The Healing of the Shire

“There Will Be Few Gardens in Middle-earth That Will Bloom Like Your Garden”. Galadriel’s Gift to Sam Gamgee.

/ stephencwinter / 6 Comments

The Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991) pp.365-367

Last week we thought about the gift that Galadriel gave to Aragorn at her parting from the Fellowship. To Boromir she gives a belt of gold. To Merry and Pippin belts of silver with clasps wrought “like a golden flower”. They will put these clasps to good use later in the story when they are captives of the Uruk-hai of Isengard. And to Legolas she gives a bow “such as the Galadhrim used, longer and stouter than the bows of Mirkwood”. Legolas will put his gift to good use in the adventures that lie ahead for him.

To Sam she gives a very particular gift and one that is very close to her own heart.

Edward Beard Jnr imagines the giving of Galadriel’s gift to Sam.

“‘For you little gardener and lover of trees,’ she said to Sam, ‘I have only a small gift.’ She put into his hand a little box of plain grey wood, unadorned save for a silver rune upon the lid.’Here is set G for Galadriel,’ she said; ‘but it may also stand for garden in your tongue. In this box there is earth from my orchard, and such blessing as Galadriel has still to bestow is upon it. It will not keep you on your road, nor defend you against any peril; but if you keep it and see your home again at last, then perhaps it may reward you. Though you should find all barren and laid waste, there will be few gardens in Middle-earth that will bloom like your garden, if you sprinkle this earth there.'”

Galadriel may speak of her gift to Sam as small and in doing so she is kind to him, not wishing to overwhelm him, but in many ways the gift she gives is hardly less significant than the one she gave to Aragorn. If for Aragorn the green stone was a symbol of his kingly destiny, for Sam her small gift is a symbol of all that she has sought to preserve in Middle-earth. It is “a glimpse far off of Lórien”.

We saw when Sam was in Cerin Amroth how he saw in “sunlight and bright day” something more elvish than he had ever heard tell of, and how this had surprised him, thinking that Elves were for the “moon and stars”. Indeed, so moved was Sam by all that he saw and felt that he described his experience as being “inside a song”. Haldir responded by saying that Sam could feel the power of the Lady of the Galadhrim. Galadriel is a woman of the morning, of spring and summer, and in the beauty of Lothlórien she has made a land that expresses all that she is. Later in the story, at the wedding of Aragorn and Arwen, Éomer and Gimli will partake of chivalric dispute over whether Galadriel is the most beautiful woman in Middle-earth or not. Éomer will choose Arwen Evenstar over Galadriel and Gimli will say that Éomer has chosen the beauty of the evening over that of the morning.

Eleniel captures morning upon Cerin Amroth.

Galadriel has seen something of her own spirit in Sam and that Sam, too, is a man of the morning. This is why he will be so important to Frodo in the journey to Mount Doom. Even after the Ring has gone to the Fire and it seems that it is the end of all things Sam will choose the possibility of hope by taking Frodo to a place away from the lava flows. And when Saruman lays waste to the Shire in revenge for his own fall it will be Sam who will use Galadriel’s gift, not only to make his own garden like Lothlórien, but to make the whole Shire a “glimpse far off of Lórien”. The effects of Galadriel’s blessing will perhaps surpass her own imagination. If her heart is now filled with thoughts of fading and ending, Sam’s heart is always filled with thoughts of making. He sees hope and healing beyond the wasteland.

Sam Gamgee healing the hurts of the world.

Well, I’m Back

/ stephencwinter / 24 Comments

The Three Companions make their silent way back from the Grey Havens and their farewells to Frodo and Bilbo and their glorious fellow travellers.

“At last they rode over the downs and took the East Road, and then Merry and Pippin rode on to Buckland; and already they were singing again as they went. But Sam turned to Bywater, and so came back up the Hill as day was ending once more. And he went on, and there was yellow light, and fire within; and the evening meal was ready, and he was expected. And Rose drew him in, and set him in his chair, and put little Elanor upon his lap.

He drew a deep breath. ‘Well, I’m back,’ he said.”

For me these are some of the most poignant lines in all literature, the last lines of a story that I have loved ever since I first encountered it in my teens nearly fifty years ago. When I first read those lines I was filled with a deep sadness because it meant that I would have to leave a story that had somehow taken me to its heart. Middle-earth was now a place within my inner world, a world that was now peopled with new races whose history was a part of my history. A few years ago I was walking with my dog along a lane in Worcestershire, England, with high hedges upon either side. Suddenly I was captured by the thought that Gandalf might be walking towards me in the opposite direction and that when I turned the bend in the road he might meet me there to invite me upon an adventure. I was filled with excitement at the prospect and a little disappointment when he was not there.

Sam is in that world but his own adventure is over. It was an adventure that took him to places that were far beyond his imagining. All of this is now a part of him but all of this is now over. Rosie sets the scene for his future endeavours and she is right to do so. The fire in his own hearth is lit, the meal at his own table is set and his child is upon his knee. He is a husband, a father and a householder. He grows food for his growing family in his garden and from this place, from this homestead, a place worthy of the greatest respect, he leads his community.

