Gandalf

“To…Perceive The Unimaginable Hand and Mind of Fëanor at Their Work.” What Would Gandalf Want to See in The Palantír of Orthanc?

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The Two Towers by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991, 2007) pp. 778-784

Gandalf and Pippin are sitting upon Shadowfax, flying across the plains of Rohan towards Edoras and then onwards to Minas Tirith and to war. A Nazgûl has just flown over them, a messenger from Barad-dûr to Isengard. Sauron wants to know why Saruman has not come to the Orthanc-stone. Soon a second messenger will be sent to bring Pippin back for further questioning but there will be no captive to send because Pippin is not in Orthanc. Sauron will want to know why he has seen a hobbit in the palantír and yet nothing is given to the Nazgûl. He will suspect treachery.

As they ride Gandalf thinks about the palantír and whether he might have wrested control of the stone from Sauron. He has already told Aragorn and Théoden that he is relieved that it was Pippin and not himself who first looked into it, that he has not been revealed to the Dark Lord, that there is still a brief window of doubt in Sauron’s mind that they might yet exploit, but he still wonders what he might have seen had he still had the palantír.

“Even now my heart desires to test my will upon it, to see if I could not wrench it from him and turn it where I would- to look across the wide seas of water and of time to Tirion the Fair, and perceive the unimaginable hand and mind of Fëanor at their work, while both the White Tree and Golden were in flower.”

When The Lord of the Rings was first published in 1954 only a handful of people knew anything about Fëanor or the two trees. In his famous review of The Hobbit C.S Lewis revealed that every character that readers meet in Wilderland spring from “deep sources in our blood and tradition” but he was one of the few who knew what they were. It was not until after Tolkien died in 1973 that The Silmarillion was published thanks to the work of his son, Christopher. That changed the way that everyone read The Lord of the Rings. At last we knew the back story.

In The Silmarillion Fëanor is a figure who is both incredibly gifted and yet deeply flawed. When Morgoth and Ungoliant, the monstrous spider creature and mother of Shelob, destroy the two trees, the source of light in Aman, the Valar turn to Fëanor who has caught the light within the Silmarils that he made. They ask for his help asking him to give up the Silmarils so that they might become the source of light in the uttermost west. Fëanor refuses to give them up but Morgoth steals them. Against the will of the Valar Fëanor leads the Noldor to Middle-earth to regain the Silmarils but he is slain in battle against Morgoth.

Gandalf’s desires to see Fëanor at work, to see the greatest maker in the whole history of Arda. Compared to Fëanor Sauron is a craftsman of little skill. Gandalf tells Pippin that Sauron could never have made the palantíri. He could only use them. Fëanor’s hand and mind are “unimaginable”. In him we see the ability of the Elves, the first born of the earth, to co-create with God, and we see Fëanor as the greatest of them. The early Fathers of the Church used to speak of a proper pride in our work. They spoke of parrhesia, of being able to speak freely to God, to look God in the eye and to say, “I have done this”. This, the Fathers taught, was lost in the Fall, as Humankind became competitors with God and not co-creators, but it is restored through the Incarnation. Fëanor’s pride, his desire to keep his own work as a private possession, brought him into competition with the Valar and with Ilúvatar himself. He was corrupted by Morgoth, coming to view the Valar with suspicion, believing that they wanted to use the things he had made for their own narrow self interest. Perhaps his death was a mercy. Had he defeated Morgoth might he have become a Dark Lord in his place?

“All Wizards Should Have a Hobbit or Two in Their Care.” Peregrin Took and The Palantír of Orthanc.

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The Two Towers by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991, 2007) pp. 767-773

This is supposed to be a blog about wisdom. About the wisdom found in The Lord of the Rings, but what wisdom do we learn from Peregrin Took in the matter of the Orthanc-stone except, perhaps, as Merry said to his friend, quoting Gildor Inglorion, “Do not meddle in the affairs of wizards for they are subtle and quick to anger”?

It was Pippin who first picked up the stone after Wormtongue threw it down from a window in Orthanc, hoping to kill one of the party that had parleyed with Saruman at its doors. Gandalf had taken it from him as quickly as possible but Pippin could not get it out of his mind. And so when they all slept in a camp on the road from Isengard to Helm’s Deep he crept silently to where Gandalf lay, took it, and then settled down to take a good look at it.

What he saw terrified him because he saw the Dark Lord himself in Barad-dûr. It was only because Sauron did not think he needed him that he was set free at all. Sauron would send a Nazgûl to Orthanc to bring Pippin to him for further interrogation and, perhaps, to bring him the Ring itself. So confident was he that he would soon have Pippin before him in person that he did not continue his questioning at that moment. Had he done so he would soon have learned much of all his enemies’ plans. Maybe even where the Ring was and how he might find it.

