day with papa

the hottest thing a hero can do is be completely doomed from the start & know it & keep going <3

Tolkien of Colour Week: 29 July to 4 August 2024

Prompts to be announced. The tag is #tocweek2024

Throwback Thursday

summoned by the lovely @sallysavestheday. Here's a throwback to Elrond the poet, Elrond the besotted, Elrond who comes home, at last.

On this day, a day he had not dared dream in his long winter, Elrond finds himself in Celebrían’s home. She had not waited for him upon the docks of Tol Eressëa with Elwing, nor welcomed him with fresh bread and sweet water beside Idril. He stands now in Celebrían’s small house, a green-roofed cabin between the trunks of ancient trees. All windows and doors are open wide as if inviting any beast of the wood to dwell as a guest here. There are few things but the house does not feel empty. A neatly folded piece of paper sits on the small table in the only room. It is for him, Elrond knows. Winters and summers Will come and go but      You will come to me. The world shall change And the roads curve but      You will come to me. None shall remember The people we were but      You will come to me. Tho Tilion descends With Arien from the skies      You will come to me. His hands shake by the time he reads the last verse. And when he looks up from the paper, she stands there watching him, renewed and more beautiful than in any of Elrond’s memories. I have no poem for you, he wants to say but does not dare speak, afraid that he shall shatter this moment and never regain it again. ‘I knew you would come to me,’ his beloved says and spreads her arms wide. Elrond lets his heart open and be slowly filled with wonder and delight as he steps forward to fall into Celebrían’s embrace. They do not need words for this.

For more Celrond poetry: filled with wonder and delight

@polutrope @elentarial @eilinelsghost if you'd like, give a snippet of something that's been standing on the shelves

Boromir and Éowyn by Catherine Chmiel

These staves he spoke, yet he laughed as he said them. For once more lust of battle was on him; and he was still unscathed, and he was young, and he was king: the lord of a fell people.

part 2, lotr quotes

Incomplete list of stuff that made me go apeshit reading Fellowship for the first time, medievalist edition (part II)

Part I here. Disclaimer: this is for fun!

Love that people keep stressing that they are going to the ELVES for COUNCIL. Old English names, especially among the rulers of Wessex, Northumbria, Mercia, etc, were often Elf Theme Names, one of the most famous and enduring of which is Alfred. Written the old way, Ælfræd or Ælfred (as in Alfred the Great), means Elf-Council, aka "counseled by elves". In their hearts... everyone wants to be Alfred... possibly this is only funny 2 me.

Tom Bombadil doing a training montage in the fucking magic system of Middle Earth?? He teaches Frodo to recite a poem that will summon him, Tom Bombadil, in times of need! Frodo gets kidnapped by undead wights in a barrow (like many a good young person in an Old Norse saga before him) and dutifully recites this magic poem. Frodo learned Recite Magic Poem! TOM BOMBADIL SMASHES THRU THE WALL OF THE BARROW LIKE THE KOOL-ADE MAN AND RECITES A BIGGER, STRONGER POEM??

At this point I gave up on trying to be normal about anything. As such, I'm pausing on Tom Bombadil again.

It helped (?? not psychologically) that Tom Bombadil recited something that felt a bit familiar, when he banished the wights. It's not anything like a direct translation, if indeed it bears any purposeful resemblance to the actual recorded medieval galdor called Against a Wen. Regardless, Against a Wen is an okay?? example of what a spoken word magic poem would look like, and why it's similar to what Tom Bombadil (and later Gandalf and others) do. Left screenshot is Bombadil against a barrow-wight. Right is Against a Wen, in English translation. (a wen was possibly a skin ailment, like a mole or a cancer). Banishing to/beyond the hills and shrivelling are the apparent themes. You don't have to follow me on this one, much less agree. Frankly this is the point I went off the deep end, probably.

Galdor can also protect! This just happens to be a banishment.

Gollum got exiled (the worst thing the early medieval and apparently proto-hobbit law could do to you) but not even for murder. No one found out about the murder. He just sucked.

ALSO Gollum lied and said that his matriarch (who exiled him) gave him the Ring. This implies it was plausible she'd give out rings, implying female ring-giver (standard role of a king). This is mentioned once and never again. ok!!

One last fun fact about galdor: it is the word at the end of "nightingale" isn't that lovely? Luthien's name in-universe means nightingale. This is fine!

I spent a lot of time researching Aragorn's favorite rock. I love these books. If I recall correctly it's a real rock! but possibly. just a cool rock.

Okay I'm almost done with Fellowship, here's an incomplete list of shit I noticed and thought was buck fucking wild on my first ever read-thru: medieval edition.

In literally the second line of the book, Tolkien implies that Bilbo Baggins wrote a story which was preserved alongside the in-universe version of the Mabinogion (aka the best-known collection of Welsh myths; I promise this is batshit). This is because The Hobbit has been preserved, in Tolkien's AU version of our world, in a "selection of the Red Book of Westmarch" (Prologue, Concerning Hobbits). If you're a medievalist and you see something called "The Red Book of" or "The Black Book of" etc it's a Thing. In this case, a cheeky reference to the Red Book of Hergest (Llyfr Coch Hergest). There are a few Red Books, but only Hergest has stories).

not a medieval thing but i did not expect one common theory among hobbits for the death of Frodo's parents to be A RUMORED MURDER-SUICIDE.

At the beginning of the book a few hobbits report seeing a moving elm tree up on the moors, heading west (thru or past the Shire). I mentioned this in another post, but another rule: if you see an elm tree, that's a Girl Tree. In Norse creation myth, the first people were carved from driftwood by the gods. Their names were Askr (Ash, as in the tree), the first man, and Embla (debated, but likely elm tree), the first woman. A lot of ppl have I think guessed that that was an ent-wife, but like. Literally that was a GIRL. TREE.

