• About

doubtfulsea

~ adventure fantasy

Tag Archives: Elves

Water Which?

12 Wednesday Jun 2019

Posted by Ollamh in Artists and Illustrators, Fairy Tales and Myths, Heroes, Literary History, Narrative Methods, Poetry, Theatre and Performance

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Alaric Hall, Alberich, Antonin Dvorak, Apollonius, Argonautica, Arthur Rackham, Elves, ETA Hoffmann, Friedrich de la Motte Fouque, Hans Christian Andersen, Heinemann, Heracles, Hylas, Jason and the Golden Fleece, John William Waterhouse, Judy Collins, mermaids, naiads, Nemean Lion, Old English Poems, Rhine Maidens, Richard Wagner, Rusalka, selkies, silkies, sirens, swan-maidens, The Great Silkie of Sul Skerry, The Little Mermaid, Tommy Makem, Undine, waeteraelfadl, Water Elf Sickness

Welcome, as ever, dear readers.

Just today, our English friend, Michael, sent us an interesting CD set, “Old English Poems, Prose & Lessons”.  We turned the jewel box over and our eye was immediately caught by #12 of the listings on the back, “Charm Against Waterelf Sickness”.

In Old English, “waterelf sickness” is a compound which can be read two ways:  “waeteraelf-adl” (“water-elf sickness”) or “waeter-aelfadl” (something like “watery elf-sickness”).  Alaric Hall, in his extremely informative dissertation, “The Meaning of Elf, and Elves, in Medieval England” (2005), 116, leans towards the second possibility, but, with our western classical background, we immediately imagined a “water elf” and, from there, we thought of naiads—female water spirits–in fresh water, like streams and pools.  (If you would like a comprehensive listing of all the subvarieties of such spirits, here’s a LINK to an article on the subject.)

Probably the most famous story about such creatures appears in Apollonius of Rhodes’ 3rd-c. BC, Argonautica, the story of Jason’s quest for the Golden Fleece.

image1gf.jpg

Two of Jason’s crew on the Argo are Heracles (seen here dealing with the Nemean Lion)

image2herc

and his companion, Hylas (seen here about to get into trouble).

image3hy.jpg

Ancient travel in the Mediterranean often meant coasting, with frequent stops for water, and, in Apollonius’ story, Hylas had gone ashore and found a pool, but was ambushed by a group of naiads, who pulled him under.

image4water.jpg

(This is John William Waterhouse’s famous 1896 painting of the scene.)

We meet woman waterfolk in much of western folk tradition—and this is excluding those on salt water, including mermaids,

image6merm.jpg

selkies/silkies (who are shape-changers, between seals and humans),

image7selkie.jpg

and even sirens.

image5sirens.jpg

For fresh water, we had those naiads, but also swan-maidens, often enchanted into water bird forms.

image8swanmaidens.jpg

(Here’s a LINK to a whole little collection of stories about such creatures.)

As well, we have the Rhine Maidens,

image9rhine.jpg

who, in Wagner’s “Ring” cycle, guard the Rhine gold, deep under the river, but who lose it to the craftsman dwarf, Alberich, with whom they flirted—with evil consequences.

image10alb.jpg

We mentioned mermaids as salt water creatures and, in Hans Christian Andersen’s (1805-1875)

image11dulac.jpg

“The Little Mermaid” (1837), we have the story of the mermaid who falls in love with a handsome prince and trades her voice for human form.

image11hca.jpg

image12ms.jpg

(This is the first page of Andersen’s original manuscript.)

There had been an earlier Romantic version of the water spirit and the human (in this case, a knight) in Friedrich de la Motte Fouque’s (1777-1843) novella, Undine (1811).

image13fred.jpg

image14undine.jpg

This, in turn, became an early Romantic opera, Undine (1816), the text by the author, the music by another famous Romantic author, E.T.A. Hoffmann (1776-1822).

image15etah.jpg

image16oveerture.jpg

The theme which runs through all of these meetings of water spirit and human is the uneasy relationship which seems the only possibility for them, virtually always leading to unhappiness, and this is true of our last water spirit, Rusalka, the subject of an opera, Rusalka, (1901) by the Czech composer, Antonin Dvorak (1841-1904)

image17ad.jpg

Like Andersen’s Little Mermaid, the water spirit (“rusalka” can mean “water spirit” in Czech) falls in love with a prince, trading her immortality for human love.

image18orig.jpg

(This is an image of the original Rusalka, Ruzena Maturova.)

If we said “leading to unhappiness” is the usual conclusion to such romances, Rusalka is even worse.  When she is betrayed by the prince, Rusalka becomes a water demon, luring people to their deaths in her pool—a far cry from the happy ending of the Disney movie!

image19lm.jpg

So, what about our charm against waeteraelfadl?  Here’s a translation:

“If a man is in the water elf disease [waeter aelfadle], then the nails of his hand are dark and the eyes teary, and he will look down. Give him this as medicine [laecedome]: everthroat, hassock, the lower part of fane, yewberry, lupin, helenium, marshmallow head, fen mint, dill, lily, attorlathe, pulegium, marrubium, dock, elder, fel terre, wormwood, strawberry leaves, consolde. Soak with ale; add holy water to it. Sing this gealdor over it thrice:

I have bound on the wounds the best of war bandages, so the wounds neither burn nor burst, nor go further, nor spread, nor jump, nor the wounds increase [waco sian?], nor sores deepen. But may he himself keep in a healthy way [halewaege?]. May it not ache you more than it aches earth in ear [eare?].

Sing this many times, “May earth bear on you with all her might and main.” These galdor a man may sing over a wound.”

(translation from Karen Louise Jolly, Popular Religion in Late Saxon England: Elf Charms in Context (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996)

Unfortunately, this looks more like a cure for a skin disease than for an ill-fated affair between water spirit and human!

