the Legendary Tale

The tale of the Pied Piper of Hamelin is one of those timeless stories that has been told and retold for centuries. Legendary German author Johann Wolfgang von Goethe wrote a famous poem about it, as did English poet Robert Browning. Perhaps the most well-known version was penned by the most famous purveyors of fairy tales in history, the Brothers Grimm.

You may not realize it, but Hamelin is actually a real place—a small town in Lower Saxony, Germany. Unsurprisingly, the town capitalizes on its fairy tale connection, attracting tens of thousands of tourists each year. But this is where the story gets a little strange.

Hamelin is an ancient town, first settled way back in the 8th century. If you were to visit today and explore the town's extensive archives, you might come across an entry written over 600 years ago, in 1384. It’s a brief note, just nine words long, but those nine words speak volumes: "It is over 100 years since our children left."

You see, the Pied Piper of Hamelin isn’t like most fairy tales, carefully constructed to teach children about the real world. In fact, it isn’t really a fairy tale at all—it’s based on real events. Disturbing ones.

Just in case you aren’t familiar with the original story, it goes something like this: Hamelin was suffering from a rat infestation when a man in colorful clothes, the Pied Piper, arrived, claiming to be the best rat catcher in the world. Eager to rid the town of its vermin problem, the mayor agreed to pay a large sum of money for his services. Unfortunately, the Pied Piper wasn’t much of a businessman. Instead of securing a contract or asking for a down payment, he simply got to work.

His methods were unusual, to say the least. Instead of setting traps or using poison, the Pied Piper pulled out his flute and began to play. To the townspeople's amazement, thousands of rats emerged from their hiding places and followed him. The Piper led them to the river, where they drowned.

But this is where the Pied Piper’s lack of paperwork came back to bite him. The mayor of Hamelin refused to pay up. In revenge, the Piper played his flute again, but this time it was the children of the town who followed him out. What happened next depends on the version of the story, but most accounts agree that the children met a tragic end or simply vanished, never to be seen again.

The evidence that something like this really did happen in Hamelin over 700 years ago is compelling. Along with that eerie entry in the town’s ledger, eyewitness accounts from the 14th and 15th centuries mention the event. The tragedy was even depicted in a stained glass window installed in the town church around 1300, presumably as a grim reminder of what had happened.

Then there’s the inscription on one of Hamelin’s oldest buildings, known as the Pied Piper’s House. Carved about 500 years ago, it reads: "A.D. 1284, on the 26th of June, the day of Saints John and Paul, 130 children born in Hamelin were led out of the town by a piper wearing multi-colored clothes. After passing the cavalry near the Koppenberg, they disappeared forever."

There’s enough evidence here to convince most historians that some tragedy befell the children of Hamelin all those years ago. But what exactly that tragedy was is still up for debate.

For one thing, rats aren’t known to be susceptible to flute-based mind control—neither are children, for that matter. Most scholars believe the story grew out of a real event that has been embellished over the centuries, with the tale of the Pied Piper surviving as a kind of folk memory of that tragedy.

As for what really happened, there are several theories. One is that Hamelin’s children were killed in a massive accident, perhaps drowning in a river after a bridge collapsed, or perishing in a landslide. If this theory is true, the Pied Piper likely never existed and was later added to the story as a symbolic figure representing death.

Another theory suggests that the Black Death was responsible for the loss of the children, who were led away from the town to prevent the spread of the disease. However, this theory doesn’t hold up to scrutiny—the dates don’t align, and rats weren’t introduced into the story until the mid-1500s, long after the event.

Some have even speculated that the children were victims of an outbreak of dancing mania, a mass psychogenic illness that caused people to dance uncontrollably until they collapsed or died from exhaustion. This phenomenon, which occurred in Europe between the 14th and 17th centuries, could explain the presence of the Pied Piper in the story. However, dancing mania didn’t typically result in the death of all participants, making this theory less likely.

A darker theory posits that the Pied Piper was a psychopathic child molester who preyed on the children of Hamelin. While this is certainly a more sinister explanation, it’s still more plausible than another popular theory: that the Pied Piper was an alien using a high-tech device to charm the children away.

However, the most widely accepted theory among historians today is somewhat less dramatic but still intriguing. In the 13th century, a large area of land in what is now Poland became available for German colonization after the Danes were defeated in the Battle of Bornhöved in 1227. This led to a wave of eastward migration, with wealthy landowners hiring "locators" to recruit settlers to clear forests and build new towns.

Professor Jürgen Udolph, a former linguistics professor at the University of Göttingen (where the Brothers Grimm once taught), suggests that the children of Hamelin were hired en masse by these landowners to work on these new settlements. The term "children" may have been used loosely to describe the younger citizens of Hamelin, who were more likely to seek a new life elsewhere.

Interestingly, some towns and villages with names similar to "Hamelin" appeared to the east around this time, and German names that were once common in Hamelin can still be found in parts of Poland today. This supports the idea that a mass emigration may have taken place.

But even with this theory, the evidence is circumstantial. Hamelin was just one of many towns affected by eastward migration at the time, so why has its story spread so widely?

Was the Pied Piper a fictional embodiment of death, a skillful headhunter in a fancy coat, or something more sinister? The answer remains a mystery. What we do know is that something tragic happened in Hamelin long ago, and the story of the Pied Piper has endured as a haunting reminder of that event.