You Have Passed My Score by One - LOTR: An Author's Journey, Bk 3 Ch 8

00:00:01.060 --> 00:01:24.040 Hello and welcome to Mythmakers. Mythmakers is a podcast for fantasy fans and fantasy creatives brought to you by the Oxford Centre for Fantasy. My name is Julia Golding and today we continue our read through the Lord of the Rings looking at it from an author's point of view and we have reached chapter 8 in The Two Towers and that's called The Road to Isengard and this is one of those interesting chapters which is transitional and so not much attention is given to it in filmic versions of it except for the very beginning and the very end but there is a lot to unpack in this and including a most beautiful passage of description by Gimli and the glittering caves of Aglauron so there's a lot to look forward to in this episode so just to get your head around what it contains it first of all starts with the immediate after aftermath of the battle for Helm's Deep then there is the journey of Theoden, Gandalf and his entourage as they go to Isengard and they're not sure what they're going to meet there and then there's a short comedic section at the 00:01:24.040 --> 00:02:40.380 end when they reunite with Merry and Pippin which is fabulous anyway let's get down to business so the first thing to note is how this starts there's a formality in the language here we've been with these characters for a long time but there is a return to their full sort of titles so we get Aragorn son of Arathorn and Legolas the elf, Urkenbrand of Westford and so on it is the roll call the battle of honor roll call that comes at the end of the successful defense of Helm's Deep and we only really zero in on a character when it comes to Gimli because we get Gimli emerging from the caves and what we're looking at is his wound he had no helm and about his head was a linen band stained with blood but his voice was loud and strong he's the first one who actually emerges from this group with a sort of distinct about them and this is to set up the fact that the game that they've been playing this is the end of it so he announces that he has managed to kill 42 and the last one his axe 00:02:40.380 --> 00:03:57.770 is notched and then you get Legolas with his response you have passed my school by one this scene is nicely done in the BBC audio version of it I didn't like the Peter Jackson version of this very much with Legolas shooting a dead body didn't seem very funny to me but what I like about the Tolkien version of it is you get here it could be and I've always thought this that Legolas is saying yeah of course you beat me is what a friend might say when they know that someone really wants to win a game who knows I mean an archer is unlikely to know exactly how many they managed to kill but anyway I sometimes wonder if Legolas is handing the game over to Gimli here because he's so relieved to see his friend alive that would be a nice touch anyway the game is rapidly put aside and what they're now looking at is this mysterious forest that has emerged and dealt with the orcs who had invaded the veil and here we get the sign of the nature of Gandalf because everybody on third and in particular is saying you know 00:03:57.770 --> 00:05:12.790 it must be great sorcery that has brought it here and Gandalf is saying no I have but given good counsel in peril and made use of the speed of shadow facts your own valour has done more and the stout legs of the Westfold men marching through the night here for those who want to dig further into the background if you want to see the other side of what was going on there is a passage in the unfinished tales where you see Gandalf riding around the Westfold and elsewhere gathering people together sending them to be at the right place at the right time there was a burial detail as well which we meet later so if you want to put in the background detail to dig into that it's in the unfinished tales so the other part that we see about Gandalf here is his keynote really in response to their amazement Gandalf laughed long and merrily this is one of the areas where the good and the evil are set apart the evil can laugh but they laugh with scorn merry laughter belongs to the good and this is often Gandalf's response it happens again 00:05:12.790 --> 00:06:36.190 when on the fields of Cormalin it's pure it's it's what we're fighting for this merry laughter and what I like here is that this isn't a superhuman all-knowing godlike figure he says and enjoys that there are things beyond his ken he says that what has happened with the horns and the ends coming it's better than my design and better even than my hope the event has proved it's that thing that Tolkien cherishes of the eucatastrophe the unexpected good that came out of something that felt desperately bad you can find that on page 149 if you've got a three volume version of the Lord of the Rings and he breaks here into a little riddle it has a sing-song cadence iron was found or tree was hewn when young was mountain under moon and so on it's not