Although that title has been used formerly elsewhere,
this posting isn’t about a romcom, but, instead, comes from a comment by Tolkien in a letter to Rhona Beare:
“The Rohirrim were not ‘medieval’ in our sense. The styles of the Bayeux Tapestry (made in England) fit them well enough, if one remembers that the kind of tennis-nets [the] soldiers seem to have on are only a clumsy conventional sign for chain-mail of small rings.” (Letter to Rhona Beare, 14 October, 1958, Letters, 401.)
“Tennis-nets”?
Let’s start off with the Bayeux Tapestry.
In fact, it’s not a tapestry at all. Here’s a tapestry—
(3rd quarter 15th-century tapestry from “Pays-Bas meridionnaux”—“southern lowlands”—that is, the Netherlands, modern Belgium, and even northernmost France at the time this tapestry was made)
Tapestries are woven on looms.
The Bayeux Tapestry is actually a 230-foot long by 20 inch high (70.1m. by 50.8cm) embroidery, in which a piece of cloth has a design plotted on the cloth and the design then stitched on—like this—
Whether it was made in England, as Tolkien very confidently asserts, or in Normandy is a question over which scholars tussle, but the subject is definitely Norman, as it depicts the conquest of southern Anglo-Saxon England by the Normans in 1066, including a little propaganda suggesting that the Anglo-Saxon king, Harold Godwinson, had violated a sacred oath in not handing the throne over to William, the Duke of Normandy, but, instead, taking it for himself (Harold is the one on the right, with the droopy mustache, William on the left, on the throne).
Those “tennis-nets”, which do, in fact, look a little like tennis nets,
are, as JRRT says, chain mail, which, in this image, both Anglo-Saxons (on foot on the left) and Norman (mounted, on the right) are wearing. For a modern reconstruction—
(by Gerry Embleton, one of my favorite contemporary English military artists)
Seen up close, the mail can look like tiny fragments of chain, linked together—
Before there was plate armor of the kind you might see in a museum or in some films with medieval themes,
there were other methods to protect the body, including various kinds of lamellar (scale) armor—little overlapping plates sewn onto a backing—
and even overlapping metal strips strung together (the Roman lorica segmentata)—
the ancient Celts, who were wonderful metal-workers, had devised chain-mail
(Angus McBride)
which the Romans, ever on the lookout for better military technology, then adopted.
(Angus Mcbride again—and I really like the little sketch on the lower left-hand corner, giving you just a hint of how the artist worked).
Even when plate began to appear, mail was still used under certain sections of it, to allow for flexibility,
and foot soldiers might continue to wear it, as full plate was expensive.
(another Gerry Embleton)
What JRRT is imagining is that the Rohirrim would, basically, look like 11th-century Normans.
(one more Gerry Embleton)
And this is what we’re to visualize when it comes to that “mithril shirt” which, once upon a time, Thorin had given to Bilbo—
“ ‘Mr. Baggins!’ he cried. ‘Here is the first payment of your reward! Cast off your old coat and put on this!’
With that he put on Bilbo a small coat of mail, wrought for some young elf-prince long ago. It was of silver-steel, which the elves call mithril…” (The Hobbit, Chapter 13, “Not At Home”)
(Alan Lee)
And, when an orc attacks Frodo in the Chamber of Records in Moria,
(Angus McBride again)
It’s no wonder that Frodo, to his friends’ surprise says, “ ‘I am all right…I can walk. Put me down!”
since he is wearing that mithril coat passed on to him by Bilbo in Rivendell, although, when Gandalf mentions mithril and Bilbo’s coat in particular—
“ ‘I wonder what has become of it? Gathering dust still in Michel Delving Mathom-house, I suppose.’”
And Gimli adds,
“ ‘What?…A corselet of Moria-silver? That was a kingly gift!’ “
And Gandalf replies,
“ ‘Yes…I never told him, but its worth was greater than the value of the whole Shire and everything in it.’”
it’s Frodo who is surprised—
“…he felt staggered to think that he had been walking about with the price of the Shire under his jacket.” (The Fellowship of the Ring, Book Two, Chapter 4, “A Journey in the Dark”)
Should you want to own a chain mail shirt of your own,
you can find one on line, but it’s not mithril, of course, nor made for a young elf-prince, but, at $87.00 (US), you can acquire one for far less than the price of the Shire. Perhaps for Christmas?
Thanks, as ever, for reading.
Stay well,
Happy Thanksgiving, if you’re in a place where people celebrate it as a formal holiday, although I hope that they’re thankful all year round,
JRRT was well aware of anachronisms and, in his 1966 revision of The Hobbit, he replaced certain items. Certain ones remained, however, including:
“…In that last hour Beorn himself had appeared—no one knew how or from where. He came alone, and in bear’s shape; and he seemed to have grown almost to giant-size in his wrath.
The roar of his voice was like drums and guns…” (The Hobbit, Chapter 18, “The Return Journey”)
This is the narrator speaking and it has been argued, quite plausibly, to my mind, that he’s someone speaking in the 1930s, telling a tale to his children, and therefore is perfectly justified in using things which are normal in his own time period, as out of place as they might be in Bilbo’s world. (Although Gandalf is known for his fireworks,
meaning that gunpowder is available, and, as we know from explosions at Helm’s Deep and the Causeways Forts, Saruman and Sauron both appear to use some sort of explosive.)
Drums, however, are a different matter and, when it comes to Tolkien, I always immediately think of
“…We cannot get out. The end comes, and then drums, drums in the deep.” (The Fellowship of the Ring, Book Two, Chapter 5, “The Bridge at Khazad-dum”)
Gandalf has been reading to the Fellowship from a ruined diary of the reoccupation of Moria by the dwarves
as they sit in what was once the Chamber of Records, having no idea that, very soon, they could be duplicating the same doomed words as orcs attack them.
(Angus McBride)
“Gandalf had hardly spoken these words, when there came a great noise: a rolling Boom that seemed to come from depths far below, and to tremble in the stone at their feet. They sprang towards the door in alarm. Doom, doom it rolled again, as if huge hands were turning the very caverns of Moria into a vast drum. Then there came an echoing blast: a great horn was blown in the hall, and answering horns and harsh cries were heard farther off. There was a hurrying sound of many feet.
‘They are coming!’ cried Legolas.
‘We cannot get out,’ said Gimli.
‘Trapped!’ cried Gandalf. ‘Why did I delay? Here we are, caught, just as they were before. But I was not here then. We will see what—‘
Doom, doom came the drum-beat and the walls shook.”
And this booming sound will pursue the company all the way to the Bridge of Khazad-dum itself.
(Alan Lee)
We never see this drum, but I’ve always wondered what it and other drums used by the orcs and other opponents of the Fellowship and their friends might have looked like and, if possible, sounded like.
Certainly whatever the orcs are using here must be rather large to penetrate the stone walls of Moria.
My first choice might be o-daiko, a Japanese drum which can be as big as six feet in diameter
and I’ve seen mention of one which is almost ten feet. It is played with two large, thick wooden sticks, called bachi,
and has been used for everything from folk festivals to war to theatre. By itself, it has a deep boom, but played in groups…
And what about the Haradrim? Here’s how they are depicted in the Jackson films—
(They are wearing, to me, a very odd helmet/mask, making them look a little like mechanical pandas—which is, I admit, a pretty terrifying thought!)
(By the wonderfully creative Patrick Lawrence. You can see more of his work here: https://pwlawrence.com/ )
but I’ve always pictured them as more like the Ottoman Turks, the sort who came to dominate southeastern Europe from the 14th century on, captured Constantinople in 1453,
and almost captured Vienna twice—in 1529 and again in 1683.
Their terror weapon—besides their fearsome reputation—was their music, often called mehter in the West.
