As ever, welcome, dear readers.

I imagine that you, like me, read something, then have a bit of it pop up in your mind when you least expect it.  Here’s what recently popped up in mine:

“They shot well with the bow, for they were keen-eyed and sure at the mark.  Not only with bows and arrows.  If any Hobbit stooped for a stone, it was well to get quickly under cover, as all trespassing beasts knew very well.” (The Lord of the Rings, Prologue, I, “Concerning Hobbits”)

When I thought further about this, it seemed like an odd detail:  Hobbit archers turn up in the Prologue when it is said that:  “To the last battle at Fornost with the Witch-lord of Angmar they sent some bowmen to the aid of the king, or so they maintained…” and, in “The Scouring of the Shire”, there are definitely bows at work:  after Grima murders Saruman, “Before Frodo could recover or speak a word, three hobbit bows twanged and Wormtongue fell dead.” (The Return of the King, Book Six, Chapter 8, “The Scouring of the Shire”).  But does any Hobbit ever prove his prowess with a stone in the novel?  I thought not—until I was reminded by a friend that, if not a stone, someone expertly used the missile to hand—

“Sam turned quickly.  ‘And you, Ferny,’ he said, ‘put your ugly face out of sight, or it will get hurt.’  With a sudden flick, quick as lightning, an apple left his hand and hit Bill square on the nose.  He ducked too late, and curses came from behind the hedge.  ‘Waste of a good apple,’ said Sam regretfully, and strode on.” (The Fellowship of the Ring, Book One, Chapter 11, “A Knife in the Dark”)

This launching of missiles—other than arrows—at heads then brought back something from my last posting, which was about how to wear—or not to wear—helmets.  Among my images was one of Goliath, in which he was (literally) being cut down to size by David.

(This is from the “Huntingfield Psalter”, dated to 1212-1220ad.)

I grew up with Judeo-Christian Bible stories and the story of Goliath’s defeat was always a favorite, but, when I was little, I was a little unclear as to how David actually did it:  after all, did he have a slingshot like mine?  (Or a catapult, as my English friends call it.)

And Goliath was huge and covered in armor—wouldn’t a stone from a slingshot just bounce off?

(This is an engraving by Robert Cruickshank, 1789-1856, which I include because, although Goliath looks like he’s dressed to play someone in an early-Victorian revival of a Greek tragedy, the artist had read his Bible carefully and included Goliath’s armiger, or armor-bearer, who is usually left out of other versions of the illustration.)

For a better understanding of just what happened, I turned to the late 4^h-century AD Latin translation of the First Book of Samuel from the so-called “Vulgate” by St Jerome (c.342-420ad).  I chose this because it was the translation from which the medieval artist of the scene in the Huntingfield Psalter would have learned the story (all translations are mine).

So let’s start with Goliath.

4 Et egressus est vir spurius de castris Philisthinorum nomine Goliath, de Geth, altitudinis sex cubitorum et palmi:

5 et cassis ærea super caput ejus, et lorica squamata induebatur. Porro pondus loricæ ejus, quinque millia siclorum æris erat:

6 et ocreas æreas habebat in cruribus: et clypeus æreus tegebat humeros ejus.

7 Hastile autem hastæ ejus erat quasi liciatorium texentium: ipsum autem ferrum hastæ ejus sexcentos siclos habebat ferri: et armiger ejus antecedebat eum.

(First Samuel, Chapter 17)

“4 And there came out of the camp of the Philistines a bastard, by name Goliath from Geth, in height six cubits and a palm.  (Cubit is an ancient measurement with lots of possible variation, but, roughly, this makes him about 9 feet—about 2.75 metres—tall.)

5 And [there was) upon his head a bronze helmet and he was dressed in a breastplate of scale—moreover, the weight of his breastplate was 5000 bronze shekels.  (Shekel is a Biblical weight—5000 would equal about 125 pounds—about 57 kilograms.)

6 And bronze greaves he had on his shins and a bronze shield was covering his shoulders.

7 As well, the shaft of his spear was like a weaver’s beam—the iron [head] itself, moreover, of his spear  weighed 600 shekels of iron and his armor-bearer used to march in front of him.”  (A weaver’s beam was the top support of an upright loom, the sort used in the ancient world—here’s an illustration–

meaning that, like everything else about Goliath, it was much larger than normal.  600 shekels equals 15 pounds—that’s almost 7 kilograms—

and remember:  this is just the head of his spear.)

With all of this in mind, what is Goliath supposed to look like?  There is an immediate problem:  words like “cassis” and “clypeus” are more generic than technical, although “cassis” usually means a metal helmet and “clypeus” a round bronze shield.  There is a great deal of argument over the date—or dates—of the writing of Samuel, and armor and weapons change over time, so perhaps what we’re seeing here is a composite—or even a fantasy:  after all, Goliath is supposed to be 9 feet tall!

A quick inventory shows Goliath with:

1. a bronze helmet

2. bronze scale (lamellar) armor (in fact, the text uses the word lorica, which usually means a breastplate, but seems to be used here to mean a coat of scales)

3. bronze greaves

4. a bronze shield

5. an immense, iron-tipped spear

We’ll come back to that helmet, but lamellar armor is made up of layers of small, overlapping plates (lamellae) of leather, bronze, or, eventually, iron,sewn to a leather or cloth backing.  Here’s an Egyptian example from the 14^th century BC, the lamellae being made of leather,

and here’s a section of Neo-Assyrian lamellae (900-600bc) from Nimrud.

As far as I can currently tell, greaves—metal shin guards—only appear with the Greeks, making them later perhaps than some other parts of this kit.  Here’s a pair from the 6^th-2^nd century BC (note the holes at the top of the left-hand one:  like helmets, greaves were lined to provide both an extra layer of protection and to prevent chafing of bronze on skin).

(From my experience in museums, by the way, it appears that, at least early Greek greaves were simply flexed to fit around the legs—no straps or buckles—and some of those I’ve seen show severe stress along the front, as if, with use, they began to wear out.)

We’re not told anything more about the clypeus, except that it’s bronze and covers the shoulders.  I’m presuming, by this, that the author/s mean that it was commonly carried on the back when out of combat—or not being lugged by Goliath’s armiger.

(This image comes from Hurstwic, which is a living-history group devoted to the Vikings.  There’s always something of interest to be found there at:  http://www.hurstwic.com/history/text/history.htm )

If we go by Greek examples, such shields weren’t just bronze, but were actually made of layers of wood, then covered with a sheet of bronze on the outer surface.  We are fortunate to have a late 5^th-century BC example, from the Athenian Agora (a combination market/state buildings site)—

As for the spear, we are given nothing more than it’s large and has an iron head, but I want to return now to the helmet.  We know that it’s bronze, but a further detail gives us a little more.  In 17.49, it is said that David’s sling stone:

“percussit Philistheum in fronte et infixus est lapis in fronte eius et cecidit in faciem suam super terram”

“struck the Philistine in the forehead and the stone was stuck in his forehead and he fell onto his face on the ground”

From this, we can see that, although Goliath was wearing a bronze helmet, it was of an open-faced variety, which provided no protection for his forehead.

As I’ve said, taking all of this together, we may have only a fantasy figure, or a composite, but, to me, the closest I can imagine is perhaps an Assyrian, like this, reconstructed by Angus McBride—

Here, in both the left-hand and central figures, we see the open-faced helmet, the lamellar armor, the bronze-faced shield—there’s even a spear, if not a gigantic one.  The only items missing are the greaves.

 Reconstructing David is a much easier matter:  although King Saul attempts to arm him in somewhat of the same style as Goliath (17.38-39), after trying it on, David declines, saying that he’s a shepherd and most comfortable wearing his normal working clothes.  Thus, he takes with him to meet the giant Philistine only his staff (baculus—or baculum, since the noun seems to have both masculine and neuter genders) and his sling (funda—17.40)—and here was my childhood confusion.  A sling looks like this—

and is thus very different from my slingshot—

It’s not just the obvious difference in look.  What propelled the stone from my slingshot was a very large rubber band (“elastic”, if you’re in the UK) and such things didn’t come into being until the 19^th century (AD).  What propelled the stone from David’s sling was the effect of his swinging the sling in several different possible ways (this is only one of them).

Although it looks like such a simple thing, a sling can be really deadly, the stones (or cast lead bullets, which both Greeks and Romans used) moving at anywhere from 60 to 100 miles per hour (97-160kmh).   Here’s a somewhat lurid but useful article from The Daily Mail on the subject: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-4541318/Roman-sling-bullets-deadly-44-Magnum.html

And here’s a very convincing demonstration of what a sling and its stone can do:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0a_IHHcw6do

It’s no wonder that David’s stone stuck in Goliath’s forehead.

In Samuel, Goliath doesn’t seem to notice David’s sling, only his staff, shouting sarcastically:  “numquid ego canis sum quod tu venis ad me cum baculo?!” (17.43)

“You don’t think that I’m a dog that you come at me with a staff?”

But, rather than attempting to mock his (to him) diminutive opponent, Goliath should, as in the case of trespassing beasts and Hobbits, have headed for cover when he saw that David “elegit sibi quinque limpidissimos lapides de torrente et misit eos in peram pastoralem quam habebat secum et fundam manu tulit et processit adversum Philistheum” (17.40)—

“[David] picked out for himself five of the smoothest stones from the stream and put them into the shepherd’s pouch which he used to have with him and took [his] sling in hand and made his way towards the Philistine…”

Thanks for reading, as always,

Stay well,

Stay low,

And remember that, as ever, there’s

MTCIDC

O

Welcome, as ever, dear readers.

