Read Online Folklore of Discworld by Terry Pratchett - Free Book Online Page B

Eastern Europe, the fear of elves and fairies was still powerful in quite recent years. The American folklorist Gail Kligman, working in Romania in 1975, learned about wondrously beautiful but malevolent fairy maidens called iele , which literally means ‘They’ or ‘Themselves’, since it is dangerous to utter their true name. They live in woods and wild places. They travel by night, singing and dancing, but those who listen to their music or join their dance will regret it – at best, they will be deaf for life, and may well be crippled, or go mad. There is hardly any limit to the sickness and trouble which the iele can inflict on humans, even those who have never offended them. In Russia and other Slavonic lands, there are forest elves who trick travellers into leaving the path to wander helplessly among the trees until they starve to death, and water elves who catch and drown the unwary. Beautiful? Yes, usually. Nice? Never.
    Wherever elves go they feed on the awe, the terror, the superstition they inspire. They take control of people’s minds. They enslave. When they invaded Lancre, as is told in Lords and Ladies , Granny Weatherwax warned King Verence II:
    ‘When they get into a world, everyone else is on the bottom. Slaves. Worse than slaves. Worse than animals, even. They take what they want, and they want everything. But worst of all, the worst bit is … they read your mind. They hear what you think, and in self-defence you think what they want. And it’s barred windows at night, and food out for the fairies, and turning around three times before you talks about ’em, and horseshoes over the door.’
    Horseshoes are important, and so are the blacksmiths who make them, since almost the only protection humans have against fairies is the power of iron. It is known throughout the multiverse that all creatures of this species fear and detest iron, which causes them intense pain. Various more or less foolish theories have been proposed to account for this. On the Earth, it is often claimed that it shows ‘fairies’ are nothing more than a folk memory of some prehistoric human society which did not have iron weapons, and fled from others who did. But on the Discworld people know the real reason. Elves have a powerful sixth sense based on awareness of magnetic fields, and use it to know precisely where they are, and where and what all other living creatures are. So to them iron is:
    … the terrible metal that drinks the force and deforms the flux universe like a heavy weight on a rubber sheet and blinds them and deafens them and leaves them rudderless and more alone than most humans could ever be. [ Lords and Ladies ]
    The other picture people have of fairies, the picture of their beauty and charm, is partly created by the fairies themselves as they infiltrate the collective memory and imagination of humanity. Nanny Ogg knows this, yet even she finds it hard to keep a clear mind when thinking about elves:
    People didn’t seem able to remember what it was like with theelves around. Life was certainly more interesting then, but usually because it was shorter. And it was more colourful, if you liked the colour of blood. It got so people didn’t even dare talk openly about the bastards.
    You said: The Shining Ones. You said: The Fair Folk. And you spat, and touched iron. But generations later, you forgot about the spitting and the iron, and you forgot why you used those names for them, and you remembered only that they were beautiful.
    Elves! The bastards … and yet … and yet … somehow, yes, they did things to memory.
    We only remembers that the elves sang [thought Nanny Ogg]. We forgets what it was they were singing about.
    How completely people forget depends very much on when, where and how they live. In the cities – in London, New York, or Ankh-Morpork – elves and fairies are nothing more than fantasy, just a bit of fun for the kids. But people who live on the land, especially in remote and wild parts