Transcript
[0:00] Hello and welcome to A Mythmaker's Sidecast, The Lord of the Rings, A Writer's Journey. And we have reached today, Chapter 6.
[0:10] Now, I'm leading you through this and my name is Julia Golding. I run the Oxford Centre for Fantasy, but I'm also an author. So when I approach Lord of the Rings, which is my favourite book, I'm always doing it from the point of of you of being a fellow author and admiring and envying in many cases the skill that Tolkien's put into writing his novel and I'm hoping that by showing you some of the things I see as an author that you'll enjoy Lord of the Rings even more on your next read through and today we have reached chapter six which is called the old forest that's in the first book of the Fellowship of the Ring now the headline here is we're finally getting out of the shire hooray it's taken a while to get to this point um and i think some of the really interesting things about this chapter is that it's a transition really into uh we're shaking off some of the last of the younger tone that tolkien started with if you remember he thinks he's writing a continuation of the hobbit it. So there are times where it seems more in a nursery than in a sort of adult world.
[1:22] It sort of fluctuates between those tones. But also we do get the deepening shadows, which I think is more indicative of what is to come. Anyway, you can think about it in four sections. The first one is the short passage of actually getting up and leaving. The second part is the the frustration of trying to pass through the old forest.
[1:48] The third section is the episode where they get trapped by old man Willow. And then the final section is when Tom Bombadil comes to the rescue and they finally escape the forest.
[2:01] But first of all, let's look at them getting up and getting ready to go. A couple of things here, which I think are worth pointing out, is that we've now got Mary has joined us as part of the first stage of this fellowship. And we get to see their roles, what jobs they take before they add to their number Aragorn and the other characters. So basically it's mary is the organizer he's the one who provides the ponies and has packed things up he also has the money the purse and he has the local knowledge in this section he's the one who knows how to get out of the shire he's the one who knows the most about the old forest sam is shown known as the practical one because he's making breakfast. Pippin, we don't hear much about, which is kind of typical, wonderfully typical, Pippin. And then we get Frodo as the last to be roused, as like the senior officer. So if you're putting them in their sort of military roles, you've got Merry as like the quartermaster.
[3:11] Sam as the servant, the Batman, man, that means the valet or the servant to an officer. Pippin is just a junior officer maybe because he's quite posh, isn't he, being a toque. And Frodo is the commander of this little group.
[3:32] I think it's particularly fine, the opening of this chapter, with this evocation of autumn. I'm always struck by how accurate the descriptions are. That's why I feel reading Lord of the Rings is almost as good as going for a walk, particularly in this case, how sound travels in a mist. I remember making a mistake in my very first book that I ever wrote where I had a fog, and I thought about it then, because I hadn't tested it, that fog muffles sound in the same way as your eyesight is muffled. And a friend who was more clued in on nature told me, no, no, no, it's the opposite, because the particles mean that sound travels. Tolkien knows more than I do about nature because he makes that point that the one thing that comes to the fore in a mist is sound. And also he's very good at just the dampness of everything. He talks about every tweak, a dripping. For those of you who live in the UK or have been here, you know how accurate that is at this September time of year when things are literally just heavy with dew and dripping.
[4:44] And there's another pattern that's set up here in this chapter. I'd say it's a pattern of opening and closing. It keeps being repeated, and I'll refer to it again. But in this case, even whilst they're still in the Shire, the mist is described as opening and closing behind them. And then there's the lovely detail of the silver cobwebs on the hedge. So lovely stuff. One thing I would like just to point out here is There is nothing generic about Tolkien's descriptions. You always feel as though he has a very specific place in mind. He knows exactly what he's talking about, a very clear sense of place. So, for example, it's a little detail here that you not paused on very long, but this gate going into the forest. He's thought about how this works. It goes down and under a wall. Then there's a gate at the other end with a key. You can walk every step with him in your imagination.
