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A Dog of Flanders is an 1872 novel by English author Marie Louise de la Ram�e published with her pseudonym "Ouida". It is about a Flemish boy named Nello and his dog Patrasche.

The story, of English origin, has little tradition of being read in Belgium, but is becoming more known because of the tourists it attracts to Antwerp. There is a small statue of Nello and Patrasche at the Kapellestr... More

A Dog of Flanders is an 1872 novel by English author Marie Louise de la Ram�e published with her pseudonym "Ouida". It is about a Flemish boy named Nello and his dog Patrasche.

The story, of English origin, has little tradition of being read in Belgium, but is becoming more known because of the tourists it attracts to Antwerp. There is a small statue of Nello and Patrasche at the Kapellestraat in the Antwerp suburb of Hoboken, and a commemorative plaque in front of the Antwerp Cathedral donated by Toyota. The story is widely read in Japan, and has been adapted into several films and anime.

The 1992 Japanese animation of this novel (My Patrasche) was very popular in the Philippines during the early-to-mid 90's, it has become a national sensation through its franchiser ABS-CBN. It had an impact[which?] on the generation born between 1980-1989; practically everyone has seen the series and continues to consider it as a big part of their childhood. Many of the young people from the country can remember the animated series as an early source of life lessons and inspiration, specially as the story highlights the relationship between Nello and Patrasche as a compelling example of unconditional love, loyalty and perseverance.

A DOG OF FLANDERS

BY

LOUISA DE LA RAME

(OUIDA)

_ILLUSTRATED IN COLOR BY_

MARIA L. KIRK



ILLUSTRATIONS

NELLO, AWAKENED FROM HIS SLEEP, RAN TO HELP WITH THE REST

THEN LITTLE NELLO TOOK HIS PLACE BESIDE THE CART

NELLO DREW THEIR LIKENESS WITH A STICK OF CHARCOAL

THE PORTALS OF THE CATHEDRAL WERE UNCLOSED AFTER THE MIDNIGHT MASS

A DOG OF FLANDERS

A STORY OF NOEL

[Illustration]


Nello and Patrasche were left all alone in the world.

They were friends in a friendship closer than brotherhood. Nello was a
little Ardennois--Patrasche was a big Fleming. They were both of the same
age by length of years, yet one was still young, and the other was already
old. They had dwelt together almost all their days: both were orphaned and
destitute, and owed their lives to the same hand. It had been the
beginning of the tie between them, their first bond of sympathy; and it
had strengthened day by day, and had grown with their growth, firm and
indissoluble, until they loved one another very greatly. Their home was a
little hut on the edge of a little village--a Flemish village a league
from Antwerp, set amidst flat breadths of pasture and corn-lands, with
long lines of poplars and of alders bending in the breeze on the edge of
the great canal which ran through it. It had about a score of houses and
homesteads, with shutters of bright green or sky-blue, and roofs rose-red
or black and white, and walls white-washed until they shone in the sun
like snow. In the centre of the village stood a windmill, placed on a
little moss-grown slope: it was a landmark to all the level country round.
It had once been painted scarlet, sails and all, but that had been in its
infancy, half a century or more earlier, when it had ground wheat for the
soldiers of Napoleon; and it was now a ruddy brown, tanned by wind and
weather. It went queerly by fits and starts, as though rheumatic and stiff
in the joints from age, but it served the whole neighborhood, which would
have thought it almost as impious to carry grain elsewhere as to attend
any other religious service than the mass that was performed at the altar
of the little old gray church, with its conical steeple, which stood
opposite to it, and whose single bell rang morning, noon, and night with
that strange, subdued, hollow sadness which every bell that hangs in the
Low Countries seems to gain as an integral part of its melody.

Within sound of the little melancholy clock almost from their birth
upward, they had dwelt together, Nello and Patrasche, in the little hut on
the edge of the village, with the cathedral spire of Antwerp rising in the
north-east, beyond the great green plain of seeding grass and spreading
corn that stretched away from them like a tideless, changeless sea.

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