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Tag Archives: Africa

Legionnaire, But No Disease

28 Wednesday Mar 2018

Posted by Ollamh in Films and Music, Heroes, Military History

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Tags

Africa, Alexandre Dumas, Algeria, Beau Geste, Beau Hunks, Camels, Chasseurs d'Afrique, Film, Flying Deuces, Follow that Camel, French Conquest of Algeria, French Foreign Legion, Garde Suisse, Genoese, Laurel and Hardy, Legions, Louisa de Ramee, military, Ouida, P.C. Wren, Sahara, The Last Remake of Beau Geste, The Three Musketeers, Under Two Flags, uniforms, Zouaves

As always, dear readers, welcome!

Although we do a lot of Tolkien, we set up this blog for adventure in general and, in this posting, we’ve gone to a completely different world—as you’ll see.

When we think of the Sahara, we immediately see:

a. a satellite map, which shows us just how huge it is

image1sahara.jpg

b. and camels—although they aren’t native, they’ve been there a long time, having been introduced from Arabia perhaps about 300Ad

image2camel.jpg

c. and, of course, desert warriors

image3desertwarrior.jpg

d. and, also, of course, their opponents, the French Foreign Legion

image4ffl.jpeg

e. or, with a bit of a trim—and in color—

image5fflcolor.jpg

The Foreign Legion were hardly the first foreigners in the service of France.  Medieval French kings had used Genoese crossbowmen.

image6genoesecrossbowmen.jpg

And the later kings of France had, as part of their household guards, the Garde Suisse.

image7gardesuisse.jpg

The Foreign Legion was raised in 1831 and used, at first, during the French conquest of Algeria.

image8firstuniform.jpg

image9frinvasionalgeria.jpg

As Algeria was exotic, so were the soldiers there, beginning with the dashing Zouaves, originally locals, but gradually mostly French.

image10zouave.jpg

Along with these were the Chasseurs d’Afrique,

image11chass.jpg

who formed the background for what we think is the first North African adventure novel in English, Ouida (Louisa de Ramee)’s Under Two Flags (1867)

image12louisa.jpg

image13book.jpg

which became a film twice, in 1922

image14nineteentwentytwo.jpg

And in 1936.

image15nineteenthirtysix.jpg

Oddly, the Chasseurs d’Afrique of the novel were replaced, in the 1936 film by the Foreign Legion—perhaps because the script writers thought that the Foreign Legion would have been a more familiar unit to their audience?

If so, it may have been because of P.C. Wren’s 1924 novel, Beau Geste,

image16bg1924.jpg

which has appeared a number of times on the screen, initially in silent form in 1926,

image17bg1926.jpg

and again as a “talkie” in 1939

image18bg1939.jpg

and again in full color in 1966.

image19bg1966.jpg

The book—and the film’s—popularity—the story was all about noble sacrifice—and exotic desert adventure—did not escape satire.  As early as 1931, two of our favorite early film comedy stars, Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy,

image20laurelandhardy.jpg

appeared in their longest short (37 minutes—but it which sounds like a contradiction in terms), Beau Hunks.

image21hunks.jpg

This title is based upon what appears to be a double ethnic slur, Bo- from “Bohemian” + Hunk- from “Hungarian”, so a disparaging reference to a central European—a lower class one, at that.  (It makes us thankful that it appears to have disappeared entirely as a slang term:  in our current world, we don’t need any more ethnic attacks—we have plenty already.)

This was remade in 1939 as Flying Deuces.

image22flying.jpg

This wasn’t the end of such cheerful assaults, however.  In 1967, there was Follow That Camel (from the British comedy series “Carry On…)

image23follow.jpeg

and, appropriately, in 1977, came The Last Remake of Beau Geste.

image24lastremake.jpg

All the same, we still love the old movie, with its last-ditch defense of Fort Zinderneuf,

image25ftz.jpg

where, borrowing from Dumas’ The Three Musketeers,

image26three.jpg

image27dumas.jpg

in desperation, the defenders prop up dead legionnaires to make their numbers appear greater than they are.

How could people with a passion for adventure not find that appealing?

Thanks, as ever, for reading

and, as always,

MTCIDC

CD

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sugar and Oliphaunts

08 Wednesday Nov 2017

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

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Africa, Bag End, Bodleian Library, Boromir, Chanson de Roland, creative misreading, Elephants, Greenway, Harad, horn, Mumakil, Oliphaunt, Oliphaunts, Savanna, sugar cane, sugar loaf, Sunlands, Swanfleet, Swertings, Tharbad, Tolkien, tropical, Umbar, war-horn

Welcome, dear readers, as always.

In our last posting, through a piece of “creative misreading” we saw a hat on Bilbo’s hallway table as a sugar loaf

image2sugarloaf

and, before you knew it, we were thinking about where the sugar behind the cakes, seed cakes, and tarts in his pantry came from.

