Sweet Revenge

laundry gets ignored, and dishes can really pile up. For King James the Fourth of Scotland, that passion was language. James the Fourth was a true renaissance Man in every sense. This term meant as an homage to Leonardo da Vinci, the original renaissance man, refers to someone who is well studied, well rounded, and skilled in many areas, either through natural

talent or hard work. During the period that James the Fourth lived in the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries, the Renaissance was just kicking off and the ideas coming out of it were spreading far and wide. Suddenly it wasn't enough for a learned person to master languages and histories. They should also be intellectual, a philosopher willing to debate different ideas, an artist, a scholar, maybe even an inventor of some sort. The ideal renaissance man was all of

that and more. James fourth was very young when he came to the throne, at just fifteen, He still should have been in the school room instead of succeeding his father to the throne. His courtiers were still jockeying for position, and as a boy with relatively little power and no parents to support him, he couldn't rule in his own rights until around fourteen ninety five. The young king was very good looking, with an interest in physical activities like hunting, falconry,

and jousting. However, james good looks in athletic skills weren't the only qualities to recommend him. He was also very intelligent and well educated. He took an interest in different scientific pursuits, including chemistry, alchemy, and dentistry, practicing all of

them himself. While the idea of the king as a practicing dentist makes me nervous, he was dedicated to the advancement of medicine, founding the first department of medicine in a university in the British Isles in fourteen ninety five. He was a great patron of the arts as well, supporting everything from music to poetry, and he threw lavish parties and pageants. Unfortunately, all the spectacles and science in the world didn't make James the Fourth any better liked.

He was deeply unpopular with the nobility, and his predilection for siring illegitimate children was causing problems. Still, the dislike wasn't enough to oust him from his throne or from his experiments. Now. Like I said, James was fascinated by different language. He spoke eight of them himself. He was the last Scottish monarch to speak Scott's Gaelic alongside English, but his repertoire also included Latin, French, German, Italian, Flemish

and Spanish. This obsession led James the Fourth to design a bizarre experiment in fourteen ninety three. The king was particularly interested in what came before modern language, not ancient hieroglyphs or anything taught by parents, but the spoken word with no interference. James reasoned that whatever language came about spontaneously, to someone who had never heard spoken language before must

have been given that by God. So James the Fourth ordered two newborn children to be sent to live on the remote island of Inchkeith, where they would be raised by a woman who was deaf and mute. He reasoned that with no adult there to teach them language, they would grow up only speaking the first language that God gifted to mankind. This experiment sounds strange and even cruel to us today, and to be clear, it very much is. Also.

He wasn't the stored the last to try this. One of James's possible inspirations was Holy Roman Emperor Frederick the Second, who lived in the twelve hundreds, and another may have been a more ancient source. You see, in the seventh century BCE, an Egyptian pharaoh sent two infants to live with a shepherd in an extremely isolated part of Egypt and told the man the children could never be spoken to. According to Herodotus, the children babbled often, but one of

the words was recognizable, the Phrygian word for bread. The pharaoh then concluded that Phrygia was mankind's oldest civilization. He was wrong about that, but the story of the experiment remained. James the Fourth had no qualms about essentially shipping a woman and two children off to a deserted island with no way to send for help. He only provided the bare minimum of material necessities, including food, clothing, and kindling,

and then he waited. So what happened to the children, Well, that's where the story tends to get a little fuzzy. Some theorized that the children got sick and died before they could be recovered from the island. Others have proposed that they rejoined society and may have become minor celebrities. Still, others claimed that they were brought back and presented to the king, where, weirdest of all, they spoke perfect Hebrew.

We'll never know for sure, largely because there aren't any contemporary records of the experiment taking place, and maybe it never did. But even if it did happen, it's doubtful that James got the answers that he wanted. Sir Walter Scott summed it up best when he said the children likely left the island sounding more like the goats and sheep that called it home. But regardless of all that, it's thrilling to speculate what people sounded like in a

time before our own language is ever changing. And maybe someday distant descendants of ours will want to know what we sounded like, and hey, maybe our cabinets of curiosities will still be around to show them. For those of us who study history, there seems to be nothing new under the sun. As Mark Twain put it, it's actually impossible to have a new idea, but that it can be beautiful for old notions to be remade into something new.

