The Red Arrow of Gondor

"In his hand he bore a single arrow, black-feathered and barbed with steel, but the point was painted red......'The Red Arrow!' said Theoden, holding it, as one who receives a summons long expected and yet dreadful when it comes."

"namque sagitta lignea ferreae speciem habens nuntii loco viritim per omnes mitti, quoties repentina belli necessitas incidisset" Saxo Grammaticus, History of the Danes, Book V

"for a wooden arrow, having the appearance of being of iron, is to be sent man by man to every place as a message whenever the sudden necessity happened for war."

"Auðbjarnar konungr lét skera upp herör ok fara herboð um allt ríki sitt." Egils Saga, 3

" King Audbjorn allowed the war-arrow to be cut out and the war-summons to be sent around the entire kingdom."

Clearly Tolkien got the idea of the summons to war being an arrow from the Old Norse sources. I am sure he was familiar with both Egil's Saga and Saxo. It is interesting that he added the detail of the black arrow having the tip painted red. Maybe this is to separate it from the black arrow that Brand used to kill Smaug. Or to give its appearance an extra helping of horror since it appears to have been dipped in blood. Maybe we should vote on that.

Tolkien and Beowulf

What else does one do when one is sitting in a hospital, watching the sick one sleep, but read Beowulfian criticism? On Friday it was Tolkien, "The Monsters and The Critics" as well as "On Translating Beowulf". Both are fascinating but then I am a nerd.

In the first essay, Tolkien was arguing that Beowulf should not just be mined for historical facts and philology but should be judged as poetry. It is probably the most influential essay on Beowulf. In it, he declared that the poet's theme was "man at war with the hostile world, and his inevitable overthrow in Time." This makes it essentially a pagan poem, even with the Christian veneer because the man of faith can triumph over death and win everlasting life. Tolkien cited the Northern gods who know that, in the final confrontation between them, their human allies and the monsters, they will lose but they go out to meet their foes with courage anyway. There is something poignant and beautiful about it: going out with your head held high even if there is no one left to sing a song about it after.

It bears the mark of the words of Byrhtwold at the Battle of Maldon, which Tolkien also cited, "Thought shall be firmer, heart shall be the keener, mind shall be more resolute as our strength grows less."

The second essay is also interesting. I am aware that there are many words in Beowulf that exist only in Beowulf and so are not completely understood. Anybody who has undertaken to translate a written piece from one language to another knows there are implied meanings in words that translation often loses and this is the case with Beowulf. I am enjoying reading it but I get the sense that, although I am reading it in the Anglo Saxon, that my understanding of what the poet is saying is rather incomplete.

Tolkien did not write essays for publication in academic journals, the mainstay of any career in the universities today. His 'essays' tended to be lectures or lecture notes. What a shame. He seemed to be more in tune with the heart of the Beowulf poet than any other critic and probably understood him better.

Review: Njal's Saga, Penguin Edition

The translator of this saga, Robert Cook, was an American professor of English in Iceland so his command of the language should be excellent. The sagas were written in plain language so they translate well into English. This edition includes footnotes at the back and a plot summary so you may remember the entire plot. There are a lot of actors in this tale.

The story, written in the 13th century, takes place over several decades on either side of the conversion of the Icelanders to Christianity (1000 C.E.) and concerns a feud. The Njal of the saga was a lawman, who along with his family was burned in his home. This is part of the historical record. The death of his friend Gunnar is also part of the historical record. So is the conversion story and the Battle of Clontarf. However, we cannot take the entire saga as fact.

The story also reads as a novel but we cannot say that the Icelanders invented the novel either but we should. Once the Icelanders adopted Latin script, they wrote and wrote and some of the sagas and poetry they wrote is the best there is but it is little known outside Iceland or academic circles. There is nothing in Njal's Saga that would make it read like a museum relic. It is fast paced, full of action and it could have been written today. Having read some sections in the Old Icelandic, this translation is good.

The story begins with a woman. In fact, women play a huge part in advancing the feud, from the old queen who lays a curse down on Gunnar, to the beautiful but proud Hallgerd who begins the blood feud that will consume her family and Njal's, to the good Bergthora who chooses to die with her husband Njal out of loyalty, to the odd groups of travelling women who show up whenever the good guys need to know which way the bad guys went.

