The Annotated Pratchett File, v7a

Carmilla, by J. Sheridan LeFanu, was one of the earliest literary vampire stories, published in 1872, a good quarter of a century before Dracula. The story about bathing in the blood of virgins is told of Erzsebet Bathory (1560-1614), a Hungarian princess who believed that it would keep her young; her name is often associated with vampire stories.

The beaked, hunched figure that Vlad calls ‘a distant ancestor’ is a reference to the stryx, a creature from Roman mythology that stabbed and drank blood through its beak.

Terry explains: “What Agnes is shown is the ‘evolution’ of vampires— harpy, hairy monster, Lugosi/Lee and Byronic bastard. And what better way to demonstrate this that a succession of family portraits?”

“As an aside, very little vampiric legend and folklore in CJ is made up -- even the vampire tools and watermelons are real world beliefs.”

+ [p. 154] “... The blood is the life [...] porphyria, lack of?”

Oats has crammed an impressive collection of vampire stories into one page of notes. “The blood is the life” is a catchphrase from Dracula; it is closely associated with the Christian view of the vampire—just as the Christian gains eternal life through the sacrament of Christ’s blood, so the vampire earns a perverted version of the same.

Porphyria is a very rare, genetic blood disorder, one form of which includes the symptoms of severe light sensitivity, reddish-brown urine and teeth, deformation of the nose, ears, eyelids, and fingers, an excess of body hair, and anaemia. It has been suggested that it explains some aspects of both vampire and werewolf legends.

+ [p. 155] “On one shelf alone he found forty-three remarkably similar accounts of a great flood, [...]”

The Biblical version is the story of Noah (Genesis 6-8). Many myth cycles have a similar story of how humanity was almost wiped out by a flood, but saved by one good person building a boat.

+ [p. 159] “This is from Ossory’s Malleus Maleficarum,”

The Malleus Maleficarum (usually translated Hammer of Witches) was written by two Dominican monks in the 15^th century as a manual for dealing with witches and possessing spirits. Many of the popular myths about medieval treatment of witches, including many of the various tests by ordeal, first appeared in this book. See also the annotation for p. 375/262 of Good Omens.

+ [p. 168] “yin, tan, TETRA!”

This is an old northern English (*not* Scots) dialect, used for counting sheep in Yorkshire and Cumbria. ‘Yan, tan, tethera, methera, pip, sethera, lethera, hovera, dovera, dick.’

According to one correspondent, the folklorist A. L. Lloyd traced the words to a group of Romanian shepherds brought to England early in the 19^th century to teach the locals something about increase in flocks. The words were thought very Occult and Mysterious, until it was explained that they were just counting.

+ [p. 169] “Well done,’ Verence murmured. ‘How long have you been a hallucination? Jolly good.”

Verence’s side of the dialogue seems to be modelled on the sorts of things the British royal family, most particularly Prince Charles, say when they are meeting The People. Verence’s general earnest and well meaning—but unappreciated—interest in the welfare of his subjects is strongly reminiscent of Charles.

+ [p. 180] “Up the airy mountain and down the rushy glen ran the Nac mac Feegle,”

From The Fairies, by William Allingham:

“Up the airy mountain

Down the rushy glen,

We daren’t go a-hunting,

For fear of little men;”

See also the annotation for p.287/207 of Lords and Ladies.

+ [p. 180] “Hakkis lugs awa’!”

‘Hack his lugs away’—cut his ears off.

+ [p. 180] “An’ b’side, she’ll gi’us uskabarch muckell.”

Just to make their dialect even more confusing, the Feegles throw in words of Gaelic. ‘Uskabarch’ is ‘uisge beatha’, ‘water of life’— whisky.

+ [p. 193] “Will ye no’ have a huge dram and a burned bannock while yer waiting?”

The usual offering is a ‘wee dram’, but to the Feegles it would, of course, appear huge. A bannock is a well-known Scottish bread product. The fact that it’s burned could be a reference to the Battle of Bannockburn, a famous Scots victory.

+ [p. 195] “I’ve read about the phoenix. It’s a mythical creature, a symbol, a—”

The phoenix as described by the Greek historian Herodotus was an eagle-like bird, with red and gold plumage, that was sacred to the sun-god in ancient Egypt. The bird lived for 500 years, at the end of which it built its own funeral pyre and was consumed to ashes, from which another phoenix would then rise. Allegedly symbolic of the rising and setting of the sun, it was adopted by medieval Christianity as a symbol of death and resurrection.

+ [p. 199] “Oh, yes, sir, ‘cos of when the other side are yelling “We’re gonna cut yer tonk—yer tongue off,””

In Interesting Times we learned that, on the Disc, ‘psychological warfare’ is defined as drumming on your shield and shouting “We’re gonna cut yer tonkers off.”

+ [p. 205] “Aye, mucken! Born sicky, imhoe!”

A common abbreviation used on parts of the Internet is IMHO, meaning ‘in my humble opinion’. Terry seems to have a particular dislike for this phrase, which in practice often translates to “and anyone who disagrees with me is patently a moron”.

+ [p. 205] “Ach, I wouldna’ gi’ye skeppens for him—”

This is very similar to a recurrent line “I wadna gie a button for her”, in Robert Burns’s poem Sic a Wife as Willie’s Wife. The poem describes the vile, vile looking wife of a wee ‘greasy weaver’ (no Adonis himself), and when performed usually has the audience in stitches when the descriptions of the wife are mimed. It is a good party piece for a Burns Supper on 25 January.

