Remembered Conversations in LotR

AlasNotMe has made some interesting observations about Frodo's memory of his conversation with Gandalf, noting (esp. at fn 5) that the words remembered are not identical to those originally spoken.

There is actually a similar phenomenon with Merry at the Pelennor Fields, remembering Théoden's words to him.

Théoden had been as gentle as possible in turning down Merry's request to accompany him to battle, saying to him: "This is no journey for such steeds as Stybba, as I have told you.  And in such a battle as we think to make on the fields of Gondor what would you do, Master Meriadoc, swordthain though you be, and greater of heart than of stature?" (803).

When Merry remembers this conversation, he leaves out the gentleness and courtesy and instead focuses on the part that he took most to heart, feeling "bitterly the truth of the old king's words: in such a battle what would you do, Meriadoc?" (837).

As edited, these words are shorn of (1) the respectful titles of "Master" and "swordthain"; (2) the seeming specificity about the kind of battle in which he might not be much use (due to his small stature), kindly leaving open the possibility that in other battles elsewhere he could hold his own; and (3) the acknowledgment that Merry's valiant, odds-defying courage (greatness of heart) is belied only by accident of physical limitations:

in such a battle as we think to make on the fields of Gondor what would you do, Master Meriadoc, swordthain though you be, and greater of heart than of stature?

Riding In to Court

In my post about the Green Knight and the Mouth of Sauron, I hadn't been sure what to make of the fact that the Green Knight rides in to Arthur's feast; it seemed discourteous, even deliberately provocative.

Now I'm reading The Forest of Medieval Romance, by Corinne J. Saunders, who says that the Green Knight "rides into the court, thus imitating the role of king's champion at coronation feasts" (148).

Sifting the Evidence

Very interesting discussion, and a reminder of the need to double-check seemingly common-sense interpretations when considering legal records:

• As to whether those convicted were executed, the answer hinges on the meaning of "Death Recorded" in the Old Bailey records - apparently a term of art. 
• As to whether the underlying charges involved consenting adults, the interviewer appears to have identified some counterexamples among the book's featured examples. 

For my own part, I wonder -- if the prosecutors targeted consenting adults, might we expect to see pairs of prosecutions?  (Not necessarily, I suppose, if one or more previously-consenting partners decided to cooperate with the prosecution; then again, presumably the cooperator[s] would not portray the relationship as purely consensual.  And I suppose if men did not dare and/or desire to enter into long-term exclusive and stable relationships in that era, they would not necessarily be prosecuted in pairs.)

Edited 5/25/2019 to add some further reflections:

I don't know what site(s) the author was using to search the Old Bailey records, but I could not find a definition or explanation of "Death Recorded" anywhere at the Old Bailey Proceedings Online site (https://www.oldbaileyonline.org).  I explored menus and links within the site itself, and also tried site-specific google searches, to no avail.

After running an unrestricted google search for some phrases the interviewer read on-air, however, I eventually found the explanation of the term at the Digital Panopticon site:

The emotional impact of the death sentence and the authority of the law was moreover undermined in the early nineteenth century by the fact that the overwhelming majority of capital convicts were being pardoned, and the death sentence thus turned into a mere formality.  In recognition of this problem, in 1823 a new practice of “death recorded” was introduced, whereby judges could abstain from pronouncing a sentence of death on any capital convict whom they considered to be a fit subject for a pardon. 

The carefully-choreographed theatre of sentencing and its emotional impact might also be undermined by open acts of defiance by the convict or the attending crowd.  It was complained in the eighteenth century that some capital convicts made light of their sentence by comments and gestures. 

The court sometimes decided to postpone or respite a sentence until a later sessions, such as in the case of pregnant female convicts, or for reasons that were unrecorded.  In 1848, judges were empowered to invite the jury to respite sentences in cases where the law was doubtful.  In these instances, the case was passed on to the twelve judges at the newly established Court for Crown Cases Reserved (superceded in 1907 by the Court of Criminal Appeal).

