A Tale of Two Rings

The chapter where everything changes (between 1937 and 1951, that is).  Gollum!  and the Ring!  Riddles and all of their history, and a look at the competing theologies of Comfort and Destruction.
All this, and More...

Transcript

1. Chapter 5 – A Tale of Two Rings
   1. The Episode you’re about to hear really should be two episodes.  I almost recorded it as such.  We have talked before in this podcast about the various incarnations of The Hobbit, about how there was the initial fragment, written around 1930, that used some different names and had more in common with modern earth that Middle Earth.  There was the published version, the first edition, published in 1937.  There is the re-written version published in 1951 to bring the story in line with the Lord of the Rings.  And there is the begun but quickly aborted entire re-write from 1960, where Tolkien tried to change the entire style of the novel to sound like the Lord of the Rings and the Silmarillion.  For most aspects of the story, the differences between the 1937 Hobbit and the 1951 Hobbit are small, and I haven’t seen fit to comment on them.  A change in wording here, an added sentence there.  But the Riddles in the Dark chapter was completely overhauled.  The plot of the chapter was changed; the character of Gollum was physically and emotionally retooled; and the Ring took on an entirely new aspect.  We are going to try to do this in one episode, but the most Successful Retconning that we are going to see in this entire podcast is what Tolkien does to Riddles in the Dark.

Hi, I’m Stephen Westbrook, and you’re listening to West of Valinor.

1. Concerning Gollum.
   1. A Quick History of Grendel
      1. A powerful monster, living down

In the darkness, growled in pain, impatient

As day after day the music rang

Loud in that hall... 

And then As now warriors sang of their pleasure:

So Hrothgar's men lived happy in his hall

Till the monster stirred, that demon, that fiend, 

Grendel, who haunted the moors, the wild

Marshes, and made his home in a hell

Not hell but earth. He was spawned in that slime, 

Conceived by a pair of those monsters born

Of Cain, murderous creatures banished

By God, punished forever for the crime

Of Abel's death. The Almighty drove

Those demons out, and their exile was bitter,

Shut away from men; they split

Into a thousand forms of evil—spirits

And fiends, goblins, monsters, giants,

A brood forever opposing the Lord's 

Will, and again and again defeated.

Then, when darkness had dropped, Grendel

Went up to Herot, wondering what the warriors 

Would do in that hall when their drinking was done. 

He found them sprawled in sleep, suspecting 

Nothing, their dreams undisturbed. The monster's

35 Thoughts were as quick as his greed or his claws:

He slipped through the door and there in the silence 

Snatched up thirty men, smashed them

Unknowing in their beds and ran out with their bodies, 

The blood dripping behind him, back

40 To his lair, delighted with his night's slaughter.

At daybreak, with the sun's first light, they saw

How well he had worked, and in that gray morning 

Broke their long feast with tears and laments

For the dead. Hrothgar, their lord, sat joyless

45 In Herot, a mighty prince mourning

The fate of his lost friends and companions, 

Knowing by its tracks that some demon had torn 

His followers apart. He wept, fearing

The beginning might not be the end. And that night

50 Grendel came again, so set

On murder that no crime could ever be enough, 

No savage assault quench his lust

For evil. Then each warrior tried

To escape him, searched for rest in different

55 Beds, as far from Herot as they could find,

Seeing how Grendel hunted when they slept. 

Distance was safety; the only survivors

Were those who fled him. Hate had triumphed.

So Grendel ruled, fought with the righteous, 

60 One against many, and won; so Herot

Stood empty, and stayed deserted for years, 

Twelve winters of grief for Hrothgar, king 

Of the Danes, sorrow heaped at his door

By hell-forged hands. His misery leaped

65 The seas, was told and sung in all

Men's ears: how Grendel's hatred began, 

How the monster relished his savage war 

On the Danes, keeping the bloody feud 

Alive, seeking no peace, offering

70 No truce, accepting no settlement, no price

In gold or land, and paying the living

For one crime only with another. No one 

Waited for reparation from his plundering claws: 

That shadow of death hunted in the darkness,

75 Stalked Hrothgar's warriors, old

And young, lying in waiting, hidden

In mist, invisibly following them from the edge 

Of the marsh, always there, unseen.

