His Letters

25 Wednesday May 2016

Posted by Ollamh in Economics in Middle-earth, J.R.R. Tolkien, Literary History

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1930s England, A Long-Expected Party, Bellerophon, Governor of the King's Posts, Henry VIII, London, mail coach, Orality, Penny Black, pillar box, Pony Express, Postal Service, Postmen, Rowland Hill, Royal Mail, semata lugra, Shire, Shirriffs, Sir Brian Tuke, stamps, The Illiad, The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien

(For Aunt Cathy—she knows why.)

“Mr. Bilbo has learned him his letters—meaning no harm, mark you, and I hope no harm will come of it.” Gaffer Gamgee, The Fellowship of the Ring, Ch.1, A Long-Expected Party

Welcome, as always, dear readers.

We’ve written a little before about aspects of literacy in Middle-earth and we will probably do so again, since the idea of reading and writing in what is, basically, an heroic world interests us very much.

Ordinarily—with a few exceptions (South Slavic pjesme, “songs” sometimes have examples)—we don’t think of writing as being an important feature of heroic stories, but our interest in such things began some years ago with an odd little reference in The Iliad. In all of the story (or in Homer in general for that matter), this is the only mention of what appears to be writing. We say “appears” because the actual writing is called semata lugra, not, in fact, a clear reference to writing, but often translated as something like “baneful signs”. We won’t get into the long, complex controversy over orality and literacy in Homer (although we have strong opinions on the subject) here, but rather point to what these semata were supposed to do. They were inscribed on tablets.

The tablets were sealed and given to a carrier—in this case, the hero Bellerophon—

to take with him to the person who would open the tablets, read them, and then—have him killed! That certainly makes those semata lugra. The fact that the tablets were closed suggests that, whatever those “signs” were, the sender thought that the carrier would be able to read them, too, giving us a wider picture of the use of such signs, whatever they might actually be.

But now we come to the Shire, and to a world which is domestic, long before some of its inhabitants become heroic.

At the beginning of The Hobbit, Bilbo is enjoying a pipe in the morning air when a very disturbing figure appears.

His mocking words are soon too much for the Hobbit, who “Then…took out his morning letters, and began to read, pretending to take no more notice of the old man.” (The Hobbit, Ch.1, An Unexpected Party)

As we were once intrigued by the semata lugra, we are now interested in these letters. Douglas Anderson, in his note (15) to this sentence in The Annotated Hobbit supplies the information that “In England in the 1930s there were at least two mail deliveries per day—hence the distinction of morning letters.” (39) If the Shire is like 1930s England, which it sometimes appears to be, even as Tolkien denies that “There is no special reference to England in the ‘Shire’—except of course that of an Englishman brought up in an ‘almost rural’ village of Warwickshire on the edge of the prosperous bourgeoisie of Birmingham…” (draft of a letter to Michael Straight, “probably January or February 1956”, Letters, 235), then Bilbo is in the enviable position of one who is in the care of The Royal Mail—or, in this case, its Shire equivalent. Or is he?

The Royal Mail as a branch of government took off in the time of Henry VIII, with the appointment of Sir Brian Tuke (respell that and where in the Shire might you find him?) as Master of the Posts (1512), then Governor of the King’s Posts (1517).

Much, if not most of the correspondence of that period was literally royal—the government’s business, not private correspondence, but, over time, this gradually changed until, by the late 18^th century, postmen had an official uniform

and there were places were letters were received and sorted.

There were problems of corruption in the system, as well as a basic difficulty: the sender didn’t pay for the letter—the receiver did. Thus, there was no assurance that the service would be paid for, beyond whatever government subsidies were allowed to it. All of this began to change in 1837, however, with this privately-printed and circulated pamphlet

by the education (and, in time more general) reformer, Rowland Hill.

He proposed to reverse the process: the sender would pay and there would be strict regulation of the charge (and, for ordinary letters a very low charge at that). Initially, the idea was to use an already franked (that is, with a mark showing that it had been paid for) form on which one might write a message, fold it, and send it.

This was not a new idea and had been used since the 17^th century, at least.

Hill quickly followed this with the idea of a stamp which could be readily attached to a letter—commonly a sheet which, once written upon, could then be folded into its own container.

