A What?

24 Wednesday Apr 2019

Posted by lebedusya1 in J.R.R. Tolkien, Narrative Methods, Villains

Tags

bokor, Bran, Circe, Cleromancy, Dol Guldur, Dracula, King Saul, Necromancer, necromancy, Odyssey, Oneiromancy, Robert Southey, Rockapella, Romania, Samuel, Sauron, Teiresias, The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, The Walking Dead, Tolkien, Zombie, Zombie Jamboree

“It was a Zombie Jamboree,
Took place in the New York Cemetery.
It was a Zombie Jamboree,
Took place in the New York Cemetery.

Zombies from all parts of the island
Some of them were great calypsonians.
Since the season was carnival,
They got together in bacchanal
HUH! And they were singing:

Back to back, belly to belly
Well I don’t give a damn
‘Cause I’m stone dead already!
Back to back, belly to belly
It’s a Zombie Jamboree.” (Conrad Eugene Mauge, Jr., c.1953)

What in the world are we doing, dear readers? Are we about to launch into a posting about The Walking Dead?

Well, no. Unless we mean the “walking-again dead”, which we do. And how did we get here?

It all began with our last two postings, on see-ers—that is, seers–and so many different ways of telling the future, like oneiromancy (dream interpretation) and cleromancy (using numbers), but, among them, we think the most sinister is necromancy—and this brought it to mind:

“Some here will remember that many years ago I myself dared to pass the doors of the Necromancer in Dol Guldur, and secretly explored his ways and found thus our fears were true: he was none other than Sauron, our Enemy of old, at length taking shape and power again.” (The Fellowship of the Ring, Book Two, Chapter 2, “The Council of Elrond”)

This is Gandalf recounting his adventure in Isengard. What he’s relating here happened somewhat before the action in The Hobbit, followed by the White Council’s attack on Dol Guldur (“The Hill of Dark Sorcery”), in the southern part of Mirkwood.

That was parallel in time to the travels of Bilbo and the dwarves towards the Lonely Mountain.

Here’s how John Howe thought Dol Guldur might have looked.

And here’s how it appears in The Hobbit films

although why it’s a ruin is unclear—Gandalf has said above that Sauron is “taking shape and power again”, and so we would imagine that, just as he’s reconstituting himself, there’s been a rebuilding campaign at his headquarters in the forest. So, rather like Howe, we see the place as more imposing, perhaps like Bran castle, in Romania, which is advertised as “Dracula’s castle” in tourist literature.

Just as cleromancy means “telling the future by lots” (that is, by casting lots—think of throwing dice–giving you a supposed “random” result) and oneiromancy means “telling the future by dreams”, so a necromancer uses the dead to find things out, suggesting something really horrible about someone with that title.

The process of questioning the dead goes back a long way in western literature. In the Odyssey, Circe,

who once turned part of Odysseus’ crew into pigs, tells him that, before he can go home, he must sail south, to the Otherworld, to consult Teiresias, who is a seer (see our last two postings for more on people like this)

for current information about his home on Ithaca and for coaching about his future behavior. To deal with the dead, Circe tells Odysseus in detail how to make a kind of drink offering of animal blood in a pit.

Then, because all of the dead will be drawn to the blood (we’re back to Dracula here, aren’t we?), he is to draw his sword and stand over the pit, only allowing those he would question to sip the blood.

But why would a sword threaten ghosts? one might ask. We think that the answer is that it’s iron and iron, in folklore, is a protection against evil magic. Odysseus has used his sword earlier to threaten Circe, who is a very powerful sorceress. See this LINK for more.

Odysseus is successful in his quest, but King Saul, in First Samuel, in the Hebrew Bible, who has already banished necromancers and magicians from his kingdom, is not. Saul is anxious about a battle to come and, when he is not answered via prayers and cleromancy about its outcome, he consults a kind of witch, who may (scholars argue over this) produce the spirit of the prophet Samuel.

When Samuel appears, his response to Saul is not what Saul had hoped for. Instead, Samuel scolds Saul and gives him a fortune-telling he’d rather not hear, that he will lose the battle, his army, and his life the next day, all of which comes true.

Saul had hoped that he could make Samuel do his bidding, which was less than successful, but what if one might make the dead one’s slaves? This is where our opening comes in. The tradition of zombies is complex, including the word itself. At the moment, the earliest reference to the word in English is found in 1819, in volume 3 of the poet, Robert Southey’s (1774-1843),

History of Brazil, Part the Third, page 24:

They were under the government of an elective Chief, who was chosen for his justice as well as his valour, and held the office for life : all men of experience and good repute had access to him as counsellors : he was obeyed with perfect loyalty; and it is said that no conspiracies or struggles for power had ever been known among them. Perhaps a feeling of religion contributed to this obedience ; for Zombi, the title whereby he was called, is the name for the Deity, in the Angolan tongue.”

The subsequent history of zombies is complex, but a recurrent theme is that they are the dead, brought back to serve the living, usually by an evil magician, called a bokor. Among the possible tasks for such a slave is telling the future, thus making a bokor a necromancer, like Sauron.

We’ve done an extensive image search under “zombie” and the weirdest things turn up, none of which we would put into a posting, so this is the best we can do.

If, however, this is the best a bokor can manage, we can’t imagine what news of the future one of these zombies might possibly give Sauron—and it’s no wonder that he loses the Ring.

But thanks for reading!

And

MTCIDC

If you’d like to see “Zombie Jamboree” performed, here’s a LINK to our favorite version, by Rockapella.

See-r (2)

17 Wednesday Apr 2019

Posted by lebedusya1 in J.R.R. Tolkien, Literary History, Narrative Methods

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Apollo, Babylonian, Claros, Delphi, Didyma, Dodona, Dr Seuss, epic metre, Etruscan, Extispicy, Flamen, Galadrien, Greek, Gustave Moreau, Haruspex, King Galdaran, Mirror of Galadriel, Oracle, Pytho, Rome, Romulus and Remus, Star Wars, The Lord of the Rings, Theogony, Tolkien, Yoda

Here we are again, dear readers, welcoming you to the second half of that posting with the odd name—or at least the odd spelling.

In the first half of this, we began with questions about Galadriel’s mirror: where did it come from? What was it doing in the text?

We saw that it had begun life in a manuscript note as the mirror of “King Galdaran”, but then became the mirror of “Galadrien” as JRRT smoothed and polished both the scene and the character. In that earlier note—a kind of shorthand plot summary—it’s stated that, “King Galdaran says the mirror shows past, present, and future, and the skill needed to decide which…”—that is, one needs skill to decide which might be past, present, or future. Such skill, especially to read the future, led us to thinking about the history of attempting to read the future, and we briefly discussed the use of turtle plastrons (the underside of a turtle) and ox shoulder blades, then number patterns, in ancient China, dreams in Egypt, and the insides of certain animals in Babylon.

In this posting, we want to take that history a bit farther.

Just as the Babylonians practiced extispicy—the examination of the intestines of certain animals or birds—so did the Etruscans, whom we think of as Rome’s “big brothers”, as many Roman practices and customs appear to have been borrowed from them. In our last, we showed a Babylonian model of a sheep’s liver,

presumably used as a guide to reading an actual liver. Here’s a bronze Etruscan model, with various areas marked off and labeled.

And here’s a fourth-century bc bronze model of an Etruscan priest, a “haruspex”, the Romans would have called him.

(Sometimes, even though we spend a great deal of time in the classical world, there are things which will always seem a little odd—the hat on this fellow can’t help but remind us of something from Dr Seuss,

just as that on a Roman flamen—a kind of priest—makes us think of a certain propeller helmet…)

Romans borrowed the custom from the Etruscans, it seems, and also read bird-signs. In fact, it was a disagreement over the interpretation of a flight of birds which may have sparked the murder of one of the founders of Rome, Remus, by his twin brother, Romulus.

