Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 3, 1892.djvu/237

 Rh structure erected between 1610 and 1617 for marriage festivities, but diverted from its purpose since 1721. Behind rises the spire of the parish church of S. Nicholas, which may still enwall stones that witnessed how the parents prayed, while the Piper wrought sorrow for them without. On Sunday morning, too, some of the story-tellers say it was; but June 26th, 1284, was Monday; and in 1376, S. Mary Magdalene's Day, July 22nd, another alleged date (acceptable to Browning), fell on a Tuesday, if tables in Sir Harris Nicolas's Chronology of History be trustworthy. An ancient minster greatly rejuvenated, formerly the collegiate church of S. Boniface (Bonifatiusstift), is some little distance off on the left, hard by the bank of the Weser, which flows west of the town, not south, as Browning says, and goes with a sweep that would soon carry a horde of rats out of reach of flesh-pots. Golden mice were made by the Philistines in Samuel's time when they were delivered from the plague that marred their land; but that may have been a golden age: this is an age of gingerbread, and the Hameln people manufacture rats accordingly. It will be understood that I use the word "gingerbread" generically: the artists work in sugar, chocolate, and other plastic materials, as best it pleases them. The card conveying "Grüsse aus Hameln" is nibbled round the edges to show its authenticity. In short, in tourist-season the staple trade seems to embody itself in rodents, for which the noted flour-mill on the river, in more senses than one, provides the raw material. I must also add that if the sapid sewers be quite free from rats, the rats neglect an opportunity.

In one window tin whistles, which bore token of being of British origin, were ticketed as "Rattenfanger Pfeifen", and though, when a lad with me put one of them to his lips, not a ridiculus mus came forth, it was plain that the children around were all alert and curious. Possibly, however,