The Disturbing True Story of the Pied Piper of Hamelin -

a reply to: punkinworks10
Speculations at best.

But what is not a speculation is that children do not suddenly disappear in those numbers, and tales do not suddenly get told and made up when and if they do, if something did not really happen and everybody wanted to forget about it. So its highly likely that if there was a series of a mass of children just disappearing, then the reason why that happen would not likely be a good or a pretty reason or reasons. Generally when such things happen there mythised and prettied up with fantastical fascicle farces, sometimes those fantastic fascicle farces are known as children's tales or fairy tales.

a reply to: Hanslune
Unfortunately,
that is actually very true, and is the jist of hantzel and Gretel

Hmmm, the part of this I am noticing most people not digging up or mentioning is really important; the Pied Piper wasn't even a part of the story until later. It's actually fairly occult knowledge that he wasn't even a part of the original narrative. The original narrative (seen in the church window from the 1300's) read, roughly, "On the day of John and Paul 130 children in Hameln went to Calvary and were brought through all kinds of danger to the Koppen mountain and lost". Not a single mentioning of a piper. Calvary has a couple meanings. It can be an experience involving great suffering, or it is specifically an open air depiction of the crucifixion of Christ. Loosely put into modern terms: On the 26th of June, 130 children from Hameln took a harrowing journey to the (mountains around Hameln) and were lost.

Now, to me that sounds less like a mysterious event and more like a natural tragedy. Something like, for example, a landslide. Given the town's location near the Weserbergland Mountains and it isn't too far fetched to look into something as mundane as a landslide (mountain opening and swallowing kids), flash flood (not likely, but it happens), or even something as simple as a bunch of kids going on a crusade (which was a thing that happened a couple times) and simply dying in the mountains or being last seen there.

It's the lack of a piper in the first account that is telling. Add to that the entry in the town chronicles a century later which reads "It is 100 years since our children left," and I am more inclined to believe the children were not led away or taken, but did leave of their own volition. 130 children dying lost in the mountains does seem more realistic, and more tragic, than a tale of a magic rat-catcher in funny clothes leading them away with music.

If there is a grain of truth to the Piper himself, I think it would be a lot closer to some jackass convincing the local youth of Hameln that he had a real good idea and getting them all killed through sheer stupidity and lack of experience once they left town and couldn't navigate the mountain terrain.

originally posted by: sidhedarkness
Hmmm, the part of this I am noticing most people not digging up or mentioning is really important; the Pied Piper wasn't even a part of the story until later. It's actually fairly occult knowledge that he wasn't even a part of the original narrative. The original narrative (seen in the church window from the 1300's) read, roughly, "On the day of John and Paul 130 children in Hameln went to Calvary and were brought through all kinds of danger to the Koppen mountain and lost". Not a single mentioning of a piper. Calvary has a couple meanings. It can be an experience involving great suffering, or it is specifically an open air depiction of the crucifixion of Christ. Loosely put into modern terms: On the 26th of June, 130 children from Hameln took a harrowing journey to the (mountains around Hameln) and were lost.

Now, to me that sounds less like a mysterious event and more like a natural tragedy. Something like, for example, a landslide. Given the town's location near the Weserbergland Mountains and it isn't too far fetched to look into something as mundane as a landslide (mountain opening and swallowing kids), flash flood (not likely, but it happens), or even something as simple as a bunch of kids going on a crusade (which was a thing that happened a couple times) and simply dying in the mountains or being last seen there.

It's the lack of a piper in the first account that is telling. Add to that the entry in the town chronicles a century later which reads "It is 100 years since our children left," and I am more inclined to believe the children were not led away or taken, but did leave of their own volition. 130 children dying lost in the mountains does seem more realistic, and more tragic, than a tale of a magic rat-catcher in funny clothes leading them away with music.

If there is a grain of truth to the Piper himself, I think it would be a lot closer to some jackass convincing the local youth of Hameln that he had a real good idea and getting them all killed through sheer stupidity and lack of experience once they left town and couldn't navigate the mountain terrain.

The key words seem to be "went to" and "were brought through all kinds of danger" and "lost". Went to doesn't imply that they were led or abducted. Brought through all kinds of danger is a bit ambiguous but doesn't seem to imply that they were abducted. Lost implies either literally getting lost (unlikely) or died.

The account suggests that someone discovered that the children "were brought through all kinds of danger". Perhaps their bodies were found. "All kinds of danger" suggests multiple things as though they went on a long trek and endured multiple hardships, one or more of which killed them.

The question is what would cause a village to send 130 children into the mountains? A plague? That might motivate people to send their seemingly healthy children out of the village and into the mountains in an attempt to protect them. If there was a plague, it was likely that some of the children carried it with them.