Besides Etruscan and home-grown methods of trying to find out about the future, the Romans also continued the Greek tradition of visiting prophetic shrines. The most famous were dedicated to Apollo

and were located (see map below—west to east)

at Delphi

Claros

and Didyma.

There was also a well-known shrine dedicated to Zeus at Dodona,

but the oracle at Delphi was perhaps the most famous.

It’s not always clear how these places worked. The oracle at Dodona, for example, may have used two methods: sacred doves and the wind in the leaves of the enclosed grove you see in the picture. At Delphi, a pilgrim waited to pose a question to the priestess, called the “Pytho”

and, if she chose to respond, it was in the standard Greek epic metre, dactylic hexameter. Her answers were famously riddling and ambiguous, as when she told Croesus, the king of Lydia that, if he went to war with the Persians, a kingdom would fall (guess whose!). To interpret such a response correctly would have taken King Galdaran’s response that, to interpret what his mirror told, one must have skill to decide just what the future might be.

When it comes to Galadrien/Galadriel, it’s not skill which she lacks, but rather she practices a kind of caution in interpretation:

“Many things I can command the Mirror to reveal…and to some I can show what they desire to see. But the Mirror will also show things unbidden, and those are often stranger and more profitable than things which we wish to behold. What you will see, if you leave the Mirror free to work, I cannot tell. For it shows things that were, and things that are, and things that may yet be. But which it is that he sees, even the wisest cannot always tell.” (The Fellowship of the Ring, Book Two, Chapter 7, “The Mirror of Galadriel”)

(We can’t resist a footnote here. In the early Greek poem, Theogony, the poet Hesiod tells us that he was a shepherd on a hillside when he was visited by the Muses, who told him that they could say many false things as if they were true, but could also speak the truth when they felt like it. They then gave him a staff and inspired him to make songs about things in the future, as well as things in the past, all of which sounds rather familiar here. Here’s a LINK if you’d like to read the story. And here’s a rather over-the-top painting by Gustave Moreau, (1826-1898.)

What Sam sees he finds deeply disturbing—the industrialization of the Shire—and it so disturbing that he leaps up and shouts that he must go home. What Frodo sees is more complex—perhaps Gandalf, what looks to be the arrival of the Numenorians to found Gondor, and, finally, the Eye, ever restless, ever searching.

So why is the Mirror here? We would suggest, tentatively, for several reasons:

first, because this is a kind of turning point in the story: after the pursuit through Moria and the death of Gandalf (as far as the Fellowship knows), this is the first breathing space which the company has had and it’s a very safe and peaceful one—for the moment. As Celeborn says:

“Now is the time…when those who wish to continue the Quest must harden their hearts to leave this land. Those who no longer wish to go forward may remain here, for a while. But whether they stay or go, none can be sure of peace.” (The Fellowship of the Ring, Book Two, Chapter 8, “Farewell to Lorien”)

After so much struggle and the loss of a major figure, it’s clearly a good moment to rest, take stock, and look towards the future.

second, Galadriel had earlier probed each of the company, testing their minds and finding out just who they were—sometimes to their discomfort, if not distress. Now the company is narrowed to just two: the ring-bearer and his servant, and here at her Mirror, she offers them a final test, but we can imagine that, unlike her earlier probing, this is much more free-form and ambiguous, as if she had allowed the two to make up their own tests. For Sam, it’s the possible ruination of what he loves most in the world, the Shire, and he almost fails, until Galadriel gently upbraids him:

“You did not wish to go home without your master before you looked in the Mirror, and yet you knew that evil things might well be happening in the Shire.”

Frodo’s test is less focused upon a place or event. Rather, it was a kind of suggestion of the past (Gondor), with the implication that that past’s continuation depends upon confronting the present danger, which is not to be underestimated. Galadriel’s words to Sam underline this:

“Remember that the Mirror shows many things, and not all have yet come to pass. Some never come to be, unless those that behold the visions turn aside from their path to prevent them.”

Shaken, both pass the test, it seems.

by implying that what Sam and Frodo see might actually happen, the author adds an extra note of urgency to the story, something always to be felt after that moment: the Shire could be in danger, Frodo may have to confront Sauron, directly or indirectly.

But you’ll notice that, taking Galadriel’s lead, we wrote “could be” and “may have to”, rather than “will be” and “must” and here we hear the voice of a wise person from another epic adventure.

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

MTCIDC

See-r (1)

10 Wednesday Apr 2019

Posted by lebedusya1 in J.R.R. Tolkien, Literary History, Narrative Methods

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Tags

Achillea, Babylonians, Cleromancy, Drafts, dream interpretation, Dream manual, Egypt, future, Galadriel, Galdaran, haruspicy, I Ching, Lothlorien, Mirror of Galadriel, Oneiromancy, plastrons, Ramesses II, ritual, Shang Dynasty, spiritual, tarot, The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien, Zhou

Welcome, as always, dear readers.

You’ll notice our odd title. Which came from a puzzle. We had been thinking about Galadriel and her mirror: when did it enter the story and, more important for the narrative, why was the episode there?

In an earlier sketch for the text, JRRT had written:

“King Galdaran’s mirror shown to Frodo. Mirror is of silver filled with fountain water in sun.

Sees Shire far away. Trees being felled and a tall building being made where the old mill was. Gaffer Gamgree turned out. Open trouble, almost war, between Marish and Buckland on one hand—and the West. Cosimo Sackville-Baggins very rich, buying up land. (All/Some of this in future.) King Galdaran says the mirror shows past, present, and future, and skill needed to decide which. Sees a grey figure like Gandalf [?going along] in twilight but it seems to be clad in white. Perhaps it is Saruman.

Sees a mountain spouting flame Sees Gollum?” (The Treason of Isengard, 249-250)

Interesting to see that the scene we know from The Fellowship of the Ring, Book Two, Chapter 7, was once very different, beginning with the fact that Galadriel’s mirror had no Galadriel—and Sam’s nightmare vision of the Shire was, originally, Frodo’s. (There was once more potentially more of that nightmare—on a surviving scrap of paper is: “Cosimo has industrialized it. Factories and smoke. The Sandymans have a biscuit factory. Iron is found.” Treason, 216. We wonder, by the way, if, since he lived and worked in Oxford, JRRT’s choice of a biscuit (US: cookie) factory might have been influenced by the Oxford Biscuits company, founded in Denmark in 1922.)

Galadriel was in the narrative at this time, and she even performs her emotional x-ray on the company (Treason, 248), but it’s in the main draft that she gains the mirror (although her name is “Galadrien” at this stage—reading the various manuscripts, we often see many characters have everything from complete name-changes—the Aragorn-as-ranger figure was once called “Trotter”—to slight adjustments). And, as Christopher Tolkien writes,

“It is seen that it was while my father was writing the ‘Lothlorien’ story ab initio [“from the beginning”] that the Lady of Lothlorien emerged…and it is also seen that the figure of Galadriel (Rhien, Galadrien) as a great power in Middle-earth was deepened and extended as he wrote.” (Treason, 250)

All of which is true, but doesn’t help us with the second part of our question: why is the episode there?

Seeking for clues, we looked at that early sketch, in which “King Galdaran says the mirror shows past, present, and future, and the skill needed to decide which…” which then made us think about that skill. At first, we considered that deciding that an event was in the past would be rather easy—after all, events which had happened leave a history, and often consequences. Suppose, however, that that history came from another place, or was never written down—after all, this is medieval Middle-earth, not our 21^st-century world. In our own western Middle Ages, literacy was limited, there was almost no long-distance communication, and people lived on rumors. Would Middle-earth be any different? The same would be true for the present in Middle-earth: what would someone in the Shire know of someone in Rohan?

