Rider in Mirkwood

I was rereading The Hoobit the other day when i came across something that bothered me. In the chapter "Flies and Spiders" while crossing the river, there is some rider or animal that comes down the trail leaps over the river knocking Bombur in the river causing him to go into a deep sleep. What was that thing it always bothered me. After reading the Simerillion i thought maybe is was that Valar Olme, the hunter one, but now i am not to sure.

please forgive me if the name of the Valar is wrong, it has been so long since i read the Simerillion.

[Inziladun]

My copy of The Hobbit names the creature as a "flying deer" and "the hart". The Vala's name is Oromë, but you were pretty close.

[haste]

Even if it was Orome the result would probably be more dramatic then Bombur flying into the river.

o my copy never said anything about that. I thought it may have been Orome just because it said he rode in that area.

[Inziladun]

I have a paperback copy printed in 1978, and it's on pages 144-145 in the 'Flies and Spiders' chapter. It's odd that it doesn't appear in your copy. What does yours say?

[Elendur]

It is listed as a deer in most newer copies of The Hobbit. I beleive that the black river they were crossing was a stream that came down from Dol Guldur, which was on a hill explaining why a stream would be formed. The deer, maybe, was a guardian to keep travellers from crossing. It seems pretty likely that if that was the case, it was an evil deer. It doesnt seem very elvish to guard their path with a deer that tries to hurt people.

Just what I think. But it was definitely not Orome in any case. [img]smilies/wink.gif[/img]

[Lostgaeriel]

Maybe Oromë was there hunting the deer.

They were still standing over him, cursing their ill luck and Bombur's clumsiness, and lamenting the loss of the boat which made it impossible for them to go back and look for the hart, when they became aware of the dim blowing of horns in the wood and the sound as of dogs baying far off. Then they all fell silent; and as they sat it seemed they could hear the noise of a great hunt going by to the north of the path, though they saw no sign of it.

Thorin had apparently shot the hart, but it fell in the shadows on the further bank. If they had been able to go check, I wonder if they would have found any sign of it. It was strange that the dwarves could not hit the the white hind and fawns that appeared later with their arrows. Was there something magical or supernatural about these deer?

[ December 05, 2001: Message edited by: Lostgaeriel ]

[Elrian]

I don't think it was an evil deer, maybe the Elves were hunting. [img]smilies/rolleyes.gif[/img]

[ December 06, 2001: Message edited by: Elrian ]

[Mister Underhill]

I’ve been in a mythical mood lately, and this little episode from The Hobbit seems tailor-made for symbolic analysis. Deer are familiar symbols in mythology, especially Celtic mythology, and there can be little doubt that Tolkien has used them in a similar capacity here. Sharkey, who is a more serious student of comparative mythology, can probably provide a more informed analysis than I, who am just a humble dabbler, but I’ll take my stab anyway.

The stag frequently appears in myth as an otherworldly creature, often one who entices heroes to the otherworld, or at least heralds otherworldly events or death. Here, the stag seems to herald a coming brush with the supernatural – first in Bombur’s immersion in the enchanted waters (contact with which transports him into a death-like slumber), and soon thereafter the party’s encounter with the Elven revelers, who, in The Hobbit, are portrayed with much greater emphasis on their magical faerie qualities than in LotR. In fact, the Elves in The Hobbit perform the same function as the stag usually does in myth – they lure the heroes off the known path and into a mystical, enchanted realm. What is the significance of the fact that Thorin fells the symbolic herald? Perhaps it’s a foreshadowing that the heroes, though they will soon face otherworldly trials, will eventually overcome them.

The hunting party that passes by is no doubt the Elven king and his court, who are hunting the hart. In Celtic mythology, the stag is considered to be a sacred, royal beast, and as such, its hunting was reserved for the nobility. The sound of their party passing by foreshadows the heroes’ encounter with King Thranduil. Now it occurs to me that Thorin’s killing of the stag may also symbolically represent and foreshadow the Dwarves’ trespasses against the king.

The white hind and her fawns are a symbol that the Dwarves misread. The gender of the deer and the fact that she is accompanied by her innocent progeny are symbolic of benevolence, and the fact that they are white supports this. Also, the white hind may be read as a solar symbol. Tolkien practically does the interpretation for us here:

Yet if they had known more about it and considered the meaning of the hunt and the white deer that had appeared upon their path, they would have known that they were at last drawing towards the eastern edge, and would soon have come, if they could have kept up their courage and their hope, to thinner trees and places where the sunlight came again.

I doubt that it’s accidental that the white hind and her fawns are ahead on the Dwarves’ path, which, had they continued to follow it, would have led them out of the forest and into the sun, while the dark hart ran back along the path in the direction from which they had come – the dark heart of the forest.

[RyAN the Pure Heart]

this is from my father's 77 printing:

There was a flying sound of hooves on the path ahead. Out of the gloom came suddenly the shape of a flying deer...then gathered itself up for a leap. High it sprang and cleared the water in a mighty jump.

