In the northeast of the Netherlands lies the province of Drenthe. It is a poor land, sparsely populated, a land of endless moors and heather fields and peat-bogs. For centuries there was naught to be found but a handful of scattered villages and crofters' hamlets, inhabited by a sturdy people trying to eke a living from the poor soil. And it was in those days that two giants were said to roam the great field between Orvelte and Elp.
They were father and son, and Ellert and Brammert were their names. The father stood over eight feet tall and the son more than matched him. With their wild hair and shaggy beards and coarse sheep-fur clothes they were a frightening sight to behold, and fear them people should, for Ellert and Brammert were robbers and murderers. Cruel. Pitiless.
There were not many travellers in those days, but all who journeyed from Oversticht to Groningen had to cross their domain, for there were but few safe routes between the bogs and fens. Ellert and Brammert span hidden wires across those routes, connected to a series of bells in their hide-out. Any traveller careless enough to jostle one would alert the giants to his presence and would soon find himself preyed upon. The people would be killed, their animals slaughtered and eaten, and their goods stashed away in the giants' lair, piling up in ever growing heaps as the giants knew not what to do with most of their ill-gotten gains. The lair itself was another marvel of ingenuity and disguise. Concealed as it was in a dried-out fen and covered in heather-branches, a traveller could pass within six feet without noticing a thing. Moreover the most treacherous bogs and marshes were all around it, which none but the giants could safely cross. Three times over the years, the men of the nearby villages of Schoonoort and Orvelte had set out with scythes and knives to hunt the giants and end their depredations, but they never found a thing.
As the years went by the giants ate well and gathered many riches, but slowly the loneliness of their existence began to wear on them. Brammert in particular, the son, became wistful for want of a wife.
The girl was called Marieke of Orvelte, a farmer's daughter, young and strong and fair to look at.
Some say she was out harvesting wild rye when Brammert spied her. Some say she was travelling across the moors to visit her aunt in Elp. Suffice it to say that one day she disappeared as she was caught and brought back to the giants' hiding hole.
Brammert was overjoyed to have some companionship other than his dour father at last. Ellert was less pleased with the changes in their life and watched the girl like a hawk, lest she escape and betray them to the villagers. Even he had to admit, though, that there were benefits to her presence. She could cook mutton that was not grey and tasteless, mended their clothes, kept the lair much neater and fairer-smelling than it had been wont to, and only a few growled threats were needed to make her do these things. No doubt she was made the victim of their lusts as well, though the tales are coy about this, only some suggesting she got pregnant.
Though her fate seemed grim, Marieke did not let it bear her down. She filled the evenings with talk of the human villages and towns and the habits and customs and entertainments of her people. She told the stories she had grown up with, none of which were known to the giants. She described sights and places they had never seen and could scarcely imagine. She explained what the tools and objects they stole were used for and what purposes they served. Ellert huffed and scoffed at all these words, saying a giant had no need of such things. He had his axe to fight with and food to eat and wished for nothing more. Brammert, however, became ever more entranced with the visions Marieke painted.
One day, when his father was out hunting, Brammert shyly approached Marieke and asked her if it were possible for him to be like the village-men from she always spoke of. The girl considered this for a while. "Perhaps," she said, tapping her chin, "but men from the village bathe even in winter, so they might smell sweet even when they are crowded together in a single building." Brammert considered this and went to bathe in the cold heather-fen. "But do not try to run away," he said, "for you will trip our hidden wires and I will find you and punish you." Marieke agreed not to run away, even though this was the first time in weeks she was left unattended.
"Am I like a man from the human town now?" Brammert asked upon his return. Marieke looked at him and shook her head. "No, human men do not wear whole sheepskins like you. They wear proper, tailored clothes, like this." She plucked the sleeve of her dress, grimier now than when she had been captured but still quite presentable. Brammert looked saddened and disappointed, but Marieke had a solution. Among their piles of loot were sets of clothes, taken from their victims or the traders' wagons. They were too small of course, but Marieke was a deft hand with a needle and after two nights' work she'd managed to make a shirt wide enough for Brammert's great barrel chest, and trousers that would fit even his thick legs. They were still too short, but with long stockings the effect was almost passable. Ellert, seeing them at work, huffed and scoffed and kept polishing his axe and asked why this nonsense was even necessary, but Brammert grew defensive and sullen and would tell him nothing.
