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noWizardme
Half-elven
Dec 9 2021, 8:49am
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"THrees Thursday": 9 December - A Conspiracy Unmasked
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This week our chapter is LOTR Book I Ch5, A Conspiracy Unmasked.
Tell me, if you wish, what threes you find in that chapter. You can do that in any way you like including:- A sort of scavenger hunt into the text to find a three of something
- Using the idea of threes to comment on the chapter in some way (e.g. write about three things you like; three plot points; three characters...)
- On occasion we might find places where the number three or a pattern of three seems likely to have been put there deliberately by Tolkien for inspiration, symbolism, use of a writing technique etc. (Or, sometimes, where such inspiration or symbolism might not be deliberate on the part of the author, but is something a reader can find and enjoy).
Contributions can be long or short, learned or simple, and from anyone.
And really this 'threes' idea is only there to encourage people to look at the chapter and join in a discussion about it. So if the 'threes' thing is a barrier to join the discussion, just feel free to post about the chapter without having to shoehorn some threes in.
I plan to post one more of these, which will take us into The Old Forest on Thursday 16th December. That would be a natural point to pause for the holidays, and in any case my sense is that the game has lost its appeal.
So over to you - what do you want to say about LOTR Book I Ch5, A Conspiracy Unmasked?
~~~~~~
My profile picture is "Kaninchen und Ente" ("Rabbit and Duck") from the 23 October 1892 issue of Fliegende Blätter (see https://en.wikipedia.org/...2%80%93duck_illusion )
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GreenHillFox
Bree
Dec 12 2021, 1:17pm
Post #2 of 8
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Here they are:
- Brandy Hall had three front-doors (and many other smaller ones).
- The bathroom in Crickhollow had three bath tubs (rather unusual, I should say)
- The ultra-classical three cheers.
I suppose the three most notable new things we learn in this chapter are probably:
- The hobbits' passion for mushrooms
- The "three" other hobbits knowing about the Ring and the red book
- Sam having been spying Frodo.
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noWizardme
Half-elven
Dec 14 2021, 10:18am
Post #3 of 8
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Yes, Merry has excelled himself:
The bathroom:
“Merry led them down the passage and threw open a door at the far end. Firelight came out, and a puff of steam. ‘A bath!’ cried Pippin. ‘O blessed Meriadoc!’‘
The limitations Frodo was expecting:‘Which order shall we go in?’ said Frodo. ‘Eldest first, or quickest first? You’ll be last either way, Master Peregrin.’
The luxury set up:
‘Trust me to arrange things better than that!’ said Merry. ‘We can’t begin life at Crickhollow with a quarrel over baths. In that room there are three tubs, and a copper full of boiling water. There are also towels, mats and soap. Get inside, and be quick!’”
I'm supposing the bathtubs are the portable kind that can be put away or used for laundry etc. between baths (rather than bathtubs that are permanently plumbed in) -- which makes the whole thing a little more practical, maybe.
So we see that Merry is good at getting things ready - which we'll see again when he reveals he's got an expedition all fitted out too.
Still, I suppose that Tolkien's main reason for having this bath-time scene (which we readers experience acoustically from the other side of the bathroom door) is so that he can include this bath song he's made up.
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My profile picture is "Kaninchen und Ente" ("Rabbit and Duck") from the 23 October 1892 issue of Fliegende Blätter (see https://en.wikipedia.org/...2%80%93duck_illusion )
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noWizardme
Half-elven
Dec 14 2021, 10:48am
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When our heroes cross the Brandywine in this chapter we get a favourite passage of mine. It has me pondering how crossing a landmark such as a river is more than just an event on the map:
“The ferry-boat moved slowly across the water. The Buckland shore drew nearer. Sam was the only member of the party who had not been over the river before. He had a strange feeling as the slow gurgling stream slipped by: his old life lay behind in the mists, dark adventure lay in front. He scratched his head, and for a moment had a passing wish that Mr. Frodo could have gone on living quietly at Bag End.” To make up my 'three' for this format I'll also give you
- Frodo's crossing of the ford to Rivendell which closes Book I,
- Frodo and Sam crossing the Anduin ("at last" one might say) at the end of Book II, and thereby committing to getting to Mordor as directly as they can.
