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Bard

09 Wednesday Jul 2025

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Welcome, as ever, dear readers,

When Bilbo and the dwarves

(the Hildebrandts)

set out on their quest, they’re aware that, at its end, they must face the reason the dwarves’ forebears died or fled Erebor, the “Lonely Mountain”.

(JRRT)

And yet they go, suggesting an almost foolhardy shrug of an attitude, particularly as Gandalf has suggested that they need someone right out of myth to help them:

“ ‘That would be no good…not without a mighty Warrior, even a Hero.’ “

But:

“ ‘I tried to find one; but warriors are busy fighting one another in distant lands, and in this neighbourhood heroes are scarce, or simply not to be found.’ “ (The Hobbit, Chapter 1, “An Unexpected Party”) 

Everything about this trip already seems haphazard, having no map of their destination, till Gandalf furnishes them with one,

(JRRT)

and even then they have no idea of another, secret entrance until Elrond spots the inscription which describes it—and how to open it.  Clearly, then, this is a case of “we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.”

Uh oh.

There’s also no clue in the text as to who or what may destroy the destroyer—until Bilbo, flattering Smaug, spots that fatal weak point:

“ ‘I’ve always understood…that dragons were softer underneath, especially in the region of the—er—chest…’ “

The dragon stopped short in his boasting.  ‘Your information is antiquated,’ he snapped.  ‘I am armoured above and below with iron scales and hard gems.  No blade can pierce me.’ “

There’s a clue here, if not for Bilbo, for readers who are aware of something in Tolkien’s own past reading: 

“Then Sigurd went down into that deep place, and dug many pits

in it, and in one of the pits he lay hidden with his sword drawn.

There he waited, and presently the earth began to shake with the

weight of the Dragon as he crawled to the water. And a cloud of

venom flew before him as he snorted and roared, so that it would

have been death to stand before him.

But Sigurd waited till half of him had crawled over the pit, and

then he thrust the sword Gram right into his very heart.”  (Andrew Lang, ed., The Red Fairy Book, 1890, “The Story of Sigurd”, page 360)

And Bilbo persists, goading Smaug to turn over, where Bilbo sees—and says:

“ ‘Old fool!  Why, there is a large patch in the hollow of his left breast as bare as a snail out of its shell!’ “ (The Hobbit, Chapter 12, “Inside Information”)

Still, although we might have a target now, who will make use of it and how and with what?  Sigurd is just what Gandalf says is not locally available, a Hero, and it’s clear that neither Bilbo nor the dwarves are capable of taking on that role.

And here we can bring in another clue from Tolkien’s past.

In “On Fairy-Stories”, he writes:

“I had very little desire to look for buried treasure or to fight pirates, and Treasure Island left me cool.  Red Indians were better:  there were bows and arrows (I had and have a wholly unsatisfied desire to shoot well with a bow)…”  (“On Fairy Stories”, 134)

This suggests that Tolkien may have been exposed to the works of James Fenimore Cooper, 1789-1851, who, beginning with The Pioneers, 1823, wrote a series of novels set on the 18th-century western Frontier (much of it what is now central and eastern New York State), called the “Leatherstocking Tales”,

the best known, even now, being The Last of the Mohegans, 1826. 

These books were filled with battles between the British and French, with Native Americans on both sides and I wonder if it’s from the adventures depicted there that JRRT was inspired with his passion for bows and arrows?

(artist?  A handsome depiction and I wish I could identify the painter.)

Another clue might lie in British history.  During the medieval struggle for English control of France, the so-called “Hundred Years War” (1337-1453), the English enjoyed three great victories, at Crecy (1346), Poitiers (1356), and Agincourt (1415), where companies of English longbowmen shot their French opponents to pieces.

(Angus McBride)

Tolkien would have read about this as a schoolboy, but, in an odd way, he might have had his knowledge of these long-ago events refreshed in 1914.

Outnumbered and in danger of being outflanked by massive German columns, the small BEF (British Expeditionary Force), in the early fall of 1914, retreated, one unit (2nd Corps) fighting a desperate battle to slow the Germans at Le Cateau.

The British managed to fend off the enveloping Germans and, considering the odds against them, some might have believed their escape miraculous. 

Enter the fantasist Arthur Machen, 1863-1947. 

In the September 29th,  1914,  issue of The Evening News, Machen published a short story which he entitled “The Bowmen”.  This was a supposed first-hand account of a British soldier who had seen a line of ghostly British longbowmen shooting down German pursuers, just as they had shot down the French, centuries before.

Machen subsequently republished it with other stories in 1915—

but was astonished when his fiction was believed to have been true, and widely circulated as such. We don’t have any evidence that JRRT actually read this story, but it was extremely widespread at the time and, once more, we see men with bows. (For more on this, see:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angels_of_Mons And you can read the stories in Machen’s volume here:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angels_of_Mons )

I think we can add to this the legends of Robin Hood, which could appear in any number of sources—our first known reference being in William Langland’s (c.1330-c.1386) late 14th-century Piers Plowman, where Sloth—a priest deserving of his name, doesn’t seem to have any religious knowledge, but says,

“Ich can rymes of Robyn Hode” (that is, “I know rhymes/songs about Robin Hood”—see the citation at:  https://robinhoodlegend.com/piers-plowman/ at the impressively rich Robin Hood site:  https://robinhoodlegend.com/ )

Then there is the collection of poems/songs from about 1500, A Gest of Robyn Hode,

which JRRT might have encountered in F.J. Child’s (1825-1896) The English and Scottish Popular Ballads, 1882-1898,

where it appears as #117.  (If you don’t know the so-called “Child Ballads”, here’s a beginning:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_Ballads  And, for a massive one-volume edition:  https://archive.org/details/englishscottishp1904chil/page/n11/mode/2up The texts are interesting in themselves, but, for me, they’re even better as songs.  To hear one, you might try one of my favorite folk singers, Ewan McColl’s version of “The Dowie Dens o’ Yarrow here:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vfsv8zUdqKM&list=RDVfsv8zUdqKM&start_radio=1 For more on Yarrow, see “Yarrow”, 10 April, 2024.

