Cox, George - Aryan Mythology Vol 2.pdf

THE PIPER OF BRANDEXBURG. 243
is a note of his music heard than there is throughout the CHAP,
town a sound of pattering feet. —r-—
All the little boys and girls
With rosy cheeks and flaxen curls
And sparkling eyes and teeth like pearls
Tripping, skipping, ran merrily after
The wonderful music with shouting and laughter.
The musician goes before them to a hill rising above the
Weser, and as they follow him into a cavern, the door in the
mountain-side shuts fast, and their happy voices are heard
no more. According to one version none were saved but a
lame boy, who remained sad and cheerless because he could
not see the beautiful land to which the piper had said that
he was leading them—a land
Where waters gushed and fruit trees grew,
And flowers put forth a fairer hue,
And everything was strange and new,
And sparrows were brighter than peacocks here,
And their dogs outran our fallow deer,
And honey bees had lost their stings,
And horses were born with eagles' wings. 1
The temptation to follow Mr. Gould through his series of
tales is almost as powerful as the spell of the piper himself.
We may yield to it only so far as we must do so to prove the
wide range of these stories in the North, the East, and the
West. At Brandenburg the plague from which the piper
delivers the people is a host of ants, whom he charms into
the water. The promised payment is not made, and when
he came again, all the pigs followed him into the lake—
touch borrowed probably from the narrative of the miracle at
Gadara. In this myth there is a triple series of incidents.
Failing to receive his recompense the second year for sweep-
ing away a cloud of crickets, the piper takes away all their
ships. In the third year all the children vanish as from
Hameln, the unpaid toil of the piper having been this time
expended in driving away a legion of rats.
clusively to the god near whom it was churches to fall on their knees and pray
placed; accordingly he refers the myth God to destroy the mice. Grriechische
without hesitation to Apollon as the Gotterlehre, i. 482.
deliverer from those plagues of mice l These lines are quoted from 3Ir.
which have been dreaded or hated as a Browning by Mr. Gould, who does not
terrible scourge, and which even now mention the poet's name.
draw German peasants in crowds to the
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