• About

doubtfulsea

~ adventure fantasy

Category Archives: Heroes

Metatextual

16 Wednesday Oct 2019

Posted by Ollamh in Heroes, J.R.R. Tolkien, Military History, Narrative Methods

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Beowulf, Game of Thrones, Great War, Great War Posters, Metatextual, Propaganda Posters, Samwise Gamgee, Story, The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien, trench warfare, Writing, WWI

Welcome, dear readers, as always—and don’t be weirded-out by the hyperliterary title.  We’ve been thinking about an odd moment in The Lord of the Rings, a moment when two of the main characters seem to possess the ability, at least for that moment, to step away from the story, and to see themselves as characters, which is one way in which metatextuality, meaning “outside the text”, works.  (For a useful definition, see this LINK.)

It’s a passage in The Two Towers, Book Four, Chapter 8, “The Stairs of Cirith Ungol”.  Sam and Frodo are pausing before Gollum leads them through a passageway which will bring them into Mordor.  They have a meal, then talk about where they’re about to go and Sam says:

“…And we shouldn’t be here at all, if we’d known more about it before we started.  But I suppose it’s often that way.  The brave things in the old tales and songs, Mr. Frodo:  adventures, as I used to call them.  I used to think that they were things the wonderful folk of the stories went out and looked for, because they wanted them, because they were exciting and life was a bit dull, a kind of sport, as you might say.”

Because Tolkien was writing this after the Great War, we might imagine that, at one level, he’s reflecting upon the war fever which captured Great Britain in the early days of the conflict, with its recruiting posters and popular art depictions like these—

image1poster.jpgimage2poster.png

image3poster.jpg

image3a.jpgimage4acharge.jpg

and its masses of volunteers crowding recruitment offices.

image4recruit.jpg

This was all before the grim reality of trench warfare

image5trench.jpg

and casualties beyond anyone’s pre-war comprehension

image6casualties.jpg

dampened that early enthusiasm, leading to a realistic cynicism mostly quietly expressed,

image7sword.png

although soldiers could sometimes express their opinion of the war vocally—see this LINK for some of that vocalizing.

What Sam says next seems to agree with this:

“But that’s not the way of it with the tales that really mattered, or the ones that stay in the mind.  Folk seem to have been just landed in them, usually—their paths were laid that way, as you put it.”

So, “adventures” now, to Sam, are no longer “a kind of sport” which “wonderful folk” seek out, but rather something which just happens to people—in fact, people like Sam and Frodo.  And, just like Sam and Frodo, “…I expect they had lots of chances, like us, of turning back, only they didn’t.”

The consequences of rejecting those chances are obvious:  “And if they had, we shouldn’t know, because they’d have been forgotten.  We hear about those as just went on…”

And Sam’s sense of the consequences of “just going on” is very realistic:  “—and not all to a good end, mind you; at least not to what folk inside a story and not outside it call a good end.  You know, coming home, and finding things all right, though not quite the same—like old Mr. Bilbo.  But those aren’t always the best tales to hear, though they may be the best tales to get landed in!”

So far, then, we might see this as the clear thinking of someone who believed in those 1914 posters and came to learn otherwise.  Sam continues, however, and here’s where that metatextuality comes in:

“I wonder what sort of tale we’ve fallen into?”

We know that Sam has long been fascinated by tales of elves and dragons.  As Gaffer Gamgee says:

“Crazy about stories of the old days, he is, and he listens to all of Mr. Bilbo’s tales.  Mr. Bilbo has learned him his letters…”  (The Fellowship of the Ring, Book One, Chapter 1, “A Long-Expected Party”)

The Gaffer’s last remark suggests that not only has Sam heard tales, but he may even have read them.  We think that it should be no surprise, then, that, when put into a situation far beyond the usual, Sam might believe that it’s not just daily life, but, in fact, a “tale”.  And so he asks, “…what sort…?”

To which Frodo replies:

“I wonder…But I don’t know.  And that’s the way of a real tale.  Take any one that you’re fond of.  You may know, or guess, what kind of tale it is, happy-ending or sad-ending, but the people in it don’t know.  And you don’t want them to.”

In Sam and Frodo’s case, they clearly don’t and can’t know, but, although they don’t know their fate (although we think that Frodo has an idea, saying “Our part will end later—or sooner.”), they both believe that they are in a tale, as Sam says:

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

This is ironic, of course, as we know that this very story is drawn as Tolkien-as-editor says in the Prologue to The Lord of the Rings, from The Red Book of Westmarch (see “Note on the Shire Records”), a volume jointly written by Bilbo and Frodo and perhaps completed by Sam himself (see The Return of the King, Book Six, Chapter 9, “The Grey Havens”).

There is also, to our minds, as we said, something odd about this view of themselves and their situation.  In general, characters in epic stories—just as Frodo says—are unaware that they are in them.  Achilles never turns to Patroclus in the Iliad and asks, “I wonder how this epic will end?” nor does Beowulf spend time discussing just what sort of tale he and Wiglaf have gotten themselves into.   (You can see a touch of metatextuality in the Game of Thrones series, however, when one of its evilest characters, Ramsay Bolton, can say, “If you think this has a happy ending, you haven’t been paying attention.”)

Frodo takes the idea of their being characters one step farther when he then suggests indirectly that their story is actually in the hands of its readers:

“…We’re going on a bit too fast.  You and I, Sam, are still stuck in the worst places of the story, and it is all too likely that some will say at this point:  ‘Shut the book now, dad; we don’t want to read any more.’ “

As in his earlier remark, that “Our part will end later—or sooner”, we see that Frodo imagines that they’re already in such a bad place that a young audience will want to stop the story.

This then leads us to a question as odd to us as their view of themselves as already-fictional characters in a tale:   if dad listens and agrees, closing the book, what will happen to Frodo and Sam then?

 

Thanks, as ever, for reading and

MTCIDC

CD

See, the Conquering Hero?

09 Wednesday Oct 2019

Posted by Ollamh in Films and Music, Heroes, J.R.R. Tolkien, Narrative Methods

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Battle of Culloden, Beethoven, celebrations, Crowning of Aragorn, endings, George Lucas, Haendel, Joshua, Judas Maccabaeus, oratorio, Return of the Jedi, Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back, The Field of Cormallen, the Force, The Grey Havens, The Last Jedi, The Lord of the Rings, The Phantom Menace, The Red Book of Westmarch, The Return of the King, The Scouring of the Shire, Tolkien

Welcome, as ever, dear readers.

With Star Wars IX to appear in mid-December, completing the series, we’ve been going back through all of the previous episodes, from I (The Phantom Menace)

image1phantom.png

through VIII (The Last Jedi).

image2last.jpg

It’s a remarkable achievement and we’re very grateful to George Lucas,

image3gl.jpg

for bringing it so far, even if his strong sense of the story seems to have been abandoned after VI (Return of the Jedi).

Because there are now so many films (including all of the offshoots, like the animated features, as well as Rogue One and Solo), it’s sometimes hard to remember that, once upon a time, there was only Star Wars (only later A New Hope), with its triumphant conclusion—mass formations of troops, Princess Leia in an actual princess outfit, and medals all around.

image4sw1.jpg

The next film—now V (The Empire Strikes Back) had a much less secure ending, with Darth Vader and the Emperor appearing to win and Han Solo a prisoner, on his way to Jaba the Hutt,

image5ending5.jpg

but VI (The Return of the Jedi) is once more triumphant, both in its original ending, on the forest moon of Endor,

image6return.jpg

and in the later revised version, where we see galaxy-wide celebrations.

image7return.jpg

Among the other films, we’ve seen another celebration, on Naboo, at the end of I (The Phantom Menace),

image8phantom.jpg

a secret marriage in II (Attack of the Clones),

image9attack.jpg

and a complex web of plot, including the construction of the Death Star, the separation of the babies—Leia to Alderan, Luke to Tatooine—and the funeral of Padme in III (The Revenge of the Sith).

image10padme.jpg

VII (The Force Awakens) had a mysterious ending:  Rey having gone to what appears the far end of the galaxy to find—

image11rey.jpg

while VIII (The Last Jedi) seemed vaguely hopeful, with an unnamed stable boy showing signs of having the Force within him, as Anakin did in I.

image12last.jpg

With such a build-up, we’ve been wondering how IX (The Rise of Skywalker) will end.  As it’s supposedly the final episode, we assume that it will not conclude up in the air, like V, but will it have a mass celebration, like I, IV, and VI?

