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.

The Lord of the Rings: The Battle of the Pelennor Fields (Part 3)

After the passing of the Lord of the Nazgul Merry stands in the middle of the battlefield, ‘blinking like an owl in the daylight,’ blinded by tears. The motionless Eowyn lies near him, and there is King Theoden, ‘fallen in the midst of his glory.’ His horse Snowmane has rolled off him it its death throes; his faithful horse has been his ‘bane’, the instrument of his death.

Merry lifts the King’s hand to kiss it, and suddenly Theoden opens his eyes. He speaks in a quiet, clear voice. He knows he is dying.

‘My body is broken. I go to my fathers. And even in their mighty company I shall not be ashamed. I felled the black serpent [the herald and champion of the Easterlings]. A grim morn, and a glad day, and a golden sunset!’

Merry begs his pardon for disobeying his orders and following him to battle. Theoden smiles and forgives him: ‘Great heart will not be denied.’ He bids the noble Hobbit to smoke his pipe in peace and remember Theoden, for he shall never keep his promise to sit and listen to his herb-lore. He asks for Eomer; he must be king after Theoden. And he wants to send word by him to Eowyn, whom he shall never see again.

Merry begins to try to tell him that she is nearby, but he is interrupted by a sudden clamor and horns blowing all around them.  ‘[H]e had forgotten the war, and all the world beside, and many hours it seemed since the king rode to his fall, though in truth it was only a little while.’ Northward comes Eomer riding leading the Rohirrim, while a force issues out of Gondor led by the Prince of Dol Amroth, and from the south come the legions of Morgul, led by a line of horsemen of Harad with footmen behind them, and then mumakil shouldering bristling war-towers. It seems the battle will soon meet near where the hobbit stands. He wonders vaguely where Gandalf is. Couldn’t he have saved the king and Eowyn?

At that moment Eomer rides up with knights of the king’s household, who have mastered their horses which fled before the terror of the Nazgul. They look in wonder at the slain fell beast and the ruin around them. Eomer leaps from his horse and stands in silence at Theoden’s side, overcome with grief and dismay.  One of the knights lifts the king’s standard from the hand of the dead Guthlaf, king’s banner bearer. Slowly Theoden opens his eyes, and gestures that the banner be given to Eomer in token of his kingship. He hails him as King of the Mark and bids him ride to victory, and to tell Eowyn farewell from him.

‘And so he died, and knew not that Eowyn laid near him. And those who stood by wept, crying: Theoden King! Theoden King!’

‘But Eomer said to them:

‘Mourn not overmuch! Mighty was the fallen,

meet was his ending. When his mound is raised,

women then shall weep. War now calls us!’

But he himself is weeping. He bids them carry Theoden's body from the battlefield to keep it from being trampled, and also to take the men who have fallen around him. Suddenly he sees Eowyn and recognizes his fallen sister. His face goes deathly white. What is she doing here, slain? He goes deadly quiet, fury rise in him, and then ‘a fey mood took him.’

‘Eowyn, Eowyn!’ he cried at last. ‘Eowyn, how came you here? What madness or devilry is this? Death, death, death! Death take us all!’

He leaps to his saddle and spurs forward, blowing a hornblast and crying in a clear voice, ‘Death! Ride, ride to ruin and the world’s ending!’ The Rohirrim answer him with Death! In one loud and terrible voice, and they speed like a roaring tide southward to battle.

And still Merry stands blinking with tears, seemingly unheeded by all. He finally stoops to pick up the green shield that Eowyn had given him and slings it on his back. He looks for his sword that fell when he struck his blow to the Nazgul; his arm had gone numb with contact with that deadly flesh. ‘And behold! There lay his weapon, but the blade was smoking like a dry branch that has been thrust in a fire; and as he watched it, it writhed and withered and was consumed.’

