Light on Their Feet

02 Wednesday Oct 2019

Posted by Ollamh in Literary History, Military History

Tags

Alfred Tennyson, Austrian, Balaclava, British Cavalry, chasseurs a cheval, Crimean War, Errol Flynn, Flashman, French, Gallic, gendarmes, George Macdonald Fraser, Heavy Brigade, Hungarian, Hussars, jinetes, lancers, Light Brigade, Light Dragoons, Napoleonic, North Africans, Olivia deHavilland, Renaissance cavalry, Romans, Russian Artillery, Spanish, St Helena, The Charge of the Light Brigade, Thomas Hughes, Tom Brown's School Days

As ever, dear readers, welcome.

Recently, someone asked us about the Light Brigade—that is, the collection of regiments of British cavalry who fought in the Crimean War (1854-56).

These are the troopers who mistakenly charged Russian artillery in the series of battles fought on 25 October, 1854, called, collectively, Balaclava.

The question was, “Why was it called ‘the Light Brigade’? Were the soldiers thin? And was there a Heavy Brigade, where they were all fat?”

It seemed to us a very reasonable question and our answer began, “Over many centuries, cavalry has had a number of uses, but they could probably be broken down into two groups by those uses: 1. raids, skirmishes, scouting, and pursuit; 2. attacking enemy cavalry and infantry formations—and pursuit. The former (#1) is the job of light cavalry, the latter (#2) of heavy cavalry.”

The Romans, who themselves only produced cavalry early in their history, quickly preferring to hire the job out, might, for example, use North Africans as light cavalry.

If heavy cavalry were needed, then the task might go to Spanish or Gallic soldiers.

And this would be true throughout military history—Renaissance cavalry might have heavily-armored gendarmes

to break up an enemy unit (or more) with the weight of its charge, but would also use lightly-armed jinetes

image6jinete

to find out the enemy’s positions, or attack their supply routes.

In the 18^th century, most cavalry were heavy—although armor had almost disappeared.

The Austrians and then the French added to those heavies light cavalry originally from the Hungarian world, hussars.

Not to be outdone, the English fleshed out their heavy cavalry

not with hussars, but something they called “light dragoons”.

Dragoons had originally been mounted infantrymen, who rode to battle on horseback, then dismounted to fight,

but, by the mid-18^th century, dragoons were just heavy cavalry—bigger men on bigger horses—and light dragoons were smaller men on smaller horses, with mostly different functions.

By the end of the century and just beyond, during the Napoleonic era, the French, in particular, had developed a whole series of light cavalry types—hussars,

chasseurs a cheval (literally, “hunters on horseback”),

and lancers, as well.

The English, to match the French, converted some regiments to hussars,

but only after 1820, when Napoleon was in his second and final exile on St. Helena, did they convert several other regiments to lancers.

(You can see that they borrowed their style of dress from that of Polish lancers in Napoleon’s armies.)

These lancers

along with hussars

and light dragoons

made up the famous Light Brigade of Alfred Tennyson’s (1809-1892)

image21at

1854 poem, “The Charge of the Light Brigade”.

This, in turn, inspired one of our favorite adventure movies, the 1936 The Charge of the Light Brigade.

(We wonder how different children must have been in 1936—we loved that movie as kids!)

And this film, in turn, inspired a 20^th-century adventure writer, George Macdonald Fraser (1925-2008),

who wrote a series of 12 books detailing the life of one Harry Flashman, beginning with Flashman (1969).

In part, these are a parody of the life of a typical Victorian officer, who eventually becomes General Sir Harry Flashman. He appears at many of the famous military events in mid-Victorian British history, from the First Afghan War (1839-1842) to the Zulu War (1879), along with appearances at later events, including a cameo appearance at the British declaration of war against Germany on 4 August, 1914. The joke is, although he wins all sorts of honors, including that knighthood, he is, in fact, a complete coward and it’s only amazing luck that he manages to survive as long and as well as he does. And there is a second joke within the first: Flashman is actually the school bully in a very famous earlier novel, Tom Brown’s School Days (1857),

by Thomas Hughes (1822-1896), a book which is the ancestor not only of many later such novels and short stories, but also of the Harry Potter books.

The fourth novel in the Flashman series, entitled Flashman at the Charge (1973),

gives us Fraser’s hero as actually leading that famous attack by accident, an accident which leads to his capture by the Russians—and many further adventures.

So, our answer to the original question is: “No. The Light Brigade wasn’t skinny, but was called that because it was smaller men on smaller horses with very specific jobs which required rapid movement and greater flexibility than heavy cavalry.”

And, with that answer, we say thank you for reading and

MTCIDC

There was, in fact, a Heavy Brigade,

who made their own equally-heroic, but more successful, attack on the same day as the more famous Light Brigade charge. Bigger men on bigger horses, they drove advancing Russian cavalry out of the Heavy Brigade camp.

Terrible as an Army with Banners

25 Wednesday Sep 2019

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

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banner, Captain Souter, color, Dol Amroth, ensign, Eye of Sauron, First Afghan War, flag, George Washington, Revolutionary War, Rohirrim, saltire, standard, The Lord of the Rings, The Song of Solomon, Tolkien, Trooping of the Colour, White Hand of Saruman, white horse of Hannover, White Tree of Gondor, WWI, WWII

Welcome, dear readers, as ever.

Our title comes from the Hebrew Bible, in the book entitled The Song of Solomon, Chapter 6, verses 4 and 10, where the speaker’s beloved’s beauty is likened to an army with banners. Growing up, we always wondered about that word “terrible”. We didn’t see why someone’s good looks could be frightening, but we could certainly see how an army with its flags could be scary.

On the subject of banners, recently, we’ve been writing about 2^nd Lieutenant JRR Tolkien.

In an earlier posting, in fact, we mentioned that that rank of 2^nd Lieutenant was a replacement for the earlier rank of “ensign”. “Lieutenant” is just the English version of a French compound for “place-holder” (lieu + tenant), in this case meaning the person who will step into the captain’s shoes if necessary. Instead of a compound with its implication of replacement, “ensign” is actually a job description. An “ensign” is a flag (a “color”, if infantry, “standard”, if cavalry) and an “ensign” is also the person who carried it.

By 1916, when Tolkien became a 2^nd Lieutenant, colors were no longer carried in battle, but only on parade, as this early-20^th-century illustration demonstrates—

and is still the case for the famous “Trooping of the Colour” for the Queen of England’s birthday parade, where her splendid footguards march with one of their colo(u)rs.

This is clearly all about show, now, but, once upon a time, colors—and their ensigns—had an important role in warfare. Earlier colors were much bigger—in the 18^th century, they were 6 feet by 6 feet square (1.82 metres by 1.82).

And here are some modern reenactors to help you to see just how big that really is.

