Pied Piper

The Pied Piper of Hamelin (, also known as the Pan Piper or the Rat-Catcher of Hamelin) is the title character of a legend from the town of Hamelin (Hameln), Lower Saxony, Germany.

The legend dates back to the Middle Ages. The earliest references describe a piper, dressed in multicoloured ("pied") clothing, who was a rat catcher hired by the town to lure rats away with his magic pipe. When the citizens refused to pay for this service as promised, he retaliated by using his instrument's magical power on their children, leading them away as he had the rats. This version of the story spread as folklore and has appeared in the writings of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, the Brothers Grimm, and Robert Browning, among others. The phrase "pied piper" has become a metaphor for a person who attracts a following through charisma or false promises.

There are many contradictory theories about the Pied Piper. Some suggest he was a symbol of hope to the people of Hamelin, which had been attacked by plague; he drove the rats from Hamelin, saving the people from the epidemic.

Plot

In 1284, while the town of Hamelin was suffering from a rat infestation, a piper dressed in multicoloured ("pied") 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 1,000 guilders for the removal of the rats. The piper accepted and played his pipe to lure the rats into the Weser River, where all the rats drowned.

Despite the piper's success, the mayor reneged on his promise and refused to pay him the full sum (reputedly reduced to 50 guilders) even going so far as to blame the piper for bringing the rats himself in an extortion attempt. Enraged, the piper stormed out of the town, vowing to return later to take revenge. On Saint John and Paul's day, while the adults were in church, the piper returned, dressed in green like a hunter and playing his pipe. In so doing, he attracted the town's children. One hundred and thirty children followed him out of town and into a mountains’ cave, after which they were 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 therefore could not hear the music, and the last was blind and therefore unable to see where he was going. These three informed the villagers of what had happened when they came out from church.

Other versions relate that the Pied Piper led the children to the top of Koppelberg Hill, where he took them to a beautiful land, or a place called Koppenberg Mountain, or Transylvania. In yet other versions, he made them walk into the Weser as he did with the rats, and they all drowned. Or, the Piper returned the children after extorting payment, or the children were returned only after the villagers paid several times the original payment in gold.

The Hamelin street named ("street without drums") is believed to be the last place that the children were seen. Ever since, music or dancing is not allowed on this street.

Background

The earliest mention of the story seems to have been on a stained-glass window placed in the Church of Hamelin . The window was described in several accounts between the 14th and 17th centuries. 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 colourful figure of the Pied Piper and several figures of children dressed in white.

The window is generally considered to have been created in memory of a tragic historical event for the town; Hamelin town records also apparently start with this event.

Although research has been conducted for centuries, no explanation for the historical event is universally accepted as true. In any case, the rats were first added to the story in a version from and are absent from earlier accounts.

14th-century Decan Lude chorus book

Decan Lude of Hamelin was reported to have in his possession a chorus book containing a Latin verse giving an eyewitness account of the event.

15th-century Lüneburg manuscript

The Lüneburg manuscript () gives an early German account of the event.Illustrated in Rattenfänger von Hameln An article by James P. O'Donnell in ''The Saturday Evening Post'' (December 24, 1955) tells how an elderly German researcher, Heinrich Spanuth, discovered the earliest version of the story in the Luneberg city archives in 1936.

On the back of the last tattered page of a dusty chronicle called ''The Golden Chain'', written in Latin in 1370 by the monk Heinrich of Herford, there is written in a different handwriting the following account:

''Here follows a marvellous wonder, which transpired in the town of Hamelin in the diocese of Minden, in this Year of Our Lord, 1284, on the Feast of Saints John and Paul. A certain young man thirty years of age, handsome and well-dressed, so that all who saw him admired him because of his appearance, crossed the bridges and entered the town by the West Gate. He then began to play all through the town a silver pipe of the most magnificent sort. All the children who heard his pipe, in the number of 130, followed him to the East Gate and out of the town to the so-called execution place or Calvary. There they proceeded to vanish, so that no trace of them could be found. The mothers of the children ran from town to town, but they found nothing. It is written: A voice was heard from on high, and a mother was bewailing her son. And as one counts the years according to the Year of Our Lord or according to the first, second or third year of an anniversary, so do the people in Hamelin reckon the years after the departure and disappearance of their children. This report I found in an old book. And the mother of the Dean Johann von Lüde saw the children depart.

