Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 3, 1892.djvu/249

 Rh where a pipe would have been far more typical and suggestive.

The memorial-glass "on the great church window painted", which Browning sang, was probably of that which Wier saw. It was not in the Minster, but in the parish church of S. Nicholas, at the east end. "Anno 1571" is at the base of the inscription, as quoted by Schoock from Erich's Exodus Hamelensis, a work not in the British Museum Library, and at present beyond my reach. This must refer to a restoration of the glass at the instance of Friedrich Poppendieck, which Bunting notes. Wier's visit was four years earlier than that, namely in 1567. By 1654, when Erich wrote, the legend was somewhat imperfect, but one can see that it told of the leading forth of the Hameln children to the Koppen on that fateful day of S. John and S. Paul. The "storied window" was turned to good account by Pastor Letzner, 1590, who, in his Chronicle concerning the foundations at Hildesheim, exclaims with reference to it, "O you dear Christian parents, do not behold and gaze on this painting, merely as a cow or some other irrational beast looks at an old door; but ponder it in your hearts in a Christian manner, and do not let your children run astray, so that the Devil gets power over them, as may soon and easily happen." If you ask me what became of this interesting glass, which Seyfrid in 1679 mentions in the Medulla as then existing, I think I can give you a hint. I supposed the French—who are the "Oliver Cromwells" of the Continent—had made an end of it during their occupation of Hameln, when they used the Marktkirche as a hospital; but I fear the blame is more likely to be our own. The