Tag Archives: Fantasy

Troll the Ancient

24 Wednesday Jul 2024

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Welcome, dear readers, as always.

When I was very little, many things puzzled me.  Among them was this from a Christmas carol:

“Don we now our gay apparel.

(assorted tra-la-las)

Troll the ancient Yuletide carol.”

(further fa-la-las, etc)

(“Deck the Halls”—for its interesting and fairly recent—1862—history, see:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deck_the_Halls )

I suppose I wondered who “Don” was (which I heard as Don Wenow, possibly a Spanish grandee?), but what really confused me was what trolls had to do with Christmas.

I had first met a troll here—

in a “Little Golden Book”—a small children’s book with, as you can see, a single story.  Although I didn’t understand that word “Gruff”, I liked the story which, if you don’t know it, is a simple folktale:

1. three goats of increasing size lived in a meadow by a stream

2. across the stream was a lusher meadow, the stream being crossed by a bridge

3. under the bridge lived a troll

(from the Rolozo Tolkien site—no artist listed—and be careful if you go looking for trolls on the internet or you might end up with this–)

4. the smallest/youngest goat attempts to cross the bridge but is threatened by the troll.  The goat says wait for my brother—he’s larger and therefore will provide a better meal.  The troll agrees, the second goat appears, says the same thing, and the troll—who has yet to catch on, but that’s trolls for you—agrees again.  And, even if you don’t know this story, you being one of my readers (unless, of course, you’re a troll, in which case, although you’re certainly welcome to join us, take notes!) will guess right away that the third, and largest, goat butts the troll into the stream, where he drowns.

But what is a troll, other than a rather dim creature with a taste for goats and a damp residence?

I’ve always assumed that they were Scandinavian and, consulting my Old Norse dictionary (Cleaseby and Gudbrand Vigfusson, 1874—here’s a copy for you here:  https://cleasby-vigfusson-dictionary.vercel.app/ ), I find “A giant, fiend, demon, a generic term”, along with all sorts of expressions, compounds, and place names associated with them, adding this:  “a werewolf, one possessed by demons”.

Giants, fiends, and demons are found everywhere in old stories (in my long-term reading of the whole of The Thousand and One Nights, I meet them on a regular basis), but the ancestry of this particular tale certainly places at least one troll squarely in Norway, as it first appeared in Asbjornsen and Moe’s Norske Folkeeventyr (1841-44)—“Norwegian Folktales”.

(This is the second edition of 1852.)

In turn, selections from this were translated by George Webbe Dasent (1817-1896) as Popular Tales from the Norse (1859)—here’s a copy for you:  https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/8933/pg8933-images.html

And here, as Number XXXVII, we find the story. 

This is where I first met a troll—could that have been true for Tolkien, as well?  Let’s have a look at the possibility.

When we think of trolls and JRRT, I imagine the first thing which comes into readers’ minds is the near-disaster of Bilbo and the dwarves with William, Bert, and Tom in a glade—

(JRRT)

“But they were trolls.  Obviously trolls.  Even Bilbo, in spite of his sheltered life, could see that:  from the great heavy faces of them, and their size, and the shape of their legs, not to mention their language, which was not drawing-room fashion at all, at all.”  (The Hobbit, Chapter 2, “Roast Mutton”)

That language was described by Douglas Anderson in his The Annotated Hobbit as “comic, lower-class speech”—but, more specifically, it’s the language of music hall comics, commonly lower-class Londoners, cockneys—

(This is Harry Champion, 1865-1942, a well-known performer in music halls, and, with that expression, half-way to becoming a troll himself.)

which is hardly what we’d expect of creatures William describes as “come down from the mountains”, where we might hear them speaking the kind of rural English you hear in Sean Astin’s Sam in Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings,

based upon southwestern speech, but generalized to a degree and called “mummershire” in England.

Tolkien once described himself as having “a very simple sense of humour (which even my appreciative critics find tiresome)” (from a letter to Deborah Webster, 25 October, 1958, Letters, 412), which might be true in general, but I find the juxtaposition of creatures from Norse mythology doing a kind of music hall routine a wonderfully grimly comic combination, particularly as, during that routine, they were about to kill and eat the dwarves—and Bilbo, too.  (I especially like William’s specific detail that “You’ve et a village and a half between yer, since we come down from the mountains.”)

Sometimes it’s clear that Tolkien’s very early experiences with stories has influenced his later writing—as much as he can be prickly on the subject—as in the case of Moria and “Soria Moria Castle”, of which he says:

“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.  It was thus merely the source of the sound-sequence moria, which might have been found or composed elsewhere.)  I liked the sound-sequence; it alliterated with ‘mines’, and it connected itself with the MOR element in my linguistic construction.”  (drafts for a letter to ‘Mr. Rang’, August, 1967, Letters, 541)

For us, however, the important phrase here is “one of the Scandinavian tales translated by Dasent”.  And here, as well, we have a small problem.  A volume we know must have formed part of Tolkien’s reading experience was Andrew Lang’s 1890 The Red Fairy Book,

and “Soria Moria Castle” appears there as the third story in the volume.  (Here’s a copy for you of the first edition:  https://archive.org/details/redfairybook00langiala/redfairybook00langiala/page/n15/mode/2up )  Although, in his introduction, Lang credits the translators of other tales, he doesn’t credit Dasent for this story.  Instead, at the story’s end, there’s a footnote citing “P.C. Asbjornsen”, who, along with Moe, was the source for Dasent’s work.   And yet, when one compares the text in Lang with that in Dasent, although the basic story is the same, there are differences, beginning with the first sentence.

In Lang, it reads:

“There was once upon a time a couple of folks who had a son called Halvor.”

And, in Dasent, that reads:

“Once on a time there was a poor couple who had a son whose name was Halvor.”

What’s going on here?  My guess is that there’s been some editing by Lang or by his wife, who, in reality, quietly took over the series, almost from the beginning, as Lang acknowledges in the introduction to The Lilac Fairy Book, 1910 (for more on this see:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lang%27s_Fairy_Books ). 

Reading on, we see that Halvor comes face to face (to face to face to face to face, as the troll has three heads) with a troll—in fact, there are several trolls—the next with six heads and a third with 9,

but these are not in the least like William, Bert, and Tom, being more like the giant in “Jack and the Beanstalk” with his “Fee-Fi-Fo-Fum, I smell the blood of an Englishman”, saying, “Hutetu!  It smells of a Christian man’s blood here!”

One form of “Soria Moria Castle”, even with a differing text, occurs both in Dasent and Lang, but “Three Billy Goats Gruff” only appears in Dasent, leaving us with a puzzle:  did Tolkien read (or have read to him by his loving mother) “Soria Moria Castle” in Lang, in which case his trolls may come from that story, or did he have a copy of Dasent available and the trolls appeared, not only from “Soria Moria Castle”, but might also have done so (in a dimmer form) in “Three Billy Goats Gruff”?

And what about that other troll, the one in

“Troll the ancient Yuletide carol.”?

If we can believe the anti-Christian view of trolls in “Soria Moria Castle”, it’s doubtful that they would be associated with Christmas.  Etymonline says (along with a brief discussion of the use of the word in fishing, which doesn’t seem apropos), “sing in a full, rolling voice”, although one can picture very large trolls with large voices, I wonder what they’d sing?  (See the song of the goblins in Chapter 4 of The Hobbit, “Over Hill and Under Hill” for a possible model?) 

