Fairy Tale Flip Ep: 22 The Pied Piper of Hamelin

Did you know that the Pied Piper was based on historical records? In episode 22 of Fairy Tale Flip, we dive into the mysterious tale of the Piper and his alluring music and what really happened in the medieval German town centuries ago. We look at the different theories proposed over the years including the possibility of it being an organized migration, a children's crusade, a plague or disease or even a Mongol invasion? We also discuss the morality lessons wrapped inside this enigmatic story including honoring agreements. We also explore themes of the story including the different types of authority, short vs. long-term thinking, and marginalized truth-tellers like jokers. This was a fascinating discussion you definitely don't want to miss!

Chapters

00:00 Introduction to the Pied Piper

10:15 The Role of Poetry in Storytelling

13:17 – Historical timeline begins (the 1284 event)

22:00 Theories Behind the Disappearance of the Children

26:44 – Moral lessons: Honoring agreements / paying the piper

28:53 The Importance of Integrity and Accountability

30:04 – Short-term vs. long-term thinking / ethical practices

35:50 The Symbolism of the Pipe

41:06 Historical Context of the Pied Piper

49:22 The Children Left Behind and Their Significance

51:35 – The Piper's appearance as an outsider (Browning version) 

52:25 – Would you share this story with your children?

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Transcript

Vanessa (00:20.653)
 Welcome, welcome to Fairy Tail Flip. My name is Vanessa Y. Rogers. I'm the hostess of Fabric of Folklore, and this is Donna Lee Fields, hostess of Doorways to Learning and Scaffolding Magic, where she has lots of educational tools for anyone in the education field. And we come together once a month and we talk about

different fairy tales and kind of understand, flip them on their head to understand their underbelly, to understand their historical context and their symbology and meaning back then and today and how they still have meaning for us today. And today we're gonna be doing the Pied Piper, which is a really fascinating fairy tale or legend. I'm not even sure what to call it because there's...

As we're going to talk about more in depth, there's a lot of actual historical records that are connected to the story that we know today. So Donna is going to give us a summary of the Pied Piper and then we'll go into it.

Donna (01:32.792)
Yeah, I'm really excited about this, Vanessa. I was just telling you before we pressed record, I don't even know how I came up with this, because I haven't thought of this story in ages, but you asked me which one I might be interested in doing this month. And I said, you know that story with the children being led out of town and never seen again? It's the Pied Piper. So we both liked it. But then when I started to go ahead, yeah.

Vanessa (01:51.595)
Well, and also, the funny thing was, when I went to my storytelling group that I go to once a month, one of the storytellers told this tale. And I was just like, serendipitous.

Donna (02:05.166)
There's got to be some spiritual meaning. There's some meaning. And we're going to be talking about the historical theories related to this story, which I didn't expect. And that's where I really got excited. So I know Vanessa wants me to give you the summary. So I'm being a good girl and I'm to give you the summary first and then we'll get into all the other theories and symbologies and details and stuff. So the Pied Piper is about a town that's really in Germany called Hamelin.

And it was a town of honest people, the story goes, the honest people who as time went by became very rich. And Vanessa, I'd love to tie this into our talk from last month with Lauri the witch and the Sampo and how the enormous wealth that the people earned from the Sampo caused corruption and greed because it happened in this story too. And as the town became rich, it also became infested by rats and they'd always had rats, but suddenly there were rats everywhere.

who ate all their food, their clothes, and even parts of their homes. So the townspeople went to the mayor and begged him to do something about it. Him, it wasn't a female mayor at the time. And he hired a Pied Piper who promised to rid the town of rats. And the mayor was ecstatic and the people were ecstatic. And he promised to pay the Pied Piper 50,000 florins or different denominations of money, even gold, some versions say, enormous amount of money, let's just say.

an enormous amount of exchange of energy. And so the Pied Piper played his pipe, enticed the rats into the river. They were all washed away. And in the morning, there was not a single rat in town. But when the Pied Piper went to ask for his recompense, the mayor would not even give him a fraction of the money. So at dawn, he said, you will regret that decision. That's a scary sentence in itself.

At dawn the next day, he started playing his pipe again and only the children of the town heard him and he magically drew them up into the mountains, into a cave, closed the cave and they were lost forever. So that's the story.

Vanessa (04:15.671)
That's interesting because I have not read a version that includes the town becomes wealthy. I always love that you find different tellings than I find, but that was new information for me.

Donna (04:30.168)
So what I'm curious about is which version of the story did you record? Because I haven't heard it yet.

Vanessa (04:35.309)
Well, I've actually done a recording of the Robert Browning poem, which I really like because it's very illustrative and descriptive and it's really cleverly written. He writes a lot about how the rats are kind of taking over and you see the rats in the baby cradle and nibbling on cheese and jumping off of men's hats.

I don't know where the other tale came from. know, a lot of, so I think one of the recordings, the most popular one was from the Grimm Brothers' tales, but it's very bare bones, and so a lot of people took that and they embellished quite a bit. And so my version is very embellished from the Grimm Brothers' version, as most fairy tales are.

Donna (05:28.622)
I'm so surprised. It's interesting. was going to write you last night and ask you which version you were going to read. And the last one I expected you read was the Browning version. It's absolutely beautiful. It's poetic. It's in a poem version, stanza. And usually like the Grimm's version, but there's also one by Goethe, which you probably also know, plus other ones. Why did you decide on the Browning poem?

