Prismatic

20 Monday Jul 2026

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Aristotle, Balrog, color-theory, De Coloribus, electromagnetic-spectrum, Fantasy, Gandalf, Isaac Newton, Istari, lotr, Maiar, Radagast, Saruman, Sauron, Shadowfax, the blue wizards, the electromagnetic spectrum, The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien, wizards

As always, dear readers, welcome.

“ ‘So you have come, Gandalf,’ he said to me gravely; but in his eyes there seemed to be a white light, as if a cold laughter was in his heart.

‘Yes, I have come,’ I said. ‘I have come for your aid, Saruman the White.’ And that title seemed to anger him.

‘Have you indeed, Gandalf the Grey!’ he scoffed…”

This seems like an odd bit of dialogue—why such an emphasis on colors? And there’s more—

“ ‘Radagast the Brown!’ laughed Saruman, and he no longer concealed his scorn. ‘Radagast the Bird-tamer! Radagast the Simple! Radagast the Fool!’ “ (The Fellowship of the Ring, Book Two, Chapter 2, “The Council of Elrond”)

These colors began with the arrival of the 5 “wizards” (Istari) on Middle-earth, a thousand years into the Third Age. They are, in fact, Maiar, which we may think of as a form of “lesser angel”—that is, belonging to the orders of spiritual beings who inhabit Valinor, to the far west of Middle-earth.

(Karen Wynn Fonstad)

These particular Maiar were intended to be a counterforce to Sauron, who appeared to be once more on the rise. Although there were 5 of them—Saruman, Gandalf, Radagast—and two more who may have been named Alatar and Pallando—and all had colors attached to them—Saruman white,

(the Hildebrandts)

Gandalf grey,

(the Hildebrandts)

Radagast brown,

(I can’t find an artist for this, but it strikes me as a much better depiction than that seen in the Jackson Hobbit movies.)

and the other two blue—those last two, only briefly mentioned, go eastwards and disappear entirely from the narrative. (For more details, see Unfinished Tales, 405-420)

As for the other three, their colors appear to have a definite significance: Radagast is an earthy type, with a passion for birds and animals, Gandalf is seen as an elderly man, grey as his garments, and Saruman as “the greatest of my order”, as Gandalf once described him, could be stainless in white.

And this is where color comes in in a different way and we see why Saruman is not pleased at being given his old title—

“ ‘For I am Saruman the Wise, Saruman Ring-maker, Saruman of Many Colours!’

I looked then and saw that his robes, which had seemed white, were not so, but were woven of all colours, and if he moved they shimmered and changed hue so that the eye was bewildered.”

Although Gandalf’s eye might have been bewildered, his mind was clearly not:

‘I liked white better,’ I said.”

White was the color in which Saruman had appeared on his mission to Middle-earth and his behavior at Gandalf’s arrival shows that he has already betrayed that mission:

“ ‘For you have come, and that was all the purpose of my message. And here you will stay, Gandalf the Grey, and rest from journeys.’

“Rest”, of course, is not quite what Saruman has in mind.

‘He was cold now and perilous. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I did not expect you to show wisdom, even in your own behalf; but I gave you the chance of aiding me willingly, and so saving yourself much trouble and pain. The third choice is to stay here until the end.’

‘Until what end?’

‘Until you reveal to me where the One may be found. I may find means to persuade you. Or until it is found in your despite, and the Ruler has time to turn to lighter matters: to devise, say, a fitting reward for the hindrance and insolence of Gandalf the Grey.’ “

“The Ruler”, we can suppose, is Sauron, but Saruman has plans of his own, proposing, when the Ring has been discovered, not to turn it over to that “Ruler”, but to keep it:

“ ‘Why not? The Ruling Ring? If we could command that, then the Power would pass to us.’ “

But Gandalf sees through this immediately:

“ ‘Saruman…only one hand at a time can wield the One, and you know that well, so do not trouble to say we!’ “

Thus, not only has Saruman betrayed his mission from the Valar, but he plans to betray the object of that mission, Sauron, as well. It’s no wonder, then, that he no longer wears white—and, in fact, has nothing but contempt for it:

“ ‘White!’ he sneered. ‘It serves as a beginning. White cloth may be dyed. The white page can be overwritten; and the white light can be broken.’ “

And here Tolkien suggests that Saruman has rather advanced information about the science of optics.

In our Middle-earth, up until at least the beginning of the 18^th century, people subscribed to the theory, created perhaps by Aristotle (384-322BC),

that colors were, in fact, a mixture of certain simpler colors, like black and white (see for more on this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_Colors ).

It was Isaac Newton’s (1642-1727) experiments with prisms

which led to a different theory—that the “white” light which he passed through a prism

was actually a series of colored lights, a theory which he published in 1704,

and which is the basis of our current understanding of light and color. (For more on the electromagnetic spectrum, see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Vsl0Iom3S0 This is from a children’s program and about my level of understanding!)

To Gandalf, seeing Saruman’s actions as the betrayal they are, replies:

“ ‘In which case it is no longer white,’ I said.”

Just as Saruman is no longer the leader of the Maiar mission to Middle-earth, but a would-be Sauron, an imitation “Ring-maker”, who will, in time, be overthrown and eventually die a miserable death, murdered by his own agent.

(Joan Wyatt—you can see more of her work here: https://www.artnet.com/artists/joan-wyatt/ )

But this is not the end of wizard colors, of course. Gandalf appears to die, dragged down into the depths of Moria along with the Balrog,

(Denis Gordeev)

but reappears, not as Gandalf the Grey or Gandalf of Many Colors, but as Gandalf the White,

(the Hildebrandts)

and here we see white in a new light (sorry!): as the color of someone who has been purified by his near-death experience and returned to become that leader of resistance to Sauron that Saruman, in breaking that trust, has betrayed.

Is it surprising that Shadowfax, his horse, is white, as well?

(Angus McBride)

Thanks, as always, for reading.

Stay well,

Imagine a spectrum where we could see all of the other elements, like ultraviolet and gamma-rays,

But, until we can, at least remember that there’s

MTCIDC

Towering.3

08 Wednesday Jul 2026

Posted by Ollamh in Uncategorized

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Aucassin et Nicolette, Barad-Dur, chantefable, Childe Roland, dark-tower, English Fairy Tales, Fantasy, Illustrations of Northern Antiquities, King Lear, lotr, Men and Women, Minas Morgul, Robert Browning, Shakespeare, the Dark Tower, The Lord of the Rings, the Morannon, Tolkien, towers

As ever, welcome, dear readers.

In our last, we began a tour and catalogue of towers as we see them in The Lord of the Rings.

We set off from the Elvish towers in the far west of Middle-earth.

(Ted Nasmith)

From there, we traveled east and south to Amon Sul, aka Weathertop.

(Alan Lee)

Unlike the Fellowship, we then went all the way down along the western side of the Misty Mountains

until we reached Isengard and the tower of Orthanc.

Leaving Isengard, we journeyed farther south yet to Helm’s Deep and its tower

(JRRT)

and then farther yet to Minas Tirith and the tower of Echthelion

(Ted Nasmith)

before turning eastwards, crossing the Anduin, to finish part 1 at Minas Morgul—formerly Minas Ithil.

(Ted Nasmith)

This marks the beginning of Frodo and Sam’s final leg, into Mordor, where we paused for the moment—but now we pick up the journey again and step into Mordor itself—but, as we’ll finish with Sauron’s hangout, let’s first grab an eagle

(Ted Nasmith—and I want to point out that this wonderful artist has illustrated things from Tolkien beyond The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings—this image, for instance is an illustration from the history of the Elvish city of Gondolin. For more on Gondolin, see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gondolin )

and fly north to the other entrance to Mordor, at the Morannon—the Black Gate.

