Being an important seaport town in the Middle Ages, it’s not exactly surprising that Bruges, more than once and occurring still in the 16th century, was a place where literary texts with sometimes remarkable maritime and piscine elements were written. These texts may not immediately be of great importance for our insight into the specific ichthyological knowledge of that time, but from a cultural-historical point of view this use of marine themes provides an interesting phenomenon. In this contribution I will discuss four literary Brugean texts of which the piscatorial elements they hold are found in two different settings: (1) in a fairy-like, wondrous, or pseudo-mythological environment, and (2) in two eulogies singing the praises of fishermen. A nice by-catch of this research is that it also reveals some intertextual relationships, leading to a better understanding of the texts in question.
1 An Imaginary Marine World
The first Brugean author to present here is the rhetorician Cornelis Everaert (1480/85–1556). By profession he was a dyer, fuller, and clerk of the controlling authority in the cloth industry, of old one of the most important trades in Bruges. Everaert was a talented and prolific playwright who collected 35 of his plays in an autograph manuscript, now kept in the Royal Library in Brussels.1
In his Esbatement vanden Visscher (Farce of the Fisherman)2 a fisherman and his wife share some thoughts on the tough but honourable task they have in society: the work is heavy and dangerous, but they find comfort in the fact that their job links them to the disciples of Christ who also earned their daily bread by fishing. After this morale-boosting discussion (vs. 1–31), they put out to sea. Having arrived at their fishing grounds, the wife sees wondrous things beneath the waves (vs. 48–66): a shrimp is hunting a codfish, a crab is carrying a ray on his back, immobilizing the fish by holding it by its tail, an eel is hunting a halibut and a plaice, an oyster is trying to poke out the eyes of a haddock, and a sole is holding a speech.3 This remarkable underwater scene, undoubtedly inserted here to amuse the spectators of the performance and to captivate their attention for what follows, is a nice example in Dutch popular literature of the so-called stringing together of impossibilities or adynata, according to E.R. Curtius a preliminary stage of the mundus inversus-topos, picturing a reality turned upside down.4
A second Brugean poet showing us an imaginary marine world is Everaert’s fellow rhetorician Eduard de Dene (1505–ca. 1578). Contrary to Everaert, whom we may consider to be merely a local literary celebrity, De Dene surely was one of the important authors in the Low Countries in the 16th century. In 1561 he collected most of the poems he had written and penned them in a large manuscript of 466 folios, calling this collection Myn Testament Rhetoricael (My Last Will in Rhetorician Verse).5 In the varied literary output found in this autograph and elsewhere, Eduard de Dene proves to be an interesting example of the 16th-century author, who more than once skilfully combines traditional ideas and methods with new insights and products of humanism and the Renaissance. Some striking cases in point here are the borrowings and imitations of François Rabelais in his own work and the fact that he wrote the texts for De Warachtighe Fabulen der Dieren (The Truthful Fables of the Animals – published in Bruges in 1567), a book that is often considered to be the first homegrown emblematic work in Dutch literature; in this collection of emblematic fables De Dene offers us also the first Dutch translations or adaptations of Alciato.6
De Dene had an active social life. He was the factor, i.e. artistic leader, of the Brugean Chamber of Rhetoric De Drie Sanctinnen (the Three Female Saints), and he was a frequent visitor of the local archers’ guild Sint Sebastiaen. Meant as a gift to this fraternity, he wrote a long ballad (7 stanzas, 140 vs.) titled Tcaeckebeen (The Jawbone),7 explaining the presence of a peculiar piece of furniture in the meeting room of the fraternity: a large table made of the bones of a whale’s head. In this ballad De Dene describes a fictitious battle from long ago (‘nearly twenty thousand years’) that took place in the vicinity of Bruges, on the waterway connecting the town with the sea. It’s in fact a highly personal, very free elaboration by De Dene of the antique gigantomachia, the (account of the) war between the giants and the gods, as the fight De Dene reports on, was waged between Neptune and his allies on the one side and some mythological giants, centaurs, cyclops, and Olympian gods on the other. Neptune, helped by the swordfish Gladius Marinus,8 whales, the Nereids or sea nymphs, and his sons Aeolus and Tryton, leads his troops while riding a huge whale. But Neptune and his army face fearful odds: they must taste defeat and turn back to the sea, leaving behind Neptune’s whale, killed by an abundance of arrows. In the refrain line at the end of each stanza of this ballad De Dene reveals to the archers of Saint Sebastian the origin of their table: ‘to remember all this, Neptune himself left us here this jawbone’.
