Miss Piggies

Published May 17, 2022, 9:00 AM

Some legends are born that way. These two stories approach that idea from two very different, very curious angles.

Welcomed Aaron Mankey's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of I Heart Radio and Grim and Mild. Our world is full of the unexplainable, and if history is an open book, all of these amazing tales are right there on display, just waiting for us to explore. Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosities. The idea of a human animal hybrid is nothing new. Anyone who has any familiarity with mythology the world over will have heard of minotaurs, centaurs, fauns, satyrs, and all kinds of fun combinations that stimulate the imagination. But most people by now at least know to categorize these creatures in the fiction category of their mental library, not in the nonfiction section. But there are apparently some exceptions to that rule. There's at least one particular human animal hybrid that is so well documented that no one knows heads or tails what to make of it, other than to accept it. It started in the Netherlands. In one According to the legend, a Dutch heiress by the surname of Jacobs encountered a mother and her perfectly normal children begging on the streets, having nothing but bitterness in her own cold heart. The heiress told the woman to be gone and take her pig children with her. The beggar woman, on hearing this, said that if her children were pigs, then made the heiress's children be pigs as well. In the story books, we would call this the inciting incident, the start of the action. It's a classic hex only partially hidden, and surely you can bet what happened next. True to the curse, Jacob went on to deliver just a few short weeks later, and you guessed it. This child had the body of a human and the head of a pig. She was believed to speak in grunts and eat from a trough. Thus the first sighting of the pig faced woman, but not the last. The British weren't too far behind. They began to spread the story of a Dutch woman by the name of tannekin Skinker, who was also a pig faced woman, whose mother had put her in the exact saint predicament as Jacobs, cruel to a beggar woman and cursed to have piggish children. Numerous onlookers heard the curse and drew the parallels between the two and assumed that this was all the same family skinkers. Story grew from there beyond what Jacobs did. Her parents, desperate to continue the family line, offered a comfy dowry of forty pounds, but there were no suitors. She did, after all, have the head of a pig. Ironically, not even a pig farmer would marry her, and her family solicited. Quite a few varieties of the story recount that this unusual woman resided in London's hole Born district. She was recorded as being tall and I quote well proportioned, while keeping her less than ordinary face hidden behind a hood and a black velvety mask, and the records retain their consistency as this woman supposedly talked in grunts like the others. This story spread so far and so wide that by the seventeen thirties it became accepted as fact. Everyday folks from town to city to countryside recounted stories of the deformed woman, of varying names, but of the exact same pig face. And it should be mentioned that this pig faced woman is not to be confused with one Griselda Stevens, who had an actual physical deformity that left her face in a state resembling that of a hog. No, this was actually explainable, and believe it or not, her own problems of being misconstrued as a pig faced woman were thanks in part to the well circulated stories of her Dutch predecessors. The actual hybrid of cursed origins, if you will, through Griselda, though the legend continued on into the nineteenth century through the noble pig woman of Manchester Square. Of course, it was only hearsay the word of a passer by seeing a snout or hearing an oink. Nothing concrete yet one more rumor, no doubt, perpetuated by the original tale. Yeah, this rumor swept across England in eighteen fourteen and eighteen fifteen, with newspapers writing her existence as fact, not the fiction that she undoubtedly had to be. The newspaper, like most media outlets, was less than kind, writing that she would have to be wooed by grunts if anyone wished to take her hand in marriage. I can't help but hope that whoever wrote the article was the next to be hext. There is a moral to the story, though, when you see someone less fortunate than you, try not to be so cruel, Otherwise you run the risk of your kids being well pigheaded. World War two was a long and deadly conflict. Sixteen million US troops fought alongside millions more from across the globe, with over four hundred thousand Americans dying for their country. Those who were stationed overseas, far from their families and friends, longed for the comforts of home, the warmth of their own beds, hugs from children left behind, and even something as simple as seeing a movie in a big theater, which is why the United Service Organization was formed otherwise known as the USO. Between nineteen forty one and ninety seven. Popular celebrities of the time, people like Bob Hope, Judy Garland, and Humphrey Bogart put on shows for the troops to bring a little bit of home to the front lines. But the U s O wasn't the only game in town when it came to entertaining the Allies. England had its own organization called e n s A. The Entertainment's National Service Association NSA brought the likes of Laurence Olivier and Peter Sellers to the British Armed Forces. The same way that the USO brought Being Crosby to the Yanks, and among Ensa's top performers was a man named George Formby. Now Formby was born in Lancashire, England, in nineteen o four to a father who was no stranger to entertaining. He was widely known in music halls as a singer and a comedian, but didn't want his son to take up the family business. Sadly, George Sr. Died in nine one of a bronchial infection, leaving a void in his son's life as well as a void on the stage. Despite never having seen his father perform with his own eyes, George Jr. Was inspired to take up the act himself after an impostor started performing under the name the new George Formby, and so George Jr. Learned how to imitate his father from listening to his records while his mother taught him all the original jokes. George also added some of his own material, like playing the ukulele, which helped the staff pulished him is more than just a carbon copy of his late father. With help from his wife and fellow performer Barrel Ingham, Formby worked his way up to packed audiences, record deals, and even film roles. He signed a seven year contract with English film studio Associated Talking Pictures, run by a producer named Basil Dean. Dean had passed on form By early on, but eventually saw something in him, mainly that audiences seemed to enjoy him, so it wasn't a surprise that when Dean left a TP to head up ENSA, he brought Formby along for the ride. George was paid ten pounds a week and flew out to France in March of nineteen forty to perform for the British Army's Expeditionary Force. He took his duties to the troops seriously, to both at home and abroad. When he wasn't singing and dancing for the soldiers in Europe, he was touring factories and concert halls back home to raise money on their behalf. He also continued to make movies and took a six film deal with Columbia Pictures in America. But he was never afraid to do anything for a laugh, even in the middle of a war zone. He would sit on top of a Sherman tank surrounded by soldiers as he sang them a funny tune. He'd also stand in fields riddled with bombed out craters as he strummed his ukulele. In fact, after the Allies landed at Normandy, Formby traveled there to entertain them. On one occasion, he was unable to give the men a proper concert as the Germans were too close for it to be done safely. Instead, he crawled into the trenches with them and told them jokes to keep their spirits up. And then he set out to see the sixth Airborne Division, who had been holding their position near several key bridges for fifty six days. Formby put on nine shows for them in a single day, and he did it standing in front of a sandbag wall as the troops hid in the safety of their foxholes. It didn't matter how dangerous it was. Formby's duty was to keep morale high and provide some much needed relief to the war We are soldiers, and he continued to make movies and work on behalf of ENSA until the end of the war. George Formby died in nineteen sixty one, having performed in front of no fewer than three million servicemen during the war. He never killed anyone. Nor did he storm the beaches at Normandy, but he was a hero. Nonetheless, James Brown is often credited as the hardest working man in show business, but George Formby easily gave him a run for his money, and he literally did it from the trenches of a war zone. I hope you've enjoyed today's guided tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities. Subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts, or learn more about the show by visiting Curiosities podcast dot com. The show was created by me Aaron Manky in partnership with how Stuff Works. I make another award winning show called Lore, which is a podcast, book series, and television show, and you can learn all about it over at the World of Lore dot com. And until next time, stay curious. Yeah h

Aaron Mahnke's Cabinet of Curiosities

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