(an early illustration by the Hildebrandts)

(a later illustration by Alan Lee—I thought the contrast in conceptions of the Gate was interesting. The Hildebrandts were pioneers in Tolkien illustration and certain of their images—like Gandalf’s original appearance to Bilbo—have always been favorites.)

Our narrator gives us a description—and history–of the place:

“But as the ranges [of Ephel Duath and Ered Lithui] approached one another, being but parts of one great wall about the mournful plains of Lithlad and of Gorgoroth, and the bitter inland sea of Nurnen amidmost, they swung out long arms northward; and between these arms there was a deep defile. This was Cirith Gorgor, the Haunted Pass, the entrance to the land of the Enemy. High cliffs lowered upon either side, and thrust forward from its mouth were two sheer hills, black-boned and bare. Upon them stood the Teeth of Mordor, two towers strong and tall. In days long past they were built by the Men of Gondor in their pride and power, after the overthrow of Sauron and his flight, lest he should seek to return to his old realm. But the strength of Gondor failed, and men slept, and for long years the towers stood empty. Then Sauron returned. Now the watch-towers, which had fallen into decay, were repaired and filled with arms, and garrisoned with ceaseless vigilance. Stony-faced they were, with dark window-holes staring north and east and west, and each window was filled with sleepless eyes.

Across the mouth of the pass, from cliff to cliff, the Dark Lord had built a rampart of stone. In it there was a single gate of iron, and upon its battlements sentinels paced unceasingly. Beneath the hills on either side the rock was bored into a hundred caves and maggot-holes…” (The Two Towers, Book Four, Chapter 3, “The Black Gate is closed”)

As always, we see in The Lord of the Rings a Middle-earth which has a history which stretches back far from the present moment. Sauron had been defeated by the Last Alliance in SA 3441. While traveling with Frodo and Sam, we set off in TA 3018—over 3000 (!) years later. (Frodo is astonished to hear from Elrond an eye-witness account of that event—see The Fellowship of the Ring, Book Two, Chapter 2, “The Council of Elrond”) Thus, the two original towers—ironically constructed to keep Sauron out—must have been built somewhere at the end of the Second Age or at the beginning of the Third, and the wall between constructed after c.TA 2942, when Sauron had been driven by the White Council from Dol Goldur,

(John Howe—if we had more information about this place, I might have included it in our tour, but it appears to be more mentioned than explained in detail.)

and returned to Mordor.

And now we come to the end of our tower tour at the most fearsome of those towers: the Barad-dur.

(JRRT—a shame that this is only a fragment)

(both by Ted Nasmith—the first strikes me as more menacing in its monumentality, the second, more elaborate and baroque, suggesting a Sauron with a taste for the ornamental, rather than simply the grimly practical.)

Frodo first sees it at Amon Hen,

(Scott Peery—for more images see: https://tolkiengateway.net/wiki/Category:Images_by_Scott_Peery )

when he puts on the Ring and first Minas Tirith appears, but then—

“But against Minas Tirith was set another fortress, greater and more strong. Thither, eastward, unwilling his eyes were drawn…Then at last his gaze was held: wall upon wall, battlement upon battlement, black, immeasurably strong, mountain of iron, gate of steel, tower of adamant, he saw it: Barad-dur, Fortress of Sauron.” (The Fellowship of the Ring, Book Two, Chapter 10, “The Breaking of the Fellowship”)

Sauron had begun the construction of this menacing place in SA 1000, completing it 600 years KinAlliance, returns to rebuild it in TA 2951 (Appendix B, “The Third Age”), its final destruction coming with the destruction of the Ring in TA 3019.

(Ted Nasmith—with the very interesting label “Rangers scout the ruins of Barad-dur”)

As we know, “Barad-dur” means “Dark Tower” and that name made me wonder about where it might have come from, apart from JRRT’s amazingly fertile imagination.

One possibility could be a poem by Robert Browning (1812-1889), entitled “Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came”, which is in his 1855 collection Men and Women.

It’s a rather creepy poem about a knight on an unknown mission—except that it seems to end at that Dark Tower. You can read it here: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/1597010/childe-roland-to-the-dark-tower-came

The only reference in Letters is to another Browning poem, “The Pied Piper of Hamelin”, which Tolkien said he loathed, but the medieval setting and the popularity of Browning in the later 19^th century might suggest that Tolkien had read it—with perhaps less distaste than he did “The Pied Piper”—but the Browning poem is actually his recreation of what might have been a much earlier ballad, only a fragment of which appears to survive, in Shakespeare’s King Lear, where, at the end of Act 3, Scene 4, a major character, Edgar, pretending to be “Poor Tom”, a madman, recites:

“Childe Rowland to the darke Tower came,

His word was still, fie, foh, and fumme,

I smell the blood of a Brittish man.”

(This is from the “First Folio” of 1623—I always prefer using early versions of Shakespeare’s texts as their spelling echoes earlier English pronunciation—so-called “Shakespearean”, which you can hear here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y2QYGEwM1Sk You can read the whole play in this older spelling here: https://internetshakespeare.uvic.ca/doc/Lr_F1/scene/1.1/index.html )

You probably know two of these lines from the English fairy tale “Jack and the Beanstalk”—sometimes called “Jack the Giant-Killer”–which you can read here, if you don’t know it, or would like to refresh your memory (start on page 99): https://archive.org/details/englishfairytal00jacogoog/page/n8/mode/2up You’ll also notice, facing the title page of this volume, an illustration entitled “Childe Rowland”,

a story which you can find beginning on page 117. The editor of this text (English Fairy Tales, 1890), Joseph Jacobs, has provided a long note (pages 238-245) about his major source, citing Jamieson’s 1814 collection, Illustrations of Northern Antiquities where Jamieson reconstructs something which combines verse and prose—as JRRT sometimes does—in what is called a “chantefable”, in which a character called “Burd Ellen” is rescued from Elfland by “Child Rowland”, (“Child/e” is a title for a young nobleman pre-knighthood.) a familiar theme in a number of ballads and which Jamieson links to a Danish balled, “Rosmer Hafmand”. You can read Jamieson’s account here: https://archive.org/details/cu31924027097868/page/396/mode/2up

(For more on the one known surviving example of the “chantefable”, the 12^th-13^th century “Aucassin et Nicolette”, see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aucassin_and_Nicolette )

So, did at least the name “Dark Tower” come from a literary source—Browning’s poem, say?

Or, can we turn to Browning’s source: King Lear?

For all that Tolkien was not, initially a Shakespeare fan (see his letter to W.H. Auden, 7 June, 1955, Letters, 312), he later came to appreciate him—at least in performance—(see letter to Christopher Tolkien, 28 July, 1944, Letters, 126), and we know that he had been exposed to Shakespeare’s works at an early age, so perhaps Shakespeare was a—if not the—inspiration?

In any event, that tower was doomed to ultimate destruction with that of the Ring, as we read:

“The earth groaned and quaked. The Towers of the Teeth swayed, tottered, and fell down; the mighty rampart crumbled; the Black Gate was hurled in ruin; and from far away, now dim, now growing, now mounting to the clouds, there came a drumming rumble, a roar, a long echoing roll of ruinous noise.” (The Return of the King, Book Six, Chapter 4, “The Field of Cormallen”)

(Ted Nasmith)

And with the end of the Dark Tower, this tour of towers ends, as well.

