We’ve been traveling along the roads of Middle-earth in the last two postings, but we’ve taken a pause at Osgiliath,
(from the Encylopedia of Arda)
before our trip across the Anduin and beyond.
Frodo and Sam had crossed the Anduin by boat, much farther upstream,
(John Howe)
(Encyclopedia of Arda)
but the bridge here is broken—
and the real reason why it’s broken may lie, not in this Middle-earth, but in our own Middle-earth and far in the past, in the early history of Rome.
The earliest Italic settlers of the area had been farmers, who built communities on seven hills to the east of the Tiber River and farmed the land below.
To their north was an older civilization, the Etruscans,
who were, culturally, a more sophisticated people.
They were also a more powerful military people
(Giuseppe Rava)
and eventually took over Rome for about a century (616-509BC).
Their last ruler of the city, Tarquinius Superbus (“Tarquinius the Arrogant”), was ejected, however, in 509BC, but did not leave quietly, going to the Etruscan king, Lars Porsena, in another Etruscan town, Clusium (Etruscan “Clevsin”),
for help. Porsena marched on Rome—
(Peter Connolly)
but, after this, ancient histories diverge—and so will we, as we pause once more at that bridge—the Pons Sublicius—the first bridge at the crossing of the Tiber. As Lars Porsena moved against the city, the Roman militia came out to fight and were defeated.
Their only chance to save Rome, they believed, was to break down the bridge and three Romans, led by a lower-rank officer, Horatius, held back the Etruscans with two higher-rank officers while that was done.
Under Etruscan pressure, the other two began to retreat, but Horatius stood his ground, even though wounded more than once, until he had word that the bridge had been broken. Upon that news, he turned, leaped into the Tiber, and swam to the other bank.
(Richard Hook)
At least one of our sources, Titus Livius (59BC-17AD), is doubtful about all of this, especially because Horatius was said to have done his swimming in full armor, but it fits into a regular story-pattern for Romans, in which a Roman suffers bravely—all for the sake of Rome. A favorite in this pattern was the story of Regulus, a Roman official, who, being allowed by his Carthaginian captors to return to Rome to deal with terms for a prisoner exchange, spoke against it in Rome, then returned to his captors to meet an unpleasant end. (For more on Regulus see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcus_Atilius_Regulus_(consul_267_BC) )
Long after Rome’s empire was history—and legends—Horatius’ story survived and, in Victorian England, had become a literary staple because of the poem “Horatius ”, the first chapter in Thomas Babington Macaulay’s (1800-1859)
would have had a double exposure to this story, then: first, in his copy of Livy’s history of Rome, Ab Urbe Condita, and then in Macaulay—which is why, rereading this passage, in which Boromir details Gondor’s rearguard action against Mordor, I saw what may have been the ultimate source for Tolkien’s bridge:
“ ‘Only a remnant of our eastern force came back, destroying the last bridge that still stood amid the ruins of Osgiliath.
I was in the company that held the bridge, until it was cast down behind us. Four only were saved by swimming: my brother and myself and two others.’ “ (The Fellowship of the Ring, Book Two, Chapter 2, “The Council of Elrond”)
Thanks, as ever, for reading. Next posting: the third and last part of the little series on Middle-earth roads, where we’ll leap over the Anduin and move east.
Stay well,
Building bridges is always better than breaking them–just ask a Roman,
“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 )
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.
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?
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”)
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
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—
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
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–
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
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–
Belshazzar, the king of the Babylonians, was having a lovely party—
“Baltassar rex fecit grande convivium optimatibus suis mille: et unusquisque secundum suam bibebat aetatem.”
“Belshazzar held a great banquet for a thousand of his elite and each one was drinking according to his time of life.” But, wishing to up the fun, he decided to make the party a bit more lavish—
Praecepit ergo jam temulentus ut afferrentur vasa aurea et argentea, quae asportaverat Nabuchodonosor pater ejus de templo, quod fuit in Ierusalem, ut biberent in eis rex, et optimates ejus, uxoresque ejus, et concubinae.
“And so now, being drunk, he ordered that the golden and silver vessels which Nebuchadnezzar, his father, had carried away from the temple which had been in Jerusalem be brought in so that the king and his nobles and his wives and concubines might drink in them.”
