The Annotated Pratchett File, v7a

Nevermore.

- [p. 233/204] “Windle snapped his fingers in front of the Dean’s pale eyes. There was no response. ‘He’s not dead,’ said Reg. ‘Just resting,’ said Windle.”

Just two words: Parrot Sketch.

- [p. 234/204] “I used to know a golem looked like him, [...] You just have to write a special holy word on ‘em to start ‘em up.”

For those needing a refresher course in Jewish magic, a golem is indeed a clay automaton. The special holy word is either the name of God, or the Hebrew word for truth, ‘emet’ (aleph-mem-tav). To turn the golem off, you erase the name, or, if you used ‘emet’, the initial aleph, which changes the word to ‘met’ (mem-tav), meaning dead.

- [p. 235/206] “Artor! Nobblyesse obligay!”

From the phrase noblesse oblige, meaning “rank imposes certain obligations”.

- [p. 246/215] “Bonsai!”

A typical Pratchettian mix-up of two different things: ‘Banzai!’ is the Japanese war cry shouted by kamikaze pilots as they performed their suicide runs. It means ‘ten thousand years’, and was originally an honorary greeting used in front of the Emperor, whom the kamikazes were, of course, dying for.

‘Bonsai’ is the art of growing tiny potted trees shaped and stunted into very particular growth patterns.

- [p. 246/215] “Like... small trees. Bush-i-do. Yeah.”

‘Bushido’ means “the way of the warrior”, and is pronounced bu-shi-do.

- [p. 247/216] “Occasionally people would climb the mountain and add a stone or two to the cairn at the top, [...]”

My correspondents tell me that there are many such mountains to be found around the world. In Ireland there is one specific mountain called Maeves Grave. On the top of it is a heap of stones which is believed to be the grave of the evil Celtic Queen Maeve. To prevent her from ever leaving the grave, each visitor to the mountain is supposed to pick up a stone, and carry it up the hill and put it on the grave.

- [p. 258/226] “I’m just going out,’ he said. ‘I may be some time.”

A quote that Terry uses again in another, similar situation. See the annotation for p. 236/170 of Small Gods.

- [p. 259/226] The idea of a were-man and were-woman who fall in love, but whose animal and human phases are out of sync with respect to each other was the main plot element in the 1985 fantasy movie Ladyhawke, starring Rutger Hauer and Michelle Pfeiffer.

- [p. 264/230] “Azrael, the Great Attractor, the Death of Universes, [...]”

In previous editions of the APF, I said that the Great Attractor was part of an astronomical theory that had been discredited some time ago. It turns out that this is far from the truth.

Basically, astronomers have discovered that there are large regions of the cosmos being held back from the smooth overall expansion (or Hubble flow) as dictated by the Big Bang/Expanding Universe theory.

The culprit would seem to be something or some things within a vast clumping of galaxies that appears to be causing an acceleration of all the surrounding galaxies in its direction. In an offhand comment during a press conference, Alan Dressler referred to this galactic pileup as the ‘Great Attractor’, and the name immediately stuck.

Although the theory was not universally accepted by all scientists, I understand the evidence for it has held up well, and in fact I saw a recent newspaper article claiming that the Great Attractor had actually been identifier by a group of international astronomers as the cluster Abel 3627.

- [p. 264/231] “LORD, WHAT CAN THE HARVEST HOPE FOR, IF NOT FOR THE CARE OF THE REAPER MAN?”

Some folks thought that this line sounded familiar and wondered if it was a quote, but Terry has assured us that he made this one up all by himself.

- [p. 265/232] “YES”

In the hardcover edition of Reaper Man, this super-large word appears on a left page, so that it takes the reader by surprise as she turns the page. In the paperback edition this is not the case, thus spoiling the effect entirely.

When questioned about this, Terry said: “Do you really think I’m some kind of dumbo to miss that kind of opportunity? I wrote 400 extra words to get it on a left-hand page in the hardcover—then Corgi shuffled people in the production department when it was going through and my careful instructions disappeared into a black hole. Go on... tell me more about comic timing...”

