Belafon

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A druid whose role in the scheme of things is to be a ferry pilot for trilithons.

He was disconcerted one day when his trilithon was hijacked in mid-flight by Rincewind and Twoflower, but bacon sandwiches acted as a diplomatic leavener. Interestingly enough, Famous Last Words had just been spoken by Rincewind, to whom Twoflower had just expressed doubts about the advisability of trying to fly a stolen witch's broomstick in low cloud cover.


"What do you think we're going to run into up here - a cloud stuffed with rocks?"

And seconds later...

Belafon makes an appearance to speak of matters druidical in The Light Fantastic.

Annotation

A dig at New Age believers and pundits of the Jacques Vallee/Erich von Daniken/ type, who resolve the mystery of how the Stonehenge stones got there by advocating either (i) they were built for us by aliens; or (ii) by some Druidic earth-magical ability since lost to us, they were flown into place by airborne Druids or jobbing Egyptians with experience at building the Pyramids the same way. (See book The View over Stonehenge). And indeed, in Pyramids, we have the Ptaclusp family who...

The name Belafon evokes shades not only of the mythical Greek hero Bellerophon, but also the rather more close-to-home singing star Harry Belafonte.