The Truth Shall Make Ye Fret - 109: The Wee Free Men Pt. 2 (Slip & Crumble: Lawyers at Large)

Episode Date: March 13, 2023

The Truth Shall Make Ye Fret is a podcast in which your hosts, Joanna Hagan and Francine Carrel, read and recap every book from Sir Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series in chronological order. This week, Part 2 of our recap of “The Wee Free Men”. Buttresses! Sundials! Dreams in Dreams in Dreams!Find us on the internet:Twitter: @MakeYeFretPodInstagram: @TheTruthShallMakeYeFretFacebook: @TheTruthShallMakeYeFretEmail: [e-mail]: www.patreon.com/thetruthshallmakeyefretWant to follow your hosts and their internet doings? Follow Joanna on twitter @joannahagan and follow Francine @francibambi Things we blathered on about:Old Gods of Appalachia Gingerbread cottage on chicken feet [@picturedragon] - TwitterThe Tay Bridge Disaster by William McGonagall - Scottish Poetry Library [See also: No Such Thing as a Fish episode 238, No Such Thing as a Low Sofa] 💖 The Tale of Tiffany 💖 - CGP Grey - YouTube Someone Dead Ruined My Life… Again. - CGP Grey - YouTube Zero shadow day - Wikipedia Thunderbolt Iron - TV Tropes "Rosebud in June" - Steeleye Span - YouTubeA Shepherd's Life: Impressions of the South Wiltshire Downs by W. H. Hudson - Project GutenbergSheep Folklore: The Life and Lore of the Shepherd – #FolkloreThursday Shepherding tools and customs: Ingram, Arthur - Internet Archive Folk-Lore/Volume 20/Superstitions and Survivals amongst Shepherds - WikisourceEightsomes and then some -  Nellifant Dances Music: Chris Collins, indiemusicbox.com 

spent my life down the Woolpits down Woolpits are explode something wrong. Right, cool. So we're functioning. Fuck. All right. So I've been listening to Old Gods of Appalachia, Appalachia. How's that going? Extremely well. I've been to the first season. When did I start listening to it yesterday afternoon? Yeah. And creepiest

fuck hugely recommend. Anybody who took my advice on the Magnus Archives should probably also take this. Although, as I said to Joanna, it is a little more graphic with some of the horror, but it's got like a very prominent list of trigger warnings. It'll be fine. As I said, graphic horror is fine as long as it's not spiders or being trapped underwater in a cave. So far I've not come across any of those. Yeah, it's lots of the kind of shit we like. So it's got Easter eggs

almost or four shadowing bits. And you go, Oh, I recognize that name from three or four days ago. And they must be a descendant of. And you said it's got it's got gays. Yeah, at least one pair so far. Yeah. Sorry, I just trying to make sure I've got more gays in my media because of binge watching friends is not good for that. No, aggressively heterosexual.

I'm in so much pain today. The yoga video I did yesterday was really core focused. And then the one I did today was like a buildup to crow practice. So really core focused. And then on top of that, I made those bagels and it's a stiff day that requires lots of needing. So I was needing dough for like 15 minutes yesterday, which was like a really good workout, but now pain. But bread. So good for your hands. Very good for your wrists.

Yeah, my elbow was hurting last night. Probably just fucked it from playing Valheim. How do you fuck up your elbow playing Valheim? Because I play on the sofa and like leaning over to the coffee table. I think I'm just holding it when Oh, yeah, no, no, no. Girl Gamer Woo Woo problem. I had like quite long nails and I've been filing them nicely. And I realized I was holding my hand

really weird on the keyboard because I couldn't rest my fingers normally on the movement keys and things. So I cut all my nails last night. I respect that as devotion to the cause. Oh, somebody on the local Facebook page posted a picture they took of a white deer somewhere in the one of the local forests. And I nearly commented, don't follow it too far or you'll end up in the other realm. And then I realized people I

know see that and will think I'm just mad, not like referencing folklore. So yeah, especially in a local Facebook page, you might get burned at the stake is a witch for that. And I don't I don't know how to get out of handcuffs and things. So dear, do we have any Pratchety news? We do have Pratchety news. I literally do, don't we? Sorry, I was like speculating wildly

there and we have proper news. Sorry. We have proper news. Our lovely listeners may be aware that friend of the pod Mark Burrows is doing a one man show based on his marvelous book, The Magic of Terry Pratchett, which he's taking up to Edinburgh. You might also be aware that he's doing some preview shows. But what you won't be aware of yet because this is our first time announcing it is that on May 19th, May 19th, in the marvellous little town of Berries and

Edmonds, the true show I'm doing again, I don't know anything. The true shall make you fret presents Mark Burrows doing The Magic of Terry Pratchett right here, right here in our little town. I can see the font. There we go. I got the flower in mind fun. Excellent. Yeah. So Mark is going to come to our little town. He is going to do a preview show of this Edinburgh thing. We're going to be there around supporting and we're going to be

doing a Q&A with the three of us afterwards. So come, come and see us. Come along. Come and come in to the Hunter Club. The Hunter Club in Berries and Edmonds. Which is a nice little venue at which Joanna has performed several times and I have spent a lot of time hanging around. Yes. It's also got quite a good pool table. I may have done an open mic there. I don't remember.

We've definitely done quite a lot of spoken word in that room. We don't have ticket links yet. We will be posting those links and how you can get tickets and everything everywhere since we can. Patrons keep an eye out because you might get a cheeky little discount. And then if you're travelling to Berries and staying overnight, I'll take you all on a pub crawl on the Saturday. Sorry, historical walking tour.

I'll join you at the places that do coffee. We will go places that do coffee for front scene. I'll tell you what, there aren't a lot of pubs that don't do coffee nowadays, but there are pubs where I feel bad asking for a coffee. Do you know what I mean? Absolutely. What are we doing? Do you want to make a podcast?

Yeah, let's make a podcast. Don't know why I got on my fucking notebook. You're about to interview me. Hello, and welcome to The True Shall Make You Threat, a podcast in which we are reading and recapping every book from Terry Pratchett's Discworld series one, a stymie in chronological order. I'm Joanna Agan. And I'm Francine Carroll.

And this is part of our discussion of the We Free Men. Hooray. They're we, they're free. Get over it. No one spoilers before we crack on. No King, no Quinn, no proper segue. Before we crack on, allow Francine to completely wreck her working space.

And before we crack on, a note on spoilers. This is a spoiler light podcast, obviously heavy spoilers for the book, The We Free Men. However, we will avoid spoiling any major future events in the Discworld series. And we're saving any in all discussion of the final Discworld novel, The Shepherd's Crown, until we get there. So you dear listener can come on the journey with us.

Stepping eyes closed through a gap and some standing stones, because that's always a good idea. Yeah, definitely do that listeners. We recommend it. We cannot be held responsible for what happens afterwards, but bring a frying pan. Follow up. Craig sent us an email with a lovely picture of the spring flowers

coming up in his garden. Well done, Craig. Despite being further north than us. That was very kid Stevie voice. Well done. Well put it on the fridge. The email has gone on the fridge. That sounds like we're under attack.

The emails have reached the bridge. Fucking internet of things. Steve on Patreon. Pointed out something we missed. It's nice that Alina's Tiffany stands on the hill looking for the school. She looks out beyond the field. She knew strikes me as a nice nod to the King of Elflands daughter book I love, which I think we've talked about a bit

on the podcast before. Laws and ladies, I reckon. Probably. We'll talk about laws and ladies a fair bit today. Spoilers for the episode. Yes, there are some parallels. Sam, one or two or five or six. Steve also pointed out Tiffany describes what fairy ought to look

like. An element I couldn't make sense of at all. First time around toddlers in rompers suits didn't click until it came around again. He added the qualifier with horns and the penny dropped Teletubbies. That's all I can think it could be. And I'm not sure if that was intended as a reference to Teletubbies, but like I I support it. I'm thinking more like the flower fairies illustrations.

I don't know if they are horns. Well done. The flower fairies did not have horns. I thought that because no, they I poured over those things or something like the little butterfly ones. Mate, they didn't have horns. All right. The distinct difference between antennae and horns.

I don't know why I'm so determined to die on this. Yeah, you are as fucking well, because Jack's been arguing with me all week about horns and antlers and fucking. There's a difference. Yes, there is. But we don't know what the triceratops were. They weren't antlers. I know that.

But people are arguing about whether they had a carrot in sheath over the only protrusion. OK, I want to feel like I feel like I have not been arguing with you about the carrot in sheaths. I would find you protrusion because it feels like something you might have done. I would have. I would have got too stuck on dick jokes to argue about that. Because I think Teletubby horns look more like the giraffe ones, you know,

and they are boned with just skin over pretty much. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Technically, they're antlers, though. Are they? I don't know. I hate this subject. I'm very sorry. Steve, this isn't your fault. Thank you for your comments, Steve,

if you've ruined the friendship between Francine and I that have survived over a decade. Imagine. If we have a fallout, it will be something utterly ridiculous. It will be fucking antlers, won't it? On Twitter, we've had confirmation from notovogons that we can, in fact, get vegetarian poutine in Quebec. Yeah, thank you for that.

