LotR -- Book 5 - Chapter 05 - The Ride of the Rohirrim

[Firefoot]

Ghan-buri-Ghan is interesting. He's described as pretty much everything that our hero men such as Aragorn and Faramir are not: short, squat, "thick and stumpy," hardly regal or lordly. His speech is harsh. And ten bucks says he hasn't got those noble grey eyes. But even so, he's clearly intelligent and a good and honest man, especially as we see when he says that if he leads the Rohirrim astray, they may kill him.

Very true. But he did have one quality about him that would be considered 'lordly' by his own folk: his small beard. I had never thought anything of this before, but I had been flipping through UT the other day and caught the mention of this - among the Wild Men, beards are rare and those who have them take pride in it. So it caught my eye when I was reading this chapter - unlovely though he may be, he is not without his own lordly quality.

Old Ghân is currently one of my favorite minor characters. More than once during this reading, I laughed at some of his comments, notably:

"Wild men have long ears and long eyes;"

It's clear what he meant, but obviously the idiom didn't translate so well.

Many paths were made when Stonemen were tronger. They carved hills as hunters carve beast-flesh. Wild Men think they ate stone for food."

But then, he also shows a great deal of sense, and somehow manages to make all the words and promises of the Rohirrim to sound, hm, superfluous. Ghan's got his priorities straight, no doubt about that. Once the orcs are killed, he does not want thanks, but to be left alone.

Aditionally, it struck me as interesting that Tolkien chose to use the word "uncouth" to describe the Wild Men's language. This is a word more commonly used to describe Orcs and their languages. Perhaps this is another instance of "look foul, feel fair"?