Author Archives: Ollamh

Out of Work Athena

12 Wednesday Aug 2026

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As always, dear readers, welcome.

The second part of “Solution” will appear next week.

In the meantime, as promised, I’ve been to see Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey,

but I’m going to break my usual rule of seeing it twice before writing about it—having just seen it yesterday, it’s all very vivid in my mind.  I will certainly keep to my constant rule of avoiding destructive criticism, however, which often seems to crowd the internet and which is not only depressing, but, worse, unhelpful.

I would begin by saying that the film is well-acted and the effects are large-scale and, on that scale, impressive.  It’s clear that an enormous amount of work on the part of everyone involved went to making the film.  And yet, for me—and for the poem—something important—even vital—is lacking and you can see it in my title. 

I’ve written earlier that I was disappointed with Troy (2006),

not only for the changes to the story but perhaps more important for the removal of the gods.  Both The Iliad and The Odyssey are, at base, deeply religious works.  The Trojan War itself was said to take place because (and be prepared for complications):

1. Zeus, head of the gods, lusts after Thetis, a sea goddess

2. but, when told that a prophecy predicts that their child will be more powerful than his father, marries her off to a mortal, Peleus, instead.

(Thetis isn’t easy to catch—Peleus is shown here wrestling with a shape-shifting goddess)

3.  to the wedding, it happens that another goddess, Eris (“Strife/Discord”), isn’t invited (not a surprise—and you probably know this motif from “Sleeping Beauty”) and, in revenge, she bowls in a golden ball or apple with the words “For the Most Beautiful” on it into the feast.

4. Three goddess, Hera, Athena, and Aphrodite then argue over who deserves it and, when Zeus refuses to choose, they find a mortal shepherd, Paris—presumably neutral—to judge.

5. Aphrodite wins by offering Paris the most beautiful woman in the world, who just happens:

a. to be Helen, a demigoddess (father Zeus)

b. to be already married to Menelaus, the younger brother of the high king of Greece, Agamemnon

6. Paris, however, isn’t really a shepherd, but the long-lost prince of Troy and, when that’s revealed, he goes on a diplomatic mission to Greece and either persuades Helen to leave with him, or steals her, carrying her back to Troy.

7. the major kings of Greece were once Helen’s suitors but, as she could pick only one, the rest took an oath to protect her.

8. and so big brother Agamemnon, when Menelaus complained that his wife was gone, called on those kings to join an expedition to bring her back—and the Trojan War began.

9. the gods—except for Zeus—then took sides and aggressively backed either the Greeks or the Trojans through the ten years of the war.

As you can see, at every step of the war, one or more divinities was involved—and sometimes very actively.

Although fewer gods are involved in The Odyssey, one goddess, Athena, is a major player throughout.

In fact, the poem begins with her on Olympus, appealing to Zeus to free Odysseus from the clutches of Calypso, with whom he’s been marooned for seven years.

She then (sorry for a second list, but, again, it’s complicated)–

1.  goes to Ithaka to help Telemachos, Odysseus’ son, to grow up, appearing both as Mentes, a guest friend of Odysseus, and then as Mentor, an Ithakan elder, as whom she travels with Telemachos to mainland Greece, first to the most senior of all Greek heroes, Nestor, and then on to Sparta, to see Menelaus and Helen, now brought back from fallen Troy. 

2. continuing in her disguises, pops up when Odysseus, on his way home from Calypso (it takes a second try for Athena to get Zeus to send Hermes to order Kalypso to help him to go home), lands on the island of the Phaeacians (left out of the film entirely) where she appears first, as a little girl who directs him to the house of Alcinous, the king of the Phaeacians, and then as a spectator at the athletic event in which Odysseus participates. 

3. appears to Odysseus, disguised as a shepherd boy, after the Phaeacians take Odysseus home, and he awakes on a beach on his home island of Ithaka.

4. is more present from then on, giving Odysseus his beggar disguise and appearing to Odysseus as herself when she pushes him to reveal himself to Telemachos at the hut of Eumaeus, the swineherd (who is not blind in the poem, by the way).

5.  in Odysseus’ home, first encourages him to believe that, with her help he can beat the suitors, and then appearing for a final time to put the suitors into a panic when Odysseus, Telemachos, and their two servants destroy all of them and their attendants.  (No one surrenders in the poem.)

6.  makes a final appearance in the poem appealing once more to Zeus, this time as to how to resolve the conflict between Odysseus and the vengeful families of the suitors. 

She is a busy character, in fact, helping both Odysseus and his son, but Nolan’s script has almost entirely erased her and certainly has removed all of her help and, as you can see from 1-6 above, she is actually an active participant throughout the poem, even being the reason why—through her pushing Zeus to send Hermes to Calypso—Odysseus actually goes home.  To allow her to be nothing more than an occasional visitor and a passive one, at that, is to misrepresent not only the story, but the character of Odysseus.  (Who, by the way, unlike in the film, has no guilt or regret over his actions and certainly doesn’t sail off into the sunset with Penelope on a mission to commemorate his dead crewmen.)

That poster I’ve used as the first image in this posting has a subtitle:  “defy the gods”, something Odysseus, with a goddess for a patron, would never think of doing, is actually more like the motto of the film.  In the poem which is the basis of the film, Odysseus survives and even wins because he has a goddess for a patron.  Without her, would he have ever returned and, having returned, would he have survived the suitors and their angry families?

So, is this a film which I would recommend?  In fact, with rare exceptions, I would recommend that everyone see/listen to any and all art and decide for her/himself as to its value, entertainment or otherwise.  In this case, I would say certainly, go and see it, but I would also encourage you to read the poem first—preferably in Richmond Lattimore’s translation

Version 1.0.0

which, although now some 60 years old (original publication 1965), is still the closest of modern translations to the original Greek and the one I’ve used in classes for many years.  Of necessity, although 3 hours long, the film leaves out many details, but, at the same time, as I hope I make clear, it also changes the text significantly, and, for me, those changes turn it from the ancient story to Christopher Nolan’s story and it is up to you, as readers and viewers, to decide which you would prefer–or perhaps you would keep both, even though being aware that the two differ significantly.  As a student once said to me about Jackson’s The Hobbit trilogy, “If you haven’t read the book, they are fun adventure movies”.

Thanks, as always, for reading.

Stay well,

If you make a surprise visit to a very large man in a cave, plan ahead what to do if you’re not welcome,

And remember that, as always, there’s

MTCIDC

O

Solution (1)

05 Wednesday Aug 2026

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As always, dear readers, welcome.

When you reread The Hobbit, do you look forward to any particular chapter?  Mine is Chapter 5, “Riddles in the Dark”–

(Alan Lee)

although, logically, I’ve always wondered about the conditions of the riddle game:  if Bilbo lost, would he automatically have shrugged, put down Sting, and allowed Gollum to make a meal out of him?

Still, the consequence of losing gives the scene an extra tension, along with Bilbo being at an unknown location, being alone in the dark, and sitting next to such a strange and menacing creature.  (I also wonder about Gollum’s language:  he had gained the Ring about the year TA 2463 and met Bilbo in TA 2941, meaning that he had been born over 500 years before.  Gollum had been in hiding for virtually all of that time, so that he had had no contact with native speakers of his language, which would be rather like someone from Shakespeare’s time suddenly meeting us.  We know what Shakespeare’s English sounded like—see:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y2QYGEwM1Sk if you don’t—so would he have, in fact, been harder to understand than he appears in The Hobbit, with his snaky hissings?)

About the riddles, Tolkien once wrote:

“And what about the Riddles?  There is work to be done here on the sources and analogues.  I should not be at all surprised to learn that both the hobbit and Gollum will find their claim to have invented any of them disallowed.”  (letter to the editor of The Observer, printed in the paper 20 February, 1938, Letters, 42)

In fact, almost 10 years later, he has more to say about their “sources and analogues”:

“As for the Riddles:  they are ‘all my own work’ except for ‘Thirty White Horses’ which is traditional, and ‘No-legs’.  The remainder, though their style and method is that of old literary (but not ‘folk-lore’), have no models as far as I am aware, save only the egg-riddle which is a reduction to a couplet (my own) of a longer literary riddle which appears in some ‘Nursery Rhyme’ books, notably American ones.”  (from a letter to Allen & Unwin, 20 September, 1947, Letters, 177)

These are all riddles in The Hobbit, in the contest between Gollum and Bilbo, but in The Lord of the Rings, two more riddles appear, the first presented in a dream which both Faramir and Boromir have had:

“Seek for the Sword that was broken:

In Imladris it dwells;

There shall be counsels taken

Stronger than Morgul-spells.

