You might say that it all started not with:

“He only needs the One; for he made that Ring himself, it is his, and he let a great part of his former power pass into it, so that he could rule all the others.” (The Fellowship of the Ring, Book One, Chapter 2 “The Shadow of the Past”)

but really with:

“His head was swimming, and he was far from certain even of the direction they had been going in when he had his fall.  He guessed as well as he could, and crawled along a good way, till suddenly his hand met what felt like a tiny ring of cold metal lying on the floor of the tunnel.”  (The Hobbit, Chapter 5, “Riddles in the Dark”)

The author goes on to add, “It was a turning point in his career, but he did not know it…” but, in fact, this—although the author himself didn’t know it in 1937—was a tremendous understatement, that finding being a turning point in more than the career of one small Hobbit.  Suppose, however, that, in the dark and in his confusion—he had just recently “bumped his head on hard rock, and remembered nothing more” after all—the “he” in that passage had missed that “tiny ring of cold metal”?

Welcome, dear readers, as ever.

In my last posting, I began to play a kind of game, enjoyed both by historians and by science fiction/fantasy writers, called “What If?”, using that tiny ring as the focus. 

Such a game produces books like the well-known If the South Had Won the Civil War, by MacKinlay Kantor (1904-1977),

first published in Look Magazine in November, 1960,

and then released as a short novel in 1961.

The possible fantasy/science fiction titles we might cite are probably endless, as “What If” now forms the basis of whole series.  In the last posting, I mentioned as a good example the classic short story by Ray Bradbury (1920-2012)

“A Sound of Thunder”, originally published in Collier’s magazine in 1952,

in which the death of a butterfly in the prehistoric past will change history in the 20^th century.

In that previous posting, I discussed What If’s centered upon Isildur, Gollum, and Bilbo, and now I want to do what Bilbo did and pass the Ring to his heir, Frodo.

In that previous posting, I began with Faramir’s total rejection of the Ring:

“I would not take this thing, if it lay by the highway.  Not were Minas Tirith falling in ruin and I alone could save her, so, using the weapon of the Dark Lord for her good and my glory…”  (The Two Towers, Book Four, Chapter 5, “The Window on the West”)

Initially, Frodo seems to have a similar reaction, saying to Gandalf:

“All the same…even if Bilbo could not kill Gollum, I wish that he had not kept the Ring.  I wish he had never found it, and that I had not got it!  Why did you let me keep it?  Why didn’t you make me throw it away, or, or destroy it?” (The Fellowship of the Ring, Book One, Chapter 2, “The Shadow of the Past”)

And yet, there is something terribly attractive about the thing:

“Frodo drew the Ring out of his pocket again and looked at it.  It now appeared plain and smooth, without mark or device that he could see.  The gold looked very fair and pure, and Frodo thought how rich and beautiful was its colour, how perfect was its roundness.  It was an admirable thing and altogether precious.  When he took it out, he had intended to fling it from him into the very hottest part of the fire.  But now he found that he could not do so, not without a great struggle.  He weighed the Ring in his hand, hesitating, and forcing himself to remember all that Gandalf had told him; and then with an effort of will he made a movement, as if to cast it away, but he found that he had put it back in his pocket.”

Gollum had had the Ring for nearly 500 years, and Bilbo had had it for about 60 years.  When Gandalf arrives at Frodo’s house, it’s been only 9 years since Bilbo left the Ring behind and Frodo’s behavior can only cause Gandalf great concern, as he says when Frodo is unable to part with it:  “You see?  Already you too, Frodo, cannot easily let it go, nor will to damage it.”

This possessiveness will only grow in time, making Frodo’s beloved kinsman, Bilbo, when he asks only to see the Ring in Rivendell, seem a monster:

“Slowly he drew it out.  Bilbo put out his hand.  But Frodo quickly drew back the Ring.  To his distress and amazement he found that he was no longer looking at Bilbo; a shadow seemed to have fallen between them, and through it he found himself eyeing a little wrinkled creature with a hungry face and bony groping hands.  He felt a desire to strike him.”  (The Fellowhip of the Ring, Book Two, Chapter 1, “Many Meetings”)

Now that Frodo has found the Ring “altogether precious”, his judgment is already so distorted that he can only see Bilbo as another Gollum, “a little wrinkled creature with a hungry face and bony groping hands”.