I'm going to post a link in the show notes to an amazing piece of artwork from Beverly, who realized our dreams of a gingerbread house on chicken feet. It's so good. It's incredible. I was about to say a chicken house on gingerbread feet, which no one tried to draw. That sounds terrifying. I've been listening to too much cosmic horror

and not to see that as a very gory affair. Also on Twitter, Frow recommended because we were talking about dinosaur civilisations a couple of weeks ago, but by Liu Tushin. I'm having said that right. I did watch the video of how to say it a couple of times of ants and dinosaurs, which sounds amazing. OK.

Also, I remembered via doing lots of TV research this week, a short mini series called Dynatopia, which was about humans and dinosaurs living in harmony that I was completely obsessed with like 20 years ago. So I'm going to see if I can find that on YouTube or something. OK, cool. Francine, would you like to tell us what happened previously on We Free Men? Certainly.

Previously on We Free Men. Tiffany is a young girl with a talent for cheese and a brain for witching. She proves this by concussing a pond monster after a bit of crockery based identification and persuades Aldo, which missed tick, that witches can grow on chalk lands after all. Just as well, too, as the chalk is being besieged by fairytale nasties. Luckily, young Tiffany's aided by her first sight,

second thoughts and huge horde of violent pixies. She'll need all the help she can get because her little brother has gone missing and it looks like he's ended up at the source of all this trouble. So, Doana, do you want to tell us what happens this week? Yes, in this section, chapter five through chapter nine, as we told you last week. In chapter five, Tiffany flies on feagles through the downs to the site of granny aching shepherd's hut. Tiffany finds a pouch of tobacco and Hamish drops in

to tell her the Queen's ridden off with young Wentworth to the other world. Grimhounds attack and the world goes white, but Tiffany runs for the green and after a defeat, Robb, anybody, explains some feagle philosophy. The feagles take Tiffany to the mound and she learns they used to watch over the lambs for granny. Tiffany remembers the China shepherds and the Gonegal plays as Tiffany enters the Kelder's cave. Chapter seven, the Kelder tells Tiffany that Wentworth is safe

for a given value of safe in the Queen's own country. She asked Tiffany to take on Kelding for a while and do the thinking for the feagles during the rescue. There's a thumb bargain and an exchange of sheep liniment and pheons not pleased. The Kelder passes and William takes the time to explain protocol. Tiffany takes a breather, but not as big as medium sized job, but bigger than we jock jocks there to keep an eye on her. All the jocks in place.

Yes, I wrote that out very carefully. Hamish takes a note back to the farm and Tiffany accepts a proposal with a long engagement attached. Tiff heads for the stones and after some searching finds a place where time moves strangely. In Fairyland, the Gonegal wards off the dogs and the feagles reveal they used to work for the Queen. Time moves differently here and Wentworth will suffer for it.

Fear takes Tiffany and she wakes in a real world. Things melt when the feagles arrive. She's faced down her first drone. They travel on through Fairyland until gilded wings attack. In Chapter nine, Noah's big as medium sized jock, but bigger than we jock jock saves the day with dreadful poetry and dogs run by chasing a stag. But her boy approaches on a white horse before Tiffany can introduce herself

to Rowland, a drone attacks and a masked balls of foot. Tiffany destroys the drone with decapitation, but the feagles are absent. Rowland won't help in those dreams within dreams and tame drones heard her into summer. Good stuff. It's a good, good sectionist. I like this. It's a good book. It is. It's very, there's a nice. You don't get it in most practice books, because again,

this is more fairy tale than most, but just the whole it's a journey. It's a literal walking journey in Fairyland. Yes, I enjoy that sort of thing. Yeah, cool. So, so, so we starting with any helicopters, any loincloth? Hamish's impressive landing spin as he descends. Superb. From the buzzard on high is clearly a loincloth.

No, it's a helicopter. And for loincloths, I have decided that bullgowns are in fact very elaborate loincloths. I was thinking that the the the the suits on the little feagles, if you if you hadn't decided on one, I was going to suggest that on because they are anti loincloths. Surely an anti loincloth is just nudity. No. OK.

In the same way, in the same way that lingerie isn't just like the opposite of nudity, a loincloth, I think, is there to. Enhance a loin. Well, it's like a fig leaf makes it more obvious that something's naked. You know, right? Yeah, obviously, a fig leaf is more obvious than a penis. It's more obvious that somebody was perverted about it. Yes, no, I don't know what you mean.

I'm just being a dick. I know. She's crying with remorse. You want me to go first? Yeah, I don't know where mine is. She stepped through and saw an astonishing sight. Green grass, blue sky becoming pink around the setting sun, a few little white clouds late for bed and a general warm,

honey-coloured look to everything. It was amazing that there could be a sight like this. The fact that Tiffany has seen it nearly every day of her life didn't make it any less fantastic. As a bonus, you didn't even have to look through any kind of stone arch to see it. You could see it by standing practically anywhere. My favourite little fucking fluff and return of that section. Absolutely.

How about you? Where you go? They might be a hill or a tree or a stone or a turn in the road, or they might be in the thought in your head, but they are there all around you. You'll have to learn to see them because you walk amongst them and don't know it, and some of them is poisonous. It's just so nice and it's so ominous. And like, if you've read Lords and Ladies, you know more about these universes that are being warned off.

But even if you don't, there's just such an incredible rhythm and poetry to it. Yeah. I mean, not just Lords and Ladies, right? The idea of a parasite universe goes all the way back to the first couple of books. Oh, yeah, it does. The Dunton dimensions were described as parasites. Yes. Obviously, this is more comparable to Lords and Ladies,

but it's an idea that fractures very into. Yes. And it's been around since the beginning. Characters, then. Shall we start with Tiffany? Yeah. Always a good idea. Our lovely protagonist. Can I talk about her name quickly? Oh, yeah. Yeah.

I forgot you're going to do that. Awesome. Well, there's two different bits about her name. One, the Tiffany problem, which in brief summary, as I think a lot of us first possibly heard of from a Tumblr post, which is sort of a it was actually a very common name in medieval times. But it sounds so modern that authors have a trouble using it in those settings. So I don't I don't know if that's something that then like inspired Pratchett to use Tiffany in this book.

Obviously, I'm not saying he saw the Tumblr post, but he may have been aware of the Tiffany problem. It sounds like it's all a bit more complicated and detailed than that. So I'm not going to go into it in a ton of detail, but CGP Grey has a really good video on it. You mean to say you're not going to try and replicate the 40 odd minutes of content CGP Grey came up with after weeks and weeks and weeks of research? I'll also link to it.

If you don't want to watch a 40 minute video, I'll link to a slightly shorter TikTok that did some similar research on it as well. I'm exaggerating. You should watch CGP Grey. You should. It's a very good video. But also, so this book. The Kelder, I think, is the one that says Tiffany's name sounds a lot like a phrase that in fecal means land under wave. OK, so I was looking a bit more into that because I assume it's the way it's spelled

out in here is a reference to Irish Gaelic. So Pratchett did say and I can't remember if this was in annotated Pratchett or in on one of the old dot found Pratchett things that I was quite a lot of links down a rabbit hole by this point that a lot of the like fecal language stuff was implied as sort of Irish Gaelic in a bad Glaswegian accent and poorly spelled. Yeah, I've seen that too. It could be either. Sorry. So this land under wave thing there, the annotation in annotated Pratchett is the last word of it, which is spelled T H O I N N.

It means nothing. The last word is meaningless, but there is something called and I have been trying to find the pronunciation of something like tia fuina tinei, which is how it should be pronounced that does translate to something like land under wave. And I stated Pratchett went on to say that this was actually part of an Irish Gaelic legend, sort of an Irish Atlantis. There's actually been a few different discussions about that land under wave translation and how it meant it sounds like. So did I not come across that during my research the other week? Well, so I couldn't find anything that I did find a disappearing Irish island that has a lot of

folklore going back called He Brasile. It's about H Y dash B R A S I L. I couldn't find anything that refers to it as the tia fuina tinei. And again, really sorry to Gaelic listeners that I'm probably butchering all of this pronunciation I tried. So yeah, so I'm not sure how accurate that annotated Pratchett annotation is. It also sounds like Tawin does have some Gaelic translation, but it may also translate as arse, depending on how it's spelt. And also the foie, which is spelled F A R could mean overall under. Oh, I thought you were going on about like the drone language then. Oh, no, not the foie foie foie. Anyway, so I'm going to link to a longer article about

