The Truth Shall Make Ye Fret - 100: The Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents Pt. 2 (Narratively Satisfying Lever)

Episode Date: December 12, 2022

The Truth Shall Make Ye Fret is a podcast in which your hosts, Joanna Hagan and Francine Carrel, read and recap every book from Sir Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series in chronological order. This week, Part 2 of our recap of “The Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents”. It’s Dark! It’s So Dark! This is a Kids Book?!Find us on the internet:Twitter: @MakeYeFretPodInstagram: @TheTruthShallMakeYeFretFacebook: @TheTruthShallMakeYeFretEmail: [e-mail]: www.patreon.com/thetruthshallmakeyefretWant to follow your hosts and their internet doings? Follow Joanna on twitter @joannahagan and follow Francine @francibambi Things we blathered on about:The big bang [Christmas cracker stuff] - The Guardian s0nderv0gel's reddit comment - /r/TTSMYFPost your rat name here! - /r/TTSMYFThe Pied Piper of Hamelin by Robert Browning - Poetry Foundation The Pied Piper of Hamlin (Cosgrove Hall) - Youtube Music: Chris Collins, indiemusicbox.com

that the 100th episode is not the time to be existential Francine. No, I'm sorry. Isn't it? If not then, then when? The 150th. The 100 is like the golden episode. The 150th is the existential episode. So I went to work Christmas do last night, which was fun. I had a good time. It was nice. However, there's one thing, and I think this is the venue's fault, not my work's fault. I'll feel bad if it's work's fault. But there was this thing called an e-cracker. And what this is, listeners, is a bit of cardboard with a QR code on it that says scan here for your e-cracker. And the cardboard does have a hat inside. That's good. It's a little envelope thing.

But the idea is to be sustainable, to be eco-conscious. And you scan the QR code, and then it comes up with a little screen that says multiplayer. Simply choose your partner, then one person selects generate code. The other selects join game. When the e-cracker appears, tap your half and wait for the meter to fill up. Then swipe down once it is full. The first to swipe all the way wins. No. Right. I do understand that the environment is a thing, and that crackers are probably not the best thing for the environment. But on the other hand, like you need the fucking paper hat. Well, we got the hat. That was the one thing in there. But all of the other stuff could be written on the cardboard, a joke and a quiz or something,

quiz question. And that just sounds like the least fun game they could have possibly invented to do it. And none of us got past that. None of us pressed generate code because we found the whole thing invariably depressing. I can only assume there was going to be some fucking put your email thing in. Yeah, probably. Terrible idea whoever came up with that. No. I wouldn't have noticed if there wasn't a cracker there. I do also feel like we might have to clarify Christmas crackers for some of our international listeners. I don't know how universal it is. Yeah. So a Christmas cracker is a tube of paper with a strip of cardboard in the middle that has a little bit of gunpowder. So it goes bang. It goes bang when you pull either end of it. And you do so with your

neighbor at the table. And whoever comes away with the longest piece wins and therefore gets the little prize inside the hat and the joke. Yes. Obviously, it's all very good spirited. So if someone ends up with two, then they'll because you end up like crossing your hands and doing it with both neighbors, you get you get one of them to the person who didn't get one and so forth. And the idea is it's all very silly. Yeah. Everyone gets a small, annoying key chain or bottle opener or some other random bit of nonsense. Did I mention this on the podcast that they deliberately make the jokes not too funny? No, I don't know if you did. That's the thing. The reasoning behind it apparently being that if it's like a clever,

funny joke, and a few people around the table don't get it, then they might feel left out. Or as if it's just a joke that everyone goes, Oh, everyone's doing it together. Well, that's nice. I like that. Yeah. Yeah. It's kind of it's taking the whole etiquette is just making everyone comfortable saying to allude across conclusion and I like it. I went. I remember one Christmas we spent at my very, very like middle class aunts and she got really fancy crackers. And they didn't have jokes. They just had facts. And it was it was a really depressing Christmas. Yeah. My great aunt was furious. Why? Why would you think that posh people don't like jokes is the thing? That's a yeah. And like, none of the toys in it were fun. I mean, I was a kid at the time.

That was the Christmas that was later improved by my great aunt putting down the C word in Scrabble, though. Fucking brilliant woman. Yes. Yeah, no, my other news this week is I was in a car accident. So I'm prick driving to the back of me on a slip road, genuinely not my fault. I know I'd say that even if it was, but it wasn't. I believe you. However, I mentioned it mainly because I thought I had not white flesh, but like, you know, decent out my muscles the day afterwards. And I was like, Oh, fuck, this is the last ages before it gets better or whatever. No, I feel fine now. I felt fine two days afterwards. It's just three days afterwards. I'm immortal. I knew it. Ha. I felt like this is not proof of your immortality.

Well, it's it's some circumstantial evidence to add to the pot. No, that just means that your muscles didn't get strained too badly. I'm healing like Wolverine. All right, fine. You're immortal. You're Wolverine. Get Isomale adamantium. Dragging us back around to the 100th episode thing. The we're going to be doing, as we said, we might a bonus Q&A. Yes, session, which what, we're going to release at the same time? It's that plan? You're the one who edits the episodes. So it's entirely up to you. I'll edit them at the same time. So we just put them both out. So tonight. Okay, cool. So you can listen to that. Or you might have already depending on what order you decided to put it. But a delight

for you listeners and thank you to everyone who sent us questions. Yes, thank you very much. Right. Well, Francine, for the 100th time, would you like to make a podcast? For the 100th time, Joanna? Yes, I would like to make a podcast. Hello, and welcome to the true shall make you fret, a podcast in which we are reading and recapping every book from Terry Pratchett's Discworld series, one at a time in chronological order. I'm Joanna Hagan. And I'm Francine Carroll. And this is part two of our discussion of The Amazing Morse and his educated rodents. Not only that, it's our 100th episode. We've been doing this nonsense for a while. We have. No one spoilers before we crack on. We are a spoiler light

podcast, obviously heavy spoilers for the book, The Amazing Morse and his educated rodents. But we will avoid spoiling any major future events in the Discworld series. And we're saving any in all discussion of the final Discworld novel, The Shepherd's Crown until we get there. So you, dear listener, can come on the journey with us. Accidentally falling to your destination via a narratively satisfying lever. I will always say lever is lever now because of Krunk. Pull the lever, Krunk. Narratively satisfying lever title of your sex tape. Nice. Follow up. We have some follow up. Glad to hear it. Glad to hear it. Sonda Vogel, whose name I'm still mangling, on Reddit are Cyclopedic Annotator in Multifarious

Studies. Left us a nice long annotated comment for the first time in a while, which is exciting. I enjoyed it. I enjoyed it. So Sonda says, first of all, played around with the mid-journey AI a bit and here's an absolutely horrifying chimera of an elephant and an antelope. It is fantastic. It's extremely horrifying. We'll link to the Reddit comment in the, in the sharing aspects. We will do. There is some context about the Pied Piper that I am going to save until later because I'll talk about the Pied Piper a bit later. Etymology of the surname Grimm could be mid-high German and mid-low German Grimm, meaning Grimm, angry, wild, so an unpleasant fellow. Connected to a place such as Grimmer in Saxony near Leipzig or Griman in the northeast of Germany.

Okay. See a metronome connected to the old Saxon word Grima, meaning mask or helmet. This would be especially funny since there's Grimmer-Warmtung in the Lord of the Rings, a guy who wears a metaphorical mask that sees a traitor and also tries to make, tells Theod and tells which make him weak, Tolkien as a linguist and pursuer of old languages such as Goth might have known about this connection. Then the etymology of Kissingen may date back to the Celtic name Cytus, a source in German, and the suffix Achem, meaning town of Cytus, with the Ing being the vowel consonant-shifted version of Achem, sadly no snogging. Finally, on the subject of cartography as a means of depicting geographical elements of the world, not geographical elements

of the world. Guff's head immediately, fine. The oldest material map or what is believed to be a map was found in Ukraine in the village of Mezarek. I'm sorry, I've definitely got that wrong. Carved on a bone of a woolly mammoth and is 15,000 years old. Well, that's fucking brilliant. Yep. Another cartography in later times like the medieval maps that Santa told us about in another episode. Kind of is a geographic elephant though, isn't it? Sorry. Kind of is. They were also used to meet as a means to transport a worldview rather than a realistic depiction of landscapes. So, thank you for those brilliant annotations.

Yeah, very brilliant. Very good. And also from the Reddit, we got a fantastic thread about rat names. Oh, we did, yes. What have we got in the end? So, to remember, I'm instant oodles, your butter beans, who else have we got in our little cart? Coffee crumbles. Coffee crumbles. Garlic passata, caramel log. Ben and Liz did this on Pratchat already. Ben with paper drops and Liz was sliced jalapenos.

