Orc Logistics

10 Wednesday Jul 2019

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

Tags

American Civil War, BEF, Belgium, British Expeditionary Force, food and ammunition, French Army, German Army, Great War, guerilla, Helm's Deep, Horace Smith-Dorrien, Le Cateau, Marius, Marius' mules, Minas Tirith, Mons, Orcs, Paris, Romans, Schlieffen, Schlieffen Plan, The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien, Wagons, World War I

Welcome, as always, dear readers.

In August, 1914, as the German army was pushing through Belgium

in its attempt to sweep to the west of Paris and drive the French armies

eastwards towards the Germans waiting for them there (the so-called Schlieffen Plan),

they were met by the small (70,000 man) BEF, British Expeditionary Force,

a few miles north of the Franco-Belgian border, near the town of Mons, where the British fought a delaying action.

The Germans were in such strength that the British were forced to pull back, retreating southward with the Germans pursuing so closely that the commander of one half of the British army (2^nd Corps), Horace Smith-Dorrien,

decided that it was necessary to fight a second delaying action, at Le Cateau.

A major reason to do so was not just that the German pursuit was so close, but that it was necessary to protect the trains. This doesn’t mean the railways, but the endless lines of wagons

which carried all the food and ammunition for the soldiers and stretched for miles behind them..

It was also primarily horse-drawn and, on narrow roads, mostly unpaved, the trains moved very slowly, which was a major reason why armies in earlier centuries rarely ever campaigned during winter.

This was a problem, all the way back to the Romans. In the 2^nd century BC, the Roman general, Marius, in an attempt to do away with as much of a baggage train as he could,

ordered his men to carry as much of their equipment as possible, thus cutting down on baggage wagons and pack animals. His men were less than pleased at being so loaded down and began to call themselves “Marius’ mules”.

In the late 18^thto early 19^th century, when French revolutionary armies swelled beyond the ability to pay to supply them, the order was to travel lightly and to live off the land. This may have reduced baggage—and even, perhaps, speeded up movement—but it made local people very hostile to the French and, in Spain, the response was to ambush the French whenever possible, which is where the word “guerilla” (originally meaning “little war”) comes from.

This could happen, particularly to Union supply trains,

during the American Civil War.

So, such trains were utterly necessary—if a large army had to cross miles of territory and perhaps fight on the way, they would need everything a train could carry. At the same time, trains could be both vulnerable and thus draw off numbers of soldiers to protect them when such soldiers might be better employed on the battlefield, as well as cumbersome, because they were slow-moving, forcing armies to march at their speed (and in dry summer weather, the dust they raised could give away the direction of an army’s movements).

In The Lord of the Rings, we see two invasions: that which attacks Helm’s Deep

and that which attacks Minas Tirith.

The mass of invaders is vividly described:

“For a staring moment the watchers on the walls saw all the space between them and Dike lit with white light: it was boiling and crawling with black shapes, some squat and broad, some tall and grim, with high helms and sable shields. Hundreds and hundreds more were pouring over the Dike and through the breach.” (The Two Towers, Book Three, Chapter 7, “Helm’s Deep”)

“The numbers that had already passed over the River could not be guessed in the darkness, but when morning, or its dim shadow, stole over the plain, it was seen that even fear by night had scarcely over-counted them. The plain was dark with their marching companies, and as far as eyes could strain in the mirk there sprouted, like a foul fungus-growth, all about the beleaguered city great camps of tents, blac or somber red.” (The Return of the King, Book Five, Chapter 4, “The Siege of Gondor”)

And yet there is no hint of what will supply them in their assaults and beyond. We could argue, of course, that, as in so many things, JRRT is interested in the movement of his narrative and its effects: masses of orcs are much more menacing than long lines of wagons, and we’re sure that this is actually the case, but there is another possibility. The Great War began in Belgium as a war of movement, huge armies attempting to outflank and block each other like chess players. For better or worse, those armies needed such baggage trains, as we’ve said. By the time Tolkien had arrived at the Western Front, in mid-1916, the war had become static, as if both sides had dug trenches and were besieging each other.

Supply was clearly still necessary, but it was a complex combination of ports and ships and railway lines and wagons and mules and even human mules, close to the front.

In a way, the whole business of supply had begun to look like just that: a business, like importing bananas from the Caribbean, having them arrive in London, then passing them on by train to cities and towns across Britain.

So, instead of being part of long marching columns,

their even longer lines of wagons lagging behind, Second Lieutenant Tolkien would have seen long lines of men and animals, lugging endless boxes and cans and bundles—

necessary for war, but hardly dramatic, and so best left to the imagination of certain readers, those who can never see a battle without wondering, “When it’s time for lunch, who feeds all of those soldiers—or orcs (and never mind what certain people might eat)?”

As always, thanks for reading and

MTCIDC

Who Goes There? (4)

05 Wednesday Dec 2018

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

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Cirith Ungol, doorwarden, Edoras, Faramir, Gorbag and Shagrat, guards, Hama, Heorot, Ingold, Isengard, Ithilien, Meduseld, Merry and Pippin, Minas Tirith, N.C. Wyeth, Orcs, Rammas Echor, Rangers, Robin Hood, The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien, White Tree of Gondor

Welcome, dear readers, as ever.

This post will complete our series on watchmen, sentries, and patrols in The Lord of the Rings and how confrontations with such figures may change the action.

In our last, we’d gotten as far as Edoras and, within, Meduseld, with Hama, its doorwarden.

(This is actually from John Howe’s painting of Heorot, the mead hall in Beowulf, but, as Meduseld is meant to mean “mead hall” in Rohirric—the language of Rohan—we figure that we can justify the substitution.)

From Edoras, we’ll follow Gandalf and Pippin to Minas Tirith,

passing through the Rammas Echor, the old barrier wall protecting the fields of the Pelennor, where Gandalf talks with Ingold, who appears to be in charge of repairing a section of that wall fallen into disrepair. (See The Return of the King, Book Five, Chapter 1, “Minas Tirith”) We don’t have a illustration of this—although we think that it would make a good one—so, as we think of the Rammas Echor as a cousin of Hadrian’s wall, here’s an illustration of that wall under construction, just to give the idea.

But we said we will follow Gandalf and Pippin. First, we have to double back to Isengard, where the Ents have wreaked justifiable havoc.

(A T Nasmith we’ve used before)

When Gandalf and crowd come to call upon Saruman, they meet with very different doorwardens from Hama:

“The king and all his company sat silent on their horses, marvelling, perceiving that the power of Saruman was overthrown; but how they could not guess. And now they turned their eyes towards the archway and the ruined gates. There they saw close beside them a great rubble heap; and suddenly they were aware of two small figures lying on it at their ease, grey-clad, hardly to be seen among the stones. 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, leaned back against a broken rock and sent from his mouth long wisps and little rings of thin blue smoke.” (The Two Towers, Book Three, Chapter 8, “The Road to Isengard”)

It’s Merry and Pippin, of course, and, for Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli, after their long, grim march across northern Rohan in search of their missing companions, only to have Eomer suggest that they’ve been killed with the orcs, this is certainly a change of mood, as well as a change of plot—not only are the two restored, but Pippin will help to rescue Faramir from his mad father and Merry will save Eowyn from the Nazgul.

