I’m always amazed at how many kinds of phobias there are.
There’s the classic acrophobia—
and nyctophobia—
and trypanophobia
(of which George Lucas takes advantage in Star Wars IV
that needle is positively dripping!)
and one of my favorites, coulrophobia–
(and who wouldn’t be afraid of that?)
as well as the seemingly common arachnophobia,
of which Steven Spielberg took advantage in the first Indiana Jones movie—
Because of Shelob in The Lord of the Rings,
(Ted Nasmith)
Tolkien, perhaps suspected of this—after all, there are also those large spiders in The Hobbit—
(Alan Lee)
wrote to W.H. Auden in 1955:
“But I did know more or less all about Gollum and his part, and Sam, and I knew that the way was guarded by a Spider. And if that has anything to do with my being stung by a tarantula when a small child,
people are welcome to the notion (supposing the improbable, that any one is interested). I can only say that I remember nothing about it, should not know it if I had not been told; and I do not dislike spiders particularly, and have no urge to kill them. I usually rescue those whom I find in the bath!” (letter to W.H. Auden, 7 June, 1955, Letters, 316. For more on this, see: “Phobe” 24 May, 2023 here: https://doubtfulsea.com//?s=phobe&search=Go )
So, as far as we know, then, JRRT makes no mention of any other fears and insists that he had no dread of arachnids, even if they make two major appearances in his works. There is another possible phobia which he doesn’t discuss, however—claustrophobia—
and I’ve wondered: could we perhaps see a mild form in his case?
I suppose that one might immediately point out that Bilbo, in effect, lives in a cave—
(JRRT)
but Tolkien’s illustration suggests that this isn’t a place for spelunking—
and his description of Bag End underlines this:
“Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat: it was a hobbit-hole, and that means comfort.
…The door opened on to a tube-shaped hall like a tunnel: a very comfortable tunnel without smoke, with panelled walls, and floors tiled and carpeted, provided with polished chairs, and lots and lots of pegs for hats and coats…” (The Hobbit, Chapter One, “An Unexpected Party”)
But consider all of his adventures in the novel: how many of them take place in adverse conditions under ground?
First, there’s the mention of the cave where the trolls
(JRRT)
kept their loot:
“There were bones on the floor and a nasty smell in the air; but there was a good deal of food jumbled carelessly on shelves and on the ground among an untidy litter of plunder, of all sorts from buttons to pots full of gold coins standing in a corner. There were lots of clothes, too, hanging on the walls—too small for trolls, I am afraid they belonged to victims…” (The Hobbit, Chapter Two, “Roast Mutton”—there was also “bacon to toast in the embers of the fire”—but, considering a major troll protein source and remembering William’s remark—“Yer can’t expect folk to stop here for ever just to be et by you and Bert. You’ve et a village and a half between yer since we come down from the mountains.” I wonder that Bilbo and the dwarves would touch it!)
Then there was the network of caves cut by the goblins under the Misty Mountains,
(JRRT—but looking from the east westwards)
where Bilbo and the dwarves were briefly held prisoner by the goblins
(Alan Lee)
and where Bilbo had his encounter with Gollum.
(Alan Lee again)
Later, we have the halls of Thranduil, where the dwarves are again held prisoner,
(JRRT)
before the final underground nightmare, the Lonely Mountain.
IJRRT)
And those are just the subterranean terrors in The Hobbit.
Continuing to The Lord of the Rings, we have Moria,
(Alan Lee)
where, besides being temporarily trapped by orcs in the Chamber of Mazarbul,
(Angus McBride)
the Fellowship loses Gandalf to the Balrog.
(Angus McBride)
There are the caves at Helm’s Deep, about which Gimli is enthusiastic, but Legolas is not.
I’m always interested in influences on Tolkien and have written about them here and there in the past. It’s clear that he was always susceptible to them and would sometimes, when questioned, candidly admit to them, as he did, in this letter to the editor of The Observer:
“Beowulf is among my most valued sources; though it was not consciously present to the mind in the process of writing, in which the episode of the theft [of a cup by an escaped slave from a dragon’s hoard] arose naturally (and almost inevitably) from the circumstances. It is difficult to think of any other way of conducting the story at that point. I fancy the author of Beowulf would say much the same.” (letter to the editor of The Observer, printed 20 February, 1938, Letters, 41)
This theft and its consequences are readily apparent in Beowulf. Athough, unlike Smaug, he never speaks a word, the dragon who has suffered the loss very eloquently protests that theft—
”Then the baleful fiend its fire belched out, and bright homes burned. The blaze stood high all landsfolk frighting. No living thing 2315would that loathly one leave as aloft it flew. Wide was the dragon’s warring seen, its fiendish fury far and near, as the grim destroyer those Geatish people hated and hounded. To hidden lair, 2320to its hoard it hastened at hint of dawn. Folk of the land it had lapped in flame, with bale and brand.”
Along with the theft, Tolkien actually uses the idea of dragon destruction more than once, beginning with:
“The pines were roaring on the height,
The winds were moaning in the night.
The fire was red, it flaming spread;
The trees like torches blazed with light.
The bells were ringing in the dale
And men looked up with faces pale;
The dragon’s ire more fierce than fire
Laid low their towers and houses frail.”
(The Hobbit, Chapter One, “An Unexpected Party”)
where the dwarves sing it in the dark in Bilbo’s house.
(the Hildebrandts)
This is a poetic description of Smaug’s initial taking possession of Mt Erebor (“the Lonely Mountain”), after destroying the town of Dale, just below it.
(JRRT You can see the remains of Dale, just to the lower right.)
We’ll see more of this when Smaug later attacks Lake-town—
“Fire leaped from thatched roofs and wooden beam-ends as he [Smaug] hurtled down and past and round again…Back swirled the dragon. A sweep of his tail and the roof of the Great House crumbled and smashed down. Flames unquenchable sprang high into the night. Another swoop and another, and another house and then another sprang afire and fell…” (The Hobbit, Chapter Fourteen, “Fire and Water”)
This is wonderful, vivid story-telling, but, for me, the most powerful part of it is not the destruction itself, but the consequences of such destruction, beginning with Smaug’s original arrival, something which Bilbo only learns about from eavesdropping on the boatmen, in whose barrels Bilbo has hidden the dwarves in their escape from the forest elves.
(JRRT)
“As he listened to the talk of the raftmen and pieced together the scraps of information they let fall, he soon realized that he was very fortunate ever to have seen it [the Lonely Mountain] at all, even from this distance…The talk was all of the trade that came and went on the waterways and the growth of the traffic on the river, as the roads out of the East towards Mirkwood vanished or fell into disuse; and of the bickering of the Lake-men and the Wood-elves about the upkeep of the Forest River and the care of the banks. Those lands had changed much since the days when dwarves dwelt in the Mountain…Great floods and rains had swollen the waters that flowed east; and there had been an earthquake or two (which some were inclined to attribute to the dragon…). The marshes and bogs had spread wider and wider on either side. Paths had vanished, and many a rider and wanderer too, if they had tried to find the lost ways across. The elf-road through the wood which the dwarves had followed on the advice of Beorn now came to a doubtful and little used end at the eastern edge of the forest…” (The Hobbit, Chapter Ten, “A Warm Welcome”)
The dragon, the cup and its theft, and the consequences for Beowulf’s southern Sweden all are derived from the Old English poem.
For all of this landscape of destruction described by the raftsmen, however, I would propose one further source, not something which Tolkien had read, but which he himself had experienced.
When JRRT arrived in northern France in June, 1916, just in time for the Somme offensive, the war had been going on for nearly two years in the region and the heavy artillery of the era
had done a very good job of leveling virtually everything in sight, from houses
to churches
to whole towns
to bridges
to railways,
and this was the world through which Tolkien walked for some months, till invalided out with trench fever in November, 1916.
The destruction either caused by or attributed to Smaug would seem to be everywhere in these images.
I would add, however, a prophetic element to JRRT’s description.
The idea of Tolkien’s Great War experiences and how they may have shaped his views on many things has become a commonplace of Tolkien studies, the seminal work being John Garth’s Tolkien and the Great War, 2003.
But then another war came, and, with it, many dragons flying over Britain,
remind him, on the one hand, of what he had seen in the Great War, and, on the other, of what he had imagined and described from what he had seen then?
“They removed northward higher up the shore; for ever after they had a dread of the water where the dragon lay. He would never again return to his golden bed, but was stretched cold as stone, twisted upon the floor of the shallows. There for ages his huge bones could be seen in calm weather amid the ruined piles of the old town . But few dared to cross the cursed spot, and none dared to dive into the shivering water or recover the precious stones that fell from his rotting carcase.” (The Hobbit, Chapter Fourteen, “Fire and Water”)
Thanks, as always, for reading.