Rattenfängerhaus

It is rendered in the following form in an inscription on a house known as (English: "Rat Catcher's House" or Pied Piper's House) in Hamelin:

According to author Fanny Rostek-Lühmann this is the oldest surviving account. (High German , meaning a knoll or domed hill) seems to be a reference to one of several hills surrounding Hamelin. Which of them was intended by the manuscript's author remains uncertain.

The Wedding House

A similar inscription can be found on the "Wedding-house or Hochzeitshaus, a fine structure erected between 1610 and 1617 for marriage festivities, but diverted from its purpose since 1721. Behind rises the spire of the parish church of St. Nicholas which, in the words of an English book of folklore, may still "enwall stones that witness how the parents prayed, while the Piper wrought sorrow for them without":

The Town Gate

A portion of the town gate dating from the year 1556 is currently exhibited at the Hamelin Museum. According to Hamelin Museum, this stone is the oldest surviving sculptural evidence for the legend. It bears the following inscription:

Verses in the monastery at Hamelin

The Hamelin Museum writes:

In the mid 14th Century, a monk from Minden, Heinrich von Herford, puts together a collection of holy legends called the "Catena Aurea".  It speaks of a "miracle" that took place in 1284 in Hamelin.  A youth appeared and played on a strange silver flute.  Every child that heard the flute, followed the stranger.  They left Hamelin by the Eastern gate and disappeared at Kalvarien Hill.  This is the oldest known account of this occurrence. Around this time a verse of rhyme is found in "zu Hameln im Kloster".  It tells about the children's disappearance.  It is written in red ink on the title page of a missal.  It bewails "the 130 beloved Hamelner children" who were "eaten alive by Calvaria".  The original verses are probably the oldest written source of this legend.  It has been missing for hundreds of years.'

However, different versions of transcriptions of handwritten copies still exist. One was published by Heinrich Meibom in 1688. Another was included by Johann Daniel Gottlieb Herr under the title Passionale Sanctorum in ''Collectanea zur Geschichte der Stadt Hameln''. His manuscript is dated 1761. There are some Latin verses which had a prose version underneath:

16th- and 17th-century sources

Somewhere between 1559 and 1565, Count Froben Christoph von Zimmern included a version in his . This appears to be the earliest account which mentions the plague of rats. Von Zimmern dates the event only as "several hundred years ago" ( ), so that his version throws no light on the conflict of dates (see next paragraph). Another contemporary account is that of Johann Weyer in his (1563).

Theories

Natural causes

A number of theories suggest that children died of some natural causes such as disease or starvation, and that the Piper was a symbolic figure of Death. Analogous themes which are associated with this theory include the Dance of Death, or , 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 "hills" of the poem) for ritual dancing where they all perished during a sudden landslide or collapsing sinkhole.

Emigration

Speculation on the emigration theory is based on the idea that, by the 13th century, overpopulation of the area resulted in the oldest son owning all the land and power (majorat), leaving the rest as serfs.. 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 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 of Transylvania. Emily Gerard reports in ''The Land Beyond the Forest'' an element of the folktale that "popular tradition has averred the Germans who about that time made their appearance in Transylvania to be no other than the lost children of Hamelin, who, having performed their long journey by subterranean passages, reissued to the light of day through the opening of a cavern known as the Almescher Höhle, in the north-east of Transylvania." 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''.

The theory is provided credence by the fact that family names common to Hamelin at the time "show up with surprising frequency in the areas of Uckermark and Prignitz, near Berlin."

Historian Ursula Sautter, citing the work of linguist Jürgen Udolph, offers this hypothesis in support of the emigration theory:

"After the defeat of the Danes at the Battle of Bornhöved 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.

Udolph favours the hypothesis that the Hamelin youths wound up in what is now Poland. Genealogist Dick Eastman cited Udolph's research on Hamelin surnames that have shown up in Polish phonebooks:

Linguistics professor Jürgen Udolph says that 130 children did vanish on a June day in the year 1284 from the German village of Hamelin ( 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 the regions of Prignitz 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 Bornhöved 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.

Other

Some theories have linked the disappearance of the children to mass psychogenic illness in the form of dancing mania. Dancing mania outbreaks occurred during the 13th century, including one in 1237 in which a large group of children travelled from Erfurt to Arnstadt (about ), jumping and dancing all the way, in marked similarity to the legend of the Pied Piper of Hamelin, which originated at around the same time.