Now, however, having picked up Pippin, we’ll continue on to Minas Tirith,

where, at the approach of Shadowfax:

“So Gandalf and Peregrin rode to the Great Gate of the Men of Gondor at the rising of the sun, and its iron doors rolled back before them…Then men fell back before the command of his voice…” (The Return of the King, Book 5, Chapter 1, “Minas Tirith”)

Passing up through the seven levels of the city, they dismounted at the gate of the Citadel, where:

“The Guards of the gate were robed in black, and their helms were of strange shape, high-crowned, with long cheek-guards close-fitting to the face, and above the cheek-guards were set the white wings of sea-birds; but the helms gleamed with a flame of silver, for they were indeed wrought of mithril, heirlooms from the glory of old days. Upon the black surcoats were embroidered in white a tree blossoming like snow beneath a silver crown and many-pointed stars.”

This was an image surprisingly difficult to find. Here’s a depiction (sort of) from the Jackson films.

The helmet might be right, but the black surcoat is missing—here’s Pippin, also from the films, wearing one.

We add to this an image by a Russian illustrator, Denis Gordeev. Here, the helmet may not be quite what we’d expect, but the rest of the ensemble works.

It says much for Gandalf’s influence in Minas Tirith that neither does Ingold, at the Rammas Echor, challenge him, nor the guards at the main gate of Minas Tirith, nor those at the Citadel—as Ingold says:

“Yea, truly we know you, Mithrandir…and you know the pass-words of the Seven Gates and are free to go forward.”

Our next sentries, are not so easily passed however, as Frodo and Sam discover, when:

“Four tall Men stood there. Two had spears in their hands with broad bright heads. Two had great bows, almost of their own height, and great quivers of long green-feathered arrows. All had swords at their sides, and were clad in green and brown of varied hues, as if the better to walk unseen in the glades of Ithilien. Green gauntlets covered their hands, and their faces were hooded and masked with green, except for their eyes, which were very keen and bright.” (The Two Towers, Book Four, Chapter 4, “Of Herbs and Stewed Rabbit”)

Their outfits immediately made us think of NC Wyeth’s Robin Hood and his men

from Wyeth’s 1917 Robin-hood.

Their leader, Faramir, questions Frodo and Sam closely before letting them go—and this meeting gives Faramir news of the end of Boromir, a view of Boromir’s character from Frodo, as well as providing us with a view of Faramir, who says of the Ring:

“I would not take this thing, if it lay by the highway. Not were Minas Tirith falling in ruin and I alone could save her, so, using the weapon of the Dark Lord for her good and my glory. No, I do not wish for such triumphs, Frodo son of Drogo.” (The Two Towers, Book Four, Chapter 5, “The Window on the West”)

Once he knows their purpose, Faramir lets them go—to much worse sentries. First, there are orc patrols, like those of Shagrat and Gorbag.

Image13: shag and bag

There is no conversation here between hobbits and orcs, but we certainly gain a better view of orc loyalty, as one orc leader, Gorbag, says to another, Shagrat:

“What d’you say? –if we get a chance, you and me’ll slip off and set up somewhere on our own with a few trusty lads, somewhere where there’s good loot nice and handy, and no big bosses.” (The Two Towers, Book Four, Chapter 10, “The Choices of Master Samwise”)

Then there are the Watchers at the Tower of Cirith Ungol:

“They were like great figures seated upon thrones. Each had three joined bodies, and three heads facing outward, and inward, and across the gateway. The heads had vulture-faces, and on their great knees were laid clawlike hands. They seemed to be carved out of huge blocks of stone, immovable, and yet they were aware: some dreadful spirit of evil vigilance abode in them. They knew an enemy. Visible or invisible none could pass unheeded…” (The Return of the King, Book Six, Chapter 1, “The Tower of Cirith Ungol”)

And here are the last sentries and perhaps a last sign for Frodo and Sam before their terrible and near-fatal trip across Mordor that there is still power for good in a world grown dark. Having rescued Frodo from his orcish imprisonment, Sam and Frodo have come up against the Watchers, who seem to block their way until:

“ ‘Gilthoniel, A Elbereth!’ Sam cried…

‘Aiya elenion ancalima!’ cried Frodo once again behind him.

The will of the Watchers was broken with a suddenness like the snapping of a cord, and Frodo and Sam stumbled forward. “

There are no more sentries, although the two hobbits will be passed by a small search party and will then be swept up into an orc marching company before being on their own on the way to Mount Doom, where we will leave them and this set of postings.

As always, thanks for reading and

MTCIDC

Thrones or Dominions (2)

07 Wednesday Nov 2018

Posted by Ollamh in Economics in Middle-earth, Imaginary History, J.R.R. Tolkien, Maps, Military History, Military History of Middle-earth

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1984, Adolf Hitler, Barad-Dur, Benito Mussolini, Big Brother, Denethor, dictatorships, Elf Kingdom, Eye of Sauron, Gondor, Maiar, map, Middle-earth, Minas Tirith, Mouth of Sauron, Nazgul, Ornthanc, Rohan, Saruman, Sauron, Steward of Gondor, The Lord of the Rings, Theoden, Tolkien, Uruk-hai

As always, dear readers, welcome.

In our last, we began to discuss what we called the governments of Middle-earth at the time of the War of the Ring, making a kind of Grand Tour using the plot movement of The Lord of the Rings to loosely shape our itinerary. (And here we’re borrowing from a witty idea, on a site called brilliantmaps.com, where we found “If Frodo and Sam had Google Maps of Middle-earth”.)

Our first stop was the Shire, where we proposed that this was a “government by the few”: that is, an oligarchy, a certain number of old and established families controlling the state. From there, we moved on to Bree, where there was so little information that our best guess was that it, too, was probably an oligarchy, some sort of loose-knit one among—or perhaps uniting—the four villages which made up the general area.

Next, we grouped together what we suggested were two Elf kingdoms, Rivendell and Lorien, where Elrond and Galadriel (along with the nearly-invisible Celeborn), clearly were in charge, although neither would claim the title of monarch.

At our next stop, Isengard, Saruman,

who had begun as one of the five Maiar sent to oppose the annoyingly-persistent Sauron, had moved from being what Gandalf called “the chief of my order” (The Fellowship of the Ring, Book One, Chapter 2, “The Shadow of the Past”), to being a kind of dictator—but one in the shadow of Sauron, just as Mussolini (1883-1945), who, from 1922, had been a model for such figures,

had fallen, by the later 1930s, into being the shadow of another, more powerful, dictator.

Like Elrond and Galadriel, he carries no title, but his captain, Ugluk, calls him “the Wise, the White Hand: the Hand that gives us man’s-flesh to eat”, which probably tells us more than we want to know about his rule. (The Two Towers, Book Three, Chapter 3, “The Uruk-hai”)

We believe that this shadow may have been created by Saruman’s growing arrogance (which Gandalf points out to Frodo in “The Shadow of the Past”) combined with his overconfidence in using a palantir he has found in Orthanc and which puts him into communication with Sauron—and Sauron’s ability to seduce.

