Orc Logistics

07 Tuesday May 2024

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As always, dear readers, welcome.

Sauron, although he rather rashly placed much of his power (as well as his life force) in what is, basically, a magic ring, has always struck me as rather a practical person when it comes to war and foreign affairs.  In order to conquer the West, he’s:

1. turned his rather bleak realm into a giant military camp

2. brought back the final destroyer of Arnor, the Witch King of Angmar, as his chief lieutenant

3. made treaties with peoples to the east and south to bolster his already extensive armies and cleverly turned pirates loose to raid the southern shores of Gondor to distract his opponents and force them to divide their forces

4. corrupted one of the West’s traditional allies, Saruman, turning him into a kind of “Mini Me”

 

5. weakened another, Rohan, through a spy in the king’s court, Grima, who has somehow turned that king into a prematurely-aged man

6. worked on the mind of the commander of Gondor, Denethor, using an ancient communications device, making him suspicious of his younger son and promoting a defeatist attitude

As well, he seems quite aware of what we call geo-politics, as we see in his demands at the Black Gate:

“ ‘The rabble of Gondor and its deluded allies shall withdraw at once beyond the Anduin, first taking oaths never again to assail Sauron the Great in arms, open or secret.  All lands east of the Anduin shall be Sauron’s for ever, solely.  West of the Anduin as far as the Misty Mountains and the Gap of Rohan shall be tributary to Mordor, and men there shall bear no weapons, but shall have leave to govern their own affairs.  But they shall help to rebuild Isengard which they have wantonly destroyed, and that shall be Sauron’s and there his lieutenant shall dwell:  not Saruman, but one more worthy of trust.”  (The Return of the King, Book Five, Chapter 10, “The Black Gate Opens”)

Reading this passage, however, I’m puzzled:

“Time passed.  At length watchers on the walls could see the retreat of the out-companies.  Small bands of weary and often wounded men came first with little order; some were running wildly as if pursued.  Away to the eastward the distant fires flickered, and now it seemed that here and there they crept across the plain.  Houses and barns were burning.  Then from many points little rivers of red flame came hurrying on, winding through the gloom, converging towards the line of the broad road that led from the City-gate to Osgiliath.”  (The Return of the King, Book 5, Chapter 4, “The Siege of Gondor”)

As we know, JRRT himself had been a soldier, though perhaps a reluctant one,

and thus would have been well aware of the saying, sometimes attributed to Napoleon, that “an army marches on its stomach”.  In 1916, such an army needed massive supply dumps,

which needed railroads to bring food and ammunition to them.

From there, wagons

and, in time, early trucks,

then mules and horses would have taken supplies farther forward

and, from there, the troops themselves might have formed what were called “carrying parties”.

Image7:  carrying

(This is actually a “wiring party”, with its “screw pickets”, which were twisted into the ground and used to hold up the barbed wire, but it can stand in for a “carrying party”.  For more on “wiring parties”, see:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiring_party  )

One fact alone might suggest how big the task of keeping the British Army supplied :  “By 1918, the British were sending over 67 million lbs (30 million kg) of meat to the Western Front each month.”  (This is from an article entitled “The Food That Fuelled the Front” from the Imperial War Museum website, which you can see here:  https://www.iwm.org.uk/history/the-food-that-fuelled-the-front  )

This was a vast, modern army, with all the modern technology available in 1918 to enable resupply (such supplying is called “logistics”).  Sauron’s army is of a much earlier time, its basis seemingly infantry, armed with swords, spears, and bows,

(Alan Lee)

assisted by a certain number of oliphaunts,

(Alan Lee)

horsemen,

(These are actually Mongols, but all the text says is “Before them went a great cavalry of horsemen moving like ordered shadows…”  The Two Towers, Book Four, Chapter 8, “The Stairs of Cirith Ungol”, leaving it up to us to imagine what they might have looked like.)

and perhaps a warband of wargs,

(Artist?)

yet its basic needs would have been the same as those of the British Army in which Tolkien served.

To provide a parallel a bit closer to The Lord of the Rings, we might imagine an earlier army, like the army of New Kingdom Egypt

as we might have seen it marching to fight the Hittites

(Angus McBride)

at the Battle of Kadesh, in the summer of 1274BC. 

No oliphaunts or cavalry (or wargs) in support, but definitely chariots, maybe 2000 of them.

(Again, Angus McBride, one of my favorite military artists of the 20th century). 

The Egyptian army of Rameses II

may have numbered about 20,000, with as many as 4,000 chariot horses, and here are some potential logistic figures for such an earlier army—

Thinking of water alone, the average modern horse will drink 5-10 gallons (19-38 ltrs) of water a day, depending on working conditions, and that same horse needs to eat 15-20 pounds  (7-9 kg) of hay.  An average present-day American eats about 5.5  pounds (2.5 kg) of food per day and drinks 2 quarts (2 ltrs) of water.  On the one hand, ancient Egyptians were somewhat smaller than we are and probably less well-fed to begin with, but, on the other, that water requirement is an average and doesn’t factor in  marching for miles on dusty summertime roads in the Middle East.

Could Rameses’ army have carried enough supplies with it for the long march (perhaps about 500 miles—about 805km)?  Rameses would have had available to him no trains or trucks, but the ancient Egyptians had carts (probably pulled by oxen, as were their plows)

and certainly used pack mules.

As to possible baggage camels,

there is a lot of scholarly argument about their use.  Although camel remains (a few depictions, bones, rope from camel hair) are there, there doesn’t appear to be any clear evidence for the use of camels as carriers until much later.  Food—the ordinary Egyptian diet was simple, including barley bread

and beer (also made from barley),

so large supplies of barley flour might be carried, but how to carry—and preserve–beer?  Water could be substituted, but could it be carried?  Or would the Egyptians have done as armies have done throughout history and foraged, picking up supplies of food and drink from the locals, willingly or unwillingly?  Both Rameses II’s and Sauron’s armies had horses, but add oliphaunts in Sauron’s, and all in need of fodder, this would include, in season, cutting grass

and, in and out of season, probably looting barns and granaries, as well.

Consider, then, Sauron’s armies and the Pelennor into which they had broken. 

We don’t know their numbers, but it’s clear that they are enormous, far outnumbering the defenders of Minas Tirith.   And this is what puzzles me.  Tolkien was certainly aware of such needs in general—as he once wrote:  “I am not incapable of or unaware of economic thought…” (letter to Naomi Mitchison, 25 September, 1954, Letters, 292).   And yet—

“It drew now to evening by the hour, and the light was so dim that even far-sighted men upon the Citadel could discern little clearly out upon the fields, save only the burnings that ever multiplied, and the lines of fire that grew in length and speed.”

Perhaps the army brought some provisions with it (Saruman and Sauron’s orcs seem to have had something like field rations, as we learn after they carry off Merry and Pippin), but, if the siege of Minas Tirith had proved to be a long one, what would such a vast host and its beasts have eaten, having destroyed the nearest source of food and fodder?  We’ve seen that Sauron was shrewd and showed a great amount of foresight in his pre-war preparations, so my only answer is a question:   did JRRT, who certainly had a taste for the dramatic moment–think of the way in which the Rohirrim appear at the edge of the Rammas Echor–

deliberately sacrifice economics for drama?  We’ll probably never know for certain, but, if you stand for a moment, on the wall of the first circle of Minas Tirith in the darkness, and see those fires spread across the Pelennor…

As always, thanks for reading.

Stay well,

If you have a yen for conquest, remember to pack a lunch (with carrots for your horse, of course),

And remember that, as always, there’s

MTCIDC

O

Battering Ram or…Wolf?

01 Wednesday May 2024

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Ad haec Caesar respondit: se magis consuetudine sua quam merito eorum civitatem conservaturum, si prius quam murum aries attigisset se dedidissent;

“Caesar replies to these things that he would preserve their town, more by his own custom than by [their] deserving it, if they would have surrendered before the ram had touched the [town] wall.” (Caesar, De Bello Gallico, 2.32.  My translation.)