explained if it already existed or if he made it up but it has the feeling of being old law and he is basically in this whole chapter Gandalf is a tease he he he knows more than everybody else about what's happened and he is underlining that here because he is talking about the ends 00:06:36.190 --> 00:07:55.790 that's the answer to the riddle but they don't yet know that and Gandalf here is like the author in that he is keeping the riders in suspense not giving them the answer in fact he has authored this whole episode by being the person who connected all the parts together and you'll see there's some other points where he doesn't actually say he could give an answer and he chooses not to so the next debate is about should they go with Gandalf or should they stay behind because Gandalf says I'm going to Isengard and they think that means another battle but this time with a wizard and you see how far they've all come because Theoden says I'm not going to doubt you any longer just before the dawn I may have had my moment of doubt and Gandalf is then able to reassure he says we go to a parley and not to a fight in other words we're going to talk not to fight and we get a brief glimpse here of the muster of Rohan getting underway and it's worth just making the connection here to the fact that Tolkien is writing this at 00:07:55.790 --> 00:09:24.630 a time when people were being called up across the world but particularly across the UK so there's a sense of a familiar background to him this idea of word being sent out and people of fighting age being called up now as I was checking the details of this chapter in the rather wonderful Reader's Companion by Hammond and Skull there are some things which in my edition might be corrected in yours because Tolkien was an absolute anti-sun Christopher was loved precision and so there's some details here that were corrected in editions after 2005 and my version is earlier and the one particular one is the moon the phases of the moon have been corrected what does this say to us about being an author well I think what it says is the world-building that Tolkien has achieved is so dense so complete that things like that can be corrected from being wrong which is extraordinary and perhaps it means lesson learning here that if you do have a long period in a novel why not follow this actually work out timings and moon phases and seasons properly so that you can correct it when 00:09:24.630 --> 00:10:40.060 it's wrong and then you know Christopher of Tolkien is able to come in say well I think this should be this the same thing happens about distances there is a precision here which is admirable and we should emulate the other correction made here according to my my notes is that one of the sad duties in the aftermath of battle of course is the burials and there was a sentence about what happened to the men of Dunland the men of Dunland were fighting on the side of the Orcs and Christopher put back in a sentence which was left out of the typescript by mistake which is the men of Dunland are also given a separate burial they aren't put with the Orcs but nor are they put with the riders of Rohan why do we care about these things I guess in that case it's because it shows the the value here that is a distinction made between Orcs and men it's one of the unsettling parts of Middle-earth it that some lives are worth more than others I guess the Orcs are lesser creations I don't know it's an area which you you accept 00:10:40.060 --> 00:12:06.600 as you read it but it certainly is difficult isn't it anyway so we have a burial mound for men three burial mounds for men and a different one for the Orcs less difficult and certainly more admirable is the role here Erkenbrand takes Erkenbrand is we remember as bit much more of a role in the book than in any other versions I've seen of this and he is showing mercy to the men of Dunland which is the key quality Gandalf is all about mercy and compassion and that is also shown in all the good leaders they all have mercy Faramir has mercy in this case the riders of Rohan have mercy Aragorn has mercy and you get here him showing it to his enemies the men of Dunland and it transforms that relationship we also get here a mention of the one named character who dies in this battle and that is Harmer do you remember that Harmer was the person at the gate back in the chapters about Edoras who takes the risk to basically he's the hand behind events allowing certain things to happen he's the one who proposes Erwin as the leader and 00:12:06.600 --> 00:13:23.020 so on so he's he's clearly a key person at the court and he has fallen in this if you're trying to attract that character to the Peter Jackson films his Harmer falls in that added scene with the wild attack yeah I mean those you can see why they add to those scenes into a film to sort of up the tempo but anyway he falls in battle here defending the gate and there's this wonderful dissonant moment which I hadn't noticed or reading it this time and so I bring your attention to it