Fortean Traveller

MATT SALUSBURY joins an unusual parade of giants, knights and a gigantic red horse in the Flemish city of Dendermonde

130. The Ros Beiaard parade, Dendermonde, Belgium The mostly unremarkable Flemish city of Dendermonde, half way between Brussels and Antwerp, is not somewhere tourists normally bother with. But every 10 years (Covid permitting), over 80,000 people descend on Dendermonde for the Ros Beiaard parade. This gloriously bonkers and very Belgian phenomenon involves a gigantic red horse called Beyard cavorting through the city, escorted by a considerable retinue of dancing giants and others. Occasionally the huge horse rears up, the four boys riding it dressed as knights raise their swords in the air, and the crowd goes wild! The Ros Beiaard originates in the chivalric romance The Four Sons of Aymon, a French-language work sung by the earliest of the proto-troubadours and first written down around 1300. It was an international…

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Fortean Times (Digital) - 1 Issue, 423

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