The Folklore of Discworld

by Terry Pratchett

  THE AUDITORS

  The most deeply negative and destructive forces in the cosmos of the Discworld have no fangs, no tentacles, no red glowing eyes. They look like small grey hooded robes, with nothing whatsoever inside. They are the Auditors of Reality, who see it as their job to make sure that the universe functions smoothly and efficiently, without unpredictable interruptions. Above all, they distrust and reject the notion of individual personality, since they hold that to have a personality means to have a beginning and an end, and hence to forfeit immortality. The way to be immortal, they maintain, is to avoid living. Therefore they operate entirely by consensus, never permitting themselves to show personal tastes, feelings or opinions; if any of them becomes aware of itself as an individual, it self-destructs instantly. They are the enemies of all imagination, creativity and emotion, and hence of life itself.

  Mercifully, their power on the Discworld has so far been restricted. On Earth, their presence grows daily.

  1 And some may be locally grown. Humanity seems predisposed to see the turtle as a massive carrier.

  2 Yes, we know that there are several versions of this story!

  3 Only to find a job with Miss Treason (see page 228). Mythology loves ravens.

  Chapter 2

  DWARFS

  IN A MINE, there are many levels. Some, anybody can visit. But lower down, there are hidden galleries, closed-off corridors, places which only the oldest and wisest miners know. And so it is with dwarfs. Pretty well everyone on the Discworld has seen a dwarf, but very, very few really understand what it is like to be a dwarf.

  What you see is easily told. A dwarf is a smallish humanoid (about four foot tall on average), strongly built, bearded, dressed in layer upon layer of leather, plus chain mail and helmet if circumstances warrant it, and never without an axe. This description applies to both male and female dwarfs, though some close observers have claimed that the beards of the latter are silkier. All dwarfs are tireless, highly skilled workers; their traditional, ancestral occupations are mining and smithing, but they are also excellent engineers, jewellers, printers, and so forth. Thousands of them have migrated to Ankh-Morpork, where they work hard and mostly keep themselves to themselves; some of the young ones, regrettably, like to congregate in dwarf bars where they drink too much, sing interminable songs about gold, and get into fights.

  These facts find close parallels in the myths and legends of Earth, especially in pre-Christian Scandinavia and the Germanic areas. There, tradition tells of a race of small beings who live inside rocks and under mountains, and are so skilled in metalworking that they make magical weapons and rings for the gods themselves. They are old, wise, and very rich. Female dwarfs are never mentioned (unlike she-elves and giantesses), so one must assume that on our world, as on the Discworld, they looked just like the males and worked at the same crafts. Although in later centuries the names for various types of small supernatural beings have become seriously confused, one can be sure that those that inhabit human mines (as gnomes and kobolds do in Germany, and knockers in Cornwall) and those that work as smiths are kin to the true ancient dwarfs.

  One need only look at the names, nicknames and patronymics of many Discworld dwarfs to find confirmation of this link with Nordic and Germanic dwarfdom – from their ancient king B’hrian Bloodaxe to the modern Albrecht Albrechtsson or Bjorn Stronginthearm, there are echoes everywhere. Other dwarf names (Ringfounder, Helmcrusher, Hammerhock) allude to battle prowess and craftsmanship. But from time to time, curiously unsuitable ones occur, such as Cheery, Snorey, Dozy, and Bashfull; these must be due to some alien influence, possibly that which affected the Discworld during the time when moving pictures were being made at Holy Wood. It was certainly at that time that some dwarfs first felt an urge to sing the irritating, and previously unknown, Hiho Song (which is utterly undwarfish, since it does not mention gold and is less than an hour long).

  These are only the upper levels of their culture. To understand the nature of a Discworld dwarf, one must dig much deeper. There, dwarfish identity is not defined by mere genetics and size, but by a whole complex culture of laws, taboos, customs, moral principles and traditional knowledge. It is not precisely a religion, but it is as vital to their sense of selfhood as any religion could be. Height, in Discworld dwarf culture, plays no part in defining a dwarf. Dwarfishness is about what you do, not how high you do it. Captain Carrot Ironfoundersson, for example, happens to have been born of human parents and to be well over six foot tall, but his upbringing has made him socially and spiritually a dwarf. As he explains to Vimes:

  ‘Adopted by dwarfs, brought up by dwarfs. To dwarfs I’m a dwarf, sir. I can do the rite of k’zakra, I know the secrets of h’ragna, I can ha’lk my g’rakha correctly … I am a dwarf.’

