Oedipus and the Royal Navy -- Not quite the thing, you know

This is probably my favorite fictional example of the reception of the myth of Oedipus. Captain Jack Aubrey is on deck speaking to his former midshipman, Captain William Babbington, commander of HMS Oedipus, while politely ignoring the argument raging below them in the captain's cabin between their newly married friends, Dr. Stephen Maturin and Diana Villiers.

The yards were braced just so, the Oedipus was heading for Dover over a quiet, gently rippling sea, her deck was almost as steady as a table, and now that all was coiled down and pretty there was scarcely a sound but the wind in her rigging, the distant cry of gulls, and the water slipping down her side. They were standing not far from the cabin skylight, and in the comparative silence they distinctly heard the words, ‘God’s death, Maturin, what an obstinate stubborn pigheaded brute you are, upon my honour. You always were.’

‘Perhaps you would like to see our figurehead, sir,’ said Babbington. ‘It is a new one: in the Grecian taste, I believe.’

Oedipus might well have been in the Grecian taste, if the Greeks had been much given to very thick paint, an insipid smirk, eyes fixed in a meaningless glare, and scarlet cheeks. The two captains stared at the image and after a while Jack said, ‘I was never any great fist at the classics, but was there not something rather odd about his feet?'

‘I believe there was, sir. But fortunately they don’t show, he being cut off at the waist.’ ‘Though now I come to think of it, was it not his marriage, rather than his feet?’

‘Perhaps it was both, sir: they might go together. And I seem to recall something in Gregory’s Polite Education to that effect.’

Captain Aubrey pondered, staring at the dolphin-striker. ‘I have it,’ he cried. ‘You are quite right: both marriage and feet. I remember the Doctor telling me the whole story when we lay alongside Jocasta in Rosia Bay. I do not mean the least fling at your figurehead, still less your brig, Babbington, but that family was not really quite the thing, you know. There were some very odd capers, and it ended unhappy. But then the relationships between men and women are often very odd, and I am afraid they often end unhappy....

Patrick O'Brian

The Surgeon's Mate

The 'Lame' Sovereignty of Melkor and Man -- Disability and Power in 'The Children of Húrin'

Fingolfin's Challenge © John Howe 2003

Plutarch's Agesilaos tells the story of a power struggle for the throne of ancient Sparta. When Agis II died in 400, his younger brother, Agesilaos challenged the claim of Agis' son, Leotychides, on the grounds that he was illegitimate. It was objected that Agesilaos could not succeed his brother because he had a limp, and a prophecy warned that Sparta should beware lest 'lame kingship' (χωλὴ βασιλεία) harm the state, which till then had been 'sound of foot' (ἀρτίποδος; Ages. 3.3-4). By dint of superior cleverness -- and no doubt better politicking -- the cause of Ageslaos prevailed. The real 'lame kingship,' he argued, would result from an illegitimate heir taking the throne (Ages. 3.5).

Here we see the word χωλή (khōlé) employed as an insult both literally and metaphorically, to suggest that the person or thing so described is impaired and therefore inferior to the 'sound of foot.' 'Lame' in English is similar in its range and potential for giving offense. A brain or an idea can be as 'lame' as a leg. The simpler, physical meaning, even if never wholly free from negative connotations, gives rise to the metaphorical and is then eclipsed by it. Clearly this has been going on since at least the time of Homer, centuries before the events of which Plutarch speaks:

ἄσβεστος δ᾽ ἄρ᾽ ἐνῶρτο γέλως μακάρεσσι θεοῖσιν
ὡς ἴδον Ἥφαιστον διὰ δώματα ποιπνύοντα. 

(Iliad 1.599-600) 

Unquenchable laughter was roused in the blessed gods
When they saw Hephaistos bustling through the palace.

And why does the sight of Hephaistos bustling stir up such laughter, and why is it marked by the particle ἄρα, which signifies that their laughter is what was after all only to be expected? Because he is 'περικλυτὸς ἀμφιγυήεις / Ἥφαιστος', 'famous Hephaistos, lame in both feet' (Iliad 1.607-08).

Turning from Plutarch and Homer to Shakespeare, we see the magnificent villain, Richard III, revelling in and despising the stigma which his limp inflicts upon him (1.1.12-31). We can see it elsewhere, too, spread across his comedies, tragedies, and histories as well as the sonnets and other poems (see here). However much Tolkien may have preferred Old English and Old Norse, he was far from ignorant of Homer and Shakespeare; a knowledge of the history of the Greeks in the fifth and fourth centuries and a familiarity with the Lives of Plutarch would have also been normal for an educated man of his day (cf. C.S. Lewis, Letters, of 13 May 1917, 11 January 1939, 12 October 1940, 1 January 1949).

