A Review of The Pied
Piper A Handbook by Wolfgang Mieder
Well, those steps go down to the old cellars, so the
whiffs come up. Lord knows what's down
there, it's so moldy and dark. Always
a couple o' rats gone home to Jesus.
~Sweeney
Todd, The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, 1979,
Hugh
Wheeler, Stephen Sondheim
|
I think there are two Hamelins. One is an actual town. One day, seven hundred years ago, a man walked
onto one of its streets. He played his
pipe, and 130 of the town's children followed him out the Weser Gate toward the
mountains in the distance. You can visit
the town. You can buy its plastic rats
and T-shirts. You can see the statues,
the restaurants, and the shops. You can watch
the musical. Then there's the Hamelin
that appears in the story, overrun with rats, bargained over before the scene
of that strange dance, where a man in many colors leads out rats and children with
an enchanting melody. This is the
Hamelin of legend, just as much legend as the Pied Piper himself.
I know about living in a legend. I come from a city people see movies about,
noble fighters defending their lost cause, the screen fading on John Wayne
making his last stand. The actual
building stands across the street from a drug store. To its right stands a department store. You can visit them if you can avoid being hit
by traffic.
The reality of the historical events wouldn't recognize the
legend they've become. The Alamo and the
Pied Piper. I sometimes think the two
existed only to provide convenient names for businesses, the Pied Piper for
pest control companies, the Alamo for everything else.
But for all we make of the Pied Piper, the legend is still
there, still growing, still transforming, still calling people to follow. Who is he, the piper? Where is he from? How did he attain his power? From the legend of Paganini to The Music
Man to "The Devil Went Down to Georgia," we've wondered about the
power of music and the musician who wields that power. Like the other medieval enigma, Faust, the
Pied Piper's story echoes across time, like thunder, adapted to current needs,
filtered through artists' psychology.
How many different ways can we tell the story of a mysterious, colorful
man who plays a melody and leads out rats and children, none of whom are ever
seen again? Wolfgang Mieder, in his
study The Pied Piper A Handbook, tells us the medieval ratcatcher's tool
of trade was the flute. A familiar
object to the tale's original audience, and yet even in the Middle Ages, his
music caused people to fear, to talk of demons and God's justice. John Steinbeck says of the story of Cain and
Abel, "No story has power, nor will it last, unless we feel in ourselves
that it is true and true of us." How
much of ourselves do we invest into the piper's story? How can one mystery bear so many
interpretations?
In 2007, Wolfgang Mieder, professor of German and Folklore
at the University of Vermont, known particularly for his studies on the use of
proverbs, published as a part of the Greenwood Folklore Handbooks series, The
Pied Piper A Handbook, the first English language book-length study of the Pied
Piper.
All the books in the series follow the same format. After their introductions, the books divide
into four segments, "Definition and Classification," which gives general
and specific background to the subject; "Examples and Texts," a
compendium of complete versions of stories and poems with a brief analysis of
each; "Scholarship and Approaches" (or "Scholarship and
Beliefs"), which summarizes the history of scholarship in the various
categories of investigation (historical, anthropological, psychological, as
well as the different schools of theory); and, finally, "Contexts,"
which outlines the uses various artists have made of the topic (the Pied Piper,
fairy- and folk tale, mythology, proverbs, legend). The Pied Piper volume runs to 189 pages,
including, glossary, bibliography, web resources, and index, deceptively short
for so much information.
Mieder examines the history of the legend, that is to say,
its variations over time and its accretions as it evolved into the versions
we're familiar with today. He gives us
stories of the same type, tales of other ratcatchers and mysterious musicians
who bewitch children into following them.
He reviews the research into the history of the original event, the
theories of the story behind the legend.
And, in the book's final section, provides Pied Piper cartoons and
advertising and lists quite a number of adaptations to novel, stage, film, and
musical composition. The deceptively
simple tale has become the center of a web of research, each of its strands
branching into theory and variation, a call and response as much pulling us as
dancing after the tune the legend has inspired in us.
Definition and Classification
On the feast day of Sts. John and Paul in 1284, a man in
multi-colored clothing appeared in the middle of a medieval German town and
played his silver flute, leading 130 children toward the local hill of
execution. This is the legend's
enigmatic beginning. Like a sculptor in
front of raw wood or stone, a writer would love to shape this material. As it first existed, specific in its setting,
growing increasingly vague, an author would question the characters' identities
and the flute-player's motivation, the historical accuracy of the account and
identities of the original reporters, even the other townspeople's reactions – just
how many adults would it take to overpower a man busy playing a flute and
dancing?
