Category Archives: supernatural

THE SHROUD – A RUSSIAN REVENANT

February 25, 2022 By in supernatural Tags: , Leave a comment
Un muerto viviente se levanta de su tumba, incunable del siglo xvi (facsímil). Original en la Bayerische Staatsbibliothek München, 2 Inc. c. a. 3893, fol. h.ii.

Vampires and zombies are having a long run in contemporary popular culture. But they are only two members of the underground population that refuse to lie quietly for whatever reason. Revenants, those who return from the grave, have always been a problem, judging by the number and variety of traditions about them. The ingenuity of the human animal is well displayed in the many different ways that ghosts, apparitions and related phantasms can be deployed in story. A Russian tale manages to turn the disturbing possibility of the undead into a moral lesson: 

The Shroud

In a certain village there was a girl who was lazy and slothful, hated working, but would gossip and chatter away like anything! Well, she took it into her head to invite the other girls to a spinning party. For in the villages, as every one knows, it is the lazybones who gives the spinning feast, and the sweet-toothed are those who go to it.

Well, on the appointed night she got her spinners together. They span for her, and she fed them and feasted them. Among other things they chatted about was this — which of them all was the boldest?

Says the lazybones, “I’m not afraid of anything!”

“Well then,” say the spinners, “if you’re not afraid, go past the graveyard to the church, take down the holy picture from the door, and bring it here.”

“Good, I’ll bring it; only each of you must spin me a distaff-full.”

That was just her sort of notion: to do nothing herself, but to get others to do it for her. Well, she went, took down the picture, and brought it home with her. Her friends all saw that sure enough it was the picture from the church. But the picture had to be taken back again, and it was now the midnight hour. Who was to take it? At length the lazybones said, “You girls go on spinning. I’ll take it back myself. I’m not afraid of anything!”

So she went and put the picture back in its place. As she was passing the graveyard on her return, she saw a corpse in a white shroud, seated on a tomb. It was a moonlight night; everything was visible. She went up to the corpse, and drew away its shroud from it. The corpse held its peace, not uttering a word; no doubt the time for it to speak had not come yet. Well, she took the shroud and went home.

“There!” says she, “I’ve taken back the picture and put it in its place; and, what’s more, here’s a shroud I took away from a corpse.” Some of the girls were horrified; others didn’t believe what she said, and laughed at her.

But after they had supped and lain down to sleep, all of a sudden the corpse tapped at the window and said, “Give me my shroud! Give me my shroud!”

The girls were so frightened they didn’t know whether they were alive or dead. But the lazybones took the shroud, went to the window, opened it, and said, “There, take it.”

“No,” replied the corpse, “restore it to the place you took it from.” Just then the cocks suddenly began to crow. The corpse disappeared.

Next night, when the spinners had all gone home to their own houses, at the very same hour as before, the corpse came, tapped at the window, and cried, “Give me my shroud!”

Well, the girl’s father and mother opened the window and offered him his shroud. “No,” says he, “let her take it back to the place she took it from.”

“Really now, how could one go to a graveyard with a corpse? What a horrible idea!” she replied. Just then the cocks crew. The corpse disappeared.

Next day the girl’s father and mother sent for the priest, told him the whole story, and entreated him to help them in their trouble. “Couldn’t a service be performed?” they said.

The priest reflected awhile; then he replied, “Please tell her to come to church tomorrow.”

Next day the lazybones went to church. The service began, numbers of people came to it. But just as they were going to sing the cherubim song, there suddenly arose, goodness knows whence, so terrible a whirlwind that all the congregation fell flat on their faces. And it caught up that girl, and then flung her down on the ground. The girl disappeared from sight; nothing was left of her but her back hair. [a braid of hair][i]

[i] W. R. S. Ralston, Russian Folk-Tales (London: Smith, Elder, and Company, 1873), pp. 307-309, from Aleksandr Afanasyev, Russian Folk-Tales (from 1855).

