Tag Archives: The Lord of the Rings

On the Road(s) Again

19 Wednesday Nov 2025

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“Just can’t wait to get on the road again
The life I love is makin’ music with my friends
And I can’t wait to get on the road again
And I can’t wait to get on the road again”

As always, welcome, dear readers.  This is from a Willie Nelson, a US country and western singer’s,

virtual theme song, and it seemed to fit where this posting wanted to go.

Having just written two postings about traveling to Bree, it struck me just how many Western adventure stories, as a main element of the plot, require the characters to travel, often long distances.  (I’m sure that there are lots of Eastern stories which do this, too—see, for example, Wu Cheng’en’s (attributed) Journey to the West, which appeared in the 16th century—see, for more:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journey_to_the_West  You can read an abridged translation  of this at:  https://www.fadedpage.com/books/20230303/html.php ) 

Such adventures are commonly quests—that is, journeys with a particular goal and are commonly round- trip adventures.  (For more on quests, see:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quest )

There are lots of folktales with this pattern, but the literary begins for us with the story of Jason, and his task of finding the Golden Fleece and bringing it back to Greece.  (You can read a summary of the story here:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Fleece  The full Greek version we have of the story is from a 3rd century BC poem, the Argonautica of Apollonius of Rhodes, which you can read in a translation here:  https://archive.org/details/apolloniusrhodiu00apol   And you can read about the poem itself here:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argonautica  )

(Jason delivering the fleece to King Pelias—for more on Pelias, who is actually Jason’s uncle, see:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pelias )

Then there’s the Odyssey, a later story, in mythological time, in which the main plot is that of Odysseus, a Greek and ruler of the island of Ithaka, who, having participated in the war against Troy, spends 9+ years of many adventures getting home to his island once more.

It’s no wonder, then, that Tolkien, originally destined to be a classicist, in telling a long story to his children, would make it a quest.

This quest would take the protagonist, Bilbo Baggins, from his home in the Shire hundreds of miles east, to the Lonely Mountain (Erebor) and back.

(Pauline Baynes—probably JRRT’s favorite illustrator—and whom he recommended to CS Lewis, for whom she illustrated all the Narnia books.  You can read about her here:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pauline_Baynes )

In the last two postings, we first followed Bilbo eastwards to Bree—only to find that, in The Hobbit, there is no Bree.  We then retraced our steps and followed Frodo and his friends as they journeyed in the same direction, although this time with more success.

(Ted Nasmith)

Part of Frodo’s trip (with some detours), took him along the Great East Road, which ran through the Shire,

(Christopher Tolkien)

crossing the Greenway ( the old north/south road—more about this in a moment) at Bree and proceeding eastwards from there–

(Barbara Strachey, The Journeys of Frodo, 1981)

although Frodo and his friends, led by Strider,

(the Hildebrandts)

took an alternate route from there to Weathertop.

Because I’m always interested in the physical world of Middle-earth, I try to imagine what, in our Middle-earth, either suggested things to JRRT, or at least what we can use to try to reconstruct something comparable. 

For the Great East Road, because it was constructed by the kings of Arnor, and had a major bridge (the Bridge of Strongbows—that is, strong arches), across the Brandywine,

(actually a 16thcentury Ottoman bridge near the village of Balgarene in Bulgaria.  For more on Bulgarian bridges, some of which are quite spectacular, see:  https://vagabond.bg/bulgarias-wondrous-bridges-3120 )

I had imagined something like a Roman road, wide, paved, with perhaps drainage on both sides.

The Romans were serious engineers and roads could be very methodically laid out and built.

Latest research suggests that they may have constructed as many as almost 200,000 miles of roads (299,171km)—not all so elaborate, and some were doubtless improved local roads, but a vast number (see for more:  https://www.sciencealert.com/massive-new-map-reveals-300000-km-of-ancient-roman-roads ) were of the standard construction.

This may have been true once, but the road Frodo and his friends eventually reach doesn’t sound much like surviving Roman work—

“…the Road, now dim as evening drew on, wound away below them.  At this point it ran nearly from South-west to North-east, and on their right it fell quickly down into a wide hollow.  It was rutted and bore many signs of the recent heavy rain; there were pools and pot-holes full of water.”  (The Fellowship of the Ring, Book One, Chapter 8, “Fog on the Barrow-downs”)

Following the road, however, has made me consider just how many miles of roads we actually see in Middle-earth and over which various characters travel and how they might appear.  Just look at a map—

(cartographer? clearly based on JRRT and Christopher Tolkien’s map)

The Great East Road (named “East-West Road” there) is drawn and identified, and we can see the North Road (as “North-South Road”), but these are hardly the only roads in Middle-earth and certainly not in the story, and, as we’re following Frodo & Co. on their journeys, I thought that it would be interesting to examine some of the others—the main ones, and one nearly-lost one.

So, when Frodo and his friends eventually reach the edge of Bree, they’re actually at a crossroads—

“For Bree stood at the old meeting of ways:  another ancient road crossed the East Road just outside the dike at the western end of the village, and in former days Men and other folk of various sorts had traveled much on it.  ‘Strange as News from Bree’ was still a saying in the Eastfarthing, descending from those days, when news from North, South, and East could be heard in the inn, and when the Shire-hobbits used to go more to hear it.”

With the fall of the northern realm of Arnor about TA1974, however, things had changed:

“But the Northern Lands had long been desolate, and the North Road was now seldom used:  it was grass-grown, and the Bree-folk called it the Greenway.”  (The Fellowship of the Ring, Book One, Chapter 9, “At the Sign of the Prancing Pony”)

We’re not given a detailed description of this road—was it like what I had imagined the Great East Road might have looked like, Roman and paved, but overgown?

If so, it led back to the city of Tharbad to the south, which had had its own elaborate bridge at the River Greyflood—

“…where the old North Road crossed the river by a ruined town.”

Of this bridge we know:

“…both kingdoms [Arnor and Gondor] together built and maintained the Bridge of Tharbad and the long causeways that carried the road to it on either of the Gwathlo [Greyflood]…”  (JRRT Unfinished Tales, 277)

It must have been massive—could it have looked something like this?

(the 1ST century Roman bridge at Merida, Spain—you can read about it here:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puente_Romano,_M%C3%A9rida )

As we also know, it had fallen into ruin, becoming only a dangerous ford, as Boromir found out, losing his horse there on the way north (The Fellowship of the Ring, Book Two, Chapter 8, “Farewell to Lorien”)

(the “Ponte Rotto” (“ruined bridge”) actually the 2nd century BC Pons Aemilius.  You can read about it here:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pons_Aemilius  This is a 1690 painting by Caspar van Wittel, a very interesting and talented man, and you can read about him here:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caspar_van_Wittel   )

We’ll pause here, however, waiting, perhaps, for a drought,

before we continue down the road towards Gondor…

Thanks for reading, as always.

Stay well,

Don’t cross any bridge till you come to it,

And remember that there’s always

MTCIDC

O

To Bree (Part 2)

12 Wednesday Nov 2025

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As always, welcome, dear readers.

In “To Bree (Part 1)”, we had followed Bilbo & Co.

(Hildebrandts)

(Hildebrandts)

eastwards,

but only as far as Bree, echoing the remark in The Lord of the Rings:

“It was not yet forgotten that there had been a time when there was much coming and going between the Shire and Bree.” (The Fellowship of the Ring, Book One, Chapter 9, “At the Sign of the Prancing Pony”)

Oddly, however, although I supposed that we were traveling through the East Farthing

(Christopher Tolkien)

through Frogmorton and Whitfurrows,

to the Bridge of Strongbows,

(Stirling Bridge, actually—for more see:  https://www.historicenvironment.scot/visit-a-place/places/stirling-old-bridge/ )

the description in The Hobbit was wildly different:

“Then they came to lands where people spoke strangely, and sang songs Bilbo had never heard before.  Now they had gone on far into the Lone-lands, where there were no people left, no inns, and the roads grew steadily worse.  Not far ahead were dreary hills, rising higher and higher, dark with trees.  On some of them were old castles with an evil look, as if they had been built by wicked people.”  (The Hobbit, Chapter 2, “Roast Mutton”) 

with, eventually, a surprise for us Bree-bound folk:  no Bree.

So, back we went to the Green Dragon, in Bywater, where Bilbo started and now we begin again, with Frodo.  Times have changed, however, and unlike the innocent Bilbo, we are in a different world, where Mordor isn’t just a distant place name and its servants are looking for Baggins.

