The Pied Piper of Hamelin

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Introduces the problem of the rats. The mood changes to mayhem with Browning personifying the rats (anthropomorphism). Wherein all plunged and perished!’ The rats are now suffering which suggests how the villagers have suffered too.

The rest of stanza 7 uses the voice of one of the rats. This makes the Pied Piper even more powerful that his magic has the capability to make rats talk. Bells and Pomegranates. No. IV.--The Return of the Druses: A Tragedy in Five Acts(London: Moxon, 1843). More intriguing is a theory that points to the medieval phenomenon of “dancing mania”, driven by a succession of pandemics and natural disasters. Known as St Vitus’ Dance, the dancing plague is documented surfacing in continental Europe as early as the 11th Century. A form of mass hysteria, the dance could spread from individuals to large groups, all driven by an unshakeable compulsion to dance feverishly, sometimes for weeks, often leaping and singing and sometimes hallucinating to the point of exhaustion and occasionally death, like a top that can’t stop spinning. And staying some dayes in Town, on a Sunday morning at high Mass, when most People were at Church, he fell to play on his Pipes, and the Children, up and down, followed him out of the Town to a great hill not far off, which rent in two, and opened, and let him and the Children in, and so closed up again. Asolando: Fancies and Facts(London: Smith, Elder, 1889; Boston & New York: Houghton, Mifflin, 1890).Complete Poetic and Dramatic Works of Robert Browning, Cambridge Edition, edited by G. W. Cooke and H. E. Scudder (Boston & New York: Houghton, Mifflin, 1895). The Piper threatens to undo what he did to help the town in the next lines of ‘The Pied Piper of Hamelin.’ He says that he can if he wants, “pipe in another fashion.” If that's what you want," he said quietly, then raised his fife, and all the sheep and goats from the entire region stood as though entranced. No one dared say anything. Then he advanced to the lake, where he disappeared with the herd. Thus did a girl who had followed them afar report to her parents, and thereupon diligent search and inquiry was soon made over land and water to find out whether the children had possibly been stolen and led away. But nobody could tell what had become of the children. This grieved the parents terribly, and is a fearful example of divine anger against sin. Thereupon he walked through all the town's streets with a pipe, which he put to his mouth and blew upon. Immediately all the rats in the entire town came from all the houses and followed at his feet in unbelievable numbers to the outskirts of the town. He banished them into the nearst sacred mountain, and from then onward there was no sign of the rats in the town.

Stanza: “The Pied Piper of Hamelin” consists of 15 parts or stanzas, with each having a different number of lines.The Agreement being made, he befan to play on his Pipes, and all the Rats and Mice followed him to a great Lough hard by, where they all perished; so the Town was infected no more. Besides introducing the world to “The Pied Piper” and establishing the poet’s modus operandi for his future verse, Dramatic Lyricsalso had a lasting effect on Browning’s personal life. Elizabeth Barrett admired the book, and in her 1844 poem “Lady Geraldine’s Courtship” she expressed the esteem in which she held Browning by linking him to William Wordsworth and Alfred, Lord Tennyson as one of the great poets of the age. She met Browning and the two poets fell deeply in love, but Elizabeth’s father, Edward Moulton Barrett, would not countenance any of his children marrying and leaving the home. On September 12, 1846 they were secretly married, and one week later they eloped to the Continent. Red Cotton Night-Cap Country; or, Turf and Towers(London: Smith, Elder, 1873; Boston: Osgood, 1873).

At the end of the year the Piper returned for his reward. The Burgers put him off, with slightings and neglect, offering him some small matter, which he refused. In the year 1240 there was such a quantity of rats and mice that neither home nor field and neither humans nor cattle were safe from their voracious appetite. Nothing was effective against them. Finally it occurred to the townspeople to engage a Capuchin by the name of Friar Angionini, famous for his magic, and who might drive away the vermin with his miraculous powers. Craigie's source (Internet Archive): Jón Árnason, Íslenzkar Þjóðsögur og Æfintýri (Leipzig: J. C. Hinrichs, 1862), p. 439. Great rats, small rats, lean rats…’ The use of a list makes it sound like a lot of rats. From this, it is clear the magic the Pied Piper is using is extremely powerful. The occasion now why this matter came unto my remembrance in speaking of Translvania, was, for that some do report that there are divers found among the Saxons in Translvania that have like surnames unto divers of the Burgers of Hamel, and will therby seeme to inferre, that this Jugler or pide Piper, might by negromancy have transported them thither, but this carrieth litle appearence of truth; because it would have beene almost as great a wonder unto the Saxon of Transilvania to have had so many strange children brought among them, they knew not how, as it was to those of Hamel to lose them: and they could not but have kept memorie of so strange a thing, if indeed any such thing had there hapned.Assonance: It is the repetition of vowel sounds in words that are close to each other in a sentence or line of poetry. An example of assonance is in line 70: “On creatures that do people harm.” The repeated “o” sound in “do” and “people” creates an assonant effect. Confirming the truthfulness of this story is the fact still today the marketplace in that town is called Mice-Market. Then he threw the mutton into a deep pit, which he had got dug for the purpose. The mice all sprang into the pit, which was then closed up at once, and the wizard strictly forbade anyone to touch it in time coming. While the tale has endured, so has Hamelin itself, which still looks as though it belongs in a fairy tale. Boyer’s tour leads visitors past rows of half-timbered houses. There are 16th Century burgher manors encrusted with Gothic gables and scrollwork, and flamboyant wedding cake buildings offering prime examples of the local Weser-Renaissance architecture, all leering gargoyles and brightly coloured polychrome wood carvings. The Schools' Collection is a manuscript collection of folklore compiled by schoolchildren in Ireland in the 1930s.

Hyperbole: It is a deliberate exaggeration for emphasis or effect. An example of hyperbole can be found in lines 11-20, where the rats are described as causing extreme destruction and chaos as they could not have been so huge. At Hammel in Saxony, An. 1284. 20. Junii, the Devil in likeness of a pied Piper, carried away 130 Children, that were never after seen. The Piper heads out into the street and again begins to play his flute. However, this time it is not rats, but the children of the town who begin to follow him. The adults find themselves unable to move as they watch the children dancing along behind the Piper as he heads out of town. Finally, the adults are able to move and decide to follow at a distance, assuming he will sooner or later have to stop playing. But when the Piper reaches a nearby mountain, a magic portal opens and all the children disappear with him into it. The speaker then tells of one boy, whose lame foot prohibited him from keeping up and who was thus left behind. He remains sad and distraught the rest of his days for not having glimpsed whatever promise lay in the Piper's song.And now hath one digression drawne on another, for being by reason of speaking of these Saxons of Transilvania, put in mind of a most true and marvelous strange accident that hapned in Saxonie not manie ages past, I cannot omit for the strangenesse thereof briefely here by the way to set it downe. Robert Browning and Julia Wedgwood: A Broken Friendship as Revealed in Their Letters, edited by Richard Curle (London: Murray & Cape, 1937). Source (books.google.com): Eliza Gutch, "The Pied Piper of Hamelin," Folk-Lore: A Quarterly Review of Myth, Tradition, Institution, and Custom, vol. 3 (1892), pp. 238-39. If the tale suggests a possible historical tragedy, though, it also offers an artistic redemption as well. The Piper does exactly what the Mayor threatened and was likely secretly afraid of. He goes into the street and brings out his pipe again. As he does so, there is a rustling in the air and the sound of small feet “pattering, wooden shoes clattering.” The children started running out of all the houses around town, skipping and dancing to the music.