Previously: The Green Children Of Woolpit.
You’re probably familiar with the tale: Once, many years ago, a mysterious stranger came to the German town of Hamelin — a stranger with a musical gift and a talent for removing rats. He offered his services to the town, who accepted his offer; once the work was done, however, they refused to pay him. And in revenge, he stole away with the children of the town, playing them a merry song on his fife and leading them away, never to be seen again. He became known as the Pied Piper of Hamelin, and he remains one of German folklore’s most fascinating figures.
But although the story of the Pied Piper of Hamelin has become infamous as a fairytale, there’s a bit more to it than just flights of fancy. Something, you see, may have actually happened in Hamelin many centuries ago to inspire the tale. But what? What happened in Hamelin? And why might the story of a mysterious stranger kidnapping the village’s children have come to be the prevailing narrative surrounding this incident?
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I’ve previously written about the Pied Piper as an Encyclopaedia subject, but given that TGIMM’s Encyclopaedia Of The Impossible feature typically treats fictional characters and legendary creatures as if they’re real (because it’s fun!), I felt it was worth examining the subject from a different standpoint — a more academic or journalistic one aimed at a deeper dive than what’s in the Piper’s current Encyclopaedia entry.
Because the bottom line is, even if the Pied Piper himself wasn’t real, something may have actually happened in Hamelin in or around the 13th century — something that resulted in the widespread loss of the town’s children. And given how devastating the loss seems to have been, especially during a time when it was still quite common for young ones not to survive childhood… it must have been something terrible, indeed.
But we don’t know what. We have some ideas, yes, and the few surviving records we have offer us some tantalizing possibilities.
We’ll never truly know, though — and that’s what’s kept me, at least, coming back to the mystery time and time again.
So let’s talk about it, shall we?
Let’s talk about what might have happened in Hamelin all those centuries ago.
Let’s talk about what happens when you don’t pay the piper.
The Story Of The Pied Piper Of Hamelin
In the event that you’re unfamiliar with the tale — or if you just might benefit from a refresher — the story of the Pied Piper of Hamelin usually goes a little something like this:
Once upon a time, in the town of Hamelin, there was a problem: Rodents. Rats, in particular — vicious ones, aggressive and without fear. They attacked dogs and cats. They snuck into homes and bit babies and children. They weaseled their way into larders and ate everything they could get their sharp little claws and teeth on. No matter what the townspeople did — no matter the traps they set or the brooms and sticks they wielded — the rats plagued them, literally eating them out of house and home and destroying everything they encountered as they went.
The people of Hamelin were at their wits’ end — until the day it seemed that an answer to their problem had appeared.
On that day, a man arrived in Hamelin — a man dressed in curious clothing, brightly colored and rather fantastical. Tall and slender, he wore a jaunty hat upon his head and carried with him a fife.
But although he looked like a traveling musician, all decked out in his pied clothing and carrying an instrument with which he could — and did — make sweet music, he told the townspeople of Hamelin that he was, in fact, a ratcatcher. For a price, he said, he would rid them of their rats.
They agreed.
And so, the man in the colorful coat took his fife and put it to his lips — and to the astonishment of the people of Hamelin, when his music began to play, the rats began to emerge. They crawled out from holes and cracks, nooks and crannies, and gathered around the strange man’s feet, seemingly entranced by the song issuing forth from his fife.
Still playing, the man began to dance — and as he danced, so too did the rats. Playing and dancing, he led, and the rats followed. They followed him through the streets of Hamelin, rushing over the cobblestones and passing by shops and houses as the villagers watched.
The man’s plan soon became clear: He led the rats out of town, yes… but then, he turned course towards the River Weser. As he played, and as he danced, he stepped into the river’s waters — and the rats still followed.
The rats, mesmerized, enthralled, enchanted, followed the strange man into the river, where they met their deaths. They drowned, each and every one of them.
The townspeople were elated.
But they were also greedy.
They no longer wanted to pay the price to which they had agreed for the strange man’s work and expertise, and when they hemmed and hawed and refused to issue him the money they had promised, he left, angry and bitter.
And for a time, the people of Hamelin felt safe. There were no more rats. There were no more strange men in colorful clothing making haunting music and dancing peculiar dances.
But then, later, the strange man returned.
A terrible aspect upon his face, he spoke not a word as the frightened townspeople watched. They watched as he raised his fife to his lips once more, and they watched as he began to play his sweet music.
This time, it was not the rats who came out from their hiding places and gathered at his feet.
It was the children.
The children of the town of Hamelin flooded out of the shops and homes, ceasing their work, halting their play, rising from their beds, and gathered around the strange man, entranced, as he played.
