Shire Portrait (2)

08 Wednesday Feb 2017

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

Tags

An Unexpected Party, Bad End, Baggins, ceramics, clay bank, coal, coins, cork, crafts, cutlery, Dwarves, Esther Forbes, Gondorian money, Hobbits, Isengard, Johnny Tremain, lead, Lloyd Alexander, Longbottom Leaf, Mayor, Michel Delving, mines, Postal Service, pottery, realien, Renaissance, Robert II of Scotland, Saruman, Shirriffs, silica, Silver, Taran Wanderer, Thain, The Green Dragon, The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, The Shire, Tolkien

Welcome, dear readers, as always.

In our last post, we began a series responding to the question: what makes the Shire the Shire?

1theshire

We began with the government, which turned out to be very rudimentary: a Thain (hereditary), a Mayor (elected), a postal service (not known how chosen), Shirriffs (a kind of border patrol—volunteer). Since the Thain and Mayor were principally honorary positions, there was perhaps no salary attached. As for the postal service (called “Messengers”) and the Shirriffs, we presume that there must have been some sort of payment, although we are not told so. Since, in our world, we pay for the police and the post office through taxes, we wondered how the same services in the Shire were paid. This led us to the question of the Shire economy in general.

In a letter of 25 September, 1954, JRRT wrote to Naomi Mitchison:

“I am more conscious of my sketchiness in the archaeology and realien [“physical facts/things of real life”] than in the economics: clothes, agricultural implements, metal-working, pottery, architecture and the like…I am not incapable of or unaware of economic thought; and I think as far as the ‘mortals’ go, Men, Hobbits, and Dwarfs, that the situations are so devised that economic likelihood is there and could be worked out…” (Letters, 196)

The Shire would appear to be an agriculturally-based economy:

“The Shire is placed in a water and mountain situation and a distance from the sea and a latitude that would give it a natural fertility, quite apart from the stated fact that it was a well-tended region when they [hobbits] took it over.” (Letters, 196)

He adds to this that, when the hobbits took control of the Shire, that included “a good deal of older arts and crafts”, suggesting that the solution to the problem of the production of “clothes, agricultural implements, metal-working, pottery”—all the Realien, as he calls them, is assumed. How and from whom such things were taken over is not explained and such production, in any community, is not a small matter: “things of real life” are many and complicated.

Consider, for example, just one moment at Bag End. The Baggins appear to have been well-to-do, even without the treasure Bilbo brought back from his trip. His house is extremely well-furnished and the Baggins certainly don’t want for provisions, as we know from descriptions both in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, as well as Realien, as the Dwarves’ clean-up song reminds us:

Chip the glasses and crack the plates!

Blunt the knives and bend the forks!

That’s what Bilbo Baggins hates—

Smash the bottles and burn the corks!

(The Hobbit, Chapter 1, “An Unexpected Party”)

If we take this line by line, we come up with the following: glasses, plates, knives, forks, bottles, corks.

Glasses and bottles (as well as the window panes at Bag End) require a glassblower and perhaps a glazier.

Plates require a potter.

Knives and forks were once made by cutlers (and forks are very advanced for a Middle-earth which is mostly medieval—although classical people used them in food preparation, it was only during the Renaissance that they began to appear as an eating utensil—western Medieval people ate with knives, spoons, and fingers).

(And next is a Renaissance fork, found in the foundations of the Rose Theatre)

Corks come from vintners and brewers (in our world, vintners only began using cork as a sealant in the 17^th century, we have read).

Take those objects a step farther back and you find:

glasswear, bottles, and window panes require silica and something to make it more stable, like lime (from limestone) or lead, which leads us to the question of where the ingredients come from. Silica is sand and can be found in many places—perhaps it might come from the west coast of Middle-earth? If all of the Shire is like the White Downs, where Michel Delving is located, it may be situated upon a vast deposit of chalk (more about Shire geography in our next posting). Lime would then have to be imported. As we have no record of mines in the Shire, the same would be true for lead.

ceramics, like plates, are made of clay and all sorts of clay are used to make pottery, but all need to be dug out, usually from beds found near streams, rivers, or places like canyons or ravines. The Shire seems fairly well-watered, so we presume that the clay used to make Bilbo’s dishes was local.

knives and forks would be made of iron, early steel, or silver (with silver, plus an alloy to make them stronger)—here, again, we would need mines, for the iron ore and silver

cork in our world is actually tree bark from the cork trees which grow in hot, dry southwest Europe (Spain/Portugal) and northwest Africa

1, 2, 4 (and possibly 3) require raw materials of which no mention is made in the Shire and 1, 2, and 3 all need especially hot fires to make them, possibly using charcoal (made locally?) or coal (again, no mines discussed). And this is just, basically, four items.

So many import possibilities: what about export? We have solid evidence for one, which Merry and Pippin have discovered at Isengard:

“My dear Gimli, it is Longbottom Leaf! There were the Hornblower brandmarks on the barrels, as plain as plain. How it came here, I can’t imagine. For Saruman’s private use, I fancy. I never knew that it went so far abroad.” (The Two Towers, Book 3, Chapter 9, “Flotsam and Jetsam”)

It should always be remembered that these are works of fantasy, of course, and, unless there is some novelistic purpose which employs a potter as a character (in Taran Wanderer,

by Lloyd Alexander, book 4 of The Chronicles of Prydain, for example, the hero, Taran, spends a little time as an apprentice potter, among other trades) or the making of silverware (something one might read about in Esther Forbes’ Johnny Tremain,

where Johnny is an apprentice to a silversmith), it would seem completely unnecessary to spend narrative time discussing raw materials, imports, exports, or the manufacture of day-to-day items. We have taken the time, however, because, where, sometimes, we write about the parallels between Middle-earth and something here in our world, here the complexity of ordinary things in our world is completely forgotten in Middle-earth, or simply taken for granted, as JRRT implies in the letter cited above. If we are to examine Shire economics, however, we must, at least, consider them. As well, although we may keep saying, “No evidence for”, we think that, even if there is no potter or tin mine in the text, prompting readers to remember that, in the real world, there would have been one is a useful exercise and, for us, at least, makes the story that much more real.

But now we come to the subject of paying for Realien, or for anything else in the Shire, be it for the Shirriffs or for a pint at The Green Dragon.

In a totally rural economy many things might be obtained through barter: in return, for payment, please take 10 chickens, or a sack of grain. (And perhaps we see something like this in “The Scouring of the Shire”, when Hob Hayward tells Merry that, “We grows a lot of food, but we don’t rightly know what becomes of it. It’s all these ‘gatherers’ and ‘sharers’, I reckon, going round counting and measuring and taking off to storage.”—this looks like taxes, “paid in kind”). Such might work for, say, trading a hen for a bowl, but would certainly not do for that pint—or for the bill at The Prancing Pony. Coins and their values are not mentioned in Tolkien, but their effect is felt, all the same: when Frodo buys a house in Crickhollow, we doubt he does it with cows!

(We discussed Middle-earth money in an earlier posting and it seems to us that it would be fun to create, say, Gondorian money—here’s one possibility

It’s actually a coin of Robert II of Scotland—1316-1390—but, changing the crown, could you imagine this as something issued earlier in the Third Age, say?)

This has been perhaps a rather long-winded and prosy posting (perhaps not for nothing did Thomas Carlyle, in 1849, call economics “the dismal science”?), for which we ask our readers’ pardon, but, if it helps to flesh out our portrait of the Shire, it was worth it, we feel. Our next, we hope will be a bit lighter, being on the physical “look” of the Shire, from its geography to its geology to its architecture.

Thanks, as ever, for reading.

MTCIDC

Shire Portrait (I)

01 Wednesday Feb 2017

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

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

British Museum, culture, elections, farthing, feudalism, Government, Hobbitry-in-arms, Hobbits, Louvre, Maps, Mathom-house, Mayor, Michel Delving, Middle-earth, museums, police, Postmen, Sharkey, Shire, Shire-moot, Shire-muster, Shirriffs, Thain, The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, The Scouring of the Shire, thegn, Tolkien, vassal, Vatican, voting, White Downs, Witch-King of Angmar

Welcome, dear readers, as always.

In our last post (well, next-to-last–the last was on circuses), we talked about museums and Mathom-houses and, thinking that the Shire had a museum, made us wonder about what we might call “Shire culture” in general. What is it which makes the Shire the Shire?

