Transcript
[0:00] Hello and welcome to Mythmakers. You're listening to the Sidecast,
[0:05] Lord of the Rings, an author's journey. And we have reached chapter 11 in Fellowship of the Ring, the chapter called A Knife in the Dark. And leading you through it today is me and my name is Julia Golding. I'm primarily an author. So I'm looking at it from the point of view of what I see Tolkien doing as a fellow author in writing this book. So the beginning of this chapter is quite unique it's one of the first tie-ups in the interlaced structure of Lord of the Rings interlaced by that I mean you cut back to other activity that's having happening sort of almost concurrently with what you're following in the main thread of the story. And very unusually, the cutaway here is back to the Shire, back to poor old Fatty Bulger in Crick Hollow. And I can't think of anything else similar in the book.
[1:10] We'll be looking for them as we go along, but this is the only one that I could think of where we go to a character not actually involved in the main fellowship, the main thrust of the story. I suppose there is an exception, actually, I've just thought about that. The story towards the end of Faramir and Erwin also gets its own moment, but that seems to be appropriately, you know, end matters. But anyway, this cutaway is very unusual. How does it work in terms of whose point of view it is? So you remember we were talking about how the conceit is that this is actually the work of the hobbits, the Lord of the Rings, primarily by Frodo, but supplemented by the recollections of his friends. So one could imagine that he has picked up this story from Fatih when he came home.
[2:05] But what's special about it is it's written like a thriller. Just have a look at it. Just read it carefully. We don't know that Fatty has escaped when the Black Riders break into the house at Crick Hollow. It's a very good stylistic lesson in suspense, if you want to see how to write suspense. The Black Riders burst in and then are thwarted because Fatty has run away and they're just left with an empty cloak. There's a wonderful evocation of atmosphere just before they break in. We've got the cock crowing, which to me reminded me of things like Peter's betrayal in the story of the Passion in the Bible. But the sort of idea of that lonely voice of the cock crowing before the change in mood, the arrival of the dawn, this cock is crowing still in the night. And there's this wonderful sentence which goes in the dark without moon or stars a drawn blade gleamed as if a chill light had been unsheathed.
[3:17] So he focuses on the weapon there, a drawn blade, gleaned. We don't need the rest of it. We can imagine the Black Rider holding it. He focuses on the weapon and the threat that it poses. And of course, it's the thing that catches the light, the thing that can be seen.
[3:37] The Black Riders here, they're a small subset of the Black Riders because they've split up at this point. Note how they're upping their game as it were because they actually do physical harm to the structure they break down the door and they also declare Mordor openly open in the name of Mordor so it's there's a shift here in the sense that they are getting more and more dangerous which we'll see is fulfilled by the end of this chapter their attack is broken up by the horns of.
[4:10] Buckland and the use of horns is always seen as a positive change almost always i think there are some horns that come along with the um the orc army later but in this case these kind of horns are seen as the good men and women getting ready to defend their homeland we get this of course again wonderfully at minas turis and the arrival of the rahirim and their horns signals the change in the course of the battle. And then again, an echo of this when Merry returns with the other hobbits and he has been given a horn and he uses it to rouse the shire. So there's a little horn echo all the way through the story, which is part of the beautiful themes.
[5:00] It's like a motif in music, almost as if Tolkien is hearing the horns play in the background here.
[5:07] I would just like to do hats off here to Fatty, who is told to have run over a mile at this point. That is pretty impressive, Fatty. And we also get another little glimpse back into the past of the Shire, because we get the mention that such a drastic attack hadn't happened for over a hundred years, not since the White Walls came in the fell winter, when the brandywine was frozen over. So there's a history here of, um, the doings of the Shire folk, which is snuck in at this point, and that's part of weaving the very similitude of the world of Middle-earth. We feel that we can go back and still find out more about it. So turning to look at the Shire was unusual, but we also get a really rare dip into the minds of the enemy here. So following the conceit that Frodo is one writing, he is projecting this. I'm not so sure, actually, when Tolkien was writing the book at this stage, if he was that tidy in the way he thought about things. That was maybe a later idea which he worked back through. So his narrator does move around more, certainly in the early parts of Lord of the Rings. But anyway, we glimpse into the mind of the enemy. Let the little people blow. Sauron would deal with them later.