[5:47] And here we've got another theme that comes up again and again in this chapter, which is the foreshadowing of disaster. So Fatty Bolger, who's the hobbit who doesn't go with them, Fredegar, he says as a sort of rather sad farewell, I hope you don't need rescuing before the end of the day. And we know if someone puts that in it's like yes of course they're going to need rescuing and that happens again and again right so imagine we're going under the hedge and we're finally in the old forest out of the shire and the first thing we get is a very hobbit discussion about stories And Pippin asks, are the stories about the wood true?
[6:36] This is a very frequent way that Tolkien has of giving us basically background information. Put that away in your locker to be used if you're thinking of writing yourself. Because the answer to that question gives you what you need to know. It introduces the history of the forest. it gives you a sense of the long traditions that read to this you know this moment in time.
[7:09] And it also sort of sets up where we're going to travel. So Mary talks about the battle between the hobbits at war with the trees.
[7:21] Which was when the trees moved to overhang the hedge as if they wanted to invade the Shire or Buckland. And the hobbits fought them back and built a big bonfire in Bonfire Glade. I don't think they mentioned that to Treebeard later on, which is just as well, because it sounds like he wouldn't have been impressed. He might well have thought hobbits were like the lorxes at that time. But anyway, we've got the sense of there's been a history of enmity between the hobbits and the trees. And that gives us that niggling feeling, the prickles at the back of our neck that things are not going to go well. We also have here another thing which we're going to see again in this chapter but also it comes very much to the fore in fangorn where as mentioned of the unintelligible language of trees that they move there's also a moment when a branch is dropped in response to frodo singing a song to cheer them up. So we have here, maybe already the seeds of the Ents are planted in Tolkien's mind and it's where he wants to go. He doesn't go there fully in this chapter. The old Banwillow is more like a horn, which is the kind of semi-awake trees that we see later, or even his own kind of thing.
[8:51] But Tolkien's clearly playing with this idea of trees as a kind of threat and as a danger. We also get the idea there is a hint of paths, something making the paths that are leading the hobbits on. This is where we're beginning to have that pattern of things opening and closing, herding them in a direction they don't necessarily want to go. It means that when things happen, that they get lost, that they go up the hill,
[9:20] it feels earned, not just a coincidence incidents that they wander into danger. Things are set against them. And here we have a very Tolkien theme which comes up again and again, which is the tricksy path, the path that doesn't take you where you want to go. And that's a very concrete example of the need an author has to put obstacles in the paths of the main characters. It's very literal in this case. You can't get where you want to go. But you need to make your heroes suffer to get where they want to go. They can't just walk straight to Bree. That's not a very good story. In that case, you would do the cinematic cut, which is what Peter Jackson chose to do.
[10:02] So the other thing that Tolkien does, he measures out this feeling of frustration, and then lightens it with a feeling of relief. Otherwise, the hobbits would just turn around and go back even so early on. So here we have this growing sense of they feel watched, they're unnerved. Pippin, of course, is the first to crack. He lets out a cry, but it's described as if it's muffled by a heavy curtain. Again, that idea of woods being muffling and suffocating comes up again later in Fangorn. And Frodo, whose head we are in most of the time, is having misgivings this early on that he's taken this path. And just at the point where he might be saying, OK, let's go back home, try a different route, they find the bonfire glade. Things open out. It's been closed. It opens out. And I love the detail here of the fireweed, which echoes the bonfire, the fire that was. So there's a memory of what to the trees would have been a massacre in the weeds that are growing in this bonfire. So you get a sense that it's not forgotten.
[11:12] So the hobbits are encouraged by reaching this opening. But as readers, we have that kind of fairy tale story knowledge, don't we? That it's a bad idea to follow what seems to be the easy road. So we have a sense that they are going to walk straight into danger, as Fredegar said. So after the muffling, we now get the hot and stuffy. So we get the ill will of the trees pressing against them. And in this section, Frodo's song, which he tries to sing to cheer them up, fails. And I think this is quite interesting because if you remember in the previous chapters, when they go walking, they've done quite a lot of singing, which does sort of cheer them up. It's funny, delightful.
