Welcome, as always, dear readers.

It’s almost Halloween once more and, to honor an ancient (and favorite) holiday, I’m writing on a creepy subject.

(This is pretty spooky, too, I think.  To create one for yourself, see:  https://pinkpixieforest.blogspot.com/2012/09/lawn-ghost-re-post.html#.VFEW0fl4pAU )

Halloween is our version of the Celtic Samain (which, in Old Irish, would be SAH-vin, more or less, modern spelling being Samhain and modern pronunciation SAH-win), the beginning of a celebration which ends summer (Samh) and looks towards winter (Gamh).  It’s also a time when the dead are thought to appear briefly among the living.  (For an entertaining article with lots of detail see:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samhain#Etymology ) 

In this month which borders summer and winter, the dead and their (under)world have appeared several times in my teaching.  First, Herakles, as the last of his Labors, was required by his (distant) cousin, Eurystheus, to go down into that underworld to bring back Cerberus, the watchdog of Hades.

(Eurystheus, although related to Herakles through the hero Perseus, clearly hasn’t inherited an heroic qualities.  Eventually, in one version of the story, he orders Herakles to leave the fruits of his labors at the city gates.)

In another version of tradition, Herakles rescues Theseus (but not his companion, Perithoos) from a botched attempt to kidnap Persephone from the Underworld.

In the class, we went on to the Odyssey, where, in Book 11, Odysseus is told by Circe that he must visit the Land of the Dead, to learn something important from the seer Tireisias,

but also meets a recently-dead crewman, Elpenor,

as well as his mother, and the hero Achilles, killed at Troy.

(That’s Achilles on the left, Ajax on the right, playing a game with numbers—perhaps a board game?, as Achilles is saying “Tesara”, “Four” and Ajax is saying “Tria”, “Three”.)

Near the end of the poem, we return to the Underworld where we see everyone from the ghost of the murdered Agamemnon

to the crowd of suitors killed by Odysseus and his son, Telemachos, with the aid of a pair of faithful slaves, Eumaios and Philoitios.

After Herakles and Odysseus, perhaps the most famous visit to the Underworld occurs when Orpheus attempts to rescue his wife, Eurydice,

which is also the subject of two of my favorite operas, Claudio Monteverdi’s (1567-1643) L’Orfeo, 1607,

(its first printing, two years later)

which you can see here:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0mD16EVxNOM

and C.W. Gluck’s (1714-1787) Orfeo ed Euridice—

Gluck produced several different versions of this—this which you can see here is the original 1762 Vienna version:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JUpZ1Npj23M

There is also Offenbach’s (1819-1880) comic version Orfee aux Enfers, Orpheus in the Underworld, 1858, revised version, 1874—of which this is the cover of the 1874 score–

and you can watch a very well-sung modern performance of the 1858 version here:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pKjaT1GV9gg )

In all of these stories, the main character goes to the Otherworld to bring back someone (or something, if you consider Cerberus an “it”).  Recently, I’ve been re-listening to a beautiful and sometimes eerie symphony by J.J. Raff (1822-1882) based upon a once-famous ballad, “Lenore”, by Gottfried August Buerger (1747-1794),

in which the opposite takes place:  a visitor comes from the Otherworld to bring someone there, instead. 

(I’m guessing that this is the earliest published illustration, by Daniel Chodowiecki, 1726-1801, which appears in Gedichte von Gottfried August Buerger Mit 8 Kupfern von Chodowiecki—“Poetry of G.A. Buerger with 8 Copperplate Engravings by Chodowiecki”–Goettingen, 1778.  This and other Chodowiecki illustrations may be found at:  https://www.gottfried-august-buerger-molmerswende.de/Burger_und_sein_Museum/Rund_um_Burger/Illustrationen/illu2/body_illu2.html )

Buerger’s ballad, which was first published in the Goettinger Musenalmanach for 1774 (here’s your copy:  https://www.gottfried-august-buerger-molmerswende.de/musenalmanach_1774.pdf   See pages 214-226 for the poem), has a very simple plot:

1. Lenore is engaged to Wilhelm, a cavalryman in the army of Frederick the Great during the Seven Years War (1756-1763)

2. The war over, others return, but not Wilhelm

3. Lenore becomes increasingly distraught and, eventually, curses God for what she sees as Wilhelm’s (and her) undeserved fate

