This summer, I’ve been re-watching A Game of Thrones—to the end in Season 8, which I simply couldn’t bear to do last time, knowing, from spoilers of various sorts, that a number of my favorite characters wouldn’t survive through the last episode.  As I’ve watched, I’ve been intrigued by this—

For Daenerys and her forces, this is the equivalent of a modern attack aircraft, like these Fairchild Republic Thunderbolt IIs—

using fire in place of bombs and strafing.

I’ve wondered about that fire, however:  where did it come from?

If we look at dragons when we first see them in Western literature in the Greco-Roman world, their danger seems to come not from flaming gasses, but from size and teeth and maybe just plain dragonicity.

[A footnote:  the word dracon, in Greek, and draco, in Latin, are very vague terms, referring to scaly things from perhaps water snakes or whatever Herakles’ hydra is supposed to be

to beasts we might think of as dragons.  For the purposes of thinking out loud about the subject, I’m going to assume that the creatures in these stories are all forms of what we would call dragons.]

A  main source for early stories is the Library of the rather mysterious “Apollodorus”—so mysterious, in fact, that he’s now often called “Pseudo-Apollodorus”, although that seems a little unfair—who may have lived in the 1^st or 2^nd century AD.  This is a huge collection of myth which records that the first human who appears to have encountered dragons in a hostile situation (at least for the human) was Minos (the Minotaur man).

 Minos has his adventure in 3.3.1, where, in a complicated story of death and rebirth, Minos kills one dragon with a stone, only to have another dragon appear, who heals the first, whereupon they disappear from the story.  The dragons, in fact, seem to have no interest in Minos and all that’s said of them suggests nothing of the fearsome, but rather of the magical.

Cadmus, the founder of Thebes, is the second to be involved with dragons, having dealt with one who had killed most of his men who had gone to a spring for water, in the Library, Book 3.4.1.

Cadmus kills the dragon, the text doesn’t say how, but there’s no more detail about the dragon than that it was a dragon and that it had slain Cadmus’ men.

Perhaps Apollodorus had left something out?  There is a late commentary on the story in the so-called “Chiliades” (“Thousands”) of John Tzetzes (c1110-1180AD), a Byzantine literary man, which adds the details that there were two men sent, Deioleon and Seriphos, and that:

“….the dragon, the guardian of the spring, killed them both,

but Cadmus, with the throwing of stones, killed the dragon…”

(Chiliades, X.406-407)

But that’s all the description we get—just a dracon, albeit, in the Cadmus story, given to homicide.

When Eurystheus

(he’s the one cowering in the big jar)

demands that Herakles do two more labors, the first of the two is to fetch the Golden Apples of the Hesperides,

(by the Pre-Raphaelite painter Edward Burne-Jones, 1833-1898, the besty of William Morris),

which were guarded, in one version of the story ,by a deathless, hundred-headed dragon (Apollodorus, the Library, 2.5.11).  Herakles kills the dragon (Apollodorus doesn’t say how, any more than he provides any details about the dragon).

Continuing through mythical history, we now arrive at Jason, who, in his quest to obtain the Golden Fleece, finds that the fleece is guarded, like the Golden Apples, by a dragon—this one both immortal (Apollodorus, The Library 1.9.16)  and sleepless ( Apollonius, Argonautica 2.1209-10).  When, in Apollonius’ (3^rd century BC)  Argonautica, Book 4, Jason actually confronts the dragon, it has an amazingly loud hiss (4.130-131 ) and huge jaws (4. 154-56 ), but is quickly subdued by the enchantress Medea, with a sung charm and a drug for his (now very sleepy) eyes (4.156-58) and, as ever, no fire.

Even in Ovid’s (43BC-17AD) retelling of the Jason story, in Book 7 of the Metamorphoses, the dragon is only described:

…linguis…tribus… et uncis

dentibus…

“with triple tongue and with curved teeth” (Ovid, Metamorphoses 7.150-151)

It’s interesting, however, that, in the Jason story, there is fire-breathing, just not reptilian.  Before the King of Colchis, Aeetes, will deal with Jason’s request for the Fleece, he sets him a task:

1. he must yoke bronze-hoofed bulls

2. he must plow a field with them

3. he must sow dragon’s teeth

and then fight the warriors who spring up from the teeth.

As if all of this weren’t difficult enough, the bulls breathed fire.  As Apollonius describes it:

“And they up to that time were raging exceedingly,

The pair of them breathing out turbulent flame of fire…” (Argonautica 3.326-7)

Bovine fireworks, but nothing from dragons—and yet, somewhere along the way between these early dragons and Beowulf,

something set off the reptiles and, from that moment on, dragons were flaming.

(from Peraldus’ Theological Miscellany—1st half 13^th century—this image is from one of the medievalist Hana Videen’s websites and I recommend all of them.  Start with:  https://oldenglishwordhord.com/ which is ongoing, but there are also https://medievalandmodernbestiary.com/about/ and  https://medievalcomicsblog.wordpress.com/  )

I have two suggestions for possible models for this change—and I’ll put “possible” in quotation marks to show just how tentative I think these are.

First, as early as Aristotle (384-322BC), there was the belief that salamanders could live in fire (Historia Animalium 5.19),

a fact repeated by Augustine (354-430AD), in Book XXI of his De Civitate Dei Contra Paganos, where he cites the example of a salamander’s survival in fire to suggest that the damned could burn for eternity and not be consumed:

“ut scripserunt qui naturas animalium curiosius indagarunt, salamandra in ignibus uiuit…”

“…as they have written who, curious, have investigated the qualities of animals:  the salamander lives in fires…”  (XXI.iv) 

Imagine, then, a lizard-like creature, as we see in medieval illustrations—

associated with fire from as far back as the Greco-Roman world…

Second, there is a fire-spouting weapon which could also have served as a model/inspiration:  Greek fire.