There is a moment, in a famous Monty Python sketch (“The Argument Clinic”) in which the main character, played by Michael Palin, walks into a room where he’s immediately hit on the head. 

He’s then informed that this is “Being Hit on the Head Lessons”, to which he replies “What a stupid concept!” and the sketch ends.  (If you don’t remember or don’t know this scene, here’s a LINK: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xpAvcGcEc0k )

In early warfare, the lesson to be learned, however, was to how to shield your head, especially when your enemy carried a club in the form of a purpose-built mace or hand axe.

(from the so-called “Narmer Palette”, c.3000bc)

(from the victory stele of Naram-Sin, c.2250bc)

Egyptian soldiers don’t appear to have worn helmets, perhaps relying on their shields to fend off attacks to their heads,

but their early contemporaries, the Sumerians, produced bowl-shaped helmets of copper, as this skull, with its helmet (from the tomb of Queen Pu-abi, c.2600bc) still more-or-less intact, shows us,

as does this file of soldiers from the so-called “Vulture Stele” (c. 2460bc).

This is a simple protective covering, but a Sumerian king might wear something a bit more elaborate—

(first identified as the helmet of Mes-Kalam-Dug, 26^th century BC—there is an interesting article on the subject here:  https://sumerianshakespeare.com/56701.html )

although it has been suggested that this, made from gold, might not have been worn in battle, as Angus McBride has pictured it here.

For the moment, note the perforations around its lower edges—I’ll come back to these shortly.

From such a basic beginning, helmets progressed to the more elaborate—though not necessarily more protective—cone-shapes of some Assyrian helmets,

(from the depiction of a siege from the palace of Tiglath-pileser III, at Nimrud, second half of the 8^th c. BC)

although, as you may see depicted on the upper left-hand side of this relief, there were also helmets which were designed with the protection of some lower part of the head in mind.

(fragment of a relief from the palace of Ashurbanipal, second half of the 7^th c. BC)

Without going into a lot of detail (like anything to do with armor, it’s a complex subject—just look at this table of the development of Greek helmets),

you can also see that helmets worn by the ancient Greeks were often constructed to protect the whole head—here’s a plain example–

(7^th c. BC)

but here’s a grander one—

A difficulty with a helmet like this is easy to see:  it not only constricts your vision and hearing, but it would be really hot and stuffy in a Greek summer.  To gain some relief, it looks like it would be lifted and pushed back on the head when not in service, as we can see on numerous depictions of Athena, for example, like this, one of my favorite reliefs, which is sometimes called “The Mourning Athena” or “Athena Reading a Decree” (c460bc), but which I think may actually be Athena at a boundary stone, suggesting that the patron of Athens stands at the edge of its lands, ready to protect them.

The Romans, in turn, may first have learned about helmets from their “big brothers”, the Etruscans, who had originally lived to the north, but gradually colonized land south of the Romans, as well.  The Etruscans, in turn, had been powerfully influenced by the Greeks who, themselves colonized the far south of Italy, as well as Sicily. 

In time, the Romans combined this with what they learned from their contacts with the Celts, who moved into northern Italy and were famous metal-workers,

but developing their own styles over time.

If we continued our review, we would find that many generations of armorers, from the Romans all the way through the Middle Ages, were always seeking ways better to protect the head.

Two important details needed to be added to this, however, and they are commonly overlooked when you see someone put on a helmet, be it Greek, Roman, or medieval, in a film.  And, for the first of these, we need to return to that Sumerian king’s helmet.

You will notice, right away, that there is a hole just below the ear.  When we see people put on and take off helmets in film, they just plop them on and off, like a hat.  Here’s Jaime Lanister taking off his helmet in Game of Thrones.

In fact, real helmets don’t just stay on heads because the wearers want them to—they need to be tied  or buckled in place, like these, from the Great War.

(A footnote here:  soldiers might actually wear the strap on the back of the head during combat, as it was believed that the concussion from a shell burst in front would throw the brim of the helmet back and the strap might then snap a soldier’s neck.  Here’s a British soldier just behind the front with the strap in the rear.)

So, that hole below the ear would match another, on the other side, to which the king’s armorer would have attached a chin strap.

At the lower edge of the helmet, you can see a whole line of holes.  If you wore a helmet so that there was nothing more than bare metal above your skull, it would not only be very hot in summer, which was the main campaigning season throughout the centuries, but a blow to the helmet would, potentially, drive the metal directly into the wearer’s head.  Those lower holes, then, are for a liner—of just the sort you see in this Great War helmet, like those on the British soldiers in the images above.

Besides the liner attached to the helmet itself, there was always the possibility of a liner attached to the wearer, called, in later times, an “arming cap”.  This was a padded cap which, when tied to the head, would provide some extra protection for the inside of the helmet in combat.  I’m not aware of any clear ancient images of one of these, but they do appear in medieval manuscript illustrations.  You can easily see one under this ancestor of the Model 1916 helmets which the British soldiers wear.  This earlier version is called a “kettle helm”.

(This is from the wonderful “Maciejowski Bible”, also called the “Morgan Bible”, c.1240ad—here’s a LINK to an article on its rather remarkable history:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morgan_Bible )

And here’s David beheading Goliath because, with his helmet off (you can just see it to the right), his arming cap alone will not protect him.

(from an English psalter—book of psalms—dating from somewhere between 1212 and 1220AD)

So, what lessons about not being hit on the head have we learned from all this?

1. always wear a helmet, but, unlike in film,

a helmet needs to be securely attached to the wearer—notice that none of these three has a chin strap

2. it is useful either to have a lining—no holes for a liner here

3. or at least an arming cap to protect the head within the helmet—Jaime just took his helmet off

Although I’ve used Game of Thrones for my examples, it’s only because I’m in the middle of rewatching the series.  The lack of the necessary internals for helmets goes back far beyond television or even film.  Here, for example, is Sir Pellias from a book which formed many readers’ views of medieval knights in the early 20^th century, Howard Pyle’s The Story of King Arthur and His Knights (1903).

Although he’s dressed for battle or a tournament, notice the lack of an arming cap, just like Jaime Lanister.   What might happen to his head if someone used an axe on that helmet?

When you next watch an adventure film, filled with men (and hopefully some women, like Eowyn) in armor, ask yourself:  what’s under that helmet except hair and what’s keeping it in place?  Theoden, at least, can answer…

Thanks, as always, for reading,

Stay well,

Buckle up,

And know that, as always, there’s

MTCIDC

O

Welcome, dear readers, as always.

I’ve just finished the Narnia books once more.  If you don’t know them, they are a series of 7 fantasy novels

written and published in the early 1950s by C.S. Lewis (1898-1963),

an Oxford and then Cambridge professor, who was a close friend for years of JRR Tolkien

and a member of the combination literary club and drinking society called “The Inklings”,

which met in various Oxford settings—college rooms and pubs like The Eagle and Child

in the 1930s and 1940s.

As a boy, Lewis and his brother had created an imaginary world, “Boxen”,

(This is a modern collection of the bits and pieces which the boys wrote—and illustrated.)

and, in later years, produced the lands of Narnia.

The books follow the adventures of a group of children—mostly related—and the group changes in time—as they are brought to Narnia to accomplish tasks set for them by a magical figure in the shape of a lion, called “Aslan” (which is Turkish for “lion”, as Lewis explained in a letter of 1952—C.S. Lewis Letters to Children, 29).                                               

(This is by Pauline Baynes, 1922-2008, whom Lewis asked to illustrate the first edition of the Narnia books after being impressed by her work for Tolkien.  Baynes also did the map of Narnia seen above.)

There are a number of films made from the books, a BBC series from 1988-1990, which included the first four books (The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Prince Caspian, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, The Silver Chair)

and bigger commercial films of the first three, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (2005),

Prince Caspian (2008)

and The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (2010).

As these films have been made, they’ve gradually begun to split from the original books, and the older BBC versions tend to be closer to those originals, but I enjoy both—wonderful special effects in the newer films, but I feel that the characters are closer to the books in the older BBC adaptations—and the older series includes The Silver Chair.

One of the children in the first volume is Susan Pevensie,

as played by Sophie Cook, in the BBC version,

and by Anna Popplewell, in the later films.

And this time through the books I was really struck by Lewis’ gradual portrayal of Susan as a kind of moral failure, the cause of which Lewis explained in a letter to a child in 1955:

“Peter [the older boy in the first and second books] gets back to Narnia in it [“it” being the last book of the series, The Last Battle].  I am afraid that Susan does not.  Haven’t you noticed in the two you have read that she is rather fond of being too grownup.  I am sorry to say that side of her got stronger and she forgot about Narnia.” (C.S. Lewis Letters to Children, 51)

Susan’s slide begins in the second book, Prince Caspian, where she lies about not having seen Aslan when she has (Chapter 11, “The Lion Roars”), and the narrator of the third book, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, further condemns her by saying, “Grown-ups had thought her the pretty one of the family and she was no good at school work (though otherwise very old for her age)…”

She makes no appearance in books 4-6 (The Silver Chair, The Horse and His Boy, and The Magician’s Nephew), but her full condemnation occurs in the final book, The Last Battle.  Basically, the plot is about the final destruction of Narnia and the transfer, at the close of the book, of most of the major characters to a kind of paradise (actually perhaps a form of Heaven, as it’s revealed that several of those characters had been killed earlier in a railway accident without knowing it).  The last king of Narnia, Tirian, asks Peter, someone from our world who is one of the first characters to visit Narnia, and became a king there, “Has not Your Majesty two sisters?  Where is Queen Susan?”  The replies—from Susan’s fellow Narnia visitors–explain in detail Lewis’ earlier remark in his 1955 letter.

