See-r (2)

17 Wednesday Apr 2019

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

Tags

Apollo, Babylonian, Claros, Delphi, Didyma, Dodona, Dr Seuss, epic metre, Etruscan, Extispicy, Flamen, Galadrien, Greek, Gustave Moreau, Haruspex, King Galdaran, Mirror of Galadriel, Oracle, Pytho, Rome, Romulus and Remus, Star Wars, The Lord of the Rings, Theogony, Tolkien, Yoda

Here we are again, dear readers, welcoming you to the second half of that posting with the odd name—or at least the odd spelling.

In the first half of this, we began with questions about Galadriel’s mirror: where did it come from? What was it doing in the text?

We saw that it had begun life in a manuscript note as the mirror of “King Galdaran”, but then became the mirror of “Galadrien” as JRRT smoothed and polished both the scene and the character. In that earlier note—a kind of shorthand plot summary—it’s stated that, “King Galdaran says the mirror shows past, present, and future, and the skill needed to decide which…”—that is, one needs skill to decide which might be past, present, or future. Such skill, especially to read the future, led us to thinking about the history of attempting to read the future, and we briefly discussed the use of turtle plastrons (the underside of a turtle) and ox shoulder blades, then number patterns, in ancient China, dreams in Egypt, and the insides of certain animals in Babylon.

In this posting, we want to take that history a bit farther.

Just as the Babylonians practiced extispicy—the examination of the intestines of certain animals or birds—so did the Etruscans, whom we think of as Rome’s “big brothers”, as many Roman practices and customs appear to have been borrowed from them. In our last, we showed a Babylonian model of a sheep’s liver,

presumably used as a guide to reading an actual liver. Here’s a bronze Etruscan model, with various areas marked off and labeled.

And here’s a fourth-century bc bronze model of an Etruscan priest, a “haruspex”, the Romans would have called him.

(Sometimes, even though we spend a great deal of time in the classical world, there are things which will always seem a little odd—the hat on this fellow can’t help but remind us of something from Dr Seuss,

just as that on a Roman flamen—a kind of priest—makes us think of a certain propeller helmet…)

Romans borrowed the custom from the Etruscans, it seems, and also read bird-signs. In fact, it was a disagreement over the interpretation of a flight of birds which may have sparked the murder of one of the founders of Rome, Remus, by his twin brother, Romulus.

Besides Etruscan and home-grown methods of trying to find out about the future, the Romans also continued the Greek tradition of visiting prophetic shrines. The most famous were dedicated to Apollo

and were located (see map below—west to east)

at Delphi

Claros

and Didyma.

There was also a well-known shrine dedicated to Zeus at Dodona,

but the oracle at Delphi was perhaps the most famous.

It’s not always clear how these places worked. The oracle at Dodona, for example, may have used two methods: sacred doves and the wind in the leaves of the enclosed grove you see in the picture. At Delphi, a pilgrim waited to pose a question to the priestess, called the “Pytho”

and, if she chose to respond, it was in the standard Greek epic metre, dactylic hexameter. Her answers were famously riddling and ambiguous, as when she told Croesus, the king of Lydia that, if he went to war with the Persians, a kingdom would fall (guess whose!). To interpret such a response correctly would have taken King Galdaran’s response that, to interpret what his mirror told, one must have skill to decide just what the future might be.

When it comes to Galadrien/Galadriel, it’s not skill which she lacks, but rather she practices a kind of caution in interpretation:

“Many things I can command the Mirror to reveal…and to some I can show what they desire to see. But the Mirror will also show things unbidden, and those are often stranger and more profitable than things which we wish to behold. What you will see, if you leave the Mirror free to work, I cannot tell. For it shows things that were, and things that are, and things that may yet be. But which it is that he sees, even the wisest cannot always tell.” (The Fellowship of the Ring, Book Two, Chapter 7, “The Mirror of Galadriel”)

(We can’t resist a footnote here. In the early Greek poem, Theogony, the poet Hesiod tells us that he was a shepherd on a hillside when he was visited by the Muses, who told him that they could say many false things as if they were true, but could also speak the truth when they felt like it. They then gave him a staff and inspired him to make songs about things in the future, as well as things in the past, all of which sounds rather familiar here. Here’s a LINK if you’d like to read the story. And here’s a rather over-the-top painting by Gustave Moreau, (1826-1898.)

What Sam sees he finds deeply disturbing—the industrialization of the Shire—and it so disturbing that he leaps up and shouts that he must go home. What Frodo sees is more complex—perhaps Gandalf, what looks to be the arrival of the Numenorians to found Gondor, and, finally, the Eye, ever restless, ever searching.

