(WIKIPEDIA)
The Pied Piper of Hamelin (German: Rattenfänger von Hameln, the Rat-Catcher of Hamelin) is the subject of a legend concerning the departure or death of a great number of children from the town of Hamelin (Hameln), Lower Saxony, Germany, in the Middle Ages. The earliest references describe a piper, dressed in multicolored clothing, leading the children away from the town never to return. In the 16th century the story was expanded into a full narrative, in which the piper is a rat-catcher hired by the town to lure rats away with his magic pipe. When the citizenry refuses to pay for this service, he retaliates by turning his power that he put in his instrument on their children, leading them away as he had the rats. This version of the story spread as folklore. This version has also appeared in the writings of, amongst others, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, the Brothers Grimm and Robert Browning.
Theories have been proposed suggesting that the Pied Piper is a symbol of the children's death by plague or catastrophe. Other theories liken him to figures like Nicholas of Cologne, who is said to have lured away a great number of children on a disastrous Children's Crusade. The current theory, generally accepted by scholars and historians,[1] ties the departure of Hamelin's children to the Ostsiedlung, in which a number of Germans left their homes to colonize Eastern Europe.
Plots
In 1284, while the town of Hamelin was suffering from a rat infestation, a piper dressed in colorful red clothing appeared, claiming to be a rat-catcher. He promised the mayor a solution to their problem with the rats. The mayor in turn promised to pay him for the removal of the rats. The piper accepted, and played his pipe to lure the rats into the Weser River, where all but one drowned. Despite the piper's success, the mayor reneged on his promise and refused to pay him the full sum. The piper left the town angrily, vowing to return later to take revenge. On Saint John and Paul's day, while the Hamelinites were in church, the piper returned, dressed in green, like a hunter, playing his pipe, and in so doing attracting the town's children. One hundred and thirty children followed him out of town, where they were lured into a cave and never seen again. Depending on the version, at most three children remained behind: One was lame and could not follow quickly enough, the second was deaf and followed the other children out of curiosity, and the last was blind and unable to see where he was going. These three informed the villagers of what had happened when they came out from church.
Another version relates that the Pied Piper led the children into following him to the top of Koppelberg Hill, where he took them to a beautiful land and had his wicked way,[3] or a place called Koppenberg Mountain,[4] or that he made them walk into the Weser like he did with the rats, and they all drowned. Some versions state that the Piper returned the children after payment, or that he returned the children after the villagers paid several times the original amount of gold.
History
The earliest mention of the story seems to have been on a stained glass window placed in the Church of Hamelin c. 1300. The window was described in several accounts between the 14th and 17th centuries.[5] It was destroyed in 1660. Based on the surviving descriptions, a modern reconstruction of the window has been created by historian Hans Dobbertin. It features the colorful figure of the Pied Piper and several figures of children dressed in white.
This window is generally considered to have been created in memory of a tragic historical event for the town. Also, Hamelin town records start with this event. The earliest written record is from the town chronicles in an entry from 1384 which states: "It is 200 years since our children left."[6]
Although research has been conducted for centuries, no explanation for the historical event is agreed upon. In any case, the rats were first added to the story in a version from c. 1559 and are absent from earlier accounts.
Natural Causes
A number of theories suggest that children died of some natural causes such as disease or accident [7] and that the Piper was a symbolic figure of Death. Analogous themes which are associated with this theory include the Dance of Death, Totentanz or Danse Macabre, a common medieval trope. Some of the scenarios that have been suggested as fitting this theory include that the children drowned in the river Weser, were killed in a landslide, or contracted some disease during an epidemic. Another modern interpretation reads the story as alluding to an event where Hamelin children were lured away by a pagan or heretic sect to forests near Coppenbrügge (the mysterious Koppen "hills" of the poem) for ritual dancing where they all perished during a sudden landslide or collapsing sinkhole.[8]
Others have suggested that the children left Hamelin to be part of a pilgrimage, a military campaign, or even a new Children's crusade (which is said to have occurred in 1212, not long before) but never returned to their parents. These theories see the unnamed Piper as their leader or a recruiting agent. The town's people made up this story (instead of recording the facts) to avoid the wrath of the church or the king.
William Manchester's A World Lit Only by Fire places the events in 1484, 100 years after the written mention in the town chronicles that "It is 100 years since our children left", and further proposes that the Pied Piper was a psychopathic paedophile. However, nowhere in the book does Manchester offer proof of his description of the facts as he presents them. He makes similar assertions regarding other legends, also without supporting evidence.[9]
Emigration Theories
Added speculation on the migration is based on the idea that by the 13th century the area had too many people resulting in the oldest son owning all the land and power (majorat), leaving the rest as serfs.[10] It has also been suggested that one reason the emigration of the children was never documented was that the children were sold to a recruiter from the Baltic region of Eastern Europe, a practice that was not uncommon at the time. In her essay Pied Piper Revisited, Sheila Harty states that surnames from the region settled are similar to those from Hamelin and that selling off illegitimate children, orphans or other children the town could not support is the more likely explanation. She states further that this may account for the lack of records of the event in the town chronicles.[6] In his book, The Pied Piper: A Handbook, Wolfgang Mieder states that historical documents exist showing that people from the area including Hamelin did help settle parts ofTransylvania.[11] Transylvania had suffered under lengthy Mongol invasions of Central Europe, led by two grandsons of Genghis Khan and which date from around the time of the earliest appearance of the legend of the piper, the early 13th century.
