Heil, Sharkey!

20 Wednesday Mar 2019

Posted by lebedusya1 in J.R.R. Tolkien, Military History, Military History of Middle-earth

Tags

Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, Black Shorts, Blackshirts, Blueshirts, Brownshirts, Charlie Chaplin, dictatorships, Eoin O'Duffy, facism, fascis, Francisco Franco, Industrial Revolution, Jeeves and Wooster, P.G. Wodehouse, Sir Oswald Mosley, Sir Roderick Spode, Sturm Abteilung, The Code of the Woosters, The Great Dictator, The Lord of the Rings, The Return of the King, The Scouring of the Shire, Tolkien, Vidkun Quisling, Vittorio Immanuele III

As ever, welcome, dear readers.

Some time ago, we did a posting on The Return of the King, Book Six, Chapter 8, “The Scouring of the Shire”.

At that time, our emphasis was upon its reflection of JRRT’s dislike for the effects of the Industrial Revolution on rural England

and the importance of the chapter to closure in The Lord of the Rings.

In this posting, we want to look at it from another direction and to view Sharkey’s Shire as a kind of proto-fascist state.

Although the word “fascist” is now used pretty loosely as a verbal attack on politicians and political parties with a rightward-lean, it had a more specific meaning in the 1920s and 1930s. Then, fascists were believers in a kind of militarized state, in which the economy might be in the hands of the government, and the government in the hands of a few (a kind of oligarchy) or even of one, a dictator. (Here’s a LINK if you want to know more.)

Benito Mussolini

was the first of these who actually succeeded in coming to power. In Italy, in 1922, he organized a march on the capital, Rome, which would lead to his becoming the head of state (although Italy remained a monarchy, the monarch, Vittorio Immanuele III, was brought out for state occasions only).

Mussolini, to make his power look like a natural historical progression, began using ancient Roman symbols. One of these was the mark of the escorts to Roman magistrates, the fascis, a bundle of birch rods with an axe in the middle, the sign that a magistrate had the power to inflict not only corporal punishment—the rods—but even death—the axe—on citizens. This bundle was carried by a lictor, a minor officer of state. The number of these lictors who marched in front of the magistrate signaled just how important the magistrate was.

Mussolini had his bullyboys, the “Blackshirts”

To emphasize this connection with the imperial past, he went so far as to impress the old initials of ancient Rome, SPQR (Senatus Populusque Romanus—“the Roman Senate and People”) on everything public in sight—even manhole covers (they’re still there to this day).

And his use of the symbol of the fascis was the basis of the term fascism—they’re even all around his tomb.

Mussolini might have been the first of these leaders—or would-be leaders—during this pre-war era, but there were plenty more. There was Eoin O’Duffy in Ireland, leading his thugs, called “Blueshirts”,

to Vidkun Quisling, with his Nasjonal Samling (“National Party”), who, after the Nazis conquered Norway, actually became leader there,

to Francisco Franco, in Spain,

to Hitler, in Germany,

whose original goon/enforcers were the SA—Sturm Abteilung (“Storm Detachment”) or “Brownshirts”.

In England, Tolkien would have been well aware of Sir Oswald Mosley and his British Union of Fascists.

Hitler had been mocked by the famous silent film comedian, Charlie Chaplin, in his 1940, The Great Dictator,

but, closer to home, Mosley had become a figure of fun in the comic novels of PG Wodehouse

as “Sir Roderick Spode”. Here he is, memorably portrayed in the 1990-1993 television adaptation, Jeeves and Wooster, by John Turner—much of whose posture was a direct imitation of Mussolini,

even down to his pathetic followers, the “Black Shorts”.

His first appearance was in Wodehouse’s 1938 novel, The Code of the Woosters,

where he is described as:

“About seven feet in height, and swathed in a plaid ulster which made him look about six feet across, he caught the eye and arrested it. It was as if Nature had intended to make a gorilla, and had changed its mind at the last moment…

“I don’t know if you have ever seen those pictures in the papers of Dictators with tilted chins and blazing eyes, inflaming the populace with fiery words on the occasion of the opening of a new skittle alley, but that was what he reminded me of.” (The Code of the Woosters, Chapter One)

(Here’s a LINK to a free edition of the book, in case you’d like to read it—and why wouldn’t you? And this is a “plaid ulster” in case you’ve never seen one.)

Everything in the “Scouring” chapter, from the “great spiked gate” on the bridge over the Brandywine, to the “Chief’s Men”—who should be wearing brown tunics—to the very name “Chief”, instead of the old Shire title, “Mayor”, reeks of fascism, and, combined with:

“The pleasant row of old hobbit-holes in the bank on the north side of the Pool were deserted, and their little gardens that used to run down bright to the water’s edge were rank with weeds Worse, there was a whole line of the ugly new houses all along Pool Side, where the Hobbiton Road ran close to the bank. An avenue of trees had stood there. They were all gone. And looking with dismay up the road towards Bag End they saw a tall chimney of brick in the distance. It was pouring out black smoke into the evening air.”

links that political movement to the despoliation of the old natural world by the Industrial Revolution.

Behavior in this new Shire is based upon “orders” and here we really see the hand of Sharkey, who is, of course, Saruman. Here’s what he says to try to seduce Gandalf into joining him:

“A new Power is rising…As the Power grows, its proved friends will also grow…We can bide our time, we can keep our thoughts in our hearts, deploring maybe evils done by the way, but approving the high and ultimate purpose: Knowledge, Rule, Order…” (The Fellowship of the Ring, Book Two, Chapter 2, “The Council of Elrond”)

And the most important element in that purpose is “Order”. It’s no wonder that Saruman is murdered.