Thanks for reading, as always.

Stay well,

If you are trapped underground and find a simple ring, consider, before you pick it up, that there may be consequences,

And expect

MTCIDC

Towering.2

01 Wednesday Jul 2026

Posted by Ollamh in Uncategorized

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Fantasy, Helm's Deep, Isengard, Minas Ithil, Minas Morgul, Minas Tirith, Orthanc, The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien, Tower Hills, Tower of Echthelion, towers, towers in The Lord of the Rings, Weathertop

Welcome, dear readers, as always.

Walls have always been a problem for attackers, as they’re clearly meant to be. There have always been several possibilities of how to deal with them:

1. attack its fabric

2. go over with a ladder (this is called an “escalade” and is, as you can imagine, an iffy method of assault)

3. dig under (tunneling)

(This is from the very good “War History Online” site: https://www.warhistoryonline.com/

4. dig under to destroy (undermining)

(And this is from another very interesting site, “Classroom Adventures”, which has an educational agenda with which I agree: https://www.classroomadventures.co.uk/ )

5. if you’re the Romans, you might build an enormous ramp to lead up to the top of the wall

6. or you might build a tower a little higher than the wall, roll it up to the wall, and climb from it onto the wall

In an earlier posting, I examined this last in a review of the recent The War of the Rohrrim

for which, see “Towering”, 28 January, 2026.

I have titled this “Towering.2”, but it’s not about walls and getting over them using a tower, however, but about towers themselves, specifically towers in The Lord of the Rings, in which there are a surprising number, of which I thought it might be fun to make a sort of catalogue, visiting them more or less geographically.

To do so, we begin to the far west of the Shire, just this side of the Grey Havens, where we see the Tower Hills.

(Ted Nasmith)

As Tolkien describes them:

“Three Elf-towers of immemorial age were still to be seen on the Tower Hills beyond the western marches. They shone far off in the moonlight. The tallest was furthest away, standing alone upon a green mound.” (“Prologue”, The Lord of the Rings)

Walking eastward towards the Misty Mountains, crossing the Shire, but veering south from Bree, we reach Weathertop,

(Alan Lee)

of which Aragorn says:

“The Men of the West did not live here; though in their latter days they defended the hills for a while against the evil that came out of Angmar. This path was made to serve the forts along the walls. But long before, in the first days of the North Kingdom, they built a great watch-tower on Weathertop, Amon Sul they called it…once it was tall and fair.” (The Fellowship of the Ring, Book One, Chapter 11, “A Knife in the Dark”)

Even with just two towers, we can begin to understand what JRRT was at such pains to suggest: settlement in Middle-earth is very old and, as we’ll see, no one has built in such an elaborate fashion for many centuries—the Elf towers are of “immemorial age” and Amon Sul was built during the later reign of Argaleb I (ruled TA 1349-1356—just to give you a sense of time, Frodo was born in TA 2968).

From Weathertop, heading south and around the southern end of the Misty Mountains, we reach Isengard and the tower of Orthanc,

(Ted Nasmith)

built sometime during the Second Age (Tolkien never appears to have provided a founding date—the Tolkien Gateway offers: “it must have been built between S.A. 3320, the year in which the realms of Gondor and Arnor were established, and S.A. 3430, the year in which the Last Alliance of Elves and Men was formed to resist Sauron‘s tyranny”).

We can say, however, that Saruman began his occupation of the site in TA 2759, so, at the time of The Lord of the Rings and the Ents’ attack upon it (TA 3019)

(Ted Nasmith)

he had been in possession of it for over 250 years—one more example of how aged everything in Middle-earth is. It’s described as something of a technological wonder—but also quite menacing—especially when we remember that Saruman attempted to keep Gandalf captive at the top, among those pinnacles:

“There stood a tower of marvellous shape. It was fashioned by the builders of old, who smoothed the Ring of Isengard, and yet it seemed a thing not made by the craft of Men, but riven from the bones of the earth in the ancient torment of the hills. A peak and isle of rock it was, black and gleaming hard; four mighty piers of many-sided stone were welded into one, but near the summit they opened into gaping horns, their pinnacles sharp as the points of spears, keen-edged as knives.” (The Two Towers, Book Three, Chapter 8, “The Road to Isengard”)

From here, we travel farther south, along the eastern side of the Ered Nimrais, the White Mountains, until we reach Helm’s Deep and its fortification with its tower, the Hornburg.

(JRRT)

As to foundation date, like Isengard, it seems vague:

“At Helm’s Gate, before the mouth of the Deep, there was a heel of rock thrust outwards by the northern cliff. There upon its spur stood high walls of ancient stone, and within was a lofty tower. Men said that in the far-off days of the glory of Gondor the sea-kings had built this fastness with the hands of giants.” (The Two Towers, Book Three, Chapter 7, “Helm’s Deep”—that phrase “with the hands of giants” may have echoed in Tolkien’s memory from the Old English poem named “The Ruin”, which possibly describes the remains of Roman Aquae Sulis (modern Bath) and which has the phrase “brosnað enta geweorc”, “ruined is the work of giants”—with that “enta”, from which the Ents came—along with a similar phrase in “Maxims II”. For more on this very poignant poem see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ruin )

Southeast now, along those same White Mountains, will bring us in the direction of the first of the two towers of the title of the second volume (but which towers? Tolkien wrote to Rayner Unwin: “The Two Towers gets as near as possible to finding a title to cover the widely divergent Books 3 and 4; and can be left ambiguous—it might refer to Isengard and Barad-dur, or to Minas Tirth and B; or Isengard and Cirith Ungol.” Letter to Rayner Unwin, 17 August, 1953, Letters, 250)

We now see ahead of us Minas Tirith,

(Ted Nasmith)

constructed in SA 3300’s, by Anarion, son of Elendil, and called initially Minas Anor, “the tower of the sun”, with its Tower of Echthelion, as one of the Fellowship first views it:

“…the Tower of Echthelion, standing high within the topmost wall, shone out against the sky, glimmering like a spike of pearl and silver, tall and fair and shapely, and its pinnacle glittered as if wrought of crystals; and white banners broke and fluttered from the battlements in the morning breeze, and high and far [Pippin] heard a clear ringing as of silver trumpets.” (The Return of the King, Book Five, Chapter 1, “Minas Tirith”)

(I couldn’t resist adding this John Howe illustration, done in the style of Maxfield Parrish)

But now, on our tour, we turn eastwards, to the land of shadow and, first, to that other tower, that of Minas Ithil, “the tower of the moon”, built about the same time as Minas Anor, by Elendil’s other son, Isildur.

(Ted Nasmith)

Elrond gives us a small picture of it in its earlier days:

“And Minas Ithil they built, Tower of the Rising Moon, eastward upon a shoulder of the Mountains of Shadow…”

But then he goes on to add:

“And on a time evil things came forth, and they took Minas Ithil and abode in it, and they made it a place of dread; and it is called Minas Morgul, the Tower of Sorcery.” (The Fellowship of the Ring, Book Two, Chapter 2, “The Council of Elrond”)

The forces of Mordor besieged and captured Minas Ithil in TA 2002 and, with their occupation, this is what it began to look like:

“Upon the further side, a deep gulf of shadow, ran back far into the mountains. Upon the farther side, some way within the valley’s arms, high on a rocky seat upon the black knees of the Ephel Duath, stood the walls and tower of Minas Morgul. All was dark about it, earth and sky, but it was lit with light. Not the imprisoned moonlight welling through the marble walls of Minas Ithil long ago, Tower of the Moon, fair and radiant in the hollow of the hills. Paler indeed than the moon ailing in some slow eclipse was the light now, wavering and blowing like a noisesome exhalation of decay, a corpse-light, a light that illuminated nothing. In the walls and tower windows showed, like countless black holes looking inward into emptiness; but the topmost course of the tower revolved slowly, first one way and then another, a huge ghostly head leering into the night.” (The Two Towers, Book Four, Chapter 8, “The Stairs of Cirith Ungol”)

I find that topmost course, “revolving slowly, first one way and then another”, as if always on watch, the most disturbing part of this description so we’ll stop here for now before Frodo and Sam take the next and near fatal step on our tower tour.