Now all I have to wonder about is who Don Wenow was and how he might be related to Christmas.

As ever, thanks for reading.

Stay well,

If you sing carols, you might consider the identity of Round John Virgin,

And remember that, as always, there’s

MTCIDC

PS

As you’ll recall, William, Bert, and Tom soon have an early morning experience with Gandalf which leaves them petrified.  Have a look at this important contribution to what happens to them and why:  https://hatchjs.com/why-do-trolls-turn-to-stone/

Grocer or Burglar?

11 Thursday Jul 2024

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As always, dear readers, welcome.

For Bilbo Baggins, what promised to be an easy morning suddenly turned dark with the arrival of “an unexpected party” (this is a Tolkien pun:  “party” in Victorian English could mean “person” as well as “event”—and it’s still available in legal English, as in “the party of the first part”—which turns up in an hilarious scene from the Marx Brothers’ Night at the Opera, 1935—

in which Groucho, a shyster lawyer named “Otis P. Driftwood”, makes an agreement with the manager, played by Chico (say that “CHICK-oh” as he was supposedly always after girls), of an Italian tenor,

the agreement consists of mock legalese and—well, here, see it for yourselves:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G_Sy6oiJbEk ).

This party is Gandalf

(the Hildebrandts)

and his arrival leads to that second party—the one with all of the dwarves—

(another Hildebrandts)

and the map

(JRRT—with the later addition of the moon letters)

and Bilbo’s reaction to the danger involved in joining the dwarves as a “burglar”:

“At may never return he began to feel a shriek coming up inside, and very soon it burst out like the whistle of an engine coming out of a tunnel…Then he fell flat on the floor, and kept calling out ‘struck by lightning, struck by lightning!’ over and over again…”  (The Hobbit, Chapter One, “An Unexpected Party”)

Needless to say, this did not leave a very good impression upon the dwarves, leading Bilbo to overhearing Gloin say:

“It is all very well for Gandalf to talk about this hobbit being fierce, but one shriek like that in a moment of excitement would be enough to wake the dragon and all his relatives, and kill the lot of us.  I think it sounded more like fright than excitement!  In fact, if it had not been for the sign on the door, I should have been sure we had come to the wrong house.  As soon as I clapped eyes on the little fellow bobbing and puffing on the mat, I had my doubts.  He looks more like a grocer than a burglar!”

But what does a burglar look like?  I’ve always presumed that Tolkien, if not Gloin, had in mind someone like this—

which certainly differs from Bilbo in every way.

If he doesn’t look like that, does he resemble a grocer?  What does a grocer look like?

In Tolkien’s England, except for a big city, like London, which had department stores like Whiteley’s,

people bought their necessities along certain streets (sometimes called “the high”), where there were shops for anything and everything (also true in middle and lower class neighborhoods even in big cities).

Thus, for example, you went to the butcher shop for meat,

the bakery for bread,

the fruiterer for fruit,

and the greengrocer for vegetables.

(This can still be the case today—I’ve certainly walked down such streets in recent years in what are commonly called “market towns”—

even when, just outside town, there are supermarkets with large parking lots—

Sainsbury’s itself began as a single shop in London in 1869—)

Such shops, and many others, including department stores, as they began to appear in the 1870s and beyond, were not self-service, as most stores are now, but were staffed with clerks, whose job was to take orders from customers, acting as in-store middlemen, like this fellow—

or these

and there could be a kind of obsequiousness to their behavior (where “the customer is always right” must have come from) which is, I think, what JRRT had in mind when he has Gloin say “more like a grocer”, “puffing and blowing”.

That Bilbo was a well-off individual, living in a rather luxurious dwelling, to begin with,

(JRRT)

and then being called “a shop assistant” or the equivalent, we can see why:

“The Took side had won.  He suddenly felt he would go without bed and breakfast to be thought fierce.  As for little fellow bobbing on the mat it almost made him really fierce.”

And so Bilbo was on his way to becoming the burglar Gandalf had advertized him to be. 

(Alan Lee)

Thanks for reading, as ever.

Stay well,

Be wary of eavesdropping on dwarves,

And remember that, as always, there’s

MTCIDC

O

PS

If you’d like to read about a completely different burglar, (someone Tolkien could easily have read about), you might try A.J. Raffles, an “amateur cracksman”—that is, a gentleman burglar–created by E.W. Hornung (1866-1921), the brother-in-law of Arthur Conan Doyle—with The Amateur Cracksman, 1899, here:  https://archive.org/details/amateurcracksma03horngoog/page/n9/mode/2up

Feudal

03 Wednesday Jul 2024

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As always, dear readers, welcome.

As Gondor prepares to meet Sauron’s massive assault, it calls in troops from the south:

“And so the companies came and were hailed and cheered through the Gate, men of the Outlands marching to defend the City of Gondor in a dark hour…The men of Ringlo Vale behind the son of their lord, Dervorin striding on foot:  three hundreds…From the Anfalas, the Langstrand far away, a long line of men of many sorts…scantily equipped save for the household of Golasgil their lord…” (The Return of the King, Book Five, Chapter 1, “Minas Tirith”)

When the text repeatedly says, “their lord”, what, precisely, does that mean?

Although born in 1892, during the last years of the reign of Victoria (1819-1901),

Tolkien was not a convinced monarchist, writing to his son, Christopher:

“Give me a king whose chief interest in life is stamps, railways, or race-horses; and who has the power to sack his Vizier (or whatever you care to call him) if he does not like the cut of his trousers.”  (letter to Christopher Tolkien, 29 November, 1943, Letters, 90)

At the same time, he was not a passionate democrat, either, referring to the Prime Minister, Winston Churchill (1874-1965),

in the same letter as ‘Winston and his gang’,

having said that his own “…political opinions lean more and more to Anarchy (philosophically understood, meaning abolition of control not whiskered men with bombs)”.

And yet, in creating Middle-earth, he shows a preference for a medieval world, and, for his homeland, England, this means the form of government from which the Victorian government descended, feudalism.

Feudalism comes from Anglo-Norman French fe, which, at base, means “trust/faith”, and, in a secondary meaning, is the basis for “fief”—that is, an estate, a parcel of land given in trust.  (For more on meanings and forms, see the extremely useful Anglo-Norman French dictionary here:  https://anglo-norman.net/entry/fe ) 

It comes from Anglo-Norman because it was the Normans under Duke William of Normandy (c.1028-1087)

who introduced the concept to their newly-conquered country after 1066AD. 

The foundation of the concept is that:

1. all the land in a kingdom belongs to the king—who has received it from God

2. he then parcels the land out to his chief followers, who then

3. parcel it out to their main followers

In return, all the followers in #3 owe military service to those in #2, who, in turn, owe military service to #1.  This creates a kind of pyramid, like this–

(correct the spelling of “fife” to “fief”)

Those in #3 would then collect those below them to form the units they would bring with them when their overlords, at the king’s demand, would gather forces for whatever the king had in mind.

(by Eugene Leliepvre, one of my favorite 20th century French military illustrators)

You’ll notice, of course, that those at the bottom of the pyramid—the 99% in modern terms—had no say in any of this:  when called, they were forced to go.

This was because they were the conquered.  When the Normans invaded and defeated the previous government, in the form of the death of the Anglo-Saxon king, Harold Godwinson,

they then spread out across the landscape, ousting the previous Anglo-Saxon owners and setting up forts, called “motte and baileys”,

to control the land and the locals, who, at first at least, were simply possessions.  (Feudalism became much more complicated over time, including grades of the 99%, who could be freemen, but who still had feudal obligations.)