To go about answering that, we tried to think of a model. Could we imagine ourselves doing a tourist brochure? A wiki article? And where would we begin?

Suppose, we thought, we begin with the outermost shell, rather as in our world: the government.

The first ten pages of the Prologue to The Lord of the Rings contain a good deal of information about hobbits and their homeland, with many other details to be gleaned from the main body of the text and the appendices and some from The Hobbit. There is undoubtedly more yet to be found in several of the subsidiary volumes, but we decided that, to make this a series of readable posts and not a small encyclopedia, we would stick to the two main works.

With all of that material to help us, all we needed was an entry point—and, almost immediately, we decided that we could begin where we left off, with that very museum, which originally attracted us because it stood out as something one would expect from a much more organized state, rather than from what, on the whole, appears to be such a rural and decentralized place.

After all, museums, as we have discussed, are a relatively recent invention in the west and public museums are even newer (the first state-sponsored museum in Britain, for example, only dates from the 1750s). Since our last posting, we’ve done a bit more research and, with one or two possible exceptions, it seems that public museums only begin to appear at all from the second half of the 17^th century. (A quick and useful reference may be found at: https://museu.ms) Even so, such places have a good deal to say about a culture:

that it values elements of its past, both historical and artistic, enough that it is willing to collect and preserve them
that it believes that such elements should then be put upon public display (the why of that might include: to use for educational purposes—which assumes that the past has things to teach the present; to provide aesthetic pleasure; even to show the wealth and power of a state which has such a history and such artists)
that it is willing to provide space, at the public expense, to house and display such things

The Mathom-house is hardly, from JRRT’s description, the equivalent of the British Museum

or the Louvre

or the Vatican

or any of the other thousand wonderful museums around the world, big or small. And yet it is there and in the closest thing to a capital which the Shire has to offer, Michel Delving. It is only the closest thing because the Shire has almost no formal governing structure.

As the Prologue says:

“The Shire at this time had hardly any ‘government’. Families for the most part managed their own affairs…”

Originally, as the Prologue tells us, the Hobbits had moved into the land which would become the Shire with the permission of the high king of the North Kingdom, at Fornost. When the last king and his kingdom had fallen to the Witch King of Angmar, the Hobbits replaced him with a “Thain” (actually an Old English word for, among other things, a “vassal”—that is, one who acts as a subordinate—in a feudal system, this might imply that the person has received land from someone higher on the social scale in return for taxes and/or military service). Here’s a thegn (Old English spelling) as a warrior.

By the time of The Hobbit, this office had dwindled, but not quite disappeared:

“The Thain was the master of the Shire-moot, and captain of the Shire-muster and the Hobbitry-in-arms, but as muster and moot were only held in times of emergency, which no longer occurred, the Thainship had ceased to be more than a nominal dignity.”

In fact,

“The only real official in the Shire at this date was the Mayor of Michel Delving (or of the Shire), who was elected every seven years at the Free Fair on the White Downs at the Lithe, that is at Mid-summer. As mayor almost his only duty was to preside at banquets, given on the Shire-holidays, which occurred at frequent intervals. But the offices of Postmaster and First Shirriff were attached to the mayoralty, so that he managed both the Messenger Service and the Watch. These were the only Shire-services, and the Messengers were the most numerous, and much the busier of the two. By no means all Hobbits were lettered, but those who were wrote constantly to all their friends (and a selection of their relations) who lived further off than an afternoon’s walk.

The Shirriffs was the name that the Hobbits gave to their police, or the nearest equivalent that they possessed…they were in practice rather haywards than policemen, more concerned with the strayings of beasts than of people. There were in all the Shire only twelve of them, three in each Farthing, for Inside Work. A rather large body, varying at need, was employed to ‘beat the bounds’, and to see that Outsiders of any kind, great or small, did not make themselves a nuisance.”

This gives us the whole of the top level of Shire culture, the public face: a vestigial Thain (representative of the long-gone King), a figurehead Mayor, a postal service, and a tiny police force/border guard.

And how does any of these hold office?

The Thain, as we know, is hereditary.

The Mayor is, as quoted above, elected—although we have no idea of the process. Does one vote by town? By Farthing? Or is there simply a kind of country-wide method? We also have no idea of suffrage: who has the vote in the Shire? Is it general (England had general suffrage by the time JRRT was writing The Hobbit, all men over 21 by 1918, some women—householders over the age of 30—having been included in elections in 1918, women in general over 21 in 1928)? Or is it the older “only property-holders” method? Or are there “hereditary electors” who do the choosing? (As CD have just gone through an election here in the US, all of these questions, as you can imagine, are fresh in our minds!)

The “postmen” (our word) are, so far as we can tell, a mystery, both as to who they are or how they gain their employment.

Shirriffs appear to be volunteers, as we learn in “The Scouring of the Shire”, when Sam talks to Robin Smallburrow, who says “You know how I went for a Shirriff seven years ago, before any of this began.”

There being so little in the way of government, are there any public buildings except for the Mathom-house? If there are, we have yet to locate them. It’s striking that, when “Sharkey” takes over the Shire, he sets up a number of such places, but neither government buildings nor museums, instead, they are tokens of a police state: barracks and watch houses, dens reminding us of something which JRRT would have seen all too much of in newspapers and magazines, as well as newsreels as he worked on the early stages of The Lord of Rings:

(More on Sharkey and the takeover in a future posting!)

Considering that there is a small policing force, as well as a kind of postal institution, we looked for another government department: the Internal Revenue Service. After all, we pay for our police and used to pay for postage stamps, back in pre-internet days, and we pay for public museums, too: how does it work in the Shire? The simple answer is, we don’t know. In fact, we don’t really know much about how the economy works in general. And that will be the subject of our next posting.

Thanks, as always, for reading!

MTCIDC

One More River (2)

28 Wednesday Dec 2016

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

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Amon Hen, Anduin, Bilbo, Blondin, Bombur, Boromir, Brandywine, bridges, Bruinen, Bucklebury Ferry, Celebrant, Dwarves, Elrond, Elves, Enchanted river, Esgaroth, Fangorn, ferry, flight to the ford, Frodo, Gandalf, Gondorians, Hoarwell, Hobbiton, Isen, Khazad-dum, Niagara Falls, Nimrodel, Old Forest, Old Man Willow, Orcs, Prince Valiant, Rivendell, Rivers, Rohirrim, Sam, Tharbad, The Hobbit, The Long Lake, The Lord of the Rings, Theodred, Tolkien, Tom Bombadil, Weathertop, Withywindle, Wraiths

Welcome, dear readers, as always. In our last post, we had turned our attention to water-crossings in The Hobbit. In this, we want to continue our study with The Lord of the Rings.

We were first prompted to look at such crossings by something Boromir said, almost in passing:

“Four hundred leagues I reckoned it, and it took me many months, for I lost my horse at Tharbad, at the fording of the Greyflood.” (The Fellowship of the Ring, Book 2, Chapter 8, “Farewell to Lorien”)

Tharbad had once been famous for its elaborate defenses and bridge, but, symbolic of so much of Middle-earth at the end of the Third Age, it had fallen into decay and was abandoned, the water of the Gwathlo, the Greyflood, spreading wide—an easy place to lose a horse—or a man.

And perhaps Boromir’s loss is also symbolic of the higher level of stress involved in crossing water in the later work. The most Bilbo and the dwarves had to deal with was a water of forgetfulness, whose effect wore off in a relatively short time. There is much worse to come.

The first crossing (after The Water in Hobbiton)

has danger attached, but it’s a danger which pursues the hobbits at the Bucklebury ferry. Here, pursued by one—or more—wraiths,

they cross over by what is a kind of do-it-yourself ferry, where the ferry runs on a cable, which keeps it available and on course, while the passengers pole to add propulsion.

There is a puzzle at their next crossing—because the hobbits don’t appear to have crossed at all! This is the River Withywindle, on whose bank the hobbits meet up with Old Man Willow (not as in the film, where he’s been pulled violently out of context and replanted, for no good reason we can see, in Fangorn’s forest).

Until we began to study water-crossings, we had never really thought about what happens then. The hobbits come to the river, having become lost in the Old Forest. Pippin and Merry are swallowed by the tree. Tom Bombadil comes to the rescue: but how do they cross the Withywindle? We just couldn’t remember! So we went back to the text, saw Tom lead the four hobbits through the forest, where they almost lose him, then they hear: “Hop along, my little friends, up the Withywindle!” (The Fellowship of the Ring, Book 1, Chapter 6, “The Old Forest”)

And so they never actually ford across or are ferried across. Instead, they walk up its course to Tom’s house, which seems to be near the source.

