Tag Archives: Gollum

Riddle Me Ree

05 Wednesday Mar 2025

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“Riddle me, riddle me, riddle me ree,

Perhaps you can tell what this riddle may be:

As deep as a house, as round as a cup,

And all the king’s horses can’t draw it up.”

I sometimes think that the world could be divided between those who love puzzles and can do them and those, like me, to whom puzzles don’t appeal—possibly because we can’t.  For instance, can you guess the answer to the riddle above?  I’ll give you a minute…

For that One Half of the world, the answer was probably embarrassingly easy:  “a well”.

You got it, didn’t you?  I got it—but only afterwards when I reread “draw it up”, which looks like it was planted as an obvious clue, as one “draws water from a…well”.

Riddle culture is clearly very old.  Trying to go as far back in time as I could, suddenly there was Oedipus and the Sphinx sitting outside Thebes—

with her:

“What goes on four legs at dawn,

What goes on two legs at midday,

What goes on three legs at sunset?”

If you belong to the Other Half—my half—and you don’t know the play (and the footnotes), you might think for a while, then shrug.  If you’ve read the footnotes, or are a member of the One Half, you’ll smile and say, “Easy.  A baby–at the dawn of life, a grownup– in midlife, an old person leaning on a stick–in the ‘Sunset Years’, so, in short, Man.”

Having read the footnotes, you know the fate of that riddler—seemingly instant death—although I can imagine her flapping off, muttering to herself about finding suckers somewhere else, like Corinth.

And a little research produces—and this is just for western Europe—the following collections:

1. Symphosius (4th-5th century AD)

2. Aldhelm (c.609-739)

3. Tatwine (c.670-734)

4. Boniface (c.675-754)

5. Eusebius (8th century)

6. The Bern Riddles (early 8th century)

7. The Lorsch Riddles (8th-9th century)

8. The Exeter Book Riddles (10th century)

I’ve gotten this list (which I’ve rewritten slightly) from a very good site on the subject:  “The Riddle Ages”, here:  https://theriddleages.com/riddles/collection/  A rich site and a good read, if medieval literature appeals.

I think that my first riddle came from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland,1865/6,

which generally has always been considered a children’s book, but, as a child, I really didn’t like it, mostly because I didn’t understand it.  I now enjoy it, but still find it almost as weird as I thought it the first time I read it.

The riddle is in Chapter VII, “A Mad Tea-party” , which begins:

“THERE was a table set out under a tree in front of the house, and the March Hare and the Hatter were having tea at it: a Dormouse was sitting between them, fast asleep, and the other two were using it as a cushion resting their elbows on it, and talking over its head. ‘Very uncomfortable for the Dormouse,’ thought Alice; ‘only as it’s asleep, I suppose it doesn’t mind.’ “

(In case you’re wondering, that’s supposed to be straw on the Hare’s head, a stagey sign of madness.  The very useful site Word Histories (https://wordhistories.net/2018/06/01/straws-hair-origin/ ), points us to a Victorian source—Punch, January, 1842, 34, “Extemporaneous Dramas No.1 Hamlet”—where a stage direction says “Ophelia discovered with straws in her hair”, but this looks to be a misunderstanding of Hamlet, Act 4, Scene 5, where a Gentleman says of Ophelia that “[she] spurns enviously at straws”—that is, “she reacts spitefully to trifles”, not that she’s wearing straw.  You can read the Punch excerpt here:  https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=iau.31858029795295&seq=339&q1=extemporaneous  )

It’s immediately clear that Alice isn’t welcome, as the Mad Hatter and March Hare, sitting at a large and nearly empty table, begin shouting “No room!  No room!”, and out of nowhere the Mad Hatter remarks:

“ ‘Your hair wants cutting…’ “

To which Alice replies:

“ ‘You should learn not to make personal remarks…it’s very rude,’

The Hatter opened his eyes very wide on hearing this; but all he said was, ‘Why is a raven like a writing desk?’ “

Alice puzzles over this throughout most of the scene until, pressed, she confesses that she doesn’t know the answer—and the Hatter replies that he has no idea either!

(For the 1866 Alice, see:   https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Alice%27s_Adventures_in_Wonderland_(1866)  for the 1907 edition, with illustrations by Arthur Rackham, see:   https://www.gutenberg.org/files/28885/28885-h/28885-h.htm )

And, reading that then, and rereading it now, I agree with the Mad Hatter—although there are numerous modern answers, including my favorite:  “Poe wrote on both.”—that is, Edgar Allan Poe, 1809-1849,

wrote a poem about a raven,

and could have done so at a desk.

There are more possible answers, including a surprisingly limp one by Lewis Carroll himself, here:   https://gizmodo.com/the-answer-to-the-most-famous-unanswerable-fantasy-ridd-5872014

Knowing, then, on which side of the aisle I stand (or should I say, sit?) on the subject of riddles, I am brought to a scene which all Tolkien readers know well—

(Alan Lee)

It is, of course, The Hobbit, Chapter 5, “Riddles in the Dark”, and includes brain-teasers like Bilbo’s:

“No-legs lay on one-leg, two-legs sat near on three legs, four-legs got some”.

Without blinking, Gollum replies:

“ ‘Fish on a little table, man at table sitting on a stool, the cat has the bones.’ “

As one on the Other Side, however, I might have to rely upon Sting

and what I might find in my pocket!

Thanks, as ever, for reading.

Stay well,

Solve:  “The more you take, the more you leave behind”,

And remember that there is always

MTCIDC

O

PS

In case you’ve a voracious appetite for riddles, try this site, which says that it has 10,337 riddles:  https://www.riddles.com/archives

Bacon and Eggs, Etc.

08 Wednesday Jan 2025

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Dear readers, welcome, as always.

When Tolkien admitted that he was a hobbit, he defined them—and himself—in part in this way:

“…I like gardens, trees and unmechanized farmlands; I smoke a pipe, and like good plain food (unrefrigerated), but detest French cooking… “ (from a letter to Deborah Webster, 25 October, 1958, Letters, 411)

This follows, of course, his description in “Concerning Hobbits” in the Prologue to The Lord of the Rings:

“Their faces were as a rule good-natured rather than beautiful, broad, bright-eyed, red-cheeked, with mouths apt to laughter, and to eating and drinking.  And laugh they did, and eat, and drink, often and heartily, being fond of simple jests at all times, and of six meals a day (when they could get them).”

And this is an extension of the description in the first chapter, “An Unexpected Party”, of The Hobbit:

“[they] have long clever brown fingers, good-natured faces, and laugh deep fruity laughs (especially after dinner, which they have twice a day when they can get it).”

This propensity for the consumption of comestibles—and for the reporting of and description of eating and all that might go with it—is more, in The Hobbit, than simply a fond look at a foible, however.  In fact, it is a theme which seems, at times to dominate the book—and we see this practically on the first page of the novel, not only in that mention of multiple dinners, but even in the fact that hobbit laughs are “fruity”.

