The Pied Piper of Hamelin: a tale of pride and destruction

The Pied Piper of Hamelin

Robert Browning - 1812-1889

I

Hamelin Town's in Brunswick,
By famous Hanover city;
The river Weser, deep and wide,
Washes its wall on the southern side;
A pleasanter spot you never spied;
But, when begins my ditty,
Almost five hundred years ago,
To see the townsfolk suffer so
From vermin, was a pity.


II

Rats! They fought the dogs and killed the cats,
And bit the babies in the cradles,
And ate the cheeses out of the vats,
And licked the soup from the cooks' own ladles,
Split open the kegs of salted sprats,
Made nests inside men's Sunday hats,
And even spoiled the women's chats
By drowning their speaking
With shrieking and squeaking
In fifty different sharps and flats.

III

At last the people in a body
To the town hall came flocking:
"'Tis clear," cried they, "our Mayor's a noddy;
And as for our Corporation--shocking
To think we buy gowns lined with ermine
For dolts that can't or won't determine
What's best to rid us of our vermin!
You hope, because you're old and obese,
To find in the furry civic robe ease?
Rouse up, sirs! Give your brains a racking
To find the remedy we're lacking,
Or, sure as fate, we'll send you packing!"
At this the Mayor and Corporation
Quaked with a mighty consternation.


IV

An hour they sat in council,
At length the Mayor broke silence:
"For a guilder I'd my ermine gown sell,
I wish I were a mile hence!
It's easy to bid one rack one's brain--
I'm sure my poor head aches again,
I've scratched it so, and all in vain
Oh for a trap, a trap, a trap!"
Just as he said this, what should hap
At the chamber door but a gentle tap?
"Bless us,' cried the Mayor, "what's that?"
(With the Corporation as he sat,
Looking little though wondrous fat;
Nor brighter was his eye, nor moister
Than a too-long-opened oyster,
Save when at noon his paunch grew mutinous
For a plate of turtle, green and glutinous)
"Only a scraping of shoes on the mat?
Anything like the sound of a rat
Makes my heart go pit-a-pat!"

V

"Come in!"--the Mayor cried, looking bigger:
And in did come the strangest figure!
His queer long coat from heel to head
Was half of yellow and half of red
And he himself was tall and thin,
With sharp blue eyes, each like a pin,
And light loose hair, yet swarthy skin,
No tuft on cheek nor beard on chin,
But lips where smiles went out and in--
There was no guessing his kith and kin!
And nobody could enough admire
The tall man and his quaint attire.
Quoth one: "It's as if my great-grandsire,
Starting up at the Trump of Doom's tone,
Had walked this way from his painted tombstone!"


VI

He advanced to the council-table:
And, "Please your honors," said he, "I'm able,
By means of a secret charm, to draw
All creatures living beneath the sun,
That creep or swim or fly or run,
After me so as you never saw!
And I chiefly use my charm
On creatures that do people harm,
The mole and toad and newt and viper;
And people call me the Pied Piper."
(And here they noticed round his neck
A scarf of red and yellow stripe,
To match with his coat of the self-same check;
And at the scarf's end hung a pipe;
And his fingers, they noticed, were ever straying
As if impatient to be playing
Upon this pipe, as low it dangled
Over his vesture so old-fangled.)
"Yet," said he, "poor piper as I am,
In Tartary I freed the Cham,
Last June, from his huge swarm of gnats;
I eased in Asia the Nizam
Of a monstrous brood of vampyre-bats:
And as for what your brain bewilders--
If I can rid your town of rats
Will you give me a thousand guilders?"
"One? Fifty thousand!" was the exclamation
Of the astonished Mayor and Corporation.

