The Truth Shall Make Ye Fret - 47: Lords And Ladies Pt. 2 (Jodphurs and Hagstones)

Episode Date: March 8, 2021

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 “Lords and Ladies”. Fae! Ferrous! Folklore!Find us on the internet:Twitter: @MakeYeFretPodInstagram: @TheTruthShallMakeYeFretFacebook: @TheTruthShallMakeYeFretEmail: [e-mail] to follow your hosts and their internet doings? Follow Joanna on twitter @joannahagan and follow Francine @francibambi Things we blathered on about:Land of the Giants - Vox Media: Podcast NetworkBewilderBeasts pod - TwitterHow “terror” gave us “terrific” - Grammarphobia St Paul's Cathedral - Quote Investigator Steeleye Span - Thomas The Rhymer (Live) - YouTubeThe structure of the cushions in the feet of African elephants (Loxodonta africana) - NCBIHorseshoe Superstitions - Journal of American Folklore Ferrous Friend Or Foe? How Iron Became The Enemy Of Fairy Folk - Folklore ThursdaysWið færstice - WikipediaThe Poet Laureate and the Gift of SherryMusic: Chris Collins, indiemusicbox.com

You've got a public Twitter account, there's no secrets from me. I've got some tragic news, which is that I am literally drinking the last of my instant coffee right now. Oh, shit. I'm going to die. I need to pop to the shop. Well, I have more coming from Amazon tomorrow, so I don't really want to go buy another pot when I've got six coming. Yeah, I've got less of a problem with me then. Well, I have ground coffee, I can do French press. Oh, right. Okay. Well, yeah, there's not like literally no coffee in my house. Yeah, that wouldn't really be okay. It's a little bit shaky, this thing. What the desk? I might have to go and tighten some screws at some point, but

I'm not going to lie, I assembled quite a lot of flat back furniture and then like had a man come around and do a lot of screw tightening and putting doors on things for me. Yeah, I don't really want Jack touching my desk. Yeah, okay, that's fair. I can anyone interfering with my carefully messy wires. Expertly messy. Exactly. So yeah, it might take me a minute to get to full functioning level, because as listeners who follow me on Twitter know, I stayed up late last night, rewatching all of modern division, because the finale came out today. As you know, I rewatched the first seven episodes last night, and then I got up this morning,

watched episode eight, and then watched the finale. Oh, cool. How long are the episodes? Well, the first sort of chunk of the series, because it's like kind of parodying sitcom, so they are like half hour episodes, and then they get longer as like it gets more involved in puzzle boxy. Oh, interesting. So that's the freedom of going straight to a streaming platform, I suppose. Yeah, they don't have to. Yeah, it's only on streaming. It's not on a channel anywhere, which means yeah, episodes can be any length, which is an exciting thing. It's a new world of television. I'm very excited about this new world of television at the moment.

Let us bow to our Disney overlords. Yeah, I mean, I hate that one company now owns everything, but at the same time, I'm very excited about what's being made. Not quite. Netflix and Amazon, I got there. I know you'll never get to it, because you've got a massive bag log of podcasts somehow, but I just listened to a fantastic two and a half seasons, because half of it's still coming out on the tech giants, so Netflix, Amazon, Google. And that halfway through Google, I think it's called Land of the Giants or something. I'll link it in the show notes. Part of me thinks that'll just, I'll just get very terrified about the future if I listen to it.

Well, probably not anymore, you are already, but yeah. There's only so many existential... Some of the rants I've had in the group chat may have been partly fueled by that. There's only so many existential crises I've got time for in a day. I'm trying to learn coding and sewing. You can have an existential crisis while doing JavaScript. It's pretty much mandatory. It's the only way it works. 90% of the time I do JavaScript, I'm having an existential crisis. And I've gone right back to the very basics of JavaScript, because I can't remember anything from when I was studying it two months ago. That's because it's all nonsense, but yes.

My brain is just literally not present. What's wrong with your brain? I don't know. Have you slept? I've slept. Are you taking your vitamin D? I've slept. I've had vitamin D. I've been running every day this week. I'm just having a really, you know, and you're just completely entirely... Brain fog. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Fog, physical fog, everything's fog. I think it's because the weather's gone shit again, to be honest. I was so fucking great last week because the sun was out. It does make a lot of difference. I don't think I cried randomly in the morning once last week. Yeah, I definitely have this week, but again, I'm blaming Paul Bettany. Blaming what? Paul Bettany, because he plays Vision in WandaVision and he does this thing with his face and it makes me cry. All right, love.

Do you want to get a coffee? Do you have a coffee? Do you have more coffee? Do you want to make French coffee press now? That's probably a good idea. I definitely need to massively caffeinate. Yes, grab coffee, do podcast. Hello and welcome to The True Shall Make You Threat, a podcast in which we are reading and recapping every book from Terry Fretcher's Discworld series, one at a time in chronological order. I'm Joanna Hagan.

And I'm Francine Carroll. And this is part two of our discussion of Lords and Ladies. Part two is the middle act. Act two. Act two. One could say, how many acts are there in a Midsummer Night's Dream? I can't remember. It's my favorite Shakespeare play. I've studied it intensely. I couldn't tell you anything about it right now. The fact it exists.

Oh, that's something. Do you want to do a little spoiler warning? Ah, yes. Note on spoilers. This is a spoiler light podcast. Obviously, heavy spoilers for the book we're on, Lords and Ladies, but we will avoid spoiling any major future events in the Discworld series, and we're saving any and all discussion of the final Discworld level, the Shepherd's Crown, until we get there so you, dear listener, can come on the journey with us. Possible spoilers also for a Midsummer Night's Dream, although if you haven't gone around to it in the last few hundred years, I doubt you will now. Yeah, spoilers for a 500-year-old play, but really that's your own fault.

I literally don't know what happens at the end of a Midsummer Night's Dream, so... Everyone gets married. So, there's like parallels with everyone pairing off in this one? Yes. Towards the end of this section, yeah. Okay. Yeah, people end up paired off. Cool. So, we have some, what do we call them, Missives from the Round World?

Dispatches from the Round World. Dispatches from the Round World, thank you. We had an email from a Geordie, from someone called Geordie, not from a Geordie. They're from Santa Cruz, probably not a Geordie, but called Geordie. Hi, Joanna and Francine. I thought you might enjoy a new connection between Discworld and Gormungast that I had just put together as I was listening to your first pod on pyramids. Nice bit of alliteration, thank you very much.

I love that book, and I've read it a bunch, but possibly not since reading Gormungast, and this time the description of King Tepikimon going mad and thinking he's a seagull rang a bell. Light spoilers ahead for Gormungast, everyone. Hopefully just enough to make you want to read it. In the first novel of the Gormungast trilogy, Lord Sepple Crave, 76th Earl of Grown, and father of the eponymous Titus Grown, I can see why Prattia likes this, is a ruler of a rundown kingdom that he doesn't understand or want, practically a slave to the ritual.