(Denis Gordeev)

Frodo doesn’t take the Great East Road,

(Christopher Tolkien)

but cuts across country, narrowly avoiding one of the searchers,

(Angus McBride)

taking shelter with a local farmer, and finally reaching the ferry across the Brandywine just ahead of his pursuers.

Although this is a very indirect route, Frodo and his companions eventually reach Bree, but even though I would love to meet Tom Bombadil,

(the Hildebrandts)

I prefer a direct route, so we’ll continue on the Great East Road, cross the Bridge of Strongbows, and head eastwards. 

(from Barbara Strachey, The Journeys of Frodo, a much-recommended book, if you don’t have a copy)

So what do we see?  

Over the bridge—and here’s another possibility for it, the Clopton Bridge at Stratford-upon-Avon—

(you can see more of Stratford and the shire—Warwickshire, that is—here:  https://www.ourwarwickshire.org.uk/content/catalogue_wow/stratford-upon-avon-clopton-bridge-2 )

the road runs, not surprisingly, due eastwards and here, consulting our map,

 is the Old Forest to our right,

described, by our narrator, as Frodo and his friends see it on their detour away from the Great East Road:

“Looking ahead they could see only tree-trunks of innumerable sizes and shapes:  straight or bent, twisted, leaning, squat or slender, smooth or gnarled and branched; and all the stems were green or grey with moss and slimy, shaggy growths.” (The Fellowship of the Ring, Book One, Chapter 6, “The Old Forest”)

Keep in mind, however, that we’re seeing it through a long line of trees planted alongside the road, probably as a windbreak.

We know that they’re there because Merry says:

“ ‘That is a line of trees,’ said Merry, ‘and that must mark the Road.  All along it for many leagues east of the Bridge there are trees growing.  Some say they were planted in the old days.’ “ (The Fellowship of the Ring, Book One, Chapter 8, “Fog on the Barrow-downs”)

As we travel farther along the road, if we look to our right, through the trees, we then come to the edge of the Barrow-downs,

with their ancient standing stones

and tumuli—

where Frodo and his friends almost end their trip.

(Matthew Stewart)

But we haven’t strayed, as they did, and, passing the Downs, we see, again on our right:

“The dark line they had seen was not a line of trees but a line of bushes growing on the edge of a deep dike, with a steep wall on the further side.”

A dike is a ditch, usually with an earthen embankment made from the spoil of the ditch.  There are several of these in England, like Offa’s Dyke—

The narrator adds:

“…with a steep wall on the further side”

and I’m presuming that that is the earthen embankment, with:

“…a gap in the wall” through which Frodo and friends rode and

…when at last they saw a line of tall trees ahead…they knew that they had come back to the Road.”

If you’re read the first part of this posting, you will know that I’ve been assuming that that Road, laid in ancient times to a stone bridge and beyond, would be like a Roman road, and be paved,

if a bit weedy, but now we find:

“…the Road, now dim as evening drew on, wound away below them.  At this point it ran nearly from South-west to North-east, and on their right it fell quickly down into a wide hollow.  It was rutted and bore many signs of the recent heavy rain; there were pools and pot-holes full of water.”

Does this suggest that it was, at best and in the past, simply a dirt road, through well-kept?  Or is it a very run-down road, worn and covered over with leaves and dirt, the ancient blocks gradually becoming separated under the weight of centuries, allowing for pot-holes?

In any event, we now continue our journey with Frodo and his compantions until–

“…they saw lights twinkling some distance ahead.

Before them rose Bree-hill barring the way, a dark mass against misty stars; and under its western flank nestled a large village.  Towards it they [and we] now hurried desiring only to find a fire, and a door between them and the night.”

We’re not in Bree yet, however, as:

“The village of Bree had some hundred stone houses of the Big Folk, mostly above the Road, nestling on the hillside with windows looking west.  On that side, running in more than half a circle from the hill and back to it, there was a deep dike with a thick hedge on the inner side.  Over this the Road crossed by a causeway; but where it pierced the hedge it was barred by a great gate.  There was another gate in the southern corner where the Road ran out of the village.  The gates were closed at nightfall; but just inside them were small lodges for the gatekeepers.”  (The Fellowship of the Ring, Book One, Chapter 9, “At the Sign of the Prancing Pony”)

We’ve seen a dike just now, at the Great East Road, but now we have to add a hedge

and a gate.

Once inside, however, lies the Prancing Pony

(Ted Nasmith)

and one more pint before bed.

As always, thanks for reading.

Stay well,

Read road signs carefully,

And remember that, as always, there’s

MTCIDC

O

To Bree (Part 1)

05 Wednesday Nov 2025

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Welcome, as always, dear readers.

For me, one of the great pleasures of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings is that they are both so wonderfully imagined.  Consider the beginning of The Hobbit, for example, where the opening could just have been the bare line “In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.” Instead, it continues:

“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.”

(JRRT)

And even this is not enough, as it continues:

“It had a perfectly round door like a porthole, painted green, with a shiny yellow brass knob in the exact middle.”

And it will go on for an entire paragraph beyond that sentence, listing rooms and even explaining why some are preferred.

Even with so much detail, I sometimes find myself wanting more—often more of the outside world.  In this posting, then, I thought that we might take a trip to Bree and spend some time sightseeing as we go.  Via the Great East Road, this is about 100 of our miles (160 km), according to the very useful website of Becky Burkheart (which you can visit here:  https://www.beckyburkheart.com/traveltimesinmiddleearth ).

Why Bree?  To quote The Lord of the Rings:

“It was not yet forgotten that there had been a time when there was much coming and going between the Shire and Bree.” (The Fellowship of the Ring, Book One, Chapter 9, “At the Sign of the Prancing Pony”)

If we use both The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings together, however, we’ll soon encounter some difficulties, as we shall see.

Our starting point for Bilbo is the Green Dragon Inn, in Bywater. 

(Christopher Tolkien)

Tolkien doesn’t describe the inn, but, using a real inn, we might imagine the Green Dragon as looking something like this–

(This is the White Lion in Barthomley, in Cheshire, built in 1614.  You can read more about it and about Barthomley here:   https://drive.google.com/file/d/1oeQEpGsXlN1A_4T8nOhUwpggDA_pEFTM/view )

Just to the south of Bywater is the spot where the Hobbiton road meets the Great East Road.  Again, Tolkien gives us no description, but there may be a hint as to this road in the original grant of the Shire by Argeleb II in TA1601:

“For it was in the one thousand six hundred and first year of the Third Age that the Fallohide brothers, Marcho and Blanco, set out from Bree; and having obtained permission from the high king at Fornost, they crossed the brown river Baranduin with a great following of Hobbits.  They passed over the Bridge of Strongbows, that had been built in the days of the power of the North Kingdom, and they took all the land beyond to dwell in, between the river and the Far Downs.  All that was demanded of them was that they should keep the Great Bridge in repair, and all other bridges and roads, speed the king’s messengers, and acknowledge his lordship.”   (The Lord of the Rings, Prologue I, “Concerning Hobbits”)

We’ll cross the bridge a little later in our journey, but we might start with the road.  That it’s sometimes called “the Great East Road” suggests that it’s more than a dirt path.

Could Tolkien have been thinking of the bits of surviving Roman road which crisscross England?  Most are now buried under modern roads, but, here and there some are still available on the surface, as here—

and perhaps we can use this as a model. As an ancient stone road, it would certainly fit in with the ancient stone Bridge, as we’ll see.

Just beyond the spot where the lesser road meets the greater, we see marked on our map, the “Three Farthing Stone”.  A “farthing” is a “four-thing”—that is, a quarter, and it marks the spot where three of the quarters, the four farthings, of the Shire meet.  This appears to be modeled on the “Four Shire Stone” in our Middle-earth

which you can read about here:  https://thirdeyetraveller.com/four-shire-stone-tolkien/ )

And, from here, we head eastwards—and meet our first difficulty.  Here’s the description in The Hobbit—

“At first they had passed through hobbit-lands, a wide respectable country inhabited by decent folk, with good roads, an inn or two, and now and then a dwarf or a farmer ambling by on business.”

That fits our Shire map:  we might be traveling through Frogmorton and Whitfurrows, villages which might look like this—

but then there’s—

“Then they came to lands where people spoke strangely, and sang songs Bilbo had never heard before.  Now they had gone on far into the Lone-lands, where there were no people left, no inns, and the roads grew steadily worse.  Not far ahead were dreary hills, rising higher and higher, dark with trees.  On some of them were old castles with an evil look, as if they had been built by wicked people.”  (The Hobbit, Chapter 2, “Roast Mutton”) 

The bridge is just ahead, but “dreary hills”?  “old castles”? 

