King Trotter?

08 Wednesday Oct 2025

Tags

Aragorn, Fantasy, Geoffrey Chaucer, Geoffrey of Monmouth, Historia Regum Britanniae, Howard Pyle, King Arthur, Le Morte d'Arthur, Merlin, NC Wyeth, Robert de Boron, Sigurd, Sir Thomas Malory, Strider, TH White, The Once and Future King, The Red Fairy Book, The Sword in the Stone, Tolkien, Trotter.

Welcome, dear readers, as ever.

I had been outside on some land being cleared when I spotted this—

and, as someone who thinks and writes and teaches about adventure in literature, I immediately thought of this—

(This version of the scene is from Howard Pyle’s 1903 The Story of King Arthur and his Knights , which you can read here: https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/60184/pg60184-images.html#CHAPTER_FIRST-A )

My own knowledge of King Arthur probably began with books like The Boy’s King Arthur, by Sidney Lanier, originally published in 1880, with perhaps the best known version being the 1917 edition, with its wonderful illustrations by N.C.Wyeth,

(Here’s your copy: https://archive.org/details/boyskingarthursimalo/mode/2up )

and Howard Pyle’s The Story of King Arthur and His Knights, mentioned above, before, as a teenager, I found the Imaginative and witty but ultimately melancholy T.H. White’s 1958 The Once and Future King,

(This is actually an omnibus volume of earlier White works, which you can read about here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Once_and_Future_King )

the first volume of which being made into a Disney movie, The Sword in the Stone in 1963,

all of which being direct descendants from Sir Thomas Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur, written perhaps in the 1460s and one of the first books printed in England by William Caxton in 1485.

(Only 2 copies are known to exist: one in the Rylands Library in Manchester, the other in the Morgan Library in New York—this is the Morgan Library copy. You can read an 1893 edition here: https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/46853/pg46853-images.html Malory’s book—and Malory himself—have been the subject of much scholarly work and debate and you can read a little about it and him here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le_Morte_d%27Arthur )

I had known that, behind Malory, lies Geoffrey of Monmouth’s early 12^th-Century Historia Regum Britanniae (aka De Gestis Britonum—that is, “History of the Kings of Britain” or “Concerning the Acts/Deeds of the Britons”), but there was something new to me in doing a little reading for this posting: the story of the sword and its stone. Because it’s in all the later versions, even forming the title of one part of White’s larger collection, I had assumed that it was a story which had always been part of the bigger history of Arthur, and yet it seems to have been an independent creation, by a French knight, Robert de Boron, in a poem entitled Merlin, dated to the end of the 12^th, the beginning of the 13^th-Century.

(This is from 13^th-Century manuscript in the Bibliotheque nationale in Paris. The BnF has a short feature—in French—on it here: https://essentiels.bnf.fr/fr/litterature/moyen-age-1/ed6c3713-b2d5-4b94-8cac-a35fbd9471b1-mythe-arthurien/video/9ad866b9-c7ac-47b8-9356-9bcb793fb0ad-histoire-merlin )

The whole Arthur story is a tangle of English and French poems and prose works, showing what a fertile field it was for poets and story-tellers, just as Troy had been, many centuries before—and still could be for medieval creators, if we think of Geoffrey Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde as an example of a continued interest. (You can read Chaucer’s poem here: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/257/257-h/257-h.htm ) Who influenced whom, sometimes even who someone might have been, is a happy battlefield for scholars, so I’ll only point you to some discussion of de Boron and his poem here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_de_Boron#Further_reading and here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merlin_(Robert_de_Boron_poem) and include a 15^th-century English prose translation of the Old French of the original here, which is quite readable, and not just if you’re used to Chaucer’s 14^th-century English: https://metseditions.org/read/jy0W7X8HvLalIgvvC1z6jFMKyK4EakW )

For me, the important point of the story is really a question : who is to be king of England and how can he prove that he is the rightful king? And the answer is provided by that sword, as the 15^th-century text reads:

“And the archebisshop lowted to the swerde and sawgh letteres of golde in
the stiel. And he redde the letteres that seiden, ‘Who taketh this swerde out of
this ston sholde be kynge by the eleccion of Jhesu Criste.’ “

(“And the archbishop bent over the sword and saw letters of gold in the steel. And he read the letters that said, ‘Who takes this sword out of the stone should be king by the choice of Jesus Christ.’ “)

This brings us to King Trotter.

It’s clear from his various letters and from Carpenter’s biography that Tolkien spent a lot of time in a kind of creative wandering before he settled upon various elements which make up the eventual The Lord of the Rings. As he writes to W.H. Auden:

“…the main idea…was arrived at in one of the earliest chapters still surviving…It is really given, and present in germ, from the beginning, though I had no conscious notion of what the Necromancer stood for (except ever-recurrent evil) in The Hobbit, nor of his connexion with the Ring. But if you wanted to go on from the end of The Hobbit I think the ring would be your inevitable choice as a link. If then you wanted a large tale, the Ring would at once acquire a capital letter; and the Dark Lord would immediately appear. As he did, unasked, on the hearth at Bag End as soon as I came to that point. So the essential Quest started at once. But I met a lot of things on the way that astonished me. Tom Bombadil I knew already; but I had never been to Bree. Strider sitting in the corner of the inn was a shock, and I had no idea who he was than had Frodo.” (letter to W.H. Auden, 7 June, 1955, Letters, 315-316)

In one of his wanderings, he had created a kind of Hobbit Ranger, “Trotter”. As Carpenter tells us:

[on a holiday at Sidmouth in 1938] “There he did a good deal of work on the story, bringing the hobbits to a village inn at ‘Bree’ where they meet a strange character, another unpremeditated element in the narrative. In the first drafts Tolkien described this person as ‘a queer-looking brown-faced hobbit’, and named him ‘Trotter’.” (Carpenter, 191)

And so, in fact, Tolkien had not initially met Strider in the Prancing Pony in Bree at all, but a completely different character, one who would, at a later date, disappear, to be replaced by Aragorn, son of Arathorn, who would, by the end of the story, be the king who has returned.

(the Hildebrandts)

But how will he ever prove that he is that king?

One clue is in the verses which are attached to a letter Gandalf had written to Frodo, but, neglected by the landlord of The Prancing Pony, was only delivered when Frodo and his friends had reached Bree:

“All that is gold does not glitter,

Not all those who wander are lost;

The old that is strong does no wither,

Deep roots are not reached by the frost.

From the ashes a fire shall be woken,

A light from the shadows shall spring;

Renewed shall be blade that was broken,

The crownless again shall be king.” (The Fellowship of the Ring, Book One, Chapter 10, “Strider”)

When Pippin and Sam both express doubt about Strider’s identity, he makes a bold gesture, saying,

“ ‘If I had killed the real Strider, I could kill you. And I should have killed you already without so much talk. If I was after the Ring I could have it—NOW!’

He stood up, and seemed suddenly to grow much taller…Throwing back his cloak, he laid his hand on the hilt of a sword that had hung concealed by his side.”

