Lord of the Rings Fanatics Plaza

A follow-up to Nuada of the Silver-arm, which extracts the core of 'The Name 'Nodens'' (1932). A summary of the extraction is given in this post on that thread.

One might seize upon one or several details dug up in 'The Name 'Nodens'' and declare an 'influence' on one or several details in Middle-earth. Notoriously, this has happened with the One Ring and one of the inscriptions to Nodens, which has given this text by Tolkien a bad name. I have little patience with this chasing of correspondences, which steps over the fundamental act at the heart of all of Tolkien's writings, namely to put ourselves in the shoes of somebody else. What did Tolkien think he was doing? We read all the stories, time and again, and lose ourselves in the words. We can sometimes find our way by observing what else Tolkien was writing around the time he wrote his various stories.

I do not have any dates for when Tolkien began work on 'The Name 'Nodens''. Based on publication date and the time scales of academic publication, I would guess he was on it by the late 1920s. Consider some of the stories that came from his pen before and after the etymological note was published.

The Hobbit. Composed 1930-1933, a story about a Hobbit-burglar who is caught by three Trolls, but after he wins a magic ring, is not caught either by the Elves (whose dungeons he harrows) and the dragon, from whom he steals a cup. Being caught is what a burglar avoids, if possible.

'The Adventures of Tom Bombadil', The Oxford Magazine (1934). The courtship of Goldberry and Tom. In the first verse Goldberry catches Tom by his beard, pulling him into the water. Then Tom is caught by Tree, badgers, and Barrow-wight and escapes by the power of his voice, then he returns to the river and catches Goldberry.

The Lord of the Rings, narrative composed 1937-1948. The Catcher is now the Necromancer, who has lost not his arm but his Ring.

Consider the last paragraph of Tolkien's note, which I break into two parts.

Far more probably the older sense of Gothic ga-niutan, ‘to catch, ensnare’, was the one shared by Keltic with old Germanic. Whether the god was called the ‘snarer’ or the ‘catcher’ or the ‘hunter’ in some sinister sense, or merely as being a lord of venery, mere etymology can hardly say.

I had to look up 'venery' - and I suggest that everyone ponder well what Tolkien is actually saying here. He is assuming (not arguing, but taking as given) that whatever else 'the Catcher' meant, Nodens was a sexual predator. As it seems to me @The Good Hunter saw some while back, and @Priya seems to be saying today about Goldberry, Tolkien is thinking about these lost ancient Celtic myths through the lens of the ancient Greek myths. (Confession: I only understood what Tolkien was saying and thinking here on reading 'The Myth of Callisto' a few years ago, but as I was then feuding with the author I did not acknowledge this debt at the time - apologies.)

It is suggestive, however, in this connexion that the most remarkable thing about Nuada was his hand, and that without his hand his power was lost. Even in the dimmed memories of Welsh legend in llaw ereint we hear still an echo of the ancient fame of the magic hand of Nodens the Catcher.

Well, I just intuitively feel that this is a road to an imagination of Sauron of the Ring. Not the only road to be sure. But this is to read The Hobbit, 'The Adventures of Tom Bombadil', and The Lord of the Rings as successive meditations on the meaning of the name Nodens. I do think that the New Testament meanings that shine through the Gothic are key. So we end up with an almost theological Nodens as the Devil but began with Nodens the mythical Welsh sexual predator. I think we should put aside our notion of Tolkien as prim and old-fashioned in his morals. He was. But he also takes the sexual dimension as given, and does so without blinking. It is not so much that he does not explore it as that he explores it intently and extensively, only by walking the very idea of 'catching' all around it, if that makes sense.

Aiks, I'm not filling in the gaps and no doubt put too much out there for you'all to digest. I would say that in the first instance, the only connection to focus on is that between Nodens (and Sulis, if we wish) on the one hand, and Bombadil and Goldberry on the other. I suggest that Tolkien began by concluding that Nodens the god had been a chaser-of-women and a bad lot and imagined his story out of a Greek myth, and that Tolkien subsequently reimagined a similar story in a more gentle form, a courtship rather than a rape, the tale transposed into his own image of northern fairy-tale.

