'Wraiths!' he wailed. 'Wraiths on Wings' -- (TT 4.ii.629-30)

Winged Messenger © Nick Marshall

[Gollum] went on again, but his uneasiness grew, and every now and again he stood up to his full height, craning his neck eastward and southward. For some time the hobbits could not hear or feel what was troubling him. Then suddenly all three halted, stiffening and listening. To Frodo and Sam it seemed that they heard, far away, a long wailing cry, high and thin and cruel. They shivered. At the same moment the stirring of the air became perceptible to them; and it grew very cold. As they stood straining their ears, they heard a noise like a wind coming in the distance. The misty lights wavered, dimmed, and went out.  

Gollum would not move. He stood shaking and gibbering to himself, until with a rush the wind came upon them, hissing and snarling over the marshes. The night became less dark, light enough for them to see, or half see, shapeless drifts of fog, curling and twisting as it rolled over them and passed them. Looking up they saw the clouds breaking and shredding; and then high in the south the moon glimmered out, riding in the flying wrack.

For a moment the sight of it gladdened the hearts of the hobbits; but Gollum cowered down, muttering curses on the White Face. Then Frodo and Sam staring at the sky, breathing deeply of the fresher air, saw it come: a small cloud flying from the accursed hills; a black shadow loosed from Mordor; a vast shape winged and ominous. It scudded across the moon, and with a deadly cry went away westward, outrunning the wind in its fell speed. 

They fell forward, grovelling heedlessly on the cold earth. But the shadow of horror wheeled and returned, passing lower now, right above them, sweeping the fen-reek with its ghastly wings. And then it was gone, flying back to Mordor with the speed of the wrath of Sauron; and behind it the wind roared away, leaving the Dead Marshes bare and bleak. The naked waste, as far as the eye could pierce, even to the distant menace of the mountains, was dappled with the fitful moonlight.  

Frodo and Sam got up, rubbing their eyes, like children wakened from an evil dream to find the familiar night still over the world. But Gollum lay on the ground as if he had been stunned. They roused him with difficulty, and for some time he would not lift his face, but knelt forward on his elbows, covering the back of his head with his large flat hands.  

'Wraiths!' he wailed. 'Wraiths on wings! The Precious is their master. They see everything, everything. Nothing can hide from them. Curse the White Face! And they tell Him everything. He sees, He knows. Ach, gollum, gollum, gollum!' It was not until the moon had sunk, westering far beyond Tol Brandir, that he would get up or make a move.  

(TT 4.ii.629-30, emphases original)

This scene, which replays itself twice more by the end of this chapter (TT 4.ii.634-35), is noteworthy for a couple of reasons. First, it allows us to make an observation that is important for understanding the power of the Ring, not because the Ring itself is directly in play here, but because of Gollum's similar behavior in another scene where its power is central. For outside the Black Gate, when Frodo declares that since there is no other way into Mordor, he must try this one, Gollum makes the mistake of suggesting that Frodo give the Ring back to him (TT 4.iii.637). At first Frodo appears not to have noticed what Gollum has said, or to attach no importance to it, so intent is he on his mission. When Gollum subsequently reveals the existence of another way into Mordor, Frodo's attention seems entirely devoted to considering that option.

But Frodo has not forgotten, not in the least.

'Sméagol,' he said, 'I will trust you once more. lndeed it seems that I must do so, and that it is my fate to receive help from you, where I least looked for it, and your fate to help me whom you long pursued with evil purpose. So far you have deserved well of me and have kept your promise truly. Truly, I say and mean,' he added with a glance at Sam, 'for twice now we have been in your power, and you have done no harm to us. Nor have you tried to take from me what you once sought. May the third time prove the best! But I warn you, Sméagol, you are in danger.' 

'Yes, yes, master!' said Gollum. 'Dreadful danger! Sméagol's bones shake to think of it, but he doesn't run away. He must help nice master.'  

'I did not mean the danger that we all share,' said Frodo. 'I mean a danger to yourself alone. You swore a promise by what you call the Precious. Remember that! It will hold you to it; but it will seek a way to twist it to your own undoing. Already you are being twisted. You revealed yourself to me just now, foolishly. Give it back to Sméagol you said. Do not say that again! Do not let that thought grow in you! You will never get it back. But the desire of it may betray you to a bitter end. You will never get it back. In the last need, Sméagol, I should put on the Precious; and the Precious mastered you long ago. If I, wearing it, were to command you, you would obey, even if it were to leap from a precipice or to cast yourself into the fire. And such would be my command. So have a care, Sméagol!' 

