Gruesome legends read in my childhood

I'm so excited. I think I've just found something from my childhood that I've been seeking for years. When I was in my early teens (maybe 13), I went to a Polish festival and picked up a book filled with the folk tales of Poland. I remembered they were a little gruesome, but fascinating. I have no idea what happened to the book over the years.

In one of my Google searches for this book, I finally think I've stumbled on one of the tales from it. In fact, I may have found the book. It's called "Legends of Poland: The Legend of Popiel and the Mice." The book is part of a series of "Legends of Poland." The art looks somewhat similar to my memories and the tale was definitely one I read. I remember the book being a collection of stories, but it's quite possible my memories are faulty and it was a series of books instead.

The story is about King Popiel, a Polish king who is incompetent. His own family tries to have him killed. Afterward, Popiel is convinced by his German wife to kill his uncles and dump their bodies in a lake. It was done, but the people revolted and Popiel and his wife escaped to their tower on a lake. But Popiel couldn't escape. Rats and mice rose up from the lake and ate through the tower to devour the royal couple.

You can find out about the legend at the Wikipedia entry. Here's a Czeslaw Milosz poem called "King Popiel." There's a film from Poland called "When the Sun Was God" that features Popiel as a main character.

Apparently, there is an old ruin in Poland that is called the Mouse Tower and is supposed to be the very tower Popiel was killed in (though historians doubt it.) For more on that structure see The World According to Google and here's a Polish flicker photo of the tower.

During my searches I found this other tale of a Mouse Tower. This time it's a Bishop Hatto on the Rhine who is devoured by rats and mice. Here's the horrible climax to this version:

They were in at last, and sprang at him fiercely.... He beat them off by the score; he trampled them under his feet; he tore at them savagely with his hands–all to no purpose; he might just as well have tried to beat back the ocean. The rats surged against him like waves breaking on a cliff, and very soon the Bishop was overwhelmed in the horrid flood. Little was left to tell of the tragedy when his servants plucked up courage to enter the building some days later.

Here's a Wikipedia entry on that version of the legend.

I tell you, I love this stuff. Half-remembered things from childhood lead down interesting pathways.

Jason of Star Command

Jason of Star Command is coming to DVD in May. This is kind of exciting, if a little weird. I watched the show religiously when I was really young. I used to wake up at ungodly hours of the morning on Saturday to see it. Now, I remember almost nothing about it. There were two little robots and there was some kind of rock-covered spaceship, or something. And there was a bad guy. That's about it.

So now, the show will become available again and I'm faced with a dilemma: Do I watch it again and risk losing my good feelings about the show? Anytime I see a show from my childhood that I've completely forgotten, I wonder if it will hold up to the pleasant memories I have for it. For instance, years ago I bought a VCR tape of "Battle of the Planets," an animated show I loved as a child. Even now, I can think of the show I thought I watched when I was a kid and how cool it was. There were superhero-type characters, an evil villain with secrets, and cool science fictiony vehicles, especially the Phoenix. But then I saw it. So much time was spent on an R2-D2 clone with tiny wings that narrated the whole show. And Casey Kasem's voice was all over it (not bad in itself, but it's hard to make a character come alive when it sounds just like that top 40 guy.) The animation was poor. And it was just generally horrible.

I don't expect Jason of Star Command to be very good. It's going to have poor TV special effects. It's not going to take many risks and it's sure to have a moral at the end of every episode. And I'm sure those two little robots I liked so much as a kid will be annoyingly cutesy.

But there's always a chance I will like it anyway. Like Land of the Lost. It's totally cheesy, but it still maintains charm. And its general weirdness keeps it entertaining. But it's got dinosaurs and sleestacks. I don't think Jason of Star Command has anything so cool (and no, James Doohan is not cool enough.)

So, maybe when May rolls around I'll try and rent the DVDs. Give it a chance and see what I was poisoning my mind with at 9 years old.

Now, if only someone would put out Thundarr on DVD. That's a show I would pick up without hesitation.