People in the Trees

WIP - Summer Camp 2023

Content Warning: Contains discussion of religious persecution and genocide.

'People in the Trees' is a Caillish children's song that has a game component to it. At the end of the song, the children begin counting and hopping on one leg. Children compete to see how many hops they can do before they fail.

Dingle dangle, dingle dangle,
People in the trees.
Dingle dangle, dingle dangle,
Are they just asleep?
Dingle dangle, dingle dangle,
Here come the flies.
Dingle dangle, dingle dangle,
They were telling lies.
How many, how many,
People in the trees?
How many, how many,
Won't you count with me?
One two three four...

— People in the Trees

by Darkmoon_Art

Despite the relative innocence of the children's game, this song is based on dark events from just over two hundred years ago. The then crown prince of Caillah died under mysterious circumstances - still unexplained to this day - and the Caillish people blamed the Koushan Mai for it. The Koushan Mai have a long history of being persecuted in Caillah. This incident sparked a series of massacres across the country that ended with whole villages being strung up in trees. Over a period of about a month, about fifty percent of the Koushan Mai population of Caillah was slaughtered.
Eventually, the anti-Koushan Mai sentiment faded a little to its prior levels, but this incident convinced most Koushan Mai people to leave the country for Serukis. The law was changed shortly afterwards to make the worship of the Koushan Mai gods illegal in Caillah, with the punishment for breaking the law being death. The few Koushan Mai that still live in Caillah practise their religion in secret.
Today, children - and quite a few adults - are generally not aware of the origins of the song. If asked, children generally imagine people crouched up in the branches of trees having a snooze.