So the donkey said, “Then we’d best rouse ourselves and hobble over. We can’t catch any shut-eye here.” The hound thought that a few bones with a little meat on them would do him good. So they made their way toward where the light shone, and soon saw it glowing ever more intensely, until they found themselves in front of a brightly lit den of thieves. Being the biggest, the donkey drew near and peaked in through the window.
“What do you see in there, Old Ned?” asked the rooster.
“What do I see?” replied the donkey. “There’s a table set with plentiful food and drink and the thieves are sitting around stuffing their faces.”
“That’d make a tasty tidbit,” said the rooster.
“That it would, if only we could get to it!” the donkey agreed.
Then the animals put their heads together to try to figure out how to chase the thieves out, and finally they came up with a plan. The donkey had to lift one hoof onto the window ledge, the hound had to leap on the donkey’s back, the cat had to climb on top of the hound, and finally, the rooster flew up and landed on the cat’s head. As soon as they managed, at an agreed-upon signal they started making their music: the donkey hee-hawed, the hound barked, the cat meowed, and the rooster crowed; then they tumbled in through the window, so that the windowpanes rattled. The thieves leapt up at the terrible racket, convinced it must be a ghost, and flew in terror out into the forest. Whereupon the four friends sat themselves down at the table and feasted on the leftovers, eating like there was no tomorrow.
Once the musicians had eaten their fill, they put out the light and sought comfortable corners in which to rest their bones, each according to his kind and comfort. The donkey lay down in the rubbish heap outside, the hound behind the door, the cat on the hearth above the warm ashes, and the rooster sat on the ceiling beam – and because they were so weary from their long walk they soon fell fast asleep.
Once midnight had passed and the thieves saw that the lights no longer burned in the house and everything was quiet, the captain said, “We shouldn’t have let ourselves scatter like chickens,” and ordered a member of the band to go to the house to check things out. The scout found everything quiet, went into the kitchen to light a torch, and taking the glowing fiery eyes of the cat for live charcoal, he held out a stick to catch fire. But the cat had no fondness for fun and games, and leapt in his face, hissing and scratching. The thief took an awful fright and wanted to run out the back door, but the hound that lay there jumped up and bit him in the leg; and when he ran across the yard and passed the rubbish heap, the donkey gave him a mighty kick with its hind legs; and awakened by the ruckus, the rooster cried down from the roof: “Cock-a-doodle-do!”
The thief ran as fast as he could back to the captain and reported: “There’s a gruesome witch seated inside the house, she hissed at me and scratched my face with her long fingernails; a man with a long knife is planted at the back door, he stabbed me in the leg; and in the yard lies a terrible monster that clubbed me with a cudgel; and up on the roof sits a judge who cried out, ‘Bring me the knave!’ So I ran for my life.”
From then on the thieves no longer dared enter the house, but the four musicians of Bremen liked it so much they didn’t want to leave. And the last one to tell me the story, his breath is still warm.
THE CHILDREN OF HAMELN
In the year 1284 a curious man appeared in Hameln. He wore a coat of many-colored cloth, which is why he was known as Bundting, Gaudy Guy. He said he was a ratcatcher and promised, for a considerable compensation, to rid the city of all mice and rats. The burghers of Hameln came to an agreement with him, assuring a certain sum of money. The ratcatcher pulled out a little pipe and blew on it, and then the rats and mice came running out of every house and gathered around him. And when he determined that there were none left, he headed out of the city and they all followed him, and he led them to the bank of the River Weser. There he undressed and walked into the water, whereupon all the rodents followed, and diving into the drink, promptly drowned.
But no sooner were the burghers delivered from the infestation than they thought twice about paying the promised price and, coming up with all kinds of excuses, refused to give the man what he asked. He stormed off angry and embittered.