Sauron himself seems like the primal dictator, but a dictator before the 20^th century, when dictators began to have a growing media world to employ to make themselves omnipresent in the lives of their citizens.

Instead, he’s remote—sitting in the Barad dur, yet

(and we can’t resist this image by “Rackthejipper”)

represented as being like 1984’s Big Brother, always watching.

Or, as it is crudely represented in the Jackson films, literally a giant eye on a tower.

When one thinks of modern dictators, however, one imagines them backed by huge bureaucracies, like the ministries in 1984:

“The Ministry of Truth–Minitrue, in Newspeak [Newspeak was the official

language of Oceania. For an account of its structure and etymology see

Appendix.]–was startlingly different from any other object in sight. It

was an enormous pyramidal structure of glittering white concrete, soaring

up, terrace after terrace, 300 metres into the air. From where Winston

stood it was just possible to read, picked out on its white face in

elegant lettering, the three slogans of the Party:

WAR IS PEACE

FREEDOM IS SLAVERY

IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH

The Ministry of Truth contained, it was said, three thousand rooms above

ground level, and corresponding ramifications below. Scattered about London

there were just three other buildings of similar appearance and size. So

completely did they dwarf the surrounding architecture that from the roof

of Victory Mansions you could see all four of them simultaneously. They

were the homes of the four Ministries between which the entire apparatus

of government was divided. The Ministry of Truth, which concerned itself

with news, entertainment, education, and the fine arts. The Ministry of

Peace, which concerned itself with war. The Ministry of Love, which

maintained law and order. And the Ministry of Plenty, which was responsible

for economic affairs. Their names, in Newspeak: Minitrue, Minipax, Miniluv,

and Miniplenty. (George Orwell, 1984, Chapter 1)

Instead, what we can see of Sauron’s government is much more medieval, beginning with the Nazgul, who were once human kings,

who would be like the barons, the chief feudal deputies of a king in a feudal world of the sort medieval England was and upon which much of Middle-earth, as we’ve suggested in many earlier postings, was based. The chief of these was then the commander of Sauron’s main attack on Minas Tirith.

To which we would add “the Voice of Sauron” (reminding us, of course, that he is only the spokesperson and Sauron would be presumed to have his eye on him, as well). If you look for images of him, you will commonly find this:

But, like certain other depictions in the Jackson films (that eye, for example), it is a very literal interpretation for someone JRRT described as:

“The rider was robed all in black, and black was his lofty helm; yet this was no Ringwraith but a living man…it is told that he was a renegade, who came of the race of those that are named the Black Numenoreans…” (The Return of the King, Book Five, Chapter 10, “The Black Gate Opens”)

Here’s an image possibility which comes a bit closer to the text, in our opinion.

From dictators, we make a final stop at two actual feudal kings, the first, the ruler of Rohan, Theoden,

is clearly the descendant of earlier kings, as we are told in Appendix A, of The Lord of the Rings, “The Kings of the Mark”, where the line begins with Eorl the Young and continues for about five hundred years.

In the case of our other monarchy, Gondor, the kings who ruled for so many centuries (from SA3320 to TA 2050), have disappeared and, though the fiction is maintained that they will someday return, the actual ruler is their deputy, the Steward, and his role as lieutenant is symbolized literally by his position in the old throne room:

“At the far end, upon a dais [a kind of raised platform] of many steps was set a high throne under a canopy of marble shaped like a crowned helm; behind it was carved upon the wall and set with gems an image of a tree in flower. But the throne was empty. At the foot of the dais, upon the lowest step which was broad and deep, there was a stone chair, black and unadorned, and on it sat an old man gazing at his lap.” (The Return of the King, Book Five, Chapter 1, “Minas Tirith)

At the same time, Denethor, and all of the previous Stewards, were kings in all but name, having ruled Gondor for twenty-five generations (see Appendix A, “The Stewards” for details).

So, in sum we have:

2 possible oligarchies (the Shire, Bree)
4 kingdoms (or at least sort of, in the case of the Elves—Rivendell, Lorien, plus Rohan and Gondor)
2 dictatorships (eastern Rohan, extending from Isengard, Mordor)

And, just when we were summarizing, the thought came to us: what about the dwarves? We can imagine that, considering Thorin’s family, there have been the equivalent of kings among the dwarves, but that’s a posting for another day!

Thanks, as ever, for reading.

MTCIDC

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

Are You Sitting Down?.2 (Some Thrones, but No Games)

11 Wednesday Oct 2017

Posted by Ollamh in Economics in Middle-earth, J.R.R. Tolkien, Literary History, Narrative Methods

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A Game of Thrones, Bag End, basins, Bree, British monarchs, Buckland, canopy, cart, Cirith Ungol, Coronation Chair, Coronation Throne, Crick Hollow, Edoras, Edward I, Edward VII, Edward VIII, Edwardian, Elizabeth II, Elrond's house, Furniture, George V, George VI, Gondor, high table, Iron Throne of Westros, Lia Fail, Lothlorien, Medieval, Middle-earth, Minas Tirith, monopodium, Moot Hill, parlor, pubs, Rivendell, Rohan, Shire, Stone of Scone, Tara Ireland, The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, The Prancing Pony, the Stone of Destiny, throne, Tolkien, Tom Bombadil, UK pubs, Victorian Bedroom, Victorians, washstand

Welcome, dear readers, as always.

In our last, we were talking about furniture in Middle-earth—in that post our subject was The Hobbit. We continue with The Lord of the Rings and conclude with one specialized piece of furniture.

We begin where we began last time, with Bag End.

With all of its rooms and the stuff in them, we suggested then that what JRRT was really doing was depicting the kind of overcrowded place later Victorians and Edwardians—the people with whom he, born 1893, would have grown up around—would have preferred.

[Note, by the way, the table in the middle of the entryway in Tolkien’s picture of Bag end, and compare it with this “monopodium” table with claw feet, which could be seen in such a parlor.]

Once the three Hobbits leave Bag End for their journey to Crick Hollow,

having sent “two covered carts…to Buckland, conveying the goods and furniture…” (and the next day sending off another) (The Fellowship of the Ring, Book One, Chapter 3, “Three is Company), they will spend a great deal of time walking (and paddling and riding), but will enter few buildings. Here, by the way, is a cart—we imagine “covered” simply means that a blanket of some tough coarse fabric, like canvas, (called a “tilt”) would have been pulled over the load.

Our chances of getting much furniture detail are not high, then, but let’s see what we find.

Beyond Buckland, the first indoors for the hobbits is Tom Bombadil’s house. As the hobbits enter, they are in:

“…a long low room, filled with the light of lamps swinging from the beams in the roof; and on the table of dark polished wood stood many candles, tall and yellow, burning brightly.

In a chair, at the far side of the room facing the outer door, sat a woman…” (The Fellowship of the Ring, Book One, Chapter 7, “In the House of Tom Bombadil”)

The hobbits are given “low rush-seated chairs”.