Or will it, like III, have multiple endings?  As we’ve thought about it, you could really see that as the case with The Lord of the Rings.

First, like I, IV, and VI, there are celebrations:  of Frodo and Sam at the field of Cormallen, in The Return of the King, Book Six, Chapter 4, “The Field of Cormallen”.

image13afield.JPG

Then, in Chapter 5, “The Steward and the King”, we have the crowning of Aragorn

image13coronation.jpg

followed by the wedding of Arwen and Aragorn.

image14wedding.jpg

After that, we have the return of the hobbits to the Shire and the defeat and death of Saruman in Chapter 8, “The Scouring of the Shire”.  The Shire has been badly damaged by Saruman and his henchmen, however, so that, although they are gone, the healing will take many years.

image15adeath.jpg

And the story doesn’t conclude there.  Only a little time goes by and then there is another ending:  the trip to the Grey Havens and beyond in Chapter 9, “The Grey Havens”.

image16grey.jpg

And then the story finally ends—or does it?  We’ve seen in Star Wars VIII, when the stable boy seems to use the Force, though only for a moment,

image12last

the implication that perhaps the title, The Last Jedi, is more of a puzzle than it would first appear.  The very last line of The Lord of the Rings, spoken by Sam, is “Well, I’m back…”  and it’s true, as far as Sam won’t go off on another adventure.  Before this, however, Frodo has been busy writing:

“There was a big book with plain red leather covers; its tall pages were now almost filled.  At the beginning there were many leaves covered with Bilbo’s thin wavering hand, but most of it was written in Frodo’s firm flowing script.  It was divided into chapters but Chapter 80 was unfinished, and after that were some blank leaves…

‘Why, you have nearly finished it, Mr. Frodo!’ Sam exclaimed.  ‘Well, you have kept at it, I must say.’

‘I have quite finished, Sam,’ said Frodo.  ‘The last pages are for you.’”

But what does this imply?  We have no idea what Sam may have added, but the volume Frodo gave him was the origin of The Red Book of Westmarch, the basis not only for The Lord of the Rings, but for The Hobbit, as well.  Are we being told that writing about adventure is an adventure in itself, and almost as important?

image17redbook.jpg

Thanks, as always, for reading.

MTCIDC, of course!

CD

ps

When we think of music in triumphs, the first piece which pops into our minds (after the Gungan march, of course) was one written by Haendel (1685-1759), “See, the Conquering Hero Comes”.

image18gfh

 

It was originally intended for his oratorio, Joshua (1747), but it fit his earlier piece, Judas Maccabaeus (1746) so well that he transferred it to the score of that oratorio.  Judas Maccabaeus was composed as a tribute to the second son of George II of England, William Augustus, the Duke of Cumberland,

 

image19duke

after he had decisively beaten the attempt to overthrow his father and replace him with the son of the former monarch, James II, at the battle of Culloden.

image20cull.jpg

Here’s a LINK to a stirring performance.

In 1796, the young Beethoven (1770-1827)

image21bvn.jpg

wrote a series of 12 variations on the theme for cello and fortepiano.  It’s a lot of fun to hear what Beethoven can do with Haendel’s tune, so we give you a LINK here.

Holding Place

21 Wednesday Aug 2019

Posted by Ollamh in Heroes, J.R.R. Tolkien, Military History

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Bath star, colours, ensign, First Boer War, Great War, Laing's Neck, lieutenant, Maciejowski Bible, Mike Chappell, Officer Training Corps, OTC, Oxford, second lieutenant, the Lancashire Fusiliers, Tolkien, Uniform and Weapons Supply, West Yorkshire Regiment, white feather, WWI

Welcome, as ever, dear readers.

Our title is actually a translation of a French compound, lieutenant, which, by itself, is an adjective, but, if you add a definite (le) or indefinite (un) article, you have a noun—and a military rank, a rank which Tolkien held in 1916.  Anyone who knows anything about JRRT is aware of this and has probably seen this photo of a very serious young officer.  In this posting, we’d like to take a closer look at this photo and what it once represented—and, as you’ll see, there’s a great deal!

image1jrrtasofficer.jpg

In 1914, JRRT had made a difficult decision:  to finish his degree and not to join up along with the passionate thousands who did

image2crowd.jpg

and, a young man still in civilian dress, to risk the public humiliation of having a young woman—or group of young women—come up to him in the street and offer him a white feather as a marker of his cowardice in not enlisting immediately.

image3whitefeather.png

While finishing, he had been a member of the OTC, the Officer Training Corps at Oxford,

image4badge.jpg

which had helped him to gain a (temporary—for the duration of the war) commission as a second lieutenant in the British Army in July, 1915.

image5jrrt2nd.jpg

The title of second lieutenant was relatively new in 1915, having only been introduced in 1877, as a permanent replacement for the much older title of “ensign” (“cornet” in the cavalry).  Originally, an ensign’s job had been to carry an ensign—that is, a flag—

image6ensignecw.jpg

which could be a very hazardous job, as a flag (a “colour”, in the infantry, a “standard” in the cavalry), was not only a rallying point, but also the equivalent of a very large sign shouting “Shoot this one first!”

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/30/Sergeant_Luke_O%27Connor_Winning_the_Victoria_Cross_at_the_Battle_of_Alma.png/731px-Sergeant_Luke_O%27Connor_Winning_the_Victoria_Cross_at_the_Battle_of_Alma.png

By 1915, British units hadn’t carried their colours into battle for about 35 years (the last known instance being at Laing’s Neck, during the First Boer War, in 1881),

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/82/3e/9d/823e9debc60fe348f17f914e1a0360d5.jpg

so a second lieutenant would be given other roles in the regiment to which he belonged, such as commanding a platoon, a smaller part of a larger company, or in JRRT’s case, being in charge of communications—a subject which we’ve discussed in a previous posting.

Although enlisted men were issued uniforms, equipment, and weapons,

image9tommy.jpg

(This wonderfully-detailed illustration is by Mike Chappell, one of our favorite modern illustrators of the British Army.)

officers, as “gentlemen”, were expected to supply everything themselves.

image10tailor.jpg

This included not only uniform,

image11uniform.jpg

but revolver (this is JRRT’s actual .455 Webley, now in the Imperial War Museum collections)

image12revolver.jpg

and sword,

image13sword.JPG

along with the belts on which to carry them,

image14sambrowne.jpg

plus all the other necessary items to join an army on campaign.

Taken altogether, it would have been very expensive for a new graduate, like JRRT, and so the government began issuing a stipend to help “temporary officers” (the Army sometimes had uglier terms for them) to kit themselves out like this.

image15ready.jpg

And we’ve forgotten one essential, by 1916, something no soldier in the front lines would ever have been without—and here’s why.

image16helmet.jpg

As people always interested in the medieval, we can say that we’ve seen this pattern before—here are examples from the 13th-century Maciejowski Bible,

image17bible.gif

where such a thing might have been called a “kettle helm”.