This could also be attached as we do, to a pre-made envelope, into which the folded letter might be placed. This was the first modern stamp, the so-called “Penny Black”.

After 1853, there were even special public mail boxes into which you might place your letters for collection.

Delivery in big cities like London would, by the late 19^th-century, begin at 7:30 in the morning and go to 7:30 in the evening, so that you could write a note to a friend across the city, drop it into a pillar box (mailbox to people in the US) at 7:30 am

and expect a reply sometime during the same day.

Behind all of this was an increasingly-complex government backed by a well-established bicameral legislature, with an increasingly-large tax base. But what of the Shire?

The government of the Shire seems to be sketchy, at best. Tolkien gives us the total picture on in the Prologue to The Lord of the Rings.

“The only real official in the Shire at this date was the Mayor of Michel Delving (or of the Shire), who was elected every seven years…As mayor almost his only duty was to preside at banquets…But the offices of Postmaster and First Shirriff were attached to the mayoralty, so that he managed both the Messenger Service and the Watch. These were the only Shire-services, and the Messengers were the most numerous, and much the busier of the two. By no means were all Hobbits lettered, but those who were wrote constantly to all their friends (and a selection of their relations) who lived further off than an afternoon’s walk.

The Shirriffs was the name that the Hobbits gave to their police…There were in the Shire only twelve of them, three in each Farthing, for Inside Work.”

So, in contrast to the elaborate workings of the Royal Mail, we are left with a series of questions: if there is a Postmaster—and clearly there is a post—how does it work? Is it all on foot? Is there the equivalent of the Pony Express? Nob, at the Prancing Pony, is called a “slow-coach”—were there once mail coaches, as in England?

(Is this the only mention of such carriages in all The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit? There are certainly wagons—there was even an invasion of “the Wainriders” once upon a time—see Appendix A of The Lord of the Rings.)

How were letters collected? Distributed? Is there a central post office, perhaps in Michel Delving, the closest thing to a capital in the Shire? And, of course, how was it all paid for? In an earlier posting, we talked a little about coinage in Middle-earth and we tried to imagine what Gondorian currency might have looked like—can we imagine Shire postage stamps?

When you read the following, think of your own postal service and join us in wondering about all of the above:

“Before long the invitations began pouring out, and the Hobbiton post-office was blocked, and the Bywater post-office was snowed under, and voluntary assistant postmen were called for…” The Fellowship of the Ring, Ch.1, A Long-Expected Party

Thanks, as ever, for reading.

MTCIDC

Rear Guard

18 Wednesday May 2016

Posted by Ollamh in Films and Music, J.R.R. Tolkien, Literary History, Maps, Military History, Military History of Middle-earth, Narrative Methods

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66th Regiment, British Infantry, Denethor, Faramir, Gary Zaboly, Le Cateau, Maiwand, Nazgul, Osgiliath, Pelennor, Peter Jackson, Rammas Echor, Richard Caton Woodville, the Alamo, The Lord of the Rings, The Return of the King, The Siege of Gondor, Tolkien

Welcome, dear readers, as always.

In a previous posting, we rolled our eyes verbally at a moment in P. Jackson’s The Return of the King in which Faramir, according to the script, was required to mount a double-rank cavalry charge against the west bank of Osgiliath.

To us, this was a clumsy attempt to convey the clash between Faramir and his father Denethor, derived from material in The Lord of the Rings, Book 5, Chapter IV, “The Siege of Gondor”, principally from this:

“ ‘Much must be risked in war,’ said Denethor. ‘Cair Andros is manned, and no more can be sent so far. But I will not yield the River and the Pelennor unfought—not if there is a captain here who has still the courage to do his lord’s will.’

Then all were silent. But at length Faramir said: ‘I do not oppose your will, sire. Since you are robbed of Boromir, I will go and do what I can in his stead—if you command it.’

‘I do so,’ said Denethor.

‘Then farewell!’ said Faramir. ‘But if I should return, think better of me!’

‘That depends on the manner of your return,’ said Denethor.