Thankfully at this point Sauron knows nothing of this. He even assumes that what he sees is a prisoner in Orthanc being paraded in front of him for his inspection. Soon, when Aragorn presents himself before Sauron he will learn his mistake but now for a little while he is filled with anticipation at what he will soon know, or even possess.

A disaster has been averted and Gandalf repeats Gildor’s advice to Pippin but is that all we learn?

I would argue that in this, as with all the history of Peregrin Took within The Lord of the Rings, we learn something much more profound. Pippin is kind of divine agent-provocateur within the story and I choose the word, divine, with care here. It was Gandalf who said to Frodo that he was meant to have the Ring and that this was an encouraging thought. What Gandalf meant by this was that he had a sense that he could discern the hand of God, of Eru Ilúvatar, in all the strange events that had led the Ring, first to Bilbo and then to Frodo. It was a hobbit that was meant to find the Ring and to watch over it for a while. Perhaps Bilbo was not the first attempt to put the Ring into the gentle hands of a hobbit but with Déagol all had ended tragically and for hundreds of years the Ring had lain hidden beneath the Misty Mountains.

Tolkien himself had asked the question, “What more can hobbits do?” after his publishers had asked for more about them following the success of The Hobbit and it took him a long time to find out. As he wrote himself, “the tale grew in the telling”, not just in length but depth also. And what Pippin does is to move the story forward time and again. First when he awoke the Balrog of Moria by dropping a stone into the guardroom well, driving Gandalf into a terrible conflict with a mighty foe and then through death itself before returning with power increased for the final struggle. Then when he and Merry were carried by orcs to the eaves of Fangorn Forest in time to awaken the Ents from their long slumber and to destroy Isengard and Saruman’s power. As Gandalf had said their coming to Fangorn “was like the falling of small stones that starts an avalanche in the mountains”. And now Pippin’s misadventure with the Stone of Orthanc propels the story forward to the Battle of the Pelennor Fields before Minas Tirith and to Aragorn’s coming to his kingdom.

Maybe this wisdom, a wisdom that would in most cases be seen as foolishness, can only be divine, because it can only be discerned and not devised. No-one would possibly devise a strategy in which each of the events that I have just outlined was at the heart of it. To do so would be utter folly and would almost certainly end in disaster. But Pippin’s foolishness and his childlike simplicity achieves much in the story that could never be achieved by careful thought. Elrond was right when he said that Pippin should not be a part of the Fellowship of the Ring. There were many within his household more capable than Pippin was. But Gandalf discerned the hand of God at work in bringing Pippin and Merry to Rivendell and so insisted that the young hobbits should be included. In saying that wizards should have a hobbit or two in their care “in order to teach them the meaning of the word”, he only half spoke in jest. He knew that through hobbits much could be achieved that could never be by the hands of those who were greater or wiser.

Only God could bring us this wisdom. Only the truly wise could discern it.

Ten Years of Wisdom From The Lord of the Rings on WordPress.

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It was on October 30th 2013 that I first posted on WordPress seeking Wisdom From The Lord of the Rings. On those first two days I was so excited that nine people around the world had read the introduction to my work. By the end of that year those nine had been added to by a further 390 and so my project had begun.

My daughter, Bethan took this photo of me outside the rooms where she taught Modern European History at Magdalen College, Oxford last year. Fans of the Inklings will know that it was on Addison’s Walk in the gardens of the College that Tolkien and Lewis went for the famous walk that ended with Lewis’s conversion to Christianity.

My first encounter with The Lord of the Rings came in the autumn of 1968. I was 13 years old and a pupil at the Royal Grammar School in High Wycombe, one of those schools originally founded in the middle of the 16th century in England. And while Tolkien attended a school originally founded in Birmingham by Edward VI, the only son of Henry VIII, mine was founded a few years later by his half-sister, Elizabeth I.

It is worth noting that in 1968 comparatively little of Tolkien’s work had been published and The Silmarillion was yet to come. So apart from The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit little was known of the history of Middle-earth except what could be found in the appendices to The Return of the King. But I was a lover and not a scholar and so, in the years to come I returned to what I knew again and again, always with a sense of melancholy as Frodo’s ship went into the West but with the knowledge that I could return to the beginning on another occasion.