VII

Into the street the Piper stept,
Smiling first a little smile,
As if he knew what magic slept
In his quiet pipe the while;
Then, like a musical adept,
To blow the pipe his lips he wrinkled,
And green and blue his sharp eyes twinkled,
Like a candle-flame where salt is sprinkled;
And ere three shrill notes the pipe uttered,
You heard as if an army muttered;
And the muttering grew to a grumbling;
And the grumbling grew to a mighty rumbling;
And out of the houses the rats came tumbling.
Great rats, small rats, lean rats, brawny rats,
Brown rats, black rats, gray rats, tawny rats,
Grave old plodders, gay young friskers,
Fathers, mothers, uncles, cousins,
Cocking tails and pricking whiskers,
Families by tens and dozens,
Brothers, sisters, husbands, wives--
Followed the Piper for their lives.
From street to street he piped advancing,
And step for step they followed dancing,
Until they came to the river Weser
Wherein all plunged and perished!
Save one who, stout as Julius Caesar,
Swam across and lived to carry
(As the manuscript he cherished)
To Rat-land home his commentary:
Which was, "At the first shrill notes of the pipe,
I heard a sound as of scraping tripe,
And putting apples, wondrous ripe,
Into a cider-press's gripe:
And a moving away of pickle-tub-boards,
And a leaving ajar of conserve-cupboards,
And a drawing the corks of train-oil-flasks,
And a breaking the hoops of butter-casks:
And it seemed as if a voice
(Sweeter far than by harp or by psaltery
Is breathed) called out, 'Oh rats, rejoice!
The world is grown to one vast dry-saltery!
So munch on, crunch on, take your nuncheon,
Breakfast, supper, dinner, luncheon!'
And just as a bulky sugar-puncheon,
All ready staved, like a great sun shone
Glorious scarce an inch before me,
Just as methought it said 'Come bore me!'
-- I found the Weser rolling o'er me."


VIII

You should have heard the Hamelin people
Ringing the bells till they rocked the steeple.
"Go," cried the Mayor, "and get long poles!
Poke out the nests and block up the holes!
Consult with carpenters and builders
And leave in our town not even a trace
Of the rats!"-- when suddenly, up the face
Of the Piper perked in the market-place,
With a, "First, if you please, my thousand guilders!"

IX

A thousand guilders! The Mayor looked blue;
So did the Corporation too.
For council dinners made rare havoc
With Claret, Moselle, Vin-de-Grave, Hock;
And half the money would replenish
Their cellar's biggest butt with Rhenish.
To pay this sum to a wandering fellow
With a gypsy coat of red and yellow!
"Beside," quoth the Mayor with a knowing wink,
"Our business was done at the river's brink;
We saw with our eyes the vermin sink,
And what's dead can't come to life, I think.
So, friend, we're not the folks to shrink
From the duty of giving you something for drink,
And a matter of money to put in your poke;
But as for the guilders, what we spoke
Of them, as you very well know, was in joke.
Beside, our losses have made us thrifty:
A thousand guilders! Come, take fifty!


X

The Piper's face fell, and he cried,
"No trifling! I can't wait! Beside,
I've promised to visit by dinnertime
Bagdad, and accept the prime
Of the Head-Cook's pottage, all he's rich in,
For having left, in the Caliph's kitchen,
Of a nest of scorpions no survivor--
With him I proved no bargain-driver,
With you, don't think I'll bate a stiver!
And folks who put me in a passion
May find me pipe to another fashion."


XI

"How?" cried the Mayor, "d'ye think I brook
Being worse treated than a Cook?
Insulted by a lazy ribald
With idle pipe and vesture piebald?
You threaten us, fellow? Do your worst,
Blow your pipe there till you burst!"


XII

Once more he stept into the street
And to his lips again
Laid his long pipe of smooth straight cane;
And ere he blew three notes (such sweet
Soft notes as yet musician's cunning
Never gave the enraptured air)
There was a rustling that seemed like a bustling
Of merry crowds justling at pitching and hustling,
Small feet were pattering, wooden shoes clattering,
Little hands clapping, and little tongues chattering,
And, like fowls in a farm-yard when barley is scattering,
Out came the children running.
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.

