The Lord of the Rings: Many Meetings

The Tale

Frodo wakes up late in the morning, and at first thinks he’s just woken up in Bag End after a long night of bad dreams. But then he notices that the roof is flat, not arched like a hobbit hole. He wonders aloud where he is, and what is the time?

He is surprised and overjoyed to have his questions answered by the voice of Gandalf, which tells him he is safe in the House of Elrond. Frodo sits up and sees the long-missing wizard sitting there, calmly smoking. Gandalf chides him for all the foolish things he’s done since he left home, but Frodo is too happy to mind.

He first asks if Sam and the others are all right, then what happened at the Ford. It seems very dim to him. Gandalf says he was beginning to fade, his wound overcoming him at last. But he resisted to the end. Gandalf knows all about his struggles with the Ring, from the Barrow-downs to the Ford; while Frodo was sleeping ‘it has not been hard for me to read your mind and memory.’   He says he called Frodo foolish just now, but that he is really impressed with how far and through such dangers that he and the others have come still bearing the Ring.

Gandalf reveals the surprising news that he was delayed because he was held captive, that the Black Riders are indeed the Ringwraiths that he mentioned before, that Strider and the Rangers are the last remnant in the North of the Men of the West, and that it has been four nights and three days since he was brought to Rivendell from the Ford. The bright shining figure Frodo saw driving the Riders into the river was Glorfindel, revealed to the hobbit’s sight as he appears in the Unseen.

Elrond Half-Elven, the Master of Rivendell, has removed the splinter of the Morgul-blade in the nick of time before Frodo could succumb and became a wraith himself. Gandalf says he is safe for a time with the Elves, who have great power to resist the Dark Lord, but that Rivendell is now like an island under siege. Frodo sits back in relief. He is looking well, awake and aware. But Gandalf seems to see a hint of transparency about him, a relic of his fading, especially in his left hand. Gandalf says he should rest now, but Frodo says he can’t rest till his curiosity satisfied.

The wizard tells him how Elrond released the flood at the Ford as soon as the first Nazgul entered the water. Gandalf added the white horses and riders as well as the grinding boulders. The Riders are uncloaked and swept away and their horses killed, but the Ringwraiths themselves cannot be destroyed thus. Now he bids Frodo finally rest, as there will be a feast in his honor that evening, as the Ring-bearer and heir to Bilbo, the Ring-finder. Frodo settles down to rest again, wondering what Bilbo would think of his adventure if he could hear about it.

He wakes up as the evening draws near and feels ready for food and drink and company. As he dresses, he sees a slimmer hobbit in the mirror than he’s seen for many a year. There is a knock on the door and Sam comes in; Gandalf has sent him to see if Frodo is ready to come down.  He comes and takes Frodo’s hand; it has been so cold as Sam has waited at his bedside all these nights. He strokes it gently in wonder, blushes, and turns shyly away. Then he dances a bit to see Frodo up and himself again. He thought Gandalf must have been joking.

They go and find Merry and Pippin and Gandalf sitting on a porch and waiting for them. Pippin hails Frodo merrily as ‘Lord of the Ring’. Gandalf says not to mention evil things in the valley, though they do not come there; the Lord of the Ring is not Frodo but the master of the Dark Tower in Mordor. It is ominous but doesn’t dampen the hobbits’ spirits as Frodo is well and they’re off to a feast.

They go to the hall, which is filled with folk, mostly Elves, but a few guests of other sorts. Elrond sits in a great chair on the dais, with Glorfindel and Gandalf seated on either hand, ‘revealed as lords of dignity and power.’ Frodo also sees for the first time Arwen, Elrond’s daughter, recently returned from a long time in Lorien, the land of her mother’s kin. Frodo is both surprised and abashed at her beauty. It is said she is the image of her foremother Luthien, of whom Strider sang in the wilderness.

After he sees that Sam and the other hobbits are seated happily at another table, Frodo (who has missed many a good meal) applies himself to the feast. When he finally comes up for air, he notices that he is sitting next to an aged dwarf of important appearance. When the dwarf sees Frodo looking at him, he gets up, bows, and introduces himself as ‘Gloin, at your service.’

Frodo jumps up and excitedly returns the bow. This is indeed one of Thorin and Bilbo’s companions on the quest to the Lonely Mountain. In fact, his presence in Rivendell is connected to Bilbo’s old adventure, but he will save that tale for now. Instead, he talks about news of the Mountain and Dale. They have been doing well, with King Dain still ruling the dwarves and Brand, the grandson of Bard, ruling Dale. But Balin and Ori and Oin have left, and it is their disappearance that is another reason Gloin has come to Rivendell.

The feast ends, and the company adjourns to the Hall of Fire, a room given to firelight, peace, and song. Elrond guides Frodo to a small figure wrapped in a cloak, who seems to be drowsing by the fire. Elrond bids him awake, and it is revealed to be Bilbo, who snorts that he was not sleeping but working on a bit of poetry. Frodo greets him with joy and wonder.

Bilbo tells him about all he has done since he left Bag End. He did visit the Lonely Mountain first, but returned to Rivendell and had been there since, working on his book and writing some songs. Sometimes he has wanted to visit Frodo again, but they ‘seemed to think the Enemy was looking high and low for me, and would make mincemeat of me, if he caught me tottering about in the wild.’

