The House of the Wolfings
William Morris with Michael W. Perry
The Book that Inspired J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings
“The Dead Marshes and the approaches to the Morannon owe something to Northern France after the Battle of the Somme. They owe more to William Morris and his Huns and Romans, as in The House of the Wolfings or The Roots of the Mountains.”
J. R. R. Tolkien, 1960
The House of the Wolfings
Copyright © 2009 by Michael W. Perry/ All rights reserved.
Published 2009 by Inkling Books, Seattle
Smashwords Edition 1.1, November 2009
William Morris and J. R. R. Tolkien
by Michael W. Perry
In her introduction to the fourteenth volume of The Collected Works of William Morris (1912), Morris’ daughter May said that, “In The House of the Wolfings and in The Roots of the Mountains my father seems to have got back to the atmosphere of the [ancient Northern European] Sagas. In that it is part metrical, part prose, the Wolfings may be held experimental, but in this tale of imaginary tribal life on the verge of Roman conquest—a period which had a great fascination for the writer, who read with critical enjoyment the more important modern studies of it as they came out.”
The impact of those “modern studies” must have been great, for May Morris went on to note with amusement, a “German professor who, after the Wolfings came out, wrote and asked learned questions about the Mark, expecting, I fear, equally learned answers from our Poet who sometimes dreamed realities without having documentary evidence of them.” The hot-tempered Morris’ own response to that professor was amusing. “Doesn’t the fool realize,” he shouted, “that it’s a romance, a work of fiction—that it’s all lies!”
As Morris well knew, we know almost nothing the day-to-day life of these brave and intelligent, but typically illiterate Central and Northern European tribes. In the Middle East, a dry climate, the widespread use of stone and clay, and the early spread of a written language preserved much. In a region that J. R. R. Tolkien would also make such a prominent part of his Middle-earth, a wet climate, the limited use of writing, and the common use of wood and leather left little for future generations to study. What little we do know has as its source the far from objective remarks of foes, such as the Romans, and literary fragments that have come down to us across the centuries, preserved in poetic sagas about great heroes and their accomplishments.
Both Morris and Tolkien drank deeply from those ancient literary wells of “Northerness.” Morris did so as part of a broad artistic genius that included the translation of ancient tales—such as his 1870 Volsunga Saga: The Story of the Volsungs and Niblungs. Tolkien did so as part of his professional life as an Oxford professor and a leading expert on the ancient languages and literature of Northern Europe.
These two men knew either much (Morris) or most (Tolkien) of all that was known about these people and their lives. They used that wealth of knowledge to create “dreamed realities” (Morris) or an “imaginary history” (Tolkien) about what it might have been like to live in those days. While what they wrote wasn’t necessarily true in a strict sense, both knew enough about the past and were talented enough as writers that what they wrote creates a strong sense that they describe what might have been.
Their readers certainly sense this. One wrote Morris that his tales, “convey the impression of your having lived in the time to describe what you have seen.” The effect of Tolkien is even more startling. Friends of his fans often complain that those who drink deeply of Middle-earth act as if Tolkien’s created world were more real than the one in which they live. In his Rehabilitations, Tolkien’s close friend C. S. Lewis said much the same when he noted of Morris, “All we need demand is that this invented world should have some intellectual or emotional relevance to the world we live in. And it has.”
Without a doubt, both Morris and Tolkien achieved that most difficult of all tasks for an author. They imagined a world with such skill that those who inhabit it seem as real as our next-door neighbor. Morris made clear that was his intent in a July 1889 paper in which he discussed romantic literature and said that, “As for romance, what does romance mean? I have heard people miscalled for being romantic, but what romance means is the capacity for a true conception of history, a power of making the past part of the present.” Both Morris and Tolkien were geniuses at doing just that.
Of course there are also differences in how the two men wrote. Morris was relatively indifferent to the broader picture. In The House of the Wolfings it was enough for him that his tale resembles the battles that Germanic tribes once fought with encroaching Roman armies. He has no desire to link his tale to actual battles fought on certain dates with specific Roman generals. The same is true of geography in The Roots of the Mountains. His description of the local geography and its forests is as marvelous as anything in Tolkien and that geography plays a major role in his story. But we are left uncertain about what would seem to be an important fact, which particular mountain range provides a backdrop for the story. May Morris believed the story was set in “the wonderful land at the foot of the Italian Alps” that her father loved so dearly. Others, with perhaps more an eye on history, place it in the German Alps or even in the Carpathian Mountains of Eastern Europe. Even more surprising, although we are left with the impression that the people in Roots are descendants of those in Wolfings, the actual ties between the two was left unclear. For Morris those things simply did not matter. It was enough for him that his tales could be fitted, however loosely, into European history.
In contrast, as his readers know, Tolkien did not place his tale within the recorded history of Europe. The events he described are assumed to have taken place in a past so distant that no independent history or artifacts from the age remain. Only the faintest echoes of what happened then have been preserved in extinct languages and ancient tales about dwarves, elves and dragons. In fact, so much (imaginary) time has passed that even the geography of Middle-earth only loosely resembles that of the Western Europe on which it is modeled.
Tolkien saw this historical vacuum as an opportunity. Into that vast gap, he thrust his own history for a world that, by his account, was just over seven thousand years old when the main events of The Lord of the Rings took place. He gave his Middle-earth a history and geography so complex, that numerous books have been written to describe it. In fact, I was able to write a 251-page chronology (Untangling Tolkien) in which I describe, typically to the year, the complex and quite plausible chain of events that led to Frodo acquiring the Ring, as well as a precise and detailed day-by-day account of Frodo’s quest to rid Middle-earth of the Ring, aided by his friends. Morris, although almost as talented as a story teller, did nothing on that grand a scale.
