IT DID NOT HAPPEN

Taranaki Daily News, 24 November 1934, Page 21 (Supplement)

IT DID NOT HAPPEN

MORE NEWS OF IT. PIED PIPER OF THE POETS. The little German town of Hameln on the Weser recently celebrated with much delightful pomp and pageantry the 650th anniversary of an event which never happened. The celebrations began on Whit Sunday, and went on through the summer; but the culminating day of excitement was June 26, when, according to the legend, the Pied Piper with his sweet music lured all the children o* the town to follow him. Everyone knows the story—the poets, among them Robert Browning, have told it in various forms—how the inhabitants of Hameln suffered torments from a plague of rats until a stranger, come no one knew whence, offered to rid them of the affliction for a price; how he. piped the rats into the Weser; and how, when the ungrateful townsfolk refused to give him his .reward, he revenged himself by luring their children away as he had lured the rats. All the little boys and girls, . With rosy cheeks and flaxen curls, And sparkling eyes and teeth like pearls, Tripping and skipping, ran merrily after The wonderful music with shouting and laughter. Browning (though his version Is at variance with that of the town as regards the date of this happening) knew also the supplementary legend, according .to which the children who had been swallowed up by the opening mountainside emerged, unhurt, in far-away Transylvania and there founded an alien tribe, whose “outlandish ways and dress” distinguished it for ever after from the indigenous population. THE NEW GATE. What, it has often been asked, _ was the foundation of these poetic fancies? The oldest known allusion to the supposed event dates from the 16th century, and is found on a stone which used to stand by the New Gate of Hameln but has now been placed in a crypt of the cathedral. The stone, which bears two dates, 1531 and 1556, records that the New Gate was erected 272 years after the spiriting away of the children by the Wizard Piper. Now, in 1259 the flower of Hameln's youth fell in battle; while in 1284 a terrible epidemic raged among the infant population of the town. Probably these two events were blended into one in the popular mind, and, coloured with memories of the Children's Crusade and the fact that in medieval art death is often depicted as a wandering musician drawing the souls of men behind him, produced the picturesque legend which has come to assume the dignity of a historic occurrence.

The idea of the children’s reappearance in Transylvania had also some connection, however remote, with actual fact. For Transylvania, which up to the Peace Treaty formed a part of Hungary, has ever since the 12th century had German colonists in its midst who, invited by the kings of Hungary to come and bring Western civilisation and urban arts into a country ravaged by wars, were allowed to govern themselves and to retain their language and customs, so that they never became absorbed into the Hungarian population. LAND FOR IDLE MEN SWITZERLAND ALLOTMENTS. England has 100,000 men working out theip own salvation on allotments in England, and Switzerland "S moving in the same direction. At Essertines in the Swiss Juras . a colony of young unemployed are busy in clearing a piece of land of thick forest undergrowth. Englishmen work independently for the most part, but these Swiss are working together for a common aim. The cleared ground is for a vineyard. Most of the Swiss youths are those who have recently left school and have not been able to make a start in their proper life’s work because of the world depression. This accounts for the fact that they live in a kind of barracks, but the conditions are perfectly free and the atmosphere is cheerful. The wood obtained by clearing the ground is cut and split into logs and distributed among other unemployed in the towns. In the last three months over fifty tons of logs have been thus cleared and got rid of.