So why is the Mirror here? We would suggest, tentatively, for several reasons:

first, because this is a kind of turning point in the story: after the pursuit through Moria and the death of Gandalf (as far as the Fellowship knows), this is the first breathing space which the company has had and it’s a very safe and peaceful one—for the moment. As Celeborn says:

“Now is the time…when those who wish to continue the Quest must harden their hearts to leave this land. Those who no longer wish to go forward may remain here, for a while. But whether they stay or go, none can be sure of peace.” (The Fellowship of the Ring, Book Two, Chapter 8, “Farewell to Lorien”)

After so much struggle and the loss of a major figure, it’s clearly a good moment to rest, take stock, and look towards the future.

second, Galadriel had earlier probed each of the company, testing their minds and finding out just who they were—sometimes to their discomfort, if not distress. Now the company is narrowed to just two: the ring-bearer and his servant, and here at her Mirror, she offers them a final test, but we can imagine that, unlike her earlier probing, this is much more free-form and ambiguous, as if she had allowed the two to make up their own tests. For Sam, it’s the possible ruination of what he loves most in the world, the Shire, and he almost fails, until Galadriel gently upbraids him:

“You did not wish to go home without your master before you looked in the Mirror, and yet you knew that evil things might well be happening in the Shire.”

Frodo’s test is less focused upon a place or event. Rather, it was a kind of suggestion of the past (Gondor), with the implication that that past’s continuation depends upon confronting the present danger, which is not to be underestimated. Galadriel’s words to Sam underline this:

“Remember that the Mirror shows many things, and not all have yet come to pass. Some never come to be, unless those that behold the visions turn aside from their path to prevent them.”

Shaken, both pass the test, it seems.

by implying that what Sam and Frodo see might actually happen, the author adds an extra note of urgency to the story, something always to be felt after that moment: the Shire could be in danger, Frodo may have to confront Sauron, directly or indirectly.

But you’ll notice that, taking Galadriel’s lead, we wrote “could be” and “may have to”, rather than “will be” and “must” and here we hear the voice of a wise person from another epic adventure.

Thanks, as always, for reading, and, as ever,

MTCIDC

See-r (1)

10 Wednesday Apr 2019

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

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Achillea, Babylonians, Cleromancy, Drafts, dream interpretation, Dream manual, Egypt, future, Galadriel, Galdaran, haruspicy, I Ching, Lothlorien, Mirror of Galadriel, Oneiromancy, plastrons, Ramesses II, ritual, Shang Dynasty, spiritual, tarot, The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien, Zhou

Welcome, as always, dear readers.

You’ll notice our odd title. Which came from a puzzle. We had been thinking about Galadriel and her mirror: when did it enter the story and, more important for the narrative, why was the episode there?

In an earlier sketch for the text, JRRT had written:

“King Galdaran’s mirror shown to Frodo. Mirror is of silver filled with fountain water in sun.

Sees Shire far away. Trees being felled and a tall building being made where the old mill was. Gaffer Gamgree turned out. Open trouble, almost war, between Marish and Buckland on one hand—and the West. Cosimo Sackville-Baggins very rich, buying up land. (All/Some of this in future.) King Galdaran says the mirror shows past, present, and future, and skill needed to decide which. Sees a grey figure like Gandalf [?going along] in twilight but it seems to be clad in white. Perhaps it is Saruman.

Sees a mountain spouting flame Sees Gollum?” (The Treason of Isengard, 249-250)

Interesting to see that the scene we know from The Fellowship of the Ring, Book Two, Chapter 7, was once very different, beginning with the fact that Galadriel’s mirror had no Galadriel—and Sam’s nightmare vision of the Shire was, originally, Frodo’s. (There was once more potentially more of that nightmare—on a surviving scrap of paper is: “Cosimo has industrialized it. Factories and smoke. The Sandymans have a biscuit factory. Iron is found.” Treason, 216. We wonder, by the way, if, since he lived and worked in Oxford, JRRT’s choice of a biscuit (US: cookie) factory might have been influenced by the Oxford Biscuits company, founded in Denmark in 1922.)