[12:01] The elves hear it and are attracted to them. It's a positive, but it fails in the old forest. It's almost as if it says the Hobbit power no longer rules here because they are outside their home country.
[12:17] And Mary here voices caution. He's saying, you mustn't sing about trees failing. Wait till we've cleared the forest. And again, in this opening and closing, they're about to give up, but they are tempted on. Now, one of the problems as a writer about describing a forest is, of course, it seems to be all but trees. And I want to point out here something that Tolkien does to help us chart our way through. First of all, he's given us one landmark.
[12:47] Which is the Bonfire Glade. We now have a second landmark, which we feel we're making towards. And it's a green hilltop, which he describes as being like a bull's head rising out of the encircling wood. So we feel we're going somewhere. We're not escaping the forest, but we're going further. We know a landmark that we can imagine. And indeed, the hobbits in hobbit's fashion have their picnic at the top of this, feeling a little bit out of the forest. Though of course they've not escaped because they're still surrounded by it and it's from the top of that landmark the shaven crown one they get to see the third landmark which is the valley of the withy window and as soon as mary says that's the queerest part of the whole forest, from their vantage point up on this island in a sea of trees we know sure as eggs are eggs they They are going to have to end up there, aren't they?
[13:47] And at this point, another discussion could have been, oh, well, I'm really not sure about this. I want to go back, that discussion. But again, they're tempted on by seeing just enough to give them heart. So they see the barrow downs in the distance.
[14:09] And so they think, okay, well, we were encouraged enough to go on. So this is another time around this same course, which we as a reader, we're getting the idea that the hobbits are being played with, being controlled by the outside force that is probably, well, it's the force of the forest. For those of you who are keen on the hobbit, this will also have shades of the Mirkwood experience, where Bilbo and the dwarves are bamboozled by the vanishing paths of Mirkwood. But I think in a, not in a fantasy sense, but just in an ordinary person sense, you get the strong impression that Tolkien is an experienced walker because this is the experience of anybody who goes off a marked footpath through a wood. It's that feeling of frustration that you get in walking in nature in the English countryside. So those, both the fantastical is present, but it's also very grounded and very practical. It doesn't have to be any magic involved to get lost in a wood. There's some wonderful descriptions in this part about as they come off this hill. And I just wanted to read a couple of them because they seem to show just what a brilliant wordsmith.
[15:37] Tolkien was. As they come off, he talks about the ground grew soft and in places boggy. Springs appeared in the banks and soon they found themselves following a brook that trickled and babbled through a weedy bed. So that sentence was soft and springy and slow. In contrast, the next sentence, then the ground began to fall rapidly and the brook growing strong and noisy You see, flowed and leaped swiftly downwards. The pace is up and it firms up like the land that's being described. Love all of that. It's just wonderful descriptions. And then we get the absolute pièce de résistance, which is the description of the valley of the Withy Windle. And it starts with the line, It was a golden afternoon.
[16:32] And you feel as you read this, almost like you are going to sleep with them a golden afternoon of late sunshine lay warm and drowsy upon the hidden land between in the midst of it they're wound lazily a dark river of brown water bordered with ancient willows arched over with willows blocked with fallen willows and flecked with thousands of faded willow leaves. Now that repetition of willow is totally intentional. It's weaving a spell around us as a sense almost of like an incantation. And early on here, there is a hint that the spell we're about to stumble into is already being woven.
[17:18] Wonderful stuff. Just as a little by the by, I'm not far from Tolkien's house in Northmoor Road, road which is where he was when he was writing this is a river in oxford called the charwell and the charwell as it winds its way um well if you go upstream um from the charwell, you find it is lined by willow trees a lot of them are very old with these cracked trunks that you can get inside so he didn't have to go far to find the kind of trees he is describing i'm i mean really not far it's a 10 minute walk from his house and he could be in the charwell valley which particularly in those days before the development of oxford would have felt a very sleepy place indeed so you can find inspiration on your doorstep.
