A CALL AT MARKEN.

Auckland Star, Volume LX, Issue 52, 2 March 1929, Page 1 (Supplement)

A CALL AT MARKEN.

THE PICTURESQUE DUTCH. CUSTOMS AlfD TOURISTS. HOW TO TELL THE LITTLE BOYS. (By A. WALKER.) Wooden shoes, baggy breeches, bunchy petticoats, lace caps, windmills, and fields of tulips and hyacinths are what the uninformed traveller expects to find all over Holland, but the traditional costume will only be found in such conservative settlements as Volendam and Marken. The trip through green fields in a sizable steamer by way of the canals will show plenty of windmills whirling leisurely arms against the flat horizon, but only springtime can produce the hyacinths and tulips.

Volendam is an old Dutch fishing village within easy distance of Amsterdam. We had tlx good fortune to visit it on a Saturday, when the immense fleet of tansailed fishing boats, home for Sunday, formed a per feet forest of masts around the landing. The population is Roman Catholic and strict on Sunday observance. Volendam preserves jealously its national dress, and I don't think it is altogether because the attraction it offers to tourists is a paying proposition, though there is evidence that this aspect is appreciated. The children, at any rate, wear it quite unconsciously and chamingly, though a more hampering dress for a lively three-year-old of either sex It would be hard to imagine. Each province of Holland had originally its own distinctive headdress, and that of Volendam is the wide-winged laoe cap that is the most picturesque and becoming of all. There seems little risk of the Volendamers dying out. Children were the principal furniture of every cottage. Any spare corners were filled with old family treasures of brilliantly polished brass ornaments and pieces of china. Even the cooking utensils are of ornamental design, and offer highly complicated surfaces for polishing. Wedding shoes are treasured ornaments. Every prospective bridegroom has to carve a pair of these as a first gift for his be-j trothed, the elaboration of the carving offering an opportunity to signify the depth of his love.

The Watchful Policeman. These were surface observations. I really did not become acquainted with the good people of Volendam. There was an obstacle in the way in the shape of the Tillage policeman, who dogged our footsteps from the time they touched Volendam soil nntil they were once more on the deck of the steamer. It was quite thrilling, but hampering. We wondered what laws we were expected to break,| but it turned out that he was there forj our protection and not that of the inhabitants. They are said to be a little insistent about the remuneration thought fitting for posing for a photograph and the duty of all visitors to buy souvenirs. For the rest they appeared to be a mild and attractive people, the children very shy.

We got on better at Marken, an island [just offshore from Volendam, also the .dwelling place of a population whose livelihood comes from fishing, but with rival costumes and customs. Their caps are nothing like as picturesque and attractive as Volendam's white wings, but the people are cheerier and more forthright, Unless it was the policeman that cramped the style of the good Volendammers. It is the ladies of Marken who transact the business, who meet the incoming steamer with baskets of souvenirs and arrange their cottages as depots for the sale of native wares. "American, yes ?" the cheerful weatherbeaten lady in colourful costume greeted me when she arrived at the gangway as a delegation of welcome, the first of a series of searching inquiries. "No, British." "From London, yea?" "No, from New Zealand." "Oh, Australia." "No, New Zealand, 1200 miles from Australia." "Oh! I saw an Australian once. Is that your husband over there?" "No, I haven't a husband." "Whew! Old maid, eh?" "Yes." "Teacher?" "No."

Status of the Husband. "Teachers from America come here sometimes,.but not any other old maids. I think you're married all right; you're too nice not to be." She selected a brass windmill and a brass cow with a bell on its neck from her basket as a hint that their purchase for two gulden each would show fitting appreciation of the compliment. I basely took refuge in my husbandless condition as a plea for having no money to spend on such beautiful and desirable ornaments. I "Go on! I think you're a little devil and that you're having fun with me. If you hadn't a husband in America to find the money how could you have come all the way here?" Her quick intelligence had grasped the chief travel problem and the status in life of American husbands at one and the same time. Even in New Zealand a husband in America to "find the money" would often be useful; in touring Europe such a convenient banking facility would be heaven-sent. I thought it was my turn to ask a few questions. "Are there no old maids in Marken, then ?" "No, never. There are more men than women here. I'm married and have four children, but I keep my own name. We don't take our husband's names when we marry, but the children are known by his name. This is my house. Come in and see my sister and the nice things we have for sale inside, eh? You buy one of these Marken costumes for a nice fancy dress. See, it is different to the Volendam clothes. Our aprons are a different shape and have this embroidery

in front, and our caps are tight-fitting and made in five pieces. Mary Pickfordl bought one of these dresses when she was here. 1 Know Mary Pickford well. She brought her husband to Bee us, and I took them round to introduce them to my motlier. Mary's nothing out of the way to look at in her street clothes — just a small bit of a thing."

"How did you learn to speak English so beautifully ?"

"Just picked it up from the tourists.' English is taught in the schools in Holland, but you soon forget it when you don't use it. If I couldn't speak English I wouldn't be able to do business with the visitors, so I had to learn it properly. I have sold forty of these Marken costumes this summer. People give me the money and I pack them up and send them to whatever address in America they wish, and they don't have any more bother. My mother and sister make the dresses and Ido the business. Our husbands go out to work at the fishing and we work here."

"Is this your little girl, or your sister's?" I asked, indicating a lively two-year-old who was romping about seemingly unhampered by a toe-length, tight-waisted, voluminous skirted frock of gay flowered, material.

"That's my little boy. Girls don't have that square patch on the back of the lace cap. That's how you can tell the little boys, otherwise the dress is the same. The baby in the cradle is my sister's —like to see him?" She lifted a suffocatingly thick covering that had concealed cradle and contents and disclosed a perfect Dutch doll of an infant with straight-cut black fringe, sleeping cherubically. Like its elders, the baby must have been able to inhale sufficient of the strong North Sea air in its waking hours to make it independent of oxygen during sleep. The box beds let into the wall in which these people pass the night defy every law of ventilation, and men, women and children are pictures of rosy health. Much the same may be said of the Germans with their hermetically closed double windows and doors to all bedrooms. "Look at your little boy crossing that plank bridge by himself. Aren't you afraid he will fall into the water? I flon't know how you ever bring children up here with only those narrow walks in front of your houses and all those plank crossings." "Oh, no, they never fall in. They're used to having water all around them as soon as they can walk." Indeed, those narrow footways, high above the sea which seeps through the edges of the low-lying island, would be a constant source of danger not only to the children of more solid lands, but also to the grown-ups, and they would certainly enforce temperate habits; there is no room for a swaying gait oc Marken.