Discworld Annotations (15) LORDS AND LADIES
[p. 5/5] "[...] young Magrat, she of the [...] tendency to be
soppy about raindrops and roses and whiskers on kittens."
One of the best songs from _The Sound of Music_ is called 'My
Favourite Things' (it's the song Maria sings for the Von Trapp
children when they are all frightened of the thunderstorm).
The opening verse goes:
"Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens,
Bright copper kettles and warm woollen mittens,
Brown paper packages, tied up with strings,
These are a few of my favourite things."
The Von Trapp children would probably have murdered Magrat if
she had been their governess.
[p. 13/11] "But that was a long time ago, in the past [footnote:
Which is another country]"
This might refer to _Hamlet_, where the future is described as
"The undiscover'd country from whose bourn / No traveller
returns", or perhaps Terry has read _The Go-between_, a 1950
book by L. P. Hartley, which opens with the words: "The past
is a foreign country; they do things differently there", which
has become a familiar quotation in England.
[p. 13/11] "And besides, the bitch is... ...older."
This is another Christopher Marlowe quote, from _The Jew of
Malta_ (act IV, scene i):
Barnadine: "Thou hast committed --"
Barabas: "Fornication? But that was in another country; and
besides, the wench is dead."
[p. 20/16] "This was the octarine grass country."
A reference to (Kentucky) bluegrass country.
[p. 20/16] "Then, [...] the young corn lay down. In a circle."
An explanation of the Crop Circle phenomenon might be in order
here.
Crop Circles are circular patches of flattened crops which
have appeared in fields of cereals in the South and West of
England over the last few years. There is no firm evidence
pointing to their cause: this has been taken by certain
parties as a prima facie proof that they are of course caused
by either alien spacecraft or by some supernatural
intelligence, possibly in an attempt to communicate.
In recent years, circle systems have become increasingly
elaborate, most notably in the case of a circle in the shape
of the Mandelbrot Set, and another system which is shown on
the cover of the recent Led Zeppelin compilation album, which
seems to indicate that whoever's up there they probably have
long hair and say _Wow!_ and _Yeah!_ a lot. A number of staged
circle-forging challenges in the summer of '92 have
demonstrated both how easy it is to produce an impressive
circle by mundane, not to say frivolous methods, and also the
surprisingly poor ability of 'cereologists' to distinguish
what they describe as a "genuine" circle from one "merely made
by hoaxers".
Anyone with a burning desire to believe in paranormal
explanations is invited to post to the newsgroup sci.skeptic
an article asserting essentially "I believe that crop circles
are produced by UFO's/Sun Spots/The Conservative
Government/The Easter Bunny" and see how far they get....
[p. 24/19] "Nanny Ogg never did any housework herself, but she was
the cause of housework in other people."
Over on alt.fan.pratchett it was postulated that this sounded
a bit too much like a quote not to be a quote
(annotation-hunters can get downright paranoid at times), but
it took us a while to figure out where it originated, although
in retrospect we could have used Occam's razor and looked it
up in Shakespeare immediately. In _King Henry IV, part 2_, act
1, scene 2, Falstaff says:
"I am not only witty in myself,
but the cause that wit is in other men."
[p. 27/21] "Some people are born to kingship. Some achieve
kingship, or at least
Arch-Generalissimo-Father-of-His-Countryship. But Verence had
kingship thrust upon him."
The original quote is (as usual) by William Shakespeare, from
_Twelfth Night_ (act 2, scene 5), where Malvolio reads in a
letter (which he thinks was written to him by his mistress):
"In my stars I am above thee; but be not afraid of greatness:
some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have
greatness thrust upon 'em."
The dictator most associated with the phrase
'Arch-Generalissimo-Father-of-His-Countryship' is probably
Franco.
[p. 28/21] "Now he was inspecting a complicated piece of
equipment. It had a pair of shafts for a horse, and the rest of it
looked like a cartful of windmills. [...] 'It's a patent crop
rotator,' said Verence."
The patent crop rotator is an agricultural tool that might not
figure very prominently in your day-to-day conversation
(possibly since no such machine exists: crop rotation means
growing different things in a field in successive years) but
British comedy writers are apparently fascinated by it.
