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Authors: Linda Washington

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Folklore of the East
If any one should be asked … what is it that solidity and extension adhere in, he would not be in a much better case than the Indian before mentioned who, saying that the world was supported by a great elephant, was asked what the elephant rested on; to which his answer was- a great tortoise: but being
again pressed to know what gave support to the broad-backed tortoise, replied- something, he knew not what.
—John Locke, British philosopher in chapter XXIII of
An Essay Concerning Human Understanding,
written in 1690,
17
a time when everyone talked like this.
Perhaps when you're eating
aloo gobi
or watching a Tony Jaa film (
The Protector!
) you don't think about myths from such countries as Thailand, China, or India. (Maybe you will next time.) But Pratchett folds some of the myths of the East into his cultural stew.
 
Terrifying Tortoises and Powerful Pachyderms.
If you happen to know Hindu mythology, you know about Akupara, the tortoise carrying a world on its back. English philosopher and empiricist John Locke was certainly aware back in the seventeenth century. We've already said Pratchett was aware; hence his inclusion of the Great A'Tuin, the giant turtle upon which the four elephants (Great T'Phon, Tubul, Jerakeen, and Berilia) carrying the Disc ride. (A fifth elephant, discussed in
The Fifth Elephant,
is just a legend.)
Elephants play a big role in Hindu mythology. Not only does the Hindu god Indra ride one (Airavata—the first elephant created), elephants supposedly are the mounts of choice for the guardian gods at the eight points of the compass. (Some people prefer horses as destriers.) So, it's only fitting that elephants, like Atlas the Titan in Greek mythology, hold up the world.
A'Tuin isn't the only chelonian mentioned in Discworld (although it is the largest, being a star turtle). The Great God Om (
Small Gods
) is a small tortoise for much of the time (and a grumpy one at that) until more people believe in him.
 
And Yet There's the Yeti.
You've undoubtedly heard stories of the yeti, the ape-man creatures loping around the Himalayas and supposedly leaving their scalps around monasteries. (We don't make these things up.) These are “the abominable snowmen” of many stories. (The Tibetans have the yeti. In North America, we have Bigfoot and Sasquatch.) But only Pratchett (see
Thief of Time
) mentions the “sword trick”—cutting off a yeti's head and having it come back to life.
Are yeti real or mythological? Scientists aren't really sure, even after several expeditions to track them. The jury's still out on Bigfoot, as well.
 