With all of the above in mind, let’s return for a moment to a larger version of that very familiar picture of JRRT in uniform.

image18jrrt.jpg

First off, you can see that, for this rather formal portrait, although he’s in uniform, he is wearing neither revolver nor sword, but he is wearing the distinctive belting (named after the general who invented the pattern a “Sam Browne”).  As well, if you look at his left cuff, you can see the mark of his second-lieutenancy, what soldiers commonly called a “pip”, but which formally was called a “Bath star”.  One of these on each cuff indicated the rank of second lieutenant.  When Tolkien was promoted, in January, 1918, to First Lieutenant, he would have added a second star.  Here’s a table of rank markers to help you.

image19table.png

If the image were as clear as that of this reenactor, we could see that his uniform bore more than his rank—older regiments, in particular, had special, distinctive markings

image20reenactor.jpg

Note the badges on this reenactor’s cap and on his collar tabs.  These are the markings of the West Yorkshire Regiment.

image21westyorks.jpg

Tolkien belonged to the Lancashire Fusiliers, whose badge looked like this:

image22lancs.jpg

You’ll see that the outer layer is the image of a flaming bomb or grenade.  This was an old symbol for fusiliers in general in the British Army.  In the 17th-century, soldiers with firearms used mainly matchlock weapons.

image23amatchlock.jpg

This was fired by applying a piece of specially-prepared cord to gunpowder.  If you wanted a guard for your artillery or powder supply, burning cord was the last thing you would want so, instead, such guards were armed with much safer flintlock fusils—hence the term fusilier.

image23bflintlock.jpg

The Lancashire Fusiliers claimed such a unit as ancestors and, as one of the units which had served in the British force which had captured Egypt from the French in 1801 (as the 20th Foot—meaning “infantry regiment”),

image23egypt.jpg

they had been entitled to add “Egypt” to their regimental colours and to their badges.

image24colours.gif

JRRT’s collar tabs and buttons would have been slightly different, displaying the sphinx inside a laurel wreath.

image25collar.jpg

image26button.jpg

Contemplating this carefully-combed and trimmed young man in his formal uniform,

image27jrrt.jpg

it might be difficult to imagine him as the man who, in time, could create Mordor and all within it—until you contrast it with images like these, the sorts of things which he would have seen daily in summer and early fall, 1916–

image28dead.jpgimage29village.jpgimage30ypres.jpg

and, suddenly, orcs

image31orcs.png

are no surprise.

 

Thanks, as always, for reading and

MTCIDC

 

CD

ps

May we recommend to you this excellent book, if you would like to know more about Tolkien and his experiences, 1914-1918?

image32grtwar.jpg

 

Water Which?

12 Wednesday Jun 2019

Posted by Ollamh in Artists and Illustrators, Fairy Tales and Myths, Heroes, Literary History, Narrative Methods, Poetry, Theatre and Performance

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Alaric Hall, Alberich, Antonin Dvorak, Apollonius, Argonautica, Arthur Rackham, Elves, ETA Hoffmann, Friedrich de la Motte Fouque, Hans Christian Andersen, Heinemann, Heracles, Hylas, Jason and the Golden Fleece, John William Waterhouse, Judy Collins, mermaids, naiads, Nemean Lion, Old English Poems, Rhine Maidens, Richard Wagner, Rusalka, selkies, silkies, sirens, swan-maidens, The Great Silkie of Sul Skerry, The Little Mermaid, Tommy Makem, Undine, waeteraelfadl, Water Elf Sickness

Welcome, as ever, dear readers.

Just today, our English friend, Michael, sent us an interesting CD set, “Old English Poems, Prose & Lessons”.  We turned the jewel box over and our eye was immediately caught by #12 of the listings on the back, “Charm Against Waterelf Sickness”.

In Old English, “waterelf sickness” is a compound which can be read two ways:  “waeteraelf-adl” (“water-elf sickness”) or “waeter-aelfadl” (something like “watery elf-sickness”).  Alaric Hall, in his extremely informative dissertation, “The Meaning of Elf, and Elves, in Medieval England” (2005), 116, leans towards the second possibility, but, with our western classical background, we immediately imagined a “water elf” and, from there, we thought of naiads—female water spirits–in fresh water, like streams and pools.  (If you would like a comprehensive listing of all the subvarieties of such spirits, here’s a LINK to an article on the subject.)

Probably the most famous story about such creatures appears in Apollonius of Rhodes’ 3rd-c. BC, Argonautica, the story of Jason’s quest for the Golden Fleece.

image1gf.jpg

Two of Jason’s crew on the Argo are Heracles (seen here dealing with the Nemean Lion)

image2herc

and his companion, Hylas (seen here about to get into trouble).

image3hy.jpg

Ancient travel in the Mediterranean often meant coasting, with frequent stops for water, and, in Apollonius’ story, Hylas had gone ashore and found a pool, but was ambushed by a group of naiads, who pulled him under.

image4water.jpg

(This is John William Waterhouse’s famous 1896 painting of the scene.)

We meet woman waterfolk in much of western folk tradition—and this is excluding those on salt water, including mermaids,

image6merm.jpg

selkies/silkies (who are shape-changers, between seals and humans),

image7selkie.jpg

and even sirens.

image5sirens.jpg

For fresh water, we had those naiads, but also swan-maidens, often enchanted into water bird forms.

image8swanmaidens.jpg

(Here’s a LINK to a whole little collection of stories about such creatures.)

As well, we have the Rhine Maidens,

image9rhine.jpg

who, in Wagner’s “Ring” cycle, guard the Rhine gold, deep under the river, but who lose it to the craftsman dwarf, Alberich, with whom they flirted—with evil consequences.

image10alb.jpg

We mentioned mermaids as salt water creatures and, in Hans Christian Andersen’s (1805-1875)

image11dulac.jpg

“The Little Mermaid” (1837), we have the story of the mermaid who falls in love with a handsome prince and trades her voice for human form.

image11hca.jpg

image12ms.jpg

(This is the first page of Andersen’s original manuscript.)

There had been an earlier Romantic version of the water spirit and the human (in this case, a knight) in Friedrich de la Motte Fouque’s (1777-1843) novella, Undine (1811).

image13fred.jpg

image14undine.jpg

This, in turn, became an early Romantic opera, Undine (1816), the text by the author, the music by another famous Romantic author, E.T.A. Hoffmann (1776-1822).

image15etah.jpg

image16oveerture.jpg

The theme which runs through all of these meetings of water spirit and human is the uneasy relationship which seems the only possibility for them, virtually always leading to unhappiness, and this is true of our last water spirit, Rusalka, the subject of an opera, Rusalka, (1901) by the Czech composer, Antonin Dvorak (1841-1904)

image17ad.jpg

Like Andersen’s Little Mermaid, the water spirit (“rusalka” can mean “water spirit” in Czech) falls in love with a prince, trading her immortality for human love.

image18orig.jpg

(This is an image of the original Rusalka, Ruzena Maturova.)

If we said “leading to unhappiness” is the usual conclusion to such romances, Rusalka is even worse.  When she is betrayed by the prince, Rusalka becomes a water demon, luring people to their deaths in her pool—a far cry from the happy ending of the Disney movie!

image19lm.jpg

So, what about our charm against waeteraelfadl?  Here’s a translation:

“If a man is in the water elf disease [waeter aelfadle], then the nails of his hand are dark and the eyes teary, and he will look down. Give him this as medicine [laecedome]: everthroat, hassock, the lower part of fane, yewberry, lupin, helenium, marshmallow head, fen mint, dill, lily, attorlathe, pulegium, marrubium, dock, elder, fel terre, wormwood, strawberry leaves, consolde. Soak with ale; add holy water to it. Sing this gealdor over it thrice:

I have bound on the wounds the best of war bandages, so the wounds neither burn nor burst, nor go further, nor spread, nor jump, nor the wounds increase [waco sian?], nor sores deepen. But may he himself keep in a healthy way [halewaege?]. May it not ache you more than it aches earth in ear [eare?].

Sing this many times, “May earth bear on you with all her might and main.” These galdor a man may sing over a wound.”

(translation from Karen Louise Jolly, Popular Religion in Late Saxon England: Elf Charms in Context (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996)

Unfortunately, this looks more like a cure for a skin disease than for an ill-fated affair between water spirit and human!

