Des. The poore Soule sat singing, by a Sicamour tree.

Sing all a greene Willough:

Her hand on her bosome her head on her knee,

Sing Willough, Willough, Wtllough.

(Shakespeare, Othello, Act 4, Scene 3, from the First Folio, 1623—here’s a LINK to the Folio:  https://internetshakespeare.uvic.ca/doc/Oth_F1/complete/index.html  You can also see, from that last line, that printers weren’t always so accurate as they might be! )

 As always, dear readers, welcome.

Old Man Willow,

for all that he obeys Tom Bombadil

(a lovely piece by Roger Garland)

to free Merry and Pippin:

“You let them out again, Old Man Willow!…What be you a-thinking of?  You should not be waking.  Eat earth!  Dig deep!  Drink water!  Go to sleep!  Bombadil is talking!”  (The Fellowship of the Ring, Book One, Chapter 6, “The Old Forest”)

seems, like the Watcher in the Water, in the pool to the east of the Mines of Moria,

to remain a kind of brooding menace.   As the author describes him:

“But none were more dangerous than the Great Willow:  his heart was rotten, but his strength was green; and he was cunning, and a master of winds, and his song and thought ran through the woods on both sides of the river.  His grey thirsty spirit drew power out of the earth and spread in fine root-threads in the ground, and invisible twig-fingers in the air, till it had under its dominion nearly all of the trees of the Forest from the Hedge to the Downs.”  (The Fellowship of the Ring, Book One, Chapter 7, “In the House of Tom Bombadil”)

(JRRT’s drawing, which seems remarkably peaceful for such a threatening creature.  Perhaps  he is striving to suggest that the surface was that of a willow, but within was that rotten heart?  Or did his love of trees prevent him from depicting the real OMW?)

As well, like Tom and like Treebeard and the Ents (and Entwives), he is, for me, one of the ancient mysteries of Middle-earth.   What is he really?  Where does he come from?  Why is he there?

Two earlier postings (“Never a Willow”, 8/7/19 and “Never That Willow”, 8/14/19) had much to say about Old Man Willow in particular and about willows in general, including their use, for centuries, as a symbol of mourning—

(An especially beautifully-carved example)

Old Man Willow’s behavior, however, suggests  that, rather than being a symbol for mourning, he can become a source of mourning and, as such, he falls into a category of deadly plants like the once ill-famed upas tree.

This is a widespread variety of tree, Antiaris toxicaria, which can be found from Africa all the way across to the western Pacific.

(This illustration is from a highly-informative and surprisingly jolly website, considering its subject matter, entitled “Nature’s Poisons”:   https://naturespoisons.com/ )

Travelers’ tales reported that the plant gave off a kind of noxious fume which poisoned the landscape for 10 miles around, leaving the vicinity empty save for the bones of unwary animals and people.  Although this was proven to be more than an exaggeration in the early 19^th century, a deadly poison can be extracted from the tree and was used by various indigenous peoples to tip their darts and arrows.

(For more on this, see the article at “Nature’s Poisons”:   https://naturespoisons.com/2019/07/17/antiarin-upas-tree-antiaris-toxicaria/ )

An even more spectacular tree—if possible—was the so-called “Man-eating tree of Madagascar”.

This was actually a hoax, first perpetrated, it seems, in an article by someone called Edmund Spencer for The New York World, first published on April 26^th, 1874.  As was the custom in the 18^th and 19^th centuries, the story was reprinted in other newspapers, including this description, which I have from The South Australian Register from later the same year.  Here, the (now known to be imaginary) Mkodo tribe made the sacrifice of a woman to the tree–

“The slender delicate palpi, with the fury of starved serpents, quivered a moment over her head, then as if instinct with demoniac intelligence fastened upon her in sudden coils round and round her neck and arms; then while her awful screams and yet more awful laughter rose wildly to be instantly strangled down again into a gurgling moan, the tendrils one after another, like great green serpents, with brutal energy and infernal rapidity, rose, retracted themselves, and wrapped her about in fold after fold, ever tightening with cruel swiftness and savage tenacity of anacondas fastening upon their prey.”

