THE WEE FREE MEN, also known as the Nac Mac Feegle (and, sometimes, as ‘the defendants’), are a fiercely independent species, organized into numerous interrelated clans. Outsiders sometimes call them gnomes. To humans, they are one of the most feared of the fairy races – indeed, they can put trolls to flight, and even Nanny Ogg’s cat Greebo retires under the furniture at the sight of them. They have shaggy red hair, and are covered all over with blue tattoos and blue paint, in patterns which indicate their clan. They wear kilts or leather loincloths, use feathers, bones or teeth as decorations, and carry swords almost as large as themselves – though they go in for kicking and head-butting too. They are about six inches tall.
Originally, they were denizens of Fairyland, and served its Queen as her wild champion robbers who went raiding on her behalf into every world there is, but all that is over. Why so, is not certain. Some say they were thrown out of Fairyland for being drunk and disorderly, making rude gestures, and using language which would be considered offensive by anybody who could understand it. They themselves say they left in disgust because the Queen was a spiteful tyrant, and ordered them to steal from the poor as well as the rich, ‘But we said it’s no right to steal an ol’ lady’s only pig, or the food frae them as dinnae ha’ enough to eat.’ Whatever the truth of it, they are now out-and-out rebels against any authority whatsoever. Their war-cry is ‘Nac Mac Feegle! The Wee Free Men! Nae king! Nae quin! Nae laird! Nae master! We willna be fooled again!’
They now live in the human territories of the Discworld, but it is hard to say just where they are at any one time. Not only do they stay well hidden, but they often shift from one area to another at high speed, rather like a swarm of locusts, while indulging in their favourite occupations: drinking, stealing, and fighting anything that gets in their way. They get such pleasure from this that they think they’re dead, and gone to heaven, where there’s lovely sunshine (not like the perpetual half-light of Fairyland), good hunting, and plenty of monsters to fight:
An amazing world like this couldn’t be open to just anybody, they say. It must be some kind of a heaven or Valhalla, where brave warriors go when they are dead. So, they reason, they have already been alive somewhere else, and then died and were allowed to come [to the Discworld] because they have been so good. [A Hatful of Sky]
They don’t mourn much for those that actually get killed while fighting on the Disc:
‘Oh, they’ve gone back to the land o’ the livin’. It’s nae as good as this one, but they’ll bide fine and come back before too long. No sense in grievin’.’ [The Wee Free Men]
They do not limit themselves to the Discworld, for, as one of their leaders, Rob Anybody, proudly declares, ‘We’ve been robbin’ an’ runnin’ aroound on all kinds o’ worrlds for a lang time.’ Their running around within a particular world is done normally, with feet (though very, very fast); but their transit from one universe to another is done by magic. They are unwilling to discuss the process, which they call ‘the crawstep’. Those who have seen them actually doing it say they simply thrust out one leg straight ahead of them, wiggle the foot, and are gone.
For many centuries, one of their favourite places was an area of the Earth called Scotland. They were already there in the time of the Ancient Romans, who spoke of them as picti, ‘painted men’; Julius Caesar himself records that the tribes of Northern Britain had ‘designs carved into their faces by iron’, a clear reference to tattooing. Needless to say, they refused to submit to the Empire, conducting such a persistent guerrilla war that the Romans gave up hope of conquering Scotland, and the Wee Free Men remained both wee and free.
Later generations of Scottish humans were well aware of their presence, and called them Pehts, Pechs, Pechts or Picts. They themselves like the last version best, and have adopted it for their own use, in the form ‘pictsies’. (Be careful, however, never to confuse them with the ‘pixies’ of Devon and Cornwall, since pixies are an altogether inferior race, whom the Feegles despise as ‘wee southron shites’, whatever that means.) Several Scotsmen have described the Pechs, who were somewhat taller than the Discworld clans, but in other respects pretty similar. They were ‘unco wee bodies, but terrible strang’, wrote a certain James Knox in 1831, and lived in underground chambers and burial mounds. Indeed, for generations the Scots took it for granted that any odd stone structures found underground were ‘Picts’ houses’. Robert Chambers, in his Popular Rhymes of Scotland (1870), wrote: ‘Short wee men they were, wi’ red hair, and long arms, and feet sae braid that when it rained they could turn them up owre their heads, and then they served for umbrellas. The Pechs were great builders; they built a’ the auld castles in the kintry.’