The opening setting itself announces the theme:  “Bilbo Baggins was standing at his door after breakfast…” and soon Bilbo is resisting Gandalf’s proposal of an adventure by saying “Nasty disturbing uncomfortable things!  Make you late for dinner!”  (The Hobbit, Chapter 1, “An Unexpected Party”)

(the Hildebrandts)

There follows the rattled Bilbo’s invitation to Gandalf to come to tea (after which he consoles himself with “a cake or two and a drink of something”), and then the party from the chapter title, which includes not only a major depletion of Bilbo’s pantry (or pantries, as the narrator has already informed us that Bilbo’s house has “lots of these”), but even a kind of heroic catalogue of what’s called for and which Bilbo seems able to supply including:  tea, beer, seed-cake, coffee, scones, ale, porter, red wine, raspberry jam, apple-tart, mince-pies, cheese, pork-pie, salad, eggs, chicken, and pickles (and a single biscuit—that is, cookie, for Bilbo).

The chapter ends with one last burst of food-talk as Bilbo offers bed and breakfast to the dwarves (as a way of seeing them off) and Thorin orders breakfast as if Bilbo were running an inn:

“But I agree about bed and breakfast.  I like six eggs with my ham, when starting on a journey:  fried not poached, and mind you don’t break ‘em.”

(Eggs and ham—those eggs will appear again, but with bacon, when Bilbo, more than once, yearns for them.  This is from a rather mouth-watering website called “The English Kitchen”, which you can visit here:  https://www.theenglishkitchen.co/2020/04/proper-ham-eggs.html  And, as, when you search for a useful image of ham and eggs, you suddenly find yourself surrounded by images of Dr. Seuss’ wonderful Green Eggs and Ham, you can it read here:  https://ia601502.us.archive.org/20/items/green-eggs-and-ham_202211/GreenEggs%20Ham.pdf )

And Bilbo goes off the bed annoyed not only at Thorin, but at all of the other dwarves, who have made similar orders.

After that opening, it’s not surprising that Chapter 2 begins with a still-annoyed Bilbo, faced with a mountain of dirty dishes, the remains of a breakfast he didn’t fix, but, cleaning up, he enjoys his own first breakfast and is starting on a second one when Gandalf appears and Bilbo is suddenly off on the adventure which takes up the rest of the book.

Food soon appears again as one of their ponies “got into the river before they could catch him…and all the baggage that he carried was washed away off him.  Of course it was mostly food, and there was mighty little left for supper, and less for breakfast.”  (Chapter 2)

But then the eating theme takes a different and disturbing turn:  trolls

(JRRT)

who, though currently munching mutton, have “…et a village and a half between yer, since we come down from the mountains” and soon, like amateur chefs on “The Great Goblin Bake Off”, are discussing how to prepare dwarf—will it be roasting?  boiling?  before the judge, one Gandalf, decides the argument by tricking them into being exposed to the sun and turned to stone.

(JRRT)

This is, in its way, a mirror to the original eating idea, in which the protagonists who do the consuming are at risk of becoming a potential article for consumption and we’ll see this repeated more than once with:

1. the goblins (Chapter 4):  “For goblins eat horses and ponies and donkeys (and other much more dreadful things), and they are always hungry.”

(Alan Lee)

2. Gollum (Chapter 5):  “He was looking out of his pale lamp-eyes for blind fish, which he grabbed with his long fingers as quick as thinking.  Goblin he thought good, when he could get it…” and there’s the possibility that Bilbo might be on the menu—if he loses the riddle contest.

(Alan Lee)

3. the spiders (Chapter 8):  “  ‘What nasty thick skins they [the dwarves] have to be sure, but I’ll wager there is good juice inside.’ ‘Aye, they’ll make fine eating, when they’ve hung a bit…’ ”

(and another Alan Lee)

4. and, of course, Smaug (Chapter 12):  “ ‘Let me tell you I ate six ponies last night and I shall catch and eat all the others before long…I know the smell (and taste) of dwarf…Girion Lord of Dale is dead, and I have eaten his people like a wolf among sheep…’ “

(JRRT)

On the other side (the eating, not eaten), however, there are:

1. supper with the Rivendell elves (Chapter 3)

(JRRT)

2. rabbit, hare, and sheep with the eagles (Chapter 6)

(JRRT)

3. meals with Beorn (Chapter 7)

(Ted Nasmith)

4. starving in Mirkwood while being tantalized by elvish feasts (Chapter 8)

(another elf king, in an illustration by A.W. Bayes, 1831-1909)

5. prison rations in the dungeons of Thranduil, the king of the forest elves (Chapter 9)—as well as food stolen by Bilbo

(a generic dungeon as, so far, I haven’t discovered a useful illustration of the original situation)

6. feasts in Lake-town (Chapter 10)

(JRRT)

7. a gourmet diet of snails (Chapter 11)

(Alan Lee)

8. and even the threat of siege and starvation (Chapter 15)—

(Alan Lee)

Given that so much of the text is handed over to eating and drinking, it’s surprising that the conclusion of the story doesn’t have Gandalf returning (with Balin) to tea some years later—

(Alan Lee)

could it be that even that academic hobbit is finally full?

As always, thanks for reading.

Stay well,

One slice of cake should do, I think, don’t you? Or maybe two?

And remember that, as always, there’s

MTCIDC

O

Dr. Smeagol and Mr. Gollum?

31 Wednesday Aug 2016

Posted by in Films and Music, J.R.R. Tolkien, Literary History, Narrative Methods, Uncategorized

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Dear readers, welcome, as ever.

In this posting, we are following a hint given us by JRRT. In a letter to Sir Stanley Unwin, 21 Sept, 1947, he says, “Hyde (or Jekyll) has had to have his way, and I have been obliged to devote myself mainly to philology…” (Letters, 124)

“Hyde (or Jekyll)” refers to the main character in Robert Louis Stevenson’s 1886 novella, Strange Case of Doctor Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

rlsJekyll_and_Hyde_Title

This is often turned into The Strange Case… by editors, but, in fact, as can be seen from the title of the first edition, given above, there is no definite article. It seems clear to us that it has been omitted because Stevenson is imitating the shorthand methods of newspapers: the title is meant to sound like a headline, the sort of thing Sherlock Holmes’ observant eye would catch and he would then read to Watson.

The original story, if you’re not familiar with it, is about a doctor who leads two lives, one of service, the other of sensuality, and who wishes that he could separate them so that he could enjoy each without the influence of the other. He invents a drug, which, when consumed, turns the socially-responsible Dr. Jekyll (said “JEE-kull”, but often mispronounced)

John_Barrymore_as_Dr_Jekyll

into the loathsome Mr. Hyde.

hydejbarrymoor

The doctor runs into horrible difficulty when it gradually becomes clear that the Id-like Mr. Hyde is actually the dominant personality and the good Dr. Jekyll begins to turn into the fiendish Mr. Hyde even without the drug.

In JRRT’s case, it’s hardly sensuality—instead, it’s his academic life versus his creative one and the fact that he offers both as a possibility suggests that the difference between the two is hardly the glaring one we see in the Stevenson story.

The idea of the split personality in one person, however, leads us—well, if you’re a Tolkien fan, you know already, don’t you?