There's probably nothing too significant about being able to pick those three from the text- it is just that the 'threes' format invites me to collect, compare and contrast (which is a Good Thing). Of course there are other water-crossings in LOTR, or just FOTR! For example, the Fellowship cross disgusting, dirty water on the way to the Gates of Moria, and then the cleansing River Nimrodel as they arrive in the neighbouring land of Lothlorien.
I'm sure a lot could be said about water crossings in the book or in Tolkien in general-- and you're invited to!
A few basic points might be that:- Rivers, or other water forms a practical barrier in Middle-earth as in the primary world. Travelers may have to go to the available crossing points, which become hazardous places for anyone being pursued. At the Brandywine, Sam looks back to see what we assume is a Black Rider, arrived too late to trap them. The trap is closer to success at the Ford. The Fellowship is ambushed on the Anduin.
- As in the primary world, water features also make political boundaries - in this chapter Sam is crossing to Buckland. Crossing other rivers, especially in force, is an act of invasion.
- Built upon these practical considerations, crossing the river is a psychological step of committal - as with Sam here, or Caesar crossing the Ribicon. And the delay in taking that 'West-bank or East bank?' decision about the Anduin has its consequences for the Fellowship in Book II
- What of magic in Middle-earth? Tolkien was clearly playing with ideas that the Black Riders found it difficult to cross water - though his attempts to explain that in Hunt For The Ring seem to show an idea that isn't fully formed in terms of mechanism. Rivendell is spectacularly defended by magic once the Riders invade the Ford: Elrond does not seem to have any protection or support to offer on the far bank, save sending out Glorfindel and his other scouts. Similarly I see the water crossings in Lothlorien as being more than quotidian trans locations across everyday water barriers: things are different, and in more than geography on the other side.
- And what of symbolism...?
Have a go with these ideas or anything else o the topic of you wish. No need to stick to the 'threes' format in reply.
~~~~~~
My profile picture is "Kaninchen und Ente" ("Rabbit and Duck") from the 23 October 1892 issue of Fliegende Blätter (see https://en.wikipedia.org/...2%80%93duck_illusion )
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GreenHillFox
Bree
Dec 15 2021, 9:53am
Post #5 of 8
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How that Brandywine ferry may (not) have worked
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Merry then pushed slowly off with a long pole. The Brandy-wine flowed slow and broad before them. On the other side the bank was steep, and up it a winding path climbed from the further landing. Lamps were twinkling there.
Each time I read that text I wonder how JRRT imagined how this ferry may have worked.
I do not believe that the mere use of a pole would be sufficient to steer a ferry over moving water in a straight line.
I remember the city of Melk in Austria, before the bridge over the Danube was built there. A ferry was in use in those days and it had no motor. The water flow was sufficiently swift to steer the ferry across just by operating the rudder. The ferry would not be carried away by the water flow, since it was suspended on a long rope across the river with a pulley (a remarkable solution of simple common sense, if you ask me).
But in LOTR we have no description how that ferry worked. The possibility that the ferry could have been stationed on the wrong side was not given any attention in the text either, by the way.
So, “three” no’s: no rope, no pulley, no guidance in the fog!
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noWizardme
Half-elven
Dec 16 2021, 1:18pm
Post #6 of 8
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I think I've seen video of that Melk ferry (or maybe one like it in Canada). I too was amazed by such a simple and ingenious way of doing things -- and that the ferry can go forwards and back, despite the river current always going the same way, which seemed counterintuitive to me at first!. It's not what I imagine here, sadly - such ferries need a swift current, I read, whereas the Brandywine is described as a "the slow gurgling stream".
I've thought about other ideas too, and to save typing, here is part of an old (2015) discussion: It seems quite a well-established crossing - someone has nicely maintained the path down to it (bollards, no less!) and there are lamps alight there, suggesting night-time travellers are common enough to make it worthwhile illuminating the landing area. But it seems to be self-service (at this time and season, of course - there could be a ferryman who operates it for some hours and lights the lamps at the end of his or her shift).
Merry is mentioned pushing of with a pole, but I'm supposing the ferry is not a punt (in which the craft is propelled by pushing the pole against the river bed). My reason for guessing this is that punting only works - for fairly obvious reasons - in shallow water, and all the more so if the punt pole has to be handled by a 3-4 foot hobbit. A river shallow enough for a hobbit to punt across probably wouldn't be the sort of obstacle to a horseman that would require the horse to swim (which is what Frodo and Merry discuss later). So I'm imagining the river is pretty deep, and that the pole is for starting and for fending off.