[6:34] And then we get the turning point here where we go from this incident where the Black Riders are thwarted, Frodo has left, Frodo is gone, and we turn back to Frodo and Strider in The Francing Pony. It's quite a cinematic moment, it's like a cinematic cut.
[6:54] And we find Strider sitting guard. And there is a connection to what is happening because Frodo feels he hears the horn and the cock crowing. The cock could, of course, be in Bree, but the horns seem like an echo on some kind of spiritual level between him and the events in the Shire. It's a way of connecting Frodo to the cutaway that we've just been seeing. It's almost as if it could have been a dream from him, but Tolkien doesn't go as far as suggesting that he's sort of seeing it in some kind of clairvoyant way. It's much more of a carrying on the theme into the next paragraph. And of course we have a very similar thing happening in Bree there's a coordinated attack by the Black Riders and fortunately because they haven't gone to their bedrooms they do not get injured at all and they hardly know it's happening it kind of happens in the dark.
[7:56] And is less scary as a result why duck the opportunity in the film version um Strider is talking about them as you see them go into the bedrooms that isn't the way it's handled here it's partly because the big attack comes at the end of this chapter and you don't want to shoot that bolt too early so you hold that back and wait for later it's fun here that we actually get the aftermath of the attack through barlam and butterbur's reaction and it's another opportunity for showing how his character works we get his character priorities, which he puts it this way guests unable to sleep in their beds and good bolsters ruined and all so he's worried about what it's cost him as well as the disturbance to his guests, anyway the result of all of this of course is that they're frustrated out of their early starts, and the hobbits agree that they have to carry more, because their ponies are also fled in the night.
[9:04] And Merry does find some silver lining in this which is that they have time for breakfast. It's always nice to have this turn back to those appetites of the hobbits, the grounding that they give to this epic heroic tower. So from their point of view, you also have to remember breakfast.
[9:23] I'm fascinated by the little insight we get here into the exchange rate of Middle Earth. There's very little on the economics of the place, but they seem to use a currency of silver pennies. And 30 is regarded as sufficient compensation for the loss of the ponies.
[9:42] And there's a little paragraph here, which then projects forward saying what happens to the horses. They go to join Fatty Lumpkin, who is Tom Bombadil's pony and are then sent back to work in Brie and I wonder why it was there and my suspicion is that this is there to snip off a trailing end so if this was being told to his family as it and to those around him reading it to the inklings it's the answer to what happened to the ponies snip that off so people don't wonder about it there's a useful summary um which Tolkien is very good at this is another sort of summary element that he also does in this chapter but the one I'm thinking of is in my edition on page 192 where we get a recap of all that's just happened so if we've been darting away back to the shire and then we're coming back to Brie there's a summary here of everything that's happened overnight Frodo's vanishing trick the appearance of the black horsemen, the robbing of the stables, and not least the news that Strider the ranger had joined the mysterious hobbits,
[10:57] made such a tale as would last for many uneventful years. It's a good way of just getting us back on track in terms of storytelling.
[11:06] Then they do set off with poor old Bill, who is the half-starved pony who is sold to them for an exorbitant amount of pennies by the mysteriously mean bill fernie and as they go there's this little interaction with bill fernie which is similar to the kind of interactions that sam has with the miller's son back in the shire and sam seems to be the one that's picked on again because bill fernie who's taken the trouble to learn their names he shows his disrespect for them by giving them disparaging nicknames he calls strider stick at north strider and sam who is actually called sam wise he gives him the diminutive sammy which immediately sort of patronizes him and sam shows his marksman skill by nailing him on the nose with an apple and he has that sort of greater side of waste of a good apple um and, And this is the moment where they shake off these kind of semi-comic characters. Bill Fernie isn't a threat. He is a threat in the sense that he is passing news about them, but he is not a serious threat. And this is the last time we see this level of character.