Gollum_Render

“Slinker and Stinker” Sam calls him, but it’s clear that, somewhere inside him, there are two much more distinctive personalities, just like Jekyll and Hyde.

269_gollum

The Dr. Jekyll is what must be almost a ghost of Smeagol, from his pre-Ring (and pre-murder of Deagol) days—ghost because near-constant exposure to the Ring has left him with only:

“…a little corner of his mind that was still his own…” (The Fellowship of the Ring, Book 1, Chapter 2, “The Shadow of the Past”)

But what is the Mr. Hyde?

Instead of a potion to break them apart, it has been the Ring which has caused the split and, in the process, as in the case of Dr. Jekyll, it has been the dark personality which has come to dominate. Unlike Mr. Hyde, however, there seems to be no pleasure to be had from being it:

“But the thing was eating up his mind, of course; and the torment had become almost unendurable.” (The Fellowship of the Ring, Book 1, Chapter 2, “The Shadow of the Past”)

JRRT isn’t any clearer about what was “eating up his mind”, but we imagine that, because Sauron has put so much of himself into the ring, just as Dr. Jekyll/Smeagol has that little corner of his own mind, Mr. Hyde/Gollum has a little corner of Sauron’s, which is a really terrible thought. One has only to remember Frodo’s reaction to Sauron when he looks into Galadriel’s mirror to understand:

“In the black abyss there appeared a single Eye that slowly grew, until it filled nearly all the Mirror. So terrible was it that Frodo stood rooted, unable to cry out or to withdraw his gaze. The Eye was rimmed with fire, but was itself glazed, yellow as a cat’s, watchful and intent, and the black slit of its pupil opened on a pit, a window into nothing.” (The Fellowship of the Ring, Book 2, Chapter 7, “The Mirror of Galadriel”)

10b8f0b7ef05881c193c76dc38bac020the-eye-of-sauron_3133429b

Viewed this way, Mr. Hyde/Gollum is nothing more than a little Sauron.

There is another, more physical connection between Smeagol/Gollum and Jekyll/Hyde. Look at the narrator’s description of Hyde:

“Mr. Hyde was pale and dwarfish; he gave the impression of deformity without any namable malformation; he had a displeasing smile; he had borne himself to the lawyer with a sort of murderous mixture of timidity and boldness, and he spoke with a husky, whispering, and somewhat broken voice…”

(Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, “The Search for Mr. Hyde”)

Compare that with:

“Deep down here by the dark water lived old Gollum, a small slimy creature…” who often talks in hisses and whispers, like:

“Bless us and splash us, my precioussss!”

(The Hobbit, Chapter 5, “Riddles in the Dark”)

riddles

Is there a physical similarity here? Certainly there is the echo of split personalities, evil, and, maybe, someone caught between what he wants and what he does…

tolkientolkien-mortar-board-7-amazing-real-life-tolkien-facts-that-made-middle-earth-jpeg-77543

Thanks, as always, for reading.

MTCIDC

CD

ps

Our pictures of Jekyll and Hyde come from a famous 1920 film, in which John Barrymore transforms himself into Hyde on camera. Follow this link to the Internet Archive to see a full, free showing (80+ minutes) of that film.

pps

It just occurred to us to mention another story with a shrunken figure of the self– Mark Twain’s conscience in his “The Facts Concerning the Recent Carnival of Crime in Connecticut” (1876).

 

What’s In a Name?

27 Wednesday Jul 2016

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

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Welcome, as always, dear readers.

In this posting, we are interested in the use and danger of using names in the history of the Ring, as well as looking at a possible parallel from an earlier heroic story.  How dangerous can a name be?

In Chapter 5 of The Hobbit, Bilbo makes what is almost a fatal mistake—not for himself so much as for Frodo, and not at the time, so much as some 77 years later.

Confronted by the curious Gollum deep under the Misty Mountains, Bilbo has responded to Gollum’s, “What iss he, my preciouss?” with, “I am Mr. Bilbo Baggins.”

The Riddle Game

First, of course, he hasn’t answered the question. He was asked what, not who. And, from Gollum’s viewpoint, in which seemingly all animate things are potentially at least a snack, if not a full meal (“I guess it’s a choice feast; at least a tasty morsel it’d make us, gollum!” The Hobbit, Chapter 5, “Riddles in the Dark”), “What is it?” is the more appropriate question.

Second, depending on the culture, names can have a much greater significance than simply being social identifiers. If your culture has a strong belief in magic, then your personal name is a point of vulnerability: someone who wishes to control you can use it in summoning spells. This is probably why, for example, Circe, in Book 10 of the Odyssey, when she can’t turn Odysseus into a pig, as she had already done with part of his crew, says that he’s akaletes—literally, “uncallable by name”. Although the story as we have it doesn’t say so, we can presume that, as he does in another circumstance—which we’re about to discuss—he gives the enchantress a false name and therefore escapes her magic.

This is not the first time Bilbo has slipped, however. William, the troll, has already asked, “What are yer?” And Bilbo has replied, “Bilbo Baggins, a bur-a hobbit.” (The Hobbit, Chapter 2, “Roast Mutton”)

TN-Trolls_colour_sketch

(By one of our favorite Tolkien artists, Ted Nasmith)

Again, Bilbo has given the wrong answer (reminding us of a scene in the Marx Brothers movie, Horsefeathers, 1932, where Chico, as Baravelli, the doorkeeper of a speakeasy, demands of Groucho, “Who are you?” to which Groucho replies, “I’m fine, thanks. Who are you?”).

Password Scene

He has also complicated matters by almost saying “burglar” (he’s just tried to steal William’s purse, after all, which has, in fact, asked him “’Ere, ‘oo are you?”), but, by changing it at the last moment, he’s then created a new confusion, as the trolls simultaneously ask, “A burrahobbit?” and William adds, “What’s a burrahobbit got to do with my pocket, anyways?”

(We also ask, is there a very mild joke here—“burra” could easily sound like “burrow” and, since hobbits traditionally lived in tunnels…?)

Gandalf and daylight take care of the trolls,

img__Art-The_Three_Trolls_are_Turned_to_Stone,_by_JRRT

but Gollum is another matter. Bilbo, caught off guard, gives him his name. This, in turn, under torture, is passed on to Sauron, now aware that the Ring has (literally) resurfaced on Middle-earth. And, somehow, the names “hobbits” and “Shire” have been added to Bilbo’s name, as Gandalf tells Frodo (The Fellowship of the Ring, Chapter 2, “The Shadow of the Past”). To find out more, Sauron sends out his search team, the Nazgul, and the danger begins…

ellenkurkinazgul

(A wonderfully atmospheric watercolor by Ella Kurki)

Odysseus, whom we mentioned earlier, has also been involved with a large and menacing creature, Polyphemus, the Cyclops, in Book 9 of the Odyssey.

Head-of-Polyphemos-Captmondo-wikimedia-commons

Having a little more experience of danger and living in a world where magic may be anywhere, he is more wary, however, than Bilbo and, when asked his name, replies “Ootis”, which is Greek for “Nobody”.