The Aduatuci (or Atuatuci) were a Germanic tribe in what is now eastern Belgium and they were in trouble.  Involved in resisting Julius Caesar’s conquest of their region, they found themselves besieged by a Roman army long-experienced in dealing with fortified towns like this one.  Appalled by the preparations they could see being made, they quickly agreed upon terms with Caesar—on his condition, as stated above, the idea being that, once the ram had touched the wall, it would knock it down and everyone inside would be at the mercy of the Romans (murdered on the spot or sold into slavery.  We have no idea what the town looked like, but if its walls were of the sort called murus gallicus,

as Caesar himself describes the building technique, it was his obvious preparations and chilly threat which caused the capitulation,  Caesar admitting that such walls would have stymied Roman rams.  See for more:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murus_gallicus    Just after their surrender, the Aduatuci made the mistake of trying to trick the Romans and paid dearly for it.  See:   https://www.livius.org/articles/battle/oppidum-aduatucorum-57-bce/   )

Among those preparations would have been a siege weapon in use at least as far back as the Neo-Assyrians (10th through 7th century BC), as this relief from the edge of a bronze vessel demonstrates.

Caesar’s threat suggests that his weapon would be aimed at a wall, but, the Assyrian relief is aimed at what, I think, we’ve come to expect from medieval illustrations—

and from adventure movies—see this scene from Braveheart (1995) as an example:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7PXrVUaoEEc  —

a gate, it being the weakest part of a defensive wall.

As always, welcome, dear readers.

What’s going on here, that we begin, as Horace (65-8BC) put it in his Ars Poetica, 146-149, when cautioning poets about trying to tackle bigger subjects that they can possibly manage, in medias res, “in the middle of the action”?

Because this posting is really about being in mediam portam, “in the middle of the gate”, as Tolkien says of the main gate of Minas Tirith:

“Very strong it might be, wrought of steel and iron, and guarded with towers and bastions of indomitable stone, yet it was the key, the weakest point in all that high and impenetrable wall.”  (The Return of the King, Book Five, Chapter 4, “The Siege of Gondor”)

What’s attacking that gate is a monstrous ram:

“…in the midst was a huge ram, great as a forest-tree a hundred feet in length, swinging on mighty chains.  Long had it been forging in the dark smithies of Mordor, and its hideous head, founded of black steel, was shaped in the likeness of a ravening wolf, on its[,] spells of ruin lay.  Grond they named it, in memory of the Hammer of the Underworld of old.”

(from Jackson’s Return of the King, and, as usual, it varies from the text—this time, instead of simply having a wolf’s head, the whole thing appears to be a wolf—and it seems to have ingested a George Forman grill, as well)

“Grond” is glossed as “the Hammer of the Underworld” and, elsewhere, as Morgoth’s mace—

but I’ve wondered about two non-Middle-earth influences upon its creation.

The first is to be found in something I suspect JRRT could have read at some point in his academic career, the Chronicle of Piers de Langtoft.  This is a early 14th-century compilation of earlier English history, combined with what is thought to be “Peter of Langtoft’s” own work, written in Norman French verse.  In his narration of events, the author includes an account of Edward I’s siege of Stirling Castle in 1304.

(This breathtaking reconstruction of the siege is by Bob Marshall, whose site is here:  https://www.bobmarshall.co.uk/stirlingcastle/   I recommend this site for:  a. the wonderful artwork; b. the excellent research and thinking behind it.  You can see more of his work—and it’s all as impressive as this—here:  https://bobmarshall.co.uk/)  Among the siege weapons Edward employed was something of which Piers/Peter writes:

“Entre ses aferes le reys fet carpenter

Une engine orrible, et Ludgar appeler

Et cel a son hurtir crevant le mur enter.”

“Among these events, the king had made of wood

A terrible device, and to be called ‘Ludgar’

And that [one] at its hit breaking down the whole wall.”

(my translation)

This “Ludgar” has been interpreted as being a large stone-thrower, called a trebuchet,

but it’s not its function which interested me, but what “Ludgar” is actually a shortened form of:  “Loup de Guerre”—“War Wolf”.  Could this have sparked Tolkien’s imagination to combine that name with another siege weapon?

(You can have your own copy of the text here:  https://ia801500.us.archive.org/5/items/chronicleofpierr02pete/chronicleofpierr02pete.pdf )

And that wolf leads me to my second possible influence, perhaps rather more unusual than the first.

Neither The Letters of JRR Tolkien nor Oronzo Cilli’s impressive Tolkien’s Library has any mention of Bram Stoker (1847-1912)

or his 1897 masterpiece, Dracula,

but, as I’m currently finishing reading it with a class, I noticed another wolf—with a similar task to that of Grond—in Stoker’s novel.

Please pardon the quick plot summary, if you’ve read the book.

Lucy Westenra is Dracula’s first victim in his one-man invasion of England.  To protect her, Dr Van Helsing surrounds her with garlic, including among other things, a garland for her neck and for the window of her first floor bedroom.  Lucy feels safe and her mother, who has a weak heart, comes to join her in bed.

Thwarted by Van Helsing’s work, Dracula picks a weapon from the London Zoological Gardens and–

“After a while there was the low howl again out in the shrubbery, and shortly after there was a crash at the window, and a lot of broken glass was hurled on the floor. The window blind blew back with the wind that rushed in, and in the aperture of the broken panes there was the head of a great, gaunt grey wolf. Mother cried out in a fright, and struggled up into a sitting posture, and clutched wildly at anything that would help her. Amongst other things, she clutched the wreath of flowers that Dr. Van Helsing insisted on my wearing round my neck, and tore it away from me. For a second or two she sat up, pointing at the wolf, and there was a strange and horrible gurgling in her throat; then she fell over—as if struck with lightning, and her head hit my forehead and made me dizzy for a moment or two. The room and all round seemed to spin round. I kept my eyes fixed on the window, but the wolf drew his head back, and a whole myriad of little specks seemed to come blowing in through the broken window, and wheeling and circling round like the pillar of dust that travellers describe when there is a simoon in the desert. I tried to stir, but there was some spell upon me, and dear mother’s poor body, which seemed to grow cold already—for her dear heart had ceased to beat—weighed me down; and I remembered no more for a while.”  (Dracula, Chapter XII, “Memorandum left by Lucy Westenra”)

(Abigail Rorer from the Folio Society edition)

Perhaps not so grand as:

“…Thrice the great ram boomed.  And suddenly upon the last stroke the Gate of Gondor broke.  As if stricken by some blasting spell it burst asunder:  there was a flash of searing lightning, and the doors tumbled in riven fragments to the ground.

In rode the Lord of the Nazgul.”

(Denis Gordeev)

but equally effective and, as the Witch King of Agmar stands at the ruined gate, so Dracula stands at the broken window.  The difference is, the Witch King is thwarted by the advent of the Rohirrim,

(Julia Alexeeva)

while Dracula slips in and begins Lucy’s final transformation into a vampire.

So, could an early 14th century text and a late 19th-century horror novel have given Tolkien inspiration?  If an 1890 children’s book can offer him a talking dragon (“The Story of Sigurd” in Andrew Lang’s The Red Fairy Book, which you can read here:  https://archive.org/details/redfairybook00langiala/redfairybook00langiala/ )

why not?

Thanks, as ever, for reading.

Stay well,

Even if garlic might not keep out vampires, it’s good in bread,

And remember that, as always, there’s

MTCIDC

O

PS

In case you haven’t read Dracula, here’s your chance in a copy of the first American edition of 1897:  https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/345/pg345-images.html

A Corking Tale?

24 Wednesday Apr 2024

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Welcome, as always, dear readers,

I’m about to teach The Hobbit again, which is, as always, a pleasure—and also a repeated source of new things to think—and write—about. 

Take this, for example:

“Chip the glasses and crack the plates!

Blunt the knives and bend the forks!

That’s what Bilbo Baggins hates—

Smash the bottles and burn the corks!” 