The kind of rope-guided ferry shown in the FOTR movie seems a reasonable guess - they run diagonally across the river so that the ferry can drift downstream one way (then it is hauled back again going the other way). That might explain why nobody is described as rowing etc.: of course they could be and it is not mentioned, but I like to think of the crossing being in eerie silence and stillness: that seems to go better with Sam's reflections on it.
The scene in the book is, it is worth noting, a lot calmer in the film (where the hobbits leap onto the ferry with a Rider in hot pursuit). In the book it seems like the hobbits are a long way into the stream before the Rider turns up.
When they get to the other bank, Merry ties the ferry up. This sounds like it is done very calmly - standard operating procedure rather than a an unusual anti-pursuit step (to prevent the Rider they have seen behind them hauling the ferry back to the other bank again and so getting across). But if it is the standard thing you do it seems rather odd when you think about it - any law-abiding hobbit traveller coming to the West (Marish) bank and hoping to get across is now stranded.
There is the odd detail that no boats are left on the west bank: dead handy now of course, but I wonder why that might be the custom? Surely the Bucklanders are not expecting an invasion from the Shire? Or mushroom rustlers, perhaps?  [Note added 13 Dec 2021: later in the conversation, I think squire suggested boats were kept on the east bank to aid any evacuation of Buckland if it were attacked from the Old Forest, and that seems a very plausible explanation to me - noWiz]
As Brethil says, there's the idea in a that the Rider can't cross water anyway (with some vague exception to cover the Ford of Brunien later on). But Frodo et al. don't know this at this point, and neither do we if we are new readers - so they and we assume that their pursuer has a regular horse and wouldn't mind a dip.
Whether the Rider could theoretically get across on the ferry (had Merry not tied it up) is also complete speculation of course - maybe it's too small, or he can't figure out how to operate it, or there are other practical obstacles.
noWizardme in 2015 here http://newboards.theonering.net/...i?post=826271#826271
You might also enjoy this thread from 2020, by which time I had made my own mental picture of a rope ferry (with a rope as part of the propulsion system, rather than 'just' to guide the ferry and prevent it from being swept downstream) :
I don't have a problem with imagining a rope ferry myself -in fact I'd done so very clearly & so imagined that was explicit in the text. So I was surprised to find that I'd inferred it.
A ferry used to exist at Bablock Hythe, near Oxford, where a rope (or at some times a chain) was strung across the river and you hauled yourself across on it (see the pictures on this website - you need to scroll down a bit to see them, and then scroll further to see 20th Century accounts of the ferry in use!). The ferry is said to have been going for six hundred years when it ended in 1964, and so maybe Tolkien used it. That area appealed to people who liked to "Walk by high hedges and heavy elms and melancholy stretches of water." (which is John Betjeman 1938, but which could readily be Tolkien, I think). Whether Tolkien used this ferry, let alone 'composted' the experience into his imaginings of the Buckleberry Ferry, is speculative (as far as I know). That's how I imagine the ferry myself.
There doesn't seem to have been a way to pull the Bablock Hythe ferry across the river to the bank you were on, if you arrived and found it on the other side. My guess is that this was for commercial reasons - so that you had to pay the ferryman! Maybe we should imagine that commercial motive for the Buckleberry Ferry, or think that the Master (he presumably of the orders that all boats had to be kept on the East bank) wanted the control of a staff-operated ferry. (If we imagine that we also imagine that some Brandybucks such as Merry are allowed to do what he likes, just as they have a private entrance into the Old Forest) I agree about the practical advantages of a self-service mechanism, where would-be passengers could pull the ferry over to their bank, and so nobody can be stranded. The only reservation reservation about such a self-service mechanism in this discussion has been about whether the Black Rider could then use it pursue the hobbits. But of course it's possible to imagine all sorts of reasons why the Black Rider didn't or couldn't operate such a self-service ferry, so it can hardly be said to prove anything. Given the replies I got to that , I should probably have made it clearer that the rope, in a ferry like at Bablock Hythe is just one that is fixed to either bank. Someone standing on the ferry reaches forwards and pulls towards them because the rope is fixed, the energy pulls the ferry forwards towards the puller's hands. (As a landlubber, I imagine fixing a rope between two posts, and that I can stand on a skateboard and pull myself across by repeatedly reaching forwards, and pulling the rope so that I and my skateboard move forwards - maybe that's a helpful image). The Bablock Hythe ferry ended up with a sort of winching gear, if I recall, so that the ferryman or traveller worked a lever or crank rather than having to pull a wet slimy chain. But that's just an added detail! That single, fixed rope arrangement is different from what other people were imagining - a ferry with ropes at either end, so you could pull it forwards using one rope, or back using the other. The benefit of that is that a traveller on either bank can draw the ferry to them: but the problem is then why the Black Rider doesn't stop them crossing or pull them back......to which many answers are possible!  Of course we may now be giving this a lot more thought than Tolkien did - but hey, a person needs a hobby!
