LotR and The ballad of the White Horse

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South Atlantic Modern Language Association "Lord of the Rings" and "The Ballad of the White Horse" Author(s): Christopher Clausen Source: South Atlantic Bulletin, Vol. 39, No. 2 (May, 1974), pp. 10-16 Published by: South Atlantic Modern Language Association Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3198587 Accessed: 30-04-2015 15:43 UTC

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"LORD OF THE RINGS" AND "THE BALLAD OF THE WHITE HORSE" CHRISTOPHER

CLAUSEN

VirginiaPolytechnicInstituteand State University No reasonablylearned reader of J. R. R. Tolkien's Lord of theRings can fail to have been struckby the extraordinary diversity of literarymaterial that Tolkien manages to incorporateinto his complicated but tightlyunified narrative. Quarrying bits from Anglo-Saxon,Norse sagas, ancient Celtic poetry,Milton, Dickens, Browning,it is as if he had approached all previous literatureas a mountainof uncut stonesavailable forhis own purposes-sometimes perhaps to amuse the wise and confound the unwary,but fundamentallyno doubt because he felt that somethingin the veryconceptionof his work required the deliberateuse of literary echoes on a grand scale. Most of this source material,if one may referso slightinglyto great works of literature,is used in individual episodes and has little importancein the total structure. "The Council of Elrond" (I, 314-355),' for example, is strongly reminiscentof Paradise Lost, Book III; the arrivalof Aragornand company at Edoras (II, 143ff)is an adaptation of Beowulf (lines 229ff);while the characterizationof Gollum owes somethingto Browning's"Caliban upon Setebos." One could catalogue numerousother borrowingsof this kind without,perhaps, adding much to anyone's understandingof the book. There is one case, however,which involvesnot only episodes and details but the basic structureand themesof Tolkien's work. In its fundamentalconception,as well as in manyof the significant details of its workingout, Lord of the Rings is heavilyindebted to G. K. Chesterton'snow littleread poem of 1911, The Ballad of the White Horse.2 The major themeof both worksis the war and eventual victory,despite all odds, of an alliance of good folk against vastly more powerfulforcesof evil, and the returnof a king to his rightful state. Like Lord of the Rings, Chesterton'spoem is set in a heroicsocietyafterthe decay of a highlycivilizedimperialpowerin England, that is to say,in the aftermathof the Roman Empire. (Tolkien's Minas Tirith, built on seven levels, greatlyresembles a medieval idealization of Rome.) King Alfred,its hero, is fighting a losing war to save his kingdomfromcomplete conquest by the Danes. As one would expect with Chesterton,it is a war of white against black, of Christianityagainst a diabolical paganism that has defeatedRome and is now tryingto make all good men its slaves.

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When the ends of the earth came marchingin To torchand cressetgleam. And the roads of the world that lead to Rome Were filledwith faces that moved like foam, Like facesin a dream. And men rode out of the easternlands, Broad riverand burningplain; Trees that are Titan flowersto see, And tigerskies,stripedhorribly, With tintsof tropic rain.. And a Shape that movethmurkily In mirrorsof ice and night, Hath blanched with fear all beasts and birds, As death and a shock of evil words Blast a man's hair with white. (225-6)3 The enemy is not simplyDanes, or barbarians in general, but a wholly malignant and almost irresistibleforce that stands behind all the enemies of Christianity:This power blights everythingit touches-there are repeated referencesto its distortingeffectseven on the natural world-and the men who serve it become like Tolkien's Orcs. Misshapen ships stood on the deep Full of strangegold and fire, And hairy men, as huge as sin With horned heads, came wading in Through the long, low sea-mire. Our townswere shaken of tall kings With scarletbeards like blood: The world turnedemptywhere theytrod, They took the kindlycross of God And cut it up forwood. (227) To fightagainst thismenace,Alfred,hiding in exile, summons three kindredsof free,Christianpeoples as allies. Alfredhimself, like Tolkien's Aragorn,is an idealized heroic figurewho roams around in humble disguise and is sometimesmistreatedby the ignorant,Instead of Dwarves, Elves, and Men of Numenorean descent,he leads an alliance of Saxons, Celts, and Romans. The parallels are reasonably exact. Chesterton'srepresentativeSaxon, Eldred, is a grim, laconic, dwarfishwarriorwith a "hand like a windy hammer-stroke"(280). The Roman, Marcus, is a proud aristocratwho looks down on lesser breeds and speaks Latin in momentsof exaltation,much as the men of Minas Tirith revertto