Thanks, as always, for reading.

Stay well,

Remember that your slippery guide may have other plans for you,

(Ted Nasmith)

And remember, as well, that, as always, there’s

MTCIDC

Gundulf

24 Wednesday Jun 2026

Posted by Ollamh in Uncategorized

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Aragorn, Bingo, bishop, Bladorthin, crozier, Elder Edda, Fantasy, Gandalf, Grima, Gundulf of Rochester, Lanfranc, lotr, Poetic Edda, Rochester Cathedral, stigand, The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, The White Tower, Theoden, Tolkien, tolkiens-names, Trotter, Trotter., Voluspa

As always, dear readers, welcome.

Bladorthin? How would we feel if, as in early drafts of The Hobbit, this were the name by which we knew the somewhat mysterious figure who visited Bilbo Baggins, looking for someone to go on an adventure?

(the Hildebrandts)

I, for one, am glad to see that name consigned to manuscripts, along with other early names, like “Bingo” (Frodo) and “Trotter”, later to become “Aragorn” and turn as well from a “Hobbit ranger” into the rightful heir to the throne of Gondor,

(the Hildebrandts again)

initially, as he tells us, to the surprise of the author (see a letter to W.H. Auden, 7 June, 1955, Letters, 315-16)

(If you want to read that draft in which Bladorthin appears, see John D. Rateliffe’s monumental The History of the Hobbit, 30-31, where the name appears just where we now read “Gandalf”, as in:

“Bladorthin! If you had heard only a quarter of what I have (and I have heard only a tiny bit what there is to hear) about him you would be prepared for any sort of remarkable tale.” (30) )

Instead, we know him as Gandalf, whose name—along with those of the dwarves—as Tolkien tells the editor of the Observer: “…are from the Elder Edda.” (letter to the editor of the Observer, published 20 Ferbruary, 1938, Letters, 41)

By “Elder Edda”, JRRT was referring to a 13^th century collection of poems also referred to as “the Poetic Edda” and, within it, to one specific section, called “Voluspa”, “prophesy of the volva”, a kind of seeress. (Also called a “vala”–for more on such magical figures, see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seeress_(Germanic) For more on the Eddas, see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edda )

In this particular poem, the seeress mentions the creation of the dwarves (quoted here from Benjamin Thorpe’s 1906 translation of both the “Poetic Edda” and the “Prose Edda” which you can read here: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/14726/14726-h/14726-h.htm ):

“9. Then went all the powers to their judgment-seats, the all-holy gods, and thereon held council, who should of the dwarfs the race create, from the sea-giant’s blood and livid bones.

10. Then was Môtsognir created greatest of all the dwarfs, and Durin second; there in man’s likeness they created many dwarfs from earth, as Durin said.

11. Nýi and Nidi, Nordri and Sudri, Austri and Vestri, Althiôf, Dvalin Nâr and Nâin, Niping, Dain, Bivör, Bavör, Bömbur, Nori, An and Anar, Ai, Miodvitnir,

12. Veig and Gandâlf, Vindâlf, Thrain, Thekk and Thorin, Thrôr, Vitr, and Litr, Nûr and Nýrâd, Regin and Râdsvid. Now of the dwarfs I have rightly told.

13. Fili, Kili, Fundin, Nali, Hepti, Vili, Hanar, Svior, Billing, Bruni, Bild, Bûri, Frâr, Hornbori, Fræg and Lôni, Aurvang, Iari, Eikinskialdi.” (Thorpe, “Voluspa”, page 2)

You can see a number of familiar dwarf names here, as well as other names which Tolkien didn’t use, and, in section 12, “Gandalf” (although this was, originally, Tolkien’s choice for the character who then become Thorin, possibly because Tolkien might have associated him with the medieval ruler of Alfheim, in southern Norway? The part of Norway he ruled might also have appealed to Tolkien, “Alfheim” meaning “Elfhome/world/land”—see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gandalf_Alfgeirsson as well as Rateliffe, “Introduction”, xi-xii)

So our documentation goes, but, by an odd chance, I came across someone whose name might also have been an influence: Gundulf, the 11-12^th-century Bishop of Rochester and architect.

I had originally simply been thinking about the name “Gandalf”, which appears to be a compound of two Old Norse words, “gandr” , “[magic] staff” and “alfr”—“elf”—see Geir Zoega, A Concise Dictionary of Old Icelandic, 1910, for further details. And JRRT certainly is aware of that staff—see his illustration, for instance, of the turning of the trolls into stone—

(JRRT)

Then I found that Norse king, Gandalf, and, prompted by that, I wondered about alternate spellings, which brought up this Wikipedia list:

“Gondulf of Provence, 6th-century duke and possibly made Bishop of Metz in 591

Indulf (6th century) (fl. 549–552 or 553), also known as Gundulf, Byzantine mercenary and Ostrogoth army leader

Gondulphus of Berry, 7th-century bishop

Gondulph of Maastricht (died after 614), bishop and Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox saint

Gondulphus of Metz (died 823), Bishop of Metz

Gundolfo, early 11th century Italian heretic

Gundulf of Rochester (died 1108), English bishop”

Unlike the etymology of “Gandalf”, “Gundulf”, although a compound like “Gandalf”, combines “gund”, “battle” and “ulf”, “wolf”—“–“battlewolf”–fierce, but not so Tolkienesque as “Elfmagicstaff”.

It certainly seemed like an interesting collection of characters, however, and, thinking of Tolkien’s medievalism, Englishness, interest in religion, and how this might tie in with bishops, I wondered about Gundulf of Rochester, who, being a bishop, would have carried, as a badge of office, a crozier, a kind of staff, as we see in this modern (1888) depiction of Gundulf, from the west façade of Gundulf’s own Rochester Cathedral—

Gundulf seems to have been a remarkable man, having been a Norman monk brought to England by his patron, Lanfranc, the Abbot of the Abbey of St. Etienne in Normandy, and an ally of William, Duke of Normandy, who, when he had conquered England after 1066, appointed Lanfranc Archbishop of Canterbury.

