The Folklore of Discworld

Russian fairy tales, whose cottage stood on hen’s legs and spun round and round.
    Granny Aching was a supremely skilful and conscientious shepherd, with all the toil and responsibility this entails.
    [One would see] Granny Aching’s light, weaving slowly across the downs, on freezing, sparkly nights or in storms like a raging war, saving lambs from the creeping frost or rams from the precipice. She froze and struggled and tramped through the night for idiot sheep that never said thank you and would probably be just as stupid tomorrow, and get into the same trouble again. And she did it because not doing it was unthinkable. [ The Wee Free Men ]
    She used no magic, though some shepherds’ tricks look like magic if you don’t know how they’re done. But she had wisdom, and authority, and sometimes anger too; she saw to it that where there was injustice there would be a reckoning, since ‘Them as can do, has to do for them as can’t, and someone has to speak up for them as has no voices.’ Within two or three years of her death, the memory of her had grown into something larger than life, something like a spirit of the downs:
    There were always buzzards over the Chalk. The shepherds had taken to calling them Granny Aching’s chickens, and some of them called clouds like those up there today ‘Granny’s little lambs’. And Tiffany knew that even her father called the thunder ‘Granny Aching cussin’’.
    And it was said that some of the shepherds, if wolves were troublesome in the winter, or a prize ewe had got lost, would go to the site of the old hut in the hills and leave an ounce of Jolly Sailor tobacco, just in case …
    No wonder that when monsters and elves from another world appear in the Chalk country, Tiffany’s first thought is that Granny would have known how to deal with them. But Granny is dead. It is now young Tiffany who must become the witch-as-shepherd, guarding the borders, driving invaders away, keeping an eye on things. She has a duty.
B ECOMING A W ITCH
    How does a girl become a witch? First, she must have some natural inborn talent, even if she does not yet realize it. Here, heredity can help, and in Tiffany’s case it does; the Achings, like the Weatherwaxes, have witching in their blood. It might also be significant that she is the seventh daughter. On the Earth it certainly would be, for in that universe many a magical healer and fortuneteller has found that being a seventh son (or daughter) is good publicity. But the supreme magical number on the Discworld is eight, not seven, so it is usually the eighth son (or daughter) who is born with power, as we learn in Equal Rites and Sourcery .
    The really unmistakable sign that Tiffany is destined to be a witch is her name – a sign all the more powerful for being the result of sheer chance (if there is such a thing as chance). In the languages of the Discworld ‘Tiffany’ has no meaning, but the kelda of the Wee Free Men tells her that in their Old Speech (a Celtic tongue, learned in another universe) its true form is Tir-far-Thóinn, meaning ‘Land Under Wave’. 10 Chalk hills are land which was once under the waves, land formed from the shells of countless millions of sea creatures. Knowing this, and knowing what her name means, is the core of Tiffany’s power.
    She saw herself set her boots firmly on the turf, and then …
    … and then …
    … and then, like someone rising from the clouds of a sleep, she felt the deep, deep Time below her. She sensed the breath of the downs and the distant roar of ancient, ancient seas trapped in millions of tiny shells. She thought of Granny Aching, under the turf, becoming part of the chalk again, part of the land under wave. She felt as if huge wheels, of time and stars, were turning slowly around her.
    She opened her eyes and then, somewhere inside, opened her eyes again.
    She heard the grass growing, and the sound of worms below the turf. She could feel the thousands of little lives around her, smell all the scents on the breeze, and see all the shades of the night …
    The wheels of stars and years, of space and time, locked into place. She knew exactly where she was, and who she was, and what she was. [ The Wee Free Men ]
    However, even if you are born with an aptitude for magic, there are still skills to be learned, and it is not wise to try to learn witching all by yourself. Get one little thing wrong, and you’re stuck among dangers you don’t understand. Even if you make no