With such reactions at the beginning of Frodo’s quest, I suppose we shouldn’t be surprised that, at the end of that terrible journey, standing at the very edge of the Ring’s destruction, we see this:

“Then Frodo stirred and spoke with a clear voice, indeed with a voice clearer and more powerful than Sam had ever heard him use, and it rose above the throb and turmoil of Mount Doom, ringing in the roof and walls.

‘I have come,’ he said.  ‘But I do not choose now to do what I came to do.  I will not do this deed.  The Ring is mine!’  And suddenly, as he set it on his finger, he vanished from Sam’s sight.” (The Return of the King, Book Six, Chapter 3, “Mount Doom”)

And this brings us to the What If. 

It’s clear from what Gandalf has told Frodo long before that, even he had wanted to, Frodo would be unable to reject the task of holding the Ring:

“I can put it no plainer than by saying that Bilbo was meant to find the Ring, and not by its maker.  In which case you also were meant to have it.” (The Fellowship of the Ring, Book One, Chapter 2, “The Shadow of the Past”)

Frodo has been chosen, then, by whom and for what ultimate purpose is not clear—or Gandalf, at least, isn’t about to divulge it.  For a mysterious reason, Frodo is bound to go.  It would appear, then, that there can be no What If of “What if Frodo refused to leave the Shire?”

Instead, we have:  “What if Gollum hadn’t bitten the Ring from Frodo’s hand?”

This new imperious attitude of Frodo’s—the voice, the very formal language—seem to come from nowhere, although I would suggest that they are the ghostly echo of Isildur’s rejection of his comrades’ urging that he throw the Ring into the fire, nearly 3000 years earlier.  And, for all the tone, Frodo was only a Hobbit from the Shire, and, as Gandalf says of Gollum, “The Ring had given him power according to his stature” (The Fellowship of the Ring, Book One, Chapter 2, “The Shadow of the Past”):  he could never have been a great power in Middle-earth and, would probably, like Gollum, have been ruined in time by the Ring, which then would have slipped from him, as it did Gollum.  As Elrond says to Boromir:

“We cannot use the Ruling Ring.  That we now know too well.  It belongs to Sauron and was made by him alone, and is altogether evil.  Its strength, Boromir, is too great for anyone to wield at will, save only those who have already a great power of their own.”  (The Fellowship of the Ring, Book Two, Chapter 2, “The Council of Elrond”)

Had Frodo worn the Ring for no more than a day, however, it would have spelled ultimate disaster for the West.  Even as he totters on the edge both of the Cracks of Doom and his refusal to destroy it, Gandalf, Aragorn, and the meager forces of Gondor and Rohan are surrounded and about to be destroyed by the far superior numbers of Sauron just outside the Morannon.

 The destruction of the Ring means the destruction of Sauron and the panicked flight of his armies.

Without that destruction at that very moment in the story, Sauron will overwhelm the forces of the West and what happens next to Frodo and the Ring will become nothing more than a footnote in Sauron’s history of his triumph.  This is a terrible “What If” and it makes me even more thankful for Gandalf’s remark about Gollum back at the story’s beginning: 

“And he is bound up with the fate of the Ring.  My heart tells me that he has some part to play yet, for good or ill, before the end; and when that comes, the pity of Bilbo may rule the fate of many—yours not least.”  (The Fellowship of the Ring, Book One, Chapter 2, “The Shadow of the Past”)

But, as this is just that, a “What If”, we can breathe a sigh of relief and, in the third and final part of this set of postings, we’ll consider a few more possibilities, when those with the great power Elrond describes as necessary to wield the Ring are offered the opportunity—or try to make it—to possess the Ring.

Thanks, as always, for reading,

Stay well,

Always choose wisely,

And know that, as ever, there’s

MTCIDC

O

Welcome, as always, dear readers.

