Legolas

“It is Old, Very Old,” Said The Elf. Legolas In The Forest of Fangorn.

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The Two Towers by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991, 2007) pp. 639, 640

A few years ago I was taking the road through the Savernake Forest on a regular basis as I drove down to Salisbury in the county of Wiltshire in England to see my mother in the last days of her life. In England, when you see the name, Forest, attached to a particular place it will often mean an area of land set apart for hunting by the Norman conquerors of this land nearly a thousand years ago and so, for example, the New Forest in the south of England was new when the Normans first came in the 11th century but it is old now. Savernake Forest is of a similar age and standing by the side of the road is a an ancient oak tree that first took root around the time that William the Conqueror first established his realm here.

The Big Belly Oak in Savernake Forest. I like the fact that passing vehicles have to take a little extra care as they pass it by.

As Legolas enters the Forest of Fangorn with his companions, Aragorn and Gimli, in search of Merry and Pippin, it is the oldness of the forest that he feels.

‘”It is old, very old,” said the Elf. “So old that I almost feel young again, as I have not felt since I journeyed with you children. It is old and full of memory. I could have been happy here, if I had come in days of peace.”‘

It is this quality of oldness that can cause us to reassess our place in the scheme of things. I have sometimes seen this in the relationship between an old man and a young boy, a grandfather and grandson, noting the particular quality of attentiveness that they give to one another. Perhaps my favourite literary relationships are between old men and young boys, Dumbledore and Harry Potter, Merlin and the young Arthur, Gandalf and Frodo, teachers and eager pupils. And it is possible to make a relationship with a particular tree as well. I remember once taking shelter in woodland on a stormy day and finding great comfort in the presence of an ancient tree that stood so confidently as its branches swayed in the wind. I still go to seek out that tree from time to time just to feel its strength and feel the need to do so, once again, even as I write this.

Alan Lee’s wonderful depiction of Merlin and the young Arthur from T.H White’s The Sword in the Stone. Was Arthur ever happier than at moments like this?

And then there are certain places that have the capacity, somehow, to hold you because of their age. Old churches can have such a capacity. A memory that still holds me is of walking with my father through spring woodland on our way to church when I was a small boy. It is the memory of the presence of my father, a rare treat, the bluebell covered woodland floor, and the particular beauty of the church, at least as I saw it then, that has this quality of holding. I picked bluebells to give to my mother on my way home. No one had ever told me not to pick wild flowers and so I did so in complete innocence. The day was perfect.

Early memories of old churches also mean singing Evensong according to the 1662 Book of Common Prayer of the Church of England. I will join a congregation in an ancient country parish church this Sunday evening for the same service and anticipate happily the same quality of inner quiet that I found back then as a small boy with my treble voice. My personal copy of the Prayerbook was given me by my grandmother, who was born in reign of Queen Victoria, and who held my elder daughter on her lap in the last year of her life. If my daughter lives to a similar age that will mean almost two centuries of the life of our family connected in that moment by just two lives. That thought too has the capability of holding me if I pay attention to it

.

The choir in Worcester Cathedral, the burial place of kings and princes, where my younger daughter sang Evensong as a chorister on Saturday evenings for five years.

It is this quality of being held, of being young again in the presence of great age, of the feeling of safety, of rootedness in something much greater than oneself that Legolas feels as he enters the Forest of Fangorn even amid the seeming impossibility of finding Merry and Pippin and so Gimli is comforted too.

“That at Least is Enough to Show That He Was a Hobbit.” Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli Search for News of Their Friends.

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The Two Towers by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991, 2007) pp. 636-639

When Gimli awakes under the eaves of Fangorn, with his “very bones” chilled, after the night in which the strange visitor came to the camp and the horses loaned to the three hunters ran away, Merry and Pippin are spending the day together with Bregalad as Entmoot continues. The young hobbits are safe in the care of the Ents although Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli could not possibly know this. Indeed Gimli, at least, still regards Fangorn Forest as a place of threat and menace and not, as we have learned, as a place of refuge and kindly welcome to those who are fleeing from danger.

Aragorn and Legolas search for clues concerning Merry and Pippin

We know that there is little possibility that the hunters will find Merry and Pippin, at least at this point in the story, but they are resolved to continue the search until either they find them or fail, even perish, in the attempt.

The search for clues begins close to the site of the battle in which Éomer’s company first surrounded, and then wiped out, the orcs who were taking Merry and Pippin to Isengard, and it is Aragorn, the greatest tracker of the age, who makes the first find.