That said, what Morris and Tolkien had in common is far more important than their differences. May Morris expressed it when she said that her father’s writings were “experimental.” In biblical language, he was trying to see if the ‘old wine’ in the ancient Northern tales that he loved so well—tales that were fragmentary and typically told in poetic forms that were no longer popular—could survive being put into the ‘new wineskins’ of a modern historical novel, with only an occasional burst of poetry. In that he proved quite successful, although much of his success would come through others, such as Tolkien, and through a new form of literature called fantasy, that he helped to create out of ancient folk and fairy tales.
Of course, the fact that Morris was building on those tales, did not mean he slavishly followed them. C. S. Lewis readily admitted that, “Morris invented for his poems and perfected in his prose-romances a language which has never at any period been spoken in England.” But he went on to point out that, “The question about Morris’s style is not whether it is an artificial language—all endurable language in longer works must be that—but whether it is a good one.”
Lewis, a great writer in his own right, believed Morris had succeeded marvelously. Morris’ style, he wrote, “is incomparably easier and clearer than any ‘natural’ style could possibly be, and the ‘dull finish,’ the careful avoidance of rhetoric, gloss and decoration, is of its very essence.” In words that apply equally well to Tolkien, Lewis said that it was the very “matter-of-factness” of the tales, that make them seem true. “Other stories have only scenery: his have geography. He is not concerned with ‘painting’ landscapes; he tells you the lie of the land, and then you paint the landscape for yourself. To a reader long fed on the almost botanical and entomological niceties of much modern fiction—where, indeed, we mostly skip if the characters go through a jungle—the effect is at first very pale and cold, but also very fresh and spacious. We begin to relish what my friend called the ‘Northerness.’ No mountains in literature are as far away as distant mountains in Morris.”
There is also, Lewis said, a remarkable vividness in Morris’ descriptions of human society. Unlike many other romantic writers, Morris did not glorify the individual, making him almost God-like in his independence. Lewis wrote that Morris “immerses the individual completely in the society. ‘If thou diest today, where then shall our love be?’ asks the heroine in the House of the Wolfings. ‘It shall abide with the soul of the Wolfings,’ comes the answer.”
Lewis pointed out that many writers who try to describe an ideal society are “dull” because they fail to define the value of “x” that tells us what is Good. But he goes on, “The tribal communities which Morris paints in The House of the Wolfings or The Roots of the Mountains are such attempts, perhaps the most successful attempts ever made, to give x a value. . . . A modern poet of the Left, praising that same solidarity with the group which Morris praises, invites a man to be ‘one cog in the singing golden hive.’ Morris, on the other hand, paints the actual goings on of the communal life, the sowing, planting, begetting, building, ditching, eating and conversation. . . . Morris . . . brings back a sentiment that a man could really live by.”
Lewis could have said much the same of the imaginary communities that his friend Tolkien created. The Shire, Rivendell and Rohan have ways of life many find appealing, however different they may be from modern life. Each sets before us what seems to be a reasonable standard by which we might live. All are real enough we can imagine them as home.
Lewis also believed that Morris might bridge a gap he saw developing in 1939 society and that has grown wider since. “The old indeterminate, half-Christian, half-Pantheistic, piety of the last century is gone,” he wrote. “The modern literary world is increasingly divided into two camps, that of the positive, militant Christians and that of the convinced materialists.” Both camps, Lewis noted, can “find in him something that they need.”
Christians can benefit from Morris’ honesty. As a Pagan poet, Morris was “content to merely state the [ultimate human] question . . . uncontaminated by theorizing.” Within his tales we sense the great Pagan “thirst for immortality, tingling alive,” but also totally devoid of the answers that Christianity would later bring to a Pagan Europe. As a “prophet as unconscious, and therefore as far beyond suspicion as Balaam’s ass,” Morris, Lewis said, testifies to the importance of that thirst in itself and not merely as a prelude to a presentation of the Christian gospel.
Materialists can also benefit. Because Morris considered himself a socialist, many on the Left see him as one of them. But Lewis saw a critical difference between Morris and his political allies. He believed that Morris might force an increasingly secular and politicized Left to face a question it would rather ignore. “The Left agrees with Morris that it is an absolute duty to labour for human happiness in this world,” he wrote. “But the Left is deceiving itself if it thinks that any zeal for this object can permanently silence the reflection that every moment of this happiness must be lost as soon as gained, that all who enjoy it will die, that the race and the planet themselves must one day follow the individual into a state of being which has no significance—a universe of inorganic homogeneous matter moving at uniform speed in a low temperature. Hitherto the Left has been content, as far as I know, to pretend that this does not matter.” Morris made clear that such things do matter and that our longing for immortality raises questions that must be answered.
Morris can stimulate us in this fashion because of something special about his writing. Like Tolkien, the fact that he wrote of a long-ago world has led some to accuse him of being escapist. Not so, says Lewis. Morris (and by implication Tolkien) has “faced the facts” of modern life. “This is the paradox of him. He seems to retire far from the real world and to build a world out of his wishes; but when he has finished the result stands out as a picture of experience ineluctably true.” Morris presents, “in one vision the ravishing sweetness and the heart-breaking melancholy of our experience.” He shows, “how the one continually passes over into the other.” Most important of all, he combines everything into “a stirring practical creed,” that “all our adventures, worldly and other-worldly alike, must take into account.”