And I’d add to all of this booming racket one more sound from the enemy:
“For Anduin, from the bend at the Harlond, so flowed that from the City men could look down it lengthwise for some leagues, and the far sighted could see any ships that approached. And looking thither they cried in dismay; for black against the glittering stream they beheld a fleet borne up on the wind: dromonds, and ships of great draught with many oars, and with black sails bellying in the breeze.” (The Return of the King, Book Five, Chapter 6, “The Battle of the Pelennor Fields”)
Here’s a dromond (this is a version of the word dromon, “runner”, the name of the standard Byzantine warship)
and you’ll notice that it is an oared vessel, as are those which JRRT describes as“ships of great draught”. To coordinate the oars, a basic tempo must be kept and that would mean, traditionally, a drum—and a fairly large one, too, to carry the rhythm across the ship, rather like the cartoons we always see of Roman galleys, like this from the French comic Asterix—
So, as advertised in the title of this posting, no guns, but certainly lots of drums—perhaps Howard Shore would consider a second edition of his score?
Thanks, as ever, for reading.
Stay well,
If rammed, be sure to have your life jacket handy (and plan to save the Roman admiral, as Ben Hur does),
And remember that, as always, there’s
MTCIDC
O
PS
I couldn’t resist adding this image—surely the Haradrim from the far south would have had camels—and kettle drums?
…her arm clad in the purest shimmering samite, held aloft Excalibur from the bosom of the water signifying by Divine Providence that I, Arthur, was to carry Excalibur.
[singing stops]
That is why I am your king!
DENNIS: Listen. Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government. Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony.
ARTHUR: Be quiet!
DENNIS: Well, but you can’t expect to wield supreme executive power just ’cause some watery tart threw a sword at you!” (Monty Python and the Holy Grail, Scene 3, “Repression is Nine Tenths of the Law?” which you can read here: http://www.montypython.50webs.com/scripts/Holy_Grail/Scene3.htm
The Pythons, by the way, look to be mocking lines from “The Passing of Arthur”, a poem in Tennyson’s long series of Arthurian poems Idylls of the King here, where the dying Arthur commands his one surviving knight, Sir Bedivere, to toss his sword, Excalibur, into the local lake. Bedivere is tempted not to, but, on his third try, he does so and
“So flashed and fell the brand Excalibur: But ere he dipt the surface, rose an arm Clothed in white samite, mystic, wonderful, And caught him by the hilt, and brandished him Three times, and drew him under in the mere.”
“Strange women lying in ponds” is the Pythons’ way of mentioning a rather common phenomenon we see in various forms both in folklore and in literature which is influenced by it, everything from classical water nymphs, naiads,
to mermaids
to the Rhinemaidens (Rheintoechter—“Rhine Daughters”) who appear in the “Ring Cycle”, Der Ring des Nibelungen, the 4-part series of Germanic mythological operas of Richard Wagner (1813-1883).
(Here chatting with the trickster god, Loge, an illustration by Arthur Rackham, 1867-1939. You can see all of his illustrations to Wagner’s story here: https://archive.org/details/rhinegoldvalkyri00wagn )
They are the guardians of the mysterious, but powerful “Rheingold”
which the dwarf, Alberich,
steals from them and fashions into a ring containing all the power of the original gold, which would enable its possessor to rule the world.
With another Ring in mind, there is, I would suggest, a bit more than a faint resemblance here between Wagner’s story and Tolkien’s, although Tolkien, seemingly fairly knowledgeable about Wagner’s work from early in his school days (see Carpenter Tolkien, 52) was very clear about just how faint that resemblance was as far as he was concerned:
“Both rings were round, and there the resemblance ceases.” (from a letter to Allen & Unwin, 23 February, 1961, Letters, 436)
But might there be at least a little more similarity than that?
One fact is obvious: Tolkien’s is a circlet which embodies tremendous power, just as the Nibelungen ring does, although that power wasn’t in the material from which it was made, but in the maker, Sauron.
Alberich’s ring, like Sauron’s, has not remained with him, coming first into the possession of the god Wotan, and then into the possession of a dragon, Fafner (formerly a giant), then into that of his killer, Siegfried (who also happens to be Wotan’s grandson), and then into that of the Valkyrie, Bruennhilde, Siegfried’s lover, who, leaping onto Siegfried’s funeral pyre, leaves the Ring to be collected from her ashes by the Rhinemaidens while, meanwhile, there is a cataclysm in the background and Valhalla, the home of the gods, is destroyed, along with the gods—“die Goetterdaemmerung”—literally “the gods’ dusk”.
That ring isn’t destroyed, but we can certainly note that combination of the ring changing hands and huge destruction associated with that act—
“And even as he spoke the earth rocked beneath their feet. Then rising swiftly up, far above the Towers of the Black Gate, high above the mountains, a vast soaring darkness sprang into the sky, flickering with fire. The earth groaned and quaked. The Towers of the Teeth swayed, tottered and fell down; the mighty rampart crumbled; the Black Gate was hurled in ruin; and from far away, now dim, now growing, now mounting to the clouds, there came a drumming rumble, a roar, a long echoing roll of ruinous noise.” (The Return of the King, Book Six, Chapter 4, “The Field of Cormallen”)
(Ted Nasmith)
As well, coming back to the beginning of this posting, there is also a water association. In fact, two:
1. after the defeat of Sauron at the foot of Orodruin, in which Isildur took the Ring from Sauron:
“…It fell into the Great River, Anduin, and vanished. For Isildur was marching north along the east bank of the River, and near the Gladden Fields he was waylaid by the Orcs of the Mountains, and almost all his folk were slain. He leaped into the waters, but the Ring slipped from his finger as he swam, and there the Orcs saw him and killed him with arrows…And there in the dark pools amid the Gladden Fields…the Ring passed out of knowledge and legend…”
2. but, many years later, two “akin to the fathers of the fathers of the Stoors”
“…took a boat and went down to the Gladden Fields…There Smeagol got out and went nosing about the banks but Deagol sat in the boat and fished. Suddenly a great fish took his hook, and before he knew where he was, he was dragged out and down into the water, to the bottom. Then he let go of his line, for he thought he saw something shining in the river-bed; and holding his breath he grabbed at it.
Then up he came spluttering, with weeds in his hair and a handful of mud; and he swam to the bank. And behold! when he washed the mud away, there in his hand lay a beautiful golden ring…” (The Fellowship of the Ring, Book One, Chapter 2, “The Shadow of the Past”)
To steal the Rhinegold from the Rhinemaidens, Alberich the dwarf has dived into the Rhine.
His son, Hagen, trying to regain the ring, is dragged into the river and drowned by them, even as they keep the ring.
Might we imagine, then, that the death of Gollum and all which precedes it is—perhaps—somehow a bit more related to Wagner’s story than JRRT was comfortable with?
