As always, dear readers, welcome.

Just what does JRRT have in mind when he says “The Thain was the master of the Shire-moot, and the captain of the Shire-muster and the Hobbitry-in-arms”?

The “Thain” had appeared in the Shire as a title at a time of political upheaval, when the last king in the North, Arvedui, had been lost and the hobbits “chose a Thain to take the place of the King”.  (The Lord of the Rings, Appendix A, Section I, Part iii)  Tolkien derived the title from the Old English word thegn, a kind of lesser nobleman, perhaps—and this is a guess we’ve seen elsewhere–with the idea that the Thain would act as a kind of stand-in for the missing monarch.

The “shire-moot” is another Old English term for a kind of assembly held in a shire, a kind of province or county (from Old English scir).  “To muster” is “to gather together” and can be used either as an intransitive verb, meaning it doesn’t need a direct object:  one can say “the Shire mustered”; or as a transitive verb, one which takes a direct object, as in “they mustered all of the armed hobbits.”  And the adjective “armed” is appropriate since, commonly, the verb is used in a military sense.  This leads us to the last term, “Hobbitry-in-arms”.

In the period before the Norman conquest in 1066,

the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms could, by law, call out freemen (as opposed to slaves of various sorts) for a temporary army.  This was called the fyrd (say the y like the u in French tu).

The Normans brought the beginnings of feudalism to England.  Feudalism was all about control, with the armed, mounted man in charge, just below the king, the nobles in this chart being mostly armed, mounted men, as well,

but, to fill out his backup, that man could call on those who lived on his land, freemen and peasants/villeins, to serve for a time.

By the Elizabethan period, these part-timers were required to serve in towns and counties as militia.

This was a tradition carried on in their North American colonies, as well,

and, at the beginning of the American Revolution, these were the first men to face the soldiers sent by the government in London.

At the end of the 18^th century, there were fears that the Revolutionary French planned to invade Britain, and many volunteer units were raised to flesh out the small number of professional army units available in the UK.  The cavalry regiments of these volunteers were called “yeomanry” and we imagine that Tolkien derived his “hobbitry” from those “yeomanry”.

For a time after 1815, when Napoleon was defeated at Waterloo, some units were retained and used as a kind of police force, mostly to put down the unrest which came from poor labor conditions and the general lack of political power for most people.  The most infamous act of suppression was the so-called “Peterloo” massacre of 1819, when some demonstrators were killed and many more wounded by a yeomanry unit which made a charge into a peaceful crowd.

Yeomanry units remained part of the volunteer establishment throughout the 19^th century, gaining a new prominence with the raising of the Imperial Yeomanry in 1900,

part of the eventually very large armed forces sent by Britain to defeat the Boers

in the Second Boer War (1899-1902).

Tolkien, who had been a cadet at King Edward’s School,

joined a yeomanry unit, King Edward’s Horse, when he reached Oxford in 1911,

before eventually being commissioned as a second lieutenant in the Lancashire Fusiliers, in 1915.

But what was the “Hobbitry-in-arms”?

And now we step into complete guess-work.

If it resembled the yeomanry, it was an organization of volunteers, raised to defend the Shire against invasion.  We know that something like this must once have existed, as we have several mentions of armed groups of hobbits, the archers who were sent off to aid the last king of the North Kingdom, Arvedui (The Lord of the Rings, Appendix A, Section I, Part iii), as well as those who fought at the Battle of Greenfields “In which Bandobras Took routed an invasion of Orcs.” (The Lord of the Rings, Prologue, I, “Concerning Hobbits”)

From the very beginning, British yeomanry units were uniformed and uniformly armed, often being patronized by upper class gentlemen, who then became the senior officers of the units.

The only uniformity we have any knowledge of in the Shire comes from this:

“The Shirriffs was the name that the Hobbit gave to their police, or the nearest equivalent that they possessed.  They had, of course, no uniforms (such things being quite unknown), only a feather in their caps…” (The Lord of the Rings, Prologue, Section 3)

As for weapons, as that same section of the Prologue says:

“So, though there was still some store of weapons in the Shire, these were used mostly as trophies, hanging above hearths or on walls, or gathered into the museum at Michel Delving.”

(We also remember that Bilbo had sent his mithril coat to “a museum”, which we presume was this one.  The Hobbit, Chapter 19, “The Last Stage”.)

With no uniformity of dress or arms, what’s left of our definition is the idea of volunteers raised to defend the Shire against invasion.  And, thus, as in “The Scouring of the Shire”, we see the hobbits in two battles defeating Sharkey’s “big men” , we imagine that this must have been what JRRT had in mind when he created the “Hobbitry-in-arms”:

“When Sam got back he found the whole village roused.  Already, apart from many younger lads, more than a hundred sturdy hobbits were assembled with axes, and heavy hammers, and long knives, and stout staves; and a few had hunting-bows.” (The Return of the King, Book Six, Chapter 8, “The Scouring of the Shire”)

Thanks, as ever, for reading, and, of course,

MTCIDC

CD

Wait—isn’t that “Halloween”—or, as it used to be spelled “Hallow E’en”, rather old-fashioned English for “Holy Evening”?

And a second wait–isn’t this a little late–or a little early?  When we realized that this 2019 Halloween edition was never posted, we wondered where we should put it.  With a slip of the keyboard, we had posted the last part of our review of Star Wars IX for last Friday, rather than this Wednesday, so we took that as a nudge from the Force and are (temporarily) declaring an early Halloween, 2020 and posting this.  We hope you enjoyed last Halloween and this will add to your happy memories!

And yes, dear readers, “Holloween” is not the correct spelling, but it’s a common US (mis)pronunciation.  And an inspiring one, too, as we thought about it.

It’s a “Holy Evening” because it’s the night before November 1^st, All Saints Day in the western Christian calendar.

But, for us, it’s also hollow—because, in the calendar of an older religion,

it marked the end of SAM, “summer”, and the beginning of GAM, “winter”—an emptying of one season before the beginning of the other.