Thanks, as always, for reading and, also as always,

MTCIDC

CD

ps

You can find Alaric Hall’s dissertation (now a book) at:  http://www.alarichall.org.uk/phd.php.

pps

Child Ballad 113, “The Great Silkie of Sul Skerry” is about the male version of such a creature.  For a haunting performance of this, with a modern tune, sung by Judy Collins (with Tommy Makem on pennywhistle), here’s a LINK.

ppps

The most famous aria from Dvorak’s opera is a song sung to the moon by Rusalka, “Měsíčku na nebi hlubokém“, and we find it one of the most beautiful arias we know.  Here’s a LINK so that you can hear it, too.

pppps (we think that this is a record, even for us)

In 1909, the publisher Heinemann released a translation of de la Motte Fouque’s Undine with illustrations by Arthur Rackham.  Here’s a LINK so that you can download it and add it to your library.

image20rack.jpg

Orcked

22 Wednesday Nov 2017

Posted by Ollamh in Economics in Middle-earth, Imaginary History, J.R.R. Tolkien, Literary History, Narrative Methods

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Arthur Rackham, Bosch, Brueghel, counterfeit, creation, Elves, Ents, Fangorn, Goblins, John Bauer, mockery, Orcs, Saruman, Sauron, The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien, Treebeard, trolls, US Treasury Department, Weimar Republic

Welcome, dear readers, as always.

In our last, we discussed less familiar characters in The Lord of the Rings, the Corsairs of Umbar, and what we imagine they could look like.

In this posting, we want to look at much more familiar characters, Orcs—but from the viewpoint of Fangorn.

image1treebeard.jpg

He says of them:

“Maybe you have heard of Trolls?  They are mighty strong.  But Trolls are only counterfeits, made by the Enemy in the Great Darkness, in mockery of Ents, as Orcs were of Elves.”  (The Two Towers, Book Three, Chapter 4, “Treebeard”)

We’ve always been a bit puzzled by this.  “Counterfeit” makes us think, immediately, of counterfeit money.  Here are a pair of US 10-dollar bills:  can you tell the counterfeit (from Old French via a Latin compound, contra, “against” + facere, “make/do”—in Medieval Latin a contrafactio is a thing put against another, something in contrast, thus “imitation”)?

image2hamiltons.jpg

To be a successful counterfeit, normally, it’s necessary that the imitation be as close to the original as possible, as in the case of these two tens.  The US Treasury Department goes to a lot of time and expense to make counterfeiting as difficult as possible

image3anticounterfeit

but, if a counterfeiter is successful, he stands to make (in two senses) a lot of money.  He can also cause a great deal of financial damage, breeding distrust in a government’s ability to coin money and to stand behind it.  The more counterfeit money in the system, the more money the government has to back, which, in time, could lead to what is called hyperinflation and can bring a currency to collapse.  When a government does this itself it can cause havoc with a country’s economy, as happened in the Weimar Republic in 1921-1924.  At that time, for complex reasons having to do with paying off the German Empire’s war debts, the government began producing too much paper money and too rapidly.  This caused the money to lose value very quickly, rendering it almost worthless.

image4weimarmoney

It’s no wonder that the penalty for counterfeiting was usually the most severe possible.

image5tyburn

Treebeard’s use of the word “counterfeit”, then, would suggest that what Sauron was doing was trying to make nearly-exact copies of something, either Ents or Elves, in his creation of Trolls and Orcs.  So what do we find when we first see a description of Orcs?

“There were four goblin-soldiers of greater stature, swart, slant-eyed, with thick legs and large hands.”

(The Two Towers, Book Three, Chapter 1, “The Departure of Boromir”)

That’s not much to go on:

  1. “greater stature” would suggest that most Orcs were short
  2. “swart” means “dark-complexioned” (a term Sam uses to describe men from Harad, whom he calls “Swertings”—The Two Towers, Book Four, Chapter 3, “The Black Gate is Closed”)
  3. “slant-eyed”—for contemporary people this is a tricky term, even a racial slur, but JRRT probably meant no more than that these Orcs had epicanthic folds to their eyelids, which is not uncommon among many of the world’s peoples.

image6epicanth

  1. “with thick legs and large hands” suggests very stocky builds—like the “Trolls turned to stone” in JRRT’s illustration of the scene in The Hobbit.

image7stonetrolls

This is a start, but will our next view help?  Pippin and Merry are the prisoners of the Orcs and Pippin is listening to a quarrel between those of Saruman and those of Sauron:

“In the twilight he saw a large black Orc, probably Ugluk, standing facing Grishnakh, a short crook-legged creature, very broad and with long arms that hung almost to the ground.” (The Two Towers, Book Three, Chapter 3. “The Uruk-hai”)

Counterfeit Elves?  Of course we know—also from Fangorn—that perhaps Saruman was up to something more, as Fangorn says of him:

“He has taken up with foul folk, with the Orcs.  Brm, hoom!  Worse than that:  he has been doing something to them; something dangerous.  For these Isengarders are more like wicked Men.  It is a mark of evil things that came in the Great Darkness that they cannot abide the Sun; but Saruman’s Orcs can endure it, even if they hate it.  I wonder what he has done?  Are they Men he has ruined, or has he blended the races of Orcs and Men?  That would be a black evil!” (The Two Towers, Book Three, Chapter 4, “Treebeard”)

This might account for the size of the Uruk-hai, as well as for their ability to endure daylight, but what about the crook-leggedness and “long arms that hung almost to the ground”?

Perhaps here we should remember the end of Fangorn’s description:  “…in mockery of Ents, as Orcs were of Elves.”

Hmm.  Trolls certainly don’t look much like Ents—

image8.jpg

image9leetreebeard.jpg

Is this the “mockery”?  It’s certainly not counterfeiting in the usual sense!

Should we understand the same for Orcs vs Elves?  Here are illustrations of Galadriel and Legolas (both by the Hildebrandts):

image10galadriel.jpg

image11legolas.jpg

Set those against any modern artist’s view of Orcs and, again, it’s not counterfeiting, in the strictest sense, so we suppose that we have to assume “mockery”—but with the added assumption that Sauron had a very twisted sense of humor.  (There’s also that nasty half-suggestion of Fangorn’s that, since Saruman’s Orcs are behaving more like men, Saruman has been performing genetic experiments, something even Fangorn doesn’t want to think about.)

image12mcbride.gif

image13lee.jpg

image14howe.jpg

Looking at all of these illustrations, by the way, we were struck by where we’d seen creatures like this before.  Could it be in the works of those strange Flemish/Dutch painters like Brueghel and Bosch?

image15bosch.jpg

Or Arthur Rackham?

image16rackham.jpg

Or the early 20th-century Swedish painter, John Bauer, who, in his depiction of forests was an influence upon JRRT?

image17bauer.jpg

And, more recently, considering P. Jackson’s Orcs,

image18orcs.png

image19orcs.jpg

their skin color and general look:  is there a suggestion here of the so-called “Bog People” (about whom we wrote a posting some time ago)—a whole series of bodies, at least one dating from the 4th century bc

image20tollundman.jpg

who have been discovered buried in peat bogs (a great preservative) in northern Europe?

image21peatbog.jpg

And, in their color and oozy look–not to mention that they seem to move in scuttly groups–is there something cockroachy about them?

image22cockroaches.jpg

But, just as there is a place Fangorn doesn’t want to go, it’s true for us as well!