Sam looked at his master with approval, but also with surprise: there was a look in his face and a tone in his voice that he had not known before. It had always been a notion of his that the kindness of dear Mr. Frodo was of such a high degree that it must imply a fair measure of blindness. Of course, he also firmly held the incompatible belief that Mr. Frodo was the wisest person in the world (with the possible exception of Old Mr. Bilbo and of Gandalf). Gollum in his own way, and with much more excuse as his acquaintance was much briefer, may have made a similar mistake, confusing kindness and blindness. At any rate this speech abashed and terrified him. He grovelled on the ground and could speak no clear words but nice master. 

Frodo waited patiently for a while, then he spoke again less sternly. 'Come now, Gollum or Sméagol if you wish, tell me of this other way, and show me, if you can, what hope there is in it, enough to justify me in turning aside from my plain path. I am in haste.' 

But Gollum was in a pitiable state, and Frodo's threat had quite unnerved him. It was not easy to get any clear account out of him, amid his mumblings and squeakings, and the frequent interruptions in which he crawled on the floor and begged them both to be kind to 'poor little Sméagol'. After a while he grew a little calmer, and Frodo gathered bit by bit that, if a traveller followed the road that turned west of Ephel Duath, he would come in time .... 

(TT 4.iii.640-41, emphasis original)

In declaring that he trusts Gollum only because he must and only because of fate. Frodo is in essence declaring that he does not trust him at all. Indeed he has already twice indicated to Sam that this is so, first conceding that they were safe with Gollum 'at present' (TT 4.ii.622-23), and then that even the promise Gollum made on the Precious would hold only 'a while yet' (TT 4.ii.624). Frodo's 'so far' to Gollum here echoes his words to Sam there, and the private glance he steals at him as he says 'truly I say and mean' serves as a reminder to Sam that both patience and vigilance are still in order. And Frodo immediately gives evidence of both, and much more, as he glides smoothly from expressing, or seeming to express, concern for the danger which Gollum is in, to delivering a threat in which he invokes the power of the Ring to terrify him. He thus reduces him to a state of mumbling incoherence, something even the terror of the winged messengers had not done.

Without saying so explicitly, Frodo has here identified himself as the master of the Precious, which not only 'mastered' Gollum long ago, but the Ringwraiths as well. He has also -- if momentarily, yet not for the last time (TT 4.vi.687; cf. RK 6.iii.944) -- adopted the preferred weapon of the Ringwraiths themselves. For, as Strider said back in Bree when asked if the Nazgûl would attack The Prancing Pony, 'that is not their way.... their power is in terror' (FR 1.x.174, italics mine); to which we may add Gandalf's statement that they 'are only shadows of the power and the terror they would possess if the Ruling Ring were on their master's hand again' (FR 2.iv.295). He is also doing what Galadriel said he must do if he wished to use to Ring -- and warned him strongly against -- 'train[ing his] will to the domination of others' (FR 2.vii.366). It is perhaps especially worth noting in this context that, until now, it has been with Sting alone that Frodo has threatened Gollum (TT 4.i.614, ii.635; see also FR 2.ix.384).

That Frodo has come so far in so short a time is chilling. Not even ten days before this moment he had left his comrades because 'the evil of the Ring [was] already at work in the Company' (FR 2.x.401). And a few days after that he found within himself the pity for Gollum that Gandalf had failed to elicit from him back in The Shire (FR 1.ii.59; TT 4.i.615). That pity arose, as I have recently argued, largely because he saw how Boromir had 'fallen into evil' owing to the power of the Ring (FR 2.x.401).  Yet here we see Frodo himself trammeled in the web of the Ring's power, moved both to show pity and wield terror by swift turns. Galadriel's concern that 'all the Company' remain 'true' applies at least as much to Frodo as it does to Boromir (FR 2.vii.357), a point that we can too easily forget given the events on the slopes of Amon Hen. Indeed, Gandalf's 'neither strength nor good purpose will last' could almost be viewed as summing up the two of them (FR 1.ii.47). 

