Which hand did Frodo put the Ring on?

A question posted online in a private group set me thinking about which hand Frodo wears the One Ring on. During The Lord of the Rings Frodo puts on the Ring six times: once in the house of Tom Bombadil; once at the Prancing Pony; once at Weathertop; twice on Amon Hen; and once in the Chambers of Fire within Mount Doom. The text mentions which hand he put it on only twice, but it's a different hand each time. That's the curious part.

The first time is on Weathertop:

Not with the hope of escape, or of doing anything, either good or bad: [Frodo] simply felt that he must take the Ring and put it on his finger. He could not speak. He felt Sam looking at him, as if he knew that his master was in some great trouble, but he could not turn towards him. He shut his eyes and struggled for a while; but resistance became unbearable, and at last he slowly drew out the chain, and slipped the Ring on the forefinger of his left hand. 

(FR 1.xi.195, emphasis added)

As we know, putting on the Ring reveals him to the Ringwraiths, who attack at once, and the Witch-king wounds Frodo in his left shoulder with a Morgul-knife. 

A shrill cry rang out in the night; and he felt a pain like a dart of poisoned ice pierce his left shoulder. Even as he swooned he caught, as through a swirling mist, a glimpse of Strider leaping out of the darkness with a flaming brand of wood in either hand. With a last effort Frodo, dropping his sword, slipped the Ring from his finger and closed his right hand tight upon it.

(1.xi.196, emphasis added).

In Rivendell Frodo is healed of the sorcerous wound to the extent that he can be, but Gandalf, and as we later learn (TT 4.iv.652), Sam, can see the effects.

Gandalf moved his chair to the bedside and took a good look at Frodo. The colour had come back to his face, and his eyes were clear, and fully awake and aware. He was smiling, and there seemed to be little wrong with him. But to the wizard’s eye there was a faint change, just a hint as it were of transparency, about him, and especially about the left hand that lay outside upon the coverlet.

        (FR 2.i.223, emphasis added) 

Even before Gandalf looks at him, Frodo has checked his left hand to see how it feels (2.i.221). Sam also takes Frodo's hand for the same reason when he enters subsequently (2.i.223). In both of these passages the text again specifies the left hand. The next time we can tell which hand he uses is in the Sammath Naur, but we don't learn it until Sam wakes up in "The Field of Cormallen." Now it is on his right hand (a different finger, too).

He sat up and then he saw that Frodo was lying beside him, and slept peacefully, one hand behind his head, and the other resting upon the coverlet. It was the right hand, and the third finger was missing. 

(RK 6.iv.951, emphasis added)

A few other passages are also noteworthy. When Sam puts on the Ring while Frodo is a prisoner, he puts it on his left hand (TT 4.x.734). When Frodo and Sam use the phial of Galadriel against Shelob, each of them holds that in his left hand (4.ix.721, 729). In the case of the phial each already has a sword in his other hand. Consider also this passage from "Mount Doom," ten pages before Frodo claims the Ring and (as we can deduce from which hand is later missing a finger, Watson) puts it on his right hand:

Anxiously Sam had noted how his master’s left hand would often be raised as if to ward off a blow, or to screen his shrinking eyes from a dreadful Eye that sought to look in them. And sometimes his right hand would creep to his breast, clutching, and then slowly, as the will recovered mastery, it would be withdrawn.

(RK 6.iii.935-36, emphasis added)

That Frodo uses his left hand here as if to hide or defend himself, while it's the right hand that's reaching for the Ring, seems quite suggestive. So, although I am not going to speculate about which hand Frodo used the other four times he wore the Ring, or whether his putting it on different fingers on different hands means anything. I will suggest that on balance we may well ask if there's a connection between claiming the Ring and wearing it on the dominant hand, the hand that almost exclusively wields a weapon. For the Ring is a weapon.

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It may also be worth noting that when Tom Bombadil banishes the wight, he holds up his right hand. Also in Chapter Five of second edition of The Hobbit Bilbo reaches into his pocket and slips the Ring on his left hand (Annotated Hobbit 129, 130, 135). In the first edition Bilbo uses his left hand once (Annotated Hobbit 134). Neither edition mentions his right hand.  

