De Goaldene Brulloft fan Paulus Scheltema

Abstract

Paulus Scheltema’s De Goaldene Brulloft is a short prose story, written in Frisian, about a golden wedding anniversary in a well-to-do farmer’s family in 1664. The story is complemented with a biography of a man who attended the feast when he was ten years old, together with the names of his ancestors. It is written in an archaizing language, as is only known from Scheltema. Ten versions of the story are known, all of them undated. They resemble each other, but still differ somewhat. Two of them have been published earlier, the one, edited here, in 1831, the other one in 1841. The 1831 version distinguishes itself from the other nine by adding a kind of justification by the author and a multitude of adoptions from Gysbert Japix. In this article, I seek to answer a number of questions concerning occasion, influences and idea to write a story about this subject; to establish the date and development of the various versions; to uncover the reason and nature of the language; to unravel fact from fiction; to determine the author’s attitude towards the past in literary prose; and to assess the relation with the prevailing literary fashion.