Galadriel was in the narrative at this time, and she even performs her emotional x-ray on the company (Treason, 248), but it’s in the main draft that she gains the mirror (although her name is “Galadrien” at this stage—reading the various manuscripts, we often see many characters have everything from complete name-changes—the Aragorn-as-ranger figure was once called “Trotter”—to slight adjustments). And, as Christopher Tolkien writes,

“It is seen that it was while my father was writing the ‘Lothlorien’ story ab initio [“from the beginning”] that the Lady of Lothlorien emerged…and it is also seen that the figure of Galadriel (Rhien, Galadrien) as a great power in Middle-earth was deepened and extended as he wrote.” (Treason, 250)

All of which is true, but doesn’t help us with the second part of our question: why is the episode there?

Seeking for clues, we looked at that early sketch, in which “King Galdaran says the mirror shows past, present, and future, and the skill needed to decide which…” which then made us think about that skill. At first, we considered that deciding that an event was in the past would be rather easy—after all, events which had happened leave a history, and often consequences. Suppose, however, that that history came from another place, or was never written down—after all, this is medieval Middle-earth, not our 21^st-century world. In our own western Middle Ages, literacy was limited, there was almost no long-distance communication, and people lived on rumors. Would Middle-earth be any different? The same would be true for the present in Middle-earth: what would someone in the Shire know of someone in Rohan?

This brought us to the future and, speaking of history, the attempt to understand the future spreads far back into recorded time and perhaps beyond.

Shang Dynasty China (c.1600-1046BC) has provided us with an extensive archaeological record for this in the form of a vast archive of rather unusual objects, the two main ones being bundles of these

and piles of these.

The first of these is the plastron or breastplate of a turtle.

The second is the shoulder blade of a cow.

These were used for a number of spiritual contact purposes, including finding out about the future, but the method was always the same:

once the surface was cleaned, a series of shallow holes was carved or drilled into the surface
blood was applied to the surface (for purification? Or perhaps to attract a spirit?)
questions were written to one side of each hole
a hot iron was applied to the hole
the surface would then crack under the heat
the officiator would interpret the crack, then write his interpretation on the surface, as well

During the next dynasty, the Zhou (1000-221BC), another method was added and, in time, this became more popular. This used the stalks of a plant of the family Achillea

for the practice of cleromancy, which, basically, means using a series of random numbers to try to understand something about the spiritual world. This is a very complicated process, as far as we can see, including not only the stalks, but a book called the I Ching.

If you would like to know more, here’s a LINK which explains the practice in 12 steps.

A method of telling the future in ancient Egypt was by interpreting dreams (oneiromancy) and we have a dream manual dated to the time of Ramesses II (1279-1213BC).

This lists common patterns in dreams, identifies whether they are bad or good, then goes on to interpret them. Because dreams are universal, this is a world-wide method and all one has to do is to google “dream interpretation book” to see just how much is available in English alone.

Babylonians used dreams, among other methods, as well as haruspicy, in which a specially-trained priest examined the entrails of certain animals, birds and sheep being especially useful. Here’s a model of a sheep’s liver (2050-1750BC) used to help in the process.

The holes were for pegs, to help the priest makes comparisons between the actual liver and the model.

In our next, we’ll discuss a few other early methods of attempting to see the future and, if we play our cards right,

we’ll circle back to Galadriel’s mirror and its place in The Lord of the Rings.

Thanks, as ever, for reading and—this part of the future we can read—

MTCIDC

Shire Portrait (5a): Hostile Takeover

08 Wednesday Mar 2017

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

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A Long-Expected Party, auction, Bag End, Baggins, Barliman Butterbur, Galadriel, Government, Isengard, Longbottom Leaf, Luke Skywalker, Merry and Pippin, Mirror of Galadriel, Pipeweed, Sackville-Bagginses, Sam Gamgee, Saruman, Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back, The Lord of the Rings, The Return of the King, The Scouring of the Shire, The Shire, Tolkien, Yoda

As always, dear readers, welcome!

This is, we think, the last in our Shire Portrait series (although a 2-parter)—at least for the moment. In it, we intend to consider just how the Shire fell into the hands of “Sharkey” and his “boys”.

The Ring destroyed and the King returned, Gandalf, the Hobbits, and a party of Elves are traveling back toward Rivendell and beyond when they come upon Saruman and Grima, now no more than Saruman’s slave.

It is not a happy meeting, as can be imagined. When offered help, Saruman replies:

“All my hopes are ruined, but I would not share yours. If you have any…You have doomed yourselves, and you know it. And it will afford me some comfort as I wander to think that you pulled down your own house when you destroyed mine.” The Return of the King, Book 6, Chapter 6, “Many Partings”

In such a mood, it can be imagined how he treats the Hobbits—even when Merry offers him pipe-weed, which he does while commenting, less than tactfully, on its origin:

“ ‘You are welcome to it; it came from the flotsam of Isengard.’

