Wyrd

“I am a Hobbit and No More Valiant Than I am a Man, Save Perhaps Now and Again By Necessity.” Pippin Declares Himself to The Guard at The Walls of The Pelennor.

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The Return of the King by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991) pp. 732-733

In an unsafe world in which the arrival of strangers might mean the coming of threat and danger it is necessary that those strangers should declare themselves to the guards. So we remember Aragorn first declaring himself to Éomer in the fields of Rohan and then to Hama at the doors of Meduseld and how it was on these occasions that he first announced his mighty lineage. When times are urgent and haste is required then the bearer of a name has no time for modesty if that one is not to suffer let or hindrance.

When Gandalf comes to the defences of the Pelennor Fields he has no need to declare himself to the guards as they rebuild its walls. They know him and know that he has the favour of the Lord of Minas Tirith. But who is the small creature who sleeps before him upon Shadowfax?

At first Gandalf speaks for his companion.

“His name is Peregrin, a very valiant man.”

Why does Gandalf speak of Pippin in terms like this? We have accompanied Pippin on his journey from the Shire all the way to this moment, from the time when his journey was no more dangerous than a walking holiday to his arrival at Minas Tirith in time of war. We recall Gandalf’s anger in the guard room in Moria when Pippin dropped a stone into the well so that he could find out how deep it was.

“Fool of a Took!”

That was what he thought of the young hobbit then. And we remember his anger when he caught Pippin looking into the Stone of Orthanc. Yet now he declares Pippin a mighty warrior to Ingold and his men. Is he simply trying to speed his journey or merely flattering his young companion?

I would argue that Gandalf does neither, that he is doing the same before Ingold and his men as Aragorn did before Éomer and Hama. He is announcing Pippin before the men of Gondor, declaring him to be a worthy addition to their number. A mighty man of arms in whose faith and help his fellows can trust.

“He has passed through more battles and perils than you have, Ingold, though you be twice his height; and he comes now from the storming of Isengard”.

Pippin is not the same hobbit who began the journey in the Shire, nor even the one who could not help taking a look into the Stone of Orthanc. He has passed through his initiation, both when he seized his chance “with both hands”, as Gimli spoke approvingly of the moment when he used a fallen orc blade to cut his bonds when he was the prisoner of the Uruk-hai of Isengard; but also in the way he has dealt with the humiliation he suffered through the incident with the palantir. He neither indulges in self-pity nor in self-congratulation. He knows that he was foolish to look into the Stone and he was fortunate that Sauron did not choose to interrogate him further at the time.

So he shows in the manner with which he announces himself.

“I am a hobbit and no more valiant than I am a man, save perhaps now and again by necessity.”

He has an appropriate pride in himself. He is a hobbit and he feels no need either to boast or apologise for this. He simply looks Ingold in the eye as Aragorn did with Éomer and says, this is who I am. And as for being valiant he declares to him that if he is ever brave it is only when he needs to be. Ingold and his men honour the manner in which he has spoken to them. That he has looked them in the eye, face to face, neither with arrogance or shame.

“Fare you well! ” said Ingold; and the men made way for Shadowfax, and he passed through a narrow gate in the wall. “May you bring good counsel to Denethor in his need, and to us all, Mithrandir!”

“I Can’t Be Their Ring-bearer. Not Without Mr. Frodo.” The Orcs of Cirith Ungol and Minas Morgul Take Frodo’s Body and Sam Decides to Follow Them.

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The Two Towers by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991, 2007) pp. 960-963

No sooner does Sam take the Ring from Frodo and take his first few faltering steps towards Mount Doom weighed down by the terrible burden that he now bears than everything suddenly changes.

“”And then suddenly he heard cries and voices. He stood still as stone Orc voices. They were behind him and before him. A noise of tramping feet and harsh shouts.”

Sam’s first instinct is to protect himself. There is no place for him to hide and so he decides to put on the Ring. That was Sam’s first instinct. His second is awakened a few seconds later when the orcs discover Frodo’s body.

“With a dreadful stroke Sam was wakened from his cowering mood. They had seen his master. What would they do? He had heard tales of the orcs to make the blood run cold. It could not be borne. He sprung up. He flung the Quest and all his decisions away, and fear and doubt with them. He knew now where his place was and had been: at his master’s side, though what he could do their was not clear.”