So, if an author like Tolkien introduces a character affected by a physical disability, the author may well be using that particular disability to suggest something. When that author introduces a second character with the same disability, it becomes difficult to claim that the author is not suggesting something. But when the author brings in a third such character in a pivotal role, we have only ourselves to blame if we fail to see that some point is being made. Thus we have The Children of Húrin, in which Tolkien gives us three characters who have a limp.

Early in the tale we meet Sador. Maimed by an accident while cutting wood, and thus unable to serve Húrin, his lord, as a fighting man, Sador works as a servant in his household, making and repairing things (40-41). Morwen and Húrin treat him with indulgence, though they believe he could spend his time better than he does (49-50, 72). Young Túrin, however, loves him and spends much time talking to him and learning things about life he has not learned from his parents. He affectionately calls Sador 'Labadal', that is, 'Hopafoot', which in his childlike way Túrin means as an endearment, and at which Sador takes no offense because he knows that it is meant 'in pity not scorn' (41). Yet Labadal is Túrin's first attempt at naming, the first of many he will make in his life, and it succeeds, to the extent that it does at all, only because Sador is wise enough not to take offense at its misapprehension of reality. 'Labadal' is the beginning of a series of names through which Túrin comes to challenge the world around him, culminating in Turambar, Master of Fate.

It is late in the tale, when Túrin comes to Brethil where he will give himself the last of his names, Turambar, the Master of Fate, that Brandir enters the story, the second of the limping characters in The Children of Húrin. Unlike Sador, Brandir's disability arises from 'a leg broken in a misadventure in childhood' (193), but it also unfitted him for war, especially since he was already 'gentle in mood'. Like Sador, Brandir has more interest in wood than metal (41, 72, 193), with which we may contrast the importance of metal, both practically and symbolically, in Túrin's life -- the knife which he gives Sador as a gift, the dragon-helm that declares his identity as rightful Lord of Dor-Lómin, and the black sword with which he kills Glaurung, Brandir, and himself. Unlike Sador, however, Brandir is the lord of his people, a people at war whom he cannot lead in battle, which is of course his role.

Both Sador and Brandir also have crucial roles to play with Túrin's sisters. It is to Sador that the young Túrin turns when his beloved sister, Lalaith (Laughter), dies in childhood as a result of a plague sent by Morgoth (40-44). It is from Sador that Túrin first learns about the inevitability of death as the fate of all Men. It is from Brandir, on the other hand, that he learns that 'the feet of his doom were overtaking him' in his tragic ignorant marriage to Níniel (Maid of Tears), his 'twice-beloved' sister (250-56). And just as he had called Sador 'Labadal' in love and pity, he now calls Brandir 'club-foot' and a 'limping evil' in wrath and scorn. And just as 'Hopafoot' had told him of all that Men could learn from the Elves, it is the elf Mablung who teaches him the truth of 'Club-foot's' words. From the bewept Laughter to the beloved Maid of Tears, from the dear Hopafoot to the despised Club-foot, from the lore Men can acquire from Elves to the lesson of doom that Mablung brings, these two characters and their lameness frame this tale, both narratively by appearing at its beginning and end, and tragically by their involvement in and commentary on the life not only of Túrin, but of Man overall.

With lameness so interwoven into Túrin's tragic tale, it is impossible not to think of Oedipus and his tragic tale, which of course Tolkien himself openly acknowledged as a source of 'elements' in The Children of Húrin's (Letters, no. 131). Dimitra Fimi, moreover, has analyzed these 'elements' in her excellent '"Wildman of the Woods": inscribing tragedy on the landscape of Middle-earth in The Children of Húrin', where she comments:

Túrin is not lame or maimed himself, but two important characters in his tale are so afflicted: Sador [...] for whom young Túrin feels pity; and Brandir [...] whose position Túrin usurps as an able-bodied warrior. In Oedipus' case lameness is a sign of his real identity, while Túrin's reaction to lameness shows his change from sensitive youth to rash warrior, who associates the wilderness with aggression in order to channel his dangerous wrath. 

(Fimi, 55)

While I wholly agree with Fimi about 'Túrin's reaction' -- indeed he had previously usurped the authority of Orodreth at Nargothrond, whose leadership is also weak and who could be seen as metaphorically lame when viewed alongside Brandir's (CoH 160-65, 171-76) -- I would argue that there is more to be said about lameness in The Children of Húrin. Indeed, as Fimi has shown, the correspondences between the two stories are extensive. For anyone familiar with Oedipus, that Túrin himself is not lame is immediately noticeable but not necessarily noteworthy. After all, as Tolkien also pointed out, Túrin owes 'elements' to Sigurd and Kullervo as well (Letters, no. 131). Yet the development of lameness as a metaphor through not two but three other characters who play important roles in Túrin's life indicates that Tolkien was after something bigger here. Considering the third of these characters will help us see what that is.