Thanks, as always, for reading and

MTCIDC

Roses—War of, Cranes—Mon

27 Wednesday Feb 2019

Posted by lebedusya1 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)

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

Like our own Across the Doubtful Sea (2015)

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:

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 20^th 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:

the descriptions of scenery and actions are clear, precise, and persuasive
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
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

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.

On the Horns

16 Wednesday Jan 2019

Posted by lebedusya1 in J.R.R. Tolkien, Military History, Military History of Middle-earth, The Rohirrim

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Boromir, buccinae, Cavalry charge, Chanson de Roland, Charlemagne, cornet, Easterlings, Eorl the Young, Gondor, Greek, horn, Meduseld, Militari, Rohan, Rohirrim, Roman, The Lord of the Rings, Theoden, Tolkien, trumpet, Trumpeter, Vegetius, war-horn

Welcome, dear readers, as always.

Our friend, Erik, once said that one of his very favorite passages from The Lord of the Rings began with this: “And as if in answer there came from far away another note. Horns, horns, horns. In dark Mindolluin’s sides they dimly echoed. Great horns of the North, wildly blowing. Rohan had come at last.” (The Return of the King, Book Five, Chapter 4, “The Siege of Gondor”)

Of course this brings on the charge of the Rohirrim, one of our own favorite moments in the Jackson films.

And what is more exciting than a cavalry charge (as long as you don’t think too hard about the fate of the horses)?

Those horns begin blowing because Theoden:

“…seized a great horn from Guthlaf his banner-bearer, and he blew such a blast upon it that it burst asunder. And straightaway all the horns in the host were lifted up in music, and the blowing of the horns of Rohan in that hour was like a storm upon the plain and a thunder in the mountains.” (The Return of the King, Book Five, Chapter 5, “The Ride of the Rohirrim”)

A number of images immediately come into our minds when reading this.

First, when Gandalf, Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli initially come to Edoras and enter Meduseld,

(This is a particularly fine possible Meduseld by Inger Edelfeldt.)

they look up to see:

“Many woven cloths were hung upon the walls, and over their wide spaces marched figures of ancient legend, some dim with years, some darkling in the shade. But upon one form the sunlight fell: a young man upon a white horse. He was blowing a great horn, and his yellow hair was flying in the wind. The horse’s head was lifted, and its nostrils were wide and red as it neighed, smelling battle afar. Foaming water, green and white, rushed and curled about its knees.

‘Behold Eorl the Young!’ said Aragorn. ‘Thus he rode out of the North to the Battle of the Field of Celebrant.’” (The Two Towers, Book Three, Chapter 6, “The King of the Golden Hall”)

Thus, we’re reminded of an earlier rescue, when Eorl brought the Rohirrim out of the north in TA2510 to aid Gondor in defeating a combined army of orcs and Easterlings.

Second, anyone interested in Western medieval literature would be reminded of the early French poem, the Chanson de Roland (c1000AD),

in which Roland, a young warrior and leader of the rear guard of Charlemagne’s army, refuses to blow his horn for reinforcements when his men are ambushed in a pass, saying that to do so would be cowardice.

Rather than his horn exploding, Roland’s head does, from the exertion, but the broken horn makes us think of Boromir’s last stand, where he blows his horn, but no help comes until it’s too late.

All that we know of the horn which Theoden blew was that it was “great”—that is, big—but perhaps it looked like Boromir’s?

“On a baldric he worn a great horn tipped with silver that was now laid upon his knees.” (The Fellowship of the Ring, Book Two, Chapter 2, “The Council of Elrond”) Here’s a medieval one from the British Museum.

It should be remembered, of all of these horns, that they have a military use, both in Middle-earth and in our world, as a method of transferring commands from officers to soldiers, both in and out of battle, and what Theoden is actually doing is the musical equivalent of shouting CHARGE! to his 6000-man eored. Nowhere is the military use of horns made clearer for earlier warfare than in the writing of the late Roman (4^th c. AD) author, Vegetius. In Book II of his De Re Militari (“Concerning Military Affairs”) he describes the use of such instruments:

“The music of the legion consists of trumpets, cornets and buccinae. The trumpet sounds the charge and the retreat. The cornets are used only to regulate the motions of the colors; the trumpets serve when the soldiers are ordered out to any work without the colors; but in time of action, the trumpets and cornets sound together. The classicum, which is a particular sound of the buccina or horn, is appropriated to the commander-in-chief and is used in the presence of the general, or at the execution of a soldier, as a mark of its being done by his authority. The ordinary guards and outposts are always mounted and relieved by the sound of trumpet, which also directs the motions of the soldiers on working parties and on field days. The cornets sound whenever the colors are to be struck or planted. These rules must be punctually observed in all exercises and reviews so that the soldiers may be ready to obey them in action without hesitation according to the general’s orders either to charge or halt, to pursue the enemy or to retire. F or reason will convince us that what is necessary to be performed in the heat of action should constantly be practiced in the leisure of peace.” (This is taken from a 1944 digest of the 1767 translation by John Clarke—if you would like to see the Latin original, here’s a LINK to a text. The relevant passage is: “XXII. Quid inter tubicines et cornicines et classicum intersit.”)

The three Latin terms translated as “trumpets, cornets and buccinae” are actually, “tubicines cornicines bucinatores”, meaning “players of tubae, players of cornua, players of buccinae”. In this ancient relief, we can see, on the left, tuba-players, and, in the center, either players of cornu, or the buccina, as the instruments appear to be rather hard to distinguish in shape.

And here’s a modern reconstruction, by Peter Connolly.

We live in a world of such rapid electronic communication

that it might be easy to forget that, for centuries, any order beyond the sound of a general’s voice had to be transferred by other means. Like Greek trumpeters,

or Roman

or medieval mounted messengers (the Latin says “messengers of William”).

