Kamil Karaś
Kamil Karaś
Wszystko o Pratchetcie
Wszystko o Pratchetcie
Są takie książki, które pozostawiają niezatarte piętno na duszy czytelnika, wprawiają w doskonały nastrój i wywołują wręcz lawinę śmiechu. Są i takie, których lektura budzi w nas jakiś bliżej nieokreślony niepokój, skłania do refleksji oraz przemyśleń wykraczających poza pozornie płytką ramę fabuły, akcji i narracji. Autorem, który tworzył właśnie takie dzieła (nie bójmy się tego określenia), był niewątpliwie sir Terry Pratchett.
A właściwie – Terence David John Pratchett, urodzony 28 kwietnia 1948 roku w Beaconsfield w Wielkiej Brytanii. Już od najwcześniejszych lat okazywał nietuzinkowość. Zapalony (choć niespełniony) astronom amator i wielki fan literatury science fiction i fantasy, zadebiutował już w wieku trzynastu lat, a jego opowiadanie Piekielny interes (The Hades Business) zauważył sam Michael Moorcock. W 1965 roku umieścił tekst młodego Pratchetta w jednym z wydań pisma „Science Fantasy”, pośród tekstów autorów z elitarnego grona. Krótko potem młody pisarz rzucił szkołę i został dziennikarzem miejscowej gazety. Już wtedy uczęszczał na kurs dziennikarski, który ukończył z jedną z czołowych lokat w kraju. W 1975 objął redakcję kącika dziecięcego i jako Wujek Jim zdobywał serca młodych czytelników fantastycznymi opowieściami. Dzisiaj widać wyraźnie, że pojawiały się w nich zalążki powieści z mającej dopiero powstać serii o Świecie Dysku.
Funkcję guru dziecięcych serc i umysłów Pratchett pełnił do 1980 roku, kiedy to odszedł z „Bucks Free Press” i został najpierw pracownikiem „Bath Chronicle”, a później rzecznikiem prasowym Central Electricity Generating Board. Na szczęście dla literatury pracował tam zaledwie cztery lata – w 1987 ukazała się jego czwarta książka o Świecie Dysku, Mort, będąca kamieniem milowym w pracy pisarskiej Pratchetta. Odtąd całą energię poświęcał pisaniu.
8
Pozwoliły mu na to zyski z trzech wcześniejszych tomów: Blasku fantastycz- nego (1983), Koloru magii (1986) i Równoumagicznienia (1987).
Razem z Mortem zamknęła się era nazywana przez niektórych „epoką wczesnego Pratchetta”. Jej nazwa wiąże się z tym, że wielu fanów uważa cztery pierwsze tomy Świata Dysku za nie tak atrakcyjne w odbiorze jak pozostałe.
Widać w nich drobne błędy oraz nieścisłości w prowadzeniu i kreowaniu postaci. Postaci, które przy tym bardzo intensywnie się rozwijają. Nie zmienia to w żaden sposób tego, że te wczesne tomy uważa się za mimo wszystko godne polecenia, nawet jeśli nie powinno się od nich zaczynać przygody ze Światem Dysku. Na szczęście konstrukcja całego cyklu pozwala na to, aby rozpocząć czytanie od dowolnej części, bez ryzyka, że nie zorientujemy się w fabule.
Pratchett pisał niestrudzenie całe życie, aż do śmierci 12 marca 2015 roku.
Już po jego odejściu wydano The Shepherd’s Crown oraz The Long Utopia.
Za zasługi dla literatury królowa Elżbieta II w 1998 nadała pisarzowi Order Brytyjskiego Imperium, a dziesięć lat później uczyniła go sir Terrym.
Jak dotąd opracowania naukowe dotyczące pisarstwa sir Terry’ego Pratchetta policzyć można na palcach obu rąk, dlatego niniejsza monografia ma wartość unikatową w skali kraju oraz wnosi powiew świeżości do literaturoznawstwa, językoznawstwa i badań kulturowych na świecie. Jest ona ważna również dlatego, że jako jedna z nielicznych porusza tak szerokie spektrum tematów.
