prismatic-bell:ancamnarvienn: la-vie-en-lys:prismatic-bell:la-vie-en-lys: prismatic-bell:what-even-i

prismatic-bell:ancamnarvienn: la-vie-en-lys:prismatic-bell:la-vie-en-lys: prismatic-bell:what-even-is-thiss: the-haiku-bot: kathrynduske:nuka-rockit: If anyone else was wondering about the slutty battle pants:The Landsknecht’s Fancy Pants – Veritable Hokum If anyone elsewas wondering about theslutty battle pants:Beep boop! I look for accidental haiku posts. Sometimes I mess up. There’s a guy in the notes calling modern Germany “weak and gay”. I don’t think there’s enough time in one lifetime to fully unpack that. Anyways, my favorite part of German history is where they just decided to replant an entire giant old growth forest and it worked. Lose your local forest? Simply put it back. Want another piece of wild German history that isn’t secret fascist worship?The story of the Pied Piper is at least partially real and documentation of it goes back to the early 1300s.Yeah. The Hamelin town records literally begin in 1384 with the phrase “it is 100 years since our children left.” The first known record, dating circa 1300, was a stained glass window in a local church commemorating the event. It was destroyed in the 1660s, but enough written and even painted records survive that it was possible to make a reconstruction of it:(Credit to Hans Dobberton.) To give you an idea of how accurate this reconstruction might be, by the way, here’s a drawing from 1592 in which the Piper shown is the one from the window:Written references to the story up through the 1500s are astonishing in number. “Astonishing?” Well. This wasn’t London or Rome. These people were not royalty, nobility, or even gentry. They were peasants and working people. And yet we have this commissioned window only sixteen years after the event, plus a further three either surviving or “we don’t have the original original but we have copies or attestations of the original” written records, and also the records of Hamelin itself. All agree on the date–1284–and the number of taken children–130. In 1816 we see the Brothers Grimm documenting the story in their first compilation of folktales*, which drew on eleven different past sources (which is more than the total amount I’ve found in research, meaning they either had more sources in German, some of their sources are now lost, or both). A now-lost choirbook actually contained a written eyewitness account, which we can no longer check against the other surviving records (because it was, you know, lost), but which is attested in other sources. We even know who it belonged to: Johannes de Lüde, whose mother was the eyewitness.The oldest known surviving account–beyond that heartbreaking line at the beginning of the Hamelin town history–dates to 1440-50, and actually used the inscription on that stained-glass window to affirm the exact date–the children left or were taken from the town on 26 June 1284.I would like to pause here to say that the amount of documentation we have for the story is frankly insane, given the time period and the fact that Hamelin was just a town built around a monastery (that doesn’t even seem to have still existed at the time of the story). The earliest record we have of its population is in 1689, when it had just 2400 people; it’s reasonable to assume that at the time of the tale, there were only a few hundred. And there were seven hundred years for these texts to get lost, and many probably did–it’s reasonable to assume the local church had birth and death records that would have told us whether the children died or just vanished, for example, but those records were probably destroyed along with the church in 1660. Hamelin has been invaded due to acts of war several times. Being a German town, there’s literally no telling what records of the place Hitler might have destroyed. That we still have this much record of a single event in a small town speaks to how catastrophic the event truly was, given the time period. Like just so we’re clear, England wasn’t yet fully unified when this was happening and the age of Vikings was only 200 years past. When I say it’s astonishing we have this many records (especially coming out of Europe at the time), it’s fucking astonishing.So what actually happened to the children? Unfortunately, this is the point at which we know it’s nonfiction because fiction would never have such an unsatisfying ending: we don’t know. Some research has been done that suggests the lost “children” were actually teenagers who just…migrated somewhere else, or went on a Children’s Crusade, and there is some evidence to support both these theories. Earlier theories that the children died in a plague don’t hold up–this theory says that the place from which “they were not seen again” would have been their mass grave, but there’s no indication of any such grave existing, and also, let’s not insult the medieval Germans that way, shall we? They knew the difference between “left” and “died.” If it was a mass death (somehow, of only children), they would have said “our children died.” Or, if they were feeling poetic, something like “our children were taken from us by the hand of the Lord.” Any theory that relies on our medieval counterparts being fucking morons doesn’t hold a whole lot of weight. Now.Regardless of whether I was able to give you an actual end to the story, isn’t that a whole fucking lot more interesting than Heinrich Himmler?*I know we think of them as writing fairy tales, but actually they were more in the business of writing them down. The Grimms were actually scholars. let’s not insult the medieval Germans that way, shall we? They knew the difference between “left” and “died.” If it was a mass death (somehow, of only children), they would have said “our children died.” Or, if they were feeling poetic, something like “our children were taken from us by the hand of the Lord.” Any theory that relies on our medieval counterparts being fucking morons doesn’t hold a whole lot of weight. Well, in modern Polish the word “leave” is commonly used as a synonym of “die”, so I guess we’re fuckign morons. ;) Seriously speaking though, @prismatic-bell are you German? And/or do you have knowledge of the history of the German language, medieval especially, and are able to confirm that medieval Germans didn’t use this specific synonym? Because I feel that one needs to have in-depth knowledge of what German was like in the Middle Ages to claim that assuming that “left” meant “died” is insulting to medieval inhabitants of Hameln. And here we go with automatic claws out. Welcome to Tumblr.Here is the problem with your argument, which I will lay out again since you’ve decided I said you piss on the poor:In order for “left” to mean “died” in this story, we