If you lived in a Neolithic

to Iron Age farm

in the Celtic world, now–late October–meant crops were already gathered and now it was time to bring in the herds, especially of pigs (who were allowed to roam forests full of nut trees in the late summer),

choose a few to continue the herd, and slaughter the rest, smoking or salting the meat for the winter.

Because the summer was dying along with the herds, somehow the belief arose that this was a time when the wall between the living and the dead, and between this world and the Otherworld, was so thin that it could no longer act as a barrier.  The spirits of the dead might come to visit the living—

and the Aes Sidhe (AH-es SHEE-thyeh), the people of the Otherworld,

might leave their dwellings and enter our world through the portals of “fairy mounds” (actually tumuli—graves–from earlier peoples)

in later belief, or simply step through the open doorways of the time of the feast of SAMHAIN (SA-vuhn, in older pronunciation) in the older stories.

These are the people who, already miniaturized in Shakespeare’s time, became a staple of children’s book illustrations and sentimental paintings in the Victorian era.

In older times, however, they were seen as looking just like the humans they could move among,  powerful, even menacing, stealing children, enticing away girls and young men who, if they ever returned, would come back hundreds of years later, but think that they’d only been gone a night, as in the story of Oisin (OH-sheen) in the Land of Youth (the basis of WB Yeats’ early “The Wanderings of Oisin”, 1889).

Here, we see Oisin in one version of the story, having returned and turned into the ancient man he really is, talking with St Patrick.

The Scots ballad of “Tam Lin” shows us a young man rescued by a young woman from his ultimate fate:  abducted earlier, he is to be the victim in a sacrifice to Satan.

It being a time between worlds, it seems like a good moment for those who can see between times—which brings us to witches, who are very much part of Halloween.

Well, not this one.

Or these—somehow we can’t imagine witches having afternoon tea—unless there is eye of newt for dessert.

We mean those three witches who surprise Macbeth with a greeting, that, although he doesn’t know it, he is already Thane of Cawdor and, even more astonishing, he will be “king hereafter”.

In an earlier posting, we suggested that the witches are three in number because they might represent the Celtic figure of the Badb (BAHTH-V), who appears in three forms, including a crow,

and who was drawn to fighting and to battlefields, the very place where Macbeth and his comrade Banquo, have just been.

In early stories, she was the mortal enemy of Cuchulain, the great Irish hero, and caused his death by tricking him into undoing the magical spells which protected him.  In this famous sculpture (in the old General Post Office in Dublin), there she is, sitting on the dying Cuchulain’s shoulder.

As well as the Badb, we could see them as the ancient Greek Fates, the Moirai, each having a role in an image based upon likening life to the making of cloth:  Clotho, who spins a person’s life thread, Lachesis, who marks out the length, and Atropos, who cuts that thread.

And here we see a set of three magical figures, like Macbeth’s witches, all associated with time (we’ll come back to that), to which we would add another possibility, which takes us to a different form of Greek goddess, the Muses, inspirers of art.  They are three times three in number, and, when they first appear to the ancient Greek poet, Hesiod, to announce to him that he will be a poet,

it is said of them that they speak of “the things [now] being, the things about to be, and the things being before” (Hesiod, Theogony, line 38—our translation).  So, they are also associated with time.

To which we add a third possibility, the Norns, Germanic figures rather like the Moirai.

In the Voluspa, the first poem in the Icelandic Poetic Edda (10^th century?), there are three of these, with names which appear to indicate, like the Muses, their link to time:  Urd (Old Norse “urdr”, “the past”), Verdandi (Old Norse “verdandi”, “the present”), and Skuld (Old Norse “skuld”, “it will be”).

Imagine, then, that Macbeth’s witches are three in number because, speaking as they do, they, like the Moirai, the Muses, and the Norns, all represent time.  And, like the Muses and Norns, the witches are the stages of time:  one witch is Macbeth’s past (he’s already the Thane of Glamis—said “GLAHMS”), a second is his present (he doesn’t know it yet, but the king, Duncan, has made him Thane of Cawdor to replace the rebel thane, just defeated), and the third is his future, that he will be king of Scotland.  (See Macbeth, Act I, Scene 3)  [Here’s the LINK for the First Folio, the first printing of the play, in 1623.]

Hallow E’en, then, is the perfect moment for witches to appear.  After sunset, we are in the hollow of the old Celtic year:  summer is done, winter will begin tomorrow, but now, being in neither, is a good time to think of what’s happened in the year past, where we are currently, and where we will be in the next year.  If three witches appear to us and hail us as future kings, however, we’ll try to remember another quotation from Shakespeare, from Richard II, Act 3, Scene 2 (again, from the First Folio), in which that word “hollow” is a warning:

For Heauens sake let vs sit vpon the ground,

And tell sad stories of the death of Kings:

How some haue been depos’d, some slaine in warre,

Some haunted by the Ghosts they haue depos’d,

Some poyson’d by their Wiues, some sleeping kill’d,

All murther’d. For within the hollow Crowne

That rounds the mortall Temples of a King,

Keepes Death his Court, and there the Antique sits

Scoffing his State, and grinning at his Pompe,

Allowing him a breath, a little Scene,

To Monarchize, be fear’d, and kill with lookes,

Infusing him with selfe and vaine conceit,

As if this Flesh, which walls about our Life,

Were Brasse impregnable: and humor’d thus,

Comes at the last, and with a little Pinne

Bores through his Castle Walls, and farwell King.

And so perhaps it’s best if we stick to a witch we can melt with a pail of water before we begin to think too hard about her vision of our future.

Happy Hollow—Halloween.  The candy corn is on us

and MTCIDC

CD

ps

This was just too spooky—and inventive—not to add!

As ever, dear readers, welcome.

In this posting, we come to the end of what we’ve been calling our slow-motion review of Star Wars:  The Rise of Skywalker.

If you’ve been following along, you will know that we began with Stars Wars:  The Phantom Menace,

and have worked our way through all the films in the first trilogy

and then the second.