(The Hobbit, Chapter One, “An Unexpected Party”)

Seven years ago, this formed a small part of an earlier essay, “Shire Portrait (2)” (8 February, 2017), in which the subject was the economy of the Shire.

JRRT was himself aware of just how much lay underneath that economy which he didn’t depict, writing:

“I am more conscious of my sketchiness in the archaeology and realien [“actualities/realities”] than in the economics:  clothes, agricultural implements, metal-working, pottery, architecture and the like…I am not incapable of or unaware of economic thought; and I think as far as the ‘mortals’ go, Men, Hobbits, and Dwarfs, that the situations are so devised that economic likelihood is there and could be worked out…”  (letter to Naomi Mitchinson, 25 September, 1954, Letters 291-292)

In that essay, I pointed out that, in Tolkien’s world, those threatened corks came primarily from Portugal, from the Quercus suber,

which, as the Wiki articles tells us, actually “is native to southwest Europe and northwest Africa”, suggesting, perhaps, that, in Middle-earth, it might be imported as far away as from Umbar, say, far to the south, had Tolkien bothered to go that far in expressing “economic likelihood”.

This cork bobbed up (they do, don’t they?) in my mind associated with something completely different, however, but certainly naturally:  barrels.

And this led me to what was, in fact, a mistaken idea.

In the mid-1580s, Philip II of Spain,

a man for whom the term “religious obsessive” could have been coined, set his sights upon an attack on England.  As “His Most Catholic Majesty”, he was already fighting what seemed like an endless war against his (to his mind) rebellious Protestant subjects in the Netherlands—the so-called “80 Years War” (1568-1648), or “Dutch Revolt”.

England, now a Protestant country under its queen, Elizabeth,

was helping that revolt.  (Philip may also have been annoyed that, as he had once been married to Elizabeth’s half-sister, Mary, 1515-1558,  queen of England, 1553-1558,

he probably thought that, after her death, he should have been king.)

As Spain, because of its looting of its New World possessions, was extremely rich,

it could afford a long war and, having lots of troops already across from England,

it seemed only a matter of:

1. building lots of landing craft for an invasion army

2. assembling a fleet—an armada, in Spanish, to protect those craft till they hit the beaches of England.

Such a fleet, sailing from Spain at least to the coast of France, where the invasion army was being assembled, as were the landing craft, would need large supplies of food and water to survive on the high seas. 

Such supplies would be carried in a vast number of barrels.

Enter now one of Elizabethan England’s most dashing characters, Sir Francis Drake (1540-1596).

When it came to sailing, Drake seems to have done it all, including surviving a circumnavigation of the globe (1577-1580), but he was, from the Spanish view, a good reason to conquer England along, as Drake had, for years, but a challenge to their (in their minds) domination of the oceans, raiding their possessions in the New World, capturing and looting their treasure ships.  (Under the Spanish form of his name, el Draque, he even supposedly had a significant price on his head:  20,000 ducats which, if I’ve got my figures right, would be almost $2,500,000.00 in today’s money—but the buying power would be substantially more—and I mean substantially.)

In 1587, Drake, with an English fleet, raided the Spanish coast, capturing and destroying ships and generally wreaking mayhem—and here’s where my mistaken idea comes in.  I thought that he had, among other things, ruined the Spanish supply of corks and hence slowed down the Armada’s ability to supply itself with those barrels.  (And I’m not the only one to have thought so—see this wonderfully silly Horrible Histories skit:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w6_UkLHcdJk )

In fact, during his raid on the Spanish coast, Drake’s men not only burned perhaps as many as 37 ships, but also not corks, but 1600-1700 tons of barrel staves,

enough to make 25-30,000 barrels,

barrels which would have held the Armada’s vital supplies. 

This raid delayed the setting off for England by a year.  New staves were made, and other ships replaced the ruined ones, however, and the Armada set off the next year, in 1588, but the staves were not the usual dried wood used for barrels, but green wood and often split, allowing the contents to be spoiled.  As well, the English navy, though small, was superior to the Armada both in seamanship and its ability to deliver firepower,

and the Spanish fleet was driven to flee north, eventually, many ships being lost on a circumnavigation of Britain,

and Philip’s planned invasion never took place.

And so, considering England’s escape and those barrels, perhaps I should have been thinking about another part of The Hobbit altogether…

(JRRT)

Thanks, as ever, for reading.

Stay well,

Avoid delusions of grandeur—remember what happened to the Armada,

Image20:  armada

And remember that, as always, there’s

MTCIDC

O

ps

For a traditional view of Drake, see Julian Corbett’s 1899 2-volume work Drake and the Tudor Navy:  https://archive.org/details/corbett-drake-and-the-tudor-navy-v-1/page/n5/mode/2up ;  https://archive.org/details/corbett-drake-and-the-tudor-navy-v-2    For a still-cited work on the Armada, I would recommend Garrett Mattingly’s The Armada, 1959.

pps

For more on cork, see:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cork_(material)

ppps

“Corking”, meaning something like “first rate”, is first cited, as far as is presently known, as appearing in 1895 in Outing, An Illustrated Monthly Magazine of Recreation.  Unfortunately, the OED (Oxford English Dictionary)  doesn’t mention which issue, so, if you feel like a search, look here to begin with:  https://archive.org/details/sim_outing-sport-adventure-travel-fiction_october-1894-march-1895_25_contents/page/n1/mode/2up

Unbuttoned

18 Thursday Apr 2024

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As always, dear readers, welcome.

As far as I’ve come to know her, Beatrix Potter (1866-1943)

(with her collie, Skep)

was not one to dwell upon horrors.

And yet, the first of her stories I ever had read to me as a small child filled me with dread, almost from its very opening:

“ ‘Now my dears,’ said old Mrs. Rabbit one morning, ‘you may go into the fields or down the lane, but don’t go into Mr. McGregor’s garden: your Father had an accident there; he was put in a pie by Mrs. McGregor.’ “

This was said so casually, as if being murdered by an angry gardener and then eaten was only “an accident”, that I knew that the story to come was not going to be a sunny one. 

“Flopsy, Mopsy, and Cotton-tail, who were good little bunnies, went down the lane to gather blackberries:”

Had I been able to read this for myself, that colon after “blackberries” might have tipped me off that something awful was about to happen—

“But Peter, who was very naughty, ran straight away to Mr. McGregor’s garden, and squeezed under the gate!”

You can see already where this is going—towards another “accident” and Peter in a pie.  Fortunately, this doesn’t happen, although Peter, after stuffing himself on Mr. McGregor’s lettuce, French beans, and radishes, is spotted by the dread gardener himself and much of the middle of the story is taken up with his relentless pursuit of Peter, in which Peter loses his shoes, but

“I think he might have got away altogether if he had not unfortunately run into a gooseberry net, and got caught by the large buttons on his jacket. It was a blue jacket with brass buttons, quite new.”

Peter escapes the murderous McGregor, leaving his jacket behind and, eventually, even finds his way home, but, menacingly, the gardener hangs up the lost shoes and jacket “for a scare-crow to frighten the blackbirds”—one wonders what he did with Peter’s father’s clothes!

This is, of course, The Tale of Peter Rabbit,

first published in 1902 and Beatrix Potter’s first successful children’s book,  with 22 more to come, including two nursery rhyme collections, between 1902 and 1930.

The stories are simple, as appropriate for small books for small children, but the illustrations are anything but, being little marvels of depiction, everything from the anthropomorphized animals who are the main characters, to the world, both natural and human, in which they function.  This shouldn’t be surprising in that the author was herself both a highly-talented draftswoman and a great naturalist and had been since childhood.

