4 ms·

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, 1

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 1y ago
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 1y ago
  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.
  - zeristor 1y ago
    One key point, could one lure rats away by playing on a flute? I mean if you could it would be handy to automate it in large cities even today, no toxic poisons. I’m not sure what evidence there is for that part of the story. It could be a tale as others have posted as to why the town lost so many children.
cubefox 1y ago
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 1y ago
  Go play a game of telephone with 20 people and see how well information travels. Now multiply that by 100 years.
  - IAmBroom 1y ago
    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 1y ago
    That calculation doesn't make sense.
  - soperj 1y ago
    Except oral histories seemed to have been very important to people and passing them down accurately has been noted throughout history
    - b112 1y ago
      No TV, no books. Lightly populated rural communities, without a lot of visitors. People loved stories because they were bored.
      - AlotOfReading 1y ago
        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.
giraffe_lady 1y ago
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 1y ago
  > 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 1y ago
    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 1y ago
> 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 1y ago
  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 1y ago
    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 1y ago
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.
- harimau777 1y ago
  FWIW, my reading of the article wasn't that the migration was necessarily forced. It could just be the youth leaving for better opportunities. Even today you have elderly people complaining about the kids moving to the city.

jvanderbot 1y ago

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 1y ago
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.
- zeristor 1y ago
  One key point, could one lure rats away by playing on a flute? I mean if you could it would be handy to automate it in large cities even today, no toxic poisons. I’m not sure what evidence there is for that part of the story. It could be a tale as others have posted as to why the town lost so many children.

cubefox 1y ago

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 1y ago
Go play a game of telephone with 20 people and see how well information travels. Now multiply that by 100 years.
- IAmBroom 1y ago
  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 1y ago
  That calculation doesn't make sense.
- soperj 1y ago
  Except oral histories seemed to have been very important to people and passing them down accurately has been noted throughout history
  - b112 1y ago
    No TV, no books. Lightly populated rural communities, without a lot of visitors. People loved stories because they were bored.
    - AlotOfReading 1y ago
      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.

giraffe_lady 1y ago

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 1y ago
> 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 1y ago
  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 1y ago

> 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 1y ago
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 1y ago
  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 1y ago

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.

harimau777 1y ago
FWIW, my reading of the article wasn't that the migration was necessarily forced. It could just be the youth leaving for better opportunities. Even today you have elderly people complaining about the kids moving to the city.