The Pied Piper of Hamelin: True Story or Medieval Folklore? (#128)

We’re back with more dark tales and folklore! And whilst, to my knowledge, Disney have yet to make the story into one of its rose-tinted movies (animated nor live action) this episode will be as close to a Dark Disney episode as we have been for a while.

Now most of us have probably heard of the tale of the Pied Piper of Hamelin, either through the famous poem by Robert Browning or the version of the story written by Michael Morpurgo… neither of which I will be reciting today. Instead, for those of us who may have forgotten certain elements of the tale, who better to bring back to the LLP fold than our favourite gritty writing duo – The Grimm Brothers! Because of course this was also one of the tales in their collection

The Children of Hamelin

By Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm

In the year 1284 a mysterious man appeared in Hameln. He was wearing a coat of many colored, bright cloth, for which reason he was called the Pied Piper. He claimed to be a rat catcher, and he promised that for a certain sum that he would rid the city of all mice and rats. The citizens struck a deal, promising him a certain price. The rat catcher then took a small fife from his pocket and began to blow on it. Rats and mice immediately came from every house and gathered around him.

When he thought that he had them all he led them to the River Weser where he pulled up his clothes and walked into the water. The animals all followed him, fell in, and drowned.Now that the citizens had been freed of their plague, they regreted having promised so much money, and, using all kinds of excuses, they refused to pay him. Finally he went away, bitter and angry. He returned on June 26, Saint John’s and Saint Paul’s Day, early in the morning at seven o’clock (others say it was at noon), now dressed in a hunter’s costume, with a dreadful look on his face and wearing a strange red hat. He sounded his fife in the streets, but this time it wasn’t rats and mice that came to him, but rather children: a great number of boys and girls from their fourth year on. Among them was the mayor’s grown daughter. The swarm followed him, and he led them into a mountain, where he disappeared with them.

All this was seen by a babysitter who, carrying a child in her arms, had followed them from a distance, but had then turned around and carried the news back to the town. The anxious parents ran in droves to the town gates seeking their children. The mothers cried out and sobbed pitifully.

Within the hour messengers were sent everywhere by water and by land inquiring if the children — or any of them — had been seen, but it was all for naught. In total, one hundred thirty were lost. Two, as some say, had lagged behind and came back. One of them was blind and the other mute. The blind one was not able to point out the place, but was able to tell how they had followed the piper. The mute one was able to point out the place, although he [or she] had heard nothing. One little boy in shirtsleeves had gone along with the others, but had turned back to fetch his jacket and thus escaped the tragedy, for when he returned, the others had already disappeared into a cave within a hill. This cave is still shown.

Until the middle of the eighteenth century, and probably still today, the street through which the children were led out to the town gate was called the bunge-lose (drumless, soundless, quiet) street, because no dancing or music was allowed there. Indeed, when a bridal procession on its way to church crossed this street, the musicians would have to stop playing. The mountain near Hameln where the children disappeared is called Poppenberg. Two stone monuments in the form of crosses have been erected there, one on the left side and one on the right. Some say that the children were led into a cave, and that they came out again in Transylvania.

The citizens of Hameln recorded this event in their town register, and they came to date all their proclamations according to the years and days since the loss of their children.

According to Seyfried the 22nd rather than the 26th of June was entered into the town register.

The following lines were inscribed on the town hall:

In the year 1284 after the birth of Christ
From Hameln were led away
One hundred thirty children, born at this place
Led away by a piper into a mountain.
And on the new gate was inscribed: Centum ter denos cum magus ab urbe puellos
duxerat ante annos CCLXXII condita porta fuit.

[This gate was built 272 years after the magician led the 130 children from the city.]

Now you might have noticed that the telling of this tale is a little… different that the previous ones we have Storytimed over the last few years. And you may have also noticed that I have not mentioned the word ‘fairy tale’ in relation to this story. That is because, technically, this is not a fairy tale. It’s actually considered a legend.

Because there is real historical evidence that the events that occurred in ‘The Pied Piper of Hamelin’ actually occurred in real life!

The earliest known record of this story is from the town of Hamelin itself. It is depicted in a stained-glass window created for the church of Hamelin, which dates to around 1300 AD. Although it was destroyed in 1660, several written accounts have survived. The oldest comes from the 15th Century Luneburg manuscript, an early German account of the event, along with five historical memory verses, some in Latin and others in Middle Low German, which stated: “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.” A 1384 entry in Hamelin’s town records also grimly states “It is 100 years since our children left.” 

