Secrets of the Wee Free Men and Discworld

by Linda Washington

  Peter Pan once warned Wendy that every time someone expressed disbelief in a fairy, one died. In Discworld, particularly in such books as Hogfather, you can see the aftermath of this idea. When the plot to kill the Hogfather gets under way, the personifications people thought should exist but they needed more belief in them until they could exist used to believe in and which died out—the Verruca Gnome, the oh God of Hangovers, the Cheerful Fairy, the Eater of Socks, the Hair Loss Fairy, the God of Indigestion—gain existence once more, helped by a bathroom designed by Bloody Stupid Johnson.

  Besides the ones above, who are the immortals of Discworld? We talked about Death in the last chapter. Let’s move on to some of the other major elementals.

  DISC-CLAIMER:

  Plot spoilers ahead. Read at your own risk.

  LET’S RIDE: JOINING THE HORSEY SET

  Let’s face it, if the four horsemen ride, well, the world is about to end. It’s Armageddon and we don’t mean the old Bruce Willis movie (although that was about a cataclysmic event signaling the end of the world). The four horsemen of the Apocalypse (five in Discworld, including Kaos) get a shout-out in chapter 6 of the Book of Revelation in the Bible and make a cameo in yet another sixth chapter, this one in an Old Testament book—Zechariah. In Revelation, they are the riders in white (Pestilence), red (War), black (Famine), and pale green (Death)—the anti-Easy Riders.

  Nothing but a Pest

  Pestilence is a plague or disease that can wipe out significant segments of a population. In the fourteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries, it was the black death (plague) that troubled several areas in Europe. In our day, the AIDS virus has killed millions.

  But in Discworld, Pestilence is a whiny sort of guy who hangs out in hospitals. It’s fitting that Death seeks out Pestilence first in Thief of Time, because he is first in the order of the riders listed in Revelation chapter 6. Being first doesn’t make him the most powerful of the horsemen of the “Apocralypse” nor does it mean that he’s the leader. He’s just a herald of the end of the world.

  War! Huh! What Is It Good For?

  Aside from being the subject of an Edwin Starr song from 1970, the god of war in Greek mythology is Ares, the tempestuous and little-liked son of Zeus and Hera. (Yeah, we know. Kevin Smith played him in the Xena: Warrior Princess and Hercules: The Legendary Journeys series.) In Roman mythology, he is Mars—for which the Red Planet was named.

  In Discworld, War is a henpecked husband married to a former Valkyrie. When you first see War, you can’t help but think of a retiree who sits around reminiscing about the good old days. Yet he answers the call to action, when summoned in Thief of Time.

  Famished

  “When the Lamb opened the third seal, I heard the third living creature say, ‘Come!’ I looked, and there before me was a black horse! Its rider was holding a pair of scales in his hand” (Revelation 6:5, New International Version). That’s the description of the third rider—the one who measures the high cost of bread, a way of indicating its scarcity. You’ve read about the sad result of famine in various parts of the world due to drought and other natural disasters. And Ichabod Crane in Washington Irving’s “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” is described as a veritable poster child for famine. But in Discworld, Famine is a guy hanging out in a restaurant longing after mayonnaise (or salad cream, if you prefer). But he, too, joins in the battle for the universe in Thief of Time. What would the end of the world be without famine?

  IT’S THE MOST WONDERFUL TIME OF THE YEAR: SEASONAL AND HOLIDAY PERSONIFICATIONS

  It’s About Time

  Time isn’t just something you mark or kill. In mythology, Time is actually a person—a personification of time. Every New Year’s Eve, you hear about Father Time—the old man with the scythe (not the Grim Reaper) who gets ready to make way for the new kid on the block. But in Greek mythology, he is Chronos (also spelled Kronos and Cronus), a guy with a plethora of jobs on his résumé: the king of the Titans, the god of time, and the unhappy father of Zeus who made child abuse an art form. Chronos is the Latin form of the Greek word for “time.” In Roman mythology, he is Saturn.

  In Discworld, Time is a female—the mother of Lobsang Ludd whom Susan encounters in Thief of Time. (Maybe that’s why Pratchett uses a capital letter in reference to Time in such books as Reaper Man.) You might call her “Mother Time,” although she probably wouldn’t answer to that.

  Lobsang becomes the new kid on the block when he takes over for his mother as the personification of time in Thief of Time. Time for a change, we suppose.

