Heer Halewijn is a Dutch ballad from the 13th century. It tells a story about a princes who is searching for Halewijn, a singing knight. Her whole family is against the idea except for her brother. When she meets Halewijn however, he gives her the choice on how to die. She wants to be beheaded instead of hanging because beheading was reserved for royals. With a neat trick, the princes manages to cut off the head of Halewijn instead and takes the head back to her home. They hold a feast and the head is placed on the table as a trophy.
Now the reason why I am mentioning this Dutch medieval ballad is because its origin is most likely much older, predating Christianity. What its exact origin is, we do not know but I would like to share a few theories.
First theory that exists is that Halewijn is somehow connected to the old runic inscription on a sword sheath of Bergakker, Netherlands, about which I have made a post. The inscription mentions that the blade is property of Haþuþȳw. Maybe this name refers to the mysterious Halewijn. We have no idea who this Haþuþȳw was.
Another theory about Halewijn's story is that it is in fact Celtic in origin. We know that Celtic warriors chopped off the heads of their enemies and that sometimes these heads were bound on the horse of a warrior. Heads were carefully conserved and considered sacred amongst the Celts. Posidonius, a Greek philosopher, travelled through Gaul and described how his Celtic hosts showed him the skulls of their enemies. In the ballad, Halewijn's head asked the princes to conserve his head with a salve, this is a clear connection to Celtic beliefs.
Another clue that confirms the link to a Celtic origin can be found in a very similar Scottish ballad called Tam Lin.
In this ballad, young women are warned about Tam Lin. One woman does meet him and gets pregnant. Tam returns and reveals that he is not a human and in fact is an Elf. With a neat trick, the woman manages to pull Tam off his horse in order to free him from the Elf queen who captured him.
The talking head in the story of Halewijn can have both Celtic and Germanic influences, look at the Germanic Mimir and the Celtic story about the hero Finn. The location of where the ballad was created is most likely Brabant, both a province of the Netherlands and Belgium. It was exactly on the border of Germania and Gaul so it is no surprise if the story contains elements of both Celtic and Germanic beliefs.
The ballad of Halewijn was only written down in 1830. Before this, the story was told orally through the centuries. We do not know how old exactly it is but when you look at the themes, it is presumably much older than Christianity in Europe. Whether it is Celtic or Germanic, it certainly is a beautiful remainder of Europe's pagan past.
Here you can listen to the song
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mRJszzu-O_A