“‘Here at last we find news!’ said Aragorn. He lifted up a broken lead for them to see, a large pale leaf of golden hue, now fading and turning brown.”

It is one of the mallorn-leaves of Lórien in which the elves had carefully wrapped the gift of lembas, the waybread that proves so important in sustaining the travellers, especially Frodo and Sam, upon their journey. And there are other signs nearby. One is the presence of lembas crumbs, another the cut cords of the bonds that had held Merry and Pippin, and the other the orc blade that Pippin had used to cut Merry’s bonds.

Legolas is perplexed by the strange tale that these signs seem to tell but Aragorn is able to interpret their meaning. As we know Pippin had been able to free his hands earlier in the forced march across the plains of Rohan. We know too that Grishnákh had tried to escape the battle carrying Merry and Pippin one under each arm in the hope that he could take them to Mordor and claim a reward for bringing a prize to the Dark Lord that Saruman had clearly coveted so much. And we know that Grishnákh was discovered and then killed by the Rohirrim who were not able to discover the hobbits because they were wearing their elven cloaks.

And there is a further detail about which all the companions are able to agree. It is clear that before they continued their journey, one, or as Aragorn guesses and hopes, both of the hobbits sat down to eat a meal of lembas.

The first main scene of The Lord of the Rings is located in The Ivy Bush, a small inn on the Bywater Road that the Gaffer Gamgee, Sam’s father, likes to frequent. This is no random detail. Hobbit life is built around the enjoyment of food, drink and good company. Tolkien described himself as “a Hobbit (in all but size). I like gardens, trees and unmechanized farmlands; I smoke a pipe and like good plain food.” He might have added his liking for beer, ale and the company of friends. It is no mere accident that some of the finest literary work of the 20th century, work that was wonderfully imaginative, brilliantly critical and profoundly philosophical, arose from The Inklings who used to gather in The Eagle and Child on St Giles’ in Oxford.

Sadly we have no photographs of a gathering of The Inklings in The Eagle and Child in Oxford; but which of them could one imagine with a smart phone at the ready to record the occasion? I will leave it to my readers to put names to the faces.
The Eagle and Child on St Giles’s in Oxford. It is temporarily closed for a major refurbishment. We are assured that it will be sympathetic. When it reopens I look forward to enjoying its pleasures. Would anyone care to join me there? Perhaps as we enter we could call out, as C.S Lewis used to do, “Any pies today?”

It is no mistake that one of the main things that makes the four hobbits , and especially Merry and Pippin, who set out upon the impossible journey first to Rivendell and then southwards towards Mordor so likeable, is their simple pleasure in food and drink. As Gandalf said of Bilbo and of hobbits in general in The Hobbit, “If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world.” It is the possibility of a merrier world that touches so many of the hearts of those who meet Merry and Pippin in their journey, even the glacial hearted Denethor of Gondor. And at this moment of the story as Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli search amidst the debris of battle for signs of their friends it transforms the mere doing of a duty into a passionate and loving self-sacrifice.

Hobbits enjoying the conviviality of The Prancing Pony in Bree, although on this occasion it rather got them into trouble!

“This Old Man Had a Hat Not a Hood.” Who Did The Three Hunters See Under The Eaves of Fangorn?

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The Two Towers by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991, 2007) pp.573-577

Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli have found the site of the battle between the Riders of Rohan and the Orc band who had taken Merry and Pippin but they have found no sign of the hobbits themselves. Now before they continue their search they decide to make camp for the night right under the eaves of an ancient chestnut tree. They build a fire taking care not to cut wood from any living tree but only that which they can gather from the ground about them.

As they rest by their fire they ponder the journey that lies before them, a journey that is likely to take them into the forest itself.

“Celeborn warned us not to go far into Fangorn,” Legolas says. “Do you know why, Aragorn?”

But Aragorn knows little of the forest save that it is old, “as old as the forest by the Barrow-downs, and it is far greater. Elrond says that the two are akin, the last strongholds of the mighty woods of the Elder Days, in which the Firstborn roamed while Men still slept. Yet Fangorn holds some secret of its own. What it is I do not know.”

Alan Lee evokes the wonderful mystery of forests.

The journeys of The Lord of the Rings sometimes lead under the ground, such as the journey through Moria, the Paths of the Dead under the White Mountains between Rohan and Gondor and the path through Shelob’s Lair that passes under the mountains that surround Mordor. Each of these paths hide a deadly peril. The Balrog lurks in the depths of Moria; the Dead haunt the paths under the White Mountains; and Shelob lies in wait for any that might pass through her lair under the mountains of Mordor. All who pass through these dark ways will come to an end of themselves in some way and emerge the other side as different from the self that first entered in.

