It’s time to settle in for a little light reading of Fairies and How to Avoid Them…
Summary
The story begins with some basic information on the Nac Mac Feegle from Miss Tick’s book Fairies and How to Avoid Them. Something is searching for a new mind to inhabit, but sheep won’t do. Tiffany Aching is eleven years old now, and Miss Tick has come to take her away to a witch to be trained—though as far as Tiffany’s family is concerned, she’s going to be a maid to an elderly woman and learn more about the world. The Nac Mac Feegle of the chalk have a new Kelda named Jeannie, who has married Rob Anybody. As Tiffany and Miss Tick reach the area where the coach is meant to take her on, Roland, the baron’s son, arrives and gives Tiffany a gift he had made for her. He tells her not to open it until later. Miss prods Tiffany to open the present and wonders why she’s not crying. To change the subject, Tiffany asks about the witch she’s going to learn from, Miss Level. Miss Tick suggests that there might be another person there, too, and tells Tiffany that Miss Level is a research witch who tries to figure out new spells by performing old ones the right way. They pass by the white horse, which is carved into a cliffside.
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The Fragile Threads of Power
The thing in search of a mind buzzes after Tiffany and the Nac Mac Feegle are concerned about it. Back home, Rob is learning to write because Jeannie comes from a clan that is okay with writing and she thinks he needs to learn it. Hamish and Big Yan report back to tell Rob that a hiver is following Tiffany. But Jeannie is new and alone and afraid, and so she tells the clan to stop watching after Tiffany. Miss Tick and Tiffany arrive at Twoshirts and Miss Tick senses something is amiss. She creates a shamble (sort of like a cat’s cradle), and senses something. Tiffany suddenly does too, as though the world is compressing, and the egg in the shamble explodes. Miss Tick insists it’s probably nothing, and they continue on their journey. They find Miss Level in the forest, and she and Miss Tick insist on having a private conversation. This annoys Tiffany, and she does her “see me” trick to step out of her body and listen in on their conversation. She’s called back because the compressing thing is happening all over again. Miss Level creates another shamble and stops the thing. Miss Level puts Tiffany on her broom, which is her first ride on one, and it’s horrible. They arrive at her home, and Tiffany knows something is wrong here…
Inside, Miss Level shows Tiffany to her room and gets her a bowl of stew, insisting that apprenticing can wait until morning. When Tiffany finishes the stew in her room, something tugs at the bowl and takes the tray from her. Tiffany wakes the next morning, deciding to open Roland’s present: It’s the white horse as a silver necklace. She writes a thank you note to Roland and one to her parents to let them know she’s alive. Using the “see me” spell to try on the necklace awakens the hiver and it sets off after her again. The cottage turns out to be full of circus posters, including one for Topsy and Tipsy, The Astounding Mind-Reading Act. Tiffany finally learns the truth: Miss Level is one person with two bodies. People assumed she was twins, but she isn’t, and because that frightened people, she ran away to the circus where she did the mind-reading act before becoming a witch. The invisible thing moving around isn’t her, it’s Oswald, an ondageist (basically the opposite of a poltergeist). Tiffany begins her chores: milking goats, tending beehives, learning about plants and their uses. A text at the Unseen University gives information about hivers and warnings to researching students. Rob Anybody is depressed, but Jeannie asks him not to go save Tiffany as his wife. When he agrees, she orders him to go save her as his kelda.
Rob gets a party together, including Daft Willie, Big Yan, and Wee Billy Bigchin, the new gonnagle, who has a plan to make a human scarecrow filled with Feegle to help them travel. Tiffany is learning about what witching really is, which is mostly helping out who needs helping and getting a little of what people have in return. One of the folks they help is Mr. Weavall, an elderly man who keeps coming back to having enough money for his own funeral. The Nac Mac Feegle steal a bunch of clothes and get themselves into them, board the local cart, and head off to find Tiffany, promising the Carter five gold coins to drop his cargo and get them to Twoshirts in time for the stagecoach. Tiffany tries to learn how to make a shamble, but she can’t quite get the hang of it, despite Miss Level’s advice. The Carter catches up to the stagecoach and the Feegle secure passage into the mountains. Tiffany meets Petulia, who Miss Level gives broom-riding lessons to, and Petulia asks if she wants to go to the sabbath with other girls. Tiffany decides she should go. The Nac Mac Feegle pay the stagecoach driver so well that he loses half the passengers and the other half get off because the strange figure smells of ferrets.