“ ‘My sister Susan,’ answered Peter shortly and gravely, ‘is no longer a friend of Narnia.’

‘Yes,’ said Eustace [a major character from books 3 and 4], ‘and whenever you’ve tried to get her to come and talk about Narnia or do anything about Narnia, she says, ‘What wonderful memories you have!  Fancy your still thinking about all those funny games we used to play when we were children.’

‘Oh Susan!’ said Jill [one of the protagonists, along with Eustace, in book 4], ‘she’s interested in nothing now-a-days except nylons and lipstick and invitations.  She always was a jolly sight too keen on being grown-up.’

‘Grown-up indeed!’ said the Lady Polly [a main character in book 6, The Magician’s Nephew].  ‘I wish she would grow up.  She wasted all her school time wanting to be the age she is now, and she’ll waste all the rest of her life trying to stay that age.  Her whole idea is to race on to the silliest time of one’s life as quick as she can and then stop there as long as she can.’ “ (The Last Battle, Chapter XII, “Through the Stable Door”)

It’s never said, but, because all of the other major figures are together in some sort of paradise, Lewis, as a Christian, is clearly implying that Susan, by her absence, has been denied redemption and therefore condemned to the opposite of heaven, which seems surprisingly hard-hearted of him, considering that her crimes seem to consist of “forgetting Narnia” and being “grown-up”.

Narnia, however, isn’t just the place, it’s its ruler, Aslan, and, by Aslan, as Lewis tells a child, “I meant the Lion of Judah” (C.S. Lewis Letters to Children, 29), that is, Jesus.  No Narnia, then, meant no Jesus, and no Jesus, to Lewis the Christian, meant no happy afterlife. 

For me, however, that other charge, of being what Susan believes is “grown-up”, is equally sad, as I find it linked to Lewis’ own view of maturity, as he outlines in his wonderful essay, “Three Ways of Writing for Children”.  (Here’s a LINK so that you may enjoy it, too:  https://www.catholicculture.org/culture/library/view.cfm?recnum=9117 )

In one part of the essay, Lewis addresses what would seem to be Susan’s “grown-up” view of her fellow Narnians’ desire to keep Narnia alive in their memories—and his own response to such behavior:

“Critics who treat adult as a term of approval, instead of as a merely descriptive term, cannot be adult themselves. To be concerned about being grown up, to admire the grown up because it is grown up, to blush at the suspicion of being childish; these things are the marks of childhood and adolescence. And in childhood and adolescence they are, in moderation, healthy symptoms. Young things ought to want to grow. But on into middle life or even into early manhood this concern about being adult is a mark of really arrested development: When I was ten I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty I read them openly. When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up.”

Thus, except for Susan, the others have shed this fear of being “childish”, as Lewis has in openly declaring his happy and unashamed adult consumption of fairy tales.  Lewis then goes on to define what he believes being grown-up means:

“2. The modern view seems to me to involve a false conception of growth. They accuse us of arrested development because we have not lost a taste we had in childhood. But surely arrested development consists not in refusing to lose old things but in failing to add new things? I now like hock, which I am sure I should not have liked as a child. But I still like lemon-squash. I call this growth or development because I have been enriched; where once I had one pleasure, I now have two. But if I had to lose the taste for lemon-squash before I acquired the taste for hock, that would not be growth but simple change. I now enjoy Tolstoy and Jane Austen and Trollope as well as fairy tales and I call that growth: if I had had to lose the fairy tales in order to acquire the novelists, I would not say that I had grown but only that I had changed. A tree grows because it adds rings: a train doesn’t grow by leaving one station behind and puffing on to the next. In reality, the case is stronger and more complicated than this. I think my growth is just as apparent when I now read the fairy tales as when I read the novelists, for I now enjoy the fairy tales better than I did in childhood: being now able to put more in, of course I get more out.”

(In case you’re not familiar with the terms, “hock” is a now rather old-fashioned word for German white wine and “lemon-squash” is, more or less, lemonade.)

Applying this to the other Narnians, we can understand that what Lewis implies is that:

1. Narnia = Aslan, and what Aslan stands for

2. by remembering Narnia, they remember Aslan

3. by including their experience of Narnia in their adult lives, they gain from the inclusivity which Lewis believes makes real “grown-ups”—and the easy entry into the paradise which appears near the end of The Last Battle

4. and, because Susan is unwilling or unable to do this, she must suffer the consequences.

I earlier wrote that, condemning Susan seems hard-hearted.  Lewis was a gentle and kind-hearted man, however, and, in another, later, letter, he offers one more thought about Susan:

“The books don’t tell us what happened to Susan.  She is left alive in this world at the end, having been turned into a rather silly, conceited young woman.  But there is plenty of time for her to mend, and perhaps she will get to Aslan’s country in the end—in her own way.”  (C.S. Lewis Letters to Children, 67.)

Thanks, as always, for reading.

Stay well,

Add rings,

And know that there’s always

MTCIDC

O

As always, dear readers, welcome.

Recently, I’ve been thinking about Gondor’s neighbors—not Mordor, with its hordes of orcs and even-more-unspeakable things, or heroic Rohan, but Harad, whose lands stretch far to the south, off the usual maps, and particularly about the city of Umbar.

Umbar is usually associated with its pirates, or corsairs, which I, in turn, always associate with the Barbary Pirates

(A romanticized view by the Danish artist, Niels Simonsen, 1807-1885.) 

who made the western Mediterranean (and beyond), a dangerous place for merchants and travelers alike from the Middle Ages into the 19^th century.

(I got my first taste of them from a children’s book written by, of all people, the author of the Hornblower novels, C.S. Forester.)

I wondered, however:  pirates tend to be parasites, not builders–had Umbar always been a refuge for corsairs, a place whose harbor was always packed with their ships?

A little research was clearly in order.

If we were looking to find out more about a real pirate den, of which there are historical records, we would have libraries with shelves full of books written by numerous authors over several centuries.  Because this is an imaginary place, the creation of a single man, our sources are much more limited, however, and, as I began to try to provide myself—and you, dear readers—with more on Umbar, I found that I really had only three main ones:  the obvious The Lord of the Rings,

but then The Peoples of Middle-earth,

and what I’ve always seen as a kind of odd-book-out, The Silmarillion.

One of the most remarkable elements in Tolkien’s work is the depth of Middle-earth’s history, although often recorded only in the form of either annalistic or chronicalistic entries.  Derived from the Latin word annus, “year”, annals are lists of events, year after year, rather like a kind of basic timeline.   Chronicles, ultimately from the Greek word, chronos, “time”, may be seen as a kind of more developed annal, in which the events can be described in greater detail. 

I find these definitions a bit fuzzy, and JRRT himself uses the word “annals” in the title of Section A of the Appendices to The Lord of the Rings, “Annals of the Kings and Rulers”, although there is so much description that “Chronicles” might be more appropriate.  Annals or Chronicles, the first entry for Umbar appears in Appendix B, “The Tale of Years” under The Second Age:

“[SA]2280 Umbar is made into a great fortress of Numenor”

It is clear, however, from a reference in Appendix F, I, “The Languages and Peoples of the Third Age”, that Umbar is, in fact, older than this fortifying:

(about place names) “A few were of forgotten origin, and descended doubtless from the days before the ships of the Numenoreans sailed the Sea; among these were Umbar, Arnach, and Erech…”

After this reference, things become a little hazy.  Sauron, who always seems to be lurking nearby, was aware that things were not well in Numenor.  Ar-Pharazon had forcibly married his first cousin and taken the throne, so:

“Now Sauron knowing of the dissension in Numenor thought how he might use it to achieve his revenge.  He began therefore to assail the havens and forts of the Numenoreans, and invaded the coast-lands under their dominion.” (The Peoples of Middle-earth, “The Tale of Years of the Second Age”)

Ar-Pharazon, in response:

“…prepared, and at last he himself set sail with a great navy and armament, the greatest that had yet appeared in the world.”

This was not what Sauron had expected:

“And Ar-Pharazon landed at Umbar, and so great was the splendour and might of the Numenoreans at the noon of their glory that at the rumour of them alone all men flocked to their summons and did obeisance; and Sauron’s own servants fled away.”

Slippery as ever, Sauron thinks that, if he can’t obtain what he wants by force, he can do it by trickery, and surrenders to Ar-Pharazon in SA3262. (“The Tale of Years”, The Second Age)

Things go out of focus again for a while as Numenor collapses, but it appears that a kind of subset of the Numenoreans, the Black Numenoreans, continued to hold the city, perhaps with the aid of the local people, the Haradrim.  (For an extended version of how Sauron ruins Numenor from within, see the “Akallabeth” in The Silmarillion.)