After a tragedy, he is driven insane and comes to believe he's one of the death owls that haunts the Tower of Flints and meets a similarly tragic fate as Tepikimon. Also, he has a similarly mad old priest running things. So, yeah. We really should read Gormungast. We should probably do our homework from a year and change ago, because if we had, we'd have sounded really cool making that connection. A, bolder view to assume we'd managed to make that connection, even if we had read Gormungast.

B, I'm still torn between, I genuinely want to read it, it sounds like a very interesting book, and more so after Geordie's email, thank you Geordie, but I'm also still slightly attached to the bit of never doing that first bit of homework. Yeah, I think one of us at least will have to hold off. Yeah, I'll tell you what, you read Gormungast, I'll say attached to the bit. All right, yeah, that seems fair. You being the one who's actually in gainful employment right now. Oh, a further dispatch from the round world.

The listener of ours hosts their own podcast, the Wildebeest pod, and they've got an upcoming which is about animals and things and stuff to do with animals. They've got an episode coming up where, among other things, they'll be talking about Esglas, the Greek playwright killed by a turtle. And going into his history in a bit more depth, I believe the episode is due out on March the 15th, we'll link to it in the show notes when it's out. That sounds rather good.

In the meantime, let me just find you their Twitter so you can investigate for yourself. It's at bewildered pod. Cool. So yes, check them out. All right. So, on to the episode. Francine, would you like to tell us what happened previously on Lords and Ladies? Certainly.

Previously on Lords and Ladies, our favorite witches are no longer abroad, but the trio touch down to some troubling changes in Lanka. Some whipper snapper wick and water bees are practicing magic with a K on the proper witch's turf. Granny challenges the ringleader and wins, with the little help from Nanny, but it's clear that the youngster is unusually powerful. Worse still, she's been taking the other girls to dance around the dancers, an arcane stone circle that guards a thin point between worlds.

Meanwhile, Magrat is more or less proposed to, and the local lads sulkily prepare for a theatrical production, and we learn about the birds and the bees. Marvelous. So to speak. So, in this section of Lords and Ladies... Which is page to age 129 to 255. You know what you're about.

I know that you wrote it down for me, yes. We open on a pensive granny rummaging through a special box as she experiences flashes of someone else's deja vu. A selection of young locals arrive on her doorstep in the hope of obtaining a cult knowledge. She sends them away with a lesson on being literal, as elsewhere a soul king Diamanda runs to the stones. A dozing nanny dreams on elves before donning her walking boots and taking gribo on an adventure. Granny confronts Diamanda at the stones,

but the young would be which runs away in the wrong direction, and Granny and Diamanda find themselves confronting the Queen of Elfland. With a little equine confusion, they make their escape, but not on scat, as Diamanda takes a hit. They make it back through the stones with an elf in tow, luckily nanny waits with a handy rope. They capture the furious fey and make their way to the castle. Nanny, Granny and their unconscious charges,

rudely interrupt Margaret and Verence's breakfast. Margaret tends to an injured Diamanda, as Granny informs the King of the Captured Elf and locks him in the dungeons. Meanwhile, our worldly wizards find their journey to Lanka rudely interrupted by a band of bandits, who get more than they bargained for as one of their number finds themselves somewhat rounder and more orange. It's a rag-tag band of bandits. Yes, rag-tag band of bandits.

Thank you. The local comic artisans rehearse at the dances after a few scumbles they land on the idea of an open-air performance. The rest of Lanka hunkers down as Nanny prepares for bath time. The wizards make it to the outskirts of Lanka and find themselves almost terrified by a troll. Ridcully attempts for a menace again before they make their way to the town proper, meeting King Verence and Sean with a mail delivery and a tome on martial arts.

Panic and Petulance set in for Margaret as she checks on the ailing Diamanda and her iron surroundings. Margaret investigates Verence's chambers and makes a couple of surprising discoveries. In the Great Hall of the Castle, the celebrations begin, although Margaret is nowhere to be seen. Nanny catches up with old conquest, Casanunda, and violins fail to play as Granny and Ridcully meet across a crowded room before teleporting somewhere quiet. As Granny and Ridcully wander in chatter, Granny identifies the origins of her deja vu before being rudely interrupted by a unicorn.

Margaret sulks in her room after her realizations. As the entertainment begins, Nanny goes for a tete-a-tete with Casanunda, and Granny and Ridcully go for a late-night swim. Snow falls in the circle as the entertainment begins. Granny and Ridcully get lost in the woods. Margaret prepares for a dramatic exit in an excellent dress. Nanny does terrifying things to a lobster. Brooks wipes out wasps, and Diamanda wakes as the walls between the universes wane thin.

They're creepy pearly eyes. Yeah, again, some good horror writing in this section. God, didn't you get pissed off with Margaret when she took the iron away? You think Granny Weatherwax is doing that for funsies? Yeah, we'll get to it, but that seemed very out of character for her as well. A helicopter and loincloth watch. Page 192, actual loincloth. Actual literal loincloth.

The troll is wearing a loincloth and a helmet, so he's quite overdressed for a troll. Official troll. Official troll in his loincloth. So, yep, words loincloth on the page, which keeps me justified in having this bit in. Sure, yeah. Soon to be a soggy loincloth. Soon to be a soggy loincloth, very true.

And for other Rob bits we're keeping track of, it's once again pointed out that we are in the century of the fruit bat. We are indeed, disappointingly, according to some. Well, yeah, I wouldn't want to be in the century of the fruit bat. So, onto quotes, yours is first. This is the, I was always going to find a way to shoehorn this in, and I ended up just fitting it as my quote. And then there's the guest list.

It's bad enough at an ordinary wedding, what with old relatives who dribble and swear, brothers who get belligerent after one drink, and various people who aren't talking to one another because of what they said about Arsharan. Royalty has to deal with entire countries who get belligerent after one drink, entire kingdoms who have broken off diplomatic relationships after what the Crown Prince said about Arsharan.

Variants have banished to work all that out, but then there were the species to consider. Trolls and dwarves got on all right in Lanka by the simple expedient of having nothing to do with one another. But too many of them under one roof, especially if drink was flowing, and especially if it was flowing in the direction of the dwarves, and people would be breaking people's arms off

because of what, more or less, their ancestors said about Arsharan. I really feel for Arsharan in all of this. I know, for Arsharan. She gets a horrible time of it. So, I've got a slightly later on one. I'm really glad you got this in, because I was struggling to, again... Yeah, well, it's one of those ones where there are a few different...

Like, another obvious one would have been the personal's not the same as important one. Yeah, which is one of Granny's most famous lines. Exactly, yeah. But I figured, yeah. We'd mention that anyway, as I just did casually. So, this is when Granny Weatherworks spots Ridgley across a crowded room, more or less. Granny Weatherworks turned.

There should have been violins. The murmur of the crowd should have faded away, and the crowd itself should have parted in a quite natural movement to leave an empty path between her and Ridgley. There should have been violins. There should have been something. There shouldn't have been the librarian accidentally knuckling her on the toe on his way to the buffet.

