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

 

The Tale

‘I won’t be left behind to be called for on return!’ said Merry. ‘I won’t be left, I won’t.” And repeating this over and over again to himself he fell asleep at last in his tent.’

He wakes, startled out of deep dreams, when a man shakes him, calling him Master Holbytla and telling him that the King summons him. Merry looks around. It seems very dark still; it doesn’t look as if the Sun has risen.

And won’t today, says the man. And may never again. ‘But time does not stand still, though the Sun be lost.’ Merry should make haste.

Outside the world is dark, ‘the very air seemed brown.’ Everything is black and grey and shadowless, and the sky above is flat and featureless. Far to the West there is still a little sky, but the creeping darkness is eating that up. In the disastrous atmosphere people look pale and grey and sad, some look fearful.  It seems to be getting darker, not lighter, as the day grows.

Merry makes his way to Theoden’s tent, and there he finds Hirgon and another messenger from Gondor talking to the King. The new messenger tells him this darkness is from Mordor; it came creeping westward as he rode all through the night, eating up the stars. It is a sign. War has already begun.

For a while the king sits silently, pondering this news. Then he speaks. ‘So we come to it in the end; the great battle of our time, in which many things shall pass away.’ But at least they no longer need to move under cover of darkness; darkness has come to meet them. They shall begin the muster and ride at once. He hopes they have good provision in Gondor, for they must ride light, with only enough food to get them to the City.

Hirgon replies they have long made good stores, planning for this day. Let them ride as lightly and as swiftly as they can! Theoden tells Eomer to command the heralds to marshal the Riders, and presently horns ring out, sounding dull and harsh in the heavy air, ‘braying ominously.’

Theoden turns to Merry. He is riding to war, so he releases him from his service but not his friendship. He suggests that he stay in safety in Rohan, perhaps serving Eowyn if he wants to. She will be ruling the folk in Theoden’s absence.

But Merry wants to go with the King; he pledged him his service. All his friends have gone to war and he would be ashamed to be left behind.  Theoden counters that they must travel quickly on great steeds, Merry cannot ride such beasts ‘great though your heart be.’ Merry counters that he can be trussed up as a bundle and carried on the back of a horse or hung from a stirrup; ’It is a long way to run, but run I shall, if I cannot ride, even if I wear my feet off and arrive weeks to late.’

Theoden smiles at his bravado and says the hobbit can at least ride to Meduseld with him; his pony Stybba can bear him that far. But when the great race to Minas Tirith begins, he cannot join.

Eowyn rises and asks Merry to come with her to see the gear she has gathered for him. She says she did this at Aragorn’s request so that he will be armed; she fears he will need it. Eowyn leads him to a booth where an armourer brings out his arms.

There is a small helm; a little shield, green and with the white horse of Rohan on it; a belt and a knife. He already has a sword, fit for his size. They have no mail that will fit him but supply him with ‘a stout jerkin of leather.’

‘Take all these things,’ she said, ‘and bear them to good fortune! Fare well now, Master Meriadoc! Yet maybe we shall meet again, you and I.’

 

Bits and Bobs

‘Holbytla’ is the asterix word (unrecorded term that is extrapolated or conjectured) in Rohirrric (Anglo-Saxon) that Tolkien feigns that the (English) word hobbit may have been worn down from. It means Hole (hol) Builder (bytla). He came up with the explanation years after he invented and started using the word, perhaps an unconscious reflex from his philologist’s training.

Merry's comment about wearing his feet off reminds me inevitably of Trotter, the Hobbit who served as the first draft for Aragorn at the Prancing Pony. His feet had been removed by some kind of torture, and his 'wooden shoes' were actually prosthetics to replace them.

A rider controls a horse as much by shifting weight as by steering with the reins; Merry is deemed too light to control the big strong steed needed to make the journey.

Looking back (hastily I fear) I can find no place where Aragorn requests anyone (let alone Eowyn) to arm Merry. Perhaps he did and it just wasn’t mentioned in the details; perhaps he did and I just plain-de-old missed it; perhaps this is an extrapolation that Eowyn makes from Aragorn’s desire that Merry be taken care of. But perhaps Eowyn is projecting her own desires on Merry, preparing him for battle, seeing in his willingness to go an echo of her own impulses and indulging them through him. Or perhaps she is already planning her own decision.