63. The Children of Hamelin Disappear, Hamelin, Lower Saxony, 1284
In this Kate Greenaway illustration from the 1888 version of Robert Browning’s poem, The Pied Piper of Hamelin (first published in 1842), one can see an accurate depiction of the pied piper, inexplicably not wearing the motley the poem’s title says he is wearing, luring away the children of the town of Hamelin because he is very angry about the town’s refusal to pay contracted wages. The children are also accurately depicted in their lovely late 18th century attire, which is just what they would have been wearing in 1284. This entire festival of anachronism is presented here because it terrified Anne when she was a child. Never got over those happy little children dancing off into an unknown oblivion.
In 1284, the children of Hamelin disappeared. Unless you translate the Latin differently, and they all died. Over the centuries, the story of what happened to them would get more and more intricate. Was there a Pied Piper involved? Probably not, though there may have been a musician. Were there rats? Nah. They don’t show up in the stories for a few hundred years. But something happened, as the Hamelin chronicles tell us. What the hell it was we don’t know. We explain the possible fates of the children of Hamelin, as invented over the centuries, and Michelle raves about the ways in which the town of Hamelin is currently cashing in on the legend.