The second reason the scene with the wraiths is noteworthy is that it marks a turning point whose importance should be clearer in view of what we have just seen. Continuing directly from the point at which we stopped in the first quote, we find the following:

From that time on Sam thought that he sensed a change in Gollum again. He was more fawning and would-be friendly; but Sam surprised some strange looks in his eyes at times, especially towards Frodo; and he went back more and more into his old manner of speaking. And Sam had another growing anxiety. Frodo seemed to be weary, weary to the point of exhaustion. He said nothing, indeed he hardly spoke at all; and he did not complain, but he walked like one who carries a load, the weight of which is ever increasing; and he dragged along, slower and slower, so that Sam had often to beg Gollum to wait and not to leave their master behind. 

In fact with every step towards the gates of Mordor Frodo felt the Ring on its chain about his neck grow more burdensome. He was now beginning to feel it as an actual weight dragging him earthwards. But far more he was troubled by the Eye: so he called it to himself. It was that more than the drag of the Ring that made him cower and stoop as he walked. The Eye: that horrible growing sense of a hostile will that strove with great power to pierce all shadows of cloud, and earth, and flesh, and to see you: to pin you under its deadly gaze, naked, immovable. So thin, so frail and thin, the veils were become that still warded it off. Frodo knew just where the present habitation and heart of that will now was: as certainly as a man can tell the direction of the sun with his eyes shut. He was facing it, and its potency beat upon his brow. 

Gollum probably felt something of the same sort. But what went on in his wretched heart between the pressure of the Eye, and the lust of the Ring that was so near, and his grovelling promise made half in the fear of cold iron, the hobbits did not guess: Frodo gave no thought to it. Sam's mind was occupied mostly with his master, hardly noticing the dark cloud that had fallen on his own heart. He put Frodo in front of him now, and kept a watchful eye on every movement of his, supporting him if he stumbled, and trying to encourage him with clumsy words.

(TT 4.ii.630-31)

The effect of the terror of the Nazgûl here once again brings to mind the verdict of Aragorn at Bree: 'In dark and loneliness they are strongest' (FR 1.x.174). The shriek Frodo and Sam heard on the cliffs of the Emyn Muil a few days earlier demonstrates the truth of this, as the narrator emphasizes how much more powerful that cry was now than in the comfortable woods of The Shire: 'Out here in the waste its terror was far greater: it pierced them with cold blades of horror and despair, stopping heart and breath' (TT 4.i.607).  Now, however, not only does it bring them temporarily to their knees. It changes them.

For as bad as the Emyn Muil were, the Dead Marshes are worse. So far from being merely a desolate, difficult, and lonely landscape, the Dead Marshes are a no man's land haunted by the phantasms of ancient wars whose appearance -- whether they are truly the ghosts of the dead in battle, evil spirits like the Barrow-wights, or altogether an illusion of Sauron -- mocks all victory and sacrifice as vain, and denies the glory of the Great Tales. The marshes and the phantasms seem to cast a spell over Frodo and Sam, much as Old Man Willow and the Barrow-wight did, inducing a dreamlike state of consciousness that nearly tempts them to their ruin.^[1] As in the Old Forest, Sam seems more resistant than Frodo. Here, too, Frodo has a 'vision' in his dreams, explicitly called 'fair' here and quite reasonably seen as such there (FR 1.viii.135; TT 4.ii.635). Also as in the Old Forest, they have a guide or escort, who helps see them through the dangers to the other side.

But how different an escort is Gollum -- who flinches as if in pain at the sound of his own true name (TT 4.i.616) and is a slave to the Ring -- from Bombadil whose name has power, and over whom the Ring has none at all. And though the 'fair vision' of Frodo's dream refreshes him, he cannot remember it upon waking, in stark contrast with the six vividly remembered dreams in the chapters centered on Bombadil and his land. In the Dead Marshes, where even the land may be called 'weary', the wailing cry of the Nazgûl casts over them 'a shadow of growing fear in which memory could find nothing to rest upon' (TT 4.ii.631). Unlike in the Old Forest and Barrow Downs, or in Lothlórien, where Bombadil and Galadriel are present to ward off the darker powers, in the Dead Marshes that darkness holds sway; and aims at that domination which distinguishes 'the devices of the Enemy' from 'elf magic.'^[2]