When I first saw this series, replayed on PBS (Public Broadcasting Service) many years ago, I had come across it by accident—very much an accident because I had, I thought, no interest whatever in science, not having enjoyed the required courses in school (gross understatement). It was so well done, both visually and dramatically, that I was hooked and now, years later, I’ve acquired both an active interest in the history of science as well as my own DVD set of the documentary and am enjoying it even more. It was in my mind, then, when I came across this Tolkien letter to Rhona Beare, an early Tolkien enthusiast, who had written to Tolkien with a number of questions about various details in The Lord of the Rings, including “Did the Witch-king ride a pterodactyl at the siege of Gondor?” to which JRRT replied:
“Yes and no. I did not intend the steed of the Witch-King to be what is now called a ‘pterodactyl’, and often is drawn (with rather less shadowy evidence than lies behind many monsters of the new and fascinating semi-scientific mythology of the ‘Prehistoric’). But obviously it is pterodactylic and owes much to the new mythology, and its description even provides a sort of way in which it could be a last survivor of older geological eras.” (letter to Rhona Beare, 14 October, 1958, Letters, 403)
The choice of “steed” Beare andTolkien are referring to is based upon this:
“The great shadow descended like a falling cloud. And behold! It was a winged creature: if bird, then greater than all other birds, and it was naked, and neither quill nor feather did it bear, and its vast pinions were as webs of hide between horned fingers; and it stank. A creature of an older world maybe it was, whose kind, lingering in forgotten mountains cold beneath the Moon, outstayed their day…” (The Return of the King, Book Five, Chapter 6, “The Battle of the Pelennor Fields”)
And one can see why a pterodactyl might be tempting—
(Alan Lee)
Those words in Tolkien’s text, “A creature of an older world maybe it was, whose kind, lingering in forgotten mountains cold beneath the Moon…” reminded me of a novel Tolkien may once have read, Conan Doyle’s The Lost World, 1912. In this novel, a group of adventurers gains access to just that: a secluded South American valley, in which various early creatures, including pterodactyls, are still living and, in fact, a young pterodactyl is even brought back to London. Neither Letters nor Carpenter’s biography mentions Conan Doyle or the novel, but the idea of the “older world” and the pterodactyl suggest, at least to me, that this is a book which JRRT had read. Here it is for you to read as well: https://gutenberg.org/cache/epub/139/pg139-images.html
And, for further evidence, perhaps this, from Chapter IX?
“Well, suddenly out of the darkness, out of the night, there swooped something with a swish like an aeroplane. The whole group of us were covered for an instant by a canopy of leathery wings, and I had a momentary vision of a long, snake-like neck, a fierce, red, greedy eye, and a great snapping beak, filled, to my amazement, with little, gleaming teeth. The next instant it was gone—and so was our dinner. A huge black shadow, twenty feet across, skimmed up into the air; for an instant the monster wings blotted out the stars, and then it vanished over the brow of the cliff above us.”
This beast derived, perhaps, from Conan Doyle, and/or from what Tolkien called the “new and fascinating semi-scientific mythology of the ‘Prehistoric’”, made me think about another of Tolkien’s creatures, which some have fancifully believed may have come from memories of dinosaurs,
something which had engaged his imagination from far childhood: dragons.
In his essay “On Fairy-Stories” he depicts this as a kind of early passion:
“I desired dragons with a profound desire. Of course, I in my timid body did not wish to have them in the neighborhood, intruding into my relatively safe world, in which it was, for instance, possible to read stories in peace of mind, free from fear. But the world that contained even the imagination of Fafnir was richer and more beautiful, at whatever cost of peril.” (“On Fairy-Stories” in The Monsters and the Critics, 1983, edited by Christopher Tolkien, 135).
Tolkien freely admitted, and more than once, the strong influence of Beowulf on his work and nowhere is this influence stronger, I would say, than in The Hobbit. And yet dragons in Beowulf are surprisingly disposable. The dragon which brings about Beowulf’s dramatic death is dumped over a cliff into the sea:
dracan éc scufun
wyrm ofer weallclif· léton wég niman,
flód fæðmian frætwa hyrde.
“The dragon, too, [that] wyrm they pushed over [the] cliff wall. They let [the] waves take away,
To grasp, [the] keeper of [the] treasure.” (Beowulf, 3132-33)
(My translation, with help from this excellent site: https://heorot.dk/beowulf-rede-text.html I’ve kept “wyrm” mostly because it works nicely with those other double-u words, wall, waves, away. )
And, earlier in the poem, we are told that the dragon which Sigemund kills “hát gemealt”—“has melted”, presumably from its own heat. (Beowulf, 897)
Smaug, however, is different.
(JRRT)
Not only does he talk, which Beowulf’s dragon does not, but, killed by Bard’s black arrow, he becomes a potential paleontological discovery:
“He would never again return to his golden bed, but was stretched cold as stone, twisted upon the floor of the shallows. There for ages his huge bones could be seen in calm weather amid the ruined piles of the old town.” (The Hobbit, Chapter 14, “Fire and Water”)
If Darwin had been puzzled about giant ground sloth remains, what might he have felt if he had discovered Smaug?
Thanks, as always, for reading.
Stay well,
As the proverb says, “Never laugh at live dragons”,
This posting will appear the day before Halloween, so, we’ll get into the spirit of the holiday (yes, pun intended),
with a story you might not know.
As a child, I most enjoyed and dreaded Halloween, the pleasure from thinking about what to dress up as—not to mention the candy—the dread because, yearly, there was the showing of this Disney animated feature—
In some ways, this was a Disney hybrid: the usual wonderful artwork (who could better create the sinister atmosphere of Ichabod Crane’s lonely ride through the increasingly spooky woods?)
but with a swinging, catchy score featuring the famous crooner (a kind of soulful singer from the 1940s—the animated feature dates from 1949), Bing Crosby, 1903-1977.
And the heart of the dread was the appearance of this character—
the Headless Horseman. (In case you don’t know the story, you can read it here, taken from Washington Irving’s, 1783-1859, The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent., most of which being published serially in 1819-1820 and first time in book form in the US in 1824.
I’m not going to add a spoiler here, but the protagonist, Ichabod Crane, pursued by what he believes to be the headless ghost of a “Hessian soldier”,
eventually disappears, all discovered of him being:
“the tracks of horses’ hoofs deeply
dented in the road, and evidently at furious
speed, were traced to the bridge, beyond
which, on the bank of a broad part of the
brook, where the water lay deep and black,
was found the hat of the unfortunate Ichabod,
and close beside it a shattered pumpkin.”
And this pumpkin brings us to another story, this one by Nathaniel Hawthorne, 1804-1864,
from his collection of short stories, Mosses from an Old Manse, first published in 1846.
This is “Feathertop”, originally published independently in 1852, and added to the collection for the second edition of 1854.
Hawthorne came from a very old Massachusetts Bay family (an ancestor, John Hathorne, had been involved in the opening stages of the Salem witchcraft trials in 1692) and the history of the Bay haunted him, producing short stories like “Young Goodman Brown” (1835), and the novels The Scarlet Letter (1850) and my particular favorite The House of the Seven Gables (1851).
“Feathertop” involves Mother Rigby, a pipe-smoking old witch,
(a relatively young witch, by Gabriel Metsu, 1629-1667, but, as you’ll see, the pipe is crucial)
who builds a scarecrow for her garden,
(by Carl Gustav Carus, 1789-1869)
including
“The most important item of all, probably, although it made so little show, was a certain broomstick, on which Mother Rigby had taken many an airy gallop at midnight, and which now served the scarecrow by way of a spinal column, or, as the unlearned phrase it, a backbone. One of its arms was a disabled flail which used to be wielded by Goodman Rigby, before his spouse worried him out of this troublesome world; the other, if I mistake not, was composed of the pudding stick and a broken rung of a chair, tied loosely together at the elbow. As for its legs, the right was a hoe handle, and the left an undistinguished and miscellaneous stick from the woodpile. Its lungs, stomach, and other affairs of that kind were nothing better than a meal bag stuffed with straw.”
Having constructed the body, she added
“…its head; and this was admirably supplied by a somewhat withered and shrivelled pumpkin, in which Mother Rigby cut two holes for the eyes and a slit for the mouth, leaving a bluish-colored knob in the middle to pass for a nose. It was really quite a respectable face.”