(a 19^th-century depiction, from the south face of the southwest porch of Canterbury Cathedral. For more on Lanfranc, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lanfranc )

In 1077, Gundulf was made Bishop of Rochester, but, besides whatever his ecclesiastical interests, he was apparently also a talented architect, building, among other works, the White Tower at the center of the Tower of London—not quite what one would expect of a bishop,

but we should remember that his patron, Lanfranc, had only become Archbishop of Canterbury when the Anglo-Saxon Archbishop, Stigand,

(For more on Stigand, see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stigand )

was deposed and imprisoned by the Normans, so Gundulf’s own position was seemingly only safe as long as the Normans remained in power, so self-interest alone might have kept him at work as an ecclesiastical/military architect. (For more on Gundulf, see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gundulf_of_Rochester )

Could he have been another influence in turning Bladorthin into Gandalf? I can find no evidence in Tolkien’s letters that he knew of Gundulf, or even ever visited Rochester, but all of the interests above—medievalism, religion, and that crozier–

might have suggested a magic staff, perhaps, like the one Gandalf kept when entering Edoras and which he used to break Grima’s enchantment of Theoden:

“He raised his staff. There was a roll of thunder. The sunlight was blotted out from the eastern windows; the whole hall became suddenly dark as night. The fire faded to sullen embers. Only Gandalf could be seen, standing white and tall before the blackened hearth.” (The Two Towers, Book three, Chapter 6, “The King of the Golden Hall”)

(Alan Lee)

Might we from all of that then imagine that the “Voluspa” alone wasn’t the only reason for the disappearance of Bladorthin and his new baptism as Gandalf?

(Denis Gordeev)

Thanks, as ever, for reading.

Stay well,

Beware of evil counselors who claim that they’re acting in your best interest.

(the Hildebrandts)

And remember that, as always, there’s

MTCIDC

Homeric?

17 Wednesday Jun 2026

Posted by Ollamh in Uncategorized

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Achilles, armor, Bayeux Tapestry, Celtic mythology, chariots, feudal system, Helm's Deep, hero, Homer, Mongols, Normans, Patroklos, Rohirrim, The Lord of the Rings, Theoden, Tolkien

As always, dear readers, welcome.

In my last posting, I returned to an old favorite, the Rohirrim,

(Bogi389)

whom Tolkien had described to Rhona Beare as “…not ‘medieval’ in our sense.” (letter to Rhona Beare, 14 October, 1958, Letters, 401.

I presumed, as he was referring to their armor, that “not medieval” meant not something like this—

(Graham Turner—see my last posting for more on him.)

but more like this—

(Gerry Embleton)

as his reference point was the Bayeux Tapestry—

In an earlier letter, to Milton Waldman, Tolkien had used another interesting phrase for describing the Rohirrim, “heroic ‘Homeric’ horsemen”. (letter to Milton Waldman, “late 1951”, Letters, 221)

Although horsemen are briefly mentioned in The Iliad, (and one of the major Greeks, Nestor, is even regularly called “the “Gerenian horseman”) the standard equine involvement is by chariot,

(This is Achilles dragging the body of the dead Hector around Troy, as described in Iliad Book 22, from line 395 on),

warriors sometimes leaping to the ground to confront their opponents, but, at other times, battling from their chariots, as we see Celtic warriors doing, both in their Irish mythological versions as well as in their real-life confrontations with the Romans in Britain.

(Peter Connolly)

JRRT says of himself:

“I was brought up in the Classics, and first discovered the sensation of literary pleasure in Homer.” (letter to Robert Murray, SJ, 2 December, 1953, Letters, 257)

Thus, as someone who was a late-Victorian/Edwardian schoolboy, raised in the Classics, and who almost made a career in them himself, JRRT would have been well aware of this earlier warfare as reported by Julius Caesar, but, if “Homeric” doesn’t mean “horsemen”, what does it imply?

In that same earlier letter to Milton Waldman, Tolkien uses the word again, describing certain people of the Second Age:

“In the West—actually the North-West is the only part clearly envisaged in these tales—lie the precarious refuges of the Elves, while Men in those parts remain more or less uncorrupted if ignorant. The better and nobler son [should this be “sort”?] of Men are in fact the kin of those that had departed to Numenor, but remain in a simple ‘Homeric’ state of patriarchal and tribal life.” (Letters, 214)

So here “Homeric” is associated not with a military but with a social system: “patriarchal and tribal”.

I’m presuming here that the operative word is “simple”—and, if we consider the Rohirrim as a horse people, rather like the Mongols in our Middle-earth’s history, who moved westwards from the Great Steppe–

but, unlike the Mongols, were not set upon destruction and conquest,

and, instead, helped to defeat the Wain-riders and became allies of Gondor,

then we might imagine them as remaining more like the horse-pasturing Mongols, even as they spread across Rohan and settled into permanent lodgings, like Edoras.

(Alan Lee)

As such, they have a king,

(the Hildebrandts)

whose power is passed down through his family—through male heirs—at the time of The Lord of the Rings through Theoden’s nephew, Eomer, as Theoden’s son, Theodred, is killed in the initial fighting against Saruman—and this is where “patriarchal”, might come in.

“Tribal”, however, puzzles me. The Rohirrim appear to retain something of their horse-people origins, but Tolkien never gives us much of the further social structure of the Rohirrim, to suggest where this might be evident.

The Rohirrim don’t appear to be a feudal culture, however, of the sort which the Normans brought to England and imposed upon the Anglo-Saxons—that is, the pyramidal method of land-holding and population-controlling you can see in this illustration—

and which Tolkien might have thought of as “medieval” and, along with plate armor, might have distinguished for him the difference between the Rohirrim, with their Tapestry look, and the later Middle Ages. (In case you’re not familiar with the term, there’s a useful article on feudalism here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feudalism )

One more of his words might help us better to understand what he meant when he described the Rohirrim: “heroic”.

In contemporary terms, “hero” is often used as the equivalent of “protagonist”, but the older Greek concept is of someone almost supernatural in his powers (possibly the child of a god and human, like Herakles or Achilles or even Aeneas) and, after death, might be given his own shrine—an heroon (he-RO-on) and honored there.

(for more on heroes and their worship, see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hero%C3%B6n )

Although JRRT would not have wanted to suggest a religious element in his use of the word, we can imagine that what he intended was something more like “people given to bold, dramatic actions, even at the risk of death”, which would fit Achilles, for example, perfectly.

This is Achilles, binding a wound for his companion, Patroklos. Against Achilles’ warning, Patroklos attempts to confront the Trojan hero, Hektor, but is killed and Achilles, although he himself is cautioned by his mother, Thetis, that, if he fights and kills Hektor, will soon die himself, does so anyway.

This brings us back to that image earlier in this posting, of Achilles dragging Hektor’s body around the walls of Troy

and also leads to a further image: Achilles, in turn, being killed by an arrow shot by the Trojan prince, Paris.

(In this scene, depicting the battle over Achilles’ body, you can see Achilles fallen, an arrow through the back of his leg.)

And, for the Rohirrim, the term would then fit Theoden perfectly, as well, as he says to Aragorn at Helm’s Deep:

“The end will not be long…But I will not end here, taken like an old badger in a trap. Snowmane and Hasufel and the horses of my guard are in the inner court. When dawn comes, I will bid men sound Helm’s horn, and I will ride forth. Will you ride with me the, son of Arathorn? Maybe we shall cleave a road, or make such an end as will be worth a song—if any be left to sing of us hereafter.” (The Two Towers, Book Three, Chapter 7, “Helm’s Deep”)

(Alan Lee)

Potentially, an heroic—and Homeric—end.

Thanks for reading, as always.

Stay well,

If possible, avoid fell beasts while attempting heroic endeavors,

(Ted Nasmith)

And remember, that, as always, there’s

MTCIDC

Tennis, Anyone?

10 Wednesday Jun 2026

Posted by Ollamh in Uncategorized

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Anglo-Saxon, anglo-saxons, armor, Duke William, Fantasy, Harold Godwinson, Jacksons The Lord of the Rings, Norman, Normans, The Battle of Hastings, The Bayeux Tapestry, The Lord of the Rings, The Rohirrim, the Siege of Minas Tirith, the-charge-of-the-rohirrim, Thing One/Thing Two, Tolkien

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 15^th-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

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

Making Money

27 Wednesday May 2026

Posted by Ollamh in Uncategorized

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Athens, Augustus, Brutus, cattle, Celtic tribes, Charlemagne, coins, deniers, Diocletian, Lydia, Philip II, Queen Victoria, The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien, weregild, William the Conqueror

As always, welcome, dear readers.