Vanessa (05:53.357)
Well, I just liked how descriptive it was and how colorful it made the story. It made it really come alive. It was longer than a lot of the ones I had come across. And I liked how it described the Pied Piper's clothing as well and his look. Yeah, and how he really stands out as a foreigner.

Donna (06:14.008)
Very important, yeah.

Donna (06:19.587)
And so this is really important to our audience, our listeners as well, because we want fairy tales for our children and the children we know around us to be interested in. And I love the storytelling you do by yourself. And I also love the ones you do with your children when they're actually listening to you. Would they have listened to you if you had read them the Brownings poem?

Vanessa (06:34.407)
Hahaha!

Vanessa (06:39.583)
I don't know because you know I was thinking about this recently because I was reading a book what was it called? The Lion Women of Tehran and it takes place in Iran during the period of when prior to when the government is taken over and so during the time period when women were free to dress and they were

becoming career women, and there was a lot of upward mobility for women. then it obviously turns into an authoritarian government that makes them dress a specific way and it really constricts women's freedoms. But in Iran, they really value poetry.

That's one of the things that they really push in their education because it's part of their history and so they memorize poetry and they recite it for each other and I think that's really fascinating because I really feel like poetry has gone out of favor in America or if it is in favor still I'm not in those circles. I've never really, I've never been good at writing poetry and

And sometimes when it's being read to me, it puts me to sleep. It's hard for me to pay attention to, and it might just be because I'm not used to it. It's not something I'm accustomed to paying attention to, and the rhythmic element of it is harder to grasp, my opinion, without pictures to keep me engaged.

Donna (08:09.666)
Uh-huh.

Vanessa (08:32.183)
So I can't even remember what the question was. What was your original question? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, well, and the groom story is just so bare bones. There's not a whole lot of meat to it.

Donna (08:36.334)
about choosing Browning over the Grimms. And I find that

Donna (08:46.604)
No, the Grimm's version has a really important element. They added the rats into the story, which is fascinating in itself and very symbolic. But I just wanted to stay on Browning for one minute because I read the poem first and I thought, this is not what I remember the story to be. This is just a whimsical. And it turns out, yeah, Browning wrote it for, I think, his manager's son. Yeah, it was designed to be light-spirited. And I thought,

Vanessa (09:06.516)
Interesting.

Donna (09:15.438)
So why is that such a disconnect for me? And I went into what Browning is usually known for, that's how, because I did poetry. I majored in poetry in college, so I was into this kind of stuff. And I understand what you mean by falling asleep to poetry. I don't fall asleep to poetry, but it can be overwhelming because every word is so specifically chosen that you need, your brain needs to process, right?

Vanessa (09:35.041)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Yeah. It really requires like two or three readings before you really are able to grasp it because the first reading it's just kind of like words here and there and then the second reading is like you're getting more of the meeting and the third reading is more of the like more of the in-depth elements of the story. So I think it just requires more attention.

Donna (10:03.096)
So were you able to read it a couple of times, the story of the Pied Piper by Browning to get some more of his meanings?

Vanessa (10:08.829)
Yeah, yeah, I did, I read it a couple times.

Donna (10:10.316)
hehe

Donna (10:15.968)
Okay, yeah, because again, what I usually think of Browning is that he has these dramatic monologues and they're usually, you very Victorian, very dark, but this particular poem, we can recommend it to our listeners, I think, because it's very light and has a lot of descriptive language. Right.

Vanessa (10:29.727)
It's not dark. Yeah, it's definitely not dark. mean, the ending is not a happily ever after. And in fact, when I was practicing telling my children this story, I asked my two youngest, I said, what do you want? Do you want me to tell you the ending with a happy ending? Or do you want me to tell you the ending with the mysterious and slightly sad ending? And they said,

happy ending, happy ending, but my older son, he really wanted the mysterious ending. So I ended up telling them both endings because there's a lot of fairy tales that have the variant where the children are returned to the town because of the apologetic mayor and they give the Pied Piper more than he asked for and so the children are returned. And so that's just a new, that's just in like.

Donna (11:01.528)
interesting.

Donna (11:19.618)
What version was that? I don't know any version where the children came back.

Vanessa (11:23.629)
newer fairy tale books that are less less traumatic

Donna (11:26.348)
yeah, that's like.

Like the Hallmark version, it's got it turned out well, right?

Vanessa (11:33.389)
Yes, yes. And you know, I think it's interesting, as you get older, I think your stomach is able to handle more of the mysterious or the sad ending. I think it didn't feel traumatic for my older son, but the younger children, they want that happy ending. And the interesting thing about this story is that it doesn't resolve.

And normally, I'm one of those people who really wants a resolution. I don't really like cliffhangers, which is really what this story is. It's just a cliffhanger that no one really knows what actually occurs. But it's almost like a mystery when you read this story, especially when you're comparing it to the historical elements and the records that are going along with it. It just becomes this...

Not a murder mystery because there's no murder, we hope, except for maybe the rats. The rats are murdered, but we already know who murdered the rats. But the children, we don't actually know what occurs with the children, but it's just a mystery of what happened.

Donna (12:47.608)
That's right. And there are theories. So we're going to go into the theories. But one thing I think it's really nice for our listeners to know is because you did the Browning version, he wrote the poem for his manager's son to illustrate the little details of the story. So the very reason you say you like the story is the very reason he wrote it so that your children can listen to it and illustrate and our listeners' children or their neighbor's children can illustrate elements of the story, which I think is beautiful.

Vanessa (13:00.108)
Mm.

