[HN Gopher] The grim truth behind the Pied Piper (2020)
___________________________________________________________________
The grim truth behind the Pied Piper (2020)
Author : Anon84
Score : 92 points
Date : 2025-11-05 12:21 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.bbc.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.bbc.com)
| bogzz wrote:
| Their CTO is a Satanist.
| jack_tripper wrote:
| Nice chain Dinesh
| wpasc wrote:
| not height per se, but d2f
| bambax wrote:
| I too read the title and thought it would be about the show.
| It's not, unfortunately.
| throw23748923 wrote:
| What's the chance this event happened as recorded in popular
| memory? The inscription dates to 1284, but the earliest mention
| according to the article is 1384, 100 years later. On a symbolic
| day no less. The plaque, where 1284 is inscribed, is on a house
| dating to the 1500s.
|
| It seems much more plausible that e.g. children emigrated as
| adults to another region (as mentioned in the article) and the
| old-timers who stayed behind lamented the 'loss of their
| children' so to speak; when the history was recorded in town
| records, it's unlikely that any of these old-timers or children
| were around. Hundreds of years of historical layering, where the
| most interesting version of the story is the one that is
| reinforced likely explains the mythological nature of the tale.
|
| But what do I know? I suppose it is curious.
| jvanderbot wrote:
| Combining all the elements, a foreigner-led emigration of adult
| / young adults en masse because of a rat/disease/sanitation
| problem seems just fine as an explanation.
| evolve2k wrote:
| While the mystery of the story has always been attractive the
| maybe more obvious moral truth within the tale is part of its
| enduring nature.
|
| In short the town screws the piper for his work with the
| rats, in what looks to be an act of greed and arrogance by
| the town leaders, likley even having done this before (tales
| of exploited contractors are easy to find even to this day).
|
| But the moral was in the way the piper responded, shockingly
| and surprisingly taking off with (per the plaque) some 130
| children at midsommer no less.
|
| It's a little abstracted here as the article doesn't start
| with the legend (of course cause it's so famous); but I think
| the historical reframe to draw from this is that after not
| being paid for his work removing rats he "takes payment" by
| recruiting 130 children and taking them to settle new lands
| (being paid then for the provision of the children to the
| settlors).
|
| I think for those interested in the histories, it somewhat
| solves the mystery and clarifies how the piper was paid in
| the end. The beauty of the narrative and the core moral of
| the story remain. And likely this story is still relevant for
| us today.
|
| Make good on your promises especially around payment lest the
| other party takes payment in other ways, with possible costs
| that you never first considered.
| cubefox wrote:
| 100 years isn't that long though. Enough to transmit an exact
| date to multiple people. Also, the oldest surviving record
| isn't necessarily the earliest record there ever was.
| thinkingtoilet wrote:
| Go play a game of telephone with 20 people and see how well
| information travels. Now multiply that by 100 years.
| IAmBroom wrote:
| If that game of telephone includes the sentence "I'm going
| to kidnap your child", I'll bet it travels faster and more
| accurately than you think it will.
| cubefox wrote:
| That calculation doesn't make sense.
| soperj wrote:
| Except oral histories seemed to have been very important to
| people and passing them down accurately has been noted
| throughout history
| bbarnett wrote:
| No TV, no books. Lightly populated rural communities,
| without a lot of visitors.
|
| People loved stories because they were bored.
| AlotOfReading wrote:
| It's not boredom. Humans have always told stories and we
| still tell them today. How often does the 500 mile email
| come up on HN, or The Story of Mel? What about the SR-71
| speed check? It's an innate human characteristic to love
| stories and most social media is lightly disguised
| storytelling.
| bbarnett wrote:
| _It 's not boredom._
|
| Says someone who didn't listen to an old timers 70th
| rendition of the same old story.
|
| There are stories, and then there are stories. I grew up
| pre-Internet with limited books, no way to get more, 3
| fuzzy TV channels on a good day, and nothing else.
|
| People today don't even know what boredom is. You don't
| know what boredom is, until you've watched the same
| episode of The Andy Griffith Show 15 times, and still
| think it is entertaining.
|
| Now go to pre-literate times. No TV. Yes, stories are
| fun.
|
| But hearing the same story over and over 1000 times is
| only fun if you're so bored, any external stimulus is a
| blessing.
