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Into the Trees.2

27 Wednesday Nov 2019

Posted by Ollamh in J.R.R. Tolkien, Language

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Alan Lee, Ents, Entwives, Hildebrandts, language, mallorn, Old Forest, Party Tree, Ted Nasmith, The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien, Tom Bombadil, Treebeard, trees, Withywindle

As ever, dear readers, welcome.

In our last, we were examining something which JRRT said in a letter from 1958 discussing a script for a film of The Lord of the Rings.  He was talking about trees and said that “the story is so largely concerned with them.”  (Letters, 275)

image1tolkienandtree.jpg

That seemed to us rather an odd thing to say, there being so many human (or humanoid) characters and so much plot in which they are actors in the novel.  And yet, as we began to consider it, we found ourselves trying to approach the story as if the trees were a major part of things—or perhaps more than one part?—and to wonder just what role or roles they were playing and whether that suggests that we might need to expand our understanding of the goals of the book in general.

We thought first of Treebeard, who is, of course, a character (here, drawn by Alan Lee) in the plot

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and so are the Ents (by Ted Nasmith).

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Besides being plot-drivers, though, Treebeard and his people represent an ancient part of Middle-earth which has somehow survived the long years of human occupation, with its own interests and its own memories—and its own tragedy:  the loss of the Entwives.   As Treebeard says:

“I am not altogether on anybody’s side because nobody is altogether on my side…”  (The Two Towers, Book Three, Chapter 4, “Treebeard”)

The sentient nature of trees is not only to be found in Treebeard and the Ents, however.  Consider the Old Forest.

image4theoldforest.gif

As Merry describes it:

“But the Forest is queer.  Everything in it is very much more alive, more aware of what is going on, so to speak, than things are in the Shire…I have only once or twice been in here after dark, and then only near the hedge.  I thought all the trees were whispering to each other, passing news and plots along in an unintelligible language…” (The Fellowship of the Ring, Book One, Chapter 6, “The Old Forest”)

Perhaps the words “unintelligible language” say it best.  Merry appears to accept not only that the trees are awake (“more aware”, as he puts it), but also that they have their own complex form of intercommunication (“language”).  At the same time he may believe such things, what it is they are thinking and saying is not comprehensible, at least by him and, we presume, by those of his acquaintance.  In other words, they are part of a world in which he has no part, just as Treebeard and the Ents are apart from those who visit or, in the case of the orcs, attack them.

In the case of Old Man Willow,

image5omw.jpg

the mostly passive hostility of the Old Forest—

“And the trees do not like strangers.  They watch you.  They are usually content merely to watch you, as long as daylight lasts, and don’t do much.  Occasionally the most unfriendly ones may drop a branch, or stick a root out, or grasp at you with a long trailer.”

becomes something more.  The Forest seems to have been guiding the hobbits, funneling them towards the river Withywindle, about which Merry has said:

“We don’t want to go that way!  The Withywindle valley is said to be the queerest part of the whole wood—the centre from which all the queerness comes, as it were.”

And then—

“Suddenly Frodo himself felt sleep overwhelming him.  His head swam.  There now seemed hardly a sound in the air.  The flies had stopped buzzing.  Only a gentle noise on the edge of hearing, a soft fluttering as of a song half whispered, seemed to stir in the boughs above.  He lifted his heavy eyes and saw leaning over him a huge willow-tree, old and hoary.  Enormous it looked, its sprawling branches going up like reaching arms with many long-fingered hands, its knotted and twisted trunk gapping in wide fissures that creaked faintly as the boughs moved.  The leaves fluttering against the bright sky dazzled him, and he toppled over, lying where he fell upon the grass.”

Frodo isn’t alone in succumbing to the seductive nature of the place:

“Merry and Pippin dragged themselves forward and lay down with their backs to the willow-trunk.  Behind them great cracks gaped wide to receive them as the tree swayed and creaked.  They looked up at the grey and yellow leaves, moving softly against the light, and singing.  They shut their eyes, and then it seemed that they could almost hear words, cool words, saying something about water and sleep.  They gave themselves up to the spell and fell fast asleep at the foot of the great grey willow.”

Again, as Merry has said, there is a language here, this time a little more intelligible, but it might just be part of a general hobbit drowsiness on what appears to be a sultry autumn afternoon, unless we worry about those “great cracks” gaping “wide to receive them”—and we should.  One of the hobbits—the only one not seduced into slumber—does:

“Sam sat down and scratched his head, and yawned like a cavern.  He was worried.  The afternoon was getting late, and he thought this sudden sleepiness uncanny.  ‘There’s more behind this than sun and warm air,’ he muttered to himself.  ‘I don’t like this great big tree.  I don’t trust it.  Hark at it singing about sleep now!  This won’t do at all!’ “

As he rouses himself, he quickly discovers what the seductive tree has been planning:  it is trying to drown Frodo and has completely swallowed Pippin and partially swallowed Merry.

They are rescued, of course, by Tom Bombadil, a character who has been left out of virtually every other medium of telling the story of The Lord of the Rings.

image6tom.jpg

And it’s not hard to see why:  he is somehow, truly out of the story, just as he’s unaffected by the Ring:

“It seemed to grow larger as it lay for a moment on his big brown-skinned hand.  Then suddenly he put it to his eye and laughed.  For a second the hobbits had a vision, both comical and alarming, of his bright blue eye gleaming through a circle of gold.  Then Tom put the Ring round the end of his little finger and held it up to the candlelight.  For a moment the hobbits noticed nothing strange about this.  Then they gasped.  There was no sign of Tom disappearing!” (The Fellowship of the Ring, Book One, Chapter 7, “In the House of Tom Bombadil”)

When it comes to things like the Old Forest and Old Man Willow, however, he is invaluable.

“As they listened, they began to understand the lives of the Forest, apart from themselves, indeed to feel themselves as the strangers where all other things are at home.”

As Tom is apart, and ancient—

“Eldest, that’s what I am.  Mark my words, my friends:  Tom was here before the river and the trees; Tom remembers the first raindrop and the first acorn.”

he is distanced, being senior to all living, growing things, and that gives him both greater knowledge and greater perspective, able to know and understand other ancient things, even if less ancient than he:

“Tom’s words laid bare the hearts of the trees and their thoughts, which were often dark and strange, filled with a hatred of things that go free upon the earth, gnawing, biting, breaking, hacking, burning:  destroyers and usurpers.  It was not called the Old Forest without reason, for it was indeed ancient, a survivor of vast forgotten woods; and in it there lived yet, ageing no quicker than the hills, the fathers of the fathers of trees, remembering times when they were lords.”

And here again we see that sense of otherness:  these are living creatures only tangentially—and then, it seems, often negatively—involved with humans (and humanoids).  And they are not just living things, but things with their own interests and purposes.  Taking all of that into account, and adding in the healing nature of the mallorn seed which Galadriel gives to Sam, which replaces the cut-down Party Tree (please see our previous posting on that subject), we would tentatively advance two possible reasons for JRRT’s remark about the major place of trees in The Lord of the Rings.

First, when it comes to the Old Forest and Old Man Willow, as well as Treebeard and the Ents, by having them in the story we are being quietly told that the history of Middle-earth is not just about its two-footed inhabitants.  Although so much of the plot focuses upon them, there is more to the story, a deeper, older context yet, putting them into a frame so much larger than that in which they and their past or even current actions take place.  This gives Gandalf’s words to Bilbo at the end of The Hobbit that much more weight:

“You are a very fine person, Mr. Baggins, and I am very fond of you; but you are only quite a little fellow in a wide world after all!”  (The Hobbit, Chapter 19, “The Last Stage”)

Second, in growing things there is a continuity beyond the human world, and not necessarily only an Old Forest malevolence.  The seed may be from a tree in fading Lorien, as Galadriel says when she gives the box containing it and earth from her garden to Sam:

“Then you may remember Galadriel, and catch a glimpse of far off Lorien, that you have seen only in our winter.  For our Spring and our Summer are gone by, and they will never be seen on earth again save in memory.”  (The Fellowship of the Ring, Book Two, Chapter 8, “Farewell to Lorien”)

Yet, planted in the Shire, the young tree appears at a time when the whole world is being regenerated:

“Altogether 1420 in the Shire was a marvellous year.  Not only was there wonderful sunshine and delicious rain, in due times and perfect measure, but there seemed something more:  an air of richness and growth, and a gleam of a beauty beyond that of mortal summers that flicker and pass upon this Middle-earth.” (The Return of the King, Book Six, Chapter 9, “The Grey Havens”)

And, thus, though the magical Lorien may fade and die, something of it will live beyond it in another place and time, linked to, and a reminder of, that other place and time, by a tree which

“In after years, as it grew in grace and beauty,… was known, far and wide, and people would come long journeys to see it:  the only mallorn west of the Mountain and east of the Sea…”

image7lorien.jpg

(by the Hildebrandts)

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

MTCIDC

CD

 

Class, Order, Family…(2)

24 Wednesday Oct 2018

Posted by Ollamh in J.R.R. Tolkien, Language, Military History, Military History of Middle-earth

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Cheshire, class, dialect, Drill Sergeant, gentlehobbits, John Howe, Mayor of Michel Delving, Michael Palin, Monty Python, Mummershire, Rustic, Samwise Gamgee, Shire, speech, The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien

Welcome, as ever, dear readers.