which is just before they set out there's a song we don't see the text but we hear it being sung so here we go it goes the Sun was already drawing near the hills upon the west of the Coombe when at last Ferdinand and Gandalf and their companions rode down from the dike behind them were gathered a great host both of the riders and of the people of Westfold old and young women and children who had come out from the caves a song of victory they sang with clear voices and then they fell silent wondering what would chance for 00:13:23.020 --> 00:14:47.230 their eyes were on the trees and they feared them so it's like their voices which been raised to fade away against the the terrifying prospect of the of the woods the woods are like the primeval place that always challenged people in sort of the northern hemisphere sort of often appears in fairy tales as the forbidden place and there it's arrived on their doorstep I love how therefore their voices kind of fade away so the riders have to follow Gandalf through this wood and how do you create the menace well here a Tolkien does it by contrast so we've got things like the bowels being described like searching fingers the roots like the limbs of strange monsters but we also have the contrast so we've got the road which is like a dare I say it like a yellow brick road or something it's the sort of safe passage marked path it has the deeping stream on one side and the sky open above and full of golden light compared to the darkness either side and the strange cries of suffering in the hidden depths and Legolas is the one who sums it up he says 00:14:47.230 --> 00:16:12.230 he feels a great wrath coming from that wood and Tolkien allows the mystery of what becomes of the Orcs to remain and the Gandalf says no one will ever know their fate and it's true that what is unseen is more scary than what is seen so for an author remember allowing that mystery and holding back and not feeling you need to explain the fate of everything can sometimes be more horrifying it's like what people know from horror films when you see the monster the mystery goes but if you just think what that it is present it's much more frightening so the next part of this chapter is taken up really with the elf and dwarf cultures and this is one of the passages that is a completely standout beautiful moment which I would urge you to go back and read it is probably I think until we get to the end it's the most exciting part of this chapter because it is Gimli talking with this great loquacious outburst of the caves that he had to take refuge in during the battle he tells Legolas and he keeps saying Legolas every few lines as Legolas 00:16:12.230 --> 00:17:41.610 Legolas it's like he's trying you know really get his attention he says that the Mirkwood caves were but hovels Legolas son of a king his palace here is being described as a hovel very not very tactful of Gimli but the contrast is there he's not saying they are hovels but they are as if they were because he has seen immeasurable halls filled with an everlasting music of water that tinkles into pools as fair as Keled Zadam in the starlight it's on page 152 and 153 of my edition it's too long to quote but it does go on with this beautiful evocation of the experience of being in in these caves and in response Legolas gives a bit of a feeble quip he says oh a family of dwarves would come and you know mine all these he misses the mood and so Gimli has to say no you don't understand no dwarf could be unmoved by such loveliness none of Durin's race would mine those caves for stones or not if diamonds and golds could be got there do you cut down groves of blossoming trees in the springtime for firewood and that really gets 00:17:41.610 --> 00:19:00.910 through to Legolas and this is the the seed of their bargain where one one of them will Gimli will take Legolas there on their return and he will go with Legolas to Fangorn so how has Tolkien thought about these caves or where's he come across them and he mentions in later life that these caves were inspired by Cheddar Gorge which are in the Mendips so if you're thinking of the map of the UK or England they're down in the western part on the way down towards Cornwall but not as far fairly near Bristol and he visited those at least twice he visited once on honeymoon so no doubt that was a very romantic experience and he visited it again in 1940 during the course of the war so very recently to the time of writing and it reminds you that there are places that stay with an author so perhaps in your own writing if you're listening to this as a writer if you have a place that you keep circling back to that has a emotional charge for you this is a good place to put in your fantasy but in a fantasy build 00:19:00.910 --> 00:20:23.690 up to the extent of your fantasy world clearly Cheddar Gorge know how wonderful it is is not as great as this place in Middle-earth Tolkien has allowed himself to sort of big it up to imagine an even more marvelous place and I was wondering about this are there