After the sun sets on the Black Gate, Frodo, Sam, and Gollum set out and take the road south towards Minas Morgul. They soon find themselves in the “garden of Gondor”: Ithilien, a land of fragrant herbs and other exotic flora that even Sam does not have names for in the horticultural word-hoard of his mind. We let the sensory imagery wash over us as Tolkien mentions one new plant after another, many of which never appear anywhere else in the legendarium. But Gollum thinks something stinks, and it’s not just the pits of Orc filth to be found along the road.
Recommended Reading:
Tolkien, J. R. R. The Two Towers: Being the Second Part of The Lord of the Rings (Mariner Books, paperback) “Of Herbs and Stewed Rabbit”, pp. 634-38
Tolkien, J. R. R. The Hobbit (Mariner Books, paperback)
Carpenter, Humphrey, ed. The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien (Mariner Books, paperback)
Urbs… LOL 🤦🏼♂️
The Ithilien basin maybe more to do with plants or even as a pleasant water feature to look at rather than for human bathing, especially if no buildings/houses nearby.
The waxing moon, three nights from the full, rises in mid-afternoon. But as Tolkien correctly notes, it is hidden behind the mountains until around midnight.
I have only recently discovered your podcast, so I have a lot of catching up to do! I first encountered Tolkien as a college freshman in the fall of 1964, when a friend loaned me copies of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. I was immediately hooked, and I figure I have read LOTR at least once a year since then. Your links to cheap copies of Tolkien’s writings are an excellent service to novice readers. The borrowed copies I first read were the notorious Ace pirate editions, but I bought the Ballantine versions the moment they were published; they cost 95 cents each in 1965. This wasn’t cheap by contemporary paperback standards; most of the science fiction I was also reading cost between 35 and 50 cents at the time.
Thank you for sharing your insights about Elendil, Isildur, and Anárion, and about Minas Ithil and Minas Anor. From the time that I first read the Lord of the Rings, I noted the names of Minas Ithil, “the Tower of the Rising Moon,” and Minas Anor, “the Tower of the Setting Sun”; at that time, I paid attention mostly to the “rising” and “setting” elements, since Minas Ithil was located to the east (the direction of moonrise), and Minas Anor to the west (the direction of sunset). More recently, I realized that those elements were not actually found in the Sindarin names, which simply meant “Tower of the Moon” and “Tower of the Sun.” However, I never once made a connection between the names of the towers and the names of Isildur and Anárion, nor did I recognize that the names of Elendil, Isildur, and Anárion reflected the Stars, the Moon, and the Sun, so your explanation was quite a revelation!
On a different note: hello, everybody! I am a long-time listener of the PPP, but I have not posted any comments in quite a while (although I have thought about it repeatedly). I first encountered the PPP when I discovered Corey Olson’s work online and listened to one of his talks; he mentioned Verlyn Flieger, so I Googled her name, which led to her interview on the PPP. At first, I listened to her interview, and then to the other guest interviews on the podcast, and finally joined the main Lord of the Rings read-through, just as the hobbits were entering the Old Forest. I have been following the podcast ever since, although there are times, like now, when I have fallen behind in my listening for a while, only to catch up later. I had the good fortune to take part online in Mythmoot VII in 2020 and the PPP Moot last year. I was a bit too intimidated to take part in any of the Common Room Zoom sessions, but I took part in the Pub Quiz and Slack discussions, and attended many of the presentations; I particularly enjoyed the Council of Elrond and the presentations by Michael Drout and Bill Fliss.
I weighed whether to pass on my comments via Barliman’s Bag or by posted them here, but chose the latter, in part due to the instant gratification of seeing my words appear online immediately.
All of the above is just a long way of saying that I have enjoyed the following the podcast, and that I wish you all the best going forward; keep up the good work!