Vanessa (13:10.54)
Mm-hmm.

Vanessa (13:14.783)
Mm-hmm. Yeah. Should we go into the history?

Donna (13:17.496)
So let's see, let's go into history because I felt that was absolutely fascinating. Now there are two things with the Grimm's version, they added the rats. Now.

Vanessa (13:27.821)
Well actually, my timeline has it being ratted earlier. It has it being added in 1559 and the Grimm Brothers published in the 1800s. So the first mention of rats comes about 300 years after the original event, so still significantly later.

Donna (13:32.012)
Rided.

Donna (13:39.648)
Interesting.

Donna (13:48.782)
Okay, so they also added first and I haven't seen this exactly but have you familiar with the number 130 130 children left, you we're

Vanessa (13:56.683)
Yes, well, and that is because that was in a historical record.

Donna (14:02.336)
rights. if you go to Hamelin, there are plaques that say 130 children disappeared. of course, some of that could be for tourists, you know, to draw them in, but there are historical records. So should we go into the historical records?

Vanessa (14:03.469)
Mm-hmm.

Vanessa (14:07.138)
Mm-hmm.

Vanessa (14:18.953)
Yes. So I'll just start with the first date. We believe that the occurrence occurred in 1284. So this is medieval Germany. I'm not sure the stretch of when medieval times began and ended, but it's... Do you know?

Donna (14:35.457)
Yeah, it's like the four the 400s to about the third, the 1600s.

Vanessa (14:40.523)
Okay, so the alleged disappearance of the Hamlet's children occurs on St. John's Paul's feast day. And so they're feasting and the Pied Piper, well, go ahead.

Donna (14:55.094)
No, no, no, go ahead, please.

Vanessa (14:56.621)
and then so we only know that because There was a town record a hundred years later that plainly states it is a hundred years since our children left and that's the first document, but then About okay, so 1284 1300 a stained-glass window

is installed in the town church. It does not exist anymore. It was destroyed at some point, but the stained glass window is documented and it has, it depicts a colorfully dressed piper leading children in white away.

Donna (15:41.082)
Okay, so no, I want you to keep going because I have them not as a timeline, but rather the causes. So why don't you keep going in the timeline and then I'll add my causes.

Vanessa (15:46.445)
Oh, okay. so then, 1370, Monk Heinrich of Hereford has this Latin verse that is really interesting because it's written in the back of a chronicle, the Golden Chain, and it's handwritten in a different handwriting. And so, it seems like it's just notation to himself, but this is what it says.

Here follows a marvelous wonder which transpired in the town of Hamelin in the Diocese of Minden in the year our Lord 1284. A certain young man, thirty years of age, handsome and well dressed, so that all who saw him admired him because of his appearance crossed the bridges and entered into the town by the west gate. He then began to play all through the town a silver pipe of the most magnificent sort. All the children who heard his pipe in the number of hundred and thirty followed him

to the east gate and out of the town to the so-called execution place or calvary. There they proceed to vanish so that no trace of them could be found. The mothers of the children ran from town to town, but they found nothing. It is written, a voice was heard from on high and a mother was bewailing her son. And as one counts the years according to the year of our Lord or according to the first, second or third year of anniversary, so do the people in Hamelin reckon the years.

after their departure and disappearance of their children. This report I found in an old book and the mother of Dean Joan von Lude saw the children depart." So this is written maybe like 90, 80 years after the event was said to have occurred and the town when it's making its records it will state how many years after the children disappeared. So it's continuously referenced.

as a very important time that occurred in the town that fundamentally changed the town.

Donna (17:47.662)
Okay, so while you're talking, just really highlights to me the whole idea of myths and fairy tales that we've talked about so often that there's a need for the adults to make sense of the world going around them. So why do they talk about 130 children? Why do all the children who are the literal future of any town, why are they sort of celebrated in a dark way?

Vanessa (18:01.453)
Mm-hmm.

Donna (18:17.282)
by this story and what you're saying, I mean, one of the possible answers could be natural causes. There was a plague and 130 children died of a plague. And the only way the adults could sort of process this was by saying there was a person who came and seduced them out of the town and we don't really know what happened. The execution ground is what you were saying. What a horrible image, right?

Vanessa (18:40.3)
Yeah, a place named Execution. Well, I see it more of like this memorial structure, just a way for people to remember just kind of how in the calendar that we currently use, before Christ, after Christ, now they've changed it so it's not quite so attached to Christianity, but everything after changes the date and in the town of Hamelin.

everything after the occurrence of these children disappearing is marked differently. It feels differently. Do you know what mean?

Donna (19:15.118)
interesting. I do. Okay, so you have more if it's all right, I just want to add a couple of things that from what you're saying in any year in any part of the timeline, again, this could just be for adults processing it because some of the theories are that it was the plague, some say that 130 children were drowned in the river or they were killed by landslide, or there was a sinkhole that collapsed when they were at a camp or you know, camping. So

Vanessa (19:21.868)
Yeah.

Donna (19:44.207)
Those are just some of the theories. And I find it fascinating that you're mirroring that by the timeline as well. So you have more,

Vanessa (19:46.551)
Mm-hmm.

Vanessa (19:52.205)
Just one more date. It's just another manuscript in the 1400s that is they reiterate all the children who heard his pipe and the number of 130 followed him to the East Gate and out of the town and it's this so it's it's just basically this the same but it's just another recorded manuscript that talks about it.

Donna (20:18.86)
Okay, because there's...