And, shortly, are shown their bedroom:

“They came to a low room with a sloping roof…There were four deep mattresses…laid on the floor along one side. Against the opposite wall was a long bench laden with wide earthenware basins, and beside it stood brown ewers filled with water…”

Not much to go on here. We’ll presume that the bench is wooden and plain, and the basins and ewers (a big pitcher—ultimately from Latin aquarius, “having to do with water”) are of the kind one would have seen in a Victorian bedroom, when indoor bathrooms were still only a wish—or were only in the homes of the extremely wealthy.

[Victorians, by the way, could have specialized places for such pitcher/basin combinations. They’re called “washstands” and here’s a simple but functional one.]

Next on their journey (we won’t count the barrow—although the Wight does mention a “stony bed”) is the Prancing Pony.

Again—what we have is functional. The hobbits are initially led to what the landlord, Barliman Butterbur, calls “a nice little parlour” where “There was a bit of bright fire burning on the hearth, and in front of it were some low and comfortable chairs” and “a round table, already spread with a white cloth”. (The Fellowship of the Ring, Book One, Chapter 9, “At the Sign of the Prancing Pony”)

This sounds like a small, private room, found in some UK pubs, and called a “snug” (etymology unclear—but used to mean “comfy” as early as the 1620s). Here’s one, in fact, from an Irish pub. (We don’t advertise—this was simply the image which fit best with both our impression and the book. And “fit best” does a double duty here, as “snug” can also mean “fitting tightly”.)

The same will be true of the bedroom the hobbits don’t use—and just as well!—plain and nondescript.

So when, if ever, are we given something with more detail? If not in Bree, perhaps in Rivendell?

Frodo comes to in a generic bed, but the “hall of Elrond’s house” is a bit more promising:

“Elrond, as was his custom, sat in a great chair at the end of a long table upon a dais…In the middle of the table there was a chair under a canopy…” The Fellowship of the Ring, Book Two, Chapter 1, “Many Meetings”)

A “dais” is a raised platform. If you’re a Harry Potter fan, you’ll remember it at “High Table” (as it’s called in English schools), where the students of the four different colleges meet to dine and the faculty sit on such a platform.

This is a left-over medieval custom, when royalty/nobles sat on a kind of stage, above the lesser folk, for formal meals.

(Oh—and don’t ask about the horse—but it wasn’t required. Horse and rider do appear at a banquet, of course, in the 14^th-century poem “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight”—which JRRT once edited.)

And that “chair under a canopy” reminds us of thrones with canopies, like this at the Palace of St. James, in London.

Which brings us to the subject of thrones, in general. After Rivendell, indoors will consist of Lothlorien

for the fellowship, then nothing for Sam and Frodo till Faramir’s cave hide-out and, beyond, the Tower of Cirith Ungol

Hardly places to find any furniture beyond the functional!

For the others, we have Edoras

and Minas Tirith.

And here we want to conclude by discussing a similar piece of furnishing in each—those thrones.

These days, when we say or write “thrones”, well, what comes immediately? A Game of Thrones and the Iron Throne of Westeros.

The thrones of Rohan and Gondor are a bit less complicated.

Theoden’s is described simply as “a great gilded chair” on a “dais with three steps”. (The Two Towers, Book Three, Chapter 6, “The King of the Golden Hall”).

Here’s Allen Lee’s interpretation

and here is the Hildebrandts’.

The throne of Gondor is just a tiny bit more elaborate:

“At the far end upon a dais of many steps was set a high throne under a canopy of marble shaped like a crowned helm…” (The Return of the King, Book Five, Chapter 1, “Minas Tirith”)

Here’s an image from the film.

But wait—there’s no one on it. Let’s look lower:

“At the foot of the dais, upon the lowest step which was broad and deep, there was a stone chair, black and unadorned, and on it sat an old man gazing at his lap.”

During his lifetime, JRRT would have seen the coronation of five British monarchs:

Edward VII

George V

Edward VIII

George VI

and the current monarch, Elizabeth II.

You’ll notice that, in every case, the throne is the same.

This is the so-called “Coronation Chair”, built between 1297 and 1300 and used since for crowning English monarchs. It was especially commissioned so that it could hold the “Stone of Scone” (pronounced “skoon”—not like the pastry). This was an ancient piece of Scottish royal history which Edward I,

in an effort to control Scotland, had stolen from its place on Moot Hill, near the Abbey of Scone.

Supposedly, it was a stone used in the crowning of Scottish kings back to the time of the first one, or that it was even older, having been lugged from Tara, in Ireland, where, under the name “Lia Fail”, “the Stone of Destiny” it was used in coronation ceremonies there. Its purpose was confirmation: tradition had it that, when the true king bestrode it (a great old verb form), it gave a great shout.

As far as we know, no shouting has been reported, over the centuries—perhaps because it’s being used for English kings and therefore the stone is holding its tongue till it’s taken back to wear it belongs?

What do you think, dear readers?

Thanks, as ever, for reading.

MTCIDC

And did you notice something(s) out of place in JRRT’s drawing of Bag End? We’ll talk about it in our next…

image1bagend

Re: Tree Two

06 Wednesday Sep 2017

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

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decay, Ents, Entwives, Fangorn, Fangorn Forest, Laurelindorenan, Lothlorien, Minas Tirith, Ronald Foerster, Samwise Gamgee, Ted Sandyman, The Green Dragon, The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien, trees

Welcome, dear readers, as ever.
A posting or two ago, we had been talking about the symbolic uses of trees in Middle-earth, mostly as symbols of decay and regeneration.
Without going into a lengthy essay, we thought we had said what we could. But we had forgotten something—or, rather, someone.
While gossiping in The Green Dragon, Sam, slowly becoming annoyed at Ted Sandyman’s skepticism about the out-of-the-ordinary, replied to Ted’s “There’s only one Dragon in Bywater, and that’s Green”, by asking:
“But what about these Tree-men, these giants, as you might call them? They do say that one bigger than a tree was seen up away beyond the North Moors not long back.”
Ted is not convinced, and Sam presses on: “But this one was as big as an elm tree, and walking—walking seven yards to a stride, if it was an inch.””
“Then I bet it wasn’t an inch. What he saw was an elm tree, as like as not.”
Undaunted, Sam continues: ‘But this one was walking, I tell you; and there ain’t no elm on the North Moors.’ “ (The Fellowship of the Ring, Book 1, Chapter 2, “The Shadow of the Past”)
The topic shifts in another direction, with Ted still not persuaded, but we readers were struck by what Sam just said. As always with JRRT, the texts are so rich that one is always falling upon something read sometimes many times before, but somehow not seen, and this was one of them. (And, as always, we can hear Sherlock Holmes disdainfully commenting, “You see, but you do not observe.”) If the North Moors are like moors in our world, they are wild and windswept

with virtually no trees, except in hollows and streambeds. And certainly no elms

as Sam says. Ted Sandyman dismisses Sam’s assertion, suggesting that it was an illusion or maybe an elm, but we know better: it was an Ent.
When Merry and Pippin meet their first, he is very vividly described:
“They found that they were looking at a most extraordinary face. It belonged to a large Man-like, almost Troll-like figure, at least fourteen feet high, very sturdy, with a tall head, and hardly any neck. Whether it was clad in stuff like green and grey bark, or whether that was its hide, was difficult to say. At any rate the arms, at a short distance from the trunk, were not wrinkled, but covered with a brown smooth skin. The large feet had seven toes each. The lower part of the long face was covered with a sweeping grey beard, busy, almost twiggy at the roots, thick and mossy at the ends. But at the moment the hobbits noted little but the eyes. These deep eyes were now surveying them, slow and solemn, but very penetrating. They were brown, shot with a green light.” (The Two Towers, Book Three, Chapter 4, “Treebeard”)

