To me, the character has always seemed very very mysterious, so I am thinking about how I am going to portray the character, as far as motivations...whats going on inside him.

So I am most keenly interested in the Piper himself, who/what he is, how he might feel, later, about what happened and what, exactly he did with the children.

The Browning poem, of course, indicates that they were led to believe they were going to a magical land...and then later mentions they may have immerged in Transylvania.

I only have a basic story idea and knowing others views of the character and events may help me to decide what to do with it

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I like the story and I think it has lots of potential - fantasy or sci-fi. I don't really see it as a revenge story, but more of a lesson in how people should be treated and how people prioritize things. The towns people cared a lot about the rats until he led the rats out of town. Then the people cared so little they wouldn't pay the piper. Therefore he took their children whom the people seemed to care more about after he took them. So they decided to pay.

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I agree...to me, it's less about revenge and more a lesson that 1) you should keep your promises and 2) greed is bad, and there are many things more important than money. But I've always felt like there was more to it, beneath the surface, as far as the nature/origins of the Piper.

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As a kid I wondered what would be so neat about the guy that the children would follow him.

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In the poem, the impression is that the song was telling them that he was leading them to a wonderful, magical land. One can assume it was basically a magical compulsion.

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I think it would be interesting to follow the perspective of one of the children who did follow or maybe have one child who is immune.

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The story more or less always involves a lame boy who is left behind. Some versions also have a deaf child who follows the others in the begining just out of curiosity.

But my story...this one anyway...probably isnt going to involve a replay of the Hamelin incident, at least I'm not planning on it

Harlan Ellison wrote a short entitled "Emissary from Hamelin," in which a descendent of the Pied Piper returns to Hamelin to lead the adults away and punish them for their crimes against humanity.

I associate the Pied Piper with several other legendary and mythic archetypes. From the Bible, Joseph's coat of many colors, which I interpret as a patchwork of rags and hand-me-downs, quilt-like, lovingly made by a devoted mother for a cherished youngest son from what was left over after honoring her older sons. The allusion is that of the youngest son harbored and conversely denied by his older siblings, camoflaged from prominence by attractive brightness and colorful clothing, yet in a position of all-knowing wisdom from being the participatory observer.

From the major arcana of the Tarot, the Fool, not as a fool but the symbolism of a youth gamboling carefree and headlong toward a cliff, invulnerable from ignorant bliss, yet skirting the edge of disaster, disaster averted by the same carefree whims of following the vagaries of a breeze.

A college graduate on Wanderjahr hellbent on having a last fling before the responsibilities of adult life demand attention.

I also associate Richard Bach's later life novels with the Pied Piper, especially Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah and to a lesser extent Jonathan Livingston Seagull. The way that both stories portray reality as illusions we create for our learning and enjoyment and comfort in dark times is what creates for me an allusion to the Pied Piper.

The flight of lemmings also makes me think of the Pied Piper, another illusion and metaphoric allusion representing people who follow popular opinion unquestioningly, often into catastrophe.

But I see in two different lights. On the one hand it's a folk legend, it has that mystique you're searching for. And there is the hint of a moral that people should be treated well and promises ought to be kept.

What if it was a curse on him? He could try to do everything he could think of to avoid doing it, but he never succeeded.

Maybe he took the rats in hopes that his compulsion (geas?) wouldn't require that he take the children, and it didn't work.

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From the major arcana of the Tarot, the Fool, not as a fool but the symbolism of a youth gamboling carefree and headlong toward a cliff, invulnerable from ignorant bliss, yet skirting the edge of disaster, disaster averted by the same carefree whims of following the vagaries of a breeze.

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I can see that...and I'd relate him to the Fool in another way as well. The Fool can also be the begining, the Sacred Clown thats also a Creator deity...probably linked to my tendency to see the Fool, the Magician, and the High Priestess as Keter, Binah, and Chokmah from Kabbalah

The Pied Piper likewise, to me, seems like he could be a figure who is much, much more than he seems or at least with far deeper connections.

I'm curious though...within the context of the usual Browning type version...who and what do you think the Piper is? What happened to the children? Why did he react so extremely to being cheated?

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But on the other hand the Piper is evil, his revenge was cold and brutal. But that is what made the story work. Though I (personally) don't believe in nor approve of revenge as justified motivation.

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Well...a couple of things. First, at the least the Mayor and Corporation are also very much to blame. They lied to the Piper, cheated him basically, and were stupid enough to do so even after it became clear he could be quite dangerous.

Also...

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What if the Piper did what he did under compulsion himself?

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Even if he wasn't under a compulsion as such, remember that old fashioned notions of revenge were somewhat different. In many times and cultures, he would have been seen as justified in taking action...and it may or may not have been considered "revenge" as much as reparation. Breaking deals is bad. And then when you thrown in his probable supernatural nature...I think its possible that there are rules to dealing with the Piper, and when they are broken, what he does in response may be less revenge, and more just following the rules.