[“fuit” here is the perfect form and might be translated “has been”, but that form can suggest a permanent state, the pluperfect, suggesting that there would be no more Jerusalem.]
and then things go very wrong–
“In eadem hora apparuerunt digiti, quasi manus hominis scribentis contra candelabrum in superficie parietis aulae regiae: et rex aspiciebat articulos manus scribentis.”
“In the same hour, there appeared fingers, like a man’s hand, opposite the lampstand, writing on the surface of the wall of the royal hall, and the king was staring at the joints of the hand writing.”
(Rembrandt—who clearly had no idea what the real Babylonian king would have worn, but settled for something right out of the visit of the Magi, which was undoubtedly good enough for his audience, who would have had no more idea than he did)
Needless to say, this was a bad omen, but one his own counselors couldn’t interpret, as the message was not in Babylonian. His queen, however, recommended that a Jewish interpreter, Daniel, be summoned, who arrived and interpreted the writing, which may have included some rather fancy word-play, but which meant: “You are not long on the throne and your kingdom is about to become the property of the Persians.”
Behind this story lies not only the status of Daniel as prophet and interpreter, and the idea that the Hebrew God is not to be messed with, even by kings, but also, for this posting, the importance of writing—the omen isn’t, like so many others, based on the flight of birds or the liver of a sheep or the behavior of chickens,
all things which the ancient world would have thought significant–but on something handwritten (literally) on a palace wall. This is clearly so unusual that its significance is immediately multiplied, and which, since Daniel can not only interpret it, but, to do so, he can read it, tells us something more about Daniel: he is literate.
Because we in the modern West live in such a literate world ourselves, it’s sometimes hard to understand earlier worlds where literacy was not the norm. Could Belshazzar read? Probably not: that was the job of technical people, scribes,
(These are actually Sumerians, but can stand in for Babylonian scribes, as the Babylonians used the writing system, cuneiform,
which the Sumerian scribes had invented.)
whom rulers could call upon when needed, as we see in ancient and medieval societies in general. Literacy was a skill, like carpentry or masonry, and limited in the number of people who could practice it. Could this have been true in Middle-earth, based as it is upon the medieval world of our Middle-earth, as well?
Gondor appears to have had a long tradition at least of extensive record-keeping, as we hear from Gandalf:
“And yet there lie in his hoards many records that few even of the lore-masters now can read, for their scripts and tongues have become dark to later men.” (The Fellowship of the Ring, Book Two, Chapter 2, “The Council of Elrond”)
As for the Rohirrim, I would guess that, although there may have been some literacy, much of their past—and possibly their present—was preserved in oral tradition, as Aragorn says of Meduseld:
“But to the Riders of the Mark it seems so long ago…that the raising of this house is but a memory of song.” (The Two Towers, Book Three, Chapter 6, “The King of the Golden Hall”)
And Theoden says to Aragorn:
“Will you ride with me then, son of Arathorn? Maybe we shall cleave a road, or make 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”)
In the Prologue to The Lord of the Rings, we are told that the Hobbits as a whole had had potential literacy for some time, in fact, from their days of moving westwards towards what would become the Shire:
“It was in these early days, doubtless, that the Hobbits learned their letters and began to write, after the manner of the Dunedain, who had in their turn long before learned the art from the Elves.” (The Lord of the Rings, Prologue I, “Concerning Hobbits”)
As in the case of other medieval worlds, however, this was seemingly not general literacy, although rather than being the possession of a specialized class, as in Babylon or ancient Egypt,
it might, instead, have been a mark of class.
Consider Sam Gamgee. His father is the gardener for Bilbo Baggins and Sam is his assistant.
(Robert Chronister)
From his position—and from the way he addresses his “betters” as “Mister”, while they address him by his first name—it’s clear that Sam and his father are not of the same social class as the Bagginses. And so, when the Gaffer says:
“Mr. Bilbo has learned him his letters—meaning no harm, mark you, and I hope no harm will come of it.” (The Fellowship of the Ring, Book One, Chapter 1, “A Long-Expected Party”)
This appears to be what we might call a mark of that class difference: Bilbo, a ‘gentleman” can read, although, as we hear of no academies in the Shire, presumably through home-schooling, implying that there was at least one other person in his family’s household who could also read and who had taught him. Considering the Gaffer’s potential uneasiness about it—why should there be harm in being able to read?—I think that we can imagine that the Gaffer himself could not—and himself was aware of the class distinction (Sam might get ideas “above his station”?).