Several people wrote to tell me that the cult TV comedy series
_The Young Ones_ also used the patent crop rotator in their
episode _Bambi_. When Neil (the hippy) is testing Rick (the
nerd) on medieval history, the following dialogue ensues
(edited somewhat for clarity):
Rick: 'Crop rotation in the 14th century was considerably more
widespread... after... God I know this... don't tell me...
after 1172?'
Neil: 'John.'
Rick: 'Crop rotation in the 14th century was considerably more
widespread after John?'
Neil: '...Lloyd invented the patent crop rotator.'
[p. 29/22] "'I asked Boggi's in Ankh-Morpork to send up their best
dress-maker [...]'"
Boggi's = Gucci's.
[p. 38/29] "[...] it was always cheaper to build a new 33-
MegaLith circle than upgrade an old slow one [...]"
Think CPUs and MHz.
[p. 40/30] "I LIKE TO THINK I AM A PICKER-UP OF UNCONSIDERED
TRIFLES. Death grinned hopefully."
In Shakespeare's _The Winter's Tale_ we find the character
Autolycus ("a Rogue"), saying in act 4, scene 2:
"My father named me Autolycus; who being, as I am, littered
under Mercury, was likewise a snapper-up of unconsidered
trifles."
[p. 42/31] "'My lord Lankin?'"
Lord Lankin is a character in a traditional folk ballad:
"Then Lankin's tane a sharp knife
that hung down by his gaire
And he has gi'en the bonny nane
A deep wound and a sair"
[p. 67/50] "One of them was known as Herne the Hunted. He was the
god of the chase and the hunt. More or less."
See the annotation for p. 145/144 of _Wyrd Sisters_.
[p. 78/57] The names of the would-be junior witches.
Two of the names resonate with the names used in _Good Omens_:
Agnes Nitt is similar to Agnes Nutter, and Amanita DeVice
(Amanita is also the name of a gender of deadly poisonous
mushrooms) is similar to Anathema Device. There's also a
Perdita in Shakespeare's _The Winter's Tale_; the name means
'damned' or 'lost'.
In fact, all these names are based on the names of the
so-called Lancashire Witches. The deeds of this group on and
around Pendle Hill were the subject of probably England's most
famous 17th century witchhunt and trials. The story is
described in some fictional detail in a little-known book
called, surprise, _The Lancashire Witches_, written at the end
of the nineteenth century in Manchester by William Harrison
Ainsworth. Interestingly enough, Ainsworth also wrote a book
called _Windsor Castle_ in which Herne the Hunter appears as a
major character (see previous annotation).
[p. 85/62] The names of the "new directions".
'East of the Sun, West of the Moon': a fairly well-known
phrase used, amongst others, by Tolkien in a poem, by Theodore
Roosevelt as the title for a book on hunting, and by pop-group
A-ha as an album title. It originally is the title of an old
Scandinavian fairy tale, which can be found in a book by Kay
Nielsen, titled _East of the Sun and West of the Moon -Old
Tales from the North_. Terry has confirmed that this book was
his source for the phrase.
'Behind the North Wind': from the title of a book by George
McDonald: _At the Back of the North Wind_, the term itself
being a translation of _Hyperborea_.
'At the Back Of Beyond': an idiom, perhaps originating from
Sir Walter Scott's _The Antiquary_: "Whirled them to the back
o' beyont".
'There and Back Again': The sub-title of Tolkien's _The
Hobbit_.
'Beyond the Fields We Know': from Lord Dunsany's novel _The
King of Elfland's Daughter_, where "the fields we know" refers
to our world, as opposed to Elfland, which lies 'beyond'. The
phrase was also used as the title of a collection of Dunsany's
stories.
[p. 86/63] "'You know, ooh-jar boards and cards [...] and paddlin'
with the occult.'"
ooh-jar = Ouija. See the annotation for p. 154/136 of _Reaper
Man_.
[p. 90/66] "'... and to my freind Gytha Ogg I leave my bedde and
the rag rugge the smith in Bad Ass made for me, [...]'"
The origins of the 'rag rugge' are more fully explained in
_Equal Rites_.
[p. 103/76] "'Kings are a bit magical, mind. They can cure
dandruff and that.'"
Well, for one thing kings can cure dandruff by permanently
removing people's heads from their shoulders, but I think that
what Terry is probably referring to here is the
folk-superstition that says that a King's touch can cure
scrofula (also known as the King's Evil), which is a
tubercular infection of the lymphatic glands.
