Flemish/Dutch (?) captions

[Carl Lavoie]

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A fortuitous find in a rather shabby quarto of British antiquities, in the middle of the section dealing with heraldry, there was this curious ink drawing in a naive but very hermetic style: a cartouche representing Perseus delivering Andromeda, and another in which Diana at the bath, in the light of the moon's rays, changes Actaeon into a stag. Most intriguing are the epigrams and mottos that frame them: they are written backwards. Was the drawing a model for an engraver (the engraving, detached from the copper plate, would show the text right side up)? 

Anyone can read this? Someone pointed that the crabbed handwriting was either Old Dutch or possibly Flemish. I paste them below inverted, that is, with the text now legible.

[Paul Ferguson]

Hi Carl,

Dutch from around 1700 I would say.
The words seem as strange as the images.
This is what I have made of it so far:

Siet hier een teere maagt lÿt aan een rots gebonde
See here a gentle maiden is suffering, bound to a rock

Om van een monster hoot te worde verslonde
In order to be devoured by a monster dog[?]

Diana was vermaft met de son belaan
Diana was weary, loaded down as she was with the Sun

Sÿ koomt aan een fontÿn haar teere leede baan
She comes across a fountain where she can bathe her delicate limbs.

Perhaps your mythological knowledge can help further decipher this. Mine is a bit rusty.

[Carl Lavoie]

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Mercy buckets, Paul!

Mythologically-wise, it is indeed the episodes of Perseus & Andromeda, and the one of Diana caught bathing by Acteon and changing him into a stag so his pack of dogs would kill him.

The cartouches might have been straighforward mythology, but with a Dutch emblem circa 1700 with a caption like: " Diana was weary, loaded down as she was with the Sun / She comes across a fountain where she can bathe her delicate limbs" , it's tempting to read:  "Put the Mercury and the Sulfur in Digestion"...

Here’s a shot of the ink drawing, not inverted:


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[Paul Ferguson]

This is very much up the street of the intriguingly-named Jacob Cats (1577-1660), although the Dutch is not of his flavour.:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacob_Cats

Emblem-books with nursery-rhymes were very popular at that time and place.

https://emblems.hum.uu.nl