 

Mani Aroman, Tolkien's Beardless Men

 

Some months back John Garth and I were discussing the phrase "Mani Aroman," which is found in The Return of the Shadow as a possible name for the people Tolkien eventually called the Rohirrim (Return 434). Tolkien indicates that "Mani Aroman" means the "Beardless Men." Tolkien being Tolkien, of course we have to wonder where these two words come from and how it is that they mean "Beardless Men."

Before we get to the speculation on these words, we should note a couple of points. First, Tolkien came up with this phrase long before he ever came near Rohan, and, as John Garth has shown, it took some time before this particular group of horsemen became the pseudo-Anglo-Saxon/Gothic horsemen we know from The Lord of the Rings. So it's no surprise if the beardless state of these riders clashes with Tolkien's later descriptions of the appearance of the Rohirrim, with our own notions of what the Germanic inhabitants of north-western Europe or early medieval England looked like, or with current notions that the beard makes the man.*

Second, elsewhere but still before the Rohirrim we know appear, Tolkien calls them "Anaxippians" and "Hippanaletians." The first of these clearly derives from Ancient Greek, and means "Horse-Lords" -- anax (ἄναξ) is a good Homeric word for king or lord, and (h)ippos (ἵππος), which we see in both words, means "horse." (Even a decade later he will refer to the Rohirrim as "heroic 'Homeric' horsemen" in Letter 131 (Letters p. 221). "Hippanaletians," aside from its first syllable, is not as easily analyzed, but my best guess so far is that it might mean "wanderers on horseback" -- coined from a combination of ἵππ(ος), ἀν(ά)/on, ἀλήτης/wanderer, hipp-an-aletes. A man who invents entire languages is not going to be shy about coining new words from old languages. "Eucatastrophe" is surely the prime example of this in Tolkien (Letters # 89 p. 142).

"Mani Aroman," however, defied our scrutiny. The words did not seem to be derived from Greek or any other likely language we could think of. Now John Garth had drawn attention to "Mani" and suggested that it might be connected to the names of various ancient Germanic tribes as handed down to us through Latin. For example, the Marcomanni, in which -manni is akin to the English "man," and -marco to "mark." This of course makes the Marcomanni the Men of the Mark, which for obvious reasons is attractive. The "Aroman" didn't fit with this, however. 

But the "Mani" stuck with me, and eventually I asked myself whether it could be Sanskrit. So I tried some googling and discovered that the Sanskrit word for "man" is "manu:"

I then searched for "Aroman" as a Sanskrit word, and found:

And this is derived from:

From this it seems to me that Tolkien might derive Mani Aroman, the Beardless Men, who later become the Rohirrim, from the Sanskrit words for "man" and "hairless." It would take real determination to view "hairless" and "beardless" as merely coincidental. But I don't know Sanskrit, and I haven't yet been able to find someone who does to consult about this. So, while this suggestion makes sense to me, that doesn't make me correct. 

_________________________________

* The present insistence in some quarters that the "manliness" of a man is predicated on his possession of a beard straight out of a Matthew Brady Civil War photograph makes me think that a parody of "The Rape of the Lock" is in order. 

Oh hadst thou, cruel! been content to seize

Hairs less in sight, or any hairs but these!"

Face up, Face down with Gollum and Boethius

Recently I saw someone somewhere inline asking about Gandalf's characterization of Gollum in The Shadow of the Past.  

The most inquisitive and curious-minded of that family was called Sméagol. He was interested in roots and beginnings; he dived into deep pools; he burrowed under trees and growing plants; he tunnelled into green mounds; and he ceased to look up at the hill-tops, or the leaves on trees, or the flowers opening in the air: his head and his eyes were downward.

            (FR 1.ii.53)

The poster wanted to know what was so wrong about his not looking up but down. The characterization starts off well enough, but it begins to feel like something has gone wrong when it reaches "and he ceased ... air." And the last phrase, singled out and pointed to by the colon, reads like a final verdict in a capital case. So why is downward bad? 

