The Annotated Pratchett File, v7a

Carpe Jugulum

+ [p. 6] “Nac mac Feegle!”

The Feegles speak a version of Scots. In theory this is closely related to English, and an English speaker can usually understand Scots with a bit of effort, but this very thick dialect is largely incomprehensible to most English speakers. Terry himself warns against trying to decode all of their sayings—the important thing is the impression you get, not the exact words—but some of them are straightforward enough.

Of the ‘battle cries’, ‘Bigjobs!’ is the catchphrase of Mek-Quake, one of the ‘ABC Warriors’ in the cult comic 2000 AD; ‘Dere c’n onlie be whin t’ousand!’ seems to be based on the tagline of the film Highlander:

‘There can be only one!’; and ‘Nac mac Feegle wha hae!’ echoes Robert Burns’s ‘Scots wha hae’—although this makes little sense on its own...

+ [p. 8] “Do they really think that spelling their name backwards fools anyone?”

There are many vampire movies in which this trick works remarkably well:

in Son of Dracula (1943), Count ‘Alucard’ travels to the southern USA to marry a disturbed woman who wants to be immortal; in Dracula’s Last Rites (1979), vampire Dr A. Lucard runs a mortuary, which keeps him well-stocked with fresh bodies. The same trick occurs in Dracula: the Series (1990), and the films Dr Terror’s Galaxy of Horrors (1966) and Dracula: the Dirty Old Man (1969).

+ [p. 11] “Not, of course, with her reflection in the glass, because that kind of heroine will sooner or later end up singing a duet with Mr Blue Bird and other forest creatures [...]”

Various Disney heroines have done this: Snow White was the first, but Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty perpetrated similar offences. In the film Mary Poppins, Julie Andrews sings in harmony with her own reflection (‘A Spoonful of Sugar’) and does indeed go on to sing with other creatures. ‘Mr Blue Bird’ comes into the song ‘Zippedy Doo-Dah’, from the Disney film Song of the South, although there may be some older reference.
+ [p. 13] “If you needed to boil an egg, you sang fifteen verses of ‘Where

Has All The Custard Gone?’ under your breath.”

Possibly the Lancrastrian version of ‘Where Have All The Flowers Gone?’, which can also be used for egg-timing purposes.

+ [p. 14] “You got to come to Mrs Ivy and her baby missus!”

Ivy is an evergreen plant that continues growing even on dead trees; hence it is sometimes a symbol of immortality, persistence of life.

+ [p. 15] “I thought old Mrs Patternoster was seeing to her.”

Paternoster (Latin for ‘Our Father’) generally refers to the Lord’s Prayer in Latin, as said by Roman Catholics until the 1960s.

+ [p. 18] “WELL, I HAVE A SMALL AMOUNT OF MONEY. A couple of coins landed on the frosty road.”

See the annotation for p. 30/25 of Mort.

+ [p. 19] “Later on, there’d be a command performance by that man who put weasels down his trousers,”

A traditional stunt act in Yorkshire, only with ferrets rather than weasels.

+ [p. 21] “Now the Quite Reverend Oats looked at himself in the mirror.”

In the Anglican Church, a priest is known as ‘Reverend’, a dean is ‘Very Reverend’, a bishop is ‘Right Reverend’, an archbishop ‘Most Reverend’.

Oats’s name may be a reference to Titus Oates, a 17^th-century English clergyman who in 1678 alleged that Jesuits were planning to assassinate Charles II and place his Roman Catholic brother James, Duke of York (later James II), on the throne. In the subsequent wave of anti-Catholic hysteria, Oates was gratefully rewarded, and about 35 innocent people were executed. In 1685, after James acceded to the throne, Oates was convicted of perjury, flogged, and imprisoned. He was released and given a pension after James was deposed in the Glorious Revolution of 1688.

+ [p. 27] “Lancre people didn’t bother much with letterboxes.”

All the same, it seems that arrangements have moved on since Lords and Ladies, in which the mail was left hanging in a sack in the town for people to collect in their own time.

+ [p. 30] “[...] an’ it’s bein’ used up on der Copperhead road tonight.”

The name is Terry’s tribute to Steve Earle, a large, ‘new country’ singer who recorded a song called ‘Copperhead Road’. A copperhead is a poisonous snake native to parts of the eastern and southern USA.

+ [p. 32] “It is as well to remember that your ancestors [...] firmly believed that they couldn’t cross a stream.”

Some vampire stories include a prohibition against crossing running water. Although it’s worth mentioning that this only ever prevented them from crossing streams under their own propulsion—they could still be carried across it, e.g. in a coach.