And you can really see the difference here between the two books.  Tolkien had yet to discover much of the East Farthing and was simply penciling in something which we might think of as “travel filler”, to indicate that the expedition was riding eastwards, but the trip was already becoming more difficult.

And then we come to the (here unnamed) bridge:

“Fortunately the road went over an ancient stone bridge, for the river, swollen with the rains, came rushing down from the hills and mountains in the north.”

As this is the first bridge mentioned, I’m going to assume that this is the “Bridge of Strongbows/Great Bridge” mentioned in Argeleb II’s grant to the original hobbit settlers.

(This is the Roman Pont Julien in southeastern France—over a bit drier patch than described in the book.  For more on this ancient bridge, see:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pont_Julien )

Once over this bridge, we’re in a different world.  We reach another river:

“Then one of the ponies took fright at nothing and bolted.  He got into the river before they could catch him…” 

Then, attempting to camp in the rain, Bilbo and the dwarves spot a fire, go to it, and find trolls.

(JRRT)

With the trolls dealt with by Gandalf, we move on to Rivendell–

(JRRT)

and suddenly we realize that:   there’s no Bree!

It’s at the crossroads of the Great East Road and what the locals call “the Greenway”, the old north/south road, now long overgrown,

but, somehow, Bilbo and the dwarves have not encountered it.  The reason is clear, of course:  just as the Tolkien of The Hobbit had yet to discover the East Farthing, so, too, he had yet to discover Breeland.

So, it looks like we have to turn around, back to the Green Dragon, stop for a pint, as any hobbit would,

and try again—in “To Bree (Part 2”).

As always, thanks for reading.

Stay well,

When approaching a crossroads, be prepared for anything—especially monsters with questions–

And remember that, as always, there’s

MTCIDC

O

Plain and Grassy

24 Wednesday Sep 2025

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Welcome, as always, dear readers.

If you read this blog regularly, you know that, when I review something, I will see it/read it twice before I put fingers to keyboard and that I always try to understand, as best I can, what it is that the creators are intending, finding completely negative reviews of the sort which are too common on the internet simply unhelpful. 

 I’ve watched The War of the Rohirrim only once, so far,

and, after I’ve seen it a second time, I’m sure that I’ll want to say more, but one point struck me immediately and I thought that others might find it interesting—or puzzling, as I did.

To begin with, I very much enjoy anime and have seen all sorts of examples, from the adventures of Cowboy Bebop

to the sad and beautiful adaptation of When Marnie was Here

to the almost hallucinatory Mononoke.

My curiosity, then, was aroused to read that someone was making an anime-influenced film from section II, “The House of Eorl” of Appendix A of The Lord of the Rings, both because of the anime and because I’m always interested to see how different artists might imagine works with which I’m familiar.

Some years ago, for instance, a Russian artist, Sergey Yuhimov, had illustrated The Lord of the Rings in the style of Russian religious art, which was an intriguing idea.  Here’s the death of Boromir, as an  example–

(For more, see:  https://www.openculture.com/2014/06/russian-illustrations-of-the-lord-of-the-rings-in-a-medieval-iconographic-style-1993.html )

At the same time, I was a bit concerned about just what could be made of this material when there was so little of it—pages 1065-1067 in my 50th-anniversary edition of the book.

Remembering my dismay at “Azog”

and “Tauriel”

 in P. Jackson’s The Hobbit, where there was plenty of original material with which to work, I wondered if this would this mean the appearance of a number of characters never devised—or intended—by the author?  (for more on this see “A Fine Romance”, 15 February, 2023)

As I said, however, more on the film in general in a future posting, but for now I want to concentrate on a bit of geography.

Here’s a map of Rohan, the location of the film’s story

It’s divided into a couple of regions, their names based on Old English words—“Wold”, I’m presuming coming for “weald”, defined as “high land covered with wood”, which would be appropriate for land just outside Fangorn, “Emnet” from “emnett”, “a plain”—basically a level or flat area, and “Fold” from a word used in compounds, meaning “earth/land”.  (See Bosworth & Toller’s  Anglo-Saxon Dictionary here:  https://bosworthtoller.com/  )  So, the central area, at least, is, at best, rolling, I would say, and we know, from the text, covered in grass:

“Turning back they saw across the River the far hills kindled.  Day leaped into the sky.  The red rim of the sun rose over the shoulders of the dark land.  Before them in the West the world lay still, formless and grey; but even as they looked, the shadows of night melted, the colours of the waking earth returned:  green flowed over the wide meads of Rohan…” (The Two Towers, Book Three, Chapter 2, “The Riders of Rohan”)

“Mead” is from Old English “maed”, “meadow” (itself from Old English “maedwe”, which Etymonline, from the OED, glosses as “low, level tract of land under grass; pasture” (for more, see:  https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=meadow )

I’ve always imagined, then, something like this—

it being a perfect place for grazing for the herds of horses kept by the Rohirrim.

Unfortunately, New Zealand doesn’t appear to have such places and so Jackson, in his films, had to make do with this—

With those snowy mountains in the background, it makes an impressive scene, but it’s not really what JRRT had clearly—and rather beautifully–imagined.

I thought, however, that the makers of the new film would take advantage of the fact that, their landscape being anything which they could imagine and depict, and would restore to us Tolkien’s vision of the plains of Rohan as he described them.

Unfortunately, that’s not what happened:  instead, the artists simply copied the Jackson look of the nearly-barren countryside, far from anything a horse people would delight in—

Why do this?  The creators weren’t limited, as Jackson was, by the available landscape, and yet they simply followed what was already available on film, virtually down to the last detail.

Needless to say, I was disappointed, and it made me wonder what else I would see as the film progressed.  But that’s for another posting.

Thanks for reading, as ever.

Stay well,

May you always seek green—but not greener– pastures,

And remember that, as always, there’s

MTCIDC

O

Going Around in Cycles

17 Wednesday Sep 2025

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“It’s déjà vue all over again.”

(attributed to Yogi Berra, US baseball player, but see:  https://quoteinvestigator.com/2013/10/08/deja-vu-again/ )

Dear readers, as always, welcome.

In later life, James Joyce, 1882-1941,

was interested in the work of the 17-18th-century philosopher (among other things) Giambattista Vico, 1668-1744,

and his idea that history followed a definite repeated pattern in three ages, Divine, Heroic, and Human, posited in his 1725-1744 work, La Scienza Nuova (“the new understanding, knowledge, learning”).

(For more on Vico, see:  https://www.philosopheasy.com/p/the-eternal-return-giambattista-vicos  This is, potentially, a very large subject, and even more so when Joyce is combined with Vico.  For an introductory view, see:  https://archive.org/details/vicojoyce00vere_0/page/n5/mode/2up ) 

Joyce incorporated his understanding of Vico in his last work, Finnegans Wake, 1939, in which

the idea of repeated patterns cycling throughout appears in the very opening—and closing– lines of the book:

“A way a lone a last a loved a long the / riverrun, past Eve and Adam’s, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs.” 

which, in fact, are reversed, the opening of the book being:

“…riverrun, past Eve and Adam’s, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs…”

and the last words of the book are:

“A way a lone a last a loved a long the…”

so that, by joining them, we have the effect of the serpent Ouroboros, tail/tale joined to mouth—and the book can begin again.

(For more on Finnegans Wake, see:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finnegans_Wake  For more on the serpent, see:   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ouroboros )

I’ve always thought that leaving Tom Bombadil and the Barrow-wight

(Matthew Stewart—see more of his work here:  https://www.matthew-stewart.com/  See, in particular, his Middle-earth work, but then go through his other galleries to view his impressive ability to capture other imaginary worlds.)

out of the first Lord of the Rings film was a mistake, even though Tolkien himself once wrote:

“Tom Bombadil is not an important person—to the narrative.”  (letter to Naomi Mitchison, 25 April, 1954, Letters, 268—but read on, as JRRT has much more to say and, to my mind, justifies his position in the narrative, in fact, in a spiritual way.)

Tom is interesting in himself, being a kind of parallel for Treebeard, among other things (and the writers of the Rings of Power series thought highly enough of him to include him in their telling), but, for me, in the narrative, it’s what he gives them, particularly Merry, which is important—

“For each of the hobbits he chose a dagger, long, leaf-shaped, and keen, of marvelous workmanship…”

(probably something like this, but more elaborately-worked)

‘Old knives are long enough as swords for hobbit-people,’ he said…Then he told them that the blades were forged many long years ago by Men of Westernesse:  they were foes of the Dark Lord, but they were overcome by the evil king of Carn Dum in the Land of Angmar.”  (The Fellowship of the Ring, Book One,  Chapter 8, “Fog on the Barrow-downs”)

This is, of course, the weapon  which Merry uses to stab the chief of the Nazgul while he’s attacking Eowyn, the Nazgul being the very witch-king who had overcome the Men of Westernesse so long before.