This brought us to the future and, speaking of history, the attempt to understand the future spreads far back into recorded time and perhaps beyond.

Shang Dynasty China (c.1600-1046BC) has provided us with an extensive archaeological record for this in the form of a vast archive of rather unusual objects, the two main ones being bundles of these

and piles of these.

The first of these is the plastron or breastplate of a turtle.

The second is the shoulder blade of a cow.

These were used for a number of spiritual contact purposes, including finding out about the future, but the method was always the same:

once the surface was cleaned, a series of shallow holes was carved or drilled into the surface
blood was applied to the surface (for purification? Or perhaps to attract a spirit?)
questions were written to one side of each hole
a hot iron was applied to the hole
the surface would then crack under the heat
the officiator would interpret the crack, then write his interpretation on the surface, as well

During the next dynasty, the Zhou (1000-221BC), another method was added and, in time, this became more popular. This used the stalks of a plant of the family Achillea

for the practice of cleromancy, which, basically, means using a series of random numbers to try to understand something about the spiritual world. This is a very complicated process, as far as we can see, including not only the stalks, but a book called the I Ching.

If you would like to know more, here’s a LINK which explains the practice in 12 steps.

A method of telling the future in ancient Egypt was by interpreting dreams (oneiromancy) and we have a dream manual dated to the time of Ramesses II (1279-1213BC).

This lists common patterns in dreams, identifies whether they are bad or good, then goes on to interpret them. Because dreams are universal, this is a world-wide method and all one has to do is to google “dream interpretation book” to see just how much is available in English alone.

Babylonians used dreams, among other methods, as well as haruspicy, in which a specially-trained priest examined the entrails of certain animals, birds and sheep being especially useful. Here’s a model of a sheep’s liver (2050-1750BC) used to help in the process.

The holes were for pegs, to help the priest makes comparisons between the actual liver and the model.

In our next, we’ll discuss a few other early methods of attempting to see the future and, if we play our cards right,

we’ll circle back to Galadriel’s mirror and its place in The Lord of the Rings.

Thanks, as ever, for reading and—this part of the future we can read—

MTCIDC

On Time.3

13 Wednesday Mar 2019

Posted by lebedusya1 in J.R.R. Tolkien, Literary History, Narrative Methods

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Calendars, Christopher Tolkien, Chronology, David Drake, Drafts, hobbit measurement, Moon Phases, Raj Whitehall, SM Stirling, The General, The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, The Stairs of Cirith Ungol, Tolkien

Once upon a time, dear readers (and welcome, as always), this series began with this:

As you can see, it’s a reproduction of the first page of a draft of JRRT’s The Lord of the Rings chronology, which we found in a display case in Reading Adventureland at the marvelous Strong National Museum of Play, in Rochester, NY (the original is in the Tolkien papers at Marquette University).

We had seen the eventual complete version of this long ago in Appendix B of The Lord of the Rings, in the section entitled “The Great Years”, but, as with everything original, there’s a special thrill to seeing something much closer to the author than the printed page–like this, a leaf from a draft of what would become The Two Towers, Book Four, Chapter 8, “The Stairs of Cirith Ungol”, illustrated by Tolkien. If you compare it with the final text, it’s very interesting to see all of the kinds of changes JRRT made between it and that which we now read.

(We found this on a site called Biblioklept. As this means “book thief”, we were a little hesitant, at first, but it turned out to be a very interesting place—here’s a LINK to it so that you can see for yourself.)

The Hobbit (about which we wrote in parts 1 and 2 of this little series) was quite simple in its chronology. It’s all of a piece, the narrative being focused solely on Bilbo and the dwarves until Smaug flies off to devastate Lake-town (Chapter 14, “Fire and Water”). Even Gandalf’s disappearance in Chapter 7 (“Queer Lodgings”) is never really gone into. The opposite is true in The Lord of the Rings. In the opening chapters of Book One alone, Gandalf appears, Bilbo disappears, years pass and Gandalf reappears and disappears, and it’s only in Book Two that both reappear and we are told by Gandalf what happened between his last disappearance and his present reappearance (“The Council of Elrond”), even though some of what happened to him was occurring at the same time as Frodo’s packing up and leaving the Shire. Here’s a useful chronology from something called “scifi.stackexchange.com” (and here’s a LINK to it).

It’s not surprising, then, that JRRT needed to make very careful notes of who went where and when.

This didn’t always work out, however, as has been pointed out more than once, in the matter of phases of the moon. This is a complicated story (here’s a LINK to help), but, basically, JRRT, as meticulous as he always was, based the moon phases on a calendar from 1941-2

and mistook the marker for “new moon” to mean “the second day of the new moon”, which would have allowed for just the faintest of crescents in the sky, rather than the astronomical definition, “the full dark of the moon”.

Here’s a moon phase chart to help.

We know from a note in Christopher Tolkien’s The Treason of Isengard that JRRT was working from such a calendar (or almanac) because:

“Either while the making of Time-scheme I was in progress or at some later point my father wrote at the head of the first page of it: Moons are after 1941-2 + 6 days. (p. 369—if you happen to consult the Tolkien Gateway: User: Gamling/Hobbitdates on the subject, you will be puzzled at its footnote 2, which cites this volume, and, within it, “The Great River”, note 23, as note 23 says nothing about this)

For us, to focus upon such a detail is to miss the bigger point, however, which was, in fact, encapsulated in W. H. Auden’s review of The Fellowship of the Ring

in 1954:

”Of any imaginary world the reader demands that it seem real, and the standard of realism demanded today is much stricter than in the time, say, of Malory. Mr. Tolkien is fortunate in possessing an amazing gift for naming and a wonderfully exact eye for description; by the time one has finished his book one knows the histories of Hobbits, Elves, Dwarves and the landscape they inhabit as well as one knows one’s own childhood.” (The New York Times, October 31, 1954)

Where does such sense of reality come from?

We once read that, before science-fiction authors SM Stirling

and David Drake

began their 5-volume series of the adventures of Raj Whitehall, The General, in 1991 (see LINK—and here’s the first volume book cover),

they created a many-page description of the world, Bellevue, upon which those adventures are set. We thought that that was a great idea and it certainly made Bellevue and all of its events more believable and the narrative more engrossing.

On a much more massive scale, there are the 13 volumes of Christopher Tolkien’s

publication of his father’s papers and his own notes (this is obviously just a few of the books).

For us, however, there is a small, but equally revealing image of what lies behind JRRT’s work.

This is another item from that display case at the Strong Museum (and the original is also from the Tolkien collection at Marquette). As you can see, it’s a menu card, for a formal dinner, and we don’t know whether an always-paper-hungry Tolkien tucked it into a coat pocket to use at a later date, or whether it was a very boring dinner and he whiled away the time till the “cheese straws” by creating a neat little measurement system based upon hobbit physiognomy (we hope it was the latter).

What particularly catches our attention is the detail that “6 toes = 1 foot” (odd—do hobbits have six toes, like certain cats?)—but added to that, in a gloss to the right, is the translation into English measure that this hobbit “foot” equals 9 inches. The standard English measure of a foot is 12 inches, but in the days before the English conquest of Wales in the 13^th century, (under Edward I, 1239-1307), something called the “Venedotian Code” provided the measurement system in northern Wales, and, in that system, the foot was 9 inches—could it be that JRRT thought of the hobbits as Welsh?

Thanks, as ever, for reading.

MTCIDC

Over the River…

06 Wednesday Mar 2019

Posted by lebedusya1 in J.R.R. Tolkien, Literary History, Maps, Narrative Methods

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Tags

atlas, Maps, Middle-earth, Roman Roads, Ted Nasmith, The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien

As ever, dear readers, welcome.

