Wyrd Sisters - Страница 54

14

Involving a red hot poker, a privy, ten pounds of live eels, a three mile stretch of frozen river, a butt of wine, a couple of tulip bulbs, a number of poisoned eardrops, an oyster and a large man with a mallet. King Murune didn’t make friends easily.

15

Possibly the first attempt at the in-flight refuelling of a broomstick.

16

An explanation may be needed at this point. The Librarian of the magic library at Unseen University, the Disc’s premier college of wizardry, had been turned into an orang-utan some years previously by a magical accident in that accident-prone academy, and since then had strenuously resisted all well-meaning efforts to turn him back. For one thing, longer arms and prehensile toes made getting around the higher shelves a whole lot easier, and being an ape meant you didn’t have to bother with all this angst business. He had also been rather pleased to find that his new body, although looking deceptively like a rubber sack full of water, gave him three times the strength and twice the reach of his old one.

17

The Shades is an ancient part of Ankh-Morpork considered considerably more unpleasant and disreputable than the rest of the city. This always amazes visitors.

18

Ankh-Morpork’s enviable system of licensed criminals owes much to the current Patrician, Lord Vetinari. He reasoned that the only way to police a city of a million inhabitants was to recognize the various gangs and robber guilds, give them professional status, invite the leaders to large dinners, allow an acceptable level of street crime and then make the guild leaders responsible for enforcing it, on pain of being stripped of their new civic honours along with large areas of their skins. It worked. Criminals, it turned out, made a very good police force; unauthorized robbers soon found, for example, that instead of a night in the cells they could now expect an eternity at the bottom of the river.

However, there was the problem of apportioning the crime statistics, and so there arose a complex system of annual budgeting, chits and allowances to see that a) the members could make a reasonable living and b) no citizen was robbed or assaulted more than an agreed number of times. Many foresighted citizens in fact arranged to get an acceptable minimum of theft, assault, etc, over at the beginning of the financial year, often in the privacy and comfort of their own homes, and thus be able to walk the streets quite safely for the rest of the year. It all ticked over extremely peacefully and efficiently, demonstrating once again that compared to the Patrician of Ankh, Machiavelli could not have run a whelk stall.

19

Because of the way time was recorded among the various states, kingdoms and cities. After all, when over an area of a hundred square miles the same year is variously the Year of the Small Bat, and Anticipated Monkey, the Hunting Cloud, Fat Cows, Three Bright Stallions and at least nine numbers recording the time since assorted kings, prophets, and strange events were either crowned, born or happened, and each year has a different number of months, and some of them don’t have weeks, and one of them refuses to accept the day as a measure of time, the only thing it is possible to be sure of is that good sex doesn’t last long enough.

* The calendar of the Theocracy of Muntab counts down, not up. No-one knows why, but it might not be a good idea to hang around and find out.

** Except for the Zabingo tribe of the Great Nef, of course.

20

The observant will realize that this was because the king was already seated there. It was not because the man had used the phrase ‘commence to start’ in cold blood. But it ought to have been.

21

Like Bognor.

* Bognor Regis is a town on the south coast of England, between Brighton and Portsmouth. A sleepy seaside resort, it is best-known for King George V’s attributed last words, supposedly said after his physician told him he would soon be brought to Bognor to convalesce: “Bugger Bognor!”.

22

At least, of supervising the loading. Actual physical assistance was a little difficult because he had, the day before, slipped on something and broken his leg.

23

There is a school of thought that says that witches and wizards can never go home. They went, though, just the same.

comments

1

In Macbeth, the three witches are sometimes called the weird sisters, e.g. act 2, scene 1: (Banquo) “I dreamt last night of the three weird sisters […]”; or act 4, scene 1: (Macbeth) “Saw you the weird sisters?” (Lennox) “No, my lord.”