have to assume that:1) one man, as attested less than two decades later, when most eyewitnesses would still have been alive 2) managed to kill 130 children (and only children)3) IN ONE DAY4) with no resistance from the adults of town5) and the adults buried them all individually, as no evidence of mass graves has ever been found6) and all of this occurred without a major manhunt for this wild mass child-murderer taking place7) and the fact that it was a mass murder was then never acknowledged.Using “left” to mean “died” is not moronic. Using “left” to mean “died” under circumstances in which 130 children somehow came to not be there anymore, all in a single day? Come on. Am I the moron for saying that’s moronic, or are you the moron for taking a single word out of a Tumblr post, removing all context, and saying I’m wrong because I’m not an academic? here we go with automatic claws out ?? Yours, maybe.I asked a question. About specific data related to the issue. I asked the question calmly. Because I thought your argument was based on a hasty and superficial conclusion. I… genuinely didn’t think your response was going to be so aggressive, because you didn’t actually sound like a defensive nutcase who can’t take criticism in your original comment – I expected a normal reaction, but since you don’t do *that* (but you’re happy to indulge in some name-calling instead) I’m not going to either address or even read most of what you replied. The first and the last paragraph tell me all I need to know about you as a conversation partner. Hi there, a former student of old manuscript and dead languages here! Granted, I studied Old English and Old Norse, and from an earlier period (10th to 13th c.), so I can’t rule on this specific case but I am somewhat versed in dealing with nuances of historical grammar and manuscript studies/philology and two things boggles me here:1) let’s not insult the medieval Germans that way, shall we? They knew the difference between “left” and “died.” @prismatic-bell​, you did not specify in your post that you read the original language in which the Hamelin chronicle and the other sources you describe were written - do you? Because if not and you’re relying on a Modern German or even English translation, you’re treading on a really thin ice - how do you know they actually made that distinction in that particular dialect at the (stipulated) time the chronicle was written in? Do you have credible sources to support that claim? 2) In order for “left” to mean “died” in this story, we have to assume that:1) one man, as attested less than two decades later, when most eyewitnesses would still have been alive2) managed to kill 130 children (and only children)3) IN ONE DAY4) with no resistance from the adults of town5) and the adults buried them all individually, as no evidence of mass graves has ever been found6) and all of this occurred without a major manhunt for this wild mass child-murderer taking place7) and the fact that it was a mass murder was then never acknowledged.That is a very good line of reasoning but again, without grounding it in historical semantics of Plattdeutsch of that time and a corpus linguistics analysis, that is still meaningless speculation. What other contexts is the original word for “left/died” used in? Are there any occurrences of the word used in a metaphorical/poetic rather than literal sense, and if so, how many are there? Are those occurrences from everyday written records, prose or perhaps from poetry? Since the Pied Piper led the children astray and they were never heard of again, wouldn’t that make them effectively “dead to the world”, thus justifying the sense of “died” rather than “left”? And that’s just the tip of the iceberg, and potentially countless hours spent over facsimiles, dictionaries and corpora.——I am not trying to question your research skills here just because you’re not affiliated with an academic institution - but in this case, any scholar worth their salt (or even a former one, like myself) will have a knee-jerk reaction to broad sweeping claims like “they knew the difference between the two words” without you assuring your audience that you checked the original language and are aware of its nuances.Since facial expressions and voice tone do not carry particularly well over text-based media, let me expressly assure you that I’m not doing this to bring you down or nitpick for nitpicking’s sake. I am merely pointing out how you could be doing what you do (which is very cool btw) better and with more structure – especially since you don’t do it within an academic framework and, I’m assuming, without supervision.And @la-vie-en-lys​, I’m afraid you do come off slightly confrontational ;D. Take it from me, I’m something of an expert on the matter of sounding offensive without meaning to XD. ….did Tumblr turn into an academic conference while I wasn’t looking? Like literally people are shitting on me today for writing about something I find interesting without being A GODDAMN MEDIEVAL SCHOLAR?What the fuck is wrong with you all? People aren’t allowed to have interests now without an entire goddamn CV to back them up? You are more than welcome to have academic interests and make posts about them, sure. However, if you do, and you make claims that something you write about is so and so, I expect you to be ready to back those claims up with sources and evidence. If you made a post about, say, nerve regeneration in some obscure mole species because you found it cool and I said, “wait, I’m not sure nerve cells work that way, could you please tell me where you got your information from?” would you throw the same hissy fit you’re throwing now?Believe or not, there are actual scholars on this site, who do publish well-researched, well-checked posts on their subjects of interest. Initially, I took you for one such scholar, until I ran into the red flags I’m describing above. You don’t have to be a scholar to pursue academic subjects (academia is its own can of worms) but if you want to share your findings, be prepared to apply proper scientific rigour to your research, or people who are actually trained in what you’re pursuing as a hobby will question what you’re saying, i.e. call bullshit. I’m really sorry your high school and university education (if you did pursue the latter) failed you so badly on that front.No need to respond, you’re obviously ill-suited to this kind of exchange. Even so, thank you for putting me on my guard - I got too used to people on here publishing quality, trustworthy material, implicitly assuming they’d done their due dilligence checking their facts before publishing. I will no longer make that assumption, so I guess I owe you. -- source link

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