[12:30] And off they go into the wild with Strider. We're immediately back into a world of very precise geolocations we know there's a description again of exactly where archit and coom and all the villages around brie lie and behind it you can hear the echo of the voice of strider telling them to their left they could see some of the houses and hobbit holes of staddle on the gentler southeastern slopes of the hill down in a deep hollow away north of the road. There were wisps of rising smoke that showed where Coombe lay. Archit was hidden in the trees beyond. So there's a sense here that they don't know this precisely without Strider. So you can hear Strider almost being the tour guide, telling them where it is. And that use of, it's almost indirect speech, the echo of the voice of a character is a very fine way to write. You get it a lot in Jane Austen, by the way, if you look at Jane Austen, full of these moments. But it also helps us get a sense of, yes, we're off again, we're in a real landscape, and we're going.
[13:44] Strider displays that he is the professional by the great comeback to Pippin. My cut, short or long, don't go wrong. He has confidence, and we feel as though they're on a much more sound footing for their journeys because if you think what they've done so far they've been going from one disaster to another so we get the impression that even if the going is tough they are with someone who knows what he's doing.
[14:11] I don't know what you think about the marshes here. I think they're wonderful. It's brilliantly evoking just how uncomfortable it can be to walk, even in fairly mild landscapes. This isn't the snowstorm of Caradhras or anything like that. They're not getting sucked down into a bog in some dramatic fashion. They're just getting eaten alive by midges.
[14:37] And anybody who has come to the uk particularly to scotland in the summer knows what midges are they're tiny little black flies that leave a nasty bite um so there are certain times of year to avoid walking in scotland for example in certain places and there's wonderful evocation of just how miserable it is to be in this kind of landscape they spend a miserable day in this lonely and unpleasant country their camping place was damp cold and uncomfortable and the biting insects would not let them sleep there were also abominable creatures haunting the reeds and tussocks that from the sound of them were evil relatives of the cricket so horrible uncomfortable and they are actually suffering here but it's also toughening them up there we see later that they're tightening their belts they're literally this is like they're training wheels for the longer journey to come that uh that in that sort of series of nights and days making their way through midgewater marshes the section break has a wonderful evocation of strider and we get this again we had him keeping watch at the inn frodo woke up and saw him and again he's doing the same thing here.
[16:01] Proto lay down again but for a long while he could still see the white flashes and against them the tall dark figure of Strider standing silent and watchful.
[16:12] So Strider here is watching the light flashing on Weathertop which connects this moment, another bit of the interlacing here, to what is happening in Gandalf's story which we find out a little bit later in this chapter. But that image of strider standing almost like a statue i think it makes him feel mythic you know he is heroic he's in that register the hobbits are worrying about um being eaten by midges and losing good apples but strider is the one who is standing watch getting on with the serious business of guiding them. He also has some sage advice for them. He says to them when they're feeling how hostile the landscape is, not all the birds are to be trusted and there are other spies more evil than they are.
[17:06] There's actually a line pretty much the same as this in Lion and the Witch and the Wardrobe, where Mr. Beaver tells them that all the birds are to be trusted. That may have been an echo that C.S. Lewis picked up, but it could also be, of course, from just the fact that during wartime, when this section was written, everywhere they went, there were posters saying, careless talk costs lives. The sense that you were being spied upon there might be a german informant hidden somewhere behind you so it's here in terms of birds and other animals keeping watch but you can see the idea of the invigilation that they felt under during the war so i mentioned that strider is mythic but he's not superman i like the fact that he isn't quite sure he never says oh absolutely i know what we've got to do. He asks their opinion. He admits when he isn't quite sure which is the best way to go. And there's a wonderful evocation of mood in these sections. What I particularly love about these sections, I don't know about you, but I love the bits which haven't been treated by films. Because when I come across them, I feel they're still mine or ours.
[18:22] But there's in this passage when they're going along the hills just having got out of midgewater marsh to approach weathertop from an unexpected direction and there's this wonderful passage about the landscape they're in a few melancholy birds were piping and wailing until the round red sun sank slowly into the western shadows then an empty silence fell and this prompts all the hobbits to think of home. But just have a look at that passage because Tolkien is immersed in Anglo-Saxon poetry and the rhyming scheme of of that older verse, which isn't end rhymes.
