Transcript
[0:00] Hello, and welcome to Mythmakers. This is a Mythmakers sidecast,
[0:05] an author's journey through Lord of the Rings, and I'm guiding you. My name's Julia Golding. Now, I'm an author, and I've always admired Tolkien's artistry as a novelist, and so doing this, I'm really looking at it from the point of view of him as he writes it. And we've reached in our adventure in our quest chapter nine in fellowship of the ring which is called at the sign of the prancing pony and this is one of the shorter chapters in fellowship of the ring and the structure is that we have an introduction which i'm going to talk about in a second then we have the hobbits meeting harry the gatekeeper at the gate then they go to the prancing pony and they have supper in a room on their own and then they take the disastrous decision to go into the main public bar into the tap room of the inn and yeah a lot of a lot of things happen in that last phase in this chapter but i want to pause here on how this starts it's quite an unusual start to a chapter, because Tolkien spends a long time telling us about where Bree and the associated villages of Staddle, Coombe and Archit are.
[1:25] So much so that you can actually draw a map as a result of this. It's very complete. I think it's almost the most complete description of a location until we get to possibly Minas Tirith, which has another moment of pausing when we get a sense of the wider area around ministerius. And this place, Bree, we find out from the appendices, is actually based on a Buckinghamshire village called Brill, which is a short drive from Oxford.
[2:01] And that is a village on a small hill with a windmill, and it is surrounded by associated villages. And it's also got lots of woods around there. I drove out there during the pandemic, during lockdown. It was one of the areas where we could go within our sort of allowed area and had a good old ramble around it. But one of the things that made it a source for Tolkien was the name. He actually took quite a few cues from the villages around that part. If you're thinking of where Oxford is, it's the area to the east of Oxford. To the west you've got the beautiful area called the Cotswolds and over in the east it's less famous less visited much more of a place known to locals so it has that yeah I don't think it beyond most itineraries of people investigating the roots of Tolkien but it's a pretty little village well worth a detour from the M40.
[3:04] The thing that brought Tolkien to that area is it interesting names so even the name of Brill and Bree they're connected to the word for hill, and its name is meant to sound Celtic or other to the names in the Shire so if we think of the Shire names as being sort of more of a contemporary English it's meant to sound as though it's from a different tradition and I don't know if you ever realize this but in the appendices if you've read that far, there's actually quite a long discussion that Tolkien has about how the Hobbit language that he uses is a translation from another language, which looks quite exotic and strange if you actually see the words he puts down for the Hobbit language. So the idea is he's translated it from Hobbit, if you see what I mean, into English. And other languages are then referenced against that.
[4:07] So there's another thing that might be worth knowing about Brie and Brill is that Brill is about the Same distance, more or less, as a good walk, a good long walk from Oxford, several days walk. So it feels about the right distance from Oxford as the Hobbits have come from the Shire with all their many delays on that journey in the Old Forest and with Tom Bombadil. So it feels like a good place for him to think, well, what's that distance from where I'm sitting writing this? So you can see how it may have all gone into that sort of stew pot of his mind and out pops Brie. And he describes it with such an accuracy, this is there, that's there, arch it's in the woodland, that you really feel he believes in its existence, which means you as a reader do too. And if you're wondering, if you found it a bit confusing, when I was thinking about this, I have a book of Tolkien maps, but I also found much more easily accessible is if you just go on the Wikipedia page for Brie, you'll see a really excellent map which describes how the roads and the villages all interrelate. So do check that out when you're reading this chapter.
[5:24] The other thing this introductory piece emphasizes is how Brie is an island in a wilderness.
[5:32] And this makes you realise how the Shire is such an exceptional country. It's got its postal services and its farthings and, you know, it's sort of petty bourgeois hobbit life of pubs and parties.