any other similar passages because we do stop in terms of the well they are riding on a horse so now they are still moving on it's passing the time of the journey but there are similar passages on a few occasions in this work and the two that came to mind were when Gimli hasn't and he's already done this it's in the passage in Moria when they are talking about how Moria used to be Gimli explains how beautiful it used to be and there's another long passage which then also has a song which he sings in the hall where they are overnighting and that has a similar sense of poetry but it's nostalgic and then another passage which we have much more recently seen is the account that Treebeard gave of how the woods used to be in his youth and to jog your memory 00:20:23.690 --> 00:21:43.610 he talks about just standing and breathing for a week he's describing there to Merry and Pippin and again it's nostalgia to a lost world what I find intriguing and different about this passage because mostly we're talking about a world that is vanishing is going that's often the sort of melancholy of Middle-earth here it's actually future looking Gimli is projecting a future for these caves a return visit what the dwarves could do he says we should make lights we should make lights such lamps as once shone in Khazad-dum and when we wished we would drive away the night that has lain there since the hills were made and when we desired rest we would let the night return I love that the idea that they would relinquish it and let the night come back to its natural state so I think what is happening here is different from those other passages because Gimli is hinting beyond the end of this story it's not all about loss there is some gain some gains to be made to balance out the melancholy of the loss of the elves and the loss of the beauty of the 00:21:43.610 --> 00:23:06.370 past ages so this little section closes with a a teasing comment from Gandalf. Gandalf is very he's a complete tease in this in this chapter let's just face it because I don't know if he's been listening in but he comes back and says when they're talking about how far how far to go and what will they see Gandalf says he doesn't know yet I think that you will not say that the journey was in vain not though the glittering caves of Aglarond are left behind so he knew they existed he's got the name for them and just to unpack some of that beautiful naming that Tolkien does that word Aglarond means basically glittering cave Aglar brilliance and Rond is vault or high roofed cavern it's always lovely to unpack these these words to see what Tolkien is getting at so during their journey they are just about at this point leaving this temporary wood as we would call it of the horns and Legolas sees eyes in the trees so he sees the answer to the riddle without making that connection he sees some ent eyes and there's this comedic bit where he wants to 00:23:06.370 --> 00:24:31.330 go and see them and Gimli saying no no no put me down put me down and Gandalf has to restrain Legolas to say you know remember the mission now is not your time and we get a glimpse here of the Ents coming out of the wood and they're described again as if we're seeing them for the first time this is because we are in the point of view of the companions Gimli and Legolas not so much Aragorn because he hasn't been present very much in this part but I very often the perspective is actually the riders it's a sort of joint perspective and so in order to give that freshness we're seeing them described again as if for the first time there's this connection in Tolkien's mind between the heron and Ents you may wonder why well herons are very common birds to be seen in the UK we don't have so many things like storks but it's the herons are our wading bird you have the kind of stride pattern that he imagines for the the Ents and we get here the idea that there are different worlds even within the world of Middle 00:24:31.330 --> 00:25:50.310 Earth Gandalf says they are not concerned with us at all and that note is often struck by Tolkien it's the Tom Bombadil issue his matters aren't our his battles aren't ours and we get it later in that encounter with the wild men of the wood Ganburi Gan people creatures move in different circles and it expands in the world building that there are things that we don't touch because we're just in one part of it but there is so much more going on elsewhere so the the king who has marveled at seeing the Ents go by he says something which is so Tolkien it comes in the middle of page 155 where he is grappling with the smallness of their lives we cared little for what lay beyond the borders of our land Fangorn is literally just over the border songs we have that tell of these things but we are forgetting them teaching them only to children as a careless custom and now the songs have come down among us out of strange places and walk visible under the Sun and he goes on saying yet also I should be sad for however the fortune 00:25:50.310 --> 00:27:09.310 of war shall