+ [p. 206] “So she’s made up some brose for ye...”

Brose is a famous Scottish pick-me-up, made with oats, whisky, cream and... herbs.

+ [p. 206] “I thought you turned into bats!’ she shouted to Vlad.”

Discworld vampires used to do this (in Reaper Man and Witches Abroad, for instance), but more recently they have taken to flying without changing form. Presumably it’s another aspect of being a Modern vampire.

+ [p. 209] “It’s called “Om Is In His Holy Temple”.”

‘God is in His Holy Temple’ was a popular Victorian hymn.

+ [p. 213] “... *and Brutha said to Simony, “Where there is darkness we will make a great light*...””

Isaiah 9:2: “The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light: they that dwell in the land of the shadow of death, upon them hath the light shined.”

+ [p. 223] “It read: ‘HLISTEN TO ZEE CHILDREN OFF DER NIGHT... VOT

VONDERFUL MHUSICK DEY MAKE. Mnftrd. by Bergholt Stuttley Johnson, Ankh-Morpork.’ ‘It’s a Johnson,’ she breathed. ‘I haven’t got my hands on a Johnson for ages...”

Combined with Igor’s previous comment that ‘the Century of the Fruitbat has its compensations’, this suggests that B. S. Johnson was active within the past hundred years—the first solid clue we’ve had about his lifetime. The ‘children of the night’ quote is one of the most famous lines from the original 1931 Dracula movie.

‘Johnson’ is American slang for a penis, so this single entendre is quite an admission from Nanny.

+ [p. 223] “”Thunderclap 14”? “Wolf Howl 5”?”

Organ registers are named after the sound they make, and the height of tone they produce. Owing to the nature of sound, however, 14 is very rarely found in real life; it would be 1. out of tune; most registers are powers of two, or three times powers of two for quints; and 2. pretty low.

+ [p. 242] “No, thought Agnes. It’ll take the nightmares away.”

There is a quotation, attributed to G. K. Chesterton: “Fairy tales do not tell children the dragons exist. Children already know that dragons exist. Fairy tales tell children the dragons can be killed.” This seems to chime remarkably well with Terry’s own attitude to children’s stories.

+ [p. 247] “Do you remember Mr and Mrs Harker?”

Jonathan and Mina Harker are two of the leading characters in Dracula.

+ [p. 247] “Do onions hurt us? Are we frightened of shallots? No.”

The hero of the classic 1954 novel I am Legend, the last living human on an earth where everyone else has become a vampire, actually experiments with this possibility.

+ [p. 248] “Greebo sheathed his claws and went back to sleep.”

This is the second time Greebo has taken out a vampire—he ate a bat in Witches Abroad -- which suggests that there are other ways of killing them than those sophisticated methods prescribed by folklore.

+ [p. 249] “—burn, with a clear bright light—”

A very tame, sweet, modern children’s hymn (see the annotation for p.

279):

“Jesus bids us shine with a pure clear light Like a little candle, burning in the night. In this world of darkness so we must shine, You in your small corner and I in mine.”

+ [p. 255] “Remember—that which does not kill us can only make us stronger.”

“That which does not kill me, makes me stronger”—popular saying, attributed to Nietzsche, whose morality would certainly have appealed to the Count.

+ [p. 256] “Lines and crosses and circles... oh, my...”

Echoes ‘Lions and tigers and bears, oh my!’ from The Wizard of Oz.

+ [p. 257] “And I’d watch that bloke with the stake. He’s altogether too keen on it. I reckon there’s some psychology there—”

It’s become a commonplace observation, about Dracula, that a man driving a stake into a female vampire is about as strong a sexual image as it was possible to publish in Victorian times...

+ [p. 261] “They’ve killed Thcrapth! The bathtardth!”

A running joke in the adult cartoon South Park is how the character Kenny is killed, in some deeply implausible way, in every episode, whereupon Kyle and Stan exchange the comments “Oh my god! They’ve killed Kenny!” “You bastards!”

+ [p. 266] “Griminir the Impaler, she was.”

Grimnir the Impaler (1514-1553, 1553-1557, 1557-1562, 1562-1567 and 1568-1573) is mentioned in Wyrd Sisters. The difference in spelling is presumably a typo.

+ [p. 268] “Old Red Eyeth ith back!”

One of Frank Sinatra’s later albums bore the title ‘Old Blue Eyes is Back’. ‘Old Red Eyes is Back’ is also the title of a song by Beautiful South.

+ [p. 275] “Oats’s gaze went out across the haze, and the forest, and the purple mountains.”

For some reason, mountains often seem to be described as ‘purple’ in the context of noble or uplifting thoughts. Compare the song ‘America the Beautiful’, by Katharine Lee Bates:

“O beautiful for spacious skies,

For amber waves of grain,

For purple mountain majesties

Above the fruited plain!”
+ [p. 279] “The singing wasn’t very enthusiastic, though, until Oats tossed aside the noisome songbook and taught them some of the songs he remembered from his grandmother, full of fire and thunder and death and justice and tunes you could actually whistle, with titles like ‘Om Shall Trample The Ungodly’ and ‘Lift Me To The Skies’ and ‘Light The Good Light’.”

Many modern churches have sanitised their official hymnbooks, leaving many of their worshippers complaining vigorously about the insipidness of the new hymns. ‘Light The Good Light’ is presumably the Omnian version of ‘Fight the Good Fight’; ‘Om Shall Trample The Ungodly’ is less clear, but it could scan to the tune of ‘The Battle-Hymn of the Republic.’