Two postings ago, we had been discussing how time is marked in The Hobbit. After a one-post interlude—a book review—we were intending to extend our discussion (as our original plan was) to The Lord of the Rings, but something caught our attention and, in this posting, we’re still interluding—although it is about The Hobbit.

We had just set off from Bag End with Bilbo and the dwarves and noticed this:

“At first they had passed through hobbit-lands, a wide respectable country inhabited by decent folk, with good roads, an inn or two, and now and then a dwarf or a farmer ambling by on business. Then they came to lands where people spoke strangely, and sang songs Bilbo had never heard before. Now they had gone on far into the Lone-lands, where there were no people left, no inns, and the roads grew steadily worse. Not far ahead were dreary hills, rising higher and higher, dark with trees. On some of them were old castles with an evil look, as if they had been built by wicked people.” (The Hobbit, Chapter 2, “Roast Mutton”)

The company passes over an ancient bridge:

“Somewhere behind the grey clouds the sun must have gone down, for it began to get dark as they went down into a deep valley with a river at the bottom. Wind got up, and willows along its banks bent and sighed. Fortunately the road went over an ancient stone bridge, for the river, swollen with the rains, came rushing down from the hills and mountains in the north.”

They go on till Bilbo and the dwarves reach the trolls.

(drawings by JRRT)

Here, though, we want to pause for a moment and look back, and, like any careful—and curious—traveler, consult a map.

First—and this is something we noted in that previous post—there is really no hard evidence for just how long this leg of the trip took. All we are given are “At first”, “now and then”, “Then”, and “Now”, and the sense of distance comes to us as much through landscape changes as from those vague words: from “hobbit-lands” to “lands where people spoke strangely…” then “Now they had gone far into the Lone-lands”.

Second, looking at that map, there are certain puzzling words in that description of travel. The description twice says “roads”, at first “good roads”, then, as the journey goes eastwards, “the roads grew steadily worse”. Our map, however, shows only one road, the East or East/West Road, the history of which goes far into the history of Middle-earth and which we have always imagined that JRRT modeled on the remains of Roman roads one could still walk in England in his time—and even today.

(Here’s a LINK to a very good basic article on constructing roads in Roman Britain.)

And then there is this:

“Not far ahead were dreary hills, rising higher and higher, dark with trees. On some of them were old castles with an evil look, as if they had been built by wicked people.”

As far as we know, there are no “castles” in Middle-earth—the East Road does skirt Weathertop. As Aragorn says:

“The Old Road, which we have left far away on our right, runs to the south of it and passes not far from its foot.” (The Fellowship of the Ring, Book One, Chapter 11, “A Knife in the Dark”)

And perhaps his description might—very roughly—fit a (ruined) castle:

“…in the first days of the North Kingdom, they built a great watch-tower on Weathertop, Amon Sul they called it. It was burned and broken, and nothing remains of it now but a tumbled ring, like a rough crown on the old hill’s head.”

As it was destroyed in the conflict against the Witch King of Angmar, we would certainly agree that “wicked people” had once been involved in its history.

Our puzzlement is not just about what appears in the text, however. There is also what’s missing (most of it shown on the map):

the bridge over the Brandywine which appears in the first paragraph of “The Scouring of the Shire”
any mention of the Greenway, which crosses the East Road at Bree
and then there is Bree itself

Of course, this is back-reading. We are looking at a map which is descended from one which JRRT gradually built up over time in the years after The Hobbit, when Middle-earth continued to grow and grow in his imagination and hence in his fiction. (For an extensive view of his work as a world-creator, see this intelligent and extremely useful volume by Karen Wynn Fonstad,

which deals with the whole history of Middle-earth in chronological order. For The Lord of the Rings, we would recommend this, by Barbara Strachey,

which has been our guide on a number of trips along Frodo’s route.)

As well, it’s good to remember that, for the most part, the company in The Hobbit is traveling at its own speed, a speed determined primarily by the countryside they cross and their trip seems—if occasionally miserable—almost leisurely, especially in comparison with The Lord of the Rings, in which so much of the first volume in particular lays out a route along which several of the main protagonists are driven by evil pursuers. The journey itself, in the latter, becomes, day by day, the focus of the narrative as they attempt to escape the Nazgul and that day-by-day quality is intensified after the wounding of Frodo on Weathertop, as he begins to fade and his friends are desperate to reach Rivendell.

The contrast between the two stories is especially striking here, as Bilbo and company are mocked and sung to by invisible elves in The Hobbit (Chapter 3, “A Short Rest”) as they ride down into the valley, whereas, in The Lord of the Rings (The Fellowship of the Ring, Book One, Chapter 12, “Flight to the Ford”), we see this (by the excellent Ted Nasmith)—

This change in the narrative emphasis, from discrete events along a route in The Hobbit, to an emphasis upon the journey itself, will bring us back to our original discussion on the marking of time—moving now from the earlier book to The Lord of the Rings in our next posting.

Thanks, as always, for reading and

MTCIDC

We would guess, by the way, that that “ancient stone bridge” mentioned above is the so-called “Last Bridge”, which Glorifindel calls “the Bridge of Mitheithel” (The Fellowship of the Ring, Book One, Chapter 12, “Flight to the Ford”) and which crosses the River Hoarwell (“Mitheithel” to the elves) on the East Road.

PPS

If you grew up, as we did, hearing the song we hinted at in our title, you might want to learn more at this LINK…

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 Time (2)

20 Wednesday Feb 2019

Posted by lebedusya1 in Artists and Illustrators, Imaginary History, J.R.R. Tolkien, Narrative Methods

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Chronology, crannogs, Durin's Day, John Bauer, Laketown, Loch Tay, Lonely Mountain, Mirkwood, passing time, Scotland, Smaug, Ted Nasmith, The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, Thorin, Thror's Map, Tolkien

As always, dear readers, welcome.

Some years ago, we visited the Strong National Museum of Play, in Rochester, New York. (Highly recommended!)

image1strong

There, we had found this in one of the display cases–

image2chrono

It’s a reproduction of the first page of a chronology of The Lord of the Rings by JRRT, covering the end of September and the beginning of October of SR1418, from the Marquette University collection. Looking closely we could see just how detailed it was and, recently, we looked at the page again and it made us wonder just how visible such detailing was in the actual work: do we really see each day portrayed? Are there moments when days—or more—go by unmarked? If so, when? And why?

To answer our questions, we turned first to The Hobbit, as a kind of test case, and, in our last posting, had, by the end, reached the western edge of Mirkwood.

image3mirk

This, as the caption says, is a work by Ted Nasmith, one of our favorite Tolkien illustrators, but here’s JRRT’s version.

image4mirkwood

(As we’ve pointed out some time ago, Tolkien’s version would appear to owe something to the work of the early-20^th-century Swedish illustrator, John Bauer (1882-1918).)

image5bauer

As Gandalf waves a good-bye and shouts a final warning, the company plunges in—and immediately time seems to blur:

“All this went on for what seemed to the hobbit ages upon ages…days followed days, and still the forest seemed just the same…” (The Hobbit, Chapter 8, “Flies and Spiders”)

They reach a dangerous stream, one of their company falls in—and immediately drops into a deep sleep, forcing them to carry him as they move away from the stream and, although their journeying continues to seem endless:

“About four days from the enchanted stream they came to a part where most of the trees were beeches…A few leaves came rustling down to remind them that outside autumn was coming on…Two days later they found their path going downwards.”

