But if the tale evokes a universal fear, it still resonates most strongly in Hamelin – and the Piper’s tour suggests why. In fact, the real surprise of his tour isn’t so much the beautifully preserved townscape but the suggestion that the Pied Piper is much more than just a fairy tale. The Grimm Brothers and Browning may have shaped the legend into art, but the story, it turns out, is likely based on an actual historical incident.

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. Of all the pleasant sights they see, Which the Piper also promised me, For he led us, he said, to a joyous land’. It is a heavenly description to where the Pied Piper was taking the children. Craigie's source (books.google.com): Jón Árnason, Íslenzkar Þjóðsögur og Æfintýri (Leipzig: J. C. Hinrichs, 1862), p. 439. For a long time after this there were no mice in Akureyar, but many years later the proprietor of the islands had a foundation dug for some new building, and they were careless enough to open the pit again. In a moment the mice crowded out again, and have ever since been a plague to the islands, which otherwise are so excellent.Fra Lippo Lippi ’– a dramatic monologue written in blank verse that tells the scandalous story of a painter’s life. Source (books.google.com): Nathaniel Wanley, The Wonders of the Little World; or, A General History of Man (London: Printed for T. Basset, 1678), p. 598. Source (Internet Archive): William A. Craigie, Scandinavian Folk-Lore: Illustrations of the Traditional Beliefs of the Northern Peoples (Paisley and London: Alexander Gardner, 1896), pp. 370-71. Thereupon he walked through all the town's streets with a pipe, which he put to his mouth and blew upon. Immediately all the rats in the entire town came from all the houses and followed at his feet in unbelievable numbers to the outskirts of the town. He banished them into the nearst sacred mountain, and from then onward there was no sign of the rats in the town.

In the year 1237, on the fifteenth of July, more than a thousand children assembled in Erfurt. They then crossed over the Waget and, dancing and playing, made their way to Arnstadt, miraculously meeting no one the entire day. There they remained overnight. Source: Richard Verstegan, A Restitution of Decayed Intelligence in Antiquities (London: Printed by John Bill, 1628), pp. 85-87. Whenever children looked out the window while he was playing nearby, they had to dance to his music and follow after him. In this manner he lured many children into Kindskogel Mountain.Imagery: It is a literary device that creates mental images through the use of sensory details, such as sight, sound, taste, touch, and smell. An example of imagery can be found in lines 5-6: “A pleasanter spot you never spied; But, when begins my ditty”. Robert Browning used various literary devices to enhance the intended impact of his poem. Some of the major literary in this poem are as follows. Whatever its sources, “The Pied Piper” reflects the hand of a master storyteller. The poem tells a story of civic venality and retribution. Desperate to rid the city of rats, the corrupt and repulsively corpulent mayor engages the mysterious piper to charm the vermin away; the piper plays a tune that draws the rats from their holes and leads them to the river Weser, where they drown. Only one especially hardy rat escapes death—by swimming across the river—to tell a cautionary tale to other rats; the rat’s story enables Browning to provide an explanation for the piper’s magic, as the rat tells how the sound of the pipe evoked all kinds of wonderful treats for rats: The Mayor is disturbed by this news and starts to threaten the Piper, telling him to pipe till his pipe bursts. Or, in simpler terms, do his worst.

While “The Pied Piper” differs from most of Browning’s adult poetry, much of its charm and delight derive from the same poetic tools that Browning deployed in his more serious work. However, techniques that are praised in “The Pied Piper” are frequently perceived as defects in the adult poems. Victorian critics disliked his predilection for outrageous (and sometimes unpronounceable) rhymes and the excessive use of single rhymes, as in the vivid account of the rat infestation that opens “The Pied Piper”: More intriguing is a theory that points to the medieval phenomenon of “dancing mania”, driven by a succession of pandemics and natural disasters. Known as St Vitus’ Dance, the dancing plague is documented surfacing in continental Europe as early as the 11th Century. A form of mass hysteria, the dance could spread from individuals to large groups, all driven by an unshakeable compulsion to dance feverishly, sometimes for weeks, often leaping and singing and sometimes hallucinating to the point of exhaustion and occasionally death, like a top that can’t stop spinning.New Poems by Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Browning, edited by Kenyon (London: Smith, Elder, 1914; New York: Macmillan, 1915). The Complete Works of Robert Browning, Florentine Edition, edited by Charlotte Porter and Helen A. Clarke, 12 volumes (New York & Boston: Crowell, 1898). At the end of the year the Piper returned for his reward. The Burgers put him off, with slightings and neglect, offering him some small matter, which he refused. Source (books.google.com): Johann Nepomuk Ritter von Alpenburg, "Mäuse in Glurns," Deutsche Alpensagen (Vienna: Wilhelm Braumüller, 1861), no. 246, p. 239.