"The lady of Stavoren"

                                                            Copyright     Hotel "de Vrouwe van Stavoren"

According to this myth there once lived an extremely wealthy merchant’s widow in Stavoren. She possessed a whole fleet of cargo ships. To the captain of one of them she ordered to sail the oceans of the world and bring her back the most precious treasure he could find. After a long search the captain sailed alongside a field of wheat. The shining sun gave it a golden colour. He decided that wheat, being the ingredient for the food many people depend their lives on, was the most precious thing in the world.

The lady, however, got furious when she saw the wheat. In her wrath she ordered the captain to dump it all into the sea. An old fisherman on the quay told her that this shameful dissipation would one day reduce her to beggary. To this, she took off her golden ring, threw it into the sea and told the man that sooner the sea would give her back the ring than she would become a beggar.

Not long after this one of her maids found back the rind inside a fish she was preparing for the lady.  The very next day the Lady received a message that all her ships had sunk in a big storm. She suddenly lost everything she had ever owned. And that is how she turned into a poor old woman begging the other villagers for a handful of wheat.