All Thin, Sort of Stretched

30 Wednesday May 2018

Posted by Ollamh in Fairy Tales and Myths, Films and Music, J.R.R. Tolkien, Villains

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Aragorn, Bilbo, Bram Stoker, Dracula, Dunedain, Gerontius, immortal, Nosferatu, Numenoreans, Professor Van Helsing, Saruman, The Lord of the Rings, The Scouring of the Shire, The Shadow of the Past, Tolkien, vampire, Voivode Dracula

As always, dear readers, welcome.

Once before, we wrote about the Scouring of the Shire and about the queer events after Saruman’s death, but, recently, we’ve come across something which might suggest an explanation.

This past term/semester, one of us taught Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel, Dracula, for the first time (and it seemed to be a big hit, we might add), as we’ve also mentioned before.

In the book, Professor Van Helsing tells the protagonists that Dracula:

“…must, indeed, have been that Voivode Dracula who won his name against the Turk, over the great river on the very frontier of Turkey-land.” (Dracula, Chapter XVIII)

If indeed true, this would mean that the Un-dead figure in the novel, who, historically, had been born about 1430, would, at the time of the novel, be about 467 years old. Van Helsing explains this longevity:

“The vampire live on, and cannot die by mere passing of the time; he can flourish when that he can fatten on the blood of the living.”

Worse—

“Even more, we have seen amongst us that he can even grow younger; that his vital faculties grow strenuous, and seem as though they refresh themselves when his special pabulum is plenty.” [pabulum is a little odd here, to us, as it’s an early word for “baby food”—perhaps Van Helsing is being sarcastic?]

We were easily, as always, prompted back to JRRT here and something Bilbo says to Gandalf when he is about to leave Bag End in the first chapter of The Lord of the Rings:

“I am old, Gandalf. I don’t look it, but I am beginning to feel it in my heart of hearts. Well-preserved indeed!…Why, I feel all thin, sort of stretched, if you know what I mean: like butter that has been scraped over too much bread. That can’t be right.” (The Fellowship of the Ring, Book One, Chapter 1, “A Long-Expected Party”)

Hobbits are, in comparison to humans in our current world and among non-Numenoreans in Middle-earth, a long-lived race, Bilbo’s family in particular being perhaps an extreme example, his grandfather, Gerontius (a small academic joke—geron in Greek means “old man”), living to be 130—and Bilbo will even surpass him, if only briefly.

“Stretched”, however, suggests something else—and we know, as Gandalf does, what that is–the Ring:

“A mortal, Frodo, who keeps one of the Great Rings, does not die, but he does not grow or obtain more life, he merely continues, until at last every minute is a weariness. And if he often uses the Ring to make himself invisible, he fades: he becomes in the end invisible permanently, and walks in the twilight under the eye of the Dark Power that rules the Rings. Yes, sooner or later—later, if he is strong or well-meaning to begin with, but neither strength nor good purpose will last—sooner or later the Dark Power will devour him.” (The Fellowship of the Ring, Book One, Chapter 2, “The Shadow of the Past”)

And so, Bilbo would have felt more and more “stretched”, had he not given it up, even as he continued to go on existing–Gollum, after all, is nearly 600 when he meets Bilbo for the riddling game.

As we’ve mentioned, the descendants of the Numenoreans had a naturally-extended life. Aragorn, for instance, is 87 at the time of The Lord of the Rings, and 210 at his death in FA120.

Others in Middle-earth, however, have simply been given what would seem to be life spans practically without limit. The elves, like Galadriel, are, in effect, immortal. Likewise are the Istari—the “wizards”, like Gandalf.

This should extend to Saruman, as well.

And yet, something seems to have gone wrong here, as we wrote about some time ago. Once Grima has cut his throat:

“To the dismay of those that stood by, about the body of Saruman a grey mist gathered, and rising slowly to a great height like smoke from a fire, as a pale shrouded figure it loomed over the Hill. For a moment it wavered, looking to the West; but out of the West came a cold wind, and it bent away, and with a sigh dissolved into nothing.”

This isn’t the end, however.