Vanessa (20:18.997)
And so after that is the Grimm Tales and I think that there's a lot more in the timeline but those are the main ones to follow. Because Robert Browning and both Grimm live in the 1800s and print in that time period.

Donna (20:35.374)
All right, that's very interesting. And then we have some modern versions, but there aren't a lot of modern versions except the one where the children go back, which is really kind of, it kind of messes with the whole moral of the story.

Vanessa (20:43.061)
Yeah. Well, but see also, of the addition of the rat, that's when it really becomes a moral fable. Whereas before, the story is more of a layered cultural memory. So they add the rat element to kind of round out the story to give a reason for why

someone would lead children out to make sense of the story because as it stands, makes very little sense unless you lob on some different reasoning. And so that element of the rats is added to kind of give it that narrative structure.

Donna (21:31.778)
Yeah, I like that. does make sense. And again, it just shows that rats probably didn't have anything to do with the original disappearance if there really was a disappearance of 130 children, but there probably were. I mean, there were even theories that this had to do with Genghis Khan and his invasion of Central Europe and that I know.

Vanessa (21:49.077)
my goodness. Okay, I wanna hear theories. Let's go into the theories and then we can go into themes, because I wanna hear all the theories that you found. All right, start with thegenghis.com.

Donna (22:00.198)
Well, Genghis Khan, I haven't gone into really deeply, but I find it really fascinating. said because of Genghis Khan, two of his grandsons were controlling the Central Europe. The Pied Piper, the appearance, the legend of the Piper came in as early as 13th century to sort of explain how, you know, the Genghis Khan, if you know anything about the history, the Mongols were pretty ferocious and pretty, they're pretty unforgiving people. As far as I know, I don't remember being there if I was there in a past life.

And so they had to make sense of it and created the legend. you really want to get into all the theories. right. Hold on. Hold on. I'm to have to.

Vanessa (22:36.577)
Yeah, well I'll give you some of my theories while you're looking for yours. Okay, so one of the ones that the historians really feel like makes the most sense today is the organized migration. There were a lot of economic difficulties during this time period and there was a lot of townships that were really struggling. And so what would occur is that these

Donna (22:41.934)
Please, go ahead.

Vanessa (23:05.907)
locators or recruitment agents would come in to these struggling towns and they would promise land and opportunity for anyone who would follow them. And they were often dressed in bright clothes and used music to gain spectacle and attraction and people would follow them. So that's the one that most historians think is the most likely that it would have occurred. There is a linguist

I can't say his name, Dürgen Udolf. He traced family names from Hamelin showing up in surprising concentrations in an area near Berlin, which fits this idea that a group of young people left Hamelin and resettled in that area to find a promise of a future, whereas they didn't feel like they had a future in their current state.

Donna (23:37.486)
Sound good.

Donna (24:00.655)
Well, just to back that up a little, in one of the theories, it wasn't that they didn't have a future there, but there was overpopulation. And so they needed to get out of their own towns. So either people enticed them to come into the city, or they just left because they had no... It's just like in some of the old towns where you can't keep expanding. You have to keep going outside and outsider. Go back to the cities and build the buildings taller. So, okay.

Vanessa (24:08.117)
Mm. Mm, mm-hmm.

Vanessa (24:24.95)
Yeah.

Donna (24:28.302)
All right, what else do you have? Historical of the inscription, keep going.

Vanessa (24:29.969)
Okay, I have some children's crusades so the it doesn't really work perfectly because they were two main children's crusades that we know of They were religious movements that were 1212 so this is Seven the Pied Piper occurs about 72 years after these children's Crusades there was one in France that was led by a shepherd boy, and then there was one in German

led by Nicholas of Cologne and thousands, possibly tens of thousands of mostly poor young people and not all children reportedly set out believing God would part the sea for them. They could peacefully reclaim Jerusalem and they hoped that divine intervention will help them succeed where the armies failed of the other crusades. So it was more of this devotional

mass devotional movement rather than an organized crusade for the children's crusades. They believe that most of them never reached the Holy Land. A lot of them dispersed or starved or were sold into slavery. So that was what occurred in 1212. So it's less likely that that would have actually occurred so much later in the day because that religious movement was not quite as fervent during that time period. So that one is

a little bit more out there than, like you said, an accident or a natural disaster that's very plausible, those occurred. And then a plague or disease. Now, it was not likely the Black Plague because this occurs decades later in 1347 to 1351. So if it is the bubonic plague that is hitting them, it's a more local epidemic rather than the pandemic that they

experienced all across Europe or it could have been a smaller disease outbreak that occurred or contamination of grain, dysentery or typhoid from contaminated water. So anything along those lines. Those were the theories that I came across. There were more. There were a lot more. We could have spent the entire podcast episode really covering all of the theories.

Donna (26:44.078)
Okay, so if we can, we can circle back to the series, which should we can we talk a little bit about the lessons from the Pied Piper, the moral lessons?

Vanessa (26:56.095)
Yeah, so I didn't really cover lessons so much as just themes, so I would love to hear, I mean there's themes, there's lessons within the themes I think, but let's hear what you think the lessons are.

Donna (27:09.806)
Okay, so exciting, so exciting. So this is why, you why did I think of this? And why did then someone, you went to a storytelling and someone told this story? Well, these are really timeless lessons. And one of these is fulfilling commitments, honoring agreements, it's really clear. So one of them is the breach of an agreement, adults saying, no, I will not honor an agreement I had for you, with you. I mean, if there's...