As early as the late 7^th century AD, the Byzantines had not only invented a new and terrifying weapon, the compounding of which is still unknown, but guessed at,

but also a way to project that fire over a distance—almost as if were being breathed out.

(Here’s a short film clip which demonstrates just how frightening this weapon could be:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lPUgvYZ5UDk )

Think of it flying–certainly not something you could, like Cadmus, knock over with a stone.

Thanks, as ever, for reading.

Stay well,

Never say “Dracarys” unless you mean it,

And know that there’s always

MTCIDC

O

PS

Although I love science—especially the natural sciences—I’m certainly not a scientist, but does the explanation below seems oddly plausible to you?

“One possible way: Their metabolism is capable of creating a low-boiling flammable liquid (such as diethyl ether or pentane) and this substance is stored in sacs somewhere in the head. The dragon also has an enzyme that acts to ignite the stuff when in contact with air.

To breathe fire, the dragon pumps (by muscle action) some of this liquid out of its mouth; its own body heat evaporates it and the enzyme, sprayed out at the same time, sets it off.”

(Ian Campbell, BA in Natural Sciences, Cambridge, 1979—from Quora at:  https://www.quora.com/When-did-people-start-to-depict-dragons-as-firebreathing-in-mythology-What-was-the-first-ever-fire-breathing-dragon-myth-in-history?share=1 )

Welcome, as always, dear readers.

Here’s an interesting passage from Appendix A of The Lord of the Rings:

“The third evil was the invasion of the Wainriders, which sapped the waning strength of Gondor in wars that lasted for almost a hundred years.  The Wainriders were a people, or a confederacy of many peoples, that came from the East; but they were stronger and better armed than any that had appeared before.  They journeyed in great wains, and their chieftains fought in chariots.” (iv:  “Gondor and the Heirs of Anarion”)

Even if you didn’t know that a “wain” is a kind of wagon,

the context would probably provide you with an image of one—although probably the best-known wain now would be the one in John Constable’s (1776-1837) famous 1821 painting, “The Hay Wain”.

(If you’d like to see more of Constable’s work, with those amazing skies, see: https://www.wikiart.org/en/john-constable/ )

Such wagons as these (and “wain” and “wagon” come from the same Old English word, waegn), however, seem a little small for a wandering people, and I imagine that Tolkien saw them as more like a Boer trekwagen (also called a “Cape wagon”)

which he might have seen in South Africa as a small child, or at least had noticed in some of the numerous images of the Boer War of 1899-1902 available in magazines of that period,

like this issue of The Sphere from March, 1900–

Another possibility is that he had seen so-called Conestoga wagons

either in illustrations or even in films of the American West,

(from The Big Trail, 1930)

where they were shown being employed in ferrying families onto the Great Plains or beyond.

This might explain the wain—but what about the riders?

Invasions from the East were a common feature in the late Roman era, when the Western Empire was gradually turning into a Germanicized world, with various Gothic tribes pushing into what were once Roman provinces and even into Italy itself.

And behind the Goths came the Huns, a nomadic steppe people,

who were stopped at the Battle of the Catalaunian Fields (also called the Battle of Chalons) in 451AD by a combination of Romans and Germanic allies.

Even before this, there had been Celtic movement along the borders of the growing Roman world in the last century BC.  A major trek was that of the Helvetii, who attempted to move from what is now western Switzerland, but were stopped and pushed back in 58BC by Julius Caesar (100-44BC).

As a medievalist, JRRT would certainly have known about the Goths and Huns, and, as a schoolboy, he would have read (or suffered through) Book One of Caesar’s De Bello Gallico, with its well-known opening, “Gallia est omnis divisa in partes tres”—“All of Gaul has been divided into three parts”.   There, in Section 3, he would have read that, prior to their invasion, the Helvetii

“constituerunt ea quae ad proficiscendum pertinerent comparare, iumentorum et carrorum quam maximum numerum coemere…” (De Bello Gallico, 1.3)

“decided to collect those things which would be suitable for their setting off—to buy up the greatest number possible of beasts of burden and of wagons…”

Carrorum—the nominative singular is carrus–is itself a Celtic word and Aulus Hirtius, Caesar’s lieutenant, who continued Caesar’s account of campaigns against the Gauls, says of them:

“magna enim multitudo carrorum etiam expeditos sequi Gallos consuevit…”  (De Bello Gallico, 8.14)

“for a great number of wagons was accustomed to follow the Gauls, even [when]traveling lightly” (expeditus, often means “lightly-armed”, but can also mean “without baggage”, hence my less formal translation)

It’s unclear what such vehicles looked like.  If they were carts—that is, two-wheeled vehicles—they might have appeared like this simple Roman one—

If a 4-wheeled vehicle, perhaps something like this—

Here, then, might be sources for Tolkien’s invaders, both wains and riders, but what about those leaders and their chariots?

Although there are a number of chariot burials found in France (more or less modern Gaul),

Caesar never encountered chariot fighters in his conquest—of Gaul.  In his two brief visits to England, it was a different matter, however.

