Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, it's your buddy Josh. And for this week's select,
Speaker 1: I've chosen our May two thousand and eighteen episode on
Speaker 1: the Pied Piper, one of those rare fairy tales that
Speaker 1: actually may be rooted in fact and history, and it's
Speaker 1: a good one. It's got a weird start for some reason.
Speaker 1: I almost sound like I'm mad at Chuck, but rest
Speaker 1: assured I wasn't. We finally catch our feet a few
Speaker 1: minutes into it, and then the episode really takes off.
Speaker 1: So I hope it takes you on a wild thrill
Speaker 1: ride like it did me listening to it again. And
Speaker 1: either way, just sit back and enjoy, as I know
Speaker 1: you will. Our episode on the Pied Piper. Welcome to
Speaker 1: Stuff you Should Know, a production of I Heart Radio. Hey,
Speaker 1: welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles w.
Speaker 1: Hu Bryant, and there's Jerry over there. This is stuff
Speaker 1: if you should know, fairy Tale edition. Jerry is supposedly
Speaker 1: on vacation. Yeah, what's going on? But she came in
Speaker 1: here just for us. Why Jerry? I think she feels beholden.
Speaker 1: That's nice, which is weird because she's we've had guest producers.
Speaker 1: I don't know. Maybe she feels like her job is threatened.
Speaker 1: Is today the day I die? Oh? Jeesus, hope Jerry
Speaker 1: knows it. Can't we at least get these two in
Speaker 1: the can first? Yeah? Well probably unless something really crazy
Speaker 1: happens in the next hour and two. Yeah, that'll give
Speaker 1: me time to get in touch with like the five
Speaker 1: people I have on my list to replace you. Ye,
Speaker 1: I know the five Bono right Obama? Right, Michael Stipe,
Speaker 1: Michael Stipe, Bobby Fisher. I think there was one more.
Speaker 1: I can't remember, Bobby Fisher, the chess player. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: a little random. Well I want to correct that episode
Speaker 1: and Optimus Prime that's the fifth one, that's right. Yeah, uh, chucker.
Speaker 1: Have you ever heard of fairy Tale before? Yeah? We uh,
Speaker 1: we did two very good episodes. Oh, if you say
Speaker 1: so yourself, know these were good. I don't often say that,
Speaker 1: but in November of two thousand and fifteen, we did
Speaker 1: it back to backer with the dark origins of fairy
Speaker 1: tales and how the Grimm's fairy Tales work or the
Speaker 1: grand Brothers. We had fairy tale fever, we did, but man,
Speaker 1: we licked it. So did you go back and listen
Speaker 1: to him and you're like, wow, these are good or
Speaker 1: you just remember them being good. I remember them being good, okay,
Speaker 1: and being especially kind of proud of those too. Really
Speaker 1: that's fantastic. Yeah, that's how I feel about your limb
Speaker 1: is torn off? Now what that was a good one.
Speaker 1: It's a good title about reattachment surgery. Remember that. Yeah?
Speaker 1: I think that that titles all you. That's a Josh
Speaker 1: Clark title. You've got some good titles out there too.
Speaker 1: What's the deal with blank? You know who's really good
Speaker 1: at coming up with titles? Yeah? Where the streets have
Speaker 1: no name? Right? Where the where the streets have no drums?
Speaker 1: For a dam dude, you just did it. So we're
Speaker 1: talking about fairy tales today, specifically, specifically, we're talking about
Speaker 1: the fairy tale of the Pie Piper of Hamlet, and
Speaker 1: as far as fairy tales go, it seems to be
Speaker 1: a little different than other fairy tales. And the reason
Speaker 1: why it's a little different is because, horrifically, it's people
Speaker 1: think scholars, not just you know, average truck right, like,
Speaker 1: real deal scholars think that something actually happened that formed
Speaker 1: the basis of this fairy tale. Right, Whereas with Hansel
Speaker 1: and Gretel it wasn't based on some witchy lady who
Speaker 1: ate children. No, but that one might have had some
Speaker 1: basis in fact too. How about like rumpel Stiltskin. Probably
Speaker 1: not based in fact? Right? You remember the little guy
Speaker 1: who like you trick him into saying his own name,
Speaker 1: A little guy with a big heart. I don't think
Speaker 1: he had a big heart. He had an insatiable sexual appetite,
Speaker 1: is what it was. Oh, the little girl with the
Speaker 1: big heart was Bono? Right man, We're gonna get so
Speaker 1: many emails from people being like, layoff Bono. What's what's
Speaker 1: with the bono references? Who's Bono? They must work with
Speaker 1: that Bono guy? I wish so, chuck Um the pie Piper.
