Once More With Footnotes

Weatherwax is entering. She always wins. "
     
                  " Yes," said Nanny. "It's a competition."
     
                  "But she always wins! "
     
                  " So?"
     
                  "In other types of competition," said Letice, "one is normally only allowed to win for three years in a row and then one takes a backsea t for a while."
     
                  "Yeah, but this is witching," said Nanny. "The rules is different. "
     
                  " How so? "
     
                  " There ain't none."
     
                  Letice twitched her skirt. "Perhaps it is time there were," she said.
     
                  "Ah," said Nanny. "And you just going to go up and tell Esme that? You up for this, Gammer?"
     
                  Gammer Beavis didn't meet her gaze. Old Mother Dismass was gazing at last week.
     
                  "I understand Miss Weatherwax is a very proud woman," said Letice.
     
                  Nanny Ogg puffed at her pipe again.
     
                  "You might as well say the sea is full of water," she said.
     
                  The other witches were silent for a moment.
     
                  "I daresay that was a valuable comment," said Letice, "but I didn't understand it."
     
                  "If there ain't no water in the sea, it ain't the sea," said Nanny Ogg. "It's just a damn great hole in the ground. Thing about Esme is ..." Nanny took another noisy pull at the pipe. "She's all pride, see? She ain't just a proud person."
     
                  "Then perhaps she should learn to be a bit more humble ..."
     
                  "What's she got to be humble about?" said Nanny sharp ly.
     
                  But Letice, like a lot of people with marshmallow on the outside, had a hard core that was not easily compressed.
     
                  "The woman clearly has a natural talent and, really, she should be grateful for — "
     
                  Nanny Ogg stopped listening at this point.
     
                  The w oman, she thought. So that was how it was going.
     
                  It was the same in just about every trade. Sooner or later someone decided it needed organising, and the one thing you could be sure of was that the organisers weren't going to be the people who, by genera l acknowledgement, were at the top of their craft. They were working too hard. To be fair, it generally wasn't done by the worst, neither. They were working hard, too. They had to.
     
                  No, it was done by the ones who had just enough time and inclination to s curry and bustle. And, to be fair again, the world needed people who scurried and bustled. You just didn't have to like them very much.
     
                  The lull told her that Letice had finished.
     
                  "Really? Now, me," said Nanny, "I'm the one who's nat'rally talented. Us Oggs've got witchcraft in our blood. I never really had to sweat at it.
     
                  Esme, now ... she's got a bit, true enough, but it ain't a lot. She just makes it work harder'n hell. And you're going to tell her she's not to?"
     
                  "We were rather hoping you would, " said Letice.
     
                  Nanny opened her mouth to deliver one or two swearwords, and then stopped.
     
                  "Tell you what," she said, "you can tell her tomorrow, and I'll come with you to hold her back."
     
    -
     
                  Granny Weatherwax was gathering Herbs when they came up the track.
     
                  Everyday herbs of sickroom and kitchen are known as simples. Granny's Herbs weren't simples. They were complicateds or they were nothing. And there was none of the airy-fairy business with a pretty basket and a pair of dainty snippers. Granny used a knife. And a chair held in front of her. And a leather hat, gloves, and apron as secondary lines of defence.
     
                  Even she didn't know where some of the Herbs came from. Roots and seeds were traded all over the world, and maybe farther. Some had flowers th at turned as you passed by, some fired their thorns at passing birds, and several were staked, not so that they wouldn't fall over, but so they'd still be