I'm looking forward to listening to that episode when we're done with these. Yep. Michelle Law, their guest, was best before. They were using a listener's suggestion that it's the first food label you read after you wake up. PD went with what might be legible on Nankmore Pork Rubber Sheep and went with Visit Querm. Nice. We've also got Quality Street, Heavenly Salad and Mocha Beans. Beautiful. Love it. So, I feel like we've got quite a solid gang there.

That reminds me. Anyone who hasn't come across it yet, we did a crossover episode with Pratchat, which is now out about Where's My Cow, which is a very visual book to be going an audio episode on, but I think it came out rather unhinged but enjoyable. It was really fun to record, especially as we were recording at silly o'clock our time. I'm very pleased with how the episode came out, but well done, Ben, for some of that editing. Yes. Oh, and last bit of follow-up, we've got an email from Steven, and this is in reference to the last continent.

Said, not sure if either of you know about the Redfern speech. Francine might have heard about it, given she spent time in Australia. Sorry, no. So, the anniversary of the speech being given is 30 years ago this weekend. Well, Steven said today, but I feel like we've got some time difference. I'm not sure what today is. Yeah. The Redfern speech was, I now can't remember the name of the person who gave it, but Paul Keating.

And it was a speech given in Redfern. He was the first Australian Prime Minister to acknowledge the Da Vinch done by invasion, dispossession, and assimilation policies. Oh, okay. But the reason Steven emailed us about it is one quote is very reminiscent of the events of the last continent and the people of Forex. These things have been buried in the great Australian silence. Australia was a monument to forgetting.

It still is. There are still things we would rather not say allowed. Yeah. That's from a Guardian Ask all memories of people who heard the speech at the time, thinking about it 30 years on. Well, we'll link to that. That sounds very moving. Yeah, it's really interesting.

That's a hell of a quote, actually, yeah. Yeah. I feel like Terry Pratchett might have been aware of the speech when he was writing the last continent. Possibly, if not, certainly of the atrocities in general. Well, yeah, I feel it goes without saying he was aware of the atrocities. So, yeah, sorry, that was my follow-up. Oh, good, very good.

I don't have any callbacks to hundreds of episodes ago today. I'm sorry. Yeah. So, following up from something I said in the first episode on the color of magic. Yes, okay. I've done that several times. Kring's a dickhead. He is, though.

Actually, that would have been the first episode before anyone emails us. I'm aware that would have been the second. Anyway, sorry. Francine, would you like to tell us what happened previously on the amazing Morris and his educated rodents in a second when you finished eating that mint? Yeah, once I've finished rudely interrupting you, yes. Previously, on the amazing Morris and his educated rodents. Rats.

They ate the goop and followed the cat who found the kid who played the flute and tricked a dozen bureaucrats and scampered away with a sack full of loot to jump in a coach. And there they sat to bicker and quarrel for ethics and morals made the clever J. Paul flat. And Christ, this is rough. I'm not tough enough to stick to all Bobby's rhyme scheme, but I'll tell you in briefs that the kid who's called Keith and the cat meet Militia, a born storyteller and the others discover way down in the cellars dozens of traps, but no sign of more rats.

And the story is heading to the fear that is spreading through shadow and screams, and soon their schemes become a call for war. That is fantastic, Francine. I really did try to write the whole thing in that rhyme scheme, but I don't know how thoroughly you read that poem probably quite a lot this week, actually. Yeah. That's a loose interpretation of me to throw out. What Robert Browning does with rhyme schemes is fantastic.

I know what you're trying to imitate it. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, yeah. It's like trying to, it's like trying to emulate an abstract artist without knowing anything about it. If I get time. Well, I also flung paint around, but mine looks shit. Why is this not worth a million dollars? If I get time next week, I'm going to try and record a reading of the Robert Browning version,

because I do love it. That's a good idea. So, patrons, keep an ear out for that. Anyway, in this section, looking amazing, Morris, I have not written this in rhyme. Which is chapter six through to the end of chapter nine? Yes, nice. Sorry, I'm going to stop making that joke, I swear. Don't.

In chapter six, for Mr. Bunzie, adventures can vary in size. Militia knocks secretly and moves cat-like, not sneakily, as she takes Morris and Keith to the rat-catcher shed and shimmies the rather large nodger. Dangerous beans talks to a kiki who's been kept in a box and there's confused fear in the air. Leadership's debated as ham and pork and dark turn head off to investigate. Clicky goes ahead and there's poison around the drain pipes, while at the shed, Keith falls through a secret trap door. In chapter seven, Ollie's played a nasty trick and Mr. Bunzie's headed for the dark wood.

There's sacks of food in the rat-catcher's cellars, unnecessary netting and evil lurking. Morris grabs sardines, but the rats start running, they've forgotten how to talk. Keith and Militia fight when they find rats in cages and Morris runs. The catchers come down, dark turn gets out, the mayer's sent for the piper, Keith's pipe gets broken, ham and pork junk ceiling gets caged for the pit, and the rat-catchers tie up Keith and Militia, and they think some loose ends. A mystery voice haunts Morris through the cellars and wants to kill the cat. In chapter eight, Mr. Bunzie is a fat rabbit in the dark wood, but ratty root puts on root.

Morris escapes the murderous rats and the next cellar goes gloop. He finds his conscience in a tunnel before finding peaches and the rest. Ham and pork needs to be rescued. The rats heard the voice too, and Morris explains what happens to the caged rats. Dark turn nourishing and sardines head for ham and pork while the rest rescue Keith and Militia after a tearful confession from Morris. Militia's talking stories until the rats get them out. Meanwhile, the youngest rats follow dark turn and sardines comes up with a bungee plan.

They get ham and pork out, dark turn drops in, bites vulnerable spot, and escapes, only to be caught in a trap. In chapter nine, the animals of Fairy Bottom visit Farmer Fred. Keith and Militia have been rescued, but dangerous beans takes his leave after he learns the truth about Mr Bunzie. Spiders talking to Morris now, he really wants out. Keith and Militia get creative with the rat catchers and learn the truth about their food stealing rat betting schemes, but there's something else in the other cellar. What is a rat king?

Dark turn faces the bone rat, but nourishing comes to the rescue and takes him out of the trap. He wants to speak to dangerous beans, the rat with the real map. Very cool. I got that. You did? It's good. A lot happens. This is a short book with a lot of events. Yeah, and this whole section is grim as fuck.

Yeah, no, this is this is fucking dark. I love it. I'm not sure we've had a darker section of a book, and this is a kid's book. Yeah, I think this is probably like as one specific section. Yeah. I think the only thing I could really say is also quite dark is when it feels like Granny's completely given up in Carpe Giaculum. Yeah.

Like there's definitely a darkest before the dawn moment in that, which, you know, vampires. Helicopter and loincloth watch. I'm going with bungee rats for helicopters. Yep. And for loincloths based on the laxatives, the rat catchers will soon need fresh trousers. Good. Yep. I had limited choices.

That's fair. That's good. Excellent. Quotes. I think you're first. Yeah. Yes. Said dangerous beans quietly.

We can think now. We can think about what we do. We can pity the innocent one who means there's no harm. And that's why she can stay. God, I love that. Using one's brain to recognize that you may be cleverer than somebody else, but then also recognizing that that means you have the moral obligation to not be a complete twat to them.

That's an excellent moment. God, I love Danger. I've got a lot to say about dangerous beans in this section. Oh, cool. But first, your quote. Yeah. Speaking of this book being dark as fuck. If the smells in that room had been sounds,

they would have been shouts and screams, thousands of them. But just that does from the moment where they first walk into the room full of cage traps and just the sheer horror of that moment. Yeah, absolutely. I love the way he's elevating the scent to kind of a way we can recognize it as well, because in the same way he did with the werewolves, it's like that. This is a sense you don't understand the potential of. But here it is in terms that kind of, you know, it's a useful lie kind of thing.

Yeah. I like it a lot. Yeah. Right. Should we talk about characters then? Yeah. Here we go first. Oh, good old Keith.

Good old Keith, who I still keep mentally referring to as Kevin. Because I'm a stupid looking kid. I like that sound fair. He's not stupid. Nobody is stupid looking. Yeah, true. I like Keith in this section because he's standing up for himself in a way I don't think he's ever really had to do before.