Sugar cane is a tropical plant

image3sugarcanefield

so, logically, we began to consider where, on the Middle-earth maps we have, tropical might be.

image4memap

In our world, that would be south, of course, and, looking as far south as we can go, we reach Harad, a name which actually means “south” in Sindarin.  It consists of two big regions, Near Harad and Far Harad.

As far as we can find, JRRT has left us no detailed geographic information about this region.  On page 413 of The War of the Ring, we are given the clue that, when the Corsairs of Umbar are driven back,

“all the enemy that were not slain or drowned were gone flying over the [?borders] into the desert that lies north of Harad.”

This would suggest that at least Near (as in “near to Gondor”, as we presume that our cartographers were Gondorians) Harad might be imagined as being like our world’s North Africa—

image5northafrica

with some fertile coastline, backed by the Sahara.  And we can’t resist including this view of the Sahara from space here.

image6saharafromspace

And, just as in our world, the whole south can’t be desert, since people from Harad are associated with elephants—or “oliphaunts”, as Sam says:

“But I’ve heard tales of the big folk down away in the Sunlands.  Swertings we call ‘em in our tales; and they ride on oliphaunts backs and all, and the oliphaunts throw rocks and trees at one another.” (The Two Towers, Book Four, Chapter 3, “The Black Gate is Closed”)

The Mûmak of Harad, by Ted Nasmith

This would suggest more fertile land south of the northern desert, a savanna, or region of great, grassy plains.  Such an area forms one of two habitats for elephants in our Africa.

image8savanna

South of the African savanna lies the rain forest—the other African elephant habitat.

image9rainforestelephants

Sugar cane, a little research tells us, can grow in savanna lands

image10caneinsavanna

as well as in rain forest (which, in our world, is being destroyed to provide more space for growing it—here’s a LINK about that).  Thus, we imagine that this must be the point of origin for Bilbo’s sugar.  From its growing and processing point (for something about those things in our world, please see the previous posting), it might then be shipped to the city of Umbar and from there to Gondor.

As to how it reaches Bilbo, well, we know that there must have been some trade up and down the old North-South Road/Greenway, as Saruman has a supply of pipe-weed from the South Farthing, with “the Hornblower brandmarks on the barrels” (The Two Towers, Book Three, Chapter 9, “Flotsam and Jetsam”), which takes us as far as Isengard.  From Gondor to Isengard?  Packhorse up the Greenway to Bree?  Butterbur tells Frodo & Co that “”There’s a party that came up the Greenway from down South last night” (Fellowship of the Ring, Book One, Chapter 9, “At the Sign of the Prancing Pony”)—though he then says that “that was strange enough to begin with”.

As we said in our last, this is all based upon a “creative misreading”, so we admit that there are some gaps here and there–just as there is a gap in the North-South Road at the Swanfleet, where the great bridge at Tharbad is down, but that’s what we get with such a “creative misreading” of a hat!

Thanks, as ever, for reading.

MTCIDC

CD

PS

But another thought—not based upon a “misreading”, but rather upon The Lord of the Rings, so, at the posting’s end we can have at least something a little less speculative.

There is another medieval spelling of “oliphaunt”—“Olifant/oliphant”, with its own specific meaning:  a horn made from an elephant’s tusk, like this one, which is just over a thousand years old and is in the treasury of York Minster.

KIPPA MATTHEWS - COPYRIGHT NOTICE

image12york

 

This is a drinking horn, but such horns could also be used for signaling, the most famous being that of Roland, the hero of the later-11th-century Old French epic poem, the Chanson de Roland. Here is a page from the oldest known ms, now in the Bodleian Library at Oxford.

image13chanson

(Here are links to two translations in English, one in prose, one in verse.)  If you don’t know the poem, its main action is a rear guard defense of a pass by a group of Carolingian soldiers commanded by Roland.  He has an olifant and can use it to call for help, but refuses to do so until the last moment because, in his view, asking for reinforcements would be cowardly.  As a consequence, the Carolingians, including Roland, do not survive the battle, as Roland blows the horn only at the last moment (and blows it so hard that he bursts his brains in the process—there would be those who might argue that someone who sacrifices his troops on a point of honor doesn’t have much in the way of brains to begin with!).

image14roland

Warriors and horn-blowing immediately make us think of Boromir.

Tolkien, Nasmith, painting, illustration, Lord of the Rings, Silmarillion, Hobbit, Middle-earth

His horn is just called a “war-horn” (The Fellowship of the Ring, Book Two, Chapter 3, “The Ring Goes South”), with no further description, but, as medieval horns in our world can be made of elephant tusk, why mightn’t Boromir’s be made of the equivalent, mumak tusk?

image16oliphant

 

 

 

 

 

 

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