~~~~~~ My profile picture is "Kaninchen und Ente" ("Rabbit and Duck") from the 23 October 1892 issue of Fliegende Blätter (see https://en.wikipedia.org/...2%80%93duck_illusion )
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noWizardme
Half-elven
Dec 17 2021, 7:05pm
Post #7 of 8
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In this chapter, in Crickhollow, Frodo has the first of three dreams which are accounted to us in detail. They are:
- In Crickhollow, Frodo dreams of a tower, great wind, tangled trees, something sniffing for him that will smell him out sooner or later, and a great desire to climb a tower to see the Sea. I wrote an analysis of this in the 2014-17 read-through and can't better that now.
- At Bombadil's, Frodo dreams a vision of Gandalf's escape from Orthanc, which segues into galloping hooves and the fear of being hunted down by the black riders. He wonders how he will be brave enough to carry on, and is relieved to postpone that for a day. The second night, he dreams a vision of a departure from Middle-earth.
- At the Prancing Pony, Frodo is woken by a noise (the burglary, presumably) and drops back off to sleep for a dream of a great wind (again), galloping hooves and a horn blowing wildly. A cock crow is the final part of his dream or what wakes him (just as Frodo's Crickhollow dream ends with a noise and a light that is both part of the dream and Merry waking him up from it).
I've always sensed that these dreams offer a sort of commentary on the story, or something else that is more subtle than exposition for readers, or a plot device to get Frodo usable information. Someone surely must have written some good criticism of Frodo's dreams (or dreams generally in LOTR), and I'd welcome suggestions for reading.
There's obviously a lot that could be said - so go ahead! What I'd like to suggest for now is:
1) The dreams often seem to observe or comment on events Yet To Come, or Events Past:- The snuffling could be Gollum sniffing for Frodo when he is camping in the flet in Lorien (or maybe it's those snuffling Black Riders);
- Gandalf's escape and the dream of a swift sunrise become explicitly clear later.
- The horn and hooves of the Pony dream are plausibly some connection to the raid on Crickhollow that very chapter (from which the Black Riders gallop away as the Horn Call of Buckland spreads). The horns blowing wildly and the cock also suggests the Rohirrim's surprise attack on the besiegers of Minas Tirith. Why not 'all of them at once'?
2) The way Tolkien writes these dreams, with one image or sensation segueing into another is strikingly like the shifting impressions F&S see in Galadriel's mirror (or what Pippin sees in the Palantir)
3) Frodo's dreams seem to me to contain anxiety (readily understandable given his circumstances). But there's always something else - things that we eventually see as more positive, whether or not they supply much hope or encouragement at the time.
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My profile picture is "Kaninchen und Ente" ("Rabbit and Duck") from the 23 October 1892 issue of Fliegende Blätter (see https://en.wikipedia.org/...2%80%93duck_illusion )
(This post was edited by noWizardme on Dec 17 2021, 7:12pm)
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sevilodorf
Tol Eressea
Dec 20 2021, 7:39pm
Post #8 of 8
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Brandy Hall had three large front doors.
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There were three tubs to bathe in.
Three of the "conspirators" are going on the journey with Frodo.
They led Three Cheers for Captain Frodo.
Fourth Age Adventures at the Inn of the Burping Troll http://burpingtroll.com
Home of TheOneRing.net Best FanFic stories of 2005 and 2006 "The Last Grey Ship" and "Ashes, East Wind, Hope That Rises" by Erin Rua
(Found in Mathoms, LOTR Tales Untold)
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