In our last posting, we began with JRRT stipulating, when selling the rights to The Lord of the Rings, that Merry and Pippin were not to be “rustics”.  The word “rustics” caught our attention and, from its origin—an  adjective from Latin rus, ruris, n., “country” (as in “countryside”)—we began some exploration of how, in The Lord of the Rings, it was possible to distinguish between “gentlehobbits” and “rustics” by their grammar,  word choices,  and speech patterns.  We also talked about the speech of Saruman (don’t listen too long!) in contrast to his Uruk-hai.

In this posting, we want to do a little more exploring to see what else we might find, first in the speech of the  principal representative of “the rustics” in The Lord of the Rings, Sam Gamgee.  Then we’ll add a bit more on the speech of the orcs.

We begin this time with the home of Sam, the Shire.

image1theshire.jpg

Tolkien says of it that it “had hardly any ‘government’, but that “Families for the most part managed their own affairs.”  Thus, although there was an actual Shire official “the Mayor of Michel Delving (or of the Shire), who was elected every seven years…As mayor almost his only duty was to preside at banquets given on the Shire-holidays…”(The Lord of the Rings, Prologue, 3, “Of the Ordering of the Shire”),  at the same time, this was not a democracy (JRRT doesn’t appear very comfortable with them—see Letters, 64, among several other references), but, rather, an oligarchy, in which certain families appear to have held all the power—“The Shire was divided into four quarters…and these again into a number of folklands, which still bore the names of some of the old leading families…It is true that the Took family had long been pre-eminent; for the office of Thain had passed to them (from the Oldbucks) some centuries before, and the chief Took had borne that title ever since…The Took family was still, indeed, accorded a special respect, for it remained both numerous and exceedingly wealthy…”

In contrast to the Tooks, it would appear that the Gamgees were not accorded such respect and, from Sam’s speech, it’s clear that he is well aware of the fact.  The first time we meet Sam, he immediately shows both his “rusticity” and his social status.  Gandalf has caught him eavesdropping outside Frodo’s window and demands to know what he’s doing.  Sam replies:

“ Lor bless you, Mr. Gandalf, sir!…Nothing!  Leastways  I was just trimming the grass-border under the window, if you follow me.” (The Fellowship of the Ring, Book One, Chapter 2, “The Shadow of the Past”)

Here we see pronunciation—“Lor” for “Lord” in “Lor bless you” (which is a Christian exclamation and makes us wonder what it was doing in Sam’s speech to begin with), word choice—“leastways”—and method of expression—“if you follow me”, all of which suggest the nature of Sam’s social class (certainly neither Frodo nor Merry nor Pippin speaks in such a way).  A second marker of class is that both Gandalf and then Frodo are called “sir” along with “Mr.”—“Mr. Gandalf, sir”, and, soon after, “Mr. Frodo, sir”.  Such honorifics are never used when anyone addresses Sam.  He’s always just “Sam”.  And this social distinction is even more marked when Sam believes that Frodo has been killed by Shelob and he addresses Frodo as “Master, dear master” (The Two Towers, Book Four, Chapter 10, “The Choices of Master Samwise”—and we note here the irony of calling Sam “Master Samwise”—Sam may, briefly, be the master of the Ring, but it’s not a choice he really wants or relishes.  Sam is most comfortable “knowing his place”, even as he shows that he has a sticktoittiveness without which both he and Frodo would not only have not reached  Mount Doom, but would have died in its wilderness long before.)

When you hear Sam in the P Jackson movies, the actor, Sean Astin, uses the standard “rural British accent” sometimes referred to as “Mummershire”.  This is based to a large extent on the distinctive accents of Southwest England.  We imagine that JRRT, who was himself from the Midlands however, would have heard Sam sound rather more like people from Cheshire.  Here’s Cheshire on a map of England’s shires.

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And here’s a brief YouTube LINK to an elderly native speaker (to provide something a little more like that which Tolkien would have heard—the accent, like all accents under the influence of radio, television, and the internet, seems to be changing pretty rapidly).  Notice those Rs—“shap” for “sharp”, for example.

When we think of accents and orcs (a John Howe illustration),

image3orcs.jpg

we always imagine their leaders as sounding like classic British drill sergeants—here’s an early nineteenth century example, but we believe that the breed hasn’t changed.  Here’s a LINK to a modern example—with a SILLY WARNING because it’s Michael Palin of Monty Python as the drill sergeant.

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Put together the sound of that sergeant—who is speaking in a London-area accent—with this quotation and perhaps you’ll see—hear—what we mean:

“ ‘Put up your weapons!’ shouted Ugluk.  ‘And let’s have no more nonsense!  We go straight west from here, and down the stair.  From there straight to the downs, along the river to the forest.  And we march day and night.  That clear?’ “ (The Two Towers, Book Three, Chapter 3, “The Uruk-hai”)

Add that to the whips used by such folk in Mordor and our view, both of Merry and Pippin’s captivity, as well as Frodo and Sam’s being swept up in an orc column, becomes all that much grimmer!

Thanks, as ever, for reading (AT EASE!).

MTCIDC

CD

Class, Order, Family… (Part 1)

17 Wednesday Oct 2018

Posted by Ollamh in J.R.R. Tolkien, Language

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Baggins, Chief Joseph, class, Cockney, Common Speech, Gamgee, George Bernard Shaw, Hobbits, language, Lerner and Loewe, Liza Doolittle, Merry and Pippin, My Fair Lady, Nez Perce, polysyndeton, Pygmalion, Rustics, Saruman, The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien, Uruk-hai, verbal class distinction, vocabulary

Welcome, dear readers, as ever.

In Lerner and Loewe’s musical My Fair Lady (1956),

image1alady

based upon George Bernard Shaw’s play, Pygmalion (1913), one major character is Professor Henry Higgins, who studies English dialects.  He is given to musical rants and, in his first, he laments “Why can’t the English teach their children how to speak?” with the couplet:

“An Englishman’s way of speaking absolutely classifies him,

The moment he talks he makes some other

Englishman despise him.”

Somewhere—we’ve temporarily lost the quotation—Tolkien, in signing over his rights to The Lord of the Rings to someone, stipulated that Merry and Pippin weren’t to be “rustics”.

This word “rustic” entered English in the mid-15th century, being derived from the Latin rus, ruris, n., “country/farm” and its adjective, rusticus/a/um, “rural/of the countryside”, the adjective then meaning “a country person”—like these Romans

image1romanfarmers

or these, in the medieval world

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or these, from JRRT’s childhood.

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To JRRT, the linguist, what made the rustic was clearly not so much the look or even the activities which country people did so much as how they spoke. In Chapter One of the first book of The Lord of the Rings, we overhear a group of older hobbits discussing Bilbo and Frodo and Daddy Twofoot says:

“And no wonder they’re queer…if they live on the wrong side of the Brandywine River, and right agin the Old Forest.  That’s a dark bad place, if half the tales be true.” (The Fellowship of the Ring, Book One, Chapter 1, “A Long-Expected Party”)

Here, we see “agin” for “again”, “dark bad place”, which is more a rhythmic pattern of dialect than the words themselves (although we wonder about the placement of those adjectives together), and the use of the old subjunctive “if half the tales be true”.  And, in the next paragraph, Gaffer Gamgee then uses a dialect form of “drowned”—“drownded”.  The content of this dialogue is gossip, but the sound of it is meant to provide a quick aural sketch of rural people with perhaps the faint suggestion that such gossip is based upon few facts and much “folk wisdom”, such as the idea that, because one lives on the far side of a river, one is “queer”, leading to the conclusion that rustics are, at best, ill-informed, and, at worst, ignorant and potentially bigoted.

And so, we would presume that what JRRT wanted was that Frodo’s cousins should sound like Frodo, who speaks, in Middle-earth, what Tolkien calls “the Westron or ‘Common Speech’ of the West-lands of Middle-earth” and what is in Modern-earth called “Received Standard English”.  Here’s a brief example of that from that same chapter, when Gandalf and Frodo are discussing Bilbo and the Ring:

“If you mean , inventing all that about a ‘present’, well, I thought the true story much more likely and I couldn’t see the point of altering it at all.  It was very unlike Bilbo to do so, anyway; and I thought it rather odd.”