‘Mine, mine, yes and dearly bought!’ cried Saruman, clutching at the pouch. ‘This is only a repayment in token; for you took more, I’ll be bound. Still, a beggar must be grateful, if a thief returns him even a morsel of his own. Well, it will serve you right when you come home, if you find things less good in the Southfarthing than you would like. Long may your land be short of leaf!’”

Saruman’s remark—a curse, really—resonates especially with Sam.

“’Ah!’ said Sam. ‘And bought he said. How, I wonder? And I didn’t like the sound of what he said about the Southfarthing. It’s time we got back.’” The Return of the King, Book 6, Chapter 6, “Many Partings”

This is a natural reaction on Sam’s part because of what he had seen in Galadriel’s mirror, we presume.

“’Hi!’ cried Sam in an outraged voice. ‘There’s that Ted Sandyman a-cutting down trees as he shouldn’t. They didn’t ought to be felled: it’s that avenue beyond the Mill that shades the road to Bywater…

But now Sam noticed that the Old Mill had vanished, and a large red-brick building was being put up where it stood. Lots of folk were busily at work. There was a tall red chimney nearby. Black smoke seemed to cloud the surface of the Mirror…

‘I can’t stay here,’ he said wildly. ‘I must go home. They’ve dug up Bagshot Row, and there’s the poor old Gaffer going down the Hill with his bits of things on a barrow…” The Fellowship of the Ring, Book 2, Chapter VII, “The Mirror of Galadriel”

At the time, Galadriel had told him

“’You cannot go home alone,’ said the Lady. ‘You did not wish to go home without your master before you looked in the Mirror, and yet you knew that evil things might well be happening in the Shire. Remember that the Mirror shows many things, and not all have yet come to pass. Some never come to be, unless those that behold the visions turn aside from their path to prevent them. The Mirror is dangerous as a guide to deeds.” The Fellowship of the Ring, Book 2, Chapter VII, “The Mirror of Galadriel”

[A footnote: suddenly, we are reminded of that scene on Dagobah in Star Wars V, when Luke has had a vision and immediately wants to rush off to Bespin.

“Luke: I saw—I saw a city in the clouds.

Yoda: [nods] Friends you have there.

Luke: They were in pain…

Yoda: It is the future you see.

Luke: The future?

[pause]

Luke: Will they die?

Yoda: [closes his eyes for a moment] Difficult to see. Always in motion is the future.

Luke: I’ve got to go to them.

Yoda: Decide you must, how to serve them best. If you leave now, help them you could; but you would destroy all for which they have fought, and suffered.” The Empire Strikes Back (1980)

As—using various websites—we provide links here—we can see that an imitation of the opening of the Hobbit—Bilbo and Gandalf meeting—appears in an early script of Star Wars IV, I think that the scene at Galadriel’s Mirror was somewhere back in G. Lucas’ wonderfully fertile brain—and, yes, we are big fans.]

“Secrets of the ‘Star Wars’ Drafts”

Was George Lucas Inspired by Tolkien?

Star Wars Origins: The Lord of the Rings

At this point, we know from two sources that Saruman has had commercial dealings with the Southfarthing.

First, of course, we’ve just seen it confirmed by Saruman’s response to Merry. Second is that scene at Isengard, where Gandalf, Theoden, Eomer, and Aragorn, travel with an escort and find there Merry and Pippin, who tell them of their discovery of two small casks:

“ ‘My dear Gimli, it is Longbottom Leaf! There were the Hornblower brandmarks on the barrels, as plain as plain. How it came here, I can’t imagine.” The Two Towers, Book Three, Chapter 9, “Flotsam and Jetsam”

Knowing, however, of Saruman’s increasing interest in the Shire, we can imagine that one of his agents, active in the Southfarthing, had acquired it for him. As the Appendix B, “The Tale of Years” tells us, under TA2953:

[Saruman] notes his [Gandalf’s] interest in the Shire. He soon begins to keep agents in Bree and the Southfarthing.” (page 1089 in Appendix B)

Spying was clearly only the beginning for Saruman, however. The actual evidence for his eventual take-over is scattered throughout The Lord of the Rings, but we believe that it can be pieced together to provide a picture of how it must have been done. It was a two-step process.

First, he appears to have gained knowledge of internal dissatisfaction within the Shire. Because there is really nothing political in the Shire–as readers will know from the first posting in this series, there is virtually no government—this unrest was domestic—as is said in the Prologue, “Families for the most part managed their own affairs.”