But the journeys through forests are different in nature. In these journeys a secret is encountered. The hobbits encounter Tom Bombadil in the Old Forest, a strange and delightful wonder. In Lothlórien, the Golden Wood, the Fellowship meet the Lady of the Wood, Galadriel. And in Fangorn Forest Merry and Pippin meet Treebeard, the oldest of the Ents, the Onodrim of which Legolas speaks by the campfire. Each forest is alive, not just as the aggregation of many things, many separate trees and other plants, but as an intelligence that holds all the separate parts together and which is expressed in the secret life hidden therein.

The night passes and Gimli is on watch by the fire when something happens that awakens all three. Or perhaps I should say that two things happen. An old man “wrapped in a great cloak” is seen standing in the firelight but who disappears when challenged by Aragorn. And the other thing is that the horses run off at the same moment.

Shadowfax, Chief of the Mearas.

Gimli is convinced that the old man is Saruman and that he has driven their horses away. He is partly correct in this. The following day the companions will meet Gandalf in the forest. It is one of the great moments of the story. Gimli will ask Gandalf if it was him or Saruman who he had seen by the fire and Gandalf will reassure him that he was not there so it was likely to have been Saruman; that Saruman had not been able to wait for his orcs to bring him the hobbits and with the hobbits the greatest prize of all, the One Ring. But it was not Saruman who drove away the horses. The following morning Aragorn will remark to the others that the horses did not sound as if they were fleeing in terror and Legolas will reply that “they spoke as horses will when they meet a friend that they have long missed.” The friend, as we will learn later, is Shadowfax, the greatest of horses who has drawn near to Fangorn in order to await Gandalf. If the companions knew this they would not have to worry about their horses. As Galadriel told them their paths are laid out before their feet and all they need do is to walk the paths in trust.

Gandalf and Saruman together.

“Do We Walk in Legends or On The Green Earth in Daylight?” The Riders of Rohan Encounter Dreams of Legend Springing Out of the Grass.

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The Two Towers by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991/2007) pp.558-565

As Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli continue their weary and hopeless march across the plains of Rohan in pursuit of the orc host that have taken Merry and Pippin captive they become aware that a band of horsemen is moving swiftly towards them back down the very trail that they are following. The horsemen are Rohirrim, riders of Rohan. Aragorn describes them to his companions.

“They are proud and wilful, but they are true-hearted, generous in thought and deed; bold but not cruel; wise but unlearned; writing no books but singing many songs, after the manner of the children of Men before the Dark Years.”

The Riders of Rohan at the Battle of the Pelennor Fields

The companions decide to wait for the riders to come to them and Aragorn greets them as they ride by. Wrapped about in their cloaks of Lothlórien it seems to the riders that they have sprung from the grass itself and what follows is a tense encounter that almost ends in disaster. For Tolkien in this scene brings us into the heroic world of the North in which honour has more meaning than even life itself and most certainly of a life, or existence, in which honour has been lost. So Gimli is ready, almost eager, to die for the sake of the honour of Galadriel, the lady of Lothlórien, when he feels that it has been slighted by Éomer, who leads the company of riders.

The Rohirrim surround the three companions

Aragorn is able to avert the disaster but then, in the manner in which he announces himself, brings us all back into the very stuff of legend.

“I am Aragorn son of Arathorn, and am called Elessar, the Elfstone, Dúnadan, the heir of Isildur Elendil’s son of Gondor. Here is the Sword that was Broken and is forged again! Will you aid me or thwart me? Choose swiftly!”

Anke Eissmann imagines the first meeting between Aragorn and Eomer

So Tolkien deliberately mingles the stuff of legend with the stuff of ordinary life and invites his readers to make the same kind of choice that Aragorn demands of the Rohirrim. For Tolkien not only makes the Rohirrim the people who would have heard tales like that of Beowulf which would have been told in the halls of their lords in the early middle ages, but he also makes them a very modern people for whom a story like Beowulf that might be one that stirred them when they were young but which would have been consigned to the pleasant, but private, world of fantasy when they grew up. For real life with its duties can, for the modern person, only be lived with stuff that can be touched, smelt, heard, seen or tasted. The life of the imagination might give a moment of pleasure amidst the grim reality of ordinary life but it can never be regarded as real.

This division between that which is heroic and that which is ordinary is one that Aragorn suggests is false. When the rider who stands beside Eomer scoffs at Aragorn’s mention of halflings Aragorn’s response is not to the rider but to his Lord. The Rider dismisses the mention of halflings as “old songs and children’s tales out of the North”. And then he asks, “Do we walk in legends or on the green earth in the daylight?”

