Helm (but not deep)

28 Wednesday Aug 2019

Posted by Ollamh in J.R.R. Tolkien, Military History

Tags

British, Constantinople, French, Great War, Helmet, Julius Caesar, kepi, Medieval, Neo-Assyrians, pickelhalben, Plevna, Port Arthur, Prussians, Sebastien Le Prestre de Vauban, sieges, Tolkien, uniforms, WWI

Welcome once more, dear readers.

In our last, we talked about Tolkien as a very junior officer in 1916-17.

We discussed much of the detail of his kit, including this very important item, first introduced to the British army on the Western Front in 1916.

The war had begun in 1914, however, and the British soldiers of 1914

although they had shed their red coats for anything but parades,

having learned in many colonial wars that khaki was more practical on campaign,

were still, at heart, ready for the kind of open-battlefield fighting which their ancestors had practiced at Waterloo, a century before.

Infantry might not fight in long solid lines any longer,

And might even seize upon temporary cover,

but battle would still be a sort of stand-up affair with artillery in support

and cavalry ready to charge even enemy artillery,

just as they had at Balaclava, 60 years before.

The British were not alone in imagining modern war as being like this. Across the Channel, the French were still wearing the same red trousers they had first put on in the 1830s, while discussing attacks made solely with the bayonet.

And the Germans, although more sensibly dressed in grey, could still see themselves as pounding across the battlefield like medieval knights, lances lowered.

Unfortunately for such dreams, weapons technology in 1914 had far outstripped fashion and tradition, with machine guns having firing rates of as much as 600 rounds per minute

and increasingly heavy artillery.

Soldiers on both sides, therefore, instinctively began to seek more shelter.

And more shelter.

What happened next was a kind of military retrograde motion: what was planned as open-field warfare turned into a giant, 500-mile-long siege.

There had, of course, been sieges forever. The ancient Neo-Assyrians were fierce proponents.

In 332bc, Alexander the Great, frustrated by the defiance of the city of Tyre, conducted a famous siege across open water to make the Tyrians submit.

Julius Caesar had crushed Celtic power in Gaul in part by besieging their major settlement at Alesia in 52bc.

During the western Middle Ages, sieges were more common than pitched battles.

By the 14^th century, however, big siege weapons, like the massive stone-throwing trebuchet,

were fated to be replaced by a new and more effective weapon, the bombard, or cannon.

And, with the expansion of the use of artillery to pound enemy defenses, siege warfare became that much more deadly—as in the relatively short time (53 days) it took for the guns of Mehmet II to knock holes in the ancient but massive walls of Constantinople in 1453.

Over time, the practice of siege craft became an art, as did that of fortification, and, for western armies, the theoretician was Louis XIV’s military engineer, Sebastien Le Prestre de Vauban (1633-1707).

Vauban designed fortresses to resist sieges, but he also said that every fortress could be taken in time and proved it by directing methodical attacks upon a number of them. Step one was to gradually move trenches—and guns—closer and closer to the enemy fortress or town, attempting to make a hole in its walls. Then, when the hole was judged big enough to provide entry into that town or fortress, infantry would be sent in to try to break through.

Vauban’s method, with its lines of moving trenches and gun emplacements, became the standard and older soldiers in 1914 and those who read military history would have seen that method in the later 19^th century, when the Prussians and their allies besieged Paris in late 1870,

or when the Russians laid siege to the Turkish garrison of Plevna in 1877,

or, more recently, when the Japanese besieged the Russians at Port Arthur in 1904-5.

Thus, there was a long tradition for such things for the armies of western Europe to follow in 1914, but the difference lay in those modern weapons, which made the life of besiegers—and, in this war, both sides were really besieging each other simultaneously—that much more dangerous. If the basis of that tradition was bombardment followed by a successful infantry assault, then the generals of 1914 would follow that pattern.

If the enemy used machine guns and heavy artillery to stop the attackers,

it took some time before those generals realized that old-fashioned methods usually produced huge numbers of casualties

and little success.

Change took time, but one element was to improve soldiers’ chances to survive in the trenches and that meant reviving something from the medieval world, the metal helmet.

The French were the first to replace the soldiers’ kepi

with a metal helmet, in 1915.

(The kepi picture, by the way, isn’t colorized, but is an actual early color photograph, using what was called “autochrome”.)

The Germans replaced their leather helmets, called pickelhalben,

image40pickelhaube

with their own version of a steel helmet, in 1916.

Also, in 1916, the British replaced the service dress cap

with the very piece of kit with which JRRT would have been equipped, and with which we began.

