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About this episode
On June 26, 1284, a hundred and thirty children left the German town of Hamelin. Not one came back. This isn’t an invention of the Brothers Grimm: a church window, a record from 1384 and a fifteenth-century manuscript all remember it. But the oldest sources have no rats, no unpaid fee and no revenge. In the final episode of my Grimm series, I peel back the layers of the Pied Piper legend, ask when and why the rats were added, and go through the major theories: plague, dancing mania, the Children’s Crusade and emigration to the east. There’s no answer. But there is a street where, to this day, no music is played.
📚 Sources and Further Reading
Wolfgang Mieder: The Pied Piper: A Handbook. Westport: Greenwood, 2007. → A comprehensive handbook on the legend, its sources and its reception.
Robert Browning: “The Pied Piper of Hamelin.” In: Dramatic Lyrics, 1842. → The best-known English-language version.
Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm: Deutsche Sagen. 2 vols. Berlin, 1816/1818. No. 245: “Die Kinder zu Hameln.” → The Grimms’ version, compiled from eleven older sources. English translation in Donald Ward (ed. and trans.): The German Legends of the Brothers Grimm.
Hans Dobbertin: Quellensammlung zur Hamelner Rattenfängersage. Göttingen: Schwartz, 1970. → The foundational edition of the sources. (German)
Hans Dobbertin: Quellenaussagen zur Rattenfängersage. Hameln: Niemeyer, 1996. → An expanded source collection with Dobbertin’s own interpretation. (German)
Jürgen Udolph: “Zogen die Hamelner Aussiedler nach Mähren? Die Rattenfängersage aus namenkundlicher Sicht.” Niedersächsisches Jahrbuch für Landesgeschichte 69 (1997), pp. 125–183. → The place-name argument for the eastward-settlement theory. (German)