Thanks, as ever, for reading.

MTCIDC

CD

PS

You probably spotted this (we have very intelligent readers), but it’s the top 10-dollar bill which is the counterfeit.

PPS

It has also occurred to us that JRRT more than once discussed the fact that Sauron, as a lesser deity-figure, could never originate, only copy and “subcreate”—perhaps suggesting another reason for making “mockeries”:  his anger at his inability to do original work?

Dancing with the Elves

09 Wednesday Aug 2017

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

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

19th Century, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Anglo-Saxon, Arthur Rackham, Beren and Luthien, dance, Dicky Doyle, Elbereth Gilthoniel, elf ring, Elves, Fairy, fairy ring, Fairy Tale, Folklore, In Fairyland, Kenneth Grahame, Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens, Song, The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien, Victorian, William Shakespeare

Dear readers,

Welcome, as always.

In The Lord of the Rings, Elves are powerful, human-like figures– immortal, skilled, and revered as counselors. In Tolkien’s work, however, they have not always been this way– early drafts suggest a sort of Victorian confusion, as if Tolkien’s elves have ancestral ties to both the tall, beautiful elves of the Anglo-Saxons, and to the jovial, delicate elves and fay of the mid- to late- 19th century.

In the beginning of June this year, Christopher Tolkien published an edited version of his father JRRT’s story, “Beren and Luthien”, which was originally published as a part of The Silmarillion, a history of the Elves.

beren-e-luthien-alan-lee.jpg

Within this book are previously unpublished earlier drafts and versions of the story, and in the introduction to them, Christopher Tolkien comments upon them: Beren was originally a gnome (which he was quick to explain meant an immortal figure– not what we would find in gardens),

il_fullxfull.1076091410_mapj.jpg

and then an elf, before his final incarnation as a mortal man. Luthien, the immortal Elven princess, is referred to by Tevildo, Prince of Cats, as “Princess of Fairies”. After being ordered to dance before him by the dark lord Melkor, Luthien began

“Such a dance as neither she nor any other sprite or fay or elf danced every before or has done since… magically beautiful as only Tinuviel ever was… and Ainu Melko for all his power and majesty succumbed to the magic of that Elf-maid, and indeed even the eyelids of Lorien had grown heavy had he been there to see” (76).

BL-back.jpg

What we found curious here was JRRT’s uses of “Elf” and “Fairy” as seemingly synonymous with each other, when, depending on to which story an Elf or Fairy belongs, they may be quite different. Being people who spend a good deal of time in the Victorian world, when we think of dancing fairies, what is more likely to come to mind are the tiny winged figures who appear in Kenneth Grahame’s Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens (1906), with illustrations by Arthur Rackham.

fairy_tiff.jpg

20245801 Fairies never say we feel happy....jpg

We might also be reminded of the little people who inhabit Dicky Doyle’s In Fairyland (1869)

7c11afdbc1cc79ed7cf88e64e80b8528--richard-doyle-conan.jpg

115cbac12c146d78a0f2753bfae597b9--antique-books-old-books.jpg

What we see in the Victorian sense of fairies and elves in images and stories is a revival of Elizabethan fairy-stories, which focus on little people: much like the fairies of William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, for example, the fairies in Kensington are light-footed, winged beings who wear flowing garments, and they fancy calling themselves “dancey” rather than “happy”.

Dicky Doyle’s In Fairyland finds Elves in the “Elf World” to be the same sort of creatures. The picture below gives us an idea of the jovial nature of Victorian Elves, and is captioned, “The little Elves would cross over the border, and come into the King’s fields and gardens.”:

356d133220f9a2875cd80f0ad16cab6c.jpg

 

J.R.R. Tolkien was born in 1896, at the end of the Victorian period. It would be understood if the Victorian sense was residual in his work– after all, he was a child when Arthur Rackham’s illustrations met the height of their popularity, at the beginning of the 20th century, and he mentions in his letters having seen them.

In his Middle-earth, however, we see a very different kind of Elf.  Tolkien describes how he imagined them in a letter to Naomi Richardson on 25 April 1954:

” ‘Elves’ is a translation, not perhaps now very suitable, but originally good enough, of Quendi. They are represented as a race similar in appearance (and more so further back) to Men, and in former days of the same stature… [they] are in fact in these histories very little akin to the Elves and Fairies of Europe; and if I were pressed to rationalize, I should say that they represent really Men with greatly enhanced aethetic and creative features, greater beauty and longer life, and nobility…” (Letters, 176).

Below are a few artists’ renditions of what these Elves might look like, and they’re very different from the imaginations of Arthur Rackham and Dicky Doyle.

61954a630522d2bbce39220223dc89ef.jpg

galadriel-hildebrant.jpg

aab7b11adf539086efc6762490bc7417.jpg

ted nasmith_the complete guide to middle-earth_departure at the grey havens.jpg

tumblr_n2gwteLx4b1tnpw9xo1_500.jpg

And some images from Peter Jackson’s films, as well:

Haldir_w_elves.jpg

Gli-Galad_y_Elrond.jpg

When JRRT refers to “the former days”, we can assume that he means two things:

  1. The former days of Middle-earth, such as in The Silmarillion
  2. The former days of our world–specifically, Anglo-Saxon Elves, which resemble the Elves of Middle-earth in their stature and beauty. Thus, the “former days” refer to a former rendition of Elves– one which, belonging to the Anglo-Saxons, would be familiar to JRRT.

(Attached here is a very useful book on this subject by Alaric Hall, which provides an in-depth look at pre-Elizabethan and pre-Victorian Elves.)

These Elves are almost the polar opposite of the Elfin and Fay creatures of the Victorians, and we found it curious that they would have anything in common. As demonstrated by Rackham’s “dancey” fairies and Luthien in Beren and Luthien, however, we found one thing: a love for song and dance.

While looking through Jack Zipes’ collected anthology of Victorian Fairy Tales, The Revolt of Fairies and Elves, we came across an example of this in “Charlie Among the Elves”, in which the protagonist, a young boy who finds himself, by some sort of magic or dream, in the world of fairies and elves. The elves invite him in and greet him with a song:

“…they struck up a melody which Charlie thought was the very sweetest music which he had ever heard in the whole course of his life, and thus ran the song of the Elves:

In the waning summer light

Which the hearts of mortals love

’Tis the hour for elfin sprite

Through the flow’ry mead to rove.

