MURDER - The Lighthouse - page 108

townspeople were in church and started playing music on his pipe, using his magic to
lure the town's children (130 of them) away. The children willingly followed him and
danced along as they followed the mysterious piper out of Hamelin never to be seen
again. Only three children were left behind: one blind child who could not see where
he was going, one lame child who could not keep up with the others and one child who
was deaf and could not hear the music. These three children told the townspeople what
had happened when they came out of church. There are various other endings to the
tale, which include the children being taken into the River Weser and drowning, as had
happened to the rats. Another version has the Pied Piper returning the children after re-
ceiving payment in full - a variation on this is that the children are only returned after
the full payment is made to him many times over in gold. 18
With regards to the actual roots of the tale, there are several theories. One is that the
children died of natural causes such as an epidemic of disease or an accident - The
tale is often consdered a variation on the Danse Macabre or 'Dance of Death'. Another
theory has the story as an allegory for the emigration, with the 'children' being unem-
ployedandmovingawaytocoloniesinEasternEuropetowork.Othertheorieshavethe
children leaving on pilgrimages or military campaigns. Yet another theory has the Pied
Piper portrayed as a psychopathic paedophile. 19
One often mooted theory 20 is that the consumption of ergot-tainted rye bread is re-
sponsible and in dancing after the piper (who is an allegorical figure in this case - that
is, death itself) the children literally danced themselves to exhaustion and death. So-
mething that was known to happen during the Middle Ages.
SogoingbacktotheFlannan IslandsinDecember 1900,wouldithavebeenpossible
that one or more of the men had consumed ergot-tainted bread and then gone mad as
a result? It is of course a possibility but it has to be considered what their behaviour
wouldhavebeenlikehadtheydoneso.Theerraticandspasmodicbehaviourinahallu-
cinating state would have made the men careless about what they were doing. From the
MuirheadandMoore'sreports,theimplicationisthatthemenappearedtohaveallbeen
working normally right up to the moment they all disappeared, with cooking utensils
all washed and put away and the work of the lighthouse done, all ready for the light to
be started once it got dark on the evening of 15 December 1900. The possibility that
one went mad from the ergot and then rushed out and pushed the other two over a cliff
and then followed them over is another scenario. The occasional keeper, Donald Ma-
carthur, was in his shirtsleeves, but one can possibly draw the conclusion that he was
duty cook for that week and may have been about to start preparing for the next meal
while Ducat and Marshall went out in their weatherproof gear. Even if Macarthur had
gone mad from eating ergot and rushed outside to attack the other two at the west land-
ing,hewouldhavehadtooverpowertwomeninveryawkwardconditionsastherewas