Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 3, 1892.djvu/250

242 building served as a storehouse for booty after the battle of Minden in 1759, and that being disposed of, the English turned it into a flour-magazine. According to the indignant Sprenger, "they destroyed pulpit, altar, and organ, an outrage which the French, though enemies, had not permitted. The paintings were burnt, and many of the organ-pipes stolen."

We will next consider what written testimony the men of Hameln could present to the enquiring Wier. He speaks of Church books in the plural, and there is no reason to doubt that he saw them; but they are all gone somewhither by this time, and, as far as I know, only a single volume has been specifically named, a Passioniale of the Middle Ages, the title-page of which was inscribed in red ink, with an invocation to the B.V.M., and some poor Latin verses about the swallowing up of the children, that had a prose version underneath. These things are attributed to the fourteenth or fifteenth century. I cannot help the vagueness, though I regret it. The Passionale belonged to the Minster, and the entries were copied from it by Pastor Herr (who died 1753) into one of the two books of miscellaneous matter about Hameln, which it was his pleasure to collect.

Among municipal archives, it is likely that Wier saw, because from their very raison d'être they were just what he would seek to see, the Brade and the Donat, the former