However, Bilbo is curious about that old Ring of his, now that he’s heard so much more about it. Could he get a little peep at it?

Frodo takes out the Ring, which has been placed on a light strong chain around his neck. Bilbo reaches for it, and Frodo suddenly has a vision of him, as through a shadow, as ‘a little wrinkled creature with a hungry face and bony groping hands.’ He feels a desire to strike it.

Bilbo looks at him, then quietly tells him to put the Ring away. He understands how it is now. He regrets that the burden has passed to Frodo, and asks if adventures really ever have an end, and if it’s any good trying to finish his book. Frodo hides the Ring again, then he and Bilbo have some ‘real talk’, about the Shire and its doings, to distract their minds.

They are deep in conversation when Strider appears, dressed in dark green cloth. Bilbo hails him as ‘the Dunadan’, the Man of the West. He is frequently called that in Rivendell, but we should now on refer to him by his more proper name, Aragorn. He asks why he wasn’t at the feast; he says meaningfully that the Lady Arwen was there. Aragorn says he often must put mirth aside for business. Elrond’s sons have returned unlooked for and that they had tidings that he needed to hear. He and Bilbo go off to work on the song Bilbo had been composing.

Frodo stays behind, becoming enchanted by the Elvish singing that seems to show him distant and dreamlike visions of things he has never imagined before. He falls asleep, but as he slowly wakes, he hears a voice chanting a song about Earendil, Elrond’s half-elven father, who journeyed to Valinor to plead for aid against the first Dark Lord Morgoth, and who became a star, voyaging through the heavens with a Silmaril bound on his brow. As Frodo awakes, he recognizes the singer as Bilbo.

The elves around him applaud, and say now they must hear it again, as they can’t tell which lines are by Bilbo and which are by the Dunadan. The old hobbit refuses to tell them, but secretly tells Frodo the only part Strider put in was something about a green stone. He seemed to think it important.

Bilbo and Frodo leave the Hall for Bilbo’s room to have some more talk, not without a little regret on Frodo’s part about leaving the Elvish songs. As they go, they start to hear a hymn to Elbereth, the Queen who ‘kindled star on star’. But in the room they have a long talk, not of Shire news or of the darkness gathering around them, but of the fair things they have seen on their journeys, of Elves and stars and trees and the bright Fall in the woods. At last Sam comes to remind Frodo that there is a council tomorrow and that he should get some rest. They part, and Bilbo says he will take a walk outside and look at ‘the stars of Elbereth.’

Bits and Bobs

With this chapter we begin the second half of The Fellowship of the Ring or Book II (‘The Ring Goes South’) of the six books of The Lord of the Rings.

When Gandalf talks about the Black Riders, we learn a lot about the Dark Lord’s growing power, his orcs and trolls, wargs and werewolves, and many Men, ‘warriors and kings, that walk alive under the Sun, and yet are under his sway. And their numbers are growing daily.’

The eventual reveal of Bilbo at Rivendell is prepared for by many mentions of him before he appears in the Hall of Fire. We are also teased a bit with further revelations about Aragorn and the presence of Arwen. She is at this point of time 2,777 years old.

The emotional reactions of Sam on finding Frodo well again are interpreted by many in these post-Freudian times as indication of some kind of sexual relation between the two. They seem incapable of holding the thought than any strong relationship between males can be formed on anything other than at least a crypto-homosexual attraction. It seems highly unlikely given Tolkien’s own religious and personal opinions, but in the era of deconstructive criticism, people feel free to add whatever meaning they like to an author’s work, whatever his intent.

Frodo’s Ring-induced hallucination of Bilbo as a greedy wrinkled creature is excellent foreshadowing of the appearance of Gollum later in the books and a hint of what his fate might have been if he hadn’t given up the Ring. His desire to see it also shows that the Ring still has a grip on him. This scene in the Bakshi film shows Bilbo almost having a stroke (Billy Barty was his model/guide under the animation), while in the Jackson films he actually briefly transforms into a grasping monster.

We are given some insight into Elvish art, where song and enchantment work together to place the listener into a waking dream where he seems to actually be living and experiencing what he hears. Tolkien covers this even more fully in his essay ‘On Fairy Stories’, where he feigns that Elves are real, and this ‘Secondary Creation’ is their Art par excellence.

In the song of Earendil we get another lore drop from The Silmarillion. It is said that Bilbo (perhaps as a sort of expy for Tolkien) had invented the rhyme scheme of the poem himself and was rather proud of it. Another example of it, ‘Errantry’, appears in The Adventures of Tom Bombadil and is also said to be by Bilbo, perhaps an earlier essay developed into this song. Aragorn says if Bilbo has the cheek to compose a song about Earendil in the house of his son Elrond, then good luck to him.

I was trying to find some good illustrations depicting Arwen, but the internet is swamped by images of Liv Tyler. While she is indeed beautiful (at least in appearance) I can only accept her as a sort of symbol for what Arwen must be. While there is no definite identification of the Judy King Rieniets image with Arwen per se, I have always thought of it in connection with her. I also find that JKR did much illustrating work, including some for Madwand (a book I used to have), as well as writing for the 1980’s reboot of The Twilight Zone.

The next chapter, ‘The Council of Elrond’, contains so much information I may well have to divide it into several sections. But that will be after my weekend break.