2 The Generous Seaman9
In April 1560 Eduard de Dene wrote Myn Langhen Adieu (My Long Farewell), one of the closing poems in his Testament Rhetoricael.10 In this ballad he bids farewell to everyone and everything. He also says goodbye to Flanders and its towns and villages, always incorporating the nicknames given to the inhabitants of the location in question. These nicknames often focus on the assumed food preferences of the citizens, and so we make the acquaintance of the Pike-Eaters (snouck-eters) of Axel, the Codfish-Eaters (cabeliau-eters) of Nieuwpoort, the Bream-Eaters (mackel-eters) of Dendermonde, the Ray-Eaters (roch-eters) of Monnikerede, and the Mussel-Eaters (mossel-eters) of Boekhoute.11 This is in fact merely anecdotal information on the piscatorial culinary habits in De Dene’s time, but in one of his songs, while fully singing the fisherman’s praises, he also gives us a more profound view on the work and life of the fisherman and on his function in society as an important and indispensable provider of food.
Dene Eduard de, Testament Rhetoricael , fol. 232v. Introduction to and beginning of Den Milde Zeeman (University Library Gent, ms. 3330)
The song involved is entitled Den Milde Zeeman (The Generous Seaman).12 In this song De Dene gives us an animated and realistic glimpse into fishing life, and in particular into the different types of greedy customers a fisherman has to serve. De Dene accomplishes this by describing a series of tragicomic situations the seaman must deal with after having put into the harbour with his catch. The song opens with the statement that the fisherman, being the maritime colleague of the peasant, risks his life day and night at sea to ensure the food supply for many; although his profits are low, he does the utmost to kindly and generously distribute the fish among everyone approaching him (stanza 1). The first to take advantage of the wet and weary fisherman bringing his catch ashore are police officers, bailiffs, and other officials abusing their power and authority to pursue self-interest (stanza 2). In stanzas 3–7 De Dene obviously enjoys himself in depicting a motley crew of customers, crowding round the fisherman and his boat: innkeepers and fishmongers try to get the merchandise they need as cheap as possible; mendicant friars, beguines, and sextons try to get their share in exchange for some fancy talk and devout prayers; travelling singers and musicians try to pay for their fish with their music; barflies promise him free drinks; prostitutes hold out the prospect of free admission to the brothel; whimpering charlatans and swindlers try to elicit the fisherman’s pity to get fish for free. To put it briefly: even before he gets to the fish market with his goods, a great part of the merchandise and the possible earnings have already disappeared, because people trespass upon his kindness and generosity. And finally (stanza 8), high taxes are levied on the caught plaice, halibut, herring, codfish, lobster, crab, and shrimp; in short, however important the fisherman may be for the society, he’s hardly able to make a decent living by his fishing. Notwithstanding this, he always remains generous and kind-hearted. De Dene concludes (stanza 9) that someone like him really deserves our never-ending praise and gratitude, and he prays to God to always help and protect the fisherman and his family because of his great generosity.
