Tag Archives: Ted Nasmith

Over the River…

06 Wednesday Mar 2019

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

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As ever, dear readers, welcome.

Two postings ago, we had been discussing how time is marked in The Hobbit.  After a one-post interlude—a book review—we were intending to extend our discussion (as our original plan was) to The Lord of the Rings, but something caught our attention and, in this posting, we’re still interluding—although it is about The Hobbit.

We had just set off from Bag End with Bilbo and the dwarves and noticed this:

“At first they had passed through hobbit-lands, a wide respectable country inhabited by decent folk, with good roads, an inn or two, and now and then a dwarf or a farmer ambling by on business.  Then they came to lands where people spoke strangely, and sang songs Bilbo had never heard before.  Now they had gone on far into the Lone-lands, where there were no people left, no inns, and the roads grew steadily worse.  Not far ahead were dreary hills, rising higher and higher, dark with trees.  On some of them were old castles with an evil look, as if they had been built by wicked people.” (The Hobbit, Chapter 2, “Roast Mutton”)

The company passes over an ancient bridge:

“Somewhere behind the grey clouds the sun must have gone down, for it began to get dark as they went down into a deep valley with a river at the bottom.  Wind got up, and willows along its banks bent and sighed.  Fortunately the road went over an ancient stone bridge, for the river, swollen with the rains, came rushing down from the hills and mountains in the north.”

They go on till Bilbo and the dwarves reach the trolls.

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(drawings by JRRT)

Here, though, we want to pause for a moment and look back, and, like any careful—and curious—traveler, consult a map.

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First—and this is something we noted in that previous post—there is really no hard evidence for just how long this leg of the trip took.  All we are given are  “At first”, “now and then”, “Then”, and “Now”, and the sense of distance comes to us as much through landscape changes as from those vague words:  from “hobbit-lands” to “lands where people spoke strangely…” then “Now they had gone far into the Lone-lands”.

Second, looking at that map, there are certain puzzling words in that description of travel.  The description twice says “roads”, at first “good roads”, then, as the journey goes eastwards, “the roads grew steadily worse”.  Our map, however, shows only one road, the East or East/West Road, the history of which goes far into the history of Middle-earth and which we have always imagined that JRRT modeled on the remains of Roman roads one could still walk in England in his time—and even today.

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(Here’s a LINK to a very good basic article on constructing roads in Roman Britain.)

And then there is this:

“Not far ahead were dreary hills, rising higher and higher, dark with trees.  On some of them were old castles with an evil look, as if they had been built by wicked people.”

As far as we know, there are no “castles” in Middle-earth—the East Road does skirt Weathertop.  As Aragorn says:

“The Old Road, which we have left far away on our right, runs to the south of it and passes not far from its foot.”  (The Fellowship of the Ring, Book One, Chapter 11, “A Knife in the Dark”)

And perhaps his description might—very roughly—fit a (ruined) castle:

“…in the first days of the North Kingdom, they built a great watch-tower on Weathertop, Amon Sul they called it.  It was burned and broken, and nothing remains of it now but a tumbled ring, like a rough crown on the old hill’s head.”

As it was destroyed in the conflict against the Witch King of Angmar, we would certainly agree that “wicked people” had once been involved in its history.

Our puzzlement is not just about what appears in the text, however.  There is also what’s missing (most of it shown on the map):

  1. the bridge over the Brandywine which appears in the first paragraph of “The Scouring of the Shire”
  2. any mention of the Greenway, which crosses the East Road at Bree
  3. and then there is Bree itself

Of course, this is back-reading.  We are looking at a map which is descended from one which JRRT gradually built up over time in the years after The Hobbit, when Middle-earth continued to grow and grow in his imagination and hence in his fiction.  (For an extensive view of his work as a world-creator, see this intelligent and extremely useful volume by Karen Wynn Fonstad,

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which deals with the whole history of Middle-earth in chronological order.  For The Lord of the Rings, we would recommend this, by Barbara Strachey,

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which has been our guide on a number of trips along Frodo’s route.)

As well, it’s good to remember that, for the most part, the company in The Hobbit is traveling at its own speed, a speed determined primarily by the countryside they cross and their trip seems—if occasionally miserable—almost leisurely, especially in comparison with The Lord of the Rings, in which so much of the first volume in particular lays out a route along which several of the main protagonists are driven by evil pursuers.  The journey itself, in the latter, becomes, day by day, the focus of the narrative as they attempt to escape the Nazgul and that day-by-day quality is intensified after the wounding of Frodo on Weathertop, as he begins to fade and his friends are desperate to reach Rivendell.

