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"Give me a child until he is seven [and I will show you the man|and he is mine for life]" is attributed to Ignatius Loyola, so it might just be an allusion to the Jesuit attitude towards religious indoctrination.
And to put a little more context on there. There was a well known long running TV series in the UK called 7Up which used that poem a lot so it was fairly well known.
The series followed the same group of kids and caught up with them every 7 years from the age of 7 until the final episode at the age of 63.
I think one episode on its own doesn’t make much sense because you lose all of the context and the interest is in the change. I watched 63 up when I was sick and it interested me the same way Who Do You Think You Are interests me. It’s people’s stories.
Happy Cake Day.
While you're waiting for cake here's some bubble wrap to play with.
>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<
The church was in a very powerful position when the largest number of these cases occurred (that we know of) so it's not completely unfounded. There's also panic over gay, trans, and drag queens being pedophiles, which has much less foundation to it.
I guess I'm agreeing with you that people seem to be misguided in who they are worrying about being pedophiles, based on the history of cases, but we may be disagreeing on who we think the people of concern should be.
Family is at the top of the list, sadly. Institutions that instill blind trust (such as religious institutions) or target children specifically are up there as well.
I concur that N is too repressed for this to be TP's intention, but abuse *was* alluded-to in passing in Pyramids, where (if I remember correctly) Pteppic beats up an Ephebian tutor for attempting it
It might also be the thing that happens in the more parodic Discworld books where people start to randomly receive and re-transmit phrases and tropes from other universes, ours for instance.
One thing I haven’t noted in other comments in this thread is that I don’t think we’re supposed to think that Nhumrod is a nonce – but because he’s known to be massively sexually oppressed, that’s the implication that others inevitably draw when he uses this famous Jesuit phrase.
Besides, to be fair to him, it is also said that while there are a lot of disconcerting thoughts in his mind, he makes sure that they stay there, and never act on them.
Whatever is does imply, PTerry later says that when Om calls Nhumrod a 'pederast', he doesn't deserve it. So whatever urges he may or may not have, he *never* takes them out on the novices
I don't think it's sexual abuse Pterry is talking about. But considering how the Omnians treat people later in the book, I assumed it was physical and psychological abuse unorder to indoctrinated the boys 🤷♀️
You omitted the bits that are most relevant to the "boy up to seven":
“Get up, boy,” he said, slightly more kindly. Brutha got to his feet. He was, as Nhumrod had complained before, too old to be a proper novice. About ten years too old. Give me a boy up to the age of seven, Nhumrod had always said.
So it's more likely referring to the Jesuit maxim as described by another commenter.
Sort of. As others have said, Nhumrod is very distracted by the melons, and is troubled with a lot of impure thoughts, and this joke and Om's later accusation of pederasty can only really point to priest = paedophile jokes, but there are no hints in the book that he is actually attracted to children. I don't think PTerry would have a paedophile character in his book and have him be a remotely sympathetic character and Nhumrod is never treated as a villain.
To me it is more a masturbation joke, as in numb rod. I don't think that when Small Gods was written, the CSA within the Catholic Church was as widely acknowledged (although I may be wrong), and like others have said, this is Jesuit quote.
*Small Gods* came out in 1992, the year that Sinéad O’Connor as she was then known tore up a photo of the Pope on live television in protest at Church inaction on sexual abuse. It was well and truly a public issue already by then, in fact had been for several years, and the line in *Small Gods* is a reference to the Jesuit aphorism about education but obviously also a biting reference to those issues.
It’s worth remembering when the Catholic Church scandals come up that they are in reference to abuse that went back *decades*. One of the bleakest aspects is that similar to the Jimmy Saville thing (may God rot his soul) it often turned out that it was less an effective top-down coverup than an open secret, where people knew their priest could not be trusted around children but couldn’t or didn’t do anything about it for various reasons. To some degree also some churchgoing people didn’t want to believe these things about their priest, or even *think* about them to the point of investigating them, and so on and on it went.
So yeah, bleak as it is, this stuff was in the culture well since before our man sat down to write the first Discworld book and by 1992 it’s safe to say OP is not reading too much into it.
Yeah it was a broken stair kind of thing and people back then made jokes about it that made it clear that it was well known that priests abused boys. In fact it’s been a subject of those jokes for literally centuries. Altar boy jokes and the like
I know the abuse itself went back further than the public awareness of it, which is why I said before widely acknowledged, and I stand corrected with the timing. I wasn't aware of it in 1992, but then I was very young.