“Frodo looked down at the body with pity and horror, for as he looked it seemed that long years of death were suddenly revealed in it, and it shrank, and the shriveled face became rags of skin upon a hideous skull. Lifting up the skirt of the dirty cloak that sprawled beside it, he covered it over, and turned away.” (The Return of the King, Book Six, Chapter 8, “The Scouring of the Shire”)

It’s never explained why the—for lack of a better word—spirit of Saruman disappears as it does. The fact that it looks to the West—towards Valinor—and a cold wind blows from there suggests that, somehow, the Valar are punishing Saruman for betraying their trust and forbidding him from returning to them, as the living Gandalf will in the final chapter of the book (and for a second time, it seems, Gandalf having been “sent back” after his apparent death fighting the Balrog).

What Frodo sees in the sprawled body, however, suggests something more: “long years of death were suddenly revealed in it”. Here’s Stoker’s description of the end of Dracula:

“As I looked, the eyes saw the sinking sun, and the look of hate in them turned to triumph.

But, on the instant, came the sweep and flash of Jonathan’s great knife. I shrieked as I saw it shear through the throat; whilst at the same moment Mr. Morris’ bowie knife plunged into the heart.

It was like a miracle; but before our very eyes, and almost in the drawing of a breath, the whole body crumble[d] into dust and passed from our sight.” (Dracula, Chapter XXVII)

Bilbo and Gollum have continued to live because the Ring has given them the power to do so, but at a great cost, at least for Gollum, as Gandalf says. Dracula has been given nearly 500 years because he has become a parasite on the living, but those years were his with the loss of his soul. Could it be that Saruman, although given immortality because he is one of the Maiar, has, through his long years of plotting, either to work with Sauron or even to become Sauron, somehow become more like one of the Un-dead, gradually losing life even though immortal?

(This is the end of Count Orlok, the Dracula figure in our favorite vampire movie, FW Murnau’s 1922 Nosferatu. If you’d like to see the film, here’s a LINK to it from the Internet Archive site.)

In which case, his end is much worse than that of Dracula, as one of the protagonists, Mina Harker, writes:

“I shall be glad as long as I live that even in that moment of final dissolution, there was in the face a look of peace, such as I never could have imagined might have rested there.”

MTCIDC

A Celtic Chill Up the Spine

23 Wednesday May 2018

Posted by Ollamh in Fairy Tales and Myths, Films and Music, Heroes, Literary History, Military History, Narrative Methods

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Banshee, Bean Nighe, Bloody Clavers, Bodbh, Bonnie Dundee, Coiste bodhar, Cuchulain, Darby O'Gill and the Little People, Dragoons, Dullahan, Gan Ceann, Greco-Roman, Hera, Highlanders, Hugh Herriot, Hugh Mackay, James II, Jason, Johm Graham, Morrigan, Old Mortality, Pass of Killecrankie, Picts, Pikemen, Rosemary Sutcliff, Sir Walter Scott, tumuli, William of Orange, Williamite, Woman of the Sidh

Welcome, as ever, dear readers.

As we just finished a novel, Bonnie Dundee (1983),

by one of our favorite YA historical authors, Rosemary Sutcliff (1920-1992), we were snagged by what, at first, seems just an odd little detail—but we’ll come to that. First, let’s talk about the book in general.

The title refers to a 17^th-century Scots nobleman, John Graham, 7^th Laird of Claverhouse, 1^st Viscount Dundee (1648-1689), also known as “Bloody Clavers” for his zeal in observing the law in a complicated religious situation (the subject of a Sir Walter Scott novel, Old Mortality, 1816),

and “Bonnie Dundee” from his noble title (and, we presume, his good looks).

In 1689, Dundee was a royal cavalry officer, leading a regiment of mounted infantry, called, at that time, dragoons.

In that same year, a combination of elements of Parliament, the army and navy, and the forces of William, Prince of Orange, Stadtholder of the other provinces of the Netherlands,

and husband of Mary,

the daughter of the King of England, James II, had overthrown James.

William was the son of James’ sister, and so James was both his uncle and his father-in-law—a very tricky situation!

Rather than fight, James had fled, but elements in Ireland and Scotland were still loyal. One of the main leaders of resistance in Scotland was Bonnie Dundee.