We are not so mathematically sophisticated as to be able to determine, from those fourteen feet of height, the length of the Ent’s stride, unfortunately, but we are later told that this Ent, who is, of course, Treebeard, can move at quite a ground-eating speed, having, by the time he brings the two hobbits to Wellinghall, come “about seventy thousand ent-strides.”
(Actually, if, as Sam says above, an Ent’s stride was 7 yards, with 3 feet in a yard times 70,000, Treebeard has brought them about 280 miles (450 km) in a few hours!)
Treebeard formed part of our previous discussion, suggesting not only was his forest, Fangorn, in decline, but likewise Lothlorien:
“Do not risk getting entangled in the woods of Laurelindorenan! That is what the Elves used to call it, but now they make the name shorter: Lothlorien they call it. Perhaps they are right: maybe it is fading, not growing…They are falling rather behind the world in there, I guess…Neither this country, nor anything else outside the Golden Wood, is what it was when Celeborn was young.”
The decline of Treebeard’s world appears to come from two causes. First, there is an elderly and declining population of Ents:
“We are tree-herds, we old Ents. Few enough of us are left now…Some of my kind look just like trees now, and need something great to rouse them; and they speak only in whispers…
Hence, part of the Entish population is fading into the trees they herd. The other reason is more delicate. The Ents, although deeply attached to the trees, are, in fact, more like humans: they have two genders, suggesting that they reproduce the way mammals do. Unfortunately, something has gone wrong and the female half of the species has disappeared. As Treebeard explains:
“When the world was young…the Ents and the Entwives…walked together and they housed together…But our hearts did not go on growing in the same way: the Ents gave their love to things that they met in the world, and the Entwives gave their thought to other things…So the Entwives made gardens to live in. But we Ents went on wandering, and we only came to the gardens now and again…”
After ages pass, the Ents try to see the Entwives again, but:
“We crossed over Anduin and came to their land; but we found a desert: it was all burned and uprooted, for war had passed over it. But the Entwives were not there.”
And, from that time, the Ents have been without the Entwives and the implication must be that, although some of the trees, as Fangorn says, are “getting Entish”, unless the Entwives are found, there will be no young Ents to continue their line into the future. As Treebeard says, “…there were never many of us and we have not increased. There have been no Entings—no children, you would say, not for a terrible long count of years.”
All of this fits in with the theme we suggested in our previous posting: trees can symbolize the decline of Middle-earth, not only in their hostility, but, in the case of the Ents (who are almost trees), through what amounts to infertility, just like Minas Tirith, with half its buildings empty.
Treebeard holds little hope of the future, as well:
“We believe that we may meet [the Entwives] again in a time to come, and perhaps we shall find a land where we can live together and both be content. But it is foreboded that that will only be when we have both lost all that we now have…”
In that previous posting, we also suggested that the defeat of Sauron and the return of the rightful king brought about new growth and regeneration, something seen in the vegetation from the White Tree sapling in Minas Tirith to the phenomenal new fertility of the Shire. In the case of the Ents, however, there appears to be no happy ending, as, taking his farewell of Merry and Pippin, Treebeard says wistfully:
“Fare you well! But if you hear news up in your pleasant land, in the Shire, send me word! You know what I mean: word or sight of the Entwives.” (The Two Towers, Book Three, Chapter 10, “The Voice of Saruman”)
And yet—if we return to that conversation between Ted Sandyman and Sam, perhaps there is news for Treebeard. As far as we know, what Ents there are now in Middle-earth—including the three eldest, Fangorn, Finglas, and Fladrif—all seem to live in the forest of Fangorn—so who is that “Tree-man, giant, one bigger than a tree…big as an elm tree and walking—walking seven yards to a stride” which Sam’s cousin Hal saw “up away beyond the North Moor not long back”? The Lord of the Rings ends without our ever finding out, so we guess we can only hope that, one day, Merry and Pippin sent word.
Thanks, as always, for reading.
MTCIDC
CD
PS
We happened upon this illustration by Ronald Foerster of an Entwife—what do you think?

In Bad Hands

30 Wednesday Aug 2017

Posted by Ollamh in Heroes, J.R.R. Tolkien, Literary History, Maps, Military History, Narrative Methods

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CBS Television News, Denethor, Dunkirk, Early newspapers, early radio, Ecthelion, fake news, Gandalf, Henry IV, Isengard, Lifestyle Magazine, Minas Tirith, Nazi, Nazi Propaganda, news, newspaper, Orthanc, Osgiliath, Palantir, propaganda leaflet, Relation, rumors, Saruman, Shakespeare, texting while driving, The Detroit News, The Illustrated London News, The White Tower, Tolkien

Welcome, dear readers, as ever.
Not so long ago, news came to most people through one—very undependable–source: rumor and gossip. As Shakespeare’s Rumor (depicted as “all painted with tongues” in a stage direction), who appears at the beginning of Henry IV, Part 2, Prologue, 1-5, describes herself:
“Open your ears, for which of you will stop
The vent of hearing when loud Rumour speaks?
I, from the orient to the drooping west,
Making the wind my post-horse, still unfold
The acts commenced on this ball of earth.”
At almost the same time as this play was written and first performed (1596-99), the first printed Western newspaper appeared, the Relation, in Strasbourg in 1605.

For the next 300-and-some years, newspapers were then the accepted conveyor of popular information about local, national, and world events. Until 1842, these could only convey that information in words, but, in that year, the first illustrated newspaper appeared, The Illustrated London News.

And soon other newspapers followed, opening a wider world of information to the reading public. In under a century, however, news appeared in a new form of technology entirely: the first news broadcast by radio believed to have been on August 31, 1920, by a set owned—perhaps not surprisingly by a newspaper— The Detroit News. Considering what radios looked like in the early 1920s, we doubt that many people heard it (this is an image from Lifestyle Magazine from 1923).

Radios soon improved, however, so that, along with newspapers, people could tune in to hear news, news sometimes more up-to-date than even the newspapers could supply. And then came television. Experiments had been made with television broadcasting as early as 1940, but steady broadcasting really only began in 1948, with CBS Television News.
And then the internet appeared, so that, today, more people are believed to get their news from some form of electronic means than any other (or so electronic means tell us). Practically anywhere you go in our world, you see people staring at screens (not always reading the news, of course—with the universe of apps, people can be doing almost anything imaginable), many of them so portable that you can watch people doing it while walking

eating,

even while driving (which, frankly, terrifies us!).

