Kabanata Kabanata 20 · THE RATCATCHER

A very long time ago the town of Hamel in Germany was invaded by bands

of rats, the like of which had never been seen before nor will ever be

again.

They were great black creatures that ran boldly in broad daylight

through the streets, and swarmed so, all over the houses, that people

at last could not put their hand or foot down anywhere without touching

one. When dressing in the morning they found them in their breeches and

petticoats, in their pockets and in their boots; and when they wanted a

morsel to eat, the voracious horde had swept away everything from

cellar to garret. The night was even worse. As soon as the lights were

out, these untiring nibblers set to work. And everywhere, in the

ceilings, in the floors, in the cupboards, at the doors, there was a

chase and a rummage, and so furious a noise of gimlets, pincers, and

saws, that a deaf man could not have rested for one hour together.

Neither cats nor dogs, nor poison nor traps, nor prayers nor candles

burnt to all the saints—nothing would do anything. The more they killed

the more came. And the inhabitants of Hamel began to go to the dogs

(not that _they_ were of much use), when one Friday there arrived in

the town a man with a queer face, who played the bagpipes and sang this

refrain:

‘Qui vivra verra:

Le voilà,

Le preneur des rats.’

He was a great gawky fellow, dry and bronzed, with a crooked nose, a

long rat-tail moustache, two great yellow piercing and mocking eyes,

under a large felt hat set off by a scarlet cock’s feather. He was

dressed in a green jacket with a leather belt and red breeches, and on

his feet were sandals fastened by thongs passed round his legs in the

gipsy fashion.

That is how he may be seen to this day, painted on a window of the

cathedral of Hamel.

He stopped on the great market-place before the town hall, turned his

back on the church and went on with his music, singing:

‘Who lives shall see:

This is he,

The ratcatcher.’

The town council had just assembled to consider once more this plague

of Egypt, from which no one could save the town.

The stranger sent word to the counsellors that, if they would make it

worth his while, he would rid them of all their rats before night, down

to the very last.

‘Then he is a sorcerer!’ cried the citizens with one voice; ‘we must

beware of him.’

The Town Counsellor, who was considered clever, reassured them.

He said: ‘Sorcerer or no, if this bagpiper speaks the truth, it was he

who sent us this horrible vermin that he wants to rid us of to-day for

money. Well, we must learn to catch the devil in his own snares. You

leave it to me.’

‘Leave it to the Town Counsellor,’ said the citizens one to another.

And the stranger was brought before them.

‘Before night,’ said he, ‘I shall have despatched all the rats in Hamel

if you will but pay me a _gros_ a head.’

‘A _gros_ a head!’ cried the citizens, ‘but that will come to millions

of florins!’

The Town Counsellor simply shrugged his shoulders and said to the

stranger:

‘A bargain! To work; the rats will be paid one _gros_ a head as you

ask.’

The bagpiper announced that he would operate that very evening when the

moon rose. He added that the inhabitants should at that hour leave the

streets free, and content themselves with looking out of their windows

at what was passing, and that it would be a pleasant spectacle. When

the people of Hamel heard of the bargain, they too exclaimed: ‘A _gros_

a head! but this will cost us a deal of money!’

‘Leave it to the Town Counsellor,’ said the town council with a

malicious air. And the good people of Hamel repeated with their

counsellors, ‘Leave it to the Town Counsellor.’

Towards nine at night the bagpiper re-appeared on the market place. He

turned, as at first, his back to the church, and the moment the moon

rose on the horizon, ‘Trarira, trari!’ the bagpipes resounded.

It was first a slow, caressing sound, then more and more lively and

urgent, and so sonorous and piercing that it penetrated as far as the

farthest alleys and retreats of the town.

Soon from the bottom of the cellars, the top of the garrets, from under

all the furniture, from all the nooks and corners of the houses, out

come the rats, search for the door, fling themselves into the street,

and trip, trip, trip, begin to run in file towards the front of the

town hall, so squeezed together that they covered the pavement like the

waves of flooded torrent.

When the square was quite full the bagpiper faced about, and, still

playing briskly, turned towards the river that runs at the foot of the

walls of Hamel.

Arrived there he turned round; the rats were following.

‘Hop! hop!’ he cried, pointing with his finger to the middle of the

stream, where the water whirled and was drawn down as if through a

funnel. And hop! hop! without hesitating, the rats took the leap, swam

straight to the funnel, plunged in head foremost and disappeared.

The plunging continued thus without ceasing till midnight.

At last, dragging himself with difficulty, came a big rat, white with

age, and stopped on the bank.

It was the king of the band.

‘Are they all there, friend Blanchet?’ asked the bagpiper.

‘They are all there,’ replied friend Blanchet.