And yet it’s to Sam that Frodo passes the book begun so long ago by Bilbo:
“ ‘Why, you have nearly finished it, Mr. Frodo!’ Sam exclaimed. ‘Well, you have kept at it, I must say.’
‘I have quite finished, Sam,’ said Frodo. ‘The last pages are for you.’ “ (The Return of the King, Book Six, Chapter 9, “The Grey Havens”)
Daniel’s literacy gives him the ability to read the Hebrew God’s warning to Belshazzar, establishing his importance in the story (which continues, as he becomes the confidant and friend of the new king, Darius.)
And here we see the real reason JRRT had given Sam literacy: not that he might read Bilbo/Frodo’s efforts, but that he might write and therefore complete the story of The Lord of the Rings, and thus add one more element to his importance in the narrative.
In our next posting, however, we will examine another use of writing and reading—and a much less benign one.
Thanks, as always for reading.
Stay well,
Delight in the fact that you can read,
And remember that there’s always
MTCIDC
O
PS
As to evidence of general literacy in the Shire, we see, in “The Scouring of the Shire”, some public notices—a sign on the new gate on the bridge over the Brandywine (“No admittance between sundown and sunrise”) and an anonymous hobbit calls out “Can’t you read the notice?” In the watch house just beyond we see: “…on every wall there was a notice and list of Rules”. As far as I can tell, however, these are the only public signs we see in Middle-earth and seem to me more about Authority than literacy. Just the fact that they’re there must have an effect upon cowed hobbits, even if they can’t read.
PPS
For completeness sake, although we have only bits and pieces of dwarvish, we can say that at least some dwarves were literate, evidence being the fragmentary account of the reworking of Moria which the Fellowship find in the Chamber of Records there,
as well as the inscription on Balin’s tomb. (for more on JRRT’s work on recreating that fragmentary record, the so-called Book of Mazarbul, see: “Aging Documents”, 31 July, 2024)
My own knowledge of King Arthur probably began with books like The Boy’s King Arthur, by Sidney Lanier, originally published in 1880, with perhaps the best known version being the 1917 edition, with its wonderful illustrations by N.C.Wyeth,
and Howard Pyle’s The Story of King Arthur and His Knights, mentioned above, before, as a teenager, I found the Imaginative and witty but ultimately melancholy T.H. White’s 1958 The Once and Future King,
the first volume of which being made into a Disney movie, The Sword in the Stone in 1963,
all of which being direct descendants from Sir Thomas Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur, written perhaps in the 1460s and one of the first books printed in England by William Caxton in 1485.
I had known that, behind Malory, lies Geoffrey of Monmouth’s early 12th-Century Historia Regum Britanniae (aka De Gestis Britonum—that is, “History of the Kings of Britain” or “Concerning the Acts/Deeds of the Britons”), but there was something new to me in doing a little reading for this posting: the story of the sword and its stone. Because it’s in all the later versions, even forming the title of one part of White’s larger collection, I had assumed that it was a story which had always been part of the bigger history of Arthur, and yet it seems to have been an independent creation, by a French knight, Robert de Boron, in a poem entitled Merlin, dated to the end of the 12th, the beginning of the 13th-Century.
The whole Arthur story is a tangle of English and French poems and prose works, showing what a fertile field it was for poets and story-tellers, just as Troy had been, many centuries before—and still could be for medieval creators, if we think of Geoffrey Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde as an example of a continued interest. (You can read Chaucer’s poem here: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/257/257-h/257-h.htm ) Who influenced whom, sometimes even who someone might have been, is a happy battlefield for scholars, so I’ll only point you to some discussion of de Boron and his poem here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_de_Boron#Further_reading and here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merlin_(Robert_de_Boron_poem) and include a 15th-century English prose translation of the Old French of the original here, which is quite readable, and not just if you’re used to Chaucer’s 14th-century English: https://metseditions.org/read/jy0W7X8HvLalIgvvC1z6jFMKyK4EakW )
For me, the important point of the story is really a question : who is to be king of England and how can he prove that he is the rightful king? And the answer is provided by that sword, as the 15th-century text reads:
“And the archebisshop lowted to the swerde and sawgh letteres of golde in the stiel. And he redde the letteres that seiden, ‘Who taketh this swerde out of this ston sholde be kynge by the eleccion of Jhesu Criste.’ “
(“And the archbishop bent over the sword and saw letters of gold in the steel. And he read the letters that said, ‘Who takes this sword out of the stone should be king by the choice of Jesus Christ.’ “)
This brings us to King Trotter.
