What is the town of HAMLIN famous for?
Where were the children taken?
The new Irish opera Hamelin tells the story of the crippled child left behind by the Pied Piper, writes librettist Lavinia Greenlaw
Writers like the Grimm Brothers and Robert Browning may have shaped the Pied Piper legend into art, but it turns out the story is likely based on an actual historical incident.
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Every working morning for the last 26 years, Michael Boyer has slipped into a pair of neon-bright, multi-coloured tights, tied on his lipstick-red cape, grabbed his flute and marched out into the medieval streets of Hamelin, a town of 60,000 residents in Lower Saxony, Germany.
the story inspired a Goethe verse, Der Rattenfänger; a Grimm Brothers’ legend, The Children of Hamelin; and one of Robert Browning’s best-known poems, The Pied Piper of Hamelin. And although each writer tinkered with the story, the basics remained the same: the Piper was hired by Hamelin to rid the town of its plague of rats. Trailing after the hypnotic notes of the rat-catcher’s magical flute, the rodents politely filed through the city gates to their presumed doom.
https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/the-meaning-behind-the-piper-s-story-1.372876