Mesmerising tunes

On June 26, 1284 tragedy struck Hamelin. More than a hundred children were lured away by a piper’s merry tune.

Illustration for Young world

Out came the children running.

All the little boys and girls,

With rosy cheeks and flaxen curls,

And sparkling eyes and teeth like pearls,

Tripping and skipping, ran merrily after

The wonderful music with shouting and laughter.

Pied Piper of Hamelin by Robert Browning

Browning tells a poignant tale of children in a small town in Germany disappearing forever into a hillside in his poem Pied Piper of Hamelin .

A story set in 1284 in Hamelin, a small town in northern Germany, near Hanover. The town was infested with rats and the people were fed up with the menace.

“ Rats!

They fought the dogs and killed the cats,

And bit the babies in the cradles,

And ate the cheeses out of the vats,

And licked the soup from the cooks' own ladles,

Split open the kegs of salted sprats,

16 Made nests inside men's Sunday hats, And even spoiled the women's chats,

By drowning their speaking

With shrieking and squeaking

In fifty different sharps and flats.”

The mayor was at his wit’s end. And just then as an answer to his prayers came the piper, dressed in red. He claimed he was a rat catcher and he could clear the town of rats. The mayor, happy to have his problem solved, promises to pay the piper the money he demands.

No more music

The piper played his pipe and hearing the tune, all the rats in the city came out and followed him. He led them to the Weser River, where all but one drowned. The piper asked the mayor for payment as his job had been done. But, the mayor went back on his word and refused to pay him the full sum! The piper left, angry at being cheated. He promised to return and seek revenge.

Then on June 26, he returned. Now in green, he played his bewitching music on the streets once again. The children of the town were enthralled. He played his merry tune and 130 children followed him. Out of the town they went until they came upon a cave set in a hillside. The piper led them in and the children were never seen again.

In Hamelin, an eye witness account, recorded in Latin, states that “130 children were taken from the town by a piper dressed in many colours”. On the wall of Pied Piper House in Bungelosenstrasse (Drumless Street) one can read the story of the piper and the children. It was on this street that the children were last seen, and even today no music can played here – out of respect for the children who had been led away by the piper.