But this, in fact, there was. I love that moment. Another beautifully highfalutin romantic speech broken by a down to earth. Can't get more down to earth than a orangutan knuckle, can you? They are quite low to the ground. Yeah. So, character stuff. We're revisiting existing characters, mostly,

because they all had some interesting beats I wanted to talk about. Starting with, of course, our witches and Granny. And one thing I noticed that I've not picked up on before reading this is Granny. So, Granny and Diamander's relationship. There's some parallels to Granny's relationship with Magra. Diamander's a different sort of belligerent and has a different sort of power. I mean, I think Magra, as much as she's obviously a bit of a wet hen in the book, she does have magic in her.

And she is quite a powerful witch in her own way. Yeah. And she's got a scientific mind. Yeah. She's got the research witch background. But there's this, and obviously, Granny's seeing her younger self in Diamander. She's, Diamander's doing exactly what Granny's younger self nearly did, going to the stones and talking to the Queen.

And, yeah. But she's got this great rant. She's saying, oh, when you're lonely, people around you seem too stupid for words. And when the world is full of secrets, no one will tell you. Yeah. And that reminded me so much of Granny's relationship to Magra, where Magra is constantly frustrated and going, why can't you just explain this to me?

Yeah. Like, especially in witches abroad, but also in this, where Granny's not bothering to just explain the elves in detail to her. Yeah. One of those shortsighted, like, I cannot be doing with having this conversation right now, things, because she correctly predicted what Magra would say. But unfortunately, because she didn't take the time, then we had all the business.

Yes. I mean, that is like the whole plot of the book. So it would have been a much shorter book if Granny had taken the time, but... Yeah. It's a problem with plots, isn't it? And it's like, oh, well, it would be nice if you'd sorted this out. But I suppose that it would be a book, would it? And then, you know, you've got the comparison between her younger self and Diomanda,

where Granny's pointing out, I remember there was a girl just like her, who was bad tempered and impatient and a pain in the bum. Do you like that Granny is one of the few people who will regularly call Granny out and not suffer for it? Yeah. And the other way round is Granny stopped Granny from cutting an elf. Well, that was something with Granny's bit and Nanny's bit, I found quite interesting, is they've both got this very, very steely practicality.

But in like, that Granny carrying Diomanda over her shoulder, so she doesn't get shot. Which does make sense. But also to rescue her. Also to rescue her. And I do like the reminder that agricultural economy is built entirely on the lifting power of little old ladies in black dresses. Absolutely. That's from a very early book, isn't it?

Yeah, don't ask me which one, I can't remember. I wasn't gonna. Listeners send us a postcard in the usual way, by our albatross. And obviously the line you brought up, the personal isn't the same as important, she's got that practicality. Yeah. And then Nanny's got her version of it as well, which you know, they bust into the castle with this injured unconscious girl.

And Nanny just drifts off over to the breakfast buffet because she's sort of like, well, there's nothing I can really do, it's being handed, there's food. Yeah, she's been around too many emergency situations to think that somebody hovering back a few feet is in any way useful. Yep. I am quite concerned in that scene, I understand the ketchup and fried egg sandwich, but then she finds herself a lamb chop and why were there lamb chops on the breakfast buffet? So Nanny's got her version of practicality.

She's described as comfortingly solid at one point, which I really enjoy as a description. Definitely of this world. But she's also incredibly willing to torture the elf. And needs Granny holding her back, they balance each other really well. Yeah. But it's sort of implied that Nanny's extra anger where she's willing to torture slash kill that elf immediately is related to her role as a mother. Yeah.

And I think they've both got that weakness somewhere in them, haven't they? They have, but in very... And they call it out in each other. Yeah. And if you look at this is like the maiden mother crone. You'll see Granny gets described as a crone at least once in this section. And that gives her different priorities to Nanny, who is very much the mother of the three. And because she's the mother, she's thinking about her children and her grandchildren being

taken. And that's why she is so willing to kill the elf. Yeah. And then you've got Magret as the maiden who acts like a fucking dumbass. Speaking of Magret, her panic about being queen is quite funny just because there's the line in that she'd never quite analysed that emotion, which relatable. Yeah. Well, I'm going to put that in a box and worry about it later.

I thought there was a feeling about loving Verence. It was more... Well, it was about loving Verence and realising that she'd not really thought about the royalty. Like that was never a priority for her. It was being with Verence that was the priority. Yeah. And she'd lost some of that in the royalty of it all. Yeah.

Because she was so busy having to learn how to queen and having these stupid meals where they sat at opposite ends of an incredibly long table. And looking at Twerp's peerage, which is a tiny throwaway joke that always makes me giggle. Yeah. I've forgotten what the real one's called. It's called Burke's peerage. Oh, well, yeah. Which...

Nearly is bad. Which I didn't know where Burke came from because Twerp and Burke are both very British, not very serious things to call someone. It's calling someone a bit silly if you call them a twerp. It's a silly goose. But Burke comes from rhyming slang and the full version is Berkshire Hunt. Oh, yeah. I see.

Well, that's had a little bit of a dilution over time, hasn't it? So Burke is originally in his undiluted form, slightly more serious. I see. I see. Well, well. So yeah, but so Margaret's been so caught up in that. She hasn't been having the relationship she had with Verence before. And admittedly, the relationship she had with Verence before was some awkward conversations.

Well, she sort of roughly twined some flowers in her hair and things. But they did seem to enjoy them, at least. But they enjoyed that and they've sort of lost that in this... Ah, well, we live in the castle and we're getting married and we're royalty now. Yeah, yeah. So I do, I have some sympathy for her in this section and I respect her decision to storm out in her wedding dress because they're static. Obviously.

And I like her. And he was dried on, obviously. Oh, obviously. But I also like her sort of looking at Dayamanda and thinking she couldn't wait for her to wake up so she could envy her properly. Yeah, absolutely. Which actually sort of jumping ahead in the list of characters but getting to Verence and their relationship.

Yeah. A, the bit where she realizes he's been sleeping in front of his door. Oh, it was so sweet. Oh, so sweet. I thought that was really lovely and such. He doesn't get a lot of, there's not a lot of time spent on him as a character in this compared to Weird Sisters. But there's so many little details that build up to who he is now that it's just really

good writing. Yeah. And there is one sentence that I'd nearly just had, this is my quote, which is just the veil had silk flowers on the headband when it's talking about Margaret's wedding dress. Because of course, Verence has had it all designed. And he's put flowers on the veil because she'd always attempt to wistfully braid flowers into her hair. That's very sweet.

So yes, I thought we could have a brief bit of emotion there before we talk about elves. I don't think I've ever tried to braid flowers into my hair. Oh, I've definitely done, drawing in Daisy's while I've idly sat around in the park on an afternoon. You've got grip, you've got grip in your hair, it's curly and I think it would just fall out of mine. Yeah, I've got incredibly thick hair. I'll make you a Daisy chain tiara at some point when we're lingering in a park. Oh, that sounds nice, thank you.

Right, what are we on? Elves. Elves. Elves, Joanna. All right, we should probably stop saying that. What, just in case they turn up? Well, you never know. I put some salt on the doorstep before we start recording.

Oh sweet, we'll find them. Yeah, I've planned ahead. And on the webcam, obviously, so they can't get through to you. That's how that works, right? That explains the picture quality, yeah. I think it's a good look for me, aesthetically crystallized. So yeah, elves are here. Here, there are antagonists.