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The contrast between the two stories is especially striking here, as Bilbo and company are mocked and sung to by invisible elves in The Hobbit (Chapter 3, “A Short Rest”) as they ride down into the valley, whereas, in The Lord of the Rings (The Fellowship of the Ring, Book One, Chapter 12, “Flight to the Ford”), we see this (by the excellent Ted Nasmith)—

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This change in the narrative emphasis, from discrete events along a route in The Hobbit, to an emphasis upon the journey itself, will bring us back to our original discussion on the marking of time—moving now from the earlier book to The Lord of the Rings in our next posting.

Thanks, as always, for reading and

MTCIDC

CD

 

PS

We would guess, by the way, that that “ancient stone bridge” mentioned above is the so-called “Last Bridge”, which Glorifindel  calls “the Bridge of Mitheithel” (The Fellowship of the Ring, Book One, Chapter 12, “Flight to the Ford”) and which crosses the River Hoarwell (“Mitheithel” to the elves) on the East Road.

PPS

If you grew up, as we did, hearing the song we hinted at in our title, you might want to learn more at this LINK…

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On Time (2)

20 Wednesday Feb 2019

Posted by in Artists and Illustrators, Imaginary History, J.R.R. Tolkien, Narrative Methods

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As always, dear readers, welcome.

Some years ago, we visited the Strong National Museum of Play, in Rochester, New York.  (Highly recommended!)

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There, we had found this in one of the display cases–

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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.

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This, as the caption says, is a work by Ted Nasmith, one of our favorite Tolkien illustrators, but here’s JRRT’s version.

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(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).)

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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.

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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.

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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,

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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.”).

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(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.)

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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”)

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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.

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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.

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(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

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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.

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(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:

  1. 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
  2. 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

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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?

And, while you’re thinking, thanks for reading.

MTCIDC

CD

Orc Arsenal.1

26 Wednesday Sep 2018

Posted by in Artists and Illustrators, Fairy Tales and Myths, Heroes, J.R.R. Tolkien, Literary History, Military History, Military History of Middle-earth, The Rohirrim

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Welcome, dear readers, as always.

“The great shadow descended like a falling cloud.  And behold! It was a winged creature…

Upon it sat a shape, black-mantled, huge and threatening…A great black mace he wielded.”

(The Return of the King, Book Five, Chapter 6, “The Battle of the Pelennor Fields”)

This is clearly a scene which has caught the attention, over the years, of many artists, starting, we’d guess, with the Hildebrandts.

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Then others, like Angus McBride and Ted Nasmith,

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And Alan Lee and John Howe,

 

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as well as many very good artists whom we don’t know by name—

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Of these, all but Lee and the unknown sixth artist follow JRRT’s description more or less closely.  Number 6—it’s a little unclear– but he might be carrying a war hammer of some sort,

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rather than a mace.

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(These last two are basic patterns of a mace.)

The Lee is, well, we’re not sure what it seems to be.  It sort of looks like a battle axe

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but also like what was called a “morning star”,

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which should, we think, belong to the flail family.

 

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This rather fits in with the P Jackson image, shown in this model (and note that sword—definitely not in the original description—which is in his other hand).

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This difference made us curious about the weapons the Rohirrim—and the Gondorians—face and, in particular, those of the orcs.  The Hildebrandts

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provide us with odd-looking spears and what might appear to be scimitars

 

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but might be the suggestion of a medieval sword called a falchion.

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McBride, who spent much of his artistic career illustrating military subjects, gives us weapons (mostly) less fanciful.

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Lee

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and Howe

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veer between the practical and the fantastic and the films clearly follow them—

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How does JRRT describe the orc weaponry?

The first armed orc we see appears in Moria:

“His broad flat face was swart, his eyes were like coals, and his tongue was red; he wielded a great spear…Sam, with a cry, hacked at the spear-shaft, and it broke.  But even as the orc flung down the truncheon and swept out his scimitar…” (The Fellowship of the Ring, Book Two, Chapter 5, “The Bridge of Khazad-dum”)

The orcs who pursue the Fellowship through Moria have similar weapons:

“Beyond the fire he saw swarming black figures:  there seemed to be hundreds of orcs.  They brandished spears and scimitars which shone red as blood in the firelight.”

After the death of Boromir, however, Aragorn, Gimli, and Legolas find a different kind of orc:

“There were four goblin-soldiers of greater stature, swart, slant-eyed, with thick legs and large hands.  They were armed with short broad-bladed swords, not with the curved scimitars usual with Orcs: and they had bows of yew, in length and shape like the bows of Men.” (The Two Towers, Book Three, Chapter 1, “The Departure of Boromir”)

So far, we’ve seen spears

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and scimitars

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and now we can add to that “short broad-bladed swords”.  Perhaps Tolkien is thinking of the medieval “arming sword”

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or even the Roman gladius?

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When we add “bows of yew, in length and shape like the bows of Men”, we immediately see the classic English longbow.