BLOOD CURDLING OATHS AND DIABOLIC RITUALS – FOLK SECRET SOCIETIES

December 27, 2020 By in ALLSORTS, supernatural Tags: , , , Leave a comment

Source: BBC History of the World at http://www.bbc.co.uk/ahistoryoftheworld/objects/5NtZ_LVYSCKfUCkwRXmPmg, accessed December 2020 (site no longer maintained), with this caption: ‘… This unique rolled painting with its carrying case, was used to initiate new members with illegal oaths administered with a Bible and pistol. The Tolpuddle Martyrs were prosecuted after asking a sign painter to make them a similar image. The skeleton, sun, moon, hour-glass and scythe were familiar to all working people as symbols of their hard lives and mortality. The painting is believed to originate in the West Midlands, but was discovered in 2004 in Colorado, USA…’

Secret societies of one kind or another have been around forever. Familiar examples are the various form of Freemasonry to which many people – mainly men – have belonged over many centuries. Although its origins lie in the trade secrets and self-protection needs of stone masons, the modern Freemason’s movement has long been a highly formalised and respectable organisation, with ‘temples’ in plain sight and making considerable contribution to the betterment of society.

But there are other types of secret society with similar origins yet much more covert and basic than the masons. These take the form of groups that started to form in the eighteenth century to protect occupational secrets, help each other out and generally protect their members from employers and others with more money and power than themselves. Possibly devolutions of medieval craft guilds, these societies operated covertly within the lower levels of rural and, to some extent, urban society, employing secret passwords, initiation rituals and oaths of loyalty unto death. The ‘Miller’s Word’ and, later, the ‘Horseman’s Word’, were among these folkloric keepers of secrets and traditional wisdom that gave them, it was believed by some, magical powers. 

“So help me Lord to keep my secrets and perform my duties as a horseman. If I break any of them – even the last of them – I wish no less than to be done to me than my heart be torn from my breast by two wild horses, and my body quartered in four and swung on chains, and the wild birds of the air left to pick my bones, and these then taken down and buried in the sands of the sea, where the tide ebbs and flows twice every twenty four hours – to show I am a deceiver of the faith. Amen.”[i]

Among their other useful purposes, these societies functioned as basic trade unions for their members, protecting their privileges and standing – and so their wages and conditions – within the rural occupational hierarchy and providing some group solidarity when required.

Interestingly, one of the famed early attempts to form a rural trade union at Tolpuddle in Dorset, also featured lurid initiation rites. These seem to have been similar to the secret oath taking of the Words, with the addition of some more theatrical elements, such as the display of a skeleton. Other early attempts to form a trade union, in this case by the bricklayers of Exeter, could involve ritualistic paraphernalia and covert as described by the police who arrested the men at the Sun Inn, Exeter in 1834:

Upon entering the room we found a great number of persons present, I believe about sixty. We found also in the room the articles now exhibited which consisted of a figure of death with the motto, ‘Remember thy latter end’, two wooden axes, two drawn swords, two scabbards, two masks, two white garments, a Bible, a book marked ‘A’ and diverse papers. “When I came into the room, several of the men – I saw three or four – appeared to have been blindfolded and I saw them pulling the handkerchiefs, with which they had been blinded, from their eyes.”

In another troubled context, convicts on Australia’s notoriously brutal Norfolk Island were said to have formed a secret fraternity known as ‘The Ring’, which policed relations between the gaolers and the gaoled and dealt out justice to any who broke the rules. They too were said to have colourful ceremonies and chilling oaths, including this one:

Its initiations involved drinking blood, accompanied by a dreadful oath of eternal loyalty. When the Ring decided to meet, word went through the prison that no non-member, including guards, should enter the prison yard. The leader, known as ‘the One’, entered the yard first and faced a corner of the wall. He was followed by the Threes, Fives, Sevens and Nines, each arrayed in a semi-circle behind him. All were masked. Satanic prayers were intoned:

Is God an officer of the establishment?

And the response came solemnly clear, thrice repeated:

No, God is not an officer of the establishment.

He passed to the next question:

Is the Devil an officer of the establishment?

And received the answer–thrice:

Yes, the Devil is an officer of the establishment.

He continued:

Then do we obey God?

With clear-cut resonance came the negative–

No, we do not obey God!

He propounded the problem framed by souls that are not necessarily corrupt:

Then whom do we obey?

And, thrice over, he received for reply the damning perjury which yet was so true an answer:

The Devil–we obey our Lord the Devil!