For Morgoth is the third character, whose malice towards Húrin and his family drives the tale as much as Túrin himself does. Curiously, slyly, Tolkien never openly says in The Children of Húrin that as a result of his duel with Fingolfin 'Morgoth went ever halt of one foot after that day, and the pain of his wounds could not be healed' (Silm. 154). He does, however, emphasize that 'Morgoth hated and feared the House of Fingolfin, because they had scorned him in Valinor and had the friendship of Ulmo his foe; and because of the wounds that Fingolfin gave him in battle' (CoH 60, italics mine). Note the construction of this sentence. Rather than say that he hated Fingolfin's house because of a, b, and c, which would be the common way of phrasing it, Tolkien says that he hated them because of a and b -- pause (thus, the semicolon) -- and because of c. He thus quite literally singles out the final reason and signals through the balance of the sentence that this reason is of special importance, perhaps even of equal importance. And of the eight wounds which Fingolfin inflicted on Morgoth, the only one specifically named is the last, the wound that maimed his foot.

Morgoth punishes Hurin © Ted Nasmith

So, we have seen how the lameness of Sador and Brandir is meaningfully interwoven with Túrin's misfortunes. How does Morgoth's matter? It undermines the claims to unrivaled position and power he makes in his verbal duel with Húrin, whom he can dominate and destroy, but never daunt (CoH 61-65). In this respect Húrin's encounter with Morgoth parallels Fingolfin's. They both defy, though in different ways, a power by whom they are outmatched. Yet their linked defiance refutes their defeat and marks the inner deficiency in Morgoth which his outer disability exemplifies. Their defeat may be inevitable, but so is his; and because he is cruel and cowardly and selfish, Morgoth's defeat is a refutation of all that he claims. In the end his shall prove to be a 'lame' sovereignty. For as Ilúvatar told him before the beginning:

'And thou, Melkor, shalt see that no theme may be played that hath not its uttermost source in me, nor can any alter the music in my despite. For he that attempteth this shall prove but mine instrument in the devising of things more wonderful, which he himself hath not imagined.'

(Silm. 17)

No matter Morgoth's boast to Húrin that he is 'the Master of the fates of Arda', he is not, no more than Túrin 'Turambar' is the 'Master of Doom' that he claims to be (CoH 65, 196, 218, 243-44). Their positions are analogous. Though each of them is powerful, neither one can finally prevail in thought or strength against one who is in turn mightier than he. The connections we see here between Morgoth and Túrin also call to mind another passage:

But Ilúvatar knew that Men, being set amid the turmoils of the powers of the world, would stray often, and would not use their gifts in harmony; and he said: ''These too in their time shall find that all that they do redounds at the end only to the glory of my work.' Yet the Elves believe that Men are often a grief to Manwë, who knows most of the mind of Ilúvatar; for it seems to the Elves that Men resemble Melkor most of all the Ainur, although he has ever feared and hated them, even those that served him. 

(Silm. 42)

© Alan Lee

There is more to be said here, I believe, more to be explored at length in greater detail, and I hope to turn to that before long. For now, however, it seems clear that the 'lameness' that surrounds Túrin and connects him and Men in general to Morgoth shows, directly in Morgoth and by reflection in Túrin, what Shakespeare might have called 'a will most incorrect to heaven' (Hamlet 1.2.101) and Homer, Sophocles, and Plutarch hybris. In such a case it is little wonder that, when Mablung arrives like the fateful messenger in Oedipus Tyrannos, and says to Túrin that the years 'have been heavy on you', he receives the reply (CoH 253):

'Heavy!' said Túrin. 'Yes, as the feet of Morgoth.'

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Works Consulted

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Hobbit Verses Versus Verses by Hobbits: Orality, Poetry, and Literacy in Bilbo's Shire

On Saturday 3 October I had the good fortune to attend the The Mythgard Institute's Midatlantic Speculative Fiction Symposium at the University of Maryland. It was as fine a mixture of work and play as you could want, with never a dull boy to be found. Among other subjects, we spoke of Star Wars, Philip Pullman, Prophecy and Predestination, Lovecraft, Tolkien, The Kalevala, film adaptation, On Fairy-Stories, Twin Peaks, Babylon 5, Ted Chiang, Frank Herbert, and Stephen Sondheim. Discussion was lively, and laughter abundant.

But for me the two highlights of the day were a trivia contest focusing on hapax legomena (words that occur only once) in The Lord of the Rings, and Sørina Higgins' interview of Verlyn Flieger about her latest book, a scholarly edition of J.R.R. Tolkien's first prose tale, The Story of Kullervo, which, alas, will not be published in the States until next spring. (If you can't wait -- I couldn't -- you can order it directly from Blackwell's, and doubtless other places as well.)