Soon after that, Bilbo is sent up a tree to see where they are—and, it appears the next day they are tormented by visions of feasting elves. The next morning? the scattered dwarves and Bilbo are attacked by outsized spiders.

image6spider

As we said, this is all rather blurry—not many time words are used and, like the forest itself, the passage of time appears almost featureless. In the confusion around the elvish torment and the spiders, however, Thorin has disappeared, only to be made captive by those very elves and taken to the palace of their king.

image7palace

And then time moves forward—a little: “The day after the battle with the spiders Bilbo and the dwarves made one last despairing effort to find a way out before they died of hunger and thirst…Such day as there ever was in the forest was fading once more into the blackness of night, when suddenly out sprang the light of many torches all round them…” (The Hobbit, Chapter 9, “Barrels Out of Bond”)

The other dwarves are captured by the elves, but Bilbo, using his ring, escapes–and then manages to slip into the elves’ underground world—and into what appears to be another nearly-timeless place:

“Poor Mr. Baggins—it was a weary long time that he lived in that place all alone…Eventually, after a week or two of this sneaking sort of life, by watching and following the guards and taking what chances he could, he managed to find out where each dwarf was kept.

He found all their twelve cells in different parts of the palace, and after a time he got to know his way about very well.”

The chance discovery of the use of an underground stream as a method of shipping goods—and wine in particular—provides Bilbo with the final means to escape the elves, but how long does all of this, from the capture of the dwarves to that escape, take?

“For some time Bilbo sat and thought about this water-gate, and wondered if it could be used for the escape of his friends, and at last he had the desperate beginnings of a plan.”

If you are familiar with the story, you know that the plan entails escaping in barrels,

image8barrels

bobbing and rolling all night down the river till they were snagged and collected and, the next morning, moved on towards Lake-town, which they reached in the evening (“The sun had set when turning with another sweep towards the East the forest-river rushed into the Long Lake.”).

image9laketown

(This reminds us to mention crannogs—lake houses—of which there is a very convincing reconstruction on Loch Tay, in Scotland. Here’s a LINK if you’d like to know more.)

image10crannog

The dwarves and Bilbo had stayed in Lake-town two weeks when: “At the end of a fortnight Thorin began to think of departure.” (The Hobbit, Chapter 10, “A Warm Welcome”) When they actually departed, however, is unclear: “So one day, although autumn was now getting far on, and winds were cold, and leaves were falling fast, three large boats left Lake-town, laden with rowers, dwarves, Mr. Baggins, and many provisions.”

They land “On the Doorstep” (the title of Chapter 11) of the Lonely Mountain. It has taken them three days to get there by boat. (“In two days going they rowed right up the Long Lake and passed out into the River Running…At the end of the third day, some miles up the river, they drew in to the left or western bank and disembarked.” The Hobbit, Chapter 11, “On the Doorstep”)

image11lonely

But how long do they spend on that doorstep?

We know, from Elrond’s reading of the moon runes on Thror’s map, that there is a kind of deadline:

“Stand by the grey stone when the thrush knocks…and the setting sun with the last light of Durin’s Day will shine upon the key-hole.” (The Hobbit, Chapter 3, “A Short Rest”)

Thorin himself is hard-pressed to say exactly what day this is, but the dwarves and hobbit continue their journey to find the hidden back door.

After camping where their supplies have been left, they begin their actual explorations the next day. (“They spent a cold and lonely night…The next day they set out again.”) Bilbo and several of the dwarves make a brief expedition to the front door and back, seemingly within a day.

We now enter into another blurry period, for, as the dwarves and Bilbo search for the hidden door, all we read is “day by day they came back to their camp without success” until: “ ‘Tomorrow begins the last week of autumn,’ said Thorin one day.” And the next day—which is, in fact, the Durin’s Day of the map—they find and open the door.

image12door

Thorin sends Bilbo down into the dark, which, we presume takes some time because we are told that “It was midnight and clouds had covered the stars” when Balin carried him out. (The Hobbit, Chapter 12, “Inside Information”) He has taken a cup from Smaug’s hoard, however, and this rouses the dragon, forcing the dwarves to take shelter in the tunnel within the hidden door where they remain as Bilbo returns a second time—the next day—to visit Smaug again. (“The sun was shining as he started…”) That same day, they take shelter within the tunnel and Smaug seals them in.

How long they are sealed in isn’t initially clear: “They could not count the passing of time…At last after days and days of waiting” Chapter 13 begins, but, with the addition of “as it seemed”, suggesting that not much time—perhaps even only hours—had actually passed. (The Hobbit, Chapter 13, “Not at Home”). This is made clearer, however, when we are told: “As a matter of fact two nights and the day between had gone by…since the dragon smashed the magic door…”). After Bilbo makes another foray—followed by the others—down into Smaug’s lair, they find it empty, press beyond it, and, eventually, the same day, move their camp to an old watchpost on the southwest corner of the mountain.

image13erebor

(We presume that the post is at the left-hand edge of this JRRT illustration.)

Smaug, of course, has gone off to destroy Lake-town and is killed there

and soon a combined force of forest elves and men from the ruined Lake-town set off for the Lonely Mountain (“It was thus that in eleven days from the ruin of the town the head of their host passed the rock-gates at the end of the lake and came into the desolate lands.” The Hobbit, Chapter 14, “Fire and Water”)

The narrative then moves back once more to the dwarves, who, by means of an ancient raven, have heard what is approaching and begin to fortify the main door of the Mountain when: “There came a night when suddenly there were many lights as of fires and torches away south in Dale before them.” (The Hobbit, Chapter 15, “The Gathering of the Clouds”) Presumably, this is some days after the invaders have reached the desolate lands, though how many is not said, but, “The next morning early a company of spearmen was seen crossing the river…”

Thus begins the last big event in The Hobbit: the siege of the Mountain by elves and men and the following Battle of the Five Armies. With the arrival of the besiegers and the stalemate caused by Thorin’s stubbornness, time is blurred once more: “Now the days passed slowly and wearily.” (The Hobbit, Chapter 16, “A Thief in the Night”) It is suddenly marked, however, by news:

“Things had gone on like this for some time, when the ravens brought news that Dain and more than five hundred dwarves…were now about two days’ march of Dale…”

This sparks Bilbo into attempting to use the Arkenstone as a bargaining chip and “Next day trumpets rang early in the camp” (The Hobbit, Chapter 17, “The Clouds Burst”) as the allies try to deal with Thorin and here we see time, from being blurred, begins to be more clearly stated: after the “for some time”, we see “the next morning” and then, with the parley discouraged by dwarvish arrows, “That day passed and then the night” and, that following day, everything falls apart: Goblins and Wild Wolves appear and the allies, Dain and his Iron Mountain dwarves, and Thorin & Co, are all involved in a massive struggle which only ends when the Eagles arrive—and Beorn–, Bilbo is knocked unconscious, and Thorin is mortally wounded.

(This is by Justin Gerard—here’s a LINK to a really interesting website dedicated to fantasy illustration where we found it.)

The story hasn’t ended, however, though time goes back into its biggest blur yet. The dragon dead, the Mountain recovered by the dwarves, Bilbo “started on his long road home” . Long it is, as “by mid-winter Gandalf and Bilbo had come all the way back…to the doors of Beorn’s house: and there for a while they both stayed…It was spring, and a fair one with mild weathers and a bright sun, before Bilbo and Gandalf took their leave at last of Beorn…” (The Hobbit, Chapter 18, “The Return Journey”) We see them reach Elrond’s Last Homely House “on May the First”, though “after a week…[Bilbo and Gandalf] said farewell to Elrond” (The Hobbit, Chapter 19, “The Last Stage”). It is June, however, while the two are still on their journey (“for now June brought summer”) and, in fact, we are told that it is precisely the 22^nd of June that they arrive at Bag End, as, on that day, “Messrs Grubb, Grubb, and Burrowes” are about to auction off “the effects of the late Bilbo Baggins, Esquire”.

The book goes on a little further, into Bilbo’s future, but this seems like a good place for us to end this posting. What have we discovered with our investigation? We guess we would say that, in The Hobbit, time comes in two forms:

there is passing time—those blurs when people are traveling or waiting—this can be simply marked as time passing, or it may be described in weeks
there is slowed time—this is around important events in the narrative and is always specific to days

And, unless one keeps a very detailed journal

perhaps this can be seen as a kind of imitation of everyone’s life: long stretches of just “doing things” broken up by short patches of intense, memorable activity. What do you think, readers?