Drums might be used—

image14rendrum image15drum

and the early 18^th-century British general, the Duke of Marlborough even had his own foot-messenger squad, wearing distinctive clothing (one, in blue, with a jockey cap, is just to the left of the Duke in this tapestry).

But what, we asked above, is more exciting than a cavalry charge (we once did a posting devoted specifically to them)—and what makes that more exciting than the trumpeter at the front, sounding the charge?

image17friedland4

Thanks, as always, for reading.

MTCIDC

A Little Ring, the Least of Rings

02 Wednesday Jan 2019

Posted by lebedusya1 in J.R.R. Tolkien, Military History, Military History of Middle-earth

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Tags

Aladdin, Alexandre Dumas, Barad-Dur, Chateau d'If, Edmond Dantes, Elba, French Revolution, Galadriel, Harad, Hitler, Jinghiz Khan, Louis XVI, Morannon, Mordor, Napoleon, Nazgul, Ring Wraiths, St Helena, The Count of Monte Cristo, The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien, Toulon, Umbar, Waterloo

Welcome, readers, as always, and, if it’s part of your culture, Happy New Year!

We’ve recently been reading a book about Napoleon

and his first fall, in 1814. He was forced to abdicate,

thereby losing the massive empire he had built up in the early 19^thcentury.

His many enemies had a number of possibilities as to what to do with him. They could, for example, have imprisoned him, as Edmond Dantes is in Dumas’ The Count of Monte Cristo (serialized 1844-46), in a fortress like the Chateau d’If.

Or, more radically—but certainly very effectively—they could have permanently removed him by the same means by which revolutionary France removed his predecessor, Louis XVI.

Instead, they allowed him not only to live, but even to continue to be a kind of monarch—although only of a tiny island, Elba, off the west coast of Italy.

They thought they’d seen the last of him, leaving him to spend the rest of his life as a sovereign of a ragged collection of fishermen and farmers.

For Napoleon, however, who always saw himself as destined for only the greatest things, being king of Elba must have felt to him rather like the way the genie in Disney’s Aladdin (1992) expresses the contrast in his life–

That being the case, Napoleon lived on Elba for less that a year before he planned and accomplished his escape.

Back in France, he was welcomed by the very soldiers sent to stop him,

image10fifth

raised new armies,

image11napog

marched north to deal with his nearest enemies, Prussia and England, and was finally—and permanently—defeated at Waterloo, 18 June, 1815.

image12waterloo

This time, his enemies, having learned their lesson, sent Napoleon as far away from Europe as they could and to a much less hospitable place, the island of St Helena, in the South Atlantic,

where he died in 1821.

From his first success, at the siege of Toulon in 1793,

Napoleon had climbed and climbed until, by 1801, he was the real ruler of France (as “First Consul”)

and then, in 1804, Emperor.

And yet, it was never enough, which reminds us of so many of the “great conquerors” of history, from Alexander,

to Jinghiz Khan and his successors,

to Hitler.

In every case throughout history, no conqueror has ever had enough and, if we move out of this earth to Middle-earth, we find Sauron, a figure in many ways like all of these earthly conquerors, who, although defeated by an alliance of Elves and Men in the past, has returned and, in time, reacquired immense power. To begin with, he has the entire realm of Mordor.

He has also somehow gained the means to create giant fortifications (sometimes based upon older constructions), like the Barad-dur

and the Morannon and all of the other inner and outer works of Mordor.

image26morannon image27mord image28cirithungol

He also controls the Nazgul,

massive armies of orcs,

as well as allies from the Harads and Umbar.

All of which he has done, it seems, by whatever innate powers he possesses—without the Ring. And this made us wonder: what is it that the Ring actually does for its wearer that Sauron wants it back?

Certainly, the only power Gollum appears to have gotten from the Ring is that of invisibility (and the side-effect of longevity).

This is true for Bilbo, as well,

and for Frodo–

although, when Frodo puts on the Ring on Weathertop, he is plunged into a kind of alternate dimension, seeing the Nazgul as they really are

and, again, on Ammon Hen, he is put into direct contact with the Ring’s real owner.

Does this suggest that the Ring’s power is only as powerful as the Ring’s current wearer? Galadriel confirms this when Frodo asks her about the other rings: “why cannot I see all the others and know the thoughts of those that wear them?”

To which she replies:

“Did not Gandalf tell you that the rings give power according to the measure of each possessor?”

(The Fellowship of the Ring, Book Two, Chapter 7, “The Mirror of Galadriel”)

This then accounts for Gandalf’s almost violent explanation when Frodo offers it to him:

“’No!’ cried Gandalf, springing to his feet. ‘With that power I should have power too great and terrible. And over me the Ring would gain a power still greater and more deadly.’ His eyes flashed and his face was lit as by a fire within. ‘Do not tempt me! For I do not wish to become like the Dark Lord himself. Yet the way of the Ring to my heart is by pity, pity for weakness and the desire of strength to do good. Do not tempt me! I dare not take it, not even to keep it safe, unused. The wish to wield it would be too great, for my strength. I shall have such need of it. Great perils lie before me.’” (The Fellowship of the Ring, Book One, Chapter 2, “The Shadow of the Past”)

Or when Frodo offers it to Galadriel:

“You will give me the Ring freely! In place of the Dark Lord you will set up a Queen. And I shall not be dark, but beautiful and terrible as the Morning and the Night! Fair as the Sea and the Sun and the Snow upon the Mountain! Dreadful as the Storm and the Lightning! Stronger than the foundations of the earth. All shall love me and despair!” (The Fellowship of the Ring, Book Two, Chapter 7, “The Mirror of Galadriel”)

Sauron has been able to accomplish so much without the Ring—what would happen should he ever wear it again? In “The Shadow of the Past”, Gandalf tells Frodo that it controls the other rings—even the three long-concealed from Sauron:

“The Three are hidden still. But that no longer troubles him. He only needs the One; for he made that Ring himself, it is his, and he let a great part of his own former power pass into it, so that he could rule all the others. If he recovers it, then he will command them all again, even the Three, and all that has been wrought with them will be laid bare, and he will be stronger than ever.”

