As ever, dear readers, welcome.

I’m always interested in Tolkien’s sources, as much for the fun of looking for them and learning new things as I go as for actually locating definite—or at least possible—ones.  The following is from one of my latest forays.

September, 9AD:  things were going very badly for Publius Quinctilius Varus (46BC-9AD), governor of the new Roman province of Germania.  Trusting an officer of Germanic auxiliary cavalry, Arminius (19/18BC-21AD), who had grown up in Rome as a hostage, and seemed more Roman than the Romans, Varus had marched three of his legions into the depths of the German forests

and into a nightmarish series of ambushes

(by Peter Dennis)

in which he had seen as many as 20,000 soldiers and civilians killed before Varus himself committed suicide, probably convinced that, if taken prisoner, he would have met a much slower and more painful end.

Although the Romans, over the next years, had mounted a number of punitive campaigns into Germania, ultimately, it was decided that the region was best left to itself, but, to try to keep an eye on the tribes and to prevent possible raids, if not outright invasions, the Roman government established what was called the Limes Germanicus, the “German boundary”.

This wasn’t just a striped road barrier and a customs station,

but hundreds of miles of ditch with a palisade and earth wall behind it,

watch towers with beacons ready to be lit,

and Roman military camps behind it.

And this became a pattern for Roman conquest.  In Britain, troubled by Pictish tribes to the north, the army set up two walls,

one, the so-called “Antonine Wall”, in Scotland, subsequently abandoned,

which was constructed much like the Limes,

and then the so-called “Hadrian’s Wall”,

more substantially built, to the south, with towers,

“mile castles” at intervals,

and extensive camps, just like the Limes.

Later post-Roman Britain saw other attempts to indicate boundaries, like Offa’s Dyke,

which may have originally resembled a rather rudimentary version of the Limes and which (roughly) marked the separation of England from Wales.

The Carolingian emperor, Charlemagne,

developed this boundary idea farther, establishing a whole series of what were called markas (marcae),which, in English, we called “marches”, and which

colonized, but also militarized, regions along his empire’s borders (when you read “Denmark”, for example, you can think that this was one such zone—the “border region with the Danes”).

As the Normans and their heirs spread westward across Britain and began the conquest of Wales, certain lords—who came to be called “marcher lords”–controlled similar areas throughout the early Middle Ages,

and the troubled border between Scotland and England was, on both sides, divided into East, Middle, and West Marches,

each March supervised by a  Warden.  This is an area particularly full of romance/adventure for me, not only for its spare landscape, with its fortified houses, called “bastles”,

and scattered castles, like Hermitage,

 its Reivers—raiders who lived on the edge, both of the Border and of the law–

(Angus McBride)

and the bold men who enforced the law—or tried to.

(another McBride—this is the “hot trod”, where the Warden summoned all those to help him in pursuit of raiders by raising a burning turf on a spear)

Many of the ballads collected from this region are stories about these people, like that of the rescue of Kinmont Willie from Carlisle castle.

(a third McBride)

(If you’d like to know more, I recommend George Macdonald Fraser’s The Steel Bonnets, as a beginning.)

This brings us to the “Riddermark”, that is, Rohan.

It seems pretty clear,, where Tolkien, first as a classicist, then as a medievalist, got the concept and thus the term from.

After Eorl the Young,

(I’ve always liked this image, which suggests the tapestry identified by Aragorn in Edoras:  “ ‘Behold Eorl the Young!…Thus he rode out of the North to the Battle of the Field of Celebrant.’ “  The  Two Towers, Book Three, Chapter 6, “The King of the Golden Hall” )

had led his men in helping the Gondorians  to deal with “a great host of wild men from the North-east”, Cirion, the Steward of Gondor:

“…in reward for his aid, gave Calendardhon between Anduin and Isen to Eorl and his people; and they sent north for their wives and children and their goods and settled in that land.  They named it anew the Mark of the Riders [Riddermark}…but in Gondor their land was called Rohan, and its people the Rohirrim…There the Rohirrim lived afterwards as free men under their own kings and laws, but in perpetual alliance with Gondor.”  (The Lord of the Rings, Appendix A, II, “The House of Eorl”)

And in this, we see the ghosts of all those historical border-watchers, from the Romans to the Carolingians to the marcher lords of Wales and the turbulent border of England and Scotland.

Thanks, as always, for reading.