Things become clear again early in the Third Age, when the Gondorian king Earnil I, led an expedition to retake Umbar in TA933 (Appendix B, The Third Age).  Having done so, he and much of his fleet were then lost in a storm off the coast (Appendix A, “Gondor and the Heirs of Anarion”), but worse was to come as:

“…the Men of the Harad, led by the lords that had been driven from Umbar, came up with great power against that stronghold, and Ciryandil [Earnil’s son] fell in battle in Haradwaith.”

The subsequent siege of Umbar lasted for 35 years (“The Tale of Years”, The Third Age:  “1015 King Ciryandil slain in the siege of Umbar”; “1050 Hyarmendacil conquers the Harad”), but:

“could not be taken because of the sea-power of Gondor.” 

In TA1050, Ciryaher, Ciryandil’s son:

“…came down from the north by sea and by land, and crossing the River Harnen his armies utterly defeated the Men of the Harad, and their kings were compelled to acknowledge the overlordship of Gondor.” 

From that time, Umbar was part of Gondor, but, as history in Middle-earth so often seems to have a roller coaster effect,

in TA1432, there begins the civil war called “the Kin-strife”, which continues to TA1448, the losers

“…sailed away, and established themselves at Umbar.  There they made a refuge for all of the enemies of the king, and a lordship independent of his crown.  Umbar remained at war with Gondor for many lives of men, a threat to its coastlands and to all traffic on the sea.  It was never again completely subdued until the days of Elessar; and the region of South Gondor became a debatable land between the Corsairs and the Kings.”

And this answers my question:  the Corsairs of Umbar postdated the fortification, if not the founding, of Umbar by 2609 years.

As I was working on this, I found, as I often do, a suggestion of something which might have influenced JRRT.  Before he was drawn away by Germanic, Celtic, and Finno-Ugric, Tolkien had begun his academic life as a classicist, and those words referring to the 35-year siege of Umbar, that the city “could not be taken because of the sea-power of Gondor” immediately brought back another city and another long siege.

After the defeat of the invading Persians at the battle of Plataea, in 479BC,

some of the victorious Greek cities, including Athens, wanted to continue the war by carrying it to the Persian-occupied Greek colonies of Asia Minor.  These cities formed a collective called the “Delian League”, from its headquarters on the island of Delos.  After some initial success, the League gradually seemed to lose its purpose and soon the leading state, Athens, had taken over the League, gradually turning it into the Athenian Empire.

There were some cities, however, which became increasingly anxious about Athens’ growing power, the leader among them being Sparta, a military state in southern Greece.  In time, this would lead to a long war, the so-called “Peloponnesian War”, 431-404BC, (named for the southern part of Greece, where some of the fighting took place), Sparta and its allies on one side, Athens and its empire on the other.

In this war, the two sides were both powerful, but their power lay in different directions:  the Spartans were heavy infantry, drilled intensively to fight in a massed formation called a phalanx.

The Athenians, as a nation of merchant/seafarers, were a naval power, possessing a large professional fleet of warships called triremes (meaning having three banks of oars).

As well, although Athens, unlike Umbar, was not situated directly at its port, it had constructed solid fortifications which joined the city with its not one, but three ports.

Each year, in the early years of the long war, the Spartans would send an army to the countryside outside Athens, block entry to the city, and destroy farmlands.  To any other place, this might have been fatal, but Athens, like Umbar, “could not be taken because of the sea-power”, so, as long as that sea-power had no rival, then Sparta, like the Haradrim, could march outside Athens’ walls every summer, yet neither deter the defenders nor penetrate the walls.                            

Gondorian Umbar survived its 35-year siege, being rescued by a king and his armies.  Athens was not so fortunate.  Sparta gave in to Persian influence and Persian money, and built a fleet which destroyed the Athenian fleet at the battle of Aegospotami, in 405BC. 

The next year, Athens, no longer able to guarantee supply by sea with its naval power so reduced, surrendered and, as a token of that surrender, was forced to knock holes in her long walls.  She was allowed to survive, but never owned an empire again.

Stay well,

Lay in plenty of provisions (and arrows),

And remember that, as ever, there’s

MTCIDC

O

Welcome, as ever, dear readers.

Saruman

Is trying to persuade Gandalf to join him in betraying their trust to the Valar:

“We can bide our time, we can keep our thoughts in our hearts, deploring maybe evils done by the way, but approving the high and ultimate purpose:  Knowledge, Rule, Order…”

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

Gandalf doesn’t accept any of this, of course, saying:

“ ‘Saruman…I have heard speeches of this kind before, but only in the mouths of emissaries sent from Mordor to deceive the ignorant.  I cannot think that you brought me so far only to weary my ears.’ “

Saruman has not begun this conversation well.  Gandalf has actually come to Isengard at his urging, that urging being delivered by Radagast:

“ ‘And he told me to say that if you feel the need, he will help; but you must seek his aid at once, or it will be too late.’ “

When Gandalf arrives, however, Saruman is less than welcoming, replying to Gandalf’s explanation that he has come for the offered aid:

“ ‘Have you indeed, Gandalf the Grey! he scoffed.  ‘For aid?  It has seldom been heard of that Gandalf the Grey sought for aid, one so cunning and so wise, wandering about the lands, and concerning himself in every business, whether it belongs to him or not.’ “

Because I’m assuming that we’ve all read beyond this, we know what Saruman is up to, but, if, for a moment, we can forget what we know, let’s see if we can try to understand both his tactics—that is, his immediate actions—and his strategy—his overall plan.

First, Saruman begins by emphasizing part of Gandalf’s common title which, we know from Christopher Tolkien’s Unfinished Tales means more than just the plain color.  There is a hierarchy of the Istari, the so-called “wizards” (from the Old English adjective wis, “experienced/learned/knowledgeable).  Originally 5 in number, they were sent to Middle-earth by the Valar, something like the senior angels in Tolkien’s mythology:

“The first to come was of noble mien [appearance] and bearing, with raven hair, and a fair voice, and he was clad in white; great skill he had in works of hand, and he was regarded by well-nigh all, even by the Eldar, as the head of the Order.  Others there were also:  two clad in sea-blue, and one in earthen brown;  and last came one who seemed the least, less tall than the others, and in looks more aged, grey-haired and grey-clad, and leaning on a staff.” (Unfinished Tales, 406)

Thus, Saruman has begun by attempting to push Gandalf down the ranks, to the position of the least of the Istari.  Second, he contrasts himself with Gandalf in terms of location:  Saruman and Gandalf are in the tower of Orthanc,

(a rough sketch by JRRT)

in the middle of Isengard, which Saruman had taken possession of (originally in the name of Gondor) about 250 years before (for the date, see The Lord of the Rings, Appendix A, II, “The House of Eorl”), while Gandalf appears to have no permanent home.

Third, he suggests that there are matters about which Gandalf should not concern himself, implying that he, Saruman, is master of such things.

To emphasize this, he now makes a rather surprising declaration:

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

Although no one would doubt his past displays of wisdom, his other two claims definitely call for investigation. 

First, there’s that ring—Gandalf had noticed it when he first arrived at Isengard:

“But I rode to the foot of Orthanc, and came to the stair of Saruman; and there he met me and led me up to his high chamber.  We wore a ring on his finger.”

Gandalf doesn’t identify this, but I would suggest that we have a clue from Unfinished Tales, where we are told of an incident which occurred when Gandalf had first reached Middle-earth from the West and had met the master of the Grey Havens, Cirdan:

“But Cirdan from their first meeting at the Grey Havens divined in him the greatest spirit and the wisest; and he welcomed him with reverence, and he gave to his keeping the Third Ring, Narya the Red…and the Grey Messenger took the Ring, and kept it ever secret; yet the White Messenger (who was skilled to uncover all secrets) after a time became aware of this gift, and begrudged it, and it was the beginning of the hidden ill-will that he bore to the Grey, which afterwards became manifest.” (Unfinished Tales, 407)

If nothing else, then, we can imagine that Saruman’s ring is an imitation of Gandalf’s, just as he makes Isengard, with its workshops and orcs, a tiny imitation of Mordor.  And we can also better understand his tone:  although he is considered the head of the Istari, Gandalf, the last of the Order, has been given a symbol of power which Saruman has not—Saruman is jealous of Gandalf.

We might also imagine that, by styling himself “Ring-maker”, he is indirectly suggesting another rivalry, one with someone who is much greater than he—but we’ll come back to this and a certain Ring.  Before we do, let’s examine that third claim, “Saruman of Many Colours”.

Saruman, as we know, has been sent by the Valar to Middle-earth as Saruman the White, but, as Gandalf now sees:

“ ‘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.’ “

Gandalf, unimpressed by this display, says simply, “I liked white better” to which Saruman replies:

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

In these robes and with these words, Saruman reveals part of his strategy:  he has divorced himself from his original self, the one dispatched from Valinor, recreating himself in a new role, not White Messenger, but Rainbow-colored Other.  But, even in this new form, he appears unsure enough of himself that he attempts to bring the despised Gandalf over to him:

“…but our time is at hand:  the world of Men, which we must rule.  But we must have power, power to order all things as we will, for that good which only the Wise can see…And listen, Gandalf, my old friend and helper!…I said we, for we it may be, if you will join with me.”

So far, Saruman has addressed Gandalf as a lesser figure, suggesting that he is the least of the Order, homeless, and a busybody.  Now, however, he seems to be trying to enlist him:  why?

