The Children’s Crusade and “The Pied Piper”
Which of us can remember a time when he did not know “The Pied Piper of Hamelin?” Which of us can remember a time when he thought it merely funny, or could not recite the joyous thing by heart like his schoolfellows? If the gliding years have stolen the detailed memory, at least they have not stolen the enormous impression that the poem made upon children; for we can still see the piper with his pin-point pupils and his light hair without tuft on cheek nor beard on chin, and his queer parti-coloured clothes: just like a Chinaman he seemed to us—like the poor mysterious “John” from whom we used to steal bananas and evoke torrents of uncouth gibberish. Perhaps he too was trying to tell us in his mildly explosive way how he had talked with the Cham of Tartary or the Nizam of Asia; perhaps he was telling us of some other mysterious potentate for whom he had contracted to bewitch vermin, though to be sure we had never observed any great love for music in him, nor did his fingers itch to do anything more than heave his stave on to his shoulders or pick out faulty vegetables for the cook. And how deliciously the piper had piped the rats from that little mediæval town: “O rats! rejoice, for the world is grown to one vast drysaltery!” We did not quite know what a drysaltery was, but to use Australian slang, it must contain things positively “bosker” to eat. The rough and tripping metre appealed to boyhood, and the queer words that we did not quite understand, though we felt that in a minute we should; such as “nuncheon” and “justling.” It seemed quite right and proper to say that salt sprinkled on a candle flame would burn green; and it savours of the “knowledge of good and evil” to know that it really burns yellow. It is good fun to try to reread the poem with a boy’s mind. But it is impossible; you cannot fully surrender yourself to the poet’s magic as a boy can, and you catch yourself wondering how much of it is really true; and, not content with the jolly way in which the story is told, you wonder whether it is “founded on fact” like so many other boys’ stories. That is the real tragedy of life, that a time comes when you cannot be contented with simple faith in good stories.
Probably there is really some foundation for the legend, which was not uncommon and was told of several other towns in the Middle Ages when grown men were really more like children than little boys are to-day. That, I take it, is the only way to study the Middle Ages—to remember that the world had not yet quite grown up and men were not as gods, but in many ways like children. Otherwise how can you explain many very wonderful things that undoubtedly happened? (Not that we are particularly godlike to-day except some men in their own estimations; but at least some of us are beginning to have the germs of common sense.)
The true foundation is much more pathetic than Browning’s poem, which to us boys seemed so funny, for we were not old enough to sympathise or to see the tragedy upon which it dances. That came later, when we learnt that “nuncheon” is not the funniest thing in the world and life has forced upon us a knowledge of things other than “good and evil.” The Koppelberg into which the children danced is not a “mighty top”; no crowded little bones have been unearthed from it; it is just so high that a child would be hidden from sight as it danced on its way to Cologne.
Of course one naturally accuses the gipsies, for there were certainly gipsies in Europe even so early as the twelfth century, let alone the thirteenth; three centuries were to pass before they reached their climax. According to the Encyclopædia Britannica the legend of the Pied Piper dates from 1284, though Browning in the poem dates it July 22nd, 1376. I believe the reason for his error is not definitely known; but I think it is possible to guess. On either date there were plenty of gipsies about, and no doubt they would be quite prepared to pick up an odd child or two if they saw money in the abduction. But it is impossible to believe that they would dare to try any such mighty abduction as was achieved by the Pied Piper. Europe would have gone mad with rage; probably every gipsy would have had his throat cut by infuriated parents and the race would have been exterminated.
Nor is it likely that the so-called “Dancing Mania” was more than in part a solution, because that was really a spiritual reaction from the Black Death of 1348; probably people were so glad to have remained alive that they danced firstly for joy, afterwards from “mass-suggestion.” It is a partial solution of our difficulty because it began in Aix-la-Chapelle in 1374; as Hecker says, “Hardly had the graves of the victims of the Black Death been covered in”; which is a somewhat excitable way of saying “a few years.” The dancing neurasthenia lasted a long time, and recurred all over Europe in several epidemics. Just so, after a terrible war, do we dance to-day, though few of us, looking at our gloomy and barbaric dances, would dream that these short-frocked maidens are dancing for joy. In 1375 it had spread the thirty-six miles to Cologne, and in 1376 the few miles to Hamelin.
I do not attempt to explain the episode of the rats, beyond saying that the story is not uncommon, that there is to this day a “Ratfanger’s Haus” in the ancient town of Hamelin, and that according to the original legend the piper was accused of sorcery. Any man who studied the habits of rats and learned how to catch them did so in peril of being accused of sorcery; and quite likely Browning, writing for children, made the mayor and corporation more ridiculous by saying that they had spent all their money in gluttony and could not pay the rat-catcher his fee. “A thousand guilders! Come, take fifty!” With what shuddering delight did we hear the absurd and obese old mayor brave the vengeance of the piper in those awful words. How could he ever have had the courage to do it? The real legend of Hamelin says that the piper was accused of being a sorcerer.