When Hellenia or Min-erva died, the priests pretended to be with us,
and in order to make it appear so, they deified Hellenia. They refused
to have any other mother chosen, saying that they feared there was
no one among her maidens whom they could trust as they had trusted
Min-erva, surnamed Nyhellenia.
But we would not recognise Min-erva as a goddess, because she herself
had told us that no one could be perfectly good except the spirit of
Wr-alda. Therefore we chose Geert Pyre's daughter for our mother. When
the priests saw that they could not fry their herrings on our fire
(have everything their own way), they left Athens, and said that we
refused to acknowledge Min-erva as a goddess out of envy, because she
had shown so much affection to the natives. Thereupon they gave the
people statues of her, declaring that they might ask of them whatever
they liked, as long as they were obedient to her. By these kinds
of tales the stupid people were estranged from us, and at last they
attacked us; but as we had built our stone city wall with two horns
down to the sea, they could not get at us. Then, lo and behold! an
Egyptian high priest, bright of eye, clear of brain, and enlightened
of mind, whose name was Cecrops, came to give them advice.
When he saw that with his people he could not storm our wall, he sent
messengers to Tyre. Thereupon there arrived three hundred ships full
of wild mountain soldiers, which sailed unexpectedly into our haven
while we were defending the walls. When they had taken our harbour,
the wild soldiers wanted to plunder the village and our ships--one
had already ravished a girl--but Cecrops would not permit it; and
the Tyrian sailors, who still had Frisian blood in their veins, said,
If you do that we will burn our ships, and you shall never see your
mountains again. Cecrops, who had no inclination towards murder
or devastation, sent messengers to Geert, requiring her to give
up the citadel, offering her free exit with all her live and dead
property, and her followers the same. The wisest of the citizens,
seeing that they could not hold the citadel, advised Geert to accept
at once, before Cecrops became furious and changed his mind. Three
months afterwards Geert departed with the best of Frya's sons, and
seven times twelve ships. Soon after they had left the harbour they
fell in with at least thirty ships coming from Tyre with women and
children. They were on their way to Athens, but when they heard how
things stood there they went with Geert. The sea-king of the Tyrians
brought them altogether through the strait which at that time ran
into the Red Sea (now re-established as the Suez Canal). At last
they landed at the Punjab, called in our language the Five Rivers,
because five rivers flow together to the sea. Here they settled, and
called it Geertmania. The King of Tyre afterwards, seeing that all
his best sailors were gone, sent all his ships with his wild soldiers
to catch them, dead or alive. When they arrived at the strait, both
the sea and the earth trembled. The land was upheaved so that all the
water ran out of the strait, and the muddy shores were raised up like
a rampart. This happened on account of the virtues of the Geertmen,
as every one can plainly understand.
IN THE YEAR ONE THOUSAND AND FIVE AFTER ATLAND WAS SUBMERGED, THIS
WAS INSCRIBED ON THE EASTERN WALL OF FRYASBURGT.
After twelve years had elapsed without our seeing any Italians in
Almanland, there came three ships, finer than any that we possessed
or had ever seen.
On the largest of them was a king of the Jonischen Islands whose name
was Ulysses, the fame of whose wisdom was great. To him a priestess
had prophesied that he should become the king of all Italy provided he
could obtain a lamp that had been lighted at the lamp in Texland. For
this purpose he had brought great treasures with him, above all,
jewels for women more beautiful than had ever been seen before. They
were from Troy, a town that the Greeks had taken. All these treasures
he offered to the mother, but the mother would have nothing to do with
them. At last, when he found that there was nothing to be got from
her, he went to Walhallagara (Walcheren). There there was established
a Burgtmaagd whose name was Kaat, but who was commonly called Kalip,
because her lower lip stuck out like a mast-head. Here he tarried for
years, to the scandal of all that knew it. According to the report
of the maidens, he obtained a lamp from her; but it did him no good,
because when he got to sea his ship was lost, and he was taken up
naked and destitute by another ship. There was left behind by this
king a writer of pure Frya's blood, born in the new harbour of Athens,
who wrote for us what follows about Athens, from which may be seen
how truly the mother Hel-licht spoke when she said that the customs
of Frya could never take firm hold in Athens.
From the other Greeks you will have heard a great deal of bad about
Cecrops, because he was not in good repute; but I dare affirm that he
was an enlightened man; very renowned both among the inhabitants and
among us, for he was against oppression, unlike the other priests,
and was virtuous, and knew how to value the wisdom of distant
nations. Knowing that, he permitted us to live according to our own
Asegaboek. There was a story current that he was favourable to us
because he was the son of a Frisian girl and an Egyptian priest: the
reason of this was that he had blue eyes, and that many of our girls
had been stolen and sold to Egypt, but he never confirmed this. However
it may have been, certain it is that he showed us more friendship than
all the other priests together. When he died, his successors soon began
to tear up our charters, and gradually to enact so many unsuitable
statutes that at long last nothing remained of liberty but the shadow
and the name. Besides, they would not allow the laws to be written,
so that the knowledge of them was hidden from us. Formerly all the
cases in Athens were pleaded in our language, but afterwards in both
languages, and at last in the native language only. At first the men of
Athens only married women of our own race, but the young men as they
grew up with the girls of the country took them to wife. The bastard
children of this connection were the handsomest and cleverest in the
world; but they were likewise the wickedest, wavering between the two
parties, paying no regard to laws or customs except where they suited
their own interests. As long as a ray of Frya's spirit existed, all
the building materials were for common use, and no one might build a
house larger or better than his neighbours; but when some degenerate
townspeople got rich by sea-voyages and by the silver that their slaves
got in the silver countries, they went to live out on the hills or
in the valleys. There, behind high enclosures of trees or walls,
they built palaces with costly furniture, and in order to remain
in good odour with the nasty priests, they placed there likenesses
of false gods and unchaste statues. Sometimes the dirty priests and
princes wished for the boys rather than the girls, and often led them
astray from the paths of virtue by rich presents or by force. Because
riches were more valued by this lost and degenerate race than virtue
or honour, one sometimes saw boys dressed in splendid flowing robes,
to the disgrace of their parents and maidens, and to the shame of
their own sex. If our simple parents came to a general assembly at
Athens and made complaints, a cry was raised, Hear, hear! there is
a sea-monster going to speak. Such is Athens become, like a morass
in a tropical country full of leeches, toads, and poisonous snakes,
in which no man of decent habits can set his foot.