As a result Gollum, who had changed for the better after promising 'to serve the master of the Precious' (TT 4.i.618), begins to revert to his former self: only a few days pass before the 'two thoughts' scene, in which Sam hears Gollum's worse self persuading his better self to betray the hobbits and recover the Ring (TT 4.ii.632-34). For Frodo, too, the Ring now begins to be a torment from moment to moment. The moral weight of its evil becomes a physical burden, wearying him and weighing him down; and though before he could perceive the spiritual pressure of Sauron's mind hunting for the Ring only when wearing the Ring or looking in Galadriel's mirror, now he feels it beating on his brow like the heat of the sun. Note the narrator's emphatic and uncharacteristic shift in pronouns from the normal and expected third to the more forceful second person: '...to see you: to pin you under its deadly gaze, naked, immovable' (italics mine).^[3]  Frodo's pity for Gollum, their kinship because of the Ring, and ability to reach each other (TT 4.i.618), now seem of little avail. A moment after the narrator tells us that Gollum's experience must have been similar to Frodo's, he also makes a point (hence the colon) of telling us that 'Frodo gave it no thought.' Feeling threatened as he does, Frodo attends only to the Ring even as he struggles onward with the intention of destroying it.

© Ted Nasmith 

_____________________________

^[1] For an extended discussion of these states of consciousness, see here.

^[2] That The Dead Marshes exhibit these characteristics suggests that Faërie contains the enchantments that are an expression of the will to power as much as those that generate Art.

^[3] I find myself unable to think of a similar instance of this kind of shift by the narrator in The Lord of the Rings.

The Black Rider, the Fox, and the Elves

Just over the top of the hill they came on the patch of fir-wood.  Leaving the road they went into the deep resin-scented darkness of the trees, and gathered dead sticks and cones to make a fire.  Soon they had a merry crackle of flame at the foot of a large fir-tree and they sat around it for a while, until they began to nod.  Then, each in an angle of the great tree's roots, they curled up in their cloaks and blankets, and were soon fast asleep.  They set no watch, for they were still in the heart of the Shire.  A few creatures came and looked at them when the fire died away.  A fox passing through the wood on business of his own stopped several minutes and sniffed. 

'Hobbits,' he thought. 'Well, what next?  I have heard of strange doings in this land, but I have seldom heard of a hobbit sleeping out of doors under a tree.  Three of them!  There's something mighty queer behind this.'  He was quite right, but he never found out anything more about it.

(FR 1.iii.72)

From the first time I read this passage at eleven years old I have been charmed by it. As I grew older I came to regard it as a last vestigial intrusion of the much more forward and obvious narrator of The Hobbit, the same one who made the rather jarring comment of Gandalf's fireworks that 'the dragon passed like an express train' (FR 1.i.28).  I always smiled to read it or recall it, but I didn't give it much more thought than that.

Until the other night. I had finished the second in my series on Sam and Story, and was reading through the next passages I wanted to examine, when suddenly I heard an echo of the fox's thoughts in an unexpected place.  The next night the hobbits unexpectedly meet Gildor and the Elves in the woods Sam had been asking about:

The hobbits sat in shadow by the wayside.  Before long the Elves came down the lane towards the valley,  They passed slowly, and the hobbits could see the starlight glimmering on their hair and in their eyes.  They bore no lights, yet as they walked a shimmer, like the light of the moon above the rim of the hills before it rises, seemed to fall about their feet. They were now silent, and as the last elf passed he turned and looked towards the hobbits and laughed, 

'Hail, Frodo,' he cried.  'You are abroad late.  Or perhaps you are lost?' Then he called aloud to the others, and all the company stopped and gathered round. 

'This is indeed wonderful!' they said. 'Three hobbits alone in a wood at night! We have not seen such a thing since Bilbo went away. What is the meaning of it?' 

'The meaning of it, fair people,' said Frodo, 'is simply that we seem to be going the same way as you are. I like walking under the stars. But I would welcome your company.' 

'But we have no need of other company, and hobbits are so dull,' they laughed.  'And how do you know that we go the same way as you, for you do not know whither we are going?'