The same idea of conquest, in some sense, must have been true of the ancestors of the men of Gondor, who were not indigenous to Middle-earth, but had come from the wreckage of Numenor and who gradually came to dominate the western lands, driving the older peoples—the Dunlendings and the Woses–

(the Hildebrandts)

into exile in mountain and forest, rather than enslaving them, as the Normans did the Anglo-Saxons.

From those words “their lord”, however, it’s clear that lesser Gondorians had become part of a similar socio-economic system.

In a letter to Naomi Mitchison, JRRT has this to say about such:

“I am not incapable of or unaware of economic thought; and I think as far as the ‘mortals’ go, Men, Hobbits, and Dwarfs, that the situations are so devised that economic likelihood is there and could be worked out:  Gondor has sufficient ‘townlands’ and fiefs with a good water and road approach to provide for its population…”  (letter to Naomi Mitchison, 25 September, 1954, Letters, 292)

And there’s that word “fief”and all that it implies about rulers and ruled, both in Norman England and Gondor:  a comfortable life for those at the top,

but endless hard work, taxes, and military service for those—the great majority—at the bottom.

The British troops who surrounded Tolkien in the trenches in 1916

were, in a sense, the descendants of that feudal 99% and, although, when called upon, could be fearsomely brave, they were also well aware that they were still peasants to many of those in charge and so had songs with lyrics like:

“If you want to find the colonel,

I know where he is.

If you want to find the colonel,

I know where he is.

He’s sitting in comfort, stuffing his bloody gut.

I saw him.  I saw him,

Sitting in comfort, stuffing his bloody gut.”

(from “Hanging on the Old Barbed Wire”—you can hear a recording of some of the many mocking verses to this by the English group “Chumbawamba” here:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zZhzV68U48w )

So, although Tolkien describes

“…Imrahil, Prince of Dol Amroth…and a company of knights in full harness riding grey horses; and behind them seven hundreds of men at arms, tall as lords, grey-eyed, dark-haired, singing as they came.”

we might wonder if JRRT, self-described as leaning “more and more to Anarchy”, could still hear the privates of 1916, and, if so, just what those men slogging along on foot behind “knights in full harness riding grey horses”  might actually have been singing?  Could it have been something as subversive as “Hanging on the Old Barbed Wire”, or maybe this couplet from an actual English peasant revolt in 1381:

“When Adam delved [dug]

And Eve span [spun],

Who was then

The gentleman?” 

Thanks, as ever, for reading.

Stay well,

Remember the Golden Rule,

(from the comic strip “The Wizard of Id”)

And remember, as well, that there’s

MTCIDC

O

Dos Mackaneeks

26 Wednesday Jun 2024

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Welcome, as always, dear readers.

Star Wars:  the Phantom Menace

certainly begins with a bang:  a Jedi and his padawan, sent on a peace mission to the planet Naboo, are attacked by poisoned gas and droids

(reminding me at once of those lines from Weird Al Jankovic’s song:

“But their response, it didn’t thrill us

They locked the doors and tried to kill us”

If you don’t know “The Saga Begins”, you can watch it here:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hEcjgJSqSRU )

but escape to the surface only to be almost squashed in an invasion of droid armor

before they rescue an unlikely helper (right out of Thompson’s Motif-Index of Folk-Literature B350-B390, “Grateful Animals”),

who takes them to an underwater city where they come before Boss Nass, who blames upperworlders for the invasion

and responds to their warning that, after they finish with the upperworlders, the invaders will be coming for those below the water:

“Dos mackaneeks no comen here.  Dey not know of usen.”

The Gungans (which is what these people call themselves) are sophisticated technologically enough to have an underwater city

and self-propelled transport,

and they even can produce an energy shield,

but faced with the armament of the invading droid army—

and its hordes of infantry,

their use of energy balls (“boomas”)

and shields

which bear a faint resemblance to Celtic shields in some clear material

show them to be really no match for the droids and their technology.  Only luck from the outside saves them.

The Gungans are brave and their weapons can cause some damage, but it’s obvious that they’re outclassed technologically, which makes me think of the Aztecs, the center of whose capital, Tenochtitlan, built in the middle of a lake, was a series of sophisticated and elegant stone buildings (complete with an aqueduct),

but who, unfortunately for them, were a late Neolithic culture who, with no metal with which to work, made their weapons using volcanic glass, obsidian, which was sharp,

(this and the next by Angus McBride)

but no match for the conquistadores’ steel weapons, armor, and early firearms.

And this brings me to a “what if”.

When Helm’s Deep is attacked,

(JRRT)

the orcs’ original method is perhaps the worst in the repertoire:  escalade—that is, putting ladders up against a wall, then climbing up them.  You can imagine why I call it the worst—

the attackers are visible all the way up the ladders and:

1. they can be pushed off

2. the ladders can be pushed off

3. people can whack you when you reach the top

4. people can shoot you on the way up

5. people can drop things on you on the way up

(In several historical assaults, ladders were found to be too short, adding an extra difficulty.)

Such attacks usually only succeed if:

1. they are a surprise  (this happened at the terrible siege of Badajoz in 1812—the French garrison was too focused in one direction and some of the British attackers climbed up the back of the fortress–)

2. the attackers can pin down enough of the defenders with archery/gunfire to allow the climbers to reach the top—and an attack can still fail if those at the top aren’t supported by others coming up behind them—Alexander the Great almost died when he was isolated after scaling an enemy wall (reinforcements overburdened the ladders and they broke—see Arrian The Anabasis of Alexander, Book VI, Sections 9-10—which you can read in translation here:  https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/46976/pg46976-images.html#Page_329  )

The orcs, however, are concealing a secret weapon—

“Even as they spoke there came a blare of trumpets.  Then there was a crash and a flash of flame and smoke.  The waters of the Deeping-stream poured out hissing and foaming:  they were choked no longer, a gaping hole was blasted in the wall.  A host of dark shapes poured in.

‘Devilry of Saruman!’ cried Aragorn.  ‘They have crept in the culvert again, while we talked, and they have lit the fire of Orthanc beneath our feet.’ “  (The Two Towers, Book Three, Chapter 7, “Helm’s Deep”)

And it’s not just Saruman’s “Devilry”—

“The bells of day had scarcely rung out again, a mockery in the unlightened dark, when far away he saw fires spring up, across in the dim spaces where the walls of the Pelennor stood.  The watchmen cried aloud, and all men in the City stood to arms.  Now ever and anon there was a red flash, and slowly through the heavy air dull rumbles could be heard.

‘They have taken the wall!’ men cried.  ‘They are blasting breaches in it.  They are coming!’ “ (The Return of the King, Book Five, Chapter 4, “The Siege of Gondor”)

I think that we can assume that “the fire of Orthanc” is, in fact, gunpowder.

In our Western world, the first known mention of it was by Friar Roger Bacon in the mid-13th century,

and the first known depiction of a gunpowder weapon dates from the early 14th century.

The only uses in The Lord of the Rings are for what would be called, in later times, “mines”.  In our Middle-earth, medieval technology further developed the use of gunpowder into bigger, deadlier forms—early cannon, called “bombards”

and miniaturized them as “handgonnes”.

(Liliane and Fred Funcken)

What if Saruman—and Sauron—had had time to develop their “fire of Orthanc”?

