Lange Wapper

The statue De Lange Wapper in front of castle Het Steen in Antwerp

Lange Wapper is a Flemish folkloric character. He is a legendary giant and trickster whose folk tales were told especially in the city of Antwerp and its neighbouring towns, but similar tales are also prominent in other Flemish cities.

His origin and character within folklore may be as follows. A farmer found in a parsley bed a red cabbage that was so big it could not fit into cauldron, and curiously feeling the vegetable he found himself stroking the head of a baby. As he was unable to take care for the child it was adopted by a family living in Antwerp. The child grew up to be a strong and sensible boy who helped those in need. One day he saved an old woman from drowning in the Scheldt river, and she gave him the ability to make himself big or small. As he preferred to appear in his tall form, he gained the nickname 'Lange Wapper'. He would disguise himself as a child in order to receive breastmilk to drink, would vex drunkards, and would cheat children in games. His bleating laughter would frighten the general public, who began to call him 'water devil'.

Stories

One story tells of a man sitting in an inn in Antwerp. When he goes home, rather drunk, he hears footsteps behind him. The man turns around to see another man, who also stops. When he walks faster, the other man also speeds up. He begins to run, and the other man does too. The drunk runs home and hides in his bed, only for a man to knocked at his window. It is Lange Wapper, as big as a house, who warns "If you get drunk again, I will break your neck!"

In a second story, children are playing nearby Steenplein in Antwerp. Suddenly, a rich man approaches, and hands out all kind of candy. The children follow the man in the direction of Boom, but he suddenly disappears. The only thing the children hear is a devil's laugh. They realize that the man was Lange Wapper.

Another story is about Stans van 't Gansken, a wheedling woman, who hides near a place in Antwerp where mothers would abandon their newborn babies. Stans would accost these women and threaten that if they did not give her a large amount of hush money, she would inform everybody that they had abandoned their child. Everyone paid her. One day, Stans finds a baby in front of her door. She takes the child, planning to abandon it. Suddenly, the baby turns into a giant. It is Lange Wapper. He gives Stans a beating, and she is never seen near the place where children are abandoned again.

In a fourth story, a young woman lives near to Groenplaats in Antwerp. She has four lovers and boasts that she could handle a fifth. One evening she invites the four lovers one by one in her house. One hour before the first lover arrives, someone knocks at the door; it is a man who introduces himself as her fifth lover, and invites her to take a walk with him. Meanwhile, Lange Wapper hides in the woman's house and uses his shapeshifting ability to assume the woman's form. As her lovers arrive, he assigns them different tasks: the first is sent to the cemetery to sit under the big cross, the second is asked to lay down in a coffin under the cross, the third to knock on the coffin until someone turned up, and the fourth to walk around the cross with a large chain. The four men and the woman all die: the first is scared to death when the second one crawls into the coffin. The second man is scared to death when the third one knocks on, the third dies of fright at the noise of the chain, thinking it to be the devil. The fourth man runs to the house of the woman, who was by now home from her walk, to tell his story. The woman was so scared she died of a stroke. The fourth man is driven insane and drowns himself in the river Scheldt. The fifth man is revealed to be an assistant of Lange Wapper.

In Flemish culture

• A planned but delayed controversial new bridge in Antwerp would have been called the Lange Wapper bridge
• Lange Wapper has a statue in front of Het Steen in Antwerp.
• The giant appeared in the Belgian comics series Spike and Suzy (Suske en Wiske), namely the album De Zwarte Madam (1947)