Picture (The), a drama by Massinger (1629). The story of this play (like that of the Twelfth Night, by Shakespeare) is taken from the novelette of Bandello, of Piedmont, who died 1555.
Pi´cus, a soothsayer and augur; husband of Canens. In his prophetic art he made use of a woodpecker (picus), a prophetic bird sacred to Mars. Circé fell in love with him, and as he did not requite her advances, she changed him into a woodpecker, whereby he still retained his prophetic power.
“There is Picus,” said Maryx. “What a strange thing is tradition! Perhaps it was in this very forest that Circê, gathering her herbs, saw the bold friend of Mars on his fiery courser, and tried to bewitch him, and, failing, metamorphosed him so. What, I wonder, ever first wedded that story to the woodpecker?”—Ouida, Ariadnê, 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.
*** 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.