In this approach, our main idea was to try to trace what the original creator, George Lucas, intended to do in what, in time, became a duology of trilogies

but has now, with the release of IX, has become a trilogy of trilogies.  In a brief summary from the conclusion of our last posting, we would say that, by the end of VI:

“But that new hope, promised in the first episode of the trilogy, has come true, it seems.  The Emperor is gone, Anakin has been saved, and, with the general celebrations throughout the galaxy, the suggestion is, at least, that the Empire is gone, as well. “

We then asked the question:  “What more is there to do?”

Over time, George Lucas produced several answers.  One was a complete negative:  VI is the end.  Then there was the implication that there might be more films, but not with the characters we knew from the second trilogy.  And then there has been, through interviews over a number of years, the idea that, in a third trilogy, we would see a kind of back-story to the back-story, in which we would learn that the “midi-chlorines” of the first movie—that something in the bloodstream which seems to be involved with the Force and which the boy, Anakin, is so full of, as Qui-Gon reports to Yoda—are actually the agents for something else, a group of entities called the “Whills”.  The little bits about this scheme have, in our experience, received reactions from critics which have ranged from vague interest to sweaty condemnation and, when Lucas sold his company to the Walt Disney Corporation in 2012, the Whills simply sank from sight.

This brings us back to our question:  “What more is there to do?”

That Lucas himself once considered that six was the magic number would suggest that his answer might be, “Nothing.”  And yet, more recently, he has lamented the fact he didn’t get the chance to make that third set.  Someone else did, however, and this could lead to real difficulties with the approach.  As we hope that we have shown in our last two postings, Lucas had gradually developed several main ideas over the first six films:

1. that there were two elements to a power which somehow stood behind the Galaxy, the Force and the Dark Side, and that, at least at the beginning of The Phantom Menace, this power was out of balance
2. in the physical world, these powers were represented by the Jedi and the Sith
3. at some point, the Dark Side had won, the Jedi were nearly exterminated, and the Galaxy was being ruled by a Sith
4. the chief agent of that ruler, Darth Vader (originally Anakin Skywalker), was a Jedi who had been seduced to join the Sith
5. unbeknownst to Vader, his children, fraternal twins, had survived their traumatic birth and had grown up on different worlds, both unaware of the other
6. in time, however, they would join together and, with other characters, bring down the Sith and save their father from what we might imagine was a kind of eternal damnation (although this last is never directly stated)

From what little we know about what might have happened if Lucas had been in charge, the next step was something to do with the midi-chlorines and the Whills.  As Lucas produced six adventure features in which the Force always appeared, but only as part of the background, we don’t believe that the final trilogy would have been a series of animated lectures on the spiritual science behind the Galaxy.  Rather, we imagine that there would have been the usual adventure element, combined, as in the case of the Force, with the Whills.  At the moment, at least, we know nothing more.

Lucas was not in charge, however, of this third trilogy, so we are left to try to understand:

1. did the creators continue the themes of the first two?
2. or did they head in other directions and, if so, how might they be understood in relation to those first two trilogies?

This brings us to VII, The Force Awakens.

With that title, no matter what else happens, there is clearly some link with the first two trilogies.  And a great deal happens, the central focus of which is that a young girl, called Rey,

who looks to be a kind of scrap-metal scavenger on a desert planet called Jakku,

and who rescues a small droid

which turns out to be carrying secret information.

So far, this has a very familiar ring and we’re suddenly back in A New Hope 

There is a switch, however.  Instead of plans for the Death Star, the information is part of a map to where Luke Skywalker has taken refuge.  As we haven’t in the past postings, we don’t intend to do a plot summary here (but here’s a LINK to one, in case you need it:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Wars:_The_Force_Awakens).

We would briefly say that other characters participate, both new, like Poe Dameron and Finn,

and old friends, like Chewy and Han.

The opposition, something called “The First Order”, is led by a mysterious figure named “Snoke”,

who has for his enforcer a Darth Vader-wannabe, Kylo Ren,

who is actually Ben Solo, son of Leia and Han.

The main story then becomes a quest for Luke, the protagonists, with Rey in the lead, vs the antagonists, led by Kylo Ren.  In the process, Rey gradually discovers that she is strong with the Force, which will lead her, by the film’s end to meeting a hooded figure on a distant world.

And so we see certain elements which appear to be built upon the past:  Luke and the other characters from the second trilogy, a no one (or a seeming no one, as we’ll eventually see) with the Force, the Dark Side and its followers, all about 20 years after Return of the Jedi and the destruction of the Empire.

Nothing has really been resolved in VII, although this new version of the Empire has suffered a set-back when its new Death Star—now an entire planet—has been blown up, and so VIII

begins with another echo from past, this time from The Empire Strikes Back:  the evacuation of a rebel base.  In this case, however, there is no ground assault and the rebels appear to have escaped, but, with a tracking device involved, they are pursued and a driving element of the plot is the rebels’ dwindling fuel supply.  (Again, if you need a plot summary, here’s a LINK:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Wars:_The_Last_Jedi)

Meanwhile, Rey’s hooded figure is, indeed, Luke, but a Luke who rejects anything to do with the Jedi and refuses to train her, which presents us with another echo, but this time a mirror opposite:  Luke and Yoda.

When he reluctantly relents, she has moments of contact with Kylo Ren, who explains to her why Luke has gone into self-exile—at least, his version of events.  In time, he captures her and brings her to Snoke, who attempts to turn her to the Dark Side, but dies instead, killed by Ren, who then declares himself Snoke’s replacement—and here we see another opposite:  Darth Vader killed the Emperor, but, instead of claiming Palpatine’s power for himself, dies, becoming Anakin Skywalker once more.

By the film’s end, the rebels have escaped once more, Kylo Ren distracted in a duel with what is rather like the astral projection of Luke (who dies peacefully at its end), and the scene is set for a final confrontation of Ren vs Rey (who believes that Ren can be redeemed—and, once more there is an echo, this time of Luke and Vader).

So far, then, what we’ve seen in this third trilogy has continued the story into the next generation with Kylo/Ben and Rey and the Force and with a number of echoes and mirror moments from the previous trilogy.  The first trilogy ended with disaster for the protagonists, the Emperor having won and the Jedi nearly destroyed.  The conclusion of the second trilogy showed us the opposite:  the Emperor gone and the Jedi—at least one Jedi—restored.  How will this third trilogy—the ultimate part of the story—conclude?