In the version of the legend posted on the official website for the town of Hamelin, another aspect of the emigration theory is presented:
Among the various interpretations, reference to the colonization of East Europe starting from Low Germany is the most plausible one: The "Children of Hameln" would have been in those days citizens willing to emigrate being recruited by landowners to settle in Moravia, East Prussia, Pomerania or in the Teutonic Land. It is assumed that in past times all people of a town were referred to as "children of the town" or "town children" as is frequently done today. The "Legend of the children's Exodus" was later connected to the "Legend of expelling the rats". This most certainly refers to the rat plagues being a great threat in the medieval milling town and the more or less successful professional rat catchers.[12]
This version states that "children" may simply have referred to residents of Hameln who chose to emigrate and not necessarily to youths.
Historian Ursula Sautter, citing the work of linguist Jurgen Udolph, offers this hypothesis in support of the emigration theory:
"After the defeat of the Danes at the Battle of Bornhoved in 1227," explains Udolph, "the region south of the Baltic Sea, which was then inhabited by Slavs, became available for colonization by the Germans." The bishops and dukes of Pomerania, Brandenburg, Uckermark and Prignitz sent out glib "locators," medieval recruitment officers, offering rich rewards to those who were willing to move to the new lands. Thousands of young adults from Lower Saxony and Westphalia headed east. And as evidence, about a dozen Westphalian place names show up in this area. Indeed there are five villages called Hindenburg running in a straight line from Westphalia to Pomerania, as well as three eastern Spiegelbergs and a trail of etymology from Beverungen south of Hamelin to Beveringen northwest of Berlin to Beweringen in modern Poland.[13]
Udolph favors the hypothesis that the Hamelin youths wound up in what is now Poland.[14] Genealogist Dick Eastman cited Udolph's research on Hamelin surnames that have shown up in Polish phonebooks:
Linguistics professor Jurgen Udolph says that 130 children did vanish on a June day in the year 1284 from the German village of Hamelin (Hameln in German). Udolph entered all the known family names in the village at that time and then started searching for matches elsewhere. He found that the same surnames occur with amazing frequency in Priegnitz and Uckermark, both north of Berlin. He also found the same surnames in the former Pomeranian region, which is now a part of Poland.Udolph surmises that the children were actually unemployed youths who had been sucked into the German drive to colonize its new settlements in Eastern Europe. The Pied Piper may never have existed as such, but, says the professor, "There were characters known as lokators who roamed northern Germany trying to recruit settlers for the East." Some of them were brightly dressed, and all were silver-tongued.Professor Udolph can show that the Hamelin exodus should be linked with the Battle of Bornhoeved in 1227 which broke the Danish hold on Eastern Europe. That opened the way for German colonization, and by the latter part of the thirteenth century there were systematic attempts to bring able-bodied youths to Brandenburg and Pomerania. The settlement, according to the professor's name search, ended up near Starogard in what is now northwestern Poland. A village near Hamelin, for example, is called Beverungen and has an almost exact counterpart called Beveringen, near Pritzwalk, north of Berlin and another called Beweringen, near Starogard.Local Polish telephone books list names that are not the typical Slavic names one would expect in that region. Instead, many of the names seem to be derived from German names that were common in the village of Hamelin in the thirteenth century. In fact, the names in today's Polish telephone directories include Hamel, Hamler and Hamelnikow, all apparently derived from the name of the original village.[15]
Fourteenth-century Decan Lude chorus book
Decan Lude of Hamelin was reported, c. 1384, to have in his possession a chorus book containing a Latin verse giving an eyewitness account of the event.[16] The verse was reportedly written by his grandmother. This chorus book is believed to have been lost since the late 17th century. The odd-looking name 'Decan Lude' may possibly indicate a priest holding the position of Dean (Latin: decanus, modern German: Dekan or Dechant) whose name was Ludwig; but as yet he has proved impossible to trace.
Fifteenth-century Lueneburg manuscript
The Lueneburg manuscript (c. 1440–50) gives an early German account of the event:[17]
In the year of 1284, on the day of Saints John and Paul on June 26 By a piper, clothed in many kinds of colours, 130 children born in Hamelin were seduced,and lost at the place of execution near the koppen. |
This appears to be the oldest surviving account. Koppen (High German Kuppe, meaning the knoll of a hill) seems to be a reference to one of several hills surrounding Hamelin. Which of them was intended by the verse's author remains uncertain.
Reportedly, there is a long-established law forbidding singing and music in one particular street of Hamelin, out of respect for the victims:[18] the Bungelosenstrasse adjacent to the Pied Piper's House. During public parades which include music, including wedding processions, the band will stop playing upon reaching this street and resume upon reaching the other side.