In the case of Bilbo and Frodo, the dissatisfied were the Sackville-Bagginses. We first met them in the last chapter of The Hobbit, where they were described as “Bilbo’s cousins” and were shown as being actively involved in the auction of the “effects of the late Bilbo Baggins Esquire”—as well as in the disappearance of some merchandise not auctioned off:

“Many of his silver spoons mysteriously disappeared and were never accounted for. Personally he suspected the Sackville-Bagginses. On their side they never admitted that the returned Baggins was genuine and they were not on friendly terms with Bilbo ever after.” The Hobbit, Chapter 19, “The Last Stage”

It was one more blow to the Sackville-Bagginses when Bilbo rescued the now-orphaned Frodo from “those queer Bucklanders” and brought him to live at Bag End, as Gaffer Gamgee related in The Ivy Bush:

“ ‘But I reckon it was a nasty knock for those Sackville-Bagginses. They thought they were going to get Bag End, that time he went off and was thought to be dead. And then he comes back and orders them off; and he goes on living and living, and never looking a day older, bless him! And suddenly he produces an heir, and has all the papers made out proper. The Sackville-Bagginses won’t never see the inside of Bag End now, or it is to be hoped not.’ “ The Fellowship of the Ring, Book One, Chapter 1, “A Long-Expected Party”

Bad blood, then, on several counts—and, for Saruman, looking for a way in, a great opportunity.

Bilbo might have suspected them of spoon-pilfering, but his was a more generous nature, however, and he even invited them to his and Frodo’s joint birthday party.

“The Sackville-Bagginses were not forgotten. Otho and his wife Lobelia were present. They disliked Bilbo and detested Frodo, but so magnificent was the invitation card, written in golden ink, that they had felt it impossible to refuse…” The Fellowship of the Ring, Book One, Chapter 1, “A Long-Expected Party”

On the other hand, Bilbo does not please them when he announces that Frodo is coming into “his inheritance”—

“The Sackville-Bagginses scowled, and wondered what was meant by ‘coming into his inheritance’ “ and, when Bilbo makes his startling disappearance, they “departed in wrath”. (quotations from Chapter One).

And yet they didn’t quite depart. It seems they have only stepped away from the party, only to return to cause trouble, demanding to see Bilbo’s will.

“Otho would have been Bilbo’s heir, but for the adoption of Frodo. He read the will carefully and snorted. It was, unfortunately, very clear and correct…” The Fellowship of the Ring, Book One, Chapter 1, “A Long-Expected Party”

Otho “snapped his fingers under Frodo’s nose and stumped off”, but Lobelia, his wife, remained, and Frodo later found her “still about the place, investigating nooks and corners, and tapping the floors. He escorted her firmly off the premises, after he had relieved her of several small (but rather valuable) articles that had somehow fallen inside her umbrella.” And she leaves with a kind of threat and what she believes is an insult:

“ ‘You’ll live to regret it, young fellow! Why didn’t you go too? You don’t belong here; you’re no Baggins—you—you’re a Brandybuck!’ ”

It’s never said why there is such an animus held by the Sackville-Bagginses against the Bagginses, but there is clearly something wrong with the S-Bs, from their covetousness to Lobelia’s open theft, and whatever is wrong is just what Saruman will find and exploit. Our next mention of them is oblique and it has to do with that pipe-weed. Merry and Pippin have been explaining how they had come to discover it at Isengard and all seems clear—

“ ‘All except one thing,’ said Aragorn: ‘leaf from the Southfarthing in Isengard. The more I consider it, the more curious I find it. I have never been in Isengard, but I have journeyed in this land, and I know well the empty countries that lie between Rohan and the Shire. Neither goods nor folk have passed that way for many a long year, not openly. Saruman had secret dealings with someone in the Shire, I guess. Wormtongues may be found in other houses than King Theoden’s…” The Two Towers, Book Three, Chapter 9, “Flotsam and Jetsam

With that faint foreboding, we hear no more until Gandalf and the Hobbits are once more leaving Bree and Butterbur says, almost in passing:

“ ‘I should have warned you before that all’s not well in the Shire neither, if what we hear is true. Funny goings on, they say.’ “ The Return of the King, Book Six, Chapter 7, “Homeward Bound”

With Butterbur’s words in their ears, the Hobbits ride out and conversation begins:

“ ‘I wonder what old Barliman was hinting at,’ said Frodo.

‘I can guess some of it,’ said Sam gloomily. ‘What I saw in the Mirror: trees cut down and all, and my old gaffer turned out of the Row. I ought to have hurried back quicker.’