In my last posting, “Blood Money” (20 May, 2026), I mentioned that, in early Western history, weregild, that is, compensation for a killing, might be paid in cattle,

or in money, more specifically, in the Merovingian/Carolingian kingdom, for which we have reparation lists, in a coin called a “denar” (more modern “denier”).

I think that we can assume that cattle might have been used before money, suggesting just how old such a custom must have been.

Money, in the Western world had first appeared in the 7^th century BC, in Lydia, in western Asia Minor.

(you can read more about Lydian coinage here: https://www.worldhistory.org/article/797/the-importance-of-the-lydian-stater-as-the-worlds/ )

This is a rather crude coin, but, picked up by the Greeks, coins became more sophisticated, commonly produced by city-states with emblems of that state and of its divine patron stamped on them, as in this Athenian coin, with Athena and her owl.

The first Western ruler to put his own head on a coin appears to have been Philip II of Macedon, the father of Alexander the Great, in the 4^th century BC.

Philip has also put his name on the reverse, in the possessive case, saying “of Philip”, next to the horseman. This is a big claim: does he mean the horseman or the coin or maybe the silver of which the coin is made? In fact, I think that it’s a greater claim: that, because of the silver—and probably the horseman, as well—Philip has the backing—and therefore the right—to produce such coins, giving them their worth.

And this is an important claim: anyone might produce a piece of metal with a decoration of some sort on it, but what is its worth unless there’s something—or someone—substantial behind it to guarantee that worth?

The reverse is true, as well: if you can produce such coins, then you must have a certain worth, as well.

A perfect example of this thinking may be seen in this well-known coin from the last century, BC.

It is a coin issued by one of Caesar’s assassins, Brutus, and, on the reverse (the back), he’s stating his claim to be believed: 2 daggers, a liberty cap, and the date: the Ides of March. This implies that, on the Ides (the 15^th–of March, in this case), with a knife, Brutus participated in the freeing of the enslaved Roman state (the cap was worn by a slave in a liberation ceremony)—when he was involved in Caesar’s murder.

On the obverse (the front) is his family name, his portrait, his claim to be an official of the state (“IMP”—short for “Imperator”—that is, the holder of “imperium”, the state’s power of life and death over citizens, given to magistrates, governors, and generals when they were sent out of Rome on a mission), and the name of the master of the government mint which issued the coin, Lucius Plaetorius Cestianus.

Putting all of this together, it asserts both the claim that the coin has value and that the person under whom it was issued has the state’s backing to have done so—with the added claim that the person depicted on the coin had that authority because he was involved in the liberation of the state from a tyrant: the coin, then, of a (self-appointed) hero of the Republic.

This is an unusual approach as, mostly, governments simply assert their power by issuing currency—often, in the later West, by modeling their coins on those of their illustrious predecessors, as Charlemagne clearly did on this coin, depicting himself as if he were a Roman emperor (that wreath on his head even goes as far back at Philip II) and making a Roman-style claim—

that he holds the imperium, as well as the title which the Roman Senate had awarded Octavian, “Aug”, “Augustus”, which, after Diocletian

had divided the Roman empire in 293AD, had been the title for the two senior rulers.

(“co-emperor” = Augustus and “Caesar” = each Augustus’ assistant)

In the Gallo-Celtic world, coins were first issued by tribes (probably through their kings)—this is a coin of the Lingones, a tribe from east central Gaul.

It would appear that the practice was extended to their Celtic cousins, in Britain, as we see here, in this coin from the Atrebates, who lived in the Thames valley.

(You can read more about British Celtic tribal coins here: https://coinweek.com/the-ancient-celtic-coinage-of-britain/ )

When the Romans arrived after 43AD, these coins disappeared, to be replaced by standard Roman issues, but, through the centuries which followed, it was still a mark of authority that a ruler would issue coins, as in this of Alfred the Great, king of the Anglo-Saxons, 886-899AD,

or this of William the Conqueror (ruled England 1066-1087),

or this of Queen Victoria (ruled 1837-1901).

(Notice the rather grandiose contrast in what’s being told you on the obverse of this coin vs that of Charlemagne–not only is she Queen of Britain—by the grace of God—“Dei Gra-tia”—but Defender of the Faith”—”Fid-em Def—ensor” and, post-1877, Empress of India—“Ind-iae Imp-eratrix”)

Interestingly, the British government still used the ancient Germanic system of coin value (perhaps inherited from those same Merovingian/Carolingians who produced the “denar” from the beginning of this posting) until 1971, when it shifted to the decimal system used in much of the rest of the world. (Here’s a really useful article on pre-decimal coinage: https://www.royalmintmuseum.org.uk/journal/history/pounds-shillings-and-pence/ And I can’t resist this wonderful skit from Horrible History on Tudor money: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j0Qv9uSNWCk )

And this brings us to the point (at last) of this posting: a new coin in the UK: a 50p (that’s 50 pence or half a pound in post-1971 money)

with a special reference for those of us who read and enjoy Tolkien: it’s a coin commemorating the 25^th anniversary of the premier of the Lord of the Rings films (You can read more about it here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/newsround/articles/cgmpneen13mo )–a fine gesture, but, note that, even as it has images from the Tolkien world on the reverse, on the obverse there’s all of this—

the King’s profile—just like Philip II’s from the 4^th century BC–with the same D[ei] G[ratia] and even F[idem] D[efensor] you can see on Victoria’s coin, lacking only the claim to be IND[iae] IMP[erator]. Perhaps some things never change?

Thanks, as always, for reading.

Stay well,

Be glad that you don’t have to do arithmetic problems in pre-decimal coinage,

(This chart is from that Royal Mint Museum site listed above)

And remember that, as always, there’s

MTCIDC,

In case, looking at them, you’ve wondered why those early coins seem so random and lumpy, see: https://www.numisdon.com/ancient-coin-minting-techniques/

PPS

For more on coins and Mordor, see: “In Mint Condition”, 4 August, 2021.

Blood Money

20 Wednesday May 2026

Posted by Ollamh in Uncategorized

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Aeschylus, Beowulf, cattle culture, Grendel, Isildur, Oresteia, Salic Law, The Lord of the Rings, The Ring, Tolkien, weregild

As ever, welcome, dear readers.

The Greek tragedian, Aeschylus, c.525-456BC,

was interested in murder—and revenge, and, in fact, wrote an entire trilogy of tragedies based upon the topic, the Oresteia.

In the three plays, Aeschylus gives us the initial murder of Agamemnon, high king of Greece, by his wife, Clytemnestra, and her boyfriend, Aegisthus, in Agamemnon,

Agamemnon’s son, Orestes’, revenge upon his mother and that boyfriend in The Libation Bearers,

which includes, at its conclusion, Orestes’ pursuit by the Furies, the supernatural avengers of kin-murder, and his final salvation, with the aid of Athena, in The Furies,

which includes both the pacification of the Furies and the first trial in Athens for murder, and also signals the beginning of the rule of law and the end of revenge as the way of dealing with murder—the old idea of “eye for an eye” justice being meted out by the family of the victim.

