Pied Piper of Hamelin

The Pied Piper of Hamelin is the subject of a legend concerning the departure or death of a great many children from the town of Hamelin (Hameln), Germany, in the Middle Ages. The earliest references describe a piper, dressed in pied (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 the piper" for this service, he retaliates by turning his magic on their children, leading them away as he had the rats. This version of the story spread as a fairy tale. This version has also appeared in the writings of, among others, Johann Goethe, the Brothers Grimm, and Robert Browning.

The story may reflect a historical event in which Hamelin lost its children. Theories have been proposed suggesting that the Pied Piper is a symbol of the children's death by plague or catastrophe. Other theories describe him as a serial killer, or liken him to figures like Nicholas of Cologne, who lured away a great number of children on a disastrous Children's Crusade. Most plausibly, a recent theory ties the departure of Hamelin's children to the Ostsiedlung, in which a number of Germans left their homes to colonize Eastern Europe.

Contents

Plot

In 1284, while the town of Hamelin was suffering from a rat infestation, a man dressed in pied clothing appeared, claiming to be a rat-catcher. He promised the townsmen a solution for their problem with the rats. The townsmen in turn promised to pay him for the removal of the rats. The man accepted, and played a musical pipe to lure the rats with a song into the Weser River, where all of them drowned. Despite his success, the people reneged on their promise and refused to pay the rat-catcher the full amount of money. The man left the town angrily, but vowed to return some time later, seeking revenge.

On Saint John and Paul's day while the inhabitants were in church, he played his pipe yet again, dressed green, like a hunter, this time attracting the children of Hamelin. One hundred thirty boys and girls followed him out of the town, where they were lured into a cave and never seen again. Depending on the version, at most three children remained behind (one of whom was lame and could not follow quickly enough, the other one was deaf and followed the other children out of curiosity and the last was blind and unable to see where they were going) who informed the villagers of what had happened when they came out of the church.

Other versions (but not the traditional ones) claim that the Piper lured the children into the river and let them drown like the rats or led the children to a cave on Köppen Hill or Koppelberg Hill (outside of Hamelin).

Another version relates that the Pied Piper hypnotized the children into following him to the top of Koppelberg Hill, where he took them to a mystery land and had his wicked way.[1] or a place called Koppenberg Mountain[2] This version states 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 oldest picture of Pied Piper (watercolour) painted in 1592[3][4] by Freiherr Augustin von Moersperg, after the glass window of Marktkirche in Hamelin.
The rats of Hamelin

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 century and the 17th century. It was destroyed in 1660. Based on the surviving descriptions, a modern reconstruction of the window has been created by Hans Dobbertin (historian). 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 city. 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 100 years since our children left"[5]

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.

Hypotheses for the origin of the legend

A serial killer of children

The Pied Piper leads the children out of Hamelin. Illustration by Kate Greenaway.

William Manchester's A World Lit Only by Fire proposes that the Pied Piper was a psychopathic paedophile. Manchester asserts (apparently drawing on Robert Burton's 1621 account; see below) that on June 20, 1484, this criminal kidnapped 130 children from the Saxon village of Hammel and used them in "unspeakable ways." He adds that "some of the children were never seen again. Others were found dismembered and scattered in the forest underbrush or hanging from tree branches." No documenting support for this alleged incident has ever been found, and Manchester offers no references or citations for his asserted explanation. His account flies in the face of more widely accepted versions of the story that appear to date from at least 120 years earlier.[6]

A plague

A number of theories suggest that children died of some natural causes and that the Piper was a symbolic figure of Death. Death is often portrayed dressed in motley, or "pied" clothing. Analogous themes which are associated with this theory include the Dance of Death, Totentanz or Danse Macabre, a common medieval type. 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.

Others have suggested that the children left the city to be part of a pilgrimage, a military campaign, or even a new Children's crusade (which 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.

Emigration theory

The theory with the broadest support[7] is that the children willingly abandoned their parents and Hamelin in order to become the founders of their own villages during the colonization of Eastern Europe. Several European villages and cities founded around this time have been suggested as the result of their efforts as settlers. This claim is supported by corresponding placenames in both the region around Hamelin and the eastern colonies where names such as Querhameln ("mill village Hamelin") exist. Again the Piper is seen as their leader.

A version of the theory was published in the Saturday Evening Post.[8] 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.[9] The Black Death later destroyed that imbalance.[9] In any case, the motivation to leave was high and very much like the motivation for emigration to America in the 18th century i.e. freedom, opportunity, and land.

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.[5] In his book, The Pied Piper: A Handbook, Wolfgang Mieder states that historical documents exist showing that people from the area including Hameln did help settle parts of Transylvania.[10] Transylvania had suffered under the Mongol invasions of central Europe that date from around the time of the earliest appearance of the legend of the piper.

In the version of the legend posted on the official website for the town of Hameln, 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."[11]

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."[12]

Udolph favors the hypothesis that the Hamelin youths wound up in what is now Poland.[13] 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 (spelled Hameln in German). Professor 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 to the north of Berlin. He also found the same surnames in the former Pommeranian region, which is now a part of Poland. Professor 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 Lokator 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 Pommerania. 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."[14]

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.[15] 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. It is known that one of the Brothers Grimm had the name Ludwig.