A similar type of legend occurs in Tolkien's _The Lord of the
Rings_, but Shakespeare also has a lot to say on the subject
in _Macbeth_, act 4, scene 3.
[p. 105/76] "Within were the eight members of the Lancre Morris
Men [...] getting to grips with a new art form."
In fact, many real life Morris teams put on so-called 'Mummers
Plays': traditional plays with a common theme of death and
resurrection. These ritual plays are performed on certain key
days of the year, such as Midwinter's Day (Magrat's wedding is
on Midsummer's Eve!), Easter, or All Souls Day (Halloween), at
which time the Soul Cake play is performed. I am also told
that a Soul Cake, traditionally served at All Souls, is
similar to a Madeira Sponge (or 'yellow cake' as the Americans
call it).
[p. 106/77] "'We could do the Stick and Bucket Dance,' volunteered
Baker the weaver."
There are Morris dances that use sticks, but according to my
sources there aren't any that use buckets. Jason's reluctance
to do this dance has its parallels in real world Morris
dancing: at least in one area (upstate New York), a dance
called the Webley Twizzle has a reputation for being hazardous
to one's health, which is perhaps why it's hardly ever danced.
It has even been claimed that someone broke his leg doing it,
although no one seems to know any details. Of course, the
reluctance of the Lancre Morris Men to perform the 'Stick and
Bucket' may also have to do with the fact that the name of the
dance very probably indicates another 'mettyfor' along the
lines of maypoles and broomsticks.
[p. 106/77] "'And why's there got to be a lion in it?' said Baker
the weaver."
Because the play-within-a-play performed by the rude
mechanicals in _A Midsummer Night's Dream_ (act 1, scene 2)
also features a lion in a starring role, of course.
The Morris Men's discussions on plays and lions reminded one
of my sources of the play written by Moominpapa in
_Moominsummer Madness_ by Tove Jansson. When asked about it,
Terry said that although he has read the Moomin books, the
lion dialogue is not connected with them.
[p. 106/78] "'Hah, I can just see a real playsmith putting
*donkeys* in a play!'"
_A Midsummer Night's Dream_, by that mediocre hack-writer
William S., is an example of a real play that *has* a donkey
in it. Or to be absolutely precise, a character magically
cursed with a donkey's head.
[p. 109/79] "The Librarian looked out at the jolting scenery. He
was sulking. This had a lot to do with the new bright collar
around his neck with the word "PONGO" on it. Someone was going to
suffer for this."
The taxonomic name for orangutans is 'Pongo pygmaeus'. And of
course Pongo is a popular dog name as well, doubling the
insult.
[p. 118/86] "[...] universes swoop and spiral around one another
like [...] a squadron of Yossarians with middle-ear trouble."
Terry writes: "Can it be that this is forgotten? Yossarian
-the 'hero' of _Catch-22_ -was the bomber pilot who flew to
the target twisting and jinking in an effort to avoid the flak
-as opposed to the Ivy League types who just flew nice and
straight..."
A minor correction: Yossarian was not the pilot, but rather
the bombardier, who kept screaming instructions to the pilot
over the intercom, to turn hard right, dive, etc.
[p. 118/86] "The universe doesn't much care if you step on a
butterfly. There are plenty more butterflies."
This immediately recalls the famous science fiction short
story _A Sound of Thunder_, by Ray Bradbury, which has as its
basic premise that the universe cares very much indeed if
someone steps on a butterfly.
[p. 121/89] "'Good morning, Hodgesaargh,' she said."
Hodgesaargh is based on Dave Hodges, a UK fan who runs a
project called _The REAL Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy_.
This is a computer database containing a couple of thousand
entries (the project began in 1987) in the style of Douglas
Adams's _Hitch Hiker's Guide_. Dave takes his Guide along with
him to SF conventions and events, where he auctions off
printed versions of the Guide in order to raise money for
charity. This is why the Guide is not readily available, e.g.
on the Internet.
One of the entries in the Guide concerns a computer virus
called "Terry", which, it says, "autographs all the files on
the disk as well as any nearby manuals".
In real life Dave Hodges works for a firm that keeps birds
away from airports and other places. To this purpose he
sometimes uses a falcon called, yes, Lady Jane, who bites all
the time, which gave Terry the idea for the character
Hodgesaargh. Note that there exist at least two other "let's
write a Hitch Hikers Guide" projects on the Internet that I
know of. One of these is the _Project Galactic Guide_, which
can be reached on the Web through the appropriate URL:
[p. 123/89] "Verence, being king, was allowed a gyrfalcon [...]"
