Hogfather

     The singers were  halfway down Park  Lane now, and halfway through 'The Red Rosy Hen' in marvellous  harmony.[19] Their collecting tins were  already full of donations for the poor of the city,  or at least those sections  of the poor who in Mrs Huggs'  opinion were  suitably picturesque and not too smelly and could be relied upon to  say thank you.  People had come to  their  doors to listen. Orange light spilled on to  the snow.  Candle  lanterns glowed among the tumbling flakes. If you could  have taken the lid off the  scene,  there would  have  been  chocolates  inside. Or  at  least an interesting  biscuit assortment.

     Mrs Huggs had heard  that wassailing  was  an ardent  ritual,  and  you didn't need anyone to tell you what that meant, but she felt she'd carefully removed all those elements that would affront the refined ear.

     And it was only gradually that the singers became aware of the discord.

     Around  the corner, slipping and sliding on the ice,  came another band of singers.

     Some  people march to a different drummer. The drummer in question here must have been trained elsewhere, possibly by a different species on another planet.

     In front of the group was a legless man on a small wheeled trolley, who was singing at the top of  his voice and banging two saucepans together. His name was Arnold Sideways. Pushing him along was Coffin Henry, whose croaking progress through an  entirely  different  song was punctuated  by  bouts  of off-the-beat coughing. He  was  accompanied by a perfectly  ordinary-looking man  in torn, dirty  and yet expensive clothing,  whose pleasant tenor voice was drowned  out by the quacking of a duck  on his head.  He answered to the name of Duck Man, although he never  seemed to understand why, or why he was always surrounded by people who seemed to see ducks where no ducks could be. And finally, being towed along by a small grey dog on a string, was Foul Ole Ron, generally regarded in AnkhMorpork as  the  deranged  beggars'  deranged beggar. He was probably incapable of singing, but at least he was attempting to swear in time to the beat, or beats.

     The wassailers stopped and watched them in horror.

     Neither party  noticed, as  the beggars oozed and ambled up the street, that  little  smears  of black and grey were spiralling  out  of  drains and squeezing out from under  tiles and buzzing off into the night.  People have always  had the urge to sing and clang things  at the dark stub of the year, when all sorts of psychic nastiness has taken  advantage  of  the long  grey days and the deep shadows to lurk and breed. Lately people had taken to singing harmoniously, which rather lost the effect.  Those who really understood just clanged something and shouted.

     The  beggars were not  in fact  this well versed in folkloric practice. They  were just  making a din in the wellfounded hope that people would give them money to stop.

     It was just possible to make out a consensus song in there somewhere.

     Hogswatch is coming,
     The pig is getting fat,
     Please put a dollar in the old man's hat
     If you ain't got a dollar a penny will do...

     'And if you  ain't got a penny,' Foul  Ole Ron  yodelled, solo, 'then - fghfgh yffg mftnfmf...'

     The Duck Man had, with great presence of mind, damped a hand over Ron's mouth.

     'So sorry about this,'  he  said, 'but this time I'd like people not to slam their doors on us. And it doesn't scan, anyway.'

     The nearby doors slammed regardless. The other  wassailers fled hastily to a more salubrious location.  Goodwill to  all men was a phrase  coined by someone who hadn't met Foul Ole Ron.

     The beggars stopped singing,  except for Arnold Sideways, who tended to live in his own small world.

     ' ...nobody knows how good we can live, on boots three times a day...'

     Then the change in the air penetrated even his consciousness.

     Snow thumped off the trees as a contrary wind brushed them. There was a whirl of  flakes and it was just possible, since  the beggars did not always have  their mental  compasses pointing due  Real,  that they  heard a  brief snatch of conversation.

     'It just ain't that simple, master, that's all I'm saying... '

IT IS BETTER TO GIVE THAN TO RECEIVE, ALBERT.

     'No, master, it's just a lot more expensive. You can't just go around-'

     Things rained down on the snow.

     The beggars looked at them. Arnold Sideways carefully picked up a sugar pig and bit  its nose off. Foul  Ole Ron peered suspiciously  into a cracker that had bounced off his hat, and then shook it against his ear.

     The Duck Man opened a bag of sweets.

     'Ah, humbugs?' he said.

     Coffin Henry unlooped a string of sausages from around his neck.

     'Buggrit?' said Foul Ole Ron.

     'It's a cracker,' said the dog, scratching its ear. 'You pull it.'

     Ron waved the cracker aimlessly by one end.

     'Oh,  give  it here,' said the dog, and gripped the  other end  in  its teeth.