Board Thread:Off Topic/@comment-24993958-20150605221100/@comment-26397825-20150607055507

Yeah. There's a lot of different tales, but the one that I know of is that a village hired the Piper to clear out the rats plague that was infesting their village and promised him like 20 silver pieces (which was a lot to them). So he played his pipe and lured them all away from the village.

But when the piper went back to collect his payment, the villagers refused saying that he did the job and they didn't need him anymore. He tried like three times to get them to pay him, and they refused each time. After the third, he played his pipe again and the adults all fell asleep and all the children of the village (which was actually Hamlin, Germany) followed him. He took them to a cliff, which opened up to reveal a paradise of sorts behind it's face, and they all went inside.

One of the kids was crippled and on crutches though, and he couldn't keep up with the Piper and the children's lively trek to the cliff, so he was just close enough to get a glimpse of the paradise but the cliff face closed before he could get inside. It's actually kind of sad, cause he then had to hobble all the way back to the village alone and tell the adults what happened, all the while berating his crippled leg and wishing he could have joined the other kids.