(FR 1.iii.80)

And while I know I have heard (and forgotten) this particular echo before, I think it resonated differently for me this time because of my examination of the next scene in which Sam asks 'Do Elves live in those woods?' First there was the fox on his way through the woods on business of his own, who stopped when he did not have to and specifically noted the strangeness of three hobbits in a wood at night. Then the Elves do precisely the same thing.

This makes me think that the appearance of the sentient fox  -- who is aware of 'strange doings in this land,' who of course does not see 'this land' as 'The Shire' because to him it is not The Shire, and who seems to be a folklore or fairy tale archetype of cunning in Middle-earth also -- is more than merely the vestige of The Hobbit I had long believed him to be.¹ Rather he is another example of how the hobbits have already entered the world of Story without straying at all far from home and without their even knowing it yet.  The fox is a link backwards to the Black Rider who questions the Gaffer right outside Frodo's front door earlier that same evening -- no one knew anything about him and his connection to another world then either -- and forwards to the reappearance of the same mysterious Black Rider in a more menacing way the next day,² and the arrival of Gildor and the Elves. Much like them, the 'thinking fox,' as he is described in the index (RK 1156), shows that the world is other than the hobbits understand.

_____________________________________

¹ In two widely separate passages Gollum is likened to a fox in cleverness. In the first the speaker is Aragorn, who calls Gollum 'slier than a fox' (FR 2.ix.384); and in the second Faramir says that Gollum 'gave us the slip by some fox-trick' (TT 4.iv.657).  Clearly the cunning of the fox is well-established in both the north and south of Middle-earth.  One could not make such statements otherwise.  It would be absurd to imagine that the reputation of the fox was established in any other way than in stories, just as it has been in our world from ancient times.
² Note how the Black Rider is more frightening when he is near them in lonely places and in darkness (FR 1.iii.74-75, 78) than he was at the door of Bag End (1.iii.69, 75-76). This of course agrees with Strider's description of them (FR1.x.174). See my discussion here.

The Black Riders at Bree

In the hobbits' room at the Prancing Pony, Frodo and Strider are discussing the worrisome failure of Gandalf to appear as promised:

'Do you think the Black Riders have anything to do with it -- with Gandalf's absence, I mean?' asked Frodo.

'I don't know of anything else that could have hindered him, except the Enemy himself,' said Strider.  'But do not give up hope!  Gandalf is greater than you Shire-folk know -- as a rule you can only see his jokes and his toys.  But this business of ours will be his greatest task.'

(FR 1.x.172)

At this point Merry bursts into the room saying that he has just seen the Black Riders.  There follows a discussion of the Black Riders in which we receive our first clear and significant information about them.  But we are more than merely informed. The very structure of the narrative linking this scene, which ends the present chapter, Strider, and the first two scenes in the next chapter, A Knife in the Dark, not only confirms what Strider tells the hobbits, thereby helping to establish his character and that of the Black Riders, but it also affords us a glimpse of the early use of a technique which Tolkien will use with great success in The Two Towers and The Return of the King.

First I want to sound a note of caution, especially for those of us who have read the work more than once. We need to beware of hindsight here.  For while it is true that Gandalf mentions the Ringwraiths back in The Shadow of the Past (FR 1.ii.51), neither Frodo nor the first time reader will know that the Black Riders are the nine mortal men Sauron ensnared with rings of power until Gandalf explicitly tells Frodo this in Many Meetings (FR 2.i.220).  When the hobbits met the Elves in the Shire and asked Gildor who the Riders were, Gildor refused to answer, though he issues a stern and prophetic warning to flee them (FR 1.iii.80, 83-84).¹ Bombadil, too, seemed to know something about the Ringwraiths (FR 1.vii.132, viii.147), but told the hobbits nothing.  At this moment in this scene the hobbits, and the reader, know little more than that the Black Riders have come from Mordor in search of the Ring, and that there is something innately frightening about them.  And even in this scene Strider, who doubtless knows the identity of the black horsemen, withholds it from the hobbits.²  

Nor is it just the characters who are reticent.  The narrator, too, who is not averse to providing information about mysterious predatory evils in his own voice elsewhere, also holds his tongue throughout the first book of The Fellowship.³ So, while we might put the refusal of the characters to speak down to a reluctance to name an evil -- since naming calls -- we cannot do the same for the narrator.

