Who is your Pied Piper?

The oldest known picture of the Pied Piper copied from the glass window of the Market Church in Hameln/Hamelin Germany (c.1300-1633)

Today in history something horrific happened, 130 children were taken from their homes, never to be seen again. “In the year of 1284, on the day of Saints John and Paul on June 26, by a piper, clothed in many kinds of colours, 130 children born in Hamelin were seduced, and lost at the place of execution near the koppen.” -Lueneburg manuscript. Honestly I did not know this fairytale story was based on true events, but there is speculation as to what really happened to the children.

The differing theories:

-the children died of some natural causes, and that the Pied Piper was the personification of Death.

-the children were actually sent away by their parents, due to the extreme poverty that they were living in.

- the children were participants of a doomed ‘Children’s Crusade’, and might have ended up in modern day Romania, or that the departure of Hamelin's children is tied to the Ostsiedlung, in which a number of Germans left their homes to colonize Eastern Europe.

- One of the darker theories even proposes that the Pied Piper was actually a pedophile who crept into the town of Hamelin to abduct children during their sleep.

One of the darker themed representations of the Pied Piper of Hamelin. Credit: Lui-Gon-Jinn

Though no one knows what happened to these kids, it did happened.

My husband created a digital image depicting the Pied Piper as a tv and the kids are following along after the glow… It is a very interesting piece, but extremely disturbing.