For lots more on Robin Hood, see:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robin_Hood )

In more recent times, perhaps Tolkien had seen Howard Pyle’s (1853-1911) The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood, 1883,

 or Paul Creswick’s (1866-1947) 1917 Robin Hood,

with its wonderful illustrations by N.C.Wyeth (1882-1945).

(If the Tolkien journal Amon Hen, is available to you–but, alas, not to me–you might also have a look at Alex Voglino’s “Middle-earth and the Legend of Robin Hood” in issue 284.)

And, although Tolkien may not have liked Treasure Island, we might add to this possible influence Robert Louis Stevenson’s (1850-1894) The Black Arrow (serialized 1883, published as a book in 1888).

An adventure story set during the Wars of the Roses, you can read it here:  https://archive.org/details/blackarrowatale02stevgoog/page/n1/mode/2up

Although there are more possibilities (Tolkien might have read Sir Walter Scott’s (1771-1832) Ivanhoe, 1819, where Robin Hood makes an appearance, for instance—and here’s the book:  https://archive.org/details/ivanhoe-sir-walter-scott/page/n7/mode/2up )

that title suggests something else:

“ ‘Arrow!’ said the bowman.  ‘Black arrow!  I have saved you to the last.  You have never failed me and always I have recovered you.  I had you from my father and he from of old.  If ever you came from the forges of the true king under the Mountain, go now and speed well!’ “ (The Hobbit, Chapter 14, “Fire and Water”)

(Michael Hague, one of my favorite Hobbit illustrators)

So, we’re about to see that the Hero to kill Smaug is a Lake-town local, Bard, and his weapon of choice is Tolkien’s special favorite, the bow.  But how to attack?

We first see Smaug on the ground, lying on his hoard.

(JRRT)

Angered at Bilbo’s teasing, he gets up long enough to attempt to flame him, but his real method of destruction is to take to the air.

(Ted Nasmith)

Fafnir was never airborne, dragging himself along the ground.  Sigurd solved the problem of his scaly protection by digging a pit and attacking him from below with his sword.  It makes good sense, then, with all of the possible bowman influences upon him, that Tolkien would imagine that the way to deal with a flying dragon would be an arrow from below.

(JRRT)

To which we might add one more potential influence from JRRT’s own experience. 

In 1914, there were few military aircraft and their main task was reconnaissance.

By 1918, there were many different models, with different tasks, including heavy bombers.

To protect their troops on the ground, all of the warring nations developed the first artillery defenses:  anti-aircraft guns, designed to shoot down threats from above. 

JRRT would certainly have seen such guns and possibly even in action, attempting to knock flying danger out of the sky.

Some of those guns were rapid-firing, spraying the air with metal, hoping to guarantee the success of their defense.  Bard, in turn, has his black arrow—and not just any black arrow, but one seemingly created perfectly for revenge:  “  ‘I had you from my father and he from of old.  If ever you came from the forges of the true king under the Mountain, go now and speed well.’ “

That is, this is an arrow created by the dwarves, whom Smaug had driven out or killed—or eaten—and it’s also an heirloom from the days before Smaug destroyed Dale:  what better weapon to deal vengeance to the wicked creature who had ruined so much?  To take out such a flying danger, but with a glaring vulnerability below, what means of propulsion, especially one known to have defeated whole medieval armies?  And, as the seemingly last descendant of the last lord of Dale, Girion, who better to take that revenge? 

As ever, thanks for reading.

Stay well,

Always monitor the skies—who knows what’s watching from above?

And remember that, as always, there’s

MTCIDC

O

PS

For more on birds, Bard, and Smaug, see “Why a Dragon?” 28 May, 2025.

PPS

While looking for just the right Smaug images, I came upon this, entitled, “Dante aka Smaug on his hoard” and couldn’t resist.

Swords Drawn

02 Wednesday Jul 2025

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Welcome, dear readers, as always.

Every time I read or teach The Hobbit, I come to this passage:

“There in the shadows on a large flat stone sat a tremendous goblin with a huge head, and armed goblins were standing round him carrying the axes and the bent swords which they use.”  (The Hobbit, Chapter 4, “Over Hill and Under Hill”)

and I wonder: what does Tolkien mean by “bent swords”?

As a medievalist, and as someone who grew up in the world of illustrators like Howard Pyle (1853-1911)

and NC Wyeth (1882-1945),

as well as an avid reader of the stories of William Morris (1834-1896),

it’s not surprising that Tolkien’s works so often include swords, although perhaps the first sword he met may have been in Andrew Lang’s (1844-1912) The Red Fairy Book, 1890, where, in the last chapter, he would have found Sigurd and a, to us, strangely-familiar sword—

“ONCE upon a time there was a King in the North who had won many wars, but now he was old. Yet he took a new wife, and then another Prince, who wanted to have married her, came up against him with a great army. The old King went out and fought bravely, but at last his sword broke, and he was wounded and his men fled. But in the night, when the battle was over, his young wife came out and searched for him among the slain, and at last she found him, and asked whether he might be healed. But he said ‘ No,’ his luck was gone, his sword was broken, and he must die. And he told her that she would have a son, and that son would be a great warrior, and would avenge him on the other King, his enemy. And he bade her keep the broken pieces of the sword, to make a new sword for his son, and that blade should be called Gram.”  (“The Story of Sigurd”, 357  If you don’t have your own copy of Lang’s collection, here it is for you:  https://archive.org/details/redfairybook00langiala/redfairybook00langiala/mode/2up courtesy of the invaluable Internet Archive.  If  you don’t know this source, and you enjoy this blog, you should check it out.  It has the most remarkable things, even including a very good selection of silent films and film classics, like Kurosawa’s “The Seven Samurai”, 1954, which, for me—and for George Lucas—is a model for adventure films and you can see it here for free:  https://archive.org/details/seven-samurai-1954_202402 )

Yes, “the sword that was broken”—Anduril—and Sigurd has it reforged—and uses it to kill Fafnir, the dragon.

