Probably there is really some foundation for the legend, which was not uncommon and was told of several other towns in the Middle Ages when grown men were really more like children than little boys are to-day. That, I take it, is the only way to study the Middle Ages—to remember that the world had not yet quite grown up and men were not as gods, but in many ways like children. Otherwise how can you explain many very wonderful things that undoubtedly happened? (Not that we are particularly godlike to-day except some men in their own estimations; but at least some of us are beginning to have the germs of common sense.) The true foundation is much more pathetic than Browning’s poem, which to us boys seemed so funny, for we were not old enough to sympathise or to see the tragedy upon which it dances. That came later, when we learnt that “nuncheon” is not the funniest thing in the world and life has forced upon us a knowledge of things other than “good and evil.” The Koppelberg into which the children danced is not a “mighty top”; no crowded little bones have been unearthed from it; it is just so high that a child would be hidden from sight as it danced on its way to Cologne. Of course one naturally accuses the gipsies, for there were certainly gipsies in Europe even so early as the twelfth century, let alone the thirteenth; three centuries were to pass before they reached their climax. According to the _Encyclopædia Britannica_ the legend of the Pied Piper dates from 1284, though Browning in the poem dates it _July 22nd, 1376_. I believe the reason for his error is not definitely known; but I think it is possible to guess. On either date there were plenty of gipsies about, and no doubt they would be quite prepared to pick up an odd child or two if they saw money in the abduction. But it is impossible to believe that they would dare to try any such mighty abduction as was achieved by the Pied Piper. Europe would have gone mad with rage; probably every gipsy would have had his throat cut by infuriated parents and the race would have been exterminated. Nor is it likely that the so-called “Dancing Mania” was more than in part a solution, because that was really a spiritual reaction from the Black Death of 1348; probably people were so glad to have remained alive that they danced firstly for joy, afterwards from “mass-suggestion.” It is a partial solution of our difficulty because it began in Aix-la-Chapelle in 1374; as Hecker says, “Hardly had the graves of the victims of the Black Death been covered in”; which is a somewhat excitable way of saying “a few years.” The dancing neurasthenia lasted a long time, and recurred all over Europe in several epidemics. Just so, after a terrible war, do we dance to-day, though few of us, looking at our gloomy and barbaric dances, would dream that these short-frocked maidens are dancing for joy. In 1375 it had spread the thirty-six miles to Cologne, and in _1376_ the few miles to Hamelin.