Metaphorically speaking, it's about opportunism and greed - but some historians believe it originally had a much more literal meaning.Īccording to NPR, "Jack" Horner was actually Thomas Horner, a steward to the Abbot of Glastonbury. In the nursery rhyme, a little boy named Jack finds a plum inside a Christmas pie. Some think the kids died of the plague, and that the Pied Piper was the personification of death, others that the kids were sent away by their parents due to their extreme poverty, while others again posit that the children were part of the "Children's Crusade," a doomed, child-led mission aimed at converting Muslims in the Holy Land to Christianity.Īs Mental Floss wrote, "nearly all of the theorists seem to agree that the Pied Piper and his rat-whispering abilities were the personification of a force that those left behind in Hamelin could not control." The oldest written account that survived simply states that "In the year of 1284, on the day of Saints John and Paul on June 26, by a piper, clothed in many kinds of colours, 130 children born in Hamelin were seduced, and lost at the place of execution near the koppen."Ĭlearly, the story has changed and evolved over time, but there are a few theories that try to explain what actually happened. The first instance of this story is said to have been on a now-destroyed stained glass window from around 1300 AD. However, the town double-crossed him and refused to pay him, so in retaliation he played his pipe and kidnapped all the kids in town, never to be seen again. In fact, the castle they lived in is now open to the public as a museum, and inside one of the rooms is a "talking mirror," aka a toy that the prince gave to his second wife: the young baroness' stepmother, whom she is said to have had a rocky relationship with.Īccording to the fairytale, in 1284, the German town of Hamelin was experiencing a rat infestation, and thus hired a man to take care of it, the Pied Piper.
Turns out, her father owned a mirror factory. Born in 1729, she was the daughter of Prince Philipp Christoph von Erthal, whom she lived in a castle with. The young woman also lived in Germany, according to the Independent, in a town called Lohr am Main. The other potential inspiration? Deep breath: Maria Sophia Margaretha Catherina von Erthal. Soon thereafter she fell ill, and many believe she was poisoned, as the couple had their fair share of detractors who believed that marrying a coalminer's daughter was beneath a king. Unfortunately, there was no true love's kiss to cure her, and she died at 21. There, she attracted the eye of Spain's king, Philip II. When she was 17, she left her father's home, perhaps due to friction with her new stepmother, and moved to Brussels. Though it took some getting used to, the beauty fell in love with "the beast." They were married for 40 years and had seven kids together, four of which also had hypertrichosis.įloss, von Waldeck lived in the German town of Waldeck (of course) during the mid-1500s. "King Henry decided to take on Gonsalvus as his little pet project," Refinery 29 wrote, "the king groomed Gonsalvus to be a nobleman."Įventually, King Henry's wife, Catherine de'Medici ( who took over after the king died), found Gonsalvus a wife - coincidentally another woman named Catherine.
Gonsalvus was just 10 years old when he was taken from his native country, Spain, and sent to the King of France to operate as a type of court jester. Read more: 17 children in Spain developed a condition known as 'werewolf syndrome' after they were accidentally given hair-loss drugs Reportedly, this was most likely because he had a case of hypertrichosis, a condition that causes a person to grow hair all over their body, often referred to as "werewolf syndrome." According to Refinery 29, in 1537 there was a young boy named Petrus Gonsalvus who was regularly called a beast.