The two Hobbit stories are more diffuse because in each of them a lot of other stuff is also going on. With The Hobbit, well if anyone read my Speak Egg! thread, I hope they intuit some deep affinities with the Nodens etymology in terms of riddles of names and their relationship to titles. Really, I so wish I could bring people to this view, because only now does one start to glimpse Tolkien thinking about stories - which is amazing. By entering into his meditations on what it means to catch we can reappraise his reading of 'Ali Baba and the 40 Thieves' - if you are considering what catching is and get to burglars then Morgiana is your Sherlock Holmes of fairy-stories, she is the one who caught all 40 thieves! Now we may glimpse Tolkien raising his eyebrows at the Victorian J.S. Mill, who wished to illustrate a mark and chose one of the loser thieves rather than the master catcher of The Arabian Nights. Sigh. So many doors begin to open as we step through these fairy-tale musings and into the story of Bilbo Baggins...

With Sauron and the One Ring. If one is medidating on catching, specially in a fairy-tale context, then the One Ring is a sort of ultimate image of a fairy-tale instrument for catching. And in general, what Tolkien is interested in exploring in this story is how character's fall by their own choices - the art of Sauron is a magic whereby people trick themselves through their own fantasies, and walk into wraithood and the like.

One thing that complicates matters further with LotR is that in writing it Tolkien worked out his own theory of enchantment, which he put down in On Fairy-stories. For Tolkien, the art of telling a story is the art of catching the imagination of your audience - drawing them into the world of your story. So LotR has all this meta dimension, because the One Ring is ultimately compared to the Red Book (The Lord of the Rings), with Tolkien thinking of himself as attempting to capture his readers no less than Sauron his Hobbits, only a voluntary mutual capture, of the Goldberry-Bombadil sort and not of the Nodens or Sauron variety.

Aiks, why would what be dark?

Thought I'd go through my pdf of Fellowship, searching 'catch'. Here are the first 10 uses of catch.

1. He was a loathsome little creature: he paddled a small boat with his large flat feet, peering with pale luminous eyes and catching blind fish with long fingers, and eating them raw. (Prologue, Of the Finding of the Ring)

2. He ate any living thing, even orc, if he could catch it and strangle it without a struggle. (Ibid)

3. ‘I am glad to find you visible,’ replied the wizard, sitting down in a chair, ‘I wanted to catch you and have a few final words.’ (Long-expected Party)

4. ‘Very well,’ said Bilbo, ‘it goes to Frodo with all the rest.’ He drew a deep breath. ‘And now I really must be starting, or somebody else will catch me.’ (Ibid)

5. He found he could hide from daylight and moonshine, and make his way swiftly and softly by dead of night with his pale cold eyes, and catch small frightened or unwary things. (The Shadow of the Past)

6. The riding figure sat quite still with its head bowed, as if listening. From inside the hood came a noise as of someone sniffing to catch an elusive scent; the head turned from side to side of the road. (Three is Company)

7. ‘It was not bird or beast,’ said Frodo. ‘It was a call, or a signal— there were words in that cry, though I could not catch them. But no hobbit has such a voice.’ (Short cut to Mushrooms)

8. Tom put his mouth to the crack and began singing into it in a low voice. They could not catch the words, but evidently Merry was aroused. (The Old Forest)

9. So he sang, running fast, tossing up his hat and catching it, until he was hidden by a fold of the ground: but for some time his hey now! hoy now! came floating back down the wind, which had shifted round towards the south. (Fog on the Barrow-downs)

10. ‘There is food in the wild,’ said Strider; ‘berry, root, and herb; and I have some skill as a hunter at need. You need not be afraid of starving before winter comes. But gathering and catching food is long and weary work, and we need haste. (A Knife in the Dark)

Past tense: caught. Many more instances - I got to 24 without reaching the Prancing Pony.