At some point later in life, I must have gotten over my fear of the bloody-handed McGregor,

as I found myself increasingly interested in his creator and her complex life and personality—an upper-class Victorian/Edwardian lady who, though barred from the sorts of things her naturalist life should have allowed her—an academic education, dealing with male naturalists on their own turf, for example—still managed to publish extensively, gain wealth from it, employ that wealth in intelligent ways, and leave behind not only such lovely books and wonderful art, but also a large expanse of land in the English Lake District which forms much of a National Park.  (You can begin learning about her here:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beatrix_Potter  You can also read a first edition of The Tale of Peter Rabbit here:   https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/14838/pg14838-images.html )

Someone else who clearly knew at least some of her work mentions it somewhat obliquely in an angry letter to his publisher on the subject of a Dutch translation of his work:

“If you think I am being absurd, then I shall be greatly distressed; but I fear not altered in my opinions.  The few people I have been able to consult, I must say, express themselves equally strongly.  Anyway I am not going to be treated a la Mrs Tiggywinkle=Poupette a l’epingle.  Not that B [eatrix] P [otter] did not give translators hell.  Though possibly from securer grounds than I have.  I am no linguist, but I do know something about nomenclature, and have specially studied it, and I am actually very angry indeed.” (letter to Rayner Unwin, 3 July, 1956, Letters, 361)

This is the only direct reference I’ve seen to “BP’s” work in Tolkien’s letters, but I would offer proof of another sort in another work:

“The place was full of goblins running about, and the poor little hobbit dodged this way and that…slipped between the legs of the captain just in time, got up, and ran for the door.

It was still ajar, but a goblin had pushed it nearly to.  Bilbo struggled but he could not move it.  He tried to squeeze through the crack.  He squeezed and squeezed and he stuck!  It was awful.  His buttons had got wedged on the edge of the door and the door-post.  He could see outside into the open air…but he could not get through.

Suddenly one of the goblins inside shouted:  ‘There is a shadow by the door.  Something is outside!’

Bilbo’s heart jumped into this mouth.  He gave a terrific squirm.  Buttons burst off in all directions.  He was through, with a torn coat and waistcoat, leaping down the steps like a goat, while bewildered goblins were still picking up his nice brass buttons on the doorstep….

Bilbo had escaped.”  (The Hobbit, Chapter Five, “Riddles in the Dark”)

(Alan Lee)

What do you suppose JRRT as a child made of that violent, pie-eating McGregor?

As always, thanks for reading.

Stay well,

Always listen to your mother and you’ll never lose your buttons,

And, as ever, remember that there’s

MTCIDC

O

Yarrow

10 Wednesday Apr 2024

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As always, dear readers, welcome.

I don’t know how Tolkien thought about ballads in general, but, about what was termed a modern “ballad”, The Ballad of the White Horse, 1911,

by its author, G.K. Chesterton (1874-1936),

he had this to say:

“P[riscilla]…has been wading through The Ballad of the White Horse for the last many nights; and my efforts to explain the obscurer parts to her convince me that it is not as good as I thought.  The ending is absurd.  The brilliant smash and glitter of the words and phrases (when they come off, and not mere loud colours) cannot disguise the fact that G.K.C. knew nothing whatever about the ‘North’, heathen or Christian.”  (from an airgraph to Christopher Tolkien, 3 September, 1944, Letters, 131)

For myself, I would say that, although I’ve been reading (and singing) old ballads for a long time, I don’t think of them as having “smash and glitter”, but rather, at their best, being plain and, often, grim—and perhaps it’s in part why they have the lure they do—and have had, since at least early Romanticism.  I’m presuming that that’s a reason why, for example, following collectors who date back at least to the early 18th century, Sir Walter Scott (1770-1832),

XCF277642 Portrait of Sir Walter Scott and his dogs (oil on canvas) by Raeburn, Sir Henry (1756-1823); Private Collection; (add.info.: Walter Scott (1771-1832);); Scottish, out of copyright

(portrait by Sir Henry Raeburn—who clearly captured Scott as Scott wanted to be remembered—a reader in a romantic atmosphere—with his dogs)

published Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border (1802-1830—Scott kept revising and revising),

which included not only ballads he had personally collected or had from others, but also contemporary imitations of what he admired.  (There’s a very useful article here:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minstrelsy_of_the_Scottish_Border on Scott and his working methods and even a site about a combined Scots/German project on the collection here:  http://walterscott.eu/ )

One of the ballads was clearly in the mind of another author, William Wordsworth (1770-1850),

“The Dowie Dens o Yarrow” (in modern English, perhaps something like “The Gloomy/Melancholy Dells of Yarrow”), when he wrote a very interesting poem in 1803, “Yarrow Unvisited”.

Yarrow itself is a narrow river which is a tributary of the River Tweed.  Here’s a late 19th-century map to help you to locate it—find St Mary’s Loch and follow the river line towards the Tweed.

And here’s the Yarrow in full spate—appropriately in a rather stark early 20th-century photo—

The original ballad—and there are a lot of variant forms—tells the story of a lady to be fought over by a series of lords—and  their rival, in some versions, a “plough-boy lad of Yarrow” (to see variants, here are those published in FJ Child’s, 1825-1896, The English and Scottish Popular Ballads, 1882-1898, known as “Child 214” and by the title “The Braes of Yarrow” (that is, “The Hillsides of Yarrow”):   https://sacred-texts.com/neu/eng/child/ch214.htm  )  The rival defeats the lords, but is then treacherously stabbed from behind, often by the lady’s brother.  (You can hear the version I first heard and learned, sung by Ewan McColl, here:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vfsv8zUdqKM Be warned:  this performance is in line with older traditional performances, which I’ve always preferred, but might be rough, if you’re used to smoother folk singers.) 

Wordsworth, and his sister, Dorothy, (1771-1855)

had made a brief tour of southern Scotland in the late summer of 1803 and had met Walter Scott there, fresh from publishing the first edition of Minstrelsy.  I suspect that the combination of their tour, that meeting, and Scott’s collection all came together in a poem which Wordsworth then wrote, probably in the early fall of 1803, “Yarrow Unvisited”.  I’ve always liked this poem because it’s not about what Wordsworth and Dorothy did see (this becomes the subject of the later “Yarrow Visited” of 1814—a good background article:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yarrow_poems_(Wordsworth) ), but the fact that, because they didn’t see Yarrow, they could still imagine it—perhaps imagination, Wordsworth even suggests, is better, and seeing might spoil it—and because there was always the future possibility of actually seeing it.  (I am a big fan of Dorothy’s work—she had a wonderful eye for the natural world and a shrewd eye for people—and you can read her “Recollections of a Tour Made in Scotland” here:  https://www.gutenberg.org/files/42856/42856-h/42856-h.htm )

Here’s Wordsworth’s poem, the “winsome Marrow” is Dorothy, the word  “marrow” meanIng “equal/match”, being a description of the lady in the ballad:

“FROM Stirling Castle we had seen

The mazy Forth unravell’d,

Had trod the banks of Clyde and Tay

And with the Tweed had travell’d;

And when we came to Clovenford,

Then said my “winsome Marrow,”

“Whate’er betide, we’ll turn aside,

And see the Braes of Yarrow.”

“Let Yarrow folk, frae Selkirk town,

Who have been buying, selling,

Go back to Yarrow, ’tis their own,

Each maiden to her dwelling!

On Yarrow’s banks let herons feed,

Hares couch, and rabbits burrow;

But we will downward with the Tweed,

Nor turn aside to Yarrow.

“There’s Gala Water, Leader Haughs,

Both lying right before us;

And Dryburgh, where with chiming Tweed

The lintwhites sing in chorus;

There’s pleasant Tiviotdale, a land

Made blithe with plough and harrow:

Why throw away a needful day

To go in search of Yarrow?

“What’s Yarrow but a river bare

That glides the dark hills under?

There are a thousand such elsewhere

As worthy of your wonder.”—

Strange words they seem’d of slight and scorn;

My true-love sigh’d for sorrow,

And look’d me in the face, to think

I thus could speak of Yarrow!

“Oh, green,” said I, “are Yarrow’s holms,

And sweet is Yarrow flowing!

Fair hangs the apple frae the rock,

But we will leave it growing.

O’er hilly path and open strath

We’ll wander Scotland thorough;

But, though so near, we will not turn

Into the dale of Yarrow.

“Let beeves and home-bred kine partake

The sweets of Burn-mill meadow;

The swan on still Saint Mary’s Lake

Float double, swan and shadow!