Scholars have argued for a very long time as to why Polyphemus, who has a Greek name (“The Much-Spoken-Of”) and speaks perfectly good Greek, can be so easily taken in by such a transparent trick and there are lots of theories to explain it. Perhaps, however, the answer is simply to point to Bilbo’s trolls, whom Tolkien describes as “slow in the uptake”—that is, they are not very quick to assess a new situation. Is this the case with Polyphemus? Or, being as big as he is, and not fearing the gods (as he informs Odysseus), perhaps he ignores Odysseus’ reply as simply part of the guest ritual known as xenia, in which, it is clear from his behavior, he does not believe anyway?

Over and over again, in the Odyssey, we see this social pattern, called xenia, which means something like “guest-friendship”, enacted   In this pattern, a person comes to another’s house in need of food and shelter. There is then a ritual, in which:

  1. the potential guest appeals to the householder
  2. the householder fulfills that person’s wants
  3. in return the person tells his name and his story
  1. the host gives the person guest-gifts and sends him on his way
  2. should he—or anyone to whom he’s related—be in the guest’s territory in the future, he can claim the same hospitality from the guest—and this can be passed down through generations

In the case of Polyphemus, Odysseus and his men have come to Polyphemus’ cave and helped themselves to his food while he was absent, therefore immediately disturbing the pattern. When the Cyclops comes home, his response is to kill and eat two of Odysseus’ men, a grim parody of the custom, in which he should be feeding them, not feeding on them. The situation escalates, with more men eaten, until Odysseus formulates an escape plan which includes getting the Cyclops drunk

Cyclops-Homer

and putting out his eye,

cyclops2

then using a flock of sheep as an escape vehicle.

FrCyclopsEscape

In the meantime, however, Polyphemus has asked for Odysseus’ name, gotten the “Nobody” answer, and offered a guest-gift in return: the Cyclops will eat Odysseus last. The plan works, Odysseus and his surviving men escape (with the sheep), and get back to their ship, but then things go wrong again. Even blind, Polyphemus pursues them and, tossing mountain tops, almost brings them back to shore.

cyclops3

They do manage to row out of range, however, but then Odysseus, seeming to destroy completely his earlier “Nobody” trick, and much to his crew’s horror, shouts out to the Cyclops not only who he really is, but where he lives, as well. What’s going on here?

polyphemos

Bilbo has twice, inadvertently, provided others with his name, if not his address.  Although Odysseus may be more able when it comes to thinking quickly in a dangerous situation than Bilbo, he also belongs to what is called a “face culture”. This means that who you are is a public thing. You only gain credit if you do things publically and your name is attached to what you do. In Odysseus’ case, he has bested a monster and avenged the deaths of his crewmen and it is important that that monster knows who did it. Unfortunately, that monster is the son of the sea god, Poseidon, to whom he prays for revenge and, knowing Odysseus’ name and address, this is a bit more pinpointed than simply saying, “Get that guy who put out my eye, dad!”

poseidon.jpg

Bilbo blundered into the territory of Gollum and, through inexperience and surprise, brought trouble, in time, to Frodo. Odysseus, having concealed his identity successfully, then exposed himself because his society and his position in that society required it. In turn, he returns home alone and on someone else’s ship, having brought trouble on himself and his crew.  In answer to our initial question, “How dangerous can a name be?”  The answer appears to be, “Very.”

Thanks, as always, for reading.

MTCIDC

CD

 

Terrifyingly Funny? (Part 2)

20 Wednesday Jul 2016

Posted by in J.R.R. Tolkien, Language, Narrative Methods, Villains

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Dear Readers, welcome, as always.

In the first part of this posting, we began to think out loud about the idea of characters in Tolkien who might combine menace and comedy. Our first idea had been to consider Gollum—

Gollum_Render.png

but not the Lord of the Rings Gollum, at least not at first glance.

The idea then took us backwards to the large, rather dim trolls of The Hobbit, who certainly seemed to display that combination.

trolls.jpg

And The Hobbit brings us back to Gollum.

All Tolkien readers must know, we imagine, that the book which JRRT published in 1937 was a very different kind of book from what gradually grew up around it. Here, for example, is the beginning of the reader’s introduction to Smeagol (a name never used in The Hobbit, of course):

“Deep down here by the dark water lived old Gollum…” (The Hobbit, Chapter 5, “Riddles in the Dark”)

To us, this sounds like it could easily begin, “Once upon a time, deep down by the dark water, lived Old Gollum”, as if it were the opening of a fairy tale and The Hobbit was, of course, originally conceived of and written as a children’s book.

“Old Gollum”, by that name, might have been a cantankerous but lovable geezer—but the line continues, “a small slimy creature”. “Slimy” then leads to “dark as darkness, except for two big round pale eyes in his thin face…He liked meat too. Goblin he thought good, when he could get it; but he took care they never found him out. He just throttled them from behind…” And then, presumably, he ate them raw (as he does fish in The Hobbit and he would coneys in The Lord of the Rings), as Gollum’s level of civilization seems to begin and end with the little boat which he has—although where the materials came from for that is never explained. (Gandalf, in “The Shadow of the Past”, says that the Stoors and Fallowhides, to whom Gollum/Smeagol belonged, made boats out of reeds.)

In our last posting, we pointed to the speech of the trolls in The Hobbit as one possible source of humor.

THE HOBBIT: AN UNEXPECTED JOURNEY

Unlike the main characters, who spoke a Middle-earth version of RSE (Received Standard English), they displayed a number of the linguistic elements of lower-class London which are often used to show class—or even species?–difference (think of the orcs who carry off Merry and Pippin, for example) in Tolkien. If this is combined with the topics of their conversation—mainly about food, some of it sheep, but also both humans and dwarves—we then have what we set out to find, menace and humor.

As for Gollum, he certainly has a very distinctive form of speech. First, there’s his habit of carrying on a conversation with himself even in the presence of others. It reminds us of the talk of Ben Gunn,

bengunn

who was marooned by Captain Flint in Stevenson’s Treasure Island (1881-2; 1883) and has clearly developed a similar habit:

“If you was sent by Long John,” said he, “I’m as good as pork and I know it. But where was you, do you suppose?” (Treasure Island, Chapter XV, “The Man of the Island”)

There are four other distinctive elements of Gollum’s speech. First, there is that gollum. The narrator says of it:

“And when he said gollum he made a horrible swallowing noise in his throat.” (The Hobbit, Chapter 5, “Riddles in the Dark”)

Andy Serkis, who is the voice (and movement) of Gollum in the Jackson films, has, in interviews, said that the noise he makes is modeled upon his cat throwing up a hairball. As Tolkien has called it “a horrible swallowing noise”, it would seem that this is, in fact, the opposite sound from what is wanted. So what should it sound like—that is, and still sound like “gollum”? The word has two syllables—perhaps we might think that the noise would depend upon which syllable bore the primary accent: GOL-lum or gol-LUM. To us, accenting the first has more of a choky feel to it and the second more of a froggy. (We also wonder, knowing Gandalf’s later explanation of how Smeagol acquired the Ring, whether, in fact, Smeagol is actually imitating the noise Deagol made as he struggled for breath.)