Thanks, as always, for reading and, also as always,

MTCIDC

CD

ps

You can find Alaric Hall’s dissertation (now a book) at:  http://www.alarichall.org.uk/phd.php.

pps

Child Ballad 113, “The Great Silkie of Sul Skerry” is about the male version of such a creature.  For a haunting performance of this, with a modern tune, sung by Judy Collins (with Tommy Makem on pennywhistle), here’s a LINK.

ppps

The most famous aria from Dvorak’s opera is a song sung to the moon by Rusalka, “Měsíčku na nebi hlubokém“, and we find it one of the most beautiful arias we know.  Here’s a LINK so that you can hear it, too.

pppps (we think that this is a record, even for us)

In 1909, the publisher Heinemann released a translation of de la Motte Fouque’s Undine with illustrations by Arthur Rackham.  Here’s a LINK so that you can download it and add it to your library.

image20rack.jpg

Camouflaged

27 Wednesday Mar 2019

Posted by Ollamh in Films and Music, Heroes, J.R.R. Tolkien, Military History, Military History of Middle-earth

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

camouflage, Disney, Douglas Fairbanks Sr., Errol Flynn, Faramir, feldgrau, Great War, Ithilien, jaeger, khaki, Men in Tights, Richard Knoetel, Robin Hood, The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien, trenches, uniforms

As ever, dear readers, welcome.

After standing and reciting his “party piece”, and stewing two rabbits, Sam is about to see his first—and only—oliphaunt.

image1.jpg

Before he does, however:

“Four tall Men stood there.  Two had spears in their hands with broad bright heads.  Two had great bows, almost of their own height, and great quivers of long green-feathered arrows.  All had swords at their sides, and were clad in green and brown of varied hues, as if the better to walk unseen in the glades of Ithilien.  Green gauntlets covered their hands, and their faces were hooded and masked with green, except for their eyes, which were very keen and bright.”  (The Two Towers, Book Four, Chapter 4, “Of Herbs and Stewed Rabbit”)

image2.jpg

The chief of these men soon identifies himself as “Faramir, Captain of Gondor” and the men with him are rangers, a term which first appears in 14th-century English to mean “game keeper”, which seems appropriate for Faramir and his men, as far as their dress is concerned.  One might expect that those who spend their days in the woods would only naturally want to blend in, especially if part of their job is to apprehend poachers—trespassers who illegally hunt game.  Faramir’s and his men’s clothing could also be that of poachers, if we match that description—the green and brown part—with some very familiar figures from another famous story—

image3ncw.jpg

If you read us regularly, you will probably recognize them, especially if we add one of our favorite illustrations.

image4rob.jpg

If you still don’t recognize them, we’ll add a book cover.

image5rh.jpg

This is the 1917 publication of the retelling of the Robin Hood stories, with illustrations by NC Wyeth and it’s clear that his depictions of Robin and his men—just like his illustrations of pirates—have influenced story-tellers and costume-designers long after that initial 1917 publication.  Just look at Douglas Fairbanks Sr.’s 1922 Robin Hood,

cbe9537043957223ed32b027acbd3812

or the 1938 Errol Flynn The Adventures of Robin Hood

 

image7rh.jpg

image8rh.jpg

or even Disney’s 1973 animated Robin Hood

image9rh.jpg

and even the 1993 parody, Robin Hood:  Men in Tights.

image10rh.jpg

Tolkien, we presume, would have known the Wyeth illustrations and perhaps the Errol Flynn, and might have had them in mind when he was describing the basic dress of Robin and his men.  Beyond the basic outfit, however, these men are clearly dressed for more than poaching and apprehending—and it isn’t just the weapons, but also the gloves and the face-coverings.  These men are soldiers and rangers have been soldiers, or the models for them, since at least the 18th century, when certain German states, including Prussia and Hesse Kassel, employed forest rangers as light infantry—men trained as sharpshooters and skirmishers, called jaeger (“hunter” in German).

image11jaeger.jpg

In the 19th century, increasing numbers of ordinary troops of many western nations were given similar training, but the jaeger continued to be allowed special uniforms, usually green.

image12jaeger1910.jpg

This is an illustration by one of the greatest (and one of our favorite) German military/historical artists of the late 19th-early-20th centuries, Richard Knoetel, dated 1910.

When the Great War began in 1914, all the soldiers of many of the countries involved were already moving away from the bright-colored uniforms of past years and dressing more like hunters.  The British put off their parade uniforms

image13homeservice.jpg

and dressed in a mud-color, that color being called “khaki” (originally a Persian word meaning “dust”).

image14khaki.jpg

The Germans, whose parade dress was blue,

image15parade.jpg

dressed in a color called feldgrau (“field grey”).

image16feld.jpg

Only the French began the war still on parade,

image17french.jpg

but even they gradually changed into something which blended in better with the terrain.

image18french.jpg

And blending in was absolutely necessary in a world in which war was being fought not with muskets and cannon, as in Napoleon’s days

image19gun.jpg

but with machine guns which could fire 600 rounds per minute

image20mg.jpg

and guns so big that some had to be transported on railroad trains.

image21rr.jpg

Whenever possible, soldiers dug in, spending their days below ground level, in trenches.

image22trench.jpg

When they had to go above ground level, they wanted to be as inconspicuous as possible.  Here’s what 2nd Lieutenant Tolkien might have looked like in 1916 (notice that, by 1916, British soldiers had put aside caps in the trenches and used helmets which looked positively medieval).

image23jrrt.jpg

image24kettle.jpg

The term for this blending-in was “camouflage”, which entered English from French in 1917 and it was used not only by infantry, but the practice was extended to everything on the battlefield and beyond– to the new tanks

image25tank.jpg

and even to ships, where the goal was to conceal or sometimes simply to confuse the eye.

image26ship.jpg

Some of the most extreme varieties take us back to the rangers of South Ithilien, like this sniper, whose job was to pick off unsuspecting soldiers (officers were a special prize) from complete concealment.

image27sniper.jpg

This makes us wonder what Faramir and his men would have done if they had been armed with magazine rifles,

image28smle.jpg

instead of bows as, after all, they are there for an ambush…

image29faramir.jpg

As always, thanks for reading and

MTCIDC

CD

Roses—War of, Cranes—Mon

27 Wednesday Feb 2019

Posted by Ollamh in Heroes, Military History, Narrative Methods

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Across the Doubtful Sea, Arnemuiden, Bosworth, Clint Dohnen, Edward IV, Era of the Warring States, Henry Tudor, Kojiro Takeda, Lancaster, Mary Rose, Mori, Richard III, Sengoku Jidai, Tewkesbury, The Rose and the Crane, The Wars of the Roses, Tokugawa Shogunate, Tudor Rose, York

Welcome, as always, dear readers.

If you read us regularly, you know that, in general, we tend to write about the past—a lot of the past, including not only our own historical past and the past of Middle-earth, but also about past authors, as well.  Today, we’re doing something slightly different in that we are writing a review of a novel, The Rose and the Crane (2017)

image1rose.jpg

by someone who is definitely of the present, Clint Dohnen, although his book is set in the period 1483-1485.

image2cd.jpg

Like our own Across the Doubtful Sea (2015)

image3doubt.jpg

this is a self-published book, available at Amazon.com, and we found it as an Amazon recommendation.

The title interested us immediately for its juxtaposition of two things one would normally not think of at the same time:

image4rose.jpg

 

image5crane

That cover, however, with its crossing of medieval sword and katana, suggested that those two things weren’t plant and bird, but something heraldic, as in the Tudor rose

image6trose

and the badge (mon) of the Mori clan of Japan.

image7mori

That rose was, in fact, a piece of political symbolism, being the combination of two separate house badges, the white rose of York

image8white

and the red rose of Lancaster,

image9red

which noble houses, along with their allies, fought an on-again off-again civil war mostly through central England from 1455 to 1487.  This struggle later came to be known as “The Wars of the Roses” because of those two flowers.

image10roses

The protagonist of this novel is Simon Lang, a young refugee from that conflict as, at the beginning of the novel, in 1483, his family’s side, the Lancastrians, have suffered what apparently had been a decisive defeat at Tewkesbury, 4 May, 1471 and the heavy hand of the Yorkist government had been upon them since.

TEWKESBURY print

(This is by Graham Turner, who has done a whole series of dramatic paintings of battles of the Wars of the Roses for Osprey, one of our favorite publishers of military history.)

