A Little Ring, the Least of Rings

02 Wednesday Jan 2019

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

Tags

Aladdin, Alexandre Dumas, Barad-Dur, Chateau d'If, Edmond Dantes, Elba, French Revolution, Galadriel, Harad, Hitler, Jinghiz Khan, Louis XVI, Morannon, Mordor, Napoleon, Nazgul, Ring Wraiths, St Helena, The Count of Monte Cristo, The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien, Toulon, Umbar, Waterloo

Welcome, readers, as always, and, if it’s part of your culture, Happy New Year!

We’ve recently been reading a book about Napoleon

and his first fall, in 1814. He was forced to abdicate,

thereby losing the massive empire he had built up in the early 19^thcentury.

His many enemies had a number of possibilities as to what to do with him. They could, for example, have imprisoned him, as Edmond Dantes is in Dumas’ The Count of Monte Cristo (serialized 1844-46), in a fortress like the Chateau d’If.

Or, more radically—but certainly very effectively—they could have permanently removed him by the same means by which revolutionary France removed his predecessor, Louis XVI.

Instead, they allowed him not only to live, but even to continue to be a kind of monarch—although only of a tiny island, Elba, off the west coast of Italy.

They thought they’d seen the last of him, leaving him to spend the rest of his life as a sovereign of a ragged collection of fishermen and farmers.

For Napoleon, however, who always saw himself as destined for only the greatest things, being king of Elba must have felt to him rather like the way the genie in Disney’s Aladdin (1992) expresses the contrast in his life–

That being the case, Napoleon lived on Elba for less that a year before he planned and accomplished his escape.

Back in France, he was welcomed by the very soldiers sent to stop him,

image10fifth

raised new armies,

image11napog

marched north to deal with his nearest enemies, Prussia and England, and was finally—and permanently—defeated at Waterloo, 18 June, 1815.

image12waterloo

This time, his enemies, having learned their lesson, sent Napoleon as far away from Europe as they could and to a much less hospitable place, the island of St Helena, in the South Atlantic,

where he died in 1821.

From his first success, at the siege of Toulon in 1793,

Napoleon had climbed and climbed until, by 1801, he was the real ruler of France (as “First Consul”)

and then, in 1804, Emperor.

And yet, it was never enough, which reminds us of so many of the “great conquerors” of history, from Alexander,

to Jinghiz Khan and his successors,

to Hitler.

In every case throughout history, no conqueror has ever had enough and, if we move out of this earth to Middle-earth, we find Sauron, a figure in many ways like all of these earthly conquerors, who, although defeated by an alliance of Elves and Men in the past, has returned and, in time, reacquired immense power. To begin with, he has the entire realm of Mordor.

He has also somehow gained the means to create giant fortifications (sometimes based upon older constructions), like the Barad-dur

and the Morannon and all of the other inner and outer works of Mordor.

image26morannon image27mord image28cirithungol

He also controls the Nazgul,

massive armies of orcs,

as well as allies from the Harads and Umbar.

All of which he has done, it seems, by whatever innate powers he possesses—without the Ring. And this made us wonder: what is it that the Ring actually does for its wearer that Sauron wants it back?

Certainly, the only power Gollum appears to have gotten from the Ring is that of invisibility (and the side-effect of longevity).

This is true for Bilbo, as well,

and for Frodo–

although, when Frodo puts on the Ring on Weathertop, he is plunged into a kind of alternate dimension, seeing the Nazgul as they really are

and, again, on Ammon Hen, he is put into direct contact with the Ring’s real owner.

Does this suggest that the Ring’s power is only as powerful as the Ring’s current wearer? Galadriel confirms this when Frodo asks her about the other rings: “why cannot I see all the others and know the thoughts of those that wear them?”

To which she replies:

“Did not Gandalf tell you that the rings give power according to the measure of each possessor?”

(The Fellowship of the Ring, Book Two, Chapter 7, “The Mirror of Galadriel”)

This then accounts for Gandalf’s almost violent explanation when Frodo offers it to him:

“’No!’ cried Gandalf, springing to his feet. ‘With that power I should have power too great and terrible. And over me the Ring would gain a power still greater and more deadly.’ His eyes flashed and his face was lit as by a fire within. ‘Do not tempt me! For I do not wish to become like the Dark Lord himself. Yet the way of the Ring to my heart is by pity, pity for weakness and the desire of strength to do good. Do not tempt me! I dare not take it, not even to keep it safe, unused. The wish to wield it would be too great, for my strength. I shall have such need of it. Great perils lie before me.’” (The Fellowship of the Ring, Book One, Chapter 2, “The Shadow of the Past”)

Or when Frodo offers it to Galadriel:

“You will give me the Ring freely! In place of the Dark Lord you will set up a Queen. And I shall not be dark, but beautiful and terrible as the Morning and the Night! Fair as the Sea and the Sun and the Snow upon the Mountain! Dreadful as the Storm and the Lightning! Stronger than the foundations of the earth. All shall love me and despair!” (The Fellowship of the Ring, Book Two, Chapter 7, “The Mirror of Galadriel”)

Sauron has been able to accomplish so much without the Ring—what would happen should he ever wear it again? In “The Shadow of the Past”, Gandalf tells Frodo that it controls the other rings—even the three long-concealed from Sauron:

“The Three are hidden still. But that no longer troubles him. He only needs the One; for he made that Ring himself, it is his, and he let a great part of his own former power pass into it, so that he could rule all the others. If he recovers it, then he will command them all again, even the Three, and all that has been wrought with them will be laid bare, and he will be stronger than ever.”

And, just as important—maybe even more so—Sauron has based his place of power and refuge, his sure foundation in Middle-earth, upon it, as Elrond tells the council:

“Sauron was diminished, but not destroyed. His Ring was lost but not unmade. The Dark Tower was broken, but its foundations were not removed; for they were made with the power of the Ring, and while it remains they will endure.” (The Fellowship of the Ring, Book Two, Chapter 2, “The Council of Elrond”)

So, then, just as Napoleon, exiled on Elba, could plot and accomplish return, given the Ring, Sauron, defeated before, could return and, with a greed for conquest as insatiable as that of the French emperor, reappear again and again in Middle-earth, where there was no St Helena to keep him for good.

Thanks for reading!

MTCIDC

Name, Rank, and…

10 Wednesday Oct 2018

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

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1984, Alan Lee, Eye of Sauron, Flodden, George Orwell, Great War, Heraldic Device, Mordor, Oceania, Orcs, Sauron, serial numbers, Serialized, Swan of Dol Amroth, the Lancashire Fusiliers, The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien, White Hand of Saruman, White Horse of Rohan, White Tree of Gondor, Winston Smith

As always, dear readers, welcome.

In George Orwell’s (1903-1950)

image1orwell

1949 horrific political novel 1984,

image2nineteen

the protagonist, Winston Smith, is attempting to do what are called “physical jerks”, meaning calisthenics, in front of a “telescreen”. This is, in fact, a two-way device, but it’s impossible to know when, as you are watching it, it can be watching you, until:

‘Smith!’ screamed the shrewish voice from the telescreen. ‘6079 Smith W.!