XIII

The Mayor was dumb, and the Council stood
As if they were changed into blocks of wood,
Unable to move a step or cry,
To the children merrily skipping by--
And could only follow with the eye
That joyous crowd at the Piper's back.
But how the Mayor was on the rack
And the wretched Council's bosoms beat,
As the Piper turned from the High Street
To where the Weser rolled its waters
Right in the way of their sons and daughters!
However he turned from South to West
And to Koppelberg Hill his steps addressed,
And after him the children pressed;
Great was the joy in every breast.
"He never can cross that mighty top!
He's forced to let the piping drop
And we shall see our children stop!
When, lo, as they reached the mountain-side,
A wondrous portal opened wide,
As if a cavern was suddenly hollowed;
And the Piper advanced and the children followed,
And when all were in to the very last,
The door in the mountain-side shut fast.
Did I say all? No! One was lame,
And could not dance the whole of the way;
And in after years, if you would blame
His sadness, he was used to say,--
"It's dull in our town since my playmates left!
I can't forget that I'm bereft
Of all the pleasant sights they see,
Which the Piper also promised me.
For he led us, he said, to a joyous land,
Joining the town and just at hand,
Where waters gushed and fruit-trees grew,
And flowers put forth a fairer hue,
And everything was strange and new;
The sparrows were brighter than peacocks here,
And their dogs outran our fallow deer,
And honey-bees had lost their stings,
And horses were born with eagles' wings:
And just as I became assured
My lame foot would be speedily cured,
The music stopped and I stood still,
And found myself outside the hill,
Left alone against my will,
To go now limping as before,
And never hear of that country more!

XIV

Alas, alas for Hamelin!
There came into many a burgher's pate
A text which says that heaven's gate
Opens to the rich at as easy rate
As the needle's eye takes a camel in!
The mayor sent East, West, North and South,
To offer the Piper, by word of mouth
Wherever it was men's lot to find him,
Silver and gold to his heart's content,
If he'd only return the way he went,
And bring the children behind him.
But when they saw 'twas a lost endeavor,
And Piper and dancers were gone forever,
They made a decree that lawyers never
Should think their records dated duly
If, after the day of the month and year,
These words did not as well appear:
"And so long after what happened here
On the twenty-second of July,
Thirteen hundred and seventy-six;"
And the better in memory to fix
The place of the children's last retreat,
They called it the Pied Piper's Street,
Where any one playing on pipe or tabor
Was sure for the future to lose his labor.
Nor suffered they hostelry or tavern
To shock with mirth a street so solemn,
But opposite the place of the cavern
They wrote the story on a column,
And on the great church-window painted
The same, to make the world acquainted
How their children were stolen away,
And there it stands to this very day.
And I must not omit to say
That, in Transylvania there's a tribe
Of alien people who ascribe
To the outlandish ways and dress
On which their neighbors lay such stress,
To their fathers and mothers having risen
Out of some subterranean prison
Into which they were trepanned
Long time ago in a mighty band
Out of Hamelin town in Brunswick land,
But how or why they don't understand.


XV

So, Willy, let you and me be wipers
Of scores out with all men--especially pipers!
And, whether they pipe us free, from rats or from mice,
If we've promised them ought, let us keep our promise.

Why can't I get it any more?

These slabs of stuff were the building blocks of my childhood.

My Dad would bring them home for me from his school supply store, which also carried a few art supplies. Each slab was a different color. When I took it out of the package, there was a familiar smell. The plasticine smell.

Faintly chemical, a little like dirty socks. Not pleasant, but not unpleasant either. It didn't make me want to eat it, like Play-Doh, which has a biscuit-dough texture and a whiff of vanilla that makes it irresistible.

It took a while to work this stuff in your hands until you could make something out of it. I was always making something out of it, usually alone. I didn't use plastic cookie cutters or try to make Gumby or other "claymation" figures like the always-morally-correct Davy and Goliath. No one used the term claymation then, though I knew it had something to do with stop-action and being incredibly patient.

