LotR -- Book 5 - Chapter 04 - The Siege of Gondor

[Fordim Hedgethistle]

I will, soon, have a much more full post about this chapter, but I just wanted to put this up right away -- it's a translation of the final paragraphs of the chapter into Old English:

Gandalf ne stureð. Ant i þet ilke time, awei bihinden i sum curt burhene, coc creow. Schille ant schire he creow, ne haldende na tale of wichecreft ne weorre, bute gretende ane þen marhen þet i þe heouene feor ouer þe schadewes deaðes wes cuminde wið þe dahunge.

Ant as þah ondswerende, an oðer song com from feor awei. Hornes, hornes, hornes. I dorc Mindolluines siden ha dimliche sweide. Great hornes of þe Norð wildeliche blawende. Rohan wes ed te leaste icumen.

As much as I'd like to claim it as my own, I found it here.

The two points I will make now are quite simple:

1) this is my single favourite bit of prose in the whole tale -- it surges ahead through heightened language and loaded symbolic resonances but culminates in the plain-style statement "Rohan had come at last". I love it so much because it mirrors exactly the action: Gondor and Mordor are confronting one another yet again in the long series of battles that go back to the First Age; Gandalf and the Witch King are facing off, the men of Westernesse and the orcs are fighting, and there they all are "lo-ing" and and "unto-ing" and "did fall-ing" all over the place, when the newer, younger race of Men rides up with their more contemporary and simple language. Their arrival is blunt, to the point and stirring beyond most of what's been happening in this chapter.

2) The movie exactly nailed this moment!

edit I'm away from my books and can't check, but in the timeline of the story aren't Frodo and Sam in Shelob's lair as battle rages on the Pelennor?? If so, that gives extra resonance to Denethor's being described as a spider: there are two non-Sauron enemies who must be overcome on each front before the heroes can hope to tackle the real Enemy. Also, this pairing is interesting in term of gender: Shelob/feminine and Denethor/masculine....herm....both present the threat of consuming the living, both are most dangerous in their stony lairs, both have retreated into themselves and pay no heed to the outside world.....more thought needed....

One more thing: the cock crowing who "recks nothing of wizardry or war" is always interesting to me, insofar as this line seems to point toward some kind of necessary connection between wizardry and war: is it a comparison of good and bad, light and dark, or are they linked in some other way? -- that is, are they being joined together as part of the same problem?

That would seem to be at least part of the implication of the confrontation of Gandalf and the Witch-King....