Yes, YOU! Bend lower, please! You can do better than that. You’re not

trying. Lower, please! THAT’S better, comrade. Now stand at ease, the

whole squad, and watch me.’ (1984, Chapter 3)

And so we see just how militarized “Oceania”, Smith’s homeland, has become. You are not a citizen, but a member of a “squad”, and your name has a serial number attached.

The same is true of Sauron’s Mordor, as Sam and Frodo overhear, desperately trying to conceal themselves behind a “brown and stunted bush”. Two scouts appear:

“One was clad in ragged brown and was armed with a bow of horn; it was of a small breed, black-skinned, with wide and snuffling nostrils…The other was a big fighting-orc, like those of Shagrat’s company, bearing the token of the Eye.”

(Here’s Alan Lee’s illustration of the two, by the way.)

image3orcs

They are soon quarreling and, when the small one tries to escape, the larger fighting-orc shouts:

“You come back…or I’ll report you!”

To which the smaller replies:

“Who to? Not to your precious Shagrat. He won’t be captain any more.”

And the larger answers that with:

“I’ll give your name and number to the Nazgul.” A threat which soon gets him killed.

When we think about Tolkien in the Great War,

we can see at once where the idea of the “name and number” came from. Although there had been attempts at serial numbers as far back as 1857,

image5eighteensixty

in 1881, units in the British Army adopted a regimental serial system.

image6eighteeneighties

Thus, in JRRT’s army, he would have seen a man in his battalion of his regiment (the Lancashire Fusiliers) identified as “189, Smith, W” (although officers like Tolkien were not issued such numbers).

image7nineteen

There is, of course, another identifying mark for the soldiers both of Sauron and Saruman, the heraldic device on helmets or shields, the red eye for Sauron, the white hand for Saruman

image8eye

image9hand

When we say “heraldic device”, we mean, as you can see, a decoration on cloth or metal, clothing, armor, and flags, which indicates, in some way, who the wearer is, or to whom he belongs. On a medieval battlefield, before men wore uniforms, this would help those in charge to understand, at a glance, who was fighting whom.

image10flodden

In this painting of the large and confused battle between English and Scots soldiers at Flodden (1513), a late-medieval, early-Renaissance struggle, you can see how confusing things could be, but some order could be made out of the English standard to the left, and two Scottish flags to the right, the far one being generic Scots, but the near one being the banner of the Scottish king himself, James IV.

Up close, the one of the heraldic badges of the Stanley family (on the English side), the claw, marks this archer.

image11stanley

The science of heraldry is large and complicated, but may be seen at its simplest in The Lord of the Rings, not only among orcs, but also among the forces of the West—

the white horse of Rohan,

image12rohan

the swan and ship of Dol Amroth,

image13dolim

and the tree and seven stars of Gondor.

image14gondor

Where there is a strong contrast between the two sides, however, and we can only speculate as to JRRT’s intent, was the assignment of numbers to the orcs of Mordor and not to the soldiers of the West a quiet comment on the facelessness of modern warfare, where a soldier is a number first, before he is ever a name and perhaps all men are reduced to orcs?

image15dead

Thanks, as ever, for reading.

MTCIDC

Orc Arsenal.2

03 Wednesday Oct 2018

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

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Anglo-Saxon, Angus McBride, Bayeux Tapestry, Celts, chain-mail, hauberk, lamellae, lorica segmentata, medieval Russians, Mordor, Mycenaeans, Orcs, Renaissance irish, Republican Romans, Rohirrim, sallet, spangenhelm, Star Wars, The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien, Zulus

So, dear readers, welcome, as always. In this posting, we want to finish our brief overview of orc weaponry which we began in our last.

A famous military illustrator, Angus McBride, (1931-2007)

once said in an interview that there was one thing which he hated about doing such illustrations: painting chain mail, which he said was the most tedious part of his work. Considering that he painted it on early Celts

and Renaissance Irish,

and Republican Romans

and medieval Russians,

McBride must have suffered many hours of boredom! It didn’t stop him, however, as we see in these illustrations for The Lord of the Rings,

from putting armor on Rohirrim and orcs alike.

Chain mail—or simply mail—is made by linking together a series of metal rings.

This is, as you can imagine, a very time-consuming process, especially if you have to make the rings first. (Here’s a LINK on mail manufacturing, in case you’d like to try it yourself.)

We have seen the number of rings used in a full mail hauberk to be over 20,000, so it’s also metal-consuming, as well as time-consuming. It also appears to have been expensive. We once heard an expert say something about the “same price as a two-bedroom house”, but that seems a little excessive. The always-useful Regia Anglorum website gives the price of a mail shirt in Anglo-Saxon times at 529d (that’s 529 pence), or 10,580 pounds in modern UK money ($13,785.18 US at today’s current exchange rate). Here’s a LINK to their web page to see the author’s reasoning for his equivalences.

McBride shows orcs wearing mail—does JRRT? In fact, in the first scene in which we see orcs, we read:

“…a huge orc-chieftain, almost man-high, clad in black mail from head to foot…” (The Fellowship of the Ring, Book Two, Chapter 5, “The Bridge of Khazad-dum”

And, late in the story, when Sam and Frodo are in Mordor and Sam provides clothes for Frodo:

“There were long hairy breeches of some unclean beast-fell, and a tunic of dirty leather. He drew them on. Over the tunic went a coat of stout ring-mail, short for a full-sized orc, too long for Frodo and heavy.” (The Return of the King, Book Six, Chapter 1, “The Tower of Cirith Ungol”)

(We can attest to the weight of such a coat, by the way, having a modern reproduction ourselves. It weighs 25 pounds or more—that’s 11.34 kilograms. When it’s on your shoulders, the weight is displaced, so it doesn’t feel quite so heavy, but, if you have it piled in a box, you really feel the heft. We would also add that, because of the cost, armor wasn’t commonly left on the battlefield. This segment of the Bayeux Tapestry shows what must normally have happened.)

McBride, in his illustrations, depicts two other types of body armor. In these first two depictions, we see the kind of armor the Romans called lorica segmentata.

This is a system based upon a series of broad, overlapping iron strips.

As far as we can tell, this is never mentioned in the text. There may be one mention of our third type:

This is armor made up of a series of small plates, called lamellae, sewn in an overlapping fashion, rather like fish scales.

There may be one mention of this:

“The orcs hindered by the mires that lay before the hills halted and poured their arrows into the defending ranks. But through them came striding up, roaring like beasts, a great company of hill-trolls out of Gorgoroth. Taller and broader than Men they were, and they were clad only in close-fitting mesh of horny scale, or maybe that was their hideous hide…” (The Return of the King, Book Five, Chapter 10, “The Black Gate Opens”)

But what about helmets?

McBride depicts most of his orcs in something which might be described as wild variations on the later medieval helmet called a sallet.

You can see John Mollo, a costume designer for Star Wars, having fun with this pattern, too.

In the text, in that first scene in which we see orcs, there is a mention of Aragorn’s sword, Anduril, which “came down upon [an orc’s] helm”, but nothing more specific—and that’s true for the second mention, when Aragorn examines the orcs killed by by Boromir:

“…on the front of their iron helms was set an S-rune, wrought of some white metal.” (The Two Towers, Book Three, Chapter 1, “The Departure of Boromir”)

There is a bit more detail in this description:

“Sam brought several orc-helmets. One of them fitted Frodo well enough, a black cap with iron rim, and iron hoops covered with leather upon which the Evil Eye was painted in red above the beaklike nose-guard.” (The Return of the King, Book Six, Chapter 1, “The Tower of Cirith Ungol”)

To us, this sounds like a kind of spangenhelm, the sort of thing the Normans wear in the Bayeux Tapestry.

