208  PIED PIPER OF HAMELIN 
 
 
this very forest that Circe, gathering her herbs, 
saw the bold friend of Mars on his fiery courser, 
and tried to bewitch him, and, failing, metamor- 
phosed him so. What, I wonder, ever first wed- 
ded that story to the woodpecker? "--Ouida, 
Ariadne, i. 11. 
 
   Pied Horses, Motassem had 130,000 
pied horses, which he employed to carry 
earth to the plain of Catoul; and having 
raised a mound of sufficient height to 
command a view of the whole neighbor- 
hood, he built thereon the royal city of 
Shamarah'. - Khondemyr, Khelassat al 
Akhbar (1495). 
   The Hill of the Pied Horses, the site of 
 the palace of Alkoremmi, built by Motas- 
 sem, and enlarged by Vathek. 
 
   Pied Piper of Hamelin (3 syl.), a 
 piper named Bunting, from his dress. He 
 undertook, for a certain sum of money, to 
 free the town of Hamelin, in Brunswick, 
 of the rats which infested it; but when he 
 had drowned all the rats in the river 
 Weser, the townsmen refused to pay the 
 sum agreed upon. The piper, in revenge, 
 collected together all the children of 
 Hamelin, and enticed them by his piping 
 into a cavern in the side of the mountain 
 Koppenberg, which instantly closed upon 
 them, and 130 went down alive into the 
 pit (June 26, 1284). The street through 
 which Bunting conducted his victims was 
 Bungen, and from that day to this no 
 music is ever allowed to be played in this 
 particular street.-Verstegan, Bestitution 
 of Decayed Intelligence (1634). 
 Robert Browning has a poem entitled 
 The Pied Piper. 
 Erichius, in his Exodus Hamelensis, 
 maintains the truth of this legend; but 
 Martin Schoock, in his Fabula Hamelensis, 
 contends that it is a mere myth. 
 "Don't forget to pay the piper" is still 
a household expression in common use. 
 
 
   *** The same tale is told of the fiddler 
 of Brandenberg. The children were led 
 to the Marienberg, which opened upon 
 them and swallowed them up. 
   *** When Lorch was infested with ants, 
 a hermit led the multitudinous insects by 
 his pipe into a lake, where they perished. 
 As the inhabitants refused to pay the 
 stipulated price, he led their pigs the 
 same dance, and they, too, perished in 
 the lake. 
   Next year, a charcoal-burner cleared 
 the same place of crickets; and when the 
 price agreed upon was withheld, he led 
 the sheep of the inhabitants into the lake. 
   The third year came a plague of rats, 
 which an old man of the mountain piped 
 away and destroyed. Being refused his 
 reward, he piped the children of Lorch 
 into the Tannenberg. 
   *** About 200 years ago, the people of 
Ispahan were tormented with rats, when 
a little dwarf named Giouf, not above two 
feet high, promised, on the payment of a 
certain sum of money, to free the city of 
all its vermin in an hour. The terms 
were agreed to, and Giouf, by tabor and 
pipe, attracted every rat and mouse to 
follow him to the river Zenderou, where 
they were all drowned. Next day, the 
dwarf demanded the money; but the 
people gave him several bad coins, which 
they refused to change. Next day, they 
saw with horror an old black woman, fifty 
feet high, standing in the market-place 
with a whip in her hand. She was the 
genie Mergian Banou, the mother of the 
dwarf. For four days she strangled daily 
fifteen of the principal women, and on the 
fifth day led forty others to a magic 
tower, into which she drove them, and 
they were never after seen by mortal eye. 
-T. S. Gueulette, Chinese Tales (" His- 
tory of Prince Kader-Bilah," 1723). 
  *** The syrens of classic story had, by 
 
 
PICUS