Vanessa (27:26.391)
Mm-hmm.

Donna (27:37.025)
Integrity to me is one of the most important things we need to have in ourselves and see in the people around us. And it's such a breach of integrity that it really, my jaw just drops. And the townspeople supported him. They didn't realize that they were going to lose something so valuable. But it doesn't matter if they lost anything. What they lost was integrity. They lost their honesty. They lost their commitment. So that's one of the morals that we have from the story. Go ahead.

Vanessa (28:03.157)
Yeah. And I will add to that that we have this concept from the Pied Piper, pay the piper. That is part of our cultural language. Pay the piper. We all understand what that means. If you don't pay the piper now, you're going to pay them later. Right? In one way or another.

Donna (28:14.606)
Pay the piper.

Donna (28:25.976)
That's right. That's right. So another theory, one of the symbols behind the story is effective communication and influence. And this is on the side of the Piper. He had the power to captivate. He had the power to entice. He had the power to seduce. And he completed his agreement. He said, I will get rid of the rats in your town. And he did it. But what he also did is he said very clearly,

you are going to be sorry for not keeping your side of the bargain. And he was able to complete that side of his communication as well. So he had a vision. His vision was to get rid of the rats. did it. And he also his vision was also, I need to be honored for my work. And it's really important for all of us, no matter how small our promises is to honor other people and to honor ourselves for their work or our work. Does that resonate with you?

Vanessa (29:22.123)
Yeah. Yeah. In fact, I framed it as a legal authority versus a charismatic authority. And the Piper is really this charismatic magnetism appeal, emotional appeal to the people, whereas the legal authority, the mayor represents this power, this legal authority that assumes it cannot be held accountable. And he stands for an institutional governance that is ultimately unethical.

Donna (29:46.039)
Interesting, yeah.

Vanessa (29:52.491)
which is something that we see both of these still in modern times today. So it's interesting to see that we as humans seem to have the same issues that we continuously...

Donna (29:57.4)
That's right.

Donna (30:04.248)
Right? Right? What is this about? When is our learning curve go up?

Vanessa (30:09.291)
I know, shouldn't we be learning lessons by now?

Donna (30:13.295)
So then this ties right into that, the consequence of short-term versus long-term thinking. it, you know, again, integrity is the most important underlying theme here. But the mayor just was looking for short-term gain. He wanted the rats gone and he wanted his bank account, you know, so to speak, to stay the same. But the long-term consequence is losing the future of the whole town, literally by losing the 130 or however many children there were. And so this is about ethical business practices.

Vanessa (30:43.361)
Yes.

Donna (30:43.582)
And I think there are decisions that we always make. My sister, for instance, is just starting her own business and she is incredible. She surprises me at every turn because at some point I will always say, well, I'll give so much, but what I really, you know, I'd really like to make sure that people pay for this, this and this. And she says, you know, I want to donate. I want to donate here, here and here. And I want people to understand that when they invest in my business, they're actually donating for charities. And so she's thinking the really long-term practices.

Vanessa (31:11.713)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I agree. know, when we reach trust, when the trust is destabilized, then it's really hard to gain that back. I think it's, you know, once the mayor does this in the story, anyone else who hears about this story will not perform services for the town.

Donna (31:12.94)
How do you feel about that?

Vanessa (31:41.076)
And one of the themes that I was covering is the outsider as necessary and dangerous. So the piper represents this liminal stranger, someone who stands outside of the community, yet holds this transformative power, and he comes in and performs something that no one else in the town is capable of doing. So he's highly valued in this

Donna (31:41.486)
That's right.

Vanessa (32:09.751)
crisis moment, but before and after this crisis he is quickly devalued. So this can be represented by an expert, an outside intellectual, an artist. A lot of times these people are not valued unless there is an absolute crisis when they are needed in the moment and then later on they're kind of swept aside. And so these this idea of

people who are on the fringe or who are marginal, who are only needed at certain times, is really kind of what the piper represents in this moment.

Donna (32:49.464)
Yeah, I love that, Vanessa. I read that too about the stranger and I was reading it and with a sort of question on my face and then I saw the flip side of it. I think you're gonna really like this because you like the Browning version because of the details and the details even of the color of the clothes of the Pied Piper and you've mentioned that a couple of times. And what some, one of the theories is is the Pied Piper actually represents the jester, the court jester. I know, isn't that interesting?

Vanessa (32:58.359)
Okay.

Vanessa (33:12.275)
I hadn't seen that. Yeah.

Donna (33:15.129)
So why is that important? Because the court jester is usually the only one in the court who will tell the king the truth and the only one to show the hidden hypocrisies in what's going on around the king or the queen. Isn't that great? So the fool will engage with the question of behavior and you know, why were children, whatever the theory is about why the children left, it's the jester who sort of ignites and highlights the hypocrisy going on in the town.

Vanessa (33:21.534)
Mm-hmm.

Vanessa (33:25.789)
fascinating. Yeah. Yes, yeah.

Vanessa (33:44.919)
Mm-hmm.

Donna (33:45.442)
So the jester is also living on the border and as you say, it's the stranger that you could be afraid of, but the jester is always is so intelligent that he will usually find a way to endear himself to you while telling you what an idiot you are.

Vanessa (33:59.829)
Yeah. Well, and even in today's world, comedians are, I've heard Jon Stewart liken them to the canary in the coal mine. They're able to speak truth to power through comedy in a way that is palatable and easier to digest, I think. And so I think that likeness of the piper being like a jester is really on point.