Speaker 1: The reason why we say it might be based in
Speaker 1: fact is because there's actual, like historic evidence that kind
Speaker 1: of supports this thing. And you can find it in
Speaker 1: this town of Hamlin, which is a real place. It's
Speaker 1: not a made up like fairy tale land like you know,
Speaker 1: ods your first clue. Yeah, most fairy tales are not
Speaker 1: set in an actual place, right. I don't know, are
Speaker 1: they know they're just made up? Or they're in a
Speaker 1: very vague place, or they take place in a larger place, like, oh,
Speaker 1: in Germany one day, or in Bavaria one day, not
Speaker 1: like in this town, right, that actually existed at the
Speaker 1: time we're saying it did. Which is another thing too,
Speaker 1: because if you look at the actual fairy tales, you'll
Speaker 1: get to in a second, there's like a specific date. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that also is very unusual. For so the more you
Speaker 1: dig into it, the more you're like, yeah, this might
Speaker 1: have actually happened. And then what you think, oh, this
Speaker 1: might have actually happened, then you're struck with some of
Speaker 1: the greatest dread human being can experience, because there's something
Speaker 1: bad happened, is what happened? Let's talk about it, all right? Well,
Speaker 1: let's get into the original fairy tale, the Grimm's Brothers
Speaker 1: Tale of the Pipe Piper. It was not even Irish
Speaker 1: and German. Um Jane McGrath, good old Jane from back
Speaker 1: in the day, wrote this one, and she points out
Speaker 1: that it is a tale, a cautionary tale about governance
Speaker 1: as well as taking responsibility for financial agreements. She's right,
Speaker 1: but it put in that way, it seems a little funny, Yeah,
Speaker 1: but it is twelve eighty four in Hamlin in Germany,
Speaker 1: and there was a rat infestation in the town at
Speaker 1: the time, and the mayor and this is the fairy
Speaker 1: tale you're going over right, yeah, yeah, And so that
Speaker 1: the mayor of the town didn't know what to do.
Speaker 1: The Burger meister, Oh yeah, maister Burger, the stranger comes
Speaker 1: into town and war and I didn't know what pid
Speaker 1: even meant. I didn't either. What is it? Multi colored? Yeah,
Speaker 1: he wore multi colored clothes, pied multi colored clothes. That's
Speaker 1: all he was. He was a piper who were colorful clothing.
Speaker 1: Had nothing to do with eating pies or I thought
Speaker 1: walking on his feet, you know, you thought that's what
Speaker 1: it meant. Yeah, why because I think, like a like
Speaker 1: pedestrian comes from pied p Well, but I think it's
Speaker 1: like maybe Italian or something that certainly makes more sense
Speaker 1: than me having no clue. Yeah, but I was way off,
Speaker 1: so it doesn't matter. He did walk. That was the
Speaker 1: other reason I thought that too. So his outfit looked
Speaker 1: a little weird. Apparently multicolored people didn't dress like that,
Speaker 1: I reckon. I saw though that it was also like, um,
Speaker 1: like a splendid outfit that he gets attracted a lot
Speaker 1: of attention, and people were like, I wish I could,
Speaker 1: I wish I had the cohones, dressed like you. Pie.
Speaker 1: Piper dance around with a band. Uh and he had
Speaker 1: a called it a musical pipe or some kind of flute,
Speaker 1: not a smoking pipe. Heads no uh. And he hears
Speaker 1: about this rat problem. He comes into town. He drags
Speaker 1: his fingernails along the chalkboard and gets everyone attention. And
Speaker 1: the down meeting says, I'll kill that shark. Oh, you
Speaker 1: gotta do it, but no, no, no, I'll kill the rats. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but in the voice I can't do quint well whatever,
Speaker 1: you can do anything. You're like the rich little of
Speaker 1: this this company. Jerry's laughing at us for no reason.
Speaker 1: She so sick of this man. She's really tickled today, Jerry,
Speaker 1: are you stoned? No, she's been smoking her own magical pipe.
Speaker 1: So they agree on a price to get rid of
Speaker 1: the rats. Piper takes out his his little his little
Speaker 1: hand flute. Yeah, yeah, I don't know if that's what
Speaker 1: it's called. But the price is important. Can I go
Speaker 1: into the price for a second. So he initially said
Speaker 1: that he would get rid of the rats for a
Speaker 1: thousand florins, which is either coins or money from Italy
Speaker 1: or France or the Netherlands, but money a thousand a
Speaker 1: lot of the time, thousand pieces of money. And this
Speaker 1: this town of Hamlin was so overrun by rats. Apparently
Speaker 1: all their cats had died. Though yes they got they
Speaker 1: beat the cats, said, I didn't see explained what happened
Speaker 1: to the cats, just that the cats died, and that's
Speaker 1: why the town was overrun, okay, which is a weird
Speaker 1: little thing, don't you think? Yeah, because my first thing
Speaker 1: was like, why a pie piper just get some cats?
Speaker 1: The cats had all died? All right, good thinking, chuck um.
Speaker 1: But they say a thousand florins, will give you fifty
Speaker 1: thousand florins if you get rid of these rats. Our
Speaker 1: problem is so bad, and he says done. But was
Speaker 1: that a facetious offer? I think it was a desperate
Speaker 1: a desperate boast. Okay. But the pipe piper I was like,
Speaker 1: all right, I'll agree to your terms. I just wanted
Speaker 1: a thousand, but fifty thousand it is. And they went,
Speaker 1: I think we ever spent I regret saying that you
Speaker 1: should hear the guy so he pulls out the instrument.
Speaker 1: He um starts playing. As the story goes, all the
Speaker 1: rats congregate around him, and he leaps about and dances
Speaker 1: through town into the Weser River, which the rats drowned,
Speaker 1: which is complete um fabrication, because rats are very good swimmers.
Speaker 1: They really are. I thought about that too. I even
Speaker 1: looked it up. They're good swimmers. Not just rats you've
Speaker 1: seen it's rats in general. Yeah. I mean the first thing, honestly,
Speaker 1: when I heard that, the first thing that made me
Speaker 1: think that was like, wait a minute, first blood, he's
Speaker 1: in that a band in mind chat, Those rats are
Speaker 1: swimming all over the place. Yeah, So I looked it up.