To which we can add a couple of types of shields. The first we see—it’s that same “orc-chieftain”—carries “a huge hide shield” (The Fellowship of the Ring, Book Two, Chapter 5, “The Bridge of Khazad-dum”). There is no further description. If it’s only made of hide, this could resemble anything from a Mycenaean “figure-of-eight” shield

to a Mycenaean “tower” shield

to a Zulu shield.

The hill-trolls of Gorgoroth, mentioned above for their possible lamellar armor, are said to carry “round bucklers huge and black” (The Return of the King, Book Five, Chapter 10, “The Black Gate Opens”).

A huge buckler, however, is a contradiction in terms, as bucklers are, by definition, small—more a kind of one-on-one fencing defense, as we see in this illustration.

Like their helmets, orc shields commonly carry the sign of their master, Saruman or Sauron—“Upon their shields they bore a strange device” (The Two Towers, Book Three, Chapter 1, “The Departure of Boromir”). (Some of Saruman’s followers, however, seem to have unmarked shields, as the attackers of Helm’s Deep are described as “some squat and broad, some tall and grim, with high helms and sable shields”—The Two Towers, Book Three, Chapter 7, “Helm’s Deep”) This can also be useful if you’re the authorities and you want to catch deserters, as Sam and Frodo find out when they’re trapped by a column of orcs on the road in Mordor:

“Then suddenly one of the slave-drivers spied the two figures by the road-side…He took a step towards them, and even in the gloom he recognized the devices on their shields. ‘Deserting, eh?’ he snarled.” ( The Return of the King, Book Six, Chapter 2, “The Land of Shadow”)

This i.d.-ing leads us towards our next posting: Heraldry and Serial Numbers, where we’ll see more of orcs and others, too.

Thanks, as always, for reading.

MTCIDC

I Think That I Shall Never See…

10 Wednesday Jan 2018

Posted by Ollamh in Artists and Illustrators, Economics in Middle-earth, Fairy Tales and Myths, J.R.R. Tolkien, Literary History, Military History, Military History of Middle-earth, Narrative Methods, Uncategorized

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Alan Lee, Alexander Volkov, Battle of the Somme, C.S. Lewis, Caspar David Friedrich, deforestation, Fangorn, Fangorn Forest, German Romantics, Grimm Brothers, Haensel and Gretel, Industrial Revolution, Isengard, Kansas, L. Frank Baum, Leonid Vladimirsky, Mordor, pre-industrial, Saruman, The Lord of the Rings, The Scouring of the Shire, The Wizard of Emerald City, The Wizard of Oz, Tin Woodman, Tolkien, trees

Welcome, dear readers, as always.

In a letter to his aunt, Jane, dated 8-9 September, 1962, JRRT wrote:

“Every tree has its enemy, few have an advocate.” (Letters, 321)

We know, from his letters and from interviews, just how passionate he was about trees,

but we were immediately caught by just how very Treebeardish he sounded:

“I am not altogether on anybody’s side, because nobody is altogether on my side, if you understand me…” (The Two Towers, Book Three, Chapter 4, “Treebeard”)

Trees almost seemed to be people to Tolkien—in fact, we know that Treebeard was based in part upon a person—his friend, CS Lewis—at least his voice and manner of speaking.

As near-people, then, to Tolkien, their destruction would have been a kind of murder. With that in mind, we thought of our last posting, in which we quoted Farmer Cotton talking about Sharkey’s regime in the Shire, including “They cut down trees and leave ‘em lie.” (The Return of the King, Book Six, Chapter 8, “The Scouring of the Shire”). And we wondered whether, behind this, JRRT was talking not only about the orcs’ wanton devastation of trees,

but also reliving the Battle of the Somme, in 1916, and seeing once more the acres of unburied dead (60,000 British casualties alone on the first day, 1 July, 1916).

Certainly Treebeard saw this as murder, as he says to Merry and Pippin about 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 left to rot—orc-mischief that; but most are hewn up and carried off to feed the fires of Orthanc…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.” (The Two Towers, Book Three, Chapter 4, “Treebeard”)

Saruman, a person with “a mind of metal and wheels”, who was “plotting to become a Power”,

has turned Isengard into a vast factory, where “there is always a smoke rising”.

Thus, just as JRRT may have been recalling the Battle of the Somme, so perhaps he was also suggesting the industrialization which had been in full swing when he was born and which he disliked intensely and which was reducing much of the part of England in which he grew up to the smoking wasteland Sharkey tried to make the Shire

as we see in this Alan Lee depiction.

Of course the deforestation went back long before the Industrial Revolution began. Once upon a time, great forests covered much of the northern European world and humans lived in the midst of miles and miles of trees in clearings which they cut for themselves.

And we still have a distant memory of these, we would suggest, in some of our fairy tales. If you think about the Brothers Grimm fairy tale of “Haensel and Gretel”, for example,

you’ll remember that, not only did the children live in the middle of such forest, as did the witch, but their father was a woodcutter, someone who would have been involved in that very deforestation, if in a very small way.

This memory, collected by the Grimms and others in folktale form in the early 19^th century, also provided inspiration for the German Romantics—as you can see in this painting by one of their greatest painters, Caspar David Friedrich (1774-1840).

To those Romantics, the forest was scary—but fascinating, as well—and disappearing, as the industrialism which JRRT disliked swallowed it.

Wood was, however, the plastic of the world for many generations, with infinite uses, from home heating to ship-building, and, wherever humans settled, wood was eaten up. Here is a telling chart for Britain of the contrast between 2000BC and 1990AD.

It is no surprise, then, that, during the 17^th century colonization of what is called New England in the US, a major attraction was the availability of wood and the colonists took full advantage of that availability, as this chart shows—

The forest which Treebeard shepherds is, in fact, rather like the forest depicted in that chart of Britain, as Aragorn says:

“Yes, it is old…as old as the forest by the Barrow-downs, and it is far greater. Elrond says that the two are akin, the last strongholds of the mighty woods of the Elder Days, in which the Firstborn roamed while Men still slept.” (The Two Towers, Book Three, Chapter 2, “The Riders of Rohan”)

But what would have happened to it had Saruman not lost Isengard to the very trees he was destroying?

In thinking about this, we were reminded of another woodcutter in a children’s story.

Or, if you prefer the film—

He lives in the still-wooded land of Oz

where there are even talking trees (although a lot less friendly than Treebeard).

Dorothy, however, lives in a Kansas seemingly blighted by the so-called “Dust Bowl” of the 1930s.

Would this have been Fangorn’s fate? We have only to look at Mordor to believe it might have been, when all the trees fell silent.

As ever, thanks for reading.

MTCIDC

In 1939, a Russian children’s author, Alexander Volkov, published The Wizard of the Emerald City. When one compares it with a certain American book of about 40 years before, striking similarities appear, starting with the title character. And the illustrations, by Leonid Vladimirsky, also have something familiar about them…

There was one very practical change, however: the Tin Woodman became the “Iron Lumberjack”, which rectifies a mistake in the original. When Dorothy discovers the Woodman, he has rusted in place, but tin can’t rust!

