The giant and the hill of the Montferland

Long ago, when giants still strode over the earth, one of them travelled through these parts with a huge load of sand or earth, carried in his apron or in a great sack. What he meant to do with it none can now say: perhaps he wished to fill in a sea, or dam a river, or build a mountain in his own far country. Heavily he lugged his burden over the flat bog and sand of the Achterhoek, step by giant step.

But near s-Heerenberg his apron gave way or his sack burst, and all at once the whole load crashed to the ground. There it lay as a great mound, and the giant, too tired or too careless to shovel it up again, left it lying and travelled on. From that fallen load, the people say, grew the Montferland, the hill that lies there to this day, clothed in ancient wood. So the people explain why in the flat east a mountain suddenly rises: not through water or ice, but through a giant who lost his sand.