(quotation from The South Australian Register  as found on the Nova  Online Adventure website in part 2 of an article on “A Forest Full of Frights”:   https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/madagascar/surviving/frights2.html   Warning:  if things which threaten your eyes disturb you, DO NOT READ THE SECTION ENTITLED “EYE SORE”!)

This sounds rather like an acrobatic variety of Venus flytrap, a predator plant I was surprised to learn was not a jungle plant, but grows in subtropical areas of the US, in North and South Carolina.

An insect victim walks across its sensitive pad centers and it instantly closes around it, then beginning the digestive process.

This makes me wonder what would have happened to Merry and Pippin, had there been no Tom Bombadil…

As ever, thanks for reading.

Stay well,

Never drowse near a carnivorous willow,

And remember that, as always, there’s

MTCIDC

O

PS

For an especially disturbing short story about such things, read Algernon Blackwood’s “The Willows”  (from his 1907collection, The Listener and Other Stories here:  http://algernonblackwood.org/Z-files/Willows.pdf  )

PPS

And a friend reminds me that there’s another very destructive, if not carnivorous, willow I should mention.

PPPS

For more on poisonous plants, see:  https://www.learnaboutnature.com/plants/carnivorous/

Welcome, dear readers, as ever.

Where do characters come from?  Sometimes, it seems, out of the air.  As Tolkien

wrote of Aragorn:

“So the essential Quest started at once.  But I met a lot of things along the way that astonished me. .. Strider sitting in the corner of the inn was a shock, and I had no more idea of who he was than had Frodo.” (a wonderfully interesting letter to W.H. Auden, 7 June, 1955, Letters, 216)

But even with such a surprise—and the letter goes on to detail more–Tolkien was always working with a deeper purpose, as we know from this familiar passage:

“The invention of language is the foundation.  The ‘stories’ were made rather to provide a world for the languages than the reverse.  To me a name comes first and the story follows it.” (“To the Houghton Mifflin Co.” nd, but sometime in mid-1955, Letters, 219)

Language needed speakers perhaps as much as stories needed characters.

Tolkien’s friend,  C.S. Lewis,

had a different approach:

“One thing I am sure of.  All my seven Narnia books, and my three science-fiction books, began with seeing pictures in my head.   At first they were not a story, just pictures.  The Lion all began with a picture of a Faun carrying an umbrella and parcels in a snowy wood.  This picture had been in my mind since I was about sixteen.”  (“It All Began with a Picture” in Of Other Worlds, 67)

But recently I’ve been thinking about a somewhat earlier author, L. Frank Baum (1856-1919)

who once wrote:

“A lot of thought is required on one of these fairy tales.  The odd characters are a sort of inspiration, liable to strike at any time, but the plot and plan of adventures takes me considerable time to develop.  When I get at a thing of that sort I live with it day by day, jotting down on odd slips of paper the various ideas that occur and in this way getting my material together.  The new Oz book is in this stage…But…it’s a long way from being ready for the printer yet.  I must rewrite it, stringing the incidents into consecutive order, elaborating the characters, etc.” (letter to Sumner C. Britton, 23 January, 1916, quoted in M.P. Hearn, The Annotated Wizard of Oz, xxxvi-xxxvii)

The first of these Oz books was, of course, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, published in 1900.

If you grew up with the 1939 musical movie,

before ever reading the original book, as I did, you were surprised to see just how different the two were, everything from the “ruby slippers”,

which were silver in the book,

to the whirlwind appearance and disappearance of the Wicked Witch of the West fairly early in the film.

In the book, she appears late—and it’s not only that there’s no appearance/disappearance, but also her actual appearance is so radically different.

One thing which hadn’t been fundamentally changed, however, were those four principal characters, Dorothy, the Scarecrow, the Tin Woodsman, and the Cowardly Lion,

even if their appearance had.

The bibliography on Baum and his books is huge, not to mention websites devoted to him and his works—the Oz Club link will show you one such, with tons of information about every facet of author and books:  https://www.ozclub.org/ .  There are also, as you can imagine, interpretations, from the literary to the Freudian and back, but I, for one, tend not to read such things, preferring to form my own opinion of what the author might intend.

In the case of Dorothy’s three main friends, they strike me as immediately falling into the standard folktale category of “animal/magic helpers”.  The Lion

has always seemed the easiest to interpret—since antiquity, lions have always been a symbol of courage—why would Richard I of England (1157-1199) be “Richard the Lionheart” otherwise?

