May 17, 2022 • 10 mins
Some legends are born that way. These two stories approach that idea from two very different, very curious angles.
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
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
(00:27):
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.
(00:51):
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
(01:11):
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
(01:31):
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
(01:52):
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,
(02:13):
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.
(02:34):
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.
(02:56):
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.
(03:17):
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,
(03:39):
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.
(04:02):
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,
(04:25):
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
(04:47):
your kids being well pigheaded. World War two was a
long and deadly conflict. Sixteen million US troops fought alongside
(05:10):
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
(05:30):
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
(05:50):
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
(06:12):
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
(06:35):
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
(06:56):
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
(07:20):
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
(07:43):
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.
(08:06):
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
(08:27):
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
(08:47):
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
(09:10):
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
(09:33):
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
(09:54):
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
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
(00:27):
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.
(00:51):
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
(01:11):
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
(01:31):
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
(01:52):
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,
(02:13):
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.
(02:34):
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.
(02:56):
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.
(03:17):
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,
(03:39):
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.
(04:02):
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,
(04:25):
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
(04:47):
your kids being well pigheaded. World War two was a
long and deadly conflict. Sixteen million US troops fought alongside
(05:10):
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
(05:30):
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
(05:50):
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
(06:12):
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
(06:35):
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
(06:56):
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
(07:20):
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
(07:43):
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.
(08:06):
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
(08:27):
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
(08:47):
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
(09:10):
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
(09:33):
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
(09:54):
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 News
Host
Aaron Mahnke
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