The Folklore of Discworld

of the Slice Fair and Revels. There is not a lot to do in Slice. Well, not that isn’t mostly banned everywhere else.
    The similarities to Earthly customs here are truly astonishing. Anyone who knows anything about English traditions will recognize the name of the Dorset Ooser, a large, heavy wooden head with bull’s horns, goggle eyes, and movable snapping jaws. Folklorists found out about it in 1891, at which time it was kept by a family in Crewkerne, but could get no information on how it was used. It has since disappeared, or perhaps it took a dislike to the folklorists and ran away. Its Discworld counterpart behaves very much like the May Day Obby Oss at Padstow in Cornwall, which dances from house to house through the narrow streets, led by a Teaser, and accompanied by singers and a massed band of accordions and drums. This goes on all day. If the Oss catches a woman, she will be married and/or pregnant within a year.
    Mumming Plays can be seen in many towns and villages of England, Lowland Scotland, and parts of Ireland around Christmas time (or Easter, in Lancashire). They always involve a lot of shouting of bad verse, two or three fights, a death, and a resurrection brought about by a quack doctor. And then someone takes up a collection from the spectators. Folklorists used to think this was some sort ofextremely ancient fertility ritual, but eventually got around to noticing the collection, and the odd fact that performances used to take place outside rich men’s houses, and nowadays at a pub.
    As for the Seven-Year Flitch, this recalls something which has been going on, off and on, for at least six hundred years at Great Dunmow in Essex. Originally, any man who, having been married for more than a year, could convince the monks at Little Dunmow Priory that he had never once had words with his wife or wished he was single again, would be given a flitch of bacon and carried in procession. Successful claims were few and far between. When the monastery was closed down at the Reformation, successive Lords of the Manor took responsibility for keeping the custom going, and did so till 1751, when they dropped it. Fortunately, in 1854 the bestselling novelist Harrison Ainsworth wrote an enthusiastic description, The Flitch of Bacon, or the Custom of Dunmow (it can still be found). This inspired a revival, which has flourished ever since. Nowadays there is a mock trial, with the wives giving evidence, and the whole thing is treated as a joke.
Soul Caking
    If the lady folklorist from Ankh-Morpork had produced another dollar, she could have learned about the excitements of the Soul Cake Days, which are celebrated in the Ramtops and on the Sto Plains on the first Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday after first half-moon in the month of Sektober. Readers attempting to work out this date should bear in mind that on the Discworld it is extremely dangerous to utter the magic number ‘eight’, or any of its derivatives, in any language.
    According to the Discworld Almanak , the Soul Cake Days are ‘celebrated by Dwarfs and Men with great fires, much noise, and mysterious customs, too many to catalogue, and some too moist to recommend’. It is known that Morris Dancing is involved; also that dwarfs play at Bobbing for Toffee-Rats on a Stick, and humanchildren go Trickle-Treating. Lady folklorists in Ankh-Morpork assume that this is just a local pronunciation of ‘Treacle-Treating’, meaning that the kids who dress up and go from house to house are hoping to be given treacle gob-stoppers as their treat. Male folklorists hold the opinion (never mentioned in print, or in the hearing of their female colleagues) that the name arose because people who refuse to hand out any treats later find a rather nasty trickle on their doorstep.
    Lancre children are also given eggs with funny faces on them (Nanny Ogg is a dab hand at painting them). There must be some connection with the Soul Cake Tuesday Duck, a magical creature which lays chocolate eggs for children in Ankh-Morpork, as will be described in a later chapter. And this in turn links up with the fact that the duck-hunting season begins that Tuesday. The good people of Ubergigl (in Uberwald) mark the date by ‘The Running of the Ducks’, when maddened untamed ducks run, more or less, through the streets, pursued by young men who vie with one another to snatch the coveted rosette from the beak of the biggest drake. Perhaps their minds have been affected by some floating