Jingo

1

“By jingo!” is an archaic, jocular oath, of obscure origin, used in Britain in the 18th and 19th centuries. The word — with derived forms such as ‘jingoism’ and ‘jingoistic’ — became associated with aggressive, militaristic nationalism as a result of a popular song dating from the Turko-Russian war of 1877-78, which began:

Interestingly (in the light of the circumstances of this particular war), it is also the name of a warlike Japanese empress of the 2nd/3rd centuries, credited by legend with the power of controlling the tides.

2

Fishing rights have been a frequent cause of dispute between the UK and neighbours, most dramatically in the ‘Cod Wars’ between the UK and Iceland (1958, 1973, 1975), in which ships from the two countries sabotaged each other’s nets.

3

In the 1963 comedy Mouse on the Moon, the Duchy of Grand Fenwick competes with the USA and USSR to put the first human on the moon. The Fenwick rocket gets there first, but someone points out that this doesn’t matter — the glory will go to whoever gets home first. The Americans and Russians quickly make their excuses and leave, pausing only to enter the wrong capsules before sorting themselves out.

4

London’s Hyde Park Corner has a very similar tradition.

5

One of Christopher Columbus’ ships was named the Pinta. A UK milk-marketing slogan from the 1980s exhorted people to ‘Drinka pinta milka day’.

6

The English word “assassins” was originally used to denote a group of fanatical Ismailis (a Shi’ite Muslim sect) who, between 1094 and 1273, worked for the creation of a new Fatimid caliphate, murdering prominent individuals. They murdered prominent individuals; hence, “assassin” in English came to mean a politically motivated murderer.

The name derives from the Arabic “hashashin” — Marco Polo and other European chroniclers claimed that the Assassins used hashish to stimulate their fearless acts. For example, Brewer writes:

“Assassins. A band of Carmathians, collected by Hassa, subah of Nishapour, called the Old Man of the Mountains, because he made Mount Lebanon his stronghold. This band was the terror of the world for two centuries, when it was put down by Sultan Bibaris. The assassins indulged in haschisch (bang), an intoxicating drink, and from this liquor received their name.”

For more information, see also the Hawkwind song ‘Hassan I Sabbah’ on their album Quark, Strangeness and Charm.

7

The name D’regs is not only a pun on ‘dregs’, but also refers to the Tuaregs, a nomadic Berber tribe in North Africa. The Tuaregs are also the desert marauders who attack Fort Zinderneuf in the movie Beau Geste (based on the book by P. C. Wren).

8

“Johnny Foreigner” is a generic, disparaging term used by Britons of — well, foreigners. During the First World War, the more specific term “Johnny Turk” appeared.

9

In the latter part of the 19th century, the phrase “gunboat diplomacy” was coined to describe this British method of negotiating with uppity colonials. The gunboat in question would not normally be expected to do anything, merely to “show the flag” as a reminder that, however vulnerable it might appear on land, Britannia still Ruled the Waves, and could make life very difficult for anyone who got too obstreperous.

The Mary-Jane is a reference to Henry VIII’s flagship, the Mary Rose, which (most embarrassingly) sank, in calm seas, immediately after being launched from Portsmouth in 1545. The ship was recovered in the 1980s, and is now a tourist attraction.

10

Theodore Roosevelt famously summarised his foreign policy as “Speak softly, and carry a big stick.”

11

This echoes a famous line from Stanley Kubrick’s 1964 movie Dr Strangelove, which has President Merkin Muffley (Peter Sellers) saying: “Gentlemen, you can’t fight in here! This is the War Room.”

12

A character in Dickens’ Oliver Twist is called the Artful Dodger.

13

Carrot has formed Ankh-Morpork’s first scout troop. This salute parodies the traditional (but now discontinued) Cub Scout exchange “Dyb dyb dyb.” “Dob dob dob.”. The ‘dyb’ in the challenge supposedly stands for “do your best”, the ‘dob’ in the scouts’ response for “do our best”.

14

This sounds very much like the story of young Tom the chimney sweep’s transformation, told in moralistic Victorian children’s tale The Water Babies, written in 1863 by Charles Kingsley.

15

Press-ganging was the 18th-century equivalent of conscription. A ship’s captain, finding himself short-handed while in a home port, would send a gang of his men round the port, enlisting anyone they could find who looked like a sailor. Often this involved simply picking up drunks, but it was not unheard-of for men to be taken by force.