The reasons for such a size (on a 9-foot pole, or “pike”—that’s 2.74m) are:

units in earlier times (pre-late-19^th-century, more or less) fought in long lines and, if you put the colors in the middle, everyone in a unit had a kind of fixed point to help them know where they—and their unit—were

as well, earlier firearms, which used black powder, put out enormous clouds of (white) smoke—

If colors were big and tall, they could still be made out in the midst of those clouds.

They could also act as a rallying point. When lines came apart and the order was Charge! (Or when things were falling apart and the call was for Retreat!)

In time, colors came to be thought of as almost the physical representative of the spirit of a unit and being called upon to surrender them was looked upon as the worst disgrace. This portrait of George Washington would have been thought particularly nasty by his British and German enemies because all around him are their colors, captured in two battles, Trenton and Princeton. (His own headquarters flag—13 stars in a circle on a blue background—is in the upper right of the picture.)

To escape surrendering their colors, soldiers would strip them from the poles/pikes and hide them in their clothes or, in real desperation, burn them, as the French did in 1760 when forced to surrender to the British at Montreal, in Canada (then New France).

In earlier centuries, before gunpowder came to dominate battlefields, colors were already used as rallying points,

but also, in the days before uniforms, colors—big or little—indicated who was fighting. If you saw a figure bearing a flag with a white, angled cross (a “saltire” in heraldic terms) on a blue field (background), for example, you knew that the King of Scotland was on the battlefield.

Thus, although 2^nd Lieutenant Tolkien would no longer carry one of his unit’s colors into battle, as previous ensigns had, he would have known the importance of their role—and especially of the role of what they carried, which is why, for example, we see that, when it comes to battle in Middie-earth, nearly everyone seems to have a distinctive flag:

the Rohirrim have their running horse

(which we think JRRT may have borrowed either from the chalk cutting known as the “White Horse of Uffington”

or possibly from an emblem long-related to the British monarchy, the white horse of Hannover—as we can see on this 18^th-century grenadier cap).

Gondor has its tree and stars

and, when Aragorn marches out of Minas Tirith,

it’s under his version of that banner–

which also boldly states his claim to be the rightful king—without actually coming out and saying it—compare the two banners–

and the Prince of Dol Amroth has his flag, with “his token of the Ship and the Silver Swan” (The Return of the King, Book Five, Chapter 1, “Minas Tirith”).

As for their opponents, we see Saruman’s white hand on armor,

so we can presume, we think, that any banners carried would bear the same insignia and the same is true for Sauron’s orcs, which would have borne the lidless eye.

(We might also note that Southrons in the service of Mordor appear to carry red banners—as Gollum reports to Frodo and Sam in The Two Towers, Book Four, Chapter 3, “The Black Gate is Closed”.)

All of which made us wonder if Solomon would have been so eager to describe his beloved as he did if the army he saw looked like this?

As ever, thanks for reading and

MTCIDC

In an odd but fortunate use of a color, in 1842, during the First Afghan War, a Captain Souter was saved because he had hidden one of his regiment’s colors by wrapping it around his waist. As the last members of his unit fell around him, his Afghan opponents saw what they believed to be a fancy waistcoat/vest and took him prisoner, hoping for a rich ransom.

Nodding Off

18 Wednesday Sep 2019

Posted by Ollamh in Artists and Illustrators, Fairy Tales and Myths, Literary History

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A Child's Garden of Verses, Charles Robinson, Child Ballad, Eugene Field, Fairy Tale, Into the Woods, Little Red Riding Hood, Maxfield Parrish, Poems of Childhood, Port na bPucai, Robert Burns, Robert Louis Stevenson, Song of the Pooka, Steven Sondheim, The Land of Nod, The Scots Musical Museum

Welcome, dear readers, as ever.

In our last, we began with a poem by Robert Louis Stevenson

from his 1885 collection, A Child’s Garden of Verses.

There’s another poem from that collection which has haunted us for years—here it is:

THE LAND OF NOD

From breakfast on through all the day

At home among my friends I stay,

But every night I go abroad

Afar into the Land of Nod.

All by myself I have to go,

With none to tell me what to do—

All alone beside the streams

And up the mountain-side of dreams.

The strangest things are there for me,

Both things to eat and things to see,

And many frightening sights abroad

Till morning in the Land of Nod.

Try as I like to find the way,

I never can get back by day,

Nor can remember plain and clear

The curious music that I hear.

As a poem for children, it seems to contain a certain amount of menace: “All by myself I have to go”, “many frightening sights”. At the same time, there is a certain fascination—after all, the speaker seems to want to return there. In other words, it’s a weird, but somehow interesting place, which reminds us of Little Red Riding Hood’s song from Stephen Sondheim’s modern fairy tale musical, Into the Woods (1987), in which she describes her experience with the wolf:

Mother said,
“Straight ahead,
Not to delay
or be misled.”
I should have heeded
Her advice…
But he seemed so nice.
And he showed me things
Many beautiful things,
That I hadn’t thought to explore.
They were off my path,
So I never had dared.
I had been so careful,
I never had cared
And he made me feel excited-
Well, excited and scared.
When he said, “Come in!”
With that sickening grin,
How could I know what was in store?
Once his teeth were bared,
Though, I really got scared-
Well, excited and scared-
But he drew me close
And he swallowed me down,
Down a dark slimy path
Where lie secrets that I never want to know
And when everything familiar seems to disappear forever
At the end of the path was granny once again
So we lay in the dark till you came and set us free
And you brought us to the light
And we’re back at the start

And I know things now,
Many valuable things,
That I hadn’t known before:
Do not put your faith
In a cape and a hood,
They will not protect you
The way that they should.
And take extra care with strangers,
Even flowers have their dangers.
And though scary is exciting,
Nice is different than good.
Now I know:
Don’t be scared.
Granny is right,
Just be prepared.
Isn’t it nice to know a lot!
And a little bit…not.”

Perhaps it’s that “curious music that I hear” which lures the speaker back? For us, we’re immediately reminded of the Otherworld music which calls mortals into Faerie in Celtic folk literature. Here’s a well-known tune with a lyric in Irish and English, which is the lament of a mortal woman who has been pulled into that world against her will, entitled Port na bPucai, “Song of the Pooka” (a kind of Otherworld spirit who plays malevolent tricks on mortals), which can illustrate the kind of music humans believed the Otherworlders used:

Is bean ón slua sí mé, do tháinig thar toinn

I am a woman from the fairy host who traveled over the seas

Is do goideadh san oíche me tamall thar lear

I was stolen in the night and taken beyond the sea

Is go bhfuilim as ríocht seo fé gheas’ mná sídhe

And I am held hostage in the kingdom by the fairy women

Is ní bheidh ar an saol seo ach go nglaofaidh an coileach

And I can only be in this world until the moment the cock crows

Is caitheadsa féin tabhairt fá’n deis isteach

I know I have tasks to do here

Ni thaithneamh liom é ach caithfead tabhairt fé

Which I do not like but must comply with

Is caitheadsa féin tabhairt fén lios isteach

I must return to the fort and do not have anything to do

Is ná déinig aon ní leis an dream thíos sa leas

With this body of fairy people down in the fairy mound.

