The Hobbit

Who's excited for the film The Hobbit? I am, for sure, and I know many others are! Ever since he directed The Lord of the Rings, fans have been hoping that Peter Jackson would undertake The Hobbit.

Not only is Peter Jackson one of the directors, but Sir Ian McKellen, Hugo Weaving, Cate Blanchett, Andy Serkis, Ian Holm (as an older Bilbo), Elijah Wood, Orlando Bloom, and Christopher Lee all playing the same roles as they did in The Lord of the Rings. Wonderful news!

Bilbo, from The Hobbit

However, from the production videos and trailers I've seen, the film seems to diverge quite a bit from the book. Galadriel does not even appear in The Hobbit. All the wizard action (Involving Radagast the Brown and Saruman the White) happens simultaneously as the action of the story, but is off-set so to speak: Tolkien never takes us there. We don't see the defeat of the Necromancer, we just hear about it. 

Secondly, I never would have pictured the village of Dale as an Italian/southern France village. It's cute though.

Thirdly, they added to the dwarves' characters. Ok, fine. Sounds entertaining. 

Fourthly, they got the beards wrong for the most part. In the film some of them don't really have beards, they have glorified mustaches. However, they are dwarves, therefore they ought to have full beards. Thorin Oakenshield from the book would be ashamed to go about with as little a beard as they gave him in the movie.

Kili

Aragorn

Fili and Kili, being younger, can certainly have smaller beards (in my opinion), but I think they should be longer and fuller than men generally wear theirs. Kili and Thorin in the movie look rather like Rangers or Men of Gondor.  In this photo, Kili looks like he could be a brother to Aragorn.
Here are pictures for comparison's sake.


Full, long beards are part of what make dwarves, dwarves (see The Blog That Time Forgot if you don't believe me). In the book, The Hobbit, Dwalin at least was able to tuck his beard in his belt: "It was a dwarf with a blue beard tucked into a golden belt" (page 7). Once, when Thorin was very angry, he said to Gandalf, "May your beard wither." Thorin was furious, showing that this is one of the worst things he could possibly wish upon another. The state of one's beard was a matter of pride. To loose one's beard would be like losing one's "man-card,"  or in this case, one's "dwarf-card."

The Blog that Time Forgot 
This blog goes into a detailed textual analysis of the dwarves' beards in the book. You can skip down to the section about beards. Basically his argument agrees with my observations from the book: dwarves should have beards and that beards are a source of pride.

In a production (behind-the-scenes) video one of the people on set suggests that maybe Fili and Kili can't grow beards yet. The above blog mentions this, and in addition to that blogger's analysis, I'd like to point out that Fili and Kili, most certainly did have beards in the book, "It was two dwarves, both with blue hoods, silver belts, and yellow beards" (page 8).

Sources:
The Hobbit, by J.R.R. Tolkien. Ballantine Books, published 1965.
The Hobbit (Official Site)
The Lord of the Rings (Official Site)
All photos come from the downloads sections.

The Symbolism of Wolves

Wolves figure in many tales. I had always grown up thinking they were symbols of evil. I was terrified of wolves, mostly due to the fact that I saw part of a documentary were a little boy was killed by wolves. The dramatization, which didn't even show him being killed, deeply disturbed my young mind. But that aside, in most of the stories I heard about wolves (whether true or fairy tale), well, they were the bad guys.

I heard that in Russia, the wolves got so hungry they would attack sleighs at night. One sleigh would be traveling over the snow and they would hear the screams of the passengers in another on the cold air as it went down somewhere in the darkness ahead or behind them.

In the pioneer days of America, wolves attacked people, even surrounding their lonely cabins.

They hunt in packs, their eerie howls rising on all sides as they close in on their hapless victims.

They work at night, a time of darkness, when evil things prowl.

Then there are the classic tales of Little Red Riding Hood and The Three Little Pigs.

There are werewolf stories. Evil beasts who can change back and forth between wolf and man.

In The Story of Rolf and the Viking Bow, by Allen French, Hiarandi dreamed that he was attacked by wolves and his wife counseled him to take extra precautions but he did not really heed her words. She said to her son, "Dreams often come true, and wolves in dreams mean death." Hiarandi died that day when his foes attacked him in the same manner as the wolves of his dream.

