Pipeweed

“Strider the Ranger Has Come Back.” Who is Aragorn? Perhaps Pipe-smoking will give us a clue.

/ stephencwinter / 12 Comments

The Two Towers by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991, 2007) pp. 730-734

Gandalf takes Théoden and Éomer around the walls of the flooded fortress of Isengard to find Treebeard and leaves Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli behind at the gatehouse with Merry and Pippin. So it is that the three hunters are reunited at last with the captives of the orcs in the very place in which Merry and Pippin were to have been held prisoner by Saruman. The young hobbits are able to provide their guests with a decent meal and a choice of wine or beer and then, when hunger is satisfied and a deep sense of contentment gently descends upon these friends Merry and Pippin are able to provide something that will deepen that feeling and that is Longbottom leaf, pipeweed of the very finest quality.

“Now let us take our ease here for a little!” said Ara Aragorn. “We will sit on the edge of ruin and talk, as Gandalf says, while he is busy elsewhere. I feel a weariness such as I have seldom felt before.” He wrapped his grey cloak about him, hiding his mail-shirt, and stretched out his long legs. Then he lay back and sent from his lips a thin stream of smoke.”

All pipe-smokers will know the particular pleasure that is achieved through the careful practice of their art. A really good pipe requires the right state of mind in order that it might be fully enjoyed. If one comes to a pipe in an agitated state then that feeling will be transmitted to the experience; but if one is able to achieve an inner quiet before lighting a well prepared pipe then both pipe and the state of mind can deepen one another. This is Aragorn’s experience now at the end of nine days endless activity since he decided to go in search of the young hobbits across the plains of Rohan.

With some sadness I have to describe myself as a former pipe-smoker and so I have had to draw upon memories of some years ago. I never smoked more than one or, at the most, two pipes in a day and I always did so when the tasks of the day were done and I had a quiet moment for thought or in the pleasant company of a fellow smoker. So for me the experience of pipe-smoking and inner quiet are intimately and delightfully linked.

My pipe-smoking career came to an end when my older daughter came back from school one day and put a screen-saver on my PC with the words, “Daddy, you will die!” It seemed that she had had a class that day in which the dangers of smoking to health were presented to the children. As she listened to the teacher anxiety grew within her about her own father and so she worked out a way of telling me about this. I love my daughter very much and as soon as I saw the message I knew that I could not be the deliberate cause of anxiety in her and so I gave up smoking my pipe on that very day.

If you want to learn a little about the pleasures of pipeweed then could I please recommend a talk by Malcolm Guite that you can find on his YouTube channel. If you search for him on pipe-smoking you will find a number of short videos there as well as much good material, especially the work that he is doing at present on the retelling of the Galahad tales from the Arthurian legends.

It is Pippin who realises that, as he watches Aragorn smoke his pipe, that he is back in the Prancing Pony with the stranger who will eventually introduce himself as Strider. And as he remembers he speaks.

“Strider the Ranger has come back!”

And Aragorn replies: “He has never been away… I am Strider and Dúnadan too, and I belong to Gondor and the North.”

Pippin belongs to the North and it is there that he first met the man who would be his king both there and in Gondor. it was Bilbo who first introduced us to Aragorn as Dúnadan, man of the West, of Númenor, making us realise his deep lineage, beginning with Eärendil and Elwing, and, before them, Beren and Lúthien. And it was Gandalf who told us that to call Aragorn only a Ranger was to misunderstand him completely. Later Pippin would hail Aragorn as Strider in the presence of the lords of that land which would prompt the Prince of Dol Amroth to ask, somewhat sardonically, whether it would be in terms of easy familiarity like this that kings would henceforth be addressed. Aragorn’s reply displayed his mastery of the moment as well as his mastery of himself.

“Strider shall be the name of my house, if that ever be established. In the high tongue it will not sound so ill, and Telcontar I will be and all the heirs of my body.”

“These Hobbits Will Sit on the Edge of Ruin and Discuss the Pleasures of the Table.” Merry and Pippin Amidst the Wreck of Isengard.

/ stephencwinter / 6 Comments

The Two Towers by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991, 2007) pp. 726-729

This week we return from Théoden’s wonder at his first sight of Ents at Helm’s Deep to Merry and Pippin amidst the wreck of Isengard. Not that I think that they mind our neglect, as they are resting after their first good meal since they were captured by orcs over a week before. Treebeard had given them drafts of a drink that not only sustained them but even made them grow, but there is nothing like proper food and drink to achieve contentment and nothing like a hobbit to enjoy it properly.

“These hobbits will sit on the edge of ruin and discuss the pleasures of the table, or the small doings of their fathers, grandfathers, and great-grandfathers, and remoter cousins to the ninth degree, if you encourage them with undue patience.” So says Gandalf to Théoden after Merry has begun to discourse on the history of pipe-smoking in the Shire, and we know this to be true, not just because Gandalf says it but because we remember how Merry and Pippin sat down on the edge of Fangorn to eat a piece of lembas as Éomer’s company did battle with the orcs just a few yards away and how, when Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli found signs of this meal they commented that this was proof that hobbits had been there. Who else would choose such a spot for a meal?

Gandalf does not say it here but this is why he loves the Shire and his visited it so often over many years. There is a sense in which the whole Shire has been sitting on the edge of the ruin of Eriador as it has been since the fall of the Kingdom of Arnor and its successor, Arthedain, at the hands of the Witch-king of Angmar for many years and has quite simply ignored the fact, being entirely absorbed with its own affairs, the pleasures of the table and the small doings of its families. How different this has been from Gondor, for example, with its endless anxiety about the world beyond its borders, although perhaps in Lossarnach and in their lord, Forlong the Fat, there is something of a hobbit spirit.