Speaker 1: I was like, is that true? And apparently rats are
Speaker 1: really good swimmers, better than others too. So this fairy
Speaker 1: tale stinks of BS already. Okay, but the story goes
Speaker 1: that the rats followed this guy in a trance to
Speaker 1: the river, whereupon they drowned. Maybe they were in the
Speaker 1: trance and that was why they couldn't swim, because they
Speaker 1: were just so lulled by his his hand flute, his
Speaker 1: smooth jazz. Should you take a break there and finish
Speaker 1: the story after? Oh it's quite a cliff banger, all right,
Speaker 1: let's do that. Alright, Chuck, We're back to lay it
Speaker 1: on them. Man. That was that was high class. Well,
Speaker 1: they drown all the rats. The pie piper is successful.
Speaker 1: Everyone parties German style, which is to say they probably
Speaker 1: got hammered on eight eight ounce beers. Have you ever
Speaker 1: been to Germany? You ever had the beers there? The
Speaker 1: big Yeah? I mean they've got big old beers there
Speaker 1: for sure. And they have lids on their their mugs too,
Speaker 1: because you know, there's so much of it you can
Speaker 1: just set it down, save it for later. But I
Speaker 1: don't think they save it for later. The beer gardener
Speaker 1: went two did not have the lids. Maybe I've just
Speaker 1: seen in those on TV. But what they did have
Speaker 1: was a four and a half foot tall woman with
Speaker 1: popeye sized foe arms carrying six of those giant like
Speaker 1: like a pro, not like a bro. They were pros.
Speaker 1: Well two, it's probably sold to the beer garden at
Speaker 1: a young age and was raised to that. Please, that's
Speaker 1: not the case, um, all right, So where are we
Speaker 1: townspeople are partying? They're they're getting hammered, They're singing, They're
Speaker 1: they're they're prosting, singing their German beer hall. Uh songs
Speaker 1: as they are want to do and then dude says, uh,
Speaker 1: what's up with that? All those florins? Yeah, he's like, everybody,
Speaker 1: I'm really glad that you enjoyed my work, but now
Speaker 1: it's time for me to go pay me. And did
Speaker 1: they just stiff them or did they say, well, let's
Speaker 1: go back to the thousand. Uh? They said, we're not
Speaker 1: giving you fifty thou florins. What you We thought you
Speaker 1: were going to get rid of these rests through hard work.
Speaker 1: You just played some flute, Like that's cool that you
Speaker 1: can do that with the flute, but that's not really work.
Speaker 1: So no, we're not gonna pay you fifty thou florens.
Speaker 1: He's like, well, in a thousand florins, at least that's
Speaker 1: what I originally agreed to. And they're like, how about this,
Speaker 1: We're gonna give you fifty and if you're not happy
Speaker 1: with that, then you're getting nothing. And he was still
Speaker 1: so mad that they're like, fine, nothing, get out of town,
Speaker 1: and he says, you will regret you know what that's like,
Speaker 1: that's like highering the critter remover because you have a
Speaker 1: raccoon in your attic. You agree to a price he
Speaker 1: comes over and shoots the raccoon and says game over.
Speaker 1: And you're like, wait a minute. I expected a little more,
Speaker 1: like like you were going to hypnotize him or or
Speaker 1: coax him down from the roof with your smooth jazz. Right,
Speaker 1: not just shoot it. Anybody could shoot it. I thought
Speaker 1: you're gonna like step on it or something. Yeah, like
Speaker 1: I would have shot it. Looking for a peaceful, less
Speaker 1: solution right in place, I have a bullet hole in
Speaker 1: my house. Now, have you ever had to call one
Speaker 1: of those people a raccoon remover? Well, I'll just you
Speaker 1: know those dudes, just like you know, I'll do snakes
Speaker 1: and raccoons or whatever. I haven't either, but a lot
Speaker 1: of my friends do that. I'm over one. I think
Speaker 1: I mentioned with cockroaches right now, and it's just it's
Speaker 1: getting bad still, Yeah, dude, because I don't know what
Speaker 1: to do. Hire an exterminator. Yeah, but we're not into
Speaker 1: the poison stuff. But I think it's like, we gotta
Speaker 1: do it. I think there's green exterminators that are not
Speaker 1: quite as deadly. Jerry's nodding, But will they kill all
Speaker 1: the cockroaches? Probably? You'll probably probably with their magic flute
Speaker 1: and I need to do something. It's gotten out of hand. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you got to do something like I almost I'm gonna
Speaker 1: tell you what happens, but I feel like people judge
Speaker 1: me on how disgusting it is. We can always edit
Speaker 1: it out later, all right, I'll go in and and
Speaker 1: this is not like it's not like food is out.
Speaker 1: I will clean the kitchen. I will go in there
Speaker 1: to get a glass of water. At midnight, I'll turn
Speaker 1: the light on and a dozen will scatter Jerry's gay Nope,
Speaker 1: like I will just I will hear them going, sure, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's one of the creepiest things. And they you know,
Speaker 1: as soon as they see that light, they're gone. And
Speaker 1: it sounds like we live in filth. But it doesn't matter.
Speaker 1: We're infested. They're just like, I don't know what to do. Yeah, well, um,
Speaker 1: I think you may want to call an excreminator, but
Speaker 1: find one you live into cater I'm sure you'd be
Speaker 1: hard pestifind an extreme nator that did use deadlye. You
Speaker 1: throw a rock in the cator and you'll hit a
Speaker 1: dust right, So I yes, I think it might be time.