Simon has become an exile, currently working on a Venetian trading ship off the coast of Japan.  (We were a little puzzled by this, we must admit, as, to our knowledge, the first Renaissance ships in that part of the world would only appear–after a strenuous trip around Africa—under Vasco da Gama in 1499—but, once the novel got under weigh, we put this puzzlement aside and let the plot carry us away.)  This ship is armed with cannon, which might seem a little surprising in 1483, but the first known use of guns on European ships actually dates all the way back to the battle of Arnemuiden, 23 September, 1338.

image12arne

When we think of early ships’ guns, however, we always think of those of the Mary Rose,

image13mrose

which sank, with virtually all hands, during a naval battle with the French, on 19 July, 1545, was rediscovered in the late 20th century, raised, and now is on display in Portsmouth, England.

image14mrose

As you can see, about half the ship has survived and, with it, an enormous quantity of wonderfully-preserved artefacts, including a number of its guns.

image15guns

It’s while on board this ship that the Rose, so to speak, meets the Crane, the samurai Kojiro Takeda

image16onin

in the time in Japanese history known as Sengoku Jidai, the “Era of the Warring States” (1467-1600), when the country went through its own complex period of civil wars before the Tokugawa Shogunate (1603-1867) brought repression and peace simultaneously.

Takeda is rescued, along with a friend, from the ship of an enemy family and the first part of the novel deals with adventures in Japan (including a battle to defend the village of Takeda’s friend, which is very clearly and convincingly described—as are all the battles in the book—and there are several of them).

The merchant ship is on a trading venture, however, and the second major episode involves the main characters in an expedition south from Japan to the Molucca Islands (now known as the Maluku), a group which is situated between New Guinea and Borneo.

image17moluccas

There—this is an adventure novel after all—they are attacked by cannibal headhunters.  These headhunters are not given a name, but, from the description, we imagine that they could be Sea Dayaks from Borneo,

image18dayak

known for collecting heads.

M0005506 Punan's heads taken by Sea Dayaks

From there, it’s back to Venice—but this is not a breather because there is another plot—a meanwhile.

After the death of the Yorkist king, Edward IV, in 1483,

image20ed

the crown should have passed to his two sons, but, instead, Edward’s younger brother, at first regent for the two boys, then takes the crown, the two boys are declared illegitimate—and, well, never seen again.

image21aprinces

Much of what was thought to be known of this younger brother, who became Richard III,

The Richard III Society Reveal A Facial Reconstruction Of Richard III

originally came from sources employed by his enemy and eventual replacement, Henry Tudor, aka Henry VII,

image22hank

but, over the years, the image of the hunch-backed monster of Shakespeare

image23olive

has gradually been changed to that of a successful administrator and more-than-competent king and soldier, but this is an adventure novel with both a young late-medieval knight and a ronin (masterless samurai) as main characters, so Richard is put back into his old role—and even more so, being clearly a psychopath.

image24olive

Simon is distantly related—half of noble England seemed to be—to the heads of the Lancastrian family and Richard is determined to remove any possible threat to his position as king, so Simon is a marked man—a situation which will continue to be the case till the very end of the book, when, in one final battle scene, Simon and his friends fight in the army of Henry Tudor at Bosworth, 22 August, 1485.

image25bosworth

Richard III is killed in the struggle

King Richard III in battle: Was Richard Really Evil?

and, in the aftermath, Henry—now Henry VII—returns Simon’s ancestral lands to him and suitably rewards the samurai and the other members of Simon’s fellowship (a familiar scene from the end of Star Wars IV, to “The Field of Cormallen” in The Return of the King).

We hope that you can tell from our summary that this is a fine example of just what we enjoy:  a wild adventure set in an actual historical era which the author has taken pains to reconstruct, with the kinds of characters one would hope for:  exiles with murderous talents, cheerfully making their way through hair-raising situations.  We would add to this three more items:

  1. the descriptions of scenery and actions are clear, precise, and persuasive
  2. the language barrier—after all, in the space of the book, characters move from England to Venice to Japan to the Moluccas and back—is handled with some care—if we have to suspend our disbelief, we only have to do so briefly and some games are played with language throughout
  3. which leads us to our third point—this is—we’ll use an old-fashioned word here—a rollicking book—it’s just plain fun and, like all of the best adventure stories, could easily be read more than once

We hope that you enjoy it as much as we did.

Thanks, as ever, for reading and,

MTCIDC

CD

ps

That image of Richard III has its own interesting story.  After Richard was killed at Bosworth, his body was quickly buried in a religious installation—Greyfriars Priory–in the city of Leicester.  Over the years from 1485 to the early 2000s, the Priory had long disappeared and the body with it (although there was another tradition that the bones had been dumped into the local river and lost).  In August, 2015, however, a joint project of the University of Leicester and Leicester City Council not only located the site, but almost immediately found the skeleton of a man of the right age who seemed to have suffered a battlefield death.  Subsequent DNA matching with descendants, plus the site itself, confirmed that the bones were that of the last Yorkist king and, before he was interred in Leicester Cathedral, measurements were taken and this image made.  Here’s a LINK, if you’d like to learn more.

Unhealing

23 Wednesday Jan 2019

Posted by Ollamh in Fairy Tales and Myths, Heroes, J.R.R. Tolkien, Literary History

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Achilles, Frod, Greeks, Morgul Knife, Mysia, Nazgul, Neoptolemus, Odysseus, Philoctetes, Telephus, The Grey Havens, The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien, Tristan and Iseult, Troy, Weathertop, wound, wounded

As always, dear readers, welcome.

The war around Troy was a very complicated thing, with traditions stretching in all directions.  In one, the Greeks actually sailed to Troy twice, the first time missing it entirely and landing in Mysia, to the east of Troy.

image1mysia.png

There, the Greeks were met by local defenders under their king, Telephus, who was wounded by Achilles

image2achilles.jpg

before the Greeks realized their mistake and withdrew.

After they’d gone, Telephus’ wound simply wouldn’t heal, but, after consulting oracles, he was told that there was a cure:  rust from the spear which had wounded him.  The Greeks had gone back to Greece to regroup and to try again, so Telephus went after them to request that Achilles treat the wound which he had made.  For some reason, Achilles refused, so Telephus grabbed the High King Agamemnon’s baby son, Orestes, and threatened to kill him if Achilles didn’t grant his request.

image3telorest.jpg

(This  scene bordered on the edge of hilarious to the Greeks and was the subject of parodies in ancient times—here’s a pot with one, Orestes being replaced by a wineskin.)

image4parody.jpg

The threat worked and Achilles healed Telephus.

image5healing.jpg

This isn’t the only example of the wound which won’t heal to be found in the Trojan material.  Philoctetes, who had inherited Heracles’ bow (given to him by Heracles because he helped with Heracles’ funeral pyre), was on his way with the other Greeks to Troy when he was bitten by a snake.  The wound wouldn’t heal and smelled so bad that the Greeks left him—and the bow—behind (this is one version—there are others).

image6phil.jpg

Later in the story, however, a prophecy told the Greeks that they wouldn’t take Troy without the bow.  (By late in the Troy tradition, there had piled up  a number of these conditions—rather like the horcruxes in the Harry Potter books—all to keep the story going.)  Odysseus and Achilles’ son, Neoptolemus, went off to persuade—or steal—the bow (in one version—there are lots of others) and eventually persuaded Philoctetes to come to Troy with the bow, where he was healed and used the bow to aid the Greeks.

image7bowmission.jpg

The theme of the unhealing wound reappears in western medieval literature in several places.  In the story of Tristan and Iseult,

image8trist.jpg

Tristan is wounded fighting an Irish giant

image9irishgiant.jpg

and, as in the Greek stories of Telephus and Philoctetes, the wound won’t heal.  The theme appears again in the story of the Holy Grail—and like the Troy tradition, it has many versions.  In some, the last guardian of the Grail is a wounded king (sometimes called the “Fisher King”) .

image10fisherking.jpg

But, if you’re a regular reader, you know where this is leading.  On Weathertop, Frodo is attacked by the Nazgul.

image11weather.jpg

He is wounded with a morgul knife

image12morgul.jpg

and the tip of the blade not only remains in the wound, but begins to travel towards Frodo’s heart.  He is saved by Elrond’s healing powers, but, somehow, things are never quite the same and, some time after the hobbits return to the Shire–

“One evening Sam came into the study and found his master looking very strange.  He was very pale and his eyes seemed to see things far away.