And the dreaded Convict Oath was taken. It had eight verses:

Hand to hand, 

On Earth, in Hell,  

Sick or Well,  

On Sea, on Land,   

On the Square, ever.”   

And ended — the intervening verses dare not be quoted —   

” Stiff or in Breath,  

Lag or Free,  

You and Me,  

In Life, in Death,   

On the Cross, never.”  [ii]

A cup of blood taken from the veins of each man was then drunk by all.

After these rites were performed, the Ring would conduct their business. Usually it was a trial and sentence of suspected collaborators among the convict population or of any of their gaolers who showed an inclination to be lenient to the prisoners.

Most of his comes from later fictioneers, such as ‘Price Warung’ (William Astley) and Marcus Clarke and is obviously gussied up to chill their readers. Historians have queried whether there ever was a ‘Ring’. Probably. Prison gangs are, and were, commonplace. Was it ever this gothic? Highly unlikely. But the documented existence of the secret societies of millers, horsemen and early trade unionists, with their traditional skills, self-protection and folk magic, suggest that the existence of such groups was possible.

The beliefs and the needs behind such organisations were powerful enough to create and maintain them, often over considerable periods of time, at least in the occupational if not the penal contexts. It is thought that the Horsemen’s Word was still well entrenched in parts of Scotland and East Anglia until the 1930s, by which time, of course, their competitive advantage had disappeared with the mechanisation of pretty well everything and the fading of the horse from serious work.

Printed in 1834 by E.C. Tufnell, one of the Factory Commissioners in Character, Object and Effects of Trade Unions. It is believed the Tolpuddle men used a similar form of initiation. Source: Graham Padden, Tolpuddle: An historical account through the eyes of Georges Loveless compiled for the Trades Union Congress, p. 11.

[i] Neat, Timothy (2002). The Horseman’s Word: Blacksmiths and Horsemanship in Twentieth-Century Scotland. Edinburgh: Birlinn.

[ii] Marcus Clarke For the Term of His Natural Life, first published in serial form in the Australian Journal between 1870-1872. ‘Price Warung’ (William Astley), wrote a number of related stories based on interviews with convicts, beginning with ‘The Liberation of the First Three’ in his Tales of the Convict System, Bulletin Newspaper Company, Sydney, 1892.

THE BLACK BOOK – Dealing With Demons

December 1, 2020 By in supernatural Tags: , , Leave a comment
The Temptation of St. Anthony by Martin Schöngauer c. 1480-90. Engraving. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

It is known by many names. The ‘Black Book’, ‘Dr. Faust’s Hell-Master’, the ‘Book of Cyprianus’, among others. Whatever it is called and wherever it is said to be, this grimoire is to be handled with extreme care. The book has the ability to summon up demons, vast spells and generally confer upon its user, great magical power. Its misuse can be disastrous. The Russian soldier who conjured up a bevy of menacing demons when he inadvertently began to read his comrade’s copy of the book found this out the hard way. ‘Give us work’, the demons demanded. Apparently familiar with the folk tradition that the only way to be rid of demons is to ask them to perform impossible tasks, the frightened soldier does just that as the demons close in upon him:

‘… The soldier reflected awhile, and then said, “Fill up the cisterns of all the baths in the town with water brought thither in a sieve.” 

The demons flew away. In two minutes they returned and said, “It is done! Give us some more work to do — quick!” 

“Pull the Voivode’s [Governor’s] house down, brick by brick; but take care you do not touch or disturb the inmates; then build it up again as it was before.”

The goblins disappeared, but in two minutes returned. “It is done!” they cried. “Give us more work — quick!”

“Go,” said the soldier, “and count the grains of sand that lie at the bottom of the Volga, the number of drops of water that are in the river, and of the fish that swim in it, from its source to its mouth.”

The spirits flew away; but in another minute they returned, having executed their task. Thus, before the soldier could think of some new labor to be done, the old one was completed, and the demons were again at his side demanding more work. When he began to think what he should give them, they pressed round him, and threatened him with instant death if he did not give them something to do. 

The soldier was becoming exhausted, and there was yet no sign of his comrade’s return. What course should he take? How deliver himself from the evil spirits? 

