The Return of the Who.2?

28 Wednesday Oct 2015

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

Tags

Aragorn, Aslan, C.S. Lewis, Catholicism, Gondor, Hobbits, Jadis, Medusa, Middle-earth, monotheism, Narnia, Oxford, religion, Sauron, secular, The Bird and the Baby, The Chronicles of Narnia, The Eagle and the Child, The Hobbit, The Inklings, The Lamb and Flag, The Lord of the Rings, the Pevensies, The Return of the Ring, The White Witch, Tolkien, White Tree

Dear Readers,

Welcome, as always.

This posting is a continuation of our last, in which we made a brief attempt to think about what the title “The Return of the King” might have meant for its author in his time.

In this posting, we want to expand that meaning from a secular king to one with more religious overtones.

We ourselves, as we’ve said before, are World Civ people, believing that all people in all times and places are and should be of interest and value to everyone. We are also pan-spiritual, thinking with Gandhi that, “I believe in the fundamental Truth of all great religions of the world.”

In the case of Tolkien, this meant Catholic Christianity, a form of monotheism. Of religion and The Lord of the Rings, he wrote in 1953:

“The Lord of the Rings is of course a fundamentally religious and Catholic work; unconsciously so at first, but consciously in the revision. That is why I have not put in, or have cut out, practically all references to anything like ‘religion’, to cults or practices, in the imaginary world. For the religious element is absorbed into the story and the symbolism.” Letters, 172.

He adds to this, in a letter to Houghton Mifflin, in 1955, that “It is a monotheistic world of ‘natural theology’. (Letters, 220). At the same time, however, he adds “I am in any case myself a Christian; but the ‘Third Age’ was not a Christian world. Letters, 220.

And yet we would suggest that there is not only more of a Christian theme, but also a Christian parallel with a book written at about the same time as the later stages of The Lord of the Rings and published slightly before it. This is C.S. Lewis’ The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (1950).

As is well known, both Lewis and Tolkien

were members of a literary group in Oxford, the Inklings.

Lewis and Tolkien formed part of the permanent core, with other members coming and going over the years (1933-1949). The meetings were held in Lewis’ rooms at Magdalen College,

as well as at two local pubs, The Eagle and Child (called locally “Bird and Baby” or just “Bird”)

as well as The Lamb and Flag.

The purpose (besides refreshments) was literary discussion, both of others’ works and of their own, and an important feature was the reading aloud of works in progress. Lewis had been very supportive, both of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, but Tolkien had not been so enthusiastic in return. All the same, we would suggest that various elements of Lewis’ The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and events around Gondor in Tolkien’s The Return of the King at times bear strong similarities.

In Lewis’ book, the main protagonists are four children, the Pevensies.

In Tolkien’s, there are four grown Hobbits, often mistaken, beyond the borders of the Shire, for children.

Both groups are on an errand which they barely understand and are faced with a supernatural enemy, the White Witch for the one, Sauron for the other. (There seems to be a lot of mirroring in all of this: the White Witch is already in Narnia and must be driven out. Sauron is outside Gondor and wants to get in, for example. The White Witch’s name is “Jadis”, by the way. Undoubtedly Lewis’ little linguistic joke: jadis in French means “formerly”, suggesting that even from the first time she appears, she’s already on her way out.)

(Notice, in the movie version of Jadis, the strong similarity between her and the Medusa. In fact, Jadis turns her enemies, when she can, to ice.)

Before the current world of Narnia, to which the children come, there was a king who had been somehow ejected a century before. In Middle Earth, there has been no king in Gondor for ten times that. In Narnia, there has been winter for that century.

In Gondor, in Middle Earth, its symbol of growth and stability, the White Tree, has withered and died.

When the Pevensie children have been involved in the defeat of the White Witch, they will rule Narnia in the place of the true king, the lion Aslan.

For about a thousand years, stewards ruled Gondor in place of the king. (Another example of mirroring.)

When Lewis’ Aslan returns, it is from death, having sacrificed himself to save one of the Pevensie children.

Thus, Aslan, in effect, heals himself. When the king of Gondor, Aragon, appears, he heals others. (Tolkien would probably associate this with the old English custom of having the monarch touch people attacked with a disease called scrofula, or “the King’s evil”. We include a picture of Queen Mary—1516-1558—doing so.)

When Aslan appears, spring returns to Narnia.

When Aragorn claims the throne, he and Gandalf discover a sapling of the old tree on Mindolluin, bring it down, and plant it and it soon flowers.

We’re sure that there are other parallels, dear reader: can you think of any?

Thanks, as always, for reading this.

MTCIDC

Jolly Tom.2

16 Wednesday Sep 2015

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

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Barrow-downs, Barrow-wights, Bree, Dagger, Dorset, Eowyn, Fangorn, Frodo, Gandalf, Middle-earth, Nazgul, Neolithic, Old Forest, Old Man Willow, Peter Jackson, Sauron, The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, The Ring, Tolkien, Tom Bombadil, Weaponry, Westernesse, Witch-King of Angmar

Dear Readers,

Welcome, as always!

As you can see from the title, this is a continuation of the previous posting, in which we began a discussion of a two-part question: 1. What would be the advantage of keeping Tom Bombadil in a recorded (audio or film) version of The Lord of the Rings? 2. What would you need to keep?