It’s clear from his various letters and from Carpenter’s biography that Tolkien spent a lot of time in a kind of creative wandering before he settled upon various elements which make up the eventual The Lord of the Rings. As he writes to W.H. Auden:
“…the main idea…was arrived at in one of the earliest chapters still surviving…It is really given, and present in germ, from the beginning, though I had no conscious notion of what the Necromancer stood for (except ever-recurrent evil) in The Hobbit, nor of his connexion with the Ring. But if you wanted to go on from the end of The Hobbit I think the ring would be your inevitable choice as a link. If then you wanted a large tale, the Ring would at once acquire a capital letter; and the Dark Lord would immediately appear. As he did, unasked, on the hearth at Bag End as soon as I came to that point. So the essential Quest started at once. But I met a lot of things on the way that astonished me. Tom Bombadil I knew already; but I had never been to Bree. Strider sitting in the corner of the inn was a shock, and I had no idea who he was than had Frodo.” (letter to W.H. Auden, 7 June, 1955, Letters, 315-316)
In one of his wanderings, he had created a kind of Hobbit Ranger, “Trotter”. As Carpenter tells us:
[on a holiday at Sidmouth in 1938] “There he did a good deal of work on the story, bringing the hobbits to a village inn at ‘Bree’ where they meet a strange character, another unpremeditated element in the narrative. In the first drafts Tolkien described this person as ‘a queer-looking brown-faced hobbit’, and named him ‘Trotter’.” (Carpenter, 191)
And so, in fact, Tolkien had not initially met Strider in the Prancing Pony in Bree at all, but a completely different character, one who would, at a later date, disappear, to be replaced by Aragorn, son of Arathorn, who would, by the end of the story, be the king who has returned.
(the Hildebrandts)
But how will he ever prove that he is that king?
One clue is in the verses which are attached to a letter Gandalf had written to Frodo, but, neglected by the landlord of The Prancing Pony, was only delivered when Frodo and his friends had reached Bree:
“All that is gold does not glitter,
Not all those who wander are lost;
The old that is strong does no wither,
Deep roots are not reached by the frost.
From the ashes a fire shall be woken,
A light from the shadows shall spring;
Renewed shall be blade that was broken,
The crownless again shall be king.” (The Fellowship of the Ring, Book One, Chapter 10, “Strider”)
When Pippin and Sam both express doubt about Strider’s identity, he makes a bold gesture, saying,
“ ‘If I had killed the real Strider, I could kill you. And I should have killed you already without so much talk. If I was after the Ring I could have it—NOW!’
He stood up, and seemed suddenly to grow much taller…Throwing back his cloak, he laid his hand on the hilt of a sword that had hung concealed by his side.”
But then:
“He drew out his sword, and they saw that the blade was indeed broken a foot below the hilt.”
As I have suggested in a previous posting (see “Swords Drawn”, 2 July, 2025), this sword appears to have been influenced by something which Tolkien had either read or had read to him as a child from Andrew Lang’s The Red Fairy Book, 1890.