We will not see them—will not go

To-day, nor yet to-morrow;

Enough if in our hearts we know

There’s such a place as Yarrow.

“Be Yarrow stream unseen, unknown!

It must, or we shall rue it:

We have a vision of our own,

Ah! why should we undo it?

The treasured dreams of times long past,

We’ll keep them, winsome Marrow!

For when we’re there, although ’tis fair

’Twill be another Yarrow!

“If Care with freezing years should come,

And wandering seem but folly,—

Should we be loth to stir from home,

And yet be melancholy;

Should life be dull, and spirits low,

’Twill soothe us in our sorrow

That earth has something yet to show,

The bonny holms of Yarrow!”

Although Wordsworth doesn’t use a ballad metre here, he cleverly echoes the sound of the 4-line stanzas in the older poem, keeping that word “Yarrow” at the end of each stanza, and rhyming or suggesting rhyme, in the second line to match it, following this Child version (214Q):

“There lived a lady in the West,

I ne’er could find her marrow;

She was courted by nine gentlemen,

And a plough-boy lad in Yarrow.”

No “smash and glitter” here, but, in the ballad, grimness and plainness and even fierceness, and, in Wordsworth’s poem, a quiet, playful thoughtfulness and, in neither, what Tolkien said of his daughter, Priscilla’s efforts with “The Ballad of the White Horse”, a need to “wade through”—although, one could always wade the Yarrow…

As ever, thanks for reading.

Stay well,

Watch your back,

And remember that there’s always

MTCIDC

O

PS

So that you can decide for yourself about that “smash and glitter”, here’s Chesterton’s poem for you:  https://www.gutenberg.org/files/1719/1719-h/1719-h.htm   It’s interesting that JRRT comments that he doesn’t think that Chesterton knew anything about the “North”—a subject upon which Tolkien himself was passionate—see his anger at the Nazis for their pirating of the subject, in his letter to Michael Tolkien, 9 June, 1941, Letters, 77)—as Chesterton boldly states, in his “Prefatory Note” he’s perfectly willing to admit that what he writes isn’t really historical and that he’s accepting myth even as he is making his own:

“This ballad needs no historical notes, for the simple reason that it does not profess to be historical. All of it that is not frankly fictitious, as in any prose romance about the past, is meant to emphasize tradition rather than history. King Alfred is not a legend in the sense that King Arthur may be a legend; that is, in the sense that he may possibly be a lie. But King Alfred is a legend in this broader and more human sense, that the legends are the most important things about him.”

PPS

If you would like to see Scott’s version of the ballad, it’s here:  https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/12882  All three volumes of the Scott are available here at Gutenberg.  They appear to be the 3rd edition of 1806.  For the various Child variants in Vol.3 of his collection, see:  https://archive.org/details/englishandscott07unkngoog/page/n8/mode/2up  This—and all 7 other volumes are available at the Internet Archive. 

PPPS

A “holm” in the Wordsworth is—I’m quoting “Etymonline” here:

“small island in a river; river meadow,” late Old English, from Old Norse holmr “small island,” especially in a river or bay, or cognate Old Danish hulm, from Proto-Germanic *hul-maz, from PIE root *kel- (2) “to be prominent; hill.” Obsolete, but preserved in place names, where it has various senses derived from the basic one of “island:” “‘raised ground in marsh, enclosure of marginal land, land in a river-bend, river meadow, promontory'” [“Cambridge Dictionary of English Place-Names”].”

Weathered Top

03 Wednesday Apr 2024

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Welcome, as always, dear readers.

Although he denies, in an annoyed letter to Allen & Unwin, that “…I never walked in Wales or the marches in my youth…” (response to Ake Ohlmarks’ introduction to The Lord of the Rings, in which Ohlmark appears to have created an entire fictitious biography of JRRT, letter to Allen & Unwin, 23 February, 1961, Letters, 437), Tolkien did say that “I am very untraveled, though I know Wales…” and “I love Wales (what is left of it, when mines, and the even more ghastly sea-side resorts have done their worst)…” (letter to Deborah Webster, 25 October, 1958, Letters, 412).

And these remarks came readily to mind when, last evening, I discovered Snodhill Castle, while watching an archeology program, Digging for Britain, on YouTube.  One of its segments took us to the borderland between England and Wales, where the Norman conquerors of England had sought to expand their territory, eventually building a large number of castles as strongpoints during their several centuries of takeover.

(This is from the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Wales website:  https://rcahmw.gov.uk/2018-year-in-review-our-improvements-to-coflein/ )

The early fortifications were once thought to have been what are called “motte and bailey”—

that is, a mound (“motte” is a late Latin word, mota, meaning “mound”) with a wooden tower on it with the addition of a palisaded lower court (“bailey” has a vaguer etymology, but I’m betting that behind it, ultimately, is Latin palus, “stake”, just as it is behind “palisade”).  For invaders who need an instant fort, this would be easy and quick to build—especially if you rounded up the locals (non-Normans, either Anglo-Saxons or Welsh, depending on your area of conquest) and made them build it for you under watchful Norman eyes.

In the 12th century, these were gradually converted to stone, as you can see at Launceston, in Cornwall.

Recent archeological work (including that done for Digging for Britain—which you can watch here:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wM_jnNSpOoI ), however, suggests that Snodhill may have been built from stone, dating from its earliest beginnings, c.1067AD (?  the first documentary evidence appears to be from 1136—for more, see the wonderfully detailed report from Historic England here:  https://historicengland.org.uk/research/results/reports/7209/SnodhillCastlePeterchurchHerefordshireArchaeologicalArchitecturalandAerialInvestigationandSurvey   For a quick overview, see:  https://historicengland.org.uk/research/results/reports/7209/SnodhillCastlePeterchurchHerefordshireArchaeologicalArchitecturalandAerialInvestigationandSurvey ).

Here’s what it looked like in 1848, long after its eventual abandonment,

when most of the stone had been robbed out and used, in part, to build Snodhill Court Farm—

(this is from British History Online, which you can see here:  https://www.british-history.ac.uk/rchme/heref/vol1/plate-192  And, for more on the site, see:  https://www.snodhillcastle.org/history/ )

Here’s a recent photo of part of the site—

interesting, if you love castles, as I do, but more interesting, it seemed to me, was this aerial view—

which reminded me of:

“But long before, in the first days of the North Kingdom, they built a great watch-tower on Weathertop, Amon Sul they called it.  It was burned and broken, and nothing remains of it now but a tumbled ring, like a rough crown on the old hill’s head.  Yet once it was tall and fair.”  (The Fellowship of the Ring, Book One, Chapter 11, “A Knife in the Dark”)

Aragorn is reassuring Merry, who has expressed an unease about the place—“It has a—well, rather a barrow-wightish look.  Is there any barrow on Weathertop?”—his reassurance being that it was never lived in and that it had once, in fact, been an important defensive feature from the early days of the northern realm of Arnor, “for the Tower of Amon Sul held the chief Palantir of the North…” (The Lord of the Rings, Appendix A, I, “The Numenorean Kings”, (iii) “Eriador, Arnor, and the Heirs of Isildur”)

(the Hildebrandts)

Here’s Alan Lee’s interpretation of Weathertop–

and John Howe’s greener, more “English” version—

and a second view from the air of Snodhill—

At the moment, I have no documentation that Tolkien ever walked or motored through western Herefordshire and spotted Snodhill off in the distance at the top of a long valley, but, combining his self-proclaimed love for, and knowledge of, Wales, I wonder—had he seen it once, on a tall hill, in its ruined state, and would he have remembered it and placed it on his growing mental map of Middle-earth and its long and troubled history?

Thanks, as ever, for reading.

Stay well,

When thinking of castles, remember this:

“The splendor falls on castle walls
And snowy summits old in story:
The long light shakes across the lakes
And the wild cataract leaps in glory.
Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying,
Blow, bugle; answer, echoes dying, dying, dying.