I used the word, instinct, a moment ago, deliberately, because Sam is not a creature of profound thought. This is not to say that he is shallow. Not by any means. As we have seen throughout the story he is capable of deep insight. When he was in Lothlórien he described his experience there as being “inside a song.” In a few beautifully poetic words he was able to capture the essence of that wonderful place in a way that no philosophical discourse ever could. Indeed a philosopher might be so anxious to find appropriate language for the experience that its sheer immediacy would be lost. And Tolkien played a beautiful language game with his readers with those words. Sam speaks to Frodo and to us in the Old English of simple country folk when he speaks of being inside a song. If he had used the language of his French speaking betters he would have spoken of being enchanted, for that is exactly what his words meant. I am not convinced that if he had used that word he would have conveyed to us his experience nearly so well.

But we should not ask Sam to reach a conclusion by means of starting with first principles because Sam has never learned to think that way. A few minutes later, as Shagrat and Gorbag and their orc companies carry Frodo towards Cirith Ungol Sam will learn that Frodo is not dead, that Shelob has a poison that renders her prey immobile so that she can eat it live later on at her leisure. Sam reels with horror when he realises that he had abandoned Frodo alive and then he says to himself:

“You fool, he isn’t dead and your heart knew it. Don’t trust your head, Samwise, it’s not the best part of you.”

Sam has only one principle and that is love. Not that this makes life easy for him. Sam loves Frodo but not exclusively. He gave his love to Bill the Pony and so found his heart torn in two when Bill refused to enter Moria. His love is given to the Gaffer, his father, and so when he sees him in Galadriel’s mirror, being driven from his home by Saruman’s thugs, again his heart is torn in two. To live for the sake of love as Sam does so completely means that he will always have to live with the danger that his heart will be broken. But now amidst the chaos as Frodo is borne into Mordor by his orc captors Sam’s heart grants him complete simplicity. He will follow Frodo and lay down his life for him. Providence will have to do the rest.

And Providence, or Luck, or Wyrd, as Sam understands it, will do exactly that. What Frodo’s captors find on his body, especially his priceless mithril coat, will lead to the annihilation of the orc company so that Sam will be able to rescue him without having to strike a single blow. The orcs only work will be to carry Frodo into Mordor itself and Sam’s work will be to follow where his heart leads him. What began in Shelob’s Lair when the light that was first captured by Feänor when he crafted the Silmarils shattered the monster’s eternal darkness, is a chain of events that will take the hobbits into Mordor and then on to Mount Doom itself.

“Around Them Lay Long Launds of Green Grass, Dappled with Celandine and Anemones, White and Blue, Now Folded for Sleep”. The Journey of Frodo and Sam to the Cross-Roads.

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The Two Towers by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991, 2007) pp. 910-915

I am going to make an assumption that Tolkien was not familiar with the work of the great Blues singer, Robert Johnson, and so did not know his classic song, Crossroad, even though the opening lines, “I went to the crossroad, fell down on my knees… Asked the Lord above, “Have mercy now, save poor Bob if you please”, seems strangely apposite to Frodo’s situation and state of mind.

As we have been seeing in these last weeks, Tolkien does not allow Frodo and Sam the comfort that they would receive if they could share the same faith that he did, and yet it is clear that they live in a world that is under divine order. For although, as Gollum puts it, they are in “Dangerous places” where “Cruel peoples come this way, down from the Tower”, these same places are, for the time being, absolutely empty, as if they have been prepared for the hobbits to walk along them in complete safety. We have thought about the sequence of events that have led to this being so, but we have also thought about how the best explanation that Frodo and Sam might be able to give to this sequence is luck or wyrd.

Frodo and Sam have to make their journey without comfort or a sense that they are part of a story that is divinely governed. And yet they are not left entirely comfortless. We have seen the comfort that Frodo received through the unexpected friendship of Faramir that “turns evil to great good” and in the next reflection we will think about a particular incident that takes place on this journey at the Cross-roads. And as they make their fearful journey from Ithilien to the Cross-roads Tolkien shows us another form of comfort.

As they make their way Tolkien gives particular attention to the flora of the landscape about them.

“As the third stage of their day’s march drew on and afternoon waned, the forest opened out, and the trees became larger and more scattered. Great ilexes of huge girth stood dark and solemn in wide glades with here and there among them hoary ash-trees, and giant oaks just putting out their brown-green buds. About them lay long launds of green grass dappled with celandine and anemones, white and blue, now folded for sleep; and there were acres populous with the leaves of woodland hyacinths: already the their sleek bell-stems were thrusting through the mould.”