The soldier thought to himself, “While I was reading the book, not one of the demons came near me. Let me try to read it again; perhaps that will keep them off.”

Again he began to read the book of magic, but he soon observed that as he read the number of phantoms increased, so that soon such a host of the spirit-world surrounded him that the very lamp was scarcely visible. 

When the soldier hesitated at a word, or paused to rest himself, the goblins became more restless and violent, demanding, “Give us work to do! Give us work!”

The soldier was almost worn out, and unhappily knew not how to help himself. Suddenly a thought occurred to him, “The spirits appeared when I read the book from the beginning; let me now read it from the end, perhaps this well send them way.”

He turned the book round and began to read it from the end. After reading for some time he observed that the number of spirits decreased; the lamp began again to burn brightly, and there was an empty space around him. The soldier was delighted, and continued his reading. He read and read until he had read them all away. And thus he saved himself from the demons. 

His comrade came in soon afterwards. The soldier told him what had happened.

“It is fortunate for you,” said his comrade, “that you began to read the book backwards in time. Had you not thus read them away by midnight they would have devoured you.”[i]

Legends of the Black Book were widely collected in Germany and Scandinavia. They highlight the strong and broad folk beliefs about magic and the Devil. The folk Devil, though, is usually unlike the image of His Satanic majesty that is usually presented in more literary treatments, such as Goethe’s Faustus and Marlowe’s Faust. The Devil is definitely satanic and evil but is often portrayed as a bit of a dill, easily outsmarted by clever humans, like the Russian soldier with knowledge of the black arts.

[i] John Naaké, Slavonic Fairy Tales, collected and translated from the Russian, Polish, Servian, and Bohemian (London: Henry S. King and Company, 1874),  pp. 190-93. 

HELLHOUNDS – FROM CONAN DOYLE TO ROBERT JOHNSON

December 31, 2019 By in supernatural Tags: , , , , , ,

hound-baskervilles 2

Here’s a good topic for the hinge of the year, the end of one calendar and the start of another. Have you been thinking about hellhounds lately? No? Well then, read on…

Oversized, red-eyed, shaggy, stinking and generally monstrous dogs have been with us from at least the era of ancient Greece. Cerberus, the three-headed dog guarding the entrance to the underworld is pretty well-known. Less-so is the Norse equivalent of Garmr, among other canine creepies.

The infernal associations of ‘hellhounds’, as these apparitions are usually known, are also found in many legends heard in the traditions of Britain, Scandinavia and elsewhere. Sometimes hellhounds appear in the form of ghostly predators shadowing travelers along lonely roads (and, very occasionally, protecting them from something worse). Sometimes they are associated with spectral hordes, such as ‘the Wild Hunt’ (see previous post on this).

Hound

But the most frequent form of hellhound tradition features, as Arthur Conan Doyle lastingly put it, ‘a gigantic hound’, that bays chillingly then appears at the imminent death of a member of a local aristocratic family, the basic premise of The Hound of the Baskervilles (Doyle seems to have added a family curse to sex up the atmosphere a tad). The creator of Sherlock Holmes said little about his inspiration for this enduring literary spectre, beyond a casual reference to hearing about something similar from a friend. Most commentators have subsequently suggested that Doyle was probably referring to the legend of seventeenth century Devon squire, Richard Cabell.

Cabell did enough dirty work in his life to gather an impressive, if improbably evil, reputation. He was alleged to have murdered his wife (though she seems to have outlived him), made a pact with the devil and to have died while hunting down a maiden across Dartmoor one stormy night.  And it gets better. The locals were reputedly so afeared of him that they built a structure over his despised burying place and placed a large block of stone over his grave to make sure he stayed in it. Whether he has or not, the church was afflicted with lightning, Nazi bombs and arson, and is now a ruin.

The historian Mike Dash has also done some sleuthing on a little-known Scots version of the hellhound tradition. This one is a stonker, complete with clans, a loyal hound and a mysterious dark island in the middle of a loch. The story has a murky history – of course! – but was given flesh by Iain Thornber in a 1980s magazine article. Read all about HERE, where Dash spins the filaments into a fascinating yarn.