(This is from the “Sigurd Portal” of a  lost stave—wooden—church from Hylestad, in Norway, dating c1200AD.  Fortunately, the doorway carvings were saved and they show in detail the story of Sigurd.  Here’s where you can read more:  https://sites.pitt.edu/~dash/sigurddoor.html#location and here:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hylestad_stave_church )

In his own life, Tolkien would have been personally familiar with swords.  When he was a member, briefly, of King Edward’s Horse,

in 1912, he would have been issued with this, the Pattern 1908 cavalry sword.

To me, it’s rather a strange weapon, seemingly designed only to stab,

whereas earlier cavalry blades might be used both to stab and to slash (very useful in chasing off enemy infantry)

Then, a new 2nd lieutenant in 1915,

JRRT would have had to buy himself the Pattern 1897 infantry officer’s sword

(as there were an increasing number of new officers from families who couldn’t afford it, there was a kind of subscription created to help such officers acquire a required piece of equipment.  For more on just what was required of officers, who had to provide their own kit, see Field Service Manual 1914, pages 16-18, here (and yes, again, it’s from the Internet Archive):  https://archive.org/details/fieldservicemanu00greauoft/page/n11/mode/2up )

These, as you can see, are straight-bladed swords, however.

Tolkien’s earliest experience with goblins was probably with George MacDonald’s (1824-1905) The Princess and the Goblin (1871/2), and he likens his own later goblins/orcs to them (see Letters, 267, 279).

The illustrations are by Arthur Hughes (1832-1915) and, as far as I can see, there’s not a bent sword among them  (If you don’t know the story, here’s the text, but without its original illustrations, alas: https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/708/pg708-images.html )

If we try some Tolkien goblin illustrators, we find Justin Gerard’s version of the scene with the Great Goblin, where there are a few pole arms off to the left, but the only sword must be Orcrist.

(Justin Gerard—you can see more of his work here:  https://www.artstation.com/justingerardillustration and here:  https://www.justingerard.com/the-art-of-justin-gerard )

Here’s John Howe’s version of the scene—

with Orcrist peeking out of its scabbard and a straight sword and a couple of spears off to the left.

Then there’s Alan Lee’s, with the seemingly inevitable Orcrist, but with, just below it, perhaps a sabre—a curved sword

and we see this again in Lee’s depiction of Bilbo’s encounter with the goblin door guards.

In Michael Hague’s illustration for the escape from the Great Goblin’s throne room,

we see both Orcrist and Glamdring, along with one more seemingly curved sword.

Are any of these, however, an example of a “bent sword”?  Archaeologists have discovered numerous ancient swords which appear to have been “sacrificed” by being bent–

but this is hardly what Tolkien meant.  Then there is what might be taken literally for a “bent sword”—

from Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings, but I must say, this looks pretty improbable as a sword—if you see how the grip is shaped, that spike at the end if pointing upwards:  what could it possibly be for?  In fact, when one sees a chart of swords from the films, I’m not sure about many of them as useful weapons—

Those to the left share patterns with swords from our Middle-earth, both those on the right look like they might be dramatic over a fireplace, but I’d question their use as practical weapons.

So what might this “bent sword” be?  Some of the swords in the illustrations above would suggest that their artists believed that, by “bent”, Tolkien meant “curved”.  One possibility:  we know that Tolkien had read or had read to him at least one of Andrew Lang’s fairy books (the Red Fairy Book, as mentioned above), but perhaps he had also seen Lang’s Arabian Nights Entertainments (1898) in which there are a number of illustrations with scimitars in them—

(Here’s a copy of the book for you:  https://archive.org/details/arabiannightsent00lang/page/n9/mode/2up )

Scimitars are curved and, barring silly ones like those in Disney’s Aladdin—which look more like something used for carving meat–

are both deadly and would seem very exotic, if not alien,

in contrast to very medieval swords like Orcrist and Glamdring.

I doubt that we’ll ever know exactly what JRRT had in mind, but, if I had to illustrate “armed goblins…carrying axes and the bent swords…” I might consider drawing—in both senses—such blades.

Stay well,

Avoid inviting caves, even if Stone Giants are playing dodge ball outside,

And remember that, as always, there’s

MTCIDC

O

PS

I’ve just discovered a contemporary illustrator who clearly enjoys the dramatic style of artists like Pyle and Wyeth, as well as French historical artists, like Meissonier (1815-1891).  This is Ugo Pinson (1987-) and here is a sample of his work.

He has illustrated book covers as well as several graphic novels and done illustrations for the “Witcher” series.  His sketches alone show his skill and talent.  You can see more samples here:  https://duckduckgo.com/?q=ugo+pinson&iar=images&iai=http%3A%2F%2Fbdzoom.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2016%2F07%2F13427953_10154226704759687_4371726455862878086_n.jpg 

Why a Dragon?

28 Wednesday May 2025

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As always, dear readers, welcome.

I think that I’ve always been a fan of the Marx brothers.

Their lack of respect for pompous men in silk hats,

opera-goers who are only interested because it gives them social status,

and self-important artists,

among many others, and their creative methods of deflating such people,

have always cheered me immensely.

There is another side to their comedy, however, which means just as much to me:  their endless play with words, delivered always deadpan and with perfect timing—not to mention absolute absurdist nonsequiturism.