It was in the first decade of this century that I began to wonder if I might write about the book that I loved and as I read it once again I began to fill notebooks with my thoughts on the text and to find references to the ideas that I was gleaning from it. I thought that forty years of reading Tolkien might give me some kind of authority to write about his work. But nothing seemed to flow until one evening at home I watched a movie on TV with my wife and younger daughter, Rebecca, and a new idea came to mind.

The movie was called Julie and Julia and in it I was introduced to a thing called a blog. The movie told the story of a young New Yorker, Julie Powell, who decided to cook all 520 recipes in the book written by the legendary cook, Julia Childs in a single year and to tell the story in a blog. As well as enjoying the story itself I began to realise that while I could not construct whole chapters on my favourite book I could construct a short piece of 700 to 800 words. My mind seemed to think in arguments of that kind of length quite naturally. After all I was a church minister, a priest of the Church of England, and I constructed sermons that felt like that.

The first year was a bit of a struggle and in 2014 I published irregularly and my work was read by just a handful of people each day. In 2015 I began to write more regularly and my readership grew to a dozen a day. I would publish a piece once a week and that felt all right within my other commitments. In November 2016 my readership grew to over a thousand in that month for the first time and thereafter kept on steadily growing and by the time I was was appointed to my current post in December 2018 I was being read by about 2000 people each month.

At that point I felt that I could not write regularly and minister to seven busy parishes in rural Worcestershire close to where Tolkien grew up and where his mother’s family used to farm on a farm known locally as Bag End. There was a gap in my publishing of over a year but to my surprise my readership held up pretty well. People were still finding and reading my work.

Then came Covid in March 2020 and we were all locked away inside our homes. Suddenly I had time to write and people had time to read. During that spring and summer I got two mentions in Google News and suddenly my readership grew from a little over 2,000 a month to around 5,000. Even after I was able to return to more normal working practices I kept on writing, getting up at around 5 a.m on a Saturday morning and writing my 700 to 800 words. A further leap in my readership came in the autumn of 2022 with Amazon’s Rings of Power and in September and October of that year I got over 11,000 readers. The number fell back a little bit after the series ended but during this year I have had regularly had between 8,000 and 9,000 readers a month and by the end of 2023 I will have had over 100,000 readers during the year for the very first time. It is a long way from the handful that I was getting each day ten years ago. Over 50 pieces that I have written have been read over 1,000 times and my two most popular posts have been read over 20,000 times.

It has been a rich experience and I would like to say a special thank you to the people who have accompanied me along the way. Brenton Dickieson who writes the blog, A Pilgrim in Narnia, has been an important regular encourager and I will always remember the weekend that he stayed with us as he made his way from Prince Edward Island in Canada to Oxford to give a lecture to the C.S Lewis Society there. We went walking in the Malvern Hills above the town where Lewis went to school and found places to which Lewis made reference in his imaginative works. And I am still incredibly excited every time I see a comment and know that a new conversation might be about to begin with someone new. Just leave a comment and we can start to talk.

So thank you everyone for travelling with me along the way. And thank you to WordPress for being such enabling hosts. I wonder where the blog is going to take me next.

“The Songs Have Come Down Among Us Out of Strange Places.” Théoden Thinks About The Nature of Fairy-stories.

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The Two Towers by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991, 2007) pp.716,717

I promised last week that we would return from the doors of Isengard and their unexpectedly merry wardens in order to return to a conversation in the Deeping-coomb between Théoden and Gandalf.

The conversation takes place when Théoden’s company are about to begin their journey, with some reluctance, to Isengard. Legolas has seen eyes amidst the strange wood that has come from Fangorn such as he has never seen before and then three strange shapes come forward from the trees.

“As tall as trolls they were, twelve feet or more in height; their strong bodies, stout as young trees, seemed to be clad with raiment or with hide of close-fitting grey and brown. Their limbs were long, and their hands had many fingers; their hair was stiff, and their beards grey-green as moss.”

Tolkien describes Ents here as if we had never met them before although we spent some time among them in the company of Merry and Pippin. But now we see them through different eyes. We see them with wonder through the eyes of Legolas and with fear through the eyes of Gimli and the Riders of Rohan.

Gandalf speaks to Théoden. “They are the shepherds of the trees,” he says to him. “Is it so long since you listened to tales by the fireside? There are children in your land who, out of the twisted threads of story, could pick out the answer to your question. You have seen Ents, O King, Ents out of Fangorn Forest, which in your name you call the Entwood. Did you think that the name was given only in idle fancy?”

