Introvert (schematic)

The poll about Bombadil’s introversion seems to have resonated with the online Tolkien community. Among many other reactions, Daniel Stride of A Phuulish Fellow (his book is up to #2 in my “to-read” pile) has a response. He dives into which characters in Tolkien are introverted, besides the obvious bad guys, and comes up with some interesting pearls.

I have one disagreement with Daniel (and a lot of redditors): some people seem to think that introverts don’t talk much, and therefore Tom Bombadil can’t be an introvert. Taciturnity and introversion are not correlated! Half of all introverts talk less than average, but the other half — well, I won’t expect anyone to understand if I mention Uncle Page, but most of the USA has heard of Garrison Keillor. The man made a career out of getting up on stage every Saturday night and talking hilariously for two hours about how shy and reclusive he is. Click that link and read his front-page coronavirus essay, and you’ll see what I mean. (N.B.: your Idiosopher might have been accused of insufficient taciturnity once or twice himself.)

But this post isn’t to argue with anyone. The virtue of scholarship (and a goal to which Idiosophy aspires with rare success) comes when it’s useful for understanding something. And there are two names on Daniel’s list that struck me as particularly useful applications.

Beorn

Beorn lives by himself, and doesn’t like visitors. Strong indications of introversion. Except he also built a big hall that can seat dozens of people. He can set a table for 16 at a moment’s notice. How do we resolve this paradox? Maybe he’s not so much a born introvert, but rather has had introversion thrust upon him. I mean, he’s also a grizzly bear. Grizzly bears require about 300 square miles (78,000 ha) of territory, each. That, plus the fact that everyone’s terrified of him, is going to lead to a lot of what we now call social distancing.

It’s interesting to think about how Beorn’s heroism at the Battle of Five Armies might have contributed to a certain kind of fame, enough to attract 100%-humans from Rhovanion to his lifestyle. But years of isolation don’t slough off instantly. Bringing new people in as followers of a war hero is a well-structured relationship. This is important to introverts, which meant that he could make it work and become the founder of a new society of Beornings.

Faramir

People who fancy themselves political realists (don’t worry, G., I’m not mentioning any names) claim it’s a shortcoming of Tolkien’s plotting in LotR that no opposition factions in Gondor are mentioned. Why did Faramir passively accept Aragorn’s claim to the throne? He had an army of loyal soldiers, much bigger than Aragorn could call on. Without his consent, Aragorn is only a Ranger.

If Faramir is really an introvert, it all makes sense. I went back and looked at Olga’s wonderful essay about his “quality”, and sure enough, through that lens lots of his behavior looks clear. (Also his clumsy approach to romance.) Faramir’s emotional reaction to Boromir’s death is mostly fraternity, but it’s easy to see a streak of dismay in it that he is suddenly expected to spend the rest of his life as a politician. Once he recovered from the Black Breath and learned that the battle had ended with so many signs and portents of a returning King, he would have felt like it was his own personal eucatastrophe.

So thanks, Daniel – that’s really interesting!

A lot of my time exploring fantastical literature ends up being spent on trying to understand facts from widely-separate fields of knowledge that, in the context of a story, seem like disconnected. So it’s a pleasure to report a case in which everyone just plain agrees.

As we noted earlier, Tolkien re-used a medieval cure for elf-shot to describe how Aragorn and Elrond cured Frodo of the Witch-King’s knife-wound. The cure involves boiled herbs (feverfew, deadnettle, and plantain), a knife held in the healer’s hands, and an incantation in an ancient language. Cutting and pasting from LotR I, xii:

He sat down on the ground, and taking the dagger-hilt laid it on his knees, and he sang over it a slow song in a strange tongue. … He crushed a leaf in his fingers, and it gave out a sweet and pungent fragrance. ‘It is fortunate that I could find it, for it is a healing plant that the Men of the West brought to Middle-earth. Athelas they named it’…. He threw the leaves into the boiling water and bathed Frodo’s shoulder.

There’s one problem, though: Athelas is the cure for Black Breath, not for elf-shot. Frodo probably suffers from both, so athelas is worth trying. But the text says Aragorn knows he’s not doing the cure with the right herb: It has great virtues, but over such a wound as this its healing powers may be small. (Ibid.) e43r87[1]

Ought to be suitable for next year’s questing

In their book Flora of Middle-Earth, Walter & Graham Judd looked around our world to find something that might be athelas, and they decided comfrey was the closest thing. As it happens, I’ve just planted comfrey in a little plot on my farm. It has some useful properties for building up soil fertility that this plot badly needs. But comfrey is kind of a cult-object, too  . When you talk to an expert about comfrey, you get lots of other information along with advice relevant to your primary application. In particular, I got a cautionary story about its healing properties.

Comfrey is useful for topical treatment of wounds. It closes up cuts fast, even though that’s not always the best thing. I heard the story of a dog who lacerated himself on a barbed-wire fence. He was treated with comfrey salve, and the wound closed up nicely, but such a closure was premature. There was something still deep inside, and the wound got infected. A vet had to slice the scar back open to remove whatever the little splinter was. This sounds familiar: ‘His wound was small, and it is already closed. There’s nothing to be seen but a cold white mark on his shoulder.’ (Ibid., a few pages later) Aragorn the field medic had to stop the bleeding, ward off the Black Breath, and keep Frodo mobile, so he used the strongest herb he could find. When the patient gets to the hospital, the doctors there can undo the quick fix. Elrond will be called upon to do a similar re-opening, and make use of his more-complete herbarium in Rivendell.

So, for once, we have 10th-century herbal lore, 20th-century fiction, 21st-century botany, and current lived experience all neatly lined up, with no contradictions to be reconciled. An account to the Tolkien blogosphere of so strange an event was required, I think.

[1] While I was writing, Fléau the Cat walked across my keyboard and I didn’t notice her scribal interpellation until the post went live. So I left it in. This is her first contribution to Tolkien scholarship.

Works Cited

Judd, Walter S., and Graham A. Judd. Flora of Middle-Earth: Plants of JRR Tolkien’s Legendarium. Oxford University Press, 2017.
Tolkien, J.R.R. The Lord of the Rings. Houghton-Mifflin, 2002.

The call for papers at Mythmoot V was disappointing. The theme of the conference is “dragons”, and I know nothing original about dragons. Seeing my disappointment, Madame told me something new:

In Kabyle myth, dragons abduct people, like ogres in Europe. The dragon tucks its victim under its wing and flies away. The poor abductee in the dragon’s armpit gradually shrinks as the dragon sucks his life-force away. After a while, he’s reduced to a baby. At the end, he’s absorbed completely into the dragon.

The singer Ait Menguellet used this as a metaphor for life under an oppressive regime. It fits so perfectly that I find myself wondering just how old this dragon-legend really is.