1. “‘Oh, are you indeed, my love,” said Smeagol; and he caught Deagol by the throat and strangled him, because the gold looked so bright and beautiful. Then he put the ring on his finger. (Prologue)

2. ‘He wandered in loneliness, weeping a little for the hardness of the world, and he journeyed up the River, till he came to a stream that flowed down from the mountains, and he went that way. He caught fish in deep pools with invisible fingers and ate them raw. (Prologue)

3. It had slipped from Isildur’s hand and betrayed him; then when a chance came it caught poor Deagol, and he was murdered; and after that Gollum, and it had devoured him. (Shadow of the Past)

4. Through Mirkwood and back again it led them, though they never caught him. (Ibid)

5. And sooner or later as he lurked and pried on the borders he would be caught, and taken—for examination. (Ibid)

6. ‘Then you know or guess something about this rider?’ said Pippin, who had caught the muttered words. (Three is Company)

7. Sam Gamgee looked back. Through an opening in the trees he caught a glimpse of the top of the green bank from which they had climbed down.
‘Look!’ he said, clutching Frodo by the arm. They all looked, and on the edge high above them they saw against the sky a horse standing. Beside it stooped a black figure. (A Shortcut to Mushrooms)

8. He caught me several times trespassing after mushrooms, when I was a youngster at Brandy Hall. (Ibid)

9. Perhaps you are thinking it won’t be too easy to get to the Ferry without being caught?’ (Ibid)

10. No, I caught em trespassing,’ said the farmer, ‘and nearly set my dogs on ’em; but they’ll tell you all the story, I’ve no doubt. (Ibid)

11. I was peeping through into the road, after the S.-Bs. had passed, and was looking straight at Bilbo when he suddenly reappeared. I caught a glint of gold as he put something back in his trouser-pocket. (Conspiracy Unmasked)

12. ‘Here’s our collector of information! And he collected a lot, I can tell you, before he was finally caught. (Ibid)

13. He found that two had wandered on a good way along the path; and he had just caught them and brought them back towards the others, when he heard two noises; one loud, and the other soft but very clear. (The Old Forest)

14. ‘My friends are caught in the willow-tree,’ cried Frodo breathlessly. (Ibid)

15. Strange furtive noises ran among the bushes and reeds on either side of them; and if they looked up to the pale sky, they caught sight of queer gnarled and knobbly faces that gloomed dark against the twilight, and leered down at them from the high bank and the edges of the wood. (Ibid)

16. The water began to murmur. In the darkness they caught the white glimmer of foam, where the river flowed over a short fall.

17. Every now and again they caught, among many a derry dol and a merry dol and a ring a ding dillo the repeated words:
Old Tom Bombadil is a merry fellow;
Bright blue his jacket is, and his boots are yellow.
(In the House of Tom Bombadil)

18. ‘Tom Bombadil is the Master. No one has ever caught old Tom walking in the forest, wading in the water, leaping on the hill-tops under light and shadow. He has no fear. Tom Bombadil is master.’ (Ibid)

19. When they caught his words again they found that he had now wandered into strange regions beyond their memory and beyond their waking thought, into times when the world was wider, and the seas flowed straight to the western Shore; and still on and back Tom went singing out into ancient starlight, when only the Elf-sires were awake. (Ibid)

20. There on the hill-brow she stood beckoning to them: her hair was flying loose, and as it caught the sun it shone and shimmered. A light like the glint of water on dewy grass flashed from under her feet as she danced. (Fog on the Barrow-downs)

21. When they caught a glimpse of the country westward the distant Forest seemed to be smoking, as if the fallen rain was steaming up again from leat and root and mould. A shadow now lay round the edge of sight, a dark haze above which the upper sky was like a blue cap, hot and heavy. (Ibid)

22. He imagined suddenly that he caught a muffled cry, and he made towards it; and even as he went forward the mist was rolled up and i thrust aside, and the starry sky was unveiled. (Ibid)

23. Then suddenly he knew that he was imprisoned, caught hopelessly; he was in a barrow. (Ibid)

24. Old Tom Bombadil is a merry fellow.
Bright blue his jacket is, and his hoots are yellow.
None has ever caught him yet, for Tom, he is the master:
His songs are stronger songs, and his feet are faster.
(Ibid)

First observation. Gollum is a primitive Nodens, an archetype of catching with menace.

Second. I had expected Sam to be saying 'if you catch my meaning'. Sounds, words, smells and vision are caught as also Hobbits, but in all the above there is no catching or not catching of meaning.