4. One night, there is a knock at the door and it appears to be the missing Wilhelm, who asks Lenore to mount up behind him and ride to their marriage bed

5. Their ride through the night is at a breakneck speed and around them the landscape becomes increasingly disquieting, to say the least

6. Finally, they arrive—at a cemetery gate–and, riding in, they come to an open grave—Wilhelm’s—and Wilhelm turns into Death himself, informing Lenore that one does not quarrel with God and the poem ends with her marriage bed being the grave (although there is an faint implication that perhaps Lenore’s soul will be saved)

In 1774, intellectual currents in the German states (no “Germany” as a whole will exist till 1871) were flowing towards what would become Romanticism, and the poem was an immediate success, combining prevailing early Romantic favorite themes:  death, the supernatural, and history—with a little morality thrown in.   It took about twenty years for this poem to reach a similar popularity in England, but, when it first appeared, in multiple translations—or, considering how they differ from the original, better to say “versions”—in 1796, the same current began at least to trickle into English literary thought.  (For a very full treatment of the Englishing of “Lenore”, see:   https://archive.org/details/earliestenglish00emergoog/page/n2/mode/2up?view=theater )

Needless to say, after that initial flood of versions, literary people through the 19^th century continued to try their hand at translating—or adapting—Buerger’s original poem.  I think my favorite is an early attempt by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, 1828-1882, which you can read here:  https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Lenore_(Rossetti)

Raff’s symphony, first publically performed in 1873, was, like Buerger’s poem, an immediate success, being a big later Romantic piece, which begins with the depiction of passionate love, moves to Wilhelm’s march off to war (watch out—that march is very catchy), then to Lenore’s anguish, the wild ride, but then a less terrible ending, entitled, in the score, “Wiedervereinigung in Tode”—“Reuniting in Death”, which is quite peaceful.  Here’s the first modern recording of it so that you can see what you think:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h77-FLvJ3sM .

In the meantime, thanks, as ever for reading (and perhaps I should also say listening),

Stay well,

If, on 31 October, you leave your outside light on, be prepared for goblins,

And know that, as always, there’s

MTCIDC

O

ps

Buerger’s poem has had many illustrators over the years.  Here are the works of a few as (I hope) a little extra Halloween treat.

(by William Blake, 1757-1821, of all people—but then his good friend, Heinrich Fuessli/Henry Fuseli, 1741-1825, painted that bizarre “The Nightmare”, 1781)

(by J.D. Schubert, 1761-1822)

(by Frank Kirchbach, 1859-1912)

pps

I’ve always loved Halloween, but there was one tradition which turned up each year and which always really frightened me as a child—Disney’s Headless Horseman. 

Even though I quickly learned that it was only a bully’s trick to scare off a potential suitor, the setting is so skillfully done in the Disney version that my knowledge of what was behind that frightening figure never really helped.  If you don’t know the story, here it is, “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” from Washington Irving’s The Sketchbook of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent., first published in book form in 1824 (this is an 1864 illustrated text of the author’s revised edition):   https://gutenberg.org/cache/epub/2048/pg2048-images.html

As always, dear readers, welcome.

Some years ago, an Italian friend of mine decided to take a French course.  By the second week, he was complaining about pronunciation:  “In Italian, 100 percent of everything written is said.  In French,” he continued, his eyebrows raised, “almost nothing is!”

This is, for an English speaker, a standard complaint—and only one of two, not only those silent letters on the end of words, but also that, even when something is pronounced, the same letters can stand for different sounds, which is what gave this posting its title, three similarly spelled English words—and yet:  through is said “throo”, rough is said “ruff”, and bough is said “bow”—but that looks like the word we pronounce as “boe”—although, in this case, it’s said as b + ow!  as in ouch!—or is that ooch?  Or uhch?

All this comes from something called the Great Vowel Shift, first named that by Otto Jesperson (1860-1943)

 in his extensive A Modern English Grammar on Historical Principles (7 volumes, 1909-1949), where the term shows up in Volume 1, “Part I Sounds and Spellings”.  Here, he described an odd change in English pronunciation from the medieval period

through Shakespeare’s time

and beyond. 

