Pied Piper of Hamelin

Billy then leaves to go for a rendezvous at the hotel with Risa.

Nicole, while she's watching the Ansel children, reads them the story of the Pied Piper and And this is very important because it runs parallel to the story that we see throughout the course of the movie.

There's a great part of this too, where after Nicole is reading the story, Mason, great name by the way, who is one of Billy Ansel's kids, asks her, did the Pied Piper take the children away because he was mad that the town didn't pay him? And for anybody that's unfamiliar with the story, that is exactly what happens.

The Pied Piper performs a service.

He gets rid of the rats for the town.

He doesn't get paid, so he decides to take all the children away.

Sam drives her to what appears to be a VFW hall to testify the next day.

It's kind of crazy how that works in some of these smaller towns.

Pipers.

See, to me, Hamlin Pied Pipers has got to be, I always feel like it's number one.

Partially because if you know the story of the Pied Piper, it was the town of Hamlin.

Yeah, I mean, it's just perfect, the Hamlin Pied Pipers.

And essentially, we're making a child abductor our mascot.

Well, that's one way to look at it.

the demure paragraph of the ordinary english biographies frederic died after a long illness which he bore with exemplary fortitude contracted such was his sense of duty by prolonged exposure to the reign while reviewing his troops in the province which he had rescued from the queen of hungary owing to

his wonderful genius chapter chapter fifteen of post mortems to mere mortals medical historical essays by charles mclaurin the children's crusade and the pied piper which of us can remember a time when he did not know the pied piper of hamelin which of us can remember a time when he thought it merely funny or could not recite the joyous thing by heart like his schoolfellows if the gliding years have stolen the detailed memory at least they have not stolen the enormous impression that the poem made upon children for we can still see the piper with his pin-point pupils and his light hair without tuft on cheek nor beard on chin and his queer parti-coloured clothes just like a chinaman he seemed to us like the poor mysterious john from whom we used to steal bananas and evoke torrents of uncouth gibberish perhaps he too was trying to tell us in his mildly explosive way how he had talked with the cham of tartary or the nizam of asia perhaps he was telling us of some other mysterious potentate for whom he had contracted to bewitch vermin though to be sure we had never observed any great love for music in him nor did his fingers itch to do anything more than heave his stave on to his shoulder or pick out faulty vegetables for the cook and how deliciously the piper had piped the rats from that little medieval town oh rats rejoice for the world is grown to one vast dry saltery we did not quite know what a dry saltery was but to use australian slang

it must contain things positively bosker to

eat the rough and tripping metre appealed to boyhood and the queer words that we did not quite understand though we felt that in a minute we should such as nuncheon and jessling it seemed quite right and proper to say that salt sprinkled on a candle flame would burn green and it savours of the knowledge of good and evil to know that it really burns yellow it is good fun to try to re-read the poem with a boy's mind but it is impossible you

is not the funniest thing in the world and life has forced upon us a knowledge of things other than good and evil the coppelberg unto which the children danced is not a mighty top no crowded little bones have been unearthed from it it is just so high that a child would be hidden from

sight as it danced on its way to cologne of course one naturally accuses the gipsies for there were

certainly gipsies in europe even so early as the twelfth century let alone the thirteenth three centuries were to pass before they reached their climax according to the encyclopdia britannica the legend of the pied piper dates from twelve eighty four though browning in the poem dates it july twenty second thirteen seventy six i believe the reason for his error is not definitely known but i think it is possible to guess on either date there were plenty of gypsies about and no doubt they would be quite prepared to pick up an odd child or two if they saw money in the abduction but it is impossible to believe that they would dare to try any such mighty abduction as was achieved by the pied piper europe would have gone mad with rage probably every gipsy would have had his throat cut by infuriated parents and the race would have been exterminated nor is it likely that the so-called dancing mania was more than in part a solution because that was really a spiritual reaction from the black death of thirteen forty eight probably people were so glad to have remained alive that they danced firstly for joy afterwards from mass suggestion it is a partial solution of our difficulty because it began at aix-la-chapelle in thirteen seventy four as hecker says hardly had the graves of the victims of the black death been covered in which is a somewhat excitable way of saying a few years the dancing neurasthenia lasted a long time and recurred all over europe in several epidemics just so after a terrible war do we dance to-day though few of us looking at our gloomy and barbaric dances would dream that these short-frocked maidens are dancing for joy in thirteen seventy five it had spread the thirty-six miles to cologne and in thirteen seventy

six the few miles to hamelin i do not attempt to explain the episode of the rats beyond saying that the story is not uncommon that there is to this day a ratfanger's house in the ancient town of hamelin and that according to the original legend

Uh-

It's like a Pied Pipers were checking in.

[laughs]

Detroit, Michigan, I saw rats when I went to Detroit.