So the donkey said, “Then we’d best rouse ourselves and hobble over. We can’t catch any shut-eye here.” The hound thought that a few bones with a little meat on them would do him good. So they made their way toward where the light shone, and soon saw it glowing ever more intensely, until they found themselves in front of a brightly lit den of thieves. Being the biggest, the donkey drew near and peaked in through the window.
“What do you see in there, Old Ned?” asked the rooster.
“What do I see?” replied the donkey. “There’s a table set with plentiful food and drink and the thieves are sitting around stuffing their faces.”
“That’d make a tasty tidbit,” said the rooster.
“That it would, if only we could get to it!” the donkey agreed.
Then the animals put their heads together to try to figure out how to chase the thieves out, and finally they came up with a plan. The donkey had to lift one hoof onto the window ledge, the hound had to leap on the donkey’s back, the cat had to climb on top of the hound, and finally, the rooster flew up and landed on the cat’s head. As soon as they managed, at an agreed-upon signal they started making their music: the donkey hee-hawed, the hound barked, the cat meowed, and the rooster crowed; then they tumbled in through the window, so that the windowpanes rattled. The thieves leapt up at the terrible racket, convinced it must be a ghost, and flew in terror out into the forest. Whereupon the four friends sat themselves down at the table and feasted on the leftovers, eating like there was no tomorrow.
Once the musicians had eaten their fill, they put out the light and sought comfortable corners in which to rest their bones, each according to his kind and comfort. The donkey lay down in the rubbish heap outside, the hound behind the door, the cat on the hearth above the warm ashes, and the rooster sat on the ceiling beam – and because they were so weary from their long walk they soon fell fast asleep.
Once midnight had passed and the thieves saw that the lights no longer burned in the house and everything was quiet, the captain said, “We shouldn’t have let ourselves scatter like chickens,” and ordered a member of the band to go to the house to check things out. The scout found everything quiet, went into the kitchen to light a torch, and taking the glowing fiery eyes of the cat for live charcoal, he held out a stick to catch fire. But the cat had no fondness for fun and games, and leapt in his face, hissing and scratching. The thief took an awful fright and wanted to run out the back door, but the hound that lay there jumped up and bit him in the leg; and when he ran across the yard and passed the rubbish heap, the donkey gave him a mighty kick with its hind legs; and awakened by the ruckus, the rooster cried down from the roof: “Cock-a-doodle-do!”
The thief ran as fast as he could back to the captain and reported: “There’s a gruesome witch seated inside the house, she hissed at me and scratched my face with her long fingernails; a man with a long knife is planted at the back door, he stabbed me in the leg; and in the yard lies a terrible monster that clubbed me with a cudgel; and up on the roof sits a judge who cried out, ‘Bring me the knave!’ So I ran for my life.”
From then on the thieves no longer dared enter the house, but the four musicians of Bremen liked it so much they didn’t want to leave. And the last one to tell me the story, his breath is still warm.
THE CHILDREN OF HAMELN
In the year 1284 a curious man appeared in Hameln. He wore a coat of many-colored cloth, which is why he was known as Bundting, Gaudy Guy. He said he was a ratcatcher and promised, for a considerable compensation, to rid the city of all mice and rats. The burghers of Hameln came to an agreement with him, assuring a certain sum of money. The ratcatcher pulled out a little pipe and blew on it, and then the rats and mice came running out of every house and gathered around him. And when he determined that there were none left, he headed out of the city and they all followed him, and he led them to the bank of the River Weser. There he undressed and walked into the water, whereupon all the rodents followed, and diving into the drink, promptly drowned.
But no sooner were the burghers delivered from the infestation than they thought twice about paying the promised price and, coming up with all kinds of excuses, refused to give the man what he asked. He stormed off angry and embittered.
At seven in the morning, others say at noon, on the twenty-sixth of june, Saint John’s and Saint Paul’s Day, he reappeared, this time dressed as a hunter with a strange red hat, his face twisted into a terrible grimace, and once again let his pipe be heard in the streets of Hameln. Presently, instead of rats and mice, children in great numbers, boys and girls as young as four, came running, among them also the grown daughter of the Bürgermeister. They all followed him, and he led them into the cleft in a mountain, where they and he disappeared.