“A man may do both,” said Aragorn. “For not we but those who come after will make the legends of our time. The green earth, say you? That is a mighty matter of legend, though you tread it under the light of day!”

I say that Aragorn addresses Eomer because, as far as the Rider is concerned, Aragorn is simply speaking nonsense that does not deserve attention. He, and his fellows, are the spiritual kin of Cervantes’ Sancho Panza, the sensible though devoted servant of Don Quixote. While Don Quixote tilts at windmills Sancho Panza does all that he can to keep his master out of trouble. Modern readers side with the servant yet wish, secretly, that they could live in the lost enchanted world of the master. Aragorn argues that it is possible to do both as he presents himself as a representative of the world of legend amidst the world of the sensible.

As far as the Riders are concerned the strange creatures who have sprung from the grass are merely “wild men”, but Eomer heard the rhyme that Boromir spoke when he came to Edoras, the rhyme that spoke of halflings as well as the blade that was broken. Eomer knows that he needs to pay closer attention to Aragorn’s words even if he does not understand them. Perhaps there is more to what Aragorn is saying than mere tilting at windmills.

An End to Hope, Maybe, But Not to Toil. Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli Pursue the Orcs of Isengard Across the Plains of Rohan.

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The Two Towers by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991, 2007) pp. 547-558)

Three times the sun rises upon the chase of Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli, the three hunters, as they pursue the orcs of Isengard first through the foothills of the Emyn Muil and then across the plains of Rohan. The hunters have run many miles and yet have come no closer to their enemies and their goal, their longing to find and then rescue Merry and Pippin from their captors. Among Men, Dwarves and Elves they have done a deed that will rightly be accounted mighty but the orcs have hardly rested by day or by night.

Hope, what little hope that they had, is fading.

“For many hours they had marched without rest. They were going slowly now, and Gimli’s back was bent. Stone-hard are the Dwarves in labour or journey, but this endless chase began to tell on him, as all hope failed in his heart.”

The “hopeless” journey of the three companions across Rohan. Alan Lee depicts the pursuit and those who are pursued.

There have been moments when faint glimmers of hope have been rekindled in their hearts. The green smell, as Legolas puts it, of the wide grasslands, lifts their spirits for a time. And there is the discovery of hobbit footprints and the broach of an elven-cloak. “Not idly do the leaves of Lórien fall,”says Aragorn. It is a sign that at least one hobbit was still alive when the orc company passed that way. Aragorn thinks it was Pippin. But as the hunters begin to realise that they are coming no closer to their quarry so hope fails.

“Not idly do the leaves of Lórien fall”, as depicted by Dante 2060.

Aragorn never had much hope. He does not even think that what they seek to do has much significance within the great story in which he is a part. At one point he looks southwards across Rohan to the White Mountains that are the northern border of Gondor and in song he yearns to be there.

O Gondor, Gondor! Shall Men behold the Silver Tree,
Or West Wind blow again between the Mountains and the Sea?

And then there is a moment in which Gimli longs for a light such as Frodo bears to guide them in the dark.

“It will be more needed where it is bestowed,” said Aragorn. ‘With him lies the true Quest. Ours is but a small matter in the great deeds of this time. A vain pursuit from its beginning, maybe, which no choice of mine can mar or mend. Well, I have chosen. So let us use this time as best we may.”

So continues Aragorn’s long reflection upon the question of hope that began with the fall of Gandalf in Moria. I say that it began there but perhaps it is more true to say that his whole adult life has been a reflection, a meditation upon this theme. Even the very name, Estel, that was given to him by his mother means Hope. And not hope as in the sense of crossing one’s fingers and trusting to luck but in something that goes much deeper. The Elven king, Finrod Felagund, sought to explain this deeper sense when he says that estel “is not defeated by the ways of the world, for it does not come from experience, but from our nature and first being. If we are indeed the Eruchin, the Children of the One, then He will not suffer Himself to be deprived of His own, not by any Enemy, not even by ourselves.”