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High Elven at such times. In his arrogant nobility and rather excessivepride of City he resemblesTolkien's Boromir. Like Tolkien's Elves, Chesterton'sCelt Colan is a sad singer, obsessedwith the sea and with a mysteriousholy land to the west. He kept the Roman order, He made the Christiansign; But his eyes grew often blind and bright, And the sea that rose in the rocksat night Rose to his head like wine... And whetherin seat or saddle, Whetherwith frownor smile, Whetherat feastor fightwas he, He heard the noise of a nameless sea On an undiscoveredisle. (242) Memoryof the sea and of their homeland beyond is one of the of Tolkien's Elves. They talk of it, sing of definingcharacteristics them returnto it in the end. Their most for of most it, yearn it; is frequentlyquoted song A! Elbereth Gilthoniel! We still remember,we who dwell In this far land beneath the trees The starlighton the WesternSeas. (III, 381, etc.) Legolas, the Elf who plays the most prominentrole in the story, confessesthat in the midstof a battle his thoughtswere turnedto the sea by the sightof gulls overhead; he sings To the Sea, to the Sea! The whitegulls are crying, The Wind is blowing,and the white foam is flying. West, west away, the round sun is falling. Sweet are the voices in the Lost Isle calling, In Eressea,in Elvenholmethat no man can discover.... (III, 289) Also like the Elves, Chesterton'sCelts have a special relationship with trees.One of Tolkien's most remarkablecreationsis the Ents, a race of ancient treelike beings, guardians of the forest, who have the abilityto speak and move around. Dwarves and men are ignorantof thesecreatures;it is only the Elves, with theirlove of forests,who talk to them,or indeed know of their existence. In The Ballad of the WhiteHorse Colan tellshis Saxon and Roman companions: The tall treesof Britain We worshippedand were wise, But you shall raid the whole land through And never a tree shall talk to you,

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Though everyleaf is a tongue taught true And the forestis full of eyes. On one round hill to the seaward The treesgrow tall and grey And the treestalk together When all men are away. (273) As there are important similaritiesbetween Tolkien's and Chesterton'skindreds of "men," so there are even greater ones betweentheirembodimentsof ideal good. Chesterton'spoem begins with King Alfred'svision of the Virgin,in Athelney,who counsels him to fighton against the Danes but pointedlyrefusesto read the futureforhim: . But if he fail or if he win To no good man is told. ... I tell you naught foryour comfort, Yea, naught for your desire, Save that the sky grows darker yet And the sea rises higher. Night shall be thricenight over you, And heaven an iron cope. Do you have joy withouta cause, Yea, faithwithouta hope? (232-233) In Lord of the Rings the incarnationof goodness is the Lady Galadriel, fair and powerfulElf queen. In the sanctuaryof Lothlorien she urges the eight remainingmembersof the company to go on with the Quest but refusesto read the futurefor them: "I do not foretell,forall foretellingis now vain: on the one hand lies darkness,and on the other only hope" (I, 487). Her effecton the fellowship,and indeed on all who meet her, is identical with that of the Virgin in Chesterton'spoem. Later on, in desperatecircumstances,Sam remembersher and the jewel she had given to Frodo: "Then as he stood,darknessabout him and a blacknessof despair and anger in his heart,it seemed to him that he saw a light. ... Far off,as in a little picture drawn by elven-fingers, he saw the Lady Galadriel standingon the grass in Lorien, and giftswere in her hands" (II, 417-418). Not only in conception but verbally as well, this is an echo of the despairingAlfred'svision of Mary: And he saw in a little picture, Tiny and far away, His mothersittingin Egbert's hall, And a book she showed him, verysmall, Where a sapphire Mary sat in stall With a golden Christat play.

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It was wroughtin the monk's slow manner, From silverand sanguine shell, Where the scenes are little and terrible, Keyholesof heaven and hell .... He looked; and thereOur Lady was, She stood and strokedthe tall live grass.... (229-230) Like Aragorn,Alfredleads his armyin an attackon the vastly more powerfulenemy force,wins against all expectation,and is restoredto power in his kingdom.Before the battle begins,however, he must sufferthe scorn and laughter of an enemy leader, who sees beforehim only the many-times-defeated exile. But as he [the Dane Harold] came beforehis line A little space along, His beardless face broke into mirth, And he cried: "What broken bits of earth Are here? For what their clothesare worth I would sell themfora song." Not less barbarian laughter Choked Harold like a flood, "And shall I fightwith scarecrows That am of Guthrum'sblood? Meeting may be of war-men, Where the best war-manwins; But all this carrion a man shoots Before the fightbegins." (275-277) similar insultsfromthe Lieutenant of the Tower suffers Aragorn of Barad-dir. Now halting a few paces beforethe Captains of the West he looked themup and down and laughed. "Is thereany one in this rout with authorityto treat with me?" he asked. "Or indeed with wit to understand me? Not thou at least!" he mocked, turningto Aragorn withscorn."It needs more to make a king than a piece of elvish glass, or a rabble such as this. Why? any brigand of the hills can show as good a following!"(III, 202) Once the victoryis won, there is another job to be done. As the penultimatechapterof Lord of the Rings is called "The Scouring of the Shire," so the last section of The Ballad of the White Horse is entitled"The Scouringof the Horse." The significanceof the task is the same in both cases, as indeed the normativeideas of the two worksare substantiallythe same throughout:although good and evil are absolute terms,no victoryover evil is final; life is not thatsimple; each generationmustfightnew battles,or scour

