The Lord of the Rings: The Muster of Rohan (Part Four)

The Tale

The company come to the King’s pavilion; a small tent for Merry has been pitched next to it. The Hobbit is forgotten and left to himself in the general business of settling into camp. As dark as the night becomes, the shadows of the Dwimorberg, the Haunted Mountain, are darker still. Merry wonders about the name he has heard spoken.

‘The Paths of the Dead? What does it all this mean? They have all left me now. They have all gone to some doom: Gandalf and Pippin to war in the East; and Sam and Frodo to Mordor; and Strider and Legolas and Gimli to the Paths of the Dead.’ Among these gloomy thoughts he thinks (very Hobbit-like) that he is very hungry and wants something to eat, but he is suddenly summoned to Theoden’s tent, to serve as squire at the King’s meal.

In the tent a space with a small table is curtained off, and there Theoden, Eomer, Eowyn, and Dunhere sit. Merry waits next to the King’s stool, ready to serve, but Theoden is deep in thought. Finally he looks up, smiles, and bids the hobbit sit next to him as his guest, and maybe lighten his heart with tales.

But they all sit and eat and drink quietly, calling for no tale. Their hearts seem heavy. At last Merry musters the courage to ask the question that has been plaguing him: what are the Paths of the Dead? Where has Aragorn gone?

Theoden can only sigh. At last Eomer answers. Merry himself has walked on the first steps of the Paths of the Dead. ‘Nay, I speak no words of ill-omen!’ The road they have climbed is the approach to the door to the paths, away there in the Dimholt Woods. What lies beyond no man knows. That’s where Aragorn has gone.

Theoden speaks. No man really knows where it leads, but there are ancient legends. Tales say the Door leads beneath the mountains to some forgotten end. But no one has ever searched for them, except one. Long ago, when Meduseld was first built, Brego, the King then, held a great feast to hallow the Hall. Baldor, his son, made a rash vow (there was probably a lot of drinking) to pass the Door of the Dead. He did so a year later and was never seen again, never became king after his father.

Folk say the Dead Men out of the Dark Years guard the way and let no living man pass. But they themselves come out sometime, riding down the stony road like shadows, at times ‘of great unquiet and coming death.’

Eowyn says in a low voice that in the moonless lights a little while ago ‘a great host in strange array' passed by in Harrowdale. Nobody knew where they came from, but they went up the road and vanished into the hill, ‘as if they went to keep a tryst.’ Merry asks why Aragorn would take such a way, but Eomer says if he hasn’t spoken to Merry about this, no living person can guess. Eowyn says that he looked older than when first she saw him, grimmer and older. ‘Fey I thought him, and like one that the Dead call.’

Theoden notices that his niece seems to need more comfort about the fate of this ‘guest.’ Aragorn is a kingly man of high destiny. There is another tale of when the Eorlingas first came to the country from the North, Brego and Baldor came up the Stair to the Door in search of a strong place for times of refuge. At the Door they found an old man sitting. He seemed like he had been tall and kingly once, but now as withered as an old stone. They thought he was dead, but when they tried to pass him into the Door, he spoke in a voice that seemed to come out of the ground.

“The way is shut … It was made by those who are Dead, and the Dead keep it, until the time comes. The way is shut.’ Baldor asks when that will be, but ‘the old man died in that hour and fell upon his face’. No other word have they heard about the ‘dwellers’ since that time. But maybe the time has come at last, and Aragorn may pass.

But how can anyone know if the time has come, unless he dare the Paths, asks Eomer. And he himself wouldn’t try it if all the hosts of Mordor were before him, and he were alone with nowhere else to go. Alas for Aragorn, that such a mood should take him; isn’t there enough war in the land and evil things abroad in the world without seeking them under the earth?

‘He paused, for at that moment there was a noise outside, a man’s voice crying the name of Theoden, and a challenge of the guard.’

Notes

Brego (‘ruler’) was the son of Eorl (‘earl’) and the second King of Rohan. Baldor recalls Balder, the doomed son of Odin in Norse mythology. It is Baldor’s skeleton Aragorn finds on the Paths of the Dead; his legs have apparently been broken by the ghosts so he could not escape. Brego was succeeded by his second son, Aldor (elder, alderman). Brego built Meduseld as the capitol of Rohan; it was ‘hallowed’ (made holy), or as we might say, inaugurated, by a great feast, when many oaths would be sworn and boasts would be made. Perhaps it was Baldor’s curiosity from their encounter with the Old King that led to his rash vow. Brego survives in the Jackson movies as a horse 'with a kingly name.'

• Ghost Hosts were seen as omens with connection to the Wild Hunts or Furious Rides of folklore. But instead of comprising completely supernatural beings they were seen as the human dead, and their intent was not always evil. During the English Civil War hosts were seen in the clouds that echoed a battle then being fought far away; observers could actually identify combatants they knew. “A story about a ghostly army that helped the British retreat during World War I became popular in Britain after the war. The story claimed that a British soldier called on Saint George for help, and then a ghostly army appeared and held back the German forces. However, there are no reliable contemporary eyewitness accounts to support this story. The story may have originated from a short story written by Arthur Machen in 1914.” 

Aragorn’s mood is several times called fey, as it seems to the people of Rohan. “Fey: fey • \FAY\ • adjective. 1 : marked by a foreboding of death or calamity 2 a : marked by an otherworldly air or attitude b : crazy, touched.” Fey is related to the term fay, or fairy, and is a Scottish word denoting something doomed or fated, and therefore partaking of a heedless nature, caring not for consequences. In old folklore fairies were sometimes referred to as fata, or fates; connections with Classical mythology and the Three Fates may have influenced the trope of Three Fairy Godmothers. Perhaps its relationship to the word fairy that has led it to be used as a term for effeminate or campy.

I think the image of the Old King before the Door of the Dead would make a fine illustration, but I can’t find one for it anywhere. If it ain’t in the movies, apparently, it ain’t anywhere. This scene in Theoden’s tent has the atmosphere of people gloomily telling ghost stories on the edge of doom.