1592 painting of the Pied Piper copied from the glass window of Marktkirche in HamelinPostcard"Gruss aus Hameln" featuring the Pied Piper of Hamelin, 1902
The legend dates back to theMiddle Ages. The earliest references describe a piper, dressed in multicoloured ("pied") clothing, who was a rat catcher hired by the town to lure rats away[1] with his magicpipe. When the citizens refused to pay for this service as promised, he retaliated by using his instrument's magical power on their children, leading them away as he had the rats. This version of the story spread as folklore and has appeared in the writings ofJohann Wolfgang von Goethe, theBrothers Grimm, andRobert Browning, among others. The phrase "pied piper" has become a metaphor for a person who attracts a following through charisma or false promises.[2]
There are various theories about the origin and symbolism of the Pied Piper. Some suggest he was a symbol of hope to the people of Hamelin, which had been subjected toplague; he drove the rats from Hamelin, saving the people from the epidemic.[3]
1909Maxfield Parrish mural of the Pied Piper of Hamelin at the Palace Hotel, San Francisco
In 1284, while the town of Hamelin was suffering from arat infestation, a piper dressed in multicoloured ("pied") clothing appeared, claiming to be a rat-catcher. He promised the burgermeister a solution to their problem with the rats. Theburgermeister, in turn, promised to pay him 1,000guilders for the removal of the rats. The piper accepted and played his pipe to lure the rats into theWeser River, where all the rats drowned.[4]
Despite the piper's success, the burgermeister reneged on his promise and refused to pay him the full sum (reputedly reduced to 50 guilders) even going so far as to blame the piper for bringing the rats himself in anextortion attempt. Enraged, the piper stormed out of the town, vowing to return later to takerevenge. On SaintJohn and Paul's day, while the adults were in church, the piper returned, dressed in green like a hunter and playing his pipe. In so doing, he attracted the town'schildren. One hundred and thirty children followed him out of town and into a mountains’ cave, after which they were never seen again. Depending on the version, at most three children remained behind: one waslame and could not follow quickly enough, the second wasdeaf and therefore could not hear the music, and the last wasblind and therefore unable to see where he was going. These three informed the villagers of what had happened when they came out from church.[4]
Other versions relate that the Pied Piper led the children to the top of Koppelberg Hill, where he took them to a beautiful land,[5] or a place calledKoppenberg Mountain,[6] or Transylvania. In yet other versions, he made them walk into theWeser as he did with the rats, and they alldrowned. Or, the Piper returned the children after extorting payment, or the children were returned only after the villagers paid several times the original payment in gold.[4][7]
The Hamelin street namedBungelosenstrasse ("street without drums") is believed to be the last place that the children were seen. Ever since, music or dancing is not allowed on this street.[8][9]
The earliest mention of the story seems to have been on a stained-glass window placed in the Church of Hamelinc. 1300. The window was described in several accounts between the 14th and 17th centuries.[10] It was destroyed in 1660. Based on the surviving descriptions, a modern reconstruction of the window has been created by historian Hans Dobbertin. It features the colourful figure of the Pied Piper and several figures of children dressed in white.[11]
The window is generally considered to have been created in memory of a tragic historical event for the town; Hamelin town records also apparently start with this event.[citation needed]
Although research has been conducted for centuries, no explanation for the historical event is universally accepted as true. In any case, the rats were first added to the story in a version fromc. 1559 and are absent from earlier accounts.[12]
On the back of the last tattered page of a dusty chronicle calledThe Golden Chain, written in Latin in 1370 by the monkHeinrich of Herford, there is written in a different handwriting the following account:[15]