(Ted Nasmith)

To keep Tom and the Barrow-wight in the film is then to underline the cyclic nature of much of the story.

 This unnamed but crucial sword is only one of the swords scattered throughout the later story of Middle-earth, however, and there is a cyclic potential for others, as well.

Think of the swords which Gandalf and Co. find in the trolls’ hideout in The Hobbit—

“…and among them were several swords of various makes, shapes, and sizes.  Two caught their eyes particularly, because of their beautiful scabbards and jeweled hilts…

‘These look like good blades,’ said the wizard, half drawing them and looking at them curiously.  ‘They were not made by any troll, nor by any smith among men in these parts and days; but when we can read the runes on them, we shall know more about them.’ “ (The Hobbit, Chapter Two, “Roast Mutton”)

In the next chapter, Elrond then identifies them:

“Elrond knew all about runes of every kind.  That day he looked at the swords they had brought from the trolls’ lair, and he said:  ‘These are not troll-make.  They are old swords, very old swords of the High Elves of the West, my kin.  They were made in Gondolin for the Goblin-wars.  They must have come from a dragon’s hoard or goblin plunder, for dragons and goblins destroyed that city many ages ago.  This, Thorin, the runes name Orcrist, the Goblin-cleaver in the ancient tongue of Gondolin; it was a famous blade.  This, Gandalf, is Glamdring, a Foe-hammer that the king of Gondolin once wore.’ “ (The Hobbit, Chapter Three.  “A Short Rest”)

And you’ll remember that Gandalf runs the king of later goblins through in the next chapter with that very sword:

“Suddenly a sword flashed in its own light.  Bilbo saw it go right through the Great Goblin as he stood dumb-founded in the middle of his rage.  He fell dead, and the goblin soldiers fled before the sword shrieking into the darkness.”  (The Hobbit, Chapter Four, “Over Hill and Under Hill”)

(Alan Lee)

The knife which Bilbo picks up from the trolls’ hoard “only a tiny pocket-knife for a troll, but it was as good as a short sword for the hobbit”, comes in handy later in The Hobbit, when Bilbo uses it to kill some of the spiders of Mirkwood,

(Oleksiy Lipatov—you can see more of his work here:  https://www.deviantart.com/lipatov/gallery/85631839/old-comic  )

but it will reappear many years later in The Lord of the Rings, when Frodo and Sam use it against another ancient evil, Shelob–

(Ted Nasmith again—and, unusually for his work, just plain weird—but vivid!)

Perhaps the most consequential sword  to return, however, is that which maimed Sauron many centuries ago, causing him to lose the Ring, and which, reforged, Aragorn shows him in Saruman’s palantir

(the Hildebrandts)

(itself appearing from a far older world, being as Aragorn says, “For this assuredly is the palantir of Orthanc, from the treasury of Elendil, set here by the Kings of Gondor.”  The Two Towers, Book Three, Chapter 11, “The Palantir”):

“…The eyes in Orthanc did not see through the armour of Theoden; but Sauron has not forgotten Isildur and the sword of Elendil.  Now in the very hour of his great designs the heir of Isildur and the Sword are revealed; for I showed the blade re-forged to him.  He is not so mighty yet that he is above fear; nay doubt ever gnaws him.”  (The Return of the King, Book Five, Chapter 2, “The Passing of the Grey Company”)

And there are more cyclings.

Consider the Ring itself:  forged in the fires of Mt Doom, it is eventually returned there and destroyed,

(another Ted Nasmith)

which causes the final end of Sauron, after several ages of struggle,

(and one more Ted Nasmith–and who better to paint a cataclysm?)

and which, in turn, brings the—return of the King.

(Denis Gordeev–and note that the artist has painted Aragorn’s crown as depicted by Tolkien in a letter to Rhona Beare, 14 October, 1958, see Letters, 401.)

After thinking about this, I can see that there are even more cyclic events, like the movement of the elves westwards, and  Gandalf traveling the same way, originally sent eastwards to oppose Sauron,

(one more Ted Nasmith)

but I think that this is enough for one posting—though considering all of the cycles I’ve already identified,  I’ll end with another (supposed) quotation from Yogi Berra:

Thanks, as always, for reading.

Stay well,

Remember one more piece of Yogi wisdom

And remember, as well, that there’s always

MTCIDC

O

Horse, Two

03 Wednesday Sep 2025

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Welcome , dear readers, as always, and, as always, I’m interested in Tolkien’s inspirations…

Enter Richard

King    A horse, a horse, my kingdome for a horse.

Cates   Withdraw my lord, ile helpe you to a horse.

King   Slaue I haue set my life vpon a cast,

And I will stand the hazard of the die,

I thinke there be sixe Richmonds in the field,

Fiue haue I slaine to daie in stead of him,

A horse, a horse, my kingdome for a horse.  (Wm Shakespeare, Richard III, Act V,  Scene 4,  First Quarto, 1597  You can read it here at the excellent Internet Shakespeare site: https://internetshakespeare.uvic.ca/doc/R3_Q1/index.html    )

(artist?)

Richard III is clearly not having a good day:  one of his allies has waited out the battle until a fatal moment, then changed sides.  And Richard has lost his horse, which, as a good horseback soldier, gives him an advantage, in terms of mobility on the battlefield, height over enemy infantry,

(Adam Hook)

and even a better chance of escape.  Without it, surrounded by enemy soldiers, he’s about to be dead.  (In the Shakespeare play, he’s killed by the Earl of Richmond, Henry Tudor, who, in turn, is about to become Henry VII, but, in reality, we don’t know who did him in, but see here for more:  https://le.ac.uk/richard-iii/identification/osteology/injuries/how-richard-iii-died )

Soldiers in the West didn’t begin on horseback.  The Sumerians first had yoked wild asses to their battle cars.

The ancient Egyptians had, by the New Kingdom (1550-1070BC), yoked horses to chariots.

(Rameses II, c.1303-1213BC)

The Assyrians, breeding bigger horses, began to sit soldiers upon their backs.

Greeks in the Iliad went to battle in and sometimes fought from their chariots (sometimes called by classical scholars “battle taxis” under the mistaken impression that they used those chariots only for transportation, which a close reading of the text shows not to be the case), although cavalry, as cavalry, are briefly mentioned, though never shown in action.

But cavalry, when it finally appeared in the Greek world, was meant for scouting and pursuit.

(Angus McBride)

All of this changed with Philip II of Macedon. 382-336BC, and his son, Alexander.  Macedon was prime horse-breeding country and Philip was a military innovator, so, with chariots long gone, Philip trained real battle cavalry, which Alexander then led to victory.

(Peter Connolly)

Alexander had a famous horse, Bucephalus (“Ox Head”),

whom he alone could tame. (see Plutarch’s life of Alexander here—section.6:    https://www.lexundria.com/plut_alex/1-77/prr )

He also fancied himself a kind of descendent of the Trojan War hero Achilles, who had two famous horses, Balios (“Dapple”)  and Xanthus (“Palomino”), born of a Fury, Podarge (“Swiftfoot”), and Zephyrus, the god of the West Wind.

This divine lineage for horses made me think about a famous horse in another adventure story:  Shadowfax.

(Luca Michelucci—you can see more of his work here:  https://www.artnet.com/artists/luca-michelucci/  I like especially his image of Gwaihir rescuing Gandalf from Orthanc)

Shadowfax, according to Gandalf, is the chief of the Mearas, horses descended from one Felarof,  the horse of Eorl, the founder of Rohan.  Felarof was said to have understood the speech of men (Rohirric, we can presume) and may have been brought by Orome, the huntsman of the Valar, from across the sea, suggesting a horse of the Valar themselves.  (See The Lord of the Rings, Appendix A, II, “The House of Eorl”)

Mearas is the plural of mearh, one of the Old English words for “horse” and this might suggest that, with his  interest in things early Germanic, we might imagine that Tolkien would have looked towards Grani,

(from the Ramsund Carving—for more:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sigurd_stones )

the horse of Sigurd, descended from Odin’s 8-legged steed, Sleipnir

(on the Tjaengvide image stone—you can read more about it here:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tj%C3%A4ngvide_image_stone     For the story of how Sigurd found Grani, see the Icelandic Volsunga Saga  in this bilingual edition, pages 23-24:   https://archive.org/details/vo-lsungasaga-text-translation-finch/page/n89/mode/2up

And I can’t resist this very clever way of producing a modern Sleipnir—

Lachlan Templar—his work appears at Deviant Art, but, when I try to find out more, the site is blocked.)

as an inspiration, but, remembering that Tolkien had begun his formal education in the traditional way:   studying Classics at King Edward’s School in Birmingham,

and, initially, continuing  in Classics at Oxford,

I wonder—and return to Balios and Xanthus.  These are horses with as distinguished a lineage as Grani, coming from a Fury

and the god of the West Wind.