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Maybe he took the rats in hopes that his compulsion (geas?) wouldn't require that he take the children, and it didn't work.

If you wanted to take that approach, you could look for other people in history who have led children astray (the leader of the Children's Crusade in the middle ages, perhaps), and make him an immortal who is cursed to do this until the end of time.

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All interesting ideas. I may well, over time, end up writing multiple stories about the Piper, given how much he fascinates me, and that he can be seen so many ways. I'm not sure exactly what it is I am looking for for the one I plan currently...i want him to be somewhat sympathetic, but not entirely...

I see the Piper as a charismatic explorer who swept up the young adults of Hamelin by his rhetoric and went away with them. In premodern times, European children as we think of them weren't considered part of the family before they could assert their needs and be known and understood, nor was there much emotional investment in them until they'd survived all the childhood diseases, well on the way into their teens. The bitterness of the townspeople toward someone coming and leading their hardwon offspring to resettlement might be a genesis of the legend. The rats are what I see as an artistic license taken by the storytellers to set up the Piper symbolically as a low common ratcatcher, lowest of the lowest trades, and as a creative device to open the story, build tension, make him somewhat sympathetic and generally enhance the plot.

I also see several challenges that any story related to the legend will face. If a contemporary story is written, might it be an updating of the original, otherwise faithful to the themes and motifs but modern? Might it be a reinterpretation of the original from a different perspective? Might it be an explanatory interpretation? Might it be some of all three? Whichever, it's bound to be a complex project to accomplish the story through one or all of those and succeed in meeting expectations preexisting from the rich tapestry that's been embelished upon by a legion of writers, past and present. Best of luck in your endeavor.

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The Pied Piper of Hamelin, the factual genesis of the legend that Browning and others set to paper, is one side of at least a three-sided interaction, the way I see it: The Piper, the townspeople, and the children the Piper led away. Browing's and most versions focus on the townspeople's version. The Piper's comes up in some of the reimaginings, I've not seen one where the children are the focal characters. Did the Piper lead them to their deaths or did they emigrate to Eastern Europe and found a new society as historians have speculated?

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All historical stuff aside, everyone else's interpretations or ideas aside, I'm curious to know who, and what, you think the Piper of the Browning and other such fantasy type versions, most likely is. A mage? A person with the specific magical ability to make living things follow them with music? Someone who's tapped into the Music of the Spheres? Is he human, or a spirit or force of nature? that sort of thing is more what I mean.

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I also see several challenges that any story related to the legend will face. If a contemporary story is written, might it be an updating of the original, otherwise faithful to the themes and motifs but modern? Might it be a reinterpretation of the original from a different perspective? Might it be an explanatory interpretation? Might it be some of all three?

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Well, at present what I'm thinking is set in the 30s or 40s, with the Piper now playing a calliope for a carnival or circus. the POV character is a crippled boy (not the one from the poem) who figures out who the calliope player is.

However, the other idea I had earlier involves my Emrys character, who spans various worlds, and the Piper in the same setting or circumstances...or maybe with the Piper as a clown...discussing various things about the Piper, his past, and what he's doing now.

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Whichever, it's bound to be a complex project to accomplish the story through one or all of those and succeed in meeting expectations preexisting from the rich tapestry that's been embelished upon by a legion of writers, past and present.

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Well the biggest thing I guess is basically deciding how to portray the Piper, among all the dozens of potential options. That I suppose is why I'm curious as to how other people view this particular folkloric figure.

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I see the Piper as a charismatic explorer who swept up the young adults of Hamelin by his rhetoric and went away with them. In premodern times, European children as we think of them weren't considered part of the family before they could assert their needs and be known and understood, nor was there much emotional investment in them until they'd survived all the childhood diseases, well on the way into their teens.

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Off the subject, and not that i doubt this is accurate to your sources or whatever, but I dont think historians can really make a judgement about the emotional state of people from centuries ago. And I don't really believe peopl could refrain from becoming emotionally invested in their children for 12 or 13 years....but none of that relates to the story, really...

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I see the Piper as a charismatic explorer who swept up the young adults of Hamelin by his rhetoric and went away with them. In premodern times

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I'm intersted in the "fictional" and conceptual character....honestly attempts at a "rational" explanation arent of much interest to me. In the Browning poem the Piper or at least his abilities are represented as magical or supernatural in nature. And I, personally, am open to the possibility that such a thing could be litterally true. I'm not a big supporter of the idea that folktales like this must have some sort of "real world" explanation.

Robert Graves' The White Goddess and other works of his do an amazing job of exploring the origins of many of the lores of the past that inform our contemporary systems of faith. I'm a Cartesianist, reality is all that that continues to exist when belief in it stops.

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Robert Graves' The White Goddess and other works of his do an amazing job of exploring the origins of many of the lores of the past that inform our contemporary systems of faith. I'm a Cartesianist, reality is all that that continues to exist when belief in it stops.