Dotychczasowe prace były bowiem zazwyczaj monodyscyplinarne. Najnowsza obecnie pozycja – The Intertextuality of Terry Pratchett’s Discworld as a Major Challenge for the Translator Aleksandra Rzymana z 2017 roku – omawia twór- czość Pratchetta z punktu widzenia tłumacza, wcześniejsze zaś poświęcone mu książki – Terry Pratchett and Philosophy Jacoba M. Helda i Jamesa B. Southa (2015), Secrets of the Wee Free Men and the Discworld Lindy Washington i Carrie Pyykkonen (2008) oraz The Folklore of the Discworld Jacqueline Simpson i Terry’ego Pratchetta (2008) – mają ewidentnie charakter filozoficzny i kultu- roznawczy. Natomiast Terry Pratchett (Pocket Essential) autorstwa Andrew M.
Butlera (2001) i Guilty of Literature Farah Mendlesohn, Andrew M. Butlera i Edwarda Jamesa (2000) to ostatnie prawdziwie literaturoznawcze pozycje badające wyłącznie twórczość Pratchetta.
Trzynaście tekstów, które znalazły się w tej antologii, porusza różne aspekty twórczości autora: językowe, kulturowe i genderowo-narratologiczne,
Wszystko o Pratchetcie
nie pominięto także popularnonaukowego wykorzystania pisarstwa Pratchetta.
Językowo-kulturowy punkt widzenia reprezentują teksty: “Thence come the three maidens...” Łukasza Neubauera, “Art brought forth the candle”. Trans- lation of Puns into Polish in Terry Pratchett’s Feet of Clay Patricii Sørensen, oraz The Humorous Function of the Characters’ Names in Terry Pratchett’s Men at Arms Martyny Gibki. Pierwszy z nich porusza motyw znanych pod różnymi imionami trzech istot dzierżących władzę nad ludzkim losem – w literaturze i kulturze ludów germańskich. Patricia Sørensen zastanawia się nad trudnym zagadnieniem przekładu gier słownych na język polski w Na glinianych nogach. Martyna Gibka zaś, jako onomastka, bada funkcje imion bohaterów Zbrojnych.
Aspekt genderowo-narratologiczny omawiają zróżnicowane artykuły – o odnajdywaniu swojej roli w świecie pisze Karol Chojnowski, a kwestię krasnoludów w mitologii Skandynawii przybliżają artykuł Karoliny Drozdow- skiej oraz komentujący rolę człowieka we współczesnej polityce tekst Doroty Guttfeld. Podobnie sytuują się rozważania nad funkcjonowaniem i rolą opowieści w Wolnych Ciut Ludziach Justyny Błaszczyk. W dalszej kolejności Jakub Dziewit przyjmuje punkt widzenia antropologa, by ze swadą omawiać próby oswojenia Innego. Karolina Kutryb pisze o psychologii funkcjono- wania Śmierci, tego jakże ikonicznego dla całego cyklu bohatera. Artykuł Joanny Wacławek Geniusze na opak, albo Żywoty dwóch najsłynniejszych malarzy, rzeźbiarzy i architektów Świata Dysku przedstawia postaci Leonarda z Quirmu i Bergholta Stuttleya Johnsona (znanego lepiej jako Bezdennie Głupi Johnson), aby zaprezentować je jako parodie realnie istniejących artystów, malarzy i architektów. Maksymilian Borowski powraca do kwestii genderowych, by przedstawić na przykładzie Cyklu o Straży Miejskiej kwestie równouprawnienia kobiet i mężczyzn Świata Dysku. Anna Czyżewska nato- miast przygląda się w Grozie, humorze i genderze – o wampirach i wilkołakach w Świecie Dysku Terry’ego Pratchetta temu, jak w tej perspektywie funkcjonują wampiry i wilkołaki.