“A new Power is rising.  Against it the old allies and policies will not avail us at all.  There is no hope left in Elves or dying Numenor.  This then is one choice before you, before us.  We may join with that Power.  It would be wise, Gandalf.  There is hope that way.  Its victory is at hand; and there will be rich reward for those that aided it.”

So, Saruman may be wise, ring-making, many-colored, but he appears to be saying that there is something more powerful yet—but not so powerful that there won’t be ways, in time, to master it:

“ ‘As the Power grows, its proved friends will also grow, and the Wise, such as you and I, may with patience come at last to direct its courses, to control it.  We can bide our time, we can keep our thoughts in our hearts, deploring maybe evils done by the way, but approving the high and ultimate purpose:  Knowledge, Rule, Order; all the things that we have so far striven in vain to accomplish, hindered rather than helped by our weak or idle friends.  There need not be, there would not be, any real change in our designs, only in our means.’ “

And then, as we saw at the opening of this posting, Gandalf rejects this proposal, Saruman comes to his real point:

“ ‘Why not?…The Ruling Ring?  If we could command that, then the Power would pass to us.  That is in truth why I brought you here.  For I have many eyes in my service, and I believe that you know where this precious thing lies.”

“Precious” is a frightening word in both The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, being Gollum’s term for the object he murdered his cousin to obtain and which will eventually bring about his own death.

That Saruman uses it tells us almost as much about him as all the rest of his words and Gandalf’s second rejection—which Saruman claims to have foreseen—sums up the truth under all of his words:  “ ‘Saruman…only one hand at a time can wield the One, and you know that well, so do not trouble to say we!”

And, with that, we can see Saruman’s tactics:  reduce Gandalf to a servant, then ask for his help; as well as his strategy:  having enlisted that help, use it to find the Ring and master its true master, Sauron.

In the Athens of the 5^th century BC,

there arose a new kind of teacher, who claimed to be able to instruct people in everything from how to understand the world to how to behave within the world.  What they taught was called sophia, coming from the adjective sophos, (so-FOSS) originally meaning “skilled”—and this could be skilled in anything, from carpentry to public speaking.  A teacher of this sort was then called a sophistes (so-fihs-TAYSE).  Among a number of early teachers, perhaps the most prominent was Protagoras (c.490-c.420bc).

In part because they charged money, but also partly because some made big claims, they came to the negative—and influential—attention of Plato (428-348bc)

and then to his pupil, to Aristotle (384-322bc),

and, in time, their reputation had become so blackened that we now use the term “sophistry” to mean something like “an argument which looks convincing—but will be found to be based upon falsity”.

And this is exactly what Saruman is using and which Gandalf sees through.

In comparison with Saruman’s lies, let’s begin with the goals of the Valar in sending the Istari to Middle-earth:

“Emissaries they were from the Lords of the West, the Valar, who still took counsel for the governance of Middle-earth, and when the shadow of Sauron began first to stir again took this means of resisting him.”

Thus, we see immediately that, by proposing to ally himself and Gandalf with Sauron, Saruman is undercutting their original purpose:  as opposition.

Next, there is the method to be used by the Istari:

“…their emissaries were forbidden to reveal themselves in forms of majesty, or to seek to rule the wills of Elves or Men by open display of power, but coming in shapes weak and humble were bidden to advise and persuade Men and Elves to good…”

and their purpose:

“…and to seek to unite in love and understanding all those whom Sauron, should he come again, would endeavour to dominate and corrupt.” (Unfinished Tales, 406)

Set this against Saruman’s claim that the Istari “high and ultimate purpose” was “Knowledge, Rule, Order” and you can see that what Saruman really means by this is his knowledge, rule, and order—and add to that his real desire, as he admits to Gandalf:  the Ring and the power it holds, even over Sauron.  And you can see, as well, why Gandalf rejects both his reasoning and his offer, replying:

“ ‘You were head of the Council, but you have unmasked yourself at last.  Well, the choices are, it seems, to submit to Sauron, or to yourself?  I will take neither.  Have you others to offer?’ “

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

But what has happened to the White Messenger?  Somewhere between his arrival at Isengard in TA 2759 and his encounter with Gandalf in TA3018, he has changed, drastically.  Along with the tower of Orthanc, he has also acquired its palantir:  has one charged to protect others from Sauron’s attempts to dominate and corrupt now himself become dominated and corrupted through it—and its connection with the owner of another? 

Perhaps there is a clue in Gandalf’s description of the opening of Saruman’s proposal:

“ ‘He drew himself up then and began to declaim, as if he were making a speech long rehearsed.’ “

Some sophists taught the art of persuasion—has someone else been instructing Saruman in sophistry?

Thanks, as always, for reading,

Be wary of people who sound too plausible,

And know that, as ever, there’s

MTCIDC

O

“Fear death by water.”

(TS Eliot, The Wasteland, 1922, Section I:  “The Burial of the Dead”)

As always, dear readers, welcome.

In 1908, Kenneth Grahame (1859-1932)

already known for The Golden Age (1895)

and Dream Days (1898),

published the book for which he is best remembered, The Wind in the Willows.

If you don’t know it, it’s the story of a group of animal friends, centered around Toad,

an eccentric, who causes no end of trouble to those friends.  The original 1908 edition wasn’t illustrated, but, in time, gained two who are still known for their work, Ernest H. Shepard (1879-1976), who brought Toad and his harassed friends to life in 1931,

and Arthur Rackham (1867-1939), whose work was published in 1940, not long after his death.

Two of Toad’s friends are Rat and Mole

and the title of this posting comes from their first adventure together, as Rat invites Mole to go boating:

“This has been a wonderful day!” said he, as the Rat shoved off and took to the sculls again. “Do you know, I’ve never been in a boat before in all my life.”

“What?” cried the Rat, open-mouthed: “Never been in a—you never—well I—what have you been doing, then?”

“Is it so nice as all that?” asked the Mole shyly, though he was quite prepared to believe it as he leant back in his seat and surveyed the cushions, the oars, the rowlocks, and all the fascinating fittings, and felt the boat sway lightly under him.

“Nice? It’s the only thing,” said the Water Rat solemnly, as he leant forward for his stroke. “Believe me, my young friend, there is nothing—absolute nothing—half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats. Simply messing,” he went on dreamily: “messing—about—in—boats; messing——”

“Look ahead, Rat!” cried the Mole suddenly.

It was too late. The boat struck the bank full tilt. The dreamer, the joyous oarsman, lay on his back at the bottom of the boat, his heels in the air.

“—about in boats—or with boats,” the Rat went on composedly, picking himself up with a pleasant laugh. “In or out of ’em, it doesn’t matter. Nothing seems really to matter, that’s the charm of it. Whether you get away, or whether you don’t; whether you arrive at your destination or whether you reach somewhere else, or whether you never get anywhere at all, you’re always busy, and you never do anything in particular; and when you’ve done it there’s always something else to do, and you can do it if you like, but you’d much better not. Look here! If you’ve really nothing else on hand this morning, supposing we drop down the river together, and have a long day of it?”

(Grahame, The Wind in the Willows, 1908, Chapter 1,”The River Bank”)

This, for all that Rat absentmindedly rams them into the riverbank, is a happy time, but it reminded me of another, less happy, event, as described at 2^nd—or 3^rd—or 4^th-hand in a pub in the Shire—

“ ‘A decent respectable hobbit was Mr. Drogo Baggins; there was never much to tell of him, till he was drownded.’

‘Drownded?’ said several voices. They had heard this and other darker rumours before, of course; but hobbits have a passion for family history, and they were ready to hear it again.

‘Well, so they say,’ said the Gaffer.  ‘You see:  Mr. Drogo, he married poor Miss Primula Brandybuck…And Mr. Drogo was staying at Brandy Hall with his father-in-law, old Master Gorbadoc, as he often did after his marriage…and he went out boating on the Brandywine River; and he and his wife were drownded, and poor Mr. Frodo only a child and all.’

‘I’ve heard they went on the river after dinner in the moonlight,’ said Old Noakes; ‘and it was Drogo’s weight as sunk the boat.’

‘And I heard she pushed him in, and he pulled her in after him,’ said Sandyman, the Hobbiton miller.”

(The Fellowship of the Ring, Book One, Chapter 1, “A Long-expected Party”)

If Rat and Mole’s adventure in the river reminded me of the gossip about Frodo’s parents, the gossip about Frodo’s parents reminded me of a very famous early attempted boat murder—or at least Roman gossip about one.

In 54AD, the emperor Claudius (10BC-54AD)

died (gossip had it that he was poisoned by his fourth wife, Agrippina the Younger, 23-59AD), leaving Agrippina’s son, Nero (37-68AD), adopted by Claudius,

to succeed him.  For the first couple of years, mother and son seemed to rule jointly, even appearing on coins together,

but then things went wrong and, soon, Nero was trying to think how he might remove his mother—permanently.  Our sources for this—Tacitus, Suetonius, and Cassius Dio—provide rather different pictures of his methods, including Nero attempting to poison her on three separate occasions, Agrippina being saved by the fact that she had regularly dosed herself with them to make herself immune, but my favorite is the story of the collapsible boat.

In this version, Nero offers his mother the use of a pleasure boat

perhaps a little less grand than this, but with a terrible secret:  it had been constructed in such a way that, when the time was right, it would come apart and drown Agrippina.