Commentary
Miss Level being two bodies and one person is dead clever, though. All the Discworld books are great at playing with various ways in which women were thought to be too strange throughout history, and frequently punished (to the point of death) for it. Twins is one of those things that people who are suspicious and/or conspiracy-minded love to get weird about, and the idea that twins are eerily connected or might just be one soul separated into two bodies crops up all over the place. It’s such a great idea to literalize the concept.
The farther you get from Lancre, the better picture you get of just how far Granny Weatherwax’s reach extends. I love it for multiple reasons, but mainly for the juxtaposition between witches and wizards. In this era, the most famous witch is maybe one of the most purely good people on the Disc, while the most famous (just by virtue of how broadly he’s known) wizard is a coward who wants out of every dangerous situation.
And, of course, that’s a clue in its own way. The book at the university detailing how the wizard handled his hiver research is par for the course in how each group handles magical phenomena. The one wizard who tries his hand in this arena wants to control the thing and promptly gets taught a fatal lesson. Conversely, the witches will be able to handle this. We don’t know how at the start of the book, but you know it’s coming. It’s just how they’re made.
It’s relevant that in a lesser author’s hands, the difficulty Jeannie is having with Tiffany would be read as “women being catty to other women.” Which it patently never reads as to me here. If anything, it’s much more painful for how explicitly the parallels are drawn between Tiffany and the new kelda, how a point is made that both of them are in a situation where they are frightened and far from home and need to prove as quickly as possible that they are wise and capable. It makes Jeannie’s initial mistake that much more complex, because it’s pointedly not so simple as being threatened by a girl who briefly held her position. It’s about both of them finding their place in the world at the same time, and once Jeannie realizes that Tiffany is in the middle of the same struggle, she promptly sends her people to help.
Having the Feegle “four raccoons in a trench coat” their journey into the mountains is glorious, as is the choice to have them steal the coat from someone who handles tons of ferrets because, if you know anything about them, you know that weasel-smell is a large part of the reason why most human do not keep them as pets.
And we have Tiffany, who two years on from her first adventure is grieving less hard for Granny Aching—but the presence never leaves. And it couldn’t, really, seeing as she is the template for what Tiffany will become. The conceit of her grandmother being a witch without really knowing it works so beautifully from a narrative standpoint because it allows for Tiffany’s “discovery” by the rest of the witches, and for a different manner of learning that she would have found otherwise. It does make me wonder how often witching might run if families if witches have children? Not that it’s relevant—it just suddenly occurred to me that Tiffany is the first example we’ve been given of it running in families—apart from the Weatherwax sisters…
Asides and little thoughts:
- Funny thing about those woad tattoos the Nac Mac Feegle are meant to have—apparently that’s a myth. Woad was certainly used by the Scottish clans, just not as tattooing material. A historical researcher tried to tattoo with woad in present day to see if it was viable and found it extremely lacking as an appropriate ink.
- Miss Tick mentions using a telescope to count dragons on the moon, which means some of Sybil’s dragons are still there, hanging out. I hope it’s nice up there.
- Tiffany’s thought that she’s not afraid of heights, she’s afraid of depths reminds me of how I used to explain my fear of heights, which is less a fear of heights than a fear of falling off a height to my death.
Pratchettisms:
Sun and wind went straight through, but rain and snow somehow saw it, and treated it as if it was real.
Admittedly—and it took some admitting—he was a lot less of a twit that he had been. On the other hand, there had been such a lot of twit to begin with.
Despite sinister forces that would have people think differently, no toad had ever been called Tommy the Toad, for example. It’s just not something that happens.
She’d known the word, certainly, but the word hadn’t been so big, so set, and above all it hadn’t been so loud.
The beef stew tasted, indeed, just like beef stew and not, just to take an example completely and totally at random, stew made out of the last poor girl who’d worked here.
Learn how to learn fast.
After all, whatever had done it had even had the decency to bolt the door after itself, which meant that it respected her privacy, even while it ignored it.
Both of the hands had fallen off the clock face and lay at the bottom of the glass cover, so while the clock was still measuring time, it wasn’t inclined to tell anyone about it.
There was a sliding noise and a tinkle exactly like the tinkle a spoon makes when it’s put back among the other spoons, who have missed it and are anxious to hear its tales of life among the frighteningly pointy people.