And, just as important—maybe even more so—Sauron has based his place of power and refuge, his sure foundation in Middle-earth, upon it, as Elrond tells the council:

“Sauron was diminished, but not destroyed. His Ring was lost but not unmade. The Dark Tower was broken, but its foundations were not removed; for they were made with the power of the Ring, and while it remains they will endure.” (The Fellowship of the Ring, Book Two, Chapter 2, “The Council of Elrond”)

So, then, just as Napoleon, exiled on Elba, could plot and accomplish return, given the Ring, Sauron, defeated before, could return and, with a greed for conquest as insatiable as that of the French emperor, reappear again and again in Middle-earth, where there was no St Helena to keep him for good.

Thanks for reading!

MTCIDC

Peace

26 Wednesday Dec 2018

Posted by lebedusya1 in Artists and Illustrators, J.R.R. Tolkien, Military History, Military History of Middle-earth

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Tags

Alderaan, armistice, Boss Nass, dictatorships, First Galactic Empire, First Order, Galadriel, Garden of Eden, gardens, Great War, Gungan, HG Wells, Isengard, Samwise Gamgee, Second World War, Star Wars, The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, The War That Will End War, Tolkien, trees, WWI, WWII

Welcome, as always, dear readers.

At the end of Star Wars 1: The Phantom Menace, the Gungan leader, Boss Nass, raises a large crystalline globe and shouts, “Peace!”

After all of the chaos which comes before, including the death or capture of many of the Gungans in battle with the forces of the Trade Federation,

this declaration, including that mysterious globe, sounds a happy and satisfied note.

As a young man, just finished with university, Second Lieutenant Tolkien

saw a great deal of the effects of war upon western Europe

and must have rejoiced as both soldiers and civilians did at the news of the armistice, 11 November, 1918.

He then went on with his life, having married during the war, eventually produced four children, and worked his way rather rapidly up the academic ladder during the 1920s and 1930s.

Along with various scholarly works, he published, in 1937, The Hobbit.

The Great War (the First World War to people in the US) was supposed, in HG Wells’

1914 book title, to be “The War That Will End War”.

Instead, combined with everything from financial disasters in the 1920s and ‘30s to the rise of dictators during that same period,

there was a Second World War, with even more destruction.

The end of this brought more relief and rejoicing.

It did not, however, bring an end to war, either, and Tolkien’s England—along with much of western Europe—had suffered horribly through the six years of this second war, damage which lasted for years after its end.

During the same period, however, he continued both his academic and creative work,

and, of course, the three volumes of The Lord of the Rings appeared in the mid-1950s.

Since then, the world has suffered war after war—so many that we would have difficulty listing them all, even if we wanted to—and massive destruction by weapons which are increasingly more effective.

It is so in the Star Wars galaxy, of course. Boss Nass’ cry would be a short-lived one. The victory on Naboo was only the beginning of a massive war between the Republic and the Separatists.

This was then succeeded by the First Galactic Empire,

during which at least one planet, Alderaan, was destroyed.

But, when the Empire was eventually defeated,

the cycle seemed to begin all over again with the rise of The First Order.

None of this, fictional or real, would, we think, have surprised JRRT. After all, not only had he seen the real horrific destruction of two World Wars, but he had imagined and depicted scenes of similar violence and destruction, especially in The Lord of the Rings. We have only to remember the ruin of Isengard,

the wreckage at Minas Tirith,

and, of course, the decimation of the Shire.

But what cure—even temporary—would he have suggested for such savagery and waste? We would suggest that, although as a firm believer, he would assume that a return to the Garden of Eden

was permanently out of human reach—

yet gardens and the trees within and around them were not. And we remember Galadriel’s gift to Sam:

“For you little gardener and lover of trees, …I have only a small gift… Here is set G for Galadriel,…but it may stand for garden in your tongue. In this box there is earth from my orchard, and such blessing as Galadriel has still to bestow is upon it. It will not keep you on your road, nor defend you against any peril; but if you keep it and see your home again at last, then perhaps it may reward you. Though you should find all barren and laid waste, there will be few gardens in Middle-earth that will bloom like your garden, if you sprinkle this earth there. Then you may remember Galadriel, and catch a glimpse far off of Lórien, 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”)

For Tolkien, who loved trees more than almost anything,

perhaps this would have been enough.

Thanks, as always, for reading. At the turn of the Western year, we wish you peace and prosperity in the year to come.

MTCIDC

Baruk Khazad!

12 Wednesday Dec 2018

Posted by lebedusya1 in Artists and Illustrators, J.R.R. Tolkien, Military History, Military History of Middle-earth

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Adze, Alan Lee, Axe, Bayeux Tapestry, Bilbo, Dane Axe, Dwarves, francisca, Gimli, Harold Godwinson, Helm's Deep, Huscarl, mithril, Skylitzis, The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, Thorin, Tolkien, Varangian Guard

As always, dear readers, welcome.

Ever since we saw the original Lord of the Rings films, we’ve been thinking about Gimli and his major weapon.

In The Hobbit, it would appear that the dwarves had not been armed until they used what was in the Lonely Mountain after Smaug had gone:

“Now the dwarves took down mail and weapons from the walls, and armed themselves. Royal indeed did Thorin look, clad in a coat of gold-plated rings, with a silver-hafted axe in a belt crusted with scarlet stones.” (The Hobbit, Chapter 13, “Not at Home”)

This is where the mithril coat which eventually protects Frodo in Moria and turns up in the hands of the Mouth of Sauron comes from, when Thorin gives it to Bilbo.