Faramir (always one of my favorite characters)

is adamant:

“I would not take this thing, if it lay by the highway.  Not were Minas Tirith falling in ruin and I alone could save her, so, using the weapon of the Dark Lord for her good and my glory…”  (The Two Towers, Book Four, Chapter 5, “The Window on the West”)

He means The Ring, of course,

(a John Howe—I like the fact that it’s a painting, not a photographic image)

and, as Frodo is standing in front of him, the ring in a thin chain around his neck, when Faramir says this, it doesn’t seem like posturing:  unlike others in The Lord of the Rings, he truly doesn’t want it.

There are others like him, who fear what it might do to them, one who doesn’t seem even to understand what it is, as well as those who lust after it, for various reasons and this brings me to today’s subject.

I am a respecter of fan fiction.  I know that there are those who condemn it, since some of it is not at the same literary level as the original work upon which the fan fiction writers base their creations.  In my view, that may be true, but it misses several important points:

1. young writers have imitated the work of their elders for centuries and, as a good imitation means close attention to the admired original, such imitation can act as a kind of writing school, in which a beginner who pays that attention can learn a good deal about the craft of writing.

2. fan fiction shows not only a deep affection for an author’s work, but a hunger for more of the same and here we see the Inklings, and Tolkien and CS Lewis, in particular,

famously saying that, having read all they could find which they liked, resolved to create more.  Imagine, then, that the fan fiction writer of today, having learned from what she/he loves to read, will now make plans to add to the pool of what she/he enjoys.  And, if the person has talent, like Tolkien and Lewis, as well as passion, who knows but she/he will be inspired to create works which the rest of us will enjoy as much as the original inspirations?

That being said, I’m not about to produce for you a short story entitled “Falling from the Bridge”, in which we see Boromir and Faramir’s failed defense of Osgiliath.  Instead, just as in fan fiction in which characters and situations are borrowed from earlier authors, inspired by Faramir’s rejection of the Ring, I want to borrow some of JRRT’s characters and employ them in that kind of speculative historical fiction called “What If?” 

A very famous story in this genre is Ray Bradbury’s (1920-2012)

 “A Sound of Thunder”, originally published in Collier’s magazine for 28 June, 1952,

and republished in Bradbury’s 1953 collection The Golden Apples of the Sun.

If you aren’t familiar with this story, here’s a LINK so that you can read it (and it’s well worth reading, which I think is true for just about anything Bradbury wrote): https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=sites&srcid=bW91bnRhaW52aWxsZWFjYWRlbXkub3JnfGNyYWlnLXMtY2xhc3Nlc3xneDoxMjI3ODZmYmIzNjY2OTk1

For our purposes, the most important element is that a wealthy man buys the chance, via a time-traveling firm, to hunt a dinosaur. He has been warned that the firm is anxious about potential changes to the future, should something unpredictable happen in the past, and so the dinosaur with which he’s provided has been seen to have been killed in the near future:  therefore, it’s believed safe to shoot him just before his actual death.  Things go awry, however, when the wealthy man first loses his nerve, then goes off the specially-engineered metal pathway which keeps the time-travelers off the actual earth.  When the travelers return to the present, they find that things have changed in their own time and the wealthy man finds the explanation on the sole of his boot, where there is a dead butterfly from that far past.

My “what if”, then, is about the Ring and what might happen if, rather than it melt in the fires of Mt Doom,

(rather than use a more dramatic image, I’ve thought it interesting to use this by Pauline Baynes, who illustrated both some of Tolkien’s work as well as, at Tolkien’s recommendation, Lewis’ Narnia books)

it fell (literally) into other hands than Gollum’s.

(this is by one of my heroes among the many excellent Tolkien illustrators, Ted Nasmith, who often picks scenes from all over JRRT’s works, as well as depicting them with such flair)

Its first hand was, of course, Sauron’s, until Isildur defeated him and cut the ring from his fiery finger.