And here’s a LINK so that you can hear that music sung.

On one level, then, this Land of Nod is simply the land of dreams—and here that land is, disturbingly illustrated by Charles Robinson for an 1895 edition of A Child’s Garden of Verses.

And we see this again in another late-19^th-century poem, by the American poet, Eugene Field (1850-1895), where Nod has become a character who, along with two boating friends (Wynken and Blynken), personifies a child going to sleep:

Dutch Lullabye

Wynken, Blynken, and Nod one night
sailed off in a wooden shoe —
Sailed on a river of crystal light,
into a sea of dew.
“Where are you going, and what do you wish?”
the old moon asked the three.
“We have come to fish for the herring fish
that live in this beautiful sea;
Nets of silver and gold have we!”
said Wynken, Blynken, and Nod.

The old moon laughed and sang a song,
as they rocked in the wooden shoe,
And the wind that sped them all night long
ruffled the waves of dew.
The little stars were the herring fish
that lived in that beautiful sea —
“Now cast your nets wherever you wish —
never afraid are we”;
So cried the stars to the fishermen three:
Wynken, Blynken, and Nod.

All night long their nets they threw
to the stars in the twinkling foam —
Then down from the skies came the wooden shoe,
bringing the fishermen home;
‘Twas all so pretty a sail, it seemed
as if it could not be,
And some folks thought ’twas a dream they’d dreamed
of sailing that beautiful sea —
But I shall name you the fishermen three:
Wynken, Blynken, and Nod.

Wynken and Blynken are two little eyes,
and Nod is a little head,
And the wooden shoe that sailed the skies
is a wee one’s trundle-bed.
So shut your eyes while Mother sings
of wonderful sights that be,
And you shall see the beautiful things
as you rock in the misty sea,
Where the old shoe rocked the fishermen three:
Wynken, Blynken, and Nod.

For a 1904 edition of a selection of Field’s poems, Poems of Childhood, Maxfield Parrish provided the following illustration—

(A “trundle bed”, by the way, is a low bed built to slide out from under a taller one and commonly was used in the past to accommodate children. Here’s an image of one.)

On another level, the reference to music might remind us of the Celtic Otherworld, to which unsuspecting humans are lured away.

This is an illustration of Child Ballad 39A, “Tam Lin”. Tam (Tom) is a mortal who has been taken by the elves (another name here for fairies) and is eventually rescued by a mortal woman. Here’s a LINK to more on the ballad.

We have one more possibility for the Land of Nod—perhaps that which inspired Stevenson initially. “To nod off” is an expression meaning “to fall asleep”, as we see in a traditional Scots song, “We’re a’ nodding”. Here’s the first verse and the chorus as edited by Robert Burns and published in Volume 6 of The Scots Musical Museum (1803):

Gudeen to you kimmer
And how do you do?
Hiccup, quo’ kimmer,
The better that I’m fou.

Chorus:
We’re a’ noddin, nid nid nodding,
We’re a’ nodding at our house at hame,
We’re a’ noddin, nid nid nodding,
We’re a’ nodding at our house at hame.

(Translation:

“Good evening to you, old gossip,

And how are you?

Hiccup! Said the old gossip,

Much better because I’m full. [a local usage, meaning “drunk”]

Chorus:

We’re all nodding, nid, nid, nodding,

We’re all nodding at our house at home.

We’re all nodding, nid, nid, nodding,

We’re all nodding at our house at home.”)

But, besides this meaning, there is also, from “Genesis” in the Hebrew Bible, the story of the twin sons of Adam and Eve, Cain and Able. After Cain murders Able:

“And Cain went out from the presence of the LORD, and dwelt in the land of Nod, on the east of Eden.” (“Genesis”, Chapter 4, Verse 16)

A little research suggests that the name “Nod” comes from a Hebrew root for the verb “to wander”, so Cain, we may be being told, was a wanderer. That brings us back to our original Stevenson poem, where the speaker tells us that

“…every night I go abroad

Afar into the Land of Nod.

All by myself I have to go,

With none to tell me what to do—

All alone beside the streams

And up the mountain-side of dreams.”

Pleasant—or pleasanter—dreams, dear readers, and

MTCIDC

Our information on the Hebrew Land of Nod comes from this LINK.

Shadowy

11 Wednesday Sep 2019

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

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A Child's Garden of Verses, Adelbert von Chamisso, Andrew Lang, Ausgabe des Fortunatus, Charles Perrault, Fortunatus' fortune-bag, Histoires ou Contes du Temps Passe, J.M. Barrie, Le Petit Poucet, Lord Dunsany, Peter Pan, Peter Schlemihl, Peter Schlemihls Wundersame Geschichte, Robert Louis Stevenson, seven-league boots, Shadow, Siglo de Oro, Sortes Tolkienses, The Charwoman's Shadow, The Grey Fairy Book, The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien

Welcome, dear readers, as always.

We were practicing our sortes tolkienses (one way of finding a topic—by simply slipping a finger into The Lord of the Rings and opening it at that page—it’s not 100% useful, but sometimes…) and came upon the title of Chapter 2 of Book One of The Fellowship of the Ring: “The Shadow of the Past”.

In the context of the chapter, we see that that shadow is cast by the history of the Ring itself and also by its maker, Sauron. That, in turn, set us off on thinking about literary shadows…

In 1885, Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894)

published a collection of poems.

Poem #19 (if you count the dedication, which is, in fact, a poem) begins:

“I have a little shadow that goes in and out with me,

And what can be the use of him is more than I can see.”

[If you would like your own copy of this volume, follow this LINK.]

In fact, in literature, its use is both visible—and invisible.

In psychology, the shadow is metaphorical, being used to symbolize an unconscious part of the personality. [For more on this, see this LINK.]

And, visibly—but also invisibly—the shadow as physical object can represent something more, as we find in perhaps the first modern literary use of the shadow in Adelbert von Chamisso’s (1781-1838)

novella (a short novel), Peter Schlemihls Wundersame Geschichte (1814), “Peter Schlemihl’s Amazing Story”.

Here’s the first English translation, from 1824.

In the story, the protagonist, Peter Schlemihl, meets a strange man, who can pull anything out of his pocket—and we mean anything. As Schlemihl reports:

“If my mind was confused, nay terrified, with these proceedings, how was I overpowered when the next-breathed wish brought from his pocket three riding horses. I tell you, three great and noble steeds, with saddles and appurtenances! Imagine for a moment, I pray you, three saddled horses from the same pocket which had before produced a pocket-book, a telescope, an ornamented carpet twenty paces long and ten broad, a pleasure-tent of the same size, with bars and iron-work!”