Here follows a marvellous wonder, which transpired in the town of Hamelin in the diocese of Minden, in this Year of Our Lord, 1284, on the Feast of Saints John and Paul. A certain young man thirty years of age, handsome and well-dressed, so that all who saw him admired him because of his appearance, crossed the bridges and entered the town by the West Gate. He then began to play all through the town a silver pipe of the most magnificent sort. All the children who heard his pipe, in the number of 130, followed him to the East Gate and out of the town to the so-called execution place or Calvary. There they proceeded to vanish, so that no trace of them could be found. The mothers of the children ran from town to town, but they found nothing. It is written: A voice was heard from on high, and a mother was bewailing her son. And as one counts the years according to the Year of Our Lord or according to the first, second or third year of an anniversary, so do the people in Hamelin reckon the years after the departure and disappearance of their children. This report I found in an old book. And the mother of the Dean Johann von Lüde saw the children depart.[16][17][18][note 1]
It is rendered in the following form in an inscription on a house known asRattenfängerhaus (English: "Rat Catcher's House" orPied Piper's House) in Hamelin:[14]
anno 1284 am dage johannis et pauli war der 26. juni dorch einen piper mit allerley farve bekledet gewesen cxxx kinder verledet binnen hameln geboren to calvarie bi den koppen verloren
Translation:
(In the year 1284 on the day of [Saints] John and Paul on 26 June 130 children born in Hamelin were lured by a piper clothed in many colours toCalvary near the Koppen, [and] lost)
According to author Fanny Rostek-Lühmann this is the oldest surviving account.Koppen (High GermanKuppe, meaning a knoll or domed hill) seems to be a reference to one of several hills surrounding Hamelin. Which of them was intended by the manuscript's author remains uncertain.[19]
A similar inscription can be found on the "Wedding-house" or Hochzeitshaus, a fine structure erected between 1610 and 1617[20] for marriage festivities, but diverted from its purpose since 1721. Behind rises the spire of the parish church of St. Nicholas which, in the words of an English book of folklore, may still "enwall stones that witness how the parents prayed, while the Piper wrought sorrow for them without":[21]
Nach Christi Geburt 1284 Jahr Gingen bei den Koppen unter Verwahr Hundert und dreissig Kinder, in Hameln geboren von einem Pfeiffer verfürt und verloren
Translation:
In the year of Our Lord 1284 went into the Koppen under custody 130 children born in Hamelin by a piper seduced and lost
A portion of the town gate dating from the year 1556 is currently exhibited at the Hamelin Museum. According to Hamelin Museum, this stone is the oldest surviving sculptural evidence for the legend.[22] It bears the following inscription:[23]
Anno 1556 / Centu[m] ter denos C[um] mag[us] ab urbe puellos / Duxerat a[n]te a[n]nos 272. Condita porta fuit
Translation:
In the year 1556, 272 years after the magician stole 130 children from the city, this gate was founded.
In the mid 14th Century, a monk from Minden, Heinrich von Herford, puts together a collection of holy legends called the "Catena Aurea". It speaks of a "miracle" that took place in 1284 in Hamelin. A youth appeared and played on a strange silver flute. Every child that heard the flute, followed the stranger. They left Hamelin by the Eastern gate and disappeared at Kalvarien Hill. This is the oldest known account of this occurrence. Around this time a verse of rhyme is found in "zu Hameln im Kloster". It tells about the children's disappearance. It is written in red ink on the title page of a missal. It bewails "the 130 beloved Hamelner children" who were "eaten alive by Calvaria". The original verses are probably the oldest written source of this legend. It has been missing for hundreds of years.[note 2]
However, different versions of transcriptions of handwritten copies still exist. One was published by Heinrich Meibom in 1688.[25] Another was included by Johann Daniel Gottlieb Herr under the title Passionale Sanctorum inCollectanea zur Geschichte der Stadt Hameln. His manuscript is dated 1761.[26] There are some Latin verses which had a prose version underneath:[27]
Maria audi nos, tibi Filius nil negat. Post duo C. C. mille post octoginta quaterue —Annus hic est ille, quo languet sexus uterque— Orbantis pueros centumque triginta Joannis Et Pauli caros Hamelenses non sine damnis, Fatur, ut omnes eos vivos Calvaria sorpsit, Christi tuere reos, ne tam mala res quibus obsit.
Anno millesimo ducentesimo octuagesimo quarto in die Johannis et Pauli perdiderunt Hamelenses centum et triginta pueros, qui intraverunt montem Calvariam.
Translation:
Mary, hear us, for your Son denies you nothing. 1284 is that year when members of both sexes languish (through weakness), the year of the day John and Paul, which the 130 dear children of Hamelin swept away and not without doom. It is said that Calvary swallowed them alive. Christ, protect the guilty so that no similar evil fate overtake them.[26]
In the year one thousand two hundred and eighty-four, on the day of John and Paul, the Hamelin lost a hundred and thirty children who entered Calvary mount.