It's part of an old notion that looking up, whether to the heavens or to heaven, is something that distinguishes humans from animals. Off the top of my head I am unsure where it started, but it can be found in Plato and Aristotle. Tolkien was certainly familiar with Plato's Timaeus, which along with the Critias, speaks of Atlantis, and helped inspire Númenor. The description from The Shadow of the Past quoted above makes me think that Tolkien would have more likely been drawing on Boethius' The Consolation of Philosophy, an exceptionally important work in the Middle Ages in Europe. There is even a translation of it into Old English, which has been attributed to Alfred the Great. It probably wasn't really translated by Alfred himself, however, and it's really more of a reboot than a straighforward translation. Tolkien certainly knew both of these works, each of which contains at a similar moment in its fifth book a poem on this difference between humans and animals. First take a look at my translation of a Latin poem from the fifth book of The Consolation of Philosophy. I include the original after that. I've also tried to keep the translation close to the original, line for line, more or less, if not word for word. It's not, however, a literal translation, and I have not tried putting it into verse.

Creatures of such different shapes wander the earth!

Some lie stretched in the dust and sweep it,

And propelled by the strength of their body

They drag a continuous furrow in the earth.

Others beat the air with their light wandering wings

And swim in liquid flight the vast spaces of the heavens.

Still others happily leave their footprints on the ground

Whether crossing green fields or entering a wood.

All these creatures, you see, differ in shape,

Yet their downward gaze can only weigh down their dull senses.

Mankind alone raises its lofty summit higher,

Stands erect and looks down on the earth as trivial.

Unless you have mud for brains, your human form bids  

You raise up your soul also when with face uplifted

You seek the heavens, lest your mind, weighed down

And inferior, sink down when your body is raised higher.

Quam uariis terras animalia permeant figuris!
Namque alia extento sunt corpore pulueremque uerrunt 
Continuumque trahunt ui pectoris incitata sulcum,
Sunt quibus alarum leuitas uaga uerberetque uentos
Et liquido longi spatia aetheris enatet uolatu,
Haec pressisse solo uestigia gressibusque gaudent
Vel uirides campos transmittere uel subire siluas.
Quae uariis uideas licet omnia discrepare formis,
Prona tamen facies hebetes ualet ingrauare sensus.
Vnica gens hominum celsum leuat altius cacumen
Atque leuis recto stat corpore despicitque terras.
Haec nisi terrenus male desipis, admonet figura,
Qui recto caelum uultu petis exserisque frontem,
In sublime feras animum quoque, ne grauata pessum
Inferior sidat mens corpore celsius leuato.

And now my translation of the Old English, followed by the original:

You might have noticed, if you enjoy such thoughts,

That many different creatures exist on the earth.

They have various colors and modes of movement

And forms of many kinds known and unknown.

Some creep and crawl, their whole body pressed to the earth;

they get no help from feathers, they cannot go on foot,

they cannot, as it is their fate, take pleasure in the earth.

Some others walk the earth on two feet,

some do so on four, some on beating wings

soar under heaven. Yet each of these creatures
inclines to the ground, bends its head down,

looks upon this world, wants from the earth

some necessity, some object of desire.

Man alone of God's creatures goes

with his face directed upwards.

By this it is betokened that his faith

and mind should look more up to heaven

than down, lest he turn his soul downward as a beast does.

It is not fitting that any man's mind

be bent downwards and his face upwards.

Hwæt ðu meaht ongitan, gif his ðe geman lyst,
Þætte mislice manega wuhta
geond eorðan farað ungelice.
Habbað blioh and fær bu ungelice
and mæg-wlitas manega cynna
cuð and uncuð. Creopað and snicað,
eall lichoma eorðan getenge;
nabbað hi æt fiðrum fultum, ne magon hi mid fotum gangan,
Eorð brucan, swa him eaden wæs.
Sume fotum twam foldan peððað,
Sume fierfete, sume fleogende
windað under wolcnum. Bið ðeah wuhta gehwylc
onhnigen to hrusan, hnipað ofdune,
on weoruld wliteð, wilnað to eorðan,
sume nedþearfe, sume neodfræce.

Man ana gæð metodes gesceafta
Mid his andwlitan up on gerihte.
Mid ðy is getacnod þæt his treowa sceal
and his modgeþonc ma up þonne niðer
habban to heofonum, þy læs he his hige wende
niðer swa ðær nyten. Nis þæt gedafenlic
þaet se modsefa monna æniges

niðerheald wese and þæt neb upweard.

