Welcome, dear readers, as always.

Anyone who reads The Lord of the Rings must have scenes which haunt them.  For me, it’s everything from the Mines of Moria

(Angus McBride)

to that moment when Frodo almost doesn’t destroy the ring,

(Ted Nasmith)

but one of the most poignant for me is that place in their journey to Mordor when Frodo and Sam stand at the crossroads in Ithilien:

“…In the very center four ways met.  Beyond them lay the road to the Morannon; before them it ran out again upon its long journey south; to their right the road from old Osgiliath came climbing up, and crossing, passed out eastward into darkness; the fourth way, the road they were to take.

Standing there for a moment filled with dread Frodo became aware that a light was shining; he saw it glowing on Sam’s face beside him…The brief glow fell upon a huge sitting figure, still and solemn as the great stone kings of Argonath.  The years had gnawed it, and violent hands had maimed it.  Its head was gone, and in its place was set in mockery a round rough-hewn stone, rudely painted by savage hands in the likeness of a grinning face with one large red eye in the midst of its forehead.  Upon its knees and  mighty chair, and all about the pedestal, were idle scrawls mixed with the foul symbols that the maggot- folk of Mordor used.”  (The Two Towers, Book Four, Chapter 7, “Journey to the Cross-roads”)

(another Ted Nasmith)

The image of the headless king, seated on his throne, covered by orc graffiti, led me to this quotation:

“Napoleon or someone said you could always turn tragedy into comedy by sittin’ down.”

(Dorothy L. Sayers, The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club, 1928)

This is spoken by the hero of the book, the noble detective Lord Peter Wimsey, (seen here played by Ian Carmichael) and is meant to calm down a suspect,

but it has made me wonder if the opposite might be true:  suppose sitting down can produce tragedy.  Certainly the seated king at the crossroads, the image of a once-powerful king of Gondor, has suffered from the depredation of the orcs, a symbol of Gondor’s flickering power and loss of the eastern bank of the Anduin to Sauron.  But might the opposite also be possible, and standing up produce, if not comedy, at least a lightening of the mood?

If this seated figure suggests tragedy, what about other such sittings in The Lord of the Rings?

Certain figures are shown simply sitting:

“The chamber was filled with a soft light; its walls were green and silver and its roof of gold.  Many Elves were seated there.  On two chairs beneath the bole of the tree and canopied by a living bough there sat, side by side, Celeborn and Galadriel.”  (The Fellowship of the Ring, Book Two, Chapter 7, “The Mirror of Galadriel”—although “They stood up to greet their guests, after the manner of Elves…)

 

“They were like great figures seated upon thrones.  Each had three joined bodies, and three heads facing outward, and inward, and across the gateway.  The heads had vulture-faces, and on their great knees were laid clawlike hands.” (The Return of the King, Book Six, Chapter 1, “The Tower of Cirith Ungol”)

(the Hildebrandts)

For two others, however, there seems to be greater weight to their positions, which, as we read, clearly comes from the same sort of baleful influence as that which produced the headless king.  First, think of Denethor, the Steward of Gondor, in his initial appearance.

(Alan Lee)

“At the far end upon a dais of many steps was set a high throne under a canopy of marble shaped like a crowned helm; behind it was carved upon the walls and set with gems an image of a tree in flower.  But the throne was empty.  At the foot of the dais, upon the lowest step which was broad and deep, there was a stone chair, black and unadorned, and on it sat an old man gazing at his lap.  In his hand was a white rod with a golden knob.  He did not look up…

‘Hail, Lord and Steward of Minas Tirith, Denethor son of Ecthelion!  I am come with counsel and tidings in this dark hour.’ “

This suggests a penalty for sitting—the empty throne above, the lower seat, suggesting the lesser office, the old man who doesn’t look up, all so completely silent and grim and then Denethor speaks:

“ ‘Dark indeed is the hour,’ said the old man, ‘and at such times you are wont to come, Mithrandir.  But though all the signs forebode that the doom of Gondor is drawing nigh, less now to me is that darkness than my own darkness.’ “ (The Return of the King, Book Five, Chapter 1, “Minas Tirith”)

In time, we’ll see Denethor as an even a grimmer figure:   jealous of Gandalf and hostile to his surviving son, Faramir, sending him to near-certain death and we’ll learn that something which he then says to Gandalf will be more meaningful than perhaps he thinks: 

“ ‘Yea…for though the Stones be lost, they say, still the lords of Gondor have keener sight than lesser men, and many messages come to them.’ “

If Denethor is said to be old, Theoden, King of Rohan, is described as decrepit, in contrast to his great hall and its throne:

“At the far end of the house, beyond the hearth and facing north towards the doors, was a dais with three steps; and in the middle of the dais was a great gilded chair.  Upon it sat a man so bent with age that he seemed almost a dwarf…

There was a silence.  The old man did not move in his chair.  At length Gandalf spoke.  ‘Hail, Theoden son of Thengel!  I have returned.  For behold!  The storm comes, and now all friends should gather together, lest each singly be destroyed.’ “

(Alan Lee)

Theoden replies—and, as in the later case of Denethor, the greeting he offers is hardly a warm one:

“ ‘I greet you,’ he said, ‘and maybe you look for welcome.  But truth to tell your welcome is doubtful here, Master Gandalf.  You have ever been a herald of woe.  Troubles follow you like crows, and ever the oftener the worse.  I will not deceive you:  when I heard that Shadowfax had come back riderless, I rejoiced at the return of the horse,, but still more at the lack of the rider…’ “ (The Two Towers, Book Three, Chapter 6, “The King of the Golden Hall”)

If such figures, sitting, present such a depressed and depressing picture, can we turn the saying around again and find that their standing up will lead, if not toc omedy, at least to relief from what we’ve seen so far?  Galadriel and Celeborn stand, though only in greeting, but the Watchers of Cirith Ungol, those vulture-headed creatures, remain immobile, yet, even so, appear to give a shriek of alarm:

“[Sam] sprang past them; but even as he did so, thrusting the phial back into his bosom, he was aware as plainly as if a bar of steel had snapped to behind him, that their vigilance was renewed.  And from those evil heads there came a high shrill cry that echoed in the towering walls before him.”

And, in the case of Denethor, his getting up turns to more active negative behavior than that of the Watchers, though driven by the same evil force.   Corrupted by the Palantir he hints at having, when Faramir is wounded in the action which his father had demanded and appears to be dying, Denethor is stirred from his throne, but not to action for the sake of the Minas Tirith which it is his task to protect.  Instead, he plots suicide, taking his son with him until rescue comes in the form of Pippin, Gandalf, and a member of the Steward’s own guard, although Denethor persists in his madness and perishes.

(? I’m not sure who the artist here is)

For Theoden, however, standing has a completely different effect, once the baleful influence of Grima Wormtongue is removed:

“ ‘It is not so dark here,’ said Theoden.

‘No,’ said Gandalf.  ‘Nor does age lie so heavily on your shoulders as some would have you think.  Cast aside your prop!’

From the king’s hand the black staff fell clattering on the stones.  He drew himself up, slowly as a man that is stiff from long bending over some dull toil.  Now tall and straight he stood, and his eyes were blue as he looked into the opening sky.”  

So far, then, the answer to the idea of standing vs sitting would appear to be 50/50. 

But, it being the turn of the year, and, as I always try in this blog to strike a positive note, let’s return to our opening scene and complete the image which haunts me–

(by Darrell Sweet)

The nameless, headless king seems to be a sad ruin, and, as a statue, will never arise, and yet:

“Suddenly, caught by the level beams, Frodo saw the old king’s head; it was lying rolled away by the roadside.  ‘Look, Sam!’ he cried, startled into speech.  ‘Look!  The king has got a crown again!’