Stories? She's Got a Thousand of 'Em.
The stories woven through one master storyteller, Scheherazade, in
The Arabian Nights
or
The 1001 Arabian Nights
, are myths from Persia (now Iran), Asia, India, and Arabia and were written in the tenth through the fourteenth centuries. Maybe you read the collection of stories compiled by Andrew Lang (usually relegated to the kids' section of the library) or the complete tales found in the nonfiction section of the library. Pratchett, like Scheherazade, wove several stories (or allusions to stories) from
The Arabian Nights
into one book:
Sourcery
. Check it out: The cowardly Rincewind's journey to Al Khali, a city in Klatch, his dealings with Creosote, the Seriph of Al Khali, and Abrim the evil vizier who instigates the Mage Wars (see also
chapter 7
)—all are reminiscent of stories in the
Arabian Nights
collection, particularly “Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp,” “The Three Princes and the Princess Nouronnihar,” and the Haroun al-Raschid, Caliph of Baghdad, stories. A major nod to
The Arabian Nights
comes through the mention of a flying carpet and a magic lamp from the seriph's treasury. Contrary to the 1992 Disney movie
Aladdin
(which drew some inspiration from
The Thief of Bagdad,
a movie from 1940), the flying carpet comes from “The Three Princes and the Princess Nouronnihar.”
Another oblique nod (we think) to
The Arabian Nights
is the
character of Rincewind who, like Sinbad, the intrepid sailor of seven voyages, journeys around the world and encounters many dangers. Unlike Sinbad, however, who at least
wanted
to go on some of the voyages, Rincewind is dragged kicking and screaming.
By the way, Creosote is an allusion to Croesus—the king of Lydia in 560-546 B.C., who was known for being wealthy, hence the idiom “rich as Croesus.” Of course, you knew that.
The decision as to what form the house shall take is made on sociocultural grounds—way of life, shared group values, and “ideal” environment sought.
Amos Rapoport,
House Form and Culture
18
An architect also has to be an anthropologist of sorts in order to make his or her designs functional and culturally relevant. Terry Pratchett is an anthropologist as well—perhaps not in degree, but in his experience as a journalist and in the stories from other cultures he has read. The curios and connections he gained through stories added to the crucible in which Discworld was born.
Discworld has several people groups, some of which have a changing cultural identity based on the region they're in. For example, the dwarfs in Shmaltzberg might act a little differently than do the dwarfs in Ankh-Morpork. Angua, a werewolf from Uberwald, opposes some of the practices of her family back home. But Pratchett still keeps the basic cultural identities of dwarfs and werewolves found in literature. Werewolves are still people who transform into wolves (or, in the case of the yennork, a werewolf who doesn't
change at all). Witches are still witches. Immortals (personifications), while they may work as milkmen at times (e.g., Ronny Soak, alias Kaos) or look like men (the Wintersmith), are still, well, elementals. It's elementary. (Just keeping up with our end of the bargain concerning the bad puns.)
So, how does Pratchett give shape to the cultural identities of his people/creature groups? Some classic stories inspire him.
Full of Fairy Tales … and Classic Tales
If you made the trek to see any of the
Shrek
movies, chances are you probably liked fairy tales as a kid (and still do, if you're honest with yourself; we know you record
The Fairly OddParents
on TiVo). The fairy-tale collections of Charles Perrault in seventeenth-century France, the Brothers Grimm (Jacob and Wilhelm) from Germany, Peter Christen Asbjørnsen and Jørgen Moe from Norway in the eighteenth century, and Scotsman Andrew Lang in the nineteenth influenced many fantasy writers, including Terry Pratchett.
“Little Red Riding Hood,” a story all three collections have in common, also finds its way into Pratchett's
Witches Abroad
—one of the Lancre witch novels featuring Granny Weatherwax, Nanny Ogg, and Magrat Garlick. Perrault's “Cinderella” story also is integral to the plot. Since the novel deals with the fulfillment of stories, it includes a plethora of nods to other well-known fairy tales from the three collections: “Sleeping Beauty” (also alluded to in
Mort
), “The Frog Prince,” “Goldilocks and the Three Bears,” “Hansel and Gretel” (also alluded to in
The Light Fantastic
), “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs,” and “Rumpelstiltskin.”
In each of Pratchett's allusions, the characters behave in a way readers can easily recognize from fairy tales. But he places his own spin on the situations. Although fairy godmothers still provide pumpkin coaches, Magrat winds up turning everything into pumpkins at first. Black Aliss is the wicked witch shut up in the oven in a
Hansel and Gretel-like way. The frog prince (really a
duc
—French for “duke” and “horned owl”—go figure), who is hardly a Prince Charming, tries to marry the Cinderella of the story.
In
Thief of Time,
Pratchett alludes to
Grimm's Fairy Tales
when Jeremy Clockson reads
Grim Fairy Tales,
which contains such stories as “The Old Lady in the Oven” (gotta be a Hansel and Gretel story) and “The Glass Clock of Bad Schüschein.”
The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents
is one large allusion to the Pied Piper of Hamelin story, a story the Grimm brothers included and one that inspired poet Robert Browning. Pratchett also mentions the story of “Puss in Books” from Charles Perrault's collection and “Dick Livingstone and his wonderful cat”—an allusion to Dick Whittington, a story Andrew Lang collected (which is partially based on the life of Richard Whittington the Lord Mayor of London), and Ken Livingstone the Leader of the Greater London Council until 1986. He became Mayor of London in 2002.
Every culture has folktales. Pratchett is undoubtedly familiar with the folktales of Norway, judging by his allusion to
East of the Sun, West of the Moon
in
Lords and Ladies
. That story comes from the fairy-tale collection of Peter Christen Asbjørnsen and Jørgen Moe published in 1845, another volume of which was published in 1879.
 