For blues fans, the primal music of Robert Johnson’s ‘Hellhound On My Trail’ (1937) evokes a haunted, hunted atmosphere that draws from this tradition and invokes broader African American spooky lore. This includes meeting with the devil at the crossroads and the exploits of the badman, Stagolee (variously spelt), hero of another classic blues and a considerable body of folktale and supernatural – as well as bawdy – lore.

For those who like to take their legends with a drop of analysis, hellhound stories seem to be closely linked to their localities, even if the basic motif is widespread. They can also accrue other motifs, such as Faustian deals with the devil and membership of the Wild Hunt, as in the case of badass Richard Cabell’s tradition. The Scots ‘Grey Dog of Meoble’ also has an element of the loyal hound tradition, probably best-known in the Welsh Beth Gellert tale and also in a modern legend. Hellhounds may also shape-shift into different animal forms, though whatever their species, their function remains the same.

Dark wind rising

Blood moon hangs in troubled skies

Thunder, lightning, hail and rain

Hellhound baying, someone dies

 

SOURCES

Mike Dash, A Blast From the Past blog, https://mikedashhistory.com/2010/07/24/the-grey-dog-of-meoble/

William Henderson, Notes on the folk-lore of the northern counties of England and the borders, The Folk-Lore Society, London, 1879, pp. 273ff.

Howard Williams, Archaeodeath blog, https://howardwilliamsblog.wordpress.com/2015/05/03/the-diabolical-hounds-of-richard-cabell-and-the-commemoration-of-arson-buckfastleigh-church/

LEGENDS OF THE SPECTRAL HORDE

November 18, 2018 By in supernatural Tags: , , 1 Comment

 

Wild Hunt

Franz Stuck’s ‘Wilde Jagd’ (The Wild Hunt), 1889

 

In the early 1860s, the Reverend Sabine Baring-Gould, English antiquarian collector of lore and general know-all, was part of a group of men galloping across an expanse of arid black sand in Iceland. One of his local companions, Jon, shouted out that they were ‘sweeping over the country like the Yule host.’ Inveterate busy-body Baring- Gould’s ears pricked up and he asked for details.

Jon told him of the ‘wild rout of phantom horsemen’ that ride across the country, especially at the winter solstice and at Yule, or Christmas. The Reverend immediately recognized this as the local version of a widespread European tradition and filled the next four pages of his Icelandic travel adventures[1]with his prodigious knowledge of the phenomenon. Baring Gould regaled his readers with the details of the spectral hordes of Norway, Germany, France, Scotland, Sweden, the Netherlands, Switzerland and, of course, England:

‘Gervaise of Tilbury says that in the thirteenth century by full moon towards evening the wild hunt was frequently seen in England traversing forest and down. In the twelfth century it was called in England the Herlething. It appeared in the reign of Henry II and was witnessed by many. The banks of the Wye was [sic] the scene of the most frequent chases. At the head of the troop rode the ancient British Herla.’

He went on to give this version of the legend, featuring the legendary king of the Britons:

‘King Herla had once been to the marriage feast of a dwarf who lived in a mountain. As he left the bridal hall the host presented him with horses dogs and hunting gear also with a bloodhound which was set on the saddle bow before the king and the troop was bidden not to get off the horses till the dog leaped down. On returning to his palace the king learned that he had been absent for two hundred years which had passed as one night whilst he was in the mountain with the dwarf. Some of the retainers jumped off their horses and fell to dust but the king and the rest ride on till the bloodhound bounds from the saddle which will be at the Last Day’.[2]

The story was old well before Gervaise gave his version. Early in 1127 an unpopular abbot arrived at the Peterborough monastery. People soon began to talk of strange and frightening nightly apparitions. Twenty or thirty spectral huntsman, ‘black, huge and hideous’ rode through the town’s deer park and woods ‘on black horses and on black he-goats, and their hounds were jet black, with eyes like saucers, and horrible.’ Every night for weeks on end until Easter, the monks listened fearfully to the sound of hunting horns echoing through the darkness.[3]

On another dark winter night thirty-six years earlier, in 1091, the English monk Orderic Vitalis was in Normandy where he documented an appearance of ghost riders he referred to as ‘Herlichin’s troop’.[4]Other accounts refer to frequent sightings of the hunt at this period.[5]