As well,  Felarof—and, in turn, Shadowfax–understand human speech and Balios and Xanthus show emotion more human than equine, weeping when their temporary master and charioteer, Patroclus, is killed in battle by the Trojan hero, Hector, refusing to return to battle, but, instead—

“…but as a monument remains firmly in the ground, one set up on a tomb

For a dead man or woman,

So they remained, immobile, holding the very beautiful chariot [still],

Leaning [their] heads to the earth, and their hot tears

Flow down from under [their] eyelids to the ground

In longing for [their] charioteer.”  (Iliad, Book 17.434-439—my translation]

And  there’s more.   Felarof and Shadowfax may understand human speech, and Balios and Xanthus may grieve, in a human way for the death of Achilles’ friend and charioteer, Patroclus, but, in an eerie moment, one of them, Xanthus, actually speaks to Achilles, warning him of his own impending doom:

“We will still keep you safe for now, mighty Achilles,

But a deadly day is near to you.”  (Iliad, Book 19.408-409—my translation)

Could there be another link here?

“But lo!  suddenly in the midst of the glory of the king his golden shield was dimmed.  The new morning was blotted from the sky.  Dark fell about him.  Horses reared and screamed.  Men cast from the saddle lay groveling on the ground…Snowmane wild with terror stood up on high, fighting with the air, and then with a great scream he crashed upon his side; a black dart had pierced him.  The king fell beneath him…” 

(Ted Nasmith)

Although we have no idea of Snowmane’s lineage except that he’s “Lightfoot’s foal”, and he never speaks a word, he’s certainly involved in a death and, as Balios and Xanthus might have inspired Shadowfax, could this horse-speech be related to Theoden’s horse, Snowmane?

(Joona  Kujanen, aka Tulikoura, a bit more of whose work you can see here:  https://hole-intheground.blogspot.com/2012/03/fridays-at-mathom-house-joona-kujanen.html )

We have no idea of the fate of Achilles’ horses, though we are told that Achilles himself was buried in a mound—

as Agamemnon says to him in the Underworld, speaking of the cremated remains of Achilles and his friend, Patroclus (over whom Achilles’ horses mourned):

“And over them then we, mighty army of the Argive spearmen,

Heaped up a tumulus…”  (Odyssey, Book 24.81-81—my translation)

Just as Snowmane received a similar grave:

“And afterwards when all was over men returned and made a fire there and burned the carcase of the beast; but for Snowmane they dug a grave and set up a stone upon which was carved in the tongues of Gondor and the Mark:

‘Faithful servant yet master’s bane,

Lightfoot’’s foal, swift Snowbane.’

Green and long grew the grass on Snowmane’s Howe…”  (The Return of the King, Book Five, Chapter 6, “The Battle of the Pelennor Fields”)

All coincidence?   Or were JRRT’s many years of classical training still at work, when he’d long abandoned it for Germanic, Finnish, and Welsh?

As ever, thanks for reading.

Stay well,

Horses are wonderful, but remember that they, like us, have their limits—what would you do if a Nazgul on a frightful thing came down upon you?

(Craig J. Spearing—you can read more about him and his work here:  https://pathfinderwiki.com/wiki/Craig_J_Spearing )

And remember that, as ever, there’s

MTCIDC

O

Bogged Down

20 Wednesday Aug 2025

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As always, dear readers, welcome.

What’s going on here?

“He turned, and there in the cold glow he saw lying beside him Sam, Pippin, and Merry.  They were on their backs, and their faces looked deadly pale; and they were clad in white.  About them lay many treasures, of gold maybe, though in that light they looked cold and unlovely.  On their heads were circlets, gold chains were about their waists, and on their fingers were many rings.  Swords lay by their sides, and shields were at their feet.  But across their three necks lay one long naked sword.”  (The Fellowship of the Ring, Book One, Chapter 8, “Fog on the Barrow Downs”)

(Matthew Stewart–you can see more of his impressive work here: https://www.matthew-stewart.com/ I like his dragons especially.)

This might appear to look like an early heroic burial, with grave goods piled up,

like this chieftain’s grave from 530BC, found near Hochdorf an der Enz in Baden-Wuerttemberg, Germany—which even has this beautiful wagon (reconstructed—for more see:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hochdorf_Chieftain%27s_Grave ).

There is a difficulty, however:  none of the hobbits is dead—although that sword across three of their necks suggests that they soon will be.

And I would further suggest that what we’re looking at is the scene of a potential human sacrifice—especially if we add what the narrator calls an “incantation” on the part of the Barrow-wight:

“Cold be hand and heart and bone,

And cold be sleep under stone:

Never more to wake on stony bed,

Never, till the Sun fails and the Moon is dead.

In the black wind the stars shall die,

And still on gold here let them lie,

Till the dark lord lifts his hand

Over dead sea and withered land.”

Human sacrifice had certainly been practiced in Middle-earth.  We know that Sauron, defeated temporarily, corrupts the king of Numenor, Tar-Calion (also known as Ar-Pharazon), preaching the worship of the fallen Vala, Morgoth:

“A new religion, and worship of the Dark, with its temple under Sauron arises.  The faithful are persecuted and sacrificed.  The Numenoreans carry their evil also to Middle-earth and there become cruel and wicked lords of necromancy, slaying and tormenting men… “ (letter to Milton Waldman, late 1951, Letters, 216-217—for more on this see “Melkor/Morgoth/Melqart” 29 June, 2022)

I suspect that Tolkien’s own first experience with such sacrifices may have come from a boyhood reading Julius Caear’s (100-44BC) De Bello Gallico, where he would have found:

“Natio est omnis Gallorum admodum dedita religionibus, atque ob eam causam, qui sunt adfecti gravioribus morbis quique in proeliis periculisque versantur, aut pro victimis homines immolant aut se immolaturos vovent administrisque ad ea sacrificia druidibus utuntur, quod, pro vita hominis nisi hominis vita reddatur, non posse deorum immortalium numen placari arbitrantur, publiceque eiusdem generis habent instituta sacrificia. Alii immani magnitudine simulacra habent, quorum contexta viminibus membra vivis hominibus complent; quibus succensis circumventi flamma exanimantur homines.”

“The whole nation of the Gauls is completely devoted to religious practices and because of this, those who are afflicted with very serious illnesses and those who are involved in battles and dangers either sacrifice men in place of animal victims or pledge that they will sacrifice them and use the druids as the priests for those sacrifices because they think that, unless the life of a person is paid back for the life of a person, the divine will of the immortal gods can’t be appeased and they [even] have sacrifices set up of the same kind at public expense.  Others have images of immense size of which the chambers, woven of willow withies, are filled with living people.   [So that], when they are set alight, the people, surrounded by flame, are killed.”  (De Bello Gallico, Book VI, Sec.16, my translation—you can read more at the invaluable Sacred Texts site here in a parallel Latin/English text:  https://sacred-texts.com/cla/jcsr/index.htm ) 

(This is from Thomas Pennant’s, 1726-1798, A Tour of Wales, 1778.  Pennant was a naturalist, antiquarian, traveler, etc etc and one of those wonderful 18th people seemingly interested in everything and eager to report what they discovered.  You can read about him here:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Pennant but don’t forget to read about his draftsman, Moses Griffith, an equally impressively-talented man:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moses_Griffith_(artist) There is even a Thomas Pennant Society:  https://www.cymdeithasthomaspennant.com/eng/t-p.html And you can read the Tour itself here:  https://archive.org/details/toursinwales00penngoog/page/n8/mode/2up  For more on the idea of the “wicker man”, see:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wicker_man  )

The Romans, with very rare (and early) exceptions, frowned upon human sacrifice, but northern people, before being overwhelmed by the Romans, or too far north for them to conquer effectively, could, as in the case of the Gauls mentioned above, have a different approach to their gods.