The eyes were hollow and the carven beard was broken, but about the high stern forehead there was a coronal of silver and gold.  A trailing plant with flowers like small white stars had bound itself across the brows as if in reverence for the fallen king, and in the crevices of his stony head yellow stonecrop gleamed.

‘They cannot conquer for ever!’ said Frodo.”

Somehow, even without standing, the sitting king has provided as much hope as the risen Theoden, so perhaps the opposite of Wimsey’s statement, at least in modified form, may be found in The Lord of the Rings, tragedy may sometimes be lightened, and, whatever the forces of darkness may be, they cannot conquer for ever.

Thanks for reading, as always.

Stay well,

May the New Year bring more comedy than tragedy,

And remember that, as ever, there’s

MTCIDC

O

PS

On the Gregorian calendar, it’s about to be New Year’s Eve, which is traditionally a time for exuberant celebration (for some a euphemism).  In keeping with the season, here’s another chair scene, but hardly a solemn one.

The Spanish Inquisition has burst onto the scene, grabbing a nice old lady and accusing her of heresy.  She is, not surprisingly, a bit confused and so they begin a series of horrible tortures, including–

“Ximinez [angrily hurling away the cushions]: Hm! She is made of harder stuff! Cardinal Fang! Fetch…THE COMFY CHAIR!

[JARRING CHORD]

[Zoom into Fang’s horrified face]

Fang [terrified]: The…Comfy Chair?

[Biggles pushes in a comfy chair — a really plush one]

Ximinez: So you think you are strong because you can survive the soft cushions. Well, we shall see. Biggles! Put her in the Comfy Chair!

[They roughly push her into the Comfy Chair]

Ximinez [with a cruel leer]: Now — you will stay in the Comfy Chair until lunch time, with only a cup of coffee at eleven. [aside, to Biggles] Is that really all it is?
Biggles: Yes, lord.
Ximinez: I see. I suppose we make it worse by shouting a lot, do we? Confess, woman. Confess! Confess! Confess! Confess!”

(There are two major variations of this—here’s one:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FAxkcPoLYcQ )

As always, readers, welcome.

Teaching The Hobbit is always a pleasure and part of that pleasure is that students surprise me with new views and questions every time.  This time, it was a question about a passage in Chapter 18, “The Return Journey”:

“Anyway by mid-winter Gandalf and Bilbo had come all the way back, along both edges of the Forest, to the doors of Beorn’s house; and there for a while they both stayed.  Yule-tide was warm and merry there; and men came from far and wide to feast at Beorn’s bidding.”

“I know ‘Yule-tide’ from a Christmas carol,” a student said, “as in ‘Troll the ancient Yule-tide carol’, and I know that ‘Yule’ is Christmas, but what’s Christmas doing in The Hobbit?”

Tolkien himself saw The Lord of the Rings as a kind of expression of his Christianity, writing to Robert Murray, SJ, in 1953:

“The Lord of the Rings is a fundamentally religious and Catholic work; unconsciously so at first, but consciously in the revision.” (letter to Robert Murray, SJ, 2 December, 1953, Letters, 172)

But did this extend back into the 1930s when he was writing The Hobbit?

Time to do some research, clearly.

As always with The Hobbit, my first stop is my copy of Douglas A. Anderson’s The Annotated Hobbit.

Note 5, next to the text, reads:

“In Appendix D (“The Shire Calendar”) to The Lord of the Rings, the Calendar in the Shire is shown to have two Yuledays, the last day of the year and the first of the next year.  Yuletide is described as six days long, including the last three and first three days of each year.” (Anderson, 353)

Okay, then, we can presume that “Yule-tide” at Beorn’s

(Tolkien)

is from the Shire calendar and has nothing to do—overtly, at least—with the Christian holiday. (“tide”, by the way, is from Old English tid, which has a number of close meanings, all seeming to indicate “time” as “occasion”.) 

