Page 15 - Reading and Writing 5

Listen and Read

The Pied Piper of Hamelin

The people of Hamelin, a beautiful town in Germany, felt completely hopeless. Every
single home there was overwhelmed by a huge number of rats. Try as they might,

the people couldn’t get rid of them.

One day, an unusual man appeared, carrying a set of pipes. “I will free you of these
rats if you pay me a thousand guilders,” he announced. The people of the town were
so desperate that they agreed.

The piper began to play a tune on his pipes, and suddenly all the rats poured out of
the houses and followed him in a single line. He led them to the River Weser, and in

they hopped, one by one, and drowned.
When the piper came back to Hamelin for his payment, the townspeople laughed

at him and told him to leave. The piper was livid and started to plan his vengeance.
Then on Sunday, the adults of the town came back from church to find that every
single one of their children was absent. Just three youngsters had been left behind

to give to them an account of what had happened. The piper had played a tune
with his bagpipe, and immediately every one of the offspring of the town had
fallen under a spell. They had followed his song out of town, and into a cave in the
mountains. Of the three children left behind, one had a limp, so he hadn’t been able
to walk quickly enough. The second was hard of hearing, so he hadn’t been able to

hear the music, and the third was visually impaired, so he hadn’t been able to follow
the pied piper.

The people of the town searched and searched for their lost children, but, they
sought in vain, for they never found them. The people of Hamelin now understood
that even if someone thinks they are unlucky, as the three children with special

needs, the winds of fortune might actually be in their favour. The townspeople
became sure too that their greed was the reason for their loss, and, as a result, they
never made this mistake again.

After You Read

1 Work with a partner and discuss the following questions.

What do you think would have happened if the townspeople had paid their debt
to the piper? Why?

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