(This is from the 3^rd edition (1861) of that first English translation.)

Impressed, Schlemihl is quickly persuaded to make a trade. The strange man offers him a magic purse, which he calls “Fortunatus’ fortune-bag”. This object is based on an old story which seems to appear for the first time in 1509 as Ausgabe des Fortunatus (the “Edition/Issue of Fortunatus”?), in which Fortunatus (as you’ll probably guess, the name means “Lucky”) has both a wishing cap and this bag. Here’s the title page of that first edition.

image6fort

[If you would like to read one version of the Fortunatus story, here is a link to it from Andrew Lang’s The Grey Fairy Book (1900).]

The purse will always produce ten gold coins when one puts a hand inside, guaranteeing a steady means of wealth for the owner. In return for this, Schlemihl hands over–his shadow.

This seems an odd trade, but having a magic bag which acts as an endless bank account is certainly no less strange. Not to be too literal-minded, but beyond the idea that a shadow is a tradable item, it makes us wonder, however: what could a shadow be made of that it can be removed and collected?

At the beginning of Peter Pan (1904), Peter has lost his shadow and Wendy reattaches it by sewing it on, as if it were simply mobile black cloth and perhaps this is how we might think about it as a physical object, at least for shadow stories.

Although he is pleased with the money, Schlemihl soon realizes the real price he has paid: when people see that he has no shadow, they avoid him in anything from disgust to horror, which ruins his ability to live anywhere and even to marry the girl he wishes. The shadow, then, is more than cloth: it is part of a person’s identity. If you cast no shadow, you are not quite human. The real price of the shadow is even higher, however, as Schlemihl learns when the strange man (who is obviously Satan in human form) returns to offer a second bargain: the Devil will return his shadow in return for his soul.

It’s clear that here Schlemihl has learned his lesson, refusing this offer several times and finally throwing away the “fortune-bag”. Although he may believe that he is done with magic, magic is not yet done with him, however. With some of the few coins remaining to him, by accident (or so it seems), he buys a pair of seven-league boots. (A “league”, classically, is about three miles, so, when he puts them on, each step he takes is at least twenty-one miles.)

image8seven

This element of the story, in turn, is also based on something in another older story, which appears in Charles Perrault’s (1628-1703)

1697 collection, Histoires ou Contes du Temps Passe,

“Le Petit Poucet” (maybe “Thumblet”?). In this story, a character steals a pair of these boots from a pursuing ogre, allowing the thief to cover great distances with every stride.

[If you’d like to read this story, here’s a LINK from a 1901 translation.]

With these boots, Schlemihl never regains his shadow, but eventually gains a peaceful existence studying the natural world (which, in fact, von Chamisso did, as well, becoming a well-known naturalist later in life).

[Here’s a LINK to a translation of the story by Michael Haldane.]

More than a century later, the early modern fantasy writer, Lord Dunsany (1878-1957)

reused the idea of buying or trading shadows in his 1926 novel, The Charwoman’s Shadow.

A charwoman, or, simply, “char” (“char” is the same as “chore”, meaning “a task”), in the UK means a kind of cleaning woman.

When it comes to fantasies, the idea that this may be about the shadow not of a princess, or at least a lady in distress, but of an ordinary cleaning lady, is immediately intriguing, but the charwoman isn’t really the main character. That’s Ramon, the son of an impoverished Spanish nobleman.

To earn money for his sister’s dowry, as well as to find a profession, Ramon apprentices himself to a wizard who deals, among other things, in shadows. As payment for his learning, Ramon uses his shadow—but, just like Peter Schlemihl before him, quickly comes to regret it. The charwoman works in the wizard’s house and, as Ramon slowly learns spells, he also learns her story and what has happened to her since she traded away her shadow long before.

In a moment of chivalry (the story takes place in Spain in what’s called the Siglo de Oro, the “Golden Century”—the early 16^th to the later 17^th centuries–when wealth from the New World made Spain a world power, as well as a leader in the arts), Ramon promises to rescue the Charwoman’s shadow for her. In the house of a wizard, you can imagine that this won’t be easy, but, eventually, and through ingenuity, he does so, only to discover that—but you should really read the story for yourself.

[Unfortunately, as this book was published in 1926, it’s still under copyright here in the US, so we can’t offer our usual LINK, but we can offer you Peter and Wendy (1911), the novel version of Barrie’s 1904 play—LINK.]

In contrast to shadows which can be traded or lost, what’s interesting to us about Sauron’s shadow is that it’s no more than a suggestion of the appearance of its owner, who, although he casts that shadow over all of Middle-earth, never appears physically in the novel. The Nazgul—shadowy figures themselves—represent him, but Sauron himself is never more than a shadow and, in fact, when he is eventually destroyed, it’s his shadow we see broken and swept away:

“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”)

That “little shadow”, then, certainly has more uses than the child in Stevenson’s poem will ever see.

Thanks, as ever, for reading.

MTCIDC

Helm (2)

04 Wednesday Sep 2019

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

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Alan Lee, Anglo-Saxon, Bayeux Tapestry, Christian Schwager, Dernhelm, Eowyn, Frank Frazetta, great helm, Great War, helmets, Howard Pyle, John Howe, kettle helm, King Arthur, spangenhelm, Tolkien, vikings, WWI

As ever, dear readers, welcome.

In our last, we focused upon the helmets worn by Tolkien and other European and US soldiers in the Great War, the French

the German,

and the British (US troops eventually settled on the British pattern).

The British helmet, we said, has produced the common comment that it looks like it was inspired by the medieval “kettle helm” (the second image being from the 13^th-century Maciejowski Bible—but these helmets were clearly so practical that they continued to be used well beyond that time).

“inspired by medieval” is the way we commonly see JRRT’s Middle-earth, and it made us wonder about the kinds of helmets we would meet in The Lord of the Rings. Unfortunately, if there were a concordance (that is, a book dedicated to listing all the times various words are used within a text, like this concordance for Homer’s Odyssey)

for Tolkien’s work, we are betting that perhaps the only word we would find there would be “helm”, which is generic, unless one adds “great”, which produces a more specific kind of head protection, looking like these, in use from the late 12^th to the mid-14^th centuries—

With only “helm” to go on, what clues might help us better to visualize what warriors are wearing?

We’ve suggested before that one possible visual resource for JRRT’s images of medieval warfare was the work of the American illustrator, Howard Pyle (1853-1911), in books like The Story of King Arthur and His Knights (1903), which Tolkien could have read as a boy.

And here’s a well-known illustration—with a knight in a great helm, in fact.

But what did Pyle use for models?