In the last tale in the book, “The Story of Sigurd”, we find:
“ONCE upon a time there was a King in the North who had won
many wars, but now he was old. Yet he took a new wife, and
then another Prince, who wanted to have married her, came up
against him with a great army. The old King went out and fought
bravely, but at last his sword broke, and he was wounded and his men
fled. But in the night, when the battle was over, his young wife came
out and searched for him among the slain, and at last she found
him, and asked whether he might be healed. But he said
‘No’, his luck was gone, his sword was broken, and he must die. And he
told her that she would have a son, and that son would be a great
warrior, and would avenge him on the other King, his enemy. And
he bade her keep the broken pieces of the sword, to make a new sword
for his son, and that blade should be called Gram.” (Lang, “The Story of Sigurd” from The Red Fairy Book, 357)
Just as Sigurd, when other swords have failed his test, has his father’s sword reforged, so the smiths of Rivendell reforge Aragorn’s sword and he changes its name from Narsil to Anduril, and even shows it, via Saruman’s palantir, to Sauron, clearly as a threat, as this is the very sword Isildur used to cut the Ring from Sauron’s hand long ago. (see The Return of the King, Book Five, Chapter 2, “The Passing of the Grey Company”)
But returning to the opening of this posting, I would wonder just how surprised JRRT really was when he returned to the Prancing Pony and found, not Trotter, the hobbit, but Strider, aka Aragorn, son of Arathorn, descended from the ancient rulers of Gondor and himself the heir? Although he had mixed feelings about Arthurian legend (see from a letter to Milton Waldman, “late in 1951”, Letters, 202, among other places– even though, in the mid-1930s, he attempted and abandoned a long poem, “The Fall of Arthur”—see Carpenter, 171), Tolkien had been well aware of its stories from childhood (“The Arthurian legends also excited him.” Carpenter, 30) and it’s clear that no story he had ever read or heard ever completely disappeared from his mind and so we’re left perhaps with a question: did Aragorn arrive with the sword, either from Sigurd or Arthur, or did the sword, in Tolkien’s memory from his earliest years, come first, making Aragorn—who needed proof that he was the rightful king, just as Arthur did–come first?
In either event, I think that we should be thankful that both arrived as it’s hard to imagine the coronation not of Aragorn,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mPuEO0VAh04 This is an attempt at Latin conversation and fun to listen to, but the subtitles don’t always mirror what is said and the use of “ius” instead of “lex” might be questioned for “law” in the script.
Try this slowed-down version with subtitles—in both French and English—as I imagine that any French Mabel would have tried out would have been in talking to JRRT, then a small child, and would have been slow: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aMx0d42wzBs Unfortunately, in later life Tolkien would write: “For instance I dislike French..”—and he also rejected French cooking—see “From a letter to Deborah Webster”, 25 October, 1958, Letters, 411.
From Mabel, we can pass to more formal education, first at King Edward’s School in Birmingham.
Here, according to Carpenter, he was exposed to Greek:
“On his return to King Edward’s, Ronald was placed in the Sixth Class, about half way up the school. He was now learning Greek. Of his first contact with this language he later wrote: ‘The fluidity of Greek, punctuated by hardness, and with its surface glitter captivated me. But part of the attraction was antiquity and alien remoteness (from me): it did not touch home.’ “ (Carpenter, J.R.R. Tolkien. 35)
This is closer to what we understand Greek to have sounded like, including turning Greek theta into the sound T + a tiny explosion of breath afterwards (as Greek phi would sound like P + that same explosion). There are a number of recitations on-line, but often strongly influenced by modern Greek, including the distinctive modern Greek pronunciation of sigma, which is a kind of hissy under-the-breath sound, which I like, but seems more modern than classical.
Even as he was increasing his knowledge of Latin and adding Greek to it through school instruction, Tolkien was making his own additions to what went on in his head.
Because his guardian, Father Francis Morgan (1857-1935)
spoke Spanish fluently and had a collection of books in Spanish, Tolkien was drawn to the language, later writing:
“…my guardian was half Spanish and in my early teens I used to pinch his books and try to learn it: the only Romance language that gives me the particular pleasure of which I am speaking…” (letter to W.H. Auden, 7 June, 1955, Letters, 312)
“…encouraged his students to read Chaucer , and he recited the Canterbury Tales to them in the original Middle English.” (Carpenter, J.R.R. Tolkien, 35)
(Here, by the way, is an interesting comparison in the changing sounds of English over centuries: Old/Middle/Early Modern “The Lord’s Prayer”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nhgXnEGSn4A )
This isn’t all, however.