(This is the seal of Richard and it’s characteristic of the man, not much of a king perhaps, considering how little time he spent as monarch in England—maybe only 6 months, it is thought–but certainly a warrior.)

 I think that we can imagine that Baum held the traditional view, but, by reversing it, we have a fresh character, who, at first, may seem a less than magical helper, since his reputation is based upon nothing more than his roar:

“I learned that if I roared very loudly every living thing was frightened and got out of my way.” (The Annotated Wizard of Oz, Chapter VI, 109)

Always the optimist, however, Dorothy says:

“You will be very welcome…for you will help to keep away the other wild beasts.  It seems to me they must be more cowardly than you to scare them so easily.”  (The Annotated Wizard of Oz, Chapter VI, 112)

We know that Tolkien very much resisted any symbolic or allegoric readings being attached to his work.  As he once wrote:

“There is no ‘symbolism’ or conscious allegory in my story.  Allegory of the sort ‘five wizards=five senses’ is wholly foreign to my way of thinking.  There were five wizards and that is just a unique part of history.  To ask if the Orcs ‘are’ Communists is to me as sensible as asking if Communists are Orcs.” (letter to Herbert Schiro, 17 November, 1957, Letters, 262)

In the same letter, however, he goes on to say:

“That there is no allegory does not, of course, say there is no applicability.  There always is.”

And I would use this as the basis of a possible interpretation of the other two “magical helpers”, the Scarecrow and the Tin Woodman.

If the Lion, usually understood to signify “Courage”, could be inverted initially to stand for “Cowardice”, I wonder if we might understand that, at some level, these two might signify two sides of the US at the turn of the century as Baum might have seen them.

The Industrial Revolution had come to the country as early as the young republic, first appearing in the Slater Mill, which harnessed water power to spin cotton thread, in 1793.

Throughout the 19^th century, the northern US in particular was gradually moving towards a machine world, with railroads,

the telegraph,

and bigger and bigger factories, driven by steam, rather than waterpower,

turning out identical items on assembly lines.

(This last is from Charlie Chaplin’s 1936 film Modern Times and here’s the LINK to the whole scene which I think pretty much sums up the consequences of humans turned into parts of a machine:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=giJ0YMaAc8s )

And so it might seem natural that one of the helpers  is a kind of mechanical man, suggesting that industrial world which the US was  fast becoming in 1900.

And perhaps it’s significant that he’s missing a heart?

Baum, although living most of his life in towns and cities, saw himself as coming from the other America, the agrarian world in which the country had begun and which, in 1900, much of the country still was.

Scarecrows were in every cornfield,

so they would have been a significant part of the landscape—if a creepy part, perhaps, to an imaginative boy:

“When I was a boy, I was tremendously interested in scarecrows.  They always seemed to my childish imagination as just about to wave their arms, straighten up and stalk across the field on their long legs.  I lived on a farm, you know.  It was natural then, that my first character in this animated life series was the Scarecrow, on whom I have taken revenge for all the mystic feeling he once inspired.”  (The Annotated Wizard of Oz, 64, quoting an interview in the North American, 3 October, 1904)

But, as the Tin Woodman is missing a heart, should we think about the fact that the Scarecrow is lacking brains?

I’m always wary to take such things too far after all, that’s just the sort of thing which I avoid reading —but, when we group the three together, we find one who says that he has no sense, one who has no emotions, and one who has no courage, and yet they all aspire to gain such, as if there is always the possibility for self-improvement.

We know that Tolkien, although he clearly enjoyed the story-making, also had the goal of giving his languages context and Lewis is pretty plain in saying that the Narnia  books have a religious goal in the midst of the exciting narrative (see “Sometimes Fairy Stories May Say Best What’s To Be Said” in Of Other Worlds).  Baum had seemingly no greater goal than entertainment, but, just like The Lord of the Rings, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz is a Quest.

Baum himself was a self-made man, having been everything from a dry goods store proprietor to a traveling salesman to a newspaper reporter to a dramatist to an expert on shop display windows before eventually becoming a very successful children’s book author.  I don’t believe that he would have wanted to take this image too far, but could I at least suggest that we might see the possibility that, to Baum, American agriculture and industrialism each lack something, but perhaps, with the self-awareness that each of his characters possesses, combined with courage, they might—as in the book and the film—gain what they feel they are missing and become whole?

