I’ve just started reading The Hobbit with my daughter, and there in the very first chapter is Bilbo offering to share his smokes with Gandalf, remarking that it’s ‘a very fine morning for a pipe of tobacco’. Tolkien also explicitly refers to pipe-weed/Nicotiana as tobacco in his Prologue to Lord of the Rings, as he explains why he’s devoting a section of his Prologue to the topic: ‘since he [Merry] and the tobacco of the Southfarthing play a part in the history that follows, his remarks in the introduction to his Herblore of the Shire may be quoted’.
While it must be admitted that Tolkien put the smoking and the beer-drinking in because they were the sort of things he enjoyed doing, it’s often overlooked, in considerations of how relatively widespread the habit was, that smoking was already in England by the 1930s an activity that was the source of much opposition. This led to the creation in many university colleges, for example, of non-smoking areas and special Smoking Rooms. Both University and Magdalen Colleges at Oxford, for example, are mentioned as having Smoking Rooms in C.S. Lewis’s diary, published as All My Road Before Me, which covers the years 1922-1927.
Wendell, I meant to ask you in my previous response, but quite forgot, are you an Oxford man? Did you follow the Clintonian path, perhaps?
Arwen’s comment notwithstanding, the fact that she was a woman had nothing to do with Men not being able harm the Witch King. The book makes it pretty clear that it was the Dunedain blade held by a hobbit that undid the sorceries that held him together, letting Arwen strike a mortal blow.
[QUOTE=Cerowyn]
Arwen? Good gods, Cerowyn. Did you even read the book?/QUOTE]We forgive you your lapse. I was even prepared to consider it a typo until you made your confession.
People, people! These prophecies were made in Sindarin, Adunaic, and occasionally Quenya. Those languages were much more gender-specific! Sadly, when JRRT translated them into English, he was stuck with clunky approximations like Man to represent men in specific in some instances, and generic humankind in others.
And Cerowyn? Sorry to contradict, but it took more than the blade from Arnor to slay the Witch-King. In Letters (IIRC) JRRT wrote more about it, even going on to say that he regretted implying that the Dunedain could work magic or weave spells into blades.
Hate being sepearate from my books, but:
Wasn’t there a line in the critical passage along the lines of “and that sword forged so long ago unknit whatever spells kept the witchking safe”
I know that is not accurate, but I remember a line like that.
I think this says that Merry & the ancient sword were more important to killing the WitchKing than Eowyn. Eowyn merely did a nice job of completing the prophesy. She was already so far in her own despair that she was one of the few mortals that could stand against the Witchking and deliver the final blow.
I believe that if Aragorn or an elven warrior was at hand, they too could have delivered the blow. Prophesy had it be Eowyn.
Sorry for my prior misspellings, I was in too much of a hurry and didn’t even preview.
Which raises an interesting question about how to address the hypothetical questions about JRRT’s universe, in view of the fact that he kept editing and updating things, even after publication. LOTR as it stands now is not the same book it was when it was first published! Neither is The Hobbit. JRRT revised them both, to more closely conform with his evolving legendarum.
Without having access to the Red Book of West March we have to live with the current final version. The revisions to LoTR were actually less than the revisions to the Hobbit however. I have both an original Return of the King Hardcover and the old Ace editions of all 3 books. The changes are fairly minimal with mostly the addition of the Appendix and other extra information to re-establish US copyright that the publishers had made a mistake on.
I would almost place Merry’s sword in the same category as Bombadil, There is always some mystery.
Bah. Damned revisionist. How’re we saddoes supposed to keep delving more and more into the backstory if the author keeps contradicting himself every five minutes?
I don’t see what he was so regretful about. It’s not like he gave the Dunedain licence to toss magic around willy-nilly - only, with a lot of lead time and a lot of effort, and possibly with only a few insanely talented individuals, the possibility to craft a potent one-shot item with a strictly limited field of application. Hell, at least some of the time he was cool with the notion of the much-lower-ranking wood-woses knocking up magic stone statues (The Faithful Stone).
But… but… but… He had this vision thing! Each alteration brought it closer to how it was supposed to be! Just like the theme propounded by Eru was being realized by the Music of the Ainur, in unexpected ways! Or something!
Well, we are also sadly 32 years past any revisions to his translations.
I agree, the little magics he let in were what made the story better.
The crafting of Orthanc, the Swords of the barrow wights. Dunedain’s learned crafting arts from Noldorians and dwarves and had several thousand years to experiment and practice. They should have been able to come up with a few magics.
Prophesy is funny, it is never obvious and relies on what would almost appear to be convenient coincidence. The line I quoted above would support very strongly that it was Meridoc the Magnificent’s blow that made the Witch King susceptible to harm.
jrfranchi, you are so right! I always felt that there ought to be a strain of ‘magic’ present in the line of mortals descended from Luthien, given her divine parentage. JRRT’s writings do show Luthien, and a number of elves (like Finrod in his battle with Sauron) using power via song, a la the Music of the Ainur. Why not have the descendants of Elros have a touch of that ability to call things into Being?
I would be willing. My E-mail is public.
I have read somewhere between 1500-2000 SciFi and Fantasy novels so my critical opinion will at least be well grounded.
Qadgop the Mercotan
With the Healing hands of the King and the Curse of Erech Stone I would say that Tolkien did allow for occasional Dunedain magic. Also it was strongly hinted at that the Black Numenoreans dabbled in Sorcery.
Nitpick: Dunedain is already the plural form (I think the singular, dunadan, is hapax legomenon as Bilbo’s nickname for Aragorn). But yes, even discounting the descent of Elros from both Elf and Maia, the Numenoreans were mighty chummy with the Elves for the longest time and could certainly have had the inclination to learn a thing or two from them.
