Terry Pratchett - Carpe Jugulum

Combined with the blue skin, this suggests a decidedly Smurf-like quality to the Feegles. Terry says:

“1 I wanted some background to Wee Mad Arthur, of Feet of Clay and so they’d be small. 2 I’d been listening to Laureena McKennitt singing ‘The Stolen Child’. 3 Since (see 1) the tribe would be cod-Scottish, then Braveheart and Rob Roy (“let’s bash the English” movies made by people sitting on the biggest piece of land ever stolen from its owners by trickery, genocide and war) were natural targets… which meant that the NmF would be blue…”

Typical Glaswegian greeting. See also p. 169 “‘What ya’ lookin a’, chymie (Jimmy)?’”

Pyramid selling is when each of your customers goes out and sells to a number of other customers, and you get a share of the profits from them; then each of those other customers goes out and tries the same trick, and so on until everyone in the world is a customer. Of course, if you’re one of the last generation to be recruited, you’re stuffed. Most pyramid-selling schemes are illegal in most countries. The scam is a common nuisance phenomenon on the Internet.

Carmilla , by J. Sheridan LeFanu, was one of the earliest literary vampire stories, published in 1872, a good quarter of a century before Dracula . The story about bathing in the blood of virgins is told of Erzsebet Bathory (1560–1614), a Hungarian princess who believed that it would keep her young; her name is often associated with vampire stories.

The beaked, hunched figure that Vlad calls ‘a distant ancestor’ is a reference to the stryx, a creature from Roman mythology that stabbed and drank blood through its beak.

Terry explains: “What Agnes is shown is the ‘evolution’ of vampires — harpy, hairy monster, Lugosi/Lee and Byronic bastard. And what better way to demonstrate this that a succession of family portraits?”

“As an aside, very little vampiric legend and folklore in CJ is made up — even the vampire tools and watermelons are real world beliefs.”

Oats has crammed an impressive collection of vampire stories into one page of notes. “The blood is the life” is a catchphrase from Dracula ; it is closely associated with the Christian view of the vampire — just as the Christian gains eternal life through the sacrament of Christ’s blood, so the vampire earns a perverted version of the same.

Porphyria is a very rare, genetic blood disorder, one form of which includes the symptoms of severe light sensitivity, reddish-brown urine and teeth, deformation of the nose, ears, eyelids, and fingers, an excess of body hair, and anaemia. It has been suggested that it explains some aspects of both vampire and werewolf legends.

The Biblical version is the story of Noah (Genesis 6–8). Many myth cycles have a similar story of how humanity was almost wiped out by a flood, but saved by one good person building a boat.

The Malleus Maleficarum (usually translated Hammer of Witches ) was written by two Dominican monks in the 15th century as a manual for dealing with witches and possessing spirits. Many of the popular myths about medieval treatment of witches, including many of the various tests by ordeal, first appeared in this book.

This is an old northern English ( not Scots) dialect, used for counting sheep in Yorkshire and Cumbria. ‘Yan, tan, tethera, methera, pip, sethera, lethera, hovera, dovera, dick.’

According to one correspondent, the folklorist A. L. Lloyd traced the words to a group of Romanian shepherds brought to England early in the 19th century to teach the locals something about increase in flocks. The words were thought very Occult and Mysterious, until it was explained that they were just counting.

Verence’s side of the dialogue seems to be modelled on the sorts of things the British royal family, most particularly Prince Charles, say when they are meeting The People. Verence’s general earnest and well meaning — but unappreciated — interest in the welfare of his subjects is strongly reminiscent of Charles.

From The Fairies , by William Allingham:

‘Hack his lugs away’ — cut his ears off.

Just to make their dialect even more confusing, the Feegles throw in words of Gaelic. ‘Uskabarch’ is ‘uisge beatha’, ‘water of life’ — whisky.

The usual offering is a ‘wee dram’, but to the Feegles it would, of course, appear huge. A bannock is a well known Scottish bread product. The fact that it’s burned could be a reference to the Battle of Bannockburn, a famous Scots victory.

The phoenix as described by the Greek historian Herodotus was an eagle-like bird, with red and gold plumage, that was sacred to the sun-god in ancient Egypt. The bird lived for 500 years, at the end of which it built its own funeral pyre and was consumed to ashes, from which another phoenix would then rise. Allegedly symbolic of the rising and setting of the sun, it was adopted by medieval Christianity as a symbol of death and resurrection.

In Interesting Times we learned that, on the Disc, ‘psychological warfare’ is defined as drumming on your shield and shouting “We’re gonna cut yer tonkers off.”

A common abbreviation used on parts of the Internet is IMHO, meaning ‘in my humble opinion’. Terry seems to have a particular dislike for this phrase, which in practice often translates to “and anyone who disagrees with me is patently a moron”.

This is very similar to a recurrent line “I wadna gie a button for her”, in Robert Burns’s poem Sic a Wife as Willie’s Wife . The poem describes the vile, vile looking wife of a wee ‘greasy weaver’ (no Adonis himself), and when performed usually has the audience in stitches when the descriptions of the wife are mimed. It is a good party piece for a Burns Supper on 25 January.

Brose is a famous Scottish pick-me-up, made with oats, whisky, cream and… herbs.

Discworld vampires used to do this (in Reaper Man and Witches Abroad , for instance), but more recently they have taken to flying without changing form. Presumably it’s another aspect of being a Modern vampire.

‘God is in His Holy Temple’ was a popular Victorian hymn.

Isaiah 9:2: “The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light: they that dwell in the land of the shadow of death, upon them hath the light shined.”

Combined with Igor’s previous comment that ‘the Century of the Fruitbat has its compensations’, this suggests that B. S. Johnson was active within the past hundred years — the first solid clue we’ve had about his lifetime. The ‘children of the night’ quote is one of the most famous lines from the original 1931 Dracula movie.

‘Johnson’ is American slang for a penis, so this single entendre is quite an admission from Nanny.

Organ registers are named after the sound they make, and the height of tone they produce. Owing to the nature of sound, however, 14 is very rarely found in real life; it would be 1. out of tune; most registers are powers of two, or three times powers of two for quints; and 2. pretty low.