The Folklore of Discworld

eye on the cover.
    It is really remarkable how similar ideas spring up across the multiverse. On the Earth groups like this have become common over the past hundred years or so. There too, some of them insist on an eccentric spelling for what they do, calling it Magick, to make sure that nobody mistakes it for that boring old-fashioned folk magic. They go in for formal initiations, oaths, grades, and hierarchies, and their founders and leaders (generally men) are notably authoritarian. They take grandiose names for themselves, their organizations, their ritual ceremonies, and the objects used in ritual. And the Zakzaks of our world do very good business. Well, whatever … but one instinctively feels that Granny’s ‘every stick is a wand, every puddle is a crystal ball’ is closer to the truth. Or a truth, at least.
‘S EE ME ’
    The most remarkable of Tiffany’s abilities was one which she ought really to have mentioned to Miss Tick, but she didn’t, being too young and inexperienced to know how unusual, and how risky, it was. Closing her eyes and concentrating, she would say ‘See me’. Then, reopening her eyes, she would find herself standing a few feet away from herself. She had walked out of her own body, and now her detached self could move around, looking at her physical self from every side. When she had seen all she wanted, she would say ‘See me not’, and the two selves were instantly reunited.
    As a child, Tiffany simply thought of this as a handy little trick to use if you didn’t have a proper mirror. She had no notion that it is the basis of Borrowing, that supreme skill of great witches. Still less did she suspect that if you just walk out of your body and leave it there, without taking proper precautions, there are creatures only too ready to move in and take control.
    This ability, or something very like it, has been observed elsewhere in the multiverse, though not under the deliberate control of those who have it. One form is the ‘Near Death Experience’, much discussed nowadays on the Earth. People who are semi-conscious from heart failure or anaesthetic, and almost on the point of death, feel the mind detaching itself from the inert body and floating upwards; they can watch the body from above, and see what is going on around it, but eventually are reunited with it and regain consciousness.
    Older Earthly sources speak of the soul, rather than the mind, separating itself from the sleeping body and wandering off on its own. According to folk tradition, it is possible for an observer to see this happening, for the soul emerges in visible form, as a small animal, an insect, or a puff of smoke. This is said to have happened once to King Guntram of the Franks, who ruled Burgundy from 561 to 592; the story was written down some two hundred years later.
    One day, Guntram felt tired while out hunting, and took a nap under a tree, while a courtier kept watch. This man saw that while the king was asleep a little animal slithered out of his mouth and went down to a tiny brook, where it ran to and fro on the bank, looking for a way to cross. Amused at this, the courtier laid his sword across the brook. The little creature crossed at once, and disappeared into a hole on the opposite bank. After a bit, it returned across the sword bridge, and slipped back into the king’s mouth. Then Guntram woke up, and said to his companion, ‘I must tell you what a strange dream I’ve just had. I saw a very large, very wide river, and across it a great iron bridge had been built. I crossed the bridge, and went into a cave in the side of a towering mountain, and it was filled with treasure!’ Then the courtier told the king what had actually happened, and they decided to dig into the bank of the brook, and sure enough, there was a treasure buried there.
    It is important that no one should touch or shake or shift the unconscious body while its soul is away, because if the soul cannot find its way back, the person will die.
M AKING A M YTH OF O NESELF
    Tiffany’s next post is as apprentice to an extremely odd – nay, terrifying – witch named Miss Eumenides Treason, one hundred and thirteen years old, quite blind, and quite deaf. Yet these disabilities scarcely bother her, because she is skilled at Borrowing and uses the eyes and ears of any nearby animal as if they were her own. On occasion, she even Borrows Tiffany’s eyes, which is rather irritating of her.
    Whereas Miss Tick is a stealth witch, Miss