He Brasile, this disappearing Irish Atlantis island. Oh, if it didn't come back again, that's probably why it didn't pop up in my research, so to speak. Yes. Yes, I was going to link the up and down ones. Anyway, yes, so that was interesting. Sorry, yes, that is interesting. Love that. Back to the book itself. Sure. The Shepardess, I expect you've noted down. I thought it was very cool because I came across some stuff that Pratchett said about that particularly, again, on the groups. And there

was a bit of discussion because in the book, obviously, it's all from Tiffany's point of view and Tiffany feels guilt about how she thinks granny aching took this gift. Yeah. There was a discussion on one of the fan groups. One commenter said, it was an important lesson for Tiffany to realise how silly insulting even the thing was to her grand and that keeping it valuing it. Nonetheless, Tiff saw how much the grand valued her. Someone replied, no, that's what Tiffany thought granny aching thought, but the impression I got was that granny aching hadn't seen it as an insult at all. And then there's quite a long explanation there. And then Pratchett himself replies,

that's what I thought I was writing. Although it was granny aching, you never know. But it seemed to me that the life of the achings and granny most of all was without anything that wasn't necessary. And so the little statue probably spoke to the Sarah Grizzle that had painted the flowers and the flowers of the chalk. I think it fascinated her. Above all though, it was a well meant present from a favourite grandchild and how could that be an insult. Oh, that's really lovely. So it's nice to see it as like Tiffany obsessing over this in because granny aching never exposed normally to her. But yeah. I really loved the chef at this moment. And I like the way Tiffany dwells on her guilt about it

because it's a very like thing for someone of her age to do. Yeah, absolutely. To overthink this action, especially because it was an action, you know, she didn't often get to give a gift to someone because they live that life. Like you said, they don't have room to get anything. Yeah. Yeah. Something else I noticed. And the whole relationship with the shepherdess to granny aching's appearance really relates to Tiffany's sort of, well, I can't be one of the princesses, I've got brown hair and brown eyes and I'll be a witch. And I think it's going to, from what I know of Tiffany's arc as it grows through the books, I think we're going to see her sort of dealing with an expectation versus like a China shepherdess version of herself quite

a few times. You've read a lot more like Victorian era stuff than I have. And I'm guessing that's where this depiction of it like a shepherdess came from the kind of Victorian romanticization of the country side. Yeah. There's a lot of Victorian romanticization of this sort of this pastoral stuff. Okay. So it's like a Victorian Arcadia, basically. Yeah, pretty much. And like, this is Bo Peep, isn't it? It's very much Bo Peep. The outfit described is very Victorian. Well, I just wanted to speak through coffee. That's quite interesting. That is impressive. Finally, I'm evolving. Obviously, the way Victorians romanticize pastoral stuff is very different than the slightly

later bodice ripping romanticizing pastoral stuff by way of handsome stable hands. Well, I don't know about the Victorians did as well, just less so. And there was definitely some fandom of handsome stable hands and Victorian times. Absolutely. But yes, Tiffany, in this section. Yeah, no, she's bad, isn't it? But I quite enjoyed her being told off by William. I was about to say, because I just, it hadn't occurred to her. And you combine it with the slightly earlier when she's deciding what she's got to do. And so she does this, all right, who knows the way to Fairyland? And Rob surprised she doesn't know the way. And she's like,

well, I was expecting, oh, you can't do that. You're just a young girl, but they're acting like she's perfectly capable. And she was hoping for a bit more, I guess, almost thinking that she's not capable so she can prove it. Yeah. And then she almost kind of overcorrects with the yeah, so I'm very capable and not asking nicely and having to be slightly scolded for. Yeah. And the feagles are kind of, they are giving her guidance, but gently, like, like, I don't know, like Motherbird or something. And she does eventually admit her frustration when she's trying to find like the actual way into Fairyland. And she ends up eventually reading from the diseases of the Sheep book

while she spots the sweets on the floor. Perfect. Yes, the character development in this section is very apparent. And it's nice that she takes it on board, not immediately and not perfectly, but instead of doing what I can imagine myself doing at that age, which is crying when I got called out. Yeah. Not like petulantly, but just as a I cried when I got embarrassed. She's like, okay, right. And we get a little flashback to how like capable she was when she found Granny A King and Oh, yeah, that was the likeability and the general witness. I also really love the moment where she's in the mound with the feagles and she has to take the toad out and quite ask, am I fashing myself? It'd be terrible if I could, if everyone could

see I was fashing and I didn't know. Yeah. The bit where she's, where she does get emotional probably is when she realizes that she'd been wrong about not even I'm not sure she thought it solidly, but the kind of whisper of an idea that Granny A King had been coming and picking up the tobacco and we're still walking the hills and it turned out it was the feagles. Yeah. And then she realizes that that she's almost she's been silly. Yeah. And she works through it pretty quickly and manages to relieve the feagles of their sudden terrible guilt. But it's good that she sort of gets those moments of grief within it, because you know, when you've lost someone, you don't just deal with it and move on. Obviously,

you get the then flashes of it and remembering new things that give you another little moment of grief. And I think it's a really realistic portrayal. It's really well done. And that bit in particular was another little loss, wasn't it? This bit of Granny, she sort of thought she had left that she realized that she did in a completely different way. Yeah, that's it. I think she was also kind of realizing it's more ripples in the world again, isn't it? And this tradition is now being carried on by these people, these little people who are alive and remember her. And that gives her her own role to carry on in traditions as well.

Well, then Tiff. Good, Tiff. I also love we get like more of an explanation of the first site, second thoughts thing, but then she finds herself having third thoughts and gets the horrible sort of can we all stop thinking so much? It's getting very loud in here. It's quite a small head. Yeah. There are parts of this book, they're describing Tiff and me like watching herself being scared. I'm like, sounds like disassociation, mate. Yeah, that bit was relatable. Guess the three things I think that if any time to disassociate is then.

Yep, absolutely. Right. The Fieggles. Fieggles, yay. We learn a bit more about their philosophy. The whole doesn't really matter if people die because they're just going back to land of living for a bit, so yeah. And they'll be back, which is that's a nice way to think about things, I suppose. Yeah. It's sad, but only in a like, oh, they've had to go to boring land for a bit. I really like it. It's just giving a very different flavour of philosophy to some new characters as well, especially because this is a book aimed at younger readers.

And so when you do have these casual deaths, like obviously there's the way that amazing but I think it's kind of nice to go, all right, we've got a giant army of these, so it might have to be a bit NPC-ish around the years. So here's a way we can kind of make that acceptable to them emotionally. Yes. And then it's kind of when we see them reacting to the KELDA, that's a different thing entirely. Yeah. Perhaps. It gives that a lot more weight. Yeah. I suppose perhaps even if you believe they've just gone to another place,

it's having a belief in something isn't always enough to overcome just the immediate grief. Emotional reaction to something. Yeah. And I think on top of that, it's different with the KELDA. They're mourning their mother and she's the mother and the matriarch of all of them. Yeah. And it's their protection and their stability. Yeah. And then so we meet William the Gonegal. Yay. I'm going to go straight from annotated Pratchett here because they like how they explain the

reference. A reference to William Topaz McGonagall, Scotland's worst poet. He was to Rhyman Mita, what B.S. Johnson was to Bricson Mortar. He got that middle name by the way as a prank. Somebody awarded it to him in a fake letter of commendation and he took it seriously and took the title. Amazing. Yeah. There are, I think, I think I got most of the stuff I know about him from a no-search thing as a fish upside. So if I remember that, I'll link to it because obviously that's a very funny way to learn about it as well. Yes. I have got an extract from one of his famous poems,

The Tay Bridge Disaster. My favorite poem of all time. I'll hear no slander. Thank you. I said it was famous. I know. I'm just warning everybody else. Oh, okay. Yeah. Beautiful railway bridge of the Silvery Tay. Alas, I am very sorry to say that 90 lives have been taken away on the last Sabbath day of 1879, which will be remembered for a very long time. I think you picked the wrong extract. So hold on. Sorry. I'm going to be a dig. I'm going to add to it because, because, Joanna, how could you miss out a bit about the girders? I must now conclude my lay by telling the world fearlessly without the least dismay that your central girders would not have given way. At least many sensible men do say,

had they been supported on each side with buttresses, at least many sensible men confesses, for the stronger we are, houses do build, the less chance we have of being killed. That's the more answer to the story. Buttresses, girders. Amazing meter. I love it. I fucking love that poem. There's just not enough buttresses and girders in modern day poetry. And I'm trying to remember. I know I've read that out on the podcast before and I don't know when. I don't think you needed a reason. I may have edited it out. Listeners, if you remember me reading that for whatever stupid reason, please tell me. We need to stop doing callbacks to earlier episodes because I don't

remember them. Well, no, because you're one and done, aren't you? I have to spend fucking hours editing the bastards. Oh, yeah. Well, I listened back to it. Yeah, it's not the same. No, it's absolutely not. I understand why they're burning your brain a lot more than mine. Anyway, we've got the Kelder and her daughter, Pheon. Yeah, a bit of a tension there. I have to say the tension between Pheon and Tiffany, like obviously it absolutely works plot-wise and it's nice to have that kind of scowling voice in the background run. Just all the feagles automatically think Tiffany's great, but there's a bit of it that's sort of like, ah, we've got two younger women of around the same age, obviously age being very relative in

the feagle sense. So let's do it. They're obviously not going to like each other. Yeah. And in this case, makes sense. There's a power struggle thing going on, but yeah, still like now. But they come around to it later, so. They do come around to it, yeah. But also, we've got this whole only one or two women at once, and the Kelder blatantly says, you know, there's a reason there's only one queen in the hive. So we have this big B parallel, which was a huge thematic thing in Lords and Ladies. Slash stab. Slash stab. Yes, I understand why they didn't go into that bit here, but not that he's been

completely without little scary bits, but there's no need to know about the slash stab in the hives. Well, I'm assuming there's not going to be much slash stab between Pheon and either the original Kelder or Tiffany. No, there'll be some politics. It's interesting to like speculate what Pheon wants to happen here, and whether she does have a clear path or not, because somebody said, like, you can bring in a warrior and marry there. And obviously, that wouldn't work from all the sort of reasons. And I think, I don't know, maybe she just doesn't want things to change. And so that's the. Yeah, I feel like it comes from like a sort of adolescent fear of change, because it's not just change that she's got to go off on her own.