Niniejszą publikację kończy artykuł, którego tematyka odbiega od zapre- zentowanych dotychczas. Marta Cebera w tekście W roli głównej – Terry Pratchett jako bohater filmu dokumentalnego przedstawia sylwetkę pisarza jako osoby cierpiącej na nieuleczalną chorobę – Alzheimera.
Podsumujmy – All About Pratchett to druga w Polsce (a pierwsza typowo literaturoznawcza) oraz jedna z nielicznych na świecie akademickich publi- kacji poświęconych wyłącznie jednemu z najwybitniejszych pisarzy literatury popularnej naszych czasów. Jej języko-, literaturo- oraz kulturoznawcza zawartość rzuca nowe światło na twórczość niekwestionowanego mistrza fantasy, sir Terry’ego Pratchetta.
Kamil Karaś
Kamil Karaś
All About Pratchett
All About Pratchett
There are books that leave a permanent mark on the soul of their reader. There are books that put their readers into good mood and overwhelm them with an avalanche of laughter. There are also books that introduce a strange feeling of distress to the readers, along with afterthoughts that go beyond the frame of the plot, action and narration. All of these comments above are true for an author to whom this book is devoted – sir Terry Pratchett OBE.
Terence David John Pratchett, born 20.04.1948 in Beaconsfield, UK, has shown his literary potential from a very young age. A keen, though unfulfilled, astronomer and a great SF and fantasy fan, he debuts at the age of thirteen, when his short story called “The Hades Business” is noticed by Moorcock himself and printed in the exclusive Science Fantasy (1965) maga- zine among stories written by many famous authors. Soon the young writer leaves school and becomes a journalist of a local newspaper. At that time he attends a journalism course, which he finishes with one of the best scores in the country. In 1975 he takes over the children section of the newspaper he’s working in and, as Uncle Jim, conquers children’s hearts with fantastical tales that already contain stirrings of his to-be-written Discworld series. His dominion over the young hearts and minds lasts until 1980, as it is the year when he leaves “Bucks Free Press” and is employed first in “Bath Chronicles”, later becoming a spokesperson for Central Electricity Generating Board.
However, literature is in luck as he stays there only for four years – his fourth Discworld book, Mort, is released in 1987 and it becomes a milestone of Pratchett’s writing career. Since then he devotes all his energy to writing, and the earnings from his earlier books – The Light Fantastic from 1983, Colour of Magic from 1986 and Equal Rites from 1987 – allow him to give
12
less thought to his material status. Together with Mort ends an era, called the “early Pratchett era” by some, because many fans consider the first four books less attractive for readers than all the remaining ones. Some small errors and, to some degree, inconsequence can be noticed, regarding creation and behaviour of characters, as well as their quite intense development. None- theless, these novels are still considered as worth commencing, even if they might not be a good place to begin the Discworld experience with. Luckily, the construction of the Discworld series allows for a safe start with almost any volume without risk of losing any part of the plot. Pratchett continues with his writing until his death on March 12th, 2015. Even after his passing, two more of his books are published – The Shepherd’s Crown and The Long Utopia, the latter being the last work in collaboration with Stephen Baxter. In 1998, Queen Elizabeth II awards Terry Pratchett with the Order of the British Empire for his merits in literature, and ten years after that she makes him a Sir Terry Pratchett.
Up to now, scholar works on Terry Pratchett are very scarce. This volume aims to fill the gap, as we think Terry Pratchett deserves scholarly interest.
The spectrum of articles one can find in this book shines a new light on literary, film and culture studies. The importance of this volume lies also in the fact that it is quite interdisciplinary, whereas the majority of existing works tend to be focused on one point of view. The most recent critical wok until now, The Inter- textuality of Terry Pratchett’s Discworld as a Major Challenge for the Translator by Aleksander Rzyman (2017) comments on Pratchett from the translator’s point of view, and the older books, such as Terry Pratchett and Philosophy by Jacob M. Held and James B. South (2015), and Secrets of the Wee Free Men and the Discworld by Linda Washington and Carrie Pyykkonen (2008), as well as The Folklore of the Discworld by Jacqueline Simpson and Terry Pratchett (2008) – belong in fact to Philosophy and Cultural field of studies respectively.