I don't think he's ever stood up to Morris or confronted the rats about anything. But it takes Militia and takes him because if you think he's largely socialized with the cat and the rats. Yeah. And he maybe thinks there isn't a point in arguing with them because, okay, fine. Yeah, but you put him with Militia and it really takes him standing up for himself. He figures out when they're in the ratcatcher sheds, why do they need wire netting? Yeah.

And then he turns to Militia and he says, well, I have time to think about things because I don't keep talking all the time, which is like barely passive aggression there. But it's a nice kind of underlining of your observation of the quietly clever type things. He is definitely fun as a quietly clever type. I feel like he'd have had a really different life if he'd maybe got to know Captain Carrot a bit. Yeah, but I wonder what kind of life. Yeah, maybe not a good one. Playing charity concerts.

Yeah. But I feel like that would have been the sort of character he could, who would A, notice that he's quietly clever and B, how he could learn to be quietly clever from. Yeah, yeah. And then when, you know, Militia's sort of saying, well, have you got some miraculous way to get out of being tied up? And he sort of calmly explaining, look, I'm not a hero.

I'm not the hero in this story. The kind of person heroes aren't. I get by and I get along. I do my best. I like that we are kind of like continuing the exploration of the hero scene that Patrick's been doing for a couple of books now, aren't we? We've got that going on. And then we've got the heroes being ham and pork and dark town

reacting to things in very different ways, but in very heroic ways in the wrong way. Yes, very much so. But yes, continuing the exploration of the theme of heroes. Somehow I've managed to put that tab in a separate window. Of course. Yeah. Yeah, I know. And I think it's a really interesting part of his character because it's a little

exploration of humanity that we get from the fact that he's not had to grow up around a lot of humans. Like, yeah, do we find out how old he was when he started hanging out with Morris? No, but I feel like this has been going on for a while and he's, you know, I'd say early teens. Yeah, Max. Yeah. Yeah.

So if you put him in about 13, say they've been doing this for a few years, that's like 10. And if all of his socialisation before that was the Guild of Musicians. Yes, which is not a joyful place by the sounds of things. Yeah, I don't think it's as bad as the Fool's Guild, but... Oh, gosh, nothing is. But yeah, his kind of interactions with Melissa are very kind of a bold version, almost, of the Morton, what's-the-face thing.

Isabel. Isabel thing, just that, you know, the bickering children, the bickering teenagers. But this, I like a bit more because there's a real sense of character behind each one that is more than just like, you know, an Isabel of these tropes, because we're making Fadda these tropes today. In this case, like, I don't know. Practice just obviously kept writing for many years since then and it's really good at it. Yeah.

Well, to kind of move on to Melissa, one thing I did notice about her is she kind of acts as a bit of an audience surrogate in this book, in that she's pointing out the story tropes so we can see exactly what the book isn't doing. I find it really hilarious that she's writing so much of the time, though. I find that so funny when the trap door was there. I thought that was a lovely little comedy moment, just the... Yeah. Oh.

Like, yeah, and the fact that, like, yeah, of course I can lockpick what happens. Just like, half the time it's kind of highlighted what the story isn't doing, but then half the time she's like, so confident about the tropes. It's like walking somewhere with a clipboard. It's like, yep. The story just keeps going. Okay, yeah, no, fine. And it's great because it is a story, and as we've talked about many times,

perhaps it is a master of storytelling and about doing things in the shape of stories. So to have a character that just sits there and blatantly goes, yep, yeah, stories. So as well as being or pointing out the trope sometimes while doing the trope character, A, one of my favorite lines she gets is when she's arguing with Keith about whether or not he's a hero, and she turns around and says, if you don't turn your life into a story, you just become part of someone else's story. Which like, just suddenly gives her character this huge motivation of, I guess, wanting control. And then if you think about her in the context of she's a mayor's daughter,

and she probably doesn't have much, and also they do live in quite a sad little town that's been struggling for food and money and the rest. Yeah, yeah. With a father who probably doesn't have a lot of time for her, so I find that it's kind of an impressive amount of motivation to be able to give a character with a single line. Yeah, and it's, you can see her try to dramatize some of the kind of humdrum everyday troubles she has. Yeah, like it's not that.

I was beaten if I didn't do this, I'm locked out of my room because whatever. Well, I had to get washing up. Yeah, look past the comedy, it's like, you know, it's kind of sad. Tragic, but yeah. Yeah, she's still a bit spoiled and a bit silly, but I think you can really feel for her there. More importantly, she's got a huge bag. She does, and I'm very impressed. Yes, the Grappnell and Rope Ladder take up a lot of room,

and then there's the big medicine kit, the small medicine kit, the knife, the other knife, the sewing kit, the mirror for sending signals. Which just I respect as someone who brings too many things to everything. And does it turn out a laxative? Well, coconuts can be very binding. They can. So what are you going to add to this adventure kit, do we think? I mean, I feel like sewing kit is a good choice.

I do try and have a little nicked out of a hotel room sewing kit on me. I didn't actually put any thought into what else. Have you got something? Well, I thought definitely charged battery packs are good. Yeah, battery packs. With the phone charger cord that came in very handy the other day with the car accident. I'm fine to insurance for like an hour on the side of the road. And spare jumper, extra jumper kind of thing.

Always good, gloves. A lot of this is because I get cold. I have taken to having whatever my current knitting project is on me, because long train journeys and stuff. Only if I know I'm going to be sitting on a train or something, not just anywhere, it's nice to have something to do. But also that means I've got some pointy objects, some scissors, lots of wool, if I need to tie anything up or like.

I always have my little pocket secateurs. They have a little saw knife on. That's always useful, yeah. My keys have a little screwdriver on. We are fairly militia in our bagpacking, actually. Between us, we're pretty sorted. It was a running joke. Yeah, always have penculas.

When I went to the Discord convention, they didn't find it funny that between Mark and I, there was like an entire boot's worth of parasite muller and ibuprofen. These are clearly people who know that headaches will happen at the drop of a hat. But yeah, no, what was the other thing? Oh, sorry. Well, it used to be a running thing. This is not true of all my handbags, but a preference for handbags

is that it needs to be able to hold a bottle of wine and a hardback book. Yeah, yeah. Which I feel I can get quite far on those two items. Both stuff, well, as a weapon. Absolutely, yeah. The kind of less positive stuff about militia, I feel like she's got like huge only child syndrome going on. And that kind of feeds into what Keith is saying.

It's like, she's not listening to the way people are saying things. No, she's obnoxious and doesn't care. But again, I still have sympathy for her because I think she's not the opportunity to learn. I just don't think she, that's fine. I don't think she's been around other people her age. No, no, exactly. Yeah, I'm not even sure it's that she doesn't, she's definitely obnoxious,

but I think maybe she would care if she understood. Yeah, but she's just not had an opportunity to learn empathy, maybe. Yeah, could be. Yeah. Which empathy actually leads us quite nicely to our next character, Morris, who's just found his conscience. Poor Morris. I mean, he is not having a good time of it.

No, the little confession thing he went into was... The confession was fantastic. Yeah. But it's because obviously he became intelligent, I won't say human, around the same time as the rats. And the conscience is like the last bit of peace to fall into place for him. Yeah. And I feel like that's a nice way to look at it.

Like he's learned how to talk to people, he's learned how to construct thoughts and recognize himself and pass a mirror to us. Yeah, and the kind of the conscience being a distinct internal narrative is a nice thing that Pratchett plays with in lots of books, especially his children's books, actually. Yeah. But yeah, the monologue and confessing that he'd killed additives in the line, I didn't know he was anyone, I didn't know I was anyone. Which I've also just noticed, because I've written out a few more of the quotes I want to go back

to for this section, just to save me flicking through the book a lot. Almost every quote I've picked uses italics for emphasis at some point. Interesting. Yeah, that's more so in this book than usual, isn't it? Yeah, I think it's kind of the, maybe it's the aimed at younger readers thing. There's a lot of, let's put the cadence here really directly, rather than doing a lot of, he said this snarkily. Probably makes it a lot easier to read aloud.

Yeah, very much so. But that's just a nice detail. Yeah, that is cool. Good stuff. And then as well as his conscience, we've got another voice in his head. Increase of voice.

God, this again, it's not just dark, this is terrifying. Yeah, again, like, way, somehow way more horror than any of his non-kids books. I know I've read this for the first time as a child, but this is still to this day the scariest, like, pratchet villain, I guess, in any book. And we haven't even seen it properly yet, but this spider thing, that's talking in Morris's head, talking in the rat's heads, talking in the rat catcher's heads.

Yeah, it's interesting that, like, staying on Morris for just a second, he's obviously very affected by it. But the way that the spider speaks, the way that spider, not the spider, the spider speaks to him at first, where it doesn't have quite the same effect as it's expecting. Yeah. Because Morris is a cat.