Against him was a Williamite army, led by Hugh Mackay.

The major battle happened at the Pass of Killiecrankie, 27 July, 1689.

The government’s side consisted almost entirely of regular infantry regiments, but a real mixture of raw and experienced soldiers, it seems.

Dundee’s men were primarily Highlanders, untrained in modern battlefield discipline and tactics.

The usual method in period battles was to begin by softening up the enemy with artillery fire in hopes that you could goad him into attacking you or at least you might shake his organization.

Then, if the enemy advanced, you used your firepower to break up his formations

and, if you were lucky, to drive him back, whereupon you might loose your cavalry to drive him off the battlefield.

1689 was a time of transition in European armies, in which the Renaissance weapon, the pike,

which had been increasingly flanked by men with firearms,

was being replaced by the bayonet, turning a musket into a short pike and thus removing the need for pikemen. The earliest bayonets, however, were simply knives stuck into the muzzle of the musket.

Of course, if you stick a knife into the muzzle, it means that you lose the ability to keep up your volleys and this seems to have been part of the difficulty for MacKay, the Williamite general. The Highlanders had, as their main weapon, the charge, the goal being to get close to the enemy before he could do much damage with firearms, and cut him to pieces with swords and axes.

Somehow, the Highlanders managed to break up the Williamite regiments—possibly because they were caught between firing and fixing bayonets?—and drive them off—although at the cost of losing Dundee, mortally wounded while attempting to direct the attack.

Sutcliff’s hero, a Scots Lowlander named Hugh Herriot, is first a groom in Dundee’s household and then a trooper in his dragoons, eventually following Dundee to Killiecrankie and his death. (Dundee was buried nearby just after the battle.)

It is on the march to the battlefield that Hugh sees something which briefly captures his attention at the time, but nothing more, and it was this description which has haunted us, ever since we put the book down:

“Once we came to the place where a cattle-track dipped down from the north, to cross the river by a made ford. And on the far side, tucked in among the roots of overshadowing hazel and alder trees, looking as twisted and as rooted into the bank as themselves, an old woman in an earth-coloured gown knelt washing a pile of household clothes and linen.

I mind thinking it was late in the year for that; mostly the crofter women fling everything out-of-doors and deal with the bed-bugs and wash all things washable in May. I mind also noticing that there was something of a dark brownish-red colour among the grey pallor of the unbleached linen; a shawl, maybe; you could not see, in the cave of shadows under the alder branches.

She took no more notice of our passing than if we had not been there at all. And we marched on, and I thought no more of the thing, for the time being.” (Bonnie Dundee, Chapter 21, “The Old Woman by the Ford”)

It’s only when later, in camp, Hugh senses that something appears to be worrying the Highlanders that it comes clear that they, too, saw the old woman—and something more, as his Highland friend, Alisdair, explains:

“Did ye see anything—any one, by the cattle ford an hour’s march up-river, as we came by?”

To which Hugh answers:

“An old woman doing her household wash…”

And Alisdair says in return:

“Aye, and you a Lowlander, ye would not be knowing.”

Continuing:

“The Woman of the Sidh—the Washer by the Ford.”

Although a Lowlander, Hugh does know:

“The Washer by the Ford, and she was washing the blood-stained linen, who comes before the death of chiefs and heroes…”

For us, who grew up in the Greco-Roman world, an old woman at a ford has a completely different meaning: in the story of Jason, his patron-to-be, Hera, disguises herself as an old woman and sits by a ford, testing men by asking to be carried across. Jason agrees to and loses a sandal in the process, thus fulfilling a divine warning sent to the king of Iolcus about his eventual overthrow (by Jason): beware the man with one sandal.

This story in the Sutcliff—really, as we said, only a little detail in a much larger story—struck us as not only extremely well told (which we expect from Sutcliff, a very gifted story-teller—we’ll talk more about her in a future post), but well-told because, initially, it does just seem like nothing at all—something idly noticed and nothing more. Its creepiness comes not from the description, which might be ordinary, but from its Celtic heritage—the Highlanders belong to a world made long before 1689, being a combination of the prehistoric settlers of the north, the Picts,

and the Irish, who began arriving in Scotland in the 5^th century AD.

