Busy week

I know I've promised a dozen times to not use this as an outlet for personal information, but I feel some obligation to explain my absence. My wife and I have been house- and dog-sitting recently and I only have Internet access via the computer my wife brings home from work. With such limited time, I opted to put the blog on the back burner. I'm not saying it's completely back from the back burner now, but just know that I may not be as vigilant about posting every day anymore!

Today in history is awesome. Are you ready?

June 26, 1284: The legendary Pied Piper leads 130 children out of Hamelin, Germany.

That's right, the Pied Piper is real.

Well, ok, maybe not REAL, but at least the story has a lot of credence to it. I just thought it was amazing that it was narrowed down to the very day that the Pied Piper led the kids out of the town. I mean, we don't know the day that Snow White met the 7 dwarfs or the day that Little Red Riding Hood went off to see her grandmother.

For anybody who is unfamiliar with the legend of the Pied Piper, here's a brief recap:

Hamelin, Germany has a rat infestation.

The Pied Piper shows up and offers to take care of the rat problem. By the way, "Pied" refers to his clothes, apparently they had patches of two or more different colors, like the magpie's black and white coloring, which is where "pied" got its name from. I guess nobody really knows this because half of the Google image pictures that come up when you search for "Pied Piper" depict this guy in one color only. Goofballs.

The town agrees to pay the Piper "X" amount of money to get rid of the rats.

He pipes away a tune that leads the rats into the nearby river, where they all drown.

The townspeople immediately ask if he knows a tune to enchant politicians.

He doesn't.

They get mad and refuse to pay him.

He gets mad and decides to get revenge.

He invents rap music and pipes away, leading away all the children.

Then the various versions of the story branch off here. Some say he leads the kids to a nearby cave and hides them there until the townspeople pay him (usually an exorbitant amount of money, much more than the agreed-upon price). Some say he never returns the kids because he never got paid. Some say he leads the kids away to a mysterious place where they are never heard from again. I was going to surmise that this mysterious place where they disappeared was the Neverland Ranch, although considering recent events that joke seems terribly tactless. Oh well, I said it anyway. Does the joke become more tasteful if you recognize that it's completely tactless?

So the Pied Piper was actually depicted on a stained glass window of the Hamelin church around 1300. The church isn't around anymore, which is really disappointing because I would sure like to see a stained glass representation of rap music being invented.

Apparently the earliest record in the town chronicles is an entry from 1384 which states that it has been 100 years "since our children left".

Side note: Does your town keep a chronicle? Probably, but it's most likely called something different these days. Too bad; I'd love to read a town chronicle. Well, maybe I'd love it for about 10 minutes and then it would get boring. Too much politics. If only the Pied Piper had known a politician-enchanting tune.

So some historians believe that the Pied Piper represents Death. There was some tragic event in which a whole lot of town children died and the townspeople thought it best to depict Death as a musician. Forget the whole black cloak and sickle outfit. Ironically, Marilyn Manson thinks the reverse--that it's a good idea for a musician to look like Death. There are a lot of people that argue this controversial concept though. Most seem to be on the side of Marilyn Manson not being a "musician".

There are other theories that say the kids started a pilgrimmage or even a Children's Crusade but never returned. The Pied Piper in these instances is the leader or recruiting agent. Another possibility is that the kids were sold to help populate some other nearby region, which apparently was not an uncommon practice at the time. Illegitimate or orphaned children that the town couldn't support were possibly just sold off to the Baltic general area. I guess there's some credence to that, but I still can't imagine rap music being invented in the Baltics.

The most common theory is that the children willingly abandoned their parents to found their own villages during the colonization of Eastern Europe. The Piper is seen as their leader. Because hey, if a guy can play an instrument, he must surely be wise enough to found a village.

Possible Baltic rap lyrics:

Yo check it, this here is the Baltic rhapsody,
coming to you from Lithuania City.
It could come from Latvia or even possibly
Estonia, sucka, 'cause that's the Baltic THREE.

Word, unh, yeah, what?
Lithuania City, yeah, what?
Not the Baltic sea, no, never happen.

Pictures:
Pied Piper
Alleged Rapper, probably not from the Baltics
Marilyn Manson