Month: June 2026

“Take All These Things and Bear Them to Good Fortune!” Merry and The Importance of Being Dressed For Battle.

/ stephencwinter / 2 Comments

The Return of the King by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991) pp. 784-785

The last reference in The Lord of the Rings to the livery of a warrior is not particularly complimentary. Sam arrives at the home of the Cotton family who have provided shelter to his father after his forced eviction from Bag End. By this point in the story he has probably become so accustomed to wearing the gear of warfare that he hardly recognises that he is wearing it anymore. But his father does, and the magnificence of his son’s attire does not impress him. In fact, as far as the Gaffer is concerned, he has simply been presented with yet one more example of his son’s tendency to have ideas above his station, the kind of moral laxity that probably began with being taught “his letters” by Mr. Bilbo Baggins.

“What’s become of his weskit?” the Gaffer asks of Frodo. “I don’t hold with wearing ironmongery, whether it wears well or no.”

The Gaffer may not be impressed by what he sees but the hobbits of the Shire most certainly are. Rosie Cotton’s eyes are shining as she looks at her man and hears the words that Frodo speaks in praise of him, and the hobbits who have collaborated first with Lotho Sackville-Baggins and then with Sharkey are clearly intimidated, both by Sam and by Merry and Pippin. For each one of them are arrayed in the war gear of Gondor and of Rohan.

The livery that each of Frodo’s companions wear carries with it the status afforded to one who wears it. We remember the magnificent appearance of Hirgon, messenger of Gondor, as he bears the message from Denethor, his lord, to Théoden of Rohan. Immediately all know, as they look upon the magnificence of the Herald of Gondor, that what he bears is of the greatest importance, and Hirgon knows it too. The clothes he wears give him pride in his lord, in his people, in himself as their messenger, and in the message that he bears.

In a later chapter we will see Pippin arrayed in the livery of the Guard of the White Tower of Minas Tirith. He too must be dressed appropriately for the work that he must do in the service of the Steward of Gondor. And here in the passage that we are thinking about this week we learn how Théoden tells Merry that because he is unable to ride one of the great war-horses of Rohan, he will not be coming with the Rohirrim in the great ride to Minas Tirith. Then Éowyn takes him aside and tells him that Aragorn had asked her to do just one thing before he left to take the Paths of the Dead and that was that Merry “should be armed for battle”, and then she gave him, “a stout jerkin of leather, a belt and a knife”; the gear that a foot soldier would wear and not one of the knights of Rohan who wore mail shirts into battle. And she gave Merry a shield and a small helm, but not a sword, for Merry had carried a sword since the night of his captivity in the barrow close by the house of Tom Bombadil.

It is arrayed in this simple gear that Merry will accompany Éowyn in secret, in her disguise as Dernhelm, on the great ride, and it will be his sword of Westernesse that will strike the blow that will enable Éowyn to kill the Witch-King of Angmar. So each of the hobbits take the journey to valiant manhood and are recognised as men by their fellow hobbits, both friend and foe, when they lead the uprising that ends the occupation of the Shire by Saruman and his lackeys.

It may be that in watching them as they are arrayed for war that readers will recognise the delight that small boys take in dressing up for games of war. Some may even think that when grown men dress likewise in this or any other uniform for work that this is a sign of their immaturity; a failure to outgrow childish games. But in their seminal work on the male psyche, King, Warrior, Magician, Lover, Robert Moore and Douglas Gillette identify four fundamental male energies, each of which can be developed either into mature or immature forms. Unbeknown, especially to themselves, Merry and Pippin, and Sam also, are growing into mature warriors who will be able to free the Shire and the enslaved hobbits from slavery and then lead them into an age of prosperity. You will note that I have not mentioned Frodo here. He takes a different path, and we will speak of that many times in future posts.

“So We Come To It in The End… The Great Battle of Our Time, in Which Many Things Shall Pass Away.” A Great Cloud Comes From Mordor That Simplifies The Mind of Théoden.

/ stephencwinter / 4 Comments

The Return of the King by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991) pp. 783-784

When Merry is awakened at dawn after the coming of the Herald of Gondor he wonders why he has been called by the King in the middle of the night.

“Flinging on some clothes, Merry looked outside. The world was darkling. The very air seemed brown, and all things about were black and grey and shadowless; there was a great stillness. No shape of cloud could be seen, unless it were far away westward, where the furthest groping fingers of the great gloom still crawled onwards, and a little light leaked through them. Overhead there hung a heavy roof, sombre and featureless, and light seemed to failing than growing.”

The coming of the cloud from Mordor is one of the most terrible images of The Lord of the Rings, symbolising as Sauron intended it to do, his absolute intention to rule over all things. For while the cloud has a practical purpose in that it provides a cover for the orcs who will make up the main body of Sauron’s army, and who dislike, even hate the brightness of the sun, it also displays the Dark Lord’s totalising intent, his desire to “bring them all, and in the darkness bind them”. He wishes to rule over all things, even the weather of the world.

The date is the 10th of March, “The Dawnless Day”, the day upon which the host of Minas Morgul sets forth to war in Gondor led by the Lord of the Nazgûl, the Witch-King of Angmar. It is the first day of Pippin’s brief service of the Steward of Gondor, a day upon which he is arrayed in the livery of the White Tower. It is the day upon which Merry is told by Théoden that he will not be riding with the Rohirrim to Minas Tirith, but that he is to remain in Rohan; but it is the day upon which Eowyn arrays him for battle. It is one of the darkest days of the whole story.

But it is a day that brings a great simplicity to the mind and heart of Théoden. For when Hirgon had asked him to bring all his strength to Minas Tirith and to come as swiftly as he can he had replied with caution, knowing that his rear needed defence against attack and that his advance guard needed to proceed with care. These are all the usual and necessary precautions that any general must take in order to reduce as much, if possible, any unnecessary losses, and to take thought for the security of what lies behind him as well as what lies before. But one set of circumstances takes away all reason for caution and that is the circumstance in which all choice is taken away except for the choice to throw everything away in one last desperate action. We call it the moment in which we have nothing left to lose, and Théoden knows that this moment has come.

“So we have come to it in the end,” he said: “the great battle of our time, in which many things will pass away. But at least there is no longer any need for hiding. We will ride the straight way and the open road and with all our speed.”

Théoden has come to that moment that is the “condition of complete simplicity”, as T.S Eliot named it in his Four Quartets. It is the moment that is expressed in Christian thought by the cross, the moment when everything has to be given away, even life itself. As Eliot himself continued in his poem, it is a condition that “costs not less than everything.” Théoden knows that he has come to that moment, the moment in which darkness seems to have triumphed completely, and so he gives everything of himself and of his people.

But even at this moment of the most terrible simplicity there is something deeper at work that almost no-one is able to see in this darkness. For it is on this day on which Frodo comes with Gollum and Sam to the Crossroads and begins his own intentional journey into the dark. It is there that he sees the statue of the fallen king, defaced by the obscene graffiti of the orcs, and sees it crowned with a circlet of wildflowers, and it is at that moment that the sun dips beneath the darkness from Mordor and illuminates the scene that Frodo can see. And as he gazes upon this beauty he cries out, “They cannot conquer forever!”

Perhaps he is the only one to experience such a moment of illumination even as the sun disappears, but what he sees, if only for a moment, is what Eliot goes onto say after speaking of the terrible condition of “complete simplicity”.

And all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be well