_The Hill of the Pied Horses_, the site of the palace of Alkoremmi, built by Motassem, 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, _Restitution 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_ (“History of Prince Kader-Bilah,” 1723). ⁂ The syrens of classic story had, by their weird spirit-music, a similar irresistible influence. (Weird music is called Alpleich or Elfenseigen.[TN-94]