*** 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.
Pierre [Peer], a blunt, bold, outspoken man, who heads a conspiracy to murder the Venetian senators, and induces Jaffier to join the gang. Jaffier (in order to save his wife’s father, Priuli), reveals the plot, under promise of free pardon; but the senators break their pledge, and order the conspirators to torture and death. Jaffier, being free, because he had turned “king’s evidence” stabs Pierre, to prevent his being broken on the wheel, and then kills himself.—T. Otway, Venice Preserved (1682).
Pierre, a very inquisitive servant of M. Darlemont, who long suspects his master has played falsely with his ward, Julio, count of Harancour.—Thomas Holcroft, The Deaf and Dumb (1785).
Pierre Alphonse (Rabbi Moïse Sephardi), a Spanish Jew converted to Christianity in 1062.
All stories that recorded are
By Pierre Alfonse he knew by heart.
Longfellow, The Wayside Inn (prelude).