The next crossing is many miles away—over the Barrow Downs, through Bree, past Weathertop, to the Last Bridge, over the Hoarwell. Although Aragorn is anxious that the Wraiths will have gotten there before them, they pass safely and keep moving southwards, towards Rivendell, until, near the ford over the Bruinen, the Nazgul catch up with them at last.

There is a bridge, of course, at Khazad-Dum, although, as far as we can tell, there is no water even in the depths far below it.

Escaping from Moria, the Fellowship reaches two streams in a row and, as far as we know, none of the prominent illustrators has given us pictures, either of the tributary Nimrodel or the main river, the Celebrant, so we provide a rather generic picture to offer a rather general idea.

The Nimrodel is shallow enough to wade across, but the Celebrant is wider and deeper and the Elves provide a rather iffy method of transport: a single line of rope to balance on, making us imagine something like the famous Blondin crossing Niagara Falls in 1859—well, a little!

The next crossing is almost inadvertent, or, at least happens sooner than expected: the Fellowship has been paddling down the Anduin, but, putting in at Amon Hen, things go disastrously wrong. Boromir tries to take the Ring, the orcs appear, Boromir is mortally wounded, and Merry and Pippin are carried off (in our edition—the 50^th Anniversary, One Volume Edition—this takes all of 12 pages—quite a narrative feat for JRRT!), before Frodo (and Sam) cross the river to the east and story begins its major split.

[We might insert here, although, in The Lord of the Rings, it’s only a footnote that at the crossing of the Isen, during this time, Theodred, son of Theoden, is killed.]

After this, there is only one more crossing of any significance, but it’s not by the main characters: rather, it’s by the orcs, who use boats to assault and capture west Osgiliath, which is the subject of one of our earlier postings.

To which we would add the return crossing, days later, of the Forlorn Hope of Gondor and Rohan, on their way to challenge Sauron (and to distract him from Frodo and Sam).

To finish up this posting, we provide a chart below (clearly now one of a series, after the earlier one on doorways and passages) of the water-crossings found in the two books.

Crossing	Characters	Outcome	Source
Tharbad	Boromir	Loses horse	The Lord of the Rings
The Water	Bilbo	Joins Dwarves	The Hobbit
An unnamed river	Bilbo, Dwarves, and Gandalf	Lose baggage	The Hobbit
Rivendell	Bilbo Dwarves, and Gandalf	Helped by Elves	The Hobbit
Anduin	Bilbo, Dwarves, and Gandalf	Transported by eagles	The Hobbit
Enchanted River	Bilbo and Dwarves	Bombur drugged	The Hobbit
Underground river	Bilbo and Dwarves	Using barrels, Bilbo and Dwarves escape	The Hobbit
The Long Lake	Bilbo and Dwarves	Gain help from Esgaroth	The Hobbit
The Brandywine (Bucklebury Ferry)	Frodo, Sam, Merry, Pippin	Escape Wraith	The Lord of the Rings
Withywindle	Frodo, Sam, Merry, Pippin	Reach Tom Bombadil’s house (never actually cross river)	The Lord of the Rings
The Bruinen	Frodo and Wraiths	Elrond causes river surge, Nazgul driven off	The Lord of the Rings
Khazad-Dum	Balrog and Gandalf	Gandalf defeats Balrog, but falls down with him	The Lord of the Rings
Nimrodel/ Celebrant	Fellowship and Elves	Fellowship brought into Lorien	The Lord of the Rings
Anduin	Frodo and Sam	Set out on journey to the east	The Lord of the Rings
Isen	Rohirrim and Orcs	Rohirrim driven back, Theodred, son of Theoden, killed	The Lord of the Rings
Anduin	Gondorians vs Orcs	Gondorians driven back from West Ogsiliath	The Lord of the Rings

This is our last posting for the year 2016 and we close the year with thanks to all who follow our blog or simply stop in for a visit. In 2017, we plan to continue our Tolkien travels, sometimes employing the Sortes Tolkienses, as well as to use Tolkien’s world to visit others, beginning with a posting on “Famous Bridge Battles”, from Boromir and Faramir jumping off one to escape the orcs, to Napoleon at Arcola, and beyond. Here’s a taste…

We also plan to explore other worlds and perhaps to add a review section for books and films we think you might enjoy.

In the meantime, thanks, as ever, for reading. Happy New Year!

MTCIDC

What sad and surprising news! Princess Leia is no more– but no– Princess Leia will always be with us, just like the Force.

_87060782_starwarsap3

One More River (1)

21 Wednesday Dec 2016

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

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Alan Lee, Beorn, Bilbo, bog people, Bombur, Boromir, bridges, causeways, drowsiness, Dwarves, Esgaroth, Great East Road, Greyflood, Gwathlo, Hobbiton-across-the-water, Lethe, Middle-earth, Mirkwood, Rammas Echor, Rivendell, river-crossing puzzle, Roman Roads, Tharbad, The Atlas of Middle-Earth, The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien, Tollund Man

Welcome, dear readers. Here we are again in Middle-earth, as so often we’ve been over the last couple of years, but, as we said in our last post, one reason why we revere JRRT and his work is that it’s so rich—it seems like one can open it to any page and there is something new to explore. In this post, we began with an odd little detail, just something said almost in passing by Boromir:

“A long and wearisome journey. Four hundred leagues I reckoned it, and it took me many months, for I lost my horse at Tharbad, at the fording of the Greyflood.” (The Fellowship of the Ring, Book 2, Chapter VIII, “Farewell to Lorien”)

Tharbad, we knew from the Companion, was once a river port on the Gwathlo, Boromir’s “Greyflood”. Here’s a description from the extremely helpful introductory section of the Companion called “The Maps of The Lord of the Rings”:

“…with long labour a port capable of receiving seagoing vessels had been made at Tharbad, and a fort raised there on great earthworks on both sides of the river, to guard the once famed Bridge of Tharbad” (lxv)

This “once-famed” bridge was clearly long-gone by the time, at the end of the Third Age, when Boromir reached the river it had once offered passage over, for all of the work done once upon a time, including long causeways—raised approach roads above boggy ground—here’s a Roman example from northern Spain with causeway and bridge—

“But in the days of The Lord of the Rings the region had become ruinous and lapsed into its primitive state: a slow wide river running through a network of swamps, pools and eyots [little islands]: the haunt of hosts of swans and other water-birds.” (from a letter of 30 June, 1969, to Paul Bibire, quoted in Companion, 650)

JRRT appears to have left no description of the bridge itself, but we imagine it as looking rather like a Roman one (as JRRT could have seen pictures of surviving ones like this in Portugal

or this in Rome.

Unlike much of the rest of the Roman world, no Roman bridge survives in Britain—only the remains of piers, ramps, and approaches–so we’re assuming that, if he were at all influenced by Roman architecture—and that’s an absolute assumption on our part, we admit, but certainly things like Hadrian’s Wall seem to have been an inspiration—see our earlier posting on the Rammas Echor—it was through photographs.)

This mention, however, sparked us to think about the crossing of bodies of water, both in The Hobbit and in The Lord of the Rings, just how many there were, and the kinds of events which happened at them.

Bilbo’s Bag End, of course, is just down the road from The Water and its mill, as depicted by Tolkien himself.

When he sets off with the dwarves, however, there is little incident involved in running water at first. The party has to cross a river, “swollen with the rains, [which] came rushing down from the hills and mountains in the north.” (The Hobbit, Chapter 2, “Roast Mutton”) They cross this by “an ancient stone bridge” (perhaps like this one at Carrbridge, in Scotland?)

but, somehow, they can’t escape the river, as, during the night, “…one of the ponies took fright at nothing and bolted. He got into the river before they could catch him; and before they could get him out again, Fili and Kili were nearly drowned, and all the baggage that he carried was washed away off him.” (The Hobbit, Chapter 2, “Roast Mutton”). So far, when it comes to running water, for all that there was a bridge, it seems difficult for the dwarves to stay out of it.

Their second adventure with water is more successful, when they cross the bridge at Rivendell, which we have discussed in a posting on Rivendell architecture, so, for this one, we’ll simply add Tolkien’s illustration of Rivendell, plus a real favorite, Alan Lee’s of the bridge.

