The Folklore of Discworld

by Terry Pratchett

  ‘Four. One under each foot. Seen ’em do it. You see a cow in a field, mindin’ its own business, next minute the grass is rustlin’. Some little bugger shouts “Hup, hup, hup,” and the poor beast goes past, voom! without its legs movin’. Backwards, sometimes. They’re stronger’n cockroaches. You step on a pictsy, you’d better be wearin’ good thick soles.’ [Lords and Ladies]

  Another clan of Feegles settled in Ireland, where they changed their way of dressing to suit local fashions, but continued to spread undiluted terror. People there were too scared to use their proper name, so they called them ‘the good folk’, hoping they might take the hint. It didn’t work. The poet William Allingham records the lament of some Irish humans:

  Up the airy mountain,

  Down the rushy glen,

  We daren’t go a-hunting

  For fear of little men.

  Wee folk, good folk,

  Trooping all together,

  Green jacket, red cap,

  And grey cock’s feather.

  On the Discworld, Feegles initially took up residence on the high moors of Uberwald, but some came into conflict with vampires who objected to the presence of any others of the ‘old races’. Since vampires can fly and Feegles can’t (except on large birds), the former had an unfair advantage, and the latter decided to move on. They arrived in Lancre, where, in return for timely help given to King Verence, they were granted possession of an island on a lake, with lots of fish around, and the chance of good hunting up the valley, provided they promised not to go cattle-raiding.

  There are other Feegle clans on the Downland Chalk. One group lives inside the large burial mound of some ancient king, whose bones don’t bother them at all, and whose gold occasionally comes in useful. These particular Feegles are probably unique in that some of them have actually been seen doing chores for a human girl, Tiffany Aching, a young witch whom they greatly respect. In general, however, we must repeat the warning that pictsies are not pixies. As Nanny Ogg has remarked, if you leave a saucer of milk out for them, hoping they’ll do the washing-up while you’re asleep, all that’ll happen is that the ‘little buggers will break into your cottage and steal everything in your drinks cabinet’.

  Very occasionally, for reasons unknown, an individual Feegle may leave his clan for a while, to get a taste of city life. One such is Wee Mad Arthur, rat-catcher and pest-destroyer in Ankh-Morpork, who plays a crucial role in Feet of Clay. The locals refer to him as a ‘gnome’, but his accent, his strength and his fondness for head-butting all show he is a true Feegle.

  No one could clear out rats like Wee Mad Arthur. Old and cunning rats that knew all about traps, deadfalls and poison were helpless in the face of his attack, which was where, in fact, he often attacked. The last thing they felt was a hand gripping each of their ears, and the last thing they saw was his forehead, approaching at speed. [Feet of Clay]

  The same may well be true of the ‘gnome’ Buggy Swires, a recently recruited Corporal in the City Watch, where he is the head (and only member) of the Airborne Section, as mentioned in Monstrous Regiment. He patrols the skies by riding on a large female buzzard named Morag, who was trained by pictsies and is well worth the crate of whisky she cost the Watch. Typical! Shakespeare’s Ariel thought himself a fine fellow because he could fly on a bat’s back, but only a large bird of prey will do for a Feegle.

  The time that the Feegles or their ancestors spent in Scotland has had a deep influence on them (unless, who knows, it was the other way around). Besides the tattoos and the kilts, they have developed a taste for strong liquor, and even for haggis. Each clan keeps a bard and musician, called a gonnagle, with a repertoire of heroic lays, laments, and martial music played on the mousepipes. Such performers are invaluable in battle, for terrorizing the enemy. When Tiffany Aching and the Feegles of the Chalk are attacked by a pack of fairy grimhounds, the venerable William the gonnagle takes out his pipes:

  ‘I shall play,’ he announced, as the dogs got close enough for Tiffany to see the drool, ‘that firrrm favourite, “the King Underrr Waterrr”.’

  As one pictsie, the Nac Mac Feegles dropped their swords and put their hands over their ears.

  William put the mouthpiece to his lips, tapped his foot once or twice, and, as a dog gathered itself to leap at Tiffany, began to play …

  The dog in front of her went cross-eyed and, instead of leaping, tumbled forward.