Thanks, as ever, for reading.

Stay well,

Avoid aircraft vulnerable to gusts of wind

And know that, as always, there’s

MTCIDC

O

PS

In case you still don’t have your own copy of the original Oz book of 1900 with Denslow’s illustrations, here’s a LINK :   https://archive.org/details/wonderfulwizardo00baumiala

As always, welcome, dear readers.

With a background in the Greco-Roman world, I’m never surprised that the divine seems always a part of human endeavors in ancient literature and even history.  Gods are regularly assumed to be behind the actions of humans, either to benefit  human worshippers (and sometimes their own semi-divine children) or to act on their own behalf (often to oppose the actions of their divine opponents).   Gods are always being worshipped, prayed to, sacrificed to, or blamed.

It has always puzzled me, then, that the movie Troy (2004),

with the exception of Achilles’ mom, Thetis,

left out the entire pantheon of gods,

who actually make up half the cast of major characters in the original story.

(This is a part of what would have been a pair of writing tablets

recovered from Egypt, c.400-500AD.  It contains lines 468-473 of Book 1 of the Iliad.)

In fact, the Trojan War itself was caused by gods when:

1. Zeus forced Thetis to marry a mortal, Peleus.

(in one version of the story, Thetis is a shape-shifter and Peleus has to catch her)

2. At the wedding of the two, the goddess Eris, who, because, she is the divine form of strife, wasn’t invited, rolls in a golden ball/apple which is labeled “for the most beautiful”.

(there is a wedding procession on the top band of the vase here)

(Eris is dropping the ball/apple from above, rather than bowling it.)

3. Athena, Hera, and Aphrodite all claim it.

4. When Zeus wisely refuses to choose, they go to a (presumably) unbiased mortal, Paris, a shepherd

5. who is offered,  by Aphrodite, Helen,“the most beautiful woman in the world”, but who just happens to be married to Menelaus, the younger brother of the main king of the Greeks, Agamemnon.  Helen, depending upon the version you prefer, is stolen/elopes with Paris, who turns out not to be a shepherd, but a Trojan prince.

(clearly a stolen Helen version here)

6. Menelaus calls on his big brother for help, and suddenly there are those 1000 ships.

(by Jon Hodgson—have a look at his webpage at Deviant Art:  https://www.deviantart.com/jonhodgson/gallery   He seems able to paint/draw/design anything in fantasy—see his website at:  https://jonhodgsondesign.com/about-jon-hodgson/  for more.)

7. The war which follows is on two levels, the humans—Trojans versus Greeks—and the gods, roughly divided between Hera, Athena, and Poseidon on the Greek side and Apollo, Aphrodite (surprise!), and Ares on the Trojan, with Zeus in the middle.

The Iliad is full of the gods’ interference, one of the saddest moments being when Zeus is forced to watch one of his favorite mortal children, Sarpedon, be killed and is warned by Hera not to intervene lest all of the other gods begin favoring their children (which they sometimes do anyway).

(Here Sarpedon’s body is being carried off by the twins, Sleep and Death, while Hermes directs.)

The Iliad is not the only ancient story with such divine/human interaction.  The Indian epic, the Ramayana, has, as its main character the god Vishnu,

who has himself born as a human prince, Rama,

in order to combat Ravana, the 10-headed king

of the Rakshasas, or demons,

as the demons have made themselves invulnerable to the gods, but have foolishly allowed a loophole in their agreement with them, so that humans and–certain animals–have not been included. 

(If you’d like an easy introduction, my favorite is the very sophisticated children’s version by Bulbul Sharma.)

And then there is the actual war among divine figures which we see in the Judeo-Christian Bible, with the Archangel Michael and his angels on one side and Satan (sometimes in the form of a dragon) and his angels on the other.  This is depicted in a series of fragmentary scenes scattered between Old and New Testaments, but John Milton (1608-1674)

produced a wonderfully dramatic and coherent version in Books V and VI  of his long poem, Paradise Lost (1667/1674).