But why is the English “Yule-tide” there at all?  As JRRT explains in Appendix D:

“I have used our modern names for both months and weekdays, though of course neither the Eldar nor the Dunedain nor the Hobbits actually did so.” ( The Lord of the Rings, Appendix D)

Unfortunately, it does not appear that he then provided us with the original Hobbitish term, but “Yule” has its own ancient pedigree, appearing in the Anglo-Saxon scholar Bede’s (672-735AD) De Temporum Ratione, which is commonly translated as “On/Concerning/About the Reckoning of Time”.  In 71 chapters, Bede (often referred to as “the Venerable Bede”, Beda Venerabilis—“Bede Worthy of Reverence”, a term attached to him as early as the 9^th century) lays out an enormous amount of information about calendars and dates.  In Chapter XV he writes about the system in use in England before his own time:

December Giuli, eodem Januarius nomine, vocatur. Incipiebant autem annum ab octavo Calendarum Januariarum die, ubi nunc natale Domini celebramus. Et ipsam noctem nunc nobis sacrosanctum, tunc gentili vocabulo Modranicht, id est, matrum noctem, appellabant, ob causam, ut suspicamur. ceremoniarum quas in ea pervigiles agebant.  (Bede, De  Temporum Ratione, Caput XV, “De Mensibus Anglorum”  You can see the full chapter here:  http://www.nabkal.de/beda/beda_15.html

“December is called Giuli by the same name as January.  They used to begin the year, however, from the eighth day back from the calends of January, when now we celebrate the birth of the Lord.  And that very night now so very holy to us, then they used to call in the common speech “Modranicht”—that is, night of the mothers, because, as I suppose, on that night, they used to conduct some all-night vigils of sacred rites.” (my translation)

(The calends is January 1^st, and, counting backwards 8 days, gives us 25 December—but we need really to go back to 24 December to include Christmas Eve, which is clearly Modranicht. Anglo-Saxons reckoned that the old day ended at sunset, so, by their method, Christmas Eve is actually part of the 25^th, rather than the 24^th, as we see it.)

G followed by iu would be pronounced “Yu”, hence “Yule” and so Tolkien, placing Gandalf and Bilbo in Beorn’s hall at mid-winter, has had them celebrate a hobbit festival , as he tells us:

“The Lithedays and the Yuledays were the chief holidays and times of feasting.” (Appendix D)

using a venerable (in more ways than one) English word.

In the use of “Lithedays”, which are the midsummer equivalent of Yule-tide, Tolkien is pointing us back to that same Chapter XV of Bede, where the Anglo-Saxon months of June and July are both called lid (where the final d is said like the th in “then”—“Junius Lida, Julius similiter Lida”).  Bede offers us two explanations, based upon two near-homonyms:   lid (with the th at the end), “gentle/mild” and lid (with a d at the end), “ship”:

Lida dicitur blandus, sive navigabilis, quod in utroque mense et blanda sit serenitas aurarum, et navigari soleant aequora.

“Lida means soft/gentle/mild, or navigable, because in both months, both the calmness of the winds may be gentle and the seas may be accustomed to be sailed.”

In fact, if we match Chapter XV against the Shire names of the months, we find that it’s not just “Yule” and “Lithe” which have been borrowed from the Anglo-Saxon calendar, but the names of many of the months, as well.

So I think that you can see now why teaching The Hobbit provides a kind of double pleasure—the fun of the story and all of the extra learning which can come from a simple—or not so simple, it turns out—question.

To which I might add a little more.

Some Christmas songs seem to date back for ever—like “Veni, Veni, Immanuel”, whose verses possibly may date from the 12^th century, set in the 19^th century to a 13^th century melody.

But one, which, from its language, seems older, surprisingly only dates from 1862 and that’s the carol the student quoted, “Deck the Halls” (originally “Deck the Hall”), which first appeared in Volume 2 of John Thomas’ Welsh Melodies.