And then he began to dance. And the children began to follow.
The man led the children through the streets of Hamelin. He led them out of the town. And he led them towards the river. He played, and he danced, and the children followed.
He did not, however, lead them into the river. Instead, upon reaching the River Weser, he turned, and continued to lead the children to a great mountain. When he reached the mountain — when they reached the mountain — a hole, a passage, a gaping maw opened up in the mountain’s side.
The strange man — still piping his pipe, still dancing his dance — led the children — still rapt, still following — inside.
They were never seen again — not the strange man with his colorful clothing and his magical fife, nor the children of the town of Hamelin.
This is why you must always keep your promises.
This is why you must always pay your debts.
For if you do not, the Pied Piper will take what is owed to him — and what he takes will be far more valuable to you than mere coins.
What he takes will be priceless.
This is just one way the story may be told, of course; like most fairytales and pieces of folklore, the details change from telling to telling and from storyteller to storyteller.
The village, for instance, is not actually called Hamelin — not in the early versions of the story, and not in real life, either. It’s Hameln; it became Hamelin in 1842, when English poet Robert Browning wrote his version of the tale, inserting the “i” to make the placename fit the meter better. This Anglicized version of the town’s name is still used today for tourism purposes, as well as more generally when the place is talked about in conversations occurring in English — but its actual, German name is Hameln.
The Pied Piper may be dressed differently in different versions, although he is always bright, bold, and colorful; this, of course, is how he gets his name — “pied” meaning patched, splotched, or variegated in color. His fife or pipe may be made of cane, although it may also be made of silver. When he reappears to take the children, he is sometimes described as having changed into a hunter’s outfit, although this wardrobe change is not always present.
Where, precisely, he takes the children after they leave the village may also differ from telling to telling. The disappearance into the side of the mountain — into a hole, a cave, or even a portal — is the most common end point; sometimes, though, he doesn’t just take them into the mountain, but through the mountain — specifically to Transylvania, or what is now central Romania.
Sometimes — and this is the version I grew up hearing, for what it’s worth — he does with them what he does with the rats: He leads them to the river to drown.
And in some versions, there are survivors — one child, or sometimes two or three children, who are unable to keep pace with the piper due to physical limitations or disability and who do not therefore fall prey to the same fate their friends do. Sometimes, these children are how the story has been relayed back to the townspeople of Hamelin; the children were unable to follow completely, but were close enough to witness what occurred, and may therefore report what they have seen when they return home.
Sometimes, one of these children is the narrator of the story as we ourselves are hearing it.
But the broad strokes are almost always the same: There is a rat problem; the piper arrives and leads the rats away from Hamelin; the town refuses to pay; and so, he returns and takes the town’s children away with him, never to be seen again.
And that, of course, is what this story is truly about: Not the rats, or the music, or even the magic, but the loss of the children — the loss of an entire generation of the village’s population. A loss that would have had powerful consequences for the village’s survival for many years to come.
And here is where the plot thickens: Sometimes, there are dates placed within the narrative — specific years in which the events of the story are said to have occurred, as well as specific days in specific months on which the piper returned and took away the children. The year is sometimes 1284, sometimes 1376, and sometimes 1484. The day is usually in June — June 20, June 22, or June 26, on or around the religious observance of Saint John’s and Saint Paul’s Day.
The specificity of the dates is striking, and ultimately prompts the question: Did something take away the children of Hamelin on a day in June during this period of history? Not a piper, perhaps (although that particular possibility cannot be entirely ruled out, either) — but… something less fantastical? Something much grimmer, and much more horrifyingly real? Something which may have become, over time, a story used to process the trauma of the loss of all those children — the story of the Pied Piper?
Perhaps.
So, then: What? What happened in Hamelin? What could have happened in Hamelin?
Lots of things, it turns out.
Lots of… not very nice things at all.
A Brief History Of Hamelin & Early Records Of The Piper
The city of Hameln, frequently known as Hamelin, is located in the Lower Saxony region of Germany, in the northwest of the country. It is on the banks of the Weser River, which also passes through another town known for its fairytale connections: Bremen, as in, the Bremen Town Musicians.
Today, it has a population of about 58,000 — but although this is still quite small, it’s been smaller. Hameln, you see, originally sprang up around a monastery, the Abbey of St. Boniface — known at the time as the Abbey of Fulda — which had been founded towards the end of the 9th century. A market town, Hameln was dependent on the abbey until 1259. (A curious date, knowing what we do about the dates associated with the Pied Piper story.)