Take, for example, this fragment from The Cocoanuts, their first surviving film, from 1929.  It’s set during the 1920s Florida land boom (read about that here:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florida_land_boom_of_the_1920s ) and, in this scene, “Mr. Hammer”, Groucho, is explaining the layout of a real estate plot to “Chico”, Chico,

saying, at one point:

“Groucho:   Now, here is a little peninsula, and, eh, here is a viaduct leading over to the mainland.

Chico:  Why a duck?

Groucho:  I’m all right, how are you?  I say, here is a little peninsula, and here is a viaduct leading over to the mainland.

Chico:   All right, why a duck?

Groucho:  I’m not playing ‘Ask Me Another’, I say that’s a viaduct.

[Ask Me Another was originally an early 1927 equivalent of “Trivia”.  You can read about it here:  https://www.thefedoralounge.com/threads/how-do-you-play-ask-me-another.62135/ and here’s a copy—

Chico:  All right!  It’s what…why a duck?  Why no a chicken?

Groucho:  I don’t know why no a chicken—I’m a stranger here myself.  All I know is that it’s a viaduct.  You try to cross over there a chicken and you’ll find out why a duck.”

(For the entire script see:  https://www.marx-brothers.org/marxology/cocoanuts-script.htm )

By the same kind of logic which produced this, I found myself thinking about The Hobbit:  and hence the title of this posting:  why a dragon?

The plot of The Hobbit is, basically, a quest:  a journey with a goal.

Quests are a familiar form of adventure story and still common—just think about Indiana Jones, with his Lost Ark

and his Holy Grail, for example.

Indiana has to travel to Tibet and Egypt and to an unnamed island in the Mediterranean for the Ark and to Germany and Turkey for the Grail.

Although Thorin doesn’t mention the travel in his “mission statement”, much of the story will be about travel, from the Shire to the Lonely Mountain and back again,

to reach the dwarves’ goal, as stated in the first chapter by Thorin:

“But we have never forgotten our stolen treasure.  And even now, when I will allow we have a good bit laid by and are not so badly off…we still mean to get it back, and to bring our curses home to Smaug—if we can.”  (The Hobbit, Chapter 1, “An Unexpected Party”)

The goal, then, is in two parts:

1. to regain the treasure taken from the dwarves by the dragon

2. to take revenge upon said dragon

Because they are aware that the dragon can be lying on top of the treasure (“Probably”, says Thorin, “for that is the dragons’ way, he has piled it all up in a great heap far inside, and sleeps on it for a bed.”), it’s clear that 1 and 2 have to be dealt with as a sequence:  no getting the treasure without getting rid of the dragon.

Which brings us back to my title.  Indiana Jones commonly has Nazis (and eventually Communists and even Neo-Nazis) as opponents,

these being the characters who compete for his goal and stand in the way of his achieving his quest. 

Tolkien was a medievalist, writing a sort of fairy tale, so what would be his equivalent and why?

 We know that Tolkien had been interested in dragons since far childhood—at least the age of 6, when he tried to write a poem about a “green, great dragon” (to the Houghton Mifflin Company [summer, 1955?], Letters, 321—JRRT tells a somewhat different version of this to W.H. Auden in a letter of 7 June, 1955, Letters, 313) and he confesses to an early love for them in his lecture “On Fairy-Stories” where he mentions Fafnir and Sigurd, suggesting that he may have had read to him or had read for himself from Andrew Lang’s The Red Fairy Book, 1890, the last chapter of which is “The Story of Sigurd”, and since, elsewhere, he mentions “Soria Moria Castle”, which is the third story in the same book.

(Your copy is here:  https://archive.org/details/redfairybook00langiala/redfairybook00langiala/ )

Fafnir, the dragon in the Sigurd story, is described as, having killed his own father:

“he went and wallowed on the gold…and no man dared go near it.”  (“The Story of Sigurd”, 360)

The next major dragon story with which Tolkien was probably involved saw the same draconic behavior, as, in Beowulf, we’re told that the unnamed dragon, having discovered a hoard in a tumulus:

“This hoarded loveliness did the old despoiler wandering

in the gloom find standing unprotected, even he who filled

with fire seeks out mounds (of burial), the naked dragon of

1915

fell heart that flies wrapped about in flame: him do earth’s

dwellers greatly dread. Treasure in the ground it is ever his

wont to seize, and there wise with many years he guards the

heathen gold – no whit doth it profit him.”

(from JRRT’s draft translation of 1920-26 in Christopher Tolkien’s 2014 publication)

Traditionally, then, dragons and gold go together—and, as JRRT admitted in a letter to the Editor of the Observer, “Beowulf is among my most valued sources” (letter to the Editor of the Observer, printed in the Observer, 28 February, 1938, Letters, 41)

There is a very interesting twist in Tolkien’s version of the story, however.

By lying in a pit below the dragon, Sigurd slays Fafnir

and Beowulf, along with his companion (and successor), Wiglaf, make an end of the nameless dragon,

Beowulf fighting against a dragon. Scene from the early medieval epic poem “Beowulf”. It is one of the most important works of Old English literature and was probably created after the year 700 and plays in the time before 600 AD in Scandinavia. Chromolithograph after drawing by Walter Zweigle (German painter, 1859 – 1904), published in 1896.

(This is a pretty silly version, with costumes and armor which look like they came from the original production of Der Ring des Nibelungen, but finding a depiction of the two attacking the dragon has seemed surprisingly difficult.)

but, in The Hobbit, although we have the traditional dragon on the traditional hoard, we don’t have the traditional dragon-slayer, a fact underlined by Thorin’s “to bring our curses home to Smaug, if we can”.