Beyond Rivendell, it’s into the mountains (literally, when they are pulled into the world of the goblins by a secret door) and, when they come out, their next water barrier is surmounted for them when they’re rescued by eagles and flown to the other side of the northern Anduin.

If they had simply taken the Great East Road (as we presume Bilbo and Gandalf did on the way back), they would have found a ford where the road runs eastward into the Old Forest Road. (see Karen Wynn Fonstad, The Atlas of Middle-earth, 80-81, for a larger view).

The real problem with a crossing comes at the next water course. They had plunged into Mirkwood

and come up across a stream (in fact, the Enchanted River, although they didn’t know it). During their leave-taking at Beorn’s, he had warned them about it:

“There is one stream there, I know, black and strong which crosses the path. That you should neither drink of, nor bathe in; for I have heard that it carries enchantment and a great drowsiness and forgetfulness.” (The Hobbit, Chapter 7, “Queer Lodgings”)

As people with a background in Greek and Roman mythology, we immediately thought of Lethe, the name of which comes from a Greek verb which means “to escape notice/be hidden—therefore, to forget”.

It was one of the rivers of the Underworld and, if you drank from it, you lost all memory of your past. In that part of classical religion which believed in reincarnation, it was one step on the way to returning to earth.

Here in Mirkwood, however, the point is to avoid drinking, or even touching, it. The difficulty, of course, is that, if you can’t touch it, how do you get across it, especially when:

“There had been a bridge of wood across, but it had rotted and fallen leaving only the broken posts near the bank.” (The Hobbit, Chapter 8, “Flies and Spiders”)

Providentially, there is a boat drawn up on the opposite shore and we’ve always been reminded here of what is called a “river-crossing puzzle”. There are many variations, but the earliest currently known dates from the 9^th century AD, and is found in Propositiones ad Acuendos Juvenes (maybe something like “Puzzles for Sharpening [the Minds of] Young Folk”—which makes it sound rather Victorian). We provide links here for: River crossing puzzle, Fox, goose and bag of beans puzzle, and Propositiones ad Acuendos Juvenes, for anyone interested to learn more.

In the case of the dwarves, the math goes awry when the largest of them, Bombur, accidentally falls into the water and becomes comatose.

(And this Alan Lee drawing oddly reminds us of “bog people”—that is, the bodies of people, the earliest being from 8000BC, a majority being Iron Age, found in peat bogs throughout northern Europe. Because of the conditions in bogs, some have been amazingly preserved, such as “Tollund Man”—here

)

He eventually awakes, long before the party’s next river, which acts as a moat to the caves of the Elf king of Mirkwood.

This has a bridge, across which, at various times, Thorin, the dwarves, and Bilbo (wearing the Ring) go.

It is the next bit of water, however, which bears the greater interest. This is the underground stream which comes up in the cave where the elves store empty wine barrels to return to the men of Esgaroth. And this, the dwarves and Bilbo don’t cross, but ride down, packed in (or perched on) those empty barrels.

This leads us to the last body of water: the Long Lake, on which Esgaroth stands. From here, the people of Lake Town convey them back north to a landing place from which they will start out for the Lonely Mountain and the climax of their quest.

And here we’ll end our quest for water-crossings for this posting, to be continued with one on The Lord of the Rings in our next—along with all of those extras which we can’t help adding, from medieval puzzles to peat bog people.

Thanks, as always, for reading!

MTCIDC

If you celebrate this time of year for any reason, may your celebration be a happy one! We mostly dream of toys…

When One Door Closes.3

23 Wednesday Nov 2016

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

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Common Tongue, doors, Doorward, Edoras, Elvish, Fangorn Forest, Gandalf, Gondor, Hama, Helm's Deep, Isengard, John Ruskin, Meduseld, Minas Tirith, Moria, passages, Paths of the Dead, The Hobbit, The King of the Golden Hall, The King of the Golden River, The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien, Witch-King of Angmar

Welcome, dear readers, to the third part of our series on doors and entryways in JRRT’s The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.

We began, several postings ago, by writing that we were intrigued by Bilbo’s statement to Frodo: “It’s a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door.” (The Fellowship of the Ring, Book 1, Chapter 3, “Three is Company”)

It made us want to look at doors (to which we quickly added entryways of all sorts) in Tolkien and, in doing so, we’ve come up with a very crude classification system, in which there were two kinds of doors, those which seemed to promise safety and those through which you might be in danger. And a major component of such places seems to be a challenge, and a challenger of some sort.

At the end of our second posting, we had come to the breaking up of the Fellowship and now we want to continue, having a look at what could be seen as good examples of what we mean along the way.

Because of the major split in the story, we decided to follow Aragorn, Gimli, and Legolas first.

The first part of their adventure takes place across open country or in Fangorn Forest. It’s only when they, with Gandalf, arrive at Edoras that we see the pattern fall into place.

But here we wondered if we should add an extra subcategory, linguistic challenge. We’ve already seen the western gates of Moria and the need to read Elvish and to know the word for friend, and now we have the gates of Edoras

and a suspicious guard of Rohirrim:

“There sat many men in bright mail, who sprang at once to their feet and barred the way with spears. ‘Stay, strangers here unknown!’ they cried in the tongue of the Riddermark.” (The Two Towers, Book 3, Chapter 6, “The King of the Golden Hall”)

[We wonder, by the way, if the chapter’s title owes something to John Ruskin’s 1841/51 fairy tale “The King of the Golden River”, in which a major figure has been changed through evil magic, but is freed and eventually helps the underdog hero…]

As he was (eventually) up to the challenge of the gate of Moria, so is Gandalf up to this and challenges them in return:

“ ‘Well do I understand your speech,’ he answered in the same language; ‘yet few strangers do so. Why then do you not speak in the Common Tongue, as is the custom in the West, if you wish to be answered?’ “

After a little parleying in this manner, Gandalf and his companions are allowed to enter and sent up to Meduseld, where there is a second challenger, the Doorward Hama.

Here, after a brief repetition of the previous language challenge, things relax: “Then one of the guards stepped forward and spoke in the Common Speech.” After a tussle about leaving weapons behind (and Gandalf escapes this with his staff), they are permitted into the hall and the scene continues.

After the battle of Helm’s Deep, Denethor, Gandalf, and the rest of the company ride to Isengard, only to find there:

“…ruined gates. There they saw close beside them a great rubble-heap; and suddenly they were aware of two small figures lying on it at their ease, grey-clad, hardly to be seen among the stones. There were bottles and bowls and platters laid beside them…” (The Two Towers, Book 3, Chapter 8, “The Road to Isengard”)

It’s Merry and Pippin, of course, who describe themselves as “doorwardens”, just as Hama was at Meduseld. The difference is, instead of barring the door and challenging those who would enter, they are welcoming and comical in their lordly self-indulgence. This seems to turn the pattern on its head, and, although it’s the only time such a thing appears, we believe that it is an example of another subcategory, that of parody. It has the elements of other occasions, but, here, the door is a ruin and the guards seem slightly tipsy, rather than menacing, as well as very glad to see those who come to their ward.

In contrast to this merriness, there is stony silence at the next door: The Paths of the Dead.

The challenge seems to be in the very air itself:

“And so they came at last deep into the glen; and there stood a sheer wall of rock, and in the wall the Dark Door gaped before them like the mouth of night. Signs and figures were carved above its wide arch too dim to read, and fear flowed from it like a grey vapour.” (The Return of the King, Book 5, Chapter 2, “The Passing of the Grey Company”)

It is Aragorn who accepts the challenge and leads the group through what, in the film, is a kind of funhouse of skulls and greenish figures,

But, to us readers, what we think is much more disturbing is that there is no more than a restless murmur, which we hear through the dauntless, but quivering Gimli—

“…but if the Company halted, there seemed an endless whisper of voices all about him, a murmur of words in no tongue he had ever heard before.”

And, at the end of their passage, it is Aragorn who is the challenger—not to block those murmurers, but to invite them:

“ ‘Keep your hoards and your secrets hidden in the Accursed Years! Speed only we ask. Let us pass, and then come! I summon you to the Stone of Erech!’ “

We can see in this multiple ends: first, it fits the pattern of confrontations at doors (all feel the sense of Something There and must rise to the challenge, conquering their fear); second, it provides a route for Aragorn’s strategy: to gain supernatural allies on the way to natural ones along the southern seacoast; third, it underlines Aragorn’s right to the kingship: only he has the knowledge and authority to call up the long-dead for his purposes.