Sixteenth- and seventeenth-century sources
In 1556, De miraculis sui temporis (Latin: Concerning the Wonders of his Times) by Jobus Fincelius mentions the tale. The author identifies the Piper with the Devil.
Somewhere between 1559 and 1565, Count Froben Christoph von Zimmern included a version in his Zimmerische Chronik.[19] This appears to be the earliest account which mentions the plague of rats. Von Zimmern dates the event only as 'several hundred years ago' (vor etlichen hundert jarn [sic]), so that his version throws no light on the conflict of dates (see next paragraph).
The earliest English account is that of Richard Rowland Verstegan (1548 – c. 1636), an antiquary and religious controversialist of partly Dutch descent, in his Restitution of Decayed Intelligence (Antwerp, 1605); he does not give his source. (It is unlikely to have been von Zimmern, since his manuscript chronicle was not discovered until 1776.) Verstegan includes the reference to the rats and the idea that the lost children turned up in Transylvania. The phrase 'Pide [sic] Piper' occurs in his version and seems to have been coined by him. Curiously enough his date is entirely different from that given above: July 22, 1376; this may suggest that two events, a migration in 1284 and a plague of rats in 1376, have become fused together.
The story is given, with a different date, in Robert Burton's The Anatomy of Melancholy of 1621, where it is used as an example of supernatural forces: 'At Hammel in Saxony, ann. 1484, 20 Junii, the devil, in likeness of a pied piper, carried away 130 children that were never after seen.' He does not give his immediate source.
Verstegan's account was copied in Nathaniel Wanley's Wonders of the Little World (1687), which was the immediate source of Robert Browning's well-known poem (see nineteenth century below). Verstegan's account is also repeated in William Ramesey's Wormes (1668)—"... that most remarkable story in Verstegan, of thePied Piper, that carryed away a hundred and sixty Children from the Town of Hamel in Saxony, on the 22. of July, Anno Dom. 1376. A wonderful permission of GOD to the Rage of the Devil".
Nineteenth-century versions
In 1803, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe wrote a poem based on the story that was later set to music by Hugo Wolf . He incorporated references to the story in his version of Faust. The first part of the Drama was first published in 1808 and the second in 1832.
Jakob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm, known as the Brothers Grimm, drawing from eleven sources included the tale in their collection "Deutsche Sagen", first published in 1816. According to their account two children were left behind as one was blind and the other lame, so neither could follow the others. The rest became the founders of Siebenbürgen (Transylvania).
Using the Verstegan/Wanley version of the tale and adopting the 1376 date, Robert Browning wrote a poem of that name which was published in his Dramatic Lyrics in 1842.[20] Browning's verse retelling is notable for its humour, wordplay, and jingling rhymes.
Twentieth-century versions and mentions of the story
- The Pied Piper is a short animated film based on the story. The short was produced by Walt Disney Productions, directed by Wilfred Jackson, and released on September 16, 1933, as a part of the Silly Symphonies series.
- In Robert McCloskey's 1943 book "Homer Price," one chapter is about a bearded stranger who comes to town with the intent of selling his services as a mouse catcher. He has invented a device, run by his car, that entices the mice with music and draws them to the device unharmed, so he can remove them from the town and let them free in woods farther away. The children of the town are intrigued and follow along behind the vehicle. Right as they get to the edge of town, the children's librarian runs out and says he realized that the stranger is not like Rip Van Winkle, as previously thought, but like the Pied Piper instead. The sheriff demands that the stranger "let them go," so he releases all the mice back to the town. It turns out the children had stuffed cotton in their ears to make sure they didn't have any negative impact from the music.
- In 1966, there was a song called the "Pied Piper", sung by Crispian St. Peters and written by Artie Kornfeld along with Steve Duboff, that went into the Top 10 on the Billboard Top 100 charts.
- The Dutch children's television drama series Kunt u me de weg naar Hamelen vertellen, meneer?, later written as Kunt u mij de weg naar Hamelen vertellen, mijnheer?, (Can you tell me the way to Hamelin, sir?) shows the adventures of a group of children (along with four adults) after they have been removed from Hamelin by the Pied Piper and are now in s strange world full of magic creatures. It was aired in The Netherlands between 1972 and 1976 and consisted of 45 episodes, many of which are either lost completely or exist only as poor quality copies of home recordings. In the last episode they happily return to Hamilin. It was written by Harrie Geelen and contained many songs composed by Joop Stokkermans
- The Megadeth song "Symphony of Destruction," released in 1992, features the lyric "Just like the Pied Piper led rats through the streets/ We dance like marionettes/ Swaying to the symphony of Destruction"
- China Miéville's 1998 novel King Rat reimagines the Pied Piper as a flautist adding samples to drum and bass music and is opposed by sentient rats in London.