  The grimhounds paid no attention to the pictsies. They howled. They spun around. They tried to bite their own tails. They stumbled, and ran into one another. The line of panting death broke into dozens of desperate animals, twisting and writhing and trying to escape from their own skins. [The Wee Free Men]

  What had happened was that William had played ‘the notes of pain’, pitched too high for human ears, but agonizing to dogs. There is precedent for such skill in our world. According to ballad singers in Shetland, there was once a King Orfeo whose wife had been slain by a dart flung by the King of Fairies. So Orfeo went into Fairyland to win her back. He entered in at a grey stone, and played his pipes at the Fairy Court. First he overwhelmed his hearers with pain, then filled them with joy, and finally played a wild dance tune to make their hearts whole again:

  An first he played da notes o noy,

  An dan he played da notes o joy,

  An dan he played da göd gabber reel

  Dat meicht ha made a sick hert hale.

  Naturally, his wife was given back to him. And, unlike the Ancient Greek Orpheus, he did not lose her by looking back.

  The title of office for a Feegle bard, ‘the gonnagle’, is a touching tribute to the memory of William McGonagall (born 1825), a famously excruciating Scottish poet. He had grasped one basic point about poetry, namely that it should rhyme, eventually, but since he had not the faintest conception of rhythm he was capable of stretching a line of verse like chewing gum. As for his choice of words, the less said the better. His most celebrated production was a lament over the collapse of a railway bridge. It is long, so the first and last verses must suffice:

  Beautiful Railway Bridge of the Silv’ry Tay!

  Alas! I am very sorry to say

  That many lives have been taken away

  On the last Sabbath Day of 1879,

  Which will be remembered for a very long time.

  …

  Oh! Ill-fated Bridge of the Silv’ry Tay,

  I must now conclude my lay

  By telling the world fearlessly without the least dismay

  That your central girders would not have given way,

  At least many sensible men do say,

  Had they been supported on each side with buttresses,

  At least many sensible men confesses,

  For the stronger we our houses do build,

  The less chance we have of being killed.

  The Feegles of the Chalk have an aspiring young bard who has mastered this style to perfection, and deploys it when they are under attack from vicious little flying fairies, rather like dragonflies. Standing with one hand pressed to his heart and the other outstretched very theatrically, and rolling his eyes, he utters a long-drawn mournful moan, and launches forth.

  ‘Oooooooooooooiiiiiit is with great lamentation and much worrying dismay,’ the pictsie groaned, ‘that we rrregard the doleful prospect of Fairyland in considerrrable decay …’

  In the air, the flying creatures stopped attacking and began to panic. Some of them flew into one another.

  ‘With quite a large number of drrrrrreadful incidents happening everrry day. Including, I am sorrrry to say, an aerial attack by the otherwise quite attractive fey …’

  The flyers screeched. Some crashed into the snow, but the ones still capable of flight swarmed off amongst the trees.

  ‘Witnessed by all of us at this time, And celebrated in this hasty rhyme,’ he shouted after them.

  And they were gone.

  The old bard congratulates the young one:

  ‘That, lad,’ he said pro
udly, ‘was some of the worst poetry I have heard for a long time. It was offensive to the ear and a torrrture to the soul. The last couple of lines need some work but ye has the groanin’ off fiiine. A’ in a’, a verrry commendable effort! We’ll make a gonnagle out o’ ye yet!’ [The Wee Free Men]

  The speech of the Feegles is markedly Scottish, to the point that, though it is not technically a foreign language (unlike, for example, that of dwarfs), most people in Lancre and Ankh-Morpork find it very hard to follow. Yet it’s a good language, as Nanny Ogg says, ‘with a hint of heather and midden in it’. Most of it is a form of Lowlands Scots peppered with Glasgow slang, but there are several words adopted from Gaelic, the Celtic language of the Highlands and Isles, one of which is of considerable folkloric significance. In its original tongue it is Cailleach, pronounced approximately ‘kall-yack’ and meaning ‘old woman, hag’. Like ‘hag’, it often implies magical power, and so can mean ‘witch’. In the Feegle language it has developed two quite different forms. The first, used light-heartedly in ordinary speech, is ‘callyake’. For example, a Feegle who had been startled by Greebo shouted at Nanny Ogg, ‘Ach, hins tak yer scaggie, yer dank owd callyake!’, which appears to mean, ‘Oh, devil take your moggy, you daft old woman!’ But the second form, ‘kelda’, is a title to be used with the deepest respect.

