De Hellenwagen

There is an Afrikaans folk tale of Jan Ellis who worked as a postal driver in the mid-nineteenth century in the Western cape. He worked on the route between Ceres and Wellington. One night he was riding his postal cart, drawn by 4 horses. He had six passengers with him. It was the beginning of winter and there was a chill in the air. His passengers were wrapped in blankets to keep the cold out.


I took this picture at the Posryers museum in Ceres

Jan Ellis reached the deepest and narrowest section of Bain's Kloof at midnight. The rider, the horses, and the passengers were all very tense. At one stage they came to a sharp turn and the horses came to a standstill. They began to snort and push themselves backward. Jan Ellis had to do everything in his power to control the horses (or they would have gone over the precipice).

It was then that they heard the sound of an oncoming wagon. They could clearly hear it rattle over the rocks. Then the wagon appeared in the dim moonlight and they could see that it was going at an incredibly high and uncontrollable speed.

In the darkness this wagon was chasing over rocks, stones and bushes, where, even at day a person could only move at walking speed!

As the wagon came closer, its tent came into view. There was a driver in front. And it was clear that there was no way to avoid a collision. It seemed as though the wagon was going to ride right through Jan's postal cart. With a devilish noise the wagon came closer. The passengers saw six mules pulling the wagon: their bodies glistening with sweat and their mouthes wide open and foaming.

Fearfully Jan shouted at them, "Where the Devil are you going!"

"We're going to Heellll!" came a long drawn out shout from the ghost wagon, followed by a satanic laughter that made all the passenger's blood curdle.

As this apparition came closer and closer, the passengers on Jan's postal cart jumped off and fled into the dark fynbos. With just a few steps left before the collision the ghost wagon swerved . Right across them the driver of this wagon looked around and pushed his cape back revealing his face: white as that of a dead person, with brightly glowing orange eyes. Then that blood-curdling laughter came again and the wagon disappeared into the night.

A week later the news came to Wellington that Jan Ellis drove his post-cart into a ravine in Bain's Kloof. It seems as though he had to swerve for an oncoming vehicle.

Apparently the story still does the rounds in the Ceres Wellington area, that a fiery wagon drives through these passes at a high speed, forcing other vehicles to turn out and fall down the steep cliffs.

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Yesterday I found a rational explanation for this story.

It was a GOMOTO!


My Gomoto at the highest section of Bain's Kloof Pass. (More photos of the kloof in the slide show account of my latest expedition posted just two blogs ago.)

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References:

"Die Vuurwa". An Afrikaans short story published in Afrika Vertel 2, a composition of short stories for South African high school learners. Editors: Annah Siteyini, Sidney Miller. Publishers: Nasou Via Afrika: Capetown. 2006. The story is an adaptation of a similar story recorded by Abel Coetzee.

This kind of story can be traced back to early Germanic folklore of over 2400 years ago. It then spread across Europe in different forms. Sometimes it made mention of a wild chase of a group of wild spirits under leadership of Wodan, the chief of the Teutonic deities. In the Netherlands the story became known as "The Fiery Wagon", or hellewagen.

Who knows, perhaps this blog will cause some people in future generations to talk about the Fiery Gomoto, a fiery motorbike and its driver from Hell :-).