Yeah, she gets to go and go somewhere completely new where she doesn't know anyone. Yeah, and that's scary. It was quite sweet. I'm sorry, backtracking very slightly. William McGonagall, I thought was very sweet in that way. I thought that was a nice moment of, yeah, good insight. Yep, I'm on my own. I'm going to go back to the Highlands now, which actually was nice. Parallel, not parallel, but made sense because practice obviously written his accent to be a bit more Highland. Or maybe not Highland, but like a bird, you know, I mean, very different from the feagles. Yeah, the feagles are generally more Glaswegianish, and I'd say.

Yeah, yeah. More gentle rolling are kind of Scottish accent. Yeah. Obviously I am. What I would associate with poetry. I am doing all of these quotes in my best Scottish brogue. You just can't tell because it sounds like my normal voice. This is the best Scottish brogue I can do. So yeah, so I like that as one of the like more really distinct Lords and Ladies parallels. Yeah. And it's, we also learned through like, tangentially that feagles live as long as people, almost because the Kelder 60 something, isn't she? Yeah.

And it's all granny aching as a peer and hang out with afraid is which is lovely to know as well. And yeah, I don't know. I really like the Caldera as a character. Obviously she has to leave quite quickly, but she does have a touch of the fantasy trope where the person gives you like the most cryptic fucking hints about the really important time sensitive mission you're about to go on. And then Dumbledore vibes on that one. I think we're allowed to have these tropes in Pratchett though. But it is definitely a tropey thing. This in particular was not necessarily more so than other books, but this is one of the books

that's obviously very much meant to encapsulate all of the fairy tale tropes. And like sort of fantasy journey tropes as well. And then granny aching. Yes, as we keep tangentially referencing. So yeah, we see more of the end of her life here. We see the funeral before we see her actual passing away. So it'll be really fun to read like the month after my grandmother died. But yeah, we see the hut and then lifting the turf and putting it back, putting the, what is it? They put the sort of part of the sheep's wool, a tuft of raw wool on her and

to show whichever golds were up there that that's why she hadn't been to worship or whatever. And I like the little detail that granny aching. So I wouldn't have had any truck with any gods who didn't understand that anyway. You know, the lambing needs doing, but you know, just in case we'll pin that on her. And I like the end it gives for Thunderbolt and Lightning as well, who just sort of trot away over the fields when it's all done. Yeah, you do. Can I mention, I really liked the parallel they had to the Grimhounds because they described in detail how the Grimhounds were kind of surrounding Tiffany and there was always one she couldn't see. And then when we got to the bit

where granny aching was confronting the guy thrashing his donkey, there was a bit where they described how Thunder and Lightning surrounded him and there was always one he couldn't see. And they're like, it's like balls of steel. And I think we're looking at a kind of granny aching Queen of the Fairies parallel like mirror thing here very slightly. Well, this is the whole thing. The reason that the Queen of the Fairies can now start encroaching on the chalk is because granny aching has gone. So now there is room for a different Queen to come in. Yeah, yeah, definitely. And I think at the same time we're learning how powerful the Queen of Fairies are is we're kind of getting these little hints that granny aching was

in her own quiet way. Yes. Yes. Or if not her superior, I would say. And with the they're always being when you can see the same thing then happens with Tiffany and the Drones towards the end of the section where she realizes she's being herded that there are some around and then there's always one. Yeah. Parallels within parallels. Can't have two queens slash staff, whatever. Yes. Yeah. I love the little details of all the things that are named after granny aching as well. The buzzards are granny aching chickens and the clouds are granny's little lambs and her father called the thunder granny aching cussing.

And makes you wonder like in five generations what that would have evolved into. Granny's lambs could obviously stay as is, but you can imagine some of the aching changing into a slightly different word or or like the buzzards just become known as little chickens. You end up some really weird nicknames for things and the etymologist can just be like referencing something we don't know about. Sorry. Yeah, they didn't write it down the bastards. And then late in the section when we read the bit where Tiffany finds granny and finds that she's passed away, the way the grief in the silence is written is incredible. Just the detachment again.

But also the way, yeah, Tiffany understands what's happened and so then she feeds the dogs and she goes and she tidies up the shed and she goes home and she tells them what's happened. But if you contrast that to because Esk is a very Tiffany-ish character, you can trust that to when Esk finds granny weatherwax in equal rights and thinks she's died. Runs home. She never had granny aching to grow up with, did she? She got her mentor a lot later. Yeah. Although then got to keep her a lot longer. Absolutely. But it's just, I don't know, there's something really beautiful about the way this is really silently and quietly and cleverly written, but I really enjoy that there is that parallel there

of how that is coped with. Yeah, absolutely. There's a lot of things about how Tiffany's coping with emotions that I think be very useful for kids to read actually and it's cool to read now just like her just being fucking annoyed in the fairy land. She's scared and therefore she's just fucking and now annoyed with it. God damn it. Everything around me is being very silly. And I think that works. Yep. Then we have the jolly sailor of the tobacco fame. Oh, yes. And this beautiful description of the packet and it's the only sea that Tiffany's ever seen and granny aching tells of the story of the whale that he's chasing around the disc, which I really like that this sort of flat version of Moby Dick that we've got going.

The whale is called Moby. It's also some very good foreshadowing for the next section. There's a nice set up here that's going to get paid off a few chapters down the line. Yes. Yes. And I think this probably is mentioned in the next section as well. But I like the kind of childlike vision of having only seen this picture. That's what sea looks like and it's just a small place. And like when she sees another picture of the guys, of the men clinging to the raft, she's like, I couldn't even see the lighthouse in that one. Yeah. Like the lighthouse. Which by the way, I tried to find out what painting that was if any, because it just, it seems very unusual for a project not to reference one. And there is like a famous,

what was it? Oh, raft of the Medusa, which is my only guess. But it seems it's pretty fucking dramatic to be just hanging up when around the country person's house. So. I did used to have a thing when I was a kid, like the main time we went to the seaside was when we went up north to visit my grandparents. They lived at Whitley Bay, so they were right by the coast. So we know we were getting close because there was a certain hill you go over, you see the sea in the distance. If you know how to spot the very sad grey North Sea against a very sad grey English sky. It's a talent. But there's a really beautiful little sort of house on a little isolated hill around that area. And there's a painting of it that my mum had on the wall. So to

me, like, it doesn't look like the sea unless that house is there. It was very, it's not the sea unless the like, I knew objectively that not every seaside you went to that house was there, but it didn't feel like a proper seaside unless I could see that house. Totally. Yeah. Having spent a lot of childhood in Jersey, I definitely still even now I'll go to another beach and like, I mean, it's fine. It's not Jersey doesn't seem quite right though. Do you feel a bit like you're cheating on the island? Yeah. Anyway, we meet Roland, the Baron's missing son, it turns out is bimbling about in Ferryland, riding up on a white horse, which I'm assuming you remember, because I talked about it in great

detail, the ballad of Tam Lin, which we talked about in Laws and Ladies. It was a while ago, though. So if you want to re-talk about any of it, please do. It's the story of a woman whose lover gets taken by the Queen of Ferries and there's various different versions of how she's got to go and get her lover back. But one of the common threads in the various tellings of Tam Lin is that Tam is put on a white horse and that's how she knows which horse has him on. And the Queen of Ferries rides a black horse, which I think is why the Queen of Ferries and this is described as riding a black horse. Oh, very cool. Because you actually read the ballad in depth. Does this seem like a kind of

inversion of some of the themes within? So Tiffany's going back to go and get not her lover at all, she's going to get a brother, but well, she's actually going to get the fucking Prince back, I guess. Yes, it's doing more pressure as well, which is flipping the story tropes on their head a little bit and this is a nice, fine, I'll do it, version of Tam Lin. Yeah, because that's the thing to do. Yes. That's the right thing to do, even though I don't like to baron that much. And even though this guy is obviously a bit of a prick, she learned her duty from Granny, didn't she? So.

Yeah. I don't even find the version of it that I listen to on repeat because I sang a version of it for patrons. Yeah. Also, the whole bit about this is the stuff that has to be done. Yeah. Tiffany there. I'm trying to think of which of the witches books before now, that was the most underlined and just like the duty of being a witch and it's not coming to me right now, but it might have been equal rights. I think I would say I was thinking witches abroad when Granny has to put the wolf out of its misery.