To summarize the previous posting, we suggested that:

he, along with Fangorn/Treebeard, represents the great age of Middle Earth—something very important to the author–and a continuity of living things, which leads us to
he might also be seen as a form of hope: the Ring has no effect upon him and he remembers a time before the arrival of Sauron, suggesting that there might be a time after him, as well, and that the Ring has limits
as it seems out of place even in the current text, the bulk of Tom’s verse and the sometimes rhythmicized prose could be removed, leaving only the character himself and his part in the plot

We believe, however, that there is a more pressing reason for keeping him in the text, and it has to do with something Gandalf says to Frodo when Frodo, panicked at the prospect of having to deal with the Ring, demands, “Why did it come to me? Why was I chosen?” LotR 61.

“’Such questions cannot be answered,’ said Gandalf, ‘You may be sure that it was not for any merit that others do not possess: not for power or wisdom, at any rate. But you have been chosen, and you must therefore use such strength and heart and wits as you have.’” LotR 61.

This is a continuation of Gandalf’s earlier statement that:

“Behind that there was something else at work, beyond any design of the Ring-maker. I can put it no plainer than by saying that Bilbo was meant to find the Ring, and not by its maker. In which case you also were meant to have it.” LotR 56.

Thus, there is a level of intentionality at work in Middle-earth, something beyond Sauron. And, when we see Bombadil next, he will prove to be an instrument of the intention.

The Hobbits have left his house and, following his directions, have passed onto the Barrow-downs.

A down is a piece of rolling countryside, often bare at the top, with trees in its folds—as here in Dorset.

The Dorset Downs have lots of Neolithic remains, including numbers of barrows or tumuli, grave mounds commonly covering an interior structure, not uncommonly made of stone—

Such tumuli once contained the body or bodies usually of high-status persons

and all sorts of grave goods, either as a display of wealth or perhaps for some sort of afterlife use.

Bombadil has been careful, however, to say “more than once” (LotR 134) that the Hobbits are to avoid the barrows themselves, telling them not to meddle with them or “cold Wights” (LotR 133). (He also says that they should pass them “on the west-side”—there have been lots of guesses about this—we would add our guess that it might have to do with the orientation—literally—of the entry. If entries faced east and the rising sun, it would be wise of the Hobbits to skirt the barrows’ potential blind side, on the west. And there is also the rather obvious point, once you’ve looked at a map of the area, that, if they kept the barrows to the right and the Old Forest to the left, they would be heading north towards the road to Bree, as they intended.)

Those Barrow-wights are not the original inhabitants of the mounds, but agents of the Witch-king of Angmar, who sends them to take possession (The Lord of the Rings Companion, 144-145), long after their original occupation—but, what’s interesting is that, at least one of these tumuli appears not to have been plundered and this leads us to our next point about Tom Bombadil. After he rescues the Hobbits (showing again his mastery over at least the minor forces of evil), he does a little plundering of his own, including:

“For each of the hobbits he chose a dagger, long, leaf-shaped, and keen, of marvellous workmanship, damasked in serpent forms in red and gold…Then he told them that these blades were forged many long years ago by Men of Westernesse: they were foes of the Dark Lord, but they were overcome by the evil king of Carn Dum in the Land of Angmar.” LotR 146.

Here are a few ideas of what, at least, the leaf shape might have looked like:

And we include this third one just because it looks so cool—

Bombadil, of course, has actually seen all of this happen, and here we see that theme of great age appear again. And there’s the pedigree of those blades. Unlike the sack ‘o swords slung without any more explanation than “These are for you. Keep them close.” to the Hobbits in the film, these were weapons made by heroic men of the past, doomed men, but who fought evil until they were overcome (a strong theme throughout the history of Middle-earth).

Late in the story, one of those blades seems to be the instrument of intentionality once more. When Eowyn faces the Witch-king of Angmar, now the chief of the Nazgul—

and he is about to kill her with his mace, Merry strikes him from behind, stabbing him in what, on a living man, would have been a vulnerable spot, the back of the knee. (LotR 842.)

Distracted and, surprisingly, in pain, the Nazgul stumbles and Eowyn destroys him and here, once more, we may see intentionality, and all because of Tom Bombadil. Merry’s sword, from its contact with the undead flesh of the Nazgul, withers away, but—

“So passed the sword of the Barrow-downs, work of Westernesse. But glad would he have been to know its fate who wrought it slowly long ago in the North-kingdom when the Dunedain were young, and chief among their foes was the dread realm of Angmar and its sorcerer king. No other blade, not though mightier hands had wielded it, would have dealt that foe a wound so bitter, cleaving the undead flesh, breaking the spell that knit his unseen sinews together.” LotR 844.

So, for everything from Old Man Willow (whom the script writers couldn’t resist completely, transposing him to an improbable scene with Fangorn/Treebeard) to showing the great age of Middle-earth to suggesting other powers untouched by the Ring to offering possible hope to showing something of the intentionality behind certain actions in the story to providing the ancient and magical weapon which could finally bring down the Witch-king of Angmar and save Eowyn at the same time, might we suggest that, next production—audio or visual—of The Lord of the Rings, Jolly Tom might have a place in the cast?