This has always struck me as the potential weak point in the quest:  to travel hundreds of miles through dangerous territory filled with trolls, goblins, wolves, hostile elves, and even giant spiders, to come to a mountain inhabited by a fearsome dragon—but to have no plan in mind as to how to deal with it, especially when the other half of the plan—to get back the dwarvish treasure—requires somehow eliminating the current guardian of that treasure.

(JRRT)

Faced with that possible weak point, so much now may appear to have a certain haphazard happenstance about it, the kind of attempted slight-of-hand which indicates an author who hasn’t the skill to create a narrative in which every element seems to fall naturally into place, and this might make us question the finding of the Ring, the convenient rescue at Lake-town, even the ray of sun which indicates the opening to the back door of the Lonely Mountain (suppose it had been overcast).

But this is where the burglar comes in—and the story of Sigurd once more.

It seems that Bilbo was not Gandalf’s first choice for the quest when he came to visit him.

(the Hildebrandts)

Thorin has just mentioned the inconvenient dragon and the awkwardness of his sudden appearance, to which Gandalf replies:

“That would be no good…not without a mighty Warrior, even a Hero.  I tried to find one; but warriors are busy fighting one another in distant lands, and in this neighbourhood heroes are scarce, or simply not to be found.”

And he continues:

“That is why I settled on burglary—especially when I remembered the existence of a Side-door.  And here is our little Bilbo Baggins, the burglar, the chosen and selected burglar.”

Bilbo’s first attempt at burglary:  picking a troll’s pocket,

(JRRT)

almost ends in disaster, but, with the eventual aid of the Ring, he even manages, first, to steal from Smaug, in a direct echo of Beowulf,

(artist?  So far, I haven’t seen one credited.)

and then to confront Smaug in his lair and escape, at worst, with only a singeing. 

(JRRT)

So far, it’s been burglary, with some help from the Ring, but then the Sigurd story comes in.

You’ll remember that, although the version in The Red Fairy Book doesn’t say so, it was clear that the vulnerable part of the dragon Fafnir was its underside, which is why Sigurd hid in a pit so that, when the dragon crawled over it, Sigurd could stab him in that unprotected underbelly. 

Using his burglarious skills, as well as a fluent tongue, Bilbo actually persuades Smaug unknowingly to expose his own vulnerability:

“ ‘I have always understood…that dragons were softer underneath, especially in the region of the—er—chest; but doubtless one so fortified has thought of that.’

The dragon stopped short in his boasting.  ‘Your information is antiquated,’ he snapped.  ‘I am armoured above and below with iron scales and hard gems.  No blade can pierce me.’”

And the smooth-tongued burglar actually flatters Smaug into rolling over, exposing “…a large patch in the hollow of his left breast as bare as a snail out of its shell”.

What to do with this potentially deadly piece of information requires the reverse of the Sigurd story.

In that story, Sigurd, having killed Fafnir, has been asked by his mentor, Regin, to roast the dragon’s heart and serve it to him.  In the process, Sigurd burns a finger, puts it in his mouth, and suddenly understands that all of the birds above him are talking about him and telling him to beware of Regin.

In The Hobbit, the opposite happens:  the thrush who had tapped the snail

(Alan Lee)

and therefore set off the chain of events which revealed the back door to the Lonely Mountain to Bilbo and the dwarves, overhears Bilbo telling the dwarves about Smaug’s vulnerable spot, which he then conveys to Bard the Archer, who is then the dragon-slayer

(Michael Hague—one of my favorite Hobbit illustrators)

needed to dispose of the one-time guardian of the hoard.

And so the dragon is disposed of—but he has one more use in the story:  as a negative model. 

Although Thorin has led the quest to retrieve the dwarves’ treasure, it seems that there’s only one which he craves, the Arkenstone,

(Donato Giancola)

and it’s clear that, in its pursuit, he becomes much like the Smaug who once reacted almost hysterically when he sensed that something was missing from his hoard:

“Thieves!  Fire!  Murder!…His rage passes description—the sort of rage that is only seen when rich folk that have more than they can enjoy suddenly lose something that they have long had but have never before used or wanted.”  (The Hobbit, Chapter 12, “Inside Information”)

Here’s his dwarvish parallel:

“ ‘For the Arkenstone of my father,’ he said, ‘is worth more than a river of gold in itself, and to me it is beyond price.  That stone of all the treasure I name unto myself, and I will be avenged on anyone who finds it and withholds it.”  (The Hobbit, Chapter 16, “A Thief in the Night”)

And, when he finds that Bilbo has taken it as a way to make peace between the dwarves, the elves, and the Lake-town men, Thorin almost does take revenge:

“ ‘You! You!’ cried Thorin, turning upon him and grasping him with both hands.  ‘You miserable hobbit!  You undersized—burglar!…By the beard of Durin!  I wish I had Gandalf here!  Curse him for his choice of you!  May his beard wither!  As for you I will throw you to the rocks!’ he cried and lifted Bilbo in his arms.”  (The Hobbit, Chapter 17, “The Clouds Burst”)

So why a dragon?

First, to Tolkien the medievalist, gold and dragons go together:  a quest for treasure needs a particularly powerful enemy and the dragon of Beowulf, who actually fatally wounds Beowulf,

who had previously defeated two terrible opponents in Grendel and his mother, provides a strong model.

Second, JRRT had, from childhood, a long-standing interest in dragons—he’ll return to them in his 1938/49 novella, “Farmer Giles of Ham”, where the practical farmer eventually not only tames the dragon, Chrysophylax (“Goldwatchman”, perhaps), but makes him disgorge much of his treasure—this time by doing nothing more than outfacing him and threatening him with his sword, “Tailbiter”.

It’s interesting, by the way, that, although, in “The Story of Sigurd”, the dragon talks, he has only one short speech:  a curse on anyone who touches his gold, whereas, in perhaps the greatest draconic influence upon Tolkien, Beowulf, another wyrm who enjoys lying on a hoard, is mute.

