De romantyk fan it histoarysk folkslibben: Petrus Wigeri sprekwurdsamler?

Abstract

Paulus Scheltema (1752-1835) is the author of a number of fabricated
historical texts, including thousands of proverbs which he made up himself.
However, for many of these proverbs Scheltema gives Rev. Petrus Wigeri
(1710-1800) as his informant. In response to the opinions of Frits van der
Kuip and Jurjen van der Kooi, this article tries to make Scheltema’s claim
implausible. One of the arguments is that Wigeri cannot have written them,
simply because the interest in the every-day life of the people in the past, of
which these proverbs abound, did not yet exist in Wigeri’s day. This interest
emerged around 1806. Until then, the historical interest in Friesland and
the Frisians was of a philological nature or focused on the history of the
Frisians as a people.