Not long after we first meet Gimli, at the Council of Elrond, however, we see Gimli already kitted out for war:

“Gimli the dwarf alone wore openly a short shirt of steel rings, for dwarves make light of burdens; and in his belt was a broad-bladed axe.” (The Fellowship of the Ring, Book Two, Chapter 3, “The Ring Goes South”)

Certainly, the axe in Gimli’s right hand in the photo wouldn’t fit through a belt and allow for comfort or freedom of movement and we note that, in that same photo, Gimli appears to have another—but that looks too long for comfort, as well.

That the two axes fit in with the general persona of dwarves, however, seems to be true—after all, the translation of our title for this post is “Axes of the dwarves!” (to be followed by Khazad ai-menu! “the dwarves are upon you!”), which is the dwarves’ rallying cry. What kind (or kinds) of axes these are doesn’t seem so clear, then. Alan Lee, for example, shows us a dwarf with something which isn’t really an axe at all, but looks more like an adze, which is a tool used in woodworking to smooth and shape wood.

Because JRRT describes Gimli’s axe as being tuckable, we wondered whether he was thinking of the kind of throwing axe, a francisca, used by Frankish warriors (and which gave them their name).

When we actually see Gimli in battle, however, he isn’t throwing, but swinging his axe. At Helm’s deep he says to Legolas, “Give me a row of orc-necks and room to swing and all weariness will fall from me!” And then he swings that axe: “An axe swung and swept back. Two Orcs fell headless.” (The Two Towers, Book Three, Chapter 7, “Helm’s Deep”)

This leads us to ask if perhaps JRRT himself wasn’t clear about Gimli’s weapon. He never throws it, using it always as a chopper, and, when we thinking of axes with a haft—that is, handle–long enough to do that, we don’t think of that odd item in the image above—which doesn’t look substantial enough to cut through cervical vertebrae—

but rather of the long-hafted axe, or “Dane axe” perhaps carried by the giant Viking who defended Stamford Bridge single-handedly against the Anglo-Saxons on 25 September, 1066,

with its razor-sharp blade.

This was the kind of axe that we see carried by the huscarl, the bodyguards, of the English king, Harold Godwinson, in the depiction of the Battle of Hastings, 14 October, 1066, on the so-called Bayeux Tapestry.

One of which Harold may himself been carrying when he was killed, if the caption on the cloth is referring to Harold being cut down by the mounted Norman in this part of the tapestry.

These same axes also appear to turn up as part of the armament of the Varangian Guard, the bodyguard of a number of Byzantine emperors from the 10^th to 14^th centuries, as depicted in the 11^th-century Skylitzis Chronicle.

Much of this guard was made up of Norsemen and Anglo-Saxons, so the pattern of axe, we imagine, was something which both groups brought with them from their original homes.

This is clearly the sort of thing to whack off heads, even two at a time, and so, if we can quietly detach it from Gimli’s belt and have him stand, perhaps even leaning on it, we have the Gimli who competes with Legolas at Helm’s Deep in the number of orcs each has dispatched.

Thanks, as ever, for reading.

MTCIDC

Who Goes There? (3)

28 Wednesday Nov 2018

Posted by lebedusya1 in J.R.R. Tolkien, Military History, Military History of Middle-earth, The Rohirrim

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Argonath, Common Tongue, Doorward Hama, Eomer, Ephraimites, Gileadites, Great War, language, Language of Rohan, patrol, Rohirrim, Shibboleth, The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien, Wulfgar

Welcome, as always, dear readers.

We’re in the third installment of a little series about sentries and patrols in Middle-earth.

We had begun in the first installment in the Shire, with the shirriffs, then the watchman in Bree, then the watcher in the lake at the western gates of Moria, then the Elves of Lorien under Haldir, finishing with the Argonath, the biggest sentries of all.

Now, as we move south, we encounter our first patrol. From his experience in the Great War,

JRRT would have been very familiar with groups of armed men spreading out across the countryside, either slipping into enemy territory or simply guarding the edges of their own.

And patrols could be on horseback, as well as on foot—and not necessarily friendly, either.

As Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli cross northern Rohan in their attempt to rescue Merry and Pippin, they run into one of these patrols: Eomer and his Rohirrim.

image5rohirrim

As we mentioned in our second installment, when it comes to The Lord of the Rings, encounters with watchers of any sort often lead to developments in the plot and this is certainly true when the three meet with Eomer. They have pursued the Orcs for days in hopes of rescuing Merry and Pippin, only to be told that the band in which the two hobbits were being kept prisoner has been destroyed completely:

“ ‘Did you search the slain?’” Aragorn asks, explaining, “ ‘Were there no bodies other than those of orc-kind? They would be small, only children to your eyes, unshod but clad in grey.’

‘There were no dwarves nor children,’ said Eomer. ‘We counted all the slain and despoiled them, and then we piled the carcasses and burned them, as is our custom. The ashes are smoking still.’” (The Two Towers, Book Three, Chapter 2, “The Riders of Rohan”)

Aragorn is unshaken in his belief that the two may still be alive, however, and the three will continue their search, but now, as Eomer has loaned them horses, so he has lain an obligation upon Aragorn:

“ ‘You may go; and what is more, I will lend you horses. This only I ask: when your quest is achieved, or is proved vain, return with the horses over the Entwade to Meduseld, the high house in Edoras where Theoden now sits. Thus you shall prove to him that I have not misjudged. In this I place myself, and maybe my very life, in the keeping of your good faith. Do not fail.’ “

And so, rather than to continue to Minas Tirith, as Aragorn had planned, he and his two companions are to be diverted to the capital of Rohan, instead. Meeting Gandalf in their search,

image6gandalf

they fulfill Aragorn’s promise and are met by two separate sets of watchmen. First, at the gates of Edoras:

“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, demanding the names and errand of the strangers.” (The Two Towers, Book Three, Chapter 6, “The King of the Golden Hall”)

In his reply, Gandalf speaks in the language of Rohan, but wonders “Why do you not speak in the Common Tongue, as is the custom in the West, if you wish to be answered?”

