The Rats of Hamelin
Encyclopedia
The Rats of Hamelin: A Piper's Tale (Moody Publishers
, 2005) is a historical fantasy
/fairy tale fantasy
novel by Adam McCune
and Keith McCune
. Gachi-Changjo Publishing Company published a Korean
translation entitled 6월 26일, 하멜른 (June 26, Hamelin) in 2007.
Set in medieval
Germany
, the story is based on the legend of the Pied Piper of Hamelin
. In this version, however, the Pied Piper is not an expert in magic piping, but an eighteen-year-old apprentice named Hannes (Johannes) who is supposed to kill the rats as his final exam before becoming a Master Piper.
Everything seems to go wrong. Someone is trying to keep the rats in Hamelin—someone with powers like Hannes’s. Hannes had hoped to buy his father’s freedom with the reward, but the Town Council has stolen every penny of the fund and is against Hannes from the beginning. Even the mayor’s daughter, with whom Hannes has fallen in love, seems to think he is getting in the way. In the end, Hannes has to overcome the Town Council, his mysterious enemy, and himself.
, a group of dukedoms loosely united under an emperor. That is why there is talk of involving the Duke of Braunschweig
(Brunswick) when a capital crime is committed.
In the backstory of the novel is the Children's Crusade
of 1212. This really took place, and the fictional character of the Old Woman of Aerzen is like many real parents who lost their children.
The German cities of Hamelin
, Aerzen
, (Hessisch-)Oldendorf
, and Koeln (Cologne
) are real cities, although there may not have been manors with serfs near Aerzen and Oldendorf, and Koeln is not known to have housed a Piper's Guild.
The Pied Piper
himself seems to have some historical basis, and is thus a figure of history as well as legend. The Lueneberg Manuscript of 1450, which serves as an epigraph
for the novel, sums up the little we know historically about him: "In the year 1284, on the days of John and Paul, the 26th of June, a piper clothed in various colors came and led away 130 children born in Hamelin to Calvary on the Koppen."
s, the Piper's Guild allows workers of one trade to help support one another. The difference is the pipers are no ordinary tradesmen. They use magic to promote justice and mercy wherever they go, and live on the rewards they sometimes receive for the help they give.
Their magical flutes are similar to recorders in that they are played in front, rather than to the side, like a modern flute. The ends are flared, like the ends of trumpets, and there are no stops; everything is done with the fingers.
The pipers use these magical flutes to enter the Pipeworld. Though the pipers never leave the real world (at least not in The Rats of Hamelin), access to the Pipeworld lets them operate in another dimension, layered on top of the world everyone else experiences. In the Pipeworld, pipers use their music and their minds to pull objects with invisible strings, transfer illness from others to themselves, freeze things, summon lightning, control animals, and cast terrible curses. They can also feel other people's souls in the Pipeworld; and if they understand someone's feelings well enough, they can enter that person's mind and experience the memories associated with those feelings. The state of a piper's own mind or soul is very important in the Pipeworld. Spells cast by a piper who has not resolved inner conflicts are vulnerable to attack and theft.
In an address to middle-schoolers in Virginia Beach, Virginia
, Adam McCune traced the inspiration of the Childrule curse (from the end of the book) to Isaiah 3:4 in the Bible
. In the New International Version
, the verse reads, "I will make boys their officials; mere children will govern them."
Interestingly, in addition to the curses that pipers cast, which have obvious effects and take place immediately, there is another kind of curse in The Rats of Hamelin: the one pronounced by the Old Woman of Aerzen. Though there is no reason to think that the Old Woman has magical powers, she nonetheless foretells a curse that eventually takes place.
Moody Publishers
Moody Publishers is a Christian publishing company that is focused on proclaiming the gospel message through its products. This vision is clearly stated within the company's mission statement...
, 2005) is a historical fantasy
Historical fantasy
Historical fantasy is a sub-genre of fantasy and related to historical fiction, which makes use of specific elements of real world history. It is used as an umbrella term for the sword and sorcery genre and sometimes, if fantasy is involved, the sword-and-sandal genre too...