With all of the previous films, we’ve had the advantage of owning dvds and therefore seeing them all a number of times.  We’ve only seen The Rise of Skywalker once, several weeks ago, in a movie theatre, so we’re going mostly on a first impression and a summary (LINK:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Wars:_The_Rise_of_Skywalker).

With that in mind, using VII and VIII, we would say that the writers/directors have, as Lucas did when he finished the first trilogy, set up the following problems:

1. is Rey now to become a Jedi?
2. if so, should we presume that she will confront Ren?
3. and, that being so, is Rey the ultimate “chosen one”, come to bring “balance to the Force” at long last?

All of the above, if we replaced the names with those from the second trilogy, could be questions we might have asked after The Empire Strikes Back:  1. Luke; 2. Vader; 3. Luke.  As long-time watchers of the series, we could take this in at least two directions:  a. not really knowing what to do, the writers have fallen back upon the very successful second trilogy; or, b. because they are trying to give the third trilogy the kind of closure such an elaborate series requires, they draw upon the strength of the narrative of the second trilogy as a basis, but then add to it—as perhaps we shall see.

As The Force Awakens had, as a major theme, the search for Luke, so this final film has its own search, for the revived Emperor Palpatine, who lets Kylo Ren know that he’s been behind everything, from Snope to the drawing of Ren to the Dark Side.  Recognizing that Rey is the only real opposition, he orders Ren to remove her.  In the process of searching for her, he makes the same kind of contact we had seen in the second film, but this time he reveals that she is, in fact, the Emperor’s granddaughter.  There is no explanation of who her parents were and only a flash of a scene in which they were murdered, so we know no more than what Ren tells Rey at the moment.  We also know that there have been some negative critical reactions to this, but we have tried to remain neutral, under the idea that, if Rey is really the “chosen one”, then her ancestry could be an important and powerful part of the rebalance of the Force.

The confrontation between Rey and Ren takes place

and Rey, whose experience with the Force has grown and grown since her original encounter with Ren in the first film of the trilogy, actually kills him—but then, in something we haven’t seen before (but Palpatine had once implied something about it to Anakin as a  power of the Dark Side, in fact), she brings him back.  Instead of then continuing with the search for Palpatine, however, she returns to the island where she had found Luke at the end of The Force Awakens.  There, Luke’s spirit sends her off once more on her quest and, in the last big scene of the film, she meets her grandfather, who tells her that she must kill him in order to inherit his power.  She refuses and, joined by the now-reformed Ren, is nearly drained of her life force by the increasingly-powerful Emperor.  Ren brings her back, however, in the mirror of the previous scene in which she does so for him, and finally she defeats and destroys her grandfather, only to kiss Ren as he dies from the effort to revive her (and we might wonder why she doesn’t try bringing him back again, but that might turn the serious to the silly).

We’ve given a bit more summary here than we would like, but we’re trying to make this as clear to ourselves as we can, seeking to understand just what the creators were attempting to do in this final episode.

In answer to our earlier questions:

1. Rey has clearly become a Jedi
2. she has not only confronted Ren, but, through her actions, actually rescued him from the Dark Side
3. is she the ultimate “chosen one”? that, we can’t answer. It’s true that she appears to be the Last Jedi, of the second film’s title and that she has great powers and even that she’s defeated and destroyed the Emperor at last.  As Yoda would say, “Unclear!”,  but, in the final short scene of the film, we are left with what is perhaps a clue.

Rey is seen returning to Tatooine, where she reverently buries not a person (Luke and Leia have disappeared into the Force, after all), but two light sabers, Luke’s and Leia’s.  Then, when asked by an old woman who’s been watching her, for her name, she says “Rey”, but then adds “Skywalker”, thus explaining the title of the film, but also suggesting a kind of continuity:  granddaughter of the Sith, but taught by the final Jedi, Luke, and, for a little while, Leia, and now on the rise…

And, with that, the film ends and we end this extended review.  We hope that you found it interesting and we’d be glad for any and all comments and questions.

In our next posting, we’re returning to JRRT—but more about that next time.  In the meantime, thanks again for reading and

MTCIDC

CD

ps

Has anyone else noticed a passing resemblance between Kylo Ren and a major figure from another epic?

Welcome, dear readers, as we continue our slow-motion review of Star Wars IX:  The Rise of Skywalker.

As we said in our last, we thought that it might be useful, and we hope, interesting, to review it by seeing it as we imagine the creators did, as the final installment of something which began almost as “long ago” as that well-known subtitle says the story took place.

We begin with the idea of trilogies.

In Western story-telling, three is a kind of magic number—almost an embodiment of the English proverb, “Third time pays for all”, where the third of three things completes something.   Fairy tales, for instance often involve three wishes.  Sometimes that third wish is a corrective, when the first two take the story in a bad direction.  In the story of “The Fisherman’s wife”, one of the tales in the Grimm Brothers’ collection of German fairy tales, the greedy fisherman’s wife even asks for a fourth wish–and loses everything the first three have given her.  (If you don’t know this story, here’s a LINK to the 1868 edition of the first English translation (1823) of it, by Edgar Taylor:  https://ia600907.us.archive.org/12/items/germanpopularsto01grim/germanpopularsto01grim.pdf).

When we think of books written to be read in a three, we might think of Suzanne Collins’ Hunger Games,

or Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials

(if you’ve read these in the US, you’ll know that first volume, Northern Lights, by another title, The Golden Compass)

or, of course, Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings

(although it was never designed to be such—early 1950s British printing demands broke what was thought of as a single work into three).

In the case of Star Wars, however, there is not one trilogy, but three.

(actually 2 and 2/3s—IX is not yet commercially available, but here it is for completeness).

Reading about the problems the original director/main writer, George Lucas,

faced in gradually developing the story, we learn that, for a time, his plans kept changing until he finally settled on beginning the big story not with I, but with IV.

