Terry Pratchett - Carpe Jugulum

There is a quotation, attributed to G. K. Chesterton: “Fairy tales do not tell children the dragons exist. Children already know that dragons exist. Fairy tales tell children the dragons can be killed.” This seems to chime remarkably well with Terry’s own attitude to children’s stories.

Jonathan and Mina Harker are two of the leading characters in Dracula .

The hero of the classic 1954 novel I am Legend , the last living human on an earth where everyone else has become a vampire, actually experiments with this possibility.

This is the second time Greebo has taken out a vampire — he ate a bat in Witches Abroad — which suggests that there are other ways of killing them than those sophisticated methods prescribed by folklore.

A very tame, sweet, modern children’s hymn (see the annotation {80} 80 Many modern churches have sanitised their official hymnbooks, leaving many of their worshippers complaining vigorously about the insipidness of the new hymns. ‘Light The Good Light’ is presumably the Omnian version of ‘Fight the Good Fight’; ‘Om Shall Trample The Ungodly’ is less clear, but it could scan to the tune of ‘The Battle-Hymn of the Republic.’ ):

“That which does not kill me, makes me stronger” — popular saying, attributed to Nietzsche, whose morality would certainly have appealed to the Count.

Echoes ‘Lions and tigers and bears, oh my!’ from The Wizard of Oz .

It’s become a commonplace observation, about Dracula , that a man driving a stake into a female vampire is about as strong a sexual image as it was possible to publish in Victorian times…

A running joke in the adult cartoon South Park is how the character Kenny is killed, in some deeply implausible way, in every episode, whereupon Kyle and Stan exchange the comments “Oh my god! They’ve killed Kenny!” “You bastards!”

Grimnir the Impaler (1514–1553, 1553–1557, 1557–1562, 1562–1567 and 1568–1573) is mentioned in Wyrd Sisters . The difference in spelling is presumably a typo.

One of Frank Sinatra’s later albums bore the title ‘Old Blue Eyes is Back’. ‘Old Red Eyes is Back’ is also the title of a song by Beautiful South.

For some reason, mountains often seem to be described as ‘purple’ in the context of noble or uplifting thoughts. Compare the song ‘America the Beautiful’, by Katharine Lee Bates:

Many modern churches have sanitised their official hymnbooks, leaving many of their worshippers complaining vigorously about the insipidness of the new hymns. ‘Light The Good Light’ is presumably the Omnian version of ‘Fight the Good Fight’; ‘Om Shall Trample The Ungodly’ is less clear, but it could scan to the tune of ‘The Battle-Hymn of the Republic.’