The explanation for this is complicated, including the Norman conquest of England,

which brought a ruling class

(William the Conqueror with his half-brothers, Odo, Bishop of Bayeux, and Robert, Count of Mortain)

which spoke one kind of French (which itself must have had elements of Norse, as the Normans’ direct ancestors had been Vikings who had so colonized one area of western  France that it came to be called “Norsemanland”—Normandy).

Although the rulers spoke French, the ruled continued to speak Anglo-Saxon (also and now commonly called Old English),

which must have made for no end of difficulties, at least initially, although, when it came to things like seizing local land and demanding taxes, the Normans appear to have had little trouble making their demands known.

(This is a page from the “Winchester Book”, known colloquially as “the Domesday Book”.  Written in Latin, this was the attempt, in 1086, by William’s agents, to catalogue all land-holding in England and part of Wales in great detail.  For more, see:  https://www.domesdaybook.co.uk/ )

Writing in Old English appears to have continued, in some areas, into the mid-12^th century, but then fades away, although the spoken language remained and, combined with a second wave of northern French, formed the basis of what is called Middle English, which people usually refer to as “the language of Chaucer”.

(This is from the early 15^th-century Ellesmere Manuscript, which is a beautifully illustrated copy of the “Canterbury Tales”.   To see more about it, go to:  https://hdl.huntington.org/digital/collection/p15150coll7/id/2360  As Chaucer died in 1400, it’s possible that this is an actual portrait.  Unfortunately, we have no information about his horse.  It is interesting, however, that Chaucer’s last name is not English, but French,  meaning “shoemaker” , while his first name, “Geoffrey” seems to be derived from a Germanic compound which appears in the Old English name “Godfrith” and in the Norman French name,  “Geoffrei”, meaning something like “God’s peace/protection”.     See:   https://ia904506.us.archive.org/34/items/ancestryofchauce00kern/ancestryofchauce00kern.pdf for much more on the subject of Chaucer’s last name.)

Tolkien, however, would have been the first to tell you that Middle English began some time before Chaucer had been born and that Chaucer’s English was just one form, from one area of England.   Tolkien himself had published an edition of Ancrene Wisse, an early 13^th century handbook for anchoresses (a kind of medieval female hermit—see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anchorite ), written in a dialect very different from that of Chaucer,

as well as, with E.V. Gordon, an edition of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, which, although written by an author who lived in the same era as Chaucer, spoke a Middle English which showed significant differences from that of the author of “The Canterbury Tales.

Throw into this mix the fact that, when printed texts began to appear in the late 15^th century,

early printers were influenced by the English which they spoke, there not being  a “common English”, either in speech or in writing. William Caxton (c.1422-c. 1491), who is believed to have introduced the printing press to England in the 1470s, came from Kent and was well aware that his English was not the English spoken elsewhere and that even the English of his own childhood was changing.  (See this brief article for more on this:  https://www.bl.uk/treasures/caxton/english.html  and for a very interesting monograph on Caxton’s prologues and epilogues, see this: https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.233974/page/n245/mode/2up  )

Putting all of this together, we arrive at the bizarre word GHOTI, first mentioned  in a letter from  the publisher Charles Ollier to Leigh Hunt in 1855, in which the  spelling of the word is explained as:

1.  the GH is the F sound in “enough”

2.  the O is the IH sound in “women”

3. and the TI is the  SH in “mention”

so GHOTI is actually an alternate spelling of FISH.  (See:  https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=81 with its wonderful attached comments), and the Great Vowel Shift is—or perhaps should be—to blame.