Sam has returned from his journey bearing many gifts. The one that all can see is Galadriel’s box, and the fruits of that gift are clear for all to see. The Mallorn Tree in the Party Field, the beauty of the children born in 1420, the flourishing of the woodlands of the Shire that Saruman tried so hard to destroy and the excellence of the beer brewed in that year that satisfied the taste of the gaffers of the Shire for long years after. Galadriel saw this for herself as she passed through the Shire on her way to the Havens and she complimented Sam on the work that he had done.

But there are other gifts too. Sam has brought a wisdom and a fortitude from his journey that he did not know before he set out. He possesses a mastery over himself and over the ebb and flow of life that could only come from being tested to and beyond his limits. And he has brought to the Shire the gifts of Elfland. Not just the box that Galadriel gave him, not just the fulfilment of his longing for beauty that was satisfied by the encounter with Gildor even before he left the Shire. Sam carries Elfland in his soul and Elfland carries him. For a time at least, the Shire will be a place that treasures the memory of Elfland within Middle-earth. Sam’s beloved daughter, Elanor the Fair, will marry Fastred of Greenholm on the Far Downs and their family, the Fairbairns, the keepers of the Red Book, will dwell in the new Westmarch on the Tower Hills and by the gift of the king will be its wardens.

The history of Middle-earth must continue but the great story, in which the Fellowship of the Ring played such a part, that brought such gifts to its peoples must now come to an end.

But all who love this tale know that they can always turn back to the first page and start again.

“I am Wounded; it will Never Really Heal”. Frodo Begins to Fade Away From the Shire.

/ stephencwinter / 23 Comments

After Sam and Rosie Cotton are married they move into together with Frodo in Bag End. It is a good arrangement for all. Sam and Rosie have a fine home in which to raise a family together. Frodo has kind and loving friends to watch over him. Sam is close enough to the Gaffer to keep an eye on him. But not too close.

It is the beginning of a golden age in the history of the Shire. Restoration work is underway everywhere and everything returns to how it was but perhaps it is even more beautiful than it was before the troubles. Tolkien gives us a vision, perhaps, of how England might have been restored after the destruction of the Second World War. One thinks of the beautiful medieval city of Coventry that was badly bombed during the war and its ancient cathedral almost completely destroyed. It is a grim joke told by the people of that city that the Luftwaffe only began the destruction of the city. It was completed by the city authorities. It is as if Lotho Pimple and Ted Sandyman had seized control of the country after the war for long enough until they had changed it for ever.

Not so the Shire. The Shire is seized, not by brutalist architects, but by a spirit of merriment. And the spirit is manifested above all in Merry and Pippin. “The two young Travellers cut a great dash in the Shire with their songs and their tales and their finery, and their wonderful parties. ‘Lordly’ folk called them, meaning nothing but good; for it warmed all hearts to see them go riding by with their mail-shirts so bright and their shields so splendid, laughing and singing songs of far away.”

Merry and Pippin bring something new to the Shire in a way that even hobbits, that most conservative of peoples, could receive. They give the Shire back to itself but more itself than ever it was before. And there is one other who does this work also and that is Sam the Gardener who will eventually take the name of Gardener for his family.

Sadly there is one who cannot share this joy, delight and glory and that is Frodo. It is not that Frodo becomes angry or embittered, withdrawing into a windowless inner darkness. It is just that Frodo has been hurt and cannot wholly be healed in Middle-earth.

Sam is away in March in the Year of Plenty on his duties as forester to the Shire. All his attention and his energy is given to looking forward. So he misses March 13th, the day one year before when Frodo lay helpless, poisoned by Shelob, a prisoner of the orcs in Cirith Ungol, and the Ring was gone. On that day Frodo had not known that Sam had taken the Ring in order to prevent it from falling into the hands of the orcs but what Frodo relives a year later is not a sense of misery at the failure of the mission but an utter emptiness because the Ring has gone. It is the same emptiness that Gollum felt when Bilbo took the Ring and which was to fuel his obsessive search thereafter. The Ring has a hold over Frodo from which he can never wholly escape.

This is an experience that the Shire cannot share. The story of the Ring and its utterly malevolent maker is something that it has never shared. Even when the Ring was in the Shire it remained hidden and it was only revealed for the briefest of moments in the uncanny goings on at Bilbo’s farewell party. And when the War of the Ring came to the Shire it was through Saruman and his brigand ban, already defeated though able to do some small mischief before being caught. The Shire never shared Frodo’s heroic sacrifice of himself and so it cannot understand it. As Frodo himself says: “I tried to save the Shire, and it has been saved, but not for me.”

Frodo is the wounded healer, the prophet without honour in his own country. Merry, Pippin and Sam are all closer to the Shire and are able to bring the great story of deliverence to their people in such a way that they can receive it and learn to be grateful for it. For Frodo healing must come somewhere else.