Other early societies lacked the Furies, but definitely had law and it’s interesting to see that their view of what to do about violent crime was decidedly different from ours, in which a murderer can be sentenced to a long term in prison or even executed, depending upon the country and the circumstances.

A major difference lies both in the lack of prison or execution and in providing compensation for the victim’s family.

What is a person worth? In modern terms, we probably think of life insurance and death compensation—

Early societies might have a kind of value scale. Early Ireland, for instance, was an agricultural world, and so everyone’s worth could be based upon cattle.

(for more on this, see: https://brehonacademy.org/cows-as-currency-in-early-ireland/ )

In the Germanic world, we see monetary compensation. The Frankish “Salic Law” had, basically, tables which showed the worth of different levels of society and what would be owed in compensation for a murder. Here is one portion so that you can see just how specific it is—

“Title XLI. Concerning the Murder of Free Men.

1. If any one shall have killed a free Frank, or a barbarian living under the Salic law, and it have been proved on him, he shall be sentenced to 8000 denars.

2. But if he shall have thrown him into a well or into the water, or shall have covered him with branches or anything else, to conceal him, he shall be sentenced to 24000 denars, which make 600 shillings.

3. But if any one has slain a man who is in the service of the king, he shall be sentenced to 24000 denars, which make 600 shillings.

4. But if he have put him in the water or in a well, and covered him with anything to conceal him, he shall be sentenced to 72000 denars, which make 1800 shillings.

5. If any one have slain a Roman who eats in the king’s palace, and it have been proved on him, he shall be sentenced to 12000 denars, which make 300 shillings.

6. But if the Roman shall not have been a landed proprietor and table companion of the king, he who killed him shall be sentenced to 4000 denars, which make 100 shillings.

7. But if he shall have killed a Roman who was obliged to pay tribute, he shall be sentenced to shillings.

9. If any one have thrown a free man into a well, and he have escaped alive, he (the criminal) shall be sentenced to 4000 denars, which make 100 shillings.”

(quoted from the Yale Law School “Avalon Project” and you could read more here: https://avalon.law.yale.edu/medieval/salic.asp A “Roman” is a citizen. A “denar” is a penny in the Merovingian/Carolingian monetary system of what we might think of as Roman Gaul +. Here’s an example—

12 of these made a shilling and 20 shillings made a pound. For more on this system, see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carolingian_monetary_system )

Payment for a death in this system was called “weregild”, or, depending where and when you lived, “mangaeld” or “leodardi”. (for more, see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weregild For another valuation list, see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nor%C3%B0leoda_laga )

We don’t know when or where Tolkien first encountered the term. It is interesting, however, to see the concept used in one of his favorite medieval works, Beowulf,

where it suggests that the monster, Grendel,

(Alan Lee)

is uncivilized, seeming not to understand that, in Danish society, killing requires rebalancing through financial compensation—

“feorhbealo feorran, fea thingian to desist in life-destruction, to settle it with payment,

ne thear naenig witena wenan thorfte none of the counsellors had any need to hope for

beorhtre bote to banan folmum noble recompense from the slayer’s hands.”

(lines 156-158, text and translation from the Heorot site, which contains helpful notes, as well as the Old English text and a modern English translation. Here it is: https://heorot.dk/beowulf-rede-text.html There’s a later mention of the Danish king, Hrothgar, paying weregild for a killing by Beowulf’s father, Ecgtheow, 456-472, and here the word used is “fee”—“feo”—which comes from a Germanic word for “cattle”, implying that, like the early Irish, the Germanic peoples were also once a cattle culture. For more on “fee”, see: https://www.etymonline.com/word/fee )

JRRT employs the term in a bit of ancient history about the Ring—

“ …and Isildur cut the Ring from [Sauron’s] hand with the hilt-shard of his father’s sword and took it for his own…

‘This I will have as weregild for my father, and my brother,’ he said…” (The Fellowship of the Ring, Book Two, Chapter 2, “The Council of Elrond”)

Isildur is aware that this isn’t a bit of costume jewelry, writing:

“The Great Ring shall go now to be an heirloom of the North Kingdom; but records of it shall be left in Gondor, where also dwell the heirs of Elendil, lest a time come when the memory of these great matters shall grow dim.”

In the same note, however, we see the signs that the Ring has already begun to exert its power over him:

“But for my part I will risk no hurt to this thing: of all the works of Sauron the only fair. It is precious to me, though I buy it with great pain.” (The Fellowship of the Ring, Book Two, Chapter 2, “The Council of Elrond”)

It will bring about his death, riddled with Orc arrows in the Anduin, and I wonder if, even as he obviously valued it, at the moment it slipped from his finger, he realized that his “weregild” wasn’t just an expensive equivalent of coins or cattle?

Thanks, as always, for reading.

Stay well,

Perhaps best to leave anything you see glittering on the ground,

But know that, as ever, there’s

MTCIDC

Planting

29 Wednesday Apr 2026

Posted by Ollamh in Uncategorized

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Bag End, Eavesdropping, Fantasy, Gardening, Guy Fawkes, lotr, plotting, Sam Gamgee, the Gaffer, The Ivy Bush, The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien

Welcome, as always, dear readers.

Recently, I’ve been thinking about plotting—not as in conspiracies, like Guy Fawkes,

who planned to blow up Parliament and James I with it,

but in the construction of fictional plots. The worse kind is what I would call examples of “fiat” writing—from the Latin subjunctive “let it be”, as in “fiat lux”—“let there be light”. In plots like this, things happen because the author wants them to and is too lazy or inept to work the details out in a systematic, believable way. (As I avoid harsh criticism in this blog, I won’t mention any examples, but I suspect that, if you are a reader of this blog, you know exactly what I mean and can supply your own.)

So let me show you an example of good, if not downright elegant, plotting, instead.

It’s about to be spring here, with things reluctantly beginning to flower and bud and spread, and that makes me think of gardens—which, I hope logically, makes me think of gardeners and that makes me think of the Gamgees, who have been gardeners for the Baggins for at least two generations—

“No one had a more attentive audience than old Ham Gamgee, commonly known as the Gaffer [a dialect form of “grandfather”].

(my favorite image—there don’t appear to be many—of the Gaffer, by Denis Gordeev)

He held forth at The Ivy Bush,

(I imagine it—minus the modern road—as looking something like this, which is the White Lion Inn in Bartholmley, Cheshire—about which you can read a little here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Lion,_Barthomley )

a small inn on the Bywater road; and he spoke with some authority, for he had tended the garden at Bag End for forty years, and had helped old Holman in the same job before that. Now that he was himself growing old and stiff in the joints, the job was mainly carried on by his youngest son, Sam Gamgee.” (The Fellowship of the Ring, Book One, Chapter 1, “An Unexpected-party”)

And here the plotting begins, which will end with Sam incorporated into Frodo’s adventure with the Ring—not by “fiat”, but by a careful planting (sorry!) of details.

So, we know that the Gamgees are long-established at Bag End, not only the Gaffer, but his son, Sam.

Now we’re given another detail—and a very important one:

“ ‘But my lad Sam will know more about that. He’s in and out of Bag End. Crazy about stories of the old days, he is, and he listens to all of Mr. Bilbo’s tales…

‘Elves and Dragons!’ I says to him. ‘Cabbages and potatoes are better for me and you. Don’t go getting mixed up in the business of your betters, and you’ll land in trouble too big for you.’ “

So now we know that Sam already has a taste for adventure, cultivated (sorry), if inadvertently, by Bilbo.

