The Folklore of Discworld

by adults. There are some people, including the compiler of The Discworld Almanak , who claim that the duck plays a major role in primeval mythology:
    Curiously written out of early legends of the creation of the Universe is the Great Duck , from whose single egg the whole of Creation was hatched. However, truth will out, and it is now known that, from the outside, infinity is duck-egg blue.
    It turns out that this was written in haste by a member of the Almanak staff to justify an error elsewhere in the book, but there once were similar myths scattered throughout our own world (in ancient Egypt, Finland, India, Greece and Persia, for example), telling how the universe was hatched from an egg laid by some Great Bird, often a duck or goose. And that , in a roundabout sort of way, might explain those chocolate eggs people buy at Easter, without quite knowing why.
    Folk custom also explains why one occasionally sees visitors to Ankh-Morpork leaning over the Brass Bridge in a meaningful manner. They are acting upon an old superstition that if you throw a coin into the Ankh you’ll be sure to return to the city – or is it if you just throw up into the Ankh? Probably it is a coin after all, since a remarkable number of supposedly rational species in various worlds feel compelled to toss coins into rivers, fountains, wishing-wells, and even oddly shaped cascades in airport terminals, in a vague expectation of good luck and wishes fulfilled. Why? Well, in the case of airports it is a convenient way of getting rid of small change you won’t need in Sydney while at the same time getting a small smug feeling of having done some good, but in the other cases? What mechanism is operating here, in the twenty-first century? On the Discworld, though, they know why. The Lady is a real presence.
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    Unseen University has a whole clutch of traditional ceremonies and festivals of its own, carried out with unfailing regularity. These of course have nothing whatever to do with anything or anybody beyond the University’s walls. They are ‘gown’, not ‘town’, and emphatically not ‘folk’. Those which involve processing through the public streets do so as a way of inspiring due respect in the uncultured masses. A prime example is the Convivium, when the Archchancellor, Council, and entire senior staff proceed ceremonially from the University to the Opera House, where new graduates are awarded their degrees in the presence of the Patrician. The procession then returns, rather more quickly, for a large banquet.
    But one ceremony which has a certain impact on the townsfolk is the Beating of the Bounds every 22 Grune. This involves a choir, all able-bodied members of staff, and a gaggle of students retracing the exact route of the boundaries of the University, as originally laid down centuries ago. They walk through or if necessary climb over any buildings that have since been built across the route, while ceremonially striking members of the public with live ferrets (in memory, for reasons unknown, of a long-ago Archchancellor Buckleby).
    Any red-headed men encountered are seized by several strong young men and given a ‘plunking’; this tradition has, most unusually – and subsequent to an incident which left three wizards hanging precariously from a gutter – been amended to read ‘any red-headed men except of course Captain Carrot Ironfoundersson of the Watch’. After the progress, the entire membership of the University heads back to the Great Hall for a huge breakfast at which duck must be served. [ The Discworld Companion ]
    Why red-heads? In Ankh-Morpork the reason, if there ever was one, is forgotten. On Earth, folklore asserts that red hair was the mark of Judas, and is found in descendants of Jews and of Viking raiders. They were distrusted, though there is no record of people plunking them.
    In Britain and Europe, processions to Beat the Bounds (also known as Rogation Processions) were mainly found in country districts, where priests led the people round the parish boundaries, blessing the fields and praying for a good harvest. The custom was legally useful too; when local administration was organized by parishes, it was important that everyone knew just where one parish ended and another began. That way, taxes and tithes could be fairly assessed, and if a penniless beggar dropped dead on the road one knew whose job it was to bury him. Boundary markers on walls, stones or trees were inspected, renewed if