The Folklore of Discworld

sulphur and rotting seaweed. Partly, because of nasty little ripples and soft splashing noises in the dark pools that lingered in the deeper cellars. But mainly it was because of the city itself. There were some buildings which looked more or less as human buildings should, with pillars and arches and steps and suchlike, and nice tiled floors with patterns of shells and squid and octopuses. But besides these, there were the remains of massive structures which had nothing to do with human architecture. It came as a relief when the island, after a few weeks, settled back down on to the seabed.
    Some faint awareness of these events, chronicled in Jingo , may have reached parts of the Earth. There is talk there of a ‘Green Land of Enchantment’ which occasionally rises to the surface in the Bristol Channel, and then vanishes again. A certain Captain Jones had a curious experience in the 1890s which was reported in the Pembroke County Guardian :
    Once when trending up the Bristol Channel and passing Grassholm Island, in what he had always known as deep water,he was surprised to see to windward of him a large tract of land covered with a beautiful green meadow. It was not, however, above water , but just a few feet below , say two or three, so that the grass waved and swam about as the ripple flowed over it, in a way quite delightful to the eye, so that as one watched it made one feel quite drowsy. ‘You know,’ he continued, ‘I have heard old people say there is a floating island off there, that sometimes rises to the surface, or nearly, and then sinks down again fathoms deep, so that no one sees it for years, and when nobody expects it comes up again for a while. How it may be, I do not know, but that is what they say.’
    There are similar tales of intermittent islands off the coasts of Norway and Ireland. If you want to make them stay permanently above water (since they offer good grazing), the thing to do is to throw a knife, or a burning torch, or a lit tobacco-pipe on to them before they can sink again, but this is very hard to achieve. The largest and loveliest Norwegian one is called Utrøst, inhabited by kindly beings; it only becomes visible to humans if their lives are in deadly danger, when its harbour offers them safety. Those who shelter there will have good luck all their lives.
    These are nice islands, of course, even if they are imaginary. One that was undoubtedly real and very Leshpian in its effects appeared in July 1831. It was a pumice island, and it rose to the surface off the coast of Sicily, due to volcanic action. A British fleet landed on it and claimed it for Britain, naming it Graham Island, but the Italians also claimed it, naming it Ferdinandea. The French and Spaniards showed interest too. The ensuing diplomatic dispute was still not settled when the island sank back into the sea in December of the same year, which was rather a shame, but averted a possible war.
    Finally, it should be noted that an island which pops up and then sinks again is, as Leonard of Quirm remarked, rather like a certain type of folklore current among sailors on the Discworld:
    ‘It puts me in mind,’ said Leonard, ‘of those nautical stories of giant turtles that sleep on the surface, thus causing sailors to think they are an island. Of course, you don’t get giant turtles that small.’ [ Jingo ]
    In our world, in the absence of any turtles larger than, say, a decent-sized dining-table, traditional nautical lore warns instead of the risks involved in landing on a really, really big fish or whale which happens to be dozing on the surface. In particular, it is very unwise to light a small fire and start cooking breakfast. St Brendan the Navigator, who was Abbot of Clonfert in Ireland in the sixth century, is said to have done just that while sailing far out in the Atlantic. Suddenly what he’d thought was an island began to twitch, and then to sink. Brendan and his crew were lucky to get back to their ship in time.
    Exactly the same thing happened to Sindbad the Sailor on his first voyage in the Indian Ocean, as is told in The Thousand and One Nights . The ship came to a little island which seemed as fair as the Garden of Eden, where the passengers disembarked; some wandered off to explore, while others busied themselves cooking, eating and drinking.
    While we were thus engaged we suddenly heard the captain cry out to us from the ship: ‘All aboard, quickly! Abandon everything and run for your lives! The