This refers to the brochs, a type of ancient round tower, which Scotsmen called ‘Picts’ castles’. Why they built them is a mystery, since they never lived in them; perhaps they had struck some bargain with the local human ruler, broch-building in exchange for hunting rights, or the like. It was said they could raise a broch in a single night, quarrying the stones, forming a long chain from the quarry to the chosen site, flinging the stones from hand to hand, and then piling them into massive walls. This is much the same technique as that of the Feegles when fighting people bigger than themselves; they work in groups, running up one another’s backs to form a pyramid, till the top one is high enough to punch the enemy, or, preferably, to head-butt him. Once he is down, it is all over bar the kicking.
Feegles can easily lift things far heavier than themselves; to steal a sheep or cow, for instance, needs only four of them, as Nanny Ogg explains:
‘Four. One under each foot. Seen ’em do it. You see a cow in a field, mindin’ its own business, next minute the grass is rustlin’. Some little bugger shouts “Hup, hup, hup,” and the poor beast goes past, voom! without its legs movin’. Backwards, sometimes. They’re stronger’n cockroaches. You step on a pictsy, you’d better be wearin’ good thick soles.’ [Lords and Ladies]
Another clan of Feegles settled in Ireland, where they changed their way of dressing to suit local fashions, but continued to spread undiluted terror. People there were too scared to use their proper name, so they called them ‘the good folk’, hoping they might take the hint. It didn’t work. The poet William Allingham records the lament of some Irish humans:
Up the airy mountain,
Down the rushy glen,
We daren’t go a-hunting
For fear of little men.
Wee folk, good folk,
Trooping all together,
Green jacket, red cap,
And grey cock’s feather.
On the Discworld, Feegles initially took up residence on the high moors of Uberwald, but some came into conflict with vampires who objected to the presence of any others of the ‘old races’. Since vampires can fly and Feegles can’t (except on large birds), the former had an unfair advantage, and the latter decided to move on. They arrived in Lancre, where, in return for timely help given to King Verence, they were granted possession of an island on a lake, with lots of fish around, and the chance of good hunting up the valley, provided they promised not to go cattle-raiding.
There are other Feegle clans on the Downland Chalk. One group lives inside the large burial mound of some ancient king, whose bones don’t bother them at all, and whose gold occasionally comes in useful. These particular Feegles are probably unique in that some of them have actually been seen doing chores for a human girl, Tiffany Aching, a young witch whom they greatly respect. In general, however, we must repeat the warning that pictsies are not pixies. As Nanny Ogg has remarked, if you leave a saucer of milk out for them, hoping they’ll do the washing-up while you’re asleep, all that’ll happen is that the ‘little buggers will break into your cottage and steal everything in your drinks cabinet’.
Very occasionally, for reasons unknown, an individual Feegle may leave his clan for a while, to get a taste of city life. One such is Wee Mad Arthur, rat-catcher and pest-destroyer in Ankh-Morpork, who plays a crucial role in Feet of Clay. The locals refer to him as a ‘gnome’, but his accent, his strength and his fondness for head-butting all show he is a true Feegle.