(For more on the Shift, see this very jolly explanation:   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VOOAb7erAmE  )

Needless to say, then, when my Italian friend had complained about French, he turned to me and said, “And then there’s English…” (which he, in fact, spoke extremely well) and I had to admit, English has its orthographic difficulties.  This was a sort of personal  nostra culpa (which I’ve seen translated in the singular as “my bad”, but, since I’m at the other end of many generations of English speakers/writers, it seemed more appropriate to write “our bad”) for the quirks in my native tongue.  At the same time, another Latin phrase came to mind, usually written tu quoque, which should probably be translated in a childish tone, “you do it, too!” and I point at one of our Germanic cousins, Danish.  There’s a common example of “well, it’s spelled like this, but said like that”:  rodgrod med flode (which requires that the O’s all have the slash through them which indicates a sound like—hmm, go to:  https://www.babbel.com/en/magazine/danish-alphabet to see all of the ways in which it can be pronounced (and already I imagine that you understand where I’m going with this).  Here’s a native speaker saying it:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xasgdhN7S48   (For an entertaining little lecture on why Danish sounds the way it does—and I myself think that it’s actually pretty cool, in fact—see:   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eI5DPt3Ge_s )

It’s clear that we English-speakers are not alone.

Thanks for reading,

Stay well,

Remember:  “I before E—except after C—or—when sounded like AY, as in ‘neighbor’ and ‘weigh’ “,

And know that, as always, there’s

MTCIDC

O

PS

Here’s an intelligent and fun historical explanation of why French frustrated mio amico italiano (in whose home language every letter is pronounced):  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a2TWBBxwhbU

Welcome, dear readers, as always.

When Frodo and his companions meet what appear to be two beggars on the road home to the Shire, they are in for an unpleasant surprise.

(a splendid Ted Nasmith, who often chooses moments in Tolkien which no one else seems to have thought of)

“ ‘Well Saruman!’ said Gandalf. ‘Where are you going?’”

Saruman’s response is just what one would expect:  self-pitying and spiteful, attacking Galadriel in particular:

“…You have doomed yourselves, and you know it.  And it will afford me some comfort as I wander to think that you pulled down your own house when you destroyed mine.”

He also has words for the Hobbits:

“…Well, it will serve you right when you come home, if you find things less good in the Southfarthing than you would like…” (The Return of the King, Book Six, Chapter 6, “Many Partings”)

Sam is, of course, right to say “And I didn’t like the sound of what he said about the Southfarthing” as the hobbits discover when they reach the Brandywine and the edge of the Shire:

“It was after nightfall when, wet and tired, the travelers came at last to the Brandywine, and they found the way barred.  At either end of the Bridge there was a great spiked gate; and on the further side of the river they could see that some new houses had been built; two-storeyed with narrow straight-sided windows, bare and dimly lit and all very gloomy and un-Shirelike.”

It only gets worse from there, with hints of a kind of brutal communist-like regime

“It’s all those ‘gatherers” and ‘sharers”, I reckon, going round counting and measuring and taking off to storage.  They do more gathering, and we never see most of the stuff again,” says Hob Hayward, who is, in fact, a servant of this new regime.

And, instead of an elected mayor, there is “the Chief” and, behind him, “Sharkey”, who turns out to be Sam’s foreboding personified:  Saruman.

(by Inger Edelfeldt)

Saruman has been busy in the Shire:

“…’if they’re such fools, I will get ahead of them and teach them a lesson.  One ill turn deserves another.’  It would have been a sharper lesson, if only you had given me a little more time and more Men.  Still I have already done much that you will find it hard to mend or undo in your lives.  And it will be pleasant to think of that and set it against my injuries.”

Besides reorganizing the Shire socially and politically, Saruman has been busy turning the countryside into an equivalent of early Industrial Revolution England—Tolkien’s own nightmare of what was happening before and in his own time:

“Still there seemed an unusual amount of burning going on, and smoke rose from many points round about.  A great cloud of it was going up far away in the direction of the Woody End…

…they came to Bywater by its wide pool; and there they had their first really painful shock…there was a whole line of ugly new houses along Pool Side…An avenue of trees had stood there.  They were all gone.  And looking with dismay up the road towards Bag End they saw a tall chimney of brick in the distance.  It was pouring out black smoke into the evening air.”  (The Return of the King, Book Six, Chapter , “The Scouring of the Shire”)

Because of Saruman’s words, it’s possible to see this as simply a complex act of revenge, a payback by him for the loss of Isengard and his position as head of the Istari. 

