Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 3, 1892.djvu/244

 236 minor heavenly bodies invisible by his brightness. It is on such lines that the story of Apollo Smintheus is interpreted.

But now let us turn from these ingenuities, and set ourselves to consider what claim the story of the Pied Piper may have to be received as an essentially true if not wholly unvarnished tale. How does it appear when we seek for a record of it in writings of the 13th century, in books which must have been penned before this more than nine-days' wonder had ceased to interest, and long ere wounds in Hameln hearts would heal? Martin Schoock, who essayed to demolish what he called the Fabula Hamelensis in 1659, assures us that no contemporary left note of the event, and gives us to understand that there was an ominous consensus of silence concerning it for some 250 years, until 16th century authors busied themselves to make it known. He delivers himself in Latin; but, being interpreted, he seems to say: "Under the Emperor Rudolf of Hapsburg, who began to reign A.D. 1272, lived the compiler of the Annales Colmariensium, who with his continuator reaches 1302; of all those whom I know, he is the most ignorant of the laws of history, and descends even to such poor matters as the details of the harvest and vintage, and of the sale of ripe strawberries, cherries, and pears in the June of 1283. Who would believe that an author relating such minutiæ would neglect a prodigy whose fame ought to have filled, if not all Europe at least all Germany? Also Werner Rolewinck a Laer, a Westphalian, a man deeply learned in the Scriptures, and in matters secular .... though living near Hameln and stopping at 1464, does not gather this flower, the exit of the children from that town, into his nosegay (Fasciculi Temporum). Like remark might be made of the author of the Magnum Chronicon Belgici, ending 1474, who revels in all kinds of historic trifles; of Trithenius, Abbot of Spanheim, who snatched from darkness whatever was worth remembering in his