‘What’s the matter, Mr. Frodo?’ said Sam.

‘I am wounded,’ he answered, ‘wounded; it will never really heal.’” (The Return of the King, Book Six, Chapter 9, “The Grey Havens”)

We began with Greeks and the complex epic of Troy, then passed through a pair of medieval stories to The Lord of the Rings, but something in all of these tales interested us in what seemed a common theme:  protecting something, keeping something, can bring long-lasting harm to the protector/keeper, even if done for the best of reasons.  It’s less clear if this pertains to Philoctetes, but Telephus was defending his country, as was Tristan in fatally wounding the Irish giant, who was leading an invasion force to Cornwall, where Tristan lived.  The Fisher King is the guardian of the Grail.

Frodo clearly has come to understand this and, when the time comes, he goes with Bilbo and Gandalf and others to the Grey Havens and beyond, saying to Sam:

“…But I have been too deeply hurt, Sam.  I tried to save the Shire, and it has been saved, but not for me.  It must often be so, Sam, when things are in danger:  some one has to give them up, lose them, so that others may keep them.”image13grey.jpg

image14grey.jpg

(These are two very different versions of the leave-taking at the Grey Havens—first, the Hildebrandts’, second, Alan Lee’s.)

Thanks, as always, for reading.

MTCIDC

CD

Orc Arsenal.1

26 Wednesday Sep 2018

Posted by Ollamh in Artists and Illustrators, Fairy Tales and Myths, Heroes, J.R.R. Tolkien, Literary History, Military History, Military History of Middle-earth, The Rohirrim

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Alan Lee, And Inquiry Into Ancient Armour, Angus McBride, arming sword, Battle Axe, English Longbowmen, Eowyn, Falchion, Gladius, Gondor, Hildebrandts, Howard Pyle, John Howe, King Arthur, Longbow, Mace, Medieval, Mongols, Morning Star, Orcs, Pelennor, Pitt-Rivers Museum, Robert Louis Stevenson, Rohirrim, Scimitar, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Sir Samuel Meyrick, Ted Nasmith, The Black Arrow, The Lord of the Rings, The White Company, Tolkien, Victorian, Wallace Collection, War Hammer, Weaponry, Witch-King of Angmar

Welcome, dear readers, as always.

“The great shadow descended like a falling cloud.  And behold! It was a winged creature…

Upon it sat a shape, black-mantled, huge and threatening…A great black mace he wielded.”

(The Return of the King, Book Five, Chapter 6, “The Battle of the Pelennor Fields”)

This is clearly a scene which has caught the attention, over the years, of many artists, starting, we’d guess, with the Hildebrandts.

image1hild.jpg

 

Then others, like Angus McBride and Ted Nasmith,

image2am.jpg

image3nasmith.jpg

And Alan Lee and John Howe,

 

image4aleeimage4bhowe

as well as many very good artists whom we don’t know by name—

image4cimage5image6image7

 

Of these, all but Lee and the unknown sixth artist follow JRRT’s description more or less closely.  Number 6—it’s a little unclear– but he might be carrying a war hammer of some sort,

image8warhammer.jpg

rather than a mace.

image9mace.jpg

image10mace.jpg

(These last two are basic patterns of a mace.)

The Lee is, well, we’re not sure what it seems to be.  It sort of looks like a battle axe

image11battleaxe.jpg

but also like what was called a “morning star”,

image12mornin.jpg

which should, we think, belong to the flail family.

 

image13flail

This rather fits in with the P Jackson image, shown in this model (and note that sword—definitely not in the original description—which is in his other hand).

image14mace.jpg

This difference made us curious about the weapons the Rohirrim—and the Gondorians—face and, in particular, those of the orcs.  The Hildebrandts

image15captured

 

provide us with odd-looking spears and what might appear to be scimitars

 

image16scim

but might be the suggestion of a medieval sword called a falchion.

image17falchion

McBride, who spent much of his artistic career illustrating military subjects, gives us weapons (mostly) less fanciful.

image18mcbimage19mcb

Lee

image19lee

and Howe

image20howe

veer between the practical and the fantastic and the films clearly follow them—

image21orcimage22orcimage23orc

How does JRRT describe the orc weaponry?

The first armed orc we see appears in Moria:

“His broad flat face was swart, his eyes were like coals, and his tongue was red; he wielded a great spear…Sam, with a cry, hacked at the spear-shaft, and it broke.  But even as the orc flung down the truncheon and swept out his scimitar…” (The Fellowship of the Ring, Book Two, Chapter 5, “The Bridge of Khazad-dum”)

The orcs who pursue the Fellowship through Moria have similar weapons:

“Beyond the fire he saw swarming black figures:  there seemed to be hundreds of orcs.  They brandished spears and scimitars which shone red as blood in the firelight.”

After the death of Boromir, however, Aragorn, Gimli, and Legolas find a different kind of orc:

“There were four goblin-soldiers of greater stature, swart, slant-eyed, with thick legs and large hands.  They were armed with short broad-bladed swords, not with the curved scimitars usual with Orcs: and they had bows of yew, in length and shape like the bows of Men.” (The Two Towers, Book Three, Chapter 1, “The Departure of Boromir”)

So far, we’ve seen spears

image24spears

and scimitars

image25scim

and now we can add to that “short broad-bladed swords”.  Perhaps Tolkien is thinking of the medieval “arming sword”

image26arming

or even the Roman gladius?

image27gladius.jpg

When we add “bows of yew, in length and shape like the bows of Men”, we immediately see the classic English longbow.

image28longbowman.jpg

This doesn’t quite match with the first orc bowman we see in the films, however, “Lurtz”—

image29lurtz.jpg

image30lurtz.jpg

who appears to have some sort of recurved bow, possibly composite, of the sort the Mongols used

image31mongol

even though, from the white hand on his face, he is supposed to be one of those “goblin-soldiers” from Isengard.

As we were looking through Tolkien’s text, we wondered where he would have gotten his ideas for weapons from.  If the basis, as we imagine it, would have been his background in medieval literature, then he might have gone to the library and found an old standard work, Sir Samuel Meyrick’s (1783-1848)

image32meyrick.jpg

An Inquiry Into Ancient Armour, As It Existed in Europe, Particularly in Great Britain, From the Norman Conquest to the Reign of Charles the Second, first published in 1824.  (Here’s a LINK if you’d like to look at this text for yourself.)

image33mey

Meyrick was the first great English specialist in armor and the later editions of his work (in 3 volumes) have wonderful early hand-colored plates, all based upon surviving armor, tombs, manuscripts, and any other period materials he could gather.

image34meyill.jpg

If JRRT wanted to see such things for himself, he would have found more exotic weapons in the Pitt-Rivers Museum in Oxford,

image35pittriversimage36pitt

or he could have traveled up to London to see the Wallace Collection

image37wallaceimage38wallace

or, best of all, he could have visited the Tower of London, with its massive collection (the organizing of which had earned Meyrick his knighthood in 1832) of medieval arms and armor, which had been available to the public in some form even before Meyrick’s time—here’s a Victorian tour.

image39tower

image40towerimage41tower

It could have been all of the above, of course, but it seems to us that the descriptions we’re reading are actually not really very specific—“mace”, “spear”, “scimitar”—only those short swords and bows suggest anything more detailed.  Perhaps, then, Tolkien was inspired by something else—perhaps he had read, perhaps even possessed, as a boy, books like Howard Pyle’s 1903 The Story of King Arthur and His Knights

image42pyle

and been inspired by its illustrations.

image43pyle

There were plenty of illustrated tales like this—Conan Doyle’s The White Company (first published in serial form in 1891),

image44whitecompany.jpg

or Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Black Arrow (serial 1883, book 1888).

image45blackarrow.jpg

With any and all of that background, we wonder what he might have made of this, however, an orc sword from the films which looks more like something manufactured from a car part than the product of a medieval armorer…

image46sword.jpg

Thanks, as ever, for reading.