‘So passed the sword of the Barrow-downs, work of Westernesse. But glad would he have been to know its fate who wrought it slowly long ago in the North-kingdom when the Dunedain were young, and chief among their foes was the dread realm of Angmar and its sorcerer king. No other blade, not though mightier hands had wielded it, would have dealt that foe a wound so bitter, cleaving the undead flesh, breaking the spell that knit his unseen sinews to his will.’

Men raise Theoden and Eowyn, ‘laying cloaks upon spear-truncheons’ on a makeshift stretcher. They have to leave seven others of the household on the field, surrounded by spears to mark them. They move the King’s horse Snowmane aside as well, and in time he has his own grave raised where he fell, with a stone engraved with an epitaph. But they burn the carcase of the fell beast, ‘and ever black and bare was the ground where the beast was burned.’

Merry follows behind the bearers and thinks no more of the battle. A great rain from the Sea starts to fall ‘and it seems that all things wept for Theoden and Eowyn.’ The entourage is suddenly met by a van of men from Gondor, led by the Prince of Dol Amroth, who pulls up beside them to see what they do. They reply that they bear Theoden who has fallen, but that Eomer now rides as king on the battlefield. The prince dismounts his horse to pay respect to the fallen king, and then is amazed that they also bear a woman.

He examines her, bending closer to observe her pale cold beauty, and takes her hand.  He suddenly cries aloud, asking the Rohirrim if they have no leeches [healers] among them. She is hurt, deadly so perhaps, but she still lives. ‘And he held the bright-burnished vambrace that was upon his arm before her cold lips, and behold! a little mist was laid on it hardly to be seen.’

Haste is now needed if she is to be saved, and the Prince sends to the City for aid. ‘But bowing low to the fallen, bade them farewell, and mounting rode away to battle.’

Notes

Part of Eomer’s despair is that he seems to be the last of his family, the last of the House of Eorl. And of course he thought Eowyn was safely back in Rohan. His mood is described again as ‘fey,’ doom-laden to the point of battle frenzy.

Aragorn said long ago after the attack on Weathertop, in reference to Frodo’s Barrow-blade, that ‘all blades perish that pierce that dreadful king.’ Merry seems to have dealt a more fatal blow. Its maker would have been glad ‘to know its fate’, to finally fulfill its purpose after centuries of laying in wait.

A vambrance is armor for the forearm. The episode recalls the scene in King Lear where Lear checks Cordelia’s breath in hope she is still alive: ‘Lend me a looking glass. If that her breath will mist or stain the stone, why then she lives.’

The grave of Snowmane is eventually marked by a howe, or burial mound, with a poem on the stone:

Faithful servant yet master’s bane,

Lightfoot’s foal, swift Snowmane. 

 

The Lord of the Rings: The Ride of the Rohirrim (Part 3)

The Tale

Merry leaves to get ready for the march. He thinks of Pippin and the fires in Minas Tirith and is filled with dread.

All goes well on the march that day, with the Wild Men sending out hunters to assure no orc or spy finds out about their movements. Every company is guided by a woodman but Ghan rides with Theoden. It takes them a while to find ways through the thickets going down into the Stonewain Valley by a forgotten road. But the trees offer them their last cover before they return to the main road.

After they emerge from the valley and gather again, Theoden calls the captains together for a council. Ghan is there to hear the reports of the Wild Men’s scouts. Ghan speaks with them ‘in a strange, throaty language’ and they report that there is a force an hour away gathered around the beacon hill of Amon Din, but nothing else between there and Minas Tirith. They also report that the enemy has thrown down Gondor’s new outlying wall ‘with earth-thunder and black clubs.’ The enemy is unwary, thinking their ‘friends’ are watching all roads. Ghan laughs at the thought with ‘a curious gurgling noise.’

Eomer sees hope in this and voices a theme that is often repeated throughout the tale. ‘Our Enemy’s devices oft serve us in his despite.’ Sauron's darkness has helped cover their approach, and throwing down the outer wall has removed a barrier to helping them reach the main battle.

Theoden thanks Ghan and his people and wishes them good fortune, but the Woses want only one kind of thanks.