Although the Irish had converted to Christianity early, there were certain older beliefs which lasted throughout many centuries. The Old Woman at the Ford is clearly one. In Gaelic, the Irish-based language of Scotland, she is the Bean Nighe, (ben NEE-yeh, “the washer-woman”), or as Alisdair calls her, “the Woman of the Sidh” (sheethe).

“Sidh” has, in fact, several possible translations: it can mean “peace”, but, as well, it signifies the Neolithic tumuli (like the barrows to the east of the Old Forest in Middle-earth), as well as the People of the Other World (who may either live in tumuli, or use them as doorways into that Other World).

Our English word “banshee” is simply the Irish ben side (ben SHEE-thyeh), “woman of the Sidh” which, as we’ve seen, is just what Alisdair calls the Old Woman at the Ford.

Banshees—who do not necessarily always appear as old women, sometimes visit as young–are a kind of messenger from the Other World, sent to warn family members of an impending death. Their manner of communicating this can vary—in some parts of tradition, they fulfil the task of old women at traditional funerals, wailing in grief, with a sound which has come into English as “keening”.

To give you an idea of this, here’s a LINK to a clip from the 1959 Disney movie, Darby O’Gill and the Little People, in which we see not only a banshee, but also the next step, the coiste bodhar, [KOH-shte BOW-er] the “silent coach” with its headless coachman, the Dullahan, called in Irish, Gan Ceann,(gan KENN) “Headless”, who carries the dead person…somewhere… [Be warned, by the way: one of us saw this only once, many years ago, on a Disney program, and has spent many further years trying not to remember it!]

In other parts of the tradition, the banshee stands outside the doomed person’s window and simply says her/his name (which impresses us as especially creepy), or calls out “My wife!” “My husband!” or “My child!”

In Ireland, the banshee is restricted to the pre-Norman-invasion population (pre-the-year 1169, more or less), suggesting that this is a purely Celtic belief, which would make sense of Hugh’s Highland friend, Alisdair’s, fear of the Washer.

It has been suggested that perhaps this figure is descended from a fearful Irish goddess, the Bodbh (BAH-thv),

who has a possible three-part persona and appears before battles and on battlefields, with a raven as her totemic animal.

She is also called Morrigan, meaning “great queen”, which sounds rather like a euphemism. In Old Irish stories, she is the enemy of the boy hero Cuchulain (Koo HOO lun), and brings about his death through tricking him into destroying his own protective spells (he eats dog, his own totemic animal—his name means “hound of Culann”). There’s a famous bronze statue of him, with her raven on his shoulder, in the old main Dublin post office.

And here Sutcliff now helps us to complete a kind of grim mythological circle. Hugh Herriot not only knows who the Washer is, but this further fact:

“The Washer by the Ford, and she was washing the blood-stained linen, who comes before the death of chiefs and heroes—aye, before the death of Cuchulain himself.”

Who is the chief and hero of the novel—and is riding to battle the Williamites? It’s clear, if one accepts this portent, what is to happen, and yet Hugh tries to deny what he knows to Alisdair—

“Och, away! Dinna be sae daft!…She was real enough; just an old hen-wife, a wee thing late with her spring washing. Aye, she was real enough.”

Alisdair’s reply still chills us—as it does Hugh—and explains why what was originally only a passing observation in this novel has stayed with us:

“ ‘She seemed real enough,’ he said, ‘she always does.’ “

Thanks, as always, for reading.

MTCIDC

First Make a Map

16 Wednesday May 2018

Posted by Ollamh in Artists and Illustrators, J.R.R. Tolkien, Literary History, Maps, Narrative Methods

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Braemar, Cherna, geography, Lloyd Osbourne, Maps, plot, Robert Louis Stevenson, Story, The Idler, The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien, topography, Treasure Island, Young Folks Magazine

As always, welcome, dear readers.

We have just said goodbye to an old friend, E, who stayed all too briefly with us on his way to and from a conference. E, like us, is a big fan of maps and we had a lot of conversation on the topographical charting of Middle-earth, particularly as seen in The Lord of the Rings.

A map forms the basis of the plot of The Hobbit, of course.