Like his earlier plans, however, this failed, as Agrippina swam safely to shore—only to be later murdered by Nero’s assassins—but she would have been wise, before she accepted the offer of that boat, to listen to the words of the Gaffer in reply to Ted Sandyman:

“ ‘You shouldn’t listen to all you hear, Sandyman,’ said the Gaffer… ‘There isn’t no call to go talking of pushing and pulling.  Boats are quite tricky enough for those that sit still without looking for the cause of trouble.’ “

Thanks, as ever, for reading.

Stay well,

Point out the approaching bank early to Ratty,

And know that, as always, there’s

MTCIDC

O

ps

If you don’t have your own copy of The Wind in the Willows, here’s the 1913 Scribner edition:  https://archive.org/details/windinwillows00grah

As always, dear readers, welcome.

The title may seem a little mysterious, being the French word for “duck”.

In English, it has a secondary meaning, something like “baseless story/ rumor”, with a supposed explanation about an old French anecdote about “selling half a duck”.   Of course, the minute I asked myself “Why a duck?” an entire Marx brothers routine appeared.  It’s from their 1929 film, The Cocoanuts

and, in it, Groucho (called “Mr Hammer” here) is trying to explain a map to Chico and, as always when the two hold what appears to be a dialogue, they often seem to be doing so from different dimensions—

“Hammer: (pause) … Now, here is a little peninsula, and, uh, here is a viaduct leading over to the mainland.

Chico:  Why a duck?

Hammer:  I’m alright, how are you?  I say, here is a little peninsula, and here is a viaduct leading over to the mainland.

Chico: Alright, why a duck?

Hammer: (pause) I’m not playing “Ask Me Another,” I say that’s a viaduct.

Chico: Alright! Why a duck? Why that…why a duck? Why a no chicken?

Hammer: Well, I don’t know why a no chicken; I’m a stranger here myself. All I know is that it’s a viaduct. You try to cross over there a chicken and you’ll find out why a duck.

Chico: When I go someplace I just…

Hammer: (interrupts) It’s…It’s deep water, that’s why a duck. It’s deep water.

Chico: That’s why a duck…

Hammer: Look…look, suppose you were out horseback riding and you came to that stream and you wanted to ford over…You couldn’t make it, it’s too deep!

Chico: Well, why do you want with a Ford if you gotta horse?

Hammer: Well, I’m sorry the matter ever came up. All I know is that it’s a viaduct.

Chico: Now look, alright, I catch ona why a horse, why a chicken, why a this, why a that…I no catch ona why a duck.

Hammer: I was only fooling…I was only fooling. They’re gonna build a tunnel there in the morning. Now is that clear to you?

Chico: Yes, everything excepta why a duck.”

(You can see most of this silliness here:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kHMrLpDHXc0 )

But—not to duck the subject—“duck” came up because I had, in my last, mentioned Ben Solo in his persona as “Kylo Ren”,

and his mask has always struck me as looking like a duck.

His master, Snoke,

has actually mocked it and ordered him to take it off, which Ben does, and then begins violently attacking it, as if he had just discovered that it looked like a duck.

It’s clear that Ben has a thing about masks, having somehow (it’s never explained how) rescued his grandfather, Darth Vader’s, helmet and turned it into a shrine of evil,

seeming either to ignore or not to know that his grandfather had died just after turning away from the Dark Side through his extermination of Emperor Palpatine (or not, as we find out in 9).

(I must also admit to being a bit puzzled as to how that helmet has remained, since Vader/Anakin, had been cremated in it and I can’t see why his body would have been disposed of in that way if his armor would survive.)

I’m presuming that the goal of the writers in choosing this variation on Vader/Anakin’s wardrobe meant to imply both that Ben considered himself in some way a padawan of his grandfather, as well as suggesting that, by his costume, he was the equivalent of a kind of anti-jedi. 

Vader’s helmet, however,

along with his armor,

was, in fact, a kind of prosthetic device, allowing him to function more or less normally after the horrible wounds he had suffered in his defeat by Obi Wan on Mustafar.

Of course, there was also a deal of menace involved, part of it, I would say, coming from that helmet, with its dead eyes and lower face grill, suggesting predatory teeth,

and the bowl, suggestive of the more threatening samurai helmets, which we know influenced the design.

(For more on the design, see Brandon Alinger’s Star Wars Costumes: The Original Trilogy, which has a discussion of the costume’s development, along with a series of images of concept and details.)

So why a duck?

Considering that Ben Solo has a shrine to a grandfather who was his very opposite at the end of his life, and that he’s wearing a mask which even his master thinks is dumb, perhaps we can redefine canard slightly, not as a “baseless story” told to someone else, but as one which Ben persists in telling himself, only to realize, at the very end of his life that the only person he’s been deceiving is himself.

Thanks, as ever, for reading,

Stay well,

When in doubt, duck,

And know that, as always, there will be

MTCIDC

O

ps

For an inspiring music video about ducks, see:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fp8hhBGNFZM

As ever, dear readers, welcome.

There is a common expression in writing classes, attributed to William Faulkner (1897-1962)

but the origin of which comes from a much lesser-known figure, Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch (1863-1944).

Sir Arthur, if known at all today, is as the editor for the once-famous The Oxford Book of English Verse 1250-1900,

and for being called something like “the rag and bone man of English poetry”

 by the American poet, Ezra Pound (1885-1972).       

Pound was, of course, trying to redefine the cannon—and insert himself into it–and Sir Arthur was a far more important man in the Victorian/Edwardian literary world than the equivalent of a recycling truck, but what Faulkner is quoted as saying is:  “In writing, you must kill all your darlings.”

This has been sometimes taken to mean, “Murder your characters”, and that’s how I understood it long ago, when I had only read that quotation from Faulkner, but what Sir Arthur really said, in a lecture at Cambridge in 1913-14 on literary style was this:

“…if you here require a practical rule of me, I will present you with this: ‘Whenever you feel an impulse to perpetrate a piece of exceptionally fine writing, obey it —whole-heartedly—and delete it before sending your manuscript to press. Murder your darlings.‘ “ (On the Art of Writing, 1916—it’s in the chapter entitled “On Style” and here’s a LINK so that you can read it for yourself:  https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/17470/pg17470.html )

So his meaning was that fine writing for the sake of fine writing was a mistake—but, for the sake of this posting, I’m returning to what I had originally thought Faulkner had meant—murder your characters—and, in my recent reading and viewing experience, there has been mayhem everywhere, which has made me wonder about darlings.

Recently, I rewatched Star Wars 7, 8, 9 and, this time, I was more pained than before by the death of Han Solo in 7.

Harrison Ford, in interviews, had long said that he had wanted Han removed back in the days of Star Wars 4, 5, and 6, but I’ve always thought that Han was really at the center of those films:  a cheerfully arrogant cynic who brought a certain satiric balance to the otherwise potentially too-serious story of the Force.  Although he might wish Luke “May the Force be with you” just before the attack on the first Death Star,

he was still capable of lines like:  ” A…Jedi Knight? I–I’m out of it for a little while, everybody gets delusions of grandeur.” (The Return of the Jedi, 1983)

When he and Chewie first appeared in The Force Awakens (2015),

I was hoping that we would see something of this in 7-9, but I was quickly disappointed.  It seems, if I understand the plot correctly, that what was intended by Han’s murder was to illustrate graphically just how far down the road to the Dark Side, his son, Ben, in his persona of “Kylo Ren”,

had gone, but, instead, I saw what, for me, was the end of that quietly ironic viewpoint and therefore of part of what gave a special life to the original trilogy.

Polishing off major characters, however, can make a strong dramatic point.  Consider the fate of the decent Ned Stark, played by Sean Bean in A Game of Thrones.

The king’s right-hand man, because of his honesty, is removed from office, charged with treason, forced to lie publically that he committed that treason, and then suddenly beheaded, after being told that, with his confession, his life would be spared.

Coming at the end of the first series, his murder sets off a major element of the plot-to-come:  the efforts by his family to gain revenge,

as well as underlining the increasingly-sadistic nature of the new king, Joffrey.

(Notice, by the way, that Joffrey’s crown is both too small and often worn at an odd angle, as if to suggest, visually, just how unfit and unbalanced he is mentally.)

George RR Martin and the script-writers, only begin with Ned Stark, however, and, by the end of the final series, large numbers of major characters, both sympathetic and not, have encountered poison,

being shot with a crossbow,

and being pushed from a great height,

among other grisly ends. 

At the series’ base is the English “Wars of the Roses” (1455-1485), fought by two large factions, Lancastrians and Yorkists—and, yes, that’s “Lannisters” and “Starks”, isn’t it?

Although lacking in the various religions, cultures, magic, and dragons of A Game of Thrones, it certainly has the violence, particularly in the way major figures, when captured on the battlefield, are simply beheaded there and then, without the bother of trials.

At the same time, we can almost imagine, in A Game of Thrones, that so many of the characters, positive and negative, are like fuel to the plot’s engine:  their deaths spurring that engine onward. 

In contrast, we come to Tolkien and, in particular, The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.

If we don’t count goblin kings,

Wargs,

and spiders,

and, of course, the destruction of Lake-town,

the only death of a major character is that of Thorin,

but, because of its serious nature, The Lord of the Rings suffers more serious losses among its protagonists, beginning with, it seems, Gandalf,

and including Boromir,

and Theoden,

as well as the mad Denethor.