Anemone and celandine …

Tolkien gives us a rich account of what readers from England would recognise as a classical woodland landscape in spring time. He also treats us to the word, laund, that the Oxford English Dictionary tells us is an archaic word which “refers to an open, grassy area, especially in a woodland, like a glade or a lawn.” It also tells us that the word is now rarely used. I have made a decision, based upon reading this passage, to use the word whenever I come across such a place. I would never have known about it if Tolkien had not used it here and I feel that my imagination has just been enriched by it.

I recently went on a long country walk through that went, in part, through the kind of woodland scene that Tolkien describes here. The walk took me down to the banks of the River Severn at this point and I saw a profusion of celandine and wood anemone in the launds about me. I took the walk in the last days of March, near the Feast of the Annunciation on the 25th March, the date upon which the Ring goes into the Fire and Sauron falls into nothingness. Spring has come a little earlier here upon the marches of Gondor, but we know that this land lies more under the influence of a Mediterranean type of climate than does England itself and so the flowers that I saw would come a little earlier there. We know too, that these woods lie higher in the mountains than my woodland walk down by the river. And for me there was the added pleasure of having known the farmer, of old Worcestershire stock, who had chosen to set aside this area on his land for wildlife. As he had proudly shown me round his farm just as he was about to hand it over to his son, he spoke of his decision to set a part of it aside as a wildlife reserve. I knew that he was too shrewd a businessman not to receive financial reward for his actions but on the day I walked through these woods I just remembered him with thanksgiving and affection.

My walk through these spring time woods was rich with a feast of sight, sound and smell. The trees had not yet turned green (is this why Tolkien refers to them as “dark and solemn”?) but this allowed the ground underneath them access to sunlight and the spring flowers to proliferate. I felt as if I had stepped into heaven. Did Tolkien feel the same way on spring time walks? Did Frodo feel the same way on his walk to the Cross-roads?

“Luck Served You There; but You Seized Your Chance With Both Hands One Might Say.” Some more thoughts on the empty Morgul Vale that Frodo and Sam will walk through.

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The Two Towers by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991, 2007) pp. 908-909

In my last post we thought about the chain of events that lead to the strange fact that the road from Ithilien into Mordor is empty at just the very moment in which Frodo and Sam need to walk down it. Instead of companies of orcs and other allies of Mordor constantly travelling up and down it, the road in the Morgul Vale is left free for two hobbits and their guide to walk along it unhindered.

The quotation that I have chosen for this piece does not come from the passage that I am thinking about here but from the chapter entitled Flotsam and Jetsam when Merry and Pippin tell the story of their adventures to Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli amidst the wreck of Isengard after it has been destroyed by the Ents. Pippin tells his companions how, by ,means of a fallen orc blade, he was able to cut the rope that his wrists had been bound by . Gimli responds to this approvingly.

“The cutting of the bands on your wrists, that was smart work!” said Gimli. “Luck served you there; but you seized your luck with both hands, one might say.”

In his study on the thought of J.R.R Tolkien, Tom Shippey considers the role of luck within The Lord of the Rings (J.R.R Tolkien, Author of The Century, Harper Collins 2001, pp. 143-147). Shippey tackles the assertion of some of Tolkien’s critics that his story is full of “biased fortune” and so cannot be taken seriously. In speaking of Gollum’s fall into the fires of Mount Doom that destroys the Ring, Shippey argues that “it is clearly not just an accident” but the direct, if unintended consequence, of many conscious choices. The word that Shippey chooses for this is the Old English word, wyrd, a word that both Shippey and Tolkien knew because both of them held the same chair at Oxford University in Philology, the study of language. Modern readers of English will, of course, immediately recognise the similarity between this Old English word and the modern word, weird. They might also note, with some sadness, the way in which a language that once had the capacity to express human experience with great subtlety has turned the words that were able to do this into banalities.

The Old English word that Gimli might have used when he spoke of Pippin’s luck might well have been wyrd. It would have meant something that had happened, something over which Pippin had no control, such as the sudden and unexpected availability of a sharp blade that Pippin was able to use and to change his fortunes. The same thing might be said about Bilbo’s finding of the Ring. The same thing could be certainly be said of the sudden emptying of the roads into Mordor. In every one of these cases luck, or wyrd, serves those who are able to take advantage of these happenings. But Pippin, Bilbo and then Frodo and Sam, each have to take seize their luck, to take advantage of it.