As he describes them:

“Genus hoc est ex essedis pugnae. Primo per omnes partes perequitant et tela coiciunt atque ipso terrore equorum et strepitu rotarum ordines plerumque perturbant, et cum se inter equitum turmas insinuaverunt, ex essedis desiliunt et pedibus proeliantur. Aurigae interim paulatim ex proelio excedunt atque ita currus conlocant ut, si illi a multitudine hostium premantur, expeditum ad quos receptum habeant. Ita mobilitatem equitum, stabilitatem peditum in proeliis praestant, ac tantum usu cotidiano et exercitatione efficiunt uti in declivi ac praecipiti loco incitatos equos sustinere et brevi moderari ac flectere et per temonem percurrere et in iugo insistere et se inde in currus citissime recipere consuerint.” (De Bello Gallico, 4.33)

“This is the method of fighting from chariots.  First, they ride around in every direction and hurl javelins and shake the ranks in general with the terror of [their] horses and the noise of [their] wheels, and, when they have worked themselves in among the troops of cavalry, they leap down from [their] chariots and fight on foot.  Meanwhile, [their] charioteers gradually retreat from the battle and so place [their] chariots that, if those [chariot warriors] may be pressed back by a large number of enemies, they may have an unimpeded mode of retreat for them.  In this way, they display in battle the mobility of cavalry, the steadiness of infantry, and they accomplish so much by daily use and practice that they have become accustomed to control [their] stirred up horses in sloping and steep places and to direct and turn [them] quickly and [they have also become accustomed] to run along the chariot pole and to stand on the yoke and to take themselves back from there into [their] chariots.”

In a letter to his son, Christopher (28 December, 1944, Letters, 107), JRRT mentions another figure connected with these ancient Britons, Julius Agricola (40-93AD), who was involved in several stages of the Roman conquest of Britain in the 1^st century AD.  What we know about him comes almost entirely from the biography of him written by his son-in-law, Publius Cornelius Tacitus (c.56-120AD).  In Book XIV of his Annals, Tacitus describes a revolt of some of the British tribes against Roman rule, those tribes being led by a haunting figure in early British history, Boudicca, queen of the Iceni.

(This is a famous statuary group, by Thomas Thorneycroft (1815-1885), erected on the Thames Embankment, basically across the street from Parliament, in 1902.)

And in Tacitus’ description of the moments before the final battle of the revolt, we might see one more possible inspiration for those Wainriders and leaders in chariots:

“at Britannorum copiae passim per catervas et turmas exultabant, quanta non alias multitudo, et animo adeo fero[ci], ut coniuges quoque testes victoriae secum traherent plaustrisque imponerent, quae super extremum ambitum campi posuerant.

Boudicca curru filias prae se vehens, ut quamque nationem accesserat, solitum quidem Britannis feminarum ductu bellare testabatur…” (Annales, 14.34-35)

“…and the forces of the Britons were rejoicing everywhere in their companies and troops, how much more numerous than other [such forces], and with such a fierce spirit that they were bringing with them their wives, as well, as witnesses of their victory, and were settling them in wagons, which they had drawn up at the extreme edge of the field.

Boudicca, riding in a chariot, with her daughters in front of her, as she had reached each tribe, was swearing that it was indeed the custom for Britons to fight under the direction of women…”

Gothic invasions turned France, Italy, and Spain, at least briefly, into Germanic-speaking worlds, muscling in on the local Romans.  The Helvetii needed serious fighting to be driven back to their original homeland.  And those chariots initially made Roman infantry very nervous (Caesar himself says that they were “pertubati novitate pugnae”—“shaken by the novelty of the [manner] of fighting”—De Bello Gallico, 4.34).  Perhaps, with such models behind them, it’s no wonder that it took nearly a hundred years to defeat those Wainriders.

As ever, thanks for reading.

Stay well,

When driving your chariot towards the enemy, always circle them counterclockwise (a huge insult in Old Irish stories),

(A totally overthetop Angus McBride of Cu Chulainn–but fun–and the Cu himself was more than a little overthetop when he would produce the gae bolga.)

And know that, as always, there’s

MTCIDC

O

Welcome, dear readers, as always.

My last posting employed a quotation from Tolkien, to be found in a letter to Prof. L.W. Forster from 31 December, 1960:

“The Dead Marshes and the approaches to the Morannon owe something to Northern France after the Battle of the Somme.  They owe more to William Morris and his Huns and Romans, as in The House of the Wolfings and The Roots of the Mountains. “  (Letters, 303)

And, in that previous posting, I had discussed what seemed to me to be some influences direct and indirect upon Tolkien’s work from the first of those two works, William Morris’ (1834-1896) 1889

The House of the Wolfings.

(And, as ever, here’s a copy for you:  https://archive.org/details/cu31924013528124/page/n7/mode/2up This is an American reprint from 1892.)

In this posting, I want to examine that second book, also published in 1889, The Roots of the Mountains Wherein Is Told Somewhat of the Lives of the Men of Burg-dale Their Friends Their Neighbours Their Foemen and Their Fellows in Arms

(Here’s your copy:  https://www.gutenberg.org/files/6050/6050-h/6050-h.htm –an 1896 reprint of the second edition )

After reading both this and Wolfings, I found myself a bit puzzled.  Certainly I saw things which might have been influences, but really nothing struck me as related to the Dead Marshes and the Morannon.  Instead, in Wolfings, there were names like “the Mark” and “Mirkwood” and some suggestions of Eowyn and Arwen and Galadriel to come, and this is the sort of thing which I discovered, as well, in Roots.

Here, we had “(the) Dale” (Chapter I) as well as:

“This was well-nigh encompassed by a wall of sheer cliffs; toward the East and the great mountains they drew together till they went near to meet, and left but a narrow path on either side of a stony stream that came rattling down into the Dale: toward the river at that end the hills lowered somewhat, though they still ended in sheer rocks; but up from it, and more especially on the north side, they swelled into great shoulders of land, then dipped a little, and rose again into the sides of huge fells clad with pine-woods, and cleft here and there by deep ghylls: thence again they rose higher and steeper, and ever higher till they drew dark and naked out of the woods to meet the snow-fields and ice-rivers of the high mountains.  But that was far away from the pass by the little river into the valley; and the said river was no drain from the snow-fields white and thick with the grinding of the ice, but clear and bright were its waters that came from wells amidst the bare rocky heaths.

