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The Pied Piper of Hamelin ( also known as the Pan Piper, the Rat-Catcher of Hamelin) is the subject of a legend from the town of Hamelin (Hameln), Lower Saxony, Germany, in the Middle Ages. The earliest references describe a piper, dressed in multicolored ("pied") clothing, who was a rat-catcher hired by the town to lure rats away with his magic pipe. When the citizens refuse to pay for this service, he retaliates by using his instrument's magic power on their children, leading them away as he had the rats. This version of the story spread as folklore and has appeared in the writings of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, the Brothers Grimm, and Robert Browning, among others. The Pied Piper is also sometimes thought to have been, or associated with, the Norse God Odin, or the Anglo-Saxon variant Woden. There are many contradicting theories about the Pied Piper. Some have been proposed suggesting he was a symbol of hope to the people of Hamelin, which had been attacked by plague; he moved all the rats out from the town of Hamelin, thus saving the people from the epidemic disease. The earliest known record of this story is from the town of Hamelin itself, depicted in a stained glass window created for the church of Hamelin, which dates to around 1300 AD. Although it was destroyed in 1660, several written accounts have survived. ==Plots== In 1284, while the town of Hamelin was suffering from a rat infestation, a piper dressed in colorful red clothing appeared, claiming to be a rat-catcher. He promised the mayor a solution to their problem with the rats. The mayor in turn promised to pay him for the removal of the rats (according to some versions the promised sum was 1000 guilders). The piper accepted and played his pipe to lure the rats into the Weser River, where all but one drowned. Despite the piper's success, the mayor reneged on his promise and refused to pay him the full sum (reputedly reduced to a sum of 50 guilders). The piper left the town angrily, vowing to return later to take revenge. On Saint John and Paul's day while the Hamelinites were in church, the piper returned dressed in green like a hunter playing his pipe. In so doing, he attracted the town's children. One hundred and thirty children followed him out of town where they were lured into a cave and never seen again. Depending on the version, at most three children remained behind: One was lame and could not follow quickly enough, the second was deaf and therefore could not hear the music, and the last was blind and unable to see where he was going. These three informed the villagers of what had happened when they came out from church. Another version relates that the Pied Piper led the children into following him to the top of Koppelberg Hill, where he took them to a beautiful land and had his wicked way, or a place called Koppenberg Mountain, or that he made them walk into the Weser as he did with the rats, and they all drowned. Some versions state that the Piper returned the children after payment, or that he returned the children after the villagers paid several times the original amount of gold. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Pied Piper of Hamelin」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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