For a serious book, these are serious deaths:  fighting a balrog, overwhelmed by orcs, falling to the chief of the Nazgul, being consumed in a pyre.  On the other hand, although we see Sauron as a great shadow passing away,

the only major deaths among the antagonists are those of Gollum, through clumsiness, really,

and Saruman, who, as his spirit is swept away by the wind, like his master, seems to crumble to nothing.

In contrast to the deaths of the protagonists, then, these seem small, almost sordid:  a victory dance too close to the lava, a throat cut by a traitorous servant.  And, rather than spurring the plot, these deaths put an end to certain strands:  the question of whether the Ring will be destroyed and Sharkey’s revenge upon the Shire.

Some darlings, it seems, need to be killed.

Thanks, as always, for reading,

Stay well—and well back from the edge of volcanoes—

And know that, as ever, there’s

MTCIDC

O

ps

In my looking about for illustrations, I happened upon this very interesting view of the death of Theoden—

which was clearly inspired by this scene from one of my favorite medieval pictorial sources, the so-called “Bayeux Tapestry”, which depicts the death of the Anglo-Saxon king, Harold, at the battle of Hastings.

Clever, don’t you think?

As always, dear readers, welcome.          

When economic circumstances forced the reluctant Tolkien to break The Lord of the Rings into three volumes, he entitled the third The Return of the King

and, of course, Strider/Aragorn becomes that king by the end of the volume. 

The last king before Aragorn was Earnur, who had disappeared into Mordor in TA2050, leaving the Stewards to rule until the death of Denethor in TA 3019.

In modern Western history, I can think of two royal restorations, of both of which I’m sure that JRRT was aware:

1. that of the Restoration of 1660, when Charles II was restored to the throne of England

after the execution of his father, in 1649,

and that of Louis XVIII in 1814,

after the execution of his older brother, Louis XVI, in 1793 (although Louis XVI had gradually been losing his royal powers since the Revolution began in 1789).

In the first case, this would have been a span of 11 years and, in the second, of 21. 

In the case of the Kings of Gondor, it would have been a span of nearly a 1000.  After such an immense stretch of time, why would anyone want the king back? 

In the Shire, there still existed a kind of ghost of kings:

“There remained, of course, the ancient tradition concerning the high king at Fornost, or Norbury, as they called it, away north of the Shire.  But there had been no king for nearly a thousand years…Yet the Hobbits still said of wild folk and wicked things (such as trolls) that they had not heard of the king.  For they attributed to the king of old all their essential laws and usually they kept the laws of free will, because they were The Rules (as they said), both ancient and just.”  (The Lord of the Rings, Prologue 3, “Of the Ordering of the Shire”)

But why do we readers—or at least I, reader–accept this return, especially as someone who lives in a country which hasn’t had a monarch over it for not quite so long as Gondor, but since 1776, which is 245 years?

Perhaps it has something to do with the traditional story culture we grew up in.  Think of fairy tales:  how many of them are set in kingdoms, with kings and queens

and often marriageable princesses—sometimes in need of rescuing.

Open what was perhaps Tolkien’s first fairy tale book, Andrew Lang’s The Red Fairy Book (1890)

and you’ll see that the first story is called “The Twelve Dancing Princesses” and the second story, “Princess Maybloom” begins: 

“ONCE upon a time there lived a King and Queen whose children had all died, first one and then another, until at last only one little daughter remained, and the Queen was at her wits’ end to know where to find a really good nurse who would take care of her, and bring her up.”

For JRRT the medievalist, there was also all the world of Arthurian legend, with earlier stories, dating back to Geoffrey of Monmouth’s 12^th-century Historia Regum Britanniae (“History of the Kings of Britain”)

 to Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (late 14^th century)

of which Tolkien and his colleague, E.V. Gordon, published a scholarly edition in 1925

and of which Tolkien himself made a translation, published posthumously by his son, Christopher, in 1975.

Then there is the later Le Morte d’Arthur, Sir Thomas Malory’s collection of Arthurian material, first published by William Caxton (c.1422-c.1491) in 1485.

And, for a late Victorian/Edwardian like Tolkien, there was the poetical work, Alfred Lord Tennyson’s (1809-1892)

The Idylls of the King (1859-1885)

At the center, of course, is Arthur himself, a man born to be king, but who had no idea that that was his fate until he found himself in front of a stone upon which rested an anvil with a sword embedded in it, a story first appearing, it seems, in Robert de Boron’s Merlin, c.1200.

This is sometimes confused in early tellings with Excalibur, Arthur’s other sword, which, in some versions, was given to him by the “Lady of the Lake”.

This confusion is then employed, to wicked effect, in Monty Python’s Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975)

where it is used to question the very idea of kingship which I’m puzzling my way through here.

Soon to be on his quest for the Holy Grail, King Arthur approaches some peasants who are grubbing in a muddy field.

“ARTHUR: How do you do, good lady? I am Arthur, King of the Britons. Whose castle is that?

WOMAN: King of the who?

ARTHUR: The Britons.

WOMAN: Who are the Britons?

ARTHUR: Well, we all are. We are all Britons, and I am your king.

WOMAN: I didn’t know we had a king. I thought we were an autonomous collective.”

This is clearly not going to go well

and soon Arthur is shouting:

“ARTHUR: Be quiet! I order you to be quiet!

WOMAN: Order, eh? Who does he think he is? Heh.

ARTHUR: I am your king!

WOMAN: Well, I didn’t vote for you.

ARTHUR: You don’t vote for kings.

WOMAN: Well, how did you become King, then?”

“ARTHUR: The Lady of the Lake,…

[angels sing]

…her arm clad in the purest shimmering samite, held aloft Excalibur from the bosom of the water signifying by Divine Providence that I, Arthur, was to carry Excalibur.

[singing stops]

That is why I am your king!”

A second peasant’s response suggests that this is not quite so convincing as Arthur would have them believe:

“DENNIS: Listen. Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government. Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony.”

(Monty Python and the Holy Grail, Scene 3:  “Repression is Nine Tenths of the Law?”)

Arthur’s argument is that he is the rightful king because he was appointed by a spiritual power and this easily ties in with justifications of kingship under the idea of “the divine right of kings”, in which a monarch claimed that he was there because God had appointed him to his position.  It also suggested that, in that position, he was answerable to no one but God—an idea which got Charles the First

of England not only into a civil war, but carried him all the way to his execution, as his opponents asserted that Charles was not himself a kind of god (an idea with which his father, James the First, had actually played in his The True Law of Free Monarchies, 1598, and Basilikon Doron, 1599), but a man responsible to his people and, when, by his actions, he betrayed them, he was as liable as any of his subjects to a charge of treason.

For the medieval Arthur, however, there was a fatal wounding on the battlefield,

or perhaps a kind of rescue by a group of mysterious women, who take him off to “the Isle of Avalon”

where, in some versions of the story, he is to be healed and there await the appropriate moment to sail back to retake his kingdom—the original Return of the King.

This, of course, brings us back to my original question:  why accept that that return is an appropriate part of the ending of The Lord of the Rings?

I think that we can begin with the remark about hobbits, that

“they attributed to the king of old all their essential laws and usually they kept the laws of free will, because they were The Rules (as they said), both ancient and just.” 

If we look at Middle-earth in TA 3018, much of it is in desperate need of laws which are “both ancient and just”, as

1. Sauron is active in Mordor, raising armies, including those from his alliance with Harad, and sending the Nazgul, his creatures, abroad

2. Saruman, now in the service of Sauron, although believing himself independent, is also building armies and infringing upon Rohan

3. Gondor is gradually growing weaker, its main city, Minas Tirith, largely depopulated, and its steward, Denethor, is being emotionally manipulated by Sauron through his unwise use of a palantir

4. Theoden, king of Rohan, has been taken over by Saruman’s spy, Grima

5. whole areas beyond the Anduin are, at best, unsafe

6. Moria is in the hands of orcs—and worse, in the form of a balrog

(and 7.—to come—the Shire itself will fall into the vengeful hands of the deposed Saruman, now called “Sharkey”, to be turned into a kind of fake socialist industrial state)

With a background in fairy tales and Arthurian legend, it would have seemed natural to JRRT to see this as a world out of balance and in need of a savior—or, in the case of The Lord of the Rings, two:  Frodo and Aragorn.

And there appears to be a kind of divine sanction for both of these in these words which both Boromir and Faramir had heard in dreams, as Boromir tells the Council of Elrond:

“For on the eve of the sudden assault a dream came to my brother in a troubled sleep; and afterwards a like dream came oft to him again, and once to me.

In that dream I thought the eastern sky grew dark and there was a growing thunder, but in the West a pale light lingered, and out of it I heard a voice, remote but clear, crying:

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

The “Sword that was broken” is in the hands of Aragorn, its rightful owner as the direct descendant of its original owner, Elendil, as Gandalf explains to Boromir:

“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.”

But then Gandalf continues:

“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?”

Boromir has his doubts, however:

“I was not sent to beg any boon, but to seek only the meaning of a riddle…Yet we are hard pressed, and the Sword of Elendil would be a help beyond our hope—if such a thing could indeed return out of the shadows of the past.”