Gandalf it was that last spoke to Faramir ere he rode east. ‘Do you throw your life away rashly or in bitterness,’ he said. ‘You will be needed here, for other things than war. Your father loves you, Faramir, and will remember it ere the end. Farewell!’ “

In the text, Faramir then goes to Osgiliath, having “taken with him such strength of men as were willing to go or could be spared.” The tone here is hardly encouraging and, the following day, “The passage of Anduin was won by the Enemy. Faramir was retreating to the wall of the Pelennor, rallying his men to the Causeway Forts; but he was ten times outnumbered.”

In an earlier posting, we have discussed the Rammas Echor, the wall which enclosed the farmland outside the walls of Minas Tirith.

We have also discussed the use by both Saruman and Sauron of what appears to be an early form of explosive—seen here in the following description of the fall of the Rammas:

“The bells of day had scarcely rung out again, a mockery in the unlightened dark, when far away he [Pippin] saw fires spring up, across in the dim spaces where the walls of the Pelennor stood. ..Now ever and anon there was a red flash, and slowly through the heavy air dull rumbles could be heard.

‘They have taken the wall!’ men cried. ‘They are blasting breeches in it. They are coming!’ “

Outnumbered and, with the fall of the wall in different locations, outflanked, the best that Faramir can do is to fall back towards Minas Tirith, as Gandalf says, “Yet he is resolved to stay with the rearguard, lest the retreat over the Pelennor become a rout. He may, perhaps, hold his men together long enough, but I doubt it.”

Unlike the silly—there’s really no other word for it—charge of P. Jackson—Faramir is a professional soldier, after all, much loved by his soldiers—we see what JRRT, having been a soldier himself, would have known was the military solution: a fighting retreat, led by a brave and capable leader.

His task had been an impossible one to begin with and, properly understood and depicted on the screen, would not only have been powerful dramatically, but much more believable. It was an impossible task, however, against the odds of ten to one. (For a comparison, we offer the siege and fall of the Alamo, late February-early March, 1836. The garrison numbered about 180, the besiegers eventually approximately 3000. In the final assault, before dawn on 6 March, 1836, the four assaulting columns had about 1200 men, offering odds of roughly 6 to 1 and the entire garrison died, along with somewhere between 400 and 600 of the attackers.)

(This is the work of the amazing Gary Zaboly– as an historical illustrator, he can’t be recommended highly enough. Much of his work concerns the 18th century, especially the 1740s and 50s, but he also has done some wonderful depictions of warfare in the American southwest in the 1830s and 40s.)

There are lots of examples of fighting retreats and we’ve picked two: a failure (Maiwand, Second Afghan War, 1880) and Le Cateau (The Great War, 1914).

At Maiwand, 27 July, 1880, a British-Indian brigade of 3 infantry units plus two cavalry units and a battery (6 guns) of horse artillery, anywhere from 1500 to 2000 soldiers, faced perhaps 12,000 Afghans with 6 batteries of guns.

Basically, the British were outflanked and their left-hand units began to buckle under the pressure of the attacks and the number of attackers which they had to face. As they gave way, the right hand end of the line began to move backwards, feeling increasingly in danger of being surrounded, just as Faramir’s men must have.

As the infantry retreated, the artillerymen used their guns to buy time for a general withdrawal, ending by losing a section (2 guns) to the enemy. There’s a famous painting of the withdrawal of the remaining guns by the late-Victorian artist, Richard Caton Woodville.

At the end of the withdrawal from the battle, a small group of British soldiers of the 66^th Regiment took shelter inside an enclosure in a nearby village and fought it out to the end.

Gandalf’s worry had been that Faramir couldn’t hold his men together and you can see here what happens when organized units come apart—they are defeated piecemeal, “in detail” is the military expression.

In contrast to this, we offer an action from Tolkien’s own time, the battle at Le Cateau, fought on 26 August, 1914. The British Expeditionary Force, facing superior numbers and in danger of being outflanked, particularly to the west, was engaged in a long retreat. Miraculously, unit cohesion was mostly maintained, although communications were often poor, causing confusion and, in one case, even in losing a unit, never notified of withdrawal.

The British Army was divided into two larger groupings, First and Second Corps, and it was Second Corps which turned to face its pursuers. During a long morning, the British, in hastily-dug trenches, fended off superior numbers of German infantry.

