Belgian Fairy Tales

by William Elliot Griffis

“Or else, mix us with the sand, and then, out of our bosoms, draw flowers. Either to be blossoms, or bricks, is what we long to be. [[184]]

“Oh, take us up out of this darkness, in which we dwell under water.”

To their ears, the gurgling of the water and the sounds from the rivers and streams were, to the fairies, as groans of pain. Now, they would change these to a song. All they had been waiting for, was an opportunity, or an invitation. Now they had received it, and that was the reason why they ran out of Father Vrolyke’s house so merrily, for here was their chance to do something big. An idea had struck inside their heads, and had hit so hard that they wanted to go to work instantly to relieve pressure on the brain.

So right away, they summoned every fairy in Belgic Land to come and help, and merrily they came. Thousands of the little fellows, mostly Kabouters, hauled up tons after tons of river clay. They piled it up, until it made an enormous brick yard. Then they made moulds of wood and iron, of the shape of bricks.

One set of Kabouters were appointed to mix the clay. Others stood at the dry dust tubs. From the wet clay, heaped up on a big bench, or table, a big Kabouter threw down a lump into the square wood or iron frame or mould, shaped like a brick. Then he shoved the soft brick over to the Stryker, who struck off, to a level, the extra amount of clay, just as a good cook cuts off [[185]]the excess of dough, in the pie crust, that hangs over the edge of the dish, before she puts it in the oven to bake. From these benches the thousands of Manneken carried the wood or iron moulds filled with clay, over to the drying ground. They tumbled flat the clay out of the frames and laid the bricks, still soft, out to dry, for several days, in the sun. Every time, as they returned, they threw the empty iron moulds into a tub full of fine dry clay-dust, so the wet clay or bricks would not stick, but fall easily, when tumbled over, flat on the ground to dry.

Another set of Kabouters built a kiln, setting the bricks into piles, with spaces, like aisles and corridors, for the air to circulate in, and the flames to reach everywhere, and to every brick, from bottom to top. Another gang cut down wood and plugging it into these holes set the fires going, to bake the soft sun-dried bricks into “klinkers,” or burnt bricks, as hard as stone.

Every night, for a month, they worked, until millions of bricks baked in the fire, until they were hard enough to “klink,” or resound, when struck together, and were ready for the bricklayers. That’s the reason they call a well-turned brick a “klinker,” because it sounds.

Father Vrolyke now took the honorable name of Van Slyk (from the river mud, now turned into brick), and his reverend colleague took the [[186]]name Stryker, and, together, they summoned masons and bricklayers from Italy. These men piled brick on brick, until walls and towers rose up toward the sky, and made some of the people think of mountains.

And, would you believe it? Some stupid folks were afraid to walk in the streets, for fear the walls, which seemed so terribly high, would fall down on them!

But the builders were not afraid of these piles of brick falling down, for they held the courses together by the “Flemish bond”; that is, wherever two bricks met, end to end, another brick was laid on top between. The middle part of the upper brick lay directly over the joining place of the under ones. Thus the whole structure was held together as tightly, as if the bricks had gone back again, to be part of the mother rock, in the high mountain, whence they came ages before.