been multiplied by 130.[1] (6) Fein[2] believed that he unmasked fable when he maintained the slaughter of many sons of Hameln at the battle of Sedemünde (1259), and the carrying of others into captivity, to be the groundwork of the legend. He observed that on a sculptured house in the Papenstrasse the Piper was followed by youths bearing spears.[3] Still, setting aside the fact that it is hardly likely the glory and fate of war would be reduced to anything as ignominious as the Koppen catastrophe, the two events were recorded as separate items in one of the municipal registers[4]; and the result of the fight was annually commemorated in the parish church of S. Nicholas[5] and at the Bonifatiusstift[6] on S. Pantaleon's Day. (7) Some authors give a mystical interpretation; Dr. Busch,[7] for instance, regards the Piper as the Aryan death-god; and others talk of Dame Hulda, and see souls in the rats as well as in the children. (8) Our own countryman, Mr. Baring-Gould, writes: "The root of the myth is this: the Piper is no other than the wind, and the ancients held that in the wind were the souls of the dead."[8] (9) I do not recollect whether those universal resolvents—Dawn and Darkness—have been called into requisition, but, if I myself were asked to give the mot d'énigme, I should say with confidence Bunting is an apt designation for the source of colour, and Kockerill, another name applied to him in story,[9] suggests "the bird of dawning". We need not hesitate to recognise the sun in the pied musician, who banishes those nocturnal marauders, rats, and renders
- ↑ First five suggestions in Martin Schoock's Fabula Hamelensis (1659), of which I have an abstract.
- ↑ Die entlarvete Fabel vom Ausgange der Hamelschen Kinder (1749). I know this only at second-hand.
- ↑ Von Reissenstein's note to Sprenger, p. 15.
- ↑ Die historische Kern, by Dr. Meinardus (1882), p. 49.
- ↑ Sprenger, p. 10.
- ↑ Meinardus, p. 24.
- ↑ Die Grenzboten, i. Semester, 1875, p. 505.
- ↑ Curious Myths of the Middle Ages, p. 427.
- ↑ Die Wunderpfeife, oderdie Kinder von Hameln, by Gustav Nieritz.