This is one of the moments in The Lord of the Rings when Tolkien speaks of the themes that he explored in his essay, On Fairy-Stories. As we noted last week this reflection takes place only in scenes involving the Rohirrim. Aragorn and Éomer speak of this when they first meet on the plains of Rohan and now Théoden and Gandalf speak of it together. They speak of “tales by the fireside”, stories told to children. I remember the pleasure of telling stories to my children when they were young. I remember how we would enter the worlds that these tales would evoke as real places. It was one of my favourite moments of the day when all my troubles would be forgotten for a little while. I did not want these moments to end and my wife would have to remind me that the children needed to sleep!

In his essay Tolkien tries to answer the question, “What is a fairy-story?” and as he skilfully dismantle dismantles various attempts to answer the question, offered by scholars or in anthologies of stories such as the collection published by Andrew and Leonora Lang, he draws us ever deeper, and disturbingly, into a realm that he describes as Perilous. He illustrates his point with reference to Walter Scott’s fine poem, Thomas the Rhymer. In it, Thomas, who himself is a poet, meets a beautiful lady who at first he addresses as “The Queen of Heaven”. She replies that this name does not belong to her and that “I am but the queen of fair Elfland, that am hither come to visit thee”. The Queen of Elfland takes Thomas with her to the Perilous Land and he spends seven years there in her company. She describes the road that they will travel together as being neither “the path of Righteousness”, nor “the path of Wickedness” but “the road to fair Elfland”.

Tolkien describes this realm as “wide and deep and high and filled with many things: all manner of beasts and birds are found there; scoreless shoreless seas and stars uncounted; beauty that is an enchantment, and an ever-present peril; both joy and sorrow as sharp as swords.” In Tolkien’s own tale it is Lothlórien that is most Perilous. Faramir understands this well and in his meeting with Frodo and Sam says, “If Men have dealings with the Mistress of Magic who dwells in the Golden Wood, then they may look for strange things to follow. For it is perilous for mortal men to walk out of the world of this Sun, and few of old came thence unchanged, ’tis said”.

This is the world of which Théoden and Gandalf now speak and one that I will return to with you next week if you will. At least to think about it if not to go there in truth, for as I have been writing this piece I have been filled with longing to take “the road to fair Elfland” myself.

“Now, Lord… Look Out Upon Your Land. Breathe the Free Air Again.” Théoden Begins to Emerge From Dark Thoughts into Free Action.

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The Two Towers by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991, 2007) pp. 671-673

The first thing that Gandalf does after freeing Théoden from the malign influence of Wormtongue is to bring him out from his hall into the chill morning air as winter begins to give way to spring in the world about Edoras, and Théoden gives careful attention to the weather that they encounter.

“From the porch upon the top of the high terrace they could see beyond the stream the green fields of Rohan fading into distant grey. Curtains of wind-blown rain were slanting down. The sky above and to the west was still dark with thunder, and the lightning far away flickered among the tops of hidden hills. But the wind had shifted to the north, and already the storm that had come out of the East was receding, rolling away southward to the sea. Suddenly through a rent in the clouds behind them a shaft of sun stabbed down. The falling showers gleamed like silver, and far away the river glittered like a shimmering glass.”

This is a passage full of symbolic meaning. The storm coming out of the east being blown away by a wind from the north and light breaking through dark clouds turning everything into silver. So it was that Eorl the Young rode out of the North to deliver Gondor long ago and now deliverance is coming out of the North in the form of the entirely unexpected returning King and the entirely unlikely form of a hobbit going step by step toward Orodruin and the Cracks of Doom.

Like all great writers, Tolkien is capable of offering his readers layers of meaning within his use of imagery, just as his characters, and his readers too, have the capacity to read the same layers of meaning both in the text and in daily experience, if we should choose to do so. We might choose to limit our reading of text and experience to the random elements that make them up but we would be impoverished if we were to to do this. Théoden’s comment as he breathes the air outside his hall is to remark, with austere simplicity that it is not so dark there, but we know from what we have learned about Théoden’s recent experience how much is contained within these words. It is clear that he is choosing to read his experience of weather in a meaningful way and this deliberate giving of meaning will both continue his healing and enable him to enter into the realm of free action once again following his imprisonment within the darkness of his hall.

Gandalf deliberately chooses to bring Théoden into an unprotected experience of weather precisely to bring him into freedom once again. While Wormtongue has sought to persuade him that everything outside the protected realm of Meduseld is a threat of danger that is to be feared, Gandalf does nothing to diminish this sense of threat. Indeed he tells Théoden that he is “come into a peril greater than the wit of Wormtongue” could weave into his dreams. But even as he admits the reality of the peril, Gandalf also shows Théoden the joy of simply being alive and fully alive. Théoden is no longer crippled by fear. If he is to die then he will embrace this reality too and will not fear it.