The same can be said of Tolkien. The Lord of the Rings ends with both “ravishing sweetness” and “heart-breaking melancholy.” Sauron is defeated and Middle-earth is free, but both Bilbo and Frodo are so badly wounded, they must seek relief over the sea. To wed Aragorn—a happy event—Arwen must separate herself from her family and face eventual death. Even the brave Ents, whose role in the victory was considerable, will never find the Ent-wives they love. As in life, the sweet and bitter are mixed together.
Tolkien recognized the literary debt he owned to those ancient tales and to Morris himself in a letter he wrote to his future wife in the fall of 1914 (now the first letter in The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien). There he spoke of introducing a fellow student to the delights of “Kalevala the Finnish ballads.” Tolkien went on to say that he hoped to turn one of those ballads, “which is really a great story and most tragic—into a short story somewhat on the lines of Morris’ romances with chunks of poetry in between.”
Forty-six years later, in a letter written at the very end of 1960, Tolkien continued to honor his debt to Morris when he wrote that the landscape of “The Dead Marshes and the approaches to the Morannon owe something to Northern France after the Battle of the Somme [where Tolkien fought in World War I]. They owe more to William Morris and his Huns and Romans, as in The House of the Wolfings or The Roots of the Mountains.” (That remark became the inspiration for a book combining those two tales under one title, More to William Morris, as well as separate printed editions of each book.)
In The Road to Middle-earth, T. A. Shippey described what Tolkien hoped to do and how it linked to Morris: “Like Walter Scott or William Morris before him, he felt the perilous charm of the archaic world of the North, recovered from bits and scraps by generations of inquiry. He wanted to tell a story about it simply, one feels, because there were hardly any complete ones left; Beowulf or The [S]aga of King Heidrek stimulated the imagination but did not quite satisfy it.”
After Tolkien died in 1973, many of his admirers hoped that stories similar to The Lord of the Rings existed in manuscript form among the author’s large collection of papers. Unfortunately, time has demonstrated that was only partly true. Fragments of tales and plots that might have become great epics do exist and have been published in The Silmarillion and Unfinished Tales. In addition, many of the attempted plots and variations in plot that lie behind The Lord of Rings have been included in Christopher Tolkien’s “History of Middle-earth” series. But almost all lack the wide appeal of Tolkien’s masterpiece. What he left behind is as fragmentary and incomplete (and thus as uninteresting for most readers) as the Northern tales he loved so much. For completed tales like Tolkien’s, we must turn to one of his richest literary sources. We must turn to William Morris.
C. S. Lewis would have agreed. Morris’ stories, he wrote, provide readers with “a pleasure so inexhaustible that after twenty or fifty years of reading they find it worked so deeply into all their emotions as to defy analysis.” Morris’ stories were almost certainly among those Lewis meant when he told Tolkien, “if they won’t write the kind of books we want to read, we shall have to write them ourselves.”
Readers should keep one thing in mind. In Morris, you won’t find an epic as broad or as extraordinarily complex as Tolkien’s tale of the Ring. Instead you find stories having the same flavor, with heroes and heroines from long ago fighting to stay free in a hostile and dangerous world. You will find descriptions of forests and nature every bit as marvelous as anything in Tolkien and tales that stresses the importance of remaining loyal to those close to us, whatever the cost. Finally, you’ll find something Tolkien is often accused of neglecting, warm romances between men and women.
In short, if you like what Tolkien wrote about Aragorn and his Rangers, if you admire the bravery of the Riders of Rohan, if you long for more tales of travel in an unspoiled wilderness, and if you wish that Tolkien had more to say about the courage of women or about romance between men and women, then you’ll be delighted by tales from the pen of William Morris.
We should always remember that William Morris, the writer who delighted and inspired Tolkien, can also delight and inspire those who love the marvelous stories that Tolkien wrote.
Introduction to The Roots of the Mountains
by Michael W. Perry
In J. R. R. Tolkien’s great epic, The Lord of the Rings, the climax of the Council of Elrond comes when the decision is made that “the Ruling Ring must be destroyed.” When the noon-bell rings, a silence falls on the group as they ponder who will take up this seemingly impossible task. At that moment Frodo, the central character in the tale, is filled with dread, “A overwhelming longing to rest and remain at peace by Bilbo’s side in Rivendell filled all his heart.” With a great effort, he makes his choice, “I will take the Ring,” he said, “though I do not know the way.”
In this earlier tale by Morris, the central actor, Thiodolf, faces a similar choice, one linked to a magical hauberk (a coat of chain mail) rather than a Ring. Like Frodo, he must choose either to live, remaining close to someone he loves (Wood-Sun) or face the near certainty that he will die defending his people.
Morris said as much in a 1888 letter when he wrote that The House of the Wolfings “is a story of the life of the Gothic tribes on their way through Middle Europe, and their first meeting with the Romans in war. It is meant to illustrate the melting of the individual into the society of the tribes: I mean apart from the artistic side of things that is its moral—if it has one.”
Although it is no more than a coincidence, both Frodo and Thiodolf see in its starkness the choice they must make in the fourteenth chapter of their respective tales. For Frodo the choice was clear beyond doubt. He must carry the Ring to Mordor. But for Thiodolf, the choice was at that time no more than a dark suspicion, “that a curse goeth with the hauberk, then either for the sake of the folk I will not wear the gift and the curse, and I shall die in great glory, and because of me the House shall live; or else for thy sake I shall bear it and live, and the House shall live or die as may be, but I not helping, nay I no longer of the House nor in it.”