Searching the Digital Panopticon

The Digital Panopticon site offers a different search mechanism from the Old Bailey Proceedings Online site.

For example, it seemingly allows you to search for all males actually executed from, say, 1835-1899; that particular search came up with 5 hits, with executions in 1835 and 1837 only.

(And indeed, for what it's worth, searching for males executed between 1838-1925 on the Digital Panopticon site results in zero hits.  After playing around with searches a bit, it would seem the last recorded execution of a male in their dataset occurred in 1837, and the last recorded execution of a female in their dataset occurred in 1832.)

Relationship Between the Two Sites?

As described on the Old Bailey Proceedings Online home page (https://www.oldbaileyonline.org):

The Proceedings of the Old Bailey, 1674-1913
A fully searchable edition of the largest body of texts detailing the lives of non-elite people ever published, containing 197,745 criminal trials held at London's central criminal court. 

As described on the Digital Panopticon home page (http://www.digitalpanopticon.org):

Tracing London Convicts in Britain & Australia, 1780-1925This website allows you to search millions of records from around fifty datasets, relating to the lives of 90,000 convicts from the Old Bailey.

The Digital Panopticon site credits the Old Bailey Proceedings Online site as  "foundational":

The Old Bailey Proceedings are the foundational source for Digital Panopticon. They contain published accounts of the criminal trials which led to the convictions and sentences for the 90,000 convicts whose lives are traceable on this website. Each trial account provides basic details about the offender, offence, verdict and punishment sentence, as well as some verbatim testimonies from those who testified at the trial.
[...]
A full digitised edition of the Proceedings is available from the Old Bailey Proceedings Online. 

But the Digital Panopticon draws from a broader base of records, presumably (or at least potentially) providing a more complete picture of the fate of each defendant:

Trial Records

• Old Bailey Proceedings 1740-1913
• Old Bailey Associated Records 1740-1834
• Newgate Calendars of Prisoners for Trial 1782-1853
• England and Wales Criminal Registers 1791-1892

Post-Trial and Sentencing Records

• Capital Convictions at the Old Bailey 1760-1837
• Home Office Criminal Entry Books 1782-1876
• Judges Reports on Criminals 1784-1827
• Petitions for Pardon 1797-1858

Transportation Records

• Middlesex Convicts Delivered For Transportation 1785-1792
• British Transportation Registers 1787-1867
• Convict Indents (Ship and Arrival Registers) 1788-1868
• Surgeons Notes from Transport Vessels 1817-1857

Colony Records

• New South Wales Convict Indexes 1788-1873
• New South Wales Convict Savings Bank Books 1824-1868
• Van Diemen's Land Founders and Survivors Convicts 1802-1853
• Van Diemen's Land Founders and Survivors Convict Biographies 1812-1853
• Van Diemen's Land Convict Labour Contracts 1848-1857
• Western Australia Character Books and General Registers 1850-1868
• Western Australia Convict Probation Records 1850-1868

Imprisonment Records

• Bridewell House of Correction Prisoners 1740-1795
• Deaths in London Prisons 1760-1869
• Hulks Registers 1801-1879
• Prison Registers 1770-1951
• Middlesex House of Detention Calendars 1836-1889
• Newgate Calendars of Prisoners 1855-1931
• UK Convict Prison Captions and Transfer Papers 1843-1871
• UK Licences for the Parole of Convicts 1853-1925
• Metropolitan Police Register of Habitual Criminals 1881-1925
• Prisoner Photograph Albums 1871-1873

Civil Records

• Records Associated with London Lives 1740-1800
• Census Returns for England and Wales 1841-1911
• FreeBMD Deaths, 1837-1925

Tempest in a Teapot: Easter Worshippers

Seems to me that "Easter worshippers" is shorthand for "people worshipping on Easter Sunday."

In the US, at least, churches are often full to the brim on Easter Sunday with what we might call "cultural Christians" -- folks who do not ordinarily grace the inside of any church and are not necessarily Christians in any theologically meaningful sense on a day-to-day basis (prayer life, devotion to Christ's teachings, etc.).  So from a purely technical point of view, "Easter worshippers" could potentially be more accurate than "Christians" to describe the victims.