The upper end of the valley, where it first began to open out from the pass, was rugged and broken by rocks and ridges of water-borne stones, but presently it smoothed itself into mere grassy swellings and knolls, and at last into a fair and fertile plain swelling up into a green wave, as it were, against the rock-wall which encompassed it on all sides save where the river came gushing out of the strait pass at the east end, and where at the west end it poured itself out of the Dale toward the lowlands and the plain of the great river.” (Chapter I)

All of which reminded me of Rivendell—

And this, which seemed even closer to the description of that body of water which lay in front of the eastern gate of Moria:

Besides the river afore-mentioned, which men called the Weltering Water, there were other waters in the Dale.  Near the eastern pass, entangled in the rocky ground was a deep tarn full of cold springs and about two acres in measure, and therefrom ran a stream which fell into the Weltering Water amidst the grassy knolls.  Black seemed the waters of that tarn which on one side washed the rocks-wall of the Dale; ugly and aweful it seemed to men, and none knew what lay beneath its waters save black mis-shapen trouts that few cared to bring to net or angle: and it was called the Death-Tarn.  (Chapter I)

There were details, too:

1. a reminiscence of The Hobbit, Chapter 18, “The Return Journey”, when Gandalf and Bilbo spent “Yule-tide” with Beorn:

“Natheless at Yule-tide also they feasted from house to house to be glad with the rest of Midwinter, and many a cup drank at those feasts to the memory of the fathers, and the days when the world was wider to them, and their banners fared far afield.” (Chapter I)

2. lots of grey-eyed people, like a major character “the Friend” (aka “Sun-beam”—Chapter VII)

3. a woman-warrior, “the Bride”, who seems, at first, reminiscent of Eowyn:

“But just as the Alderman was on the point of rising to declare the breaking-up of the Thing, there came a stir in the throng and it opened, and a warrior came forth into the innermost of the ring of men, arrayed in goodly glittering War-gear; clad in such wise that a tunicle of precious gold-wrought web covered the hauberk all but the sleeves thereof, and the hem of it beset with blue mountain-stones smote against the ankles and well-nigh touched the feet, shod with sandals gold-embroidered and gemmed.  This warrior bore a goodly gilded helm on the head, and held in hand a spear with gold-garlanded shaft, and was girt with a sword whose hilts and scabbard both were adorned with gold and gems: beardless, smooth-cheeked, exceeding fair of face was the warrior, but pale and somewhat haggard-eyed: and those who were nearby beheld and wondered; for they saw that there was come the Bride arrayed for war and battle, as if she were a messenger from the House of the Gods, and the Burg that endureth for ever.”  (Chapter XXVI)

She becomes more so when, cast off by the protagonist, “Gold-mane”, she fights, is wounded, and eventually marries a secondary protagonist, “Folk-might”, after a lingering and tentative courtship (Chapters XXXVI, XL, and L), like Eowyn and Faramir.

4. The image of a revealed banner appears:

“But before the hedge of steel stood the two tall men who held in their hands the war-tokens of the Battle-shaft and the War-spear, and betwixt them stood one who was indeed the tallest man of the whole assembly, who held the great staff of the hidden banner.  And now he reached up his hand, and plucked at the yarn that bound it, which of set purpose was but feeble, and tore it off, and then shook the staff aloft with both hands, and shouted, and lo! the Banner of the Wolf with the Sun-burst behind him, glittering-bright, new-woven by the women of the kindred, ran out in the fresh wind, and flapped and rippled before His warriors there assembled.”

And this could be a foreshadowing of the banner which Arwen has woven for Aragorn:

“…For he saw that instead of a spear he bore a tall staff, as it were a standard, but it was close-furled in a black cloth bound about with many thongs…And with that he bade Halbarad unfurl the great standard which he had brought; and behold!  It was black, and if there was any device upon it, it was hidden in the darkness.”  (The Return of the King, Book Five, Chapter 2, “The Passing of the Grey Company)

5. But, for me, the most striking single description was this:

“It was a bright spring afternoon in that clearing of the Wood, and they looked at the two dead men closely; and Gold-mane, who had been somewhat silent and moody till then, became merry and wordy; for he beheld the men and saw that they were utterly strange to him: they were short of stature, crooked-legged, long-armed, very strong for their size: with small blue eyes, snubbed-nosed, wide-mouthed, thin-lipped, very swarthy of skin, exceeding foul of favour.” (Chapter XV)

“In the twilight he saw a large black Orc, probably Ugluk, standing facing Grishnakh, a short crook-legged creature, very broad and with long arms that hung almost to the ground.”   (The Two Towers, Book Three, Chapter 3, “The Uruk-hai”)

(A favorite Alan Lee)

So much for “Roots”, but I would also include a “Branch”.