O hark, O hear! how thin and clear,
And thinner, clearer, farther going!
O sweet and far from cliff and scar
The horns of Elfland faintly blowing!
Blow, let us hear the purple glens replying,
Blow, bugle; answer, echoes dying, dying, dying.

O love they die in yon rich sky,
They faint on hill or field, or river:
Our echoes roll from soul to soul,
And grow forever and forever.
Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying,
And answer, echoes, answer, dying, dying, dying.”

(from Alfred Tennyson’s The Princess, 1847—this lyric added to the 1850 edition—which you can read here:  https://archive.org/details/tennysonprincess/page/n5/mode/2up )

And remember that, as always, there’s

MTCIDC

O

Setting Boundaries

27 Wednesday Mar 2024

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Welcome, dear readers, as always.

“ ‘Behold the Argonath, the Pillars of the Kings!’ cried Aragorn…

As Frodo was born towards them the great pillars rose like towers to meet him.  Giants they seemed to him, vast grey figures silent but threatening.  Then he saw that they were indeed shaped and fashioned:  the craft and power of old had wrought upon them, and still they preserved through the suns and rains of forgotten years the mighty likenesses in which they had been hewn.  Upon great pedestals founded in the deep waters stood two great kings of stone:  still with blurred eyes and crannied brows they frowned upon the North.  The left hand of each was raised palm outwards in gesture of warning; in each right hand there was an axe; upon each head there was a crumbling helm and crown.  Great power and majesty they still wore, the silent wardens of a long-vanished kingdom…” (The Fellowship of the Ring, Book Two, Chapter 9, “The Great River”)

There are a number of illustrations of this, from the Hildebrandts

to John Howe

to Alan Lee

to J.C. Barquet

and more, including in Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings,

where, in the sometimes perverse method of the films, one figure has a sword, rather than the axe which Tolkien had specifically described (true of the Alan Lee sketch, as well).  Reviewing this short list, however, the first two of these seem to portray the kings with a more peaceably raised left hand, whereas the others more clearly portray what the author wanted:  “The left hand of each was raised outwards in a gesture of warning…”

These figures, in fact, are boundary markers, set up by the Gondorian king Minalcar (later crowned as Romendacil II) some time during his regency (TA1240-1304—see The Lord of the Rings, Appendix A, (ii) “The Southern Line[:] Heirs of Anarion” and (iv) “Gondor and the Heirs of Anarion”) and the gesture is clearly meant as a warning to potential invaders.

More than once, in past postings, I’ve suggested influences upon Tolkien, from The Red Fairy Book of his childhood,

to Mussolini as a possible Saruman model.

In this posting, however, I’m moving forward, perhaps seeing a Tolkien model for something erected long after Tolkien’s death in 1973.

It begins with a bit of history in JRRT’s lifetime.

At the end of the Great War (aka “World War I”), the Middle East, the majority of it the fading Ottoman Empire, was very much in flux, with France and Britain struggling diplomatically to extend their influence over Syria, Lebanon, and the area then known as Palestine, as well as farther inland.  (For more on this, see David Fromkin’s The Peace to End All Peace, 1989,

and Sean McMeekin’s The Ottoman Endgame, 2016)

Farther north, and encouraged by the victorious Allies, Greece had invaded Turkey, hoping to expand Greece beyond its current boundaries.

This led to a number of bloody encounters between the two sides, with the Greeks advancing to within 50 miles (80km) of the capital at Ankara in the late summer of 1921 before being stopped at the climactic battle in the area of the Sakarya River.  When the Greeks finally withdrew, they had suffered 23,000 casualties (plus perhaps as many as 15,000 prisoners) against Turkish totals of 22,000 casualties and 1,000 prisoners.  This withdrawal turned into a scorched earth retreat towards the Aegean coast and ultimate evacuation of the Greek army along with thousands of civilians from Asia Minor.  (For more see:  https://www.historynet.com/the-battle-that-made-kemal-ataturk/ ) 

In 2015, the Turkish government established the Battle of Sakarya National Historic Park, but, in 2008, several private companies had already commemorated the battle by commissioning a statue of a Turkish infantryman to be placed on a height (Karaltepe) looking westward in the direction from which the Greek army had come.

 It’s not a boundary marker, per se, as the Argonath is meant to be, but, by marking the line of Turkish resistance to the Greek invasion, it has somewhat of the same effect.  And, though not gigantic, like the Gondorian figures, it’s over 100 feet (31m) tall on its base and the pose certainly reminds me of what Frodo sees in the river ahead,

even if it doesn’t produce the same emotional reaction as it did members of the Fellowship:

“Awe and fear fell upon Frodo, and he cowered down, shutting his eyes and not daring to look up as the boat drew near.  Even Boromir bowed his head as the boats whirled by, frail and fleeting as little leaves, under the enduring shadow of the sentinels of Numenor.”

Had the designers of the Turkish monument read The Fellowship of the Ring, or perhaps had seen the Jackson movie?

Thanks for reading, as ever.

Stay well,

What ancient monument might awe you?

And remember that, as always, there’s

MTCIDC

O

ps

In answer to my own question, I’ve always loved this—

It’s often called “the mourning Athena”, but I imagine that the goddess isn’t grieving, but reading a boundary stone and, armed with helmet and spear, seems ready to defend her city from any who would violate that boundary.  It’s nowhere near the monumental size of those images discussed above, being only about 1 ½ feet (.48m) high, but, with a goddess, does size matter?

*(A)Dun[e]-(aic)

20 Wednesday Mar 2024

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Welcome, dear readers, as always.

If you’re a regular reader, you know that I have begun a (definitely!) long-term project to deepen my knowledge of Science Fiction.  I’ve read Sci-Fi since childhood, but totally unscientifically (sorry!), and, being interested in both Fantasy and Sci-Fi, I thought that it was more than time to have a better grasp of it and its (as I’ve found out) complicated history.

Although I’m still reading somewhat haphazardly—when I find an author whose work catches my attention, I catch myself reading more than one representative—see novels by L. Sprague de Camp (1907-2000), including those in collaboration with Fletcher Pratt (1897-1956)—like Lest Darkness Fall, 1941,

or The Castle of Iron, 1950,

I am developing a chronological list, and, so far, have read about three dozen novels and maybe a dozen short stories, my most recent novel being Dune, 1965,

about which I’ve already written one posting (see “No Names, No…”, 10 January, 2024).  It’s an impressive beginning, full of vividly imagined things, especially anything and everything about the desert planet of Arrakis, its native inhabitants, their environment, and their survival in it.  It’s easy to see how some early reviewers compared it to The Lord of the Rings for its depth of detail.  In my earlier posting, I admitted to being less convinced by the names, which sometimes seem rather haphazard—something which Tolkien would never allow (and actually criticized in the work of E.R. Eddison, 1882-1945—see a letter to Caroline Everett, 24 June, 1957, Letters, 372)—and this brings me to the subject of this posting, which is about Chakobsa—not “Shikwoshir”, or “Shikowschir”, or even “Schakobsche” or “Farschipse”, all possible names for a Northwest Caucasian language (or perhaps invented dialect based upon one of the languages—see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chakobsa )–but one of the principal languages of Dune.

The first film based upon Dune appeared in 1984

and was not a success—I remember seeing it, but have virtually no memory of what I saw.  (For more on the tribulations of making a film of the novel, see:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dune_(1984_film) )  If anyone spoke anything other than standard English, I couldn’t say.  There was a difference, however, in Dune, 2021,

where, although English substitutes for Galach, the standard universal language (like the Common Speech of Middle-earth), the language of the natives of Arrakis, the Fremen, is in need of subtitles.  (And there seems to be a bit of confusion here about what they actually speak, which even one of its creators, in an aside in a recording, admits:  https://dune.fandom.com/wiki/%22Neo-Chakobsa%22_(2020s_film_series)?file=Work_Stream_6-_Translating_into_Chakobsa%2C_Part_1 )  The language we hear most about—and which appears even more frequently in Dune 2, 2023,

was named by the original author, Frank Herbert (1920-1986), after that Northwest Causcasian language, Chakobsa, but, linguistically, has nothing to do with it.  Instead, it was a gallimaufry (a wonderful word in itself, meaning “a hodgepodge”—see:   https://www.etymonline.com/word/gallimaufry where you’ll discover that it’s actually one of those etymologies with a question mark after it).  As Herbert’s son, Brian, says of the linguistic constructions in Dune in general:

“  The words and names in Dune are from many tongues, including Navajo, Latin, Chakobsa (a language found in the Caucasus), the Nahuatl dialect of the Aztecs, Greek, Persian, East Indian, Russian, Turkish, Finnish, Old English, and, of course, Arabic.” (Dune, “Afterword”, 878 in the Ace edition)

There is a great difference, however, between Herbert’s approach to language and that of the language created for the Fremen in the two films and the latter approach might be seen as coming directly from JRRT’s method of language construction.

