Ancient Roads to New Horizons
Leaving the Shire, Forgotten Paths, & Buried Treasures
A Rough & Slow Start
The most daunting part of any journey is often the beginning. This is as true for those beginning The Lord of the Rings as it is for Frodo himself beginning on his journey to Mordor. New readers might complain of the book’s slow start, the long, meandering passages describing even longer, meandering roads that Frodo and his friends take—now we’re eleven chapters in and they have hardly left the Shire!
While this complaint, I admit, is not entirely undeserving, the slow trek Frodo and his friends take across the Shire to Rivendell was not an indulgence of a long-winded writer—Tolkien paid the utmost attention to each word he wrote, in fact—but rather a very purposeful way for him to weave in the ancient history that lies at the core of Middle-earth’s legendarium, which has shaped both the environment and politics of the current age. Tolkien, after all, considered the Silmarillion his great work, the legends and epic cycles that blossomed from his invented languages, Quenya and Sindarin, and as we can see even in his children’s tale, The Hobbit, Tolkien can hardly resist sprinkling in that ancient lore, continually referencing old battles and forgotten kingdoms.
Those reading The Hobbit or The Lord of the Rings for the first time might consider these in-passing references as superfluous—or worse, as events and historical babble that the writer came up with on the spot but who had hardly sketched out the details. How wrong they are! If anything, one could argue that it was The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings that were incidental, which Tolkien told as bedtime stories to his children while he was constructing the languages of Middle-earth and composing the epic cycles and poems of the Silmarillion, and was more or less compelled to write The Lord of the Rings by popular demand of more hobbit material instead of publishing his true passion project.
But that is not to say he slacked in his writing of The Lord of the Rings, but rather as we will see, in his effort as “a tale-teller to try his hand at a really long story that would hold the attention of readers, amuse them, delight them, and at times maybe excite them or deeply move them,”1 the ancient history and mythology he had already created for Middle-earth became one of the main reasons I believe The Lord of the Rings is a masterpiece of literature and storytelling.
Green-ways of the Past
Despite the fact that Frodo and his friends are literally on the run from Black Riders, the journey they take across the Shire to the Prancing Pony takes them seven days in the book, crossing about 120 miles, which is not a small distance by any means, but could have been covered by hobbits much quicker.
Obviously, Frodo and his friends were delayed, both by the pursuing Black Riders and other forces at play, such as waiting for Gandalf to arrive (he never did), getting lost in the Old Forest, staying with Tom Bombadil, and nearly being killed by a Barrow-wight. But this delay may also have been due to the weightiness of history, which demanded to be remembered as Frodo passes the haunts of the past with the One Ring, whose very power is tied to the fate of Middle-earth, both past and present.
The first glimpse of the past we see occurs after the second close call with one of the Black Riders, on a lane “winding through a wood of ancient oak-trees on its way to Woodhall.” They hear voices and hooves beating on the lane behind them, but instead of a Black Rider, they realize the voices are that of Elves singing. So they wait for them to pass, and this is the song they hear them sing:
Snow-white! Snow-white! O Lady clear! O Queen beyond the Western Seas! O light to us that wander here Amid the world of woven trees! Gilthoniel! O Elbereth! Clear are thy eyes and bright thy breath! Snow-white! Snow-white! We sing to thee In a far land beyond the sea. O Stars that in the Sunless Year With shining hand by her were sown, In windy fields now bright and clear We see your silver blossom blown! O Elbereth! Gilthoniel! We still remember, we who dwell In this far land beneath the trees, Thy starlight on the Western Seas.
This song references the “far land beyond the sea,” or Valinor, the Blessed Realm, and calls upon Elbereth, which is the Sindarin name for Varda, Queen of the Valar, meaning “Star-Queen.” So she is called Lady of the Stars, while her other name, Gilthoniel, means “Starkindler.” As
writes in his post “Our Most Beloved Star: Eärendil and the Stars Above Middle-earth” (which is worth a read for a more in-depth analysis of Varda’s mythological importance), “Varda is known as Elbereth because it was she who created all the stars long ago and then who in the ‘greatest of all the works of the Valar since their coming’ took dew from Telperion, one of the Two Trees of Valinor, and created even greater and brighter stars right before the awakening of the elves. For even as she ended her labors, the elves awoke and ‘their eyes beheld first of all things the stars of heaven. Therefore they have ever loved the starlight, and have revered Varda Elentári above all the Valar.’”