Stay well,

Listen always for the sound of distant horns,

And remember that, as ever, there’s

MTCIDC

O

As ever, dear readers, welcome.

Over the years, I’ve reviewed a number of films and, almost always, I’ve avoided negative comments, as there is all too much negativity on the internet already and because, when I see such criticism, I usually find that it’s simply not helpful.  What I try to do in my reviews is:

1. understand what the makers are attempting

2. evaluate how well I believe that they have succeeded. 

In doing so, I’ve sometimes gone against much mainstream criticism—I thought that Obi Wan had much more to offer than some professional reviewers thought, for example.  (If you’re interested to see my reaction, see  “Obi:  Won? (One)” 6 July, 2022, and “Obi:  Won? (Two)” 13 July, 2022.)

Because I’m about to teach The Hobbit again, that’s brought me back to the 3-part Jackson film and my  initial reaction to it which was, I confess, negative, so much so that, although I’ve owned  a set of Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings, since it was first released and have rewatched some scenes more than once (the Rohirrim, as you’ll know if you read this blog regularly, are my favorite part),

I’ve never invested in his Hobbit

and I doubt that I ever will.

There are many reasons for this, including the bloated nature of the whole, the overemphasis on Thorin and his death, the many changes to the text,  the addition of an anarchronistic pursuing villain, “Azog the Defiler” (dead 150 years, in fact, before the events in The Hobbit).

and the turning of Radagast the Brown into a buffoon,

thus making him seem like what Saruman calls him, “Radagast the Bird-tamer!  Radagast the Simple!  Radagast the Fool!” (The Fellowship of the Ring, Book Two, Chapter 2, “The Council of Elrond”), rather than one of the five Istari  sent to Middle-earth to counter Sauron.

This last, I suppose, was meant by the script writers somehow to “lighten” the story for a moment—for all that its initial tone (which Tolkien was later to dislike) was almost jokey, with its “Gandalf!  If you had heard only a quarter of what I have heard about him…” etc,  it’s, ultimately, at least for me, a rather serious book (I point to things like Bilbo’s riddling game, which could have ended in his death, the destruction of Lake-town, and the book’s depiction of grief at the death of Thorin, for examples).

Another moment, which combines that “lightening” with one of the many changes to the text was the insertion of a completely new character, “Tauriel”,

and her suggested romance with one of the dwarves, Kili,

and this is what I’ve been thinking about most recently. 

Making Tauriel into a warrior strikes me as coming from the same impulse which, rumor has it, made the script writers think to turn Arwen into a kind of Elf-ninja until fan reaction forced them to abandon that idea (although she does replace Glorfindel as the owner of Asfaloth, and carries Frodo across the Ford of Rivendell)

and would have had her fight at Helm’s deep.  On the one hand, I certainly respect the urge to produce more fierce woman warriors in films and books—which is why I so much enjoy  and reread the works of Tamora Pierce, who has a number of brave (and often tricky) female characters, in her series The Song of the Lioness,(which is about a female knight)

Trickster’s Choice,

and Provost’s Dog.

(If you don’t know her work and these interest you, see:   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tamora_Pierce_bibliography )

On the other hand, although the latest on-line series of Tolkien-related material, Rings of Power, presents us with a scrappy Galadriel (based , at least in part,  it seems,  upon a remark in one of JRRT’s late letters—“…in her youth a leader in the rebellion against the Valar…”—“from a letter to Mrs. Ruth Austin” 25 January, 1971, Letters, 407), it seems clear that, with the exception of Eowyn (and what a wonderful exception she is),

(Denis Gordeev)

Tolkien takes the very traditional view that women, (unless, say, enchantresses or goddesses like Circe

(Briton Riviere)

or Athena (one of my two favorite characters in The Odyssey)

or my other favorite Odyssey character, Penelope)

(This is a fragment of a tapestry by the remarkable Dora Wheeler Keith, 1856-1940.)

are, as in so much of western epic, to be sidelined, in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings,

(But how I wish that he had said much more about “the famous Belladonna Took, one of the three remarkable daughters of the Old Took” teasingly mentioned almost in passing in Chapter One of The Hobbit!)

Introducing a woman warrior into a text which has no female characters and, in fact, is virtually without mention of any females at all, seems rather like the appearance of Azog, a kind of interference for “dramatic effect” with the fairy tale “feel” and pace of the story as Tolkien wrote it, but using her for a kind of “love interest” goes beyond that, I think, especially when we consider what JRRT had to say about romance in The Lord of the Rings. 