One can see, reading the story, that Tolkien was inspired by this saga as well as by the Volsungsaga. It also includes the phrase "Cold are the counsels of women" which has been oft repeated and is much discussed in scholarly essays. Not only does it contain scenes which would not be out of place in 'The Matrix', such as when Skarphedin crosses a river over an ice bridge and, skidding out of control, is heading towards the group of men he meant to attack, swinging his ax but it is also a court room drama not unlike 'Twelve Angry Men' or 'Inherit the Wind'. Before there was Grisham, there was the anonymous writer of Njal. Yes, the Vikings of Iceland were really into the law and had a large number of lawyers. Who knew.

Once you have read the story, if you cannot get enough, there are tours in Iceland that take you through all the locations in the saga and there are festivals with re-enactments of the burning.

The Blue Edged Sword

In chapter 129 of Njal's Saga, while the house of Njal is burned with everyone in it, Kari Solmundarson escaped from the blaze and leaves so that he can avenge the deaths of Njal and his household but the edge of his sword has turned blue. It is suggested that the fire has turned the edge soft but, in true heroic fashion, he proposes to harden it with the blood of his enemies.

One can recognize some ideas that Tolkien borrowed from Njal's Saga. Such as Sam, the loyal dog of Gunnar, who dies with Gunnar. The Old Norse 'Sam' and the English 'Samwise' are not related but, who is to say if the Old Norse was what Tolkien had in mind when he created Sam Gamgee. It appeared that way to me and to a fellow student in that class.

The Wild Man of Orford

Ralph of Coggeshall was another medieval chronicler who, after he was finished writing the doings of the wealthy and powerful, collected curious little tales he had heard. He is the source for the story of the green children of Woolpit and this interesting story about the wild man of Orford. In his words, more or less, as I translate from the latin.

"At the time of King Henry II when Bartholomew de Glanville kept the castle at Orford, it happened one day that some fishermen who were fishing, caught a wild man in their net. They handed him over to Bartholomew to admire. The wild man was completely nude, and appeared as a human in all his parts. He had hair on his head, but ruined and wrecked in appearance. He had a really long beard, and he was really too hairy and shaggy on his chest. Bartholomew had him guarded for a time, day and night, so that he could not go back to the sea. Whatever was brought to him, he ate avidly. Indeed he ate fishes raw rather than cooked, but he would squeeze the raw fish between his hands and suck the juice out and thus he would eat. He emitted not one word either because he did not want to or he could not, even when he was suspended by his feet and subjected to frequent dire tortures. Although he was brought to church, he showed no signs of veneration or any sign of belief, by either bending the knee or inclining the head with which one could discern something holy. He always eagerly sought his bedchamber when the sun went down and would lie there until the sun came up.

It happened one day, that they brought him to the sea and set him in the sea, held on to by a net, three lines thick. Who, seeking the deepest part of the sea, passing through the net, was emerging again and again from the bottom of the sea and was looking at those watching from the shore of the sea a long while. Often he dipped down and blow out a bit of water as if insulting those watching because he escaped their net. And when he played in the sea thus a while and now all hope was gone that they would recapture him, suddenly he came, swimming in the waves, again all the way to them. And he remained with them again for two months. But when those keeping him became negligent and showed distaste for him, he fled in secret to the sea and never appeared afterwards. If however he existed as a mortal man, presenting himself as some human type of fish, as if an evil spirit was hiding in the body of the submerged man, just as may be read in the life of St. Audoeni, one cannot easily categorize him. Most of all because so many wonders are being told by so many about these events."

That was a quick and dirty translation on my part. The story seems part Gollum, part Free Willy. I couldn't say for sure that Tolkien had read Chronicon Anglicanum (it is not a particularly obscure text) and that this incident inspired his portrayal of Gollum (Gollum was not this hairy) but it struck me as very similar.