She dresses it in the remains of what were once fine clothes, including a rooster tail for his hat (hence his name), but, continuing to look at it, she says to herself:
” ‘That puppet yonder,’ thought Mother Rigby, still with her eyes fixed on the scarecrow, ‘is too good a piece of work to stand all summer in a corn-patch, frightening away the crows and blackbirds. He’s capable of better things. Why, I’ve danced with a worse one, when partners happened to be scarce, at our witch meetings in the forest! What if I should let him take his chance among the other men of straw and empty fellows who go bustling about the world?’ “
As you can see, this is quickly turning from a story of enchantment into a satire, as she animates the “puppet” (a word used in the 17th century to have, for witches, the meaning of something like a voodoo doll and used for the same purpose)
by getting it to puff on her pipe
before sending it out in the world to prey upon an enemy, Master Gookin, a wealthy merchant with a pretty daughter Mother Rigby wants him to woo.
Needless to say, in his enchanted form, and puffing on the magic pipe (he claims it’s for medicinal purposes), the scarecrow gains entry to Gookin’s house and even begins to romance the merchant’s daughter when, by chance,
“…”she cast a glance towards the full-length looking-glass in front of which they happened to be standing. It was one of the truest plates in the world and incapable of flattery. No sooner did the images therein reflected meet Polly’s eye than she shrieked, shrank from the stranger’s side, gazed at him for a moment in the wildest dismay, and sank insensible upon the floor. Feathertop likewise had looked towards the mirror, and there beheld, not the glittering mockery of his outside show, but a picture of the sordid patchwork of his real composition stripped of all witchcraft.”
The scarecrow, being reminded of what he really is, rushes back to his maker, smashes the pipe, and collapses into his component parts, leaving his creator to say to herself:
” ‘Poor Feathertop!’ she continued. ‘I could easily give him another chance and send him forth again tomorrow. But no; his feelings are too tender, his sensibilities too deep. He seems to have too much heart to bustle for his own advantage in such an empty and heartless world. Well! well! I’ll make a scarecrow of him after all. ‘Tis an innocent and useful vocation, and will suit my darling well; and, if each of his human brethren had as fit a one, ‘t would be the better for mankind; and as for this pipe of tobacco, I need it more than he.’ “
And perhaps that scarecrow eventually found himself in a much more heroic role, much later in time and as far away as Kansas—
As always, thanks for reading.
Stay well,
Happy Halloween,
And remember that, as always, there’s
MTCIDC
O
PS
Before pumpkins had come from the New World, the old world hollowed out turnips, like this one, putting a candle inside to light the dark world of the end of the old growing year.
In 1961, there was a television musical of Hawthorne’s story,
with music by Mary Rogers, who then went on to compose the music for Once Upon a Mattress, my favorite version of Andersen’s “The Princess and the Pea” (which, looking at the Danish, which is “Princessen Pa Aerten” should really be “The Princess On the Pea”). You can hear a catchy duet between the witch and her scarecrow creation, “A Gentleman of Breeding” here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GXONisleuSw
“ ‘I am sorry,’ said Frodo. ‘But I am frightened and I do not feel any pity for Gollum.’
‘You have not seen him,’ Gandalf broke in.
‘No, and I don’t want to,’ said Frodo. ‘I can’t understand you. Do you mean to say that you, and the Elves, have let him live on after all those horrible deeds? Now at any rate he is as bad as an Orc, and just an enemy. He deserves death.’
‘Deserves it! I daresay he does. Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgement.’” (The Fellowship of the Ring, Book One, Chapter Two, “The Shadow of the Past”)
(Alan Lee)
I’ve always thought that this was one of the most striking passages early in The Lord of the Rings. Gandalf has been telling Frodo about his meeting with Gollum, including the unwelcome thought that Sauron, who has found out from Gollum that the Ring wasn’t lost and, in fact, was in the hands of someone called “Baggins” and may even be aware that “Baggins” and “Shire” are linked. Frodo’s natural reaction is to panic and to blame Gollum, turning vindictive in his fear. In contrast, Gandalf, whose more humane reaction was probably a product of his Maia nature and his long experience of events and people in Middle-earth (having arrived there in TA 1000, 2000 years before the joint birthday party which sets The Lord of the Rings in motion—TA 3001—see Christopher Tolkien, Unfinished Tales, 405, “The Istari”), opposes Frodo’s sentence of death with one of compassion, so, when Frodo says, “What a pity that Bilbo did not stab that vile creature when he had a chance!” Gandalf replies, “Pity? It was Pity that stayed his hand. Pity, and Mercy: not to strike without need.”
I’ve also wondered where such a humane sentiment came from in Gandalf’s creator. His deep Christian faith must have played a part, but I think another element was his experience in 1916,
when, as he writes to his son, Michael:
“Bolted into the army: July 1915. I found the situation intolerable and married on March 22, 1916. May found me crossing the Channel…for the carnage of the Somme.” (from a letter to Michael Tolkien, 6-8 March, 1941, Letters, 73)
This was the beginning of Tolkien’s short experience of actual combat in what was called, at the time, The Great War—meaning “the Big War” in British English, as it was the biggest war in any contemporary’s experience and, without World War II, it obviously couldn’t be called “World War I”. At the same time, I think that JRRT’s time at the front, although really only measured in a few months (June to November, 1916—see Carpenter, Tolkien, 90-96 for details) might have made him find that other meaning of “great” ironic and I suspect that he would have agreed with Yoda’s reply to Luke’s “I’m looking for a great warrior.”—“Ahhh! A great warrior…Wars not make one great.” in Star Wars V . (You can read the script for this scene, pages 55-58, at: https://assets.scriptslug.com/live/pdf/scripts/star-wars-episode-v-the-empire-strikes-back-1980.pdf )
The new second lieutenant
belonged to one of the battalions (sub-units) of the Lancashire Fusiliers,
one of the oldest infantry regiments in the British Army (begun as “Peyton’s Regiment” in 1688—you can read more about it here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lancashire_Fusiliers ). It was only one of the many units designated to be part of what would become known as “The Somme”, a battle which lasted from 1 July to 18 November, 1916—and which would cost the British alone 57,470 casualties on the first day and a total of 415,690 by 18 November. (You can read a very detailed article about it here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Somme )
The battlefield was huge—
and Tolkien would have seen only a tiny portion of it, but what he saw should have terrified any sensible person.
We begin with the trench he would have crouched in, waiting for the order to attack (going “over the top”, which means climbing up over the forward lip of the trench).
In front of the trench was a long stretch of barbed wire, which had to be negotiated before any further forward motion was to be made.
Ahead lay the wilderness called “no man’s land”.
This varied, depending upon what had been there before the War, but, since it was often pounded by one side or the other’s artillery, whatever had been there before—farms, villages, forests—had been turned into a beaten-down desert of ruins.
Beyond there, lay the enemy’s wire entanglements.
And, beyond there were the enemy’s trenches—as many as three lines of them.
These could look like the trench Tolkien had crawled out of, but they could also be much more elaborate, with pillboxes made of concrete, reinforced with steel girders, and buried under a layer of soil both to conceal them and to help to protect them from the shells which the enemy would attempt to drop on them.
(This is the rear entry of a German pillbox.)
In those trenches would be multiple machine guns, placed to sweep the wire which lay before them.
Each of these guns could fire 600 rounds per minute, to which would be added the rifle fire of the infantry who were the trenches’ garrison.
(Peter Dennis)
Behind the trenches would be artillery, whose job was, when an attack began, to fire as many shells as possible into the enemy trenches and into no man’s land, to slow down, if not stop, the enemy attack, forcing the attackers back with heavy casualties.
Before the attack on 1 July, the British had used their heavy artillery
to destroy enemy entrenchments and, hopefully, to cut apart those deep fields of barbed wire in front of them.
Unfortunately, on 1 July, the artillery—even after a massive bombardment—failed to disrupt the wire and soldiers were simply pinned to it, perfect targets for machine gunners and the casualties mounted—and mounted
so that one can easily see why Tolkien would refer to his experience in 1916 as “the carnage of the Somme” with its British 57,470 casualties on its first day and 415,690 by its final one.