The legend as originally reported begged too many questions,
bore too many interpretations. How many
times, in repeating a story we once heard, have we added details that attempt
to explain away its holes? Mieder traces
this legend's evolution as reporters grappled with its mysteries and attempt to
turn it into a story. Details attached
themselves to the bare plot, both to clarify its problems and to personalize
the tale. The piper threatens to return
in 300 years; two children, one blind, the other mute, survive; the piper plays
the part of devil sent to punish the townspeople for their undisclosed sins. Two hundred and eighty years would go by
before a ratcatcher tale grafted itself onto the story's beginning.
The story originates in inscriptions that date from the thirteen-
to sixteen hundreds, the sparest of commemorations with much of the detail
unwritten. From there Mieder outlines
the directions the piper's followers have danced. This first section functions more as an
in-depth introduction, for Mieder will examine many of his material here in
later sections. Is the story a
half-rememberred account of the Children's Crusades? a cryptic account of
plagues or wars? a transformed myth? a partially-told account of a settler-recruitment campaign? Is the Pied Piper a demon, with or without
being an envoy of God's justice? Proverb
scholar that he is, he even examines the phrase "to pay the piper"
and its doubtful connection to the Pied Piper.
And what of its many variations and interpretations? Is that what keeps the legend so popular? Does it still exist as a vibrant story
because of what we can do with it? Does
it still live because of what we can think about it? Undoubtedly so, if the examples can be taken
as evidence. The piper's story has
become children's story and political quarterstaff (or "dollar and a
quarter quarterstaff," as Daffy Duck says, but that's another story and
shall be told at another time).
Examples and Texts
An inscription becomes a story much the same way gossip
mutates. The human mind adds details,
convinces itself of its wisdom and omniscience as if, of course, if I
think of it, it must come from God.
Later tellers more consciously embellish because the thrill becomes the
telling itself, the salaciousness having run its course or become
outmoded. In the same way, the bare
incident in Hamelin gained, from the mid-1400s to the late 1700s, survivors. A blind and a mute child and a girl who
followed too far behind. The piper now threatens
to return 300 years later to take more children. The date of the incident changes and changes
back again, and the piper becomes more supernatural. One chronicle claims to be the summary of an
account written by the son of an eye-witness.
Another reproduces a stained glass window commemorating the event. In 1565, we find the first mention of
rats. The piper is a foreigner, and he
haggles with the town council over his fee.
His "art" is called unusual, and he takes children under the
age of nine. This also seems to be the
first account in which the side of the mountain opens.
Our story has now become a didactic tale, warning people of
the dangers of acting unjustly. For now,
the question of where the children went is put aside. The tale tells of parents grieving, traveling
to other cities, looking for their children.
But centuries have gone by, and the children's generation has long since
died. The story's mystery
transfers. The question of where the
children went is now beside the point, and the why of the tale transfers
to the piper himself. If grief could
find a reason for being, then part of it can be borne more easily. If fear can be allayed (the piper did,
according to some versions, promise to return in 300 years), a reason implies
prevention. Imagination and invention
mine the field of Cause. That resolved,
taletellers can get on with the business of telling the story.
In 1816, the Brothers Grimm published the seminal account
in their book German Legends, edited and translated into English in
1981, in two volumes, by Donald Ward. Their
account is still somewhat spare, but the folklorists followed their version with another ratcatcher tale, indicating "The Children of Hamelin" is
another example of a particular type of folk tale. Mieder then reprints a number of ratcatcher
and stolen children tales. Next he examines the English tradition of the tale of Hamelin (Hammel, Hamel, Hamelen),
leading up to Andrew Lang's 1890 version ("The Rat-Catcher") from his
Red Fairy Book. Here the musician
plays the bagpipes. This version also features the intriguing conversation between the rat-catcher
and a rat named Blanchet:
"Are they all there, friend
Blanchet?" asked the bagpiper.
"They are all there," replied
friend Blanchet.
"And how many were they?"
"Nine hundred and nine thousand, nine hundred and
ninety-nine."
"Well reckoned?"
"Well reckoned."
"Then go and join them, old sire, and au revoir."
Then the old white rat sprang in his turn
into the river, swam to the whirlpool and disappeared.
Finally, Mieder gives
us a wonderful 1948 English-German dialect version, "Der Tootlen und Der
Ratz," by David Morrah from his book Cinderella Hassenpfeffer and Other
Tales Mein Grossfader Told Me:
"Ach!