[18:11] So we again have this little discussion between Mary and Pippin about whether or not the path that Mary has found is going to lead them anywhere. And because we've been trained now not to trust paths, we don't trust this one either, though it turns out that this is one we can trust because it leads us to Tom Bombadil. But at this point, before we know that, there is no sense of security about that path.
[18:41] And the next section in the story, because there's a little line break, is we stumble in into the spell. And one of the signals for that is after having described the buzzing of the pesky flies, suddenly everything goes silent. It's very creepy, except for the creaking of Old Man Willow. I don't know if you've ever heard a tree creak I was once had the privilege of seeing those very great big um fir trees in marrying country and the biggest trees in the world and one of the extraordinary things about those trees is they creak as they sway I don't know if willow trees creak but this one does I haven't been out to listen to a willow tree recently but I imagine and Tolkien had and we are swept up in the spell the language here is somnolent the characters are having hard times stringing words together, and it sort of drags you down the weight of this and it's.
[19:52] It is because spells are often language. We are finding the spell of the language that is used to describe this having an effect on us as a reader. If you listen to the audio version of that, it's even clearer. And it leads us to this moment, which has one of the most brilliant, unusual descriptions.
[20:16] That Tolkien has for the natural world, where Frodo is sitting on a bough that is leaning over the water. And he talks about seeing the roots straining down to drink, but he described them as gnarled dragonets. We're in the world where Smaug the dragon lives, those little dragon's roots straining down to drink at the water, which perfectly sums up that kind of knotted appearance. Knotted appearance sorry the knotted appearance of tree roots trying to reach the river and of course he falls asleep suddenly now's a moment to switch from frodo to sam if you will remember that the idea about the point of view in this story is frodo is compiling the history of the war of the a ring by the account of his friend so this is sam's account now that he's folding in here of what happened next and we get the sense of the stubbornness of sam if we hadn't already got that idea in our head and also his practicality so when he drags frodo is thrown into the river when he drags him out frodo says the tree threw him in sam's first instinct instinct is to say you just dropped off to sleep he gives the you know the most straightforward answer you can imagine.
[21:42] But then of course we see that actually probably frodo was correct because mary and pippin have been um taken captive by the tree pippin's been swallowed up and mary is half in half out and here we might have a nod to shakespeare potentially because those of you who know your tempest ariel is freed from a tree by prospero that's the beginning of his service to the wizard, prospero he's being treated freed from a tree where he was trapped by a witch's curse, anyway um not having prospero on hand proto and sam are left to try and work out how to free their friends they talk about axes they decide they couldn't do enough damage to with their little hatchet that they have with them and sam comes up the idea of actually setting fire to the tree on the far side from where the friends are and this is an echo of course of how the hobbits fought the trees in the bonfire glade.
[22:42] And here we get the warning from Mary. The tree is obviously communicating to him in some way. We're not sure. It's like a whispery voice or he just knows what the tree is saying. The tree is saying, don't do it. And because he will squeeze him in half, it's a horrible, claustrophobic image there. This is quite scary stuff. If he thought he was still writing for children, I find all this quite disturbing. Disturbing um enough to give you a nightmare this is i think the nadir the lowest point for the hobbits in the old forest and of course it's at this point where things shift and we get the arrival of tom bombadil and it's interesting to see that one of the first things that happens as he approaches is the willow wind this unnatural wind which is called the willow wind by tolkien stops. Things are about to reverse.
[23:40] Okay, I think it's now time to stop and consider Tom Bombadil. Now, Tolkien was a writer who wrote by discovery. He hadn't planned. So in some ways, what he's doing here is throwing in elements of things he knows.
[23:56] And one element he had in his stories that he told his children was this character Tom Bombadil. He had written poems about him that pre-exist the poetry in this section. And it's based on a toy that was given to the Tolkien children, which was like a little figurine of a guy with a yellow hat and a feather and a blue coat. I mean, it's what's described here.
