Lore - Legends 90: Set Aside

Episode Date: October 12, 2026

For a very long time, stories were fragile artifacts, passed along on the tenuous thread of oral tradition. And many of the relics that have survived to this day are thanks to one woman, and her connection to a famous pair of brothers. Narrated and produced by Aaron Mahnke, with writing by Alex Robinson and research by Jamie Vargas. ————————— BUY EXHUMED TODAY: aaronmahnke.com/exhumed ————————— Lore Resources:  Get Ad-Free Lore: lorepodcast.com/support Episode Music: lorepodcast.com/music  Episode Sources: lorepodcast.com/sources  Official Lore Merchandise: lorepodcast.com/shop ————————— Sponsors: Chime: Chime is banking done right. Open an account in 2 minutes at chime.com/lore. Gusto: Online payroll and benefits software built for small businesses. Try Gusto today at Gusto.com/LORE, and get 3 months free when you run your first payroll. SimpliSafe: Secure your home with 24/7 professional monitoring. Sign up today at SimpliSafe.com/Lore to get 60% off a new SimpliSafe system. Quince: Premium European clothing and accessories for 50% to 80% less than similar brands. Visit Quince.com/LORE for free shipping on your order and 365-day returns. ————————— To report a concern regarding a radio-style, non-Aaron ad in this episode, reach out to ads @ lorepodcast.com with the name of the company or organization so we can look into it. To advertise on this podcast please email: [e-mail]. Or go to: https://advertising.libsyn.com/lore ————————— ©2026 Aaron Mahnke. All rights reserved.

We are living in the age of information. Our generation has access to institutional knowledge like never before. With a touch of a button, we can get the answer to any question or the solution to any problem. It's all right there at our fingertips. But that wasn't always the case. For most of human history, knowledge was difficult to come by. Education was guarded by the elites. And if you wanted to know something, you had to go dig through the library shelves yourself.

That is, if you were literate and had access to books. And even those repositories of learning weren't guaranteed. From the destruction of the Library of Constantinople to the Chinese Cultural Revolution and everything in between, humans have a nasty habit of wiping centuries of written records off the map in no time flat. Which is why, for most of history, information has passed down with people's voices, songs, plays, storytelling, all of it, was oral. That is the only way that people could make knowledge accessible to the masses,

or, for that matter, participate in sharing their own knowledge with their community. And sure, it might not have been as fast or as accurate as the modern-day computer, but it worked. There's just one problem with it, though. If it wasn't written down, those stories eventually vanished. Needless to say, when something from that oral era was preserved and passed down, it was a very big deal. And of course, it also created a treasure trove of some truly legendary tales. I'm Aaron Mankey, and this is lore legends. They didn't come up with all those fairy tales on their own. From day one, their mission was to record, not to create. And for the Grim Brothers, there was one single purpose in mind to create a unified culture,

for all German-speaking peoples. You see, at the time, Germany wasn't Germany. Not yet, anyway. Instead, it was a loosely connected group of nation-states, all cobbled together like puzzle pieces that didn't fit the best. It was quite the geopolitical conundrum. On the one hand, there were a whole bunch of German princes trying to run their individual states like little kingdoms.

Sometimes they helped each other, and sometimes they bickered. It was a lot of chaos. And on the other hand, there was the looming possibility of empire. The Napoleonic wars were raging, and Napoleon himself had set his sights on the German states. The French troops actually succeeded in occupying the Grim Brothers' hometown of Kassel in 1806, and then suddenly the streets were flooded with a new language, new customs, and foreign faces. The brothers felt as though their identity had been taken from them. It was to them a wake-up call.

No matter what happened to Germany, whether it was shattered into pieces by squabbling princes or united under a central foreign government, the Grims felt that they would have to watch their nation's history and culture disappear. And so they created a third option. They wanted to foster a national German identity that couldn't be swayed by ever-shifting European politics. If the German states had a shared, preserved culture, then they would be one step closer to being a unified people. Although we have to call that what it is, nationalism, right? And often, a pretty rabid form of it at that. To turn their dream into reality,

the Grim Brothers began to collect folktales from across the German states. Before the brothers, most folk tales and fairy tales were told around campfires at bedtime, and during long workdays. They were so tightly woven into every household's daily tasks that you couldn't separate them from the household itself. And because of that, close to 90% of the brothers' sources were women. And one of those women was named Dorothea Veman. The brothers met her in 1813 while they were working on their second book of fairy tales.