Terry Pratchett (Pocket Essential) by Andrew M. Butler (2001) and Guilty of Literature by Farah Mendlesohn, Andrew M. Butler and Edward James (2000) are the last critical works devoted to Literary Studies.
In this volume one can find cultural, literary and gender problems from Terry Pratchett’s books, as well as other ways of implementing his works – namely in the movie business. The thirteen articles included in this anthology discuss different aspects of the Master’s oeuvre – namely linguistic, cultural,
All About Pratchett
gender-narratological and… that another one, discussing Pratchett’s role in popular culture.
The linguistic-cultural aspect is represented by Łukasz Neubauer’s – Thence Come the Three Maidens, Patricia Sørensen’s – “Art brought forth the candle”.
Translation of Puns into Polish in Terry Pratchett’s Feet of Clay and Martyna Gibka’s – The Humorous Function of the Characters’ Names in Terry Pratchett’s Men at Arms. Neubauer brings on the motif of three powerful beings with power over human fates – known under many names in literature and culture of several German tribes. Sørensen discusses the difficult task of translating puns and games with language in Pratchett’s Feet of Clay. Gibka, as an onom- atology expert, talks on the functions of the names of the characters in Men at Arms.
The gender-narratological aspect is discussed in several interesting articles. Karol Chojnowski comments on finding your own way in life, Karolina Drozdowska focuses on the Pratchettian dwarves from the point of view of a Norse mythology expert and Dorota Guttfeld delivers a text on the role of men in modern politics. Narratology commentaries continue with Justyna Błaszczyk’s deliberations over the functions of the storytelling in The Wee Free Men. Our next author, Jakub Dziewit, employs the point of view of an anthropologist in order to talk about the Other. Karolina Kutryb discusses the psychological aspects of the way Death functions in the Discworld series. Joanna Wacławek in her article Geniusze na opak, albo Żywoty dwóch najsłynniejszych malarzy, rzeźbiarzy i architektów Świata Dysku discusses Leonard da Quirm and Bergholt Stuttley Johnson (more commonly known as Bloody Stupid Johnson) as parodies of real architects and artists living on Earth. Maksymilian M. Borowski returns to gender discussion, as he provides us with a depiction of equality of rights on the Disc, on the examples of the Night Watch subseries. And Anna Czyżewska in Groza, humor i gen- der – o wampirach i wilkołakach w Świecie Dysku Terry’ego Pratchetta talks, among other topics, about gender issues found in such popular elements of pop culture as werewolves and vampires.
This anthology ends with Marta Cebera’s text W roli głównej – Terry Pratchett jako bohater filmu dokumentalnego, in which she writes on Terry Pratchett at the end of his Earthly life – she shows him as a person suffering from the incurable Alzheimer’s disease.
To sum up, the All About Pratchett anthology is second in Poland (and the first literature-specialist) critical work devoted to one of the most popular and influential writers of our times. The commentaries on literature, culture and language one can find here project a new light on the oeuvre of the indis- putable king of fantasy literature, Sir Terry Pratchett.
Łukasz Neubauer, Politechnika Koszalińska
Łukasz Neubauer, Politechnika Koszalińska
“Thence come the three maidens knowing much”:
An Examination and Assessment of the Ancient Germanic Roots for William Shakespeare’s Weird Sisters
“Thence come the three maidens knowing much”…
Three witches was good. Two wouldn’t be enough, four would be too many. They could be meddling with the destinies of mankind, and everything. Lots of smoke and green light. You could do a lot with three witches.