Unfortunately, as they were not, like the Romans, extremely literate, what little description we have comes from people like Caesar, curious (and probably horrified) outsiders—and perhaps also propagandists, who wanted to paint those outside the Mediterranean world as savages and therefore worthy of nothing more than conquest.

We do, however, have other and very vivid evidence in the form of archaeological discoveries.

One of these turned up in my last posting, the “Vimose comb” (see “Runing Things”, 13 August, 2025).

The “-mose” in Vimose means “bog/wetland/moorland” in modern Danish, descended from “mosi” in Old Norse and this immediately tells us about a different method of making a sacrifice—and not necessarily a human one—dropping it into water.

Without local explanation, we can only guess what was thought to happen when the object was deposited.  For myself, I’ve always thought of the pool in the story of Fionn mac Cumhaill. 

(Marga Gomila—you can see drafts of this work at:  https://margagomila.artstation.com/projects/OmEwgv )

This was connected with the otherworld and nuts from hazel trees would fall into the pool from that otherworld, to be consumed by a salmon in our world.  Cooking the salmon (caught in this world), Fionn, then a boy, burned his thumb and, putting it into his mouth, gained supernatural knowledge thereby.  (See for more:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fionn_mac_Cumhaill and:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wells_in_the_Irish_Dindsenchas There is a similar story attached to the Germanic hero, Sigurd, which you can read in the form Tolkien probably first read it:  https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/540/pg540-images.html )

So, were these earlier sacrificers dropping in their treasures in hopes of sending them out of this world, presumably to the place where their gods lived?

Certainly the person who dropped the comb into the Vimose must have had some such hope and that person was hardly alone as, to date, about 2500 objects have been recovered from the site.  (For more on Vimose, check out this very interesting site:  https://ageofarthur.substack.com/p/the-homeland-of-the-angles-and-the See, as well, the Danish National Museum site, with all sorts of short articles on Vimose and other places:  https://en.natmus.dk/historical-knowledge/denmark/prehistoric-period-until-1050-ad/the-early-iron-age/the-weapon-deposit-from-vimose/the-offerings-in-vimose/ )

And it’s not the only site.  From Ireland eastwards through much of Germany, there are sites, some more specific, like La Tene, in Switzerland, where there was a huge cache of swords,

(no citation, but it looks like a Peter Connolly)

and Hjortspring, in Denmark, where there was a boat,

and Dejbjerg, also in Denmark, where there was a wagon.

There are animal sacrifices,

(Miroslaw Kuzma–as a sometime horseman, I hesitated to include this illustration.)

but the most sinister deposits are human ones,

some of whose well-preserved remains would probably have worried those who believed that, once the victim had been dealt with, and sunk in the water, the sacrifice would have been accepted and then the next step would be a god’s.  (For more on so-called “bog bodies”, see:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bog_body )

Although Frodo was responsible for halting what may have been about to be a sacrifice—

“But the courage that had been awakened in him was now too strong:  he could not leave his friends so easily.  He wavered, groping in his pocket, and then fought with himself again; and as he did so the arm crept nearer.  Suddenly resolve hardened in him, and he seized a short sword that lay beside him, and kneeling, he stooped low over the bodies of his companions.  With what strength he had he hewed at the crawling arm near the wrist, and the hand broke off; but at the same moment the sword splintered up to the hilt.  There was a shriek and the light vanished.  In the dark there was a snarling noise.”

It was the appearance of Tom Bombadil, summoned by Frodo, who rescued them all—

“There was a loud rumbling sound, as of stones rolling and falling, and suddenly light streamed in, real light, the plain light of day.  A low door-like opening appeared at the end of the chamber beyond Frodo’s feet; and there was Tom’s head (hat, feather, and all) framed against the light of the sun rising red behind him.”

And there was Tom’s incantation—

“Get out, you old Wight!  Vanish in the sunlight!

Shrivel like the cold mist, like the winds go wailing,

Out into the barren lands far beyond the mountains!

Come never here again!  Leave your barrow empty!

Lost and forgotten be, darker than the darkness,

Where gates stand for ever shut, till the world is mended.”  (The Fellowship of the Ring, Book One, Chapter 8, “Fog on the Barrow-downs”)

I wonder whether, about to be consecrated to a god we no longer know of, a victim might have called upon his/her gods, hoping for a similar rescue?

Thanks for reading, as ever.

Stay well,

Avoid barrows—unless they’re wheeled,

(Is this by a medieval Dr. Seuss?)

Definitely stay out of bogs,

And remember that, as always, there’s

MTCIDC

O

PS

If you’re interested in a scientific explanation for the surprising preservation of some bodies, see:

https://en.natmus.dk/historical-knowledge/denmark/prehistoric-period-until-1050-ad/the-early-iron-age/the-woman-from-huldremose/the-chemistry-of-the-bog-bodies/

Runing Things

13 Wednesday Aug 2025

Posted by in J.R.R. Tolkien, Language, Tolkien

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Welcome, as ever, dear readers.

It is a grim moment, in The Lord of the Rings when the company, making its way through the complexity of Moria in near-darkness, save for Gandalf’s staff, reaches this—

“Their feet disturbed a deep dust upon the floor, and stumbled among things lying in the doorway whose shapes they could not at first make out.  The chamber was lit by a wide shaft high in the further eastern wall; it slanted upwards and, far above, a small square patch of blue sky could be seen.  The light of the shaft fell directly on a table in the middle of the room:  a single oblong block, about two feet high, upon which was laid a great slab of white stone.

(the Hildebrandts)

‘It looks like a tomb,’ muttered Frodo, and bent forwards with a curious sense of foreboding, to look more closely at it.  Gandalf came quickly to his side.  On the slab runes were deeply graven:

‘These are Daeron’s Runes, such as were used of old in Moria,’ said Gandalf.  ‘Here it is written in the tongues of Men and Dwarves:

BALIN SON OF FUNDIN

LORD OF MORIA ‘.”  (The Lord of the Rings, Book Two, Chapter 4, “A Journey in the Dark”)

Even if you’re not an expert in early western writing systems, you’ve probably encountered runes before.  They appear to be a Germanic invention, with their first known outside mention thought to be in P. Cornelius Tacitus’ (c.56-c.120 AD) essay on some northern tribes, Germania, where this passage is cited.

“[10] Auspicia sortesque ut qui maxime observant: sortium consuetudo simplex. Virgam frugiferae arbori decisam in surculos amputant eosque notis quibusdam discretos super candidam vestem temere ac fortuito spargunt. Mox, si publice consultetur, sacerdos civitatis, sin privatim, ipse pater familiae, precatus deos caelumque suspiciens ter singulos tollit, sublatos secundum impressam ante notam interpretatur.”

“[the Germans] pay very close attention to auspices and lot-drawing:  the practice of lot-drawing is simple.  They split a branch cut from a fruit tree into splinters and scatter those, marked out with certain signs, on a white robe casually and randomly.  Then a priest of the settlement, if it may be the public consulting of an oracle, but if private, the father of a family himself, having prayed to the gods and raising his eyes to the sky, draws three [splinters] one at a time [and] interprets those drawn according to the mark stamped upon [them] previously.”

(Tactius, Germania, Section 10—my translation.  If you’d like to read the whole text, here’s a useful Victorian translation:  https://archive.org/details/tacitusagricolag00taciiala/page/62/mode/2up )

We don’t know where Tacitus got his information from, but he lived at about the same time as one of the earliest currently-known runic inscriptions, the “Vimose comb”, dated to about 160AD,

(There seem to be two guesses at to what the inscription says—transliterated, it appears to read “harja”, meaning either the obvious “comb” or the less obvious “warrior”.  For more on this and other early rune-marked artifacts, see:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vimose_inscriptions and https://en.natmus.dk/historical-knowledge/denmark/prehistoric-period-until-1050-ad/the-early-iron-age/the-weapon-deposit-from-vimose/the-offerings-in-vimose/   Until they sold out, you could even get a bone replica of the comb here:  https://norseimports.com/products/vimose-comb )

so the notae, “marks”, he mentioned could, indeed, be early runes.