go may it not so end that much that was fair and wonderful shall pass forever out of Middle-earth so if you remember I was saying that the Gimli passage about the caves of Aglarond is one of the hopeful aftermath of battle Theoden here is talking much more on the more the note that struck more often the one of things are passing things are going to be lost is what Galadriel said that with the ring is destroyed the power of the elven rings will probably also go and it and the world is moving on and Gandalf's response to that is to say but to such days we are doomed I think there are a number of things to connect to here one is it is a gloomier echo of his famous words to Frodo about all we have to decide is what to do with the time that's given to us you know we're in dark times that's our that's what we have to deal with but it's also I think a sense of how Tolkien felt about the development of the 20th century much of what he had loved and remembered 00:27:09.310 --> 00:28:28.750 from his youth was passing it lived through two world wars there seemed to be a coarsening and worsening of life for him so it is a contemporary reflection he is making there and that's a reminder that fantasy often is about the present moment of the writer as well as about some imagined fantasy world and it does give an emotional weight to what the characters are experiencing it feels real it feels relatable and so is if you've got something equivalent so modern fantasy for example often does something similar with the feeling of environmental stress and degradation so that's the kind of meat and drink of a fantasy writer is to look for that what you feel strongly about how you connect to our world and bring that into your own fantasy creation so they're now riding on the way to Isengard and here we get another lovely little passage untouched by film or audio version we see the moon is the moon is they're riding by night so they aren't observed so in the moonlight in its cold silver light the swelling grasslands rose and fell like a wide grey sea Tolkien often reaches for the 00:28:28.750 --> 00:29:57.850 sea as image for that for things on land it will come up again but he's describing Isengard and it also connects of course to the importance of the sea voyages across the sea Numenor the Undying Land so it's all part of his imagery that he keeps like poetry weaving into his prose and as they ride they discover that the river Isen is missing and Aymer blames Saruman for the lack of river and here comes Gandalf the tease again so it would seem says Gandalf but he doesn't say oh yeah it's the the Ents have done this they've they flooded Isengard none of that he just is letting them discover the unfolding of it he doesn't relieve the tension he's waiting to show them what has happened then we get a section about the burial at the Fords why waste time on this it's not that particular battle doesn't happen in this story there is a connection of course to the death of Theodred and the scattering of the Riders of Rohan which you can read about in the Unfinished Tales in more detail so why bother with this section one could imagine a modern-day 00:29:57.850 --> 00:31:21.270 editor would be saying not necessary striking it through well I think what it for me stands for is the fact that Tolkien is always aware of the bigger picture the bigger battles happening in and around his narrative things are happening up north things are happening down south you don't see everything and I think this reflects his experience of a real war when he was on the Western Front in the First World War he would have come across places where others had already fought where ground had been lost and won on a frontier he would have seen fortifications occupied by the enemy and lost by the enemy and sense that there is a moving frontier of the battle gives it as what you would call very similitude there's also here a respect for the dead so perhaps it worried him that he that there was a feeling of unburied bodies and in a way he's wanting to show that people deserve not to be left in no man's land but given a respectful war grave and that's what's happened here when they're resting on the banks of the river which is empty there is an interesting 00:31:22.310 --> 00:32:53.490 choreography happening so you get this creepy passing of the horns which aren't named they're described described like a black shadow and then we get this little throwback to how the people of Helm's Deep see the leaving of the wood and what's been left behind the burial of the Orcs in something called the Death Down where no one goes and then we come back so the Orcs have gone towards Isengard and then in the night the river comes back the other way so there's sort of like the past the passings go first towards Isengard and then away from it and the King Gandalf they are the still point around which these passings are happening there's a little point but it's sort of part of the lovely weaving of Tolkien's prose he thinks of these things they arrive on the approach to