The Pied Piper of Hamelin

(German Legends, Volume I, 1816, No. 244 – Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm)

In the year 1284 after the birth of Christ, on the day of Saints John and Paul, that is on the 26th of June,
one hundred and thirty children of Hamelin, children of the town’s citizens, disappeared in an incomprehensible manner and were never brought back again.

A piper, whistling and dressed in garments of many colors, appeared there.
He promised to rid the town of rats and mice;
and when his reward had been promised to him,
he went through all the streets playing his pipe,
and the rats and mice gathered together and followed him out beyond the city gate.

But when he demanded his payment and the citizens refused to give it,
he returned while the inhabitants were in church
and played his pipe through the streets once more.

Then all the children, boys and girls alike,
ran after him out through the eastern gate,
to where a new road lay by the Koppenberg,
and they disappeared into the mountain,
within which they were enclosed.

Only two children returned—
one blind, the other deaf—
so that neither could recognize the path nor the sound of the pipe.

The road was thereafter called
the Lost Road (the Street of the Lost Children).

This event was recorded in Hamelin with the greatest care,
and later it was depicted in glass and stone.
As late as the year 1572, this story was inscribed in large letters on the new town hall of Hamelin.

And thus it has been handed down to this day.

Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm
German Legends (Deutsche Sagen), Volume I
Realschulbuchhandlung, Berlin, 1816
No. 244: “The Departure of the Children of Hamelin”

Digitally available via the Berlin State Library:
👉 https://digital.staatsbibliothek-berlin.de/werkansicht/?PPN=PPN737600552

(Direct link to the original edition of German Legends)

This source is 100% public domain.