For her part, Dorothea was a widowed mother in her 50s who sold fruit at the market to support her family. Looking at her, you would never suspect that she was a storytelling genius. But she'd been honing those skills since she was a little girl. Her father had owned a tavern, and Dorothea had spent her childhood listening to patrons tell their best tales by the light of the fire. These stories were rough around the edges and sometimes a bit crude, but they made a lonely tavern feel like home for weary travelers. So at some point she started telling these stories to her own children, and eventually her

audience expanded to include the daughters of a local pastor, a pastor who just so happened to be friends with, the brothers grim. And after a while, he realized that he needed to introduce them to Dorothea. Throughout the summer and fall of 1813, Dorothea told the brothers her stories, and they feverishly wrote them all down. It was clear to the brothers that they had struck a goldmine. Dorothea's mind was a folktale sponge, and her talent for retelling these stories was unmatched.

In fact, the brothers directly credited her in the preface of their second book, writing, she recites her tales with thought, certainty, and an uncommon liveliness, taking her own delight in the telling. She first tells a tale freely, and then if one wishes, she will tell it again more slowly, so that with some practice one can write it down as she speaks. In this way, much has been retained word for word and is unmistakable in its truth. It's amazing, actually. For all the effort their second volume of fairy tales took to create, Dorothea was the only source they specifically named, because she was the only one that had mattered, because she was just that good. And the best way to understand why is to explore a few of them together right now. Once upon a time, a soldier

met the devil. He was only a little man, and if the soldier was honest with himself, he'd admit that Satan was quite a bit smaller than he expected, but he had more pressing matters to deal with and worrying about how tall the devil was. His sorrows must have shown on his face, because almost immediately the devil asked him what was wrong. The soldier replied that he was hungry, but he had no money. And what was worse, he had no way of earning it either. The devil, though, turned out to be much nicer than most people would believe. He wanted to help this poor soldier out, and so he made him an offer. If the soldier agreed to be his servant for seven years, he would be set free with enough riches to last him the rest of

his life. The only catch was that he couldn't bathe, trim his hair, trim his nails, or wash the water from his eyes. But all things considered, the devil thought that this was a pretty good bargain. And the soldier agreed and followed the devil to hell. Despite its negative reputation, hell wasn't all that bad. In fact, the devil had a nice little house tucked away down there. The soldiers' only duties were to keep the home tidy, sweep the floors, and tend to the fire that was under the kettles that contained, and I quote, the hell broth. And that broth was important enough that the devil told his new servant that he wasn't allowed to even look into it, which of course meant that the soldier

couldn't resist. And since the devil was frequently away on business, this soldier eventually took the opportunity to do some snooping. When he lifted the lid of one of the kettles, he saw that one of his former corporals had been shoved inside. When he moved to the second kettle, he found his former Ensign, and inside the third was his former general. This made the lowly soldier smile. He gloated over all of them, and then stoked the flames underneath to make the fire burn even hotter. Soon enough, the devil came back. To the soldier, it felt like he'd only been working for about a year, but when his master returned, he explained that the full seven-year term had

already passed. The devil didn't even care that he had broken the rules and peeked into the kettles. After all, he had made the flames hotter. That was what a good servant of hell was supposed to do. And the soldier's efforts earned him his wages. The devil told him to fill his pack with soot from the fires and then take it home. And if anyone asked where he was coming from, he was told to say, from hell. If anyone asked who he was, he was supposed to answer, the devil's sooty brother. And so the soldier set off with his long, dirty hair, his untrimmed nails, and his backpack full of chimney sweep.

