Happy Ratcatcher's Day! Wait... What?

Every profession has a day and it's only fair that people who catch rats for a living should get theirs.

Ratcatcher's Day originates from the myth of the Pied Piper. You all know the story. Plague of rats, piper comes in and played his pipe, leading all of the rats into the river where they drowned (in the style of most Grimm's faerie tales, it all ends in death).

The Grimm brothers used the town of Hamelin as the setting for their version of The Pied Piper and their story also says it was the 26th of June that the rats left the town in the company of our favourite minstrel. The reason that we celebrate Ratcatcher's Day on the 22nd of July as well is because of a poem by a fella named Robert Browning. In his poem he says that the piper led the rats to their doom on the 22nd if July 1376. The Grimm Brothers say it was the 26th of June 1284, just under a century earlier.

In the end it doesn't really matter. But today (or the 22nd of last month if you have a time machine) is the day to remember and say "Thanks Mate" to your local Ratcatcher.



Have a good one.