A second element is his incessant referring—in the 1937 edition—to himself as “my precious”. In the 1951 revision, and beyond, Gollum can call both himself and the Ring by the term, and we are of two minds about the change. On the one hand, the 1937 version reflects what interests us: a word of tender endearment mixed with a murderous intent, all within Gollum. On the other, the post-1951 version’s double usage presents us with a picture of a creature so enslaved to the Ring that he uses that term of endearment (and we also know, from Gandalf’s later explanation, that the Ring does not return the affection, making it even more horrible). As well, others touched by the Ring can be seen as infected by its power when they use the expression.

bilbowithring

Third—and more potentially comic—is Gollum’s actual language. There are the odd expressions, sometimes based on actual older English expressions—“Bless us and save us” becomes “Bless us and splash us”, example.   As well, there are the non-standard words like “bitsy” (a kind of diminutive) and plurals—“handses”, “eggses”, “pocketses”.

Fourth is the stressed sssssssssssssssssssssibilance. JRRT himself points to this in a letter to Rayner Unwin in a correction to the 1937 edition: “Not that Gollum would miss the chance of a sibilant.” (cited in Anderson, The Annotated Hobbit, 120, note 9)

Taken altogether, this makes for a very distinctive—and very different speaker from any other in The Hobbit (or The Lord of the Rings, for that matter) and this is clear from the very start of the conversation between Gollum and Bilbo:

“What iss he, my preciouss?”…

“I am Mr. Bilbo Baggins. I have lost the dwarves and I have lost the wizard, and I don’t know where I am and I don’t want to know, if only I can get away.” (The Hobbit, Chapter 5, “Riddles in the Dark”)

The menace is there in Gollum, from the very beginning:

“Bless us and splash us, my precioussss! I guess it’s a choice feast; at least a tasty morsel it’d make us, gollum!” (The Hobbit, Chapter 5, “Riddles in the Dark”)

And we would suggest that the humor is there, too, in the very same speech: the twisted expression, the self-address, the use of “my precioussss”, and the hissy sibilance. Tolkien, though personally drily witty, was not—nor intended to be—a comic writer. What he could do well, we suggest, is use that which interested him deeply—language and its expression—combine it, for contrast, with a certain darkness of theme, as here, and allow the reader to feel a kind of grim amusement in the balance–or imbalance–between what’s being said and how.

What do you think, dear readers?

Thanks, as always, for reading.

MTCIDC

CD

Terrifyingly Funny? (Part 1)

13 Wednesday Jul 2016

Posted by in Artists and Illustrators, Fairy Tales and Myths, Imaginary History, J.R.R. Tolkien, Language, Literary History, Narrative Methods, Villains

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Dear Readers, welcome, as always.

This is going to be a two-part posting because– well, it began as one thing, and then became another. We were thinking about Gollum, not as the grim and tormented figure we know from The Lord of the Rings, but rather as the muttering, riddling cave-dweller of The Hobbit. We were wondering if we could see Gollum not only as menacing, but as comic, as well.

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Then, however, we began to think about other such figures, and one of us said to the other, “What about the trolls in The Hobbit?”. The other replied, “we see them before we see Gollum. Maybe we should start with them.”

And so we shall.

It’s clear where Tolkien got his trolls– they’re all over the fairy tales he had been reading since childhood, and they form a component of the traditional Scandinavian literature in which he had been interested for nearly as long. They are commonly large, and not terrifically bright, and often possess an anxiety about daylight. One of our favorite illustrators of such creatures is John Bauer (1882-1918), who, among other works, contributed illustrations to an ongoing series of volumes appropriately titled Among Gnomes and Trolls. Here, for example, is one of his depictions of the latter.

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And, because we can’t resist– can we ever? Here are a couple more illustrations by Bauer.

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Even before The Hobbit, however, Tolkien had produced a literary troll. In 1926, he wrote the first version of a poem to be sung to the folk song “The Fox Went Out”, called “Pēro & Pōdex”(“Boot and Bottom”). It survives  in a later version in chapter 12 of Book 1 of The Lord of the Rings, beginning “Troll sat alone on his seat of stone”.

In The Hobbit, the trolls are grouped around a fire, drinking and eating and immediately recognizable:

“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”)

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Douglas Anderson, in his invaluable The Annotated Hobbit, says that “Tolkien presents the Trolls’ speech in a comic, lower-class dialect” (70). In fact, we wonder whether, as in the case of the later orcs in The Lord of the Rings, we are not seeing a reflection of the speech of some of the Tommies whom Tolkien had commanded in the Great War.

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” ‘Mutton yesterday, mutton today, and blimey, if it don’t look like mutton again tomorrer,’ said one of the trolls.

‘Never a blinking bit of manflesh have we had for long enough,’ said a second. ‘What the ‘ell William was a-thinkin; of to bring us into these parts at all, beats me – and the drink runnin’ short, what’s more,’ he said jogging the elbow of William, who was taking a pull at his jug” (The Hobbit, Chapter 2, “Roast Mutton”).

Besides what sounds like a reference to a line in Through the Looking-Glass (1871), “The rule is, jam to-morrow and jam yesterday – but never jam to-day,” with their “blimey” and “blinking”, the trolls are immediately labeled by their speech as lower-class, potentially thuggish, and certainly not people invited to a formal drawing room like this–

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Of course, we might ask ourselves, why should trolls talk like that anyway? And we might then reply, because Tolkien is mixing language for comic effect. Bilbo, Gandalf, and the dwarves speak in non-dialect standard English. Therefore, there’s an especially strong contrast here. As well, what the trolls are saying can be funny in itself, as when William says to the discontented other trolls,

” ‘Yer can’t expect folk to stop here for ever just to be et by you and Bert. You’ve et a village and a half between yer, since we come down from the mountains. What more d’yer want?’ ” (The Hobbit, Chapter 2, “Roast Mutton”).

Here, we have comic exaggeration combined with the frustrated defensiveness of a leader whose tactics are being questioned by subordinates.

The tension grows as the scene progresses.  Bilbo appears, is nabbed by a purse which sounds like the Trolls, the Trolls fall to fisticuffs while arguing over Bilbo and then over the dwarves whom they capture, and Gandalf, imitating various Troll voices, so stirs the pot that the Trolls never notice when the first beam of sunlight cuts across their clearing and they are petrified.

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So, if we consider what the Trolls have been doing previously–“Never a blinking bit of manflesh have we had for long enough…” says one, as well as what they discuss doing not only to Bilbo, but to the whole of Thorin & Co., these could seem to be grim figures, indeed.  Then again, they sound like comic cockneys, they have ludicrously-large appetites, and they are dim enough to be taken in very easily by Gandalf’s ventriloquism.   So, grim and funny at the same time.

On the whole, humor is more an element in The Hobbit than in The Lord of the Rings, but we believe that perhaps because of his initial appearance in The Hobbit, Gollum may have both the menace and the humor, at times , of these gormless Trolls, as we hope to show in Part 2.

Thanks, as always, for reading,

MTCIDC,

CD

Evil Twin?