And the need for an accurate depiction of (fictional) geography haunted its author as he expanded his story, as he says in a letter to Rayner Unwin, 11 April, 1953:

“Maps are worrying me. One at least (which would then have to be rather large) is absolutely essential. I think three are needed: 1. Of the Shire; 2. Of Gondor; and 3. A general small-scale map of the whole field of action. They exist, of course; though not in any form fit for reproduction—for of course in such a story one cannot make a map for the narrative, but must first make a map and make the narrative agree.” (Letters, 168)

(If you would like to see an interesting selection of Tolkien maps, here’s a LINK to the Tolkien Estate website, which has a number of them, including the first map of the Shire.)

The idea of making a map, rather than a story, first reminded us of an earlier author, who once said much the same thing.

In the summer of 1881, Robert Louis Stevenson

was on an extended tour of central and eastern Scotland with his parents, his wife, and his stepson, Lloyd Osbourne.

From early August to late September, they stayed in Braemar

in this cottage.

Then the weather intervened:

“There it blew a good deal and rained in a proportion…and I must consent to pass a good deal of my time between four walls…There was a schoolboy [his stepson, Lloyd]…home from the holidays…He had no thought of literature; it was the art of Raphael that received his fleeing suffrages; and with the aid of pen and ink and a shilling box of water colours, he had soon turned one of the rooms into a picture gallery. My more immediate duty towards the gallery was to be showman; but I would sometimes unbend a little, join the artist (so to speak) at the easel, and pass the afternoon with him in a generous emulation, making coloured drawings. On one of these occasions, I made the map of an island; it was elaborately and (I thought) beautifully coloured; the shape of it took my fancy beyond expression; it contained harbours that pleased me like sonnets; and with the unconsciousness of the predestined, I ticketed my performance ‘Treasure Island’.” (RL Stevenson, “My First Book: ‘Treasure Island’”, The Idler, August, 1894)

In fact, as Stevenson writes earlier in this essay, it was not, in fact, his first book, or even his first novel, but it was his first published novel. After its inspired beginning as a map, it first saw publication not as a novel, but as a serial in 17 installments in a magazine called Young Folks, from 1 Oct, 1881 to 28 Jan, 1882, under a pen name, “Captain George North”. Its first appearance as a novel was in November, 1883, with the title, Treasure Island, or, The Mutiny of the Hispaniola.

This has produced many subsequent republications over the years, our favorite being the 1911 edition,

with its wonderful, atmospheric illustrations by NC Wyeth.

But what about the map which started it all?

“But the adventures of Treasure Island are not yet quite at an end. I had written it up to the map. The map was the chief part of my plot. For instance, I had called an islet ‘Skeleton Island,’ not knowing what I meant, seeking only for the immediate picturesque, and it was to justify this name that I broke into the gallery of Mr. Poe and stole Flint’s pointer [a sprawled skeleton, if you don’t know the book]. And in the same way, it was because I had made two harbours that the Hispaniola was sent on her wanderings with Israel Hands. The time came when it was decided to republish [that is, from magazine to book form], and I sent in my manuscript, and the map along with it, to Messrs. Cassell. The proofs came, they were corrected, but I heard nothing of the map. I wrote and asked; was told it had never been received, and sat aghast. It is one thing to draw a map at random, set a scale in one corner of it at a venture, and write up a story to the measurements. It is quite another to have to examine a whole book, make an inventory of all the allusions contained in it, and with a pair of compasses, painfully design a map to suit the date. I did it; and the map was drawn again in my father’s office, with embellishments of blowing whales and sailing ships, and my father himself brought into service a knack he had of various writing, and elaborately FORGED the signature of Captain Flint, and the sailing directions of Billy Bones. But somehow it was never Treasure Island to me.”

So here is that second version.

