PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS. 63 
mountain’s side.’’ And is it not a significant coincidence 
that this calamity befel the children because the Piper had 
not been paid his dues ?—which we now know were cleanlli- 
ness and better sanitation. That this view of the story of 
the Pied Piper has indirect evidence to support it, it may 
be mentioned that Payne+ states that after some 800 years, 
during which plague cannot be clearly traced, it broke out 
afresh in the fourteenth century. The ‘‘Black Death’’ 
appeared in Southern Italy in 1346-47, and spread over the 
whole of Europe. A second epidemic occurred in 1361, and 
a third in 1368. ‘‘It has been calculated that 25 million 
persons, one-fourth of the population of Europe, died of 
the disease.’’ The date of the story of the Pied Piper is 
1376, eight years after the last of these great outbreaks, 
and it is not unreasonable to assume that at this period 
there were still many local outbreaks of the disease. It may 
further be pointed out that, if this legend does not refer 
to an outbreak of plague, to what does it refer? It may be 
pure imagination, but nearly all such tales, however dis- 
torted, have a basis in fact. Even our familiar Punch and 
Judy has a deeper origin than fun and fancy. 
One of the most sraphic and picturesque descriptions is 
that of the plague in Florence in 1348, given by Boccaccio 
in the Introduction to the Decameron. ‘‘ Despite all that 
human wisdom and forethought could devise to avert it, as 
the clearing of the city from many impurities by officials 
appointed for the purpose, the refusal of entrance to all 
sick folk, and the adoption of many precautions for the pre- 
servation of health ... between March and the ensuing July 
upwards of a hundred thousand human beings lost their 
lives within the walls of the city of Florence, which before 
the deadly visitation would not have been supposed to con- 
tain so many people.’’ - Boccaccio refers to other animals 
1 Allbutt’s Syst. of Med., 1st Edit., I., p. 917. 