‘Kill gorgun! Kill orc-folk! No other words please Wild Men … Drive away bad air and darkness with bright iron!’

The king replies that they have ridden far to do so, but only the next day will show if they can do so. Ghan-buri-Ghan bows his forehead in farewell and gets up to leave, but suddenly the Wild Man looks up startled and a light comes into his eyes. ‘Wind is changing!’ he cries.

He and his people vanish in a twinkling, never to be seen by the Riders of Rohan again. Their drums in the hills roll as if in farewell. ‘Yet to no heart in all the host came any fear that the Wild Men were unfaithful, strange and unlovely though they might appear.’

And the Riders need no further guides, for as Elfhelm states, many of them have ridden this road to Gondor in days of peace. They can ride much of that way quickly and without a lot of noise to warn the enemy. Eomer advises they rest before undertaking that ride, because after that they may look to ‘fell deeds and the need of all our strength.’

Theoden agrees, and the captains leave. But Elfhelm soon returns with the report that the two bodies of the errand-riders from Gondor have been found, hewed and headless. It seems they were unable to reach Minas Tirith and turned back west before they were killed. Theoden realizes that Denethor could not know of their riding and will not hope that they are coming.

‘Need brooks no delay, yet late is better than never,’ said Eomer. ‘And mayhap in this time shall the old saw be proved truer than ever before since men spoke with mouth.’

Bits and Bobs

The Wild Men or Woses are another of those vanishing people, like the Ents, who do not seem to survive the coming of the next age. You might include the Hobbits, except that Tolkien avers that there are still some in our time (or at least as late as the middle 20^th Century).

To add to ‘Our Enemy’s devices oft serve us in his despite,’ could be ‘oft evil will shall evil mar’, ‘oft does hatred hurt itself’, and ‘a traitor may betray himself and do good that he does not intend’. Even Eru, the creator, tells Morgoth at the beginning of the world: “And thou, Melkor, shalt see that no theme may be played that hath not its uttermost source in me, nor can any alter the music in my despite. For he that attempteth this shall prove but mine instrument in the devising of things more wonderful, which he himself hath not imagined.”

One of the dead errand riders of Gondor is identified as Hirgon, the messenger who spoke to Theoden; he still clutches the Red Arrow he showed the king.

The proverb Eomer quotes might be translated as “Urgent need allows (brooks) no hesitation but getting there late is better than not coming at all.” As usual, Tolkien hints that our modern saying, “better late than never” might be a folk remembrance of a longer phrase and a cultural commonality. 'Since men spoke with mouth' is a striking phrase; it implies that this proverb is as old as language itself.

‘Wind is changing!’ strikes a strange note of hope in the darkness, hinting at a change of fortune. 

 

The Lord of the Rings: The Siege of Gondor (Part 3)

The Tale

Pippin and Beregond are suddenly frozen with fear as a shuddering cry rends the air. Pippin recognizes it; he heard it long ago in the Shire when they were fleeing to Bree, but ‘it was grown in power and hatred, piercing the heart with a poisonous despair.’ For a moment they can neither move nor speak.

With an effort, Beregond, who had been staring out when paralyzed, speaks to Pippin, calling him to look below. In the dim air are five wheeling shadows, ‘five birdlike forms, horrible as carrion-fowl yet greater than eagles.’ They come to within bowshot of the wall, then wheel away, concentrating on something moving along the ground.

Pippin mutters that the ‘Black Riders in the air’ are chasing a small group of four or five horsemen. The peril and the hideous shrieking are more than he can handle, and the little hobbit cries out for Gandalf to help against this horror.

There is another horrific screech that is answered by the call of a rising horn from below. Beregond recognizes it as Lord Faramir’s call. At first it seems Faramir will hold his men together and reach the Gates, but the horses go mad with terror and the men are thrown. All except Faramir: ‘he can master both beasts and men.’ He rides back to help his unsaddled men. But one of the foul ‘hell-hawks’ comes stooping at him personally. Beregond springs away and hurries down to help his beloved captain.