Instead of returning to I after that, however, he went on to make his first trilogy of IV, V, and VI.

Ultimately, the two main characters of this trilogy are Luke Skywalker and his antagonist, Darth Vader.

In this second trilogy—although really the first in the series—Lucas had set his audiences what seemed to be several puzzles:

1. who was Darth Vader—and why/how does he turn out to be (no spoiler alert here, we’re pretty sure!) Luke’s father? (and, we’d add, “Who’s his mother?”)
2. what is the more general context—among other things, there’s talk of a republic and its senate, of “Jedi”, and then of the galaxy being ruled by an evil emperor who, when we see him, employs powers he derives from the “dark side” of “The Force”—so where does all of this come from?

And so, in this first trilogy (shown here with the second, as images of the first trilogy seem hard to find),

not only has the author given us several puzzles, but he’s seemingly set himself what might prove to be a very difficult task.  If he tells the story of Darth Vader in the first set of three films, Vader has already appeared as such a monster that it might be impossible to generate any sympathy for him, making him simply a two-dimensional villain of the sort the emperor appears to be in the second trilogy, and any films in which he is a main, if not the main, character, could be mostly just a series of repetitions of his evil behavior.  Instead, Star Wars I

begins with two of those Jedi, a master (as he’s called by the other), and an apprentice (called a “padawan”), Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan.

During their adventures, they encounter the Queen of Naboo, Padme,

and what appears to be a kind of child prodigy, Anakin.

Qui-Gon decides that Anakin is something called “the Chosen One”, who is to “bring balance to the Force” and proposes to adopt him as his next padawan/apprentice.  The difficulty with this, as we are told in time, is that Jedi:

1. must be without fear or anger
2. must renounce all attachments

Anakin, still a little boy, must leave his mother, Shmi (short for Lakshmi, after the Hindu goddess of good fortune?)

and is obviously troubled about this:  a possible serious flaw in his becoming a Jedi, let alone “the Chosen One”.

Qui-Gon is killed in a duel with a mysterious figure called “Darth Maul”,

who is, in turn, cut in two by Obi-Wan,

and, at the conclusion of this first film, Obi-Wan, now a Jedi himself, pledges to become Anakin’s master,

much against the will of a senior Jedi, Yoda, who has examined the boy and seen very clearly that flaw, along with his possibilities.

So far, then, the story is about promise, that Anakin will grow into a Jedi, but also a threat:  will Yoda’s doubts be proved correct?  And who was Darth Maul and why was he despatched on what looks like an assassination attempt?  We are briefly told that he was a “Sith” and the equivalent of a padawan, with the addition that, where there is one Sith, there is always one more…

The second film, Attack of the Clones,

seems to take place about 10 years later:  Obi-Wan is now a settled Jedi (with a beard) and Anakin is a sort of senior apprentice, who nurses a growing sense of resentment that he’s never recognized as he believes he should be for his abilities.

At this point, Padme, now a member of the Galactic Senate, reappears,

having just survived an assassination attempt.  Anakin confesses his attraction for her and, added to his anger, we see the very beginnings of what Yoda has always feared.

This is only intensified when Anakin discovers that his mother has been captured on his home planet of Tatooine by Sand People and, basically, tortured to death.

Beyond the personal, we see that the Republic is falling apart:  a number of planetary systems within the Galaxy are struggling to separate themselves.  The current Supreme Chancellor is forced to step down and, in his place, another senator from Naboo, Palpatine, is his replacement.  We saw Palpatine briefly in the first film and we see him again here and he seems like a sympathetic, if minor, figure.  Fatherless himself, and increasingly estranged from Obi-Wan, Anakin is drawn to him.

By the end of the second film, developments have come in quick succession:  the rebellion of the Separatists is being fueled by a one-time Jedi, Count Dooku; to defend itself, the remaining members of the Senate vote to form an army—only to find that there already is one, an army of clones; and Padme has fallen in love with Anakin and they secretly marry.

We now come to the last of this first trilogy with Revenge of the Sith.

In a way, the title says it all:  Senator Palpatine is revealed as the Sith lord, Darth Sidious, and Anakin, corrupted by his fears for Padme’s death in childbirth and Sidious’ suggestion that, as a Sith, he knows ways to deal with death, joins him as his apprentice, Darth Vader, as Sidious activates Order 66.  It seems that, behind that mysterious clone army is Sidious himself, who has also been behind the Separatists, all to overthrow the Republic and become Galactic emperor.  This, however, is only one of two goals.  The other is the complete destruction of the Jedi order and Order 66 is the command, implanted in the clones, to murder all of the Jedi without question.

This then leads to the climactic battle between Obi-Wan and Anakin/Darth Vader,

in which Obi-Wan reluctantly defends himself but eventually defeats Anakin, who is left sprawled and mutilated, while Obi-Wan escapes with Padme, whom a jealous Anakin has nearly murdered.  She dies, however, just as Anakin feared, in childbirth, leaving behind twins, Luke and Leia, who, to protect them from the murderous Darth Sidious, are to be raised on separate planets, Leia on Alderan and Luke on Tatooine.

Meanwhile, the dying Anakin is rescued by Sidious and reconstructed within the black armor in which we know Darth Vader, Sidious assuring him that he has killed Padme in his rage.

Yoda and Obi-Wan, two of the very few surviving Jedi, both disappear into exile, and we are left with the image of baby Luke in the arms of his foster parents, Beru and Owen, initiating a scene we will view again in the first film of the second trilogy.

So, in the three films of this first trilogy, we see:

1. the fall of the Republic and the rise of the Sith Darth Sidious as Galactic emperor
2. the destruction of the Jedi, with two notable exceptions
3. the failure of Anakin as “the Chosen One” and his rebirth as the apprentice of the greatest enemy of the Jedi
4. and yet we also see Anakin’s children, who will reappear in the fourth film, perhaps optimistically titled A New Hope?

We shall see in our next, even as we thank you for reading this posting, with a promise, rather than a hope, that

MTCIDC

CD

Welcome, dear readers, as always.

