Latest / Mythmakers / Sidecast - LOTR: An Author's Journey, Book 1 Chapter 8

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Sidecast - LOTR: An Author's Journey, Book 1 Chapter 8 · Mythmakers

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  Hello to the Mythbaker's sidecast and authors journey through Lord of the Rings.
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  And today we have reached chapter 8 in the first book of the Fellowship of the Ring, which
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  is called Fog on the Barrow Downs.
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  Now before we do one of our custom-read deep dives into this chapter, I just wanted
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  to say how great it is to have these chapters which weren't treated in any
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  atomic sense in the Peter Jackson versions, because I still feel their mind in a
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  funny kind of way that my imagination doesn't have to battle with strong images
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  that I've seen on film. So I've been really enjoying reading my way through
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  these sections. But let's have a look at this chapter. The structure of it really
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  is as follows. It starts with a series of goodbyes. And then we move into the
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  beginning of a journey, begins in optimism with a transition to fear. And then
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  you go into the Barrow and you have the moment of bravery, the eventual rescue by Tom
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  Bombardill. And then there's a post-cript to that saving as the adventure moves on
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  to connect to Bri. That image of going into the earth and coming out again is almost
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  a right of passage. It seems a bit like some of those initiations that you get in some
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  cultures or a baptism. The idea of that baptism in the church, which of course, Tolkien
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  would have been well familiar with this idea as you go under the water and come out again.
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  So there is this sense of renewal in this chapter. But let's not skip over the very beginning.
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  It has a most wonderful first paragraph. I'd encourage you to go and read it again. So
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  they, it starts by saying that night they heard no noises. And it goes into Brodo's dream,
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  which some of you, I'm sure, will find very familiar. He says in his mind, a song that
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  seemed to come like a pale light behind a grey rain curtain and growing stronger to turn
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  the veil all to glass and silver. Until at last it was rolled back and a far green country
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  opened before him under a swift sunrise. Now, many of you will be saying, hang on a minute,
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  doesn't Gandalf say that to pick in? In Ministerous? No, he is said here. And it's not
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  attributed to Gandalf. In fact, in this context, what does it possibly mean? Okay, it might
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  be some sense of a sense of the Elven countries, but it also might be a reference to the unspoiled
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  world that Tom Bumberdeal represents, because he is this kind of Adam figure, the unfauliness
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  of nature. There is something fresh and new about him. So maybe it's about death. It certainly
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  fits with that theme of baptism, the renewal that's going on in this chapter. But anyway,
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  I thought I'd just highlight that in case you were wondering whether that passage came
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  from in the book. I also note that it's in the Annie Lenox song, a beautiful song that
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  is used at the end of the third film. And I think she won an Oscar for it. Anyway, so moving
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  on, after that waking up, the tempo picks up, the pros tempo picks up. So they're getting ready
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  to go. And this is reflected in the short sentences, but also what's happening. Their quiet
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  ponies were almost frisky, sniffing and moving restlessly. It's kind of, let's get going,
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  buckle up everybody. And they do get started finally. And they've forgotten to say goodbye to
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  Goldbury. And here we get one of those patterns in Tolkien. He likes. He likes to have beautiful
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  ladies standing on sort of hills with the light behind them. So the way he describes Goldbury
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  here is very similar to in my mind, anyway, I think we'll find this when we get to that chapter
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  to how we see Galadriel when they leave Lorean and set out on the river. It must be, or it's
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  here I'm wondering if there is a connection to the pictures you see of like the Virgin Mary
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  and many Catholic churches with the halo around them. It seems to be calling on that kind of iconography
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  just softly in the background. The other transition which is used here is the idea that you go
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  from a place of intense color to a muted world. That's what's happening as they leave the home
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  built by Tom and Goldbury because they go out into a world which seems mystia and browner
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  and less fresh. And remember that also happens in Lorean. They leave the golden leaves of Lorean
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  and enter it back into the ordinary world. So it's a little as if you're leaving the world of
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  magic and fairy tale in its fullest sense back into a more everyday world. One thing I noticed
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  on this read through which made me laugh is Goldbury's instructions. We tend to think more of Tom
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  chatting away because he is very eloquent and he's the one who intervenes but Goldbury is also
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  very much equal partner in the advice that she gives them, which is the one who's been offering
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  reassurance and here she gives them some very good advice but it's funny that her advice really
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  suits ponies rather than hobbits because it's and hold to your purpose north with the wind in the
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  left eye and a blessing on your footsteps. Now hobbits and humans we both have
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  eyes on the front of our face so you're not going to get the wind just in your left eye.