Having lost heavily, but having given the enemy similar punishment, the British slowed German pursuit and were able to withdraw without being as closely pursued as they had been.

The difference here is in exactly what Gandalf was worried about. At Maiwand, the brigade fell apart and could easily be swept away by the enemy. At Le Cateau, although it was hardly a perfect affair, the British kept enough cohesion not only to withstand and defeat heavy attacks, but then to retreat in units, without ever collapsing into a fleeing mob.

What happens in that struggle in the fields behind the Rammas Echor is, in fact, a mixture of the two retreats described above. We see “Small bands of weary and often wounded men…some were running wildly as if pursued.” Then, “…less than a mile from the City, a more ordered mass of men came into view, marching not running, still holding together.” And then “Out of the gloom behind a small company of horsemen galloped, all that was left of the rearguard.”

So, it looks like Faramir had succeeded in maintaining that sense of order and purpose which is vital for a fighting retreat. It was not to last, however, as a mass of enemy horsemen on the causeway behind, as well as several Nazgul from above, threw all into confusion—which was stemmed, in turn, by the arrival of a rescue party, led by the Prince of Dol Amroth and accompanied by Gandalf arrived to drive back the attackers.

gandalf_to_the_rescue___speed_paint4_by_myworld1-d7wjv97.png

In that flurry, Faramir is struck by an arrow and has to be rescued and brought into the City, badly wounded.

Looking back, it is a very different scene from that preposterous cavalry charge, isn’t it? As our readers are probably also experienced watchers of the films, we wonder: which do you prefer, Jackson/writers or the author?

Thanks, as always, for reading.

MTCIDC

A Country for Old Men—and Old Men for a Country

11 Wednesday May 2016

Posted by Ollamh in Fairy Tales and Myths, J.R.R. Tolkien, Literary History

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Apollonius, Aragorn, Argo, Blue Wizards, Denethor, Faramir, Gandalf and the Balrog, Grey Havens, Heracles, Hildebrandts, Hylas, Istari, Jason and the Golden Fleece, Merlin, Radaghast, sage, Saint Nicholas, Saruman, Sharkey, The Argonautica, The Fantastic Four, The Lord of the Rings, Theoden, Tiresias, Tolkien, Valar, W.B.Yeats

Dear readers, welcome, as always.

Recently, we wrote a posting about Saruman and his fate. It was fun to think about, but it made us think further about why Saruman, in the Shire, is called “Sharkey” by his thugs—supposedly from Orcish sharku, “Old Man”. If we had never read a description of Saruman, but only the nickname, we might think of “the old man” either as an older Anglo-American expression either for a father—“my old man keeps nagging me about cutting the grass, if I want my allowance” (note the use of the possessive “my”)—a naval/military term for commander—“the old man said that, on his ship, smoking would never be allowed again” (always without the possessive)—or older English for husband—“her old man is fooling around behind her back—I hope she turns around!” (again, with a possessive).

In fact, Saruman is, literally, an old man

greg-hildebrandt-isengard-orthanc-saruman-607429-1300x962.jpg

—as are all five of the Istari, the wizards sent to Middle-earth by the Valar about the year 1000 of the Third Age. As JRRT says in a letter to Robert Murray, S.J. (there’s a surviving draft on pages 200-207 of The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien):

“They are actually emissaries from the True West, and so mediately from God, sent precisely to strengthen the resistance of the ‘good’, when the Valar become aware that the shadow of Sauron is taking shape again.” Letters, 207

He further explains their role:

“At this point in the fabulous history the purpose was precisely to limit and hinder their exhibition of ‘power’ on the physical plane, and so that they should do what they were primarily sent for: train, advise, instruct, arouse the hearts and minds of those threatened by Sauron to a resistance with their own strengths; and not just to do the job for them.” 202

JRRT could have chosen a different path, of course, and created a plot in which there was constant, open war between the wizards and Sauron, and there is mention of war of some sort, as, during the time of The Hobbit, the White Council drives “the Necromancer” out of Dol Goldur in the southern part of Mirkwood. It’s not said how, but no army is mentioned, so we presume that it was done by magic against magic (on the subject of magic, see JRRT in the letter previous to the one to Murray, Letters, 199-200).

