:INFO
The Pied Piper of Hamelin
The story most people know involves rats, a jilted piper and children led into a hill. The historical record is more unsettling. The oldest known source, a stained glass window in a Hamelin church from around 1300, shows only the children and the piper. No rats. A town chronicle from 1384 records simply: it is 100 years since our children left. The departure of 130 children from Hamelin on 26 June 1284 appears in documents that predate the fairy tale by centuries.


:JOURNEY
The record
5 The event
4 First image
4 The chronicle
3 Elaboration
2 Folklore
1 Literature

:IMAGE

:QUOTE [quotetype:plain, subtitle:Hamelin town chronicle]
It is one hundred years since our children left.


:NOTE.half
Historians have proposed the children were recruited for the Ostsiedlung, the eastern colonisation of Slavic territories, and never returned. Several villages in Poland share surnames with Hamelin.
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:NOTE.half
Other theories suggest plague, a children's crusade or a dancing mania. None accounts for the precision of the 1284 date in the earliest sources.


:POLL
What happened to the children of Hamelin in 1284?
They were recruited for colonial migration and lost contact
They died in a local disaster later mythologised
The historical record has been misread across centuries
Keep it open

:LINK
https://www.google.com/search?q=Pied+Piper+Hamelin+1284+historical+record
Read more about the case