They waited two days until Ellert went away again. Brammert washed and put on his new clothes and approached Marieke: "Do I look like a human village-man now?" She looked him up and down critically, and finally shook her head with a regretful sigh. "You are clean, and you have the clothes, but no townsman has such wild long hair and such a great shaggy beard as you do. Townsmen shave their whiskers." Brammert was baffled. He knew not what this "shaving" business was, but Marieke again had the answer. There was a razor in their pile of loot too, and shaving soap. She had him sit down on a rock as she worked up a fine lather and smeared it over his cheeks, describing how the process worked. "It smells funny," Brammert said.
Marieke merely nodded, flipped the razor open, and with one swift, smooth motion slit Brammert's throat from ear to ear. Her arm only shook a little bit and it seemed the giant had not noticed the hammering of her heart after all.
Brammert's eyes opened wide in surprise, and then he slipped off the rock and fell silently onto the ground, the blood pouring down on his fine new clothes. He tried to raise his hands, fingers clawing and twitching, but whether he meant to clutch his throat or reach for Marieke's would never be known as his movements quickly ceased.
Marieke pushed down the sickness in her gut and quickly gathered up the bundle of possessions she had hidden away over the past few days, and set off in the direction of Orvelte as fast as she could. By now she knew the safe paths through the bogs, having observed the giants take it half a hundred times, and she knew she would never get a better chance than this, but she knew she was far from safe. Indeed, she had not gone far when she suddenly stumbled and saw she had set off a hidden tripwire. Not long after she heard a scream of rage in the distance behind her, such as could not have been produced by any human throat.
Ellert had found the body of his son, still dressed in his "villager" clothes. The old giant was no great thinker, but it was obvious what had happened. His worst fear had come true, and there was room for but one thought in his mind. There was only one thing still to be done. For forty years he had stalked the heather and he knew it like no other man or giant alive. The girl's trail was clear to him as daylight. He set after her with great loping strides, axe clutched in whitened knuckles. His son would be avenged. He just had to catch the human before she reached her people.
But Marieke was young and strong, and though Ellert ran faster than he had in decades, his old heart hammering in his chest, by the time he finally caught sight of her the outer barns of Orvelte were already coming in view. Marieke looked over her shoulder as she heard the approaching thunder of his footsteps, her expression fearful but determined. She dropped her belongings, hiked up her skirts and ran for her life.
Ellert's speed picked up, chest heaving, heart pounding. His legs were twice as long as the girl's, but her lead was too big. He wouldn't catch her. She was nearly at the barn already. At the last he stopped and lifted his beloved axe and with all his remaining might threw it at the back of Marieke's head.
Marieke heard the blade whistling and dove forward, felt the wind of its passage stir her hair as it flew just over her head, felt the crash as it struck the barn's doorpost. She immediately pushed herself up again to run on when she heard another crash. Ellert had fallen, clutching at his chest as his heart gave out in despair at seeing his vengeance escape him and with it the last bit of purpose in his life.
And so the reign of terror of the giants ended. Marieke was welcomed back to Orvelte with great happiness and fanfare, for she had long been thought dead by her all her kin. The times being what they were, her time in captivity with the giants had rendered her soiled in the eyes of the townsmen, unfit for marriage within her class, but even that did not dampen Marieke's spirits. She had long loved a poor boy in the village whom her parents had deemed unworthy of a girl of good family, but now with the money she had retrieved from the giants' lair she could marry him as she had always wanted. They lived, as it is said, contentedly for a good while after.
AN: I never actually intended to put this story up on this site, but a conversation with Clar the Pirate made me think about just how similar the old ways of storytelling are to writing fan-fiction. Stories of Ellert and Brammert have been told in the Netherlands for more than 350 years. By now, dozens of versions exist, varying wildly in contents and themes. This one is ultimately based on the bedtime story my grandmother used to tell my brothers and I, though I don't know if she'd recognise what I've made of it. She'd probably think this version too gruesome. It also turns out to be fairly close to the oldest known version of the story and doesn't include many later additions, though I did not actually know that at the time of writing.
I imagine most English-speaking readers on this site won't be familiar with these things and won't be able to tell the differences between the other versions and my take on this old tale, but I don't think that's really important for a story like this. That's what makes fairy tales the oldest kind of fan-fiction: they belong to no one but the teller and the audience, and as long as we like it the story lives on no matter how much it changes with each telling.
Fun facts: This legend is used to explain the names of the Ellertsfield and the Brammersheap in Drenthe, as well as the custom for local barns to have a notch in the right-hand doorpost.