The Folklore of Discworld

grabbed the comb grabbed the tongs too and threw them to the ground, all bent and twisted. Such is a banshee’s strength.
G OLEMS
    In all societies there is a good deal of boring, dirty, heavy work which nobody really wants to do, whatever the pay. So what could be better than to find a race of strong, tireless, silent workers to take on these jobs? Especially if they don’t need paying.
    The historical solution, in Ankh-Morpork, is the golems – large, powerful creatures made of baked clay, roughly humanoid in form but seven or eight foot tall. They need no food or sleep; they can work underwater, or in extremes of heat or cold, or in total darkness; they cannot feel pain or boredom. They can repair themselves, and last for centuries. Their triangular eyes have the faint, dark red glow of a banked fire, and on the rare occasions when they open their mouths you get a brief glimpse of an inferno. According to the original specifications they cannot speak, though they can write; this, however, was changed at the insistence of Commander Vimes, after the events recounted in Feet of Clay .
    A golem’s head is hollow, and flips open when you press a line across the forehead; inside is a yellowing scroll bearing words in Cenotine, an ancient sacred script, the language of a dead religion. This has to have been written by a priest. Take out the scroll, and the light in the golem’s eyes goes out, and its life (if it can be called life) ceases. Put it back, and it comes ‘alive’ again. When the golem Dorfl is asked to explain itself, it writes on a slate:
    I am a golem. I was made of clay. My life is the words. By means of words of purpose in my head I acquire life. My life is to work. I obey all commands. I take no rest … Golem must work. Golem must have a master. [ Feet of Clay ]
    The written commands in a golem’s head are those which the Cenotine god is said to have given to the first people on earth, after he had baked them out of clay. ‘Thou shalt labour fruitfully all thedays of your life’ is one of them, and another is ‘Thou shalt not kill’, and a third ‘Thou shalt be humble’.
    Not surprisingly, factory owners are prepared to pay a good price for golems. There are stories that sometimes one of them over-does things, being too stupid to stop work unless actually ordered to, so your house gets flooded as it brings pail after pail from the well. This, however, always seems to have happened somewhere else, some good while ago, and can be disregarded. One minor snag is that just occasionally they down tools and go off for a few hours, leaving a message that today is for them a holy day. Apart from that, they are perfect machines for work.
    Few in Ankh-Morpork remember who first made a golem, or why, or how. Recent archaeological discoveries (described in Making Money ) indicate that particularly fine specimens existed in the ancient City of Um, back in the Clay Age some sixty thousand years ago. When Rincewind visited the Counterweight Continent (see Interesting Times ) he accidentally roused a vast Red Army of seven thousand terracotta golems, which were standing guard inside the burial mound of some very ancient emperor – but again, nothing is known of their making. To learn more, one must turn to the more recent traditions of Jewish communities in Central and Eastern Europe. For there, by one of those remarkable freaks of cosmic resonance, the story of the making of the golem first appeared in fifteenth-century Germany, and by the seventeenth century had become famous.
    In Hebrew, the word ‘golem’ means an unshaped lump of matter, an imperfect or incomplete creation. According to legend, various extremely learned and pious rabbis knew how to create a humanoid being out of clay, thanks to the magical power of holy words and letters, especially the four letters forming the Name of God. The act echoed that of God Himself in forming Adam from the dust of the earth, and for that reason most rabbis never put their knowledge into practice, for fear of blasphemy. But a few did, to get themselves a servant, or to get help in times of great danger.
    The fullest and most famous story is about Judah Loew ben Bazalel, Chief Rabbi of Prague towards the end of the sixteenth century. In 1580 the Jews of Prague were under attack from anti-Semitic fanatics, and Rabbi Loew received a divine message telling him to create a golem for their protection. Four elements would be required: earth, fire, water and air.