(For more, see:   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deck_the_Halls )

Thanks for reading, as ever.

Stay well,

If so inclined, troll a carol or two,

And remember that, as always, there’s

MTCIDC

O

ps

But—there is another version of “Deck the Hall/s” which should be included here, although of an even more recent date.

It  is stirringly sung, with a number of variants, here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SL0lPcNwRqQ

Welcome, as ever, dear readers,

Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-94)

—or, rather “Captain George North”, as he called himself– had had some success publishing “Treasure Island; or, the Mutiny of the Hispaniola” in Young Folks in 1881-82. 

(for a wonderful description by Stevenson of the origins of the story, see:  “My First Book:  ‘Treasure Island’, originally published in Britain in The Idler, August, 1894,and in the US in McClure’s Magazine for September, 1894, but which you can find here:  https://readandripe.com/my-first-book-treasure-island-by-robert-louis-stevenson/  or, if you’d prefer to read the American publication—I recommend it, not only for the article itself, but for seeing how impressive a late-Victorian magazine could be–here it is:  https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015009324834&view=1up&seq=291 )

In 1883, he published it as a book, his first commercial success, as he tells us, although he had published a good deal previously (for a man who had only begun serious publication at 21 and died at 44, he created at a furious rate, the Scribner edition of 1907, for example, is in 27 volumes—if you’d like a complete list of his work—and much more, see:  https://robert-louis-stevenson.org/ )

Stevenson was very candid about his influences and sources, beginning with “Captain Charles Johnson’s” A General History of the Robberies and Murders of the most notorious Pyrates

(first edition 1724, with a number of subsequent editions—you can read the first volume of the second edition at:  https://archive.org/details/generalhistoryof00defo/page/n3/mode/2up?view=theater and the second volume of the fourth edition at:  https://digital.lib.ecu.edu/encore/ncgre000/00000018/00017002/00017002.pdf   I’ve put the author’s name in quotation marks because this is believed to be a nom de plume, perhaps for the period author Daniel Defoe, who had published his own sea-adventure story, The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, of York, Mariner… in 1719.),

and including everyone from Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Gold Bug”

(1843—which you can read transcribed from the original publication here:  https://www.eapoe.org/works/tales/goldbga2.htm)

to Washington Irving’s Tales of a Traveler,

 (1824, which has, in Volume II, Part IV, both “Kidd the Pirate” and “Wolfert Webber, or Golden Dreams”—which you can read, in a later edition, here:  https://gutenberg.org/cache/epub/13514/pg13514-images.html )

to Charles Kingsley’s At Last:  a Christmas in the West Indies (1871,

which you can read here:  https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/10669/pg10669-images.html ).

For us, in this posting, however, it’s not the sources and influences so much as it’s the desire either to keep the story going, either with sequels or—but we’ll come to that soon—which is of greater interest.

There is a remarkable list of sequels to be found at:  https://robert-louis-stevenson.org/wp-content/uploads/retellings.html , which begins with Sir Arthur Quiller Couch’s—himself a writer of adventure fiction– imitation, Poison Island (1907—and here it is:  https://archive.org/details/poisonisland00quil ), then there’s a gap, but sequels pick up in 1935, with H.A. Callahan’s Back to Treasure Island (unless you care to include Floyd Gottfredson’s 1932 “Mickey Mouse Sails for Treasure Island” comic strip), and then, with a second gap, we find everything from Leonard Wibberly’s  Flint’s Island (1972) to Andrew Motion’s second sequel The New World (2014)—where this list stops, but I’m willing to bet that there are more subsequently, as it seems that, unlike the silver mines of the New World, which the Spanish eventually exhausted, Treasure Island still beckons to would-be future Stevensons.