The contrast between the protected space of a dwelling place and the unprotected reality of the world outside is one that Tolkien often returns to in The Lord of the Rings. Later, in The Return of the King we will learn that Sauron constantly weaves “veils of Shadow” about himself in Barad-dûr. In many ways he is the master-hider from reality, both hating and fearing the real. But if he is the biggest example of the way in which a dwelling place is created primarily by fear of what lies outside it, many others copy him. Even Rivendell and Lothlórien are hidden and protected realms, descendents, in their way, of Nargothrond, Gondolin and Doriath. And although we thought about how in Treebeard’s dwelling in Wellinghall there was little distinction between the world outside it and the world inside nevertheless the Ents sought to make the forest a protected space for the thriving of trees. Maybe only Gandalf lives a pilgrim life that is undefended but he too needs homes in which to rest and be restored. Perhaps at best we need a rhythm of free air and weather, but homes to live in too, and Théoden has lived too long at home and needs to breathe again if he is to find wholeness once more.

“I Have Not Passed Through Fire and Death to Bandy Crooked Words With a Serving-Man Till The Lightning Falls. ” Gandalf Overcomes Wormtongue in Meduseld.

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The Two Towers by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991, 2007) pp. 668-671

As Gandalf and his companions enter the hall of Théoden Tolkien gives us many contrasts. The light of the sun falls only upon the image of Eorl the Young while everything else is in cloying darkness. A man sits upon a gilded chair “so bent with age that he seemed almost a dwarf; but his white hair was long and thick and fell in great braids from beneath a thin golden circlet set upon his brow.” This man has a beard that reaches his knees “but his eyes still burned with a bright light”.

In other words we are meant to see that the decline of the House of Eorl is only superficial. There is a potency within Rohan that now lies hidden but could be unveiled in a moment. Gandalf knows this and appeals to Théoden to join the conflict against Sauron.

But there is one other person who is, perhaps, more aware than any of the hidden power of Rohan and that is Grima, Wormtongue, the King’s chief counsellor. He has long been secretly in the service of Saruman ever working to weaken the resistance of the Rohirrim against his true master, ever weakening the resolve of Théoden to resist him. When Saruman was not at open war against Rohan it was easy to convince Théoden that he posed no threat. But when open war began Wormtongue’s task became more difficult. Now what he sought to achieve was to weaken Théoden’s resolve and to convince him that his only hope lay in keeping the larger part of his force within Edoras so that in the battle at the Fords of the Isen where Théodred, Théoden’s son fell in battle, his armies were insufficient in number to mount an effective defence. And, perhaps worst of all, the King of Rohan was sitting upon a chair in his darkened hall while his people were falling in battle vainly seeking to defend their homes.

In his guise as the Grey Pilgrim Gandalf has always sought to achieve his purpose by encouragement and persuasion. He has never used force except by necessity. He has remained true to the charge that the Istari, the wizards, were given by the Valar not “to reveal themselves in forms of majesty, or to seek to rule the wills of Men or Elves by open display of power” (Unfinished Tales p.389). As the secret keeper of Narya the Red, one of the three Elven Rings forged by Celebrimbor he has sought to kindle hearts and not to dominate them. But now the great crisis of the Third Age of Arda has come. There is no longer the time to work in this way. in time past Gandalf had been willing to accept rejection patiently, to withdraw from Edoras as he did upon Shadowfax after his escape from Isengard, but now there is no time to act in this fashion. Saruman is at open war with Rohan and, worst of all, so is the Dark Lord in Mordor.

And so in this moment when a choice must be made Gandalf casts aside his tattered cloak and reveals himself in power.

“The wise speak only of what they know, Grima son of Gálmód. A witless worm you have become. Therefore be silent, and keep your forked tongue behind your teeth. I have not passed through fire and death to bandy crooked words with a serving-man till the lightning falls.”

There is a particular kind of wisdom required to know the true moment of crisis when all normal forms of action must be cast aside and replaced by decision. Some are too quick to do this and so act too soon. Gandalf knows that patient diplomacy is now insufficient, that if Rohan remains passive it will fall, so too will Gondor, and ultimately so will all the free peoples of Middle-earth and so night will fall. Gandalf has passed through his own personal crisis in his battle against the Balrog of Moria that ended with his death and so no longer fears anything less than that. He must rouse Théoden from his illusion of decrepitude and with the King restored to who he truly is so too will the Rohirrim rediscover their greatness.

