Bordering (.2: Blackmail, Battle, and Song)

05 Wednesday Apr 2017

Posted by Ollamh in Literary History, Maps, Military History

Tags

A Gest of Robyn Hode, Angus McBride, Ballads, Border Reivers, Carlisle Castle, Child Ballad, Connacht, Cuchulain, Cuchulain of Muirthemne, England, Ewan McColl, Faroe Islands, Francis James Child, Irish Iron Age, Johnnie of Breadisley, Kinmont Willie Armstrong, Loeg, Marches, Medb, Peggy Seeger, ring dance, Robin Hood, Scotland, Scott of Buccleuch, Sheriff of Nottingham, Sherwood Forest, skiparin, Tain Bo Cualnge, The Cattle Raid of Cooley, The English and Scottish Popular Ballads, The Tale of MacDatho's Pig, Ulster, West March of the Shire

Welcome, dear readers, as ever.

This is a continuation of our last, on borders. In that post, we began with the West March of the Shire, then talked about the idea of marches—militarized border areas—and wardens—overseers of such. Our focus was upon the border between Scotland and England and, in particular, in the very troubled 16^th century.

The danger, in this world, was from reivers,

a kind of border bandit, but a more complex figure than, for example, Robin Hood.

In the Marches of Scotland and England, unlike Robin vs the Sheriff of Nottingham in Sherwood, who the heroes and villains were wasn’t always clear. England and Scotland were often at war throughout the later Middle Ages and into the Renaissance and, when not openly at war, continued to skirmish with each other. War and skirmishing brought financial problems to both sides—raids could ruin a farm or even a village on either side of the border– and there was also a certain level of vendetta—families always being bound to avenge a murdered kinsman—or rescue a living one, as we see here Scott of Buccleuch (said something like “buk-LOO”) rescuing Kinmont Willie Armstrong from imprisonment by the English in Carlisle Castle in 1596. Willie had been taken prisoner illegally during a “truce day” and Scott was the official representing Scotland on that day—so, as we said, the differences between heroes and villains aren’t always so obvious in this twilight world.

One thing reivers have in common with R. Hood, however, is that both are the subject of legends and songs. One of the first collections of those songs is A Gest of Robyn Hode, printed between 1492 and 1534.

A common form of song is the ballad. For those not familiar with the form, a ballad is a narrative poem commonly in couplets (2 rhymed lines—sometimes with a refrain—a line repeated throughout the poem—after each couplet) or in quatrains (4 lines, often rhyming on the 2^nd and 4^th line).

From the word, which appears to be related to the Romance language ballare/bailar/ballet, “to dance/a dance”, we might imagine that, originally, it was a song to which one danced and there are medieval illustrations of such—

This appears to be a ring dance and, in fact, resembles the ring dance and song of the Faroe Islands, where there is a central figure, a skiparin, (“captain”—just like English “skipper”) who sings a verse and all of the dancers join in on the chorus of kvaedi, or ballads.

The circle on such a dance/song can expand to the point where it looks more like a snake dance—as this link from a recent performance shows.

An easy example of the quatrain form of ballad might be the opening of “Johnnie of Breadisley” (Child 114):

Johnny rose on a May mornin’,

Called for water to wash his hands,

Saying loose to me my twa grey dogs

Wha’ lie bound in iron chains.

We did this from memory, it being one of the first ballads we memorized years ago. If it’s compared with the standard ballad text—that’s from Francis J. Child’s The English and Scottish Popular Ballads (1882-1898), we’re sure you’ll find that, without even knowing it, we’ve made little changes, turning it into a variant—which always happens when songs are learned by ear. (You can also see that rhyme can be very loose—sometimes only assonance, but it’s clearly less important than telling the story.) Our version came from one sung by the famous Scots folk singer/composer, Ewan McColl, shown here with Peggy Seeger, his equally-famous wife and fellow artist.

You can hear his version on YouTube here.

