Alfons Mervillie

Alfons Mervillie, son of Pieter Mervillie, farm labourer, and Regina Quintyn, was a composer, translator, prose writer (in a didactic-popular style) and writer of occasional poems. He was a language particularist and an “extreme language purist”. At the minor seminary of Roeselare H. Verriest was one of his teachers. He was an enthusiastic music lover and admired Bach. He was ordained priest on 27.08.1882 and on 03.10.1880 he started teaching organ playing and chanting at the teachers and vergers school in Torhout. He became curate in Dudzele (27.11.1891), Nieuwpoort (15.05.1896) and Aartrijke (23.11.1898) and pastor in Nieuwkapelle (22.08.1913). He published several contributions in Gezelle's magazine Biekorf (Beehive) and set twelve poems of Gezelle to music, dedicating them to the priest-poet. They were published in Leipzig in 1884 and republished in an extended edition including an introduction on aesthetics. Beside this he was the author of Gusten, a story from ancient times (Bruges, 1891) and Evangeline (Roeselare, 1901), a metric translation from Longfellow.