Castle Grunsfoort | The White Miss - Renkum

On the Grunsfoort meadow are low stone structures. They indicate the size of the former castle Grunsfoort, an important castle in the Duchy of Gelre. There lived an unkind, miserly nobleman and his daughter, the "white missus.

The nobleman made people work for him until they literally grew crooked. He didn't pay them. Under the guise of so-called "croft services" or "gentleman's services," it was common for lower-class people to work for the nobles. All day they had to plow, sow, harrow, chop wood, cut sod and mow the heath. At night when the peasants were exhausted, they had to be careful that the cats did not meow and the frogs did not croak, otherwise the nobleman and his family could not sleep. If there was nothing to do on the land, they had to help hunt.

The daughter, unfortunately, had inherited many of his traits. When she walked to church on Sunday, the poor peasants had to make sure there was a white linen runner ready between the castle and the church. She did not want to get her fine shoes dirty and especially not with the earth from the graveyard around the church.

When she finally died, no one appeared to mourn her. She was buried with statie by six barons simply because she was a noblewoman, but the next day the white missus stood outside the cemetery in her coffin. She was buried again, this time by the local peasants and a lot deeper than last time. But the next day the coffin was outside the fence again. She didn't want to touch the cemetery when she was alive; now the cemetery didn't want her.

They decided to put the coffin on a cart with a horse in front of it and then see what happened. The horse bolted, kicked off the cart at a stream and the coffin disappeared into the stream. But with a full moon, when the moon colors the water white like a linen runner, you can see the jug running.