What If…

31 Wednesday May 2017

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

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

Welcome, readers, as always.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

62790_8d3686244501897

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

poi_img_town_defences_1

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

Tiryns Reconstruction

tiryns-walls

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

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

image13mtzigzag

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

minas-tirith3

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

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

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

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

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

image18badajoz

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

image19defenseofandelkrag

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

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

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

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

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

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

alamo-map-3

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

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

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

What do you think, dear readers?

And thanks, as ever, for reading!

MTCIDC

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

PPS

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

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

When One Door Closes.4

30 Wednesday Nov 2016

Posted by Ollamh in Imaginary History, J.R.R. Tolkien, Literary History, Maps, Uncategorized

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Alfred Lord Tennyson, Cirith Ungol, doors, Gilbert and Sullivan, Gondor, Grond, Hobbit door, James Fennimore Cooper, Minas Morgul, Minas Tirith, Morannon, Mordor, N.C. Wyeth, Nazgul, Orodruin, Princess Ida, Shelob's Lair, The Last of the Mohicans, The Lord of the Rings, The Princess, The Siege of Gondor, Tolkien

Welcome, as always, dear readers. In this posting, we’ll complete our survey of doors and entryways and what happens at them in The Lord of the Rings.

We began this series a little while ago when we got to thinking about Bilbo’s remark to Frodo that: “It’s a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door.”

Bilbo had learned this the hard way when Gandalf had come to his door and he had embarked upon an adventure he, originally, had no desire to be part of.

gandalfvisitsbilbo

In three postings, we’ve followed the story through doors and entryways from that moment all the way to the moment when Gandalf blocks the Lord of the Nazgul from entering Minas Tirith through its ruined main gate.

In the process, we have come to see that doors and entryways seem to come in two forms: first, there are doors which lead to safety; second, there are doors which lead to danger. We’ve added other elements, natural entryways, like fords and bridges, and the fact that many of the entryways have challenges and challengers barring the way.

In a moment of cheerful intellectual cruelty, we ended the last posting at that crucial moment in “The Siege of Gondor”, in which Grond, the battering ram of the armies of Mordor, has, with the magical aid of the Lord of the Nazgul, broken down the gate and that Lord is about to enter the city, when he meets Gandalf as the challenger:

“ ‘You cannot enter here,’ said Gandalf, and the huge shadow halted. ‘Go back to the abyss prepared for you! Go back! Fall into the nothingness that awaits you and your Master. Go!’ ”

And, just at that moment, “Great horns of the North wildly blowing. Rohan had come at last.”

[We wondered, by the way, if that “Great horns of the North wildly blowing” was an accidental or deliberate allusion to a lyric from Alfred Lord Tennyson’s

poetic criticism of the idea of women’s education, The Princess (1847),

in which we find the line “The horns of Elfland faintly blowing”—here’s the whole poem:

from The Princess: The Splendour Falls on Castle Walls

By Alfred, Lord Tennyson

The splendour falls on castle walls

And snowy summits old in story:

The long light shakes across the lakes,

And the wild cataract leaps in glory.

Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying,

Blow, bugle; answer, echoes, dying, dying, dying.

O hark, O hear! how thin and clear,

And thinner, clearer, farther going!

O sweet and far from cliff and scar

The horns of Elfland faintly blowing!

Blow, let us hear the purple glens replying:

Blow, bugle; answer, echoes, dying, dying, dying.

O love, they die in yon rich sky,

They faint on hill or field or river:

Our echoes roll from soul to soul,

And grow for ever and for ever.

Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying,

And answer, echoes, answer, dying, dying, dying.

This then formed the basis of an 1870 play by W.S. Gilbert, which he converted, with his collaborator, Arthur Sullivan, into an operetta, in 1884.]

Gilbert and Sullivan Cartoon.jpg

For the Aragorn and company half of the story, we see the arrival of the army of Gondor and its allies at the Morannon as the last door.

morannon.1.gif

Here, there are, in fact, two challengers/challenges. First,

“When all was ordered, the Captains rode forth towards the Black Gate with a great guard of horsemen and the banner and heralds and trumpeters…They came within cry of the Morannon, and unfurled the banner, and blew upon their trumpets; and the heralds stood out and sent their voices up over the battlement of Mordor.” (The Return of the King, Book 5, Chapter 10, “The Black Gate Opens”)

In return,

“There came a long rolling of great drums like thunder in the mountains, and then a braying of horns that shook the very stones and stunned men’s ears. And thereupon the door of the Black Gate was thrown open with a great clang, and out of it there came an embassy from the Dark Tower.”

In both cases, it goes without saying that this is a door to danger, the difference being that those from Gondor want those within to come out so that, by defeating them (though they have little hope of this), those from Gondor can enter, while those within the gate want to prevent their entry (except, perhaps, as prisoners).

As we turn to the other half of the narrative, we begin at the same gate, where Gollum has brought Frodo and Sam.

Here, there is no easily visible challenger, just the forbidding nature of the gate, but it is still not an entryway to safety, as, on the other side is an inhospitable landscape, populated by Sauron’s vast armies, constantly on the move, as we see in later chapters. As well, from those later chapters, we gain the sense that Frodo doesn’t believe he’s going to return from Mordor anyway.

Seeing no way to enter, Frodo pushes Gollum to lead them south and, with a diversion to Faramir’s base behind a waterfall (which, to us, is reminiscent of a similar hide-out in James Fennimore Cooper’s The Last of the Mohicans (1826)

—and how can we resist mentioning that, in 1919, N.C. Wyeth illustrated an edition?)

they arrive at the southern entryway to Mordor, the pass with Minas Morgul at its western end and Cirith Ungol at its eastern.

The challengers of Minas Morgul are the Lord of the Nazgul and a vast army, on their way to attack Minas Tirith, but these are skirted, as Gollum guides the two hobbits around the site and up on a perilous climb—and into Torech Ungol, Shelob’s Lair. Safety? Gollum wants the hobbits to think so. Danger? With Shelob as a challenger, what else?

Even as Sam drives Shelob off, however, he loses Frodo, paralyzed and cocooned, and is faced with an inner door closed by the orcs as they withdraw. Climbing over it, he moves forward, cloaked by the ring, to look out towards Orodruin and the Tower of Cirith Ungol.

cirith-ungol2

And, with this, we have finished our survey.

Unless, of course, we consider two more events.

First, there is what happens at Mount Doom, where Gollum is the challenger, and the door, such as it is, leads to safety for Middle-earth, but not for Sam and Frodo.

And, finally, at the edge of the Shire, in “The Scouring of the Shire”, where the returning hobbits meet with the followers of “Sharkey” at the bridge. Those followers, brain-washed by fear of “The Chief” and his “big man” followers, attempt to deny what should be a door to safety to Frodo, Merry, and Pippin, as the three had expected, but which leads, in fact, to conflict and open violence before their return home is safely accomplished.

