The Folklore of Discworld

dead, despise demons, and rightly regard elves as dangerous and evil. Nor do they depend on ‘familiars’ to act on their behalf, as Earthly witches were said to do – these being minor demons, usually in the form of toads, mice, or cats, who were loaned to witches by the Devil and would perform magical tasks in exchange for a few drops of blood. (The cat Greebo is no demon; he is nothing more, and nothing less, than a cat. Miss Tick’s toad appears to have no magical abilities at all; his powerof speech is merely the residue of his previous human faculties.)
    Another major difference is that on the Discworld witches undertake one dangerous duty that ‘our’ witches have no idea of. It is their responsibility to defend their homeland against insidious supernatural invasions. Blatant attacks by Creatures from the Dungeon Dimensions are usually dealt with by the wizards of Unseen University, who can be relied on to recognize a tentacular threat when it turns up on their doorstep, but it takes a witch to fight the more subtle menace of vampires or elves. Their epic struggles on behalf of Lancre are recounted in Lords and Ladies and Carpe Jugulum . Never, in the field of inter-species conflict, was so much owed by so many to so few. But do the people of Lancre appreciate this? Do they, hell! They don’t even notice. Which is perhaps how it should be.
W ICKED W ITCHES
    The witches of Lancre remember stories about other witches long ago, or maybe not so long ago, whom they disapprove of. Witches who have gone to the bad, who have crossed over to the Dark Side. There is something of the dark in the Weatherwax heredity, and Granny was for a long time worried about her own Nana, Alison Weatherwax, who disappeared in Uberwald and was rumoured to have hobnobbed with vampires. Fortunately, the rumour was false. She didn’t hobnob with them, she staked them.
    Then there was Black Aliss. Not exactly a bad witch, but so powerful that one couldn’t really tell the difference, and deeply affected by narrative patterns similar to those which the Brothers Grimm recorded on Earth. Magrat asked about her once.
    ‘She was before your time,’ said Nanny Ogg. ‘Before mine, really. She lived over Skund way. Very powerful witch.’
    ‘If you listen to rumour,’ said Granny.
    ‘She turned a pumpkin into a royal coach once,’ said Nanny.
    ‘Showy,’ said Granny Weatherwax. ‘That’s no help to anyone, turning up at a ball smelling like a pie. And that business with the glass slipper. Dangerous, to my mind.’
    ‘But the biggest thing she ever did,’ said Nanny, ignoring the interruption, ‘was to send a whole palace to sleep for a hundred years until …’ She hesitated. ‘Can’t remember. Was there rose bushes involved, or was it spinning wheels in that one?’ …
    ‘Why did they call her Black Aliss?’
    ‘Fingernails,’ said Granny.
    ‘And teeth,’ said Nanny Ogg. ‘She had a sweet tooth. Lived in a real gingerbread cottage. Couple of kids shoved her in her own oven at the end. Shocking.’ [ Wyrd Sisters ]
    One sign that things weren’t quite right with Black Aliss was that she used to cackle. So one day when Granny Weatherwax uttered a cackle (though she swore it was just a rather rough chuckle), Nanny Ogg warned her:
    ‘You want to watch out that you don’t end up the same way as she did. She went a bit funny at the finish, you know. Poisoned apples and suchlike.’ [ Wyrd Sisters ]
    But Black Aliss wasn’t really bad, not out and out bad. It was just that she got so involved in old stories – those rural myths that happen over and over again and everyone knows about – that they sent her weird in the head, so she lost track of what was real and what wasn’t. ‘I mean, she didn’t ever really eat anyone,’ said Nanny. ‘Well. Not often. I mean, there was talk, but …’
    Her name can’t have helped, for names shape people, and this one carries sinister echoes drifting across from the Earth. There, in the city of Leicester, a hideous hag called Black Annis lived in a cave in the Dane Hills, just outside the town. She had a dark blue face, and her nails were long sharp talons. There can be no doubt that she ate people – naughty children mostly, but good ones too if they stayed out late. She would lurk in a tree overhanging the mouth of her cave, ever ready to spring like a wild beast on any stray children passing below; then she would scratch them to death with her claws, suck their blood,