Thanks, as ever, for reading

and

MTCIDC,

A Tale of Two Swords

19 Wednesday Jun 2019

Posted by Ollamh in Fairy Tales and Myths, Imaginary History, Military History

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Tags

Charles X, Crusades, Excalibur, French Revolution, Gesta Henrici II et Gesta Regis Ricardi, Glastonbury, King Arthur, King Tancred, Lady of the Lake, Lecce, Lionheart, Louis IX, Louis Philipe, Louis XIV, Louis XV, Louis XVI, Louis XVIII, Medieval, mosaic, Napoleon, Norman, Otranto, Rex Arturus, Richard I of England, Roger of Howden, swords, Third Crusade

So we were reading this really interesting book, Christopher Tyerman’sngcce How to Plan a Crusade, when, on pages 244-5, we came across this: “While Louis prayed to the relics of the Passion, Richard had carried the sword Excalibur.” And we said, “What? Excalibur?”

Welcome, as always, dear readers. In this post, we want to talk a bit about two historic—or mythical– swords, inspired, as we were, by that reference and by two kings involved with them.

The “Louis” in the passage above is Louis IX (1214-1270) of France,

aka St Louis, a saint of both the Catholic and Anglican churches, who led several crusades in the mid-13^th century, but not very successfully, being taken prisoner during the first (1250) and dying of a fever during the second (1270).

The “Richard” is Richard I of England (1157-1199), also called “Lionheart”.

He was also a crusader, having been one of the dominant figures in the earlier Third Crusade (1189-1192).

But how do we know that Richard had “Excalibur”? And how did he acquire it?

We begin with the passage from a contemporary of Richard’s, Roger of Howden (?-1201?), who has left us a history known as Gesta Henrici II et Gesta Regis Ricardi, “The Deeds/Acts of Henry II and the Deeds/Acts of King Richard”. This begins in the 8^th century and covers the period up to 1201, which is presumed to be the year of Roger’s death. Roger went on the Third Crusade with Richard, although he left it early. He either observed or heard about this event, which took place in 1191:

“Et contra rex Angliae dedit regi Tancredo gladium illum optimum quem Britones Caliburne[m?] vocant qui fuerat gladius Arthuri quondam nobilis regis Angliae.”

“And, in return, the King of England gave to King Tancred that best of swords, which the Britons call ‘Calibern’, which had been the sword of Arthur, the one-time noble king of England.”

(The Latin text comes from page 392 of a collection of earlier English historians, entitled “Rerum Anglicarum Scriptores Post Bedam Praecipui”,–something like, “Writers of/on English Affairs in Particular After Bede”–which was published in London in 1596).

“King Tancred” (1138-1194) was the Norman ruler of Sicily from 1189-1194, just when Richard and his fellow Crusaders had reached that part of the world on their way eastward.

Tancred gave Richard a number of ships to help with transport and we might suppose that this was part of a reciprocal process. Remarkably for this early time, we have what appears to be concrete evidence not only that King Arthur was a well-known figure in southern Italy, but perhaps known to Tancred himself.

Tancred had been born in 1138 in Lecce (on the right-hand side of the map, just inland)

and just a few miles south is Otranto, with its cathedral (below Lecce on the map).

The main floor of that cathedral is covered by an enormous mosaic, installed between 1163 and 1165.

In that mosaic is a figure labeled “Rex Arturus”.

We’ve answered our first question, sort of: “How do we know that Richard had Excalibur?” But, again, how did he acquire it? Unfortunately, the only reference to Richard and the sword is the one we’ve quoted.

One thought, however. About 1191, the monks of Glastonbury Abbey

excavated a grave which

supposedly included a lead cross which read:

“Hic jacet sepultus inclytus rex Arthurius in insula avallonia cum Wennevereia uxore sua secunda”

“Here lies buried the renowned king Arthurius on the Avalonian island with Guinevere his second wife”

(Latin text from Giraldus Cambrensis, Speculum Ecclesiae, Chapter IX.)

Giraldus himself had been shown this cross by the Abbot, as he tells us. (For a more complete version of this story, in an English translation, please see this LINK.)

Modern research suggests that this was a fake, intended to boost the fortunes of a fading religious site, badly damaged by fire in 1184, but suppose that, to increase their patronage, the monks had added another level to their sham and “found” a sword, which they had then sent to Richard, who carried it off on his journey to the East.

(For more on the fakery, see, for example, this LINK.)

Louis IX, as we mentioned, died on campaign in 1270. His son, Philip, was with him at the time, but sailed back to France after his father’s death and was crowned Philip III in 1271. Our sources are vague here (they don’t always get the year right, for example), but all report that, for the first time, a special sword was used in the coronation ceremony. This was the so-called “sword of Charlemagne”, named “Joyeuse” (the “happy one”), which is mentioned in the 11^th-century Chanson de Roland:

“Si ad vestut sun blanc osberc sasfret,
Laciet sun elme, ki est a or gemmet,
Ceinte Joiuse, unches ne fut sa per,
Ki cascun jur muet.XXX. clartez.”

“[Charlemagne] was wearing his fine white coat of mail and his helmet with gold-studded stones; by his side hung Joyeuse, and never was there a sword to match it; its colour changed thirty times a day.”