Child

image9child

was a professor at Harvard who spent most of his adult scholarly life searching out traditional ballads and a version of his massive collection—305 ballads, with many variants—is available (based upon early editions) at the wonderful Sacred Texts. (If you are interested in adventure/fantasy/mythology and you don’t know this site, spend some time browsing it—you will be impressed.)

The border between Scotland and England wasn’t the only place in the UK which spawned heroic stories, however. During the Irish Iron Age, two of Ireland’s five provinces, Ulster and Connacht, were imagined to be constantly at war and raids across the border formed the basis or background of all kinds of tales, the most elaborate being the Tain Bo Cualnge (Tahn Boh KOO-al-nyeh)—“The Cattle Raid of Cooley”. In this story—a kind of prose epic, with occasional short verse inserts—Medb (Mi-YEDTH), the queen of Connacht, has decided that she must have a famous bull, owned by someone in Ulster. At the time, the warriors of Ulster are under a geis (gesh), a kind of magical prohibition, which keeps them from defending the province, which leaves only one—their best, in fact—the 17-year-old Cuchulain (Koo-HOO-lun), with his charioteer, Loeg (loig) to delay the Connachtmen. Here’s a rather over-the-top illustration by one of our favorite military artists, Angus McBride, of the pair rocketing towards the enemy.

If you would like to read a translation of the Tain, here’s a link to a really useful website, which juxtaposes the Old Irish and English (and includes, as a bonus, another great story—and the first one we read in Old Irish—the Tale of MacDatho’s Pig). If you would like to read more Old Irish Stories about Ulster and Connacht, there is Lady Gregory’s Cuchulain of Muirthemne (1902). It’s available at Sacred Texts. (And a note here: Old Irish literature has a very plain-spoken way of talking about body functions, among other things, and early translators, like Lady Gregory, quietly removed or softened such things. On the whole, however, the basic stories are there—and they’re free!)

Among those stories, we find a very different idea about otherworlds—not the fairly-strict western classical one that there is a clearly-marked border between this world and the next, but something looser and therefore spookier and we want to talk about this in our next (and mention a favorite YA author and his treatment of the subject, as well).

Thanks, as always, for reading.

MTCIDC

Knowledge, Rule, Order

06 Wednesday Jan 2016

Posted by Ollamh in Fairy Tales and Myths, Imaginary History, J.R.R. Tolkien, Military History, Military History of Middle-earth, Narrative Methods

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Adolf Hitler, Anduin, Benedict Cumberbatch, Benito Mussolini, British Government, Charlie Chaplin, dictatorships, England, Gandalf, George V, Germany, Gondor, gothic script, Government, History, India, Isengard, Kaiser Willhelm II, Lenin, Mehmed VI, Middle-earth, monarchs, Mordor, Nazis, newsreel, Numenor, Ottoman Empire, Oz, Peter Jackson, Queen Mary, Queen Victoria, Rohan, Saruman, Sauron, Scott, Smaug, Stalin, Stock Market Crash of 1929, Sultan, The Great Dictator, The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien, Treaty of Versailles, Valar, Victoria Louise, Weimar Republic, William Morris, Writing

Dear Readers,

Welcome, as always.

Have you ever wondered what Middle Earth would have been like if the Fourth Age had begun on a calendar written by Sauron?

That of the Third Age was hardly a democratic paradise: a king rules Rohan, a stand-in for king rules Gondor. Elrond and Celeborn/Galadriel behave and are treated like royalty and Thranduil, as we learn from The Hobbit, is the king of Mirkwood. The dwarves have hereditary rulers. Only the outliers—communities like Bree and the Shire and the earlier inhabitants like Tom Bombadil and Fangorn—appear to be completely independent. (The Shire even has elections and a mayor, although the actual government, except for the shire reeves, appears to bemostly token—you wonder who’s running their seemingly-efficient postal service.)