Sleepy, Sneezy, Doc and Gut-Bucket

The topic of the day is dwarfs. More specifically dwarf names. It is always interesting to see where authors get names from. Some clearly make them up and they are cringe-worthy, others find them in heroic sagas or myth. Alan Garner said he got names from The Mabinogion, particularly "Culhwch and Olwen". I knew Tolkien took Durin's name from Norse myth but I found this list of names in the 'Voluspa' and it made me chuckle.

nyi-New Moon, Nithi - Moon Wane, Northri-North, Suthri-South, Austri-East, Vestri-West, Althjofr-Thieve All, Dwalin - Dawdler, Bivurr - Shaky, Bavurr- Grumbler, Bomburr - Gut Bucket, Nori - Old Salt, Ann ok Annar - Friend and Friendly, Oinn - Grandpa, Mjothvitnir - Mead Wolf, Vegrr - Swig, Vindalfr - Wind Elf, Thorinn - Urge, Thrak ok Thrainn - Knowing and Daring, Thekkr - Spurt, Litr ok Vitr - Wise and Bright, Nyr ok Nyrathr - Corpse and Fresh Counsel. I could go on but it is a long list. Imagine Snow White with a dwarf called Corpse.

Other names from Lord of the Rings on this list: Fili - Filer, Kili - Wedger, Fundinn - New Found, Ori - Prankster, Eikinskjaldi - Oakenshield, and of course Gandalf, which means 'Wand-elf'.

Eight More Days to Go

My long list of readers have probably wondered where I have been. Reading. I have been rereading George R.R. Martin's A Song of Fire and Ice series. The fifth book called A Dance With Dragons will be released to very impatient waiting public. The fourth book came out six years ago so it was a long wait. Excluding the appendices, the shortest book was A Game of Thrones with 807 pages and the longest was A Storm of Swords with 1128 pages. I have been trying to whip through approximately 400o pages of writing in about a week. I could have tried to read it a bit slower but, once I got 'into' the story, I could not stop reading. I am now ready for book five.

I dog-earred a few pages to make some comments about because the author drew inspiration from the Middle Ages and the War of the Roses. (Lannisters vs Starks, Lancaster vs York, Robert Baratheon being a sort of Henry Tudor)

Sparrows - Why not robins? Or starlings? Swallows? I think Martin chose sparrow as the name for the adherents of a religious revival that was sweeping Westeros because of Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English People (II.13) where Edwin, the king of Northumberland has decided to accept the new faith but has called a council of his men to discuss this. One of his counsellors compares the life of man to the swift flight of a sparrow through the banqueting hall on a winter's day.

Blue roses - There is no such thing. I have some pale lavender roses in my garden. They are about as close as one can get to blue roses without food colouring or genetic engineering. from Wikipedia "In some cultures, blue roses traditionally signify a mystery, or attaining the impossible, or never ending quest for the impossible" Perhaps Martin was using the Victorian language of flowers or maybe he borrowed it from Tennessee Williams' The Glass Menagerie where Laura's high school crush, Jim O'Connor, called her 'Blue Roses' because he misheard her when she told him that she had pleurosis. Jim actually liked Laura but he was already engaged to another just like Rhaegar was already married to Elia but loved Lyanna.

Bael the Bard - he is a wilding that fathered a son on a Stark woman. Later he when he is leading his army south thirty years after, he meets his son at the ford and his son, not knowing Bael is his father, kills him. This story reminds me of the Hildebrandslied in which Hildebrand, who has been away for thirty years fighting in Theodoric the Great's wars, returns home and is confronted by his son Hadubrand who believes his father is dead. They fight and Hildebrand kills his own son, knowing it is his son because the Heroic Code allows him no other honourable course of action.

Baelor the Blessed - Edward the Confessor. He too refused to consummate his marriage, devoting himself to his faith. He was called a 'good king' but he was a terrible king. He should have closed his eyes and done his duty and produced an heir. His selfishness lead to a dispute over succession and the massive slaughter that has been called the Norman Conquest.

The incident with Hodor throwing a rock down the well at the Nightfort - so Tolkien. Martin has admitted to being a fan. The passage is like Pippin tossing a pebble down the well at Moria but instead of hearing drums and calling orcs, Hodor only called Samwell Tarley out of the well which was a secret passageway. The name Samwell reminds me of Samwise. There were several parts that were clearly influenced by Lord of the Rings and I don't mind. Once upon a time that was how writers wrote - taking bits from other authors. Shakespeare stole entire passages from Plautus, Ovid or Montaigne and no one calls him a hack for that. It was a compliment then, not a reason to call in the copyright lawyers. Of course, they are a product of our enlightened modern times.