When Frodo speaks with the Elf lord, he tells Frodo that he is “‘Gildor Inglorion of the House of Finrod. We are Exiles, and most of our kindred have long ago departed and we too are now only tarrying here a while, ere we return over the Great Sea. But some of our kinsfolk dwell still in peace in Rivendell.’”
The House of Finrod unravels the rest of the Silmarillion, and the story of how the Elves awoke at the light of the stars and how they came—or did not come—to Valinor, and how some became exiles like Gildor. This scene also alludes to the departure of the Elves from the shores of Middle-earth, thus marking the end of an age, but also the beginning of a new one, the age of Men.
When Frodo complains, “‘I knew that danger lay ahead, of course; but I did not expect to meet it in our own Shire. Can’t a hobbit walk from the Water to the River in peace?’” it is Gildor who responds: “‘But it is not your own Shire,’ said Gildor. ‘Others dwelt here before hobbits were; and others will dwell here again when hobbits are no more. The wide world is all about you: you can fence yourselves in, but you cannot for ever fence it out.’”
Gildor’s memory, as does Tom Bombadil’s, reaches farther back than the earliest memories of the hobbits of the Shire and their history. Before the hobbits settled in what is now named the Shire, there were great kingdoms of Elves, now forgotten by those who inhabit those same lands and remembered only by a few. Those kingdoms were responsible for the Shire’s fertility and abundance after centuries of cultivation and care.
Tom Bombadil himself reaches even further into the past when he tells the hobbits tales of the Old Forest:
“As they listened, they began to understand the lives of the Forest, apart from themselves, indeed to feel themselves as the strangers where all other things were at home.….It was not called the Old Forest without reason, for it was indeed ancient, a survivor of vast forgotten woods; and in it there lived yet, ageing no quicker than the hills, the fathers of the fathers of trees, remembering times when they were lords.”
Part of the beauty of Tolkien’s legendarium is that it not only includes the history of kingdoms, both of Elves, Men, and Dwarves, as well as evil forces like Melkor and Sauron, but it also details the changing landscapes of Middle-earth and the kingdoms of nature, from sundering seas, crumbling and rising mountain ranges, rivers moving direction, forests growing and shrinking, grasses dying, fields covering ancient ruins, and deep, delving caves where monsters of old still dwell in secret. Therefore we begin to see, as Frodo does, that his journey across Middle-earth’s forests and plains, mountains and rivers, hills and marshes, has a deeper meaning than he could ever have guessed, and that when one journeys on the paths of the earth, we are at the same time journeying into the past that they preserve.
After being rescued from the Barrow-wight by Tom Bombadil, they ride together to Bree. On their journey, another phantom of the past rises up: “The dark line they had seen was not a line of trees but a line of bushes growing on the edge of a deep dike with a steep wall on the further side. Tom said that it had once been the boundary of a kingdom, but a very long time ago. He seemed to remember something sad about it, and would not say much.”
While I will discuss Tom’s reaction to the past more in the next section, this description of Middle-earth’s changing environment is yet another example of how the past is intertwined with the landscape, that one cannot exist without the other, and more to the point, that no matter how high we build castles and fortresses, no matter how many lands we conquer, the earth is her own master, and one day those castles and fortresses shall fall, those kingdoms will lie in ruin, forgotten and buried by the grass and the trees in victory, before another kingdom rises to take its place.
In a brief history of the village of Bree, Tolkien tells us that “down on the Road, where it swept to the right to go round the foot of the hill, there was a large inn. It had been built long ago when the traffic on the roads had been far greater. For Bree stood at an old meeting of ways; another ancient road crossed the East Road just outside the dike at the western end of the village, and in former days Men and other folk of various sorts had travelled much on it….But the Northern Lands had long been desolate, and the North Road was now seldom used: it was grass-grown, and the Bree-folk called it the Greenway.”