1. The Lake at the Base of the Mountain is the Lake where Grendel and his Mother live.
   1. From the Hobbit:
      1. There are strange things living in the pools and lakes in the hearts of mountains: fish whose fathers swam in, goodness only knows how many years ago, and never swam out again, while their eyes grew bigger and bigger and bigger from trying to see in the blackness; also there are other things more slimy than fish. Even in the tunnels and caves the goblins have made for themselves there are other things living unbeknown to them that have sneaked in from outside to lie up in the dark. Some of these caves, too, go back in their beginnings to ages before the goblins, who only widened them and joined them up with passages, and the original owners are still there in odd corners, slinking and nosing about.
      2. Deep down here by the dark water lived old Gollum. I don't know where he came from, nor who or what he was. He was Gollum—as dark as darkness, except for two big round pale eyes.
   2. From Beowulf:
      1. Miscreated thing, in man’s form trod the ways of exile, albeit he was greater than any other human thing.  Him in days of old the dwellers on earth named Grendel; of a father they knew not, nor whether any such was ever before begotten for him among the demons of the dark.  In a hidden land they dwell upon highlands wolfhaunted, and windy cliffs, and the perilous passes of the fens, where the mountain-stream goes down beneath the shadows of the cliffs, a river beneath the earth.  It is not far hence in the measurement of miles that that mere lies, over which there hang rimy thickets, and a wood clinging by its roots overshadows the water.  There may each night be seen a wonder grim, fire upon the flood.  There lives not of the children of men one so wise that he should know the depth of it.
   3. Two lairs, in rivers and lakes beneath the earth, so deep that no one knew how deep they were.  Cursed places that no one will go to.  And at the bottom, a monster.  And a monster that not even the narrators of the story know:
      1. If he had a father, no one knew him.
2. Golems from Jewish Folklore
   1. The word “Gollum” though, is Biblical in origin, from ancient Hebrew.  In Psalm 139, verse 16 writes “16 Thine eyes did see mine unformed substance, and in Thy book they were all written even the days that were fashioned, when as yet there was none of them.”  The Hebrew word that is translated here as “Unformed Substance” is Golmi.  In Jewish mysticism, the Golem is simply clay that has not been but might be brought to life.  Adam - before God breathed life into him - is sometimes said to have been a golem.  But by the time we get to the 1600s or so, Golem are the subject of Jewish fairy-tales around central and eastern Europe.  The Golem of Prague is a story about  Judah Loew ben Bezalel who brings a Golem made of clay to life and sets it to defend the Jews of Prague against the Pogroms and anti-semitic violence in the city - a kind of mystical Jewish Frankenstein’s creature.
   2. While Tolkien certainly was aware of the Jewish Golem, there is no real indication that he used anything of it beyond the name in influencing his work.
3. Morlocks
   1. In HG Wells’ The Time Machine, he describes a race of creatures - opposite to the Eloi - who are entirely subterranean.  They have “pallid bodies. They were just the half-bleached colour of the worms and things one sees preserved in spirit in a zoological museum. And they were filthily cold to the touch.”
4. Gagool from King Soloman’s Mines
   1. Gagool is the advisor to the antagonistic King Twala in Sir H. Rider Haggard’s King Solomon’s Mines.  In the story, Gagool is sort of the chief inquisitor of the King, choosing out who seems to oppose the kings will and trying them in a very witch-hunt-esque way. Gagool is described as 
      1. “a withered-up monkey [that] crept on all fours ... a most extraordinary and weird countenance. It was (apparently) that of a woman of great age, so shrunken that in size it was no larger than that of a year-old child, and was made up of a collection of deep yellow wrinkles ... a pair of large black eyes, still full of fire and intelligence, which gleamed and played under the snow-white eyebrows, and the projecting parchment-coloured skull, like jewels in a charnel-house. As for the skull itself, it was perfectly bare, and yellow in hue, while its wrinkled scalp moved and contracted like the hood of a cobra."
   2. When King Twala is overthrown, the protagonist, Allen Quartermain, makes Gagool show them a treasure room inside a mountain - the mines of King Solomon -  full of gold, diamonds, and ivory. Gagool then sneaks out while they are admiring the hoard and triggers a secret mechanism that closes the mine's vast stone door. However, she is confronted by one of the women friendly to Quartermain and Gagool is crushed under the stone door.  The trapped men prepare to die, being stuck in a black cave at the bottom of a mountain, but after a few days sealed in the dark chamber, they find an escape route, bringing with them a few pocketfuls of diamonds, enough to make them rich.
5. Finally, we have Glip.  Glip is a character of Tolkien’s own creation, the title character of a 1928 poem, that describes Glip as blind as a mole in daylight, but at night eyes that “with a pale gleam… shine like green jelly.”  He is “a slimy thing, sneaking and crawling under fishy stones and slinking home to sing a gurgling song in his damp hole.”

1. Gollum vs Smeagol
   1. So these are the literary figures that seem to pre-figure Gollum.  Let’s look at how Tolkien deals with him.  Let’s start with the original version of Gollum in 1937.
   2. The 1937 Version – semi-nice
      1. Okay, so he isn’t actually semi-nice, but he is honorable.  He offers to give Bilbo a magic ring (if Bilbo wins the riddle game), and when he can’t find the magic ring to give Bilbo, he is frantic to find some other way to keep his word.  ANYTHING to keep his word.  He is a murderous creature, and would dearly love to have eaten Bilbo up.  But not at the risk of breaking his promise.   He deeply apologetic when he finds that it is missing: 
         1. “I don't know how many times Gollum begged Bilbo's pardon. He kept on saying: "We are ssorry; we didn't mean to cheat, we meant to give it our only present, if it won the competition."
      2. He even offered to catch Bilbo some nice juicy fish to eat as a consolation. 'Bilbo, who has the Ring in his pocket, persuades Gollum to lead him out of the underground passages, which Gollum does, and the two of them part company in a civil manner.  This Gollum is violent but honest.  Lawful Evil, if you will.  He also is NOT a hobbit.  The Narrator clearly says "I don't know where he came from, nor who or what he was.”  And, as we discussed in episode 2, the narrator in this novel, especially when he expresses ignorance, is often speaking for Tolkien himself.  Gollum, in the 1937 published version, has long fingers, webbed feed that flap when he walks - contrasted with the hairy, un-webbed, silent feet of hobbits, and long, protruding, luminescent eyes that stick out like telescopes and give off their own light.  This is an audio podcast, so I can’t show you pictures, but you should go look at some of the illustrations of Gollum done for the first edition of the Hobbit.  There is a Soviet version wherein Gollum looks like a 10 foot tall Eggplant with eyes and a laurel wreath around his head, sitting in a pool and talking to a tiny Bilbo.  There is a German version wherein Gollum is imagined as literally a giant toad.  Just a giant toad, that’s it.  There is a version wherein Gollum kind of looks like a shadow version of Terry from Soul, or maybe the Shadow of Dr. What’s his Name from The Princess and the Frog.  There is one where he looks like Dick York with webbed feet.  And my absolute favorite one has to be Gene Deitch’s  illustration where Gollum just kind of looks like a large blue koosh ball with eyes and spindly, stick figure legs.  As much as I don’t want to lose a captive audience when I have one, I’m really tempted to tell you to pause this podcast and just Google early illustrations of Gollum….  You know what, just make yourself a note to do it later.

But he is most definitely NOT described as a Hobbit.  I cannot find any correspondence Tolkien did on Gollum in the pre-Lord of the Rings years, so I don’t know if he ever commented on how his creature was being illustrated.  But when he went back after writing the Lord of the Rings, he definitely had a picture of Gollum in his mind, and he added phrases like “a small slimy creature” and mentioned his “thin face.”