22 Wednesday Jun 2016

Posted by in Films and Music, J.R.R. Tolkien, Narrative Methods, Villains

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Dear Readers,

Welcome, as always.

In Edgar Allen Poe’s short story, “William Wilson”, (1839) the protagonist is haunted by a double—not a genetic twin, but a kind of look-alike opposite—who acts upon the behavior of the debauched original. (He eventually murders the “twin”, only to discover that, in a sense, he’s murdered himself.)

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In this posting, we want to think about a relationship which, born in The Hobbit, grows over time until it, too, appears almost to be a pair of mirror opposites—who sometimes exchange their roles…

” ‘Gollum!’ cried Frodo. ‘Gollum? Do you mean that this is the very Gollum-creature that Bilbo met? How loathsome!’ ” (The Lord of the Rings, Book 1, The Fellowship of the Ring, Chapter Two, “The Shadow of the Past”).

This is the moment in which Gandalf is beginning to explain the history of the Ring, first to Frodo, and then, in more detail, in the Council of Elrond.

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When Gandalf reveals that a major force in that history has been Gollum, Frodo is both surprised and appalled.

Gandalf is not. In fact, he shows a kind of sympathy for Gollum which flickers throughout the whole of The Lord of the Rings and which might be best described as pity. When later in this chapter Frodo exclaims, “What a pity that Bilbo did not stab the creature when he had the chance”, Gandalf replies:

” ‘Pity? It was Pity that stayed his hand. Pity, and Mercy: not to strike without need. And he has been well rewarded, Frodo. Be sure that he took so little hurt from the evil, and escaped in the end, because he began his ownership of the Ring so. With Pity.’ ” (The Lord of the Rings, Book 1, The Fellowship of the Ring, Chapter Two, “The Shadow of the Past”).

This, of course, is in contrast to what happened when Gollum found the Ring– because, in fact, he didn’t, and he murdered his friend Deagol, who did.

Sauron, we are told, has put much of his power—and himself—into the Ring. That power is often talked about in The Lord of the Rings, but it seems abstract—power to do what? One aspect of Sauron’s personality—a deep greed—is easily seen, however, reflected in how the Ring brings out that same feeling in others, even to the point of violence. Yet, as Gandalf says:

” ‘The murder of Deagol haunted Gollum, and he had made up a defence, repeating it to his “Precious” over and over again, as he gnawed bones in the dark, until he almost believed it.’ ” (The Lord of the Rings, Book 1, The Fellowship of the Ring, Chapter Two, “The Shadow of the Past”).

[Is there a hint of cannibalism here? When we first meet Gollum, the narrator says of him: “He liked meat too. Goblin he thought good, when he could get it…” (The Hobbit, “Riddles in the Dark”) Whose bones might Smeagol have gnawed first?

“No one ever found out what had become of Deagol; he was murdered far from home, and his body was cunningly hidden.” ]

We might wonder, thinking of “William Wilson”, if Smeagol and Deagol were, in a sense, twins?

“He had a friend called Deagol, of similar sort, sharper-eyed but not so quick and strong.” (The Lord of the Rings, Book 1, The Fellowship of the Ring, Chapter Two, “The Shadow of the Past”)

And Smeagol’s torment has as much to do with the symbolic killing of the “good” self as it does the murder of a friend?

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Smeagol and Deagol by Williweissfuss

There may be a moral element here, as well, and it’s interesting to think that, although infected with Sauron’s greed, this potential for knowing right from wrong remains, at least temporarily, in Gollum, making him lie to himself and to others about how he acquired the ring.  Bilbo must have felt this, too, even if he gained the Ring through non-violent means, this need for self-justification. And so he lies, but, to someone with a deeper knowledge, such behavior is all-too-transparent, as Gandalf says:

“Then I heard Bilbo’s strange story of how he had ‘won’ it, and I could not believe it. When I at last got the truth out of him, I saw at once that he had been trying to put his claim to the ring beyond doubt. Much like Gollum with his ‘birthday-present’. The lies were too much alike for my comfort.” (The Lord of the Rings, Book 1, The Fellowship of the Ring, Chapter Two, “The Shadow of the Past”).

Gandalf has seen the lie, but he has also seen something else, a kind of pattern in that lying and a worrying link between the liars, which he expresses in his response to Frodo’s disgust at the thought of Gollum with the Ring:

“ ‘I think that it is a sad story,’ said the wizard, ‘and it might have happened to others, even to some hobbits that I have known.’ “ (The Lord of the Rings, Book 1, The Fellowship of the Ring, Chapter 2, “The Shadow of the Past”)

Gandalf has also seen a deeper similarity between the two. When Frodo says that he can’t believe that Gollum has any connection with hobbits, Gandalf says:

“ ‘It is true all the same…About their origins, at any rate, I know more than hobbits do themselves. And even Bilbo’s story suggests the kinship. There was a great deal in the background of their minds and memories that was very similar. They understood one another remarkably well, very much better than a hobbit would understand, say, a Dwarf, or an Orc, or even an Elf. Think of the riddles they both knew, for one thing.’ “ (The Lord of the Rings, Book 1, The Fellowship of the Ring, Chapter 2, “The Shadow of the Past”)

Alan Lee - The Hobbit - 19 - Riddles in the dark.jpg

Alan Lee, “Riddles in the Dark”

This connection is not just with Bilbo—Frodo, too, appears to share it, as we see later in the story:

“For a moment it appeared to Sam that his master had grown and Gollum had shrunk: a tall stern shadow, a mighty lord who hid his brightness in grey cloud, and at his feet a little whining dog. Yet the two were in some way akin and not alien: they could reach one another’s minds.” (The Lord of the Rings, Book 4, The Two Towers, Chapter 1, “The Taming of Smeagol”)

But this is the behavior of a hobbit as the “good” twin, when he has the Ring and believes himself in control. Below it always lurks Sauron’s greed, and it can bring the “bad” twin to the surface very easily, as Frodo imagines when Bilbo says:

“ ‘Have you got it here?’ he asked in a whisper. ‘I can’t help feeling curious, you know, after all I’ve heard. I should very much like just to peep at it again.’

‘Yes, I’ve got it,’ answered Frodo, feeling a strange reluctance. ‘It looks just the same as it ever did.’

‘Well, I should just like to see it for a moment,’ said Bilbo.