Terry Pratchett, Wyrd Sisters (2012, p. 262) Originally performed in the first decade of the seventeenth century, Macbeth certainly ranks amongst the greatest Jacobean tragedies and is by far the dark- est of all theatrical pieces penned by the Bard from Stratford-upon-Avon. One of the most perplexing ingredients of this gory tale of regal lust and paranoia, standing at the very centre of dramatic events which bring about the ultimate downfall – moral as well as political – of the once loyal thane of Glamis and his wife, is the preternatural trio of the witches (or Weird Sisters) whose genuine involvement in the play’s dynamic chain of events has for several years been an important subject of many an academic discussion. There have also been numerous attempts, first on stage, then on stage and on screen, to depict, or rather interpret, the actual disposition of this thoroughly enigmatic triad of supernatural beings, Shakespeare’s demonic female tricksters (Southworth, 2007).
16
There is no denying that the etymological roots for the three and, at least to some extent, the cultural framework in which they operate lie in the ancient Germanic concept of fate-weaving maidens – sometimes known as nornir or dísir1 – who, according to the anonymous eddic poem Vǫluspá2, may be found beneath the roots of the gigantic ash tree Yggdrasill, the Norse axis mundi, where they lǫg l[eggja], / […] líf k[jósa] / alda bǫrnum, / [ok] ǫrlǫg seggja (20)
“establish laws, choose lives of the sons of men and pronounce their fates”.
It would be a gross misconception, however, to assume that Shakespeare, who in all likelihood took the idea for his “witches” from the revised edition of Raphael Holinshed’s Chronicles of England, Scotland and Ireland (1587), was in any way aware of their actual Germanic inheritance. In fact, it appears that he may have been just as much (if not more) inclined to model them upon the classical personifications of the Fate, that is to say the Greek Moirai or Roman Parcae. It may also be that the Bard was in some way inspired by the now long-forgotten aspects of the local folklore. Nonetheless, despite these multiple, sometimes apparently unrelated layers of cultural influence, there is still remaining in the Weird Sisters a great deal of their presumably original ancient Germanic fabric. The foremost objectives of this paper are therefore to identify and examine some of the most striking aspects of this now largely obscure inheritance, namely the etymology of the word by which the sisters are collectively referred to (“weird”) as well as their number, sex and the actual degree of their influence upon the course of events in Shake- speare’s “Scottish play”, all in the broad and to some extent indefinite context of ancient Germanic mythology.
First of all, there is the purely philological question of the sisters’ anthropo- nomic weirdness. Modern English weird (both as a noun and as an adjective) evidently derives from the somewhat enigmatic Old English noun wyrd (via numerous intermediate Middle English and Middle Scottish variations).3
1 For a more in-depth examination of the numerous similarities and differences that exist between the nornir, dísir and valkyrjur, see especially the excellent book by Karen Bek-Pedersen The Norns in Old Norse Mythology (2011).
2 Its title is variously translated as “The Prophecy of the Seeress” or, somewhat erroneously,
“The Prophecy of the Sybil”.
3 Interestingly, in the earliest transcriptions of Shakespeare’s Macbeth the word is variably spelt as weyrd, weyward and weyard, clearly suggesting its dissyllabic pronunciation (Schamas, 2007).
It appears to have gone out of use by the late Middle Ages, and so it was not until the early
“Thence come the three maidens knowing much”…
It is cognate with, amongst others, Old Frisian werd(e), Old Saxon wurd, Old High German wurt and Old Norse urðr, all of which have their roots in Proto-Germanic *wurdiz, an inevitably ambiguous word, the estimated meaning of which was once rendered descriptively by the French linguist Jean Haudry (2001) as “cours circulaire des événements” (2001, p. 321). Likewise, their numerous verbal equivalents in other Germanic languages – Old English weorþan, Old Frisian wertha, Old Saxon werthan, Old High German werdan and Old Norse verða (from Proto-Germanic *werþaną “to turn, become”) – which appear to be morphologically and semantically related to a great deal of other lexical items of general Indo-European provenance (such as the Latin verb vertere “to turn, revolve, rotate” or the Polish verb wiercić “to drill, bore”), all share a distinctive cyclic quality which is not to be ignored when time and causality are taken into consideration.