“Since we now try to deal with ‘ordinary life’, springing up ever unquenched under the trample of world policies and events, there are love-stories touched in, or love in different modes, wholly absent from The Hobbit.  But the highest love-story, that of Aragon and Arwen Elrond’s daughter is only alluded to as a known thing.  It is told elsewhere in a short tale, Of Aragorn and Arwen Undomiel.  I think that the simple ‘rustic’ love of Sam and his Rosie (nowhere elaborated) is absolutely essential to the study of his (the chief hero’s) character, and to the theme of the relation of ordinary life (breathing, eating, working, begetting) and quests, sacrifice, causes, and the ‘longing for Elves’, and sheer beauty.”  (letter to Milton Waldman, “probably written late in 1951”, Letters, 160-161)

Tolkien, then, sees The Hobbit , unlike The Lord of the Rings, as a pure fairy tale, removed from “the trample of world policies and events” and, presumably, in no need of the contrast between “quests, sacrifice, causes, and the ‘longing for Elves’, and sheer beauty” and “breathing, eating, working, begetting” which makes him insist upon “the simple ‘rustic’ love of Sam and his Rosie” as “absolutely essential”. 

This is especially true, when we attach to that phrase“the study of his (the chief hero’s) character”—this is, the character of Frodo,  whoTolkien says “will naturally become too ennobled and rarefied by the great Quest”, whereas Sam is, for Tolkien, not only “this jewel among the hobbits” (letter to Christopher Tolkien, 28 July, 1944, Letters, 88), but  also“the most closely drawn character, the successor to Bilbo of the first book, the genuine hobbit.”  (letter to Christopher Tolkien, 24 December, 1944, Letters, 105)

Although he becomes sturdy and even wily in the course of his adventures, Bilbo is hardly “ennobled” or “rarefied” at the story’s end, being content to return to his former  domestic life (with an occasional foray to visit elves).  In such a story as his, what place would a romance  (improbable to begin with)  between  an elf and a dwarf  possibly have?

As ever, thanks for reading.

Stay well,

Believe that the author knows what s/he’s doing,

And remember that there’s always

MTCIDC

O

As always, dear readers, welcome.

In my last two postings, I talked about what Tolkien had once referred to as favorite passages in The Lord of the Rings, they being the departure of the Fellowship from Lorien and the sound of the Rohirrim horns at cockcrow.

I certainly agreed with JRRT about the horns, and had more to say about their owners, but I have another favorite (and very melancholy) one.

In a pause during their final approach to Mordor, Frodo and Sam are quietly talking, and, in mid-speech, Sam says:

“ ‘Still, I wonder if we shall ever be put into songs or tales.  We’re in one, of course; but I mean:  put into words, you know, told by the fireside, or read out of a great big book with red and black letters, years and years afterwards…’

‘Why, Sam, [Frodo] said, ‘to hear you makes me laugh as merry as if the story was already written.  But you’ve left out one of the chief characters:  Samwise the stouthearted…’

‘Now, Mr. Frodo,’ said Sam, ‘you shouldn’t make fun.  I was serious.’

‘So was I,’ said Frodo, ‘and so I am.  We’re going on a bit too far.  You and I, Sam, are still stuck in the worst places of the story, and it is all too likely that some will say at this point:  “Shut the book, now, dad; we don’t want to read any more.” ‘ “ (The Two Towers, Book Four, Chapter 8, “The Stairs of Cirith Ungol”)

This is not only melancholy, but also ironic:  we’re reading from that very book when we read these words:  the Red Book of Westmarch.

(This is actually one of Tolkien’s models, the Welsh Red Book of Hergest, which dates from the 1380s and contains, among other things, the cycle of mythological stories called the Mabinogi.  For more about the book see:   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZPHQGx5QAzo   For an annotated translation of the whole cycle, see:  https://www.mabinogi.net/translations.htm  If you don’t know them, I would add here Lloyd Alexander’s The Chronicles of Prydain, based in part upon elements of the cycle, but with their own wonderful creativity.)