In 1931, Tolkien gave a lecture to the Johnson Society at Pembroke College, Oxford.

Daringly entitled “A Secret Vice”, it was an essay about his own “vice”, the creation of languages.  In it, he used his own early experiences with everything from Esperanto to “Nevbosh”, expressing not only his long interest, but also his ideas about the possibilities to be found in such a hobby, including:

“…various other interests in the hobby.  There is the purely philological (a necessary part of the completed whole though it may be developed for its own sake):  you may, for instance, construct a pseudo-historical background and deduce the form you have actually decided on from an antecedent and different form (conceived in outline); or you can posit certain tendencies of development and see what sort of form this will produce.  In the first case you discover what sort of general tendencies of change produce this a given character; in the second you discover the character produced by given tendencies.  Both are interesting, and their exploration gives one a much greater precision and sureness in construction—in the technique in fact of producing an effect you wish to produce for its own sake.” (Tolkien, A Secret Vice:  Tolkien on Invented Languages, edited by Dimitra Fimi & Andrew Higgins, Harper/Collins, 2016, 25)

I was reminded of this passage when I watched a brief interview with the creators of Chakobsa, Jessie and David Peterson, which you can see here:  https://www.bbc.com/reel/video/p0hg5n6z/dune-and-the-art-of-creating-a-fictional-language  .  David was the creator of Valyrian and Dothraki for A Game of Thrones, as well as the author of a very entertaining and informative book on the subject of constructed languages (“conlang” for short), The Art of Language Invention (Penguin, 2015).

(For more on Valyrian, see:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valyrian_languages .  For more on Dothraki, see:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dothraki_language )

In the interview, Jessie talks about the “evolutionary method” of designing a language—that is, just like Tolkien, creating an older version of the language which you then “age”, using standard linguistic methods for consistent change over time.  We see an example of this in an interview the Petersons did with IndieWire:

“The most everyday terms in any language — things like “hello” and “goodbye” — are often ones that have the most history behind them. ‘You don’t try to come up with a way to say hello. You try to come up with what would have been a common phrase that was repeated when you saw someone and which ended up getting reduced to a smaller form,’ Jessie Peterson said. “

All of this was trickier, of course, for the Petersons, since, unlike Tolkien, the language they were employed to build already had some chosen, if not invented, elements—words from Herbert’s gallimaufry—which they were obliged to begin with.  In the same interview with IndieWire, David Peterson had this to say about such difficulties:

”Peterson traced the longest existing phrase in Chakobsa, a funeral rite spoken for Jamis (Babs Olusanmokun) as his water is given to the well at Sietch Tabr, to a Romani nursery rhyme. 

‘He just changed the meaning and said that it had something to do with water,’ Peterson told IndieWire. “A lot of [Chakobsa] is just borrowed kind of haphazardly from different languages. We just had to come up with our own system and incorporate it as best we could.”  (You can read the whole interview here:  https://www.indiewire.com/features/craft/dune-fremen-langauge-how-to-speak-1234958145/ )

An interesting feature in Tolkien’s language invention—and perhaps eventually crucial—

“I might fling out the view that for perfect construction of an art-language it is found necessary to construct at least in outline a mythology concomitant.  Not solely because some pieces of verse will inevitably be part of the (more or less) completed structure, but because the making of language and mythology are related functions (coeval and congenital, not related as disease to health, or as by-products to main manufacture); to give your language an individual flavour, it must have woven into it the threads of an individual mythology, individual while working within the scheme of natural human mythopoeia, as your word-form may be individual while working within the hackneyed limits of human, even European, phonetics.  The converse indeed is true, your language construction will breed a mythology.”  (Tolkien, A Secret Vice, 23-24)

So far, David, and now David and Jessie, Peterson have worked to create languages for other people’s stories and mythologies.  I wonder what they might produce if they constructed a language—or languages—for a story of their own?

As always, thanks for reading.

Stay well,

So shiira isim un-rauqizak,

And remember that, as ever, there’s

MTCIDC

O

PS

If creating languages interests you, have a look at Jessie Peterson’s website here:  https://www.quothalinguist.com/about-me/

Glittering Caves, or, Cheese, Hobbit!

13 Wednesday Mar 2024

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Welcome, dear readers, as ever.

In a letter to a “Mr. Wrigley”, Tolkien made this remark:

“I fear you may be right that the search for the sources of The Lord of the Rings is going to occupy academics for a generation or two.  I wish this need not be so.  To my mind it is the particular use in a particular situation of any motive, whether invented, deliberately borrowed, or unconsciously remembered that is the most interesting thing to consider.”  (letter to Mr. Wrigley, 25 May, 1972, Letters, 587)

I would like to add:  not just unconsciously remembered, but also consciously, as in the Caves of Aglarond.

“Strange are the ways of Men, Legolas!” Gimli suddenly burst out, continuing:  “Here they have one of the marvels of the Northern World, and what do they say of it?  Caves, they say!  Caves!  Holes to fly to in time of war, to store fodder in!  My good Legolas, do you know that the caverns of Helm’s Deep are vast and beautiful?  There would be an endless pilgrimage of Dwarves, merely to gaze at them, if such things were known to be.  Aye indeed, they would pay pure gold for a brief glance!”  (The Two Towers, Book Three, Chapter 8, “The Road to Isengard”)

Gimli and Legolas have just survived Saruman’s failed attack on Helm’s Deep,

(the Hildebrandts)

where Gimli, separated from his companions, has taken refuge in the very caves he is now raving about.

(Ted Nasmith—and, as ever, he has chosen a moment no one else has thought to illustrate—one of the many reasons I so admire his work)

As Gimli goes on—and he does for half a page—we hear of

“immeasurable halls, filled with an everlasting music of water that tinkles into pools, as fair as Kheled-zaram in the starlight…gems and crystals and veins of precious ore glint in the polished walls; and the light glows through folded marbles, shell-like, translucent as the living hands of Queen Galadriel.”

Remembering Gimli’s ultimate request from Galadriel—a strand of her hair:

“…which surpasses the gold of the earth as the stars surpass the gems of the mine.” (The Fellowship of the Ring, Book Two, Chapter 8, “Farewell to Lorien”)

this is an impressive comparison.  But, for all of JRRT’s wonderful imagination, in fact these caves, although perhaps embroidered by that imagination, were based upon a real place, as Tolkien tells us in a letter:

“I was most pleased by your reference to the description of ‘glittering caves’.  No other critic, I think, has picked it out for special mention.  It may interest you to know that the passage was based on the caves in Cheddar Gorge and was written just after I had revisited these in 1940 but was still coloured by my memory of them much earlier before they became so commercialized.  I had been there during my honeymoon nearly thirty years earlier.”  (letter to P. Rorke, SJ, 4 February, 1971, Letters, 572)

Cheddar Gorge is a natural feature in Dorset, in southwest England in the area of the Mendip Hills.

A gorge is a kind of valley and Cheddar Gorge is one which has cut through layers of limestone to form it.

As you can see, this is spectacular in itself, but there is an attraction within the attraction:  a series of caves in the limestone and this is the sort of thing which Tolkien might have seen on his two visits—

which then inspired Gimli’s impassioned speech (which, by the way, is totally unnecessary to the plot, but which brilliantly illuminates (sorry!) Gimli’s character and adds to his growing friendship with Legolas, who, persuaded by the dwarf’s rhetoric, pledges to return to the caves with him—in return for visiting Fangorn Forest with Legolas).

