The Folklore of Discworld

inside volcanoes such as Etna (where they still wriggle about, causing eruptions and earthquakes), so Blind Io and the other Discworld gods defeated the Ice Giants and imprisoned them under the eternal ice at the Hub. There is, however, a prophecy. A very Norse-sounding prophecy, a prophecy of End Time doom:
    At the end of the world they’ll break free at last, and ride out on their dreadful glaciers and regain their ancient domination, crushing out the flames of civilization until the world lies naked and frozen under the terrible cold stars until Time itself freezes over. Or something like that, apparently. [ Sourcery ]
    Whether it comes with ice ages, global warming, a nasty bang or a little whimper, the end of a world is never much fun.
Blind Io
    Io is the chief of the gods. He is elderly, white-haired and white-bearded, dressed in a toga and wearing a white blindfold which conceals the blank skin where his eyes should be. Despite this, and despite his name, he sees everything that is going on, since in fact he has a number of detached eyes (several dozen of them) which hover around him and keep a sharp look-out in all directions. His throne too is encrusted with eyes. He is the Supreme Thunderer, having absorbed every other thunder-god on the Disc into himself. However, he keeps a stock of seventy hammers, double-headed axes, and thunderbolts, each of a different design, to blend in with local expectations wherever he may appear. This avoids unnecessary distress to worshippers.
    At one time he employed a pair of ravens to fly hither and yon and keep him informed of everything going on in the world. In another universe Odin, chief of the Norse gods, had had exactly the same idea; his two ravens were named Memory and Thought. Fromthe god’s point of view, it’s a good plan, efficient and energy-saving. From the ravens’ point of view, regrettably, Io’s free-floating eyeballs were altogether too much of a temptation (Odin’s one eye is firmly fixed in his head, so in his case the problem did not arise) and after some embarrassing scenes Io’s ravens had to be dismissed. 3
    Earth is well stocked with thunder-gods, including Zeus, Jupiter, Thor, Perkun, Indra and Jehovah. Usually, a thunder-god is also the ruler of his particular pantheon, but Thor is an exception, taking second place to Odin (god of war, magic, death and poetry). Blind Io’s insistence on being the Disc’s only Thunderer is an example of how Discworld gods love to outdo those of Earth in displays of status. It’s the same with his lavish use of detached eyeballs, whereas on the Earth even the mightiest deities are satisfied with only one. These are mostly to be found in Ancient Egypt, where the Eye of a major god such as Ra, Atum, or Horus embodied the concentration of his divine power and could be sent out to act on his behalf. The separated Eye, called the wedjat , was often shown in religious art, and worn as an amulet. It was sometimes identified with the sun or the moon, and sometimes personified as itself a goddess. That’s something Io has not yet thought of.
Dagon
    A very ancient, mysterious and probably unpleasant god, believed to have been once worshipped on the mud-flats where the city of Ankh-Morpork was later built. At least, something happened not so long ago when the late Mr Hong opened a takeaway fish bar on the site of an old temple in Dagon Street, at the time of the full moon – or, some say, of a lunar eclipse. Everybody has heard about it, in general terms, but nobody says just what it was …
    Traditions of the Earth are fuller. It appears that Dagon was first worshipped there some four thousand years ago by Philistines andPhoenicians in the Middle East; there were temples to him in Gaza and other coastal towns. According to the Bible (1 Samuel 5), his statue stood in a mighty temple at Ashdod, but when the captured Jewish Ark was brought into this temple the statue crashed to the ground and its head and hands broke off, leaving only a stump on the threshold.
    There is argument among scholars as to what he looked like, and what it was he was god of. The older generation thought his name came from a word for ‘fish’ and that he must have been the god of fishes, shaped like a merman, human above the waist and fishy below. Most poets and occultists agree. More recent scholars say no, the name comes from a word for ‘corn’, and he was a god of farming (no fish tail required). The matter could easily be settled if