Our last challenge of this posting is at what is perhaps the most dramatic moment in the attack upon Minas Tirith. Grond the ram has, with the aid of the Lord of the Nazgul, burst open the great gate and the Wraith is about to enter when he encounters:

“…Gandalf upon Shadowfax…

‘You cannot enter here,’ said Gandalf, and the huge shadow halted. ‘Go back to the abyss prepared for you! Fall into the nothingness that awaits you and your Master. Go!’ ” (The Return of the King, Book 5, Chapter 4, “The Siege of Gondor”)

But—then? We admit it—we shamelessly want a cliffhanger here. And so we’ll stop—till our next, in which we’ll finish the story—we promise!—and provide a breakdown of all of the doors and entryways in a chart, as well.

Thanks, as always, for reading—and we’re sorry that we gave in to temptation, but, as novelists ourselves, we couldn’t resist!

MTCIDC

When One Door Closes (2)

16 Wednesday Nov 2016

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

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Balin, Barrows, Bree, Bridge of Khazad-Dum, Chamber of Mazarbul, Crickhollow, doors, Dwarves, Elven-way, Farmer Maggot, Gandalf, Greenway, Hobbit door, Hollin, Lothlorien, Moria, Nazgul, picaresque, Rivendell, Robert Burns, Tam O'Shanter, The Fellowship of the Ring, The Ford of Bruinen, The Hobbit, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, The Lord of the Rings, The Prancing Pony, Tolkien, Washington Irving, Watcher in the Water, Weathertop, West-door, West-gate

Welcome, dear reader, as always. It’s a rather gloomy late autumn day here as we write this, fitting, perhaps, for the gloomier The Lord of the Rings after the cheerier (well, sometimes) The Hobbit, as we continue our look at the functions of doors and their equivalents in JRRT.

If you’ve read our previous posting, you’ll know that, in it, we examined doors and gates in The Hobbit, dividing them into two basic categories: doors which might lead to safety and doors which led to danger, all based upon Bilbo’s remark about how dangerous it can be, just stepping outside your door.

Bilbo’s door adventures had begun with his own.

When comparing the two books, we get a strong sense of the episodic nature of The Hobbit: we can almost break it down into movement between doors, from the arrival of the dwarves to the knock of Gandalf and Balin, giving it more the feel of a picaresque novel: that is, a novel with an goal, but with much of its focus upon the adventures along the way, adventures which don’t always necessarily lead to that goal. This gives it a lighter tone, as well—after all, it was meant as a children’s book in a time (1937) when such books were understood in general never to be too solemn. The Lord of the Rings, in contrast, develops an almost grimly-focused forward motion, which impels it even when the Fellowship breaks into two after the death of Boromir, and much of the action spreads from Frodo and Sam on the way to Mordor to the separate adventures of Merry and Pippin in Rohan and Gondor.

So what might we see as the first door—in either sense—in The Lord of the Rings? we asked ourselves. And we supposed that we might see minor doors of safety at Farmer Maggot’s and Frodo’s new home in Crickhollow, in both cases brief refuges from the Nazgul, but, as we said in our last posting, doors commonly have some sort of challenge to them—and challenger—and the first one of those appears briefly at the hedge in Bree:

“They came to the West-gate and found it shut; but at the door of the lodge beyond it, there was a man sitting. He jumped up and fetched a lantern and looked over the gate at them in surprise.” (The Fellowship of the Ring, Book 1, Chapter 9, “At the Sign of the Prancing Pony”)

The watchman, when his challenges (and maybe a little too-inquisitive challenges) are turned aside, lets them in and they reach The Prancing Pony, only to escape murder in their beds and the loss of their ponies.

The first gateway which leads to real safety, however, isn’t a door or gate at all, but a natural barrier (with some magical help): the Ford of Bruinen. Here, the role of traveler and challenger is reversed, as the challenged are the Wraiths and the challenger is Frodo, but it is the power of the Elves which closes the door.

At the Ford, by Ted Nasmith

(It is interesting here that Tolkien has chosen not to take advantage of the folk belief—if you know “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” by Washington Irving, or its inspiration, the poet Robert Burn’s “Tam O’Shanter”, this will be readily familiar to you—that evil spirits are unable to cross running water, even at a bridge.

John_Quidor_-_The_Headless_Horseman_Pursuing_Ichabod_Crane_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg

To reach the Shire, the Wraiths have had to cross several bodies of water and now their hesitation to traverse another appears to be derived from their confidence that they can now control Frodo—either by the influence of the Ring, or perhaps from his wound—and call him back across the stream to them.)

From Rivendell, the next such door is that at the western side of Moria.

Here, there is no living challenger. Rather, it is a kind of riddle—or, at least, it is initially understood as such—which bars the way. Its answer is simple, which led us to wonder, what is the purpose of this door scene in the story? As the creature in the pool

barricades the door behind them, it adds to the tension: the Fellowship has been watched and, from the hostile mountains to the wolves to the tentacle thing, it has been forced into darker and narrower ways, those ways seemingly chosen by the malevolent force observing their journey. As well, it suggests the gradual decay of what was once a vibrant, active culture, as Gandalf explains:

“Here the Elven-way from Hollin ended. Holly was the token of the people of that land, and they planted it here to mark the end of their domain; for the West-door was made chiefly for their use in their traffic with the Lords of Moria. Those were happier days, when there was still close friendship at times between folk of different race, even between Dwarves and Elves.” (The Fellowship of the Ring, Book 2, Chapter 4, “A Journey in the Dark”)

This is a theme throughout The Lord of the Rings and one which, we believe, adds to its power: the events of the close of the Third Age are set against a background of other times and other events and the landscape still bears traces of those times, from the Barrows to the Greenway and Weathertop and far beyond. As well, so many of those traces suggest that violence and the dark spirit of Sauron, sometimes through his agents, sometimes in person, have had much to do with their end.

Now that the Fellowship is within Moria, it encounters its next door: that of the Chamber of Mazarbul.

Here, they are the challengers, when forced to defend themselves from a horde of “Orcs, very many of them…And some are large and evil: black Uruks of Mordor.” (The Fellowship of the Ring, Book 2, Chapter 5, “The Bridge of Khazad-Dum”). There is a second door, however, and, when they have beaten back their attackers, they escape by it—but only so that Gandalf may be the challenger at a crossing—as Frodo was at the ford—at the Bridge of Khazad-Dum, although here magic apparently cannot save him, as it had Frodo.

With Gandalf gone, we see the repetition of a scene from The Hobbit—the escape through a crowd to the outside world:

“…and suddenly before them the Great Gates opened, an arch of blazing light.

There was a guard of orcs crouching in the shadows behind the great door-posts towering on either side, but the gates were shattered and cast down. Aragorn smote to the ground the captain that stood in his path, and the rest fled in terror at his wrath.” (The Fellowship of the Ring, Book 2, Chapter 5, “The Bridge of Khazad-Dum”)

At this moment in The Hobbit, Bilbo had used his newly-discovered ring to escape (albeit with the loss of a few buttons), but Aragorn’s sword clearly does just as well.

It is easy to see just how prevalent the pattern is: even after that harrowing moment of being chased through the mines and losing Gandalf, where there is a door, there is someone at it to make a challenge, and this holds true even without an actual door, as the remaining members of the Fellowship seek to enter Lothlorien and are stopped by Elven sentries in a tree. (The Fellowship of the Ring, Book 2, Chapter 6, “Lothlorien”)

And the pattern continues, even as the Fellowship breaks up, but let’s take a moment to see what we’ve found so far. On the side of doors to safety, we have: Bree (although it’s not so safe as it looks), the Ford of Bruinen, the main door of Moria, and the entrance to Lorien. As for doors to danger, there are: the western doors of Moria and the door to the Chamber of Mazarbul.

In the third installment, we shall see just how many more doors/gates/entryways we find which continue to fit the pattern—and there are a fair number of them.

Thanks, as ever, for reading.

