Pied Piper of Hamelin
This watercolor painting is the oldest pictorial depiction of the story of the Pied Piper of Hamelin, the folktale made famous by the Grimm brothers. The story recounts the tale pied piper who was hired to eradicate all the rats living within the village of Hamelin, Germany. Pied means multi-colored.
This painting is a copy of a stained-glass window that was located in the Market Church, in Hamelin, or Hameln as it is spelled today. It is believed that the window was created in circa 1300, just 16 years after the disappearance of the children.
This piece was either commissioned or painted by the baron Augustin von Mörsperg in 1592. He had traveled to Hamelin from the Alsace region of western Germany to see if the story of the Pied Piper was, in fact, true. Notice the gallows near the opening of the cave, indicating the children’s march to their death. Von Mörsperg included this illustration in his book, Reisechronik. We are lucky he had it copied, as the window was destroyed around 1660.
The earliest writing concerning the Pied Piper of Hamelin was an entry in the town chronicles of Hamelin from 1384 which said, “It is 100 years since our children left”. Another record, the Lüneburg manuscript, dated to around 1440 reads: “In the year of 1284, on the day of [Saints] John and Paul on 26th June…130 children born in Hamlin were led away by a piper [clothed] in many colours to [their] Calvary near the Koppen, [and] lost”. Koppen is a German word that translates into a domed hill or knoll.
In the sixteenth century, a wall was built around Hamelin with the following written into the stone, “In the year 1556, 272 years after the magician led 130 children out of the town, this portal was erected”. The story became immortal when the Grimm Brothers documented it in their 1816 publication of Deutsche Sagen (or German Legends). They used 11 different sources to write their version.
Some linguists today believe that the “children” in the story may just be referring to the townsfolk as “children of the town” and that the story documents a sudden mass migration to another country. An account from 1605 by Richard Rowland Verstegan supports that and states that the children from Hamelin had moved to Transylvania. Other theories that have been postulated include that the children had died from some sort of plague, or that they left on the Children’s Crusade to Jerusalem never to return.
The following is a brief synopsis of the Pied Piper of Hamelin story, who is also sometimes referred to as the Pan Piper:
During the 13th century (some records say June 26, 1284, some say the year was 1294), the town of Hamelin was infested with rats. Rat catching was a popular profession in that time, supported by townspeople trying to avoid the Bubonic Plague that was sweeping the continent. The Pied Piper waltzed into town in an outfit of many colors. He made a deal with the townsfolk to rid the town of rats in exchange for money. The Pied Piper played his flute, and the rats, spellbound, followed him as he led them into the Weser River where all but one drowned. The Pied Piper returned to Hamelin to pick up the money he was owed when the townsfolk refused to pay him what they promised. In retaliation, the Pied Piper played his flute, which this time attracted all the children of the town (approximately 130 children), except for three, and he led them into the cave of a mountain which closed up behind them. The children were never heard from again. Of the three that couldn’t follow, one was lame, one was deaf, and one was blind, and they were the ones to inform the adults what happened. The earliest versions of this story only talk about the missing children. The rats were added to the story in circa 1559, in the Zimmerische Chronik, written by Count Froben Christoph von Zimmern.
The road that the children supposedly left town on is still around, Bungelosenstrasse, which translates into “street without drums”. The urban legend is that even today, it is forbidden to play music on that street. The Pied Piper of Hamelin is a very dark story with some probable basis in history. I wonder what did actually happen to those children….
“The Pied Piper of Hamelin” painting is found within Augustin von Mörsperg’s book, Reisechronik, which is in the collections of the Schlossmuseum in Sondershausen, Germany.
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