This is further developed in the next chapter—

“[Sam] believed that he had once seen an Elf in the woods, and still hoped to see more one day. Of all the legends that he had heard in his early years such fragments of tales and half-remembered stories about the Elves as the hobbits knew, had always moved him most deeply.” (The Fellowship of the Ring, Book One, Chapter 2, “The Shadow of the Past”)

And now the scene is set:

“Sam sat silent and said no more. He had a good deal to think about. For one thing, there was a lot to do up in the Bag End garden, and he would have a busy day tomorrow, if the weather cleared. The grass was growing fast. But Sam had more on his mind than gardening. After a while he sighed, and got up and went out.

…He walked home under the early stars through Hobbiton and up the Hill, whistling softly and thoughtfully.”

And here we even get the suggestion of a sound effect to come.

But there’s even more scene-setting:

“…It was over nine years since Frodo had seen or heard of [Gandalf]…But that evening, as Sam was walking home and twilight was fading, there came a once familiar tap on the study window.

…Next morning after a late breakfast, the wizard was sitting with Frodo by the open window of the study.

…There was another long silence. The sound of Sam Gamgee cutting the lawn came in from the garden.”

There is a puzzle here. Where were the lawn and garden of Bag End? Here are two images by Tolkien—the first from a distance,

the second close up,

but I can’t make out where those items are supposed to be. In the first, the road appears to run just below the house, with perhaps lawn and garden on the far side and down the hill? In the second image, there appears to be a bench (where Bilbo would have sat, smoking and reading his mail when Gandalf turned up in the first chapter of The Hobbit) and, to the right, some garden?

Let’s put this aside, however, to continue the action.

Gandalf has begun to talk about the Ring, and even closes the shutters and the curtains when he does so, but now the narrative inside and the action outside are about to be linked—as Gandalf begins to describe the search for Gollum—

“A heavy silence fell in the room. Frodo could hear his heart beating. Even outside everything seemed still. No sound of Sam’s shears could be heard.”

Sam is still at work, however, as—

“[Gandalf] went to the window and drew aside the curtains and the shutters. Sunlight streamed back into the room. Sam passed along the path outside whistling.”

But is Sam really occupied with grass-cutting?

“Suddenly [Gandalf] stopped as if listening. Frodo became aware that all was very quiet, inside and outside. Gandalf crept to one side of the window. Then with a dart he sprang to the sill, and thrust a long arm out and downwards. There was a squawk, and up came Sam Gamgee’s curly head hauled by one ear.”

(Robert Chronister—I can find a few paintings by him, but no website or further biographic material than that he was born in 1933.)

Sam tries to defend himself—

“ ‘…I was just trimming the grass-border under the window, if you follow me.’ He picked up his shears and exhibited them as evidence.”

When pressed, however, he confesses that he had been listening:

“…I heard a deal that I didn’t rightly understand, about and enemy, and rings, and Mr. Bilbo, sir, and dragons, and a fiery mountain, and—and Elves, sir. I listened because I couldn’t help myself, if you know what I mean. Lor bless me, sir, but I do love tales of that sort…Elves, sir! I would dearly love to see them. Couldn’t you take me to see Elves, sir, when you go?”

And here we see how all of this has been patiently laid out: the Gamgees and the Bagginses, the gardening, Sam and his interest—through Bilbo—in Elves and stories of adventure, Gandalf’s appearance and his narrative, which Sam overhears while gardening—and listening–only to be apprehended in his eavesdropping, with only one detail still needed and now mentioned:

“ ‘Get up, Sam!’ said Gandalf. ‘I have thought of something better than that. Something to shut your mouth, and punish you properly for listening. You shall go away with Mr. Frodo!’ “

After all of the careful plotting, Sam’s reaction is no wonder, then—

“ ‘Me go and see Elves and all! Hooray!’ he shouted and then burst into tears.”

Elegant, and yet practical and completely convincing.

Thanks, as always, for reading.

Stay well,

How is your garden doing?

And remember that, as ever, there’s

MTCIDC,

While working on this posting, I came across this very interesting and thoughtful piece: https://thoughtsontolkien.wordpress.com/2024/04/14/gardens-in-the-lord-of-the-rings/

Subterranean

22 Wednesday Apr 2026

Posted by Ollamh in Uncategorized

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Bag End, Balrog, Bilbo, Chamber of Mazarbul, Cirith Ungol, clowns, enclosed-spaces, Erebor, Fantasy, Frodo, Goblins, Gollum, heights, Helm's Deep, Indiana Jones, Misty Mountains, Moria, Mt. Doom, needles, phobias, Smaug, spiders, Star Wars, Star Wars IV, The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, The Paths of the Dead, the-misty-mountains, Tolkien, trolls

As ever, dear readers, welcome.

I’m always amazed at how many kinds of phobias there are.

There’s the classic acrophobia—

and nyctophobia—

and trypanophobia

(of which George Lucas takes advantage in Star Wars IV

that needle is positively dripping!)

and one of my favorites, coulrophobia–

(and who wouldn’t be afraid of that?)

as well as the seemingly common arachnophobia,

of which Steven Spielberg took advantage in the first Indiana Jones movie—

Because of Shelob in The Lord of the Rings,

(Ted Nasmith)

Tolkien, perhaps suspected of this—after all, there are also those large spiders in The Hobbit—

(Alan Lee)

wrote to W.H. Auden in 1955:

“But I did know more or less all about Gollum and his part, and Sam, and I knew that the way was guarded by a Spider. And if that has anything to do with my being stung by a tarantula when a small child,

people are welcome to the notion (supposing the improbable, that any one is interested). I can only say that I remember nothing about it, should not know it if I had not been told; and I do not dislike spiders particularly, and have no urge to kill them. I usually rescue those whom I find in the bath!” (letter to W.H. Auden, 7 June, 1955, Letters, 316. For more on this, see: “Phobe” 24 May, 2023 here: https://doubtfulsea.com//?s=phobe&search=Go )

So, as far as we know, then, JRRT makes no mention of any other fears and insists that he had no dread of arachnids, even if they make two major appearances in his works. There is another possible phobia which he doesn’t discuss, however—claustrophobia—

and I’ve wondered: could we perhaps see a mild form in his case?

I suppose that one might immediately point out that Bilbo, in effect, lives in a cave—

(JRRT)

but Tolkien’s illustration suggests that this isn’t a place for spelunking—

and his description of Bag End underlines this:

“Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat: it was a hobbit-hole, and that means comfort.

…The door opened on to a tube-shaped hall like a tunnel: a very comfortable tunnel without smoke, with panelled walls, and floors tiled and carpeted, provided with polished chairs, and lots and lots of pegs for hats and coats…” (The Hobbit, Chapter One, “An Unexpected Party”)

But consider all of his adventures in the novel: how many of them take place in adverse conditions under ground?

First, there’s the mention of the cave where the trolls

(JRRT)

kept their loot:

“There were bones on the floor and a nasty smell in the air; but there was a good deal of food jumbled carelessly on shelves and on the ground among an untidy litter of plunder, of all sorts from buttons to pots full of gold coins standing in a corner. There were lots of clothes, too, hanging on the walls—too small for trolls, I am afraid they belonged to victims…” (The Hobbit, Chapter Two, “Roast Mutton”—there was also “bacon to toast in the embers of the fire”—but, considering a major troll protein source and remembering William’s remark—“Yer can’t expect folk to stop here for ever just to be et by you and Bert. You’ve et a village and a half between yer since we come down from the mountains.” I wonder that Bilbo and the dwarves would touch it!)

Then there was the network of caves cut by the goblins under the Misty Mountains,