MTCIDC

When One Door Closes (I)

09 Wednesday Nov 2016

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

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

And Unexpected Party, Baggins, Beorn, Bilbo, Bilbo and Gollum, Chico Marx, doors, Dwarves, Gandalf, Goblins, Groucho Marx, hidden door, Hobbit door, Horse Feathers, Into the Fire, Lake Town, Lonely Mountain, Mirkwood, Out of the Frying-Pan, password, Smaug, speakeasy, Swordfish, The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, The Marx Brothers, Thranduil, Tolkien, Took, wargs

Welcome, dear readers, as always.

Recently, we’ve been thinking about Bilbo’s remark to Frodo:

“It’s a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door.” (The Fellowship of the Ring, Book 1, Chapter 3, “Three is Company”)

What makes this true in Tolkien, we wondered? As an experiment, we began to list all of the significant doors in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings and what happened at each of them and we believed that we could see that they fell, roughly, into two categories: doors (and we include gates here) which are the approach to danger, as Bilbo says, and doors which at least seem to offer safety. There are so many, in fact, that we have decided to break them down (no pun intended) and, in this posting, we’ll examine those we found in The Hobbit.

Our first door is Bilbo’s own, in front of which he is sitting when Gandalf first appears

and which he dodges behind, to escape Gandalf—or so he thinks:

“With that the hobbit turned and scuttled inside his round green door, and shut it as quickly as he dared, not to seem rude.” (The Hobbit, Chapter 1, “An Unexpected Party”)

This door, of course, is hardly a barrier to Gandalf, who scratches a rune on it, turning it from what Bilbo hopes is a “no trespassing” sign to a “welcome” mat.

We then get a scene which reminds us of one in the Marx Brothers’ movie, Horsefeathers (1932)

—or maybe it’s just an excuse on our part to bring up the Marx Brothers, who, in our opinion, are never brought up often enough. It’s a scene from the days of Prohibition, when hard liquor had been outlawed in the U.S. by an amendment to the Constitution (1920-1933). It was clearly a batty idea and, very soon, many people (some of whom must even have voted for the amendment), were looking for ways to skirt the federal law. One way to do so was to visit an illegal bar, called a “Speakeasy”, presumably because you could say what you wanted there, including criticizing a stupid law. These were secret places, with guards at the door and a need for passwords, so that people on the inside could detect attempts by the police to raid them. In the movie, Chico (pronounced “chick-o’’—as he was said to be an avid pursuer of girls)

is the guard on the inside and Groucho

is a potential customer.

As is typical with the Marx Brothers, the scheme collapses and they both end up on the outside of the door, but, before that happens, there is a lot of knocking and attempts (full of bad puns) to guess the proper password.

The door, then, is really only a prop, a site where Chico and Groucho can practice one-liners on each other and not much else (as if that matters with the Marx Brothers!). In the next door scene from The Hobbit, however, JRRT uses Bilbo’s door for larger purposes: to show Gandalf’s subtle understanding of Bilbo’s psychological make-up, as well as the beginning of his plan to turn Bilbo from a staid Baggins to a much freer Took, as Bilbo is forced to confront a gang of dwarves and their mission.

Gandalf’s method, as readers will remember, was to send the dwarves to Bilbo’s door one or two at a time. Gandalf repeats this trick when he and the dwarves (and Bilbo, of course) take refuge at Beorn’s,

after their escape from the pursuing wargs and goblins.

Whereas we might say that the second door scene at Bilbo’s led to danger, this scene leads to safety, although only temporary security, as Bilbo and the dwarves must set out again, even if refreshed and refitted.

(Readers note: this second time has been replaced in the second Hobbit film with a scene which misses both the quiet comedy of the original and its use in the story as a way to provide us with a more rounded picture of Beorn, as well as JRRT’s use of a repeated folk motif perhaps to reinforce the fairy tale-like structure of what was originally an oral tale turned children’s book.)

The dwarves had encountered the goblins through a hidden door (clearly a “danger door”), outside of which they had taken shelter. They are made prisoner

but Bilbo, being lost, finds the Ring, meets Gollum,

Bilbo and Gollum.JPG

and escapes by a door which certainly offers safety. (Although, as the title of the next chapter puts it, not for long, being “Out of the Frying-Pan, Into the Fire”.)

This, of course, not only leads us back to Beorn, but also on to Mirkwood and our next door, that of the Mirkwood Elves and their king, Thranduil (who does not ride an elk, as the movies would have it—and really silly-looking that is, in our opinion). This is one of a number of versions by JRRT himself.

palazzo di thranduil 2.jpg

Although this door leads to the dwarves’ imprisonment, the danger appears to be minimal. Thranduil threatens them, but, except for locking them up and putting them on short rations, he does them no harm. (And there is another backdoor escape—this time in barrels—one of JRRT’s own favorite illustrations—and ours, too).

The barrels led us to the lake and to Lake Town (a colored version of another JRRT illustration),

through the gate of which the dwarves had to pass. A strong theme in so many of these entryways is that they are a form of challenge: those who would get in (or out) must deal with a guardian—Bilbo, goblins, elves–and Lake Town is no different. Here, there is a squad of lax gate guards, who are rather easily impressed when Thorin announces who he is and that he wants to see the Master. As the dwarves persuade the Lake Town people to supply their expedition, we would label this one of the doors to safety—the last thing we would say for the final two: the back door and the front gate of the Lonely Mountain.

So far, we have had two front doors (Bilbo’s and Beorn’s), one hidden door (goblins), two sets of gates (elves, Lake Town), and two back doors (goblins and elves). Now we have a door with a spell cast upon it and the riddle of the spell acts as the guardian. It is, of course, the door most desired by the dwarves, but it’s hardly a door to safety as, at its bottom lies the reason they abandoned the mountain to begin with: Smaug.

The front gate is hardly better, as it soon becomes a defensive work for the dwarves as they prepare to fend off those who either try to seek recompense or are simply goblin attackers.

But wait—we’ve left out a final door, haven’t we? “the door where it began”—and, in front of it, Bilbo experiences one more trial: finding that he’s been declared dead and his property is up for auction—and just when he believes he is “back again”. But there is a happy ending and The Hobbit itself ends with Bilbo, some years later, answering that same door

and entertaining Gandalf and Balin. (Although in the drawing above, Bilbo bears a certain resemblance to someone else…)

In our next post, we’ll continue by looking at doors and gates in The Lord of the Rings.

Thanks, as always, for reading!

MTCIDC

What’s In a Name?

27 Wednesday Jul 2016

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

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Adventure, akaletes, Baggins, Bilbo, Chico, cyclops, Gollum, Groucho, Marx Brothers, Odysseus, Polyphemus, Riddles in the Dark, The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, The Odyssey, Tolkien, trolls, xenia

Welcome, as always, dear readers.

In this posting, we are interested in the use and danger of using names in the history of the Ring, as well as looking at a possible parallel from an earlier heroic story. How dangerous can a name be?

In Chapter 5 of The Hobbit, Bilbo makes what is almost a fatal mistake—not for himself so much as for Frodo, and not at the time, so much as some 77 years later.

Confronted by the curious Gollum deep under the Misty Mountains, Bilbo has responded to Gollum’s, “What iss he, my preciouss?” with, “I am Mr. Bilbo Baggins.”

The Riddle Game

First, of course, he hasn’t answered the question. He was asked what, not who. And, from Gollum’s viewpoint, in which seemingly all animate things are potentially at least a snack, if not a full meal (“I guess it’s a choice feast; at least a tasty morsel it’d make us, gollum!” The Hobbit, Chapter 5, “Riddles in the Dark”), “What is it?” is the more appropriate question.

Second, depending on the culture, names can have a much greater significance than simply being social identifiers. If your culture has a strong belief in magic, then your personal name is a point of vulnerability: someone who wishes to control you can use it in summoning spells. This is probably why, for example, Circe, in Book 10 of the Odyssey, when she can’t turn Odysseus into a pig, as she had already done with part of his crew, says that he’s akaletes—literally, “uncallable by name”. Although the story as we have it doesn’t say so, we can presume that, as he does in another circumstance—which we’re about to discuss—he gives the enchantress a false name and therefore escapes her magic.

This is not the first time Bilbo has slipped, however. William, the troll, has already asked, “What are yer?” And Bilbo has replied, “Bilbo Baggins, a bur-a hobbit.” (The Hobbit, Chapter 2, “Roast Mutton”)

TN-Trolls_colour_sketch

(By one of our favorite Tolkien artists, Ted Nasmith)

Again, Bilbo has given the wrong answer (reminding us of a scene in the Marx Brothers movie, Horsefeathers, 1932, where Chico, as Baravelli, the doorkeeper of a speakeasy, demands of Groucho, “Who are you?” to which Groucho replies, “I’m fine, thanks. Who are you?”).