In later years, he might have a somewhat ambivalent view of what he had gone through, writing to his son Michael that
“War is a grim hard ugly business. But it is as good a master as Oxford, or better.” (letter to Michael Tolkien, 12 July, 1940, Letters, 61)
and yet could also write this about the end of the second war:
“The appalling destruction and misery of this war mount hourly, destruction of what should be (indeed is) the common wealth of Europe, and the world, if mankind were not so besotted, wealth the loss of which will affect us all, victors or not. Yet people gloat to hear of the endless lines, 40 miles long, of miserable refugees, women and children pouring West, dying on the way. There seem no bowels of mercy or compassion, no imagination, left in this dark diabolic hour.” (letter to Christopher Tolkien, 20 January, 1945, Letters, 160)
Having experienced one of the bloodiest periods in the Great War, it is no wonder, then, that JRRT could sound like Gandalf, speaking of mercy, on the one hand, and, on the other, like a changed Frodo near the end of his adventures:
“ ‘Fight?’ said Frodo. ‘Well, I suppose it may come to that. But remember: there is to be no slaying of hobbits, not even if they have gone over to the other side. Really gone over, I mean; not just obeying ruffians’ orders because they are frightened. No hobbit has ever killed another on purpose in the Shire, and it is not to begin now. And nobody is to be killed at all, if it can be helped. Keep your tempers and hold your hands to the last possible moment.’ “ (The Return of the King, Book Six, Chapter 8, “The Scouring of the Shire”)
As always, thanks for reading.
Stay well,
Consider what, had Bilbo done what Frodo wished, might have been Frodo’s fate—and Middle-earth’s,
I’ve just read an interesting piece of news: there’s going to be an opera based upon The Lord of the Rings (see: https://www.classicfm.com/music-news/lord-of-the-rings-opera-approved-tolkien-estate/ ). The composer is Paul Corfield Godfrey, 1950-, who had already composed a rather massive work on the Silmarillion, of which you can hear an excerpt here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q4HUnCx4dLI You can also hear “The Lament for Boromir” here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6nxvzZ98LS4 and “The Man in the Moon Came Down Too Soon” and “The Song of the Troll”, along with one or two others on YouTube as well. (There’s the proviso with these: you may be accused of being a bot, unless you know the secret password.)
For me, opera began with a cartoon.
As a child, I saw it, loved it (Bugs Bunny always being a favorite, along with Daffy Duck), and that’s where opera first appeared in my life.
In terms of real opera, it’s an odd little piece, having, at one level, a standard plot: Elmer Fudd pursues Bugs, as he had done many times before.
At another level, however, it’s a parody of grand opera, in which Elmer plays the Wagnerian hero, Siegfried, and Bugs, at a certain point in the story, turns himself into the Valkyrie, Brunnhilde.
And, for only the third time in their lives of pursuit and escape, Elmer actually succeeds in dealing with Bugs.
Although, in case you haven’t seen it, or forgot the plot and are worried, Bugs comes back from the dead long enough to say to the audience, “Well, what did you expect in an opera? A happy ending?” before subsiding again. (You can see it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6jDcWAWRRHo provided, of course, that you’re not a bot. You can also read a very interesting article about the making of the cartoon here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What%27s_Opera,_Doc%3F )
Peter Schickele, 1935-2024,
the creator of PDQ Bach, 1807-1742?,
whom he once described as “the youngest and oddest of Johann Sebastian’s 20-odd children”, in a memorable introduction to Baroque opera as exemplified in PDQ Bach’s, “Haensel and Gretel and Ted and Alice”, explained that there were, in the period, two kinds of opera, “opera seria”, which was concerned with tragedies and histories, and “opera funnia”—and you can guess where this would go.
Opera seria, however, was real and where opera began, with Jacopo Peri’s, 1561-1633,
Dafne, in 1598. This is based upon the ancient story of Daphne, who, pursued by Apollo, is turned into a laurel tree (you can read the most familiar version of the story, as told by Ovid in Book 1 of his Metamorphoses, here: https://www.theoi.com/Text/OvidMetamorphoses1.html at line 452 and following).
(by Gian Lorenzo Bernini, 1598-1680, dated to 1622-25)
The goal of this and subsequent works, both by Peri and others, was to attempt to revive what they understood Greek tragedy to have been like, with its dark mythological stories—truly opera seria! To Peri and his contemporaries, this meant not only solo songs and choruses, but that all of the dialogue would be sung, too, in what came to be called recitativo, and this convention continued into the 20th century.
There is another possibility, however, although not “opera funnia”. It’s a form known in German as “Singspiel” and in French as “Opera comique” and combines the solo songs and choruses of opera seria with spoken dialogue, rather than recitativo, in just the way contemporary musicals are really plays with music, where songs appear at important dramatic points in the story.
(Rodgers and Hammerstein’s “Oklahoma”, 1943)
In 1964, an English composer, Carey Blyton, 1932-2002, wrote to JRR Tolkien requesting his permission to create a “Hobbit overture”. Tolkien was clearly delighted and granted permission immediately, providing for us, as well, with this sidelight on himself and music:
“As an author I am honoured to hear that I have inspired a composer. I have long hoped to do so, and hope also that I might find the result intelligible to me, or feel that it was akin to my own inspiration…I have little musical knowledge. Though I come from a musical family, owing to defects of education and opportunity as an orphan, such music as was in me was submerged (until I married a musician), or was transformed into linguistic terms. Music gives me great pleasure and sometimes inspiration, but I remain in the position in reverse of one who likes to read or hear poetry but knows little of its technique or tradition, or of linguistic structure.” (from a letter to Carey Blyton, 16 August, 1964, Letters, 490. You can hear Blyton’s overture, composed in 1967 as Opus 52a, here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rybV4xDq_DM –that is, if you persist in insisting that you’re not a bot.)
The musician was, of course, his wife, Edith, and Tolkien’s interest in music was certainly developed enough that, in a trip to Italy in 1955 with his daughter, Priscilla, he reacted to a performance of Giuseppe Verdi’s Rigoletto, with the words “Perfectly astounding”. (from a letter to Christopher and Faith Tolkien, 15 August, 1955, Letters, 325)
I’ll be very curious to see what comes of this opera project, which claims to be retaining Tom Bombadil
(the Hildebrandts)
and the equally neglected Barrow-wight.
Under the Spell of the Barrow-wight, by Ted Nasmith
(Ted Nasmith)
If the selection I’ve heard from Godfrey’s Silmarillion provides us with an idea of his treatment of The Lord of the Rings, we will hear not only Tolkien’s poems, like “The Man in the Moon”, set to music, but the dialogue may also be done in recitativo, and I’ll be very curious to see how he manages this, as there’s so much of it—perhaps a narrator for continuity?
Thinking about this has set me wondering about how one might turn The Hobbit into an opera, dialogue aside. Tolkien has provided us with about 15 lyrics throughout:
Chapter 1, “An Unexpected Party”:
“Chip the glasses…” a chorus for the dwarves
“Far over the misty mountains cold…” a second chorus for the dwarves
“Far over the misty mountains cold…” a reprise of the first verse, sung by Thorin and overheard by Bilbo
Chapter 3, “A Short Rest”
“O! What are you doing…” a chorus for elves
Chapter 4, “Over Hill and Under Hill”
“Clap! Snap! the black crack!” a chorus for goblins
Chapter 5, “Riddles in the Dark”
Just a thought, but perhaps these riddles could all be sung, the glaring exception being Bilbo’s “What have I got in my pocket?”
Chapter 6, “Out of the Frying-Pan into the Fire”
“Fifteen birds in five fir-trees” another goblin chorus
“Burn, burn tree and fern” a goblin chorus—but possibly add in the howling of the wolves?