It's just like a, it's going with just the frequency. It's going with just the frequency. Why aren't you bribing an agony type thing? Yeah. And it makes... Oh, sorry, go. Oh, no, just something else I noticed is that a lot of the scenes, like between Keith and Militia, some of the scenes with the rats,

are from Morris's point of view. So we get his internal dialogue with Spider as, like, the rat catcher interrogation is happening, as Keith and Militia are arguing. Yes. He's sort of in Morris's head more, which means we have to see it from Morris's point of view to get that bit as well.

Yeah. But the reveal with Spider, the I'm in your head and I will never go away, it's so terrifying. Yeah. That the intrusive presence within the mind is, again, a kind of recurring motif within Pratchett books. And I think escalates from here on in different books without being spoilery.

So... Yeah, I just thought of four examples off the top of my head and they're all in books we haven't covered yet. Exactly, yeah. But I think we've had a couple before, like the vampires or the elves could be a... Yeah, very much. I was going to say witches books are a good one to point to.

Oh, one thing I noticed is that Morris... Worked out very quickly that what the rat was... What the spider, sorry, was doing quicker than the rats did, like that it was seeing through his eyes. Yeah. And so I was like, oh, that's because cats think like witches. Knows what borrowing is instinctively. I would say cats definitely...

Or Morris thinks like witches. Yes, yeah. Crebo doesn't think like witches. Crebo doesn't need to think like witches. Crebo doesn't need to think. Crebo has a witch. Crebo has a witch to do as thinking... He's outsourced.

Yes. Yeah, so Dangerous Beans. You brought up that really good point with your quote, that they're better than rats and not sending someone to die, because as you said, like having that intelligence also gives you like a moral responsibility. But in that conversation, he kind of inadvertently challenges Ham and Pork for leadership

and everyone holds their breath. And Ham and Pork realizes like that's a fight not worth picking. Yes. But I think there's a hint of it's not entirely unintentional. Like he knows how to manipulate Ham and Pork. Like just further down the page, he gets Ham and Pork to go off with Darktown and go and investigate. He calls him Dear Ham and Pork.

I definitely agree because I noted that he manipulates Morris as well quite cleverly. When Morris is like on the fence or leaning towards not going to save the kids, Dangerous Beans asks peaches to kind of read to him from the bit where they talk to the humans. And at that point, without like acknowledging it, Morris comes around to the idea that they should go and rescue the kids. Yeah.

And that's something actually like jumping slightly further away from Dangerous Beans. I know all the rats are very young because rats have shorter lifespans, but they feel older. That like Keith and Militia are kids. And in some ways like Morris is almost the responsible grown up in this situation. In some ways like Darktown and Ham and Pork are as well. But it rarely gets acknowledged, but when it does, they do need a bit of looking after and not just because they're human

and therefore really rubbish in a lot of ways. Yes. But also, but yeah, sorry, back to Dangerous Beans. His breakdown when the rats forget to talk and he's crying and another italicized one, they've forgotten how to talk. And this is just after he's taken us down and said, but we're better than rats. Yeah.

The idea that everything he's built, his whole belief system around could be taken away in a moment. Exactly. And the further, slightly further on, not much further on, but when he learns about how rats behave when they're putting the pit with the terrier. Yeah. And that they don't fight. They just run around as soon as there's trouble.

We're just rats. Yeah. And then eventually. That's an existential crisis you could probably have about people, isn't it? Absolutely. And then he finds out about Mr. Bunzee. Yeah. That was in such a horrible way.

That's really malicious, not finest moment there. Yeah. I mean, she doesn't know. It's just she doesn't listen when someone tells her to stop. Yeah, yeah. For things. But it's a really tough read. Like as well as this book being dark in that it's scary,

just like watching this very sweet little rat go through this horrible emotional experience. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, all of them. Yeah. Dangerous beings, especially being the not tough one. So Hammond Fork and Dark Tan, watching them go through shit's awful as well. But yeah.

What they go through is like straight up sort of violence that they know how to handle, whereas Dangerous Beans is really in this uncharted territory and sort of expect, like, you know, Dark Tan saying, oh, he's got the map in his heads at the end of the section. He doesn't fully have that map and he's sort of got this pressure on him to have it. Yeah. Like he's aware he's the thinker and so he's doing his best to send Hammond Fork off to the right place to get Dark Tan and go what he needs to do, so that he can keep working through everything mentally.

Yeah. Which is a lot when you only just learned how to think. Yeah. I struggle working through stuff mentally now and in theory, I've been thinking for quite a while. I don't know. So yeah, so Hammond Fork. Hammond Fork, poof. Poof.

I liked, I liked, again, weird thing to talk about liking stuff in this section, honestly, but you know what I mean? I liked his reaction to the atrocities and that I think it really underlined his like innermoral bit that he'd fucking lost it. Yeah. And that I will gnaw you. Let them out. Let them out now.

Let them out now. Yeah. And when he's thrown into the cage, his sort of point of view interlude, the smells of terror and hunger and violence met the anger coming the other way. He was a cornered rat who could think. Yeah. And it's this, as much as he resents this new world order he's found himself in, that he's struggling to stay the leadership during,

that thought comes in handy when it comes really far down to it. Yeah. Yeah. And still he bites in a, in a fair way though. And just a, you know, bite here or bite there, done. Yeah. Yeah. He's as much putting them out of their misery as anything.

I never used to like, I didn't like Hammond Fork when I read this when I was younger. I like, I found him really annoying. I wished he'd just get with the program and accept that the rats were all modern now. I've got a lot more sympathy for him this time down and enjoy. We're getting old. Yeah. Hi, Alfred. Yeah, that is it though, isn't it?

For sure. Yeah. It's one of the interesting things, re-reading some, some things or re-watching stuff that you've enjoyed as a child. It's, um, which, which characters you can sympathize with now. Yeah. Like the little mermaid's dad. I'm not sure, sympathize is the word I'd use for letting him in.

Going off to marry some leg man. No. You're 16, you just met him. I remember the kind of fist to the air moment when Frozen came out and a character actually says, no, you can't marry a man. You just met. Yeah, yeah. She, you know, turned out to be quite good advice specifically in Frozen.

Yeah. She married that other guy she'd just met and starred. Exactly. Much better. But not within that film. So. Yeah. No, that's fine.

Anyway, yeah, sorry. Did you have anything else on Hammond Fork? I don't think so. Okay. Darktan who just epic in this section, like he's cool. I love him. That's a very good near death experience he gets. Very good near death experience, but it is built up.

I like that he's got his sword and he's very sensible about a spike as a spike. But also someone says to him, you got the idea from Mr. Bungie and I'm just thinking, who in Mr. Bungie had a fucking sword? Don't know. Maybe he's just illustrated with one. Yeah, but like why is someone got a sword? Because he's on an adventure. Oh, right.

Fine. I just, I don't picture Mr. Bungie with a sword. So it's probably like a little twig. Sword. Well, yes. Two twigs tied together. Yeah. Very cute.

But before they go and rescue Hammond Fork, but they're sort of thinking about burning the stables down. And it's very this, if I don't get out, you know what to do. Yeah. Yeah. And when he finds himself stuck in the trap, he's just like very accepting. Like he's ready to confront the bone rat or the big underground or whatever it is. Yeah.

Just a moment of peace. It's like if he turned his head, he could see something. But yeah, he's fine. This is fine. But yeah, before the trap stuff or no, after the trap stuff, he's figuring out dangerous beings and realizing how alike they are. And it's something that they're not written to be alike at all until Dark Tang comes out with a, he goes ahead, finds the dangerous ideas, traps them in words and makes them safe

and shows us the way through. Yeah. Yeah. And his bigger, slower thoughts definitely allow him to see that. Yeah. Like the idea of having a perforation scar, by the way. I think that's an extremely cool scar to have. Yeah.

Not to get, but to have. If you have to have a scar looking like a perforated line is fairly cool, I'd say. That is a cool one. And nourishing, who's one of my very favorites of the rats, but her coping with Dark Tang and getting him out of the trap. I think something else of the book does well is you genuinely do fear for the lives of the characters. You do not know who's going to survive chapter to chapter.

Like, Apart from nourishing, where this time you get a clue. Yeah, which is nice. Relaying the story as an old rat to her grand rats. It's another kind of adventure trope, isn't it? Having the young, slightly useless, tag along. So who then is the one telling the story later? Yeah.

