Oleanna

“Little roasted piggies  rush around the city street

 inquiring so politely  if you’d like slice of ham to eat.”

 -- Norwegian folksong, “Oleanna”

A lovely remembrance from summer-camp days (whose music I have eulogized here).  It evokes, if not Eden, at least Schlaraffenland. 

Cockaigne / Pays de Cocagne

A corn-cum-cabaret version of the song:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9w87QhQ2gog

A musically more intricate version, by kids:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xCDW9DoFbqY&feature=related

And yet that image, of the little pigs offering themselves to be ingested, which to a child is just “funny” and “silly”, is so much darker  in our fallen world.  Thus the paradigm case of Bernd Jürgen Brandes, who showed up at the door of Herr Meiwes, virtually (as in Breughel’s painting) with the knife already in him, to volunteer as an hors d’oeuvre…

The case is baffling.   Not so much criminal  -- indeed German law found itself in a pickle (hm, unfortunate choice of words) even to deal with it -- not so much merely criminal, as downright Satanic, and scarcely to be comprehended from any other angle.  (Particularly not the Darwinian:  Consult our essay here.)  

[Update 31 May 2012]  It's even worse than we thought:
http://worldofdrjustice.blogspot.com/2012/05/necrophilia-not-that-theres-anything.html

.