Aragorn replies—and here we begin to see his street cred:

“If Gondor, Boromir, has been a stalwart tower, we [his people, the Dunedain] have played another part.  Many evil things there are that your strong walls and bright swords do not stay…Peace and freedom, do you say?  The North would have known them little but for us.  Fear would have destroyed them.  But when dark things come from the houseless hills, or creep from sunless woods, they fly from us.”

Thus, Aragorn suggests that he’s not only the possessor of an ancient sword which signifies his heritage, but he’s also an experienced soldier, who has continued has family’s role as protectors of the North.  As the story proceeds, Aragorn continues to show proofs of his kingship, laying claim to a palantir and using it to turn the tables on Sauron (The Return of the King, Book Five, Chapter 2, “The Passing of the Grey Company”), traveling the Paths of the Dead to call upon the Oathbreakers finally to fulfil their oath (“The Passing of the Grey Company”), and in his ability to heal those near-death, as Gandalf says:

“ ‘Let us not stay at the door, for the time is urgent.  Let us enter!  For it is only in the coming of Aragorn that any hope remains for the sick that lie in the House.  Thus spake Ioreth, the wise-woman of Gondor:  “The hands of the king are the hands of a healer, and so shall the rightful king be known.” ‘ “ (The Return of the King, Book Five, Chapter 8, “The Houses of Healing”)

And we should note two things here:

1. it is Gandalf who quotes Ioreth and who is Gandalf?  One of the 5 Istari, lesser spirits sent by the Valar to counter Sauron in Middle-earth (Unfinished Tales, Part Four, II. The Istari)

2. not “a rightful king”, but “the rightful king”—Gandalf may be thought, then, to be speaking for the Valar to say that Aragorn is, indeed, the King Who Returns

All this may convey a kind of justification for Gandalf’s earlier identification of Aragorn as “Aragorn son of Arathorn, the heir of Kings” (The Two Towers, Book Three, Chapter 6, “The King of the Golden Hall”), although it skates very close to that divine right of kings which got Charles the First into trouble, but it is only when all of the menace in the list above has been dissipated, much of it by the efforts of others, that we see the true nature of the Return of the King:

“In his time the City was made more fair than it had ever been, even in the days of its first glory; and it was filled with trees and with fountains, and its gates were wrought of mithril and steel, and its streets paved with white marble, and the Folk of the Mountain and the Folk of the Wood rejoiced to come there; and all was healed and made good, and the houses were filled with men and women and the laughter of children, and no window was blind nor any courtyard empty; and after the ending of the Third Age of the world into the new age it preserved the memory and the glory of the years that were gone.” (The Return of the King, Book Six, Chapter 5, “The Steward and the King”)

And it’s not just the sick and the City which Aragorn heals, but a great portion of Middle-earth:

“And embassies came from many lands and peoples, from the East and the South, and from the borders of Mirkwood, and from Dunland in the west.  And the King pardoned the Easterlings that had given themselves up, and sent them away free, and he made peace with the peoples of Harad; and the slaves of Mordor he released and gave them all the lands about Lake Nurnen to be their own.”

I’ve wondered whether being conditioned by fairy tales has had something to do with my acceptance of the Return, and this seems to be a giant fairy tale ending, including the marriage with Arwen (“The Steward and the King”)-

but JRRT is a better story-teller than to take such an easy way out.  The Return of the King has brought peace and will bring prosperity to a world much in need of both, but it isn’t a happy world for everyone. 

When Frodo and his friends return to the Shire, they find destruction, both to the landscape and to the social fabric and it takes the deaths, not only of men, but of hobbits and even of one of the Istari, Saruman, to begin the healing there.  (The Return of the King, Book Six, Chapter 8, “The Scouring of the Shire”)

And there is another sadness as well:  the departure of Frodo and Bilbo and Gandalf from Middle-earth (The Return of the King, Book Six, Chapter 9, “The Grey Havens”).

(A real beauty by Ted Nasmith)

So perhaps, beyond fairy tales and the Once and Future King of Arthur, it’s this mixture of joy and sorrow which persuades me to believe in The Return of the King.

Thanks, as ever, for reading.

Stay well,

Hope for wizards in our world (but not so ambitious and self-deceiving as Saruman)

And know that, as always, there’s

MTCIDC

O

ps

Near the beginning of this piece, there is an illustration of a king and queen which I drew from one of Ernest Shepard’s illustrations for one of my favorite A.A. Milne’s poems, “The King’s Breakfast”.  Here’s a LINK, if you don’t know it:  https://wonderingminstrels.blogspot.com/2000/09/king-breakfast-a-milne.html  WARNING:  this has such an infectious rhythm that you will find yourself memorizing it without knowing it!

Dear readers, as always, welcome.

This is posting number 351 and, if you are a regular follower of the blog, you know that, in over 350+ postings, a huge number of images have appeared.  Usually, the writing of the posting inspires the choice of images, but, in this one, it was the other way around, as you’ll see…

The Romans were proud of their state, the Res Publica, “The Business of the People”. 

Rome hadn’t begun as a people’s business, however.  Instead, it had been farmers

and shepherds

who had lived in thatched huts

in little villages on 7 hills, overlooking the Tiber River.

In time, they had come under the control of their northern neighbors, the wealthy and sophisticated Etruscans,

and an Etruscan king, a lucumo, had ruled them.

Then, in 509BC, the Romans overthrew the king and established a new kind of state, that Res Publica.  They retained the former kings’ council of elders, which they called the Senate, after the Latin root sen-, “old”, but, instead of a king, the Romans yearly elected two state officers, the consuls.  Here are the two consuls in a session with the Senate.

Roman society had two big social classes, the Patricians and the Plebeians,

and, for the first century-and-a-half, consuls were always elected from the Patricians, until, in 367BC, a new law was passed, decreeing that one of the two consuls should be a Plebeian.

Consuls held a great deal of power, including acting as generals in time of war, but all of this came to an end when Augustus (63BC-14AD),

the grand-nephew of Julius Caesar (100-44BC),

having won a final civil war, became the sole ruler of Rome and the consuls became more holders of positions of prestige than of power.  They were, at least initially, still elected, but they were nominated by the emperors, who sometimes even nominated themselves.  Because the office had almost 500 years of tradition behind it, however, becoming a consul was to have achieved a lofty position in the state and certain senior state positions were only available to those who had held it.

By late imperial times, however, the office had lost its power and had become ceremonial, which included, at the consul’s installation, a massive celebration, including the Greco-Roman world’s favorite sport, chariot-racing.

Along with elaborate celebrations, there could be the distribution of commemorative gifts, one of which might look like this—

It is called a “consular diptych” (Greek di—“two/double” + ptukhe, “fold”) and consists of two panels, which could be made of wood, ivory, or metal.  This particular one, seemingly the oldest surviving, dates from 406AD, and depicts the late western emperor, Honorius (384-423AD)—who had been consul once, himself—at the age of 2—and was dedicated to him by Anicius Petronius Probus, who was consul in 406.  It’s a very graphic contrast to the power of the consuls of the old Republic that Probus describes himself as the famulus, “household slave” of Honorius.

The form of the diptych descends from a much less exalted object, the usual Roman notebook,

 which consisted of two hollow wooden halves, into which wax was poured to form a surface. 

The writer then used an instrument called a stilus, which had two functions:  the pointy end was used to write on the wax, the other end was a kind of eraser, with which the writer could smooth the wax over what she/he’d written, thus erasing it.

By the first century AD, these apparently could also be used to hold letters of appointment, which I presume is how they became associated with consuls. 

As you can see from the one dedicated to Honorius, the carvings on the outside of these can be wonderfully elaborate, my favorite being this,

which, although it’s a diptych, isn’t actually a consular one, its purpose being unknown.  It has the names of two prominent late Roman families, the Symmachi and the Nichomachi, along the top, however, suggesting that, whatever it was for, it somehow involved them and, in particular, two women of the families, who appear to be acting as religious figures.  (The left-hand panel was badly damaged in a fire, unfortunately.)

This posting came about because, as usual, I was looking for images to illustrate an earlier posting and came across the work of Tom Buggey, and this wood panel of Galadriel—does this form look familiar?

As Dr. Buggey explains, he is an admirer of a pair of my favorite Tolkien illustrators, the Hildebrandts, and this is clearly based upon one of their depictions of the Lady of the Golden Wood.

Although I enjoy Dr. B’s Tolkien work, I also find his other work impressive, as in this

of which I quote his description:

“This is an original composition based on a children’s story I was hoping to write illustrated with a series of carvings – If only I had the time. This carving measures 31″ x 15″. The story goes something like this. Long ago the woodsmen of the north were aided by the city dwellers of the south. The woodsman vowed to aid the city dwellers if ever they were in need. To secure this promise a spell was placed on a series of songs that would awaken future generations to the promise of aid. This carving represents a princess (of course) of the besieged city’s king who travels north with the court musician to garner the assistance of the woodsmen. The first songs are being sung.”  (from the website, lightly edited by me)

There are a number of other carvings at his site: https://buggeycarve.com/  For myself, I hope that, since he wrote the above, he has continued both the story and the panels, maintaining a sculpting tradition which goes back far beyond consular diptychs, but which includes such wonderful pieces as this—

Thanks, as always, for reading,

Stay well—be careful—those carving tools are sharp!

And know that, as ever, there’s

MTCIDC

O