[24:24] So he's folding in a familiar thing from the Tolkien nursery stories. But yet he's also growing him into a different role because this isn't a nursery story he's coming to the realisation that this isn't that kind of Hobbit Mark II story.
[24:43] And so he takes on shades of being like the mythological figure of the Green Man or the God Pan, a forest man, not quite a man, a forest entity who is powerful and at one with the wood that he is in. Though the poetry and the appearance are comic and lighthearted, he laughs, He talks in rhyming couplets with lots of nonsense, ring-a-ding-dillo type little tags, which are actually the sort of thing you find in medieval folk songs. So again, it's a sense of an older language, but it's also odd. Odd doesn't feel necessarily organic to this world because I think it is a character transported in. I think he succeeds. The oddest thing for me actually is the clothing. These strong colors of blue and yellow stand out, push him out, foreground him.
[26:01] So he doesn't fit the valley he's in. I know that Tom Bombadil is one of some people's favourite character I think it's partly because he's like the adult who comes in the room when you're having a night terror as a child and he can dispel the fears quickly and easily it's a relief, and he's also in a way a voice of nature representing nature, but there is something challenging shall we say maybe that's as far as I'll go challenging about making him folding him into middle earth he never white fits which is understandable because he's been brought in from the outside and also tolkien sort of i think recognizes that by saying he's not part of this story if you projecting forward to the council of elrond they don't use him because his concerns are so different from the concerns of the characters in this story that he wouldn't see the importance of what they're trying to achieve, it's it's yeah so anyway let's let's carry on with tom he comes in like the adult who dispels the night fears even his speech has poetic rhythms so he's always in a way singing.
[27:21] And the next little bit, so he is able to quite quickly and easily release the hobbits, tell off old Bam Willow and says, come home for tea with me.
[27:33] Again, that feels a bit nursery, that solution, doesn't it? This is where I think we still got the echo of the Tolkien nursery tale still clinging on here.
[27:42] And the hobbits follow on after him and they are chased to the haven of Tom's home through basically the scary things of the night, the whispering things that seem to be following them.
[27:56] And what's interesting here is that these dark things are nothing to do with Sauron. This is not anything that Sauron has touched or got any influence on. It's something older and deeper than Sauron, who, of course, is only a relative newcomer, being a servant of Morgoth. These things seem to have existed way beyond all of that which is a bit like tom and one of the things this gives is the sense of the depth of middle earth that even this massive story that we're part of is but a small part happening on top of a much older and deeper longer history and finally at the end of the chapter we escape the old forest and this is signaled by the fact that the eaves of the forest are trimmed and clipped and everything is under control there's a stable there's a house with golden light coming out the door and we get another character who's um an oddity in middle earth which is goldberry she's introduced again with poetry she also um uses like her partner husband spouse i'm not quite sure um what her forever person and anyway she sings in couplets like him and.
[29:20] And she's another, she is equal to Tom in both being a part and of this story. We never really understand how river daughters fit into the wider picture. Are they like the sort of demigods in some ways? It's never really followed through. Probably somebody has written an article on it somewhere, but I always felt that who is, if she's the river daughter, then who's the river father there's a sort of it feels almost like a greek sense of.
[29:59] Spirits rising out of the natural world which i can't remember arising anywhere else in middle earth so again she's of middle earth but also seems to be apart and really is is not mentioned again so both tom and goldberry are just confined to this one little section and except for gandalf right at the end saying he's going to go and have a long talk with tom bombadil after all the the war of the ring is complete they are living in their small little kingdom and they are not involved so in it's quite a bold move in terms of a book because this section is um forms the It serves the function of being a haven, a relief, something that gives you respite from the first darkness because we're moving to a place of golden light. But it's not absolutely necessary. It's delightful, but it's not necessary. So that's what we're going to look at next in the next chapter.
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