The Dark Story Of Pied Piper Of Hamelin & The Missing Children | Myths & Monsters | Absolute History

[Music] for most of our existence on earth humans were hunter-gatherers we've foraged for survival living on what we could scavenge always on the move [Music] all this changed around ten thousand years ago when mankind formed its first permanent settlements when we started growing crops and domesticating animals the agricultural revolution had begun the settlements grew towns formed then cities nations and empires [Music] but it took more than living side by side to form a community shared traditions and beliefs were needed and shared stories is through stories that the boundaries of a community were said that their rules were tested that they coped with change all societies going through periods of rapid change desperately need myths to hang on to sometimes myths seem to exist to question social norms and to ask us to question them that's a much better way of enforcing social norms than the kind of story which just says this is the social norm this is what you're going to do i think if one sees it as a kind of vehicle in narrative form for things which are important in society that's probably the best way of thinking of it a lot of myths involve characters heroes heroines debating what they should do and in that way a norm gets to find myths of course can only become myths if we share them we're a community of readers of the bible we share the faith in those stories so miss create community they bond us together societies exist in a state of tension the needs and wants of all can never be satisfied at the same time a balance must be found it's in the stories we tell each other that we debate what that balance is [Music] the laws of the kingdom were clear and prince roswell had broken them he had disobeyed his father the king the three noblemen had been in the dungeon for years they were blamed by the king for a crime they did not commit roswell was not his father however the injustice done to the three men shamed him he had to do something roswell led the nobles out of the dungeon past the guards and through the secret silent passages of the castle to freedom but roswell's father soon discovered who was responsible for the prisoner's escape roswell would pay a price for his kindness the king banished his son sending him forever into exile the law after all was the law it is a comforting thought that we have control over our destiny the random cruelty of the world can seem at times too much to bear stories offer a haven good is rewarded evil punished and everyone gets there just desserts in a story even catastrophe has a reason [Music] the rivers of central germany carve through field and hill on their journey to the distant sea [Music] for centuries these waterways have borne goods and people up and down the country riverside towns grew rich on the back of this trade [Music] one of their settlements was the town of hamlin and then it was an important center for the shipping of grain it was on the visa river it got lots of grain coming in it milled it and it shipped it out so it was one of the relatively new towns which are becoming very very important much like all german towns of that age it would have had a social structure it would have had a class of burger what we would call bourgeoisie that is a qualified citizens of the town it would have been dominated by guilds rather than aristocrats so one would begin to see the sort of structure that would eventually evolve into the modern city hamlin is most famous however for the story of the pied piper it's one of the best known tales of the brothers grimm in their telling hamlin was wealthy and thriving its citizens lived happily in their fine gray stone houses until an infestation of rats inflicted misery on the town this black swarm of vermin attacked barns and storehouses they gnawed on wood and chewed through cloth try as they might the people could not rid themselves of the plague salvation seemed to come in the figure of a mysterious piper he lured the rats into the river with a magical song but when the town refused to pay him what was promised the piper swore revenge returning to the town he played his song once more but this time it was the town's children he entranced he marched them out of hamelin and into a mountain cave neither piper nor children were ever seen again there's more to it however than mere legend in 1384 the hamlin chronicle recorded that a century had passed since the children had left the town something did happen in hamlin but what because there's a specific date there's a suggestion that well maybe this started as a real story and then you get the kind of speculation of what is going on i think we can say deductively will in all probability it will have had its origin in some kind of social and cultural crisis that's what the stories are there for they're there to resolve that crisis what kind of crisis might that have been well we we don't know we can speculate [Music] some suggest that a disease or famine must have struck hamlin the piper was symbolic of the death which carried the town's children away others have linked the story to the dancing plagues of medieval europe this bizarre trend saw thousands of people dance together in a state of frenzy until collapsing from exhaustion a more convincing theory is that the legend of the pied piper is a story of migration the town's children were in fact citizens who left hamlin on mass in the late 13th century this was a time when recruiters traveled across central europe seeking settlers for land further east they offered rewards for those willing to move thousands took up the offer in houston europe you had these huge empty tracks of land and landowners would actually hire agents to go find people to come and farm the land so this may actually be a