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This doesn’t quite match with the first orc bowman we see in the films, however, “Lurtz”—

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who appears to have some sort of recurved bow, possibly composite, of the sort the Mongols used

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even though, from the white hand on his face, he is supposed to be one of those “goblin-soldiers” from Isengard.

As we were looking through Tolkien’s text, we wondered where he would have gotten his ideas for weapons from.  If the basis, as we imagine it, would have been his background in medieval literature, then he might have gone to the library and found an old standard work, Sir Samuel Meyrick’s (1783-1848)

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An Inquiry Into Ancient Armour, As It Existed in Europe, Particularly in Great Britain, From the Norman Conquest to the Reign of Charles the Second, first published in 1824.  (Here’s a LINK if you’d like to look at this text for yourself.)

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Meyrick was the first great English specialist in armor and the later editions of his work (in 3 volumes) have wonderful early hand-colored plates, all based upon surviving armor, tombs, manuscripts, and any other period materials he could gather.

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If JRRT wanted to see such things for himself, he would have found more exotic weapons in the Pitt-Rivers Museum in Oxford,

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or he could have traveled up to London to see the Wallace Collection

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or, best of all, he could have visited the Tower of London, with its massive collection (the organizing of which had earned Meyrick his knighthood in 1832) of medieval arms and armor, which had been available to the public in some form even before Meyrick’s time—here’s a Victorian tour.

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It could have been all of the above, of course, but it seems to us that the descriptions we’re reading are actually not really very specific—“mace”, “spear”, “scimitar”—only those short swords and bows suggest anything more detailed.  Perhaps, then, Tolkien was inspired by something else—perhaps he had read, perhaps even possessed, as a boy, books like Howard Pyle’s 1903 The Story of King Arthur and His Knights

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and been inspired by its illustrations.

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There were plenty of illustrated tales like this—Conan Doyle’s The White Company (first published in serial form in 1891),

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or Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Black Arrow (serial 1883, book 1888).

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With any and all of that background, we wonder what he might have made of this, however, an orc sword from the films which looks more like something manufactured from a car part than the product of a medieval armorer…

image46sword.jpg

Thanks, as ever, for reading.

MTCIDC

CD

ps

If car part weapons don’t bother you, you might be interested in this LINK—it’s an early article on ideas for weapons and armor for the Jackson films.

In a Pukel

09 Wednesday May 2018

Posted by in Artists and Illustrators, Fairy Tales and Myths, J.R.R. Tolkien, Maps, Medieval Russia, Military History, Military History of Middle-earth, The Rohirrim

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Welcome, dear readers, as ever.

After their mustering and rapid journey to the aid of Gondor, the Rohirrim

image1rohirrim.jpg

have been stopped:

“Scouts had been sent ahead.  Some had not returned.  Others hastening back had reported that the road was held in force against them.  A host of the enemy was encamped upon it, three [4.8km]] miles west of Amon Din, and some strength of men was already thrusting along the road and was not more than three leagues [about 9 miles/14.5km] away.”  (The Return of the King, Book Five, Chapter 5, “The Ride of the Rohirrim”)

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And so they are camped temporarily in the murk which has fallen over the West—a sign of Sauron on the move.

As they remain there, Merry gradually hears a sound like distant drums and, when Elfhelm, the Marshal of the eored [Rohirrim unit of horsemen] in which Merry and his mysterious companion, Dernhelm, are riding, stumbles over him, Merry asks if it’s the enemy:

“Are those their drums?”

Elfhelm replies:

“You hear the Woses, the Wild Men of the Woods…They still haunt Druadan Foest, it is said…But they have offered their services to Theoden.  Even now one of their headmen is being taken to the king.”

Merry follows Elfhelm and soon sees:

“A large lantern, covered above, was hanging from a bough and cast a pale circle of light below.  There sat Theoden and Eomer, and before them on the ground sat a strange squat shape of a man, gnarled as an old stone, and the hairs of his scanty beard straggled on his lumpy chin like dry moss.  He was short-legged and fat-armed, thick and stumpy, and clad only with grass about his waist.”

This, we find out, is Ghan-buri-Ghan, leader of the Wild Men, who, as Elfhelm has said, has come to offer his and his people’s aid to Theoden.

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(We note, by the way, that this Hildebrandt illustration has taken certain liberties with the scene as described in the book:  it appears to be daylight—no lantern—if Eomer is there, he isn’t seated, and there is more than one Wild Man–oh, and the Wild Man’s beard has suddenly sprouted.)

What Ghan-buri-Ghan offers Theoden is a long-forgotten road which would provide a way around the soldiers of Sauron who are blocking the direct route to Minas Tirith:   the path through the Stonewain Valley.

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What caught our attention here was the connection Merry made between Ghan-buri-Ghan and something he’d encountered only recently:

“Merry felt that he had seen him before somewhere, and suddenly he remembered the Pukel-men of Dunharrow.  Here was one of those old images brought to life, or maybe a creature descended in true line through endless years from the models used by the forgotten craftsmen long ago.”