Chapter 7, “Queer Lodgings”
“The wind was on the withered heath” a chorus for dwarves
Chapter 8, “Flies and Spiders”
“Old fat spider”
“Lazy lob and crazy cob” two songs for Bilbo—the first time we’ve heard his voice
Chapter 9. “Barrels Out of Bond”
“Roll—roll—roll—roll”
“Down the swift dark stream you go” two choruses for the forest elves
Chapter 10, “A Warm Welcome”
“The King beneath the mountains” sung by the people of Lake-town
Chapter 15, “The Gathering of the Clouds”
“Under the Mountain dark and tall” a dwarf chorus
Chapter 19, “The Last Stage”
“The dragon is withered” a chorus for the elves of Rivendell
“Sing all ye joyful, now sing all together!” a second chorus for the elves
“Roads go ever ever on” a song for Bilbo and the last in the book
Reading through this list:
1. it’s easy to see that the majority of the lyrics are meant for a chorus of dwarves, goblins, Lake-town people, and assorted elves
2. the only solo numbers (excepting the riddles, if sung) are few in number and given to Bilbo
3. there are lyric gaps in the potential script: Chapters 11-14 and 16-18 have no songs at all
If you were the librettist, how would you fill not only those gaps, but provide for more solos—for Gandalf, Bilbo,Thorin, the Chief Goblin, Gollum, Beorn, Thranduil (the forest elf king), the Master of Lake-town, Bard, Smaug, Roac (the elderly raven), as well as perhaps small comic parts for the Sackville-Bagginses, and something for the stone trolls (a trio about eating might be appropriate) too? It’s also important to note the complete lack (except with the possible exception of the Lake-towners) of female voices in solos and choruses. How could that imbalance be readjusted—without seriously messing with Tolkien’s text (and we know from his correspondence with Forrest J. Ackerman on a potential film version of The Lord of the Rings that, although he conceded that a different art form might require some adjustment, he had his limits as to just what and how much might be altered—see “from a letter to Forrest J. Ackerman”, June, 1958, Letters, 389-397) Considering the story, it would seem that it would be a fitting subject for an opera seria, but there would be the danger—as there will be for Godfrey’s The Lord of the Rings—that, not maintaining the tone and making too many additions or changes to the text might quickly turn it into an opera—funnia.
Thanks for reading, as ever,
Stay well,
Beware of Godfrey’s “The Song of the Troll”—it’s catchy!
And remember that, as always, there’s
MTCIDC
O
PS
I’m not aware that Tolkien ever heard that “Hobbit overture”, but, in 1967, he collaborated with the composer, Donald Swann, 1923-1994, on a short cycle of his poems drawn from various sources, entitled The Road Goes Ever On.
Although the hero of Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island, 1883,
is the young narrator, Jim Hawkins, the other major character is a rascal, Long John Silver.
If you haven’t read the book, it’s a story about buried treasure (surprised?), a map,
and a voyage to find that treasure—with a crew the half of which are, unknown at first to the protagonists, (temporarily) retired pirates, led by the cook, Silver, of the pirate captain who buried the treasure, Flint.
It’s easy to see why Silver is the other major character: charming and cold-blooded by turns, he dominates those pirates and yet clearly has a soft spot in his heart for Jim Hawkins. At the book’s end, while the other pirates are defeated and killed or marooned on the island, we hear that:
“Silver was gone…But that was not all. The sea-cook had not gone empty-handed. He had cut through a bulkhead unobserved, and had removed one of the sacks of coin, worth, perhaps, three or four hundred guineas, to help him on his further wanderings.
I think we were all pleased to be so cheaply quit of him.”
The other protagonists, like Squire Trelawney and Doctor Livesey,
are sympathetic, but pale in comparison with Silver, one moment genial, the next, treacherous. (Treasure Island, Chapter XXXIV “And Last”)
There is a tradition of having, at worst, a sneaking affection for a villain which dates in English literature at least as far back as the Romantics, when the Satan of Milton’s Paradise Lost, 1667/1674, is seen as other than the destroyer of Paradise. Shelley, in his introduction to his Prometheus Unbound, 1820, almost casually refers to Satan as “the Hero of Paradise Lost” and Blake, in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, 1790-1793, says of Milton that
“The reason Milton wrote in fetters when he wrote of Angels and God, and at liberty when of Devils and Hell, is because he was a true poet, and of the Devil’s party without knowing it.” (“The Voice of the Devil” 3. “Energy is Eternal Delight”—But I hasten to point out that there has been an enormous amount of scholarly ink spilled over what Blake may actually have meant by this—for my purpose, however, we’ll leave it as a kind of “sympathy for the Devil”.)
Both of these Romantics found Satan more interesting than Adam and angels—in his adversarial relationship to Heaven, he’s simply more developed, and therefore not only more realistic, but, in his way, more dangerous—and tempting.
And this is why I have a soft spot for Orcs. It’s not that I admire their behavior, from murdering Boromir
(Inger Edelfeldt)
to murdering each other,
(Alan Lee—this is the pre-murder stage—very soon the archer will shoot an arrow into the other’s eye—see The Return of the King, Book Six, Chapter 2, “The Land of Shadow”)
but that Tolkien has brought them to life through his use of dialogue: these are real foot soldiers in a real war and vivid because of it, even if they’re villains.
In the draft of a letter from 1956, he had written:
“My ‘Sam Gamgee’ is indeed, as you say, a reflexion of the English Soldier, of the privates and batmen I knew in the 1914 war, and recognized as so far superior to myself.” (draft of a letter to H. Cotton Minchin, not dated, although JRRT noted that some version was sent 16 April, 1956, Letters, 358)
Although I would worry if Tolkien thought that the Orcs were superior to anyone, starting with himself, I would suggest that they are also modeled on the soldiers he knew in the Great War (note, by the way: “batmen” here means “officers’ servants” not Bruce Wayne and descendants).
Consider, in comparison, the dialogue of the two Gondorian soldiers, Mablung and Damrod, we overhear when they are keeping an eye on Frodo and Sam—it seems more like an ancient history lesson than the talk of men in the trenches:
“ ‘Aye, curse the Southrons!’ said Damrod. ‘ ‘Tis said that there were dealings of old between Gondor and the kingdoms of the Harad in the Far South; there was never friendship. In those days our bounds were away south beyond the mouths of Anduin, and Umbar, the nearest of their realms, acknowledged our sway.’ “ (The Two Towers,Book Three, Chapter 4, “Of Herbs and Stewed Rabbit”—I might add that “acknowledged our sway” sounds more like William Morris, 1834-1896, a strong influence on Tolkien, and one who revived archaic language in his writings, than the speech of ordinary infantry of any age.)
Now here are two Orcs, Grishnak and Ugluk, who sound more like Great War sergeants than historians:
“At that moment Pippin saw why some of the troop had been pointing eastward. From that direction there now came hoarse cries, and there was Grishnakh again, and at his back a couple of score of others like him: long-armed crook-legged Orcs. They had a red eye painted on their shields. Ugluk stepped forward to meet them.
‘So you’ve come back?’ he said. ‘Thought better of it, eh?’
‘I’ve returned to see that Orders are carried out and the prisoners safe,’ answered Grishnakh.
‘Indeed!’ said Ugluk. ‘Waste of effort. I’ll see that orders are carried out in my command. And what else did you come back for? Did you leave anything behind?’
‘I left a fool,’ snarled Grishnakh. ‘But there were some stout fellows with him that are too good to lose. I knew that you’d lead them into a mess. I’ve come to help them.’ “ (The Two Towers, Book Three, Chapter 3, “The Uruk-hai”)
And what about this bit of reminiscence and wary conversation between Gorbag and Shagrat:
“…What d’you say?—if we get a chance, you and me’ll slip off and set up somewhere on our own with a few trusty lads, somewhere where there’s good loot nice and handy, and no big bosses.’
‘Ah!’ said Shagrat. ‘Like old times!’
