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THE FOLKLORE OF DISCWORLD by TERRY PRATCHETT and JACQUELINE SIMPSON

Published by Doubleday / November 2008

Pretty much right from the get go Terry Pratchett's now legendary Discworld has taken on a life of its own. The star of his long running series of comic fantasy books, The Discworld is a planet, completely flat, that nestles on the back of a giant turtle (The Great A'Tuin) supported by four elephants! The Discworld is a world that is actually very much like our own, if only our world was still in medieval times and home to trolls, dwarves, witches and wizards. Pratchett though has always mined that area of pagansism, mythology and folklore for his books and this is a new, very interesting, take, by Terry Pratchett and Jacqueline Simpson, on how the mythology of Discworld fits in rather nicely with our own.

Covering everything from how the actual discworld, turtle and elephants scenario relates to Hindu cosmology, to the 3000 Gods currently being worshipped on the disc, as well as a nice run down of the major ones (most of which are quite recognisably variations of Earth bound Gods). Other chapters are devoted to Dwarves, Elves, the excellent Wee Free Men, Trolls and the other multitudinous races and foul beasts that make up the world of the disc.

The final section and most interesting looks at the actual myths and legends that have appeared in Pratchett's books and how they relate to our own folklore. Pratchett never has his tongue firmly away from his cheek and even though the discworld series is essentially a comic one, the myths and lore he features carry clear echoes of our own increasingly forgotten past.

Although he gets a co-writers credit one imagines that the bulk of the book is Simpson's (although the footnotes definitely bear the Pratchett imprint) and this guiding light of the British Folklore Society clearly knows the Discworld inside out and, like the rest of us, gets a great big kick out of it too.

Definitely a worthy addition (and not only for the wealth of background info about the series you get), to the ever growing Pratchett shelf on the bookcase.

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