Dunharrow

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was a mysterious place—

“…the work of long-forgotten men.  Their name was lost and no song or legend remembered it.  For what purpose they had made this place, as a town or secret temple or a tomb of kings, none in Rohan could say.  Here they labored in the Dark Years, before ever a ship came to the western shores, or Gondor of the Dunedain was built; and now they had vanished, and only the old Pukel-men were left, still sitting at the turnings of the road.

Merry stared at the lines of marching stones:  they were worn and black; some were leaning, some were fallen, some cracked or broken; they looked like rows of old and hungry teeth.” (The Return of the King, Book Five, Chapter 3, “The Muster of Rohan”)

For a moment, this description reminded us of something one sees in Brittany, on the west coast of France, the so-called “Carnac Stones”, a vast field of Neolithic upright stones, now called menhirs (Breton for “long stone”) in long lines in and around the village of Carnac.

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And, just as the use or meaning of Dunharrow is lost, so is that of the elaborate construction of the Carnac Stones.

Once the Carnac Stones—and others like them, both in France and in Great Britain—came into our heads, we were whirled away to Rapa Nui (Easter Island) and all of those puzzling outsized heads on less-developed torsos, the moai.

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It was not the size or placement of those figures like “rows of old and hungry teeth” however, which made us think further about Ghan-buri-Ghan and his stony cousins, but how the figures were carved:

“At each turn of the road there were great standing stones that had been carved in the likeness of men, huge and clumsy-limbed, squatting cross-legged with their stumpy arms folded on fat bellies.  Some in the wearing of the years had lost all features save the dark holes of their eyes that still stared sadly at the passers-by.  The Riders hardly glanced at them.  The Pukel-men they called them, and heeded them little…”

As the Rohirrim are translated as speaking among themselves a sort of Tolkien-adapted Old English, so “pukel” appears to be derived from “pucel” = “goblin/demon”, which suggests perhaps a quasi-religious or magical use, but, if they once represented spirits, they are now spiritless, with no ability to frighten.  Rather, as the narrator tells us:

“…no power or terror was left in them; but Merry gazed at them with wonder and a feeling almost of pity, as they loomed up mournfully in the dusk.”

The narrator’s elaboration then reminded us of something else:  balbal.

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These are carved stone figures with a history probably as long as that of the Pukel-men.  They appear to be the product of Turkic peoples in Central Asia—with even older relatives, perhaps, to the west, as well.  Some may have been tomb guardians or monuments themselves—as with the Pukel-men, their origins and use/s are lost to us.  We ourselves have stolen them for use in our series of novels based in an imaginary medieval fairy tale Russia, called Cherna, “The Black Land”—but please don’t think “Mordor?”  In our case, the reason it’s named that is that it is steppe country with extremely fertile black soil.  So rich, especially as pasture-land, that it’s worth invading and fighting over, which is what the villains of our trilogy, the Vsadniki, modeled on the Mongols, do.

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Unlike Pukel-men and menhirs and moai, however, there is no mystery about what the Vsadniki are up to with their stones:  every time they conquer a new land, they set such stones up at their new far-western border to say not only “what’s behind these is ours”, but also “and we’re looking at your lands next”.

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Thanks, as always, for reading.

MTCIDC

CD

ps

In the Tolkien volume Unfinished Tales, we find further connections between the Wild Men/Woses and carvings.  We use a paperback edition and this has somewhat different pagination from the hardbound, but, should you be interested, you can find it in either form in Part Four, I The Druedain.

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Here is a drawing of Ghan-buri-Ghan by Denis Gordeev, who has done a good deal of work illustrating a wide selection of JRRT’s fiction, rather as Ted Nasmith has, along with many other classics as well as modern fantasy fiction.

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Gordeev has clearly been trained/trained himself in drawing as people did in that golden age of children’s writing and illustration, the 1880s to 1920s, and, once you get used to his very distinctive style, you may come to like it as we do.  Here’s Gandalf arriving in Hobbiton, fireworks and all, just to give you a taste.

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Hoards of the Things

28 Wednesday Jun 2017

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

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Welcome, dear readers, as always.

Recently, we’ve had a couple of posts on dragons and hoards, but, having done a certain amount of research and thinking and writing, we’ve come back once again to the subject, with the question: why would a dragon want a hoard to begin with?

The earliest Western European stories we know in which dragons (or serpents—the Greek word can apply to either) are associated with valuables are:

  1. the 11th labor of Heracles, in which his cousin, Eurystheus, demands that Heracles bring him the Golden Apples of the Hesperides (“children of the evening star”)—which are on an island guarded by a 100-headed (in some versions of the story) dragon/serpent called Ladon

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  1. the story of Jason and the Argo, in which Jason must bring back to Greece the Golden Fleece, also guarded by a dragon/serpent (a sleepless one this time)

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In both of these stories, the dragon is the agent for someone else—Hera, in the case of the Golden Apples,

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and Aeetes, the king of Colchis, in that of the Golden Fleece.