In any event the phrase, though inelegant and easily mockable, is clear enough.  It seems odd to complain that these tweets failed to use the word "Christians," when the word "Easter" makes clear that the victims were not culturally or theologically Muslim, Jewish, Buddhist, or the like.  Does the word "Christian" have some totemic power that it must be invoked in a tweet expressing sympathy for the victims?

Moreover, the phrase "Easter worshippers" arguably gets to the core of the matter -- these attacks were not just random attacks on Christians on some random Sunday.  They were targeting Christians on the highest of high holy days, the day when it was fully revealed that Jesus was not just another nice guy who finished last, but instead was God himself incarnate, sacrificed and resurrected for us.  And they were targeting Christian churches on a day when anyone with any cultural or theological affinity to Christianity whatsoever would likely be in a church. (Presumably in order to maximize the deaths/injuries.)

"We were worsted"

I associate "worsted" with wool, but Tolkien uses the verb form of worst twice in LotR, in places where I'd have been inclined to say bested or defeated:

• Merry (post-barrow): "The men of Carn Dûm came on us at night, and we were worsted.  Ah! the spear in my heart!"
• Gimli: "With its own weapons was it worsted!"

According to the OED, worst, v. is about two centuries older than best, v., and slightly rarer nowadays.  But they are essentially synonyms; just as flammable and inflammable are synonyms.

So for worst, v., the second meaning is the one in current use:

2. transitive. Cf. best, v. 

a. To get the better of (an adversary) in a fight or battle; to defeat, overcome.
1636—2015

b. To defeat in argument, to outdo or prove better than (a person). Also: to overcome or foil (an undertaking). Frequently in passive.
1646—2012

But for best, v., there is only one meaning:

transitive. To get the better of, to get an advantage over; to outwit. Also: to cheat, defraud; cf. bester n.
1839—2006

I think bested may be more popular with modern Americans, because it focuses on the victor: who was best?  Whereas worsted focuses on the loser: who came out worst?

So compare "With its own weapons was it bested!"  vs "With its own weapons was it worsted" -- Tolkien's version has better alliteration, of course, but it also emphasizes the irony of this particular defeat.

(Curiously enough, as Corey Olsen has noted, cleave and splice are each their own antonym; also sanction, for that matter.)

First-World Problems

Carolyn Hax, responding to a letter-writer’s self-negating comment (“I know there is so much worse stuff going on in the world right now”):

This can be a useful thought exercise for dealing with disappointment, say, but for grief, especially on so many fronts? There’s no “first-world loss,” there’s just loss — unless your Mercedes-Benz has died.

Washington Post online, April 14 at 11:59 PM.

Gleaming Cohorts

This morning, I suddenly thought of the opening lines of Byron's "The Destruction of Sennacherib," as mediated by James Thurber.  They gallop memorably along in anapestic tetrameter:

The Assyrian came down like the wolf on the fold,
And his cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold;

Thurber reports the complaint of some self-help guru that people just weren't reading these lines properly: "when a suspicious-minded investigator tested them, quite a number turned out to suppose that the Assyrian's cohorts were an article of wearing apparel" (75).

Thurber's rejoinder is a delightful defense of this misreading:

What the second line means is simply that the cohorts' articles of wearing apparel were gleaming in purple and gold, so nothing much is distorted except the number of people who came down like the wolf on the fold.  The readers who got it wrong had, it seems to me, as deep a poetic feeling [...] as those who knew that a cohort was originally one of the ten divisions of a Roman legion and had, to begin with, three hundred soldiers, later five hundred to six hundred.  Furthermore, those who got it wrong had a fine flaring image of one Assyrian coming down valiantly all alone, instead of with a couple of thousand soldiers to help him, the big coward. (75-76, bold emphasis added)

That bit in bold is a contender for Best Literary Criticism Ever, as far as I'm concerned.