Aragorn has sought to embody estel within himself in his long years of service in Gondor, in Rohan, and as the leader of the Rangers of the North. Always he has held before him his longing for personal happiness in his desire to marry Arwen. And he has sought to be the expression of hope for his people, for the fading remnant of Númenor in the North and for the brave but beleaguered defenders of freedom in Gondor. But now he feels that he has been seperated from this hope. The fall of Gandalf has affected him deeply but, so too, has Frodo’s decision to leave the Company and to make the journey to Mordor without them. Aragorn realises that he no longer has any part to play in that journey. He may be determined to rescue the young hobbits or die in the attempt. He may be certain that what he has chosen is right. But he is bitterly aware that he has been pushed, as it would seem, to the margins of the story. For him the loss of hope is not just about whether they will be able to rescue Merry and Pippin but about the sense of destiny that has given him meaning throughout his life. We might say, to use the language of Finrod Felagund, that his sense of hope, of estel, has been founded, not upon a belief that Illuvatar will not leave himself bereft of his children within the world, but upon something much more personal, that he, Aragorn, will be the bearer of that hope. Now, as he begins his pursuit on the third morning after the breaking of the Fellowship that hope is gone and all that remains is toil.

Aragorn at the Argonath. Can he fulfil the hope of his people?

“Now May I Make a Right Choice, and Change The Evil Fate of This Unhappy Day.” Aragorn Chooses to Follow the Orcs of Isengard.

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The Two Towers by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991, 2007) pp. 544-546

Boromir has passed over Rauros in the elven boat in which Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli have laid him, and by virtue of the skill learned by Elves over thousands of years in which craft and nature have become seamlessly woven together the boat is not dashed to pieces by the force of water and of rock nor have its contents been spilled into the river. The three companions have done their duty to their comrade and now they may turn their attention to their duty to the hobbits.

Already they know that Merry and Pippin have been taken by the Uruk-hai, the orcs of Isengard, back towards their fortress across the plains of Rohan and soon it becomes clear what has become of Frodo and Sam.

“So much at least is now clear,” said Legolas: “Frodo is no longer on this side of the River: only he can have taken the boat. And Sam is with him; only he can have taken his pack.”

The companions have a choice. Either they can follow Frodo, as Sam has done, and guide him to Mordor, or they can follow Merry and Pippin and their orc captors towards Isengard. Neither path holds out much hope for them. In doing their duty to Boromir they have lost many hours.

At last Aragorn makes his choice.

“Let me think!” said Aragorn. “And now may I make a right choice, and change the evil fate of this unhappy day!” He stood silent for a moment. “I will follow the Orcs,” he said at last. “I would have guided Frodo to Mordor and gone with him to the end; but if I seek him now in the wilderness, I must abandon the captives to torment and death. My heart speaks clearly at last: the fate of the Bearer is in my hands no longer. The Company has played its part. Yet we that remain cannot abandon our companions while we have strength left.”

Alan Lee depicts the hopeless chase of the three hunters.

Aragorn speaks of the fate of the day. He is seeking after the biggest story that he can find and tell about all that has befallen the Fellowship since it began. The day began with a belief among them all that they would make a decision together and follow it together. Only Boromir had made it clear from the beginning that he would travel on to Minas Tirith whatever choice was made by the others. Frodo is becoming ever more certain that he must make the journey alone to Mordor but he is afraid to tell the others, afraid too of the journey itself. But now the possibility that the Fellowship might make a decision together has been made impossible. In trying to take the Ring from Frodo Boromir has set in motion a chain of events that means that the Fellowship can never take one course of action together again. Frodo and Sam have crossed the Anduin together. Boromir has died defending Merry and Pippin from the Uruk-hai of Isengard and the young hobbits have been taken prisoner.

Frodo has made a free choice and Sam has gone with him. Merry and Pippin are prisoners. And so Aragorn must honour both Frodo’s freedom and the young hobbits’ captivity. He will not guide Frodo to Mordor. That necessary task will be undertaken by the most unlikely of people, by one who seeks to kill him and to regain the Ring. The young hobbits will regain their freedom in the confusion of battle. The three hunters will not find them again until they meet amidst the ruin of Isengard. No choice that Aragorn will take this day will lead to either course of events and yet he must still choose.

The Three Hunters look out over the plains of Rohan.

I spoke of the fate of the day, of the task of seeking the biggest story that can be found. The story that Aragorn chooses is that of freeing the captives or dying in the attempt. He knows that it is the dying that is most likely and that, like Boromir, he will probably fall in hopeless defence of two hobbits who probably should not have come with them in the first place but that in choosing this story he opens the possibility that something greater, more wonderful, might happen. And at the very least he will do something worthy of a song.

Yonatan Ayala gives a marvellous sense of the tremendous energy of the chase that will be accounted a marvel among the three kindreds of Elves, Dwarves and Men.

“Do You Hear the Voice of Nimrodel?” The Fellowship Enter an Enchanted Land.