Fifteenth-century Lueneburg manuscript

The Lueneburg manuscript (c. 1440–50) gives an early German account of the event:[16]

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

In the year of 1284, on the day of Saints John and Paul
on 26 June
130 children born in Hamelin were seduced
By a piper, dressed in all kinds of colours,
and lost at the place of execution near the koppen.

This appears to be the oldest surviving account. Koppen (Old German meaning "hills") seems to be a reference to one of several hills surrounding the city. 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: 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.[17] This appears to be the earliest account which mentions the plague of rats. Unfortunately 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 Lame Child

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); unfortunately 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 the Pied 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 1842.[18] Browning's verse retelling is notable for its humor, wordplay, and jingling rhymes.

Verse 2

Rats! They fought the dogs and killed the cats,
And bit the babies in the cradles

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", although others disagree.[19] To "pay the piper" means to face the inevitable consequences of one's actions, possibly alluding to the story where the villagers broke their promise to pay the Piper for his assistance in ridding the town of the rats. The phrase sometimes refers to a financial transaction but often does not.

Also, some experts on pedophilia, such as Ken Lanning, in writing about the seduction of children by some pedophiles, have used the term the "Pied Piper effect" to describe a "unique ability to identify with children."[20]

See also

Notes

  1. ↑ The Encyclopædia Britannica: A Dictionary of Arts, Sciences, Literature and General Information Page 876, At the University press, 1910 Original from the University of Virginia — Digitized July 3, 2007. Accessed via Google Books September 4, 2008
  2. ↑ True Story The Pied Piper of Hamelin Never Piped:About the true story behind the legend of the Pied Pit per of Hamelin. GREAT HAPPENINGS THAT NEVER HAPPENED © 1975 - 1981 by David Wallechinsky & Irving Wallace from "The People's Almanac" series of books and posted on Trivia-Library.Com Accessed September 4, 2008
  3. ↑ "Pied Piper Redux". Uclick.com. 2008-11-21. http://www.uclick.com/widgets/ew/081121/ew081121h.html. Retrieved 2010-07-27. 
  4. ↑ "Pied Piper of Hamelin". Lowtechconcepts.com. http://www.lowtechconcepts.com/pidpipr.htm. Retrieved 2010-07-27. 
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 Shiela Harty Pied Piper Revisited, Essay published in: David Bridges, Terence H. McLaughlin, editors Education And The Market Place Page 89, Routledge, 1994 ISBN 0750703482
  6. ↑ Langton, Page 120
  7. ↑ Nobert Humburg, Der Rattenfänger von Hameln. Die berühmte Sagengestalt in Geschichte und Literatur, Malerei und Musik, auf der Bühne und im Film. Niemeyer, Hameln 2. ed. 1990, p44. ISBN 3-87585-122-6; Jürgen Udolph, Zogen die Hamelner Aussiedler nach Mähren? Die Rattenfängersage aus namenkundlicher Sicht, in: Niedersächsisches Jahrbuch für Landesgeschichte 69 (1997), pp125–183, here p126. ISSN 0078-0561
  8. ↑ "What happened to these children?", Saturday Evening Post, December 24, 1955
  9. ↑ 9.0 9.1 The Black Death in Egypt and England: A Comparative Study, Stuart J Borsch, University of Texas Press 2005, ISBN 0-292-70617-0
  10. ↑ Wolfgang Mieder, The Pied Piper: A Handbook Page 67, Greenwood Press, 2007 ISBN 0313334641 - Accessed via Google books September 3, 2008
  11. ↑ The Legend of the Pied Piper Rattenfängerstadt Hameln Accessed September 3. 2008
  12. ↑ Ursula Sautter, "Fairy Tale Ending." Time International, April 27, 1998, p. 58.
  13. ↑ Twist in the tale of Pied Piper's kidnapping by Imre Karacs, Independent, The (London), January 27, 1998. Online version Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning Company — Accessed September 5, 2008
  14. ↑ Eastman's Online Genealogy Newsletter: A Weekly Summary of Events and Topics of Interest to Online Genealogists Vol. 3 No. 6 – February 7, 1998 Ancestry Publishing — Pied Piper of Hamelin. Retrieved September 5, 2008.
  15. ↑ Willy Krogmann Der Rattenfänger von Hameln: Eine Untersuchung über das werden der sage Page 67 Published by E. Ebering, 1934. Original from the University of Michigan — Digitized June 12, 2007 Accessed via Google Books September 3, 2008
  16. ↑ The website www.triune.de cites the Lueneburg manuscript, giving the dates 1440–50.
  17. ↑ F.C. von Zimmern [attr.]: Zimmerische Chronik, ed. K. A. Barack (Stuttgart, 1869), vol. III p.198-200
  18. ↑ "Pied Piper - Verses". Lancsngfl.ac.uk. http://www.lancsngfl.ac.uk/curriculum/literacy/lit_site/html/fiction/Pied_Piper/pages/master_frame_verse.htm. Retrieved 2010-07-27. 
  19. ↑ "TO PAY THE PIPER" AND THE LEGEND OF "THE PIED PIPER OF HAMELIN" WOLFGANG MIEDER De Proverbia Journal, Volume 5 - Number 2 - 1999 - Accessed September 3, 2008
  20. ↑ A Behavioral Profile of Pedophiles

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