But then:

“He drew out his sword, and they saw that the blade was indeed broken a foot below the hilt.”

As I have suggested in a previous posting (see “Swords Drawn”, 2 July, 2025), this sword appears to have been influenced by something which Tolkien had either read or had read to him as a child from Andrew Lang’s The Red Fairy Book, 1890.

(here’s a copy for you: https://archive.org/details/redfairybook00langiala/redfairybook00langiala/ )

In the last tale in the book, “The Story of Sigurd”, we find:

“ONCE upon a time there was a King in the North who had won

many wars, but now he was old. Yet he took a new wife, and

then another Prince, who wanted to have married her, came up

against him with a great army. The old King went out and fought

bravely, but at last his sword broke, and he was wounded and his men

fled. But in the night, when the battle was over, his young wife came

out and searched for him among the slain, and at last she found

him, and asked whether he might be healed. But he said

‘No’, his luck was gone, his sword was broken, and he must die. And he

told her that she would have a son, and that son would be a great

warrior, and would avenge him on the other King, his enemy. And

he bade her keep the broken pieces of the sword, to make a new sword

for his son, and that blade should be called Gram.” (Lang, “The Story of Sigurd” from The Red Fairy Book, 357)

Just as Sigurd, when other swords have failed his test, has his father’s sword reforged, so the smiths of Rivendell reforge Aragorn’s sword and he changes its name from Narsil to Anduril, and even shows it, via Saruman’s palantir, to Sauron, clearly as a threat, as this is the very sword Isildur used to cut the Ring from Sauron’s hand long ago. (see The Return of the King, Book Five, Chapter 2, “The Passing of the Grey Company”)

But returning to the opening of this posting, I would wonder just how surprised JRRT really was when he returned to the Prancing Pony and found, not Trotter, the hobbit, but Strider, aka Aragorn, son of Arathorn, descended from the ancient rulers of Gondor and himself the heir? Although he had mixed feelings about Arthurian legend (see from a letter to Milton Waldman, “late in 1951”, Letters, 202, among other places– even though, in the mid-1930s, he attempted and abandoned a long poem, “The Fall of Arthur”—see Carpenter, 171), Tolkien had been well aware of its stories from childhood (“The Arthurian legends also excited him.” Carpenter, 30) and it’s clear that no story he had ever read or heard ever completely disappeared from his mind and so we’re left perhaps with a question: did Aragorn arrive with the sword, either from Sigurd or Arthur, or did the sword, in Tolkien’s memory from his earliest years, come first, making Aragorn—who needed proof that he was the rightful king, just as Arthur did–come first?

In either event, I think that we should be thankful that both arrived as it’s hard to imagine the coronation not of Aragorn,

(the Hildebrandts)

but of “a queer-looking brown-faced hobbit”!

Thanks, as always, for reading.

Stay well,

Wander, if you will, but don’t be lost,

And remember that, as always, there’s

MTCIDC

Bard

09 Wednesday Jul 2025

Posted by Ollamh in Uncategorized

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Tags

Agincourt, anti-aircraft gun, Archery, Arthur Machen, Bard, Bilbo, black arrow, Crecy, Dwarves, Fafnir, Fantasy, Howard Pyle, James Fenimore Cooper, Le Cateau, NC Wyeth, Poitiers, Robert Louis Stevenson, Robin Hood, Sigurd, Smaug, The Bowmen, The Hobbit, Tolkien

Welcome, as ever, dear readers,

When Bilbo and the dwarves

(the Hildebrandts)

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

(JRRT)

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

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

But:

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

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

(JRRT)

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

Uh oh.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

have been death to stand before him.

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

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

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

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

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

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

In “On Fairy-Stories”, he writes:

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

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

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

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

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

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

(Angus McBride)

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

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

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

Enter the fantasist Arthur Machen, 1863-1947.

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

Machen subsequently republished it with other stories in 1915—

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

that title suggests something else:

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

(Michael Hague, one of my favorite Hobbit illustrators)

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

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

(JRRT)

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

(Ted Nasmith)

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

(JRRT)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

As ever, thanks for reading.

Stay well,

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

And remember that, as always, there’s

MTCIDC

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

PPS

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

Swords Drawn

02 Wednesday Jul 2025

Posted by Ollamh in Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Anduril, arthur-hughes, bent-swords, Fafnir, George Macdonald, Glamdring, Goblins, great-goblin, Howard Pyle, King Edward's Horse, NC Wyeth, Orcrist, Scimitar, Sigurd, Sigurd Portal, swords, The Hobbit, Tolkien, William Morris

Welcome, dear readers, as always.

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

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

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

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

and NC Wyeth (1882-1945),

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Then, a new 2^nd lieutenant in 1915,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

in contrast to very medieval swords like Orcrist and Glamdring.

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

Stay well,

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

And remember that, as always, there’s

MTCIDC

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

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

Helm (2)

04 Wednesday Sep 2019

Posted by Ollamh in Films and Music, J.R.R. Tolkien, Military History, Military History of Middle-earth, The Rohirrim

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Alan Lee, Anglo-Saxon, Bayeux Tapestry, Christian Schwager, Dernhelm, Eowyn, Frank Frazetta, great helm, Great War, helmets, Howard Pyle, John Howe, kettle helm, King Arthur, spangenhelm, Tolkien, vikings, WWI

As ever, dear readers, welcome.

In our last, we focused upon the helmets worn by Tolkien and other European and US soldiers in the Great War, the French

the German,

and the British (US troops eventually settled on the British pattern).

The British helmet, we said, has produced the common comment that it looks like it was inspired by the medieval “kettle helm” (the second image being from the 13^th-century Maciejowski Bible—but these helmets were clearly so practical that they continued to be used well beyond that time).

“inspired by medieval” is the way we commonly see JRRT’s Middle-earth, and it made us wonder about the kinds of helmets we would meet in The Lord of the Rings. Unfortunately, if there were a concordance (that is, a book dedicated to listing all the times various words are used within a text, like this concordance for Homer’s Odyssey)

for Tolkien’s work, we are betting that perhaps the only word we would find there would be “helm”, which is generic, unless one adds “great”, which produces a more specific kind of head protection, looking like these, in use from the late 12^th to the mid-14^th centuries—

With only “helm” to go on, what clues might help us better to visualize what warriors are wearing?

We’ve suggested before that one possible visual resource for JRRT’s images of medieval warfare was the work of the American illustrator, Howard Pyle (1853-1911), in books like The Story of King Arthur and His Knights (1903), which Tolkien could have read as a boy.

And here’s a well-known illustration—with a knight in a great helm, in fact.

But what did Pyle use for models?

In Pyle’s time, the collection and classification of armor was still at its very beginnings (the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York only instituted an Arms and Armor Department in 1912, for example). We can only assume, then, that he thought “knights = medieval” and so any armor might do. (If Arthur were real—there’s been argument about this for many years—he would have lived centuries before the medieval period and so would have had neither knights nor the military equipment of later days anyway. As myth, Arthur can live at any time, of course. We think of Hal Foster’s Prince Valiant, where, at one moment, we’re facing Huns and, at the next moment, Vikings.)