The complex issues of class distinction in falconry apparently
existed in medieval times just as Terry describes them here.
In _The Once and Future King_, T. H. White quotes a paragraph
by Abbess Juliana Berners: "An emperor was allowed an eagle, a
king could have a jerfalcon, and after that there was the
peregrine for an earl, the merlin for a lady, the goshawk for
a yeoman, the sparrow hawk for a priest, and the musket for a
holy-water clerk."
[p. 133/97] "[...] five flavours, known as 'up', 'down',
'sideways', 'sex appeal', and 'peppermint'."
The flavours of resons are a satire of the somewhat odd naming
scheme modern physicists have chosen for the different known
quarks, namely: 'up', 'down', 'strange', 'charm', and
'beauty' (in order of discovery and increasing mass).
Since theoretical physicists don't like odd numbers they have
postulated the existence of a sixth quark -'truth', which was
only recently created at FermiLab in the USA.
The beauty and truth quarks are often called 'bottom' and
'top' respectively. In earlier times (and sometimes even now),
the strange quark was indeed called 'sideways'.
[p. 133/97] "_resons_ [footnote: Lit: 'Thing-ies']"
In Latin 'res' does indeed mean 'thing'.
[p. 141/103] "'You are in my kingdom, woman,' said the Queen.
'You do not come or go without the leave of me.'"
This has echoes of another traditional ballad, this time 'Tam
Lin':
"Why come you to Carterhaugh
Without command of me?
I'll come and go, young Janet said,
And ask no leave of thee"
As with some of the other folk song extracts Terry is closer
to the recorded (in this case Fairport Convention) version
than to the very early text in (say) the _Oxford Book of
Ballads_.
[p. 144/104] "'Head for the gap between the Piper and the
Drummer!'"
There are several stone circles in England similar to the
Dancers. Usually, legend has it that a group of dancers,
revellers, ball players, etc. got turned to stone by the
devil's trickery, for not keeping the Sabbath, or for having
too much fun, or some other awful transgression. The Merry
Maidens stone circle, with two nearby standing stones known as
the Pipers, is one such site in Cornwall; the Stanton Drew
stone circles near Bristol, the petrified remains of a wedding
party that got out of control, also include a stone circle
said to be dancers with a nearby set of stones representing
the fiddlers.
[p. 153/111] "Magrat had tried explaining things to Mrs Scorbic
the cook, but the woman's three chins wobbled so menacingly at
words like 'vitamins' that she'd made an excuse to back out of the
kitchen."
The technical name for vitamin C is ascorbic acid.
[p. 163/118] "'Like the horseshoe thing. [...] Nothing to do with
its shape.'"
Granny refers to the traditional explanation for hanging
horseshoes over the door, which is that they bring luck, but
only if placed with the open side up -otherwise the luck would
just run out the bottom.
[p. 172/125] "'Good morrow, brothers, and wherehap do we whist
this merry day?' said Carter the baker."
It is impossible to list all the ways in which the sections
about the Lancre Morris Men and the play they are performing
parodies the play-within-a-play that occurs in _A Midsummer
Night's Dream_. The only way to get full enjoyment here is to
just go out and read Shakespeare. While you're at it, pay
particular attention to the names and occupations of both
Terry's and William's 'Rude Mechanicals'.
[p. 173/125] "'And we're Rude Mechanicals as well?' said Baker the
weaver."
Baker's next three lines are "Bum!", "Drawers!" and "Belly!".
These come from a song by Flanders and Swann, which is called
'P**! P*! B****! B**! D******!'. The first verse goes:
Ma's out, Pa's out, let's talk rude!
Pee! Po! Belly! Bum! Drawers!
Dance in the garden in the nude,
Pee! Po! Belly! Bum! Drawers!
Let's write rude words all down the street;
Stick out our tongues at the people we meet;
Let's have an intellectual treat!
Pee! Po! Belly! Bum! Drawers!
[p. 174/126] "'Yeah, everyone knows 'tis your delight on a shining
night', said Thatcher the carter."
