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Show AUTHOR'S NOTE My fascination with the Middle Ages began during my late teens when I first read KRISTIN LAVRANSDATTER, a magnificent portrayal of fourteenth-century life. Many years later, while researching the effects of the plagues which swept medieval Europe, I came upon the following intriguing sentencesi "It may surprise the reader to learn that probably the well-known legend about the Pied Piper of Hamelin is attached to the time of the plagues.... Many [of the children lured away by the PiperJ, like those who went on the Children's Crusade, fell into the hands of professional kidnappers and slavers." Other sources confirmed the fact that landowners purchased children to work newly acquired territories, or to replace serfs who had died in epidemics. Another book on medieval plagues mentioned the purple fungus ergot, which grows on rye grain in wet seasons. "Anyone who ate rye bread made from infected flour was liable to be afflicted with violent spasms of cramp and mental derangement. Since victims appeared to want to dance, and since the exercise did in fact seem to help them, they were encouraged, often by the hiring of a musician to play for them. If this is the true explanation of the dancing epidemics, the Pied Piper of Hamelin... was probably playing to ease the children's suffering." |