The people of Hamelin, you may remember, had a problem:
The Rats!
They fought the dogs, they killed the cats,
And bit the babies in the cradles,
And ate the cheese out of the vats
And licked the soup from the cooks' own ladles.
According to legend, the solution to the problem arrived in town in the shape of a mysterious piper in a multicoloured suit who offered to rid it of vermin for a certain sum - an offer readily accepted by the townspeople. The piper fulfilled his contract by piping the rats into the River Weser, where they drowned.
With their problems solved, the good citizens of Hamelin decided to welsh upon the deal, and as we know, the piper took his singular revenge. Some time later - the legend has it that it was 713 years ago today, on July 22nd, 1284 - the piper reappeared and played his pipe again. This time all the town's children followed him:
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.
The piper led them to a cave, into which all except one disappeared, never to heard of again. The origins of the latter part of this story are well known. It is said to have its roots in the
Children's Crusade of 1212, when some 40,000 German children, led by a zealot by the name of Nicholas, set off over the Alps for Italy.
Some were ordered home by Innocent III, but many more sailed from
Brindisi to disappear from history.
But what about the rats? The species in question would have been the black rat, or rattus rattus, which arrived in Europe from the east some time before AD 1100, and spread rapidly across the continent. In the early 18th century, Europe's black rats were wiped out by a second influx from Asia of the species more familiar to us now, the brown rat, or rattus norvegicus. Now rats are proverbially prolific. But one of the few things, apparently, that can get their numbers down is a good cold winter, since it makes them less enthusiastic breeders. From about 1450 onwards, northern Europe entered the period of severe winter weather known retrospectively as the Little Ice Age, but prior to that it enjoyed several centuries of benign conditions, when the climate was significantly warmer than it is even now. So perhaps it is not surprising that in the balmy
European atmosphere of the 13th century, the Hamelin rats should thrive.