‘And something’s wrong with the Southfarthing evidently,’ said Merry. ‘There’s a general shortage of pipe-weed.’

‘Whatever it is,’ said Pippin, ‘Lotho will be at the bottom of it: you can be sure of that.’”

Here again, after Aragorn’s remark long before, we see that pipe-weed turn up—and associated somehow with a Sackville-Baggins. Butterbur has already replied to Gandalf’s request for it that “That’s the one thing that we’re short of, seeing how we’ve only got what we grow ourselves, and that’s not enough. There’s none to be had from the Shire these days.”

It’s never explained why Pippin makes the connection with Lotho at this point—was the bad blood between the Bagginses and the Sackville-Bagginses part of a darker picture of the S-Bs? This seems more than possible when Gandalf adds to Pippin’s remark:

“ ‘Deep in, but not at the bottom,’ said Gandalf. ‘You have forgotten Saruman. He began to take an interest in the Shire before Mordor did.’”

And now we begin to see a potential bigger pattern: Saruman-an S-B-Shire and, with it, the second step in the take-over of the Shire, that from outside. But that’s for Shire Portrait 5b: “Hostile Take-Over.2”, next time.

Until then, thanks, as ever, for reading!

MTCIDC

To the Elves for Counsel

07 Wednesday Dec 2016

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

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advised by elves, Aelfraed, Aethelwulf, Alaric Hall, Alfred, Alfred of Wessex, Alfred the Great, Anglo-Saxon, Aragorn, Boudicca, council, Counseling the Scippigraed, Danish invaders, Elder Days, Elves, Elves in Anglo-Saxon England, Frodo, Galadriel, Gildor Inglorion, Grey Havens, Hamo Thornycroft, Hobbits, Mirror of Galadriel, Morgul Knife, Shire, statue, T. A. Shippey, The Council of Elrond, The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien, Tolkien in the New Century, Tom Shippey, With Faerstice

Welcome, dear readers, as ever. In this posting, our attention was caught by the first paragraph of an article in Tolkien in the New Century: Essays in Honor of Tom Shippey (McFarland, 2014). The article, entitled, “Counseling the Scippigraed: How T.A. Shippey Taught Us to Read”, by John R. Holmes, begins:

“The Christening of Alfred Aetheling of Wessex in 849 may have played a role in his greatness. Alfred’s father, Aethelwulf, had wanted to establish his own name-prefix, Aethel, which means (more or less) “noble,” as the sign of the royal line: he gave it to his first four sons and a daughter. By the time his sixth child came along, however—his fifth son—there didn’t seem to be any point in giving him the Aethel- prefix, since there seemed to be no reasonable chance this infant could ever become king. But wishing the lad wisdom and happiness, Aethelwulf named him Aelfraed, “advised by elves.” While we have no historical proof that Alfred actually received counsel from elves, there is no evidence to the contrary, and the boy certainly prospered as if he had. Alfred, Elf-counsel, not only outlasted four older brothers to become king, but also would be the only English monarch known to history as “The Great”. “ (11)

Alfred, king of Wessex from 871-899, was perhaps the most distinguished ruler of pre-Norman England. Against heavy odds, he eventually stabilized Wessex against a powerful wave of Danish invaders

and even forced the second Danish leader both into a treaty and into conversion to Christianity. As well, he was active in promoting Anglo-Saxon intellectuality and the rise of a vernacular literature.

Statue_d'Alfred_le_Grand_à_Winchester.jpg

(this statue, from 1901, by the way, was done by Hamo Thornycroft, the son of the man who did the famous Boudicca plus chariot statue on the Thames embankment—erected 1902, but created much earlier–)

For us, however, what was interesting was none of this, but rather the idea that it might be possible for someone in the 9^th century AD to have the kind of contact with elves we see in The Lord of the Rings.

We have always imagined Elves as belonging to the Elder Days and that, eventually, like Elrond and Galadriel, they had all traveled to the Grey Havens and taken ship for the West.

Suppose, however, we said to ourselves, that, as JRRT suggests about hobbits, Elves continued to exist, even down into actual historical times:

“Hobbits are an unobtrusive but very ancient people, more numerous formerly than they are today…They do not and did not understand or like machines more complicated that a forge-bellows, a water-mill, or a hand-loom, though they were skillful with tools. Even in ancient days they were, as a rule, shy of ‘the Big Folk’, as they call us, and now they avoid us with dismay and are becoming hard to find. (The Lord of the Rings, “Prologue”)

Of elves, the actual Anglo-Saxon people of the period don’t appear to have much good to say, in fact. The 11^th-century recipe, called the With Faerstice (“Against a Stabbing Pain”), suggests that elves were dangerous and, should they attack you, it required serious medical treatment, including what looks like a magic spell, to cure you of the wound, which was made by something which reminded us of the tip of the Morgul Knife broken off in Frodo’s wound.