Somewhere between 1559 and 1565, CountFroben Christoph von Zimmern included a version in hisZimmerische Chronik.[28] This appears to be the earliest account which mentions the plague of rats. 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). Another contemporary account is that ofJohann Weyer in hisDe praestigiis daemonum (1563).[29]
A number of theories suggest that children died of some natural causes such as disease or starvation,[30] and that the Piper was a symbolic figure ofDeath. Analogous themes which are associated with this theory include theDance of Death,Totentanz orDanse Macabre, a common medieval trope. Some of the scenarios that have been suggested as fitting this theory include that the children drowned in the river Weser, were killed in alandslide or contracted some disease during an epidemic. Another modern interpretation reads the story as alluding to an event where Hamelin children were lured away by apagan orhereticsect to forests nearCoppenbrügge (the mysteriousKoppen "hills" of the poem) for ritual dancing where they all perished during a sudden landslide or collapsingsinkhole.[31]
Speculation on the emigration theory is based on the idea that, by the 13th century, overpopulation of the area resulted in the oldest son owning all the land and power (majorat), leaving the rest as serfs.[32] 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.[33] In his bookThe Pied Piper: A Handbook,Wolfgang Mieder states that historical documents exist showing that people from the area including Hamelin did help settle parts ofTransylvania.[34]Emily Gerard reports inThe Land Beyond the Forest an element of the folktale that "popular tradition has averred the Germans who about that time made their appearance in Transylvania to be no other than the lost children of Hamelin, who, having performed their long journey by subterranean passages, reissued to the light of day through the opening of a cavern known as the Almescher Höhle, in the north-east of Transylvania."[35] Transylvania had suffered under lengthyMongol invasions of Central Europe, led by two grandsons ofGenghis Khan and which date from around the time of the earliest appearance of the legend of the piper, the early 13th century.[36]
In the version of the legend posted on the official website for the town of Hamelin, 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 professionalrat catchers.[37]
The theory is provided credence by the fact that family names common to Hamelin at the time "show up with surprising frequency in the areas of Uckermark and Prignitz, near Berlin."[38]
Lokator, in hat
Historian Ursula Sautter, citing the work of linguist Jürgen Udolph, offers this hypothesis in support of the emigration theory:
"After the defeat of the Danes at theBattle of Bornhöved 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.[39]
Udolph favours the hypothesis that the Hamelin youths wound up in what is now Poland.[40] Genealogist Dick Eastman cited Udolph's research on Hamelin surnames that have shown up in Polish phonebooks:
Linguistics professor Jürgen Udolph says that 130 children did vanish on a June day in the year 1284 from the German village of Hamelin (Hameln in German). 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 the regions of Prignitz and Uckermark, both north of Berlin. He also found the same surnames in the former Pomeranian region, which is now a part of Poland.
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 aslokators 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 theBattle of Bornhöved 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 Pomerania. 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.[41]
Some theories have linked the disappearance of the children tomass psychogenic illness in the form ofdancing mania. Dancing mania outbreaks occurred during the 13th century, including one in 1237 in which a large group of children travelled fromErfurt toArnstadt (about 20 km (12 mi)), jumping and dancing all the way,[42] in marked similarity to the legend of the Pied Piper of Hamelin, which originated at around the same time.[43]
Others have suggested that the children left Hamelin to be part of apilgrimage, amilitary campaign, or even a newChildren's Crusade (which is said to have occurred in 1212) but never returned to their parents. These theories see the unnamed Piper as their leader or a recruiting agent. The townspeople made up this story (instead of recording the facts) to avoid the wrath of the church or the king.[44]
James Howell compared a version of the legend with recent events in London in a letter of 1643.[46]
In 1803,Johann Wolfgang von Goethe wrote a poem based on the story that was later set to music byHugo Wolf. Goethe also incorporated references to the story in his version ofFaust. (The first part of the drama was first published in 1808 and the second in 1832.)[citation needed]
Jakob andWilhelm Grimm, known as theBrothers Grimm, drawing from 11 sources, included the tale in their collectionDeutsche 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).[19]
Robert Browning wrote a poem called "The Pied Piper of Hamelin", using the 1605Verstegan version of the tale (the earliest account in English) and adopting the 1376 date. The poem was published in Browning'sDramatic Lyrics (1842).[47] His retelling in verse is notable for its humour, wordplay, and jingling rhymes.[citation needed][according to whom?]
Viktor Dyk'sKrysař (The Rat-Catcher), published in 1915, retells the story in a slightly darker, more enigmatic way. The short novel also features the character ofFaust.
Shel Silverstein's poem "The One Who Stayed", published as part of his collectionWhere the Sidewalk Ends in 1974, tells the Pied Piper story from the point of view of a child who was too scared to follow him.
