I get you completely.Alatar wrote:I prefer Stracheys, for no real reason apart from its format and "intimacy", if you get me.
I like both and have, in the past, pored over them for hours.
I get you completely.Alatar wrote:I prefer Stracheys, for no real reason apart from its format and "intimacy", if you get me.
Me too. Strachey's is great for instant dipping into to check dates and mileage, but Fonstad's is just wonderful for all the geographical detail and architectural layouts as well as the descriptive information.Karen Wynn Fonstad's Atlas of Middle-earth? That is just wonderful.
There's also Barbara Strachey's Journeys of Frodo.
I like both and have, in the past, pored over them for hours.
But what is most remarkable (though of course Paul Kocher couldn't know this back in 1972), is that this verse and tale was originally recited and told not by Aragorn, son of Arathorn, hoping to tie the knot with Lúthien's great-great-great-granddaughter, but rather by Trotter the wooden-shoed hobbit, though he also was "strange and grim at times." Indeed, even once Trotter became Aragorn, descendant of kings, Arwen still did not exist, and the reciting of the story of Beren and Lúthien still did not have the special significance to him than it eventually had.None of the hobbits has the faintest glimmer of an idea why Aragorn chooses this particular legend to recite, and neither have we at first reading, thanks to Tolkien's failure to mention Arwen at all up to that point. But in the light of later revelations it can dawn on us that the longing for Arwen is a torment, a joy, a despair, a comfort to Aragorn in a time of little hope. Small wonder that he is 'strange and grim at times,', but he seldom speaks of the life of private emotions stirring within. [Master of Middle-earth, p. 137
With the present chapter:Now they had gone on far into the Lone-lands, where there were no people left, no inns, and the roads grew steadily worse. Not far ahead were dreary hills, rising higher and higher, dark with trees. On some of them were old castles with an evil look, as if they had been built by wicked people. Everything seemed gloomy, for the weather that day had taken a nasty turn. Mostly it had been as good as May can be, even in merry tales, but now it was cold and wet. In the Lone-lands they had to camp when they could, but at least it had been dry.
"To think it will soon be June," grumbled Bilbo as he splashed along behind the others in a very muddy track. It was after tea-time; it was pouring with rain, and had been all day; his hood was dripping into his eyes, his cloak was full of water; the pony was tired and stumbled on stones; the others were too grumpy to talk.
Already in The Hobbit "you can feel the rain on your neck;" but the sense of the weight of history has not yet entered. The evil-looking castles (prob. by the later geography in Rhudaur, not the Weather Hills), set the bleak mood, but are otherwise context- and meaningless, like Peter Jackson's random ruins.Along the crest of the ridge the hobbits could see what looked to be the remains of green-grown walls and dikes, and in the clefts there still stood the ruins of old works of stone. By night they had reached the feet of the westward slopes, and there they camped. It was the night of the fifth of October, and they were six days out from Bree.
In the morning they found, for the first time since they had left the Chetwood, a track plain to see. They turned right and followed it southwards. It ran cunningly, taking a line that seemed chosen so as to keep as much hidden as possible from the view, both of the hill-tops above and of the flats to the west. It dived into dells, and hugged steep banks; and where it passed over flatter and more open ground on either side of it there were lines of large boulders and hewn stones that screened the travellers almost like a hedge.
'I wonder who made this path, and what for,' said Merry, as they walked along one of these avenues, where the stones were unusually large and closely set. 'I am not sure that I like it: it has a - well, rather a barrow-wightish look. Is there any barrow on Weathertop?'
'No. There is no barrow on Weathertop, nor on any of these hills,' answered Strider. 'The Men of the West did not live here; though in their latter days they defended the hills for a while against the evil that came out of Angmar. This path was made to serve the forts along the walls. But long before, in the first days of the North Kingdom, they built a great watch-tower on Weathertop, Amon Sûl they called it. It was burned and broken, and nothing remains of it now but a tumbled ring, like a rough crown on the old hill's head. Yet once it was tall and fair. It is told that Elendil stood there watching for the coming of Gil-galad out of the West, in the days of the Last Alliance.'
Oxford isn't that urban for a city and there are large open spaces nearby. Merton backs onto ChristChurch meadow, which is a big green space.vison wrote:
What I like about this part of the book is the "nature" aspect. Tolkien was not a rural dweller, as far as I know his life was pretty well spent in towns and cities.
That's really interesting, Voronwë. Thanks for pointing that out!Voronwë_the_Faithful wrote:This sets up the other, more important piece of verse in the chapter, the long, beautiful poem telling of the meeting of Beren and Lúthien (which was based on the poem Light as Leaf on Lindentree, published in the Leeds magazineThe Gryphon in June 1925, and going back to older poems). This is truly some of the most beautiful verse that Tolkien ever wrote, and together with the prose description of Beren and Lúthien's story that follows, are certainly the most extensive connection between the new story and the old tales of what would become known as the First Age. At this point, what had started as a sequel to The Hobbit had now become firmly a sequel to the unpublished Silmarillion.
In the final form of the story, Strider's reciting this poem and telling this story takes on particular importance. Wayne and Christina quote Paul Kocher as saying:
But what is most remarkable (though of course Paul Kocher couldn't know this back in 1972), is that this verse and tale was originally recited and told not by Aragorn, son of Arathorn, hoping to tie the knot with Lúthien's great-great-great-granddaughter, but rather by Trotter the wooden-shoed hobbit, though he also was "strange and grim at times." Indeed, even once Trotter became Aragorn, descendant of kings, Arwen still did not exist, and the reciting of the story of Beren and Lúthien still did not have the special significance to him than it eventually had.None of the hobbits has the faintest glimmer of an idea why Aragorn chooses this particular legend to recite, and neither have we at first reading, thanks to Tolkien's failure to mention Arwen at all up to that point. But in the light of later revelations it can dawn on us that the longing for Arwen is a torment, a joy, a despair, a comfort to Aragorn in a time of little hope. Small wonder that he is 'strange and grim at times,', but he seldom speaks of the life of private emotions stirring within. [Master of Middle-earth, p. 137
This goes to further substantiate that it was NOT the Black Riders at Bree.snip...For the black horses can see, and the Riders can use men and other creatures as spies, as we found at Bree....snip
Which events are those, V?Voronwë_the_Faithful wrote:But the fact that the Riders need to use other creatures or beings eyes to see could tend to suggest that it wasn't them that physically attacked the Inn (although that contradicts some later events, I think).