  Feegles are matriarchal. Each community is ruled by a kelda, who has come from some different clan when young, to choose one of them as her husband and be their Queen and their Wise Woman for the rest of her life. Like a queen bee, she bears an incredible number of offspring, but in her case (unlike the bee’s) all but one or two of them are male. This means that all the men of the clan are either her sons or her husband’s brothers, apart from a few of her own brothers who came with her as bodyguards, and probably the gonnagle, since these travel from clan to clan. Keldas are rather taller than the male Feegles, and very, very fat, looking just like the little figurines of goddesses carved on Earth way back in the times of ice and mammoths. Their word is law, as truly as if they were indeed goddesses. As for the title itself, though centuries of use have worn it down, its origins can still be guessed. It comes from Cailleach Dubh, ‘the Black Hag’, a supernatural figure in Scottish and Irish tradition who shapes the landscape, rules the seasons, protects wild animals, and confers power on favoured humans. The Cailleach Dubh was a true Mother Goddess, and the language of the Feegles honours her memory.

  And what of their own name? Here again we see the influence of the Scottish and Irish lore they picked up during their stay on the Earth (or vice versa). ‘Mac Feegle’ means ‘Sons of Feegle’, and ‘Feegle’ is clearly a variation of ‘Fingal’, the eighteenth-century Scottish name for a great hunter and warrior hero in Celtic tradition. Tales about him under his older name of Finn or Fionn mac Cumhaill have been popular for over twelve hundred years in Ireland, and almost equally long in Scotland, where he is called Finn MacCool. He was the chieftain of the fianna, a band of wild young men who lived by hunting deer and wild boar, fighting, cattle-raiding and robbing. At times they might take service under some king and fight in his wars; at other times they chose an independent life. All were fearless in confronting any enemy, natural or supernatural. Fionn himself more than once entered some sinister region of the Otherworld and had to fight his way out against great odds. It is very understandable that the race now known as the Nac Mac Feegle should wish to take his name.

  Chapter 5

  TROLLS

  TROLLS ARE A UNIQUE life-form because their ‘flesh’ is composed of silicon in various complex combinations. At least, so it is said. They look rocky. Lichen grows on their heads. They have carbon as well as silicon in their make-up – in their teeth, which are of diamond – and from time to time, at intervals of many centuries, there appears a King of Trolls who is pure diamond. In one sense, therefore, trolls belong in the mineral kingdom, and exposure to strong sunlight often puts them into a fully stony state until nightfall – although in truth it is heat rather than light that slows down their brains.

  At the same time, they do have most of the attributes of animal life: they eat and drink (mineral and chemical substances only), walk and talk, are male or female, make love and have children. Their given names are always related to geology – Mica, Bluejohn, Flint, Morraine (or Brick, for one born in the city). They can be killed by force, but do not (as far as is known) ever die a natural death. Instead, after several centuries of active life, a troll withdraws to some remote mountain area and settles down in one spot among the rocks to think long, slow thoughts about nothing in particular. Gradually he becomes more and more rock-like, till he is to all intents and purposes simply a landscape feature.

  Many have come down from the Ramtop Mountains, which for most of them is their native region, and have come looking for work in towns and cities. Being immensely strong and intimidating, they are welcome wherever a hired fist is needed – as private bodyguards, barmen, bouncers or splatters (who carry out the same duties, but with messier results). One, who has adopted the human name of Big Jim Beef, is employed as a customs officer and frontier guard for the kingdom of Lancre; when not making checks on travellers, he lives under the Troll Bridge. It is not a good idea to mention billygoats in his hearing. Unfortunately, some of the young city-dwelling trolls give themselves unpleasantly thuggish airs; they go in for elaborate body-carving and real skull pendants, and become addicted to various brain-rotting substances (and practically anything can slow down a troll’s brain).