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) but never returned to their parents. These theories see the unnamed Piper as their leader or a recruiting agent. The townspeople 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, and further proposes that the Pied Piper was a psychopathic paedophile.

Adaptations

Literature

* In 1803, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe wrote a poem based on the story that was later set to music by Hugo Wolf. Goethe also 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 and Wilhelm Grimm, known as the Brothers Grimm, drawing from 11 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).
* Robert Browning wrote a poem called "The Pied Piper of Hamelin", using the 1605 Verstegan version of the tale (the earliest account in English) and adopting the 1376 date. The poem was published in Browning's '' Dramatic Lyrics'' (1842). His retelling in verse is notable for its humour, wordplay, and jingling rhymes.
* Viktor Dyk's ''Krysař (The Rat-Catcher)'', published in 1915, retells the story in a slightly darker, more enigmatic way. The short novel also features the character of ''Faust''.
* In Marina Tsvetaeva's long poem ''liricheskaia satira, The Rat-Catcher'' (serialized in the émigré journal ''Volia Rossii'' in 1925–1926), rats are an allegory of people influenced by Bolshevik propaganda.
* Shel Silverstein's poem "The One Who Stayed", published as part of his collection ''Where the Sidewalk Ends'' in 1974, tells the Pied Piper story from the point of view of a child who was too scared to follow him.
* Gloria Skurzynski's 1979 children's novel ''What Happened in Hamelin'' re-tells the Piped Piper story documenting the 1284 Hamelin events using research of medieval manuscripts, but gives the Piper an apprentice, a badly treated baker's servant, who discovers his new master's intended vengeance.
* "Emissary from Hamelin" is a short story written by Harlan Ellison, published in 1978 in the collection ''Strange Wine''.
* The paperback horror novel ''Come, Follow Me'' by Philip Michaels (Avon Books, 1983) is based on the story.
* China Miéville's 1998 London-set novel '' King Rat'' centers on the ancient rivalry between the rats (some of whom are portrayed as having humanlike characteristics) and the Pied Piper, who appears in the novel as a mysterious musician named Pete who infiltrates the local club-music scene.
* Terry Pratchett's 2001 young-adult novel, '' The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents'', parodies the legend from the perspective of the rats, the piper and their handler. It was adapted as an '' CGI animated film'' released in 2022.
*In 2011, Michael Morpurgo retold the story in a children's novel, ''The Pied Piper of Hamelin'', illustrated by Emma Chichester Clark, with a social agenda twist.
* In 2014, Russell Brand's ''The Pied Piper of Hamelin'' was published by Atria Books () as Book 1 of his ''Trickster Tales'', setting the story in a more modern era and making some of the children as (and in some cases even more) repulsive than the adults. He also narrated the audiobook version (see below in "Audio").
* The short story "The Rat King" by John Connolly, first included in the 2016 edition of his novel '' The Book of Lost Things'', is a fairly faithful adaptation of the legend, but with a new ending. It was adapted for BBC Radio 4 and first broadcast on 28 October 2016.
* ''Piper'', a 2017 liberal adaptation of the original story into a Young Adult graphic novel written by Jay Asher and Jessica Freeburg and illustrated by Jeff Stokely, from Penguin imprint Razorbill.
* The Pied Piper is a central figure in '' Rainbow Valley'' and '' Rilla of Ingleside'' by Lucy Maud Montgomery, calling, or in hindsight luring, that generation of boys off to war.

''"The Piper is coming nearer," he said, "he is nearer than he was that evening I saw him before. His long, shadowy cloak is blowing around him. He pipes—he pipes—and we must follow—Jem and Carl and Jerry and I—round and round the world. Listen—listen—can't you hear his wild music?"''

* Matthew Cody has written a trilogy for young readers entitled ''The Secrets of the Pied Piper'', consisting of ''The Peddler's Road'' (2015, ), ''The Magician's Key'' (2016, ) and ''The Piper's Apprentice'' (2017, ), telling the story of two siblings who, while visiting Hamelin with their father, are transported to the Summer Isle, where the original stolen Hamelin children (who have not aged a day) now live, and must find a way to escape back to the real world.
* In 2024, ''Book 1: Hamelin'', the first book in ''The Children of the Piper'' series by Peter Smart, was published by PiperHaus () and is a fully illustrated twist on the classic tale told from the point of view of 13-year-old Sofia Müller, a girl living in Hamelin at the time. Instead of asking for gold or silver to get rid of the town's rat infestation, the piper asks for a promise instead: because the adults of the town had not been treating the children very well, they must agree to start treating them as they wished they would have been treated when they were children themselves. A year later, after the townsfolk fail to keep their promise, the piper takes the children away.