In all it was a wonderful time. I had the chance to become better acquainted with several people I had only met briefly before, or only on the web, and to chat for the first time with others I had not known at all.  I very much hope that we'll see more meetings like this in the near future. Supporting The Mythgard Institute will help that happen.

I was also fortunate enough to present a brief paper, Hobbit Verses Versus Verses by Hobbits: Orality, Poetry, and Literacy in Bilbo's Shire, which I have added below for all who may be interested. I plan to expand it at some point in the future, to discuss some of the material I had to relegate to the footnotes during my talk, the material I mention in my final paragraph, and other hobbit poems, like Sam's Oliphaunt, and Frodo's spontaneous verse, after the fashion of Tom Bombadil, when he first sees Goldberry. But for now, here it is.

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One summer evening in the Ivy Bush Gaffer Gamgee was denying that Bag End was ‘packed with chests of gold and silver, and jools’ (FR 1.i.23):

‘… my lad Sam will know more about that. He’s in and out of Bag End. Crazy about stories of the old days he is, and he listens to all Mr. Bilbo’s tales. Mr. Bilbo has learned him his letters – meaning no harm, mark you, and I hope no harm will come of it. 

‘Elves and Dragons’ I says to him. ‘Cabbages and potatoes are better for me and you. Don’t go getting mixed up in the business of your betters, or you’ll land in trouble too big for you,’ I says to him.

(FR 1.i.24, emphasis original)

Only a few days later Bilbo sent out so many party invitations that both local Post Offices were overwhelmed, and needed volunteers to handle all the replies: ‘There was a constant stream of them going up the Hill, carrying hundreds of polite variations on Thank you, I shall certainly come’ (1.i.26).

These few brief quotes suggest that basic literacy in the Shire was quite common, but not universal.[1] Moreover, the Gaffer’s defensiveness and his insistence that gardeners like him and Sam – thus  ‘cabbages and potatoes’ – shouldn’t get above themselves, point to a class distinction between those who can read and those who cannot, an impression reinforced by the colloquial illiteracies of his speech – ‘j-oo-ls,’ ‘learned’ as a synonym of ‘taught,’ and ‘says’ as a first person singular.[2]  That Sam, unlike his father, has learned to read is a sign of change, as are the children who witness Gandalf’s arrival and seem able to recognize the letter G in at least one and perhaps two writing systems (FR 1.i.25).

But there’s reading and there’s reading. Hobbits, we’re told in the Prologue, ‘delighted in such things [as genealogical tables], if they were accurate: they liked to have books filled with things that they already knew, set out fair and square with no contradictions’ (FR 7). Thus, of the many works later composed by Merry, the best remembered in the Shire were his Herblore of the Shire, his Reckoning of the Years, which relates the calendars of Elves and Men to those of hobbits, and his Old Words and Names in the Shire (FR 15).  Among hobbits, The Old Farmer’s Almanac would have been a perennial bestseller.

The kinds of stories that Sam wants to read are of precisely the sort that hobbit literacy has no time for, stories of Elves and Dragons that take place in the ‘queer’ lands beyond the borders of the Shire which hobbit maps mark only with ‘mostly white spaces’ (FR 1.ii.43).[3]  Gil-galad may have been an elven king all right, but his name won’t fetch you a pint at The Ivy Bush.  A proper hobbit poem, however, might do just that.  But what’s a proper hobbit poem?

One type would be songs like Frodo’s The Man in the Moon Stayed up Too Late (FR 1.ix.158-160) or Sam’s The Stone Troll (FR 1.xii.206-208), drinking songs, if you will, that invite their audience to join in a rollicking good time.[4]  Another we would find in the songs which speak of life’s simple pleasures, such as long walks, cold beer, hot baths,  supper and, of course, bed.[5] Songs of this type share in a common meter, iambic tetrameter, which occurs so often in these poems that we may well call it ‘hobbit meter.’[6]  We can even see elvish poems translated by hobbits – like Gil-galad Was an Elven King and the hymns to Elbereth – rendered in this meter.[7]

A particularly noteworthy aspect of this type of hobbit verse is its mutability.  We have four versions of The Road Goes Ever On, each of which differs from its predecessor in its adaptation to the occasion.  Bilbo’s first version at the end of The Hobbit clearly reflects his hopes, fears, and sorrows as he returns home (313). His shorter, simpler version, sixty years later shows the heart’s ease he feels once free of the Ring (FR 1.i.35), just as Frodo’s alteration of a single word reveals the weight of the burden now upon him (FR 1.iii.73).[8]  The final version differs yet again, with more thorough changes in keeping with the end of Bilbo’s Road now being in sight, and Frodo’s just around the bend (RK 6.vi.987).  And in the only other poem that we get two versions of in ‘hobbit meter’ – Upon the Hearth the Fire Is Red – there are likewise changes to suit the occasion (FR 1.iii.77-78; RK 6.ix.1028).

