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Originally Posted by Lalwendë
I like the idea that the scents recall cultural memories in each patient and that they bring each 'home' once more. This would be a fitting cure for the ailments they are suffering, which again are differing. Faramir is suffering from grief while Eowyn and Merry are suffering from 'the Black shadow'.
But one thing stands out for me as not fitting into a cultural pattern and that is one of the effects associated with Eowyn:
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an air wholly fresh and clean and young, as if it had not before been breathed by any living thing and came new-made from snowy mountains hight beneath a dome of stars, or from shores of silver far away washed by seas of foam.
This does not seem to fit with any cultural ideas of the Rohirrim. They are not a sea-faring people. In fact, this would fit more with Faramir given the maritime history of the Numenoreans. Strangely, some of the words associated with Faramir actually sound more fitting to Eowyn:
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the fragrance that came to each was like a memory of dewy mornings of unshadowed sun in some land of which the fair world in Spring is itself but a fleeting memory.
Hmmm...Perhaps the scents evoke not personalities, nor even cultural memories, but dreams, or that which the patient yearns for. It is quite easy to see Eowyn yearning for the 'escape' of empty seashores and the grandeur of mountains; the images used to describe the scent when she is treated are evocative of wide open spaces and freedom. But again, the words used for Faramir have me a little foxed.
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Interesting idea,
Lal, a dream of something they desire but have never known. Yet would this suit Merry's scent? I'm not sure.
Grief indeed is part of Faramir's wound, yet Aragorn does link Faramir's illness with the Shadow:
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Originally Posted by Tolkien via Aragorn
"... How do you read this matter?" [Imrahil]
"Weariness, grief for his father's mood, a wound, and over all the Black Breath," said Aragorn. "He is a man of staunch will,for already he had come close under the Shadow before ever he rode to battle on the out-walls. Slowly the dark must have crept on him, even as he found and strove to hold his outpost. Would that I could have been here sooner!"
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I think we have to recall that the Rohirrim are not native to Rohan, but are Northmen, come down from the Vales of the Anduin "between the furthest ranges of the Misty Mountains and the northernmost parts of Mirkwood", to quote Appendix A. I read the scent of Eowyn as an ancestral call reaching far back into her people's past. The Northmen were of a different line than the Numenoreans, descending from the Middle peoples rather than the Edain and ultimately of course harkening back to the Hildor, the Aftercomers, who awoke in Hildorien, on the shores of the East Sea. So we have this sea thing again, as a universal symbol.
Interesting that you think the words associated with Faramir would suit Eowyn better, as I absolutely have no sense that they would at all, quite otherwise in fact, for it is the Gondorians who are awash in nostalgic memory somewhat akin to that of the elves. The first sunrise, after all, was in the West, over Aman and Numenor, no?
And so, in Eowyn and Faramir, the two 'strains' of the Hildor, reunite.
But then again, "Dome of Stars" is a name for Osgiliath, where Faramir was wounded. Do we have Aragorn actually acting as a matchmaker here?
Still and all, what are dreams made on? Desire for what would be or what was or a little of both?