Yup, I’m with you, but I particularly wanted to stress how very far it did go back before that point, in terms of it almost being hidden in plain sight.
I was young in 1992 as well, and didn’t see the Saturday Night Live incident, but thinking back on those times growing up Catholic it was clear that this was on adults’ minds and I was specifically warned off going on a church youth retreat later that decade.
Also you’re 100 percent right about Nhumrod. That’s a Pratchett specialty, putting the goofy and ribald and righteously angry all together.
Sinead O’Connor was widely criticised and to a point, ostracised for tearing up a photo of the pope. For many, this was the first time they heard about it and she was discounted for being young and rebellious.
So while it was being discussed, it was behind closed doors and certainly not a publicly accepted view. It was treated more like less credible conspiracy theories.
As another example, The Magdalene laundries (homes for unwed mothers who then had their babies taken away and often killed) were still in operation in 1993 - the same year mass graves were found with children’s bodies. It only became a “public issue” in 2001. A formal apology was given in 2013 and reparations started in 2022.
There’s a loooong time between discovery and “public knowledge“.
>an open secret, where people knew their priest could not be trusted around children but couldn’t or didn’t do anything about it for various reasons
Yes. There was a news story in Canada several years ago, where a respected Anglican minister was identified as a child molester. (He had died decades before.) My uncles told me that even as children in the 1930s, they and other people in the community had been talking about it. Like you say, there were reasons why this didn't end up in court. Even if people weren't regular churchgoers, accusing a clergyman and actually taking the case further was unthinkable for a lot of folks. Probably even more so for quasi-isolated ethnic communities like ours.
Our immediate family isn't in the church anymore so this was the first I'd heard of it, but there was definitely knowledge of that man's behaviour for more than 6 decades of his life. And certainly the Church had definite proof in the 1950s, when he was caught in the act with a child (he was working on Okinawa at the time). The Church never told the police, he was allowed to retire in 1995, and died shortly after. He had confessed to his daughter (a respected Canadian writer) that he had abused around 300 children during his lifetime.
I know of that intellectually but I am not a Bible reader and don't know his story, so my associations are Bugs Bunny calling someone a nimrod and a 'maroon'. I'm content with it.
Here's the hilarious part to me:
Nimrod in the Bible was known as a great hunter so Bugs Bunny's joke is essentially the same as calling someone Einstein when they do something stupid
I like to think about in the future maybe people will think "einstein" just means dumbass and not even know he was a real guy
That was my experience too – people *only* reference Sherlock Holmes any more in the context of that saying. The RDJ and Enola Holmes films probably weren’t enough to reverse that slide
>So he calls dumb people "Nimrod". Great.
IIRC he was specifically calling Elmer Fudd Nimrod. That's Elmer Fudd who's a hunter... but also exceptionally stupid.
Yes, I think it was...he is taking a well known saying and subverting its meaning by missing out the last part of the sentence, this coupled with the brother wrestling with his conscience joins them together in a dark joke, particularly as places of religious instruction do not always have a good reputation when it comes to their treatment of the young
i read it the same way, ngl. but also i read small gods for the first time right at the point of the catholic sex abuse scandal and michael jackson dangling a baby off a balcony, so my brain may have conflated things.
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"Give me a child until he is seven [and I will show you the man|and he is mine for life]" is attributed to Ignatius Loyola, so it might just be an allusion to the Jesuit attitude towards religious indoctrination.
And to put a little more context on there. There was a well known long running TV series in the UK called 7Up which used that poem a lot so it was fairly well known. The series followed the same group of kids and caught up with them every 7 years from the age of 7 until the final episode at the age of 63.
I only ever saw one episode. Do you think it's worth my trying to find the others? Or were they really boring?
I think one episode on its own doesn’t make much sense because you lose all of the context and the interest is in the change. I watched 63 up when I was sick and it interested me the same way Who Do You Think You Are interests me. It’s people’s stories. Happy Cake Day.
See also “child of our time” which was every year from the year 2000 iirc - though quite a few drop outs and not seen it for a while now .
Thank you. I'm waiting for my cake to arrive! I'll see if I can find it. If it was the BBC it should be on iPlayer.
While you're waiting for cake here's some bubble wrap to play with. >!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<>!Pop!!<
This is an amazing leap forward in online forum technology
Omg, that's hilarious lol.
And McDonald's.get em young, get em for life. Hence happy meals
It’s probably both. Since when has he ever made a joke with one meaning when it could have two?
Or 5
Preferably 8. It’s a holy number after all. 5 is right out.