Speaker 1: All right, Sorry about getting sidetracks, So much. They offer him,
Speaker 1: what fifty fifty not even not fifty thou or a
Speaker 1: thousand fifty? And so what does he say? He says,
Speaker 1: but he did that little everybody. You can't see me,
Speaker 1: but you know where you flick the underside of your chain,
Speaker 1: that feel like that's Italian? Well, I mean this is Germany,
Speaker 1: it's lower Saxon. It wasn't too far from Germ. No,
Speaker 1: but is that Italian? I was just wondering, Yeah, it
Speaker 1: feels like a very like Italian thing to do. Yeah, right, exactly.
Speaker 1: You gotta say it like that, all right. So he
Speaker 1: gives him that number and says, I'm going to come back.
Speaker 1: Does he even warn them and say I'm gonna come
Speaker 1: back and get your kids or I'm just gonna it
Speaker 1: depends on It's all good, you'll see me again. It
Speaker 1: depends on the story. Some say, yeah, he vowed vengeance.
Speaker 1: Some say he came back a month later, Some say
Speaker 1: he came back a year later. Some say he just
Speaker 1: immediately started playing as flu Some say, and I think
Speaker 1: the brothers grim version is that he waited until the
Speaker 1: town went to sleep and then came through the town
Speaker 1: and started playing again. All right, but this time he's
Speaker 1: wearing hunter's clothing. Did not see that anywhere? Oh? Really
Speaker 1: is that BS? Well? I don't think it's BS. I
Speaker 1: think this story has just been added to so many
Speaker 1: times over there. But yeah, I shouldn't have been to anything,
Speaker 1: all right. So he comes back regardless of what he's wearing.
Speaker 1: Let's say he's buck naked, which makes it even more fun. Well,
Speaker 1: you just added to the legend just there. He starts
Speaker 1: playing this flute again, but this time the children are entranced.
Speaker 1: He leads like a hundred and thirty kids supposedly, Yeah,
Speaker 1: pay attention to a number. It seems a little specific,
Speaker 1: doesn't it. It It does. He leads a hundred and thirty
Speaker 1: children out of town up a mountain to a cave.
Speaker 1: They supposedly enter and are never heard from again. Right,
Speaker 1: And the mountain has a landslide and covers up the
Speaker 1: cave mouth. And supposedly it was a mad e gold
Speaker 1: door that opened in the mountain that revealed the key.
Speaker 1: They go in, doors closed, landslide, gone, never heard from again,
Speaker 1: like you said, And the townspeople are like, there goes
Speaker 1: are labor pool, you know, there goes my baby, There
Speaker 1: goes are labor pool. Who's going to service at the
Speaker 1: beer gardens, and supposedly there in one version at least
Speaker 1: um there was the mayor's grown daughter was among that group,
Speaker 1: and this feels like a specific jab at the mayor,
Speaker 1: like even though your daughter's grown, I'm gonna in transfer
Speaker 1: with my flute as well. Yeah. Well, I don't think
Speaker 1: that was in the original Grim Brothers one either, but
Speaker 1: but two children survived, correct or they come back. I
Speaker 1: think in the Grim Brothers version it's just one. Sometimes
Speaker 1: it's up to three. But there there's in a lot
Speaker 1: of retellings there's a kid who either um is deaf
Speaker 1: and so can't hear the magic flute, so it's not entranced.
Speaker 1: Um has some sort of physical disability and so that
Speaker 1: he or she can't keep up with the rest of
Speaker 1: the kids and survives from that um or I think
Speaker 1: it is blind and can't see their way. Either way,
Speaker 1: some kid who had some unique characteristic that kept them
Speaker 1: from being um entranced or whatever. UH is like the
Speaker 1: eyewitness that comes back and tells the parents what happened,
Speaker 1: or in another version, is just a skeptic, a child skeptic.
Speaker 1: This can't be happening. Louis the child's skeptic um. That's funny.
Speaker 1: So all right, so let's get into this. It may
Speaker 1: not to be fictions, as it turns out, because a
Speaker 1: lot of historians and scholars have looked into this. You
Speaker 1: talked about the specificity being a little weird. One thing
Speaker 1: we do know is that at one point there was
Speaker 1: a stained glass window in the in the town church
Speaker 1: um that depicted and this was what around thirdeen hundreds
Speaker 1: is after it would have happened, but I mean sixteen
Speaker 1: years in memory, living memory. It was when they first
Speaker 1: erected that window, which kind of makes sense as a memorial. Uh.
Speaker 1: And on that window it said on the day of
Speaker 1: John Paul, I'm sorry John and Paul one thirty children
Speaker 1: in Hamlin went to Calvary, were brought through all kinds
Speaker 1: of danger to the Copen Mountain and lost. Yeah. So
Speaker 1: the Calvary thing that I thought was another word for Heaven,
Speaker 1: isn't it. I'm gone, I'm going to Calvary in that
Speaker 1: was like in that like the hill where was crucified.
Speaker 1: If I know this, surely you know I used to
Speaker 1: know this. I know it looms large and in Christianity,
Speaker 1: but I can't remember exactly. I think it's like shorthand
Speaker 1: for I'm going to meet my Maker. I saw elsewhere
Speaker 1: that they referred to the mountain as cavalry. Yeah. They
Speaker 1: also referred to the area that the children went to
Speaker 1: Calvary as the execution place. I never saw any explanation
Speaker 1: of that. And then the copp And Mountain. I don't
Speaker 1: understand why that would be also named Calvary, and they
Speaker 1: would mention at the same place twice with two different names.