MTCIDC

CD

ps

If car part weapons don’t bother you, you might be interested in this LINK—it’s an early article on ideas for weapons and armor for the Jackson films.

Green and Quiet.2

12 Wednesday Sep 2018

Posted by Ollamh in Heroes, J.R.R. Tolkien, Military History

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

21st Lancers, Bataclava, Cavalry, Charge of the Light Brigade, Edwardian, Great War, horses, King Edward, Medieval, Omdurman, Oxford, Pelennor, railways, Rohirrim, Romans, Scots Greys, Tolkien, Victorian, Waterloo

Welcome, as ever, dear readers.

The late-Victorian/Edwardian world of JRRT’s childhood and youth was full of stirring stories and illustrations of military adventure, from the 1815 charge of the Scots Greys at Waterloo

image1scot.jpg

to the disastrous (but glorious) charge of the Light Brigade at Balaclava in 1854

image2.jpg

to the near-disastrous (but also glorious) charge of the 21st Lancers at Omdurman (1898)

image3omdurman.jpg

to the expectation of more glorious attacks in the event of a Great War on the continent.

image4eleventhhus.jpg

Such images may have inspired him to join a volunteer cavalry unit at Oxford, King Edward’s Horse,

image5keh.jpg

and may even lie behind the charge of the Rohirrim at the Battle of the Pelennor Fields.

image6pel.jpg

To us, however, it also symbolizes something else:  the role of the horse in Tolkien’s world.  Its military role was more than simply carrying the glamorous cavalry, however.

image7hussars.jpg

It also pulled the guns,

image8rha.jpg

the supply wagons,

image9gsw.jpg

the ambulances,

image10ambulance.jpg

as well as carried those in control of it all, from the Kings (after 1901)

image11ed7.jpg

image12geo5.jpg

to the generals,

image13french.jpg

and it was the same for all of Europe and the US, as well.

image14kaiser.png

image15tr.jpg

image16pershing.jpg

All of which simply reflected that, for all that there were railroads

image17railway.jpg

and the West was crisscrossed with railway tracks,

image18rrmaps.jpg

horses still pulled the world,

image19plowing.jpg

as they had from Roman times

image20roman.jpg

through medieval

image21medplow.gif

and still did, even beyond the Great War.

image22london.jpg

In our last posting, we discussed a line from The Hobbit :  “By some curious chance one morning long ago in the quiet of the world, when there was less noise and more green…”

We suggested that, with that phrase “long ago” and that imperfect tense verb form, “was”, all was no longer so quiet or green and that goblins/orcs, or their modern equivalent in the Industrial Revolution, were eating up the green of the world, as well as the quiet, but we would like to add to that that a major change in transport, which removed the horse almost entirely from the picture, also contributed greatly.

First, of course, it was those railways which cut through everywhere, steaming and smoking and hooting.

image23rr.png

These greatly reduced the use of horses for carrying things—and people—over distances.

image24wagon.jpg

image25stage.jpg

At the turn of the century, however, a new invention would come to so diminish the employment of horses eventually to the point where they would be thought obsolete.

image26duryea.JPG

At first, they were few and far between, available only to the rich for personal use.

image27richcar.jpg

The massive production needed for the Great War (1914-1918),

image28atruck.jpg

however, encouraged both post-war demand and supply.

image28car.jpg

image29van.jpg

As we’ve discussed in previous postings, the Romans had been masters of the paved road.

image30romanroad

 

After the Romans, however, the secret (and the massive amounts of cash, as well as the numbers of workers) to such roads was lost and roads declined into, at best, wide paths—dust baths in summer, swamps in winter.

image31greatnorth.jpg

At best, a road might be “metalled”—that is, covered in loose stone (from Latin “metallum”—here, meaning “quarry”).

image32metalled.jpg

In the 1820s, the Scots engineer, JL McAdam, created roads with a crushed stone surface over larger inlaid stones.

image33mcadam

 

Each of these was an improvement over a dirt track,

image34track.jpg

but, about 1900, the next process arrived, with the use of bitumen and then various petroleum substances to cover the surface and, along with the use of concrete, these produced the roads we still drive on today.

image35highway.jpg

Unfortunately for green and quiet, this rapidly multiplied the decay of both, as cars and trucks and the roads they needed began to spread across the landscape.  Imagine, for a man who had been born into the greener and quieter and horsier world of 1892, what this 1930s traffic jam would have been like and you can easily see why he would have believed that goblins and orcs could so harm the peaceful world!

image36jam.jpg

Thanks, as ever, for reading.

MTCIDC

ps

Recently, we happened upon this very interesting story, which we had never seen before, from the online BBC New, 3 July, 2006.  The author mentions “Tolkien’s son” by whom he means JRRT’s second son, Michael.

Many years ago I corresponded with Tolkien’s son, a schoolmaster like myself. He said the Dark Riders in his novel were based on a real recurring nightmare from the Forst World War. Tolkien, riding a good cavlary horse, had somehow got lost behind the German lines,and, imagining he was behind his own trenches, rode towards a group of mounted cavalrymen standing in the shade of a coppice.

It was only when he drew nearer he realised his mistake for they German Ulhans, noted for their atrocities and taking no prisoners. When they saw him they set off in pursuit with their lances levelled at him. He swung his horse round and galloped off hotly pursued by the Germans. They had faster steeds but Tolkien’s horse was a big-boned hunter.

They got near enough for him to see their skull and crossbone helmet badges. Fortunately for Tolkien (and us, his readers)he raced towards some old trenches which his horse, used to hunting, took in its stride. The Uhlans’ horses weren’t up to it and they reined in leaving Tolkien to get away to his own side.

He was terrified and the cruel faces of those Uhlans and their badges haunted him in nightmares for a long time afterwards. Years later, when he was writing his novel, the Dark Riders were the result of that terrifying chase.
Revd John Waddington-Feather, Shrewsbury

There are some odd typos, but we think that the basic story might be true except for the details about the German cavalry.  Uhlans are lancers, but lancer cap badges looked like this.

image37czapska.jpg

German hussar busbies, however, could have the famous “death’s head” badge.

image38vonm.jpg

And German hussars also could carry lances as in this picture from 1915.

image39hussars.jpg

German cavalry went to war with covers over their headgear (as in the photo of the hussars), but, if the story is accurate, we might presume that the hussars, for some reason, have shed those covers.

Dayless Dawn

08 Wednesday Aug 2018

Posted by Ollamh in Artists and Illustrators, Heroes, J.R.R. Tolkien, Military History, Military History of Middle-earth

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Battle of the Somme, British Expeditionary Force, chemical warfare, Fritz Haber, Gas warfare, Great War, John Singer Sargent, maxim gun, mustard gas, tear gas, The Lord of the Rings, The Siege of Gondor, Tolkien, trench warfare, trenches, Vale of Anduin, WWI, Young Indiana Jones

Welcome, as always, dear readers.

In this, the last year of the centennial of the Great War, we are often reminded not only of that conflict, but also that Second Lieutenant J R R Tolkien took part in it.

image1jrrt.jpg

By the time he had reached the Front, in July, 1916, the latest round of blood-letting, the infamous Somme, was already in progress.

image2over.jpeg

image3somme.jpg

“Blood-letting” is an understatement:  on the first day of the battle, 1 July, 1916, there had been nearly 60,000 British casualties and attacks would continue till November.  The problems faced were mainly those of 1914.  The well-equipped, well-trained professional soldier of the British Expeditionary Force

image4tommy.jpg

met the Maxim Gun

image5maxim.jpg

and took heavy casualties.  These casualties were multiplied by the number and range of German artillery.

image6haubitzer.jpg

To defend themselves against these modern weapons, soldiers went to ground as soon as they could.

image7frenchembankment.jpg

Digging in moved from a simple scrape of the earth into 500 miles (from Switzerland to the North Sea) of often very elaborate earthworks.

image8trench.jpgimage9system.jpeg

Equip these with machine guns

image10mg.jpg

and spread acres of barbed wire in front

image11barbedwire.jpg

and you can think that you’re safe from attack.

image12trapped.jpg

So, the problem then was:  how to break through?  And this is where the German chemical industry

image13factory.jpg

and its brilliant chemist, Fritz Haber,

image14haber.jpg

(who will share the Nobel Prize for chemistry in 1918) came in.