+ [p. 38] “the worst she can put her hand up to at her age is a few grubby nappies and keepin’ you awake at night. That’s hardly sinful, to my mind.”

St Augustine, in his Confessions, pointed to the attention-seeking behaviour of babies as evidence that even the most innocent are selfish, because of original sin.

+ [p. 39] “If Klatch sneezes, Ankh-Morpork catches a cold.”

‘If “foo” sneezes, “bar” catches a cold’ has become a cliché in economics. “foo” and “bar” may be pretty much any combination of America, Japan, Europe and Asia.

+ [p. 39] “The “werewolf economies”, as the Patrician in Ankh-Morpork

calls them.”

The East Asian economies of South Korea, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand and others that grew outstandingly fast throughout the 1980s and 90s are sometimes collectively called the ‘Tiger Economies’.

+ [p. 41] “”shave and a haircut, no legs””

The usual tune is ‘Shave and a haircut, two pence’. See also the annotation for p. 47/36 of Soul Music.

+ [p. 51] “We eat only fish this month. [...] Because the prophet Brutha eschewed meat, um, while he was wandering in the desert, see.”

The Christian fast of Lent, originally a period of abstaining from all ‘rich food’, commemorates Christ’s time spent fasting in the wilderness, during which Satan tempted him with bread. See Matthew 4:1-11 and Luke 4:1-14. For the full story of Brutha, read Small Gods.

+ [p. 52] “Wstfgl?’ said Agnes.”

The earliest occurrence of this non-word that anyone has yet reported is in Asterix the Legionary, when Obelix catches sight of the beautiful Fabella. Terry says: “You’ve got me there... I thought I’d just strung together some letters!”

But there’s something about this set of letters, because Ptraci says the same thing in Pyramids, and in Feet of Clay, in her sleep, Sybil says ‘wsfgl’. There’s also Astfgl, the ‘villain’ of Eric. More significantly, if you search for “wstfgl” on the Web, you’ll find it cropping up in all sorts of apparently unrelated stories in a similar context—the noise people make when they’re either asleep or lost for words.

We may be witnessing the birth of a new word.

+ [p. 54] “I do not drink... wine,’ said Igor haughtily.”

This line, with the dramatic pause before the word ‘wine’, appears in many different movie versions of Dracula, starting with Bela Lugosi’s 1931 classic version, down to the Francis Ford Coppola 1992 remake Bram Stoker’s Dracula.

The line itself does not occur in the book, but originated in the Hamilton Deane stage-play Dracula, which was hugely successful in New York in the 1920s.

+ [p. 55] “There wath none of thith fumble-finger thtuff and then pinching a brain out of the “Really Inthane” jar and hopin’ no one’d notithe.”

At least one of the early Frankenstein films (which are clearly the main inspiration for Igor) involves the servant being sent to steal the brain of a famous scientist from a medical lab, but he drops that one and substitutes one labelled ‘Abnormal’, which is then transplanted into the monster.

+ [p. 59] “Vlad de Magpyr,’ said Vlad, bowing.”

Bram Stoker borrowed the name ‘Dracula’ from Vlad Dracula, ‘the Impaler’, 1431-1476, prince of Wallachia. This Vlad was as brutal and psychopathic a ruler as you could ever hope to avoid, but there is no historical evidence that he either drank blood or dabbled in sorcery.

The name ‘Magpyr’ puns both on magpie and Magyar, an equestrian tribe who settled in what is now Hungary and parts of Romania during the 9^th century. Dracula would have been a Magyar. Nowadays, the word is more or less synonymous with ‘Hungarian’.

+ [p. 59] “Or, we prefer, vampyres. With a “y”. It’s more modern.”

This spelling has a very old pedigree, but has become a hallmark of certain modern-day vampire fans who, like the Count, want to distance themselves from traditional beliefs about vampires. I blame Anne Rice.

+ [p. 60] “And this is my daughter, Lacrimosa.”

‘Lacrimosa’ is Latin for ‘tearful one’, which seems appropriate to Lacci’s whiney personality. It’s also the first word of the traditional Latin requiem mass:

“Lacrymosa dies illa

quae resurget ex favilla

judicandus homo reus.

Huic ergo parce, Deus,

pie Jesu, Jesu Domine,

dona eis requiem.”
Which translates approximately to:

“O tearful the day

when from the ashes rises

the guilty to be judged.

Therefore spare him, God,

Good Jesus, Jesus Lord,

give them rest.”
+ [p. 62] “The Queen makes up some sort of headache pills out of willow bark.”

As previously noted (see the annotation for p. 119 of Hogfather), willow bark contains aspirin.