As Tolkien explains it, this:

“…most important source for the history of the War of the Rings was so called because it was long preserved at Undertowers, the home of the Fairbairns, Wardens of the Westmarch.  It was in origin Bilbo’s private diary, which he took with him to Rivendell.  Frodo brought it back to the Shire, together with many loose leaves of notes, and during S.R. 1420-1 he nearly filled its pages with his account of the War.” (The Lord of the Rings, Prologue, “Note on the Shire Records”)

“the history of the War of the Rings” is, of course, again, the book we’re reading, The Lord of the Rings, and here JRRT is playing games with the idea that what we’re reading is:

a. a translation (he being the translator and editor)

b. real history 

and not a long, complex novel which he has created over many years.  What interests me at the moment, however, is the very written nature of all this.  Although Sam mentions “songs or tales…put into words, you know, told by the fireside”, he also talks about “a great big book with red and black letters” and Frodo, trying to be realistic, then closes this book, implying that the story has become too dark for anyone to want to read further.  But we do read further, of course, and, before or after, we add The Hobbit, which Tolkien informs us is to

“…be found in the selection from the Red Book of Westmarch that has already been published, under the title of The Hobbit.  That story was derived from the earlier chapters of the Red Book, composed by Bilbo himself…” (The Lord of the Rings, Prologue, 1 Concerning Hobbits)

At base, then, of at least one part of the Red Book, which is, eventually,  a whole collection of volumes—five, we’re told (“Note on the Shire Records”)—is “Bilbo’s private diary” and I’ve always wondered what was meant by that.  Does Tolkien intend us to understand that, throughout the period in which Bilbo and the dwarves were involved in their quest, he kept a journal?  This doesn’t seem possible, as one wonders when and where he might have kept it—everything which Bilbo and the dwarves had brought with them from the beginning of their journey had been taken by the goblins when they were captured and, even if such a thing had survived (although Bilbo never is seen writing in it and, in fact, it’s never mentioned), surely his adventure on the barrel would have meant the end of it.

(by JRRT himself)

And we should add to this Tolkien’s remark, “Frodo…nearly filled its pages with his account of the War.”  Are we to assume that Frodo also kept a diary? 

All of this is just a fiction about a fiction, of course.  Even if both Bilbo and Frodo had kept diaries and they had somehow miraculously survived even the journey to Mount Doom, it’s past belief that all of the detailed material in the texts came directly from them—how, for example, would Frodo have known about the conversation among Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli in their race to save Merry and Pippin?  Or, for that matter, the conversation among the orcs they were pursuing?  (Although, at a stretch, Merry and Pippin might have provided some sense of the latter.)

Thinking about this fiction of a fiction made me imagine something like the following, however—and I suppose I should post a “WARNING:  SILLINESS AHEAD!” sign here.

When Odysseus returned to his home on Ithaka, in the 19^th year since he’d left for Troy, it wasn’t to a peaceful retirement.  Over 100 suitors were spending time in his home, consuming his food and drink and attempting to persuade his wife that they were each an excellent replacement for her husband—whom they considered long dead (or pretended to).

(J.W. Waterhouse)

The house-cleaning which followed would eradicate those pests for good,

(Alan Lee)

but some of their families would, not surprisingly, still need dealing with.  Before Odysseus and his small band of son, father, and slaves would, with Athena’s help, settle that matter, however, he was granted a moment of reunion with his wife, Penelope.

(another Alan Lee)

Before any amorous behavior, the two exchanged stories of what had happened to them in the long years of their separation.  (I suspect that Odysseus may have glossed over certain details of the year he spent at Circe’s

(another Waterhouse)

or the seven years with Kalypso.)

(George Hitchcock)

Considering that they had 19 years of experiences to recount to each other, it’s no wonder that Athena kindly lengthened the night for them.  And, as they lived in an oral world,  they would have been quite at home listening to and telling such long stories—or  would have been even singing them, as did the two aoidoi, or professional singers, Phemios and Demodokos, who appear in the poem.  And, in real life, it was generations of nameless aoidoi who actually created the later composite we know as the Odyssey.

Suppose, however, that Odysseus, like Frodo, had written the poem himself, having somehow managed to keep a diary through his entire voyage home—what would a page of  that diary have looked like?

“Saturday

Dear Diary,

Yesterday, I took my ship over to the mainland, where some of us visited a cave which was full of cheese.  Being hungry, we helped ourselves.  But then the owner came home.  He was very large and had only one eye, right in the middle of his forehead.