(Here’s a LINK to the 1667 edition:  https://scholarsbank.uoregon.edu/xmlui/bitstream/handle/1794/767/lost.pdf?sequence=1  If you read this blog regularly, you know that I always prefer original texts, especially for Renaissance works, as, using them always makes me feel a little closer to the author and his/her original intent.)

What isn’t surprising, then, is to see an author who had originally intended to become a Classicist and who was a practicing Christian, when creating his own world and its mythology, depict the same sort of struggles as in Homer and the Bible, if not in the Ramayana.  Consider the situation:  on the one side, there is a fallen angel, a Maia, Sauron,

(JRRT’s unfinished drawing)

and, potentially on the other, five more angels, the Maiar Istari, on the other.

(These are Hero Forge miniatures—I wonder what they would look like painted?)

The five have been sent to counterbalance the one, but, whereas the one builds up fortresses and vast armies of men and others,

two of the five disappear before the story begins, one has a connection with the animal world, one leads and counsels but rarely commands,

(an Alan Lee)

and the fifth is corrupted and attempts to imitate the fallen one, with his own fortress

(the Hildebrandts at work)

and his own armies.

(a Ted Nasmith)

The one—and his imitator—are both eventually defeated and, when they are, much of it is through the agency of the counselor, who then appears to return to the Middle-earth equivalent of heaven.

(another beautiful Ted Nasmith)

To someone who is also steeped in the Classics, what could be more satisfying?

Thanks, as always, for reading.

Stay well,

Be as pius as Aeneas,

And believe—that there is always

MTCIDC

O

Welcome, dear readers, as always.  I’ve been teaching the Odyssey again and, as I am hardly the first to say (about the ten millionth, at least, I’d guess, from its initial general circulation, probably in the 4^th to 3^rd centuries BC):  “Every time I read it, I find something new.”

In this case, it was in a passing remark made by Odysseus to his Phaeacian hosts while telling them the long story of “How I Still Haven’t Gotten Home”.  We are in Book 12 and Odysseus and his men are on the ill-fated island of Thrinakia (“Tridentia” in English) where Helios keeps his pet cattle.

and flocks and from which Odysseus has been warned away by Circe. 

Odysseus and his men have dragged their ship ashore to a cave “there where the pretty dancing places of the nymphs and [their] seats were”.  (Odyssey, Book 12, line 318, my translation)

In the early Greco-Roman world, it was believed that there were spirits in everything and “nymph” had a wide meaning, from those who lived in springs, Naiads,

(This is from the story of the Golden Fleece, where Herakles’ companion, Hylas, is abducted by several naiads as he tries to get water from a spring.)

to those who lived in trees,  Dryads and Hamadryads,

(This is a very spooky and convincing work by SamanthaCatherine at Deviant Art.  Here’s her website:  https://www.deviantart.com/samanthacatherine )

to those who live in the sea, Oceanids and Nereids.

In the line quoted, there is simply the word “of nymphs”, but, as there is a cave, and a similar cave on Ithaka, in Book 13, has Naiads, (Odyssey,  Book 13, lines 347-348) I’m going to guess that these are Naiads, too. 

The word for “dancing places” is, transliterated, khoroi, and it can also mean  “round dances”, suggesting that the nymphs were doing what in the South Slavic world is called the kolo

or in modern Greece, a syrtaki,

although both of these may also be danced in a line.  And we can see the suggestion of this round pattern in ancient illustrations, like the so-called “Borghese dancers”, from the 2^nd-3^rd century AD—

(A later plaster copy)

But the idea of supernatural dances to me suggests another tradition, that of “fairy rings”.

Who these fairies were isn’t an answerable question.  Perhaps the descendants in belief from the ancient idea of spirits in everything?   Certainly they dance in circular patterns like the nymphs on Odysseus’ Ithaka,

but, in this later tradition, unthinking people can be lured into such rings and be made to join in the dancing till they not only lose track of time, but lose time itself—a common motif about mortals who enter the Otherworld.  In more modern times, W.B. Yeats (1865-1939) included the idea in his long poem, The Wanderings of Ossian (1889), and C.S. Lewis  (1898-1963) has visitors to Narnia find that there is a great difference between time back home in England and that in Narnia.