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The Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991) pp. 328-332

A reading of The Lord of the Rings is a journey that runs between enchantment and disenchantment. It begins with Gaffer Gamgee discoursing on how cabbages and potatoes are better for his son than Elves and Dragons and how Sam would be wise to keep out of the affairs of his betters in case he lands in trouble too big for him. These are prophetic words indeed although the Gaffer will never see all that his son will see precisely by getting into trouble. And the Gaffer, for all his homespun wisdom and hobbit good sense, has no notion that one day he and his kind will be as much regarded as a kind of fairy folk as the Elves are in his own time.

Like the Gaffer, Boromir is easily disturbed by anything that is redolent of the uncanny. Although he names Lothlórien, the Golden Wood, his knowledge of it is more closely formed by the name that the Rohirrim have for the land the Company are about to enter, Dwimordene, or the Land of Phantoms. So it is already true that many who live in Tolkien’s world are disenchanted themselves and already fear anything that might exist outside an experience of cabbages, potatoes and things of that are of an easily accessible nature.

Anna Kulisz is enchanted by light shining through trees in Lothlórien

Understandably Aragorn is disappointed with Boromir because for him Lothlórien is the place of ultimate enchantment, for it was here that he first met Arwen. Even in our times the experience of falling in love transforms everything. Oscar Hammerstein may not have been making an intentionally philosophical point when he wrote the lyrics of “Some Enchanted Evening” but anyone who has truly fallen in love knows what he means. But Aragorn’s disappointment goes further. “Lore wanes in Gondor, Boromir, if in the city of those who once were wise they now speak evil of Lothlórien.” The heirs of Númenor really ought to know better.

It is Frodo, one whose name, Elf-friend, means much more than a simple disposition to like Elves, who first becomes aware of the nature of the land that the Company have come to. First, in the crossing of Nimrodel, he feels “the stain of travel and all weariness” wash from his limbs. Did all his companions have the same experience? Tolkien does not answer the question but if Boromir had then surely his inclination to fear Lothlórien might have altered even just a little. And I doubt whether the orcs who followed some time later had any experience of healing in crossing the stream.

Stephen Graham Walsh evokes the healing power of Nimrodel

Legolas speaks to his companions about Nimrodel and as he does so they hear “the music of the waterfall running sweetly in the shadows”. But it is Frodo who hears “a voice singing, mingled with the sound of the water”.

“Do you hear the voice of Nimrodel?” asks Legolas and he tells them the story of the Silvan princess who once dwelt here long ago and whose memory lingers still in the land that was her home. As with so many songs of the Elves it is a tale of sadness about that which has been lost but it is beautiful yet. And as he sings his hearers are drawn further into Faerie just as Frodo, Sam and Pippin were when they were guests of Gildor Inglorien at the very beginning of their journey in their own familiar land.

Liga Klavina imagines Nimrodel whose memory enchants the stream that bears her name..

And that, of course, is what Tolkien is trying to convey to his readers. That it is possible, even in a place that we think we know so well that nothing about it could ever surprise us, to be suddenly drawn into an enchanted land. We have already spoken of how falling in love can do this. We might add moments like the birth of a child or when a ray of the sun suddenly bursts through the clouds illuminating all that lies around us. We might quickly get a hold of ourselves and reduce all experience to the atomic particles that make it up or we might follow the path of wonder and delight and see where it leads us. Frodo and Boromir will experience Lothlórien in very different ways because of the way in which they have nourished their inner lives.

“My Heart Would be Glad if I Were Beneath the Eaves of That Wood, and it Were Springtime.” The Fellowship Draw Near to Lothlórien.

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The Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991) pp.324-326

As Tolkien takes us from the dark of Moria and the terrible events at the Bridge of Khazad-dûm so the language that he uses grows ever richer and more verdant. It is Legolas, the Wood-elf from the green of Mirkwood who first speaks of the land that they approach.

“‘There lie the woods of Lothlórien!’ said Legolas. ‘That is the fairest of all the dwellings of my people. There are no trees like the trees of that land.'”

Ted Nasmith’s imagining of Lothlórien

The history of Lothlórien goes back to the earliest days of the First Age and a settlement there of Silvan, or woodland elves, kindred to Legolas’s own people. When the Valar called the Elves to come to Valinor for fear of Morgoth the Silvan elves had refused the call, choosing to stay east of the Misty Mountains in the vale of Anduin. It was these who were found by Galadriel and Celeborn, fleeing eastward from the war that destroyed the kingdom of Eregion in the Second Age and they became lords of the people who dwelt there. So it was that the two great strongholds of the Elves in Middle-earth were created after the destruction wrought by Sauron, Imladris or Rivendell founded by Elrond and Lothlórien founded by Galadriel and Celeborn.