| AlotOfReading wrote:
| Let's not assume things about age. I'm old enough to
| remember holding the stupid rabbit ears. Never liked the
| Andy Griffith show though. I've _also_ spent plenty of
| nights sitting a fire with a bunch of nomads in the
| middle of nowhere.
|
| It's not fundamentally different from media today.
| Audiobooks, Twilight Zone, Black Mirror, Disney movies,
| true crime media, etc. People don't choose these for lack
| of alternatives. They're activities people _like_
| (excepting the parents forced to watch Frozen for the
| thousandth time).
|
| Strong oral storytelling cultures also have many, many
| stories available to them. It's not as tedious as
| syndicated TV was. Two examples of collections that
| survive to the modern day are the Jewish bible (old
| testament) and the Christian New Testament, each of which
| has dozens of stories you're likely familiar with no
| matter your religious background. They're not
| communicated solely through everyone sitting down around
| a campfire, and not every recitation is in the formal
| verbiage of the source material. Often recitation is
| associated with a calendar (e.g. the sermon schedules
| ministers follow in modern churches, or performed only at
| particular seasonal festivals). Different recitations are
| often performed in new ways to adjust things to the
| audience (e.g. referencing recent events) or with slight
| changes to keep things fresh. So on and so forth. It's a
| much richer world than you may be aware of.
| advisedwang wrote:
| 100 years doesn't require a game of telephone with 20
| people. It requires maybe 2 or 3. And for a event known to
| a whole town, you have multiple independent narrators which
| can help stabilize information.
|
| My family has far more trivial information passed down
| orally that is way older than 100 years.
| cogman10 wrote:
| Mine doesn't. I know just a handful of things about my
| great grandparents. Things I do know about my family
| history didn't come from oral traditions but rather
| records placing my ancestors in places.
|
| Even from what I know of my parents, I'm sure I've
| forgotten or misremembered a bunch of stories that
| they've told me about their lives. I couldn't reliably
| retell more than a handful of stories.
| Jtsummers wrote:
| The telephone game lacks features in the telling that are
| common in oral storytelling that help reinforce the content
| and reduces the number of errors. Repeated telling,
| repetition in the structure, rhyming and alliteration
| (which is used, or even if they're used, depends on the
| language), being made into a song (seems to stick better
| than just straight speaking), etc. If you played the
| telephone game with a deliberately constructed story using
| those elements and taught that story to the next
| "generation" by repetition over a period of time before
| they, in turn, repeated it to the next generation it would
| be much more reliable. It also wouldn't be the telephone
| game.
| WalterBright wrote:
| I'm convinced that poems are an effective error-
| correcting code for remembering things.
| cogman10 wrote:
| Yeah it is. It's a full generation.
|
| The Spanish flu is a great example of that phenomena. It's
| hardly mentioned in history books yet we had a flu season
| where people were dying in the streets. Very shortly after it
| happened, people stopped talking about it or mentioning it.
|
| COVID is looking like it will very much turn into the same
| thing.
|
| These are massive global events that may only get small blubs
| 100 years later. Now imagine an event that happens in a
| localized area. How much of that event will get carried on or
| reported?
|
| You also have to remember that in the 1200s, things like
| paper and ink were a lot more expensive than modern paper.
| That's part of the reason literacy rates were a lot lower.
| lproven wrote:
| > It's a full generation.
|
| This is wrong. It is 4 generations.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation
|
| << the average period, generally considered to be about
| 20-30 years, during which children are born and grow up,
| become adults, and begin to have children. >>
|
| > a great example of that phenomena
|
| This is wrong. "Phenomena" is plural. The singular is
| "phenomenon."
|
| > It's hardly mentioned in history books
|
| Because it is living memory for a small number of people.
|
| "Spanish flu" is widely remembered, and just 4-5 years ago
| thousands of articles were published comparing the measures
| taken a century before against a pandemic.
|
| > small blubs
|
| I think you meant "blurbs", as in "short informal pieces of
| writing", and it's a poor choice of words anyway. "To blub"
| means to cry.
|
| https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/blub
|
| These repeated errors strongly weaken your argument, and
| suggest that despite your confident tone you don't know as
| much as you think.
| jvanderbot wrote:
| Your off-topic ad hominems or pedantic takedowns weaken
| any point you might have had, if you'd had one. This is
| not high school debate or reddit. We can do better here.
| It's best to take the most generous view of a post and
| address the core thesis.
| hluska wrote:
| Wow, you achieved being an asshole. Good for you?