+ [p. 63] “Agnes’s left arm twitched [...] as if guided by a mind of its own.”

The hero of the cult horror parody Evil Dead II has a similar problem, which he eventually resolves by cutting off his own hand; this scene could well be partly inspired by the film.

+ [p. 72] “national anthems [...] all have the same second verse, which goes ‘nur... hnur... mur... nur nur, hnur... nur... nur, hnur’ at some length, until everyone remembers the last line of the first verse and sings it as loudly as they can.”

Not long after the publication of Carpe Jugulum, Terry wrote the Ankh-Morpork national anthem along these lines, set to original music by Carl Davis.

+ [p. 75] “The trolls are stupid, the dwarfs are devious, the pixies are evil and the gnomes stick in your teeth.”

Later in the book, it appears that gnomes and pixies are the same thing, but Vlad seems to think differently.

+ [p. 82] “Good morning, Mister Magpie,’ said Agnes automatically.”

As Agnes and Nanny go on to discuss, there are many different counting rhymes for magpies, but they generally agree that a single magpie is unlucky. Some people believe that one can avert the bad luck by being polite, or even downright flattering, to the magpie in this manner.

The rhyme Agnes repeats over the next few pages is similar to the one Mike learned as a child:

“One for sorrow, two for joy,

Three for a girl, four for a boy,

Five for silver, six for gold,

Seven for a secret never to be told.”
Nanny’s version seems closer to the Scots version given in Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase & Fable:

“One’s sorrow, two’s mirth,

Three’s a wedding, four’s a birth,

Five’s a christening, six a dearth,

Seven’s heaven, eight is hell,

And nine’s the devil his ane sel’.”

although Nanny’s also varies noticeably from this, which just goes to prove what she says about there being lots of different rhymes.
+ [p. 90] “Lady Strigoiul said her daughter has taken to calling herself

Wendy,’ [...] ‘Maladora Krvoijac does,’ said Vlad.”

In Romanian, ‘strigoi’ or ‘strigoiaca’ is the modern form of the ancient Roman ‘stryx’, a type of shape-changing, bloodsucking witch. ‘Krvopijac’ is either Bulgarian or Croatian for ‘blood-drinker’.

+ [p. 91] “*Le sang nouveau est arrive*,’ said Vlad.”

Every year, towards the end of October, the first press of the year’s Beaujolais wine is marketed as ‘Beaujolais nouveau’, announced with the slogan ‘Le Beaujolais nouveau est arrive.’ The wine is generally quite strong, both in alcohol content and flavour, and not highly regarded by connoisseurs. After a few months it becomes undrinkable, owing to the accelerated fermentation process.

+ [p. 91] “That is the double snake symbol of the Djelibeybian water cult,’ he said calmly.”

In Pyramids, the Djelibeybian high priest Dios had a staff with two serpents entwined around it—possibly the same symbol. There are at least three distinct theories about why holy symbols repel vampires. The Catholic theory is that the repelling force is the faith of the holder, and the symbol merely focuses that faith—so a symbol on its own, or in the hands of a non-believer, is useless. (This has produced some interesting interpretations of what a ‘holy symbol’ could be—one film shows a yuppie repelling a vampire with his wallet.) The Orthodox theory is that faith is irrelevant—it’s God who is performing the miracle, not the wielder. The psychological theory, which Terry seems to be subscribing to here, is that the effect is entirely in the mind of the vampire.

+ [p. 98] “Although having studied the passage in question in the original

Second Omnian IV text, I have advanced the rather daring theory that the word in question translates more accurately as “cockroaches”.”

Exodus 22:18: “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.” It is often suggested that the Hebrew word used here should be translated ‘poisoner’, but the case for this is unconvincing and based mainly on the flawed Greek translation of the Old Testament, the Septuagint. Modern translations of the Bible still say ‘witch’.

+ [p. 99-100] “Look, there was this donkey, and it stopped in the middle of the river, and it wouldn’t go backwards or forwards, [...] Bad Ass. See?”

This is slightly reminiscent of the Biblical story of Balaam’s ass (Numbers 22:1-41).

+ [p. 100] “Agnes had seen pictures of an ostrich. So... start with one of them, but make the head and neck in violent yellow, and give the head a huge ruff of red and purple feathers and two big round eyes, the pupils of which jiggled drunkenly as the head moved back and forth...”

The description may be modelled on ‘Emu’, property of Rod Hull; their double act was very popular on UK TV in the 1970s.

+ [p. 100] “Take that thing out of your mouth,’ said Agnes. ‘You sound like Mr Punch.”