There is a problem with news, however, in every era. Shakespeare’s Rumor may have been pushed to one side by later technological innovations, but, in the form of so-called “fake news”, it’s still with us. And, in fact, faked news—news distorted—or even manufactured—has become a standard feature in newer technology. One has only to think about Nazi propaganda (certainly not the first, but perhaps, for us, the most extensive and most vivid), where—just as one example out of thousands—the mostly horse-powered German army of 1940

was publicly depicted as streamlined and gasoline-powered (or, even more high-tech, diesel-powered).

Some time ago, we talked about literacy in Middle-earth. There was no printed material, of course, and literacy appears to have been limited (we only have to mention Gaffer Gamgee saying of Sam, “Mr. Bilbo has learned him his letters—meaning no harm, mark you, and I hope no harm will come of it.” to imagine that not only was it limited, but there might even be a certain suspicion attached to it.)
And what news there was came by the oldest of methods:
“There were rumours of strange things happening in the world outside; and as Gandalf had not at that time appeared or sent any message for several years, Frodo gathered all the news he could. Elves, who seldom walked in the Shire, could now be seen passing westward through the woods in the evening, passing and not returning; but they were leaving Middle-earth and were no longer concerned with its troubles. There were, however, dwarves on the road in unusual numbers. The ancient East-West Road ran through the Shire to its end at the Grey Havens, and dwarves had always used it on their way to their mines in the Blue Mountains. They were the hobbits’ chief source of news from distant parts—if they wanted any: as a rule dwarves said little and hobbits asked no more. But now Frodo often met strange dwarves of far countries, seeking refuge in the West. They were troubled, and some spoke in whispers of the Enemy and of the Land of Mordor.” (The Fellowship of the Ring, Book One, Chapter 2, “The Shadow of the Past”)
(See also the scene in The Green Dragon a little later in the chapter, where there is discussion, all based on hearsay, about Shire and extra-Shire events, between Sam and Ted Sandyman.)
For two people in Middle-earth, however, news came by a method in a strange way like that of the internet: the palantir, and that news which they received was not to their advantage. Made “from beyond Westernesse, from Eldamar. The Noldor made them…” Gandalf tells Pippin. (The Two Towers, Book Three, Chapter 11, “The Palantir”)

The palantiri were made “to see far off, and to converse in thought with one another.” Although there were seven, one, that at Osgiliath, was the master: “each palantir replied to each, but all those in Gondor were ever open to the view of Osgiliath.” Saruman had one of the others

—the one under discussion in this chapter, after Pippin had almost come to disaster from looking in it—which Grima flung off Orthanc

in what, although unexplained, must have been an attempt to brain Gandalf.

Unfortunately for Saruman, what he presumably thought would benefit his quest for what he speciously tells Gandalf is “Knowledge, Rule, Order; all the things that we have so far striven in vain to accomplish…” (The Fellowship of the Ring, Book Two, Chapter 2, “The Council of Elrond”), becomes a snare, as it seems that the master stone of Osgiliath has fallen into Sauron’s hands and “Easy it is now to guess how quickly the roving eye of Saruman was trapped and held; and how ever since he has been persuaded from afar, and daunted when persuasion would not serve.” (The Two Towers, Book 3, Chapter 11, “The Palantir”)
There is another surviving stone, however, and, though it doesn’t turn its possessor into an unwilling ally of Sauron, its propaganda—faked news—does terrible damage, all the same. In the White Tower of Ecthelion in Minas Tirith,

Denethor

holds a palantir and he, too, is caught, as Gandalf surmises:
“…I fear that as the peril in his realm grew he looked in the Stone and was deceived: far too often, I guess, since Boromir departed. He was too great to be subdued to the will of the Dark Power, he saw nonetheless only those things which that Power permitted him to see. The knowledge which he obtained was, doubtless, often of service to him; yet the vision of the great might of Mordor that was shown to him fed the despair of his heart until it overthrew his mind.” (The Return of the King, Book Five, Chapter 7, “The Pyre of Denethor”)
This overthrow, brought on by Sauron’s propaganda, results in Denethor accusing Gandalf of plotting “to rule in my stead, to stand behind every throne, north, south, or west” as well as delivering what clearly sounds like the “speech long rehearsed” Gandalf has long ago said that Saruman delivered to him in Orthanc:
“For a little space you may triumph on the field, for a day. But against the Power that now arises there is no victory. To this City only the first finger of its hand has yet been stretched. All the East is moving. And even now the wind of thy hope cheats thee and wafts up the Anduin a fleet with black sails. The West has failed. It is time for all to depart who would not be slaves.”
“to depart” quickly seems a euphemism for something much more radical as Denethor:
“leaped upon the table, and standing there wreathed in fire and smoke he took up the staff of his stewardship that lay at his feet and broke it on his knee. Casting the pieces into the blaze he bowed and laid himself on the table, clasping the palantir with both hands upon his breast.”

Here, we thought of all of those people we see who seemingly can never put down their phones—even in death Denethor still grips the very thing which has brought about his destruction.

Was JRRT sending us, here in the future, a warning: beware of your source of news—and sometimes let go of what brings it to you? We can only add his description of Denethor’s palantir when it was retrieved from the pyre:
“And it was said that ever after, if any man looked in that Stone, unless he had a great strength of will to turn it to other purpose, he saw only two aged hands withering into flame.”

Thanks, as always, for reading!
MTCIDC
CD
PS
The new film, Dunkirk, opens with a British soldier catching a German propaganda leaflet based upon an actual one. Below on the left is the movie version, on the right the original. (Notice, by the way, that, in the one on the right, the English is not quite parallel to the French, including the line, “Your commanders (chefs) are going to flee by airplane.”) If Middle-earth had had a print culture, it’s easy to see such a leaflet being dropped by Nazgul over Minas Tirith!

Re: Tree

23 Wednesday Aug 2017

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

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Alfred Tennyson, Dreamflower, Fangorn Forest, Galadriel, Gondor, Helm's Deep, Isengard, Laurelindorenan, Lothlorien, Lotus-eaters, mallorn, Minas Tirith, Mirkwood, Old Forest, Old Man Willow, Palantir, Rath Dinen, Samwise Gamgee, Saruman, The Lord of the Rings, The Odyssey, Tolkien, Treebeard, trees, White Tree of Gondor