Der younger folken ben starten der jitterbuggen mit swingen und
jumpen und
stompen! Das tootler ben outen-geblaren
mit hotten lickers!"
Then he finishes off with a number of German folksongs, the
earliest being mere retellings, the later two presenting the piper happily
leading rats (and the occasional young woman) and hoping for the joys of
heaven.
Scholarship and Approaches
A story walks many roads at once. Research is a prism that breaks the tale into
its component parts to examine and appreciate its colors. I can study a Shakespeare play for its
observation of character and its themes.
I can study its origins in history and literature, including
Shakespeare's possible sources and insights into the playwright's psyche. I can study the methods of production in
Elizabethan England and even trace how performances of Shakespeare's plays
changed with the times, technology, and social and psychological
views. I can study the works a given
play has inspired, alternate views, modernizations, even the history of the
research itself. Each gives invaluable
insight into the original work. As I've
told my students, when they begin moaning, the more you understand a
work the more you can enjoy it.
All the work's background is available to you as the story unfolds, and
suddenly Hamlet can be played by four actors at once.
The Pied Piper dances toward Hamelin's Calvary along the
roads of history, folklore, and literature.
Historical investigation gives the story back to the children, asking,
again, whatever happened to them?
Historical investigation reminds us that legend often has its basis in
fact, and so what evidence do the skimpy details give us that can lead us to a
rebuilt rendition of the story?
Folkloric studies place the legend within the context of the stories we
tell, the "files" in our brain Garrison Keillor once built a sketch
around that we open as we hear people's stories and try to find another that
relates to them. The world of literature
is, I suppose, by definition self-referential.
Storytellers nearly always allude to some earlier story. Writers began as listeners and readers. We take literally the Biblical injunction to
become doers of the word and not remain hearers only, although in a decidedly
more secular fashion. Having once loved
a particular story, we write our own stories in the light of its inspiration,
in the prodding of its example.
Mieder perhaps too briefly reviews Pied Piper
scholarship. I say too briefly
especially in light of the fact that most of the work is in a language and in texts
that are often inaccessible to many of us.
He does, however, place a number of the texts listed in his extensive
bibliography in a context so that if I ever do learn German I'd be able to
select fairly judiciously, if I could find or afford them. I also question his identifying Moravia with Transylvania. Repeatedly, and particularly on page 10, he
refers to the region of "Moravia (Transylvania)." Transylvania, speaking of a land of legend,
once incorporated a portion of what is now Hungary, but it never extended north
or east enough to incorporate Moravia.
The legend tells us the children emerged from the mountains outside of
Hamelin into Transylvania, where they settled, and some research bears this
out, but history and philology indicate the children, or probably more
accurately young adults, followed a recruiter sent by the bishop of Olmütz to
settle in the underpopulated Moravia in what is now the Czech Republic. I mention this because I spent over half an
hour trying to untwist the rather murky map I held in my head as I tried to
keep track of all the theories' geography.
Fact is as mysterous as the legend.
Contexts
As an English and social studies teacher, I occasionally
find my interests at battle with each other.
The historian reads investigations into what could have been the
"real" story while the literatus rolls his eyes, grumbling, "The
legend is the real story! The raw
material isn't this historical figure's document or that investigator's
research into surnames. The raw material
is an enigmatic figure walking into a town drowning in rats, a silver flute
gleaming in the waning sunlight, rodents spilling into a river, frightened and
greedy councilmen, and children who are for some reason all too ready to follow
a stranger playing a tune about a new life away from Hamelin!"
Robert Browning took this approach. So did Marina Tsvetaeva, Nevil Shute, Günther
Grass, Russell Banks and Atom Egoyan, Jiří Barta, John Corigliano,
and Meredith Willson. They tell the
story as social criticism, bitter political satire, humorous social satire, and
historical and contemporary drama.
Mieder reviews the significance of Browning's poem,
especially in the English-speaking world, and even reprints a long Pied Piper
poem written by Browning's father. He
includes Pied Piper poems by Goethe, Ambrose Bierce, Brecht, Fritz Eichenberg,
Edward Bond, and Günther Grass. His latest
example, however, is a disturbing poem from 1998 in which the poet filters the
story through the worst of current headlines.