We wonder if, in choosing to limit the wizards’ power, Tolkien made the same choice which Apollonius of Rhodes (3^rd century BC) made in his version of the story of Jason and the Golden Fleece, The Argonautica. If you don’t know this story, the shortest way to explain it is to say that Jason’s wicked uncle has stolen the throne which rightfully belongs to Jason and, in an effort to make Jason disappear, his uncle has sent him off on what he hoped was a suicide mission. That mission was to bring back a magical golden fleece from the far side of the Black Sea (at the time, this would have been like a mission to Mars). To help him, Jason summons heroes from across the Greek world.

Unfortunately for Apollonius, the traditional story on which his epic is based had, over time, gradually come to include every hero from ancient Greece on Argo,

This means that Heracles had to be asked to join, but there is a big difficulty in including Heracles: he’s so powerful that he could do the job all by himself.

Apollonius was extremely scrupulous, as far as we can tell, in following tradition, so he finds a way out. He puts Heracles’ bff, Hylas, on board the ship, then, at a watering spot, has the boy lured away by some randy water nymphs.

hylas_and_the_nymphs.waterhouse1896.jpg

When Heracles goes off to find the boy, the ship leaves without him and the problem is solved. (Although Apollonius chooses to ignore the fact that the ship is still absolutely crammed with the ancient equivalent of The Fantastic Four. We suppose that, for him, Heracles was the only really major hero.)

Thus, we can imagine that Tolkien, believing that he could create a more interesting (and longer?) story without too much magic, has, in general, limited the wizards not in their power, but in the use of it. (There are exceptions, of course—we immediately think of Gandalf and the Balrog, for instance.)

The wizards do not just have the shape of men, however, but old men—“Thus they appeared as ‘old’ sage figures” (Letters, 202).

The word “sage” here is definitely one element in Tolkien’s choice for his characters. There is a world-wide tradition that old men are wise men—think of the ancient Greek seer Tiresias, for example—

Johann_Heinrich_Füssli_tiresias.jpg

or the Arthurian Merlin

or Father Christmas/Santa Claus.

We wonder whether there might also be the idea that, dramatically, older rulers, like Theoden

And Denethor

might be more inclined to listen to such a person (although we notice that the corrupted Denethor is less than willing).

And, that younger men like Aragorn

and Faramir

Tim Hildebrandt - Faramir rencontre Frodon et Sam (2).jpg

would see them as mentors.

And, as the Istari have been sent by the Valar, the last act on Gandalf’s part, as depicted in this Hildebrandt twins’ painting, has special significance, suggesting that, Aragorn has been given the throne with divine approval and, with his crowning, Sauron has been completely defeated and balance has been restored, even if only temporarily, to Middle-earth.

When this has been accomplished, Gandalf is then allowed to “retire”, as we seem to expect old men to do in our world (and as Tolkien himself did, in 1959), going to the Grey Havens and a final journey back to the West.

We hear nothing more of Radagast and the two so-called “Blue Wizards”, but, Saruman also leaves Middle-earth—though not in Gandalf’s gentle way. And perhaps his end, shabby and disgraced, also shows a kind of divine approval: those given power must not abuse it, for the consequences not only to the world around them, but to them, can be fatal.

Thanks, as always, for reading.

MTCIDC

Our title is an adaptation of the first line of W.B. Yeats’ gorgeous poem, Sailing to Byzantium (first published in 1928). Although it has nothing to do with Middle-earth, it does depict a strange, magical place.

Tell How

04 Wednesday May 2016

Posted by Ollamh in Literary History, Military History, Narnia, Narrative Methods

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A Passage to India, A Walk at Dusk, Ajanta Caves, Aslan, Aslan's How, C.D. Friedrich, C.S. Lewis, Catacombs, consular diptychs, cromlech, E. M. Forster, haugr, Late antique ivories, Malabar Caves, Narnia, Newgrange, Nicomachi, Oseberg Ship, Prince Caspian, Qin Shi Huangdi, River Boyne, Stone Table, Symmachi, Telmarines, Terracotta warriors

Welcome, dear readers, as always.

We’ve been rereading C.S. Lewis’ Narnia series and have just finished the second book, Prince Caspian. We were interested, as we read, in “Aslan’s How”.