With that, we complete the pattern and here is our chart:

Entryway	Source	Challenger	Challenged	Outcome
Bilbo’s door	The Hobbit	Bilbo	Dwarves	Bilbo is tricked into hospitality
Beorn’s house	The Hobbit	Beorn	Gandalf	Beorn tricked into hospitality
Goblin cave	The Hobbit	Goblins	Bilbo	Escapes by use of the Ring
Mirkwood	The Hobbit	Elves	Dwarves/Bilbo	Bilbo rescues dwarves with Ring and barrels
Lonely Mountain (Back door)	The Hobbit	Smaug	Dwarves/Bilbo	Understanding the inscription, Dwarves open the door
Lonely Mountain (Front door)	The Hobbit	Dwarves	Men, Elves, Goblins	Battle of the Five Armies—eventual settlement
Bilbo’s door	The Hobbit	Hobbits	Bilbo	Bilbo’s things are up for auctions—Bilbo gets most things back
Ford of Bruinen	The Lord of the Rings	Wraiths	Frodo/Elves	After Frodo’s challenge, elf magic overwhelms wraiths
Moria (west gate)	The Lord of the Rings	Elves of Hollin	Fellowship	Gandalf discovers password—the group enters
Lothlorien (western side)	The Lord of the Rings	Elves	Fellowship	Challenged by elves, but allowed to enter
Edoras	The Lord of the Rings	Rohirrim	Gandalf et al.	Challenged by gate guards, but allowed to enter
Meduseld	The Lord of the Rings	Hama	Gandalf et al.	Challenged, but allowed to enter
Helms Deep	The Lord of the Rings	Aragorn	Orcs/Wildings	Aragorn warns them of their danger
Isengard	The Lord of the Rings	Merry/Pippin	Gandalf et al.	Greeted and offered food, drink, and smoke
Paths of the Dead	The Lord of the Rings	Oath-breakers	Aragorn at al.	Allowed to enter, but followed—leave safely
Morannon	The Lord of the Rings	Sauron	King Elessar et al.	Sauron’s army appears for battle
Morannon	The Lord of the Rings	Sauron	Frodo/Sam/Gollum	No way of entry—the three head south
Minas Morgul	The Lord of the Rings	Lord of Nazgul	Frodo/Sam/Gollum	Entry blocked by Lord’s Army
Torech Ungol	The Lord of the Rings	Shelob	Frodo/Sam	Gollum escapes, Frodo paralyzed by Shelob
Cirith Ungol	The Lord of the Rings	Orcs	Sam	With Ring as aid, Sam enters
Mt. Doom	The Lord of the Rings	Gollum	Frodo	Gollum gains Ring, but perishes in fire
Shire bridge	The Lord of the Rings	Hobbits	Frodo et al.	Hobbits climb over gate, guards run

Because this material becomes increasingly complex, there is always the possibility that, as thorough as we try to be and as inclusive, we’ve missed something. If so, we’d be glad to hear from our readers!

Thanks, as always, for reading!

MTCIDC

Further Thoughts

02 Wednesday Nov 2016

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

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Alexander of Macedon, Athenian Empire, Babylon, Cleopatra VII, Delian League, Mongol Empire, Mordor, Persians, Plataea, Ptolemy, Sauron, Tolkien, W.H. Auden

Welcome, dear readers, as ever.

It is one of the pleasures—perhaps we should say even blessings—of JRRT that there is such a richness available within his work—and within him—that no subject can ever be discussed to a perfect conclusion. In an earlier posting, we talked about Sauron and his demands, but, as we watch our current world and certain powers who are maneuvering to gain increasing control over land and sea, we have come back once more to wondering about what it is that Sauron has planned to do and what he will have if he succeeds.

In an unpublished reply to a review by W.H. Auden, JRRT wrote:

“The theatre of my tale is this earth, the one in which we now live, but the historical period is imaginary. The essentials of that abiding place are all there (at any rate for inhabitants of N.W. Europe), so naturally it feels familiar, even if a little glorified by the enchantment of distance in time.” (Letters, 239)

Thus, we can feel justified, we think, in looking at a would-be world conqueror from an actual historical period to see if we can better understand the fictional Sauron.

If we consider Alexander of Macedon,

we see someone who began with a project which, in part, went back for a century and more before his own time: to take back the western shore of northern Asia Minor from its Persian overlords. This had been begun by the Delian League,

The Delian League - map.jpg

a group of Greek city-states who had been participants in the ultimate battle defeat of the invading Persians, at Plataea, in 479bc.

After he had defeated the southern Greeks at Chaeronea in 338bc with the aid of his son, Alexander, it had been Philip II of Macedon’s plan to do what the League had planned and take back Asia Minor from the Persian empire. Philip was murdered (by a “lone spearman”) in 336, but Alexander, took over the plan and, in 334, invaded the Persian empire and, within three years or so, had conquered it—

but then had kept moving eastward, besieging cities, winning battles, all the way into western India, where his army finally revolted and refused to go farther.

He returned to his new capital, Babylon, to die there in 323bc.

the_death_of_alexander_the_great_after_the_painting_by_karl_von_piloty_1886

Because Alexander had no grown male heirs, his new empire fell apart very quickly, his chief generals seizing big chunks and defending them against other generals. We can presume, we think, that he hadn’t been planning to die young (he was born in 356), so we assume that he was out to do something permanent. His generals—the successful ones—founded dynasties, the longest-lived of them being that of Ptolemy,

Coin (Ptolemy I) (Alexandria 305-285 BC).jpg

who grabbed Egypt, and whose last descendant to rule was Cleopatra VII (yes, that Cleopatra), who committed suicide in 30bc.

Kleopatra-VII.-Altes-Museum-Berlin1.jpg

If Alexander was planning to do something similar, only on a larger scale, how do we understand it? What was all of that conquest for and why was it never enough?

Part of the explanation may lie in the analogy of the folk-tradition about sharks: that they have to keep moving to breathe. This is apparently not true (google Discovery.com/tv-shows/shark-week).

great-white-shark-swimming-blue.jpg.adapt.945.1.jpg

It’s a good image, however, of how an expanding kingdom has to work: the more land you have, the more people you have, the more people you have, the more food you need, therefore you need an increased food supply, which means either buying it or taking it from outside, or making the land itself produce more or simply acquiring more land—and the cycle begins again. This may have been what caused the rapid expansion of the Mongol empire in the 13^th century ad, although, in their case, it may not have been expanding population so much as expanding flocks and herds which needed more pasture land.

We might see Sauron in the same light: he needed huge armies to conquer Middle-earth, his huge armies, both humans and orcs, would need feeding (even orcs ate, after all, although as to what they ate…) and therefore would have needed a huge amount of growing land to be fed from, and so on and so on. Certainly Mordor was not the place for gardens and grain fields.

JRRT says of Sauron:

“Sauron desired to be a God-King, and was held to be this by his servants; if he had been victorious he would have demanded divine honour from all rational creatures and absolute temporal power over the whole world.” (Letters 243-244)

And perhaps this offers another view of Alexander, in turn. As Sauron would have needed land to feed his armies, perhaps Alexander was intent upon collecting worshippers? Certainly he allowed rumors to circulate that he was at least semi-divine—as we see in this coin portrait, where he is portrayed with the horns of Zeus/Ammon, a combination Greek and Egyptian god.

Alexander succeeded in gaining territory—although not so much as he wished—but died before founding the dynasty which might have given his kingdom stability. Sauron lost, not only his kingdom-in-the-making, but his corporeal form and the bulk of his power. JRRT has given us a hint as to one side of his plans—founding a religion with himself as the god, but perhaps Alexander has given us a clue as to another side, the need to support his means of conquest. In turn, Sauron may supply a clue to another side of Alexander’s plans: inserting himself into the religion of his Greek subjects, then expanding his cult throughout as much of the world as he could conquer.