Thanks, as always, for reading.

MTCIDC

If you would like to read more about Tom, see, for example, Dorathea Thomas, “He Is: Tom Bombadil and His Function in The Lord of the Rings” at Academia.edu.

What’s In A Name?

26 Wednesday Aug 2015

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

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Anglo-Saxon, artefacts, Balin, Beaumaris, Bladorthin, Gandalf, Girion, Hadrian's Wall, Hoard, Middle-earth, Raedwald, Ship burial, Sigeberht, spears, Staffordshire Hoard, Stonehenge, Suffolk, Sutton Hoo, The Argonath, The Hobbit, Thorin, Thror, Tolkien, weapons

Dear Readers, welcome, as ever.

If you look for the name “Bladorthin” in The Annotated Hobbit (our standard source), you will find it only once, on page 287, where Thorin and Balin discuss what they can remember of the great hoard of the Lonely Mountain.

This includes not only the usual golden items and jewels, but also what appears to have been a military consignment, “the spears that were made for the armies of the great King Bladorthin (long since dead), each had a thrice-forged head and their shafts were inlaid with cunning gold, but they were never delivered or paid for.”

Who this king was and why he was arming his men with what appear to be deluxe weapons is a mystery and probably forever unsolved. This is likewise true for the original Bladorthin, who exchanges his name for that of the head dwarf in the first drafts, Gandalf, just as the head dwarf loses his name, Gandalf, to become Thorin. Why does Tolkien make the shift?

If neither of these can be answered, perhaps we can step back a little to wonder why Bladorthin, the king, is in The Hobbit at all?

A strongly-marked feature of The Lord of the Rings is the sense of age, of great time having passed. Part of this comes from Tolkien’s own sense of history, part from living in a place where things like stone circles

and Roman fortifications

let alone more recent things, like castles

are everywhere to be seen every day.

Part of it, too, comes from Tolkien’s seemingly-unquenchable desire to add to what he had created, providing more and more and more context practically per page.

What might be seen as obsessive, or nearly, however, adds what we might call convincing texture, and in two ways: on the one hand, it makes the story that much more vivid because it’s so much more detailed, and, on the other, it gives it weight: this is not a tale of yesterday, but of a long ago, even if not a long ago from the world of the Neolithic or Romans or Edward I.

This sense of age comes from a number of elements, including not only the idea that the text has been translated from a manuscript, a handwritten text from a pre-Gutenberg age, but also from the landscape which, like Tolkien’s own mid-20^th-century Britain, is full of visible reminders of the past–

In fact, not long after the publication of The Hobbit, in 1937, a major uncovering of the English Anglo-Saxon past took place near the coast, in Suffolk, at a place called Sutton Hoo. Here, a series of mounds

yielded a ship burial

with nothing short of a hoard, including such items as these pieces from a purse

and a helmet.

(And, since then, it turns out that the area is an extensive cemetery, which, though much plundered, has yielded many other finds.)

Although Tolkien doesn’t mention this discovery in his selected letters, it would be difficult to imagine that he hadn’t seen something about it: it was even featured in the US National Geographic, in the year of discovery, 1939. Unfortunately, who the man buried there was appears impossible to say, leaving one aspect unknown, and all of the valuables simply generic Anglo-Saxon. (The theory now is that he is the early 7^th-c AD ruler, Raedwald, or his son/step-son, Sigeberht.)

The Hobbit, written earlier in terms of years and even earlier, perhaps, in terms of literary sophistication, has, in comparison, much less depth. Much of the backdrop is, particularly in comparison, fairy-tale flat, without all of those levelsl of history.

But then there is Bladorthin.

That mound of wealth, extending beyond the sleeping Smaug is initially described as:

“…on all sides stretching away across the unseen floors, lay countless piles of precious things, gold wrought and unwrought, gems and jewels, and silver red-stained in the ruddy light.” TH 270

This is impressive enough to wake a kind of primal greed in Bilbo:

“His heart was filled and pierced with enchantment and with the desire of dwarves; and he gazed motionless, almost forgetting the frightful guardian, at the gold beyond price and count.” TH 271

Imagine, then, that such a hoard—like Sutton Hoo, or the more recent—and astonishing—Staffordshire Hoard (see the link here)

could have names attached to some of its pieces, if not to the hoard in general. Thorin and Balin, in their reminiscing, combine general description with some specific detail, as well as identifying several one-time object owners:

“…shields made for warriors long dead; the great golden cup of Thror, two-handed, hammered and carven with birds and flowers whose eyes and petals were of jewels; coats of mail gilded and silvered and impenetrable; the necklace of Girion, Lord of Dale, made of five hundred emeralds green as grass, which he gave for the arming of his eldest son in a coat of dwarf-linked rings the like of which had never been made before, for it was wrought of pure silver to the power and strength of triple steel. But fairest of all was the great white gem, which the dwarves had found beneath the roots of the Mountain, the Heart of the Mountain, the Arkenstone of Thrain.” TH 287

Just as places in Middle-earth, by having history, are deepened, the same would be true for artefacts: not just a necklace, but Girion’s necklace, not just a golden cup, but Thror’s cup, and not just spears, but spears commissioned by Bladorthin, a king of long ago.