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| I mean looking at the attested record, interpreting it,
| weighing evidence and motive and audience in this way, that's
| what historians do that is the practice of the discipline of
| history.
|
| 100 years later is actually pretty damn close all things
| considered! For comparison we have contemporaneous inscriptions
| and epigraphs attesting the existence of alexander the great
| but the earliest surviving accounts of his actions are from
| 200-300 years later. It can be the dedicated work of a
| scholar's lifetime to pry a handful of verifiable facts from
| these second- and third-hand, biased, incomplete accounts. But
| the lifetimes stack up and the guesses come into focus as
| knowledge.
| empath75 wrote:
| > For comparison we have contemporaneous inscriptions and
| epigraphs attesting the existence of alexander the great but
| the earliest surviving accounts of his actions are from
| 200-300 years later.
|
| This is true, but those surviving accounts quote or
| paraphrase contemporaneous accounts from his generals like
| Ptolemy and others that have since been lost.
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| Sure but now we're doing history in the comment section
| where I only intended to point out that this is exactly how
| history is done.
| IAmBroom wrote:
| > On a symbolic day no less.
|
| Meh, the feast day of two saints. Pretty much any day of the
| year. Today is the feast day for Saints Bertille, Zechariah,
| and Elizabeth.
| thinkingemote wrote:
| People in medieval times had more time off not working than
| today. Feast days were actual feast days, they often didn't
| work during them. Feast days were not something written on a
| calendar that only a few people could consult and say "hmm,
| oh look today is the feast day of such and such... meh,
| what's for supper?" :-)
|
| They had to a greater or lesser extent, fairs, games, dances
| - they were literally festivals. People looked forward to and
| prepared in advance for feast days. There are at least 2
| things that I think are relevant: firstly feast days
| punctuated and delimited the calendar and people's lives and
| secondly feast days were very memorable shared whole-
| community events.
|
| This doesn't necessarily make the story more believable but
| it can make it more memorable. Think of a story where it says
| "it happened at Halloween and again at Christmas" and it
| could just help fix that story in a specific time making it
| more memorable in our brains.
| BobaFloutist wrote:
| Sorry, you think early-modern indentured sharecropping
| subsidence farmers without dishwashers, laundry machines,
| sewing machines, or industrialized clothing production
| worked less than 2080 hours a year?
|
| Subsidence farming is a brutally demanding, painful way to
| scrape a living. Even with modern technology, it can't be
| overstated the sheer amount of labor it takes to grow
| enough food just to feed yourself, and that's without owing
| an obscene portion of your product to your "landlord"
| (who's also your employer and your local government, and
| can forbid you freedom of movement and dictate your
| personal life).
|
| Laundry was an immense amount of labor. Keeping the home
| intact took labor. Maintaining your clothes took labor.
|
| Look up the the BBC historic farm series if you want an
| idea of the amount of work it takes to actually run a farm,
| without any of the extra problems actually living in that
| period would bring, such as not understanding germ theory
| and sanitation, unreliable access to clean water, no real
| medical care, no real birth control, and no defense against
| a bad season just breaking your back.
| chasil wrote:
| As the involvement of a magic flute is unlikely in the extreme,
| this devolves to kidnapping.
|
| As to why, the article asserts the scenarios of forced
| migration for settling new areas, or perhaps a "childrens'
| crusade" to the war in the Middle East.
| DonHopkins wrote:
| The OctoPipers of PiperNet - Silicon Valley
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s-l6btZcJ54
| tetris11 wrote:
| The Wikipedia article has actual information instead of the
| storytelling that the BBC article is insisting on
|
| > Udolph favours the hypothesis that the Hamelin youths wound up
| in what is now Poland.[40] Genealogist Dick Eastman cited
| Udolph's research on Hamelin surnames that have shown up in
| Polish phonebooks
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pied_Piper_of_Hamelin
|
| Also, _every_ town in Southern Germany looks like that. Hamelin
| is nothing special in that respect
| flobosg wrote:
| Hamelin is located in Lower Saxony, not in the southern states.
| beeforpork wrote:
| And there, many cities look like that, too.
|
| It's all about the angle. I am sure that just outside of the
| camera frame, there's a mobile phone shop, a Burger King or
| MacDonald's, and other trivially universal city commerce. :-)
| Let's see...