‘Yes,’ said Gorbag. ‘But don’t count on it. I’m not easy in my mind. As I said, the Big Bosses, ay,’ his voice sank almost to a whisper, ‘ay, even the Biggest, can make mistakes. Something nearly slipped, you say. I say, something has slipped. And we’ve got to look out. Always the poor Uruks to put slips right, and small thanks. But don’t forget: the enemies don’t love us any more than they love Him, and if they get topsides on Him, we’re done too…’ “ (The Two Towers, Book Four, Chapter 10, “The Choices of Master Samwise”)
You won’t love them, considering their behavior towards Merry and Pippin, Frodo and Sam, you’ll probably be glad that at least 3 out of 4 are killed (Shagrat, though wounded by Snaga, escapes to report to the Barad-dur—see The Return of the King, Book Six, Chapter 1, “The Tower of Cirith Ungol”), but, perhaps, like me, you might remember Tolkien’s description of the Orcs to Peter Hastings:
“…fundamentally a race of ‘rational incarnate’ creatures, though horribly corrupted, if no more so than many Men to be met today.” (draft of letter to Peter Hastings, September, 1954, Letters, 285)
and find that, like “many Men to be met today”—and even for fictional men, like Long John Silver—you can have, as JRRT seems to, a brief moment of sympathy for them in their corruption as well as admitting that they can often be a lot more engaging than their virtuous Gondorian and Rohirric opponents.
Thanks, as always, for reading.
Stay well,
Beware the temptation of the Dark Side, even if it makes you want to turn the page and read on,
When I think of whales, 3 come readily to mind from literature. The first is the creature who swallows Jonah (although it is described as piscem grandem, a “big fish” in Jerome’s translation, which a whale isn’t, although ancient people probably weren’t aware of the difference—the Greek version says ketos megas, “big sea monster”).
(This is from a mosaic found on the floor of a synagogue at Huqoq, in 2017. For more on the discovery, see: https://www.biblicalarchaeology.org/daily/news/huqoq-mosaics-jonah-and-the-whale-the-tower-of-babel/ I like this depiction because of its vaguely comic air—Jonah being swallowed by a fish which is being swallowed by a fish which is being swallowed by a fish, like something out of Finding Nemo.)
But the story begins in Nineveh, the capital of the Neo-Assyrian empire.
According to the story as translated by Jerome, Dominus (“the Lord”) was not pleased with the city, saying to Jonah that he should go there and inform the people that ascendit malitia eius coram me “its wickedness has come up into my presence”—and, knowing other instances of when something like this has happened, Nineveh is in for destruction unless—and that’s why Jonah is sent. Instead of obeying, however, Jonah skips town, hops on a ship, and suddenly (are we surprised?) there’s a tremendous storm, as well as dialogue between the ship’s captain, the crew, and Jonah, who admits that he’s the reason and that, if they want calm weather, they need to throw him overboard. The sailors are decent folk, and, at first, refuse, but, Jonah prevailing, over he goes and meets that piscis grandis.
(An ambo—a lectern from which readings are delivered—this one dates c.1130AD and is found in the church of Saint Pantaleone in Ravello, Italy)
By repenting, he’s saved, goes to Nineveh, warns the people and they, and even the king, change their ways, and there’s a happy ending—although the ending of the book itself seems rather abrupt and the book in general has been the center of scholarly discussion for centuries. If you’d like to read Jerome’s Latin translation, which is my go-to for the Bible in general, see: https://vulgate.org/ot/jonah_1.htm For more about Jonah, see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonah although this article needs a little editing. On the Book of Jonah see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_of_Jonah It’s interesting that, in Western sailor’s lore, a “Jonah” is a person on board a ship who brings misfortune. There’s a horrible example of this in Peter Weir’s outstanding film, Master and Commander, 2003, if you like first-rate adventure films—highly recommended!)
I suspect that my first whale and its occupant were well known to the author of my second story, “Carlo Collodi” (real name: Carlo Lorenzini, 1826-1890),
who originally published his serial of the burattino (“puppet”) who could talk and move on his own in a children’s magazine, Il Giornale dei Bambini (“Children’s Magazine”) in 1881. (The Wiki article needs to be corrected here, saying that it was first published in Il Corriere dei Piccoli–something like “The Little Ones’ Messenger”—which was not founded till 1908. For an article about the Giornale, see: https://www.academia.edu/7325693/Ferdinando_Martini_e_la_direzione_del_Giornale_per_i_Bambini_in_alcuni_documenti_inediti_1881_1889_ )
It is always one of the great pleasures of researching and writing this blog that I’m always taught something new and, in the case of that original short story of Pinocchio, it was a little shocking. As someone who first met Pinocchio, Collodi’s creation, in a later revival of Disney’s 1940 Pinocchio,
I’d always imagined that, once more united with his creator, Geppetto, Pinocchio would become a real boy and live happily ever after. In that serial, however, two tricksters, a cat and a fox, in the disguise of “assassins” attempting to steal money from Pinocchio, hang him, and that, apparently, was where the serial ended—until the publishers wanted the story to continue and so Pinocchio was rescued by an agent of his patron, the Blue Haired Fairy, and the story went on—to (more or less—lots more complications than in the film) the ending which I had always known: Pinocchio is eventually rewarded by becoming that real boy. (For a rather grim essay on the original form of the story, see: https://slate.com/culture/2011/10/carlo-collodi-s-pinocchio-why-is-the-original-pinocchio-subjected-to-such-sadistic-treatment.html )
Collodi published the extended work in 1883
and, in its later chapters we see that Jonah motif appear again, when Pinocchio’s creator, Geppetto, seeking the lost Pinocchio at sea, is swallowed—along with his ship—by what the Italian text calls a pesce-cane, but which an early translator called a “dogfish”, although pescecane means “shark” in modern Italian (a “dogfish” is a gatttucio). Pinocchio rescues Geppetto
Again, as in the Jonah story, what I’ve always imagined as a whale (and so do Disney’s animators)
it seems to be everything but a cetacean (and, if you didn’t know that technical word for kinds of sea mammals, you can go back to the beginning of this posting and see where it comes from in Jonah’s swallower being called, in Greek, ketos megas),
but my third is very definitely a whale, although he only swallows a selection of his relentless pursuer (reminds me, of course, of Captain Hook, from Peter Pan, where the Crocodile there has swallowed one of Hook’s hands and now wants the rest).
It’s also a story, which, although I’ve read it twice, I can only point to, suggesting that, if you haven’t read it, you might try it, as, like War and Peace, it has the undeserved reputation of being a book more likely to be mentioned than actually read and as, over the years, War and Peace has become a favorite, a book which, every so often, I find that I just have to reread, I would say the same for this long, complex work.
(If you’d like to try War and Peace, I would recommend seeing this BBC production first. It encapsulates many of the longer story’s elements, and, as you’d expect from the BBC, it’s beautifully acted, and it’s visually beautifully realized.)
But my final whale is one of the principal characters (although spoken of, kept offstage till late in the book) of Herman Melville’s, 1851 novel.
It’s such a crazy mixture of archaic language, image, description, drama, philosophical/theological discussion that you might find it a bit like Finnegans Wake—an interesting idea, but difficult to digest (but definitely easier to follow—although, if you should try Moby Dick, I would recommend this to help you to visualize it—it may be a coloring book, but it’s extremely well detailed and drawn.)
Its whale and his pursuer, Captain Ahab, have been analyzed in every way possible—see this to read much more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moby-Dick –and the critical library is now enormous, but I would say that, for all that it covers, in its chapters, everything you’d ever want to know about whales and whaling, among other things, at base, it’s a book about a mad obsessive, a man so fixed upon revenge that he’s willing to sacrifice everything to gain it, including his own life, strangled by his own harpoon line and dragged into the sea to follow the whale upon whom he’s sworn vengeance.