1. The 1951 Version – fully evil
   1. By the second edition of the Hobbit, Gollum had been reconceived.  He is no longer honorable, and his physical description is no longer up for debate.  He is Bilbo’s size, and he is emaciated.  Whereas in the 1937 version of the chapter, the term “My Precious” now referred exclusively to Gollum himself, in the 1951 version it is ambiguous at times.  Sometimes the term refers to Gollum himself, but other times he directly calls the Ring precious.  And sometimes we aren’t too sure which one he’s talking to, or (if we have read the Lord of the Rings and know what the ring becomes) we believe that he has so conflated the ring with himself that he cannot separate his own identity from the ring.

He is also murderous in the 1951 version.  He loses the Riddle Game with Bilbo (if we don’t want to say that Bilbo’s final riddle wasn’t actually kind of cheating,) but Gollum has no intention of keeping his word.  First of all, in this version he does not offer Bilbo the ring as a present, Tolkien would never have allowed that once he reconcieved the ring as Isildur’s Bane, the prize for winning the Riddle Game is simply showing Bilbo the way out.  But when Gollum loses, he fully intends to cheat and just murder Bilbo.  The 1937 Gollum was okay with killing Bilbo and eating him, but not with cold-blooded murder, deception and dishonor.  But the 1951 Gollum?  That’s all he is concerned with:  Put on the Ring, become invisible, and throttle Bilbo from behind.  In the 1937 version, Gollum shows Bilbo to the exit and they shake hands and part ways.  Literally, the text reads that “Bilbo slipped under the arch, and SAID GOODBYE to the nasty miserable creature.”

But in the 1951 version, Gollum accidentally leads Bilbo to the exit when he (correctly) guesses that Bilbo has stolen the ring.  And then Bilbo has his moment of choice, one that Tolkien would come to refer to as one of the most defining moments of his life.  Gollum is in his way, and doesn’t know that Bilbo is there.  “He was desperate.  He must get away, out of this horrible darkness, while he had any strength left.  He must fight.  He must stab the foul thing, put its eyes out, kill it.  It meant to kill him.  No, not a fair fight.  He was invisible now.  Gollum had no sword.  Gollum had not actually threatened to kill him, or tried yet.  And he was miserable, alone, lost.  A sudden understanding, a pity mixed with horror, welled up in Bilbo’s heart: a glimpse of endless unmarked days without light or hope of betterment, hard stone, cold fish, sneaking and whispering.  All these thoughts passed in a flash of a second.  He trembled.  And then quite suddenly in a flash, as if lifted by a new strength and resolve, he leaped.”  Gandalf and Frodo will talk about this moment in The Lord of the Rings - that it was the pity of Bilbo that kept him from experiencing the worst that the Ring had to offer, and that the pity of Bilbo had profound effects on the history of the world.

1. The LotR Version – Complex
   1. In the Hobbit, it takes us about 21000 words before we meet Gollum.  In the Lord of the Rings, it only takes about 6000 words before characters begin discussing Gollum, but we won’t meet him until nearly a quarter-of-a-million words into the story.  Tolkien had quite a bit of time to think about the character before reintroducing him, and think he did.  Gollum now has a backstory:  Gollum, as Tolkien would think of him for the rest of his life, was a Hobbit named Smeagol - one of the the grandfathers of the grandfathers of the Stoors - born around 500 years before the story begins.  He lived to the east of the Misty Mountains with his rather large family, run by his Grandmother, and he had friends, including a particularly close friend named Deagol.  Deagol, of course, finds the Ring in the river while out fishing one day, and then it being Gollum - Smeagol -’s birthday, he demands the ring which, of course, Deagol refuges to give up.
   2. Cain & Abel
      1. It isn’t that both Deagol and Smeagol were equally deserving of the ring.  Quite the opposite.  Neither of them were deserving of the ring.   But the ring chose Deagol, and because he was not chosen, Smeagol murders his friend, his brother.

I’m reminded of another story of two brothers.  Now the younger brother was a keeper of sheep, and the older brother a tiller of the ground. 3 In the course of time the older brother brought to the Lord an offering of the fruit of the ground, 4 and the younger brother for his part brought of the firstlings of his flock, their fat portions. And the Lord had regard for the younger brother and his offering, 5 but for the older brother and his offering he had no regard. So the older brother was very angry, and his countenance fell. 6 The Lord said to the older brother, “Why are you angry, and why has your countenance fallen? 7 If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin is lurking at the door; its desire is for you, but you must master it.”

8 Then the older brother said to the younger, “Let us go out to the field.”[b] And when they were in the field, Cain rose up against his brother Abel, and killed him. 9 Then the Lord said to Cain, “Where is your brother Abel?” He said, “I do not know; am I my brother’s keeper?” 10 And the Lord said, “What have you done? Listen; your brother’s blood is crying out to me from the ground! 11 And now you are cursed from the ground, which has opened its mouth to receive your brother’s blood from your hand. 12 When you till the ground, it will no longer yield to you its strength; you will be a fugitive and a wanderer on the earth.” 

And this isn’t the first time we have talked about Cain today.  In the Beowulf story Grendel is a descendent of Cain - as are all monsters, all wicked creatures, all evil things descended from the first evil act, the first murder.

Gollum is a cursed creature the same way that Cain was - cursed by the murder of one whom he was supposed to love, and now the ground will no longer yield to him, he is a fugitive and wanders the earth, he can stand neither sunlight nor starlight, and his redemption is beyond us (which is not to say that he can never find it.)