From his experience, Stevenson drew the same conclusion as JRRT would nearly 60 years later:

“I have said the map was the most of the plot. I might almost say it was the whole…It is, perhaps, not often that a map figures so largely in a tale, yet it is always important. The author must know his countryside, whether real or imaginary, like his hand; the distances, the points of the compass, the place of the sun’s rising, the behavior of the moon, should all be beyond cavil…But it is my contention—my superstition, if you like—that who is faithful to his map, and consults it, and draws from it his inspiration, daily and hourly, gains positive support, and not mere negative immunity from accident. The tale has a root there; it grows in that soil; it has a spine of its own behind the words. Better if the country be real, and he has walked every foot of it and knows every milestone. But even with imaginary places, he will do well in the beginning to provide a map; as he studies it, relations will appear that he had not thought upon; he will discover obvious, though unsuspected, short-cuts and footprints for his messengers; and even when a map is not all the plot, as it was in Treasure Island, it will be found to be a mine of suggestion.”

(If you would like to read this little essay in full—and we recommend it—here’s a LINK.)

We will end here as, inspired, we’re off to redo the map for our imaginary medieval Russia, Cherna.

MTCIDC

In a Pukel

09 Wednesday May 2018

Posted by Ollamh in Artists and Illustrators, Fairy Tales and Myths, J.R.R. Tolkien, Maps, Medieval Russia, Military History, Military History of Middle-earth, The Rohirrim

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balbal, Carnac Stones, Cherna, Denis Gordeev, Druadan Forest, Dunharrow, Easter Island, Eored, Ghan-buri-Ghan, Gondor, menhirs, moai, Pukel-men, Rapa Nui, Rohan, Rohirrim, Stonewain Valley, Ted Nasmith, The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien, Unfinished Tales, Vsadniki, Woses

Welcome, dear readers, as ever.

After their mustering and rapid journey to the aid of Gondor, the Rohirrim

have been stopped:

“Scouts had been sent ahead. Some had not returned. Others hastening back had reported that the road was held in force against them. A host of the enemy was encamped upon it, three [4.8km]] miles west of Amon Din, and some strength of men was already thrusting along the road and was not more than three leagues [about 9 miles/14.5km] away.” (The Return of the King, Book Five, Chapter 5, “The Ride of the Rohirrim”)

And so they are camped temporarily in the murk which has fallen over the West—a sign of Sauron on the move.

As they remain there, Merry gradually hears a sound like distant drums and, when Elfhelm, the Marshal of the eored [Rohirrim unit of horsemen] in which Merry and his mysterious companion, Dernhelm, are riding, stumbles over him, Merry asks if it’s the enemy:

“Are those their drums?”

Elfhelm replies:

“You hear the Woses, the Wild Men of the Woods…They still haunt Druadan Foest, it is said…But they have offered their services to Theoden. Even now one of their headmen is being taken to the king.”

Merry follows Elfhelm and soon sees:

“A large lantern, covered above, was hanging from a bough and cast a pale circle of light below. There sat Theoden and Eomer, and before them on the ground sat a strange squat shape of a man, gnarled as an old stone, and the hairs of his scanty beard straggled on his lumpy chin like dry moss. He was short-legged and fat-armed, thick and stumpy, and clad only with grass about his waist.”

This, we find out, is Ghan-buri-Ghan, leader of the Wild Men, who, as Elfhelm has said, has come to offer his and his people’s aid to Theoden.

(We note, by the way, that this Hildebrandt illustration has taken certain liberties with the scene as described in the book: it appears to be daylight—no lantern—if Eomer is there, he isn’t seated, and there is more than one Wild Man–oh, and the Wild Man’s beard has suddenly sprouted.)

What Ghan-buri-Ghan offers Theoden is a long-forgotten road which would provide a way around the soldiers of Sauron who are blocking the direct route to Minas Tirith: the path through the Stonewain Valley.

What caught our attention here was the connection Merry made between Ghan-buri-Ghan and something he’d encountered only recently:

“Merry felt that he had seen him before somewhere, and suddenly he remembered the Pukel-men of Dunharrow. Here was one of those old images brought to life, or maybe a creature descended in true line through endless years from the models used by the forgotten craftsmen long ago.”

Dunharrow

was a mysterious place—

“…the work of long-forgotten men. Their name was lost and no song or legend remembered it. For what purpose they had made this place, as a town or secret temple or a tomb of kings, none in Rohan could say. Here they labored in the Dark Years, before ever a ship came to the western shores, or Gondor of the Dunedain was built; and now they had vanished, and only the old Pukel-men were left, still sitting at the turnings of the road.