This is not surprising, not only for an author born during the later years of Victoria,

but also for someone powerfully influenced by the medievalist interests of everyone from Scott

Sir_William_Allan_-_Sir_Walter_Scott,_1771_-_1832._Novelist_and_poet_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg

to William Morris.

(We might add that the world of fairy tales, full of princes and princesses, queens and kings, was also a powerful influence at the time—and not only on story-tellers born in monarchies—after all, even Oz is ruled by a queen—

Yet, after Smaug—who could better be a medieval fantasy villain (especially with the voice of the incomparable Benedict Cumberbatch attached)?

—something changed in Tolkien’s world. In fact, something changed in the whole outside world. With the end of World War One, monarchs toppled all over Europe and beyond, from:

Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany

to Mehmed VI, last Sultan of the Ottoman Empire.

In place of the former, there appeared the always-troubled Weimar Republic, full of good intentions, but badly crippled, not only by the war which had sapped its manpower and resources, but by all kinds of social unrest and then by the Crash of 1929, which notoriously destroyed the value of its currency.

weimar currency.jpg

As early as 1919, there had been clashes among the forces of different ideologies—

CombatesEnBerlín19190903.jpg

And, amidst all of the unrest, there was a failed coup attempt in 1923 by the man in the overcoat in this picture.

Bundesarchiv_Bild_102-00344A,_München,_nach_Hitler-Ludendorff_Prozess.jpg

He, of course, was only following the footsteps of this man, who had pushed his way into power the year before—

to be followed, in turn, by the man on the left, from the mid-1920s.

That first man, having failed at obvious violence, tried again through more complicated means (although still employing violence, if it suited his purposes) and succeeded in 1933.

He was, so we are told, a riveting public speaker, but, if the newsreels we’ve seen are evidence, we guess you would have had to have been there.

Some people thought the style exaggerated in the 1930s and caricatured it even then.

He had a definite social agenda, which he outlined at length and often, although concealing certain of the most horrible aspects. And he liked big words and big concepts, like:

It would have been impossible for someone as intelligent and generally well-informed as Tolkien not to have been very much aware of this man and all of the other like men, busy oppressing as much of the world as they could. And this would have been especially true in a time when radio and film were changing how people received news—and how those interested in influencing others might shape what people saw. As early as 1911, the British government was using newsreel film to show the might and reach of its empire (2/5 of the globe was in their hands) when the king, George V, and his wife, Queen Mary, visited India.

Delhi_Durbar,_1911.jpg

Not to be outdone, Kaiser Wilhelm II encouraged a grand—and filmed–event in 1913, for the wedding of his daughter, Victoria Louise—and some of the film was even in color.

The Marriage of Victoria Louise Color Film

It would be easy to imagine, then, that the weight of such public figures might have influenced Tolkien in his depiction of late-3^rd-Age villains. We can see it in Saruman’s unsuccessful attempt to persuade Gandalf to join him:

“ ‘He drew himself up then and began to declaim, as if he were making a speech long rehearsed. ‘The Elder Days are gone. The Middle Days are passing. The Younger Days are beginning. The time of the Elves is over, but our time is at hand: the world of Men, which we must rule. But we must have power, power to order all things as we will, for that good which only the Wise can see.” (The Fellowship of the Ring, Chapter 2, “The Council of Elrond”)

Thus, unlike the script of Jackson’s version, there is no plan to wipe out men and replace them with orcs. Instead, men are to survive: to be ruled—perhaps under what definitely sounds like it should be a translation from something written in Fraktur—the fake Gothic script favored by the Nazis–

die-schöne-deutsche-Schrift-detail1.jpg

“ ‘We can bide our time,’” says Saruman, “ ‘we can keep our thoughts in our hearts, deploring maybe evils done by the way, but approving the high and ultimate purpose: Knowledge, Rule, Order; all the things that we have so far striven in vain to accomplish…’ ”