  The best-known troll is Detritus, who was recruited into the Ankh-Morpork City Watch by Captain Vimes, and has proved a most keen and loyal Sergeant, if a little slow on the uptake. Trolls are not in fact stupid, despite what most people think, but their brains function properly only at low temperatures (because of the silicon), so the warm climate of the valleys and plains makes them very sluggish, especially in the daytime. Detritus now gets some help from a small fan attached to his helmet, but it was only when he was accidentally shut in the refrigerated Pork Futures Warehouse that his true intelligence was revealed – as he gradually froze, he scratched calculations worthy of Einstein all over the iced-up walls. There are hints that trolls have age-old cultural traditions which no outsider knows anything about; there is talk of their history chants and stone music, for instance, and of their Long Dance. They think of Time in a curious though logical way: the future, they say, must be behind you, since you can’t see it, but the past, which you can see in your memory, must be ahead.

  There is an age-old feud between trolls and dwarfs, possibly arising from the fact that both races live in the same mountain regions, and that dwarfs spend their lives mining and tunnelling through rock – something which trolls find it upsetting to think about. It is even rumoured that dwarfs have occasionally tunnelled into the underside of a particularly stony and immobile troll. Be that as it may, the feud led to the disastrous battle of Koom Valley, said to be the only occasion in military history where each army ambushed the other. It was long ago and far away, but has never been forgotten. Koom Valley has become a myth, a state of mind.

  Where any dwarf fought any troll, there was Koom Valley. Even if it was a punch-up in a pub, it was Koom Valley. It was part of the mythology of both races, a rallying cry, the ancestral reason why you couldn’t trust those short, bearded / big, rocky bastards. [Thud!]

  And yet … and yet … if other myths can be trusted, the first man, the first dwarf and the first troll all originated in a single egg of stone, a geode, more than 500,000 years ago, and are therefore, in some sense, brothers. This myth was mentioned above, in the section on dwarfs. Its implications, together with the story of what really happened in Koom Valley, are explored in Thud!.

  Trolls also have a dislike of druids, who can be found in the small, rainy, mountainous kingdom of Llamedos. There is no mystery about the reason, for the druids of the Disc went around erecting huge stone circles in much the same way as (some folk used to say) British druids did at Stonehen
ge. Regrettable errors occurred:

  Any sapient species which spends a lot of time in a stationary, rock-like pose objects to any other species which drags it sixty miles on rollers and buries it up to its knees in a circle. It tends to feel it has cause for disgruntlement. [Soul Music]

  Even the dragging on rollers is not the worst of it. It is said (as recorded in The Light Fantastic) that one particularly skilled group of druids found a way to quarry huge slabs of high-quality stone and fly them hundreds of miles along ley-lines to the snowy Vortex Plain, where they set them up as an immense construction of concentric circles, towering trilithons, and mystic avenues, to be a great computer of the skies. It proved hopelessly inaccurate. This act of wanton cruelty to minerals made trolls still more bitter towards druids.

  On Earth, there are two quite different races claiming the name ‘troll’. One lot is to be found in Denmark: these are smallish mischievous goblins with red hair, living inside mounds and hillocks near farmland. They can be disregarded here since, apart from the name, they have nothing in common with Discworld trolls, and seem akin to Feegles.

  The other ones, however – the huge mountain trolls who live in Iceland and Norway – are remarkably like those of the Discworld, but wilder and more hostile to human beings. They are thought to be the direct descendants of the dangerous Giants of Scandinavian myth, but differ from them in being generally solitary creatures. They are immensely old and strong, and probably not as stupid as humans say they are. They have had a considerable impact on the landscape – quite literally so, since they often quarrel and hurl huge boulders at one another, and never clear the pieces away afterwards. They also send avalanches and rock-falls crashing down on anybody who annoys them by shouting among the mountains. Many of them object to humans building churches in their district, partly because they dislike Christianity itself, and partly because they hate the noise of bells. The troll’s solution is always the same: heave a large rock at it. He always misses. At least, so the stories say, but can we be sure that there are no squashed churches under any of the rocks that litter the landscape? Has anyone checked?