Even in Middle-earth, Elves aren’t considered to be the most direct of people, however, as Frodo quotes:

“ And it is also said…’Go not to the Elves for counsel, for they will say both no and yes.’ “

And yet, in this scene, from The Fellowship of the Ring, Book 1, Chapter 3, “Three is Company”, in which Frodo, Sam, and Pippin fall into the company of Elves,

their leader, Gildor Inglorion, does offer advice and the way he frames it might provide us with a model for how Alfred could have been counseled.

To begin, we might picture the elves as being unimaginably older than the Anglo-Saxons, and, with that age, having a longer view of things. As Gildor says to Frodo, when Frodo says, “I knew that danger lay ahead, of course; but I did not expect to meet it in our own Shire.”:

“But it is not your own Shire…Others dwelt here before hobbits were; and others will dwell here again when hobbits are no more. The wide world is all about you: you can fence yourselves in, but you cannot for ever fence it out.”

Great age, then, can lend great perspective. When you’ve lived as long as the Elves, you have seen much more of change within time, and what concerns them might be very different from what engages humans, as Gildor tells Frodo:

“The Elves have their own labours and their own sorrows, and they are little concerned with the ways of hobbits, or of any other creatures upon earth. Our paths cross theirs seldom, by chance or purpose.”

So what would be the kind of raed (“advice/counsel”) which the elves would have given Alfred? we asked ourselves. It’s easy to imagine his approach: often, particularly in the early years of his kingship, Alfred was faced with defeat. The Danes were numerous, powerful, and unscrupulous, once even killing hostages after swearing to a peace agreement. His question might then have been: how can I beat the Danes and regain my kingdom?

The elves would have been cautious, of course. Gildor says:

“Elves seldom give unguarded advice, for advice is a dangerous gift, even from the wise to the wise, and all courses may run ill.”

This is spoken by someone who has many centuries of experience behind him, as would an elf advising Alfred. Time and its changes had clearly taught the Elves both caution and patience and we imagine that those two elements would have been the basis of a reply—and, in fact, it appears to have been Alfred’s method, as we learn from the first biography, by Bishop Asser, a contemporary, who was asked by Alfred to join his court. Rather than seek victory in one climactic battle, had that been possible, Alfred attacked the problem from multiple angles, doing things which not only contributed to the Danish defeat (and to the defeat of a subsequent invasion), but also strengthened the kingdom in general, changing and improving the tax and military systems, building the first English navy, as well as producing a law code and encouraging education in Anglo-Saxon. This method brought peace and stability to Wessex (much of southern England), but did so over the period of twenty years or more, suggesting to us that the counsel of elves had surely been at work.

When we picture the scene of Alfred receiving the elves’ advice, we think of this Hildebrandt painting of Galadriel and Aragorn.

And perhaps those elves said the same thing to Alfred which Galadriel said to Frodo before her mirror:

“ ‘Do you advise me to look?’ asked Frodo.

‘No,’ she said, ‘I do not counsel you one way or the other. I am not a counsellor. You may learn something, and whether what you see be fair or evil, that may be profitable, and yet it may not. Seeing is both good and perilous. Yet I think, Frodo, that you have courage and wisdom enough for the venture, or I would not have brought you here. Do as you will!’ “ ( The Fellowship of the Ring, Book 2, Chapter 7, “The Mirror of Galadriel”)

In Alfred’s case, he would have been brave and wise enough, and therefore has come down to us both as “Alfred the Great” and as “Alfred Elf-counsel”.

Thanks, as always, for reading.

MTCIDC

If you are interested in knowing more about Anglo-Saxon attitudes about elves, we very much recommend Alaric Hall’s Elves in Anglo-Saxon England which is, miraculously, available for free on-line.

Beaux Gestes? (1)

20 Wednesday Apr 2016

Posted by Ollamh in J.R.R. Tolkien, Narrative Methods, Theatre and Performance

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Tags

Cicero, David Garrick, Edmund Burke, Elizabethan, Film, Galadriel, Globe theatre, Hamlet, Hildebrandt, Mirror of Galadriel, Quintilian, rejection, Roman theatre, The Argonath, The Lord of the Rings, The Phantom of the Opera, The Popular Entertainer and Self-Instructor in Elocution, theatre, Theatrical gesture, Tolkien

Dear Readers, welcome, as always.