Medieval thing: I used to read the runes on the covers of The Hobbit and LOTR for fun when I worked in a bookshop. There's a mix of Old Norse (viking) and Old English runes in use, but all the ones I've noticed so far are real and readable if you know runes.

Tom Bombadil makes perfect sense if you once spent months of your life researching the early medieval art of galdor, which was the use of poems or songs to do a form of word-magic, often incorporating gibberish. If you think maybe Tolkien did not base the entirety of Fellowship so far around learning and using galdor and thus the power of words and stories, that is fine I cannot force you. He did personally translate "galdor" in Beowulf as "spell" (spell, amusingly, used to mean "story"). And also he named an elf Galdor. Like he very much did name an elf Galdor.

Tom Bombadil in fact does galdor from the moment we meet him. He arrives and fights the evil galdor (song) of the willow tree ("old gray willow-man, he's a mighty singer"), which is singing the hobbits to sleep and possibly eating them, with a galdor (song) of his own. Then he wanders off still singing, incorporating gibberish. I think it was at this point that I started clawing my face.

THEN Tom Bombadil makes perfect sense if you've read the description of the scop's songs in Beowulf (Beowulf again, but hey, Tolkien did famously a. translate it b. write a fanfiction about it called Sellic Spell where he gave Beowulf an arguably homoerotic Best Friend). The scop (pronounched shop) is a poet who sings about deeds on earth, but also by profession must know how to sing the song or tell the story of how the cosmos itself came to be. The wise-singer who knows the deep lore of the early universe is a standard trope in Old English literature, not just Beowulf! Anyway Tom Bombadil takes everyone home and tells them THE ENTIRE STORY OF ALL THE AGES OF THE EARTH BACKWARDS UNTIL JUST BEFORE THE MOMENT OF CREATION, THE BIG BANG ITSELF and then Frodo Baggins falls asleep.

Tom Bombadil knows about plate tectonics

This is sort of a lie, Tom Bombadil describes the oceans of old being in a different place, which works as a standard visual of Old English creation, which being Christian followed vaguely Genesis lines, and vaguely Christian Genesis involves a lot of water. TOLKIEN knew about plate tectonics though.

Actually I just checked whether Tolkien knew about plate tectonics because I know the advent of plate tectonics theory took forever bc people HATED it and Alfred Wegener suffered for like 50 years. So! actually while Tolkien was writing LOTR, the scientific community was literally still not sure plate tectonics existed. Tom Bombadil knew tho.

Remember that next time you (a geologist) are forced to look at the Middle Earth map.

I'm not even done with Tom Bombadil but I'm stopping here tonight. Plate tectonics got me. There's a great early (but almost high!) medieval treatise on cosmology and also volcanoes and i wonder if tolkien read it. oh my god. i'm going to bed.

edit: part II

“Dernhelm and Windfola”

For narysocontrary, another winner of my giveaway who wanted a Tolkien inspired drawing featuring a Rohirric theme instead of a Sherlock one. I was happy to oblige.

And since somehow I ended up doing two commissions, one of the packs with the Big Issue and Sherlock ABC print and other stuff is still left and will go to another lucky person yet to be decided by the random number generator.

Got real exercised about Peter Jackson’s defanged Eowyn and needed to draw my girl going slowly out of her mind as Aragorn’s apathy makes her more and more desperate until she finally breaks free of the chains that bind her and decides that if she is to die, she would choose how.

Tbh I find hilarious the fact that animals canonically feed beren because it creates so many crack scenarios.

Like,

Edrahil: *shoots a rabbit and brings it to camp*

Beren, under his breath: holy hell i hope it wasn't dave

Finrod: ???

or,

Finrod: um guys anyone else noticed the bear that has followed us for hours?

Beren: oh yeah don't worry that's kate. she's just making sure i don't skip breakfasts

The Ten:

Beren:

Beren: ...she doesn't bite?...

and,

Edrahil: you know you could've told us you're vegetarian before we left nargothrond. what will we feed him now finrod

Beren: you really shouldn't worry about that

Edrahil: absolutely not i'm not showing up before morgoth with skeleton of a man finrod do we have oatmeal-

Beren: no it's fine. really

Edrahil: *stares as every kind of mice, squirells and birds form a pile of seeds and nuts in beren's hands*

Beren:

Beren, apologetically: i have no idea why do they keep doing this

Éowyn with the starry mantle donated by Faramir 💖

+ timelapse ❣️

Eowyn, 04.2024

I'm really happy with how this turned out, though the contast is much greater in real life. These are the limitations of traditional art, sadly.

Sometimes I randomly remember that Boromir only went to Rivendell in the first place because the road there from Gondor was full of perils and he didn’t want his beloved little brother to walk that dangerous path so he took the task upon himself like he took every task upon himself to spare Faramir and I just break down.

my line has ended! 

One thing I really like about Eowyn living in Ithilien is the sense that this is something new. Ithilien has been overrun by orcs and needs rebuilding and repopulating, which means going to live there is a total fresh start.

So much of Eowyn's despair can be traced back to her struggle living under the gendered expectations of her family and her society, which comes from years and years of traditions and customs.

Ithilien may be in Gondor, but it's a principality under Faramir and Eowyn's rule, so it's set apart, and it's clean slate. Eowyn is the first ruling Lady of Ithilien in ages, so there's no template she has to follow, no defined role she has to conform to. She can make it what she wants.