We’ve seen runes three times before in the book, each time related to Gandalf and the first letter of his name in runes–

The first is a jolly appearance:

(Darrell K. Sweet, who died, unfortunately, in 2011, but you can see his archived website here:  https://web.archive.org/web/20110131141507/http://www.sweetartwork.com/DKSmainPage.html and read a little more about this very talented illustrator here:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darrell_K._Sweet And I couldn’t resist adding this knowledgeable appreciation of his work:  https://blackgate.com/2022/04/17/an-adventure-to-be-had-a-journey-through-the-art-of-darrell-k-sweet/ )

“At the end of the second week in September a cart came in through Bywater from the direction of Brandywine Bridge in broad daylight.  An old man was driving it all alone…It had a cargo of fireworks…At Bilbo’s front door the old man began to unload:  there were great bundles of fireworks of all sorts and shapes, each labeled with a large red G [runic letter] and the elf-rune [see the image above].” (The Fellowship of the Ring, Book One, Chapter 1, “A Long-Expected Party”)

The second is not, being Gandalf’s much-delayed letter to Frodo, still at the Prancing Pony in Bree, instead of being delivered 3 months before to the Shire, meant to alert Frodo to the possibility that he won’t meet them, with some consolation that Strider might appear. (The Fellowship of the Ring, Book One, Chapter 10, “Strider”)

(the Hildebrandts)

And the third is only guessed at as seeming to be a sign from Gandalf on Weathertop:

“ ‘The stroke on the left might be a G-rune with thin branches,’ said Strider.  ‘It might be a sign left by Gandalf, though one cannot be sure…I should say…that they stood for G3, and were a sign that Gandalf was here on October the third:  that is three days ago now.  It would also show that he was in a hurry and danger was at hand, so he had no time or did not dare to write anything longer or plainer.  If that is so, we must be wary.’ “ (The Fellowship of the Ring, Book One, Chapter 11, “A Knife in the Dark”)

(John Howe)

In our Middle-earth, there are several iterations of runes, with the melodious (modern) names of “Futhark”(Elder and Younger) and “Futhorc”, which get those names, as the word “alphabet” does, from putting together a collection of the first letters of the series in a standard order.  Here’s the Elder Futhark—

It’s easy to see why the letters might be shaped as they were, appearing to be relatively easy to inscribe on things with a knife.  (Or a chisel for the stone inscriptions?)

(a 12th-century AD inscription on wood from Bryggen in Norway—one of 670 inscriptions on wood or bone found at the site since 1955—for more see:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bryggen_inscriptions  and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bryggen One of the many amazing things about this second piece is that it underlines just how sophisticated trade could be in northern Europe in the Middle Ages.)

(This is the Kylver Stone from Gotland, Sweden, c.400AD, which lists the Elder Futhark letters.  For more, see:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kylver_Stone and you can see from the translation of the runes where “Futhark” came from. )

Tolkien’s own runes, as he tells us, are derived from what are sometimes called the “Anglo-Saxon” or “Anglo-Frisian” Futhorc:

“There is the matter of the Runes.  Those used by Thorin and Co., for special purposes, were comprised of an alphabet of thirty-two letters (full list on application), similar to, but not identical, with the runes of Anglo-Saxon inscriptions.”  (letter to the editor of The Observer, published there 20 February, 1938, Letters, 42)

We can then imagine that this is what must appear as the “moon letters” on Thror’s map—

 

And this brings me to my final point.

In my last, in connection with the conlang (constructed language) toki pona, I mentioned the internet site Robwords, one of my favorite places for information and discussion about languages, primarily English, German, and French, but with some surprises (see last week’s “Simple Words” for more).

(This is Rob Watts, of Robwords)

One of those surprises was toki pona, but, in another, Rob made the suggestion that the Roman alphabet, in which I’m writing this posting, was rotten for the English language, being adapted from the Greek alphabet (in turn adapted from the Phoenician alphabet) via the Etruscan alphabet,

and lacking letters for certain common English sounds like “th” and “sh” and “ng”.

In his playful way, he suggested that we’d be better off with the runic system, and specifically that Anglo-Saxon version, aka Futhorc.

 To prove his point, he cites something familiar to Tolkien readers—

and then proceeds to translate it, showing that it’s not in the language of the dwarves, as one might expect from a dwarvish map, but English (or, if you prefer, “the Common Speech”).

Watch the video, then, and see if you agree with Rob: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4npuVmGxXuk

And, if you’d like to try your hand at using the runes, here’s something to help—it’s a link to Harys Dalvi’s Old English runic keyboard:  https://www.harysdalvi.com/futhorc/  Harys Dalvi’s website is full of really interesting language and computer stuff and just plain fun:  https://www.harysdalvi.com/

Thanks, as always, for reading,

(ᚦᚫᛝᚳᛋ᛫ᚫᛋ᛫ᚫᛚᚹᛠᛋ᛫ᚠᚪᚱ᛫ᚱᛁᛁᛞᛁᛝ)

Stay well,

(ᛥᛠ᛫ᚹᛖᛚ)

Try runisizing today,

(ᛏᚱᚫᛁ᛫ᚱᚢᚾᛁᛋᛁᛋᛁᛝ᛫ᛏᚣᛞᛠ)

And remember that, as always, there’s

ᛗᚪᚱ᛫ᛏᚣ᛫ᚳᚢᛗ᛫ᛁᚾ᛫ᛞᚣ᛫ᚳᚣᚱᛋ

O

PS

At “wikiHow” there’s a pronunciation guide and a rather New Age interpretation of the Elder Futhark’s runes.  It’s fun, but, as it sits to the left of such “How” guides as “telekinesis”, and “reading palms”, I myself would stick to the pronunciations!  https://www.wikihow.com/Elder-Futhark-Runes 

PPS

And how could I resist listing this:  https://runicstudies.org/ the website for the American Association for Runic Studies?  If you get hooked on runes—and I think that that would be quite easy to do, especially after playing on Harys’ website—this site has links in all directions.

Simple Words

06 Wednesday Aug 2025

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Welcome, as always, dear readers.

I’ve read and reread Tolkien since the surprising appearance of this—

and the two volumes which followed–

which got me hooked and, as the (rather tired) saying goes, the rest is history—although I much prefer the genie’s words at the end of Disney’s Aladdin

“…ciao!  I’m history!  No, I’m mythology!”

as JRRT himself said of creating a language:

“As one suggestion, I might fling out the view that [in] the perfect construction of an art-language it is found necessary to construct at least in outline a mythology concomitant…because the making of language and mythology are related functions.”  (“A Secret Vice” in J.R.R. Tolkien, The Monsters and the Critics, 210)

In all of those readings, however, I’ve never quite believed something which Tolkien wrote—and more than once—that:

“The invention of languages is the foundation.  The ‘stories’ were made rather to provide a world for the languages than the reverse.” (taken from letter to the Houghton Mifflin Co., June, 1955, Letters, 319)

Gollum?  Saruman?  Grishnakh and Ugluk?  Treebeard?  Sam?  All created only so that they could speak JRRT’s languages?  Such vivid major and minor characters—surely there was also a pure pleasure not only in having them talk, but in what they said and what effect their talk—and actions—had on the ‘stories’?

I can certainly believe, however, that the languages were a major feature of JRRT’s making of Middle-earth—just the essay I quoted above—“A Secret Vice”– would show you just how devoted Tolkien was to languages and their creation, or look up “Languages” in the Index to Letters

and you’ll find two columns and a little more (pages 667-669) of references to languages, name-formation, Quenya vs Sindarin, Dwarvish, the Black Speech, and much more.  And, digging below the surface, you can find such details as Tolkien writing to a fan with the declension of two nouns in Quenya:  cirya, “ship” and lasse, “leaf” (declensions are patterns of noun/adjective formation in which the functions of the words are shown by their endings—think of “whose” and “whom” in English as the last remnants of something which would earlier have look like this:

Nominative (shows subject):   who

Genitive (shows possession):  whose

Dative (indirect object):   whom

Accusative (direct object/takes prepositions):  whom

Ablative (would take some other prepositions—fell together with the accusative):   whom

and there can be other endings—all called “case endings”—like the instrumental, the ending of which would tell you that the noun was being used as a means to do something, the locative, which indicates at what place something is, and the vocative, employed when you’re addressing someone/thing)

(see “From a letter to Dick Plotz, c.1967, Letters, 522-523)

Such profusion is in strong contrast to something which I discovered a week or two on YouTube.

One of the real pleasures I find there are the number of languages and essays about them available in great profusion.  One of my current favorites is a feature called “RobWords”, which is written and presented by Rob Watts, its subjects tending to center around English, but touching upon German and French, among other topics, as well.