Haber, famous for creating artificial fertilizer—his positive side—was also a captain in the Kaiser’s army (hence the uniform in our illustration), intensely convinced that Germany was justified in waging war on Europe, and began to develop a reply to elaborate fortifications:  poison gases—Haber’s dark side.

Nearly twenty years before, in 1900, many of the world’s nations, including Germany, had signed an agreement at the Hague that, among other things, they wouldn’t employ such a weapon, but, clearly, the temptation was too great, and not only for Germany.  After the first major attack, 22 April, 1915, in which the Germans had killed or driven a large number of French troops from their trenches, the British and French began their own development programs.

Over time, the gases varied as experiments showed scientists and military men what worked and what didn’t.  There were simple tear gases, which incapacitated soldiers by blinding them with their own tears and disturbed their breathing, to much deadlier blister agents—but here’s a chart to lay out the effects.

image15gaschart.jpg

Delivery systems varied.  Gas might be released from canisters, allowing the prevailing wind to carry it to the enemy.

image16gas.jpg

The difficulty here was the variability of winds—should the direction change, the releasers of gas might—and sometimes did—find themselves the victims.

Gas packed into artillery shells was more dependable.

image17gas.jpg

Shells were marked to identify which gas was inside, as in this illustration.

In time, the British developed a method of projecting gas bombs in large numbers with what were called “Livens projectors”.

image18gasbomb.jpg

image19livens.jpg

This simple mechanism could be used in banks to blanket the enemy line with poisonous air.

image20projectors.jpg

Initially, there had been no defense against this weapon, but, in time, both sides developed gas masks.

image21masks.jpg

And, of course, something had to be done for the hundreds of thousands of horses both depended upon.

image22amask.jpeg

Here’s how the later, more efficient ones worked.

image22mask.jpg

They might have prevented suffocation, but they were uncomfortable and, worse, the lenses soon fogged over, making it difficult to see the enemy in their masks advancing through the clouds of gas.

image23advance.jpg

image24combat.jpg

In the television series about young Indiana Jones of some years ago, there was a very graphic depiction of this—and here’s a LINK so that you can see for yourself.  (We very much recommend this series, by the way.  On the whole, it has many episodes which not only fill in Indie’s past, but are good adventure stories in themselves.)

We can imagine, then, what might have been going on in JRRT’s mind when he wrote:

“It was dark and dim all day.  From the sunless dawn until evening the heavy shadow had deepened, and all hearts in the City were oppressed.  Far above a great cloud streamed slowly westward from the Black Land, devouring light, borne upon a wind of war; but below the air was still and breathless, as if all the Vale of Anduin waited for the onset of a ruinous storm.”  (The Return of the King, Book Five, Chapter 4, “The Siege of Gondor”)

image25gondor.jpg

Were those orcs approaching, or the Kaiser’s infantry?

image26gas.jpg

Thanks, as ever, for reading.

MTCIDC

CD

ps

The horrific effects of chemical warfare have, to us, never been more powerfully depicted than in John Singer Sargent’s (1856-1925)  Gassed (1919), based upon Sargent’s visit to the Western Front in July, 1918.

image27gassed.jpg

pps

But, you know us—if we can add a little something more, we always will and, in this case, we want to end not with just this image, horrible and moving as it is, but with something from another of Sargent’s works.  Along with being a society painter, he was one of the greatest American watercolorists and has left us a collection of beautiful, atmospheric works from Europe, the US, and the Caribbean.  We want to end, then, with these very different clouds–

image28sargent.jpg

← Older posts

The Doubtful Sea Series Facebook Page

The Doubtful Sea Series Facebook Page

  • Ollamh

Categories

  • Artists and Illustrators
  • Economics in Middle-earth
  • Fairy Tales and Myths
  • Films and Music
  • Games
  • Heroes
  • Imaginary History
  • J.R.R. Tolkien
  • Language
  • Literary History
  • Maps
  • Medieval Russia
  • Military History
  • Military History of Middle-earth
  • Narnia
  • Narrative Methods
  • Poetry
  • Research
  • Star Wars
  • Terra Australis
  • The Rohirrim
  • Theatre and Performance
  • Tolkien
  • Uncategorized
  • Villains
  • Writing as Collaborators
Follow doubtfulsea on WordPress.com

Across the Doubtful Sea

Recent Postings

  • Horning In (2) February 1, 2023
  • Horning In (1) January 25, 2023
  •  Things You/They Know That Ain’t January 18, 2023
  • Sympathy for a Devil? January 11, 2023
  • Trumpeting January 4, 2023
  • Seating December 28, 2022
  • Yule? December 21, 2022
  • Sequels and Prequel December 14, 2022
  • Rascals December 7, 2022

Blog Statistics

  • 69,175 Views

Posting Archive

  • February 2023 (1)
  • January 2023 (4)
  • December 2022 (4)
  • November 2022 (5)
  • October 2022 (4)
  • September 2022 (4)
  • August 2022 (5)
  • July 2022 (4)
  • June 2022 (5)
  • May 2022 (4)
  • April 2022 (4)
  • March 2022 (5)
  • February 2022 (4)
  • January 2022 (4)
  • December 2021 (5)
  • November 2021 (4)
  • October 2021 (4)
  • September 2021 (5)
  • August 2021 (4)
  • July 2021 (4)
  • June 2021 (5)
  • May 2021 (4)
  • April 2021 (4)
  • March 2021 (5)
  • February 2021 (4)
  • January 2021 (4)
  • December 2020 (5)
  • November 2020 (4)
  • October 2020 (4)
  • September 2020 (5)
  • August 2020 (4)
  • July 2020 (5)
  • June 2020 (4)
  • May 2020 (4)
  • April 2020 (5)
  • March 2020 (4)
  • February 2020 (4)
  • January 2020 (6)
  • December 2019 (4)
  • November 2019 (4)
  • October 2019 (5)
  • September 2019 (4)
  • August 2019 (4)
  • July 2019 (5)
  • June 2019 (4)
  • May 2019 (5)
  • April 2019 (4)
  • March 2019 (4)
  • February 2019 (4)
  • January 2019 (5)
  • December 2018 (4)
  • November 2018 (4)
  • October 2018 (5)
  • September 2018 (4)
  • August 2018 (5)
  • July 2018 (4)
  • June 2018 (4)
  • May 2018 (5)
  • April 2018 (4)
  • March 2018 (4)
  • February 2018 (4)
  • January 2018 (5)
  • December 2017 (4)
  • November 2017 (4)
  • October 2017 (4)
  • September 2017 (4)
  • August 2017 (5)
  • July 2017 (4)
  • June 2017 (4)
  • May 2017 (5)
  • April 2017 (4)
  • March 2017 (5)
  • February 2017 (4)
  • January 2017 (4)
  • December 2016 (4)
  • November 2016 (5)
  • October 2016 (6)
  • September 2016 (5)
  • August 2016 (5)
  • July 2016 (5)
  • June 2016 (5)
  • May 2016 (4)
  • April 2016 (4)
  • March 2016 (5)
  • February 2016 (4)
  • January 2016 (4)
  • December 2015 (5)
  • November 2015 (5)
  • October 2015 (4)
  • September 2015 (5)
  • August 2015 (4)
  • July 2015 (5)
  • June 2015 (5)
  • May 2015 (4)
  • April 2015 (3)
  • March 2015 (4)
  • February 2015 (4)
  • January 2015 (4)
  • December 2014 (5)
  • November 2014 (4)
  • October 2014 (6)
  • September 2014 (1)

Blog at WordPress.com.

  • Follow Following
    • doubtfulsea
    • Join 68 other followers
    • Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
    • doubtfulsea
    • Customize
    • Follow Following
    • Sign up
    • Log in
    • Report this content
    • View site in Reader
    • Manage subscriptions
    • Collapse this bar
 

Loading Comments...