(this is by “Tulikoura”, who describes himself on his website as someone who loves traditional illustration, and here’s a LINK to that site so that you can see his other work: https://www.deviantart.com/tulikoura )

And here’s our first—and very easy—What If:  what if, instead of keeping the Ring, saying that it was “weregild [blood price] for my father, and my brother” (The Fellowship of the Ring, Book Two, Chapter 2, “The Council of Elrond”), Isildur had tossed the Ring into the fire, as his surviving companions urged him?  As happened when the Ring was finally destroyed, I presume that Isildur and the others would have felt that:

“…the earth rocked beneath their feet.  Then rising swiftly up, far above the Towers of the Black Gate, high above the mountains, a vast soaring darkness sprang into the sky, flickering with fire…And as the Captains gazed south to the Land of Mordor, it seemed to them that, black against the pall of cloud, there rose a huge shape of shadow, impenetrable, lightning-crowned, filling all the sky.  Enormous it reared above the world, and stretched out towards them a vast threatening hand, terrible but impotent:  for even as it leaned over them, a great wind took it, and it was all blown away, and passed; and then a hush fell.” (The Return of the King, Book Six, Chapter 4, “The Field of Cormallen”)

(another spectacular Nasmith)

Should this have happened, The Hobbit might still have occurred—after all, although Bilbo uses the Ring to avoid goblins and forest elves and even Smaug, we might imagine him proving his developing burglarious skills by normal means.  After all, the author says of Hobbits: 

“They possessed from the first the art of disappearing swiftly and silently, when large folk whom they do not wish to meet come blundering by; and this art they have developed until to Men it may seem magical.  But Hobbits have never, in fact, studied magic of any kind, and their elusiveness is due solely to professional skills that heredity and practice, and a close friendship with the earth, have rendered inimitable by bigger and clumsier races.” (The Lord of the Rings, Prologue I:  “Concerning Hobbits”)

As for The Lord of the Rings, well, no Ring, no lord, even though Sauron was well on his way to a come-back in the later Third Age, even without the Ring.

(the Hildebrandts at their wildest)

After the Ring had betrayed Isildur to the orcs, however,

it was acquired in time by Gollum, but, for all its potential power on the hand of its maker (after all the Barad-dur itself was founded upon that power—The Fellowship of the Ring, Book Two, Chapter 2, “The Council of Elrond”), Gollum uses it for nothing more than eavesdropping and relatively petty nastiness, revealing, as Gandalf says, something about the true nature of what he had found:  “The ring had given him power according to his stature.” (The Fellowship of the Ring, Book One, Chapter 2, “The Shadow of the Past”)  Thus, had Gollum never lost it, he would never have been anything more than he already was—a sneaking nobody deep under the Misty Mountains (although he might have slipped up on Bilbo in the dark and The Hobbit would have ended rather abruptly).

Bilbo did find the Ring, however, but, like Gollum, although in a less sinister way, it’s simply part of a disappearing act, even the last time he uses it, at his joint birthday party with Frodo.  It originally saved him from Gollum in that role, but that may have been Bilbo’s ultimate salvation, as well, as Gandalf replies to Frodo’s cry, “What a pity that Bilbo did not stab that vile creature, when he had a chance!”:

“Pity?  It was Pity that stayed his hand.  Pity, and Mercy:  not to strike without need.  And he has been well rewarded, Frodo.  Be sure that he took so little hurt from the evil, and escaped in the end, because he began his ownership of the Ring so.  With Pity.” (The Fellowship of the Ring, Book One, Chapter 2, “The Shadow of the Past”)

But what would have happened, had Bilbo kept the Ring?  Would that earlier act of mercy have continued to save him?  Two possibilities, perhaps stages of the same fate, might occur, Gollum being our example.  In the first stage, as Gandalf tells Frodo:

“But still the thing was eating up his mind, of course, and the torment had become almost unbearable…He hated the dark, and he hated light more:  he hated everything, and the Ring most of all.”

That this was already happening to Bilbo is suggested by his remark to Gandalf:

“…And yet it would be a relief in a way not to be bothered with it any more.  It has been so growing on my mind lately.  Sometimes I have felt it was like an eye looking at me.  And I am always wanting to put it on and disappear, don’t you know; or wondering if it is safe and pulling it out to make sure.  I tried locking it up, but I found I couldn’t rest without it in my pocket.  I don’t know why…” (The Fellowship of the Ring, Book One, Chapter 1, “A Long-Expected Party”)

The second and final stage for Bilbo might be:

“A Ring of Power looks after itself, Frodo.  It may slip off treacherously, but its keeper never abandons it.  At most he plays with the idea of handing it on to someone else’s care—and that only at an early stage, when it first begins to grip.”