And it might be a framing device where they start off with the old lady. And yeah, that's good. It makes me very happy, but then you get this parallel to Dark Tang with the match before he's gone down into the rat pit and Dark Tang with the match after the rat pit where he sort of lights it and is this thousand yard. Yes, like rats in a barrel. Yeah. Like, I think nourishing gets full hero worship at that point.

Oh, yeah. You would. Especially after surviving the trap. I like that she just gnawed through the spring. Good work. Yeah. Yeah. No, got him out of there.

This is the thing. I like that the kind of slightly drippy seems incompetent companion actually does exactly the right thing when the thing needs to be done. Yeah. Yeah, of course. Well, she's been taught by the best. Yeah. But she's another fun, trippy character.

Yeah. But also, think about how short and this is something we've gone into with a couple of Prattie books, how short a time span this is over and how well developed the characters are and how well they get to grow within that tiny time span and also with characters that we've never met before. Yeah. Because obviously in a lot of the Discworld books Prattie has got the benefit of a bit of shorthand of, well, I've had five books to make Granny Weatherworks into Granny Weatherworks.

Yeah. There's none of that here. Darktan is there on the page, like very alive right from the beginning. Yeah. Yeah, he's a very well written character. And he's not only that, but he's one of so many characters in this book. And yet he still manages to kind of imbue each of them. Yeah, there are so many, even big savings who only actually gets a couple of lines,

but it's this big, you know, butch femme. Yeah, okay. Oh, and quickly before we move on, poor Jaco, the Terrier. I know he's killing rats, but... I know, I know. But I think Prattie does a good job here of showing that he's not some fucking evil monster thing. He's killing rats. That's what he does.

He's been trained to kill rats. Yeah. He's not a bad dog. He does what he's told. But he does a really good job of inviting us into the head of an uneducated animal compared to the educated rodents. Yes. And I thought that was interesting because in Discworld Canon, of course, even dogs who can't speak English are very organized, form gangs, have culture.

True. And so I would call them educated to the level of, like, maybe not quite the rats, but nearly there. I'd say more so than the rats were before they became self-aware. Because they are self-aware. They have identities. They come up with new names. Those dogs that we see doing that are specifically Ankh-Morpork dogs.

How do we think they've been a bit near the university? Yeah, I feel like there's just enough vibes in Ankh-Morpork to get a bit more, like, gaspody. If you think about it, gaspody isn't educated. There's probably a similar way to Morris and the rats. I think that's, that might even be Canon. That might be Canon. That might be Canon. That was hanging around the university.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So Jaco might not have those same intelligence levels because he's never been near the unseen university. That'll be it. Yeah. But for all that, he's still very intelligent and, you know, puzzles through,

okay, it's talking, but I think it's a rat. Shake, shake. Have I been hit? No. Okay. I've done a good job. I'm still a good boy. Oh, and he's saying he gets kicked in things.

Poor little Jaco. Poor little Jaco. But yes, I think part of it is just he's a terrier. And obviously I have an overwhelming amount of sympathy for terriers. Yes. And bitten on the unutterables. As a bit of him. I feel like the practice seems to think this is the, you know,

if we must punish a dog who is being the villain in this instance. That is the way to do it. In the balls. As the, but not a life-threatening injury. Yes. Because Gaspo did that to another one, didn't he? Yeah. I think that was it.

Yeah. Took out a werewolf. Good lad. I don't have any locations marked for this section. No, all the locations are horrible. Good job. Yeah. I don't want to talk about the goofy seller.

There's a shed. There's a shed. There's a shed and a lot of sellers. Yeah. All very bad. At a racquet. We're not. Yeah.

Anyway. Little things we like. What are we like? What are we like? We like the ancient guild of rat catchers. We do. Yeah. We mentioned that last week as well.

And I was like, is that it? Has that been fleshed out tools for the industrial world? Mr. Pounder was a member of the guild of rat catchers, apparently. Who is Mr. Pounder? He was the one who died in masquerade. Of course. He had the hat with the candles. Yeah.

So this is from one of the L-Space websites. As Mr. Pounder discovers, the death of rats does indeed manifest rat catchers in certain precisely defined circumstances. I eat to collect their souls when they are dead and to wash them through the revolving door that says reincarnate as rat until further notice. I also had a quick look in my shiny Ultimate Discworld Companion book, which I've not referenced enough, I don't think, since I got it. I don't actually have that one yet.

Rat catchers, comma, V. The two rat catchers encountered during the events of the Amazing Morris were called Ron Blunkett and Bill Spears, because they're called rat catcher one and rat catcher two for a lot of it, aren't they? Which is interesting. Yeah. Both wore long, dusty overcoats and battered black top hats. One was big and one was big in fact.

One was thin. In fact, they made some effort to comply with all the narrative stereotypes for comic thugs. It's comic thugs. Comic thugs also. And also, just because it's underneath rat traps, several manufacturers are referenced in the Amazing Morris. And for a random impression of completeness, these include Jenkins and Jenkins, Nugent Brothers, Comethe, Prattle and Johnson, and Sniffed and Polson.

Yeah, this is something I didn't think to mention, but just Pratchett doing names is great. Always, always is. Yeah. But yes, I like bringing in another reference to the guild system, because it's clearly not just an Angkor Maw Pork thing. Yeah, yeah. I mean, obviously, it's not because guilds have existed all over the world for as long as they've existed.

But do we think there's like an Angkor Maw Pork, Uberwold, Ratcatcher Guild exchange program? I'd say maybe. We Mad Arthur has to contend with them. Apparently, that's mentioned in Feet of Clay. So when he's catching rats. He's a non-guild ratcatcher. Yeah, and the only other bit of info like I've got about them is apparently

the Long Bones is a pub on Mariborne High Street. And the complete Angkor Maw Pork, which I don't know if I have, notes that it's the informal guild house for the Ratcatcher Guild. I can't see anything about a different country maybe having one. So I think maybe Angkor Maw Pork trains them and sends them out everywhere. Maybe the exchange program, it's just a, you know, that's where you go to get your training. I think I have the complete Angkor Maw Pork.

There's a few of the reference ones that I intentionally haven't looked at too deeply, because I don't want to end up bringing stuff in that is spoilery, because they're all released sort of after the fact. Yeah. Yeah. And I know I'm very bad at remembering what's a spoiler and what isn't. Aren't we all? Aren't we all.

Anyway, Secret Passages, this is one of my favorite bits in the whole thing. And we have already talked about it a bit, the narrative satisfaction. But it's one of the most aware of the tropes bit where Milch is like, well, you've got to give up looking and lean nonchalantly against a bit of wall. And it's the lean against the wall with incredible nonchalance. There was not a click, a panel in the floor did not slide back. Very disappointing. I'll just rest my arm innocently on this coat hook.

A sudden door in the wall completely failed to happen. And no one ate candlesticks. Who designed this shed for God's sake? Why is there no one ate candlestick in my shed? Candlestick? Candlestick. The candlestick stick. And the other bit, you pointed out for me.

I miss this. But one of my favorite tropes, which is when dark tans over the rat pit, looking at it all, the black top hats of the rat catchers moved through the crowd. Seen from above, they were sinister black blobs among the gray and brown caps. And Pratchett writes colors and the way people move through crowd scenes so well. And it's something I've only started noticing doing this podcast, but it's one of my favorite things he does. Yeah, lovely little visual treat in the monster.

Yeah. Speaking of visuals and not having them. When Hammond pork's having a little moment of self-awareness, there's just a line saying darkness inside behind the eyes. That bit was Hammond pork. Everything outside was everything else. And that's kind of cool back to the same way it was referenced in Thief of Time with the auditors. And we were talking about what is humanity?

Is it the darkness behind the eyes? Is it? What is it to human? Yeah. Oh, in this case, what is it to be self-aware? What is it to be sentient? I guess. Yeah.

That's a really nice follow through from Thief of Time. Actually, I hadn't picked up on that while done. And the last bit is something I didn't have time to research. So I put it in little bits we liked in case someone else feels like it. But it's the idea of a killing gentleman. These ones who you can just tell are dangerous. The ones who travel from town to town and... Yeah.

The actual bit is when Keith and Melissa are interrogating the rat catchers. Yeah. Do you have the quote? Yeah. Well, it's a quick one where Morris said, you killed the rats, said Morris quietly. And the rat catchers freeze because they've heard this voice. I don't have the full quote in front of me.

I can grab it quickly. But they'd heard this sort of voice before, assumingly through the nefarious rat pit dealings. There was an edge to the voice he recognized. He'd heard it at the pit. You got them there sometimes. High rolling types with fancy waistcoats who traveled through the mountains, making a living by betting and sometimes making a killing by knives.

