Thus, as Tannhauser is the Northern Ulysses, so is Goethe's
Erlking none other than the Piper of Hamelin. And the piper,
in turn, is the classic Hermes or Orpheus, the counterpart of
the Finnish Wainamoinen and the Sanskrit Gunadhya. His
wonderful pipe is the horn of Oberon, the lyre of Apollo (who,
like the piper, was a rat-killer), the harp stolen by Jack
when he climbed the bean-stalk to the ogre's castle.[18] And
the father, in Goethe's ballad, is no more than right when he
assures his child that the siren voice which tempts him is but
the rustle of the wind among the dried leaves; for from such a
simple class of phenomena arose this entire family of charming
legends.

[18] And it reappears as the mysterious lyre of the Gaelic
musician, who

"Could harp a fish out o' the water,
Or bluid out of a stane,
Or milk out of a maiden's breast,
That bairns had never nane."

But why does the piper, who is a leader of souls
(Psychopompos), also draw rats after him? In answering this
we shall have occasion to note that the ancients by no means
shared that curious prejudice against the brute creation which
is indulged in by modern anti-Darwinians. In many countries,
rats and mice have been regarded as sacred animals; but in
Germany they were thought to represent the human soul. One
story out of a hundred must suffice to illustrate this. "In