Pieter Bruegel and the Art of Laughter - AAAARG.ORG

notes to pages 135–138 225
West Prussia, about 1443, in which men dressed as devils and hunted up
old women and supposedly carried them oª to Hell; see R. W. Scribner,
Popular Culture and Popular Movements in Reformation Germany (London: Hambledon
Press, 1987), p. 88. Further research might determine if this incident
was isolated or reflects a common carnival custom.
44. Variants of this tale appear in a number of medieval exempla collections
(Tubach 1969, p. 405, no. 5361), and it inspired plays for several centuries
after Sachs (Schmidt 1963, pp. 70–78). For further examples in art, see
also Jones 2002b, pp. 189–190.
45. Karant-Nunn and Wiesner-Hanks 2003, pp. 124, 135.
46. Geisberg-Strauss 1974, 1:140 (Geisberg, no. 161). I am very grateful to
Professor Gisela Luther for a translation of this poem. The poem may
be by Hans Sachs; see Nuremberg, Stadtgeschichtliche Museen, Die Welt
des Hans Sachs: 400 Holzschnitte des 16. Jahrhunderts, 1976, p. 101, cat. no. 121.
47. Hollstein [1949]–, 4:59, no. 117, there erroneously described as “The
Witch and the Devil.”
48. Christine de Pizan, Treasure of the City of Ladies, or the Book of the Three Virtues,
trans. and intro. Sarah Lawson (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1985),
p. 129.
49. My illustration is of a damaged impression in the Rijksprentenkabinet,
Amsterdam, attributed to Remigius Hogenberg. For this and other images
of Kenau Hasselaer published during the later sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries, see Peacock 1999, pp. 18 and passim and pp. 26–28, figs.
15–17. Cf. some contemporary images of the triumphant Judith in Margarita
Stocker, Judith, Sexual Warrior: Women and Power in Western Culture (New
Haven: Yale University Press, 1998), figs. 1, 2, 13, 15, 17. For Hasselaer’s
life, see Kurtz 1956, esp. pp. 16–41, on her heroic role in the siege of Haarlem.
Trijnje van Leemput and her companions performed similar martial
deeds in the defense of Utrecht (Peacock 1999, pp. 18, 29, fig. 18).
50. For a similar contrast between Kenau Hasselaer and Dulle Griet, see Simon
Schama, The Embarrassment of Riches: An Interpretation of Dutch Culture in
the Golden Age (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1987), p. 418.
51. See Gibson 1979, p. 11, for the theme of the Fight for the Breeches. In a
woodcut picture series of about 1700 from East Flanders, the wife donning
the trousers is labeled Quaey Griet or “Bad Griet” (Röhrich 1974,
1:440).