For those who love cheese, there is another connection here, of course:  billed as “the world’s most popular cheese”, there is Cheddar, a tangy, solid variety, which seems to have originated—yes, in the village of Cheddar, just below the Gorge (and it has been suggested that some of the caves were used to age the cheese in the past).

In a left (or perhaps wrong) turn from Tolkien’s “the particular use in a particular situation of any motive, whether invented, deliberately borrowed, or unconsciously remembered that is the most interesting thing to consider”, I found that, once I made the association:  Caves of Aglarond, Cheddar Gorge, my next step was directly to Cheddar Cheese and, from there, to another English cheese, Wensleydale, made to the northeast, in Yorkshire.

And here’s where cheese and hobbits became intertwined with the characters most devoted to Wensleydale, Wallace and his skeptical dog, Gromit.

These are the brilliant stop-motion creations of Nick Park,

beginning with the pair’s first adventure, “A Grand Day Out” (1989)

in which, in search of a cheese holiday,

they visit the moon in a ramshackle rocket which Wallace (a part-time inventor) built for the trip.

Since then, they have had a number of adventures—“The Wrong Trousers” (1993), “A Close Shave” (1995), and “A Matter of Loaf and Death” (2008), all shorts, along with a feature-length film, “The Curse of the Were-Rabbit” (2005).  If you don’t know them, you can see “A Grand Day Out” for free at the wonderful Internet Archive:  https://archive.org/details/agranddayout_202001 and, if this delights you as much as it’s always delighted me, you can see more at the Archive under “Aardman Animations”, including a series of very short films highlighting some of Wallace’s inventions:  https://archive.org/details/94920

This is very much English humor:  wacky, but played straight, as if visiting the Moon in search of exotic cheese is a perfectly normal thing to do.  I don’t know if JRRT would have enjoyed Wallace and Gromit, but he says this of hobbits:

“…I am personally immensely amused by hobbits as such, and can contemplate them eating and making their rather fatuous jokes indefinitely…” (letter to D.A. Furth, 24 July, 1938, Letters, 49)

so perhaps the adventures of two eccentrics—well, one eccentric and one very sensible canine–

would tickle him.  As I was writing this, I discovered, however, that someone else had already made the association of Cheddar (Gorge) and Wallace and Gromit, at least–

Thanks for reading, as always,

Stay well,

Squirrel away, as Wallace does, Jacob’s Cream Crackers—you just shouldn’t run out,

And remember that there’s always

MTCIDC

O

PS

For more on Cheddar Gorge, see:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheddar_Gorge   For more on Cheddar cheese see:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheddar_cheese

Seem Fairer

06 Wednesday Mar 2024

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As ever, dear readers, welcome.

If you flip to the back of The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien,

and page through the index to the aitches, you’ll find five references to Adolf Hitler.  The first, to his son, Michael, simply mentions the idea that Hitler must soon attack Britain (letter to Michael Tolkien, 12 January, 1941, Letters, 64).  The third is to another son, Christopher, and makes a brief reference to Stalin and Hitler (letter to Christopher Tolkien, 22 August, 1944, Letters, 131).  Both of these are neutral in tone.  The second, however, has more the tone of a rant:

“Anyway, I have in this War a burning private grudge—which would probably make me a better soldier at 49 than I was at 22:  against that ruddy little ignoramus Adolf Hitler (for the odd thing about demonic inspiration and impetus is that it in no way enhances the purely intellectual stature:  it chiefly affects the mere will).”  (letter to Michael Tolkien, 9 June, 1941, Letters, 77)

And the fourth and fifth (in the same letter) have a similar tone:

“We knew that Hitler was a vulgar and ignorant little cad, in addition to any other defects (or the source of them)…” (letter to Christopher Tolkien, 23-25 September, 1944, Letters, 133)

Both of which are entirely understandable, of course.  In terms of his family, two of his sons were involved in the Second World War, Michael as an anti-aircraft gunner, Christopher as a pilot, and Tolkien worried very much about both, as various letters to them make very plain.

That “burning private grudge”, however, was about something entirely different—and characteristic of JRRT—was his anger at the Nazi perversion of what he thought of as “that noble northern spirit”, as he says in that letter to Michael:

“Ruining, perverting, misapplying, and making for ever accursed, that noble northern spirit, a supreme contribution to Europe, which I have ever loved and tried to present in its true light.”

This being under the direction of:

“…a man inspired by a mad, whirlwind, devil:  a typhoon, a passion:  that makes the poor old Kaiser look like an old woman knitting.”

For all that Tolkien descends to name-calling (not his usual method of dealing with whom or what he doesn’t like), there is a certain—I won’t call it respect—but wary awe of someone he calls a “mad, whirlwind, devil” and, as always when I think about JRRT, his time, and his influences, I wonder about how he his impression of that “vulgar and ignorant little cad”—and “whirlwind devil”—might have influenced his work.

Germany after the Great War was economically and socially in ruins.  The 1919 Treaty of Versailles, blaming Germany for the war and designed to exact severe punishment for that, had done much to put her in that condition.

When Germany was unable to pay the amount demanded on time, parts of western Germany were then occupied by several of the Allies.

Bankruptcy, monetary depreciation,

and ideas of revolution swirled—including a brief attempt at revolution in Munich, in 1923.

The leader of this attempt was an ex-serviceman named Hitler.

With a sympathetic court, instead of being executed for treason, he was given a light sentence and soon was out on the streets again, presenting himself not as a violent revolutionary, but as a reformer, someone who was working to bring his country back from the wreckage it has suffered from war, a brutal treaty, a ruined economy, and social unrest (some of which he himself had inspired—and would continue to inspire).

In time, he was so successful at this that he became his country’s director, under the very neutral title of Fuehrer, “Leader” and the economy did improve, living conditions did improve—

but under all of this improvement was something else and here I’m immediately reminded of Sauron:

“Sauron was of course not ‘evil’ in origin…until he became the main representative of Evil of later ages.  But at the beginning of the Second Age he was still beautiful to look at, or could still assume a beautiful visible shape—and was not indeed wholly evil, not unless all ‘reformers’ who want to hurry up with ‘reconstruction’ and ‘reorganization’ are wholly evil, even before pride and the lust to exert their will eat them up.” (draft of a letter to Peter Hastings, September, 1954, Letters, 284)

“But many of the Elves listened to Sauron.  He was still fair in that early time, and his motives and those of the Elves seemed to go partly together:  the healing of the desolate lands.  Sauron found their weak point, suggesting that, helping one another, they could make Western Middle-earth as beautiful as Valinor.” (to Milton Waldman, typescript, “late 1951”, Letters, 212)

And here are the consequences:

“[Sauron] lingers in Middle-earth.  Very slowly, beginning with fair motives:  the reorganizing and rehabilitation of the ruin of Middle-earth, ‘neglected by the gods’, he becomes a reincarnation of Evil, and a thing lusting for Complete Power—and so consumed ever more fiercely with hate (especially of gods and Elves).  All through the twilight of the Second Age the Shadow is growing in the East of Middle-earth, spreading its sway more and more over Men…” (to Milton Waldman, typescript, “late 1951”, Letters, 211)

The title of this posting, as I’ll bet you all know, is part of a remark which Frodo makes just after Strider has appeared and approached him at The Prancing Pony in Bree:

(the Hildebrandts)

“You have frightened me several times tonight, but never in the way that the servants of the Enemy would, or so I imagine.  I think that one of his spies would—well, seem fairer and feel fouler, if you understand.”

To which Strider makes a reply one would never expect Hitler—or Sauron– to have made—

“ ‘I see,’ laughed Strider.  ‘I look foul and feel fair.  Is that it?’ “

As always, thanks for reading.

Stay well,

When it comes to reformers, it might always be wise to question their ultimate motives,

And remember that, as always, there’s

MTCIDC

O