(by those Tolkien illustrator pioneers, the Hildebrandts)

Frodo, however, sees it as one part of something much larger and much worse:

“ ‘This is worse than Mordor!’ said Sam…

“ ‘Yes, this is Mordor,’ said Frodo.  ‘Just one of its works.  Saruman was doing its work all the time, even when he thought he was working for himself…’ “

This is a theme which we can trace all the way back to Gandalf’s description of his conversation with Saruman in “The Council of Elrond”, where Saruman has tried to enlist Gandalf on his side for the conquest of Gondor he anticipates:

“ ‘…A new Power is rising.  Against it the old allies and policies will not avail us at all.  There is no hope left in Elves or dying Numenor.  This then is one choice before you, before us.  We may join with that Power.  It would be wise, Gandalf.  There is hope that way.  Victory is at hand; there will be rich reward for those that aided it.  As the Power grows, its proved friends will also grow; and the Wise, such as you and I, may with patience come at last to direct its courses, to control it…’

‘Saruman,’ I said, ‘I have heard speeches of this kind before, but only in the mouths of emissaries sent from Mordor to deceive the ignorant…’ “ (The Fellowship of the Ring, Book Two, Chapter 2, “The Council of Elrond”)

As we learn, Saruman has unwisely believed that, in handling a palantir, his communications with Sauron have been simply an exchange of views between two sovereign powers.

 (another Hildebrandt)

This has led him to produce his own Mordor in miniature at Isengard, with its imitation of Mordor’s industrial power—

“But Saruman had slowly shaped it to his shifting purposes, and made it better, as he thought, being deceived—for all those arts and subtle devices, for which he forsook his former wisdom, and which fondly he imagined were his own, came but from Mordor; so that what he made was naught, only a little copy, a child’s model or a slave’s flattery, of that vast fortress, armoury, prison, furnace of great power, Barad-dur, the Dark Tower, which suffered no rival and laughed at flattery, biding its time, secure in its pride and its immeasurable strength.” (The Two Towers, Book Three, Chapter 7, “The Road to Isengard”)

Something which appears in the Prologue to The Lord of the Rings, however, has led me to imagine that Saruman could be doing all of this not just for the sake of vengeance, but for a larger purpose, now that Sauron and Mordor are no more:  making a comeback.  Very early in that text, the narrator says of the Hobbits:

“They do not and did not understand or like machines more complicated than a forge-bellows, a water-mill, or a hand-loom, though they were skilful with tools.” (The Lord of the Rings, Prologue I “Concerning Hobbits”)

England, in the mid-18^th century, was suffering an economic crisis.  From the Middle Ages, it had long been a producer of wool and woolen goods for Europe.

This had always been a piece-work industry, in which everything had been done by hand.

With England’s rise to a dominant position in trade and shipping at the time of the Seven Years War, however, demand had begun rapidly to exceed supply.   And the means to reorganize supply were the beginnings of the Industrial Revolution.  The slowness of supply came from having to depend upon spinners (called “spinsters”)

and weavers,

the usual formula being that it took at least five spinsters to keep a weaver in thread.  And here we see the “hand-loom” which the Hobbits understood.

The means of changing this came in the form of machines, which began to appear in the 1760s with James Hargreaves’ (1721-1778) “spinning jenny”,

which allowed one operator, turning a crank, to produce 24 bobbins of thread at once. 

Since the Romans, people had used water power to grind wheat and other grains into flour—this is the “water-mill” which the Hobbits also understood.  And JRRT provides us with a picture of one.

It was easy, then, for an ingenious engineer, Richard Arkwright (1732-1792),

to take the next step and figure out a way to hook a thread-producing machine to water power, thus removing the person turning the crank entirely and producing something which, in theory, could work seven days a week, twenty-four hours a day.  And it was a simple jump from there to factories with water-powered looms mechanically producing yard after yard of cloth.

Water power had its disadvantages:  drought and winter freezes could stop the process, so the further step was to replace the water with the magic power of the 18^th and early 19^th centuries:  steam.  Here, the brilliant James Watt,

who, I suspect, thought that virtually everything could be powered by it, enters the picture.

 And so were created steam-powered mills, with their smokey stacks—just the sort of thing which Frodo and Sam see with such dismay on their way to Bag End.

In time, however, mills of this sort could have other uses including producing standardized weapons.  Although the idea of making muskets with interchangeable parts

dates to the later 18^th century and possibly France, it would appear that a leader in the industry was the American, Eli Whitney (1765-1825),

and we see here his steam-powered arms factory, near New Haven, Connecticut, in 1827.