Such abstract, but somehow menacing, words sound like a translation of something from Hitler’s Germany: Kenntnisse, Herrschaft, Ordnung. They do not sound in the least like Gandalf’s goals, ever, and he, in fact, replies by implying that not only are they not really Saruman’s words, but that Saruman is foolish for believing them:

“ ‘Saruman,’ I said, ‘I have heard speeches of this kind before, but only in the mouths of emissaries sent from Mordor to deceive the ignorant.’ “

As really the words of Sauron, however, they give us an idea of what to expect in a world under his control. Knowledge would be for Sauron alone, we suppose, perhaps after regaining his lost ring? Certainly he wouldn’t share it with Saruman, whom, it will become clear, he never trusted. As for Rule and Order, the world would be a place full of rules and those watching that they be obeyed. And here we can remember Sharkey’s Shire, with its “by order of the Chief” signs—and its gangs of human enforcers. As well, we can think of its grey, industrial character, as we’ve discussed in a previous post, a universal Mordor, devoted to production. To this, we can add the Mouth of Sauron’s recitation of surrender conditions, delivered to the allies before the Morannon:

“ ‘These are the terms…The rabble of Gondor and its deluded allies shall withdraw at once beyond the Anduin, first taking oaths never again to assail Sauron the Great in arms, open or secret. All lands east of the Anduin shall be Sauron’s for ever, solely. West of the Anduin as far as the Gap of Rohan shall be tributary to Mordor, and men there shall bear no weapons, but shall have leave to govern their own affairs. But they shall help to rebuild Isengard which they have wantonly destroyed, and that shall be Sauron’s, and there his lieutenant shall dwell: not Saruman, but one more worthy of trust.’ “ (The Return of the King, Chapter 10, “The Black Gate Opens”)

In keeping with the influence of current events in this world, we might see this as being a parallel with the 1919 Versailles Treaty, in which Germany was to be forced to make huge territorial concessions, to disarm almost entirely, and to pay massive amounts in reparation to the victorious allies.

Treaty_of_Versailles,_English_version.jpg

The Treaty of Versailles– Wiki Article

Such terms as Sauron offers would also destroy Rohan as an ally and set up a permanent garrison between it and the north. We might also expect the restored Isengard to be a staging area for an assault upon Fangorn and the ents, to their ultimate destruction. As well, “west of the Anduin” is a very vague expression—does it include Gondor, as well as Rohan?

Religion in The Lord of the Rings has always been the subject of debate: how much or how little? Of what kind? Tolkien is quoted as saying that it was monotheistic, although, when attacked by the Mumak, Faramir’s men called on the (plural) Valar. There is no mention, in what is often extremely detailed landscape description, of any kind of temple or shrine, however. Nevertheless, we would like to conclude with an eerie thought about religion in this alternative Fourth Age. The Mouth of Sauron, aka, The Lieutenant of the Tower of Barad-dur, is described as:

“…a renegade, who came of the race of those that are named the Black Numenoreans; for they established their dwellings in Middle-earth during the years of Sauron’s domination, and they worshipped him, being enamoured of evil knowledge.”

Could we imagine that, in this other Fourth Age, a new and horrible religion might have appeared, one dedicated to the worship of Sauron—and to that Knowledge which Saruman finds so important? What do you think, dear readers?

As always, thanks for reading.

MTCIDC

A Holiday Special

05 Thursday Nov 2015

Posted by Ollamh in Fairy Tales and Myths, Military History

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American Revolution, Boston, British, Caesar, Celtic, drawing and quartering, England, Gam, Guy Fawkes, holiday, James I, Pagan, Parliament, Remember the Fifth of November, Sam, Samhain, St. Patrick's Day, tradition, traitor, Westminster

Dear Readers,

Welcome, as always.

This posting is a little bonus because of the day, November 5th.

Because laws in the US tend at least to try to separate church and state, how do the people of Boston celebrate St. Patrick’s Day legally?

Easy– they dug into their history, and somebody remembered that during the American Revolution, the British abandoned their occupation of Boston on March 17th, 1776: St. Patrick’s Day.