This is how we usually see orcs and their armament—all medieval—spears, swords, bows.

(Alan Lee)

Suppose, however, that there had been further armament.  Imagine orcs with handgonnes, for example.

And, instead of massive stone-throwers employed to break down the walls of Minas Tirith—also a medieval weapon—

giant bombards.

It was weapons like these, in 1453, which broke holes in the ancient walls of Constantinople,

allowing the Turkish besiegers to enter a place which only once before, in its 1000 year plus history, had been broken into.

And why stop there? 

Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519)

was born only the year before the fall of Constantinople, just at the very end of the Western Middle Ages.  In 1487, he sketched this—

which, in terms of much of its technology, was possible in 1487, although it would have been more than a little crowded inside with all of those guns, especially when they jerked backwards in the recoil which would have come with firing them.  Fortunately for the West, da Vinci doesn’t appear to have figured out a useful way of propelling his invention

and it was only in the early 20th century that the internal combustion engine could be employed to move such a metal monster.

Consider, however, if the opponents of the West in the later Third Age had developed what clearly they had begun.  Seeing such approaching, on foot or, worse, in an armored vehicle, what could Rohirrim or Gondorians have done beyond believing what Qui Gon had tried to warn Boss Nass about:

Dos Mackaneeks!

Thanks, as always, for reading.

Stay well,

Remember the places where tanks are vulnerable,

and remember, as well, that there’s always

MTCIDC

O

Soul Divided

19 Wednesday Jun 2024

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As always, dear readers, welcome.

Although I’ve never reread any but the first of them, I enjoyed the “Harry Potter” books when they were originally published, beginning in 1997.

My favorite was that first,

or, by its US title.

I prefer the original British title because it suggests something magical.  “Sorcerer’s Stone” was a make-shift replacement, with no resonance.  The “philosopher’s stone”, however, was a real (or at least hoped-for) thing, being thought of as a kind of alchemical tool which could turn substances into precious metals, and which seemed very appropriate for a book set mostly in a boarding school for witches and wizards.  (You can read more about it here:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosopher’s_stone   Illustrating the article is a wonderful painting by Joseph Wright of Derby, 1734-1797,

which, although entitled–in short form—the full title is practically a brief lecture–“The Alchymist, in Search of the Philosopher’s Stone…”, has always struck me as potentially being a very useful portrait of Merlin.  If you know T.H. White’s The Once and Future King, you might imagine that that’s the young Wart—aka Arthur—in the background.)

When the series continued, I wondered how far the author would take what was, initially, a clever takeoff on a literary type:  the school story, which dates at least as far back as Thomas Hughes’ 1857 Tom Brown’s School Days and which you can read here:  https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/1480/pg1480-images.html

In fact, although the series progressed with the main protagonists continuing their magical education, it became increasingly entangled with the villain, Voldemort, and a world folktale, classified in the Aarne-Thompson-Uther Index as “The Giant (Ogre) who had no heart in his body” (ATU302).  In this story, of which at least 250 versions exist, the Giant (or his equivalent), to protect himself, removes his heart and conceals it where (he hopes) it cannot be found.   The protagonist (along with helpers) must find that location and destroy the heart—or at least use it as leverage.  (You can read the translation of a Norwegian version of it here, under the title “Cinder-Lad and His Six Brothers”:  https://archive.org/details/fairystoriesmych00shim/page/n7/mode/2up   And you can read more about the tale here:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Giant_Who_Had_No_Heart_in_His_Body )  In the Harry Potter books, it’s not one piece of his heart–here, his soul–but 7, all hidden in what are called “Horcruxes”, and it takes Harry and his friends (along with the headmaster, at one point) to locate and destroy the set, providing for a major plot element beginning with the second book Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets.  (For more, see: https://fortheloveofharry.com/list-of-horcruxes/  )

When all of the Horcruxes are gone, so is Voldemort and this brings to mind another complex story.

“The Enemy still lacks one thing to give him strength and knowledge to beat down all resistance, break the last defences, and cover all the lands in a second darkness.  He lacks the One Ring…

…the Nine he has gathered to himself; the Seven also, or else they are destroyed.  The Three are hidden still.  But that no longer troubles him.  He only needs the One; for he made that Ring himself, it is his, and he let a great part of his own former power pass into it, so that he could rule all the others.  If he recovers it, then he will command them all again, wherever they be, even the Three, and all that has been wrought with them will be laid bare, and he will be stronger than ever.”  (The Fellowship of the Ring, Book One, Chapter 2, “The Shadow of the Past”)

If this Ring is so crucial, it would be easy to wonder why Sauron hasn’t been more aggressive in finding it, but Gandalf answers that next:

“…He believed that the One had perished, that the Elves had destroyed it, as should have been done.  But he knows now that it has not perished, that it has been found.  So he is seeking it, seeking it, and all his thought is bent on it…”

In the Norwegian version of “The Giant (Ogre) who had no heart in his body”, the Giant’s heart was concealed in an egg and, when the egg was broken, “the giant burst to pieces”.

When the last Horcrux is gone, Voldemort seems to melt away,

rather like the demise of the Wicked Witch of the West when she is doused with water.

When the Ring is destroyed, the end is a bit more dramatic:

“And even as he spoke the earth rocked beneath their feet.  Then rising swiftly up, far above the Towers of the Black Gate, high above the mountains, a vast soaring darkness sprang into the sky, flickering with fire.  The earth groaned and quaked.  The Towers of the Teeth swayed, tottered, and fell down; the mighty rampart crumbled; the Black Gate was hurled in ruin; and from far away, now dim, now growing, now mounting to the clouds,  there came a drumming rumble, a roar, a long echoing roll of ruinous noise.

…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”)

(An amazing illustration by Ted Nasmith)

Somehow, in contrast, for all that his end brings a dramatic conclusion to the Harry Potter series, the melting of Voldemort seems more like the melting of Vole de Mort, in comparison.

(by Exifia at Deviant Art—I’m sorry that I can’t say more, but Deviant Art’s website appears to be unavailable at present)

Thanks, as ever, for reading.

Stay well,

When it comes to hiding things, see E.A. Poe, “The Purloined Letter” here:  https://poestories.com/read/purloined

And remember that, as always, there’s

MTCIDC

O

PS

Looking at Vole de Mort, I’m reminded of one of my (many) favorite Terry Pratchett characters,  The Death of Rats (“aka ‘The Grim Squeaker’ “).  Put a black robe on him and perhaps a resemblance?

(credited to Paul Southard)

For more, see:  https://wiki.lspace.org/Death_of_Rats

How Stands the Glass Around?

29 Wednesday May 2024

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As always, dear readers, welcome.

I admit that the title of this posting, upon further reading, may seem a little deceptive.  It’s the title of a (perhaps) early 18th-century English song, sometimes called “General Wolfe’s Song” because, somehow, a story appeared that General James Wolfe (1727-1759)

(by George Townshend, 1724-1807, one of Wolfe’s senior officers, who disliked him, but did this little watercolor which, to me, looks much more like the real man than the formal portraits we normally see)

sang it before his death (and victory) at Quebec, in 1759.  (This appears to have had no basis in fact, but has been repeated more than once, in various books about English popular song.)