In Pyle’s time, the collection and classification of armor was still at its very beginnings (the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York only instituted an Arms and Armor Department in 1912, for example). We can only assume, then, that he thought “knights = medieval” and so any armor might do. (If Arthur were real—there’s been argument about this for many years—he would have lived centuries before the medieval period and so would have had neither knights nor the military equipment of later days anyway. As myth, Arthur can live at any time, of course. We think of Hal Foster’s Prince Valiant, where, at one moment, we’re facing Huns and, at the next moment, Vikings.)

If Pyle were one of JRRT’s sources, then, “helm” can easily stand for any kind of protective headgear made of metal and vaguely medieval. We think that there is more to be said on this, however, and we’ll go into a bit more detail about helmets in The Lord of the Rings in the third part of this little series, but, for now, we want to concentrate on one helmet in particular.

Normally, one thinks of helmets as protection, but, in the novel, we see one also used as a disguise, as Eowyn becomes “Dernhelm” (Old English dirne, “hidden/secret” + helm “head covering/helmet”, so, something like “a helm which hides”?).

What kind of helmet, we asked ourselves, would Eowyn be wearing which would:

keep her identity hidden
blend in with the helmets of other Rohirrim?

We began by looking at modern illustrations of Eowyn but, unfortunately, a cursory survey shows us that almost all modern illustrators appear to have chosen the same scene: the moment when Eowyn has removed her helmet when facing the Witch King.

So far, we’ve found only a few artists who capture the previous moment:

whose name so far has eluded us, but who shows a rear view of something which looks rather like a French Great War helmet.

the second, another anonymous (to us), again shows Eowyn from behind, but with a style of helmet which appears to owe more to fantasy than to any medieval reality—

and perhaps a little something to Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

the third is Christian Schwager, based in New Zealand.

Her armor is full plate, which, in our world, is later medieval. As for the helmet, it somewhat resembles a visored sallet, but only vaguely.

And that plume and its placement strike us as problematic, at best.

the last is the well-known fantasy illustrator, Frank Frazetta, and although we enjoy some of his work, this illustration suggests to us that the artist doesn’t appear to have taken the scene–or Eowyn– seriously—or practically.

As we wrote in a post some time ago, the basis of the Rohirrim is Anglo-Saxon, men who wore long mail shirts and conical spangenhelm,

making them look very much like dismounted versions of their Norman opponents, both being shown in the following panel from the Bayeux Tapestry.

A characteristic feature of the spangenhelm is that nasal—the bar which comes down to protect the wearer’s nose.

Potentially, this and the helmet’s brim might shade the eyes and make the face less visible.

So, with the need for disguise and blending-in being crucial, and only “helm” to go on in the text, we asked ourselves what did the two artists who acted as inspiration for Jackson’s films, Alan Lee and John Howe, choose to do? Here’s a picture of the battlefield confrontation by Lee—

image23lee

Eowyn is, as in the case of other illustrators, here depicted as having removed her helmet, and, even under magnification, it’s difficult to make much out. Howe, however, has given us a very detailed picture.

It’s clear, however, that, in choosing to emphasize the dirne in “Dernhelm”, he’s stepped away from the world of knights entirely and into a slightly older world, that of the Vikings, as his helmet more closely resembles the so-called “spectacle helmets”, of which a few examples survive from Viking burials, like this, reconstructed from a discovery at Gjermundbu, in Norway. (For a very useful view of Viking helmets in general, follow this LINK.)

In turn, Jackson’s designers have followed Lee—

This certainly gives us the “hidden/secret” part of “Dernhelm”, but what about the idea of blending in? Looking at a group shot of Rohirrim, we find a little surprise.

Instead of looking like Anglo-Saxons, as depicted on the Bayeux Tapestry, Jackson’s Rohirrim look more like Vikings—and so Eowyn’s helmet blends right in (in fact, in this picture, you can see at least one other warrior with a spectacled helmet), almost as if her helmet and its secrecy requirement have been the basis for all of the warriors of Rohan.

There are lots of other helmets to pursue, however, which we’ll do in our next, so, with thanks to you, dear readers, for reading this, we’ll say

MTCIDC,

Helm (but not deep)

28 Wednesday Aug 2019

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

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British, Constantinople, French, Great War, Helmet, Julius Caesar, kepi, Medieval, Neo-Assyrians, pickelhalben, Plevna, Port Arthur, Prussians, Sebastien Le Prestre de Vauban, sieges, Tolkien, uniforms, WWI

Welcome once more, dear readers.

In our last, we talked about Tolkien as a very junior officer in 1916-17.

We discussed much of the detail of his kit, including this very important item, first introduced to the British army on the Western Front in 1916.

The war had begun in 1914, however, and the British soldiers of 1914

although they had shed their red coats for anything but parades,

having learned in many colonial wars that khaki was more practical on campaign,

were still, at heart, ready for the kind of open-battlefield fighting which their ancestors had practiced at Waterloo, a century before.

Infantry might not fight in long solid lines any longer,

And might even seize upon temporary cover,

but battle would still be a sort of stand-up affair with artillery in support

and cavalry ready to charge even enemy artillery,

just as they had at Balaclava, 60 years before.

The British were not alone in imagining modern war as being like this. Across the Channel, the French were still wearing the same red trousers they had first put on in the 1830s, while discussing attacks made solely with the bayonet.

And the Germans, although more sensibly dressed in grey, could still see themselves as pounding across the battlefield like medieval knights, lances lowered.

Unfortunately for such dreams, weapons technology in 1914 had far outstripped fashion and tradition, with machine guns having firing rates of as much as 600 rounds per minute

and increasingly heavy artillery.

Soldiers on both sides, therefore, instinctively began to seek more shelter.

And more shelter.

What happened next was a kind of military retrograde motion: what was planned as open-field warfare turned into a giant, 500-mile-long siege.

There had, of course, been sieges forever. The ancient Neo-Assyrians were fierce proponents.

In 332bc, Alexander the Great, frustrated by the defiance of the city of Tyre, conducted a famous siege across open water to make the Tyrians submit.

Julius Caesar had crushed Celtic power in Gaul in part by besieging their major settlement at Alesia in 52bc.

During the western Middle Ages, sieges were more common than pitched battles.

By the 14^th century, however, big siege weapons, like the massive stone-throwing trebuchet,

were fated to be replaced by a new and more effective weapon, the bombard, or cannon.

And, with the expansion of the use of artillery to pound enemy defenses, siege warfare became that much more deadly—as in the relatively short time (53 days) it took for the guns of Mehmet II to knock holes in the ancient but massive walls of Constantinople in 1453.

Over time, the practice of siege craft became an art, as did that of fortification, and, for western armies, the theoretician was Louis XIV’s military engineer, Sebastien Le Prestre de Vauban (1633-1707).