Recently, we saw Star Wars IX:  The Rise of Skywalker

and we’d like to talk with you a bit about it.  If you follow this complex world, you’ve probably read reviews and even seen the film, as we have.  If so, you know that the reviews have been a wild mixture, although the tone among many has been dismissive and disappointed.

For us, the feelings were much more complicated.  After all, our first view of this world was with Star Wars IV:  A New Hope,

the subtitle of which, to us, who loved adventure stories—especially long, complex ones—was true.  Suddenly, we were in “a galaxy far, far away” in a time “long, long ago”:  phrases which sounded as traditional as “once upon a time” or “a king there was upon Ireland”, but phrases which indicated a hope for many new stories about new characters in new places.

And that hope has been fulfilled, over and over–

And not just with the slow but steady building of the main story, but with stories around the edges, from animated features like the Clone Wars

and Rebels

to Rogue One

to Solo.

And this is not to mention all of the novels, comic books, graphic novels, games, costumes, toys—some of the toys being our favorites…

as well as the bits of dialogue like:

“She’s rich.”

“Rich?”

“Rich, powerful.  Listen, if you were to rescue her, the reward would be…”

“What?”

“Well, more wealth than you can imagine!”

“I don’t know, I can imagine quite a bit.”

And

“Do or do not.  There is no try.”

Thinking of all of those things and much more and how they all began with one film, made us think of the long, complex history of the story of Troy.  Unlike Star Wars, this didn’t begin with one identifiable man,

but with an oral tradition of singers, aoidoi, in Greek,

who gradually spread and embellished upon what was probably once a song about a raid

but which, as it grew, included not only Greek adventures, like the homecoming of Odysseus,

but even Roman, with the escape from the collapsing city of the Trojan prince, Aeneas, who then, in Italy, will begin the process which will lead, in time, to the founding of Rome.

The same could be said for the King Arthur story, which may have begun with a tale about a kind of vague post-Roman historical figure,

and became, in western Europe, the center of a web of medieval stories and spin-offs

up to the present (and who can forget Monty Python and the Holy Grail?).

Here’s a LINK to some—and it’s only some—of those treatments and spin-offs: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_works_based_on_Arthurian_legends#Film

Because the story is so complicated and because our reactions to IX are also so complicated, we thought that we’d tackle our review a little like the original, by moving in three postings, one to cover each trilogy, leading up, at the end of the third, to our reaction—reactions, really—to the final episode (with a spoiler alert:  we will not grumble, complain, or condemn IX, only try to understand what it is trying to do and what we are feeling about what we understand, with a huge amount of gratitude for all that the series has given us along the way).

So, thanks for reading, as always, and definitely

MTCIDC

CD

ps

If you haven’t seen it, we definitely recommend the Camelot Project sponsored by the University of Rochester (the US one) at this LINK:  https://d.lib.rochester.edu/camelot/theme/arthur

“ ‘Then what is Durin’s Day?’ asked Elrond.

‘The first day of the dwarves’ New Year,’ said Thorin, ‘is as all should know the first day of the last moon of Autumn on the threshold of Winter.’ “ (The Hobbit, Chapter Three, “A Short Rest”)

Welcome, dear readers, to our end-of-the-year posting.  It will be posted on January 1, 2020—which is hardly Durin’s Day.

But when is Durin’s Day?

It seems that that is as much a puzzle for Thorin as it might be for us, as he says:

“ ‘We call it Durin’s Day when the last moon of Auturm and the sun are in the sky together.  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.’ “

Thorin and Gandalf have consulted Elrond over the map of the Lonely Mountain made by (or for) Thror, Thorin’s grandfather, and Elrond has discovered that the map has more to tell than would first appear.

As, in the light of a crescent moon, Elrond

“held up the map and the white light shone through it.  ‘What is this?’ he said.  ‘There are moon-letters here, beside the plain runes…’ “

Those briefly-readable lunar runes (highlighted in white on our image), say:

“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.”

Like the first day of the dwarves’ New Year, the first day of the Western New Year has been a bit of a mystery over the centuries, too.

Ultimately, our calendar comes from the Roman calendar and that calendar, at its beginnings, was already in trouble, and all because of that same moon which illuminates Thror’s map.

Roman tradition said that this calendar had been edited by the founder of Rome, Romulus, here depicted murdering his twin brother, Remus, before introducing

his ten-month lunar calendar.  His successor, Numa Pompilius,

attempting to combine a solar with a lunar calendar, added two months, but was forced to add another, shorter, month, every two years so that the seasons and the calendar didn’t drift too far apart.  As this still caused difficulties, Julius Caesar, many centuries later,

recently made “Dictator for Life” by the Senate, consulted an Alexandrian astronomer, Sosigenes, and redesigned the calendar with 12 months with a total of 365 ¼ days, an extra day being added every four years to fill out that ¼ day—that is, more or less, a solar year.  There are a lot of complications in this which we ourselves would roll our eyes over, so, if you would like more information, here’s the WIKI LINK:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_calendar.

The difficulty with this, as we understand it, is that that ¼ day is fractionally longer than a quarter and that, over many years, the seasons and the calendar still managed to drift apart, so that, by the early 1580s, there was a 10-day gap.  This was adjusted by a new calendar, authorized by Pope Gregory XIII, in 1582, which recalibrated things in such a way that we’re still using that system in 2019.

But what about the first day of the Western New Year?

Originally, Romans, with a ten-month calendar (which is why we the names “Septem-ber, Octo-ber, Novem-ber, and Decem-ber”, even though, now, those names/numbers can no longer be correlated with the modern 12-month variety), marked the beginning of the New Year as late in March, at the time of the vernal equinox.   This was one of two days a year when day and night are approximately equal (the other is on the autumnal equinox, which, as the name suggests, is in the fall).  In 2020, that will be on March 20^th.

Although the Roman Republic had established 1 January as the beginning of the civil year, when their two chief magistrates, the consuls, took office,

that late March date was still being used until, along with his 12-month reform, Caesar permanently moved the beginning of the year to the first day of the extra month named after the god of endings and beginnings, Janus.