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(We’ve always loved the curly beard of Jack Gwillim in Jason and the Argonauts—1963. His son, David, by the way, was a perfect Prince Hal and Henry V in BBC productions from 1979—if you can find them, we highly recommend them.)

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After these, we see the dragon of Beowulf.

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In his case, although he’s called hordweard, “hoard guardian/watchman”, we are told that he has come upon a treasure in a barrow, piled in for safe-keeping several hundred years before. Europeans in the Neolithic Period and long beyond buried high-status people in such places—like this, in Denmark.

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As it was the custom for high-status people to be buried with at least some of their riches, it’s easy to see how singers might be inspired to create a barrow like that of the Beowulf dragon. Some of our favorite grave goods come from the Scythians, a horse-people who once lived north of the Black Sea, and who had buried them in grave mounds with their dead.

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(A wonderfully atmospheric picture by Alexander Deruchenko.)

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The Beowulf dragon is not the proper owner of the hoard: rather, he has taken possession (the poem may even be suggesting that dragons—or this dragon, at least– have a special affection for barrows (2270-2278), rather as the barrow wights have taken over the tumuli on the Barrow Downs, both places being much older and long-abandoned. You may remember this striking image by one of our favorite Tolkien artists, Ted Nasmith–

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In contrast, Smaug has taken possession of the Lonely Mountain by force, burning out the rightful owners.

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In both cases, however, the latest owner is very sensitive about his new property: the removal of one object, as Beowulf and Bilbo find out.

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(And we can’t resist this item—it’s copy of a cup used in the 2007 Beowulf film. We don’t see that it would be very useful for drinking from, but it’s certainly fun to look at!)

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It’s one thing if it’s your job to guard gold: you’re like a sheepdog with a flock. (Here’s a Maremma, in fact, with a flock.)

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It’s another if you are occupying, seized or not, someone else’s gold. In the latter case, however, we are still left with our initial question: why is this important to a dragon?

Perhaps they just like the look of it. After all, Smaug seems quite proud of what he sees as a waistcoat of precious things. When Bilbo says: “What a magnificence to possess a waistcoat of fine diamonds!” Smaug replies “Yes, it is rare and wonderful, indeed.” (The Hobbit, Chapter 12, “Inside Information”) Yet there is the darker side:

“To say that Bilbo’s breath was taken away is no description at all. There are no words left to express his staggerment, since Men changed the language that they learned of elves in the days when all the world was wonderful. Bilbo had heard tell and sing of dragon-hoards before, but the splendor, the lust, the glory of such treasure had never yet come home to him. His heart was filled and pierced with enchantment and with the desire of dwarves; and he gazed motionless, almost forgetting the frightful guardian, at the gold beyond price and count.”   (The Hobbit, Chapter 12, “Inside Information”)

Just seeing such wealth brought on “lust” and “the desire of dwarves” and it’s clear that this is what infects Thorin after Smaug’s death and eventually brings on the “dragon-sickness” which leads to the end of the Master of Laketown (The Hobbit, Chapter 19, “The Last Stage”). As this “lust” for beautiful, valuable things seems inherent in the dwarves, it strikes us that we might imagine dragons as somehow enablers or carriers—like anopheles mosquitoes and malaria—

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rather than originators of the disease and that the name is derived from that combination of acquisitiveness and sensitivity we noted earlier and which so clearly disturbs Thorin’s judgement.

But perhaps there is something in the idea of hoarding itself. In our world, “hoarding” has come to have a different meaning, being a kind of psychological condition in which a person acquires and acquires and has lost the ability to discard anything for complex internal reasons. In literature, one might imagine that misers have something of this—think of Ebenezer Scrooge, in Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol (1843).

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Or, Uncle Scrooge McDuck, from Walt Disney comics. Who, as you can see, takes this to an extreme even Dickens’ Scrooge might find a bit excessive.

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Underneath this, however, is the sad side: those who become imprisoned by their possessions, a famous case being that of the Collyer brothers in New York, whose apartment, after their joint deaths in 1947, was a subject both of curiosity and of mild horror in the New York newspapers of the time.

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Is it possible that the Beowulf dragon and Smaug both suffer from this condition? Is that why the theft of a single piece from an uncountable hoard seems to mean so much?

We never want to shy away from serious subjects—after all, all of the best fantasy/adventure writers never did—but it’s an early summer day where we live—just after Midsummer’s Day, in fact, and so we’d like to end with another kind of acquisitor—the magpie.

