Tag Archives: The Bayeux Tapestry

Cap-a-Pie (1)

21 Wednesday Oct 2026

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Horatio is describing to Hamlet a vision of the night before—

“Hor. Two nights together had these Gentlemen,

Marcellus and Bernardo, on their watch,

In the dead vast and middle of the night.

Beene thus incountered by a figure like your father,

Armed to poynt, exactly Capapea

Appeeres before them thrise, he walkes

Before their weake and feare oppressed eies

Within his tronchions length…”

(from the First Quarto, 1603, of Hamlet, Act One, Scene 2, a somewhat quirky text, but, as always, I like to use Elizabethan/Jacobean spellings as they seem chewier to me and can sometimes indicate the very different sound of Shakespeare’s English.  For the complete text, see:  https://internetshakespeare.uvic.ca/doc/Ham_Q1/scene/1/index.html  To hear Shakespeare’s English reconstructed, see:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y2QYGEwM1Sk This is part of a whole series which I recommend as a real ear-opener, if you are unfamiliar with the sound of English c.1600.)

(Henry Fuseli—that is, Heinrich Fuessli, 1741-1825—a Swiss-born artist who spent most of his later life in England.  A painter of Shakespeare and the weird, friend of William Blake, and extremely interesting Romantic period character.  You can read more about him here:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Fuseli#Influence )

That strange-looking “Capapea” is actually the “cap-a-pie” of my title and means “head-to-foot” in the French (roughly) it was taken from.  Hamlet’s father, then, was in full armor, something which was gradually disappearing from the military world of Shakespeare, but might still be seen in Tudor times, especially if someone was involved in one of the retro-tournaments which the Elizabethans and Jacobeans occasionally staged.

(Graham Turner)

My current interest in such things came from recently seeing, in a toy catalogue, this—

labeled as “Sauron”, a Lego model, and clearly based upon the image seen in the Jackson film of The Fellowship of the Ring,

where Sauron appears in Elrond’s account, from Chapter 2 of Book Two, “The Council of Elrond”, of the battle in which Sauron lost the Ring to Isildur.  There is no description of Sauron in the original text, but I wondered, looking at the Lego version, what Tolkien, rather than Jackson and his designers, might have had in mind, not only for Sauron’s look, but for armor in his story in general.  (This is just a cursory run-through, for the moment, but, on my next reading of the story, I’ll take more time—there are helmets, for instance, about which there is more to be said —such as whatever Gimli is wearing and what kind of helmet conceals Eowyn from her uncle—and the arming of the dwarves and Bilbo in The Hobbit might also be useful.)

We know from a letter to Rhona Beare how he imagined the Rohirrim:

“The Styles of the Bayeux Tapestry…fit them well enough, if one remembers that the kind of tennis-nets [the] soldiers seem to have on are only a clumsy conventional sign for chain-mail of small rings.”  (letter to Rhona Beare, 14 October, 1955, Letters, 401)

Here’s what JRRT was referring to—

and here’s what those “tennis-nets” would have been based upon—

The helmet is what’s called a “spangenhelm” and looks like this (with lots of variations)—

Tolkien had employed (and enjoyed) the work of Pauline Baynes (1922-2008), commenting, however, on her knights in the same letter:

“…Pauline Baynes drew her inspiration for F[armer] Giles [of Ham] largely from medieval MS. drawings—except for the knights (who are a bit ‘King-Arthurish’)…”

with this footnote:  “Sc. belong to our ‘mythological’ Middle-Ages which blends [sic] unhistorically styles and details over 500 years, and most of which did not of course exist in the Dark Ages of c.500 A.D.” 

Here’s one of Baynes’ illustrations—

Tolkien is dating King Arthur to early Dark Ages Britain, where warriors might have looked like this—

(Angus McBride)

“mythological” is an important word here, as Tolkien seems to be implying a fantasy world, where details from various periods can be–and are–used at random—and I wonder if he’s thinking here of something like Hal Foster’s long-running comic strip, “Prince Valiant”, which is set in the age of Arthur, but employs elements from all sorts of historical periods—

as does Howard Pyle, in his illustrations for The Story of King Arthur and His Knights (1903)—

of which you can have your own copy here:  https://dn720408.ca.archive.org/0/items/storyofkingarthu22pyle/storyofkingarthu22pyle.pdf

the irony being, of course, that Tolkien, himself, both in Farmer Giles and in The Lord of the Rings, is telling his own “mythological” stories.