If Pyle were one of JRRT’s sources, then, “helm” can easily stand for any kind of protective headgear made of metal and vaguely medieval. We think that there is more to be said on this, however, and we’ll go into a bit more detail about helmets in The Lord of the Rings in the third part of this little series, but, for now, we want to concentrate on one helmet in particular.

Normally, one thinks of helmets as protection, but, in the novel, we see one also used as a disguise, as Eowyn becomes “Dernhelm” (Old English dirne, “hidden/secret” + helm “head covering/helmet”, so, something like “a helm which hides”?).

What kind of helmet, we asked ourselves, would Eowyn be wearing which would:

keep her identity hidden
blend in with the helmets of other Rohirrim?

We began by looking at modern illustrations of Eowyn but, unfortunately, a cursory survey shows us that almost all modern illustrators appear to have chosen the same scene: the moment when Eowyn has removed her helmet when facing the Witch King.

So far, we’ve found only a few artists who capture the previous moment:

whose name so far has eluded us, but who shows a rear view of something which looks rather like a French Great War helmet.

the second, another anonymous (to us), again shows Eowyn from behind, but with a style of helmet which appears to owe more to fantasy than to any medieval reality—

and perhaps a little something to Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

the third is Christian Schwager, based in New Zealand.

Her armor is full plate, which, in our world, is later medieval. As for the helmet, it somewhat resembles a visored sallet, but only vaguely.

And that plume and its placement strike us as problematic, at best.

the last is the well-known fantasy illustrator, Frank Frazetta, and although we enjoy some of his work, this illustration suggests to us that the artist doesn’t appear to have taken the scene–or Eowyn– seriously—or practically.

As we wrote in a post some time ago, the basis of the Rohirrim is Anglo-Saxon, men who wore long mail shirts and conical spangenhelm,

making them look very much like dismounted versions of their Norman opponents, both being shown in the following panel from the Bayeux Tapestry.

A characteristic feature of the spangenhelm is that nasal—the bar which comes down to protect the wearer’s nose.

Potentially, this and the helmet’s brim might shade the eyes and make the face less visible.

So, with the need for disguise and blending-in being crucial, and only “helm” to go on in the text, we asked ourselves what did the two artists who acted as inspiration for Jackson’s films, Alan Lee and John Howe, choose to do? Here’s a picture of the battlefield confrontation by Lee—

image23lee

Eowyn is, as in the case of other illustrators, here depicted as having removed her helmet, and, even under magnification, it’s difficult to make much out. Howe, however, has given us a very detailed picture.

It’s clear, however, that, in choosing to emphasize the dirne in “Dernhelm”, he’s stepped away from the world of knights entirely and into a slightly older world, that of the Vikings, as his helmet more closely resembles the so-called “spectacle helmets”, of which a few examples survive from Viking burials, like this, reconstructed from a discovery at Gjermundbu, in Norway. (For a very useful view of Viking helmets in general, follow this LINK.)

In turn, Jackson’s designers have followed Lee—

This certainly gives us the “hidden/secret” part of “Dernhelm”, but what about the idea of blending in? Looking at a group shot of Rohirrim, we find a little surprise.

Instead of looking like Anglo-Saxons, as depicted on the Bayeux Tapestry, Jackson’s Rohirrim look more like Vikings—and so Eowyn’s helmet blends right in (in fact, in this picture, you can see at least one other warrior with a spectacled helmet), almost as if her helmet and its secrecy requirement have been the basis for all of the warriors of Rohan.

There are lots of other helmets to pursue, however, which we’ll do in our next, so, with thanks to you, dear readers, for reading this, we’ll say

MTCIDC,

Orc Arsenal.1

26 Wednesday Sep 2018

Posted by Ollamh in Artists and Illustrators, Fairy Tales and Myths, Heroes, J.R.R. Tolkien, Literary History, Military History, Military History of Middle-earth, The Rohirrim

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Alan Lee, And Inquiry Into Ancient Armour, Angus McBride, arming sword, Battle Axe, English Longbowmen, Eowyn, Falchion, Gladius, Gondor, Hildebrandts, Howard Pyle, John Howe, King Arthur, Longbow, Mace, Medieval, Mongols, Morning Star, Orcs, Pelennor, Pitt-Rivers Museum, Robert Louis Stevenson, Rohirrim, Scimitar, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Sir Samuel Meyrick, Ted Nasmith, The Black Arrow, The Lord of the Rings, The White Company, Tolkien, Victorian, Wallace Collection, War Hammer, Weaponry, Witch-King of Angmar

Welcome, dear readers, as always.

“The great shadow descended like a falling cloud. And behold! It was a winged creature…

Upon it sat a shape, black-mantled, huge and threatening…A great black mace he wielded.”

(The Return of the King, Book Five, Chapter 6, “The Battle of the Pelennor Fields”)

This is clearly a scene which has caught the attention, over the years, of many artists, starting, we’d guess, with the Hildebrandts.

Then others, like Angus McBride and Ted Nasmith,

And Alan Lee and John Howe,

as well as many very good artists whom we don’t know by name—

Of these, all but Lee and the unknown sixth artist follow JRRT’s description more or less closely. Number 6—it’s a little unclear– but he might be carrying a war hammer of some sort,

rather than a mace.

(These last two are basic patterns of a mace.)

The Lee is, well, we’re not sure what it seems to be. It sort of looks like a battle axe

but also like what was called a “morning star”,

which should, we think, belong to the flail family.

This rather fits in with the P Jackson image, shown in this model (and note that sword—definitely not in the original description—which is in his other hand).

This difference made us curious about the weapons the Rohirrim—and the Gondorians—face and, in particular, those of the orcs. The Hildebrandts

provide us with odd-looking spears and what might appear to be scimitars

but might be the suggestion of a medieval sword called a falchion.

McBride, who spent much of his artistic career illustrating military subjects, gives us weapons (mostly) less fanciful.

Lee

and Howe

veer between the practical and the fantastic and the films clearly follow them—

How does JRRT describe the orc weaponry?

The first armed orc we see appears in Moria:

“His broad flat face was swart, his eyes were like coals, and his tongue was red; he wielded a great spear…Sam, with a cry, hacked at the spear-shaft, and it broke. But even as the orc flung down the truncheon and swept out his scimitar…” (The Fellowship of the Ring, Book Two, Chapter 5, “The Bridge of Khazad-dum”)

The orcs who pursue the Fellowship through Moria have similar weapons:

“Beyond the fire he saw swarming black figures: there seemed to be hundreds of orcs. They brandished spears and scimitars which shone red as blood in the firelight.”

