MysteryFamous
The Pied Piper of Newtown
Fifty pounds promised, twenty paid, and every child gone.
See it clearly
- What's there
- Lonely town hall on salt-marsh lanes
- Legend from
- Elder's Tales (1839)
- Tone
- Eerie
A piper, a cheated fee, and a town with no children.
Newtown was once the island's busy medieval capital, called Francheville, but it was burned by the French in 1377 and never recovered. Abraham Elder's 1839 Tales and Legends tells a Pied Piper story set here. A piper rid the town of rats, but the mayor and corporation paid him £20 instead of the agreed £50. He played a new tune, and the town's children followed him away and were never seen again. Wikipedia repeats the tale. Today only a grassy street plan and the little Old Town Hall remain.