And, while you’re thinking, thanks for reading.

MTCIDC

On Time (1)

13 Wednesday Feb 2019

Posted by lebedusya1 in Imaginary History, J.R.R. Tolkien, Narrative Methods

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Tags

Calendars, Chronology, Marquette University, Reading Adventureland, Strong National Museum of Play, The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, Time, Tolkien

Welcome, dear readers, as ever.

Our last two postings were all about calendars of various sorts and, as we thought about those, it brought us back to something we’d seen some years ago at the wonderful Strong National Museum of Play in Rochester, New York.

In the part of the museum called “Reading Adventureland”,

there was a small exhibit on JRRT, and, in the middle, was this:

This is a reproduction of the first page (from the collection of JRRT’s papers at Marquette University) of a highly-detailed chronology of Book One of The Fellowship of the Ring, covering, day by day, the movements of major characters from the end of September, SR1418, through the first half of October.

It doesn’t surprise us that there would be such a thing—considering how many names there are: Frodo, Tom Bombadil, Aragorn, Gandalf, Elrond, and Glorfindel (not to mention the Nazgul)—and all are potentially in play in this short time, something almost like a train schedule would seem necessary.

This made us wonder if, when reading the text, we’re always as aware of time passing as the author. Are there moments when we can almost literally hear the clock ticking (there’s one on Bilbo’s wall—but I don’t think we ever see another)?

Are there times/places where it seems to move at a different speed or we forget time completely?

And what about The Hobbit? Is there the same sense of time there as in The Lord of the Rings?

On the very first page of the latter, we’re given a date:

“Bilbo and Frodo happened to have the same birthday, September 22.” (The Fellowship of the Ring, Book One, Chapter 1, “A Long-Expected Party”)

And this date then forms a central point in that first chapter. In contrast, The Hobbit presents us with:

“By some curious chance one morning long ago in the quiet of the world…” (The Hobbit, Chapter One, “An Unexpected Party”)

So how is time then marked, say, from that moment

to the first real incident on the way to the Lonely Mountain, the adventure with the trolls?

To begin with, Gandalf gives us a hint at least as to the month Bilbo left the Shire with the Dwarves, saying to Thorin:

“And Thrain your father went away on the twenty-first of April, a hundred years ago last Thursday…”

It is the end of April, then. The next suggestion of a date comes as they are about to come upon those trolls, when Bilbo says to himself, “To think that it will soon be June!” (The Hobbit, Chapter Two, “Roast Mutton”). This makes us think that they’ve been traveling east for about a month. How long, then, from there to their first stop, Rivendell?

Here, things become vague. The next chapter, “A Short Rest”, begins:

“They did not sing or tell stories that day, even though the weather improved; nor the next day, nor the day after.”

And then the text says, “One morning”, though no day or month is specified. Presumably, they are now at the beginning of June. It seems that, that same day, “Morning passed, afternoon came…”, then “Tea-time had long gone by, and it seemed supper-time would soon do the same. There were moths fluttering about, and the light became very dim, for the moon had not risen.” At this point, Gandalf discovers the way down to Rivendell.

In a mocking song which the elves sing to Bilbo and his companions, they confirm that it’s June:

“No knowing, no knowing

What brings Mister Baggins

And Balin and Dwalin

Down into the valley

In June…”

How long do the travelers stay in Rivendell, now that they’ve reached it? Here we have a bit more concrete information:

“They stayed long in that good house, fourteen days at least…”

And we also know when their stay ended:

“So the time came to midsummer eve, and they were to go on again with the early sun on midsummer morning.”

In Tolkien’s England Midsummer’s Day is the 24^th of June, so we now know that Bilbo and the Dwarves have been on the road at least a month and a half.

On Midsummer’s Eve, we are given a more fixed point to their journey when Elrond reads the “Moon-letters” on Thorin’s map.

“Stand by the grey stone when the thrush knocks…and the setting sun with the last light of Durin’s Day will shine upon the key-hole.” (The Hobbit, Chapter 3, “A Short Rest”)

This would mean that, at the end of the expedition to the Lonely Mountain, the Dwarves, to enter the back door, must be at a specific location at a specific time. Unfortunately, though Thorin can identify what “Durin’s Day” is, he then says, “But this will not help us much, I fear, for it passes our skill in these days to guess when such a time will come again.”

Without that knowledge, they still set out on Midsummer’s Day and we wonder if we will be told how long it will take to reach their next adventure, capture by the goblins?

Unfortunately not. Instead, we are only told:

“Long days after they had climbed out of the valley and left the Last Homely House miles behind, they were still going up and up and up.” (The Hobbit, Chapter 4, “Over Hill and Under Hill”)

We know that the summer is passing, however, because Bilbo says to himself, “The summer is getting on down below…and haymaking is going on…They will be harvesting and blackberrying…”

This is a little uncertain. Wheat planted in September, our sources tell us, is usually harvested in August of the following year and blackberrying in England begins in August. If the travelers have set out from Rivendell on 24 June (Midsummer’s Day), have they been climbing into the Misty Mountains for a whole month?

Our first bit of concrete data for this part of the journey comes from Gandalf, who tells them, as they stand on the far side of the Misty Mountains:

“You lose track of time inside goblin-tunnels. Today’s Thursday, and it was Monday night or Tuesday morning that we were captured.” (The Hobbit, Chapter Six, “Out of the Frying-Pan into the Fire”)

Thus, although their flight from the goblins has been “miles and miles” and they’ve come out on the eastern side of the Mountains, they’ve taken between two and three days to do so—but we still don’t know what month we’re now in.

From their current location, it seems like a quick trip to Beorn’s house.

Rescued from goblins and Wargs by eagles, they have an overnight stay in the eagles’ nests before being dropped at the Carrock, a huge rock set in the river Anduin.

It appears to be no more than a day’s walk from there to Beorn’s, so the question is, how long do they stay? Counting by wakings and meals, it appears that they were at the shape-shifter’s house, basically two days and left on the morning of the third, then, when leaving, they traveled for three days to the edge of Mirkwood:

“That third evening they were so eager to press on, for Beorn had said that they should reach the forest-gate early on the fourth-day, that they rode still forward after dark and into the night beneath the moon.” (The Hobbit, Chapter Seven, “Queer Lodgings”).

They camp overnight at the edge of the forest and we’ll camp here, too, before continuing to investigate the measurement of time further in the second part of this posting, next week.

Thanks, as always, for reading.

MTCIDC

Ring Composition

09 Wednesday Jan 2019

Posted by lebedusya1 in Fairy Tales and Myths, J.R.R. Tolkien, Literary History, Narrative Methods

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Tags

Alberich, Andrew Lang, Andvari, Anglo-Saxon, Annatar, Der Ring des Nibelungen, Fafnir, Fairy Books, Goetterdaemmerung, Halvor, Heroic literature, Hildebrandts, Midgard Serpent, Norse Folktales, Old English, Otter, Red Fairy Book, Richard Wagner, Ring, Sauron, Sigurd, Sir George Webbe Dasent, Soria Moria Castle, The Lord of the Rings, The Ring of the Nibelung, The Silmarillion, Tolkien, Widsith

Welcome, as always, dear readers.

The title of this essay is derived from a technique in heroic literature, in which, in some way, the story/song ends, more or less where it began, just like a ring—or the Midgard Serpent, which encircles the earth in Norse mythology.

Thinking about ring composition made us think, of course, about the Ring

and to ask ourselves a question about the composition of The Lord of the Rings: where did the idea of a powerful ring come from?