There shall be shown a token

That Doom is near at hand,

For Isildur’s Bane shall waken,

And the Halfling forth shall stand.” 

The second is presented by Bilbo:

“All that is gold does not glitter,

Not all those who wander are lost;

The old that is strong does not wither,

Deep roots are not reached by the frost.

From the ashes a fire shall be woken,

A light from the shadows shall spring;

Renewed shall be blade that was broken:

The crownless again shall be king.”

(The Fellowship of the Ring, Book Two, Chapter 2, “The Council of Elrond”)

Parts of these two riddles are answered immediately—

“ ‘And here in the house of Elrond more shall be made clear to you,’ said Aragorn, standing up.  He cast his sword upon the table and that before Elrond, and the blade was in two pieces.  ‘Here is the Sword that was broken!’ “

And Gandalf then adds:

“ ‘Bring out the Ring, Frodo!’ said Gandalf solemnly.  ‘The time has come.  Hold it up, and then Boromir will understand the remainder of his riddle.’ “

So much for the Bane, the Sword, and the Halfling, but there is a further part of the riddle, however, that it will take much of the rest of the story to solve:  who is the unglittering gold, the wanderer, the light and fire, the crownless?

It’s also important to note that, as well as riddling, there is prophesying here:  it begins with “Doom near at hand” and “a fire shall be woken”, as well as “a light from the shadows shall spring”, “renewed shall be blade that was broken”, and “the crownless again shall be king”.  With words like “renewed” and “again”, there is a sense both of the past and the future here, and, linked with the previous “unglittering” and “wanderer”, it suggests that some one, not some thing, is the answer to these riddles—and what about that “Doom”?

Boromir is puzzled:  “Isildur’s Bane” (“bane”= “curse”) is identified as the Ring, which Frodo, the Halfling, has held up, but—

“Boromir’s eyes glinted as he gazed at the golden thing.  ‘The Halfling!’ he muttered.  ‘Is then the doom of Minas Tirith come at last?  But why then should we seek a broken sword?’ “

Appropriately, it is the holder of that sword who responds:

“ ‘The words were not the doom of Minas Tirith,’ said Aragorn.  ‘But doom and great deeds are indeed at hand.’ “

To JRRT, the medievalist, “doom”, coming originally from Old English “dom”, which has a fairly wide field of meanings but, in Middle English, can mean “fate”, and, combined with all of the prophecy we’ve just seen, might suggest “something inevitable”—but not necessarily evil—especially provided that the conditions set out are understood and fulfilled:

1. the sword must be reforged

2. the Ring must reappear, in the hands of a hobbit

What happens then is left open—what must be done with the sword and the Ring?

One part of the riddles, however,, is made clearer when Aragorn continues:

“ ‘For the Sword that was Broken is the Sword of Elendil that broke beneath him when he fell.  It has been treasured by his heirs when all other heirlooms were lost; for it was spoken of old among us that it should be made again when the Ring, Isildur’s Bane, was found.  Now you have seen the sword that you have sought, what would you ask?  Do you wish for the House of Elendil to return to the Land of Gondor?’ “

So, following that, we can guess that the inheritor of the sword must then be the wanderer, the unglittering—but then, to take it a step farther, he must also be descended directly from Elendil, the founder of Gondor—and therefore be that uncrowned king. 

Boromir has already had his doubts, even before Frodo displays the Ring: 

“ ‘And who are you, and what have you to do with Minas Tirith?’ asked Boromir, looking in wonder at the lean face of the Ranger and his weather-stained cloak.“ 

And even after Gandalf identifies Aragorn as the descendant of Isildur, son of Elendil, Boromir continues to doubt:

“ ‘Isildur’s Bane is found, you say…I have seen a bright ring in the Halfling’s hand, but Isildur perished ere this age of the world began, they say.  How do the Wise know that this ring is his?  And how has it passed down the years, until it is brought hither by so strange a messenger?’ “

So, although possessing the sword, Aragorn’s claims are questioned and this is, really, a new riddle:  how can he back up his claim as to who he is and what he should then inherit?

As the Voice of Sauron says:

“ ‘Is there anyone in this rout [“mob”] to treat with me?…Or indeed the wit to understand me?  Not thou at least!’ he mocked, turning to Aragorn with scorn.  ‘It needs more to make a king than a piece of Elvish glass, or a rabble such as this.  Why, any brigand of the hills can show as good a following!’ “ (The Return of the King, Book Five, Chapter 10, “The Black Gate Opens”)

(Douglas Beekman—for more on him and his work, see:  https://sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/beekman_doug )

In part two of this posting, we will see the answer.

Thanks, as ever, for reading.

Stay well,

If you’ve seen this rear-window sticker, wonder if Aragorn has learned to drive,

And remember that there’s

MTCIDC

O

More Troy?

29 Wednesday Jul 2026

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Welcome, dear readers, as always.

A new film of the Odyssey has just appeared this summer.

I’m always interested to see what creative people can do with an old favorite, although I was disappointed by Troy (2004),

not only because of the many changes to the story, but also because the gods, who, ultimately, are behind the Trojan War, were removed completely, thus telling, really, only half of the tale of Troy.

If you read this blog regularly, you know that I try to see a film or even series at least twice, if I can, and I always attempt to understand what it is that the creators are trying to do before I review it, trusting that the work was made with the best intentions.  Having only seen trailers and read about it, I’ll hold off on making any comments about this new Odyssey until I’ve actually sat in the theatre and watched.

Even before seeing it, however, I’m impressed, once more, by the interest the story of Troy continues to hold, and not only in films, of which we have, among others, Ulysses (1954)

 Helen of Troy (1956),

a television series with Armand Assante (1997),

as well as Troy (2004) and The Return (2024),

but through time—ancient Greek dramatists based plots upon it, like Aeschylus (c.525-455BC),

who used the consequences of the war upon the victorious returning Greeks in his Oresteia trilogy, beginning with the murder of the Greek leader, Agamemnon.

Roman poets, like Statius (c.45-96AD), planned epics, like his unfinished Achilleid, using material from the huge field of earlier tradition,

(a late 14th-early-15th-century ms)

and Vergil (70-19BC) has left us, in Book 2 of his Aeneid, a striking depiction of the fall of Troy from the viewpoint of an inhabitant, Aeneas, the subject of his epic,

(Aeneas is carrying his aged father, Anchises, and leading his son, Ascanius)

and founding father of the Roman state to come, as he leads his band of Trojan fugitives across the Mediterranean, finally to settle in Italy.

This new tradition of fugitive founders even comes to England, first in the form of Geoffrey of Monmouth’s (c.1095-1155AD) Historia Regum Britanniae (“History of the Kings of Britain”), where a certain Brutus, the great grandson of Aeneas (via Ascanius and his son, Silvius), exiled from Italy (having accidentally killed his father, Silvius), then leads Trojan refugees to war in Greece before heading an expedition westwards where, after consulting the goddess, Diana, he lands in England to found a new homeland there, which is named “Britain” after himself (suggesting that the place should really have been called “Bruton”?).  (You can read about Brutus and his complex adventures—including war in Gaul on his way westwards–here:  https://www.sacred-texts.com/neu/eng/gem/gem02.htm  Start with Book I, Chapter III.  Medieval people loved the Troy tale and elements of it turn up everywhere, from the 12th-century Roman de Troie of Benoit de Sainte-Maure to Chaucer’s “Troilus and Criseyde” and beyond.)

I would also suggest that, removing the Trojans, but keeping the idea of refugees, we might see that theme continuing in England in the form of a new mythology—

“…but when Ar-Pharazon set foot upon the shores of Aman the Blessed, the Valar laid down their Guardianship and called upon the One, and the world was changed.  Numenor was thrown down and swallowed in the Sea, and the Undying Lands were removed for ever from the circles of the world.  So ended the glory of Numenor.

The last leaders of the Faithful, Elendil and his sons, escaped from the Downfall with nine ships, bearing a seedling of Nimloth, and the Seven Seeing-stones (gifts of the Eldar to their House); and they were borne on the wind of a great storm and cast upon the shores of Middle-earth.  There they established in the North-west the Numenorean realms in exile, Arnor and Gondor.”  (The Lord of the Rings, Appendix A, I, “The Numenorean Kings”)

(Ted Nasmith)

As someone who was on his way to becoming a classicist, but then veered off into medieval studies, JRRT, would have had all of that rich past behind him, so would we be wrong in thinking that, in founding a new Numenor, he was inspired by other founders, all the way back to Aeneas?

