Equal Rites

the religion of Wicca, in other words, they are not Wiccan. Another option would be a misspelled word ‘coward’, of course.

9

Someone on alt.fan.pratchett pointed out that in our world, Gypsies were named because people thought they were Egyptians. Since the Discworld equivalent of Egypt is Djelibeybi, shouldn’t Hilta Goatfounder have been talking about, say, ‘Jellybabes’? Terry answered:

“Okay. Almost every word in the English language has a whole slew of historic associations. People on the Disc can’t possibly speak ‘English’ but I have to write in English. Some carefully-positioned ‘translations’ like ‘It’s all Klatchian to me’ can work, but if I went the whole hog and ‘discworlded’ every name and term, then the books would be even more impenetrable and would probably only be read by people who like learning Klingon. I do my best—French fries can’t exist on Discworld, for example—but I think ‘gypsies’ is allowable.”

10

A Morris Minor is a British car that non-Brits might be familiar with either through the video clip for Madness’ song ‘Driving in my car’, or through the TV series Lovejoy. In that series, Lovejoy’s car ‘Miriam’ is a Morris Minor. For the rest of you, here’s a description:

Imagine a curvaceous jelly-mould in the shape of a crouching rabbit, like Granny used to use. Turn it open- side-down and fit four wheels, near the corners. On the rabbit’s back build a cabin, with picture windows and a windscreen in two parts at an angle to each other. Add turn indicators consisting of little arms which flip out of the body at roof level, just behind the doors. Furnish the cabin in a post-War austerity style, and power the result with a 1935 vintage 850cc straight four engine pulling about 30bhp. In its day, in 1948, this was the height of desirability —so much so that for its first few years it was only available for export.

Even in the Nineties, a fair number of Moggies are still going, er, strong. You can actually pay a couple of thousand pounds for a good one which works, because they’re so easy to maintain. And the split-screen ones are very definitely collectors’ items.

11

The Necrotelicomnicom is another reference to the Phonebook of the Dead (see the annotation for the dedication of Equal Rites), but is also a pun on the evil book of the dead Necronomicon, used by H. P. Lovecraft in his Cthulhu stories.

Bel-Shamharoth is an Elder God of the Discworld we already met in ‘The Sending of Eight’ in The Colour of Magic. C’hulagen is obviously made up out of the same ingredients as C’thulhu, and the Insider refers to the unnamed narrator of Lovecraft’s The Outsider.

12

Terry’s having fun with a familiar saying that originated with Robert Frost’s poem Mending a Wall:

My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
He only says, ‘Good fences make good neighbours’.

And since people keep pointing it out to me I suppose it might as well be mentioned here that ‘fence’ is also the English word for a dealer in stolen goods.

13

“Mrs Palm(er) and her daughters” is a euphemism for male masturbation.

14

Treatle refers here to the old student’s (drinking) song ‘Gaudeamus Igitur’, written in 1781 by Christian Wilhelm Kindleben, a priest in Leipzig who got kicked out because of his student songs. The song is still in use at many universities and schools, where it gets sung during graduation ceremonies. The actual lyrics are:

Gaudeamus igitur, iuvenes dum sumus.
Post iucundam iuventutem,
Post molestam senectutem,
Nos habebit humus, nos habebit humus.

Which roughly translates to:

Let us be merry, therefore, whilst we are young men.
After the joys of youth,
After the pain of old age,
The ground will have us, the ground will have us.

15

You really have to read Tolkien in order to understand why this is so funny. Sure, I can explain that in the The Lord of the Rings a big deal is made of the transformation of wizards from one ‘colour’ to another (and in particular Gandalf the Grey becoming Gandalf the White), but that just doesn’t do justice to the real atmosphere of the thing.