There has been a lot of scholarly work about what influenced JRRT, some of which he himself agreed with, some he did not. For instance, the suggestion that Richard Wagner’s (1813-1883)

huge 4-opera cycle, Der Ring des Nibelungen, “The Ring of the Nibelung” (1848-1874)

might have provided a spark was vigorously dismissed by Tolkien—although, to our minds, there is a certain similarity—the ring of the title is a magical one, after all, whose power would allow the owner to rule the world—but it’s accursed and only brings unhappiness—or worse– to anyone who possesses it. And yet characters in the four operas which make up the cycle struggle over its possession. There, however, the similarity ends. The maker of the ring isn’t a semi-divine figure who’s attempting to rebuild his kingdom through a combination of his magical powers and his political abilities, but, rather, a dwarf, named Alberich, who has stolen the gold from which the ring is made from the Rhine Maidens, and, in return, Alberich must give up love, which he renounces.

He soon loses the ring and there is no parallel with the Shire, or with hobbits: this is a world with gods and heroes, all larger-than-life, and Sam, in particular, would feel very out of place here. Just contrast the Hildebrandts’ Frodo and Sam meeting Faramir with this children’s theatre character sheet depicting the figures from the last of the four operas, Goetterdaemmerung, “The Gods’ Twilight”.

We would suggest that a stronger influence might be found in JRRT’s interest in Old English literature. In that literature, Anglo-Saxon kings and lords are known as “ring-givers” and “gold-givers”,

who reward their followers—as well as singers—with precious decorations–as the poet in the poem called Widsith tells us:

Likewise I was among the Eatula with Ælfwine,
he had the lightest hand of all mankind, as I have heard,
to perform his praises, the most generous in the sharing of rings,
the bright bracelets, the child of Eadwine. (68-74)

(translation by Prof. Aaron K. Hostetter of Rutgers University, Camden—here’s a LINK so that you can read the whole poem—and much more—at his website—he has a wonderful project to translate a mass of Old English literature and has done a great deal to make it all accessible in one place. As for Widsith, there’s a very useful Wiki article, if you’re interested. Here’s a LINK to it.)

Whereas there might be some distant influence in the making of a powerful ring in Wagner’s operas, the giving of rings makes us think of Sauron, when he reappears in the Second Age. At that time, he comes in the guise of “Annatar”, “Lord of Gifts” and, to gain power over the Elves, encourages them to make rings, all the while creating his own to overpower and master them. As his power grows, he collects all of the rings he can (he never succeeds in getting the last three Elven rings) and doles them out, like those Anglo-Saxon kings and lords, to attempt to control dwarves and men, as well:

“But Sauron gathered into his hands all the remaining Rings of Power; and he dealt them out to the other peoples of Middle-earth, hoping thus to bring under his sway all those that desired secret power beyond the measure of their kind.” (The Silmarillion, 288)

The theme in both Wagner and The Silmarillion is that of supernatural control through what appears to be a rather ordinary object, a ring, something which, when Bilbo first finds it, is described as nothing more than “a tiny ring of cold metal” (The Hobbit, Chapter 5, “Riddles in the Dark”). Tolkien may have been influenced by its appearance in opera, and more likely, by the use of rings in Old English, but there is an older possibility:

“Outside school-room hours his mother gave him plenty of story-books…The Arthurian legends also excited him. But most of all he found delight in the Fairy Books of Andrew Lang, especially the Red Fairy Book, for tucked away in its closing pages was the best story he had ever read. This was the tale of Sigurd who slew the dragon Fafnir: a strange and powerful tale set in the nameless North.” (Carpenter, J.R.R. Tolkien, A Biography, 31)

Andrew Lang (1844-1912),

who might be considered a perfect example of the Victorian literary figure, having written novels, poems, criticism, travelogues, and early anthropological works, had also begun publishing a series of collections of stories for children, each one of the series being bound in a different color.

His wife, Leonora Blanche Alleyne (1851-1933), did most of the editing after the initial volumes, publishing, in all, a dozen volumes between 1889 and 1910. The Red Fairy Book (1890) was the second in the series

and it was in this volume that a little boy

first discovered dragons—and perhaps magic rings, as well, as in the story of Sigurd, we find:

“Now there was at that time a dwarf called Andvari, who lived in a pool beneath a waterfall, and there he had hidden a great hoard of gold. And one day Otter had been fishing there, and had killed a salmon and eaten it, and was sleeping, like an otter, on a stone. Then someone came by, and threw a stone at the otter and killed it, and flayed off the skin, and took it to the house of Otter’s father. Then he knew his son was dead, and to punish the person who had killed him he said he must have the Otter’s skin filled with gold, and covered all over with red gold, or it should go worse with him. Then the person who had killed Otter went down and caught the Dwarf who owned all the treasure and took it from him.

Only one ring was left, which the Dwarf wore, and even that was taken from him.

Then the poor Dwarf was very angry, and he prayed that the gold might never bring any but bad luck to all the men who might own it, for ever.” (Lang, editor, “The Story of Sigurd”)

And this is not the only ring to be found in The Red Fairy Book.

In the “Draft of a letter to ‘Mr. Rang’ ”, dated by Tolkien as “Aug. 1967”, JRRT has this to say about the origin of the name Moria:

“In fact this first appeared in The Hobbit chap.1. It was there, as I remember, a casual ‘echo’ of Soria Moria Castle in one of the Scandinavian tales translated by Dasent. (The tale had no interest for me: I had already forgotten it and have never since looked at it…)” (Letters, 384)

The “Dasent” mentioned here is Sir George Webbe Dasent (1817-1896), lawyer, civil servant, and sometime professor of English Literature and Modern History at King’s College, London, who, in 1859, had published Popular Tales from the Norse, a translation from the Norwegian of a series of pamphlets and books by Asbjornsen and Moe under the general title “Norske Folkeeventyr” (“Norse Folktales”), published between 1841 and 1871. By the third edition (1888), Dasent had added, among other works, a story entitled “Soria Moria Castle”. Tolkien may have seen any one of the several different editions of this work as an adult, but, as a child, he would have first read “Soria Moria Castle” in the same Red Fairy Book in which he had encountered Sigurd and the dragon. (Here’s a LINK to the Lang if you would like to see the two stories as JRRT would have.)

Beyond the title and its hint of Dwarfish mines, however, there is also a magic ring to be found in this story, given to the hero, Halvor, by three princesses whom he has rescued from trolls:

“Then they dressed him so splendidly that he was like a King’s son; and they put a ring on his finger, and it was one which would enable him to go there and back again by wishing, but they told him that he must not throw it away, or name their names; for if he did, all his magnificence would be at an end, and then he would never see them more.” (“Soria Moria Castle”)

JRRT was born in 1893. We don’t know exactly when his mother may have handed him Lang’s collection, but it was in childhood, according to his own recollection. Thus, the Ring—disguised as a ring—may have entered his life long before he heard an opera, or studied an earlier form of his native language.