As always, thanks for reading.

Stay well,

Imagine that, in the 250th anniversary of the founding of the US, those “founding fathers”, trained in the classics, probably also thought of Aeneas,

And think, as well that there’s

MTCIDC

O

Prismatic

20 Monday Jul 2026

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As always, dear readers, welcome.

“ ‘So you have come, Gandalf,’ he said to me gravely; but in his eyes there seemed to be a white light, as if a cold laughter was in his heart.

‘Yes, I have come,’ I said.  ‘I have come for your aid, Saruman the White.’ And that title seemed to anger him.

‘Have you indeed, Gandalf the Grey!’ he scoffed…”

This seems like an odd bit of dialogue—why such an emphasis on colors?  And there’s more—

“ ‘Radagast the Brown!’ laughed Saruman, and he no longer concealed his scorn.  ‘Radagast the Bird-tamer!  Radagast the Simple!  Radagast the Fool!’ “ (The Fellowship of the Ring, Book Two, Chapter 2, “The Council of Elrond”)

These colors began with the arrival of the 5 “wizards” (Istari) on Middle-earth, a thousand years into the Third Age.  They are, in fact, Maiar, which we may think of as a form of “lesser angel”—that is, belonging to the orders of spiritual beings who inhabit Valinor, to the far west of Middle-earth. 

(Karen Wynn Fonstad)

These particular Maiar were intended to be a counterforce to Sauron, who appeared to be once more on the rise.  Although there were 5 of them—Saruman, Gandalf, Radagast—and two more who may have been named Alatar and Pallando—and all had colors attached to them—Saruman white,

(the Hildebrandts)

Gandalf grey,

(the Hildebrandts)

Radagast brown,

(I can’t find an artist for this, but it strikes me as a much better depiction than that seen in the Jackson Hobbit movies.)

and the other two blue—those last two, only briefly mentioned, go eastwards and disappear entirely from the narrative.  (For more details, see Unfinished Tales, 405-420)

As for the other three, their colors appear to have a definite significance:  Radagast is an earthy type, with a passion for birds and animals, Gandalf is seen as an elderly man, grey as his garments, and Saruman as “the greatest of my order”, as Gandalf once described him, could be stainless in white.

And this is where color comes in in a different way and we see why Saruman is not pleased at being given his old title—

“ ‘For I am Saruman the Wise, Saruman Ring-maker, Saruman of Many Colours!’

I looked then and saw that his robes, which had seemed white, were not so, but were woven of all colours, and if he moved they shimmered and changed hue so that the eye was bewildered.”

Although Gandalf’s eye might have been bewildered, his mind was clearly not:

‘I liked white better,’ I said.”

White was the color in which Saruman had appeared on his mission to Middle-earth and his behavior at Gandalf’s arrival shows that he has already betrayed that mission:  

“ ‘For you have come, and that was all the purpose of my message.  And here you will stay, Gandalf the Grey, and rest from journeys.’

“Rest”, of course, is not quite what Saruman has in mind.

‘He was cold now and perilous.  ‘Yes,’ he said.  ‘I did not expect you to show wisdom, even in your own behalf; but I gave you the chance of aiding me willingly, and so saving yourself much trouble and pain.  The third choice is to stay here until the end.’

‘Until what end?’

‘Until you reveal to me where the One may be found.  I may find means to persuade you.  Or until it is found in your despite, and the Ruler has time to turn to lighter matters:  to devise, say, a fitting reward for the hindrance and insolence of Gandalf the Grey.’ “

“The Ruler”, we can suppose, is Sauron, but Saruman has plans of his own, proposing, when the Ring has been discovered, not to turn it over to that “Ruler”, but to keep it:

“ ‘Why not?  The Ruling Ring?  If we could command that, then the Power would pass to us.’ “

But Gandalf sees through this immediately:

“ ‘Saruman…only one hand at a time can wield the One, and you know that well, so do not trouble to say we!’ “

Thus, not only has Saruman betrayed his mission from the Valar, but he plans to betray the object of that mission, Sauron, as well.  It’s no wonder, then, that he no longer wears white—and, in fact, has nothing but contempt for it:

“ ‘White!’ he sneered.  ‘It serves as a beginning.  White cloth may be dyed.  The white page can be overwritten; and the white light can be broken.’ “

And here Tolkien suggests that Saruman has rather advanced information about the science of optics.

In our Middle-earth, up until at least the beginning of the 18th century, people subscribed to the theory, created perhaps by Aristotle (384-322BC),

 that colors were, in fact, a mixture of certain simpler colors, like black and white (see for more on this:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_Colors  ). 

It was Isaac Newton’s (1642-1727) experiments with prisms

which led to a different theory—that the “white” light which he passed through a prism

was actually a series of colored lights, a theory which he published in 1704,

and which is the basis of our current understanding of light and color.  (For more on the electromagnetic spectrum, see:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Vsl0Iom3S0  This is from a children’s program and about my level of understanding!)

To Gandalf, seeing Saruman’s actions as the betrayal they are, replies:

“ ‘In which case it is no longer white,’ I said.”

Just as Saruman is no longer the leader of the Maiar mission to Middle-earth, but a would-be Sauron, an imitation “Ring-maker”, who will, in time, be overthrown and eventually die a miserable death, murdered by his own agent.

(Joan Wyatt—you can see more of her work here:  https://www.artnet.com/artists/joan-wyatt/ )

But this is not the end of wizard colors, of course.  Gandalf appears to die, dragged down into the depths of Moria along with the Balrog,

(Denis Gordeev)

but reappears, not as Gandalf the Grey or Gandalf of Many Colors, but as Gandalf the White,

(the Hildebrandts)

and here we see white in a new light (sorry!):  as the color of someone who has been purified by his near-death experience and returned to become that leader of resistance to Sauron that Saruman, in breaking that trust, has betrayed. 

Is it surprising that Shadowfax, his horse, is white, as well?

(Angus McBride)

Thanks, as always, for reading.

Stay well,

Imagine a spectrum where we could see all of the other elements, like ultraviolet and gamma-rays,

But, until we can, at least remember that there’s

MTCIDC

O

Arboricidal

15 Wednesday Jul 2026

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As ever, dear readers, welcome.

Recently, I was rereading a book on the Romantic poet, artist, and visionary, William Blake (1757-1827),

and happened upon this:

“To the eyes of a miser, a guinea

is more beautiful than the sun, and a bag worn with the use of money has more beautiful proportions than a vine filled with grapes. 

The tree which moves some to tears of joy is in the eyes of others only a green thing that stands in the way.”  (Damrosch, Eternity’s Sunrise, 40–a book I recommend, by the way, if you’d like to learn more about the very complex Blake.)

(A beech tree—a favorite of JRRT’s—and mine.)

It immediately struck me as something Tolkien himself might have said and of which he would certainly have approved.

Tolkien’s passion for trees is well known and that passion seems to be everywhere in his work—even in a title–

and, contained in the volume,

with forests seemingly everywhere—from the Old Forest, with Old Man Willow,

(the Hildebrandts)

to Mirkwood, with its spiders,

(Alan Lee)

to Lorien,

(the Hildebrandts)

to Fangorn, Treebeard,

(Ted Nasmith)

(Alan Lee)

and the Ents.

(These wonderful creatures are from a site called “Confessions of a 40 K Addict” and are part of a Lord of the Rings wargame, which you can read about here:  https://www.40kaddict.uk/2024/03/battle-report-middle-earth-isengard-vs.html )

If we started serious cataloguing, we’d find more—think of the Party Tree—

(Inger Edelfeldt)

and the White Tree, the badge of Gondor, and I’m sure that there are more yet,

but I want to go back to Fangorn and Treebeard.

When people talk about the origins of Treebeard and the Ents, they always quote this:

“Their part in the story is due, I think, to my bitter disappointment and disgust from schooldays with the shabby use made in Shakespeare of the coming of ‘Great Birnam wood to high Dunsinane hill’:  I longed to devise a setting in which the trees might really march to war.”  (letter to W.H. Auden, 7 June, 1955, Letters,310)

Tolkien’s relationship with the works of Shakespeare varied throughout his life, from an early loathing of reading them (see letter to W.H. Auden, 7 June, 1955, Letters, 312 ), to an appreciation of Hamlet in performance many years later (see letter to Christopher Tolkien, 28 July, 1944, Letters, 126), but, although we must trust JRRT in what he believed to be his inspiration, I think that there’s more to what lay behind his creation than that—and Treebeard is a clue.