What I loved about plasticine was the fact that it never dried out, could be endlessly reused and recycled, got warmer and more forgiving as you worked with it. It was the ideal substance, the medium for my imagination as expressed through my fingers.

I still dream about McKeough School in Chatham, Ontario where I grew up in the '60s. Last night I dreamed it was no longer a historical site (as I think it used to be, before being shut down due to violating every building code in existence), and was being demolished.

My memories are fragmentary but powerful. The principal, Mr. Robertson, was an ex-army man who made us march in to military music ("Over hill, over dale, we have hit the dusty trail. . . "). He sometimes came in unexpectedly and had us stand beside our desks while he inspected the troops. We were expected to stand rigidly at "ten-HUT" until he said (no, I am not making this up) "at ease".

That school was old. The stone steps going in had hollows in them from countless thousands of feet. The basement where we watched "fill-ums" (mostly National Film Board hygiene things) was like somebody's pitch-black furnace room.

I remember things, like bringing 32 pink-iced Valentine cookies to school for the class (my mother did all the work, as I remember, turning them out grimly like a machine. Housewives kept score on each other then.) I remember the Monday after the Beatles came on the Ed Sullivan Show, when everyone was buzzing about them and trying to buy Ringo dolls. Our teacher, Miss Wray (an elderly spinster, like all the McKeough School teachers) finally said, "Settle down, class. This lesson has nothing to do with wigs."

Then there was Kennedy. We had some idea who Kennedy was, of course. How could we help it? Then one day in November the voice of doom came over the loudspeaker asking all the teachers to get down to the office, now. This was unusual, as the teacher had to ask the hall monitor to keep us in line for a few minutes.

When Miss Wray came back, she was ashen.

Then Mr. Robertson came on again and called recess: what was going on? It wasn't recess! I can't recall exactly how he communicated this, but somehow we all knew Kennedy had been shot and we were being sent outside, a nonsensical turn of events, though my adult self realizes they were probably trying to figure out what the hell to do next.

While we were milling about outside (the girls on one side, the boys on the other), Nancy, a girl who had been born in the States, started rallying us around her. We stood in a big circle in the yard and chanted, "Kennedy, Kennedy, rah-rah-rah! Kruschev, Kruschev, boo-boo-boo!"

It didn't do any good, though we were dismissed early after the faux recess, which we always thought was a good thing. My parents didn't say anything that I can remember, but Bullwinkle wasn't on, nor was anything else I liked to watch. It was all "coverage". Walter Cronkite nearly cried, which was scary, like Mr. Robertson crying or something. Confusion was everywhere, reaching its nadir as I watched Lee Harvey Oswald shot to death on live TV.

But what does all this have to do with plasticine? I'm getting to that, be patient.

At the end of the school year came the ultimate event: the McKeough School Picnic. This was a grand occasion with all sorts of sports, races and games, prizes given out, and a splendid fireworks display at the end (including the Burning School House, which didn't look like anything but always provoked subversive whoops of joy). I remember one year coming in third in the sack race, proving that even then, I was pretty good in the sack.

There was all sorts of food available for this event, bake table things and the like. My mother always made three kinds of fudge: chocolate, vanilla and coconut. To this day, I make damn good fudge with a similar recipe (the old-time kind where you boil up syrup to the soft ball stage - no thermometers, you wimps! - and beat the hell out of the molten liquid until it "fudge-ifies", as my kids called it eons later). She also made tons of popcorn using a beat-up old saucepan, put it in paper sacks while it was still sizzling hot, and drenched it with melted butter. Eaten fresh, it was agonizingly good.

But the plasticine! We're still getting to that. Along with all the other gorgeous things we did, there was the Hobby Fair. I don't remember much about it, frankly - maybe it involved crocheted toilet roll covers, stamp collections or something like that. There were ribbons given out, firstsecondthird. I had never won anything in my life, mainly because I never entered it.

Then, at the end of Grade Three, I got an idea.