The Titan of Bravos - the Colossus of Rhodes.

The Three Leaves in the Prince's Pass, pierced by Dornish spears, Alester sounding his warhorn with his last breath - Song of Roland. Count Roland blew his horn, Oliphaunt to call back Charlemagne to the pass. He was killed by Arabs or Basques at Roncesvalles.

Knowing where Martin draws inspiration from does not help to figure out where he is going with the series. Good guys die routinely in his novels as they do in real life. Sometimes the bad guys win. No character is immune from being killed off. Clearly though, Daenerys is the 'Prince That was Promised' and the dragons are going to fry the Others.

Beorn

I was reading Gesta Herwardi, or The Deeds of Hereward the Wake, last night when the name of Beorn appeared on the page. Since I just mentioned him in my last post, it was interesting to be handed a reason for Tolkien choosing Beorn as the name of the shapeshifter.

After being banished by his father, Hereward went north to Northumberland and spent Christmas watching people wrestle bears for fun. He decided to test his strength against the biggest, baddest bear there. "This was the offspring of a famous Norwegian bear which had the head and feet of a man and human intelligence, which understood the speech of men and was cunning in battle. Its father, so the stories and legends told, was said to have raped a girl in the woods and through her to have engendered Beorn, King of Norway."(M. Swanton trans.)

All the bees are easily explained. 'Beo' is Anglo-Saxon for 'bee'.

It is a curious little tale and is probably taken from the same story that this Norwegian legend was taken from. Whether Tolkien chose the name for the story in Gesta Herewardi or the Norwegian story, I do not know. Either one is likely.

Thingol Was a Wanker

There is a good explanation for the title of this piece. I have been busy learning the Anglo Saxon language, for which knowing Tolkien as well as I do has been really helpful. I have to chuckle, as I memorize word lists, when I come across edoras which means 'building'. Of course it does.

I have come across beam as well, which means 'tree' and is why Quickbeam was such a hasty ent. Speaking of ent, it is the word for 'giant' so of course the ents had to be large. Flet is floor. Mearh is horse. Beorn has 'bee' as a root, as well as meaning 'chief', so he must be a leader and there would be some large bees at his home. Wine means 'friend'. Brandywine. Huru! (Indeed!)

Last week, on my word list to learn was a verb- asmeagian, to investigate, devise, examine, elicit. Sounds like Smeagol. Then, when we were going over the vocabulary list, my prof made some Gollum noises and said that this verb is where Tolkien got the name from. The inside joke is that, when Sam was calling him a sneak, it really was his name. The suffix -ol is added to a verb to create a noun much like in Latin when -ator is added to gladius (sword) to create gladiator.

So this brings me to Thingol. Thing + ol. Hmmm. What was Thingol up to off in his cave? It explains much that is strange about Legolas. Does it not?

The Healing Hands of the King

In The Return of the King, Ioreth, looking at the fair face of Faramir says, "Alas! if he should die. Would that there were kings in Gondor, as there were once upon a time, they say! For it is said in old lore: The hands of the king are the hands of a healer. And so the rightful king could ever be known."

While reading A Distant Mirror, which leads into the miracle of Joan of Arc being at the end of the Hundred Years War, I decided to get out my copy of Marina Warner's Joan of Arc to compare Warner's view of the events of the war to that of Tuchman. One of the commands issued by Joan's voices was that Charles VII must go to Rheims, which was in enemy hands at the time, to be crowned King of France and anointed with the special oil which was kept at Rheims for the anointing of kings since the days of Clovis. The oil was given to the Bishop Remigius by the Holy Spirit in the form of a white dove, according to Hincmar, the archbishop of Rheims in the 9th century.

After he had been crowned in a bare bones ceremony, he touched the relics of the martyr, St. Marcoul, and "through his intercession heal the scrofula, or king's evil, of his subjects. Scrofula is a disfiguring, incurable disease of the skin, and the only remedy in medieval times was believed to be the touch of the legitimate, God-appointed and God-pleasing king." This according to Warner's notes comes from the chronicle of Enguerrand Monstrelet. By healing people, Charles VII was confirming for himself and his people that he was the rightful king.