[19:09] I'm a poet and I didn't know it. Not the end rhyme idea. It is the alliteration, which is the first sound of a word. So I'll read that again and listen for the R sound and the S sound that make this one sentence pretty much a little poem. A few melancholy birds were piping and wailing until the round red sun sank slowly into the western shadows then an empty silence fell so if you're wondering why you react so strongly to tolkien's story not just on a level of the plot and the excitement of that and the values i think there's also a poetry under the prose that we all are responding to his nature writing i'm going to keep on saying this um his nature writing is amongst the best so we've seen the hobbits have had to struggle through their training wheels they're um not even training wheels it's more like some awful entry to the military type.
[20:14] Assault course that they've been on going through the rich water marshes and they're talking about having to tighten their belts because they're not eating as much and they're doing a lot more walking and frodo makes the quip about one day he might turn into a wraith which strider clamps down on very quickly he doesn't want even the mention of such things because he knows far more than they do at this stage that that is a real possibility that is the big threat and it comes out more explicitly later the big threat to is that he will become a less powerful version of the ringwraiths themselves.
[21:00] So we are approaching Weathertop now, which is one of our way markers in this story. But they come along the west of the ridge. The hobbits could see what looked to be the remains of green-grown walls and dikes. And in the clefts there still stood the ruins of old works of stone. Again, lots of S's, making that almost like poetry. But what I wanted to point out here is just how familiar this landscape is to people in the UK. Um in england i live near the downs which is a long line of hills not dissimilar to weathertop and you can see roman ruins you can see anglo-saxon remains iron age remains um dikes ditches um all these things are there but they're obviously more famous places like offers dike which is one of the old fortifications between England and Wales.
[21:56] And Hadrian's Wall, built by the Romans. So it feels like a real landscape, and a landscape that has been lived in by many generations of people going back into the mists of time. So as they approach Weathertop, this is an opportunity for Merry to ask more of the treasure trove of lore that clearly Aragorn has. But the surprise here is the answer doesn't come from Strider, but Sam, who continually surprises us in this story, he comes up with the wonderful Gil-Galad song, which he says Bilbo talked to him and Aragorn says Bilbo must have translated it from a much longer lay, the fall of Gil-Galad. Now this is one of my favorite bits of tolkien poetry and it's beautiful when sang if you want to find a really good version of this i would highly recommend listening to the bbc radio drama version of it where the actor bill nighy young bill nighy sings it is absolutely wonderful and i often sing it myself because it's so brilliant and there's an evocation of gil Galad, who if you've been watching the Rings of Power, he is the high king in that, story in the Second Age.
[23:20] And again, Strider doesn't want mention of dark subjects, so he sort of turns away. He says, Sam stops telling Susie, I didn't learn the stuff in Mordor. And Strider basically says, yes, that is the wrong thing for us to talk about.
[23:35] Do not speak that name so loudly. So like Voldemort in Harry Potter.
[23:40] We don't want to go around shouting Mordor because it brings Mordor down upon us so they separate for setting up camp when they reach the base of weathertop and it's just frodo mary and aragorn who go up the hill that's actually a fairly unusual combination because normally sam is inseparable from frodo but i think this is a sign of them being still here a bit like a little army troop um sam is the valet the servant who will set up the you know put the kettle on basically uh pippin is the the junior and mary is as we saw earlier on he's i think got a slightly more responsible role so he's like the assistant to frodo and aragorn is their guide anyway that's what i feel is going on here up they go to reconnoiter and we get the connection back to the lightning flashes that were mentioned a few paragraphs before a couple of pages before and Aragorn puts together the fact that Gandalf probably stood there and it was the battle that they saw there's also a moment here to do one of those way marker things that he does remember we had this in the old forest where they reached a high point and they could see out beyond the old forest where they were going.
[25:07] This is another, but we get here sketched in the road all the way to Rivendell, which is pretty much the rest of the journey in this first book of Lord of the Rings and.