Documentation of… whatever happened begins around 1300, although it’s worth noting that many of the earliest sources are no longer extant. As such, we can’t independently verify exactly what they were or what they said — we can only rely on other, later writings about them, which brings with it the possibility that we might be playing a game of Telephone with both the form and content of the original sources.
In any event, there was, it seems, a stained-glass window erected in Hameln’s Market Church around 1300 — in 1314, according to some sources, although the date is sometimes unclear — that commemorated a terrible event.
Originally constructed in the 12th century, this version of the church technically no longer exists; it was destroyed in 1945. It was reconstructed between 1957 and 1959, however, and the reconstructed church remains open and in operation today.
But in the early 14th century, when the original version of the church still stood, it reportedly had within it a window depicting a man dressed in colorful clothing with children all around him. The window also included an inscription, which we believe may have read something like:
“Am dage Ioannis / et Pauli / CXXX sind binnen / Hamelen ge/varen tho Kal/varie vnde / dorch geledt / alierlei gevar / gen Koppen ver/bracht vnd verloren.”
Or, in English, “On the day of John and Paul, 130 in Hamelin went to Calvary and were brought through all kinds of danger to the Koppen mountain and lost.”
The trouble is, the window has, like the 130 mentioned by it (which, by the way, we’ve assumed to mean “130 children,” although it does not expressly state that), been lost for many centuries. We know it was removed at one point and restored in 1572, but we no longer have it itself; we have only fragments of what it may have said, or what it may have shown. What we believe the inscription to have said and the art to have depicted are both only our best guesses, and unverifiable guesses at that.
(There is still currently a Pied Piper window in the church, by the way; however, it is not the original one. It is, in fact, quite recent, all things considered: It was designed in 1984 by Klaus Zimmer, per the Market Church’s official website.)
Another early mention of… something having occurred may be found in the Hameln town records. These records, the BBC reported in 2020, contain an entry dated 1384 reading simply, “It is 100 years since our children left.” It does not state what actually happened — there is no why, and there is no how. It says only that the children of that generation were gone, and that it has been a full century since they disappeared.
There was, we believe, another brief recounting of the incident that slightly predates the 1384 town record, but, like the stained-glass window, the original source is no longer extant. Written by the monk Heinrich von Herford, this recounting is thought to have been documented within the pages of a manuscript dating to around 1370.
But while we no longer have this record, we do have a later one that makes direct reference to it. In an annotation to what’s known as the Lüneburg Manuscript — so named for the location in which it was unearthed during its 1936 rediscovery — likely made between the years 1430 and 1450, there lies a written description of the piper leading the children out of Hameln. This description includes the note that the writer “found [this report] in an old book” — a book which is believed to be the 1370 manuscript.
What’s most notable about the Lüneburg Manuscript’s account, however, is the fact that its final line reads as follows: “And the mother of deacon Johann von Lüde saw the children depart.” Why is this notable? Because Johann von Lüde was, in fact, a real person.
The von Lüde family was one of Hameln’s wealthiest and most prominent; Johann himself, who was born in 1299, was the deacon of the St. Boniface collegiate basilica for decades, a position he held up until his 1378 death at the ripe old age of 79. Given that Johann was born in 1299, his mother would certainly have been around for the Pied Piper incident, if it had, in fact, occurred in or around 1284.
At this point, though, the documentation has already started to move from something resembling recorded (if, perhaps, embellished) fact to something more akin to legend — so although there are more sources I’d still classify as “historical,” technically speaking (an account from the mayor of Bamberg’s diary, dated 1533; a text from theologian and physician Jobus Fineclius dated 1556; and so on), they’re probably best considered versions of the story rather than factual reporting.
And, indeed, here is also where we also start to move into the more well-known retellings — the accounts passed around explicitly as fairytales. In the 16th century, for instance, we get Count Froben Christoph von Zimmern’s version in his Zimmerische Chronik, or Zimmern Chronicle, which is generally understood to be the version that introduced the rats into the equation; in the 17th century, there’s Richard Rowland Verstegan’s version — the first English language retelling, and the one that introduces Transylvania as a possible destination for the piper and the children — in his book A Restitution of Decayed Intelligence in Antiquities; and, of course, in the 19th century, we get the biggest, most well-known ones of all: The Grimms’ version, published in 1816 in the first volume of Deutsche Sagen, or German Legends; Robert Browning’s 1842 version, written in verse and based primarily on the Verstegan version; and Andrew Lang’s version, published in 1890 in his Red Fairy Book.
By the time the Pied Piper story becomes… well, the Pied Piper story — a fairytale, something to tell children before putting them to bed at night or to frighten them into good behavior — its fragments of truth have been buried in the narrative.