Oh, yeah. Actually, it's probably been a theme in all of them, hasn't it? But you might be right, that might be the one that's... Yeah, I'll see if I can... I should actually have done it this section. I'll do it next section. Find some parallel paragraphs from other practice. I can never fucking illiterate with peas. Parallel Pratchit paragraphs. Thank you. Paul the Apostle, no. And then we meet drones, which are such a sinister, terrifying concept. Yeah. I did have a quick look and I can find the obvious parallels. I think this is Pratchit's

horrible invention. Well done, Pratchit, for the horrific horror. Do you want to point out the secondary and the masked ball that Tiffany goes into? I'm assuming this is very much a reference to the Labyrinth. Oh, yeah. Because it's like an infamous scene, which is a story about a girl going to the land of the goblins to rescue her brother from the little brother who she hates from the Goblin King. And there's no way that Pratchit didn't like the Labyrinth. And we all know it's Henson's and David Bowie. Yeah, absolutely. In very tight trousers. No, we should relapse that. I said that at the same time you said very tight trousers. He's not a fan of Bowie in very tight trousers. I'm also really glad that you,

I know you sometimes catch me trying to spell things live in the shared episode plan. So you weren't in it, but I still didn't try and put labyrinth in there. I only put it in my note so you didn't see me trying to spell it. I'm not sure I could do it first go. So there you go. I'll tell you what. It's a tricky word. They're fucking me up this week. The word parallel. I knew how to spell it before, but I keep trying to do it with a double R this week. Too many R's, too many L's. Yeah, no. Parallels are a tricky one. Anyway, yeah, no. So the masked ball dream, I must be a Labyrinth reference. Actually, I'm going to get ahead of myself here aren't I? Because we need to be locations. But yeah, the drone's very cool. I like the

bit where the four drones, I know it's right at the end, are sitting in the quadrant and kind of projecting this screen on. I know we'll see that a bit more later, but it seems very, that's almost a little sci-fi moment, isn't it? You can see in some Mad Scientist lab, the four energy sources, protecting this, whatever it is. Oh, yeah. That's what comes up for me. I like that as a visual. Fucky characters, those. What kind of clues do you think you're trying to give yourself if you're in one of these dreams? It'd probably be me doing something competently. It'd be like all the laundry's done. It'd be like if this room felt organized, this table has never felt organized.

Or all the books were in order or something like that. I don't know. I guess maybe if Jack said something a certain way or... Successfully completing a sewing project rather than half finishing it and leaving the fabric around to judge me. I'm in my sewing room, so that's my main focus. Also, what food do you think they would try and tempt you with? I know that, but like, if we weren't as clever as Tiffany and try to imagine them. Oh, it'd be pasta. Not like just randomly eating it off the counter. Probably. Biscuits. I really like food. It wouldn't take a lot.

Yeah. Snacking is fun. Many tell us something like that, whatever. Well, the problem is that it would also be very realistic if they're trying to sort of recreate my world with a dream that there'd be a loaf of bread probably freshly baked around somewhere because I like to make bread once a week as I freshly baked bread if there's some butter near it. Yeah. Actually, yeah, that's a good one. That would be it. Definitely. You can't resist a slice of bread with butter on it. No. Never. I'm never going to try. No. What the fuck would even be the point? You're staying Fairyland, whatever.

You keep your humanity at least. What was I saying? Fuck. Oh, yeah. The whole being tempted by food, by fairies, by spirits. That also came off in the old gods of afterliction, by the way. But if you do the rabbit hole for the patrons this month on like fairytale rules. Oh, yeah. That's definitely what I want to talk about. I want to hear more about that. Nice. I'm just putting in my request for Joanna doing research for me. All right. So we've got a year and a day. We've got food. We've got... Rule of three. That won't take me long to research. Oh, Jesus Christ. Sorry, listeners. We're literally now live planning our bonus content

on the podcast rather than talking about what we're meant to be fucking talking about, the chalk. Chalks. I've got brackets. No, I'm not just smuggling in extra quotes. So what would you like to read, Joanna? Okay. So there's this great line right at the beginning of the section. This is the girl flying at the moment. There's a toad on her head holding onto her hair. Pull back and here is the long green whaleback of the Downs. Now she's a pale blue dot against the endless grass mowed by the sheep to the length of a carpet. But the green sea isn't unbroken here and there. Humans have been. Which is really cool because we had that thing last week or in the last section where Miss Tick was watching Tiffany and we had that pulling back

and looking over the Downs. We get a repeat of it here. Yes. I love those bits anyway, those bits of description. I think I must have been subconsciously pulling from that a while ago because I wrote something that I never tidied up and published, but about walking through Suffolk like that and just imagining what it would look like as an aerial view. You know, me with a little dog running next to me, scaring crows off into big clusters and I'll try and dig that out. But yeah, I love that. I love the fucking pull up descriptions. I think that's very clever of him. It is one of my favorite things to do. And then just the next page, we get the actual golly gee of the chalk, the flints and the standing stones

and colkins. And the decorative, very twisted looking flints that people put on their garden walls. Yeah, I've never seen those used as decorations, but they definitely dusted around here as well. Flint babies, did they call them? Something like that. They've got lots of weird little names. Yet, colkins, which means chalk children. Chalk children. Oh, nice. And it talks about the carvings in the chalk as well, which is something, you know, we talked about. We'll talk about the affington white horse and more. And we talked about the, I can't remember what it's called, but the man with the big penis that's carved into chalks. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, if you're going to carve a giant, you're not going to need a small

penis. Dick man. Anyway, right. No, I'm being, I'm being a dick. And they also references trilithons. Yeah. Which is, yes, specifically two upright with one across the top, like you see a stonehenge. Oh, try. Okay. Yes. Yes. Good. I like that. There's a lot of Celtic imagery that is like obsessed with threes because the rule of three is fucking everywhere, obviously. Yeah, but like triptych symbology that I was looking into because when I was drawing that, the hair, the three hair thing, I was trying to find the design I wanted to fit in the background for that. So that's cool. Love that. Yes. And obviously, again, we've got with that another parallel to Lords and Ladies where they're dealing with the stone circle, although we don't seem to

have magnetism here. No. But it's a similar sort of stones, potentially guarding gateways and what have you. We definitely don't because she brought the panthery. Yeah, she managed to get the frying panther. She wouldn't be able to do that if it was magnetic. Yeah. Which maybe, you know, the Queen hasn't managed to exert enough influence on the stones to make them magnetic and therefore keep iron out. I can't remember if that's how the magnetism worked in. I thought it just kept them in because they don't like the magnetism because it disrupts their senses. Oh, it might be that. Yeah. It might have been an unintended side effect of people that I thought couldn't come in with them with the iron. Yes. Yeah. I think it was like because they used electromagnetic

sensors to get around, right? Something like that. So the magnet fucked them up. Yes. Yeah. Anyway, I should go back and I don't have time to go back and read Lords and Ladies, but listeners, correct us. Please do correct us if we're wrong, which we are. I mean, I'm not. I'm pretty sure I'm right on that one, actually. That's fine. I'm pretty sure you're right, too. I'm not. This isn't a hill I'm going to die on. Speaking of hills, the mound. Yes. Nice. I knew you two chose that phrasing. So yes, the feagles live in one of these mysterious burial grounds, burial mounds, which are a thing. Over here, we talked about the famous man-made neolithic mound last week.

Yes. I found, actually, in that very old folklore journal, I sent you the thing about the fucking sundials in. There's a little bit in, might have been a slightly later edition, about the various folklore around that hill that you mentioned. Oh, cool. Oh, it's that hill called Not Dragon Hill, the other one. It's not Arken Hill. I'd have to grab that plant from last week. But yes. The hill I was talking about. Yeah, yeah. But yeah, I like that the feagles acknowledge, like, oh, yeah, there's a dead king in the other room, but he doesn't bother us. Yeah, he's fine. He's fine. We live him alone. He leaves us alone.

The kelders surrounded by these, like, piles and piles of gold. Yeah. And the kelders are buried with the king, I guess, or very close to. And to me, I think it makes sense that the feagles have these thousands of year old relationships with the rulers of the land, possibly not with the baron. But I mean, they rekindled the one in Lanka. Yes. And so I wouldn't be surprised if they and the old king had made an agreement that they could bury together or whatever. Or then again, I wouldn't be at all surprised if they just found a friendly looking mountain and made their home.

Yeah. Oh, because they took variants to the mountains they were living in in Carpe Joculum. Oh, that's right. They were living there already, were they? I don't know if it's the same mountain. Or they wanted to or something. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They might have had like an island mound. They may not be all the same feagles, but I think there is some overlap. I mean, it's not the same as this one, obviously, because they're rough in the mountains. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But they're, oh, maybe William McGonagall came from them. Yeah, they could be some family over there. Anyway, sorry.