1. Peter Jackson – Multiple Personalities
   1. The famous Gollum scene from Peter Jackson’s movies is his conversation with himself in the Two Towers.  Frodo has made Gollum swear on the ring to be good and faithful and actually calls him by his given name, Smeagol, for what might be the first time in several hundred years.  Gollum then apparently goes through a dissociative episode, and splits into two personalities - the wicked, evil half, the Gollum side, the side that Sam will, in the novel, call “Stinker”, and the good and helpful side, the Smeagol side, the side that Sam will call “Slinker.”  And these two sides have an argument that ends with Smeagol - Slinker - telling Gollum - Stinker - to go away and never return.  And for a while, it looks like Smeagol has exorcised his demon, his Gollum side.
   2. This scene is not entirely Peter Jackson et al’s idea - there is a scene in the novels wherein Gollum has a conversation with himself that Sam overhears, but it isn’t quite the “Good” side versus the “Bad” side that the movies make it out to be.
   3. This type of multiple-personality syndrome was a budding plot device in Victorian Literature, in The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, for example.  But while Sam alludes to it in the novels, it is only in Peter Jackson’s films that the character is full on split-personality. 
2. The Sounds of Gollum
   1. I can’t show you Gollum, this being an Audio Medium, but I can let you hear him.  Tolkien wrote Gollum’s dialogue intentionally and he did it well - talking about himself in the third person or the 1st Person plural… Talking about everyone in the third person, actually.  Gollum almost never, as far as I can tell, uses the pronouns “you” or “I”.  He also uses sibilants with incredible frequency.  Siblilants are sounds made by forcing air through your teeth, like Shhhhh or pssst.  S and Z and SH sounds.  And across multiple decades and multiple mediums and multiple actors, Gollum has sounded very consistent.  Let’s listen.
   2. Tolkien reading the chapter in 1952: 8:38
      1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=poueOkhyouY&list=PLMMxav_zz6kIQ8ZaRmN1YNw0Fj8hrr0Qm&index=2
   3. 1977 Rankin Bass: 3:28
      1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xj8r5ojAh9k
   4. Andy Serkis Audiobook: 34:33

1. Riddles
   1. The tradition of telling riddles is an old one, and has many literary antecedents.  Two poems from the Elder Edda involve riddle contests - the Alvismal and the Vafthrudinsmal, as well as one of the stories from the Prose Edda, “The Deluding of Gylfi.”  The Riddle Game appears in the Old English “Second Dialogue of Solomon and Saturn” and in The Saga of King Heidrek the Wise, and Tolkien himself pointed to the Nursery Rhyme origin of a couple of his riddles.  Eldest of all, of course, is the Riddle of the Sphinx, which is a plot point (although never said explicitly) in Oedipus Rex, written around 430 BC.  The Sphinx as a character is far older - the Great Sphinx of Giza was built around 2500 BC.

1. It is important to remember, at this point, that these riddles all appeared in their final form in 1937.  Indeed, John Rateliff, in his History of the Hobbit went through and read Tolkien’s hand-written manuscript for the Hobbit, and the riddles are in their final form even there.  Tolkien did a fair amount of editing as he wrote, apparently, changing wordings or adding in or cutting a line or two, but not in the riddles.  Rateliff infers that this means that the riddles predate the composition of the chapter… or that, in this case, although Tolkien was accustomed to telling the story to his children aloud and then writing down what he had just told, that in this case he may have written the riddles out before he told it to his children.  In any case, that these riddles were written down in the original manuscript and never changed indicates that the Gollum who was telling these riddles is the earliest form of Gollum - not Smeagol.
2. Tolkien always maintained two, vaguely contradictory points about his riddles.  1 - he maintained that he did not come up with the ideas for them, that if enough research were to be done, that all of these riddles come from a source beyond just Tolkien’s brain.  He wrote to The Observer in 1938 that “I should not be surprised to learn that both the Hobbit and Gollum will find their claim to have invented any of the riddles disallowed.”  That said, Tolkien firmly held that the wording of almost all of the riddles is entirely his own.  Allen and Unwin at one point suggested that they did not need Tolkein’s permission to print the riddles as poems in an anthology because they were common folklore, but Tolkien responded that the wording of them was “all my own work, except for Thirty White Horses and No-legs” and that not giving him credit for them would be akin to “walking off with somebody’s chair because it was a Chippendale copy, or drinking his wine because it was labelled ‘port-type’”.  Basically, he maintained that the ideas for these riddles are ancient, but that the words are his.

1. Gollum:

What has roots as nobody sees,

Is taller than trees,

Up, up it goes,

And yet never grows?

[A mountain]

1. Nobody seems to be really sure where this riddle comes from.  At least it does not have any obvious analogs in literature or mythology.  The riddle is also the most neutral one we are going to get in this contest, it does not subscribe to any particular world view.  But even here, Gollum asserts that the mountain, the answer to the riddle, is greater than the trees.  It is unknown and yet majestic and powerful.  Gollum argues that his home is greater than Bilbos.

1. Bilbo:

Thirty white horses on a red hill,

First they champ,

Then they stamp,

Then they stand still.

[Teeth]

1. This riddle is a straight up Nursery Rhyme, although Tolkien’s wording is slightly different than the traditional wording.  The Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes lists this one as “Thirty white horses Upon a red hill.  Now the tramp, Now they Champ.  Now they stand still.”  But essentially the same.  Whereas Gollum’s first riddle was about the roots of things, and the power and majesty of his mountain home, Bilbo’s riddle although the answer is simply teeth, uses the imagery of horses as it’s major clue.  The dichotomy is set - Bilbo views things through the lens of the natural world, and Gollum views things from a hidden, obscured, and powerful lens.

1. Gollum:

Voiceless it cries,

Wingless flutters,

Toothless bites,

Mouthless mutters.

[Wind]

1. Wind riddles are traditional, and although the wording of this riddle is entirely Tolkiens, it does use metaphors for the wind that are fairly common - Flying without wings, and speaking without a voice.  Gollum responds to Bilbo’s horse imagery - the imagery of a living thing - by taking the aspects of living things and giving them to the inanimate.  The wind is personified as crying, fluttering, biting, and muttering, but is also said to not have a voice, wings, teeth, or a mouth.  The inanimate and lifeless world, according to Gollum, can do all that the living world can.

1. Bilbo:

An eye in a blue face

Saw an eye in a green face.

"That eye is like to this eye"

Said the first eye,

"But in low place,

Not in high place."