Donna (34:20.622)
Exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Donna (34:29.411)
Yeah, I really like that. I think that that's really important. And the Pied Piper was dealing most directly with the mayor who could be the royal in this sense. it is a very easy analogy to make. And there's also another element about the Pied Piper that we really need to address. It's a pipe. It's a pipe.

Vanessa (34:42.227)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Vanessa (34:50.189)
yes, let's hear it.

Donna (34:53.39)
Okay, so I wish I delved even more deeply into it, but I want our listeners to think about this and come up with their own theories about it. But the mic is an extension of this jester, this stranger, and it's a wood instrument. Let's assume it's a wood instrument because at that time it probably was. The pipe enables, I love this, the pipe literally enables you manipulate the air from outside into the piper's lungs and out again.

So it goes in, meaning that you're processing spirituality inside and then coming out differently. And so the Pied Piper is, and you know I love saying this, giving the townspeople an opportunity to reflect on themselves and come out with different conclusions, which this town did not do, but at least he gave them the opportunity to do it. So we could think about it, even as a shamanic healer.

Vanessa (35:22.039)
Mm-hmm.

Vanessa (35:29.598)
Mm. Mm-hmm.

Donna (35:50.456)
that was not successful in this town. And I find that fascinating.

Vanessa (35:52.673)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, I like that and I wish I had done more research on the music element, but I didn't. But that does lead me to talk about the psychological element of the symbology. So one of the things that we see is this, you know, all of the townspeople just going along with the mayor and not fighting back against it, against his decision to renege on his agreement. And this

Donna (36:03.535)
Great.

Vanessa (36:23.025)
social proof where people bypass critical thinking to just follow blindly is really something that we see historically and evolutionarily because as early humans were becoming humans those who followed the successful group members

where to hunt, where to eat, when to flee, were the ones who tended to survive and reproduce more. Whereas those lone individuals who were more likely to take risks, they fared worse because those risks sometimes did not work in their favor. And so because of this, we kind of have this innate, an innate biological impulse to follow the crowd. And sometimes,

And a lot of times it's unconscious. We are just allowing the crowd to make decisions for us rather than use our critical thinking skills because it's a shortcut in our brain. And so it requires a whole lot more attention to rewire and go against the grain.

Donna (37:38.318)
That's a really important topic, Vanessa. And it's something I thought about a lot more when I was younger. And I don't like being in crowds a lot for that, very much for that reason, because there's a crowd mentality and it's very easy to be swept into it. And you have to be very introspective to fight, excuse me, to fight against it. So think about it when you're in a crowd, excuse me.

Vanessa (37:47.339)
Hmm.

Vanessa (37:55.309)
Mmm.

Donna (38:04.342)
Even if it's a concert, even at a children's concert, at your children's assembly, and all of sudden there's a wave and everyone's saying, know, we're gonna do a wave. And it's very innocent probably, but think about it. Do you wanna be involved? you doing it only because the person next on both sides of you are doing it? That is a crowd mentality. Now, most of the time that's not going to be nefarious. It's not going to create any negative after effects, but it's definitely crowd mentality. And what I'd love...

Vanessa (38:21.602)
Mm-hmm.

Donna (38:32.911)
our listeners to think about is how often are they in a party or how often are they at a dinner party or in a protest and they're doing something that they wouldn't have done if everyone else in the street or everyone else in the auditorium weren't doing. And I think it's really important to think about that. mean, World War II, people just went along with it because their neighbors were doing it and most wars.

Vanessa (38:48.353)
Yeah.

Donna (38:58.956)
A lot of people are just going along with it because they feel safer doing it rather than going against the majority. Okay, what else do you have?

Vanessa (39:04.257)
Right. Exactly.

Okay, so there is an interesting symbol of the piper as a personification of death. I thought this was interesting. So some suggest that the children drowned in the river during the outing. Others point to the mountain that is nearby with having a landslide or a geological disaster that killed many of the young people.

But there's also this idea, it's called danse macabre. I think you probably don't roll the R for the French. Dance of death and it's this this image, this artistic allegory showing a skeleton leading people in this dance procession. People from poor people to popes and peasants to kings to the grave. And so this imagery

Donna (39:44.92)
Thank

Vanessa (40:07.917)
the danse macabre, the dance of death, emerges after the black plague because mortality becomes extremely dominant in a cultural reality and so it's painted much later after the Pied Piper so it's likely not tied to it but some people think of the Pied Piper in the same fashion as someone who's leading children to their death.

Donna (40:37.55)
Well, that's really interesting because one of the really fascinating articles I found on the Pied Piper was really tangential, which was about the evacuation of the children from London in 1939, just before the war broke out. And they call it the Pied Piper evacuation, there were hundreds of thousands of children that were evacuated from London, because again, the future of the British, they considered, and probably accurately, were the children. And so they wanted the children out of London where they felt most of the bombing.

Vanessa (40:49.648)
huh.

Donna (41:06.765)
was going to be and in fact was. And what they found was that it was so traumatic for the children. They were separated within one day. Within one day, the parents had to evacuate to pack their children up and give them to strangers and be shipped out to the countryside. And what they found with the children were much more traumatized by the evacuation than the bombing itself. And it started a whole psychological sort of story of

Vanessa (41:18.901)
Ugh. Yeah.

Vanessa (41:29.463)
Mmm. Mmm.

Donna (41:36.898)
how humans react to trauma. And I found that really interesting as well.

