Once More With Footnotes

Lancre. Well there's only one fertility ritual that I knows of and that's the one that comes nat'raly but she says, no, there's got to be loads of folk stuff hanging on because I am writin' a book and I will give you this handsome silver dollar, my good woman.
     
                  Well of course a dollar is not to be sneezed up so next morning I was able to give her as much folklore as she could carry away. Of course I din't tell her much of the real stuff lik e the Dark Morris 'cos she wouldn't get it right, and anyways the Obbyoss ain't been seen for years although sometimes the hunters say they hears it afar off in the woods, but all the same it's amazing what you can remember after a couple of pints, such a s :
     
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    The Lancre Oozer
     
                  The Oozer, attended by people dressed up as his Squeasers, dances from house to house in every village on Old Hogswatch Eve until people gives them money to go somewhere else. It is said that any maiden kissed by the Oozer is sure to be pregnant before the year is out but this is an odds-on bet in these parts anyway.
     
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    The Slice Mummers Play
     
                  This is performed on the first Saturday after Marling Day, when the characters of Old Hogfather, Death, Merry Hood, and the White Knight pe rform an age old ritual tellin' of the death and resurrection of really bad acting. This is the high spot of the Slice Fair and Revels. There is not a lot to do in Slice. Well, not that isn't mostly banned everywhere else.
     
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    The Scouring of the Long Man
     
                  This takes place about every twenty years in early May, when the men and the married women go up to the Long Man and cut away all the bracken and seedlings what have grown up since the last Scouring. Unmarried girls ain't allowed to join in but it's amaz in what a good view you can get from up a tree and if you ain't got brothers you can get an education right there and then which will prevent surprises later in life. Someone who knows about this stuff said the Long Man is just some old burial mounds, and I ain't arguing, har har.
     
     
     
                  When it's decently dark there's a pig roast and a sing song and then people wander off and make their own entertainment.
     
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    The Lancre Seven-year Flitch
     
                  This is an old custom datin' back to one Miscegenation Carter, who lef t some money in his will to set it up to provide a flitch of bacon for the deservin' poor. It is held every five years. It is open to any man who has been married for more than seven years to appear before the Flitch Court, which consists of six old marri e d couples, an swear that in that time he has never had a cross word with his wife or regretted bein' married. If he does, he is then beaten near senseless with the flitch for lying, but brought round with strong drink and the rest of the day is a fair. So far no man has ever convinced the Court an the flitch is still the original one which is hard as oak now.
     
                  That is about all I can recall for one dollar.
     
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                  I did not study folklore any more than a butterfly studies flowers. I certainly wasn't in any se nse scholarly. But as a young writer — and a journalist, because journalists certainly think in terms of "story shapes", as a useful means of compressing the complexities of a planning row or a crime in two hundred and fifty words — I started noticing pattern s and similarities. A theory that arose in my mind as a result of my reading, and later my writing, was that of narrative causality — the idea that there are "story shapes" into which human history, both large scale and at the personal level, attempts to fit. At least, a novelist would put it that way; it's probably more sensible to say that we ourselves for some reason have the story shapes in our mind, and attempt to fit the facts of history into them, like Cinderella's slipper — a case in point, in fact, sin c e for generations we have been happy to accept the idea that the servants went out into what appears to be quite a large city to find a girl whose foot would fit, and as Nanny Ogg points out: "How many size seven narrow fit are there in one city? Seems a b it suspicious they go straight to the right house. "As a witch, of course, she is immune from stories — witches make stories for other people. And we like