(by Edward Penny, 1763?—this, one of several versions of the picture by the painter, is in the Fort Ligonier museum in Ligonier, Pennsylvania)

The tune, at least, appears to be some years older, the first citation I can find is to a song from Thomas Odell’s (1691-1749) ballad opera The Patron (1729), where the tune for the lyric is given as that of “Why, Soldiers, Why”, which is the beginning of the second verse.  (For the first two verses, see:  https://tunearch.org/wiki/Annotation:Why_Soldiers_Why%3F    The tune may be older yet, as there’s a 1712 broadside entitled “The Duke of Marlborough’s Delight” set “to a new tune” which has similar lyrics—see the text here:  http://ballads.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/static/images/sheets/20000/16153.gif  You can hear the tune to “Why, Soldiers, Why” here:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-VxlkhsOcRI )

The glass I want to talk about is, in fact, both related to the lyric, with its “Let mirth and wine abound”, and another kind of glass entirely.

When the dwarves overwhelm Bilbo’s house, in the first chapter of The Hobbit (“An Unexpected Party”—which is, in fact, a pun—JRRT admits, in a letter to Deborah Webster 25 October, 1958,  Letters,    to having a simple, hobbit sense of humor—not only is a party a festivity—although this one, for Bilbo was far from it—but, in older English, “party” can also mean “a person”—so that “unexpected party/person is presumably Gandalf, as it’s in the singular),

(Alan Lee)                                                                                                                          

they mock his discomfort in a clean-up song which begins:

“Chip the glasses and crack the plates!”

and this made me wonder:  The Hobbit, like The Lord of the Rings, is set in a pre-industrial—really, medieval—world:  what kind of glasses might these be?

Glass, as a material, is much older than the western Middle Ages.  As you might expect from something which may have originated in the middle of the 3rd millennium BC (2500BC?—there’s lots of on-line discussion, but see, for example:  https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/a-brief-scientific-history-of-glass-180979117/  ), there has been much scholarly debate on the subject, but let’s go with that rough date for the present.

A combination of silica sand,

lime,

(powdered, of course)

and sodium carbonate,

(plus lots of other elements for various additional properties—see for more:  http://www.historyofglass.com/glass-making-process/glass-ingredients/ )

when heated to about 2400 degrees Fahrenheit (about 1315C), produces a moldable, shapeable liquid.

(For an experiment on making early glass, see:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lg7kZpTVoms This is from a YouTube series called “How to Make Everything” and, if you’re like me, interested in all early technologies, definitely recommended.  There’s an interesting suggestion there, as well, that glass may have been an accidental byproduct of early metal-working.) 

The first surviving glass seems to be beads–

these are Mesopotamian, but found in a grave in Denmark, showing just how extensive early trade networks were.

The Egyptians went into the glass business at some point,

and, eventually, the later Assyrians even produced the first known glass-making manual in the reign of King Ashurbanipal (reigned 669-631BC)—you can read about it here:  https://historyofknowledge.net/2018/12/05/you-us-and-them-glass-and-procedural-knowledge-in-cuneiform-cultures/  and read a translation of the cuneiform tablets on which it was written here:  https://www.nemequ.com/texts )

The Romans produced some rather amazing creations in glass,

as well as the first window glass.

(For how Romans made window glass, see:  http://www.theglassmakers.co.uk/archiveromanglassmakers/articles.htm#No  This is actually a small collection of interesting articles.  Scroll to the last to see the specific piece about window glass.)

Even after the change in the western Roman empire from imperial rule to Germanic kingdoms and their later successors, the art of glass-making was never lost, but it appears that the older method of making larger panes may have been, since medieval domestic windows used smaller pieces of glass framed in metal, called “mullioning”—

and this was only for the very wealthy.  This leads me to wonder about:

“The best rooms were all on the left-hand side (going in), for these were the only ones to have windows, deep-set round windows looking over his garden, and meadows beyond, sloping down to the river.”  (The Hobbit, Chapter One, “An Unexpected Party”)

(JRRT)

Is this hobbit mullioning?  Other buildings in the Shire look to have had ordinary glass windows, as in—

“…some new houses had been built:  two-storeyed with narrow straight-sided windows, bare and dimly lit, all very gloomy and un-Shirelike.”

and

“The Shirriff-house at Frogmorton was as bad as the Bridge-house.  It had only one storey, but it had the same narrow windows…”

I suspect that what Tolkien had in mind was something like these Victorian railway workers’ houses,

as mentioned earlier:

“Worse, there was a whole line of the ugly new houses all along Pool Side…”

(All of these grim quotations are from The Return of the King, Book Six, Chapter 8, “The Scouring of the Shire”)

Clearly, “Shirelike” means windows of an entirely different design—and that means round, as Tolkien’s own view towards Bag End shows us—

(JRRT)

(Although you can see, by the way, in this earlier sketch, that Tolkien had not originally decided upon the window-shape consistency of the later illustration, or on the true meaning of “Shirelike”.)

But, though a window plays an important part in recruiting a crucial member of the Fellowship of the Ring:

“Suddenly he stopped as if listening.  Frodo became aware that all was very quiet, inside and outside.  Gandalf crept to one side of the window.  Then with a dart he sprang to the sill, and thrust a long arm out and downwards.  There was a squawk, and up came Sam Gamgee’s curly head hauled by one ear.”  (The Fellowship of the Ring, Book One, Chapter 2, “The Shadow of the Past”)

(Artist?  I’m always glad to credit one, but I’m stumped here.)

the glasses which the dwarves threaten to chip are clearly of the drinking variety. 

I imagine that the glasses in the Tolkien household looked like this

or, for more formal occasions, like this

and what JRRT drank from at The Eagle and Child (aka “The Bird and Baby”) or The Lamb and Flag would have been something like this–

But that’s the first half of the 20th century. 

Could we see this actual medieval glass as a model?

It seems awfully dainty and, remembering the dwarves’ demands for what seems like endless rounds of food and drink, however, perhaps it wasn’t chipped glasses which Bilbo should worry about at all, but dented tankards!

Thanks, as ever, for reading.

Stay well,

When necessary, sing quietly to yourself, “Ho, ho, ho, To the bottle I go…”,

And remember that, as always, there’s

MTCIDC

O

PS

As you can tell, the history of glass—and windows—is long and complicated.

See this for more on glass:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_glass

And this on windows:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Window

Speak Friend, or, Open, Sez Me

22 Wednesday May 2024

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As always, welcome, dear readers.

Occasionally, I return to something I’ve already written about, but, this time around, hope to see in a new, or at least newish, light.  The subject of today’s posting first appeared back in “Do What I Say, Not What I Speak”, 13 June, 2018, but, since then, I began my campaign to read all of The Arabian Nights and am now in the second volume of the Penguin edition (for the first volume, see “Arabian Nights for Days”, 31 January, 2024).

I’ve known some of the stories in this vast collection since childhood, but the first two stories I heard as a child are actually so-called “orphan tales”, being stories which appear to have no early manuscript tradition, first appearing in Antoine Galland’s (1646-1715)

Les Mille et Une Nuits (1704-1717).

and from there into the first edition in English, the anonymous so-called “Grub Street Edition” of 1706-1721.

(This is an image from the earliest edition I can locate—as you can see, it’s from 1781.  Only two copies of the first edition are known to exist, one in the Bodleian Library at Oxford, the other in the rare books collection of Princeton University and clearly they don’t get out much.)

There has been much discussion as to the actual origins of “Aladdin”

and “Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves”–

in particular, that, although they contain standard folktale motifs, they are actually the work of a Syrian storyteller named Antun Yusuf Hanna Diyab (c.1668-post-1763) and were added by Galland to his translation without attribution.  (For more, see:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanna_Diyab ) 

Whatever is the truth of this, these were the stories I carried in my head for years before I came back to them when commencing my “Arabian Nights” reading campaign. 

