The Lord of the Rings: The Houses of Healing (Part Three)

Aragorn enters the Houses of Healing and the others follow. Inside they see Citadel guards, one tall and one short, and the short one is actually Pippin, who greats Aragorn with wonder and delight, calling him Strider, much to the consternation of Prince Imrahil. Is this how we greet our kings?

Aragorn laughs and tells Pippin they have no time to catch up just yet. But if ever his house is established, it will be called Strider. ‘But in the high tongue it will not sound so ill, and Telcontar I will be, and all the heirs of my body.’

As they walk along Gandalf tells him of the deeds of Eowyn and Merry. He knows because they spoke a lot in their dreaming before they sank down into silence. ‘Also it is given to me to see many things far off.’

Aragorn examines Faramir, Eowyn, and Merry and looks grave and weary. Eomer, seeing how tired he is, asks if he will not eat something and rest a while, but Aragorn says there is no time, and least of all for Faramir. He calls for Ioreth and asks if they have much store of herbs, and the old lady answers in a long complaint about how hard it is to get proper supplies, what with the war and all, but they do their best. Aragorn asks her very shortly if they have any athelas. She doesn’t know of anything by that name, but she could ask the herb-master.

He says it is sometimes called kingsfoil by the country folk, and Ioreth says, well no, we have none of that, she knows. She never heard it was good for anything. She once asked her sisters in Lossarnach why it’s called kingsfoil; if she were a king she’d have better plants in her garden. But it does smell wholesome when ‘bruised.’

Aragorn tells her then run as quick as her tongue and find some kingsfoil somewhere in the City, if any is to be had, as she loves the Lord Faramir.

‘And if not,’ said Gandalf, ‘I will ride to Lossarnach with Ioreth behind me, and she shall take me to the woods, but not to her sisters. And Shadowfax shall show her the meaning of haste.’

Bits and Bobs

Pippin says that somehow he knew it was Strider in the black fleet though everyone was shouting ‘corsairs!’ How he could have even suspected such a thing is never explained. He has not seen Aragorn since Gandalf took the hobbit to Gondor. A feeling, a lifting of heart?

Athelas is Sindarin (athae + lass); ‘leaves of the Kings.’ There is now a healthcare technology company that goes by the name.

In the Peter Jackson movies Sam calls kingsfoil a weed, though (gardener though he is) I wonder if he ever saw it in the cultivated Shire. It was said to grow wild in areas where the Dunedain had lived, and even then was hard to find. I wonder if Sam had ever wandered abroad much, even in the lands surrounding the Shire. But that was the movie, and they needed explication.

Ioreth fits the trope of the gabby old lady who, when asked a question, will rattle on in a discursive manner with whatever enters her head until she comes in a roundabout way to the answer one is looking for. I would say this is a stereotype if my own mother and my niece did not fit the trope to a T. You always have to have the explanatory story before the answer.

This is a pretty short snip, but I have a long day ahead.