Tolkien was very sensitive on the subject of language choice in The Lord of the Rings, defending himself at some length in the draft of an unsent letter to Hugh Brogan, September, 1955, when Brogan had apparently suggested in an earlier letter that the occasional archaizing seemed artificial to him:

“Of course, not being specially well read in modern English, and far more familiar with works in the ancient and ‘middle’ idioms, my own ear is to some extent affected; so that though I could easily recollect how a modern would put this or that, what comes easiest to mind or pen is not quite that.  But take an example from that chapter that you specially singled out (and called terrible):  Book iii, ‘The King of the Golden Hall’.  ‘Nay, Gandalf!’ said the King.  ‘You do not know your own skill in healing.  It shall not be so.  I myself will go to war, to fall in the front of the battle, if it must be.  Thus shall I sleep better.’…  For a king who spoke in a modern style would not really think in such terms at all, and any reference to sleeping quietly in the grave would be a deliberate archaism of expression on his part (however worded) far more bogus than the actual ‘archaic’ English that I have used.  (Letters, 225-6)

This has always struck me as a very reasonable defense, but I would add something more from Tolkien’s—and my—reading of Morris.  As early as 1914, JRRT wrote to Edith Bratt:

“”Amongst other work I am trying to turn one of the stories [from the Finnish folk-collection of Elias Loennrot, the Kalevala]—which is a very great story and most tragic—into a short story somewhat on the lines of Morris’ romances with chunks of poetry in between…” (letter to Edith Bratt, October, 1914, Letters, 7)

These ‘Morris romances’ — novels like Wolfings and Roots, as well as his earlier work, like his translation of the Odyssey (1887)—had come in for serious criticism for their language choices.  In fact, a expression which was used into the 20^th century for such archaizing, “Wardour Street”, was invented specifically for criticizing Morris’ prose:

“This is not literary English of any date; this is Wardour-Street Early English—a perfectly modern article with a sham appearance of the real antique about it. There is a trade in early furniture as well as in Early English, and one of the well-known tricks of that trade is the production of artificial worm-holes in articles of modern manufacture.”

(Archibald Ballantyne   “Wardour-Street English”  Longman’s Magazine, LXXVII, Oct.1888, 585-594)

In the 19^th century, Wardour Street, London, was the center of the used and antique furniture trade and so this term, in 1888, had punch:  fake “Olde Englishe” language in a text was the equivalent of faking antique furniture:  both created for the purpose of deceiving readers/buyers into believing that they were receiving something authentic (“authentick”).

Morris, just from the two novels I’ve cited in these postings, has had, perhaps, a stronger influence upon Tolkien than has been previously understood, but, for myself, I agree with this reviewer of The Roots of the Mountains about Morris and, with some adjustment in terms of his criticism of Morris’ prose for Tolkien’s , maybe it will serve for Tolkien, as well:

“Much dust has been raised, and it was practically impossible that some should not be raised, about the ‘Wardour Street’ style of The Roots of the Mountains…Now, Mr. William Morris’ Wardour Street is on the whole a very superior specimen of the article…There is less narrative verse (though there are songs, &c, and good ones), and since, good as Mr. Morris’ prose always is, it is less good than his verse, we lose something…The old merit of Mr. Morris’ work, both in prose and verse, its adjustment of literary and pictorial merit, appears throughout the book…”

( Unsigned,  The Saturday Review, 12/14/89, 688)

Thanks, as ever, for reading,

Stay well,

Check your furniture for worm-holes,

And know that, as always, there’s

MTCIDC

O

PS

Ballantyne’s 1888 review disappeared into the back pages of literary history, but the term he had invented was carried into the 20^th century by the once-commanding figure of H.W. Fowler, whose books on the English language were once gospel for correctness.   Here’s where “Wardour Street” was kept alive:

“As Wardour Street itself offers to those who live in modern houses the opportunity of picking up an antique or two that will be conspicuous for good or ill among their surroundings, so this article offers to those who write modern English a selection of oddments calculated to establish (in the eyes of some readers) their claims to be persons of taste & writers of beautiful English.” (700)

H.W. Fowler, A Dictionary of Modern English Usage, 1926

(We should note, by the way, that the actual inventor isn’t mentioned here—I wonder what Fowler might have to say about “lack of proper citation”?)

As always, dear readers, welcome.

The title of this posting is a kind of wish in Italian.  It means literally, “in/into the mouth of the wolf”.

It doesn’t sound like a good wish—until you think about the English parallel usually suggested for this expression, the theatrical, “Break a leg”, in which the point has the opposite meaning, “Be a huge success”, because, by a strange magical law, reverses prevent evil. 

In this case, the evil was said originally to endanger a hunter, but, in the case of William Morris’ (1834-1896)

 1889 novel, A Tale of the House of the Wolfings and All the Kindreds of the Mark Written in Prose and in Verse (now usually called The House of the Wolfings ,for short),

 the wolf brought good luck, as reviews, like Oscar Wilde’s (1854-1900) in The Pall Mall Gazette (2 March, 1889—which you can find here:   https://victorianweb.org/authors/wilde/essays/1.html )

in which he calls the book, “a piece of pure art workmanship from beginning to end”

or Henry Hewlitt’s in The Nineteenth Century (August, 1889, xxvi, 337-341), where the reviewer says “None of his [Morris’] writings will generally be read, I think, with more unqualified pleasure”. (337—the full review may be found here:   https://morrisarchive.lib.uiowa.edu/items/show/972  ), suggest.

Hewlitt goes on to say of Morris that:

“His genius has always seemed to breathe most freely in the atmosphere of prehistoric or semi-historic mythology, whether Gothic or Greek…” (337)

and, looking at Morris’ list of publications, from The Hollow Land (1856—you can read it here:   https://www.sacred-texts.com/neu/morris/thol/index.htm ) to The Life and Death of Jason (1867—you can find it here:  https://archive.org/details/lifedeathofjason00morrrich ) to The Sundering Flood  (published posthumously in 1897—and here it is:  https://archive.org/details/sunderingflood00morrrich ), one can see that Morris created worlds based, just as Hewlitt says, on medieval or classical themes, with, as Wilde noted of Wolfings,  a “very remoteness of its style from the common language and ordinary interests of our day which gives to the whole story a strange beauty and an unfamiliar charm”.  This style often mixes poetry and prose, something which Morris did more than once in his literary works, as Wilde points out “like the medieval ‘cante-fable’ “, and The House of the Wolfings is a perfect example of this, the plot sometimes being advanced in prose, sometimes in verse.

