It seems especially fitting that Wolfgang Mieder, a German-born scholar who is one of the most prolific folklorists of all time, should be the author of this handbook, which presents a much-studied German legend to an English-speaking readership. Like other books in this series, this one consists of four sections: definition and classification, examples and texts, scholarship and approaches, and contexts. The first section covers the essential elements and the historical development of the tradition, and the others provide the evidence, including illustrations.
The origin of the legend is a fifteenth-century report saying that in 1284 a young man who came to Hameln played his flute and led 130 children out of town, after which, to the dismay of the rest of the townsfolk, they vanished. Various historical explanations have been proposed: the children were lured to the Children’s Crusade (1212), they went to fight in the Battle of Sedemünder (1259), or, more credibly, they eventually settled in Transylvania.
An account from the sixteenth century adds that the man wore “clothing of many colors,” and that two children, one blind and one mute, returned home. Not until 1565 is the man a rat catcher who is refused payment after he charms the rats out of the town. This addition, which gives the legend a moral center, is traced to a then-current tradition of legends about skillful, fantastic, and diabolical rat catchers. Many versions of the Pied Piper legend dwell on the parents’ and townsfolk’s sorrow, whether or not they are supposed to have done anything wrong. The horror of losing a child, and not knowing if he or she is alive or dead, comes up all too often in news reports.
Two literary versions are responsible for the modern currency of this legend. The Grimms included it in their Deutsche Sagen (no. 245), citing nine different sources. Many Germans are familiar with the Grimms’ wording of the legend, and the handful of retellings that relocate the action to places other than Hameln follow this account. Most English speakers learn the story directly or indirectly from Robert Browning’s poem (1842), which was based on an English prose account that he found in a history book in his father’s library (his father also wrote a poem on the same subject).
One of Mieder’s hallmarks as a scholar is his interest in folklore references in popular culture. In a section called “contexts,” but which is actually organized by “media,” he treats the Pied Piper in literature, performance (drama and music), and art, especially cartoons and advertising. This section concludes with the many ways in which the town of Hameln has adopted the rat-catcher legend as its theme--an instance of “folklorism.” The legend is enacted on summer weekends by child and adult actors with audience participation. During the whole year, representations of its characters and events are to be seen as statues, standing silently or animated as part of the town clock. Bakeries sell rats made of hard bread-dough. The street where the children were led is marked with an appropriate sign, and no music is permitted there.
The Rat Catcher of Hameln is a well-researched subject, and naturally most of the work has been written in German. Mieder guides the reader, pointing out the most important books and articles and mentioning many others. For example, one book consists of 140 historical texts. The proceedings of a 700th anniversary conference held in Hameln were published as a book that covers many aspects of the tradition, including the reception of the legend in America. Mieder himself is the author of a comprehensive article (in English) and a book (in German). The section of the bibliography in this handbook that covers Pied Piper scholarship (separate from general folklore scholarship) fills seven pages (one cannot help but wonder how much of what is referred to there represents duplicated effort).
The universal meaning of the legend is said to come from the way it depicts a leader who can summon support even when such behavior is contrary to the best interests of the followers. As a proverb specialist, Mieder is adept at finding supporting examples from popular culture. Certainly this interpretation applies to the rats, but whether the children suffer from having gone away with the piper is deliberately unclear. The people who are definitely worse off are those left behind, the parents and other townsfolk.
What is missing from the text-focused scholarship is that the legend depends on the power of music. We are told that rats can in fact be influenced by high-frequency tones, although the report in Browning’s poem that the piper’s music spoke to the rats of their favorite foods has not been verified. We may recall Orpheus charming the animals with his lyre, Papageno playing his bells to make Monostatos and the slaves abandon their attack, or various folktales where a musical instrument has power over living creatures (motifs D1210-1239 and cross references). Odysseus blocked his companions’ ears with wax and had himself lashed to the mast of his ship, in order to hear the sirens’ song without being captured. Dramatizations of the Pied Piper legend feature a haunting melody, and there are songs as well as musical compositions on this theme (see pages 121-123), but in ordinary written texts such an experience is difficult to convey.
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[Review length: 886 words • Review posted on May 24, 2007]