|
| https://maps.app.goo.gl/hbRSXaDvfKNFmQtT6
|
| No, but there's Rossmann, Kik, Doner, and Woolworth's.
| flobosg wrote:
| The point I was addressing from the parent comment was the
| implication that Hamelin is located in southern Germany. It
| could be rewritten to, as you pointed out:
|
| > Also, every town in Germany looks like that.
| beeforpork wrote:
| Yes, I know. I was trying to stress exactly that.
| b2ccb2 wrote:
| "Hameln" is in northern Germany, don't know where the I comes
| from in the English transliteration.
|
| There are many theories, one of them is the Children's
| Crusade[0], diseases, pagan sects, but yes, the leading one is
| the "Ostsiedlung".
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Children%27s_Crusade [1]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ostsiedlung
| flobosg wrote:
| Funnily enough, the district ( _Landkreis_ ) name in English
| keeps the original spelling: Hameln-Pyrmont.
| mananaysiempre wrote:
| > don't know where the _i_ [in _Hamelin_ ] comes from in the
| English transliteration
|
| Could just be that it's a very inconvenient consonant cluster
| (and and a speaker of modern English will to some degree turn
| it into a [l@n] or [lIn], however you spell it).
| throwaway173738 wrote:
| I'm an English speaker and when I saw it written "Hameln" I
| thought it was a typo.
| emmelaich wrote:
| It comes from the same place as the i in Munich.
| b2ccb2 wrote:
| Oh, and my favorite theory:
|
| "Eine andere, weniger stark vertretene Theorie besagt, dass
| die Hamelner Kinder einem heidnischen Sektenfuhrer
| aufgesessen sein konnten, der diese zu einem religiosen Ritus
| in die Walder bei Coppenbrugge gefuhrt hat, wo sie heidnische
| Tanze auffuhrten. Dabei habe es einen Bergrutsch oder Erdfall
| gegeben, wodurch die meisten umgekommen seien. Noch heute
| lasst sich dort eine grosse Kuhle finden, die durch ein
| solches Ereignis entstanden sein konnte." > https://de.wikipe
| dia.org/wiki/Rattenf%C3%A4nger_von_Hameln#H...
|
| I'll roughly translate it:
|
| "Another, less thought after theory says, the children of
| Hameln got seduced by a pagan cult leader. He lead the
| children to the forest of Coppenbrugge for a religious
| ritual, where they performed pagan dances. This caused an
| landslide, causing most of them to die. There is, to this
| day, still a large pit, that could have been caused by such
| an event."
|
| Edit: Expanded translation
| IAmBroom wrote:
| Well, I'm convinced! What else could have caused a pit, but
| pagan dancing?
| b2ccb2 wrote:
| The historical precursor of a mosh pit.
| buildsjets wrote:
| I go to many metal and other shows a year. A 3-day
| outdoor festival in the woods with hundreds of tripping
| manchildren moshing in the rain resulted in a very muddy
| shallow depression, not a landslide. I have brief cameo
| in the video below. Want to see a hundred hippies sitting
| in the mud pretending to row ancient Roman galley?
|
| https://youtu.be/X-BtJBDi8OA?si=Gtzeibmuokx39KhP
| mellosouls wrote:
| _The Wikipedia article has actual information instead of the
| storytelling that the BBC article is insisting on_
|
| Strange thing to note (and wrong), given they have completely
| different purposes and the BBC article conveys "actual
| information" as well just in a less clinical way.
| Razengan wrote:
| Weird, I was reading the Wikipedia article about that a few
| days ago and thought of posting that here!
|
| That whatsit phenomenon strikes again!
|
| I wonder if there was or will be a typical modern twisty-take
| movie about this
| dcminter wrote:
| Baader-Meinhof.
| b2ccb2 wrote:
| Hah, macabre and word play. I see you my German brethren.
|
| He is referring to the Baader-Meinhof-Komplex book, that
| pretty much documents the RAF
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Army_Faction
| IAmBroom wrote:
| Um, no, he isn't. He is referring to the Baader-Meinhof
| phenomenon.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frequency_illusion
| b2ccb2 wrote:
| TIL that the term Baader-Meinhof phenomenon is based upon
| this nugget:
|
| > The name "Baader-Meinhof phenomenon" was coined in 1994
| by Terry Mullen in a letter to the St. Paul Pioneer
| Press.[1] The letter describes how, after mentioning the
| name of the German militant group Baader-Meinhof once, he
| kept noticing it.