Vauban designed fortresses to resist sieges, but he also said that every fortress could be taken in time and proved it by directing methodical attacks upon a number of them. Step one was to gradually move trenches—and guns—closer and closer to the enemy fortress or town, attempting to make a hole in its walls. Then, when the hole was judged big enough to provide entry into that town or fortress, infantry would be sent in to try to break through.

Vauban’s method, with its lines of moving trenches and gun emplacements, became the standard and older soldiers in 1914 and those who read military history would have seen that method in the later 19^th century, when the Prussians and their allies besieged Paris in late 1870,

or when the Russians laid siege to the Turkish garrison of Plevna in 1877,

or, more recently, when the Japanese besieged the Russians at Port Arthur in 1904-5.

Thus, there was a long tradition for such things for the armies of western Europe to follow in 1914, but the difference lay in those modern weapons, which made the life of besiegers—and, in this war, both sides were really besieging each other simultaneously—that much more dangerous. If the basis of that tradition was bombardment followed by a successful infantry assault, then the generals of 1914 would follow that pattern.

If the enemy used machine guns and heavy artillery to stop the attackers,

it took some time before those generals realized that old-fashioned methods usually produced huge numbers of casualties

and little success.

Change took time, but one element was to improve soldiers’ chances to survive in the trenches and that meant reviving something from the medieval world, the metal helmet.

The French were the first to replace the soldiers’ kepi

with a metal helmet, in 1915.

(The kepi picture, by the way, isn’t colorized, but is an actual early color photograph, using what was called “autochrome”.)

The Germans replaced their leather helmets, called pickelhalben,

image40pickelhaube

with their own version of a steel helmet, in 1916.

Also, in 1916, the British replaced the service dress cap

with the very piece of kit with which JRRT would have been equipped, and with which we began.

Thanks, as ever, for reading

and

MTCIDC,

Holding Place

21 Wednesday Aug 2019

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

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

Welcome, as ever, dear readers.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This included not only uniform,

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

and sword,

along with the belts on which to carry them,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

and, suddenly, orcs

are no surprise.

Thanks, as always, for reading and

MTCIDC

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

Never That Willow

14 Wednesday Aug 2019

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

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Barrow-downs, Barrow-wights, Hamlet, humours, Melancholy, Old Man Willow, Ophelia, Othello, Robert Burton, The Lord of the Rings, The National Library of Scotland, Thomas D'Urfey, Timothy Bright, Tolkien, Tom Bombadil, William Shakespeare, Willow Tree

As always, dear readers, welcome.

In our last post, we had:

begun with a willow tree

moved to the English Renaissance association between willows and melancholy

and, in particular, the play Hamlet (1599-1601), in which a disturbed girl, Ophelia, falls from a willow into a stream and drowns

as well as Desdemona, in Shakespeare’s Othello (1604), who sings a song with “Willow” as a kind of lamenting chorus—just before she’s murdered by her jealous (and misled) husband.

Melancholy comes from an imbalance of the humors, so medieval and Renaissance people thought, from those substances which control the body and its moods.

Too much black bile and you might be plunged into a depression.

(Although his posture suggests that he’s grieving, this young man’s armor says that he’s involved in a medieval sport that certain Tudor noblemen still engaged in, jousting. Perhaps he just lost?)

As this was considered a serious problem, English Renaissance authors created texts which analyzed the condition, like Timothy Bright, a physician, who published his treatise in 1586,

(if you’d like to see what was believed medically in 1586, here’s a LINK to the work.)

or Robert Burton, a philosopher, who published his in 1621.

One way of dealing with that imbalance was by bleeding—the idea being that, since the humors influenced the blood, by opening up a blood vessel and letting some of the blood pour out it might act as a kind of safety valve.

Another treatment was playing or listening to music.

This therapeutic idea led to the title of one of the first great collections of Renaissance and post-Renaissance lyrics and tunes, Thomas D’Urfey’s, Wit and Mirthe, or Pills to Purge Melancholy (1698-1720).

(The National Library of Scotland has a complete edition of all six volumes of this. Here’s a LINK, so that you can download them for yourself.)

Melancholy and willows became even more bound together in the early 19^th century, when the tree, along with other images, such as urns, was used as a symbol of mourning on tombstones.

Willows, then, have moved from being associated with an Elizabethan ailment to an expression of grief at the death of a loved one, which could certainly bring on melancholy.

For us, willows have another association, however, but one which includes death–and the Elizabethan use of music as a cure. In The Lord of the Rings, when Frodo and his friends try to cut through the Old Forest to escape the pursuing Nazgul,

they are confused by the hostile wood and eventually brought to the bank of the Withywindle, where Old Man Willow

sings a spell:

“They shut their eyes, and then it seemed that they could almost hear words, cool words, saying something about water and sleep. They gave themselves up to the spell and fell fast asleep at the foot of the great grey willow.” (The Fellowship of the Ring, Book One, Chapter 6, “The Old Forest”)

This was more than just a sleepy-spell, however, as the tree attempts to drown Frodo, swallows Pippin, and half-swallows Merry (his upper half).

When Sam and Frodo (whom Sam has rescued) threaten the tree with fire, it threatens to kill Merry and Pippin and it looks like a standoff until Frodo simply runs off, shouting for help, and the very odd figure of Tom Bombadil appears.

He has a very distinctive look—

“there appeared above the reeds an old battered hat with a tall crown and a long blue feather stuck to the band…there came into view a man…stumping along with great yellow boots…He had a blue coat and a long brown beard; his eyes were blue and bright, and his face was red as a ripe apple, but creased into a hundred wrinkles of laughter.”

As well, he has distinctive speech and this is where music as cure reappears. Commonly, Tom’s speech is either actual song or short declarative sentences, which fall into a metrical pattern reminiscent of song:

“What’s the matter here then? Do you know who I am? I’m Tom Bombadil. Tell me what’s your trouble!”

DUM-tee-DUM-tee-DUM-DUM. DUM-tee-DUM-tee-DUM-DUM. DUM-DUM-DUM-tee-DUM. DUM-tee-DUM-tee-DUM-DUM.

He shows no fear of the fearsome willow, breaking off one of its branches and smacking the tree with it while employing this characteristic chanting—

“You let them out again, Old Man Willow!…What be you a-thinking of? You should not be waking. Eat earth! Dig deep! Drink water! Go to sleep! Bombadil is talking!”

Who this figure is, is only ever explained in the vaguest way. His companion, Goldberry,

says of him simply, “Tom Bombadil is master.” (The Fellowship of the Ring, Book One, Chapter 7, “In the House of Tom Bombadil”) And, when he receives the Ring from Frodo, even when he puts it on, it has no effect upon him.