  In Hog Heaven

  Back when you were a kid, maybe you believed in Santa. (Maybe you still do.) That’s what kids usually do. We know that Santa Claus comes from the legends of Saint Nicholas—the bishop of Myra from the fourth century. The Hogfather is the Santa Claus/Father Christmas of Discworld, whose sleigh is pulled not by reindeer but by four boars (Gouger, Router, Tusker, and Snouter). For this spirit of Hogs-watch, pork pies and sherry take the place of the cookies and milk kids leave out for Santa in our world. But many of their other trappings of the holiday are the same: the mistletoe, the sleigh, the stockings, the carol singers, the coal, etc. Makes you feel all warm inside, doesn’t it?

  A Winter Wonderland

  Old Man Winter/Father Winter, the personification of winter, comes from Russian folklore. The Wintersmith is the personification of winter in Discworld. While a blacksmith forges metals, the Wintersmith forges snow and ice. Although the Wintersmith is as old as the hills, he appears to Tiffany Aching—his crush—as a young man.

  Discworld also has a Jack Frost who personifies frost and has a fern fixation, apparently. While the Wintersmith pelts the world with Tiffany Aching-shaped snowflakes, Jack paints windows with fern patterns. But Jack Frost comes from Norse mythology and Russian folklore. You’ve probably seen him as a winter sprite—a mischievous creature in such movies as Santa Clause 3 and obliquely in the 1996 Jack Frost, where he is a serial killer-turned-snowman who’s “chillin … and killin’,” according to the movie tagline. Talk about “Jack Frost nipping at your nose,” as the song goes, not to mention your legs and other important appendages. (Thank you, Ben Pyykkonen, for your inspiration on that last line.)

  Summer in the City

  While the Summer Lady, the personification of summer, looks like Tiffany (thanks to some interference by Tiffany in an endless dance of the seasons), hers is a Pratchett makeover à la the Persephone story from Greek mythology (see chapter 1) . Persephone was the daughter of Demeter, the goddess of the harvest. After Hades, lord of the Underworld, grabbed Persephone (without even asking for a date) and dragged her to the Underworld, Persephone’s enforced stay caused Demeter to grieve and neglect the plants and trees—thus leading to the deadness of winter.

  The Summer Lady is like Demeter in that she can cause plants to grow—which happens in the spring and summer. But she’s also like Opora, the personification of the part of summer when fruit is at its peak. That season is August through September, according to Hesiod’s Theogony.

  YOU ARE WHAT YOU DO: HOW SOME PERSONIFICATIONS ARE DEFINED

  “It’s not who I am underneath … But what I do that defines me,” declares Batman in Batman Begins.104 Some of the other personifications in Discworld could say the same thing.

  Sweet Dreams Are Made of Sand

  Who is the Sandman? A being who puts people to sleep without boring them. If you read the classic graphic novels on the Sandman—Preludes and Nocturnes being one of them—written by Neil Gaiman (Pratchett’s coauthor for Good Omens) and illustrated by Sam Kieth, Mike Dringenberg, and Malcolm Jones III, you might feel that that series provides the definitive portrayal of the Sandman. He is Dream—the personification of dreams a.k.a. Morpheus. (Morpheus in the Matrix movies had the opposite goal: to wake people up.) Dream, the younger brother of Death (a Goth-looking female), is one of the Endless—not the kind to hit people on the head with sandbags full of sand, like the Discworld Sandman does. Gaiman’s S
andman is someone who could be summoned like the Death of Discworld—by an occult rite that traps him for several decades until he escapes.

  Even if you haven’t read Gaiman’s graphic novels, you might know that Morpheus comes from Greek mythology. He’s the most powerful of the gods of dreams (the Oneroi) and the son of Hypnos, the god of sleep. Ovid wrote about the family in Metamorphoses. Morpheus’s brothers—Phobeter and Phantasos—also personify dreams.

  Supposedly, the Sandman of mythology sprinkles dust in the eyes of children to make them fall asleep. “Ready for a visit from the Sandman, Rachel? Close your eyes.” Well, that’s what parents tell their kids. Wishful thinking. Speaking of wishful thinking, back in the 1950s a song called “Mr. Sandman,” written by Pat Ballard, described some thoughts about the Sandman’s job. It was popular in the United States and Great Britain.

