Moon Pond Lane

Mentioned in The Last Continent as the Librarian's birth street. Moon Pond Lane is actually on the upmarket Ankh side of the city not far away from the socially big money district around Scoone Avenue and King's Way, and suggests the Librarian, in human terms, came from a fairly well-off family. There is a saddlery shop next door to the Librarian's birth address.

Annotation

Perhaps a link or resonance with the Roundworld folk-story of the "Moonrakers"? Here, the population of a village under threat from (i) the Revenoo, or (ii) the Customs Men, decides to let the outsiders see them as so amazingly stupid and inbred that there is no way idiots like this could ever be cheating the Taxman nor are they involved in smuggling, an activity which requires brains.

Therefore the Customs and Excise men, among other proofs of rural idiocy, see the dumb bumpkins, at dead of night, dragging the surface of a pond with rakes, so as to rescue the Moon, which has fallen into it, look, zurs. But she be elusive and she don't want to be rezcued. We can be out most nights trying to save'ee from drowning!

The story is often associated with the village of Gotham whose "wise men" are often associated with inspired idiocy. A more extreme version claims that a Gothamite cut his cow in half to save the moon which she had swallowed (a passing cloud caused the moon's reflection to vanish at the exact moment the cow drank from the pond). This story, and others like it, probably predate the conflicts between smugglers and revenooers, the people of Gotham were originally said to have acted mad to deter King John Lackland from building a hunting lodge in their woods, so the story is older than the Magna Carta, never mind the Revenue Acts!

One Retcon of the Batman story suggests that the Dark Knight's hometown was named after a mental asylum which was in turn named after the village of the mad.

This article is a stub. One can help Discworld & Terry Pratchett Wiki by expanding it.