Aiks, Tolkien writes of his own art of fantasy that "it does not seek delusion nor bewitchment and domination; it seeks shared enrichment, partners in making and delight, not slaves." (OFS) But he is still saying that by his art he aspires to enchant you and I. He says he does not wish to make us his slaves, yet he still wishes to catch our imaginations and capture our hearts.

Tolkien is observed to be prudish on sex and limited with women characters. What I really like about @Ephtariat is his utter and total fixation on romance in Tolkien's stories. He drives me crazy because he will not see this romance in perspective, will not look mourning, grief, and elegy in the face. Yet despite all my criticisms of his various arguments, my intuition is that he is completely right to point to the love story of Beren and Luthien as at the heart of Tolkien's imagination. Because what enchantment as fantasy writing is all about is an author seducing the reader, and doing so with love. The seduction must be motivated by love because if you catch someone they are (in some way) within your power, and love is the only thing that holds back abuse of power (well, love, admins, and the DEI). Take away love and in the primary world seduction becomes the old story of gone in the morning and storytelling becomes fake news, advertisments, and propaganda. Take away love in Middle-earth and Elvish song becomes the One Ring.

I do look to Tolkien as a guide to life, as well as for fantasy escape. I do not adopt everything he offers, because his values are not quite mine. But I have learned to consider carefully the way that he considered the world and - so far - the above has proved right, in my experience. It is as simple as the difference between a good plaza conversation and a monologue, only imagine a mythical plaza member who not only did not care what other people were in themselves but also had the power of Saruman in their writing, their very posts an enchantment. The plaza would become an insane collective, reminscent of the 1930s.

I think Tolkien derived this understanding of life and imagination from the author of Beowulf, as put down in my thread men ne cunnon. In a nutshell, every action is a step in one or other direction upon the 'lost road'. The lost road leads from Valinor, past our own house, to the Dark Tower in Mordor. The way of domination, of power, of corruption, is in this Anglo-Saxon tradition the road of necromancy, of death in life. The other way is into the light of the west, but actually for you and I, who are not Elves, this is no road but only a view. For us the road to Valinor is a view upon what we have lost, and it is a hard view to look in the face, to accept that we can no longer touch what we still can see. This is the direction on the road taken by the mortal Elf-friend, who pays a price of pain but comes (however slowly) to forgive the world - for the death sentence that hangs over us, and for the vanishing into the past of those whom we still love with all our hearts.

What you'all stumble on is that you think that Tolkien's stories - which you like - are something other than Tolkien's scholarship - which likely intimidates you, and is possibly not your bedtime reading. But this was a Professor, and what he professed was old stories, and his scholarship is but the distillation of his research on these stories. And what is to me plain as the end of my nose (after many years reading both scholarship and stories) is that the stories are Tolkien thinking about these old stories. We are all lost in his research anyway. Once you get a hold on that, then a couple of scholarly essays can at least provide a map for where we are all lost, and kind of reveal to us what it is that we are lost in.

It is not as if the theme of catching-the-burglar and the courtship of Tom and Goldberry and the catch of the gold as the One Ring is slipped into a pocket are something other than the imaginative thinking embodied in 'The Name 'Nodens''. We simply follow this Professor's trains of thought as the ancient name Nodens - and the very idea of the Catch - continued to bubble away in his head.

At the most simple it is like this. J.R.R. Tolkien was a philologist. He owed his position to his recognized authority on names, on nouns and adjectives and their combinations, as revealed by the comparison of linguistic change over a long time. That sounds like a door to the abstract, and it is. One can open the door a sliver and peak the magic of the adjective-noun combination that Tolkien names the 'fairy-element' that gives the magic to a fairy-story. This is to enter the impossible labyrinth of 'On Fairy-stories.' But there is a real simple point about what Tolkien thought the history of language - of names, their coupling and their reinvention over time.

The meaning of a word at some moment of history is given by the stories that were told in those days. And we can only really access that meaning through our own stories.

Tolkien did not think that a word - say, to catch - was understood by philosophical reflection on the very idea of catching. He was not a philosopher. Tolkien tried to catch the meaning of a word that had caught his interest by discovering its meaning in a story. As we follow 'catch' in the stories after 1932 we simply observe this Professor turning a word over (and over) in his mind, trying to catch it.