(A “chante-fable”, as it’s now ordinarily spelled, was a medieval creation, being, as Wilde says, a story in a combination of media.  Only one known medieval example survives (“Aucassin et Nicolette”) and I imagine that Wilde had read it in Andrew Lang’s 1887 translation:  https://archive.org/details/aucassinnicolete00languoft –this is a 1909 American republication.  For a  modern, more literal translation of what is really a parody of all sorts of medieval genres—with its music transposed into modern notation, see:  http://www.umilta.net/aucassin.html )

In brief, the story concerns an early Germanic land (“the Mark”—which in our world once meant “a border”—as in Denmark, “the frontier/border of the Danes”) of villages settled by clans with names like “Wolfing” (“children/family of the wolf”), with the image of a wolf as their badge—which might remind you of the Starks in A Game of Thrones–

 

or “Bearing”—and you can guess what their image would be.

A major figure among the Wolfings is Thiodolf (a Germanic compound name—“Thiod-“ from a root like “teut-“= “people/of the people” and “-olf” = “wolf”, so something like “Wolf of/for the People”).  He has had an alliance with a figure called (the) Wood-Sun, who is somewhere between the gods and men, which produces a daughter, (the) Hall-Sun, named after a glass lamp which hangs in the main hall of the Wolfings and is a sacred emblem, always kept alight, like the fire in the temple of Vesta in Rome.

This land is then invaded by the Romans and a series of battles ensues.

(This is Paja Jovanovic’ 1899 painting of the ambush of three Roman legions in the Teutoburg Forest in 9AD and probably more or less how Morris would have imagined such combat.)

Wood-Sun is conflicted when it comes to Thiodolf’s involvement in this war, in which he is a leader of the Wolfings, and eventually gives him a “hauberk”—that is, a ring mail shirt–which was made long ago by dwarves, and which will protect him from harm, probably looking something like this—

although Thiodolf remains helmet-less, like most of the major characters in A Game of Thrones, making them easy targets for head blows in real combat.

There is a catch to this, however, in that, through some terrible dwarvish magic, it also takes the wearer out of this world and, after putting it on and advancing into battle, Thiodolf collapses, insensible, leaving the battle to those around him and thus endangering them and the Mark itself.  Eventually, Thiodolf understands the consequences, and, to the grief of Wood-Sun, goes out to the final battle without it, saving his people, but dying, as Wood-Sun had foreseen he would.

In a letter to Professor L. W. Forster of 31 December, 1960, Tolkien has this to say of Morris:

“The Dead Marshes and the approaches of the Morannon owe something to Northern France after the Battle of the Somme.  They owe more to William Morris and his Huns and Romans, as in The House of the Wolfings or The Roots of the Mountains.”  (Letters, 303)

Knowing this quotation, I have often seen others cite it, but without more detail than, at best a brief summary of the plot of Wolfings.  Curious about what JRRT might really have meant by what looks like a kind of off-hand remark, I decided that it was time to read more of Morris than his early The Defence of Guenevere and Other Poems (1858) with its daring view of a feisty Guenevere, far from the groveling and repentant heroine of Tennyson’s “Guinevere”  (1859).   (And here’s your copy of the Morris:   https://d.lib.rochester.edu/camelot/text/morris-defence-of-guenevere This is from the University of Rochester’s wonderful “The Camelot Project”.) 

While reading, I kept a running list of what in Wolfings struck me as a potential influence on Tolkien and found, to my surprise, that it was something other than Dead Marshes and Morannon.

Rather than go through the thirty-one chapters one by one, here’s a brief thematic summary:

1. familiar names (both in Chapter I)—and this is what other commentators have picked up on:

 a.  the Mark (which is then divided into geographic sub-regions)

 b. Mirkwood

2. familiar architecture:

a. the main hall of the Wolfings:

 ”As to the house within, two rows of pillars went down it endlong, fashioned of the mightiest trees that might be found, and each one fairly wrought with base and chapiter, and wreaths and knots, and fighting men and dragons; so that it was like a church of later days that has a nave and aisles: windows there were above the aisles, and a passage underneath the said windows in their roofs.  In the aisles were the sleeping-places of the Folk, and down the nave under the crown of the roof were three hearths for the fires…”  (Chapter I) 

Compare this with the bits of description of Beorn’s hall, with its pillars and central fires, in Chapter 7, “Queer Lodgings” of The Hobbit.

b.decoration of the hall:

“round about the dais, along the gable-wall, and hung from pillar to pillar were woven cloths pictured with images of ancient tales and the deeds of the Wolfings, and the deeds of the Gods from whence they came.” (Chapter I)

Compare that with this from the description of Meduseld:

“Many woven cloths were hung upon the walls, and over their wide spaces marched figures of ancient legend, some dim with years, some darkling in the shade.” (The Two Towers, Book Three, Chapter 6, “The King of the Golden Hall”)

(There are more architectural details in Chapter I, including a raised dais at one end of the hall, just as in Meduseld.)

c. as in front of Edoras are the grave mounds of former kings, including, in time, that of Theoden,

so the hero of the story, is given his own mound near the main hall of the Wolfings:

“But on the morrow the kindreds laid their dead men in mound betwixt the Great Roof and the Wild-wood.  In one mound they laid them with the War-dukes in their midst, and Arinbiorn by Otter’s right side; and Thiodolf bore Throng-plough to mound with him.” (Chapter XXXI—“Throng-plough” was Thiodolf’s sword, just as swords in Tolkien have names like “Orcrist”.)