Thanks, as ever, for reading.

MTCIDC

Paying No Attention to the Man Behind the Curtain

08 Wednesday Jun 2016

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

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Beowulf, Cloacina, Connacht, Grendel, Heorot, Horatius, King of Leinster, Lembas, Lord Chesterfield, Mac Da Tho, Mordor, Odysseus, Penelope, Tamora Pierce, The Lord of the Rings, The Odyssey, The Wizard of Oz, Tolkien, Ulster

Dear Readers,

Welcome, as always, to our blog. In this posting, we want to consider something usually invisible, but, at the same time, for reader/listeners, always there in adventure stories.

Think for a moment about your day. And how filled it is with requirements of the body, from sleep to washing to eating to—yes, you see where we’re going.

(And we can’t see this 18^th century outhouse—sometimes called a “necessary” or a “privy” then—without thinking of part of a letter by the famous 18^th-century essayist/letter-writer Lord Chesterfield (1694-1773).

Philip_Stanhope,_4th_Earl_of_Chesterfield.PNG

Who wrote a series of affectionate and very worldly-wise letters to his illegitimate son. In one of them he had the following advice—

“I knew a gentleman who was so good a manager of his time that he would not even lose that small portion of it which the calls of nature obliged him to pass in the necessary-house; but gradually went through all the Latin poets in those moments. He bought, for example, a common edition of Horace, of which he tore off gradually a couple of pages, carried them with him to that necessary place, read them first, and then sent them down as a sacrifice to Cloacina: this was so much time fairly gained, and I recommend you to follow his example…. Books of science and of a grave sort must be read with continuity; but there are very many, and even very useful ones, which may be read with advantage by snatches and unconnectedly: such are all the good Latin poets, except Virgil in his Æneid, and such are most of the modern poets, in which you will find many pieces worth reading that will not take up above seven or eight minutes.”

Cloacina was the patron goddess of the ancient main drain of Rome. Here’s an image of her shrine—

and here’s her drain

But, as we were starting to say, things of the body, ordinary things, are almost entirely ignored both in traditional adventure and in modern versions. In fact, it’s a bit of a shock to see, in some of Tamora Pierce’s YA novels (a big favorite of ours), that people actually use a latrine.

When we look at JRRT, for example, whose works we’ve often tried to set into a medieval context, we never see what one would have seen in such a context, whether behind a farmhouse

or in some place grand.

Garderobe,_Peveril_Castle,_Derbyshire.jpg

We began with the least common possibility, but this is as true for other functions—usually taken for granted, except for specific reasons. Sleep, for example, is very often employed simply as a way to show the passage of time during an adventure—and, in worlds without googlemaps, Siri, and perhaps even signposts

it’s a very natural and easy way to mark time and distance simultaneously.

Eating can show the same—think of Sam hoarding lembas as he and Frodo trek towards Mordor—

JRRT then uses it to show urgency, as well—what will they do in Mordor, when it runs out?

Of course, eating—in the form of feasting, in particular—can provide a major plot element.

Think of Heorot, the feasting hall, in Beowulf, for instance,

where feasts are ruined until Beowulf defeats their ruiner, Grendel.

Or the endless feasting of the suitors in the Odyssey

as they eat up everything which makes Odysseus the lord of his lands, besides trying to steal his wife, Penelope.

JohnWilliamWaterhouse-PenelopeandtheSuitors(1912).jpg

Here, eating and drinking take on a greater significance in that they are symbolic of the slow destruction of Odysseus’ household. They also provide a great setting for his reappearance and then, with the help of Athena, his massacre of the suitors in one of the wildest revenge scenes we know. It has quite a number of illustrators, from ancient

to Victorian

to modern—and our favorite, for the way it’s being shown from the angle of Odysseus’ patron, Athena

And then there is the feast, held in the rath of the king of Leinster, Mac Da Tho, which has to be one of the zaniest scela in Old Irish literature. Leinster’s most powerful neighbors, Ulster and Connacht, are at dinner, but there is a sudden difficulty over who will carve the pig.

Pictish_symbol_stone_from_Dores Wiki Commons.JPG

Like so many of the stories of the so-called “Ulster Cycle”, it is full of over-the-top violence and grim humor as both powers struggle to gain the honor of carving and therefore having the right to award the curadmir, the “hero’s portion”.

As you think about your favorite heroic or adventure story, consider the above—where can you see body care/body functions? Then, to take it a step farther: where does anyone ever sneeze? (We can think of one special one, but what can you come up with?—Hint: see Odyssey 17…)

Thanks, as ever, for reading.

MTCIDC

Lingua Orca

10 Wednesday Feb 2016

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

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Adventure, Black Speech, Bree, Cirth, Fantasy, Gandalf, L. Frank Baum, Mordor, Orcs, Origin of Orcs, Ozma of Oz, Princess Langwidere, The Lord of the Rings, Thorin, Tolkien

Welcome, dear readers, as always.

In P. Jackson’s The Desolation of Smaug, there is a scene at the opening, cut from whole cloth as so much of the later Hobbit movies, in which Gandalf meets Thorin in The Prancing Pony in Bree.

There Gandalf shows Thorin a “message”.

“Gandalf: It is Black Speech.

[Thorin looks at Gandalf with unease]

Gandalf: A promise of payment.

Thorin: For what?

Gandalf: Your head. Someone wants you dead.”

One can laugh at that last—is there the possibility that someone who promised payment for a head would not want the owner dead? (Here we thought, for a moment, of the Princess Langwidere in L. Frank Baum’s Ozma of Oz, who has a collection of 30 exchangeable heads which she keeps locked in a cabinet.)

After laughing, however, we began to wonder just who that message was supposed to be for.

Tolkien says of the Black Speech:

“It is said that the Black Speech was devised by Sauron in the Dark Years, and that he had desired to make it the language of all those that served him, but he failed in that purpose.”

We are never told why he failed: was it too complicated? Too impractical? Too limited? (In modern terms, we can imagine Sauron sending out memos, saying things like: “To All Departments: it has come to Our attention that there are those who are not using the Black Speech in all official documents. Please conform to standards as laid out in Mordor Bulletin #512. Immediate.”) If what Isildur has to say about the inscription inside the ring is true,

Sauron doesn’t appear to have devised a script in which to write it:

“Already the writing upon it, which at first was as clear as red flame, fadeth and is now only barely to be read. It is fashioned in an elven-script of Eregion, for they have no letters in Mordor for such subtle work…” (The Fellowship of the Ring, Book 2, Chapter 2, “The Council of Elrond”)

Tolkien continues:

From the Black Speech, however, were derived many of the words that were in the Third Age wide- spread among the Orcs, such as ghash ‘fire’, but after the first overthrow of Sauron this language in its ancient form was forgotten by all but the Nazgul. When Sauron arose again, it became once more the language of Barad-dur and of the captains of Mordor.”

Could the “promise of payment” be meant for the Nazgul, then? That hardly seems likely—after all, they are the main servants of Sauron, bound to him by the rings they wear, Nazgul, after all, meaning “ring wraith”. Sauron’s success is their success—just as his failure seems to mean their end.