"If you post, do not post all at once, it can be overwhelming."

Aiks, I think that Priya posts material that is already polished. This is good for us, as readers. I have always treated the plaza as a place to work through my own confusions, and so I imagine what I post may be not only overwhelming but almost incoherent - very difficult to catch a thread.

But I feel now that I have reached a point of clarity in my own head. Talking at home with my eldest son, he seems to think so too - he did not before! So maybe, hopefully, my posts will begin to read more easily. Also, as I get to know my readers (that is, members of the plaza) I begin to write with them in mind, and so perhaps you'all will follow more easily. I think this last is one of the great lessons that I learned this last year. I saw how Eph. posted about his ideas and recognized in my older plaza self just the same attitude - the ideas are all that matters, and people are annoying when they fail to see the idea. Over the last year I have turned this upside down and inside out, or at least attempted to.

Thank you very much for your words above. They mean a lot to me.

So, what is the catch? What is Tolkien's catch?

Metaphor.

Here is the door to the linguistic theory that gave us LotR, which is a reworking of the late 19th-century Oxford conjectural history of how primitive language developed. The textbook account was that a new noun arose when people pointed at a thing with no name and called it by a thing with a name, intending the borrowed name as a metaphor, which eventually became a new name. Tolkien reworked this to give us an account of the exploration of Fairy, a realm that escapes definition because the names hover between literal reference and metaphor and so are not quite what they seem. This is the good stuff and it takes us through the adjective-noun formulas that Tolkien calls 'fairy elements' in OFS back to the kennings of Beowulf. This is basically the holy grail if we are ever to catch Tolkien.

But in the first instance consider simply the traditional folksong on the music thread titled The Bonny Black Hare. Here are the first three verses.

On the fourteenth of May at the dawn of the day
With me gun on me shoulder to the woods I did stray
In search of some game if the weather proved fair
To see can I get a shot at the bonny black hare

I met a young girl there, her face like the rose
Her skin was as fair as the lily that blows
Says I "Me fair maiden, why ramble you so?
Can you tell me where the bonny black hare do go?"

The answer she gave me, oh the answer was "No
But under me apron they say it do go
And if you'll not deceive me I'll vow and declare
We'll both go together to hunt the bonny black hare"

There is something that I feel to be deeply English in this song, which is made of the same kind of sexual innuendos that were the staple of British comedy once upon a time - Frankie Howerd and Bennie Hill, come to mind. What the song does is suggest (and none too subtly). Tolkien's craft as a writer is bound up in his power of suggestion, which he is supremely good at hiding. That is to say, in contrast to this song, a story by Tolkien leaves us with a suggestion (or many) without us noticing that anything has even been suggested.

Tolkien works his craft of suggestion around a notion of the nameless. As I've pointed out, the realm of the nameless is wide and diverse. Some things have no name because we have forgotten what it is, some because we have never (yet) encountered the thing within our minds and so never given it a name, and some things are nameless because it is better not to speak of them.

'The Bonny Black Hare' falls into the latter category, which of course has many gradations and variations. This song works because this bit of the nameless - a sexual act between man and woman - is almost OK to talk about in polite company, but is still not actually OK (what with admins and the DEI and all that). Of course, in any society at any time there are sexual acts deemed more ilicit, and so deemed less OK to speak about. As I see it, necromancy is by definition the sexual act imagined as no human being could possibly ever deem it OK to speak about (this has something to do with one taboo passing into another, for whatever is begotten by the sexual coupling is not the birth of life but of death).

'The Bonny Black Hare' is worth considering just because it illustrates how much suggestion is a part of our everyday, ordinary conversation. Imagine a situation in which you say something that you know will go over the heads of (say) the children in the room and yet serves as a wink to the wise (the adults). Not that hard to imagine because this kind of thing goes on all the time.

Because Tolkien was an Oxford philologist he conceived of words as bearing buried metaphors from out of the past, usually several, often quite forgotten. And because Tolkien was Tolkien he uses his technique of metaphorical suggestion with supreme craft. When he invites us into his stories, he is the hunter. This is an author who knows just how to turn us around to look in one direction by means of subtle wordcraft that we as readers do not even notice, and turns us around merely as a deft distraction because what he is actually doing is setting up the big surprise right in front of our faces. This author makes a hall of mirrors out of hidden metaphors. We are all of us still wandering, lost in his great halls.