Having read this song, one might ask: Is this really the right interpretation of that poem? Enjoying this highly tragicomic Den Milde Zeeman, one could viciously be inclined to think that the author wants us to consider the attitude of the fisherman towards all those opportunistic freeloaders and profiteers as silly naïveté or even stupidity, rather than as generosity. Someone who allows others to take advantage of him in such a way deserves to bleed for it. De Dene, however, is not that ironic or sarcastic, and the high degree of tragicomedy in the song does not mean that he makes the fisherman a laughingstock, as the text is clearly written with great sympathy and empathy for the hard-working seaman. Concrete proof of his positive view toward the generous seaman can be found in the fact that the poem is incorporated in De Dene’s Testament Rhetoricael in a large section devoted to the second of the seven deadly sins (greed) and its counterpart (generosity).13 If De Dene had intended to label the fisherman’s approach as naïveté or stupidity, he certainly would have put the song elsewhere in his Testament. Furthermore, in the introductory verses preceding the song, De Dene states explicitly that he wants to give praise to the seamen who will not be stopped by storm or danger to provide the people with food. It’s clear that we safely may conclude that there is no satire or mockery involved, and we can read the text as a genuine song of praise with a touch of social commitment: the fisherman is honoured, his customers are criticized.
3 Ode to the Fisherman
A second text paying tribute to the fisherman is a poem written down as a contemporary filler on a blank page in a register of the Castellany of Ypres, after a charter dated 13 July 1549.14 The poem, entitled Lof vanden Visschere (‘Ode to the Fisherman’), is incomplete: judging by the rhyme scheme, the second to last verse of the first stanza is missing, the fourth stanza only has four instead of eight verses, and moreover, one obviously gets the impression that after this fourth stanza the end of the poem was not yet in sight.15
The poem opens with the author pondering on the fact that he recently found some texts, once more speaking of the peasants in the highest terms, for they are the providers of food for everyone, rich and poor, the high lords as well as the most modest folk. This is getting a bit on the writer’s nerves, because according to him, the kind fisherman also deserves praise, as he also works hard to feed all the people (stanza 1). Next, just like in De Dene’s song, we get a vivid and colourful description of the people taking advantage of the weary fisherman, who had entered the harbour after a wakeful and cold night at sea (stanzas 2–4).
The resemblances between The Generous Seaman and this Ode to the Fisherman are most striking. The introductory stanzas of the song and the poem run analogously, as do the two storylines; the core points of both texts (i.e. the indispensability of the fisherman, his hard but poorly rewarded work, and the fact that everyone imposes on his kindness) are identical; even more eye-catching are the several similarities in the vocabulary used.16 It’s not immediately clear how to explain the close relationship between a song in De Dene’s Testament Rhetoricael and an incomplete poem written down as a filler in a register with official documents. Perhaps we may assume that both texts are products of one and the same author (De Dene), writing two variations on one theme. Such a hypothesis would account for the many resemblances. But these similarities are also accounted for when two different writers (De Dene and a fellow member of his Brugean chamber of rhetoric) created the song and the poem after the same model. This was not an unusual practice, as we can read in the foundation charter of the Ghent chamber De Fonteine: one of the requirements is that at each meeting of the chamber, which convened every three weeks, one of the rhetoricians is chosen to write a poem that is to be used by the other members as guiding example for their own literary contribution in the next gathering.17 As a slight variation on this second explanation, it certainly is also very well conceivable that the song of De Dene must have been the example to follow, as he was, after all, the artistic leader of the Brugean chamber.
4 Eulogies for the Peasant
Be that as it may, in the research on The Generous Seaman and the Ode to the Fisherman we must introduce here an important new element. Independently of each other, both the song and the poem show the influences of two other texts that must have played an essential role in their creation.
