
The grim truth behind the Pied Piper - jedwhite
http://www.bbc.com/travel/story/20200902-the-grim-truth-behind-the-pied-piper
======
ajuc
Another possible sources of such legends are fictional stories put into
documents as page-fillers.

In my city there's court documents going 5 centuries back, and there was a
tradition among scribes to fill the pages between separate cases with
"obviously false cases" and other stories so nobody can add false details to
the cases.

So there are stories about a sheep sueing a wolf and other classic jokes.

And in the actual court documents from 17th century there's a formally written
letter signed "Pluton, lord of all hells" praising his protestant politicians
for doing great job in the city :) At the time there was reformation and
counterreformation going on.

And there were obviously legends based on that :)

~~~
tomjakubowski
That is hilarious. Are any of those documents available online?

~~~
ajuc
I've searched for it, found mentions but no full text. Here's one example (in
Polish):
[http://pther.net/PDF/Miscellanea/MIscellanea%20tom%2010](http://pther.net/PDF/Miscellanea/MIscellanea%20tom%2010).

It mentions an article by M. Trojanowska called "Wpisy epickie w księgach
grodzkich lubelskich XVU-XVUI w." fully concerned with these "wpisy epickie"
or "wpisy ludyczne" (epic/ludic entries)

It was published in „Biuletyn Lubelskiego Towarzystwa Naukowego”, tome 23,
year 1981, no 1

~~~
Twixes
Malformed link it appears!

~~~
ajuc
Weird. The link is the same but this one works.

[http://pther.net/PDF/Miscellanea/MIscellanea%20tom%2010.pdf](http://pther.net/PDF/Miscellanea/MIscellanea%20tom%2010.pdf)

------
annoyingnoob
And here I was thinking middle-out compression.

~~~
goldenkey
Well, the rats are filtering out some frequencies when they search for
predators..

------
ginko
Sounds like it could have been the Children's Crusade (or something along
those lines)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Children%27s_Crusade](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Children%27s_Crusade)

------
mlang23
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dancing_mania](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dancing_mania)

Apparently, there is no consensus as to what triggered this phenomenon. Very
interesting mystery.

------
cowboysauce
One thing that the article hints at, but doesn't explicitly say is that
"children" probably doesn't mean literal children, but may mean something more
along the line of "citizen" or "young adult".

~~~
mlang23
That's what the recruitment theory implies.

------
dr_dshiv
There are lots of great stories about "magical music" that could have a hint
of truth to them. But the rat bit seemed to come later.

It seems to me there is something more shameful going on, as the original
tragedy was forgotten.

The earliest written town records of Hamelin state, in 1348, "It is 100 years
since our children left." The German Lüneburg manuscript, dating 1440-1450
"130 children born in Hamelin were led away by a piper [clothed] in many
colours to [their] Calvary near the Koppen, [and] lost."

~~~
trhway
almost sure so. Being religiously uneducated atheists we have no associations
with "Calvary near the Koppen" while it seems to have had well defined
semantics back then:

[https://www.coursehero.com/file/p1upht4/What-is-the-
signific...](https://www.coursehero.com/file/p1upht4/What-is-the-significance-
of-the-concept-hill-of-Calvary-in-relation-to-the/)

"... conflated the concepts of Koppenberg , the hill of Calvary and Golgotha
as though they all meant the same, but that can never have been the case.
There were always substantial differences between them, as in the Middle Ages
itself the concept of Calvary referred exclusively to the head or skull
surmounting the jaws of Hell, otherwise referred to as the lion’s or dragon’s
mouth, that swallows sinners while little demons spare no effort to push poor
wretches into this mouth with their tridents or other implements. This was the
typically medieval image of the journey to Hell or the entry into the jaws of
Hell up to the era of the Crusades, when a Minister General of the Franciscan
order interpreted the Bible in such a way that the hill of Calvary , the
skull, became synonymous with Golgotha , a concept which later included an
association with any place of execution, and thus Calvary acquired a new
significance ..."

------
LargoLasskhyfv
Needs some pop music:

Abba - The Piper, 1980, 3min24sec

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FFrGTtZKA_I](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FFrGTtZKA_I)

------
nathanyz
I don't know about rats, but we called animal control on an aggressive gator.
And the guy who came out sat down on the side of the pond with a boombox
playing a cassette tape of some weird noises. Gator swam right up to him and
he then disposed of it.

I don't know that it's that far fetched to think that at least the rats part
could possibly have been true.

As for the gator cassette, I asked and was told it's gator mating sounds. The
bad news was that he then said that to catch the mate, the cassette won't work
and he would have to use chicken.

~~~
trhway
rats have ultrasound hearing, and children have higher range of hearing than
adults, though not in ultrasound. While i don't subscribe to the literary
version of a piper taking children away, it may have been noticed by the
people back then that animals and children hear some flutes while adults -
don't. (An example of a gruesome speculative version of events would be for
example that it was used to sort "good" children say from "possessed",
especially if children playing in the dirt/etc. were noticed to have say
higher infection rate) The story don't mention nor dogs nor cats reacting to
the piper, and that is natural given that it is a rat infested medieval city -
getting rid of dogs and especially of cats (done back then for superstitious
religious reasons ) would be the major way of getting into rat infestation in
the first place.

------
peter303
Baby boomers will remember a wonderful musical made off the poem shown on TV
during the Thanksgiving weekend. It used a lot of Greig music.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pied_Piper_of_Hamelin_(195...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pied_Piper_of_Hamelin_\(1957_film\))

In its heyday it was as popular as the Wizard of Oz musical. Wikipedia says
that because its copyright expired, no network now reshows it. However it is
available on youtube.

[https://youtu.be/563V_2pIuwU](https://youtu.be/563V_2pIuwU)

~~~
echelon
Why should copyright expiry decrease popularity? They can still broadcast the
show.

------
Digit-Al
My nan used to be able to recite the whole poem from memory. She's 93 now, so
can't remember so well any more.

------
MrBuddyCasino
tl;dr: the event refers probably to an emigration that really happened, and
the pied piper might have been a recruiter to attract settlers to newly
conquered lands near Berlin

~~~
amscanne
The article suggests multiple other interpretations. That does seem to be the
most accepted, although “probably” seems like the wrong word.

~~~
Zickzack
Jürgen Udolph - the researcher in Onomastics who has proposed the generally
accepted theory - is well respected. The names of families and of places in
that region northeast of Berlin resemble those from Hameln/Hamelin. However,
he does not claim to have found the one true truth. A possible alternative is
that both things happened - locators recruiting the younger generation around
Hameln as well as the incident that became the story of the Pied Piper

------
aaron695
The non grim it didn't happen would be the obvious. They all slowly moved away
as mentioned.

But sex/slavery would be a grim working theory. Sold by their parents, who
then wouldn't rush to dispel rumours.