At seven in the morning, others say at noon, on the twenty-sixth of june, Saint John’s and Saint Paul’s Day, he reappeared, this time dressed as a hunter with a strange red hat, his face twisted into a terrible grimace, and once again let his pipe be heard in the streets of Hameln. Presently, instead of rats and mice, children in great numbers, boys and girls as young as four, came running, among them also the grown daughter of the Bürgermeister. They all followed him, and he led them into the cleft in a mountain, where they and he disappeared.
This was witnessed by a nursemaid with a child in her arm, who followed him from afar, turned around thereafter, and brought word of it back to the city. With heavy hearts, the distraught parents searched high and low for their lost children; the mothers let out a pitiful wailing and weeping. Messengers were immediately sent out to comb every body of water and square inch of land in the vicinity, inquiring if anyone had seen hide or hair of the children, but to no avail. In all, a hundred and thirty children were lost.
It is said by some that two who had lagged behind, returned; one of them was blind, the other deaf, so that the blind one could not show but only tell how they’d followed the piper; and the deaf one, on the other hand, indicated the place where the others disappeared but had not heard a sound. Others tell that a little lad who followed in his shirtsleeves turned back to fetch his coat, which is why he survived the misfortune, for once he returned, the others had already disappeared into the hole in a hill that is still shown to this day.
The street along which the children passed on their way out the gate was still, in the middle of the eighteenth century (as it is today), called the Street of Silence, since no dancing or music was permitted. Indeed, when a bride was serenaded on her way to church, the musicians had to stop playing on that street. The mountain near Hameln in which the children disappeared is called the Poppenberg, to the left and right of which two stone crosses were erected. Some say the children were led into a cave and came out again in Siebenbürgen.
The burghers of Hameln had the occurrence recorded in their civic register and made a custom of counting the years and days elapsed since the loss of their children. According to Seyfried, the twenty-second, rather than the twenty-sixth, of June is the recorded date. A plaque with the following lines hangs on the wall of the Rathaus:
In 1284, the year of our Lord
Hameln registered the sad record
Of a hundred and thirty children here born
By a piper nabbed and ever mourned.
And on the new gate of the city is inscribed:
Centrum ter denos cum magnus ab urbe puellos
Duxerat ante annos CCLXXII condita porta fuit.
In the year 1572 the Bürgermeister had the story depicted in the pane of a stained-glass window along with the accompanying caption, which is unreadable today. A medallion marking the event is also affixed.
THE MASTER THIEF
One day an old man sat with his wife in front of a humble house to take a short rest from his work. Then a splendid carriage drawn by four horses came rolling up, and out stepped a well-dressed gentleman. The weary peasant got up, went over to the gentleman, and asked him what he wanted and how he could be of service. The stranger reached out his hand to the old man and said, “I have no other wish but to enjoy a rustic dish. Fix me up a plate of potatoes the way you like them, and I’ll sit myself down at your table and devour them with pleasure.”
The peasant smiled and said, “You must be a count or a prince, or perhaps a duke, fancy folk sometimes have such whims. We’ll see what we can do.” His wife went to the kitchen and started washing and grating potatoes, intending to prepare a plate of dumplings, peasant style. While she was busy whipping them up, the peasant said to the stran
ger, “Come with me, in the meantime, to my vegetable garden. I still have a few chores to attend to.” He had dug holes in the ground and wanted to plant trees.
“Have you no children who could help you with your work?” the stranger asked.
“No,” replied the peasant. “I did indeed have a son,” he added, “but it’s been years since he went off into the world. He was a wayward lad, crafty and sly, but he didn’t want to learn anything and kept on playing tricks. Finally he ran away, and I never heard from him again.”
The old man took a sapling, set it in the hole, and planted a pole beside it, and once he’d shoveled the earth back in around it and stamped it down with his feet, he bound the sapling below, above, and in the middle to the pole with a straw cord.
“But tell me,” said the gentleman, “why don’t you tie up that knotty twisted tree over there in the corner that’s almost bent down to the ground, so that it may grow straight?”
