The Annotated Pratchett File, v7a

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

URL: <http://www.galactic-guide.com/>

- [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 [...]”