That Ring’s eventual escape from Bilbo might appear simply as a loss—Gollum had no idea that it had slipped from his finger in The Hobbit—but it might be much worse, as happened to Isildur:  “The Ring was trying to get back to its master.  It had slipped from Isildur’s hand and betrayed him; then when a chance came it caught poor Deagol, and he was murdered…”

as Gandalf explains to Frodo.

But with our next character, Frodo, we move from the past of the Ring to the present of The Lord of the Rings, and we’ll consider more What Ifs in Ringing False (2) in the next posting.

Meanwhile, thanks, as ever, for reading,

Stay well,

Refrain from picking up small shiny objects in tunnels,

And know that, as always, there’s

MTCIDC

O

(“Here is bread, which strengthens a man’s heart, and therefore called the staff of life…”

Matthew Henry, Exposition of the Old and New Testaments, 1708-1710, commentary on Psalm CIV, Verse 15)

Merry and Pippin are in trouble.  Separated from their companions in their search for the missing Frodo, they tangle with a band of Orcs, witness the fall of Boromir,

and are carried off, eastwards, towards Saruman’s lair, at Isengard.

As they are driven on by the orcs, there are occasional pauses for breath and, at one point, Pippin is handed a meal:

“An Orc stooped over him, and flung him some bread and a strip of raw dried flesh.  He ate the stale grey bread hungrily, but not the meat.  He was famished but not yet so famished as to eat flesh flung to him by an Orc, the flesh of he dared not guess what creature.”  (The Fellowship of the Ring, Book Two, Chapter 3, “The Uruk-hai”)

The grey bread, in fact, may not necessarily have been grey from age—rye flour when baked into loaves can have a natural grey look—

As for the dried meat, I always think of something like South African biltong,

but Pippin is right to be suspicious, remembering the previous words of Ugluk the captain of the Uruk-hai:

“We are the servants of Saruman the Wise, the White Hand:  the Hand that gives us man’s-flesh to eat.”

As much as they often seem more like hordes of goblins (Tolkien blends goblins and Orcs together after The Hobbit)

than drilled troops, the Orcs, however, at least Saruman’s Uruk-hai, are actually war-bands of soldiers with some discipline(as Ugluk says, when some of Sauron’s Orcs complain about his plans:  “By the White Hand!  What’s the use of sending out mountain-maggots on a trip, only half trained.”)  We can imagine then that what is tossed to Pippin is actually a typical Orc military ration, containing the sorts of things which possess some nourishment, are portable, and which can keep for a long time.

Since the days of the Romans, a major issue for standing armies has been how to feed soldiers on campaign.  The Romans issued their soldiers with some basics, including grains of various sorts, which the soldiers would grind into flour in portable hand-mills

and bake into various basic forms of bread, sometimes being something like modern pita

or even so-called “campfire bread”—dough wrapped around a stick.

(for a good introduction to Roman military eating, see:  https://www.roman-reenactor.com/roman%20military%20bread%20making.html )

Such large, organized, and permanent armies wouldn’t appear again in Europe until the 17^th century, when monarchs like Louis XIV (1638-1715),

eager to extend their reach—and their territory—would begin to build bigger and bigger forces.

Then the same problem which challenged the Romans arose once more–how to feed armies on the march–and part of the solution was to establish depots along the major military routes, with bakeries attached, so that soldiers could be issued fresh bread every few days as they passed such depots on their way into the field.

Another possibility was to develop portable ovens, which could march along with the troops and, when they stopped, the ovens could be stoked and bread could appear for evening meals.

A third possibility would be to develop some sort of long-lasting bread, something which could be stored for long periods without losing at least some of its nutritive value.  As sailors began to make longer and longer voyages from the days of the Age of Discovery on, this was a problem for mariners as well as for soldiers and the solution was what was called “ship’s biscuit”, a hardened version of a mixture of salt, water, and flour.