This shift also nicely fit in with the season of traditional Roman year-end festivities (which seemed to go on no matter what the calendar might be doing), including the Saturnalia,

and the later addition of the festival of Sol Invictus (the “unconquered sun”), all from mid-to-late December.

This worked until 567AD, when Christian clergy, meeting at the Council of Tours, decreed that 1 January still reeked of paganism and shifted the beginning of the year back to late March—March 25^th, in fact, where it remained until Pope Gregory XIII (remember him?) revised the calendar and moved it back to 1 January.  Most of the West adopted this new version of the calendar rather speedily, except for Great Britain, which didn’t make the change until 1752.  (So, when you see that George Washington, for example, was born on 22 February, 1732, until he was about 20, he must have believed that he had been born on 11 February, 1731.)

But what about Durin’s Day? we asked some time ago.

We know that Thorin seems a bit unsure and that would appear to be true for his creator, as well.  The best guess (with the author sort of behind it) would be 19 October, but, if you want to pursue it farther than that, see this LINK:  http://thorinoakenshield.net/confusticate-and-bebother-these-dates-the-durins-day-dilemma/  The author does a very good job of, well, trying to deal with something JRRT once wrote in a note at the top of a page of revisions for the projected 1966 edition of The Hobbit, “Hobbit Time table is not very clear”.

In this world, however, in the West, 1 January remains the beginning of the year and we wish you a happy and prosperous one, no matter when/how you celebrate.

With thanks for reading, as always, and, as always

MTCIDC

CD

ps

The traditional New Year’s song in the English-speaking world is Robert Burn’s “Auld Lang Syne” (literally, “Old Long Since”) and our favorite version is that of Leopold Kozeluch (1747-1818).

Here’s a LINK so that you can hear it for yourself:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=INzME1iKkGE

Welcome, as always, dear readers—although we were tempted to say:  “Welcome to my house! Enter freely and of your own will!”  This is what Dracula says to Jonathan Harker, soon to become the Count’s horrified prisoner in Bram Stoker’s (1847-1912)

1897 novel, Dracula,

which we taught this last term.

Although the novel is the most famous of vampire stories, and the most popular, never being out of print since that original publication, it is not the original vampire story in English.  That honor appears to go to John Polidori (1795-1821),

who published The Vampyre in 1819.

The story behind this is well-known:  Polidori was Lord Byron’s physician and was at the occasion when Shelley and Byron and their circle challenged each other to come up with a horror story.  Mary Shelley (1797-1851),

with a little help from her husband, produced the first version of Frankenstein

in 1818.  The Polidori, published the following year is a novella (a short novel) about a character called “Lord Ruthven”, who somehow returns from the dead and seems to appear and disappear in rather an odd fashion, as well as be involved in a mysterious murder (after which he disappears again).  Although the novella includes a certain amount of travel in what was at that time an exotic locale, Asia Minor and Greece, both in the hands of the Ottoman Empire,

it is set in a contemporary world (c.1818) and London, amidst upper class society, which is depicted in conventional terms of social calls and gossip.

This turned out to be a popular story (in part because there was a rumor that “Lord Ruthven” was actually Lord Byron—and a second rumor that the novella itself was actually written by him) and, from that moment, “vampyre”—respelled as “vampire”– became a useful figure in English literature.  (Here is a LINK if you’d like to read the story for yourself:  https://gutenberg.org/files/6087/6087-h/6087-h.htm)

At least useful when it came to what were called “penny dreadfuls”, which were stories with sensational violence in them, produced cheaply for the mass market which increasing literacy in Victorian England, as well, as improvements in everything from paper production (from rag to wood pulp) to illustration, encouraged.  In 1845-47, one of these, published in installments, was this–

The story of Sir Francis Varney, who was inflicted with vampirism as a kind of curse, it is set in the 18^th century—sort of–but also in the 19^th and scholars who have written about the text, which is, ultimately 876 double column pages long, have suggested that more than one author was involved in the long period of its initial serial publication, the two names associated with it being James Malcolm Rymer (1814-1884) and Thomas Peckett Prest (1810?-1859), both known for other popular thrillers.  As you may guess, that confusion about time period is only one of a number of confusions in the plot, probably stemming from multiple authorship but perhaps more so from haste in writing—hack writers were commonly paid for volume, after all–as well as the disposable nature of the genre. (If you would like to struggle through this text, here’s a LINK:  http://www.gutenberg.org/files/14833/14833-h/14833-h.htm  This is an edited version.  You can see all three volumes of the ultimate publication at:  https://web.archive.org/web/20080913024450/http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/toc/modeng/public/PreVarn.html)

Of a higher quality was the next contender for prominence in vampire-lit:  Sheridan le Fanu’s (1814-1873)

Carmilla, first published in serial form in 1871-72 in the magazine The Dark Blue, appearing the next year in a collection of short stories and novellas, In a Glass Darkly.

(This is the 1884 edition as, so far, we’ve been unable to locate an image of the 1872 original.)

Like the Polidori novella, Carmilla is set in the present (1871), in Styria, part of southeast Austria.  The protagonist, Laura, is of English descent, but has lived her whole life abroad, in an ancient castle, perhaps like this one.

Without going into a plot summary (here’s the Wiki LINK if you’d like one:    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carmilla), we would only add that:

1. Carmilla is actually the Countess Mircalla, a 17^th-century vampire, who preys on young women
2. many elements, including: an ancient castle, Mircalla’s age, her ability to shift shapes, her feeding off young women, her death (stake through the heart, head cut off) foreshadow our last book, and the one with which we began, Dracula.

(Here’s a LINK to Carmilla: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/10007/10007-h/10007-h.htm, but, we would actually recommend that you try the whole collection:  http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks07/0700861h.html)

We entitled this posting “Real Fantasy” and what we meant by that was exactly what, as we’ve taught Stoker’s novel, we’ve seen to be a major feature of this novel.  Our earlier stories here—at least the better ones—Polidori and Le Fanu, have taken place in their own present time, either the early 1800s or the 1870s, but, beyond a few details, their settings, barely sketched in, are like the proscenium arch of a theatre, a kind of frame for the story.