Speaker 1: So it's a bit of a mystery. But the point is,
Speaker 1: about fifteen sixteen years after this event supposedly happened, or
Speaker 1: the fairy tale takes place, the town of Hamlin, Germany,
Speaker 1: in um Lower Saxony or West Falley, I think is
Speaker 1: what it's called. Now, put put up of stained glass
Speaker 1: window commemorating this. And the window did not survive. But
Speaker 1: apparently there are accounts of that window, yeah, like in
Speaker 1: more than one place. Yeah, and it was I mean
Speaker 1: you can understand that it would be because it was
Speaker 1: in the town church for hundreds of years before it
Speaker 1: was destroyed. No one knows how it was destroyed, but
Speaker 1: there is documentation that this window existed. Obviously, no living
Speaker 1: historians saw it with their own eyes. But there's enough,
Speaker 1: um documentary evidence that it seems to be. Yes, there
Speaker 1: was a window that was erected. That is a very
Speaker 1: weird thing to do. Yeah, to just make up right,
Speaker 1: yea very weird, especially in the church. Yeah, you don't lie. No,
Speaker 1: you go to hell for that. So that was that
Speaker 1: was the first documentary evidence, right. The next one I
Speaker 1: saw comes a hundred years later in four and um
Speaker 1: it's in the Hamlin Town Chronicle for that year and
Speaker 1: all it says is it is one years since our
Speaker 1: children left. Yeah. Kind of weird. And what is that?
Speaker 1: Just a blurb? I guess so you'd think a hundred
Speaker 1: year commemoration they might add a little more than that. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And what is this the Luonberg manuscript. This was about
Speaker 1: a hundred years after the window and this was a
Speaker 1: monk who wrote it, Heinrich of Hereford, and he says
Speaker 1: he writes an account and says a man about thirty
Speaker 1: years old came to town playing a flute and lead
Speaker 1: the children out. Yeah. Pretty simple. Yeah, but what's noteworthy
Speaker 1: about that one. There's a couple of things. Um, so
Speaker 1: the the piper doesn't show up in the first in
Speaker 1: the window. But he does show up in the Lumberg manuscript.
Speaker 1: He mentions the piper, but no rats in any of
Speaker 1: these right, not yet. But the other thing about the
Speaker 1: Luomburg manuscript is that it Looomberg is a nearby town.
Speaker 1: So there are other towns that are talking about this
Speaker 1: event that happened in their own chronicles. Right. One of
Speaker 1: the reasons why, But it supports the idea that it's real,
Speaker 1: because if it's just this one town that's deluded, even
Speaker 1: if other towns are talking about it, they'll probably be
Speaker 1: by the way, they're all nuts. But other towns chronicles
Speaker 1: seem to be verifying that this happened or recounting this
Speaker 1: story in like a credulous way. So something happened in
Speaker 1: twelve eighty four, and the evidence is starting to mount. Um.
Speaker 1: The other thing about the fact that this is another
Speaker 1: town is that this town Loomburg and other towns um
Speaker 1: cited that Hambling came to be known to commemorate things
Speaker 1: counting backward or forward from the date of twelve eighty four. So,
Speaker 1: for example, they put up a gate in fifteen fifty
Speaker 1: six in the town. This is what they inscribed on
Speaker 1: the gate. Chuck uh in this year of fifteen fifty six,
Speaker 1: two hundred and seventy two years after the magician led
Speaker 1: a hundred and thirty children out of the town, this
Speaker 1: portal was erected. That's like saying, like this, we're putting
Speaker 1: up the sewer two hundred and sixty two years after
Speaker 1: our children were led out of town by a magician.
Speaker 1: Enjoy the sewer. Like, that's a weird thing to inscribe
Speaker 1: in something, and apparently the town became known for that
Speaker 1: kind of thing. What just these random inscriptions about this weird,
Speaker 1: like mysterious event. Yeah, just like dating everything from twelve
Speaker 1: eighty four on bay Stan their their children leaving, and
Speaker 1: again you'll notice it mentions a hundred and thirty children.
Speaker 1: Things changed over the retelling, but the one thing that's
Speaker 1: remained the same is the hundred and thirty children leaving.
Speaker 1: Even before the piper shows up in the story, a
Speaker 1: hundred and thirty children are cited each and every time. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but in what we don't know is that, like some
Speaker 1: symbolic things, that all metaphor Um. Should we take a
Speaker 1: break and get to the theories, all right, let's do that,
Speaker 1: all right? The theories are varied, Um, One of the
Speaker 1: common ones make that makes a lot of sense is
Speaker 1: that there was some disease that killed all these kids,
Speaker 1: and then this story is some sort of metaphor for
Speaker 1: what happened to their children. And the fact that rats
Speaker 1: come into play at some point have led people to
Speaker 1: speculate that it might be the bubonic plague. Yeah, there's
Speaker 1: a guy named Count Froben Christoph von Zimmer. Can you
Speaker 1: say it like that Froban? No, I don't know, but
Speaker 1: I know that that guy will steal your soul in
Speaker 1: the middle of the night if you're not careful. Yeah, So,
Speaker 1: Count Froben Christoph von Zimmer, you can only say all
Speaker 1: of his names, you can't, he wrote. He wrote a
Speaker 1: chronicle in fifteen sixty five from another nearby town, and
Speaker 1: he was the one who seems to have introduced the rats. Okay,
Speaker 1: And so at that point the piper goes from just
Speaker 1: a weirdo magician to ratten Fonger. Yeah, rat catcher. Yeah,
Speaker 1: which was a job, it was, And I mean like
Speaker 1: like this town would have had rats. Any town would
Speaker 1: have had rats, So it would have been like it's
Speaker 1: understandable like that the rats would come into it, and
Speaker 1: it's not like that's just, you know, a totally outlandish
Speaker 1: addition to the story. But the fact that it doesn't
Speaker 1: show up until fifteen sixty five, and this has been
Speaker 1: documented for hundreds of years up to that point, seems
Speaker 1: a little fishy. And it certainly seems weird that it
Speaker 1: would have been the plague because the play cadn't come
Speaker 1: around yet, right right, And it also seems fishy that
Speaker 1: it doesn't mention anything about adults in any sort of
Speaker 1: rat carrying or diseased rat would It seems like it
Speaker 1: wouldn't just affect kids. No, it doesn't make any sense. No,
Speaker 1: it doesn't. But the idea that a hundred and thirty
Speaker 1: kids were taken from the town in one form of fashion,
Speaker 1: you could say, well, it's like some sort of disease.
