The Folklore of Discworld

fascinated him, and wrote a book Concerning Isisand Osiris based on the legends current there in his time. He recounts in detail how the virtuous king Osiris was murdered by his evil brother Seth. Seth secretly obtained the exact measurements of Osiris, and had a magnificent chest made; he then displayed it during a feast, promising to give it to whoever could fit inside it exactly. Many tried, but in vain. Finally Osiris laid himself in the chest, which immediately became a perfect fit for him; Seth promptly bolted it shut, sealed it with lead, and threw it into the Nile. It floated magically for many miles, and when it washed ashore in the Lebanon it grew at once into a marvellous tree, still containing the dead body of Osiris; then it was cut down and made into a pillar in a king’s palace. Isis, wife of Osiris, claimed the pillar and had it opened, revealing the chest/coffin, which held the wonderfully preserved corpse; it thus became the prototype for all Egyptian mummy-cases.
    Another death-dealing chest is recorded in Norse tradition as the property of the legendary goldsmith Volund (or, in English, Wayland). A cruel king held him captive on an island, forcing him to work at making golden treasures; his sword had been taken from him, and he had been deliberately lamed to prevent any escape. The king had two young sons, who one day went hunting on that island and came to Volund’s forge. There they saw a great chest, and asked Volund for the key. He opened it, and they looked in. It held great evil, but to the boys it seemed filled with gold rings and fine jewels. ‘Come back tomorrow,’ said Volund, ‘and all this will be yours. But tell no one that you are visiting me.’ And so they did, and, as the Old Icelandic poem Völundarkvid–a says:
    They came to where the great chest stood,
    Asked Volund for the key;
    When they looked in, there was revealed
    Evil and enmity.
    He struck off the heads of those two boys
    As they bent down to gaze,
    And under the pit of the anvil there
    He buried their bodies.
    ‘He struck off the heads’ … but how, as he had no sword? One has a nasty suspicion that the chest did the deed itself, using its lid as a weapon.
    Suspicion also surrounds a tragic event chronicled by Thomas Haynes Bayly in his poem ‘The Mistletoe Bough’ in the 1820s. It was in the times of Merrie England that one of our typical Merrie barons was holding a typically Merrie Christmas dance in his typically Merrie castle, together with his retainers (who all were blithe and gay), his newly married daughter, and the latter’s bridegroom, young Lovell. Seized by a sudden Merrie whim, the bride decided to play hide-and-seek, challenging Lovell to find her secret lurking place. But it all went horribly wrong:
    They sought her that night! They sought her next day!
    And they sought her in vain when a week passed away!
    In the highest – the lowest – the loneliest spot,>
    Young Lovell sought wildly – but found her not.
    Many, many years passed by, and then:
    At length an oak chest, that had long lain hid,
    Was found in the castle – they raised the lid –
    And a skeleton form lay mouldering there,
    In the bridal wreath of that lady fair!
Oh! Sad was her fate! In sportive jest
    She hid from her lord in the old oak chest.
    It closed with a spring! – and, dreadful doom,
    The bride lay clasp’d in her living tomb!
    Sheer accident? The corresponding tragedy in the history of Lancre does indeed seem so, judging by Nanny Ogg’s account:
    ‘I remember years ago my granny telling me about Queen Amonia, well, I say queen, but she never was queen except for about three hours because of what I’m about to unfold, on account of them playing hide-and-seek at the wedding party and her hiding in a big heavy old chest in some attic and the lid slamming shut and no one finding her for seven months, by which time you could definitely say the wedding cake was getting a bit stale.’ [ Lords and Ladies ]
    Yet over in our own world, suspicion lingers. Did the chest Bayly speaks of have some rudimentary capacity for bloody-minded malevolence? And how exactly had it managed to lie hidden while everybody was searching the castle from turret to dungeon? There is a sinister mystery here.
    A later generation glimpsed what may be a related phenomenon in Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island (1883). Jim Hawkins, looking back on the adventure of his boyhood, recalled how it began on the day the ‘brown old seaman