Vanessa (41:39.201)
Yeah.

But on the same token, their lives were more at risk in London. I mean, they did suffer psychological trauma, but what is worse, I guess?

Donna (41:49.016)
they were.

Donna (41:53.666)
they were. Right. But it was interesting that that was the beginning of child psychology, pretty much in that sense. Yeah. Yeah, so I'm sure it influences your children.

Vanessa (41:59.561)
Yeah, yeah, that is interesting. I wanted to talk a little bit about the rats. you? So I think the idea of the Black Plague coming up comes up a lot because of the story of the rats, but as we were saying earlier, the Black Plague occurs much later.

Donna (42:10.542)
Let's talk about the rats!

Vanessa (42:25.837)
decades later in 1347, whereas this happened in 1284. So it's unlikely that it was actually the bubonic plague unless it was a very small outbreak. And they're a later edition. And they seem, like I was saying before, they're really just an embellishment to make the story more well-rounded.

But I really kind of clung on to the concept of these rat catchers and how when I was in my MBA program, there's this concept that has lots of nicknames. One of their nicknames is the Cobra Effect or the Perverse Incentive or the Law of Unintended Consequences. Have you heard about this? Do you know about this?

Donna (43:21.526)
No, it doesn't sound familiar.

Vanessa (43:23.167)
Okay, so basically this happened a lot where there were rats or there were cobras. they were feral pigs in towns and the leaders of the towns wouldn't know what to do. So most of the time the officials, so in British Columbia, the reason it's called the Cobra effect is because in British Columbia, Cobra, bounties were created for, people to gain

cash if they turned in, I think it's the each dead snake. So each dead snake, they would get money back. But what started occurring were people would breed cobras and then kill them for the reward. And this occurs over and over and over again. This happens in lots of different places. the economists start to say, like, learn if you pay for a dead animal,

Donna (44:13.62)
my goodness.

Vanessa (44:20.907)
This not without changing the underlying conditions you create a market for a black market and it in once they stop the bounty then all these people would release these cobras or these rats or there's these feral pigs and it would double the problem that they had before so this occurred in in British India this happened in French Hanoi with rats this happened in Mexico City in the Oino

Donna (44:35.236)
my goodness.

Vanessa (44:49.984)
Circula, I don't know if they I doubt they still have this program. It's basically they were trying to decrease the pollution in Mexico City So they would say you can only drive if you have the last letter if you're if your license plate ends in an even number on these days and if your license plate ends on in a Non number on these days, then you can drive on those days. But what ends up happening is all these people get a

cheap cars that cause more pollution. they get one car to drive on the Tuesdays and Thursdays and they have one car to drive on Monday, Wednesday, Friday and it just still causes lots of pollution. people optimizing this. the what ends up occurring is economists say that it's important to this is again your long term wins long term harm, right?

Donna (45:27.342)
my goodness.

Vanessa (45:48.301)
Early numbers look good, but it, and so then they declare victory, but then the underlying system gets more fragile and more polluted. And so that's,

Donna (45:59.896)
Well, it's a real modern day twist on that. What you were saying about raising cobras and then killing them and showing them as that was, they've taken care of the problem. It's the same thing today as companies that have antivirus programs creating the virus that they are going to kill in your computer. People pretty much assume that the same company who has the antivirus has created the virus. Yeah, so it's absurd. It's just absurd.

Vanessa (46:16.957)
Mm-hmm. yeah.

Vanessa (46:23.361)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Donna (46:29.763)
And so we're staying on the rats just for a minute more. I find it really interesting that the Grims. So what for me, you're explaining, I had read that the Grims decided on adding the rats, but the rats were added to the story before the Grims. In any case, we know the Grims, they changed things, whatever they felt like it. could have added, they changed it to a natural disaster. They could have changed it to anything else, but they kept the either added or kept the rat infestation to the story.

Vanessa (46:57.994)
Mm-hmm.

Donna (46:58.774)
And that is because rat invitation has to do with human intervention. It has to do with humans having food and storage, not safely stored, not having, to me this is really fascinating because in the story it talks about the fact that there are no cats. Now why are there no cats in a town? That's to me a signal that the animal kingdom itself has given up on these people. They recognize them as.

Vanessa (47:03.437)
Mm.

Donna (47:24.43)
unintegrated, not integrated people without integrity, and they're not going to help them in any way because cats are the, you know, the easiest natural way to get rid of the, the, the bats. So if we use that as the rats are a symbol of the fact that the town has really taken the curve down into the fireballs of hell. Oh my God, how dramatic that is.

Vanessa (47:37.165)
you

Vanessa (47:49.517)
You

Donna (47:50.346)
It's not even the rats that caused any bubonic plague. So we don't even have to say that they caused the bubonic plague. was during that it was any bubonic plague that's caused by the rats, but not by the rats. The fleas on the rats caused the plague.

Vanessa (48:01.397)
Right, the fleas and the rats. They were the transporter. The transportation for the fleas.

Donna (48:06.497)
There you go. So what if we're going to be very literal, the fleas will bite a person and compromise the immune system, their lymph system, which is the immune system. And basically from the inside out, it's turning your healthy system into a extremely sort of poisonous venomous system, which is exactly what's happening to the people as they became wealthier. When you have wealth, you either become philanthropic, know, generous,

or you become really penorious, which is greedy and tight-fisted. a lot of times it's a little balance of between, but with this town, they became very greedy. And it was like the fleas infesting the town. They were turning themselves from the inside out with dirt. It's just fleas inside and out. So that's why think the rats are really fascinating in the story.