To which one of the guards replies: “It is the will of Theoden King that none should enter his gates, save those who know our tongue and are our friends.”

[This use of language as a screening test, by the way, reminds us of a well-known story from the Hebrew Bible, in which, when the Ephraimites were defeated in battle and attempted to escape over the Jordan River, their opponents, the men of Gilead, stood at the crossings and, whenever a strange man tried to ford the river, the Gileadites would demand that he pronounce the word “shibboleth” (which means “a stalk of grain”, among other things). In the Ephraimite dialect of Hebrew, the consonant combination “sh” was said “s”, and so, at least as the story goes, every Ephraimite warrior who slipped and said “shibboleth” was immediately revealed to be an enemy soldier and was captured and killed. (See The Book of Judges, Chapter 12)]

Aragorn has already been warned by Eomer that all is not well in Edoras, as he has said about Saruman, who has become an enemy of Rohan, “His spies slip through every net, and his birds of ill omen are abroad in the sky. I do not know how it will all end, and my heart misgives me; for it seems to me that his friends do not all dwell in Isengard.”

This confrontation between guards and Gandalf immediately makes Gandalf wary, especially when he hears from one of the sentries that:

“It is but two nights ago that Wormtongue came to us and said that by the will of Theoden no stranger should pass these gates.”

Knowing from this that Wormtongue is inserting himself into Theoden’s actions prepares Gandalf to deal with the next sentry, the Doorward Hama.

“Then one of the guards stepped forward and spoke in the Common Speech.

‘I am the Doorward of Theoden…Hama is my name. Here I must bid you lay aside your weapons before you enter.’ “

[If you read us regularly, you’ll recognize this figure from Beowulf. There he is named Wulfgar, and he is the herald of King Hrothgar. See Beowulf, 330-355.]

Although Legolas easily puts aside his weapons, Aragorn is a bit stiff-necked, refusing, at first, to put down Anduril until Gandalf offers his sword, Glamdring, followed by Gimli, who places his axe with the other weapons. Hama hasn’t finished, however:

“The guard still hesitated. ‘Your staff,’ he said to Gandalf. ‘Forgive me, but that too must be left at the doors.’ “

Gandalf appears to object, on the grounds of his age:

“Foolishness!…Prudence is one thing, but discourtesy is another. I am old. If I may not lean on my stick as I go, then I will sit out here, until it pleases Theoden to hobble out himself to speak with me.”

Hama has a moment of proper doubt—“ ‘The staff in the hand of a wizard may be more than a prop for age.’ “—but he still allows Gandalf to carry his staff, which he then uses to disarm Grima Wormtongue and break the spell which has prematurely aged Theoden.

We have now added three more watchmen or groups to our growing list, all from Rohan and each meeting having had an effect upon those involved. In the final installment of our series, we’ll leave the grassy plains of the Riddermark for Gondor, then cross the Anduin into a very different world.

Till then, thanks, as ever, for reading and

MTCIDC

Thrones or Dominions (2)

07 Wednesday Nov 2018

Posted by lebedusya1 in Economics in Middle-earth, Imaginary History, J.R.R. Tolkien, Maps, Military History, Military History of Middle-earth

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1984, Adolf Hitler, Barad-Dur, Benito Mussolini, Big Brother, Denethor, dictatorships, Elf Kingdom, Eye of Sauron, Gondor, Maiar, map, Middle-earth, Minas Tirith, Mouth of Sauron, Nazgul, Ornthanc, Rohan, Saruman, Sauron, Steward of Gondor, The Lord of the Rings, Theoden, Tolkien, Uruk-hai

As always, dear readers, welcome.

In our last, we began to discuss what we called the governments of Middle-earth at the time of the War of the Ring, making a kind of Grand Tour using the plot movement of The Lord of the Rings to loosely shape our itinerary. (And here we’re borrowing from a witty idea, on a site called brilliantmaps.com, where we found “If Frodo and Sam had Google Maps of Middle-earth”.)

Our first stop was the Shire, where we proposed that this was a “government by the few”: that is, an oligarchy, a certain number of old and established families controlling the state. From there, we moved on to Bree, where there was so little information that our best guess was that it, too, was probably an oligarchy, some sort of loose-knit one among—or perhaps uniting—the four villages which made up the general area.

Next, we grouped together what we suggested were two Elf kingdoms, Rivendell and Lorien, where Elrond and Galadriel (along with the nearly-invisible Celeborn), clearly were in charge, although neither would claim the title of monarch.

At our next stop, Isengard, Saruman,

who had begun as one of the five Maiar sent to oppose the annoyingly-persistent Sauron, had moved from being what Gandalf called “the chief of my order” (The Fellowship of the Ring, Book One, Chapter 2, “The Shadow of the Past”), to being a kind of dictator—but one in the shadow of Sauron, just as Mussolini (1883-1945), who, from 1922, had been a model for such figures,

had fallen, by the later 1930s, into being the shadow of another, more powerful, dictator.

Like Elrond and Galadriel, he carries no title, but his captain, Ugluk, calls him “the Wise, the White Hand: the Hand that gives us man’s-flesh to eat”, which probably tells us more than we want to know about his rule. (The Two Towers, Book Three, Chapter 3, “The Uruk-hai”)

We believe that this shadow may have been created by Saruman’s growing arrogance (which Gandalf points out to Frodo in “The Shadow of the Past”) combined with his overconfidence in using a palantir he has found in Orthanc and which puts him into communication with Sauron—and Sauron’s ability to seduce.