As metaphor
- Merriam Webster definitions
- a charismatic person who attracts followers
- one that offers strong but delusive enticement
- a leader who makes irresponsible promises
Allusions in linguistics
In linguistics pied-piping is the common, informal name for the ability of question words and relative pronouns to drag other words along with them when brought to the front, as part of the phenomenon called Wh-movement. For example, in "For whom are the pictures?", the word "for" is pied-piped by "whom" away from its declarative position ("The pictures are for me"), and in "The mayor, pictures of whom adorn his office walls" both words "pictures of" are pied-piped in front of the relative pronoun, which normally starts the relative clause.
Some researchers believe that the tale has inspired the common English phrase "pay the piper".[24] Although the phrase is actually a contraction of the English proverb "he who pays the piper calls the tune" which simply means that wealthy people who are prepared to spend their money often exert an undue amount of influence.
Present-day Hamelin and The Pied Piper in modern times
The present-day City of Hamelin continues to maintain on its website information about the Pied Piper legend and possible origins of the story. Interest in the city's connection to the story remains so strong that in 2009, Hamelin held a tourist festival to mark the 725th anniversary of the disappearance of the earlier town's children.[25] The eerie nature of such a celebration was enough to warrant an article in the Fortean Times, a print magazine devoted to odd occurrences, legends, cryptozoology and all things strange which are known now as Forteana[26] The article noted that even to this day, there is prohibition against playing music or dancing upon the Bungelosenstrass, the street where the children were purported to have last been seen before they disappeared or left the town. There is even a building, popular with visitors, that is called "the rat catcher's house" although it bears no connection to the Rat-Catcher version of the legend. Indeed, the Rattenfängerhaus is instead, associated with the story due to the earlier inscription upon its facade mentioning the legend. The house was built much later in 1602 and 1603. It is now a Hamelin City-owned restaurant with a pied piper theme throughout.[27] The city also maintains a webshop with rat themed merchandise as well as offering an officially licensed Hameln-Edition of the popular board game Monopoly which depicts the legendary Piper on the cover.[28]
In addition to the recent milestone festival, each year the city marks 26 June as "Rat Catcher's Day". In the United States, a similar holiday for Exterminators based on Rat Catcher's Day has failed to catch on and is marked on 22 July. National Geographic discussed both days and the legendary origins of the holiday in 2004 [29]
True Story : The Piper of Hamelin never Piped
GREAT HAPPENINGS THAT NEVER HAPPENED
The Pied Piper of Hamelin Never Piped.
The Pied Piper of Hamelin piped only in legend, never in fact. For centuries it was widely believed that in 1284 a piper called Bunting (because of his multicolored clothes) appeared in the Westphalian town of Hamelin and offered to rid the community of its rats in exchange for a fee of 1,000 guilders. The piper then walked through the streets and with his enchanting music lured the rodents to a mass drowning in the Weser River, only to have the townspeople renege on their part of the contract. In retaliation the piper returned to Hamelin on St. John's Day (June 26) and with his playing similarly lured its children into a cave in the Koppenberg Mountain. As soon as they had entered, the entrance of the cave was sealed behind them, and all 130 were trapped forever.
Like all great myths, the Pied Piper of Hamelin has appeared and reappeared in innumerable variations throughout the world. Some point to the ancient literature of China and Persia as the source of the tale. The Rev. Sabine Baring-Gould believed that parts of the story originated in Greek and Sanskrit mythology. The irresistible influence of the sirens' song in Homer's Odyssey may have been another inspiration.
Other versions are plentiful. In one, the children are led, not into the mountain, but around it and into Transylvania, where they establish a German colony. In another, the action switches to Brandenburg and the musical charmer is a violinist. Yet another takes place over a three-year period in the town of Lorch, which has become overrun with ants. The first year, a hermit offers to pipe the vermin into a nearby lake, the townspeople withhold payment, and the angered hermit does his musical death number on the town's pigs. The following year a charcoal burner is hired to purge Lorch of its crickets, and again the locals renege. This time it's the sheep that are destroyed. Finally, a year later, an old man charms the town's rats out of their senses to a watery death. Unpaid, he takes his revenge on the children.
The actual historical inspiration of the Pied Piper legend may have been the infamous Children's Crusade of 1212, in which 20,000 young crusaders, led by a German youth named Nicholas, died.
The Black Death in Egypt and England - A Comparative Study
Other Citations
It was the year 1284 when a strange and wondrous figure arrived in Hameln. He was attired in a coat of many colours and was taken to be a rat catcher, as he promised to free the town of a plague of rats and mice for a fixed sum of money.
The citizens pledged to pay him his fee, so the visitor produced a pipe and began to play. Soon all the rats and mice came running out of the houses and gathered around the Pied Piper in a teeming mass. Once convinced that each and every one followed, he went out of the town straight into the River Weser where the vermin plunged after him and drowned.
The townspeople, however, now freed of the plague, regretted their promise and refused to pay the Piper, who left Hameln in a bitter mood.
Pied Piper fountain
On the 26th of June in that year he returned, this time dressed as a huntsman, wearing a grim countenance and a wondrous red hat. While the townsfolk were assembled in the church, he again sounded his pipe in the streets.
