Moore and Gillette

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Legolas and Gimli Speak of The Greatness of Aragorn, The Heir of Isildur.

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So it is that Legolas and Gimli meet and speak with Merry and Pippin in the gardens of the Houses of Healing. And there the Elf and the Dwarf tell of the mighty ride of the Dunedain and the hosts of the Dead through the valleys of Gondor through Lebennin to the mouth of the Great River at Pelargir. And they tell of how the Corsairs of Umbar and the Haradrim were overthrown by the terror of the Dead so that it was an army of Gondor that came to the landings of Harlond at the key moment in the Battle of the Pelennor Fields and not her enemies.

And the friends speak of the greatness of Aragorn, a greatness that through the mighty ride through Gondor and in the battles after was a terrible thing to behold. And Legolas says,

“In that hour I looked on Aragorn and thought how great and terrible a Lord he might have become in the strength of his own will, had he taken the Ring to himself. Not for naught does Mordor fear him.”

In the Houses of Healing we saw Aragorn as a healer passing his hand gently through Merry’s hair and kissing Éowyn gently upon her brow, restoring both to life. Is it possible that one man should contain such apparent opposites within himself? We might remember that the Warden of the Houses of Healing presumed that a captain of war could not also be a man of learning. His assumption is that a man will be either one or the other but not both.

So is Aragorn a divided man? I would argue not. And that is why he does not take the Ring for himself. His might in battle is not the seizing of power by a ruthless man but a self offering for the sake of the peoples of Middle-earth. He will die for his people if need be and his offering is a terrible thing in its ferocity. But he will not win at any price and he values the freedom of the peoples of Middle-earth above victory.

Compare this to Denethor when debating with Gandalf before the battle. Denethor makes it clear that he values Gondor above all other nations and also that he values his own lordship even above the welfare of his people. Aragorn is entirely different. He has spent his life in the service of all Free Folk and that is why Elf, Dwarf and Hobbits love him. And like Faramir his desire for Gondor is that it should  be “full of light, high and fair, beautiful as a queen among other queens… Not feared, save as men may fear the dignity of a man, old and wise.”

Moore and Gillette would argue that what Aragorn does is to access the energy of the great masculine archetypes, King, Magician, Warrior and Lover and is able to do so at will but that he never identifies his Self with any of them. This is such an important distinction to be able to make if we are to understand true maturity. If we overly identify our Self with one of the archetypes then that Self will be a slave to the archetype and almost certainly to a false or immature version of it. Sauron is a terrible example of this. His desire for domination has led him to identify entirely with the energy of the King archetype. He is enslaved by his desire for power and has no freedom over this. By contrast Aragorn’s Self is greater than any of the archetypal energies. Legolas puts it this way, “But nobler is his spirit than the understanding of Sauron; for is he not of the children of Lúthien?”

To become our True Self we must learn how to draw upon archetypal energy but we must learn too that our True Self is greater than any archetype. Aragorn is able to call upon the energy of the Warrior archetype to a terrible degree in battle and then to lay it aside afterwards. He is master of himself for a purpose higher than himself.