The grim truth behind the Pied Piper

The grim truth behind the Pied Piper Kate Greenawayduncan1890/Getty Images Entranced by his flute, the transfixed children of Hamelin followed the Piper out of town Writers like the Grimm Brothers and Robert Browning may have shaped the Pied Piper legend into art, but it turns out the story is likely based on an actual historical incident.. Every working morning for the last 26 years, Michael Boyer has slipped into a pair of neon-bright, multi-coloured tights, tied on his lipstick-red cape, grabbed his flute and marched out into the medieval streets of Hamelin, a town of 60,000 residents in Lower Saxony, Germany. Originating as medieval folklore, the story inspired a Goethe verse, Der Rattenfänger; a Grimm Brothers’ legend, The Children of Hamelin; and one of Robert Browning’s best-known poems, The Pied Piper of Hamelin. An entry in Hamelin’s town records, dating to 1384, laments that, “It is 100 years since our children left.” The stained-glass window in the town’s St Nicolai church, destroyed in the 17th Century but described in earlier accounts, reportedly illustrated the figure of the Pied Piper leading several ghostly white children. Something so traumatic that it was transmitted orally for so long in the town’s collective memory, over decades and even centuries?” Kate Greenaway/duncan1890/Getty Images Some theorise that the Pied Piper led the youth of Hamelin to their midsummer festivities In fact, the date chronicled in all the local documentation pinpoint 26 June as the day the children disappeared.