No one could clear out rats like Wee Mad Arthur. Old and cunning rats that knew all about traps, deadfalls and poison were helpless in the face of his attack, which was where, in fact, he often attacked. The last thing they felt was a hand gripping each of their ears, and the last thing they saw was his forehead, approaching at speed. [Feet of Clay]
The same may well be true of the ‘gnome’ Buggy Swires, a recently recruited Corporal in the City Watch, where he is the head (and only member) of the Airborne Section, as mentioned in Monstrous Regiment. He patrols the skies by riding on a large female buzzard named Morag, who was trained by pictsies and is well worth the crate of whisky she cost the Watch. Typical! Shakespeare’s Ariel thought himself a fine fellow because he could fly on a bat’s back, but only a large bird of prey will do for a Feegle.
The time that the Feegles or their ancestors spent in Scotland has had a deep influence on them (unless, who knows, it was the other way around). Besides the tattoos and the kilts, they have developed a taste for strong liquor, and even for haggis. Each clan keeps a bard and musician, called a gonnagle, with a repertoire of heroic lays, laments, and martial music played on the mousepipes. Such performers are invaluable in battle, for terrorizing the enemy. When Tiffany Aching and the Feegles of the Chalk are attacked by a pack of fairy grimhounds, the venerable William the gonnagle takes out his pipes:
‘I shall play,’ he announced, as the dogs got close enough for Tiffany to see the drool, ‘that firrrm favourite, “the King Underrr Waterrr”.’
As one pictsie, the Nac Mac Feegles dropped their swords and put their hands over their ears.
William put the mouthpiece to his lips, tapped his foot once or twice, and, as a dog gathered itself to leap at Tiffany, began to play …
The dog in front of her went cross-eyed and, instead of leaping, tumbled forward.
The grimhounds paid no attention to the pictsies. They howled. They spun around. They tried to bite their own tails. They stumbled, and ran into one another. The line of panting death broke into dozens of desperate animals, twisting and writhing and trying to escape from their own skins. [The Wee Free Men]
What had happened was that William had played ‘the notes of pain’, pitched too high for human ears, but agonizing to dogs. There is precedent for such skill in our world. According to ballad singers in Shetland, there was once a King Orfeo whose wife had been slain by a dart flung by the King of Fairies. So Orfeo went into Fairyland to win her back. He entered in at a grey stone, and played his pipes at the Fairy Court. First he overwhelmed his hearers with pain, then filled them with joy, and finally played a wild dance tune to make their hearts whole again:
An first he played da notes o noy,
An dan he played da notes o joy,
An dan he played da göd gabber reel
Dat meicht ha made a sick hert hale.
Naturally, his wife was given back to him. And, unlike the Ancient Greek Orpheus, he did not lose her by looking back.
The title of office for a Feegle bard, ‘the gonnagle’, is a touching tribute to the memory of William McGonagall (born 1825), a famously excruciating Scottish poet. He had grasped one basic point about poetry, namely that it should rhyme, eventually, but since he had not the faintest conception of rhythm he was capable of stretching a line of verse like chewing gum. As for his choice of words, the less said the better. His most celebrated production was a lament over the collapse of a railway bridge. It is long, so the first and last verses must suffice:
Beautiful Railway Bridge of the Silv’ry Tay!
Alas! I am very sorry to say
That many lives have been taken away
On the last Sabbath Day of 1879,
Which will be remembered for a very long time.
…
Oh! Ill-fated Bridge of the Silv’ry Tay,
I must now conclude my lay
By telling the world fearlessly without the least dismay
That your central girders would not have given way,
At least many sensible men do say,
Had they been supported on each side with buttresses,
At least many sensible men confesses,
For the stronger we our houses do build,
The less chance we have of being killed.
The Feegles of the Chalk have an aspiring young bard who has mastered this style to perfection, and deploys it when they are under attack from vicious little flying fairies, rather like dragonflies. Standing with one hand pressed to his heart and the other outstretched very theatrically, and rolling his eyes, he utters a long-drawn mournful moan, and launches forth.
‘Oooooooooooooiiiiiit is with great lamentation and much worrying dismay,’ the pictsie groaned, ‘that we rrregard the doleful prospect of Fairyland in considerrrable decay …’
In the air, the flying creatures stopped attacking and began to panic. Some of them flew into one another.