So the problem with Gollum looking down all the time is that he has stopped being human and become an animal instead. This is analogous to something Boethius says earlier in The Consolation, that "the man who ceases to be human because he has abandoned goodness, turns into a beast since he cannot be transformed into a godlike state" (4.3). It's also worth remembering how Gollum is sometimes called "it" rather than "he," a "creature," a "thing," and is likened to an insect, a spider, and a dog. In fact, all of these words are used of him throughout The Taming of Sméagol. Fittingly, when Frodo and Sam first see Gollum in this chapter, he is "creeping" and "crawling" down the cliff-face head first, words which echo the sixth line in the Old English poem above: "creopað and snicað." I must admit, however, that I'm disappointed to find that "snicað" does not seem etymologically connected to "sneak." It would be so nice to hear Gollum's response to Sam's accusation of "sneaking" on the stairs: "snicð! snicð!" he hiscte."

The Politeness of Théoden and the Healing of Gandalf

In his new book The Literary Role of History in the Fiction of J. R. R. Tolkien, Nick Birns has written a very interesting chapter called "Hobbits, the Rohirrim, and Modern Histories of Politeness."

In the paragraph shown below, he comments on what we can see in Théoden's first encounter with Merry and Pippin at the gates of Isengard:

Earlier on Gandalf, Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli had been rather rudely welcomed to Edoras by Théoden and Wormtongue. Gandalf replies as tartly as we might expect him to do: "The courtesy of your hall is somewhat lessened of late, Théoden son of Thengel," (TT  4.vi.513). And even amongst themselves the Rohirrim have seen the politeness appropriate to the King's Hall wear thin. Éomer has threatened Wormtongue with his sword in the hall and disobeyed the King's orders, breaches for which he has been imprisoned. 

With this in the background and the King's healing by Gandalf, we can see the politeness of the King which so impressed Merry and Pippin as proof of that healing, and as an assurance that Théoden is restored enough to be able to face Saruman without being taken in by his polite lies. The Riders may doubt him when the moment comes, but Gandalf does not. Nor do most readers, I would imagine. 

"You do not belong here" -- The presence of Men in Faërie

 

...fairy-stories are not in normal English usage stories about fairies or elves, but stories about Fairy, that is Faërie, the realm or state in which fairies have their being. Faërie contains many things besides elves and fays, and besides dwarfs, witches, trolls, giants, or dragons: it holds the seas, the sun, the moon, the sky; and the earth, and all things that are in it: tree and bird, water and stone, wine and bread, and ourselves, mortal men, when we are enchanted.

On Fairy-stories ⁋ 10, p. 32 (Flieger & Anderson edition)

Reading these words over and over across the years, I have come to conclude that Tolkien did not regard the world as disenchanted, as we often hear it called. To him everything but us was naturally a part of Faërie. We must be enchanted in order to be "contained" in that "realm or state." So, does this mean that we mortals are normally unenchanted, not normally a part of Faërie as everything else in this world is? Or we were once enchanted, but have since become disenchanted by the Fall and expulsion from Paradise, or more mundanely by materialism and positivism and the industrial revolution? 

I don't have the time to sort through all of this right now, but something else Tolkien has said makes me think that he would have answered that we were not normally a part of Faërie. In the Atrabeth Finrod ah Andreth Finrod says of the fëa (soul) and hröa (body) of mortal Men:

‘But what then shall we think of the union [of fëa and hröa] in Man: of an Indweller [i.e., fëa], who is but a guest here in Arda and not here at home, with a House [i.e., hröa] that is built of the matter of Arda and must therefore (one would suppose) here remain?

(Morgoth's Ring p. 317)

Every other living creature lives and dies with this world, as does every other piece of creation, because this world is "the realm or state in which [they] have their being." In this world, which is coterminous with Faërie, we mortal humans are no more than guests. Faërie is not our home. Or at least it is not the home of our fëa.

As the birch tree in Faërie says to Smith in Smith of Wootton Major: "You do not belong here. Go away and never return!" (Smith, extended edition, p. 30).