But those early accounts — the stained-glass window, the 14th century manuscript, the note in the Hameln town records of it having been 100 years since the children left — what, simply put, is the deal with them? Do they point to an actual event?
Again: We’ll probably never known for sure. But boy, do folks have some theories about what, if anything, that actual event could have possibly been.
The Truth Of The Pied Piper: Theories & Speculation
We’ll start with one of the most commonly leaped-to explanations for why the children may have disappeared: Illness and subsequent death.
Logically, this explanation makes sense; child mortality rates in the medieval era were astonishingly high, with historians estimating that somewhere in the neighborhood of 400 to 500 children out of every thousand not reaching 10 years of age in England alone. (Imagine what the numbers might be for Europe as whole.) True, not all of these deaths were the result of illness; the dangers of a medieval childhood were many, with accidents both in and out of the home frequently causing injury and death. But illness was still a major cause of death for children during this era, which can’t be ignored.
The presence of the rats in the story is often cited as an indicator that illness may have been at work; they work on both a literal and metaphorical level: They are actual carriers of disease, and they may be seen as a representation of disease. Suggestions on the specific illness at work here have ranged from murine typhus to the Bubonic Plague.
There are flaws in this theory, of course. For one thing, the rats aren’t present in any of the earliest documentation; indeed, they didn’t even enter the narrative until many centuries later (that was the work of the Zimmern Chronicle version in the 1600s, you’ll recall). And for another, if it were really the Bubonic Plague at work, then the events of the story could not have occurred in 1284; the Black Death didn’t hit until 1347.
A different sort of plague has also been offered forth as an explanation: Dancing plague. Also known as dancing mania or St. Vitus’ Dance, this phenomenon involves people uncontrollably dancing without cessation, often until they literally collapse. We know next to nothing about its actual mechanism(s) — but there are a number of documented cases of dancing mania occurring throughout the middle ages and early modern period in Europe.
The most famous of these is the Dancing Plague of 1518, which occurred in Strasburg — but, as the BBC pointed out in 2020, there was, in fact, an outbreak of dancing mania not too far from Hameln in 1247 (or possibly 1237 — sources conflict). In this instance, the children of Erfurt — possibly around 100, although potentially as many as a thousand — began dancing uncontrollably, traveling all the way to Arnstadt as they danced before finally collapsing upon arrival at the town gates.
Again, though, there are flaws in the theory — namely that although Erfurt is, like Hameln, in Germany, “not too far from” is a relative phrase: They’re about 250 kilometers apart. Today, that’s more than a three-hour drive; in the medieval era, it would have been… quite a journey to get from one to the other, and therefore quite a feat for news from Erfurt to make its way to Hameln in a way conducive to having the dancing mania incident inspire the Pied Piper. Furthermore, there’s no evidence that the people of Hameln even knew about the Erfurt incident, so this theory remains just that: A theory.
Another possibility that’s been floated from time to time is that the children of Hameln left as part of a children’s crusade. Notably, we’re not necessarily talking about the Children’s Crusade here — the failed popular crusade that occurred in the early 13th century (possibly 1212, although that date is not definitive), in which somewhere in the neighborhood of 30,000 children were convinced to follow a boy claiming to have been personally instructed by Jesus to lead them all to the “Holy Land” and essentially colonize it (spoiler alert: It did not go well!) — but rather, a different children’s crusade with similar goals.
There is not, as far as I know, any record of a specific children’s crusade that’s pointed to as an option here, however; when this theory is floated, it’s usually just noted as a children’s crusade which may or may not have occurred that could theoretically have followed a similar template as the documented 13th century one. It’s a bit wibbly, and mostly just a thought experiment.
What about war? Is that a possibility? War is frequently responsible for the losses of entire generations — did a battle around Hameln at the time of the Pied Piper incident that might account for it? Intriguingly, yes: The Battle of Sedemünder.
Remember when I noted that Hameln was under the jurisdiction of the abbey around which it had sprung up until 1259? That’s the year the Battle of Sedemünder occurred. After the Abbot of Fulda transferred the sovereign rights of Hameln to the Bishop of Minden, the townspeople — feeling (probably rightly) that their independence was being threatened — subsequently took up arms. The battle was not a success for the villagers, however; the people of Hameln were roundly defeated and many were taken prisoner.
This is interesting to me, but again, there’s nothing definitive or concrete that we can really point to in order to connect this battle firmly with the Pied Piper legend. All we have is that a battle that probably resulted in the deaths or imprisonment of at least some of Hameln’s young people (though probably young adults, not actual children). For the curious, Hameln was granted its independence in 1277, so the battle wasn’t a total disaster, historically speaking.