It’s a very informative and light-hearted site with occasional surprises, as I found with one entitled “The World’s Smallest Language”, which introduced a conlang (constructed language—in fact, just like Tolkien’s languages), but with an extremely simple grammar and an initial vocabulary of 120 words:  “Toki Pona” (you can see the episode here:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PY3Qe_b9ufI )

The inventor, Sonja Lang, is, not surprisingly, a linguist, combining her knowledge of world languages with her own creations—something you might guess from the name of the language itself:  “toki” coming from the language “Tok Pisin”—that is, “Talk Pidgin”—“pidgin” meaning a kind of trade language—and “pona” coming from Latin “bonus –a –um”—“good”.  (More about pidgins here:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pidgin and Tok Pisin here:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tok_Pisin )

Here’s how Lang explains it:

“Toki Pona was my philosophical attempt to understand the meaning of life in 120 words. 

Through a process of soul-searching, comparative linguistics and playfulness, I designed a simple communication system to simplify my thoughts.”  (Toki Pona The Language of Good, Preface)

And simple it is:  things which appear in Indo-European languages like grammatical gender (whether a noun is masculine, feminine, or neuter—not important in English, but necessary, for instance, in language descended from Latin—Italian, French, Spanish, Catalan, Portuguese, and Romanian), plurals, case endings (see above), definite and indefinite articles (the/a/an in English) verb tenses, even more than one form for a verb—are all gone.  Sentence formation basically follows English, which is Subject, Verb, Object (SVO in linguistic terms—“Cats [subject] drink [verb] milk [object]”)—but use the link above to learn more and be entertained by a bit of a catchy pop song in Toki Pona.  If you want more about its grammar, see:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_PgytSj-YVE and, if you go to YouTube, there are many more places to visit.  If you watch these two videos, you’ll see that that simplicity might easily lead to vagueness (something which “RobWords” points out), but, for a fluent speaker, with an imagination, perhaps it’s less vague than may seem at first.  For example, watch this speaker demonstrate how you can create the term “video game” using only the readily-available vocabulary:  https://www.youtube.com/shorts/z2ltEHfgR2g

Tolkien had been a learner and admirer of an earlier conlang:  Esperanto (if you don’t know about it, see:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esperanto and https://esperanto.net/en/ ) and I wonder what he would have made of Toki Pona?  As a number of its words are derived from a language he loved, Finnish, I think that we might not be surprised if he found Toki Pona fun (see:  https://www.youtube.com/shorts/UoVTWjMrlp4  for a list of parallels between the two languages)—although he probably wouldn’t be able to resist adding to that 120-word basic vocabulary.

But all of this raises the question:  just how many words do you need to communicate?

In my science fiction reading, I’ve found one ingenious answer in a short story by Stanley G. Weinbaum, “A Martian Odyssey”, published in the July, 1934 issue of Wonder Stories.  For another wonder, it was his first published story in what was, unfortunately a brief career, Weinbaum dying in 1935.  (You can read more about him here:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanley_G._Weinbaum )

In this story, the main character, Jarvis, is one of a 4-man expedition, the first to reach Mars (and this is a Mars with Martian gravity, but also with a thin, breathable surface layer of oxygen).  While exploring, his ship crashes and he’s stranded many miles from where the rocket which brought the crew to Mars, the Ares, has landed.  While hoping that the others will search for him, he sets off to walk back towards the Ares and, in the process, rescues a local, whom he calls “Tweel”, as he can’t really pronounce the local’s actual name, that being a loose approximation.  He attempts to communicate, using a few words, based upon the setting, and then a little math, and it’s clear that the local understands some of what he tries to do, but, interestingly, while “Tweel” can speak a little of what Jarvis tries to convey, Jarvis has no luck—and doesn’t even really try—to speak the other’s language.  So, with about half-a-dozen words between them, they set off together on Jarvis’ original journey, meeting strange creatures—and a deadly one—on the way.

I won’t do a summary beyond this as, if you read this far and you’re interested in languages or science fiction, or both, you’ll want to read the story for yourself:  https://www.gutenberg.org/files/23731/23731-h/23731-h.htm

Thanks, as ever for reading,

Stay well,

mi tawa (“Goodbye” in Toki Pona—simply meaning “I’m going”, although I’d prefer to say the “hello” greeting, powa tawa sina—“peace be with you”),

And remember that, as always, there’s

MTCIDC

O

PS Weinbaum wrote a sequel to “A Martian Odyssey” which, if you enjoyed that story, you can read here:  https://gutenberg.org/cache/epub/22301/pg22301-images.html

Two Fingers

09 Wednesday Apr 2025

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As ever, dear readers, welcome.

From the title of this posting, you, imaginative readers, might create any number of topic subjects.  It could be the name of a pirate,

his other fingers lost to a cutlass.

It could be the order by that pirate for whiskey,

since the barkeep has run out of rum–

or perhaps the pirate is an elegant gentleman, like James Hook,

(William Nicholson’s costume design for the original captain, 1904, in the V&M–Victoria and Albert Museum—collection)

a graduate of Eton College,

who knows his malts and knows that “two fingers” is a standard measure.

In Philip Pullman’s The Subtle Knife,

one of the protagonists, Will Parry, has lost two fingers in gaining the knife of the title—could this be the topic?

In the US, poison ivy

has the colloquial name “Three-fingered Jack”—perhaps this is a variant so deadly that it only needs two fingers? 

Or is this the title for one of Sherlock Holmes’

cases that Watson is so desperate to see—but never will:  “The Adventure of the Two Fingers”?

As you’re imaginative, I’ll let you go on from there, and I hope that you won’t be disappointed to learn that it’s none of the above, but, instead, it’s about typing.

The history of typewriters is a complex one (you can read all about it here:  https://historycooperative.org/who-invented-the-typewriter/  but, if the history of technology interests you as it does me, be sure to veer over to the article on the Hansen “writing ball”, which you can find here:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hansen_Writing_Ball )

but Christopher Latham Sholes (along with Samuel Soule , Carlos Glidden, and James Densmore) is credited with producing the first commercially viable machine in 1868, the “Remington No.1”,

which employed the QWERTY pattern still seen today.

(For a wonderfully-detailed and enlighteningly-illustrated article on this, see:   https://readmultiplex.com/2022/10/21/the-actual-reasons-the-qwerty-keyboard-layout-was-invented-and-how-it-changed-us/   And yes, that “Remington” was the firearms company, which was diversifying.)

In the later 19th century, the Industrial Revolution seemed  to begin to find a second wind and offices were increasingly full of typewriters and typists (one of the ways in which young women came into the workforce).

You can really see this in 1897’s Dracula,

where a major character, Mina Harker, uses her typing and other secretarial skills to help to defeat the vampire.  (And, if you’ve never read it, here’s an American first edition for you:    https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/45839/pg45839-images.html  For more on using the office to defeat Dracula, see “Take a Letter”, 30 December, 2020 on this blog)

But the machine which is the focus of this posting—and appears above, just after that Sidney Paget image of Holmes, wasn’t a Remington, but a Hammond, first put on the market in 1884.

(for more on early Hammonds, see:  https://www.antikeychop.com/hammondno1typewriter )

A much later version of one of these was owned by a Professor JRR Tolkien and, as he tells us, on which “I typed nearly all of The Lord of the Rings” (letter to Rayner Unwin, 22 June, 1952, Letters, 236).

The Hammond was a very different machine from the Remingtons in their various iterations, including, in time, the ability to shift typefaces (JRRT mentions in an airmail letter to Christopher during the war that he’s using a “midget” typeface to cram in more writing in the limited space of an airmail letter—see the letter of 7 July, 1944, Letters, 124.  For a very good article on Tolkien’s writing habits, see:  https://tonyriches.blogspot.com/2014/06/j-r-r-tolkiens-writing-habits.html )

With 1200 pages of manuscript, and only Tolkien to do the typing (or most of it, from his various accounts it’s unclear if he did every page himself—he had earlier typed out The Hobbit—see the letter to Christopher Bretherton, 16 July, 1964, Letters,  257), it’s not surprising that it took him so long to do a readable draft (and he only had one, as he tells Hugh Brogan –from a letter to Hugh Brogan, 4 September, 1950, Letters, 199-200), especially as he was not a trained typist.  “Touch typing” appeared as early as the 1880s, but it was a specialized skill (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Touch_typing )and we can only presume that JRRT was self-taught. 

And that he typed everything with only two fingers (see Philip Norman, “The Prevalence of Hobbits” in the New York Times Book Review, 15 January, 1967, which you can find here:   https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/01/02/11/specials/tolkien-mag67.html ).

And that’s where the two fingers of the title meet Tolkien’s Hammond typewriter.

Thanks, as always, for reading.

Stay well,

Imagine what JRRT could have done with a laptop,

And remember that there’s always

MTCIDC

O