Smaug, in The Hobbit, however, is not only positively talky, but, like Saruman in The Lord of the Rings, his voice and manner have their own dangerously persuasive power, at one point in his conversation with Bilbo even beginning to seed Bilbo’s mind with doubts about the dwarves Bilbo accompanies (The Hobbit, Chapter 12, “Inside Information”).

Chrysophylax, in “Farmer Giles of Ham” is even more talkative than Smaug, and I wonder about the model for these chatty beasts.  Tolkien was a great fan of Kenneth Grahame (1859-1932) and of his well-known children’s book, The Wind in the Willows (1908),

mentioning in a letter to Christopher Tolkien that Elspeth Grahame, Grahame’s widow, is publishing a book with other stories about the main characters of The Wind in the Willows, a book which JRRT is very eager to obtain (letter to Christopher Tolkien, 31 July, 1944, Letters, 128).  In 1898, Grahame published a collection of stories, Dream Days,

which included “The Reluctant Dragon”, in which we see another very loquacious beast,

(from the original book, illustrated by Maxfield Parrish)

(I couldn’t resist including E.H. Shepard’s 1938 version)

but rather more like the ultimately rather timid dragon of “Farmer Giles” than the grim and mute creature of Beowulf or the more-than-a-little-pleased-with-himself Smaug, but, in his garrulousness, could he have been a model for Smaug?  (You can make your own comparison with:  https://www.gutenberg.org/files/35187/35187-h/35187-h.htm )

To this we add perhaps not a model, but a parallel:  Thorin as becoming a kind of dwarvish dragon in his obsession with the Arkenstone.  Fafnir dies with a curse, however, the Beowulf beast dies killing Beowulf, and Smaug dies destroying Lake-town,

but, in his own last moments, Thorin escapes such a poisonous model, saying to Bilbo:

“Farewell, good thief…I go now to the halls of waiting to sit beside my fathers, until the world is renewed.  Since I leave now all gold and silver, and go where it is of little worth, I wish to part in friendship from you, and I would take back my words and deeds at the Gate.” (The Hobbit, Chapter 18, “The Return Journey”)

(Darrell Sweet—you can read a little about him here:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darrell_K._Sweet )

And so “Why a dragon?”—and not “Why No a Hippogriff?”

(artist? so far, I haven’t found one–a pity, too, as it’s quite a splendid illustration and I’ll love to mention the author!)

Thanks, as ever, for reading.

Stay well,

Remember not to laugh at live dragons,

And remember, as well, that there’s

MTCIDC

O

Ring Composition

09 Wednesday Jan 2019

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

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Welcome, as always, dear readers.

The title of this essay is derived from a technique in heroic literature, in which, in some way, the story/song ends, more or less where it began, just like a ring—or the Midgard Serpent, which encircles the earth in Norse mythology.

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Thinking about ring composition made us think, of course, about the Ring

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and to ask ourselves a question about the composition of The Lord of the Rings:  where did the idea of a powerful ring come from?

There has been a lot of scholarly work about what influenced JRRT, some of which he himself agreed with, some he did not.  For instance, the suggestion that Richard Wagner’s  (1813-1883)

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huge 4-opera cycle, Der Ring des Nibelungen,   “The Ring of the Nibelung” (1848-1874)

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might have provided a spark was vigorously dismissed by Tolkien—although, to our minds, there is a certain similarity—the ring of the title is a magical one, after all, whose power would allow the owner to rule the world—but it’s accursed and only brings unhappiness—or worse– to anyone who possesses it.  And yet characters in the four operas which make up the cycle struggle over its possession.   There, however, the similarity ends.  The maker of the ring isn’t a semi-divine figure who’s attempting to rebuild his kingdom through a combination of his magical powers and his political abilities, but, rather, a dwarf, named Alberich, who has stolen the gold from which the ring is made from the Rhine Maidens, and, in return, Alberich must give up love, which he renounces.

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He soon loses the ring and there is no parallel with the Shire, or with hobbits:  this is a world with gods and heroes, all larger-than-life, and Sam, in particular, would feel very out of place here.  Just contrast the Hildebrandts’ Frodo and Sam meeting Faramir with this children’s theatre character sheet depicting the figures from the last of the four operas, Goetterdaemmerung, “The Gods’ Twilight”.

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We would suggest that a stronger influence might be found in JRRT’s interest in Old English literature.  In that literature, Anglo-Saxon kings and lords are known as “ring-givers” and “gold-givers”,

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who reward their followers—as well as singers—with precious decorations–as the poet in the poem called Widsith tells us:

Likewise I was among the Eatula with Ælfwine,
he had the lightest hand of all mankind, as I have heard,
to perform his praises, the most generous in the sharing of rings,
the bright bracelets, the child of Eadwine. (68-74)

(translation by Prof. Aaron K. Hostetter of Rutgers University, Camden—here’s a LINK so that you can read the whole poem—and much more—at his website—he has a wonderful project to translate a mass of Old English literature and has done a great deal to make it all accessible in one place.  As for Widsith, there’s a very useful Wiki article, if you’re interested.  Here’s a LINK to it.)