You can even, to this day, visit the town of Hamelin itself and find it full of clues of its historical significance: An inscribed plaque on the stone facade of the so-called Pied Piper house, a half-timbered private residence dating to 1602 – similar to an even earlier one etched on the building’s window – bears explicit witness to the mystery. The inscription reads:

“A.D. 1284 – on the 26th of June – the day of St John and St Paul – 130 children – born in Hamelin – were led out of the town by a piper wearing multicoloured clothes. After passing the Calvary near the Koppenberg they disappeared forever.”

The supposed street where the children were last seen is today called Bungelosenstrasse (street without drums), as no one is allowed to play music or dance there. Incidentally, it is said that the rats were absent from earlier accounts, and only added to the story around the middle of the 16th century. Moreover, the stained-glass window and other primary written sources do not speak of the plague of rats.

The town even has a guy called Michael Boyer who, for every working morning for the last 26 years, has slipped into a pair of neon-bright, multi-coloured tights, tied on his lipstick-red cape, grabbed his flute and marched out into the medieval streets of Hamelin, a town of 60,000 residents in Lower Saxony, Germany as the Pied Piper incarnate. Despite it’s dark past, Hamelin as we know it today has managed to turn the legend into a commercial success, with the local restaurants plate a “rat tail” signature dish made from thinly sliced pork, and the bakeries do a brisk business in rodent-shaped breads and cakes. The Hameln Museum offers a sound and light Pied Piper re-enactment; local actors put on an open-air Pied Piper play during summer; and the souvenir shops hawk their own rat-inspired memorabilia.

So if the children’s disappearance was not an act of revenge, then what was its cause for the Pied Piper’s actions? There have been numerous theories trying to explain what happened to the children of Hamelin.

For instance, one theory suggests that the children died of some natural causes, and that the Pied Piper was actually a personification of Death. By associating the rats with the Black Death, it has been suggested that the children were victims of that plague. Yet, the Black Death was most severe in Europe between 1348 and 1350, more than half a century after the event in Hamelin.

Another theory suggests that the children were actually sent away by their parents, due to the extreme poverty in which they were living. Yet another theory speculates that the children were participants of a doomed ‘Children’s Crusade’ part of the wave of medieval crusades aimed at winning back the Holy Land, and might have ended up in modern day Romania.

There is also the suggestion that the town’s youth were part of a migration of Germans to Eastern Europe fuelled by an economic depression. The Pied Piper would have played the role of a so-called locator or recruiter, responsible for organising migrations to the east and were said to have worn colourful garments and played an instrument to attract the attention of possible settlers. While some historians believe that the youth emigrated to Transylvania, the German linguist Jürgen Udolph’s widely accepted theory is that regions around Berlin as the most probable location, in an area that’s now [eastern Germany] and he backs up his theory by place name evidence.” Udolph found that the family names common in Hamelin at the time show up with surprising frequency in the areas of Uckermark and Prignitz, near Berlin, that he locates as the centre of the migration. The theory is also reinforced by evidence that the region, newly liberated from the Danes, was ripe for German colonisation. 

Yet another suggestion is that this is an account of dance mania , also known as St. Vitus’ Dance. The dancing plague is documented surfacing in continental Europe as early as the 11th Century. A form of mass hysteria, the dance could spread from individuals to large groups, all driven by an unshakeable compulsion to dance feverishly, sometimes for weeks, often leaping and singing and sometimes hallucinating to the point of exhaustion and occasionally death, like a top that can’t stop spinning.

And, in fact, one 13th Century outbreak – a literal form of dance fever – occurred south of Hamelin, in the town of Erfurt, where a group of youths were documented as wildly gyrating as they travelled out of town, ending up 20km away in a neighbouring town. Some of the children, one chronicle suggests, expired shortly thereafter, having flat-out danced themselves to death, and those who survived were left with chronic tremors. Perhaps Hamelin witnessed a similar plague, dancing to the figurative tune of the Piper.

So whilst the transmission of this story undoubtedly evolved and changed over the centuries, since it originating as medieval folklore through the Goethe verse, Der Rattenfänger, the mystery of what really happened to those children in June 1284 has never been solved. The story also raises the question: if the Pied Piper of Hamelin was based on reality, how much truthis there in other fairy tales that we were told as children?