In The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit, all the encounters the characters have with them are bad.  In The Hobbit, Thorin and Company are surrounded by wolves who are then joined by goblins and barely escaped. In The Lord of the Rings, wolves surrounded the camp one night and Legolas shot one of them as it leaped towards them.

Granted, I heard a few where the wolves were the good guys, The Jungle Book chiefly. I suppose I dismissed the tale of Romulus and Remus being suckled by a she-wolf. It's a story were a wolf did a good deed, nursing abandoned babes so that they did not die. But still, they were bad men (that's how I wrote them off when I was younger). Romulus killed Remus after Remus made fun of the wall he was building. And from him, the Roman conquests began, later taking over the homelands of my Celtic ancestors.

It wasn't until last year though that my perception of wolves was challenged. In French class we were discussing a piece of literature featuring wolves. We got into a discussion of the symbolism of wolves. For me, they symbolized evil. For the professor, they symbolized good, for she was Italian, and for her the tale of the she-wolf was a good tale. The she-wolf saved the founder of Rome, which led to the Roman Empire.

That was when I realized that wolves as a symbol of evil didn't cover the entirety of the western world.

So, last week I took a poll. Here is what I asked participants: "answer the question with "good, evil, or neutral/neither." Go with your gut, I don't want your logical answer, I want your gut feeling based on the stories you've heard as a child. Question: Do wolves symbolize good or evil?"

Out of the 27 responses:
13 - evil
6 - good
6 - neither
2 - not really evil, but bad.

48% said evil, which is not quite half. Therefore many people think of wolves as symbolizing evil, however, other views are fairly prevalent also.

One of the responders succinctly explained her positive view of wolves, "I would say good, overall... kindof like Aslan, they're not safe but they're good. They are beautiful, wild, free, lonely, mysterious, like what the spirit of the forest would be if they were incarnated in animal form. Although the childhood stories I grew up with would portray them as evil." 
  
Another wrote, "Good - because they are strong, free and we owned a wolf and they are the most loyal ever----not evil except from movies portrayal- can be bad if you are a smaller critter looking to be eaten if don't run fast enough. I put them almost in the same place as the Bald Eagle-not quite because it cannot fly-" 

The Bald Eagle represents freedom for Americans, a sort of majestic freedom that is fierce.    

So, one's view of wolves can depend on various factors. Background: Celtic vs. Roman. And also: personal experiences, history, TV, novels, and folktales.



          

Horses Weeping For Their Masters

In three stories, two ancient and one not so much, the horses were aware that their masters were soon to meet their ends.

In Shakespeare's Play, Julius Caesar, The horses belonging to Caesar wept because they knew his death was drawing nigh.  This was a sign, along with many others that foretold Caesar's death in the Senate.

Achilles' horse Xanthus, foretold Achilles' death.  Xanthus was not a normal horse, he was an immortal horse and he spoke aloud.

The Gray of Macha

Cu Chulainn's horse, the Gray of Macha, knew his master would die if he rode out to battle that day and refused to be hitched to the chariot until Cu Chulainn came and spoke to him. The Gray submitted in tears of blood:  "Cu Chulainn went to him. And thrice did the horse turn his left side to his master....Then Cu Chulainn reproached his horse, saying that he was not wont to deal thus with his master.
Thereat the Gray of Macha came and let his big round tears of blood fall on Cu Chulainn's feet. And then Cu Chulainn leaped into the chariot, and drove it suddenly southwards along the Road of Midluachar."  (An Anthology of Irish Literature, vol. I, by David Greene)
In this case, I'm not sure if the Gray was foretelling the future, he may have just been aware of the circumstances.  Other events foretold the death of Cu Chulainn, and the Gray could have been privy to some of them.

But why horses? I have several ideas, which are merely speculations:
Perhaps because they are man's "second" best friend.  Like dogs, horses are man's companion more so than most other creatures. People bond with their dogs and horses, and this bond is celebrated in many stories.
Mythology about Cu Chulainn, and Greek mythology are steeped in omens and prophecies, so why not have the horses involved?  
Additionally, animals have a keen sense of the approach of danger. Their senses are much keener then ours. A dog knows when someone is approaching before a person does. They also can supposedly sense when someone is good or bad. People can sometimes tell too.  Nothing really has to happen, but certain people make us uncomfortable: it's either women's intuition (if you're a gal) or else a fine reading of body language, tone, and the eyes.  There are also stories from WWII were the fighter pilots knew who wasn't coming back just before a flight. If people and animals have such keen senses, then why not exaggerate in a story and make the horses cry or talk? Mayhap these legends were born from an exaggeration of the amazing abilities of animals coupled with the horse's tendency to freak at things they perceive as threats.