This suggests that we need to pay close attention, because the text is telling us something more than their name alone could tell us.  For even if Strider had explained that the Black Riders were in fact the Ringwraiths of whom Gandalf had spoken, that would not tell the hobbits or the reader very much.  For Gandalf said little more than that they were Sauron's 'most terrible servants' before he, too, stopped talking: 'But come!  We will not speak of such things even in the morning of the Shire.' (FR 1.ii.51)

So what does the text say? The first thing we learn is that the Riders have a power great enough to hinder Gandalf, but what that power is we don't yet know. And, since we have not yet seen 'Gandalf the Grey uncloaked,' the assertion that the wizard is 'greater than you Shire-folk know' is suggestive but not very revealing.⁴ Strider means to inspire hope, but by increasing expectations of Gandalf's power, he necessarily does the same for the Riders.  The stronger Gandalf is, the stronger they must be to 'hinder' him.

With Merry's arrival, our information starts to become more definite.  Alone, outside, and in the dark, Merry had felt that 'something horrible was creeping near,' something he can at first perceive only as 'a sort of deeper shade among the shadows.' (FR 1.x.173) But the Rider withdraws at once, and Merry follows: 'I could hardly help myself.  I seemed to be drawn somehow.'  This sounds more like Merry's will is being influenced than mere hobbit curiosity, or the foolish stoutness of heart that Strider had believed it to be at first.⁵  As he draws near the Black Rider, he sees him talking to a man (almost certainly Bill Ferny passing on the word of Frodo's disappearance).  Then Merry is seized by terror and turns to go, but he is overwhelmed from behind by 'something' he has trouble describing:

 ...I fell over....I thought I had fallen into deep water...I had an ugly dream, which I can't remember.  I went to pieces.  I don't know what came over me.

(FR 1.x.173)

Strider identifies this without hesitation as The Black Breath, a power the Riders can evidently employ at will, since no one else we have seen them approach so far has been similarly affected.⁶ But now that the Black Riders know they have found the Ring, the next question becomes obvious, and its answering is revealing:

'What will happen?' said Merry. 'Will they attack the inn?'

'No, I think not,' said Strider. 'They are not all here yet.  And in any case that is not their way.  In dark and loneliness they are strongest; they will not openly attack a house where there are lights and many people -- not until they are desperate, not while all the long leagues of Eriador still lie before us.  But their power is in terror, and already some in Bree are in their clutch.  They will drive these wretches to some evil work: Ferny, and some of the strangers, and, maybe, the gatekeeper, too.  They had words with Harry at West-gate on Monday.  I was watching them.  He was white and shaking when they left him.'

(FR 1.x.174)

First Strider flatly rejects the likelihood of an attack because the Riders are not all present, and then, more importantly, he dismisses the very idea of one out of hand (thus, 'And in any case that is not their way.').  From such 'terrible servants' of the Enemy we might expect an approach both forceful and direct now that they have found the Ring, and, as Strider's statement also makes clear, such an assault is something of which they are entirely capable. But they prefer not to.  For 'their power is in terror;' and they like it that way.

To jump ahead just a little bit to illustrate this point, consider the Witch King's attack on Frodo on Weathertop a week later.  He is armed not only with a sword, but with an enchanted knife that reduces its victim to a wraith enslaved and tormented by Sauron.  It is this weapon the Witch King chooses to stab Frodo with when he could just as easily have killed him with his sword. (FR 1.xi.195-96; 2.i.222)  He chooses the application of terror over the application of force.  Because that is their way.

Nor is terror a power they use merely to subdue their opponents, as it is with Merry. It is a tool by which they 'drive' others to do evil, as happens with Bill Ferny, the southerners, and Harry the gatekeeper.  And again, since not everyone they approach is terrified, (or, like Merry, at least not terrified at once,) this power seems to be under their control, to be exerted when it suits them.⁷ It is precisely this use of their power of terror against which Strider is guarding the hobbits as chapter ten ends.

