8 Vreemdelingenhaat

8.    Also on the Stereind
1755
Xenophobia
The bailiff takes it high. Eleven persons he questioned to find out who were the ones who terrorized the couple, who had just come to Gemert from across the Peel, so terribly. Well, Antonie van den Bergh and his wife Allegonda Maes ventured from Venraij to Gemert not so long ago. They started a small store and inn on the Schilt, but the people of Gemert did not turn up. On the contrary. To Allegonda, for example, they call out:
'Go to the Overpeel gallows, to the nooses. Get there the nooses on which your cousins and uncles were hung.'
And to her husband Antonie:
'Asshole, whoremonger, knave, thou givest not full measure to the lazy, walk to the Overpeel gallows.'
And to someone who wants to enter the inn:

'Do ye get gin there? 'Tis Overpeel gin ye get there and he don't give the measure.
Up to three times Antonie's bee-sticks were knocked over, several times the windows were smashed, the couple was threatened with a bayonet, and on the evening of New Year's Day, a stone butter pot was thrown drek and filth right through the windows, right up to the counter in the store:
    "Now we'll get you, pear bastard, your white bread is too light!
Frightening and disconcerting is the observation that all these eleven witnesses insist they saw nothing and hardly heard anything. Yes, in retrospect, the damage to the house, they studied it meticulously. But a perpetrator or perpetrators? No, they cannot help the sheriff. Inappropriate village solidarity!