once upon a time in hamelin

once upon a time in Hamelin

fiction
Edward w Pritchard


The pied piper is a racial memory of two related events that are in the wrong order in the folk tale.

First the children disappear from the village. Then the rats are an important part of life suddenly.

The rats have been there all along. Hidden only creeping about at night. Rats amongst us. Large rats, brown and black rats and mice coming out of the wood work, emerging from barns, emerging from behind stumps and haystacks. Insidious vermin now exposed to the light.

The children disappear. It is somehow connected to the rats.

Wait there is another clue. It is a man in a multicolored uniform. He marches and plays a pipe, or is it a fife.

The man, the piper is a soldier. Other soldiers follow him marching in rows. Long ago he marched through the town. The rats followed him. The man in the multicolored uniform is the soldier who played a fife and the " rats" are the rank and follow soldiers that march behind the fife player in rows. Hundreds of soldiers in colored uniforms are everywhere. Soldiers of all sizes. Enemy soldiers that weren't seen before now everywhere.

The children are gone because the boys die fighting, the girls are broken hearted and disappear because their men friends are gone.

"Where have all the young girls gone long time passing? Where have all the young men gone long time ago? "1

Beware when the men in multicolored uniforms march through the town.

1. " where have all the flowers gone" by Pete Seeger