Thus, although Bladorthin’s history may remain a mystery outside The Hobbit, what history there is gives greater depth, narrative texture, to this early vision of Middle-earth and to the story of Bilbo, in particular.

Thanks, as ever, for reading.

MTCIDC

Fairy Tale to Bill of Sale

19 Wednesday Aug 2015

Posted by Ollamh in Economics in Middle-earth, Fairy Tales and Myths, J.R.R. Tolkien

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Alice in Wonderland, Baggins, Bilbo, Contract, Dragon, Dwarves, Economics, Elves, Fairy Tale, Fantasy, Goblins, Hoard, Laketown, Middle-earth, Mirkwood, Odysseus, On Fairy Stories, Smaug, The Hobbit, The Odyssey, Tolkien

Dear Readers,

Welcome, as always!

Recently, when we discussed the economics of Middle-earth, Tolkien told us that he was not entirely ignorant about such matters, saying “…the situations are so devised that economic likelihood is there and could be worked out”. LT, 296

So that’s what we’ve set out to do in this posting, working out something of those economics in a modest way.

The Hobbit, as everyone knows, began as a story for his children, set in a fairytale world of elves, goblins, dwarves, and a dragon—the sorts of things which, in Tolkien’s essay “On Fairy Stories”, are derived from fantasy, which is “a natural human activity. It certainly does not destroy or even insult Reason,” but enhances it, lest fantasy become mere “Morbid Delusion” (which, later in the essay, Tolkien links with a work like Alice in Wonderland).

But something begins to happen, even early on, when Bilbo signs a contract before setting out for his adventure—an odd start for a fairytale hero who, traditionally, has to prove himself. The story proceeds for some time in fairy tale mode, but then, when the party loses everything in Mirkwood, it’s necessary for Bilbo and Company to resupply and here the story moves seriously from a fairytale world to capitalism, as the fairy tale quest evolves into a commercial venture.

To replace lost materiel, the company turns to the people of Laketown,

who provide it–and clearly do so on speculation, since the Dwarves have nothing to offer but promises.

The fairytale then seems to resume. The party reaches the mountain, gets in, the dragon wakes–but then things go very wrong, at least for the investors, as Smaug, easily putting together that two and two equal Laketown, sets off to destroy it and is destroyed himself, in the process. And then the fairy tale comes apart completely in a potential war over economic resources and compensation for damage caused during the investment: Laketowners versus Dwarves, which escalates when Elves stake a claim and then Dwarves come to reenforce Dwarves and then, just to keep things in flux, a goblin army arrives. One almost wonders whether the Eagles, when they arrived, have invested in Laketown bonds and are expecting to cash them in, with interest!

When all of this is resolved, we might think that we’ve returned to the fairy tale world once more: Bilbo, with his share of the hoard, sets off for home, where happily ever after lies–or does it?

In The Odyssey, Odysseus comes home to find his house in the hands of suitors, and must deal with them with the help of a goddess—very much a folktale. Bilbo comes home to find that his house and goods have just been auctioned off, and has to retrieve his happy ending by buying back his own things. That initial contract seems to have haunted the story, even to this moment.

Fantasy for Tolkien was, “founded on the harsh recognition that things are so in the world as they appear under the sun”—one of those things was economics, something which Bilbo may have found almost as unavoidable as a vengeful dragon.

What do you think, dear readers?

As always, thank you for reading,

MTCIDC,

It Will Have To Be Paid For!

12 Wednesday Aug 2015

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

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Asia Minor, Bilbo, Bronze, Chinese, Coinage, Currency, Deagol, Egyptians, Germanic, Gondor, Greeks, Isengard, Italy, Middle-earth, Moria, Pennies, Rohan, Roman Coins, Roman Roads, Romans, Saruman, Shire, Silver, Smeagol, Sumerians, Theodric, Tolkien, Trade, Treasure

Dear Readers,

Welcome, as always!

We recently wrote about Saruman and his pipeweed trade along the North-South and Great East Roads, and concluded that those roads reminded us of Roman Roads. Looking at road networks from both Rome and Middle-earth, we see both as just that, networks, lines of communication which travel to and from central points.

The roads of Middle-earth don’t appear to be so elaborately constructed and paved, of course, but then, at least for many centuries before The Lord of the Rings, there had been no central authority to maintain the system.

Although the idea of a Roman road—especially one that is incomplete or ruinous–

gives us a similar image.

But there’s still something missing—Saruman has roads and connections, but how would he have paid for the pipeweed? He could have used a barter system, although that would mean understanding what it would be that he might use—raw material from the mountains? Some sort of manufactured goods made at Isengard? This could certainly be so, if we’re thinking of Middle-earth as a place set in pre-currency times, such as the Sumerians and the Egyptians, who managed their extensive trade just fine without a single coin.

And we could just leave it at that, but then there’s a clue in the first chapter of The Fellowship of the Ring which suggests that the actual commercial system is based upon currency.

