The Lord of the Rings: The Departure of Boromir

 

The Tale

Aragorn is speeding on up the hill of Amon Hen, every now and then bending down to be sure he is still following Frodo’s faint tracks. He reaches the high seat there and looks out. He is granted no visions as Frodo was, only distant hills and a lone eagle descending in circles from high up.

Then sounds come to him from below: cries, and among them the harsh voices of Orcs. Then the air is full of the deep-throated echoing call of the horn of Boromir. ‘He is in need!’ Aragorn goes leaping down the path, wondering where Sam is, while the yells of the Orcs grow louder but the horn call fainter, and until finally it ceases. The Orc sounds retreat until he can hear them no more. Putting on even more speed, he draws his bright sword and cries out, ‘Elendil! Elendil!’

‘A mile, maybe, from Parth Galen in a little glade not far from the lake he found Boromir.’ His back is against a tree, and he is pierced with many arrows, his sword broken and cloven horn by his side. But he is alive enough to confess that he tried to take the Ring from Frodo. He is sorry. He says that Orcs have taken the Halflings, after tying them up. ‘Farewell, Aragorn! Go to Minas Tirith and save my people! I have failed.’

‘No!’ said Aragorn, taking his hand and kissing his brow. ‘You have conquered. Few have gained such a victory. Be at peace! Minas Tirith shall not fall!’ Before he can ask if Frodo was with them, Boromir dies. Aragorn bends his head, weeping. He feels that it was he who had failed as leader of the company, and vain was Gandalf’s trust in him. It is thus that Gimli and Legolas find him as they come following the summons of the horn.

They have been fighting orcs; Legolas has spent all his arrows. At first they think Aragorn is wounded. He tells them all that has happened, and that he doesn’t know where Frodo is. They decide that the first thing they must do is tend to Boromir’s body. They have no time to bury him or raise a cairn of stones over him; they decide they must give him a ship burial on the river Anduin.

As they gather the gear of the fallen Orcs as trophies for Boromir’s funeral rites, they find Merry and Pippin’s barrow-blades, thrown aside by their captors. Aragorn takes them up to keep in hopes that he can return them. Legolas gathers as many arrows as he can find. There are many that are longer and stronger than Orcs usually use.

Among the more familiar types of Orcs, Mordor-folk or goblins from the Misty Mountains, Aragorn finds another breed. They are ‘of greater stature, swart, slant-eyed, with thick legs and huge hands. They were armed with short broad-bladed swords, not with the curved scimitars usual with Orcs.’ They carry yew bows like those of Men, shields with the strange device of a white hand, and an S-rune in some white metal on their helms.

Gimli first guesses that S is for Sauron, but the Dark Lord does not use the Elf-runes nor allow his right name to be spelled or spoken, and his sign is the Red Eye. Aragorn guesses they are from Saruman, and that he somehow knew of the Company’s purpose and the Ring and probably knows of Gandalf’s fall. But they must hurry on with their task.

Gimli uses his axe to cut branches, which they tie together with bowstrings and lay their cloaks over. Putting Boromir and such trophies as they have chosen, they bear him to the riverside. Aragorn keeps watch as Legolas and Gimli return to Parth Galen for their things. They return paddling two of the boats along the shore. They’ve come back with a strange tale.

The third boat is missing. It wasn’t Orcs, because they would have destroyed everything. Aragon says he will examine things later; for right now they need to attend to the task at hand. Laying Boromir out in one of the boats, his elven-cloak under his head, the golden belt of Lorien on his waist, his helm set beside him and his broken sword and horn on his lap, and the weapons of his enemies at his feet.

Using the other boat they tow him to the middle of the river and set him loose, watching until he vanishes over the falls. Aragorn begins singing a funeral song for him, saying how the people of Gondor will question the West Wind about the fate of Boromir but will get no answer; Legolas, when questioned in the person of the South Wind, replies ‘Ask not of me where he doth dwell – so many bones there lie/ On the white shores and the dark shores under the stormy sky’. Aragorn answers as the North Wind, finally revealing how Boromir died and was laid to rest on the waters of Rauros.

When the song is finished Gimli complains that they left the East Wind to him but is told that Minas Tirith endures the East Wind but does question it: it blows from Mordor.

They return to camp and Aragorn rangers up the place. They correctly deduce from the absence of orc-damage and the missing packs and boat that Frodo and Sam have crossed the river and are on their way to Mordor. Legolas wonders what could have made him flee so suddenly; but what Aragorn thinks ‘was the cause of Frodo’s sudden resolve and flight [he] did not say. The last words of Boromir he long kept secret.’