But this seems like such a grim ending that I’ll add this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AkjTGCrLvAU It’s Kirk Douglas, as harpooner Ned Land, in Disney’s 1954 Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea,
singing “I’ve a Whale of a Tale”. This is a great adaptation of Jules Verne’s original, with an impressive Victorian submarine, the Nautilus. (Those thousands of leagues don’t mean deep, by the way, but long, as it describes the ranging ability of Captain Nemo’s ship.)
As always, thanks for reading.
Stay well,
Imagine not hunting whales, but chatting with them,
“The hallway smelt of boiled cabbage and old rag mats. At
one end of it a coloured poster, too large for indoor display,
had been tacked to the wall. It depicted simply an enor-
mous face, more than a metre wide: the face of a man of
about forty-five, with a heavy black moustache and rugged-
ly handsome features. Winston made for the stairs. It was no
use trying the lift. Even at the best of times it was seldom
working, and at present the electric current was cut
off during daylight hours. It was part of the economy drive
in preparation for Hate Week. The flat was seven flights up,
and Winston, who was thirty-nine and had a varicose ulcer
above his right ankle, went slowly, resting several times on
the way. On each landing, opposite the lift-shaft, the poster
with the enormous face gazed from the wall. It was one of
those pictures which are so contrived that the eyes follow
you about when you move. BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING
YOU, the caption beneath it ran.” (George Orwell, 1984, Part One, Chapter 1)
This is the second paragraph in the first chapter of “George Orwell”’s (aka Eric Blair, 1903-1950) 1948 dystopian novel, 1984. It’s an extremely thoughtful, well-written book, but its view of the future seems so hopeless and grim that it’s not easy to read—you can do it here, however: https://archive.org/details/GeorgeOrwells1984
I’ve been interested in that poster.
The first film made from the book, in 1956, doesn’t appear to have believed the kind of image of “Big Brother” which Orwell described—
nor does the second film, from, appropriately enough, 1984—
The first is lacking that mustache (and looks more like a man in a staring contest) and the second to me appears to be the image of someone earnestly trying to sell us something. I wonder if what Orwell (who loathed Stalinist Russian and who used it as a model for his future Britain) actually had in mind was something like this—
combined with this—
(the British Field Marshall and Secretary of State for War, H.H. Kitchener, 1850-1916, on probably the most influential recruiting poster of the Great War/WW1)
The stare—a kind of commanding gaze—is clearly very important. As Orwell tells us: “It was one of those pictures which are so contrived that the eyes follow you about when you move”, which made me immediately think about Sauron as he appears in The Lord of the Rings—or, rather, doesn’t appear in actual physical form, but is only represented by what Frodo sees in Galadriel’s Mirror:
“But suddenly the Mirror went altogether dark, as dark as if a hole had opened in the world of sight, and Frodo looked into emptiness. In the black abyss there appeared a single Eye that slowly grew, until it filled nearly all the Mirror. So terrible was it that Frodo stood rooted, unable to cry out or to withdraw his gaze. The Eye was rimmed with fire, but was itself glazed, yellow as a cat’s, watchful and intent, and the black slit of its pupil opened on a pit, a window into nothing.”
(an actual yellow cat’s eye)
This is powerful enough, but then—
“Then the Eye began to rove, searching this way and that; and Frodo knew with certainty and horror that among the many things that it sought he himself was one.” (The Fellowship of the Ring, Book Two, Chapter 7, “The Mirror of Galadriel”)
When, much later in the story, Pippin makes the mistake of looking into Saruman’s Palantir, he discovers just how powerful that gaze can be:
“ ‘I, I took the ball and looked at it…and I saw things that frightened me. And I wanted to go away, but I couldn’t. And then he came and questioned me; and he looked at me, and, and, that is all I remember…Then suddenly he seemed to see me, and he laughed at me. It was cruel. It was like being stabbed with knives…Then he gloated over me. I felt I was falling to pieces…’ “ (The Two Towers, Book Three, Chapter 11, “The Palantir”)
Just like the eyes of Big Brother, and of Field Marshall Kitchener, then, Sauron’s eye radiates authority and sends the same signal: “Sauron is watching YOU”, which is why it appears even on the equipment of Sauron’s orcs—who would dare to flinch or fail when Sauron may actually be watching you personally?
(Angus McBride)
It is the badge, then, of never-sleeping watchfulness.
We know, from the narrator, that Saruman had plans to imitate Sauron—although he was deceived into thinking that he was doing so:
“A strong place and wonderful was Isengard, and long had it been beautiful…But Saruman had slowly shaped it to his shifting purposes, and made it better, as he thought, being deceived—for all those arts and subtle devices, for which he forsook his former wisdom, and which fondly he imagined were his own, came from Mordor; so that what he made was naught, only a little copy, a child’s model or a slave’s flattery, of that vast fortress, armoury, prison, furnace of great power, Barad-dur, the Dark Tower, which suffered no rival, and laughed at flattery, biding its time, secure in its pride and its immeasurable strength.” (The Two Towers, Book Three, Chapter 8, “The Road to Isengard”)
If the all-seeing, ever-watchful Eye was Sauron’s badge, it’s interesting to see what Saruman chose:
“Suddenly a tall pillar loomed before them. It was black; and set upon it was a great stone, carved and painted in the likeness of a long White Hand.”
We first meet this sign when Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli are looking through the Orc dead after Boromir’s death:
“There were four goblin-soldiers of greater stature, swart, slant-eyed, with thick legs and large hands. They were armed with short broad-bladed swords, not with the curved scimitars usual with Orcs; and they had bows of yew, in length and shape like the bows of Men Upon their shields they bore a strange device: a small white hand in the centre of a black field; on the front of their iron helms was set an S-rune, wrought of some white metal.” (The Two Towers, Book Three, Chapter 1, “The Departure of Boromir”)
(Inger Edelfeldt)
I don’t believe we ever see that “S-rune” again,
but the White Hand, along with the Eye, will appear as the Orcs carry Merry and Pippin off to the west.
(Denis Gordeev)
But what does it signify? Saruman, as he has become unknowingly corrupted by Sauron, has become “Saruman of Many Colours”, as he explains to Gandalf (see the dialogue between them in The Fellowship of the Ring, Book Two, Chapter 2, “The Council of Elrond”), but he began as Saruman the White, and that might explain the color of the hand. On that pillar outside Isengard, the hand, then, might indicate a warning: “Stop. This is the Land of Saruman. Go Back.”, as we imagine the two figures of the Argonath might be indicating by their gesture—
(the Hildebrandts)
This might work for a boundary pillar, but what about those shields? Can we add a second meaning?
Ugluk the captain of the Isengard Orcs might offer a very grim one:
“We are the servants of Saruman the Wise, the White Hand: the Hand that gives us man’s flesh to eat.” (The Two Towers, Book Three, Chapter 3, “The Uruk-hai”)
Could this then be another warning: “If you face us, not only will we defeat you, but then we’ll eat you”?
Perhaps a clue to this possibility may be found in a closer examination of that pillar:
“Now Gandalf rode to the great pillar of the Hand, and passed it; and as he did so the Riders saw to their wonder that the Hand appeared no longer white. It was stained as with dried blood; and looking closer they perceived that its nails were red.” (The Two Towers, Book Three, Chapter 8, “The Road to Isengard”)
It’s just as well, then, for Pippin when:
“An Orc stooped over him, and flung him some bread and a strip of raw dried flesh…”
that
“He ate the stale grey bread hungrily, but not the meat.”
Thanks, for reading, as ever.
Stay well,
Sometimes it may be good to be a picky eater,
And remember that, as always, there’s
MTCIDC
PS
While poking around for white hand images, I found this:
doubtfulsea 