As one illustration, here’s a late appearance of the idea—in comic form–in Basil Hood and Arthur Sullivan’s (completed by Edward German after Sullivan’s death) operetta, The Emerald Isle (1901).

The story, set in 1801 in Ireland, is a complicated one with Irish rebels (or patriots, depending) and the British Lord Lieutenant and his redcoats.  Into the middle of it comes Professor Bunn,

who appears to be pulled back and forth between the two sides.  At one point, however, he is on the Irish side and, disguised as an ancient man,

he tries to scare off the redcoats by telling them what happened to him when he was lured into such a ring.

“BUNN.          Many years ago I strode

               Down the Carrig-Cleena road;

               Night coming on, tired out, I lay

               Where the legend says the fairies play!

               But the tales I had heard of fairy tricks

                    Were never believed by me;

               Then I was a youth of twenty-six,

                    But now I’m eighty-three!

ALL.                Now he’s eighty-three!

BUNN.          Round and round the fairy ring,

               There I heard the fairies sing;

               This is the fairy song I heard,

               Do I remember it?  — every word.

                    Da Luan, da mort, da Luan, da mort

                    Angus da Dardine!

               Many, many people may

               Disbelieve what I do say —

               Once I was young and foolish, too,

               And an ignoramus, just like you;

               But whenever you hear of fairy tricks,

                    Don’t laugh at ’em any more.

               Then I was a youth of twenty-six,

                    But now I’m ninety-four!

ALL.                Now he’s ninety four!

BUNN.          Dancing round the fairy ring

               All that time I’ve had to sing;

               Though you may not believe a word,

               This is exactly what occurred,

                    Da Luan, da mort, da Luan, da mort

                    Angus da Dardine!”

(The words to the fairies’ song are almost as mysterious in English as they’re meant to sound in Irish:  “Monday, Tuesday, Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday!”  These words appear to be taken from a well-known Irish folktale, “The Legend of Knockgrafton”, where they are spelled in this fashion, including some spelling mistakes.  In Modern Irish, this would be “De Luain, De Mairt, De Luain, De Mairt, agus De Ceaodaoin”.   Thomas Crofton Croker (1798-1854) first published it in Fairy Legends and Traditions of the South of Ireland, 1825.  This went through many editions, but you can read it yourself in the second edition of 1838 here:   https://archive.org/details/fairylegendstrad00crokiala/page/n7/mode/2up   If you’d like to hear this sung—and I recommend it for its jaunty little tune–go to:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-t6Q9aAmhcA   and run it over to about 6:28.  At the moment, there’s no professional recording, but this was a production by The Prince Consort in 1982 which is on Pearl CD Gems 0189, along with a previous late Sullivan work with Basil Hood, The Rose of Persia. )

Odysseus seems to assume that nymphs and their dances are a natural part of the landscape and I imagine that so did the early audiences for the epic and from the songs and stories from which it came.  Yeats claimed to believe in these Otherworld folk and included the Croker story in his Folk and Fairy Tales of the Irish Peasantry (1888).  (You can read the book here:   https://sacred-texts.com/neu/yeats/fip/index.htm  You can also read it at the Internet Archive, but I wanted to give you this LINK because it puts you into the Sacred Texts site, which is full of good things for people interested in traditional stories.)

Unfortunately, modern science not only doesn’t believe in fairies, but explains fairy rings

as:

 “a naturally occurring ring of fungi that can produce rings or arcs of dead grass, lush green grass that grows quicker than the rest of the lawn, or mushrooms.”  (This is from the Garden Seeker website, under the title, “Fairy Rings in Your Lawn?  How to Remove Them and Prevent Them Returning”.)

Spoilsports.

Thanks for reading, as always.

Stay well,

Avoid seductive circles, particularly under a full moon,

And know that, as ever, there’s

MTCIDC

O

Welcome, dear readers, as ever.

Juliet, standing on her balcony, is talking to herself, unaware that Romeo is standing right below:

“Iul: Ah Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo?

Denie thy Father, and refuse thy name,

Or if thou wilt not be but sworne my loue,

And il’e no longer be a Capulet.

Rom: Shall I heare more, or shall I speake to this?

Iul: Tis but thy name that is mine enemie.