No one in the Third Age had firearms (although Saruman and Sauron both appear to have gunpowder—see “Fourth Age—Big Bang Theory”, 17 February, 2016), but the machines which might have stamped out musket parts could just as well have used the same power for stamping out swords and shields and and whatever clothing Saruman’s orcs wore could easily have been turned out in factories just like the one which appalls the Hobbits.

We are told that Saruman, in imitation of Sauron, had turned Isengard into a vast production site to further his plans of conquest:  can we also imagine that he might have had it in mind to do the same to the Shire, with his mind “of metal and wheels” to try to replace Sauron at last?

Thanks for reading, as always.

Stay well,

Imagine driving a Stanley Steamer,

And know that, as ever, there’s

MTCIDC

O

As always, dear readers, welcome.

   I have just finished John Christopher’s (one of a number of pen names for Samuel Youd, 1922-2012)

1960s tetrology about the tripods,

originally a trilogy, to which the author added a fourth volume as a “prequel”.

  The tripods are the vehicles—and emblems—of an alien race , which at an earlier time, had invaded the earth.  If you know H.G. Wells’ work, and, if you read this blog, that’s probably a sure bet, you’ll recognize where Christopher got the idea, both for the invasion and the tripods—

   Europe, in the late 19^th century, when Wells came up with his idea, was an increasingly large armed camp.  Industrialization had promoted more and bigger armaments and larger populations had encouraged national conscription (except for Britain, which maintained only a small—especially in comparison–volunteer army).

With heightened awareness of the possibilities of imminent war somewhere, and perhaps soon, British fiction writers began to turn out books like William Le Queux’ (1864-1927) 

1894 what-if novel, The Great War in England 1897,

(Here’s your copy:  https://archive.org/details/greatwarinengla00queugoog/page/n8/mode/2up

in which French and Russian forces combine to invade Britain.

Invasions don’t have to come from the continent, however, and, in 1897, Wells (1866-1946), began

publishing a serial in Pearson’s Magazine entitled  The War of the Worlds,

following that with the story in book form in 1898.

(If you’d like to see it in its original magazine form, here it is, beginning with this:  Pearson’s Magazine, Vol.III, April, 1897, No.16

https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=inu.30000041662515&view=1up&seq=374&skin=2021

For the complete text, look here: https://archive.org/details/h-g-wells_the-war-of-the-worlds  )

   In Wells’ narrative, Earth is attacked by a series of cylinders, fired like giant bullets, from Mars, which oddly presages Georges Melies’  (1861-1938) 1902 comic silent film Le Voyage dans la Lune (The Trip to the Moon), in which a group of Earthmen are shot to the moon by a giant cannon.

(And you can see it here:  https://archive.org/details/VoyageDansLaLune  The Internet Archive has over 200 silent films and is a wonderful resource for enjoying an art form which precedes later film, but has its own life and isn’t simply black and white movies without sound.)

   Inside the cylinders are the Martians, few in number, but equipped with weapons far beyond anything available on earth.  And so Wells’ story is the very opposite of a comedy, the Martians being so advanced that, even with a few losses, they, with their superior technology, quickly devastate not only the area around London, but the people around London as well with a combination of what Wells’ calls a “heat ray” and this:

“Each of the Martians, standing in the great crescent I have described, had discharged, by means of the gunlike tube he carried, a huge canister over whatever hill, copse, cluster of houses, or other possible cover for guns, chanced to be in front of him. Some fired only one of these, some two—as in the case of the one we had seen; the one at Ripley is said to have discharged no fewer than five at that time. These canisters smashed on striking the ground—they did not explode—and incontinently disengaged an enormous volume of heavy, inky vapour, coiling and pouring upward in a huge and ebony cumulus cloud, a gaseous hill that sank and spread itself slowly over the surrounding country. And the touch of that vapour, the inhaling of its pungent wisps, was death to all that breathes.”  (The War of the Worlds, Book 1, Chapter XV)

which horribly prefigures this, which appeared only a few years later on the battlefields of the Great War—

The Martians were mostly represented by their “war machines”, huge metal monsters with three legs,