They at stake? No, they are terrifying. Kind of revealed to be odd little creatures who project glamour rather than beautiful fey or the ring's elves. There's a description of the look in their eyes, and this is when Granny and Diamanda are in Elfland. And Diamanda realizes when you look in your eyes, you get this impression that you have no value.

You are nothing to them. And whether you're pet or prey, it is not up to you. Yes. And that was quite a chilling section. I thought it was really well written. Yeah, it's interesting that they consider themselves definitely the superior species considering they're in the parasite universe. And although, obviously, they are stronger and cunning in things, not necessarily.

Yeah, they're a strange one. But I like the sort of creeping horror built up around them. And when we see them in the next section get into our world, we can kind of see where some of the arrogance comes from, because they prove themselves to be somewhat powerful. Yeah, for sure. But I did look into the elves of Marvelous. They create marvels.

Elves are terrific. They get terror. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I looked into some of the esmology behind it. I mostly looked at the terror, terrific one, because the rest of them, it's quite a logical step from marvel to Marvelous or glamorous or glamorous.

But obviously, terror is not the same thing as terrific. So the root of it is the Indo-European tares or trays, which means to shake. Okay. That's where it got into the English language as a reaction to fear, like a human shaking in fear. Okay. So that's where we get terror.

And it kept being used as something awful or something that provoked that reaction in a human, something that would make a human shake. By the 18th century, it had shifted to sort of meaning huge. Is it something that creates that? Oh, yeah. That makes sense if you read old literature that's kind of used like that. Yeah. Yeah.

A terrific noise kind of thing. Yes, exactly. And so it didn't really start being used as a positive thing, terrific being a good thing until about the 19th century. So quite late, really. Yeah. Yeah, that is like... Terrific as a positive thing is fairly newish in linguistic terms.

Yeah. I guess that makes sense because one could still say something like, and there came a terrific roar. And although it would sound old fashioned, you would know they meant huge rather than... Good. Oh, isn't that great? What a great roar.

Well done, Mr. Tiger. Please don't eat me. Superb. Marvelous, Mr. Tiger. And this, yeah, this is this semantic change, semantic shift, which is a term you reminded me to look up, but you may have learned from me, apparently. Yeah, I think a lot of our knowledge is kind of this.

We sort of have one of us from members who has it written down somewhere, but who knows who learned it first, yeah. Between us, we have one brain cell, and I'm not sure who's using it. I think you were using it today. I had to build this desk, you see. So thanks for the exclusive use of it this morning. And this led me to something we're talking about as well,

which is an old apocryphal-ish story about St Paul's Cathedral being described as amusing, awful, and artificial. Go on, explain it in the old terms. Uh, so awful meant creating a sense of awe. Oh, inspiring kind of thing, okay. Exactly. And artificial was sort of well done, very arty. Yeah, it's, it's, it's artifice.

Yeah. It's, it is artificial, I suppose, only would have come as a, as an insult when we kind of had the resurgence of natural is good. I'll link to an article about it in the show notes. I found quite an interesting one. And something about more of the origins of terrific as well. The main source for this sort of apocryphal story

is something Charles II, so this would be mid-17th century, wrote about the construction of St Paul's Cathedral where he used the term artificial. Okay, cool. And possibly awful as well, but in two separate paragraphs. It was never like one sentence of, of amusing, awful, and artificial. Okay, that's it. It's been condensed for demonstrative purposes.

Yeah. And attributed to many, many different monarchs throughout history. But the most evidence is for Charles II. But yes, that's a fun example of semantic shift. I like that. Yes. And wildly off topic for us.

They're back on topic. Ridcully. Ridcully. Ridcully. I enjoy Ridcully getting annoyed at quantum because I find it very relatable. I feel like I've dived too deep into this dislike of quantum. I actually don't hate quantum physics.

No, I mean, it's just, it's, it's baffling. It's one of those things where you have it explained to you, and you're like, I get, I understand it for this minute, as you explain it to me, Mr. Good at Science Person. But I know if I try and explain it to anyone else within three minutes, it just won't stick. And yeah. Yeah.

I mean, you saw that little bit of quantum particles, subatomic particles, wasn't it, with the weird directions and everything? Yes. It is. It's here that the psalm, as the two believed to be the smallest particle of magic, was successfully demonstrated to be made up of rissons or reality fragments. Currently, research indicates that each risson is itself made up of a combination

of at least five flavors known as up-down, sideways, sex appeal, and peppermint. Ridcully is just sort of furious about the whole thing. Could you stop proving things like this? It's not necessary. Yes. Marvelous. Listen to my reminiscence. Marvelous hooray.

Here comes another quantum. Okay. And Schrodinger's cat reference as well. There's this cat they've discovered that if you can put it in a box, it's dead and alive at the same time. Very cruel. But we also get sort of a bit of a callback moment, as well as a description.

And I'm pretty sure in Reaper Man, I already gave Ridcully's hat its own section, so I haven't here. But Ridcully has got an excellent hat that has cupboards and surprises and telescopic legs, so it can make a little tent. That's all the best tents do you? But we also get a reference to the previous Archchancelors hat, which picked up two magical vibrations after spending so much time on wizardly heads and developed a personality of its own.

Oh, good. Recalling the events of sorcery. Yes. Gosh, that's a callback. So yeah, I think that's all I have for characters. Good. Locations. Yes, we don't actually really go anywhere new, but there's some funny bits,

including the joke about putting something where the sun doesn't shine. Yes. That valley over in Slyce, where the monkey keeps his nut. Very innocent, one of the rude artisans or whatever they're called. Rude Mechanicals. The Rude Mechanicals, which is the main Shakespeare reference of the bit, that's what they're called in the Mid-Semite Stream as well. Because I once went to an amazing production of it where they had done a touring production,

and in each town they had a different amdram group come in and be the Rude Mechanicals in the performance. This is Royal Shakespeare Company. So I saw it in Stratford-upon-Avon, and they had these different amdram groups all come down and do two or three performances at the Royal Shakespeare Company. It was great. That sounds horrible. I'm sure you loved it.

They were really good. If I hadn't known that they were an amdram group coming in with professional actors, I probably wouldn't have noticed the difference. Well, you know, I wouldn't go and see that out of the way, but yes. For you, that sounds fantastic. It was. So yeah, so that bit made me giggle. That's another one of those things that becomes a bit of a running joke.

There's a bit I nearly missed, and I only found this reference because I was looking at the folklore of Discworld. The middle path. Yes, the middle path. I didn't look enough. I saw it, and I was like, oh, I bet that's a reference. I'm glad you looked at it. After I'd done this whole episode plan and looked at the folklore of Discworld and put

it all together, I thought, I'll just check out space for things I've missed. Just look behind the sofa. This is so full of references, especially to folk songs, and I'm not going to go into it. I know. That's why I didn't even look at L-Space. I was like, I'm just going to drown myself. They'd obscure references. I'd, you know, pick one that I noticed. So there are three paths.