Welcome, as always, dear readers.
image1ajrrttree
The inspirations for our postings come from many places: from something we’re reading or have just watched/seen, from a connection between two texts, or between Tolkien’s world—the real or Middle-earth—and something from the history of this world. Sometimes ideas come from the Sortes Tolkienses—our take on an ancient fortune-telling method, in which one posed a question, then opened a copy of an important text like The Bible or Vergil’s Aeneid, closed one’s eyes, and pointed and the text where the finger landed was believed, through interpretation, to contain an answer to that question. In our case, should we require inspiration, we sometimes use our 50th Anniversary hardbound of The Lord of the Rings to do this and, surprisingly often, what we find gives us an idea about what to write.
In the case of this posting, however, it was more of a “we were working on something else entirely and then there it was.” The “it” here is the White Tree of Gondor.
image1treeofgondor
(We confess, by the way, that we have iphone cases with the image—and we are often complimented on them.)
image2phonecase
We had, in fact, been thinking about another post, this one about corruption through technology, as represented by the palantiri, and had been reading references to Denethor. This had led us to his fiery death in Rath Dinen, “Silent Street”, which led to the tombs of the kings and stewards of Gondor. Besides the rulers of Gondor, however, the street had another occupant, the old White Tree, long dead,

but which, when a new sapling

was found in the mountains by Gandalf and Aragorn, was still treated with ceremony:
“Then the withered tree was uprooted, but with reverence; and they did not burn it, but laid it to rest in the silence of Rath Dinen.” (The Return of the King, Book Six, Chapter 5, “The Steward and the King”)
This seemed a rather odd thing to do to a tree and this led us, finally, to consider one function of trees in The Lord of the Rings: just as the White Tree is buried, as human rulers were, could trees act as a mirror for the condition of the human world at what would be the end of the Third Age? And can they also act as a mirror of change for the better?
Consider, for example, the dead White Tree as a symbol for the withering of Gondor itself, as Minas Tirith is described:
Pippin gazed in growing wonder “at the great stone city, vaster and more splendid than anything that he had dreamed of; greater and stronger than Isengard, and far more beautiful. Yet it was in truth falling year by year into decay; and already it lacked half the men that could have dwelt at ease there…(The Return of the King, Book Five, Chapter 1, “Minas Tirith”)
And this decay of city and tree appears to be echoed in the natural world of Middle-earth in general, as Treebeard says of Lothlorien:

“Do not risk getting entangled in the woods of Laurelindorenan! That is what the Elves used to call it, but now they make the name shorter: Lothlorien they call it. Perhaps they are right: maybe it is fading, not growing. Land of the Valley of Singing Gold, that was it, once upon a time. Now it is the Dreamflower.”
[Just a quick footnote here. “Dreamflower” immediately takes us to Odyssey, Book 9, 82-105, where a small party of Odysseus’ men, set ashore to explore, meet up with the Lotus-eaters, who give them the mysterious lotus to eat and that “whoever might eat of the sweet fruit of the lotus, no longer wished to bring word back or to return home/but wanted, feeding on lotus, to remain in the very same place with the lotus-eating men and to forget about home-going.” (94-97, our translation). This certainly could describe at least some of the Fellowship’s reaction to Lothlorien. Here’s an illustration from a cartoon-version:

Alfred Tennyson wrote a poem on the same subject—here’s a LINK, in case you would like to read his 1832 (revised 1842) interpretation.]
Beyond Lothlorien, other parts of the tree-covered natural world seem more menacing–there’s the Old Forest,

and Mirkwood,

described by Haldir:
“ ‘There lies the fastness of Southern Mirkwood…It is clad in a forest of dark fir, where the trees strive against one another and their branches rot and wither.’ “ (The Fellowship of the Ring, Book Two, Chapter 6, “Lothlorien”)
It wouldn’t take much imagination to replace “where the trees strive” with “where the humans strive against one another and their kind rots and withers”!
There is the sentient, malevolent Old Man Willow,

and even Treebeard and his forest do not at first offer the kind of invitation one hears in the first verse of this song, from Shakespeare’s As You Like It:
Under the greenwood tree
Who loves to lie with me
And tune his merry note,
Unto the sweet bird’s throat,
Come hither, come hither, come hither:
Here shall he see
No enemy
Than winter and rough weather.

Instead, when Treebeard

overhears Pippin say:
“This shaggy old forest looked so different in the sunlight. I almost felt I liked the place.” (The Two Towers, Book Three, Chapter 4, “Treebeard”)
he says, “ ‘Almost felt you liked the Forest!’ That’s good! That’s uncommonly kind of you…Turn round and let me have a look at your faces. I almost feel that I dislike you both…”
Treebeard’s hostility towards Pippin and Merry actually springs from another source—Saruman:
“He and his foul folk are making havoc now. Down on the borders they are felling trees—good trees. Some of the trees they just cut down and leave to rot—orc-mischief that; but most are hewn up and carried off to feed the fires of Orthanc.”
Treebeard’s growing anger, however, then marks a turn in the behavior of the natural world: somehow the appearance of Pippin and Merry acts as a catalyst:
“Curse him, root and branch! Many of those trees were my friends, creatures I had known from nut and acorn; many had voices of their own that are lost for ever now. And there are wastes of stump and bramble where once there were singing groves. I have been idle. I have let things slip. It must stop!”
And it’s not simply the Revenge of the Ents. Treebeard has a larger strategy, saying to the two hobbits:
“You may be able to help me. You will be helping your own friends that way, too; for if Saruman is not checked Rohan and Gondor will have an enemy behind as well as in front.”
As we know, Treebeard convinces the other Ents to help and, in a short time, they not only destroy Isengard

but also the orcs at Helm’s Deep,

effectively removing Saruman from the story except as an empty threat—and a final, petty Sauron, ruining the Shire, which included cutting down numbers of trees—among them the famous Party Tree. And here we see one more symbol, perhaps. Long before, Galadriel had given Sam a gift which, in her wisdom (and perhaps in her foresight?) seemed almost perfect for a gardener:
“She put into his hand a little box of plain grey wood, unadorned save for a single silver rune on the lid….’In this box there is earth from my orchard, and such blessing as Galadriel has still to bestow is upon it…Though you should find all barren and laid waste, there will be few gardens in Middle-earth that will bloom like your garden, if you sprinkle this earth there.’ “ (The Fellowship of the Ring, Book Two, Chapter 8, “Farewell to Lorien”)
Once the Shire has been scoured of Saruman’s final evil, Sam remembers this present and uses it, spreading the earth across the Shire:
“So Sam planted saplings in all the places where specially beautiful or beloved trees had been destroyed, and he put a grain of the precious dust in the soil at the root of each.” (The Return of the King, Book Six, Chapter 9, “The Grey Havens”)
And his plan succeeds:
“His trees began to sprout and grow, as if time was in a hurry and wished to make one year do for twenty.”
In midst of such fertility, there is an extra favor. Sam had found within Galadriel’s box “a seed, like a small nut with a silver shale [shell or husk].”
Sam planted this in the Party Field, where the tree had once stood, and, in the spring:
“In the Party Field a beautiful young sapling leaped up: it had silver bark and long leaves and burst into golden flowers in April. It was indeed a mallorn [the golden tree specific only to Lothlorien], and it was the wonder of the neighborhood.”
Just as the human world of Middle-earth, stunted by Sauron and his minions, is now free, so is the natural world free once more—no more orcs to abuse its forests, no malevolent will to taint its woods, and the reflowering of the Shire and, at its center, the mallorn, may stand as a symbol for that rebirth—and even be twinned with the new White Tree of Gondor, far to the south.