Although I reminded him that the hospitality which we looked for was a sacred right, protected by Zeus, he proceeded to eat a number of my crew, having assured me that his people (Cyclopses) weren’t in the least afraid of the Gods.  Fortunately, I had brought along a really good vintage to serve at lunch and this creature had a weak head, so, after he got really hammered, we sharpened his walking stick and put out his eye with it.  Ouch!

Then we stole his sheep and ran away.

It rained late in the afternoon.”

Thanks, as always, for reading.

Stay well,

If you’re planning to visit a new friend for lunch, be very certain that you know what’s on the menu,

And remember that, as ever, there’s

MTCIDC

O

As ever, dear readers, welcome.

In my last posting, I had quoted Tolkien on one of his two favorite moments in The Lord of the Rings:

“If it is of interest, the passages that now move me most—written so long ago that I read them now as if they had been written by someone else—are the end of the chapter Lothlorien (I 365-7), and the horns of the Rohirrim at cockcrow.”  (from extracts made by Humphrey Carpenter of JRRT’s commentary on a proposed article for the Daily Telegraph from an interview by Charlotte and Denis Plimmer, 8 February, 1967, Letters, 376)

I especially agree with the latter, and, in my last, linked it to the Rohirrim themselves, both in the novel and in their depiction in the Jackson films, particularly in their charge across the fields of the Pelennor against the Orcs so focused upon their attack against Minas Tirith (although the script writers have left out the cock).

The Rohirrim might seem, by the sweep of their charge, like a mob of horsemen,

but a closer examination of them suggests something very different.  To begin with, they fight in units of about 120, called an eored (which is, like so many of the bits we get of their language, actually an Old English word which can mean, among other things “a troop of cavalry”).  As well, they appear to understand the need for reserves, as this image may show us, where you may be able to see the riders grouped into eored, as well as perceive that there are, in fact, two lines of horsemen, just the sort of thing trained cavalry did so that the second line could supply support for the first.

A useful example of this can be seen here, in this period depiction of the charge of the British Light Brigade at Balaclava, in October, 1854, where there are, in fact, three lines of cavalry.

If, as I think we can, assume that the Rohirrim aren’t operating in a very loose fashion, rather like, say, a depiction of Lakota on the Great Plains,

(a wonderful image painted  on buffalo hide by a Native American of warriors in combat with soldiers)

then we can also assume that their movements require training.  For units, like eored, to work together as they do in their great charge on the orcs, means that that training would require uniformity throughout the whole of the Rohirrim.   JRRT, who, had himself once, briefly, been a cavalryman (for more on this, please see the previous post), hasn’t left us a Rohirrim drill book, but I believe he has left us a number of clues which we can dig out of The Lord of the Rings to help us. 

To begin, of course, there is that unit, the eored.  Eomer commands one when he encounters Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli on the grassy plains of Rohan, and it’s from him that we first hear that term:

“ ‘Peace, Eothain!’ said Eomer in his own tongue.  ‘Leave me a while.  Tell the eored to assemble on the path, and make ready to ride to the Entwade.”  (The Two Towers, Book Three, Chapter 2, “The Riders of Rohan”—“Eothain”, who appears to be Eomer’s lieutenant, has an appropriate name, in Old English it would be something like “Warhorse-vassal”, where  “Eo” can mean “steed” and “thain” “someone who holds land in exchange for military service”. )

These riders have just exterminated a combined band of Sauron’s and Saruman’s Orcs and, from their actions, we learn a certain amount:

1. they march in what is called “a column of twos” :  “In pairs they galloped by…” (The Two Towers, Book Three, Chapter 2, “The Riders of Rohan”)

2. when they camp, it seems as that they are as organized as the Romans, who made fortified camps at the end of every day’s march,

although without the wall and ditch:

“On all the level spaces there was a great concourse of men. ..but stretching away into the distance behind there were ordered rows of tents and booths, and lines of picketed horses…Watchmen heavily cloaked paced to and fro.”  (The Return of the King, Book Five, Chapter 3, “The Muster of Rohan”)

3. they have scouts who move ahead of the column (“ ‘The scouts have come back at last,’ said an Orc close at hand.  ‘Well, what did you discover?’ growled the voice of Ugluk.  ‘Only a single horseman, and he made off westwards.  All’s clear now.’ ‘Now, I daresay.  But how long?  You fools!  You should have shot him.  He’ll raise the alarm.  The cursed horsebreeders will hear of us by morning.  Now we’ll have to leg it double quick.’ “ (The Two Towers, Book Three, Chapter 3, “The Uruk-hai”)  Ugluk’s fear is proven true when Eomer tells Aragorn:  “But scouts warned me of the orc-host coming down out of the East Wall four nights ago.”  (The Two Towers, Book Three, Chapter 2, “The Riders of Rohan”)

4. a standard form of attack is the movement to encircle the enemy—when Aragorn hails them: 

“With astonishing speed and skill they checked their steeds, wheeled, and came charging round.  Soon the three companions found themselves in a ring of horsemen moving in a running circle, up the hill-slope behind them and down, round and round them, and drawing ever inwards. ..

