The Lord of the Rings: Of Herbs and Stewed Rabbit (Part Four and Last)

Mablung

The Tale 

Frodo and Sam sit down, but don’t talk to each other about their situation. Nearby two of the men remain on guard. After a while they take off their masks to cool themselves. and begin to talk to each other, first in the Common Speech, but then in a language very close to the Elven-tongue, which leads Frodo to realize that they are Dunedain of the South (as Aragorn is of the Dunedain of the North), descended from the Men of Westernesse (Numenor).

After a while Frodo speaks to them and they are wary at first. They name themselves Mablung and Damrod, soldiers of Gondor and Rangers of Ithilien. They are descended from people who were driven out of the land when it was overrun, and now they return at the order of Lord Denethor, Steward of Gondor, to harry the Orcs. But the errand they are on now is to ambush the gathering Men of Harad.

These ‘Southrons’, or Men from the Far South, used to have uneasy dealings with Gondor, says Damrod, but lately they have been stirred up and gone over to Sauron (or back to him again) and are marching north to swell his growing armies. Mablung says that’s why the Rangers are here: Faramir means to stop an approaching regiment, traveling up by the very roads that Gondor once made. ‘The road may pass, but they shall not! Not while Faramir is Captain.’ He seems to lead a charmed life.

The talk dies down into listening silence. Sam, crouching down at the edge of the sheltering ferns, becomes aware of large numbers of Men passing stealthily by, all dressed like the other Rangers, going up the slopes. Soon they pass, and Sam crawls back into deeper shade. He wonders where Gollum is in all this mess. ‘He stands a fair chance of being spitted for an Orc, or of being roasted by the Yellow Face (sun),’ but he guesses that the crafty creature will be able to look after himself. He lies down next to Frodo and begins to doze.

He wakes up to the sound of distant horns. It was now high noon. The horns ring out louder and from above, over the top of the slope, and cries and loud shouting, as if from far away. But after a while the sound breaks out even nearer just above their hiding place, with the clash of swords and shields and one clear voice shouting Gondor! as a battle cry.

‘It sounds like a hundred blacksmiths all smithying together,’ said Sam to Frodo. ‘They’re as near as I want them now.’

But the tumult draws nearer. Some of the Southrons have broken out of Faramir’s ambush are running from the road, the swarthy men fleeing from the Captain’s assault. Arrows fly thick in the air. Suddenly right over the rim of their hiding place comes a falling dead man, one of the Southrons, a green arrow of the Rangers sticking from his neck below a gold collar. He is dressed in red robes and brass armor, his black hair plaited with gold and drenched with blood. He clutches a broken sword.

‘It was Sam’s first view of a battle of Men against Men, and he did not like it much. He was glad that he could not see the dead face. He wondered what the man’s name was and where he came from; and if he was really evil of heart or what lies or threats had led him on the long march from his home, and if he would not really rather have stayed there in peace – all in a flash of thought which was quickly driven from his mind.’

For just as Mablung steps toward the fallen foe, there is a new noise, crying and shouting and a shrill bellowing or trumpeting, and a great thudding on the ground. ‘Ware! Ware!’ cried Damrod to his companion. ‘May the Valar turn him aside! Mumak! Mumak!’

‘To his astonishment and terror, and lasting delight’, Sam sees a huge shape crashing through the trees and heading towards them, careening down the slope. The mumak is indeed an Oliphaunt, looking just like the old poem described it, ‘a beast of vast bulk, and the like of him does not now walk in Middle-earth; his kin that live still in latter days are but memories of his girth and majesty.’ Its red eyes rage, its gold-bound tusks are covered with blood, and its snout is raised like a striking serpent. It turns aside just before it reaches them, and they can see ‘a very war tower on his back … and high upon his neck still desperately clung a tiny figure – the body of a mighty warrior, a giant among the Swertings.’

The great beast blunders wildly on, arrows bouncing from its triple-thick hide. Both the Rangers and the Southrons flee from its blind wrath and runaway might, crushing all who come in his path. Soon he is lost to view, though his trumpeting and thumping is still heard a long way. Sam ever after wondered what became of it, whether it roamed free for a time or killed itself falling into a pit or drowning in the river.

Sam draws a deep breath. So there are Oliphaunts, and he has seen one! No-one at home will ever believe him. Now that the excitement’s all over, though, he wants to take a nap. Mablung tells him to sleep while he can, for when Faramir returns (if he still lives) they will have to depart quickly before news of the raid reaches the Enemy.

‘Go quietly when you must!’ said Sam. ‘No need to disturb my sleep. I was walking all night.’

‘Mablung laughed. ‘I do not think the Captain will leave you here, Master Samwise,’ he said. ‘But you shall see.’

 

Notes

Mablung (‘heavy-handed’) and Damrod (‘copper-beater’) are both names that have been ‘recycled’ from The Silmarillion for use in LOTR at a time when it seemed unlikely that the older work would ever be published. There, Mablung was the name of an Elf, a Captain of Doriath and King Thingol’s chief warrior, witness to many of the important events of the First Age, and Damrod was an abandoned name for one of the Sons of Feanor. Seeing as how Gondor has remained very Elf-centric, it is not unlikely that the men were named after these old heroes.

Here we are introduced to the Men of Far Harad, or Haradrim, or Southrons, or Swertings (swarthy folk) as the Hobbits call Men from the Far South because of their complexion, darker than the ‘pale-skinned’ Men of Gondor. According to The One Ring Wiki, ‘The men of Near Harad were brown-skinned, with black hair and dark eyes, while the men of Far Harad were black-skinned and compared to ‘half-trolls’. They seem to echo the peoples of Arabia and sub-Saharan Africa.

As Men, of course, they are not as totally depraved or evil as Orcs, as Sam quickly meditates on when he sees the fallen Southron warrior. After the War of the Ring, they are not simply slain as Orcs were, but pardoned and sent home. It is speculated that there are men in Harad and Umbar who have not bent the knee to Sauron, perhaps aided (once upon a time) by the counsel of the lost Blue Wizards.

‘May the Valar turn him aside!’ is one of the few mentions of religion in LOTR, and it is rather cryptic at that. The Valar are of course the ‘Powers’, angelic spirits who rule (almost like a pantheon of ‘gods’) under the authority of Eru Iluvatar, the One God. Elbereth is a Vala who has already been called on in the tale, both by the Elves and Frodo. The Valar’s influence in Middle-earth is veiled from most to allow all peoples free will uninfluenced by awe, but if they are called upon for help they may act. The Oliphaunt is turned aside, but whether that is chance (as they say) or an answer to Damrod’s ‘prayer’ is left in the tale (and to the reader) as a matter of opinion.