The Folklore of Discworld

you’d better tell them to watch out for a wee sticky kid wanderin’ the hills shoutin’ for sweeties, ’cos that’ll be their Uncle Wentworth. That wouldna be the worst o’ it, neither. Live in dreams for too long and ye go mad, ye can never wake up prop’ly, ye can never get the hang o’ reality again …’
    The grim picture of a sunless land where time does not run true matches some accounts in the folklore which took shape before Shakespeare’s influence was felt. Take the story of Thomas the Rhymer, also called Thomas of Erceldoune, a poet and seer who lived on the borders between Scotland and England at the close of the thirteenth century. Some time in the next couple of hundred years, someone wrote a ballad about him (it is still sung today). It tells howThomas, resting on a hillside near Edinburgh, saw the Queen of Elfland ride by on a milk-white horse with silver bells on its mane; she summoned him to be her harpist, he kissed her and mounted behind her on her horse.
    O they rade on, and farther on,
    The steed gaed faster than the wind;
    Until they reached a desert wide,
    And living land was left behind.
    In that desert is a place where three paths meet, just as they do in Lancre. One is a narrow path, thick beset with thorns and briars; this, says the Queen, is the Christian Path of Righteousness. The second is a broad path through flowery meadows, and that’s the Path of Wickedness. As for the third:
    ‘And see ye not yon bonny road,
    That winds about the fernie brae?
    That is the road to fair Elfland,
    Where thou and I this night maun gae.’
    But the bonny road among the ferns isn’t so very bonny after all:
    O they rade on, and farther on,
    And they waded rivers abune the knee,
    And they saw neither sun nor moon,
    But they heard the roaring of the sea.
    It was mirk, mirk night, there was nae starlight,
    They waded thro’ red blude to the knee;
    For a’ the blude that’s shed on earth
    Runs through the springs o’ that countrie.
    Finally they reach a garden, where the Queen gives Thomas anapple as his wages, and with it the unwelcome gift of ‘a tongue that can never lie’. He eats (one should never eat the food in Elfland),
    And till seven years were gane and past,
    True Thomas on earth was never seen.
    It could have been worse. He was away only seven years, after all, and when he returned he became a famous seer and prophet, thanks to his truth-telling tongue.
    People who are kidnapped by elves can be rescued, but this needs courage and a cool head, as there won’t be a second chance. Sometimes the rescuer has to go deep into Elfland (as Tiffany does). Sometimes, according to our own tales, it is enough to go back a year later to the place where the person was taken – a fairy ring, perhaps, where elves gather to dance, or some crossroads which they pass when they ride out hunting – and wait and watch. When they appear, their human captive will be seen among them. The rescuer must drag him or her out of the dance, or off the horse, and hold on tight, no matter what monsters and terrifying illusions the elves call up. Another method, known in Scotland, is to throw a dagger over the captive’s head. Some would-be rescuers have lost their nerve, but others do not:
    ‘I remember a folksong about a situation just like this,’ said Magrat. ‘This girl had her fiancé stolen by the Queen of the Elves and she didn’t hang around whining, she jolly well got on her horse and went and rescued him. Well, I’m going to do that too.’ [ Lords and Ladies ]
    The song Magrat remembers is known in Scotland as the ballad of Tam Lin. To save him, his lover Janet must pull him off the fairy horse and hold on as he turns into a snake, a deer, and a red-hot iron, before returning to human form. She has the courage, and Tam is free and unharmed.
    Others were not so lucky. Some never escaped, others fell victim to the distortion of time in Fairyland. An Irish hero, Bran the son of Febal, heard an elf-woman singing and followed her to her magical island in the western seas. He remained there for a year (so he thought), but then he and his companions grew homesick. She told them they were allowed to sail close to the coast of Ireland and speak with anyone standing on dry land, but must not step ashore themselves. And so they anchored in a harbour, and shouted to the men on the beach. Nobody recognized them, though someone remembered that there were old stories about a man called Bran who once, long