Password Scene

He has also complicated matters by almost saying “burglar” (he’s just tried to steal William’s purse, after all, which has, in fact, asked him “’Ere, ‘oo are you?”), but, by changing it at the last moment, he’s then created a new confusion, as the trolls simultaneously ask, “A burrahobbit?” and William adds, “What’s a burrahobbit got to do with my pocket, anyways?”

(We also ask, is there a very mild joke here—“burra” could easily sound like “burrow” and, since hobbits traditionally lived in tunnels…?)

Gandalf and daylight take care of the trolls,

img__Art-The_Three_Trolls_are_Turned_to_Stone,_by_JRRT

but Gollum is another matter. Bilbo, caught off guard, gives him his name. This, in turn, under torture, is passed on to Sauron, now aware that the Ring has (literally) resurfaced on Middle-earth. And, somehow, the names “hobbits” and “Shire” have been added to Bilbo’s name, as Gandalf tells Frodo (The Fellowship of the Ring, Chapter 2, “The Shadow of the Past”). To find out more, Sauron sends out his search team, the Nazgul, and the danger begins…

ellenkurkinazgul

(A wonderfully atmospheric watercolor by Ella Kurki)

Odysseus, whom we mentioned earlier, has also been involved with a large and menacing creature, Polyphemus, the Cyclops, in Book 9 of the Odyssey.

Head-of-Polyphemos-Captmondo-wikimedia-commons

Having a little more experience of danger and living in a world where magic may be anywhere, he is more wary, however, than Bilbo and, when asked his name, replies “Ootis”, which is Greek for “Nobody”.

Scholars have argued for a very long time as to why Polyphemus, who has a Greek name (“The Much-Spoken-Of”) and speaks perfectly good Greek, can be so easily taken in by such a transparent trick and there are lots of theories to explain it. Perhaps, however, the answer is simply to point to Bilbo’s trolls, whom Tolkien describes as “slow in the uptake”—that is, they are not very quick to assess a new situation. Is this the case with Polyphemus? Or, being as big as he is, and not fearing the gods (as he informs Odysseus), perhaps he ignores Odysseus’ reply as simply part of the guest ritual known as xenia, in which, it is clear from his behavior, he does not believe anyway?

Over and over again, in the Odyssey, we see this social pattern, called xenia, which means something like “guest-friendship”, enacted In this pattern, a person comes to another’s house in need of food and shelter. There is then a ritual, in which:

the potential guest appeals to the householder
the householder fulfills that person’s wants
in return the person tells his name and his story

the host gives the person guest-gifts and sends him on his way
should he—or anyone to whom he’s related—be in the guest’s territory in the future, he can claim the same hospitality from the guest—and this can be passed down through generations

In the case of Polyphemus, Odysseus and his men have come to Polyphemus’ cave and helped themselves to his food while he was absent, therefore immediately disturbing the pattern. When the Cyclops comes home, his response is to kill and eat two of Odysseus’ men, a grim parody of the custom, in which he should be feeding them, not feeding on them. The situation escalates, with more men eaten, until Odysseus formulates an escape plan which includes getting the Cyclops drunk

Cyclops-Homer

and putting out his eye,

cyclops2

then using a flock of sheep as an escape vehicle.

FrCyclopsEscape

In the meantime, however, Polyphemus has asked for Odysseus’ name, gotten the “Nobody” answer, and offered a guest-gift in return: the Cyclops will eat Odysseus last. The plan works, Odysseus and his surviving men escape (with the sheep), and get back to their ship, but then things go wrong again. Even blind, Polyphemus pursues them and, tossing mountain tops, almost brings them back to shore.

cyclops3

They do manage to row out of range, however, but then Odysseus, seeming to destroy completely his earlier “Nobody” trick, and much to his crew’s horror, shouts out to the Cyclops not only who he really is, but where he lives, as well. What’s going on here?

polyphemos

Bilbo has twice, inadvertently, provided others with his name, if not his address. Although Odysseus may be more able when it comes to thinking quickly in a dangerous situation than Bilbo, he also belongs to what is called a “face culture”. This means that who you are is a public thing. You only gain credit if you do things publically and your name is attached to what you do. In Odysseus’ case, he has bested a monster and avenged the deaths of his crewmen and it is important that that monster knows who did it. Unfortunately, that monster is the son of the sea god, Poseidon, to whom he prays for revenge and, knowing Odysseus’ name and address, this is a bit more pinpointed than simply saying, “Get that guy who put out my eye, dad!”

Bilbo blundered into the territory of Gollum and, through inexperience and surprise, brought trouble, in time, to Frodo. Odysseus, having concealed his identity successfully, then exposed himself because his society and his position in that society required it. In turn, he returns home alone and on someone else’s ship, having brought trouble on himself and his crew. In answer to our initial question, “How dangerous can a name be?” The answer appears to be, “Very.”

Thanks, as always, for reading.

MTCIDC

Terrifyingly Funny? (Part 2)

20 Wednesday Jul 2016

Posted by Ollamh in J.R.R. Tolkien, Language, Narrative Methods, Villains

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

Andy Serkis, Ben Gunn, Bilbo, Deagol, Gollum, Received Standard English, Riddles in the Dark, Smeagol, The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien, Treasure Island

Dear Readers, welcome, as always.

In the first part of this posting, we began to think out loud about the idea of characters in Tolkien who might combine menace and comedy. Our first idea had been to consider Gollum—

but not the Lord of the Rings Gollum, at least not at first glance.

The idea then took us backwards to the large, rather dim trolls of The Hobbit, who certainly seemed to display that combination.

And The Hobbit brings us back to Gollum.

All Tolkien readers must know, we imagine, that the book which JRRT published in 1937 was a very different kind of book from what gradually grew up around it. Here, for example, is the beginning of the reader’s introduction to Smeagol (a name never used in The Hobbit, of course):

“Deep down here by the dark water lived old Gollum…” (The Hobbit, Chapter 5, “Riddles in the Dark”)

To us, this sounds like it could easily begin, “Once upon a time, deep down by the dark water, lived Old Gollum”, as if it were the opening of a fairy tale and The Hobbit was, of course, originally conceived of and written as a children’s book.

“Old Gollum”, by that name, might have been a cantankerous but lovable geezer—but the line continues, “a small slimy creature”. “Slimy” then leads to “dark as darkness, except for two big round pale eyes in his thin face…He liked meat too. Goblin he thought good, when he could get it; but he took care they never found him out. He just throttled them from behind…” And then, presumably, he ate them raw (as he does fish in The Hobbit and he would coneys in The Lord of the Rings), as Gollum’s level of civilization seems to begin and end with the little boat which he has—although where the materials came from for that is never explained. (Gandalf, in “The Shadow of the Past”, says that the Stoors and Fallowhides, to whom Gollum/Smeagol belonged, made boats out of reeds.)

In our last posting, we pointed to the speech of the trolls in The Hobbit as one possible source of humor.

THE HOBBIT: AN UNEXPECTED JOURNEY

Unlike the main characters, who spoke a Middle-earth version of RSE (Received Standard English), they displayed a number of the linguistic elements of lower-class London which are often used to show class—or even species?–difference (think of the orcs who carry off Merry and Pippin, for example) in Tolkien. If this is combined with the topics of their conversation—mainly about food, some of it sheep, but also both humans and dwarves—we then have what we set out to find, menace and humor.

As for Gollum, he certainly has a very distinctive form of speech. First, there’s his habit of carrying on a conversation with himself even in the presence of others. It reminds us of the talk of Ben Gunn,

bengunn

who was marooned by Captain Flint in Stevenson’s Treasure Island (1881-2; 1883) and has clearly developed a similar habit:

“If you was sent by Long John,” said he, “I’m as good as pork and I know it. But where was you, do you suppose?” (Treasure Island, Chapter XV, “The Man of the Island”)

There are four other distinctive elements of Gollum’s speech. First, there is that gollum. The narrator says of it:

“And when he said gollum he made a horrible swallowing noise in his throat.” (The Hobbit, Chapter 5, “Riddles in the Dark”)

Andy Serkis, who is the voice (and movement) of Gollum in the Jackson films, has, in interviews, said that the noise he makes is modeled upon his cat throwing up a hairball. As Tolkien has called it “a horrible swallowing noise”, it would seem that this is, in fact, the opposite sound from what is wanted. So what should it sound like—that is, and still sound like “gollum”? The word has two syllables—perhaps we might think that the noise would depend upon which syllable bore the primary accent: GOL-lum or gol-LUM. To us, accenting the first has more of a choky feel to it and the second more of a froggy. (We also wonder, knowing Gandalf’s later explanation of how Smeagol acquired the Ring, whether, in fact, Smeagol is actually imitating the noise Deagol made as he struggled for breath.)