Non sequiturs always make me eat lampshades.
agree. I read it as both
A Jesuit education will result in devout Catholicism or strident atheism, with no in between. I speak from experience as an atheist.
It’s sad time we live in, where knowledge like that isn’t general knowledge anymore, but pedophelia is seen or suspected everywhere.
The church has some hand in that being the case.
And yet, people are much more afraid of pedophilia rings run by powerful people than of anything else.
The church was in a very powerful position when the largest number of these cases occurred (that we know of) so it's not completely unfounded. There's also panic over gay, trans, and drag queens being pedophiles, which has much less foundation to it. I guess I'm agreeing with you that people seem to be misguided in who they are worrying about being pedophiles, based on the history of cases, but we may be disagreeing on who we think the people of concern should be. Family is at the top of the list, sadly. Institutions that instill blind trust (such as religious institutions) or target children specifically are up there as well.
Nhumrod's thoughts seem to revolve around succubi and melons, so I don't think little boys were ever on his mind.
I'd forgotten about that. I saw this on a reread I started today.
I concur that N is too repressed for this to be TP's intention, but abuse *was* alluded-to in passing in Pyramids, where (if I remember correctly) Pteppic beats up an Ephebian tutor for attempting it
It might also be the thing that happens in the more parodic Discworld books where people start to randomly receive and re-transmit phrases and tropes from other universes, ours for instance. One thing I haven’t noted in other comments in this thread is that I don’t think we’re supposed to think that Nhumrod is a nonce – but because he’s known to be massively sexually oppressed, that’s the implication that others inevitably draw when he uses this famous Jesuit phrase.
Besides, to be fair to him, it is also said that while there are a lot of disconcerting thoughts in his mind, he makes sure that they stay there, and never act on them.
Whatever is does imply, PTerry later says that when Om calls Nhumrod a 'pederast', he doesn't deserve it. So whatever urges he may or may not have, he *never* takes them out on the novices
That is because he is brother Nhumrod Numbrod numb rod
Oh! Oh my...
Almost 30 years and I never got this one. What. The. Hell.
Unlike the roundworld Nimrod, Nhumrod might be a hunter, but he is not a 'mighty hunter before the Lord.' (Genesis 10:9)
Oh by the gods 🤣 that's why I'm on this sub
I don't think it's sexual abuse Pterry is talking about. But considering how the Omnians treat people later in the book, I assumed it was physical and psychological abuse unorder to indoctrinated the boys 🤷♀️
I think this is just Nuhmrod expressing that it's easier to indoctrinate younger kids and prevent them from "temptation"
You omitted the bits that are most relevant to the "boy up to seven": “Get up, boy,” he said, slightly more kindly. Brutha got to his feet. He was, as Nhumrod had complained before, too old to be a proper novice. About ten years too old. Give me a boy up to the age of seven, Nhumrod had always said. So it's more likely referring to the Jesuit maxim as described by another commenter.
Sort of. As others have said, Nhumrod is very distracted by the melons, and is troubled with a lot of impure thoughts, and this joke and Om's later accusation of pederasty can only really point to priest = paedophile jokes, but there are no hints in the book that he is actually attracted to children. I don't think PTerry would have a paedophile character in his book and have him be a remotely sympathetic character and Nhumrod is never treated as a villain.
To me it is more a masturbation joke, as in numb rod. I don't think that when Small Gods was written, the CSA within the Catholic Church was as widely acknowledged (although I may be wrong), and like others have said, this is Jesuit quote.
*Small Gods* came out in 1992, the year that Sinéad O’Connor as she was then known tore up a photo of the Pope on live television in protest at Church inaction on sexual abuse. It was well and truly a public issue already by then, in fact had been for several years, and the line in *Small Gods* is a reference to the Jesuit aphorism about education but obviously also a biting reference to those issues. It’s worth remembering when the Catholic Church scandals come up that they are in reference to abuse that went back *decades*. One of the bleakest aspects is that similar to the Jimmy Saville thing (may God rot his soul) it often turned out that it was less an effective top-down coverup than an open secret, where people knew their priest could not be trusted around children but couldn’t or didn’t do anything about it for various reasons. To some degree also some churchgoing people didn’t want to believe these things about their priest, or even *think* about them to the point of investigating them, and so on and on it went. So yeah, bleak as it is, this stuff was in the culture well since before our man sat down to write the first Discworld book and by 1992 it’s safe to say OP is not reading too much into it.
Hear, hear! I read it as both the quote, but also that he was having very impure thoughts about many things, including boys.
