The Folklore of Discworld

mistakes, you’ll be desperately lonely. Unless you can meet people of your own sort, you may end up mad – or bad.
    Things aren’t so bad for boys who are potential wizards, since they can go to Unseen University. Occasionally, in those few times and places in the multiverse where girls have been allowed to study the same things as their brothers, there has been some talk of boarding schools for young witches, and even of co-educational establishments. But on the Disc there is nothing like that. When Miss Tick tells Tiffany that yes, there is indeed such a school – very magical, nowhere else quite like it – this is a trick or test. The true ‘school’, as Tiffany soon understands, is all around you, once you know how to open your eyes and then open them again. As for the detailed skills of the craft, they are passed on from elderly witches to young ones on a one-to-one basis, together with some very necessary guidance and protection. It is Miss Tick’s responsibility, as a secret witch-finder, to pick out girls with talent and make suitable arrangements for them.
    So when Tiffany was eleven, she left her home in the Chalk country and travelled to the mountains, where she went into service with Miss Level, partly as a maid and partly as an apprentice. Shelearned about herbs, and broomsticks, and tried patiently to make a shamble. She accompanied Miss Level round the villages and isolated farms doing medicine and midwifery, and learned that though a witch never expects payment and never asks for it, there is a constant interchange of gifts and favours. There was nothing romantic about this work, nothing dramatic, no magic potions to cure the sick in an instant. Witchcraft, said Miss Level, was mostly about helping people by doing quite ordinary things. This has been the task of the true Wise Woman in every universe, and we can assume (though evidence is lacking) that girls who became Wise Women on Earth learned their skills and duties by some similar informal apprenticeship.
    However, cures and advice are more likely to be accepted if they sound magical, as Tiffany learned. Miss Level had been carefully telling one family that their well was much too close to their privy, so the water was full of tiny, tiny creatures which were making the children sick. They listened politely, but did nothing. Then Granny Weatherwax visited them and told them the illness was caused by goblins who were attracted to the smell of the privy, and that very day the man of the house and his friends began digging a new well at the other end of the garden. A story gets things done.
    Yet there was part of Tiffany’s mind which hankered for power and drama and picturesque paraphernalia. This is a very common weakness in young witches, and Tiffany meets one group of girls who practise ‘The Higher MagiK’.
    ‘Magic with a K?’ said Tiffany. ‘MagiK kkk ?’
    ‘That’s deliberate,’ said Annagramma coldly. ‘If we are to make any progress at all we must distinguish the Higher MagiK from the everyday sort.’
    ‘The everyday sort of magic?’ said Tiffany.
    ‘Exactly. None of that mumbling in hedgerows for us . Proper sacred circles, spells written down. A proper hierarchy, not everyone running around doing whatever they feel like. Realwands, not bits of grubby stick. Professionalism, with respect. Absolutely no warts. That’s the only way forward.’ [ A Hatful of Sky ]
    Annagramma has learned this approach from Mrs Letice Earwig, a tall thin witch who wears so much silver that she gleams, uses words like ‘avatar’ and ‘sigil’, and writes books. This has earned her Granny Weatherwax’s heartfelt contempt. ‘That’s just wizard magic with a dress on,’ and ‘She thinks you can become a witch by going shopping,’ are two of Granny’s milder comments.
    Annagramma runs a coven of young girls, whom she bullies and sneers at, and chivvies through complex ceremonies involving such things as the Wand of Air, the Cauldron of the Sea, the Shriven Chalice, the Circlet of Infinity. They all go in for robes and occult jewellery, and patronize the very expensive shop of Zakzak Stronginthearm, a dwarf craftsman who supplies everything the Higher MagiKkkkian might require: wands of metal or rare woods, elaborately pretty ready-made shambles, crystal balls, luxurious cloaks, star-spangled hats, rings, pendants, your personal grimoire (‘Book of Night’, or ‘Book of Shadows’) bound in heavy leather with an actively rolling