The Sindarin elves who came with Galadriel named the woodland realm that they settled in Laurelindórenan, or the Valley of Singing Gold, so-called because of the mallorn trees, gifts of Gil-galad, that they had brought with them. It is of these that Legolas speaks in language that becomes ever more poetic.

“For in the autumn their leaves fall not, but turn to gold. Not till the spring comes, and the new green opens do they fall, and then the boughs are laden with yellow flowers; and the floor of the wood is golden, and golden is the roof, and its pillars are of silver, for the bark of the trees is smooth and grey.”

(I have not been able to find the name of the artist who has done this beautiful painting. Can anyone help me? )

You can almost feel Legolas savouring his own words like fine wine, especially the adjectives, golden, golden, and silver. Tolkien himself enjoyed a visceral relationship to language so that he could experience a word both in his senses and in his inner life and in passages like this, even though they are written in the Common Tongue, both for the sake of the Company and for his readers like myself, they are still able to convey a sense of this relationship. We too long to travel to this earthly paradise and to hear and taste the music of the singing gold.

But its name is no longer Laurelindórenan but Lothlórien. It has become the Dreamflower or even just Lórien, or Dream Land. Later Treebeard will speak of this to Merry and Pippin.

“Now they make the name shorter: Lothlórien they call it. Perhaps they are right; maybe it is fading, not growing. Land of the Valley of Singing Gold, that was it, once upon a time. Now it is the Dreamflower.”

The dream that the Fellowship will enter will still be potent, still intoxicating, and perhaps just a little frightening, very frightening for those who bring their peril with them as Sam will later put it to Faramir in Henneth Annûn. But it is a land that is falling asleep, “fading, not growing”. Tolkien skilfully shows a world that is still saturated with the myth of Eden. Like Legolas we cry with yearning, “My heart would be glad if I were beneath the eaves of that wood, and it were springtime!” or with Aragorn, “My heart will be glad, even in the winter”, but as we read The Lord of the Rings we come to realise that there is no return to Eden, that if there is to be a place for us, somewhere, then it lies before and beyond us. As Aragorn will say to Arwen Undómiel at his own ending, “In sorrow we must go, but not in despair. Behold! we are not bound for ever to the circles of the world, and beyond them there is more than memory.”

Anna Kulisz imagines the Fellowship in Lothlórien

“Speak Friend and Enter”. Gandalf Tries to Enter Moria by the Western Gate but is Thwarted By His Own Cleverness.

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The Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991) pp. 290-300

All who know The Lord of the Rings will remember that our title this week is a mistranslation by Gandalf of these words that turns a simple instruction into an impossible riddle. What, in happier times, had been knowledge available to all, had in these times of treachery and betrayal become something arcane, known only to initiates. I fear that we live in such times and so we have to surround information that is important to us with passwords and firewalls. Like Gandalf, if we cannot remember them then, like Gandalf, we might try different possibilities with growing frustration, or as I usually do, click on the link that invites me to change the password.

The Doors of Durin. One of the rare illustrations done by Tolkien himself in The Lord of the Rings.

The latter is not an option available to Gandalf and so he must find the words that will unlock the doors that Narvi made to allow free transport between the Elven Kingdom of Hollin and Durín’s Kingdom of Moria. He speaks of his knowledge of many such words and then tries one after another as each one fails in its purpose. His patience quickly deserts him but, of course, this has never been one of Gandalf’s best qualities. At one point Pippin comes close to having his head used to beat down the door but then at last, even as the Wargs of Mordor begin to howl once more, the answer finally comes to him.

Gandalf tries to solve a riddle that is only a simple instruction. Bohemian Weasel imagines the scene.

The words on Narvi’s door read pedo mellon a minno. Gandalf had translated pedo as speak and so never actually used the word that he was intended to say. His assumption was that something needed to be spoken and so he tried to find the correct word. It is only when he realises that pedo should be translated say that it all becomes clear.

Mellon is all he needed to say. Friend.

Imagine a world in which Friend is the only password that you will ever require in order to gain entrance to any place. Such a world is one that is filled with friends and not with enemies. Such a world is one in which the hounds of Mordor do not pursue you with the intention of taking your life and a lifeless lake, one that contains a terrible secret, does not bar your passage to your destination. Such a world is one in which doors rarely need to be locked or even closed, a world in which weary travellers can expect a friendly welcome. Indeed it is a world in which the word, friend, is no mere euphemism but one that conveys precisely what it is meant to mean. Only friends were intended or expected to approach the doors of Moria.