(There are many images of these things on-line, but this seems to me to come closest to Wells’ original description, although this, from the 2005 Tom Cruise film doesn’t seem so far off. )

but the anonymous main character manages to see some Martians outside their machines and here’s his description:

“They were, I now saw, the most unearthly creatures it is possible to conceive. They were huge round bodies—or, rather, heads—about four feet in diameter, each body having in front of it a face. This face had no nostrils—indeed, the Martians do not seem to have had any sense of smell, but it had a pair of very large dark-coloured eyes, and just beneath this a kind of fleshy beak. In the back of this head or body—I scarcely know how to speak of it—was the single tight tympanic surface, since known to be anatomically an ear, though it must have been almost useless in our dense air. In a group round the mouth were sixteen slender, almost whiplike tentacles, arranged in two bunches of eight each. These bunches have since been named rather aptly, by that distinguished anatomist, Professor Howes, the hands. Even as I saw these Martians for the first time they seemed to be endeavouring to raise themselves on these hands, but of course, with the increased weight of terrestrial conditions, this was impossible. There is reason to suppose that on Mars they may have progressed upon them with some facility.

The internal anatomy, I may remark here, as dissection has since shown, was almost equally simple. The greater part of the structure was the brain, sending enormous nerves to the eyes, ear, and tactile tentacles. Besides this were the bulky lungs, into which the mouth opened, and the heart and its vessels. The pulmonary distress caused by the denser atmosphere and greater gravitational attraction was only too evident in the convulsive movements of the outer skin.

And this was the sum of the Martian organs. Strange as it may seem to a human being, all the complex apparatus of digestion, which makes up the bulk of our bodies, did not exist in the Martians. They were heads—merely heads. Entrails they had none. They did not eat, much less digest. Instead, they took the fresh, living blood of other creatures, and injected it into their own veins. I have myself seen this being done, as I shall mention in its place. But, squeamish as I may seem, I cannot bring myself to describe what I could not endure even to continue watching. Let it suffice to say, blood obtained from a still living animal, in most cases from a human being, was run directly by means of a little pipette into the recipient canal. . . “(War, Book 2, Chapter II)

Probably the end of this story is familiar to you:  although the Martians have advanced technology, they lack immune systems which will fight off terrestrial diseases and, just when it looks like they are about to march on the rest of the UK, they quickly succumb to infections.

Over the years, there have been a number of attempts to dramatize Wells’ story, from the famous Orson Welles (no relation, as far as I know) radio adaptation of 1938,

which caused a certain amount of panic among listeners in the US,

(You can read about it here: 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_War_of_the_Worlds_(1938_radio_drama)

and listen to it here:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9q7tN7MhQ4I )

to the perhaps equally well-known George Pal film from 1953,

in which the story is moved to the early 1950s and southern California and the Martians’ war machines become sleek aircraft,

(for more, see a very interesting and thorough article here: 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_War_of_the_Worlds_(1953_film) )

to the Tom Cruise/Steven Spielberg movie of 2005, in which events take place in the present, on the east coast of the US. 

(about which you can read more here:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_the_Worlds_(2005_film) and for more adaptations of the Wells’ story, see:   https://www.imdb.com/list/ls058900268/ )

Unlike those who have written scripts which follow, sometimes more, sometimes less, closely Wells’ text, Christopher takes a completely different approach.  To begin, the aliens are not Martians, but come from a distant galaxy and successfully conquer the majority of Earth.  Although their tripods have the destructive power of Wells’ war machines, they conquer in a completely different manner:  through brainwashing.  They take over television and use it to convince most Earthlings that they are not hostile invaders, but beneficent beings and Earth would be far better off with them in control.  This we learn in the first book, or “prequel”, When the Tripods Came.

Once they had achieved their conquest, they erect three huge dome-cities across the northern hemispheres and maintain control by placing a kind of webbing, called “the cap” on the heads of all humans past puberty.  This mesh is dug into the skull and transmits electronic waves which convey the orders of the aliens.  In the subsequent books, which take place some time later, we follow Will, an English boy who, with his difficult cousin, Henry, escapes England ahead of capping and manages to reach what has become a center of resistance to the aliens in The White Mountains.