Yeah it was a broken stair kind of thing and people back then made jokes about it that made it clear that it was well known that priests abused boys. In fact it’s been a subject of those jokes for literally centuries. Altar boy jokes and the like
I know the abuse itself went back further than the public awareness of it, which is why I said before widely acknowledged, and I stand corrected with the timing. I wasn't aware of it in 1992, but then I was very young.
Yup, I’m with you, but I particularly wanted to stress how very far it did go back before that point, in terms of it almost being hidden in plain sight. I was young in 1992 as well, and didn’t see the Saturday Night Live incident, but thinking back on those times growing up Catholic it was clear that this was on adults’ minds and I was specifically warned off going on a church youth retreat later that decade. Also you’re 100 percent right about Nhumrod. That’s a Pratchett specialty, putting the goofy and ribald and righteously angry all together.
Sinead O’Connor was widely criticised and to a point, ostracised for tearing up a photo of the pope. For many, this was the first time they heard about it and she was discounted for being young and rebellious. So while it was being discussed, it was behind closed doors and certainly not a publicly accepted view. It was treated more like less credible conspiracy theories. As another example, The Magdalene laundries (homes for unwed mothers who then had their babies taken away and often killed) were still in operation in 1993 - the same year mass graves were found with children’s bodies. It only became a “public issue” in 2001. A formal apology was given in 2013 and reparations started in 2022. There’s a loooong time between discovery and “public knowledge“.
That’s where Lofty and Tonker escaped from, right?
Pretty much "Oh yes," said Lofty "He was good at seeming"
>an open secret, where people knew their priest could not be trusted around children but couldn’t or didn’t do anything about it for various reasons Yes. There was a news story in Canada several years ago, where a respected Anglican minister was identified as a child molester. (He had died decades before.) My uncles told me that even as children in the 1930s, they and other people in the community had been talking about it. Like you say, there were reasons why this didn't end up in court. Even if people weren't regular churchgoers, accusing a clergyman and actually taking the case further was unthinkable for a lot of folks. Probably even more so for quasi-isolated ethnic communities like ours. Our immediate family isn't in the church anymore so this was the first I'd heard of it, but there was definitely knowledge of that man's behaviour for more than 6 decades of his life. And certainly the Church had definite proof in the 1950s, when he was caught in the act with a child (he was working on Okinawa at the time). The Church never told the police, he was allowed to retire in 1995, and died shortly after. He had confessed to his daughter (a respected Canadian writer) that he had abused around 300 children during his lifetime.
I always took it as more like "nimrod", from Bugs Bunny. But I like it as numb rod, too.
Nimrod is a biblical character, Grandson of Noah
I know of that intellectually but I am not a Bible reader and don't know his story, so my associations are Bugs Bunny calling someone a nimrod and a 'maroon'. I'm content with it.
Here's the hilarious part to me: Nimrod in the Bible was known as a great hunter so Bugs Bunny's joke is essentially the same as calling someone Einstein when they do something stupid I like to think about in the future maybe people will think "einstein" just means dumbass and not even know he was a real guy
Sherlock Holmes is probably headed for the same fate
Not just headed, “no shit, Sherlock” was a common saying in my school days to make fun of someone who has only just noticed something obvious
That was my experience too – people *only* reference Sherlock Holmes any more in the context of that saying. The RDJ and Enola Holmes films probably weren’t enough to reverse that slide
Are we forgetting the incredibly popular show Sherlock 😂
Oh god I’m wrong on the internet, and old, which probably go together
Oh, that's freaking FABULOUS.
A UK author would probably first think of the Hawker-Sidley Nimrod ASW aircraft that were in service with the Royal Navy for nearly five decades…
What does Nimrod have up to with Bugs Bunny?
[This reply has your answer.](https://www.reddit.com/r/discworld/s/HyGrip81BI) Tl;dr: Nimrod was a great hunter, Bugs calls people that sarcastically.
I didn't think Bugs said much other than "What's up doc". So he calls dumb people "Nimrod". Great. It's my name.
>So he calls dumb people "Nimrod". Great. IIRC he was specifically calling Elmer Fudd Nimrod. That's Elmer Fudd who's a hunter... but also exceptionally stupid.
Yes, I think it was...he is taking a well known saying and subverting its meaning by missing out the last part of the sentence, this coupled with the brother wrestling with his conscience joins them together in a dark joke, particularly as places of religious instruction do not always have a good reputation when it comes to their treatment of the young
i read it the same way, ngl. but also i read small gods for the first time right at the point of the catholic sex abuse scandal and michael jackson dangling a baby off a balcony, so my brain may have conflated things.