I cracked open several new slabs of plasticine that my Dad had brought home from his store. (Don't ever think he bought them for me, because he didn't. This was excess stock that would have been returned to the manufacturer or thrown out.) I started warming it up in my hands, revving.

Then I began to build.

We had just "taken" a poem in school about the Pied Piper of Hamelin. It was endless, taking up page after page, a simple story crammed with detail and unfamiliar words like "nuncheon" and "sugar-puncheon". The most memorable lines are quite well-known: "Great rats, small rats, lean rats, brawny rats,/Brown rats, black rats, grey rats, tawny rats."

Rats!

I would make rats. I would make the piper, holding his flute triumphant and spiriting all the rats out of Hamelin. My fingers flew as I made rat, after rat, after rat.

I don't know what color they were. They must have rested on something, some sort of cardboard (though I think that came later: I wasn't thinking of an actual display). I don't know how many rats, exactly, but there seemed to be hundreds of them.

Surprisingly, I think it was my mother who said, "We have to enter this in the Hobby Fair." I looked up at her: it was highly unusual for my parents to acknowledge any sort of talent in me, with three older siblings (one of them thirteen years older) who seemed to surpass me at everything. Even then, I fully expected to understand my 23-year-old sister's erudition when I was ten.

So my rat-swarmed display was entered. Came the time for the judges to snoop around all the exhibits, looking to pin ribbons on them, or not. One of them stopped at my Pied Piper station and sniffed, "I don't believe a child in Grade Three could have made this."

As it happened, a neighbor lady, Peggy Aitken, was standing there and said, "Oh yes, she did! I saw her making it!" This wasn't true, but I appreciated the vote of confidence.

I won first prize. For my rats. For my Pied Piper of Hamelin. I don't know what happened to the display; I suspect it was recycled, like all my plasticene things. No one took a picture of it, and I don't know what happened to the ribbon.

Nice story. But the thing is, now that my grandkids have outgrown Play-Doh (which is only useful for mucking around and making fake cookies), I can't find real plasticine. It's just not anywhere. I've gone to that Michaels craft store and bought some abominations. It's called all sorts of different things, usually Modelling Clay (which it isn't: this isn't clay at all but some sort of polymer product that never hardens), Krazy Klay and the like. I once bought a huge rainbow package (the different colors now come in small tubes like fat pencils), opened it, and was knocked back by noxious fumes.

The smell was just overpowering. Like moth balls mixed with Varsol (a more foul version of turpentine). I did let the kids play with it once, thinking, it has to be safe, I bought it at Michaels!, but their fingers were coated in disgusting oily smears, and their fingernails looked like they'd been coal mining.

So I go on the internet to find out what the hell, and it's vague as usual: it sort of tells you where to buy the stuff, if you can get it. The slabs might still be made in Britain, maybe, if you're willing to pay L25 per slab and shipping and handling, and you'll probably still get the wrong stuff.

I want my plasticine back! My eldest granddaughter Caitlin, who is endlessly crafty and creative, is just at the "big rats, small rats" stage. She could make her own Pied Piper display (though it's more likely to be Lady Gaga and her legions of fans). Don't tell ME I have to make my own, using creosote, crank case oil and corn syrup.

I saw something on the net saying Plasticine, the original name brand, had been banned for being a biohazard. Nonsense! The original had a faint odor, nothing like the knock-you-back fumes of the crap I bought at Michaels. If kids ate it in great quantities, maybe. But that's also true of poster paint and Elmer's glue. I don't understand why, if actual Plasticene is banned, they don't also ban this foul Third World glop that won't come off your hands until it wears off.

Like so many things I've lost, I want it back, but it's unlikely. I'll keep on trying to find something decent at the dollar store, then pitching it out when it stinks or won't mold any better than a pencil erasor.

Oh, by the way. The Beatles first appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show on February 9, 1964. My tenth birthday, coming only three months after the Kennedy Assassination and four months before my Pied Piper victory. It was one of those years.