When Merry and Pippin first meet him, and tell him what little they know about the much bigger adventure in which they seem to form such a small part, he is an avid listener, but clearly only a listener:

“…I have not troubled about the Great Wars…they mostly concern Elves and Men.  That is the business of Wizards…I am not altogether anybody’s side, if you understand me…”

And yet—

“…there are some things, of course, whose side I am altogether not on; I am against them altogether:  these—burarum…these Orcs, and their masters.”

For Treebeard, the Orc-master is Saruman, and Merry and Pippin’s intelligence leads him to some unhappy but important conclusions:

“I think that I now understand what he is up to.  He is plotting to become a Power.  He has a mind of metal and wheels; and he does not care for growing things, except as far as they serve him for the moment.  And now it is clear that he is a black traitor.  He has taken up with foul folk, with the Orcs….He and his foul folk are making havoc now.  Down on the borders they are felling trees—good trees.  Some of the trees they just cut down and leave to rot—orc-mischief that; but most are hewn up and carried off to feed the fires of Orthanc.. Curse him, root and branch!…there are wastes of stump and bramble where once there were singing groves.  I have been idle.  I have let things slip.  It must stop!”  (The Two Towers, Book Three, Chapter 4, “Treebeard”)

As we know that Tolkien loved trees, we also know that he was opposed to the Industrial Revolution—or at least to its effects upon the modern world, even though he once owned an automobile and certainly traveled by train.  To him “the machine” (sometimes capitalized in his letters as “the Machine”) represented the certain destruction of what he loved—

“Oxford continues to suffer from the ravages of the machine-worshippers.  I remember it as a little old university town nestling in the country—and it had about 55,000 inhabitants.  It now has nearly 100,000 more, sprawls in every direction, and is jammed with noise and smell…” (from a letter to Joan Anne Tolkien, November, 1961, Letters, 438—although, to be fair, JRRT then adds that there is some good change—the removal of a “slum-fringe”.)

This sounds a bit like what Saruman had done to Isengard—

“Once it had been green and filled with avenues, and groves of fruitful trees, watered by streams that flowed from the mountains to a lake.  But no green thing grew in the latter days of Saruman.  The roads were paved with stone flags, dark and hard; and beside their borders instead of trees there marched long lines of pillars, some of marble, some of copper and of iron, joined by heavy chains…The plain, too, was bored and delved…The shafts ran down many slopes and spiral stairs to caverns far under…Iron wheels revolved there endlessly, and hammers thudded.  At night plumes of vapor stream from the vents, lit from beneath with red light, or blue, or venomous green.”  (The Two Towers, Book Three, Chapter 8, “The Road to Isengard”)

Saruman, then, who had so changed Isengard and whose Orcs destroy forestland, has a mind “of metal and wheels” therefore embodies exactly what JRRT dislikes.  He cannot stop the effects of the Industrial Revolution in our Middle-earth, but there is much which might be done in his Middle-earth—at least in his imagination. 

In his MacBeth, Shakespeare had literally interpreted a prophesy which the “weird sisters” (i.e., witches)

had given to MacBeth as a warning.  In Act 4, Scene 1, the sisters produce apparitions, the third of which says:

“3 Appar. Be Lyon metled, proud, and take no care:

Who chafes, who frets, or where Conspirers are:

Macbeth shall neuer vanquish’d be, vntill

Great Byrnam Wood, to high Dunsmane [Dunsinane] Hill

Shall come against him.”

To which, MacBeth, reassured, comments

“Macb. That will neuer bee:

Who can impresse the Forrest, bid the Tree

Vnfixe his earth-bound Root? Sweet boadments, good:

Rebellious dead, rise neuer till the Wood

Of Byrnan rise, and our high plac’d Macbeth

Shall liue the Lease of Nature, pay his breath

To time, and mortall Custome. “

(As always, I use the earliest surviving text, with its suggestion of Elizabethan speech—often quite different in sound from modern standard English, British or American, although closer to some English dialects.   This is from the First Folio (1623) and you can see this text here:  https://internetshakespeare.uvic.ca/doc/Mac_F1/scene/4.1/index.html  To hear this earlier English, see:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y2QYGEwM1Sk )

MacBeth is proved wrong, of course, when his enemy’s soldiers use foliage from the wood as camouflage to approach MacBeth’s stronghold, where he is trapped and killed.

(This illustration comes from a very interesting site, “Shakespeare Retold”, which offers both a modern translation and interpretation of Shakespeare’s plays and sonnets, with some very thoughtful, useful commentary.   You can visit the site here:  https://www.shakespeareretold.com/macbeth-scene-analysis/act-5-scene-4  Although the tactic has been used for centuries, the word “camouflage” only appeared relatively recently in English—seemingly first in 1917—see:  https://www.etymonline.com/word/camouflage  )

His enemies use only foliage, but Tolkien animates much of the forest in his version, and, whereas the play’s foliage is only meant to conceal numbers of soldiers, JRRT’s trees cause massive destruction—

(Ted Nasmith)

“The ring beyond was filled with steaming water:  a bubbling cauldron, in which there heaved and floated a wreckage of beams and spars, chests and casks and broken gear.  Twisted and leaning pillars reared their splintered stems above the flood, but all the roads were drowned.” (The Two Towers, Book Three, Chapter 8, “The Road to Isengard”)

Is this what Tolkien would have liked to do to the Industrial Revolution and its products?  In a letter to The Daily Telegraph, he writes:

“In all my works, I take the part of trees as against all their enemies.  Lothlorien is beautiful because there the trees were loved; elsewhere forests are represented as awakening to consciousness of themselves.  The Old Forest was hostile to two legged creatures because of the memory of many injuries.  Fangorn Forest was old and beautiful, but at the time of the story tense with hostility because it was threatened by a machine-loving enemy.”

Here are those machines again and trees.

Tolkien’s letter is in response to commentary about the work of the Forestry Commission and he continues:

“It would be unfair to compare the Forestry Commission with Sauron because as you observe it is capable of repentance; but noting it has done that is stupid compares with the destruction, torture and murder of trees perpetrated by private individuals and minor official bodies.  The savage sound of the electric saw is never silent wherever trees are still found growing.”  (letter to the editor of The Daily Telegraph, 30 June, 1972, Letters, 588-589)

“Torture”?  “Murder”?  Perhaps it’s just as well that Tolkien never owned a chainsaw.

Thanks, as always, for reading.

Stay well,

 Here’s a peaceful JRRT writing in his garden, to remind us to be peaceful,

And to remember that, as always, there’s

MTCIDC

O

Towering.3

08 Wednesday Jul 2026

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As ever, welcome, dear readers.

In our last, we began a tour and catalogue of towers as we see them in The Lord of the Rings.

We set off from the Elvish towers in the far west of Middle-earth.

(Ted Nasmith)

From there, we traveled east and south to Amon Sul, aka Weathertop.

(Alan Lee)

Unlike the Fellowship, we then went all the way down along the western side of the Misty Mountains

until we reached Isengard and the tower of Orthanc.

(Ted Nasmith)

Leaving Isengard, we journeyed farther south yet to Helm’s Deep and its tower

(JRRT)

and then farther yet to Minas Tirith and the tower of Echthelion

(Ted Nasmith)

before turning eastwards, crossing the Anduin, to finish part 1 at Minas Morgul—formerly Minas Ithil.

(Ted Nasmith)

This marks the beginning of Frodo and Sam’s final leg, into Mordor, where we paused for the moment—but now we pick up the journey again and step into Mordor itself—but, as we’ll finish with Sauron’s hangout, let’s first grab an eagle

(Ted Nasmith—and I want to point out that this wonderful artist has illustrated things from Tolkien beyond The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings—this image, for instance is an illustration from the history of the Elvish city of Gondolin.  For more on Gondolin, see:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gondolin )

and fly north to the other entrance to Mordor, at the Morannon—the Black Gate.

(an early illustration by the Hildebrandts)

(a later illustration by Alan Lee—I thought the contrast in conceptions of the Gate was interesting.  The Hildebrandts were pioneers in Tolkien illustration and certain of their images—like Gandalf’s original appearance to Bilbo—have always been favorites.)

Our narrator gives us a description—and history–of the place:

“But as the ranges [of Ephel Duath and Ered Lithui] approached one another, being but parts of one great wall about the mournful plains of Lithlad and of Gorgoroth, and the bitter inland sea of Nurnen amidmost, they swung out long arms northward; and between these arms there was a deep defile.  This was Cirith Gorgor, the Haunted Pass, the entrance to the land of the Enemy.  High cliffs lowered upon either side, and thrust forward from its mouth were two sheer hills, black-boned and bare.  Upon them stood the Teeth of Mordor, two towers strong and tall.  In days long past they were built by the Men of Gondor in their pride and power, after the overthrow of Sauron and his flight, lest he should seek to return to his old realm.  But the strength of Gondor failed, and men slept, and for long years the towers stood empty.  Then Sauron returned.  Now the watch-towers, which had fallen into decay, were repaired and filled with arms, and garrisoned with ceaseless vigilance.  Stony-faced they were, with dark window-holes staring north and east and west, and each window was filled with sleepless eyes.