  ‘What do those things mean?’

  ‘I am not allowed to tell non-dwarfs.’ [The Fifth Elephant]

  The legal aspects of this culture are known collectively as kruk. Outsiders think of this as ‘mining law’, which is true as far as it goes, but as Carrot explains:

  ‘It’s a lot more than that. It’s about … how you live. Laws of ownership, marriage laws, inheritance, rules for dealing with disputes of all kinds, that sort of thing. Everything, really.’

  Each dwarf mine4 has its own ‘king’ (a title roughly equivalent to ‘chief engineer’), but in disputes where the kruk is unclear the final arbiter is the Low King, whose authority extends over all dwarfish communities. He is chosen by the senior dwarfs, usually from among the leading families, and is crowned sitting upon the Scone of Stone. He must sit on it to give his judgements, as all Low Kings have done ever since the days of King B’hrian Bloodaxe, fifteen hundred years ago. This scone is the supreme example of a traditional dwarf bread – a highly prized product used by dwarfs as a food of last resort, and regarded as utterly inedible by all other races. It also serves as a weapon. Some observers claim to have seen it being fashioned with hammer and anvil. Specimens kept in museums for decades, if not centuries, show little change from the day they were baked. That, however, is not why the Scone is held in deep reverence and guarded with the utmost care. King B’hrian Bloodaxe, fifteen hundred years ago, sat on it while it was still soft, and left his impression upon it. It is now the very seat of majesty, conferring legitimacy on each new ruler.

  This should not seem surprising to us. Pretty well every country can show at least one rock on to which some ancient hero or holy man has stamped his footprints – or hand-prints, or the mark of his knees, or the hoof-prints of his horse. Many are sites of pilgrimage. Some, in Britain and Ireland, are symbols of authority. One famous Scottish one was the Stone of the Footprints on the island of Islay in the Hebrides, a rock about seven foot square marked with two prints; at his inauguration, each chief of the MacDonalds would set his feet in them and stand there, sword in hand, to take his oath. This showed that he would walk in the ways of justice established by his forebears, and held his power by right. This particular stone, alas, was destroyed some three hundred years ago.

  The most famous of all inauguration stones is the Stone of Scone, on which generations of medieval kings of Scotland were crowned. Some say it originally came from Ireland, and is identical with the legendary Liafail, which screamed a greeting when a rightful high king of Ireland stood on it; if so, it is at least 2,300 years old. It does not, however, bear any imprints. It was removed from the castle of Scone, near Perth, in 1296 by Edward I of England after his victory over the Scots; for centuries it was kept in Westminster Abbey, built into an ornate wooden throne on which every monarch (including the present Queen) has sat for her or his coronation. In 1950 it was stolen, and recovered a few months later – or was it? Some say what was recovered was only a replica. In any case, real or replica, the Westminster stone was returned to Scotland in 1996, and is now in Edinburgh Castle. Clearly the Stone of Scone and the Scone of Stone echo one another across the multiverse.

  Curiously, and we advance it with some caution, our worl
d may offer a more direct parallel with the Scone of Stone. In her book Footprints in Stone Janet Bord mentions a local legend that there’s said to be a stone behind the main altar in Reims cathedral with the marks of Christ’s buttocks. He was helping masons build the main doorway, and felt a bit tired. So many comments spring to mind, but the only one we will allow to spring further is that stories of Jesus helping in the construction were endemic during the cathedral-building era, and this one has the feel of a workmen’s legend, especially the sort which would be told to wide-eyed apprentices.