The Devil Made Me Do It.
As you may or may not know,
Faust,
the epic by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, featuring a Job-like agreement and a contest of wills between Faust and Mephistopheles, is parodied in
Eric
. Instead of the pious Doktor Faust, there's Eric, a fourteen-year-old who wants to meet the most beautiful woman in the world, have mastery over the kingdoms, and live forever—apt goals according to some in our world. Having a huge amount of gold would be nice, too. But instead of summoning someone like Mephistopheles, Eric summons Rincewind.
In
Faust,
Mephistopheles tried and failed to gain Faust's soul through similar temptations—the pleasures of life, the search for
the most beautiful woman in the world (Helen of Troy), a desire for power. As we mentioned earlier, Helen is Elenor in
Eric.
As the scenery of Pandemonium—the place to which Eric journeys—is described, we can't help also seeing the influence of
The Divine Comedy,
the fourteenth-century Dante Alighieri classic, and
Paradise Lost,
John Milton's epic take on the temptation and fall of man, published in 1667. The city Eric comes to, which is surrounded by a lake of lava, has “unparalleled views of the Eight Circles”
19
—like the nine circles of Dante's
Inferno,
the first cantica of
The Divine Comedy
. The name Pandemonium is a reference to Lucifer's palace of the same name in
Paradise Lost.
In
Inferno,
you see some elements similar to Greek mythology in the use of the River Acheron and Charon the ferryman. In the journey through the Underworld described in
Wintersmith,
the taciturn river ferryman is like Charon and the river is like Acheron.
 
A Book to Sink Your Teeth Into.
Bram Stoker's 1897 classic novel
Dracula
is the great-great-grandfather of many a vampire story, even though it wasn't actually the first vampire story written. (John William Polidori wrote “The Vampyre,” published in 1819. But even that wasn't the first, although it started the tradition of the vampire story in literature.) As Pratchett gives shape to the fortified communities of Uberwald, a land “with no real boundaries and lots of forest in between”
20
plus plenty of howling wolves, you see echoes of the Transylvania the unfortunate Jonathan Harker saw in
Dracula,
with its howling wolves and mile after mile of forested land.
Pratchett's vampires run the gamut from bloodthirsty (the de Magpyrs of
Carpe Jugulum
) to black ribboners (Lady Margolotta
von Uberwald in
The Fifth Elephant,
Lance-constable Sally von Humpeding in
Thud!,
Otto Chriek in
The Truth
and other books, Maladict/Maladicta in
Monstrous Regiment
) who have taken the pledge to avoid the usual diet of vampires, to wannabes (Doreen Winkings—Countess Notfaroutoe in
The Reaper Man
and
Thud!
—who isn't really a vampire, but acts as if she is).
In
Carpe Jugulum,
the name Magpyr is an allusion to the Magyars—Hungarians in western Transylvania in the nineteenth century. Vlad is an allusion to Vlad Tepes also known as Vlad the Impaler, the fifteenth-century ruler of Walachia known for impaling prisoners. Of course, you knew that. Stoker used Tepes as a model of sorts for Count Dracula. Not content to stop at that reference, Pratchett references a character known as Griminir the Impaler, a female vampire who merely bit people but did not suck their blood.
The name Notfaroutoe is an allusion to the movie adaptations of
Dracula,
namely the 1922 silent movie
Nosferatu,
directed by F. W. Murnau and its 1979 remake
Nosferatu the Vampyre
by Werner Herzog.
 
“That's Fronck-en-shteen”
Mary Shelley's creation came “to life” in 1818 and spawned Frankenstein movies as well as the Igor tradition in Discworld. Although there is no character named “Igor” in Shelley's book, an Igor appears in many of the films based on the book (like Mel Brooks's classic,
Young Frankenstein,
starring Gene Wilder where Igor—or rather, Eye-gore—is played by Marty Feldman).
While visiting Lord Byron in 1816, Shelley (then Mary Woll-stonecraft Godwin), John William Polidori (the physician of Lord Byron), and Shelley's then husband-to-be, poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, were encouraged by Byron to each write a scary story. Shelley wrote
Frankenstein.
Polidori wrote “The Vampyre.” And thus history was made.
Jeremy Clockson plays a sort of Victor Frankenstein-like creator
in
Thief of Time.
Instead of using lightning to bring life to a creature amassed out of corpses' body parts, he uses it to bring the ultimate clock to life. It's apt that he's assigned an Igor (yes, there's more than one) to help him, since Igors usually work for vampires, mad scientists, and other criminally insane individuals.
Throughout Discworld, the Igors carry on the Victor Frankenstein tradition by operating on themselves and others as well as recycling spare body parts. Just doing their bit to help the environment.
 