So we have here a form of poetry with an easily remembered four-beat line, with words that are readily changed to suit their context, and simple rhyme schemes, using couplets (AABB) or alternating lines (ABAB).[9]  Even the more rhythmically complex pub songs have mostly four-beat lines, and fairly straightforward rhyme schemes.[10]  Both these types of hobbit verse explicitly reuse old tunes, and seem to rely on oral transmission.[11] 

But there are other verses by hobbits which do not quite fit within these parameters.  More meditative and elegiac, they pursue paths that the other hobbit poems can suggest, but do not treat in detail.[12]  Bilbo’s  I Sit Beside the Fire and Think is the first clear example of this kind of verse (FR 2.iii.278-279).  Not only is its subject more somber, but only the even lines always have rhymes.  Frodo’s When Evening in the Shire Was Grey is even more directly concerned with death, though it remains traditional in rhyme and meter (FR 2.vii.359-60). But the most significant of all, I would argue, is Sam’s In Western Lands beneath the Sun (RK 6.i.908-09).

For through this poem we can see the arc of Sam’s growth as a storyteller and poet in parallel with the growth of hobbit poetry and literacy in a more literary direction.  After the good fun and nonsense of The Stone Troll we get Sam’s attempt to add to Frodo’s elegy for Gandalf, but The Finest Rockets Ever Seen is too full of childlike wonder at the ephemeral to touch the elegiac (FR 2.vii.360).  In Western Lands beneath the Sun, however, Sam not only leaves behind iambic tetrameter for alternating lines of tetrameter and trimeter, but rises above even the contemplation of death we see in I Sit beside the Fire and Think and When Evening in the Shire Was Grey to meditate upon a beauty forever beyond the reach of the transient evils of this world.[13]  And the very words which introduce this poem describe that arc:

His voice sounded thin and quavering in the cold dark tower: the voice of a forlorn and weary hobbit that no listening orc could possibly mistake for the clear song of an Elven-lord. He murmured old childish tunes out of the Shire, and snatches of Mr. Bilbo's rhymes that came into his mind like fleeting glimpses of the country of his home. And then suddenly new strength rose in him, and his voice rang out, while words of his own came unbidden to fit the simple tune.

(RK 6.i.908)

Finally let us turn to a poem that in both form and substance reaches beyond such stuff as hobbit poems are made on. All That Is Gold Does Not Glitter, with its three-beat lines of irregular length, its nameless because un-nameable meter – iamb, anapest, anapest – and its simultaneous embrace of history, legend, and prophecy, is also the only poem in The Lord of the Rings that is actually presented to the characters in written form.  ‘It is not a very hobbity song,’  as Corey Olsen put it.[14]  It’s about as far from Sing Hey! For the Bath at Close of Day as we can get.

What we see here is Tolkien, with his uncanny heed of the smallest detail, suggesting a slow process across generations and classes, a shift from oral to written and a growth of the literary to extend beyond mere literacy. In this Bilbo, Frodo, and Sam all play their parts.  Had we the time, we might also examine Errantry and Eärendil and the poems in The Adventures of Tom Bombadil.[15] And finally we might inquire how Sam’s ‘seed of courage’ had been nourished by poetry and tales of Elves and Dragons while it ‘wait[ed] for some final and desperate danger to make it grow’ (FR 1.viii.140).[16] But that is for another day.

---

[1] In addition, we may see Bilbo’s written notes to those to whom he gave gifts upon his departure.  He expects the recipients to be able to read them, and in two cases – Milo Burrows and Dora Baggins – he makes specific references to their literacy: FR 1.i.37.

[2] To be fair to the Gaffer, with ‘jools’ he is repeating what another has said, but that tends to reinforce the point about class since it shows more than one hobbit speaking so. Note also his description of Frodo as a ‘gentlehobbit’  and his concern to know whether ‘my Sam had behaved hisself and given satisfaction’ (RK 6.viii.1014).

[3] Though the Gaffer says that Sam is keen to listen to tales of Elves and Dragons, his words also clearly establish a link between such tales and Sam’s being taught to read by Bilbo. Sam’s later (mistaken) insistence that Bilbo ‘wrote’ The Fall of Gil-galad also suggests a connection with reading and writing (FR 1.xi.186).