Once again we see nature conquering the memory of the past, which clings futilely to the present. We can imagine that Tolkien, a lover of trees and long walks in the countryside, might have stumbled upon an ancient road, maybe even one of the many Roman roads that lie buried under England’s rich fields, and seen the green grass sprouting over the stones, and wondered at the many feet that had once trod the path when it was so widely used as to have necessitated a paved road. Perhaps it was on that very path—a green-way if you will—that the name arose in his mind for an ancient road that once connected the Shire with the ancient history of Middle-earth, and whose past is now awakened beneath Frodo’s hurrying hobbit feet.
Treasure Hoards of the Past
Perhaps the greatest mystery welling out of the past in these first eleven chapters is Tom Bombadil. He is sometimes regarded as a mistake on Tolkien’s part, a strange figure who no one (not Frodo and much less us) really understands, and who doesn’t seem to fit into the story at all. But his character plays an important role as a link between the ancient past—even the very Makings of the Earth—and the current age.
For as he tells Frodo: “Eldest, that’s what I am. Mark my words, my friends: Tom was here before the river and the trees; Tom remembers the first raindrop and the first acorn. He made paths before the Big People, and saw the little People arriving. He was here before the Kings and the graves and the Barrow-wights. When the Elves passed westward, Tom was here already, before the seas were bent. He knew the dark under the stars when it was fearless – before the Dark Lord came from Outside.’”
His “power” over the One Ring (or we might say, the lack of power the One Ring has over him), for example, reminds us that the very fabric of the Earth and the universe were created by forces greater than the ring, greater even than Sauron himself, and that Ilúvatar shall endure long after the Unmaking of the World. And as Tom Bombadil has existed for much longer than we may even realize, he has seen the history of Middle-earth unfold, and is one of its keepers not only through his stewardship as “master of wood, water, and hill,” but also through remembering.
We first learn of Tom’s ages-old memory when he tells the story of “the Great Barrows, and the green mounds, and the stone-rings upon the hills and in the hollows among the hills. Sheep were bleating in flocks. Green walls and white walls rose. There were fortresses on the heights. Kings of little kingdoms fought together, and the young Sun shone like fire on the red metal of their new and greedy swords. There was victory and defeat; and towers fell, fortresses were burned, and flames went up into the sky. Gold was piled on the biers of dead kings and queens; and mounds covered them, and the stone doors were shut; and the grass grew over all.”
This vision of the past is resurrected even more poignantly when Tom rescues Frodo, Sam, Merry, and Pippin from the Barrow-wight. As Tom looks through the many glittering treasures they find in the mound, “he chose for himself from the pile a brooch set with blue stones, many-shaded like flax-flowers or the wings of blue butterflies. He looked long at it, as if stirred by some memory, shaking his head, and saying at last: ‘Here is a pretty toy for Tom and for his lady! Fair was she who long ago wore this on her shoulder. Goldberry shall wear it now, and we will not forget her!’”
I find this passage so beautiful, when always merry, always singing Tom Bombadil looks in solemn silence at the brooch that perhaps once graced a long-forgotten queen of a kingdom that no one remembers. Yet he and Goldberry remember who she was, reminding us of the long, ancient history that Tolkien had given Middle-earth for thousands of years before the events of The Lord of the Rings. It also reminds us that our own earth harbors a similar forgotten past, and when we see the jewelry and precious objects collected in museums—most likely carried out of ancient grave sites dug not unlike the grass-covered Barrow mounds so as never to see the light of day again—we are beholding the lives of someone who had once lived just like you and me, and whose shining youth, decorated by a brooch or a gold ring, had once blossomed under our very same sun and moon.
We do not have to look very hard indeed—during the late Classical period of Greece around 340–320 BCE, a gold pediment-shaped brooch had been made and most likely buried with its owner.
