The Folklore of Discworld

NEED … MARACAS. ’ [ Reaper Man ]
    That was on the Disc. He can be just as energetic on Earth too, judging by old prints of skeletons wildly leaping about, and by a story told in Sussex in the 1860s, as recorded by Charlotte Latham:
    There stood upon the Downs close to Broadwater an old oak tree, and people said that always on Midsummer Eve, just at midnight, a number of skeletons started up from its roots and, joining hands, danced round it till cock-crow, then as suddenly sank down again. They said several persons had actually seen this dance of death; one young man in particular, having been detained by business at Findon till very late, and forgetting that it was Midsummer Eve, had been frightened out of his very senses by seeing the dead men caper to the rattling of their own bones.
    On other occasions, his dancing is sedate and courtly. In Europe in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the Dance of Death was often painted on the walls of cemeteries and churches; it showed a line of men and skeletons, hand in hand, pacing along in a slow and stately chain-dance. In England there was a famous mural in the cloister of London’s Old St Paul’s Cathedral (the one that burned down in the Great Fire of 1666), and there is still a set of carvings on the ceiling of Roslyn Chapel near Edinburgh. The Dance was also painted in the margins of prayer books, and acted out in religious pageants. Nowadays, it is best remembered as the closing shot of Ingmar Bergman’s film The Seventh Seal .
    On the Discworld, Death has often tried to act in human ways as a relief from his unremitting memory of both past and future, buthe rarely gets much satisfaction from it. Fishing, gambling, getting drunk and joining the Klatchian Foreign Legion in order to forget have not really worked for him. His greatest success was his spell as a farm labourer (harvesting a speciality), as described in Reaper Man ; he also on one occasion enjoyed riding a rather special motorbike:
    There were two small cart-wheels, one behind the other, with a saddle in between them. In front of the saddle was a pipe with a complicated double curve in it, so that someone sitting in the saddle would be able to get a grip.
    The rest was junk. Bones and tree branches and a jackdaw’s bouquet of gewgaws. A horse’s skull was strapped over the front wheel, and feathers and beads hung from every point. [ Soul Music ]
    Death is clearly the patron saint of album covers. And in some cultures a saint is just what he is – or rather she is: Santa Muerte, a (female) folk saint. Devotees say she is an offshoot of the Catholic Church; the Church dismisses them as a cult. The case continues, but one follower delivered a quote with a near Discworld pragmatism: ‘It’s better to make her your friend.’ 16
    Sainted or otherwise, Death is attracted to Mexico, where he takes part in all kinds of human activities, expertly and with great enjoyment. This is especially obvious around the time of the Day of the Dead (1 and 2 November). At this season, streets and shops are full of cheerful images of male and female Deaths not just dancing but playing all kinds of musical instruments, flirting, fighting, drinking, showing off their fine clothes, working at any and every trade. Nothing, in short, could be more alive than Death, in Mexico.
    And what of the dead themselves, on the Discworld? What happens when Death comes to them? Well, that usually seems to beup to them. The only group who had no say in the matter were the luckless pharaohs of Djelibeybi, mummified and immured in pyramids which were supposed to ensure a blissful afterlife but which simply imprisoned them inside a time-distortion. After centuries of excruciating boredom, they broke free and passed over into Death’s world (with great relief, and forming an orderly queue). It is not known whether the Ancient Egyptian pyramids had the same unwelcome side-effect on their pharaohs.
    On Earth, according to the myths of Ancient Greece, the gods would occasionally, as a mark of great favour, take someone newly dead and turn him or her into stars. The hero Perseus is a constellation now, as is Andromeda, the girl he rescued from a sea-monster, and indeed Cetus the monster too. So is Orion the hunter, lover of at least two goddesses; so is Amalthea the Goat, who became the constellation Capricorn. Some people on the Disc are aware of this possibility, though as far as is known the Disc gods have never actually done it –