Walter Cuthbert Blythe (named after his grandfather, Walter Shirley, and his adopted grandparents, Marilla and Matthew Cuthbert) is a fictional character in the Anne of Green Gables Series, mentioned in Lucy Maud Montgomery's Anne of Ingleside (book 6 of the Anne series, published in 1939), Rainbow Valley (book 7 of the Anne series, pub. 1919) and Rilla of Ingleside (book 8 of the Anne series, pub. 1921).He is the second son of Gilbert and Anne Blythe.He has six siblings: eldest sister Joyce (died as an infant), older brother James Matthew, nicknamed "Jem", younger sisters Anne and Diana, twins also known as "Nan" and "Di" respectively, younger brother Shirley; and youngest sister Bertha Marilla, or "Rilla".
Walter loves poetry and aspires to one day become a famous poet. Unbeknownst to him, he will one day fight and die in one of the world's most terrible wars. In Rilla of Ingleside, Walter joins World War I along with his brothers, Jem and Shirley Blythe and neighbours, Kenneth Ford, Thomas Carlyle "Carl" Meredith ,Gerald "Jerry" Meredith and Miller Douglas. He dies in the war, while the others survive with wounds and scars. However, he is survived by a poem that goes on to become beloved across Canada after his death.
His death is "foreshadowed" in Chapter 41 of Anne of Ingleside, published 18 years after the book in which he dies:
Walter was smiling in his sleep as someone who knew a charming secret. The moon was shining on his pillow through the bars of the leaded window ... casting the shadow of a clearly defined cross on the wall above his head. In long after years Anne was to remember that and wonder if it were an omen of Courcelette ... of a cross-marked grave "somewhere in France."
Walter's poem, written in the trenches during the first World War, is called "The Piper" and alludes to Walter's prophetic vision of World War I. The Piper refers to the legend of the Pied Piper of Hamelin and the call of his pipe which sweeps the children away. The idea of the piper calling the boys to war is introduced in Chapter 8 of Rainbow Valley:
"Some day," said Walter dreamily, looking afar into the sky, "the Pied Piper will come over the hill up there and down Rainbow Valley, piping merrily and sweetly. And I will follow him--follow him down to the shore--down to the sea--away from you all. I don't think I'll want to go--Jem will want to go--it will be such an adventure--but I won't. Only I'll HAVE to--the music will call and call and call me until I MUST follow."
The poem is a tribute to In Flanders Field by John McCrae and, though never fully written out in the novel, is implied to mimic the poem in content and form:
"The poem was a short, poignant little thing. In a month it had carried Walter's name to every corner of the globe. Everywhere it was copied-- in metropolitan dailies and little village weeklies--in profound reviews and "agony columns," in Red Cross appeals and Government recruiting propaganda. Mothers and sisters wept over it, young lads thrilled to it, the whole great heart of humanity caught it up as an epitome of all the pain and hope and pity and purpose of the mighty conflict, crystallized in three brief immortal verses. A Canadian lad in the Flanders trenches had written the one great poem of the war. "The Piper," by Pte. Walter Blythe, was a classic from its first printing."
L.M. Montgomery eventually wrote a poem called "The Piper" and included it in The Blythes Are Quoted, the intended ninth book in the Anne series.
The Project Gutenberg ebook of Rainbow Valley