It wasn't quite the king's ransom that he'd been expecting, but when he snuck a look into the backpack, his disappointment vanished. That soot had somehow magically transformed into a pile of gold. His journey eventually brought him to a small town, and he headed for the inn to find a room for the night. The landlord of the inn, however, didn't like hearing that this filthy soldier was of the devil's sooty brother and denied him accommodations. That is, until the soldier flashed his bag full of gold. After that, he was treated like a king. But the soldier may have been a bit too hasty in showing off his new wages, because the next morning he woke up to find that his gold had been stolen. He didn't panic, though. He just went back to hell to tattle. With a sigh, the devil washed and

trimmed the soldier's hair and nails. He then instructed him to go back to the landlord and tell him that if he didn't return the gold, he would become the devil's new servant. So the soldier did as he was instructed, and thankfully the landlord believed him and returned every single coin. Now Rich, the soldier, finally returned home to his father. He had so much money that he no longer needed to work. Instead, he strolled around town, strumming on instruments that the devil had taught him to play, and eventually his music became so famous that it reached the ears of the king, who was so impressed that he promised his eldest daughter to the soldier in marriage. Unfortunately, though, she refused to marry a peasant, and because the king respected her choices,

he offered the opportunity to his youngest daughter instead. This princess agreed, and thus the devil's sooty brother became a prince, and eventually, a king. Once upon a time, it was prophesied that a peasant would marry the king's daughter. When the lucky baby was born, everyone celebrated, everyone that is, except for the king. You see, this king was not a kind man, and he didn't want his daughter to marry some poor nobody, but he was also shrewd. His people were happy, so he knew that he had to approach the situation delicately.

When he visited the baby's family, he was as friendly as could be. With a benevolent smile, he offered a pile of gold for the child, and the parents, who believed this was a sign that their son was truly destined to be lucky, sent him away with this wealthy stranger. Of course, the king had no intention of keeping him. the baby, though. Instead, he stuck him in a box and then dropped that box into the river. Despite the king's ill intentions, though, the box didn't sink. Instead, it floated down to the capital city where it was fished out of the water by a miller. The miller and his wife had

always wanted a child, and they decided to raise the infant as their own. Fourteen years later, the king just so happened to visit that very same mill, and when he saw the young man, he asked the miller if that was his son. The miller responded that, no, he was a foundling who had been rescued from the water. And instantly the king knew that this young man was the one he had tried to kill all those years before. So, once again, with a forced smile, he asked if their son could deliver a letter to the queen for him. And of course, they agreed, completely ignoring the fact that the king's letter instructed the queen to execute the person delivering it. During his journey to the castle, the young man lost his way. Eventually, he found himself in a dark forest. He

wandered through the trees for hours before he found a cottage, and the old woman inside warned him that the house belonged to a band of thieves. But the boy paid her no mind. He was so exhausted from his journey that he couldn't walk another step. Within minutes, he was asleep. When the thieves returned home, they saw the letter that was lying next to the sleeping intruder. Upon reading it, their hearts went out to the traveler. So they forged a new letter to replace it, one that told the queen to hold a wedding for the young man and the princess. The next morning, he waved goodbye to the friendly thieves

and continued on his way, none the wiser. When at long last he reached the castle, the queen hosted a splendid feast in his honor. Then he and the princess were married. When the king finally returned home, he was furious to discover what had happened. It was quite literally the opposite of what he had asked. enraged, he told the boy that in order to stay married, he would have to complete a quest.

The king commanded that the boy journey to hell and steal three golden hairs from the devil's head. Then, and only then, would he continue to live with the king's daughter. The young man declared that he wasn't afraid of the devil, and then set off, determined to win his prize. To get to hell, he had to take a ferry across the river. While in the boat, he struck up a conversation with the ferryman, who lamented that he was trapped on the river, and could never be free. The young man told him that he would try to come up with a solution for him. Once he made it past the river, he found the entrance to hell. Unfortunately, the devil wasn't home, but the devil's grandmother was, and the old woman didn't look so scary, and so he decided to risk

telling her about his mission. And, as it turned out, the grandmother was sympathetic to his plight. She transformed him into an aunt and told him to hide in the folds of her skirt. When the devil finally returned home, he ate and drank until he grew tired. Then he settled his head onto his grandmother's lap and drifted off to sleep. And once he was snoring, his grandmother yanked one of his golden hairs from his head. The devil woke up howling, asking why she had done that. The old woman replied that she'd had a nightmare and that she had seized hold of his hair in her fright. Appeased, the devil went back to sleep. But over the course of the night, his grandmother pulled out two more hairs, and each time she did, the devil awoke with a scream.