16

In Arabic, “al” is the definite article, and it is joined to the word that it defines.

17

The idea of treating zero as a number was one of several major contributions that Western mathematics adopted from the Arabs.

18

A long-running series of British commercials for a certain brand of bread emphasised the Yorkshire origins of the manufacturer. This slogan is in a parody of a Yorkshire accent, presumably for similar reasons.

19

Reg Shoe first appeared in Reaper Man as the founder of the Campaign for Dead Rights (slogans included “Undead, yes! Unperson, no!”). Possibly Vimes has forgotten that he personally ordered zombies to be recruited into the Watch, towards the end of Feet of Clay.

20

Swires was the name of the gnome Rincewind and Twoflower encountered in The Light Fantastic. Given that gnome lives are described in that book as ‘nasty, brutish and short’, it seems unlikely that this is the same gnome. Possibly a relative, though.

21

A popular song from the Second World War had the lyric:

The phrase was also used as the title of a stage play (filmed in 1960) by Willis Hall, describing the plight and fate of a squad of British soldiers in Burma.

22

In the Good Old Days™, besieging armies would sometimes hurl the rotting corpses of dead animals over the city walls by catapult, with the aim of spreading disease and making the city uninhabitable. So in a sense, a dead dog could be a siege weapon…

23

Leshp bears a resemblance to H. P. Lovecraft’s similarly strange-sounding creation, R’lyeh — an ancient, now submerged island in the Pacific, inhabited by alien Things with strange architecture, which rises at very long intervals and sends people mad all over the world. For full details, see Lovecraft’s The Call of Cthulhu.

24

“It’ll all be over by Christmas” was said of the First World War by armchair strategists, in August 1914. Ironically, the phrase has become a popular reassurance: more recently, President Clinton promised the American public in 1996 that US troops in Bosnia would be “home for Christmas”.

25

Ahmed’s catchphrase is borrowed from Signior So-So, a comic Italian character in the famous wartime radio series It’s That Man Again (ITMA).

26

The original Fanny Adams was an eight-year-old girl in Alton, Hampshire, whose dismembered body was discovered in 1867. About the same time, tinned mutton was first introduced in the Royal Navy, and the sailors — not noted for their sensitivity — took to calling the (rather disgusting) meat “Sweet Fanny Adams”. Hence the term came to mean something worthless, and finally to mean “nothing at all”.

27

Oxford University has a ceremony called the Encaenia, which also involves lots of old men in silly costumes and a procession ending in the Sheldonian Theatre.

28

The Pavlovian experiment in our world involved ringing a bell before and during the feeding of a group of dogs. After a while the dogs learned to associate the ringing of the bell with food. A part of them was essentially programmed to think that the bell was the same thing as food.

29

Refers to the fact that, for many years, surgeons used to double as barbers, or vice versa.

30

The Keystone Cops were a squad of frantically bumbling comedy policemen from the silent movie era.

31

The “lone gunman” theory is still the official explanation of John F. Kennedy’s assassination, despite four decades of frenzied speculation. Conspiracy theorists like to claim that Someone, Somewhere is covering up the truth, in much the same way as Vimes and Vetinari are conspiring to cover it up here.

32

In 1363, in England, Edward III — then in the early stages of the Hundred Years’ War with France — ordered that all men should practise archery on Sundays and holidays; this law remained technically in force for some time after the longbow was effectively obsolete as a weapon of war.

33

In our world, an early attempt at an internal combustion engine used pellets of gunpowder, stuck to a strip of paper (rather like the roll of caps for a cap pistol). I understand that the attempt was just as successful as Leonard’s.

34

Burnt umber is a dark, cool-toned brown colour. Umber is an earth pigment containing manganese and iron oxides, used in paints, pastels and pencils. The name comes from Umbria, the region where it was originally mined and adopted as a pigment for art.

35

The live film of JFK’s assassination, allegedly, shows similar inconsistencies with the official account.

36

The official account of JFK’s assassination describes how a bullet moved in some very strange ways through his body. Conspiracy theorists disparage this as the “magic bullet theory”.

37

In our world there is a magazine Guns And Ammo; this appears to be the Discworld equivalent.

38

When the First World War broke out, Britons were much comforted by the fact that the supposedly unstoppable “steamroller” of the Russian army was on their side. Rumours spread that Russian troops were landing in Scotland to reinforce the British army, and these troops could be recognised by the snow on their boots. Ever since, the story has been a standard joke about the gullibility of people in wartime.

