Selected Tales of the Brothers Grimm(32)

This was witnessed by a nursemaid with a child in her arm, who followed him from afar, turned around thereafter, and brought word of it back to the city. With heavy hearts, the distraught parents searched high and low for their lost children; the mothers let out a pitiful wailing and weeping. Messengers were immediately sent out to comb every body of water and square inch of land in the vicinity, inquiring if anyone had seen hide or hair of the children, but to no avail. In all, a hundred and thirty children were lost.

It is said by some that two who had lagged behind, returned; one of them was blind, the other deaf, so that the blind one could not show but only tell how they’d followed the piper; and the deaf one, on the other hand, indicated the place where the others disappeared but had not heard a sound. Others tell that a little lad who followed in his shirtsleeves turned back to fetch his coat, which is why he survived the misfortune, for once he returned, the others had already disappeared into the hole in a hill that is still shown to this day.

The street along which the children passed on their way out the gate was still, in the middle of the eighteenth century (as it is today), called the Street of Silence, since no dancing or music was permitted. Indeed, when a bride was serenaded on her way to church, the musicians had to stop playing on that street. The mountain near Hameln in which the children disappeared is called the Poppenberg, to the left and right of which two stone crosses were erected. Some say the children were led into a cave and came out again in Siebenbürgen.

The burghers of Hameln had the occurrence recorded in their civic register and made a custom of counting the years and days elapsed since the loss of their children. According to Seyfried, the twenty-second, rather than the twenty-sixth, of June is the recorded date. A plaque with the following lines hangs on the wall of the Rathaus:

In 1284, the year of our Lord

Hameln registered the sad record

Of a hundred and thirty children here born

By a piper nabbed and ever mourned.

And on the new gate of the city is inscribed:

Centrum ter denos cum magnus ab urbe puellos

Duxerat ante annos CCLXXII condita porta fuit.

In the year 1572 the Bürgermeister had the story depicted in the pane of a stained-glass window along with the accompanying caption, which is unreadable today. A medallion marking the event is also affixed.





THE MASTER THIEF





One day an old man sat with his wife in front of a humble house to take a short rest from his work. Then a splendid carriage drawn by four horses came rolling up, and out stepped a well-dressed gentleman. The weary peasant got up, went over to the gentleman, and asked him what he wanted and how he could be of service. The stranger reached out his hand to the old man and said, “I have no other wish but to enjoy a rustic dish. Fix me up a plate of potatoes the way you like them, and I’ll sit myself down at your table and devour them with pleasure.”

The peasant smiled and said, “You must be a count or a prince, or perhaps a duke, fancy folk sometimes have such whims. We’ll see what we can do.” His wife went to the kitchen and started washing and grating potatoes, intending to prepare a plate of dumplings, peasant style. While she was busy whipping them up, the peasant said to the stranger, “Come with me, in the meantime, to my vegetable garden. I still have a few chores to attend to.” He had dug holes in the ground and wanted to plant trees.

“Have you no children who could help you with your work?” the stranger asked.

“No,” replied the peasant. “I did indeed have a son,” he added, “but it’s been years since he went off into the world. He was a wayward lad, crafty and sly, but he didn’t want to learn anything and kept on playing tricks. Finally he ran away, and I never heard from him again.”

The old man took a sapling, set it in the hole, and planted a pole beside it, and once he’d shoveled the earth back in around it and stamped it down with his feet, he bound the sapling below, above, and in the middle to the pole with a straw cord.

“But tell me,” said the gentleman, “why don’t you tie up that knotty twisted tree over there in the corner that’s almost bent down to the ground, so that it may grow straight?”

The old man smiled and said, “Sir, you speak like you know what you’re talking about, but I can tell you haven’t spent much time gardening. That tree over there is old and twisted, nobody can make it grow straight again. Trees can only be trained when they’re young.”

“It’s just like your son,” said the stranger. “If you’d brought him up right when he was still young, he wouldn’t have run away. He too must have grown hard and knotty by now.”