|
| Thanks!
| IAmBroom wrote:
| Quote from the article that you claim doesn't mention it:
|
| > In fact, Udolph found that the family names common in Hamelin
| at the time show up with surprising frequency in the areas of
| Uckermark and Prignitz, near Berlin, that he locates as the
| centre of the migration.
|
| Maybe try reading the whole article before condemning it,
| instead of just the first couple of paragraphs.
| nartho wrote:
| Is Berlin in Poland ?
| fsckboy wrote:
| wikipedia does not come out and say "this happened" or "the
| folktale was (or "must be") based on a historical event". it
| seems to suggest that the folktale is all the history we have,
| and everything else is a retcon
| willvarfar wrote:
| I'd always imagined the "pied piper" as being 'pied' as in
| patched or even checkerboard of black and white. A piebald pony
| is patches of black or white, for example.
|
| Is it that 'pied' is or was less specific and can mean patches of
| any colour, or is it that the English name is a bit lost in
| translation?
| Grumbledour wrote:
| It's "Rattenfanger von Hameln" in german, so the literal
| translation would be "Rat-Catcher of Hamelin".
|
| I do remember him wearing brightly colored patchwork clothing
| in the stories, but I could not say if that was an integral
| part of the original fable or just added in retellings to make
| the character stand out more as a mysterious stranger.
| b2ccb2 wrote:
| Here is a picture on Wikipedia. https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki
| /Rattenf%C3%A4nger_von_Hameln#/...
|
| I grew up around Hameln and can confirm, that is how he is
| depicted.
|
| Also a depiction of him from 1592: https://de.wikipedia.org/w
| iki/Rattenf%C3%A4nger_von_Hameln#/...
|
| So it is part of the fable.
| IncreasePosts wrote:
| Was that kind of garb common back then? Reminds me of Swiss
| guard uniforms(granted, developed in the early 20th c, but
| based off 16th century imagery)
| b2ccb2 wrote:
| Not sure, the costume reminds me of a jester. If I'd take
| a jab at it, here is the original transcription from
| Bruder Grimm:
|
| "Im Jahr 1284 liess sich zu Hameln ein wunderlicher Mann
| sehen. Er hatte einen Rock von vielfarbigem, bunten Tuch
| an, weshalben er Bundting soll geheissen haben, und gab
| sich fur einen Rattenfanger aus..."[0][1]
|
| "In the year 1284, a strange man appeared in Hameln. He
| had a skirt, made from differently colored fabrics, which
| is why his name was 'bundle(?)', pretending to be a rat
| catcher..."
|
| [0] https://de.wikisource.org/wiki/Seite:Deutsche_Sagen_(
| Grimm)_... [1] https://de.wikisource.org/wiki/Seite:Deuts
| che_Sagen_(Grimm)_...
| gsf_emergency_4 wrote:
| Someone needs to work on the wiki etymology.. (not saying
| it's wrong, just that there seems to be a story missing
| there that connects 1 & 2 :)
|
| https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/bunting#English
| bluGill wrote:
| It would not surprise me. Clothing took a lot of labor to
| make. A large part of the labor was women's labor which
| history doesn't record much of. When you are doing that
| much effort it isn't that much more to die in bright
| colors, and people like colorful clothing (some like the
| Amish make non-color part of their identity of course,
| but they like colors they are just rejecting them anyway
| because they think that helps them get to heaven). Colors
| were limited to what they could make so probably not as
| bright as modern, but not dark in general.
| WalterBright wrote:
| > A large part of the labor was women's labor which
| history doesn't record much of
|
| Women spent much of their lives making textiles. It
| likely wasn't recorded much because it was so ubiquitous.
|
| For example, my family photographs when I was growing up
| were nearly all about documenting unusual events, like
| birthdays, holidays, and vacations. The humdrum ordinary
| things were not photographed. For example, there was only
| two photos with the family car incidentally in the frame.
| No photographs of the neighborhood. One photo of the
| school I attended. No pictures of my dad at work. No
| pictures of my mom cleaning the house. And so on.
|
| It gives a fairly skewed vision of life then.
| bluGill wrote:
| That too, but we know more about men's work that was just
| as ubiquitous. Though the vast majority of history is
| about those in charge - the 0.0001%.
| WalterBright wrote:
| > the 0.0001%
|
| The ones who can read and write expect to be paid, and
| the wealthy and powerful will commission them to write
| about what interests the wealthy and powerful - i.e.