Because this scene exists only in the minds of the scriptwriters, we could have just shrugged it off right there as being a piece with the resurrected Azog and that ridiculous arm which he seems to have borrowed from a macho Frosty the Snowman, “Tauriel” and the embarrassing romance with a Dwarf, etc, etc, etc. Instead, we decided to play with the idea.

Using Tolkien’s actual texts as the basis of our thinking, we wondered: if the message wasn’t for the Nazgul and the Black Speech is specifically linked to Mordor, who else might be the recipient? Well, there are always the Orcs—but could they read it?

We know—sort of—what they are. Fangorn tells Merry and Pippin that they were made by Sauron as mockery of Elves. Tolkien himself seemed initially a bit puzzled about Orcish origins, calling them, in a letter to Milton Waldman (Letters no.131, 151, “probably in late 1951”) “…the Orcs (goblins) and other monsters bred by the First Enemy”. The same is said in Appendix F of The Lord of the Rings: “The Orcs were first bred by the Dark Power of the North in the Elder Days.” Then, in a letter to Naomi Mitchison (Letters, no.144, 177-8, 25 April, 1954), however, he writes: “Orcs…are nowhere clearly stated to be of any particular origin. But since they are servants of the Dark Power, and later of Sauron, neither of whom could, or would, produce living things, they must be ‘corruptions.’” And, again, in the draft of a letter to Peter Hastings, from later in the same year, he explains, quoting Frodo, speaking to Sam: “ ‘The Shadow that bred them can only mock, it cannot make real new things of its own. I don’t think it gave life to the Orcs, it only ruined them and twisted them.’” to which he adds, “In the legends of the Elder Days it is suggested that the Diabolus subjugated and corrupted some of the earliest Elves…” (Letters, no.153, 191). (This is continued later in the same letter, 195.)

Of their speech, JRRT wrote:

“It is said that they had no language of their own, but took what they could of other tongues and perverted it to their own liking; yet they made only brutal jargons, scarcely sufficient for their own needs, unless it were for curses and abuse. So it was in the Third Age Orcs used for communication between breed and breed the Westron tongue…” (The Lord of the Rings, Appendix F)

(Linguistically, we wonder if it would be possible for a people—especially a people who appear, in the later Third Age, to be extensive in number—could actually have had no language—or languages–of their own, particularly if they were a people who had existed before being corrupted by Morgoth. In The Lord of the Rings, for example, although they speak the Common Speech, they clearly have names out of some other language—what might that have been?)

Taking the next step, in a previous posting, we had begun to probe the question of literacy versus orality in Middle Earth and here we might ask the question: were Orcs literate at all? The only possible clue we’d found is in Appendix E of The Lord of the Rings, where it is said of the form of writing called “Cirth”:

“The Cirth in their older and simpler form spread eastward in the Second Age, and became known to many peoples, to Men and Dwarves, and even to Orcs…”

This would suggest that they were.

When we actually see the Orcs, however, do we find any evidence of the use of that writing?

There are only a couple of extended passages when we hear the Orcs as well as see them. The first is in the chapter entitled “The Uruk-hai”. In this chapter, the Orcs who have Merry and Pippin argue over their captives and we hear several talk about “orders” and “my orders”, but no documents appear or are mentioned: are these only oral orders? The second time we hear the Orcs is in “The Choices of Master Samwise.” Here, Sam overhears two Orc officers, Gorbag and Shagrat, talking. “The messages go through quicker than anything could fly, as a rule. But I don’t inquire how it’s done. Safest not to.” says Gorbag. And, a little later, Shagrat says, “A message came: Nazgul uneasy. Spies feared on Stairs. Double vigilance. Patrol to head of Stairs.” Unfortunately, there’s no further information here– although that second message almost sounds like it’s one step from being a tweet! (Or, in JRRT’s time, a Western Union telegram.) But then Shagrat says, “ I have my orders…Any trespasser found by the guard is to be held at the tower. Prisoner to be stripped. Full description of every article, garment, weapon, letter, ring, or trinket to be sent to Lugburz at once, and to Lugburz only…” Does such detail require writing? It does say “full description…to be sent”, which certainly suggests it.

We have a final glimpse and earful of the Orcs from “The Tower of Cirith Ungol” and into “The Land of Shadow”, but there are no more discussions of orders or messages or descriptions, just more of the brutality and treachery which seems the norm for such creatures.

So, we have two statements, in total, which are more suggestive than actual proof: Cirth was known to Orcs and the order for a “full description” to be sent to Barad-dur. Does that mean that, should Shagrat or Gorbag have written, he would have done so in Cirth? If so, this proves only literacy in that form and, when we look back to the one sample we have of any length (all of two lines) of the actual Black Speech, it is in Tengwar as we know, from Isildur, that Sauron—at least at the time of the making of the ring—had no Black Speech writing system to employ.

Conclusions? Although it was fun to do the research, at base, this was a fool’s errand—the whole thing, after all, was a creation of the same people who brought you Thranduil on an Irish elk (for more on that, google the extremely useful—and entertaining!– www.tolkien-treasures and see the entry on Thranduil and his mount).

If we play along, as we have, there’s only a process of elimination. The only people who had anything to do with the (revived) Black Speech were in Mordor. If it wasn’t the Nazgul and it wasn’t the Orcs, who’s left? Only one possibility seems to remain: Sauron wrote it as a memo to himself, a kind of Barad-dur post-it, (“To Me: Thorin. Head. Reward? Do soonest.”), but, being very busy in contract negotiations with Benedict Cumberbatch’s agent on voice-overs, he absentmindedly sent it.

What do you think, dear readers?

As always, thanks for reading!

MTCIDC

Knowledge, Rule, Order

06 Wednesday Jan 2016

Posted by Ollamh in Fairy Tales and Myths, Imaginary History, J.R.R. Tolkien, Military History, Military History of Middle-earth, Narrative Methods

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Adolf Hitler, Anduin, Benedict Cumberbatch, Benito Mussolini, British Government, Charlie Chaplin, dictatorships, England, Gandalf, George V, Germany, Gondor, gothic script, Government, History, India, Isengard, Kaiser Willhelm II, Lenin, Mehmed VI, Middle-earth, monarchs, Mordor, Nazis, newsreel, Numenor, Ottoman Empire, Oz, Peter Jackson, Queen Mary, Queen Victoria, Rohan, Saruman, Sauron, Scott, Smaug, Stalin, Stock Market Crash of 1929, Sultan, The Great Dictator, The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien, Treaty of Versailles, Valar, Victoria Louise, Weimar Republic, William Morris, Writing

Dear Readers,

Welcome, as always.

Have you ever wondered what Middle Earth would have been like if the Fourth Age had begun on a calendar written by Sauron?

That of the Third Age was hardly a democratic paradise: a king rules Rohan, a stand-in for king rules Gondor. Elrond and Celeborn/Galadriel behave and are treated like royalty and Thranduil, as we learn from The Hobbit, is the king of Mirkwood. The dwarves have hereditary rulers. Only the outliers—communities like Bree and the Shire and the earlier inhabitants like Tom Bombadil and Fangorn—appear to be completely independent. (The Shire even has elections and a mayor, although the actual government, except for the shire reeves, appears to bemostly token—you wonder who’s running their seemingly-efficient postal service.)