After the death of Boromir, however, Aragorn, Gimli, and Legolas find a different kind of orc:

“There were four goblin-soldiers of greater stature, swart, slant-eyed, with thick legs and large hands. They were armed with short broad-bladed swords, not with the curved scimitars usual with Orcs: and they had bows of yew, in length and shape like the bows of Men.” (The Two Towers, Book Three, Chapter 1, “The Departure of Boromir”)

So far, we’ve seen spears

and scimitars

and now we can add to that “short broad-bladed swords”. Perhaps Tolkien is thinking of the medieval “arming sword”

or even the Roman gladius?

When we add “bows of yew, in length and shape like the bows of Men”, we immediately see the classic English longbow.

This doesn’t quite match with the first orc bowman we see in the films, however, “Lurtz”—

who appears to have some sort of recurved bow, possibly composite, of the sort the Mongols used

even though, from the white hand on his face, he is supposed to be one of those “goblin-soldiers” from Isengard.

As we were looking through Tolkien’s text, we wondered where he would have gotten his ideas for weapons from. If the basis, as we imagine it, would have been his background in medieval literature, then he might have gone to the library and found an old standard work, Sir Samuel Meyrick’s (1783-1848)

An Inquiry Into Ancient Armour, As It Existed in Europe, Particularly in Great Britain, From the Norman Conquest to the Reign of Charles the Second, first published in 1824. (Here’s a LINK if you’d like to look at this text for yourself.)

Meyrick was the first great English specialist in armor and the later editions of his work (in 3 volumes) have wonderful early hand-colored plates, all based upon surviving armor, tombs, manuscripts, and any other period materials he could gather.

If JRRT wanted to see such things for himself, he would have found more exotic weapons in the Pitt-Rivers Museum in Oxford,

or he could have traveled up to London to see the Wallace Collection

or, best of all, he could have visited the Tower of London, with its massive collection (the organizing of which had earned Meyrick his knighthood in 1832) of medieval arms and armor, which had been available to the public in some form even before Meyrick’s time—here’s a Victorian tour.

It could have been all of the above, of course, but it seems to us that the descriptions we’re reading are actually not really very specific—“mace”, “spear”, “scimitar”—only those short swords and bows suggest anything more detailed. Perhaps, then, Tolkien was inspired by something else—perhaps he had read, perhaps even possessed, as a boy, books like Howard Pyle’s 1903 The Story of King Arthur and His Knights

and been inspired by its illustrations.

There were plenty of illustrated tales like this—Conan Doyle’s The White Company (first published in serial form in 1891),

or Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Black Arrow (serial 1883, book 1888).

With any and all of that background, we wonder what he might have made of this, however, an orc sword from the films which looks more like something manufactured from a car part than the product of a medieval armorer…

Thanks, as ever, for reading.

MTCIDC

If car part weapons don’t bother you, you might be interested in this LINK—it’s an early article on ideas for weapons and armor for the Jackson films.

I Love a Parade

28 Wednesday Feb 2018

Posted by Ollamh in Artists and Illustrators, J.R.R. Tolkien, Military History, Military History of Middle-earth, Terra Australis

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Agincourt, Bayeux Tapestry, Dol Amroth, Forlong, Great Gate, Harold Godwinson, hauberk, Hirluin the Fair, Howard Pyle, huscarls, Imrahil, Langstrand, Lincoln Cathedral, livery, Lossarnach, Medieval, Minas Tirith, Morthond, N.C. Wyeth, Palermo, parade, Ringlo Vale, Robin Hood, spangenhelm, The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien, Tower of Gondor

“I love a parade, the tramping of feet,

I love every beat I hear of a drum.”

–Koehler/Arlen Rhythmania (1931)

Welcome, dear readers, as always. In the past, we’ve spent a posting or two discussing military aspects of The Lord of the Rings, from the look of the Rohirrim to the attack on Minas Tirith. In this posting, we would like to go back one step from that attack to consider what is a rather melancholy moment in the lead up to that assault.

Pippin and his newfound friend, Bergil, have come down to the Great Gate of Minas Tirith.

Here’s the gate from the films.

This immediately reminded us of places like the west door of Lincoln Cathedral.

Or the main door of the cathedral of Palermo.

Because he is now a member of the Guard of the Tower of Gondor, Pippin is allowed to pass through the Gate—and to take Bergil with him out to see and hear the following:

“Beyond the Gate there was a crowd of men along the verge of the road and of the great paved space into which all the ways to Minas Tirith ran. All eyes were turned southwards, and soon a murmur rose: ‘There is dust away there! They are coming!’

Pippin and Bergil edged their way forward to the front of the crowd and waited. Horns sounded at some distance, and the noise of cheering rolled towards them like a gathering wind. There was a loud trumpet-blast, and all about them people were shouting.” (The Return of the King, Book Five, Chapter 1, “Minas Tirith”)

What happens then is a kind of parade.

When we see the defenders of Minas Tirith in the films, they are all uniformly clad.

In our medieval world, this was highly unlikely, the best being that soldiers and servants might wear the colors/crest of the lord they served. This was called “livery”. Uniformity in clothing, weapons, and armor would be some time in the future.

What is coming up the road from the south are reinforcements, marching in a long column of units, and those units differ greatly in look. First are the men of Lossarnach, led by their lord, Forlong:

“Leading the line there came walking a big thick-limbed horse, and on it sat a man of wide shoulders and huge girth, but old and grey-bearded, yet mail-clad and black-helmed and bearing a long heavy spear. Behind him marched proudly a dusty line of men, well-armed and bearing great battle-axes; grim-faced they were, and shorter and somewhat swarthier than any men Pippin had yet seen in Gondor.”

To us, those axes make the men of Lossarnach sound like the huscarls, the bodyguard of an Anglo-Saxon king, like Harold Godwinson, whom we see depicted on the “Bayeux Tapestry”.

Their leader, Forlong, might be similar in appearance, wearing a type of helmet called a spangenhelm,

and protected by an early form of mail shirt called a hauberk.

After these, we see more units, but with little description—the men of Ringlo Vale “striding on foot”, so infantry of some sort, five hundred bowmen from Morthond, from the Langstrand, “a long line of men of many sorts, hunters and herdsmen and men of little villages, scantily equipped save for the household of Golasgil their lord”. After them, “a few grim hillmen without a captain”, and “fisher-folk of the Ethir”, all of which we imagine in their workaday clothes of hunters and shepherds and farmers and sailors, as depicted in medieval English and French manuscripts.

Next comes a unit which is perhaps wearing livery: “Hirluin the Fair of the Green Hills from Pinnath Gelin with three hundreds of gallant green-clad men.” We aren’t told how they’re armed, but that they may be in livery suggests that they may be better armed than some of the earlier contingents. (In fact, “gallant green-clad men” makes us think of Robin Hood—perhaps more archers?)

And, finally, folk we’ve discussed before:

“And last and proudest, Imrahil, Prince of Dol Amroth, kinsman of the Lord, with gilded banners bearing his token of the Ship and the Silver Swan, 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.”