Like Tolkien, Morris set his story within a larger history. Although there is no exact parallel between what happens in The House of the Wolfings and any particular historical event, the great struggle between Rome’s drive to civilize and enslave their way into Central Europe and the Gothic (Germanic) tribes willingness to fight for their independence is a fact of history.
Perhaps the most important battle in that struggle between Romans and Germans was one in A.D. 9 between the Roman general Varus and Gothic soldiers led by Arminius, a German whose talent had been recognized the Romans, who attempted to buy his allegiance by giving him Roman citizenship and military training. He would use that training against them.
Knowing that troop strength and military skill gave the advantage to Rome, in September Arminius lured Varus out of his Westphalian fortress to put down what the Romans thought was a minor revolt. They were tricked into entering a wooded and hilly region, where heavy rains made movement difficult. Arminius then launched a series of lightning attacks on the Roman army, using every advantage imaginable. (Much as in Morris’ tale, one key battle took place on a forested ridge.) In the end, Varus committed suicide to avoid capture and most of his army was either killed in battle or sacrificed to blood-thirsty pagan gods. Rome was left angry and bitter by the defeat, but in the end both sides were forced to come to an uneasy truce with the Rhine River as a boundary line. Later, barbarian tribes coming out of Central Europe would weaken and then destroy the Roman empire. Morris tells that history from a Gothic perspective in The Roots of The Mountains, where the Huns are the Wolfings’ new foes.
Why would an Englishman like Morris take pride in a long-ago victory by a distant tribe when his own homeland, England, had been successfully occupied and colonized by Rome? The reason is simple. In his day, many educated Englishmen believed that their racial (‘blood’) roots lay in the Germanic tribes of this era. In his often-reprinted 1851 Fifteen Decisive Battles of the World, Edward S. Creasy made the bold claim that, “an Englishman is entitled to claim a closer degree of relationship with Arminius than can be claimed by any German of modern Germany.” Strange as it may sound today, the Englishmen of Morris’ day had no problem imagining themselves as brave and fierce Wolfing warriors, even as a heavily industrialized Great Britain ruled a Rome-like empire that bore little resemblance to a Gothic village.
Those who have read Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings will notice similarities. There is a forest named Mirkwood in Morris, although it is not as dark and mysterious as Tolkien’s. (Both have as their source the Nordic Elder Edda saga.) In Chapter 2, a messenger brings to the Wolfings (as to Rohan) a “war-arrow ragged and burnt and bloody” that is a call to war. And, much like Bilbo and Frodo, Thiodolf acquires a protective coat of mail (hauberk) made by dwarves and having, in addition, dangerous and hidden powers much like the Ring that both Hobbits bear. But while the Ring can bestow an unimaginably dangerous power on its possessor, the hauberk has a far different effect. In both tales, however, the plot hinges on the hero making the right choice about the use of the powerful weapon he has been given.
With that, I leave you to enjoy Morris’ marvelous tale.
The Roots of the Mountains
by William Morris
Whiles in the early Winter eve
We pass amid the gathering night
Some homestead that we had to leave
Years past; and see its candles bright
Shine in the room beside the door
Where we were merry years agone
But now must never enter more,
As still the dark road drives us on.
E’en so the world of men may turn
At even of some hurried day
And see the ancient glimmer burn
Across the waste that hath no way;
Then with that faint light in its eyes
A while I bid it linger near
And nurse in wavering memories
The bitter-sweet of days that were.
Contents
1. The Dwellings of Mid-mark
2. The Flitting of the War-Arrow
3. Thiodolf Talketh with the Wood-Sun
4. The House Fareth to the War
5. Concerning the Hall-Sun
6. They Talk on the Way to the Folk-Thing
7. They Gather to the Folk-Mote
8. The Folk-mote of the Markmen
9. The Ancient Man of the Daylings
10. That Carline Cometh to the Roof of the Wolfings
11. The Hall-Sun Speaketh
12. Tidings of the Battle in Mirkwood
13. The Hall-Sun Saith Another Word
14. The Hall-Sun Is Careful Concerning the Passes of the Wood
15. They Hear Tell of the Battle on the Ridge
16. How the Dwarf-Wrought Hauberk Was Brought Away from the Hall of the Daylings
17. The Wood-Sun Speaketh with Thiodolf
18. Tidings Brought to the Wain-Burg
19. Those Messengers Come to Thiodolf
20. Otter and his Folk Come into Mid-mark
21. They Bicker about the Ford
22. Otter Falls on Against his Will
23. Thiodolf Meeteth the Romans in the Wolfing Meadow
24. The Goths Are Overthrown by the Romans
25. The Host of the Markmen Cometh into the Wild-wood
26. Thiodolf Talketh with the Wood-sun
27. They Wend to the Morning Battle
28. Of the Storm of Dawning
29. Of Thiodolf’s Storm
30. Thiodolf Is Borne Out of the Hall and Otter Is Laid Beside Him
31. Old Asmund Speaketh Over the War-dukes: The Dead Are Laid in Mound
Chapter 1
The Dwellings of Mid-mark
The tale tells that in times long past there was a dwelling of men beside a great wood. Before it lay a plain, not very great, but which was, as it were, an isle in the sea of woodland, since even when you stood on the flat ground, you could see trees everywhere in the offing, though as for hills, you could scarce say that there were any; only swellings-up of the earth here and there, like the upheavings of the water that one sees at whiles going on amidst the eddies of a swift but deep stream.