Stay well,
When you think of dragons, remember the Reluctant one, as well as the terrible,
Where are “eaves” anyway, and why would you drop from them?
On a modern roof, they look like this—
If you lived in the mid-15th century, when the expression “eavesdropper” first appears, it might look like this—that’s the overhang of the thatched roof–
As Etymonline will be happy to tell you,“eaves” is from Old English “efes”, the “overhang of a roof”, plus “dropa”, “a drop (as of rain)”, so “that area of the roof from which the rain drips”. (For more, see: https://www.etymonline.com/word/eavesdrop )
The idea, then, is that, if you wanted to listen in on an indoor conversation, you might climb on a roof, hang your head over the side, and follow someone speaking below, say at an open window—rather as Sam Gamgee does, although he does so less precariously—
(Robert Chronister)
In our modern world, more than once, I’ve found myself doing this—and probably you have, too–although inadvertently, as someone nearby has been bellowing into his/her cellphone while sitting or standing near you.
Unless the person at the other end is bellowing, too, you don’t hear that end of the conversation, only the local speaker, but it might be an interesting experiment, perhaps, to see what you could reconstruct from this end and, in this posting, I want to try to do that–not with a cellphone, but with a rather older device, a palantir,
(Angus McBride)
and the person we’ll be eavesdropping on isn’t that loud person on the bus, but the Steward of Gondor, Denethor.
(Alan Lee)
Initially, we don’t know that Denethor has one, of course, although we receive hints in the text—
“ ‘Yea,’ he [Denethor] said; ‘for though the Stones be lost, they say, still the lords of Gondor have keener sight than lesser men…’ “
“ ‘And the Lord Denethor is unlike other men: he sees far. Some say that as he sits alone in his high chamber in the Tower at night, and bends his thought this way and that, he can read somewhat of the future, and that he will at times search even the mind of the Enemy, wrestling with him.’ “ (The Return of the King, Book Five, Chapter 1, “Minas Tirith”)
“But he [Denethor] himself went up alone into the secret room under the summit of the Tower; and many who looked up thither at that time saw a pale light that gleamed and flickered from the narrow windows for a while, and then flashed and went out.” (The Return of the King, Book Five, Chapter 4, “The Siege of Gondor”)
It’s only at Denethor’s end that we see what gleamed and flickered and with what, as Beregond says, he “wrestles” with the Enemy—
(Robert Chronister)
“Then suddenly Denethor laughed. He stood up tall and proud again, and stepping swifly back to the table he lifted from it the pillow on which his head had lain. Then coming to the doorway he drew aside the covering, and lo! he had between his hands a palantir. As he held it up, it seemed to those that looked on that the globe began to glow with an inner flame, so that the lean face of the Lord was lit as with a red fire.” (The Return of the King, Book Five, Chapter 7, “The Pyre of Denethor”)
We don’t, unfortunately, have record of either end of the conversations which Denethor has had, but we know one thing: these were not happy chats—Beregond says, continuing the description above—“And so it is that he is old, worn before his time.”
And it’s not hard to guess another: at the far end of the connection is Sauron, as Gandalf explains to Pippin:
“ ‘Who knows where the lost Stones of Arnor and Gondor now lie buried, or drowned deep? But one at least Sauron must have obtained and mastered to his purposes. I guess that it was the Ithil-stone, for he took Minas Ithil long ago and turned it into an evil place: Minas Morgul, it has become.’ “
We can also guess what has happened to Denethor—exactly what happened to Saruman:
(the Hildebrandts)
“ ‘…yet it seems that he was not content. Further and further abroad he gazed, until he cast his gaze upon Barad-dur. Then he was caught!…Easy it is now to guess how quickly the roving eye of Saruman was trapped and held; and how ever since he has been persuaded from afar, and daunted when persuasion would not serve…How long, I wonder, has he been constrained to come often to his glass for inspection and instruction, and the Orthanc-stone so bent towards Barad-dur that, if any save a will of adamant now looks into it, it will bear his mind and sight swiftly thither?’ “ (The Two Towers, Book Three, Chapter 11, “The Palantir”)
The power of the voice is a strong theme, both in The Hobbit, where we see that Smaug
(JRRT)
can begin to damage Bilbo’s trust in the dwarves with a few words, and in The Lord of the Rings, Saruman’s spy, Grima,
(Alan Lee)
can actually prematurely age Theoden with his talk, sowing, as well, distrust of allies.
Perhaps the most powerful voice is that of Saruman himself, as Gandalf warns Pippin:
“ ‘But there is no knowing what he can do, or may choose to try. A wild beast cornered is not safe to approach. And Saruman has powers you do not guess. Beware of his voice!’ “
(Carl Lundgren)
One example will underline Gandalf’s warning:
“ ‘But my lord of Rohan, am I to be called a murderer, because valiant men have fallen in battle? If you go to war, needlessly, for I did not desire it, then men will be slain…I say, Theoden King: shall we have peace and friendship, you and I? It is ours to command.’ ”
Saruman’s words are simply lies: he began the war when his Orcs marched against Rohan and attacked Helm’s Deep, but his power is as dangerous as Gandalf has warned:
“For many the sound of the voice alone was enough to hold them enthralled; but for those whom it conquered the spell endured when they were away, and ever they heard that soft voice whispering and urging them. But none were unmoved; none rejected its pleas and its commands without an effort of mind and will, so long as its master had control of it.” (The Two Towers, Book Three, Chapter 10, “The Voice of Saruman”)
The few words we actually hear from Sauron are brief questions and commands, but, at least initially, these wouldn’t have come to control as powerful a personality as Denethor, so I’m imagining something more like Saruman, but, judging from Denethor’s reactions to others, this included the kind of undermining which Smaug and Grima practice.
(This is medieval undermining, and shows one of two possibilities. The first is to dig all the way under a castle wall and burst out suddenly behind the defenders. The second, shown here, is to dig under the way, replace the foundations with wooden props, then set fire to the props in hopes that, without them, the wall will crumble. The illustration is from the site “Classroom Adventures” and I recommend the essay which is attached to the illustration as a very useful way of getting up to speed on how medieval sieges—like that of Minas Tirith—were conducted: https://www.classroomadventures.co.uk/post/under-siege-a-history-of-siege-weaponshttps://www.classroomadventures.co.uk/post/under-siege-a-history-of-siege-weapons )
This posting had a different title, when I began it: “Sauron Psychologist” and, in Denethor’s reactions, it would appear that Denethor has been attacked on two main fronts: jealousy and insecurity, suggesting that, in his conversations with the Steward, Sauron has learned just where Denethor’s psychological vulnerabilities lie.
Although Denethor favors Boromir, he seems more than a little anxious at Faramir’s attraction to Gandalf, as Denethor says bitterly:
“ ‘See, you have spoken skillfully, as ever; but I, have I not seen your eyes fixed on Mithrandir, seeking whether you said well or too much? He has long had your heart in his keeping…For Boromir was loyal to me and no wizard’s pupil.” (The Return of the King, Book Five, Chapter 4, “The Siege of Gondor”)
Sauron also appears to have worked to undermine Denethor’s understanding of his role in Gondor. He is, after all, not the King, but the King’s lieutenant. His family has ruled in place of the King for so long, however, that Denethor seems—I think that we can assume with Sauron’s encouragement– to have made the assumption that he is the King:
“ ‘I will not step down to be the dotard chamberlain of an upstart. Even were his claim proved to me, still he comes but of the line of Isildur. I will not bow to such a one, last of a ragged house long bereft of lordship and dignity.’ “
And I would suggest that, just as Gandalf, long before, has said that the beginning of Saruman’s attempt to persuade him in Orthanc had seemed “as if he were making a speech long rehearsed”, so Denethor’s reply to Gandalf’s question “What then would you have…if your will could have its way?” has that same ring, and is just as false:
“ ‘I would have things as they were in all the days of my life…and in the days of my longfathers before: to be the Lord of this City in peace, and leave my chair to a son after me, who would be his own master and no wizard’s pupil. But if doom denies this to me, then I will have naught: neither life diminished, nor love halved, nor honour abated.’ “(The Return of the King, Book Five, Chapter 7, “The Pyre of Denethor”)
Without Sauron’s actual words, this can only be a guess, but I wonder if, behind all of this is Sauron’s “whispering and urging”, saying things like: “You once had two sons, but your favorite died on a mission which failed, and the other is no longer yours, is he? A wizard’s pupil now, and you fear, but know, this. And will the pupil ever become master, or will his master become master of all? Without the interference of wizards, we could have had peace, you and I—it was in our power—two wise rulers sharing Middle-earth—I the East, you the West, for no King would ever return—should ever return—to take your place, in Gondor. But now”—and here I switch from my text to JRRT’s–‘For a little space you may triumph on the field, for a day. But against the Power that now arises there is no victory. To this City only the first finger of its hand has yet been stretched. All the East is moving. And even now the wind of thy hope cheats thee and wafts up the Anduin a fleet with black sails. The West has failed. It is time for all to depart who would not be slaves.’ “
Smaug ultimately didn’t convince Bilbo. Gandalf freed Theoden from Grima’s attempt at senescence. Theoden’s mockery of Saruman broke the spell of Saruman’s voice. But there was no rescue for Denethor:
“Then Denethor leaped upon the table; and standing there wreathed in fire and smoke he took up the staff of his stewardship and broke it on his knee. Casting the pieces into the blaze he bowed and laid himself on the table, clasping the palantir with both hands upon his breast. And it was said that ever after, if any man looked in that Stone, unless he had a great strength of will to turn it to other purpose, he saw only two aged hands withering in flame.” (The Return of the King, Book Five, Chapter 7, “The Pyre of Denethor”)
Thanks, as always, for reading.