“knight in full harness”, as we talked about in an earlier post, probably meant, to JRRT, something from Howard Pyle or NC Wyeth, like this—

As for those “men at arms”, if they appear to be “tall as lords”, we assume that they’re on foot, which puzzles us a bit. “Men at arms” usually means “armored soldiers on horseback” in our world—perhaps with less armor than knights, but still cavalry (unless dismounted, to fight on foot, as the French did at Agincourt in 1415, for example). We see them, then, as looking like those dismounted cavalry, like these—

However they are armed and clothed, however, they are thought to be too few by those watching and, considering what Mordor eventually sends against them, they would not have been enough, if the brave Rohirrim and Aragorn’s reinforcement from the south hadn’t arrived in time. What would have happened if they hadn’t? A subject for very grim fan-fiction!

Thanks, as ever, for reading!

MTCIDC

In Shining Armo(u)r

17 Wednesday Jan 2018

Posted by Ollamh in Artists and Illustrators, Heroes, J.R.R. Tolkien, Literary History, Military History, Military History of Middle-earth, Narrative Methods, The Rohirrim, Tolkien

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Agincourt, Anglo-Saxon, armor, Bayeux Tapestry, chain-mail, Crecy, Dark Ages, Embroidery, Howard Pyle, knights of Dol Amroth, Medieval books, medieval manuscript drawings, N.C. Wyeth, Norman knight, Pauline Baynes, Romans, sub-Roman period, Sutton Hoo, The Lord of the Rings, The Rohirrim, The Story of King Arthur and His Knights, Tolkien

Welcome, as always, dear readers.

In a letter to Miss [Rhona] Beare, of 14 October, 1958, JRRT wrote to answer what was clearly a question about dress in The Lord of the Rings:

“Question 4. I do not know the detail of clothing. I visualize with great clarity and detail scenery and ‘natural’ objects, but not artefacts. Pauline Baynes drew her inspiration for F. Giles largely from medieval MS drawings—except for the knights (who are a bit ‘King-Arthurish’)* the style seems to fit well enough.” (Letters, 280)

To which he adds this footnote:

“*Sc. [= “Know/understand”] belong to our ‘mythological’ Middle-Ages which blends unhistorically styles and details ranging over 500 years, and most of which did not of course exist in the Dark Ages of c. 500 A.D.”

In the next paragraph he adds:

“The Rohirrim were not ‘mediaeval’, in our sense. The styles of the Bayeux Tapestry (made in England) fit them well enough, if one remembers that the kind of tennis-nets [the] soldiers seem to have on are only a clumsy conventional sign for chain-mail of small rings.” (Letters, 280-281)

The Bayeux Tapestry (which should really be called the “Bayeux Embroidery”, since it’s actually a long piece of cloth with hundreds of figures and details stitched on to it, rather than woven into it) presents us with a detailed history of the invasion of England in 1066AD. The soldiers Tolkien is talking about look like this:

You can see what he means by “tennis-nets”—which should really look like this:

That chain-mail, then, looks like this:

And, at the bottom of this next illustration, you can see how it’s made:

We know, then, how JRRT envisaged the Rohirrim in its eoreds, marching towards Minas Tirith, but how did he imagine other soldiers, we’ve asked ourselves, and, in particular, the knights of Dol Amroth—the only soldiers specifically described as such in The Lord of the Rings?

JRRT writes of them as they enter Minas Tirith:

“And last and proudest, Imrahil, Prince of Dol Amroth, kinsman of the Lord, with gilded banners bearing his token of the Ship and the Silver Swan, and a company of knights in full harness riding grey horses…”(The Return of the King, Book Five, Chapter 1, “Minas Tirith”)

“Full harness” means “complete armor”. When we think of the term, we think of something later than the Normans, who are, after all, just wearing a kind of very long ringed shirt. Here’s a useful chart to give you of an idea of what we mean.

So, since “full harness” doesn’t look like the Rohirrim, how might it look?

In Jackson’s films, we don’t believe that we ever see those knights singled out, as we see the Rohirrim. The best we could find was this picture of Faramir’s men about to mount a cavalry charge against what appears to be Osgiliath. (We’ve talked about this in a much earlier posting—one of the most unbelievable moments in the whole of Jackson’s work.)

This is a big picture, but the details, unfortunately, aren’t very clear. There are a few things, however, which we found rather odd:

although there appear to be a few lances with penons among them, most seem to be armed only with swords—a close-up weapon—which is why actual knights also carried lances—heavy cavalry came crashing down on infantry or slamming into enemy mounted men—or intended to—spearing right and left and then drawing swords (or using maces or battle axes)
a minor detail, but everyone seems to be wearing his sword on the right-hand side, which would have made it very hard to draw, unless all were left-handed men!
the helmets and armor seem very standardized, and we would believe that budgetary considerations probably influenced this uniformity—50 identical helmets were probably cheaper to make than 50 different ones—but such sameness reminds us more of Roman imperial troops than of any western medieval army we can think of.

We assume, then, that this is the film’s view of soldiers at least like Imrahil’s men, but when Tolkien wrote “a company of knights in full harness”: what might he have had in mind? We think there is a clue in that adjective “King-Arthurish”, which he uses of Pauline Bayne’s illustrations and in his footnote, where he refers to “our ‘mythological Middle-Ages”. What does he mean?

JRRT would have been about ten when Howard Pyle published his The Story of King Arthur and His Knights in 1903.

Here is how Pyle saw Arthur’s knights.

image9aknight image10asknights

Could this have inspired Tolkien’s view of Imrahil’s men? (Judge for yourself by following this LINK.)

Tolkien would have been nearly 30 when The Boy’s King Arthur, illustrated by N.C. Wyeth, was published in 1922,

but, if this were in among his children’s books, perhaps these illustrations might have given him ideas. (And here’s a LINK to your own copy, from the Internet Archive.)

These are two well-known sets of illustrations of Arthurian figures, both available in Tolkien’s early lifetime. If Arthur was real, of course, he would have lived, as JRRT was well aware, in what is called the “sub-Roman period”, c.500AD—at the beginning of the so-called “Dark Ages”– and he and his men would actually have looked like this:

But this is where “our ‘mythological’ Middle-Ages” comes in—little would have been known, when JRRT was writing The Lord of the Rings, of what such warriors would have looked like, although the spectacular Sutton Hoo find of 1939, with its splendid helmet, would have given an inkling, once restored.

Because such knowledge was lacking, however, the historical Arthur (if there was one) had been moved to the Middle-Ages and re-equipped as a military figure of a much later era, and we believe that, when Tolkien wrote “Arthurish” and “knights”, this is what he meant—and how we’ve always seen Arthur, not only from books (and lots of films) but also from the armor galleries in a number of museums, from the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York

to the Higgins Armory in Massachusetts

to the Philadelphia Museum of Fine Arts

to the Tower of London.

And, as we’ve discussed before, Prince Valiant, has been an influence from childhood (talk about ‘mythological’ Middle-Ages!).

