My parents were in this part of the world a few years ago and my mom tried to come to Leiden for an afternoon to see one thing—The Pilgrim Museum. One of Leiden’s main claims to fame (other than being the birthplace of Rembrandt) is that the group of pilgrims that came to America on the Mayflower originated here in Leiden. Unfortunately, the day she wanted to come the public transportation operators were on strike so she wasn’t able to make it. I promised her I would go see the museum on her behalf.
I wandered about 15 minutes from my dorms and arrived at the address of the museum—it looked like any other house on a quiet residential street save for a tiny sign on the doorway. I tried to enter and the door was locked, so I knocked, and someone opened the door for me. I entered a small room, decorated in Pilgrim-era furnishings with objects set all over the place. The room was dark and cold, and there were two people in it. I asked if this was the museum and if it consisted only of this one room, and the man told me that I was indeed in the museum and that there were two other rooms. It wasn’t really like a museum at all considering everything was just out in the open set up like people were living there and there were no plaques explaining what anything was. I figured I could just look around the rooms, take a few pictures for my mom, and be on my merry way. I started looking around the other person in the room—a woman—asked if I knew anything about the Pilgrims, and when I told her I did not, she asked if I had any questions and we began chatting. The few questions turned into a fabulous 2-hour private tour with a local historian!
She answered all the questions I had and pointed out many cool things in the museum and told me stories about life in Leiden in the 16th century (I think that’s the right time period? Not sure) And what was really cool was that because it wasn’t a mainstream museum, I could touch things! That makes it much more fun than just looking at something behind glass. Some of my favorite things I learned:
• There was a ceramic bowl sitting on the table stand it was unlike any of the other tableware in that it had three frogs sculpted into the inside edges of it. She told me that it was a candy dish, and that candy was very expensive because sugar came from the Far East. The frogs prevented anyone from taking a big handful of candy at one time, because they blocked your fingers from being able to get to the bottom of the bowl. You could only use two-three fingers to pick up candy, limiting the number of pieces you got at one time.
• There was also a pig-shaped thing next to the frog bowl that looked like a piggy bank. She told me indeed it was a piggy bank, and asked if I know why a piggy bank is a pig and not another animal. I had no idea (do you?) It’s because in real life people would give food to their pigs all summer long and fatten them up for the fall slaughter, so people would “feed” their piggy banks with coins and then smash them open to get what was inside, mimicking real life.
• The same type of earthen wear (mugs, bowls, etc) used in Leiden was found buried in Jamestown. Obviously, the pilgrims packed up their belongings and just took everything with them over to their new life in America.
Picture: The candy dish and the piggy bank.
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