It’s one of the duller phases of the moon and seldom gets illustrated.
“It’s still magic. Knowing things is magical, if other people don’t know them.”
The carter, white in the face, got down carefully and then lay on the ground and held on tight to the dirt.
Next week we’ll read chapters 5-9!
Witching doesn’t seem to run in the large Ogg clan, despite its matriarch being a witch. I don’t remember if Nanny Ogg had any daughters, however.
And… Granny Weatherwax is purely good? Not as I recall. She was forced to act good, because of her sister Lilly, but it went against her basic nature.
Thoughts
A significant presaging is when Tiffany remembers what Miss Tick said about what witches fear. “It was too easy to slip into careless cruelties because you had the power and other people didn’t, too easy to think other people didn’t matter much, too easy to think that ideas like right and wrong didn’t apply to you.”
Another of Tiffany’s memories – “sheep wool, turpentine, and Jolly Sailor tobacco” will become significant
The wizard’s account of the capture of a hiver hints at why it is seeking Tiffany and what will become of Tiffany if it catches her.
Rob Anybody’s PLN is priceless, write it down and then figure out (verbally) what to do.
Tiffany meets Annagramma and recognizes her for what she is – a dog worrying sheep – an obnoxious bully. But because she needs to see if her hat exists she casts See Me and is taken by the Hiver.
Pratchettisms
He had mastered the first two rules of writing, as he understood them. 1 STEAL SOME PAPER. 2. STEAL A PENCIL. (Rob Anybody)
A goat is a sheep with brains. (Tiffany)
Granny does what’s right, which isn’t always the same thing as doing good. I can’t remember exactly, but I think somewhere it’s said she isn’t the most powerful witch, she just makes her witch-ness work extra hard.
As for Tiffany, she always reads as older. I don’t know if that’s because she’s a country girl, but she always seems to be just that bit too old for how she is written. I think it would have read better if he had aged her up a couple of years. But out of all the Discworld books, the Tiffany stories rank amongst my favourites. Maskerade and Carpe Jugulum are probably favourites to the side of the Tiffany books.
@1 – I agree with your assessment of Granny. Over the course of the books she’s gotten gooder but she has a mean streak and can be petty in earlier books. She insists she’s always right, even when she’s not, and never apologizes.
wrt some of the above sentiments: ” ‘Nice’ is different than ‘good’.” (Sondheim put that in the mouth of a character who has no idea of the next layer of what she was saying, but I expect he did.)
The discussion circles around the throwaway line that sets up a lot of this section; “Even if it isn’t your fault, it’s your responsibility.” Being a witch means being responsible, far beyond not just being as careless/unthinking/… as a wizard. (Now I’m thinking of Elgin’s Ozark trilogy, in which the lead had been saddled with the name “Responsible of Brightwater”.) (ISTM that Jeannie recognizing some of this is part of her growing into the role of a Kelda — and she doesn’t have a mentor.) Each witch is responsible for a territory; ISTR that the witches, very carefully, are responsible for acting if one of them goes too cackly. In conventional power structures this would fall quickly into tyranny, but Tiffany also learns (to the extent she wasn’t instructed at the end of the previous book) that there are huge constraints on the use of power. One constraint that’s barely suggested is how much more effective power is when it’s almost never used.
A Pratchettism: It was difficult to talk to someone who paid attention all the time. It put you off. (Not solely a Pratchettism — I remember it as a gag in Andy Capp from somewhere around the time of Pratchett’s very first published story — but rarely mentioned.)
It also seems to me that we’re seeing an evolution of how women/girls become witches, vaguely parallel to how Weatherwax changes from even more of a caricature than Anita‘s granny to the figure of power she’s been in recent appearances. Magrat, as an adult, is almost bullied by the other Wyrd Sisters; a few books later in Lords and Ladies, we get a brief view of Weatherwax as having been in a run-away-from-the-boys-until-they-catch-her phase when she decided that knowing was more interesting. (How this fits in with her having to be the good one is IIRC never explained.) Now we’re seeing that there’s something beyond mentoring and almost like training, at least if the talent/attitude is spotted early enough. (Mentoring seems to be a skill in itself, a bit like potions; Miss Level isn’t as harsh as Weatherwax or as uproarious as Ogg — I can’t see either of them as being an effective mentor.)
@3 – re Tiffany’s age, I agree, she reads older to me as well. I read her as a teenager and I wish more time had elapsed in her confrontation with the Queen.