Stay well,
Noise-canceling earphones definitely have their merits,
This is a film I own and have seen perhaps half-a-dozen times and I’ve never viewed it as the horror film which the article would suggest. Granted, sensationalism sells the news, but, having read the article again, I’ve thought about how horror can be an element in a work—and a powerful one—without making the work as a whole into something like Bram Stoker’s Dracula.
But does the appearance of all these dangers make the book a horror novel, like one of Stephen King’s more forbidding works?
The article points to some potentially disturbing moments—and at least the first is certainly disturbing and, interestingly, is not in the two books upon which the film is based—The Marvelous Land of Oz, 1904,
and Ozma of Oz, 1907. (For more on the combination and the scriptwriters’ changes, see: “Chickening In”, 12 February, 2025)
The Kansas of the 1939 film was as bleak as a 1930s sound stage could make it, in sepia, suggesting photos of the Dust Bowl of the Great Depression era—
The 1985 movie showed us the real rolling hills of Kansas and the ruin of Uncle Henry and Aunt Em’s farm.
(This is at the end of the film, when the house has been rebuilt—early in the film, the house—which, of course, was ripped from Kansas and dropped on the Wicked Witch of the East—remains unfinished and Uncle Henry crippled from the twister.)
Dorothy, to Aunt Em, also seems somehow ruined, having reappeared after the tornado with stories about having been in a foreign land, Oz, but with no proof of it, and Em, having seen a newspaper ad for medical treatment by electricity, decides to take Dorothy to the clinic and its all-too-calm and rational Dr. Worley.
The treatment consists of running a powerful electrical current through Dorothy’s brain, (now called ECT—electroconvulsive therapy), which is supposed to erase Dorothy’s (supposedly false) memory of Oz.
As the audience, with its own memories of Oz, from the 1939 film, the many books, or both, knows perfectly well that Oz is real, as is Dorothy’s memory of it, and, as the article points out:
“…the power of these scenes lies in the fact that they are trying to silence Dorothy, to obliterate her memories of Oz”
Dorothy escapes the clinic (one might really says “asylum”, as it has that grim look of Victorian asylums for the insane)
(A real Victorian asylum—and not the grimmest, there being some real competition here)
and turns up in Oz, once more, where the article mentions other potentially disturbing elements:
the destruction of Oz and its citizens petrified,
its ruins haunted by the Wheelers,
the minions of Princess Mombi, who collects heads and wears them for different occasions,
and then there is the Nome King, who is the current ruler of Oz,
and is the destroyer of the Emerald City, the overlord of Mombi, and has enchanted Dorothy’s former friends, the Scarecrow, the Tinman, and the Cowardly Lion, turning them into inanimate objects.
For the sake of sensationalism, it seems that the article leans heavily on these—as if, I suggested above, one could do the same for The Hobbit, but this leaves out the fact that, although Dorothy’s first allies in Oz have been neutralized, she finds others, just as Bilbo has dwarves, Gandalf, Elrond, the Eagles, and Beorn, not to mention Sting and the Ring.
These include the caustic hen, Billina, who arrives with her from Kansas,
“the Army of Oz”—Tik-Tok,
Jack Pumpkinhead,
and the Gump.
I teach story-telling on a regular basis and a dictum I use is “No fiction without friction” . Just as trolls, goblins, wolves, Gollum, spiders, and Smaug provide the friction in The Hobbit, so the clinic and its smooth-talking doctor, the Wheelers, Princess Mombi, and the Nome King, provide it in Return to Oz. These plot elements supply the problems which must be solved before the ultimate goal of the story can be achieved—coming home safely (and much better-off) for Bilbo, coming home and keeping her memories of Oz for Dorothy (guaranteed for her when she sees Ozma, rescued from the Nome King, in her mirror in Kansas).
Disturbing moments—in both—what’s that riddle contest with Gollum if nothing short of harrowing?—but is Return to Oz just this side of a horror movie? As always, I suggest that you see it for yourself, but remember “no fiction without friction” before you rank it with The Shining.
set out on their quest, they’re aware that, at its end, they must face the reason the dwarves’ forebears died or fled Erebor, the “Lonely Mountain”.
(JRRT)
And yet they go, suggesting an almost foolhardy shrug of an attitude, particularly as Gandalf has suggested that they need someone right out of myth to help them:
“ ‘That would be no good…not without a mighty Warrior, even a Hero.’ “
But:
“ ‘I tried to find one; but warriors are busy fighting one another in distant lands, and in this neighbourhood heroes are scarce, or simply not to be found.’ “ (The Hobbit, Chapter 1, “An Unexpected Party”)
Everything about this trip already seems haphazard, having no map of their destination, till Gandalf furnishes them with one,
(JRRT)
and even then they have no idea of another, secret entrance until Elrond spots the inscription which describes it—and how to open it. Clearly, then, this is a case of “we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.”
Uh oh.
There’s also no clue in the text as to who or what may destroy the destroyer—until Bilbo, flattering Smaug, spots that fatal weak point:
“ ‘I’ve always understood…that dragons were softer underneath, especially in the region of the—er—chest…’ “
The dragon stopped short in his boasting. ‘Your information is antiquated,’ he snapped. ‘I am armoured above and below with iron scales and hard gems. No blade can pierce me.’ “
There’s a clue here, if not for Bilbo, for readers who are aware of something in Tolkien’s own past reading:
“Then Sigurd went down into that deep place, and dug many pits
in it, and in one of the pits he lay hidden with his sword drawn.
There he waited, and presently the earth began to shake with the
weight of the Dragon as he crawled to the water. And a cloud of
venom flew before him as he snorted and roared, so that it would
have been death to stand before him.
But Sigurd waited till half of him had crawled over the pit, and
then he thrust the sword Gram right into his very heart.” (Andrew Lang, ed., The Red Fairy Book, 1890, “The Story of Sigurd”, page 360)
And Bilbo persists, goading Smaug to turn over, where Bilbo sees—and says:
“ ‘Old fool! Why, there is a large patch in the hollow of his left breast as bare as a snail out of its shell!’ “ (The Hobbit, Chapter 12, “Inside Information”)
Still, although we might have a target now, who will make use of it and how and with what? Sigurd is just what Gandalf says is not locally available, a Hero, and it’s clear that neither Bilbo nor the dwarves are capable of taking on that role.
And here we can bring in another clue from Tolkien’s past.
In “On Fairy-Stories”, he writes:
“I had very little desire to look for buried treasure or to fight pirates, and Treasure Island left me cool. Red Indians were better: there were bows and arrows (I had and have a wholly unsatisfied desire to shoot well with a bow)…” (“On Fairy Stories”, 134)
This suggests that Tolkien may have been exposed to the works of James Fenimore Cooper, 1789-1851, who, beginning with The Pioneers, 1823, wrote a series of novels set on the 18th-century western Frontier (much of it what is now central and eastern New York State), called the “Leatherstocking Tales”,
the best known, even now, being The Last of the Mohegans, 1826.
These books were filled with battles between the British and French, with Native Americans on both sides and I wonder if it’s from the adventures depicted there that JRRT was inspired with his passion for bows and arrows?
(artist? A handsome depiction and I wish I could identify the painter.)
Another clue might lie in British history. During the medieval struggle for English control of France, the so-called “Hundred Years War” (1337-1453), the English enjoyed three great victories, at Crecy (1346), Poitiers (1356), and Agincourt (1415), where companies of English longbowmen shot their French opponents to pieces.
(Angus McBride)
Tolkien would have read about this as a schoolboy, but, in an odd way, he might have had his knowledge of these long-ago events refreshed in 1914.