Across the mouth of the pass, from cliff to cliff, the Dark Lord had built a rampart of stone.  In it there was a single gate of iron, and upon its battlements sentinels paced unceasingly.  Beneath the hills on either side the rock was bored into a hundred caves and maggot-holes…”  (The Two Towers, Book Four, Chapter 3, “The Black Gate is closed”)

As always, we see in The Lord of the Rings a Middle-earth which has a history which stretches back far from the present moment.  Sauron had been defeated by the Last Alliance in SA 3441.  While traveling with Frodo and Sam, we set off in TA 3018—over 3000 (!) years later.  (Frodo is astonished to hear from Elrond an eye-witness account of that event—see The Fellowship of the Ring, Book Two, Chapter 2, “The Council of Elrond”)  Thus, the two original towers—ironically constructed to keep Sauron out—must have been built somewhere at the end of the Second Age or at the beginning of the Third, and the wall between constructed after c.TA 2942, when  Sauron had been driven by the White Council from Dol Goldur,

(John Howe—if we had more information about this place, I might have included it in our tour, but it appears to be more mentioned than explained in detail.)

and returned to Mordor.

And now we come to the end of our tower tour at the most fearsome of those towers:  the Barad-dur.

(JRRT—a shame that this is only a fragment)

(both by Ted Nasmith—the first strikes me as more menacing in its monumentality, the second, more elaborate and baroque, suggesting a Sauron with a taste for the ornamental, rather than simply the grimly practical.)

Frodo first sees it at Amon Hen,

(Scott Peery—for more images see:  https://tolkiengateway.net/wiki/Category:Images_by_Scott_Peery )

when he puts on the Ring and first Minas Tirith appears, but then—

“But against Minas Tirith was set another fortress, greater and more strong.  Thither, eastward, unwilling his eyes were drawn…Then at last his gaze was held:  wall upon wall, battlement upon battlement, black, immeasurably strong, mountain of iron, gate of steel, tower of adamant, he saw it:  Barad-dur, Fortress of Sauron.”  (The Fellowship of the Ring, Book Two, Chapter 10, “The Breaking of the Fellowship”)

Sauron had begun the construction of this menacing place in SA 1000, completing it 600 years KinAlliance, returns to rebuild it in TA 2951 (Appendix B, “The Third Age”), its final destruction coming with the destruction of the Ring in TA 3019.

(Ted Nasmith—with the very interesting label “Rangers scout the ruins of Barad-dur”)

As we know, “Barad-dur” means “Dark Tower” and that name made me wonder about where it might have come from, apart from JRRT’s amazingly fertile imagination.

One possibility could be a poem by Robert Browning (1812-1889), entitled “Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came”, which is in his 1855 collection Men and Women. 

It’s a rather creepy poem about a knight on an unknown mission—except that it seems to end at that Dark Tower.  You can read it here:  https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/1597010/childe-roland-to-the-dark-tower-came

The only reference in Letters is to another Browning poem, “The Pied Piper of Hamelin”, which Tolkien said he loathed, but the medieval setting and the popularity of Browning in the later 19th century might suggest that Tolkien had read it—with perhaps less distaste than he did “The Pied Piper”—but the Browning poem is actually his recreation of what might have been a much earlier ballad, only a fragment of which appears to survive, in Shakespeare’s King Lear, where, at the end of Act 3, Scene 4,  a major character, Edgar, pretending to be “Poor Tom”, a madman, recites:

“Childe Rowland to the darke Tower came,

His word was still, fie, foh, and fumme,

I smell the blood of a Brittish man.”

(This is from the “First Folio” of 1623—I always prefer using early versions of Shakespeare’s texts as their spelling echoes earlier English pronunciation—so-called “Shakespearean”, which you can hear here:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y2QYGEwM1Sk  You can read the whole play in this older spelling here:  https://internetshakespeare.uvic.ca/doc/Lr_F1/scene/1.1/index.html )

You probably know two of these lines from the English fairy tale “Jack and the Beanstalk”—sometimes called “Jack the Giant-Killer”–which you can read here, if you don’t know it, or would like to refresh your memory (start on page 99):  https://archive.org/details/englishfairytal00jacogoog/page/n8/mode/2up  You’ll also notice, facing the title page of this volume, an illustration entitled “Childe Rowland”,

a story which you can find beginning on page 117.  The editor of this text (English Fairy Tales, 1890), Joseph Jacobs, has provided a long note (pages 238-245) about his major source, citing Jamieson’s 1814 collection, Illustrations of Northern Antiquities where Jamieson reconstructs something which combines verse and prose—as JRRT sometimes does—in what is called a “chantefable”, in which a character called “Burd Ellen” is rescued from Elfland by “Child Rowland”, (“Child/e” is a title for a young nobleman pre-knighthood.) a familiar theme in a number of ballads and which Jamieson links to a Danish balled, “Rosmer Hafmand”.  You can read Jamieson’s account here:  https://archive.org/details/cu31924027097868/page/396/mode/2up

(For more on the one known surviving example of the “chantefable”, the 12th-13th century “Aucassin et Nicolette”, see:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aucassin_and_Nicolette ) 

So, did at least the name “Dark Tower” come from a literary source—Browning’s poem, say?

Or, can we turn to Browning’s source:  King Lear?

For all that Tolkien was not, initially a Shakespeare fan (see his letter to W.H. Auden, 7 June, 1955, Letters, 312), he later came to appreciate him—at least in performance—(see letter to Christopher Tolkien, 28 July, 1944, Letters, 126), and we know that he had been exposed to Shakespeare’s works at an early age, so perhaps Shakespeare was a—if not the—inspiration?

In any event, that tower was doomed to ultimate destruction with that of the Ring, as we read:

“The earth groaned and quaked.  The Towers of the Teeth swayed, tottered,  and fell down; the mighty rampart crumbled; the Black Gate was hurled in ruin; and from far away, now dim, now growing, now mounting to the clouds, there came a drumming rumble, a roar, a long echoing roll of ruinous noise.”  (The Return of the King, Book Six, Chapter 4, “The Field of Cormallen”)

A Tolkien illustration by Ted Nasmith

(Ted Nasmith)

And with the end of the Dark Tower, this tour of towers ends, as well.

Thanks for reading, as always.

Stay well,

If you are trapped underground and find a simple ring, consider, before you pick it up, that there may be consequences,

And expect

MTCIDC

O

Towering.2

01 Wednesday Jul 2026

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Welcome, dear readers, as always.

Walls have always been a problem for attackers, as they’re clearly meant to be.  There have always been several possibilities of how to deal with them:

1. attack its fabric

2. go over with a ladder (this is called an “escalade” and is, as you can imagine, an iffy method of assault)

3. dig under (tunneling)

(This is from the very good “War History Online” site:  https://www.warhistoryonline.com/

4. dig under to destroy (undermining)

(And this is from another very interesting site, “Classroom Adventures”, which has an educational agenda with which I agree:  https://www.classroomadventures.co.uk/ )

5. if you’re the Romans, you might build an enormous ramp to lead up to the top of the wall

6. or you might build a tower a little higher than the wall, roll it up to the wall, and climb from it onto the wall

In an earlier posting, I examined this last in a review of the recent The War of the Rohrrim

for which, see “Towering”, 28 January, 2026.                                       

I have titled this “Towering.2”, but it’s not about walls and getting over them using a tower, however, but about towers themselves, specifically towers in The Lord of the Rings, in which there are a surprising number, of which I thought it might be fun to make a sort of catalogue, visiting them more or less geographically.

To do so, we begin to the far west of the Shire, just this side of the Grey Havens, where we see the Tower Hills.

