Een paard en een stad : de Dendermondse toe-eigening van De historie van de vier Heemskinderen

This article concerns the Dendermond appropriation of the medieval legend of the steed Bayard and the four sons (the ‘Heems children’) of Aymon, lord of Dordoen. The story of Bayard and Aymon’s sons was popular in the Low Countries during the Middle Ages. In many towns and cities, a giant wooden Horse Bayard was part of processions and parades. In some cases, the tradition persists to this day. This is especially the case in Dendermonde, where a local version of the story exists. The nineteenth-century archivist of the city, Prudens Van Duyse, is probably responsible for this remarkable tradition. His assumptions about the Dendermond roots of Aymon of Dordoen and the resulting local narrative tradition are based on a very free interpretation of the toponyms in the Middle Dutch prose story and on an equally free reading of the writings of a number of seventeenth-century historians. While, after Van Duyse’s passing, there was some debate among historians concerning the credibility of his theories, storytellers embraced the regional variant that he invented. To this day, Van Duyse continues to influence Dendermond folklore