But it was not rats and mice who came out this time, but children! A great many boys and girls older than four came running and were led through the Ostertor gate into the very heart of a hill where they all disappeared. Only two children returned because they could not keep up: one was blind and could not show where the others had gone, the other dumb and not able to tell the secret. A last little boy had come back to fetch his coat and so escaped the calamity. Some tell that the children were led into a great cavern and reappeared in Transylvania. A total of 130 children were lost.
(From the Brothers Grimm in the book "German Legends")
Even today, the historical background of the Pied Piper’s legend can not be proved. Among the various interpretations, reference to the colonization of East Europe starting from Low Germany is the most plausible one: The "Children of Hameln" would have been in those days citizens willing to emigrate being recruited by landowners to settle in Moravia, East Prussia, Pomerania or in the Teutonic Land. It is assumed that in past times all people of a town were referred to as "children of the town" or "town children" as is frequently done today.
The "Legend of the children’s Exodus" was later connected to the "Legend of expelling the rats". This most certainly refers to the rat plagues being a great threat in the medieval milling town and the more or less successful professional "rat catchers".
The citizens pledged to pay him his fee, so the visitor produced a pipe and began to play. Soon all the rats and mice came running out of the houses and gathered around the Pied Piper in a teeming mass. Once convinced that each and every one followed, he went out of the town straight into the River Weser where the vermin plunged after him and drowned.
The townspeople, however, now freed of the plague, regretted their promise and refused to pay the Piper, who left Hameln in a bitter mood.
Pied Piper fountainBut it was not rats and mice who came out this time, but children! A great many boys and girls older than four came running and were led through the Ostertor gate into the very heart of a hill where they all disappeared. Only two children returned because they could not keep up: one was blind and could not show where the others had gone, the other dumb and not able to tell the secret. A last little boy had come back to fetch his coat and so escaped the calamity. Some tell that the children were led into a great cavern and reappeared in Transylvania. A total of 130 children were lost.
(From the Brothers Grimm in the book "German Legends")
Even today, the historical background of the Pied Piper’s legend can not be proved. Among the various interpretations, reference to the colonization of East Europe starting from Low Germany is the most plausible one: The "Children of Hameln" would have been in those days citizens willing to emigrate being recruited by landowners to settle in Moravia, East Prussia, Pomerania or in the Teutonic Land. It is assumed that in past times all people of a town were referred to as "children of the town" or "town children" as is frequently done today.
The "Legend of the children’s Exodus" was later connected to the "Legend of expelling the rats". This most certainly refers to the rat plagues being a great threat in the medieval milling town and the more or less successful professional "rat catchers".
Link :
- http://www.hameln.com/tourism/piedpiper/rf_sage_gb.htm
- http://www.indiana.edu/~librcsd/etext/piper/title.html
- http://lcweb2.loc.gov/cgi-bin/ampage
 |
| The Pied Piper Song Lyrics |
The Lost Children of Hamelin
On 26 June, the German town of Hamelin celebrated Rat Catcher's Day. But what really happened there, and who was the mysterious Pied Piper?
FT264
Last year, the town of Hamelin in Germany celebrated the 725th anniversary of a macabre event still familiar through children’s fairytales more than seven centuries later. But beyond the musical Rats and the colourful souvenirs and tourist attractions, the town of the Pied Piper is full of references to a real tragedy – one recorded on the walls of the so-called Rattenfängerhaus, or House of the Piper:
“In the year of 1284, on the day of Saints John and Paul, the 26th of June, 130 children born in Hamelin were seduced by a piper, dressed in all kinds of colours, and lost at the calvary near the koppen.”
The town of Hamelin hasn’t forgotten this loss. The street where, supposedly, the children were last seen is called Bungelosenstrasse: street without drums”. Even so many years after the event, no one is allowed to play music or dance there. Oral tradition preserved and enriched the story until the Brothers Grimm included it in their compilation of German legends, Deutsche Sagen (1816–18).
In the Grimms’ version, mediæval Hamelin is hit by a plague of rats. A seemingly hero-like figure appears, in the shape of a mysterious stranger dressed in red and yellow clothes. He promises to rid the town of the vermin, and the townsmen promise him money in exchange. The rat-catcher has a strange, almost supernatural gift: he plays a tune on his pipe that lures the rats into the river Weser, where they all drown. But, blinded by their greed, the townsmen refuse to honour their promise and pay the Piper his fee. The Piper leaves the town, plotting his revenge. When he returns to Hamelin, he wears the attire of a hunter. He plays a melody that hypnotises the children, who follow him to the mountains, never to be seen again.
The cruelty of the denouément strikes us doubly, because it surpasses our expectations. What initially looks like a classic ‘Overcoming the Monster’ plot turns into a nightmarish tale of disproportionate revenge. The Piper’s retribution oversteps the boundaries, suggesting society’s ultimate taboo: child murder. This twist is so shocking that many versions have been tempered, with the Piper orchestrating the disappearance of the children only to get the money he is owed; the children go back to Hamelin and the townsfolk learn their lesson. Far from simplifying the story, this presents the Piper as a more interesting hero, a complex, modern one – someone who has to challenge the establishment in order to survive in difficult times.
