the English tales much better, I find, than that of the Grimms' tales, or even of the Celtic stories. They certainly have the quality of coming home to English children. Perhaps this may be partly due to the fact that a larger proportion of the tales are of native manufacture. If the researches contained in my Notes are to be trusted only i.-ix., xi., xvii., xxii., xxv., xxvi., xxvii., xliv., l., liv., lv., lviii., lxi., lxii., lxv., lxvii., lxxviii., lxxxiv., lxxxvii. were imported; nearly all the remaining sixty are home produce, and have their roots in the hearts of the English people which naturally respond to them.
In the following Notes I have continued my practice of giving (1) Source where I obtained the various tales. (2) Parallels, so far as possible, in full for the British Isles, with bibliographical references when they can be found; for occurrences abroad I generally refer to the lists of incidents contained in my paper read before the International Folk-Lore Congress of 1891 and republished in the Transactions 1892, pp. 87-98. (3) Remarks where the tale seems to need them. I have mainly been on the search for signs of diffusion rather than of "survivals" of antiquarian interest, though I trust it will be found I have not neglected these.
Source.—Abraham Elder, Tales and Legends of the Isle of Wight, (London, 1839), pp. 157-164. Mr. Nutt, who has abridged and partly rewritten the story from a copy of Elder's book in his possession, has introduced a couple of touches from Browning.
Parallels.—The well-known story of the Pied Piper of Hameln (Hamelin), immortalised by Browning, will at once recur to every reader's mind. Before Browning, it had been told in English in books as well known as Verstegan's Restitution of Decayed Intelligence, 1605; Howell's Familiar Letters (see my edition, p. 357, n.); and Wanley's Wonders of the Little World. Browning is said to have taken it from the last source (Furnivall, Browning Bibliography, 158), though there are touches which seem to me to come from Howell (see my note (ad loc.), while it is not impossible he may have come across Elder's book, which was illustrated by Cruikshank. The Grimms give the legend in their Deutsche Sagen (ed. 1816, 330-33), and in its native land it has given rise to an elaborate poem à la Scheffel by Julius Wolft, which has in its turn been the occasion of an opera by Victor Nessler. Mrs. Gutch, in an interesting study of the myth in Folk-Lore,