Whereas there might be some distant influence in the making of a powerful ring in Wagner’s operas, the giving of rings makes us think of Sauron, when he reappears in the Second Age.  At that time, he comes in the guise of “Annatar”, “Lord of Gifts” and, to gain power over the Elves, encourages them to make rings, all the while creating his own to overpower and master them.  As his power grows, he collects all of the rings he can (he never succeeds in getting the last three Elven rings) and doles them out, like those Anglo-Saxon kings and lords, to attempt to control dwarves and men, as well:

“But Sauron gathered into his hands all the remaining Rings of Power; and he dealt them out to the other peoples of Middle-earth, hoping thus to bring under his sway all those that desired secret power beyond the measure of their kind.” (The Silmarillion, 288)

The theme in both Wagner and The Silmarillion is that of supernatural control through what appears to be a rather ordinary object, a ring, something which, when Bilbo first finds it, is described as nothing more than “a tiny ring of cold metal” (The Hobbit, Chapter 5, “Riddles in the Dark”).  Tolkien may have been influenced by its appearance in opera, and more likely, by the use of rings in Old English, but there is an older possibility:

“Outside school-room hours his mother gave him plenty of story-books…The Arthurian legends also excited him.  But most of all he found delight in the Fairy Books of Andrew Lang, especially the Red Fairy Book, for tucked away in its closing pages was the best story he had ever read.  This was the tale of Sigurd who slew the dragon Fafnir:  a strange and powerful tale set in the nameless North.” (Carpenter, J.R.R. Tolkien, A Biography, 31)

Andrew Lang (1844-1912),

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who might be considered a perfect example of the Victorian literary figure, having  written novels, poems, criticism, travelogues, and early anthropological works, had also begun publishing a series of collections of stories for children, each one of the series being bound in a different color.

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His wife, Leonora Blanche Alleyne (1851-1933), did most of the editing after the initial volumes, publishing, in all, a dozen volumes between 1889 and 1910.  The Red Fairy Book (1890) was the second in the series

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and it was in this volume that a little boy

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first discovered dragons—and perhaps magic rings, as well, as in the story of Sigurd, we find:

“Now there was at that time a dwarf called Andvari, who lived in a pool beneath a waterfall, and there he had hidden a great hoard of gold. And one day Otter had been fishing there, and had killed a salmon and eaten it, and was sleeping, like an otter, on a stone. Then someone came by, and threw a stone at the otter and killed it, and flayed off the skin, and took it to the house of Otter’s father. Then he knew his son was dead, and to punish the person who had killed him he said he must have the Otter’s skin filled with gold, and covered all over with red gold, or it should go worse with him. Then the person who had killed Otter went down and caught the Dwarf who owned all the treasure and took it from him.

Only one ring was left, which the Dwarf wore, and even that was taken from him.

Then the poor Dwarf was very angry, and he prayed that the gold might never bring any but bad luck to all the men who might own it, for ever.” (Lang, editor, “The Story of Sigurd”)

And this is not the only ring to be found in The Red Fairy Book.

In the “Draft of a letter to ‘Mr. Rang’ ”, dated by Tolkien as “Aug. 1967”, JRRT has this to say about the origin of the name Moria:

“In fact this first appeared in The Hobbit chap.1.  It was there, as I remember, a casual ‘echo’ of Soria Moria Castle in one of the Scandinavian tales translated by Dasent.  (The tale had no interest for me:  I had already forgotten it and have never since looked at it…)” (Letters, 384)

The “Dasent” mentioned here is Sir George Webbe Dasent (1817-1896), lawyer, civil servant, and sometime professor of English Literature and Modern History at King’s College, London, who, in 1859, had published Popular Tales from the Norse, a translation from the Norwegian of a series of pamphlets and books by Asbjornsen and Moe under the general title “Norske Folkeeventyr” (“Norse Folktales”), published between 1841 and 1871.   By the third edition (1888), Dasent had added, among other works, a story entitled “Soria Moria Castle”.  Tolkien may have seen any one of the several different editions of this work as an adult, but, as a child, he would have first read “Soria Moria Castle” in the same Red Fairy Book in which he had encountered Sigurd and the dragon.  (Here’s a LINK to the Lang if you would like to see the two stories as JRRT would have.)

Beyond the title and its hint of Dwarfish mines, however, there is also a magic ring to be found in this story, given to the hero, Halvor, by three princesses whom he has rescued from trolls:

“Then they dressed him so splendidly that he was like a King’s son; and they put a ring on his finger, and it was one which would enable him to go there and back again by wishing, but they told him that he must not throw it away, or name their names; for if he did, all his magnificence would be at an end, and then he would never see them more.” (“Soria Moria Castle”)

JRRT was born in 1893.  We don’t know exactly when his mother may have handed him Lang’s collection, but it was in childhood, according to his own recollection.  Thus, the Ring—disguised as a ring—may have entered his life long before he heard an opera, or studied an earlier form of his native language.

The Lord of the Rings has a ring in its composition and we began this posting with talk of ring composition, but now we’re going to conclude by breaking loose from that ring by suggesting that perhaps that was the ultimate purpose in the original choice of the Ring for JRRT:  to symbolize completion not by circling back, but by the breaking of a seemingly unbreakable circle.  Sauron, once the servant of Melkor, but having great power of his own, has used that power not only to return and return through the ages from defeat, but to fashion a master ring, one which controls all others, giving him even more strength.  At the same time, it had required such strength to make such a ring that, at its destruction:

“ ‘The realm of Sauron is ended!’ said Gandalf. ‘The Ring-bearer has fulfilled his Quest.’  And as the Captains gazed south to the Land of Mordor, it seemed to them that, black against the pall of cloud, there rose a huge shape of shadow, impenetrable, lightning-crowned, filling all the sky.  Enormous it reared above the world, and stretched out towards them a vast, threatening hand, terrible but impotent:  for even as it leaned over them, a great wind took it, and it was all blown away, and passed; and then a hush fell.” (The Return of the King, Book Six, Chapter 4, “The Field of Cormallen”)

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(Another wonderful illustration by one of our favorite Tolkien illustrators, Ted Nasmith)

As Gandalf has said of the Ring:

“If it is destroyed, then he will fall, and his fall will be so low that none can foresee his arising ever again. For he will lose the best part of the strength that was native to him in his beginning, and all that was made or begun with that power will crumble, and he will be maimed for ever, becoming a mere spirit of malice that gnaws itself in the shadows, but cannot again grow or take shape. And so a great evil of this world will be removed.” (The Return of the King, Book Five, Chapter 9, “The Last Debate”)

Thus, after the Ring was destroyed, so was the ring of Sauron’s return in age after age, bringing about what we might then call “ring de-composition”and the story ends not where it began, but going towards old places—the Grey Havens and beyond—for some, and new places—the Fourth Age—for others.