The old man smiled and said, “Sir, you speak like you know what you’re talking about, but I can tell you haven’t spent much time gardening. That tree over there is old and twisted, nobody can make it grow straight again. Trees can only be trained when they’re young.”
“It’s just like your son,” said the stranger. “If you’d brought him up right when he was still young, he wouldn’t have run away. He too must have grown hard and knotty by now.”
“No doubt,” replied the old man. “It’s been a long time since he went away. He must have changed considerably.”
“Would you still recognize him if he were standing here before you?” asked the stranger.
“Probably not by his face,” replied the peasant, “but he had a birthmark on his shoulder the size of a bean.”
As soon as the peasant said this, the stranger took his coat off, bared his shoulder, and showed him the bean-shaped birthmark.
“God in heaven,” cried the old man, “you are indeed my son,” and the love he felt for his own flesh and blood welled up in his heart. “But how can you be my son?” he added. “You’ve become a fine gentleman and live in the lap of luxury. How did you get rich?”
“Oh, Father,” replied the son, “this tree was bound to no pole, he didn’t grow up straight – and now he’s too old and it’s too late to straighten him out. How did I get rich, you ask. I became a thief. But don’t worry, I’m a master thief. There’s no lock I can’t pick or bolt I can’t break, whatever I want is mine. I don’t steal like a common thief, I only take from the surplus of the rich. Poor people have nothing to fear from me. I’d rather give to than take from them. And I won’t waste my time with a heist that doesn’t demand the utmost effort, stealth, and finesse to bring off.”
“Oh, my son,” said the father, “a thief is still a thief. It won’t end well, I tell you.”
The father took him to his mother, and when she heard it was her son, she wept for joy, but when he told her he’d become a master thief, a second stream of tears ran down her face. Finally she said, “Thief or no thief, you are still my son, and my eyes are glad to see you again.”
They sat down at the table, and he ate again with his parents the poor man’s dish he hadn’t tasted in years.
The father said, “If the lord, the count in the castle over there, discovers who you are and what you do, he won’t take you in his arms and rock you as he did at your baptism when you were born. He’ll let you swing from the gallows.”
“Don’t fret, dear Father, I know my craft, he won’t do a thing to me. I’ll go present myself to him today.” When night fell, the master thief set out in his carriage to the castle.
The count received him with the utmost courtesy, as he took him for a gentleman of quality. But when the stranger revealed who he was, the count turned pale and went silent for a while. Finally he said to him, “You are my godchild, so I will have mercy on you. Since you claim to be a master thief, I’ll put your skill to the test, but if you fail, you’ll dangle with the hangman’s daughter, and the crowing of ravens will be your wedding music.”
“Sir count,” replied the master thief, “think up three tests as hard as they might be, and if I don’t succeed you can do with me as you wish.”
The count pondered for a while, and then he said, “Very well then, first off, you will steal my horse from the stable; second, you will steal the sheets out from under my wife and myself as we sleep, and my wife’s wedding ring to boot, without waking us; third and last, you will steal the pastor and the sexton out of the church. Mind all I said, or it’ll cost you your neck.”
The master thief proceeded to the nearest city. There he bought the clothes off the back of an old peasant woman and put them on. Then he applied brown makeup to his face and painted in wrinkles, so that no one would recognize him. Finally he filled a jug with old Hungarian wine in which he mixed a strong sleep potion. He placed the jug in a basket hung from his back and made his way with deliberately tottering steps to the count’s castle. It was already dark by the time he arrived. There he sat himself down on a flat stone in the courtyard and began to cough like an old woman suffering from consumption and rubbed his hands together as though he trembled with cold. Soldiers sat around a fire in front of the stable. One of them noticed the old woman and called to her, “Come join us, old mother, and warm yourself by our fire. You’ve got no place to rest your weary bones. Better take what you can get.” The old woman stumbled over, took the basket from her shoulders, and sat down beside the fire.
“What do you have there in that jug, old biddy?” a soldier asked.