Now, once again, a group of friends stand before these gates that are closed. Four are hobbits, two are men, one is a dwarf, one an elf and one a wizard. I call them friends and they will become friends but the bonds that tie them all together are still fragile. We all know the fierce loyalty that binds the hobbits. “We are your friends, Frodo,” were the passionate words spoken in Crickhollow by Merry that declared the intention that he, Pippin and Sam would go with their friend to follow him “like hounds”. But the other bonds are less certain. Aragorn and Boromir are still wary of each other, watching one another from a careful distance and even at the gates of Moria the ancient enmity between Elves and Dwarves is displayed. When Gandalf speaks of the unusual friendship between Moria and Hollin Gimli immediately responds by saying:

“It was not the fault of the Dwarves that the friendship waned”. To which Legolas replies, “I have not heard that it was the fault of the Elves”.

And Gandalf puts an end to the quarrel by saying, “I have heard both, and I will not give judgement now. But I beg you two, Legolas and Gimli, at least to be friends, and to help me. I need you both.”

At this time in the story it is Gandalf who holds them all together and who will take them all into the dark.

“I beg you two, Legolas and Gimli, at least to be friends.” Nathalie Kranich depicts the close friendship that develops.

Legolas and the Sea. A Longing for a Land Where Nothing Fades Away.

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Legolas has long dwelt content in the green land of his people in the north of Mirkwood in rhythm with the trees of the wood as they breathe in and out in winter and summer, winter and summer, year upon year, year upon year as the ages pass.

It was Galadriel who first warned him of the call of the sea, words that came to him through Gandalf when they met in the depths of Fangorn Forest. “Legolas Greenleaf long under tree in joy thou hast lived. Beware of the Sea! If thou hearest the cry of the gull on the shore, thy heart shall then rest in the forest no more.”

It was in the great ride with the Grey Company to the assault of the ships of the Corsairs of Umbar at Pelargir that Legolas first heard the sound of the sea. Gimli paid no heed to it but Legolas was stricken in his heart and as the companions of the Fellowship speak together of their adventures Legolas sings of a heart that is no longer at rest.

“To the Sea, to the Sea! The white gulls are crying, the wind is blowing, and the white foam is flying. West, west away, the round sun is falling. Grey ship, grey ship, do you hear them calling, the voices of my people that have gone before me? I will leave, I will leave the woods that bore me; for our days are ending and our years falling.”

The deepest longing of the Elves is for a world in which nothing fades away. They themselves are immortal, age cannot touch them, but the world in which they live is always changing and in this lies their sadness. The lands in which they have lived in Middle-earth have been islands of relative changelessness. Rivendell, Lothlórien, the Grey Havens and the Woodland Realm in the north of Mirkwood, all have been places in which the memory of ancient beauty has been preserved but at the end of the Third Age with the passing of the Ring the change that they have long resisted has come at last.

It is one of the most profound ideas within The Lord of the Rings that so much that has been beautiful must pass away with the destruction of a thing that was entirely evil. The forging of the three elven rings, Nenya, Varya and Vilya accomplished so much that was good in the Second and Third Ages but none of this could have been achieved without the ringlore of Sauron in his disguise of Annatar in the court of Celebrimbor the lord of Eregion. Sauron played no part in the forging of the Elven Rings and yet their making was still linked to the forging of the Rings of Power and to the One Ring itself. The great temptation of the Elves lay in their very desire to preserve and it is this that Sauron exploited.

The one who chooses to be an enemy learns how to  perceive weakness in others and then exploits it. Indeed it seems to be this quality that marks out an enemy above all others. But when we choose to lay down that which we desire then the enemy has nothing more to exploit. It is the decision to destroy the Ring that enables Sauron’s foes to defeat him even as it was the decision to preserve beauty and to forge the Rings that linked the destiny of the Elves to that of their greatest enemy.

All things pass away and the one who learns this and who does not try to hold on to them can enjoy them without becoming prey to a melancholy that robs us of all joy. “He who binds to himself a joy does the winged life destroy. He who kisses the life as it flies lives in eternity’s sunrise.” Kissing the life as it inevitably and inexorably flies is one of the greatest wisdoms that we can learn. At this moment in the story Legolas is overcome with the sadness of loss. Let us hope that when the time comes for him to leave Middle-earth he will do so with thanksgiving and with joyful hope.

Artwork this week by Lorraine Brevig http://www.lorrainebrevig.com