Speaker 1: One of the other diseases that got um put up
Speaker 1: was Parkinson's I believe or no, Huntington's I'm Sorry, which
Speaker 1: is a stupid theory. It's a terrible theory. Unting tense
Speaker 1: disease is an inherited disease, so that would mean that
Speaker 1: every kid in the town had inherited hunting Ten's from
Speaker 1: their parents, who apparently weren't showing any symptoms. I don't know,
Speaker 1: I couldn't find it, but it's a terrible one. And
Speaker 1: then the idea that so it's not infectious, it's rare
Speaker 1: and everybody's symptoms coming on at the same time in dying.
Speaker 1: The reason why they said that those because supposedly um
Speaker 1: the sheiks from it, the palsy would account for the
Speaker 1: dancing of the children. It seems like a pretty dumb
Speaker 1: thing to zero. That's a stretch. Hunting ten disease were
Speaker 1: crossing off the list, all right. One of my favorites
Speaker 1: is that the children left on their own as part
Speaker 1: of one of the crusades. And apparently the one thing
Speaker 1: that doesn't quite align is the timeline because a few
Speaker 1: decades previous there were in fact young people children probably teenagers.
Speaker 1: Do there like eight year old participating in the Crusades.
Speaker 1: One of them would have a vision from God and say,
Speaker 1: you know, we should totally cover the Crusades. I don't
Speaker 1: think we No. Have we done that? No, not yet.
Speaker 1: There's a really good article on the site too, would
Speaker 1: be it's a pretty dense single. Yeah we might do too, alright,
Speaker 1: two party on the Crusades coming at you, Uh, so
Speaker 1: you would you know, one of those kids would have
Speaker 1: a vision from God and then all the kids would
Speaker 1: follow and say, all right, when we can take our
Speaker 1: broadswords that we can barely lift and go fight the
Speaker 1: good fight. Right. So that's one theory, and that's actually
Speaker 1: a pretty uh It's that that's a little more rooted
Speaker 1: in reality. Like, yes, there were children's crusade before documented,
Speaker 1: It's possible it happened a decade or two later, Like
Speaker 1: if if it was in the area and well known,
Speaker 1: some other kid could have been like, Okay, let me
Speaker 1: try my hand at it, changes his name to Jim
Speaker 1: Jones and says follow me to Jerusalem. Right, that's right,
Speaker 1: So that that one could have happened. It's possible. Um.
Speaker 1: The other one, this is supposed of the most widely
Speaker 1: held theory, Chuck, was that this is all part of
Speaker 1: the Oh seed long o s this is a tongue
Speaker 1: twister O S T S I E D l U
Speaker 1: n G, which is basically an exodus or an eastward
Speaker 1: expansion from Germany to Transylvania, Romania area which was being
Speaker 1: newly settled by Um Western Europeans after conquering, Like the
Speaker 1: whole Dracula era. So the idea is an adult came
Speaker 1: and said, hey, kids, why don't you come with me
Speaker 1: and we'll we'll go like populate eastern Europe pretty much
Speaker 1: right right, So um, and there is evidence that this
Speaker 1: this did, like this definitely happened, right there was a
Speaker 1: migration eastward. Um. And the big thing about this one
Speaker 1: is that they were misinterpreting the word kids or children
Speaker 1: that it could have been the town's children in but
Speaker 1: it's like their their children, they weren't kids. They were
Speaker 1: you know, young adults who were who would have represented like,
Speaker 1: you know, a lot of the workforce. So that would
Speaker 1: have been a big deal had they left. So that's
Speaker 1: a that's I think the most widely held one right now. Well,
Speaker 1: one of the traditions you're hanging onto is uh. And
Speaker 1: I kind of teased it with that dum bano jerk
Speaker 1: jerk like that's a great botto that bono joke earlier
Speaker 1: is uh today still um. The street where this supposedly
Speaker 1: all happened UM is called the Bungalowsan stausa street with
Speaker 1: no drums, street without drums, And to this day they
Speaker 1: won't allow people to play music or dance on that street. Right,
Speaker 1: the rest of the town and including that street, but
Speaker 1: really the rest of the town is the whole town
Speaker 1: is dedicated to this legend. Yeah, um, I thought you
Speaker 1: can say dedicated to music and dancing. Well, I'm except
Speaker 1: for the streets they do. There is a musical called
Speaker 1: Rats that's put on in the town seriously, um. And
Speaker 1: there's there's like a pie piper statue and recreations every
Speaker 1: Sunday in the summer. Oh yeah, it's huge tourist town
Speaker 1: for this. Um. There's like a I think a Rats
Speaker 1: blug cocktails that they served. I saw. It's like a
Speaker 1: mental Falss article I mentioned that. But um, the town
Speaker 1: is dedicated to this. But there's there's the fact that
Speaker 1: they're still talking about it is not just legend. It's um.