Film

* ''The Pied Piper'' (1924), a combination live-action/animated silent short directed by and starring Walter Lantz and his cartoon creation "Dinky Doodle", putting the "Pied Piper" concept in a modern setting with an artist being constantly bothered by cartoon mice interrupting his work.
* ''The Pied Piper'' (16 September 1933) is a short animated film based on the story, produced by Walt Disney Productions, directed by Wilfred Jackson, and released as a part of Walt Disney's ''Silly Symphonies'' series. It stars the voice talents of Billy Bletcher as the Mayor of Hamelin.
* ''Pied Piper Porky'' (1939), starring Porky Pig, is a ''Looney Tunes'' parody of the tale of the Pied Piper, in which one rat doesn't fall for Porky's tune and breaks his pipe, causing Porky to call upon a cat who's afraid of mice.
* ''The Pied Piper of Basin Street'' (1945), a Walter Lantz ''Swing Symphony'' cartoon transposing the Pied Piper story to a modern city, with the Piper playing a trombone (performed by Jack Teagarden) to lure away and capture all the rats and then after the Mayor cheats him luring away all the teenagers by impersonating "Hank Swoonatra".
* '' Paying the Piper'' (1949), starring Porky Pig, is another ''Looney Tunes'' parody of the tale of the Pied Piper in which the cats aren't happy that Porky has rid the town of rats.
* '' The Pied Piper of Guadalupe'' (1961), starring Sylvester and Speedy Gonzales, is a ''Looney Tunes'' parody of the tale of the Pied Piper in which Sylvester is inspired to imitate the Piper in order to catch all of the mice in town.
* ''The Pied Piper'' is a 1972 British film directed by Jacques Demy and starring Jack Wild, Donald Pleasence and John Hurt, featuring Donovan in the title role and Diana Dors.
* ''Pink Piper'' is a 1976 theatrical short starring The Pink Panther in which after "The Pink Piper" unsuccessfully tries to lead a mouse out of a villager's house, he then tries to save it when the villager tries to kill the mouse himself.
* ''The Pied Piper of Hamelin'' is a 1981 stop-motion animated film by Cosgrove Hall using Robert Browning's original poem verbatim, narrated by Robert Hardy. This adaptation was later shown as an episode for the PBS series '' Long Ago and Far Away''.
* In 1986, Jiří Bárta made the animated movie '' Krysař (The Pied Piper)'' based more on the above-mentioned story by Viktor Dyk; the movie was accompanied by a score by Michael Kocáb.
* The 1995 anime film '' Sailor Moon SuperS: The Movie'' contained a character who used magic flute to hypnotize children and make them follow him, similar to the Pied Piper.
* The 1995 American black comedy movie '' Ice Cream Man'' makes heavy allusions to the Pied Piper legend and its similarities to the modern institution of the ice cream truck.
* In Atom Egoyan's '' The Sweet Hereafter'' (1997), the legend of the Pied Piper is a metaphor for a town's failure to protect its children.
* The Pied Piper, "voiced" by Jeremy Steig, has a small role (flute only) in the 2010 Dreamworks animated film ''Shrek Forever After''.
* In 2015, a South Korean horror movie, '' The Piper'', was released. It is a loose adaptation of the Brothers Grimm tale where the Pied Piper uses the rats for his revenge to kill all the villagers except for the children whom he traps in a cave.
* In 2023, Erlingur Thoroddsen directed ''The Piper'', a dark reimagining of the tale, starring Charlotte Hope, Julian Sands, Kate Nichols, Oliver Savell, Alexis Rodney, Philipp Christopher, Salomé Chandler, Aoibhe O'Flanagan, Louise Gold, Pippa Winslow, and Boyan Anev.
* Also in 2023, Anthony Waller directed ''Piper'', another dark reimagining of the tale written by Waller and Duncan Kennedy, starring Elizabeth Hurley

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