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Old 10-04-2004, 08:04 AM   #2
davem
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davem is battling Black Riders on Weathertop.davem is battling Black Riders on Weathertop.
Quote:
Gandalf stood up & strode forward, holding his staff aloft. 'Listen, Hound of Sauron!' he cried. 'Gandalf is here. Fly, if you value your foul skin! I will shrivel you from tail to snout, if you come within this ring.'....

When the full light of morning came no signs of the wolves were to be found, & they looked in vain for the bodies of the dead.
This is interesting - did Tolkien, the Professor of Anglo Saxon, the great philologist, seems not to realise (or has Gandalf fail to realise) that there is all the difference in the world between a wolf & a hound!

But is it that simple? These 'wargs' are neither wolves nor hounds. they are supernatural beings, which seem at first to be real creatures, not illusions - we could expect Gandalf at least to know an illusion, yet he seems as convinced as the others that they are facing a real physical threat. But his words are interesting - 'Hound of Sauron'. Are these creatures that Sauron has sent, magically created to attack the Fellowship & then disappear when their task is done?

In British folklore there is the Wild Hunt:

Quote:
Ghost stories featuring black dogs must be numbered in hundreds. In many instances, the dog is a fearsome hound, with glowing eyes & slavering jaws, which haunts lonely lanes late at night. In many others, it is associated with the devil, & a pack of savages hounds are, of course, an integral feature of the Wild Hunt. Barguest, Padfoot & Shrike are names sometimes given to phantom hounds.

The Wild Hunt is a common feature of northern mythologies...What are they hunting? In Norse mythology anyone who crossed their path was fair game. He was liable to be snatched up & transported to a distant land, & he must never speak of his experiences, for even to mention the huntsman meant death...
Whitlock, 'In Search of Lost Gods'
Quote:
Some of the spectral dogs which are said to haunt the north & east coasts of England may owe their existence to a far-off memory of the Vikings. When the Norsemen invaded, they brought with them their own legends of the Hounds of Odin, the ghostly war-dogs of their chief god.
'Reader's Digest Book of Folklore, Myths & Legends of Britain',
It seems that here Tolkien is again making use of a folkloric tradition in his work, taking an ancient image & transferring it to Middle earth, partly for reasons of strengthening its claim to be 'a mythology for England', partly to give an 'explanation' for the tradition by giving us its 'original' form. We can see how the Hobbits would take the story of the attack by 'Hounds of Sauron', modify them & pass them on down through the ages, till they were taken up by the later Pagan peoples & then the Christians, till the 'Hounds of Sauron', passing through the stage of being 'Hounds of Odin', finally become 'Hounds of Satan'.

Yet, in their Middle earth context, how can they be explained - 'real', physical 'wargs' which disappear in the morning light - like the blade of the Morgul Knife? Are we again dealing with two worlds? Do these 'Hounds of Sauron' exist, like the Ringwraiths, in the OtherWorld, & like them are able, with Sauron's will, to pass from that world into this one in order to do Sauron's will, & then return back whence they came? Once again, one is struck by the sense that the War of the Ring is not simply a war between good & evil in this world, but a war being fought by the forces of two worlds, or 'dimensions'.

A few other points - CT gives us a translation of Gandalf's opening spell: 'Elvish gate open now for us; doorway of the Dwarf-folk listen to the word of my tongue.' He also quotes Tolkien (if memory serves) as saying that he didn't want the incident of the entrance to Moria to resemble the account of trying to gain entrance to the Lonely Mountain in the Hobbit, yet in some ways it definitely does.

Gandalf's instruction, once in the mines, to 'Follow my Staff', did cause Biblical echoes to spring to mind for me - Thy Rod & thy staff they comfort me. We also have him handing out to each of his followers the flask containing the magical/mystical/supernatural liqour Miruvor, & spending a night sitting in meditation, while all his companions sleep, & we know he goes on to face death & resurrection, involving a descent into the Underworld. One does have to wonder whether this is one of the 'Catholic' themes which were 'consciously' placed in the revision.

Finally, on a personal note, the drawing of the Doors of Moria struck me forcibly, because a couple of weeks back in Oxford I saw the original manuscript page. The detail was amazing - as was that on the original paintings for the Hobbit - if anyone thought that the originals were large size & had been substantially reduced for the book - they weren't. If you have a copy of TH with Tolkien's colour plates, take another look at them, because he painted them, with all that detail, effectively at the size you see them in the hardback.
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