Gandalf has needed the Shire for many reasons. In part he has needed it as a place of rest amidst his long and weary travels. But he has also needed it as a place of play, a place where he has learned to play. Sam Gamgee wanted Frodo to include a verse about Gandalf’s fireworks in the lament that he had composed about Gandalf in Lothlórien and that is what Gandalf had meant to him and to most of the people of the Shire. There is a sense that as Gandalf incarnated his Olorin spirit in Middle-earth as one of the Istari sent by the Valar to contend with Sauron, it was the Shire, and its “small doings” that shaped that incarnation in a very particular way. Saruman never understood this, laughed at it, and suspected it too. His own incarnation lay within the walls of what he thought was an impregnable fortress, a place where he could plot the conquest of Rohan and even dream of becoming the Lord of the Rings and master of Middle-earth.

That it was Gandalf who triumphed in the War of the Ring that ended the Third Age of Arda, and not Saruman, was in no small measure because of his love of the Shire. This was not just because, by a set of strange circumstances, the Ring came to the Shire, and then from the Shire to Mount Doom, but also because Merry and Pippin came to Fangorn Forest. It was Gandalf himself who told Frodo how he had chosen Bilbo for the Quest of the Lonely Mountain, a story recounted in Lost Tales, telling Thorin Oakenshield that “a foresight is on me.” This foresight, this world changing intuition, was formed within Gandalf’s soul by hours at hobbit tables on the edge of ruin while he smoked his pipe and listened to tales of the small doings of his hosts. It was from these doings that Sauron and Saruman fell.

“A Foresight is On Me”. How Gandalf Chooses.

/ stephencwinter / 12 Comments

The Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991) pp. 267-269

I have learned over the years in which I have written this blog that I have readers who know their Tolkien very well, often much better than I do, and so I am sure that there will be readers who will instantly know that the quotation that heads this week’s post is not from The Lord of the Rings. It is in fact from Tolkien’s Unfinished Tales. It comes from a chapter in which Frodo describes a conversation with Gandalf that takes place in Minas Tirith after the Ring has gone to the fire and Sauron has fallen. In that conversation Gandalf speaks of how he came to be convinced that Bilbo should be a part of the company that would make the journey to Erebor, the Lonely Mountain, under the leadership of Thorin Oakenshield.

I write about it here because we are thinking about the choosing of Frodo’s companions in the Quest of the Ring. We have already seen that the company is chosen, as much for its symbolic quality as for its effectiveness. Nine walkers will oppose nine riders. Nine of the free peoples of the earth will oppose the slaves of the Dark Lord. And as we journey through the unfolding of the story we find that it is the hobbits who will play central roles in it. The journey of Frodo and Sam to Mordor and the Mountain and the journey of Merry and Pippin, carried as prisoners of the orcs, to the borders of Fangorn Forest and the meeting with Treebeard are these central actions and none of the rest of the company go with them on these journeys. They will have other parts to play.

Gandalf’s support for Pippin is described as “unexpected”. When Pippin announced his intention to go with Frodo because there needed to “be someone with intelligence in the party”, Gandalf’s response was that Pippin would certainly not be chosen on that basis. But Gandalf is greatly drawn towards Pippin. Indeed I rather think that Gandalf liked Pippin to be nearby and found his simple honesty and friendliness to be a comfort. Was it because he needed such comfort that Gandalf liked to go to the Shire? In his account of how he came to choose Bilbo to go with the Dwarves to Erebor he speaks of how he had been going to the Shire “for a short rest” after a twenty year absence. “I thought that if I put [my dark thoughts] out of my mind for a while I might perhaps find some way of dealing with these troubles”.

Gandalf’s “dark thoughts” were about the reappearing of Sauron in Dol Guldur, about the ever present danger to the north of Middle-earth that was posed by Smaug the dragon in his occupation of the Lonely Mountain, about the fragility of the free peoples and about the opposition of Saruman to any direct action against Sauron. Gandalf’s thoughts are like a hammer striking against a hard surface with the intention of making it give way before the force of its blows. He knows that his thinking will not bring about a solution by itself. It will only keep bringing him back to that which is insoluble and so he heads for the Shire and a rest from his anxiety. The Shire folk have taught him how to play. It is there that he makes fireworks and it is there that he enjoys wholesome food, good beer and pipeweed. And it is on his way there, just outside Bree, that he encounters Thorin Oakenshield who is also beset with his own dark thoughts.

Is it because he is in search of rest that Gandalf is open to something entirely unexpected? Is it his proximity to the Shire and to hobbits that makes the participation of Bilbo a possibility for the expedition to Erebor? In Carl Jung’s idea of synchronicity it is the empty space between the spokes of a wheel that give the wheel its usefulness just as much as do the spokes themselves. So it is the empty space that the Shire is for Gandalf in his endless labours that gives him the idea of Bilbo. And when the idea comes it does so with such force that he describes it as a foresight. Not that he knows what is to come but he knows that he has to listen to his inner voice and that Thorin has to listen to it too when he declares it aloud. Perhaps it is in knowing the power of Gandalf’s inner voice that Elrond too gives way to him about Merry and Pippin despite his own misgivings.