Read Online Folklore of Discworld by Terry Pratchett - Free Book Online
Authors: Terry Pratchett
Tags: Non-Fiction
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things strive’. And for the service the stone had given he fashioned it into the First Troll, and delighted in the life that came unbidden. These are the things that Tak wrote!
This, as any Earthbound reader can see, is a philosophically and morally profound Creation Myth, and Tak a more impressive figure than any of the gods on Cori Celesti. We can no longer accept that dwarfs are a non-religious race. 5
Yet in some dwarf communities devotion to the Laws spawned an outlook as rigid as the unchanging ritualism in the kingdom of Djelibeybi, though not as cruel as the enforcement of dogma by the Omnians. At the time of the events described in The Fifth Elephant and in Thud! the influence of traditionalist mountain dwarfs, especially those from Schmaltzberg, had grown strong. They held that those who had moved to Ankh-Morpork and other lowland cities were d’rkza ,‘not proper dwarfs’, because they had become lax, they had let the old ways slide. If Albrecht Albrechtsson had become Low King, he would have declared all these city-dwellers d’hrarak , ‘non-dwarfs’; this would have made their marriages and business contracts invalid, and would have meant that old dwarfs would not be allowed to be buried back home.
Albrecht did not become Low King, so this did not happen. Instead, traditionalists themselves began coming to Ankh-Morpork, hoping to re-establish orthodoxy by their teaching and example. They are called grags. They are greatly respected by the city dwarfs; they conduct marriages and other necessary ceremonies, give judgement in disputes and advice on problems:
Please come and say the death-words over my father … Please advise me on the sale of my shop … Please guide me in my business … I am a long way from the bones of my grandfathers, please help me to stay a dwarf. [ Thud! ]
The grags, or deep-downers, go beyond even the strictest letter of the Laws. They have dug themselves new dwellings under the cellars of existing houses, where they live as much as possible underground; if they do have to come up to the surface, they wear heavy black leather robes and hoods with a mere slit for the eyes, and are carried about in curtained sedan chairs, so as never to commit the crime of seeing daylight. The strictest among them form enclosed communities, and never come out. They send a junior novice, called ‘the daylight face’, to do any errands above ground and to speak with visitors in an antechamber. They claim that everything that happens underground should be governed by kruk , ‘mining law’, not by the laws of Ankh-Morpork. This is something Commander Vimes vigorously rejects; city law, he argues, applies just as much below the city as in the city.
It should not be too difficult to find parallels to all this in other universes, including ours. One thinks of fundamentalist movementsin various religions, of cultic communities, of the rules of enclosed orders of monks and nuns. Humans and dwarfs think the same way. Regrettably, here there is no Commander Vimes around to put a stop to the endless revival of Koom Valley …
4 Any assembly of dwarfs for a common purpose is technically a ‘mine’, even if it is a boat or a farm.
5 For a given value of ‘non-religious’. Study of the text suggests that Tak, in the dwarfs’ understanding, is both the creator of, and immanent in, the fundamental laws of the universe. There is no act of worship, any more than gravity is worshipped, although it may be argued that living a ‘right life’ is such a thing. Even then the dwarf laws seem open to slow change by long argument. Dwarfs are artisans, after all; tools that don’t work are recast.
Chapter 3
THE ELVES
I T ’ S EASY, ALL TOO EASY , for people nowadays to get hold of the wrong end of the stick if you tell them there are ‘elves’ about. And if you say ‘fairies’, that just makes matters worse. People think of tall, shining figures dancing in rings in the moonlight to the
This, as any Earthbound reader can see, is a philosophically and morally profound Creation Myth, and Tak a more impressive figure than any of the gods on Cori Celesti. We can no longer accept that dwarfs are a non-religious race. 5
Yet in some dwarf communities devotion to the Laws spawned an outlook as rigid as the unchanging ritualism in the kingdom of Djelibeybi, though not as cruel as the enforcement of dogma by the Omnians. At the time of the events described in The Fifth Elephant and in Thud! the influence of traditionalist mountain dwarfs, especially those from Schmaltzberg, had grown strong. They held that those who had moved to Ankh-Morpork and other lowland cities were d’rkza ,‘not proper dwarfs’, because they had become lax, they had let the old ways slide. If Albrecht Albrechtsson had become Low King, he would have declared all these city-dwellers d’hrarak , ‘non-dwarfs’; this would have made their marriages and business contracts invalid, and would have meant that old dwarfs would not be allowed to be buried back home.
Albrecht did not become Low King, so this did not happen. Instead, traditionalists themselves began coming to Ankh-Morpork, hoping to re-establish orthodoxy by their teaching and example. They are called grags. They are greatly respected by the city dwarfs; they conduct marriages and other necessary ceremonies, give judgement in disputes and advice on problems:
Please come and say the death-words over my father … Please advise me on the sale of my shop … Please guide me in my business … I am a long way from the bones of my grandfathers, please help me to stay a dwarf. [ Thud! ]
The grags, or deep-downers, go beyond even the strictest letter of the Laws. They have dug themselves new dwellings under the cellars of existing houses, where they live as much as possible underground; if they do have to come up to the surface, they wear heavy black leather robes and hoods with a mere slit for the eyes, and are carried about in curtained sedan chairs, so as never to commit the crime of seeing daylight. The strictest among them form enclosed communities, and never come out. They send a junior novice, called ‘the daylight face’, to do any errands above ground and to speak with visitors in an antechamber. They claim that everything that happens underground should be governed by kruk , ‘mining law’, not by the laws of Ankh-Morpork. This is something Commander Vimes vigorously rejects; city law, he argues, applies just as much below the city as in the city.
It should not be too difficult to find parallels to all this in other universes, including ours. One thinks of fundamentalist movementsin various religions, of cultic communities, of the rules of enclosed orders of monks and nuns. Humans and dwarfs think the same way. Regrettably, here there is no Commander Vimes around to put a stop to the endless revival of Koom Valley …
4 Any assembly of dwarfs for a common purpose is technically a ‘mine’, even if it is a boat or a farm.
5 For a given value of ‘non-religious’. Study of the text suggests that Tak, in the dwarfs’ understanding, is both the creator of, and immanent in, the fundamental laws of the universe. There is no act of worship, any more than gravity is worshipped, although it may be argued that living a ‘right life’ is such a thing. Even then the dwarf laws seem open to slow change by long argument. Dwarfs are artisans, after all; tools that don’t work are recast.
Chapter 3
THE ELVES
I T ’ S EASY, ALL TOO EASY , for people nowadays to get hold of the wrong end of the stick if you tell them there are ‘elves’ about. And if you say ‘fairies’, that just makes matters worse. People think of tall, shining figures dancing in rings in the moonlight to the
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