Vocabulary  choice plays a strong part here, with a Latinate element—“altering”—and the use of “odd”, where the Gaffer had earlier used “queer”, plus what we might think of as “higher class” words, like “likely” and “unlike” and “rather” as adjectives.

The Bagginses and their relatives, after all, are looked upon as well-to-do–“a decent respectable hobbit” the Gaffer says of Frodo’ father, Drogo, and calls Bilbo, “a very nice well-spoken gentlehobbit”.  In Middle-earth, dialect—especially here meaning that spoken by what appear to be meant to be “rustics”—can make the difference between gentlehobbits and people like the Gaffer.   As the Henry Higgins mentioned above says to Colonel Pickering, whom he regards as a social equal, of Liza Doolittle, a Cockney (inner London, lower-class girl):

“If you spoke as she does, sir,

Instead of the way you do,

Why, you might be selling flowers, too.”

image4pat

It’s not just among hobbits that we see what Henry Higgins calls a “verbal class distinction”, however.  Here’s Saruman

image5aasaruman

speaking to Gandalf:

“I did not expect you to show wisdom, even in your own behalf; but I gave you the chance of aiding me willingly, and so saving yourself much trouble and pain.  The third choice is to remain here until the end.” (The Fellowship of the Ring, Book Two, Chapter 2, “The Council of Elrond”)

We notice here the long compound sentence (long sentence made up of clauses which depend upon each other), from “I” to “pain”.  This is clearly the equivalent of “gentlehobbit” talk.

And here is one of Saruman’s orcs:

“…We are the fighting Uruk-hai!  We slew the great warrior.  We took the prisoners.  We are the servants of Saruman the Wise, the White Hand, the Hand that gives us man’s-flesh to eat  We came out of Isengard, and led you here, and we shall lead you back by the way we choose.  I am Ugluk.  I have spoken.” (The Two Towers, Book Three, Chapter 3, “The Uruk-hai”)

image5aorcs

Here, we have a series of simple, declarative sentences (sentences with only one subject and verb)—three in a row– followed by a longer sentence which is built upon a simple sentence, “We are the servants of Saruman the Wise…”, followed by an example of what is called “polysyndeton”—that is, several shorter sentences joined together by a conjunction (a word like “and” or “or”).  All of this is followed by two more simple declarative sentences.

This is clearly not “rustic” speech—just compare it with that of Daddy Twofoot, above.  Instead, it reminds  us of translations of Native American speeches, like this, from the brave and wise Chief Joseph (1840-1904—Native American name in translation, “Thunder Traveling to Higher Areas”),

image5chiefjoseph

of the Nez Perce:

“Tell General Howard I know his heart. What he told me before, I have it in my heart. I am tired of fighting. Our Chiefs are killed; Looking Glass is dead, Ta Hool Hool Shute is dead. The old men are all dead. It is the young men who say yes or no. He who led on the young men is dead. It is cold, and we have no blankets; the little children are freezing to death. My people, some of them, have run away to the hills, and have no blankets, no food. No one knows where they are – perhaps freezing to death. I want to have time to look for my children, and see how many of them I can find. Maybe I shall find them among the dead. Hear me, my Chiefs! I am tired; my heart is sick and sad. From where the sun now stands I will fight no more forever.”

How might we characterize this?  It’s clearly very different from the speech of the orc’s master, who tends to speak in longer, more complex sentences, indicating more sophistication in the use of language (we remember the danger of listening too long to him, as demonstrated in The Two Towers, Book Three, Chapter 10, “The Voice of Saruman”).   We would say that, where the “rustic” dialect—pronunciation (“agin”), odd forms (“drownded”), old verb forms (“be true”)–differentiates the Gaffer and Daddy Twofoot from Frodo (and Merry and Pippin), for the orcs—or Ugluk, at least– it is sentence structure which differentiates the Isengard equivalent of “gentlehobbit” speech from that of the “rustic” orcs.

It isn’t only sentence structure which we would suggest makes orcs sound different, however, and we’ll talk more about this—and about another “rustic”—a real one—in Part 2 of this posting, next week.

Thanks, as always, for reading.

MTCIDC

CD

Gobs and Hobs.2

29 Wednesday Aug 2018

Posted by Ollamh in Artists and Illustrators, Fairy Tales and Myths, J.R.R. Tolkien, Language, Literary History

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A Midsummer Night's Dream, Arthur Rackham, Christina Rossetti, Elf Child, Fairies, Fairy Tale, George Macdonald, Goblin Feet, Goblin Market, Goblins, Historia Ecclesiastica, Hobgoblin, James Whitcomb Riley, John Garth, John Singer Sargent, King Edward's Horse, Little Orphan Annie, Orderic Vitalis, Pat Walsh, Psalm 91, Robin Goodfellow, The Crowfield Curse, The Crowfield Demon, The Hob and the Deerman, The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, The Princess and the Goblin, Tolkien, Tolkien and the Great War, Tolkien at Exeter College

As always, dear Readers, welcome!

In our last, we were talking about JRRT’s 1915 poem, “Goblin Feet” its origins, original publication, and context.

In this, we want to think out loud a bit about the idea of goblins in general.

Although the poem was entitled “Goblin Feet”, Tolkien seemed not to focus so much on goblins—there are also other creatures from the Otherworld, including fairies and gnomes and even leprechauns (not to mention bats—called by their old country name “flitter-mice”—and beetles and coneys).

In this posting, however, we’re going to stick to goblins—well, and hobgoblins—but more about those later.

We first encountered goblins as very small children when a teacher read us a poem by the American poet, James Whitcomb Riley (1849-1916).

image1riley.jpg

(We can’t resist a second picture.  This is by one of our favorite late-19th-early-20th-c. American Painters, John Singer Sargent—1856-1925.)

image2riley.jpg

This poem, first entitled “Elf Child”, originally appeared in a newspaper in 1885.  After that, it was meant to be “Little Orphan Allie”, but, owing to a typsetter’s error, it gained its present title, which it’s had ever since.

Little Orphant Annie – Poem by James Whitcomb Riley

To all the little children: — The happy ones; and sad ones;
The sober and the silent ones; the boisterous and glad ones;
The good ones — Yes, the good ones, too; and all the lovely bad ones.

Little Orphant Annie’s come to our house to stay,
An’ wash the cups an’ saucers up, an’ brush the crumbs away,
An’ shoo the chickens off the porch, an’ dust the hearth, an’ sweep,
An’ make the fire, an’ bake the bread, an’ earn her board-an’-keep;
An’ all us other childern, when the supper-things is done,
We set around the kitchen fire an’ has the mostest fun
A-list’nin’ to the witch-tales ‘at Annie tells about,
An’ the Gobble-uns ‘ll git you
Ef you
Don’t
Watch
Out!

Wunst they wuz a little boy wouldn’t say his prayers,–
An’ when he went to bed at night, away up-stairs,
His Mammy heerd him holler, an’ his Daddy heerd him bawl,
An’ when they turn’t the kivvers down, he wuzn’t there at all!
An’ they seeked him in the rafter-room, an’ cubby-hole, an’ press,
An’ seeked him up the chimbly-flue, an’ ever’-wheres, I guess;
But all they ever found wuz jist his pants an’ roundabout:–
An’ the Gobble-uns ‘ll git you
Ef you
Don’t
Watch
Out!

An’ one time a little girl ‘ud allus laugh an’ grin,
An’ make fun of ever’ one, an’ all her blood-an’-kin;
An’ wunst, when they was ‘company,’ an’ ole folks wuz there,
She mocked ’em an’ shocked ’em, an’ said she didn’t care!
An’ jist as she kicked her heels, an’ turn’t to run an’ hide,
They wuz two great big Black Things a-standin’ by her side,
An’ they snatched her through the ceilin’ ‘fore she knowed what she’s about!
An’ the Gobble-uns ‘ll git you
Ef you
Don’t
Watch
Out!

An’ little Orphant Annie says, when the blaze is blue,
An’ the lamp-wick sputters, an’ the wind goes woo-oo!
An’ you hear the crickets quit, an’ the moon is gray,
An’ the lightnin’-bugs in dew is all squenched away,–
You better mind yer parunts, an’ yer teachurs fond an’ dear,
An’ churish them ‘as loves you, an’ dry the orphant’s tear,
An’ he’p the pore an’ needy ones ‘at clusters all about,
Er the Gobble-uns ‘ll git you
Ef you
Don’t
Watch
Out!

