On this day in 1284, The Pied Piper led away 130 children from the village of Hamelin in Germany. n 1284, while the town of Hamelin was suffering from a rat infestation, a piper dressed in multicoloured (“pied”) clothing appeared, claiming to be a rat-catcher. He promised the mayor a solution to their problem with the rats. The mayor, in turn, promised to pay him 1,000 guilders for the removal of the rats. The piper accepted and played his pipe to lure the rats into the Weser River, where all the rats drowned.
Despite the piper’s success, the mayor reneged on his promise and refused to pay him the full sum (reputedly reduced to 50 guilders) even going so far as to blame the piper for bringing the rats himself in an extortion attempt. Enraged, the piper stormed out of the town, vowing to return later to take revenge. On Saint John and Paul’s day, while the adults were in church, the piper returned, dressed in green like a hunter and playing his pipe. In so doing, he attracted the town’s children. One hundred and thirty children followed him out of town and into a mountains’ cave, after which they were never seen again.
There is some documentary evidence that a number of children did disappear around the time. There are a variety of theories about what actually happened. My favorite is the emigration theory. At the time there was a german drive to expand to the east. There were characters known as lokators who roamed northern Germany trying to recruit settlers for the East.” Some of them were brightly dressed, and all were silver-tongued. Family names from Hamelin appear frequently in the regions of Prignitz and Uckermark, both north of Berlin. He also found the same surnames in the former Pomeranian region, which is now a part of Poland.
(Lokator, in hat)
Material shortage – made it work anyway!
Grass is greener….
Wedding Invitations are getting weird…
For you burger eaters…
Some days we all need to forget the world and visit a caberet. Here’s the amazing Joel Gray with Liza Minnelli to welcome you. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x_n4GK7PawQ
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