“That is Shadowfax. He is The Chief of The Mearas, Lords of Horses”. Gandalf Must Reach Edoras Swiftly.

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The Two Towers by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991, 2007) pp. 657-659

Aragorn need do no more choosing. At least not for a while. Gandalf has bidden him not to regret the choice that he made in the valley of the Emyn Muil and to go to Edoras and to Théoden in his hall where he is needed.

“The light of Andúril must now be uncovered in the battle for which it has so long waited.”

And so on the edge of the forest and the plains of Rohan Gandalf gives a long whistle, “clear and piercing” and soon the companions hear the whinny of a horse and soon the sound of hooves also.

“There are three,” said Legolas, gazing over the plain. “See how they run! There is Hasufel, and there is my friend Arod beside him! But there is another that strides ahead: a very great horse. I have not seen his like before.”

Readers will remember how, on the night before they had entered Fangorn in search of Merry and Pippin, Saruman had come to the camp in search of news of what had happened to the band of orcs that he had sent in search of the Fellowship and of hobbits in particular. He chased Arod and Hasufel away but soon Legolas and Gimli heard a sound that mystified them. They had expected to hear the cries of frightened horses but heard joy instead. For what they heard was their horses meeting Shadowfax, their lord.

“That is Shadowfax,” said Gandalf. “He is the chief of the Mearas , lords of horses, and not even Théoden, King of Rohan, has ever looked on a better. Does he not shine like silver, and run as swiftly as a swift stream?”

Gandalf first met Shadowfax after he escaped from his captivity in Isengard, borne by Gwaihir, lord of eagles, to Edoras. Gandalf had tried to warn Théoden about Saruman but he was not listened to. Théoden told Gandalf to choose a horse and to depart and Gandalf chose Shadowfax who had never been ridden before.

The Rohirrim had long had a close relationship to horses, closer than any other people in Middle-earth. Tolkien based this people upon the English who dwelt in this land before the Norman conquest of 1066. The language that he created for them was closest to Old English, a language that he taught in Oxford. But Tolkien gave the Rohirrim something that the ancient people of England never had, a mastery of horses. For although the warrior elite of England could ride the mass of the people who would make up the army in time of war could not. The army of England was essentially an infantry force and in 1066 it had to fight two battles against invading forces. The first against Harold Hadrada of Norway was fought at Stamford Bridge in the north of England and the second, just a few days later, was fought against a Norman army under William the Conquerer near Hastings on the south coast. The Normans won the battle decisively and William became king. Tolkien believed that the imposition of the French language as the language of the new rulers of England and the relegation of English to the language of the peasantry destroyed the indigenous mythology of England. He also believed that a key factor in the English defeat was the lack of any effective cavalry in the English army and the use of cavalry by the Normans. As a consequence he not only gave horses to the Rohirrim but built an entire culture around this. The Rohirrim were the horse lords.

I know little about horses myself but have long admired them and I live in an area of England with a strong tradition of horse riding and horse racing. I spent many hours watching my daughters learn to ride as they grew up and observed the bond that can develop between horse and rider at close quarters. This bond is very deep indeed between Gandalf and Shadowfax. We see him ask permission of him and Arod and Hasufel to carry the four companions to Edoras.

“Gandalf caressed him. ‘It is a long way from Rivendell, my friend,’ he said, ‘but you are wise and swift and come at need. Far let us ride now together, and part not in this world again!’

“I Have Spoken Words of Hope. But Only of Hope. Hope is Not Victory.” Gandalf Looks to The Future.

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The Two Towers by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991, 2007) pp. 652,653

The moment is about to come when Gandalf will lead Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli to Edoras and to Meduseld, Théoden’s golden hall in the realm of Rohan. At that moment the story will leap forward once again even as Gandalf and the three companions leap forward borne by Shadowfax and the horses that ran from the camp on the night before Aragorn and his friends entered Fangorn. But just before this great leap there has been a pause, a drawing of breath, as Gandalf speaks of how things stand at this point in the story. And there is also the conclusion of a theme that has run through the story ever since he fell in Moria in the battle at the bridge of Khazad-dûm.

Aragorn speaks to his grief-stricken companions.

It was Aragorn who spoke then to his grief-stricken companions.

“Farewell, Gandalf!” he cried. “Did I not say to you: if you pass the doors of Moria, beware? Alas that I spoke true! What hope have we without you?”

And then he added words that would both drive him on yet hang around his neck like the mariner’s albatross in Coleridge’s great poem:

“We must do without hope,” he said. “At least we may be avenged. Let us gird ourselves and weep no more! Come! We have a long road, and much to do.”