(The translator for this was not identified at the site and we would make one small change—“clartez” might be better as “sheen/brightness” instead of “colour”.)

This, one of the few remaining pieces of the royal regalia, is, in fact, a mixture of a number of different periods, all the way up to Charles X (reigned 1824-1830), and experts argue over whether it is actually possible to date any part of it as early as Charlemagne’s time (see this LINK for more).

What isn’t questioned is that some version of this sword, at least, was used as part of the crowning ritual of French kings for centuries and its association with Charlemagne was as important for French history as linking something to King Arthur for English.

We haven’t managed to locate any medieval manuscript illustration which depicts a French coronation with the sword in place, but, when it comes to “The Sun King”, that is, Louis XIV, you can see that’s its hanging from his left side.

The same is true for Louis XV

and for that most unwarlike monarch, Louis XVI.

The French Revolution brought the crowning of kings to a halt, of course,

but Napoleon, all too aware both of the past and of his need to establish himself as the legitimate heir to the previous kings, brought it back, as you can see in this really over the top portrait.

When the younger brothers of the executed Louis XVI, Louis XVIII (1755-1824)

and Charles X (1757-1836)

became king successively in 1814 and 1824, one can still see the sword—although apparently Napoleon’s craftsmen had fiddled with it, as did those of Charles. His successor, Louis Philipe (1773-1850), who belonged to a cousin branch of the royal family, broke the tradition for good and the sword disappeared into history—and the Louvre, where it’s now on display.

And this brings us back to Excalibur. The tradition is a little murky, but the medieval sources are pretty clear that Excalibur had come from “The Lady of the Lake” and, as Arthur lay, gravely, perhaps fatally wounded, he commanded one of his knights, Griflet or Bedivere, according to the tradition, to return it to the Lady, which he finally, and very reluctantly, did.

With this, Excalibur disappears from the story—until Richard is reported giving it to the king of Sicily and our story—briefly—begins again.

Thanks, as always, for reading and

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.

Green and Quiet.2

12 Wednesday Sep 2018

Posted by Ollamh in Heroes, J.R.R. Tolkien, Military History

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Tags

21st Lancers, Bataclava, Cavalry, Charge of the Light Brigade, Edwardian, Great War, horses, King Edward, Medieval, Omdurman, Oxford, Pelennor, railways, Rohirrim, Romans, Scots Greys, Tolkien, Victorian, Waterloo

Welcome, as ever, dear readers.

The late-Victorian/Edwardian world of JRRT’s childhood and youth was full of stirring stories and illustrations of military adventure, from the 1815 charge of the Scots Greys at Waterloo

to the disastrous (but glorious) charge of the Light Brigade at Balaclava in 1854

to the near-disastrous (but also glorious) charge of the 21^st Lancers at Omdurman (1898)

to the expectation of more glorious attacks in the event of a Great War on the continent.

Such images may have inspired him to join a volunteer cavalry unit at Oxford, King Edward’s Horse,

and may even lie behind the charge of the Rohirrim at the Battle of the Pelennor Fields.

To us, however, it also symbolizes something else: the role of the horse in Tolkien’s world. Its military role was more than simply carrying the glamorous cavalry, however.

It also pulled the guns,

the supply wagons,

the ambulances,

as well as carried those in control of it all, from the Kings (after 1901)

to the generals,

and it was the same for all of Europe and the US, as well.

All of which simply reflected that, for all that there were railroads

and the West was crisscrossed with railway tracks,

horses still pulled the world,

as they had from Roman times

through medieval

and still did, even beyond the Great War.

In our last posting, we discussed a line from The Hobbit : “By some curious chance one morning long ago in the quiet of the world, when there was less noise and more green…”

We suggested that, with that phrase “long ago” and that imperfect tense verb form, “was”, all was no longer so quiet or green and that goblins/orcs, or their modern equivalent in the Industrial Revolution, were eating up the green of the world, as well as the quiet, but we would like to add to that that a major change in transport, which removed the horse almost entirely from the picture, also contributed greatly.

First, of course, it was those railways which cut through everywhere, steaming and smoking and hooting.

These greatly reduced the use of horses for carrying things—and people—over distances.

At the turn of the century, however, a new invention would come to so diminish the employment of horses eventually to the point where they would be thought obsolete.

At first, they were few and far between, available only to the rich for personal use.

The massive production needed for the Great War (1914-1918),

however, encouraged both post-war demand and supply.

As we’ve discussed in previous postings, the Romans had been masters of the paved road.

image30romanroad

After the Romans, however, the secret (and the massive amounts of cash, as well as the numbers of workers) to such roads was lost and roads declined into, at best, wide paths—dust baths in summer, swamps in winter.

At best, a road might be “metalled”—that is, covered in loose stone (from Latin “metallum”—here, meaning “quarry”).