And then obviously, we go into Fairyland for the first time. We have the incursion of the country into Tiffany's World, which is, was really cool to reread and write about yesterday, because it was like snowing here yesterday, but it was a weird mix of like snow and then it's green again. And a really weird temporary snow as well. So that must have been a cool kind to be reread because it was, it started snowing at like nine o'clock. I went out for a walk at about 10 when it was like really heavy snow and settling everywhere by the time I got back, the garden was all white. I looked out again and before lunchtime it was gone. But then it kept snowing. Yeah, like tiny little flowers, but yeah, it didn't settle again. Yeah, it was a very weird

day of snow yesterday. So it was quite cool reading the incursions. Yeah. Oh no, wait. But also that you have these details like Tiffany realises the trees are filling themselves in when you get closer to them. Very video game, isn't it? Well, but also it frustrates her, it makes hard to look at. And I was thinking it's a nice parallel to Hogfather, the children's painting that they're in. Yeah. I think she refers to the trees as a children's drawing at some point. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. For me, it's, I reckon he's definitely thinking of walking through one of the older games by the rendering. Yeah, it's really so and it starts kicking in. It is my bugbear and Valhalla, how I understand why my like bass and shit doesn't start rendering

till I sound near it. But it's really annoying that I almost say I'll pass the dock because the fucking bonfires don't light up until I'm close enough. Yeah, definitely. I think if some people have complained about that, they might patch it at some point, but I think it's like a distance on it. I don't know if that's how video games work. Anyway. Oh, and we also, as when they're talking about like the Fiegel's history with the Queen and what Fairyland used to be like, we get a reference to the King that she had the argument with. Is this, is this the same King and Queen? Yeah. Okay, good. From Lords and Ladies. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's the same tale being told a different way. So I am going to, in that case, look up the nannyogs telling of the story

with the whole, there was an argument between the King and the Queen. Yes. And yeah, because then words were heard, but there were magic words and mountains. Forest destroyed, mountains exploding, a few hundred deaths, that kind of thing. That kind of thing. You know how it goes. But I like that we have more of the history of Fairyland before that argument. And then it still wasn't really a great place to be then. No, because it was at least maybe prettier looking. Yeah. And like just a slightly nicer vibe, perhaps. The point is, it's never been a fairy tale. It's never been the nice kind of fairy tale. Yes. It's more like a horror. Fairy's always been horrid. Yeah. Little bits we like. What do we like? Well, speculation corner.

Yes. So Fiegel's die and go back, no, don't die. They're just going back to the land of the living. Yeah. Do we have a Fiegel psycho pump? Do we have a death equivalent but a living? I feel like the fact that they're being shuttled between their world and this world, where they're just so good and in theory kind of ping-ponging back and forward, is because death wants nothing to do with those fuckers. So we reckon they just close eyes, wake up, new world. Yeah. Okay. Got it. Because otherwise they'll end up following death back and Albert has to get them out of the porridge and... That's true. I was wondering if death would even accommodate a different psycho pump.

Is it a psycho pump? If you're accompanying someone back to the land of the living, does it work both ways? No, I think it only goes one way. Okay. So one way is like a pop sister. One death usually does. Yeah. That's what I've heard. Yeah. Oh, we didn't see Wendepoons get ushered back in, did we? Even though that was a bit of a special circumstance. But Red Shoe, as far as we know, didn't get kicked back in, did he? No, we just kept going. Sheer force of will. All right. All right. If there is one, it'll just be a fecal, just a normal fecal. Yeah.

It's like, yeah, I'm doing this job this month. Yeah. They take turns psycho pumping. Okay. Good. Wild speculation over. Cool. Tiffany does some speculation. She thinks that there should be a word that sounds like a noise, the noise a thing would make if that thing made a noise, even though actually it doesn't, but what if it did? Yeah. We've definitely had this conversation before and I can't remember when. Nope. We're doing really well on the callbacks to all the episodes today. We've talked for so many hours as the thing listeners. On and off podcast. Yeah. But yeah, this is a cool concept and I enjoy it as well.

I like this concept. Do you have any ideas for that sort of word? So what have we got in the book? It's glisten, gleam. Yeah. All the glas. All the glas. All the glas. Let me have a quick think. Definitely some. Yeah. We have glint as well. Coruscate is coming into my word, right? It's coming into my head. That's from a different book. That is from a different book. I do not remember which book it's from now. Yeah. Okay. I'm just glad I'm not going mad. Okay. That's fine though. No. There is conversation about the word coruscate.

No, I can't think of it. Crumble to me fits into that. Crumble's that. Almost but not quite the same thing as I always feel like the word slip sounds like the noise silk slip makes as you put it on. Nice. Yeah. And it doesn't make any noise. So it does fit. Yes. Good. There we go. You can have slip. Yes. Good. Slip and crumble. Lawyers at large. Lawyers at large. Attorneys at law. Thank you. I try. You absolutely did try, Francine. I cannot say that you did not try.

Thank you, Diana. We have setting the clock and the aching nature of time keeping. Yes. The big old clock in the farmhouse is set once a week, which is how far the goes to the market in Creel Springs. He makes a note of the position of the hands and the big clock there. And then when he gets home, he puts the hands on the clock into the same position. Yep. Which is how you get countryside time, of course. Yep. But they all take their time from the sun anyway. And you sent me a really interesting thing earlier about turf sundials. Oh, yeah. So that was when I was trying to look up like chef-hitting folklore and stuff.

And basically there were just some cool ways that chef had used to tell the times just putting sticks in turf in various formations and like they were portable sundials and things apparently for a little while. And yeah, but the turf sundials in particular were going for until recently. I'm guessing until wristwatches were super reliable. And I guess able to survive sheep. Yeah. And then, yeah, then they said, if not, you just reckon from whereabouts the sun was. Yeah. I suppose if you're doing that sort of job, you only need to have a pretty good fixed knowing when all Southeast and West are.

Yeah. Oh, Tiffany as well. I suppose that's a little bit of a three line in the book, isn't it? So you said about, they worked out what time it was by where the sun was. And then when she's in Fairyland, one of the first things she notices is there's no sun to be seen. She can't work out what time it is because time doesn't work there. And when she's going through this frustrating, fear filled moment at the end, she has the shadows, but there's no sun to create the shadows. Oh, yeah. There's a phenomenon right on the equator that are exactly noon at a certain, I guess, on the equinoxes.

Yeah. Solstices. Yeah. For a little bit, for a few minutes, there are no shadows because the sun is directly overhead. And apparently it looks very odd like something's not rendered properly, and everything looks very liminal and just weird. I want to go experience that now. Yeah, you see. Yeah. I've been speaking of time. Yeah.

When Tiffany accepts Rob's proposal. Got that whole thing was awkward. That's very sweet where they're sort of awkwardly, you know, one of them's washed and there's picked a nice bunch of flowers for her. Yeah. And they don't realise that, you know, fecal and human biology are obviously very different. It's like, she'd be young to be having baby. Is it like, yeah, she's like nine. I like how incredibly not creepy it is. Yeah, it genuinely is, yeah. And Tiffany doesn't feel like it's like that.

She's just like, right, okay, how can I not make this awkward? And I think Pheon must know when he's trying to capture out a bit here. Yeah, that's I think the moment of rivalry. I was talking about a bit earlier where Pheon's got this kind of smuggle. How are you going to get out of this one? Because if not, I sort of win. So when Tiffany sets the date for her wedding with Rob, she says, at the end of the world, there's a great big mountain of granite rock a mile high. Every year, a tiny bird flies all the way to the rock and wipes its beak on it. When the little bird has worn the mountain down to the size of a grain of sand, that's when she'll marry him. And I've heard that reference

like adds a story within stories before the mountain at the end of the world and the bird that visits it once, however long. Yep, definitely. So I had a look at where it's from. Origin seems to be the shepherd's poi by brothers Grimm. Nice, relevant. Which is a king asks a shepherd's boy three questions and if the boy can answer them properly, then the boy gets to be the prince and inherit everything from the king. Sure. Normal way to run a country. At least in the Grimm's version, there's absolutely no context for like why this arrangement has come about. There's no build up, it's just this.

So he asks the boy these big unanswerable questions like how many drops of water are in the ocean, how many stars are in the sky. And the third one is how long is eternity. And so the boy describes the bird flying to the mountain of diamond at the end of the world and says when the diamond is worn down to a single grain that the first second of eternity will be over. Oh, very cool. So it's ATU index 922. The shepherd substituting for the clergyman answers the king's questions. This is the story type. There are lots of versions from various different folk laws. There's English, Irish and Scots versions. There's things with like two boys pretending to be each other in classrooms and answering questions like

this and tricking teachers. But there are always these kind of big abstract questions and it's always three questions, obviously. But the only version of the story I found with the bird sharpening speak is the shepherd's boy, which has its origin as brother's Grimm. I'm assuming because it's brother's Grimm, it goes back in Germanic folklore probably quite a lot further. And also may not be Germanic based on a lot of the research I've done about brother's Grimm in the past. Have we did it not come up in Reaper Man or something as well? It's definitely come up in Pratchett before. But it's something I've heard in a lot of places. It's referenced as like a shorthand for eternity. That's literally what it is.

Yeah. It would be interesting to know where it first first came up. Brothers Grimm took their stuff from other sources, didn't they? Their whole thing was collecting folklore of German origin, but they often ended up with things like French shit in there. They weren't very good about checking their sources. Probably a bit harder then. True, true. Anyway, yeah, sorry. Thunderbolt iron. So in the book, Tiffany brings a frying pan, obviously. That's the correct weapon to go into fairyland words. But the feagles, like shouldn't you have a sort of thunderbolt iron? Yes, he did. Exactly. I was like thunderbolt iron. That's a word I know.

