Wisdom in Old Wives’ Tales

Anyone who has read Tolkien (or watched the movie adaptions, especially) often comes away with the idea that women are largely absent from Middle-earth save for three major characters—Galadriel, Éowyn, and Arwen (the latter playing a greater role in the movies than the books)—whose special powers and heroic attributes do not, however, make up for how few they are in number.

As much as I appreciate why recent Tolkien “media” (Rings of Power and the War of the Rohirrim, which I cannot in good conscience call adaptations) attempts the female warrior trope—ironically not done so authentically as Éowyn in the original books and movies—I think we are missing a glaring point that Tolkien makes about the role of women in Middle-earth, that has its echoes in the ancient societies and mythologies he channeled into his storytelling.

We shouldn’t feel too bad about our ignorance on the subject of women in Middle-earth. Many of the great men in the story make the same mistake, though swiftly corrected by an Elf or Wizard with much more wisdom than them. For instance, when Boromir doubts the stories told about Fangorn Forest, which he brushes aside as old wives’ tales told to children, Celeborn tells him not to “despise the lore that has come down from distant years; for oft it may chance that old wives keep in memory word of things that once were needful for the wise to know.”

King Théoden makes a similar mistake about the Ents, disbelieving their existence as mere legends in songs and stories taught to children, to which Gandalf gently berates him:

“‘…Is it so long since you listened to tales by the fireside? There are children in your land who, out of the twisted threads of story, could pick the answer to your question. You have seen Ents, O King, Ents out of Fangorn Forest, which in your tongue you call the Entwood. Did you think that the name was given only in idle fancy?’

After the Battle of Pelennor Fields, when Aragorn is tending to Éowyn and the other wounded, we see this ignorance in the learned Healer, who scoffs at his request for kingsfoil. Ultimately, only an old housewife recalls the lore of Athelas as a healing plant in the hands of the king, thanks to an old rhyme:

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedWhen the black breath blows, And death's shadow grows, Come Athelas! Come Athelas! Life to the dying, In the king's hand lying!

In these glimpses behind the male-dominated warfront, we see a more textured Middle-earth, where women as wives, mothers, and nurses keep all of the legends that we read about alive by telling stories to children by the fireside, a role Tolkien valued so much that The Hobbit was born out of all the fireside stories he would tell his children as they were growing up. In his essay “On Fairy Stories,” Tolkien further claims that nurses “were sometimes in touch with rustic and traditional lore forgotten by their ‘betters.’” As an orphan at the age of thirteen, Tolkien must have felt keenly the missing lore and legend that was usually passed down from mother to child, and regretted that England itself had no body of legends comparable to other ancient cultures, like the Greek, Italic, or Nordic epics.

This is not to say that women’s only role in Middle-earth was the traditional housewife and mother, or that by being one, they could not be the other. Galadriel, we may remember, is a wife and mother, but she is also arguably the most powerful Elf in all of Middle-earth, Queen of Lórien and one of the three Ringbearers; Éowyn is charged with the care of the elderly, women, and children instead of fighting, but even when she disobeys this duty, she fulfills an age-old prophecy and defeats the Witch King of Angmar, which no man (or wizard!) had been able to kill; and even Arwen, who neither fights nor carries much apparent power, is just as necessary for restoring the line of Kings to the throne of Gondor as Aragorn is, and has the same illustrious lineage, if you trace it far back enough, to Beren and Lúthien.

Lastly, I might note here that both Aragorn and Faramir, the lead captains of the armies battling Sauron, ultimately settle in domestic settings equal to that of their wives, Arwen and Éowyn; Tolkien understood the nobler state of men and women as residing in the peace of the home, not at war, and rewards his heroes (both men and women) with marriage and posterity, not merely glory and renown.

Weaving as Magic

As much as I can say that at the heart of Tolkien’s stories are women, war in Middle-earth is very much ‘the province of men,’ as Éomer succinctly tells Éowyn in the movie adaptation just before her valiant deeds in battle. Therefore, much of The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit (centered around two major wars) revolve around men and their storylines. Yet as we saw with the various reminders to heed old wives’ tales, women have their own provinces of wisdom and power in addition to their capabilities in untraditional settings.