I wonder if there was an initiatory tradition of sending children into the mountains. If so, in this instance a landslide or other natural disaster might have killed them. It seems unlikely that a group of 130 people could get lost but I know of a 40-person search party (searching in a swamp for a missing child) that got lost and had to be found by plane. And those were adults!

One hundred and thirty children lost in the mountains is a recipe for disaster.

Unless more documents are found, we'll never know what happened, but the least likely scenario is a pied-piper leading 130 children into the mountains. Someone pointed out that pied means colored or multi-colored. It occurs to me that that might refer to rashes or skin discolorations caused by some sort of plague and the pied-piper is a euphemism.

a reply to: 727Sky

Neat story (I remember hearing it as a kid).

I could go two ways with this:
1,
A member of a local monastery could have taken the healthy children into the hills to protect them from the horrible curse of god (aka "The Plague").
The Monastery official might have worn brightly colored robes, and the music could have been religious chants.
The children were either never allowed to return to the cursed village, or as some suggested, died in some kind of disaster at the monastery.

2, And I like this one better.
The Pied Piper was in fact a Deros.
His Music was in the form of an Air Loam.
The Deros used the rats (which contained the Plague) to infest the village.
The Deros then offers help in removing the rodent from the village with taking the children as payment.
A villager learns that the Deros was behind the rats, and told the village to stop handing over their children to the Deros.
The Deros in turns does the unthinkable, and just takes the children by using the Air Loam to control the children's minds.

I know the first one makes the most sense, but if we take the time to look at the second option we find that it too (as weird as it seems) could have some truth to it. The accusations of a mysterious group controlling people by using a device called an Air Loam has been around since at least the mid 1700's. The and the idea of a sub-terrain society that move from their lands to ours through the use of caves has been around since at least the 1100's ( i.e. The Green Man of the woods, The Green Children of Woolpit). Maybe Richard Shaver wasn't as nutty as advertised. (or maybe the first theory is correct)

****THIS PART WAS ADDED AFTER THE FACT****

Apparently some guy named Maurice Shadbolt had researched this back in the 1980's. I won't go into to much detail here (I'll let you all read about it. It's a neat, but boring tale).
Other names connected to this:
Hans Dobbertin
Count Nicholas von Spiegelberg
Bishop Bruno of Olmutz

There are some versions of the tale where the piper comes back for the chidren wearing hunter green.

Why would a respected poet like Goethe capture a tragic event such as the loss of a towns children in a happy poem?
There is little distinction made between rats and weasels, boys and maidens.

www.recmusic.org...

a reply to: Cauliflower

Well... Goethe was born like five centuries after it happened... and Goethe's poem isn't exactly happy.

a reply to: sidhedarkness

It was mentioned before that they were, quote on quote recruited in a holy crusade. Whatever that means. But either way you splice it...It does not really make sense, do you see 130 children back then going on a field trip into dangerous mountains were they were mysteriously lost in a possible mudslide?

And really is it even specified what ages all these children were, I dont see 7yr olds and 10yr olds or even 15yr olds trekking through mountains on some odd journey, much less 130 of them all in tow. Do you see any mother or father letting them go on such a trek, I mean from what all people say children were less fraught over then then now. But do you really see that happen? If they were really young there likely not physicall fit to be trekking over mountains, and if they were older, then there family would likely need them at home to work on the farm or to upkeep the house or any number of things, it was common practice back then.

Anyways, could be anything, and the whole Calvary could literally mean they got drafted into some sort of army that went off to fight in the crusades for all we know, and there is that story of children so infatuated with the holy plight they did get shipped right to war, even with the popes consent. One thing is for sure the more you read on this story, or the more people say on this story, the less sense it makes.

a reply to: Tangerine

Oh the pied piper is fluss that's obvious. Even if he existed he probably was no were near a good flute player as people make him out to be.

But you know what else if fantasy.The concept of 130 children going or trekking into the mountainous terrain is high fantasy in this day and age, or any day and age, most especially if it was only them, or them and some guides. I even tried to find this town on Google maps, not exactly sure that was the area in the story, and really to lazy and got other things on my mind to really check. And its also not the most mountainous terrain I seen, or at least compared to here in the westcoast of the US, its more big hills and nice and neat trees then anything else. But either way, I still dont see 130 children trekking through the area on some sort of camping trip or whatever, much less back then in the dark ages when all of that was likely deep forest, and who know what else was around, but I bet more then an owls and rabbits were roaming the area in those times.

On a side note though, I never knew Germany was so quaint, there was a bunch of little villages all over the area and everything even from up on high on google maps looks so clean and neat, even in the way the villages and town are arranged, and also it so dam picturesque.