Acquired from an uncatalogued broadsheet, stamped only with the seal of a defunct cartography office in the Prussian lowlands. Bound within the Archive's ephemeral collections under 'Contagious Folk-Memory']
Archivist’s Marginalia:
This piece defies conventional classification while surviving as a traditional nursery rhyme. Little is known of why the people of the Prussian lowlands, up to northern Russian pelts, still reserve the traditional custom of having their bodies lathered in virgin oil and donned with sesame seeds, though there are no origins to trace the particular habit, the methods provide them with a sense of ease, as seen with the works below.
The god Flan
Flan the breadmaker,
Maker of man,
Hath baked him in the crust of the natures of Bran.
Trees of crust and flesh of bread
As such, the works of Flan the breadmaker bred
Oh Flan, Oh creator why dost you show your face?
Why hath from your creation, have you fled?
-The GingerBread Men.
The Tale of Young Adler
The stories follow the elders of Gootenstrut who anointed themselves in virgin oil and scattered sesame seeds throughout their bodies to travel and bring back bread and cake to feed the many mouths, as the failed wheat and hunt did little to sustain the numerous bodies.
Young Adler, Oh Young Adler, mischievous and wise, decided with unseemly eyes that he would follow secretly among the governing chiefs and he would steal past the flocking crowds and chanting noise. He would no longer fear dread hunger on his little head. Young Atler would have endless loaves that would never leave his bed.
Young Adler set out among his peers to play , he would leave them to their jovial day. Young Adler would keep his distance not to arouse the elders, he saw them cave into that diseased tree. Young Adler unannointed followed suit into the lands of Bran.
There he witnessed all things composed of bread, with his sack he began to shovel into his bag. He followed the elders who brought the sacrificial deer, he watched as they bled it onto the ground of crust. Their bread appeared before them in large amounts.
Displeased with his journey, he hid among the bread trees until the passage of the last elders, he would then return with his own hunt so that he may too receive such heavy amounts of bread.
When he returned from the land of Bran, he felt his body slowly stiffen and his vision blur into darkness, the only sound that muttered was muffled screams. Now alone sat a pillar of bread, and each time the birds and wild beasts would tear upon the standing loaf, and each time Young Adler would feel such devastating pain, his tears simply salting, flavouring the mouths of all who fed.
Flan the breadmaker is one whose face no one has seen, whose heavenly cadence and fresh-baked scent can only be gathered.
An uncle found himself a sweetened cake, which was devoured by his wife afterwards, sweetened from the heavy extent of sugar he tolled on himself.
A girl ate her entire family, as she awoke to only find loaves of bread in their place, each matching their size. She thought they had left her to her own devices and that her mother baked bread for each to their portion. She found out too late.
So if anyone were to enter the land of Bran or were to hear the heavy cadence and fresh scent, dress yourselves with virgin oil and sesame seeds.
That was the story my mother passed on to me.
Archival addendum (On the nature of Flan and Bran)
The readers should note that the entity Flan is not a localised entity confined to only the spaces of the extradimensional place Bran. The entity can manifest anywhere at a given place at any given time hence why the nursery rhyme has been passed down as an oral cautionary tale among the locals, as seen within the sentence "That was the story my mother passed on to me."
Bran is an area which can be accessed wherever the fungal yeast infects, and in this case, as to the nursery rhyme, the tree is referred to as diseased, exhibiting such infection. Bran's ground is composed entirely of crust, and everything else, from the trees to other botanical ecology, is composed of bread. The end of Bran houses the gingerbread men who only have a semblance of an ordinary gingerbread in terms of height but have a 3D structure.
Archival addendum (On the nature surrounding the poem)
There have been no findings of how such a poem composed entirely by the denizens of Bran came to be possessed by us humans, and the theory of whether we are being referred to or if the subject, if drawn only to the gingerbread men remains entirely unknown.