To discover this common ground, we should return to the opening stanza of the Ode to the Fisherman, where the author obviously hints to poems singing the peasant’s praises. Most probably, this singing can be taken literally, as the opening lines unmistakably seem to refer to two songs, entitled, respectively, Vanden Edelen Landtman (On the Noble Peasant) and Vanden Landtman (On the Peasant). The songs were published a couple of years before the writing down of Ode to the Fisherman, in a small booklet, printed in 1544 and now known as the Antwerp Songbook. This songbook is one of the highlights of 16th-century literature in the Low Countries, containing a collection of no fewer than 220 songs in the vernacular. The two songs in question are nr. 176 and nr. 201 of this Antwerp Songbook. The high degree of similarity in structure, content, and vocabulary of these two peasant eulogies is even more striking than the resemblances we saw in The Generous Seaman and Ode to the Fisherman. The explanation for this likeness has already been given by several scholars: the songs must have been written by two members of the same chamber of rhetoric, after a guiding example written in advance by the factor of the chamber.18 This explanation ties neatly in with the second and third of the hypotheses accounting for the resemblances between The Generous Seaman and Ode to the Fisherman.
Without any doubt, both peasant songs can be considered as the agrarian counterparts of The Generous Seaman and Ode to the Fisherman. Their subject matter is, mutatis mutandis, identical: peasants deserve our praise and respect because everyone, from the highest to the lowest, can be fed thanks to their hard work; however, a peasant is hardly able to make a decent living, as young couples destroy his crop while making love; mendicant friars, nuns, sextons, and beguines approach him to get food for free with sweet talk, flattery, or in exchange for some prayers; he is swindled by impostors and treacherous millers, and suffers extortion by soldiers and hunters; wolves and foxes kill his cattle and poultry, weasels steal his eggs, and moles churn up his fields. Just like the two fisherman’s eulogies, the peasant songs too get a religious twist in the epilogue stanza: the authors link the peasant to Jesus Christ, as he provides the essentials for Christ’s transubstantiation in the Holy Mass (wheat for the sacred host and grapes for the holy wine); besides, Christ also honoured the peasant by the fact that, after His resurrection, He appeared unto Mary Magdalene in the shape of a gardener;19 finally, the songs end by expressing the wish that Christ might always be at the peasant’s side. Next to these parallelisms in structure and content, we also see some similarities in vocabulary and literary techniques: De Dene’s The Generous Seaman has the same rhyme scheme and iambic metre as song nr. 201 of the Antwerp Songbook, and in both eulogies for the fisherman we can discover words and phrases also found in the two peasant’s songs.
5 A Nice By-Catch
Connecting the peasant’s songs to The Generous Seaman via ‘the missing link’ Ode to the Fisherman gives us – to speak in fishing terms – some nice by-catch as far as De Dene’s song is concerned. His song is no longer just one of the very many poems in his Testament Rhetoricael, it’s also a song we can place in the right context now, as it illustrates, together with Ode to the Fisherman, how a particular theme (the praise of the peasant) and two specific texts (On the (noble) Peasant) find their way in rhetorician circles. We are also able to determine a more precise year of origin for De Dene’s text: it is no longer 1561 (date of his Testament Rhetoricael), because we now know that he must have written it somewhere between 1544 (year of publication of the Antwerp Songbook) and July 1549 (date of the only known copy of Ode to the Fisherman). But the nicest gain is probably the fact that, by linking De Dene’s song to song nr. 201 of the Antwerp Songbook, we discovered how his The Generous Seaman had to be sung, as the melody used for On the Peasant was one of the melodies that could be traced back in 16th-century songbooks where song texts were given together with their music notation.20
6 Final Remarks
Apart from the text-inherent results of this research, already put into words in the previous paragraph, we can also draw a more general conclusion on the songs and poems with which we dealt.
From the 17th century onwards, poems on the country life and its inhabitants (peasants and shepherds) often belong to the genre of arcadian or bucolic literature, idealizing the rural and pastoral life in an idyllic, rustic setting. A maritime subvariant of this type of literature was introduced by Jacob Sannazaro’s Eclogae piscatoriae (Naples, 1526). In this contribution we presented a small corpus of 16th-century Brugean texts using maritime and piscatorial elements as well. These elements were used in fairy-like or pseudo-mythological scenes, and particularly in two eulogies singing the praises of the fisherman. These eulogies, however, differ in a fundamental way from the Renaissance piscatorial eclogues, as there is no idealization of a fisherman’s work or of the life on the seashore. Instead of this, the texts emphasize the importance and indispensability of the fisherman as a supplier of food, linking this positive message (1) to a realistic description of the hard, far from enviable life of the fisherman, and (2) to a tragicomic description of the many ways in which people try to take advantage of his generosity. At the end of his song, De Dene praises and thanks the fisherman once again, hoping that God will always stand by him.