In this posting, we want to begin to consider a pair of contrasting gestures in The Lord of the Rings, where they may come from, and how they may mirror each other.

We begin with Galadriel in The Fellowship of the Ring, Book II, Chapter 7, “The Mirror of Galadriel”.

In this scene, she has offered Frodo and Sam the chance to look into what appears to be a small pool of enchanted water, where she tells Frodo “You may learn something, and whether what you see be fair or evil, that may be profitable, and yet it may not. Seeing is both good and perilous.”

Sam goes first and endures a nightmarish depiction of the future of the Shire—although Galadriel warns him that it is perhaps potential, not fated future.

Frodo has, in turn, an even worse experience: the eye of Sauron himself appears and Frodo can feel that it is trying to discover the Ring. It is something of which Galadriel herself is well aware, but she comforts Frodo, saying, “…I perceive the Dark Lord and know his mind, or all of his mind that concerns the Elves. And he gropes ever to see me and my thought. But the door is still closed!”

To emphasize this, “She lifted up her white arms, and spread out her hands towards the East in a gesture of rejection and denial.”

To modern people, like us, trying to visualize what Galadriel is doing , this might seem a very “theatrical” gesture. The closest we could find in our image bank of Galadriel actually doing it wasn’t more than a suggestion.

And, in fact, the image we’ve chosen (obviously not Galadriel!) to depict this comes from a book published in 1898, with the intriguing title, The Popular Entertainer and Self-Instructor in Elocution.

This brings us back to a time in history when public speaking was a polished art and men (primarily—although the women’s rights movement from the mid-19^th century had its speakers, as well) practiced stylized gestures to help them convey their meaning in lecture halls, theatres, and open spaces. Older public statues sometimes capture such a speaker in mid-gesture—as in this of the British intellectual and politician, Edmund Burke, in Bristol.

Such combinations of gesture and speech are derived from a tradition which stretches all the way back to the last century BC/first century AD in the works of the Roman orators/writers Cicero

And Quintilian.

These men described the art of public speaking, and Quintilian, in particular, discusses the use of gesture to expand and underline the spoken text emotionally. This tradition was continued from the Renaissance and beyond initially in translations of the two into local languages, but then in expansions of their ideas. Such gestures were also found useful for the young popular theatre and continued to form part of an actor’s training into the twentieth century. Here, for instance, is the 18^th-century actor, David Garrick, in a role for which he was famous, Hamlet. And you’ll notice that same gesture of rejection: arms extended, hands spread.

(This is not, by the way, the same gesture we see depicted on the Argonath. That seems to us more to convey the message: Stop! You have reached the boundary of Gondor—go no farther!

argonath hildebrandt.jpg

This is the Hildebrandt twins rather mild version. A fiercer one would be that from the film.)

To us, such gestures may seem very overdone, if not downright silly—as in this from the 1925 film of The Phantom of the Opera.

lchaneysrphantom

And it is probably film itself which has changed our view. Originally, these gestures were developed to extend a speaker’s ability to convey thought and feeling in a public space—a big place where there was no elaborate sound system with microphones and speakers to help.

In a big, noisy place like an Elizabethan theatre, such an extension would have proved just as useful.

Hodge's_conjectural_Globe_reconstruction.jpg

And, until artificial vocal magnification was invented in the 20^th century, it would have continued to help.

Film began as an offshoot of the stage—after all, what other model was there for actors? Film was much more intimate than the stage, however, even before sound films arrived at the very end of the 1920s. The heavy make-up and big, stylized gestures brought over from earlier drama must have seemed even more exaggerated, in time, to audiences, and everything was gradually scaled down. What Tolkien saw as a young man,

however, having been born in 1893, would have been the product of that earlier time—a time all the way back to the Romans—and thus, when he wants to depict strong emotion, he clearly uses what would have been more appropriate for an older time, just as he uses older language, borrowed from people like William Morris and Tennyson, when he wants to add a certain weight to the words.

In our second posting, we want to continue our exploration with what we feel to be an opposing gesture—and the final gesture—of Saruman.

greg-hildebrandt-isengard-orthanc-saruman-607429-1300x962.jpg

Thanks, as always, for reading.

MTCIDC

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~ adventure fantasy

Tag Archives: Mirror of Galadriel

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Beaux Gestes? (1)