 

Mortal eyes the spot may scan,

Yet our forms they ne’er descry;

Though so near the haunts of man,

Merrily our trade we ply.”

In some folklore, there is also the danger of dance. Fairy rings, also called elf rings, are supernatural places created by the dancing of either fairies, elves, or witches. They have been considered hazardous by much of Western folklore to those outside of the fairy world; in these stories, mortals who have stepped inside have been cursed, trapped, or simply disappear.

fairy-ring.jpg

Plucked-from-the-Fairy-Circle.jpg

Rackham-Come-Now-a-Roundal-L.jpg

Charlie was lucky that he had come across benevolent creatures, and this reminded us of another instance when an adventurer was greeted by Elves through song: in The Hobbit, which is where Tolkien first introduced Elves, before he later understood them. Before The Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion, Bilbo, Thorin, and Company are greeted by Elf-song in Rivendell:

” ‘Hmmm! it smells like elves!’ thought Bilbo, and he looked up at the stars. They were burning bright and blue. Just then there came a burst of song like laughter in the trees:

‘O! What are you doing,

And where are you going?

Your ponies need shoeing!

The river is flowing!

O! tra-la-la-lally,

here down in the valley!’ ”

As the Elves in both “Charlie Among the Elves” and The Hobbit are jovial and playful in their music, we might think that Tolkien had not completely abandoned the Victorian Elfin world, after all; of course, in The Lord of the Rings and in The Silmarillion, the Elves, just as much as the stories, take a more serious turn. Playful tunes are replaced with much more serious poetry, and in their native tongue, such as the Hymn to Elbereth Gilthoniel:

“A Elbereth Gilthoniel
Silivren penna miriel
A menel aglar elennath
Na chaered palandiriel.
O Galadhremmin ennorath
Fanuilos, le linnathon
Nef aer, si nef aeron!
A Elbereth Gilthoniel!
We still remember,
We who dwell
In the lands beneath the trees
Thy starlight on the western seas.”

pl_elbereth.jpg

When trying to reconcile these sorts of Elves and Fairies, rather than assessing them through their physical and behavioral qualities, we may look at them through something just as important in understanding them: music. The Silmarillion explains that the Elves, as well as the world and everything in it, including good and evil, originated from song.

But just as Elven music changes from The Hobbit to The Lord of the Rings, so the Elves have changed– they are human-sized, but also perhaps more serious and melancholy, as a parallel to the world Tolkien had created, which was much more complex than he originally realized.

The songs in The Lord of the Rings, and the later versions of Luthien, which present her as an Elf princess– a beautiful being which Beren falls in love with as soon as he sees her dance– express that melancholy. As the tale of Beren and Luthien reflects the way Tolkien wishes us to see Elven folklore– romantic, adventurous, and, ultimately, sorrowful– perhaps we can conclude that JRRT’s Elves are really fairies grown up.

And what do you think, dear readers?

MTCIDC,

CD

One More River (2)

28 Wednesday Dec 2016

Posted by Ollamh in Heroes, Imaginary History, J.R.R. Tolkien, Literary History, Maps, Military History of Middle-earth, Narrative Methods

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Amon Hen, Anduin, Bilbo, Blondin, Bombur, Boromir, Brandywine, bridges, Bruinen, Bucklebury Ferry, Celebrant, Dwarves, Elrond, Elves, Enchanted river, Esgaroth, Fangorn, ferry, flight to the ford, Frodo, Gandalf, Gondorians, Hoarwell, Hobbiton, Isen, Khazad-dum, Niagara Falls, Nimrodel, Old Forest, Old Man Willow, Orcs, Prince Valiant, Rivendell, Rivers, Rohirrim, Sam, Tharbad, The Hobbit, The Long Lake, The Lord of the Rings, Theodred, Tolkien, Tom Bombadil, Weathertop, Withywindle, Wraiths

Welcome, dear readers, as always. In our last post, we had turned our attention to water-crossings in The Hobbit. In this, we want to continue our study with The Lord of the Rings.

We were first prompted to look at such crossings by something Boromir said, almost in passing:

“Four hundred leagues I reckoned it, and it took me many months, for I lost my horse at Tharbad, at the fording of the Greyflood.” (The Fellowship of the Ring, Book 2, Chapter 8, “Farewell to Lorien”)

Tharbad had once been famous for its elaborate defenses and bridge, but, symbolic of so much of Middle-earth at the end of the Third Age, it had fallen into decay and was abandoned, the water of the Gwathlo, the Greyflood, spreading wide—an easy place to lose a horse—or a man.

And perhaps Boromir’s loss is also symbolic of the higher level of stress involved in crossing water in the later work. The most Bilbo and the dwarves had to deal with was a water of forgetfulness, whose effect wore off in a relatively short time. There is much worse to come.

The first crossing (after The Water in Hobbiton)

1hobbiton.jpg

has danger attached, but it’s a danger which pursues the hobbits at the Bucklebury ferry. Here, pursued by one—or more—wraiths,

2wraithatferry.jpg

they cross over by what is a kind of do-it-yourself ferry, where the ferry runs on a cable, which keeps it available and on course, while the passengers pole to add propulsion.

3cableferry.jpg

4ferry.jpg

There is a puzzle at their next crossing—because the hobbits don’t appear to have crossed at all! This is the River Withywindle, on whose bank the hobbits meet up with Old Man Willow (not as in the film, where he’s been pulled violently out of context and replanted, for no good reason we can see, in Fangorn’s forest).

5oldmanwillow.jpg

Until we began to study water-crossings, we had never really thought about what happens then. The hobbits come to the river, having become lost in the Old Forest. Pippin and Merry are swallowed by the tree. Tom Bombadil comes to the rescue: but how do they cross the Withywindle? We just couldn’t remember! So we went back to the text, saw Tom lead the four hobbits through the forest, where they almost lose him, then they hear: “Hop along, my little friends, up the Withywindle!” (The Fellowship of the Ring, Book 1, Chapter 6, “The Old Forest”)

And so they never actually ford across or are ferried across. Instead, they walk up its course to Tom’s house, which seems to be near the source.