Ashamed of himself, Pippin masters his terror enough to get up  and look out over the wall more closely, just in time to see ‘a flash of white and silver coming from the North, like a small star down on the dusky fields.’ It is Gandalf on Shadowfax, and the shadows seem to give way before him, and Pippin hears like an echo his great voice calling.

Pippin cries out the name of the wizard who ‘always turns up when things are darkest’, urging him on like a spectator at a great race that is almost lost.

But the Nazgul are now aware of the White Rider, and one wheels toward him. But Gandalf raises his hand ‘and a shaft of white light stabbed upward.’  The Nazgul gives a wailing cry, then all five wheel and fly away into the grim clouds above, and for a while the Pelennor fields seem less dark.

Pippin watches as the White Rider meets the horseman and they wait for the others on foot. Men now hurry out to join them, free from the wailing terror, and the company pass out of sight below toward the Great Gate. Pippin hurries down to meet them, guessing they will go right to the citadel and Denethor.

He joins a cheering crowd who are calling out for Faramir and Mithrandir; many have watched the race and rescue from the walls. The two dismount from their horses and walk toward the gate of the citadel, Gandalf with smoldering eyes and Faramir swaying like a weary or wounded man.

When Pippin presses forward and sees the face of Faramir he is startled. It is a face of one who has mastered a great fear, proud and grave. But what astonishes the hobbit is how much he resembles his brother Boromir, ‘whom Pippin had liked from the first, admiring the great man’s lordly but kindly manner.’ But he also sees in Faramir ‘an air of high nobility such as Aragorn at times revealed’ but also ‘touched with the wisdom and the sadness of the Elder race.’  Here is a captain he would follow even under the shadow of the stooping Nazgul.

Pippin calls out his name with the others and Faramir, hearing his strange voice amid the clamor, turns and is amazed to see ‘a halfling, and in the livery of the Tower!’ Where did he come from?

‘But with that Gandalf stepped to his side and spoke. ‘He came with me from the land of the Halflings,’ he said. ‘He came with me. But let us not tarry here. There is much to say and do, and you are weary. He shall come with us. Indeed he must, for if he does not forget his new duties more easily than I do, he must attend on his lord again within the hour. Come, Pippin, follow us!’

 

Bits and Bobs

Just how ‘birdlike’ are the Winged Steeds of the Nazgul? Some earlier illustrators make them winged horse, ‘steeds’ literally. The beast that the Lord of the Nazgul rides later is described as a creature ‘of an older world maybe’ in terms that strongly suggest a pterodactyl to many readers. Tolkien agrees that it is at least ‘pterodactyl-like’. Are all the Nazgul supplied with similar beasts? They are most often compared to birds, hawks or eagles or other scavenger species. Is that just in shape? In an old draft the Witch-King rides something like a ‘huge vulture.’ Of course, in the Jackson movies they are most like dragons, wyverns to be exact, with only two legs. I’ve heard them commonly referred to as dragons by a lot of first reactors.

Some people who have only seen the movie have asked why Gandalf doesn’t use his ‘magic flashlight’ against the Nazgul more often. Perhaps it’s too draining. More than likely, it was because the Valar had set limits to the use of the wizards’ powers, never to use more than absolutely necessary to overcome situations that the Free Peoples could not match themselves. Enough to drive the Nazgul away and preserve life; not enough to outright destroy them.

Much space is given to Pippin’s first reaction to Faramir. You might say that as Pippin was now pledged to Minas Tirith that Faramir was his ‘ideal’ in the command chain. Something is in him that the hobbit ‘would fain call master.’ We are also given a further insight into Pippin’s attachment, his almost ‘hero-worship’ of Boromir that makes him quick to ally himself to his brother. One can almost imagine Pippin telling Frodo (as he gathers material for The Lord of the Rings) about his first impressions of Faramir after seeing him act to save his men under the terror of a Nazgul attack.