The Pied Piper of Hamelin

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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.

We read that at Hameln ages ago a mouse-catcher presented himself and sold to the townspeople powder that rid the town of all the vermin.

And, in fact, one 13th Century outbreak – a literal form of dance fever – occurred south of Hamelin, in the town of Erfurt, where a group of youths were documented as wildly gyrating as they travelled out of town, ending up 20km away in a neighbouring town. Some of the children, one chronicle suggests, expired shortly thereafter, having flat-out danced themselves to death, and those who survived were left with chronic tremors. Perhaps, some theorise, Hamelin witnessed a similar plague, dancing to the figurative tune of the Piper.

Confirming the truthfulness of this story is the fact still today the marketplace in that town is called Mice-Market. William S. Peterson, Robert and Elizabeth Browning: An Annotated Bibliography, 1951-1970(New York: Browning Institute, 1974). The Works of Robert Browning, Centenary Edition, 10 volumes, edited by Frederic G. Kenyon (London: Smith, Elder / Boston: Hinkley, 1912). The second moral appears in the penultimate stanza: "Heaven's gate/Opens to the rich at an easy rate/As the needle's eye takes a camel in!" A paraphrase of the Biblical verse that makes wealth and holiness mutually exclusive, this poem suggests that concerns with worldly goods – money and power – will pollute a person. Notice that, even before the Mayor and Corporation betray the Piper, their concern for the town does not flare up until the public threatens rebellion. Those who hired the Piper were solely concerned with material life, and their decisions ended up costing the entire town its happiness. This happen'd, a matter of two hundred and fifty yeers since; and in that Town, they date their Bills and Bonds, and other Instruments in Law, to this day, from the yeer of the going out of their children: Besides, there is a great piller of stone at the foot of the said Hill, wheron this story is ingraven.Letters of Robert Browning Collected by Thomas J. Wise, edited by Thurman L. Hood (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1933).