The Morgul Blade

“And in That Very Moment, Away Behind in Some Courtyard of The City, a Cock Crowed.” When The Earth Fights Back Against The Servants of Darkness.

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The Return of the King by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991) pp. 809-811

The “very moment” that Tolkien speaks of here is the moment that the Morgul Lord describes as “my hour”, the triumph of the powers of darkness over the free peoples of Middle-earth. As the defenders of Minas Tirith flee before him only Gandalf stands. But what happens next is not a mighty struggle such as took place in the mines of Moria when Gandalf fought the Balrog and died as he overthrew his enemy, but the sound of horns. The Riders of Rohan have come at last to the aid of their ancient allies.

And there is something else, something that the Morgul Lord does not seem to notice, but is absolutely fundamental to the turning of the battle before the walls of the city.

“And in that very moment, away behind in some courtyard of the City, a cock crowed. Shrill and clear he crowed, recking nothing of wizardry or war, welcoming only the morning that in the sky far above the shadows of death was coming with the dawn.”

The Witch-King does not notice this because why should he? What does it matter to him that in the heart of a great battle such a thing should happen? The doings of small creatures are beneath his notice. Ultimately, the doings of any creature are of nothing to him, chief of all the servants of the Dark Lord. The end of that creature, as is the end of any creature, is darkness, so why should he bother?

Except that the crowing of the cockerel announces a turning of the tide. Maybe not the ultimate downfall of his master, that is yet to come and is equally unlooked for, but it is the turning of the tide in the story of that day, because what the cock announces in its crowing is the coming of the dawn.

For many days now there has been no dawn. The smokes of Mount Doom have spread over the lands of the south, reaching even the mustering of the Riders of Rohan in Harrowdale far off in Rohan. As the world turns towards the springtime of the year Sauron declares to that world that there will be no spring, there will be no welcome to the return of life, but only darkness. His own armies and most especially his orcs, fear the sun, and even his allies who have sold themselves to the power of darkness acknowledge its inevitable triumph and serve it. Frodo may have cried out in defiance at the setting of the sun at the Crossroads that the Powers of Darkness will not conquer forever, but if Sauron had heard that cry he might have named it as bravery in the face of defeat but nothing more than that. Both he and his master, Morgoth, have heard many such cries and have never feared them.

But the crowing of the cock is not a cry of defiance. The cock is simply doing what he has always done when the dawn breaks over the world. He crows. And in the simple act of his crowing, he declares something that undermines the power of every tyrant. He declares that although the earth is marred by darkness it is both good and free. He declares that “the heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament showeth his handiwork.” That the sun “as a bridegroom cometh out of his chamber, and rejoiceth as a strong man to run a race.” The good earth and the good sun is not the servant of Sauron but of Eru Ilúvatar, the Creator of all. The morning is coming high above the shadows that Sauron has made, and he has no power over it, and with the changing of the direction of the wind those shadows are beginning to lift, and the cock crows to welcome the dawn and the ending of the night.

The words that the Morgul Lord speaks to Gandalf in the gate of the city inevitably recall the words that Jesus spoke to the temple guards who had come to arrest him in the Garden of Gethsemane: “but this is your hour and the power of darkness” (Luke 22.53). But just as the power of darkness in the gospel has only the power permitted to it for it to wield so too the power of the Morgul Lord is only for a moment. The cock crow announces the end of that power as the dawn breaks and the horns of Rohan sound.

What Happened at the Fords of Bruinen? Gandalf Explains All to Frodo in Rivendell.

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The Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991) pp. 215-219

Gandalf explains much to Frodo as the hobbit rests in his wonderful bed but one question above all still bothers him.

“Just give me news of my friends, and tell me the end of the affair at the Ford, as I keep on asking, and I shall be content for the present. After that I shall have another sleep, I think; but I shan’t be able to close my eyes until you have finished the story for me.”

We thought about the events at the Fords of Bruinen a few weeks ago when we were introduced to Glorfindel and his decisive intervention. Now we return to them as Gandalf explains to Frodo what was happening to him on that day. Gandalf explains to Frodo that the Ringwraiths could see him even when he was not wearing the Ring because he was “on the threshold of their world”. The Morgul-knife, with which the Witch-king of Angmar, the Lord of Minas Morgul, had pierced Frodo in his shoulder, had broken inside the wound and had left a splinter there. He had tried to pierce Frodo in his heart and if he had succeeded he would have done a deed that would have been worse than murder for Frodo would have become a wraith, he “would have become like they are, only weaker and under their command”.

And now we know why Gandalf looked at Frodo so closely. How far into the shadow world had Frodo gone? Was there any lasting damage caused by the Morgul Blade as the Witch-king intended or had Elrond been successful in both removing the deadly splinter and in preventing Frodo from slipping out of the world of substance and into the world that the ringwraiths knew?