[With thanks to Britta Siemen’s blog, where we found this image—LINK here]
Thanks, as ever, for reading!
MTCIDC
CD

What If…

31 Wednesday May 2017

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

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

Welcome, readers, as always.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tiryns Reconstruction

tiryns-walls

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

image19defenseofandelkrag

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

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

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

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

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

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

alamo-map-3

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

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

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

What do you think, dear readers?

And thanks, as ever, for reading!

MTCIDC

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

PPS

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

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

Tintinnabulations

24 Wednesday May 2017

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

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Asfaloth, bells, Child Ballad, dance, Edgar Allan Poe, Glorfindel, Headless Horseman, Joan of Arc, John Howe, Medieval, Minas Tirith, Morris Dance, Nazgul, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Sortes Tolkienses, Sortes Vergilianae, sun-down bells, The Hobbit, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, The Lord of the Rings, Thomas the Rymer, tocsin, Tower of Echthelion

Welcome, once more, dear readers.

The sources of our postings come from all sorts of places. Sometimes, we are reading something and we have an idea, or we spot an image or see a film. Sometimes, it’s from a friend’s e-mail, or reaction to an earlier posting. Sometimes they come from our sortes tolkienses. If you’ve missed our original posting where we invented this, it’s based upon an ancient fortune-telling method, where one closes one’s eyes, opens an important book, like the Aeneid or the Bible, puts one’s finger on a verse—and hopes that it tells you something about the day or the future. In our case, we use The Lord of the Rings or The Hobbit.

And what did we find today? This, from The Lord of the Rings—

“Hand in hand they went back into the City, the last to pass the Gate before it was shut; and as they reached the Lampwrights’ Street all the bells in the towers tolled solemnly.” (The Return of the King, Book Five, Chapter 1, “Minas Tirith”)

These are the “sun-down bells”, as Pippin learns from Bergil, son of Beregond. Bergil is a boy of Minas Tirith and has just given Pippin a tour of the city.

“Sun-down bells” made us think first about the bells of Minas Tirith, and then about bells in Middle-earth in general, and we could easily pick out three kinds.

To begin with, there are the city bells. Or, rather, where are the city bells? The text says “in the towers”. In the medieval world in which we so often find illustrations and parallels to Middle-earth, those bells are commonly in church belfries.

Minas Tirith clearly has towers—and, in fact, is a towering place—literally:

“…the Tower of Echthelion, standing high within the topmost wall, shone out against the sky, glimmering like a spike of pearl and silver, tall and fair and shapely, and its pinnacle glittered as if it were wrought of crystals; and white banners broke and fluttered from the battlements in the morning breeze, and high and far he heard a clear ringing as of silver trumpets.” (The Return of the King, Book Five, Chapter 1, “Minas Tirith”)

Because there are no churches—or even temples—in Minas Tirith, by examining some images of the city, from John Howe’s painting to the model used in the films, we can pick out towers here and there and some of those, we might imagine, could hold bells.

image4howe

image5mt In our medieval world, such bells had a number of functions. Not only did they ring the hours of the medieval Christian day, but they could also sound a warning, called the “tocsin”, and signal that the day was over and that fires should be covered for the night, the “curfew”—rather like the “sun-down” bells in Minas Tirith. Joan of Arc (c.1412-1431) said that she could sometimes hear the sound of angelic voices, inspiring her to drive the English out of France, in her village bell.

There are other uses—and places—for bells in Middle-earth, however. In The Fellowship of the Ring, Book One, Chapter 1, “A Long-Expected Party”, they turn up at an impromptu dance:

“Master Everard Took and Miss Melilot Brandybuck got on a table and with bells in their hands began to dance the Springle-ring: a pretty dance, but rather vigorous.”

The wording of this sounds like it came from the “society section” of a newspaper, as not only are the hobbits’ names given, but given with their social titles—“Master” and “Miss”—to show that they are unmarried.

The boisterous dance, being energetic and accompanied by bells, makes us think of traditional English Morris dances, where the dancers not only strap bells to their arms and legs, but occasionally carry sticks with bells attached to them.

image7morris OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA image9jinglestick

This also makes us think about medieval music bands, which could include a percussionist who played bells.

image10medbellers image11bellplayers

A further use is as decoration—and perhaps as something more. When Aragorn is leading the hobbits, with the wounded Frodo, towards Rivendell, they heard “a sound that brought sudden fear back into their hearts: the noise of hoofs behind them.” The fear is, of course, of pursuing Nazgul, depicted here first in an Alan Lee sketch, and then in a painting which we believe is by the Hildebrandts, of one of the Ringwraiths almost riding down Farmer Cotton.

image12nazgul image13nazgul

[We are always struck, by the way, how the Nazgul bear a certain resemblance to the “Headless Horseman” from Washington Irving’s (1783-1859) story, “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” (1820). Walt Disney made a musical version of this in 1949, which was shown on Disney tv programs in later years, around Halloween, and the image of the Horseman could always give us nightmares.]

image14headlessh

What Aragorn and the hobbits are actually hearing is the horse of the Elf lord, Glorfindel, Asfaloth—

“The sound of the hoofs drew nearer. They were going fast, with a light clppety-clippety-clip. Then, faintly, as if it was blown away from them by the breeze, they seemed to catch a dim ringing, as of small bells tinkling.” (The Fellowship of the Ring, Book One, Chapter 12, “Flight to the Ford”)

image15glorf

Although Frodo never explains why he says this, he exclaims, “That does not sound like a Black Rider’s horse…” The only difference in sound clearly is coming from the bells, perhaps on Asfaloth’s halter or bridle—or perhaps on his mane, as in the case of what might be a source for those bells, Child ballad 37 (we’re quoting from Variant A). 37 is called “Thomas Rymer” and describes the meeting of the actual 13^th-century Thomas of Earlston with the Queen of Elfland. [We include a LINK here to the useful Wiki entry.)

image16tther

In the ballad, her horse is described as having

“At ilke tett [“every tuft/lock”] of her horse’s mane

Hung fifty silver bells and nine.”

We are always careful never to say, without documentary evidence, that such-and-such is “definitely” the source for something in JRRT, but this particular detail seems to line up so well:

Glorfindel is an Elf
so is the unnamed Queen
each has bells on his/her horse

And these bells suggest—at least to Frodo—something unworldly, but, unlike the Nazgul, something positive. We can add to this another—okay, undeniable—source, and our evidence for this is JRRT himself. In 1925, Tolkien (in collaboration with E.V. Gordon) published an edition of the 14^th-century Middle English poem, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.

image17greenknight

The Green Knight is an enchanted being and part of his magic lies in his greenness and in the elaborate decoration of himself and his horse, including

“Ther mony bellez ful bry3t of brende golde rungen” (line 195)

This is only a preliminary investigation—done out of our heads, rather than from a thorough scouring of the text—so, can you, dear readers, think of other bells in The Lord of the Rings? We could think of two references in The Hobbit—but we leave it to you to guess where they are (and to find more?).

And thanks, as always, for reading.

MTCIDC

We include a LINK here to an appropriate poem which uses our title, Edgar Allan Poe’s, “The Bells” (1849).

doubtfulsea

~ adventure fantasy

Tag Archives: Minas Tirith

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Tintinnabulations