“When the old man, helped by Bilbo and some dwarves, had finished unloading, Bilbo gave a few pennies away…” LOTR 25

Bilbo is rumored to have treasure hidden away in his hobbit-hole, with much speculation from all,

“’There’s a tidy bit of money tucked away up there, I hear tell,’ said a stranger… ‘All the top of your hill is full of tunnels packed with chests of gold and silver…’” LOTR 23

And the Shire isn’t the only place where pennies are used—when Sam wants to purchase Bill the pony in Bree,

“Bill Ferny’s price was twelve silver pennies; and that was indeed at least three times the pony’s value in those parts.” LOTR 175

This indicates a standard value based upon that currency, which one assumes was universal (with a tone in the text which implies that everyone might share that opinion), and old enough that it was the accepted modus for buying and selling. As Tolkien himself once wrote:

“I am not incapable or unaware of economic thought; and I think as far as the ‘mortals’ go, Men, Hobbits, and Dwarfs, that the situations are so devised that economic likelihood is there and can be worked out…” LT, L.154 P.196.

Thus, although he was clearly aware of such economic transactions, he didn’t need them for a plot and Merry and Pippin’s food and drink–and smoke–are simply there–with the implication that Saruman’s reach is longer than anyone has assumed.

In fact, there are very few scenes where money is needed at all—the Prancing Pony is the only inn they come across on the road, and the Fellowship otherwise camps out until they are taken in at Lorien, Edoras, and Gondor, and a guest/host relationship becomes a major part of the story. We’ve actually even seen this sort of thing near the very beginning of the story, when Frodo becomes Elf-friend to Gildor, and is awarded provisions (and a hearty breakfast) for their journey.

We have only a little knowledge of the commercial world of Middle Earth, as you can see, and no description of “pennies”, except that some are silver. What might they have looked like? In our earlier essays, we’ve used parallels from the history of our earth, just as JRRT might used road systems which could easily have been influenced by the Roman roads which once connected so much of Britain, to build the roads in Middle-earth. Some of those Roman roads, even in his time, were still visible–some even still used (although usually paved over).

Using our parallel method, we turn to Roman coinage.

We’re dealing with silver coinage in northwest Middle-earth, where Saruman’s imports come from, and if we’re thinking about Rome, we’d be looking at a time where coinage had already existed. We have no idea when coins were first issued in Middle Earth–considering how complexly organized the North and South Kingdoms had been for many centuries, we would imagine that a thousand years before the events of The Lord of the Rings probably wouldn’t be too soon. We have a small piece of evidence from some five hundred years before, when Deagol says to Smeagol:

“’I don’t care,’ said Déagol, ‘I have given you a present already, more than I could afford.’” LOTR, 52

In Rome, silver coinage was introduced in 269 BC, courtesy of the Greeks, after the Romans had been using bronze.

Coins originated in Asia Minor in the 6^th c. BC and quickly caught on, being a convenient and highly portable way of transporting wealth—it was much easier to carry and design to designate between currencies, and the Chinese even began to manufacture coins which could be strung together.

In Middle-earth, this would make it easier to trade beyond the borders of a local market, or even the Shire–and would certainly have been accepted at The Prancing Pony.

All of this leads, however, to Questions for Further Study, as textbooks often say. Currency needs backing—the Roman republic and then the empire backed Roman coins. What backed those pennies in the Shire and beyond?Imagine that, in Middle-earth, the major legitimate government was Gondor—would these pennies have been originally Gondor-issued? If so, perhaps just what happened to Roman currency in late imperial times might have happened in Middle-earth—as Rome began to fall apart, semi-independent governments began to issue coins on their own, such as Theodric, the Germanic ruler of Northeastern Italy:

Visually, they remind us–and they were certainly intended to–of imperial coins, with their images of Roman emperors. Theodoric, even with his unusual hairstyle, meant to be seen as a new ruler for an old Rome. Can we imagine dwarf coins, perhaps issued from the Moria mint? And, when we remember that Mordor has tried to acquire horses from Rohan, what would Mordorian currency have looked like? And, returning to Saruman for a final time—if he paid for pipeweed in coins, did they bear a white hand?

Thanks, as ever, for reading,

MTCIDC,

Trading with the Enemy

15 Wednesday Jul 2015

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

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Bree, Cross-Roads, Gandalf, Gimli, Great East Road, Greenway, Isengard, Laketown, Legolas, Marxist Critics, Merry and Pippin, Middle-earth, Mirkwood, North-South Road, Peter Jackson, Pipeweed, Roads, Roman Roads, Rome, Saruman, Sauron, South Farthing, Swanfleet, The Lord of the Rings, The Shire, Theoden, Tolkien, Trade, Transport

Dear Readers,

In a recent posting, we opened with the image of Merry and Pippin happily feasting among the ruins of Isengard as Gandalf, Theoden, and company ride up to meet them.

“…suddenly they were aware of two small figures lying…at their ease…there were bottles and bowls and platters laid beside them, as if they had just eaten well, and now rested from their labour. One seemed asleep; the other, with crossed legs and arms behind his head, and little rings of thin blue smoke.” L543

We, as the readers, may be just as taken aback as the company; we’re joining the Hobbits again for the first time since Isengard’s demise, and it’s natural to ask: where, in the midst of all of this ruin, did they find this stuff? Gimli doesn’t hesitate to ask for us.

