The Folklore of Discworld

by Terry Pratchett

Nowadays, if you go looking for ‘Biddy Early’s Cottage’, you will eventually be directed to a lonely, tumbledown building at the far end of a weed-choked path. You will find that others have been there before you, leaving their tokens on windowsill and doorstep – coins, flowers, strips of cloth, candles, beer bottles. She is not forgotten.

  In fact Biddy Early needs a book of her own, and our bibliography has at least two.

  OF HATS AND BROOMS

  There is of course the pointy hat. And the broomstick. Every Discworld witch uses these, and as far as we know they always have. Yet the broomstick is merely a convenience, and the hat is not in itself magical. Its secret – and it is one of the great secrets of witchcraft – lies elsewhere. When Granny challenges clever young Esk to discover it, Esk examines the hat carefully.

  There was nothing particularly strange about it, except that no one in the village had one like it. But that didn’t make it magical … It was just a typical witch’s hat. Granny always wore it when she went into the village, but in the forest she just wore a leather hood …

  ‘I think I know,’ she said at last.

  ‘Out with it, then.’

  ‘It’s sort of in two parts.’

  ‘Well?’

  ‘It’s a witch’s hat because you wear it. But you’re a witch because you wear the hat. Um.’

  ‘So –’ prompted Granny.

  ‘So people see you coming in the hat and the cloak and they know you’re a witch and that’s why your magic works?’ [Equal Rites]

  On Earth too, some people who practised magic for a living appreciated the value of eye-catching clothes and headgear, though there was no uniform style. There was Mother Redcap, for instance, a fortune-teller in Camden Town in London in the seventeenth century, whose appearance was definitely eccentric. She was strikingly ugly, kept a huge black cat, and always wore the red bonnet which gave her her nickname, plus a grey shawl with strange black patches. From a distance, they looked like flying bats. Then there was Billy Brewer, the most famous fortune-teller and magical healer in nineteenth-century Somerset, who practised in Taunton from the 1840s till his death in 1890 and called himself the Wizard of the West; he went about the streets wearing a long Inverness cloak, a tattered brown wig, and a sombrero, with gold and silver rings glittering on every finger. This did wonders for his reputation.

  In the matter of pointy hats and broomsticks, it is a curious fact that nowadays, as soon as you say ‘witch’ people just see the hat and the broom, and yet three hundred years ago they were very, very rare. Many people believed that witches could fly through the air, but they were said to do this by riding on all kinds of everyday objects and animals, not just brooms. The fashion for broomsticks began in late medieval France and Flanders, and only started spreading after about 1600; in Germany, cooking sticks were preferred; in Britain, pitchforks and hurdles. In Russian fairy tales, there’s the famous witch Baba Yaga, a child-eating ogress who lives in the forest; she often travels high above the tree-tops, sitting in an iron kettle or a stone mortar.

  As for the hat, nobody, in all the witch trials of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, ever stepped into court and said, ‘I know she’s a witch because she wears a pointy hat.’ No paintings, prints or pamphlets of that period show it; if a witch is wearing any headgear at all, it is that of ordinary everyday dress. But then things change. If we look at William Hogarth’s cartoon of 1762 which mocks ‘Credulity, Superstition and Fanaticism’, we can see a preacher brandishing a doll dressed as a witch. She’s an ugly old woman. In a pointy hat. Astride a broom. Something remarkable must have happened, since Hogarth obviously expected everybody to know what his picture meant. And that was only the beginning, because now there are broomsticks, black cloaks and pointy hats in every toyshop in the run-up to Halloween. They are spreading fast, even in countries which had never heard of them fifty years ago. In Sweden, for instance, until quite recently witches wore aprons and head-scarves when they gathered for their annual Great Sabbat (held at Easter), but now it’s cloaks and pointy hats for them too.

  So what can have happened? There can only be one explanation – this costume was invented on the Discworld and rightfully belongs there, but the image it creates is so powerful that it is seeping out across the multiverse, and before long people will recognize it in every other world there is.

  SO WHAT DO WITCHES ACTUALLY

  DO, THEN?