When I was small, they were actually quite scary—the magician who pretends to be Aladdin’s long-lost uncle and who only wants to use him long enough to obtain the lamp, then would let him die in the cave where the lamp was kept, and the merciless thieves, who once they found their cave with its secret password was compromised, cut up Ali Baba’s brother who had discovered the secret but, who, forgetting the password, was trapped until the thieves returned, were among the creepier parts of my childhood, and, as may always be the case with creepy things, not easily forgotten.

At the same time, I was always puzzled by the opening to “Ali Baba”:

“IN a town in Persia there dwelt two brothers, one named Cassim,

the other Ali Baba. Cassim was married to a rich wife and lived

in plenty, while Ali Baba had to maintain his wife and children by

cutting wood in a neighbouring forest and selling it in the town.

One day, when Ali Baba was in the forest, he saw a troop of men

on horseback, coming towards him in a cloud of dust. He was

afraid they were robbers, and climbed into a tree for safety.  When

they came up to him and dismounted, he counted forty of them.

They unbridled their horses and tied them to trees. The finest man

among them, whom Ali Baba took to be their captain, went a little

way among some bushes, and said: ‘ Open, Sesame!’ so plainly that

Ali Baba heard him. A door opened in the rocks, and having made

the troop go in, he followed them, and the door shut again of itself.”

Why would a door obey a password?  And why that word, which I knew was a kind of seed.

(For more—much more—see:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sesame#Allergy )

This sat somewhere in my memory until I read:

“But close under the cliff there stood, still strong and living, two tall trees, larger than any trees of holly that Frodo had ever seen or imagined…

(JRRT)

‘Well, here we are at last!’ said Gandalf.  ‘Here the Elven-way from Hollin ended.  Holly was the token of the people of that land, and they planted it here to mark the end of their domain; for the West-door was made chiefly for their use in their traffic with the Lords of Moria.’ …

…they turned to watch Gandalf.  He appeared to have done nothing.  He was standing between the two trees gazing at the blank wall of the cliff, as if he would bore a hole into it…

 ‘Dwarf-doors are not made to be seen when shut,’ said Gimli.  ‘They are invisible, and their own makers cannot find them or open them, if their secret is forgotten.’

‘But this Door was not made to be a secret known only to Dwarves,’ said Gandalf…’Unless things are altogether changed, eyes that know what to look for may discover the signs.’

He walked forward to the wall.  Right between the shadow of the trees there was a smooth space, and over this he passed his hands to and fro, muttering words under his breath.  Then he stepped back.

‘Look!’ he said.  ‘Can you see anything now?’

…Then slowly on the surface, where the wizard’s hands had passed, faint lines appeared, like slender veins of silver running in the stone…

At the top, as high as Gandalf could reach, was an arch of interlacing letters of an Elvish character.

(Ted Nasmith)

Below, though the threads were in places blurred or broken, the outline could be seen…

(JRRT)

‘What does the writing say?’ asked Frodo…

‘…They say only:  The Doors of Durin, Lord of Moria.  Speak, friend, and enter.’

‘What does it mean…?’ asked Merry.

‘That is plain enough,’ said Gimli.  ‘If you are a friend, speak the password, and the doors will open, and you can enter.’ “  (The Fellowship of the Ring, Book Two, Chapter 4, “A Journey in the Dark”)

We know from various clues, like the story title “Storia Moria Castle”, that Tolkien had read—or been read to—from Andrew Lang’s (1844-1912) The Red Fairy Book, 1890,

but, interestingly, “Aladdin” and “Ali Baba” both appear in Lang’s previous The Blue Fairy Book, 1889,

from which both the “Ali Baba” quotation and illustration above, come.  Could Tolkien have been read to from, or read, “Ali Baba” there?  Certainly we see that door, and the need for the password.  But what about that password?

In The Fellowship of the Ring, Gandalf tells us that “ ‘I will tell you that these doors open outwards.  From the inside you may thrust them open with your hands.  From the outside nothing will move them save the spell of command.  They cannot be forced inwards.’   Try as he might, however, Gandalf can’t come up with that word—until he realizes that he’s made a slight mistranslation: 

“ ‘The opening word was inscribed on the archway all the time!  The translation should have been Say “Friend’ and enter.  I had only to speak the Elvish word for friend and the doors opened.’ “

To a linguist with a fine ear, like JRRT’s, the distinction, in English, between the verb “to speak”, as in “to speak a language”, and “to say”, as in “to say the right thing”, can be subtle—in this case, almost too subtle—as Gandalf says:

“ ‘Quite simple.  Too simple for a learned lore-master in these suspicious days.’ “

With the problem solved, the doors swing open—but where they’re about to go is, ultimately, worse than Ali Baba’s thieves’ treasure cave, even as I’m reminded of what happens to Ali Baba’s jealous brother.  Obtaining the password, he easily enters the cave, but, when he tries to leave, he confuses “sesame” with other grains, is trapped, and eventually dismembered by the returning thieves.  (Think Balrog and “Drums in the Dark”…)

And, though “Friend”, says Gandalf, is quite simple, and, adding, “Those were happier times” in which such a pleasant password was all that was necessary,  I’m still puzzled about “sesame” and, in both cases, I wonder about those doors—who or what was doing the opening?  Then again, when I post this,  I’ll need a password and, when I employ it, the site will pop open—who or what is doing the opening there?

Thanks, as always, for reading.

Stay well,

When it comes to locks, I prefer a good, sturdy key,

And remember that, as always, there’s

MTCIDC

O

PS

In case you want to read the two fairy books—and I hope you do—here they are:

The Blue Fairy Book 

https://archive.org/details/bluefairybook00langiala/page/n7/mode/2up

The Red Fairy Book

https://archive.org/details/cu31924084424013/page/n9/mode/2up

Terror Weapon

15 Wednesday May 2024

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Welcome, dear readers, as always.

If you grew up, as I did, with the 1939 film, The Wizard of Oz,

but had never read the original,

L. Frank Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, 1900,

you would be surprised to open the book and find that Chapter 1 is entitled “The Cyclone”,

which, considering the use of that terrifying force of nature in the story isn’t surprising, but that “Miss Almira Gulch”, the initial incarnation of the story’s main antagonist, with her wonderful last name (a “gulch” is, as Etymonline tells us, a “deep ravine” suggesting that Miss Gulch is empty—and treacherous, as “ to dry gulch” someone is archaic Wild West slang for “to ambush”) is not to be seen.

As a small child, I found almost everything about her disturbing.  As someone who, initially, wanted to deal with Toto and had the economic power to do it (shades of 1930s social commentary about the 1%), she was bad enough.  It was the green skin of her next incarnation and those dagger-like fingernails, however,

which were at the edge of nightmares, and even more so the menace of flight—not only her own skywriting,

but her nasty little airborne monkeys.

These seemed almost too prescient for what was about to happen in the real world as, on 1 September, 1939, only about two weeks after the Hollywood premiere of the film on 15 August, Germany invaded Poland, and, in less than a year, Denmark, Holland, Norway, and France, major weapons being a deadly form of those flying monkeys—

(by Mike Chappell, a favorite military artist)

paratroopers, and dive bombers, the notorious  Ju87, “Stuka” (short for “Sturzkampfflugzeug”—“dive bomber”).