6withywindlemap.jpg

The next crossing is many miles away—over the Barrow Downs, through Bree, past Weathertop, to the Last Bridge, over the Hoarwell. Although Aragorn is anxious that the Wraiths will have gotten there before them, they pass safely and keep moving southwards, towards Rivendell, until, near the ford over the Bruinen, the Nazgul catch up with them at last.

7bruinen.jpg

There is a bridge, of course, at Khazad-Dum, although, as far as we can tell, there is no water even in the depths far below it.

8khazaddum.jpg

Escaping from Moria, the Fellowship reaches two streams in a row and, as far as we know, none of the prominent illustrators has given us pictures, either of the tributary Nimrodel or the main river, the Celebrant, so we provide a rather generic picture to offer a rather general idea.

9nimrodel.jpg

10nimrodel.jpg

The Nimrodel is shallow enough to wade across, but the Celebrant is wider and deeper and the Elves provide a rather iffy method of transport: a single line of rope to balance on, making us imagine something like the famous Blondin crossing Niagara Falls in 1859—well, a little!

11blondin.jpg

The next crossing is almost inadvertent, or, at least happens sooner than expected: the Fellowship has been paddling down the Anduin, but, putting in at Amon Hen, things go disastrously wrong. Boromir tries to take the Ring, the orcs appear, Boromir is mortally wounded, and Merry and Pippin are carried off (in our edition—the 50th Anniversary, One Volume Edition—this takes all of 12 pages—quite a narrative feat for JRRT!), before Frodo (and Sam) cross the river to the east and story begins its major split.

12samandfrodo.jpg

[We might insert here, although, in The Lord of the Rings, it’s only a footnote that at the crossing of the Isen, during this time, Theodred, son of Theoden, is killed.]

12aTTTIsenFord2.jpg

After this, there is only one more crossing of any significance, but it’s not by the main characters: rather, it’s by the orcs, who use boats to assault and capture west Osgiliath, which is the subject of one of our earlier postings.

13orcsosgiliath.png

To which we would add the return crossing, days later, of the Forlorn Hope of Gondor and Rohan, on their way to challenge Sauron (and to distract him from Frodo and Sam).

14marchonmordor.jpg

To finish up this posting, we provide a chart below (clearly now one of a series, after the earlier one on doorways and passages) of the water-crossings found in the two books.

Crossing Characters Outcome Source
Tharbad Boromir Loses horse The Lord of the Rings
The Water Bilbo Joins Dwarves The Hobbit
 An unnamed river Bilbo, Dwarves, and Gandalf Lose baggage The Hobbit
Rivendell Bilbo Dwarves, and Gandalf Helped by Elves The Hobbit
Anduin Bilbo, Dwarves, and Gandalf Transported by eagles The Hobbit
Enchanted River Bilbo and Dwarves Bombur drugged The Hobbit
Underground river Bilbo and Dwarves Using barrels, Bilbo and Dwarves escape The Hobbit
The Long Lake Bilbo and Dwarves Gain help from Esgaroth The Hobbit
The Brandywine (Bucklebury Ferry) Frodo, Sam, Merry, Pippin Escape Wraith The Lord of the Rings
Withywindle Frodo, Sam, Merry, Pippin Reach Tom Bombadil’s house (never actually cross river) The Lord of the Rings
The Bruinen Frodo and Wraiths Elrond causes river surge, Nazgul driven off The Lord of the Rings
Khazad-Dum Balrog and Gandalf Gandalf defeats Balrog, but falls down with him The Lord of the Rings
Nimrodel/

Celebrant

Fellowship and Elves Fellowship brought into Lorien The Lord of the Rings
Anduin Frodo and Sam Set out on journey to the east The Lord of the Rings
Isen Rohirrim and Orcs Rohirrim driven back, Theodred, son of Theoden, killed The Lord of the Rings
Anduin Gondorians vs Orcs Gondorians driven back from West Ogsiliath The Lord of the Rings

 

This is our last posting for the year 2016 and we close the year with thanks to all who follow our blog or simply stop in for a visit. In 2017, we plan to continue our Tolkien travels, sometimes employing the Sortes Tolkienses, as well as to use Tolkien’s world to visit others, beginning with a posting on “Famous Bridge Battles”, from Boromir and Faramir jumping off one to escape the orcs, to Napoleon at Arcola, and beyond. Here’s a taste…

15princeval.jpg

We also plan to explore other worlds and perhaps to add a review section for books and films we think you might enjoy.

In the meantime, thanks, as ever, for reading. Happy New Year!

MTCIDC

CD

ps

What sad and surprising news! Princess Leia is no more– but no– Princess Leia will always be with us, just like the Force.

_87060782_starwarsap3

To the Elves for Counsel

07 Wednesday Dec 2016

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

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

advised by elves, Aelfraed, Aethelwulf, Alaric Hall, Alfred, Alfred of Wessex, Alfred the Great, Anglo-Saxon, Aragorn, Boudicca, council, Counseling the Scippigraed, Danish invaders, Elder Days, Elves, Elves in Anglo-Saxon England, Frodo, Galadriel, Gildor Inglorion, Grey Havens, Hamo Thornycroft, Hobbits, Mirror of Galadriel, Morgul Knife, Shire, statue, T. A. Shippey, The Council of Elrond, The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien, Tolkien in the New Century, Tom Shippey, With Faerstice

Welcome, dear readers, as ever. In this posting, our attention was caught by the first paragraph of an article in Tolkien in the New Century: Essays in Honor of Tom Shippey (McFarland, 2014). The article, entitled, “Counseling the Scippigraed: How T.A. Shippey Taught Us to Read”, by John R. Holmes, begins:

“The Christening of Alfred Aetheling of Wessex in 849 may have played a role in his greatness. Alfred’s father, Aethelwulf, had wanted to establish his own name-prefix, Aethel, which means (more or less) “noble,” as the sign of the royal line: he gave it to his first four sons and a daughter. By the time his sixth child came along, however—his fifth son—there didn’t seem to be any point in giving him the Aethel- prefix, since there seemed to be no reasonable chance this infant could ever become king. But wishing the lad wisdom and happiness, Aethelwulf named him Aelfraed, “advised by elves.” While we have no historical proof that Alfred actually received counsel from elves, there is no evidence to the contrary, and the boy certainly prospered as if he had. Alfred, Elf-counsel, not only outlasted four older brothers to become king, but also would be the only English monarch known to history as “The Great”. “ (11)

Alfred, king of Wessex from 871-899, was perhaps the most distinguished ruler of pre-Norman England. Against heavy odds, he eventually stabilized Wessex against a powerful wave of Danish invaders

vikings.jpg

and even forced the second Danish leader both into a treaty and into conversion to Christianity. As well, he was active in promoting Anglo-Saxon intellectuality and the rise of a vernacular literature.