How well-intentioned and full of empathy these eulogies – including the two related peasant songs of the Antwerp Songbook – may be, they also mean nothing but a rather scant consolation for the fisherman (and peasant). Although the authors state explicitly that they are fully aware of the difficulties of the fisherman (and peasant) and that they sincerely admire him for how he deals with these hardships, this awareness and admiration are not accompanied by a call on the people involved to change the way in which they misbehave, nor do they entail a demand to improve the fisherman’s (or the peasant’s) life because of his great merits. Especially after having read the religious clinchers in the final stanzas it looks as if the songs and the poem also can be considered as an incentive, whether or not intentional, to patiently accept this fate as an inescapable fact of life in the late medieval class-ridden society. This patient, long-suffering attitude is also revealed in Cornelis Everaert’s Farce of the Fisherman, in the short talk between the fisherman and his wife before they witness the wondrous underwater scene with which we opened this contribution. In brief, the texts dealt with not only express respect and sympathy for the fisherman (and peasant), but they also illustrate a society where everyone has his fixed function and immutable position, a society where everyone has his cross to bear – hopefully with the help of God.21
Appendix: Text and Translation of the Two Eulogies for the Fisherman
1) Den milde zeeman (E. de Dene, Testament Rhetoricael, fols. 232v–233v)22
2. [Lof vanden visschere]25
Bibliography
Coigneau D., “9 december 1448. Het Gentse stadsbestuur keurt de statuten van de rederijkerskamer De fonteine goed. Literaire bedrijvigheid in stads- en gildeverband”, in Nederlandse literatuur, een geschiedenis (Groningen: 1993) 102–108.
Coigneau D. – Waterschoot W. et al. (eds.), Eduard de Dene, “Testament Rhetoricael”, in Jaarboek “De Fonteine” 26, 28, 30 (Gent – Oudenaarde: 1976–1980).
Curtius E.R., European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages, transl. R. Trask (Princeton: 1973).
Geirnaert D., “Visser versus boer, of de lof der mildheid”, in Porteman K. – Verbeke W. – Willaert F. (eds.), Tegendraads genot. Opstellen over de kwaliteit van middeleeuwse teksten (Leuven: 1996) 173–186.
Geirnaert D., “A Gift for Hanno. The Fictitious Booklist of Eduard de Dene”, in Pouey-Mounou A.-P. – Smith P.J. (eds.), Early Modern Catalogues of Imaginary Books. A Scholarly Anthology (Leiden – Boston: 2020) 112–134.
Hüsken W.N.M. (ed.), De spelen van Cornelis Everaert, 2 vols. (Hilversum: 2005).
Kalff G., Het lied in de Middeleeuwen (Leiden: 1884).
Muller J.W. – Scharpé L. (eds.), Spelen van Cornelis Everaert (Leiden: 1920).
Pleij H., Het gilde van de Blauwe Schuit. Literatuur, volksfeest en burgermoraal in de middeleeuwen (Amsterdam: 1979).
Pleij H., Het gevleugelde woord. Geschiedenis van de Nederlandse literatuur – 1400–1560 (Amsterdam: 2007).
Poel D. van der et al. (eds.), Het Antwerps Liedboek, 2 vols. (Tielt: 2004).
Robert-Nicoud V., The World Upside Down in 16th-Century French Literature and Visual Culture (Leiden – Boston: 2018).
Strubbe E.I., “‘Lof van den Visschere’. Een vers uit Eduard de Dene’s tijd”, Biekorf 46 (1940–1945) 27–28.