Vanessa (49:04.106)
Mm-hmm. Yes, the fleas.

Donna (49:06.222)
fleas on the rats. Isn't there a song about that? The fleas on the rats go? Well, something. There's a song about that. Yeah. Yeah.

Vanessa (49:10.765)
Jump jump jump All right, is there anything else? we didn't mention that the three children left behind

Donna (49:22.719)
Interesting. So in some versions, there is either one boy who doesn't get blind. In my version, there was one boy who was, I think, blind or either blind, deaf or disabled in some way.

Vanessa (49:34.751)
Right, there's some versions where there's three children and it's all those things. One is blind, one is deaf, and one is lame. The blind one can't follow because they can't see, the deaf one can't follow because they don't hear the music, so they're not enchanted. And then the lame child or what we would say is disabled child wasn't physically able to follow. And so they're the lone witnesses, the lone survivors.

Donna (49:43.488)
Lame. There you go.

Vanessa (50:03.153)
of this event and so they're the only living memory of the event because they're the three left behind.

Donna (50:13.56)
And actually, just by explaining them, sorry, Vanessa, just by explaining what their disabilities are means that they really don't understand the whole impact of why they were left behind and why the other children were drawn away. And so there's no lesson learned here, which is also really interesting.

Vanessa (50:27.787)
Hmm. this was also interesting because this kind of describes them a little bit how you were describing the piper as the marginal truth-teller. The one left behind is the only one who's able to tell the story. The people on the edges are often see and remember what central power denies.

Donna (50:51.56)
Can you go into that, say that one more time please?

Vanessa (50:53.865)
Okay, says, symbolically, people on the edges often see and remember what central powers deny. The story suggests that distance from power can produce clarity.

Donna (51:08.494)
Very interesting. So do we think that the, I would say the one exception is the jester who always has different, who has a very healthy perspective on everything.

Vanessa (51:18.763)
Right, but he's still marginal. I would not say that he's still in the norm. He's like the clown.

Donna (51:21.58)
Yes, that's true. That's That's true because, right, because the rest, we call them sycophants, that they will do anything the majority will do because they need the favor of the king or the queen or the princes or whatever, the nobility. Yeah. Yeah.

Vanessa (51:35.915)
Yeah. Also in the Robert Browning version, the Piper, so this is not the children, I'm going back, I'm switching around. The Piper is described with swarthy skin, which is another way of saying dark skin. So it indicates that he's outside quite a bit, possibly a foreigner, although he is described with blonde hair and blue eyes, but definitely different than the people in the town who

Donna (51:44.769)
Yes.

Vanessa (52:05.421)
probably are more pale skinned if... because, you know, Germany. I have a lot of German heritage and my skin is very red. I'm less white and more red.

Donna (52:20.11)
Okay, so I guess the question is, you didn't ask me, for the first time you didn't ask me why did I want to choose this story? And so I'm going to ask you in a different way. Now that we've gone into the story and talked about its really intricacies and the historical context and the morals that we can learn from it, is it a story that you'd want your children to really sit down and think about, to listen to and think about?

Vanessa (52:43.157)
Yeah, I think there's a lot to digest and there's a lot that is, that they can perceive on the outside. I've been doing a performance for children called, like preschool and kindergarten, and I've been doing stone soup and the moral of that story is really evident if you're a little bit older, but pre-K and kinder, they're still having a hard time grasping what's happening. Kind of how I was describing.

Poetry how you have to read it multiple times in order to really grasp on to the the fundamental meanings I think with that young of age sometimes it's it's hard to look past like just the surface level but if you you know if they hear it multiple times Then they're more easily able to grasp on to the moral of the story It would be interesting for me to ask my children if they if they

thought that there was a moral of the story. I'm sure my ten, my, he's about to turn ten, I will just call him ten, my ten year old would be able to grasp it, but the younger ones, I'm not sure they would have, they would be able to describe to me what, what the lesson was.

Donna (53:54.51)
But I think that's the key. They may not be able to describe it, but I think they get it. I mean, first of all, your kids are pretty smart. But usually that's why we like fairy tales is because we get the moral of the story without all the time being able to verbalize it.

Vanessa (53:57.953)
Yeah.

Vanessa (54:08.819)
Right, you don't have to actually be able to put it into words to be able to understand it. Yeah.

Donna (54:13.196)
Right, right. Well, I think we did, Vanessa. I think we really dissected this story, and I think it's really much more fascinating than I even expected it to be.

Vanessa (54:16.885)
Yeah.

Vanessa (54:23.433)
Absolutely, and I wonder I want to remind our listeners because sometimes we forget make sure you hit that subscribe button if you're watching on YouTube or if you're listening on the podcasting platform follow like subscribe Comment if you can comment we would love to hear your thoughts to have you do you know the story of Pied Piper? Did you know it before did you know about all the historical relevance elements? I Don and I were both really intrigued. I think by the the historical

ties because it's so fascinating that this mystery occurred that no one really knows what happened.

Donna (55:00.758)
Right, we hope we've sort of sparked your interest in it as well. So hope it's a win-win situation. Win-win-win.

Vanessa (55:04.703)
Yes, absolutely. And so thanks so much for listening. Make sure you're commenting and doing all the things to help our podcast to continue. until next time, keep the fairy tales alive.

Donna (55:21.614)
Bye everyone. Thank you.