In some ways, this is a typical Victorian moral poem:  children better behave, or…  But, instead of being in “proper” English, it’s been told in the dialect of the US state of Indiana and this was something for which Riley was well-known, having written numbers of poems in the so-called “Hoosier” dialect.  (This includes what looks like a misprint for the proper spelling “orphan”.)

Our acquaintance with goblins has continued to be literary, from Christina Rossetti’s (1830-1894)

image3acr.jpg

Goblin Market (1862)

image3gobmark.jpg

to George Macdonald’s (1824-1905)

image4gmacd.jpg

1872 fantasy novel, The Princess and the Goblin.

princessandgoblin1872.jpg

Our biggest—and longest—exposure, of course, was in The Hobbit (1937).

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Goblins turn up from the moment Bilbo and the dwarves fall into their hands in Chapter 4, “Over Hill and Under Hill” and we see them again in their pursuit of the party once they’ve escaped the goblin stronghold and finally at the Battle of the Five Armies.  At their first appearance, they are described as “great ugly-looking goblins” and, unlike the nimble-footed creatures of Tolkien’s 1915 poem, these have flat feet and flap them as they move.  They live in a monarchy, ruled (for the moment) by a king described as “a tremendous goblin with a huge head”.

So far, we might see that as traditional nightmarish beings, like the “great big Black Things” in stanza 3 of Riley’s poem, but JRRT does something further and very interesting with them.  This first novel was written in the 1930s, only twenty years after the Great War which had ruined much of western Europe and killed all but one of Tolkien’s oldest friends, and the emotional scar was still fresh, it seems.  He was too humane (and too wise) to blame Germany for what had happened, but it’s clear that he wouldn’t excuse the Industrial Revolution and the goblins become a stand-in for all the worse of it:

“Hammers, axes, swords, daggers, pickaxes, tongs, and also instruments of torture, they make very well, or get other people to make to their designs, prisoners and slaves that have to work till they die for want of air and light.  It is not unlikely that they invented some of the machines that have since troubled the world, especially the ingenious devices for killing large numbers of people at once, for wheels and engines and explosions always delighted them, and also not working with their own hands more than they could help; but in those days and those wild parts they had not advanced (so it is called) so far.”  (The Hobbit, Chapter 4, “Over Hill and Under Hill”)

The word “goblin” has a rather mysterious etymological history and, like so many early words, that history is a murky one, full of guesses and suggestions.  A little research produces the explanation that the word first seems to appear in Latin, in Orderic Vitalis’ (1075-c1142) Historia Ecclesiastica, Book 5, Chapter 7, in which, while reviewing the life of the early French saint, Taurinus, (lived c.400AD), Orderic mentions a demon whom the saint has vanquished, but which still haunted the area around the town of Evreux in Normandy, a demon the locals called “gobelinus”.

A century later, in the long Old French poem on the Third Crusade (1189-1192) of Ambroise of Normandy (who lived at the end of the 12th century), a noted figure in the actual history of the period, Balian d’ Ibelin, is referred to as being “more false than a gobelin” (L’Histoire de la Guerre Sainte, line 8710), with no explanation, suggesting that readers would be aware of what a gobelin was (and that he wasn’t trustworthy).

The word first appears in English in John Wycliffe’s translation of the Bible in the late 14th century, in Psalm 91, in which a God-fearing person will never be afraid of various things, including

“of a gobelyn goyng in derknisses”.

If 14th-century people knew what this creature was, we wonder whether it was still clear to people two centuries later—the older standard English translation (the so-called “King James Bible”, 1611) translates this as

“the pestilence that walks in darkness”

(which actually is close to the Hebrew original, as best as we can make out, as we don’t, unfortunately, read Hebrew—see this LINK to read for yourself.)

In the preface to the 1951 second edition of The Hobbit, Tolkien gives his own gloss, based upon the word he will employ almost entirely in The Lord of the Rings for such creatures:

“Orc is not an English word.  It occurs in one or two places but is usually translated goblin (or hobgoblin for the larger kinds).  Orc is the hobbits’ form of the name given at that time to these creatures…)

thus blending villains from 1937 with those readers would soon see in his new work, The Lord of the Rings (1954-1955).

“Hobgoblin” brings us to our conclusion, however.  As in the case of “goblin”, things get murky here, too, with some stating that, as “Hob” is an old nickname for “Robert” (compare “Hodge” as an old nickname for “Roger”), so a hobgoblin is related to “Robin Goodfellow”, (“Robin” being another nickname for “Robert”) aka the Puck we see in A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1595-96?).

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(This image is from Arthur Rackham’s (1865-1939) 1933 version of the play.)

https://pictures.abebooks.com/BLAEU/md/md20625435733.jpg

Hobgoblins sometimes appear as prickly household helpers (rather like Dobby in the Harry Potter books), and those who want to associate the “hob” of “hobgoblin” with the “hob” (earlier “hubbe”), “the side of a fireplace” see that prefix as suggesting that “hobgoblins” might be a subset of “goblins” in general.

For us, however, a “hob” is a character in an on-going series we recommend to our readers.  These are novels set in and around a decaying medieval monastery in 1347 and the haunted world around it, written by Pat Walsh, an archaeologist/fantasy author.

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The first two in the series are The Crowfield Curse (2010) and The Crowfield Demon (2011)

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In this series, the hero, Will, an orphan, discovers a wounded creature and brings it back to the monastery.  It’s a hob—and will be a major character as the series develops.  In 2014, Walsh began a new series with The Hob and the Deerman.

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Walsh has promised a third book in the Crowfield series, Crowfield Rising, but it has yet to appear—unlike our next posting, which will appear (provided that there is no space alien invasion or implementation of Order 66 or Sauron producing a new ring), next week.

Till then, thanks, as ever, for reading.

MTCIDC

CD

PS

In our last, we mistakenly identified a photo of JRRT in a uniform which we thought belonged to a unit at his alma mater, King Edward’s School, as the caption with it said “1907”.   It seemed odd to us, however, because it had the look of a cavalry unit (the bandoleer across the chest was common during the period for cavalry and for artillerymen) and, for all that he writes admiringly of horses, we had no sense that he himself was ever a horseman.  This nagged at us until we did a little research and realized our mistake:  the uniform was for King Edward’s Horse, the equivalent of a national guard/volunteer unit raised before the Great War.  Tolkien was a member of this at the beginning of his Oxford career in 1911, but later resigned.  John Garth’s two really useful books, Tolkien at Exeter College and Tolkien and the Great War, set us straight.

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PPS

If you read us regularly, you know that we have a special love for early, silent film  While researching this posting, we learned that, in 1918, a film was made based upon “Little Orphant Annie” and that a copy of it has survived for us to see.  Here’s a poster and a still.

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In Depth

15 Wednesday Aug 2018

Posted by Ollamh in J.R.R. Tolkien, Language, Literary History

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Beowulf, Canterbury Tales, Chaucer, Christopher Tolkien, conlang, Danian, David J Peterson, Dothraki, Elvish, English, Game of Thrones, Hamlet, Ilkorin, James Joyce, Jane Austen, language, Noldorin, Pride and Prejudice, Qenya, Shakespeare, Star Wars, Telerin, The Art of Language Invention, The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien, Ulysses

Welcome, as always, dear readers.

In 1977, the more observant viewers and critics commented upon the look and feel of a new film.  Instead of a world in which everything appeared newly-produced and sparkling, this was one in which it was clear that people had lived for a long time and many different peoples, at that.

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Even their vehicles had a scratched and dusty look.

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We had been told, of course, in the very opening sequence that this was an old place—

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but actually seeing its used look was that much more convincing

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as was seeing—and hearing—its peoples,

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who sometimes even required subtitles, as if the audience were watching a foreign film.

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In time, as the success of this film produced not only more films, but mountains of other material, from novels to graphic novels to spin-off series to toys and t-shirts and kitchen ware,

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a whole literature appeared about this world—or, we should say, worlds. Its geography and even its extremely-varied animal life.

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And, along with all of the other material, information about its languages began to appear.

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What prompted this posting, however, was something odd about one of those languages, that spoken by a character in what would, in time, become the sixth in the series.

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This was pointed out to us by David J. Peterson

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in his 2015 book, The Art of Language Invention.

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As a child, what had puzzled Peterson was that the character (who is subtitled), says only “Yate, yate, yoto, ei, yato, cha”—in total, only six different words, but they are translated as everything from “I have come for the bounty on this Wookiee” to “50,000, no less”.  (This is quoted and discussed on pages 3 to 5 of Peterson’s book—which is, by the way, one we would recommend, if you’re as interested in languages as we are.)

How could so few words mean so many different things?  As an adult, looking back, Peterson had his doubts and we would agree—especially when reading about the world in which Peterson lives, the world of “conlang”, which is short for “constructed languages”.  Peterson is the creator of Dothraki, the language of the nomadic Dothraki people,

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one of the numerous races which inhabit the landscape of George R R Martin’s Game of Thrones, first novels, then a huge, elaborate, and engrossing television series.