What makes it so disturbing is its self-righteous assertion that, of
course, he, the poet, knows "how it really was," blaming
Robert Browning of white-washing sexual and cannibalistic rituals into "a
sanitized nursery rhyme" (as if writing a nursery rhyme were Browning's
intention to begin with). This poet has
obviously been disturbed by anominalistic outrages that make the news ahead of
commonplaces, but to pretend to higher knowledge and point to The Other (i.e.,
anyone not myself) as a danger is to place oneself in the danger of being overtaken
by what one fears. How many times have
we heard people who were not there and who only half-heard the tale declare to
us they know how it "really" was, they know what "really"
happened, when all they could possibly do is canonize their own imagination,
which, more often than not, runs in directions they'd do better to control? An equal horror is to turn all our neighbors
into sadistic anomalies who sadly sometimes do live next door. As Mieder points out, writers have for
centuries examined their world through the tool of the Pied Piper, but
overreaction is not reaction and the gut has no better angels.
Finally, Mieder includes a collection of comics ("Half
a Mile Out of Hamelin": children
whining, "I have to go to the bathroom!" "Carry me!" "Hans pushed me!" "I wanna play the pipe!");
editorial cartoons (the Pied Piper as Nazi, Communist, nuclear armaments, and
H. Ross Perot); paintings (including a small, black and white reproduction of
Maxfield Parrish's painting that I recommend looking up in color); advertising;
a list of film, book, drama, and music titles; and finally, a selection of
sites in Hamelin itself.
c d
So why has he lasted all these centuries? Certainly, we human beings are followers by nature – even if we don't like to admit it. Life is too difficult to remain confident for long. We look for someone to lead us, politicians, celebrities, spiritual and financial directors, doctors, pop songs, slogans, and web sites. Still, underneath it all, we fear having chosen the wrong one. What we happily and successfully followed yesterday we pridefully continue to trudge after, despite trepidation, today and see no way to get away from tomorrow. The Piper embodies all of these. Is he the children's savior or a demon? Does our view of him depend on where we believe the children wound up, inside the cave or in Transylvania?
Could the piper himself even tell us what his power is? I doubt it.
He's an artist, one whose music speaks for him. Certainly, according to his own story, his
words had little effect. What he has to
offer is his mystery, that is the subject of his song. Our encounter with him compels us, like a child
set dancing, like the girl in the red dancing slippers, after the images his
song sets off in our brains, variants, history, folkloric categorization,
off-shoots, adaptations, modernizations.
The way to that mountain is far across the field. It leads to dark places and places we're not
even sure of where they are. It leads to
monsters. And to nursery rhymes.
Three PSs:
1) Professor D. L.
Ashliman, author of the Greenwood Folklore Handbooks' Folk and Fairy Tales,
maintains an excellent web site of folklore and mythology, Folktexts, from the
University of Pittsburgh, at www.pitt.edu/~dash/foltexts.html. The site includes Pied Piper and ratcatcher
stories from around the world, as well as many, many other tales, and he's
constantly adding to it. I've given up trying to keep up with him.
2) A word of
advice. Greenwood books are vastly overpriced. Buy them used. Search http://www.bookfinder.com/
and http://used.addall.com/. The volumes I've bought came to me in
pristine condition; although, I checked The Pied Piper out of my local
library some four or five times over the course of a year and a half before the
used price came down to something I could afford.
3) Shameless self-promotion: I published an essay on the history of the Pied Piper, the story's variations leading back to its possible origins, on HubPages at http://anthonydeleon.hubpages.com/hub/piedpiperhistory
3) Shameless self-promotion: I published an essay on the history of the Pied Piper, the story's variations leading back to its possible origins, on HubPages at http://anthonydeleon.hubpages.com/hub/piedpiperhistory
Illustration credits (some links no longer work):
- Line-Dancing Mice by Francis D. Bedford from the book Battle of the Frogs and the Mice, which I got from http://fithfath.com/images/?tag=ps7-brush-sets
- Pied Piper & Children Silhouette from Karen's Whimsy at
- Rats running up the stairs ("The Pied Piper of Hamelin") by H. Kaulbach, from The Project Gutenberg EBook of Myths of the Norsemen, by H. A. Guerber, obtained at http://www.gutenberg.org/files/28497/28497-h/28497-h.htm#p028
- Piper Leading the Rats drawing from http://kcsummers.hubpages.com/hub/The-Pied-Piper-Of-Hamelin-Fact-or-Fiction, listed only as "public domain."
- Pied Piper on the map of the Hamelin area from
the Wikimedia Commons, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Pied_piper.jpg
- All photographs, including the Whylom Forest, are by Anthony de León