These unfortunate monks, and many others, were witnessing the ‘Wild Hunt’, an ancient and widespread apparition reported throughout Europe. The hunt is invariably a bad omen, foretelling war, tragedy or other disaster. In many traditions, anyone who lays eyes upon the spectral horde is doomed. The leader of the hunt varies from country to country. In Germany, it might be Woden, or malign figures of German tradition, such as Fraue Holle. In the Scandinavian countries it can be Odin; in Brittany, King Arthur and, in Ireland, Fionn mac Cumhaill. Other European countries have their own versions of the legend, often in diverse forms. In England and Wales, the leader can be any of Woden, Herne the Hunter, St Guthliac, Old Nick or any of a dozen or so other identities, depending on which part of the country the tradition is known.

Another leader of the (mainly) English pack is named Eadric, an historical figure who refused to bow to the Norman invaders in his domain within what is now the English and Welsh border, the Marches. Along these borderlands between 1067 and early 1070 Eadric held out against the invaders in a variety of activities that included attacking Hereford castle and occupying the city of Shrewsbury. He was one of a number of rebel leaders, including Hereward (‘the Wake’), attempting an ultimately lost resistance against the Normans, who named them silvatici, or ‘wild men’. Eadric probably made peace with William in 1070 but may have been involved in another rebellion against the ‘Norman yoke’ in 1075, probably losing his lands as a consequence, and possibly a lot more. There are no further mentions of Eadric in historical records[6], but in the Shropshire and Welsh versions of the wild hunt legend Eadric, sometimes in company with his wife, haunts the night skies. Eadric’s wild hunt has been reportedly seen or heard just before the Crimean War, the First World War and the Second World War.[7]

While the wild hunt seems to originate in the medieval era[8], it has endured into modern times. A German painting on the theme made by Franz Stuck in 1889gh was widely believed to foretell the tyranny of Adolph Hitler and his Nazis. Hitler was reportedly so enamoured of the painting that he purchased it and groomed himself in imitation of its forbidding depiction of the German god of war. There is even a possible connection with the popular country song ‘Ghost Riders in the Sky’, though that might be drawing the bow a little too long, as the song seems to have been based on a local legend of a fatal cattle stampede.[9]More recently, the anthropologist and historian, Frédérique Audoin-Rouzeau, under her pen name of ‘Fred Vargas’ has used French version of the story as the basis of a detective novel, The Ghost Riders of Ordebec(2013) – and a great read it is.

The number of alleged sightings, along with the diffusion and duration of this powerful legend gives it a creepily convincing character. The legend is not going away any time soon either. It features in the best-selling ‘Witcher’ fantasy novel series byAndrzej Sapkowski,later turned into an award-winning and widely successful video game, ‘The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt’, bringing an ancient folk tradition to the digital generation.

 

NOTES AND SOURCES:

[1]Sabine Baring Gould and Alfred Newton, Iceland: Its Scenes and Sagas, Smithe, Elder and Son, London, 1863, pp. 200 -204.

[2]Baring Gould, pp. 201-202.

[3]Garmonsway, G.N., The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, Dent, Dutton, 1972 & 1975, p. 258.

[4]Harold Peake, ‘17. Horned Deities’, Man22, February 1922, p. 28.

[5]Map, Walter. Master Walter Map’s book, De nugis curialium (Courtier’s trifles). trans. Frederick Tupper and Marbury Bladen Ogle. London: Chatto & Windus, 1924, at http://www.maryjones.us/ctexts/map1.html, accessed November 2018. Map was writing towards the end of the twelfth century.

[6]Reynolds, S., ‘Eadric Silvaticus and the English Resistance’, Bulletin of the Institute of Historical ResearchVol LIV, No 129, 1981, pp. 102-105.

[7]Westwood, J., Albion: A Guide to Legendary Britain, Granada, London, 1985, pp. 300-304. Also Hutton, Ronald (2014). ‘The Wild Hunt and the Witches’ Sabbath’. Folklore. London: The Folklore Society. 125 (2): 161–178.