If we go back even later to the early 5th century BCE, in the Etruscan tombs—not so very different from the Barrow mounds that Frodo encounters—was buried a great treasure of gold jewelry, including a fibula (similar to a brooch but more functional as a dress fastener), decorated with a sphynx. Who, you wonder, had adorned herself with these exquisite gold pieces? What queen or great lady had a sphinx fibula fastened on her dress, with gold disks on her ears to match her necklace? Perhaps in her day, she was well known, or even held great power, but today nothing is remembered of her identity save these gold pieces, that metal truly precious insofar as a testament to her existence even after all these years have passed.
And we can go even farther back to ca. 1050 BCE, when two gold fibulae, or brooches, in the shape of a bow (which was at the time a trendy design sold around the Greek world and beyond) were buried in Maroni, Cyprus. Who is to say that even five hundred years after these treasures were buried—when the woman who wore the sphinx fibula in Estrusca was alive—whether anyone remembered who had been buried with these brooches? But perhaps there is a beauty found in this lost history, as George Eliot so beautifully wrote: “Sorrow and neglect leave their traces on such beauty, but it thrills us to the last, like a glorious Greek temple, which, for all the loss it has suffered from time and barbarous hands, has gained a solemn history, and fills our imagination the more because it is incomplete to the sense.”
But incomplete the history of Middle-earth is not. We can only catch glimpses of it in The Lord of the Rings, especially through the hobbits’ eyes, but every once in a while we are granted a pair of keener eyes who can look further back into the past, such as Tom Bombadil. In the same scene at the Barrow mound, Tom gives the four hobbits old knives that can serve as swords. Tom “told them that these blades were forged many long years ago by Men of Westernesse: they were foes of the Dark Lord, but they were overcome by the evil king of Carn Dûm in the Land of Angmar. ‘Few now remember them,’ Tom murmured, ‘yet still some go wandering, sons of forgotten kings walking in loneliness, guarding from evil things folk that are heedless.’”
He is, of course, talking of Aragorn, and the Rangers that had once been more numerous, protecting the hobbits and other heedless folk from the dangers that lurk outside of their borders. He also refers to the king of Carn Dûm, who is, in fact, the Witch King of Angmar, otherwise known as The Lord of the Nazgul. Other readers have already noted the foreshadowing of Merry being given a sword specifically forged to defeat the Witch King. The discovery of this knife in a tomb is not so different from the discoveries of our own day, such as the archeological find of a bronze dagger forged in the 16th century BC by the Myceneans of prehistoric Greece, inlaid with gold and silver designs, and buried with their owner.
Much like Frodo and his friends who “did not understand [Tom’s] words,” we too can hardly fathom the battles such a bronze dagger had been forged for more than three thousand years ago, nor the grandness and wealth of the kingdom of Mycenae at the time, all but forgotten today, so that even daggers were decorated with silver and gold, the likes of which are hardly ever seen in our own age, if at all. And so as with the hobbits, who “had a vision as it were of a great expanse of years behind them, like a vast shadowy plain over which there strode shapes of Men, tall and grim with bright swords, and last came one with a star on his brow,” we too peer into the past when we look at the bronze dagger, and glimpse a vision of great Kings sailing across the seas to avenge a stolen queen, a similar dagger at his side as he gazes beyond the prow of a ship.
But we should not be so surprised, after all, that as a student of such ancient cultures and a true storyteller, Tolkien, like the bards of Ancient Greece who sang of battles long ago and great kings who died at the hands of their enemies, like Tom Bombadil as he tells the story of old forests and barrows and fallen kingdoms ruling when the sun was still young, had the desire to breathe life back into buried treasures and old roads, and gaze on them in solemn silence as Tom had the brooch set with blue stones, and imagine the queenly figure who might have worn it, or the strong stature of the young prince who strapped the bronze dagger to his thigh, eager for war and victory—and in so imagining the past, honors it.
And like Frodo listening to Tom Bombadil’s stories half-asleep by the fireside, if we keep wandering down the paths of Tolkien’s stories, we shall too find “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.”
For those reading, please finish Chapter 11 of The Lord of the Rings, “A Knife in the Dark,” by Sunday, October 6th.
Until then,
Zoë
Foreward to the Second Edition (October, 1966)