| themselves.
|
| This state of affairs persisted until the advent of the
| printing press, which made for a mass market of ordinary
| people.
| AlotOfReading wrote:
| Bright colors fade more noticeably over time, so bright
| clothing was a good indication of new, regularly replaced
| clothing. The dyes themselves could also be phenomenally
| expensive. The scarlet red of Catholic cardinals was
| historically made from Kermes, an especially lightfast
| dye. Kermes was in turn a cheaper alternative to the
| Tyrian Purple worn previously.
|
| Daily clothing would have been more pastel than the
| saturated colors we associate with "colorful" today.
| IAmBroom wrote:
| "Pied" in clothing now means "patchwork of colors". "Parti-
| colored" would be more historically accurate.
| dang wrote:
| Discussed at the time (of the article):
|
| _The grim truth behind the Pied Piper_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24450760 - Sept 2020 (23
| comments)
| iammjm wrote:
| So what? Like if something was posted years before should it
| never be posted ever again? We are talking 5 years here, and
| the information hasn't become deprecated or outdated
| CrazyStat wrote:
| People might be interested to see what was said last time.
| ishouldbework wrote:
| I do not believe that is dang's point. He often posts
| comments like these under recurring posts, I assume in hope
| that the past discussions could also be of interest to the
| readers.
| iammjm wrote:
| I see! my bad
| mellosouls wrote:
| Its very normal on HN to point to earlier discussions on the
| same article or subject and is normally intended as help
| rather than a complaint.
| dang wrote:
| Not at all! As the other commenters have pointed out, no
| criticism is implied. Reposts are fine after a year or so.
| This is in the FAQ:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html.
|
| It's just that readers are often curious to look at past
| discussions. Sometimes I point that out: https://hn.algolia.c
| om/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que....
| iammjm wrote:
| That makes sense, sorry for my negative interpretation
| baked_beanz wrote:
| I really appreciate respectful interactions like this on
| HN. It's easy to misinterpret things in text!
| volemo wrote:
| What a guy, to criticise dang himself. :P
| caymanjim wrote:
| In case it isn't clear from the responses, dang is the HN
| moderator. He regularly groups related stories and references
| past threads.
| nathias wrote:
| > But most people recognise him for what he is, the Pied Piper
| incarnate
|
| I hope this AI generated
| mellosouls wrote:
| 2020 so unlikely
| TMEHpodcast wrote:
| Initially read the headline and thinking it would be about a
| certain TV show about Silicon Valley. Not disappointed
| czbond wrote:
| I recently got into the show "Silicon Valley" after never
| making it past season 1. Really loving it..... and thought this
| was the Pied Piper company too.
| analog8374 wrote:
| It makes you wonder how many modern facts are just a popularized
| copy of a copy of a copy, mangled beyond all realness.
| Ylpertnodi wrote:
| Please leave AI out of this.
| neilv wrote:
| Jared gentle deadpan from "Silicon Valley":
|
| > _Well, I looked it up. It 's about a predatory flautist who
| murders children in a cave._
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QJ70b-WRHlU&t=18s
| mmaunder wrote:
| "And, in fact, one 13th Century outbreak - a literal form of
| dance fever - occurred south of Hamelin, in the town of Erfurt,
| where a group of youths were documented as wildly gyrating as
| they travelled out of town, ending up 20km away in a neighbouring
| town. Some of the children, one chronicle suggests, expired
| shortly thereafter, having flat-out danced themselves to death,
| and those who survived were left with chronic tremors. Perhaps,
| some theorise, Hamelin witnessed a similar plague, dancing to the
| figurative tune of the Piper."
|
| Early discovery of MDMA.
| entropicdrifter wrote:
| Could have been ergot fungus in the wheat
| yard2010 wrote:
| Can we talk about the dance pandemic of 1518?
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dancing_plague_of_1518
|
| Is this when they invented the Harlem Shake?
| senderista wrote:
| > Perhaps the Piper, emblematic of a pagan shaman, playing his
| flute, was leading the youth of Hamelin to their midsummer
| festivities when the local Christian faction, hoping to cement
| conversion of the region, waylaid and massacred the group.
|
| This passage doesn't make much sense to me, given that Saxony had
| been converted around 800 CE. What could "local Christian
| faction" even mean when everyone was (nominally) Christian?
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