THE ALMANAC OF COMMON KNOWLEDGE

Being Everything That Is Known — Set Down at Last by One Who Adds Nothing, Invents Nothing, and Asks Nobody, Because It Is Already Known.

Kept in the barber's chair at Murkminster by Goodman Natter, who has shaved the whole city twice a week for forty years, and who holds — modestly, for he takes no credit — that a man in his position hears everything worth hearing and is therefore uniquely fitted to write down what the realm knows, which is a great deal, and all of it certain.

A Word Before We Begin, From the Chair

There are almanacs on this shelf, I am told, kept by clever men — the counting-house, the map office, the tinkering Professor up his tower — and every one of them is at pains to find things out. They measure. They test. They walk up to things. It must be exhausting.

I do none of it, and I will tell you why, and it is not laziness: there is no need. The realm already knows what it knows. It has known it for generations. A thing that everybody knows, and has always known, and agrees upon without one dissenting voice from Saltgate to the Hem — what is there to test? You do not weigh a thing the whole world has already weighed. You write it down before it is lost, which is the only real danger, and you write it down plain, and you do not muddy it with your own opinions, of which I have none that matter and am proud to say so.

I add nothing. That is my whole method and my whole boast. Every word in this book is common knowledge — which is to say it is true by the highest court there is, which is everybody, agreeing, for a very long time. If you want a fact nobody knows, go to the Professor. If you want a fact everybody knows, you have come to the right chair. Sit still. Mind the razor.

Each entry: What Is Known · How It Is Known · What I Have Established By Enquiry. The third line will be brief. There has been no need for enquiry. It is known.

1 · THAT THE ISLES ARE A DAY'S SAIL, AND EVERY GRANDFATHER MADE THE CROSSING

What Is Known. The Isles lie one day's easy sail off Saltgate, in fair weather, and the crossing is nothing — a pleasant outing. Everyone's grandfather made it, there and back, and spoke of it fondly.

How It Is Known. Ask any soul on the Cold Coast about their grandfather and the Isles. Not one will tell you their grandfather stayed home.

What I Have Established By Enquiry. I asked, once, at Saltgate, to shake the hand of a man now living who had himself made the crossing. There was a silence, and then a great deal of pointing at other men, each of whom pointed onward, and I followed the pointing the whole length of the quay and arrived back where I had started, at a boat called the Patience, which is kept ready and does not go. The grandfathers, it seems, are all just out of reach — which is where grandfathers keep their best work, and I see no cause to trouble them further.

As they say on the coast: the crossing is easy; it is the setting-off that drowns you.

2 · THAT AN EEL KNOWS A LIAR

What Is Known. An eel can tell an honest hand from a false one, and will not come to a liar's trap, and a family whose eels desert them has something on its conscience. This is known to every child who has ever minded a trap.

How It Is Known. Everyone has heard of a family the eels turned against. There was such a family at Mucklecombe — the eels took against the daughter for years, to the whole parish's private satisfaction, and nobody would name the reason because everybody knew there wasn't one, which only proves how deep the eel sees.

What I Have Established By Enquiry. The girl in question grew up, married a peat-cutter, and was by all accounts the most honest woman in the parish, so either the eels were wrong, which cannot be, or honesty is not the thing the eel is judging, which does not bear thinking about, so I have not thought about it, and neither has anyone else, and the belief is the healthier for it.

As they say by the traps: trust the eel, and never ask the eel to explain itself.

3 · THAT IT WAS BETTER BEFORE

What Is Known. The weather was better before. The crops were better before. People were better before, and knew their place, and the bog was firmer, and you could get a good day's damp instead of this. Everyone of a certain age knows it, and says it, and is believed.

How It Is Known. It has always been known. My own father knew it, and his father, who assured him the weather had been far better still in his day, back when — and here the account grows misty, as the best knowledge does.

What I Have Established By Enquiry. I looked, once, in the parish records, for the golden year everybody remembers, and found in every single year on record a note in the clerk's hand to the effect that the weather that year had been a disgrace and worse than the last. There is no first year. It was always better before the before. I found this restful rather than otherwise: a realm that has always been getting worse has, you will notice, not yet arrived anywhere, and is therefore in no immediate danger.

As they say: it was better before — and it always will be.

4 · THAT EVERYONE IN SODDEN BOTTOM IS SOMEHOW RELATED TO THE BELL

What Is Known. There is a bell at Sodden Bottom, and everyone in the parish is descended from, or related to, or was present at the casting of, or once heard, the bell — the exact connection varies, but the fact of the connection is universal and fiercely held.

How It Is Known. Ask anyone in Sodden Bottom about the bell and stand back.

What I Have Established By Enquiry. I attempted to draw up the family tree that would connect all these claims and produced a document that looks like a plate of eels and proves that everyone in the parish is their own great-uncle. I have framed it. It is the truest genealogy I possess, precisely because it cannot be true, and the parish is entirely satisfied with it, which is the mark of a knowledge worth keeping: it survives being written down, because nobody reads it.

As they say at the flood-line: we are all family here, and the bell will tell you so, if you ask it wrong.

5 · THAT SOME THINGS MUST NOT BE SAID ALOUD

What Is Known. There are things one does not say aloud, and everyone knows which they are, and everyone knows that to name a thing is to call it, and so the wise leave certain matters unspoken and are the safer for it. This is the deepest common knowledge of all, and the one nobody will discuss, which is only proper.

How It Is Known. Everyone falls silent in the same places. That is how you learn where the silences are — not by being told, but by the whole room going quiet at once, which it does, and which teaches a child faster than any book.

What I Have Established By Enquiry. Nothing, and I will keep it that way. I am a barber, not a fool. I have noticed only this, and I set it down and go no further: that the things the realm agrees not to name are believed in far more completely than the things it can prove, and that a belief nobody is allowed to test is the strongest belief there is, and outlasts every fact, and that this is the true foundation of the whole kingdom — a great and load-bearing silence, agreed by all, examined by none.

As they say — but here, you understand, they do not say anything. That is the entry.

Goodman Natter keeps the Almanac open on the shelf by the strop, and adds to it whenever a customer tells him a thing that everybody knows, which is daily, and he never checks it, which is the point, and he has come nearer the shape of this realm from a barber's chair, adding nothing, than the whole Cartographic Committee has come with its chains — because he wrote down not what is true, but what is believed, and in Sogmarsh the second is the larger country, and the better mapped, and the only one anybody actually lives in.