Edward the Confessor, one of the last Anglo-Saxon kings of England, was the first to have been credited this power by Osbert de Clare and all subsequent kings of England are also supposed to have had this power to heal the King's Evil, as scrofula was called.

So the hands of the king really were healing hands, if you believe.

Tolkien and Swords

     One thing that struck me early on while reading Lord of the Rings is the way swords have names and their own histories.  Some even have magical qualities.  It amazed me that, in The Hobbit, when Gandalf and the dwarves are captured by the goblins of the Misty Mountains and the goblins examine the swords that Gandalf and Thorin are bearing, even though it has been more that 6,400 years since the fall of Gondolin in the First Age, the goblins still remembered Glamdring - the Foe Hammer - the sword of Turgon, King of Gondolin.  They called his sword "Beater" fearing it and whoever wielded it as well as Orcrist - Goblin-Cleaver - which they called "Biter".

     One has to wonder, since the elves of Gondolin relied on staying hidden rather than killing orcs to keep their kingdom secret, how these swords acquired these fearsome reputations among the goblins.   They were found in the troll-hoard where they had probably found their way after being kept in the hands of men of the North Kingdom of Arnor.  During the wars with the Witch-King of Angmar, the swords (in the hands of new owners) could have added to their personal history.

     Looking at a book like Beowulf for comparison, when the hero returns home to Geatland and tells of the upcoming marriage between Hrothgar's daughter and Ingeld's son, he predicts that the hope of an alliance through this marriage, ending the blood feud between the tribes, will fail for one main reason.  Swords and armor were very valuable then and were not usually buried with the deceased.  When you killed an enemy in battle, you were entitled to take his armor and arms and very often carried them yourself if they were superior to what you had.  At the wedding and any other gatherings, relatives of the dead men were sure to see the arms of their loved ones being worn by their enemies and recognize them.  The Heroic Code of the Saxons would demand that the death then be avenged.  So in the past, people would know a particular  sword and its history.

      While Tolkien was a scholar in Anglo-Saxon and helped to popularize Beowulf, I think The Song of Roland is a part of where he drew his inspiration from in sword lore.  Count Roland has a sword called 'Durendal'.   There is no consensus on the meaning of the name (I think it sounds like 'hard steel') but in it's golden hilt is embedded St. Peter's tooth, blood of St. Basil, hair from St. Denis and a part of the raiment of Mary, mother of Jesus.  He also bore a horn called the Oliphant which, when they were attacked and the battle turned against them, he sounded to summon Charlemagne with the main part of the army.  Charlemagne heard the horn 30 leagues away but was at first persuaded that it was nothing.  The Saracens, at first dismayed but seeing that no one came, continued their assault. (Sounds like Boromir?)  Two more times Roland blew his horn and on the third blast, Charlemagne was convinced Roland was in danger and turned around.   The Franks heard the horn two more times as they hurried back, the last blow sounding weak and they knew Roland was dying.  All of his men were dead and he did not want his sword to fall into the hands of the infidels so he tried to break it.  It was unbreakable.  Charlemagne found him dead with his sword under him, covered with wounds that showed how bravely he fought against so many.

     The sword of Roland with all its fabulous relics did not belong to Charlemagne because the king had a better relic embedded in the pommel of his sword, Jouise or Joyous - the tip of the Spear of Destiny also known as the Spear of Longinus.  This sword changed color thirty times a day.  Charlemagne's war cry was 'Monjoie" meaning 'My Joy' from his sword rather like Aragorn's war cry of 'Anduril'. Aragorn's sword name seems like it may be an anagram of Roland's sword but if that is not convincing enough that The Song of Roland influenced Tolkien (among other works) while writing Lord of the Rings, consider this:  the enemy responsible for the attack that killed Roland, an emir named Baligant, who fought with Charlemagne and died at his hands, had a sword that he called Precuise or 'Precious'.  It was his battle cry.  One could imagine him dying with a shriek of 'Precious' but it would cause one to giggle slightly and deny the solemnity of the moment. Gollum, gollum.

Elf, Fairy, or Sidhe? Which Should It Be? Spoiler Alert!

    I enjoyed watching Hellboy 2: The Golden Army, but unfortunately for Hellboy, the three kids who were with me and I were rooting for the bad guy Nuadda, who squarely defeated Hellboy in single combat but was treacherously destroyed by his twin sister. 