One can tell the truth. One can only lie. If you stab the middle path. One's got a tiger behind the door. So it's all briars and thorns one way. It's all winding the other way. And the middle road is sort of overgrown. It had a green, rich, dark field to it suggested by the word bossky,

i.e. having a lot of bossk. Yeah, cheers, Pratchett. I looked it up. Bossky is a real word, and bossk comes from the old English for bush. So it does literally mean like an overgrown path. Cool, cool. But the whole thing with the three paths is from the ballad of Thomas the Rimer. Oh, well, that's something that Steel Eyes Band did.

Yes, they did. I've got that on my Spotify somewhere. I think I've got it on my Apple Music. So it tells the story of Thomas seeing the Queen of Elves. And he sort of, they go riding. They find these three paths. And the one overgrown with thorn and briars is the Christian path of righteousness. The broad path through flowery meadows is the path of wickedness.

And then the third path, and see not Yon Bonnie Road that wins about the Fernie Brake, that is the road to Fair Elfland where thou and I this night may go. So we've got to go down the Sony path if we want to not end up in Elfland or hell. Yeah, but I don't know if I want to walk the Christian path of righteousness. I've got those pocket secateurs, but... Oh, I just don't want to hang out with that many like righteous Christians. Yeah, yeah, let's take the winding road.

That's always the most fun. I'll take the road less traveled. Christian symbology, bloody holier than that, obviously. Think of a synonym of that for me, please, John. Christian symbology just thinks it's better than all the other symbology. Castle, the castle has rooms. Yeah, it does, several, many, lots. Francine is definitely more than three, that's for sure.

Yeah, no, I just like the way it was kind of described as this big rambling, lots of shut-up places full of the furniture you're never going to ask for on the register. And then nearer the end of this section, it was described as it had the feel of one of those rooms where you go in and it still got the sum-tack holes in the wall from the last lot of students who lived here. I was like, you know the feel of that building, don't you? So that was a good little relatable moment. Even for us, we've never been to university.

We know that kind of long-term tenancy feel of a place. We've both lived in the shitty house shares. Or in the UK, so you spent 90% of your time on the sofa of my shitty house share. That was a good year. Very comfy sofa. That was an excellent sofa. Yeah, that bit did make me giggle. And then one last thing, we do get a little reference.

And I don't think it's the first time this has been referenced. But on the map, it says, here be dragons. In this case, the street map of Ankh-Morpork. Whereas it says here be dragons. This is the sunshine home for sick dragons in Morfolk Street. Isn't that nice? I'm just glad that there is a nice little home for sick dragons. Yes.

Because we know who in Ankh-Morpork likes dragons. We do. We do. Good old Vimes in his life. So, all right, yeah. We get to talk about Sibyl again soon. Is that next, is it, Men at Arms? Yeah.

We're doing that next month now, aren't we? Because the watch doesn't have a release date. Yeah. Okay, cool, cool, cool. Loving the mid-episode admin. It's fine. Our listeners only the committed ones now will know what we're doing next month. And that's how it should be.

We're going to be like those really irritating job ads that put like a password in the middle of the description. They say, make sure you include this, so we know you're the... None of this is even slightly relatable to me. I don't look at job ads. No, you don't. That makes me sound really smug.

Chefs don't find jobs like on the internet. We know someone who runs a kitchen and... Everyone needs chefs, so... Yeah. Well, you know, until the... Robots takes fatality industry, just collapsed over the last year, but... Anyway.

Anyway, sorry. I'm doing a good job of cheering you up. So, should we do a quick break before... Actually, all sectors in ruins. And that's why Trisha makes you present. We'll be coming to an only fans near you soon. So, on little bits, Power of Belief, Evil Edition, because it is a truth universally acknowledged

that if the Power of Belief is mentioned in a Pratchett book, I need to talk about it. Sure, sure. Well, I like here this whole idea of the sort of motivation of the elves, what they want from us most of all is our belief. And obviously, we've just had that theme running through all of small gods, but what Om wants most in small gods is people's belief to keep him alive, but he is not an antagonist.

Whereas here, the elves are very much antagonists. They are evil bastards. But their basic want is the same as Om's. They want to be believed in. The belief kind of sins the barrier between the world or makes them more powerful and able to cross. I'm not entirely clear on which it is. They need to be believed in to be able to get out of their parasite universe

and into the main universe. And their parasite universe doesn't sound like a particularly pleasant place to be. No, but Chile. Plus, not as much to chase and hunt, considering that seems to be their favourite pastime. So, I don't have big thoughts on that, but I can let it go past without pointing it out, especially as we've got the evil version of it.

This is the way it is. It is not a good or a bad thing. This is how it is. And here is a bad thing doing it. Yep. Sometimes it is good and sometimes it is not so good. That Terry Pratchett. Bit clever, wasn't it?

What a thinker. Yeah, I quite liked the inability to describe a hangover properly, because I completely agree. Oh, yeah, they never described well. Terry Pratchett kind of pointedly says, nobody can write the feeling of a hangover. And honestly, it's just a bit bizarre when people try. They use things like dancing elephants,

red-hot curried marbles for eyes. It's like, oh, you just feel shit, don't you? I mean, that's how you say it. Yeah. If you've had a hangover, you know what I mean. If you haven't, there's no point trying to imagine it. Yeah. Unless, like, you've said big car sex quite like it, I suppose.

Yeah, it's like a queasy, headache existential crisis. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Have you gotten an irrelevant fact while we've got dancing elephants? Oh, shit. No, I didn't think about that. Elephants feet are kind of weirdly tiptoish, like the skeleton in the foot. So it looks all, like, flat or whatever,

but it's kind of little ballerina feet up there. This is really good visual content for our audio podcast. That's relevant because we've got dancing elephants here, and I sort of like the idea that elephants are quietly all going around on point. There we go. Look at us go. Was there another one for me? There was.

Oh, yeah. There was. Nanny talking through the door. Nanny talking through the door at Macra. Indeared me to Nanny very much. Not that I wasn't already endeared, but I was going to say she's already pretty much. It was possible to endear me further.

I was further endeared. It's a really sweet scene. It is a very sweet scene. She was kind of, first of all, kind of like chipping Macra along, like, oh, we'll have the weasels down the trousers kind of thing. And then what kind of surprised me slightly and delighted me was that, oh, you know, you can just go back to live in your cottage or stay with me. Like, these are all options.

You don't have to go and get married. Just want you to know that. Yeah, I really love that moment. Yeah. And I guess, like, nobody else had said that to her. And to me, that would have been the moment where Macra finally kind of came out. But obviously that wouldn't work for the plot.

But yeah. Yes. The first time. So we went, you know, this is still your choice. Like, you can just come and stay with me and deal with the tin bath. Yeah. Well, Magrette's sort of been very, very swept along by Verrantz and his lack of proposal. And yeah, I don't think anyone has bothered to say to her, you don't have to.

And you don't have to do this out of pride, because part of the reason she says, well, I'm going to go and be queen and live in the castle is because of her falling out with Granny. When you look at it as an outsider, bizarre that you'd like choose your whole life based on a bickering with a friend that you kind of imagine in the moment, like the unthinkableness of going back. Yeah. While tempers were still hot then.