Call number of this manuscript: Brussels, Royal Library, 19036. This autograph was edited twice: Muller J.W. – Scharpé L. (eds.), Spelen van Cornelis Everaert (Leiden: 1920) and Hüsken W.N.M. (ed.), De spelen van Cornelis Everaert, 2 vols. (Hilversum: 2005).
Hüsken, De spelen, 628–644; see also Muller, Spelen, 317–326 en 615–616.
The author introduces here a play on words, as the Dutch word for sole is tong, a homonym of tong, ‘tongue’.
See Robert-Nicoud V., The World Upside Down in 16th-Century French Literature and Visual Culture (Leiden – Boston: 2018) 2. The reference is to Curtius E.R., European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages, transl. R. Trask (Princeton: 1973) 94–98.
For the edition of this work, see Coigneau D. – Waterschoot W. et al. (eds.), Eduard de Dene, “Testament Rhetoricael”, in Jaarboek “De Fonteine” 26, 28, 30 (Gent – Oudenaarde: 1976–1980); online: https://www.dbnl.org/tekst/dene001test01_01/index.php.
For further information on his importance, see Pleij H., Het gevleugelde woord. Geschiedenis van de Nederlandse literatuur – 1400–1560 (Amsterdam: 2007) 385–393; Geirnaert D., “A Gift for Hanno. The Fictitious Booklist of Eduard de Dene”, in Pouey-Mounou A.-P. – Smith P.J. (eds.), Early Modern Catalogues of Imaginary Books. A Scholarly Anthology (Leiden – Boston: 2020) 112–134 (here 112–114).
Testament Rhetoricael, fols. 118r–119v.
Gladius maris or marinus is one of the medieval scientific names for the swordfish; in this way it gives an ichthyological tinge to the information given here by De Dene.
For the following paragraphs, I rely largely on the findings in Geirnaert D., “Visser versus boer, of de lof der mildheid”, in Porteman K. – Verbeke W. – Willaert F. (eds.), Tegendraads genot. Opstellen over de kwaliteit van middeleeuwse teksten (Leuven: 1996) 173–186.
Testament Rhetoricael, fols. 440r–444v.
Testament Rhetoricael, fols. 440v–441r.
Testament Rhetoricael, fols. 232v–233v. For the text and its translation, see the appendix at the end of this contribution.
Testament Rhetoricael, fols. 225v–240r.
It was discovered and published by E.I. Strubbe in 1940 (Strubbe E.I., “‘Lof van den Visschere’. Een vers uit Eduard de Dene’s tijd”, Biekorf 46 (1940–1945) 27–28).
For the original text and its translation, see the appendix at the end of this contribution.
For these lexical similarities, see the words in bold in the original text of the song and the poem in the appendix.
Coigneau D., “9 december 1448. Het Gentse stadsbestuur keurt de statuten van de rederijkerskamer De fonteine goed. Literaire bedrijvigheid in stads- en gildeverband”, in Nederlandse literatuur, een geschiedenis (Groningen: 1993) 106.
See Kalff G., Het lied in de Middeleeuwen (Leiden: 1884) 402; and also the most recent edition of the Antwerp Songbook (Poel D. van der et al. (eds.), Het Antwerps Liedboek (Tielt: 2004), II, 399 and 453).
See John 20:15.
See the information on Vanden Landtman in the Dutch Song Database (www.liederen bank.nl), a database containing more than 180,000 songs in the Dutch and Flemish language, from the Middle Ages through the 20th century.
See also Pleij H., Het gilde van de Blauwe Schuit. Literatuur, volksfeest en burgermoraal in de middeleeuwen (Amsterdam: 1979) 142–143.
Coigneau, Testament Rhetoricael, 28, 141–143.
To weave on a woman’s loom: metaphorical expression meaning ‘to have sexual intercourse with a woman’.
To sew: metaphorical expression meaning ‘to have sexual intercourse’.
Strubbe, Lof, 27–28.