The Pied Piper of Hamelin
Rattenfängerhaus
July 22, 1376* | The Pied Piper came to Hamelin
(Hameln), a
town in Lower Saxony, Germany, and led the children out of
town. (Read
the legend here.)
The story
of the Pied Piper (Rattenfänger) of Hamelin was popularised in
German by the Brothers
Grimm and in English by the poet Robert Browning
(1812 -
1889) in his narrative poem
of that name.
It comes from an old German
legend translated into English in 1605 by
Richard Verstegan,
English publisher and antiquarian (c. 1548 - c.
1636), who gave this as
the date in A Restitution of Decayed Intelligence. (A 14th-century
account gives the date as June 26, 1284.) The oldest
remaining source is a note in Latin prose, made one and a half
centuries later (1430
- 1450) as an
addition to a 14th-century manuscript from Lüneburg.
The
stranger, dressed in pied, or multicoloured, clothing, offered to
rid the town of Hamelin of its plague of rats, for an agreed price.
He played his pipe and the rats followed his beguiling tune down to
the Weser River,
all drowning. The burghers of Hamelin refused to pay the piper, so
in revenge he began piping his charming song and the town’s
children, entranced, followed him to a mountain cave, which as if by
magic sealed itself shut.
The historical record
There are
historical records of a stained glass window in the church of
Hamelin that dates from before 1300, depicting the children’s
exodus. Unfortunately, the picture has been missing since the window
was replaced around 1660.
A rhyme appeared with this window, reporting that a piper dressed in
many colours led 130 children away from Hamelin.
A German version of the tale seems to have
survived in a 1602/1603 inscription
found in Hamelin in the Rattenfängerhaus (Pied
Piper’s, or Ratcatcher’s house):
Anno 1284 am dage Johannis et Pauli
war der 26. junii
Dorch einen piper mit allerlei farve bekledet
gewesen CXXX kinder verledet binnen Hamelen gebo[re]n
to calvarie bi den koppen verloren
which has been roughly translated into English as:
In the year of 1284, on John's and Paul's day
was the 26th of June
By a piper, dressed in all kinds of colours,
130 children born in Hamelin were seduced
and lost at the place of execution near the Koppen. (Source)
We do know
that something remarkable happened in medieval Hamelin that changed
the town forever. Somehow, 130 of the town’s children were taken
away, and the grief imprinted itself on the village’s soul, enough
for the town church to have a stained-glass window installed that
showed many children being led away by a person unknown.
One Decan
Lude of Hamelin was reported
around 1384 to
have in his possession a chorus book containing a Latin verse giving an
eyewitness account of the event. The verse was reportedly written by
his grandmother, but, unfortunately, the chorus book is believed to
have been lost since the late 17th century.
Pied Piper theories
Many people have proposed
explanations for the famous legend. Perhaps the most likely is that
the Bishop Bruno of Olmütz (now Olomouc) went on a Crusade
recruitment drive – perhaps a Children’s
crusade – in
his diocese. Many family names in Olomouc bear a strikingly
similarity to those in Hamelin, so a pilgrimage or
military campaign
might be the basis of the legend.
It has also been suggested that Hamelin’s
children, or some of them, were victims of an accident, perhaps
either drowning in the Weser or being buried in a landslide.
Alternatively,
it might be that the children fell victim to one of the many epidemics
of the Middle Ages and were led out of town to die, in order to
protect the rest of the town – an early appearance of the Black
Death has been suggested. Some have seen the children’s
dancing to be an early reference to Huntington’s
disease, an inherited disorder. These theories perceive the
Piper as a symbolic figure of Death.
It is generally believed that the rats are late additions to the
story.
It's interesting to note that similar, even almost
identical, tales exist for towns other than Hamelin, such as the
Pied
Piper of Newport, on the Isle of Wight, UK, and Ma Hsiang Rids Hangchow of Rats (China).
According to one writer, early
editions of Brewer’s Dictionary
of Phrase and Fable ascribed the origin of the expression
‘to pay the piper’ (to be made accountable) to the Hamelin
legend, but in the centenary edition did not. (It does appear in the
online Dictionary, here.) It is
probably more likely that the expression derives from the practice
of paying itinerant pipe musicians for a song, as in the fuller
expression, ‘He who pays the piper calls the tune”. More
on this by Prof. Wolfgang Mieder.
Rattenwelt