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The difference between “yate”, etc and Dothraki is that those few words are there to suggest that someone is speaking in a language different from the language spoken by the majority of the characters—which is the method employed throughout not only this film, but its two immediate successors.

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What Peterson set out to do was to create the shape of an entire language (something he has done more than once).  Here’s a LINK to the Wiki site, which, as usual, leads to other sites, which lead to other sites, which lead… if you’d like to learn more.

As worn-looking buildings and vehicles, different peoples and flora and fauna, and at least the suggestion of other languages create a bigger, deeper picture of the setting of an adventure, so, too, does the suggestion of great age.  Over time, the huge pile of material for the film series we first mentioned showed, in detail, that what we were seeing was, in fact, only the latest phase in a whole galaxy of civilizations over many centuries—after all, “For over a thousand generations, the Jedi Knights were the guardians of peace and justice in the Old Republic”.

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Another way to suggest that great age is a much less dramatic one—perhaps even a nearly-invisible one–practiced by one of our favorite authors and the subject of innumerable postings, and here is one of his efforts.

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What we’re seeing here is JRRT working out the history of sounds throughout a series of Elf languages, Qenya, Telerin, Noldorin, Ilkorin, and Danian, part of his immense and immensely-detailed work on the tongues of Middle-earth.   All languages change through time, of course—here’s a rough version of the succession of periods of English—

Old English (the opening lines of Beowulf, 700-1000AD,

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Middle English (the opening of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, c.1400AD),

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Early Modern English (the beginning of the first scene of Shakepeare’s Hamlet, 1603),

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early 19th-century English (the first lines of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, 1813),

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and early 20th-century English (the opening of James Joyce’s Ulysses, 1922).

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And Joyce even attempted to suggest the procession of those periods in Chapter 14 of Ulysses, “The Oxen of the Sun”, where the story is told through paragraphs which sound like earlier versions of the language gradually moving towards modern English.  (The novelist Nabokov, who played with language constantly, actually found this chapter boring, perhaps because it seemed to him like a one-off, not really in aid of the plot and its characters in general, but rather just a piece of private fun by and for the author?)

JRRT, however, goes one better.  Like other creators of big adventures, he used lots of means to deepen his story, from an extensive and detailed map

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to describing the remains of earlier times still standing in the landscape of Middle-earth of the present,

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to adding detailed historical appendices and chronologies (and his valiant son, Christopher, has added many volumes more),

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but using intricate sound changes and their logical development takes the idea of depth into new regions, especially because it would probably go unnoticed by most readers—there’s an awful lot of detail in those appendices—but whose meticulous creation is not in the least surprising for someone who once wrote, “The ‘stories’ were made rather to provide a world for the languages than the reverse.” (Letters, 219)

Thanks, as ever, for reading.

MTCIDC

CD

 

ps

Ah yes—the nearly-inevitable post scriptum—if the normal world/s of the films we first mentioned are “scruffy-looking” (to quote a character about another character), we notice that the world of the villains—the soldiers of the Empire and their surroundings—are hard and clean and shiny—which makes us feel a little better when we wonder when we may last have shined our shoes.

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Ugluk Was Here

14 Wednesday Dec 2016

Posted by Ollamh in Artists and Illustrators, J.R.R. Tolkien, Language, Literary History, Military History

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Alan Lee, Alfred Waud, American Civil War, Angus McBride, Argonath, Belgium, Black Speech, cemeteries, Confederate, Egyptian monuments, First Virginia Cavalry, graffiti, Great War, Greek mercenaries, Greeks, Hildebrandt, John Howe, Journey to the Cross-roads, Kilroy, Kilroy was here, Literacy, Napoleon I, Orcs, Pompeii, quarry at Naours, Sauron, The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien, Union, Virginia, World War I, World War II

Welcome, dear readers, as always.

One of our reasons for holding Tolkien’s work in such high esteem is that it’s so rich: practicing Sortes Tolkienses (see our earlier posting on this), we find innumerable subjects to write about.

In this posting, our eye was caught by this:

“The brief glow feel upon a huge sitting figure, still and solemn as the great stone kings of Argonath. The years had gnawed it, and violent hands had maimed it. Its head was gone, and in its place was set in mockery a round rough-hewn stone, rudely painted by savage hands in the likeness of a grinning face with one large red eye in the midst of its forehead. Upon its knees and mighty chair, and all about the pedestal, were idle scrawls mixed with the foul symbols that the maggot-folk of Mordor used.” (The Two Towers, Book 4, Chapter 7, “Journey to the Cross-roads”)

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We had the feeling that we’d seen a statue something like this before—and we were curious whether JRRT had, too, and with a little mental rooting-around, we found this:

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It’s Egyptian (13th century BC), and has a head, but, not only is it monumental, and seated, but it has lots of “idle scrawls” on the bases and lower parts of its legs.

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What’s particularly interesting to us is that one piece of the graffiti is actually from some Greek mercenaries c. 600bc

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As long as there has been a certain level of literacy, of course, there has been graffiti. The walls of ancient Pompeii (sealed in by the eruption of 79AD) are loaded with everything from election posters to the admiration of gladiators to personal insults.

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There’s so much, in fact, that this is our favorite:

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A translation of this might be: “I wonder/am in awe, wall, that, you, who are holding up so much boring writing, haven’t fallen down!”

Soldiers, in particular, seem prone to leaving messages behind—beginning with those 7th-c Greeks, but continuing throughout the centuries. When Napoleon I led an expedition to Egypt in 1798,

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his soldiers left their mark in more ways than one upon the landscape.

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Recently discovered in a house in Virginia was a large collection of inscriptions from the soldiers, Union and Confederate, of the American Civil War.

Graffiti-House.jpg Graffiti House Wall and Chair.jpg unionsoldier.jpgAlfred R. Waudfirstva.jpg

(An irresistible footnote: the picture you see of the Confederate cavalry—actually the 1st Virginia—was made by one of the greatest Civil War artists, Alfred Waud (pronounced “woad”). He had been briefly detained by this unit and took the opportunity to sketch them from life. His sketch—with his notes—then went to his publisher in New York, who had a group of engravers ready to turn his sketch into a finished—and publishable—picture.1st-virginia-cavalry-halted-based-on-sketch-by-waud-harpers-sept-27-1862.jpg

For more on the process by which a sketch becomes a magazine illustration, see this link.)

Another recent discovery was a mass of inscriptions (something like 2000 of them) in an abandoned quarry at Naours, in northern France.

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These date from the Great War (World War I) and, in a sad way, parallel the epitaphs on the seemingly-endless graves in the seemingly endless military cemeteries in the same region and in southern Belgium.

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And World War II brought us Kilroy, of the famous (and ubiquitous) “Kilroy was here”.

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American prankster soldiers doodled this everywhere they went.

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We have written previously about literacy in Middle-earth: not uncommon among hobbits, it would seem, but much less so among the other peoples. As for orcs, be they Hildebrandt

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Mcbride,

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Howe

John Howe - Merry et Pippin prisonniers des orcs.jpg

Or Lee,

Alan Lee - Orcs (1).jpg

although the Black Speech was created for them and Sauron’s other creatures, we have no evidence (except for the Ring inscription) of any use of it as a writing tool by any of them.

Which leaves us free to imagine just what those “idle scrawls” might read like. How about:

LUGDUSH SMELLS LIKE MAN FLESH!

LAGDUF + MUZGASH = CLUELESS AND SHIRTLESS!

GORBAG LOVES SHELOB

SHAGRAT IS A SNAGA!

And, of course:

UGLUK WAS HERE

Thanks for reading! (And why not submit your own graffiti? We’d be glad to add them to our list!)

MTCIDC

CD

When One Door Closes.3

23 Wednesday Nov 2016

Posted by Ollamh in J.R.R. Tolkien, Language, Literary History, Narrative Methods

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Common Tongue, doors, Doorward, Edoras, Elvish, Fangorn Forest, Gandalf, Gondor, Hama, Helm's Deep, Isengard, John Ruskin, Meduseld, Minas Tirith, Moria, passages, Paths of the Dead, The Hobbit, The King of the Golden Hall, The King of the Golden River, The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien, Witch-King of Angmar

Welcome, dear readers, to the third part of our series on doors and entryways in JRRT’s The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.

We began, several postings ago, by writing that we were intrigued by Bilbo’s statement to Frodo: “It’s a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door.” (The Fellowship of the Ring, Book 1, Chapter 3, “Three is Company”)

It made us want to look at doors (to which we quickly added entryways of all sorts) in Tolkien and, in doing so, we’ve come up with a very crude classification system, in which there were two kinds of doors, those which seemed to promise safety and those through which you might be in danger. And a major component of such places seems to be a challenge, and a challenger of some sort.

