Notes on RoTK: The Ride of the Rohirrim
'All about [Merry] hidden trees were sighing softly.' From the Old Forest to Fangorn to the Forest of the Druadan, he has listened to a lot of trees. I don't think he has felt the delight of the living tree itself, like Frodo did in Lorien, but he has every hobbits' visceral connection with them.
'Merry felt small, unwanted, and lonely...Merry wished he was a tall Rider like Eomer and could blow a horn or something and go galloping to [Pippin's] rescue.' He pictures Pippin 'shut up in the great city of stone, lonely and afraid', which is true as far as it goes, but Merry seems more in need of rescue because Pippin has his pride; he is engaged in mastering his fear and doing what he can, while Merry is just anxious. Merry is in fact not very proud of himself, but only of what he can do, which has not proved to be very much.
'There seemed to be some understanding between Dernhelm and Elfhelm,' perhaps because Elfhelm knew, with or without being told, who Dernhelm really was. The understanding includes everyone pretending that Merry isn't there; but Merry never agreed to that, and is quick to engage Elfhelm in conversation. He is equally quick to take advantage of both the darkness to find out what is going on. ('Waiting was unbearable. He longed to know.')
The Druadan 'fear lest the Dark Years be returning'; this is one reason that 'they have offered their services to Theoden'. They never leave the woods, but they know what is going on in the outside world, as well as its history: 'Wild Men [as they call themselves ironically in Westron, which has no other name for them] have long ears and long eyes; know all paths. Wild Men were here before Stone-houses; before Tall Men come up out of Water.'
Eomer is suspicious of how much Ghan-buri-Ghan knows about the war. He was also suspicious of Galadriel, but wiling to learn better. Ghan-buri-Ghan is proud enough to be insulted by that ('his voice was sullen with displeasure') as well as by Theoden's 'if you are faithful'. This isn't stated, but his curt, 'Dead men are not friends to living men and give them no gifts' is a polite way of cutting Theoden down to size by framing them both in the same mortal danger. Also his refusing any 'reward', except 'leave the Wild Men alone in the woods and do not hunt them like beasts anymore' is a way of maintaining dignity in a position of ultimate weakness, by setting a boundary. He doesn't want to his people to be beholden, just left alone - and that is worth risking his life for: 'Ghan-buri-Ghan. . .will go himself with father of Horsemen, and if he leads you wrong, you will kill him.'
'It did not seem likely to [Merry] that many of them would survive it. But he thought of Pippin and the flames in Minas Tirith and thrust down his own dread.' Does this mean that he thrust down dread on his own behalf, because Pippin was in worse danger? Or does he do it in response to the chance to act on his fantasy of riding to the rescue? I think it has something to do with Pippin being a person who whom Merry is important, as he is not to all the great folk around him.
'Kill gorgun! Kill orc folk! ... Drive away bad air and darkness with bright iron!' The Druadan lack the technology to do this themselves. Therefore Ghan 'squatted down and touched the earth with his horny brow in token of farewell.'
'[T]o no heart in the in all the host came any fear that the Wild Men were unfaithful' - the Rohirrim are, as Aragorn said, 'not cruel; wise but unlearned' but they learn quickly.
'Dernhelm had left his place and in the dark was moving steadily forward, until at last he was riding just in rear of the king's guard'. Eowyn is ready, even eager to die, but only honorably, defending her king and (for all practical purposes) father. She wouldn't just kill herself nor desert Theoden.
The wind is turning; Ghan felt it, and Widfara, but not Merry, any more than most of the Riders do. 'There comes a breath out of the South; there is a sea-tang in it.. . Above the reek it will be dawn when you pass the wall' although now it is 'still deep dark'. This knowledge comes with knowing the land; like the hobbits and the Shire, or the Elves and Lorien, people and land make each other.