Outnumbered and in danger of being outflanked by massive German columns, the small BEF (British Expeditionary Force), in the early fall of 1914, retreated, one unit (2nd Corps) fighting a desperate battle to slow the Germans at Le Cateau.
The British managed to fend off the enveloping Germans and, considering the odds against them, some might have believed their escape miraculous.
Enter the fantasist Arthur Machen, 1863-1947.
In the September 29th, 1914, issue of The Evening News, Machen published a short story which he entitled “The Bowmen”. This was a supposed first-hand account of a British soldier who had seen a line of ghostly British longbowmen shooting down German pursuers, just as they had shot down the French, centuries before.
Machen subsequently republished it with other stories in 1915—
but was astonished when his fiction was believed to have been true, and widely circulated as such. We don’t have any evidence that JRRT actually read this story, but it was extremely widespread at the time and, once more, we see men with bows. (For more on this, see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angels_of_Mons And you can read the stories in Machen’s volume here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angels_of_Mons )
I think we can add to this the legends of Robin Hood, which could appear in any number of sources—our first known reference being in William Langland’s (c.1330-c.1386) late 14th-century Piers Plowman, where Sloth—a priest deserving of his name, doesn’t seem to have any religious knowledge, but says,
In more recent times, perhaps Tolkien had seen Howard Pyle’s (1853-1911) The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood, 1883,
or Paul Creswick’s (1866-1947) 1917 Robin Hood,
with its wonderful illustrations by N.C.Wyeth (1882-1945).
(If the Tolkien journal Amon Hen, is available to you–but, alas, not to me–you might also have a look at Alex Voglino’s “Middle-earth and the Legend of Robin Hood” in issue 284.)
And, although Tolkien may not have liked Treasure Island, we might add to this possible influence Robert Louis Stevenson’s (1850-1894) The Black Arrow (serialized 1883, published as a book in 1888).
“ ‘Arrow!’ said the bowman. ‘Black arrow! I have saved you to the last. You have never failed me and always I have recovered you. I had you from my father and he from of old. If ever you came from the forges of the true king under the Mountain, go now and speed well!’ “ (The Hobbit, Chapter 14, “Fire and Water”)
(Michael Hague, one of my favorite Hobbit illustrators)
So, we’re about to see that the Hero to kill Smaug is a Lake-town local, Bard, and his weapon of choice is Tolkien’s special favorite, the bow. But how to attack?
We first see Smaug on the ground, lying on his hoard.
(JRRT)
Angered at Bilbo’s teasing, he gets up long enough to attempt to flame him, but his real method of destruction is to take to the air.
(Ted Nasmith)
Fafnir was never airborne, dragging himself along the ground. Sigurd solved the problem of his scaly protection by digging a pit and attacking him from below with his sword. It makes good sense, then, with all of the possible bowman influences upon him, that Tolkien would imagine that the way to deal with a flying dragon would be an arrow from below.
(JRRT)
To which we might add one more potential influence from JRRT’s own experience.
In 1914, there were few military aircraft and their main task was reconnaissance.
By 1918, there were many different models, with different tasks, including heavy bombers.
To protect their troops on the ground, all of the warring nations developed the first artillery defenses: anti-aircraft guns, designed to shoot down threats from above.
JRRT would certainly have seen such guns and possibly even in action, attempting to knock flying danger out of the sky.
Some of those guns were rapid-firing, spraying the air with metal, hoping to guarantee the success of their defense. Bard, in turn, has his black arrow—and not just any black arrow, but one seemingly created perfectly for revenge: “ ‘I had you from my father and he from of old. If ever you came from the forges of the true king under the Mountain, go now and speed well.’ “
That is, this is an arrow created by the dwarves, whom Smaug had driven out or killed—or eaten—and it’s also an heirloom from the days before Smaug destroyed Dale: what better weapon to deal vengeance to the wicked creature who had ruined so much? To take out such a flying danger, but with a glaring vulnerability below, what means of propulsion, especially one known to have defeated whole medieval armies? And, as the seemingly last descendant of the last lord of Dale, Girion, who better to take that revenge?
As ever, thanks for reading.
Stay well,
Always monitor the skies—who knows what’s watching from above?
And remember that, as always, there’s
MTCIDC
O
PS
For more on birds, Bard, and Smaug, see “Why a Dragon?” 28 May, 2025.
PPS
While looking for just the right Smaug images, I came upon this, entitled, “Dante aka Smaug on his hoard” and couldn’t resist.
I think that I’ve always been a fan of the Marx brothers.
Their lack of respect for pompous men in silk hats,
opera-goers who are only interested because it gives them social status,
and self-important artists,
among many others, and their creative methods of deflating such people,
have always cheered me immensely.
There is another side to their comedy, however, which means just as much to me: their endless play with words, delivered always deadpan and with perfect timing—not to mention absolute absurdist nonsequiturism.
Take, for example, this fragment from The Cocoanuts, their first surviving film, from 1929. It’s set during the 1920s Florida land boom (read about that here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florida_land_boom_of_the_1920s ) and, in this scene, “Mr. Hammer”, Groucho, is explaining the layout of a real estate plot to “Chico”, Chico,
saying, at one point:
“Groucho: Now, here is a little peninsula, and, eh, here is a viaduct leading over to the mainland.
Chico: Why a duck?
Groucho: I’m all right, how are you? I say, here is a little peninsula, and here is a viaduct leading over to the mainland.
Chico: All right, why a duck?
Groucho: I’m not playing ‘Ask Me Another’, I say that’s a viaduct.
Chico: All right! It’s what…why a duck? Why no a chicken?
Groucho: I don’t know why no a chicken—I’m a stranger here myself. All I know is that it’s a viaduct. You try to cross over there a chicken and you’ll find out why a duck.”
By the same kind of logic which produced this, I found myself thinking about The Hobbit: and hence the title of this posting: why a dragon?
The plot of The Hobbit is, basically, a quest: a journey with a goal.
Quests are a familiar form of adventure story and still common—just think about Indiana Jones, with his Lost Ark
and his Holy Grail, for example.
Indiana has to travel to Tibet and Egypt and to an unnamed island in the Mediterranean for the Ark and to Germany and Turkey for the Grail.
Although Thorin doesn’t mention the travel in his “mission statement”, much of the story will be about travel, from the Shire to the Lonely Mountain and back again,
to reach the dwarves’ goal, as stated in the first chapter by Thorin:
“But we have never forgotten our stolen treasure. And even now, when I will allow we have a good bit laid by and are not so badly off…we still mean to get it back, and to bring our curses home to Smaug—if we can.” (The Hobbit, Chapter 1, “An Unexpected Party”)
The goal, then, is in two parts:
1. to regain the treasure taken from the dwarves by the dragon
2. to take revenge upon said dragon
Because they are aware that the dragon can be lying on top of the treasure (“Probably”, says Thorin, “for that is the dragons’ way, he has piled it all up in a great heap far inside, and sleeps on it for a bed.”), it’s clear that 1 and 2 have to be dealt with as a sequence: no getting the treasure without getting rid of the dragon.
Which brings us back to my title. Indiana Jones commonly has Nazis (and eventually Communists and even Neo-Nazis) as opponents,
these being the characters who compete for his goal and stand in the way of his achieving his quest.
Tolkien was a medievalist, writing a sort of fairy tale, so what would be his equivalent and why?
We know that Tolkien had been interested in dragons since far childhood—at least the age of 6, when he tried to write a poem about a “green, great dragon” (to the Houghton Mifflin Company [summer, 1955?], Letters, 321—JRRT tells a somewhat different version of this to W.H. Auden in a letter of 7 June, 1955, Letters, 313) and he confesses to an early love for them in his lecture “On Fairy-Stories” where he mentions Fafnir and Sigurd, suggesting that he may have had read to him or had read for himself from Andrew Lang’s The Red Fairy Book, 1890, the last chapter of which is “The Story of Sigurd”, and since, elsewhere, he mentions “Soria Moria Castle”, which is the third story in the same book.
Fafnir, the dragon in the Sigurd story, is described as, having killed his own father:
“he went and wallowed on the gold…and no man dared go near it.” (“The Story of Sigurd”, 360)
The next major dragon story with which Tolkien was probably involved saw the same draconic behavior, as, in Beowulf, we’re told that the unnamed dragon, having discovered a hoard in a tumulus:
“This hoarded loveliness did the old despoiler wandering
in the gloom find standing unprotected, even he who filled
with fire seeks out mounds (of burial), the naked dragon of
1915
fell heart that flies wrapped about in flame: him do earth’s
dwellers greatly dread. Treasure in the ground it is ever his
wont to seize, and there wise with many years he guards the
heathen gold – no whit doth it profit him.”