In the 1820s, the Scots engineer, JL McAdam, created roads with a crushed stone surface over larger inlaid stones.

image33mcadam

Each of these was an improvement over a dirt track,

but, about 1900, the next process arrived, with the use of bitumen and then various petroleum substances to cover the surface and, along with the use of concrete, these produced the roads we still drive on today.

Unfortunately for green and quiet, this rapidly multiplied the decay of both, as cars and trucks and the roads they needed began to spread across the landscape. Imagine, for a man who had been born into the greener and quieter and horsier world of 1892, what this 1930s traffic jam would have been like and you can easily see why he would have believed that goblins and orcs could so harm the peaceful world!

Thanks, as ever, for reading.

MTCIDC

Recently, we happened upon this very interesting story, which we had never seen before, from the online BBC New, 3 July, 2006. The author mentions “Tolkien’s son” by whom he means JRRT’s second son, Michael.

Many years ago I corresponded with Tolkien’s son, a schoolmaster like myself. He said the Dark Riders in his novel were based on a real recurring nightmare from the Forst World War. Tolkien, riding a good cavlary horse, had somehow got lost behind the German lines,and, imagining he was behind his own trenches, rode towards a group of mounted cavalrymen standing in the shade of a coppice.

It was only when he drew nearer he realised his mistake for they German Ulhans, noted for their atrocities and taking no prisoners. When they saw him they set off in pursuit with their lances levelled at him. He swung his horse round and galloped off hotly pursued by the Germans. They had faster steeds but Tolkien’s horse was a big-boned hunter.

They got near enough for him to see their skull and crossbone helmet badges. Fortunately for Tolkien (and us, his readers)he raced towards some old trenches which his horse, used to hunting, took in its stride. The Uhlans’ horses weren’t up to it and they reined in leaving Tolkien to get away to his own side.

He was terrified and the cruel faces of those Uhlans and their badges haunted him in nightmares for a long time afterwards. Years later, when he was writing his novel, the Dark Riders were the result of that terrifying chase.
Revd John Waddington-Feather, Shrewsbury

There are some odd typos, but we think that the basic story might be true except for the details about the German cavalry. Uhlans are lancers, but lancer cap badges looked like this.

German hussar busbies, however, could have the famous “death’s head” badge.

And German hussars also could carry lances as in this picture from 1915.

German cavalry went to war with covers over their headgear (as in the photo of the hussars), but, if the story is accurate, we might presume that the hussars, for some reason, have shed those covers.

Small Talk

02 Wednesday May 2018

Posted by Ollamh in Fairy Tales and Myths, Films and Music, Heroes, J.R.R. Tolkien, Narrative Methods, Villains

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Assyrians, Charles Goodyear, cyclops, David and Goliath, Death Star, Egypt, Ewoks, Greeks, Hetep Senworset, Hobbits, Jack and the Beanstalk, Kelandry of Mindelan, Lachish, Medieval, Odysseus, Polyphemus, Protector of the Small, Romans, Sling, slingers, Slingshot, Smaug, Star Wars, Tamora Pierce, thrush, Tortall, Vulcanized, Woses, Yoda

Welcome, dear readers, as always.

Sometimes, ideas for posts come from something we’ve seen in a movie theatre or something we’re reading or even from something we’re teaching or studying. Sometimes we employ the Sortes Tolkienses. And sometimes things just seem to fall into our hands. And that’s where this post comes from.

We were moving a bookshelf and something literally dropped into our hands, a boxed set of books by one of our favorite YA authors, Tamora Pierce.

As you can see from our image, the series is called “Protector of the Small” and is about the life of Keladry of Mindelan, who lives in Pierce’s imaginary Tortall, where it is possible—just possible—for a girl to become a knight. Through the four volumes, Kel gradually works her way from pre-page to knighthood and, is always the case with TP’s books, there are both surprises and interesting and not always predictable difficulties along the way, as well as an ultimate humanity which makes her books such satisfying reading.

It wasn’t the actual books, however, which got us to thinking, but the word “small” in the series title. How often, in our favorite adventure stories, it’s a case of small versus big

and, very often, the big thinks that that’s all which counts—think of the fairy tale “Jack and the Beanstalk” for example.

For all that the giant is huge and menacing in the story, he’s vulnerable as he climbs down the beanstalk and Jack’s quick thought–to cut down the stalk even as the giant descends–makes quick work of the oversized (but perhaps overconfident—and underbrained?) creature.

In the Judeo-Christian tradition, we have the Biblical story of David and Goliath.

Goliath is not only huge, but armored, and David is a boy who has only his shepherd’s staff, a sling, and five stones from a river bed, but it’s all he needs.

A sling is an ancient weapon

This is from the Egyptian Middle Kingdom town of Hetep Senwosret, c. 1895BC. The Assyrians were still using the weapon more than a thousand years later, as this scene from one of the Lachish reliefs (c.700BC) shows.

The Greeks had slingers

as did the Romans

as did medieval westerners.

Slings shouldn’t be confused with slingshots, by the way. (Or “catapult” if you’re one of our British friends.)