It is relevant that Thatcher is making this remark to
Carpenter the poacher, because it is a line from the chorus of
an English folk song called 'The Lincolnshire Poacher':
"When I was bound apprentice in famous Lincolnshire
Full well I served my master for more than seven year'
'Til I took up to poaching, as you shall quickly hear
Oh 'tis my delight on a shining night
In the season of the year!"
[p. 174/126] The three paths leading from the cross-roads in the
woods are variously described as being "all thorns and briars",
"all winding", and the last (which the Lancre Morris Men decide to
take) as "Ferns grew thickly alongside it".
This echoes the poem and folk song 'Thomas the Rhymer', about
a man who followes the Queen of Elves to Elfland:
"O see ye not yon narrow road,
So thick beset wi' thorns and riers?
That is the Path of Righteousness,
Though after it but few enquires.
And see ye not yon braid, braid road,
That lies across the lily leven?
That is the Path of Wickedness,
Though some call it the Road to Heaven.
And see ye not yon bonny road
That winds about the fernie brae?
That is the Road to fair Elfland,
Where thou and I this night maun gae."
[p. 177/128] "'But it ain't April!', neighbours told themselves
[...]"
Inconsistency time! On p. 154/135 of _Witches Abroad_, Granny
responds to Nanny Ogg's intention of taking a bath with the
words "My word, doesn't autumn roll around quickly".
In subsequent discussions on the net it was postulated that
Nanny's bath habits could well be explained by taking into
account the fact that the Discworld has eight seasons (see
first footnote in _The Colour of Magic_ on p. 11/11), which
might result in e.g. two autumns a year. And of course, on
our world April *is* indeed a month in Autumn -in the southern
hemisphere (don't ask me if that also holds for a Discworld,
though).
Personally, I tend to agree with Terry, who has once said:
"There are *no* inconsistencies in the Discworld books;
occasionally, however, there are alternate pasts".
[p. 191/138] "[...] fed up with books of etiquette and lineage and
_Twurp's Peerage_ [...]"
_Burke's Peerage_ is a book that lists the hereditary titled
nobility of the British Realm (the Peers of the Realm, hence
the title of the book). It contains biographical facts such
as when they were born, what title(s) they hold, who they're
married to, children, relationships to other peers, etc. For
example, under 'Westminster, Duke of' it will give details of
when the title was created, who has held it and who holds it
now.
Also, 'twerp' and 'berk' (also spelt as 'burk') are both terms
of abuse, with 'twerp' being relatively innocent, but with
'berk' coming from the Cockney rhyming slang for 'Berkshire
Hunt', meaning '****'.
[p. 191/138] "It probably looked beautiful on the Lady of Shallot,
[...]"
Alfred, Lord Tennyson wrote a well-known poem called _The Lady
of Shalott_ (see also e.g. Agatha Christie's _The Mirror
Crack'd_). A shallot (double l, single t), however, is a
small greenish/purple (octarine?) onion.
[p. 193/139] "'I mean, we used to have a tradition of rolling
boiled eggs downhill on Soul Cake Tuesday, but --'"
It is in fact a Lithuanian tradition (one of many) to roll
boiled eggs downhill on Easter Sunday in a game similar to
lawn bowls. The idea is to either (1) break the other
person's egg, thereby eliminating them from the competition
(although this can be risky, since your own egg may also
break) or (2) to get your egg to just hit someone else's, in
which case you win their egg. Similar traditions undoubtedly
exist in many other European countries (in fact, I'm told it
is also done in some English villages), though not in the
Netherlands, where we'd be having extreme difficulties finding
a spot high enough for an egg to be rolled down from in the
first place.
[p. 193/140] "Even these people would consider it tactless to
mention the word 'billygoat' to a troll."
This sentence used to have me completely stumped, until I
discovered (with the help of the ever helpful
alt.fan.pratchett correspondents) that this refers to a
well-known British fairy tale of Scandinavian origin called
'The Three Billygoats Gruff'.
That tale tells the story of three billygoat brothers who try
to cross a bridge guarded by, you guessed it, a mean troll who
wants to eat them. Luckily, the troll wasn't very smart, so
the first two goats were able to outwit him by passing him one
at a time, each saying "Don't eat me, just wait for my brother
who's much bigger and fatter than I am". The third goat, Big
Billygoat Gruff, was big, all right. Big enough to take on the
troll and butt him off the bridge and right over the mountains
far from the green meadow (loud cheers from listening
audience). So the troll was both tricked and trounced.