Gloria Skurzynski's 1979 children's novelWhat Happened in Hamelin re-tells the Piped Piper story documenting the 1284 Hamelin events using research of medieval manuscripts, but gives the Piper an apprentice, a badly treated baker's servant, who discovers his new master's intended vengeance.
"Emissary from Hamelin" is a short story written by Harlan Ellison, published in 1978 in the collectionStrange Wine.
The paperback horror novelCome, Follow Me by Philip Michaels (Avon Books, 1983) is based on the story.
China Miéville's 1998 London-set novelKing Rat centers on the ancient rivalry between the rats (some of whom are portrayed as having humanlike characteristics) and the Pied Piper, who appears in the novel as a mysterious musician named Pete who infiltrates the local club-music scene.
The Piper is one of the three children of the architect in Garth Nix’sThe Keys to the Kingdom series. One of the main characters in the novel. Suzy Turquoise Blue, is one of the children he led away.
In 2014,Russell Brand'sThe Pied Piper of Hamelin was published by Atria Books (ISBN978-1-4767-9189-0) as Book 1 of hisTrickster Tales, setting the story in a more modern era and making some of the children as (and in some cases even more) repulsive as the adults. He also narrated the audiobook version (see below in "Audio").
The short story "The Rat King" byJohn Connolly, first included in the 2016 edition of his novelThe Book of Lost Things, is a fairly faithful adaptation of the legend, but with a new ending. It was adapted for BBC Radio 4 and first broadcast on 28 October 2016.[citation needed]
"The Piper is coming nearer," he said, "he is nearer than he was that evening I saw him before. His long, shadowy cloak is blowing around him. He pipes—he pipes—and we must follow—Jem and Carl and Jerry and I—round and round the world. Listen—listen—can't you hear his wild music?"[50]
Matthew Cody has written a trilogy for young readers entitledThe Secrets of the Pied Piper, consisting ofThe Peddler's Road (2015,ISBN978-0385755283),The Magician's Key (2016,ISBN978-0385755283) andThe Piper's Apprentice (2017,ISBN978-0385755306), telling the story of two siblings who, while visiting Hamelin with their father, are transported to the Summer Isle, where the original stolen Hamelin children (who have not aged a day) now live, and must find a way to escape back to the real world.
In 2024,Book 1: Hamelin, the first book inThe Children of the Piper series by Peter Smart, was published by PiperHaus (ISBN978-1-966158-01-1) and is a fully illustrated twist on the classic tale told from the point of view of 13-year-old Sofia Müller, a girl living in Hamelin at the time. Instead of asking for gold or silver to get rid of the town's rat infestation, the piper asks for a promise instead: because the adults of the town had not been treating the children very well, they must agree to start treating them as they wished they would have been treated when they were children themselves. A year later, after the townsfolk fail to keep their promise, the piper takes the children away.
The Pied Piper (1924), a combination live-action/animated silent short directed by and starringWalter Lantz and his cartoon creation "Dinky Doodle", putting the "Pied Piper" concept in a modern setting with an artist being constantly bothered by cartoon mice interrupting his work.[52]
Pied Piper Porky (1939), starringPorky Pig, is aLooney Tunes parody of the tale of the Pied Piper, in which one rat doesn't fall for Porky's tune and breaks his pipe, causing Porky to call upon a cat who's afraid of mice.
The Pied Piper of Basin Street (1945), aWalter LantzSwing Symphony cartoon transposing the Pied Piper story to a modern city, with the Piper playing a trombone (performed byJack Teagarden) to lure away and capture all the rats and then after the Mayor cheats him luring away all the teenagers by impersonating "Hank Swoonatra".
Paying the Piper (1949), starringPorky Pig, is anotherLooney Tunes parody of the tale of the Pied Piper in which the cats aren't happy that Porky has rid the town of rats.
Pink Piper is a 1976theatrical short starringThe Pink Panther in which after "The Pink Piper" unsuccessfully tries to lead a mouse out of a villager's house, he then tries to save it when the villager tries to kill the mouse himself.
The Pied Piper of Hamelin is a 1981 stop-motion animated film byCosgrove Hall using Robert Browning's original poem verbatim, narrated byRobert Hardy. This adaptation was later shown as an episode for the PBS seriesLong Ago and Far Away.