There are scattered references to armored figures in the text, but, as far as I can tell, mostly just that, and not very detailed.  For the defenders of Gondor, instance, we are briefly shown Forlong of Lossnarch, as he leads his men into Minas Tirith—

“…a man of wide shoulders and huge girth, but old and grey-bearded, yet mail-clad and black-helmed…”

Mail-clad would mean wearing chain-mail, like this (and like the Normans depicted as wearing “tennis-nets”)—

but “black-helmed” is vague—are we looking at the earlier spangenhelm, or a later closed helm of some sort?

There’s no mention of heraldry on shields or banners, and Forlong is recognized, so perhaps this means an open helm of some sort?

Imrahil of Dol Amroth appears to be a figure like those in Howard Pyle’s illustrations—

“…with gilded banners bearing his token of the Ship and the Silver Swan, and a company of knights in full harness…” (The Return of the King, Book Five, Chapter 1, “Minas Tirith”)

So JRRT probably meant something like this, as “full harness” usually means full armor–

or this—

There are, as well, the Guards of the citadel of Gondor, described in more detail than usual:

“…robed in black, and their helms were of strange shape, high-crowned, with long cheek-guards close-fitting to the face, and above the cheek-guards were set the white wings of sea-birds, but the helms gleamed with a flame of silver, for they were indeed wrought of mithril, heirlooms of the glory of old days.  Upon the black surcoats were embroidered in white a tree blossoming like snow beneath a silver crown and many-pointed stars.”  (The Return of the King, Book Five, Chapter 1, “Minas Tirith”)

That description of helmets does seem strange, in a way sounding like a Greek Corinthian helmet—

but the addition of the white wings takes things in a different direction and here I think that Jackson’s designers came close to what Tolkien had described–

So much for the protagonists of The Lord of the Rings, but what about the antagonists?  We’ll look at what they’re wearing in part 2 of this posting.

Thanks, as always, for reading.

Stay well,

Be sure to be respectful of visiting ghosts—the watchmen in Hamlet actually try poking theirs with their partisans—

(Yeomen warders of the Tower of London armed with partisans)

And remember, that, as always, there’s

MTCIDC

O

Tennis, Anyone?

10 Wednesday Jun 2026

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Welcome, dear readers, as always.

The title of this posting is based upon a scene in 1920-30s country house plays where someone known as a “bright young thing”–no, not one of those—

bounds onto the stage in his whites, cheerily chirping “Tennis, anyone?”

But, lest you think that you’ve stumbled into the wrong blog, I’m actually not going to talk about tennis—except as Tolkien uses it analogically—in this quotation:

“The Rohirrim were not ‘medieval’, in our sense.  The styles of the Bayeux Tapestry (made in England) fit them well enough, if one remembers that the kind of tennis-nets [the] soldiers seem to have on are only a clumsy conventional sign for chain-mail of small rings.”  (letter to Rhona Beare, 14 October, 1958, Letters, 401)

Here’s a tennis net, in the unlikely event that you’ve never seen one—

and here’s a segment of the “Bayeux Tapestry” (actually a massive embroidery) with some warriors wearing what JRRT is talking about—

What’s going on in this scene is that a rumor during the battle of Hastings was spreading through the Norman army that William had been killed, so the Duke rode among his men with his helmet raised, and therefore anyone who knew him, at least by sight, would realize that the rumor was false (note also, in case you didn’t know about this event, the Latin caption—“Hic est Dux Will[helm”—“here is Duke William”, as well as the mounted Norman to the right who is pointing—and doubtless shouting “Iloc!”—“There [he is]!” –for something about Norman French, see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_language )

Although he doesn’t explain “medieval”, I expect that what Tolkien means is that the Rohirrim shouldn’t look like this—

(Graham Turner—who has made a specialty of the 15th-century military—with a wonderful illustrated history of the Wars of the Roses, which I recommend highly.)

but rather like this—

If you read this blog regularly, you know that my favorite part of Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings films is the depiction of the Rohirrim—with the exception of Rohan, which should be a great, grassy plain,

but, as New Zealand doesn’t possess such, the best that could be done was this rather withered- looking landscape—

(For more on this, see “Plain and Grassy”, 24 September, 2025)

Now, however, I begin to think that, though the Rohirrim are still my favorite part, I want to add a second exception:  how the Rohirrim look.

Tolkien, after all, has given us a definite picture of what he wanted.  The Rohirrim were to be imagined as looking like the Normans (and Anglo-Saxons) we can see on the Tapestry:  wearing rather simple helmets, either hammered from one sheet of metal,

or made of a series of plates attached to a frame—called a “spangenhelm”,

and a long coat of chain mail,

which was pulled over the head, like some sweaters (“pullovers”), as you can see at the bottom of this scene from the Bayeux Tapestry–

The top part of this scene is labeled, “Harold Rex interfectus est”—“King Harold has been killed”, but there is some confusion here as to which figure is Harold.  There is an early account which says that he had been hit in the eye with a Norman arrow, so that would suggest the figure in the middle, but the arrow seems to have been a replacement for something else, so perhaps it’s the figure being struck down on the right?  (For more on this, see: https://historiamag.com/harold-death-truth/  )  In any event, we can see those same “tennis nets” on both the mounted Norman (winning) and the Anglo-Saxons on foot (losing).