Lastly, we have a much simpler explanation — one which, insofar as it’s believed that there could be a factual, historical basis for the Pied Piper legend, is generally the most accepted of the possibilities: Emigration and colonization (and, alas, possibly some kidnapping or abduction).
As Wolfgang Mieder noted in his (truly terrific) book Tradition And Innovation In Folklore, Bishop Bruno of Olmutz sent recruiters out to many towns and villages in the latter half of the 13th century; the goal was to find people willing to relocate in order to populate the several hundred villages in Moravia the bishop had previously established. There are records of family names in one of the Moravian towns that seem like they might be closely related to similar names found in the Hameln records; as such, it’s not outside the realm of possibility that one of Bishop Bruno’s recruiters could have come to Hameln around 1284 and convinced a number of its young people to leave for what would have been pitched to them as better opportunities.
At least one academic, however, has a different idea: In 1998, a report in the Independent zeroed in on a theory from Jurgen Udolph, then a linguistics professor at the University of Gottingen, which proposed East Germany and Poland as the areas of relocation. Per Udolph, it’s not uncommon for settlers (or, uh, colonizers) to bestow placenames upon their new locations inspired by favorite locales from their original homes — and, in studying the place names of the areas in question which were colonized by Germans in the 13th century, Udolph found a number of Hamelns.
In Udolph’s theory, recruiters may have arrived in Hameln around 1284 and convinced a large group of young people from the village to relocate. And although Udolph did state that he did not have a definitive idea of who the Pied Piper may have actually been, he thought it was possible that he may have been one of these recruiters — a “locator,” as they were termed. “They more multi-colored robes, just like the musician in the story,” he said.
So: Those are the possibilities — or many of them, at least; there may be still more. Is the evidence particularly compelling for any of them? Yes and no; many are plausible, but there is no proof positive for any of them — and there likely never will be.
Either way, though: The idea that something could have happened that, for whatever reason, the town itself decided it did not want to remember in its entirety — something which fueled the creation of a stand-in, a strange man in colorful clothing who stole away 130 children — is a fascinating one. I’ve remarked several times on the ability of stories and storytelling to function as a means of processing trauma, and I do think that possibility remains here.
Paying the piper can mean many things, after all.
Hamelin Today: Home Of The Rat Catcher
Today, Hameln — Hamelin — leans heavily into its identity as the town in which the Pied Piper once played his tunes and danced his dance and led both the rats and the children away. And, honestly, why wouldn’t it? Already a worthy destination for its historical longevity and beautiful architecture, the presence of the piper adds an even more colorful, fairytale-like quality to the place.
The Pied Piper’s tale is emblazoned across many buildings and structures. The building known as the Rattenfängerhaus, for instance — literally the Rat Catcher’s House — features a plaque outside bearing an inscription similar to the one believed to have been on the stained-glass window that was once part of the Market Church:
“A.D. 1284 — on the 26th of June — the day of St. John and St. Paul — 130 children, born in Hamelin, were led out of the town by a piper wearing multicoloured clothes. After passing the Calvary near the Koppenberg they disappeared forever.”
The building, notably, was built in the 17th century, long after the Pied Piper is said to have visited the town; it also didn’t bear the name Rattenfängerhaus until the early 20th century. It currently houses a Pied Piper-themed restaurant.
The town is also dotted with fountains and statues commemorating the Pied Piper; a mechanical clock tower plays a clockwork reenactment of the legend at various times throughout the day; small, decorative stones adorned with rats may be found embedded within the cobbles on many streets; and, of course, you can see the new stained-glass window depicting the piper in the Market Church.
The Hameln Museum, naturally, has a large focus on the Pied Piper legend; it’s open Tuesdays to Sundays from 11am to 6pm.
And — most entertainingly — there’s an open-air theatrical performance that plays throughout the spring and summer every year, bringing the tale of the Pied Piper to life. With the curtain rising at the Hochzeitshaus-Terrasse on Sundays at noon, the show runs about 30 minutes, and ends with the Piper parading the audience through Hameln’s historical streets. It’s tradition, at this point; the Pied Piper play has been performing for more than 60 years.
Should you choose to visit Hamelin, feel free to enjoy all of these things. Enjoy the Rattenfängerhaus, and the statues, and the museum, and the play, and all the little touches that present the Pied Piper as a brightly-colored mascot.
But should you hear the distant strains of a fife floating through the air…
…Think twice about following them.
You never know where they might go.
***
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[Photos via Wikimedia Commons (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 8, 9, 10, 12, 14), available via the public domain; Ruben Holthuijsen, dierk schaefer, michaelmueller410, John Carkeet/Flickr, available under a CC BY 2.0 Creative Commons license]
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