Merry stared at the lines of marching stones: they were worn and black; some were leaning, some were fallen, some cracked or broken; they looked like rows of old and hungry teeth.” (The Return of the King, Book Five, Chapter 3, “The Muster of Rohan”)

For a moment, this description reminded us of something one sees in Brittany, on the west coast of France, the so-called “Carnac Stones”, a vast field of Neolithic upright stones, now called menhirs (Breton for “long stone”) in long lines in and around the village of Carnac.

And, just as the use or meaning of Dunharrow is lost, so is that of the elaborate construction of the Carnac Stones.

Once the Carnac Stones—and others like them, both in France and in Great Britain—came into our heads, we were whirled away to Rapa Nui (Easter Island) and all of those puzzling outsized heads on less-developed torsos, the moai.

It was not the size or placement of those figures like “rows of old and hungry teeth” however, which made us think further about Ghan-buri-Ghan and his stony cousins, but how the figures were carved:

“At each turn of the road there were great standing stones that had been carved in the likeness of men, huge and clumsy-limbed, squatting cross-legged with their stumpy arms folded on fat bellies. Some in the wearing of the years had lost all features save the dark holes of their eyes that still stared sadly at the passers-by. The Riders hardly glanced at them. The Pukel-men they called them, and heeded them little…”

As the Rohirrim are translated as speaking among themselves a sort of Tolkien-adapted Old English, so “pukel” appears to be derived from “pucel” = “goblin/demon”, which suggests perhaps a quasi-religious or magical use, but, if they once represented spirits, they are now spiritless, with no ability to frighten. Rather, as the narrator tells us:

“…no power or terror was left in them; but Merry gazed at them with wonder and a feeling almost of pity, as they loomed up mournfully in the dusk.”

The narrator’s elaboration then reminded us of something else: balbal.

These are carved stone figures with a history probably as long as that of the Pukel-men. They appear to be the product of Turkic peoples in Central Asia—with even older relatives, perhaps, to the west, as well. Some may have been tomb guardians or monuments themselves—as with the Pukel-men, their origins and use/s are lost to us. We ourselves have stolen them for use in our series of novels based in an imaginary medieval fairy tale Russia, called Cherna, “The Black Land”—but please don’t think “Mordor?” In our case, the reason it’s named that is that it is steppe country with extremely fertile black soil. So rich, especially as pasture-land, that it’s worth invading and fighting over, which is what the villains of our trilogy, the Vsadniki, modeled on the Mongols, do.

Unlike Pukel-men and menhirs and moai, however, there is no mystery about what the Vsadniki are up to with their stones: every time they conquer a new land, they set such stones up at their new far-western border to say not only “what’s behind these is ours”, but also “and we’re looking at your lands next”.

Thanks, as always, for reading.

MTCIDC

In the Tolkien volume Unfinished Tales, we find further connections between the Wild Men/Woses and carvings. We use a paperback edition and this has somewhat different pagination from the hardbound, but, should you be interested, you can find it in either form in Part Four, I The Druedain.

pps

Here is a drawing of Ghan-buri-Ghan by Denis Gordeev, who has done a good deal of work illustrating a wide selection of JRRT’s fiction, rather as Ted Nasmith has, along with many other classics as well as modern fantasy fiction.

Gordeev has clearly been trained/trained himself in drawing as people did in that golden age of children’s writing and illustration, the 1880s to 1920s, and, once you get used to his very distinctive style, you may come to like it as we do. Here’s Gandalf arriving in Hobbiton, fireworks and all, just to give you a taste.

Small Talk

02 Wednesday May 2018

Posted by Ollamh in Fairy Tales and Myths, Films and Music, Heroes, J.R.R. Tolkien, Narrative Methods, Villains

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Assyrians, Charles Goodyear, cyclops, David and Goliath, Death Star, Egypt, Ewoks, Greeks, Hetep Senworset, Hobbits, Jack and the Beanstalk, Kelandry of Mindelan, Lachish, Medieval, Odysseus, Polyphemus, Protector of the Small, Romans, Sling, slingers, Slingshot, Smaug, Star Wars, Tamora Pierce, thrush, Tortall, Vulcanized, Woses, Yoda

Welcome, dear readers, as always.