story of immigration there are some names which contain the etymology of hamlin and it is possible that perhaps 100 or 150 of the youth of harman wandered away and that the tale therefore has its origins in that great division of the population the grimms recorded their version of the story in the 1800s but the tale had been told and retold in europe since the middle ages and it evolved along the way once you get people living in cities and they're crowded you begin to see a change in the kind of stories they tell themselves or they tell each other there are no rats in the original story the idea of the bargain comes in even slightly later then by the time the 19th century comes along you begin to get a much more sentimental thing the little lame boy or the little blind boy depending on the version who can't keep up with his fellows and therefore you know the mountain closes before he can get this it's a wonderful example of how myths will change as society changes [Music] the story of the pied piper is one of social norms broken hamlin loses its children not to the random cruelty of sickness or war but because of his own people's actions they broke their agreement with the piper their greed and dishonesty are responsible for the disappearance of the children in times scarred by war starvation and disease the sense of control the story implies must have been comforting avoid hamlin's mistake obey the rules of society and catastrophe can be prevented prince roswell did not go into his exile alone he was accompanied by steward who had served the family loyally for many years after a long ride through punishing terrain roswell suggested they rest a while at a cooling stream [Music] a sharp blow sent roswell crashing unconscious to the ground the steward sneered over him long had this man nursed resentment for his masters long had he cloaked his ambitions roswell's parents had given him gold enough to live in princely fashion the wicked steward took it all donning roswell's fine garments the steward rode away with the prince's fortune and a prince's name poor roswell was left for dead not all law breakers are as unpleasant as roswell's treacherous steward the good thief is an archetype found in cultures around the world this rogue may break the laws of the land but only to follow a higher code in rebelling against the existing social order with all its flaws and inequalities the good thief holds out the promise of something better amid the trees and woodland streams of the english forest there once lurked a fugitive from the law he was known by kings in their castles he was beloved by peasants in the fields he was a man of many identities he was a trickster a soldier a rebel a lord his name was robin hood since emerging in the 14th century robin has become one of the world's most famous and enduring legends today his story seems familiar to us all robin lives in the woods with his merry men he challenges the wrongful authority of the sheriff of nottingham and he robs from the rich to give to the poor yet this familiarity disguises the evolution of this legend for as society has changed down the centuries so has robin hood for what defines wrongful authority what principles justify rebellion against it our answers are always shifting in the earliest battles and plays about him robin is no night fallen on hard times nor a nobleman denied his birthright instead he is a man of the people a yeoman a little more than a peasant the robin hood story is very much a story of ordinary people against authority and robin hood is the nexus that allows authority to be challenged he's saying something about the ordinary person the ordinary yemen bowman having capabilities that aren't well understood by toffs robin hood is smarter and better at shooting and better at defending himself than the people who think they're very smart because they've got account books and because they're good with abacuses and that in a way is the point of him that's what he's for stories about robin were spread by word of mouth among ordinary people and it was a time when they could do with the hero the black death and other plagues had ravaged 14th century england civil war followed millions were killed or displaced the stories of the defiant and clever robin hood offered rare victories for the common man but he would not be theirs alone for long in 1510 king henry viii himself played the outlaw at a court pageant even the high and mighty could not resist robin's appeal in the 16th century england became a protestant nation as the country changed so did the stories of robin hood soon it was not only the sheriff of nottingham he fought but corrupt catholic priests as well under elizabeth the first however authorities grew concerned this legendary man of the people was becoming too popular robin hood they decided was a threat to their power efforts were made to suppress the stories if robin hood was to survive he would have to change yet again his savior was elizabethan playwright anthony monday he transformed the outlaw from a yeoman into the earl of huntingdon a fallen member of the aristocracy this changed the target of robin hood's rebellion in monday's telling the outlaws conflict was only with corrupt authority now a member of the aristocracy himself and a loyal servant of the true king robin became a representative of legitimate authority and every time he defied the rulers of his fictional world he reinforced the social structures of the elizabethan [Music] the next great shift came in the 19th century the 19th century gets really keen on the medieval past it's called medievalism and this takes lots of different forms like william morris goes around trying to replicate medieval interiors and the look of medieval books for example you've got tennyson writing poems about king arthur idols of the king and the mordata and