Sauron himself seems like the primal dictator, but a dictator before the 20^th century, when dictators began to have a growing media world to employ to make themselves omnipresent in the lives of their citizens.

Instead, he’s remote—sitting in the Barad dur, yet

(and we can’t resist this image by “Rackthejipper”)

represented as being like 1984’s Big Brother, always watching.

Or, as it is crudely represented in the Jackson films, literally a giant eye on a tower.

When one thinks of modern dictators, however, one imagines them backed by huge bureaucracies, like the ministries in 1984:

“The Ministry of Truth–Minitrue, in Newspeak [Newspeak was the official

language of Oceania. For an account of its structure and etymology see

Appendix.]–was startlingly different from any other object in sight. It

was an enormous pyramidal structure of glittering white concrete, soaring

up, terrace after terrace, 300 metres into the air. From where Winston

stood it was just possible to read, picked out on its white face in

elegant lettering, the three slogans of the Party:

WAR IS PEACE

FREEDOM IS SLAVERY

IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH

The Ministry of Truth contained, it was said, three thousand rooms above

ground level, and corresponding ramifications below. Scattered about London

there were just three other buildings of similar appearance and size. So

completely did they dwarf the surrounding architecture that from the roof

of Victory Mansions you could see all four of them simultaneously. They

were the homes of the four Ministries between which the entire apparatus

of government was divided. The Ministry of Truth, which concerned itself

with news, entertainment, education, and the fine arts. The Ministry of

Peace, which concerned itself with war. The Ministry of Love, which

maintained law and order. And the Ministry of Plenty, which was responsible

for economic affairs. Their names, in Newspeak: Minitrue, Minipax, Miniluv,

and Miniplenty. (George Orwell, 1984, Chapter 1)

Instead, what we can see of Sauron’s government is much more medieval, beginning with the Nazgul, who were once human kings,

who would be like the barons, the chief feudal deputies of a king in a feudal world of the sort medieval England was and upon which much of Middle-earth, as we’ve suggested in many earlier postings, was based. The chief of these was then the commander of Sauron’s main attack on Minas Tirith.

To which we would add “the Voice of Sauron” (reminding us, of course, that he is only the spokesperson and Sauron would be presumed to have his eye on him, as well). If you look for images of him, you will commonly find this:

But, like certain other depictions in the Jackson films (that eye, for example), it is a very literal interpretation for someone JRRT described as:

“The rider was robed all in black, and black was his lofty helm; yet this was no Ringwraith but a living man…it is told that he was a renegade, who came of the race of those that are named the Black Numenoreans…” (The Return of the King, Book Five, Chapter 10, “The Black Gate Opens”)

Here’s an image possibility which comes a bit closer to the text, in our opinion.

From dictators, we make a final stop at two actual feudal kings, the first, the ruler of Rohan, Theoden,

is clearly the descendant of earlier kings, as we are told in Appendix A, of The Lord of the Rings, “The Kings of the Mark”, where the line begins with Eorl the Young and continues for about five hundred years.

In the case of our other monarchy, Gondor, the kings who ruled for so many centuries (from SA3320 to TA 2050), have disappeared and, though the fiction is maintained that they will someday return, the actual ruler is their deputy, the Steward, and his role as lieutenant is symbolized literally by his position in the old throne room:

“At the far end, upon a dais [a kind of raised platform] of many steps was set a high throne under a canopy of marble shaped like a crowned helm; behind it was carved upon the wall and set with gems an image of a tree in flower. But the throne was empty. At the foot of the dais, upon the lowest step which was broad and deep, there was a stone chair, black and unadorned, and on it sat an old man gazing at his lap.” (The Return of the King, Book Five, Chapter 1, “Minas Tirith)

At the same time, Denethor, and all of the previous Stewards, were kings in all but name, having ruled Gondor for twenty-five generations (see Appendix A, “The Stewards” for details).

So, in sum we have:

2 possible oligarchies (the Shire, Bree)
4 kingdoms (or at least sort of, in the case of the Elves—Rivendell, Lorien, plus Rohan and Gondor)
2 dictatorships (eastern Rohan, extending from Isengard, Mordor)

And, just when we were summarizing, the thought came to us: what about the dwarves? We can imagine that, considering Thorin’s family, there have been the equivalent of kings among the dwarves, but that’s a posting for another day!

Thanks, as ever, for reading.

MTCIDC

Thrones or Dominions, Principalities or Powers (1)

31 Wednesday Oct 2018

Posted by lebedusya1 in J.R.R. Tolkien, Military History, Military History of Middle-earth

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Al Capone, Christopher Tolkien, dictators, Edward VIII, Galadriel, gang, George V, George VI, King Edward VII, Monarchy, oligarchy, Queen Elizabeth II, Queen Victoria, Rivendell, Saruman, Sharkey, Shire government, The Lord of the Rings, Thranduil, Tolkien

Welcome, as ever, dear readers.

In a letter to his son, Christopher, of 29 November, 1943, Tolkien wrote:

“Give me a king whose chief interest in life is stamps, railways, or race-horses; and who has the power to sack his Vizier (or whatever you care to call him) if he does not like the cut of his trousers. And so on down the line. But, of course, the fatal weakness of all that—after all only the fatal weakness of all good natural things in a bad corrupt unnatural world—is that it works and has worked only when all the world is messing along in the same good old inefficient human way.” (Letters, 64)

Monarchs, of course, are all that he had known, when it came to heads of state. Born during the last years of Queen Victoria (ruled 1837-1901),

image1victoria

he lived under King Edward VII (reigned 1901-1910),

image2bertie

George V (ruled 1910-1936),

Edward VIII (ruled 1936—abdicated in favor of his younger brother),

George VI (ruled 1936-1952),

and died in 1973 during the reign of Elizabeth II (1952—the present).