“’Where did you come by the weed, you villains?’” L544

Of course, he’s talking about pipeweed, something common, yet treasured, in the Shire. It is not native to a place like Isengard, so far south, but here we have the Hobbits smoking it and even enjoying a surplus. Legolas is just as impressed,

“’You speak for me, Gimli,’ laughed Legolas, ‘though I would sooner learn how they came by the wine.’” L544

Pippin only teases, answering that

“’Here you find us sitting on a field of victory…and you wonder how we came by a few well earned comforts.” L544

And so we’re left with this mystery of supplies, but we can be sure that, in Tolkien’s mind, there was an answer. He was, after all, diligent about even minute details concerning Middle-earth, and was also the same man who once said that

In this quotation, Tolkien can almost be echoing, in an ironic way, the argument of Marxist critics that economic systems, even those appearing in literature, hide their true nature. Tolkien seems to be telling us that he was well aware of trade systems, and, we would suggest, this would include a basic foundation: transport. And, using what we are given in the texts, we can see that there were two main methods. One is by water–as in the flourishing wine trade between Mirkwood and Laketown.

This pair of places is naturally connected by river and lake. Such is not the case with the South Farthing and Isengard, of course. Instead, water bodies like the Swanfleet lie between them. And yet there is that pipeweed. The Hobbits are smoking it and, in the extended edition of the film version, Peter Jackson even shows us two large barrels of pipeweed labeled “South Farthing”.

This brings us to our second method of transport, by road.

Like all educated men of his time, Tolkien had been raised on the world of the Greeks and Romans and, among the longest-lasting monuments of the Roman world was the extensive system of roads, some of which are still in existence in our own time and are even (asphalted over) the basis of certain modern English roads. In Middle-earth, there appear to be a number of such ancient roads, such as the Cross-Roads:

The Great East road:

The North-South road:

Other possibilities would include once-active, but now abandoned routes, like the Greenway, running north from Bree and the Stone Road which the Woodwoses know and point out to Theoden.

As you can see, we can easily imagine Tolkien thinking out the economics of Middle Earth through a road network similar to that of the Roman Empire, with its own intricate road systems

Along these roads came much of Rome’s wealth and the case would have been the same for Middle-earth, so here’s a clue to Saruman’s pipeweed trade with the Shire. Looking at a map, we see that The Great East Road, which, traveling east from the Shire, would lead to Bree, and to the Cross-Roads, reaching The North-South Road.

Such trade would seem natural, not only to the Romans, but to us. In the wreckage of Isengard, however, for all that Merry and Pippin are so casual about it, there is another implication: Saruman, who wants to be another Sauron, must know much more about the Shire than anyone, even Gandalf has understood, and, thinking of the “Scouring of the Shire”, that could easily bode ill for the future of that place which the Hobbits think so safe and removed…

Thanks, as ever, for reading.

MTCIDC,

Powerplay

12 Friday Jun 2015

Posted by Ollamh in J.R.R. Tolkien, Military History, Military History of Middle-earth, Villains

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Tags

Barad-Dur, Beer Hall Putsch, Black Country, Charlie Chaplin, Christopher Lee, Edwin Butler Bayliss, Ents, Fangorn, Franco, Frodo, Gandalf, Grima, Hitler, Isengard, Maiar, Merry, Middle-earth, Mordor, Mosley, Mussolini, O'Duffy, Orcs, Orthanc, Pippin, Rohan, Saruman, Sauron, Spode, The Great Dictator, The Lord of the Rings, The Shire, Theoden, Tolkien, Treebeard, Valar

Welcome, as always, dear readers!

We’ve discussed the nearly-invisible Sauron in an earlier posting, but now we’d like to think out loud about the all-too-visible Saruman. And, as we’ve just heard that we’ve lost our own Saruman, Christopher Lee, we would like to dedicate it to his memory.

Pippin and Merry have been filling Fangorn in about all of their adventures up to the moment when he found them in his forest.

Saruman, in particular, has caught his attention, being his neighbor and, it seems, an increasingly distant one—

“There was a time when he was always walking about my woods. He was polite in those days, always asking my leave (at least when he met me); and always eager to listen. I told him many things that he would never have found out by himself; but he never repaid me in like kind. I cannot remember that he ever told me anything. And he got more and more like that; his face, as I remember it—became like windows in a stone wall: windows with shutters inside.” 473

At that moment, everything comes together for the Ent.

“I think that I now understand what he is up to. He is plotting to become a Power.” 473

And not a friendly power, as Gandalf, during his last visit to Isengard, has learned to his dismay, having heard Saruman alternately wheedle and threaten him. Saruman’s initial words, however, were not about himself, but about someone else, to the east:

“A new Power is rising. Against it the old allies and policies will not avail us at all. There is no hope left in Elves or dying Numenor. This then is one choice before you, before us. We may join with that Power.” 259

So far, this must sound like the Sauron party line—and Saruman is actually described “as if he were making a speech long rehearsed”, (259), the tone of which Gandalf recognized immediately, replying:

“I have heard speeches of this kind before, but only in the mouths of emissaries sent from Morder to deceive the ignorant.” 259

If we pause for a moment and consider the era in which this was written, we might catch a glimpse of something from the history of our world in this, something from the period beginning in 1922 and extending at least through 1945, when Tolkien was beginning to write The Lord of the Rings.

