25. he/him. Vermont. Prime cthulhu country weirdo. Coming back to tumblr because twitter is sinking. No minors this is a classy blog where we talk about grown up things like taxes n shit.
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.
Homophobic straight cis men have long been envious of the homosexual and the transsexual for how much sex they’re having. Straight cis men who define their sexuality through metaphors of conquest and violence find that people who define their sexuality through freedom and love have a better time doing it and with way more partners. This is despicable to the homophobic straight cis man who can only find joy in restriction, exclusion and shame.
He boasts of his conquests because to him they are representative of his natural place within the social order. The sexual freedoms of the other however is deviant precisely because it deviates from sex as conquest and violence between unequal parties. It is deviant not because homosexuality between consenting adults is somehow morally wrong but because it promotes an equality between partners, not for the conquest of the male over the woman towards reproduction and thus the transfer of property but for the joy of living and out of love for one another outside the bounds of legal contracts, property ownership and compulsory reproduction.
Freedom and love is antithetical to the homophobe who can only accept love as long as it is confined within society’s expectation that you only be allowed to pair off with a patriarch or madonna, conform, reproduce regardless of your wishes and die. Love outside these limits is seen as an existential threat to the status quo of patriarchy and must be destroyed, assimilated and recuperated.
The homosexual and transsexual express a love that creates new possibilities for social bonds outside of cisheteropatriarchy. Homophobes and transphobes are only capable of expressing a love that destroys the possibilities of non-exploitative relationships.
I used to resent other queer people for how much sex they were having compared to how little I was until I matured enough to grow to admire them. Like, hell yea you go at it.
The most annoying thing about trying to date as a cis guy is that I feel like so many people expect you to make the first move and take lead on basically everything. Even matching with other queer men on dating apps I always feel like i’m the one expected to message first. I just want to match with someone and not have them ghost me after like three messages
Stalin’s USSR = most woke nation to ever exist. You heard it here first, folks.
Imagine, for a moment, trying to figure out what the fuck is being measured on a scale where the USSR is a 10 and Portland, Oregon is an 8 without the excruciating knowledge of the hyperspecific neuroses of fascists over the past decade
Wokeness is when you shove an icepick in your political rivals head. Kill most of the people who are on your team but not your side. And starve troublesome populations and deport others.
