The Folklore of Discworld

told, the main difference being that the dog survives for many years, fed by passers-by, though still faithfully grieving. In Edinburgh, this model of doggy devotion is a terrier called Greyfriars Bobby, after the graveyard where his master, a night-watchman called John Gray, was buried in 1858, and where there is now a statue of him (the dog, that is, not John Gray). He lived on for fourteen years; some say he spent all day at his master’s grave, but others say he was regularly fed in a nearby restaurant. When he died, a place was found for him near the entrance of Greyfriars Kirkyard, though not actually in consecrated ground. The stone is inscribed: ‘Let his loyalty and devotion be a lesson to us all.’
    In Tokyo, the faithful dog, named Hachi-koh, used to go daily to Shibuya Station to meet his master, a professor, when he got off the train on his return from work. The professor died in 1925, but the dog lived on for ten years more, loyally meeting the train every day at the usual time, and resisting all attempts to re-home him. A statue of him was set up in the station even in his lifetime, and a special section of the concourse was set aside as his home; his stuffed body is now in the Natural Science Museum in Tokyo, and his statueis always garlanded with flowers on the anniversary of his death.
    What Gaspode – the modern, mangy, flea-bitten Gaspode – would make of these stories is not hard to guess, considering his cynical ideas about his famous namesake:
    ‘That’s very sad,’ said Victor.
    ‘Yeah. Everyone says it demonstrates a dog’s innocent and undyin’ love for ’is master,’ said Gaspode, spitting the words out as if they were ashes.
    ‘You don’t believe that, then?’
    ‘Not really. I b’lieve any bloody dog will stay still an’ howl when you’ve just lowered the gravestone on his tail,’ said Gaspode.
    The modern Gaspode takes good care to keep his skills hidden, which is relatively easy since most people refuse to believe that any dog can talk. Even so, rumours get around. William de Worde, editor of the Ankh-Morpork Times , who is professionally inclined to scepticism, struggles (in vain) against that strange phenomenon, the urban myth:
    A couple of months ago someone had tried to hand William the old story of there being a dog in the city that could talk. It was the third time this year. William had explained that it was an urban myth. It was always the friend of a friend who had heard the talk, and it was never anyone who had seen the dog … There seemed to be no stopping that kind of story. People swore there was some long-lost heir to the throne of Ankh living incognito in the town. William certainly recognized wishful thinking when he heard it. [ The Truth ]
    Alas for William, who has chosen the wrong city in which to be an enlightened thinker …
    Meanwhile, other people, even more cynical, know how to takea legend and turn it into a nice little earner. One is the con-man known as the Amazing Maurice (who may in fact, according to rumour, be a remarkably cunning cat). He travels from town to town with his gang of Educated Rodents, who infiltrate the buildings. A musical confederate then undertakes, for a good fee, to summon them with his magic pipe and lead them all far, far away. It has always worked. Here, we know this as a rather inverted version of the Pied Piper story.
T REACLE M INES
    Embedded in place-names, lurking like hidden diamonds, are precious traces of past history and traditions. There is, for example, a street in Ankh-Morpork called Treacle Mine Road, running from Misbegot Bridge to Easy Street. It takes its name from the treacle mines which used to be worked in this area, which are ancient, very ancient indeed. The deepest levels contain the remnants of pig-treacle measures that are estimated to be 500,000 years old, intermingled with basalt slabs carved with archaic trollish pictograms. The mines were abandoned many years ago, and most people believe that this was because they were exhausted. However, when some deep-down dwarfs (grags) bought property on that street and began mining below it, for reasons of their own (as told in Thud! ), they reopened old tunnels and galleries, and their bores struck some residue of deep treacle.
    Up in the mountains, on the borders of Uberwald, there are still very productive treacle mines, enabling the dwarfs of that region to make a handsome profit exporting both raw pig-treacle and luscious treacle-based