Monday, April 15, 2024

The Lord of the Rings: Journey to the Crossroads (Part Three)


The Tale

‘The red glare over Mordor died away.’ The morning twilight grows darker as vapors rise over the mountains in the east [the Ephel Duath, ‘Mountains of Shadow’], blocking the sun. Frodo and Sam eat a little, but Gollum is restless and will only take a little water. He does not settle down but searches around a bit, then suddenly disappears.

It’s Sam’s turn to sleep first, and he falls into a fitful, fretful sleep, plagued with dreams of looking for his pipe in a strangely wretched version of Bag End. He wakes up, realizing his pipe is in his pack, but of course he has no leaf. He looks around. It is almost dark, it seems. How long has he been asleep? Only about three hours, Frodo replies. It’s not even noon. But it’s getting darker and darker.

Sam wonders if a storm is coming. He hears what sounds like thunder, or drums. Frodo says that’s been going on for hours, and the earth is trembling. There’s been no sign of Gollum. Sam hopes he hasn’t gotten lost, though he can’t abide the wretch and he’s never been of any use. Frodo reminds him of the Dead Marshes. Still, Sam grumbles, he might be up to some sort of tricks, and if Gollum himself gets caught he’d likely rat them out in a minute and then they’ll be in trouble. The ground rumbles even louder and trembles. Frodo thinks they’re in trouble already.

‘Maybe,’ said Sam; ‘but where there’s life there’s hope, as my Gaffer used to say, and need of vittles, as he mostways used to add. You have a bite, Mr. Frodo, and then a bit of sleep.’

The afternoon wears on, getting darker and darker in a colorless gloom, stifling but not warm. Sam watches Frodo’s unquiet sleep as his master tosses and turns and sometimes murmurs Gandalf’s name. Suddenly he hears a hiss, and Gollum is with them, crawling on all fours, eyes gleaming. ‘Wake up, sleepies!’ he whispers, excited or frightened. They must leave at once!

Sam is suspicious; it isn’t even teatime yet, at least in decent places where they have tea. As Gollum points out, however, they aren’t in decent places, and must get going.  He claws at Frodo, who starts up and grabs him in alarm. Gollum backs away and insists they must move now and gives no further information. Frodo sighs and prepares to journey out into the deepening darkness.  Gollum leads them carefully and quietly, running almost bent to the ground. The hobbits, with their elven-cloaks and hobbit stealth, pass almost invisibly through the shadows.

They walk for an hour or so across a broken slope that leads south, the quiet of the land troubled only by the drumming thunder that rolls mysteriously far away. At last, they approach a belt of trees, ancient and vast, their tops gaunt and broken. Gollum breaks his silence to announce that they are at the Cross-roads. There are no other paths; they must go that way if they are to proceed.

They move along, as ‘soft-footed as hunting cats’, until they come to a great ring in the middle of the trees, where four roads meet, north, south, east, and west. The trees surround it like the pillars of an ancient hall. To the east, plunging into darkness, is the road they must take.

Standing there, Frodo suddenly becomes aware of a light on Sam’s face. It is the sun in the west, which has finally sunk low enough to escape the pall of clouds. The brief glow illuminates an ancient statue of some old king, ’still and solemn as the great stone kings of Argonath.’ It has been beheaded and defiled with graffiti by the orcs, and a one-eyed stone placed in travesty on its broken neck.

But Frodo notices the old king’s head rolled away by the roadside, lit by the setting sun. It gleams, crowned by trailing flowers like small white stars, golden stonecrop in its hair. The old king has a crown again.

‘They cannot conquer forever!’ said Frodo. And then suddenly the brief glimpse was gone. The Sun dipped and vanished, and as if at the shuttering of a lamp, black night fell.’







Bits and Bobs

Abide means "to be able to live with or put up with." If you can't abide something, it means you can't stand it. If you can abide it, it means you can live with it. Sam has so far actually been able to abide with Gollum; it just hasn’t been comfortably.

The earliest example of the saying 'Where there's life, there's hope' has been traced to the Roman playwright Terence (died 139 BC).  Such 'gnomic' sayings sprinkled all throughout the LOTR give the impression of a continuity of folkloric wisdom. 

‘Vittles’ is, of course, the lower-class way of pronouncing ‘victuals’ (though I don’t know if anyone ever actually pronounced it as it is spelled), meaning food supplies or provisions. [Alteration (influenced by Late Latin vīctuālia, provisions) of Middle English vitaille, from Old French, from Late Latin vīctuālia, provisions, from neuter pl. of Latin vīctuālis, of nourishment, from vīctus, nourishment, from past participle of vīvere, to live]. The fact that the Gaffer uses it suggest his rough-and-ready nature; the word in now most associated with hillbillies and cowboys.

The word coronal (here used in relation to the wreath of flowers around the old king’s head) means a binding or an encircling of the head like a crown.

And of course, Gollum’s use of the childlike, nursery word sleepies just makes him more endearing and tragic.

Illustrators seem to love the image of the King at the Cross-roads. It is one of those moments (like Sam spotting the star high above the reeks of Mordor) that suggests ‘They cannot conquer forever!’


 

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