Luckily for poor old Satan, his grandmother did not wake him up a fourth time, and he slept till daybreak. When he did get out of bed and left for another long day of collecting souls, she returned the young man to his true form and gave him the three golden strands of hair from the devil's head. The fairy tale goes on to tell us that during his journey back, he passed through a number of different towns that were all experiencing different hardships. Each time, though, he solved their problem, and they showered him with gold in return. By the time he made it back to his wife, his pockets were overflowing with coins. Surprised by this, the king asked where all the gold had come from,

and the young man told him that he'd founded on the banks of the river. All the king had to do was ask the ferryman to take him across, and so the king did, as the young man suggested. Once he was on the ferry, though, he grew frustrated with the slowness of the boat and grabbed the ore out of the ferryman's hands to make it move faster. And when the wood touched his palm, a strange thing happened. He became the new ferryman, while the other man was freed. As a result, the king was forced to row across the river to hell for the rest of his life.

Fairy tales have a way of seeming immortal. The truth is, they almost weren't. The Grim brothers collected their last story from Dorothea Veman in 1814. just two years later, she passed away. And it shows just how tenuous this thread between the past and the present really is. If the Grims had shown up just a couple of years later to interview her, all her stories might have been lost. Sadly, though, throughout history, there have been thousands of women just like Dorothea.

Very few of them have had the opportunity to tell their stories to a wider audience like her. It highlights the miracle that her words have lived on for generations, while countless others have evaporated into obscurity, just like the women who served as those story stewards. Looking back, there is no telling how many folk tales we've lost to time, which is why it's so important that we celebrate the few that we still have. And thankfully, Dorothea's words have been celebrated. In fact, her portrait was printed in the first English edition of the Grim Brothers' fairy tales.

To this day, she is revered as one of history's best storytellers. But Dorothea's influence has reached far beyond the realm of German fairy tales. In fact, her story about the devil's three golden hairs had a rather unexpected impact on the fantasy genre. You see, this fairy tale held a special place in the heart of one particular English author, so much so that he felt inspired to write a story of his own, one that went on to become much better known than Dorothea's. A story that launched the most famous fantasy series in history and whose character's names wound up on the tombstones of the author and his wife,

The Tale of Baron and Luthian by J.R. R. Tolkien. I hope you enjoyed today's sampling of some of the treasured stories saved by Dorothea. Her tales were full of swashbuckling heroes and clever tricksters, and I think it's fair to say that that's what most of us are expecting when we read fairy tales. But not all of her protagonists were one-size-fits-all. In fact, I have one last tale to share. that's about a fellow whose tiny stature didn't quite measure up to that of the average heroes,

although, truth be told, his height was one of the least unusual things about him. Stick around through this brief sponsor break to hear all about it. Once upon a time, there was a couple who longed for a child. No matter what they did, though, they never conceived. Eventually, the pain became too much to bear, and the man said, I will have a child, even if it be a hedgehog. The next morning the man and his wife woke to see, you guessed it, a hedgehog at their door. Or maybe we should call it a hedgehog hybrid.

The lower part of his body was that of a boy, while the upper half belonged to a spiky little hedgehog. As badly as the man and wife wanted to be parents, neither of them were particularly keen on taking in this odd creature. But what else could they do? Somehow the husband had spoken their new fate into existence, and here it was, covered in quills and beaming up at them. So they did what brand-new parents always did. They took their new child to be christened at the local church. The wife named him Hans the Hedgehog, the parson blessed him, and that was that. Unfortunately, poor Hans the Hedgehog wasn't built for human life.

