Women Who Lived as Men

Abstract

While I was detained in Amsterdam, I made by chance the acquaintance of a certain Willempje Gerrits of Emden, who had recently fought in the battle of Funen in Denmark, dressed in male attire; there, she had behaved herself so valiantly, according to the witness of the menfolk present at this battle with her, that she served as an example to others. This maid earned her bed and board by doing scullery work, or if she found no work of this kind, with spinning, but this was so against her spirit, that she repeatedly professed a fierce passion for war and only waited for a propitious moment to surrender once again to that bloody trade. Because I thought I could choose no better companion, I went to her house, where I found her seated at the spinning wheel. ‘How sorry a sight’, I said, ‘to see you sitting here and spinning, while the drum is being beaten! Hurl the wheel into the fire and go into service again!.’ As I spoke these words to her, I saw a small axe which was used to cut peat whereupon I so dispatched the household devil, that it could never again be used by anyone. ‘What is to be done now?’ said Willempje, ‘you have hewn the wheel into pieces, but I have no money to buy men’s clothing, without which you know I can never be taken on.’ ‘That is a small scruple,’ I said, ‘I have still enough money to buy an old suit and once we have that, we shall sell this woman’s garb and we shall get enough of it to get another old suit for you, and then we shall be ready.’