As an incredibly stubborn and prideful person, absolutely. Which is of course why you live in that dusty old castle with the white blanket of a king. Orcs. Orcs are mercy. Excellent. And yeah, parallels to previous books. This is something I said I would keep an eye on as we go through,

like especially this section of 10 or so. Hmm. The scene with Granny and Ridcully where they're sort of going for their late night walk, midnight swim, realising they knew each other or talking about the fact they used to know each other is like an updated sort of parallel version of the boat scene in Equal Rights when Granny is with. And I can't remember the name of that.

Aren't you Chancellor? Was it Waze Seagust? No, that was the old one he was called. It was after that. It's not coming to me, but I know what you mean. But I enjoyed that we sort of get just like there were some moments in Small Gods that were very much reworking. Cut Angle.

Some ideas from Pyramids. Cut Angle, thank you. No, no. That would have bugged both of us that we get this kind of rehash of a scene here. And there's not a lot here that's hugely paralleled. And I've decided to do weird sisters, but better. We've got the parallel of the Shakespeare parody and the relationship between Granny and Magret and Magret storming off and not being included as much.

But that was the most sort of direct scene for scene moment that really reminded me because you even have the thing with Granny and Cut Angle where they realise they probably knew each other when back when in the wilds of Lanka. Yes, yeah, definitely. That was him picking up on his previous half-thoughts thread, wasn't it? Yeah. And I like this pairing of Granny and Ridcully. Not as obviously, you know, I want them to end up together or anything.

But they are, although they're very different, Granny is very not quiet. But you know what I mean? She's quite reserved. Yeah. Yeah, reserved as the word here. Yeah. And Ridcully is very loud and boisterous, but they're two of the most incredibly

powerful and impactful characters. Everything Granny thinks Granny does has an impact and impacts the people around her. She is just naturally at the centre of stories. And I think both of them have a power that isn't immediately apparent because of their personalities as well. Yeah, Granny has the ability to be very passionate and Ridcully has the ability to be very quietly clever on sort of discrepancies in timelines and things because lots of people pointed out, you know, this is mid-summer and Nanny's

having her bath, but there's another reference in a different book to her having a bath in autumn. Oh, that. Her annual bath. That terrible discrepancy. No, there's a quote from Terry Pratchett when people point these things out to him, there are no inconsistencies, but occasionally there are alternate pasts, which is a nice way to think about these things that don't add up,

like the fact that Granny knew two arts chancellors because they both used to run about. Yeah. I saw a kind of a parallel when Granny Weatherwax was basically properly having to go at Diamander when I was talking about how kind of the power that the elf queen would have given Diamander would have felt amazing at first and then slowly had to pay more or more for less and less of a thing. And like it was clearly a parallel to drugs of it, like a kind of high and a slow feel of that. And I quite like that building on previous passages on how magic was like a drug.

And I think it rinsed wind wasn't it? I'm trying to think of. Rinsed wind who kind of got a high off his magic when he had the hat, the Dean I think had a similar. I like that he keeps that thread running through. So going on to the bigger stuff. Yes. Let's talk about the fey.

We've already talked about the elves a bit, but the actual sort of folklore origins in this. I like that it's kind of like a PSA format. All right, kids. We've had our fun today, but now it's time to talk about the fairy folk. First of all, turn around three times after you speak about them. Yeah. I didn't get as far as that one as to why, but that seems like it ties in with a lot of the It's lots of old traditions.

Turning around. It just seems like something to do, doesn't it? Throwing salt over your shoulders. Another one. And that's because you're throwing it in the eyes of the devil. The old powerful devil can be easily foiled by a little bit of seasoning in the eyes. Well, it's very well known that the devil likes rather bland food. That's what makes him so evil.

He doesn't even season his pasta water. Christ. Hell is just badly seasoned pasta. Oh my God. So obviously in this book, Pratchett picks up on a round world phenomenon that he is rather enamoured with, which is the fact that fairy folk elves included used to be considered very dangerous, very evil, very keep them away from your door. And due to the influence of various literary figures, Shakespeare included, one must add,

became something else entirely mischievous at worst. Beautiful fey. Now, see even fey, the word fey kind of means it has a positive connotation now, doesn't it? Whereas that would not have always been the case. And it got that way through. And I think we've talked about this a very long time ago on this podcast. But Victorian literature, of course, had its part in this terrible descent into misinformation. Yep, misinformation about the fair folk.

It's very important. Tinkerbell actually, you know, Tinkerbell is a decent at least representation of someone who is clearly not morally driven. Yes, Tinkerbell's priorities are not really based around morality. He's always very sweet, but she is a murderous little menace. I like her. I also need applause to live. And then of course, you've got Tolkien with his beautiful

tall fair and our wise and beautiful and whatever, which I think put the non-ferric nail in the coffin. Excellent use of fair. That is a general overview of what it was. And then we both had a kind of look into the reasons behind some of the traditions that he mentioned in here. And I think you have a look at horseshoes, didn't you? Yeah, I looked at the origins of horseshoes, so superstitions,

because I was quite curious about that anyway, to be fair. There's a really interesting little section I found from the Channel of American Folklore. Oh, I like that. I like that, then all that is bookmarked in my permanent podcast bookmark folder. So this is a late 19th century publication. And I found an article from that about the folklore of the horseshoe, which goes through a lot of the different ideas of where it could have come from. Because no one's exactly sure, because it's been around so long,

and there's sort of lots of different variations on it. Sometimes it is just iron. Sometimes it's very specifically a horseshoe. And the fact it's a horseshoe is more important than the fact that it's iron. Oh, okay. There's theories to do with the shape of it. So one of the ideas of the origin is a connection with the Jewish holiday of Passover. And to do with the blood sprinkled on doorposts and just being iron,

being a representation of it, but also the arch shape. And that is a huge rabbit hole I plan on going down in my own time of the symbolism of the arch and various bits of folklore, because it turns out there's a lot. Oh, I've got some bookmarks for you on that. Yeah. Excellent. Because there was also a practice in Scotland of putting row and trees in an arch over the door, and it was a similar idea of warding off evil.

You can go back to your terrible folk dancing as well there. Oh, yep. We won't go back to my terrible folk dancing. No one needs to imagine that. Do we have a video of that anyway, Joanna? No, no, there is no video. There's also some theories that it's... Not anymore.

I can see a smoldering pile behind you. There's some theories about it being connected to primitive serpent worship. Rude. Nothing primitive about serpent worship. Inspiration from the... Got a worship target as anything. Sorry. Oh, I'll worship serpent.

It could be something to do with the moon and similar shapes. It's always to do with the moon. It's always to do with the fucking moon. My favorite bit of this article, I'm obviously not going to read the whole article or allow out, but I will link to it in the show notes. This is obviously written by someone who's quite stayed in sense for me. Number four, a phallochemblum. It must suffice to mention this theory of the origin of the superstitious use of the horseshoe.