The same is true when we follow those British soldiers home.

Samhain is the ancient Celtic holiday which celebrates that time of year between summer and winter. (Sam—in various forms, depending on which branch of Celtic you speak—means “summer” and its opposite is Gam). The Celts believed that, at that time, the doors between the worlds lay open and the dead could return.

In a Christian country like Britain, this would be rather an awkward holiday to celebrate without the same sort of adaptation the Bostonians used to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day. November 1st, All Saints’ Day, will cover some of this, but the clever British, just like the Bostonians, reached into their history and produced Guy Fawkes Day.

Guy Fawkes was, in fact, the leader of a group of Catholic gentlemen who wanted to block the succession of the Protestant James I to the throne of England.

To do this, they planned to blow up Parliament with the king and his court inside on the 5^th of November, 1605.

To do so, they managed, by using a building next door, to smuggle 3 dozen barrels of gunpowder into the basement of Parliament (and this is the old Parliament in Westminster palace, not the one we see today, which was built after the great fire of 1834).

Fawkes and the others were caught, however, and suffered a gruesome end as traitors: drawing and quartering.

So, if you want to have a pagan holiday under Christian auspices—and patriotic ones, at that, you can celebrate the end of Guy Fawkes, failed conspirator and Samhain favorite.

The older tradition in Britain was that children would put together a flammable dummy, called a “Guy” and take him around the neighborhood, begging for pennies under the slogans, “Penny for the Old Guy, Remember, Remember, the Fifth of November!”

These pennies then bought sweet and fireworks. On the evening of the 5^th of November, the dummy would be set on fire, the fireworks would be set off, and the sweets consumed.

And so ancient holiday and political event could be blended and both survive.

But, although Guy Fawkes and the other conspirators might suffer horrible ends, no one was burned. There is, however, another Celtic tradition, reported by Julius Caesar. In his Gallic Wars, Caesar claimed that the priests of the Celts sacrificed victims by burning them alive in a huge woven figure. Perhaps the fiery death of the Old Guy is one more remembrance of Samhain-long-gone?

Happy Guy Fawkes Day!

MTCIDC

Like Smoke From a Fire: Sharkey’s End

04 Wednesday Nov 2015

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

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Adventure, Birmingham, Branywine, Bywater, Coketown, Dickens, Dol Amroth, England, Ents, factory, Fangorn, feudalism, Galadriel, Gandalf, Grima, Hard Times, Hobbiton, Idylls, industrial, Industrial Revolution, Isengard, King Edward School, Medieval, Merry, Midlands, Mordor, Morris, Oxford, Palantir, Pippin, poetry, pre-industrial, Saruman, Sauron, Scouring of the Shire, Sharkey, Southfarthing, Tennyson, The Lord of the Rings, The Shire, Tolkien

Dear Readers,

Welcome, as always.

In a previous posting, we talked about Saruman as a kind of imitation Sauron and Isengard as a mini-Mordor.

In this posting, we want to consider the implications of Gandalf’s remark about him in “Many Partings”, from The Return of the King: “I fancy he could do some mischief still in a small mean way.”

The mischief, when we see it, is definitely mean, but not small, even though confined to the limits of the Shire.

The world of The Lord of the Rings is a pre-industrial one. The most advanced technology, on the one hand, is the palantir (actually perhaps a magical, rather than mechanical, device)

and , on the other hand, a watermill.

Beyond that, it’s a medieval world, but without, it seems, feudalism, although there are, for example, castles and knights in the form of the Prince of Dol Amroth.

We can easily see why JRRT wanted this regression. On the one hand, like so many boys of his age, he had grown up reading Tennyson

and William Morris

who had created a world of Victorian medievalism, Tennyson in poetry, Morris in many different art forms.

On the other, Tolkien had grown up in Birmingham, in the English Midlands, where there had been massive development throughout the era of the Industrial Revolution.

