The Folklore of Discworld

Granny Weatherwax.
    ‘ Where e’er ,’ said Miss Tick primly.
    ‘What?’ snapped Granny, who was now pacing up and down in front of the fire.
    ‘It’s where e’er she walks, in fact,’ said Miss Tick. ‘It’s more … poetical.’
    ‘Hah,’ Granny said. ‘Poetry!’ [ Wintersmith ]
    The next sign of Tiffany’s new status is that a Cornucopia (aka Horn of Plenty) crash-lands in the garden. It is a curly shell-like object, of magically variable size, containing every kind of fruit, vegetable and grain – in fact, it turns out, anything and everything one can eat or drink. These things it produces on request, in lavish quantities. It is a definitely mythological object:
    ‘According to Chaffinch,’ [Tiffany] said, with the Mythology open on her lap … , ‘the god Blind Io created the Cornucopia from a horn of the magical goat Almeg to feed his two children by the Goddess Bisonomy, who was later turned into a showerof oysters by Epidity, god of things shaped like potatoes, after insulting Resonata, goddess of weasels, by throwing a mole at her shadow. It is now the badge of office of the Summer Goddess.’
    The corresponding myth in Ancient Greece is not quite so complicated. As a baby, the god Zeus had to be hidden from his murderous father in a cave in Crete, where he fed on the milk of a nanny-goat called Amalthea (unless this was the name of the nymph who owned her). Later, when he became ruler of the gods, he showed his gratitude by placing the goat among the stars as the constellation Capricorn. But first he broke off one of her horns; it became the Cornucopia, which supplies whatever food or drink one desires. This horn later belonged to Demeter, also called Ceres, goddess of the harvest, and was sometimes carried by Flora, the flower goddess, who scattered corn and wine and fruit and flowers from it. Painters and sculptors are very fond of it, it’s such a pretty shape.
    Tiffany struggles to cope with these rather embarrassing attributes, and the even more embarrassing compliments lavished on her by the Wintersmith. But where, meanwhile, is the real Summer Lady? It turns out that, like many a goddess before her, she is trapped in the Underworld, powerless to return. Without her presence, the Disc will suffer permanent and catastrophic discal cooling, with incalculable environmental repercussions. It is, in short, time for a Hero and a Descent into the Underworld.
    This Descent is one of the most powerful stories in the multiverse. On Earth, for example, it can be found in one form or another in at least a dozen mythologies from ancient Babylonia onwards. Sometimes it is a god or goddess who descends, sometimes a human. Sometimes the purpose is to gain foreknowledge by questioning the dead; sometimes it is to learn the secret of immortality, or to carry off a magical object; but most often, it is to rescue a captive. There have been missions that were entirely successful, as when Odysseus went down to consult the dead seer Tiresias or when Herakles (Hercules)brought Queen Alkmene back from the dead; and others that failed, most famously when Orpheus lost his beloved Eurydice when they had very nearly reached the land of the living, because he looked back at her.
    And some myths tell of partial successes – and these, curiously, are linked to the cycle of the seasons, just like the rescue of the Disc’s Summer Lady. The oldest comes from ancient Sumeria, about 2000 BC , and tells how the great goddess Ishtar went into the Underworld,
    To the Land of No Return, the realm of Ereshkigal,
    To the house which none leaves who has entered it,
    To the road from which there is no way back,
    To the house wherein the entrants are bereft of life,
    Where dust is their fare and clay their food,
    Where they see no light, residing in darkness,
    Where they are clothed like birds, with wings for garments,
    And where over door and bolt is spread dust.
    [ Ishtar’s Descent , transl. John Gray]
    She was seeking her human lover Tammuz, who had apparently been kidnapped by Ereshkigal, Queen of the Underworld, and was now among the dead. Ishtar fought Ereshkigal, but was defeated, tortured, and held captive in a corpse-like condition. Without her, there was nothing but famine and sterility on earth, so the High Gods forced Ereshkigal to sprinkle Ishtar with the water of life and let her go free. Tammuz too was revived and freed, but not entirely; every year he died again during the long sterile drought season, and