The evidence in its favor is meager, resting chiefly upon the employment of amulets of this character. And I will say no more about it. Oh, you imagine it's what's his chops from Gilmore Girls. Oh, Taylor Dosey. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. The evidence is meager.

We will say no more about it. We don't think the horseshoe superstition has anything to do with dick jokes, but it could. If it does apply to you, please do go to the doctor. It should not look like that. It could have something to do with the fact it's shaped like prongs, like the prongs of a devil's horn. They're throwing the horns again. Yay, we're back.

There's lots of ideas about the horse itself being sacred. I'm with Rick Cully on the horses. They're not sacred. I love horses, but they're not sacred. That is two inches of brain on six foot of beast. Exactly so. They are giant dumbasses. There's also this idea that it protects against the entrance of witches as well and evil spirits,

but it has to be the right way up. Which is the right way up? So visual content on a podcast. So the round bit is curvy side down or up? Curvy side down pointed up. Cool, cool, cool. Because I used to be a big folklore and superstition geek when I was a bit younger. Yeah, we both got a shelf.

And I had quite a few horseshoe necklaces because I also was a bit of a horse girl. What a combination. John Fuzz and Hagstones. But they are always that way up because the idea is that the horseshoe is lucky. There's a lot of old Irish traditions around it as well. And obviously that thing goes into racing, which is how I was kind of a horse girl. Much easier to put on a pendant as well.

Well, yeah, handily, much easier to put on a pendant. But I was always taught if it's upside down, the luck drains out. Oh, yeah, of course, yeah. And then it needs to be up like a, up like a bowl to hold the luck in. Of course, yeah, yeah. Yeah, same physical properties as water, of course. Yes, yes, very much so. Luck is a kind of viscous liquid, isn't it?

But it is definitely a liquid and not a gas. Yeah, yeah. The degree of luck pertaining to a horseshoe found by chance is thought to depend on the number of nails remaining in it. Oh, Jesus Christ, all right. So if we're going to have to have a handbook printed out, Joanna. And if you've ever played horseshoes, it's better to play with horseshoes that don't still have nails in.

Yes, safety reasons. Have you ever played horseshoes at a fair? I have not played horseshoes at a fair. I did note down the various fair games that were mentioned here at the marriage party. Yes. But decided not to go down there because it's nonsense and the greasy pole with nanny and.

There are some. You're already on the verge of hysteria. I didn't really need to conjure an image in your mind, which I've now done anyway. No, I started going down the same rabbit hole and came to the same conclusion. There's a lot of nonsense here, and we don't need to hear me read out exactly what a brand tub is.

I think our first Patreon rabbit hole thing might end up being a few of these unexplored lords and ladies ones. Yes, I think it might be. I love that you're cheeky hint at the Patreon there, Francine. It's foreshadowing, mate, or whatever the equivalent is for marketing. I should know. We can still call that foreshadowing.

So was there anything you found out about folklore traditions and what have you? Yeah, I took the path less traveled, maybe the windier path, the brighter path, whichever one does not take me to heaven, and looked up iron instead of horseshoes. Because, yes, I looked up the idea that iron was the main thing,

and that as Pratchett decided was the case in the disquell, that was just the most common form of iron you likely see lying around as a horseshoe. So that's why iron goes hundreds of years back in many cultures as superstitious material. You would use it to ward off evil. You would bury an iron knife in front of a door to keep witches out, for instance.

It was an alternative to the horseshoe, I imagine, in different cultures. And there are some various theories, and again, I found some nice articles on Link, but it's probably because it had properties that might have seen magical once upon a time. So the biggest dramaticist should have a proper word instead of having to say most dramatic,

because it takes away from the drama. And rarest would have been iron ore came from the sky sometimes. Well, that's where the stones came from, didn't it? Exactly. So, yes, magnets, yes. And iron needle in water would have served as a compass a long time before we could explain why. Kind of seemed magic. Iron conducts electricity, and it creates strong,

complex weapons of the sort we just couldn't have when we were bronze or copper or whatever we were using, which I can see how that would root one in reality in opposition to the kind of fey nonsense. Yeah, iron is something strong and solid. Very human, yeah. Oh, look, I've got a loose thread on my toe. That's a big one, sorry.

Yeah, and then I had a quick look at some of the other things mentioned, leaving the milk out. I kind of knew this already. The main one is leaving out for brownies. Brownies being the little imps that would, at some point at least in history, come and do your chores. I don't know if they were perhaps a little bit more mischievous before.

Yeah, this comes, this is old Cornish folklore traditions, isn't it? Cornish, yes, yes, quite right. Neil Gaiman went into it, didn't he? One of his somethings. There is, it's my favourite part of American gods, and it is the story of Essie Tregowan. Yes, yes, the Irish lassie. No, she's Cornish.

Cornish, sorry. But well, there's a lot of overlap between Cornish and Irish traditions. Being the last strongholds of some older cult. Yeah, that makes sense. That's cool. The other bits that kind of have a bit of grounding in folkloric reality, if that's not an oxymoron, is the change in kind of perception of time is definitely one.

You know, they were worrying about waking up in the wrong century. Definitely lots of stories, particularly I found some Scotland and Ireland about being taken by the fairies and coming back 100 years later, and everyone's like, where the hell are you? And you're like, who the hell are you? And they're like, where's my wife? The century of the fruit, that meal. I was in the century of the Angevee.

Paraphrase. Thank you for not trying the Scottish accent. And then the last thing I found before I had to come and do this an hour late was Elfshot. Oh. Yeah, Elfshot is a medical condition described in Anglo-Saxon texts. Notably, oddly enough, I can't pronounce Anglo-Saxon text. So I'm going to call it,

we owe fairsters, and I'm sure that's wrong, and believed to be caused by invisible elves shooting invisible arrows at a personal animal, causing fun shooting pains localized to a particular area of the body. Modern diagnoses might include arthritis or cramps. Yeah, so that was in Scandinavian and Scottish culture later than it was elsewhere, but it was throughout Anglo-Saxon culture. And yeah. Interesting.

You can intercure it with various things, but as well as treating the symptom one would try and treat, caused by eliminating elves from one's immediate vicinity, as always wise. Always. Especially if you are hurting. Always eliminate the elves. Or emotionally immediate vicinity. Yes, that's why I'm emotionally up and down this week.

Elves. Elves. Elves. Elves. How much iron have you got in the house? No, probably not enough. You've got cast iron pants. Stay in the kitchen, you'll be fine.

I mean, that's in an emotionally healthy way, not a sexist way. Thank you for clarifying. Before we go on to the next topic, my battery's dying. I just need to grab a charger. Listeners are tragically deprived of the sight of Joanna vaulting a sofa. Is the anyways getting out of the fort? You can release that video at some point, but can you do it on a week where I'm slightly more graceful than today?

Sure, sure. Because it's not always quite this bad. Sometimes I do it quite stylishly. I'll give you a heads up and you can do the landing with the... Landing on the cross legs. I can come in from the side and kind of do a diving roll. Spy style. All right, God, sorry, we're making a podcast, aren't we?

In theory, yes. In reality. World building and the nature of witchcraft, Joanna. Is the second talking point? Indeed. And this is a combination of my favorite things. Witchcraft, world building and rules for all magic. Let me come back to you with the rest of that.