Here’s Charles Dickens’ description of such a place from Hard Times (1856):

(Excerpt Describing Coketown)

Needless to say, although Tolkien kept a strong affection for King Edward School, where he was educated before Oxford,

he was less enthusiastic about the industrial world which surrounded it and this clearly colors his picture of Saruman. Look, for instance, at Fangorn’s description of him:

“He has a mind of metals and wheels; and he does not care for growing things, except as far as they serve him for the moment.” (The Two Towers, Book 1, Chapter 4, “Treebeard”) (It’s revealing, by the way that this is almost a quotation of something which Saruman later says of Gandalf, “When his tools have done their task he drops them.” The Return of the King, Book 2, Chapter 8, “The Scouring of the Shire”)

Saruman, then, with his metal mind, has turned the once-beautiful Isengard

into an arms factory

another Midlands,

and has angered the Ents, as well, by the wanton destruction of trees, not just for fuel, it appears, but just out of sheer spitefulness.

As we wrote earlier, all of this has remade Isengard into a mini-Mordor—as Frodo says: “Yes, this is Mordor…just one of its works. Saruman was doing its work all the time, even when he thought he was working for himself.” (The Return of the King, Book 2, Chapter 8, “The Scouring of the Shire”)

So, when Saruman, Grima in tow, leaves his ruined factory, one could almost imagine just what he might have in mind when he says to the hobbits:

“Well, it will serve you right when you come home, if you find things less good in the Southfarthing than you would like.” (The Return of the King, Book 2, Chapter 6, “Many Partings”)

We know from Merry and Pippin’s experience at the gate of Isengard that Saruman has been importing pipe-weed, a main export of the Southfarthing.

But when the hobbits, having forced the gate at the Brandywine, are making their way towards Hobbiton, they begin to have a feeling that much more has been damaged than the South Farthing: “Still there seemed an unusual amount of burning going on, and smoke rose from many points round about. A great cloud of it was going up far away in the direction of the Woody End.” (The Return of the King, Book 2, Chapter 8, “The Scouring of the Shire”)

This smoke bears an ominous resemblance to the Midlands (and, in fact, to all of industrial England):

There is worse to come, however: Bywater. “Many of the houses that they had known were missing. Some seemed to have been burned down. The pleasant row of old hobbit-holes in the bank on the north side of the Pool were deserted, and their little gardens that used to run down bright to the water’s edge were rank with weeds. Worse, there was a whole line of ugly new houses all along the Pool Side, where the Hobbiton Road ran close to the bank. An avenue of trees had stood there. They were all gone. And looking with dismay up the road towards Bag End they saw a tall chimney of brick in the distance. It was pouring out black smoke into the evening air.” (The Return of the King, Book 2, Chapter 8, “The Scouring of the Shire”)

And here, we move from a single smoking mill to a smoking mill town.

Saruman’s revenge has been more than small and mean, especially in terms of the industrial world which The Lord of the Rings rejects: the Shire is on its way to becoming another Midlands,

even to the workers’ miserable housing.

And the cutting down of trees (including, as we will find out, the Party Tree) insures the truth of Saruman’s sneering statement to the hobbits:

“…I have done much that you will find it hard to mend or undo in your lives.” (The Return of the King, Book 2, Chapter 8, “The Scouring of the Shire”)

But, as we know, Saruman, even in his moment of triumph, has no more than a moment to enjoy it. He is murdered by Grima and here we see the final irony. As Saruman has turned the medieval, bucolic Shire into a smoky horror, so he himself is turned to smoke:

“To the dismay of those that stood by, about the body of Saruman a grey mist gathered, and rising slowly to a great height like smoke from a fire, as a pale shrouded figure it loomed over the Hill. For a moment it wavered, looking to the West; but out of the West came a cold wind, and it bent away, and with a sigh dissolved into nothing.” (The Return of the King, Book 2, Chapter 8, “The Scouring of the Shire”)

A final thought, however. Might we see Saruman’s gesture towards the West, in which he clearly feels that he has been rejected by that which sent him to Middle Earth, as a mirror Galadriel’s gesture of rejection towards the East, when she refuses the Ring?

