The Grimm Diaries Prequels Volume 11- 14: Children of Hamlin, Jar of Hearts, Tooth & Nail & Fairy Tale, Ember in the Wind, Welcome to Sorrow, and Happy Valentine's Slay. by Cameron Jace

children, unbeknownst of what it was really about. I won’t say now who made them sing the songs, but all I can reveal is that the songs were meant to sound childish and happy so they passed undetected by those who had later forged history to their own benefits. It was a smart way to make sure the truth never died.
    Ring around the rosy was about the red circular rash that people were infected with once plagued. A pocketful of posies described the flowers people thought could cover the awful smell of the dead. It was also thought that the plague transmuted through breath, and that flowers helped keep it away.
    Ashes, Ashes described the hundreds of cremated bodies. We all fall down described the huge ditches that were dug to burry the dead. Atishoo Atishoo described the sneezing that preceded the illness.
    The secrets and mysteries of the world’s history were sung on the tongues of the innocent children century after century.
    One day, people woke up and the plague was gone. Did the Piper give up on finding the Lost Seven? It was unlikely, but his disappearance had been a mystery. Maybe he’d met his match, an equal force of goodness that had put him to sleep. The truth is that no one knew how he’d disappeared and how the plague stopped.
    Historians, as deluded as they always were, claimed that so many people had died that the disease couldn’t host the living anymore. Others claimed that the rats ended up catching their own plague and died like everyone else. Historians are in many ways like scientists; most of the things they say are destined to be surpassed by someone else years later.
    The Piper’s disappearance lasted about four centuries until he rose again to spread an even crueler plague in Europe in the 1600’s. It didn’t mean that all the world was free of his evil the years he had been gone. On the contrary, the Piper had left behind a darker secret: one-hundred-and-thirty children of Hamlin—one hundred and twenty three, since seven escaped.
    Remember when I told you that no one knew what had happened to the children?
    I knew; and Robert Browning knew as well.
    Here’s what he’s written in his poems years and years ago in the conclusion to his long poem about the Pied Piper:
    In Transylvania there's a tribe,
    Of alien people who ascribe
    The outlandish ways and dress,
    On which their neighbors lay such stress
    The Piper didn’t kill the Children of Hamlin. Now that their hearts had been blackened with his lulling song, he needed them to create his own army of darkness. The Piper sent the children to Transylvania where an evil force, represented by the Magpie, resided.
    The details of what happened to the children in Transylvania will take too many diaries to explain. All you need to know for now is that the Children of Hamlin, who once sympathized with the Piper, became the first vampires in history.
    Whilst the Piper was away, they spread their own lore slowly over the years, not minding if people thought of them as a myth. Vampires were few, and they were hunted all over the world. They knew they needed centuries to spread and learn about their own nature.
    Browning completed his references to the Children of Hamlin in Transylvania, referring to the founders, saying:
     
    To their fathers and mothers having risen,
    Out of some subterranean prison
     
    If that was the case, I hear you say, then how did the Piper return?
    The answer is Elizabeth Bathory.
    In the seventeenth century, when Europe thronged with healthy people, spreading romanticism and art, Elizabeth Bathory caught the attention of the world.
    Elizabeth killed young girls and bathed in their blood, and I believe I talked briefly about her when I told you about Bloody Mary. She was sentenced to death in a castle in Transylvania later. Only no one knew that Elizabeth was only a descendant of the Children of Hamlin, a vampire who was caught, hunted, and presumably killed.
    Elizabeth was a stronger descendant of Hamlin. Instead of giving