Ref. 1091 (new) CONTEMPORARY LEGEND. CHURCHES BUILT ON OXHIDES. Peter Burger: Query: do stories about churches or other buildings constructed on a foundation of oxhides exist outside the Dutch language area? Any studies of the origins of this legendary custom? In the Netherlands and Flanders many churches are said to be built on cowhides or oxhides, and some people still believe that they live in a house built on hides. The legends date back to at least the eighteenth century. Some are more elaborate, incorporating the building sacrifice and suppressed product motifs. In one, the hides are a trade secret of a master builder. When his son unintentionally discloses the secret, he kills him in fit of rage. Theo Meder: Building a church where oxen halt as well as claiming more land by cutting ox hide into strips are well known in the Netherlands as well. However, the type of story Peter mentions is different. There seems to be neither an ATU number for it, nor a Thompson motif. Sinninghe acknowledges the legend type by cataloguing it as 984: Das Gebäude ruht auf Ochsenhäuten. However, Sinninghe deals with Dutch legends only. The Dutch Folktale Database has 17 versions of the story, but we could easily find more. Some legends claim the hides were used to keep the water out - architects say thats silly, because it doesnt work. Some scholars claim the legends are all based on the misunderstanding of a Dutch word. In that case, there shouldnt be any German, English, French, Spanish etc. legends about buildings being built on oxhides... So were really curious for versions in other tongues. Peter Burger: Thanks for these oxhide references. To clarify: AT 2400, ATU 927C*; Motif K185.1 is the oxhide purchase narrative, best known in connection with Dido and Carthage. The suppressed product is the legend about the artist, craftsman or inventor who is killed or otherwise incapacitated (e.g., blinded) to prevent him from creating more copies of his masterpiece. Building sacrifice: burying animals or humans beneath the foundations of a building to make it stronger. My impression so far is that the Dutch and Flemish versions of the built on oxhides legends date back to the 17th century (rather than the 18th, as I said in my first post). I just came across a dense piece of philological detective work by art historian Gary Schwartz, Saenredam, Huygens and the Utrecht Bull, Simiolus 1966, pp. 69-93 (jstor.org/stable/3780492). Schwartz unpicks the history of the Utrecht Mariakerk and refers to a story in Plinys Natural History about the temple of Artemis at Ephesus, where the soggy ground was stabilized with fleece. Tellingly, this is the only non-Dutch example he provides, so the legend may be exclusively Dutch - although that would be a rarity. JSTOR: Access Denied Access is denied because you may be accessing an invalid URL, or you may be using a web accelerator or other automatic webpage downloader that overloads our server. Paul Screeton: I heard that the pillars of Yarm railway viaduct, which stretches across the River Tees [England], were built on sheep fleeces. This struck me at the time as rather illogical and by then I was beginning to question teachers supposed wisdom. There was until recent times a couple of tanneries in the market town, so maybe the geography master who made this claim was in partial error.
Posted on: Sat, 20 Sep 2014 17:18:59 +0000
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