This is not surprising, not only for an author born during the later years of Victoria,

but also for someone powerfully influenced by the medievalist interests of everyone from Scott

Sir_William_Allan_-_Sir_Walter_Scott,_1771_-_1832._Novelist_and_poet_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg

to William Morris.

(We might add that the world of fairy tales, full of princes and princesses, queens and kings, was also a powerful influence at the time—and not only on story-tellers born in monarchies—after all, even Oz is ruled by a queen—

Yet, after Smaug—who could better be a medieval fantasy villain (especially with the voice of the incomparable Benedict Cumberbatch attached)?

—something changed in Tolkien’s world. In fact, something changed in the whole outside world. With the end of World War One, monarchs toppled all over Europe and beyond, from:

Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany

to Mehmed VI, last Sultan of the Ottoman Empire.

In place of the former, there appeared the always-troubled Weimar Republic, full of good intentions, but badly crippled, not only by the war which had sapped its manpower and resources, but by all kinds of social unrest and then by the Crash of 1929, which notoriously destroyed the value of its currency.

weimar currency.jpg

As early as 1919, there had been clashes among the forces of different ideologies—

CombatesEnBerlín19190903.jpg

And, amidst all of the unrest, there was a failed coup attempt in 1923 by the man in the overcoat in this picture.

Bundesarchiv_Bild_102-00344A,_München,_nach_Hitler-Ludendorff_Prozess.jpg

He, of course, was only following the footsteps of this man, who had pushed his way into power the year before—

to be followed, in turn, by the man on the left, from the mid-1920s.

That first man, having failed at obvious violence, tried again through more complicated means (although still employing violence, if it suited his purposes) and succeeded in 1933.

He was, so we are told, a riveting public speaker, but, if the newsreels we’ve seen are evidence, we guess you would have had to have been there.

Some people thought the style exaggerated in the 1930s and caricatured it even then.

He had a definite social agenda, which he outlined at length and often, although concealing certain of the most horrible aspects. And he liked big words and big concepts, like:

It would have been impossible for someone as intelligent and generally well-informed as Tolkien not to have been very much aware of this man and all of the other like men, busy oppressing as much of the world as they could. And this would have been especially true in a time when radio and film were changing how people received news—and how those interested in influencing others might shape what people saw. As early as 1911, the British government was using newsreel film to show the might and reach of its empire (2/5 of the globe was in their hands) when the king, George V, and his wife, Queen Mary, visited India.

Delhi_Durbar,_1911.jpg

Not to be outdone, Kaiser Wilhelm II encouraged a grand—and filmed–event in 1913, for the wedding of his daughter, Victoria Louise—and some of the film was even in color.

The Marriage of Victoria Louise Color Film

It would be easy to imagine, then, that the weight of such public figures might have influenced Tolkien in his depiction of late-3^rd-Age villains. We can see it in Saruman’s unsuccessful attempt to persuade Gandalf to join him:

“ ‘He drew himself up then and began to declaim, as if he were making a speech long rehearsed. ‘The Elder Days are gone. The Middle Days are passing. The Younger Days are beginning. The time of the Elves is over, but our time is at hand: the world of Men, which we must rule. But we must have power, power to order all things as we will, for that good which only the Wise can see.” (The Fellowship of the Ring, Chapter 2, “The Council of Elrond”)

Thus, unlike the script of Jackson’s version, there is no plan to wipe out men and replace them with orcs. Instead, men are to survive: to be ruled—perhaps under what definitely sounds like it should be a translation from something written in Fraktur—the fake Gothic script favored by the Nazis–

die-schöne-deutsche-Schrift-detail1.jpg

“ ‘We can bide our time,’” says Saruman, “ ‘we can keep our thoughts in our hearts, deploring maybe evils done by the way, but approving the high and ultimate purpose: Knowledge, Rule, Order; all the things that we have so far striven in vain to accomplish…’ ”

Such abstract, but somehow menacing, words sound like a translation of something from Hitler’s Germany: Kenntnisse, Herrschaft, Ordnung. They do not sound in the least like Gandalf’s goals, ever, and he, in fact, replies by implying that not only are they not really Saruman’s words, but that Saruman is foolish for believing them:

“ ‘Saruman,’ I said, ‘I have heard speeches of this kind before, but only in the mouths of emissaries sent from Mordor to deceive the ignorant.’ “

As really the words of Sauron, however, they give us an idea of what to expect in a world under his control. Knowledge would be for Sauron alone, we suppose, perhaps after regaining his lost ring? Certainly he wouldn’t share it with Saruman, whom, it will become clear, he never trusted. As for Rule and Order, the world would be a place full of rules and those watching that they be obeyed. And here we can remember Sharkey’s Shire, with its “by order of the Chief” signs—and its gangs of human enforcers. As well, we can think of its grey, industrial character, as we’ve discussed in a previous post, a universal Mordor, devoted to production. To this, we can add the Mouth of Sauron’s recitation of surrender conditions, delivered to the allies before the Morannon:

“ ‘These are the terms…The rabble of Gondor and its deluded allies shall withdraw at once beyond the Anduin, first taking oaths never again to assail Sauron the Great in arms, open or secret. All lands east of the Anduin shall be Sauron’s for ever, solely. West of the Anduin as far as the Gap of Rohan shall be tributary to Mordor, and men there shall bear no weapons, but shall have leave to govern their own affairs. But they shall help to rebuild Isengard which they have wantonly destroyed, and that shall be Sauron’s, and there his lieutenant shall dwell: not Saruman, but one more worthy of trust.’ “ (The Return of the King, Chapter 10, “The Black Gate Opens”)

In keeping with the influence of current events in this world, we might see this as being a parallel with the 1919 Versailles Treaty, in which Germany was to be forced to make huge territorial concessions, to disarm almost entirely, and to pay massive amounts in reparation to the victorious allies.

Treaty_of_Versailles,_English_version.jpg

The Treaty of Versailles– Wiki Article

Such terms as Sauron offers would also destroy Rohan as an ally and set up a permanent garrison between it and the north. We might also expect the restored Isengard to be a staging area for an assault upon Fangorn and the ents, to their ultimate destruction. As well, “west of the Anduin” is a very vague expression—does it include Gondor, as well as Rohan?

Religion in The Lord of the Rings has always been the subject of debate: how much or how little? Of what kind? Tolkien is quoted as saying that it was monotheistic, although, when attacked by the Mumak, Faramir’s men called on the (plural) Valar. There is no mention, in what is often extremely detailed landscape description, of any kind of temple or shrine, however. Nevertheless, we would like to conclude with an eerie thought about religion in this alternative Fourth Age. The Mouth of Sauron, aka, The Lieutenant of the Tower of Barad-dur, is described as:

“…a renegade, who came of the race of those that are named the Black Numenoreans; for they established their dwellings in Middle-earth during the years of Sauron’s domination, and they worshipped him, being enamoured of evil knowledge.”

Could we imagine that, in this other Fourth Age, a new and horrible religion might have appeared, one dedicated to the worship of Sauron—and to that Knowledge which Saruman finds so important? What do you think, dear readers?

As always, thanks for reading.

MTCIDC

doubtfulsea

~ adventure fantasy

Tag Archives: Mordor

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Knowledge, Rule, Order