Speaking of swarms of Germanic rats, the tale
has to that of the Pied Piper of Hamelin (the Anglicised form of Hameln,
as it seems the English are unable to pronounce the letter combination of ‘ln’
– I wonder how we manage words like ‘kiln’ if that’s the case). I first
came to the story through Robert Browning’s poem of the same name, which used
to be a standard recitation piece in junior schools (and if it still isn’t, it
jolly well ought to be).
It’s a rattlingly (no pun intended) good bit of
versifying, with splendid metrical flourishes and cleverly unforced rhymes and
just the sort of deliciously macabre details that send shivers down the spines
of young readers. Legions of rats have invaded Hamelin in Lower Saxony and the
townsfolk are at their wits’ ends when a strange piper in varicoloured motley
arrives in the town, offering to lead the infestation away for one thousand
guilders.
Overjoyed, the mayor and corporation up the offer to fifty thousand
guilders to rid them of the vermin and so the piper tootles on his flute and
pipes the pests out of Hamelin and into the river Weser, where all but one
survivor drown.
The piper goes back to claim his fee but the mayor reneges on
the deal and offers a mere fifty guilders whereupon the piper steps out into the
street and pipes once more.
The boys and girls of the town flock behind him and
are charmed away, turning away from the river’s edge at the last minute but
following the enchanted piper to the Koppelberg hill instead, where a magical
portal opens in the hillside long enough for the piper and the children to be
swallowed up. All but one crippled lad disappear inside, he too slow to reach
the doorway in time and, it is said, a strange band of people in far-off
Transylvania are descended from these stolen children.
It’s a moral tale – keep
your promises or you will have to ‘pay the piper’ – and is said to be based on
a real event that happened in 1284, when one hundred and thirty children
mysteriously disappeared from Hamelin (Browning places his version in 1376).
The rats did not appear in the story until sometime in the 1550s and in some
versions the children are returned when the piper is paid many times the
promised bounty.
The first mention of the Pied Piper appears in 1384, when the
town chronicle of Hamelin records that it was one century since the children
disappeared. The story has had additions and twists added over the years;
Goethe wrote a version, as did the Brothers Grimm, with Browning’s poem
published first in 1842. Walt Disney made a Silly Symphony cartoon in
1933, wherein the children are led into a magical kingdom inside the Koppelberg
mountain, with the crippled boy healed at the last minute and managing to slip
into a Teutonic version of the Big Rock Candy Mountain.
No one knows what
really happened at Hamelin but there have been assorted theories put forward to
explain the genesis of the myth. Some link the story to plague legends, with
the Pied Piper taking the role of Death in a bizarre danse macabre,
metaphorically leading the dead children into the Pit.
Others feel that the
true origins of the tale stem from resurgent attempt at a Children’s Crusade,
copying the Crusades of 1212 when, it was said, two columns of children set out
for the Holy Land, one from France and one from Germany, intent on peaceably
converting the Muslim occupiers of Jerusalem to Christianity. The reality of
what really happened is lost in myth and legend but it looks likely that there
was a movement of people from France and Germany in the direction of the Levant
but it also seems likely that the majority of them didn’t leave European soil,
and the ones that did were most likely sold into slavery in northern Africa.
Yet another possibility is that something terrible happened in Hamelin and the
inhabitants had to devise an elaborate alibi for the loss of the children (one
version puts forward the idea that rye bread became infected with ergot fungus,
which produces a powerful hallucinogen similar to LSD, and the tripped-out
citizens murdered their offspring).
Turning to another possibility, it could be
that the children weren’t really children in the primary sense but were
‘children’ of Saxony who left their heimat and struck out for pastures
new, founding new communities throughout Europe. There may be something to all
this, as there are population pockets in places like Poland that have surnames
that are distinctly unSlavic but curiously Germanic instead. There were
movements of German settlers into other parts of the continent at about the
thirteenth century and there were recruiters who ‘charmed’ prospective
emigrants into joining the exodus, and it is possible that at least one of
these recruiters - lokators –
used a pipe or a flute to attract his clients.
If you haven’t read Browning’s
poem, it’s easy enough to find online – have a read, you’ll enjoy it.
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