On either side, to right and left the tree-girdle reached out toward the blue distance, thick close and unsundered, save where it and the plain which it begirdled was cleft amidmost by a river about as wide as the Thames at Sheene when the flood-tide is at its highest, but so swift and full of eddies, that it gave token of mountains not so far distant, though they were hidden. On each side moreover of the stream of this river was a wide space of stones, great and little, and in most places above this stony waste were banks of a few feet high, showing where the yearly winter flood was most commonly stayed.
You must know that this great clearing in the woodland was not a matter of haphazard; though the river had driven a road whereby men might fare on each side of its hurrying stream. It was men who had made that Isle in the woodland.
For many generations the folk that now dwelt there had learned the craft of iron-founding, so that they had no lack of wares of iron and steel, whether they were tools of handicraft or weapons for hunting and for war. It was the men of the Folk, who coming adown by the river-side had made that clearing. The tale tells not whence they came, but belike from the dales of the distant mountains, and from dales and mountains and plains further aloof and yet further.
Anyhow they came adown the river; on its waters on rafts, by its shores in wains or bestriding their horses or their kine, or afoot, till they had a mind to abide; and there as it fell they stayed their travel, and spread from each side of the river, and fought with the wood and its wild things, that they might make to themselves a dwelling-place on the face of the earth.
So they cut down the trees, and burned their stumps that the grass might grow sweet for their kine and sheep and horses; and they diked the river where need was all through the plain, and far up into the wild-wood to bridle the winter floods: and they made them boats to ferry them over, and to float down stream and track up-stream: they fished the river’s eddies also with net and with line; and drew drift from out of it of far-travelled wood and other matters; and the gravel of its shallows they washed for gold; and it became their friend, and they loved it, and gave it a name, and called it the Dusky, and the Glassy, and the Mirkwood-water; for the names of it changed with the generations of man.
There then in the clearing of the wood that for many years grew greater yearly they drave their beasts to pasture in the new-made meadows, where year by year the grass grew sweeter as the sun shone on it and the standing waters went from it; and now in the year whereof the tale telleth it was a fair and smiling plain, and no folk might have a better meadow.
But long before that had they learned the craft of tillage and taken heed to the acres and begun to grow wheat and rye thereon round about their roofs; the spade came into their hands, and they bethought them of the plough-share, and the tillage spread and grew, and there was no lack of bread.
In such wise that Folk had made an island amidst of the Mirkwood, and established a home there, and upheld it with manifold toil too long to tell of. And from the beginning this clearing in the wood they called the Mid-mark: for you shall know that men might journey up and down the Mirkwood-water, and half a day’s ride up or down they would come on another clearing or island in the woods, and these were the Upper-mark and the Nether-mark: and all these three were inhabited by men of one folk and one kindred, which was called the Markmen, though of many branches was that stem of folk, who bore divers signs in battle and at the council whereby they might be known.
Now in the Mid-mark itself were many Houses of men; for by that word had they called for generations those who dwelt together under one token of kinship. The river ran from South to North, and both on the East side and on the West were there Houses of the Folk, and their habitations were shouldered up nigh unto the wood, so that ever betwixt them and the river was there a space of tillage and pasture.
Tells the tale of one such House, whose habitations were on the west side of the water, on a gentle slope of land, so that no flood higher than common might reach them. It was straight down to the river mostly that the land fell off, and on its downward-reaching slopes was the tillage, “the Acres,” as the men of that time always called tilled land; and beyond that was the meadow going fair and smooth, though with here and there a rising in it, down to the lips of the stony waste of the winter river.
Now the name of this House was the Wolfings, and they bore a Wolf on their banners, and their warriors were marked on the breast with the image of the Wolf, that they might be known for what they were if they fell in battle, and were stripped.
The house, that is to say the Roof, of the Wolfings of the Mid-mark stood on the topmost of the slope aforesaid with its back to the wild-wood and its face to the acres and the water. But you must know that in those days the men of one branch of kindred dwelt under one roof together, and had therein their place and dignity; nor were there many degrees amongst them as hath befallen afterwards, but all they of one blood were brethren and of equal dignity. Howbeit they had servants or thralls, men taken in battle, men of alien blood, though true it is that from time to time were some of such men taken into the House, and hailed as brethren of the blood.
Also (to make an end at once of these matters of kinship and affinity) the men of one House might not wed the women of their own House: to the Wolfing men all Wolfing women were as sisters: they must needs wed with the Hartings or the Elkings or the Bearings, or other such Houses of the Mark as were not so close akin to the blood of the Wolf; and this was a law that none dreamed of breaking. Thus then dwelt this Folk and such was their Custom.
As to the Roof of the Wolfings, it was a great hall and goodly, after the fashion of their folk and their day; not built of stone and lime, but framed of the goodliest trees of the wild-wood squared with the adze, and betwixt the framing filled with clay wattled with reeds. Long was that house, and at one end anigh the gable was the Man’s-door, not so high that a man might stand on the threshold and his helmcrest clear the lintel; for such was the custom, that a tall man must bow himself as he came into the hall; which custom maybe was a memory of the days of onslaught when the foemen were mostly wont to beset the hall; whereas in the days whereof the tale tells they drew out into the fields and fought unfenced; unless at whiles when the odds were over great, and then they drew their wains about them and were fenced by the Wain-burg. At least it was from no niggardry that the door was made thus low, as might be seen by the fair and manifold carving of knots and dragons that was wrought above the lintel of the door for some three foot’s space. But a like door was there anigh the other gable-end, whereby the women entered, and it was called the Woman’s-door.