[5:49] Brie seems to be a very different place, even just on that level. It's much more isolated, much lower population compared to the Shire. And there is a feeling that we have passed the golden age that the landscape is empty the roads are abandoned and we are entering into much almost stepping back in time in a way by leaving the shire he says that the bremen belong to nobody but themselves Tolkien in his letters described himself as having anarchistic leanings that's his ideal sort of i he wants to get rid of big government and interference and he has a liking for small self-governing communities which of course the shire itself is is that uh.
[6:37] His most sort of extended idea about that but you get a version of that in Brie as well and this gives the theme that keeps coming up in Tolkien have you noticed it the theme of the survival of small people as great waves of history come and go I mean they're also literally small, you've got the Druadan who we meet in the forest much later when Theoden rides to Minas Tirith we've got the hobbits themselves and now the bremen are also described as being short of stature in contrast to these smaller people who don't get so cool you know they're not the tall poppies cut down by history we get a glimpse of the rangers and this picks up on the vision of the last chapter which Tom Bombadil prompts and of course stretches forward to the main encounter in this chapter which is with Aragorn known at this stage as Strider but let's have a think what is happening in this intro there's been quite a few quite a long moment now where we're basically getting a geography and history lesson about a place that we're not going to spend an awful long time. Who is telling us this? What is going on? So looking at it from an author's point of view, people often describe Lord of the Rings as an omniscient narrator, but it's not really.
[8:05] Because it's explained that the book is written by Frodo, supplemented by the stories and recollections of his friends. So if we're going to go with that conceit, what's happening here is Frodo way after the events of the tale is writing this for the public record of his adventure which he's going to hand on to Sam and he feels that the reader I imagine he's thinking hobbits, reader needs to know, these things about the place that's outside their borders. So the narrator, let's assume it's Frodo, is stopping to tell us about that.
[8:49] That is obviously a game that Tolkien's playing and he doesn't always keep those rules, but that's how I understand this. Let's think about it. Otherwise, he's breaking the rules of narration by zipping around and doing different things. I think it all becomes a unity if you let that conceit run all the way through that this is Frodo using the recollections of his friends to dramatize them and provide the information that we know because he's very good at writing books and one of the things that is emphasized in this introduction is that there is hobbits outside the shire more than shire folk know there's a little fascinating idea that they may be living like tramps as well as the population in Bree but the thing that challenges the hobbit expectations in Bree is they are here the hobbits from the shire the hobbits in Bree are able to coexist with the big people which is described as like a unique experiment and it does influence our concept of the shire and its limitation and its insularity. They feel that they are.
[10:06] Not part of everything else and that will come up again in a minute in when we get to the scenes in the inn and it does pick up on something which is very true of village life in england but i've met it in italy and elsewhere i imagine if you think of your own equivalent villages or regions in the country you're from that you can have this sense of we are different from those people over there even if there's only a field separating you, or a short stretch of road in this case.
[10:38] Another little thing before we move on to back to the story, as it were, is the glimpse of old roads. We've got two intersecting roads here, which is why Bree is at this particular point. One called the Greenway, which suggests it's been overgrown and become green, i.e. The grass is growing up through the tracks this for me is reminiscent of the fate of roman roads in the history of england which sometimes underlie main roads now but sometimes get lost in the surrounds when they no longer connect points in the way that we we do the traveling and there was one or is one i should say very close to Tolkien on otmore which is the place where he sets farmer jars of ham and it would be a place that he could easily motor to or walk to from oxford it's a great place to go bird watching there's a there's a wonderful bird sanctuary there but running right across the center of it is a green road which is an old roman road, which you can still walk along and i always think of the greenway when i'm walking along that, And another thing you might want to, because we are now heading past these roads to the in itself, to the Prancing Pony.
[12:02] And when you sort of look online to see what people think about the Prancing Pony, there are those who attempt to identify it with a particular pub that has inspired Tolkien. There is actually a pub in Oxford, a well-known pub called the White Horse, right by Blackwell. So if you're looking for a place with a white horse, quite a plump white horse on the sign, you don't have to go very far. But I think that would probably not be fair to Tolkien. I think he's thinking about all the pubs he knows, and by George, he knew his pubs. Because in a way, it's an amalgam of a very common part of village life.