We knew, from the text, what the place was, as Doctor Cornelius describes it:

“…it is a huge mound which Narnians raised in very ancient times over a very magical place, where there stood—and perhaps still stands—a very magical Stone. The mound is all hollowed out within into galleries and caves, and the Stone is in the central cave of all.”

In the 2008 film of Prince Caspian, this is depicted as what appears to be a stone structure which is covered in earth and trees

(Spoiler Alert! Underneath the magic of CGI…)

This version reminds us of the Ajanta Caves, an Indian Buddhist monument dating from the 2^nd century BC to (perhaps as late as) the 7^th century AD.

These are, as you can see from this photo, spectacular on the outside, but even more so on the inside, as they are full of a huge number of wall paintings and sculptures.

Hamsa_jâtaka,_Ajanta,_India.jpg

(These, by the way, have their own literary history, being a model for the “Malabar Caves” which feature in the plot of E. M. Forster’s A Passage to India, 1924.)

Lewis, however, was from Belfast, and we’ve always imagined that what he was actually thinking of was the Neolithic monument of Newgrange, in Eire (the Republic of Ireland).

This was possibly a passage tomb—but there’s lots of scholarly discussion about that. At least it can be said that it has “galleries and caves”

newgrange plan.gif

and, like Aslan’s How (“How” being a worn-down form of Old Norse “haugr”, “tumulus/hill”), it’s up from a river, in this case, the River Boyne, as the How is just up from the Great River, in Narnia.

In Lewis’ description, it seems that the Narnians of long ago had constructed the mound to protect an object, “a very magical Stone”. As we know from the first book in the Narnia series, this is the Stone Table on which Aslan allowed himself to be sacrificed by the White Witch.

We’ve chosen this painting by Michael Hague because it strikes us as closer to what we imagine the scene to have been like and we prefer it to the scene in the 2005 film.

In particular, we differ on the table. Here’s another view of the one from the film.

To us, it’s more likely to have been modeled on a cromlech, the remains of a Neolithic tomb, of a kind found in numbers all over western Europe and which Lewis must certainly have seen.

The Hague painting obviously reflects this and the power of such monuments for painters goes back at least to the German Romantics. Here’s a wonderfully moody depiction (“A Walk at Dusk”, 1821) by our favorite painter of that movement, C.D. Friedrich (1774-1840).

Commonly, large artificial mounds like the How are tombs. In an earlier post, we talked about ship burials, like that of the Oseberg ship–

which must have looked like this before its excavation.

Such burials are a worldwide phenomenon. In China, perhaps the grandest is for Qin Shi Huangdi, the so-called “First Emperor” (built 246-208BC).

This site was rendered even more impressive in 1974 when the first of at least 7000 life-size ceramic warriors was uncovered after a local farmer began to dig a well.

These figures were originally painted in bright colors and held bronze weapons.

Aslan’s How is not a tomb, however, but the resting place of its opposite—the broken stone which is intended to be a symbol of resurrection, and this is in keeping with the parallel between Aslan and the Christian figure, Jesus, who is believed by Christians to have been killed, entombed, but, on the third day escaped the tomb.

(And we can’t show one of these wonderful late classical ivory carvings without adding another, a favorite, a so-called “consular diptych”—that is, a pair of ivory plaques joined together. They are thought to have commemorated the appointment of a member of an upper class family to the rank of consul. This diptych celebrated the appointment of someone from one or both of two families, the Nicomachi and the Symmachi, and is dated to about 400AD.)

This idea leads us to another possible model. Outside Rome, there are miles of underground passages associated with early Christians. They served both as secret places of worship, as well as burial places.

Considering that those Old Narnians who resist the rule of the Telmarines and take refuge in the How are often those who believe in the existence of Aslan as well, may we see Aslan’s How, with its central stone table as a reminder of Aslan’s sacrifice and resurrection, as the equivalent of the catacombs?

What do you think, dear readers?

Thanks, as always, for reading.

MTCIDC

doubtfulsea

~ adventure fantasy

Monthly Archives: May 2016

His Letters

Rear Guard

A Country for Old Men—and Old Men for a Country

Tell How