Aiks

What to do if Caught? -----> Escape!

OFS inquires into the nature, origin, and use of fairy-stories. On this last, Tolkien argues that fairy-stories are rightly used for escape. What does this mean? Well, the essay was worked up from the 1939 St Andrews lecture notes when Tolkien took a break from composition of LotR in 1943. By the close of 1942 he had brought LotR just past the breaking of the staff of Saruman, so concluding the main part of the tale of King Théoden (all he has left to do is ride to battle a second time and die fighting a monster). Théoden's is a story of escape by fairy-tale.

Théoden is the old man who has done his bit and now expects a peaceful old age, and instead must pick up his sword and die in battle. This is the part of the old Beowulf, a good king for 50 years and then a dragon turns up (Macbeth Act 5, Sc 3 gives another variation - note the suggestions of Ents, Éowyn, and 10,000 geese). Unlike Beowulf and Macbeth, however, Théoden does not put on his armour - instead he sits on his throne in his hall and allows himself to believe the lie of Gríma Wormtongue that Saruman is the friend and ally of Rohan.

Tolkien wrote the tale of Théoden in the latter part of 1942, when World War II was approaching its most terrible worst. There is a lot of anger here, I feel, as to the British appeasement of 1938 - a reflection on the collective fantasy whereby the British had fooled themselves that peace could endure, despite everything that suggested otherwise. If we take this historical context on board, we see why something that offered escape from being caught might be deemed very useful indeed.

In the story, escape involves a series of developments, which conclude with Théoden climbing the external staircase of Orthanc and, alone and unaided, mastering the enchantment of the voice of Saruman. So this tale is not merely about escape from Wormtongue's mortal spell of words - it culminates with the king who was caught by mortal words mastering the words of a wizard! Whatever it is that Théoden gets as a cure, works wonders.

I'm not clear on the precise way that the spell is undone and escape achieved - would be worth reading the text slowly. And you certainly have to put the movie transformation out of your head. We have the intervention of Gandalf - some theatrical magic with lightning and the name of Galadriel is invoked (who Wormtongue had named a net-weaver). Then Théoden takes courage - he makes the choice to harken to Gandalf, and the two speak words that we never get to hear. And Théoden - at last - goes to war.

But consider what happens after the first great battle when Théoden arrives at Orthanc - he sees both Ents and Hobbits, and marvels at each. There are children in Rohan who could pick the answer of the Ents out of half-forgotten fairy-tales recalled in Rohan only by old wives, observes Gandalf, while Hobbits step out of more than half-forgotten tales of hole-dwellers in the old homeland of the Rohirrim in the North.

Between capture by the wordcraft of Wormtongue and mastering the voice of Saruman, Théoden goes to war and sees marvels. The first is his moment of northern courage (which the movies caught well), but it requires the tonic of wonder before the king ascends the external steps of Orthanc and masters the voice of a wizard.

Initial conclusion: If you find that you have been caught - by a dragon-tongued counselor, an enchanter in a high tower, or any other with a magical voice - and that your mind is no longer your own, then the best thing that can happen is for a decent wizard to turn up (not all are, as the tale of Théoden underlines). Failing this, and in any case, one really must take courage (cf. Frodo in the Barrow). But once you have taken courage, do look out for an Ent, a Hobbit, or in general someone unexpected. You might try singing the Bombadil song, though it remains an open question on the plaza whether a song sung that nobody hears gets you anywhere.

Aiks, no point in framing escape before we are clear on the catch. I was premature in turning to the recovery of the senses of the king of Rohan.

I had intended to post on metaphor, suggestion, fantasy, and the most common realms of the nameless, and ground the whole on the idea of a reading community (as set out some months ago on the 'Frodo reading' post). This would be to return to my argument with Eph. about romance vs. elegy, thereby unveiling the true Gothic fusion of sex and death that I held up to him as a mirror of his Elves. But I got sidetracked by Priya.

This poor fish's eyes wandered and were bewitched by signs that are both far more and far less than what they seem! Now I am caught and must recover my own senses from a vision of imagination without history.