When he had dressed, Frodo found that while he slept the Ring had been hung about his neck on a new chain, light but strong. Slowly he drew it out. Bilbo put out his hand. But Frodo quickly drew back the Ring. To his distress and amazement he found that he was no longer looking at Bilbo; a shadow seemed to have fallen between them, and through it he found himself eyeing a little wrinkled creature with a hungry face and bony groping hands. He felt a desire to strike him.” (The Lord of the Rings, Book 2, The Fellowship of the Ring, Chapter 1, “Many Meetings”)

[Here we have included a second image which is, to our eyes, strikingly like the first. This is a picture of Lon Chaney, Sr., as Inspector Edward C. Burke of Scotland Yard, in the lost 1927 silent film London After Midnight. Chaney was a remarkable frightening presence on-screen, doing his own make-up, as in the 1925 The Phantom of the Opera, based upon Gaston Leroux’s 1910 novel of the same title—]

ChaneyPhantomoftheOpera

Of course, one might ask here, was this really Bilbo Frodo was seeing through that shadow, or was it Sauron’s greed, distorting Frodo’s vision? Certainly, this happens again, when in “The Tower of Cirith Ungol”, Sam offers to carry the Ring and Frodo thought that:

“Sam had changed before his very eyes into an orc again, leering and pawing at his treasure, a foul little creature with greedy eyes and slobbering mouth.” (The Lord of the Rings, Book 6, The Return of the King, Chapter One, “The Tower of Cirith Ungol”)

And then, just at the moment before the Ring’s final destruction, it’s Frodo who changes before Sam’s eyes:

“Then Frodo stirred and spoke in a clear voice, indeed with a voice clearer and more powerful than Sam had ever heard him use, and it rose above the throb and turmoil of Mount Doom, ringing in the roof and walls.

‘I have come,’ he said. ‘But I do not choose now to do what I came to do. I will not do this deed. The Ring is mine!’ “ (The Lord of the Rings, Book 6, The Return of the King, Chapter Three, “Mount Doom”)

At this moment, it seems horribly appropriate that he put on the Ring and disappear, as the Frodo who has gone through such terrible hardship has disappeared, replaced not by Gollum as twin, but, it seems, by Isildur, who, when urged by Cirdan and Elrond, that the Ring “should have been cast then into Orodruin’s fire nigh at hand where it was made”, refused, saying “This I will have as weregild for my father, and my brother…” (The Lord of the Rings, Book 2, The Fellowship of the Ring, Chapter Two, “The Council of Elrond”)

But Gollum does appear and fulfills Gandalf’s near-prophecy to Frodo of long before:

“…he is bound up with the fate of the Ring. My heart tells me that he has some part to play yet, for good or ill, before the end; and when that comes, the pity of Bilbo may rule the fate of many—yours not least.” (The Lord of the Rings, Book 1, The Fellowship of the Ring, Chapter Two, “The Shadow of the Past”)

Removing the Ring by removing the finger, Gollum continues the image of Isildur, who had done the same to Sauron to gain the Ring, and, at the same time, he releases Frodo from its spell, even as he falls to his death in the fires of Mount Doom. At the same time, Gollum also breaks the image of twins—and, unlike William Wilson, with the Ring gone and the bond, Frodo is maimed, but whole—and alone.

Thanks, as ever, for reading.

MTCIDC

CD

Rare Good Ballast

15 Wednesday Jun 2016

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

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Welcome, dear readers, to our latest posting. This one is based upon a word, but that word leads us to an interesting question: when you make a new world, do you intend to include anything from your own? Or do things just sort of slip in?

The word is “taters”, as in “I’d give a lot for a half dozen taters.” (The Lord of the Rings, Book 4, Chapter 4, “Of Herbs and Stewed Rabbit”)

(And a footnote–if you’re an American, you say that “erbs”, but, if you’re from the UK, you say it “Herbs”.)

It’s Sam, of course, trying to create a little domesticity while he and Frodo live rough on the trek south from the Morannon.

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At Sam’s request, Gollum has gone hunting and has returned with a pair of wild (European) rabbits, or coneys. (“Coney” is a worn-down form of the Latin word cuniculus, “rabbit”, through Old French, the source of so many Latin-based English words.)

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Gollum, who has long forgotten about cooking (although one presumes that, in his distant life among his fellow proto-Hobbits, he wore clothes, lived in a house—or a hobbit hole–and ate bread), is convinced that Sam is going to ruin his catch.

“ ‘Stew the rabbits!’ squealed Gollum in dismay. ‘Spoil beautiful meat Smeagol saved for you, poor hungry Smeagol! What for? What for, silly hobbit? They are young, they are tender, they are nice. Eat them, eat them!’ “

(And here we can hear Sam-I-am from Dr. Seuss’ Green Eggs and Ham, “Would you? Could you/In a car?/Eat them! Eat them!/Here they are.”)

GEH

Along with the coneys, Sam would like something more, “taters”, much to Gollum’s puzzlement:

“Smeagol won’t grub for roots and carrotses and—taters. What’s taters, precious, eh, what’s taters?”

And Sam spells it out:

“Po-ta-toes…The Gaffer’s delight, and rare good ballast for an empty belly. But you won’t find any, so you needn’t look.”

Most readers would know immediately what Sam meant when he said, “Po-ta-toes”, but how about “ballast?”

In a way, it may be odd that Sam would know this word, as it comes from the world of ocean-going ships and Sam has never been closer to bigger water than the Brandywine—and that only near the beginning of The Lord of the Rings.

Ballast is the weight put into the deepest hold of a ship to keep it balanced in the water—especially when it’s empty of cargo. It’s commonly stone and it’s very useful now for underwater archaeologists, since the stone, if it remains in place after a ship sinks, can show the outline of a hull.

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So “rare good ballast for an empty belly” gives us the image of a Gaffer kept upright and balanced, moving with potatoes inside him.

Sam has also said, “But you won’t find any, so you needn’t look”: why not?

In our world, before the 16th century, potatoes were only available in South America, in particular in the Inca empire.

This was an elaborate patchwork of smaller peoples controlled by a military group with a capital at Cuzco.

Inca_MainMap3_sg

A Neolithic civilization, they were master architects, as may be seen in the remains of the Temple of the Sun, in the capital—

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and in what is believed to be a summer palace, at Machu Picchu.

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With a king and an army

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they controlled much of the west coast of South America from 1438 to 1533, when Spanish invaders destroyed them and their world.

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A major food source was potatoes and there were many varieties available—and there still are, more than 1000—

Potatoes_Peruvian_varieties

In fact, the Inca even learned how to freeze-dry them to preserve them, a method called chunu.

Chunu

No one knows for sure when potatoes first came to Europe. It is imagined that Spaniards coming back from the New World would have brought them. In the English tradition, it was Sir Walter Raleigh who introduced them.

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They were then cultivated and rapidly became a major European food source, but they are not a native species and don’t grow wild—leading us to imagine that that’s what Sam is saying: Sam and Frodo and Gollum are in the wilderness and potatoes only grow where they’re planted—suggesting that, in Middle-earth, they are also an import—but from where?

(This reminds us of that moment in the Jackson film, where Sam and Frodo bump into Merry and Pippin in a corn—that is, maize–field. JRRT never mentions maize which, in European history, is also a New World import. This only makes us further wonder what the script writers thought they were doing in removing Pippin and Merry from their proper place in the story…)

There is more of this sort of thing, of course—Hobbits have teatime—we can suppose that it’s something herbal, but real teatime only appeared in England after the regular importation of tea to England from China in the mid-17th century. (For those familiar with it, there is a funny Horrible Histories episode which shows the introduction of tea in Stuart times when, according to the story, people had been refreshing themselves previously with cups of hot water.)

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And then there’s tobacco. It’s called that in The Hobbit, but it’s “pipe weed” in The Lord of the Rings. Tobacco is one more import in our world—brought to Europe in the 16th century. Here’s the first known image of someone actually smoking (from 1595).