[25:21] Strider is telling us the reader and them what lies ahead and how long it will take and again this is just one of those repetitions that tolkien does to keep us on track when you've got a complicated epic journey like this these little moments where you recap without it feeling too boring um but necessary information keeps us able to imagine the journey that lies ahead and this is where strider admits he's made a mistake because he he hears a cry and he thinks that he they've been standing up there too long but it also gives them the opportunity to know that the enemy is approaching what is interesting i can notice and i only noticed it on this read which i don't know how many times i've read lord of the rings but you can almost sense the approach of the black riders through the bitterness and cynicism of frodo who's normally not like this because he says a fortnight said frodo a lot may happen in that time and it goes on into dip into his thoughts he wished bitterly that his fortune had left him in the quiet and beloved shire he stared down at the hateful road leading back westwards to his home.
[26:46] It may be like there's like this malevolent cloud or influence that goes in front of the black riders and he's particularly susceptible to it. I don't know if that is intentional, but it certainly makes the arrival of the black riders absolutely the right moment for them to come. He's, he's maybe, he sends them even before he sees them. So they retreat to the dell and they rejoin the others.
[27:16] And here we get, I think it's the equivalent of a briefing.
[27:20] Strider admits his mistake to the whole company about having stood up there too long. But he also explains the nature of the enemy. He says, they themselves do not see the world of light as we do, but our shapes cast shadows in their minds, which only the noon sun destroys. At all times they smell the blood of living things, desiring and hating it. So i think this is quite indicative of the way tolkien thinks about the nature of evil evil is emptiness evil is hunger want an unsatisfied desire they're never going to be satisfied they're always going to want and hunger and be empty because if you think of the opposites of all of those fullness satisfaction happiness um there are all the things that the good have they're satisfied with enough they don't want more the way they function is as a huge negative which of course goes well with the fact that they're like a blackness a black shape within the blackness even more darker than everything else around them which is how they're described as they approach.
[28:29] But considering that Strider is later revealed to be the king, at this stage we see that his relationship with the hobbits has settled down to an ease of exchange because when he tells them the pretty darness of the situation they're in, Sam does get a sort of clap back on him after Strider suggests that they light a fire.
[28:56] Which is a thing the riders do not love. May be muttered sam it's also as good a way of saying here we are as i can think of bar shouting so you know he's not he's not there without thought he's he's giving his own hate me worth um is sam so here we get a firelight scene and it goes back to the song that sam had sung about gil gallag and around the fireside to distract themselves from the fear and the terror of what's out there, Frodo begins to explain a little bit about what he knows about Gil-Galod and then Aragorn stops him saying that's not the right tale for now. So he tells the tale which is the closest to his heart. We know that Aragorn and Arwen see themselves of echoes of Beren and Luthien. We also know that this story is the one that was dearest to Tolkien's heart because he associated his wife with Tenuviel and himself with Beren, so much so that that is the only words on their tombs up in the Wolvercott Cemetery, Luthien and Beren. Rather mysterious for anyone who doesn't know the Lord of the Rings, but beautiful for those of us who do. And he tells the story of Tinufiel and Beren twice. First of all, he gives.
[30:25] I'm just counting here, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, nine verses of their first meeting. And this is based on an incident that Tolkien remembered from the early days of his marriage to Edith when he was in the army and she was following him around when she could, when he was in camps or convalescing in different places in England.
[30:53] And they were out on a walk in the countryside near Hull and she danced beneath what are called by Tolkien hemlock but they're actually better known as Queen Nanslace or cow parsley which are tall weeds basically they grow in lots of woodlands but have a beautiful white lacy flower they can be really huge anyway she danced quite spontaneously you can imagine this young girl in love early marriage you know beautiful lovely scene and that kept as a moment in Tolkien's heart and it's the heart of this story and that is the scene he reads oh not he reads it's a scene that Aragorn relates So, for example, here we go, there Beren came from the mountains cold, and lost he wandered under leaves, and where the elven river rolled he walked alone and sorrowing. He peered between the hemlock leaves, and saw in wonder flowers of gold upon her mantle and her sleeves, and her hair like shadow following.
[32:10] So she's dancing in this sort of moonlit glade. So it's a beautiful story to tell the hobbits. They don't know at this point that it has a personal application for Strider.
