The Folklore of Discworld

Hamlin story, it’s not difficult to think of something that could fit, and many modern commentators have offered suggestions. There were wars going on in thirteenth-century Germany, so maybe a recruiting sergeant passed through the town and led away 130 young men, and maybe they were all killed in battle. Or maybe the date is wrong, and the story really recalls how friars came preaching wild sermons to get youngsters to join the so-called Children’s Crusade to Jerusalem in 1212; they never got there, and those who did not die on the road ended up as slaves. Or maybe it refers to the forced emigration of local families to colonize new territories far away. For example, Bishop Bruno of Olmütz recruited families from Lower Saxony to build up a German population in his diocese in Bohemia; a comparison of city records in Hamlin and Olmütz reveals a startling agreement in the family names in each place, which bears out the rumour that the lost children of Hamlin reappeared safe and sound in Transylvania.
    Be that as it may, it’s the rats, the pipe, and the pied coat that we remember now. And only a beastly spoilsport would point out that rats can swim.
    As for drums …
    There was even an Ankh-Morpork legend, wasn’t there, about some old drum in the Palace or somewhere that was supposed to bang itself if an enemy fleet was seen sailing up the Ankh? The legend had died out in recent centuries, partly because this was the Age of Reason and also because no enemy fleet could sail up the Ankh without a gang of men with shovels going in front. [ Soul Music ]
    There is a curiously close parallel here with the patriotic English legend of Drake’s Drum. After the great Elizabethan seaman Sir Francis Drake died off Panama in 1595 a drum painted with his coat of arms was brought back to his home at Buckland Abbey in Devon,and is still kept there. It is traditionally believed to have come from the ship on which he had once sailed round the world. In 1895, for the three-hundredth anniversary of the hero’s death, Sir Henry Newbolt wrote a vigorous poem telling how Drake on his deathbed promised that if the drum was struck when England was in danger, he would return to save the country once again, as he had done when the Spanish Armada came.
    Drake he was a Devon man an’ ruled the Devon seas,
    (Capten, art tha sleepin’ there below?)
    Rovin’ tho’ his death fell, he went wi’ heart at ease,
    An’ dreamin’ arl the time o’ Plymouth Hoe.
    ‘Take my drum to England, hang et by the shore,
    Strike et when your powder’s runnin’ low;
    If the Dons sight Devon, I’ll quit the port o’ Heaven,
    An’ drum them up the Channel, as we drummed them long ago.’
    In 1916, when England was at war, a poet named Alfred Noyes gave this story an even stronger patriotic twist. Writing an article in The Times about submarine warfare, he declared that Devon fishermen believed that the drum had sounded of its own accord in times of crisis, and that Drake would always hear and answer its call. It had been heard when Nelson’s fleet went to meet the French at Trafalgar, and again in that very year of 1916 before the naval battle of Jutland in the North Sea. And this, the fishermen said, showed that Drake had returned to inspire Nelson and Admiral Jellicoe and guide them to victory. Whether Noyes really had heard Devon fishermen saying this, or whether he made it up himself, hardly matters. It’s folklore now. And now people say Drake’s drum was heard in 1940 at the evacuation of Dunkirk.
    The citizens of Ankh-Morpork show in their legends an appreciation of virtue which is rarely evident in their lives. They can in fact be downright sentimental. Take the story of the famous dog Gaspode –not to be confused with the mangy, flea-ridden speaking cur of the same name, who was simply called after him. The reason the famous Gaspode is famous is his devotion to his master.
    ‘It was years and years ago. There was this ole bloke in Ankh who snuffed it, and he belonged to one of them religions where they bury you after you’re dead, an’ they did, and he had this ole dog—’
    ‘Called Gaspode?’
    ‘Yeah, an’ this ole dog had been his only companion, and after they buried the man he lay down on his grave, and howled and howled for a couple of weeks. Growled at everybody who came near. An’ then died.’ [ Moving Pictures ]
    Strangely, there are two cities on Earth – Edinburgh and Tokyo – where almost the same story is