And so, in turn, we imagine—and we think that JRRT did, too–the “company of knights in full harness” to have been individuals, brightly clothed in heraldic colors, their armor that, perhaps, of Crecy, in 1346—

or Agincourt, in 1415.

And you, dear readers, what do you think?

Thanks, as ever, for reading!

MTCIDC

Accuracy? Well, Yes, But…

07 Wednesday Jun 2017

Posted by Ollamh in Artists and Illustrators, Heroes, J.R.R. Tolkien, Literary History, Military History, Narrative Methods, The Rohirrim

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American Civil War, American Revolution, Concord, Don Troiani, Germantown, grenadiers, H. Charles McBarron, Harper's Monthly, Howard Pyle, Illustration, John Trumbull, Joseph Warren, King Arthur, Lexington, Pirates, Richard Simkin, The Battle of Bunker Hill, The Battle of Nashville, The Lord of the Rings, The Rohirrim, The Salem Wolf, Tolkien

Welcome, dear readers, as always.

Today’s post takes us to the question of what we like and why and how such likes may push us—who, we realize, are a little stiff on the subject of accuracy—to accept things which, if our feelings weren’t engaged, we would briskly reject.

We begin by looking at a painting by one of our favorite late Victorian/Edwardian illustrators, Howard Pyle (1853-1911).

If you’re a regular reader (and we hope you are—or will be!), you’ll have seen his work on our pages any number of times, from his King Arthur illustrations (and here’s a LINK to a free 1922 reprint at the Internet Archive)

to his pirates (and here’s a LINK to a later—c.1921—collection of Pyle’s pictures and writings on pirates at Internet Archive).

Pyle also wrote and illustrated original fiction—just look at this haunting picture from a short story, “The Salem Wolf”, which was published in the December, 1909, issue of Harper’s Monthly Magazine.

(And here’s a LINK to the story at Internet Archive)

Pyle also painted stand-alone historical pictures, such as this of “The Battle of Nashville” (1907).

MN 60

And we’re lucky to have a photograph of the artist at work on this very picture.

image6hppainting

Besides American Civil War pictures, Pyle painted several based upon incidents of the American Revolution, such as this, of the assault on the Chew House, at the Battle of Germantown (4 October, 1777).

image7pylegermantown

Another of his pictures of the Revolution is the subject of this post, “The Battle of Bunker Hill” (1897).

image8pylebunkerhill

We’re not sure when one of us first saw this picture—childhood, we’d guess—but we were immediately bowled over by it. It’s the adventure of it: those long ranks of redcoats stoically marching up the hill, drums beating behind. It’s not a sanitized picture—just look up the hill and all around you can see the wreck of the earlier British attacks—but its emphasis is upon the courage it must take to do what those soldiers did.

This was, in fact, the third battle of the American Revolution. The war had begun in mid-April, 1775, when a raiding party of British troops, ordered to disrupt local preparations for defense, fought two skirmishes with local militia, at Lexington

and Concord,

two rural settlements some twenty miles or so west of Boston.

When the British withdrew into Boston itself, those locals, who had grown in numbers to about 15,000, drawn from all over New England, blockaded the town and there was a period of stalemate, while both sides were reinforced. When it was clear that the locals had seized a nearby hill and were planning to plant artillery there which would then be capable of bombarding Boston, the British were forced to move. Their choice was to attack that hill, which was named “Breed’s Hill” but, through an historical mix-up, the battle was named for the hill to its rear, “Bunker Hill”.

Initially, the British plan was to have part of its force make a feint—a fake attack—against the main part of the hill, where the locals had built an open-backed fortification, called a redoubt, while the real attack was to push through the weaker local left and curve around to hit the locals from the rear.

By underestimating the defense, the British soon suffered over a thousand casualties to the local 450. As the assaults were driven back, the British plan changed and the main attack was to be uphill, straight at the redoubt and this is what is depicted in Pyle’s painting, specifically the advance of the 52^nd Foot (“Foot” is 18^th-century shorthand for “regiment of infantry”).

This is not the first well-known painting of the battle, however. In the first third of the 19^th century, John Trumbull (1756-1843), a prominent American artist, painted several versions of a work entitled, “The Death of General Warren at the Battle of Bunker’s Hill, June 17, 1775”.

This picture belongs to what we might call both the “heroic school” and the “portrait school”, the former because of a certain flashy quality (look at the way the wind seems to be whipping everything—and where are those flames on the right coming from?), the latter because, not only is the local officer, Joseph Warren depicted, but so are a number of other figures—two of the British generals, two British majors, and a number of more minor participants.

Bunker Hill remained—and remains—a popular subject for historical painters, most of them depicting events from the local side. Here is one version, by the distinguished 20^th-century American military artist, H. Charles McBarron (1902-1992).

And here are two by one of our favorite contemporary American Civil War artists, Don Troiani (1949-).

All pictures are not from the viewpoint of the colonists, however. The late-Victorian/Edwardian British military artist, Richard Simkin (1850-1926), gave us this view.

Of all of these images, the Trumbull has drawn upon his memory and upon his sketchbooks, too, we bet, to give a general impression of the look of the soldiers, but, although he was part of the colonial force besieging Boston, he only saw the battle through a telescope. McBarron was a collector of uniforms and equipment, as is Troiani, and their works are painstakingly accurate. Simkin, although he, too, was a collector, came from an earlier time, just at the beginning of serious research on weapons and uniforms of the past, and, therefore, certain elements in his picture—the plumes and cords on his men’s bearskins and those packs (left behind in Boston, in reality), for instance—are not correct. Even so, his picture is far more accurate than Pyle’s, which is full of mistakes, in everything from the uniforms and equipment to those grenadiers (those guys in the fuzzy hats in the center), who shouldn’t be there at all, having been detached to form part of the right wing assault force.

And yet the Pyle is still our favorite depiction of the battle. Why? Because it feels right: it’s a 19^th-century image of courage and discipline, and appeals to our romantic souls, even though there are casualties strewn about, which, to us, only serves to emphasize the bravery and stick-to-it-iveness of those solid infantry.

And this is where JRRT comes in. We’ve said before: our favorite part of P. Jackson’s films is anything to do with the Rohirrim.

The fact that, in the books, they live in wide, grassy plains (unavailable in New Zealand) and that their capital, Edoras, does not have “a dike and mighty wall and thorny fence” in the films, along with any other details it would be easy to extract from The Lord of the Rings, doesn’t matter to us in the least. The depiction in the films feels right and we’re content with that, even when there are other parts of the films where we have other reactions. Simple (and perhaps surprising to us) as that.

So, dear readers, do you have similar reactions? And to what? We’d love to hear!

And thanks, as always, for reading.