In the third volume, Will and another boy, to gain intelligence, penetrate one of the three dome cities of the aliens in The City of Gold and Lead,

and, in the fourth and final book, The Pool of Fire, Will and others finally defeat the aliens by breaking open the domes of all three cities, allowing Earth’s atmosphere in, which then poisons all of the aliens.

One might see this as fairly standard science fiction of a certain sort, all about a willful but intelligent boy who has to learn first how to survive and then to take action in a hostile world.  It moves along at a good pace and there is a certain amount of friction and character development, but, for me, the most interesting parts are about the aliens, beginning with Christopher’s description of them:

“…They stood much taller than a man, nearly twice as tall, and were broad in proportion.   Their bodies were wider at the bottom than at the top, four or five feet around I thought, but tapered upward to something like a foot in circumference at the head.  If it was the head, for there was no break in the continuity, no sign of a neck.  The next thing I noticed was that their bodies were supported not on two legs but three, these being thick but short.  They had, matching them, three arms, or rather tentacles, issuing from a point about halfway up their bodies.  And their eyes—I saw that there were three of those, too, set in a flattened triangle, one above and between the other two, and a foot or so below the crown.  In color the creatures were green, though I saw that the shades differed, some being dark, the green tinged with brown, and others quite pallid.  That, and the fact that their heights varied to some extent, appeared to be the only means of telling one from another… (The City of Gold and Lead, 125-126)

It’s no wonder, then, that the aliens use tripod vehicles—they are tripods themselves.

The dome city is, in fact, a kind of eco-dome, which replicates not only their home world’s atmosphere, but also its heat and heavy gravity.  They use young human males as slaves and so wearing is life in such a different climate, even when wearing an oxygen mask, which is a necessity, that it seems that 6 months are the usual life expectancy.  The humans are so conditioned, however, that, when they feel too worn out, they willingly betake themselves to “the Place of Happy Release” to be exterminated.

A striking fact about the aliens is that they seem almost solitary, perhaps because reproduction is by budding and therefore there is little need for the kind of socializing which goes on in human society.  As well, they are aesthetes, seeking or making what they believe to be beautiful—including preserving what they consider fine specimens of young female humans in collections which echo rows on butterflies on pins.  Altogether, I feel that Christopher has produced a distinct race, intelligent, capable, but ultimately alien in every sense.

The idea of the Martian invasion first caught my attention when I read it in comic book form in childhood,

and I’ve read and reread the novel more than once—and even once wrote a blog posting about it (One World, Two Wars, 19 February, 2020), but, reading it this time for this posting, I found a connection—perhaps only the suggestion of a connection—with Tolkien.

   This appears in a footnote by JRRT in one of his letters.  A couple, Charlotte and Denis Plimmer, had interviewed him for The Daily Telegraph Magazine in the later 1960s and though seemingly kind and well-meaning, had either misunderstood or simply recreated parts of the interview, a draft of which they then sent to JRRT.  Tolkien then, very patiently, wrote to correct a number of points and, in the process, added:

“I was greatly taken by the book that was (I believe) the runner-up when The L.R.was given the Fantasy Award:  [The] Death of Grass.  (letter to Mr. and Mrs. Plimmer, 8 February, 1967, Letters, 377)

The Death of Grass is a 1956 science fiction novel by John Christopher. 

If Tolkien knew and enjoyed that earlier novel by Christopher, perhaps he had read about tripods, too?

Thanks, as ever, for reading.

Stay well,

Avoid hair nets,

And know that, as always, there’s

MTCIDC

O

PS

If you would like to know more about the tripods and their world, have a look at:  

https://thetripods.fandom.com/wiki/The_Tripods_Wiki

PPS

There is a very interesting 2013 pseudo-documentary about a Martian invasion called The Great Martian War, 1913-1917, in which the Great War of 1914-1918 is replaced with an alternative:  the great powers of Europe and North America, instead of fighting each other during this period, are allied in a war against exterrestrial invaders.  You can read about it here: 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Martian_War_1913%E2%80%931917

and see it here:  https://archive.org/details/TheGreatMartianWar19131917.Mister.X   It cleverly mixes real period film with altered or imitation film, giving it a surprisingly authentic look.