Whats Mountague? It is nor hand nor foote,

Nor arme, nor face, nor any other part.

Whats in a name? That which we call a Rose,

By any other name would smell as sweet: “   (Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet,  827-838—no act or scene numbers and this is modern lineation of the 1597 (Quarto 1) version—in the Folger Edition, this is Act 2, Scene 2, lines 36-47—for the 1597 version, see:   https://internetshakespeare.uvic.ca/doc/Rom_Q1/index.html  ; for the Folger Edition:  https://shakespeare.folger.edu/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Rom.pdf  )

Thinking of a few items from certain other genres of western literature, however, I’m not sure that I agree with Juliet.

We can start early, with heroic poetry and the Odyssey.  When Odysseus, in need of help finally to reach home, drags himself ashore on the island of Scheria, home of the Phaeacians, he first encounters a princess, Nausicaa.

The Phaeacians are, appropriately for islanders, a sea-going people, and the princess’ name may be translated as either “Excelling-in-ships” or, more alarmingly perhaps, “Ship-burner”.   (There is some scholarly argument about this—see this interesting discussion:  https://sententiaeantiquae.com/2020/12/08/was-nausikaa-a-ship-burner-speaking-names-and-etymology-2/  )  Other Phaeacians have similar maritime names, like the herald, Pontonoos—“Sea-minded”—and the founder of the Phaeacian nation himself, Nausithoos—“Swift-ship”. 

Many years later, we’ll see Tolkien echo this with the names of some of his horse-people, the Rohirrim,

(by JlazarusEB—more at his website:  https://www.deviantart.com/jlazaruseb  He’s very cleverly taken a hint from JRRT’s use of Old English as the basis of Rohirric to employ the 7^th-century AD Sutton Hoo helmet as a model. ) with

with such names as Eomer—“Famous-for-[his]-horses”—

(by that very interesting Russian illustrator, Denis Gordeev)

and his sister, Eowyn—“Horse-friend”.

(another work by Gordeev)

From the heroic, we can easily move to morality, or perhaps I should say mortality, with the late 15^th century play, “The Summoning of Everyman”,

(from the earliest printing)

where the very name of the main character points a finger towards the entire audience.  The plot of this drama has Everyman going on a kind of life journey towards death and judgment in which he tries to recruit others to join him.  These others are very easy to recognize even before they speak by names like “Good Deeds”, “Wisdom”, and “Strength”. (If you’re not familiar with this work, here’s the LINK to an early 20^th-century translation into modern English:  https://archive.org/details/summoningofevery00leip/page/n5/mode/2up )

We might almost call this “labeling” rather than “naming” and such labeling is a common feature of the English morality/mortality tradition, from the 14^th-century on, perhaps the most famous later version being John Bunyan’s (1628-1688)

The Pilgrim’s Progress (1678).

Like Everyman, this is a journey,

in which the main character, on his way to what he hopes is salvation, encounters all sorts of figures with give-away names, like “Mr. Worldly Wiseman”

and “Faithful”.

(who is burned at the stake, thus providing later illustrators with a dramatic scene)

We can see Charles Dickens (1812-1870)

continue this practice in the 19^th century in another genre, novels.  Among descriptive names in his various books, we find  “Wackford Squeers”, a brutal headmaster,

“Mr. Gradgrind”, an educational reformer

and “Mr. M’Choakumchild” , another teacher (giving you a good idea of what Dickens thought of the mid-Victorian educational system),

(I don’t have an actual illustration, but this image of an 1850 schoolroom is certainly suggestive.)

not to mention villains with names like “Sir Mulberry Hawk”

(a social predator—can you tell which he is?)

 and “Uriah Heep”,

giving the author, in this case, the chance to have another character call him a “heap of infamy” (while whacking him with a ruler).

From the grimly comic novel, we can move to the openly comic film, and, hearing the name “J. Cheever Loophole”

will tell you all you need to know about that lawyer’s methods and abilities.

What’s in a name?  Perhaps plenty—and all of those roses don’t smell equally sweet as in the case of “Rufus T. Firefly”

and “Otis P. Driftwood”.

Thanks for reading,

Stay well,

Remember:  “No names, no pack drill”, (an old British army expression)

And know that, as ever, there’s

MTCIDC

O