To do without hope. To carry on without any sense that at the end of the long road there will be a completion of the taskdone. To carry on because that is what must be done and for no other reason.

And step by step, from the emergence of the Fellowship from the dark of Moria “beyond hope under the sky” until the reunion “beyond all hope” in the forest of Fangorn Aragorn has journeyed hopelessly.

Now hope is restored. Surely with Gandalf beside them once more there is hope they will triumph. But Gandalf speaks once again of their hope of victory.

“I have spoken words of hope. But only of hope. Hope is not victory. War is upon us and all our friends, a war in which only the use of the Ring could give us surety of victory. It fills me with great sorrow and great fear: for much shall be destroyed and all may be lost. I am Gandalf, Gandalf the White, but Black is mightier still.”

To follow a road hopelessly is a courageous act for it is to do what must be done simply because the deed is right and not for any sense that a reward of some kind might lie at the road’s ending. We might compare the way in which Aragorn and his companions journey onward from Moria to the journey that Thorin Oakenshield and his company make to the Lonely Mountain in Tolkien’s The Hobbit. There, we might say, a part of what sustains hope upon the journey is simply not to think too much about its end, upon the dragon that must be faced and overcome. The dwarves and their hobbit companion go from obstacle to obstacle thinking of nothing more than how to deal with each one as it comes until at the secret door into the mountain Thorin informs Bilbo that the time has come for him to do his job without any sense of how this is to be accomplished. Hope of treasure certainly drives them forward but in another sense they also travel without hope because hope of success lies too close to fear of failure and death in the flames of Smaug. It is best not to think either of success or failure.

Aragorn has also put aside all thoughts of triumph or disaster, only focusing on whether the deed is just or not. But now Gandalf is returned and his hope rekindled. Gandalf does not counsel that they should do without hope. Indeed he tells Legolas that he should go “where he must go and hope”. But he warns them that hope is not victory.

I am reminded of the grim and rather frightening deputy head at my school who, when he would lead prayers at the start of the day, would do so with these words of St Ignatius Loyola. They seem to have been written in very much the same spirit that Gandalf displays here.

“Lord Jesus, teach us to serve you as you deserve. To give and not to count the cost, to fight and not to heed the wounds, to labour and not to seek for rest, to give and not to seek for any reward save that of knowing that we do your will.”

“The Choice Was Just and It Has Been Rewarded”. Why Did Aragorn Choose to Pursue Merry and Pippin?

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The Two Towers by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991, 2007) pp. 646-653

When Aragorn chose, with Legolas and Gimli, not to follow Frodo and Sam but to go across Rohan in pursuit of the orc band that had taken Merry and Pippin to Isengard it was a brave choice but also one of despair. When he had set out from Rivendell with the rest of the Fellowship his purpose was to fulfil his destiny. Through all that was to lie ahead of him, whether war in Minas Tirith or a journey with the Ringbearer to the Cracks of Doom, he would claim the throne, both of Gondor and Arnor, and he would claim Arwen, daughter of Elrond, to be his bride. For Elrond had told him that only the king, both of Gondor and Arnor, could marry his daughter.

Perhaps it was always a desperate hope but, step by step, he was determined to pursue his hope right to the very end. But then Gandalf fell in battle against the Balrog in Moria and his hope was dashed. Not even when Galadriel gave him the green stone of his ancestors, borne by Eärendil himself was his hope truly rekindled. Not even when she said: “Take the name that was foretold for you, Elessar, the Elfstone of the house of Elendil!”

So it was that when the Company was attacked at Parth Galen and Boromir fell and Merry and Pippin seized by orcs Aragorn chose to pursue them. Until that moment he had felt that he had two choices. Either he would go with Boromir to Minas Tirith and play his part in the defence of the city or he would go with Frodo to Mordor and there to do all he could to try to destroy the Ring. He felt in his heart that it was his duty to go with Frodo, especially after the fall of Gandalf, but that same heart longed to go to Gondor where his destiny lay.

All this was taken from him at Parth Galen. Boromir fell in battle seeking to defend Merry and Pippin and Frodo set out for Mordor taking Sam with him. What little hope remained to him that he might yet fulfil his destiny was taken from him. What lay ahead was what he knew was a fruitless task. He would pursue the orc band that had taken the young hobbits across the plains of Rohan and probably die in an attempt to free them. The pursuit took him to the Forest of Fangorn where he even wondered whether he might starve to death alongside the companions that he had tried to rescue.

And then he met Gandalf in the very place in which he expected to die beyond all hope. On the one hand he is filled with joy as hope is rekindled. On the other hand he wonders what the vain pursuit of Merry and Pippin was for.