Obviously, it's referenced in Weird Sisters and that actually. And in I'm guessing lords and ladies. Maybe it's the meteorite iron anyway, basically. So yeah, Pratchett made his own sword, as I'm sure we all know by now. He gathered raw iron ore from a field and then also lobbed, as Rob Wilkins put it, pieces of the sick coat allen meteorite to play the part of thunderbolt iron, which folklore insists is highly magical. And then I was like thunderbolt iron, though, like as a term. I'm not sure that's how it's usually put. And yeah, no, Pratchett is named as the trope namer in TV tropes. So Discworld's thunderbolt iron is strongly magnetized,

even more useful than normal iron for keeping whales, etc. But yeah, and all of the stuff about meteorite iron on TV tropes is on the thunderbolt iron. And Pratchett just came up with the coolest name for it. Nice. Speaking of names for things. Teases. Teases. Teases. Yeah, I just very much tell you a little bit. I liked they're far away cheeses with strange sounding names. Teases like treble wibbly, wainy tasty, old arg, red runny and the legendary lanker blue, which had to be nailed to the table to stop it attacking other cheeses. Yeah, some cheese names are pretty fucking weird. I can't think of many old arg probably something called yarg. Yarg is a cheese, isn't it? Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I want cheese unpack it. Wookie hole, wookie hole cheddar.

Normal and good. Shepherding superstitions. Oh, no, it's me again. Okay. All right, I'm going to bring up my notes in front of me now. Tell me about shepherding superstitions. So this bit, I think, is brought up a lot when we're discussing that chalk and Pratchett lore in general is that granny aching was wrapped in wool blanket, tuttle wool bling to it, as we mentioned earlier, because I don't know, it's a very sticky bit of folklore. Also, in the part of the world where that was tradition, the shepherd would often be carried to their grave on hurdles, you know, the bit of movable fence he used specifically for sheep. Oh, cool. As far as I see it, there are kind of a couple of ways you can look at shepherd folklore shepherd superstition. And the first one

of those is like shepherd as a metaphor, which I think there's quite a lot of in this book. It's kind of the power. It's a very powerful simple imagery. It's guiding a flock, it's doing so for little reward, because it is your duty. And you love it, what you can't imagine doing anything else, or you were born into it or a mixture of all of those. And in in a context like this, I like it, I like it very much as the symbology. And I think granny aching is great. But yeah, especially as it turns out, witches and shepherds have a lot in common in definitely in practice canon. I find it a bit interesting or possibly annoying that when it's used in more religious contexts, or maybe slightly more preachy contexts, because it's kind of a part of a historically

incredibly undervalued labor force and portrayed like they do everything from duty. And it doesn't therefore it doesn't matter they have little reward. And it reminded me very much of our discussions about like the NHS workers and they're like, talk to the NHS, they're heroes, so they don't need paying properly. Yeah. It's oh, it's such a noble profession. It's a calling. It's that yeah. So I don't know, reading reading the book on shepherding that I was at W. H. Hudson's one, the shepherd's life is pretty depressing actually more so than I thought, because there's a lot of details about the kind of uprisings following some of the automated farming equipment. So this would have actually been super relevant during breather man because

there was a lot of the thrashing machines getting destroyed and things and the but all of the stuff surrounding that before and after it and just there were a lot of starving families of laborers even before that came in and then they got worse afterwards. And that was like incredibly harsh punishments for sheep stealing, as we've seen in this book, like you hanged for stealing a sheep because your family's starving and a lot of the justices seem to take some fucking perverse joy in it. And yeah, that kind of sucked and was very depressing to read about. So I veered into half of your territory and just looked up a few fun little customs and folklore bits. There's a really interesting bit of nuance though. I hadn't thought about it like

that at all. It's yeah. I like how it's portrayed here, but I think it would be very annoying in the hands of another author. Absolutely. Yeah. Granny Aking and Tiffany. We get to see it from Tiffany's perspective, which is important, I think, because quite often you don't see it from the shepherd's perspective. And also Tiffany is not always very noble about it. She finds it frustrating sometimes. Yeah, absolutely. Hmm. It's interesting. It's a woman, actually, the granny. I didn't really think about that, but Granny Aking being a woman, you don't often get this trope of shepherd being a woman. No, you don't. Even though it seems like quite a nurturing maternal role. You get shepherdesses in silly dresses. Shepherdesses, silly dresses.

There's a poem there somewhere. There's already one about by Pete. Anyway, sorry. Shepherdesses, silly dresses. Something about the curled tresses. All right, we're not improvising poetry on the podcast front, so you can tell me about six seasons. So just a fun, fun little small collection of bits that I found and I liked. I like that Steel Ice Band have done a version of Rosebud in June, which I also know. It's a sheep's hearing song. Some of the lyrics go, it's a rosebud in June and the violets in full bloom and the small birds are singing love songs on each spray will pipe and will sing love will dance in a ring love when each lad takes his lass all on the green grass and it's old to plow where the

fat oxen graze low and the lads and the lasses do sheep's hearing go. Little, little bit of innuendo in there, I reckon. Not even innuendo really, is it? It's a lovely song and I'll look to Steel Ice Band's version of that. There were some little bits that I found. So from the first edition, actually, I think of the Folklore Society Journal, somebody was looking for any folk beliefs and primitive appliances, love that primitive appliances, still lingering amongst the shepherds. Most of the shepherds are natives of the district, nearly all descend from a long line of shepherds and so may be expected still to hold on to ancient customs and ideas. The author did know that he found quite a lot of difficulty getting those who still believe in

the charms and the magic to own up and to talk about the practices. So this is in 1909 and he said, I found here, as elsewhere, a great change is taking place and it's probable that not many years hence, there will no longer be been to be found to use the tallies and the sundials described right below. Oh, interesting. We are talking quite a lot about the chalk being made up of all secretes and that. This is from the same Folklore Journal. I may note here that near Whitstable, the name crampstone, and cramp was an affliction, it seems, that a lot of shepherds struggled with, I'm guessing because partly malnutrition, it's very active job. But there were a lot of charms against cramps specifically, interesting, is given to the fossils, fossil sharks teeth with

alimie concretion near the base, which to be found in the beds of the clay and talk. Yeah. And they're an amulet against cramp. Pretty cool. So I like that as a, I don't think we have any sharks teeth around here, but now I want to kind of look up and find it because we do, we get the odd, we're not proper chalk country here, but we've got clay chalk and flint in some amounts. Yeah. I want to find a sharks tooth now. Yeah, right. Yeah. Wear that once a month. Absolutely. So the book that I spent most of the time reading and then didn't actually draw much from this episode for, because there's just a lot about life in rural wheelchair, which is very interesting and very relevant. The author gained most of his information

from interviewing a shepherd in his 70s or 80s at the time. And he was a retired shepherd, but he could remember talking to shepherds who had been old men when he was a young man and things like that. So I love those connections anyway. And when I was a young boy, I spoke to the old man and there's like a 150 year fucking folklore span there. I was like, wow. I thought you might like the association of starlings and sheeps. Apparently, starlings love hanging around near sheep fields. And I'm not sure exactly why, but apparently, or rather the author theorizes, because starlings are kind of mimic birds in certain ways, but they're not as good at it as like the mockingbird. They kind of give like an odd, slightly harsh imitation of whatever

they're imitating. But there was this weird metallic cry that he kept hearing from them. And he was theorizing that they were trying to copy the sheep bells, which I thought was rather lovely. Yeah. And then he went on to describe the sheep bells and their importance. And he was saying that the idea of sheep bells, what you'll generally read about them is that they're there so you can tell which way the herd is going. And if there's a sudden clamoring, you'll know there's something wrong. So the sheep are running away, being attacked, whatever. However, he said that he's not entirely sure that was the main motivation and that the chef is just really fucking love the bells. And so like they would spend a lot of money on getting

like more bells that they could really afford for their sheep. And they said that they'd get all different sizes and different types of metals that it would make a kind of music as the herd was going along. Oh, that's so lovely. And they were saying, yeah, we think the sheep like it too, which is actually plausible to me, because I don't know if you've ever seen livestock react to music, they're quite often very into it. And a lot of places, shepherds and goat herds are traditionally equipped with a little musical instrument to entertain both them and the livestock. Like flute, I think is the traditional one, that sounds right. Shepherd's flute, yeah, sure. Could be, maybe. Sounds like a thing.

But yeah, I loved that. And then so the bit we were saying, and I think it made it into the episode when we were talking about don't plant anything before May. Yeah, because of the frost. I'm wrong. Shearing, in fact, and it begins in June to avoid any dangerous deterioration in the weather. So we've got to be careful with our delicate plants. And our sheep. And our sheep. Shear your sheep in May, shear them all the way. A rhyme warned. And you know, I like a little advice rhyme. We do love an advice rhyme here on the true shall make ye fret. Lambing obviously was the other really important landmark in the shepherd calendar. And traditions

unsurprisingly grew up around them. If the first lamb was seen facing you, it meant good luck. If facing away from you, the opposite. It was tradition in Warwickshire villages for the shepherds to have a pancake when the first lamb was born. And that's still done in some farming families today, apparently. Does that link to the fact that I suppose lambing season is probably beginning around Shrove Tuesday, around the beginning of Lent? Oh, it definitely is. Yes. So probably, possibly. Yeah. Good point. I'm sure there's some sort of connection there. Maybe like instead of starting Lent when Lent officially starts, they would start when the lambing starts.

