The Lord of the Rings: The Window on the West (Part Two)

 

The Tale

Faramir’s last words about treachery are more than Sam can take. After all, what Mr. Frodo has gone through is for Faramir and all these Men as well as everybody else. If the Captain is implying his master murdered ‘this Boromir’ then ran away, he’s got no sense. If that’s what he thinks, say it and be done, before all the Orcs in Mordor descend on them.

Faramir tells him to be patient and let Frodo answer; he is the wiser. If Faramir were as hasty as Sam, he would have killed them long ago and been done with it. ‘But I do not slay man or beast needlessly, and not gladly even when it is needed.’ Sam sits down red-faced and rebuked and Faramir turns back to Frodo.

Frodo asked him how he knows that Boromir is dead? Tidings come in many forms. ‘Night oft brings news to near kindred.’ Boromir was his brother. A shadow of sorrow passes over his face. Does Frodo recall anything special that would identify Boromir?

Frodo debates a moment over what he should tell. He has saved the Ring from ‘proud’ Boromir, but here with Faramir and his men, could he ever escape if it became necessary? Yet from what he can judge, Faramir seems a man ‘less self-regarding, both sterner and wiser.’ Finally he replies that Boromir bore a horn.

‘You remember well,’ Faramir answers. A horn of one of the wild oxen of the East, bound with silver and graven with ancient letters, an heirloom of the House of Stewards. It is said that if anyone in need blew it in the ancient boundaries of Gondor there would come some answer. Well, eleven days before Faramir set out for Ithilien, he heard it blowing dimly from the North, like ‘an echo in the mind.’ It seemed like an ill omen.

Then three nights later, as he was sitting by the waters of the river Anduin, he saw something numinous, whether it was real or a vision. In the dark, on the waters of the river, a small strange glimmering grey boat floated down and near him. It drew close, as if to present itself to him. Then he saw the dead body of his brother Boromir, slain with many wounds, laying in the clear water the vessel seemed to have shipped. It comes close, but Faramir dared not touch it for awe.

But he clearly recognizes his brother, his gear, and his broken sword. Only one thing was missing, his horn. He had only one thing on him that Faramir didn’t recognize: a golden belt of linked leaves. Faramir called out to him, but the boat goes back into the stream of the river and passes away, dreamlike, into the night. But Faramir knows it was no dream and that Boromir is dead indeed, passed down to the Sea.

Notes

Tolkien elsewhere notes that the horn of the House of the Stewards came from ‘the Kine of Araw’, a special breed of wild ox named after the hunter Vala Orome, called Araw in Sindarin.

“The Kine of Araw were a species of oxen that lived in fields in Rhûn near the Sea of Rhûn, and they were hardier and wilder than any other oxen in Middle-earth. Legends claimed that they were descended from the cattle of Oromë, the Huntsman of the Valar, and so they were named the Kine of Araw (Araw being the Sindarin form of Oromë's name).

“The Kine were famous as the quarry of Vorondil the Hunter, ancestor of the Ruling Stewards of Gondor. It was he who cut a horn from one of these beasts and fashioned a hunting-horn from it, the Great Horn, which came to be carried by the eldest son of the Ruling Steward from Vorondil's time onward. The last heir to bear the horn was Boromir, who saw it broken in two in his battle with Orcs beneath Amon Hen. 

“In an unpublished manuscript held at the Bodleian Library, the Wild Kine were likened by Tolkien to aurochs.” – Tolkien Gateway. (The aurochs are a species of wild cattle, painted as far back as on cave walls, but only going extinct as recently as 1627.)

The numinous awe, the eerie dreamlike spirit of Faramir’s encounter suggests that there is some power or special grace behind it, whether it is from the One, or the Valar (possibly Nienna, Lady of Pity), or even just by the Elven powers placed on the boat by the people of Lothlorien. Whatever is going on, Faramir gets one last farewell with his brother. The halves of the horn later wash ashore and are taken to Denethor. They must have gone overboard sometime between Boromir’s final passage over Rauros Falls and Faramir’s sighting, possibly when the boat shipped all that water.