Historicisations of Nymphs in Early Modern Antiquarianism

Chapter 15 Our White Ladies on the Graves: Historicisations of Nymphs in Early Modern Antiquarianism

Bernd Roling

I Introduction

Classical nymphs today appear to us as a subject of literature or art history, they inhabit the idylls and eclogues of the bucolic genre and the frescoes of a Renaissance villa.1 In this paper I would like to show, through a few examples, that they were not necessarily limited to this territory, the history of literature and art, and, especially, that they did not necessarily find their home solely in classical antiquity. What was the relationship of the nymphs, and along with them many other gods and goddesses, to the sites at which they were worshipped? Was this relation perhaps more than just a question of iconog- raphy and architectural history, namely a question of concrete practices and experience? What, in truth, filled a temple with life, and why should this life withdraw from it with the arrival of Christianity? I would like to show, further, how in the mid-seventeenth century scholars who can be regarded as part of the great movement of antiquarianism began step by step to set archaeology, literature, folklore into relation with each other, in order to gain a better pic- ture of the phenomenon of the nymphs. It should become clear that here the study of the history of the Mother Goddesses cautiously called into being an early predecessor of the comparative study of religion.

II Jean Picardt and the Dutch ‘White Ladies’

In 1660 Jean Picardt, who is still today well known in the Netherlands, pub- lished his description of the provice of Drenthe and its neighbouring regions Friesland and Emsland.2 Picardt himself was from Schüttorf, went to school in

1 I would like to thank Orla Mulholland for her translation of the paper and Dorothee Huff (Göttingen) and Cornelia Selent (Münster) for helpful discussions. 2 On Johan Picardt as historian of Drenthe see the very useful survey of Gerding M.A.W., Johan Picardt (1600–1670). Drenthe’s eerste geschiedsschrijver (Assen: 1997), passim, and

Steinfurt, studied medicine in Leiden and succeeded in a career as a cleric in the service of the Count of Bentheim. His Korte Beschryvinge van eenige vergetene Antiquiteten is the first history of this region. Picardt recorded as a sight specially worth seeing in his homeland the barrows or Hünengräber, megalithic monuments, that were found in some places in Drenthe. Picardt himself called them berghjes and observed that many of these religious sites were the tombs of giants who had been able to survive the catastrophe of the Flood.3 As was noted by Jan Albert Bakker a few years ago, a similar view was taken at the end of the seventeenth century by other scholars who took an interest in these megalithic graves, such as Hermann Conring, who had addressed them in Helmstedt,4 or Johannes Daniel Major,5 who at the same time had begun to catalogue them in Schleswig-Holstein.6 Picardt himself, however, did not re- gard all the barrows of Friesland as giants’ graves. For him some of the berghjes were certainly of later date: they could have been constructed in the Roman period and been set up as burial and memorial sites for Roman legionaries, for the army of Varus or other troops that had been stationed in the region. However, Picard noted, these burial and cult sites had a special feature. From time immemorial, out of the caves beneath their stones the White Ladies had appeared, the witte wijwen, as they were called in Dutch: white-clad, fairy- like beings of non-human nature. At times by these Ladies’ grottoes one could hear the lamentations down below of the men and women whom the White Ladies had forced down into their caverns. Sometimes people had even re- turned from these caves, having seen marvellous sights, though they refused to divulge any more about their experiences. These were nymphs, Picardt states, nymphae montanae, or Berg-duywels, who had made their home below these apparently Roman graves. For the local people of the surrounding countryside, these ladies had another role too: they were able to foresee the future and they

recently Esser R., The Politics of Memory. The Writing of Partition in the Seventeenth-Century Low Countries (Leiden: 2012) 262–281.

3 Picardt Johan, Korte beschryvinge van eenige vergetene en verborgene Antiquiteiten der Provintien en Landen gelegen tusschen de Noord-Zee, de Yssel, Emse en Lippe (Amsterdam, Goesdesbergh: 1660) 1. deel, dist. 8, 43–46.

4 Conring Hermann, De antiquissimo statu Helmestadii et vicinae coniecturae (Helmstedt, Henning Müller: 1665) e.g. 5–6. 5 Maior Johann Daniel, Bevölckertes Cimbrien, oder, Die zwischen der Ost- und West-See gelegene Halb-Insel Deutschlandes: nebst dero ersten Einwohnern und ihrer eigendlichen durch viel und grosse Umwege geschehenen Ankunfft, summarischer weise vorgestellet (Plön, Schmied: 1692) ch. 27–28, 38–42. 6 Bakker J.A., Megalithic Research in the Netherlands, 1547–1911. From ‘Giant’s Beds’ and ‘Pillars of Hercules’ to Accurate Investigations (Leiden: 2010), there on Picardt 40–50.