To add to the effect of having such a thing racing down to drop a bomb on you, sirens were attached to the landing gear or wings, the so-called “Jericho trumpets”  (You can read more about them here:  https://www.warhistoryonline.com/instant-articles/trumpets-jericho-luftwaffe.html And you can hear one here:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=80bOdm2P9Y8 ), giving a wailing, screeching sound to the attacker in hopes of destroying morale even before a bomb hit.  Although designed to be support for infantry and armor, numbers were employed in the air campaign against Britain and, although Oxford was never attacked as the great ports and manufacturing centers were, I wonder if Tolkien, as a volunteer air raid warden, ever heard that sound overhead.

Even if it only appeared in a newsreel, it must have been an unforgettable noise and my wondering brought me to this:

“And Minas Morgul answered.  There was a flare of livid lightnings:  forks of blue flame springing up from the tower and from the encircling hills into the sullen clouds.  The earth groaned; and out of the city there came a cry.  Mingled with harsh high voices as of birds of prey, and the shrill neighing of horses wild with rage and fear there came a rending screech, shivering, rising swiftly to a piercing pitch beyond the range of hearing.  The hobbits wheeled round towards it, and cast themselves down, holding their hands upon their ears.”  (The Two Towers, Book Four, Chapter 8, “The Stairs of Cirith Ungol”)

In Minas Tirith, Pippin heard something very similar:

“Suddenly as they talked they were stricken dumb, frozen as it were to listening stones.  Pippin cowered down with his hands pressed to his ears…”

Not Stukas diving out of the clouds to bomb the city,

but

“…now wheeling swiftly across it, like shadows of untimely night, he saw in the middle airs below him five birdlike forms, horrible as carrion-fowl yet greater than eagles, cruel as death.  Now they swooped near, venturing almost within bowshot of the walls, now they circled away.

‘Black Riders!’ muttered Pippin.  ‘Black Riders of the air!’ “

And this was not the first time that any of the hobbits had heard that terrible sound:

“Pippin knew that shuddering cry that he had heard:  it was the same that he had heard long ago in the Marish of the Shire, but now it was grown in power and hatred, piercing the heart with a poisonous despair.”

It’s unclear if Frodo and Sam had heard the same cry at Cirith Ungol, but certainly what Pippin heard and to which he reacted violently:

“Another long screech rose and fell, and he threw himself back again from the wall, panting like a hunted animal.”  (The Return of the King, Book Five, Chapter 4, “The Siege of Gondor”)

(Alan Lee)

had the same effect—and, in fact, the same effect which Stukas were intended to have upon their victims—just as the Wicked Witch, aka, Miss Gulch—had had a similar effect upon me as a little boy,

even without her creepy little simian assistants.

Thanks, as ever, for reading.

Stay well,

When going outdoors, always cast a wary eye upwards,

And remember that, as always, there’s

MTCIDC

O

PS

In case you don’t have a first edition of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz with its original illustrations, here it is for you:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=80bOdm2P9Y8

Orc Logistics

07 Tuesday May 2024

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As always, dear readers, welcome.

Sauron, although he rather rashly placed much of his power (as well as his life force) in what is, basically, a magic ring, has always struck me as rather a practical person when it comes to war and foreign affairs.  In order to conquer the West, he’s:

1. turned his rather bleak realm into a giant military camp

2. brought back the final destroyer of Arnor, the Witch King of Angmar, as his chief lieutenant

3. made treaties with peoples to the east and south to bolster his already extensive armies and cleverly turned pirates loose to raid the southern shores of Gondor to distract his opponents and force them to divide their forces

4. corrupted one of the West’s traditional allies, Saruman, turning him into a kind of “Mini Me”

 

5. weakened another, Rohan, through a spy in the king’s court, Grima, who has somehow turned that king into a prematurely-aged man

6. worked on the mind of the commander of Gondor, Denethor, using an ancient communications device, making him suspicious of his younger son and promoting a defeatist attitude

As well, he seems quite aware of what we call geo-politics, as we see in his demands at the Black Gate:

“ ‘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 Misty Mountains and 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, Book Five, Chapter 10, “The Black Gate Opens”)

Reading this passage, however, I’m puzzled:

“Time passed.  At length watchers on the walls could see the retreat of the out-companies.  Small bands of weary and often wounded men came first with little order; some were running wildly as if pursued.  Away to the eastward the distant fires flickered, and now it seemed that here and there they crept across the plain.  Houses and barns were burning.  Then from many points little rivers of red flame came hurrying on, winding through the gloom, converging towards the line of the broad road that led from the City-gate to Osgiliath.”  (The Return of the King, Book 5, Chapter 4, “The Siege of Gondor”)

As we know, JRRT himself had been a soldier, though perhaps a reluctant one,

and thus would have been well aware of the saying, sometimes attributed to Napoleon, that “an army marches on its stomach”.  In 1916, such an army needed massive supply dumps,

which needed railroads to bring food and ammunition to them.

From there, wagons

and, in time, early trucks,

then mules and horses would have taken supplies farther forward

and, from there, the troops themselves might have formed what were called “carrying parties”.

Image7:  carrying

(This is actually a “wiring party”, with its “screw pickets”, which were twisted into the ground and used to hold up the barbed wire, but it can stand in for a “carrying party”.  For more on “wiring parties”, see:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiring_party  )

One fact alone might suggest how big the task of keeping the British Army supplied :  “By 1918, the British were sending over 67 million lbs (30 million kg) of meat to the Western Front each month.”  (This is from an article entitled “The Food That Fuelled the Front” from the Imperial War Museum website, which you can see here:  https://www.iwm.org.uk/history/the-food-that-fuelled-the-front  )

This was a vast, modern army, with all the modern technology available in 1918 to enable resupply (such supplying is called “logistics”).  Sauron’s army is of a much earlier time, its basis seemingly infantry, armed with swords, spears, and bows,

(Alan Lee)

assisted by a certain number of oliphaunts,

(Alan Lee)

horsemen,

(These are actually Mongols, but all the text says is “Before them went a great cavalry of horsemen moving like ordered shadows…”  The Two Towers, Book Four, Chapter 8, “The Stairs of Cirith Ungol”, leaving it up to us to imagine what they might have looked like.)

and perhaps a warband of wargs,

(Artist?)

yet its basic needs would have been the same as those of the British Army in which Tolkien served.

To provide a parallel a bit closer to The Lord of the Rings, we might imagine an earlier army, like the army of New Kingdom Egypt

as we might have seen it marching to fight the Hittites

(Angus McBride)

at the Battle of Kadesh, in the summer of 1274BC. 

No oliphaunts or cavalry (or wargs) in support, but definitely chariots, maybe 2000 of them.

(Again, Angus McBride, one of my favorite military artists of the 20th century). 

The Egyptian army of Rameses II

may have numbered about 20,000, with as many as 4,000 chariot horses, and here are some potential logistic figures for such an earlier army—

Thinking of water alone, the average modern horse will drink 5-10 gallons (19-38 ltrs) of water a day, depending on working conditions, and that same horse needs to eat 15-20 pounds  (7-9 kg) of hay.  An average present-day American eats about 5.5  pounds (2.5 kg) of food per day and drinks 2 quarts (2 ltrs) of water.  On the one hand, ancient Egyptians were somewhat smaller than we are and probably less well-fed to begin with, but, on the other, that water requirement is an average and doesn’t factor in  marching for miles on dusty summertime roads in the Middle East.