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Ok...but I dont see the connection. The idea is that magic/spiritual/supernatural things, if real, also exist wether they are believed in or not (although i realize there is fiction dealing with or including the idea that magical beings etc only exist as long as people believe in them, but thats not really my point of view.

I believe that magic is simply part of reality, in exactly the same way as rocks and rain and elephants. And in fact, I tend to see music as inherently magical.

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The Piper being an extraordinary supernatural talent, I generally won't have it for myself. I see him as a charismatic person, in the same vein as a premodern prophet, slightly insane and revered for the insanity, listened to and obeyed because he had a supposed "special" connection with the supernatural.

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But in the Browning poem, and every fictional work dealing with the character that I've encountered, he and/or his abilities are portrayed as clearly magical. A big part of the reason the character fascinates me is he is one of several such figures that to me, could be just people with abilities, but could also easily be something...else...in a human appearance. Which is the case, and if the later what exactly, is a big part of what interests me.

I know of the magic alluded to in the Browning version. I didn't take it literally, though. Unfortunately, my sceptical nature doesn't allow me to take fantasy literally. I still enjoy fantasy, but from consuming it through allusive interpretations.

Having studied musical composition, I know how it can seem magical, but I also appreciate that it's like writing good fiction. Some crossovers between the two have identical influences on the audience, tension, tension relief, emotive resonance, emotional influence. In a bowdlerization of René Descartes Cogito ergo sum, I feel, therefore I exist. Music is magic because it causes us to feel. The Piper caused people to feel. That he made Hamelin's children follow him for his music represents to me that he seduced them musically, perhaps with poetic even mellifluous rhetoric. That the Hamelinites felt sorrow for the loss of their children rather than outrage might have seemed like magical influence to them.

However, enough of our differing interpretations. What you seek is inspiration for the fantastical.

For starters, rather than a calliope, what about a hurdy-gurdy or Franklin's glass harmonica? The hurdy-gurdy is portable enough for walking around playing. Picture the stereotyped Italian beggar with a dancing monkey on a leash waving a tin cup. The instrument the Italian plays is a hurdy-gurdy. I've listened to a hurdy-gurdy played by a reknowned balladeer. Sounds coming from it were like an orchestra of violin and bass and cello. The glass harmonica isn't as portable. I've heard a recording of a glass harmonica played. The sounds that came from it were a little like songs on the album Tubular Bells by Mike Oldfield. Bear with me, I'm thinking. Distractions help my processors function.

I've long considered a story where certain frequencies of sound did good or bad things. Ultralow frequencies are known to stun. Powerful ultrahigh frequencies excite liquids, cause unbearable pain in living tissues. Perhaps a drone undertone modulated at 13,000 cycles might be hypnotic. B-flat is the droning undertone note generated by electric motors, vacuum cleaners, air conditioner compressors.

Subtonic notes are common in modern "devil" music, blues, jazz, rock and roll. Subtonic notes are the dominants of the relative major key. They cause emotional tension that is relieved by returning to the tonic of the major key. Music with sensual feelings.

Diminished fifths, diminished sevenths, disharmonies, tempo variations, all create tension that is relieved by returning to the tonic of the major key or the principal rhythm. Manipulation of notes from the major into the minor key is another tension-creating effect. Autosuggestion, hypnosis, mass hysteria, brainwashing, mindwiping, maybe one or all could be an effect of tension left unrelieved for too long.

I once listened to a live performance of an experimental scale fusion by a brilliant musician who unfortunately couldn't live off of his music and gave it up. He fused a pentatonic scale upbeat with a heptatonic scale backbeat. It was oddly comforting and distressing at the same time. He played it on an electric guitar. He refused an encore and never attempted it again. Nor was it recorded. C'est la vie.

I might not be of much help. My analytical mind is hampering my creative blue-skying of the fantastical. I'll sleep on it and see if anything presents.

Ah! Perhaps your Piper learned the "trade" from an arcane practitioner who wouldn't use it, but secretly desired to do so and instead passed it on so he/she could live vicariously through another.

I've written one mundane fantasy that was well received by a most sceptical and discriminating though small audience. It was my BFA thesis. The fiction subdepartment remarked that they didn't ordinarily like genre, but . . . The common most-favorable comment was how the third-person limited narrator had a distinct voice separate from the point of view character who was also not the protagonist. The narrator was a distinct character, the point of view character was another, and the protagonist was yet another in the story. I wasn't after following traditions or conventions of fantasy or mundane fantasy in particular, but rather focused on exploring distinguishing narrative character roles. Despite preferring genre storywriting and being generally disapproved of by the department, I graduated top of my creative writing class magna cum laude and, of course, with an A for my thesis.

I don't reject fantasy writing. I'm one of those never-say-never kind of guys in most things. However, the conventional expectations of any one genre are complex. So, for the time being, I'm focusing on those of hard-science fiction. Perhaps once I've "mastered" that genre subset and story in general, I'll branch into other genres.