  Let us return to the Discworld. There, dwarfs are famous workmen. As Captain of the City Watch, Vimes had to learn about the folkways of this important ethnic minority. When one of the city dwarfs was murdered, and later when one who had joined the multiracial City Watch was killed in the course of his duties, Vimes learned a good deal. For one thing, a dead dwarf’s tools are always melted down, however fine they are, since no one else would want to use them:

  ‘What, use another dwarf’s actual tools?’ Carrot’s mouth twisted in distaste. ‘Oh no, that’s not … right. I mean, they’re … part of him. I mean … someone else using them, after he’s used them all these years, I mean … urrgh!’ [Men at Arms]

  And a weapon, of the finest quality, will be placed in his grave. Vimes, examining the murdered Bjorn Hammerhock’s workshop, noticed a particularly heavy axe etched with intricate patterns. This, Carrot explains, is a burial weapon:

  ‘It’s made to be buried with a dwarf. Every dwarf is buried with a weapon. You know? To take with him to … wherever he’s going.’

  ‘But it’s fine workmanship! And it’s got an edge like— aargh,’ Vimes sucked his finger, ‘like a razor!’

  Carrot looked shocked. ‘Of course. It would be no good facing them with an inferior weapon.’

  ‘What them are you talking about?’

  ‘Anything bad he encounters on his journey after death,’ said Carrot, a shade awkwardly.

  This is so essential that Cuddy, the dwarf watchman, flatly refuses to depart into the afterlife because his axe has been shattered in the fall that killed him. He protests to Death that he needs a good weapon:

  ‘If I’m not going to be properly buried, I ain’t going. My tortured soul will walk the world in torment.’

  IT DOESN’T HAVE TO.

  ‘It can if it wants to,’ snapped the ghost of Cuddy.

  Many, many human societies in this world have agreed with the dwarfs that the dead should be given their weapons, and anything else they might need on the journey. And archaeologists are very grateful to them – especially to the ones who carefully laid the stuff in the grave, rather than those who tossed it on to a funeral pyre, even if from the ghost’s point of view both methods are equally good. Obviously, archaeologists can’t tell from material remains whether in these old societies the living also felt (as Carrot does) that there’s something disgusting about using weapons and tools that had belonged to the dead, but it would not be surprising if they did. In the modern world, Gypsies traditionally approve of the idea of burning a dead man’s caravan and all its contents, though this means such financial loss to the family that nowadays it is rarely done. So too on the Disc, the Chalkland shepherds burned Granny Aching’s hut after her death, knowing none of them would dare use something she had made so much her own (see A Hatful of Sky).

  One of us recalls a metalwork shop staffed by very old men. When one of them died, his personal tools were left on the bench where he’d put them, untouched, and were gradually buried under workshop debris. It does not need a fevered imagination to see that in the days when tools were an expensive lifetime investment, shaped over the years to their owner’s hand, there would be a certain unfocused distaste for handling them after a workmate’s death.

  *

  Outsiders often assume that because all dwarfs look, dress and behave alike, have masculine names, and refer to one another as ‘he’, they are in fact all male. This is completely untrue – the population, as with other humanoid races, is fifty per cent male and fifty per cent female. But very, very, very few dwarfs would ever admit this statistic in public. And (until very recently) none would let it be publicly known that they themselves belong to the female fifty per cent.

  Even when outsiders know about this, they underestimate the distress it can cause. When the dwarf Cheery Littlebottom joined the Ankh-Morpork Watch, the werewolf Angua guessed that ‘he’ was really ‘she’, but couldn’t understand why being spotted was so shattering:

  Cheery sagged on to a seat. ‘How could you tell? Even other dwarfs can’t tell! I’ve been so careful!’

  ‘I don’t know why you’re so upset,’ said Angua. ‘I thought dwarfs hardly recognized the difference between male and female, anyway. Look, there’s plenty of women in this town that’d love to do things the dwarf way. I mean, what are the choices they’ve got? Barmaid, seamstress, or somebody’s wife. While you can do anything the men do …’

  ‘Provided we do only what the men do,’ said Cheery.

  Angua paused. ‘Oh,’ she said. ‘I see. Hah. Yes, I know that tune.’ [Feet of Clay]

  Encouraged by Angua, Cheery gradually yields to her suppressed longing for a bit of jewellery and a dab of lipstick; eventually and with much nervousness, she dons a mid-calf leather skirt (still keeping helmet, breastplate, and beard, naturally). Some other dwarf watchmen react with horror:

  ‘That’s … female clothes, isn’t it?’