Near to the house on all sides except toward the wood were there many bowers and cots round about the penfolds and the byres: and these were booths for the stowage of wares, and for crafts and smithying that were unhandy to do in the house; and withal they were the dwelling-places of the thralls. And the lads and young men often abode there many days and were cherished there of the thralls that loved them, since at whiles they shunned the Great Roof that they might be the freer to come and go at their pleasure, and deal as they would. Thus was there a clustering on the slopes and bents betwixt the acres of the Wolfings and the wild-wood wherein dwelt the wolves.
As to the house within, two rows of pillars went down it endlong, fashioned of the mightiest trees that might be found, and each one fairly wrought with base and chapiter, and wreaths and knots, and fighting men and dragons; so that it was like a church of later days that has a nave and aisles: windows there were above the aisles, and a passage underneath the said windows in their roofs. In the aisles were the sleeping-places of the Folk, and down the nave under the crown of the roof were three hearths for the fires, and above each hearth a luffer or smoke-bearer to draw the smoke up when the fires were lighted. Forsooth on a bright winter afternoon it was strange to see the three columns of smoke going wavering up to the dimness of the mighty roof, and one maybe smitten athwart by the sunbeams. As for the timber of the roof itself and its framing, so exceeding great and high it was, that the tale tells how that none might see the fashion of it from the hall-floor unless he were to raise aloft a blazing faggot on a long pole: since no lack of timber was there among the men of the Mark.
At the end of the hall anigh the Man’s-door was the dais, and a table thereon set thwartwise of the hall; and in front of the dais was the noblest and greatest of the hearths; (but of the others one was in the very midmost, and another in the Woman’s Chamber) and round about the dais, along the gable-wall, and hung from pillar to pillar were woven cloths pictured with images of ancient tales and the deeds of the Wolfings, and the deeds of the Gods from whence they came. And this was the fairest place of all the house and the best-beloved of the Folk, and especially of the older and the mightier men: and there were tales told, and songs sung, especially if they were new: and thereto also were messengers brought if any tidings were abroad: there also would the elders talk together about matters concerning the House or the Mid-mark or the whole Folk of the Markmen.
Yet you must not think that their solemn councils were held there, the folk-motes whereat it must be determined what to do and what to forbear doing; for according as such councils, (which they called Things) were of the House or of the Mid-mark or of the whole Folk, were they held each at the due Thing-steads in the Wood aloof from either acre or meadow, (as was the custom of our forefathers for long after) and at such Things would all the men of the House or the Mid-mark or the Folk be present man by man. And in each of these steads was there a Doomring wherein Doom was given by the neighbours chosen, (whom now we call the Jury) in matters between man and man; and no such doom of neighbours was given, and no such voice of the Folk proclaimed in any house or under any roof, nor even as aforesaid on the tilled acres or the depastured meadows. This was the custom of our forefathers, in memory, belike, of the days when as yet there was neither house nor tillage, nor flocks and herds, but the Earth’s face only and what freely grew thereon.
But over the dais there hung by chains and pulleys fastened to a tie-beam of the roof high aloft a wondrous lamp fashioned of glass; yet of no such glass as the folk made then and there, but of a fair and clear green like an emerald, and all done with figures and knots in gold, and strange beasts, and a warrior slaying a dragon, and the sun rising on the earth: nor did any tale tell whence this lamp came, but it was held as an ancient and holy thing by all the Markmen, and the kindred of the Wolf had it in charge to keep a light burning in it night and day for ever; and they appointed a maiden of their own kindred to that office; which damsel must needs be unwedded, since no wedded woman dwelling under that roof could be a Wolfing woman, but would needs be of the houses wherein the Wolfings wedded.
This lamp which burned ever was called the Hall-Sun, and the woman who had charge of it, and who was the fairest that might be found was called after it the Hall-Sun also.
At the other end of the hall was the Woman’s Chamber, and therein were the looms and other gear for the carding and spinning of wool and the weaving of cloth.
Such was the Roof under which dwelt the kindred of the Wolfings; and the other kindreds of the Mid-mark had roofs like to it; and of these the chiefest were the Elkings, the Vallings, the Alftings, the Beamings, the Galtings, and the Bearings; who bore on their banners the Elk, the Falcon, the Swan, the Tree, the Boar, and the Bear. But other lesser and newer kindreds there were than these: as for the Hartings above named, they were a kindred of the Upper-mark.
Chapter 2
The Flitting of the War-Arrow
Tells the tale that it was an evening of summer, when the wheat was in the ear, but yet green; and the neat-herds were done driving the milch-kine to the byre, and the horseherds and the shepherds had made the night-shift, and the out-goers were riding two by two and one by one through the lanes between the wheat and the rye towards the meadow. Round the cots of the thralls were gathered knots of men and women both thralls and freemen, some talking together, some hearkening a song or a tale, some singing and some dancing together; and the children gambolling about from group to group with their shrill and tuneless voices, like young throstles who have not yet learned the song of their race. With these were mingled dogs, dun of colour, long of limb, sharp-nosed, gaunt and great; they took little heed of the children as they pulled them about in their play, but lay down, or loitered about, as though they had forgotten the chase and the wild-wood.
Merry was the folk with that fair tide, and the promise of the harvest, and the joy of life, and there was no weapon among them so close to the houses, save here and there the boar-spear of some herdman or herd-woman late come from the meadow.