/fairy tale fantasy
Fairytale fantasy
Fairytale fantasy is distinguished from other subgenres of fantasy by the works' heavy use of motifs, and often plots, from folklore.-History:...
novel by Adam McCune
Adam McCune
-Biography:McCune was born on July 18, 1985, in Virginia Beach, Virginia, to Keith and Grace McCune, and was raised in the Philippines and Russia.In the year 2000, when McCune was fourteen, his father showed him a three-page short story based on the legend of the Pied Piper of Hamelin, and asked...
and Keith McCune
Keith McCune
Keith Michael McCune is a linguist, novelist, and translator. His study of Indonesian roots has been called "perhaps the most detailed and complete single work in the field of phonosemantics," while his retelling of the legend of the Pied Piper of Hamelin earned praise from Michael Boyer, the...
. Gachi-Changjo Publishing Company published a Korean
Korean language
Korean is the official language of the country Korea, in both South and North. It is also one of the two official languages in the Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture in People's Republic of China. There are about 78 million Korean speakers worldwide. In the 15th century, a national writing...
translation entitled 6월 26일, 하멜른 (June 26, Hamelin) in 2007.
Set in medieval
Middle Ages
The Middle Ages is a periodization of European history from the 5th century to the 15th century. The Middle Ages follows the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 and precedes the Early Modern Era. It is the middle period of a three-period division of Western history: Classic, Medieval and Modern...
Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
, the story is based on the legend of the Pied Piper of Hamelin
The Pied Piper of Hamelin
The Pied Piper of Hamelin is the subject of a legend concerning the departure or death of a great many children from the town of Hamelin , Lower Saxony, Germany, in the Middle Ages. The earliest references describe a piper, dressed in pied clothing, leading the children away from the town never...
. In this version, however, the Pied Piper is not an expert in magic piping, but an eighteen-year-old apprentice named Hannes (Johannes) who is supposed to kill the rats as his final exam before becoming a Master Piper.
Everything seems to go wrong. Someone is trying to keep the rats in Hamelin—someone with powers like Hannes’s. Hannes had hoped to buy his father’s freedom with the reward, but the Town Council has stolen every penny of the fund and is against Hannes from the beginning. Even the mayor’s daughter, with whom Hannes has fallen in love, seems to think he is getting in the way. In the end, Hannes has to overcome the Town Council, his mysterious enemy, and himself.
History
The Rats of Hamelin is set mostly in the year 1284. At this time, Germany was the Holy Roman EmpireHoly Roman Empire
The Holy Roman Empire was a realm that existed from 962 to 1806 in Central Europe.It was ruled by the Holy Roman Emperor. Its character changed during the Middle Ages and the Early Modern period, when the power of the emperor gradually weakened in favour of the princes...
, a group of dukedoms loosely united under an emperor. That is why there is talk of involving the Duke of Braunschweig
Braunschweig (region)
Brunswick is one of the four former administrative regions of Lower Saxony, Germany, located in the southeast of the state. The region covers roughly the area of the former state of Brunswick-Lüneburg...
(Brunswick) when a capital crime is committed.
In the backstory of the novel is the Children's Crusade
Children's Crusade
The Children's Crusade is the name given to a variety of fictional and factual events which happened in 1212 that combine some or all of these elements: visions by a French or German boy; an intention to peacefully convert Muslims in the Holy Land to Christianity; bands of children marching to...
of 1212. This really took place, and the fictional character of the Old Woman of Aerzen is like many real parents who lost their children.
The German cities of Hamelin
Hamelin
Hamelin is a town on the river Weser in Lower Saxony, Germany. It is the capital of the district of Hamelin-Pyrmont and has a population of 58,696 ....
, Aerzen
Hamelin-Pyrmont
Hamelin-Pyrmont is a district in Lower Saxony, Germany. It is bounded by the districts of Schaumburg, Hanover, Hildesheim and Holzminden, and by the state of North Rhine-Westphalia .-History:...
, (Hessisch-)Oldendorf
Hamelin-Pyrmont
Hamelin-Pyrmont is a district in Lower Saxony, Germany. It is bounded by the districts of Schaumburg, Hanover, Hildesheim and Holzminden, and by the state of North Rhine-Westphalia .-History:...