The Lord of the Rings has a ring in its composition and we began this posting with talk of ring composition, but now we’re going to conclude by breaking loose from that ring by suggesting that perhaps that was the ultimate purpose in the original choice of the Ring for JRRT: to symbolize completion not by circling back, but by the breaking of a seemingly unbreakable circle. Sauron, once the servant of Melkor, but having great power of his own, has used that power not only to return and return through the ages from defeat, but to fashion a master ring, one which controls all others, giving him even more strength. At the same time, it had required such strength to make such a ring that, at its destruction:

“ ‘The realm of Sauron is ended!’ said Gandalf. ‘The Ring-bearer has fulfilled his Quest.’ And as the Captains gazed south to the Land of Mordor, it seemed to them that, black against the pall of cloud, there rose a huge shape of shadow, impenetrable, lightning-crowned, filling all the sky. Enormous it reared above the world, and stretched out towards them a vast, threatening hand, terrible but impotent: for even as it leaned over them, a great wind took it, and it was all blown away, and passed; and then a hush fell.” (The Return of the King, Book Six, Chapter 4, “The Field of Cormallen”)

(Another wonderful illustration by one of our favorite Tolkien illustrators, Ted Nasmith)

As Gandalf has said of the Ring:

“If it is destroyed, then he will fall, and his fall will be so low that none can foresee his arising ever again. For he will lose the best part of the strength that was native to him in his beginning, and all that was made or begun with that power will crumble, and he will be maimed for ever, becoming a mere spirit of malice that gnaws itself in the shadows, but cannot again grow or take shape. And so a great evil of this world will be removed.” (The Return of the King, Book Five, Chapter 9, “The Last Debate”)

Thus, after the Ring was destroyed, so was the ring of Sauron’s return in age after age, bringing about what we might then call “ring de-composition”and the story ends not where it began, but going towards old places—the Grey Havens and beyond—for some, and new places—the Fourth Age—for others.

Thanks, as ever, for reading.

MTCIDC

Can we resist saying one thing more? JRRT couldn’t—but was he thinking of a teaser for a sequel when Gandalf added to what he’d said above:

“Other evils there are that may come; for Sauron is himself but a servant or emissary.”?

Who Goes There? (4)

05 Wednesday Dec 2018

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

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Cirith Ungol, doorwarden, Edoras, Faramir, Gorbag and Shagrat, guards, Hama, Heorot, Ingold, Isengard, Ithilien, Meduseld, Merry and Pippin, Minas Tirith, N.C. Wyeth, Orcs, Rammas Echor, Rangers, Robin Hood, The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien, White Tree of Gondor

Welcome, dear readers, as ever.

This post will complete our series on watchmen, sentries, and patrols in The Lord of the Rings and how confrontations with such figures may change the action.

In our last, we’d gotten as far as Edoras and, within, Meduseld, with Hama, its doorwarden.

(This is actually from John Howe’s painting of Heorot, the mead hall in Beowulf, but, as Meduseld is meant to mean “mead hall” in Rohirric—the language of Rohan—we figure that we can justify the substitution.)

From Edoras, we’ll follow Gandalf and Pippin to Minas Tirith,

passing through the Rammas Echor, the old barrier wall protecting the fields of the Pelennor, where Gandalf talks with Ingold, who appears to be in charge of repairing a section of that wall fallen into disrepair. (See The Return of the King, Book Five, Chapter 1, “Minas Tirith”) We don’t have a illustration of this—although we think that it would make a good one—so, as we think of the Rammas Echor as a cousin of Hadrian’s wall, here’s an illustration of that wall under construction, just to give the idea.

But we said we will follow Gandalf and Pippin. First, we have to double back to Isengard, where the Ents have wreaked justifiable havoc.

(A T Nasmith we’ve used before)

When Gandalf and crowd come to call upon Saruman, they meet with very different doorwardens from Hama:

“The king and all his company sat silent on their horses, marvelling, perceiving that the power of Saruman was overthrown; but how they could not guess. And now they turned their eyes towards the archway and the 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, as if they had just eaten well, and now rested from their labour. One seemed asleep, the other, with crossed legs and arms behind his head, leaned back against a broken rock and sent from his mouth long wisps and little rings of thin blue smoke.” (The Two Towers, Book Three, Chapter 8, “The Road to Isengard”)

It’s Merry and Pippin, of course, and, for Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli, after their long, grim march across northern Rohan in search of their missing companions, only to have Eomer suggest that they’ve been killed with the orcs, this is certainly a change of mood, as well as a change of plot—not only are the two restored, but Pippin will help to rescue Faramir from his mad father and Merry will save Eowyn from the Nazgul.

Now, however, having picked up Pippin, we’ll continue on to Minas Tirith,

where, at the approach of Shadowfax:

“So Gandalf and Peregrin rode to the Great Gate of the Men of Gondor at the rising of the sun, and its iron doors rolled back before them…Then men fell back before the command of his voice…” (The Return of the King, Book 5, Chapter 1, “Minas Tirith”)

Passing up through the seven levels of the city, they dismounted at the gate of the Citadel, where:

“The Guards of the gate were robed in black, and their helms were of strange shape, high-crowned, with long cheek-guards close-fitting to the face, and above the cheek-guards were set the white wings of sea-birds; but the helms gleamed with a flame of silver, for they were indeed wrought of mithril, heirlooms from the glory of old days. Upon the black surcoats were embroidered in white a tree blossoming like snow beneath a silver crown and many-pointed stars.”

This was an image surprisingly difficult to find. Here’s a depiction (sort of) from the Jackson films.

The helmet might be right, but the black surcoat is missing—here’s Pippin, also from the films, wearing one.

We add to this an image by a Russian illustrator, Denis Gordeev. Here, the helmet may not be quite what we’d expect, but the rest of the ensemble works.

It says much for Gandalf’s influence in Minas Tirith that neither does Ingold, at the Rammas Echor, challenge him, nor the guards at the main gate of Minas Tirith, nor those at the Citadel—as Ingold says:

“Yea, truly we know you, Mithrandir…and you know the pass-words of the Seven Gates and are free to go forward.”

Our next sentries, are not so easily passed however, as Frodo and Sam discover, when:

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

Their outfits immediately made us think of NC Wyeth’s Robin Hood and his men

from Wyeth’s 1917 Robin-hood.

Their leader, Faramir, questions Frodo and Sam closely before letting them go—and this meeting gives Faramir news of the end of Boromir, a view of Boromir’s character from Frodo, as well as providing us with a view of Faramir, who says of the Ring:

“I would not take this thing, if it lay by the highway. Not were Minas Tirith falling in ruin and I alone could save her, so, using the weapon of the Dark Lord for her good and my glory. No, I do not wish for such triumphs, Frodo son of Drogo.” (The Two Towers, Book Four, Chapter 5, “The Window on the West”)

Once he knows their purpose, Faramir lets them go—to much worse sentries. First, there are orc patrols, like those of Shagrat and Gorbag.

Image13: shag and bag

There is no conversation here between hobbits and orcs, but we certainly gain a better view of orc loyalty, as one orc leader, Gorbag, says to another, Shagrat:

“What d’you say? –if we get a chance, you and me’ll slip off and set up somewhere on our own with a few trusty lads, somewhere where there’s good loot nice and handy, and no big bosses.” (The Two Towers, Book Four, Chapter 10, “The Choices of Master Samwise”)

Then there are the Watchers at the Tower of Cirith Ungol:

“They were like great figures seated upon thrones. Each had three joined bodies, and three heads facing outward, and inward, and across the gateway. The heads had vulture-faces, and on their great knees were laid clawlike hands. They seemed to be carved out of huge blocks of stone, immovable, and yet they were aware: some dreadful spirit of evil vigilance abode in them. They knew an enemy. Visible or invisible none could pass unheeded…” (The Return of the King, Book Six, Chapter 1, “The Tower of Cirith Ungol”)

And here are the last sentries and perhaps a last sign for Frodo and Sam before their terrible and near-fatal trip across Mordor that there is still power for good in a world grown dark. Having rescued Frodo from his orcish imprisonment, Sam and Frodo have come up against the Watchers, who seem to block their way until:

“ ‘Gilthoniel, A Elbereth!’ Sam cried…

‘Aiya elenion ancalima!’ cried Frodo once again behind him.

The will of the Watchers was broken with a suddenness like the snapping of a cord, and Frodo and Sam stumbled forward. “

There are no more sentries, although the two hobbits will be passed by a small search party and will then be swept up into an orc marching company before being on their own on the way to Mount Doom, where we will leave them and this set of postings.

As always, thanks for reading and

MTCIDC

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