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  Not really it's much harder. Whereas if you're a horse or the ponies, so I'm hope the ponies
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  are listening, that makes more sense. Anyway it would fit with their sort of idea that
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  they treat the ponies as equal to the hobbits. So it's just a sweet little detail there I thought.
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  As we've seen when the hobbits set off in the forest, the old forest, they start optimistically
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  and it's usually in good weather, all those things. But we get these warnings which
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  always undercuts. We know that they are foolishly optimistic. There is no surprise that this is
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  going to go horribly wrong. The pattern has already been set and this the warning here is when they
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  come across the finger post. So they come to this hollow circle and in it's sort of single stone
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  standing tall under the sun above. Now at this hour casting no shadow, it was shapeless and yet
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  significant like a landmark or a guarding finger or more like a warning. Again, there seems
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  to be a favorite image here because you'll notice there's another finger post, this one associated
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  with Saruman, an eyes and guard that comes later. And I suppose there's also the connection to the
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  crossroads that Frodo and Sam come across with the fallen statue. There's an idea that you can
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  find these objects in the landscape that act as a warning or an encouragement. They can blend
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  those two in one. So that's the warning they get but they're not listening properly. They're not
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  certainly not keeping the wind in the right eye because they sit down and have something to eat
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  which is typical hobbit behaviour but will spell disaster. And here we get one of those wonderful
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  weather transitions. This is where a book is better than film because no one does weather quite
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  like talking and it goes from the sunny day to the sense of the mist moving in and trapping them.
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  They find themselves in a hall of mist whose central pillar was that standing stone.
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  So they've gone from the openness and the views and the optimism to being blinkered and shut
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  down by having lingered too long in this hollow place. And one thing I really like here as well
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  in the weather transition is remembering the experience of the characters within it.
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  Sometimes as a writer you can spend a long time describing the external as if the eye is the
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  only way of experiencing a landscape. And here we have a very telling detail where he picks up
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  how the hair hung length and dripping on their foreheads. So you get that that sense of them all
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  being sort of soaked by the mist, the heaviness and length, the negative sound of that.
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  It's a beautifully chosen detail so we really get to share their discomfort.
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  So of course if you're in someone you don't want to be, you want to get out of it. And Frodo makes
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  the rookie mistake here of rushing on without his companions.
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  Understandable and I think there's also a sense that they're being driven inevitably
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  by the barrowites. Whereas in the old forest it was the spell of Old Van Willow that was
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  leading them inevitably to destruction. It's almost a sense here that they ask flies being
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  lured into the web by the parrots, the barrowites which makes them panic, makes them scared, makes them
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  flee. I mean the pony's sense it and that's why they run off eventually. And here I think it's one
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  of those places where I start to remember Tolkien is also a war writer and his experience of combat
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  because I think this is a typical example of the fog of war. It might be the first time when they
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  have to think about standing together in a fight. They feel there may be a battle ahead of them.
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  They've got, they're sort of having to band together but they get split. They're surprised by
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  the enemy, there's confusion, there's doubt, there's mistakes. It's not Frodo having a grand plan
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  and they're all executing it. It's all the plans just going to pieces as soon as reality gets in
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  the way. And we get a fabulous moment when Frodo is alone. Normally, if you think about it, a lot
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  of the characters spend a lot of time in fellowship with others, talking to other people and they
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  are fewer times when they're actually standing alone. And there's a beautiful here description
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  of Frodo alone in the biting wind in the faint stars with the wind hissing and it emphasising just
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  how scary that moment is for him. I love the biting wind in particular because it's both the
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  sense of cold but also the sense of teeth. And then we find his overcome and Frodo finds himself
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  in the barrow. I just want to pause here and think about barrow whites and the nature of evil.
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  The barrow whites were made use of in the most recent season of the rings of power.
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  And one thing I was asking myself when I was watching that is what are they? They don't seem an
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  obvious tool of Sauron, though they could be attached to him because there is a mention of a dark
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  Lord. They seem more like the evil things that were hinted at in the Old Forest. They seem like
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  was like a primal evil that has come into the fallen worlds of introduced by Melkor from his dark
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  song that he sang at the founding of the world is. Things like that and they're inhabiting the
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  bodies of the fallen. They don't seem to be like the ghosts of fallen kings. They are something
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  else who are inhabiting, who've crept into that. So in a way they're inexplicable. They don't
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  sort of fit neatly into a group like the Orcs or the Bowerogs. But they are more like Goldbury
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  is good. And Tom Bombardille is good. They're part of the the Callit of Evil, shall we say.