robin hood's sort of part of that people like walter scott we write the legend to bring it into line with the 19th century's idea of what the middle ages were robin becomes a literary figure a popular figure and once that happens you get this romantic robin hood who is very much loved by all he's loved by women he's very very charming he's loved by good men he's a true monarchist which is very important in the expanding english empire it was a time of urbanization industry and empire building its robin hood stories mingled nostalgia for a simpler medieval age with a muscular victorian nationalism [Music] the 19th century saw the popularity of the robin hood legend spread far beyond england and in the 20th century he would reach hollywood since his early appearances in silent film there have been dozens of screen adventures for robin hood these depictions vary decade by decade but they always question pressing issues of the day in the 1920s it was american isolationism in the 30s the depression and roosevelt's new deal in the 1950s britain's post-war reconstruction was the unspoken backdrop in the 1970s its tired decline the 90s saw a new more international robin hood with allies of different races and creeds [Music] and we continue year after year to revisit the story and recraft it for our own age for the appeal of robin hood seems undimmed by time there's something immensely attractive about being an outlaw in connection with trees i think it's just the idea of living in a world where you don't have to work but where you have all kinds of important skills and you're living in this kind of almost identic nature we like bad boys and i think this is what the robin hood legend sort of attracts us to in that he's a bad boy with a heart of gold so there's something very very attractive about him his identity his enemies and the questions he asks of us continue to evolve with every new screen adventure robin hood is both a figure of comforting permanent tradition and a relentlessly contemporary rule breaker this dual identity is at the heart of his endurance it is through constant evolution that robin hood maintains his foothold in our imagination [Music] after weeks of wandering the exhausted roswell came to a city behind walls high and true stood great houses of stone and beyond them in the heart of the city the towers of a mighty fortress dazzled in the sun roswell marveled at its wide streets and busy markets but the greatest wonder was still to come it was in the palace yard he saw her he was transfixed she was the most beautiful creature he had ever seen roswell summoned up his courage to speak with her but before they had exchanged more than a few words a harsh cry came from the palace princess lillian come at once your father wishes to speak with you reluctantly the princess obeyed roswell stared longingly after her she not meant for the likes of us lives the passerby mocked she's to marry some fine prince i hear sure enough just days later the prince promised to lilian arrived at the castle roswell joined the crowds at the gate but when he saw the prince he was stunned it was none other than the treacherous steward who had stolen his fortune and his princely name he was the man dear lillian was to wed sudden reversals in fortune like those of paul roswell are difficult for individuals to bear whole societies can fare a little better balancing people's competing demands is difficult at the best of times a sudden shock can make it impossible one such shock came in the 16th century in 1517 german monk martin luther defied the teachings of the catholic church he ignited a religious revolution the reformation had begun soon europe was divided as never before families communities and nations were split catholic and protestant wars of religion scarred the continent and the bloodiest of all was the thirty years war with almost eight million casualties the conflict was one of the longest and most destructive in european history it began in the holy roman empire a fragmented land of tiny kingdoms and principalities all of these little kingdoms were caught up in a stupendous war about whether catholics or protestants should succeed to one of these little kingdoms but all of them ended up getting involved and it started in 1618 and it just banged on and on and on this was the epoch of the war which proverbially laid waste to germany germany was the theater of war for all of europe the pretty normal experience was for the other side to ride into your village and just kill everybody and i really mean everybody that kind of nightmare experience became quite commonplace and must have altered people's sense of the world [Music] caught up in this conflict was the north bavarian town of bamberg it was a town built at the meeting of two rivers 40 miles downstream from nuremberg it had grown in the shadow of a mountain fortress but at its heart was the church a four-towered cathedral loomed over the rooftops and catholicism dominated everyday life bamberg in the early 17th century was a typically south german typically bavarian place it would have had a strongly established roman catholic culture bamberg was a prince archbishopric presided over by successive archbishops who strongly wanted to oppose the spread of protestantism it defined itself over against the newly established and threatening protestant culture just a few leagues up the road in 1623 johan georg von dornheim became the city's prince bishop fondornheim was a jesuit he was utterly committed to the catholic church and obsessed with pushing back protestantism [Music] the bishop was a rather extreme character even by the standards of his day he appears to have exploited his office as prince bishop of bumbag to apply the most rigoristic uh form uh of witch hunting witch hunts were not new in bamberg they had taken place under several