As a character in the book, he has proved awkward both for audio adapters and P Jackson and his writers, virtually all of whom have tended, over the years, simply to leave him out of their versions of the story. This leaves a gap, of course, especially when it comes to Tom’s second rescue of the hobbits, from a barrow-wight (illustration by one of our favorite Tolkien artists, Ted Nasmith),

not only because it’s a wonderfully spooky part of the story, but because Tom ransacks the barrow and gives the hobbits short swords “forged long years ago by Men of Westernesse: they were foes of the Dark Lord, but they were overcome by the evil king of Carn Dum in the Land of Angmar”” (The Fellowship of the Ring, Book One, Chapter 8, “Fog on the Barrow-Downs”). With one of these swords, because of where and when it’s from, Merry is able to wound the chief of the Nazgul who is, in fact, that evil king of Angmar mentioned by Tom Bombadil, allowing Eowyn to finish him off.

Tolkien himself was less than concrete in his explanation of Tom, writing to Naomi Mitchison in April, 1954:

“Tom Bombadil is not an important person—to the narrative. I suppose he has some importance as a ‘comment’. I mean, I do not really write like that: he is just an invention (who first appeared in the Oxford Magazine about 1933 [1934]), and represents something that I feel important, though I would not be prepared to analyze the feeling precisely.” (Letters, 178)

Considering our theme of melancholy and, later, death, associated with willows, as well as the Elizabethan idea that music might cure or at least ameliorate that melancholy, our feeling is that Tom, in the first book of The Lord of the Rings, is a counterbalance, with his singing and chanting, to all of the darkness we’re gradually being shown. As JRRT says in that same paragraph to Naomi Mitchison:

“I would not, however, have left him in, if he did not have some kind of function. I might put it this way. The story is cast in terms of a good side, and a bad side…”

Tom, then, in our view, is not only on the good side, but the antidote to the bad, twice, dealing not only with a living tree, but with a dead and murderous wight. In both cases, he uses song, making him rather like an Elizabethan cure for the melancholy associated with willows—and, in the 19^th-century, willows associated with death–brought to life. It’s no wonder that, when Sauron is defeated and Middle-earth is beginning to heal, Gandalf tells the hobbits:

“…I am turning aside soon. I am going to have a long talk with Bombadil: such a talk as I have not had in all my time.” (The Return of the King, Book Six, Chapter 7, “Homeward Bound”)

For Gandalf, Tom is the humors back in balance.

As ever, thanks for reading and

MTCIDC

For another willow, you might try George Lucas’ fantasy film, Willow (1988). It has a complicated plot, all about an abducted infant who will fulfill a prophecy, a valiant dwarf, white and black magic, and a rather ragged warrior. Here’s the LINK for the first trailer (there’s a second, as well).

Although not quite, for us, of the same level as The Princess Bride, being perhaps more like Labyrinth or The Dark Crystal or Time Bandits, like all of those, it has its moments of fun.

Never a Willow

07 Wednesday Aug 2019

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

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Babylon, Baltimore Consort, Chludov Psaltery, Dennis Moore, Desdemona, Euphrates, Hamlet, Highwaymen, humours, Israelites, JE Millais, Melancholy, Monty Python, Old Man Willow, Ophelia, Othello, Robert Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy, The Carman's Whistle, The Lord of the Rings, The Old Forest, Tigris, Tolkien, Tom Bombadil, William Shakespeare, Willow

As always, dear readers, welcome.

In our last posting, although we were talking about 18^th-century highwaymen, somehow—we blame the “Dennis Moore” sketch—

we included mention of a willow.

In Anglo-American culture, the willow has long suggested melancholy, perhaps being somehow linked with Psalm 137, which laments the fall of Jerusalem to the Babylonians in 586BC and the so-called “Babylonian captivity” of the Israelites?

“By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion.

We hanged our harps upon the willows in the midst thereof.

For there they that carried us away captive required of us a song; and they that wasted us required of us mirth, saying, Sing us one of the songs of Zion.

How shall we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land?”

Under all of that heavy-handed Babylonian mockery is the simple fact that willows are water-lovers, so it would be natural that they would grow near the Euphrates and Tigris, the two major rivers of Babylon.

If the Israelites are no longer singing, we would guess that parking their harps on the willows would be as good a place as any. Certainly medieval manuscript illustrators had no trouble envisioning it. This is from the 9^th-century Chludov Psaltery (a collection of psalms).

“Melancholy”, medieval/Renaissance people believed,

came from an imbalance of the four “humours” which ran the body and its emotions and people in Shakespeare’s day and beyond appear to have so suffered from it that they consulted a famous and popular text, Robert Burton’s The Anatomy of Melancholy, What it is: With all the Kinds, Causes, Symptomes, Prognostickes, and Several Cures of it. In Three Maine Partitions with their several Sections, Members, and Subsections. Philosophically, Medicinally, Historically, Opened and Cut Up. That this was a pressing matter for the people of this age is clear from the length of the first edition of 1621—it’s nearly 900 pages—and later editions, which appeared within the next few years, were even longer. This is the frontispiece of the 1638 edition–

A common treatment for the problem (too much black bile in the system—the “melan-“ part is Greek for “black”—the “-choly” is the “choler”, or bile) was to listen to music, but clearly not all music was soothing, as we see in Shakespeare’s Hamlet (1599-1601) , where Hamlet’s girlfriend, Ophelia, goes mad and spends her time drifting around the castle singing bits of unhappy songs and handing out flowers with significant meanings. As music can be involved with melancholy, so, as we said, can willows and the two come together when Ophelia trusts a willow–

“There is a willow grows aslant a brook,
That shows his hoar leaves in the glassy stream;
There with fantastic garlands did she come
Of crow-flowers, nettles, daisies, and long purples
That liberal shepherds give a grosser name,
But our cold maids do dead men’s fingers call them:
There, on the pendent boughs her coronet weeds
Clambering to hang, an envious sliver broke;
When down her weedy trophies and herself
Fell in the weeping brook. Her clothes spread wide;
And, mermaid-like, awhile they bore her up:
Which time she chanted snatches of old tunes;
As one incapable of her own distress,
Or like a creature native and indued
Unto that element: but long it could not be
Till that her garments, heavy with their drink,
Pull’d the poor wretch from her melodious lay
To muddy death.” (Hamlet, Act IV, Sc 7)

(This is a painting by JE Millais, 1851/2. That “dead men’s fingers” should have been enough, we think!)

The melancholy continues in Shakspeare’s Othello (1604), Act IV, Scene 3, where the soon-to-be-murdered-by-the-title-character Desdemona sings a sad little song, beginning:

“The poor soul sat sighing by a sycamore tree,
Sing all a green willow;
Her hand on her bosom, her head on her knee,(45)
Sing willow, willow, willow.
The fresh streams ran by her, and murmur’d her moans;
Sing willow, willow, willow;
Her salt tears fell from her, and soften’d the stones”—

(It seems like this posting can’t escape including even more trees. Sycamores are another water-loving tree,

but the emphasis here is upon that willow and we’ll stick with it.)