And the very next scenes, which open the chapter A Knife in the Dark, illustrate everything Strider has just said about the 'way' of the Black Riders. At Crickhollow (FR 1.xi,176-77) the night is dark, and the dwelling stands lonely, with 'the nearest house, more than a mile away.'  Inside are not many people but one, and he in terror. The Riders approach slowly but not too stealthily -- Fatty Bolger, a hobbit not a Ranger, sees them coming! -- allowing his fear to mount throughout the day until they finally attack in the dead of night, shattering the door with a single blow.  When they meet opposition because Fatty has fled and raised the alarm, they withdraw, openly and with clear contempt for the hobbits.  Back in Bree the following morning (FR 1.xi.177-179), the hobbits wake to find that their rooms, where Strider had urged them not to sleep, have been broken into through the windows and ransacked, as if by burglars and vandals.  This was Ferny and the other 'wretches,' driven by terror to 'some evil work,'  If Strider's words in the last chapter were not enough to make this clear, the contrast between the first two scenes in this chapter should be. When the Riders do attack, they do so openly.  They break down doors; they don't do windows.

Thus, as we see, these three scenes not only establish the character of the Black Riders in terms of their power and 'their way' of using it, but also confirm the capability and and trustworthiness of Strider, since events bear witness to his account of them.  We might even allow that these scenes plant a seed for our understanding of Gandalf and his power, given the implicit comparison of his with theirs.  For just as the power of the Ringwraiths consists in the terror they can inflict, whether as goad or weapon, so Gandalf's consists in his ability to inspire hearts to hope against the darkness.⁸

In switching the scene back to Crickhollow for a moment, we can also see Tolkien dividing the narrative into separate but related threads for the first time, as he will do later in The Two Towers and The Return of the King when he follows a number of interwoven strands that diverge and come together and diverge again in different ways before they finally all meet again in The Field of Cormallen: Merry and Pippin; Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli; Frodo and Sam; Gandalf and Pippin; and Merry and Éowyn.  These later instances differ significantly from this one, however.  They narrate large scale developments of significance to the Tale as whole, and continue at length, usually for at least a few chapters.  With Crickhollow, however, the narrator shifts the scene for a mere page and a half, and only, in a sense, to prove that Strider's description of the ways of the Black Riders is accurate,

To be sure the "incident at Crickhollow" is dramatic in itself, haunting and visual, taut with mystery and fear, brought off as masterfully as in the the best horror film. There is the 'brooding threat' that had been growing all day, the peeking of Fatty Bolger out the door, and the ghostly opening of the garden gate, seemingly by itself. There is the heroic blowing of the horn call of Buckland to rouse the hobbits to face a threat they cannot imagine.  There is the suitably epic allusion that whets our taste for events beyond our ken -- 'not since the white wolves came in the Fell Winter, when the Brandywine was frozen over' (note the famous capitals in Fell Winter, which tell us that this story is unknown only to us).  There is the "thin and menacing" voice of the Black Rider -- no longer whispering or hissing, but demanding the door be opened in the name of Mordor -- and then the heavy hand that breaks down the door with a single blow. And most remarkable of all there is the brief shift into the perspective of the Riders themselves --

Let the little people blow! Sauron would deal with them later.  Meanwhile they had another errand: they knew now that the house was empty and the Ring had gone.  They rode down the guards at the gate and vanished from the Shire.

(FR 1.x.177)

It is all quite breathtaking.  I can recall the thrill the first time I read it.  It's a wonderful scene and I love it.  The Tale would be far less rich without it.  But the plot would suffer little were it not there.

________________________________

All citations of The Lord of the Rings refer to the single volume fiftieth anniversary edition.  Thus, for example, RK 6.ix.1030 cites The Return of the King, book six, chapter nine ( = The Grey Havens), page 1030.

¹It is hardly surprising that it is in precisely this context that the famous line 'Go not to the Elves for counsel, for they will say both no and yes' occurs.

²Strider ignores every opportunity to identify the Riders, even when telling the hobbits more about them (FR 1.xi.189, xii.197-98, 204).  On the way to Weathertop, Frodo had joked that he was getting so thin that he would become a wraith, and was rebuked by Strider 'with surprising earnestness.' (FR 1.xi.184) It is surprising only because of the hobbits' ignorance.  When Glorfindel arrives (FR 1.xii.210), he refers to the Riders as 'the Nine,' which is the first time their full number has been mentioned. (Strider twice indicates that he knows their number, but never gives it (FR 1.x.165, xii.197).)  Although Gandalf had spoken of the Nine to Frodo (FR 1.ii.50-51, Frodo does not make the connection.