The cyclic concept of time is probably as old as human awareness of various temporal phenomena. It is, of course, variedly reflected in the numerous cultural ideas and conventions which developed over the past few mil- lennia, very often without even being consciously formulated. In the early Germanic world, where the concepts of past, present and future found their curious grammatical expression in the binary preterite-present tense system and the development of dynamic tense-linking verbs (such as Old English weorþan or Old Norse verða), time and causality must have once constituted a closely knit web of natural connections, gradually turning into the more (North) or less (West Germanic) personalised representations of the divine-natured fate (Winterbourne, 2007).4
As far as Shakespeare’s Weird Sisters are concerned, perhaps the most natural mythological association should be with the meyjar margs vitandi þrjár (Vǫluspá 20) “three maidens knowing much” of the Norse pantheon.
Not only are they female, but – just as the witches in Macbeth – they are
seventeenth century that weird once again entered the English lexicon – this time as a borrowing from Scots.
4 It is not unlikely that this personalised image of fate-weaving maidens was in some way inspired, or at least influenced, by the classical incarnations of human destiny (Greek Moirai and Roman Parcae). On the other hand, though, given the abundance of analogous female beings in different mythological systems (for example Slavic Sudice, Baltic Laima), it may be that they are in fact part of some broader cultural phenomenon whose roots can be traced down to the dawn of Indo-European culture.
18
commonly referred to as a triad whose impact upon the shape of the events to come is either highly significant or, in many a case, even decisive. Worth considering are particularly their names – Urðr, Skuld and Verðandi – which may be loosely translated as, respectively, “Fate”, “Future” and “Present” or
“That which is happening”. In fact, however, despite being etymologically related to shall, the English modal auxiliary verb indicating futurity, the sec- ond of the three could also mean “debt”, and thus denote not only causality, but also stark inevitability (after all, present debts must be paid off in the future).
Even more intriguing are the other two names of the Norse nornir. Both Urðr and Verðandi have their roots in the aforesaid Proto-Germanic noun
*wurdiz and could also be used as ordinary words, meaning, respectively,
“fate” and “happening” or “becoming”.5
In contrast, the Anglo-Saxon concept of Wyrd is not only less personal- ised, but also appears not to be denoting plurality. In Old English literature, particularly in Beowulf, but also to some extent in The Wonderer, Wyrd seems to have been given a clear Christian colouring, possibly even rep- resenting the Almighty Himself or, at least, what the Northumbrian poet Cædmon calls modgidanc (Hymn of Creation 2) “mind-thought, purpose of mind”. In any case, it is evidently some indefinite unworldly being, not necessarily of material manifestation, whose ultimate purpose of exist- ence is to pronounce the fates of men, rich and poor alike. It is always unknowable but certain, ungemete neah (Beowulf, 2420) “immeasurably near” though at all times due to change. In the military contexts it may also grant one victory or choose ne gescr[ifan] / hreð æt hilde (2574–5) “not to give glory in battle”. Finally, it has a power ner[ian] / unfægne eorl (573)
“to save the earl who has not been doomed”. As ominously reflected by the anonymous Beowulf poet, gæð a wyrd swa hio scel! (455) “Wyrd goes ever as she must!”.6
5 In fact, verðandi is the present participle form of the aforesaid Old Norse verb verða.
6 It is interesting to note that grammar-wise wyrd is a feminine noun (much as her numerous cognates). This may, of course, be no more than a mere coincidence (after all, there are numerous Germanic nouns of abstract meaning that have feminine forms), but it may as well be a not-too-distant echo of the once-personalised concept of human fate in the Germanic world.
“Thence come the three maidens knowing much”…
It might be that this less personalised notion of Anglo-Saxon Wyrd in effect constitutes evidence of a deep-rooted cultural continuity, an ever-evolving tradition which shared its now long-forgotten origins with that of the three maidens in the somewhat later Old Norse sources. There can be little doubt that the presence of Wyrd in Beowulf was dictated by the intent of its poet – doubtlessly some monk or other cleric with a high regard for the many virtues of legendary Germanic heroes – who made a syncretic attempt to adapt and redefine certain rudiments of ancient heathen beliefs by trans- lating them into the already dominant framework of Christian theology.