It’s not that he was very enthusiastic about monarchies—in the same letter he says “My political opinions lean more and more to Anarchy (philosophically understood, meaning abolition of control not whiskered men with bombs)…”

but even there he couldn’t escape the structure he was a subject of, adding “or to ‘unconstitutional’ Monarchy.”

This made us consider how this conditioning might be reflected in Middle-earth—after all, the title of the third volume of The Lord of the Rings is The Return of the King. What were the governments of Middle-earth at, roughly, the time of the War of the Ring? How many were monarchies and what other forms might there be?

Recently, we had looked at the governing structure of the Shire,

about which, as JRRT has told us:

“The Shire at this time had hardly any ‘government’. (The Lord of the Rings, Prologue, 3. “Of the Ordering of the Shire”)

This depends, of course, upon what is meant by “government”. There is an elected Mayor, the “only real official in the Shire”, and whose job appears, at first, to be only ceremonial, until we are informed that “the offices of Postmaster and First Shirriff were attached to the mayoralty.” At the same time, there was an hereditary position of leader, the Thain, controlled by the Took family, and, the more Tolkien explains, the more it appears that what really governs the Shire is an oligarchy—that is, a small group of families who, together, quietly run things. (There may also be tension just below the surface about which families this oligarchy includes. When Saruman (aka “Sharkey”) takes over the Shire, he favors not the Tooks, but the Bagginses, suggesting that he is aware of this tension and may be exploiting it.)

As we move across Middle-earth with the Fellowship,

the next settlement we come to is Bree. The government of this is completely unclear. All that we’re told is that:

“The Big Folk and the Little Folk (as they called one another) were on friendly terms, minding their own affairs in their own ways, but both rightly regarding themselves as necessary parts of the Bree-folk…The Bree-folk, Big and Little, did not themselves travel much, and the affairs of the four villages were their chief concern.” (The Fellowship of the Ring, Book One, Chapter 9, “At the Sign of the Prancing Pony”)

Their only defense appears to have been “a deep dike [ditch] with a thick hedge on the inner side”, but who maintains it is not mentioned, although there is a gate guard—the evil Bill Ferny, when the hobbits first approach the gate. Unlike the Shirriffs of the Shire, however, we have no idea what structure might lie behind this position.

As we travel farther eastward, we come to Rivendell.

Here, Elrond is clearly in charge, but seems to have no distinct title—unlike Thranduil, who is called “the King of the Elves of Northern Mirkwood” (The Fellowship of the Ring, Book Two, Chapter 2, “The Council of Elrond”). The same lack of title seems to be true of Galadriel.

Although Gimli calls her “Queen Galadriel” (The Two Towers, Book Three, Chapter 8, “The Road to Isengard”), and she, along with Celeborn, rules Lorien, she does not bear that title—in fact she may be a little anxious about it, as seen when Frodo offers her the ring:

“You will give me the Ring freely? In place of the Dark Lord you will set up a Queen.” (The Fellowship of the Ring, Book Two, Chapter 7, “The Mirror of Galadriel”)

Along with Frodo’s frightening vision of her, this seems more like a warning than a statement.

We’ve seen that monarchy seems to be linked with inheritance: the thainship in the Shire is passed down through the Tooks. Even Elrond and Galadriel appear to hold their positions through seniority. In our next government, it is self-assumed, as Saruman, once referred to by Gandalf as “the chief of my order” (The Fellowship of the Ring, Book One, Chapter 2, “The Shadow of the Past”), begins to have grander plans.

image11saruman

In contrast to other monarchs in The Lord of the Rings, Saruman, we would suggest, is not so much a medieval king, as others in Middle-earth are, but an avatar for modern (1930s-1940s) dictators,

with, as Treebeard says, “a mind of metal and wheels” (The Two Towers, Book Three, Chapter 4, “Treebeard”). In fact, Saruman is a relative newcomer to the business, “setting up on his own with his filthy white badges”, as Grishnakh describes him (The Two Towers, Book Three, Chapter 3, “The Uruk-hai”), in contrast with Sauron, who, although intermittent in his attempts at control, has been involved in the process in Middle-earth for many centuries.

In his role of metal and wheels dictator, Saruman turns Isengard into a factory/fortress, manufacturing everything from orcs to swords within its precinct. His orc captain, Ugluk, calls him “Saruman the Wise, the White Hand”, but we see him later in his real form, as he works to destroy the Shire, as “Sharkey”—a name he says “All my people used to call me that in Isengard, I believe. A sign of affection, possibly.” (The Return of the King, Book Six, Chapter 8, “The Scouring of the Shire”) This is hardly “His Majesty”. Rather, it’s more like the kind of nickname a gang-leader in the US in the 1920s-30s might have had, like “Scarface” Al Capone.

image12alcapone

“Sharkey” may be derived, as JRRT suggests, from “Orkish…sharku, ‘old man’,” but it also suggests a fishy predator—a very appropriate image for a would-be dictator.

In our next, we’ll answer Grishnakh’s question: “Is Saruman the master or the Great Eye?” as we continue our exploration of government in Middle-earth.

Thanks, as always, for reading.

MTCIDC

Class, Order, Family…(2)

24 Wednesday Oct 2018

Posted by lebedusya1 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.

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.

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),

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.

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

doubtfulsea

~ adventure romance fantasy

Category Archives: Military History

Heil, Sharkey!

Roses—War of, Cranes—Mon

On the Horns

A Little Ring, the Least of Rings

Peace

Baruk Khazad!

Who Goes There? (3)

Thrones or Dominions (2)

Thrones or Dominions, Principalities or Powers (1)

Class, Order, Family…(2)