Speaker 1: It's like they're they're still telling that story to an extent,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. Well, yeah, keeping it alive,
Speaker 1: not just for tourist dollars because it looms large because
Speaker 1: this is their ancestry. Well, they definitely. Um, there are
Speaker 1: some more um theories that haven't gained as much traction,
Speaker 1: Like there was a pedophile that came, Um, these children
Speaker 1: were just maybe just simply sent away because they're very poor.
Speaker 1: Because that happened. That's my theory that that was just
Speaker 1: sort of the regular thing that would happen, is we're
Speaker 1: also poor, you go away and live a better life somewhere. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And that's where Hansel and Gretel is kind of rooted
Speaker 1: in reality, the idea of child abandonment. Remember we talked
Speaker 1: about that. I believe in the in one of the
Speaker 1: fairy Tale episodes from before that like if you fell
Speaker 1: on hard times, just taking your kid out to the
Speaker 1: woods and being like, best of luck. It was a
Speaker 1: viable thing to do during the Middle Ages. And it's
Speaker 1: possible that this town basically said it would be like
Speaker 1: a combination of the guy coming from Romania and saying
Speaker 1: follow me, and the parents being like, maybe you should
Speaker 1: go with him. And then that would explain why the
Speaker 1: whole thing is written in like such vague, flowery language.
Speaker 1: To me, that indicates that they're they're working out guilt.
Speaker 1: There's guilt by this town, bague. They're not direct. Other
Speaker 1: towns are talking about this legend in much more explicit terms,
Speaker 1: But in the town of hay Amelin it's all very
Speaker 1: like like flowery and and poetic and vague, and it
Speaker 1: makes me think they're they're covering something up that they
Speaker 1: have to get off their chest. But they're still they
Speaker 1: can't bring themselves to actually say what it was. Well,
Speaker 1: that sort of jibes the with um. This dude, he's
Speaker 1: a children's poet named Michael Rosen. He sent that one article.
Speaker 1: He actually went to Hamlin and hooked up with a
Speaker 1: guy named Michael Boyer from the tourism office there, and
Speaker 1: Boyer says that he thinks the rats were added and
Speaker 1: this this makes sense with your theory. Was that just
Speaker 1: sort of an attempt to wash away what he said,
Speaker 1: we're bad memories, like a cover up to draw attention
Speaker 1: away from this awful thing. They're like, hey, let's tell
Speaker 1: this rat story. Right, But if you'll notice also in
Speaker 1: that story with the rats there there is guilt by
Speaker 1: the town. The town is guilty of something and they
Speaker 1: lose their children as a result. Right, So if the
Speaker 1: rats were actually part of the original story, even if
Speaker 1: it wasn't documented, even if there weren't real rats, it
Speaker 1: still is putting some veneer of guilt onto the town.
Speaker 1: It wasn't something that just happened to them. This thing
Speaker 1: befell them because they did something wrong. I don't feel
Speaker 1: like there could be a deeper mystery, though, Yeah I
Speaker 1: think there is, Like, for real, I think there's something
Speaker 1: really happened in Hamlin in twelve eighty four and they
Speaker 1: lost a hundred and thirty kids somehow, and the town
Speaker 1: it was psychically damaged by it. Are you going to
Speaker 1: title this one pie Piper colon cold Case? That's a
Speaker 1: good one. Actually, Okay, you got anything else? No? Now
Speaker 1: I want to know more. I know I got sucked
Speaker 1: into this. I can't remember which of the articles I
Speaker 1: sent it got me, but I don't remember how I
Speaker 1: came across it, but it was it was like, oh,
Speaker 1: I've never thought of this, And it's not like you
Speaker 1: can do this with every um fairy tale, right there's
Speaker 1: you know, there's was probably no rapondola, and probably no
Speaker 1: rumble Stiltskin, Hansel and Gretel's just so vague. Probably happened
Speaker 1: to multiple children, But this one, this happened in Hamlin
Speaker 1: in twelve eighty four. Something happened. We may never know
Speaker 1: what it was, but it's pretty interesting. My mind goes
Speaker 1: really dark and thinks, like what if there was just
Speaker 1: a mass murder, well parents. One more thing, One more thing.
Speaker 1: I'm glad you brought that up. So the execution place
Speaker 1: that the Coppin Mountain or Cavalry Mountain or whatever it was,
Speaker 1: supposedly that was where they buried people too, So they
Speaker 1: were saying that could be code for a mass grave
Speaker 1: where they would have buried people, which would suggest a
Speaker 1: mass death that happened in a short period of time. Man,
Speaker 1: can you imagine if there was a discovery made of
Speaker 1: children's bones and in a mountain somewhere north of Hamlin
Speaker 1: to be neat nor because it's mountains, I just think
Speaker 1: that means they're north. So one more you keep bringing
Speaker 1: up this awesome stuff, dude. You ready, they recently discovered
Speaker 1: I think they discovered it a while back, but they
Speaker 1: recently publicized that the discovery of a and believe it was.