@6 – As far as Weatherwax not being a good mentor, once, when Tiffany was wishing for less imagination, she wonders if Weatherwax recommended Miss Level as a test rather than as a true mentor.
Its a ‘ Kelda’
To add to Rob’s comment above, in the first paragraph of the summary there’s the line: “The Nac Mac Feegle of the chalk have a new Zelda named Jeannie”, which is a fun typo :)
@8 @9 – Training autocorrect for the fantasy world is really a witch. There it goes again. :-)
@8-10 — Fixed, thanks!
‘Before she had done it, she hadn’t known that she could. When she had been doing it, she hadn’t known that she was. And after she had done it, she hadn’t known how she had.’ I love this. It could describe a lot of endeavors. My jobs come to mind, especially my first job as a ranger at a world-famous national park.
“It’s amazing what you can store in other people” (Miss Level referring to sharing food when she gets it in excess) reminds me of honeypot ants: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honeypot_ant :p
Miss Level says Mr. Weavall “eats like a bird.” I always found that popular expression a weird way to describe someone who doesn’t eat much. Birds tend to have proportionally big appetites, being highly active, warm-blooded, and mostly small.
Pratchettisms:
“And writin’ even keeps on sayin’ a man’s words after he’s dead!” — Rob Anybody
“Ach, it’s a terrible thing for a man when his woman gangs up on him with a toad.” — Rob Anybody
“What’s this about the big wee hag?” she said in a voice as small and meek as a mouse trained at the Rodent College of Assassins.
‘[…] they weren’t stupid people just because they lived a long time ago.’
“Once a man has the readin’ and the writin,’ he’ll come down with a dose of the thinkin.’” — Big Yan
Looking back:
Jeannie and her brothers are from the Long Lake Clan that featured in Carpe Jugulum and settled in Lancre.
Chalk Hill Feegles liken writing to nailing a man’s shadow to the wall…which Long Lake Feegles literally did in Carpe Jugulum.
Looking ahead:
Sensibility Bustle’s book on hivers mentions getting information from ancient texts found by an “ill-fated expedition to the Loko region.” This magic-soaked region will be referenced in later books as, among other things, the source of stygium and home to possibly-the-last Orcs.
It is implied in The Last Hero that dragons are actually native to the moon and swamp dragons somehow ended up in the wrong place.
Witching doesn’t seem to run in the large Ogg clan, despite its matriarch being a witch. I don’t remember if Nanny Ogg had any daughters, however.
I’m pretty sure she does. I remember a reference to how her numerous sons-in-law are welcomed into the family, while her daughters-in-law are treated like nameless drudges. If she has sons-in-law, she presumably has daughters.
We only meet her sons, and I don’t think any daughters are explicitly named as daughters, but she refers to a list of family members including Jason, Grame, Tracie, Shirl, Daff, Dreen, Nev, Trev, Kev, Wane, Sharleen, Darron, Karen, Reet and Shawn. Some of them may be daughters.
“Woad was certainly used by the Scottish clans, just not as tattooing material.”
This is very technically true but a bit misleading.
Note for Americans and other aliens: Braveheart is not a reliable historical source.
The ancient Britons, according to Caesar, coloured themselves blue. No idea on whether this was paint or tattooing, but from context they did it before battle, so it probably wasn’t tattooing but some sort of temporary paint or dye.
They weren’t Picts; Caesar never met a Pict. He only reached what is now southern England. The Picts lived in what is now Scotland.
Woad is a cloth dye and a paint. It doesn’t work well as a body paint or a tattoo ink.
The Picts were the “picti”, the painted people, according to a much later Roman source (3rd century). They lived in what is now Scotland. They may have been painted, or tattooed, or both, or neither.
The “Scottish clans” don’t really date back much before 1200 or so. I’m sure they used woad as a dye for clothing; so did everyone in Europe and Western Asia.
@15 – Sources and Myth
You are correct in your analysis but it brings up a broader problem in some of our discussions.
When we try to ground Pratchett in Roundworld reality, we confuse ‘facts’ with inspiration. Pratchett didn’t care how the Picts got blue, I suspect he just liked the name ‘pictsie’ to distinguish it from ‘pixie’ and went with blue tattoos as a nod to the original source. Trying to nail it down is like Miss Level trying to determine what kind of frog to put in the cauldron to make the spell work.