This is the weapon of choice of the cartoon character, Dennis the Menace.

These are a modern invention which requires a large rubber band (an “elastic”) to propel the missile and such rubber bands can only come from the 1840s and beyond, when the process of heat-hardening rubber (“vulcanization”) was patented by Charles Goodyear.

For us, then, the image of Ori in P Jackson’s film armed with a slingshot

goes into our catalogue of anachronisms, like the steam engine whistle, the popgun, and the tomatoes in The Hobbit.

But, as we were saying, small David has no fear of big Goliath, as one of those stones from the riverbed stuns the giant warrior, allowing David to use Goliath’s own sword to cut off his head.

In ancient Greek tradition, Polyphemus the Cyclops obviously thinks his size will allow him to consume all of Odysseus’ men—and then Odysseus, too, saving him for last as a “guest gift”.

Big body, however, doesn’t necessarily mean big brain as Odysseus gets the Cyclops drunk and then blinds him with his own staff.

Then, he uses the Cyclops’ own sheep as escape vehicles for himself and his men.

Small versus big is a major theme in Star Wars, from the fact that the gigantic Death Star has a single ventilator duct which makes it vulnerable

to attack by a single fighter,

to the ferocious Ewoks,

and, of course, Yoda, with his famous question.

And then there are The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, where the world of the small and tough seems to be everywhere, from the hobbits

to the dwarves

and even to the Woses.

Their opponents are suitably large—trolls,

dragons

wizards

to the biggest evil in Middle-earth (although it’s not clear, really, how big he is, physically).

But there’s someone even smaller in The Hobbit who, because of that size, perhaps, is left behind, but is crucial to the story: the elderly thrush

who informs Bard the Bowman just where to fire that black arrow which never fails him—and doesn’t this time, thanks to the bird.

We were sorry that his part was completely removed from The Battle of the Five Armies, but perhaps this was, in fact, one of the few times when the small hero lost to the big–studio.

Thanks, as ever, for reading.

MTCIDC

Here’s a LINK to an amazing demonstration of just how accurate the sling can be.

Psalters and Psalms

11 Wednesday Apr 2018

Posted by Ollamh in Artists and Illustrators, Heroes, Literary History, Military History

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Easter Sepulchre, Irnham, King David, King John, Lincolnshire, Luttrell Psalter, Magna Carta, Medieval, Middle-earth, Nottingham, psalter, Robin Hood, Scriptorium, Sir Geoffrey Psalter, St Andrew's, Tolkien, Utrecht Psalter, Westminster Psalter

As always, dear readers, welcome.

In past posts, we’ve occasionally used images from a very famous medieval manuscript, the Luttrell Psalter. One fairly recent one, on carts and wagons in Middle-earth, included this, for example—

A medieval psalter is a collection of psalms—religious poems which were traditionally attributed to King David of Israel–

(This is, in fact, from the Westminster Psalter, c.1200)

plus other Christian religious material. It was clearly a place which offered lots of opportunities for illustrations because a number of them have them, some of them very generous in just how many, like the Utrecht Psalter, from the 9^th century, which has an illustration for every psalm.

The Utrecht Psalter has been digitized—here’s a LINK so that you can see all of this wonderful book.

Such books were created in the medieval equivalent of copy-centers, called scriptoria (singular = scriptorium). For many years, it was said that this was a specific room in a monastery in which teams of monks worked on writing/copying books. More recently, this view has been challenged (see this LINK for discussion on the subject), but certainly monks made and copied books, as this manuscript illustration of the 12^th-century English priest and Latin poet, Lawrence of Durham reminds us. In fact, this illustration may be more accurate than other medieval illustrations as it shows Lawrence working on a single sheet, which was the standard method. All sheets were then gathered up and bound into a book—a very different scene from this Spanish medieval illustration, in which at least the monk on the right seems to be writing in a book (the figure on the left looks to be a lay person and may be painting—hence, illustrating).

Illustrated books—especially heavily-illustrated books like the Luttrell Psalter—would have been very costly, and so only the wealthy would have commissioned such a work. We know the name of the person who commissioned this book because that name and a suggestion of a portrait are at Psalm 109 of the manuscript.

As it says just above the illustration: “DNS Galfridus Louterrell me fieri fecit” = The Lord Geoffrey Luttrell had me made”.

Sir Geoffrey (1276-1345) was descended from an earlier Sir Geoffrey, who had been a supporter of King John (1166-1216), the dodgy character of the Magna Carta and from the Robin Hood story.

Here’s King John forced to sign the Magna Carta, designed to lessen the king’s power and increase that of the nobles—

which, of course, he didn’t do, since the sign of royal approval in 1215 wasn’t a name, but an official seal.