39

Legend tells of Sweeney Todd, a barber in Fleet Street, London, who would rob and kill (not necessarily in that order) solitary customers, disposing of their bodies via a meat-pie shop next door. The story is celebrated in a popular Victorian melodrama, in a 1936 film, in a musical by Stephen Sondheim (1979), and in rhyming slang (“Sweeney Todd” = “Flying Squad”, an elite unit of the Metropolitan Police).

The story was the most successful of a spate of such shockers dating from the early 19th century. Sawney Bean, the Man-Eater of Midlothian was supposedly based on a real 13th-century Scottish legal case; also published about this time were two French versions, both set in Paris. All of these were claimed to be based on true stories — but then, this pretence was standard practice for novelists at the time. The “original” version of Sweeney Todd was written by Edward Lloyd under the title of The String of Pearls, published around 1840.

40

Lee Harvey Oswald shot Kennedy from the Texas Schools Book Depository, on the fifth floor.

41

Mr Potato Head is a child’s toy based on putting facial features on a potato. Nowadays, Mr Potato Head, produced by Hasbro Inc, has a plastic body and has achieved great fame by starring in the Toy Story films.

42

In later editions of the book, this sentence was altered to ‘Snowy can barely read and write’ — presumably for consistency with the Clue about the notebook.

43

The Riot Act was an old British law that allowed the authorities to use deadly force to break up crowds who were gathered for subversive purposes, such as trade unionists or Chartists. It was an unusual law in that it had to be read out to the crowd before it came into force — hence the significance of Detritus’ attempt to read it — and the crowd was then supposed to be given a reasonable time to disperse. However, it was wide open to abuse, and was associated with some very nasty incidents, such as the Peterloo Massacre in 1818. It was not finally abolished in the UK until the mid-20th century, when the government decided that it would not be an acceptable way to deal with the regular riots then taking place in Northern Ireland.

44

Named after the most famous archer of English mythology: Robin of Locksley, AKA Robin Hood.

In our world, there really do exist ‘reflex bows’: they are a type of bow that will curve away from the archer when unstrung.

45

“Stoolie” is sometimes an abbreviation for “stoolpigeon”, a police informant. Of course, a stool is also something you might find in an Ankh-Morpork street.

46

It has been pointed out — and I feel bound to inflict the thought on others — that Stoolie is technically a grassy gnoll. (And if that doesn’t mean anything to you in the context of political assassinations — be thankful.)

47

A reference to the shampoo ‘Wash and Go’, a trademark of Vidal Sassoon.

48

Another reference to the shampoo ‘Wash and Go’, a trademark of Vidal Sassoon.

49

According to legend, Dis is also the name of a city in Hell — particularly appropriate to a demon-powered organiser.

50

One of the most intractable disputes in the early Christian church was over the nature of Christ — to what extent he was God or man. In 325, the Council of Nicea tried to settle the question with the Nicean Creed, but the dispute immediately re-emerged over a single word of the creed: one school said that it was “homoousios” (of one substance), the other that it should be “homoiousios” (of similar substance). The difference in the words is a single iota — the smallest letter in the Greek alphabet — and the schism (between Eastern and Western churches) continues to this day.

51

“Shaving” is a method of marking cards by trimming a very, very thin slice from one edge, perceptible only if you know what to look for.

52

Caliph was the title of the leader of the Muslim world, from the death of the Prophet in 632 onward; although the title has been divided and weakened since the 10th century, it was only officially abolished by the newly-formed Republic of Turkey as recently as 1924.

53

Carl Philipp Gottfried von Clausewitz (1780–1831), a Prussian general who fought against Napoleon, wrote a standard textbook On War (Vom Kriege, first published 1833), in which he said that “war is simply a continuation of political intercourse, with the addition of other means”. If you want to understand Lord Rust’s mindset as expressed by someone with a working brain, read Clausewitz.

54

When Jingo was being written, there was much speculation about whether “mad cow disease” had first been transmitted from sheep to cattle, and whether it could be transmitted from cattle to humans. Both ideas are now widely accepted.

55

Many British army regiments have, or had, nicknames of this sort, based either on some historical event or on some idiosyncrasy of their uniforms. The marching song is a famous old tongue-twister: “I’m not a pheasant plucker, I’m a pheasant plucker’s mate/ I’m only plucking pheasants since the pheasant plucker’s late.” (Another variant substitutes “son/come” for “mate/late”.)

