It is not without significance that
Elder was writing in the days of the _Ingoldsby Legends_, and had
possibly no more foundation for the localisation of his stories than
Barham.
There still remains the curious parallel from Belfast to which Mrs.
Gutch has drawn attention. Magic pipers are not unknown to English
folk-lore, as in the Percy ballad of _The Frere and the Boy_, or in the
nursery rhyme of Tom the Piper's son in its more extended form. But
beguiling into a mountain is not known elsewhere except at Hameln, which
was made widely known in England by Verstegan's and Howell's accounts,
so that the Belfast variant is also probably to be traced to the
_Rattenfaenger_. Here again, as in the case of Beddgellert (_Celtic Fairy
Tales_, No. xxi.), the Blinded Giant and the Pedlar of Swaffham
(_infra_, Nos. lxi., lxiii.), we have an imported legend adapted to
local conditions.
XLV. HEREAFTERTHIS
_Source._--Sent me anonymously soon after the appearance of _English
Fairy Tales_.
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