  ‘Well?’ she quavered. ‘So what? I can if I want to.’

  ‘That’s … my mother never even … urgh … That’s disgusting! In public too! What happens if kids come in? I can see your ankles!’

  As it turns out, other she-dwarfs in Ankh-Morpork soon follow Cheery’s lead and pluck up courage to ‘come out’. But when her duties take her to the old homelands in the mountains, she has to face traditionalists who think it an obscene abomination, a denial of all true dwarfishness, for a female even to admit her gender, let alone to flaunt it by her appearance. The fact that the relatively liberal King Rhys Rhysson accepts her presence, and actually shakes hands with her, is for them a major culture shock.

  It is fascinating to compare the way Discworld dwarfs view femininity with the rules, taboos and superstitions about women in many Earthly societies, past and present. At first glance, they seem to be opposites. Dwarfs expect females to conceal their gender, to dress exactly like males, to be warriors, miners, blacksmiths and so forth, just like males. On Earth, on the contrary, societies and religions which feel strongly on questions of gender abominate the idea of a woman dressing like a man. They expect her to wear distinctively female clothing, obeying rules as to what is or is not ‘modest’: the most important concerns usually being the length of the skirt and how much of the hair, head and face should be concealed. In extreme cases, women end up looking more like small perambulating tents than human beings. So, although their garb proclaims their gender, at the same time it hides it, as surely as that of a Discworld she-dwarf.

  As regards work practices, however, Discworld dwarfs are not hampered by the same taboos as Earth’s older traditional societies, where it would be out of the question for a woman to take up man’s work. Even in European countries in recent times, in some ultra-masculine occupations it was believed that the mere presence of a woman brought bad luck. Women were not allowed to go down mines or on board fishing boats – indeed, simply to meet a woman on the road down to the beach would make a fisherman give up his plans for the day and head back home.

  Behind this, rarely mentioned openly, is a deep-rooted horror of menstruation, regarded as a source of magical harm in primitive societies, and as a pollution in the Bible. Sir James Frazer’s The Golden Bough gives examples of taboos among the native peoples of Australia, North America and elsewhere: a menstruating woman must not touch a man, or his tools and weapons, or any object he may use, or he will surely die; she must not touch freshly killed meat, or it will go bad; she must not go anywhere nea
r the pastures, or the cows will die. There is a whole list of similar notions in the writings of the Roman naturalist Pliny, who regarded them as proven scientific facts: her touch will turn milk sour, cause plants to wither, blunt razors, cloud mirrors, and so on. Most of them crop up again in relatively modern European folklore. As recently as 1846 Victor Hugo noted that menstruating women were not allowed into parts of the Paris catacombs where mushrooms were grown, as their presence would make the mushrooms rot. And to this day some Orthodox Jews will not shake hands with a gentile woman, for fear she might be having her period (a Jewish woman would know she must keep out of their way at this time).

  Dwarfs say of themselves that they are not a religious race. True, they have been heard to utter some rather strange words, which may be the names of gods, if they drop something heavy on their toes. They also talk about Agi Hammerthief, a mischievous sort of sprite who hangs about in mines and makes off with the tool you were quite sure you’d put down just there. Sometimes, in a dark tunnel, you can hear his distant laughter. But they don’t count these things as religion; they don’t take them seriously.

  What dwarfs do take very seriously indeed are the Laws, which were called into existence, at the beginning of time, by Tak. Who Tak was or is, is something they do not discuss, but every dwarf knows the Tale of the Things Tak Wrote:

  The first thing Tak did, he wrote himself.

  The second thing Tak did, he wrote the Laws.

  The third thing Tak did, he wrote the World.

  The fourth thing Tak did, he wrote a cave.

  The fifth thing Tak did, he wrote a geode, an egg of stone. [Thud!]

  When the geode hatched in the twilight of the cave, the First Man and the First Dwarf were born, but only the First Dwarf found the Laws Tak had written. Finally came the First Troll. The conclusion of the Tale was deliberately distorted for thousands of years in order to justify the hatred dwarfs felt for trolls, but the true text has now been recovered. It runs: