Transcript
[0:00] Hello and welcome to the Mythmakers Sidecast, an author's journey, a chapter-by-chapter journey through Lord of the Rings, looking at it from an author's perspective. My name is Julia Golding and today we have reached Chapter 4 in the Fellowship of the Ring, which has the wonderful title, A Short Cut to Mushrooms. Where this falls is just after Frodo, Pippin and Sam have met Gildor and the elves in the woods in the Shire. If you are primarily familiar with Lord of the Rings from the film, you'll have only seen a glimpse of this in the extended edition where there is an elven procession going through the woods. They don't actually interact with the elves in that version. It would have taken too much film time to do it. Maybe they'll I'll do that in the miniseries. But Gildor and the elves themselves do actually provide an important missing link because they are the ones spreading the word that Frodo has set off in the absence of Gandalf.
[1:03] There's a ripple effect through other characters where it becomes important that this was known. Anyway, we start the Shortcut to Mushrooms still solidly in the Shire and it starts with Frodo waking up after an exciting evening of speaking with the elves and what this passage reminds me it's right at the start it says in the morning Frodo woke refreshed he was lying in a bower made by a living tree with branches laced and drooping to the ground his bed was of fern and grass deep and soft and strangely fragrant so here we have a micro version of something that Tolkien does regularly throughout the book because the overall journey is to a dark and terrible place. But he makes sure all the way along to give us these spots of refreshment, particularly in nature,
[1:58] which feel like little holidays from the unbearable pressure of the quest to destroy the ring. So obviously an extended version of this is in.
[2:12] Even more so, I think, in Lothlorien, because that's after they lose Gandalf, where they really need the comfort at that point, and it's an incredibly beautiful place. It's always had a very strong image in my mind, Lothlorien. I'm looking forward to getting to that chapter. But another time when we get this is when Frodo and Sam are being led by Gollum, and they don't go through the gates, but they go into Ithilien, which is like a kind of wounded paradise. And that's where they meet Faramir. So another little micro respite. And there's even a tiny, tiny one when they're on the trail in Mordor where they find some water.
[2:53] So keep putting in these notes to lift up the sort of what otherwise could be quite a heavy journey fleeing from trouble. Also the what then follows is a rather tetchy conversation with Pippin who's full of full of energy and Frodo is not a morning person at this on this particular day and it feels very real makes their conversations feel like those that would happen between friends we know that Tolkien would often go on walking holidays with the well with his friends and fellow inklings I came across cross a reference during the war to his plans for what might happen after the war. The Inklings were saying they wanted to book out an inn for a whole week and just have conversation and walking. So clearly it's something he enjoys doing. So he knows what it's like to wake up after a night spent not that comfortably out in the wilds.
[3:50] Then we get another passage here, which again later has influence on what is said. Tolkien, the way he wrote is he didn't plan. He had an overall arching idea of what he was going to do. And he occasionally sketched forward what he thought was going to happen in the future chapters. But he was very often writing into the dark. He really didn't know who was going to pop up, what was going to be important. He did discover his writing journey as he was writing. Many of us writers are like that.
[4:25] You will meet those who plot very carefully, but they're often writing thrillers or crime detective stories where you need to weave in clues. When I've been writing detective stories, that's the approach I take. But something like this, which is a quest story, you can actually be a bit freer and do a discovery writing.
[4:51] And things that you put in earlier, you then use later. So probably teachers will say, oh, this is foreshadowing. But I think what it is, is Tolkien rereading his manuscript and saying, oh, yes, that was a good line. I must remember that. And the one in this case is Sam reporting on what Gildor and the elves told him, which was, don't you leave him. And when we get to what happens in Shelob's lair, Sam goes back to thinking about that. You know, I was told don't leave him and I did and that was a mistake. Stake so it's what's really great about Tolkien as a writer is he connects all parts of his story so a small scene here because this isn't a fireworks chapter it's it's a great chapter but it's it's moving the journey along but it's not like the Balrog or something like that but you get these details which then are repeated and echoed later on which gives the whole work a sort of unity. It's great writing.
[5:52] We also see here, and it's pointed by Frodo, that we're getting a different Sam. Sam had said he wanted to leave the Shire to see elves when he was first given the job by Gandalf.
[6:09] Frodo says, well, now you've seen them, do you want to go home? Have you had enough? We see a more sober, more mature Sam, Sam. And we get a shift of the relationship here because they start off as, well, Sam is Frodo's employee and they move to being friends and real sort of heart friends by the end because they are a kind of soulmate almost, not in the romantic sense, but like a brother in arms, perhaps is a better way of putting that. And we'd also get Sam giving voice to the sentiment that Tolkien often and spoke of as being the one that his generation felt facing First World War.
[6:51] And that he was writing to his sons who were fighting in the Second World War. And that is the sentiment that I've got something I have to do. I can't turn back. It isn't to see elves now, nor dragons, nor mountains that I want. I don't rightly know what I want, but I have something to do before the end and it lies ahead, not in the Shire. I must see it through, sir, if you understand me. So it's this idea that I can't shirk my responsibility. And when you're not in charge of the politics, but being swept along by the politics, be it a declaration of war or being landed with a ring, that's how you step up. And we see Sam doing that.
[7:35] And then after that quite sober statement, we get the funny little exchange, my favorite sort of hobbity moment in this chapter, which is Frodo saying he wants to take a shortcut. And Pippin, who's normally, you know, he's normally probably more of a risk taker, he goes, oh, no, no, no, shortcuts make long delays.
[7:57] And then it all turns out that he wants to go to the pub, the Golden Perch,
[8:02] which sadly we never get to visit. It and i imagine it's a lovely little bijou pub um and frodo caps that phrase with uh shortcuts make long delays but ins make longer which i love and then we move through in our setting off we're moving through the shower and i think that one of the reasons why tolkien's world feels so real, is that there is a vicarious experience here of what it's like to walk through the english countryside going off a footpath. Fortunately, it's not a countryside full of creepy crawlers that can kill you or fearsome beasts, in this case, aside from the Black Riders. But the English countryside that Tolkien knew, the main things that you meet in terms of barriers are fences, ditches, brambles, undergrowth, that kind of thing, and nettles. They can be real barriers and this passage is actually quite hard to read because you get i feel as though i'm sort of laboring with them it always stays in my mind as a longer passage than it is because in fact it's only like two pages if that where no it's a page where they're having trouble wading through.
[9:20] Trying to get uh to the ferry but their frustration is conveyed so well that it feels as though it's is really tough going and within that we've got Pippin basically his expression saying I told you so when he says first check you know referring back to the golden perch conversation so you know the joke continues but it's not just a joke of course because what they're trying to flee is the the sense the pressing sense of the black rider oddly this chapter might be my desert island chapter parts of it anyway because i do feel reading it as though i'm really going for a walk.
[10:07] Odd choice, I know. But on a desert island, the idea of rambling through brambles might be quite attractive. This or the one that comes later in the old forest, which is a similar experience of frustration whilst walking. And again, we get one of our mini breaks, our mini refreshments, where they're singing and they're sitting under an elm tree. Just as a sidebar here to mention to those of you who don't live in the UK, the elms were a huge part of the English landscape, but a lot of them were lost in the 70s to a terrible disease called Dutch elm disease. I don't know why it was called Dutch elm disease. It probably came in, I don't know, not the fault of the Dutch. Anyway, that's what the disease was called.
[10:54] These beautiful trees have largely gone from the landscape.
[10:57] For for me this is elegiac this this passage they sit under an elm tree its leaves were fast turning yellow were still thick and the ground as it at its feet was fairly dry and sheltered and they find that the elves have filled their bottles with this golden drink which seems as though it's well could it be alcoholic i suppose but it gives them that sense of euphoria and there's a lovely line here very soon they were laughing and snapping their fingers at rain and at the black riders but before we get too uh comfortable suddenly it's undercut by a whale and it bumps them out of their hobbitry if we have too much of them being carefree i think that we lose that sense of danger and adventure so it's always flipping back to the sense of pressure.
[11:52] And now we get the section where Pippin is the one leading the way. It's interesting how the hobbits do swap leadership throughout. So sometimes Merry leads, sometimes, well, not so often, but occasionally Pippin leads. In Mordor, Sam leads and Frodo has like overall command.
[12:10] They are a fellowship in that sense that they do swap who gets to call the shots. And Pippin, because he is familiar with this territory because he's been here with merry get a sense of them knocking around for a long time in the area not too far from or brandy hall um he knows that when they reach farmer maggot's land and then we get this humanizing or operatizing section about frodo, being scared of farmer maggot he's being chased by black riders but suddenly the most scary thing calling up his childhood fears is Farmer Maggot and his dogs.
[12:50] And as an author, you need your characters to be good storytellers if they are going to project back into the past. A couple of times this happens in this chapter. So Frodo is giving voice to what Farmer Maggot said to him. He doesn't just say, oh, he told me to go away. He actually does the reported speech. See, lads, he said, next time this young varmint sets foot on my land, you can eat him. I'll see him off.
[13:20] That's probably more of a literary device than something someone would do in a real conversation, but it brings alive that confrontation. We get this happening again very quickly when Farmer Maggot recounts to the Hobbits about seeing the Black Riders. So we father maggot comes doesn't know who they are to start with pippin is the one who greets them greets father maggot and recognition happens and when he hears when farmer maggot hears that frodo baggins is amongst them that trips the recollection of what has just happened which is he has just spoken to a black rider so there's several things happening here the black riders have been at a distance and overheard at this point, but now we actually are talking to the person who had a long conversation with one. And again, this is where your characters need to be good narrators because we basically get that dialogue pretty much looks like verbatim.
[14:25] So you've got Farmer Maggot saying, this lane don't lead anywhere. And wherever you may be going, your quickest way will be back to the road. So basically, get off my land. And then he characterizes the Black Rider like this. I come from yonder, he said, slow and stiff-like, pointing back west over my fields, if you please. Have you seen Baggins? He asked in a queer voice and bent down towards me. And so on. So we've got a very...
[14:53] Falunaga is not easily cowed we later find out he's a friend of Tom Bombadil so he probably copes with a Black Rider better than many though, having said that Gaffer Gamgee also sent them on their business so at this point the Black Riders are not showing their full awesome sort of power they're letting Hobbits turn them away because they're fixed on finding Frodo they don't want to start a fight unnecessarily at this point quite different from the battle of palenor fields version of the black riders but we also what's helpful about this passage you want to hold back your villains so that you don't so you build the sense of menace um but we get it here from a character who is telling us what happens and also his reaction of his dogs so you get the sense of the visceral fear that a black rider produces juices. I didn't like the looks of him and when grip came out he took one sniff and let out a yelp as if he'd been stung. He put down his tail and bolted off howling. So obviously dogs have good instincts about people so you get a sense of the Mordor energy about the Black Rider. I think it's important to meet Maggot because at this point Hobbit world is very much just Hobbiton. When you think about it, we don't see.
[16:19] Much of the Shire, really. When I was listening to it recently, I noticed that Mickledelving is like the main town, and that's only mentioned a couple of times as a place where characters are locked up under the Saruman regime and where they keep the records.
[16:35] But it's bigger than Holberton, one assumes. But it's certainly where the mayor hangs out. It's the capital, in a sense. So there's a lot of the shah we don't see. Plus we've got two clans and we've got Brandy Hall, which comes up in the next chapter.
[16:52] So Maggot is in a way of expanding our knowledge beyond Hobbiton. And what is interesting here is I think it prepares us to understand that Hobbits
[17:02] aren't just sort of nice, foolish innocents abroad who dig down and find their courage. They're actually canny. they work it out in the next chapter we'll find out other hobbits have been working out what's really going on and maggot here is putting two and two together about why black rider might be after frodo and goes as far to suggest it's about bilbo's treasures that he brought back and this is quite unnerving for frodo because he has done that superior thing of thinking he's the cleverest person in the room he's possibly the most learned because of his knowledge of elvish and other things and he's finding out that there is a common sense wisdom around him that means he's not being so clever as he thought which is nice it redresses the balance and of course we've got the memory here that maggot says oh i know exactly who you are you were terrible terrible for going after my mushrooms in the film version peter jackson made mary and pippin the ones who stole from farmer maggot there was like a brief scene where they run through the cornfield, Here, none of them are stealing in the present moment because they're a bit more grown up than that.
[18:13] But it's Frodo who was the wild boy when he was younger. And actually, I really like that detail about Frodo because there is a danger that Frodo becomes just a little bit bland, a bit too goody-goody. I like the idea that he was a tearaway. Remember, he's an orphan having to sort of live with, relatives until Bilbo takes him in. You could imagine a much more interesting backstory seed for Frodo. We don't get a chance to explore it much further in this book, but it is an interesting area where you could have the prequel, Frodo the prequel, the troubled teen. There you are, just put that out there into the universe. Maybe they could put that into The Hunt for Gollum. And the final section in this chapter is in the maggot household. First thing I wanted to sort draw out here is the farmhouse household which means there are 14 sitting down at the table is already by the time it's being written a kind of historic idea of what families were like I'm sure there were large farming families and maybe still are but it's certainly a projection back in the past where you'd have lots of sons lots of daughters helpers on the farm who'd all eat together and so there is a sense of the old values of the shire reinforced by this farmhouse.
[19:33] Household these are the people who are going to be the heart of the resistance in the scouring of the shire also just to note that this is the first time we've been in a house and not a hole, though potentially the green dragon well that's a pub though isn't it so they lived in a thatched house, of which there are many in the UK today. So if you're coming here, do make a trip out to a village and see a thatched house.
[19:59] I'm surrounded by them in the village I live in, absolutely beautiful. And they do have a kind of hobbity feel to them when I look at them, because they're on a smaller scale, smaller doors, smaller windows, because of the period in which they were built.
[20:13] There's something about the manners in that maggot household though that do remind me of an early 19th century set of manners I know that his wife calls him maggot not I don't know what his first name is let's say his, Bingo, there we go, an unused Tolkien name. Maybe he's Bingo Maggot or something like that. But his wife calls him Maggot, and that's the kind of thing you see in a Jane Austen novel, where Mrs. Bennet doesn't call Mr. Bennet, I don't know what his name is either, but Fred, calls him Mr. Bennet. There is a sort of level of formality and manners, again, which feels quite retrospective world. World if you look at tolkien's own letters he's not calling his wife uh and his wife's not calling him tolkien they're calling each other by their first names so it is something of a past generation, there's another thing here which is how this chapter started which is there is a unexpected.
[21:19] Pleasure and unexpected friends so we had gildor with the cordial in the the alcohol in the bottles now we've got farmer maggot his family and the mushrooms with the added assistance of helping him and his companions get to the ferry and we have a minor scary episode when they approach the ferry when they see someone else coming towards them which turns out to be mary and not a black rider but as that forms a hole with the conversation that goes on with Mary that follows. I'm going to treat that in the next chapter. A chapter that has a scary middle, getting lost, hearing the whales, knowing they're being hunted, ends on the similar note of comfort. Frodo woke up refreshed and at the evening time, he's smelling the wonderful scent of mushrooms and now we're ready to cross the river and really get started on our adventure.
Thanks for listening to Mythmakers Podcast, brought to you by the Oxford Centre for Fantasy. Visit OxfordCentreForFantasy.org to join in the fun. Find out about our online courses, in-person stays in Oxford, plus visit our shop for great gifts. Tell a friend and subscribe, wherever you find your favourite podcasts worldwide. [MUSIC PLAYING]