Sir Geoffrey’s descendant, also Geoffrey, held land, among other places, around Irnham (probably from the Old English for “Georna’s settlement”, Geornaham) in Lincolnshire (yes, when it comes to England, we can never quite escape the Shire, can we?). Here’s where Lincolnshire is on a map of England. (It’s interesting that Nottingham, notorious for its sheriff and Prince John in the Robin Hood stories, is only about 40 miles west of Irnham.)

This Sir Geoffrey’s manor house has long disappeared, but we imagine that the area called a manor might have looked something like this.

Its church, St Andrew’s, survives, however, and, though rebuilt in 1858, dates from the 12^th century.

Inside, is a monumental brass for Sir Geoffrey’s son, Andrew, (died 1390).

There is no tomb for his father, Sir Geoffrey, but there is what’s called an “Easter Sepulchre”, which was commissioned by him and which may have been based upon such a tomb.

This piece of architecture was used in an elaborate ceremony connected with the celebration of the Christian Easter in the Middle Ages.

Beyond the church, our monument to Sir Geoffrey is the psalter, over whose date there has been lots of scholarly discussion, so we’ll go with the general area of dating, c.1320-1340. The book is about 14.5 inches by 10.5 (368.3mm x 266.7mm) and contains 309 pages made of vellum (fine calfskin), with illustrations on more than 200 pages. The text was written by a single scribe, it is thought, but at least five artists were involved in the illustrating—and what illustrations!

In fact, it seems a crazy variety, and, unlike the Utrecht Psalter, the illustrations don’t match the psalms. Instead, the scenes depicted vary from the high religious—like the three Wise Men/Kings/Magi following the star to Bethlehem, from the New Testament

to all sorts of grotesque creatures

to what we love most, the agricultural and domestic scenes.

These can show a whole town

or mills, both water and wind-driven

or how the grain is raised and processed to get to the mills

or even controlling the pests who would eat the grain. (Is this a screencap from the first cat video?)

Here’s a LINK to a selection of images from the British Library, but there are more if you google “Luttrell Psalter”. See what your favorites might be.

And thanks, as always, for reading!

MTCIDC

Let’s add here a LINK to a short film based upon the psalter, which we think you might enjoy.

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

Wains, Carts, and… (2)

14 Wednesday Feb 2018

Posted by Ollamh in Economics in Middle-earth, J.R.R. Tolkien

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Boudica, Carts, Cassius Dio, Celts, chariots, Conestoga, Farmer Maggot, Gandalf, gur, Hobbiton, Iceni, Iron Age, Medieval, Mongols, Oregon Trail, Roman History, Romans, The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien, vikings, Wagons, Wainriders, Wains

Welcome, as always, to our blog, dear readers.

In our last, we began discussing wheeled transport in The Lord of the Rings. We began with Gandalf’s cart, mentioned in Chapter 1.

The posting took us from the first traces of wheeled vehicles in western Europe, circa 3600BC (literally traces—just a pair of tracks in the clay)

through chariots

to Roman carts

to their descendants, medieval carts,

which led us back to Gandalf.

Continuing our discussion, we move from carts (2 wheels) to wagons (4 wheels) with the wagon Farmer Maggot uses to carry the hobbits to Bucklebury Ferry:

“I was going to say: after a bit of supper, I’ll get out a small wagon, and I’ll drive you all to the Ferry.” (The Fellowship of the Ring, Book One, Chapter 4, “A Short Cut to Mushrooms”)

There is no description beyond that, really, but wagons are pretty generic things. We have a few examples of early (600-500BC) Iron Age wagons—very fancy ones, too—from burials,

as well as this later Viking wagon.

And, in between, we have Roman wagons

and their medieval descendants.

Farmer Maggott’s wagon, would probably have looked something like this (without the arms).

Of course, those Roman wagons were meant for paved Roman roads.

Although some Roman roads remained on the surface and continued to be used, most medieval roads were merely dirt and stones—as JRRT illustrates in that picture of the Hill

and as we see in this picture.

In which case, medieval people relied upon pack horses to transport many of their goods.

(Think of Bill the pony as a modest example.)

An old word for wagon is wain and we would like to end this brief exploration with something about wains and Wainriders. In Appendix A, we find this:

“The third evil was the invasion of the Wainriders, which sapped the waning strength of Gondor in wars that lasted for almost a hundred years. The Wainriders were a people, or a confederacy of many peoples, that came from the east; but they were stronger and better armed than any that had appeared before. They journeyed in great wains, and their chieftains fought in chariots.”

We’ve been puzzled by that combination of “great wains” and “their chieftains fought in chariots”. The only immediate reference we could think of was to the Iceni, a tribe of ancient Britain, who, led by a female chieftain named Boudica, revolted against Roman occupation in 60-61AD. At the final battle, where they were defeated by Roman troops, they had parked wagons in a crescent formation to their rear, then advanced with their chariots and infantry against the Romans. (See Cassius Dio, Roman History, LXII.12 for a description of this battle—here’s an easy LINK to that portion of his extensive writing.)