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the horse lest it be overgrownwith weeds. As Alfred says to his people, who complain that the Danes are returning: Will ye part with the weeds forever? Or show daisies to the door? Or will you bid the bold grass Go, and returnno more? (309) Gandalf gives the same message to the allied leaders even before the fall of Sauron: "Yet it is not our part to masterall the tidesof the world, but to do what is in us for the succour of those years whereinwe are set, uprooting the evil in the fieldsthat we know, so that those who live after may have clean earth to till." (III, 190) One could go throughthe two workscataloguingother similaritiesand echoes of detail, but I trustI have sufficiently demonstrated that Tolkien's debt to Chestertonis more than one of echoes; it extends to basic structureand conception. I have no desire to exaggerate that debt, or to lessen anyone's regard for Tolkien as an artist.Lord of the Rings is a much more complex, workthan The Ballad of the WhiteHorse profound,and satisfying (which has, after all, no Hobbits and no Ring). Its author, like many writersof the Middle Ages and Renaissance,had an extraordinaryability to use substantialelementsfromprevious literary worksin a way thatenhancedthe power and originalityof his own. With Chestertonthe similarityof outlook was so close4thatTolkien was able to borrowa whole narrativestructureand many details that took him in exactlythe directionhe wished to follow-superimposing both on the incrediblycomplicated body of mythical historyand language that he had half invented,half derived from ancient and medieval literatures.He had the knack of borrowing (and often greatlyelaborating)5exactly those things that would complement what he had invented, and what he borrowed he made his own.6Even the archetypalWhite Horse itself,in Chesterton merelya chalk figure,servesTolkien's needs. Both as a symbol and as a convenienceof plot, it is quite appropriatethat Tolkien brings the preternaturalanimal to life and places Gandalf, the most active champion of good, on its back. NOTES 1. Citations of Lord of the Rings are to the three volumes of the Ballantine Books edition (New York, 1965). 2. It is surprising that Tolkien's debts to Chesterton have been so little noticed by those who have writtenon Lord of the Rings. Lin Carter (Tolkien: A Look Behind The Lord of the Rings [New York, 1969], p. 151) relates Tolkien

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vaguely to a "tradition" of modern fantasybut does not mention Chesterton. Of the authors represented in Neil D. Isaacs and Rose A. Zimbardo, eds., Tolkien and the Critics (Notre Dame, 1968), none mentions The Ballad of the White Horse, though R. J. Reilly, in making the standard (and questionable) comparison of Tolkien with Charles Williams and C. S. Lewis, says that "The historian will in turn find back of all three the face of Chesterton,and behind him one of Lewis and Chesterton's longtime favorites, George Macdonald." ("Tolkien and the Fairy Story,"p. 130) The observation is not developed, however. For Tolkien, Lewis and Williams, see (inter alia) W. R. Irwin, "There and Back Again: The Romances of Williams, Lewis and Tolkien," Sewanee Review, LXIX (1961), 566-78; Roger Sale, "England's Parnassus," Hudson Review, XVII (1964), 203-25; Patricia Meyer Sparks, "Power and Meaning in The Lord of the Rings" in Tolkien and the Critics, 81-99; and Mariann Russell, The Idea of the City of God (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation,Columbia, 1965). Gloria St. Clair's Studies in the Sources of J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation,Universityof Oklahoma, 1970) sees the trilogy as deriving mainly from the sagas and eddas. Catherine R. Stimpson's ]. R. R. Tolkien (New York, 1969) does not mention Chesterton. 3. Citations of The Ballad of the White Horse are to page numbers in The Collected Poems of G. K. Chesterton(London, 1965). 4. Anyone who doubts this should read Tolkien's essay "On Fairy Stories" (in The Tolkien Reader [New York, 1966]), a veritable repositoryof Chestertonian opinions-indeed a recipe for the kind of story that each wrote. 5. As for example "the wizard's tower and glass" (Ballad of the White Horse, 284)-merely a phrase in Chesterton,but a whole subplot in Tolkien. 6. The opposite point of view is stated by Catherine R. Stimpson (J.,R. R. Tolkien, p. 9ff).

American Notes and Queries Beginning with the current volume, American Notes and Queries will be published by the Erasmus Press, 225 Culpepper, Lexington,Kentucky40502. William S. Ward, who retiresas professorof English at the Universityof Kentuckyat the end of the springsemester,1974,will succeed Lee Ash as editor.Contributions should be submittedto Mr. Ward at English Department,Patterson OfficeBuilding, Universityof Kentucky,Lexingt. Kentucky 40506.

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