of vondonheim's predecessors but fondonheim took the practice to extremes not for nothing was he dubbed the hexenblenner the witch burner hundreds were accused put on trial and executed in 1627 fondornheim ordered the construction of the witch house this special prison had 28 cells and torture chambers it was here he secured his confessions [Music] there was quite lavish torture used to force a confession from witches and we know this because one of the suspects actually smuggled the letter out to his daughter it's incredibly sad explaining what had been done to him explaining why he'd had to name names and betray people even though he knew what he was saying wasn't true and it was the standard array of medieval tortures thumb screws the boots and the stropado which mostly rely not only on pain but on creating disfigurement and disability neither age nor rank proved a defense against accusation among those executed were the mayor and his wife georg hahn a prominent doctor in the town opposed the trials but that only made him a target for the bishop hahn his wife his son and two daughters were all burned at the stake witches have featured in european mythology and folklore for thousands of years but they were never confined to the safe world of the story many believed in sorcery and blamed it for misfortune in their everyday life there has never been a society that didn't have at least a residual belief in witchcraft it's not a recent thing it doesn't suddenly bound into existence in the 17th century what happens though and this is important in the 15th 16th 17th centuries people started trying to prosecute everyone who they thought was guilty of witchcraft and by the time of the bamberg trials it was a serious matter for the secular courts with capital punishment to follow the theological and legal foundation for which trials was found in a book published in the late 15th century the malius malafikaram or hammer of the witches defined witchcraft as a pact with the devil and laid down ways to combat this alleged evil the prosecution of witches was not restricted to germany however similar trials took place throughout europe both protestant and catholic communities took part in a tiny village in sweden more than 70 people were beheaded in a single day hundreds were killed in scotland and the spanish inquisition accused thousands [Music] a moral panic was gripping europe [Music] but what could drive whole societies to such inhuman acts [Music] for hundreds of years in the middle ages europe benefited from long summers and mild winters crops were plentiful and the seas free of ice but this medieval warm period did not last forever by the 16th century europe had become colder rivers froze snows lingered long into spring and crops failed again and again there was widespread famine months of rain ruined crops and there were no charitable agencies of course to prevent people starving in their villages what people thought they knew about the weather was constantly violated and that upset them terribly and made them feel that something was causing all this people are very reluctant to believe that nature is as changeable as it actually is if your harvest fails for one year but then another year and then another year these things appear to be against the course of nature because they appear to be unnatural of course it's natural for the collective mind to seek a supernatural reason for it it's that kind of collective thinking which surely would have played a significant role in the collective fury of the witch hunts [Music] the bamberg trials finally ended after the swedish intervention in the 30 years war king gustavus adolphus invaded germany in defense of protestantism in february of 1632 his forces neared bamberg the bishop fontornheim fled the remaining prisoners in the witch house were released they were told never to speak of the torture inflicted upon them the trials in denmark are a frightening example of what can happen when society turns on itself when it seeks out the saboteurs and the enemies within when it embarks on a witch hunt [Music] so [Music] in the 19th century britain was transformed a steam-powered revolution was underway [Music] railways cut through the countryside chimneys pierced the sky the roar of metal-toothed machinery filled the air and black smoke veiled the heavens the industrial revolution made britain a global superpower it reshaped the landscape of the country and it altered the lives of its people forever although creating great wealth and beginning to improve living standards of even the poorest this new age of industry was also disrupting established ways of life old jobs were disappearing and towns were swallowing up people in their thousands the cities were transformed by factories and mills they became dark and dirty people started doing what we would now think of as a really long work day actually they typically were aroused by the factory siren sort of seven in the morning and didn't stagger home again until six at night when you get new communities you really have to create myths and legends that allow people to deal with that environment and allow people to identify themselves with that environment once you've got people living in the rook race they're going to start trying to make up stories about where they are and they're going to start trying to incorporate this nightmare landscape of thick smoke and fog and blackened buildings and hungry children into their mythology as a way of coping with it there aren't the certainties of the old small communities where everybody knew everybody so the industrial revolution was a great sort of upset to old communities but it also created new communities and it's the transition between the old and new communities where you get a lot of new legends and myths starting to emerge [Music] the first rumors began