[The sun on Daisies]

1. This is the most purely Tolkien riddle we are going to get.  Tolkien’s first job was to research word origins for the Oxford English Dictionary, and he just takes that etymology and puts it in verse here.  The word “Daisy” comes from the word daeges eage, which just means “Day’s Eye.”  The Sun.  Ancient people looked at the daisy and thought that it resembled the sun overhead, and so they called the Day’s Eye, the Day’s e’e’.  The Daisy.    Bilbo responds to Gollum’s cold, lifeless, biting wind riddle with something warm and entirely natural, green fields and blue skies, bright sun and bright flowers.  This is the fields of Hobbiton in which Bilbo feels most comfortable and most at home.  But Tolkien begins to tell us how much this makes Gollum uncomfortable.  “These ordinary above ground everyday sort of riddles were tiring for him” that they “put him out of temper” and so no Gollum tries, intentionally, “something a bit more difficult and unpleasant.”

1. Gollum:

It cannot be seen, cannot be felt,

Cannot be heard, cannot be smelt.

It lies behind stars and under hills,

And empty holes it fills.

It comes first and follows after,

Ends life, kills laughter.

[Dark]

1. This riddle is Icelandic in origin.  Jon Arnason’s Icelandic Riddles contains one that reads, “It will soon cover the roof of a high house.  It flies higher than the mountains and causes the fall of many a man.  Everyone can see it, but no one can fetter it.  It can stand both blows and the wind, and it is not harmful.”  But whereas Arnason’s riddle is tame and explicit that darkness is not harmful, Gollum’s darkness is.  Gollum now embraces nihilism - the belief in nothingness, the power of nothing.  For him, darkness is everywhere and everytime, omnipresent and omnitemporal.  Darkness was there in the beginning.  St John said that in the beginning was the world, and even the Torah said that in the beginning the world was there just without form.  But for Gollum, Darkness was there at the beginning.  And by the way, it will be there afterwards.  After you and I and we and all of us are dead and gone.  After your children’s children’s children are gone, there will still be the darkness, the void.  It ends life.  It kills laughter.  And perhaps worst of all, or perhaps best of all if you are Gollum, you won’t even see it coming.  This isn’t portrayed in the book as Gollum’s most sinister riddle, and it doesn’t fluster Bilbo even for a second, but as a theology, this one may be his most hopeless.

1. Bilbo:

A box without hinges, key, or lid,

Yet golden treasure inside is hid.

[An egg]

1. Tolkien himself glossed the origin of this riddle for us, saying that the wording was his, but that the idea came from an Old English verse, translated: In marble walls as white as milk, Lined with a skin as soft as silk, within a fountain crystal-clear, A golden apple doth appear.  No doors are there to this stronghold, Yet thieves break in and steal the gold.”  Tolkien had worked on translations of this particular riddle back in the early 1920s.     Bilbo counters Gollum’s view of the end of all things with the ultimate expression of hope - new life.  And while Tolkien puts it out there that Bilbo is really only asking this so that he can have time to think of something really challenging, even that aside casts into sharp relief the difference between the world-views of Bilbo and of Gollum.  For Bilbo, life is taken for granted, it is ubiquitous.  Bilbo is always thinking of bacon and eggs, and the renewal of life is, for him, commonplace.  But Gollum has eschewed life and hidden away from it.  Sun and warmth and growth and children and new life are centuries outside of his experience.  Even when Gollum finally does get the answer to this riddle, it is that he remembered thieving from next long ago and of sucking eggs.  Theft and destruction are Gollum’s only interaction with new life.

1. Gollum:

Alive without breath,

As cold as death;

Never thirsty, ever drinking,

All in mail never clinking.

[Fish]

1. This one comes from a single line in Norse Mythology, from the Saga of King Heidrek the Wise.  In the saga, King Heidrek and Odin (who is disguised as the traveller Gestumblindi) trade riddles back and forth.  And at one point Odin asks the king “What lives in high fells?  What falls in deep dales?  What lives without breath?  What is never silent?  This riddle ponder, O prince Heidrek!” to which the king responds “Your riddle is good, Gestumblindi, I have guessed it.  The raven lives ever on the high fells, the dew falls ever in the deep dales, the fish lives without breath, and the rushing waterfall is never silent.”     Bilbo introduces the idea of new life, and Gollum’s first response is a direct refutation - Alive without breath, as cold as death.  Life is not warm, it is not golden, it is not a beautiful treasure - it is cold and can be deathlike.  And again, Gollum isn’t trying to trick Bilbo here.  He is just expressing his everyday world view.  He expects the riddle to be guessed instantly, he just can’t think of anything else at the moment.  But now Bilbo is really flustered.  The difference between Bilbo’s and Gollum’s theologies is so wide that they don’t even understand one another’s natural points of origin.  They simply have opposite world views.

By the way, this is the one riddle that Tolkien will bring back and expand on in the Lord of the Rings.

1. Bilbo:

No-legs lay on one-leg,

two-legs sat near on three-legs,

four-legs got some.

[Fish on a table,

man on a stool,

cat gets the scraps]

1. This is another one of the riddles that Tolkien can’t even take credit for the language, although he did alter it very slightly from its most common form. This riddle is in Mother Goose, it’s in the Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes.  Usually it goes: Two legs sat upon three legs with one leg in his lap; In comes four legs and runs away with one leg; Up jumps two legs, catches up three legs, throws it at four legs, and makes him bring back one leg.  A man sits on a stool eating a turkey leg (or chicken leg, or leg of lamb), a dog runs in and grabs it off the plate.  The man stands up, grabs the stool, chucks the stool at the poor dog, and makes it bring back the leg of meat.     This is also the oldest riddle in the chapter, or at least the genesis of the riddle is the oldest.  This pattern of riddles is the same of as the Riddle of the Sphinx: What goes on four legs in the morning, two legs in the afternoon, and three legs in the evening?      But for Bilbo, this riddle is just home.  As much as the Daisy riddle describes a typical Hobbiton field, and the egg riddle is food and probably what Bilbo is thinking of most of the time, this one is the most Baggins-like, a homey dinner scene, a man, a warm meal, a pet.  All the comforts of everyday life.  If the darkness riddle is Gollum at is most hopeless, this one is Bilbo at his most hopeful: comfort.

1. Gollum:

This thing all things devours:

Birds, beasts, trees, flowers;

Gnaws iron, bites steel;

Grinds hard stones to meal;

Slays king, ruins town,

And beats high mountain down.