Perhaps it’s the slumping shape, which might suggest despair, or at least grief, but the willow began to appear on tombstones here in the US at the beginning of the 19^th century, sometimes by itself,

sometimes shading other symbols of mourning, like an urn.

It could appear in other funerary art, as well—as in pictures

and even as part of another funerary—and life—custom of the time, the giving/exchanging of locks of hair. In this mourning brooch, one can see a willow made from such a lock.

With such a grim history, it shouldn’t be surprising, then, that a willow familiar to readers of The Lord of the Rings might have a sinister purpose.

He’s not alone in being hostile foliage. As Merry tells Frodo, Sam, and Pippin:

“But the Forest is queer. Everything in it is very much more alive, more aware of what is going on, so to speak, than things are in the Shire. And the trees do not like strangers. They watch you. They are usually content merely to watch you, as long as daylight lasts, and don’t do much. Occasionally the most unfriendly ones may drop a branch, or stick a root out, or grasp at you with a long trailer. But at night things can be most alarming… (The Fellowship of the Ring, Book One, Chapter 6, “The Old Forest”)

Their journey through the Forest, intended to put some space between them and the danger of the Nazgul, provides its own dangers, as the place seems to move about of its own accord, confusing travelers—or worse:

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

We are a far cry from Monty Python here. The willow then tries to drown Frodo, swallows Pippin completely, and the upper half of Merry, and, were it not for the appearance of perhaps the oddest character in The Lord of the Rings, it is difficult to imagine what would have happened next.

What will happen in our next posting, however, you will see next week (hint: the posting is entitled, “Never This Willow”). In the meantime,

Thanks, as always, for reading and

MTCIDC

To treat any melancholy you might feel from reading this posting, please see below for a very merry Elizabethan song ably performed by the Baltimore Consort.

And here’s a LINK to a set of lyrics c. 1590 so that you can follow along. You’ll notice that it includes melancholy, trees, and music, all in one.

Further Crime

31 Wednesday Jul 2019

Posted by Ollamh in Villains

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Tags

Alfred Noyes, Claude Duval, Dennis Moore, Dick Turpin, Dr Syn, gibbet, Highwaymen, Industry and Idleness, Lupine Express, Lupine flower, Monty Python, Robin Hood, Romney Marsh, Russell Thorndike, Smugglers, The Four Stages of Cruelty, Tyburn, William Hogarth, William Powell Frith

After our last posting, where we were in southeast England with 18^th-century smugglers, we’ve found ourselves traveling inland, but still on the same theme: interesting evil-doers.

Dr. Syn, aka “The Scarecrow”

was a fictional character created in 1915 by Russell Thorndike,

but based upon actual smuggling gangs who worked along the coast of the area called Kent.

Such people robbed the government of revenue, removing goods which would have been taxed, sometimes heavily, at legitimate ports of entry. Our next 17^th-18^th-century evil-doers use the more personal approach, behaving in the tradition of Robin Hood,

the difference being that, rather robbing the rich and giving to the poor, highwaymen robbed from the rich—or almost anyone they caught on the public roads—and kept it. This could mean an individual on foot,

image6foot

or on horseback,

or in a carriage,

or in a coach.

These men could become quite well-known in life, like Dick Turpin, who had biographies written about him.

Turpin, and a few others, like Claude Duval,

even entered contemporary folklore. This painting, by William Powell Frith (1819-1909), depicts a piece of what appears to be that very folklore. The story goes that, once, when he had stopped a coach, Duval offered to reduce the amount taken from the gentleman inside if his pretty wife would dance with him. She did so, and Duval did as he offered.

Such behavior, real or no, may have impressed ordinary people, but the law saw highwaymen as a menace and one to be dealt with severely. Any one caught was tried and quickly sentenced to be hanged. If taken in the London area, the execution was done at a standard execution place, Tyburn.

This engraving is by William Hogarth (1697-1764), a famous artist and caricaturist of the first half of the 18^th-century. It’s from a series entitled, “Industry and Idleness” (1747) and you can see who is about to suffer from the sheet of paper held in the hand of the woman in the foreground. It reads: “The Last Dying Speech and Confession of the Idle [Apprentice]”.

People in other times, from Roman gladiatorial combat to Elizabethan bear-baiting, had very different ideas from most contemporary folk when it came to open violence as spectacle. Here, we see, as was common in England at this time, a huge crowd all gathered to witness the Idle Apprentice’s death. (Public executions were only abolished in Great Britain in 1868.)

One can see part of the entertainment in what that woman is holding. A common souvenir of the event was a printed broadsheet, with a title like “Trial, Last Words, and True Confession of…”, which purported to be the dying statement of the person about to be executed.

Often these began with a generic woodcut of a hanging and might also contain other illustrations, like the one below, from 1835.

image15broadsheet

Once the execution was over, the punishment was not. The executed person’s corpse (we think that this was only males) might be displayed publicly in a kind of iron cage on a frame, called a gibbet, sometimes till the body had crumbled away.

image16gibbet

Or, worse, it might be turned over to a medical school and used for instructional purposes.

(This is from another Hogarth series, “The Four Stages of Cruelty”, 1751. The skeleton in the background, on the right, is labeled, “MacLeane”, who was a highwayman hanged in 1750.)

We had first learned about highwaymen from a famous poem, “The Highwayman”, by Alfred Noyes (1880-1958).

The Highwayman

Here’s a LINK so that you can read it for yourself.

But, because we can’t end on a grim note, there’s one more highwayman we want to mention. This is Monty Python’s John Cleese, playing the highwayman Dennis Moore. Moore doesn’t take money from his victims in the sketch. Instead, he robs the “Lupine Express”.

Lupines are an edible flower and, as you can see, at least the dwarf variety comes in multiple colo(u)rs.

We can’t show you the sketch, unfortunately, but we can give you the LINK to the audio recording, in which there is not only the robbery, but also a good deal of discussion about tree identification, with argument over a willow…

Considering penal laws in 18^th-century England, where over 200 crimes were punishable by death, we don’t imagine that even a flower thief would have escaped the gallows, even if he did give the lupines to the deserving poor

Thanks, as ever, for reading—and, if attacked by highwaymen, try to be as well-armed as these people clearly were—

And thanks, as ever, for reading.

MTCIDC

And how about a highwayman music video featuring Dick Turpin, brought to you courtesy of Horrible Histories? Here’s the LINK.

doubtfulsea

~ adventure fantasy

Light on Their Feet

Terrible as an Army with Banners

Nodding Off

Shadowy

Helm (2)

Helm (but not deep)

Holding Place

Never That Willow

Never a Willow

Further Crime