When he had walked on thus for three days he came to the outskirts of
Brussels, and to the wealthy township of Uccle. And there, passing in
front of the inn with the sign of the Trumpet, his attention was drawn
to a most heavenly odour of fricassee. A little urchin who stood by
was also sniffing the delightful perfume of the sauce, and Ulenspiegel
asked him in whose honour it was that there rose to heaven such odour
of festal incense. The boy made answer that the Guild of the Jolly
Face was to meet at the inn that evening after vespers, to celebrate
the deliverance of the town by the women and girls of olden time.
Now in the distance Ulenspiegel saw a high pole with a popinjay on
the top of it, and the pole was set in the ground, and round it were
a company of women armed with bows and arrows. He asked the boy if
women were become archers nowadays?
The boy, still sniffing greedily the savour of the sauces, replied that
in the days of the Good Duke the very bows that were now being used
by those women had been the means of killing over a hundred brigands.
Ulenspiegel desired to know further concerning this matter, but the
boy said that he could tell no more, so hungry was he, unless forsooth
Ulenspiegel would give him a patard with which he might buy food and
drink. This Ulenspiegel did, for he felt sorry for him.
No sooner had the boy received the patard than he rushed into the
tavern like a fox to the hen-house, and presently reappeared in
triumph with half a sausage and a large loaf of bread.
And now Ulenspiegel was suddenly aware of a sweet sound of viols
and tabors, and soon he saw a number of women dancing together, and
among them a woman of great beauty with a chain of gold hanging round
her neck.
The boy, who had by this time assuaged his hunger and was grinning
with delight, informed Ulenspiegel that the beautiful woman was the
Queen of Archery, that her name was Mietje, and that she was wife to
Messire Renonckel, alderman of the parish. Then he asked Ulenspiegel
to give him six liards for a drink. Ulenspiegel gave him the money,
and when he had thus eaten and drunk his fill the urchin sat himself
down in the sun and fell to picking his teeth with his nails.
When the women archers noticed Ulenspiegel standing there in his
pilgrim's habit, they came and began to dance round him in a ring,
crying:
"Hail pilgrim, hail! Do you come from far away, you handsome pilgrim
boy?"
Ulenspiegel, thinking sadly of Nele, thus made answer:
"I come from Flanders, a lovely land and filled with lovesome girls."
"What crime have you committed?" asked the women, stopping in their
dance.
"I dare not confess it, so great it was," said he.
They asked him the reason why it was needful for him to journey thus
with a pilgrim's staff and wallet, and those scalloped oysters that
are the sign of the pilgrim.
"The reason is," he replied, not quite truthfully, "that I said that
Masses for the dead are advantageous to the priests."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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