MTCIDC

What If…

31 Wednesday May 2017

Posted by Ollamh in Artists and Illustrators, J.R.R. Tolkien, Literary History, Maps, Military History, Military History of Middle-earth, Narrative Methods, Tolkien

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Alamo, Andelkrag, Anduin, Caernarfon, Carcassonne, Duc de Berry, fortresses, Hal Foster, Harry Turtledove, Howard Pyle, Huns, Minas Tirith, moat, Mont Saint Michel, Mordor, Numenor, Peter Jackson, Portchester, Prince Valiant, Rohirrim, S.M. Stirling, Santa Anna, Segontium, Siege Warfare, Texas War for Independence, The Lord of the Rings, The Return of the King, Tiryns, Tolkien, Tower of Orthanc, Tres Riches Heures

Welcome, readers, as always.

If you are among our excellent regulars, you know that we’re fascinated by history (one of us has taught it for years). One subset of our interest is “what ifs”, two of our favorite scifi/fantasy authors being Harry Turtledove and S.M. Stirling, who have written numerous books exploring all sorts of alternative places and times.

In this posting, we’d like to try a “what if” ourselves: what would happen to Minas Tirith if the Rohirrim and Aragorn had failed to arrive?

Walls collapsing under a rain of boulders, soldiers fleeing from the defenses, the main gate broken in by a giant battering ram—

how was this the place of which its creator had written:

“A strong citadel it was indeed, and not to be taken by a host of enemies, if there were any within that could hold weapons…” (The Return of the King, Book Five, Chapter 1, “Minas Tirith”)

In an earlier posting, we talked about Sauron’s attack on Minas Tirith

and even suggested that one inspiration might have been an episode of the comic strip Prince Valiant and the siege of Andelkrag by the Huns (published in May, 1939). (Footnote: there is a rumor that the writer/illustrator, Hal Foster, intended the Huns to equal the Nazis and therefore annoyed Hitler—a would-be Sauron to Saruman’s Mussolini, as we once also suggested?)

That castle is splendid, but not quite what one would have seen in the 5^th century AD, when Attila led the Huns to invade central and western Europe. Andelkrag appears to be a very elaborate late-medieval castle, c.1400 or so, rather like the ones you might see in the Duc de Berry’s Tres Riches Heures (c.1412-16; 1440s; 1485-1489).

More likely, if Andelkrag had been a real fortress, it would have been a repurposed Roman army installation, like this at Caernarfon, called by the Romans, Segontium.

Such forts might then be converted into castles, as at Portchester

62790_8d3686244501897

but that would hardly have provided the gallant medieval look which Foster gave his comic strip and which, in turn, came from the illustrations of people like Howard Pyle (1853-1911), in the previous generation (and which, we have previously argued, had a strong influence on what JRRT imagined his Middle-earth to look like).

We are told in one of the extra features in the extended film version of The Lord of the Rings that an inspiration for P. Jackson’s Minas Tirith

was the ancient island fort/religious site of Mont Saint Michel, on the western coast of France.

As you can see from the photo and the map, this isn’t just a fort, however, but a little fortified town, reminding us that Minas Tirith isn’t a castle, but a walled city, like the restored medieval town of Carcassonne, in southern France.

Like Mont St. Michel, Minas Tirith is built up a slope.

(This, by the way, is Tolkien’s first sketch.)

But, unlike Mont St. Michel and Carcassonne, it has not one wall, but many:

“For the fashion of Minas Tirith was such that it was built on seven levels, each delved into the hill, and about each was set a wall, and in each wall was a gate.”

Because the city was built on a series of levels, this would mean that each wall would overlook the next lower one, so that the defenders on the upper wall could rain down missiles on attackers below.

poi_img_town_defences_1

This is an ancient practice. The Bronze Age Greek city of Tiryns (yes, there is a bit of a similarity in the name, isn’t there?) is so constructed, for example, that its entryway forces attackers to move to the left, thereby potentially exposing an unshielded side, as well as undergoing a barrage of arrows and rocks from those on the wall above.

Tiryns Reconstruction

tiryns-walls

In the case of Minas Tirith, there is an added obstacle:

“But the gates were not set in a line: the Great Gate in the City Wall was at the east point of the circuit, but the next faced half south, and the third half north, and so to and fro upwards; so that the paved way that climbed towards the Citadel turned this way and then that across the face of the hill.”

image13mtzigzag

Attackers, then, would not only be at the mercy of those above them, but would, should they break through one gate, be forced to zigzag back and forth as they fought their way upwards, taking more and more casualties as they advanced.

minas-tirith3

Added to this, at the lowest level, was the main wall:

“…of great height and marvellous thickness, built ere the power and craft of Numenor waned in exile; and its outward face was like to the Tower of Orthanc, hard and dark and smooth, unconquerable by steel or fire, unbreakable except by some convulsion that would rend the very earth on which it stood.” (The Return of the King, Book Five, Chapter 4, “The Siege of Gondor”)

Unlike so many fortresses—going back at least to Neolithic times—Minas Tirith had no moat. Not only does such a watery ditch slow down attackers by giving them one more puzzle to solve, but it also makes a standard siege practice, undermining, much more difficult. Basically, what undermining does is to hollow out an area underneath a wall and replace the original foundation with a flammable wooden one. Then the miners fill the hollow with burnables, torch them, and wait to see if the new wooden foundation collapses, bringing down the wall on top of it. You can see miners at work in this medieval manuscript illustration.

A wet moat would have forced the miners to dig much deeper, to avoid being flooded out.

For Minas Tirith, the nearest water source for a wet moat would have been the Anduin, some miles away, but dry moats were useful as well. This diorama of the final attack by the British at the siege of Badajoz in 1812 shows how effective such a thing might be. Although the besiegers have managed, through prolonged bombardment, to create a breach in the main wall, they have to struggle through the deep dry moat to reach it—and took large numbers of casualties in doing so.

image18badajoz

Against all of these defenses, the head of the Nazgul, as Sauron’s general in the field, has the usual siege weapons: stone throwers, siege towers, even a massive battering ram. He also has a more subtle tool:

“But soon there were few left in Minas Tirith who had the heart to stand up and defy the hosts of Mordor. For yet another weapon, swifter than hunger, the Lord of the Dark Tower had: dread and despair.”

Even so, under the command of Gandalf, there was still resistance and we can imagine that that resistance would have persisted through all the circles, but the ultimate difficulty, which would have caused the fall of the city, had not the Rohirrim—and then Aragorn—come, was the lack of reserves.

Gondor was, at the time of the siege, in decline, as Pippin noticed when he and Gandalf arrived there:

“Yet it was in truth falling year by year into decay; and already it lacked half the men that could have dwelt at ease there.”

When reenforcements came from the south, they were “less than three thousands full told.”