But it turns out Terry Pratchett has also played with a similar misreading of "cohorts" in Byron's poem.  For example, in ch. 6 of Going Postal:

A voice behind [Moist] said: ‘The Postman came down like a wolf on the fold / His cohorts all gleaming in azure and gold... ’ 

[...] He turned to Miss Dearheart. 

‘When I was a kid I always thought that a cohort was a piece of armour, Miss Dearheart,’ he said, giving her a smile. ‘I used to imagine the troops sitting up all night, polishing them.’

And in Feet of Clay, there's a reference to "Stronginthearm's Armour Polish for Gleaming Cohorts."

A brief google search confirms that Wodehouse riffs on these lines as well at various times in multiple books, but it doesn't look like his characters necessarily mistake the meaning of "cohorts."  For example, in Bertie Wooster Sees It Through, Bertie at one point complains that Stilton "was once more in the position of an Assyrian fully licensed to come down like a wolf on the fold with his cohorts all gleaming with purple and gold."  (Later, he reflects that Stilton's demeanor "was that of an Assyrian who, having come down like a wolf on the fold, had found in residence not lambs, but wildcats, than which, of course, nothing makes an Assyrian feel sillier.")

(Another Wodehousian twist: "With the nippiness of a lamb in the fold on observing the approaching Assyrians...." - The Code of the Woosters.)

---

I suspect the substitution of "a wolf" for "the wolf" is probably quite common.  But  "a wolf" suggests a mere everyday simile (the Assyrian approaches just like any wolf would), whereas "the wolf" suggests more of an iconic encounter, maybe even the Platonic ideal of wolf-sheep encounters, the Wolf all sheep fear.

----
Thurber, James. “Miscellaneous Mentation.” Let Your Mind Alone! And Other More or Less Inspirational Pieces, 1st Perennial Library ed., Harper & Row, Publishers, 1976, pp. 72–79.

Laconic/Understated Repartee in Macbeth

Here's something that apparently caught my attention in my last read-through of Macbeth back in March 2017.  Yet another reminder that our modern and post-modern authors did not invent irony/deliberate understatement/litotes/snappy comebacks.

From Act 2, Scene 3:

LENNOX:

The night has been unruly: where we lay,
Our chimneys were blown down; and, as they say,
Lamentings heard i' the air; strange screams of death,
And prophesying with accents terrible
Of dire combustion and confused events
New hatch'd to the woeful time: the obscure bird
Clamour'd the livelong night: some say, the earth
Was feverous and did shake.

MACBETH:  'Twas a rough night.


From Act 4, Scene 1:

Second Apparition: Macbeth! Macbeth! Macbeth!

MACBETH: Had I three ears, I'ld hear thee.


From Act 4, Scene 2:

LADY MACDUFF:  Yes, he is dead; how wilt thou do for a father?

Son:  Nay, how will you do for a husband?

LADY MACDUFF:  Why, I can buy me twenty at any market.

Son:  Then you'll buy 'em to sell again.

Bright Yellow Daffodils, in Black & White

a lovely touch from the beloved

Crocuses in the Lawn

The past few days, I noticed crocuses springing up: yellow ones in the lawn around the library, then purple ones in the local park as I crossed to read on a sun-drenched bench.

And this morning, I tried to find the word that Jonathan Strange uses to address Drawlight in Venice, only a little handicapped by never having seen it in print; in the audiobook, it had sounded like "Croquitur" (and thus sprang to mind with the word "crocus").  It turns out the word is "Leucrocuta," which the Tor.com re-read helpfully glosses with a link to a medieval bestiary:

The leucrota is a swift beast that lives in India. It is a composite animal, the result of a mating between a hyena and a lioness, the same size as an ass, but with a horse's head, chest and legs like a lion, hind quarters like a stag, and cloven hoofs. It has an extremely wide mouth, that stretches from one ear to the other. It does not have individual teeth, but only a single bone where teeth should be. Like the hyena, the leucrota can make sounds that resemble human speech.

No wonder poor, vain Drawlight is so worried about Strange's threat to change him to this form.