In Atom Egoyan'sThe Sweet Hereafter (1997), the legend of the Pied Piper is a metaphor for a town's failure to protect its children.[55]
In 2015, a South Korean horror movie,The Piper, was released. It is a loose adaptation of the Brothers Grimm tale where the Pied Piper uses the rats for his revenge to kill all the villagers except for the children whom he traps in a cave.[56]
In 1985 Robert Browning's poetic retelling of the story was adapted and directed byNicholas Meyer as an episode ofShelley Duvall'sFaerie Tale Theatre starringEric Idle as both the Piper and Robert Browning in the prologue and epilogue narrating the poem to a young boy.
Gloria Skurzynski's 1979 children's novelWhat Happened in Hamelin (see above in "Literature") was adapted as an episode ofCBS Storybreak under the same title and released as the 3rd episode of Season 3 on 3 October 1987 and is considered to belost media.
The cast ofPeanuts did their own version of the tale in the direct-to-DVD specialIt's the Pied Piper, Charlie Brown (2000), which was the final special to have the involvement of original creatorCharles Schulz, who died before it was released.
The 2003 television filmThe Electric Piper, set in the United States in the 1960s, depicts the piper as apsychedelic rock guitarist modeled afterJimi Hendrix.
InThe Sarah Jane Adventures the Pied Piper is a shapeshifting alien who manifests from people's fears.
In the American TV seriesOnce Upon a Time, the Pied Piper is revealed to bePeter Pan, who is using pipes to call out to "lost boys" and take them away from their homes.
In the Netflix seriesThe Society, a man named Pfeiffer removes a mysterious smell from the town of West Ham, but is not paid. Two days later he takes the kids on field trip in a school bus and returns them to an alternate version of the town where the adults are not present.
InTeenage Mutant Ninja Turtles there is a villain called the Rat King who uses rats as troops; like the Pied Piper he uses a flute to charm them and even turns Master Splinter on his prized students.
The HBO seriesSiliconValley centers around acompression company calledPied Piper. The denouement of the series depicts the company as benevolent and self-sacrificing as opposed to the extortionist depiction in the fable. One of the characters refers to the company's eponymous inspiration as "a predatory flautist who murders children in a cave."
The Grimm Variations, a 2024Netflix anime series, features a retelling of the story, in which the Pied Piper is a visitor to an isolated village who introduces an illicit picture to a teacher, who uses it to try and seduce a student.
On 23 August 2000,The Amazing Ratman Story, written by David Sheasby, was broadcast onBBC Radio 4 as part of theirAfternoon Play series, withBernard Cribbins andGeraldine Fitzgerald.[60] In this version of the Pied Piper story, set in a retirement home, an old man makes a deal with a television crew to tell them his tale about a piper, a mayor and a town plagued with rats. The radio play has since been rebroadcast several times onBBC Radio 7 andBBC Radio 4 Extra.
A reading ofJohn Connolly's storyThe Rat King (see the entry above in "Literature"), performed by Peter Marinker, was broadcast onBBC Radio 4 on 28 October 2016[61] and rebroadcast onBBC Radio 4 Extra on 20 and 21 January 2019.[62]
In 2014,Russell Brand narrated the audiobook version of his bookThe Pied Piper of Hamelin (see above in "Literature") for Simon & Schuster Audio.[63]
Karl Weigl composed a children's operettaThe Pied Piper of Hamelin in 1934, with libretto by Helene Scheu-Riesz. Under the direction of Davide Casali, the Festival Viktor Ullmann mounted a dramatic performance of the operetta in 2021 in Italian rather than the original German.
The 1959 album by Malvina Reynolds: 'Another Country Heard From' contains an original song about the Pied Piper.
In 1970,Nicolas Flagello composed the operaThe Piper of Hamelin. In 1999, Newport Classics released a recording of a live performance of the opera performed by the Metropolitan School of Music Preparatory Division, featuringSesame Street'sBob McGrath as the Narrator and Brace Negron as the Piper.[65]
In 1972, a musical version of the story titledThe Pied Piper was released byEMI's Starline Records (SRS 5144) as part of theDavid Frost Presents series, a series of LPs featuringDavid Frost narrating fairytales and supported in song and vocal dramatization by famous British comedians of the 50s & 60s, with music byRoger Webb, lyrics byNorman Newell and featuringDoctor Who starJon Pertwee as the Piper andMiriam Margolyes.[66]
In 1985,Harvey Shield's musicalHamelin: A Musical Tale from Rats to Riches, written with Richard Jarboe and Matthew Wells, was produced off-Broadway at the Circle in the Square Downtown Theatre in Greenwich Village, New York following initial productions at the Olio in Los Angeles and Musical Theater Works in New York, running for 33 performances.[67] A recording was released in 2003 under the titleThe Pied Piper of Hamelin: A Musical.
