The Folklore of Discworld

game. They claim, for example, that when children shape big fat figures out of piled-up snow and push in lumps of coal as eyes, these are ‘obvious survivals’ of primitive idols representing the dreaded Ice Giants with their tiny, deep-set black eyes who, according to mythology, will one day overwhelm the world. Of course, the children say they just do it for fun – they would, wouldn’t they? But a theoretical folklorist rarely if ever takes note of what the folk themselves have to say. It stands to reason that he or she is far better equipped than they are to roll back the mists of time. And in two shakes of a duck’s tail, the theory is accepted as a proven fact. If the moving pictures enterprise once begun at Holy Wood had succeeded, by now every audience in Ankh-Morpork would know that when a film-maker shows a brief shot of a snowman he means everyone to shudder at this sinister symbol of ecological doom and the imminent End of the World. Meanwhile, the kids go on throwing snowballs and lumps of coal around, regardless.
    In our Earthly culture, many parents and teachers worry whether fairy tales and nursery rhymes and children’s games and customs are respectable, morally and educationally sound, and fully in accord with health and safety regulations. Judging from existing records, few adults on the Disc are bothered by these issues. There, at least in the poorer parts of Ankh-Morpork, children freely play brutal and unhygienic street games, hallowed by long tradition. These include Dead Rat Conkers and Tiddley-Rat, though a recent observer has noted that Turd Races in the gutter appear to have died out, despite an attempt to take them upmarket with the name Poosticks. Hopscotch too is popular, especially a variation which Captain Vimes played in childhood, in which you kicked the least popular kid from one square to another, singing ‘William Scuggins is a bastard’ – actions and words which do not figure in handbooks designed for games teachers.
    Throughout the multiverse, parents have repeatedly discovered the useful fact that the best way to control a child is by working on its imagination to create a gruesome anthropomorphic personification: ‘Don’t you dare play in the cornfield! If you do, the Corn Mother will come with her long iron teeth and her long iron claws, and tear you to bits’ – ‘Behave yourselves while I’m out. Remember that Rawhead-and-Bloody-Bones is watching you!’ Used in moderation, these Frighteners and Prohibitory Monsters have a great deal to recommend them. If Nanny Ogg’s grandchildren believe there’s a demon inside the copper in her wash-house, 14 and if country children everywhere are scared of deep pools because there’s something down there with green eyes and big teeth just longing to pull them in, a lot of nasty accidents will be avoided.
    But there are snags, particularly on Discworld. Even though the adults don’t believe the Frighteners are real, the children do, and the high magic quotient built into the very fabric of the Disc ensures that whatever is powerfully believed in will, very shortly, exist. (‘Ifonly people would think before they invent monsters,’ sighed Miss Tick, the teacher-witch of the Chalk country.) The problem seems to be at its worst in cities. True, there are fewer natural dangers there, but semi-sadistic adults still enjoy inducing irrational fears, as Susan Sto-Helit found when she became a governess in Ankh-Morpork. Since she was one of the rare adults capable of seeing the resulting monsters, she knew how to deal with them:
    One of the many terrors conjured up by the previous governess’s happy way with children had been the bears that waited around in the street to eat you if you stood on the cracks [in the pavement].
    Susan had taken to carrying the poker under her respectable coat. One wallop generally did the trick. The bears were amazed that anyone else saw them …
    The previous governess had used various monsters and bogeymen as a form of discipline. There was always something waiting to eat or carry off bad boys and girls for crimes like stuttering or defiantly and aggravatingly persisting in writing with their left hand. There was always a Scissor Man waiting for a little girl who sucked her thumb, always a bogeyman in the cellar. Of such bricks is the innocence of childhood constructed. [ Hogfather ]
    It is impossible to describe what bogeymen look like, since they are skilled shape-shifters and mould their