And yet the tale’s elements of greed, revenge and infanticide send us back to the Middle Ages, a violent period of deep contrasts. The legend contains enough material to have inspired the popular and the poetic imagination for centuries – but what really happened on that fateful day in 1284, and who was the mysterious Pied Piper?
TRACES OF THE TRAGEDY
“In the year of 1284, on the day of Saints John and Paul, the 26th of June, 130 children born in Hamelin were seduced by a piper, dressed in all kinds of colours, and lost at the calvary near the koppen.”
The town of Hamelin hasn’t forgotten this loss. The street where, supposedly, the children were last seen is called Bungelosenstrasse: street without drums”. Even so many years after the event, no one is allowed to play music or dance there. Oral tradition preserved and enriched the story until the Brothers Grimm included it in their compilation of German legends, Deutsche Sagen (1816–18).
In the Grimms’ version, mediæval Hamelin is hit by a plague of rats. A seemingly hero-like figure appears, in the shape of a mysterious stranger dressed in red and yellow clothes. He promises to rid the town of the vermin, and the townsmen promise him money in exchange. The rat-catcher has a strange, almost supernatural gift: he plays a tune on his pipe that lures the rats into the river Weser, where they all drown. But, blinded by their greed, the townsmen refuse to honour their promise and pay the Piper his fee. The Piper leaves the town, plotting his revenge. When he returns to Hamelin, he wears the attire of a hunter. He plays a melody that hypnotises the children, who follow him to the mountains, never to be seen again.
The cruelty of the denouément strikes us doubly, because it surpasses our expectations. What initially looks like a classic ‘Overcoming the Monster’ plot turns into a nightmarish tale of disproportionate revenge. The Piper’s retribution oversteps the boundaries, suggesting society’s ultimate taboo: child murder. This twist is so shocking that many versions have been tempered, with the Piper orchestrating the disappearance of the children only to get the money he is owed; the children go back to Hamelin and the townsfolk learn their lesson. Far from simplifying the story, this presents the Piper as a more interesting hero, a complex, modern one – someone who has to challenge the establishment in order to survive in difficult times.
And yet the tale’s elements of greed, revenge and infanticide send us back to the Middle Ages, a violent period of deep contrasts. The legend contains enough material to have inspired the popular and the poetic imagination for centuries – but what really happened on that fateful day in 1284, and who was the mysterious Pied Piper?
TRACES OF THE TRAGEDY
The main difficulty when trying to trace the roots of the legend is the lack of primary sources. The earliest surviving reference to the tragedy of Hamelin is a note in a manuscript copy of the Catena Aurea of Heinrich von Herford (c.1370), generally referred to as the Lüneburg Manuscript. According to both this manuscript and the inscription found in the Rattenfängerhaus, the events took place on 26 June 1284.
There are, however, reports of scholars who accessed earlier documents that are now lost. Dutch physician and demonologist Johann Weyer mentioned in the fourth edition of his Delusions of the Devil(1577) some of the historical sources that contained multiple references to the tragedy of Hamelin:
“These facts are thus written in the annals of Hammel and are religiously guarded in the archives. They are to be read also in the sacred books of the Church, and to be seen in the painted panes of the same; of which fact I am an eyewitness. Besides, as confirmation of the story, the older magistracy was accustomed to write together on its public documents: ‘in the year of Christ and in that of the going out of the children’, etc.” [1]
Weyer was probably referring to the book of statutes of Hamelin, Der Donat, (c.1351), or to a collection of local historical documents called the Brade. The Market Church in Hamelin exhibited another piece of the puzzle, a glass window dating from the 1300s depicting the stranger dressed in multicoloured clothes taking away a crowd of children dressed in white. The window was destroyed in 1660, but it inspired a 1592 watercolour by Augustin Von Moersperg that preserves its essence and represents the main geographical elements of the legend – the town, the river Weser, and the mountain, with a dark entrance to a cave.
THE BLACK DEATH
Although neither the Lüneburg Manuscript nor the glass window suggest that rats played an important part in the Hamelin events, folklore has assimilated the figure of the Pied Piper with that of a rat-catcher. The first surviving reference to rodents appears in the 16th-centuryZimmern Chronicle (c.1559–65), followed by Weyer’s aforementionedDelusions of the Devil, both written almost three centuries after the tragedy.
If the rats were most likely a later addition rather than an original element of the Hamelin episode, they gave depth to the tale and resonated in the popular imagination thanks to a play of macabre symbolic associations. The image of a rat-infested mediæval town instantly brings to mind thoughts of the plague. Plagues and epidemics have had a continuous impact on the collective imagination, taking us back to the Ten Plagues of Egypt in Exodus: biblical plagues were a punishment from God. The Piper, able to defy the curse with the power of his music, is thus invested with supernatural abilities.
In mediæval representations, Death presented himself as a skeleton wearing a colourful pied attire, a jester who always laughs last (perhaps the reportedly widespread fear of clowns – see FT226:34–41 – might even derive from this image). The Pied Piper thus becomes the lord of the rats, the Black Death (known at the time as the Great Death or simply the Pestilence) personified, and the one responsible for taking the lives of the 130 children of Hamelin.