[Time]

1. This riddle comes from the Second Dialogue of Solomon and Saturn, an Old English text: Solomon being the wise king of Israel, and Saturn being a king of one of the small principalities that would become part of Babylon.  No one is entirely sure when these dialogues were written, but most scholars date them to the 9th or 10th centuries AD, perhaps to the court of King Alfred the Great.  The original riddle is given by Saturn, who asks “But what is that strange thing that travels through this world, goes on inexorably, beats at foundations, causes tears of sorrow, and often comes here?  Neither star nor stone nor eye-catching jewel, neither water nor wild beast can deceive it at all, but into its hand go hard and soft, small and great.”  And Solomon’s replies, “Old age has power over everything on earth.  She reaches far and wide with her ravaging slave-chain, her fetters are broad, her rope is long, she subdues everything that she wants to.”  So the original answer is Old Age, not necessarily Time, but maybe that’s two sides of the same come.   There is also a scene in the Prose Edda wherein Thor wrestles with the mother of one of the Giants - Utgardiloki, but it turns out that, when Thor can’t beat her, Utgardiloki reveals that she is really Old Age itself, and obviously no one can beat old age.   The entire myth, actually is a series of metaphors - Loki is said to be a great eater, but can’t outeat fire personified, their servant Thialdi is said to be a great runner, but cannot outrun thought personified, etc.
   This riddle Gollum intends to be his bleakest - his discussion of the end of all things, his prophecy of the return to darkness.  Bilbo has just described to Gollum a peaceful, homey scene, a scene of comfort, and Gollum’s response is to want to burn it all down.  All of it.

1. Bilbo and Gollum express opposing world views / theologies, Bilbo that of peace and comfort, Gollum that of darkness and destruction.  These are not the opposites that Tolkien will play up in the Lord of the Rings.  In the Lord of the Rings, the choices are between good and evil - Gandalf and Elrond and Galadrial against Sauron, those who want the free peoples free and those who want them conquered and enslaved.  Bilbo and Gollum don’t really fit into those paradigms.  Bilbo and Gollum are arguing not for good or evil, but rather for comfort or destruction.  Neither of them want mastery or victory.  Gollum, at least at this point, isn’t trying to take over the world.  Rather, he wants to tear it all down.  And Bilbo isn’t trying to preserve the free peoples of the world, or set up great gardens or great centers of learning: he just wants comfort.
2. Reflective of the values of each
3. Light vs Dark, life vs death (lifelessness?), 
4. and YET they still understand each other
   1. When Gandalf and Frodo are discussing this event in Chapter 2 of the Fellowship of the ring Frodo says:
      1. ‘I can’t believe that Gollum was connected with hobbits, however distantly,’ said Frodo with some heat. ‘What an abominable notion!’

‘It is true all the same,’ replied Gandalf. ‘About their origins, at any rate, I know more than hobbits do themselves. And even Bilbo’s story suggests the kinship. There was a great deal in the background of their minds and memories that was very similar. They understood one another remarkably well, very much better than a hobbit would understand, say, a Dwarf, or an Orc, or even an Elf. Think of the riddles they both knew, for one thing.’

1. In the 1937 version, they are even polite to one another.  The trolls don’t understand Bilbo, even living on the borders of the Shire, they have clearly never even heard of Hobbits.  The goblins don’t understand Bilbo.  When the Great Goblin asks who the prisoners are, the guards answer: Dwarves and this! pulling Bilbo’s chain so that he fell forward.  They’ve never heard of Hobbits either.  But Gollum and Bilbo understand one another, even if it is just ancient history or mutual politeness… Despite their antithetical world view, or maybe because their world views, though antithetical, both revolve around comfort and existence and not power or control, they see each other.  They could have gotten along, if it weren’t for the Ring.