With such basic ingredients, this would seem to have the potential to last forever, but there was one problem:  not only did sailors eat these cracker-like things, but so did weevils—

(Here is a little scene from Peter Weir’s wonderful film, Master and Commander, where you can see both biscuit and bugs:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y-aPp7Kiiyg )

These horrible little passengers actually came from the flour out of which the biscuits were made

and can be evident in several stages, from larvae to six-legged insects.  For something on the disposal of them, see this little documentary presented by the ship’s cook of the Cutty Sark, a famous tea clipper:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Onem-n-y64

Ship’s biscuit supplied sailors on long voyages.  With its alternate name of “hard tack” or “hard crackers” or, as governments called it, “army bread”, it was baked, packed,

and shipped to feed soldiers in the US Civil War.  Just like its naval cousin, it would seem to last forever, but, just like that cousin, it was prone to bugs and, just as bad, it soon became very hard on the teeth

—and this in a world where dentistry was just beginning to become a medical science (although details like scrubbing hands and instruments after each operation would only appear later—and slowly—in the 19^th century).

Pippin—and Merry—were handed an Orc ration issued to its soldiers by the Sauronic or Sarumanic government, but there was an alternative in Middle-earth and both of the Hobbits had tasted it:  lembas.

Because it clearly is similar to something like hard tack, Gimli mistakes it for cram, which he describes as “such as the Dale-men make for journeys in the wild.”  He is corrected by the Elves, who tell him that it has a like purpose, “But we call it lembas or waybread, and it is more strengthening than any food made by Men, and it is more pleasant than cram, by all accounts.”  (The Fellowship of the Ring, Book Two, Chapter 8, “Farewell to Lorien”)

More than once, we see this waybread sustaining characters, even in the worst of circumstances, as on the final, nearly-fatal, slog to Mt Doom, where the narrator says of Sam:

“As for himself, though weary and under a shadow of fear, he still had some strength left.  The lembas had a virtue without which they would long ago have lain down to die.  It did not satisfy desire, and at times Sam’s mind was filled with the memories of food, and the longing for simple bread and meats.  And yet this waybread of the Elves had a potency that increased as travelers relied on it alone and did not mingle it with other foods.  It fed the will, and it gave strength to endure, and to master sinew and limb beyond the measure of mortal kind.”  (The Return of the King, Book Six, Chapter 3, “Mount Doom”)

Tolkien so believed in this inherent spiritual quality that, seeing it turned into a “food concentrate” in an early proposed film script (which he clearly hated—I think that some of the strongest language in Letters appears here), he wrote:

“We are not exploring the Moon or any other more improbable region.  No analysis in any laboratory would discover chemical properties of lembas that made it superior to other cakes of wheat-meal…In the book lembas has two functions. It is a ‘machine’ or device for making credible the long marches with little provision, in a world in which as I have said ‘miles are miles.’  But that is relatively unimportant.  It also has a much larger significance, of what one might hesitatingly call a ‘religious’ kind.”  (from a letter of June, 1958, to Forrest J. Ackerman, Letters, 274-275)

Although our breads—and they come in many different forms, from many different grains—

aren’t supplied by the Elves of Lorien, perhaps, in their ability to be the staff of our lives, we can see them as having a little of the spiritual quality of lembas?

As ever, thanks for reading,

Chew slowly and thoughtfully,

And know that, as always, there’s

MTCIDC

O

ps

For more on ship’s biscuit, see:  https://historiesoftheunexpected.com/magazine/the-unexpected-history-of-ships-biscuits/   This is from a really interesting website, Histories of the Unexpected, in which two very bright and witty men investigate, well, just about anything.  Warning:  this site could be addicting—once you listen to one podcast, can you stop?  https://historiesoftheunexpected.com/

Welcome, as ever, dear readers.

A Nazgul

(By Anato Finnstark—I very much like the misty effect of the rider)

is prowling the Shire, asking about “Baggins”.

 He has made the mistake not only of trying to get information out of Farmer Maggot, but of trying to bribe him, when told that he’s in the wrong part of the Shire:

“ ‘Baggins has left,’ he answered in a whisper.  ‘He is coming.  He is not far away.  I wish to find him.  If he passes will you tell me?  I will come back with gold.’ “ (The Fellowship of the Ring, Book One, Chapter 4, “A Short Cut to Mushrooms”)

Although Maggot rejects that offer of gold, I found it interesting.  Where will he go to obtain such gold?  And what gold will it be?