Could Rameses’ army have carried enough supplies with it for the long march (perhaps about 500 miles—about 805km)?  Rameses would have had available to him no trains or trucks, but the ancient Egyptians had carts (probably pulled by oxen, as were their plows)

and certainly used pack mules.

As to possible baggage camels,

there is a lot of scholarly argument about their use.  Although camel remains (a few depictions, bones, rope from camel hair) are there, there doesn’t appear to be any clear evidence for the use of camels as carriers until much later.  Food—the ordinary Egyptian diet was simple, including barley bread

and beer (also made from barley),

so large supplies of barley flour might be carried, but how to carry—and preserve–beer?  Water could be substituted, but could it be carried?  Or would the Egyptians have done as armies have done throughout history and foraged, picking up supplies of food and drink from the locals, willingly or unwillingly?  Both Rameses II’s and Sauron’s armies had horses, but add oliphaunts in Sauron’s, and all in need of fodder, this would include, in season, cutting grass

and, in and out of season, probably looting barns and granaries, as well.

Consider, then, Sauron’s armies and the Pelennor into which they had broken. 

We don’t know their numbers, but it’s clear that they are enormous, far outnumbering the defenders of Minas Tirith.   And this is what puzzles me.  Tolkien was certainly aware of such needs in general—as he once wrote:  “I am not incapable of or unaware of economic thought…” (letter to Naomi Mitchison, 25 September, 1954, Letters, 292).   And yet—

“It drew now to evening by the hour, and the light was so dim that even far-sighted men upon the Citadel could discern little clearly out upon the fields, save only the burnings that ever multiplied, and the lines of fire that grew in length and speed.”

Perhaps the army brought some provisions with it (Saruman and Sauron’s orcs seem to have had something like field rations, as we learn after they carry off Merry and Pippin), but, if the siege of Minas Tirith had proved to be a long one, what would such a vast host and its beasts have eaten, having destroyed the nearest source of food and fodder?  We’ve seen that Sauron was shrewd and showed a great amount of foresight in his pre-war preparations, so my only answer is a question:   did JRRT, who certainly had a taste for the dramatic moment–think of the way in which the Rohirrim appear at the edge of the Rammas Echor–

deliberately sacrifice economics for drama?  We’ll probably never know for certain, but, if you stand for a moment, on the wall of the first circle of Minas Tirith in the darkness, and see those fires spread across the Pelennor…

As always, thanks for reading.

Stay well,

If you have a yen for conquest, remember to pack a lunch (with carrots for your horse, of course),

And remember that, as always, there’s

MTCIDC

O

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18 Thursday Apr 2024

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As always, dear readers, welcome.

As far as I’ve come to know her, Beatrix Potter (1866-1943)

(with her collie, Skep)

was not one to dwell upon horrors.

And yet, the first of her stories I ever had read to me as a small child filled me with dread, almost from its very opening:

“ ‘Now my dears,’ said old Mrs. Rabbit one morning, ‘you may go into the fields or down the lane, but don’t go into Mr. McGregor’s garden: your Father had an accident there; he was put in a pie by Mrs. McGregor.’ “

This was said so casually, as if being murdered by an angry gardener and then eaten was only “an accident”, that I knew that the story to come was not going to be a sunny one. 

“Flopsy, Mopsy, and Cotton-tail, who were good little bunnies, went down the lane to gather blackberries:”

Had I been able to read this for myself, that colon after “blackberries” might have tipped me off that something awful was about to happen—

“But Peter, who was very naughty, ran straight away to Mr. McGregor’s garden, and squeezed under the gate!”

You can see already where this is going—towards another “accident” and Peter in a pie.  Fortunately, this doesn’t happen, although Peter, after stuffing himself on Mr. McGregor’s lettuce, French beans, and radishes, is spotted by the dread gardener himself and much of the middle of the story is taken up with his relentless pursuit of Peter, in which Peter loses his shoes, but

“I think he might have got away altogether if he had not unfortunately run into a gooseberry net, and got caught by the large buttons on his jacket. It was a blue jacket with brass buttons, quite new.”

Peter escapes the murderous McGregor, leaving his jacket behind and, eventually, even finds his way home, but, menacingly, the gardener hangs up the lost shoes and jacket “for a scare-crow to frighten the blackbirds”—one wonders what he did with Peter’s father’s clothes!

This is, of course, The Tale of Peter Rabbit,

first published in 1902 and Beatrix Potter’s first successful children’s book,  with 22 more to come, including two nursery rhyme collections, between 1902 and 1930.

The stories are simple, as appropriate for small books for small children, but the illustrations are anything but, being little marvels of depiction, everything from the anthropomorphized animals who are the main characters, to the world, both natural and human, in which they function.  This shouldn’t be surprising in that the author was herself both a highly-talented draftswoman and a great naturalist and had been since childhood.

At some point later in life, I must have gotten over my fear of the bloody-handed McGregor,

as I found myself increasingly interested in his creator and her complex life and personality—an upper-class Victorian/Edwardian lady who, though barred from the sorts of things her naturalist life should have allowed her—an academic education, dealing with male naturalists on their own turf, for example—still managed to publish extensively, gain wealth from it, employ that wealth in intelligent ways, and leave behind not only such lovely books and wonderful art, but also a large expanse of land in the English Lake District which forms much of a National Park.  (You can begin learning about her here:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beatrix_Potter  You can also read a first edition of The Tale of Peter Rabbit here:   https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/14838/pg14838-images.html )

Someone else who clearly knew at least some of her work mentions it somewhat obliquely in an angry letter to his publisher on the subject of a Dutch translation of his work:

“If you think I am being absurd, then I shall be greatly distressed; but I fear not altered in my opinions.  The few people I have been able to consult, I must say, express themselves equally strongly.  Anyway I am not going to be treated a la Mrs Tiggywinkle=Poupette a l’epingle.  Not that B [eatrix] P [otter] did not give translators hell.  Though possibly from securer grounds than I have.  I am no linguist, but I do know something about nomenclature, and have specially studied it, and I am actually very angry indeed.” (letter to Rayner Unwin, 3 July, 1956, Letters, 361)

This is the only direct reference I’ve seen to “BP’s” work in Tolkien’s letters, but I would offer proof of another sort in another work:

“The place was full of goblins running about, and the poor little hobbit dodged this way and that…slipped between the legs of the captain just in time, got up, and ran for the door.

It was still ajar, but a goblin had pushed it nearly to.  Bilbo struggled but he could not move it.  He tried to squeeze through the crack.  He squeezed and squeezed and he stuck!  It was awful.  His buttons had got wedged on the edge of the door and the door-post.  He could see outside into the open air…but he could not get through.

Suddenly one of the goblins inside shouted:  ‘There is a shadow by the door.  Something is outside!’

Bilbo’s heart jumped into this mouth.  He gave a terrific squirm.  Buttons burst off in all directions.  He was through, with a torn coat and waistcoat, leaping down the steps like a goat, while bewildered goblins were still picking up his nice brass buttons on the doorstep….

Bilbo had escaped.”  (The Hobbit, Chapter Five, “Riddles in the Dark”)

(Alan Lee)

What do you suppose JRRT as a child made of that violent, pie-eating McGregor?

As always, thanks for reading.

Stay well,

Always listen to your mother and you’ll never lose your buttons,

And, as ever, remember that there’s

MTCIDC

O