1. The Ring
   1. When Sauron, through his emissaries, petitions the Dwarves of the Lonely Mountain to give up the location of Bilbo, he mentions that Bilbo has a Ring.  And when this is revealed at the Council of Elrond, Elrond laments:
      1. The Ring! What shall we do with the Ring, the least of rings, the trifle that Sauron fancies? That is the doom that we must deem.
      2. And what Ring is this?  And whence did it come?
2. CONCERNING RINGS
   1. Our scope has been so limited in this podcast so far.  It’s been nice, hasn’t it?  We introduce a new legendary creature, and we discuss how that creature was treated from pre-history until 1937, then we discuss how it has been treated since 1937.  Clean.  Simple.  But the Ring!  The ring.  We could do an entire series on Tolkien’s treatment just of this one band of gold and not cover everything.  How then shall we cover what is needful to know in one segment?
   2. Let’s start by saying that this ring is really two rings, combined by narrative necessity into one.  There is the ring that Bilbo found on the ground in a freak accident in the 1937 Hobbit - a beautiful bit of illusion, a magic ring that would make you near (not absolutely completely) invisible.  A useful tool for a burglar, but naught worse than that.  And then there is the one ring, the Ring of Power, One Ring to Rule them all, One Ring to Find them.  One Ring to bring them all and in the Darkness Bind them in the land of Mordor, where the shadows lie.
   3. And maybe it would be stupid of us to conflate the one with the other.  But how could we do otherwise?
   4. Let’s start with this:  Magic Rings are not a new invention.
      1. Aladdin’s Genie Ring
         1. Despite what Disney may have told you, there are actually two genie’s in the Aladdin story (and no, I’m not talking about Robin Williams vs the Fresh Prince of Bel Air remake.)  In the original tale, Aladdin is given a Magic Ring by the magician who sent him in after the lamp.  And after the cave collapses and Aladdin is trapped inside, he wrings his hands in worry and a lesser jinn (genie) comes forth from the lamp and helps Aladdin retrieve the lamp and takes him home.  And then at the end of the story, when the evil Magician has stolen the lamp (that contains the greater genie in it), it is the Magic Ring and it’s lesser Genie that helps Aladdin reclaim his palace, bride, and eventually throne.
      2. Andvari’s Ring and/or Draupnir and/or the Ring of the Nieblungs
         1. There are also magic rings in Norse Mythology.  According to one myth, Loki played two sets of dwarves (or dark elves) off of each other - Brokk and Eitri on one hand, and the Sons of Ivaldi on the other hand - basically lying to both groups that the other group had bet that THEY were better craftsmen, and that the AEsir, the gods, were going to judge.  (This, by the way, is also where Thor’s Hammer, Mjollnir, comes from.)  But one of the crafts made by Brokk and Eitri is Draupnir, which means The Dripper, a golden ring that every nine nights makes eight copies of itself - a golden ring that makes more gold.  This, to me, seems more like the rings given to the dwarves in Tolkien’s Legendarium - a perpetual source of gold and wealth.  But there are other rings in Norse Mythology!  There is Andvari’s Ring.  Andvari’s Ring, in the original Norse Myth, is, like Draupnir, just a bringer of wealth.  It is entirely possible, perhaps likely, that the two rings are the same ring in the original oral tradition myths, and just were written down differently.  But once the myths were written down, Andvari’s Ring was used differently.  Andvari’s Ring became the Ring of the Nieblungs, and as Richard Wagner took up the story in the 1800s, he gave to that ring, absolute power.  Whoever controlled the Ring of the Nieblungs, according to Wagner’s Ring Cycle, could control the entire world.  The entire 15+ hour Ring Cycle of Wagner’s Operas is the telling of three generations of Gods, Dwarves, Valkyrie and Men vying for control of the Ring.
      3. Ring of Gyges
         1. I have no idea whether this is the earliest example of a magical ring story or not, but it certainly is the earliest that I can find.  In book two of The Republic, Plato tells a parable about a man who finds a magic ring that makes the wearer invisible.  From The Republic (the Benjamin Jowett translation):
            1. Now that those who practise justice do so involuntarily and because they have not the power to be unjust will best appear if we imagine something of this kind: having given both to the just and the unjust power to do what they will, let us watch and see whither desire will lead them; then we shall discover in the very act the just and unjust man to be proceeding along the same road, following their interest, which all natures deem to be their good, and are only diverted into the path of justice by the force of law. The liberty which we are supposing may be most completely given to them in the form of such a power as is said to have been possessed by Gyges, the ancestor of Croesus the Lydian. According to the tradition, Gyges was a shepherd in the service of the king of Lydia; there was a great storm, and an earthquake made an opening in the earth at the place where he was feeding his flock. Amazed at the sight, he descended into the opening, where, among other marvels, he beheld a hollow brazen horse, having doors, at which he stooping and looking in saw a dead body of stature, as appeared to him, more than human, and having nothing on but a gold ring; this he took from the finger of the dead and reascended. Now the shepherds met together, according to custom, that they might send their monthly report about the flocks to the king; into their assembly he came having the ring on his finger, and as he was sitting among them he chanced to turn the collet of the ring inside his hand, when instantly he became invisible to the rest of the company and they began to speak of him as if he were no longer present. He was astonished at this, and again touching the ring he turned the collet outwards and reappeared; he made several trials of the ring, and always with the same result—when he turned the collet inwards he became invisible, when outwards he reappeared. Whereupon he contrived to be chosen one of the messengers who were sent to the court; whereas soon as he arrived he seduced the queen, and with her help conspired against the king and slew him, and took the kingdom. Suppose now that there were two such magic rings, and the just put on one of them and the unjust the other; no man can be imagined to be of such an iron nature that he would stand fast in justice. No man would keep his hands off what was not his own when he could safely take what he liked out of the market, or go into houses and lie with any one at his pleasure, or kill or release from prison whom he would, and in all respects be like a God among men. Then the actions of the just would be as the actions of the unjust; they would both come at last to the same point. And this we may truly affirm to be a great proof that a man is just, not willingly or because he thinks that justice is any good to him individually, but of necessity, for wherever any one thinks that he can safely be unjust, there he is unjust. For all men believe in their hearts that injustice is far more profitable to the individual than justice, and he who argues as I have been supposing, will say that they are right. If you could imagine any one obtaining this power of becoming invisible, and never doing any wrong or touching what was another's, he would be thought by the lookers-on to be a most wretched idiot, although they would praise him to one another's faces, and keep up appearances with one another from a fear that they too might suffer injustice. 
            2. [Discuss]
      4. The ring of Owein from the Mabinogion (originally from Chretian de Troyes’ Ywain: The Knight of the Lion)
         1. Moving forward in history, we come to the ring of Owien from the Mabinogion - the older, original version of this story would be the ring of Ywain from Chretian de Troyes Arthurian Romance, Knight of the lion.  But Tolkien, as we discussed a couple of episodes ago, would have been familiar with the Mabinogion - Welch mythology - from his college days.  In the story Owein (one of King Arthur’s knights) has just fought the Black Knight and then chased the Black Knight back into his castle, and as Owein rides into the castle the Black Knight’s soldiers drop the portculis and it just misses Owein but it literally cuts his horse in half, and as he is standing there, good and properly screwed, he sees the Lady Luned:
            1. And he beheld a maiden 12b, with yellow curling hair, and a frontlet of gold upon her head; and she was clad in a dress of yellow satin, and on her feet were shoes of variegated leather. And she approached the gate, and desired that it should be opened. "Heaven knows, Lady," said Owain, "it is no more possible for me to open to thee from hence, than it is for thee to set me free." "Truly," said the damsel, "it is very sad that thou canst not be released, and every woman ought to succour thee, for I never saw one more faithful in the service of ladies than thou. As a friend thou art the most sincere, and as a lover the most devoted. Therefore," quoth she, "whatever is in my power 13a to do for thy release, I will do it. Take this ring 13b and put it on thy finger, with the stone inside thy hand; and close thy hand upon the stone. And as long as thou concealest it, it will conceal thee. When they have consulted together, they will come forth to fetch thee, in order to put thee to death; and they will be much grieved that they cannot find thee. And I will await thee on the horseblock 13c yonder; and thou wilt be able to see me, though I cannot see thee; therefore come and place thy hand upon my shoulder, that I may know that thou art near me. And by the way that I go hence, do thou accompany me."