   The naming of the Elf Prince Nuadda made me smile since, anyone who is familiar with Celtic mythology would recognize the name as the leader of the Tuatha de Danaan, when they arrived at the home promised to them by their goddess Danu, Ireland. They called their new home Innis Fail or the 'Island of Destiny' in English.  Nuadda, in the film, was without the silver hand but he was carrying a sword.  And what a swordsman he was!!

      In keeping with the Irish Book of Invasions, the lebor gabala erin, the Tuatha de Danaan fought a war with humans, the sons of Miles.  The aftermath of the war was an agreement to leave the earth above ground to humans while the Tuatha de Danaan took the underworld, particularly the barrows, which is when their name changed to Sidhe, pronounced Shee, the people of the barrows. 

     So far the facts fit the movie, except for the Golden Army.  There was no Golden Army.  There were the Fianna, the Red Branch of warriors with Diarmid, who was every bit the athlete like Nuadda was in Hellboy but the creators of the film chose to call Nuadda an elf rather than a Sidhe.  Is it really the same thing since the English commonly call the folk of the 'Otherworld' the fairy people now?

    In a sense it is and this is where the Medieval connection lies.  It is in the evolution of the English language.  The Norman Conquest of 1066 did not just take the land, it took over the language.  Fairy is a word derived from Old French.  When the Anglo-Saxons marched into England in the fifth century, they pushed the native Celts into Cornwall, Wales, and Scotland where they lived apart and so Gaelic had very little impact on the language.  'Elf' would have been the Anglo-Saxon word and so it might still be if not for that French completely took over the language, excepting a few hundred common nouns like bread, brother, wood, etc.  Until Tolkien brought it back with The Lord of the Rings. 

Beatles Song of the Week

Ubi me in temporibus turbulentis invenio,

Mater Maria ad me venit,

Verba sapientarum dicit, sit.

Et in hora caeca mea

Ante meum directe stat,

Verba sapientarum dicit, sit

Sit, sit

Susurrate verba sapientarum,

Sit.

Et ubi deiecti,

In terra vivens convenerunt,

Explicatio erit, sit.

 

Nam etsi separati sint,

Etiam potestas videbunt,

Responsio erit, sit.

Et ubi nox nubis est,

Est etiam lumen quod in meum lucet.

Lucete in crasinum, sit.

E somno excito et musicam audio,

Mater Maria ad me venit,

Verba sapientarum dicit, sit.

Amalasuntha, Daughter of the King

     Amalasuntha died around 534 AD, strangled in her bath according to Jordanes. Procopius agrees she was murdered.  You may ask who was Amalasuntha and why do we care.  I shall try to answer that.

     She was firstly the daughter of Theodoric the Great, the Ostrogoth King of Italy.  When Theodoric died, his throne passed on to Amalasuntha's son, Athalaric, a sickly lad of ten.  The kingdom had peace for eight years under his rule and the regency of his mother but it was not to last.  Athalaric died at the age of eighteen, leaving his mother alone to rule the kingdom.  His father Eutharic had died before Theodoric.   The Goths were not disposed to follow the rule of a woman even the daughter of Theodoric the Great so Amalasuntha asked her cousin Theohadad, who was the king of Tuscany, to be her co-ruler.  He immediately exiled her, seized her throne and, within a few days, Jordanes related, he had her strangled in her bath. 

     Procopius also had a few things to say about Amalasuntha since her father had been fostered at the court in Constantinople and the rule of Italy had been conferred on Theodoric and his family by the Byzantine emperor.  They were under his protection and, after the death of Amalasuntha and Athalaric, Mathesuentha moved to Constantinople with her second husband Germanus, the nephew of Justinian. 

     Procopius would never accuse the empress Theodora during his lifetime.  Far too risky.  He wrote about it in his Secret History that was not published until after his death.  He wrote that Amalasuntha was planning to move to Constantinople and Theodora sent a man to assassinate her before she could arrive and possibly become a rival for the emperor's affections.  Amalasuntha was still young and beautiful, a widow and the daughter of a king.  

     This could have been the case because Amalasuntha's mother was Audofleda, the sister of Clovis and the oft warring Merovingian kings were her cousins.  Yet they seemed to do nothing about her murder but Justinian, the emperor, took this opportunity to launch an invasion to reclaim Italy. 