Without a word or cry, suddenly, the Riders halted.  A thicket of spears pointed towards the strangers; and some of the horsemen had bows in hand, and their arrows were already fitted to the string.” (The Two Towers, Book Three, Chapter 2, “The Riders of Rohan”) 

This is how the Orcs who are carrying Pippin and Merry are stopped:

“The Riders were drawing in their ring, close round the knoll, risking the orc-arrows, so as to prevent any sortie…”  (The Two Towers, Book Three, Chapter 2, “The Riders of Rohan”)

5.  to finish the job, the Rohirrim shift from a circle to  to a charge—in this case, with their backs to the rising sun, thereby blinding the enemy:

“…Then with a great cry the Riders charged from the East; the red light gleamed on mail and spear.  The Orcs yelled and shot all the arrows that remained to them.  The hobbits saw several horsemen fall; but their line held on up the hill and over it, and wheeled round and charged again.”( The Two Towers, Book Three, Chapter 2, “The Riders of Rohan”)

6. at the battle on the fields of the Pelennor, we see another possible formation, this one very much like one used in our Middle-earth, by Philip II of Macedon and then by his son, Alexander.

(by Giuseppe Rava)

 This was a wedge, pointed directly at the enemy’s line, seeking a weak spot and, finding one, broke the enemy apart (Theoden is attacking the king of the Haradrim):

“Then Theoden was aware of him, and would not wait for his onset, but crying to Snowmane he charged headlong to greet him.  Great was the clash of their meeting.  But the white fury of the Northmen burned the hotter, and more skilled was their knighthood with long spears and bitter.  Fewer were they but they clove through the Southrons like a fire-bolt in a forest.  Right through the press drove Theoden Thengel’s son…” (The Two Towers, Book Five, Chapter 6, “The Battle of the Pelennor Fields”)

And we see this again, a little later in the same battle:

“…The great wrath of [Eomer’s] onset had utterly overthrown the front of his enemies, and great wedges of his Riders had passed clear through the ranks of the Southrons, discomfiting their horsemen and riding their footmen to ruin.” 

But what about those horns? 

It seems, in fact, that the Rohirrim have two kinds, at least.  When Theoden and his company ride to the muster of the Rohan, we hear this:

“Then one blew a long call on a horn.  It echoed in the valley.  Other horns answered it, and lights shone out across the river.

And suddenly there rose a great chorus of trumpets from high above, sounding from some hollow place, as it seemed, that gathered their notes into one voice and sent ti rolling and beating on the walls of stone.”  (The Return of the King, Book Five, Chapter 3, “The Muster of Rohan”)

Horn and trumpet are clearly to be distinguished here.  They aren’t described, so it’s up to us readers to imagine.  I suspect that most people would see “horn” and think of something Vikingish or like Roland’s olifant

in La Chanson de Roland,

the sort of thing that the ill-fated Boromir carried.

(Artist Monkeys)

As for “trumpets”, I myself imagine something like this,

which would be a bit tricky to use on horseback, whereas Roland’s horn would be just right for mounted men—and for dramatic moments in a narrative:

“Gandalf did not move.  And in that very moment, away behind in some courtyard of the City, a cock crowed.  Shrill and clear he crowed, recking nothing of wizardry or war, welcoming only the morning that in the sky far above the shadows of death was coming with the dawn.

And as if in answer there came from far away another note.  Horns, horns, horns.  In dark Mindolluin’s sides they dimly echoed.  Great horns of the North wildly blowing.  Rohan had come at last.”  (The Return of the King, Book Five, Chapter 4, “The Siege of Gondor”)

Thanks, as ever, for reading.

Stay well,

Remember that, at cockcrow, evil things flee away,

And also know that, as always, there’s

MTCIDC

O