Thanks to all for your thoughts on these words – clearly more familiar to those of you who live closer to English farm country than I do. I’ve been inspired by everyone's replies to do a little vocab research and see just what the words of this sentence are telling us.
The townlands were rich, with wide tilth and many orchards, and homesteads there were with oast and garner, fold and byre, and many rills rippling through the green from the highlands down to Anduin. -LotR V.1
Townlands (Old English
tun, enclosure), I had always thought, was a word for farmlands that are near to a town or city – as with the Pelennor Fields that surround the city of Minas Tirith. But on looking it up online, the only meaning I find is: ‘the smallest geographical division of land’, in a medieval setting. (The term is still in use in Ireland today, but has fallen out of use in England.) I guess the point here is that the landscape is broken up into numerous distinguishable agricultural communities; it’s not just one undifferentiated plantation or estate.
Tilth (Old English
tilian, obtain) refers to soil that has been prepared for cultivation, or which is highly suitable for cultivation: aerated, moist, fertile, broken up and ready to plant. Clearly in this case we are to imagine extensive fields that have been plowed or mowed in preparation for the spring planting.
Orchard (Old English
ortgeard, plant-yard). The “wide tilth” is paired with “many
orchards”, so we see that the Pelennor is productive of both grains and fruit, as one would expect of a landscape that supports a major city. But there’s no mention of garden vegetables, or truck – is that odd?
Homestead (Old English
hamstede, home-place) is a collection of agricultural buildings, typically a farmhouse and its outbuildings.
Oast (Old English
ast, kiln), my single favorite word in the passage, is short for oast house. It is a farmyard structure that dries fresh hops in preparation for adding them to brewed beer. It has a distinctive conical roof. Oast houses first appeared in England in the 1500s. The hop plant, used to flavor sweet malt beer with a bitter tinge, thrives in northern temperate lands like England and Germany. So we can make some interesting statements about Tolkien’s inclusion of oast in his picture of the Pelennor Fields.
- One, it tends to post-date Gondor from being a medieval state to being a bit more modern, although most people would not place Middle-earth in 1500s Europe. Of course, Tolkien was not averse to such seeming anachronisms when they served his purposes, and it’s hardly a point of criticism to make a stand on.
- More creatively considered, oasts are picturesque and distinctive in silhouette; they add flavor and contrast to the word-picture of the landscape.
- Next, we now know that beer is brewed in Gondor, at least around Minas Tirith. This is in direct contrast to the notable mention of the wines drunk and served by the Steward and his social class. We’ve noted this distinction of beverages in previous discussions as another clue that Gondor represents a Mediterranean culture in Middle-earth in contrast to the “Northern” (i.e., British or Germanic) cultures of Rohan, the Shire, and Eriador in general. (Now, in a little while we’ll see Beregond put together a soldiers’ picnic with Pippin that includes ale – which in older times was essentially a weak beer that lacked hops. So -- just who was drinking the hopped beer in Minas Tirith?).
- Lastly, how the climate accommodates the cultivation of hops in Gondor is less clear, since we are told repeatedly that Gondor is in a southern region with warmer weather, but let that one go.
Garner (Middle English i], granary) is an older word for ‘granary’, or storage house for grain. The associated verb to garner, or gather for storage, survives while the noun really hasn’t. Interestingly, the word comes from Old French and ultimately Latin (
granarium, place of grains). Tolkien has a reputation for shunning English words that come from the Norman Invasion, but that is a myth, really. He’s not so foolish as to ban a large part of his language’s vocabulary on principle. What he does do, in my observation, is choose the word with Old English roots as opposed to French roots, when there are two such words of roughly equal meaning (as we saw in a recent discussion of Tom Bombadil, who is described as “merry” (Old English
mirige) many times, but as “jolly” (Middle English i]) only once). And he’s sure doing that here, too. You may have noticed that I’m giving the etymology of the vocab words in this post; how many are Old English?
Fold (Old English
fald) is a fenced enclosure for sheep. Thus Minas Tirith has a supply of wool and sheepskin for clothing, mutton for meat, and milk for cheese.
Byre (Old English
bur, chamber) is a cattle-barn, or shelter for livestock. In this context it informs us that beef, cows-milk and butter, horn, vellum and cow-leather are local products in Minas Tirith.
Rill (Old English
rith, rivulet) is a small brook. Clearly there is no lack of fresh water for irrigation, watering animals, and other agricultural uses.
Rippling (Middle English
ripplen, wrinkle or crease). The slope of the land to the bottom of the Anduin valley is clearly not too steep; here there are no waterfalls (as in Ithilien), just “rippling” watercourses.
Green (Old English
grene), grassy land. This reinforces the impression of fertile fields in general, but also reminds us that there are pastures for the stock, not just cropland.
Without getting too much more deeply into this rather wonderful sentence – like repeating my long-standing complaint about how it was misrepresented in the New Line film, for instance; or getting into the blank-verse rhythm of the prose; or the use of alliteration, assonance, and inverted word order – I now see how well structured it is as pure description.
The townlands were rich, with wide tilth and many orchards, and homesteads there were with oast and garner, fold and byre, and many rills rippling through the green from the highlands down to Anduin. -LotR V.1
If we diagram it, we see these few dozen words become an entire agricultural census:
I. The
land is divided into many small agricultural districts.
-A. Extensive and fertile fields of crops.
-B. Numerous fruit orchards.
II. The
farms are built up and well-developed.
-A. Structures for processing
crops:
--i. Hop-kilns with conical roofs.
--ii. Granaries for wheat, barley, rye, etc.
-B. Structures for housing
livestock:
--i. Sheep pens.
--ii. Cattle barns.
III. The
landscape is well watered, on a hillside.
-A. Many brooks.
-B. Plenty of rich pastureland.
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