What is clear is that Frodo’s resistance played a crucial role in his escape and then his recovery. As Gandalf puts it, “Your heart was not touched, and only your shoulder was pierced; and that was because you resisted to the last”. Frodo’s resistance was crucial at that point and then at the Fords of Bruinen when he called out, “You shall have neither the Ring nor me”. But most important of all was the fact that he was able to resist tye journey of the fragment of the blade from the shoulder to the heart.

Frodo’s resistance was aided at the beginning by Strider’s application of athelas to the wound. Even though he is not yet king it is a sign of his true identity that this herb, that seems to share his hiddenness in its apparent insignificance, responds both to his touch and his voice. Strider is the true king who is to come and the world listens to his voice.

But this is not the only aid that Frodo receives. When his hobbit companions said to him, “We are your friends, Frodo”, on that night at Crickhollow when the “conspiracy” was unmasked, these were not mere words. The friendship of Merry, Pippin and, above all, Sam was shown in the unloading of Bill the pony and the carrying of great burdens; it was shown in hobbit cheerfulness even in adversity; it was shown in Sam’s song about trolls at the discovery of the place where Bilbo’s first adventure took place; and it was shown at the Fords of Bruinen when they all ran towards the deadliest of danger in the ringwraiths. And, as readers of The Lord of the Rings know, this was not the last time in the story that this friends were willing to lay down their lives for the love of a friend.

Of course, none of this would have been to any effect if the hobbits had been alone. The Nazgûl would have been too deadly a foe and the Ring, and Frodo too, would have been taken away to Mordor had it not been for the intervention of Glorfindel and the power in the river that awaited any attempt to cross by an enemy. The waters in the river rose and the steeds of the ringwraiths were swept away, their riders forced to return to Mordor having failed in their mission and to be rehorsed.

All of this Gandalf explains to Frodo but he also tells him that while “fortune or fate” may have helped him to escape his deadly foe so too did courage and all through the story that courage will make all the difference.

Frodo is Cheered by Old Trolls. With a Little Help from a Song by Sam Gamgee.

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The Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991) pp. 197-203

In attempting to keep away from the great East-West Road that runs from Rivendell to the Grey Havens, fearing that it will be upon the road that the Nazgûl will be lying in wait, Strider has taken the hobbits a little too far to the north. It is at this point that Tolkien’s maps of Middle-earth that he drew for The Lord of the Rings give us little guidance about the exact route of their journey. Although it is clear from Tolkien’s wonderfully evocative description that the travellers have to negotiate some difficult terrain with steep climbs and descents the map shows us none of this and we are left to our imaginations to trace their path. Indeed for a long time there is no path. They have to find their way through what is literally a trackless waste until Pippin stumbles upon one.

We remember the paths created by Tom Bombadil in the Old Forest, respectfully even tenderly weaving in and out among the trees following the line of the Withywindle. This path in the wild is a brutal affair “made by strong arms and heavy feet. Here and there old trees had been cut or broken down, and large rocks cloven or heaved aside to make a way. “

Eventually we learn that the heavy lifting machinery is, in fact, three trolls, the very three who years before had captured the thirteen dwarves of the expedition to the Lonely Mountain that had been Bilbo’s great adventure; and the reason why they are now effigies seated on the ground in a clearing in the Trollshaws is that Gandalf had tricked them into continuing an argument about how to cook their prey until the rising sun had turned them into stone.

Throughout this stage of the journey Frodo has been drifting in and out of a shadowy world. We will not find out until later in Rivendell that a tiny sliver of the Morgul blade that had pierced his shoulder has been working its way inwards towards his heart, slowly but inexorably drawing him into the world of shadows in which his attackers dwell, but the progress of this deadly invader does not seem to be an even one and moments like this seem to stay its malevolent influence, for a time at least.

The person whose wholesome influence has this effect upon Frodo is Sam. I wonder if in this scene Tolkien was recalling the way in which soldiers in the trenches of the First World War would try to cheer each other up with songs like the one that Sam sings here in the shadow of the frozen trolls. Probably some of them were pretty bawdy but some would, as with Sam’s simple ditty, have simply made their hearers smile. And Frodo does smile. In the trenches such songs would have kept at bay a slow freezing of the heart for men, lice infested and surrounded by death. Here Sam’s song slows the progress of the splinter towards Frodo’s heart. Frodo jokingly declares that Sam might “end up by becoming a wizard-or a warrior” and wizards and warriors will both play a vital part in this story.

But so too will jesters. That is the word that Frodo uses, somewhat dismissively we have to acknowledge, to describe Sam at this point of the story. Frodo does not yet know that the part that this jester is going to play in getting him and the Ring to the Cracks of Doom is going to be absolutely vital. Sam will prove to be a warrior, although never one by choice, especially in his heroic battle with Shelob in her lair and in his storming of the Tower of Cirith Ungol but it is his simple refusal to abandon his cheerful spirit that will play the kind of role that only someone who is learning to see through the eyes of a child will ever come to value. Those who study to achieve a cultured sophistication will never have that vision. Frodo might have been tempted to be such a sophisticate but his terrible suffering in the course of his Ringbearing journey will teach him that it is not cleverness that sustains us in our darkest days but pure and simple goodness.