[32:23] But he pauses and tells them the song again in case they didn't get the references. And he tells them in prose, the same story. That's quite rare if you think about it, because this story is not part of the main action. But the fact that it's been told twice points out that we as readers should pay attention to it, think about the themes. So we get a brave couple, elf and men, joined together to go and take a duel from the crown of Morgoth, who is the big baddie before Sauron. So there are echoes of that in the what they're trying to do they're doing the opposite they're trying to get rid of a jewel but elves and men and dwarves and hobbits are banding together to defeat evil by taking a jewel away permanently from the principle you know the powers of darkness in this world but this also in terms of narrative you can follow the laurel on this go back into Silmarillion and there's also a separate volume called Beryn and Luthien. You can read this to your heart content. But what is it doing here?
[33:40] Well, the one thing it's doing here is it's providing the brightest, most beautiful, most enchanted light as possible in that glade in the dark, a sort of starlit scene, which is just about to be contrasted with the darkest moment in the first part of this journey an attack by black riders so that contrast i think is important it's why it's here and after having heard this story and relishing it there's a change in tone and mood as they break up to get ready to go to sleep stretch their legs frodo feels a cold dread and sam and merry who have wandered away from the campfire rush back and bring him reports a bit like reporting to their commanding officer the scouts have gone out and come back telling him that they feel this uncanny evil uh has is approaching and, And it's, they tell him he's still in charge of their little walking party there.
[34:55] And it's just as well, they do warn them because of course, this is where we get the attack that we have been waiting for.
[35:03] Imagine how close this must have felt to the experience of being in the trenches where you knew you could be attacked at any time, but you didn't know quite when it was happening. And then you'd get the little signs it was about to happen. And then you'd get ready, stand ready to defend your position. It has that feel to it that they're in a sort of dell which is a bit like a trench and they're waiting for the enemy to arrive and when they do come it is this creeping slowness because first of all they're seen in the distance so black were they that they seem like black holes in the deep shade behind them and the hobbits all as they approach the hobbits are overcome with the terror of them. Pippin and Merry are literally overcome. Sam rushes to Frodo's side, and Frodo has an even worse experience because he's dealing with a much bigger battle of having to resist their will to put on the ring. And it's described as he must put it on.
[36:07] And he can't, poor Frodo, he can't battle it. He puts it on. And then there's this transition here where we see for the first time what happens when the ring is put on in the presence of the evil that it represents. And it's like going into a negative of, if you, the setting, the filter setting where you put negative, black becomes white and white becomes black. And it's well worth reading how the Black Riders are described.
[36:42] He was able to see beneath their black wrappings. There were five tall figures, two standing on the lip of the dell, three advancing. In their white faces burned keen and merciless eyes. Under their mantles were long grey robes. Upon their grey hairs were helms of silver. In their haggard hands were swords of steel. Their eyes fell on him and pierced him as they rushed towards him. So their eyes pierce him even before the dagger does and it's worth mentioning here that there is no prejudice here that black equals evil because in their truest form the raves are white and gray it's quite well done in the film version but i remember seeing it also in the cartoon version which i don't particularly like the cartoon version but this bit in the cartoon is pretty well done. It lends itself to that graphic flip of the switch. Frodo is often seen as being quite passive, and he does sort of disappear a lot towards the later part of the story because of the toll that the ring has taken on him. But here we do see his bravery.
[37:56] He is able to draw his sword to make a go at defending himself, unlike the other hobbits who are sort of overcome. and he also finds the right words, oh, Elbereth Gilthoniel. What he's referring to here is the Varda, the goddess who makes the stars. So it means the queen of the stars, the person who made the stars, but that is her title, Elbereth Gilthoniel. And even more importantly than appealing to starlight light and the powers of good to drive away the darkness he also takes off the ring he doesn't hand it over he clutches it in his hand and another form of light is the thing which drives the black riders away because strider at this point leaps in with firebrands and is able to force them back though unfortunately the job has been done because the chief of the black riders has managed to pierce Frodo's shoulder with his Morgul blade, and that leads into the next chapter.
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