Meriadoc Brandybuck

“Just a Nuisance: a Passenger, a Piece of Luggage.” Pippin is a Prisoner of The Orcs and Wonders What Good He Has Been.

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The Two Towers by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991, 2007) pp.578-583

With the brief appearance of the mysterious old man and the loss of the horses under the eaves of Fangorn Forest the narrative switches away from Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli to the plight of Merry and Pippin. They are prisoners of the orcs and are being taken to Isengard and to Saruman whose intelligence is that a Halfling bears the One Ring but which one it is he does not know. The Orc band comprises three distinct groups who are there for three very different reasons. While the Isengarders are there to carry out Saruman’s orders there is also a company from Moria who are there to kill in revenge for their losses in the battle against the Fellowship before the escape across the Bridge of Khazad-dûm and also a company from Mordor who want to take the hobbits there.

Pippin tries to recall all that has happened. How he and Merry had run off in panic to seek out Frodo; how they had been attacked by orcs but rescued at first by Boromir; but how the orcs had attacked again, firing arrows at Boromir, and how darkness had fallen.

And then Pippin starts to feel rather sorry for himself.

“I wish Gandalf had never persuaded Elrond to let us come,” he thought. “What good have I been? Just a nuisance: a passenger, a piece of luggage. And now I have been stolen and I am just a piece of luggage for the Orcs. I hope that Strider or someone will come and claim us! But ought I to hope for it? Won’t that throw out all the plans? I wish I could get free!”

And so begins a trope that will run through the story until just before the Battle of the Pelennor Fields of the young hobbits likening themselves to baggage being carried by others and being of no more use than that. It is a trope that reaches its climax when Elfhelm, a Marshal of the Riders of Rohan trips over Merry in the dark. “Pack yourself up, Master Bag!” he instructs Merry before going off to other tasks.

While we might ponder with a certain wry amusement the existence of a left luggage service in the Shire which might lead Pippin to liken himself to an item of lost property waiting to be claimed by its owner, we do recognise, perhaps with sympathy, the feeling that Pippin describes. At this point of the story neither he nor Merry have any idea what they are going to contribute to the successful outcome of the quest. The rousing of the Ents to overthrow Isengard; the slaying of the Lord of the Nazgûl, the Witch-king of Angmar; the rescue of Faramir from the funeral pyre of Denethor, and the raising of the hobbit rebellion against Saruman’s control over the Shire, all these still lie ahead of them. At this moment Pippin feels that he has contributed nothing. We might even speculate about whether he ever ponders the moment when he dropped a stone into the well in the guard chamber in Moria, an action that leads to the awakening of the Balrog and the fall of Gandalf. We might speculate but we do not know because Tolkien never tells us whether he thinks about this or not.

What we do know is that Pippin ends his speech of self pity by declaring, “I wish I could get free!” And with this we see Pippin’s essential character. He is not much given to reflection. He does not see what use too much thought is to him. What matters is what lies immediately before him. Sometimes his lack of reflection gets him into trouble. The question about the depth of a well in Moria, his curiosity about what a glass globe hurled by Wormtongue at Gandalf might possibly be. And sometimes it will lead him to acts of courage such as his determination to save Faramir. He will never think much about the outcome of this or that action and now he will put aside reflection and self-pity (actually there is rarely much self-anything at all about Pippin) and give himself to the task at hand. How can he and Merry escape from their captors?

“There Are Some Things That it is Better to Begin Than to Refuse, Even Though the End May be Dark.” Aragorn Ponders The Fate of The Young Hobbits.

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The Two Towers by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991, 2007) pp. 571-573

With some misgivings expressed by his company, Eomer gives three horses to Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli. Or I should say that he gives two, because Gimli refuses the offer, feeling no more at ease on the back of a horse than Sam Gamgee felt in the Elven boats of Lothlórien. Aragorn is asked to promise that he will return the horses to Meduseld, the golden hall of the King of Rohan and this he promises to do. After that the three hunters follow the orc trail until they come to the eaves of Fangorn Forest.

There they find the scene of the battle a great burning of the orc host, the burial mound for the fifteen members of Eomer’s company, but no sign of the hobbits. Eomer has told them that only orcs were burned but Gimli is sure that the hobbits must have been among them.

“It will be hard news for Frodo, if he lives to hear it; and hard to for the old hobbit who waits in Rivendell. Elrond was against their coming.”

“But Gandalf was not,” said Legolas.

“But Gandalf chose to come himself, and he was the first to be lost,” answered Gimli. “His foresight failed him.”

Gimli bases his judgement regarding the wisdom of a choice upon one thing only; whether the choice leads to a successful outcome. Gandalf fell in Moria at the Bridge of Khazad-dûm in the battle against the Balrog. Gimli fears that Merry and Pippin have fallen in the battle under the eaves of Fangorn Forest. Gandalf chose to accompany the Fellowship on its mission to destroy the Ring. Gandalf persuaded Elrond to allow the young hobbits to be a part of their company and it seems that they too are lost. Gimli is clear that Gandalf’s wisdom failed him as did his foresight.

