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ПРЕДИСЛОВИЕ автора НЕМАЛО ДНЕЙ прошло с тех пор как я, к своему счастью, родилась в Ланкре. Мне знаком каждый дюйм этой земли и каждый человек, и обозревая эти горы, холмы, деревья и долины я думаю: 'Эта молодая пара была в этой рощице довольно долго, мне придется переговорить с ее мамой'. But a lot of the old ways
I knew when I was a girl are passin' now. There's six oil lamps in the
kingdom to my knowledge, and up at the castle they put in one of them privies
that cleans 'emselves, so instead of having to dig out the pit every week my
lad Shawn, who does all the jobs up there apart from kinging, now merely has
to fill up the 200-gallon tank on top of the tower. That is Progress for you.
Of course it all ends up in the river so what you gains in convenience you
loses in compost. |
All this means that these
are changin' times, and that's when people go around bewildered and full of
uncertainty and they turn to me, because I am agrande dame, or 'big
woman' as we would say here, and ask me the questions that is puzzling them,
viz., if you are givin' a dinner party, what are the issues of etiquette involved
in seatin' the man who makes a living putting weasels down his
trousers at fairs, and who
is therefore quite respected in these parts, next to the daughter of a man who
once mugged the second son of an earl? Which is the kind of knotty problem a
society hostess has to face every day, and it takes Experience not only to get
it right but also to make sure there's a really soft cushion on the weasel
juggler's chair, since the poor man suffers for his Art.
They ask me things like:
what is the right way to address a duke? An' once again I have to point out
that it is a matter of fine details, such as, if there's a gate needs holdin'
open and it looks like half a dollar might be forthcoming, it's 'G'day, your
gracious-ness,' whereas if you've just set fire to his ancestral piles and the
mob is breakin' the windows it is more suitable to address him as 'you bloated
lying blutocat!' It is all a matter of finesse.
People are coming to me all
the time to ask things like, what kind of wedding anniversary d'you call it
after ten years, or, is it lucky to plant beans on a Thursday. Of course, it is
nat'ral for people to ask witches this sort of thing on account of us bein' the
suppositories of tradition, but the younger girls I see around don't seem very
keen on picking this sort of thing up, them being far too keen on candles and
lucky crystals and so on. I reckon if a crystal's so lucky, how come it's ended
up as a bit of rock? I don't trust all this occult, you never know who had it
last.
Anyway, there's a lot more
writin' around these days than there was when I was young and I thought, I will
write down some of those little hints and tips which can smooth the lumpy bits
on the pathway that is life. I've gone heavy on the recipes, because so much in
life revolves around food. In fact good manners started to happen as soon as
all the mammoths were killed off and there was no piece of food big enough for
everyone to eat at the same time. A good meal is good manners.
Г. Ягг