Unfortunately, there is no answer in the text to either question.  If he’s not simply lying (who would trust a Nazgul?), he is on horseback, not on one of those dragon/pterodactyl mounts the Nazgul are fond of.

A trip back to Mordor for cash would take too long, then, when he’s in hot pursuit of Frodo.  This would suggest, if he is telling the truth, that he has a local source.  It will later become clear that Saruman has agents in the Shire, so perhaps Sauron does, too?

As to the second question, the Nazgul says, “gold”, so I presume he means not ingots,

but coins of some sort.

But the question then arises, what kind of coins might these be?

Coins are mentioned a few times in The Lord of the Rings, including the price of Bill, the pony—“twelve silver pennies” (The Fellowship of the Ring, Book One, Chapter 11, “A Knife in the Dark”)—but I’m not aware that these coins are ever described in any detail—and whose coins are they and where do they come from? 

Because all such information is lacking, I imagine that the Nazgul, if telling the truth, has, somewhere, a sack of coins from Mordor itself—gold coins, at that.  Western Mordor, at least the part we see in Sam and Frodo’s travels, seems utterly barren,

but Sauron has armies to feed and the myriad horses and mules and oxen needed to carry such armies beyond his gates, and that food and those beasts have to come from somewhere.  Even if we presume that much can be produced from green lands beyond the Sea of Nurnen, Sauron has allies farther south in Harad, suggesting that he has commerce of some sort with them and, as we know from those twelve silver pennies, Middle-earth appears not to be based upon a barter-system.

So what would such coins look like?

The earliest Western coins came from Lydia in western Asian Minor in the 7^th century BC and carried on the obverse (the front) the images of bulls and lions.

Alexander the Great’s father, Philip II, seems to have been the first to put his own profile on a coin,

but that appears to have set a precedent for later rulers, with Julius Caesar being perhaps the first Roman to stamp his profile on his currency.

(This is rather an ironic coin, showing Caesar on the obverse and describing him as “dictatore perpetuo”—“being dictator for life”, a position he held for only a couple of months before he was murdered.)

You’ll notice that Caesar, like Philip before him, doesn’t wear an elaborate crown of some sort, like Darius on this early Persian coin,

but, instead, has only a simple wreath (not so modest, in fact, since, because it was used in sporting events, it could suggest that Philip—and Caesar after him—was a champion at being a ruler).  When the Carolingians began their own currency, in the later years of the 8^th century AD in what we might think of as “France+”, they adopted a Roman model and so here’s their greatest ruler, Charlemagne (748-814 AD), looking more like a Roman emperor than a Germanic king, which is exactly what he intended.

This is, by the way, a silver denarius—a silver penny, just like those paid to Bill Ferny–and it’s just packed with information.  First, of course, is the portrait itself, with the ruler in profile (a tradition still in force on coins today), wreath of office firmly on his head.  And, because virtually no one would ever see Charlemagne himself, there’s his name, in a kind of Germanic Latin spelling, “Karolus”.  (Karl/Carl was his actual name.  What we use is a kind of name + title—Charl-le-magne—Charles le Magne, “Charles the Great”, which dates from a later time.)  Beyond his name are two important abbreviations:  IMP “emperor” and AUG “augustus”.   When Pope Leo III had crowned Charlemagne in Rome on Christmas Day, 800 AD,

(This is from the 14^th-century Grandes Chroniques de France, so the artist had no idea of the wreath, when it came to an accurate depiction of imperial headgear.)

he named him Imperator Romanorum, “Emperor of the Romans”, which, in fact, implied that Charlemagne was the successor to the last Byzantine emperor, Constantine VI, whom the Western world thought of as the “Roman emperor”, being the ruler of the surviving half of the old Roman empire.  Charlemagne never controlled that eastern empire, but it was a grand claim and Charlemagne was a grand (and very successful) ruler.  To Imperator, Charlemagne added Augustus, the most famous of Roman emperors (63 BC-14 AD),

and (according to Augustus himself), the restorer of Rome to former glories, implying that he, Charlemagne, was the new Augustus.  We might think that Charlemagne is also making a reference to the period after Diocletian (c.244-311 AD)

had divided the original Roman empire into two halves, each ruled by a co-emperor called an “Augustus”, suggesting that he is the actual monarch of the western half of the empire, even while claiming to be the emperor of the eastern half.  (The “M” under Charlemagne’s profile, by the way, stands for one of the government’s mints, that at Mainz.)