But there’s a bit more to it than just the Macbeth reference. ‘Wyrd’ is the Norse concept of destiny or fate, as embodied by the Norns (who probably inspired the Witches in Macbeth). Since ‘weird’ to a modern reader just means ‘strange’, it’s easy to miss the overtones of the title and just assume that it’s an Old spelling of ‘weird’.

2

Macbeth, act 1, scene 1, first line. The entire opening scene of Wyrd Sisters is of course a direct parody on the opening scene of Macbeth.

3

Probably the most famous Chance (or Community Chest) card in Monopoly: “GO TO JAIL—Go directly to Jail. Do not pass Go. Do not collect $200.”. (or 200 pounds, or 200 guilders, or 200 of whatever currency you care to name).

4

Terry says: “Magrat is pronounced Magg-rat. Doesn’t matter what I think is right—everyone I’ve heard pronounce it has pronounced it Maggrat.”

“In Margaret Murray’s book “The Witch Cult in Western Europe” you will find a number of Magrats and Magrets, and a suggestion that they were not misspellings but an earlier form of Margaret; also in the lists of those arraigned for witchcraft are the surnames Garlick, Device and Nutter. No Oggs or Weatherwax’s, though.”

5

There exists a book entitled Servants of Satan, which is about the history of witch hunts. It contains the following paragraph:

“This brings us back to Pierre de Lancre. He became convinced that Basque women where an immoral and unfaithful lot when observing their social arrangements during his witch-hunting expedition. De Lancre was especially horrified at the leadership roles in religious services taken by Basque women, the very women among whom witchcraft was rife …”

Terry comments: “I’m astonished. I’ve never heard of the guy, and I’m reasonably well-read in that area. But it is a lovely coincidence.”

It may also not be entirely a coincidence that ‘Lancre’ is a common way of referring to Lancashire, the county where the famous 17th century witch trials were held (see the annotation for p. 78/57 of Lords and Ladies).

6

Refers to the famous “Beware the ides of March” warning in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, act 1, scene 2.

7

Macbeth, act 4, scene 1: (2 Witch) “By the pricking of my thumbs, Something wicked this way comes […]”.

Keep an eye on Macbeth, act 4, scene 1. It’s one of Terry’s favourites in Wyrd Sisters.

8

Felmet’s dislike of the forest resonates with the prophecy foretelling Macbeth had nothing to fear until Birnam wood itself would march against him.

9

Infirm of purpose, is what Lady Macbeth calls her husband in Macbeth, act 2, scene 2.

10

‘Droit de seigneur’ or ‘jus primae noctae’ (‘right of first night’): a custom alleged to have existed in medieval Europe giving the lord of the land the right to sleep the first night with the bride of any one of his vassals. The evidence for this custom deals with redemption dues which were paid to avoid its enforcement. It probably existed as a recognised custom in parts of France and possibly Italy and Germany, but not elsewhere.

11

Gormenghast is the ancient, decaying castle from Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast trilogy. See also the annotation for p. 17/17 of Pyramids.

12

In act 2 of Macbeth, scenes 2 and 3 have a lot of [Knocking within] in the stage directions.

13

Nanny’s ring story is a well-known folk tale that goes back as least as far as Herodotus, but has also been used by e.g. Tolkien and Jack Vance.

More interesting is that at least one non-Brit over on alt.fan.pratchett had some trouble making sense of the implied connection between the concepts of ‘turbot’ and ‘tea’. What he did not realise was that ‘tea’ is the term the British tend to use for any meal taken between 4.30 and 7 pm, which may therefore include a nice, juicy turbot.

14

I must have read Wyrd Sisters close to twenty times by now, and except for the last time this nice bit of foreshadowing completely passed me by.

15

For those who do not know: in Shakespeare’s time this was indeed the case; no women were allowed on stage.

16

Obvious, because very well known, but since I’m annotating all the other Shakespeare references, I might as well point out here that Felmet’s attempts to wash the blood from his hands echo Lady Macbeth’s actions in Macbeth after the killing of Duncan in act 5, scene 1: “Out, damned spot!”, etc.