Theoden comes from a tradition in which kings must plan their public words to be repeated by future bards: 'Foes and fire are before you, and your homes far behind. Yet, though you fight upon an alien field, the glory that you reap there shall be your own for ever. Oaths you have taken; now fulfill them all, to lord and land and league of friendship!' It needs only a little polishing.
Merry 'felt bitterly' that he can only 'encumber a rider, and hope at best to stay in my seat and not be pounded to death by galloping hooves' - which is to say, not only die but die uselessly.
'[T]he mind and will of the Black Captain were bent wholly on the falling city' yet when they come to even the edge of the battle Theoden and Merry are both affected by his presence the same way Frodo was at Minas Morgul, afflicted with a sense of weakness and failure: 'The king sat motionless. . .as if stricken suddenly by anguish or by dread. He seemed to shrink down, cowed by age. Merry himself felt as if a great weigh of horror and doubt had settled on him. His heart beat slowly. Time seemed poised in uncertainty. [Is this a Nazgul-induced time-effect? IF so, is it unique?] They were too late!' If not for the scene at Minas Morgul, one might think that this is only a reaction to the sight and smell of the city burning, of which they had already been told, but the effect is the same.
Boromir described a different effect at The Council of Elrond: 'fear fell on our boldest, so that horse and man gave way and fled'. Theoden, despite Merry's fear, does not 'bow his old head, turn, slink away to hide in the hills'; the 'searing lightning' of the bursting gate of Minas Tirith rouses him, and he becomes '[f]ey,..or the battle-fury of his fathers ran like new fire in his veins and he was born up on Snowmane like a god of old, even as Orome the Great in the battle of the Valar'. (I believe this is the only reference to the Valar as 'gods' in LoTR; I am not sure whose point of view it is. It doesn't seem like a thought, or the kind of knowledge that Merry would have. For Merry, everything in this scene depends on Theoden, so his thought ought to be here. I wonder what it was.)
Theoden becomes his own banner: 'the grass flamed into green about the white feet of his steed.'
The wind from the South - whence Aragorn is coming - drives away the darkness; the light drives away the hosts of Mordor, and the Rohirrim 'sang as they slew, for the joy of battle was on them, and the sound of their singing was fair and terrible' - the Music breaking through with light again.
'Merry felt small, unwanted, and lonely...Merry wished he was a tall Rider like Eomer and could blow a horn or something and go galloping to [Pippin's] rescue.' He pictures Pippin 'shut up in the great city of stone, lonely and afraid', which is true as far as it goes, but Merry seems more in need of rescue because Pippin has his pride; he is engaged in mastering his fear and doing what he can, while Merry is just anxious. Merry is in fact not very proud of himself, but only of what he can do, which has not proved to be very much.
'There seemed to be some understanding between Dernhelm and Elfhelm,' perhaps because Elfhelm knew, with or without being told, who Dernhelm really was. The understanding includes everyone pretending that Merry isn't there; but Merry never agreed to that, and is quick to engage Elfhelm in conversation. He is equally quick to take advantage of both the darkness to find out what is going on. ('Waiting was unbearable. He longed to know.')
The Druadan 'fear lest the Dark Years be returning'; this is one reason that 'they have offered their services to Theoden'. They never leave the woods, but they know what is going on in the outside world, as well as its history: 'Wild Men [as they call themselves ironically in Westron, which has no other name for them] have long ears and long eyes; know all paths. Wild Men were here before Stone-houses; before Tall Men come up out of Water.'
Eomer is suspicious of how much Ghan-buri-Ghan knows about the war. He was also suspicious of Galadriel, but wiling to learn better. Ghan-buri-Ghan is proud enough to be insulted by that ('his voice was sullen with displeasure') as well as by Theoden's 'if you are faithful'. This isn't stated, but his curt, 'Dead men are not friends to living men and give them no gifts' is a polite way of cutting Theoden down to size by framing them both in the same mortal danger. Also his refusing any 'reward', except 'leave the Wild Men alone in the woods and do not hunt them like beasts anymore' is a way of maintaining dignity in a position of ultimate weakness, by setting a boundary. He doesn't want to his people to be beholden, just left alone - and that is worth risking his life for: 'Ghan-buri-Ghan. . .will go himself with father of Horsemen, and if he leads you wrong, you will kill him.'
