elements that would affront the refined ear
And it was only gradual y that the singers became aware of the discord
Around the corner, slipping and sliding on the ice, came another band of singers
Some people march to a different drummer. The drummer in question here must
have been trained elsewhere, possibly by a different species on another planet
In front of the group was a legless man on a smal wheeled trol ey, who was singing
at the top of his voice and banging two saucepans together. His name was Arnold
Sideways. Pushing him along was Coffin Henry, whose croaking progress through an
entirely different song was punctuated by bouts of off-the-beat coughing. He was
accompanied by a perfectly ordinary-looking man in torn, dirty and yet expensive
clothing, whose pleasant tenor voice was drowned out by the quacking of a duck on
his head. He answered to the name of Duck Man, although he never seemed to
understand why, or why he was always surrounded by people who seemed to see
ducks where no ducks could be. And final y, being towed along by a smal grey dog on
a string, was Foul Ole Ron, general y regarded in AnkhMorpork as the deranged
beggars’ deranged beggar. He was probably incapable of singing, but at least he was
attempting to swear in time to the beat, or beats
The wassailers stopped and watched them in horror
Neither party noticed, as the beggars oozed and ambled up the street, that little
smears of black and grey were spiral ing out of drains and squeezing out from under
tiles and buzzing off into the night. People have always had the urge to sing and clang
things at the dark stub of the year, when al sorts of psychic nastiness has taken
advantage of the long grey days and the deep shadows to lurk and breed. Lately
people ha
taken to singing harmoniously, which rather lost the effect. Those who real y
understood just clanged something and shouted
The beggars were not in fact this wel versed in folkloric practice. They were just
making a din in the wel founded hope that people would give them money to stop
It was just possible to make out a consensus song in there somewhere
‘Hogswatch is coming
The pig is getting fat
Please put a dol ar in the old man’s ha
If you ain’t got a dol ar a penny wil do-
‘And if you ain’t got a penny,’ Foul Ole Ron yodel ed, solo, ‘then – fghfgh yffg
mftnfmf…
The Duck Man had, with great presence of mind, damped a hand over Ron’s mouth
‘So sorry about this,’ he said, ‘but this time I’d like people not to slam their doors on
us. And it doesn’t scan, anyway.
The nearby doors slammed regardless. The other wassailers fled hastily to a more
salubrious location. Goodwil to al men was a phrase coined by someone who hadn’t
met Foul Ole Ron
The beggars stopped singing, except for Arnold Sideways, who tended to live in his
own smal world
‘ -nobody knows how good we can live, on boots three times a day…
Then the change in the air penetrated even his consciousness
Snow thumped off the trees as a contrary wind brushed them. There was a whirl of
flakes and it was just possible, since the beggars did not always have their mental
compasses pointing due Real, that they heard a brief snatch of conversation
‘It just ain’t that simple, master, that’s al I’m saying-
IT IS BETTER TO GIVE THAN TO RECEIVE, ALBERT
‘No, master, it’s just a lot more expensive. You can’t just go around-
Things rained down on the snow
The beggars looked at them. Arnold Sideways careful y picked up a sugar pig and bit
its nose off. Foul Ole Ron peered suspiciously into a cracker that had bounced off his
hat, and then shook it against his ear
The Duck Man opened a bag of sweets
‘Ah, humbugs?’ he said
Coffin Henry unlooped a string of sausages from around his neck
‘Buggrit?’ said Foul Ole Ron
‘It’s a cracker,’ said the dog, scratching its ear. ‘You pul it.
Ron waved the cracker aimlessly by one end
‘Oh, give it here,’ said the dog, and gripped the other end in its teeth
‘My word,’ said the Duck Man, fishing in a snowdrift. ‘Here’s a whole roast pig! And a
big dish of roast potatoes, miraculously uncracked”
And… look… isn’t this caviar in the jar? Asparagus! Potted shrimp! My goodness!
What were we going to have for Hogswatch dinner, Arnold?