The list also has a few “prequels” (a silly word, since “sequel” comes from the Latin verb sequor, “to follow”, whereas there’s no verb prequor, but it’s still a useful term), of which there is one, the first, which I would recommend.  This is A. D. Howden Smith’s (1887-1945)

(an image of Smith as a young man at the time of the Balkan Wars—the later image one sees of him appears to be actually a picture of Woodrow Wilson which someone has seemingly whimsically inserted, perhaps because there is no surviving later picture of him?)

1924 Porto Bello Gold.

(Here it is:  https://archive.org/details/portobellogold0000unse/ )

Smith was such an admirer of Stevenson and the original book that he wrote to Stevenson’s stepson and executor, Lloyd Osbourne (who, as the school boy in “My First Book”, mentioned above, had been involved in the initial creation of the novel), and asked permission to use some of the characters from the original book.  Osbourne was so impressed that he agreed and so we see Long John Silver, Blind Pew, Billy Bones, and Black Dog, in particular, appear, along with Captain Flint, long dead by the time of Stevenson’s book, but a vivid memory for surviving members of his crew on The Walrus, and whose name also turns up as the name of Long John Silver’s parrot. 

The story also introduces new characters, in the form of the main protagonist, Robert Ormerod, his friend (and sometime protector), Peter Corlaer, a potential love interest, Moira O’Donnell, and, to me, the most interesting character, Andrew Murray, Robert’s great-uncle.  Murray is elegant, beautifully spoken, and deadly, suggesting that, in another context, he might be a protagonist, instead of the main antagonist.  He is also a committed Jacobite.

In case “Jacobite” isn’t in your vocabulary, these are people who believed that the Stuarts were the eternally-rightful rulers of Great Britain, the last Stuart to sit on the throne being James II,

(reigned 1685-1688), who had been ejected from his kingdom by a coalition of English and Dutch conspirators, the Dutch being led by William of Orange, who had married James’ daughter, Mary.  Mary herself went along with the plot and, after James was removed, ruled Great Britain with her husband as William (III) and Mary (II).

There were several attempts by the followers of James and his son, James, “the Old Pretender”,

to return to England and take back the throne, from 1689 to 1746, all of them failures, the last, from 1745 to 1746 coming the closest to success, but ending with a spectacular final defeat at Culloden, on April 16, 1746.

The Latin for “James” is Jacobus, and so the followers of James and his family were called “Jacobites”.

In brief, Murray, who is partners with Captain Flint, kidnaps Robert, both to make him his heir, and to help him in his dealings with Flint, who is suspicious of his partner.  Murray plans to attack a Spanish treasure galleon,

plunder its riches,

keep some for himself, give some to Flint, and the rest will go to further the Jacobite cause.

(The Spanish had been looting the New World since Cortes had arrived in Mexico in 1519, most years sending fabulous riches back to Spain in one or more ships.  It was the dream, both of pirates and hostile governments, to capture a whole fleet, or even one of these ships, as the wealth in one alone could be enormous.  In 1687, a Bostonian treasure hunter, William Phips, excavating the remains of Nuestra Senora de la Concepcion, sunk in 1641, recovered over 34 tons of treasure, valued then at L205,536, which would be nearly 14 million dollars in today’s money, although the buying power of a single pound in 1681 would have been far greater than in 2022, the British pound of 1680 having the value of about 172 pounds today.  See this excellent site for more:   https://www.measuringworth.com/calculators/ukcompare/relativevalue.php )

No spoiler here—just that, although the plan succeeds, Murray’s ambitious scheme ultimately fails, and, although the treasure reaches the island which is the center of Murray’s plot, it is left there, to become the focus of Stevenson’s novel. 

For reasons unexplained, Tolkien did not enjoy Treasure Island (see Carpenter, Tolkien, page 24), but perhaps, if he had read Porto Bello Gold first, he might have changed his mind.

As ever, thanks for reading.

Stay well,

Remember International Talk Like a Pirate Day (September 19),

And know that, as always, there’s

MTCIDC

O

Welcome, as always, dear readers.