Isengard into the Wizards Vale and this is like a foretaste of the much more ravaged landscape that Frodo and Sam are going to see it's a sad country and treeless and there is a pause here another pause but this is a more familiar pause this is a pause for description for a landscape 00:32:53.490 --> 00:34:20.550 we had one for Helm's Deep we've had them for other important locations in the story we'll get them for Minas Tirith great for anyone who's trying to make a film of this because it's all laid out for you exactly what you need to know and we get the description of what it had been a place of gardens and trees to what it is now a place of pillars and chains it's a great description well worth going back to and one phrase I've picked out that sort of sums up the ugliness of what they are looking at it's like the graveyard of the unquiet dead so a living place is now a place of death denuded of anything of beauty and as a lot going on under the ground of course with the pits and caverns that have been excavated and I suppose that stands for the undermining so Saruman has undermined his own character he's undermined what that place once stood for so there is a sense of that connecting to his turn to evil and then we get a little dip into Tolkien wordplay where Orthanc can mean in languages Mount Fang and in 00:34:20.550 --> 00:35:57.260 the language of the mark cunning mind and I'm sure he absolutely loved that fortuitous the way it broke down in the two languages but Saruman shouldn't get too big for his boots because it is dismissed as being a little copy a child's model of Barad-dûr thinking about this as a story one of the intriguing things of course is that we never actually confront the bad guy the big bad guy we see his lesser versions particularly Saruman but also the Witch-King but the actual I himself is present in the ring and indirectly because he is disembodied and so he is represented by things that are not him the ring the tower Mordor itself and you hold back you don't give in book two or in fact it's book three in Tolkien scheme but anyway you don't give in the middle of this story the biggest baddest tower you hold back on that and so the emphasis here is that this is just a shadow of the big shadow as they ride past the once proud pillar with the white hand we're again in the riders point of view we see that the hand is 00:35:57.260 --> 00:37:24.180 blood-stained and no longer white this joint point of view is fascinating I'm gonna be looking out to see if he does it with other armies but he does seem to often dip into seeing the Rohan as a group that have a single point of view that he enjoys being in and RT's Gandalf brings it all together by presenting us with the answer to the riddle with a kind of dramaturge skill because as they arrive at the gates the mist clears the Sun shines and they're at the doors of Isengard shall we continue with how Tolkien describes it but the doors lay hurled and twisted on the ground and all about stone cracked and splintered into countless jagged shards were scattered far and wide or piled in ruinous heaps so there's a couple of things going on here more than a couple we've got the surprise for the riders who Gandalf didn't say he said we're going for a parley but they didn't know they were going to a ruin to a battle that's already been lost by Saruman he kept that back but we also as readers have known that Merry and Pippin and 00:37:24.180 --> 00:38:48.120 the Ents were headed for Isengard and the last we heard is that maybe they were going to their doom so the nail-biting what has happened to Merry and Pippin still not completely answered yet but we knew there was a possibility that Saruman may have been caught unawares by the arrival of the Ents and the hints have been tending that way with the arrival of the horns and the other Ents so we was had slightly more knowledge than the riders and we get another of Tolkien's sea imagery here he says if the great sea had risen in wrath and fallen on the hills with storm it could have worked no greater ruin so we get the sense of an elemental force that has undone Orthanc it's a wonderful description it's on page 161 in my version it's well worth just looking at it full of lovely details that sum up this devastation ending with still dark and tall unbroken by the storm the tower of Orthanc stood pale waters lapped about its feet remember Orthanc wasn't made by Saruman it was made by men of Numenor so that's not been destroyed whereas a lot of 00:38:48.120 --> 00:40:02.280 Saruman's lesser works have been so we are in the point of view of the king and the company who are marvelling and then we get the answer that some of them have been waiting for there they saw close beside them a great rubble heap and suddenly they were aware of two small figures lying on it at their ease gray clad hardly to be seen among the stones there were bottles and bowls and platters laid beside them as if they had just eaten well and now rested from their labour so we know our hobbits well enough now to know