Mr Punch is the lead character in a Punch-and-Judy show, a traditional British children’s entertainment featuring theft, extreme violence, wife-beating and multiple murders, using glove puppets. The performer would use a special throat-whistle, called a swozzle, to produce the character’s squeaky voice. See also the Discworld short story Theatre of Cruelty.

+ [p. 103] “A huge gilded china beer stein that played ‘Ich Bin Ein Rattarsedschwein’ from The Student Horse [...]”

‘Ich Bin Ein Rattarsedschwein’ means ‘I am a Drunken Pig’, rat-arsed being British slang for very drunk. The Student Horse refers to The Student Prince, an operetta by Romberg about a prince who studies at Heidelberg and falls for a barmaid. In the film, allegedly, Mario Lanza was supposed to play the part of the prince, but got too fat, so his voice is just dubbed over the lead actor’s when singing. Songs include the ‘Drinking Song’ and the unfortunately titled ‘Come Boys, Let’s All Be Gay Boys’.

+ [p. 104] “Why did you bring Soapy Sam back with you?”

The original ‘Soapy Sam’ was Samuel Wilberforce, Bishop of Oxford from 1845 to 1869, best remembered today for his diehard opposition to the theory of evolution. The name is occasionally applied today as a generic insult to any churchman who holds an opinion contrary to one’s own.

+ [p. 106] “I believe that in Glitz you have to fill their mouth with salt, hammer a carrot into both ears, and then cut off their head.’ ‘I can see it must’ve been fun finding that out.”

Terry is here parodying, but not even slightly exaggerating, the bewildering variety of ways of dealing with vampires in earth mythology. To give a taste of how abstruse these beliefs could become, here is a quotation from the alt.vampyres FAQ (held on http://www.altvampyres.net/:

“Some Gypsies in Kosova once believed that a brother and sister born together as twins on a Saturday could see a vampiric mulo if they wore their underwear and shirts inside out. The mulo would flee as soon as it was seen by the twins.”

+ [p. 120] “You were so successful in Escrow, I know.”

Escrow is a legal term for a formal contract or agreement to do something, where the document is held by a trusted third party until its conditions are satisfied.

+ [p. 121] “Every day, in every way, we get better and better,”

One of the very first positive-thinking mantras, coined by Emile Coue (1857-1926), French psychotherapist and pharmacist. Coue’s study of hypnotism convinced him that auto-suggestion could cure anything.

+ [p. 123] “They stared into the abyss, which didn’t stare back.”

A famous quotation from Nietzsche: “If you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.” (From Beyond Good and Evil.)

+ [p. 126] “She pushed gently until her toes were pointed at the sky and she was doing a handstand on the edge.”

Agnes is imitating Lara Croft, hero of the hugely successful Tomb Raider series of video games. Terry admits to being a Lara fan.

+ [p. 128] “Oh, that’s the witch,’ said Nanny. ‘She’s not a problem.”

There’s a cave in Somerset, near where Terry lives, with a similar feature outside it.

+ [p. 138] “Like the hero in Tsort or wherever it was, who was completely invincible except for his heel [...]”

See the annotation for p. 274/241 of Witches Abroad.

+ [p. 139] “The man lowered the thimble. ‘Pictsies!”

Puns on ‘pixie’ and ‘Picts’ (inhabitants of Scotland in Iron Age times).

+ [p. 141] “Hundreds of pixies had simply appeared among the ornaments.

Most of them wore pointed hats that curved so that the point was practically pointing down.”

Combined with the blue skin, this suggests a decidedly Smurf-like quality to the Feegles. Terry says:

“1 I wanted some background to Wee Mad Arthur, of Feet of Clay and so they’d be small. 2 I’d been listening to Laureena McKennitt singing ‘The Stolen Child’. 3 Since (see 1) the tribe would be cod-Scottish, then Braveheart and Rob Roy (“let’s bash the English” movies made by people sitting on the biggest piece of land ever stolen from its owners by trickery, genocide and war) were natural targets... which meant that the NmF would be blue...”

+ [p. 143] “Yez lukin’ at a faceful o’heid!”

Typical Glaswegian greeting. See also p. 169 “What ya’ lookin a’, chymie (Jimmy)?”

+ [p. 148] “You mean vampirism is like... pyramid selling?”

Pyramid selling is when each of your customers goes out and sells to a number of other customers, and you get a share of the profits from them; then each of those other customers goes out and tries the same trick, and so on until everyone in the world is a customer. Of course, if you’re one of the last generation to be recruited, you’re stuffed. Most pyramid-selling schemes are illegal in most countries. The scam is a common nuisance phenomenon on the Internet.

+ [p. 150] “Ah... Aunt Carmilla...”