Now they have to choose. Should they try to find Frodo and Sam in the wilderness, or else follow the Orcs and rescue Merry and Pippin? Aragorn finally decides. ‘My heart speaks clearly at last: the fate of the Bearer is in my hands no longer. The Company has played its part. Yet we that remain cannot forsake our companions while we have strength yet.’

They leave the last boat behind with all that they can spare and return to glade where Boromir fell. There they pick up the trail of the Orcs. Their trampling path is plain and obvious; they seem to go out of their way to do damage. But they do go swiftly and are hours ahead of them. But Aragorn declares that they will make a chase of them as will be a marvel among the Three Kindreds, Elves, Dwarves, and Men. ‘Forth the Three Hunters!’

They spring forward through the trees, leaving the lake behind and climbing up dark, long slopes  in the sunset. Dusk comes and they pass away, ‘grey shadows in a stony land.’

Bits and Bobs

We pick up the tale going back a bit, following Aragorn after he runs ahead of Sam in search of Frodo. He wants to see what he can see from the top of Amon Hen. Frodo’s tracks not only lead there, but it is a high point from which to scout out the land. He also hopes, as a Numenorean and an Heir of Elendil, to perhaps gain a guiding vision. He sees that Frodo’s footprints lead not only there but away again, but decides it is worth the time for a look. The view he gains is neither as clear nor as distant as Frodo had, suggesting that the hobbit had some advanced power of sight when he had the Ring on. Perhaps Aragorn’s doubt and indecision clouds his perception, or maybe Frodo is ‘granted’ what he needs to know.

The noise of Boromir’s horn draws the ranger back in time to hear Boromir’s last confession and to grant him pardon after his heroic acts of penance and restitution. Boromir’s horn call and death underneath a tree recalls the fate of the warrior Roland, from the famous 11^th Century chanson de geste “The Song of Roland”. He too sends out a horn call when he is overwhelmed by enemies and dies propped up against a tree, his relief coming too late to save him.

The ’ship burial’ of Boromir also recalls another famous episode from medieval literature, one with which Tolkien was very familiar. At the beginning of the Old English epic of Beowulf the life and death of Scyld Scefing, the ancestor of Hrothgar, is briefly told: how he was found floating on the sea as an infant with a sheaf of grain and weapons at his feet; and when he dies is sent back over the waves in a boat laden with weapons and treasure. Such burials at sea are recounted often in Viking literature, though they usually end in the boat being set on fire as they voyage out. Tolkien probably thought this would be too much of a ‘heathen’ flourish for the Men of the West: Gandalf later tasks Denethor with the fact that such a practice was followed by human kings who had fallen under the Shadow. In our own history, ‘ship burials’ could include internment in the earth with entire vessels, or even simply in a grave shaped like a boat.

Other funeral customs mentioned are the ‘vigil’ Aragorn holds over Boromir’s body, the dirge praising his deeds and virtues (made up extempore at that; Aragorn and Legolas’s power of improvisation is impressive, but perhaps on par with the skills of Elves or those trained by them), and the fact that they comb out his hair in an effort to make him more presentable, and to show that he’s cared for.

It recalls to my mind a story my Mom told me about her early life. Our grandmother was a hairdresser by trade, and was training her up accordingly. One day one of their customers died, and as it turned out that she had requested that Mom do her hair for the funeral; she liked the way Mom worked on her hair. Mom didn’t really want to go, but Nanny forced her. She was all of 15 or 16. She went to the funeral home and was, for the first time, confronted with the bare reality of death. She managed a brush or two, then fled the room in tears. The mortuary cosmetologist, an understanding soul, finished for her, but she was traumatized for a long time. What does this have to do with Boromir? Not a damn thing.

Among his funeral goods is mentioned his helm, a detail that either I didn’t notice him wearing before or that was only just mentioned. You rarely see it shown in LOTR iconography.

Gimli once again boasts about the hardiness and endurance of the Dwarves, as he did before helping portage the boats overland. That effort wore him out; Boromir commented on it ironically at the time. Still, Gimli thinks he’s certainly more than a match for the marching Orcs, an opinion he will have to modify a bit as time goes on.

Boromir's Pieta

Aragorn knows what he must do now. With Frodo gone of his own free will, with only Sam with him to follow the quest (and not, for instance, choosing Aragorn to go with him), and with Merry and Pippin facing possible torment and death, his choice is clear. He sets off with Gimli and Legolas to find the Orcs and rescue the Hobbits.

The fact that Sauron does not allow his 'right name' to be spoken or written down, even a single letter, reflects a very old idea of sympathetic magic, where the name or symbol of a person or thing is the thing itself, the use of which can grant one power over the thing named, or which might summon the thing named. This often leads to a system of 'secret names' and 'use names', as in Ursula K. Le Guin's Earthsea books, or taboo names that give the name power, as in J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter books.