There was an old woman, goes the nursery rhyme, who had so many children... In the 14th century, a legend sprang up in Holland about 365 babies born to one woman in one mighty heave. Jan Bondeson explains the history of this strange story but is still baffled as to why it was said about a pious noblewoman who had died two centuries earlier. In May 1660, when the diarist Samuel Pepys visited the Netherlands, he stopped off at the village of Loosduinen. It didn't impress him very much - it was small and its tavern was full of Dutch boors eating of fish in a boorish manner" he later recalled. He was there to see a monument so famous that many thousands had made the same journey for centuries. In the church, Pepys saw a small wooden tablet inscribed with the story of the unfortunate Countess Margaret of Henneberg, who had given birth, on Good Friday in the year 1276, to 365 babies in one great go. Pepys also saw there, the two basins in which the myriad children had been baptised, the boys in one and the girls in the other. Today, despite the changes in its structure, the church at Loosduinen still displays the basins and plaque commemorating the Countess and her brood and several thousand people still make the pilgrimage each year. Could the strange story of this prodigious birth be true or is it just a legend? There is no doubt that Margaret of Henneberg was a historical personage. She was born in 1234, the daughter of Count Floris IV of Holland and was married to Count Herman of Henneberg in 1249. The following year, after the death of her son Herman, this deeply religious girl spent much time with the nuns in the convent attached to Loosduinen Abbey. It is known that while she was staying there, she was taken ill and died on Good Friday 1276. Count Floris V, her nephew, visited her while she was ill and wrote a letter at her request, distributing gifts and bequests to two ladies-in-waiting. The original documents of this time make no mention of the miraculous birth. The Countess was buried in the church, but the whereabouts of her tomb is unknown. The earliest document that mentions the multiple birth is the late-14th-century Tabula of Egmond which simply says, under the year 1276:During Easter, Countess Margaret of Henneberg gave birth to 363 sons and daughters and died quietly, together with them. Her tomb is in Loosduinen, with a stone sarcophagus adorned with an epitaph in metal letters... Other Dutch mediæval chronicles add several new details to the legend. The haughty Countess had, it seems, observed a beggar woman carrying twins and taunted her for her immoral ways as she was convinced the twins had different fathers, making the woman an adulteress. The poor woman called upon God as a witness of her innocence and cursed the Countess, wishing that she would come to have as many children as there were days in the year. Later, Margaret gave birth to 365 minute infants, all of them living. They were as tiny as mice but completely human in structure. They were baptised in two large basins by Bishop Guido of Utrecht , all the males named Jan and the females Elisabeth. Soon after their baptism, the children all died, together with their mother. The beggar woman's call to God had resulted in the Countess being struck with a gruesome judgement...