Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 3, 1892.djvu/256

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and led the way into the gaping, yawning mountain, which in due course

Now the veracity of this tale, and of the rest, is not at present my affair; I must mention them lest I should be accused of keeping, what some may consider damaging facts, in the background; but it is my claim for the Hameln story, of which we have many data, wanting to the others, that it stands alone, and should be judged apart from them. There was nothing supernatural, believe me, in the leading away of the children, indeed nothing, putting scale out of the question, that was not commonplace. Imps continue to rush after men, of whom the Pied One is a type; and, when they do not come to grief, let the praise belong to the piper. If it be not a thing incredible that in 1211 "a multitude amounting as some say to 90,000 chiefly composed of children" ["for the most part from Germany"] "and commanded by a child, set out for the purpose of recovering the Holy Land", we may surely swallow the assertion that 130 young Hamelners ran away after an attractive gaily-garbed musician in 1284. Though mediæval chorea was promoted by fifing and red colours, it is not necessary to believe with Meinardus that they were affected by dancing-mania like the 100 children of Erfurt, who in 1237 skipped and jumped along the road until they came to Arnstadt, where they fell to the ground in utter exhaustion. Neither do I think the wild rites of