I don’t know why, but I find sometimes that I have a soft spot for villains, well, some villains, in fiction.  It pleases me, for example, that Captain Hook may elude the ticking crocodile

and that Long John Silver

escapes at the end of Treasure Island, even though he’s been the ringleader and inspirer of the mutiny which causes all the trouble.  (It doesn’t bother me in the least that Blind Pew meets his end so early in the book,

or that Jim Hawkins shoots Black Dog right out of the rigging, however.)

(These illustrations come from the 1911 edition, illustrated by one of my favorites, N.C. Wyeth.  Here’s  a copy for you:  https://ia600901.us.archive.org/20/items/treasureisland00stev/treasureisland00stev.pdf )

And so, looking back on a number of earlier postings, I must admit that I have a sneaking fondness for orcs.  Not the ghastly things from Jackson’s films, like the almost-ludicrous “Azog the Defiler” from The Hobbit, with his twig for an arm as if he were attempting to become an Ent on an installment plan, and who should have been called “Azog the Anachronism” as the actual figure had been killed 150 years before Bilbo set out for the Lonely Mountain (for the story of the real Azog—and it’s a harrowing one—see:  The Lord of the Rings, Appendix A, III, “Durin’s Folk”),

but the ordinary orcs we see throughout The Lord of the Rings,

and who, I suggested in an earlier posting (“Ugluk Orckins”, 3 November, 2021), were, like Sam Gamgee, a reflection of Tolkien’s experience among the British infantry in the Great War:

“My ‘Sam Gamgee’ is indeed a reflection of the English soldier, of the privates and batmen I knew in the 1914 war…”  (Carpenter, Tolkien, 91—“batmen” are officers’ servants from the French word “bat”, meaning a pack saddle, suggesting that the servants tended to officers’ baggage horses)

It’s easy, in fact, to hear JRRT bringing these men back to life in the voice of Ugluk the chief of Saruman’s orcs, who sounds like a Great War British sergeant:

“ ‘Don’t stand slavering there!  Get your rabble together!  The other swine are legging it to the forest.  You’d better follow.  You wouldn’t get back to the Great River alive.  Right off the mark!  Now!  I’ll be on your heels.’ “ (The Two Towers, Book Three, Chapter 3, “The Uruk-hai”)

This is how I always imagine them, although Tolkien, being Tolkien, having made the orcs, couldn’t leave them as Saruman’s

(the Hildebrandts)

minions

(no—not those minions)

or as a main infantry component of Sauron’s armies,

(Alan Lee)

but had to consider them, outside The Lord of the Rings, as moral (or not) beings.  This included thinking about who, in his legendarium had created them and what that might have implied.  Middle-earth was a monotheistic world, as he believed his own world to be (See, for instance, his 2 December, 1953, letter to Robert Murray, Letters, 172), and he reserved the right of creation to Eru Iluvatar, his version of the Judeo-Christian God.  That being understood, he underlined Eru’s possession of this right in the story of the Vala Aule’s making of dwarves:

“The One rebuked Aule, saying that he had tried usurp the Creator’s power; but he could not give independent life to his makings.  He had only one life, his own derived from the One, and could at most only distribute it.”  (see Tolkien’s continuation of a letter to Rhona Beare 14 October, 1958, Letters, 287)

There seems little possibility, then, that anyone other than Eru could have brought the orcs into being and yet, in a letter to Naomi Mitchison of 25 April, 1954, Tolkien writes:

“Orcs…are nowhere clearly stated to be of any particular origin.  But since they are servants of the Dark Power [that is, of Morgoth/Melkor, the rebel Vala], and later of Sauron [Morgoth’s servant, a Maia, one of the lesser divine figures], neither of whom could, or would, produce living things, they must be ‘corruptions’.” (Letters, 178)

And Frodo says of them to Sam:

“The Shadow that bred them can only mock, it cannot make:  not real new things of its own.  I don’t think it gave life to the orcs, it only ruined them and twisted them…” (The Return of the King, Book Six, Chapter 1, “The Tower of Cirith-Ungol”)