[p. 204/147] "'I'll be as rich as Creosote.'"
Creosote = Croesus. See the annotation for p. 125/113 of
_Sourcery_.
[p. 216/156] "'All the hort mond are here,' Nanny observed [...]"
Hort mond = haut monde = high society.
[p. 226/162] "'And there's this damn cat they've discovered that
you can put in a box and it's dead and alive at the same time. Or
something.'"
This is Schroedinger's cat. See also the annotation for p.
279/199.
[p. 239/172] "This made some of the _grand guignol_ melodramas a
little unusual, [...]"
Grand guignol, after the Montmartre, Paris theatre _Le Grand
Guignol_, is the name given to a form of gory and macabre
drama so laboriously horrific as to fall into absurdity.
[p. 243/175] "'Mind you, that bramble jam tasted of fish, to my
mind.' 'S caviar,' murmured Casanunda."
Many people recognised this joke, and mentioned a variety of
different sources. Terry replied: "It's very, very old. I
first heard it from another journalist about 25 years ago, and
he said he heard it on the (wartime) radio when he was a kid.
I've also been told it is a music-hall line."
[p. 248/178] "Quite a lot of trouble had once been caused in
Unseen University by a former Archchancellor's hat, [...]"
Refers back to certain events described more fully in
_Sourcery_.
[p. 250/180] _Jane's All The World Siege Weapons_
_Jane's_ is a well known series of books/catalogues for
military equipment of all sorts and types. There is a Jane's
for aeroplanes, for boats, etc.
[p. 276/199] "[...] in this case there were three determinate
states the cat could be in: these being Alive, Dead, and Bloody
Furious."
This is a reference to the well-known 'Schroedinger's cat'
quantum theory thought-experiment in which a cat in a box is
probabilistically killed, leaving it in a superposition of
being alive and being dead until the box is opened and the
wavefunction collapses.
[p. 276/199] "Shawn dived sideways as Greebo went off like a
Claymore mine."
A Claymore mine is an ingenious and therefore extremely nasty
device. It is a small metal box, slightly curved. On the
convex side is written "THIS SIDE TOWARDS THE ENEMY" which
explains why literacy is a survival trait even with US
marines. The box is filled with explosive and 600 steel balls.
It has a tripod and a trigger mechanism, which can be operated
either by a tripwire or, when the operator doesn't want to
miss the fun, manually. When triggered, the device explodes
and showers the half of the world which could have read the
letters with the steel balls. Killing radius 100 ft., serious
maiming radius a good deal more. Used to great effect in
Vietnam by both sides.
[p. 277/199] "Green-blue blood was streaming from a dozen wounds"
This is a brilliant bit of logical extrapolation on Terry's
part. Since iron is anathema to elves, they obviously can't
have haemoglobin-based red blood. Copper-based (green) blood
is used by some Earth animals, notably crayfish, so it's an
obvious alternative. Of course, it was _Star Trek_ that really
made pointy-eared, green-blooded characters famous...
[p. 285/205] "'This girl had her fianc‚ stolen by the Queen of
Elves and she didn't hang around whining, [...]'"
A reference to the folk song 'Tam Lin', in which Fair Janet
successfully wrests her Tam Lin from the Queen of Fairies,
despite various alarming transformations inflicted on him.
[p. 285/205] "'I'll be back.'"
Catchphrase used by Arnold Schwarzenegger in (almost) all his
movies.
[p. 287/207] "Ancient fragments chimed together now in Magrat's
head."
The six lines given make up three different poems. From _The
Fairies_, by Irish poet William Allingham (1850):
"Up the airy mountain, down the rushy glen
We dare not go a-hunting for fear of little men"
From a traditional Cornish prayer:
"From ghoulies and ghosties and long-leggety beasties and
things that go bump in the night
Good Lord deliver us"
And finally from a traditional school girls' skipping rhyme:
"My mother said I never should
Play with the fairies in the wood
If I did, she would say
You naughty girl to disobey
Your hair won't grow, your shoes won't shine
You naughty little girl, you shan't be mine!"
[p. 295/213] "'[...] one and six, beetle crushers! [...] one, two,
forward... bean setting!'"
This section demonstrates that Terry is not a Morris dancer
himself; the terminology isn't quite authentic enough. But
"beetle crushers" is an actual Morris step, and "bean setting"
is the name of a dance and, by extension, a name for a move
used in that dance.