  Whatever might be the case elsewhere and elsewhen, in Lancre witchcraft is seen as an honourable profession. Witches get respected. They don’t go in for fancy titles, but use good old-fashioned homely names which speak volumes for their solid respectability – Dame this, Old Mother that, Gammer t’other, and of course Granny and Nanny. It is to them that the village turns when a child or a cow falls desperately sick, when a woman is having a difficult labour, when those who are dying cannot actually die. It is then that the witch has to bring help – and take responsibility. Nobody knows this better than Granny Weatherwax.

  There were stories that were never to be told, the little secret stories enacted in little rooms …

  They were about those times when medicines didn’t help and headology was at a loss because a mind was a rage of pain in a body that had become its own enemy, when people were simply in a prison made of flesh, and at times like this she could let them go. There was no need for desperate stuff with a pillow, or deliberate mistakes with the medicine. You didn’t push them out of the world, you just stopped the world pulling them back. You just reached in, and … showed them the way …

  She’d been a witch here all her life. And one of the things a witch did was stand right on the edge, where the decisions had to be made. You made them so that others didn’t have to, so that others could even pretend to themselves that there were no decisions to be made, no little secrets, that things just happened. You never said what you knew. And you didn’t ask for anything in return. [Carpe Jugulum]

  Well, true enough, you didn’t ask, but, as Nanny Ogg says, ‘There’s ways and ways of not askin’, if you get my meaning. People can be very gen’rous to witches. They do like to see a happy witch.’ And it was indeed amazing how many people would pop round to a witch’s cottage from time to time with a basket of this or a bottle of that, and would volunteer to do a bit of digging, or to check that the chimneys were OK.

  Magrat once grumbled that Granny Weatherwax hardly ever did ‘real magic’ – ‘What good is being a witch if you don’t do magic? Why doesn’t she use it to help people?’

  To which Nanny Ogg replied that it was precisely because she knew how good she would be at it that she didn’t. Nanny meant that magic is power, and where there is power, there is always the temptation to abuse it. Granny steered clear of that temptation, knowing its strength only too well. Moreover, she thought that you could not help people with magic, though you could certainly help them by headology and hard work.

  All this is very much like what used to go on on Earth up to a hundred years or so ago – maybe even more recently, in some parts. There were women who knew charms and cures, who told fortunes, who acted as midwives and nurses, who knew what counter-spells to use against bewitchment. And men too. You could find them in both villages and towns, and their clients came from miles around. Some openly made a career of it, taking payment in cash for their services, others used Nanny Ogg’s technique (with an edge to it). A Sussex village witch in the 1890s, for example, was described to a folklorist in 1941, in the Sussex County Magazine.

  Her reputation was very valuable to her. If she stopped a child and said, ‘What a fine crop of plums your mother had down Crabtree Lane, dearie,’ the result would be a basket of the best plums, as otherwise the tree would wither and die. So she kept herself provided with good things.

  But you had to be careful what you called such people, since on Earth the word ‘witch’ so often meant someone who uses magic to harm, not to help. It was more polite to say ‘wise woman’, ‘white witch’, ‘charmer’, ‘cunni
ng man’, even ‘wizard’ – and latterly a ‘District Nurse’. But shorn of the little nods to superstition, what they had and have in common has been a certain strength of character, practical experience and the ability to take charge of a situation.

  Yet, in spite of these parallels, there are important differences between magical practitioners in the two universes.

  The most far-reaching concerns the source of their power. On the Earth it was generally assumed that magic power must originate in some non-human source, and that the witch had received it as a gift or reward, or through some pact or bargain. Those who feared and hated witches accused them of having pledged their souls to devils. Some of the more learned magicians boasted that their knowledge came from angels and spirits. Some Scottish wise women claimed they had been taught charms and remedies by elves, whom they would visit in the hollow hills, or by the dead. In other lands, gods and the spirits of ancestors were the power sources.