To be fair to Gimli, Merry and Pippin feel the same way about the wisdom of their desire to go with Frodo and Sam. At least they feel that way while they are prisoners of the orcs. “I wish Gandalf had never persuaded Elrond to let us come,” says Merry. And who can blame him for feeling that way while he is trussed up like a piece of baggage and carried by his orc captors.

But Aragorn thinks differently. He too tried to persuade Gandalf not to go to Moria because he had a foreboding that something would befall Gandalf there. We are not told what he thought about Merry and Pippin going with the Company. His first impression of them, based upon his encounter with the hobbits at the Prancing Pony in Bree, had not been encouraging. But his respect for them grows on the journey to Rivendell as he realises that they are made of sterner stuff than he first thought. But he recognises that there are reasons for choices that outweigh any considerations the success or otherwise of the venture. Friendship is one of them. Merry and Pippin simply could not abandon Frodo and Sam just as Gimli could not abandon Legolas, just as they could not abandon the young hobbits.

The other reason is Aragorn’s own choice to go with the Fellowship. He must fulfil his destiny as the heir of Eärendil, as the heir of Isildur. Either he will succeed, thus becoming King of Gondor and of Arnor and winning the hand of Arwen, or he will fall in the attempt and be the last of his line. He can refuse the attempt but to do so will be to refuse hope both for himself and for the free peoples of Middle-earth. Like Denethor later he would have to accept that “the West has failed”. He does not know whether he will succeed or not. Indeed after the fall of Gandalf he has very little hope that he will. But he must go on, perhaps with failure the only outcome.

“The counsel of Gandalf was not founded on foreknowledge of safety, for himself or others… There are things that it is better to begin than to refuse, even though the end may be dark.”

The Story of Meriadoc Brandybuck. Or The Necessity of Getting Out of Your Depth.

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The Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991) pp. 107,108

There are few things more annoying than when someone for whom you don’t have very much respect gets something absolutely right. I don’t know how much respect the other hobbits have for Fredegar Bolger (or Fatty to his friends) although I do note that little attempt is made to persuade Fatty to come with them when he tells the other hobbits that he will not come into the Old Forest with them.

Fatty’s main contribution to the discussion about how the hobbits are to leave Buckland without attracting the attention of the Black Riders is to warn them of the dangers of the Forest. By contrast, Merry is both confident and competent. He has been into the Forest before. He speaks about the path that he intends to take. He gives a lesson on the history of the Forest or at least the history that hobbits have been a part of. He has ponies ready for the journey and all the supplies have been prepared. He has anticipated Frodo’s insistence that he must leave the Shire immediately. He has been making preparations for just this moment all through the summer. And with a little help from Pippin he has even composed a song that is suitable for the occasion drawing upon his knowledge of hobbit history. “It was made on the model of the dwarf-song that started Bilbo on his adventure long ago, and went to the same tune”.

One day Merry will make a fine Master of Buckland but on this day everything will go completely wrong and Fatty will be proved completely right.

“I only hope that you will not need rescuing before the day is out.”

Merry and his companions will need rescuing before the day is out. In fact if rescue had not been at hand the quest would have ended in disaster almost before it had begun. And things do not really get much better for Merry from that point onwards. He will lurch from catastrophe to catastrophe and will need to be rescued many times.

Rescued from the barrow wight by Tom Bombadil. Rescued from the Black Rider in the streets of Bree by Nob of all people and rescued from starvation in the Forest of Fangorn by Treebeard. Eventually he will complain bitterly of being no more than an item of baggage in the story and perhaps his lowest point will be when Théoden of Rohan will announce to him that he is to be left behind when the Riders go to war outside the gates of Minas Tirith. He has been of some value as a kind of entertainment for the king on the journey from the sack of Isengard to the gathering at Dunharrow but he will be of no value at all in the serious business of war. And even when he does go, thanks to the intervention of another character who has been left behind, he finds himself being addressed by a soldier who has just stumbled over him as “Master Bag”. It is the one name they know him by, the name that speaks of his humiliation.

Merry’s journey is in many ways a miserable one and yet he neither falls into bitterness nor despair. Two qualities will sustain him throughout and these are his cheerfulness, by which I mean that he has the ability, no matter how great the humiliation, to be ‘cheered up’ to find cheer as soon as he is able, in the house of Tom Bombadil, in the dwelling of Treebeard and in the wreckage of Isengard amidst the spoils of battle. A moment of pleasure is always able to put all suffering out of his mind. And the other is what Gandalf calls, “his gentle loyalty”. There may be many times in which Merry is unhappy but at no time is his self-pity of more importance to him than the welfare of his friends.

And so the time will come when he will play a central role in one of the great deeds of his Age in Middle-earth. And he will be there because of his gentle loyalty. When he sees Éowyn standing hopelessly before the Lord of the Nazgûl on the Pelennor Fields it will be pity that fills his heart and, Tolkien tells us, “suddenly the slow-kindled courage of his race awoke. He clenched his hand. She should not die, so fair, so desperate! At least she should not die alone, unaided.”