In 1989,W11 Opera premieredKoppelberg, an opera they commissioned from composerSteve Gray and lyricist Norman Brooke; the work was based on the Robert Browning poem.[68]
The Town on the Edge of the End, a comic-book version, was published byWalt Kelly in his 1954Pogo collectionPogo Stepmother Goose.
The 1995 video gamePiper is aWestern re-telling of the original legend of the Pied Piper.
In the anime adaptation of the Japanese light novel series,Problem Children Are Coming from Another World, Aren't They? (2013), a major story revolves around the "false legend" of Pied Piper of Hamelin. The adaptation speaks in great length about the original source and the various versions of the story that sprang up throughout the years. It is stated that Weser, the representation of Natural Disaster, was the true Piper of Hamelin (meaning the children were killed by drowning or landslides).[69]
Inlinguistics,pied-piping is the common 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 calledWh-movement. For example, in "For whom are the pictures?", the word "for" ispied-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 therelative pronoun, which normally starts the relative clause.
Some researchers believe that the tale has inspired the common English phrase "pay the piper,"[70] meaning to pay one's debts (or, metaphorically, face the consequences of one's decisions) rather than attempting to evade them. However, the phrase "pay the piper" may also be acontraction of the Englishproverb "he who pays the piper calls the tune."[70] This proverb, in contrast to the modern interpretation of paying a debt, suggests that the person who bears the financial responsibility for something also has the right to determine how it should be carried out.[71]
The present-day city of Hamelin continues to maintain information about the Pied Piper legend and possible origins of the story on its website. Interest in the city's connection to the story remains so strong that, in 2009, Hamelin held a tourist festival to mark the 725th anniversary of the disappearance of the town's earlier children.[72]The Rat Catcher's House is popular with visitors, although it bears no connection to the Rat-Catcher version of the legend. Indeed, the Rattenfängerhaus is instead associated with the story due to the earlier inscription upon its facade mentioning the legend. The house was built much later, in 1602 and 1603. It is now a Hamelin City-owned restaurant with a Pied Piper theme throughout.[73] The city also maintains an online shop with rat-themed merchandise as well as offering an officially licensed Hamelin Edition of the popular board gameMonopoly which depicts the legendary Piper on the cover.[74]
In addition to the recent milestone festival, each year the city marks 26 June as "Rat Catcher's Day". In the United States, a similar holiday for exterminators based on Rat Catcher's Day is marked on 22 July, but has not caught on.[75]
^O'Donnell translates the name "Johann von Lüde" as "John of Luede" (the original Latin sentence goes: "Et mater domini Johannis de Lude decani vidit pueros recedentes"), uses the description "Calvary Cross", and makes no mention of an execution place. O'Donnell also writes that the piper plays on a "magic silver flute". Both O'Donnell and Wolfgang Wieder write "the Weser Gate" instead of "the West Gate". All three sources translatedecani with "deacon", but he was a Stiftsdechant, which in German can also be written Dekan and Dekant. In English this position is called Dean. Johann von Lüde was a dean, not a deacon.
^Catena Aurea in Latin is the same asThe Golden Chain in English
^Harty, Sheila (1994). "Pied Piper Revisited". In Bridges, David; McLaughlin, Terence H. (eds.).Education And The Market Place. Routledge. p. 89.ISBN0-7507-0348-2.
^Mieder, Wolfgang (2007).The Pied Piper: A Handbook. Greenwood Press. p. 67.ISBN978-0-313-33464-1.
^Gerard, Emily (1888).The Land Beyond the Forest: Facts, Figures, and Fancies from Transylvania. Harper & Brothers. p. 30.
^Eastman, Dick (7 February 1998)."Pied Piper of Hamelin".Eastman's Online Genealogy Newsletter. Vol. 3, no. 6. Ancestry Publishing. Archived fromthe original on 18 July 2011. Retrieved5 September 2008.
^Schullian, D. M. (1977). "The Dancing Pilgrims at Muelebeek".Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences.32 (3). Oxford University Press:315–9.doi:10.1093/jhmas/xxxii.3.315.PMID326865.
^"Koppelberg".W11 Opera. 21 June 2012. Retrieved5 April 2017.
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