[4] In At the Sign of the Prancing Pony Frodo sings his song a second time, ‘while many of [those in the room] joined in; for the tune was well known, and they were quick at picking up words’ (FR 1.ix.160). Note ‘words,’ not ‘the words,’ suggesting that they were good at this in general, as those who rely more on their memory than on writing would be.

If there should be any doubt that these two are in fact drinking songs, see HoME VI 142 n. 11, where Christopher Tolkien quotes his father’s outline, referring to the song in The Prancing Pony as precisely that.  It is also the case that Bingo (>Frodo) was originally meant to sing The Root of the Boot, an older troll song that evolved into The Stone Troll.  All versions of the troll song are sung to the tune of The Fox Went out on a Winter’s Night.  Subsequently  Bingo was given The Cat and the Fiddle to sing, which again evolved into The Man in the Moon Stayed up Too Late, and the troll song was made over to Sam and moved to its present location. See HoME VII.142-47.

Interestingly, Tolkien’s famous recording of the troll song deviates from the printed text of both The Root of the Boot and The Stone Troll, which lends indirect support to my suggestion below, p 4, that hobbit poetry of this kind was oral rather than written.  See the links below for recordings:

·         Tolkien sings The Stone Troll

·         The Root of the Boot

·         The Fox Went out on a Winter's Night

[5] ‘They began to hum softly, as hobbits have a way of doing as they walk along, especially when they are drawing near to home at night. With most hobbits it is a supper-song or a bed-song; but these hobbits hummed a walking-song (though not, of course, without any mention of supper and bed). Bilbo Baggins had made the words, to a tune that was as old as the hills, and taught it to Frodo as they walked in the lanes of the Water-valley and talked about Adventure.’  This passage both identifies what ‘most hobbits’ are like and in what ways “our” hobbits are like and unlike them.  Consider Pippin’s statement to Denethor (RK 5.iv.807): ‘[I can sing] well enough for my own people.  But we have no songs fit for great halls and evil times, lord.  We seldom sing of anything more terrible than wind and rain. And most of my songs are about things that make us laugh; or about food and drink, of course.’  Does ‘my’ imply that Pippin makes songs, or only refer to the songs he knows?  Note ‘of course’ in both passages, as if this should be obvious to everyone. Cf. Sam whistling on his way home to bed in The Shadow of the Past (FR 1.ii.45).

[6] I am indebted here to the discussions in classes 15 and 16 of Corey Olsen’s Mythgard course in Tolkien’s Poetry in the summer of 2015.

[7] While Bilbo seems to have consciously translated The Fall of Gil-galad (FR 1.xi.185-86), Frodo’s rendering of his first encounter with the hymn to Elbereth is described rather differently, as a spontaneous understanding produced by the art of elven minstrelsy (FR 1.iii.79): ‘One clear voice rose now above the others. It was singing in the fair elven-tongue, of which Frodo knew only a little, and the others knew nothing. Yet the sound blending with the melody seemed to shape itself in their thought into words which they only partly understood. This was the song as Frodo heard it: Snow-white! Snow-white! O Lady clear….’ See also FR 2.i.233 for a more detailed description of this effect.

[8] Between Bilbo’s version in The Hobbit and the versions in The Lord of the Rings there is one other difference that I believe is quite significant, the shift from ‘roads’ to ‘road,’ which signals a degree of abstraction, and reflects the frequent capitalization of Road in The Lord of the Rings.

[9] In addition to The Road Goes Ever On and Upon the Hearth the Fire Is Red we have FR 1.iv.90: Ho! Ho! Ho! to the Bottle I Go; 1.v.101: Sing Hey! For the Bath at the Close of Day; 1.v.106: Farewell We Call to Hearth and Hall!; 1.vi.112: O! Wanderers in the Shadowed Land; 2.iii.273: When Winter First Begins to Bite; 2.vii.360: The Finest Rockets Ever Seen. Sing Hey! For the Bath at the Close of Day is also introduced as ‘one of Bilbo’s favorite bath songs,’ thus revealing the existence of a number of such songs.

[10] The Stone Troll has an A-A-B-C-C-A-C rhyme scheme, with four-beat lines that are basically iambic with some anapests and the odd trochee.  The fifth line in each stanza is the odd man out.  It has only four syllables, but I am unsure whether to take them as two trochees, or two spondees.  The Man in the Moon Stayed up Too Late has an A-B-C-C-B rhyme scheme, with the first, third, and fourth lines having four beats, and the second and fifth having three (anapest, iamb, iamb).  On these poems see also nn. 5 above and 11 below.