“A swallow of wine,” she replied. “I peddle it to the thirsty. For a coin or two and a few kind words I’ll gladly give you a glassful.”
“Here, give us a gulp,” said the soldier, and once he’d downed a glass, he winked and said, “It’s a good vintage, old mother, I’ll gladly have another glass.” Whereupon he emptied another glass, and the others promptly followed his example. “Hey, fellas,” the drunken soldier cried to the stableboys, “there’s an old lady here peddling wine that’s as old as she is. Come have a drop. It’ll warm you better than this fire.”
The old woman carried the jug into the stable. One of the stable hands was seated on the count’s saddled steed, another held the bridle in his hand, a third held it by the tail. She poured as much as they wanted until the jug was empty. In a little while the bridle fell out of the one stableboy’s hand, and he leaned back and began snoring. The other one let go of the tail, lay back, and snored even louder. The one in the saddle stayed seated where he was, but leaned forward against the horse’s mane, fell asleep, and snorted like a smithy. The soldiers outside had long since fallen asleep and lay around on the ground without moving, as if they were made of stone. As soon as the master thief assured himself that his scheme had worked, he gave the stableboy holding the bridle a rope to hold, and the one holding the tail a straw switch. But what was he to do with the one who sat asleep in the saddle? He didn’t want to shove him out of the saddle, lest he awaken and cry out to the others. But he had an idea. He unfastened the saddle cinch, attached it to a few cords that hung from metal rings embedded in the wall, raised saddle and rider in midair, and tied the loose ends of the cords tightly to the doorpost. It was easy enough to untie the horse from the chain, but had he ridden it across the flagstones of the courtyard the clip-clop of its hooves would have been heard in the castle. So first he bound rags around each of its hooves, and then carefully led it out, swung himself into the saddle, and made off with it.
At the break of day, the master thief swung himself again into the saddle of the stolen horse and rode it to the castle. The count had just awakened and looked out the window. “Good morning, sir count,” the master thief called up to him. “Here is the horse that I successfully stole out of your stable, and if you care to have a look in the stable you’ll see how comfortable your guards have made themselves.”
The count had to laugh, then he said, “This once you succeeded, but the second task won’t be so e
asy. And I warn you, if next we cross paths as thief and target, then I will treat you as a thief.”
That evening when the countess went to bed she balled up the fingers of her left hand around the wedding ring, and the count said, “All the doors are locked and bolted, and I’ll stay awake and lie in wait for the thief. If he climbs in through the window, I’ll shoot him down.”
But when it got dark, the master thief hastened to the gallows, cut down a poor sinner he found swinging there, and carried him on his back to the castle. There he leaned a ladder against the castle wall, hoisted the dead man onto his shoulders, and started climbing up. Once he had climbed high enough so that the head of the dead man appeared in the window, the count, who lay awake in bed, pressed the trigger of his pistol. Whereupon the master thief let the poor sinner fall to the ground, leapt off the ladder, and hid in a corner.
The night was so brightly lit by the moon that the master thief could clearly make out the count as he climbed down the ladder and carried the dead man into the garden. There he began digging a hole in which to bury him. Now, thought the thief, is the right time, and he nimbly slipped out of hiding and climbed the ladder up into the countess’s bedroom. “Dear wife,” he said, mimicking the voice of the count, “the thief is dead, but he was after all my godchild and more of a prankster than a villain – I won’t want to put him to public shame, and I feel bad for his poor parents. Before daybreak I myself will bury him in the garden, so that no one gets wind of the matter. Give me a bedsheet, and I’ll wrap the corpse in it and dig him under like a dog.” The countess gave him the bedsheet. “You know what,” the thief went on, “I’m feeling generous, give me the ring. The poor unfortunate risked his life to get it, so let him take it with him to the grave.” Under the circumstances, the countess did not want to have words with her husband, and with a heavy heart she pulled the ring from her finger and handed it to him. The thief made off with both bits of booty and safely reached his hideout before the count had finished patting down the grave in the garden.