(Ted Nasmith)

As Tolkien describes them:

“Three Elf-towers of immemorial age were still to be seen on the Tower Hills beyond the western marches.  They shone far off in the moonlight.  The tallest was furthest away, standing alone upon a green mound.”  (“Prologue”, The Lord of the Rings) 

Walking eastward towards the Misty Mountains, crossing the Shire, but veering south from Bree, we reach Weathertop,

(Alan Lee)

of which Aragorn says:

“The Men of the West did not live here; though in their latter days they defended the hills for a while against the evil that came out of Angmar.  This path was made to serve the forts along the walls.  But long before, in the first days of the North Kingdom, they built a great watch-tower on Weathertop, Amon Sul they called it…once it was tall and fair.”  (The Fellowship of the Ring, Book One, Chapter 11, “A Knife in the Dark”)

Even with just two towers, we can begin to understand what JRRT was at such pains to suggest:  settlement in Middle-earth is very old and, as we’ll see, no one has built in such an elaborate fashion for many centuries—the Elf towers are of “immemorial age” and Amon Sul was built during the later reign of Argaleb I (ruled TA 1349-1356—just to give you a sense of time, Frodo was born in TA 2968).

From Weathertop, heading south and around the southern end of the Misty Mountains, we reach Isengard and the tower of Orthanc,

(Ted Nasmith)            

built sometime during the Second Age (Tolkien never appears to have provided a founding date—the Tolkien Gateway offers:  “it must have been built between S.A. 3320, the year in which the realms of Gondor and Arnor were established, and S.A. 3430, the year in which the Last Alliance of Elves and Men was formed to resist Sauron‘s tyranny”).

We can say, however, that Saruman began his occupation of the site in TA 2759, so, at the time of The Lord of the Rings and the Ents’ attack upon it (TA 3019)

(Ted Nasmith)

he had been in possession of it for over 250 years—one more example of how aged everything in Middle-earth is.  It’s described as something of a technological wonder—but also quite menacing—especially when we remember that Saruman attempted to keep Gandalf captive at the top, among those pinnacles:

“There stood a tower of marvellous shape.  It was fashioned by the builders of old, who smoothed the Ring of Isengard, and yet it seemed a thing not made by the craft of Men, but riven from the bones of the earth in the ancient torment of the hills.  A peak and isle of rock it was, black and gleaming hard; four mighty piers of many-sided stone were welded into one, but near the summit they opened into gaping horns, their pinnacles sharp as the points of spears, keen-edged as knives.”  (The Two Towers, Book Three, Chapter 8, “The Road to Isengard”)

From here, we travel farther south, along the eastern side of the Ered Nimrais, the White Mountains, until we reach Helm’s Deep and its fortification with its tower, the Hornburg.

(JRRT)

As to foundation date, like Isengard, it seems vague:

“At Helm’s Gate, before the mouth of the Deep, there was a heel of rock thrust outwards by the northern cliff.  There upon its spur stood high walls of ancient stone, and within was a lofty tower.  Men said that in the far-off days of the glory of Gondor the sea-kings had built this fastness with the hands of giants.”  (The Two Towers, Book Three, Chapter 7, “Helm’s Deep”—that phrase “with the hands of giants” may have echoed in Tolkien’s memory from the Old English poem named “The Ruin”, which possibly describes the remains of Roman Aquae Sulis (modern Bath) and which has the phrase “brosnað enta geweorc”, “ruined is the work of giants”—with that “enta”, from which the Ents came—along with a similar phrase in “Maxims II”.  For more on this very poignant poem see:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ruin )

Southeast now, along those same White Mountains, will bring us in the direction of the first of the two towers of the title of the second volume (but which towers?  Tolkien wrote to Rayner Unwin:  “The Two Towers gets as near as possible to finding a title to cover the widely divergent Books 3 and 4; and can be left ambiguous—it might refer to Isengard and Barad-dur, or to Minas Tirth and B; or Isengard and Cirith Ungol.”  Letter to Rayner Unwin, 17 August, 1953, Letters, 250)

We now see ahead of us Minas Tirith,

(Ted Nasmith)

constructed in SA 3300’s, by Anarion, son of Elendil, and called initially Minas Anor, “the tower of the sun”, with its Tower of Echthelion, as one of the Fellowship first views it:

“…the Tower of Echthelion, standing high within the topmost wall, shone out against the sky, glimmering like a spike of pearl and silver, tall and fair and shapely, and its pinnacle glittered as if wrought of crystals; and white banners broke and fluttered from the battlements in the morning breeze, and high and far [Pippin] heard a clear ringing as of silver trumpets.”  (The Return of the King, Book Five, Chapter 1, “Minas Tirith”)

(I couldn’t resist adding this John Howe illustration, done in the style of Maxfield Parrish)

But now, on our tour, we turn eastwards, to the land of shadow and, first, to that other tower, that of Minas Ithil, “the tower of the moon”, built about the same time as Minas Anor, by Elendil’s other son, Isildur.

(Ted Nasmith)

Elrond gives us a small picture of it in its earlier days:

“And Minas Ithil they built, Tower of the Rising Moon, eastward upon a shoulder of the Mountains of Shadow…”

But then he goes on to add:

“And on a time evil things came forth, and they took Minas Ithil and abode in it, and they made it a place of dread; and it is called Minas Morgul, the Tower of Sorcery.”  (The Fellowship of the Ring, Book Two, Chapter 2, “The Council of Elrond”)

The forces of Mordor besieged and captured Minas Ithil in TA 2002 and, with their occupation, this is what it began to look like:

“Upon the further side, a deep gulf of shadow, ran back far into the mountains.  Upon the farther side, some way within the valley’s arms, high on a rocky seat upon the black knees of the Ephel Duath, stood the walls and tower of Minas Morgul.  All was dark about it, earth and sky, but it was lit with light.  Not the imprisoned moonlight welling through the marble walls of Minas Ithil long ago, Tower of the Moon, fair and radiant in the hollow of the hills.  Paler indeed than the moon ailing in some slow eclipse was the light now, wavering and blowing like a noisesome exhalation of decay, a corpse-light, a light that illuminated nothing.  In the walls and tower windows showed, like countless black holes looking inward into emptiness; but the topmost course of the tower revolved slowly, first one way and then another, a huge ghostly head leering into the night.”  (The Two Towers, Book Four, Chapter 8, “The Stairs of Cirith Ungol”)

I find that topmost course, “revolving slowly, first one way and then another”, as if always on watch, the most disturbing part of this description so we’ll stop here for now before Frodo and Sam take the next and near fatal step on our tower tour.

Thanks, as always, for reading.

Stay well,

Remember that your slippery guide may have other plans for you,

(Ted Nasmith)

And remember, as well, that, as always, there’s

MTCIDC

O

Gundulf

24 Wednesday Jun 2026

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As always, dear readers, welcome.

Bladorthin?  How would we feel if, as in early drafts of The Hobbit, this were the name by which we knew the somewhat mysterious figure who visited Bilbo Baggins, looking for someone to go on an adventure?

(the Hildebrandts)

I, for one, am glad to see that name consigned to manuscripts, along with other early names, like “Bingo” (Frodo) and “Trotter”, later to become “Aragorn” and turn as well from a “Hobbit ranger” into the rightful heir to the throne of Gondor,

(the Hildebrandts again)

initially, as he tells us, to the surprise of the author (see a letter to W.H. Auden, 7 June, 1955, Letters, 315-16)

(If you want to read that draft in which Bladorthin appears, see John D. Rateliffe’s monumental The History of the Hobbit, 30-31, where the name appears just where we now read “Gandalf”, as in:

“Bladorthin!  If you had heard only a quarter of what I have (and I have heard only a tiny bit what there is to hear) about him you would be prepared for any sort of remarkable tale.” (30) )

Instead, we know him as Gandalf, whose name—along with those of the dwarves—as Tolkien tells the editor of the Observer:  “…are from the Elder Edda.” (letter to the editor of the Observer, published 20 Ferbruary, 1938, Letters, 41)

By “Elder Edda”, JRRT was referring to a 13th century collection of poems also referred to as “the Poetic Edda” and, within it, to one specific section, called “Voluspa”, “prophesy of the volva”, a kind of seeress.  (Also called a “vala”–for more on such magical figures, see:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seeress_(Germanic)  For more on the Eddas, see:   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edda  )

In this particular poem, the seeress mentions the creation of the dwarves (quoted here from Benjamin Thorpe’s 1906 translation of both the “Poetic Edda” and the “Prose Edda” which you can read here:  https://www.gutenberg.org/files/14726/14726-h/14726-h.htm ):

“9. Then went all the powers to their judgment-seats, the all-holy gods, and thereon held council, who should of the dwarfs the race create, from the sea-giant’s blood and livid bones.

10. Then was Môtsognir created greatest of all the dwarfs, and Durin second; there in man’s likeness they created many dwarfs from earth, as Durin said.