(from JRRT’s draft translation of 1920-26 in Christopher Tolkien’s 2014 publication)
Traditionally, then, dragons and gold go together—and, as JRRT admitted in a letter to the Editor of the Observer, “Beowulf is among my most valued sources” (letter to the Editor of the Observer, printed in the Observer, 28 February, 1938, Letters, 41)
There is a very interesting twist in Tolkien’s version of the story, however.
By lying in a pit below the dragon, Sigurd slays Fafnir
and Beowulf, along with his companion (and successor), Wiglaf, make an end of the nameless dragon,
Beowulf fighting against a dragon. Scene from the early medieval epic poem “Beowulf”. It is one of the most important works of Old English literature and was probably created after the year 700 and plays in the time before 600 AD in Scandinavia. Chromolithograph after drawing by Walter Zweigle (German painter, 1859 – 1904), published in 1896.
(This is a pretty silly version, with costumes and armor which look like they came from the original production of Der Ring des Nibelungen, but finding a depiction of the two attacking the dragon has seemed surprisingly difficult.)
but, in The Hobbit, although we have the traditional dragon on the traditional hoard, we don’t have the traditional dragon-slayer, a fact underlined by Thorin’s “to bring our curses home to Smaug, if we can”.
This has always struck me as the potential weak point in the quest: to travel hundreds of miles through dangerous territory filled with trolls, goblins, wolves, hostile elves, and even giant spiders, to come to a mountain inhabited by a fearsome dragon—but to have no plan in mind as to how to deal with it, especially when the other half of the plan—to get back the dwarvish treasure—requires somehow eliminating the current guardian of that treasure.
(JRRT)
Faced with that possible weak point, so much now may appear to have a certain haphazard happenstance about it, the kind of attempted slight-of-hand which indicates an author who hasn’t the skill to create a narrative in which every element seems to fall naturally into place, and this might make us question the finding of the Ring, the convenient rescue at Lake-town, even the ray of sun which indicates the opening to the back door of the Lonely Mountain (suppose it had been overcast).
But this is where the burglar comes in—and the story of Sigurd once more.
It seems that Bilbo was not Gandalf’s first choice for the quest when he came to visit him.
(the Hildebrandts)
Thorin has just mentioned the inconvenient dragon and the awkwardness of his sudden appearance, to which Gandalf replies:
“That would be no good…not without a mighty Warrior, even a Hero. I tried to find one; but warriors are busy fighting one another in distant lands, and in this neighbourhood heroes are scarce, or simply not to be found.”
And he continues:
“That is why I settled on burglary—especially when I remembered the existence of a Side-door. And here is our little Bilbo Baggins, the burglar, the chosen and selected burglar.”
Bilbo’s first attempt at burglary: picking a troll’s pocket,
(JRRT)
almost ends in disaster, but, with the eventual aid of the Ring, he even manages, first, to steal from Smaug, in a direct echo of Beowulf,
(artist? So far, I haven’t seen one credited.)
and then to confront Smaug in his lair and escape, at worst, with only a singeing.
(JRRT)
So far, it’s been burglary, with some help from the Ring, but then the Sigurd story comes in.
You’ll remember that, although the version in The Red Fairy Book doesn’t say so, it was clear that the vulnerable part of the dragon Fafnir was its underside, which is why Sigurd hid in a pit so that, when the dragon crawled over it, Sigurd could stab him in that unprotected underbelly.
Using his burglarious skills, as well as a fluent tongue, Bilbo actually persuades Smaug unknowingly to expose his own vulnerability:
“ ‘I have always understood…that dragons were softer underneath, especially in the region of the—er—chest; but doubtless one so fortified has thought of that.’
The dragon stopped short in his boasting. ‘Your information is antiquated,’ he snapped. ‘I am armoured above and below with iron scales and hard gems. No blade can pierce me.’”
And the smooth-tongued burglar actually flatters Smaug into rolling over, exposing “…a large patch in the hollow of his left breast as bare as a snail out of its shell”.
What to do with this potentially deadly piece of information requires the reverse of the Sigurd story.
In that story, Sigurd, having killed Fafnir, has been asked by his mentor, Regin, to roast the dragon’s heart and serve it to him. In the process, Sigurd burns a finger, puts it in his mouth, and suddenly understands that all of the birds above him are talking about him and telling him to beware of Regin.
In The Hobbit, the opposite happens: the thrush who had tapped the snail
(Alan Lee)
and therefore set off the chain of events which revealed the back door to the Lonely Mountain to Bilbo and the dwarves, overhears Bilbo telling the dwarves about Smaug’s vulnerable spot, which he then conveys to Bard the Archer, who is then the dragon-slayer
(Michael Hague—one of my favorite Hobbit illustrators)
needed to dispose of the one-time guardian of the hoard.
And so the dragon is disposed of—but he has one more use in the story: as a negative model.
Although Thorin has led the quest to retrieve the dwarves’ treasure, it seems that there’s only one which he craves, the Arkenstone,
(Donato Giancola)
and it’s clear that, in its pursuit, he becomes much like the Smaug who once reacted almost hysterically when he sensed that something was missing from his hoard:
“Thieves! Fire! Murder!…His rage passes description—the sort of rage that is only seen when rich folk that have more than they can enjoy suddenly lose something that they have long had but have never before used or wanted.” (The Hobbit, Chapter 12, “Inside Information”)
Here’s his dwarvish parallel:
“ ‘For the Arkenstone of my father,’ he said, ‘is worth more than a river of gold in itself, and to me it is beyond price. That stone of all the treasure I name unto myself, and I will be avenged on anyone who finds it and withholds it.” (The Hobbit, Chapter 16, “A Thief in the Night”)
And, when he finds that Bilbo has taken it as a way to make peace between the dwarves, the elves, and the Lake-town men, Thorin almost does take revenge:
“ ‘You! You!’ cried Thorin, turning upon him and grasping him with both hands. ‘You miserable hobbit! You undersized—burglar!…By the beard of Durin! I wish I had Gandalf here! Curse him for his choice of you! May his beard wither! As for you I will throw you to the rocks!’ he cried and lifted Bilbo in his arms.” (The Hobbit, Chapter 17, “The Clouds Burst”)
So why a dragon?
First, to Tolkien the medievalist, gold and dragons go together: a quest for treasure needs a particularly powerful enemy and the dragon of Beowulf, who actually fatally wounds Beowulf,
who had previously defeated two terrible opponents in Grendel and his mother, provides a strong model.
Second, JRRT had, from childhood, a long-standing interest in dragons—he’ll return to them in his 1938/49 novella, “Farmer Giles of Ham”, where the practical farmer eventually not only tames the dragon, Chrysophylax (“Goldwatchman”, perhaps), but makes him disgorge much of his treasure—this time by doing nothing more than outfacing him and threatening him with his sword, “Tailbiter”.
It’s interesting, by the way, that, although, in “The Story of Sigurd”, the dragon talks, he has only one short speech: a curse on anyone who touches his gold, whereas, in perhaps the greatest draconic influence upon Tolkien, Beowulf, another wyrm who enjoys lying on a hoard, is mute.
Smaug, in The Hobbit, however, is not only positively talky, but, like Saruman in The Lord of the Rings, his voice and manner have their own dangerously persuasive power, at one point in his conversation with Bilbo even beginning to seed Bilbo’s mind with doubts about the dwarves Bilbo accompanies (The Hobbit, Chapter 12, “Inside Information”).
Chrysophylax, in “Farmer Giles of Ham” is even more talkative than Smaug, and I wonder about the model for these chatty beasts. Tolkien was a great fan of Kenneth Grahame (1859-1932) and of his well-known children’s book, The Wind in the Willows (1908),
mentioning in a letter to Christopher Tolkien that Elspeth Grahame, Grahame’s widow, is publishing a book with other stories about the main characters of The Wind in the Willows, a book which JRRT is very eager to obtain (letter to Christopher Tolkien, 31 July, 1944, Letters, 128). In 1898, Grahame published a collection of stories, Dream Days,
which included “The Reluctant Dragon”, in which we see another very loquacious beast,
(from the original book, illustrated by Maxfield Parrish)
(I couldn’t resist including E.H. Shepard’s 1938 version)
but rather more like the ultimately rather timid dragon of “Farmer Giles” than the grim and mute creature of Beowulf or the more-than-a-little-pleased-with-himself Smaug, but, in his garrulousness, could he have been a model for Smaug? (You can make your own comparison with: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/35187/35187-h/35187-h.htm )
To this we add perhaps not a model, but a parallel: Thorin as becoming a kind of dwarvish dragon in his obsession with the Arkenstone. Fafnir dies with a curse, however, the Beowulf beast dies killing Beowulf, and Smaug dies destroying Lake-town,
but, in his own last moments, Thorin escapes such a poisonous model, saying to Bilbo:
“Farewell, good thief…I go now to the halls of waiting to sit beside my fathers, until the world is renewed. Since I leave now all gold and silver, and go where it is of little worth, I wish to part in friendship from you, and I would take back my words and deeds at the Gate.” (The Hobbit, Chapter 18, “The Return Journey”)
When Tolkien admitted that he was a hobbit, he defined them—and himself—in part in this way:
“…I like gardens, trees and unmechanized farmlands; I smoke a pipe, and like good plain food (unrefrigerated), but detest French cooking… “ (from a letter to Deborah Webster, 25 October, 1958, Letters, 411)
This follows, of course, his description in “Concerning Hobbits” in the Prologue to The Lord of the Rings:
“Their faces were as a rule good-natured rather than beautiful, broad, bright-eyed, red-cheeked, with mouths apt to laughter, and to eating and drinking. And laugh they did, and eat, and drink, often and heartily, being fond of simple jests at all times, and of six meals a day (when they could get them).”