‘With quite a large number of drrrrrreadful incidents happening everrry day. Including, I am sorrrry to say, an aerial attack by the otherwise quite attractive fey …’
The flyers screeched. Some crashed into the snow, but the ones still capable of flight swarmed off amongst the trees.
‘Witnessed by all of us at this time, And celebrated in this hasty rhyme,’ he shouted after them.
And they were gone.
The old bard congratulates the young one:
‘That, lad,’ he said proudly, ‘was some of the worst poetry I have heard for a long time. It was offensive to the ear and a torrrture to the soul. The last couple of lines need some work but ye has the groanin’ off fiiine. A’ in a’, a verrry commendable effort! We’ll make a gonnagle out o’ ye yet!’ [The Wee Free Men]
The speech of the Feegles is markedly Scottish, to the point that, though it is not technically a foreign language (unlike, for example, that of dwarfs), most people in Lancre and Ankh-Morpork find it very hard to follow. Yet it’s a good language, as Nanny Ogg says, ‘with a hint of heather and midden in it’. Most of it is a form of Lowlands Scots peppered with Glasgow slang, but there are several words adopted from Gaelic, the Celtic language of the Highlands and Isles, one of which is of considerable folkloric significance. In its original tongue it is Cailleach, pronounced approximately ‘kall-yack’ and meaning ‘old woman, hag’. Like ‘hag’, it often implies magical power, and so can mean ‘witch’. In the Feegle language it has developed two quite different forms. The first, used light-heartedly in ordinary speech, is ‘callyake’. For example, a Feegle who had been startled by Greebo shouted at Nanny Ogg, ‘Ach, hins tak yer scaggie, yer dank owd callyake!’, which appears to mean, ‘Oh, devil take your moggy, you daft old woman!’ But the second form, ‘kelda’, is a title to be used with the deepest respect.
Feegles are matriarchal. Each community is ruled by a kelda, who has come from some different clan when young, to choose one of them as her husband and be their Queen and their Wise Woman for the rest of her life. Like a queen bee, she bears an incredible number of offspring, but in her case (unlike the bee’s) all but one or two of them are male. This means that all the men of the clan are either her sons or her husband’s brothers, apart from a few of her own brothers who came with her as bodyguards, and probably the gonnagle, since these travel from clan to clan. Keldas are rather taller than the male Feegles, and very, very fat, looking just like the little figurines of goddesses carved on Earth way back in the times of ice and mammoths. Their word is law, as truly as if they were indeed goddesses. As for the title itself, though centuries of use have worn it down, its origins can still be guessed. It comes from Cailleach Dubh, ‘the Black Hag’, a supernatural figure in Scottish and Irish tradition who shapes the landscape, rules the seasons, protects wild animals, and confers power on favoured humans. The Cailleach Dubh was a true Mother Goddess, and the language of the Feegles honours her memory.
And what of their own name? Here again we see the influence of the Scottish and Irish lore they picked up during their stay on the Earth (or vice versa). ‘Mac Feegle’ means ‘Sons of Feegle’, and ‘Feegle’ is clearly a variation of ‘Fingal’, the eighteenth-century Scottish name for a great hunter and warrior hero in Celtic tradition. Tales about him under his older name of Finn or Fionn mac Cumhaill have been popular for over twelve hundred years in Ireland, and almost equally long in Scotland, where he is called Finn MacCool. He was the chieftain of the fianna, a band of wild young men who lived by hunting deer and wild boar, fighting, cattle-raiding and robbing. At times they might take service under some king and fight in his wars; at other times they chose an independent life. All were fearless in confronting any enemy, natural or supernatural. Fionn himself more than once entered some sinister region of the Otherworld and had to fight his way out against great odds. It is very understandable that the race now known as the Nac Mac Feegle should wish to take his name.