Statue_d'Alfred_le_Grand_à_Winchester.jpg

(this statue, from 1901, by the way, was done by Hamo Thornycroft, the son of the man who did the famous Boudicca plus chariot statue on the Thames embankment—erected 1902, but created much earlier–)

boadicea1.jpg

For us, however, what was interesting was none of this, but rather the idea that it might be possible for someone in the 9th century AD to have the kind of contact with elves we see in The Lord of the Rings.

mirrorofgaladriel.jpg

We have always imagined Elves as belonging to the Elder Days and that, eventually, like Elrond and Galadriel, they had all traveled to the Grey Havens and taken ship for the West.

TN-Departure_at_the_Grey_Havens.jpg

Suppose, however, we said to ourselves, that, as JRRT suggests about hobbits, Elves continued to exist, even down into actual historical times:

“Hobbits are an unobtrusive but very ancient people, more numerous formerly than they are today…They do not and did not understand or like machines more complicated that a forge-bellows, a water-mill, or a hand-loom, though they were skillful with tools. Even in ancient days they were, as a rule, shy of ‘the Big Folk’, as they call us, and now they avoid us with dismay and are becoming hard to find. (The Lord of the Rings, “Prologue”)

Of elves, the actual Anglo-Saxon people of the period don’t appear to have much good to say, in fact. The 11th-century recipe, called the With Faerstice (“Against a Stabbing Pain”), suggests that elves were dangerous and, should they attack you, it required serious medical treatment, including what looks like a magic spell, to cure you of the wound, which was made by something which reminded us of the tip of the Morgul Knife broken off in Frodo’s wound.

morgulknife.jpg

Even in Middle-earth, Elves aren’t considered to be the most direct of people, however, as Frodo quotes:

“ And it is also said…’Go not to the Elves for counsel, for they will say both no and yes.’ “

And yet, in this scene, from The Fellowship of the Ring, Book 1, Chapter 3, “Three is Company”, in which Frodo, Sam, and Pippin fall into the company of Elves,

Alan_Lee_-_Gildor_and_the_Hobbits.jpg

their leader, Gildor Inglorion, does offer advice and the way he frames it might provide us with a model for how Alfred could have been counseled.

To begin, we might picture the elves as being unimaginably older than the Anglo-Saxons, and, with that age, having a longer view of things. As Gildor says to Frodo, when Frodo says, “I knew that danger lay ahead, of course; but I did not expect to meet it in our own Shire.”:

“But it is not your own Shire…Others dwelt here before hobbits were; and others will dwell here again when hobbits are no more. The wide world is all about you: you can fence yourselves in, but you cannot for ever fence it out.”

Great age, then, can lend great perspective. When you’ve lived as long as the Elves, you have seen much more of change within time, and what concerns them might be very different from what engages humans, as Gildor tells Frodo:

“The Elves have their own labours and their own sorrows, and they are little concerned with the ways of hobbits, or of any other creatures upon earth. Our paths cross theirs seldom, by chance or purpose.”

So what would be the kind of raed (“advice/counsel”) which the elves would have given Alfred? we asked ourselves. It’s easy to imagine his approach: often, particularly in the early years of his kingship, Alfred was faced with defeat. The Danes were numerous, powerful, and unscrupulous, once even killing hostages after swearing to a peace agreement. His question might then have been: how can I beat the Danes and regain my kingdom?

The elves would have been cautious, of course. Gildor says:

“Elves seldom give unguarded advice, for advice is a dangerous gift, even from the wise to the wise, and all courses may run ill.”

This is spoken by someone who has many centuries of experience behind him, as would an elf advising Alfred. Time and its changes had clearly taught the Elves both caution and patience and we imagine that those two elements would have been the basis of a reply—and, in fact, it appears to have been Alfred’s method, as we learn from the first biography, by Bishop Asser, a contemporary, who was asked by Alfred to join his court. Rather than seek victory in one climactic battle, had that been possible, Alfred attacked the problem from multiple angles, doing things which not only contributed to the Danish defeat (and to the defeat of a subsequent invasion), but also strengthened the kingdom in general, changing and improving the tax and military systems, building the first English navy, as well as producing a law code and encouraging education in Anglo-Saxon. This method brought peace and stability to Wessex (much of southern England), but did so over the period of twenty years or more, suggesting to us that the counsel of elves had surely been at work.

When we picture the scene of Alfred receiving the elves’ advice, we think of this Hildebrandt painting of Galadriel and Aragorn.

gift.jpg

And perhaps those elves said the same thing to Alfred which Galadriel said to Frodo before her mirror:

“ ‘Do you advise me to look?’ asked Frodo.

‘No,’ she said, ‘I do not counsel you one way or the other. I am not a counsellor. You may learn something, and whether what you see be fair or evil, that may be profitable, and yet it may not. Seeing is both good and perilous. Yet I think, Frodo, that you have courage and wisdom enough for the venture, or I would not have brought you here. Do as you will!’ “ ( The Fellowship of the Ring, Book 2, Chapter 7, “The Mirror of Galadriel”)

In Alfred’s case, he would have been brave and wise enough, and therefore has come down to us both as “Alfred the Great” and as “Alfred Elf-counsel”.

as_silver_penny_alfred.jpg

Thanks, as always, for reading.

MTCIDC

CD

PS

If you are interested in knowing more about Anglo-Saxon attitudes about elves, we very much recommend Alaric Hall’s Elves in Anglo-Saxon England which is, miraculously, available for free on-line.

 

Fairy Tale to Bill of Sale

19 Wednesday Aug 2015

Posted by Ollamh in Economics in Middle-earth, Fairy Tales and Myths, J.R.R. Tolkien

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Alice in Wonderland, Baggins, Bilbo, Contract, Dragon, Dwarves, Economics, Elves, Fairy Tale, Fantasy, Goblins, Hoard, Laketown, Middle-earth, Mirkwood, Odysseus, On Fairy Stories, Smaug, The Hobbit, The Odyssey, Tolkien

Dear Readers,

Welcome, as always!

Recently, when we discussed the economics of Middle-earth, Tolkien told us that he was not entirely ignorant about such matters, saying “…the situations are so devised that economic likelihood is there and could be worked out”. LT, 296

So that’s what we’ve set out to do in this posting, working out something of those economics in a modest way.