Associations of the Piper with the Black Death aren’t limited to the subtext of the tale. The plague has also been used to contextualise the story; Jacques Demy’s 1972 film, featuring singer/songwriter Donovan as the Piper, is a good example. However, the peak of Black Death in Europe was between 1348 and 1350, that is, more than 64 years afterthe date of the children’s disappearance if we follow the Lüneburg Manuscript’s chronology. The possibilities of an outbreak of bubonic plague in the Hamelin of 1284 are certainly limited. In addition, the plague would have swept away the lives of many people – not just of one town, and not just of its children.
Perhaps oral tradition gave the Piper the identity of a rat-catcher after the plague had struck and Von Zimmern preserved this new variation in his 1559 Chronicle. Ever since then, the Pied Piper has become the most iconic of rat-catchers. Throughout the mediæval period, it was a well-respected and well-paid occupation, an essential service for towns infested with vermin. But it was a risky business – rat catchers’ proximity to rodents made them prone to deadly diseases – and perhaps one that deserved a hero: Rat Catchers’ Day is still celebrated on 26 June to commemorate the events in Hamelin.
CITY OF LOST CHILDREN
In the earliest accounts of the Hamelin events, we are told that the children were “lost”, but not necessarily dead. The Brothers Grimm, at the end of their version, add that “some say that the children were led into a cave, and that they came out again in Transylvania,” a conclusion retained by Robert Browning in his 1842 poem The Pied Piper of Hamelin. The terms from the Lüneburg Manuscript used to describe the place of the children’s disappearance (Calvary, Koppen), have been interpreted in different ways. Historian Hans Dobbertin assimilated the word Calvary, place of the skull, to the word Koppen, meaning head. In the Bible, Calvary or Golgotha was the place of the execution of Jesus – a mountain or a hill. This might suggest that the children of Hamelin were executed, or perhaps the word Calvary is merely used to describe the skull-like shape of a hill, like the biblical Golgotha.
Scholars such as Heinrich Spanuth, Jürgen Udolph and Dobbertin have suggested that the Piper could have been an emissary sent by the ruling nobility to promote a campaign for the colonisation of Moravia, East Prussia, Pomerania or the Teutonic Lands to the East. The expression “children of Hamelin” could have been a general term for all the inhabitants of the town who listened to this brightly dressed “recruiting sergeant”, and their exodus a response to politico-economical factors.
In this light, the story of the Pied Piper might be seen to bear certain similarities to that of the Children’s Crusade, an extraordinary series of events that purportedly took place in 1212. In both episodes, the border between history and myth is a porous one. The Children’s Crusade appears in mediæval sources, but historians now question its authenticity. The crusade was said to have been led by a child shepherd named Nicholas, from Cologne, Germany, who preached that the purity of children would allow them to conquer the Holy Land; the legend says that they starved and died along the way.
DEAD CAN DANCE
Another episode that shares features with the Pied Piper events took place in 1237 in the town of Erfurt, 271km south-east of Hamelin. A group of children marched in a dancing procession towards Arnstadt, 15km to the south, where they were said to have collapsed with exhaustion. Unlike the children of Hamelin, the Erfurt youngsters were rescued by their parents, who took them back to their homes. Still, some of them were said either to have died or remained afflicted with a permanent tremor.
The events at Erfurt are considered to be one of the first manifestations of the mediæval phenomenon known as the Dancing Mania (see FT:203:30–34), usually interpreted as a form of mass hysteria related to religious fervour. Dancing Mania was reportedly spread by “the sight of sufferers, like a demoniacal epidemic, over the whole of Germany and the neighbouring countries to the northwest”. [2] Those affected were described as unable to control their movements, or to stop their endless dance, and many were said to have died of exhaustion. As with Hamelin, we have an image of a crowd of children led away by music, perhaps to their deaths.
The Dancing Mania is also known as the Dance of St John, whose festival is celebrated on 24 June, or the Dance of St Vitus, whose day is celebrated on 15 or 28 June, depending on the calendar. It is no coincidence that these three dates are set around Midsummer and the Pagan celebration of the Summer Solstice.
Early descriptions of Dancing Mania strongly suggest that its origin was related to Midsummer celebrations, a vestigial hangover from Paganism, and, as such, condemned by Christians: “No Christian on the feast of St John [the Baptist] or the solemnity of any other saints performs solestitia [solstice rites] or dancing or leaping or diabolical chants.” [3] Indeed, those affected by the Dancing Mania were thought to be possessed and therefore consigned to mass exorcisms.
Traditionally, Midsummer was also considered to be a time of initiation for youngsters. It’s possible that the children of Hamelin, like their predecessors from Erfurt, could have been participating in a Pagan ritual, marching off to the mountains while dancing to the music of a colourfully attired piper jester. But, unlike the children of Erfurt, they never returned home.