[p. 298/215] "'Girls used to go up there if they wanted to get
--'"
Women who wished to conceive would spend the night on the um,
appropriate bit of the Cerne Abbas Giant site in Dorset. See
the annotation for p. 302/217.
[p. 300/216] "[...] the only other one ever flying around here is
Mr Ixolite the banshee, and he's very good about slipping us a
note under the door when he's going to be about."
If you haven't read _Reaper Man_ yet, you may not realise that
the reason why Mr Ixolite slips notes under the door is that
he is the only banshee in the world with a speech impediment.
[p. 302/217] "'They're nervy of going close to the Long Man. [...]
Here it's the landscape saying: I've got a great big tonker.'"
The Discworld's Long Man is a set of three burial mounds. In
Britain there is a famous monument called the Long Man of
Wilmington, in East Sussex. It's not a mound, but a chalk-cut
figure on a hillside; the turf was scraped away to expose the
chalk underneath, outlining a standing giant 70 meters tall.
There are several such figures in England, but only two human
figures, this and the Cerne Abbas Giant.
Chalk-cut figures have to be recut periodically, which
provides opportunities to bowdlerize them. This is probably
why the Long Man of Wilmington is sexless; it was recut in the
1870s, when, presumably, public displays of great big tonkers
were rather frowned upon. However, the other chalk-cut giant
in Britain, the Cerne Abbas Giant in Dorset, is a nude,
55-meter-tall giant wielding a club, who has a tonker about 12
meters long, and proudly upraised. Nearby is a small earth
enclosure where maypole dancing, etc. was once held.
[p. 305/219] "They showed a figure of an owl-eyed man wearing an
animal skin and horns."
I am told this description applies to the cave painting known
as The Sorcerer (aka The Magician, aka The Shaman) in the
Trois Freres cave in Arieges, France.
[p. 305/219] "There was a runic inscription underneath. [...]
'It's a variant of Oggham,' she said."
Ogham is the name of an existing runic script found in the
British Isles (mostly in Ireland) and dating back at least to
the 5th century. The Pratchett Archives contain a file with
more information about the oghamic alphabet, including
pictures of the individual characters.
[p. 307/221] "'Hiho, hiho --'"
See the annotation for p. 88/73 of _Moving Pictures_.
[p. 308/222] "'It's some old king and his warriors [...] supposed
to wake up for some final battle when a wolf eats the sun.'"
Another one of Terry's famous Mixed Legends along the lines of
the princess and the pea fairy tale in _Mort_.
The wolf bit is straight from Norse mythology. The wolf
Fenris, one of Loki's monster children, will one day break
free from his chains and eat the sun. This is one of the signs
that the Goetterdaemmerung or Ragnarok has begun, and at this
point the frost giants <> will cross the Rainbow Bridge
and fight the final battle with the gods of Asgard and the
heroes who have died and gone to Valhalla. See the last part
of Richard Wagner's Ring cycle for details.
The sleeping king is one of the oldest and deepest folk-myths
of western culture, some versions of the popular legend even
have King Arthur and his warriors sleeping on the island of
Anglesea. For more information, see e.g. the section about
the Fisher King in Frazer's _The Golden Bough_, Jessie
Weston's _From Ritual To Romance_ and all the stuff that this
leads into, such as Elliot's _The Wasteland_ and David Lodge's
_Small World_.
[p. 316/227] "The place looked as though it had been visited by
Genghiz Cohen."
Much later, in _Interesting Times_, we learn that Cohen the
Barbarian's first name is, in fact, Genghiz.
With respect to the original pun on Genghiz Kahn, Terry says:
"As a matter of interest, I'm told there's a kosher Mongolian
restaurant in LA called Genghiz Cohen's. It's a fairly obvious
pun, if your mind is wired that way."
[p. 316/227] "Queen Ynci wouldn't have obeyed..."
The ancient warrior queen Ynci is modelled on Boadicea (who
led a British rebellion against the Romans). Boadicea's
husband was the ruler of a tribe called the Iceni, which is
almost Ynci backwards.
[p. 321/231] "...I think at some point I remember someone asking
us to clap our hands..."
From J. M. Barrie's _Peter Pan_:
[...] [Tinkerbell the Fairy] was saying that she thought she
could get well again if children believed in fairies. [...]