Hight, heiti, háte, heisse

 "'What are your names?'
Rolf answered: 'Rolf hight I.'"
-Allen French, The Story of Rolf and the Viking Bow.

Rolf is a fictional young man living in 11th century Iceland. I have long loved this book, and today I came upon the word "hight" while researching related topics. Though its meaning was obvious, it always intrigued me:

"Hight" is an English verb meaning "to call/name," and "to be called/named." It is an archaic term, meaning it is no longer in general use, but people understand it when found in written text.
Sources:
"Hight" in Wiktionary,
"Archaic" in Wiktionary

This word, not surprisingly, sounds remarkably similar to these phrases meaning "my name is":

Icelandic:
ég heiti...
(yerch* hey-te) *ch as in Loch.

Old English:

íċ háte...

(eech ha*-te) *long a, as in "father."

German: Ich heisse...
(eesh/eek high-se)

Legends - a retelling of history

"Look to the past, learn for the future." This was our motto in American Girl's Club.

 "Legends are lessons. They ring with truth." -Queen Elinor, in Brave (a Pixar-Disney film)

"'Haflings!' laughed the Rider that stood beside Eomer. 'Haflings! But they are only a little people in old songs and children's tales out of the North. Do we walk in legends or on the green earth in the daylight?'
'A man may do both,' said Aragorn. 'For not we but those who come after will make the legends of our time.'" - J.R.R. Tolkien, The Two Towers

Based on fact, legends reflect reality as it was, and sometimes as it is.

Learn from legends or else "History repeats itself." 

Brave - Transformations to Transform Fate

Brave has a rather unusual plot line -for a movie.

The story that most reminds me of this plot line appears, interestingly enough, in The Little House on the Highland series. These are stories about Laura Ingalls Wilder's great-grandmother, Martha, who grew up in Scotland. In a tale that little Martha supposedly heard as a child, a girl is supposed to marry a man she doesn't love at the order of her father. She runs off to the church in despair and overhears two mice talking about her.  One says to the other that what she really needs is such and such a fix. She takes their words to heart and performs the spell, then she goes home to bed. The next morning, her wedding day, the detested suitor arrives. She appears, to the surprise of all, with the head of dog. The suitor begins to rail at her father for cheating him and says he won't have her. Meanwhile the man she loves arrives and he takes her in his arms despite her dog's head. Her head turns back to normal and she weds the man she loves and who truly loves her.

Like Brave, the spell worked an unexpected animal transformation but in the end, the desired outcome arrives. It just arrives in a way no one thought it would, via their reactions to the transformation. 

Picture from Karen's Whimsey

Brave - What is Young MacGuffin saying?

(For a translation of the lines please see: Brave - What is Young MacGuffin saying? Translation)

In Disney's Brave, no one (in the film and that I know in the audience) can tell what Young MacGuffin is saying. My question is, could he be speaking Scottish Gaelic? The flavor of the words sounded like Gaelic, but I couldn't be sure.

So I looked it up online. Well, the flavor is Gaelic, but he is technically speaking English! IMBD, among other sources, reports that he speaks the Doric dialect (of English).  This is the dialect of the Scottish hometown of the voice of Young MacGuffin,  Kevin McKidd. (The Hollywood Reporter, The Hollywood Reporter )

Kevin McKidd told The Hollywood Reporter, "It definitely is a fanaticized version of Scotland but I think that they did capture the essence and spirit of the landscape and spirit. The humorous and wildness but warmth still exists, really captured that, kind of a love letter to Scotland in a way. I think the landscapes they created were almost more beautiful than Scotland."

There are other interesting facts amongst the trivia. Seems like this was a film of firsts:
IMBD Brave Trivia

Want to learn more and see samples of Doric?
Wikipedia entry on Doric