(Quelle, Hervorhebungen von mir)Vimes' visit to Miss Beedle. She lives in a scenario which is reminiscent of the Starkadders' smallholding at Cold Comfort Farm. (another literary shout-out to novels of rural England). The role of Elfine, the unworldly free spirit, is taken by the goblin girl, Tears of the Mushroom, and the unhinged Starkadder family, those archetypes of inbred rurality, would in this context be the habitues of Jiminy's public house, the Goblin's Head. Miss Felicity Beedle might well be Flora Poste, the displaced city intellectual who reads a lot, and who acts as a stone cast into the still and stagnant local pond, sending ripples everywhere. The owl-shaped clock in Miss Beedle's cottage also appears on Miss Flitworth's parlour wall in Reaper Man, where it serves to seriously discomfort Death in his Bill Door mortal aspect. Here, it worries Sam Vimes. (another reference to the deeper themes of Reaper Man, also a novel set largely in the rural Shires?) It need not necessarily be the same one. A search on Google produces quite a few manufacturers of owl-shaped curio clocks, which are unaccountably popular. Google also throws up articles on the social, literary and folklorique connotations of the owl, as a synbol of death, passage into eternity, and a harbinger of change, suggesting the ghostly nocturnal aspect of this bird together with its haunting night cry might link it to the Banshee myth - ie, hearing it call in the night is a harbinger of death to somebody or something.
Interessanterweise heißen in "Cold Comfort Farm" auch mehrere Charaktere "Beetle". Kann allerdings weder sagen, ob das auch Teil der Anspielung ist, dies überhaupt eine bestätigte Anspielung ist.