They had a look to their eye and a tone to their voice. They were known as killing gentlemen. You didn't cross the killing gentlemen. Yeah. And it's a related but not the same as the other kind of man we've talked about before and practiced talk about before, which is the insane eyes. This man is dangerous and will not think rationally before just killing you. Tea time.

Yeah. Tea time. Yeah. A couple of others, I think. Yeah. Yeah. Tea time, pin and tulip. Yes.

That's it. Yeah. There was something else I noticed about that moment. Then hearing that edge in Morris' voice is that it's kind of a side to Morris. We've not seen as readers either because when we see Morris, it's either in his head or through the eyes of, say, Keith or the rats. They have no, yeah. And they have no context for this idea of a killing gentleman.

But because the rat catches already have the context, they hear instantly. Should we dive into some big stuff? Yeah. Oh, it's all right. Yorn's first. Good. Okay. Yeah.

All right. I've got a power point. No. Tell me, Joanna, about the Pied Piper of Pamela, if you would, which I've now learned to say. Oh, someone said something about the Pied Piper of Hamilton. We missed a bit of follow up. Fuck.

Oh, that was Craig. That was Craig, wasn't it? He mentioned there's a Hamilton Academicals football team, not far from him. Because I made a terrible joking response about the fact they must not have many spectators. In fact, they might be unseen. Nice. I'm the worst. Sorry, Craig, thank you.

Anyway. In our best Scottish accent. That joke's not going to die anytime soon. But the Pied Piper of Hamlin. I wanted to go into more of the context of this. And I know this isn't the episode where we talk about the Pied Piper as the most, but it seemed the best episode to talk about it. So a rough summary of the story of the Pied Piper.

Some kind of well-dressed in coloured clothes. That's what Pied means in this context. Piper agrees to lead all of the rats out of the rat-infested town of Hamlin. For a certain sum, agreed in advance with the mayor. And then the mayor doesn't pay up. So as revenge, the Piper leads away 130 children never to be seen again. 130. 130 is the common figure.

A specific number is always more effective. It's not just about a specific number being more effective, different. So this is the thing. This is, in theory, based on a true story. Oh. Yeah, that was the fun, but I didn't know. But no one knows exactly what the true story is. This is true for a given value of true.

This is my new favourite unsolved mystery. This is my new Green Children of Warpit of Pass. Two of those are not like the other one. But yes. So the earliest origins we have for this story are a stained glass window from a church in Hamlin that was there in about year 1300, was placed about the year 1300, that was described in multiple accounts.

But it was destroyed in 1660, but there are now reconstructions of it. The earliest written record from Hamlin is in 1384. And the written record, it has been 100 years since our children left. It's generally agreed that the stained glass window commemorated some kind of tragic event. And it's usually remembered as part of the town history. There are wall carvings from the 14th and 15th century. Gate carvings, all acknowledging some kind of event where a magician or a piper took the town's children.

What the fuck? Yeah. So there's a whole bunch of theories around it. Sonda, in the rest of their Reddit comment annotation, mentioned eastern colonization by the German Empire. The piper being employed by the emperor to convince the youth of Hamlin to go east and form new settlements. There are several towns and villages in the east that bear names

that go back to this region where Hamlin is or Hameln without any other connection to surrounding geography. There are some other similar immigration theories about Germans going into Transylvania, possibly not documented in writing because the children could have been sold to a Baltic recruiter. Other theories is that there was some kind of epidemic that wiped out the town's children or death by natural causes, possibly flooding.

Because part of the story is the piper leads the rats into the river and then there's lots of different versions of events based on different writings. The piper leads the children into the river to drown, leaves them on a hill. It takes them to some kind of execution place. It takes them into the woods either way they're not seen again. And so this argument for it being a natural causes thing, epidemic or flooding, the piper represents death.

There's a lot of medieval work where death is represented in some kind of musical way. The dance book art. I also very nearly went down a rabbit hole and if my sister hadn't turned up to pick a book up from me, I would have done. There are some other dancing sicknesses recorded in medieval times. Yeah, I know, we've talked about this.

Yeah, and that's just a side thing that really fascinates me. There's also some very satanic panic sounding theories. Children led away. So most documentation, and again we're using this term vaguely, there's not a whole load of primary evidence. But there is evidence from this town. Yeah, but there is evidence in this town that some tragic event happened where the children were taken away.

But all the documentation supports it happening around mid-summer. So there's a lot of theories over children led away to taking some kind of pagan celebrations. Oh yeah, no, that's just one of those things that sounds attractive to believe, doesn't it? Yeah, quite possibly. But there was, when I say pagan here, I mean non-Christian existent religions in Europe in this time,

not pagan like Neopagan. No, no, no. And the theories are obviously children possibly harmed in just those rituals or whatever, but also possibly taken into the woods for something and then harmed in a natural event like a landslide. So there's all these different theories, but no one really knows. But there genuinely was a town where all the children disappeared

and a story around someone taking them, a piper, also described as someone with some kind of magical power. But we don't know, there's no way to know because it was the 14th century. Well, this is very cool. Would you like to get very into this? Yeah, no, I'm really... This is like, yeah, yeah.

Okay, it's time to track down every version we can find of this story and get far too into it, I think. This has very much tickled my fancy. Well, so one thing I found weird about this, so obviously it moves into literature and popular culture. And this is weird because it's a rare example of something that is so in literature and popular culture that it is in the ATU index, it's ATU 570,

so it's in Tales of Magic, ratcatcher slash pied piper. It's in the 19th century, though, where it starts being told as a story. So in 1803, Goeth, Goeth, we never learned how to pronounce that, wrote a poem... We'll never know, it's like the pied piper. The evidence was lost in a fire in 1660, which is incredible because he wasn't alive till then.

So he wrote a poem based on the story that was eventually set to music. Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, known as The Brothers Grimm. I've heard of them. Yeah. Yeah. Included the tale in their collection, Deutschsagen or German sagas.

So it wasn't in Grimm's fairy tales, but it was in one of their, you know, We Are Collecting Germanic Stories collections. That's sick. I only skim read that bit of Sonder Vogels because I didn't want to spoil what you were preparing. But did he mention that because it doesn't have a moral, it can't be a normal fairy tale.

Yeah. Yeah, I'll get to that. Oh, I'm sorry. According to the... No, you're right. According to the Grimm's account, there were two children left behind, one was blind and the other lame,

so they couldn't follow the others. And in the version that Grimm's collected, they became founders of Seibernbergen in Transylvania. So that obviously is the emigration theory as an early one. Yeah. The fact that it's in Grimm's is probably a contributing factor to it being part of the fairy tale canon. Yeah.

Yeah, it's in the same box to a certain extent. Despite the fact that it's based on a true, and obviously a true Grimm value of true, but some kind of horrible tragic event that actually happened, whereas the majority of stories from things like the ATU index are their origins are things like Greek mythology. This is almost quite a modern story to be a part of it. Yeah, that's it, isn't it?

Because you were saying it's Greek mythology and probably far beyond that's just as far as we have the records. Yeah, exactly. Whereas this one, there is probably a discernible start date. Yeah. Unless, of course, the townsfolk used an already existing legend to help explain their own tragedy, in which case maybe there's a whole thread to go.

I don't know, we could probably waste our lives. Yeah, no, this is... I'm definitely going to assess over this for a bit. But anyway, so in 1842, we get Robert Browning's version. And his version was based on, a restitution of decayed intelligence and antiquities concerning the most noble and renowned English nation. Originally published in 1605 by Richard Verstegen,

who was a 16th, 17th century publisher, writer, humorist. What's his name? Richard Verstegen. Verstegen, no, don't do that. Yes, which he changed something else. And that was the first English version of the story of the Pied Piper of Hamlet. Verst, sorry.

The Versten. So, Robert Browning based his poem on that first English language version published in the early 17th century. Oh, smart. So in 1842, obviously, we already had a bit from it, but I want to read another bit from it because it's just good. Yeah, I do.

And this is from much later. Oh, he's really good at upping the tempo. Yeah. And if you think about where that's fucking going. So it does then start getting adapted into other things. There is, and I have linked in the show notes, but approached with caution, Cosgrove Hall, who you may remember

as creating the wonderful animated weird sisters and soul music. Father. I liked one more than the other. Did a stop motion version using Browning's poem and it's fucking haunting. I watched like two minutes of it. Yeah.

And that's going to, that's going to haunt my dreams. Don't show that to children. I don't know who the fuck that was for, but interestingly, the title Pied Piper of Hamlet card uses the reproduction of the stained glass window. Oh, I'm going to watch the whole thing at some. I like stop motion. I love stop motion.