Then she went away from Owain, and he did all that the maiden had told him. And the people of the Castle came to seek Owain, to put him to death, and when they found nothing but the half of his horse, they were sorely grieved.

And Owain vanished from among them, and went to the maiden, and placed his hand upon her shoulder; whereupon she set off, and Owain followed her

1. The text notes for the version of the Mabinogion that I have says that the ring in this story is probably based on the Ring of Gyges, but was also supposed to have been listed among “Thirteen Rarities of Kingly Regalia of the Island of Britain, which were formerly kept at Caerlleon” and is still in possession of Taliesin, the chief Bard of Wales.
2. [Discuss]
3. The ring of Orlando from Orlando Furioso [Roland Gone Mad] by Ludovico Ariosto
   1. Orlando is just the Italian name of Roland - Charlemagne’s knight and the titular character from the Old French poem The Song of Roland.  In this particular poem, though, Orlando Furioso, Roland gives the ring to Angelica who uses its powers to spread disorder throughout the ranks of Charlemagne’s knights.  And this ring, to turn you invisible, has to go in your mouth.  On your finger it makes you invulnerable.  And eventually Angelica gets captured and I think that another Heroine - Bradamante - has to use the ring to defeat Angelica’s evil wizard father Atlante.  Or something like that.
4. A ring of a similar kind - one that has invisibility powers but also kind of acts as a cure-all, deus ex machina for the story - it has whatever powers the hero really needs it to - appears in The Enchanted Ring from Andrew Lang’s Green Fairy Book

1. There are other magical rings throughout literature and mythology - Arabic and Hebrew traditions mention the magical ring or rings of Solomon, and there is an Estonian fairy tale wherein a hero uses the magic ring of Solomon to defeat the Dragon of the North.  C.S. Lewis would use magic rings as a plot device in The Magician’s Nephew.  William Thackery has a story where a magic ring makes the wearer beautiful…  Sir Gareth has a ring of invulnerable in battle.  Rings are everywhere.

1. As for Bilbo’s ring, though there is also a possible historical antecedent for the ring: The Ring of Silvianus.
   1. Silvianus was a Roman Briton who, apparently lost a golden ring some time in the 4th Century.  And, apparently, the owner of the ring put a curse on whomever took it.  The ring was eventually discovered in 1785.  A hundred and fifty years later, in 1928, a plaque was found with an inscription of the curse.  It read:

DEVO NODENTI SILVIANVS ANILVM PERDEDIT DEMEDIAM PARTEM DONAVIT NODENTI INTER QVIBVS NOMEN SENICIANI NOLLIS PETMITTAS SANITATEM DONEC PERFERA VSQVE TEMPLVM DENTIS

which translates:

For the god Nodens. Silvianus has lost a ring and has donated one half [its worth] to Nodens. Among those named Senicianus permit no good health until it is returned to the temple of Nodens

1. The archaeologist who found the tablet had no idea who the God Nodens was, and so they called in an expert on Anglo Saxon to help: J.R.R. Tolkien.  

1. The Ring in the Hobbit
   1. The ring of Owein or the Ring of Orlando.  A simple ring of invisibility, but nothing more.  A useful trinket, but still just a trinket.  As we have pointed out more than once, Bilbo’s finding of the ring is an absurd coincidence: of all the places Bilbo could have put his hand out to in that immense cavern, he happens to put it on the ring (in the Blind dark).  And of all the moments of the 500 years that Gollum lived there, Bilbo just happens to come on the one day Gollum lost his ring.  An absurd coincidence, but, then, Bilbo is the lucky number, and if Bilbo had a super-power, he would be Domino - just a super power of ridiculous good luck.  This ring is not the ring of the Lord of the Rings.  Both the ring and the Necromancer are mentioned in this story, but they have no connection with each other whatsoever.  Bilbo does not get “transported to the shadow world” when he puts the ring on, he just turns invisible.  And although Tolkien, in is REWRITE of the chapter, does give the ring one bit of agency when it plays a trick on Bilbo and isn’t on his finger when he meets the Goblins at the back gate, in the original, Bilbo had simply taken the ring off to say goodbye to Gollum.  The ring has no voice, no mind of its own.  Nothing.
2. The Ring in the LotR
   1. The Ring of Gyges and the Ring of the Nieblungs combined into one.  A mighty heirloom that gives the wearer the power to conquer the world, but one that corrupts the soul and turns all people - good or bad - into villains eventually.  This is the ring made by Sauron, a craft he learned from Celebrimbor in the 2nd age of Middle Earth.  This is the ruling ring, the ring that calls to the 9 rings given to mortal men and thus turned them into ringwraiths, the ring that pulls at the 7 rings given to the dwarf lords, the ring that has no hold over the 3 rings of the elves but that would render them all but useless if Sauron were to recover it.  This is the ring that corrupts Boromir and gnaws at the mind of Frodo.  This is the ring that Gandalf and Galadriel are terrified to possess.  This is the ring that gives power based on the user’s own strength and need, but that converts all things.  Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.  That is the ring we will eventually get in the Lord of the Rings.

1. In the mean time, there is one final note I want to get to in this chapter.  When Bilbo is behind Gollum, deciding whether or not to stab him and ultimately deciding not to - that moment of pity that governs the fate of many, Bilbo decides instead to leap over Gollum.  Tolkien describes this as “Not a great leap for a man, but a leap in the dark.”
   1. Leap in the dark, obviously, is another term for Faith.  Bilbo begins to have faith.  Now faith is a funny term.  Here in our Judeo-Christian west, the term faith gets applied almost uniquely to faith in God.  But you can have faith in other things as well.  You can have faith in people, You can have faith in objects, you can have faith in yourself.  And this leap in the dark - this leap of faith that Bilbo takes.  He begins to have just that - faith in himself.  He will still be the struggling fifth (or fourteenth, I suppose) wheel at times - in the next chapter with the Eagles, for instance, but this confidence that he gets here, this faith in himself, this leap in the dark will begin to give him more and more of a leading role in this adventure.