Barbarian nursery stories, like their sagas, laud the hero. They show how luck is associated with particular attitudes, especially a pure heart that does not seek immediate or ultimate reward.
There is frequently a test of this purity, from helping a poor blind cripple, who turns out to be a god in disguise, to curing or feeding a desperate animal, who comes to your aid later.
The agents in many of these stories are supernatural -out of the order of things, magical and causeless -'people', such as fairies (including fairy queens and fairy godmothers), avatars of the gods, demons, and djinni. People, especially heroes or aspiring heroes (such as Siegfried, but also Aladdin), attain control over these supernatural beings with the assistance of magic rings, named swords, spells, or merely by their own inner nobility. This changes their fortunes, and luck comes to be on their side; they win battles and bouts against long odds, they climb tall mountains, they kill immortal dragons and monsters. No tribal thinker would even dream of stories like these. For them, fortune favours the well-prepared.
Man is forever inventive, and we have stories that counter even the most heroic tales: the Sidh, the seven-foot-tall elves of Lords and ladies and old Irish folklore, the Devil who buys your soul and has you at his mercy even if you repent, the Grand Vizier, James Bond's opponents.
What is interesting in our discussion of stories here is the characters of these anti-heroes. They don't have any. Elves are the High Folk, but they don't have lives of their own; they are simply portrayed as being antithetic to what people, especially heroes, want to do. We don't care about the human aspects of James Bond's iconic enemies: they are always portrayed as being mindlessly cruel, or avid for power without responsibility and without having to overcome obstacles. They are ciphers, they don't have creative personalities, and they don't learn. If they did, one of them would have shot James Bond dead with a simple gun many years ago, after learning what happens to those who put their trust in laser beams and circular saws. They'd remove his watch first, too.
Rincewind would characterise the elves as 'edge fairies'. They don't tell stories to themselves or, rather, they keep telling the same old story.
It is natural to think of stories as resting on language, but the causality probably works the other way round. Gregory Bateson, in his book Mind and the Universe, devotes several chapters to human languages and how we use them to think. But his start on the subject is a beautiful mistake. He starts by looking at an 'outside' view of language, a kind of chemical analogy.
Words, he says, are obviously the atoms of language, phrases and sentences the molecules, atoms in combination. Verbs are reactive atoms, link nouns together, and so on. He discusses paragraphs, chapters, books ... and fiction, that he claims, very persuasively, is the ultimate triumph of human language.
Bateson shows us a scenario where an audience is watching a murder on stage, and nobody runs to phone the police. And then he goes into another mode, addressing his readers directly. He tells them that he felt that he'd done a really good job on the introduction to language, so he rewarded himself with a visit to the Washington Zoo. Almost the first cage inside the gate had two monkeys playing at fighting, and as he watched them, the whole beautiful edifice that he had written turned upside down in his mind. The monkeys had no verbs, no nouns, no paragraphs.
But they understood fiction perfectly.
What does this tell us? Not just that we can rewrite that scene with the boss in our minds. Not even that we can go and see her, and discuss what happened. Its most important implication is that the distinction between fiction and fact sits at the base of language, not at the pinnacle.
Verbs and nouns are the most rarefied of abstractions, not the original raw material. We do not acquire stories through language: we acquire language through stories.
TROUSER LEG OF TIME
In the heat of the night, magic moved on silent feet.
One horizon was red with the setting sun. This world went around a central star. The elves did not know this. If they had done, it would not have bothered them. They never bothered with detail of that kind. The universe had given rise to life in many strange places, but the elves were not interested in that, either.
This world had created lots of life, too. None of it had ever had what the elves considered to be potential. But this time ...
It had iron, too. The elves hated iron. But this time, the rewards were worth the risk. This time ...
One of them signalled. The prey was close at hand. And now they saw it, clustered in the trees around a clearing, dark blobs against the sunset.
The elves assembled. And then, at a pitch so strange that it entered the brain without the need to use the ears, they began to sing.
'Chmmmmph!' said Archchancellor Ridcully, as a heavy body landed on his back and clamped a hand over his mouth, forcing him back down into the long, dewy grass.
'Listen very carefully!' hissed a voice in his ear. 'When you were small, you had a one-eared toy rabbit called Mr Big Pram! On your sixth birthday your brother hit you on the head with a model boat! And when you were twelve ... do the words "jolly lolly" ring a bell?'
'Mmph!'
'Very well. I'm you. There's been one of those temporal things Mister Stibbons is always goin' on about. I'm taking my hand away now and we'll both quietly crawl away without the elves seeing us. Understand?'
'Mmp.'
'Good man.'
Elsewhere in the bushes the Dean whispered into his own ear: 'Under a secret floorboard in your study—'
Ponder whispered to himself: 'I'm sure we both agree that this should not really be happening ...'
In fact the only wizard who did not bother with concealment was Rincewind, who tapped himself on the shoulder and evinced no surprise at seeing himself. In his life he had seen far more unusual things than his own doppelganger.
'Oh, you,' he said.
"fraid so,' he said glumly.
'Was it you that turned up just now to tell me I should hold my breath?'
'Er ... possibly, but I think I've been superseded by me.'
'Oh. Has Ponder Stibbons being talking about quantum again?'
'You got it in one.'
'Another mess up?'
'More or less. It turns out stopping the elves is a really bad idea.'
'Typical. Do we both survive? There's not much room in the office, what with all the coal—'
'Ponder Stibbons says we may end up remembering everything, because of residual quantum infraction, but we'll sort of be the same person.'
'Any big teeth or sharp edges involved?'
'Not so far.'
'Could be worse, then, all things considered.'
In pairs, the wizards assembled as quietly as they could. Apart from Ridcully, who seemed to quite enjoy his own company, they tried not to look at their doppelgangers; it's quite embarrassing being in the company of someone who knows everything about you, even if that person is yourself.
A few feet away, with the suddenness of lightning, a pale circle appeared on the grass.
'Our transport is here, gentlemen,' said Ponder. One of the Deans, who was standing well apart from the other Dean, raised his hand.
'What happens to the ones of us that stay behind?' he said. 'It won't matter,' said Ponder Stibbons.
'They'll vanish the moment we do, and the ones of us who end up in the, er, other trouser leg of time will have the memories of both of us. I think that's right, isn't it?' 'Yes,' said Ponder Stibbons. 'A pretty good summation for the layman. So, gentlemen, are we ready? One of everyone, into the circle now, please.'
Only the Rincewinds did not move. They knew what to expect. 'Depressing, isn't it,' said one of them, watching the fighting. Both Deans had managed to knock one another out of the circle on the very first charge.