circulating in the autumn of 1837. in the villages south of london a monstrous fiend was on the loose described as a great white bull or bear something had attacked several people and women were its favorite target [Music] as the rumors spread closer to the heart of the city the strange creature's form shifted it became more human and all the more frightening it was an unearthly visitant clad in armor and long clawed gloves who struck at night before escaping with great leaps over the city rooftops by early 1838 authorities could no longer ignore the phenomenon on the 8th of january sir john cowan lord mayor of the city of london publicised a letter he'd received from a resident of south london the letter warned of the strange apparition and the terror growing among the people the lord mayor however was dismissive these attacks were either made up or the work of malicious pranksters the times printed the mayor's announcement the next day the monster made another leap this time into the imaginations of people around the country he soon had a name as well spring healed jack this is where you really see the media beginning to take the legend and feed back into the legend terrible event in somewhere great outrage in i mean you know the usual things but you also had a lot of chat books which are sort of little almost like little paperbacks little sort of paper books which were sold by peddlers all over the country it comes from the kind of literature that usually gets characterized as the penny dreadful which is a literature deliberately produced for and to some extent also by the ordinary kids who are just about literate who love a good story who love to be scared the idea of something something jumping at you it's like a popcorn moment in a horror film basically and this is part of the thing that appealed to people they like to be scared spring hill jack was a blend of the old and new he was a figure reminiscent of ancient superstition yet was strikingly modern in his appearance whether the attacks were real or fabricated in many ways doesn't matter the fact that the story spread so quickly and were believed by so many reveals an anxiety at work in victorian society for with his metal claws and furnace mouth spring hill jack was the dark personification of this new industrial urban world a new demon hidden among the anonymous masses of the city it must have seemed to people that they were living in hell at night you could see the fires from the potteries for miles and miles and the smoke belching out why would you not think that this was part of a kind of modern demonology this notion of a character who can jump quickly looks like the devil sometimes he's skeletal sometimes he's got fiery eyes but he also begins to take on characters of the gothic hero in that he can be dressed as a gentleman and he has a long cloak so you can see this figure being created about all of the fascinations and anxieties of the victorian world i suspect spring hill jacks struck people as a kind of emanation of the industrial revolution itself the darkness the terrible smorgan fogs that overtook the country the fact that even the trees turned black he's the perfect urban legend for the victorian era he's a criminal he's supernatural you never know when he's going to appear he attacks the vulnerable but of course if you read about him in a chat book or a newspaper or see him on stage somehow you're safe [Music] three days of jousting were announced to celebrate the nuptials of princess lillian the crowd roared as the just began but sitting in the royal box beside her husband-to-be lillian could not muster even a smile across the tourney field the miserable roswell paid little heat to the spectacle either when the justin came to an end the victors paraded down the ground the custom was for them to stop and bow at the royal box but not this day instead the three knights ignored the imposter prince and rode on towards the other side of the ground there among the common people they found roswell it was to him they bowed roswell was stunned until the knights removed their helmets they were the nobleman he had freed from his father's dungeon they denounced the imposter in the royal box and proclaimed roswell the true prince arrest them the steward cried but nobody moved arrest them the more he shouted the less princely he looked instead of the royal bride he hoped for the steward received a traitor's death his head was left to rot above the city gates reclaiming his royal title roswell married lillian the happy kingdom they inherited lived in peace and justice all the rest of their days [Music] with roots in earlier folklore the story of roswell was a popular one in 16th century england and scotland it was a tale of social order uprooted and then restored an attractive proposition for many in what was a time of religious upheaval and national uncertainty for change is often frightening too much can tear society apart but too little and society withers in times of change stories can be a comfort to cling to or a tool to probe with they can be a reminder of shared history or a vision of a possible future the best of them have lingered in our memory for centuries the tensions in society reflected by those tales have not disappeared completely however we remain a jumble of contradictions just about muddling by but as was ever the case is in the stories we cherish in the legends we believe and in the myths we retell that those contradictions are debated and our values are tested

Channel: Absolute History

Views: 116,043

Rating: 4.8143978 out of 5

Keywords: history documentaries, absolute history, world history, ridiculous history, quirky history, pied piper of hamelin, missing children, dark legends, dark myths

Id: rF5FAgM9cFs

Length: 43min 7sec (2587 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 02 2021