The Pied Piper of Hamelin

If you were to close your eyes and listen to the darkness of the town of Hamelin in the spring of the year 1284, you would hear a sound like dry autumn leaves scraping across stone. But there was no wind that spring, and the leaves had long since rotted into the earth. The sound was alive. It was hungry, and it was everywhere. This is a story from Germany, preserved for over 700 years in the quiet valleys of the Lower Saxony region. Like all great tales that have traveled down the long winding road of human history, it has been told in many ways. Sometimes as a fairy tale to whisper at bedtime, sometimes as a dark warning, and sometimes as a song. But at its heart, it is a story about the weight of a word, and what happens when the people who hold power forget that a promise is a sacred thing. To understand the tragedy that befell Hamelin, you must first picture the town as it was before the gray tide came. It was a beautiful, prosperous place, nestled comfortably on the banks of the river Weser. Its houses were built of strong oak timbers and white plaster, with high steep roofs that reached toward the gray German sky. The citizens of Hamelin were proud, hard-working, and above all, comfortable. Their granaries were bursting with wheat. Their cellars were stocked with heavy wheels of cheese and barrels of salted fish. Their merchants wore coats of fine wool and carried heavy purses of silver. But wealth has a way of attracting those who wish to share in it without working for it. At first, the people of Hamelin barely noticed the newcomers. A scratch behind the wainscot in the pantry, a small dark shape darting across the rafters of the barn, a sack of flour in the bakery that seemed to have a small jagged hole chewed through the canvas. Within a few months, however, the scratch became a rattle, and the rattle became a roar. The rats had arrived. They did not come in dozens, or even in hundreds. They came in thousands, and then in tens of thousands, pouring down from the surrounding hills and up from the damp banks of the river. They were not the small, timid field mice of the meadows. These were great, bold, gray rats with long, hairless tails, sharp yellow teeth, and eyes that gleamed like tiny drops of hot pitch in the dark. Before long, there was no corner of Hamelin free from their presence. They nested in the Sunday bonnets of the ladies. They licked the sweet butter straight from the churns. They chewed through the leather of the shoemaker's finest boots. If a cook left a pot of soup simmering on the hearth, she would return to find a gray rat sitting on the lid, peering down at the steam. They ran across the tables during dinner, snatching bread crumbs from the hands of the merchants. They even climbed into the wooden cradles where the babies slept, their cold pink feet leaving tiny tracks on the linen sheets. The town's people tried everything. They brought in cats, but the rats were so large and fierce that they banded together, hissed, and drove the terrified cats up into the apple trees. They brought in packs of sharp-nosed terriers, but the rats outnumbered the dogs a hundred to one, biting their paws and sending them howling into the streets. They set iron traps, but for every rat that was caught, ten more seemed to spring from the floorboards. They laid out plates of poisoned grain, but the rats grew clever, smelling the venom and leaving the plates untouched, turning instead to eat the leather bindings of the town's law books. The people of Hamelin were at their wits' end. The constant scratching, squeaking, and scurrying wore away their sleep and their patience. Neighbors began to argue in the streets. The baker blamed the butcher for attracting the pests. The butcher blamed the brewer, and everyone blamed the town council. Every morning, a crowd of angry citizens gathered outside the town hall, shaking their fists at the high…

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