56

Apparently there are “well-documented” cases of this sort of miraculous escape, but it has become a much-parodied staple of Boys’ Own-style fiction. One well-known occurrence comes at the very end of the Blackadder III television series. Another can be found in the 1975 movie The Man Who Would Be King, starring Sean Connery and Michael Caine.

57

Medieval Arab legend identifies the source of the Nile as being in “the Mountains of the Moon”.

58

A direct quote from Tennyson’s poem Sir Galahad:

59

There’s a pub in Bath called “The Saracen’s Head”, which supposedly has a similarly colourful history.

60

‘Veni vidi vici’ (‘I came, I saw, I conquered’) is a quotation attributed to Julius Caesar, one of several great generals who contributed to the composite figure of Tacticus.

There are similarities between Tacticus’ book, as expounded later in Jingo, and The Art of War by the Chinese general Sun Tzu.

61

General Patton, addressing his troops in 1942: “No bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making the other poor dumb bastard die for his country.”

62

From the beginning of every episode of the television series Mission: Impossible.

63

Historically, the tusk of the narwhal has sometimes been taken for that of a unicorn.

64

Das Boot (The Boat) was an epic German film, made by Wolfgang Petersen in 1981, telling the story of a German submarine in 1941.

65

Said of the neutron bomb, which delivers a very heavy dose of radiation but relatively small explosive power or fallout. Mind you, it could fairly be said of most crossbows.

66

An inconsistency alert: earlier Carrot told Vimes that Blind Hugh had ‘passed away last month’.

67

The first working submarine was a one-man, hand-propelled vessel called the Turtle, designed to use an auger to attach explosive charges to the hulls of enemy ships, the enemy in this case being the British during the American War of Independence. The Turtle attacked HMS Eagle in New York Harbor on 6 September 1776, but the hull was lined with copper and the screw failed to pierce it.

68

This has several parallels in our own world, most notably the Sioux, who adopted that name from their neighbours and habitual enemies the Ojibwa.

69

The description matches St Elmo’s Fire, a corona discharge of static electricity sometimes seen on highly exposed surfaces (such as ships) during thunderstorms. In our world, it’s supposed to be a good omen. For more on St Ungulant, see Small Gods.

70

According to the Bible, the prophet Jonah did much the same (Jonah 1:17).

71

The Israelites, while fleeing from Egypt, were sustained by a divinely provided rain of bread (Exodus 16:4).

72

Another Roman saying, coined by Terence (c.190–159 BC): “Fortune aids the brave.”

73

For the story of Detritus’ helmet, read Men at Arms.

74

The original proverb is “Give a man a fish and he can eat for a day, teach him to fish and he can eat for the rest of his life.”

75

One of the many adventures of Sinbad, in The Thousand and One Nights.

76

From the 4th/5th century Roman writer Vegetius: “Qui desiderat pacem, praeparet bellum” — “Let him who desires peace, prepare for war.”

77

The name ‘Hersheba’ (a pun on ‘Hershey Bar’ / ‘Beersheba’) is something that Terry came up with in 1992 on a.f.p., when he was more or less thinking out loud about the many people who didn’t get the Djelibeybi reference (a pun on the sweets called ‘Jelly Babies’).

78

The troop of entertainers that our heroes become is modelled on the old time Music-Hall team of Wilson, Kepple and Betty, whose act included ‘The Sand Dance’. There’s also a nice resonance of names with the Paul Simon song ‘Call Me Al’:

79

Since getting into his flowing white robes, Carrot appears to be fast turning into Lawrence of Arabia.

80

Vetinari’s patter seems to be based on that of the fez-wearing British comedian Tommy Cooper.

81

This is, as Vetinari later translates, almost-Arabic for “where the sun shines not”.

82

One of the best-known (in the west, at least) works of Arabic literature is The Thousand and One Nights. Several classics of children’s literature — including Aladdin and Sinbad the Sailor — appear in this collection. Nobby’s version would appear to be rather more PG-rated.

83

The joke as adapted by thee goode folkes of alt.fan.pratchett goes like this:

This Klatchian walked into a pub carrying a small piano. He puts in on the bar and has a few drinks. When it comes time to pay up he says to the publican, “I bet you double or nothing I can show you the most amazing thing you ever saw.”