³Shelob is a perfect example of this, whom the narrator pauses and intrudes into the narrative to identify  (TT 4.ix.723-24).  After an introduction in a high mythic register, detailing her evil, ancient and heedless even of Sauron, the narrator then turns back to say 'But nothing of this evil which they had stirred up against them did poor Sam know.' Cf. also TT 4.iii.644: 'Its name was Cirith Ungol....'

⁴Gandalf's threat -- 'Then you shall see Gandalf the Grey uncloaked' (FR 1.i.34) -- could suggest that not even Bilbo has seen this, and to be sure the Gandalf we see in The Hobbit does not show much 'power' of the kind displayed by him at times in The Lord of the Rings: at first offstage at Weathertop (1.x.183, 187, 2.ii.264), in Hollin against the wargs (2.iv,297-99; and, most famously, against the Balrog (2.326-27, 329-31; TT 3.v.501-02).

⁵Cf. FR 2.vii.366, where Galadriel speaks to Frodo about the use of the Ring and 'the domination of others,' an ability which she, herself the keeper of one of the three elven rings, demonstrates during the Company's stay in Lórien in the famous scene where she tests their hearts (FR 2.vii.356-58).  The power of terror wielded by the Ringwraiths is a different manifestation of this ability to dominate others that goes with using Rings of Power.  As the testing scene itself demonstrates, some are better than others at resisting domination.  For further discussion of this scene, go here.


⁶So far the Riders have been close to or spoken to the Gaffer (FR. 1.iii.69-70, 75-76), Farmer Maggot (1.iv.93-94), and Butterbur (1.x.167-68), all of whom were more 'put out' by them than anything else; but Harry the Gatekeeper (1.x.174) was frightened, as was Butterbur's servant Nob.  Frodo overhearing the Gaffer's conversation with the Rider finds himself annoyed. During their journey across the Shire in the chapter Three Is Company and A Short Cut to Mushrooms, Frodo, Sam, and Pippin have several near encounters with the Black Riders of course (1.iii.74-76, 78-79; iv.90-91),but they do not seem to grow seriously afraid until the third time, when they hear the Black Riders calling out to one another, cries which were 'chilling to the blood.'(1.iv.90) So, clearly, mere proximity to the Riders does not produce the effects of The Black Breath or induce panic and terror. Nor does the Rider attempt to intimidate the Gaffer, and he offers Maggot gold for information.  The openness of the Riders' dealings with all of these people is worth noting.

The Black Breath is identified in the index of persons, places, and things with The Black Shadow (RK 1145), and cites other passages (FR 2.ii.256; RK 5.860, 864, 865, 871), the most relevant of which is 5.viii.860.  Cf. especially the condition of Merry after striking the Witch King: RK 5.viii.858-59.

⁷See note 6.

⁸ Cf. Círdan's words to Gandalf as he gave him the Ring of Fire: 'with it you may rekindle hearts in a world that grows chill.' (RK 1085) See also the description of Gandalf (Olórin) in The Silmarillion (1977) 30-31 and The History of Middle-Earth x.147, 152, and especially 203, where Christopher Tolkien quotes a handwritten addition of his father's to the typescript of the Valaquenta, which he says was wrongly omitted from the published Silmarillion: '[Olórin] was humble in the Land of the Blessed; and in Middle-earth he sought no renown. His triumph was in the uprising of the fallen, and his joy was in the renewal of hope.'

One might object, not without reason, that this is 'retcon,' and so should be omitted from our consideration of The Lord of the Rings. If we were discussing Galadriel or Isildur, whose characters underwent substantial change and revision after the publication of The Lord of the Rings, I would entirely agree. But this characterization merely writes Gandalf and what we already can see in him in The Lord of the Rings into the 'older' text of The Silmarillion. There is no change in him as there is with the others. On Galadriel and Isildur see Unfinished Tales (1980) 228-267, 271-87 and listen to the discussions on Galadriel and  Isildur during The Mythgard Academy's free course on Unfinished Tales.