And this is an extension of the description in the first chapter, “An Unexpected Party”, of The Hobbit:
“[they] have long clever brown fingers, good-natured faces, and laugh deep fruity laughs (especially after dinner, which they have twice a day when they can get it).”
This propensity for the consumption of comestibles—and for the reporting of and description of eating and all that might go with it—is more, in The Hobbit, than simply a fond look at a foible, however. In fact, it is a theme which seems, at times to dominate the book—and we see this practically on the first page of the novel, not only in that mention of multiple dinners, but even in the fact that hobbit laughs are “fruity”.
The opening setting itself announces the theme: “Bilbo Baggins was standing at his door after breakfast…” and soon Bilbo is resisting Gandalf’s proposal of an adventure by saying “Nasty disturbing uncomfortable things! Make you late for dinner!” (The Hobbit, Chapter 1, “An Unexpected Party”)
(the Hildebrandts)
There follows the rattled Bilbo’s invitation to Gandalf to come to tea (after which he consoles himself with “a cake or two and a drink of something”), and then the party from the chapter title, which includes not only a major depletion of Bilbo’s pantry (or pantries, as the narrator has already informed us that Bilbo’s house has “lots of these”), but even a kind of heroic catalogue of what’s called for and which Bilbo seems able to supply including: tea, beer, seed-cake, coffee, scones, ale, porter, red wine, raspberry jam, apple-tart, mince-pies, cheese, pork-pie, salad, eggs, chicken, and pickles (and a single biscuit—that is, cookie, for Bilbo).
The chapter ends with one last burst of food-talk as Bilbo offers bed and breakfast to the dwarves (as a way of seeing them off) and Thorin orders breakfast as if Bilbo were running an inn:
“But I agree about bed and breakfast. I like six eggs with my ham, when starting on a journey: fried not poached, and mind you don’t break ‘em.”
And Bilbo goes off the bed annoyed not only at Thorin, but at all of the other dwarves, who have made similar orders.
After that opening, it’s not surprising that Chapter 2 begins with a still-annoyed Bilbo, faced with a mountain of dirty dishes, the remains of a breakfast he didn’t fix, but, cleaning up, he enjoys his own first breakfast and is starting on a second one when Gandalf appears and Bilbo is suddenly off on the adventure which takes up the rest of the book.
Food soon appears again as one of their ponies “got into the river before they could catch him…and all the baggage that he carried was washed away off him. Of course it was mostly food, and there was mighty little left for supper, and less for breakfast.” (Chapter 2)
But then the eating theme takes a different and disturbing turn: trolls
(JRRT)
who, though currently munching mutton, have “…et a village and a half between yer, since we come down from the mountains” and soon, like amateur chefs on “The Great Goblin Bake Off”, are discussing how to prepare dwarf—will it be roasting? boiling? before the judge, one Gandalf, decides the argument by tricking them into being exposed to the sun and turned to stone.
(JRRT)
This is, in its way, a mirror to the original eating idea, in which the protagonists who do the consuming are at risk of becoming a potential article for consumption and we’ll see this repeated more than once with:
1. the goblins (Chapter 4): “For goblins eat horses and ponies and donkeys (and other much more dreadful things), and they are always hungry.”
(Alan Lee)
2. Gollum (Chapter 5): “He was looking out of his pale lamp-eyes for blind fish, which he grabbed with his long fingers as quick as thinking. Goblin he thought good, when he could get it…” and there’s the possibility that Bilbo might be on the menu—if he loses the riddle contest.
(Alan Lee)
3. the spiders (Chapter 8): “ ‘What nasty thick skins they [the dwarves] have to be sure, but I’ll wager there is good juice inside.’ ‘Aye, they’ll make fine eating, when they’ve hung a bit…’ ”
(and another Alan Lee)
4. and, of course, Smaug (Chapter 12): “ ‘Let me tell you I ate six ponies last night and I shall catch and eat all the others before long…I know the smell (and taste) of dwarf…Girion Lord of Dale is dead, and I have eaten his people like a wolf among sheep…’ “
(JRRT)
On the other side (the eating, not eaten), however, there are:
1. supper with the Rivendell elves (Chapter 3)
(JRRT)
2. rabbit, hare, and sheep with the eagles (Chapter 6)
(JRRT)
3. meals with Beorn (Chapter 7)
(Ted Nasmith)
4. starving in Mirkwood while being tantalized by elvish feasts (Chapter 8)
(another elf king, in an illustration by A.W. Bayes, 1831-1909)
5. prison rations in the dungeons of Thranduil, the king of the forest elves (Chapter 9)—as well as food stolen by Bilbo
(a generic dungeon as, so far, I haven’t discovered a useful illustration of the original situation)
6. feasts in Lake-town (Chapter 10)
(JRRT)
7. a gourmet diet of snails (Chapter 11)
(Alan Lee)
8. and even the threat of siege and starvation (Chapter 15)—
(Alan Lee)
Given that so much of the text is handed over to eating and drinking, it’s surprising that the conclusion of the story doesn’t have Gandalf returning (with Balin) to tea some years later—
(Alan Lee)
could it be that even that academic hobbit is finally full?
As always, thanks for reading.
Stay well,
One slice of cake should do, I think, don’t you? Or maybe two?
After a very disturbing evening with a group of vengeful and determined dwarves,
Bilbo wakes to a wreck of breakfast dishes and, soon after, the appearance of Gandalf, who prompts him to see that he has a note from Thorin (& Co.). It makes an appointment for 11am that morning at the Green Dragon Inn, in Bywater.
With Gandalf harrying him, Bilbo barely makes it, but, a moment later, the journey eastward of The Hobbit begins.
It is ironic, of course, that a trip which focuses upon removing a dragon
should commence with a place named after one, but, judging by the number of Green Dragon pubs in Britain one might find by googling right now, it may be nothing more than a common name—
although, as Douglas Anderson points out in The Annotated Hobbit, 61, we know that JRRT had been interested in dragons, especially green ones, from childhood, as he wrote to WH Auden:
“I first tried to write a story when I was about seven. It was about a dragon. I remember nothing about it except a philological fact. My mother said nothing about the dragon, but pointed out out one could not say ‘a green great dragon,’ but had to say, ‘a great green dragon.’ I wondered why, and still do.” (Letters, 214, 7 June, 1955)
The countryside east of the Shire and the story itself are empty of pubs (short for “public houses”, originally meaning simply a place open to the general public, but, in time, it came to mean a place licensed by the government to sell alcoholic beverages) after this, but, until we reach Bree, there are a certain number mentioned in The Lord of the Rings. We meet the first, TheIvy Bush, in The Fellowship of the Ring, Book One, Chapter 1, “An Unexpected Party”, where we see a group of hobbits gossiping about Bilbo and Frodo. In the next chapter, “The Shadow of the Past”, TheGreen Dragon makes its second appearance in Tolkien when Sam Gamgee has a verbal tussle with Ted Sandyman on the subject of things seen and unseen, as well as on the sanity, or lack of it, of Bilbo and Frodo, there.
TheIvy Bush will only appear once more, linked with The Green Dragon, in the succeeding chapter, “Three Is Company”, but we will see The Green Dragon (mentioned by Sam in hopes that The Prancing Pony in Bree will measure up to it in Chapter 8, “Fog on the Barrow-Downs”) close to the end of The Lord of the Rings. In The Return of the King, Book Six, Chapter 8, “The Scouring of the Shire”, it appears as an emblem of the endless ruin by Sharkey and gang of the old ways of the Shire: “When they reached The Green Dragon, the last house on the Hobbiton side [of the Water], now lifeless and with broken windows…”
This is in great contrast to The Prancing Pony Sam worried about earlier
as we see it in The Fellowship of the Ring, Book One, Chapter 9, “At the Sign of the Prancing Pony”. At first, the place seems menacing, especially to Sam, who:
“…stared up at the inn with its three storeys and many windows, and felt his heart sink.”