In Northern Europe, where the New Faith was eventually implemented at the turn of the two millennia, i.e. around four centuries after the Augus- tinian mission had brought Christianity to the peoples of England (595), the animistic image of tripartite feminine providence still lingered (and would long continue to do so) in the minds of the Nordic peoples. As far as Britain is concerned, at the time when the only existing copy of Beowulf was produced (i.e. in the late tenth century) it was already a dying (if not entirely superseded) tradition in the south of England. In the northern folklore, however, where the old beliefs and customs were more likely to persist and be merged with the new ones, the image of three fate-weaving maidens must have been a great deal stronger. It is highly unlikely that Raphael Holinshed, whose Chronicles of England, Scotland and Ireland (1577) was a principal source of inspiration for Shakespeare’s numerous plays, was in any way familiar with the eddic texts of the north (especially that they were not to be translated into English until the late eighteenth century). It is much more probable that the “three women in strange and wild apparel” (268) who all of a sudden appear (and just as suddenly disappear) in the fifth book of his work were a not-too-distant resonance of the ancient tradition. In fact, Holinshed himself explicitly refers to them as “creatures of elder world” (268). He is not quite certain whether they are “the weird sisters, […] the goddesses of destinie, or else some nymphs or feiries, indued with knowledge of prophesie by their necromanticall science” (269), but it is merely his general awareness of their mythical substance – along with the etymological roots of their descriptive byname – that makes the account so stunning in the context of Old Germanic
“fates” and their prolonged existence in the minds of the British people as late as the second half of the sixteenth century.
20
Apart from these etymological considerations, worth examining is also the question of the witches’ actual number. There have been some attempts, theatrical as well as cinematic, to reduce them to just a single spirit (most notably, perhaps, in Throne of Blood, Akira Kurosawa’s 1957 Japanese rendition of Macbeth), yet the usual, one may even say standardised, figure ought to be three. There are three Weird Sisters in Holinshed’s Chronicles and three in Shakespeare’s Macbeth. Three is also the number of the nornir in the eddic poem Vǫluspá (20) and in Snorri Sturluson’s Gylfaginning7 (15). There are, however, certain noteworthy variations to this as well as some scattered allusions made to these morally ambiguous beings, very often frustratingly cryptic and indeterminate as to their actual number and intentions.
However, regardless of all these textual obscurities, it must be observed that whenever the number is specified, it is always either three or its multiple.
It may naturally be noted that this recurrence of the number three is hardly exceptional in different mythological, religious or folkloristic combinations.
There are, after all, several beings, both divine and semi-divine, whose trinity expresses itself in a number of ways, from the multiplicity of persons (for example Moirai, Parcae, Nornir) to the multiplicity of their heads (for example Cerberus, Hydra, Triglav). This recurrent textual convention was of course initially dictated by the mnemonics of oral performance in pre-literate cultures, resulting in the emergence of various groups of three brothers, sisters, supernatural objects, adventures etc. Nevertheless, it is hard to escape the feeling that, being in one way or another linked with the passage of time, the fate-weaving maidens (or other such deities) are somewhat predestined to be portrayed in threes, thus figuratively (if not at all times accurately) expressing the three-dimensional construct of temporal relations, i.e. the past, the present and the future.
Should the ancient Germanic concept of triple fate-goddesses – regardless of its possible roots in the classical mythology – turn out to be primary in relation to its singular representation in Old English literature, the Weird Sisters of Shakespeare’s Macbeth would constitute a fascinating example of a marginal (although, of course, in this particular case highly significant) folkloristic continuity. We may nearly take it for granted that there once
7 Its title is usually translated into English as The Beguiling [or Tricking] of Gylfi.
