So Random: Every once in a while I fall down this rabbit hole and remember how interesting it is. "The Pied Piper" when you get into it is a fascinating story with an amazing history.

It's so interesting. It comes from a story from the 1600s that is based on a oral history from the 12 hundreds where an actual town record says "It's be 100 years since the piper took our children away" and somehow poems and stories just kinda came up from there?

It's weird and interesting. Were there plague infected rats that made the children sick and the piper is a death metaphor? Was the piper an embodiment of the pipes that lead solders and all the young men in the town died in a war? WE DON'T KNOW

Once you dive in, it's FASCINATING

Why is he pied? Two colors? What does that mean?

that sort of historical game of telephone stuff fascinates me

me too

I mean we have the old town record and drawings of a stained glass window that supposedly existed in a church that was destroyed in 13 something and a bunch of poetry and it's like WHAT HAPPENED?

I've been into Arthurian legend for a while now and the sort of historical roots to that are wild. Like, part of the original Welsh legend of Merlin/Myrrdin is that he went mad after an actual battle and ran off into the woods and turned into a prophet.

Maybe you can answer me something: The way I understood it stories about kings have always been around. Some true, some false, many true but exaggerated, and they get shifted from monarch to monarch as suits the needs of the teller. And somehow "Arthur" who was probably based on a real king, just sort of eventually became a repository for all those stories?

Does that sound accurate to you?

really just curious

Also a bit of an armchair folklorist. And... I would say that's accurate, but there's more to it than that, too.

naturally

But yes, there was probably a real king, who would be utterly unrecognizable by the legends and stories ascribed to him.

Yeah

Arthur was probably based on an actual King, though if the first written stories we have of someone named "Arthur" (or like that) are tue/closer to the truth, he wouldn't have been named Arthur, even

He probably would have ruled before Christianity came to England, so forget everything of the Holy Grail and all the rest, too.

Well and we can say the same about Jesus, was there a real person? probably. But most of the myths about him already existed before he was ever a figure

I can't find anything backing this up, but the way I remember it is that "Arthur" was the general of a king who was maybe named "Ambrosius"

which is probably half legend at least, since it was written down at least a century after the events happened

Yeah

With Jesus, we at least have what appears to be first and second hand reports, though some are copies of copies of copies. It does at least seem more likely than not that there was indeed a Jewish rabbi causing some social upheaval during that time period, who was probably crucified.

The real "Arthur" probably just was a "popular king" trope, and various popular stories and legends and folklore all got added to him over the years.

Except we have copies of copies of copies of people who SAID they had a first or second hand report some 60 - 100 years after the event

So we have accounts that say they are first or second hand but kinda sketchy

funny thing is also they are accounts of events that if they had happened would have been fairly significant and should have cohobating accounts from multiple sources but those accounts and sources are not there