The Pied Piper of Hamelin - The Background of the Story

There is pretty good evidence about loss of 130 kids in the town of Hamelin on June 26, 1284. Several documents mention the church window made of stained glass portraying the scene with a colorfully dressed stranger playing flute who led children into an unknown direction. They have never been seen again. We must add a rat-catcher was not mentioned and there was nothing about the deal with the city council or major. These parts were added to the story later and it is believed The Pied Piper as is known today is a fusion of at least two stories.

If you need to refresh the basics about the story about the piper of Hamelin, don't hesitate visiting:

https://hubpages.com/education/pied-piper

Many interpretations of what really happened are available, so we'll explore five of the most popular ones.

2. One possible (and very popular) explanation is the plague. Colorful (pied) dress of the piper is sometimes explained as a symbolic presentation of lesions, as a consequence of overcome disease and clear proof of his immunity. Rats are clearly connected to the bubonic plague, but three elements don't support this theory:

• Why killing all the children (and only children)?
• The rats were added to the story only around 1600, earlier versions don't mention them.
• While the diseases were a constant threat, this part of Europe suffered from the serious epidemy of plague only about fifty years later than the event with the piper supposedly happened.

We should note that several versions of the legend mention that not all the children were gone. Some (on, two, or three, depending on the variation) stayed in Hamelin because they were handicapped (blindness, deafness, lameness, ...), what supports the theory of recruiting kind of army.

While all presented facts don't deny connection with a Children's Crusade, this happened more than half of century before the pied piper took the kids from Hamelin.

4. Yet another possible, although not very believable possibility was connected with then relatively common situation - poor parents were selling their children to rich buyers. Most of them were turned into slaves, but such solution sometimes seemed as better of two bad ones: live as a slave or die from starvation.

It would be very strange to execute such massive deal with 130 kids at once and almost unbelievable to document it in the church window, which, by the way, was made only a century or more after the piper came into Hamelin.

Nobody knew what caused this phenomenon sometimes called dancing plague, choreomania or St. Vitus Dance.

To control the dancers at least a bit musicians were sometimes sent to the dancers, but their music could attract even more dancers to join. One such mania could end with a massive tragedy, like a broken bridge under hundreds of the dancing feet.

6. This part of today's northern Germany was extremely poor in the 13th century. Diseases and famine were everyday issues, so selling people, especially children was an obvious and simple solution.

Young families and youngsters were among the most vulnerable groups, so we can believe at certain moment majority of younger folks was absent from the city. A popular way to go was East with a large unoccupied land.

This theory is somehow supported by a research of surnames in Hamelin with surroundings and parts in Poland. Surname Hamel (meaning from Hamel) is surprisingly often found in polish phonebooks. There is also a version where kids are not led into the water or in the cave in mountains, but into the mountains in Transilvania (today's Romania), what also speaks in favor of this explanation.

• Pavements in Hamelin are painted with rats, pointed to various tourist attraction, many of them related to the famous legend.
• On summer Sundays actors play the story about the Piper on the streets.
• One of the streets is called Bungelosenstrasse (Street Without Drums, Soundless Street, Quiet Street), where no music is allowed to play - here were the kids supposedly last seen.
• A mechanism in the clock tower tells the story three times a day.
• One of the local specialties is a cocktail called Rat's blood - mix of champagne and blackcurrant juice.

In others, Hamelin represents totally corrupted place, from which kids need to be saved - possibilities are virtually endless, what makes this story especially valuable for artists from all creative areas.

It is often used to warn people not to break their promises. If you don't pay your debts, you'll have to bear consequences. If we think a bit, losing children is even worse than losing your own life, because children represent the future - with them, your family name, all the lineage, disappears. In a few versions, children are actually portrayed as saved by the piper, having a better life without dishonest parents as role models.

But! The full phrase is actually "He who pays the piper calls the tune!" what sends a completely different message - the man who is paying for something, makes final decisions - nothing about the consequences. The oldest known date of this saying (1611) predates Browning's ballad for several centuries. There is also a similar phrase known in Germany, predating Goethe and Grimms for many decades as well.