3. familiar look:

“Tall and for the most part comely were both men and women; the most of them light-haired and grey-eyed, with cheek-bones somewhat high…” (Chapter I)

More than once, Tolkien gives a similar appearance to his heroic characters, as in his description of the troops of the Prince of Dol Amroth:

“…a company of knights in full harness, riding grey horses; and behind them seven hundreds of men at arms, tall as lords, grey-eyed…” (The Return of the King, Book Five, Chapter 1, “Minas Tirith”)—and we note that even their horses are grey.

4. interesting armor

As noted above, one focus of the latter part of the story is the hauberk which Wood-Sun gives to Thiodolf and which causes him so much grief.  Thiodolf addresses it, saying:

“Strange are the hands that have passed over thee, sword-rampart, and in strange places of the earth have they dwelt!  For no smith of the kindreds hath fashioned thee, unless he had for his friend either a God or a foe of the Gods.”  (Chapter XVI)

Although it was made by Elves, not dwarves, could there be a certain similarity here between this and Bilbo/Frodo’s mithril shirt?

(Alan Lee)

5. characters—this is more suggestion, I admit, than hard fact, but

 a. at times, Hall-Sun, Thiodolf’s daughter, reminds me of Eowyn—a highly-respected member of her clan, but left behind to organize the defense of the Wolfings’ hall when the warriors go off to fight the Romans (Chapters V and XIV)

 b. Wood-Sun, the semi-divine figure, strikes me as having both elements of Galadriel—in her position of human, but not quite:

““Nay, nay; I began, I was born; although it may be indeed
That not on the hills of the earth I sprang from the godhead’s seed.
And e’en as my birth and my waxing shall be my waning and end.” (Chapter III)

and of Arwen, in that, when she knows that Thiodolf will die, she says to him:

“But I thy thrall shall follow, I shall come where thou seemest to lie,
I shall sit on the howe that hides thee, and thou so dear and nigh!
A few bones white in their war-gear that have no help or thought,
Shall be Thiodolf the Mighty, so nigh, so dear—and nought.” (Chapter XVII)

which sounds very much like Arwen’s choice in remaining in Middle-earth with the mortal Aragorn and fading after his death.  (See The Lord of the Rings, Appendix A, (V), “Here Follows a Part of the Tale of Aragorn and Arwen”)

There are more details here and there, like Hall-Sun being called a “Vala” (Chapter VII), but perhaps the last big point worth considering is that mixture of poetry and prose, which Oscar Wilde mentioned in his review, the ‘cante-fable’ effect.  Although not so prominent in The Lord of the Rings as it is in Wulfings, at moments of high emotion, characters tend to break into verse—think , for example, of the lament for Boromir in “The Departure of Boromir” in Book Three, Chapter 1, or even Sam singing to bolster his courage in The Return of the King, Book Six, Chapter 1, “The Tower of Cirith Ungol”.

And there may be more possibilities yet—here’s the text for you so that you can see what you may find which I may have missed:  https://www.gutenberg.org/files/2885/2885-h/2885-h.htm .   As you read, you’ll certainly see why Tolkien mentioned Morris’ influence.

Thanks, as ever, for reading.

Stay well,

Be wary of approaching Romans,

And know that, as always, there’s

MTCIDC

O

PS

William Morris was a creative dynamo and well worth learning more about, as part of later 19^th-century literary and artistic history, but also for the pure pleasure of watching him at work—and he can tell a good story.  If you find Morris as irresistible as I do—although in small doses!—have a look at:  https://morrisarchive.lib.uiowa.edu/

PPS

Is there something similar between this map, from Morris’ posthumous The Sundering Flood, and another long-worked-over map we know?

PPPS

This is Morris’ first purpose-built residence, called “the Red House” because of its brick and tile.

Do those windows remind you of anything?

PPPPS

The traditional reply to “In bocca al lupo” is “crepi il lupo!” which means, literally, “May the wolf burst!”

Welcome, dear readers, as ever.

Imagine that you are writing a novel about an infantryman in World War II.  What could you use for resources to help you to make your story as vivid and authentic as possible?

You might locate some soldiers’ diaries—although keeping such diaries was forbidden by US Army regulations, so they are not available in large numbers.

You might read collections of  letters sent home, saved by loved ones, although these may have been heavily censored (a job which company officers often had to do—and mostly hated).

Beyond that, you could try to talk to veterans themselves, now a difficult task as so few are left and those surviving are very elderly.

And, beyond that, there would be newspapers and magazines

and lots of images—photos and movie film, some of it even in color,

as well as audio recordings of speeches and popular radio programs, to give you the feel of the period.

(This is a popular comedy group of the period, “Spike Jones and His City Slickers”, known for complete wackiness.)

You could also draw upon official accounts

and, in time, the books published by veterans themselves, as well as by scholars of the period.

Go back a century and imagine that your protagonist fought in the US Civil War.

No one told soldiers that they couldn’t keep a diary,

and there are thousands of surviving letters from the period.

Unfortunately, the last veterans had died by the early 1950s, although, had you been able to travel back in time, even only a century, you could have interviewed hundreds of veterans both North and South who had formed veterans’ associations after the war and came to reunions  into the 20^th century to relive the past with friends—and even former enemies.

(This is at Gettysburg in 1938—the last big reunion of the two sides.)

There were certainly newspapers and illustrated magazines, although their illustrations were woodcuts, not photographs,

since the technology available at the time was too clumsy for the battlefield and any motion became blur.

