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The
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LOTR
and Longshanks Orcish Landscape (new)
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‘The
Oath Breakers’, ‘The Army that was Cursed’
And
The Border Reivers Tolkien’s ‘Oath-breakers’ was an army which had given an oath of allegiance to the king Isildur at the end of the 2nd Age. But when Isildur summoned them to fight against Sauron they refused. Isildur cursed them but declared that the curse could be broken if they fought Sauron on the summons of his heir. On their horses, Aragorn together with the Dúnedain went through the ‘Door of the Dead’ and summoned them at the Stone of Erech.
The ‘Oath-breakers’
have a close affinity to the Border Reivers, the families that lived
Longshanks (1258 – 1306) had aimed to enforce peace but his actions in Scotland and Robert the Bruce in Northern England, resulted in the terrible culture of the Border Reivers. Reivers were used by both Scottish and English kings to create turmoil on demand, but when the kings wanted peace, it was impossible as the Reivers had to live with the anarchic consequences of their mutual murdering and thieving.
They were thought to have betrayed their Scottish King at the Battle of Flodden in 1513. The Scots Reivers had fought well at the beginning, left the field to reform but when their king summoned them, refused to continue in the battle. The Reivers on both sides seemed to be interested more in plundering the baggage rather than fighting.
Flodden for the Scots, was a disaster. In just over 2 hours, the Scots had approximately 10,000 dead including King James 4th, 12 earls, 14 lords, 2 bishops and many knights. Lord Hume, who had commanded the Scottish reivers, lost a brother. The English dead were approximately 1,500.
It was perceived that Lord Hume had come to an agreement with the English Lord Dacre and his Borderers, that they would fight the opposing army but not fight against each other. But the Scots had inappropriate military tactics and weaponry for the terrain and Lord Hume would have been able to have seen this so not risked more of his men. Whatever the cause, the Scottish Reivers’ actions were seen as a betrayal. Lord Hume, a Catholic and a focus for Catholics in the region when religion was becoming a crucial issue, was executed by the Scots two years later, though officially for being too close to the English. The Archbishop of Glasgow's 1500 word curse of the Border Reivers is one of the longest in history.
John Sadler's the
Raid of the Reidswire
is an example of the anarchy. After the Union of the Crowns in 1603 the Reivers were crushed. Their descendents became a fundamental part of the British army fighting in many wars of the British Empire.
In The Lord of the Rings, it is interesting to realise the connections between Aragorn as the descendent of Isildur and Aragorn as ‘Trotter’ from a Border Reiver family which had always fought under the Humes. In ‘The Lord of the Rings’, no explanation is given as to why the ‘Oath-breakers’ refused to fight, just that they had changed their loyalty to Sauron. But there is an interesting twist as a result of Tolkien’s Catholic beliefs: in his epic he arranged forgiveness from the curse, if they fought for the king’s heir. After the Union of the two Crowns in 1603, the Border Reivers answered the summons of the English/Scottish kings and fought in the British army.
Much poetry has been written about the spirits of dead soldiers of many wars over the centuries. All must have inspired Tolkien, but the Reivers not only betrayed their king, but were officially cursed, and later fought for the king’s descendent - just like Tolkien’s Oath-Breakers.
Aside
Another Aside Aragorn was given a token of hope, ‘a great stone of a clear green’ from Arwen, a stone which had belonged to Galadriel’s family. This resonates with the gift of a turquoise stone from Anne of Brittany, the consort to Louis X11, given to James 4th of Scotland. It was a chivalric gesture asking him to raise an army to draw off the English army in France. The Battle of Flodden was part in response to this French request for aid. (Sadler, J. 2006)
Fraser, G M. The
Steel Bonnets. HarperCollins 1995
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