such students have collected half-a-dozen "variants" that they feel their incredulity justifiable, range their treasure in a "cycle", and account their attitude as being truly scientific!
If what is told of more than one place, cannot be told with truth of any, and what has never happened in our time never happened at all, the exodus of the Hameln innocents is in " a parlous state". We have just glanced at the musical kidnapping of Lorch[1] and Baring-Gould also reports how Brandenburg was once visited by a man who went fiddling through the streets till he had a troop of little listeners whom he wiled to the Marienberg, which opened to enclose both him and them. Nearer home, according to Dr. Kirkpatrick in The Sea Piece, a narrative, philosophical, and descriptive poem published in 1750, a like tradition is attached to Cave Hill near Belfast,[2] though I believe the memory of it is now grown dim.
- ↑ Curious Myths, p. 422.
- ↑
"Here, as Tradition's hoary Legend tells,
A blinking Piper once with magic Spells
And Strains beyond a vulgar Bagpipe's sound,
Gathered the dancing Country wide around;
When hither as he drew the tripping Rear
(Dreadful to think and difficult to swear!)
The gaping Mountain yawn'd from side to side,
A hideous Cavern, darksome, deep, and wide;
In skipt th' exulting Demon, piping loud.
With passivejoy succeeded by the Croud;
The winding Cavern, trembling, as he play'd,
With dreadful Echoes rung throughout its Shade;
There firm and instant clos'd the greedy Womb,
Where wide-born Thousands met a common Tomb.
Ev'n now the good Inhabitant relates
With serious Horror their disastrous Fates;
And as the noted Spot he ventures near,
His Fancy, strung with Tales and shook with Fear,
Sounds magic Concerts in his tingling Ear;
With superstitious Awe and solemn Face,
Trembling he points, and thinks he points the Place."
