The Oera Linda Book, by Wiliam R. Sandbach, [1876], at sacred-texts.com
The Oera Linda Book, by Wiliam R. Sandbach, [1876], at sacred-texts.com
After twelve years had elapsed without our seeing any Italians in Almanland, there came three ships, finer than any that we possessed or had ever seen.
On the largest of them was a king of the Jonischen Islands whose name was Ulysses, the fame of whose wisdom was great. To him a priestess had prophesied that he should become the king of all Italy provided he could obtain a lamp that had been lighted at the lamp in Tex-land. For this purpose he had brought great treasures with him, above all, jewels for women more beautiful than had ever been seen before. They were from Troy, a town that the Greeks had taken. All these treasures he offered to the mother, but the mother would have nothing to do with them. At last, when he found that there was nothing to be got from her, he went to Walhallagara ‡ (Walcheren). There there was established a Burgtmaagd whose name was Kaat,
but who was commonly called Kalip *, because her lower lip stuck out like a mast-head. Here he tarried for years, to the scandal of all that knew it. According to the report of the maidens, he obtained a lamp from her; but it did him no good, because when he got to sea his ship was lost, and he was taken up naked and destitute by another ship. There was left behind by this king a writer of pure Frya's blood, born in the new harbour of Athens, who wrote for us what follows about Athens, from which may be seen how truly the mother Hei-licht spoke when she said that the customs of Frya could never take firm hold in Athens.
From the other Greeks you will have heard a great deal of bad about Cecrops, because he was not in good repute; but I dare affirm that be was an enlightened man; very renowned both among the inhabitants and among us, for he was against oppression, unlike the other priests, and was virtuous, and knew how to value the wisdom of distant nations. Knowing that, he permitted us to live according to our own Asegaboek. There was a story current that he was favourable to us because he was the son of a Frisian girl and an Egyptian priest: the reason of this was that he had blue eyes, and that many of our girls had been stolen and sold to Egypt, but he never confirmed this. However it may have been, certain it is that he showed us more friendship than all the other priests together. When he died, his successors soon began to tear up our charters, and gradually to enact so many unsuitable statutes that at long last nothing remained of liberty but the shadow and the name. Besides, they would not allow the laws to be written, so that the knowledge of them was hidden from us. Formerly all the cases in
[paragraph continues] Athens were pleaded in our language, but afterwards in both languages, and at last in the native language only. At first the men of Athens only married women of our own race, but the young men as they grew up with the girls of the country took them to wife. The bastard children of this connection were the handsomest and cleverest in the world; but they were likewise the wickedest, wavering between the two parties, paying no regard to laws or customs except where they suited their own interests. As long as a ray of Frya's spirit existed, all the building materials were for common use, and no one might build a house larger or better than his neighbours; but when some degenerate townspeople got rich by sea-voyages and by the silver that their slaves got in the silver countries, they went to live out on the hills or in the valleys. There, behind high enclosures of trees or walls, they built palaces with costly furniture, and in order to remain in good odour with the nasty priests, they placed there likenesses of false gods and unchaste statues. Sometimes the dirty priests and princes wished for the boys rather than the girls, and often led them astray from the paths of virtue by rich presents or by force. Because riches were more valued by this lost and degenerate race than virtue or honour, one sometimes saw boys dressed in splendid flowing robes, to the disgrace of their parents and maidens, and to the shame of their own sex. If our simple parents came to a general assembly at Athens and made complaints, a cry was raised, Hear, hear! there is a sea-monster going to speak. Such is Athens become, like a morass in a tropical country full of leeches, toads, and poisonous snakes, in which no man of decent habits can set his foot.
105:† 2193-1005 is 1188 before Christ.
105:‡ Walhallagâra is Walcheren.
107:*Kalip, called by Homer Kalipso.