“Okay, but I warn you, I’ve seen some weird stuff.”

The Klatchian takes out a tiny stool, which he sits in front of the piano. He then reaches into his robes and pulls out a box, about a foot long, with tiny air-holes in it. He takes off the lid and inside is a tiny man, fast asleep. As the lid opens he wakes up. Instantly he jumps to the piano and plays a perfect rendition of ‘The Shades of Ankh-Morpork’! Then, as everyone in the bar is clapping, he jumps back into the box and closes the lid.

“Wow!” The publican says, and wipes the slate clean. “If I give you another drink, could you do it again?” The Klatchian agrees. This time the little man plays the Hedgehog song, to thunderous applause.

“I gotta ask, where did you get that?”

“Well, a few months ago I was travelling across the deserts of Klatch, when I suddenly came across a glass bottle. I picked it up and rubbed it and lo and behold, out popped a Genie. For some reason it was holding a curved bone to his ear and talking to it.”

“‘Genie,’ I said to him, ‘I have freed you, and in return I ask only three wishes.’”

“‘Huh?’ The genie said, looking at me for the first time. ‘Oh, OK, three, whatever.’ He then started talking to the bone again.”

“‘Genie, I would like a million bucks!’ I said to him.”

“Did you get it?”

“Not exactly. The genie kept talking to the bone and he waved one of his hands. Instantly, I was surrounded by a million ducks. Then they flew away.”

“What was your second wish?”

“I said to him: ‘I want to be the ruler the world!’ the Genie was still talking to his bone, but he waved his free hand and a piece of wood appeared, with inches marked on it.”

“Oh, a ruler. It sounds like the genie wasn’t paying much attention. Did you get your third wish?”

“Let me put it like this: do you really think I asked for a twelve-inch pianist?”

84

Another Tommy Cooper reference.

85

The most famous example in our world is Alexandria, built by Alexander the Great.

86

A reference to Shelley’s sonnet Ozymandias.

Ozymandias was the Greek name for Ramses the Second. Percy Bysshe Shelley’s poem Ozymandias is famous, and because it is short here it is in full:

87

British officers in the First World War, when encouraging their men to go over the top, would quip that “We’ll be eating tea and cakes in Berlin at teatime.” (Captain Blackadder observed irritably that “Everyone wants to eat out as soon as they get there”.)

88

See Pyramids for the Discworld convention on the naming of camels.

89

In 1914, the Kaiser apparently made a similar observation of the British Expeditionary Force sent to oppose the German advance through Belgium. The soldiers later proudly adopted the name ‘Old Contemptibles’.

90

Judging from the name, this could be one of Leonard’s creations — but actually we’ve learned in Soul Music that this particular invention was the work of Ponder Stibbons at Unseen University.

91

There’s a famous but true story of how, on Christmas Day 1914, troops from British and German units came out of the trenches and played football in No-Man’s Land.

92

This speech is very similar to the end of the film Lawrence of Arabia (David Lean, 1962). Prince Feisal tells Lawrence: “There’s nothing further here, for a warrior. We drive bargains, old men’s work. Young men makes wars and the virtues of war are the virtues of young men: courage and hope for the future. Old men make the peace and the vices of peace are the vices of old men: mistrust and caution.”

93

Early in the film Lawrence of Arabia, Lawrence is sitting in an office drawing maps and talking to his compatriot about the Bedouin attacking the Turks. Another man joins them and Lawrence lights a cigarette, putting the match out with his fingers. The newcomer tries the same trick, but drops the match with a shout of “it hurts.” To which Lawrence replies: “The trick, William Potter, is not minding that it hurts.”

94

‘Shoeless’ Joe Jackson was the star player of the Chicago White Sox during the 1919 World Series. When it emerged that he had (allegedly) accepted bribes to throw the series, the fans’ collective reaction was of shocked incredulity: the line “Say it ain’t so, Joe!” became the canonical form of begging someone to deny an allegation that is too shocking to accept, but too convincing to disbelieve.

95

At the end of Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities, Sydney Carton, good-natured layabout and occasional drunk, goes to the guillotine in the place of his beloved’s beloved.

The book’s famous last line is not a direct quote from Sydney (since he’s already dead by then), but rather what the narrator feels he might have said: “If he had given any utterance to his [thoughts], and they were prophetic, they would have been these: ‘[…] It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known.’”.