‘And how many were they?’

‘Nine hundred and ninety thousand, nine hundred and ninety-nine.’

‘Well reckoned?’

‘Well reckoned.’

‘Then go and join them, old sire, and au revoir.’

Then the old white rat sprang in his turn into the river, swam to the

whirlpool and disappeared.

When the bagpiper had thus concluded his business he went to bed at his

inn. And for the first time during three months the people of Hamel

slept quietly through the night.

The next morning, at nine o’clock, the bagpiper repaired to the town

hall, where the town council awaited him.

‘All your rats took a jump into the river yesterday,’ said he to the

counsellors, ‘and I guarantee that not one of them comes back. They

were nine hundred and ninety thousand, nine hundred and ninety-nine, at

one _gros_ a head. Reckon!’

‘Let us reckon the heads first. One _gros_ a head is one head the

_gros_. Where are the heads?’

The ratcatcher did not expect this treacherous stroke. He paled with

anger and his eyes flashed fire.

‘The heads!’ cried he, ‘if you care about them, go and find them in the

river.’

‘So,’ replied the Town Counsellor, ‘you refuse to hold to the terms of

your agreement? We ourselves could refuse you all payment. But you have

been of use to us, and we will not let you go without a recompense,’

and he offered him fifty crowns.

‘Keep your recompense for yourself,’ replied the ratcatcher proudly.

‘If you do not pay me I will be paid by your heirs.’

Thereupon he pulled his hat down over his eyes, went hastily out of the

hall, and left the town without speaking to a soul.

When the Hamel people heard how the affair had ended they rubbed their

hands, and with no more scruple than their Town Counsellor, they

laughed over the ratcatcher, who, they said, was caught in his own

trap. But what made them laugh above all was his threat of getting

himself paid by their heirs. Ha! they wished that they only had such

creditors for the rest of their lives.

Next day, which was a Sunday, they all went gaily to church, thinking

that after Mass they would at last be able to eat some good thing that

the rats had not tasted before them.

They never suspected the terrible surprise that awaited them on their

return home. No children anywhere, they had all disappeared!

‘Our children! where are our poor children?’ was the cry that was soon

heard in all the streets.

Then through the east door of the town came three little boys, who

cried and wept, and this is what they told:

While the parents were at church a wonderful music had resounded. Soon

all the little boys and all the little girls that had been left at home

had gone out, attracted by the magic sounds, and had rushed to the

great market-place. There they found the ratcatcher playing his

bagpipes at the same spot as the evening before. Then the stranger had

begun to walk quickly, and they had followed, running, singing and

dancing to the sound of the music, as far as the foot of the mountain

which one sees on entering Hamel. At their approach the mountain had

opened a little, and the bagpiper had gone in with them, after which it

had closed again. Only the three little ones who told the adventure had

remained outside, as if by a miracle. One was bandy-legged and could

not run fast enough; the other, who had left the house in haste, one

foot shod the other bare, had hurt himself against a big stone and

could not walk without difficulty; the third had arrived in time, but

in harrying to go in with the others had struck so violently against

the wall of the mountain that he fell backwards at the moment it closed

upon his comrades.

At this story the parents redoubled their lamentations. They ran with

pikes and mattocks to the mountain, and searched till evening to find

the opening by which their children had disappeared, without being able

to find it. At last, the night falling, they returned desolate to

Hamel.

But the most unhappy of all was the Town Counsellor, for he lost three

little boys and two pretty little girls, and to crown all, the people

of Hamel overwhelmed him with reproaches, forgetting that the evening

before they had all agreed with him.

What had become of all these unfortunate children?

The parents always hoped they were not dead, and that the rat-catcher,

who certainly must have come out of the mountain, would have taken them

with him to his country. That is why for several years they sent in

search of them to different countries, but no one ever came on the

trace of the poor little ones.

It was not till much later that anything was to be heard of them.

About one hundred and fifty years after the event, when there was no

longer one left of the fathers, mothers, brothers or sisters of that

day, there arrived one evening in Hamel some merchants of Bremen

returning from the East, who asked to speak with the citizens. They

told that they, in crossing Hungary, had sojourned in a mountainous

country called Transylvania, where the inhabitants only spoke German,

while all around them nothing was spoken but Hungarian. These people

also declared that they came from Germany, but they did not know how

they chanced to be in this strange country. ‘Now,’ said the merchants

of Bremen, ‘these Germans cannot be other than the descendants of the

lost children of Hamel.’

The people of Hamel did not doubt it; and since that day they regard it

as certain that the Transylvanians of Hungary are their country folk,

whose ancestors, as children, were brought there by the ratcatcher.

There are more difficult things to believe than that.[16]

[16] Ch. Marelles.

THE

Story 21.