In contrast, here’s Theoden, as portrayed in the Jackson films—

and add in his helmet.

What in the world is all of this?  Certainly not anything like the Bayeux Tapestry which JRRT suggested as a model and yet not the “medieval” I’m assuming he intended to steer Rhona Beare away from.  Instead, it seems like something patched together, with a leather coat underneath (?), lamellar (scale) armor below,

and other things attached—a very odd-looking breastplate in several sections, pauldrons (shoulder pieces), and vambraces (arm pieces).  There is also that helmet—

(This image comes from an amazing site:  https://www.blindsquirrelprops.com/theoden-helmet/  The Squirrel seems to be able to make/reproduce anything and, in this posting, he/she demonstrates how he/she made a reproduction of Theoden’s helmet, based upon a couple of screen captures.)

The Anglo-Saxon king, Harold,

and the Norman-king-to-be, William,

seem content with simple conical helmets—does Theoden really need more?  I’m also puzzled as to where Theoden is wearing his sword—on the right.  Soldiers on the Tapestry wear theirs on the left

and this is true for mounted men over the centuries in general, who then use the left as their bridle hand and their right to draw and use their swords (or spears as is often the case on the Tapestry).  Was Bernard Hill, who played Theoden in the films, left-handed and the director wanted him to feel comfortable? 

The mass of the Rohirrim, we mostly never see closely—

but, blowing up this image, it’s possible to determine that some attempt has been made to provide the extras with conical helmets, although what little armor one can see appears to be lamellar, rather than chain—probably for the budget’s sake—chain mail taking longer to make and the man-hours making it more expensive—for more on chain mail, here’s a very useful article—and site in general:  https://www.ironskin.com/faq-chainmail-weight-and-cost/

Tolkien was very clear as to what he intended—you have only to read his sometimes outraged comments about a proposed film to be made of The Lord of the Rings to see just how seriously he took his work and its interpretation—letter to Forrest J. Ackerman, June, 1958, Letters, 389-397—and this is an abbreviated form before he appears to have given up in frustration.

And yet, although Tolkien’s letter to Rhona Beare was certainly available to them, with its description, the director and designers of the films clearly paid little attention to his intentions when it came to the look of the Rohirrim.

So, will I still find the Rohirrim my favorite part of the films?  Well, there is that moment when we see them sweep against Sauron’s Orcs from behind—

which you can see here:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HVmWl7PrBcc

and that would be hard to give up, because, even if they don’t look like Tolkien’s idea of the Rohirrim, certainly the charge is as stirring as he described it.

At the same time, however, I’ll offer you this image, by “Bogi380”, of a very different view of the Rohirrim, much closer to Tolkien’s model—

Given the choice of what I would want the Rohirrim to look like, I know what I would choose, but, as the films are not about to be remade, I guess that I’ll stick with my favorites and, as in the case of the ungrassy Rohan, be glad for all that I do enjoy.

Thanks for reading, as always.

Stay well,

Imagine, however, what that scene might have looked like if they’d followed Tolkien’s model–

And remember, that, as always, there’s

MTCIDC

O

PS

For a practically frame-by-frame analysis of the attack of the Rohirrim and a sometimes zany one, see: https://www.extended-cut.com/p/the-charge-of-the-rohirrim-is-the

Pippin

30 Wednesday Jul 2025

Posted by in Heroes, Imaginary History, J.R.R. Tolkien, Maps

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Welcome, as always, dear readers.

When I was little, I heard a folksong, “I gave my love a cherry”, with these lines:

“I gave my love a cherry that has no stone
I gave my love a chicken that has no bone
I gave my love a ring that has no end
I gave my love a baby with no cryen

How can there be a cherry that has no stone?
How can there be a chicken that has no bone?
How can there be a ring that has no end?
How can there be a baby with no cryen?

A cherry, when it’s blooming, it has no stone
A chicken when it’s pipping, it has no bone
A ring when it’s rolling, it has no end
A baby when it’s sleeping, has no cryen.”

Now, I know that it belongs to a riddle song tradition seen in two Child Ballads:  “Riddles Wisely Expounded” (#1) and “Captain Wedderburn’s Courtship” (#46), as well as in several supposedly-impossible task ballads, including “The Elfin Knight” (#2), but then it was just puzzling—especially that line about “A chicken when it’s pipping”. 

