Chapter XLIV: The Pied Piper

_Source._--Abraham Elder, _Tales and Legends of the Isle of Wight_ (London, 1839), pp. 157-164. Mr. Nutt, who has abridged and partly rewritten the story from a copy of Elder's book in his possession, has introduced a couple of touches from Browning.

_Parallels._--The well-known story of the Pied Piper of Hameln (Hamelin), immortalised by Browning, will at once recur to every reader's mind. Before Browning, it had been told in English in books as well known as Verstegan's _Restitution of Decayed Intelligence_, 1605; Howell's _Familiar Letters_ (see my edition, p. 357, _n._); and Wanley's _Wonders of the Little World_. Browning is said to have taken it from the last source (Furnivall, _Browning Bibliography_, 158), though there are touches which seem to me to come from Howell (see my note _ad loc._), while it is not impossible he may have come across Elder's book, which was illustrated by Cruikshank. The Grimms give the legend in their _Deutsche Sagen_ (ed. 1816, 330-33), and in its native land it has given rise to an elaborate poem _à la_ Scheffel by Julius Wolff, which has in its turn been the occasion of an opera by Victor Nessler. Mrs. Gutch, in an interesting study of the myth in _Folk-Lore_ iii., pp. 227-52, quotes a poem, _The Sea Piece_, published by Dr. Kirkpatrick in 1750, as showing that a similar legend was told of the Cave Hill, Belfast.

Here, as Tradition's hoary legend tells,
A blinking Piper once with magic Spells
And strains beyond a vulgar Bagpipe's sounds
Gathered the dancing Country wide around.
When hither as he drew the tripping Rear
(Dreadful to think and difficult to swear!)
The gaping Mountain yawned from side to side,
A hideous Cavern, darksome, deep, and wide;
In skipt th' exulting Demon, piping loud,
With passive joy succeeded by the Crowd.

* * * * *

There firm and instant closed the greedy Womb,
Where wide-born Thousands met a common Tomb.

_Remarks._--Mr. Baring-Gould, in his _Curious Myths of the Middle Ages_, has explained the Pied Piper as a wind myth. Mrs. Gutch is inclined to think there may be a substratum of fact at the root of the legend, basing her conclusions on a pamphlet of Dr. Meinardus, _Der historische Kern_, which I have not seen. She does not, however, give any well-authenticated historical event at Hameln in the thirteenth century which could have plausibly given rise to the legend, nor can I find any in the _Urkundenbuch_ of Hameln (Luneberg, 1883). The chief question of interest attaching to the English form of the legend as given in 1839 by Elder, is whether it is independent of the German myth. It does not occur in any of the local histories of the Isle of Wight which I have been able to consult of a date previous to Elder's book--_e.g._, J. Hassel, _Tour of the Isle of Wight_, 1790. Mr. Shore, in his _History of Hampshire_, 1891, p. 185, refers to the legend, but evidently bases his reference on Elder, and so with all the modern references I have seen. Now Elder himself quotes Verstegan in his comments on the legend, pp. 168-9 and note, and it is impossible to avoid conjecturing that he adapted Verstegan to the locality. Newtown, when Hassel visited it in 1790, had only six or seven houses (_l.c._, i., 137-8), though it had the privilege of returning two members to Parliament; it had been a populous town by the name of Franchville before the French invasion of the island of _temp._ Ric. II. It is just possible that there may have been a local legend to account for the depopulation by an exodus of the children. But the expression "pied piper" which Elder used clearly came from Verstegan, and until evidence is shown to the contrary the whole of the legend was adapted from him. It is not without significance that Elder was writing in the days of the _Ingoldsby Legends_, and had possibly no more foundation for the localisation of his stories than Barham.

There still remains the curious parallel from Belfast to which Mrs. Gutch has drawn attention. Magic pipers are not unknown to English folk-lore, as in the Percy ballad of _The Frere and the Boy_, or in the nursery rhyme of Tom the Piper's son in its more extended form. But beguiling into a mountain is not known elsewhere except at Hameln, which was made widely known in England by Verstegan's and Howell's accounts, so that the Belfast variant is also probably to be traced to the _Rattenfänger_. Here again, as in the case of Beddgellert (_Celtic Fairy Tales_, No. xxi.), the Blinded Giant and the Pedlar of Swaffham (_infra_, Nos. lxi., lxiii.), we have an imported legend adapted to local conditions.