Frodo had to leave the relative security of the refuge of Henneth Annûn and put his trust in a treacherous guide who would eventually betray him. In walking down the Morgul Vale and then climbing the stair to Cirith Ungol he made his way directly into Shelob’s Lair and was poisoned by her. He only entered Mordor on the backs of orcs and his journey thereafter to Orodruin was one of unrelenting agony as the Ring that he bore slowly but inevitably wore down his resistance to its malignant power. By the time he reached the Cracks of Doom he had no strength left to resist it. At the end he needed an enemy to enable him to fulfil his mission and this enemy did so by biting off his finger. If after all this Gimli were to say to him that he seized his luck with both hands then Frodo might well reply that Gimli had a poor idea of luck. Frodo would be right but then so too would be Gimli. This luck truly opened the way to the mountain and it took the Ring into the Fire. But in seizing it Frodo had to pay a terrible price. He could never find peace again in Middle-earth.

Trusting to Luck on the Roads of Mordor

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Life sometimes takes you to places that you would rather not go to. Tolkien found himself in the trenches of the Western Front on the first day of the Battle of the Somme in 1916 when nearly 20,000 British soldiers were killed in a single attack on the German lines and a further 40,000 were wounded. He gained a great respect for ordinary British soldiers and largely based the character of Sam Gamgee upon those who he got to know. Sam, like those men, would rather not be in the trenches. He does not pretend to some kind of heroism. As far as he is concerned behaviour like that would be entirely inappropriate, like pretending to be Aragorn, or Faramir, or Boromir, or… Frodo for that matter. Sam just gets on with whatever needs to be done. Things like dealing with “Gollum’s treacherous attack, the horror of Shelob, and his own adventures with the orcs.”

Sam has no sense of entitlement. He does not believe that he has an inalienable right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. He hopes and even expects that Frodo will treat him fairly and with due respect but that expectation lies within certain bounds. He does not think of himself as Frodo’s equal.

And Sam believes in luck. Not that he thinks that he has a right to it but that he wants to give it a chance if possible. In his fine study, The Road to Middle-earth, Tom Shippey reflects on the place of luck in Tolkien at some length. Shippey tells us that the poet of Beowulf “often ascribes events to wyrd, and treats it in a way as a supernatural force.” But Shippey notes that luck or wyrd is not the same thing as fate. There is an implacability about fate, there is nothing that you can do about it; but you can change your luck. As Shippey puts it, “while persistence offers no guarantees, it does give ‘luck’ a chance to operate.”

And so Sam decides to go in search for water and, as he does so, he says to the sleeping Frodo, “I’ll have to leave you for a bit and trust to luck.”

Sam does find water but he also nearly runs into Gollum and his response to these events is to say, “Well, luck did not let me down… but that was a near thing.” In other words, it is wise not to push luck too far.

Later, when they are forced to take the road, Frodo and Sam are overtaken by a company of orcs on the way to reinforce the garrison at the Black Gate as the armies of the West approach. They know that they cannot escape and Frodo despairs. “We trusted to luck, and it has failed us. We are trapped.” Sam, however, is not so quick to give up. “Seems so,” he says. “Well, we can but wait and see.” They are not able to escape the orcs’ attention but later, in a moment of confusion, they are able to escape and so continue their journey to the mountain. Their persistence has given luck a chance to operate.

In recent weeks in this blog we have thought about the role of Providence in the hobbits’ journey through Mordor. We have seen the part played by the gifts of the Valar in the light of the Silmarils captured in the star glass of Galadriel and in the retreat of the smokes of Orodruin before the West Wind. Shippey reflects on the relationship between Providence and Luck in King Alfred the Great’s translation into Old English of The Consolation of Philosophy by Boethius, a text that was one of the most influential in the shaping of the medieval mind. He comments that “What we call God’s fore-thought and his Providence is while it is there in his mind, before it gets done; but once it gets done, then we call it wyrd. This way anyone can tell that there are two things and two names, forethought and wyrd.” Sam is content to live in the experience of luck or wyrd and leave the discernment of Providence to kings or scholars. The result is that he lives life cheerfully and thankfully and he never gives up.