But then—
“As they [the hobbits] hesitated outside in the gloom, someone began singing a merry song inside, and many cheerful voices joined loudly in the chorus. They listened to this encouraging sound for a moment and then got off their ponies. The song ended and there was a burst of laughter and clapping.”
Pubs, and their upscale cousins, inns, would have been vital to people traveling before motels, hotels, and b&bs, as we can see in Book One of The Fellowship, and, for most of the rest of the novel, with the exceptions of Rivendell, Lorien, Edoras, and Minas Tirith, accommodation for the night would have meant a blanket on the ground. For Tolkien and his friends in the writers’ group called The Inklings,
they were vital meeting points—not for the reading of new work, which appears to have been done in one member, C.S. Lewis’, rooms at Oxford,
but for socializing and discussion, which was equally important for such a group of intelligent, educated, and highly-creative men. (No women, alas! One of our favorite mystery novelists and Dante-translator, Dorothy Sayers, 1893-1957, was friends with several members but, with the short-sightedness of the 1930s-50s, was never invited to join.)
They met during the week not only at the best-known of their watering holes, the Eagle and Child,
but at The Mitre,
The King’s Arms,
and at The White Horse.
The one which caught our eye in particular is the first, which, as we said, is probably the one most closely associated with Tolkien and his friends. Here’s its sign—
The explanation of the pub’s name is, to us, a bit murky, supposedly coming from an element of the crest of the Stanley family which portrays an infant stolen by an eagle,
but found alive and unharmed. (Here’s a LINK so that you can judge for yourself.)
For ourselves, the idea of a child stolen by a raptor makes us think of a really awful 19th-century song, “The Vulture of the Alps”, a poem set to music about 1842 by a famous American vocal group of the 1840s-1870s, the Hutchinson Family Singers. The title pretty much says it all.
When we think of eagles and Tolkien, however, we remember them as rescuers—of Gandalf, the dwarves, and Bilbo from the goblins and Wargs
and as providers of air assault in The Hobbit.
And, in The Lord of the Rings, rescuer of Gandalf from Saruman,
as allies of the West at the battle at the Morannon,
and as saviors of Frodo and Sam on Mt Doom.
And it may be a crazy idea, but it makes us wonder—although Tolkien had abandoned The Hobbit unfinished in the early 1930s, he had picked it up again in 1936, just about the time the Inklings were meeting regularly (the first documented mention of them, apparently, is in a 1936 letter from CS Lewis to the novelist, Charles Williams, inviting him to join—see The Collected Letters of CS Lewis, Vol.2, 183—in a letter to William Luther White 9/11/67, JRRT dates the origins of the Inklings as “probably mid-thirties”—Letters, 387). Could he have found his inspiration for these heroic birds and their habit of picking people up from the name of his pub?
As ever, thanks for reading.
MTCIDC
CD
ps
If you haven’t read CS Lewis’ wonderful essay, “On Three Ways of Writing for Children”, here’s a LINK.
pps
We have no illustration of Tolkien’s Green Dragon, but here’s a Tudor example from Wymondham in Norfolk which we think would do quite well.
Here is a postcard of the town of Ypres, in southern Belgium, in the years before the Great War, with its famous Cloth Hall and cathedral.
The Cloth Hall was begun in 1200 and finished in 1304, being a center of the woolen trade in the region.
The cathedral was begun in 1230 and finished in 1370.
Then the Great War began and Ypres was just behind Allied lines.
Artillery had begun in the Middle Ages, as something which looks like a high school science experiment (plus armor).
By 1914, it was much bigger and much more efficient.
(The German says, “Our Growlers!”—perhaps a soldier’s slang word for heavy howitzers like these?)
And, as the war progressed, bigger and more efficient yet.
And even more so—to the point where some guns became so big and heavy that only railways could move them around.
Needless to say, when shells from such guns hit Ypres, the damage they caused was enormous.
And not only to Ypres, but to the whole region—entire villages disappeared, as did forests, landscapes became moonscapes.
For some months in 1916, Second Lieutenant Tolkien walked through, lived through, this devastated world,
which took many years to be repaired.
And, in the meantime, the economies of Europe suffered, with so much damaged or shifted to war work, and governments left with enormous debts, both the victors and the vanquished.
This devastation made us think about another devastation, first described by Thorin in Chapter One of The Hobbit, and, of course we wondered if JRRT thought of the damage caused by the endless, pitiless bombardments as he wrote about the ruin brought by a dragon.
Thorin begins, as we did at the opening of this posting, showing a peaceful, prosperous world:
“Altogether those were good days for us, and the poorest of us had money to spend and to lend, and leisure to make beautiful things just for the fun of it, not to speak of the most marvellous and magical toys, the like of which is not to be found in the world now-a-days. So my grandfather’s halls became full of armour and jewels and carvings and cups, and the toy market of Dale was the wonder of the North.”
But, just as the Great War came to the ridges north of Ypres, so Smaug came down upon the town of Dale just below the Lonely Mountain and to the Mountain, as well:
“Then he came down the slopes and when he reached the woods they all went up in fire. By that time all the bells were ringing in Dale and the warriors were arming. The dwarves rushed out of their great gate; but there was the dragon waiting for them. None escaped that way. The river rushed up in steam and a fog fell on Dale, and in the fog the dragon came on them and destroyed most of the warriors…Then he went back and crept in through the Front Gate and routed out all the halls, and lanes, and tunnels, alleys, cellars, mansions and passages…Later he used to crawl out of the great gate and come by night to Dale, and carry away people, especially maidens, to eat, until Dale was ruined and all the people dead or gone. What goes on there now I don’t know for certain, but I don’t suppose any one lives nearer the Mountain than the far edge of the Long Lake now-a-days.”
Thorin is correct about this: Dale is ruined and abandoned (you can see the remains of the town on the right hand side of this illustration) and the Mountain has only one inhabitant.
When Bilbo disturbs him and steals a cup, Smaug goes on a second rampage, flying as far south as Lake-town:
“Fire leaped from the dragon’s jaws. He circled for a while high in the air above them lighting all the lake…Fire leaped from the thatched roofs and wooden beam-ends as he hurtled down and past and round again…Flames unquenchable sprang high into the night. “ (The Hobbit, Chapter Fourteen, “Fire and Water”)
And, even when Bard’s arrow brings him down, Smaug causes a final wave of destruction:
“Full on the town he fell. His last throes splintered it to sparks and gledes. The lake roared in. A vast steam leaped up, white in the sudden dark under the moon. There was a hiss, a gushing whirl, and then silence. And that was the end of Smaug and Esgaroth…”
Just as certain parts of Europe were destroyed and their economies stunted by the Great War, we can hear, in Thorin’s words, that the same has happened to Dale and the Lonely Mountain: with no dwarves and no men to make the “armour and jewels and carvings and cups”, not to mention the “most marvellous and magical toys”, the whole economy of the area to the north of the Long Lake was completely destroyed. Survivors built up Lake-town, but no one dared to revive the trade which had once enriched an entire region.
And, as for the few remaining dwarves:
“After that we went away, and we have had to earn our livings as best we could up and down the lands, often sinking as low as black-smith-work or even coal-mining.” says Thorin.
Although Thorin dies in the struggle to regain what was lost, there is a happy ending of sorts for the dwarves. With Smaug dead, they can finally return, as can men, and rebuild, just as Europe began to rebuild—Ypres restored both Cloth Hall and cathedral in time.
Some years ago, we visited the Strong National Museum of Play, in Rochester, New York. (Highly recommended!)
There, we had found this in one of the display cases–
It’s a reproduction of the first page of a chronology of The Lord of the Rings by JRRT, covering the end of September and the beginning of October of SR1418, from the Marquette University collection. Looking closely we could see just how detailed it was and, recently, we looked at the page again and it made us wonder just how visible such detailing was in the actual work: do we really see each day portrayed? Are there moments when days—or more—go by unmarked? If so, when? And why?
To answer our questions, we turned first to The Hobbit, as a kind of test case, and, in our last posting, had, by the end, reached the western edge of Mirkwood.
This, as the caption says, is a work by Ted Nasmith, one of our favorite Tolkien illustrators, but here’s JRRT’s version.
(As we’ve pointed out some time ago, Tolkien’s version would appear to owe something to the work of the early-20th-century Swedish illustrator, John Bauer (1882-1918).)