(A photo of one element of the parade of the victorious Union armies through Washington, DC, May 23-24, 1865)

There were also plenty of books written by veterans beginning soon after the war and into the 20^th century

(This is one of my favorites, by Union veteran, Josh Billings and illustrated by Charles Reed, another veteran—you can read it for yourself here:   https://archive.org/details/hardtackcoffee00bill/page/n5/mode/2up   If you’d like a view from the other side, here’s Sam Watkins’ classic:  https://archive.org/details/coaytch00watk/page/n5/mode/2up 

I’m not going to add a warning here:  people in the 19^th century who published books about their experiences were just that:  people of the 19^th century, with all the prejudices of people in those times.  We live in a different and, generally, more tolerant world, but, if we want to know about the past, we have to be willing to understand that people in that past could be unlike us, sometimes in ways with which we would disagree or even find just plain wrong.)

And, by the end of the century, there were official records to consult.

And since the war, there have been thousands of books published on every aspect of it.

(This is one of my favorites.  Stephen Sears has authored  a number of books on the subject, all well-researched and engagingly written and worth reading—more than once.)

Things begin to change rather quickly as we go farther back, however.  If you wanted to create a character from the American Revolution, there are few diaries,

and, because there was no regular postal service, although letters do survive, often from people at the top, like George Washington,

(who, to my mind, was a very good letter-writer, revealing, underneath that cool exterior, a very passionate man), ordinary people have left much less of a trace, although some veterans wrote memoirs, like Henry Lee, the father of Robert E. Lee.

There were almost no magazines

and virtually no newspapers,

and images, both of people and events, were scarce, most portraits being only of people who could afford such an extravagance, and, for period illustrations, the best one could do would be post-war pictures, often grand and more full of drama than detailed accuracy.

(Trumbull’s “Bunker Hill”, painted in 1786.)

And, of course, the farther back one goes, the fewer the sources:  if you wanted to create a hoplite who fought at Marathon in 490BC, for example,

the only period account we have is that of Herodotus, a near-contemporary.

Suppose, instead , that you decide to chronicle one or more veterans of  an imaginary war, in another time and (possibly) another place, what might you employ for resources—besides your vivid imagination, of course?

To begin, because you’re not a professional novelist, but a medievalist, you pick a time and place which are medieval, so no electronic possibilities, as well as no newspapers or magazines.  You don’t really like the contemporary world much any way and you also really enjoy modern stories set in medieval or even Dark Ages worlds,

so they will be an influence, whether you want them to or not

Literacy in our own medieval world was a specialized skill, which, if you model your world on this one, will at least cut down on things like letters (although medieval letters survive, the most famous in English being those written by and to members of the Paston family mainly in the 15^th century).

As well, diaries are very rare, perhaps the best-known being the so-called “Journal of a Bourgeois of Paris”, written in the period 1405-1445.  (There doesn’t appear to be a complete English translation of this, but here’s Alexandre Tuetey’s 1881 French edition:  https://www.gutenberg.org/files/54182/54182-h/54182-h.htm  )

As for illustrations, from our medieval world, there are thousands of wonderful images, in manuscripts

(This is from Chroniques de France ou de Saint Denis, written 1332-1350 and depicts the fighting around the castle of Gisors in Normandy in 1198.)

and on tombs,

(This is the tomb of the Black Prince, post-1376.)

and in churches, among other places.

(So far, I’ve been unable to identify this one—but I’m glad not to be in his position!)

Although, as you’re an enthusiast for modern versions of the past, perhaps you’d be drawn to things like this—

(from Howard Pyle’s 1903 The Story of King Arthur and His Knights—here’s a LINK to your copy:  https://ia802705.us.archive.org/30/items/storyofkingarthu00pylerich/storyofkingarthu00pylerich.pdf )

Few letters or diaries, then, in which your protagonist/s, can write down their thoughts and happenings, but there was, in our world,  a written model which might be useful:  complicated medieval manuscripts with titles like The Yellow Book of Lecan, composed about 1400,

and The Black Book of Carmarthen, written pre-1250.

Unlike modern works, these are actually compendia, containing everything from poetry to epic to historical chronicles to practical things like finding the right date for Easter.  Perhaps your protagonist/s could use one of these to set down the events which would, in turn, form the plot of your novel?

Above, I suggested that, if you wrote about WW2 or even the Civil War, there were lots of accounts by veterans of their experiences, and even a few autobiographies from the American Revolutionary period.  By employing these, if you wrote about actual historical periods, you could add a level of convincing detail.  As well, they could help you to flesh out your protagonist/s’ viewpoint, providing other experiences to make the story not only fuller, but also to give it greater depth.

For your imaginary war, then, you might give your imaginary heroes comrades during the struggle, who then would  be able to provide your heroes with insights about places and people and events they themselves might not experience.

So what would all of this look like, put together?  Perhaps something like this:

“THE DOWNFALL

OF THE

LORD OF THE RINGS

AND THE

RETURN OF THE KING

(as seen by the Little People; being the memoirs of Bilbo and Frodo of the Shire, supplemented by the accounts of their friends and the learning of the Wise)

Together with extracts from Books of Lore translated by Bilbo in Rivendell.”

Imagine it at the beginning of “a big book with plain red leather covers; its tall pages…now almost filled.”

Now you only have to wait for Sam to fill in those last pages.

Thanks for reading, as ever,

Stay well,

Orcs are believed to hate sunlight—but watch out for those with a white hand on their shields,

And know that there’s always

MTCIDC

O

PS

This, Posting Number 416, ends Year Eight and, with this PS, I want to express my gratitude to those who follow and those who pop in for an occasional read.  Next week, we’ll launch into Year Nine, where we’ll have a look at a work by an author who actually did influence JRRT, as you’ll see…