Page:The Folk-Lore Journal Volume 2 1884.djvu/215

 Rh to their parents and much perplexity to historians. As public attention is thus called to the legend it may not be uninteresting to English readers to learn the results of recent investigations undertaken in Germany by several scholars, more especially by Dr. Otto Meinardus, in a treatise entitled Der historische Kern der Hameler Rattenfängersage, and by Herr M. Busch in the Grenzboten, with a view to ascertaining whether or no the legend rests on an historical basis.

The Piper and the rats have always been considered an essential part of the story. It seems impossible that the man on whom we have always looked as the cause of the catastrophe should in reality be only a secondary personage; but on turning to what is considered the earliest record of the tragedy of Hamelin we find it is merely to the effect "that on the 26th of June, 1284, one hundred and thirty children vanished into Mount Calvary," afterwards called the "Koppelberg." There is no doubt whatever that the above record was made a long time after the occurrence of the event, for the mystical element has already made its appearance in the statement that the children disappeared into the mountain. The entries concerning the Piper do not occur till some years after the first record was made, and the rats are not mentioned at all in the archives of the town. We are then not unjustified in taking for granted that, if any part of the story is true, it is the disappearance of the children, and that the Piper, the scourge of the rats, and the broken treaty, were added to account for a fact whose real cause was long since forgotten.

We will first see whether any satisfactory explanation presents itself of that part of the story which we have already relegated to the rank of fable, and here we find that the Piper who by means of his music destroys obnoxious animals is not the sole property of the people of Hamelin. Like Wilhelm Tell he is common property in the realm of fiction. It is not only that the Piper recalls the malicious gnomes and elves who delight to steal children, or that his gay costume reminds us of the love these creatures have for bright-coloured cloth, he has his actual counterpart in the legends of other countries. In France there is a story of a monk who freed a town from a plague of rats. The people withheld the promised reward, and with the help of his horn the monk led away their cattle and their domestic animals. In