     Faced with the large and well armed Byzantine army, the Goths deposed Theohadad and chose his armor bearer, Vitiges, as his replacement.  Theohadad then fled and was pursued and killed by Vitiges's men.  Vitiges then married the last surviving member of Theodoric's family, Amalasuntha's daughter Mathesuentha, and prepared to defend Italy against the Byzantines. 

     Where is Gregory of Tours account in all of this since it involves a member of the Merovingian clan?  He does write an account of Amalasuntha but it is slanderous and full of malice towards her.  Amalasuntha was a virtuous woman, whose mother died of old age before she did.  She married a prince willingly and had two children with him but Gregory says nothing about that.  He wrote that she was a wicked woman who ran off with a slave and murdered her mother and that Theodat (as he named him) was the avenger who did right to have her killed.  Gregory also wrote that Childebert, Lothar, and Theudebert did demand wergeld from Theodat for her death, not that they cared but that it was an opportunity for a cash grab. 

    One has to wonder why a good Christian man like Gregory would formulate such lies about Amalasuntha when it is a sin to do so.  I read one suggestion that it may have been because she was a member, like most Goths, of the Arian sect and if there is one thing Gregory clearly despises it is a heretic especially the Arians.  This story may have been just to discredit one more Arian since it is probably not a sin if you lie for the purpose of turning people towards the true faith. 

     Now for the second question, why do we care?  There are lines in Jordanes, sec. XLVIII, 

"For his son Beremud, as we have said before, at last grew to despise the race of the Ostrogoths because of the overlordship of the Huns, and so had followed the tribe of the Visigoths to the western country, and it was from him Veteric was descended.  Veteric also had a son Eutharic, who married Amalasuentha, the daughter of Theodoric, thus uniting again the stock of the Amali which had divided long ago."

If Tolkien was in part inspired by Jordanes, compare those lines with this line from Appendix A in Return of the King, " ... Arwen and Aragorn.  By the last the long-sundered branches of the Half-elven were reunited and their line was restored."  I had a thought that Eutharic might have been the historical Aragorn, he is a descendant of Theodoric the Visigoth who stood with the last might of Rome to repel Attila the Hun,  but nothing else about him fits.  But, if he were Aragorn, then Amalasuntha would be Arwen.  I guess they were just one more ingredient that went into the soup.   The search for Aragorn still goes on.

From Wikipedia:

"The Amali were one of the leading dynasties of the Goths, a Germanic people who confronted the Roman Empire in its declining years in the west.  They were also called the Amals, Amaler, or Amaling and were at one point considered highest in rank among Gothic fighters and royal dignity.  According to Gothic legend, the Amali were descended from an ancient hero whose deeds earned him the title of Amala or 'mighty'."  Beren One-Hand, anyone?

Beatles Song of the Week

Te amat, heia, heia, heia!

Te amat, heia, heia, heia!

Cogitas tuum amorem amissis,

Certe eam heri vidi,

Dicit te amat,

Et scis mallum non est.

Heia, te amat,

Et scis laetus sis. 

Dixit eam multum nocuis,

Paene eam mentum amissit,

Et nunc dicit ea scit,

Genus qui nocere non es,

Dicit te amat,

Et scis malum non est,

Dicit te amat,

Et scis laetus  sis.

Te amat, heia, heia, heia......

Lord of the Rings and the King of the Visigoths

     I was posting a comment on a blog about Harry Potter when one of the people said that they like HP because they could imagine someone like McGonagall walking down the road.  Real but hidden to us.  That person could not imagine Aragorn walking down that same street.

  You would not find him strolling along some city street today because he lived 1,500 years ago in the Heroic Age of Beowulf, Arthur, and Siegfried.  The more I read Old English literature, the more I see where J.R.R. Tolkien got his material from.

    Tolkien wrote an essay first published in 1964 called "On Fairy Stories".   In it he wrote this wonderful metaphor for story being a kind of soup.  

     "Speaking of the history of stories and especially of fairy-stories, we may say that the Pot of Soup, the Cauldron of Story, has always been  been boiling, and to it have continually been added new bits, dainty and undainty." 

As we know, those of us who cook, the very best and most flavorful soups are made from the scraps in the kitchen and not something carefully planned out from a recipe book needing a trip to the grocery store. 