Tall and for the most part comely were both men and women; the most of them light-haired and grey-eyed, with cheek-bones somewhat high; white of skin but for the sun’s burning, and the wind’s parching, and whereas they were tanned of a very ruddy and cheerful hue. But the thralls were some of them of a shorter and darker breed, black-haired also and dark-eyed, lighter of limb; sometimes better knit, but sometimes crookeder of leg and knottier of arm. But some also were of build and hue not much unlike to the freemen; and these doubtless came of some other Folk of the Goths which had given way in battle before the Men of the Mark, either they or their fathers.
Moreover some of the freemen were unlike their fellows and kindred, being slenderer and closer-knit, and black-haired, but grey-eyed withal; and amongst these were one or two who exceeded in beauty all others of the House.
Now the sun was set and the glooming was at point to begin and the shadowless twilight lay upon the earth. The nightingales on the borders of the wood sang ceaselessly from the scattered hazel-trees above the greensward where the grass was cropped down close by the nibbling of the rabbits; but in spite of their song and the divers voices of the men-folk about the houses, it was an evening on which sounds from aloof can be well heard, since noises carry far at such tides.
Suddenly they who were on the edges of those throngs and were the less noisy, held themselves as if to listen; and a group that had gathered about a minstrel to hear his story fell hearkening also round about the silenced and hearkening tale-teller: some of the dancers and singers noted them and in their turn stayed the dance and kept silence to hearken; and so from group to group spread the change, till all were straining their ears to hearken the tidings. Already the men of the night-shift had heard it, and the shepherds of them had turned about, and were trotting smartly back through the lanes of the tall wheat: but the horse-herds were now scarce seen on the darkening meadow, as they galloped on fast toward their herds to drive home the stallions. For what they had heard was the tidings of war.
There was a sound in the air as of a humble-bee close to the ear of one lying on a grassy bank; or whiles as of a cow afar in the meadow lowing in the afternoon when milking-time draws nigh: but it was ever shriller than the one, and fuller than the other; for it changed at whiles, though after the first sound of it, it did not rise or fall, because the eve was windless. You might hear at once that for all it was afar, it was a great and mighty sound; nor did any that hearkened doubt what it was, but all knew it for the blast of the great war-horn of the Elkings, whose Roof lay up Mirkwood-water next to the Roof of the Wolfings.
So those little throngs broke up at once; and all the freemen, and of the thralls a good many, flocked, both men and women, to the Man’s-door of the hall, and streamed in quietly and with little talk, as men knowing that they should hear all in due season.
Within under the Hall-Sun, amidst the woven stories of time past, sat the elders and chief warriors on the dais, and amidst of all a big strong man of forty winters, his dark beard a little grizzled, his eyes big and grey. Before him on the board lay the great War-horn of the Wolfings carved out of the tusk of a sea-whale of the North and with many devices on it and the Wolf amidst them all; its golden mouth-piece and rim wrought finely with flowers. There it abode the blowing, until the spoken word of some messenger should set forth the tidings borne on the air by the horn of the Elkings.
But the name of the dark-haired chief was Thiodolf (to wit Folk-wolf) and he was deemed the wisest man of the Wolfings, and the best man of his hands, and of heart most dauntless. Beside him sat the fair woman called the Hall-Sun; for she was his foster-daughter before men’s eyes; and she was black-haired and grey-eyed like to her fosterer, and never was woman fashioned fairer: she was young of years, scarce twenty winters old.
There sat the chiefs and elders on the dais, and round about stood the kindred intermingled with the thralls, and no man spake, for they were awaiting sure and certain tidings: and when all were come in who had a mind to, there was so great a silence in the hall, that the song of the nightingales on the wood-edge sounded clear and loud therein, and even the chink of the bats about the upper windows could be heard. Then amidst the hush of men-folk, and the sounds of the life of the earth came another sound that made all turn their eyes toward the door; and this was the pad-pad of one running on the trodden and summer-dried ground anigh the hall: it stopped for a moment at the Man’s-door, and the door opened, and the throng parted, making way for the man that entered and came hastily up to the midst of the table that stood on the dais athwart the hall, and stood there panting, holding forth in his outstretched hand something which not all could see in the dimness of the hall-twilight, but which all knew nevertheless. The man was young, lithe and slender, and had no raiment but linen breeches round his middle, and skin shoes on his feet. As he stood there gathering his breath for speech, Thiodolf stood up, and poured mead into a drinking horn and held it out towards the new-comer, and spake, but in rhyme and measure:
Welcome, thou evening-farer, and holy be thine head,
Since thou hast sought unto us in the heart of the Wolfings’ stead;
Drink now of the horn of the mighty, and call a health if thou wilt
O’er the eddies of the mead-horn to the washing out of guilt.
For thou com’st to the peace of the Wolfings, and our very guest thou art,
And meseems as I behold thee, that I look on a child of the Hart.
But the man put the horn from him with a hasty hand, and none said another word to him until he had gotten his breath again; and then he said:
All hail ye Wood-Wolfs’ children! nought may I drink the wine,
For the mouth and the maw that I carry this eve are nought of mine;
And my feet are the feet of the people, since the word went forth that tide,
‘O Elf here of the Hartings, no longer shalt thou bide
In any house of the Markmen than to speak the word and wend,
Till all men know the tidings and thine errand hath an end.’
Behold, O Wolves, the token and say if it be true!
