XXVII.—A Marvellous Prank played by the Devil at Hamelen, a Town in Germany.
This city was annoyed with rats and mice. It happened that a pied-coated piper came thither, who covenanted with the chief burghers for such a reward, if he could free them from the said vermin; nor would he demand it for a twelvemonth and a day after. The agreement being made, he began to play on the pipes, and all the rats and mice followed him to a great loch hard by, where they all perished; so that the town was infested no more. At the end of the year, the piper returned for his reward, the burghers put him off with slighting and neglect, offering him some small matter, which he refused. And staying some days in town, on a Sunday morning, at high mass, when most people were at church, he fell to play his pipes, and their children up and down followed him out of the town, to a great hill not far off, which rent in two, and let him and the children in, and so closed up again. This happened about two hundred and fifty years since. And in that town, they date their bills and bonds, and other instruments in law to this day, from the year of the going out of their children; besides, there is a great pillar of stone, erected at the foot of the said hill, where this story is engraven.