THE PIPER AS TRICKSTER
The scarce and enigmatic reports of the loss of an entire generation in Hamelin reverberated down the centuries. Literal interpretations of the story present the Piper as a kidnapper or a psychopathic pederast. This vision has endured in popular culture (even the 2010 remake ofNightmare on Elm Street suggests that there are some similarities between the characters of Freddy Krueger and the Piper), but its underlying idea was first expressed five centuries ago, in the work of German physicist and Humanist Jobus Fincelius (De miraculis sui Temporis, 1556), who believed that the Piper was the Devil in disguise:
“Of the Devil’s power and wickedness will I here tell a true history. About 180 years ago, on S. Mary Magdalene’s Day, it came to pass at Hammel on the Weser in Saxony, that the Devil went about the streets visibly in human form, piped and allured many children, boys and girls, and led them through the town-gate towards a mountain”. [4]
This idea is repeated in Robert Burton’s The Anatomy of Melancholy(1621), where the Piper turns up as an example in episode two, A Digression of the nature of Spirits, bad Angels, or Devils, and how they cause Melancholy.
This characterisation of the Piper as a demoniacal archetype always represents him as possessing malevolent intentions and, crucially, supernatural abilities: he is able to lure animals and children with the music of his pipe. Such musical skills recall the Greek god Pan, whose melodies were said to inspire panic and other uncontrollable reactions, both positive and negative. We should remember that with the spread of Christianity, the horned and goat-legged Pagan god lent his attributes to Satan, replacing the fallen angel of the Bible with the image of the Devil.
The 19th century romanticised the figure of the Pied Piper, just as it did other outsiders –the pirate, the gypsy, the bandit. Goethe’s 1802 poemDer Rattenfänger, clearly inspired by the Hamelin legend, presents the rat-catcher of the title as “the bard known far and wide, / The travell’d rat-catcher beside; / A man most needful to this town”.
Along similar lines, the most popular retelling of all is Robert Browning’s 1849 poem, where the children of Hamelin are happy to leave a town governed by greedy, dishonourable adults. The Piper, the “travell’d rat catcher” of Goethe’s lines, arrives in Hamelin offering a fresh start for a new generation.
Appropriately setting the figure of the Piper to music (and why so late?), Goethe’s poem would, in turn, be adapted by Romantic composer Schubert and, later, Hugo Wolf. The Romantic take on the Piper contains an idea that has proved unsurprisingly appealing to musicians: the transformation of youth by a mysterious outsider who has inherited the musical skills of Orpheus or Pan – a theme that’s been revisited by the likes of Led Zeppelin, Jethro Tull, Megadeth and even ABBA.
Over more than 700 years, the Pied-Piper of Hamelin has become an archetypal Trickster figure (see FT175:40–41; 185:53–55). The Trickster is known for challenging the establishment, breaking the rules and spreading anarchy. In his dual nature, he can be seen as malignant or mischievous, but he is also a messenger of the gods and an agent and symbol of transformation. The Pied Piper, like the Trickster, is a shape-shifter who wears a number of different masks – the psychopath, the hero, the rebel… even Death himself. Like Shakespeare’s Puck or Barrie’s Peter Pan, he spreads a net of enchantment, leading our children to the Otherworld. Whether this Otherworld was a new land to colonise, an altered state of consciousness or the realm of the dead remains a mystery.
Notes
1 As quoted in Elisa Gutch’s “The Pied Piper of Hamelin”, Folklore, vol. 3, no. 2, Jun 1892.
2 See Justus Friedrich Carl Hecker’s From The epidemics of the middle ages. Accessed through Google Books.
3 See Dado of Rouen: “Life of St. Eligius of Noyon”, Medieval Hagiography: An Anthology, ed. Thomas Head. Accessed through Google Books.
4 Gutch, op. cit.
Video References
Disney's Adaptation of the Pied Piper (1933)
The Pied Piper of Hamelin - Stop Motion by Mark Hall & Brian Cosgrove
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Krysař 1985
The Pied Piper of Hamelin
Robert Browning
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References
Mayer, M., & Browning, R. (1987). The Pied Piper of Hamelin. New York: Macmillan ;.
Barta, J. (Director). (1986). Krysar, le joueur de flûte de Hamelin : Les Films du Paradoxe.
Hall, M. (Director). (1980). The Pied Piper of Hamelin - Stop Motion England: .
Borsch, S. J. (2005). The Black Death in Egypt and England a comparative study. Austin: University of Texas Press.
Pied Piper of Hamelin. (2014, May 7). Wikipedia. Retrieved June 17, 2014, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pied_Piper_of_Hamelin
Mieder, W. (2007). The pied piper: a handbook. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press.
Cuervo, M. J. (2010, June 1). Features: Articles. The Lost Children of Hamelin. Retrieved July 7, 2014, from http://www.forteantimes.com/features/articles/3805/the_lost_children_of_hamelin.html
Browning, R. (n.d.). Robert Browning: the Pied Piper of Hamelin: Title Page. Robert Browning: the Pied Piper of Hamelin: Title Page. Retrieved July 7, 2014, from http://www.indiana.edu/~librcsd/etext/piper/
