Tolkien Calendar: The Hobbit

Gandalf has gone and the company has been left to cross Mirkwood without him, with the instruction 'DON'T LEAVE THE PATH' ringing in their ears. Mirkwood - the very name tells you everything you need to know about it: pitch black nights, stuffy and airless, alarmingly thick cobwebs, scuffling sounds and bulbous insect eyes in the dark. Bilbo and the dwarves endure seven oppressive but uneventful days of this, living off increasingly meagre rations, seeing no water and discovering that black squirrels (dark like all the other things living in the wood) are inedible.

On August 16 a black stream crosses their path but this is no welcome relief. Beorn has already warned them not to drink from it or bathe in it as it causes drowsiness and forgetfulness. But the bridge has gone and they are stuck. This seemingly unsolvable problem is a major tuning point for Bilbo. With Gandalf gone it's now Bilbo who takes the initiative, seeing the oarless boat on the other side which the dwarves (despite all that tunnelling) don't seem to have good enough eyesight to spot. In fact poorer sight is as much true of the dwarves rather negative and blinkered outlook as it is of their ability to spot a boat, as it is Bilbo again who solves the logistical problem of how to pull it over with rope and hook. In fact, from this point on, without Bilbo's better view of each difficulty they get themselves into, the dwarves would never see their way out of Mirkwood let alone reach the Lonely Mountain.

They cross the water and all is going well until disaster strikes. A deer charges out of the wood and tries to leap the stream. While Thorin shoots it with an arrow all the others are bowled over and poor Bombur falls into the stream. Again it's Bilbo that has the wits to see what's going on in time to rescue him, but Bombur has now fallen into a deep sleep and they can't rouse him. And it's now clear the deer is being hunted as they hear the sound of horns and dogs but see nothing of the mysterious hunters. Things get even worse when a white hind with white fawns cross their path and the dwarves loose the last arrows given to them by Beorn without hitting the mark. They now have to plod on with their meagre rations while carrying Bombur who, we know, was not the lightest of dwarves.

The events at the stream are crammed full of things familiar to those that love mythology and fairy tales. Tolkien has drawn on them deeply here and in the space of a couple of pages gives us the Enchanted Steam (who's mythological source is the classical Lethe, meaning 'forgetfulness', one of the rivers of Hades which brought oblivion if drunk from), the Elven Hunt (also the 'Wild Hunt', usually heard and best not seen as it could lead men astray and foretold calamity. Sometimes led by the Fairy King, sometimes by Cernunnos, the great antlered Celtic Lord of Animals, or by Herne the Hunter, the 'Lord of the Wildwood'), and finally the White Hart (although Tolkien gives us a dark stag and a white hind, the white stag was the usual quarry of the Elven Hunt. It was bad luck to cross the White Hart's path and it was a harbinger of doom, meaning that a taboo had been transgressed. By the time of the King Arthur legends it had come to symbolise the beginning of a quest or a search for the unobtainable).

Quite a lot of mythological associations to cram into one dwarvish accident at a stream! Although young readers wouldn't know these associations, just the suggestion of them adds to the mystery and danger of the magical borders of Fairy Land and to wondrous possibilities.