  Tooth Fairy

  The Tooth Fairy has existed for ages, thanks to candy, stories told around Europe, and movies starring Kirstie Alley (Toothless). You know the racket—lose a baby tooth, gain money. Sweet. (Doesn’t work if you pull out a permanent tooth.) But if you saw The 10th Kingdom—a fairy-tale miniseries on NBC in 2000 available on DVD (also a novel)—you know that the Tooth Fairy was a sadistic prison dentist. He didn’t give money—only pain.

  In Discworld, the Tooth Fairy isn’t an imaginary figure who goes around leaving money under kids’ pillows. Discworld’s first bogeyman is the head Tooth Fairy, a job that passes to Banjo Lilywhite (see chapter 12) in Hogfather. The Tooth Fairy’s tooth collection routes are parceled out like paper routes, and are managed by “tooth girls.” That’s why the Tooth Fairy is known in Discworld as Violet Bottler and various other names. But Tooth Fairy’s headquarters is a castle full of small teeth—a castle formed from the beliefs of kids everywhere.

  Discworld also has a Clinkerbell, who claims to be a troll Tooth Fairy in Feet of Clay. But that’s another story.

  The Soul Cake Duck

  If you’re looking for the Easter Bunny in Discworld, look no further than the Soul Cake Duck, who comes on Soul Cake Tuesday, rather than on a holiday like Easter. Soul Cake Tuesday signals the start of duck hunting season. On this day, children hunt for the chocolate eggs laid by the Soul Cake Duck. (In our world, we have the ones made by Cadbury or Hershey.)

  We can’t help wondering if the Soul Cake Duck inspired Puley the Pule Duck, who showed up in an episode of The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron.

  THE FACES OF FEAR: NIGHTMARE PERSONIFICATIONS

  Pixar’s Monsters, Inc. showed some of the fears common to kids. Some personifications or creatures of the imagination are all about fears, some of which we never outgrow.

  Old Man Trouble

  Putting a name and a face to something you fear takes the edge off it. Trouble is the same way. Besides being a song by Stephen Sills and a line from a George Gershwin song from 1930 (just after the troublesome Stock Market Crash), Old Man Trouble is one of the odd gods of Discworld. You can gain a sense of his reputation in Hogfather, where he’s described as “nasty.” Isn’t that just how trouble is?

  The Scissor Man

  The Scissor Man, who gets a mention in Hogfather, was a headscratcher to us, even after Jasper Fforde, the writer of the Tuesday Next and Nursery Crime series, mentioned a Scissor-man in The Fourth Bear. Guess our moms forgot to tell us about him. In Fforde’s book, the Scissor-man runs around with a giant pair of scissors and threatens to cut off the thumbs of a kid named Conrad. (There’s no watchdog committee for behavior like that.) Sounds like something out of Edward Scissorhands—the 1990 movie directed by Tim Burton.

  But the Scissor Man comes from a book by Heinrich Hoffman published in 1845 called Der Struwwelpeter—a book of “happy” nursery rhymes in the vein of Mother Goose-gone-Rambo. “Die Geschichte vom Daumenlutcher” (“The Story of the Thumb-Sucker”) describes the fate of one Konrad—a thumb-sucker who failed to heed his mother’s warning and wound up with both thumbs cut off by giant scissors wielded by a man known as “the tailor.” The late Rod Serling, creator of The Twilight Zone, could not have come up with a more macabre tale—one sure to horrify parents and delight kids.

  Discworld’s Scissor Man isn’t exactly a man, but a creature made of blades and with a stronger fear factor than “the tailor.” This creature would be handy (or rather, “scissory”) to have around the garment district of New York.

  The Bogeyman

  Did a parent ever warn you about the bogeyman? Most kids have been given a vague story about the bogeyman. The vaguer the story, the more frightening the imaginary creature. For some, he hides in the closet, like the monsters of Monsters, Inc., waiting to jump out when the lights go off. For many, he hides under the bed—again, like some of the monsters of Monsters, Inc. For others, he might bear the face of the latest serial killer or, sadly, a hurtful relative.

  In Discworld, there is more than one bogeyman. We talked about Discworld’s first bogeyman earlier. But other bogeymen, for instance, Mr. Schleppel (Reaper Man), Shlimazel (Hogfather), and Shlitzen (Feet of Clay) exist, too. (Note the pattern of the bogeymen names.) Throwing a blanket over them creates in them a sense of “existential uncertainty,” as Pratchett describes in Feet of Clay and Hogfather. In other words, they’re not sure they exist. If only we could do that with bills.