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Traditionally, magpies are famous for being attracted to—and collecting—shiny objects. Our favorite magpie story, however, isn’t about obsession, but about generosity. It’s a beautiful children’s book by Nancy Willard and Jane Dyer, entitled Cinderella’s Dress.

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In this book, told in light, easy verse, we see a magpie couple as fairy godparents for Cinderella, using their cache of shiny things to—but we’ll leave that to you to discover (although the title is a bit of a give-away). Here’s another page to tease you…

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Thanks, as ever, for reading.

MTCIDC

 

PS

Another Nancy Willard book you might enjoy is A Visit to William Blake’s Inn (1981), illustrated by Alice and Martin Provensen.

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Bordering (.1: The Landscape)

29 Wednesday Mar 2017

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

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Welcome once more, dear readers.

In this posting, we want to return to a recent one about “marches”—that is, not pieces for military bands (although we are partial to those of John Philip Sousa—1854-1932–

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especially “The Liberty Bell”—1893—

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mostly because it was used by Monty Python. We provide a link here for what might have been its first recording, by the “Edison Grand Concert Band” in 1896. Watch out for the big foot!)

but border areas, usually sensitive ones, which might have been militarized, like that at the southern edge of Charlemagne’s empire.

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This, the Marca Hispanica, existed as a buffer state between the Moorish Caliphate to its south and the Holy Roman Empire to the north.

In contrast, we have the West March, to the west of the Shire, as we’ve discussed before.

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At its far western edge are the Tower Hills (here illustrated by one of our favorite Tolkien artists, Ted Nasmith)

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on which are perched three white towers, described in the Prologue to The Lord of the Rings:

“Three Elf-towers of immemorial age were still to be seen on the Tower Hills beyond the western marches. They shone far off in the moonlight. The tallest was furthest away, standing alone upon a green mound. The Hobbits of the Westfarthing said that one could see the Sea from the top of that tower; but no Hobbit had ever been known to climb it.” (Gandalf adds to this that there was a palantir, Elendil’s Stone, located there—The Two Towers, Book Three, Chapter 11, “The Palantir”.)

The difference is, those towers don’t seem defensive and the West March is not a military zone—although it is the site of Hobbit-expansion, as Appendix B tells us:

“1452 The Westmarch, from the Far Downs to the Tower Hills (Emyn Beraid) is added to the Shire by the gift of the King. Many hobbits remove to it.

1462 …the Thain makes Fastred Warden of Westmarch. Fastred and Elanor make their dwelling at Undertowers on the Tower Hills, where their descendants, the Fairbairns of the Towers, dwelt for many generations.”

Talk of marches and wardens and towers, however, immediately brought to mind for us something from our world (doesn’t it always?).

This is the border area between England and Scotland, an area of conflict for several centuries, but culminating in the struggles of the 16th century.

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The border area had been divided, on both sides, into three marches, with a subset for that area on the southwest side called the “Debatable Lands”, because both England and Scotland claimed it. In 1552, the decision was mutually made to put up an earthen barrier, the so-called “Scots Dike”, to split it.

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Unlike Hadrian’s Wall, farther to the south, with its system of walls and towers and gates and little forts and big army camps, this was never an elaborate military structure, or even like Offa’s Dike between England and Wales,

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but simply a boundary marker in low-lying land (and only 3.5 miles long– 5.6km).

When it came to the border towards the east, and the center of the region and beyond, however, the land rises into the characteristic twisty hills with long, narrow valleys.

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In this wild world, there are no long walls, of stone, wood, or earth to protect anyone, but castles, towers, and fortified farmhouses called bastles (possibly from the same root as “Bastille”?). Here we see Hermitage Castle, Smailholm Tower, and Black Middens Bastle.

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Although we see these now as gaunt ruins, we should always imagine them—as in this reconstruction of Smailholm—as living spaces, as well as refuges in an often lawless land.

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One has only to see the thick walls of a bastle and, originally, no door at ground level (stairs appear to be a later convenience for a more peaceable time), to imagine the danger from reivers, raiders from either side of the Anglo-Scots border and sometimes, as there was a certain amount of intermarriage, from both.

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As can be seen in this reconstruction, these walls might be all that would stand between the inhabitants and destitution or even death, should the reivers come raiding.

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There was also the possibility of buying them off, by paying them blackmail, a word whose origin is contested, but whose purpose is clear: protection money. If you paid them, in coin or cattle, you were safe—at least until the price went up.

Curbing such behavior was the job of the Border Wardens, there being six, one for each March on each side of the border. Theirs was a difficult job: too much territory, too few men, and too few resources to back them up. Wonderfully, one of these Wardens, Robert Carey, has left us a memoir, which is available on-line: memoirsrobertca00orregoog.

If you were attacked and you survived, you might send word to the Warden or one of his officers, who could organize a posse to pursue the raiders. By law, all able-bodied locals were supposed to turn out to help when the organizer—Warden or officer—rode by with trumpeter and a rider who carried a flaming bit of peat on his “staff” (local word for “lance”).

