Month: June 2026

“He Was a Captain That Men Would Follow, That He Would Follow, Even Under the Shadow of The Black Wings.” Some Thoughts on Leadership as Faramir Returns to Minas Tirith.

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The Return of the King by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991) pp. 788-793

“How are the people to know they are faithful, unless their captains tell them?” So wrote Richard Hooker, the Anglican theologian of the 16th and early 17th century who wrote the first major defence of the newly established Church of England under the reign of Queen Elizabeth I.

I don’t think that Pippin is a thinker, one given to deep reflection, but he has a good and faithful heart, and he needs to know that he is doing something right and of value. And that is the last thing that he feels that he is doing as he waits for war to break upon him. He may have been dressed in the livery of the Guard of the Tower, a high honour in Gondor. He may too have the honour of waiting upon the Steward of Gondor as his esquire. But deep down he feels of little use.

“Why did you bring me here?” he asks Gandalf. And the answer that Gandalf gives to him brings him little comfort.

“You know quite well… To keep you out of mischief; and if you do not like being here, you can remember that you brought it upon yourself.”

Gandalf, of course, is speaking of the incident in which Pippin looked into the Stone of Orthanc and so saw Sauron himself and nearly gave away the whole mission of the Fellowship of the Ring. Much good came of that but it was all unintended, certainly by Pippin. He is no traitor, but he has been very foolish, and Gandalf intends that he should not forget this and so he might learn every lesson that he can from his foolishness.

Pippin feels a very small and insignificant figure among many great captains. There is Gandalf, of course, and then there is the frightening figure of Denethor, and the mighty Aragorn. But then comes the Lord Faramir, and Pippin responds to him in a way that he does not to any of the mighty ones that I have just mentioned.

Faramir is first seen leading his men towards the gate of Minas Tirith across the Pelennor Field, and as he does so, he is attacked by five fell riders of the air, by five Nazgûl riding upon their terrible steeds that swoop down upon the retreating soldiers. All the horses of Faramir’s men rear in terror and throw their riders but Faramir is able to master his and to return to the aid of the others. But for all his courage all would have been lost had it not been that Gandalf rode towards them upon Shadowfax and with a shaft of white light rising upwards from his hand drove away the attackers and so brought the soldiers safely back to the city.

All within the city walls are stirred by what they have witnessed and many rush to the gate where Gandalf and Faramir enter. Pippin is among them and when he reaches the gate he sees Faramir at close quarters for the very first time.

“Pippin pressed forward as they passed under the lamp beneath the gate-arch, and when he saw the pale face of Faramir he caught his breath. It was the face who has been assailed by a great fear or anguish, but has mastered it and now is quiet.”

Pippin is immediately reminded of Boromir, Faramir’s brother, who died in Pippin’s defence and who Pippin liked and admired. But I think there is something more that is happening here. As Pippin gazes upon Faramir’s face we read:

“He knew now why Beregond spoke his name with love. He was a captain that men would follow, that he would follow, even under the shadow of the black wings.”

And I know that I would have followed such a captain too when I was a young man. I have met some leaders for whom I have had considerable respect, even some that I would have loved to be picked out by and to follow them on some great venture, but I am not sure that I have ever met a Faramir. I wish that I had. I wonder if Tolkien ever did, or did the character of Faramir that he created, that he unexpectedly discovered as he wrote The Lord of the Rings, represent someone that he wished that he could have met.

It is such a captain to whom the people will always look in order to know that they are faithful and of worth. Happy the people who can find such a captain especially in time of need.

“Where Will Wants Not, a Way Opens, So We Say.” Dernhelm the Young Warrior Takes Merry into Battle.

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The Return of the King by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991) pp. 785-787

One of the greatest challenges that faces any person is not to pass the pain that they have faced onto another. So it is for each one of us, for all of us must endure pain at some point in our lives, whether in body, soul or spirit, or all three together. And so it is for Éowyn, sister-daughter of Théoden. She has long borne the pain of being forced to gaze helplessly upon her uncle’s long decline into dotage at the hands of Grima Wormtongue, and then as hope is suddenly rekindled in her heart at the sudden healing of Théoden, and even more as she falls in love with the greatest man of the age, Aragorn, the Heir of Isildur, the possibility of freedom and glory opens up before her. Then just as suddenly all is dashed from her grasp.

Aragorn takes the hopeless road, the Paths of the Dead, that no-one has ever passed, and what is worse, he will not take her with him. She must “do her duty” to her lord and king and to her people, attending as lady of her people to all the hearths that will await the men on their return from battle or, if they do not return, awaiting her fate and bearing it as bravely as she can. All the women, children and those too old to fight, do so in the best manner they can. Tolkien turns to the rhythm of speech of his Old English ancestors in order to speak of them:

“They were a stern people, loyal to their lord, and little weeping or murmuring was heard”.

Each woman and child does what is expected of them, what they have long been trained to do.

But there are two people who do not wish to stay behind. Meriadoc Brandybuck, swordthain of Rohan, feels shame as he thinks about having to stay with the women, the children, and the elderly while the warriors go to war, while his closest friends are putting their lives in mortal danger. He has to accept the reasons that Théoden has given to him, that Stybba, the pony small enough for him to ride alongside the king in the gentle pace of a journey along mountain paths will never be able to keep pace with the steeds of the Rohirrim or be able to join the charge of knights before the gates of Minas Tirith. He understands this but it cannot erase the dishonour he feels.

And Éowyn feels the cage that she fears closing round her once more and the rejection by Aragorn that leaves her with the feeling that there is no future, no hope for her beyond the fate of the women who “have leave to be burned in the house” when the men do not return from the war. She sees nothing beyond death in a burning house and so she chooses death in battle, taking on the disguise of a young warrior and the name of Dernhelm.

But even in her despair her heart is able to go out to another. She recognises in the young hobbit a fellow sufferer, one who is condemned to dishonour as he like her is left behind. As he watches the riders preparing to break camp a young Rider comes alongside him, one that he thinks he recognises but whose name he does not know. And the Rider speaks softly to him.

“Where will wants not, a way opens, so we say,” the Rider says… “You wish to go wither the Lord of the Mark goes. I see it in your face.”

And so Éowyn takes Merry secretly with her into battle. She may have been wrapped in anger and despair but she is still able to recognise the same feeling in another and to reach out to him. This does not begin a friendship. They never speak on the ride into Gondor. But in their silence they are able to grant strength to one another. And perhaps for Éowyn this reaching out to another in their pain, even within her own, a keeping open of her broken heart and not closing it against the world and its suffering, perhaps this is the beginning of her long journey towards healing

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

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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.

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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