At the end of our second posting, we had come to the breaking up of the Fellowship and now we want to continue, having a look at what could be seen as good examples of what we mean along the way.

Because of the major split in the story, we decided to follow Aragorn, Gimli, and Legolas first.

The first part of their adventure takes place across open country or in Fangorn Forest. It’s only when they, with Gandalf, arrive at Edoras that we see the pattern fall into place.

But here we wondered if we should add an extra subcategory, linguistic challenge. We’ve already seen the western gates of Moria and the need to read Elvish and to know the word for friend, and now we have the gates of Edoras

Edoras.jpg

and a suspicious guard of Rohirrim:

“There sat many men in bright mail, who sprang at once to their feet and barred the way with spears. ‘Stay, strangers here unknown!’ they cried in the tongue of the Riddermark.” (The Two Towers, Book 3, Chapter 6, “The King of the Golden Hall”)

[We wonder, by the way, if the chapter’s title owes something to John Ruskin’s 1841/51 fairy tale “The King of the Golden River”, in which a major figure has been changed through evil magic, but is freed and eventually helps the underdog hero…]

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As he was (eventually) up to the challenge of the gate of Moria, so is Gandalf up to this and challenges them in return:

“ ‘Well do I understand your speech,’ he answered in the same language; ‘yet few strangers do so. Why then do you not speak in the Common Tongue, as is the custom in the West, if you wish to be answered?’ “

After a little parleying in this manner, Gandalf and his companions are allowed to enter and sent up to Meduseld, where there is a second challenger, the Doorward Hama.

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Here, after a brief repetition of the previous language challenge, things relax: “Then one of the guards stepped forward and spoke in the Common Speech.” After a tussle about leaving weapons behind (and Gandalf escapes this with his staff), they are permitted into the hall and the scene continues.

After the battle of Helm’s Deep, Denethor, Gandalf, and the rest of the company ride to Isengard, only to find there:

“…ruined gates. There they saw close beside them a great rubble-heap; and suddenly they were aware of two small figures lying on it at their ease, grey-clad, hardly to be seen among the stones. There were bottles and bowls and platters laid beside them…” (The Two Towers, Book 3, Chapter 8, “The Road to Isengard”)

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It’s Merry and Pippin, of course, who describe themselves as “doorwardens”, just as Hama was at Meduseld. The difference is, instead of barring the door and challenging those who would enter, they are welcoming and comical in their lordly self-indulgence. This seems to turn the pattern on its head, and, although it’s the only time such a thing appears, we believe that it is an example of another subcategory, that of parody. It has the elements of other occasions, but, here, the door is a ruin and the guards seem slightly tipsy, rather than menacing, as well as very glad to see those who come to their ward.

In contrast to this merriness, there is stony silence at the next door:   The Paths of the Dead.

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The challenge seems to be in the very air itself:

“And so they came at last deep into the glen; and there stood a sheer wall of rock, and in the wall the Dark Door gaped before them like the mouth of night. Signs and figures were carved above its wide arch too dim to read, and fear flowed from it like a grey vapour.” (The Return of the King, Book 5, Chapter 2, “The Passing of the Grey Company”)

It is Aragorn who accepts the challenge and leads the group through what, in the film, is a kind of funhouse of skulls and greenish figures,

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But, to us readers, what we think is much more disturbing is that there is no more than a restless murmur, which we hear through the dauntless, but quivering Gimli—

“…but if the Company halted, there seemed an endless whisper of voices all about him, a murmur of words in no tongue he had ever heard before.”

And, at the end of their passage, it is Aragorn who is the challenger—not to block those murmurers, but to invite them:

“ ‘Keep your hoards and your secrets hidden in the Accursed Years! Speed only we ask. Let us pass, and then come! I summon you to the Stone of Erech!’ “

We can see in this multiple ends: first, it fits the pattern of confrontations at doors (all feel the sense of Something There and must rise to the challenge, conquering their fear); second, it provides a route for Aragorn’s strategy: to gain supernatural allies on the way to natural ones along the southern seacoast; third, it underlines Aragorn’s right to the kingship: only he has the knowledge and authority to call up the long-dead for his purposes.

Our last challenge of this posting is at what is perhaps the most dramatic moment in the attack upon Minas Tirith. Grond the ram has, with the aid of the Lord of the Nazgul, burst open the great gate and the Wraith is about to enter when he encounters:

“…Gandalf upon Shadowfax…

‘You cannot enter here,’ said Gandalf, and the huge shadow halted. ‘Go back to the abyss prepared for you! Fall into the nothingness that awaits you and your Master. Go!’ ” (The Return of the King, Book 5, Chapter 4, “The Siege of Gondor”)

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But—then? We admit it—we shamelessly want a cliffhanger here. And so we’ll stop—till our next, in which we’ll finish the story—we promise!—and provide a breakdown of all of the doors and entryways in a chart, as well.

Thanks, as always, for reading—and we’re sorry that we gave in to temptation, but, as novelists ourselves, we couldn’t resist!

MTCIDC

CD

Terrifyingly Funny? (Part 2)

20 Wednesday Jul 2016

Posted by Ollamh in J.R.R. Tolkien, Language, Narrative Methods, Villains

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Andy Serkis, Ben Gunn, Bilbo, Deagol, Gollum, Received Standard English, Riddles in the Dark, Smeagol, The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien, Treasure Island

Dear Readers, welcome, as always.

In the first part of this posting, we began to think out loud about the idea of characters in Tolkien who might combine menace and comedy. Our first idea had been to consider Gollum—

Gollum_Render.png

but not the Lord of the Rings Gollum, at least not at first glance.

The idea then took us backwards to the large, rather dim trolls of The Hobbit, who certainly seemed to display that combination.

trolls.jpg

And The Hobbit brings us back to Gollum.

All Tolkien readers must know, we imagine, that the book which JRRT published in 1937 was a very different kind of book from what gradually grew up around it. Here, for example, is the beginning of the reader’s introduction to Smeagol (a name never used in The Hobbit, of course):

“Deep down here by the dark water lived old Gollum…” (The Hobbit, Chapter 5, “Riddles in the Dark”)

To us, this sounds like it could easily begin, “Once upon a time, deep down by the dark water, lived Old Gollum”, as if it were the opening of a fairy tale and The Hobbit was, of course, originally conceived of and written as a children’s book.

“Old Gollum”, by that name, might have been a cantankerous but lovable geezer—but the line continues, “a small slimy creature”. “Slimy” then leads to “dark as darkness, except for two big round pale eyes in his thin face…He liked meat too. Goblin he thought good, when he could get it; but he took care they never found him out. He just throttled them from behind…” And then, presumably, he ate them raw (as he does fish in The Hobbit and he would coneys in The Lord of the Rings), as Gollum’s level of civilization seems to begin and end with the little boat which he has—although where the materials came from for that is never explained. (Gandalf, in “The Shadow of the Past”, says that the Stoors and Fallowhides, to whom Gollum/Smeagol belonged, made boats out of reeds.)

In our last posting, we pointed to the speech of the trolls in The Hobbit as one possible source of humor.

THE HOBBIT: AN UNEXPECTED JOURNEY

Unlike the main characters, who spoke a Middle-earth version of RSE (Received Standard English), they displayed a number of the linguistic elements of lower-class London which are often used to show class—or even species?–difference (think of the orcs who carry off Merry and Pippin, for example) in Tolkien. If this is combined with the topics of their conversation—mainly about food, some of it sheep, but also both humans and dwarves—we then have what we set out to find, menace and humor.

As for Gollum, he certainly has a very distinctive form of speech. First, there’s his habit of carrying on a conversation with himself even in the presence of others. It reminds us of the talk of Ben Gunn,

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who was marooned by Captain Flint in Stevenson’s Treasure Island (1881-2; 1883) and has clearly developed a similar habit:

“If you was sent by Long John,” said he, “I’m as good as pork and I know it. But where was you, do you suppose?” (Treasure Island, Chapter XV, “The Man of the Island”)

There are four other distinctive elements of Gollum’s speech. First, there is that gollum. The narrator says of it:

“And when he said gollum he made a horrible swallowing noise in his throat.” (The Hobbit, Chapter 5, “Riddles in the Dark”)

Andy Serkis, who is the voice (and movement) of Gollum in the Jackson films, has, in interviews, said that the noise he makes is modeled upon his cat throwing up a hairball. As Tolkien has called it “a horrible swallowing noise”, it would seem that this is, in fact, the opposite sound from what is wanted. So what should it sound like—that is, and still sound like “gollum”? The word has two syllables—perhaps we might think that the noise would depend upon which syllable bore the primary accent: GOL-lum or gol-LUM. To us, accenting the first has more of a choky feel to it and the second more of a froggy. (We also wonder, knowing Gandalf’s later explanation of how Smeagol acquired the Ring, whether, in fact, Smeagol is actually imitating the noise Deagol made as he struggled for breath.)

