First Clare visit for Sir Terry

IRELAND’S first Discworld Convention was held in the Falls Hotel in Ennistymon last weekend, where renowned author Sir Terry Pratchett paid his first visit to the county.
Speaking to The Clare Champion, the British writer said he was delighted to attend the convention but when asked how he liked his visit to Clare, he joked, “I’ve found it extremely wet. Are you familiar with the concept of no rain?”
The knighted author, who prefers to be addressed as Terry or Sir Terry, is held in high esteem for his fantasy writing across the world.
The Irish convention, which pays special tribute to a body of Terry’s work known as the Discworld Series, was organised by devoted fans Nicola and Mary Ellen Murphy from Tulla and Sheila O’Sullivan from Shannon.
Together with the help of a large fan base, the three Clare women used their experience of attending the British Discworld Convention and their contacts to secure the guest of honour’s presence.
According to some, the obvious choice of venue for such an event would have been Dublin but Sir Terry dismissed this.
“It is up to the fans whether they want to organise a Discworld Convention and if they want to do it, then that’s fine by me and if I can come I will. It’s as simple as that. It is run by them and I’m their guest. There were some people that have said that if it’s going to be an Irish con then why isn’t it on in Dublin but the case is that those that are organising it wanted it here and that’s fine by me,” he said.
Explaining what happens at a Discworld Convention, Sir Terry said, “What are people going to do here; they’re going to have a masquerade and they are going to meet other people like them”.
Indeed, visitors to the Falls Hotel at the weekend, who were not aware that the event was taking place, might have thought that Hallowe’en had run on, such were the fans’ elaborate portrayals of characters from the Discworld series.
In discussing his books, Sir Terry acknowledged that there are some similarities between one of the characters in Discworld and a local Clare figure, Biddy Early.
“I didn’t find Biddy Early until the mid 1980s, which was some time after I had done the character of Granny Weatherwax, who is a witch. Witches in Discworld are, generally speaking, dealers or midwives. Generally, they’re pretty smart. They tend to be community leaders. They have some power in the community and they’re respected. They are the people you go to for help in general.
“I was over here with my publisher for some event and I went into a store and I bought two books about Biddy Early. The cover had Biddy Early, the witch of County Clare, and I read it and I thought, no one is ever going to believe that I haven’t heard of this lady,” he said.
He explained that having read the books, he instantly saw parallels to Granny Weatherwax. However, he noted that there were some obvious differences. Eager to prove that he had in fact independently come up with his character, Sir Terry outlined the discrepancies between the two.
“Granny Weatherwax is a confirmed spinster and Biddy Early certainly wasn’t. The truth of the matter is that witchcraft is psychological in a way; it particularly helps if the person you are dealing with thinks you’re a witch. It’s clear to me that Biddy Early was a keen student of human nature and so was Granny Weatherwax in the books.
“I didn’t claim that I was influenced by Biddy Early [in creating the character Granny Weatherwax]. If I had done, though, I think I would have made Granny Weatherwax more different than she actually is,” Sir Terry said.
While Biddy Early may not have influenced him directly, Sir Terry appears to be fascinated by her and the folklore surrounding her.
“There’s a lot of stuff written about her, so I have no idea whether anything said about her is true. There are versions – and what can you say about versions of a lie – but there’s one version that is of interest.
“After her death, a blue bottle is thrown into the Lough and some time later the local tailor, I believe, conducts a stranger down to the Lough. The stranger walks into the Lough up to his waist and holds up his hand and the tailor sees something come skimming over the waves and the man catches it and goes away.
“That is wonderful imagery but this is Ireland and I think no Irishman worth his guineas is going to leave a story unimproved. My mother’s grandfather was Irish and she used to tell me some of his stories,” he reflected.
Having worked in a library as a boy, Sir Terry admitted that school did nothing for him. “I fell in love with my local library and I owe my success to it,” he said.
Sir Terry had a wealth of books available to him from a young age, particularly adult books. However, “in those days they were a bit iffy about giving out adult books”.
“Of course, I read all the adult books, especially those that weren’t suitable for me because it is the right age to start reading adult books.
“I found science fiction and fantasy and I wanted more stuff so I started reading history, because you know guys with helmets and swords was going to be more of the same thing.
“Then I came across folklore and I was fascinated that folklore existed. Now there are bits of mythology and folklore that are dying out and I think that’s a bad thing,” he commented.
As a young reader, Sir Terry was most inspired by the author GK Chesterton, who was from Pratchett’s hometown, Beaconsfield.
“My grandmother knew him. She gave me one of his books and I thought he was absolutely great and she said ‘Oh I knew him, he was a big man with a squeaky voice’, and I said what else?
“One of the stories told about him was that he used to write for magazines and [my grandmother] remembers the time when the express train to London was halted at the town of Beaconsfield. The express train waited at the station because he [Chesterton] hadn’t finished writing his piece for a magazine. They waited until a man on a bike pulled up and said ‘wait, I have the paper’.
“Can you imagine that power, and yet such was the respect for the man, that the London express had to wait five minutes. I thought it was great. That in a sense was one of the things that got me into being an author,” he revealed.
Despite his huge fan base across the world, Sir Terry said he believes a worrying trend is developing.
“We are living in a time when reading is going on the back burner. Kids read the Internet and people are losing the art of understanding a narrative. The world is now being delivered in small bites,” he said.
He made reference to websites like Twitter, adding that the Internet is “a mixed blessing”.
Sir Terry added that authors, of course, had a duty to encourage reading, “because after all, that’s where you’re money is coming from”. He described books of the fantasy genre as “an exercise bike for the mind”.
“If you can get a 14-year-old boy to read a book, his mum is going to be really pleased. I get lots of letters saying, ‘Mr Pratchett, my boy didn’t read any books when he was small up until he was 14. Then he read Discworld books and now he’s professor of linguistics at Oxford.’
“I get a lot of stories like that. If you can get children reading then you’ve done them the best thing that you can ever do,” he concluded.