11. Nýi and Nidi, Nordri and Sudri, Austri and Vestri, Althiôf, Dvalin Nâr and Nâin, Niping, Dain, Bivör, Bavör, Bömbur, Nori, An and Anar, Ai, Miodvitnir,

12. Veig and Gandâlf, Vindâlf, Thrain, Thekk and Thorin, Thrôr, Vitr, and Litr, Nûr and Nýrâd, Regin and Râdsvid. Now of the dwarfs I have rightly told.

13. Fili, Kili, Fundin, Nali, Hepti, Vili, Hanar, Svior, Billing, Bruni, Bild, Bûri, Frâr, Hornbori, Fræg and Lôni, Aurvang, Iari, Eikinskialdi.”  (Thorpe, “Voluspa”, page 2)

You can see a number of familiar dwarf names here, as well as other names which Tolkien didn’t use, and, in section 12, “Gandalf” (although this was, originally, Tolkien’s choice for the character who then become Thorin, possibly because Tolkien might have associated him with the medieval ruler of Alfheim, in southern Norway?  The part of Norway he ruled might also have appealed to Tolkien, “Alfheim” meaning “Elfhome/world/land”—see:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gandalf_Alfgeirsson as well as Rateliffe, “Introduction”, xi-xii)

So our documentation goes, but, by an odd chance, I came across someone whose name might also have been an influence:  Gundulf, the 11-12th-century Bishop of Rochester and architect.

I had originally simply been thinking about the name “Gandalf”, which appears to be a compound of two Old Norse words, “gandr” , “[magic] staff” and “alfr”—“elf”—see Geir Zoega, A Concise Dictionary of Old Icelandic, 1910, for further details.  And JRRT certainly is aware of that staff—see his illustration, for instance, of the turning of the trolls into stone—

(JRRT)

Then I found that Norse king, Gandalf, and, prompted by that, I wondered about alternate spellings, which brought up this Wikipedia list:

“Gondulf of Provence, 6th-century duke and possibly made Bishop of Metz in 591

Indulf (6th century) (fl. 549–552 or 553), also known as Gundulf, Byzantine mercenary and Ostrogoth army leader

Gondulphus of Berry, 7th-century bishop

Gondulph of Maastricht (died after 614), bishop and Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox saint

Gondulphus of Metz (died 823), Bishop of Metz

Gundolfo, early 11th century Italian heretic

Gundulf of Rochester (died 1108), English bishop”

Unlike the etymology of “Gandalf”, “Gundulf”, although a compound like “Gandalf”, combines “gund”, “battle” and “ulf”, “wolf”—“–“battlewolf”–fierce, but not so Tolkienesque as “Elfmagicstaff”.

It certainly seemed like an interesting collection of characters, however, and, thinking of Tolkien’s medievalism, Englishness, interest in religion, and  how this might tie in with bishops, I wondered about Gundulf of Rochester, who, being a bishop, would have carried, as a badge of office, a crozier, a kind of staff, as we see in this modern (1888) depiction of Gundulf, from the west façade of Gundulf’s own Rochester Cathedral—

Gundulf seems to have been a remarkable man, having been a Norman monk brought to England by his patron, Lanfranc, the Abbot of the Abbey of St. Etienne in Normandy, and an ally of William, Duke of Normandy, who, when he had conquered England after 1066, appointed Lanfranc Archbishop of Canterbury.

(a 19th-century depiction, from the south face of the southwest porch of Canterbury Cathedral.  For more on Lanfranc, see  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lanfranc )

In 1077, Gundulf was made Bishop of Rochester, but, besides whatever his ecclesiastical interests, he was apparently also a talented architect, building, among other works, the White Tower at the center of the Tower of London—not quite what one would expect of a bishop,

but we should remember that his patron, Lanfranc, had only become Archbishop of Canterbury when the Anglo-Saxon Archbishop, Stigand,

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

was deposed and imprisoned by the Normans, so Gundulf’s own position was seemingly only safe as long as the Normans remained in power, so self-interest alone might have kept him at work as an ecclesiastical/military architect.  (For more on Gundulf, see:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gundulf_of_Rochester )

Could he have been another influence in turning Bladorthin into Gandalf?  I can find no evidence in Tolkien’s letters that he knew of Gundulf, or even ever visited Rochester, but all of the interests above—medievalism, religion, and that crozier–

might have suggested a magic staff, perhaps, like the one Gandalf kept when entering Edoras and which he used to break Grima’s enchantment of Theoden:

“He raised his staff.  There was a roll of thunder.  The sunlight was blotted out from the eastern windows; the whole hall became suddenly dark as night.  The fire faded to sullen embers.  Only Gandalf could be seen, standing white and tall before the blackened hearth.”  (The Two Towers, Book three, Chapter 6, “The King of the Golden Hall”)

(Alan Lee)

Might we from all of that then imagine that the “Voluspa” alone wasn’t the only reason for the disappearance of Bladorthin and his new baptism as Gandalf?

(Denis Gordeev)

Thanks, as ever, for reading.

Stay well,

Beware of evil counselors who claim that they’re acting in your best interest.

(the Hildebrandts)

And remember that, as always, there’s

MTCIDC

O

Homeric?

17 Wednesday Jun 2026

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As always, dear readers, welcome.

In my last posting, I returned to an old favorite, the Rohirrim,

(Bogi389)

whom Tolkien had described to Rhona Beare as “…not ‘medieval’ in our sense.” (letter to Rhona Beare, 14 October, 1958, Letters, 401.

I presumed, as he was referring to their armor, that “not medieval” meant not something like this—

(Graham Turner—see my last posting for more on him.)

but more like this—

(Gerry Embleton)

as his reference point was the Bayeux Tapestry—

In an earlier letter, to Milton Waldman, Tolkien had used another interesting phrase for describing the Rohirrim, “heroic ‘Homeric’ horsemen”.  (letter to Milton Waldman, “late 1951”, Letters, 221)

Although horsemen are briefly mentioned in The Iliad, (and one of the major Greeks, Nestor, is even regularly called “the “Gerenian horseman”)  the standard equine involvement is by chariot,

(This is Achilles dragging the body of the dead Hector around Troy, as described in Iliad Book 22, from line 395 on),

warriors sometimes leaping to the ground to confront their opponents, but, at other times, battling from their chariots, as we see Celtic warriors doing, both in their Irish mythological versions as well as in their real-life confrontations with the Romans in Britain.

(Peter Connolly)

JRRT says of himself:

“I was brought up in the Classics, and first discovered the sensation of literary pleasure in Homer.”  (letter to Robert Murray, SJ, 2 December, 1953, Letters, 257)

Thus, as someone who was a late-Victorian/Edwardian schoolboy, raised in the Classics, and who almost made a career in them himself, JRRT would have been well aware of this earlier warfare as reported by Julius Caesar, but, if “Homeric” doesn’t mean “horsemen”, what does it imply?

In that same earlier letter to Milton Waldman, Tolkien uses the word again, describing certain people of the Second Age:

“In the West—actually the North-West is the only part clearly envisaged in these tales—lie the precarious refuges of the Elves, while Men in those parts remain more or less uncorrupted if ignorant.  The better and nobler son [should this be “sort”?] of Men are in fact the kin of those that had departed to Numenor, but remain in a simple ‘Homeric’ state of patriarchal and tribal life.”  (Letters, 214)

So here “Homeric” is associated not with a military but with a social system:  “patriarchal and tribal”.

I’m presuming here that the operative word is “simple”—and, if we consider the Rohirrim as a horse people, rather like the Mongols in our Middle-earth’s history, who moved westwards from the Great Steppe–

but, unlike the Mongols, were not set upon destruction and conquest,

and, instead, helped to defeat the Wain-riders and became allies of Gondor,

then we might imagine them as remaining more like the horse-pasturing Mongols, even as they spread across Rohan and settled into permanent lodgings, like Edoras.

(Alan Lee)

As such, they have a king,

(the Hildebrandts)

whose power is passed down through his family—through male heirs—at the time of The Lord of the Rings through Theoden’s nephew, Eomer, as Theoden’s son, Theodred, is killed in the initial fighting against Saruman—and this is where “patriarchal”, might come in.

“Tribal”, however, puzzles me.  The Rohirrim appear to retain something of their horse-people origins, but Tolkien never gives us much of the further social structure of the Rohirrim, to suggest where this might be evident.

The Rohirrim don’t appear to be a feudal culture, however, of the sort which the Normans brought to England and imposed upon the Anglo-Saxons—that is, the pyramidal method of land-holding and population-controlling you can see in this illustration—

and which Tolkien might have thought of as “medieval” and, along with plate armor, might have distinguished for him the difference between the Rohirrim, with their Tapestry look, and the later Middle Ages.  (In case you’re not familiar with the term, there’s a useful article on feudalism here:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feudalism )

One more of his words might help us better to understand what he meant when he described the Rohirrim:  “heroic”.