A second element is his incessant referring—in the 1937 edition—to himself as “my precious”. In the 1951 revision, and beyond, Gollum can call both himself and the Ring by the term, and we are of two minds about the change. On the one hand, the 1937 version reflects what interests us: a word of tender endearment mixed with a murderous intent, all within Gollum. On the other, the post-1951 version’s double usage presents us with a picture of a creature so enslaved to the Ring that he uses that term of endearment (and we also know, from Gandalf’s later explanation, that the Ring does not return the affection, making it even more horrible). As well, others touched by the Ring can be seen as infected by its power when they use the expression.

bilbowithring

Third—and more potentially comic—is Gollum’s actual language. There are the odd expressions, sometimes based on actual older English expressions—“Bless us and save us” becomes “Bless us and splash us”, example.   As well, there are the non-standard words like “bitsy” (a kind of diminutive) and plurals—“handses”, “eggses”, “pocketses”.

Fourth is the stressed sssssssssssssssssssssibilance. JRRT himself points to this in a letter to Rayner Unwin in a correction to the 1937 edition: “Not that Gollum would miss the chance of a sibilant.” (cited in Anderson, The Annotated Hobbit, 120, note 9)

Taken altogether, this makes for a very distinctive—and very different speaker from any other in The Hobbit (or The Lord of the Rings, for that matter) and this is clear from the very start of the conversation between Gollum and Bilbo:

“What iss he, my preciouss?”…

“I am Mr. Bilbo Baggins. I have lost the dwarves and I have lost the wizard, and I don’t know where I am and I don’t want to know, if only I can get away.” (The Hobbit, Chapter 5, “Riddles in the Dark”)

The menace is there in Gollum, from the very beginning:

“Bless us and splash us, my precioussss! I guess it’s a choice feast; at least a tasty morsel it’d make us, gollum!” (The Hobbit, Chapter 5, “Riddles in the Dark”)

And we would suggest that the humor is there, too, in the very same speech: the twisted expression, the self-address, the use of “my precioussss”, and the hissy sibilance. Tolkien, though personally drily witty, was not—nor intended to be—a comic writer. What he could do well, we suggest, is use that which interested him deeply—language and its expression—combine it, for contrast, with a certain darkness of theme, as here, and allow the reader to feel a kind of grim amusement in the balance–or imbalance–between what’s being said and how.

What do you think, dear readers?

Thanks, as always, for reading.

MTCIDC

CD

Terrifyingly Funny? (Part 1)

13 Wednesday Jul 2016

Posted by Ollamh in Artists and Illustrators, Fairy Tales and Myths, Imaginary History, J.R.R. Tolkien, Language, Literary History, Narrative Methods, Villains

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Adventure, Among Gnomes and Trolls, Bilbo, comic, Gandalf, Gollum, humor, John Bauer, Middle-earth, Pēro & Pōdex, Roast Mutton, Stone Trolls, The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, Through the Looking-Glass, Tolkien, Tommies, trolls, Victorian Drawing Room

Dear Readers, welcome, as always.

This is going to be a two-part posting because– well, it began as one thing, and then became another. We were thinking about Gollum, not as the grim and tormented figure we know from The Lord of the Rings, but rather as the muttering, riddling cave-dweller of The Hobbit. We were wondering if we could see Gollum not only as menacing, but as comic, as well.

Gollum_Render.png

Then, however, we began to think about other such figures, and one of us said to the other, “What about the trolls in The Hobbit?”. The other replied, “we see them before we see Gollum. Maybe we should start with them.”

And so we shall.

It’s clear where Tolkien got his trolls– they’re all over the fairy tales he had been reading since childhood, and they form a component of the traditional Scandinavian literature in which he had been interested for nearly as long. They are commonly large, and not terrifically bright, and often possess an anxiety about daylight. One of our favorite illustrators of such creatures is John Bauer (1882-1918), who, among other works, contributed illustrations to an ongoing series of volumes appropriately titled Among Gnomes and Trolls. Here, for example, is one of his depictions of the latter.

John_Bauer_1915.jpg

And, because we can’t resist– can we ever? Here are a couple more illustrations by Bauer.

bauer5.jpgJohn_Bauer07.jpg

Even before The Hobbit, however, Tolkien had produced a literary troll. In 1926, he wrote the first version of a poem to be sung to the folk song “The Fox Went Out”, called “Pēro & Pōdex”(“Boot and Bottom”). It survives  in a later version in chapter 12 of Book 1 of The Lord of the Rings, beginning “Troll sat alone on his seat of stone”.

In The Hobbit, the trolls are grouped around a fire, drinking and eating and immediately recognizable:

“But they were trolls.  Obviously trolls.  Even Bilbo, in spite of his sheltered life, could see that:  from the great heavy faces of them, and their size, and the shape of their legs, not to mention their language, which was not drawing-room fashion at all, at all.”  (The Hobbit, Chapter 2, “Roast Mutton”)

tumblr_m6wyygQDLc1ru50yro1_1280.jpg

Douglas Anderson, in his invaluable The Annotated Hobbit, says that “Tolkien presents the Trolls’ speech in a comic, lower-class dialect” (70). In fact, we wonder whether, as in the case of the later orcs in The Lord of the Rings, we are not seeing a reflection of the speech of some of the Tommies whom Tolkien had commanded in the Great War.

roads_bef1914.jpg

” ‘Mutton yesterday, mutton today, and blimey, if it don’t look like mutton again tomorrer,’ said one of the trolls.

‘Never a blinking bit of manflesh have we had for long enough,’ said a second. ‘What the ‘ell William was a-thinkin; of to bring us into these parts at all, beats me – and the drink runnin’ short, what’s more,’ he said jogging the elbow of William, who was taking a pull at his jug” (The Hobbit, Chapter 2, “Roast Mutton”).

Besides what sounds like a reference to a line in Through the Looking-Glass (1871), “The rule is, jam to-morrow and jam yesterday – but never jam to-day,” with their “blimey” and “blinking”, the trolls are immediately labeled by their speech as lower-class, potentially thuggish, and certainly not people invited to a formal drawing room like this–

drawingroom1890ssmall.JPG

Of course, we might ask ourselves, why should trolls talk like that anyway? And we might then reply, because Tolkien is mixing language for comic effect. Bilbo, Gandalf, and the dwarves speak in non-dialect standard English. Therefore, there’s an especially strong contrast here. As well, what the trolls are saying can be funny in itself, as when William says to the discontented other trolls,

” ‘Yer can’t expect folk to stop here for ever just to be et by you and Bert. You’ve et a village and a half between yer, since we come down from the mountains. What more d’yer want?’ ” (The Hobbit, Chapter 2, “Roast Mutton”).

Here, we have comic exaggeration combined with the frustrated defensiveness of a leader whose tactics are being questioned by subordinates.

The tension grows as the scene progresses.  Bilbo appears, is nabbed by a purse which sounds like the Trolls, the Trolls fall to fisticuffs while arguing over Bilbo and then over the dwarves whom they capture, and Gandalf, imitating various Troll voices, so stirs the pot that the Trolls never notice when the first beam of sunlight cuts across their clearing and they are petrified.

jrrt_14.jpg

So, if we consider what the Trolls have been doing previously–“Never a blinking bit of manflesh have we had for long enough…” says one, as well as what they discuss doing not only to Bilbo, but to the whole of Thorin & Co., these could seem to be grim figures, indeed.  Then again, they sound like comic cockneys, they have ludicrously-large appetites, and they are dim enough to be taken in very easily by Gandalf’s ventriloquism.   So, grim and funny at the same time.

On the whole, humor is more an element in The Hobbit than in The Lord of the Rings, but we believe that perhaps because of his initial appearance in The Hobbit, Gollum may have both the menace and the humor, at times , of these gormless Trolls, as we hope to show in Part 2.

Thanks, as always, for reading,

MTCIDC,

CD

The Fall of Two Cities?