"If you believe," [Peter Pan] shouted to them, "clap your
hands; don't let Tink die."
[p. 324/233] "'Millennium hand and shrimp.'"
One of the truly frequently asked questions on
alt.fan.pratchett is "Where does this phrase come from?" (Foul
Ole Ron also uses it, in _Soul Music_.)
The answer concerns Terry's experiments with computer-
generated texts:
"It was a program called Babble, or something similar. I put
in all kinds of stuff, including the menu of the Dragon House
Chinese take- away because it was lying on my desk. The
program attempted to make 'coherent' phrases (!) out of it
all."
One of the other things Terry must have fed it were the lyrics
to the song 'Particle Man' by They Might Be Giants (see the
annotation for p. 264/199 of _Soul Music_):
"Universe man, universe man
Size of the entire universe man
Usually kind to smaller men, universe man
He's got a watch with a minute hand
A millennium hand, and an eon hand
When they meet it's happyland
Powerful man, universe man."
[p. 328/236] "'I've got five years' worth of _Bows And Ammo_,
Mum,' said Shawn."
In our world there is a magazine _Guns And Ammo_; this appears
to be the Discworld equivalent.
[p. 328/236] Shawn's speech.
Shawn's speech is a parody of the 'St. Crispin's Day' speech
in Shakespeare's _King Henry V_. See also the annotation for
p. 239/303 of _Wyrd Sisters_.
[p. 329/236] "[...] imitate the action of the Lancre Reciprocating
Fox and stiffen some sinews while leaving them flexible enough
[...]"
And this one is from the even more famous 'Once more unto the
breach' speech, also from _King Henry V_:
"Then imitate the action of the tiger; stiffen the sinews,
summon up the blood."
[p. 341/245] "'Ain't that so, Fairy Peaseblossom?'"
One of the fairies in _A Midsummer Night's Dream_ is called
Peasblossom. In itself this is not very interesting, but it
is directly relevant when you consider the point Granny is
trying to make to the Elf Queen.
[p. 350/252] "The King held out a hand, and said something. Only
Magrat heard it. Something about meeting by moonlight, she said
later."
In _A Midsummer Night's Dream_ (act 2, scene 2), Oberon, King
of the Fairies, says to Titania, Queen of the Fairies (with
whom he has a kind of love/hate relationship): "Ill met by
moonlight, proud Titania".
[p. 353/253] "'You know, sir, sometimes I think there's a great
ocean of truth out there and I'm just sitting on the beach playing
with... with *stones*.'"
This paraphrases Isaac Newton. The original quote can be found
in Brewster's _Memoirs of Newton_, Volume II, Chapter 27:
"I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I
seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, and
diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or
a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of
truth lay all undiscovered before me."
[p. 363/261] "'Go ahead, [...] bake my quiche.'"
Clint Eastwood's _Dirty Harry_ again, another satire of the
line which also inspired "FABRICATI DIEM, PVNC" (see the
annotation for p. 51/48 of _Guards! Guards!_).
[p. 364/261] "'On with the motley. Magrat'll appreciate it.'"
"On with the motley" is a direct translation of the Italian
"Vesti la giubba" which is the first line of a famous aria
from the opera _I Pagliacci_. (Operatic arias are usually
known by their first line or first few words). It is the
bitter aria in which the actor Canio laments that he must go
on stage even though his heart is breaking, and climaxes with
the line 'Ridi Pagliaccio'.
[p. 367/264] "Do not meddle in the affairs of wizards, especially
simian ones. They are not all that subtle."
Definitely a Tolkien reference this time. See the annotation
for p. 183/149 of _Mort_. There is a version frequently seen
on the net in people's .signatures, which I am sure will have
Terry's full approval. It runs: "Do not meddle in the affairs
of cats, for they are subtle and will piss on your computer".
[p. 371/267] "'My great-grandma's husband hammered it out of a tin
bath and a couple of saucepans.'"
On a.f.p. the question was asked why, if Magrat's armour was
fake and not made of iron at all, was it so effective against
the Elves? Terry answers:
"A tin bath isn't made out of tin. It's invariably galvanised
iron -ie, zinc dipped. They certainly rust after a while."
[p. 382/274] "[...] he called it _The Taming Of The Vole_ [...]"
Shakespeare again, of course. A vole is a small animal,
somewhat similar to a shrew.
To be continued
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