The Hobbit, as everyone knows, began as a story for his children, set in a fairytale world of elves, goblins, dwarves, and a dragon—the sorts of things which, in Tolkien’s essay “On Fairy Stories”, are derived from fantasy, which is “a natural human activity. It certainly does not destroy or even insult Reason,” but enhances it, lest fantasy become mere “Morbid Delusion” (which, later in the essay, Tolkien links with a work like Alice in Wonderland).

But something begins to happen, even early on, when Bilbo signs a contract before setting out for his adventure—an odd start for a fairytale hero who, traditionally, has to prove himself.  The story proceeds for some time in fairy tale mode, but then, when the party loses everything in Mirkwood, it’s necessary for Bilbo and Company to resupply and here the story moves seriously from a fairytale world to capitalism, as the fairy tale quest evolves into a commercial venture.

To replace lost materiel, the company turns to the people of Laketown,

Laketown

who provide it–and clearly do so on speculation, since the Dwarves have nothing to offer but promises.

The fairytale then seems to resume.  The party reaches the mountain, gets in, the dragon wakes–but then things go very wrong, at least for the investors, as Smaug, easily putting together that two and two equal Laketown, sets off to destroy it and is destroyed himself, in the process.  And then the fairy tale comes apart completely in a potential war over economic resources and compensation for damage caused during the investment:  Laketowners versus Dwarves, which escalates when Elves stake a claim and then Dwarves come to reenforce Dwarves and then, just to keep things in flux, a goblin army arrives. One almost wonders whether the Eagles, when they arrived, have invested in Laketown bonds and are expecting to cash them in, with interest!

When all of this is resolved, we might think that we’ve returned to the fairy tale world once more:  Bilbo, with his share of the hoard, sets off for home, where happily ever after lies–or does it?

OdysseusSuitors

In The Odyssey, Odysseus comes home to find his house in the hands of suitors, and must deal with them with the help of a goddess—very much a folktale. Bilbo comes home to find that his house and goods have just been auctioned off, and has to retrieve his happy ending by buying back his own things. That initial contract seems to have haunted the story, even to this moment.

Fantasy for Tolkien was, “founded on the harsh recognition that things are so in the world as they appear under the sun”—one of those things was economics, something which Bilbo may have found almost as unavoidable as a vengeful dragon.

What do you think, dear readers?

As always, thank you for reading,

MTCIDC,

CD

Ringed In

05 Wednesday Aug 2015

Posted by Ollamh in J.R.R. Tolkien

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Anglo-Saxon, Bilbo, Deagol, Dwarves, Elves, Faramir, Frodo, Gandalf, Gollum, Gondor, Isildur, Kenning, Lorien, Men, Nazgul, Ring, Ring-bearer, Roman senator, Romans, Sam, Sauron, Silmaril, The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien, Tom Bombadil

Dear Readers, as always, welcome!

permcol5tn

Everyone at all interested in the works of Tolkien knows this passage (and many could recite it by heart, we’re sure):

“Three Rings for the Elven-kings under the sky,

     Seven for the Dwarf-lords in their halls of stone,

Nine for Mortal Men doomed to die,

     One for the Dark Lord on his dark throne

In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie.

     One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them,

     One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them

In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie.” LoTR 50.

But why a ring? Since the Ring is about power, why not something which looks like power:

a sword, for example

ferb__s_magic_sword_by_kicsterash-d4clz45

or a crown

WingedAphroditeCrown_front

or even, considering Tolkien’s own mythology, a silmaril.

Beren_silmaril

In The Hobbit of 1937, the Ring was originally simply a magic ring right out of folk and fairy tales, with apparently one gift, invisibility, for which Gollum treasures it.

Alan%20Lee%20-%20The%20Hobbit%20-%2019%20-%20Riddles%20in%20the%20dark

As is well known, Tolkien reconsidered its powers and, as The Lord of the Rings grew, the ring became the Ring, and the central focus of the sequel to the earlier book. By the beginning of the 1950s, he states (in a letter to Milton Waldman dated by Carpenter/C. Tolkien as “probably written late in 1951” LTR 143):

“the primary symbolism of the Ring, as the will to mere power, seeking to make itself objective by physical force and mechanism, and so also inevitably by lies…” LTR 160.

(by “mere” we imagine that Tolkien is using the word here in its original Latin—merus –a –um— sense of “pure/unmixed”)

Although this tells us something about the force within the Ring, it doesn’t really explain why a ring.

Rings are an ancient status symbol, certainly. The Romans used them as one of the ways to show the class of a person: senators wore gold ones (although there is an old story that, originally, Roman senators wore rings made of iron)

RomeSenators2romanring

and the other free classes wore any metal they chose.   Tolkien would have had a vivid idea of the inherent status in a ring from Old English, as one of the kennings (poetic metaphorical phrases) for a great lord was “ring-giver”

asring

—just as Sauron gives rings to the ancient kings and so holds their allegiance long after their natural lives should have ended.    

bwnazgul

This is echoed in “and in the darkness bind them” , which brings us back to those verses with which we began.

In them, the Ring’s powers are clearly laid out (rather like Saruman’s claimed goals, “Knowledge, rule, order”): rule, find, bring, bind.

As Gandalf tells us, the primary reason for the creation of the Ring was, in fact, to rule, both the other rings and, through them, Middle-earth and its peoples: Elves, Dwarves, Men. To do so, Sauron endowed the Ring with much of his own power, a perfect example of his arrogance, depriving himself of power he might need, clearly convinced that he would suffer no harm from its lack.

As he endows the Ring, it seems that he—intentionally?—passed on to it a small bit of his self-will. Unlike inanimate objects in our world (and we presume in Middle-earth, too), the Ring not only shows purpose, but can act upon it.

As Gandalf tells Frodo:

“A Ring of Power looks after itself…It was not Gollum, Frodo, but the Ring itself decided things. The Ring left him…The Ring was trying to get back to its master.” LotR 55.

To do so, it uses another of its powers, it brings people to use as vehicles, discarding them when they have served its purpose.

“It had slipped from Isildur’s hand,” says Gandalf (a hand already under the Ring’s control, as it couldn’t force itself to destroy the Ring when it had the chance) and betrayed him; then when a chance came it caught poor Deagol, and he was murdered and after that Gollum, and it had devoured him. It could make no further use of him: he was too small and mean…So now, when its master was awake once more…it abandoned Gollum, only to be picked up by…Bilbo.” LotR 55-56.