Yeah, maybe. Oh, I might try and look into that. And the last, oh no, I can't fit around. No, I can. I'm finished. It'll slightly grim on, but quite cool. The shepherd's reliance on his crook was surpassed only by that upon his dog. And not only in driving the sheep to the crook and the dog combined to aid the shepherd, they could also provide him with this supper. I've heard accounts from old Wilch's shepherds that on finding a hair crouched in its form, the shepherd would bid his dog bide, stay. He would then walk in a wide circle coming up behind the hair whose gaze was still firmly fixed on the dog sitting some yards in front. And then the shepherd would strike the hair blow on the back of the neck for the crook.

I'm not saying, that's just got an interesting way of hunting a hair. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And I've got another load of random shit here, but I think that's enough. That was a good amount of superstitious facts. I will link to the sources if anybody wants to read more about shepherding in general. Yeah, cool. I mean, to go into what I was going to talk about, something I really love about these older superstitions, especially that come from a line of a particular work, like say shepherding, is that no matter how sort of strange or different they might seem to us,

now there's almost always some actually very logical basis to it. So there are things like, so potentially the pancake thing could have something to do with Lenten for a Tuesday. But there's so many things where it seems like a superstition, it seems dumb, but there's almost always there's a reason. Yeah. And I think that really links nicely into something this book deals with, which is Tiffany learning how magic is done and having to decide whether it's still magic or not. Because when we meet here at the start of the book, she's excited to go to a magical school on the unicorn and become a witch. And then she learns, well, she is a witch, at least

according to the fecal, she's the hag of the hills now that her grandmother's gone. And so she's got to learn how to do that very quickly. And then she's sort of like, well, I don't know any magic. And then she's, it's very, you know, how the real magic is the friends we made along the way, except the friends are. The friends are, okay, knowledge. Basically, knowledge, miscellaneous knowledge. I think the place where we see her confronting it the most head on is when we were talking about her learning that the feagles take the tobacco. Yes. Yeah. Because for her, that was this sort of last little bit of well, that people place tobacco there as an offering and it goes and I didn't,

she doesn't logically think that granny is still somehow wandering around the hills looking after sheep. But she hadn't found anything else to fill that in. And so there was a bit of a spark of that for her. So learning the real truth of it is obviously a very difficult thing to go through emotionally. We talked about the fact it's like another piece of grief for her. But then this acceptance of it of, well, there's still a magic to it. There's an arrangement. The sheep are looked after. The feagles take the tobacco and look after the sheep and granny's honor and people leave the tobacco and ask for granny's help in her honor. It all worked, even if it wasn't magic, but it took granny away. That's what she has to deal with. There's slightly less granny in

the world. And alongside that, she has to deal with, she's not going to go and tell all the other shepherds and stuff, like guys know there's just some weird little blue dudes, like keep doing it, leave the tobacco because they'll keep an eye on the sheep. She's not going to tell them that. And not just because she'd sound insane and be burned at the stake as a witch. But because why take away the magic for everybody else? Yeah. And it's nice that that's already instilled in her. Yeah. Well, not even instilled. It's in her already, isn't it? She's not...

She's not the kind of kid I was about to say who immediately needs to spoil everything for everybody else. Well, that did remind me that when she found Roland in that dream, she was like, don't you have any sense why you're eating? I was like, five minutes ago, mate. Yeah. We were about to eat the fucking porridge. Well, it was the thing we talked about last week that sort of, well, everyone knows this thing I learned a minute ago. Exactly. She finds the way into the land and then all the feagles are kind of telling her well done afterwards. And oh, we didn't think you'd see the green sweet. So you use your eyes and use your

head. That's what a real hag does. The magicians just there for the advertising. So she's from learning, the magic maybe takes a very different shape. And again, it's small blue and the friends we made along the way. She has it in her that there's no need to tell everyone else that to actually it benefits her to have this as a form of advertising. If she wants to make her way as a witch and find her place as a witch, she has to know what the magic is that she can do. Yeah. It must be odd to be coming to terms with that at the same time where you're going to face a very outwardly magical thing, though, a magic with a capital M. All the things she thought was magic are actually just people being very clever. And now she's got

to go to actual fairy land to fight the quorum of the fairies and the dream monsters. It's a lot of contradictions taken for one little girl. But it's just it's something Pratchett does. It's something Pratchett does very well is here we go. It's all very calm and sensible, ridiculous. Also, by the way, guys, in case I forgot to mention, we are on a turtle. Yes. By the way, remember the turtle all the way down and mopey the whale going round and round in circles. And as she comes to terms with it throughout the section, we see all these different granny aching interludes. So she remembers the funeral. She remembers finding her. She remembers the

finding the China shepherdess and giving it to her. And she remembers the story you mentioned earlier, the peddler. And granny stops the peddler from beating his donkey with her two dogs. Yeah. And, you know, Tiffany said sort of a couple of times, like in the early section, she said to mistake, I think that she was a witch. Yes. Because what she did was very witch shaped, even if she wasn't a witch with a pointy hat. Yeah. And the feagles will very much acknowledge that the hug of the hills. Exactly. She was a hag, even if she wasn't a witch. Yeah. Same thing. And at the end of the peddler story, which is right at the end of the section, Granny explains to Tiffany, them as can do has to do for them as can't and someone has to speak

up for them as has no voices, which is a very granny weatherwax shaped sentiment as well. If a less angry and bitter version of a granny weatherwax shaped sentiment. Yes. I feel like granny would add a people who have no sense to do it kind of thing. Yes. Yeah. It's less I can't be having with this and more someone should be having with this. Yes. Yeah. And it is just a wonderful bit of advice generally, isn't it? It's a wonderful ethical pillar, I think. Yeah. It's a sentiment that's carried, it's one of the famous, famous disc world quotes. And it's a sentiment that's carried through a lot of Pratchett's work. I think it's got it's a cousin to granny weatherwax and copper jugular evil begins when you treat

people as things. It does make me wonder sometimes how people with extremely individualistic politics, I'd say, can still count themselves among Pratchett terms, like with with just such clear flags like this, like I just thought that would enrage me if I were a fuck everybody else kind of person. No, I don't understand it, but they are out there. They do walk among us. They do. We've had one or two emails from them. Not very many. But yeah, so I think it's a beautiful theme to run through this book, and especially the section, is that as Tiffany kind of has to grow into her version of being whatever a hag is, and being whatever a witch is, as opposed to the witch she imagined herself being.

I'm not pretty sure a hag is just a synonym for witch. It is, but I think the whole thing with the feagles calling granny aching the hag, even if she wasn't officially a witch with a pointy hat. I'm not saying that they're two different things. I'm saying that maybe hag is like a flavour of witch, or it's like a subset. I don't think it's established as officially that as a rule in the book. But I think it's one of those things like, if you're a hag, you're a witch, but not all witches are hags. Does that make sense? I guess. I really do just think that hag is like the feagles dialect for witch.

No, I do think the fact is just feagles dialect for witch. I'm saying thematically, there can be a bit more to it where Tiffany's figuring out how to be a witch through a feagle lens at this point. Yes, that's true. So she's figuring out specifically hagging. The foundational knowledge looks different for her than for most witches. And again, the geology, the foundation. Yes, the actual foundation is different. Well, that sets us nicely for next week. But before we get there, Francine, have you got an obscure reference for Neil Formé? Yeah. So at one point, they're talking about how at the wake of the KELDA, they will

dance the 512 some reel. That sounds difficult. It does, doesn't it? And so like the, what's it, the eight some reel and things like that. Our Scottish dancers. And I say 512. So I just, I just googled that quickly. Because I was like, some, someone has looked this up for me. And yes, somebody who does cool Scottish dances is also a Fretcher fan and has written a blog post about it. And I'll link to that. But my question answered, it would require 64 couples on each side of the set. Excellent. And she can't imagine that happening in reel, R-E-E-L brackets. Sorry. Life. Where for starters? So I imagine quite a feagle only kind of dance.

Require an awfully large K. Lee. No, I'm not saying that right. Okay. And that's it. Amazing. Okay. That's everything that we are going to say about part two of the Wee for Women. We could probably say a lot more. Let's be realistic. We will be back next week where we're covering the last third of the book, chapter 10, through to the end of the book. Until next time, dear listeners, you can follow us on Instagram at the true show, make you fret on Twitter, make you fret pod on Facebook at the true show, make you fret, join our subreddit community, r slash T T S M Y F. Email us your thoughts, queries, castles, snacks and K. Lee's, the true show, make you fret pod at gmail.com. And if you want to

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I'm making the algorithms fairyland. Okay. Yeah, cool. We're lost in fairyland, so rate, review and subscribe and all that shit. Until next time. Dear listener. Don't let us detain you. When the train left Edinburgh, the passengers' hearts were light and felt no sorrow, but Bori asked Blue a terrific gale, which made their hearts four to quail. And I always think any poet that adds four to in something is fantastic. Oh yeah, no, I'm with you. And many of the passengers with fear did say,

I hope God will send us safe across the bridge of day. Well, sorry to tell you lessness. Spoilers. Spoilers, Francine.