“One of his school-friends had bought a book at a missionary sale, but found that he had no use for it and sold it to Tolkien. It was Joseph Wright’s Primer of the Gothic Language. Tolkien opened it and immediately experienced ‘a sensation at least as full of delight as first looking into Chapman’s Homer. ‘ “ (Carpenter, J.R.R. Tolkien, 45)
“Then he turned to a different language and took a few hesitant steps in Old Norse, reading line by line in the original words the story of Sigurd and the dragon Fafnir that had fascinated him in Andrew Lang’s Red Fairy Book when he was a small child.” (Carpenter, J.R.R. Tolkien, 43)
Here’s a brief selection : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ASsCH17cbA ( This is from Jackson Crawford’s very interesting Norse website. And you can read the Sigurd story which fascinated Tolkien here: https://archive.org/details/redfairybook00langiala/redfairybook00langiala/ Tolkien formalized and extended his study of Old Norse at Oxford—see Carpenter, 71-72. Old Norse is the ancestor of Icelandic and JRRT was particularly pleased when he was informed that The Hobbit was being translated into Icelandic. See “from a letter ot Ungfru Adalsteinsdottir”, 5 June, 1973, Letters, 603)
With all of this behind him, Tolkien went off to Oxford, to Exeter College,
intending to continue his classical studies, but then:
“I did not learn any Welsh till I was an undergraduate, and found in it an abiding linguistic-aesthetic satisfaction…”
As a child, Tolkien’s eye had been caught by hopper cars labeled in Welsh full of coal from Welsh mines (Carpenter, J.R.R. Tolkien, 33-34),
but it was only at Exeter , encouraged by the man who had written the Gothic text which had been such a revelation, Joseph Wright (1855-1930), that
“He managed to find books of medieval Welsh, and he began to read the language that had fascinated him on coal-trucks. He was not disappointed; indeed he was confirmed in all his expectations of beauty.” (Carpenter, J.R.R. Tolkien, 64)
and then:
“ ‘Most important, perhaps, after Gothic was the discovery in Exeter College library, when I was supposed to be reading for Honour Mods, of a Finnish Grammar. It was like discovering a complete wine-cellar filled with bottles of an amazing wine of a kind and flavour never tasted before. It quite intoxicated me…’ ” (letter to W.H. Auden, 7 June, 1955, Letters, 312)
(I have no current evidence for what Tolkien’s actual discovery might have been, but here’s an 1890 Finnish grammar that, being an Oxford University Press publication, might be a good possibility: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/59795/59795-h/59795-h.htm )
So, what might Tolkien have had echoing through his capacious head? German, French, Latin, Greek, Old and Middle English, Gothic, Spanish, Old Norse, Welsh, and Finnish—which I thought covered them all until I discovered:
“In hospital, besides working on his mythology and the elvish languages, he was teaching himself a little Russian and improving his Spanish and Italian.” (Carpenter, J.R.R. Tolkien, 106)
and:
“The Dutch edition and translation are going well. I have had to swot at Dutch; but it is not a really nice language. Actually I am at present immersed in Hebrew. If you want a beautiful but idiotic alphabet, and a language so difficult that it makes Latin (and even Greek) seem footling—but also glimpses into a past that makes Homer seem recent—then that is the stuff!” (letter to Michael George Tolkien, 24 April, 1957, Letters, 370)
As if German, French, Latin, Greek, Old and Middle English, Gothic ,Old Norse, Spanish, Italian, and a little Russian, Welsh, and Finnish—not to mention creating Sindarin, Quenya, a little of the language of the Dwarves, a bit of the tongue of the Ents, Rohirric, and even a fragment of the Black Speech–were not enough.
Thanks, as ever for reading.
Stay well,
Remember that: “To learn a language is to have one more window from which to look at the world.” (a Chinese proverb)
And remember, as well, that there’s
MTCIDC
O
PS
As a contrast, here’s the sound of a language Tolkien didn’t care for (besides French)–see “From a letter to Deborah Webster”, 25 October, 1958, Letters, 412–https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vfXBjv-uMZM
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–
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,
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”).
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.
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,
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:
AI seems to be everywhere and talked about all the time, sometimes in the kind of excited tones that earlier centuries used for STEAM! ELECTRICITY! THE INTERNAL COMBUSTION ENGINE! NUCLEAR POWER! COMPUTERS! and sometimes in less than enthusiastic voices which point out the pitfalls, including the (apocryphal? urban legend? true?) story about the computer which refused to turn itself off, or the one which supposedly tried to blackmail its user (possibly the same story?).
The latter, for me, has brought up this—
and this fragment of dialogue, where the Terminator’s target is being given a crash course by her protector in why she is that target:
“SARAH
I don’t understand…
REESE
Defense network computer. New.
Powerful. Hooked into everything.
