Unless you’re a resident of a particular German hamlet, Ratcatcher’s Day likely doesn’t make your list of annual commemorations. Even if you were a resident of the town in question, you’d commemorate the events on June 26th, not July 22nd.
Time just seems to have a way of distorting details, especially when the matters in question occurred more than 700 years ago and have been told and retold by different people. Even so, today marks Ratcatcher’s Day in many countries. The date takes its name from the legend of the Pied Piper of Hamellin.
As the story goes, the sleepy little village awoke one morning to find itself inexplicably overrun with rats. The people were terrified and desperate. As if magically summoned, a shadowy figure clad in a coat of many colors wandered into town. He offered to rid the village of the rats for a fee of 100 gold coins. The townsfolk agreed.
He took out his pipe and began to play an entrancing song. The rats came out of hiding and followed behind the piper. He led them to the river Wesser, where they all dove in and drown. Free of the plague, the townsfolk reneged on their promise to pay.
The piper stomped out of town very angry. On the 26th of June (or 22nd of July depending upon versions) he returned, dressed as a huntsman wearing a bright red cap. While the villagers were in church, he again took out his pipe. Only this time, the village children assembled behind him. Just as he did with the rats, he led the children out of town. According to the legend 130 children marched away, never to be seen again.
Independent reporting for Pine Bluff & Jefferson County since 1879.
We can sidestep the fact that rats are good swimmers and are not known to have a demonstrable affinity for flute music. Moreover, the whole story sounds like something a group of contractors would make up to prompt timely payments. Nonetheless, it endures.
Fast-forward to Miller County, Arkansas circa 1928. According to U. S. Department of Agriculture Cooperative extension service records, Arkansas had its own great rat scare.
As the county agent wrote, “Early last year we found that the rat population of the county was larger than it had been for several years. Many complaints came to us that rats were doing great damage to stored grain and supplies of all kinds and also that they were eating the corn that was planted in the fields, thereby ruining the stand. We decided to put on a rat killing campaign through the schools. The U. S. Bureau of Biological Survey was asked to send a man here to start us off and did so. His first suggestion was that we get some prizes to be offered to the school accounting for the most rats and to the individual boys and girls.”
The prices ranged from $50 worth of books, playground equipment, a Victrola, a rifle, a shotgun, a wristwatch, a cedar chest and a trip to Farmers Week.
The rules for the contest were grisly and simple. The children were free to kill rats by any method, but to keep the count fair, they were instructed to cut off the dead rat’s tails and take them to their teachers who would tally the carnage.
When the campaign ended after six weeks, 50 schools had participated with 649 boys and girls having killed 95,849 rats. Herbert Miles won first prize for boys for killing a grand total of 2,360 rats.
One assumes none of the children used pipes — not musical ones anyway.