In contemporary terms, “hero” is often used as the equivalent of “protagonist”, but the older Greek concept is of someone almost supernatural in his powers (possibly the child of a god and human, like Herakles or Achilles or even Aeneas) and, after death, might be given his own shrine—an heroon (he-RO-on) and honored there.

(for more on heroes and their worship, see:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hero%C3%B6n )

Although JRRT would not have wanted to suggest a religious element in his use of the word, we can imagine that what he intended was something more like “people given to bold, dramatic actions, even at the risk of death”, which would fit Achilles, for example, perfectly.

This is Achilles, binding a wound for his companion, Patroklos.  Against Achilles’ warning, Patroklos attempts to confront the Trojan hero, Hektor, but is killed and Achilles, although he himself is cautioned by his mother, Thetis, that, if he fights and kills Hektor, will soon die himself, does so anyway. 

This brings us back to that image earlier in this posting, of Achilles dragging Hektor’s body around the walls of Troy

and also leads to a further image:  Achilles, in turn, being killed by an arrow shot by the Trojan prince, Paris.

(In this scene, depicting the battle over Achilles’ body, you can see Achilles fallen, an arrow through the back of his leg.)

And, for the Rohirrim, the term would then fit Theoden perfectly, as well, as he says to Aragorn at Helm’s Deep:

“The end will not be long…But I will not end here, taken like an old badger in a trap.  Snowmane and Hasufel and the horses of my guard are in the inner court.  When dawn comes, I will bid men sound Helm’s horn, and I will ride forth.  Will you ride with me the, son of Arathorn?  Maybe we shall cleave a road, or make such an end as will be worth a song—if any be left to sing of us hereafter.”  (The Two Towers, Book Three, Chapter 7, “Helm’s Deep”)

(Alan Lee)

Potentially, an heroic—and Homeric—end.

Thanks for reading, as always.

Stay well,

If possible, avoid fell beasts while attempting heroic endeavors,

(Ted Nasmith)

And remember, that, as always, there’s

MTCIDC

O

Tennis, Anyone?

10 Wednesday Jun 2026

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Welcome, dear readers, as always.

The title of this posting is based upon a scene in 1920-30s country house plays where someone known as a “bright young thing”–no, not one of those—

bounds onto the stage in his whites, cheerily chirping “Tennis, anyone?”

But, lest you think that you’ve stumbled into the wrong blog, I’m actually not going to talk about tennis—except as Tolkien uses it analogically—in this quotation:

“The Rohirrim were not ‘medieval’, in our sense.  The styles of the Bayeux Tapestry (made in England) fit them well enough, if one remembers that the kind of tennis-nets [the] soldiers seem to have on are only a clumsy conventional sign for chain-mail of small rings.”  (letter to Rhona Beare, 14 October, 1958, Letters, 401)

Here’s a tennis net, in the unlikely event that you’ve never seen one—

and here’s a segment of the “Bayeux Tapestry” (actually a massive embroidery) with some warriors wearing what JRRT is talking about—

What’s going on in this scene is that a rumor during the battle of Hastings was spreading through the Norman army that William had been killed, so the Duke rode among his men with his helmet raised, and therefore anyone who knew him, at least by sight, would realize that the rumor was false (note also, in case you didn’t know about this event, the Latin caption—“Hic est Dux Will[helm”—“here is Duke William”, as well as the mounted Norman to the right who is pointing—and doubtless shouting “Iloc!”—“There [he is]!” –for something about Norman French, see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_language )

Although he doesn’t explain “medieval”, I expect that what Tolkien means is that the Rohirrim shouldn’t look like this—

(Graham Turner—who has made a specialty of the 15th-century military—with a wonderful illustrated history of the Wars of the Roses, which I recommend highly.)

but rather like this—

If you read this blog regularly, you know that my favorite part of Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings films is the depiction of the Rohirrim—with the exception of Rohan, which should be a great, grassy plain,

but, as New Zealand doesn’t possess such, the best that could be done was this rather withered- looking landscape—

(For more on this, see “Plain and Grassy”, 24 September, 2025)

Now, however, I begin to think that, though the Rohirrim are still my favorite part, I want to add a second exception:  how the Rohirrim look.

Tolkien, after all, has given us a definite picture of what he wanted.  The Rohirrim were to be imagined as looking like the Normans (and Anglo-Saxons) we can see on the Tapestry:  wearing rather simple helmets, either hammered from one sheet of metal,

or made of a series of plates attached to a frame—called a “spangenhelm”,

and a long coat of chain mail,

which was pulled over the head, like some sweaters (“pullovers”), as you can see at the bottom of this scene from the Bayeux Tapestry–

The top part of this scene is labeled, “Harold Rex interfectus est”—“King Harold has been killed”, but there is some confusion here as to which figure is Harold.  There is an early account which says that he had been hit in the eye with a Norman arrow, so that would suggest the figure in the middle, but the arrow seems to have been a replacement for something else, so perhaps it’s the figure being struck down on the right?  (For more on this, see: https://historiamag.com/harold-death-truth/  )  In any event, we can see those same “tennis nets” on both the mounted Norman (winning) and the Anglo-Saxons on foot (losing).

In contrast, here’s Theoden, as portrayed in the Jackson films—

and add in his helmet.

What in the world is all of this?  Certainly not anything like the Bayeux Tapestry which JRRT suggested as a model and yet not the “medieval” I’m assuming he intended to steer Rhona Beare away from.  Instead, it seems like something patched together, with a leather coat underneath (?), lamellar (scale) armor below,

and other things attached—a very odd-looking breastplate in several sections, pauldrons (shoulder pieces), and vambraces (arm pieces).  There is also that helmet—

(This image comes from an amazing site:  https://www.blindsquirrelprops.com/theoden-helmet/  The Squirrel seems to be able to make/reproduce anything and, in this posting, he/she demonstrates how he/she made a reproduction of Theoden’s helmet, based upon a couple of screen captures.)

The Anglo-Saxon king, Harold,

and the Norman-king-to-be, William,

seem content with simple conical helmets—does Theoden really need more?  I’m also puzzled as to where Theoden is wearing his sword—on the right.  Soldiers on the Tapestry wear theirs on the left

and this is true for mounted men over the centuries in general, who then use the left as their bridle hand and their right to draw and use their swords (or spears as is often the case on the Tapestry).  Was Bernard Hill, who played Theoden in the films, left-handed and the director wanted him to feel comfortable? 

The mass of the Rohirrim, we mostly never see closely—

but, blowing up this image, it’s possible to determine that some attempt has been made to provide the extras with conical helmets, although what little armor one can see appears to be lamellar, rather than chain—probably for the budget’s sake—chain mail taking longer to make and the man-hours making it more expensive—for more on chain mail, here’s a very useful article—and site in general:  https://www.ironskin.com/faq-chainmail-weight-and-cost/

Tolkien was very clear as to what he intended—you have only to read his sometimes outraged comments about a proposed film to be made of The Lord of the Rings to see just how seriously he took his work and its interpretation—letter to Forrest J. Ackerman, June, 1958, Letters, 389-397—and this is an abbreviated form before he appears to have given up in frustration.

And yet, although Tolkien’s letter to Rhona Beare was certainly available to them, with its description, the director and designers of the films clearly paid little attention to his intentions when it came to the look of the Rohirrim.

So, will I still find the Rohirrim my favorite part of the films?  Well, there is that moment when we see them sweep against Sauron’s Orcs from behind—

which you can see here:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HVmWl7PrBcc

and that would be hard to give up, because, even if they don’t look like Tolkien’s idea of the Rohirrim, certainly the charge is as stirring as he described it.

At the same time, however, I’ll offer you this image, by “Bogi380”, of a very different view of the Rohirrim, much closer to Tolkien’s model—

Given the choice of what I would want the Rohirrim to look like, I know what I would choose, but, as the films are not about to be remade, I guess that I’ll stick with my favorites and, as in the case of the ungrassy Rohan, be glad for all that I do enjoy.

Thanks for reading, as always.

Stay well,

Imagine, however, what that scene might have looked like if they’d followed Tolkien’s model–

And remember, that, as always, there’s

MTCIDC

O

PS

For a practically frame-by-frame analysis of the attack of the Rohirrim and a sometimes zany one, see: https://www.extended-cut.com/p/the-charge-of-the-rohirrim-is-the