When a city or castle is under siege, it needs not only a force to man its walls, but also a second force, to be sent quickly to any place where an enemy breakthrough is threatened. The force on the walls has two main jobs: 1. to keep the enemy at a distance with missile fire—or, failing that, to cut down the attacking force as it approaches the walls, trimming its numbers and thereby possibly demoralizing it; 2. to fend off the enemy if it actually manages to gain the walls. This illustration from the Prince Valiant Andelkrag siege provides a good image of this double job.

image19defenseofandelkrag

It might be possible, if the enemy made an assault upon a single point, to siphon off men from other parts of the defenses to act as a temporary second force, but, if the enemy attacks more than one place at the same time, this is not a safe thing to do. In the case of the assault on the first wall of Minas Tirith, the enemy commander seems to have had such numbers—and didn’t care in the least about his losses– that he could attack the entire wall:

“Ever since the middle night the great assault had gone on. The drums rolled. To the north and to the south company upon company of the enemy pressed to the walls. There came great beasts, like moving houses in the red and fitful light, the mumakil of the Harad dragging through the lanes amid the fires huge towers and engines. Yet their Captain cared not greatly what they did or how many might be slain: their purpose was only to test the strength of the defence and to keep the men of Gondor busy in many places.”

The weakest place in any strong wall is a gate and that knowledge has guided Sauron’s Captain:

“It was against the Gate that he would throw his heaviest weight. Very strong it might be, wrought of steel and iron, and guarded with towers and bastions of indomitable stone, yet it was the key, the weakest point in all that high and impenetrable wall.”

Thus, with everyone pinned in position by a general assault, and there being no other possible reserve, once the gate is down—but then a cock crows and there are horns and, well, you know what happens next.

But, continuing our “what if”, we look to a different model, the Alamo, a ruined mission turned into a fortress in the so-called “Texas War for Independence” of 1835-36.

alamo-map-3

Within this mission, some 180plus defenders faced a Mexican army of several thousand, staving them off for a week-and-a-half before finally being overwhelmed by a series of nearly-simultaneous pre-dawn assaults from several directions at once. image21alamoassault

The survivors drew back, still fighting, and made a series of last stands in the rooms of the surviving mission buildings, dying almost to a man because the Mexican general, Santa Anna, had declared that there would be no mercy for any survivors. (There were a handful of prisoners, however, perhaps including the famous American frontiersman, Davy Crockett, but under Santa Anna’s direction, they were then murdered.)

In our grim “what if”, the survivors of the outer wall, led in retreat by Gandalf, are gradually driven back, like the Alamo defenders, until they reach the Citadel—and then—but, can we go on? Are the Rohirrim and Aragorn simply delayed and then appear? Are there eagle-rescues, as in The Hobbit?

What do you think, dear readers?

And thanks, as ever, for reading!

MTCIDC

We saw this Lego attack on Minas Tirith and it was just too wonderful not to include!

PPS

As we were finishing this, we happened upon a really great website–

https://middleeartharchitectures.wordpress.com/ –wonderful visuals!

Killer Monks (and Friars)

11 Wednesday Jan 2017

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

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Baze Malbus, Bo staff, Canterbury Tales, Chirrut Imwe, Cluny, Dauntless, Friar Tuck, Friars, Geoffery Chaucer, Guardians of the Whills, Howard Pyle, Jahng Bong, Jedha, Little John, monastery, monks, N.C. Wyeth, Nijedha, quarter-staff, religion, Robin Hood, Rogue One, Scarif, Star Destroyer, Star Wars, stormtroopers, Tae Kwon-Do, Temple of the Kyber, the Force, The Force Awakens, The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood, Thomas Hughes, Tom Brown's Schooldays

Welcome, dear readers, as always.

Today, for the first time in some time, we are not visiting Middle-earth. Instead, we are visiting our earth, as well as another planet or two.

Recently, we saw Rogue One,

which, in our opinion, was a bit more coherent than The Force Awakens, but which still—again, our opinion—like Force, had too many players and too many planets. For us, this has always been the danger of fantasy fiction, when plot overwhelms character, as—and aren’t we opinionated in this posting?—in the Harry Potter series.

The first volume was a pleasant twist on the traditional school story, a genre which dates at least as far back as Tom Brown’s Schooldays (1857).

by Thomas Hughes.

We thought that that first book had a number of potentially interesting characters—Hermione, the Weasley twins, Snape, Hagrid—but, as the books piled up and the plot became more complex and more and more characters appeared, there was less and less, it seemed to us, of those interesting original figures. And many of the characters who were there, seemed much sketchier.

In the case of Rogue One, we thought that two of the most interesting were the two Guardians of the Whills, rather like monks

Chirrut Imwe

and Baze Malbus.

These two had been attached to the Temple of the Kyber in the city of Nijedha on the desert moon Jedha.

The Empire has arrived, however (hard to miss the Star Destroyer Dauntless in this picture, isn’t it?), to seize all of the kyber crystals on Jedha (used originally to power Jedi light sabers) to fuel the superlaser on the new terror weapon, the Death Star.

In the process, the two monks have been driven from the Temple, which has been pillaged, and now appear to be living on the street. Chirrut believes in the Force, while Baze seems to believe in his very large gun. Chirrut, who is blind, first shows his skills in an amazing scene where, surrounded by stormtroopers, he makes short work of them with his fighting staff, which resembles the Jahng Bong or Bo Staff used in Tae Kwon-do, among other Eastern weapons and martial arts.

As everyone who has seen Rogue One (and, by now, many who haven’t, we’d guess) knows, the two don’t survive the attack on Scarif

and this made us wish we had seen more of them, not only in this movie (perhaps them ejected from the Temple—which wouldn’t have been easy!), but in another Star Wars story, in which they were the main characters. So many questions: how did they meet? Why does the one believe so fervently in the Force and the other does not? What did they do before Nijedha? Were they always monks? If not, how did they become so? How and where did they train?

Seeing fighting with that Bo Staff immediately prompted us to think of much earlier figures with a similar weapon: Robin Hood, who fights, on a log over a stream, his soon-to-be-lieutenant, Little John, with quarter-staves.

This is an illustration by N.C. Wyeth from the 1917 Robin Hood,

but there is an earlier edition of the stories of Robin Hood by Wyeth’s teacher, Howard Pyle, The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood (1883).

And here is a version of the aftermath of that scene on the log with Little John.

Robin has another encounter with water and a fighter when he meets a friar beside a stream. A monk is a man who enters a religious community called a monastery and spends his life working (and praying) within its walls.

Western medieval Europe was full of monasteries, like this, at Cluny, in France.

Friars, on the other hand, traveled within their appointed district, called a “province”. Here is a friar from an early (beginning of the 15^th century) illustrated version of Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales.

Because friars were much less strictly governed, they gained a folk reputation as tricksters and high-livers, and the trickster shows through when Robin Hood forces a friar (he will become Robin’s friend, Friar Tuck) to carry him across a stream—and the friar dumps him before proving that he’s also an expert swordsman. Here’s an illustration from the 1883 Pyle version.

As we thought about it, by combining Little John’s skill with the quarterstaff with Friar Tuck’s wits and courage and holy orders, we could see a possible inspiration for Chirrut Imwe.

If you know the old Robin Hood stories and you’re seen Rogue One, what do you think?

Thanks, as ever, for reading.

MTCIDC

doubtfulsea

~ adventure fantasy

Tag Archives: Howard Pyle

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Killer Monks (and Friars)