  The witches of Lancre have no such ideas. Their skill and power are their own innate gifts, carefully honed by practice and observation. They have no dealings with the gods or the dead, despise demons, and rightly regard elves as dangerous and evil. Nor do they depend on ‘familiars’ to act on their behalf, as Earthly witches were said to do – these being minor demons, usually in the form of toads, mice, or cats, who were loaned to witches by the Devil and would perform magical tasks in exchange for a few drops of blood. (The cat Greebo is no demon; he is nothing more, and nothing less, than a cat. Miss Tick’s toad appears to have no magical abilities at all; his power of speech is merely the residue of his previous human faculties.)

  Another major difference is that on the Discworld witches undertake one dangerous duty that ‘our’ witches have no idea of. It is their responsibility to defend their homeland against insidious supernatural invasions. Blatant attacks by Creatures from the Dungeon Dimensions are usually dealt with by the wizards of Unseen University, who can be relied on to recognize a tentacular threat when it turns up on their doorstep, but it takes a witch to fight the more subtle menace of vampires or elves. Their epic struggles on behalf of Lancre are recounted in Lords and Ladies and Carpe Jugulum. Never, in the field of inter-species conflict, was so much owed by so many to so few. But do the people of Lancre appreciate this? Do they, hell! They don’t even notice. Which is perhaps how it should be.

  WICKED WITCHES

  The witches of Lancre remember stories about other witches long ago, or maybe not so long ago, whom they disapprove of. Witches who have gone to the bad, who have crossed over to the Dark Side. There is something of the dark in the Weatherwax heredity, and Granny was for a long time worried about her own Nana, Alison Weatherwax, who disappeared in Uberwald and was rumoured to have hobnobbed with vampires. Fortunately, the rumour was false. She didn’t hobnob with them, she staked them.

  Then there was Black Aliss. Not exactly a bad witch, but so powerful that one couldn’t really tell the difference, and deeply affected by narrative patterns similar to those which the Brothers Grimm recorded on Earth. Magrat asked about her once.

  ‘She was before your time,’ said Nanny Ogg. ‘Before mine, really. She lived over Skund way. Very powerful witch.’

  ‘If you listen to rumour,’ said Granny.

  ‘She turned a pumpkin into a royal coach once,’ said Nanny.

  ‘Showy,’ said Granny Weatherwax. ‘That’s no help to anyone, turning up at a ball smelling like a pie. And that business with the glass slipper. Dangerous, to my mind.’

  ‘But the biggest thing she ever did,’ said Nanny, ignoring the interruption, ‘was to send a whole palace to sleep for a hundred years until …’ She hesitated. ‘Can’t remember. Was there rose bushes involved, or was it spinning wheels in that one?’ …

  ‘Why did they call her Black Aliss?’

  ‘Fingernails,’ said Granny.

  ‘And teeth,’ said Nanny Ogg. ‘She had a sweet tooth. Lived in a real gingerbread cottage. Couple of kids shoved her in her own oven at the end. Shocking.’ [Wyrd Sisters]

  One sign that things weren’t quite right with Black Aliss was that she used to cackle. So one day when Granny Weatherwax uttered a cackle (though she swore it was just a rather rough chuckle), Nanny Ogg warned her:

  ‘You want to watch out that you don’t end up the same way as she did. She went a bit funny at the finish, you know. Poisoned apples and suchlike.’ [Wyrd Sisters]

  But Black Aliss wasn’t really bad, not out and out bad. It was just that she got so involved in old stories – those rural myths that happen over and over again and everyone knows about – that they sent her weird in the head, so she lost track of what was real and what wasn’t. ‘I mean, she didn’t ever really eat anyone,’ said Nanny. ‘Well. Not often. I mean, there was talk, but …’

  Her name can’t have helped, for names shape people, and this one carries sinister echoes drifting across from the Earth. There, in the city of Leicester, a hideous hag called Black Annis lived in a cave in the Dane Hills, just outside the town. She had a dark blue face, and her nails were long sharp talons. There can be no doubt that she ate people – naughty children mostly, but good ones too if they stayed out late. She would lurk in a tree overhanging the mouth of her cave, ever ready to spring like a wild beast on any stray children passing below; then she would scratch them to death with her claws, suck their blood, and hang up their skins to dry. If memories from Black Annis’s mind had infected Black Aliss, it’s a wonder that she didn’t become far more wicked than she did.