  Imagine having the power to cause personifications to pop into existence. What would your fears or hopes bring into existence? Hopefully, you won’t suffer the fate of Peachy, whose belief in the Scissor Man leads him to … the twilight zone.

  10

  It’s a Small World After All

  “Look, he’s six inches high and lives in a mushroom,” snarled Rincewind. “Of course he’s a bloody gnome.”105

  A TINY BIT OF DISCWORLD

  When Lemuel Gulliver, the sailor in Jonathan Swift’s classic, Gulliver’s Travels, was shipwrecked in Lilliput, he learned that the world was indeed small, for the land was filled with tiny people about six inches high (Lilliputians). Although normal-size back home, Gulliver was a giant to them.

  Tiny people can also be found in Discworld. And we don’t mean really teensy like Lucas, who was shrunk to ant size in The Ant Bully, or the kids or adults in Honey, I Shrunk the Kids and its sequels. We mean the four- to six-inch variety—possibly even a little smaller. They are the gnomes, Pictsies, fairies, and imps. Don’t be a hater or an underestimater because they’re small. If you were involved in a role-playing game and wanted some characters with power, you might do well to have some of these tiny titans on your side. Check out their stats.

  GNOME ON THE RANGE

  If you read Terry Brooks’s Shannara series, you probably have a different take on gnomes than you would from Gnomes by Wil Huygen and illustrated by Rien Poortvliet, the Harry Potter series, The Time-Life Encyclopedia of Things that Never Were, or Phantastes (George MacDonald), or in old video games like The Sims: Bustin’ Out, or if you checked out those found in gardens all across the world. In Gnomes, you find little old men about fifteen centimeters high (nearly six inches—the size of the Death of Rats, by the way) with long white beards and red pointed hats. (There are female gnomes as well. Unlike Discworld dwarfs, they don’t have beards.) This is the concept of gnomes that many people have. Perhaps these are the creatures depicted in Tiffany’s book, The Goode Childe’s Booke of Faerie Tales (The Wee Free Men). But in the Shannara series, gnomes are bigger.

  Gnomes aren’t the same as leprechauns—the little green men of Irish folklore who supposedly know where gold is and often make shoes—or toy-making Christmas elves or the other kind of elves that make shoes also. Gnomes come from the folklore of a number of countries, including Germany, Switzerland, and France. Supposedly, they’re helpful to humans, unlike some other fairy-tale folk (e.g., goblins and ogres). (In the Shannara series, they’re anything but helpful, seeing as how they prefer to fraternize with the enemy of good.)

  In Discworld, gnomes are about the same height as those described in Gnomes, judging by Wee Ma
d Arthur—the rat-catching precursor to the Nac Mac Feegle Buggy Swires—one of the City Watch’s finest, who is described as “a mile high in pent-up aggression,” 106 the “Swires” mentioned in The Light Fantastic, who seem too good-natured to be Buggy Swires, and the Glingleglingleglingle Fairy—a gnome in Hogfather.

  Wee Mad Arthur is like a more cynical, tougher version of the Borrowers from Mary Norton’s classic children’s series of the same name. Instead of matchboxes and thimbles, he “borrows” rats he finds lying around. He may be small, but he’s got skills.

  And Buggy Swires … like Wee Mad Arthur, he’s little but mean—not someone you’d want to cross if you’re a perpetrator or an animal predator like a mountain lion.

  In classic fairy tales, gnomes are bigger in size. They’re more like dwarfs—the earth dwellers (which is what their name means in Latin) who guard a treasure hoard. (In the Harry Potter series, goblins perform this function at Gringott’s Wizard Bank. There are garden gnomes in the series, however.) Think about Ruggedo the Nome (“gnome” without the g) King in The Magic of Oz and other Oz stories by L. Frank Baum. (Or not, if you wish.)

  Pratchett included nomes (again without the g) in The Bromeliad—a series he wrote for kids. (Truckers, Diggers, and Wings.) In that series, which takes place in the late twentieth century, we first meet the nomes living in a store. In Truckers, a group of nomes find a group of garden gnomes on sale. The nomes aren’t sure what to make of them. If they were like many people in the States, they would take the nomes and film them in various spots around the country. Don’t ask us why. It’s just done.