A second element is his incessant referring—in the 1937 edition—to himself as “my precious”. In the 1951 revision, and beyond, Gollum can call both himself and the Ring by the term, and we are of two minds about the change. On the one hand, the 1937 version reflects what interests us: a word of tender endearment mixed with a murderous intent, all within Gollum. On the other, the post-1951 version’s double usage presents us with a picture of a creature so enslaved to the Ring that he uses that term of endearment (and we also know, from Gandalf’s later explanation, that the Ring does not return the affection, making it even more horrible). As well, others touched by the Ring can be seen as infected by its power when they use the expression.

bilbowithring

Third—and more potentially comic—is Gollum’s actual language. There are the odd expressions, sometimes based on actual older English expressions—“Bless us and save us” becomes “Bless us and splash us”, example. As well, there are the non-standard words like “bitsy” (a kind of diminutive) and plurals—“handses”, “eggses”, “pocketses”.

Fourth is the stressed sssssssssssssssssssssibilance. JRRT himself points to this in a letter to Rayner Unwin in a correction to the 1937 edition: “Not that Gollum would miss the chance of a sibilant.” (cited in Anderson, The Annotated Hobbit, 120, note 9)

Taken altogether, this makes for a very distinctive—and very different speaker from any other in The Hobbit (or The Lord of the Rings, for that matter) and this is clear from the very start of the conversation between Gollum and Bilbo:

“What iss he, my preciouss?”…

“I am Mr. Bilbo Baggins. I have lost the dwarves and I have lost the wizard, and I don’t know where I am and I don’t want to know, if only I can get away.” (The Hobbit, Chapter 5, “Riddles in the Dark”)

The menace is there in Gollum, from the very beginning:

“Bless us and splash us, my precioussss! I guess it’s a choice feast; at least a tasty morsel it’d make us, gollum!” (The Hobbit, Chapter 5, “Riddles in the Dark”)

And we would suggest that the humor is there, too, in the very same speech: the twisted expression, the self-address, the use of “my precioussss”, and the hissy sibilance. Tolkien, though personally drily witty, was not—nor intended to be—a comic writer. What he could do well, we suggest, is use that which interested him deeply—language and its expression—combine it, for contrast, with a certain darkness of theme, as here, and allow the reader to feel a kind of grim amusement in the balance–or imbalance–between what’s being said and how.

What do you think, dear readers?

Thanks, as always, for reading.

MTCIDC

Terrifyingly Funny? (Part 1)

13 Wednesday Jul 2016

Posted by Ollamh in Artists and Illustrators, Fairy Tales and Myths, Imaginary History, J.R.R. Tolkien, Language, Literary History, Narrative Methods, Villains

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Adventure, Among Gnomes and Trolls, Bilbo, comic, Gandalf, Gollum, humor, John Bauer, Middle-earth, Pēro & Pōdex, Roast Mutton, Stone Trolls, The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, Through the Looking-Glass, Tolkien, Tommies, trolls, Victorian Drawing Room

Dear Readers, welcome, as always.

This is going to be a two-part posting because– well, it began as one thing, and then became another. We were thinking about Gollum, not as the grim and tormented figure we know from The Lord of the Rings, but rather as the muttering, riddling cave-dweller of The Hobbit. We were wondering if we could see Gollum not only as menacing, but as comic, as well.

Then, however, we began to think about other such figures, and one of us said to the other, “What about the trolls in The Hobbit?”. The other replied, “we see them before we see Gollum. Maybe we should start with them.”

And so we shall.

It’s clear where Tolkien got his trolls– they’re all over the fairy tales he had been reading since childhood, and they form a component of the traditional Scandinavian literature in which he had been interested for nearly as long. They are commonly large, and not terrifically bright, and often possess an anxiety about daylight. One of our favorite illustrators of such creatures is John Bauer (1882-1918), who, among other works, contributed illustrations to an ongoing series of volumes appropriately titled Among Gnomes and Trolls. Here, for example, is one of his depictions of the latter.

And, because we can’t resist– can we ever? Here are a couple more illustrations by Bauer.

Even before The Hobbit, however, Tolkien had produced a literary troll. In 1926, he wrote the first version of a poem to be sung to the folk song “The Fox Went Out”, called “Pēro & Pōdex”(“Boot and Bottom”). It survives in a later version in chapter 12 of Book 1 of The Lord of the Rings, beginning “Troll sat alone on his seat of stone”.

In The Hobbit, the trolls are grouped around a fire, drinking and eating and immediately recognizable:

“But they were trolls. Obviously trolls. Even Bilbo, in spite of his sheltered life, could see that: from the great heavy faces of them, and their size, and the shape of their legs, not to mention their language, which was not drawing-room fashion at all, at all.” (The Hobbit, Chapter 2, “Roast Mutton”)

Douglas Anderson, in his invaluable The Annotated Hobbit, says that “Tolkien presents the Trolls’ speech in a comic, lower-class dialect” (70). In fact, we wonder whether, as in the case of the later orcs in The Lord of the Rings, we are not seeing a reflection of the speech of some of the Tommies whom Tolkien had commanded in the Great War.

” ‘Mutton yesterday, mutton today, and blimey, if it don’t look like mutton again tomorrer,’ said one of the trolls.

‘Never a blinking bit of manflesh have we had for long enough,’ said a second. ‘What the ‘ell William was a-thinkin; of to bring us into these parts at all, beats me – and the drink runnin’ short, what’s more,’ he said jogging the elbow of William, who was taking a pull at his jug” (The Hobbit, Chapter 2, “Roast Mutton”).

Besides what sounds like a reference to a line in Through the Looking-Glass (1871), “The rule is, jam to-morrow and jam yesterday – but never jam to-day,” with their “blimey” and “blinking”, the trolls are immediately labeled by their speech as lower-class, potentially thuggish, and certainly not people invited to a formal drawing room like this–

Of course, we might ask ourselves, why should trolls talk like that anyway? And we might then reply, because Tolkien is mixing language for comic effect. Bilbo, Gandalf, and the dwarves speak in non-dialect standard English. Therefore, there’s an especially strong contrast here. As well, what the trolls are saying can be funny in itself, as when William says to the discontented other trolls,

” ‘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. What more d’yer want?’ ” (The Hobbit, Chapter 2, “Roast Mutton”).

Here, we have comic exaggeration combined with the frustrated defensiveness of a leader whose tactics are being questioned by subordinates.

The tension grows as the scene progresses. Bilbo appears, is nabbed by a purse which sounds like the Trolls, the Trolls fall to fisticuffs while arguing over Bilbo and then over the dwarves whom they capture, and Gandalf, imitating various Troll voices, so stirs the pot that the Trolls never notice when the first beam of sunlight cuts across their clearing and they are petrified.

So, if we consider what the Trolls have been doing previously–“Never a blinking bit of manflesh have we had for long enough…” says one, as well as what they discuss doing not only to Bilbo, but to the whole of Thorin & Co., these could seem to be grim figures, indeed. Then again, they sound like comic cockneys, they have ludicrously-large appetites, and they are dim enough to be taken in very easily by Gandalf’s ventriloquism. So, grim and funny at the same time.

On the whole, humor is more an element in The Hobbit than in The Lord of the Rings, but we believe that perhaps because of his initial appearance in The Hobbit, Gollum may have both the menace and the humor, at times , of these gormless Trolls, as we hope to show in Part 2.

Thanks, as always, for reading,

MTCIDC,

doubtfulsea

~ adventure fantasy

Tag Archives: The Hobbit

Shire Portrait (2)

Shire Portrait (I)

One More River (2)

One More River (1)

When One Door Closes.3

When One Door Closes (2)

When One Door Closes (I)

What’s In a Name?

Terrifyingly Funny? (Part 2)

Terrifyingly Funny? (Part 1)