JRRT always denied that his work was allegorical, although, sophisticated man that he was, he was well aware that the world around him would impinge upon his consciousness. Thus, when we see numerous sinister figures rising in power in our world, it would be difficult to imagine that they might not, even if only very distantly, exert some small influence on his work.

The lesser figures include Franco, in Spain,

Eoin O’Duffy in Ireland,

Sir Oswald Mosley in England, (mocked as “the amateur dictator “ by P.G.Wodehouse in the persona of Sir Roderick Spode—brilliantly played by John Turner in the 1990s Wodehouse “Jeeves and Wooster” television series)

and the most menacing of all, Mussolini and Hitler.

Mussolini had begun his rise to power just after World War One, achieving his position of Il Duce in 1922,

while Hitler, after a false start in 1923, in emulation of Mussolini,

finally reached the ultimate position of authority in 1933.

Although Hitler was a relative late-comer in comparison with Mussolini, it seems that Mussolini looked up to Hitler, even taking German lessons (although there is no mention of Hitler reciprocating) so that they could talk more easily (and, doubtless, securely).

Thus, it might be possible to see Saruman, in his position as lesser of two evils, looking up to and wanting to imitate Sauron, the greater of two evils, as Mussolini attempting to emulate Hitler. (And this odd partnership is sharply satirized in Charley Chaplin’s The Great Dictator, 1940.)

So, as Sauron has the Barad-dur,

so Saruman has Orthanc.

As Sauron has Orcs

so Saruman has Orcs.

Worst of all, just as Sauron has the vast wasteland of Mordor

Saruman takes the once-green and beautiful Isengard

and turns it into a mini-Mordor.

All of this is swept away by Fangorn and his fellow Ents, of course,

and it appears that Saruman will remain within the tower, but we know that he slips away, taking the former counselor of Theoden, Grima, with him.

Or, at least, that’s what Tolkien intended. Unfortunately, the makers of The Lord of the Rings films simply dropped this theme here, with the deaths both of Saruman and Grima on Orthanc. We say unfortunately because, although we have portrayed Saruman as a wanna-be Sauron (even to the point of thinking that he might gain control of the Ring), which is certainly one of his roles, his is a greater role as he was once a greater figure. He is the eldest of the Maiar in Middle Earth, those spirits whom Tolkien once described as “near equivalent in the mode of these tales of Angels, guardian Angels”, LTR 159. That he can be corrupted by Sauron (as Sauron himself had been corrupted by Morgoth), shows just how great Sauron’s power (and the lure of the Ring) really is. As well, in his fall, we see that that corruption, like Sauron’s, is complete. Offered the chance to return to the good, he spurns it and slips away—but not out of the story, and it’s here that we feel that the writers of the films missed a great opportunity.

In what might, at first, seem like an act of petty revenge, Saruman goes to the Shire, that green and so-far-safe land far west of all of evil of Middle Earth,.

and industrializes it. After all, Fangorn has said of Saruman that “He has a mind of metal and wheels; and he does not care for growing things, except as far as they serve him for the moment.” 473

So, just as at Isengard, trees must go, if only to feed his industrial plans. When we think of Saruman’s ultimate vision for the Shire, we imagine that it would look like the work of Edwin Butler Bayliss (1874-1950) who painted the industrial landscapes of England’s West Midlands, the “Black Country”, an area Tolkien himself thought of as his home region.

The end comes quickly, however, when the Hobbits return and we see, in “The Scouring of the Shire”, on the one hand, the new maturity of Merry and Pippin, and, on the other, the deep humanity of Frodo.

And Saruman would have been allowed to go free again—but there is an irony here in what happens. He had sought to overturn Theoden and Rohan through having subverted Grima and, instead, he himself is killed by that very agent—

and we have wondered about that. If Saruman is of the same substance as the Valar, merely inhabiting a human body, can he, in fact, be killed, any more than Sauron? We assume that Sauron, who had poured so much of his spiritual power into the Ring, would be seriously weakened by its loss, enough so that his empire collapses on him. In Saruman’s case, the end is less dramatic, but at the same time, poignant:

“To the dismay of those that stood by, about the body of Saruman a grey mist gathered, and rising slowly to a great height like smoke from a fire, as a pale shrouded figure it loomed over the Hill. For a moment it wavered, looking to the West; but out of the West came a cold wind, and it bent away, and with a sigh dissolved into nothing.” 1020

Although the withered remains are then described, they seem unnecessary. That was only the borrowed flesh. The tragedy lies in that wavering look, the bending away, the sigh. In the final chapter, “The Grey Havens”, we see Gandalf departing towards that very West which was denied to Saruman and here we see, as well, what it was that the spirit of Saruman had lost: the reward of being allowed, at last, to return home, to go back towards Valinor. Instead, the Valar have rejected one of their own and, though his spirit may not have been destroyed, something seems to have left him forever.