“She lifted up her hand and from the ring that she wore there issued a great light that illuminated her alone and left all else dark. She stood before Frodo seeming now tall beyond measurement, and beautiful beyond enduring, terrible and worshipful. Then she let her hand fall, and the light faded, and suddenly she laughed again, and lo! she was shrunken: a slender elf-woman, clad in simple white, whose gentle voice was soft and sad.” (The Fellowship of the Ring, Book 2, Chapter 7, “The Mirror of Galadriel”)

Thanks, as always, for reading.

MTCIDC

Where Did It Go– And Why?

17 Wednesday Jun 2015

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

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Arbeia, Boromir, Cavalry, Denethor, England, Faramir, Film, Gondor, Hadrian's Wall, Helm's Deep, Iliad, Minas Tirith, Offa's Dyke, Osgiliath, Pelennor, Peter Jackson, Rammas Echor, Script, The Great Wall, The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien, Wansdyke

Dear Readers,

Welcome, as always!

In this post, we want to consider the Rammas Echor, which, in the original, had holes blown in it by the invading army of Sauron, but was demolished completely by the script writers for Peter Jackson’s LOTR.

We first meet it when Gandalf and Pippin, in their rapid journey to Minas Tirith, are briefly stopped at what appears to be a sally port in it (rather than a major gate, as Shadowfax is said to have “passed through a narrow gate in the wall” 749). Gandalf briefly trades remarks with an officer named Ingold (who appears briefly later in the story to report that the northern section has fallen, 821) before he and Pippin continue their journey.

It is described thus:

“Gandalf passed now into the wide land beyond the Rammas Echor. So the men of Gondor called the out-wall that they had built with great labour, after Ithilien fell under the shadow of their Enemy. For ten leagues [about 30 miles in the English system—about 48 km in the metric] or more it ran from the mountains’ feet and so back again, enclosing in its fence the fields of the Pelennor: fair and fertile townlands on the long slopes and terraces falling to the deep levels of the Anduin. At its furthest point from the Great Gate of the City, north-eastward, the wall was four leagues [12 miles—about 19 km] distant, and there from a frowning bank it overlooked the long flats beside the river, and men had made it high and strong; for at that point, upon a walled causeway, the road came in from the fords and bridges of Osgiliath and passed through a guarded gate between embattled towers… “ 750.

With so much of Tolkien, one can find illustrations from the usual artists—the Hildebrandts, Howe, Nasmith, and Lee—but for this particular—and important—architectural feature, we haven’t discovered—so far—a single illustration.

It’s made of stone and has evidently not been well-maintained: “Many tall men heavily cloaked stood beside him [Shadowfax], and behind them in the mist loomed a wall of stone. Partly ruinous it seemed, but already before the night was passed the sound of hurried labour clould be heard: beat of hammers, clink of trowels, and the creak of wheels.” 748 And, as mentioned above, it has gates, but, beyond that, what does it look like?

England has a long history of long walls. There are the surviving earthen walls and ditches of the Dark Ages or early medieval Offa’s Dyke

and Wansdyke

and, of course, the well-known 2^nd –century AD work, Hadrian’s Wall, with its surviving stone work and its elaborate series of mile castles, gates, and supporting forts and camps.

We might also cast further afield and in time. In Book 7 of the Iliad, the Greeks dig a ditch, fill it with sharpened stakes, and build a stone wall behind it to protect their ships from Trojan attack.

[We can’t find an image of that, but here’s a picture of one of our favorite features of today’s Truva/Hisalik, just to remind you of a later feature of the Trojan War—along with a still from the 2004 Brad Pitt film, known to those of us who love Homer for its rather casual attitude towards the traditional story.]

And how can we fail to mention the Great Wall of China?