To acquire such vehicles, the Ring uses a third power, finding. Gandalf’s list suggests that that power entails some innate ability to sense who will be most attracted to it. They appear to be rather a wide assortment, from the heir to the throne of Gondor to two proto-hobbits. And there are also those not on Gandalf’s list: Saruman and even, to some degree, Galadriel. As for Gandalf himself, he, like the Lady of Lorien, is wise enough to avoid the ultimate temptation, as is Faramir, perhaps because, as his father accuses him, he has been Gandalf’s pupil and has acquired some of his awareness both of events and of himself.

Our list would not be complete, however, without Frodo and Sam. It is hard to imagine that the Ring has picked them: Frodo, after all, has inherited it. This doesn’t mean that he is not influenced by it, even, at the end, sounding more like Isildur than himself in his refusing to destroy it, suggesting that, even by inheritance, someone can be found, brought, and ruled. And Sam? He holds it only briefly, but surrenders it so easily that it appears to have little ultimate power over him, something which he shares with Tom Bombadil, perhaps because both are grounded—quite literally—in Middle-earth. It is no surprise that Galadriel gives him a gift for growing things and that, in his consolation of Sam, Frodo says that he will be “the most famous gardener in history” (LoTR 1029). As for Bombadil, it would appear that the same sort of protection which keeps Sam from being found, brought, and ruled keeps him safe. When he holds up the Ring and looks through it, for a moment we might see that, for him, the symbolism of the “will to mere power” means nothing and, instead, he sees it only as an empty metal band.

For others, from the Nazgul to Frodo, who never feels whole again, the fourth power, binding, has done its job and also perhaps, in doing so, answers the question, why a ring?

Heavy-6mm-D-Shape-18k-Yellow-Gold-Wedding-Ring

What better binder than a perfect circle, seemingly blank, but with a hidden message, almost a spell, and which, when put on, pulls you from the daylight world and, which, worn too long, can keep you there forever?

Thanks, as ever, for reading.

MTCIDC

CD

The Doubtful Sea Series Facebook Page

The Doubtful Sea Series Facebook Page

  • Ollamh

Categories

  • Artists and Illustrators
  • Economics in Middle-earth
  • Fairy Tales and Myths
  • Films and Music
  • Games
  • Heroes
  • Imaginary History
  • J.R.R. Tolkien
  • Language
  • Literary History
  • Maps
  • Medieval Russia
  • Military History
  • Military History of Middle-earth
  • Narnia
  • Narrative Methods
  • Poetry
  • Research
  • Star Wars
  • Terra Australis
  • The Rohirrim
  • Theatre and Performance
  • Tolkien
  • Uncategorized
  • Villains
  • Writing as Collaborators
Follow doubtfulsea on WordPress.com

Across the Doubtful Sea

Recent Postings

  • Horning In (2) February 1, 2023
  • Horning In (1) January 25, 2023
  •  Things You/They Know That Ain’t January 18, 2023
  • Sympathy for a Devil? January 11, 2023
  • Trumpeting January 4, 2023
  • Seating December 28, 2022
  • Yule? December 21, 2022
  • Sequels and Prequel December 14, 2022
  • Rascals December 7, 2022

Blog Statistics

  • 69,217 Views

Posting Archive

  • February 2023 (1)
  • January 2023 (4)
  • December 2022 (4)
  • November 2022 (5)
  • October 2022 (4)
  • September 2022 (4)
  • August 2022 (5)
  • July 2022 (4)
  • June 2022 (5)
  • May 2022 (4)
  • April 2022 (4)
  • March 2022 (5)
  • February 2022 (4)
  • January 2022 (4)
  • December 2021 (5)
  • November 2021 (4)
  • October 2021 (4)
  • September 2021 (5)
  • August 2021 (4)
  • July 2021 (4)
  • June 2021 (5)
  • May 2021 (4)
  • April 2021 (4)
  • March 2021 (5)
  • February 2021 (4)
  • January 2021 (4)
  • December 2020 (5)
  • November 2020 (4)
  • October 2020 (4)
  • September 2020 (5)
  • August 2020 (4)
  • July 2020 (5)
  • June 2020 (4)
  • May 2020 (4)
  • April 2020 (5)
  • March 2020 (4)
  • February 2020 (4)
  • January 2020 (6)
  • December 2019 (4)
  • November 2019 (4)
  • October 2019 (5)
  • September 2019 (4)
  • August 2019 (4)
  • July 2019 (5)
  • June 2019 (4)
  • May 2019 (5)
  • April 2019 (4)
  • March 2019 (4)
  • February 2019 (4)
  • January 2019 (5)
  • December 2018 (4)
  • November 2018 (4)
  • October 2018 (5)
  • September 2018 (4)
  • August 2018 (5)
  • July 2018 (4)
  • June 2018 (4)
  • May 2018 (5)
  • April 2018 (4)
  • March 2018 (4)
  • February 2018 (4)
  • January 2018 (5)
  • December 2017 (4)
  • November 2017 (4)
  • October 2017 (4)
  • September 2017 (4)
  • August 2017 (5)
  • July 2017 (4)
  • June 2017 (4)
  • May 2017 (5)
  • April 2017 (4)
  • March 2017 (5)
  • February 2017 (4)
  • January 2017 (4)
  • December 2016 (4)
  • November 2016 (5)
  • October 2016 (6)
  • September 2016 (5)
  • August 2016 (5)
  • July 2016 (5)
  • June 2016 (5)
  • May 2016 (4)
  • April 2016 (4)
  • March 2016 (5)
  • February 2016 (4)
  • January 2016 (4)
  • December 2015 (5)
  • November 2015 (5)
  • October 2015 (4)
  • September 2015 (5)
  • August 2015 (4)
  • July 2015 (5)
  • June 2015 (5)
  • May 2015 (4)
  • April 2015 (3)
  • March 2015 (4)
  • February 2015 (4)
  • January 2015 (4)
  • December 2014 (5)
  • November 2014 (4)
  • October 2014 (6)
  • September 2014 (1)

Blog at WordPress.com.

  • Follow Following
    • doubtfulsea
    • Join 68 other followers
    • Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
    • doubtfulsea
    • Customize
    • Follow Following
    • Sign up
    • Log in
    • Report this content
    • View site in Reader
    • Manage subscriptions
    • Collapse this bar
 

Loading Comments...