[12:43] Certainly in his day, many pubs, well, many villages had more than one pub. So it's capturing, I think, a cultural moment. There are less pubs now than there used to be, but still, if you come to the UK or if you live here, you know that you can go and visit pubs very much like this without much effort.
[13:05] Anyway, back to the story. the first person that the hobbits meet after having said goodbye tom bombadil is to is harry the gatekeeper who i think is the first man they meet if we think of tom and Gandalf as not being men and it's interesting that there is clearly mutual suspicion between them and you get the sense that the hobbits hackles are up they feel something's not right and Tolkien is giving us signals he's shading that character um to be on the villainous side because harry stared at them darkly so we're getting the uh signals here that this is not a person to be trusted and, And we get an insight into Frodo's point of view.
[13:54] So we're at this stage in the narration more often in Frodo's head than anyone else. And that's where we stay for most of this. In fact, for all of this chapter. And we see that he's still hoping for Gandalf to turn up. It's one little odd moment here where when they go off to into the village itself, itself the narrator future Frodo adds a little line about someone climbing the gate unseen by Harry unseen by the hobbits and it's a dark figure we're not told who it is we later find out who it is but because we don't know it could be ominous it could be bad it could be a threat so you never want in a narration to let everything just be this happened this happened this happened it has to be shaded by some sort of tension or problem or ticking clock or something to keep you reading and these suggestions that something is following them hounding them is one way of doing it and when they reach the prancing ponies it's fun here that Sam is very unnerved by his first sight of all these stone houses that big to him that the men build whereas Frodo is readier to accept Tom's recommendation that all is well in this particular case.
[15:19] There's an odd description here which I just wanted to pause over which is the sign when that's mentioned it's the Prancing Pony by Barlim and Butterbur. I wondered, I'll have to look this up, I wasn't sure, if that means that the landlord, was that a common way of describing pubs that they're by the name of the landlord? It doesn't seem quite right. I've never heard it in any other context. The other possibility, which I rather like and would be rather fun, is maybe he painted the sign. I would love to think of Barlim and Butterbur Having a sideline where he goes away and paints He's so proud of his pub He actually makes his own sign Because that would make sense of the sign being by him But I suspect it's just meant to say That this is the name of the landlord, Okay, and then brace yourself, because this is where Tolkien shows his powers of dramatising a scene through, well, through speech.
[16:24] That's how we do get a brief description of him, but really what we know most about Barleyman Butterbur is his breathless way of talking.
[16:34] It's short sentences, abrupt, moving on, always running after to somebody else's call. All brilliantly written here very economically he's a friendly man i mean very clear that his agenda isn't the Same as the hobbits he puts the quest in perspective and we get that again when we circle back round to brie right at the end of the journey where he's just thinking about the fact that his custom has been down and things aren't looking at so Tolkien's always keeping the perspective of the common man in this bigger magical quest he is one of Tolkien's originals the unheroic but rather fine people along with farmer maggot and later in minister if we meet um yoris the loquacious lady in the houses of healing he's clearly good-hearted but probably a bit annoying because we're thinking why didn't you know get to the point these are important you know um why didn't you send the letter all these things
[17:38] so he can be a bit annoying but the.
[17:41] Energy of his speech shows that he is a man of his community and that particularly signaled not by him saying i am a man of my community but by him coming up with sayings and common wisdom that's how he he's very networked we would call it now in his community and he reminds me of in this case Jane Austen.
[18:07] So one of the funniest characters in Emma, Jane Austen's wonderful novel, is Miss Bates, who is another powerhouse of language. And most people find her tedious, including Emma, the main character. But she is used with great verve and fun by Jane Austen as a way of seeing into scenes. Because she will enter into an assembly room, for example, and describe everything from the decorations to the food on the table. So the author doesn't need to describe it. They've got a character who's doing it in a funny and amusing way. It reveals the character, it reveals the scene, it reveals the reactions of the other characters to her. But if you're reading carefully, you pick up clues because she is giving little signals that you need to pay attention to. And you get this with Barlim and Butterbur him saying about who's come up that they have a party that's just come up the Greenway we know who's in the taproom from him so when they actually do go into the taproom we don't need that to be reiterated you already know there's some strangers there there's the local hobbits and there's the local men and it's all been done by that outpouring of conversation of Butterbur wanting to tell you everything.
