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The Pied Piper Of Hamelin: Real Or Fiction?

This is a more interesting story.

A very carelessly-written piece, I'm afraid.

To take just two obvious errors: the Grimms themselves presided over the watering-down of their tales, when it became evident that the market for them was younger than they had anticipated. The English reprints just followed the later German editions, where mothers became step-mothers etc. The reference to The Three Bears, at the end, does not make it clear that this political fable was the work of Southey. The intruder was not a overly-particular young woman but a female vagrant, who was rewarded for her trespassing by a broken neck!
 
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A lot of our fairy tales come from Perrault, dont they?

(I was unsatisfied with the piece too...Do mothers really worry about this sort of thing? I know mine didnt...typical BBC wooness)
 
The reference to The Three Bears, at the end, does not make it clear that this political fable was the work of Southey. The intruder was not a overly-particular young woman but a female vagrant, who was rewarded for her trespassing by a broken neck!
Yeah, there's no fooling the bears. Burglar's a burglar, see?
 
I thought I'd already posted this here but I can't find it.

The Piper: South Korean Folk Horror take on the legend. It's 1953, just after the Armistice, a man and his young son wandering through a forest finds a village. The chief of the settlement invites them to stay for the night. The stranger entertains the locals playing tunes on his pipe. His music causes rats to move. He is asked to stay on and is offered a reward when he claims he can rid the village of it's plague of rats. These are fearsome rodents, they eat cats and menace humans. When the villagers had to flee during the war, the sick and there Shaman wouldn't leave and they were massacred by the rampaging Chinese soldiers. The Chief and his followers returned to find their bodies being devoured by rats. Using his pipe and bait the piper clears the rats out. But as in the fable the villagers renege on the deal. There is real horror in this film, the rats descending in swarms, devouring the living and the dead, the spirit of a wronged Shaman returns and possesses a young woman, gruesome murders. It is far darker than the original legend as the villagers are also hiding secrets which shame them. The rats deserve an award for best ensemble performance. The psychological horror is also impressive as the Piper's achievements are denied, accused of being a spy, the far of the stranger used to turn a mob against him. The existential terror of the final scenes will stick with me for a while I reckon. Written and Directed by Kim Gwang-tae. 8/10.

I had recorded it from Film4.
 
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The idea that it is a memory of the Children's Crusade, is mentioned in post#6 of this thread, and possibly refuted in post#23.

I'm more interested in the possibility that it was a memory of the 'locators and recruiters', agents who went around West Europe looking for recruits to relocate into the (somewhat depopulated) east of Germany and beyond. Apparently, these recruiters sometimes wore motley clothes and distinctive hats to draw attention to themselves. Did they also play instruments for the same reason?
 
The idea that it is a memory of the Children's Crusade, is mentioned in post#6 of this thread, and possibly refuted in post#23.

I'm more interested in the possibility that it was a memory of the 'locators and recruiters', agents who went around West Europe looking for recruits to relocate into the (somewhat depopulated) east of Germany and beyond. Apparently, these recruiters sometimes wore motley clothes and distinctive hats to draw attention to themselves. Did they also play instruments for the same reason?

That's a new idea to me @eburacum - thank you :)
 
This idea is also mentioned upthread, which is where I first heard of it.
 
This was discussed on today's Quora.
The location and date - Hamelin on 26th June 1284, seem remarkably precise if it was nothing more than an urban legend.
Furthermore, the Lüneburg manuscript, written around 150 years after the event, corroborates the fact that 130 children went missing in Hamelin.
The Rattenfängerhaus (rat-catcher's house) in Hamelin dates originally from the medieval period and bears the following inscription:

rat.png


"A.D. 1284 - on the 26th of June - the day of St. John and St. Paul - 130 children - born in Hamelin - were led out of the town by a piper wearing multicoloured clothes. After passing the Calvary near the Koppenberg they disappeared forever."

Seems likely to me that it was more than a mere legend.
 
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