Dracula, set in the 1890s, does more with its own time, making the physical world of 1897 a major part of the book.  One element of this is in the settings.  In his research, Stoker had consulted Emily Gerard’s “Transylvanian Superstitions” (an article in The Nineteenth Century, Vol. 18, July-December, 1885) and The Land Beyond the Forest, published in 1888.

Gerard’s (1849-1905) husband had been an Austro-Hungarian officer stationed in Transylvania, where the opening chapters of the novel take place, and Stoker, while not plagiarizing, certainly leans heavily on her texts to help to provide vivid depictions of places where he had never been.

The next major location is the Victorian seaside resort of Whitby, on the northeast English coast.

Unlike his literary-based Transylvania, Stoker had actually spent part of the summer in his first English location in 1890, working in the local library and clearly making careful notes about the town, down to borrowing a name for a minor character from a tombstone in a local cemetery.

For his third major location, London, Stoker had lived and worked there for years and, just as in Whitby, he had kept his eyes open not only to the city, but to its outskirts, where he may have found the house upon which Dracula’s first habitation was based, in Purfleet, down the Thames from the city.

Beyond locations, we see so much of Victorian to late-Victorian technology:

1. complex railroad networks—Jonathan Harker actually sees Dracula consulting one of the two major railway guides, Bradshaw

2. the telegraph

3. the telephone

4.  several items from the modern world of the office, including shorthand stenography

5. the dictaphone,

6. and the typewriter.

7. Beyond the office (we hope), the breech-loading, repeating rifle appears

8. and, though gas lighting  is common in towns and cities still (although electric lighting was coming in)

9. there are battery-powered flashlights (called “electric torches” in England).

All of this, combined, gives a remarkable vividness to the text, placing the 15^th-century Vlad Tepes

in an up-to-date context, where modern men of science must combine that modernity with ancient folk beliefs

to defeat an enemy far more imposing than Lord Ruthven, or Varney, or Countess Mircalla.

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

MTCIDC

CD

ps

If you don’t own a copy of Dracula, here’s the LINK to the 1897 American edition:  https://www.gutenberg.org/files/345/345-h/345-h.htm

pps

As this will be posted on 25 December, we want to wish all of our readers a happy holiday season and a prosperous new year, whatever faith you may follow!

As always, dear readers, welcome.

“On the table in the light of a big lamp with a red shade he spread a piece of parchment rather like a map.  ‘This was made by Thror, your grandfather, Thorin,’ he said in answer to the dwarves’ excited questions.  ‘It is a plan of the Mountain.’ “ (The Hobbit, Chapter One, “An Unexpected Party”)

We are teaching The Hobbit again and here is Gandalf, spreading out Thror’s map (by Alan Lee).

And here’s that map.

What caught our immediate attention this time was that central label:  “The Desolation of Smaug”.

The narrator describes this:

“The land about them grew bleak and barren, though once, as Thorin told them, it had been green and fair.  There was little grass, and before long there was neither bush nor tree, and only broken and blackened stumps to speak of ones long vanished.” (Chapter 11, “On the Doorstep”)

That last detail, about the stumps, reminded us of another place, one with which Tolkien, in 1916, would have been very familiar—No Man’s Land in that area between the Germans and the Allies during the Great War in the West and

pounded to dust by the heavy artillery of both sides.

It wasn’t just the landscape which was pounded:  entire villages disappeared under bombardment and bigger towns suffered severe damage, foreshadowing the destruction of Dale:

“they could see in the wide valley shadowed by the Mountain’s arms the grey ruins of ancient houses, towers, and walls.”

Perhaps the most famous ruin was that of the Cloth Hall in Ypres, in southern Belgium.

Here it is in a pre-war image.

Ypres had been at the center of the northern European wool and cloth trade,

which had made its makers and dealers so rich that they had this enormous place built for themselves,

finished in 1304.

But then, in August, 1914, came the German invasion of Belgium.

The Allies—the British and French—were driven back, but, in time, part of their network of defensive trenches was on the northeast side of Ypres.

Unfortunately for the Allies, the Germans held heights above the town and their guns could easily batter their positions and the town of Ypres beyond.  Doubly unfortunate was the fact that the Cloth Hall and the cathedral behind were prominent features on the landscape and therefore excellent targets—which they soon became—and, in a series of photos, the gradual nearly-complete destruction of the Cloth Hall is clearly visible.

It wasn’t just Belgium which suffered, however.  Beginning in January, 1915, the Germans began an air campaign against Britain.  First, airships were employed,

but, as aircraft technology improved, bombers were added to the attacks,

which continued until May, 1918.  The raids only killed or wounded about 2,000, and did minimal physical damage,

but the psychological damage was enormous.  In the past, as long as the Royal Navy was active, no one had ever successfully threatened England, not even Napoleon.

Airpower changed all that and we wonder about how JRRT’s experience of that—from reading newspaper accounts—

combined with his first-hand experience of No Man’s Land,

influenced the way he imagined the land Smaug had invaded and destroyed.

When the Second War came, Tolkien became an Air Raid Warden in Oxford.

German air attacks on England were much more elaborate and intense than in the First War,

causing great loss of life and enormous damage—huge fires could engulf whole sections of cities, as they did in London.

Bombers never attacked Oxford, but the newspapers

and newsreels of the day

would have shown him what the rest of the country was experiencing, and we can easily imagine that Smaug’s

attack on Lake-town

would have somehow mirrored the awful destruction England was enduring,

just as the use of antiaircraft fire

which brought down German aircraft

would suggest the fateful arrow which brings down Smaug.

Tolkien himself resisted all attempts to turn his work into allegories which portrayed the political and military events of his time in veiled terms, but it wouldn’t be hard to see that such earth-shaking events as the First and Second World Wars and his own experiences in them and of them, could certainly influence the way he saw and presented events in his own Middle-earth.

Thanks, as always, for reading and

MTCIDC

CD

ps

But we couldn’t leave you with that ruin of a cloth hall.  Over many years, the people of Ypres worked to rebuild and here’s that famous building today.