Читать онлайн «Pay the Piper»
Автор Джейн Йолен
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Table of Contents
About the Authors
Copyright Page
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For big David, forever
—J. Y.
For Alison and wee David, fey children I am proud to call my own
—A. S.
With special thanks to Greg Feeley.
And apologies to Northampton and Hadley, Massachusetts, for any liberties we have taken with their geographies, as well as apologies to Smith College, whose John M. Greene Hall was pressed into service for the Brass Rat concert, though it really only holds about half of the audience we proposed for it.
From the Authors
Based on a true event, the tale of the Pied Piper of Hamelin (or as they spelled it in German, Hameln) has always fascinated us. We are both musicians and storytellers and the piper was a performer so talented he didn’t just entertain his audience—he enchanted them!
This is what is known about the reputed piper: On the 26th of June, 1284, “came a colorful piper to Hamelin and led 130 children away…” At least this is what the earliest account—a piece of Latin prose—says some 150 years after the event.
More interesting than the bare fact is the
Why did the piper come and why did the children leave with him? Some scholars say that they went off on a crusade, or that they were recruited as settlers for Northern Germany or Transylvania. Some say the town had the Black Plague and the children had to be led out of town to save them. Some guess that the children had eaten bread infected with ergot, a disease of rye grain that leads to bizarre dancing and shaking. Some people have even theorized that the Pied Piper was an alien and that the children were swept off of earth in a UFO.
The legend of the Pied Piper is now a tourist gimmick in the (very real) town of Hameln. Poets like Robert Browning and Goethe have written about the piper. Operas, musicals, pantomimes, and ballets based on the story have been produced. Children’s books telling the story in dozens of languages have been published. Pop groups like Jethro Tull and Abba have written songs based on it. And scholarly papers by the dozens have been penned trying to explain just what really happened so long ago in that small town.
