Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 3, 1892.djvu/240

 232 was nothing besides this rose-tree to mark the scene of the mysterious catastrophe."

It is a curious coincidence that about 1654 roses were all that Erich could discern on a sculptured stone on the Koppen, which was regarded as a memorial of that Exodus Hamelemsis of which he was writing. Only a few years ago there were old people who professed to remember two stones in the form of a cross upon the hill ; and I myself fell in with a young man, of some twenty summers, who seemed to assert that he had often seen the record; yet I looked and looked in vain, and was scarcely solaced when Dr. Meinardus wrote to me : "A memorial stone with an inscription on the so-called Koppen you will never find. If such a thing ever existed, which is doubtful, it is no longer there."

Is the episode of the Pied Piper credible? is the question that has been for some time before me; and, at the risk of incurring your scorn, I answer that it is. A few accretions, such as no tradition or even frequently re-written story is likely to avoid, must of course be cleared off; but this may easily be done, and then I think nothing will be found remaining that any reverent-minded folk-lorer need decline to hold.

Early in the present century an account of the Hameln disaster was distilled from ten different sources (four only of them to be sipped of at the British Museum) by the Brothers Grimm, for their Deutsche Sagen where it runs essentially as follows. In the year 1284, a strange man appeared at Hameln wearing a many-coloured coat, which is said to have earned for him the name of Bundting. He gave