, and Koeln (Cologne
Cologne
Cologne is Germany's fourth-largest city , and is the largest city both in the Germany Federal State of North Rhine-Westphalia and within the Rhine-Ruhr Metropolitan Area, one of the major European metropolitan areas with more than ten million inhabitants.Cologne is located on both sides of the...
) are real cities, although there may not have been manors with serfs near Aerzen and Oldendorf, and Koeln is not known to have housed a Piper's Guild.
The Pied Piper
The Pied Piper of Hamelin
The Pied Piper of Hamelin is the subject of a legend concerning the departure or death of a great many children from the town of Hamelin , Lower Saxony, Germany, in the Middle Ages. The earliest references describe a piper, dressed in pied clothing, leading the children away from the town never...
himself seems to have some historical basis, and is thus a figure of history as well as legend. The Lueneberg Manuscript of 1450, which serves as an epigraph
Epigraph (literature)
In literature, an epigraph is a phrase, quotation, or poem that is set at the beginning of a document or component. The epigraph may serve as a preface, as a summary, as a counter-example, or to link the work to a wider literary canon, either to invite comparison or to enlist a conventional...
for the novel, sums up the little we know historically about him: "In the year 1284, on the days of John and Paul, the 26th of June, a piper clothed in various colors came and led away 130 children born in Hamelin to Calvary on the Koppen."
Fantasy
Hannes is trained in magical piping by the Piper's Guild. Like other medieval guildGuild
A guild is an association of craftsmen in a particular trade. The earliest types of guild were formed as confraternities of workers. They were organized in a manner something between a trade union, a cartel, and a secret society...
s, the Piper's Guild allows workers of one trade to help support one another. The difference is the pipers are no ordinary tradesmen. They use magic to promote justice and mercy wherever they go, and live on the rewards they sometimes receive for the help they give.
Their magical flutes are similar to recorders in that they are played in front, rather than to the side, like a modern flute. The ends are flared, like the ends of trumpets, and there are no stops; everything is done with the fingers.
The pipers use these magical flutes to enter the Pipeworld. Though the pipers never leave the real world (at least not in The Rats of Hamelin), access to the Pipeworld lets them operate in another dimension, layered on top of the world everyone else experiences. In the Pipeworld, pipers use their music and their minds to pull objects with invisible strings, transfer illness from others to themselves, freeze things, summon lightning, control animals, and cast terrible curses. They can also feel other people's souls in the Pipeworld; and if they understand someone's feelings well enough, they can enter that person's mind and experience the memories associated with those feelings. The state of a piper's own mind or soul is very important in the Pipeworld. Spells cast by a piper who has not resolved inner conflicts are vulnerable to attack and theft.
In an address to middle-schoolers in Virginia Beach, Virginia
Virginia Beach, Virginia
Virginia Beach is an independent city located in the Hampton Roads metropolitan area of Virginia, on the Atlantic Ocean at the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay...
, Adam McCune traced the inspiration of the Childrule curse (from the end of the book) to Isaiah 3:4 in the Bible
Bible
The Bible refers to any one of the collections of the primary religious texts of Judaism and Christianity. There is no common version of the Bible, as the individual books , their contents and their order vary among denominations...
. In the New International Version
New International Version
The New International Version is an English translation of the Christian Bible. Published by Zondervan in the United States and by Hodder & Stoughton in the UK, it has become one of the most popular modern translations in history.-History:...
, the verse reads, "I will make boys their officials; mere children will govern them."
Interestingly, in addition to the curses that pipers cast, which have obvious effects and take place immediately, there is another kind of curse in The Rats of Hamelin: the one pronounced by the Old Woman of Aerzen. Though there is no reason to think that the Old Woman has magical powers, she nonetheless foretells a curse that eventually takes place.
External links
- The Rats of Hamelin homepage
- Adam McCune & Keith McCune (Moody Publishers author page)
- Moody Publishers
- June 26, Hamelin homepage
- Gachi-Changjo (Shwimbook)
- www.triune.de cites the Lueneberg manuscript which also serves as the epigraph of The Rats of Hamelin