I bear the shaft of battle that is four-wise cloven through,
And its each end dipped in the blood-stream, both the iron and the horn,
And its midmost scathed with the fire; and the word that I have borne
Along with this war-token is, ‘Wolfings of the Mark
Whenso ye see the war-shaft, by the daylight or the dark,
Busk ye to battle faring, and leave all work undone
Save the gathering for the handplay at the rising of the sun.
Three days hence is the hosting, and thither bear along
Your wains and your kine for the slaughter lest the journey should be long.
For great is the Folk, saith the tidings, that against the Markmen come;
In a far off land is their dwelling, whenso they sit at home,
And Welsh is their tongue, and we wot not of the word that is in their mouth,
As they march a many together from the cities of the South.’
Therewith he held up yet for a minute the token of the war-arrow ragged and burnt and bloody; and turning about with it in his hand went his ways through the open door, none hindering; and when he was gone, it was as if the token were still in the air there against the heads of the living men, and the heads of the woven warriors, so intently had all gazed at it; and none doubted the tidings or the token. Then said Thiodolf:
Forth will we Wolfing children, and cast a sound abroad:
The mouth of the sea-beast’s weapon shall speak the battle-word;
And ye warriors hearken and hasten, and dight the weed of war,
And then to acre and meadow wend ye adown no more,
For this work shall be for the women to drive our neat from the mead,
And to yoke the wains, and to load them as the men of war have need.
Out then they streamed from the hall, and no man was left therein save the fair Hall-Sun sitting under the lamp whose name she bore. But to the highest of the slope they went, where was a mound made higher by man’s handiwork; thereon stood Thiodolf and handled the horn, turning his face toward the downward course of Mirkwood-water; and he set the horn to his lips, and blew a long blast, and then again, and yet again the third time; and all the sounds of the gathering night were hushed under the sound of the roaring of the war-horn of the Wolfings; and the Kin of the Beamings heard it as they sat in their hall, and they gat them ready to hearken to the bearer of the tidings who should follow on the sound of the war-blast.
But when the last sound of the horn had died away, then said Thiodolf:
Now Wolfing children hearken, what the splintered War-shaft saith,
The fire scathed blood-stained aspen! we shall ride for life or death,
We warriors, a long journey with the herd and with the wain;
But unto this our homestead shall we wend us back again,
All the gleanings of the battle; and here for them that live
Shall stand the Roof of the Wolfings, and for them shall the meadow thrive,
And the acres give their increase in the harvest of the year;
Now is no long departing since the Hall-Sun bideth here
’Neath the holy Roof of the Fathers, and the place of the Wolfing kin,
And the feast of our glad returning shall yet be held therein
Hear the bidding of the War-shaft! All men, both thralls and free,
’Twixt twenty winters and sixty, beneath the shield shall be,
And the hosting is at the Thing-stead, the Upper-mark anigh;
And we wend away to-morrow ere the Sun is noon-tide high.
Therewith he stepped down from the mound, and went his way back to the hall; and manifold talk arose among the folk; and of the warriors some were already dight for the journey, but most not, and a many went their ways to see to their weapons and horses, and the rest back again into the hall.
By this time night had fallen, and between then and the dawning would be no darker hour, for the moon was just rising; a many of the horse-herds had done their business, and were now making their way back again through the lanes of the wheat, driving the stallions before them, who played together kicking, biting and squealing, paying but little heed to the standing corn on either side. Lights began to glitter now in the cots of the thralls, and brighter still in the stithies where already you might hear the hammers clinking on the anvils, as men fell to looking to their battle gear.
But the chief men and the women sat under their Roof on the eve of departure: and the tuns of mead were broached, and the horns filled and borne round by young maidens, and men ate and drank and were merry; and from time to time as some one of the warriors had done with giving heed to his weapons, he entered into the hall and fell into the company of those whom he loved most and by whom he was best beloved; and whiles they talked, and whiles they sang to the harp up and down that long house; and the moon risen high shone in at the windows, and there was much laughter and merriment, and talk of deeds of arms of the old days on the eve of that departure: till little by little weariness fell on them, and they went their ways to slumber, and the hall was fallen silent.
Chapter 3
Thiodolf Talketh with the Wood-Sun
But yet sat Thiodolf under the Hall-Sun for a while as one in deep thought; till at last as he stirred, his sword clattered on him; and then he lifted up his eyes and looked down the hall and saw no man stirring, so he stood up and settled his raiment on him, and went forth, and so took his ways through the hall-door, as one who hath an errand.
The moonlight lay in a great flood on the grass without, and the dew was falling in the coldest hour of the night, and the earth smelled sweetly: the whole habitation was asleep now, and there was no sound to be known as the sound of any creature, save that from the distant meadow came the lowing of a cow that had lost her calf, and that a white owl was flitting about near the eaves of the Roof with her wild cry that sounded like the mocking of merriment now silent.
Thiodolf turned toward the wood, and walked steadily through the scattered hazel-trees, and thereby into the thick of the beech-trees, whose boles grew smooth and silver-grey, high and close-set: and so on and on he went as one going by a well-known path, though there was no path, till all the moonlight was quenched under the close roof of the beech-leaves, though yet for all the darkness, no man could go there and not feel that the roof was green above him. Still he went on in despite of the darkness, till at last there was a glimmer before him, that grew greater till he came unto a small wood-lawn whereon the turf grew again, though the grass was but thin, because little sunlight got to it, so close and thick were the tall trees round about it. In the heavens above it by now there was a light that was not all of the moon, though it might scarce be told whether that light were the memory of yesterday or the promise of to-morrow, since little of the heavens could be seen thence, save the crown of them, because of the tall tree-tops.