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  And it's interesting that the colors that they are used to be painted with are slightly different
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  because they are represented by a pale greenish light, a cold glow. And I love this one. They're
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  immeasurably dreary. The idea that evil is banal is in that. And they are the antithesis of life
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  and light. If you're thinking about the early part of writing this story when talking wasn't
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  that clear about his direction and what he was going to do with the story. He was a writer who
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  found his story by discovery. One of the things he is doing is seasawing between darkness and light,
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  but different forms. So you had the old man Willow with its greenish and natural worlds, tree hunger,
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  then the familiar home and domestic light and love and laughter, Tom Bombardille. So what's the
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  opposite to that? Well, you go to something which is dreary and dark and cold and a tomb is the
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  opposite of a home. And it's interesting here. Another for those of you who know the film well
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  is another little heads up of a borrowed bit, which is the song in the extended version.
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  This song is a part of this song is given to golem, cold be hand and heart and stone and cold be
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  sleep under stone. So they borrowed this song which does fit, of course, a barrow right really
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  well. And it's wonderful to see it here in its situation. This has some of the, this is a
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  perchie battle. You've had a rap battles. Talking was there before. He was doing perchie battles
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  because we've got this desperate lyric, dreary lyric from the barrow right, which ends about
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  till the dark lord lifts his hand over Dead Sea and withered land, real apocalyptic stuff. And that's
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  the one mentioned where we feel that they're on the side of the dark lord, that they are their own
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  sort of evil. One wonders, I imagine a plot spoiler, Saron is defeated, but one feels that the
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  barrow rights would probably stay on. They don't, their fate isn't attached to his, at least I don't
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  think so. I like here that Frodo isn't instantly brave. He has a moment where he imagines escaping
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  and grieving and almost saying, oh well, what else could I do? I can put on the ring and disappear
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  and I had no other choice. I had to leave them behind. And this links to Sam's comment much later on
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  when they're approaching the out the borders of Mordor about people in those tales have lots of
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  chances of turning back, but they didn't. And this is one of those times when Frodo has the chance
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  to turn back, give up, run away. Another one is coming up at the council of Elrund, of course,
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  a bigger decision, but this is a really important one too. And he takes the brave decision not to.
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  And this is where the rap battle, my poetry battle finds its answer, because he comes in with the
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  Tom Bumberdale silly song. Ho Tom Bumberdale Tom Bumberdale by water, wood and hill by
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  reed and willow and so on. And it's a song that's been taught him as a chant to summon
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  Tom Bumberdale to their rescue. It doesn't feel like a summoning spell, it feels as though
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  I always sort of understood it as a reader that Tom was just so alive to everything
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  near his land that he could hear. He's got superly acute, like Superman, a superly acute hearing.
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  And indeed, he's able to come and you hear the answer and he comes and removes the stone. So
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  again, a religious echo here, he rolls the stone away. And it's a kind of resurrection,
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  not obviously the hobbits aren't a Christ figure, but the more like Lazarus, I think, coming from
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  the tomb, he brings life back into that tomb. His great power, I think, is shown by the relative
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  ease with which he is able to banish the right, the white. These are which he banishes the white.
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  And I like the change of song here. Get out, you old white, banish in the sunlight.
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  Shival like the cold mist, like the winds go wailing. So he's using some of the words that the
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  barrow white had used in his song, or its song, and turning it against the white himself. So
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  things like cold and wailing and all those sorts of whitish words, baron lands. So he's sending him
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  into the world of his song and away from the hobbits. And it breaks the power the barrow white has
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  over that tomb. And the thing here, which I think thematically makes Tom Bombardill work, is that
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  he gives a version of what the whole story is about here. They take the hobbits up out into the
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  sunshine, and they bring out all the possessions to scatter them on the hill. This is a story about
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  setting out to lose a treasure or to possess it. It's the opposite of the usual quest, which
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  may be to find a magic object. This is to get rid of it. And he shows by example here that the way
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  you get rid of evil is by setting its treasure out and not trying to possess it. Not being the dragon
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  who sits on the hall or the barrow white who sits on the hall, you have to put it out in the
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  sunshine for all comers. And there's a detail here of Mary being caught in someone else's memories,
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  which I think is intriguing. And it also links the next chapter we have their meeting Aragon.
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  And it's the memory that Mary is caught in through the spell of the tomb and the people who are buried
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  in it is the one about his ancestors, Aragon's ancestors in the battle against Angmar. So again,
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  we're getting these little hints of what's to come and the kind of people we're going to meet going
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  forward. And if you didn't need anything more than the rolling the stone away aspects of this,
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  we also get the baptismal rebirth, a image here of Tom saying to the hobbits to run about naked.