[11] Both The Man in the Moon Stayed up Too Late and The Stone Troll are said to be set to old tunes, using new words, as is Upon the Hearth the Fire Is Red.  At Bree the tune is familiar to the patrons, who are so ‘good at picking up words’ that they are already singing along the second time through.  Bilbo, moreover, taught Frodo the words he had made up for Upon the Hearth while they were out walking in the Shire. With this we may compare the history of Farewell We Call to Hearth and Hall!  For since Bilbo kept his book away from prying eyes (FR 1.v.105), the only way Merry and Pippin could have learned the dwarf song (Hobbit 22-23) on which they modelled Farewell We Call to Hearth and Hall! (FR 1.v.106), is by hearing it. So in both cases we have evidence of oral transmission.

[12] Both of Bilbo’s road poems open the door to wider reflections, but do not really cross the threshold until their final versions late in The Lord of the Rings (RK 6.vi.987; ix.1028).  I believe that one could argue that Bilbo began weaving more distant horizons and larger perspectives Into the songs celebrating the loveliness of the countryside and the simple life. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that Bilbo expanded the “genre” to include these things.

[13] RK 6.ii.922: ‘Far above the Ephel Dúath in the West the night-sky was still dim and pale. There, peeping among the cloud-wrack above a dark tor high up in the mountains, Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while. The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him. For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach. His song in the Tower had been defiance rather than hope; for then he was thinking of himself. Now, for a moment, his own fate, and even his masters, ceased to trouble him. He crawled back into the brambles and laid himself by Frodo's side, and putting away all fear he cast himself into a deep untroubled sleep.’

[14] In class 16 of his class on Tolkien’s Poetry in the summer of 2015 at 1:22.45.  The recording is proprietary.

[15] The Adventures of Tom Bombadil purports to come from near the time of The Lord of the Rings (29-30).  It clearly identifies Errantry as Bilbo’s work (30), and the hand that scrawled the words ‘Frodo’s Dreme’ at the head of The Sea Bell (33-34) must have been familiar with Frodo’s story in some form.

[16] ‘When [Frodo] came to himself again, for a moment he could recall nothing except a sense of dread. Then suddenly he knew that he was imprisoned, caught hopelessly; he was in a barrow. A Barrow-wight had taken him, and he was probably already under the dreadful spells of the Barrow-wights about which whispered tales spoke. He dared not move, but lay as he found himself: flat on his back upon a cold stone with his hands on his breast.

‘But though his fear was so great that it seemed to be part of the very darkness that was round him, he found himself as he lay thinking about Bilbo Baggins and his stories, of their jogging along together in the lanes of the Shire and talking about roads and adventures. There is a seed of courage hidden (often deeply, it is true) in the heart of the fattest and most timid hobbit,

wailing for some final and desperate danger to make it grow. Frodo was neither very fat nor very timid; indeed, though he did not know it, Bilbo (and Gandalf) had thought him the best hobbit in the Shire. He thought he had come to the end of his adventure, and a terrible end, but the thought hardened him. He found himself stiffening, as if for a final spring; he no longer felt limp like a helpless prey.’ 

(FR 1.viii.140).

With this passage on Frodo compare Sam’s famous discussion of the Great Tales with Frodo on the Stairs (TT 4.viii.711-13), his song in the tower (RK 6.i.908-909), his thoughts on the star and the song (RK 6.ii.922, quoted above n. 13), and the seeming death of hope (RK 6.iii.934).

Bilbo's Pity and Horror: Aristotle, Tolkien, and not Tragedy

Bilbo almost stopped breathing, and went stiff himself. He was desperate. He must get away, out of this horrible darkness, while he had any strength left. He must fight. He must stab the foul thing, put out its eyes, kill it. It meant to kill him. No, not a fair fight. He was invisible now. Gollum had no sword. Gollum had not actually threatened to kill him, or tried to yet. And he was miserable, alone, lost. A sudden understanding, a pity mixed with horror, welled up in Bilbo’s heart: a glimpse of endless unmarked days without light or hope of betterment, hard stone, cold fish, sneaking and whispering. All these thoughts passed in a flash of a second. He trembled. And then quite suddenly in another flash, as if lifted by a new hope and resolve, he leaped.

(The Hobbit, 97)

I've spent a lot of time thinking about this passage in recent months as I prepared my paper Gollum's Blighted Repentance and What Bilbo Saw for presentation at Mythmoot III.  Early on, in one of those how-did-I-never-notice-this-before moments, I found myself smiling at the words 'a sudden understanding, a pity mixed with horror, welled up in Bilbo's heart,' and thinking that Aristotle would have been pleased with that moment since it echoes his own thoughts on Tragedy in The Poetics (1452a-1452b):

Tragedy is an imitation not just of a complete action, but of events that evoke pity and fear.  These effects occur above all when things come about unexpectedly but at the same time consequentially.¹ This will produce greater astonishment than if they come about spontaneously or by chance -- for even chance events are more astonishing when they seem to have happened for a purpose.

.... 