  Names shape people. When a young witch gives herself a new name, it tells you who and what she wants to be – who and what she will inevitably become. Most times, all it means is a little vanity, a little snobbishness and misplaced romance. If a girl named Violet prefers to be ‘Magenta’, or an Agnes becomes ‘Perdita’, that does no great harm. But if a Lucy turns into a ‘Diamanda’, that shows she’s already a bright, hard little bitch, and intends to become brighter and harder.

  So what of that most powerful and evil of witches, who began her life in Lancre as plain Lily Weatherwax, but took the name Lilith when she moved to Genua? How did it come into her mind? Surely it must have arrived as a particle of inspiration, originating in a parallel universe. For in Earthly myth and legend ‘Lilith’ is the name of a terrible female demon, noted for pride as well as cruelty. It is said that she was Adam’s first wife, but refused to submit to his authority and fled from Eden into the desert, where she consorted with demons and became a demon herself. Ever since, she has exploited her beauty by seducing sleeping men in their dreams, and satisfied her cruelty by killing women in childbirth and strangling young babies. She feeds on their blood and sucks the marrow from their bones. And so, in her own way, does Lilith of Genua. She takes people’s lives and twists them, sucking away their will-power and personality, forcing them into the patterns of old stories where she, and she alone, is in control. Yet all the time she is enslaving them, she convinces herself that she is the good godmother, the good witch. And if that’s not being a wicked witch, what is?

  Chapter 9

  THE LAND OF

  LANCRE

  LANCRE LANDMARKS

  The Dancers

  WHEN PEOPLE HAVE LIVED in the same place for generations, they know every inch of the countryside as if it were their own backyard, which it often is. They like things to have reasons, a name, a history, an explanation. Particularly an explanation. Everything inexplicable demands an explanation. Narrativium takes over, the land becomes filled with stories, and the result is a fine crop of folklore. On the Discworld the process is most obvious in Lancre and on the Chalk, though much the same thing would be found in every country if anyone went to look.

  Of course, there are always people who wouldn’t take a folk tale seriously even if it jumped up and bit them (which, given the power of narrativium, it might quite well do). Consider the case of Eric Wheelbrace, that most resolute and rational of ramblers, now alas missing and presumed dead. Among interesting
features noted in his essay ‘Lancre: Gateway to the Ramtops’ (included in A Tourist Guide to Lancre), he briefly mentions the Dancers, a group of standing stones on a small area of moorland about midway between Lancre River and the Ramtops:

  There are eight of them, in a circle wide enough to throw a stone across. They are reddish, about man height, and barely thicker than a man as well. Local legend has it that they are a gateway into the kingdom of the elves but the truth is likely to be much more prosaic. They are typical of a style of silicon chronograph constructed in the dawn of time by our ignorant forebears. Basically, they are an underused resource, and I for one intend to organize a Lancre Music and Dance Festival next year, based round the stones, which are in a perfect location for that sort of activity. It is my belief that the stories are put about by the locals in order to keep people away, but we will not be deterred. [A Tourist Guide to Lancre]

  Oh deary, deary me. Eight of them, a magic number. And called The Dancers, too, with a Piper and a Drummer among them. This looks very much like a warning that something eldritch happened there in the olden days, and maybe could happen again. The witches have done their best to make sure everyone avoids the place. Even the more stupid locals have some notion of the dangers:

  ‘I remember an old story about this place,’ said Baker. ‘Some man went to sleep up here once, when he was out hunting.’

  ‘So what? I can do that,’ said Carter. ‘I go to sleep every night, reg’lar.’

  ‘Ah, but this man, when he woke up and went home, his wife was carrying on with someone else and all his children had grown up and didn’t know who he was.’ [Lords and Ladies]

  These weird tricks of time always happen when someone is taken out of their own world into Elfland, as we noted in an earlier chapter. But in what sense are the stones themselves Dancers? Since the locals didn’t tell Wheelbrace, or if they did he wasn’t listening, we must look to the Earth for the explanation, thanks to some of those remarkable parallels and echoes between one universe and another.