Gandalf speaks to him.

“Come, Aragorn son of Arathorn!” he said. “Do not regret your choice in the valley of the Emyn Muil, nor call it a vain pursuit. You chose amid doubts the path that seemed right: the choice was just and it has been rewarded. For so we met in time, who otherwise might have met too late.”

Aragorn chose a path that that was utterly alien in nature to the dark forces ranged against him. For they saw all things and all creatures as objects merely to be used for their own purposes. This was true from Sauron and Saruman right down to the meanest of orcs. He chose to lay down his life, his dreams and deepest longings, in the service of two figures that seemed to be of little more value than lost luggage. Gandalf describes the choice as just. Aragorn acted justly in choosing to serve the weak. And he speaks of reward. He speaks of a sense that reality itself rewards such choices. Sauron and Saruman would dismiss such talk as mere sentimental drivel and typical of the weakness of people like Gandalf, a weakness that deserved to be swept away. Gandalf, and Aragorn too, have placed their bets upon an entirely different reality. They believe in a universe that is just; not an impersonal even an implacable thing. And, says Gandalf, the choice is rewarded. The universe approves an act of justice and of mercy.

“The Enemy Has Failed- so Far. Thanks to Saruman.” What Does Gandalf Mean?

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The Two Towers by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991, 2007) pp.646-650

The treason of Isengard is one of the saddest stories within all that makes up The Lord of the Rings. One who was chosen by the Valar to rouse the peoples of Middle-earth against Sauron chooses to turn against them and to side with the very power against whom he was sent to fight.

Gandalf has been giving Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli a briefing on the state of affairs in the War of the Ring at this point in the story when he has been reunited with them in Fangorn Forest. He has spoken of how Sauron has no conception of the possibility that his enemies might want to destroy the Ring, being convinced that one of them will seize control of it and use it against him. With this conviction he is concentrating upon attack rather than defence. “If he had used all his power to guard Mordor, so that none could enter, and bent all his guile to the hunting of the Ring, then indeed hope would have faded: neither Ring nor bearer could long have eluded him.”

But what Sauron believes is that it will take time even for the most able of his enemies to learn how to wield the power of the Ring in a way that could ensure victory over him. Gollum, and then Bilbo later, possessed and used the Ring, but neither were able to do much more with it than to make themselves invisible. As Frodo draws nearer to Mordor he begins to become more aware of the Ring’s power threatening to use that power against Gollum in order to frighten him into co-operation, but compared to what Sauron could achieve if he were to regain possession of the Ring this is very small.

Because of this Sauron believes that he has a window of opportunity to strike a blow against his foes that will be strong enough to defeat them. His main goal is to capture Minas Tirith, the capital of Gondor and that is where the main part of his attention is focussed. Surely this is the reason why he sent only a small company of orcs to waylay the Fellowship and not a more significant force. His concern would have been that any larger company would have attracted the attention of his enemies and he did not yet have enough control over the territory between Mordor and the Anduin to fight a battle far from home.

So Grishnákh’s force that took part in the attack upon the Fellowship was not particularly large, and disastrously for Sauron, not large enough to force Uglúk’s Uruk-hai to go to Barad-dûr instead of Isengard.

“Already he knows that the messengers that he sent to waylay the Company have failed again. They have not found the Ring. Neither have they brought away any hobbits as hostages. Had they done even so much as that, it would have been a heavy blow to us, and it might have been fatal. But let us not darken our hearts by imagining the trial of their gentle loyalty in the Dark Tower. For the Enemy has failed- so far. Thanks to Saruman.”

Gimli is confused by Gandalf’s words, wondering if what he means by them is that Saruman is not a traitor, but what Gandalf means is that Saruman is not only a traitor to the Valar and the free peoples of Middle-earth but also to Sauron. Saruman wants the Ring for his own purposes. He wishes to become lord of Middle-earth. But he too has failed to seize the Ring. He too has not even been able to capture hobbits. All that he has managed to achieve is, as Gandalf puts it, “to bring Merry and Pippin with marvellous speed, and in the nick of time, to Fangorn, where otherwise they would never come at all.”

What Saruman has achieved by attempting to seize the Ring for himself is to make Sauron aware of his treachery. At this point of the story Sauron fears that it might be Saruman who has seized the Ring. Time and again irony has a big part to play within The Lord of the Rings. An action that is meant to do harm turns out to achieve the opposite of its intention. It might even be that irony is not merely a kind of chance event but is woven into the very fabric of reality.