Along with nursing children and telling stories by the fire, women were also traditionally responsible for weaving all the clothing worn by the household, a skill that manifests to varying degrees of magical effect in Middle-earth. Even Galadriel, as powerful as she is, wove the Elven cloaks which were given to the members of the Fellowship, a sign of her favor for them, and which contain marvelous Elvish “magic”:

“They are Elvish robes certainly, if that is what you mean. Leaf and branch, water and stone: they have the hue and beauty of all these things under the twilight of Lórien that we love; for we put the thought of all that we love into all that we make. Yet they are garments, not armour, and they will not turn shaft or blade. But they should serve you well: they are light to wear, and warm enough or cool enough at need. And you will find them a great aid in keeping out of the sight of unfriendly eyes, whether you walk among the stones or the trees.”

Weaving as “magic” occurs elsewhere in Tolkien’s stories: in the Tale of Tinúviel, about the love between Elf maiden Lúthien and mortal Man Beren, weaving and an accompanying song are used by Lúthien to escape imprisonment. After mixing water and wine while singing a song to lengthen her hair, she “laboured with the deftness of an Elf, long was the spinning and longer weaving still,” until “of that cloudy hair Tinúviel wove a robe of misty black soaked with drowsiness more magical far than even that one that her mother had worn and danced in long ago.”

Interestingly, this enchantment of an Elf maiden’s hair is seen elsewhere. In The Unfinished Tales, we are told of Galadriel’s golden hair, of which “the Eldar said that the light of the Two Trees had been snared in her tresses.” This gave way to the rumor that Galadriel’s hair had given Fëanor himself the idea of imprisoning and blending the light of the Two Trees, which led to the creation of the Silmarils. Fëanor indeed asked Galadriel for strands of her hair three times, to which each time she refused. What a lovely nod to the secret power of her hair and its entanglement with the history of the Silmarils that Galadriel gave Gimli three strands!

But to return to the idea of women weaving, Tolkien is not the first to light upon the “magic” of a loom and thread. In the Homeric world, there are several instances of weaving as a form of enchantment. Both Circe and Calypso, goddesses renowned for deceiving and entrapping men on their islands, are depicted as weaving and singing to lure men into their homes. And of course, Penelope, wife of Odysseus, keeps her greedy suitors at bay by weaving a shroud for Laertes during the day and unraveling it by night, promising only to wed one of them when she finishes the shroud. And in Ancient Greek religion, it was the three Fates, the Moirai (Μοῖραι), who spun the fates of mortals: one spun the thread from the spindle, the other measured the length, and the last cut it, a metaphor for the creation, allotment, and ending of a mortal life.

The Fabric of Storytelling

As a scholar of ancient cultures and one who was able to read the Odyssey in Ancient Greek at an early age, Tolkien was certainly aware of the magic of weaving, the power of song, and the wisdom inherent in old wives’ tales. For example, Tolkien surely knew that although Odysseus was the one to go off to war and devise tricks against the Trojans (and we might add that Odysseus strongly resisted going to war, given that his son, Telemachus, was just born), Penelope must do her duty as well and fight her own battles, using her own tricks and deceptions, a fitting match for her husband of many wiles.

We can imagine that in Middle-earth, just as in the ancient cultures of our world, women are responsible for clothing, feeding, and rearing, and yet that these skills, which we might call knowledge, harbor deeper dimensions of power and subtle magic: songs sung while weaving or nursing by the fire keep the legends and history of the past alive in the present. Although Tolkien often follows the warriors into battle (he went to battle himself and lived to tell the tale), he gently reminds us, like Celeborn with Boromir and Gandalf with Théoden, that there is a secret world of magic and power to be found among those who are so often left out of the epic songs, since they are usually the ones singing them. Thus, women are to thank for preserving the hard-earned wisdom of ages past, for weaving the tapestry of our stories into song—and by extension, Tolkien’s own story, the story we love so much today, in part because it may just remind us of the wonder we found in stories told to us as children.

Perhaps, then, we can understand why Tolkien assigns the song of Lúthien as the most fair to be ever sung, an enchantment woven like the threads of a loom, and which has the greatest power of all: to bring the dead back to life…

“The song of Lúthien before Mandos was the song most fair that ever in words was woven, and the song most sorrowful that ever the world shall hear. Unchanged, imperishable, it is sung still in Valinor beyond the hearing of the world, and listening the Valar are grieved. For Lúthien wove two themes of words, of the sorrow of the Eldar and the grief of Men, of the Two Kindreds that were made by Ilúvatar to dwell in Arda, the Kingdom of Earth amid the innumerable stars. And as she knelt before him her tears fell upon his feet like rain upon stones; and Mandos was moved to pity, who never before was so moved, nor has been since.”

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