I wrote earlier about Till Eulenspiegel, a figure of German folklore who may have been real or fictional. In this post I will look at another legendary German character with similarly mysterious origins, the Pied Piper of Hamelin, made well known to German and English speakers by many different retellings of the story.

Scholars generally believe that the legend is based on a real historical event which occurred on June 26th, 1284 when a man with a pipe led 130 children away from the town of Hamelin (in German, Hameln) in north Germany. The first known evidence of this was a stained glass window depicting the Pied Piper and the children, erected in the town church around 1300. This was unfortunately destroyed in the 17th century but was written about several times and copied in the late 16th century. Early texts made no mention of rats but over time the story developed into one in which the piper (wearing pied – or colourful – clothes) successfully rid the town of an abundance of rats but led the children away as revenge when the townspeople refused to pay him. The German name for the character, Der Rattenfänger von Hameln, references this aspect.

The mystery of what happened to the children has led to much research and many theories. In his useful 2005 book, The pied piper: a handbook (465:2.c.200.8), Wolfgang Mieder summarises seven theories while the website of the town itself links to a list of seventeen. These include plague death, a crusade to Jerusalem and several variations on the idea of emigrating east as part of a wider German settlement in eastern Europe. In particular, Transylvania was suggested as a final destination, most notably by the Brothers Grimm in their 1816 Deutsche Sagen (746:03.d.22.82) which did much to popularise the story.

Robert Browning was the writer most responsible for establishing the Pied Piper story in the English-speaking world with his 1842 poem. This also perpetuates the idea that the children ended up in Transylvania. Later in the 19th century Browning’s poem was introduced to the commercial publishing world in an edition illustrated by Kate Greenaway.

Waddleton.b.9.1305

Many more illustrated editions of Browning’s poem have been published since Greenaway’s. Here are some from our collections from more than one hundred years ago:

And these are from the last fifty years:

My favourite version of the Browning poem is one from 1936, right at the start of the career of the children’s illustrator, Roger Duvoisin (Waddleton.a.18.113). The font and the colourful illustrations seem to epitomise 1930s style.

Countless other writers and illustrators have turned their hand to retelling the legend in their own way. The UL has received under Legal Deposit many versions for children, particularly during the 1980s, it seems. Here are the covers of a few of these:

A stand-out version for me is the 1988 edition by Sara and Stephen Corrin, illustrated by Errol Le Cain, a previous winner of the Kate Greenaway medal. This was probably one of the last projects he worked on as he died in 1989. His colourful artwork seems to be appealing to children and adults alike, drawing on the influences of earlier landscape painters and including intricate detail.

The attraction of the story of the Pied Piper shows no sign of stopping as we continue to receive new versions. Here are a few 21st century ones:

Katharine Dicks