Speaker 1: It was definitely in Peru. It wasn't Incan. It was
Speaker 1: one of the Incan's rivals, the Inca rivals um. But
Speaker 1: it was a mass sacrifice of hundreds of kids that
Speaker 1: all happened on one day, one after the other. It was.
Speaker 1: And like they found this and you're reading it and
Speaker 1: you're like, this probably has never happened in the history
Speaker 1: of the world anything like this, Nothing like this. I
Speaker 1: mean it's they were probably child side or they're definitely
Speaker 1: child sacrifices, but they would do it like once in
Speaker 1: a while or something. But imagine a town gone that
Speaker 1: berserk that they just let their kids, like hundreds of
Speaker 1: kids just killed in a day in one area. It was.
Speaker 1: It's really rough, man, it's but reading about it, it's
Speaker 1: I mean, it's just too you can't help but pull
Speaker 1: yourself back into that day and just see it and
Speaker 1: want to be like, stop, what are you doing? You've
Speaker 1: lost your mind? You know. And if it happened once,
Speaker 1: it could happen again. I guess you know, maybe the
Speaker 1: parents were all, uh, maybe they'll drank bad beer one
Speaker 1: day it made him temporarily insane. That would be really bad.
Speaker 1: It sounds like a Bloomhouse movie to come. What is that?
Speaker 1: It's just that production company that makes a lot of
Speaker 1: the horror movies. Now, what like what I think they
Speaker 1: did get out among many others. Good, Okay, you've got
Speaker 1: anything else? Now? I got nothing else? Jerry? No, okay, Well,
Speaker 1: if you want to know more about the pipe Piper
Speaker 1: and all that stuff, you can type that word in
Speaker 1: the search bar how stuff works dot Com. And since
Speaker 1: I said that, it's time for listener mail, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: call this a double Kieta reply because you heard from
Speaker 1: a couple of people with some good insight. First, Alexandra,
Speaker 1: longtime listener from San Juan, Puerto Rico, loved episode on
Speaker 1: Kensanetas's usually you did a great job approaching a cultural tradition,
Speaker 1: but it is not your own, while providing a balanced information,
Speaker 1: well rounded and textualization of the celebration and its influences.
Speaker 1: And she's like in Parnes, it was the opposite of
Speaker 1: the ing episode. Oh man, we've gotten beat up about that.
Speaker 1: For my own Keen Saneta, my mother gave me the
Speaker 1: option of the traditional coming of age party or a trip.
Speaker 1: What do you think she chose. I'm guessing a trip. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I would too. I chose to travel. It. Spent a
Speaker 1: month in Germany this summer I turned fifteen. Looking back,
Speaker 1: it's amazing that she trusted me enough at such a
Speaker 1: young age travel on my own, although I did stay
Speaker 1: with family. She's like, it's the greatest regret of my
Speaker 1: young life. I wish I would have partied. Uh, I
Speaker 1: just wanted to clarify a few things you brought up. Um,
Speaker 1: l A T I n X is pronounced, she says,
Speaker 1: latin X. It refers to those from Latin America or
Speaker 1: Latin American descent. Hispanic refers to Spanish speaking persons. Oh
Speaker 1: and your pronunciation of keen yeta was great, as the
Speaker 1: r A is a soft our sound. Um, no need
Speaker 1: to read this on the podcast. T s sorry, Alexandra.
Speaker 1: And then this other follow up I want to this
Speaker 1: guy says, this is Ti van Plinski. I recognize that name.
Speaker 1: I think he's on Twitter or something. Really Yeah, great name.
Speaker 1: He's local, is she said? Disclaimer, I'm a white person
Speaker 1: from Georgia, so I have no authority here at all.
Speaker 1: But we'll be referring to the opinions of actual Latino
Speaker 1: Latina Latin X people I know or have read the
Speaker 1: writings of. I've personally only heard that word pronounced with
Speaker 1: confidence in the following two ways, Latin X and Latin X. However,
Speaker 1: some people say latin X or latins latin X sounds
Speaker 1: right because it's Latino Latina latin X, Yeah, that makes sense,
Speaker 1: or LATINX rhymes with sphinx. Um I don't think that's
Speaker 1: right or something else entirely, as evidenced by this Twitter poll,
Speaker 1: and he shared a Twitter poll which was from a
Speaker 1: media brand for Latino millennials. Interestingly, there appears to be
Speaker 1: backlash against the term by some who view it as
Speaker 1: an attempt, potential or not to anglicize Spanish. They say
Speaker 1: this is part of a larger movement to paint Hispanic
Speaker 1: Latino Latina Latin X people as sexist and ignorant. Mexican
Speaker 1: American person who introduced me to the term was still
Speaker 1: sorting out their feelings about the whole situation. Huh. So
Speaker 1: that's where we step steps into a hornet's nice uh
Speaker 1: tivon plinsky Uh. If you want to get in touch
Speaker 1: with us, like Tie and Alexandra did, you can tweet
Speaker 1: to us at s Y s K podcast and Chuck's
Speaker 1: at movie Crush. You can join Chuck on Facebook at
Speaker 1: Facebook dot com, slash Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and slash
Speaker 1: Stuff you Should Know. You can send us all an email.
Speaker 1: The Stuff podcast at how Stuff Works dot com and
Speaker 1: has always joined us their home on the web, Stuff
Speaker 1: you Should Know dot Com Radio. Stuff you Should Know
Speaker 1: is a production of i heart Radio. For more podcasts
Speaker 1: My heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. H