@14 – Tracie, Shirl, Daff, Dreen, Sharleen, and Karen – daughters, no doubt. No mention of them having any witching potential, though, as I recall. Nanny Ogg and Granny Weatherwax were concerned with recruiting a replacement for Magrat from the local female population at large and didn’t seem to think of drafting an Ogg daughter.
And yes, daughters-in-law are treated like skivvies.
@16 – Additionally, it’s doubtful that the Picts sounded like Billy Connolly, as Pratchett’s pictsies do.
@16
I think there’s also an element of Smurfs involved in the creation of the Feegles. A bunch of little blue men with only one woman among the lot of them?
@18 – The clans and Keldas definitely have a Smurfy feel about them when it comes to clan organization.
Nanny Ogg and Granny Weatherwax were concerned with recruiting a replacement for Magrat from the local female population at large and didn’t seem to think of drafting an Ogg daughter
Good point.
Are there in fact any cases we know about of a witch having a witch as a daughter? I certainly can’t think of any cases of a witch handing on her practice to her daughter. They generally seem to pick an unrelated smart girl as an apprentice.
My headcanon is that Nanny Ogg’s daughters tend not to hang around locally, much as they love their old mum.
@21 That makes sense, imagine growing up magical in Lancre, with Granny, Nanny, and Her Majesty Magrat. You’d be on the first cart out of there as soon as you could.
Witches and witchfinders.
Prior to Miss Tick, ISTM that new witches started by being noticed by another witch who took them under their wing (or cloak) as Granny Weatherwax did for Eskarina.
Witches are known to have descendants that are witches but they leave home to apprentice under another witch. The most famous family was Alison Weatherwax and her granddaughters, the sisters Esmerelda and Lily/Lilith. But Granny Weatherwax was not trained by her or by her mother Violet; she apprenticed under Nanny Gripes. And when she talks about Lilith, it seems like having two witches in a family is not unknown.
This brings up two thoughts. As far as Granny Weatherwax’s character, keep in mind that she wanted to be bad and resents Lilith for making her be good.
Also, witchfinders are a concept that Pratchett liked in Good Omens and adopted for Discworld.
From Emmett’s writeup: “while the most famous (just by virtue of how broadly he’s known) wizard is a coward who wants out of every dangerous situation.”
To whom does this refer? I had assumed Ridcully would be the most famous wizard just by being the head of the university. But “coward” strongly indicates Rincewind – is he well-known? For inadvertently saving the world, perhaps?
24: yes, there are problems with both halves of
In this era, the most famous witch is maybe one of the most purely good people on the Disc, while the most famous (just by virtue of how broadly he’s known) wizard is a coward who wants out of every dangerous situation.
First, yes, Granny Weatherwax is definitely famous but purely good? Granny Weatherwax is purely good? I think she’s a lot more complicated and interesting than that.
And second, I’m not sure that Rincewind is particularly well-known. He’s last seen living in obscurity as the Assistant Librarian. He never meets anyone who has heard of him before in any of the books; his own Archchancellor is only vaguely aware of his existence. (Contrast actual celebrities, like Cohen the Barbarian, Granny, and Captain Carrot).
Rincewind, Witches, and Wizards
I agree about Rincewind. He isn’t famous at all. He’s Pratchett’s reluctant explorer. None of the wizards, save Ridcully are well known outside of UU.
I’ve already spoken of Weatherwax’s being good, but the parallels between witches and wizards is interesting. Both have the mindset of “got my hat, got my staff/broomstick, let’s go” but wizards charge in without thinking while witches first observe and try to understand.
To bring it back to Rincewind, he is the witchiest of the wizards while Tiffany is the most wizardly of the witches.
Re: Rincewind
He’s the only wizard to be known to people on the Sto Plains, the Counterweight Continent, Fourecks, Krull, and assorted smaller islands.
@26 Why do you say Tiffany is the most wizardly of witches?
Tiffany is an exception, as she is the granddaughter of Granny Aching, who is a witch as established in this book. Wizardry can be inherited – there’s discussion of this elsewhere, as well as in Sourcery, which is 7th sns of 7th sons. Arguably Esk is a more wizardly witch than Tiffany.
@28 @29 – I was thinking about actions rather than genetics. Unlike trained witches, Tiffany tends to act first and plan later. There is no sense of the careful observation and planning of, say, Eskarina.