Thanks, as ever, for reading.

MTCIDC

CD

ps

Can we resist saying one thing more?  JRRT couldn’t—but was he thinking of a teaser for a sequel when Gandalf added to what he’d said above:

“Other evils there are that may come; for Sauron is himself but a servant or emissary.”?

Hoarders

26 Wednesday Apr 2017

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

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Welcome, dear readers, as always.

In this posting, we’re continuing with the theme suggested by our dear friend, EMH, about Middle-earth coinage. If you read our last post, you’ll remember that we cited the price of “Bill”, Sam’s pony, which was “12 silver pennies”. Our pennies here in the US—and modern British ones—are made of copper.

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imag1aabrpenny.jpg(As usual with so many old and established things, there is argument over where the word “penny” comes from. Personally, we’ve always imagined that it’s an English diminutive of a Brythonic word—as it exists today in Welsh—“pen” = “head”, the idea being that coins had portrait heads on them. Certainly some pre-Roman British coins had them

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and they were the norm for the Roman coins the Celts would have seen.)

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Originally—from the 8th century to 1797, all English pennies were silver. Here’s an 8th-century penny.

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In 1797, this was replaced by the so-called “cartwheel penny”, made of copper:

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For all that the material changed, the same monetary system of 1 pound = 20 shillings, each shilling = 12 pence (pennies), which had been in place since Anglo-Saxon times, remained in place in the UK till decimalization appeared in 1971. (There is evidence that the number of pence per shilling varied early on, however, with a shilling worth anywhere from 4 to 6.)

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(For a wonderful but totally perplexing view of this money system in Tudor times, see the Horrible Histories segment here.)

So many of these early coins have all come from “hoards”—that is, from groups of valuable objects which were hidden, presumably with the idea that the one hiding them would return someday to collect them, but, for unknown reasons, never did. (The word, as “hord”, is an Old English/Anglo-Saxon word meaning “treasure/thing of value”.)

As a cache (from French “cacher” = “to hide”—“cache-cache” = the children’s game “hide and seek”) of things someone thought valuable, hoards have been discovered world-wide (just google “hoard”), but some of the most spectacular hoards have come from the UK.

A particularly striking hoard was found by a metal detectorist, Terry Herbert, in 2009. This is the “Staffordshire Hoard”, with over 3500 objects dating from the 7th century AD.

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In case “metal detectorist” is new to you, this is a person who spends time using a metal detector

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to search what he hopes is a promising area in hopes of finding historical objects. The negative side—and we’ve seen it in the US—is that some slip into historical sites, make finds, never report them, and sell them, thereby destroying them as evidence of moments in history. The positive side—and we’ve seen this in England, particularly after the enlightened “The Treasure Act” of 1996—is that responsible detectorists cover much more ground than archaeological services can and both report finds on their own and work on sites with trained professionals. (If you have discovered the wonderful British series, “Time Team”, you can almost always see some working in the background.) In fact, in 2014, BBC4 released a comedy/drama series, The Detectorists, based upon two rather hapless members of the community, Andy and Lance,

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with a second series released in 2015 and a third promised for 2017. As an example of that special brand of quiet, quirky English humor, we very much recommend these.

The Staffordshire Hoard contained a large selection of worked gold and silver pieces and fragments, but, as far as we can read, no coins. A major coin hoard was found at Lenborough in 2014. This was a carefully-buried lead box containing over 5,000 late Anglo-Saxon coins.

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And a heap like that immediately makes us think of hoards from myth—the hoard from which a slave steals a cup in Beowulf (just as Bilbo does, in The Hobbit)

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to the hoard of the dragon Fafnir

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to the hoard of Smaug.

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JRRT paints a broad picture of Smaug’s hoard:

“Beneath him…lay countless piles of precious things, gold wrought and unwrought, gems and jewels, and silver red-stained in the ruddy light…Behind him where the walls were nearest could dimly be seen coats of mail, helms and axes, swords and spears hanging; and there in rows stood great jars and vessels filled with a wealth that could not be guessed.” (The Hobbit, Chapter 12, “Inside Information”)

No coins are mentioned—although ponies, unfortunately, are: Smaug says that he’s eaten six of them.

And this brings us back to our original quotation and the price of Sam’s pony:

“Bill Ferny’s price was twelve silver pennies; and that was at least three times the pony’s value in those parts.” (The Fellowship of the Ring, Book One, Chapter 11, “A Knife in the Dark”)

Butterbur the innkeeper at Bree paid for the pony and “offered Merry another eighteen pence as some compensation for the lost animals” (the others driven off by the Nazgul during their night raid on Bree). We have some sense of just how much that meant when the story goes on to say of Butterbur that, “He was an honest man, and well-off as things were reckoned in Bree; but thirty silver pennies was a sore blow to him…”

We had assumed that JRRT, as a scholar of the medieval English world, had based his coinage on the system of the Anglo-Saxon world (which was still, more or less, the system in Britain nearly to JRRT’s death in 1973). A comparison with a very useful chart of period prices, based primarily upon surviving law texts, to be found on the website of the reenactment consortium Regia Anglorum, however, suggests that, although JRRT has silver pennies, just as the AS system does, his price for the pony doesn’t appear to match at all.   If 4 silver pennies would have been a good price in the late Third Age, what would Butterbur have said to the 193.5 pence for a horse on the actual AS list?

Thanks, as ever, for reading!

MTCIDC

CD