Sometimes, ideas for posts come from something we’ve seen in a movie theatre or something we’re reading or even from something we’re teaching or studying. Sometimes we employ the Sortes Tolkienses. And sometimes things just seem to fall into our hands. And that’s where this post comes from.

We were moving a bookshelf and something literally dropped into our hands, a boxed set of books by one of our favorite YA authors, Tamora Pierce.

As you can see from our image, the series is called “Protector of the Small” and is about the life of Keladry of Mindelan, who lives in Pierce’s imaginary Tortall, where it is possible—just possible—for a girl to become a knight. Through the four volumes, Kel gradually works her way from pre-page to knighthood and, is always the case with TP’s books, there are both surprises and interesting and not always predictable difficulties along the way, as well as an ultimate humanity which makes her books such satisfying reading.

It wasn’t the actual books, however, which got us to thinking, but the word “small” in the series title. How often, in our favorite adventure stories, it’s a case of small versus big

and, very often, the big thinks that that’s all which counts—think of the fairy tale “Jack and the Beanstalk” for example.

For all that the giant is huge and menacing in the story, he’s vulnerable as he climbs down the beanstalk and Jack’s quick thought–to cut down the stalk even as the giant descends–makes quick work of the oversized (but perhaps overconfident—and underbrained?) creature.

In the Judeo-Christian tradition, we have the Biblical story of David and Goliath.

Goliath is not only huge, but armored, and David is a boy who has only his shepherd’s staff, a sling, and five stones from a river bed, but it’s all he needs.

A sling is an ancient weapon

This is from the Egyptian Middle Kingdom town of Hetep Senwosret, c. 1895BC. The Assyrians were still using the weapon more than a thousand years later, as this scene from one of the Lachish reliefs (c.700BC) shows.

The Greeks had slingers

as did the Romans

as did medieval westerners.

Slings shouldn’t be confused with slingshots, by the way. (Or “catapult” if you’re one of our British friends.)

This is the weapon of choice of the cartoon character, Dennis the Menace.

These are a modern invention which requires a large rubber band (an “elastic”) to propel the missile and such rubber bands can only come from the 1840s and beyond, when the process of heat-hardening rubber (“vulcanization”) was patented by Charles Goodyear.

For us, then, the image of Ori in P Jackson’s film armed with a slingshot

goes into our catalogue of anachronisms, like the steam engine whistle, the popgun, and the tomatoes in The Hobbit.

But, as we were saying, small David has no fear of big Goliath, as one of those stones from the riverbed stuns the giant warrior, allowing David to use Goliath’s own sword to cut off his head.

In ancient Greek tradition, Polyphemus the Cyclops obviously thinks his size will allow him to consume all of Odysseus’ men—and then Odysseus, too, saving him for last as a “guest gift”.

Big body, however, doesn’t necessarily mean big brain as Odysseus gets the Cyclops drunk and then blinds him with his own staff.

Then, he uses the Cyclops’ own sheep as escape vehicles for himself and his men.

Small versus big is a major theme in Star Wars, from the fact that the gigantic Death Star has a single ventilator duct which makes it vulnerable

to attack by a single fighter,

to the ferocious Ewoks,

and, of course, Yoda, with his famous question.

And then there are The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, where the world of the small and tough seems to be everywhere, from the hobbits

to the dwarves

and even to the Woses.

Their opponents are suitably large—trolls,

dragons

wizards

to the biggest evil in Middle-earth (although it’s not clear, really, how big he is, physically).

But there’s someone even smaller in The Hobbit who, because of that size, perhaps, is left behind, but is crucial to the story: the elderly thrush

who informs Bard the Bowman just where to fire that black arrow which never fails him—and doesn’t this time, thanks to the bird.

We were sorry that his part was completely removed from The Battle of the Five Armies, but perhaps this was, in fact, one of the few times when the small hero lost to the big–studio.

Thanks, as ever, for reading.

MTCIDC

Here’s a LINK to an amazing demonstration of just how accurate the sling can be.

doubtfulsea

~ adventure fantasy

Monthly Archives: May 2018

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Small Talk