The Marriage of Sam Gamgee and Rosie Cotton

“They Go Only Because They Would Not Be Parted From Thee- Because They Love Thee.” Some Thoughts on Éowyn’s Unrequited Love For Aragorn

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The Return of the King by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991) pp. 765-767

Éowyn has tried in every way that she can think to persuade Aragorn to take her with him on what she is convinced is little more than a suicide mission through the Paths of the Dead into Gondor, laying bare her soul to him, of her fear of remaining within a cage for the whole of her life, whether long or short. And at the last all she hears are these words:

“Stay! For you have no errand to the South.”

Aragorn has given up any attempt to be gentle. He knows that he is risking everything on this venture and that everything may well be lost. All his hopes and even his life itself and the lives of all who go with him. Nothing must stand between him and his effort to come to Minas Tirith in time before it falls to the forces of Mordor and this includes the desperate young woman who stands before him. She too must be swept aside and it must be done swiftly.

And so Éowyn is left with but one thing remaining that she can offer of herself. Her heart. She longs to be claimed by this hero and all she can hear and feel is his rejection. She heard him say that were his heart to be where it most desires to be it would “be wandering in the fair valley of Rivendell”. She did not hear Aragorn speak of Arwen but she fears that there might be someone else in his life. But she has come to believe that the only hope of the freedom for which she longs lies in his hands and that if he casts her aside then she is left with nothing. And at this moment it is this nothing that she fears above all.

So when Aragorn brutally commands her to stay in Rohan, that she has no errand to the South she speaks the words that she has kept hidden from him until now.

“Neither have those others who go with thee. They go only because they would not be parted from thee- because they love thee.”

Then, having given everything that she can give she turns away and vanishes from sight.

Does Éowyn really love Aragorn? Or does she only love what he represents for her? The possibility of achieving the freedom from captivity and degradation that she has come to hate and to fear? How many of us truly know our own hearts? Does this mean that none can really know whether they love another person or not? To fall in love is a glorious thing. Perhaps the most exalted state that any human being can ever achieve. But to go beyond this state that can become a thing desired in itself because it is so all consuming, so intoxicating, takes something greater than the action of falling into it. It requires a commitment to remain with another person through everything.

As a priest in the Church of England I have presided at many weddings over the years and time and time again I have felt a thrill run through my body when I have heard a couple promise to one another that they will love and cherish each other:

For better, for worse; for richer for poorer; in sickness and in health.

These are words of commitment that I know will be tested to the limit in the lives of everyone who speaks them aloud before many witnesses, and, I believe, before God. But perhaps one of the greatest gifts that someone can give to the world is a life that has been true to those promises, through all its tests and even through failure. Such a life, such a gift, can be a source of great strength to others who struggle through their own trials, that it is worth not giving up, that there remains something to hope for.

Later in the story Éowyn will respond to the declaration of love made by another man and we will read that “the heart of Éowyn changed, or else at last she understood it”. I would add to these words that she understood her heart as it appeared to her at that moment, but she would come to understand it even better after years together with the man that she chose. This is true for all of us and as with Éowyn, though not by the path that she will walk that is unique to her, we will go through many trials and through many joys to the day when we can truly understand our hearts.

The Marriage of Sam Gamgee and Rosie Cotton

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Tolkien gives the unmarried women of his story something that he did not give to his own wife. When critics sneered at what they regarded as the bachelor atmosphere of Tolkien’s work, a kind of Drones Club (the club in which P.G Woodhouse’s, Bertie Wooster was a member) in a heroic tale, Tolkien replied that it would be irresponsible for an unmarried man to marry before going to war. A husband is one who, in Old English, is bonded to his house and land and cannot leave them.

Tolkien did not follow this principle. As he wrote to his son, Michael in 1941:

“On January 8th I went back to her [Edith Bratt], and became engaged, and informed an astonished family. I picked up my socks and did a spot of work… and then war broke out the next year [July 28th 1914], while I still had a year to go at college. In those days chaps joined up, or were scorned publicly. It was a nasty cleft to be in, especially for a man with too much imagination and little physical courage. No degree: no money: fiancee. I endured the obloquy, and hints becoming outspoken from relatives, stayed up, and produced a First in Finals in 1915. Bolted into the army: July 1915. I found the situation intolerable and married on March 22nd, 1916. May found me crossing the Channel… for the carnage of the Somme.”

I will leave my readers who want to know more about the story of John and Edith to one of the excellent biographies of Tolkien. Here we are going to think a little about the story of Sam Gamgee and Rosie Cotton.

Sam joined up or, rather, was conscripted, in April 3018 in the Third Age or 1418 in the Shire Reckoning. He already had an understanding with Rosie Cotton and here I wish to express my admiration for Rosie. She was a farmer’s daughter. Her father owned his own house and land. Sam was only a the son of a land worker with no prospects that this might change. The heirs to Bag End were the Sackville-Bagginses and given their known reputation were unlikely to be overly generous to their retainers. Sam was only a servant and not a master. Rosie was the daughter of a master, and so, just like Gandalf, she must have seen something in him that others might have been slower to see.

Her judgement proved accurate. Sam may have left the Shire a servant but he returned to it as one of the lords of his people. Frodo says as much to the sceptical Gaffer in Rosie’s hearing. “He’s now one of the most famous people in all the lands, and they are making songs about his deeds from here to the Sea and beyond the Great River.” All of this is way beyond the Gaffer’s rather limited imagination and so he quickly puts it out of his mind but “Rosie’s eyes were shining and she was smiling at [Sam]”.

Rosie never quite understood in what way her man had become famous and so, unlike Arwen to Aragorn or Éowyn to Faramir, she never became a “soul mate” to Sam. As Sam said to Frodo, as far as Rosie was concerned, Sam had “wasted a year” in which they could have got on with the really serious business of creating a home and family.  Did Sam mind? I suspect that his reference to himself as feeling “torn in two” means that he did, at least in the half of him that longed for the life that Frodo represented. He became very close to his daughter, Elanor, and when, after Rosie died in a good old age, Sam made his last journey across the Sea to the Undying Lands, he gave the Red Book to her and to her husband, Fastred, Warden of Westmarch as he was leaving the Shire for the last time.

Rosie and Sam may not have had a deeply romantic relationship but they do not seem to have complained about the lack of one. Rosie had the satisfaction of seeing her husband become Mayor of the Shire and along with Merry and Pippin, Counsellors of the King in his northern kingdom, and Elanor become a maid of honour to the Queen.  The marriage of Rosie Cotton and Sam Gamgee was a good one and I hope that when the time came for Rosie to say farewell to this life she was able to do so in peace and in contentment.