[19:34] That's on his mind he doesn't have much of a filter I think we would say, Then we get, when they're finally sitting down, after having been through the scary time in the Barrow White and all of that loneliness of the road, the suspicion at the gate, we now get one of those golden moments where they get a lovely feast of very plain and simple food, including a blackberry tart, which I quite like the sound of. And it reminds me that this was written in the tradition of still holding on to some of the children's fiction idea, that sort of Hobbit feel, as in from The Hobbit, which could also be described as a series of memorable meals, and it has that air about it. It seems innocent. It seems comforting. So then why?
[20:26] As a reader, you're thinking, you're safe. Stay there.
[20:30] Don't do anything. Didn't you get the vibe from Harry? Didn't you get a vibe that someone may have climbed over the wall but no whilst telling each other to be careful they take the decision to leave that little haven most of them go into the tap room and Merry says I'm going to go and wander around outside it's the equivalent of the you know the person going into the haunted house don't do it you know you can see there's going to be disaster but that is the fun of narrative you're winding up the reader because they know that something is going to happen so once they get into the tap room that's Frodo Sam and Pippin they get a rush of names um which has a bit like it reminds echoes the the party right at the very beginning so this is the brie version and these names because names are vital in the way Tolkien thinks about his world gives you a sense of the slightly different culture and the hobbits.
[21:36] Register that the way people name themselves there is unfamiliar there are some familiars.
[21:43] But they find it odd that the men of Brie have botanical names, for example. And so botanical names also tell you what the local environment is. And it's very English. They're still within familiar climes. They haven't got any of the new flowers that you'll get later in Lothlorien and elsewhere. We also have a little insight here to something which has a very modern feel to it, which is the tension between the people who are coming up the road, the strangers, and the men themselves, the local people themselves. They're basically a kind of economic migrant asylum seeker. And the reactions are fascinating. So the local people are saying, well, yeah, sorry about it, but no room here is their sort of vibe that they're giving. And as the hobbits don't think it affects them at all which of course turns out to be disastrously wrong because whilst they're away Saruman moves in takes over build sheds to house the men in the shire so it's a warning that these problems don't stay confined within borders and I think if you remember this is all being written during the second world war of which massive displacements of people in Europe.
[23:08] Lots of refugees. You can see that this also had an echo of the situation that Tolkien was in at the time of writing. Then we move into the next section prior to the disaster. We get Pippin who's having the time of his life telling stories.
[23:26] Pippin is regaling the locals with little funny anecdotes from the Shire. And whilst he's doing that, holding the attention, Frodo is intrigued by a stranger who's sitting in the corner and this is of course going to be Aragorn but we don't know that yet and as he's wonderfully introduced it's just very economic and note how many details of where he's come from and what he's doing are given by this brief description. Suddenly Frodo noticed that a strange looking weather-beaten man sitting in the shadows near the wall, was also listening intently to the hobbit talk. He had a tall tankard in front of him and was smoking a long-stemmed pipe curiously carved. His legs were stretched out before him, showing high boots of supple leather that fitted him well, but had seen much wear and were now caked with mud. A travel-stained cloak of heavy dark green cloth was drawn close about him, and in spite of the heat of the room he wore a hood that overshadowed his face, but the gleam of his eyes could be seen as he watched the hobbits.
[24:38] That is actually my favorite shot in the Peter Jackson film, where the glow of the pipe flares and catches in Aragorn or Viggo Mortensen's eyes, which is straight from this passage. So we get that he is a long, lean, well-traveled person who's set apart, who's not joining in, who's watching, who's listening. And if we've been paying attention we might start to think oh yes what about those rangers that sounds like a person who ranges about the place and obviously on a second reading you're already making the links Frodo goes to um talk to him he's waved over which i think is.