By leaving the final chapters out of the film, then, the script writers lost the chance not only to show us Merry and Pippin, at the end of their long adventure, grown into figures to rival the Old Took, both in deeds and in stature. As well, they denied us the potential contrast with the end of such figures as Hitler—a suicide—and Mussolini—executed by his own people, and that of Saruman the White, murdered by his own follower and, at the end, nothing but sadness and grey smoke.

Thanks, as always, for reading. And thank you, Christopher Lee, for acting.

MTCIDC

Where From the Rohirrim?

10 Wednesday Jun 2015

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

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Tags

Amazons, Anglo-Saxon, Bayeux Tapestry, Burial mounds, Cavalry, Charge of the Light Brigade, descendants, Edoras, Eotheod, Horse people, Indo-European, Kurgan, language, Middle-earth, Normans, Rohan, Rohirric, Rohirrim, Scythians, The Lord of the Rings, The Mark, Tolkien, Tom Shippey

Dear Readers, welcome!

In this post, we want to think out loud a bit about the Rohirrim.

Everyone knows where their language is from, as Tolkien says in a letter to “one Mr. Rang”:

“…’Anglo-Saxon’…is the sole field in which to look for the origins and meaning of words and names belonging to the speech of the Mark.” LT 381

And yet they are horse people (their own name for themselves, in fact, is Eotheod, “horse people”), which the Angles and Saxons who went to make up the Anglo-Saxons, were not. Tolkien was well aware of this difference, saying in Appendix F of The Lord of the Rings:

“…this linguistic procedure does not imply that the Rohirrim closely resembled the ancient English otherwise, in culture or art, in weapons or modes of warfare, except in a general way due to their circumstances…” L1136

Tom Shippey, in The Road to Middle Earth, suggests that

“The Rohirrim are nothing if not cavalry. By contrast the Anglo-Saxons’ reluctance to have anything militarily to do with horses is notorious…How then can Anglo-Saxons and Rohirrim ever, culturally, be equated? A part of the answer is that the Rohirrim are not to be equated with the Anglo-Saxons of history, but with those of poetry, or legend.” (112)

Or, could there have been other models?

Tolkien may have been suggesting one when, in a letter to Rhona Beare of 14 October, 1958:

“The Rohirrim were not ‘mediaeval’ in our sense. The styles of the Bayeux Taptestry (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.” Ltr 280-281.

The Bayeux Tapestry depicts both Normans and their allies, on the one hand, and the Anglo-Saxons, on the other, but Tolkien doesn’t appear to distinguish between them. The Normans themselves are mounted, the Anglo-Saxons on foot, as was their custom (they did use horses to move rapidly from place to place, as in the race north to Stamford Bridge and then back south to face the Normans).

Here, to the left, we see those mounted Normans and, to the right, the Anglo-Saxons behind their shield wall. The “tennis-nets” are clearly visible and would actually have looked like this:

In this further illustration, by the way, it’s easy to see the consequences of having the shield wall crumble: men on horseback can have a significant advantage when their opponents lose cohesion.

This, however, is only their look . What about those horses and an entire culture based around them?

For a clue, we look to another element in the culture of the Rohirrim, the use of burial mounds. Here they are at Edoras.

(We can’t resist, by the way, saying that our absolute favorite part of the Jackson movies is anything to do with the Rohirrim—to us, absolutely inspired and we see the depiction of the charge of the Rohirrim against the army besieging Minas Tirith as being right up there with the Charge of the Light Brigade at Balaclava in 1854 and the charge of the Australian Light Horse at Beersheba in 1917–

One might say, in reply, that there are Anglo-Saxon mounds—like the famous Sutton Hoo ship burial.

But that leaves us where we started, in the land of foot soldiers.

So, let’s go farther afield, to the north of the Black Sea.

Here, we see the so-called “Kurgan Culture”, with its burial mounds

[This, by the way, is not to be confused with The Kurgan from the first Highlander movie

The Kurgan]

These were a people who:

are believed by many linguists (and some archeologists) to be the direct ancestors of the Indo-Europeans who gradually invaded Asia Minor and western Europe (including, eventually, the Anglo-Saxons) as well as moving east, to India and beyond
buried their dead (at least what appear to be the high status ones) in mounds
were a horse culture

And, in fact, were seemingly the forerunners of the Scythians, a later well-known Indo-European horse people

And the Scythians, in turn, may have been the model for those mythical horse folk, the Amazons.

In the 19^th century, when the idea of Indo-Europeans began to circulate, there was a preference for a northern European origin (a theory no longer held), but the idea of an eastern home was also circulating and we would suggest that Tolkien would have known about this, as well as, from his early classical training, Scythians and Amazons, their actual and mythical descendants.

Imagine, then, that what we see in the Rohirrim is, in fact, an interesting mixture of people sprung from an earlier people (as Tolkien tells us, the Rohirrim were descended from the Edain of the First Age—see LOTR, Appendix F 1129), both in our world and in Middle Earth, who based their culture upon horses, and bury their dead in mounds, combined with people who may also bury their dead in mounds, who speak a version of Anglo-Saxon and who dress like the Normans and Anglo-Saxons of the 11^thcentury AD.

What do you think, dear readers?

Thanks for reading, as always.

MTCIDC

doubtfulsea

~ adventure fantasy

Tag Archives: Middle-earth

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Powerplay

Where From the Rohirrim?