'It did not seem likely to [Merry] that many of them would survive it. But he thought of Pippin and the flames in Minas Tirith and thrust down his own dread.' Does this mean that he thrust down dread on his own behalf, because Pippin was in worse danger? Or does he do it in response to the chance to act on his fantasy of riding to the rescue? I think it has something to do with Pippin being a person who whom Merry is important, as he is not to all the great folk around him.
'Kill gorgun! Kill orc folk! ... Drive away bad air and darkness with bright iron!' The Druadan lack the technology to do this themselves. Therefore Ghan 'squatted down and touched the earth with his horny brow in token of farewell.'
'[T]o no heart in the in all the host came any fear that the Wild Men were unfaithful' - the Rohirrim are, as Aragorn said, 'not cruel; wise but unlearned' but they learn quickly.
'Dernhelm had left his place and in the dark was moving steadily forward, until at last he was riding just in rear of the king's guard'. Eowyn is ready, even eager to die, but only honorably, defending her king and (for all practical purposes) father. She wouldn't just kill herself nor desert Theoden.
The wind is turning; Ghan felt it, and Widfara, but not Merry, any more than most of the Riders do. 'There comes a breath out of the South; there is a sea-tang in it.. . Above the reek it will be dawn when you pass the wall' although now it is 'still deep dark'. This knowledge comes with knowing the land; like the hobbits and the Shire, or the Elves and Lorien, people and land make each other.
Theoden comes from a tradition in which kings must plan their public words to be repeated by future bards: 'Foes and fire are before you, and your homes far behind. Yet, though you fight upon an alien field, the glory that you reap there shall be your own for ever. Oaths you have taken; now fulfill them all, to lord and land and league of friendship!' It needs only a little polishing.
Merry 'felt bitterly' that he can only 'encumber a rider, and hope at best to stay in my seat and not be pounded to death by galloping hooves' - which is to say, not only die but die uselessly.
'[T]he mind and will of the Black Captain were bent wholly on the falling city' yet when they come to even the edge of the battle Theoden and Merry are both affected by his presence the same way Frodo was at Minas Morgul, afflicted with a sense of weakness and failure: 'The king sat motionless. . .as if stricken suddenly by anguish or by dread. He seemed to shrink down, cowed by age. Merry himself felt as if a great weigh of horror and doubt had settled on him. His heart beat slowly. Time seemed poised in uncertainty. [Is this a Nazgul-induced time-effect? IF so, is it unique?] They were too late!' If not for the scene at Minas Morgul, one might think that this is only a reaction to the sight and smell of the city burning, of which they had already been told, but the effect is the same.
Boromir described a different effect at The Council of Elrond: 'fear fell on our boldest, so that horse and man gave way and fled'. Theoden, despite Merry's fear, does not 'bow his old head, turn, slink away to hide in the hills'; the 'searing lightning' of the bursting gate of Minas Tirith rouses him, and he becomes '[f]ey,..or the battle-fury of his fathers ran like new fire in his veins and he was born up on Snowmane like a god of old, even as Orome the Great in the battle of the Valar'. (I believe this is the only reference to the Valar as 'gods' in LoTR; I am not sure whose point of view it is. It doesn't seem like a thought, or the kind of knowledge that Merry would have. For Merry, everything in this scene depends on Theoden, so his thought ought to be here. I wonder what it was.)
Theoden becomes his own banner: 'the grass flamed into green about the white feet of his steed.'
The wind from the South - whence Aragorn is coming - drives away the darkness; the light drives away the hosts of Mordor, and the Rohirrim 'sang as they slew, for the joy of battle was on them, and the sound of their singing was fair and terrible' - the Music breaking through with light again.