A lot of my time exploring fantastical literature ends up being spent on trying to understand facts from widely-separate fields of knowledge that, in the context of a story, seem like disconnected. So it’s a pleasure to report a case in which everyone just plain agrees.

As we noted earlier, Tolkien re-used a medieval cure for elf-shot to describe how Aragorn and Elrond cured Frodo of the Witch-King’s knife-wound. The cure involves boiled herbs (feverfew, deadnettle, and plantain), a knife held in the healer’s hands, and an incantation in an ancient language. Cutting and pasting from LotR I, xii:

He sat down on the ground, and taking the dagger-hilt laid it on his knees, and he sang over it a slow song in a strange tongue. … He crushed a leaf in his fingers, and it gave out a sweet and pungent fragrance. ‘It is fortunate that I could find it, for it is a healing plant that the Men of the West brought to Middle-earth. Athelas they named it’…. He threw the leaves into the boiling water and bathed Frodo’s shoulder.

There’s one problem, though: Athelas is the cure for Black Breath, not for elf-shot. Frodo probably suffers from both, so athelas is worth trying. But the text says Aragorn knows he’s not doing the cure with the right herb: It has great virtues, but over such a wound as this its healing powers may be small. (Ibid.) e43r87[1]

Ought to be suitable for next year’s questing

In their book Flora of Middle-Earth, Walter & Graham Judd looked around our world to find something that might be athelas, and they decided comfrey was the closest thing. As it happens, I’ve just planted comfrey in a little plot on my farm. It has some useful properties for building up soil fertility that this plot badly needs. But comfrey is kind of a cult-object, too  . When you talk to an expert about comfrey, you get lots of other information along with advice relevant to your primary application. In particular, I got a cautionary story about its healing properties.

Comfrey is useful for topical treatment of wounds. It closes up cuts fast, even though that’s not always the best thing. I heard the story of a dog who lacerated himself on a barbed-wire fence. He was treated with comfrey salve, and the wound closed up nicely, but such a closure was premature. There was something still deep inside, and the wound got infected. A vet had to slice the scar back open to remove whatever the little splinter was. This sounds familiar: ‘His wound was small, and it is already closed. There’s nothing to be seen but a cold white mark on his shoulder.’ (Ibid., a few pages later) Aragorn the field medic had to stop the bleeding, ward off the Black Breath, and keep Frodo mobile, so he used the strongest herb he could find. When the patient gets to the hospital, the doctors there can undo the quick fix. Elrond will be called upon to do a similar re-opening, and make use of his more-complete herbarium in Rivendell.

So, for once, we have 10th-century herbal lore, 20th-century fiction, 21st-century botany, and current lived experience all neatly lined up, with no contradictions to be reconciled. An account to the Tolkien blogosphere of so strange an event was required, I think.

[1] While I was writing, Fléau the Cat walked across my keyboard and I didn’t notice her scribal interpellation until the post went live. So I left it in. This is her first contribution to Tolkien scholarship.

Works Cited

Judd, Walter S., and Graham A. Judd. Flora of Middle-Earth: Plants of JRR Tolkien’s Legendarium. Oxford University Press, 2017.
Tolkien, J.R.R. The Lord of the Rings. Houghton-Mifflin, 2002.

The call for papers at Mythmoot V was disappointing. The theme of the conference is “dragons”, and I know nothing original about dragons. Seeing my disappointment, Madame told me something new:

In Kabyle myth, dragons abduct people, like ogres in Europe. The dragon tucks its victim under its wing and flies away. The poor abductee in the dragon’s armpit gradually shrinks as the dragon sucks his life-force away. After a while, he’s reduced to a baby. At the end, he’s absorbed completely into the dragon.

The singer Ait Menguellet used this as a metaphor for life under an oppressive regime. It fits so perfectly that I find myself wondering just how old this dragon-legend really is.

Today is Tolkien Reading Day, or New Year’s Day (Fourth Age), or Lady Day (in the Middle Ages), or Why-haven’t-you-started-the-pepper-seedlings-yet Day (in the vegetable garden).

Over at “Middle-earth Reflections”, Olga has published an essay about the mystery of Tom Bombadil, with the usual quiet charm that wouldn’t be out of place in the drawing room of a hobbit hole. Over in the more boisterous hall at the Prancing Pony, Ed Powell asks what Alan and Shawn think Bombadil is doing in the story, and they give a typically-entertaining answer. Well, Idiosophers know a harmonic convergence when they see one, so in I shall jump.