There is a problem here, however. The Britons were not migratory and their wagons were probably no more than farm wagons and carts, hardly the great wains of JRRT’s description. If we removed the chariots, another candidate for the Wainriders might be the Mongols, however, who were migratory and traveled in something even more splendid than a wagon—a gur—like this one—

The Mongols certainly came from the east and, in a short time, swallowed up territory from China all the way to eastern Europe.

It is more likely, however, that JRRT combined things–it wouldn’t be the first time he synthesized—so much of his so-called legendarium is a mixture of this and that in brilliant profusion. So, in the same spirit, we asked ourselves what we thought wains might look like and immediately saw the big wagon which was instrumental in colonizing the western part of the US, the Conestoga.

Great, long lines of these and other wagons, packed with people and supplies, crossed the plains from the 1840s on.

Could we then remove the 19^th-century settlers and add Celts and their chariots, say?

What do you think, dear readers?

Thanks, as ever, for reading.

MTCIDC

Wains and Carts and… (Part I)

07 Wednesday Feb 2018

Posted by Ollamh in J.R.R. Tolkien, Literary History, Military History

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Bronze Age, Byzantines, Carts, chariots, delivery carts, Flintbek, Gandalf, Great War, Greece, Iliad, Late-Victorian, Medieval, military, Mycenaean, Neolithic, Roman Roads, Romans, Schleswig-Holstein, The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien, Trundholm Sun Chariot, Wagons, wattle and daub

Welcome, dear readers, once more to our blog.
We’ve just been watching the extended version opening of The Fellowship of the Ring, in which Gandalf appears, driving a cart.

(Sorry—we couldn’t resist! We love Legos and the older Playmobil—Vikings, pirates, Roman warship, too. Not to forget the Egyptian pyramid! )
Unlike ordinary medieval carts,

it is quite elaborate.

You can see from our second illustration that both the medieval example and Gandalf’s have wattled sides—that is, the upright spindles below the railing top have pliable sticks (perhaps willow or hazel?) woven between them to make the sides of the cart.
This is also a common method for producing traditional house walls: you just add daub, which is clay plus fibre, as a kind of plaster to fill in around the sticks.

Many buildings, from the Neolithic on, were constructed using the technique,

as well as, without the daub, miles and miles of useful fencing.

What caught our attention, however, was the general look of the cart and the detailing of the wooden railing,

which very much reminded us of this—

a Celtic chariot of the sort one sees both in chariot burials

and in stirring reconstructions.

But that’s not the direction we wanted to take in this post. Rather, we were, as so often, thinking about the medieval world and Middle-earth and, in this case, wheeled vehicles.
The earliest evidence in Europe currently known for such vehicles is not the remains of a vehicle itself, but rather its tracks, found under a burial mound at Flintbek, in Schleswig-Holstein, in northwest Germany.

These have been dated to about 3600BC, during the late Neolithic Era. A bit later, we see this odd thing, the so-called “Trundholm Sun Chariot”, from about 1400BC

which actually appears to be some sort of wagon, or at least its frame.

Perhaps 50 years later, there are Bronze Age Mycenaean chariots

but, at least as far as illustrations go, European domestic vehicle depictions are scarce, especially in contrast to those of military—or sport—vehicles. Here’s a 5th-century BC depiction of a wagon being used for a wedding,

but we could then show you heaps of illustrations of chariots, used in very early Greece for warfare. You see them all over the Iliad, for example,

but chariots in the later Greek world were abandoned for warfare, although retained for racing, which was true for the Romans and for their successors, the Byzantines.

We have lots more depictions of domestic vehicles from the Roman world, both carts

and wagons.

This shouldn’t be surprising, we suppose, given that the Romans built more than 50,000 miles of roads.
image19romrd
Judging by these depictions, it appears that the medieval world simply continued using Roman vehicle patterns, just as, where available, they continued to use Roman roads.

For us, then Gandalf’s cart—which is not really described:
“At the end of the second week in September a cart came in through Bywater from the direction of Brandywine Bridge in broad daylight. An old man was driving it all alone…It had a cargo of fireworks…”
(The Fellowship of the Ring, Book One, Chapter 1, “A Long-expected Party”)
would follow what we see in manuscript illustrations.
Tolkien might have been thinking of such illustrations, of course, but there is another possibility. In the late-Victorian world into which JRRT was born, horses still powered vehicles and delivery carts like this one

would have been a common site—even after the Great War. Perhaps he was thinking of something he might still have seen outside his window when he was young?
We’ll stop here for now, but will continue in Part II, where we’ll consider Farmer Maggot’s wagon and wains…

Thanks, as ever, for reading.
MTCIDC
CD

Mirror Image

03 Wednesday Jan 2018

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

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Tags

ancient mirrors, Bag End, chiaroscuro, Claude Debussy, Egyptians, Etruscans, Georges de la Tour, Greeks, hall stand, Headington, Magic mirror, Maurice Ravel, Medieval, Miroirs, mirror, North Oxford, Parmigianino, Portrait of the Money-Lender and His Wife, Quentin Matsys, Reflections in the Water, Reflets dans L'eau, Renaissance, Romans, Snow White, The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien, Victorian

Welcome, as ever, dear readers.

