The Folklore of Discworld

the grains one at a time, and often only one grain per year. This so engages his attention that he is obliged to drop all other pursuits.’ Nets and knitted stockings in the coffin are just as good; he has to unpick them, one knot or stitch per year. As for putting coins, pebbles, dirt or food in the corpse’s mouth, that gives him something satisfying to chew on.
    So a girl setting out to be a vampire-slayer in Uberwald needs a big sack, to be ready for all possibilities. She must carry a stake and mallet, a spade, and a strong knife; nets, seeds, coins, sand, salt, stones, lemons, garlic, assorted vegetables; thorns and needles to stick in the vampire’s feet to stop him walking, and in his tongue to stop him sucking; a flask of holy water and the sacred symbols of all major gods.
    But, as Nanny Ogg could tell her, there is a better way. She couldsimply borrow Greebo the cat, and wait till a very large red-eyed bat comes by. For that would be a flabberghast (‘which is foreign for bat,’ Nanny Ogg explains), and a flabberghast is a shape-shifted vampire. And it would very soon learn the useful truth set down in Witches Abroad :
    Vampires have risen from the dead, the grave and the crypt, but have never managed it from the cat.
B ANSHEES
    These unpleasant (and mercifully rare) creatures, native to the Uberwald mountains, are the only humanoid species on the Discworld that has evolved wings, apart from certain small elves; vampires who fly, such as the Count de Magpyr and his family, simply do so by a form of levitation. However, there may possibly be some remote genetic connection between the two races, since a banshee has two hearts, which, according to some folk traditions, is a characteristic of vampires. No research has been done on this topic, nor is likely to be.
    A Discworld banshee is about the same size as a man, but far more lightly built, consisting almost entirely of thin bones and very strong sinews, several rows of pointy teeth, and huge claws. At first glance, you would think it is wearing a black leather cloak. This, as you will soon discover, is its wings. And then there is its scream.
    It was harsh, guttural, it was malice and hunger given a voice. Small huddling shrew-like creatures had once heard sounds like that, circling over the swamps. [ Going Postal ]
    It is well known that to hear the banshee’s scream means that you are going to die. With the more civilized banshees, all this means is that they have taken on the job of a death-omen, and will sitscreeching on your roof to make sure you get plenty of warning that Death is on his way. Indeed, in Ankh-Morpork there is one solitary and gloomy banshee named Ixolite who suffers from a speech impediment and just writes OoooEeeeOoooEEEeee on a scrap of paper and slips it under your door. But the wild banshees, such as the Mr Gryle described in Going Postal , do the whole job themselves. One minute you hear the scream, next minute there’s a swoop and a pounce and some quite remarkable claws.
    Over in our own parallel universe, banshees are only to be found in one particular habitat, namely Ireland. The name, if not the species, must have originated there, since bean sí makes good sense in Irish, though it is mere gibberish in Discworld languages. It means ‘woman of the otherworld’ – for in Ireland the creature is invariably female. Her mission is to announce the imminent death of someone in one of the old aristocratic Irish families, by screaming and wailing near their homes. She is more often heard than seen, but when she does let herself be glimpsed it is as an old woman with long, loose white hair which she combs as she wails. Sometimes she is seen crouching by a river, washing a winding-sheet. In some parts of the country she is also known as the badhbh chaointe , pronounced ‘boheenta’ and meaning ‘the keening scaldcrow’, though she does not nowadays actually appear in crow-shape.
    Though the Irish banshee is no predator, it is best to be wary of offending her. There was once a man who saw a banshee combing her hair on the riverbank at twilight, crept up behind her, and snatched her comb. He ran home with it. That night there were terrifying shrieks all around his house, and something was hammering on his window. So he opened the window just a little way and pushed the comb out, holding it in the big iron tongs from the fireplace. And it was well for him that he did so rather than putting his hand out, for the thing that