Since then, I have seen two explanations:

1. “pipping” is the chick still developing in the egg

2. “pipping” is the act of the chick breaking out of the egg and its bones have not yet matured

“Pipping” is characteristically sung “pippin’” and that was undoubtedly in my head when I first read The Lord of the Rings, and there was “Pippin”—Peregrine Took.

Took is a Norman-English family name, the first member in England being one of the invaders in 1066,

mentioned in (Robert? his first name is under discussion—sometimes he’s just called “Master”) Wace’s 12th century verse chronicle Roman de Rou (the “story of Rollo”—that is, of Hrolfr, a Viking colonizer of the western coast of France who became a vassal of the French king, Charles III (“ the Simple”), under the name “Rollo”, controlling what would become Normandy—“Norsemanland”—for more, see:  https://vikingr.org/explorers/rollo )

(from his tomb in Rouen Cathedral—a medieval idea of his appearance–and they wouldn’t have had much to go on as the tomb has been despoiled more than once:  report has it that only one femur remains inside)

which includes material about the conquest of England and where the sire “de Touques” (Touques is a town and river in Normandy—see:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Touques,_Calvados )  appears (see Master Wace, his chronicle of the Norman Conquest from the Roman de Rou, translated and edited by Edgar Taylor, 1837, where you can see the name on page 212:  https://archive.org/details/masterwacehischr00waceuoft/page/210/mode/2up )

“Peregrine” is Latin peregrinus, formed from peregre, literally “through the fields” (per agros), meaning “coming from somewhere else”, hence “foreign(er)/strang(er)/and, eventually, “pilgrim”.  See for more:  https://www.etymonline.com/word/pilgrim  I suspect that the name was inspired by Tolkien’s religious background, where there are several saints with that name:

1.  a 2nd-century AD martyr (you can read about him here:  https://www.catholic.org/saints/saint.php?saint_id=5564 )

2. a 7th-century Celtic figure (you can read about him here:  https://www.saintforaminute.com/saints/saint_peregrinus_of_modena )

3. a 13th-century Italian (you can read about him here:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peregrine_Laziosi )

“Pippin”, however, appears to be a bit murkier.  One would assume that the nickname for Peregrine would be “Perry” (as in Perry the Platypus from the wonderful animated series “Phineas and Ferb”—for more see:   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phineas_and_Ferb    ).

So where does Pippin come from? 

I go back to what so often I find helpful for JRRT:  the Middle Ages.

And here I find Latin “Pipinus”, who could be this colorful character, Pepin (nicknamed “Shorty”—le Bref), c.714-768, the 8th-century Mayor of the Palace (chief officer under the king)

(to the right is Pepin’s father, Mayor of  the Palace before him, Charles “Martel”–“the Hammer”)

in Merovingian Francia (for more on this, see:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merovingian_dynasty .

Pepin is known in history for two things:

1. with the blessing of Pope Zachary, in 751, he overthrew the Merovingian king, Childeric III, ending the dynasty and making himself king

2. he was the father of Charlemagne, 747-814, creator of the short-lived Carolingian Empire (800-843)

(As always, coins have so much to tell us beyond their monetary significance.  This is a good example of using a Roman model to suggest that, somehow, the person depicted is descended from earlier Roman rulers:  it’s in Latin and uses Roman imperial titles—“IMP” = “Imperator”, once only “one holding the Senate’s authority outside Rome” but, from the time of Tiberius, 42BC-37AD, used as we use “emperor”; “AUG” = “Augustus”, a title originally given by a subservient Senate to Octavian, the heir to his greatuncle, Julius Caesar, and, after 30BC, owner of the whole Mediterranean basin.  As well, Charlemagne is wearing just the suggesting of later Roman armor, covered by a Roman military cloak and, on his head, is the early—and modest—imperial crown—a victor’s wreath.  Charlemagne’s ancestors were the Franks, Germanic invaders who would give France its name.  Charlemagne’s name is the Latin form, “Carolus”, of a Germanic name, “Karl” and note how it’s spelled in the Latin inscription:  “Karolus”.  Latin doesn’t use the letter K—so, a Germanic practice?) 

As Drogo and Freddie are out of the medieval Germanic past, I would suggest that, whereas Took is Anglo-Norman and Peregrine is Latin, Pippin may have gotten his nickname from a similar source, a fittingly distinguished name for someone who, after the War of the Ring, would become Thain of the Shire, Knight of Gondor, and Counsellor of the North Kingdom.

Thanks for reading, as always.

Stay well,

Dark Ages?  What Dark Ages?  You just have to know where to look—Tolkien did,

And remember that there’s always

MTCIDC

O