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It quickly became so popular that controversy over it, ranging from Tobias Hume’s ( 1579?-1645 ) love song to it, “Tobacco, Tobacco, sing sweetly for Tobacco” (from The First Part of Ayres or the Musicall Humours, No. 3, 1605—you can see the text and score if you Google “Tobias Hume” at IMSLP) to James the First’s condemnation of it, A Counterblaste to Tobacco (1604), which you can actually read if you Google “A Counterblaste to Tobacco”.

When JRRT was revising The Hobbit for its republication in 1966, he made a number of changes to the text, but some things remained, such as teatime, and even the image of a railroad train—“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.”

Douglas Anderson argues, in Note 35 of Chapter 1 of The Annotated Hobbit, that, in the case of the railroad, “This usage need not be viewed as an anachronism, for Tolkien as narrator was telling this story to his children in the early 1930s, and they lived in a world where railway trains were an important feature of life.” (The Annotated Hobbit, 47-48.) This is never really stated, in fact, in the Hobbit text, but the tone of the narration—which JRRT came to dislike—would suggest something of the sort. As for The Lord of the Rings, we have no explanation. Some items are never explained, they’re just there.

And, of course, there’s this:

“I’ll cook you some taters one of these days. I will: fried fish and chips served by S. Gamgee.”

fish-and-chips

FishAndChips

Perhaps this is in Hobbiton? Bywater? Michel Delving?

Thanks, as always, for reading.

MTCIDC

CD

Ringed In

05 Wednesday Aug 2015

Posted by in J.R.R. Tolkien

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Dear Readers, as always, welcome!

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

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

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

Nine for Mortal Men doomed to die,

     One for the Dark Lord on his dark throne

In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie.

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

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

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

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

a sword, for example

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or a crown

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

As Gandalf tells Frodo:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thanks, as ever, for reading.

MTCIDC

CD

Red Books, Black Books, Yellow Books

24 Wednesday Jun 2015

Posted by in J.R.R. Tolkien, Language, Narrative Methods

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Dear Readers,

Welcome back! This posting is devoted to a look at what lies behind that famous imaginary document The Red Book of Westmarch.

     As Tolkien says of The Lord of the Rings in the section of the prologue entitled “Note on the Shire Records”:

“This account of the end of the Third Age is drawn mainly from the Red Book of Westmarch. That most important source for the history of the War of the Ring was so called because it was long preserved at Undertowers, the home of the Fairbairns, Wardens of the Westmarch. It was in origin Bilbo’s private diary, which he took with him to Rivendell. Frodo brought it back to the Shire, together with many loose leaves of notes, and during S.R. 1420-1 he nearly filled its pages with his account of the War. But annexed to it and preserved with it, probably in a single red case, were the three large volumes, bound in red leather, that Bilbo gave to him as a parting gift. To these four volumes there was added in Westmarch a fifth containing commentaries, genealogies, and various other matter concerning the hobbit members of the Fellowship.” 14

redbookfacsimile

     This is not the end of the material on the Red Book, of course,—that takes up another paragraph and then is continued in several more paragraphs about copies and about other pertinent written sources. This is JRRT having fun, of course: after all, for him, what is more satisfying after creating languages than building contexts for them?

     This particular context is based upon material from his own specialty, medieval literature, and it’s always been said that The Red Book of Westmarch was inspired by the late 14th-century Welsh Red Book of Hergest. This famous manuscript contains one of the major texts of the cycle of legendary material called the Mabinogion, but for Tolkien its importance may have been simply that

  1. it’s a medieval manuscript familiar to him and a model-ready-to-hand for what he created in what he thought of as his own medieval world
  2. as the Wiki entry says, “The manuscript derives its name from the colour of its leather binding and from its association with Hergest Court between the late 15th and early 17th century.”

redbookofhergest

     This manuscript and others like it, both Welsh (Black Book of Carmarthen,White Book of Rhydderch, Book of Taliesin) and Irish (Book of the Dun Cow, Yellow Book of Lecan, Book of Leinster, Book of Ballymote, Book of Lismore)

blackbookofcarmarthen

Book_of_Taliesin_facsimile

whitebookof rhydderch

lebornauidre

Book_of_Lecan_p2

Book_of_Leinster,_folio_53

were created in the scriptoriums (Latin plural: scriptoria), the medieval equivalent of a copy center, in various monasteries. The following images will give you an idea of how they worked.

scriptorium

 BL_Royal_Vincent_of_Beauvais

gregory

In the world before Gutenberg

792px-Pressing-16th_century%20copy

everything was written—and then copied—by hand, a fact which Tolkien faithfully reproduces in his world when he writes that:

“The most important copy, however, has a different history. It was kept at Great Smials, but it was written in Gondor, probably at the request of the great-grandson of Peregrin, and completed in S.R. 1592 (F.A. 172). Its southern scribe appended this note: Findegil, King’s Writer, finished this work in IV 172.” 14

     There are, of course, no monasteries in Middle Earth, but, in our world, there were clerks, educated in monasteries, who worked as secretaries and copyists for kings and their nobility, so it’s quite logical that a copy of the Red Book in Middle Earth was the work of a so-called “King’s Writer”.

     Comparing an actual manuscript with the Red Book of Westmarch, we find several other differences. For one, the RBW’s four main volumes appear to contain nothing but material relating to the events surrounding Bilbo, Frodo, and the Ring. In contrast, the actual medieval manuscripts are more like compilations. The Red Book of Hergest, for example, has not only the Mabinogion, but also unrelated poetry, and a Welsh translation of Geoffrey of Monmouth’s History of the Kings of Britain, among other works. The Irish Book of the Dun Cow has religious texts and secular, all mixed together, and this appears to be common. The closest the RBW comes to this is volume 5, with its “commentaries, genealogies, and various other matter concerning the hobbit members of the Fellowship” and this is still material pertaining to the main subject, not something as removed as the method for determining the correct date for Easter to be found in the Book of Leinster.

     Another difference brings us to a puzzle and the conclusion of this posting.  Tolkien has told us that the core of the RBW is Bilbo’s diary. The Welsh and Irish manuscripts discussed above are collections of literary and religious texts, with nothing personal in them at all, as he would have been well aware.  As well, we might wonder when and where and how Bilbo kept that diary. There’s no mention of it in The Hobbit—after all, Bilbo ran out of his house to join the dwarves without even a pocket handkerchief. And, even if the dwarves had provided one (along with the handkerchief–although that does not seem terrifically likely–the dwarves who visit Bilbo seem more attuned to orality than literacy), surely it would have been lost with all of the other baggage when the company fell into the goblin world and Bilbo met Gollum.

Alan Lee - The Hobbit - 19 - Riddles in the dark

Other than assuming that Bilbo, although he had forgotten his handkerchief, had remembered his Blackberry and was constantly dictating to the Cloud for later transcription, what do we have here?  (And, while we’re wondering, if The Hobbit was based upon that mysterious diary, what do we know of the adapter/narrator who turned it from a diary into a continuous narrative–another “King’s Writer”?)

Obviously, MTCIDC!

Thanks, as always, for reading.

CD