The American paperback edition, by the way, also gets it right.

- [p. 267/235] “To deliver a box of chocolates like this, dark strangers drop from chairlifts and abseil down buildings.”

A reference to a UK TV commercial for ‘Milk Tray’ chocolates, in which a James Bond-like figure does death-defying stunts, only to leave a box of chocolates in some place where a woman finds them at the end of the ad.

- [p. 267/235] “DARK ENCHANTMENTS’, he said.”

A reference to a brand of chocolates called ‘Black Magic’.

- [p. 270/237] “Chap with a whip got as far as the big sharp spikes last week,’ said the low priest.”

Refers to the Raiders of the Lost Ark movies, in which Indiana Jones (with trademark whip) always steals stuff from sacred temples loaded with spikes, big rolling balls, and nasty insects.

- [p. 271/238] “The priests heard the chink of a very large diamond being lifted out of its socket.”

This is the sequence where Death enters the Lost Jewelled Temple of Doom of Offler the Crocodile God and purloins the massive diamond called the Tear of Offler from the statue therein.

On p. 109/109 of the The Light Fantastic, however, Twoflower tells Bethan the story of Cohen the Barbarian stealing this very same sacred diamond.

There are ways around this inconsistency, of course. The most reasonable one seems to me the fact that there is no reason why we have to assume that all the stories told about Cohen are necessarily true.

- [p. 275/242] “Let’s see ... something like ‘Corn be ripe, nuts be brown, petticoats up ...’ something.”

This is a paraphrase or alternate version of an existing “ould Sussex Folk Song”, quoted in Spike Milligan’s autobiography Adolf Hitler: My Part in his Downfall as follows:

“Apples be ripe, nuts be brown,

Petticoats up, trousers down.”

- [p. 275/242] “I take it you do dance, Mr Bill Door?’ FAMED FOR IT, MISS FLITWORTH.”

Dancing with death is of course a metaphor as familiar as playing a game of chess or Exclusive Possessions with Death.

- [p. 276/242] “[...] ‘Do-si-do!’ [...]”

A dosi-do is a square dance figure in which two dancers start facing each other, then circle round each other, passing back to back (in French: ‘dos-a-dos’).

- [p. 277/243] “I know this one! It’s the Quirmish bullfight dance!

Oh-lay!’ ‘WITH MILK’?”

Oh-lay!, a phonetic version of the Spanish cry Ole!, sounds also the same as the pronunciation of the French phrase “au lait” which means “with milk”, as in e.g. ‘cafe au lait’.

- [p. 280/246] “One yodel out of place would attract, not the jolly echo of a lonely goatherd, but fifty tons of express-delivery snow.”

A reference to the puppet sequence in The Sound of Music, a song in which both yodelling and lonely goatherds are featured.

- [p. 280/246] “And who was that masked man?’ They both looked around.

There was no one there.”

Refers to the Lone Ranger.

- [p. 282/248] “Just me, your lordship,’ said the watchman cheerfully.

‘Turning up like a bad copper.”

‘Copper’ is a British colloquialism for policemen (see also the annotation for p. 185/140 of Men at Arms), but ‘copper’ is also a somewhat archaic synonym for ‘penny’, which gives the link to the saying:

“turning up like a bad penny”.

Hence also the old joke: ‘What do you call a policeman’s night shift pay?’ ‘Copper nitrate’.

- [p. 283/249] “You know,’ said Windle, ‘it’s a wonderful afterlife.”

It’s A Wonderful Life is the title of Frank Capra’s classic 1946 movie about a special kind of undead (or rather: unliving) man.

- [p. 284/250] “WINDLE POONS? ‘Yes?’ THAT WAS YOUR LIFE.”

Reference to the TV show This Is Your Life, where a noted celebrity is surprised and (hopefully) embarrassed by having the high (and occasionally low) points of his/her life recounted by friends and acquaintances during a half hour programme.