We might see that in the stories we tell over and over, from books and plays to movies, the emotions and delight carry through to new generations while preserving the original intent. My Fair Lady has gone through many iterations, starting as a Greek myth before becoming a stage play in nineteen thirteen, then a Broadway musical in nineteen fifty six, and finally the nineteen sixty four movie that we all

grew up with. For anyone not as musical crazy as some members of my research team, I'll give you a quick recap. Eliza Doolittle is a Cockney flower seller in Edwardian, London. When she comes to the attention of phonetic scholar doctor Henry Higgins. Egomaniac. Higgins boasts that he can reform her accent and manners so well she could pass as a duchess at a high society ball. The story goes on to follow their experiments highs and lows, and each learns

something from the other along the way. Supported by a colorful cast of characters, It's always a delight to watch, albeit a little dated now. The Broadway show was incredibly popular, starring to young Julie Andrews as Eliza and industry giant Rex Harrison as Higgins. Their chemistry, along with Andrews's spectacular voice, made the show a hit, and distant bodies in Hollywood began to talk, Yes, my fair Lady would make the perfect movie musical, so Jack Warner of Warner Brothers snapped

up the rights. As production got off the ground, many expected Andrews and Harrison to reprise their roles. They had made the stage show a success after all. Audiences were delighted to learn that Harrison would once again be bringing his unique charms to the Priggish professor, but were stunned to hear that Andrews had been snubbed. Instead of keeping Julie Andrews, who had little screen experience or draw outside of theater crowds. Jack Warner decided the movie needed a

bigger name. At that time, no one was bigger than Audrey Hepburn, and she was delighted to take the part. She had no singing experience, mind you, but she hired a vocal coach and worked hard to step into the role of Eliza. Although she was disappointed at the loss, Andrews herself was hardly idle at the time. She was performing in Camelot as Queen Guenevere alongside Richard Burton. She stood out in the cast so much so that she

had a special visitor backstage. One night. Walt Disney was in the crowd and loved her performance so much that he offered her a role in an upcoming project right there on the spot. Andrews smiled and demurred, and finally admitted that she wouldn't be able to be in his movie because well, she was pregnant. Disney was not about to lose a budding star and firmly told her that

they would wait, and they did. In nineteen sixty two, Andrews gave birth to a daughter, and in nineteen sixty three, began her work as a no nonsense nanny Mary Poppins herself. Both Mary Poppins and My Fair Lady premiered in theaters in late nineteen sixty four, and both were smashed successes. It was a golden moment for Andrews, but was likely at least a little bittersweet for Hepburn. You see, Jack

Warner wasn't taking any chances with a commercial success. He had promised Hepburn that she could sing the parts, but without anyone realizing it, they had brought in one of Hollywood's worst kept secrets, a woman named Marnie Nixon. Nixon was what you call the ghost singer. You can hear her voice in classics like Westside Story when she sang Maria's parts, or other roles like Grandmother Faugh in Disney's Moulan.

Nixon sang a majority of Eliza Doolittle's numbers, albeit uncredited, which reduced Hepburn to a largely speaking role even after she had tried so hard. We don't know Hepburn's reactions, but she was likely devastated. I've heard the original cuts when Hepburn's and honestly, while She's no Julie Andrews. She

might have made a lovely Eliza if left alone. Regardless, award season was going to be contentious between the two movies, especially The Golden Globes, which pitted Hepburn and Andrews against each other for Best Actress. It could have devolved into a squabble that would have given Betty Davis and Joan Crawford a run for their money. But of course, neither Hepburn nor Andrews begrudged each other the success. In the end, Julie Andrews won the award for her performance as Mary

Poppins and rose to make the expected acceptance speech. After she thanked everyone who had helped her get where she was that night, she took a deep breath and closed by saying these words, my thanks to a man who made a wonderful movie and who made all of this possible in the first place, mister Jack Warner. It was a small little dig that caused the place to irrupt, and the camera caught Warner laughing along with the rest of the crowd. It's a snub that's been mostly forgotten.

But as we know, Andrew's career was just beginning. To blossom. Over the years, Ulie Andrews has taught so many kids, including myself, so many important life lessons, including, as it turns out, how to throw shade with a smile. It's true a spoonful of sugar can make even the bitterest sentiment go down in the most delightful way. 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 Mankey 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 Worldoflore dot com. And until next time, stay curious.