     "But if we speak of a Cauldron, we must not wholly forget the Cooks.  There are many things in the Cauldron but the Cooks do not dip the ladle quite blindly.  Their selection is important.  The gods are after all gods, and it is a matter of some moment what stories are told of them."  Indeed.

     When Tolkien was writing his stories of Midgaard/Middle Earth, he too was dipping in his ladle and choosing his bits, some were Scandinavian, some were Celtic, some were from history and some were from myth.  Many were from the Anglo-Saxons; it was after all where he made his living and reputation as a scholar.  In the few works that remain of the Anglo-Saxons, I may not have found Aragorn but I think I have found his ally Theoden in Theodoric I, King of the Visigoths.

     Gregory of Tours said little about him except that he was one of the few to heed the call and stand beside Aetius, Patrician of Rome, against the Scourge of God, Attila the Hun.  It is clear in many ways that the Numenorians are based on the Romans but it is difficult to say if Aetius's role in the battle mirrors Aragorn's or Denethor.  He was a steward of a sort in the fading of the empire but he fought on the field gloriously and survived. 

     Jordanes can tell us more.  He called Theodoric Theodorid.  So why not say he was Theoden's son Theodred?  Theodoric and Theoden died in the same way and were about the same age.  While Attila was advancing on the walled city of Orleans, burning and plundering after the manner of orcs, Aetius and Theodoric gathered together a last alliance of tribes, the last major battle of a united Roman empire.  They stopped his advance in the Battle of the Catalaunian Plains, like the king of the Nazgul was stopped in the Battle of the Pelennor Fields.

     The Visigoth king would not be outdone in courage by his men and rode ahead of them all.  He was thrown from his horse, like Theoden, and died trampled by the horses of his men rather than by his own horse.  His son, not a nephew, Thorismud pursued the enemy so far into the field that he wandered into Attila's camp on the way back and had to fight his way out, like Eomer's heedless rush at the enemy.

     When they found the body of Theodoric "where the dead lay thickest"(Jordanes), they bore his body away with songs in the sight of the enemy while the battle raged on around them, exactly like Theoden was carried from the field.  Unlike in the Battle of the Pelennor Fields, this enemy, Attila, lived to flee and find his death later overexerting himself with a young bride but not before facing Thorismud in battle and being defeated by him. One cannot imagine the leader of the Nazgul dying in this way.

     There are other parallels.  The death of the Witch King of Angmar had been foretold in the North.  Attila, through fear of Aetius, consulted shamen to have them prophesize what the outcome of the battle would be.  He was told one of the leaders of the armies would die that day.  He risked the battle hoping it would be Aetius. 

     Attila had allies in the Ostrogoths, the Goths of the East, which is why the king of the Ostrogoths is at his court in the Nibelungenlied.  Since they come from the East, these could be compared to the Black Numenorians who fought against their kin from the West.  Visigoth simply means Goth of the West.

     One last similarity between the Battle of the Catalaunian Plains and the Battle of the Pelennor field is the presence of an army of the dead. While I must track down the original source to confirm this, in E.A. Thompson's book The Huns, he quotes a scholar, Damascius, who wrote that the fighting between the Roman alliance and the Huns was so severe that only the leaders and a few followers survived.  Jordanes gives the numbers of the dead as 165,000.  The battle raged so fiercely that those who were killed did not realize they were dead and went on fighting for three days.  The clash of their ghostly arms could be heard by the living. 

I do not yet know who Aragorn was but I will.  For he lived; more surely than did McGonagall, he lived. 

Beatles Song of the Week

Via Cyancitta Cristata

Illuc nebulam super Urbe Angelorum est,

Et mei amici viam suam perierant, 

Erimus in illo loco mox diximus,

Nunc in vicem ipsi perierant.

refrain:  Amabo, non este tardi,

Amabo, non este perquam tardi,

Amabo, non este tardi,

Aut sim dormiens.

Bene solum agit monstrare,

Et dixi eos ubi agere,

Vigiliam in viam rogare,

Est tot ibi convenire,

Nunc est ultra horam somnorum intellego,

Et vero agere amo,

Mox prima lux erit,

Hic in Via Cyancitta Cristata sedeo.