As Gandalf waves a good-bye and shouts a final warning, the company plunges in—and immediately time seems to blur:
“All this went on for what seemed to the hobbit ages upon ages…days followed days, and still the forest seemed just the same…” (The Hobbit, Chapter 8, “Flies and Spiders”)
They reach a dangerous stream, one of their company falls in—and immediately drops into a deep sleep, forcing them to carry him as they move away from the stream and, although their journeying continues to seem endless:
“About four days from the enchanted stream they came to a part where most of the trees were beeches…A few leaves came rustling down to remind them that outside autumn was coming on…Two days later they found their path going downwards.”
Soon after that, Bilbo is sent up a tree to see where they are—and, it appears the next day they are tormented by visions of feasting elves. The next morning? the scattered dwarves and Bilbo are attacked by outsized spiders.
As we said, this is all rather blurry—not many time words are used and, like the forest itself, the passage of time appears almost featureless. In the confusion around the elvish torment and the spiders, however, Thorin has disappeared, only to be made captive by those very elves and taken to the palace of their king.
And then time moves forward—a little: “The day after the battle with the spiders Bilbo and the dwarves made one last despairing effort to find a way out before they died of hunger and thirst…Such day as there ever was in the forest was fading once more into the blackness of night, when suddenly out sprang the light of many torches all round them…” (The Hobbit, Chapter 9, “Barrels Out of Bond”)
The other dwarves are captured by the elves, but Bilbo, using his ring, escapes–and then manages to slip into the elves’ underground world—and into what appears to be another nearly-timeless place:
“Poor Mr. Baggins—it was a weary long time that he lived in that place all alone…Eventually, after a week or two of this sneaking sort of life, by watching and following the guards and taking what chances he could, he managed to find out where each dwarf was kept.
He found all their twelve cells in different parts of the palace, and after a time he got to know his way about very well.”
The chance discovery of the use of an underground stream as a method of shipping goods—and wine in particular—provides Bilbo with the final means to escape the elves, but how long does all of this, from the capture of the dwarves to that escape, take?
“For some time Bilbo sat and thought about this water-gate, and wondered if it could be used for the escape of his friends, and at last he had the desperate beginnings of a plan.”
If you are familiar with the story, you know that the plan entails escaping in barrels,
bobbing and rolling all night down the river till they were snagged and collected and, the next morning, moved on towards Lake-town, which they reached in the evening (“The sun had set when turning with another sweep towards the East the forest-river rushed into the Long Lake.”).
(This reminds us to mention crannogs—lake houses—of which there is a very convincing reconstruction on Loch Tay, in Scotland. Here’s a LINK if you’d like to know more.)
The dwarves and Bilbo had stayed in Lake-town two weeks when: “At the end of a fortnight Thorin began to think of departure.” (The Hobbit, Chapter 10, “A Warm Welcome”) When they actually departed, however, is unclear: “So one day, although autumn was now getting far on, and winds were cold, and leaves were falling fast, three large boats left Lake-town, laden with rowers, dwarves, Mr. Baggins, and many provisions.”
They land “On the Doorstep” (the title of Chapter 11) of the Lonely Mountain. It has taken them three days to get there by boat. (“In two days going they rowed right up the Long Lake and passed out into the River Running…At the end of the third day, some miles up the river, they drew in to the left or western bank and disembarked.” The Hobbit, Chapter 11, “On the Doorstep”)
But how long do they spend on that doorstep?
We know, from Elrond’s reading of the moon runes on Thror’s map, that there is a kind of deadline:
“Stand by the grey stone when the thrush knocks…and the setting sun with the last light of Durin’s Day will shine upon the key-hole.” (The Hobbit, Chapter 3, “A Short Rest”)
Thorin himself is hard-pressed to say exactly what day this is, but the dwarves and hobbit continue their journey to find the hidden back door.
After camping where their supplies have been left, they begin their actual explorations the next day. (“They spent a cold and lonely night…The next day they set out again.”) Bilbo and several of the dwarves make a brief expedition to the front door and back, seemingly within a day.
We now enter into another blurry period, for, as the dwarves and Bilbo search for the hidden door, all we read is “day by day they came back to their camp without success” until: “ ‘Tomorrow begins the last week of autumn,’ said Thorin one day.” And the next day—which is, in fact, the Durin’s Day of the map—they find and open the door.
Thorin sends Bilbo down into the dark, which, we presume takes some time because we are told that “It was midnight and clouds had covered the stars” when Balin carried him out. (The Hobbit, Chapter 12, “Inside Information”) He has taken a cup from Smaug’s hoard, however, and this rouses the dragon, forcing the dwarves to take shelter in the tunnel within the hidden door where they remain as Bilbo returns a second time—the next day—to visit Smaug again. (“The sun was shining as he started…”) That same day, they take shelter within the tunnel and Smaug seals them in.
How long they are sealed in isn’t initially clear: “They could not count the passing of time…At last after days and days of waiting” Chapter 13 begins, but, with the addition of “as it seemed”, suggesting that not much time—perhaps even only hours—had actually passed. (The Hobbit, Chapter 13, “Not at Home”). This is made clearer, however, when we are told: “As a matter of fact two nights and the day between had gone by…since the dragon smashed the magic door…”). After Bilbo makes another foray—followed by the others—down into Smaug’s lair, they find it empty, press beyond it, and, eventually, the same day, move their camp to an old watchpost on the southwest corner of the mountain.
(We presume that the post is at the left-hand edge of this JRRT illustration.)
Smaug, of course, has gone off to destroy Lake-town and is killed there
and soon a combined force of forest elves and men from the ruined Lake-town set off for the Lonely Mountain (“It was thus that in eleven days from the ruin of the town the head of their host passed the rock-gates at the end of the lake and came into the desolate lands.” The Hobbit, Chapter 14, “Fire and Water”)
The narrative then moves back once more to the dwarves, who, by means of an ancient raven, have heard what is approaching and begin to fortify the main door of the Mountain when: “There came a night when suddenly there were many lights as of fires and torches away south in Dale before them.” (The Hobbit, Chapter 15, “The Gathering of the Clouds”) Presumably, this is some days after the invaders have reached the desolate lands, though how many is not said, but, “The next morning early a company of spearmen was seen crossing the river…”
Thus begins the last big event in The Hobbit: the siege of the Mountain by elves and men and the following Battle of the Five Armies. With the arrival of the besiegers and the stalemate caused by Thorin’s stubbornness, time is blurred once more: “Now the days passed slowly and wearily.” (The Hobbit, Chapter 16, “A Thief in the Night”) It is suddenly marked, however, by news:
“Things had gone on like this for some time, when the ravens brought news that Dain and more than five hundred dwarves…were now about two days’ march of Dale…”
This sparks Bilbo into attempting to use the Arkenstone as a bargaining chip and “Next day trumpets rang early in the camp” (The Hobbit, Chapter 17, “The Clouds Burst”) as the allies try to deal with Thorin and here we see time, from being blurred, begins to be more clearly stated: after the “for some time”, we see “the next morning” and then, with the parley discouraged by dwarvish arrows, “That day passed and then the night” and, that following day, everything falls apart: Goblins and Wild Wolves appear and the allies, Dain and his Iron Mountain dwarves, and Thorin & Co, are all involved in a massive struggle which only ends when the Eagles arrive—and Beorn–, Bilbo is knocked unconscious, and Thorin is mortally wounded.
(This is by Justin Gerard—here’s a LINK to a really interesting website dedicated to fantasy illustration where we found it.)
The story hasn’t ended, however, though time goes back into its biggest blur yet. The dragon dead, the Mountain recovered by the dwarves, Bilbo “started on his long road home” . Long it is, as “by mid-winter Gandalf and Bilbo had come all the way back…to the doors of Beorn’s house: and there for a while they both stayed…It was spring, and a fair one with mild weathers and a bright sun, before Bilbo and Gandalf took their leave at last of Beorn…” (The Hobbit, Chapter 18, “The Return Journey”) We see them reach Elrond’s Last Homely House “on May the First”, though “after a week…[Bilbo and Gandalf] said farewell to Elrond” (The Hobbit, Chapter 19, “The Last Stage”). It is June, however, while the two are still on their journey (“for now June brought summer”) and, in fact, we are told that it is precisely the 22nd of June that they arrive at Bag End, as, on that day, “Messrs Grubb, Grubb, and Burrowes” are about to auction off “the effects of the late Bilbo Baggins, Esquire”.
The book goes on a little further, into Bilbo’s future, but this seems like a good place for us to end this posting. What have we discovered with our investigation? We guess we would say that, in The Hobbit, time comes in two forms:
there is passing time—those blurs when people are traveling or waiting—this can be simply marked as time passing, or it may be described in weeks
there is slowed time—this is around important events in the narrative and is always specific to days
And, unless one keeps a very detailed journal
perhaps this can be seen as a kind of imitation of everyone’s life: long stretches of just “doing things” broken up by short patches of intense, memorable activity. What do you think, readers?
doubtfulsea 