Treebeard suggests a parallel with Trolls:

“But Trolls are only counterfeits, made by the Enemy in the Great Darkness, in mockery of Ents, as Orcs were of Elves.”  (The Two Towers, Book Three, Chapter 4, “Treebeard”)

And Tolkien extends this explanation in the draft of a letter to Peter Hastings of September, 1954:

“Treebeard does not say that the Dark Lord ‘created’ Trolls and Orcs.  He says he ‘made’ them in counterfeit of certain creatures pre-existing.  There is, to me, a wide gulf between the two statements, so wide that Treebeard’s statement could (in my world) have possibly been true.  It is not true, actually, of the Orcs—who are fundamentally of ‘rational incarnate’ creatures, though horribly corrupted…” (Letters, 190)

Tolkien, although clear on “make” versus “create”, seems a bit vague on just how this corruption came about, but there is a hint in the same letter to Peter Hastings:

“I have represented at least the Orcs as pre-existing real beings on whom the Dark Lord has exerted the fullness of his power in remodeling and corrupting them, not making them.  That God would ‘tolerate’ that seems no worse theology than the toleration of the calculated dehumanizing of Men by tyrants that goes on today.” (Letters, 195)

If nothing else, then, almost by definition, if orcs exist, they must be “corrupt”.

To me, however, all of this talk about what orcs might have been previously and how they might have been changed is beside the point,

Instead, I ask myself, what’s to like about these creatures? 

And my answer is:  I believe I like them because they’re corrupt, but seemingly happily so.  They can be rascals:  that is, not black villains, like Sauron, who seems rather overfocused, if not over the top (thank goodness that JRRT had the wisdom to leave him only as a menacing shadow—can you imagine him in person, monologuing, as Saruman does to Gandalf, about his diabolical schemes?), but creatures who take a certain pleasure in being evil.  Captain Hook, for example, certainly has this rascality, as we can see when he’s about to make many of the major characters walk the plank and is positively cheerful about it—

“HOOK (communing with his ego). How still the night is; nothing sounds alive. Now is the hour when children in their homes are a-bed; their lips bright-browned with the good-night chocolate, and their tongues drowsily searching for belated crumbs housed insecurely on their shining cheeks. Compare with them the children on this boat about to walk the plank. Split my infinitives, but ’tis my hour of triumph!”

(J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan, Act V, Scene 1)

(costume design for the first production of Peter Pan in 1904)

Can we imagine the Dark Lord exclaiming “Split my infinitives, but ‘tis my hour of triumph!”?

Instead, listen to Gorbag and Shagrat:

“ ‘What d’you say?—if we get a chance, you and me’ll slip off and set up somewhere on our own with a few trusty lads, somewhere where there’s good loot nice and handy, and no big bosses.’

‘Ah!’ said Shagrat.  ‘Like old times!’” (The Two Towers, Book Four, Chapter 10, “The Choices of Master Samwise”)

Sadly, Gorbag and Shagrat fall out, Shagrat knifing Gorbag before escaping the Tower of Cirith Ungol (The Return of the King, Book Six, Chapter 1, “The Tower of Cirith Ungol”)—even some rascals pay the price for their rascality—but at least :

“Silver was gone…But this was not all.  The sea-cook had not gone empty-handed.  He had cut through a bulkhead unobserved and had removed one of the sacks of coin, worth perhaps three or four hundred guineas, to help him on his further wanderings.”

But I, for one, would not agree with Jim Hawkins, the narrator, that:

“I think we were all pleased to be so cheaply quit of him.” (R.L. Stevenson, Treasure Island, Chapter XXXIV, “And Last”)

Thanks, as ever, for reading.

Stay well,

Beware of the Nazgul waiting on the other side of the Great River,

And remember that, as always, there’s

MTCIDC

O