Read Folklore of Discworld for Free Online

tracts. Clearly, this is all made up and the story has nothing to do with any ‘Earthly’ deity.
Valkyries
    Valkyries form a group of very specialized goddesses honoured by Barbarian Heroes; their name means ‘Choosers of the Slain’. They are found both on the Discworld and in the Nordic and Germanic myths of Earth, where they serve Odin the God of War (also known as Wotan or Woden). They became even better known through a nineteenth-century opera by the German composer Wagner. They are tall, powerfully built women, wearing chain mail and horned helmets, and riding magnificent airborne horses. Since Wagner’s time, a good singing voice is also a requirement for the job, for they ride to a rousing chorus of ‘Hi-jo-to! Ho! Hi-jo-to! Ho!’
    The task of a Valkyrie is to hover over battlefields where her chosen Hero is fighting, bringing him good luck for as long as the God of War decrees. Then, when the fated time comes for the Hero to be killed, she swoops down and carries his soul to Odin’s Valhalla, ‘Hall of the Slain’ – or to its Discworld equivalent, the Halls of Blind Io – where he will enjoy a blissful afterlife of quaffing mead and feasting on roast boar. The Valkyries will be on hand to make sure the drinking horns are kept filled. And there is other fun to be had too, as the medieval Icelandic writer Snorri Sturluson explained in his account of heathen Nordic mythology, The Edda , in the 1220s:
    ‘What sport is there for the Chosen Warriors when they aren’t drinking?’ asked Gangleri the Wanderer.
    The High One said: ‘Every day, when they have dressed they put on their armour and go out into the open country and have a battle, and they kill one another, every one of them. That is their sport. And when the time for the evening meal comes round, they ride back home to Valhalla and sit down together to drink again.’
    It’s a magnificent option, an offer one can’t refuse. But sometimes, sometimes – well, maybe only once in all the centuries of the Discworld, and never on Earth – there come Heroes like Cohen the Barbarian and his Silver Horde, who do refuse it, as is told in The Last Hero . As their confederate Mr Saveloy had once pointed out (in Interesting Times ), it does sound like spending forever in a room full of sports masters. And it involves hobnobbing with gods, which isn’t to everyone’s taste. Instead, Cohen and the Horde choose to ride away to the stars.
D EMONS OF THE N ETHER P IT
    Demons have existed on the Discworld for as long as the gods, whom in many ways they closely resemble. There are millions of them. They find it very galling that those stuck-up bastards in Dunmanifestin refuse to take them seriously.
    The demons live in a spacious dimension which is more or less on the same space-time continuum as that of humans, and which they have tastefully decorated in shades of flame and keep heated to roasting point, as tradition requires. It is arranged in eight circles, surrounding a bubbling lake of lava-substitute, from which rise the majestic towers of Pandemonium, the Demon City. Demonic society is strongly hierarchical, murderously competitive, and devoted to tradition. Its higher ranks have added impressive titles to theirsonorously supernatural names – Lord Astfgl, Duke Vassenego, Earl Beelzemoth, Duke Drazometh the Putrid. This, incidentally, is equally true on Earth, where the famous grimoire known as the Lemegeton , attributed to King Solomon, is intensely class-conscious. It lists seventy-six aristocratic demons: eighteen kings, twenty-six dukes, fifteen marquises, five earls and twelve presidents, besides various minor groups.
    Demons take a lively interest in observing human affairs, partly out of curiosity and partly because they do so much admire human ingenuity when it comes to devising ways of hurting one another. Like the gods, they can peer across multidimensional space, and take note of events and ideas on the Earth as well as on the Disc. This is