by David Churchman

Created on: April 18, 2008

REALITY BECOMES MYTH:
THE PIED PIPER

Many stories begin somewhere vague "Once upon a time," but the Pied Piper story has an exact place and date. Exactly 130 children disappeared. The precision suggests an actual event, but what? The earliest reference to the story is a notation on a mid-15th century manuscript:

In Hamelin in the year 1284, and on the [26 June] feast day of Saints John and Paul, there occurred a wondrous event. A young man of about thirty years, handsome and well-clothed so that all who saw admired him, entered Hamelin by the Weser Gate. He began piping through town on a magic silver flute. And all the children, to the number of 130, followed him out the East Gate. There, by Calvary Cross, they suddenly vanished. This story I found in an old book [of 1370], and the mother of the deacon John of Luede saw the children leave town.

This has the beginnings of myth in a "wondrous" event and a "magic" flute, but the rest seems spare and factual, and mentions an earlier source and eyewitness whose son is known from town records. There are eight main suggestions as to what might have happened

Leibniz suggested St. Vitus's Dance that afflicted children who would then "dance" from town to town seeking a cure. However, no piper led the children in these "dances" and the epidemics occurred in the early 13th century in southern German, nowhere near Hamelin.

Goethe and Manchester suggested a mass killing by a pedophile but provided no evidence to support this idea.

An early theory tied the story to the 1283 appearance in Germany of Tile Kolup, who claimed to be the reincarnated Frederick II, but he only operated in Cologne, Neuss, and Wetzlar and was executed by Rudolph of Habsburg.

Woeller and Huesam think the children died in a landslide. No piper is involved and there is no record of such an event in the town records.

Wallachinsky and Wallace suggest the Children's Crusade, but it was 72 years too soon, and was led in Germany by a partially insane peasant who never was near Hamelin.

Rats suggest bubonic plague to Ueffing, but it struck in 1348, too late, does not strike just children, and rats did not appear in the story until 1559 in the Zimmerishe Chronik of Count Christoph von Zimmern.

Raabe and Fein attribute the tale to the losses in the 1260 battle of Sedemunder, but this does not explain the disappearance of the girls or the importance of a piper in the story.

That leaves the explanation developed by Spanuth and Wann. In 1240-1, the Mongols decimated

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