[8]Though Jacob Grimm, who produced the first scholarly study of the tradition in 1883, located it in pagan belief.

[9]Composed by Stan Jones and first recorded by Burl Ives in 1949, and by many since. For the local stampede legend, see Fairweather Lewis, ‘Stampede Mesa: The Story Behind ‘(Ghost’) Riders in the Sky’ at https://fairweatherlewis.wordpress.com/2011/10/19/stampede-mesa-the-story-behind-ghost-riders-in-the-sky/, accessed November 2018.

 

PIED PIPER STILL PIPING

August 17, 2016 By in supernatural, Uncategorized Tags: , , , Leave a comment
From a window of the Market Church in Hameln/Hamelin Germany (c.1300-1633), thought to be the earliest representation of the legend.
 
A well-known story of German, and now global, tradition is a constant reminder of what might happen if a helper is not properly rewarded for his assistance. The Pied Piper of Hamelin is the ambivalent focus of an enduring medieval legend. In 1284 the town of Hamelin in Saxony is disturbed by a plague of rats. The piper, dressed in motley, hence the term ‘pied’, pipes the rats into the River Weser where they drown. But the people of the town refuse to pay him and so he pipes their children inside Koppenberg Hill, from where they have never emerged. Only one lame child, too slow to keep up with the others, survived.
 
This is the most familiar version of this enigmatic legend today, though its original form, as far as can be known, was a little different. One of the earliest and most significant accounts of the event is the fourteenth century version appearing in the Latin chronicle Catena Aurea (The Golden Chain) and written by a monk known as Heinrich of Hereford. This account has nothing about a plague of rats but simply tells of a handsome and well-dressed young man appearing in the city on the Feast of Saints John and Paul (26 June). He went through the streets playing a magnificent silver pipe, attracting about 130 children to follow him out of the city to the execution ground known as Calvary. There they all vanished without trace. Heinrich gives an earlier written source for this information and also refers to the testimony of an eye-witness relayed to him through the witnesses’ son.
 
As well as the absence of the rats and the reluctance of the townspeople to pay the piper’s fee, there is nothing ‘pied’ about the piper in Heinrich’s version of events, and no children returned. By the mid-1550s, though, an account written in Bamberg elaborated the story with such details as the threat of the piper to return in three hundred years and take more children away and the return of two naked children, one blind and one mute. Another account from around the same period identifies the piper as the devil and the fate of the children a result of God’s retribution for human sin. The return of the one lame child seems to appear first in the English translation made by Richard Verstegan in 1605.
 
The detail of the rat plague is first heard of in the Swabian Zimmer Chronicle of 1565. However, it is known that by this time there were other legends involving rat and mouse-catchers attached to other parts of Europe and it may be that these became mixed with the basic Hamelin story. By whatever and various ways the story evolved, it was already a popular item of print entertainment by the early seventeenth century and, in one version or another, continued to attract the interest of poets like Robert Browning (‘The Pied Piper of Hamelin’, 1842) and of folklorists like the Brothers Grimm as well as carrying on a busy life in oral tradition, including a number of German folksongs.
 
This disturbing legend has attracted a good deal of scholarly speculation through the succeeding centuries. Some suggest the legend is derived from the eastward migrations of young Germanic peoples during the thirteenth century. Others relate the story to the disastrous Children’s Crusade in which many children left their homes, never to return. There are also suggestions that the story is related to the medieval dance epidemic known as ‘St John’s Dance’ or ‘St Vitus’ Dance’ or to a major bubonic plague outbreak. Others have looked to mythological and historical sources for enlightenment and explanation.
 
Whatever its source, the tale has been continually in oral tradition and, later, in literature, theatre, children’s books, advertising, cartoons, political propaganda, films and, of course, in the tourism industry of the city of Hamelin. The many-faceted legend of the Pied Piper is largely due to the ambiguity of the piper’s character, both good and evil, and the ingratitude and stupidity of the burghers of Weser. As well as all the other many uses to which the tradition has been put, in the end it is perhaps primarily an appealing moral tale about just rewards (‘you must pay the piper’s fee’) and being careful about which processions you follow.
 
 

From Graham Seal and Kim Kennedy-White, Folk Heroes and Heroines Around the World