who they are but we are also getting one of these rider point of view moments because they are seeing the hobbits afresh for the first time one seemed asleep the other with crossed legs and arms behind his head leaned back against a broken rock and sent from his mouth long wisps and little rings of thin blue smoke so Mary is the one who digs deep and finds the right words one of the interesting things about this comedic passage which is just lovely is we've been waiting for this the relief is huge when 00:40:02.280 --> 00:41:41.700 they are reunited with their friends and we as the readers feel it and it's expressed as well in some lovely exchange that follows but just a little moment here Mary is putting on his company manners he calls himself Mariadoc son of Saradoc and Peregrine son of Paladin who is kicking awake a bit of nice bathos there amongst the high polluting language Saradoc shows the Welsh vaguely Celtic roots that Tolkien wanted for that nomenclature and Paladin is purposely gothic for the Tewks because he saw those as an older family just so the language gives a hint of what he thought of the history of the various hobbit families Mary is wonderfully dry here he explains gravely that in answer to Gandalf's questions that his orders come from Treebeard who has taken over the management of Isengard great I mean he's matching Gandalf here for sort of dryness isn't he no wonder Gandalf loves the hobbits they share his sense of humor and so after this restraint Gimli's outburst is just fabulous what about your companions a fine hunt you have led us two hundred leagues through fen and forest battle and death to rescue you and 00:41:41.700 --> 00:43:08.220 we find you feasting and idling and smoking smoking and so on wonderful stuff including the the insult you woolly footed and wool pated truants so he's letting loose here and even Legolas gets a little sly moment here because he says oh yeah you speak for me Gimli though I would sooner learn how they came by the wine their double act is just priceless and in response to this banter which of course Aragorn is not joining in I bet he's laughing Theoden says it cannot be doubted that we witness the meeting of dear friends and then he goes on to reveal that the hobbits are not unknown to him and his people that his people call them the hobbit lan which obviously is quite close to Hobbit and it means in their language whole dweller and then you get this exchange with Mary where rather disappointingly which always makes me laugh every time I read this that Mary is astonished to find anyone's heard of them and Theoden says well there are no legends of their deeds and we get here Mary launching into the more important for the hobbits perspective that their deeds are really 00:43:08.220 --> 00:44:35.110 of you know eating and drinking and smoking he starts to tell the history of pipe weed now originally apparently Tolkien put a lot of lot more here but he then cut it out and moved it to the preface which was a good decision because we would like Gandalf want to interrupt and say these hobbits will sit on the edge of ruin and discuss the pleasures of the table and so on if you encourage them with undue patience we don't want to get sidetracked to that extent so Gandalf and Theoden and their people are sent off to meet Treebeard and Gandalf here interestingly calls Treebeard you will hear the speech of the oldest of all living things much scholarly ink has been spilt over who is the oldest thing in Middle-earth is it Tom Bombadil what about the elves I think the idea here is in a way Tom Bombadil is more like a more like Gandalf more like a spirit or a emanate you know something almost demigod ish about Tom whereas Treebeard is a tree or an ent tree so a living thing creaturely thing of Middle-earth so maybe that's how you 00:44:35.110 --> 00:46:05.720 can square that circle and as they ride off leaving the hobbits with Legolas Gimli and Aragorn the hobbits give Theoden a big thumbs up from them he is their kind of king the hobbits bowed low so that is the king of Rohan said Pippin in an undertone a fine old fellow very polite so this connection between the youngest of the the men folk we meet in terms of culturally the people of Rohan they are very close or understand in some ways better than many the hobbits who are also another sort of childlike young people in many ways their history is not very long or very venerable not much has happened if the legends are to be believed so there is a connection there between the two which is cemented at this moment and there we leave it before the meeting of the friends and description of what has quite happened to Isengard thank you very much for listening thanks for listening to Mythmakers podcast brought to you by the Oxford Center for fantasy visit OxfordCenterforfantasy.org to join in the fun find out about our online courses in-person stays in 00:46:05.720 --> 00:46:15.180 Oxford plus visit our shop for great gifts tell a friend and subscribe wherever you find your favorite podcasts worldwide