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This was called the “hot trod” and, under its conditions, the pursuers were allowed to cross the border. Such occasions could be very dangerous, however, as those raiders would be chased back across their own territory, giving them the chance to delay or destroy those in pursuit in an ambush on familiar ground.

We were originally drawn to this part of the world and of Anglo-Scottish history because of our interest in the musical literature of the region, the so-called “border ballads”, and, in our next, “Bordering (.2 Blackmail, Battle, and Song”) we’ll talk a bit about them—and perhaps a bit more about borders and heroic behavior, as well.

Thanks as ever, for reading!

MTCIDC

CD

Infrastructure and Architecture in Rivendell

28 Wednesday Sep 2016

Posted by in Artists and Illustrators, Films and Music, Imaginary History, J.R.R. Tolkien, Literary History, Narrative Methods

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Welcome, dear readers, as ever. In our last posting, we looked at the Greenway from a comparative perspective. In this one, we’ve got an idea or two from having looked as closely as we could at one of JRRT’s illustrations of Rivendell, comparing it with various modern conceptions, including that in the films of P. Jackson.

Rivendell, Sindarin, Imladris, “deep valley in a cleft”, is located on the eastern edge of Eriador, at the foot of the Misty Mountains. Set in that deep valley, which was formed by the action of the river Bruinen (“Loudwater”), it was besieged on several occasions throughout its lifetime, but had survived to be the last refuge of the Elves on that side of the mountains.

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It is understood that Tolkien based it upon a Swiss valley, Lauterbrunnental, which he had visited on a hiking trip in 1911.

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(And maybe there’s an echo in the name—which is sometimes translated “Louder Springs”—in Bruinen, “Loudwater”?)

Here is the Tolkien illustration

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We want to look at two features here. First, in the middle ground, there is that bridge. Here is Alan Lee’s very beautiful version—although you will note that it’s been moved and shortened.The-Hobbit-and-dwarfts-on-the-bridge-alan-lee-18907573-1024-768

As we examined this bridge as closely as we could, we wondered, where had the idea come from for its shape? And two possibilities came to mind. First, because we’re very much World History people, we thought of those beautiful bridges from the Ottoman world. There are a number of surviving bridges which are more elaborate, but there are also single-arch bridges like these, which bear a strong resemblance to the bridge in Tolkien’s illustration.

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To us, one of the most beautiful is the Stari Most (Bosnian, “Old Bridge”), in Mostar (Bosnian, “Bridge Keeper”), which was built in the 16th century, destroyed in 1993, and rebuilt, and reopened in 2004.

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Moving a little closer to home (England, that is, in the case of JRRT), another possibility for a model might be something mentioned in our last posting, when we talked about medieval English roads as mostly packhorse trails. Here’s a perfect example, from Wasdale in the Lake District of northern England, a packhorse bridge.

(n) The pack horse bridge behind the Wasdale Head Inn

Moving upstream from the bridge in Tolkien’s picture, we see a house depicted.

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It’s hard to make it out, even under magnification, but, when we compare it with:

  1. the buildings in the Jackson films

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  1. Alan Lee’s Rivendell

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  1. or even Ted Nasmith’s,

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we personally don’t think anyone quite captures what Tolkien drew. To us, there appears to be, as we said before, something closer to home–in the reconstructions of Roman villas and their outbuildings. And, as we said in our last, so much of Roman Britain was still available, either above or below ground, that we can imagine JRRT  being aware of it.  (In fact, in 1929, the archaeologist, Sir Mortimer Wheeler actually consulted him on an ancient curse and the inscription on a Roman-British ring.  See the Ring of Silvianus wiki page).  Possible examples, some from reconstructed sites:

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Blow up the Tolkien illustration for yourself, dear readers, and what do you think?

Thanks, as always, for reading.

MTCIDC

CD

 

 

 

“A kind of proud, venerable, but increasingly impotent Byzantium”

01 Wednesday Jun 2016

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

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Welcome, as always, dear readers.

The title of this posting is taken from a very long letter (10,000 words), written to Milton Waldman probably in 1951 (Letters No.131, 157). Waldman represented the English publisher, Collins, which had expressed an interest in The Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion when Allen & Unwin had been hesitant. Determined to justify the simultaneous publication of both, Tolkien wrote in great detail about the general narrative, with an emphasis upon the religious aspects.

In the process, he likened Gondor to the Byzantine empire, a comparison which immediately attracted our attention. We ourselves had suggested in an earlier posting that the attack on its capital, Minas Tirith, had been like the siege of the Byzantine capital, Constantinople.

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What was JRRT thinking of when he likened the two?

First, they both were—or had been—large kingdoms—in the case of Byzantium, an empire, really, as these maps demonstrate.

