The Middle Ages are perhaps the most legendary era. Ignorance and religious fanaticism gave rise to many stories about the invasion of the real world by otherworldly and, as a rule, forces hostile to man.
The Motley Flutist
The famous legend about the Pied Piper of Gammeln can be classified as such. The city suffered from an invasion of rodents: they destroyed food supplies, were not afraid of cats or dogs, and even attacked babies in cradles.
The magistrate promised a generous reward to the one who stops the hordes of rats. And such a person was found. A certain "colorful flute player" (or "colorful piper", the translation may be different) appeared in Gammeln. As soon as he started playing his instrument, all the rats of the city ran to him. The flutist led the enchanted rodents to the Weser River, entering which they drowned. However, the magistrate did not want to pay a reward to the savior of the city, and the musician left Gammeln empty-handed.
But he soon returned to take revenge: now his flute played a different melody. As soon as they heard her, all the city children ran to the musician, and the adults, as if bewitched, could only watch, unable to interfere. The flutist took the children out of the city - and no one ever saw them again. According to one version of the legend, the children were drowned in the Weser River, and by their friend they were taken to the mountains, where they died. There is also a later version of the legend with a happy ending: the children crossed the mountains and settled in Transylvania, on the territory of modern Romania.
At first glance, the events described are so incredible that they cannot be anything but a legend. But there is one single detail that forces scientists to treat the legend of the Pied Piper with close attention. The fact is that this event is mentioned in many chronicles of that time, moreover, its specific date (June 26, 1284) and the exact number of children taken away by the Pied Piper are indicated (130). Other medieval legends with a similar plot did not receive this honor. Therefore, many scientists are inclined to think that the legend of the Gammeln Pied Piper is an allegorical description of some real event.
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Crusade
In 1212, an unusual religious movement arose in France and Germany: children went on the Crusade to the Holy Sepulcher. However, modern scientists believe that the majority of the participants in the campaign were teenagers, young men and people from the common people.
In Germany, this crowd of many thousands was led by a boy (or youth) Nikolai, whose exalted piety bordering on insanity. So, he argued that adults will not be able to enter Jerusalem, because they are too sinful, and only children, pure in soul, will enter the holy city without using weapons. Nikolai was also sure that when the children reached the seashore, its waters would part.
The path was not easy: it was necessary to cross the Alps and go through all of Italy. When the significantly thinned crowd reached the coast, the biblical events were not repeated: the sea did not part.
The children did not arrive at the Holy Land, but they did not return home either - the second crossing over the Alps took the lives of those who did not die during the first.
Some scholars believe that the Gammeln Pied Piper is some kind of preacher who carried away the children on the Crusade with his speeches. However, the significant gap between these two events (1212 and 1284) casts doubt on the correctness of this version. In addition, the Pied Piper is an image of a clearly infernal (demonic) nature; it is unlikely that a Christian preacher could be so reincarnated in the minds of medieval townspeople.
Plague
In the XIV century, European cities were devastated by a pandemic - the black death. According to historians, she claimed the lives of about a third of the entire population of
Europe. The disease was brought from the East, and rats, which lived in many holds in the holds of merchant ships, were its main carriers.
It is this "rat footprint" that makes some researchers see in the Pied Piper an allegorical image of the "black death" leading children to their kingdom. His variegated robe is interpreted as spots that appear on the body of a plague patient. The fact that the Pied Piper plays the flute also has its own interpretation: for the Middle Ages, the image of death in the form of a dancing skeleton dressed in rags is typical. However, the plague epidemic began in Germany much later than the date when, according to the chronicle, the Pied Piper took the children out of the city.
Choreaomania
Chorea is a type of Greek dance and choreaomania is an obsession with dance. Medieval chronicles more than once described how crowds of people, for some unknown reason, began to dance frantically, moving from place to place, even from city to city. People were shouting and waving their arms like mad. They could not stop and, only finally exhausted, fell to the ground and fell asleep. When they woke up, they returned to normal life. This phenomenon, most likely, by its nature refers to the mass psychoses that were common in the Middle Ages.
The peak of choreaomania in Europe falls on the XIV-XV centuries, but its cases were recorded at an earlier time. Since dance and music are closely related to each other, it can be assumed that the Pied Piper, with his playing on the flute, managed to provoke an attack of choreaomania in the Gammeln children. Or it could be that the residents connected the accidental attack with the appearance of a musician in the city. Both options seem equally plausible.
Disaster in the mountains
This highly original theory was put forward by Waltraut Weller, a contemporary German researcher. She suggested that the children were victims of a natural disaster, such as a landslide in the mountains. She was inclined to this version by the version of the legend, according to which the children died in the mountains (as the legends say, “the mountain opened and the children went inside”). Perhaps, during the mass festivities, a procession of children, led by a musician, went to the mountains, where they died in some dangerous place.
The researcher managed to find a possible place of death of the Gammeln children. 15 km from the city there is a swampy area, popularly called the Devil's Hole. The way there runs through a mountain gorge, where children could easily have died. Confident in her rightness, Waltraut Weller even wanted to organize excavations in the Devil's Hole, believing that the corpses of the children should have been mummified and perfectly preserved. But no official permission was given for the excavation.
The weakest point in this version is the lack of a motive explaining why the children went on such a long journey. Now, not far from the Devil's Hole, Coppenburg Castle is located, and it could be assumed that the procession was heading there. However, it has been established for certain that the castle had not yet been built in 1284. Where did the children go then?
Children sold
One of the versions of the legend claims that the children were not killed by the Pied Piper, but were brought to Transylvania, where they "lived happily ever after."
The population of the cities grew, while there was a lot of land that was worth settling. Recruiters walked around the cities, captivating people with promises of a happy life in new lands. Perhaps the Pied Piper in colorful clothes was such a recruiter.
Of course, then “children” should be understood not as children, but as young people, who, as you know, are much easier to attract than adults.
There are many very different versions of where the recruiter took the Gammelnites and how their fate developed. Some scientists are sure that the settlers died in a shipwreck, others believe that they still got to their destination. The latter are based on the fact that in Transylvania and Saxony one can find settlements whose names etymologically go back to the word Gammeln.
Migration is an everyday event, and therefore the question arises: how could a poetic legend about the Pied Piper arise on such an ordinary basis? An interesting answer is offered by a researcher from the United States, Sheila Harty. In her opinion, one hundred and thirty people were sold into slavery for the recruiter Pied Piper - city orphans, beggars, poor people and other people for whom there was no one to intercede. Such cases are described in the chronicles of that time. The Hammeln chronicler simply turned out to be a delicate person and resorted to allegory.
Legend and modernity
In addition to the above hypotheses, the disappearance of children was explained by the atrocities of a serial killer, and the intervention of otherworldly forces, and the kidnapping of children by gypsies.
Modern residents of Hameln have managed to turn an old legend into a profitable business, making their city a tourist center. The guides, dressed in the Pied Piper's colorful costumes, retell the sad story of the lost children to tourists, and in local cafes you can buy funny buns in the shape of mice.
One of the streets of the city is called the Street of Silence - it is still forbidden to play music and have fun on it, because, according to legend, it was along this street that the procession of children, led by the Pied Piper, left the city forever.
And what actually happened to them still remains a mystery.
Magazine: Secrets of the 20th century №12. Author: Emilia Galagan