I must confess right off, I don’t know where the mystery is. This is one of those (frequent) cases where people who study literature for-real say things that I just note without understanding. Tolkien told us in Letter #153 [1] what Bombadil is doing there:

… he is then an ‘allegory’, or an exemplar, a particular embodying of pure (real) natural science: the spirit that desires knowledge of other things, their history and nature, because they are ‘other’ and wholly independent of the enquiring mind, a spirit coeval with the rational mind, and entirely unconcerned with ‘doing’ anything with the knowledge: Zoology and Botany not Cattle-breeding or Agriculture.

So many of the characters in Middle-earth who seek knowledge are doing so for the sake of power, seeking dark secrets they can use against others, that one might be tempted to think Tolkien disapproved of the search for knowledge. Bombadil is a counter-weight to that. He knows all there is to know about his little realm, but it hasn’t turned him into a power-hungry maniac like Saruman or a resentful wretch like Gollum. He’s happy, playful, always goofing around.

You can find people like that in any physics department. When I was in college, it was Rolf Winter. He didn’t look much like Tom Bombadil, though (now that I think of it) he bore a resemblance to Ken Stott’s portrayal of Balin in the Peter Jackson movies.  Here’s a figure from Prof. Winter’s book Quantum Physics:

A world with only dark secrets would be unbalanced and considerably out of line with Tolkien’s own views. Tom Bombadil reassures us that a life of learning can be a joyful experience.

Works Cited

Carpenter, Humphrey. The Letters of JRR Tolkien. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1981.

Winter, Rolf G. Quantum Physics. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 1979

[1] N.B.: 153 has 3 digits. Raise each digit to the third power.
1^3 + 5^3 + 3^3 = 153. Numerology!

Joan Bushwell,  in an old piece called “The Tolkienian War on Science”.
(h/t Daniel Stride), explains Fëanor in a way that makes him (to me) almost sympathetic. I do have one big disagreement with the author, though. I’m on board when she calls Fëanor “the master smith/scientist/engineer”. But then she builds an analogy between Morgoth’s theft of the Silmarils and the current anxiety engineers have about intellectual property. No way. Fëanor is not upset about the theft of “intellectual property”. It’s clear that Fëanor gave away intellectual property freely – look at the alphabets for the best example. Silmarils are different. When Morgoth stole the Silmarils, Fëanor didn’t have them any more. In fact, he couldn’t even make new ones. They were like moon rocks or glacial core samples: literally irreplaceable, since we don’t fly to the Moon and the glaciers are melting.

“Intellectual property” is a bizarre legal fiction because it’s exactly the opposite of Silmarils. When (not “if”) intellectual property is stolen, the possessions of the developer are unchanged. The only thing the developer loses is the secrecy. The potential for profit.

Gandalf was fond of lecturing on topics like this, so pontification must not be too reprehensible. There are several reasons why people would want to own things and keep thieves away.

1. They need things to live their lives, e.g. a wheelchair or a craftsman‘s tools
2. A wish to preserve the things from harm
3. The pleasure of accumulating things
4. They want the status that possessions provide
5. To exploit them for advantage in battle or its modern equivalent, trade

JRRT approves of number 1: “Would you part an old man from his support?” (III,vi) JRRT approves of number 2: “It shall be set in imperishable crystal to be an heirloom of my house…”. (II, viii) [1]

Numbers 3 & 4 are deadly sins. I’m pretty sure Morgoth was working from one of these or the other.

Number 5 isn’t morally nailed down outside of LotR, but Faramir was unambiguous: “If it were a thing that gave advantage in battle, I can well believe that Boromir, the proud and fearless, often rash, ever anxious for the victory of Minas Tirith (and his own glory therein), might desire such a thing and be allured by it.” (IV, v) Either way, it is the only one of the five that we know wasn’t motivating Fëanor.

Maybe the whole debate over Fëanor can be boiled down to an argument over which motivation he thought he was acting on.

[1] Yes, I could have chosen more weighty quotations, but Idiosophy is a hobbitish discipline.  By the way, is anything else in Middle-earth “imperishable”?