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Their capitals were both of great age. Minas Tirith, “The Tower of Guard”, had been built originally as Minas Anor, “Tower of the Sun” in SA 3320 by Anarion, the younger son of Elendil, but only became the capital of Gondor in TA1640, after Osgiliath had been devastated by a plague. If we add its time in the Second Age (121 years) to the whole of the Third Age (3021 years), we reach a total of 3142 years at the defeat of Sauron. (For comparison, we might look at Athens, whose continuous habitation began before 3000BC, giving it a more-than-5000-year history.)

Constantinople, is old, by anyone’s standards, having been founded in 667BC as a Greek colony (there’s a bit of argument over the dating of this, which is typical of such things), and is still inhabited (and an absolutely amazing place!), but a bit younger than Minas Tirith at the time of The Lord of the Rings by some 500 years or so.

Third, there is the matter of the elaborate construction of these capitals.

“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. 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 first this way and then that across the face of the hill. And each time that it passed the line of the Great Gate it went through an arched tunnel, piercing a vast pier of rock whose huge out-thrust bulk divided in two all of the circles of the City save the first. For partly in the primeval shaping of the hill, partly by the mighty craft and labour of old, there stood up from the rear of the wide court behind the Gate a towering bastion of stone, its edge sharp as a ship-keel facing east. Up it rose, even to the level of the topmost circle, and there was crowned with a battlement; so that those in the Citadel might, like mariners in a monstrous ship, look from its peak sheer down upon the Gate seven hundred feet below.”

The Lord of the Rings, Book 5, Chapter 1, “Minas Tirith”

Here’s one of our favorite paintings (by Ted Nasmith—one of our favorite Tolkien artists).

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And here’s the film.

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The designers have said that they were influenced by the look of Mont Saint Michel, a medieval monastery just off the coast of Normandy in France.

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The complex nature of the place is captured in this diagram.

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Byzantium (or, Constantinople, its later name) began its life, as we said, as a colony of the Greek mainland city of Megara. In the 4th century AD, the Roman emperor Constantine I, the last survivor in a long civil war, chose the site for his new capital. As much of the weight, both of commerce and defense, lay in the eastern part of the Roman world by this time, he chose very wisely: his new city was placed to control trade with the rich Black Sea region and to provide a strategic jumping-off point for dealing with invaders and emerging kingdoms in Asia Minor.

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The position was also well-chosen for defense, being at the end of a peninsula—the main strategy then being its walling-off from the mainland.

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There is, of course, a big difference here between the 7 levels and 7 gates of Minas Tirith and the two walls—the older inner 4th-century one of Constantine and the slightly-later (early 5th century) walls of Theodosius II. Nevertheless, those later walls were well-constructed, in two successive lines, with a moat on the outside.

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The Theodosian walls were about a mile-and-half from the older, Constantine wall, encompassing a population which, at its height, may have been over 400,000 in number. By the time of its fall to the Ottoman army in 1453, that number had dropped to perhaps only 50,000, which reflected the gradual shrinking of the empire from its greatest size, in the 6th century

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under the emperor Justinian

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when it encompassed the majority of the Mediterranean basin, to its last, worn-out phase in the early 15th century, when it controlled a few scattered outposts, but mainly the area directly around the capital.

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This shrinking of the empire and of its population proved disastrous for the capital. When the Ottoman army, under Mehmet II, arrived outside the walls in the spring of 1453, the imperial government could only provide 7000 defenders, 2000 of whom were foreigners, to defend about 3 and ½ miles of wall (that’s 5 ½ km). Against them were anywhere from 50 to 80,000 attackers, who brought with them (or cast on the spot), massive artillery pieces and, after a 53-day siege, broke into the city and put an end to an empire which had lasted for over 1100 years.

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And this is the last sad similarity with Gondor and its capital, as we see through Pippin’s eyes:

“Pippin gazed in growing wonder at the great stone city, vaster and more splendid than anything that he had dreamed of, greater and stronger than Isengard, and far more beautiful. Yet is was in truth falling year by year into decay, and already it lacked half the men that could have dwelt at ease there. In every street they passed some great house or court over whose doors and arched gates were carved many fair letters of strange and ancient shapes: names Pippin guessed of great men and kindreds that had once dwelt there; and yet now they were silent, and no footsteps rang on their wide pavements, nor voice was heard in their halls, nor any face looked out from door or empty window.”

The Lord of the Rings, Book 5, Chapter 1, “Minas Tirith”

And, just as in the case of Constantinople, the capital of Gondor was hard-pressed to defend itself. Luckily for it, however, there was an uncrowned king with a ghostly army, a brave reinforcement of southern yeomen, a mass of wild horsemen from the north, a wizard, and the fulfillment of an ancient prophecy about a witch king to aid it in its hour of need…

Thanks, as always, for reading.

MTCIDC

CD