Stories can be classified as simple or complex....I call it complex if the change of fortune involves a reversal or a discovery or both.... 

Reversal is a change of direction in the course of events....For instance, in Oedipus a messenger comes to bring Oedipus good news and rid him of his fears about his mother, but by revealing his true identity he produces the opposite effect.... Discovery, as the term implies, is a change from ignorance to knowledge, and thus to either love or hate, on the part of those destined for either good or bad fortune.  Discovery takes its finest form when it coincides with reversal, as in Oedipus.... Reversal and discovery together will evoke either pity or fear  --  just the kind of actions of which, according to our basic principle, tragedy offers an imitation -- and will serve to bring about the happy or unhappy ending.

(trans. Kenny, 29-30)

While I imagine the Inklings probably enjoyed a laugh over The Hobbit passage, Tolkien, though obviously quite clever, was never about cleverness for cleverness' sake.  And this moment is one of the most important turning points in the entire Tale of Middle-earth, when the pity of Bilbo rules the fate of many.  So clearly the echoes of Aristotle were not merely some donnish joke to be relished over a pint at the Bird and Baby. What's going on?

Tolkien is not of course writing Tragedy. Faërie has a Poetics of its own, and Tolkien wrote the book on the subject.  So we should not imagine that Tolkien is in any way following Aristotle.  Yet the points of contact here -- fear/horror, pity, sudden understanding/discovery -- are too salient to be overlooked or dismissed. Even Aristotle's remark that 'chance events are more astonishing when they seem to have happened for a purpose' itself becomes astonishing when seen in the light of Gandalf's statement in The Fellowship that 'Bilbo was meant to have the Ring, and not by its maker' (FR 1.ii.56).

But what is most remarkable is the reversal which we find in Tolkien.  As in Oedipus reversal follows hard upon discovery, but in Sophocles Tragedy is revealed. In The Hobbit Tragedy is averted by Bilbo's discovery, by his 'sudden understanding' of Gollum, which evokes both pity and fear.  As I have mentioned elsewhere, this is also precisely the moment when Bilbo first sees Gollum as a person, a 'he,' and not a thing, an 'it.'  For an instant Bilbo is in a sense both tragic audience and tragic protagonist at once, and his discovery reverses his course from murder to mercy and from despair to hope.  And, as if to underline the point that Tolkien is not writing Tragedy, it is Bilbo's sense of justice -- which Aristotle says the ideal tragic protagonist should not excel in² -- that buys him the time to see Gollum as deserving of pity and mercy.

Bilbo of course would be ill suited to be the protagonist of the kind of Tragedy Aristotle describes.  The House of Bungo, mercifully, had little in common with the Houses of Atreus or Laius.  And to my knowledge no tragic protagonist was ever likened to a grocer, not even by his most implacable foe.  But Aristotle's thinking on plot and character, on recognition and reversal, has been seen to have some applicability to other genres before now.³  So it is hardly surprising that, with Pity and Fear so much and so importantly in play, the poetics of Faërie and Tragedy brushed up against each other here.

___________________________________

¹ 'Consequentially' might be a bit compressed for ready understanding. A more literal rendering of the Greek text (ὅταν γένηται παρὰ τὴν δόξαν δι᾽ ἄλληλα) would be: 'when one thing happens on account of another contrary to expectation.'  That is, a causal link is reveal that had not previously been suspected.  Aristotle, Poetics, transl. Anthony Kenny (Oxford 2013) 29.

² 'We are left, then, with the person in between: a man not outstanding in virtue or justice, brought down through vice or depravity, who falls into adversity not through vice or depravity but because he errs in some way....' (1453a; Kenny 32).  Pardon me for geeking out here for a moment.  The words I have struck through need to be removed as they are clearly a relic of an earlier rendering of this sentence which was missed in editing and proofreading.  Aside from the difficulty they would bring to construing the sentence if they were allowed to remain, they are present only once in the Greek: ' Ὁ μεταξὺ ἄρα τούτων λοιπός. Ἔστι δὲ τοιοῦτος ὁ μήτε ἀρετῇ διαφέρων καὶ δικαιοσύνῃ μήτε διὰ κακίαν καὶ μοχθηρίαν μεταβάλλων εἰς τὴν δυστυχίαν ἀλλὰ δι᾽ ἁμαρτίαν τινά, '

Compare, e.g., the earlier translation of Hamilton Fyfe: 'There remains then the mean between these. This is the sort of man who is not pre-eminently virutous and just, and yet it is through no badness or villainy of his own that he falls into [mis]fortune, but rather through some flaw in him...'

³ Dorothy L. Sayers, for one, delivered a lecture 'Aristotle on Detective Fiction,' at Oxford in 1935, which Professor Kenny has included in his edition (79-88).