There is something inherently upsetting about stop motion or unsettling, I should say. It's very uncanny value of stop motion. Because everything's just got to be at that slightly odd speed. It's like the TikTok lip sync is trying to emulate somehow. You know? Yeah, yeah. Just the slightly exaggerated expressions

and just odd animation like movement and the exaggerated start and finish. But that's a particularly creepy stop motion thing. It reminded me of Doogal and the Blue Cat, which still haunts my nightmares. Still not okay about Doogal and the Blue Cat. I don't know that. Oh, it's like a feature length magic roundabout thing,

but it's really, really fucking dark and terrifying. Okay. And I was, my mum used to work for this curtain fabric shop and the people who owned it also owned a nice house out in the country where they kept a lot of stock. So we'd have to go out to the house when mum had to do stocktake, but dad was also working. So I was a kid and they were like,

oh, we've probably got a, they didn't have children of their own. They were like, we must have a video we can put you in front of and they had that. And I was like, oh, I love the magic roundabout because I loved the magic roundabout. And then I watched this and... No.

Not fan. No. There will be listeners who've seen Doogal and the Blue Cat and know what I'm talking about. All right. Anyway, some other adaptations. One of them was, there was an American animated anthology series from the mid-90s called Happily Ever After,

Fairy Tales for Every Child, that did a... I didn't watch the whole thing, so I don't know how racist it was. But it features Wesley Snipes as the piper and Samuel L. Jackson as the mayor, but the piper is doing like jazz trumpet stuff. This is why I assume it might have actually been racist. I don't know, I didn't watch it.

Okay. Just based on what I know about America in the 90s, not that England's any better. But I did find some of the actual music from it and it's very cool jazz music. Guy Ronnie Laws put that together. Okay. Who I'm assuming is quite a famous jazz musician.

I don't know enough about jazz to know that. And then another anthology series that did Fairy Tales, Fairy Tale Theatre, had Eric Idol playing both Robert Browning narrating and the piper. Okay. Um, but the reason I'm talking about these adaptations is quite an interesting point about this, is like I said, it's part of the Fairy Tale canon

despite being based on a true story. Sondavago made a very good point in the comment that it's not part of the often adapted thing in the same way because it's got a very sad ending and there just isn't really a way to sanitize it. Not without, not while doing anything close to the story. Like at the end of the day, it ends with the death of 130 kids or disappearance,

probably death. Yeah. It's not just the sanitizing thing, it's the moral thing. So with Grimm's Fairy Tales, they're often extremely unsanitized. But they have a, and this happened because the person did this, that or the other.

Whereas the kids, they did nothing wrong. Exactly. Like the mayor did something wrong, but 130 children did not deserve to die because the mayor didn't want to pay up. But it is really often referenced in anything pertaining to Fairy Tales, Fairy Tale ensembles, like these anthology series would include it,

alongside things like the Cinderella and the Snow White. Once upon a time, a absolutely trash show that I love that was Disney. They referenced the Pied Piper in that, in that it turns out it's Evil Peter Pan using a pipe to attract the Lost Boys. Evil Peter Pan is a very fucking weird character in that book. He's somehow eight people's grandfather. Sure.

Shrek Pied Piper turns up at some point. So it is a well-known Fairy Tale, except with none of the kind of origin that most other Fairy Tales had, instead of really horrible tragic origin. That's very interesting. We'll have to have a think about whether we can think of any other that does that, not necessarily like similar to this, but that doesn't fit into the rest of the canon.

Yeah, the rest of it, yeah. Yeah. I mean, you have the like more modern ones that then like, I went back when I did a rabbit hole on Origins of Different Fairy Tales, I talked about the Little Mermaid, which is a much more modern one because that was written by Hans Christian Andersen in the 18th century. Yeah.

And I'm not sure that does exist in the Fairy Tale canon. Oh yeah, it's not in the ATU index. Like that's going to be my kind of go-to for how old a story is, how much it's considered part of a canon. Little Mermaid less Fairy Tale canon, more Disney canon. But to tie this back in to the book we've just been talking about, Pratchett is playing with children's stories here. And in a sense, he's done this book where he wants to embrace children's stories

and he's done it through the lens of the Pied Piper, this one that really stands out from the others. And obviously done it in a very interesting way by looking at it from the perspective of the rats, which is not a common perspective in these stories. And in doing it, he's also putting in, he's doing what we love, which is a genre of sort of pastiche way, he's putting in all these references. But he's not quite genre pastiche in the same way here.

One of the things I've talked about a lot of his parodies and things, especially like Carpe Giaculum and Gothic literature, is that it's really the right shape. And this isn't, this just isn't the shape of a children's story. Every time it looks like one, it's peeled away. Yeah, you think you know who the baddies are and you've worked it out, like the famous five-word and then it's like, oh no. Yeah, the baddies are an interesting one.

You were talking about the Guild of Ratcatchers and Militia says to them, you know, well, I know you're only the humorous thugs, one big fat one, one thin one. Where's the boss? And they're very much, and then the trope gets broken. It's like, no, we don't have a boss. We're doing this for themselves. And then gets reestablished.

They do have a boss. They don't know it. It's fucking spider saying shit in their brains. And you get, you know, a silly moment of ratcatcher, rule 27 of the Guild sounds stupid. Because he's saying, oh, say them kids, not those kids. Yeah, that's it. Yeah, yeah.

But just further down the page, they're like very blatantly planning a fucking murder. You get silly stuff as well. You get the reference to Dick Livingston, which I would not have got the full reference if it wasn't for annotated project. That's a Dick Whittington, obviously, I got. But Livingston is in Ken Livingston getting rid of the... I just didn't know about that.

Somehow a bit of... Wait, no, sorry. What did he get rid of? I just knew he was the mayor of London. Oh, he got rid of the pigeons in Trafalgar Square by banning them selling birdseed. Oh, and then yeah, malicious going on. The pigeons.

Yeah, no, I wouldn't have got the full reference. I thought I was being smart by just knowing he was a mayor. No, he got rid of the pigeons. That was the thing. I wouldn't have got that without annotated projects. That's a little, but before I was aware of things like the mayor of London. Yeah, I didn't even know he got rid of the pigeons that long ago. Yeah, would have been late 90s, early 2000s.

I think that was quite a recent reference for this book. Oh yeah, in Militia, saying to Morris, well, you're not a proper talking cat. You don't wear boots and a sword and have a big hat with a feather in it. And Trek did a very good Puss in Boots. That's still my favourite. If we ignore the actual Puss in Boots movie. Can I do a little Pied Piper of Hamelin fact that I didn't want to do last week

because I thought you might mention it, but you didn't. Oh, did I miss one? Yeah, no, you didn't miss one so much as it's an infinite amount of source material here. The Pied Piper's house or Rat and Fanger house. So another rat house. Oh, I did see that one. Which translate to the Rat Captor's house, or is sometimes translated as the Pied Piper's house,

is a half timbered building in Hamelin. And it's named after an inscription on the side of it, which is meant to be an eyewitness account of the original Pied Piper of Hamelin events. AD 1284 on the 26th of June on the day of St. John and St. Paul. 130 children born in Hamelin were led out of the town by a Piper wearing multicoloured clothes after passing the cavalry near the Koppenberg. They disappeared forever. And so the stone dates from 1602, like stone parts of the building,

but apparently the building itself, like I don't know, the fact that some of the timber maybe, I don't know, is much older. And yeah, I don't know how widely believed it is that that's meant to be a proper eyewitness account or what, but it's like with this thing. No, I read about this. This is what I was meaning about some of the evidence being like gate carvings, wall carvings, that kind of thing. It's like the stained glass window in that it's not a primary piece of evidence, but it is evidence.

There's also a giant signal iPhone. I can open it. There's also a very cool image from the Wikipedia that I, from 1900, of the house. I just thought it looked really cool. Oh, signals decided to update itself. So that's good. Well, you can see that later.

I'll look forward to that. Wait, hold on. I'll put it in the chat in here. No, it's all right. It's working now. Okay. Oh, yes, that. There's also like a full on like just Pied Piper theme restaurant in Hamlin now,

which seems a bit importaste, but I also really want to go after this. I want to go to Hamlin. Yeah, obviously. But yeah. So I called that out not just because it was another bit of evidence amongst the many, many, many bits of whatever law, but because it's another. We talked about rat house a lot. Yes, we have talked about rat houses.

Now we've got a rat house. And I'm going to ask for rat house, not a, oh no, common misconception rat house. Anyway, but yeah. Briefly jump back to the fear and the murder planning. Fear and loathing in bad. Rat catches, sheds. Lints wherever we are. In bad blints.