Ringing in the New.
Moving along on this architectural tour, we come to one of the pillars of fantasy fiction. J. R. R. Tolkien is widely considered the father of twentieth-century fantasy. Pratchett read Tolkien's trilogy during his childhood, and describing how he felt when he first read the trilogy, Pratchett remarked in an essay, “I can remember the vision of beech woods in the Shire … I remember the light as green, coming through trees. I have never since then so truly had the experience of being inside the story.”
21
Maybe that's why several allusions to Tolkien's works became part of the Discworld makeup. In
Equal Rites,
Gandalf's single state gets a shout-out in the second paragraph of the first chapter. In
Lords and Ladies,
witches are referred to as having minds “like metal”
22
—reminiscent of Treebeard's description of Saruman in
The Two Towers
: “He has a mind of metal and wheels.”
23
A scene in
Witches Abroad
provides an allusion to aspects of
The Fellowship of the Ring
and
The Hobbit.
Perhaps you caught it. While on their way to Genua by boat, Granny Weatherwax, Nanny Ogg, and Magrat Garlick spy with their little eyes a “small gray creature, vaguely froglike” on a log, who is whispering of his “birthday.”
24
As you know, in
The Hobbit
Gollum referred to the ring as his birthday present. And in
Fellowship,
Frodo, Sam, and Aragorn noticed that Gollum used a log to follow them while they traveled on the river Anduin. And of course, the
draco nobilis
in
Guards! Guards!
sitting on a hoard of gold brings to mind Smaug from
The Hobbit.
In
Wintersmith,
during the Underworld journey, Roland recalls his time as the prisoner of the queen of the elves, an event that takes place in
The Wee Free Men
: “I could hardly remember anything after a while. Not my name, not the feel of the sunshine, not the taste of real food.”
25
His words are an allusion to Frodo's words in
Return of the King
in response to Sam's question concerning the rabbits Frodo and Sam ate in Ithilien, earlier in their journey (
The Two Towers
): “I know that such things happened, but I cannot see them. No taste of food, no feel of water, no sound of wind, no memory of tree or grass or flower, no image of moon or star are left to me.”
26
 
A-Head of His Time.
If you saw
Sleepy Hollow,
the 1999 movie starring Johnny Depp (directed by Tim Burton), you're undoubtedly familiar with “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow,” the short story written by American author Washington Irving, published in 1820. The story is a staple in many elementary school curricula, especially around Halloween. The setting is Sleepy Hollow, an area near Tarrytown, New York, a place of “haunted spots, and twilight superstitions”
27
—the home of the legendary Headless Horseman, the so-called ghost of a Hessian soldier killed during the Revolutionary War, who frightened the ill-fated schoolmaster, Ichabod Crane. His fright, however, was due to the shenanigans of Brom
(Bones) Van Brunt—his rival for the affections of Katrina Van Tassel.
A headless horseman makes an appearance in
The Wee Free Men
and thus provides another building block for Discworld. Too bad Ichabod Crane didn't have the Nac Mac Feegles (see
chapter 10
) on his side. They prove to be a huge help to Tiffany Aching who encounters the headless horseman.
 
“Phantastic” Voyage.
George MacDonald is another author who helped inspire a cornice or two in Discworld. If you read his novel
Phantastes
, you read of Anodos, a man who wakes up to discover himself in Fairy Land. As with many “Otherworld” trips, there is delight mixed with horror.
Pratchett's Fairyland, a place you travel through in
The Wee Free Men,
is a ramped-up Neverland, where everything tries to harm you instead of just one jealous pixie like Tinker Bell. Traveling through it is like taking a trip through an evil version of Wonderland or the everyday version of the Matrix (i.e., evil) where Agent Smiths abound. But there is wonder as well, however, with talking daisies (reminiscent of the talking flowers of
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
). However, creatures like the dromes, grimhounds, and bumblebee women take the joy out of the journey.
 
An Oz Encore.
Perhaps you think of Oz only in terms of the prison drama on HBO from 1997-2003. Another building block of Discworld comes from L. Frank Baum's classic children's series of that name. Some aspects of the 1939 movie based on Baum's first book (
The Wizard of Oz
) are alluded to in
Witches Abroad.
The witches fly on broomsticks, a reminder of an image Dorothy saw during the tornado: the evil Miss Gulch turning into a wicked witch flying on a broomstick. Later, when a farmhouse falls on Nanny Ogg and a “dwarf” asks for Nanny Ogg's red boots but doesn't know why he asks for them, you can't help thinking of the scene in the Munchkins'
Country (or Munchkinland as the movie refers to it) where Dorothy's farmhouse fell on the Wicked Witch of the East and Dorothy gained the ruby slippers (silver in the book). It's only fitting that the fate of one witch befall another (one decidedly nicer, however).

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