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  It's like the Garden of Eden, isn't it? Which is also underpinned by the fact that he
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  mentions the true names of the ponies, one of the versions in Genesis of the Garden of Eden story
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  has Adam naming the animals. And Tom here is doing that. He's naming the animals. I'd also want to
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  just underline here this is where they get their swords. In the film version, Aragon just happens
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  to have them hanging around. It's a filmic shortcut. This links to, they get swords of lineage
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  which becomes important, particularly later for Mary, that he has a sword from the Horde that was
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  taken from the northern kingdom of Arnault that was used in the fight against the Witch King of
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  Angmar. So again, we've got a little pointers here to things which will later become important.
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  So I've said that Tom takes out the treasure to scatter it. And here's the one who hands over
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  these things, their gifts. The hobbits don't take the swords for themselves. And the one thing he
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  tapes home with him is for Goldbree, which is a beautifully described roach, which I've always
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  wanted actually. But she takes in memory of an unnamed person who, that he remembers, fair was she
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  says Tom Bumbadill. And this is another of Tolkien's what he describes as vistas of untold stories
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  that stretch off into the past that you never actually hear the full story of in Lord of the Rings.
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  But you get a sense of depth and a reality to the world as a result.
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  So we don't hear anymore about this roached sect with blue stones,
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  like the wings of blue butterflies. But we do hear more about the leaf-shaped blades
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  forged by the men of Westerness, of course, because these are going to be wielded
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  in frequent occasions going forward. And Frodo obviously gets to wave his and stab at the cloak
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  of the black riders when they attack on weather top. And of course, Mary's sword has the greatest
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  adventure of all. There's a strange moment here, which again emphasizes the power of Tom Bumbadill,
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  preparing them for what they need to know, because they have a shared vision when he's talking
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  about the men of Westerness. And they see the shapes of men tall and grim with bright swords,
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  and last came one with a star on his brow. Then the vision faded and they're back in the Sunlit
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  World. That one with a star on his brow, of course, is an image of the ruling house,
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  who they will then meet in the shape of Aragon. So it's both his forebears, but it's also the
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  person they're about to meet very shortly. Then the last part of this chapter is booting us off
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  out of the off the barrow downs and on into kicking us on into the next chapter where we reach
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  Bri. And as a reader, you feel safe whilst they are with Tom Bumbadill. You're pretty sure that
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  nothing can touch them when they're with Tom. In fact, you kind of almost want him to go with them.
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  All the way somehow he would just get them to about do no problem. Anyway, he says that's not
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  possible because he only keeps within his borders. He won't go outside his land. And this is another
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  sign of his not falling to temptation. Another way of describing the Lord of the Rings is an
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  examination of what people do when they're faced with temptation. Will they take the ring? Will they
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  ask for it for themselves? I'll demand it for themselves. Tom Bumbadill with his great powers,
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  his presumably good rule kingdoms, but he is content with a little bit of earth,
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  than a little bit of land that he and Goldbury have established their home. They don't want
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  any more. They are content with enough. Probably a lesson in there to all our contemporary
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  billionaires, but it's better to be more like Tom Bumbadill than be like Saron in this world.
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  I also like here about the way the hobbits are listening to Tom's language and he's singing
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  as they ride along. You have to remember that Tolkien is a lover of languages, and any mention
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  of language should be paid attention to. The hobbits are listening to chiefly nonsense,
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  or else perhaps a strange language unknown to the hobbits, an ancient language whose words were
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  mainly those of wonder and delight. That's talking perhaps thinking about how language starts
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  and what you use it for, and if there can be such a thing as a language that is purely unfiltered
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  so that it expresses a kind of the holiest of emotions, wonder and delight, and Tom does that,
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  that's what he is. So we leave behind this perplexing intriguing figure, but we don't meet again
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  in the story. He is mentioned, but we don't meet him again. And the last word is left to Sam,
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  who says, he's a caution and no mistake. Calling somebody a caution is the kind of thing my
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  grandmother's generation used. Well, she's a caution, meaning, wow, you know, they're
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  something of a laugh, but also remarkable. It's a particularly early 20th century word.
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  And now we get the hobbits hurrying along to Bri, and we get Frodo saying that he's going to go
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  under the name of Underhill. But we also are, given some pointers, a bit like Goldbury's instructions
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  to keep the wind in the left eye. We know that Tom Bumberdale thinks Butterbur is a safe
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  person to lodge with. So we have one little bit of direction given us here, because we're about
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  to enter a world where we meet big people for the first time. And some of them are enemies,
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  some appear to be enemies, and some turn out to be allies. So it's a much more confusing world
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  that the hobbits are about to enter.
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