[25:23] It's an interesting choice by Frodo maybe he feels he couldn't be it's maybe banners because he's asked about him and then gets the beckon to go over. But he does take the risk to go over and just sound out this person who's watching him. And what he hears is very disturbing because there's some very heavy hints dropped here by Strider that he might know who he is. He says, Master Underhill, if old Butterbur got your name right. So still on a first reading, we're not sure if this is a friend or a foe. But he does point out that Pippin is going too far. So Pippin has moved into the story of Bilbo's farewell speech, which is obviously where this whole book begins. And Frodo takes alarm that he might even go as far to mention the ring. And Strider urges him on to make an intervention.
[26:21] And this is where we get evidence that Frodo too is someone who is a bit of
[26:26] a performer. because after a slow start, he sings the song about the man in the moon. Now, let's have a little pause here to think about Tolkien as a poet.
[26:40] There's a wonderful new three-volume edition of his collected poems. And reading through the introduction to that, I was reminded that this poem was actually written for a context outside of the book. It was started way back, a version of it was started way back in 1919, where he was having fun with the idea of tracing the roots of nursery rhymes, because this is based on a well-known nursery rhyme. Expanding it and giving it a sort of another lineage so he'd already written this poem and when he was thinking of for a song that Frodo could sing he thought oh well this fits because this is the time um it could be the time when nursery before the nursery rhyme was shortened he's almost inventing the history by putting it into middle earth um so he's continuing this joke that he began in 1919 in this book several decades later i actually think it's quite a good fun piece of nonsense verse if you want to hear it sung andy circus has a go in the audio version but i personally rather like the version in the bbc radio drama which was done by brian sibley back in the 80s it's actually really good so i would and ian holm is singing it as.
[28:07] Frodo so i would recommend going and having a listen to that.
[28:13] What's particularly good about it is the way it builds, so that you can see it would give a cheer at the end if you were listening to it in a pub and they want to join in. I didn't like the version that was done. It was borrowed for The Hobbit, and the dwarves sing it as part of their sort of disruption, I think in Rivendell. I didn't like that. It's much better in this context, so don't bother to go and watch that version.
[28:42] And here we get a sense of the power of the ring because Frodo isn't in he's nervous the ring knows that he's he's got this nervous habit of playing with the ring and it slips on his finger in an unguarded moment and betrays him and I think it's really strongly felt here that Frodo feels an utter fool shame and feeling foolish is actually a really powerful emotion to put in a story because we all know that we probably agonize over things we do far longer than anybody else would remember them and that's how Frodo feels I think he's not even aware of the danger he's put himself in Aragorn is but Frodo is just thinking I have been an utter idiot his reaction is very relatable and also the embarrassment of how do I come back from that, strider is quite unsympathetic here he just basically a bit like Gandalf telling Pippin that he's a fool of a Took there's a kind of strider asperity here but it does mean that, Frodo in his sort of embarrassment does agree to an interview with strider to kind of have it out with him in private.
[30:00] And Frodo tries to do what is the equivalent of clean up on aisle five by saying, of course, he isn't a magician. He just crawled away under the table. No one buys it. And poor old Mr. Butterbur has to come in and try and, you know, make peace with his regulars. And then we find it ending on a dark note.
[30:21] So how you begin and how you end a chapter is important that people read on. And this has got a very good end in that Butterbur, who's been the friendly one, he goes back to that note of suspicion, rousing suspicion in The Hobbits that we had with Harry by saying, I hope you don't mind, there's something I should have told you. So we go back to this sense of being unnerved and the reminder that something dangerous is hovering that even old Butterbur has something that he needs to confess and admit so of course you're going to turn the page and find out what both Strider and Butterbur want to say to the hobbits but we are going to leave it there notice that Merry is not mentioned so the attentive reader will have ticking away in their mind that, where's Merry? And again, we're going to have to wait to find out in the next chapter.
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