The dancing plague of 1518

[Hygro]

You'd develop a tolerance to the effects long before anyone collapsed.

 

[AdamCrock]

On the account of the upcoming saturday (night fever) I just remembered a video from so long ago (and this guys definitely dig what a dance plague is ! )

 

[CavLancer]

No potatoes in Europe in 1518.

Oh yeah.

So no vodka then...?

 

[warpus]

I'm guessing more than just the guy picking knows mushrooms. Being from Oregon I can tell you that a lot of the people do. That's today with all the distractions. Back in 1518 there were fewer entertainments. Copulating, hunting, picking berries, planting, harvesting, dancing, and picking mushrooms. With only these few things to do, I'm guessing experts abounded. Plus, the mushroom guy would have to keep them coming for a month. That's a lot of psychedelic mushrooms. He would also have to hate mushrooms himself or he would just dance, and the mushrooms would stop coming. However unlikely its as good a theory as any I've seen. The month is the problem. If they are ingesting something that makes them dance they have to continue to do so for a month. If its bread and they stopped dancing long enough to eat, and chose potatoes instead, the effect would soon end. This is Germany too, lots of potatoes. In 1518 there should still have been plenty of game as well. That said, bringing down a wild boar while dancing might be a trick.

Wait, the dancing plague went on for a MONTH? Okay, that's crazy, I thought it was 1-2 days, clearly I didn't read the article well enough.

As for people knowing their mushrooms, in Poland learning about mushrooms is a bit of a rite of passage. Virtually every single Polish person I've ever met has gone through this. It happens when you're young, your parents will take you out to the forest to pick mushrooms. If you live in the city, you just drive out of town a bit and go to one of your favourite spots. They'll start teaching you which kind are edible and which kind will kill you. You'll come home, then mom will make a mushroom soup and mushroom pierogies or whatever. Then when you run out of mushrooms, you repeat, and involve the kids more and more, until they know enough to do it on their own.

Nobody in North America seems to pick mushrooms. It's just not done. Oh sure some people do it.. But it's not a society wide phenomenon by any means. Maybe 1 out of 2,000 or 5,000 people picks mushrooms on a regular basis. Maybe 1 out of 10,000 or less even. I know just one non Polish person who picks mushrooms on a regular basis and she was born in Czechia.

When Czernobyl hit us in Poland, it temporarily put an end to all mushroom picking in the whole country. The government was late about reporting the disaster, because.. well, you know, they didn't want us to know at first because evil communists and so on. But once everybody knew, that was one of the main things being said: Don't pick any mushrooms for a while.

Unfortunately I didn't get to make it all the way through the rite of passage, we left Poland right as I was getting into joining my parents on mushroom picking trips. Then in West Germany we sort of stopped doing that.. Maybe the terrain was just unfamiliar and we didn't know any good mushroom spots, I dont know. Maybe it's that German stores had a lot more types of mushrooms than commie Polish ones. Maybe we were just busy with other stuff. We did go mushroom picking here and there, but not at the same frequency as in Poland. And now here in Canada we never do it. I think maybe there's just more types of mushrooms growing in the wild in Poland? I have no idea really. A lot of people in Poland seemed to view mushroom picking as a sort of a relaxing meditative type of activity. You get out in nature and it makes you feel better. Maybe we've just embraced too many Canadian cultural values and now use other activities to fill in our mushroom picking time..

 

[REDY]

All that not collected mushrooms. I see business opportunities.

I do it just in forest right behind our family cottage. Its quite isolated place on the steep slope, so mushrooms are just waiting on me. There grow just 3 types of mushrooms, so my knowledge quite degenerated and I will not pass it to other generation. My parents were intermediate, my all grandparents were experts. So its pretty possible that for the new generations it will be not general knowledge and activity.

 

[AdamCrock]

Oh yeah.

So no vodka then...?

Rye, wheat, apples, plums - You name it

 

[warpus]

My parents were intermediate, my all grandparents were experts. So its pretty possible that for the new generations it will be not general knowledge and activity.

Yeah you are probably right In Poland these days grocery stores have more than just empty shelves, so people can buy all the mushrooms they want. Everyone's leading a much more fast paced lifestyle these days, there's no time for anything, so yeah.. one day there will be just one freelance mushroom picker left in Poland I'm sure, and then he will die and there will be no more.

 

[Gori the Grey]

You never met my first girlfriend.

I have not. I'm sure she was a lovely woman. My condolences.

 

[shadowplay]

Picking wild mushrooms in Canada isn't advisable... too many toxic ones.

 

[warpus]

Picking wild mushrooms in Canada isn't advisable... too many toxic ones.

There's toxic ones in Poland too, you just gotta know which ones to avoid.

 

[CavLancer]

In Oregon picking mushrooms is all the rage.

 

[Mouthwash]

As for people knowing their mushrooms, in Poland learning about mushrooms is a bit of a rite of passage.

No comment. Just this.