Play on bad blints. We can't stop here. It's bad country. That's really funny. Honestly, it was. Sorry, what was it? We can't stop here. It's bad country.

We can't stop here. It's bad country is from fear and loathing in Las Vegas. Oh, sorry. Sorry, I'm sorry. I'll let it out. You pointing it out. Sorry, Patience. Just find it really funny for me.

I will. I did. I'm sorry. It's like the one. It's been a very long time since I watched any of that. I know it's like the one cool reference I've got. Oh, don't read the book. It hurts. Oh, okay. God, I can't remember what I was talking about.

Oh yeah, the whole just literally very blatantly planning a murder. And it's a rare children's story where you actually get any kind of real fear of death or threat. And, you know, not just to the rats, but to the human characters. Like, that's an interesting thing for a younger person to read. Yeah. Yeah. I'm just going to knock these kids in the head and throw them in the river. Sure.

Yeah. And that's being framed as like a nice thing. Yes. By the standards of the rat catchers, which I'll say. Well, it is, isn't it? Yeah, yeah. They're not putting them in a cage. They're not getting eaten alive by rats. Yeah. What more do you want?

Geez. Anyway, so from fear of death to fear in general, Francine? Yeah. And my first notes on this actually tie in perfectly with that because I've got, this is a kids book, like to frame all of this before I even start is it's genuinely so creepy, the suspense building just through this vague sense of unease throughout the little hints at it right from when they arrive. These experienced characters like being visibly shaken is a really good way of showing it. So when dark tan is just really not happy about all these different types of

traps and poison being around and yeah, and Morris being like, this doesn't seem right, even though he's the streetwise, whatever cat. And another thing about it being the kids book, I think he's, he's kind of met the right level of detail with the graphic stuff. So he kind of says what has happened without describing it. So he said, like the rats are eating each other, whatever. There are some authors and obviously not kids authors, one would hope it would go into, I would say too much graphic detail about that, like, you know what it would be like.

And he describes the reactions rather than the event a lot of the time, which I think is very effective. And so with the rat coursing, the changelings stared down at the circle of death and the cheering humans after a minute or two, nourishing, tore her gaze away. When she looked around, she caught the expression on dark tan space. Maybe it wasn't just the lamplight that made his eyes full of fire. Oh, so good. Yeah. And from that, again, if a kid who is not ready to read that kind of stuff does come upon it, that is not enough to traumatize a kid.

It is only if you understand what it must be that you feel the impact of the reaction. And then just, yeah, as I said, here in general, I like how the fear is built up as its own entity and as its own kind of plague, it's turning these educated rodents back into rats. Yeah. It's like one of those dancing sicknesses, something like that, just this inexplicable, like, suddenly the different again. And it's definitely its own entity. And then it's given a voice suddenly, and it's spider, and it's tied back into that who's the real baddie layering of the story.

Yeah. He also, I think, shows the reactions to fear very well. And I don't mean the reaction to the event, but to fear itself. So we go through anger, as in Hammond-Pork's case, the loss of speech, loss of faculties, in the same way that I know a lot of war veterans suffered, especially, well, I don't know if this is especially or not, but like World War I, World War II, there were a lot of people who came back with some of their senses, like they couldn't speak anymore, they couldn't hear anymore, they went blind because of some psychological thing.

Then you've got the running, you've got the freezing, you've got the acceptance, all of this. It's also interesting, I thought, that we, our characters aren't above using fear as a weapon, as they might be in a more moralistic, no, I don't mean moralistic, in a more fairytale-ish story. We've got Keith and Militia using fear tactics, using interrogation torture, you could say, on the right characters. It's not framed as a bad thing to do, maybe as a morally questionable thing to do, like they're talking about it amongst themselves. And yeah, I think it's the right thing to do, obviously. You do what they want to and need to in that situation. Just a sidebar that I like, Keith's moral reaction, where she admits she gave them laxatives,

and then admits she gave them more laxative as the antidote. And that's the line for Keith, not psychologically torturing them and making them think they're poisoned, or making them shit themselves for hours, but making the antidote more of the poison. That was the trick that he thought was the moral line. Yes. Yeah. Gosh, yes. And then just like another fun, wracked fact bit, just that rats in particular, again, might be vulnerable, this kind of thing, or it might just be because rats are particularly well studied. But there is a lot of study stuff going around how they release and detect fear pheromones, and how what a site, what a physical effect it has on them. And on lots of other species, I mean, everything from fish and

upwards, I think, fish upwards on my very religious version of the animal kingdom, sorry. But yeah. And there was a, I'm not going to go into research because it's a cruel and a bit boring, but the social buffering as a phenomenon. So having others of the same species that are friends around you in these experiments were also shown to lessen the physical effects of the alarm pheromone were. And so the whole thing tying it back into like the working together and how dangerous beings are so upset by the fact they won't just work together because he knows, it will help, it will help. Yeah. Yeah. I wish I'd written a good conclusion to this, but I haven't because it's just, we haven't reached the conclusion yet. Yeah, no, I think it's

all building and building and building. And we've just hit and tell me what a rat king is. And then the next page does not tell you, I checked because I would have kept reading. Oh, I know what a rat king is, but still, you know, I'm in the fucking, the fucking little bit of foreshadowing where what, and again, it's when these characters break, and we've got a few moments, these characters break and breaking and just givering about it. So we've got Morris and his, his confession, we've got Hammond pork and not, not givering about it, but his internal. Yeah. And then we've got Ratcatcher too,

suddenly going on about how he made a rat king and how he's terrified of it. And it's all spilling out in a confession again. We had to make one. Yeah. Yeah. And the great bit of foreshadowing of the rat, ancient Ratcatcher's guild symbol. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Which is the rat star. Tied in, so I just speak. Sorry. No. Right. Well, I think that's the to be continued, but before we continue, Francine, do you have an obscure reference for Neil for me? Kind of. Sort of, kind of, yes. The, sorry. There it is. Good. Yeah. The Poisons, the Poisons stars again. I just thought it was good. So it's an interesting mix. I thought the list of jars, we've got jars with labels like danger, hydrogen dioxide, rat vein, fire gut,

and poly put put a kettle on, which I had to rely on someone else's annotation to a lot of the time with Pratchett jokes, actually, I suffer from the fact I don't read aloud in my head. Yeah. Like, I know some people can hear a voice in their head as they read. And I don't, which I think does make you able to skim read better, but does mean you don't miss some jokes, poly put a kettle. Oh, for fuck's sake. It was like I didn't get the jelly baby joke for the longest time. Yeah. But anyway, I thought that was a nice joke mixed in with stuff like rat vein, which is a can be made in type of arsenic, I think. And yeah, and along those lines, the

laxatives she used is a real laxative. Kaskara. Kaskara, yeah, could be made, it's made from a bark in the North America's, can't remember exactly where, but it was used a lot by the native populations there. And then was used in modern medicine till 2002 when it was banned because it has a lot of side effects. But the unsurprisingly, the kind of Western interest in it as a medicine led to it being overharvested and there were real problems with supply for the native people who still used it, et cetera. So hopefully, they who I believe we use a bit more responsibly and not getting so many of these side effects now can have it. Well, I hope so. Quickly on the poisons as well, I do like that certain thing,

they've got a calendar from the ACME Poison Company. Oh, yeah. Oh, cool. We've got them again, have we? We've had them in a previous book, haven't we? So music. Yeah, that's it. Because, but yes, that's a Looney Tunes reference. Excellent. All right. I think that's everything that we can say on the part two of Amazing Morris and his educated rodents. Certainly, as if we want to go and spend the rest of our lives reading about the Pied Piper of Hamilton. Hamelin, fuck! Hamelin, you were doing so well, Francine. Let's go to Hamilton and learn about the Pied Piper there. They've got a lovely football team. Right. We'll be back next week, this time next week, with the final part of our discussion of the book, the Amazing Morris and

his educated rodents, which starts in chapter 10 and unsurprisingly goes to the end of the book. Our Christmas Slash Hogs Watch episode is also coming. That will be with you. Hopefully, Christmas Eve, we're going to be talking about the Amazing Morris movie that's about to come out. So, A, get us in your letters to the Hogfather and questions for your glorious little co-hosts. And B, just a heads up that we will siphon the chat about the movie into one specific section. So if for some reason you can't see it, you don't want to listen to the episode until you've seen it. This will be able to listen to bits. We'll make it very clear we will not spoil it for you. You can get all of those letters and things to us in a variety of ways. You can contact us on

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