The Pied Piper of Hamelin Part 2

Astonishing Legends

Scott Philbrook

History, Society & Culture

4.6 • 9.8K Ratings

🗓️ 23 February 2020

⏱️ 115 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

As with any mysterious event, it’s often said that we should look to the simplest solution as being most likely the right one. The idea that when presented with competing hypotheses that make the same predictions, the solution with the fewest assumptions should be chosen is usually attributed to the principle of “Occam’s razor.” But what happens if we try to apply this cure-all of an axiom to explain a medieval legend that has few clues associated with it? In Part Two of our series on The Pied Piper of Hamelin, we’ll explore several of the leading hypotheses on this bizarre event such as the plague and Murine Typhus, forced emigration, the “Dancing Madness” and ergotism, slavery, the Crusades and even alien abduction. And if we return to applying “Occam’s razor” to this mystery from the Middle Ages and accept the contemporary accounts? Then what remains is the disturbing thought that somehow, a nefarious charmer simply used a flute to tragically persuade a large group of children to follow him into oblivion. They may be lost and their names are forgotten, but they and their Piper shall be forever remembered as one of the most famous legends of all time.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Presenting Hop On Board, a podcast series by Southeastern, six podcasts, six celebrity
0:06.2	hosts, taking you on a whistle-stop tour of some of the best places to explore by rail
0:10.8	on the Southeastern network.
0:12.4	Join Greg Wallace as he tucks into delicious food and drink, rave-wilding, uncovering
0:17.2	unsolved mysteries and spooky happenings, and Miranda Sawyer getting Artie on the Ken
0:21.9	Coast.
0:22.9	Get the inside track on Kenton East Sussex with Hop On Board, listen now wherever you
0:27.2	get your podcasts.
0:30.0	Estonishing legends would like to thank Quip, Hello Fresh, Best Fiends, The Great Courses
0:34.3	Plus, our contributors at patreon.com and you, our listeners, for making tonight's
0:38.6	show possible.
0:40.9	Last week we brought you the legend of the Pied Piper, a more than 700 year old story
0:45.7	that details the vanishing of 130 children from the small town of Hamiland, Germany in the
0:50.6	year 1284.
0:53.2	While historians cannot seem to suss out what really happened the day those kids disappeared,
0:58.2	many of them do concur on this startling idea which is that there's something real at
1:03.4	the heart of this story, something more than just an allegory about not paying a stranger
1:08.8	for a job well done.
1:11.0	The question is, what is that kernel of truth?
1:14.9	What could have left such an indelible impression of the town's folk of Hamiland?
1:19.4	Theory is a bound of course and one of them details how after the children vanished into
1:23.6	a cave in the Companburg, they emerged in Transylvania somehow over 1100 miles away as detailed
	...

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