In English, we have the expression “upon reflection”, meaning something like “I’ve looked back at something and have considered (or reconsidered)”. When we look at the word “reflection”, we see its Latin origin, re “back/again” and flection, from the verb flecto, flectere, flexi, flexum “to bend/turn/bow” (we show all four of what are called the “principal parts” of the verb so that you can see where words like “flexible”—and, together with that re—“reflex” come from) and can imagine that, originally, it was almost a physical act—as if a person were believed literally to have turned back to a thought, event, action, to think about it again.

But that made us wonder about a reflection in a different sense—when an image is repeated, in water, say.

(And here we provide a YouTube LINK for a beautiful piece of music “Reflets dans L’eau”—“Reflections in the Water” by Claude Debussy—1862-1918, from the set entitled, Images, Book One—1905.)

Or in a mirror.

(This haunting painting is by Georges de la Tour, 1593-1652—known for his chiaroscuro—shadow-versus-light effects—style.)

Fancifully, we might ask: does a “reflection” in this sense suggest that the image in the mirror was turning back to look at the viewer? More realistically, we might say that the image is bent/turned back upon the viewer—but we also wonder if the Latin word from which our word mirror comes might give a certain flavor of the uncanny about it. Miror, mirari, miratus sum in Latin means “to wonder/be amazed at something” (Put the Latin preposition ad– on the front of this and you’re looking at English “admire”—originally “to wonder at something”—our modern sense of this has lost something of the wide-eyed nature implied in the original, but that’s how language works—sharp things, like knives, become dull with use. In Spanish, for example, mirar comes to mean “to look at/watch/observe”.)

Certainly, folktales and folk customs once preserved something eerie about mirrors. Think of the wicked queen’s magic mirror in Snow White.

If you know the Disney version of Snow White, you probably expected us to show this image.

But this so creeped us out as children that it was not our first choice!

In various western European countries, looking into a mirror on New Year’s Eve (lots of extra things to do: while combing hair, eating an apple, taking a bath first so that the mirror is steamy) will show you the image of your intended spouse. And breaking a mirror can mean seven years of bad luck.

For Egyptians,

Greeks,

Etruscans,

Romans,

and western Medieval people, as well,

mirrors were not very breakable, however, being commonly made of a piece of polished bronze (although there were attempts, apparently, from late classical times on to do something with glass and a metal backing). Artists in the classical world, rarely missing a chance to do something more, used the backs of mirrors as surfaces for decoration, as well. Here’s a very interesting Etruscan mirror back, including an inscription (it’s the story of Icarus and Daedalus).

Mirrors with a silvered back and glass cover, the direct ancestors of modern mirrors, appeared during the Renaissance.

This is a little joke—a self-portrait of the painter—which has been included in Quentin Matsys’ (1466-1530) painting “Portrait of the Money-Lender and His Wife” (1514).

(And, speaking of Renaissance paintings with mirrors, we couldn’t resist including this famous little painting by Parmigianino (1503-1540), a self-portrait painted on a mirror-shaped convex panel.)

If silver-backed, glass-covered mirrors only appeared in the Renaissance, however, what can we say about this object on the left house wall in this picture?

We can tell it’s meant to be a mirror as, looking closely, you can just make out the reflection of a tree which is outside to the right of the open door on its surface. And is that another mirror, on the piece of furniture in the foreground on the left? If so, it fits the kind of thing called a “hall stand” which one might see in a later-Victorian house—like this piece from the 1870s.

This makes us wonder once again: how much of this entryway depicts a Middle-earth based not upon the Middle Ages, but upon the memory of houses JRRT grew up in or perhaps furnishings from his own homes in North Oxford or Headington as an adult?

But we’ll save what appears to be a Gothic Revival chair there on the right for another day…

In the meantime, thanks, as ever, for reading!

MTCIDC

We would like to take a moment and turn to the west to thank the Valar for the full recovery of our dear friend and fellow Tolkien enthusiast, EMH, from a serious operation. Get even well-er soon!

Caspar_David_Friedrich_-_Woman_before_the_Rising_Sun_(Woman_before_the_Setting_Sun)_-_WGA08253.jpg

PPS

If you enjoyed the Debussy in the link above, perhaps you might also enjoy Maurice Ravel’s (1875-1937) Miroirs (1906)—here’s a LINK.

doubtfulsea

~ adventure fantasy

Tag Archives: Medieval

Helm (but not deep)

A Tale of Two Swords

Orc Arsenal.1

Green and Quiet.2

Small Talk

Psalters and Psalms

I Love a Parade

Wains, Carts, and… (2)

Wains and Carts and… (Part I)

Mirror Image