‘Old boots,’ said Arnold. He opened a fal en box of cigars and licked them
‘Just old boots?
‘Oh, no. Stuffed with mud, and with roast mud. ‘s good mud, too. I bin saving it up.
‘Now we can have a merry feast of goose!
‘Al right. Can we stuff it with old boots?
There was a pop from the direction of the cracker. They heard Foul Ole Ron’s
thinkingbrain dog growl
‘No, no, no, you put the hat on your head and you read the hum’rous mottar.
‘Mil ennium hand and shrimp?’ said Ron, passing the scrap of paper to the Duck
Man. The Duck Man was regarded as the intel ectual of the group
He peered at the motto
‘Ah, yes, let’s see now… It says “‘Help Help Help Ive Fal en in the Crakker Machine I
Cant Keep Runin on this Rol er Please Get me Ou-“.’ He turned the paper over a few
times. ‘That appears to be it, except for the stains.
‘Always the same ole mottars,’ said the dog. ‘Someone slap Ron on the back, wil
you? If he laughs any more he’l – oh, he has. Oh wel , nothing new about that.
The beggars spent a few more minutes pickin
up hams, jars and bottles that had settled on the snow. They packed them around
Arnold on his trol ey and set off down the street
‘How come we got al this?
‘ ‘s Hogswatch, right?
‘Yeah, but who hung up their stocking?
‘I don’t think we’ve got any, have we?
‘I hung up an old boot.
‘Does that count?
‘Dunno. Ron ate it.
I’m waiting for the Hogfather, thought Ponder Stibbons. I’m in the dark waiting for the
Hogfather. Me. A believer in Natural Philosophy. I can find the square root of 27.4 in
my head.20 I shouldn’t be doing this
It’s not as if I’ve hung a stocking up. There’d be some point if..
He sat rigid for a moment, and then pul ed off his pointy sandal and rol ed down a
sock. It helped if you thought of it as the scientific testing of an interesting hypothesis
From out of the darkness Ridcul y said, ‘How long, do you think?
‘It’s general y believed that al deliveries are completed wel before midnight,’ said
Ponder, and tugged hard
‘Are you al right, Mr Stibbons?
‘Fine. sir. Fine. Er… do you happen to have a drawing pin about you? Or a smal nail,
perhaps?
‘I don’t believe so.
‘Oh, it’s al right. I’ve found a penknife.
After a while Ridcul y heard a faint scratching noise in the dark
‘How do you spel “electricity”, sir?
Ridcul y thought for a while. ‘You know, I don’t think I ever do.
There was silence again, and then a clang. The Librarian grunted in his sleep
‘What are you doing?
‘I just knocked over the coal shovel.
‘Why are you feeling around on the mantelpiece?
‘Oh, just… you know, just… just looking. A little… experiment. After al , you never
know.
‘You never know what?
‘Just… never know, you know.
‘ Sometimes you know,’ said Ridcul y. ‘I think I know quite a lot that I didn’t used to
know. It’s amazing what you do end up knowing, I sometimes think. I often wonder
what new stuff I’l know.
‘Wel , you never know.
‘That’s a fact.
High over the city Albert turned to Death, who seemed to be trying to avoid his gaze
‘You didn’t get that stuff out of the sack! Not cigars and peaches in brandy and grub
with fancy foreign names!
YES, IT CAME OUT OF THE SACK
Albert gave him a suspicious look
‘But you put it in the sack in the first place, didn’t you?
NO
‘You did, didn’t you?’ Albert stated
NO
‘You put al those things in the sack.
NO
20 He’d have to admit that the answer would be ‘five and a bit’, but at least he could come up with it.
‘You got them from somewhere and put them in the sack.
NO
‘You did put them in the sack, didn’t you?
NO
‘You put them in the sack.
YES
‘I knew you put them in the sack. Where did you get them?
THEY WERE JUST LYING AROUND
‘Whole roast pig does not, in my experience, just lie around.
NO ONE SEEMED TO BE USING THEM, ALBERT