With such bold claims on the obverse, we see a different picture on the reverse (the back).  Here is depicted, it is now thought, the aediculum, the “little building” which the emperor Constantine had built over what he believed to be the tomb of Jesus in Jerusalem (c.326 AD) and, around it are placed the words religio xristiana, “Christian religion”.  Many of the peoples at the edges of Charlemagne’s empire were still worshippers of other, older gods and one of the goals of his imperial expansion was to expand Christianity, as well.  Depending upon your position, then, this might be a reassurance that Charlemagne was a firm supporter of your faith, or, should you be an older believer, that things were going to change under his rule.

With all of that behind us, what can we see as one of the Nazgul’s promised gold coins?

Let’s begin with a blank.

As we’ve seen, it’s a long tradition to place one’s kingly profile on the obverse, but what is Sauron’s profile?  As originally one of the Maiar (under the name Mairon), Sauron had no permanent form, being a spirit who could put on forms as needed, which Sauron did, over time.  After his defeat and loss of the Ring at the end of the Second Age, however, he doesn’t seem to have re-embodied himself as, for example, Gandalf and Saruman did, instead choosing a kind of symbolic form, which suggested eternal (menacing) vigilance, like Big Brother in Orwell’s 1984—

This image then turns up everywhere his subjects go, from shields

to graffiti on public monuments.

So, imagine that the obverse has, at its center, the Lidless Eye.

Coins like Charlemagne’s and Caesar’s and even Philip’s include the ruler’s name:   Karolus, Caesar, though Philip’s name has a genitive—possessive—ending, “Of Philip”.  We might assume that that simply means that the coin is his, but we might also see a more ambiguous message:   everything behind this coin—the metal mine, the mint, the power to control such things–all belongs to him—and maybe that’s true even of the holder of the coin, as well.

But Caesar is called “dictator for life” and Charlemagne “emperor” and “augustus”—what should Sauron’s title be? 

When the heralds of Gondor summon him at the Morannon, he is referred to as “the Lord of the Black Land” (The Return of the King, Book Six, Chapter 10, “The Black Gate Opens”), which seems a little meek.  When the Mouth of Sauron arrives for a parley, he refers to him as “Sauron the Great”, which is I’m sure how Sauron refers to himself, so this would give us two possibilities.  Around the Eye it might read:  SAURON LORD OF THE BLACK LAND or SAURON THE GREAT.

Philip gives his name in his native Greek and Caesar naturally uses his native tongue, Latin, for his inscription.  Although Charlemagne spells his name, as I’ve noted, somewhat Germanically, using a K for a Latin C (not surprising—his Frankish ancestors were Germanic tribesmen who invaded northern France—hence the name “France”), his inscription is an imitation of a Roman imperial coin, with his titles in Latin inscriptional shorthand.  In what language would the inscription on Sauron’s coin be in?  If he wanted it to be read in contemporary Middle-earth, we might think he would use the common tongue, written out in Tengwar.

If he wanted to suggest something more powerful—and mysterious?—he might use Tengwar, but the words might be in the Black Speech, rather like the inscription on the Ring.

With the eye and one of those two labels on the obverse, what would be on the reverse?

The center of Sauron’s power—his capital—is the Barad-dur, the Black Tower, so I could easily see it represented there, with no inscription, simply a single figure of menace (in John Howell’s image).

As always, thanks for reading and

So, replaying the scene where the Nazgul tries to tempt Farmer Maggot, perhaps we can see the Nazgul, rather than promising a future reward, tossing one such coin to land at the Farmer’s feet, hissing, “And more to come, if you will tell me.”

Stay well,

Remember that all that glisters is not gold,

And know that, as ever, there’s

MTCIDC

O

 ps

If you would like to read more about Middle-earth and currency, please see the postings for 19 April (“Spare Change?”) and 26 April (“Hoarders”), 2017.