Like a lot of Tolkiens writing i think its important no to take words for their literal meaning. By flying i assume he means moving quickly. besides, if it were flying why would it have to gather itself up for a leap?

RyAN

[obloquy]

Good point, Ryan. We call that "winged speed" here in the land of infinite Tolkien debate. [img]smilies/wink.gif[/img]

[Mister Underhill]

O devil!

[img]smilies/wink.gif[/img]

[Aldaron]

Thank you, Mr. Underhill, for that challenging interpretation of the flying deer from The Hobbit. It does one good on occasion to sit back and consider some small point with deeper concentration. You've done so and enlightened and entertained us.

[Sharkû]

To your well observed ontological interpretation of the Mirkwood-deer, Underhill, I have to say it is hard to add anything, so I will just throw in some cross-references I noticed.

The “Elves in The Hobbit perform the same function as the stag usually does in myth – they lure the heroes off the known path and into a mystical, enchanted realm” (Underhill).
This is obviously the main point about this encounter in Mirkwood, the confrontation of the other- (or maybe, as we will see, nether-) world with the corporal world. Here it is interesting, by the way, that the dwarves, which normally stand for a certain otherworldliness themselves, are on the purely physical level of things.

One trait of Middle-Earth, and The Hobbit no less, is that while mythological themes, topoi, can be applied, it can, due to its nature, not be associated with a single complex of real world myth, if at all with a concrete one.

In this example, I found two myths in particular striking, one from the Celtic mythology, one from ancient pan-Germanic sources, including England.
If we reduce the passage of the deers, and the ensuing encounter with the Elves, to the striking quotes, these become more obvious:

There was a flying sound of hooves […]a flying deer […] charged […] the shadows swallowed it up […] blowing of horns in the wood and the sound as of dogs baying far off […] the noise of a great hunt going by to the north of the path, though they saw no sign of it […]hind and fawns as snowy white as the hart had been dark […] a woodland king was there with a crown of leaves […]on a chair of carven wood. On his head was a crown of berries and red leaves, for the autumn was come again. In the spring he wore a crown of woodland flowers. In his hand he held a carven staff of oak.

The appearance of the hunted stag and the Elven court, and how they look to the perception of the dwarves, remind, for one, of the Wild Hunt, a central item not only in Anglo-Saxon mythology.
Even though the word ‘fly’ is in Tolkien’s works always also used in the sense ‘flee’, and this undoubtedly is the case here, too, it seems once again likely that an ambiguity with ‘move through air’ might have been intentional, for the passing of the beasts and the hunt evoke this imagery, too. This is also the very case with the Wild Hunt, led by the Grim Hunter, King of the Dead and Spirits, ultimately, Odin. The black and white deers hunted may in this analogy -- which I admit is no more than just an interesting parallel, not an interpretation, and by no means an allegory, to gainsay such accusations aforehand – both be no more than beasts, or also women or spirits clad in beastly hue, for both we know as being possible as well in Middle-Earth as in the myth of the Wild Hunt.

What appears especially interesting, is how the Hunt meets the company. While Thorin and the other dwarves are eventually taken captive by the King, Bombur, who is standing in the way of the Hunt, is rewarded with an insight into the otherworld, and transcendence the way he imagined it, by the dreams he receives after getting hit.
The nature of the Wild Hunt as traditioned in legends is similar. Mortals who encounter it are punished, but those who dare to stand in the middle of the way of the passing hunt are rewarded – incidentally, one myth I remember included that Odin slew a stag for the one who stood in his path, and gave parts of it to the mortal, which turned out to be treasures the next morning.

A different legend in which similar motives appear is the Celtic-influenced Ballad of TamLin, a mortal man who, upon hunting in the woods, was taken away by the Elven Queen and her court to dwell in their realm.
Towards the end of the ballad, the passing of the Elven court is described: first would run a black horse, then a brown, and then the white horse of Tamlin. This of course echoes the passing of the deers, and the abduction by Elves is similarly present in The Hobbit as well.

All three accounts, Wild Hunt, Tamlin, and Hobbit, can be abstracted on a higher plain of meaning, which Underhill covered well already.
One sign for the metaphysical nature of the white deer, which somehow may seem more important, is that it cannot be hit by the arrows of three dwarves combined.

What I could add here is that the white fawn of the deer may not only be a solar symbol, or a sign of purity, as he proved, but that the whole constellation of the deers may have an astral connotation – the other two myths have one for sure.
For the white fawn could also be the moon that finally appears behind black clouds, symbolized by the black stag, both moving across the firmament at night. In this way, the white deer has one more attribute that makes it appear as feminine, not only as the prey of the Hunt (which was often a woman desired by the Hunter), but also since the moon itself is feminine in most Indo-European languages.

Such an animate ‘second’ nature of things undoubtedly is one of the fascinating aspects of Middle-Earth, whether the reader examines it more closely, as in this example, or lets it take its effect subconsciously.

Now for that fox in the Green Hills in ‘Three Is Company’…