Trusted to run it all. They say it
got smart…a new order of intelli-
gence. Then it saw all people as
a threat, not just the ones on the
other side. Decided our fate in a
micro-second…extermination.”
(if you’d like to read what appears to be a late draft of the screenplay, see:
This uneasiness about new technology—and robots, in particular, is hardly new. In the early 20th century, as technology was rapidly accelerating, we see Karl Capek ‘s (that’s CHA-pek), 1890-1938,
1920 play R.U.R.,
which stands for “Rossum’s Universal Robots”, a company which is supplying the world with mechanical workers, as one of the main characters says of the formula which produced the original successful models:
“Dr. Gall. We go on using it and making Robots. All the universities are sending in long petitions to restrict their production. Otherwise, they say, mankind will become extinct through lack of fertility. But the R. U. R. shareholders, of course, won’t hear of it. All the governments, on the other hand, are clamoring for an increase in production, to raise the standards of their armies. And all the manufacturers in the world are ordering Robots like mad.” (R.U.R., Act II)
And you can see here the tensions which such an invention can—and do– bring: those who can see the future are concerned, those who are only interested in profit—or death—are boosting production, regardless of any hazard.
This all comes apart when a limited number of robots (from the Czech word roboti, “workers”) gain sentience—“got smart…a new order of intelligence”—you can see that uneasiness started early—realize that they are far more intelligent and stronger, with more endurance, than humans, and revolt, determined to wipe out humanity and replace it with themselves.
They rally all of the other robots and, by the play’s end, only one human appears to be left. That ending is perhaps a little more hopeful, but I won’t spoil it for you—you can read it (in its first English translation) here: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/59112/59112-h/59112-h.htm
Tolkien was somewhat of a science fiction fan, enjoying, in particular, the work of Isaac Asimov, 1920-1992. (See the second footnote to a letter to Charlotte and Denis Plimmer, 8 February, 1968, Letters, 530)
He doesn’t list what he had read, unfortunately, but, as the letter in which he mentions (and misspells) Asimov dates from 1967, I’ve wondered whether he had read Asimov’s 1950 classic collection of short stories, I, Robot,
the first of a series of “Robot” novels, beginning with The Caves of Steel, 1954.
To Asimov’s annoyance, the publisher took the title of that short story collection from a 1939 short story by “Eando Binder” (pen name of Earl and Otto Binder) published in the January, 1939, issue of Amazing Stories.
Asimov tells us that he had read and been inspired by the 1939 short story, but his 1950 collection, of which a number of the stories had been published earlier, is told from the outside, and is a very interesting series of what might be seen as profiles of robots and their behavior over a number of years and events, narrated by Dr. Susan Calvin, a “robopsychologist”. You can read the collection here: https://dn720004.ca.archive.org/0/items/english-collections-1/I%2C%20Robot%20-%20Isaac%20Asimov.pdf And read about it here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I,_Robot
One aspect of Asimov’s early stories is that robot behavior—almost as if the creators there had seen or read R.U.R. and paid attention to the warning implied (and I’ll bet that Asimov, who appears to have read everything, probably had read the play)- – is governed by a set of basic laws, first appearing in the story “Runaround” in I, Robot:
“Powell’s radio voice was tense in Donovan’s ear: ‘Now, look, let’s start with the three fundamental Rules of Robotics—the three rules that are built most deeply into a robot’s positronic brain.’ In the darkness, his gloved fingers ticked off each point. ‘We have: One, a robot may not injure a human being, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.’
‘Right!’ ‘Two,’ continued Powell, ‘a robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.’ ‘Right!’ ‘And three, a robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Laws.’ ‘Right! Now where are we?’ “
As we confront the extremely rapid growth of AI, still so much a mystery, even if we don’t believe stories about increasing—and potentially menacing—sentience, I’m only hoping that, as I suppose Tolkien did, at least some of the designers have read “Runaround” and built those laws into their experimental models.
Thanks, as ever, for reading.
Stay well,
Be interested in technology, but be aware, as Asimov was, that it should be addressed critically,
And remember that, as always, there’s
MTCIDC
O
PS
For more on the history of automata and droids, see: “Eyeing Robots”, 8 April, 2021. Capek came from a very interesting family. Read about him and them here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karel_%C4%8Capek
doubtfulsea 