His spikes prevented him from sleeping on a mattress, so he was forced to make his bed with the pile of straw on the floor. Even worse, his mother couldn't hug him, and his father couldn't even bear to look at him. Now, it goes without saying that his childhood home wasn't a very happy one, so Hans came up with a plan. When his father asked what he wanted from the market, Hans requested bagpipes, and when his father returned, there it was, a shiny new set of pipes. Hans grabbed his bagpipes, mounted the family rooster as though it were a horse,

and rode off into the sunset. The hedgehog and his steed clipped along until they found a suitable tree deep in the forest, and then they settled onto one of the branches and began their new life together. Hans never returned home after that. Instead, he sat in the tree with his rooster for years on end, learning to play the bagpipes until he mastered them. Eventually, his music became so beautiful that it caught the attention of a king who had gotten lost in the forest, and when he saw that it was a hedgehog playing the pipes,

the king figured the creature might be intelligent enough to direct him towards the road. Lucky for him, Hans knew which way to go, but he told the king that he would only point him in the right direction if he wrote and signed a promise that he would marry the hedgehog to the first person who greeted him when he returned home. The king agreed to this demand, but not because he was actually planning on following through. He just figured that this hedgehog, like most other hedgehogs, was illiterate and wouldn't be able to read what he had written. And as far as gambles go, it was a pretty solid one. really couldn't read, and so he never realized that he was being played. The king scrawled a note promising to not give the hedgehog what he wanted, and Hans sent him on his merry way. When this slimy king never returned, Hans continued on with his quiet life, playing the bagpipes

with his rooster. Eventually, though, another lost king stumbled upon Hans's tree, and just like the first, he asked for directions to the road, and once again, Hans asked to be married to the first person who greeted the king when he returned home. This king, it turns out, was a lot more honest than the other. He agreed to the terms with no ill intentions in his heart, and so Hans mounted his rooster and led the king to the road that would take him home. When the king reached his castle, his daughter ran into his arms. Because she was the first person to greet him,

he told her that she must now marry this strange hedgehog who lived in the forest. And the princess said that if this hedgehog were to ever come and claim her, she would go with him willingly. Years passed by, and eventually Hans decided that he no longer wanted to live in the forest, so he packed up his things, hopped onto his rooster, and headed out into the wide world. Hans's first stop was to the kingdom of the first dishonest king, but he quickly learned that this ruler had ordered his soldiers to kill any bagpipe-plane hedgehogs that were riding on roosters, which I'm going to assume there was only one in the world.

Hans was forced to dodge pikes and bullets as he and his feathered companion fought their way into the castle and up to the king's bedroom window. Once they made it inside, Hans punished the king for not keeping their agreement, which he did by stabbing the king's daughter with his spikes. After she was covered in blood, he and his rooster fled the castle and continued on their way. Next, he went to the second king's realm. This king had kept his word, and soon enough, he allowed Hans to marry his daughter. After their wedding feast was over, the young woman admitted that she was too afraid to get into bed

with this prickly hedgehog. To calm her worries, Hans peeled off his hedgehog's skin and tossed it into the fire. As it burned, the flesh of Hans' body blackened as well, mirroring the charred remains of his spikes. Soon enough, though, the hedgehog's skin

in the fire was completely consumed, and Hans stood covered in a thick layer of soot. But when the king's attendants took their rags and wiped him down, they discovered something amazing. Beneath the ash, his skin was pale and clean and smooth, like that of a human being.

Hans was, for lack of a better term, now a real boy, and he and his new wife, along with, I would assume, his loyal rooster, lived happily ever after. This episode of Lord Legends was produced by me, Aaron Mankey, with writing by Alex Robinson and research by Jamie Vargas. It's official, folks, my brand new creepy history book Exhumed is finally here. It's available in hardcover, e-book, or an audiobook book version that's narrated by me. Exhumed is 300 pages of brand new material, exploring the

strange and twisted roots of the New England vampire panic and its star player, Mercy Brown. Longtime fans of lore and my other show Unobscured can think of Exhumed as a brand new season of Unobscured all about the subject of the very first episode of lore. And you can learn more about the book over at Aaron Mankey.com slash Exhumed. I'll put the link in the description for this episode. Follow the show on YouTube threads, Blue Sky and Instagram, just search for lore podcast, all one word, and then click that follow button. And when you do, say hi.

I like it when people say hi. And as always, thanks for listening.