A, I like when the books talk about the nature of magic and stuff because my two favorite ways for magic to be presented in a fantasy book are either with a lot of very strict rules or no rules really whatsoever. Like a bit of consistency in your nonsense. Yeah, I either want it to be all nonsense or something like name of the wind, where there's 18 million different rules, all of which get blown out of the water when he meets one of the various. Yeah.

Well, what are you going to do? Well, fairies should have had a horsey. Should have had a horsey, quote. Honestly, quote, what are you doing? So I like this moment where the girls turn up on the doorstep and they want to be taught witching. Yeah, because it's we've had insights into this before, but insights of how one becomes a witch, especially in this area,

which has a very, very solid witching tradition. Yes. You have the smaller covens and the larger coven meetings that we've seen and say weird sisters and equal rights. Yeah. And the beginning of which is abroad. But you also have how do younger girls become witches? How do they get trained up?

And it's that they approach older witches and Granny's way of sending them away is how do you destroy this hat? Yeah, or knock the hat off the head. Knock the hat off the head and Nanny does it with a stick. And it's this this thing that comes up again and again in the Witcher's books is the magic of not doing magic. But it's the fact that when the girls aren't satisfied with this, Granny then points out it's like, OK, you can blow a hat up with magic

and does it to Nanny's hat. Yeah, whole picture of that costume. Yeah, I'm awesome and cool and magical. However, maybe learn how to think a bit before I teach you the explosions. Exactly. Thinking, then explosions. Excellent teaching methods from Granny Weatherworks. But she taught Esk before and it kind of went a bit pear shaped,

so I can see why she's... In her defense, Esk wasn't exactly full witch because she had all that wizardy nonsense. She did, she did. What with being the seventh daughter of a seventh son and what have you. But you also have them talking about being chosen. So there's this idea that witches kind of select from a pool of candidates and go, you, you're going to be trained up, you're going to be a witch,

and that's what happened to Nanny. And isn't what happened to Granny. Granny went and camped out on someone's doorstep until she was chosen. And we've got the more detail about the witches' cottages as well, the idea that these sort of hereditary things, they don't belong to an individual witch, they belong to like a chain of witches. Yeah, which is nice because it kind of ties in with the idea of the narrative consistency as well.

So there is always a mother, Maiden Crone, and there is always a research witch and a goat witch and a mother witch and... Yeah. And there's, and Margaret's old cottage is very much a cottage of research, which is there. There's witches that know eye of witch-yute. Yes. And the nice line...

Witch-fasking ravine shark. Granny was a better witch because she knows that it doesn't really matter, but Margaret's a better doctor because she thinks it does. Yes. And I like that Margaret gets the moment to be incredibly competent in this sixth section. There's where a lot of the book sort of makes fun of Margaret a bit, for being a bit of a wet hen and not really standing up for herself and thinking that elves are nice. Yeah.

She does get a moment where even Granny acknowledges she is the best person for this job and she gets to be the best person for the job. Although Granny does have to kind of shout her down from trying to continue the pettiness, like, no, come on, this is important. We're not bickering now. Do you want to help or not? Because if not, I'm just going to go and find someone who will. We literally don't have time for this shit.

Yeah. She does need a moment, but when she does roll up her sleeves and get stuck in, she very much rolls up her sleeves and gets stuck in. Yeah. And I, like I said, I mostly just, I enjoy this as well building because we're slowly getting more and more about the inner workings of the society. And it's kind of the opposite from the wizards where we had a lot of the courtly intrigue of wizards and then it faded off into, we don't really need that now.

Rid Cully's in charge. The rest of them have jobs and they muck about together. And if Rid Cully says, do this, they will argue. Yeah. But they will probably at least listen to him. But witches, we sort of have the opposite. We haven't had much of how it all works and we're slowly getting more of it. And we'll get more and more as we revisit the witches.

And this is the kind of world building that's very exciting for me because I like knowing these sort of details. I like knowing how this world works. Yeah. So that's fun. And of course, we've also got the whole what is magic section. And we talked about the wizards getting excited about particles and quantum and yeah, raisons, which does literally mean things.

Yeah. And which is having more of just a feel for it. Yeah. But I do like if a trained mind rigid with quantum certainty was inserted in the crack and twisted. And this is the idea that there are so many possibilities which is basically picking a possibility and going for it. Yeah. Such as the version of the world where that has exploded.

Yes. Into more complex things. Whereas younger witches like crystals, mystic forces and dancing around without your draws on. Yes. And it might be that all of these are true. Maybe so. Maybe so. But yes.

So that's a fun thing for me. That's a fun book thing that I enjoyed. Yes. I made a small note that the idea of not giving the hair the milk after borrowing it or borrowing its body would be unthinkable to a witch. And if you really wanted to piss off a witch, you would do a favour that they couldn't repay and it would be as irritating as a hangnail. Yes.

I thought that tied into your favourite quote from last week about the the unsaid obligation. Yes. The absence of demand was an obligation. Yes. So Francine, do you have an obscure reference finial for me? I do. I do. I do.

The idea of a poet laureate was floated. And for some reason floated towards Nanny Og by Varence. Oh, she is very poetic. No better. One would think no better by now, but apparently not. And the throwaway line in there was, oh yeah, and they get paid a sack of butt or a butt of sack or something like that. So look that up.

And yeah, that is the thing. The poet laureate was given a small stipend by the monarch. And a butt or barrel of sherry, which was called sack. Oh. So that began back in 1630 for Ben Johnson, who wrote poetry for kings, but never had a formal appointment. And then the first official poet laureate, who I think was soon afterwards and also got it. And then the custom died out in about 1800 and then was revived in 1984 by the sherry producers

of Spain, who knew a marketing opportunity when they found one in obscure history book. And they now present a butt of sherry, which I must say is equivalent to over 700 bottles of sherry. Jesus. It's a rather large barrel to the poet laureate. Well, I've got a new reason to try and become poet laureate. I don't really like sherry to be fair. Head around Carol Ann Duffy's house to see if she's still got some left.

I'll drop her a text. We're on first name turn. I wonder if it irks the monarchy a bit that they go to Spain to receive the sherry. So it's the Spanish now giving out the sherry. If I was to become poet laureate, I'd be more excited about getting the barrel of sherry than I would about like meeting royalty and being named poet laureate. Yeah. I'm not sure if that's because I'm an alcoholic or a Republican.

Republican to be clear to our American listeners means in this case, not a monarchist. It does not mean a right wing American. Yeah, probably should clarify that. The English sort of Republican, which is very different from the American sort. Well, I think that's as we've gone worldly off topic again. That's probably all we can say about part two of Lords and Ladies. That is literally anything anyone could ever say. Yep.

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And in the meantime, dear listener, don't let us detain you. Hello and welcome to The Two Shall Make You Freight, a podcast in which we're reading and recapping every book by Terry from Terry. Ah, fuck. Jesus. All right. I'll try that again, shall I? Yeah, I feel like.

Thought it was fine. Hello and welcome to fuck.