09 Wednesday Mar 2016

Posted by Ollamh in Economics in Middle-earth, Imaginary History, J.R.R. Tolkien, Language, Maps, Military History, Military History of Middle-earth, Narrative Methods

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Agincourt, Anadoluhisari, Anatolia, Asia Minor, Bayezid I, Bosphorus, Byzantium, Constantine I, Constantinople, Crecy, English Civil Wars, Eowyn, Gondor, map, Mehmet II, Minas Tirith, motte and bailey, Newark, Normans, Osgiliath, Ottoman Empire, Poitiers, Rumelihisari, siege, The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien, Witch-King of Angmar

Dear Readers,

Welcome, as always. A little while ago, we talked about the “siege of Gondor”, which really wasn’t a siege in the formal sense, at all, but rather an assault. (We suspect that JRRT liked the sound of “siege” and so used it, not caring if it were strictly accurate or not.) In this posting, we want to look at a real siege and examine what might be parallels with events in Middle Earth.

Before we do, we want to take a moment to talk about the word “siege”. It comes into English through Old French asegier, which comes from Latin ad + sedeo > adsideo, adsidere , literally, “to sit down at”. The northern French who passed the word on to England must have liked to say what’s called a y-glide when certain consonants came before e, so, though it was spelled asegier, it would have been said “ah-see-YED-jier”. And that’s why English today has what can be a confusing spelling. (In our experience, lots of native speakers have trouble distinguishing between the ie of “siege” and the ei of “seize”). The stress on the word in English would have been away from the initial a, and so that would have disappeared from the word as it moved from being a borrowing.

[As what we think is a cool footnote, Latin also has the verb obsideo “to sit down right before=to besiege” and we can see that used in English in the word “obsession”, with the idea that something bothers you so much that it’s like you’re being besieged by it. You can also see it on this wonderful bit of 17th-c. English history.

obsidionalmoney.jpg

Although it doesn’t look like a modern coin, this is a form which used to be called “half-a-crown”—that is, 30 pennies (that’s what those three xses mean), or two shillings, sixpence.   This coin was struck in the town of Newark-upon-Trent, when it was besieged during the English Civil Wars (1642-1651).

_82601862_newark-1646map.jpg

And that’s where obsideo comes in. The back (the “reverse” in coin language—the front is called the “obverse”) says:

OBS: Newark (with a date, either 1645 or 1646, depending on when the coin was struck)

OBS = Obsessa Newark = “Newark Besieged”

There were a lot of coin-substitutes struck by various besieged towns, but, apparently, those from Newark are the most numerous.]

In the medieval western military world, sieges were more common, it seems, than pitched battles. As castles and towns were focal points for the possession and control of land—think of the hundreds of early castles, called “motte and bailey”, which the Normans built all across England in the first years after their conquest–it’s not surprising that they would have been a focus of attack.

motteandbailey.jpg Tapisserie_motte_dinan 704.jpg

As well, we can imagine that, ultimately, they would have been cheaper, in terms of the most irreplaceable manpower, sparing the highly-trained, hard-to-replace, knights and men-at-arms.

knights.jpg

Battles like Crecy (1346), Poitiers (1356), and Agincourt (1415), cost the French dearly as their brave knights threw themselves at their English opponents, whose longbows shot them and their horses down.

agincourt.jpg

In a siege, although there was the occasional combat, including the exploitation of a break in the enemy’s defenses,

Edward-III-takes-Poix-Castle.jpg

most of a siege would be spent in using machinery of various sorts to aid you in breaking down the walls—and the resistance of the defenders, as well.

castles-and-knights-2-with-labels.jpg

This brings us to the real, historical siege we want to examine: Constantinople, 1453.

Bizansist_touchup.jpg

Constantinople had begun life as a Greek colony, called Byzantium, on the European side of the narrow passageway between the Black Sea and the northeastern Mediterranean.

byzempmap.gif

It had been refounded and greatly expanded by the Roman emperor, Constantine I, to be a new capital in the east.

Constantine-I-Face.jpg

Although it was supposed to be called “New Rome”, everyone in the east called it after its refounder, and so it was “Constantinople”, becoming the capital of an eastern empire which we call “Byzantine”. Even with setbacks and a number of unsuccessful attacks over the centuries, it was, for a long time, a very wealthy and powerful city.

1-reconstruccion-de-bizancio.jpg

But even the wealthiest and most powerful cities will fade—especially when faced with ambitious enemies. Constantinople had had a number of those, but, finally, in its last years, perhaps its most ambitious and most powerful arose in Asia Minor: that of the Ottoman Turks. As you can see from this map, its beginnings were modest: one Turkic-speaking group among many.

Anatolian_Beyliks_in_1300.png

This was a period of instability, however. The Ottoman leaders quickly took advantage of that instability to grab power and territory, so that, by 1400, they had spread beyond the shrinking Byzantine world, into the Balkans, and, soon, Constantinople was surrounded.

trebizond1400

This surrounding took place in an increasingly-methodical way. In 1393-4, the ruler of the Ottomans, the sultan Bayezid I

bayezit1.jpg

 

built a small fortress on the Asia Minor side of the Bosphorus, the name for the northern stretch of the passage which led from the Black Sea to the Mediterranean. It was called Anadoluhisari, “the Anatolian fort”.

Anadoluhisari.jpg

 

You can see from the map that this was the beginning of setting up a choke point upstream from Constantinople.

mapwithanadoluhisari.gif

In 1451-2, the sultan Mehmet II finished the job with the Rumelihisari just opposite, on the European side (and that’s what its name means, “the Roman—that is, European—fort”).

Rumeli_hisari.jpg

Guns were mounted

muslim_rocket_technology_06.jpg

and any help which might have come from the Black Sea was blocked.

And here we want to take a minute to look at our imaginary city and its danger—because we see some easy parallels here. First, of course, the Ottoman empire was an eastern threat—so was Mordor. Mordor had taken the east bank of the Anduin, just as the Ottomans had taken the Asian side of the Bosphorus. And, in the capture of the European side and the building of Rumelihisari, we might see the taking of Osgiliath and the west bank of the Anduin. Then there is the massive city of Minas Tirith and the attack upon it.

mt.jpg 2381576-zmordorforcesk7.jpg

Constantinople was also a massive city.

Byzantine_Constantinople-en.png

It was, basically, on a triangular piece of land, with two sides protected by water. The original Greek town had had a wall, but it was long gone and almost all of Constantine’s land wall had long disappeared, as well. The latest walls are called the Theodosian, after their originator, the emperor Theodosius II (408-450AD), but the walls included bits of the Constantinian walls and many repairs, over the centuries. The main land defenses included three lines of wall and a moat.

2rh67o0.jpg

This sounds very impressive until one considers two things: first, is there a garrison big enough to defend what are, in fact, a number of miles of wall? And, second, although the walls have withstood previous attacks, including one made by the Ottomans in 1422AD, how will they stand up to the threat of modern artillery?

At the height of its power and prosperity, it is estimated that Constantinople had had a population of anywhere from 500,000 to 750,000 (although scholars argue over this). At the time of the final siege, the population had fallen to as low as 40,000. Thus, large parts of the city were empty—just like Minas Tirith:

“Pippin gazed in growing wonder at the great stone city…Yet it was in truth falling year by year into decay; and already it lacked half the men that could have dwelt at ease there.” (The Return of the King, Book 5, Chapter 1, “Minas Tirith”)

The garrison of Constantinople was perhaps about 9,000, in all, which meant that they were very thinly stretched. We don’t know just how many troops were in Minas Tirith. Some reinforcements had come from South Gondor, as we noted in an earlier posting, but only a few thousand and the defenders were powerfully outnumbered, just as those of Constantinople were, when the forces of Mordor began to arrive. The Ottoman army is thought to have had between 50,000 and 80,000 men, but just how many Orcs and others marched down the causeway from Osgiliath isn’t known–they are just a horde—something which the Jackson film shows very well.

maxresdefault

Then the assault begins, the Orcs having giant stone throwers, siege towers, and, finally, a giant, fire-breathing ram, Grond.

Grond_arrives.png

If you’ve been following our postings (and we hope you have!), then you know that we’ve discussed the use of what appears to be gunpowder, both at Helm’s Deep and at the Rammas Echor. The Orcs who attack the walls of Minas Tirith don’t appear to have such a weapon, but, unfortunately for the defenders of Constantinople in 1453, the Turks do, in the form of plentiful modern artillery.

Illustration-of-angus-mcbride-showing-the-ottoman-cannon-basilica-during-the-siege-of-constantinople-in-1453-ad.jpg

Attacks wear down the small garrison and huge, stone-throwing weapons knock down the walls, so that, finally the city falls, on 29 May, 1453.

84087026.jpg

Its conqueror, Mehmet II, rides in—

mehmet2enteringconstantinople.jpg

which is something the witch king of Angmar never gets to do, perishing instead, at the hands of Eowyn and Merry.

Eowyn.jpg

 

And there the parallels end, as does our posting. Did JRRT have the fall of Constantinople somewhere in the back of his mind? What do you think?

Thanks, as always, for reading.

MTCIDC

CD

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