For us, Hadrian’s Wall might do, with its stretch of stonework across the entire width of England (73 miles, 117.5 kilometres).

It even has the requisite main gate, which will be defended by Faramir.

This is actually from the Roman fort of Arbeia, South Shields—a great site—but it gives you an idea of what something a little grander—after all, it connected the Pelennor with Osgiliath—might look like.

That event, however, is in The Lord of the Rings, where Faramir maintains his reputation as a brave and far-sighted commander, as Beregond says to Pippin:

“But things may change when Faramir returns. He is bold, more bold than many deem; for in these days men are slow to believe that a captain can be wise and learned in the scrolls of lore and song, as he is, and yet a man of hardihood and swift judgement in the field.” 766

In the film, it is quite a different matter. There is no Rammas Echor and Faramir, in contrast, is badly wounded in a cavalry charge against the walls of Osgiliath while his father, Denethor, has a rather messy and all-too-symbolic lunch.

What has happened here? First, no intelligent—maybe even foolish—commander would attack a stone wall with cavalry, and we know that Faramir is, indeed, intelligent. Second, what has happened to the Rammas, where Faramir actually had been just before he fell, commanding the rearguard?

First, we would suggest that the script writers took their cue from the final scene between father and son, in which Faramir, already told by his father that his father had preferred his elder son, Boromir, volunteers to direct the defense of Osgiliath:

“But at length Faramir said: ‘I do not oppose your wil, sire. Since you are robbed of Boromir, I will go and do what I can in his stead—if you command it.’

‘I do so,’ said Denethor.

“Then farewell!’ said Faramir. ‘But if I should return, think better of me!’

‘That depends upon the manner of your return,’ said Denethor.

Gandalf it was that last spoke to Faramir ere he rode east. ‘Do not throw your life away rashly or in bitterness,’ he said. ‘You will be needed here, for other things than war. Your father loves you, Faramir, and will remember it ere the end. Farewell!’” 816-817

To them, this might have indicated that Faramir—who had clearly been Gandalf’s pupil, as his father has said:

“See, you have spoken skillfully, as ever; but I, have I not seen your eyes fixed on Mithrandir, seeking whether you said well or too much? He has long had your heart in his keeping.” 812

does not listen to his tutor and deliberately sets out to get himself killed. In the text, however, Faramir is actually acting responsibly, fighting in the rearguard of the retreating detachment driven from the Rammas:

“Even as the Nazgul had swerved aside from the onset of the White Rider, there came flying a deadly dart, and Faramir, as he held at bay a mounted champion of Harad, had fallen to the earth.” 821

(And we might add that Prince Imrahil, who brings the wounded Faramir back, says, “Your son has returned, lord, after great deeds…” 821, which, of course, could easily be understood to be ironic and is perhaps meant to be so on the part of Imrahil, considering Fararmir’s last words to his father and Denethor’s reply.)

Thus, we see Faramir’s wounding completely changed, but what about the wall he had been defending?

When one reads through the various chat sights, there was once a considerable amount of discussion about the Rammas Echor, but all was speculation, it seems, as we were unable to find anything said by the writers themselves. In the text, instead of concentrating on the main gate, Sauron’s engineers detonate explosions to each side and the troops then pour through the breaches to take the defenders in flank. This could be seen as a repetition of a similar earlier event at Helm’s Deep, in which Saruman’s forces blew a hole in the defenses.

As well, we think that, for the director, the big visual attraction was the attack on Minas Tirith. This means that it could simply have been a matter of where to spend time—and/or possibly money—and so the Rammas was sacrificed. If the decision had already been made to change—we will say misinterpret– the story of Faramir, simplifying it drastically and shifting the focus (just think of that dripping mouth!), then the choice to discard this defense would have been an easy one.

So, suppose you were script writer or director, what would you have done, dear readers?

Thanks, as always, for reading (and, we hope, speculating).

MTCIDC

doubtfulsea

~ adventure fantasy

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