metamorphosed him so. What, I
wonder, ever first wedded that story to the woodpecker?"--Ouida,
_Ariadn[^e]_, i. 11.

=Pied Horses=, Motassem had 130,000 _pied horses_, which he employed to
carry earth to the plain of Catoul; and having raised a mound of
sufficient height to command a view of the whole neighborhood, he built
thereon the royal city of Shamarah'.--Khondemyr, _Khelassat al Akhbar_
(1495).

_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.

[Asterism] 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.

[Asterism] 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.

[Asterism] About 200 years ago, the people of Ispahan were tormented
with rats, when a little dwarf named Giouf, not