In Memoriam by Narya
Mar. 5th, 2018 01:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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b2memB2MeM Prompt and Category: March 5, "The Lost" by Rosemary Dobson
Format: Photography/essay
Genre: N/A
Rating: G
Warnings: None
Characters: None
Pairings: N/A
Summary: A picture and some thoughts to go with it.
I am possibly pushing things to call this a fanwork. I certainly don't pretend to be a brilliant photographer.
A little background: I live in Clitheroe, Lancashire. The town is built around a tiny old Norman keep on top of a motte, and the castle grounds have been converted into a park for the town residents, with the war memorial at the centre. From the top of the motte there are excellent views of the surrounding countryside, including Pendle Hill, which you can see in the background covered in snow-melt. It's an isolated hill, stuck on its own between the Pennines and the Bowland Fells, and was associated with the supernatural long before the 17th century witch trials made it famous.
Normally I'd be at work on a Monday, but for whatever reason today I decided to work at home - just as well, as my Mum called me this morning to let me know my great-uncle had passed away. I shuffled a few things around so I could have some breathing space, and my husband and I went for a walk. There were a few things swirling around in my head. The usual post-bad-news questions about death and mortality were there, as well as a mental numbness from the dull grey weather, relief that the worst of the snow has gone, and some stray Tolkien fic ideas tied up with the B2MeM prompts.
Tolkien actually spent a fair bit of time in this part of the world. Chunks of The Lord of the Rings were allegedly written in a classroom at Stonyhurst College, a nearby boarding school; his son Michael later taught there in the 1960s. There is a 9km circular walk starting in the village of Hurst Green known as The Tolkien Trail, and some of the place names and landmarks on the route do echo the text - Shire Lane and Barley Mow, for example, and Jumbles Farm on the banks of the Ribble could easily belong to old Farmer Maggot. There's even a plausible Brandywine Bridge.
How much of it was a direct lift on Tolkien's part is debatable. I think it's more likely that the Ribble Valley is a beautiful, well-preserved example of the traditional England that Tolkien loved so much and was looking to evoke. I'd be reluctant to claim that it provided specific, direct inspiration in and of itself. I also don't buy the favourite local boast, which is that Pendle Hill inspired the Lonely Mountain, given that The Hobbit predates Tolkien's association with the area, and that Pendle is a flat-topped rolling hill, not a mountain - but anything is possible. With his interest in fairytale and folklore, he may have spent more time studying Pendle than I know.
Still, standing behind the statue with my Tolkien-inspired thoughts suddenly and sharply reminded me of something that I've believed since I started studying the texts properly in my late teens - namely, that Tolkien was a war poet just as much as Wilfred Owen, Siegfried Sassoon and the rest of them. His work just took a different form. That's a whole essay by itself and I won't start going into it here, but the cold and the memorial and the melting snow and my own sad news rushed together with my Tolkien musings, and suddenly the photograph seemed like the perfect response to today's prompt. I hope it counts.
Format: Photography/essay
Genre: N/A
Rating: G
Warnings: None
Characters: None
Pairings: N/A
Summary: A picture and some thoughts to go with it.
I am possibly pushing things to call this a fanwork. I certainly don't pretend to be a brilliant photographer.
A little background: I live in Clitheroe, Lancashire. The town is built around a tiny old Norman keep on top of a motte, and the castle grounds have been converted into a park for the town residents, with the war memorial at the centre. From the top of the motte there are excellent views of the surrounding countryside, including Pendle Hill, which you can see in the background covered in snow-melt. It's an isolated hill, stuck on its own between the Pennines and the Bowland Fells, and was associated with the supernatural long before the 17th century witch trials made it famous.
Normally I'd be at work on a Monday, but for whatever reason today I decided to work at home - just as well, as my Mum called me this morning to let me know my great-uncle had passed away. I shuffled a few things around so I could have some breathing space, and my husband and I went for a walk. There were a few things swirling around in my head. The usual post-bad-news questions about death and mortality were there, as well as a mental numbness from the dull grey weather, relief that the worst of the snow has gone, and some stray Tolkien fic ideas tied up with the B2MeM prompts.
Tolkien actually spent a fair bit of time in this part of the world. Chunks of The Lord of the Rings were allegedly written in a classroom at Stonyhurst College, a nearby boarding school; his son Michael later taught there in the 1960s. There is a 9km circular walk starting in the village of Hurst Green known as The Tolkien Trail, and some of the place names and landmarks on the route do echo the text - Shire Lane and Barley Mow, for example, and Jumbles Farm on the banks of the Ribble could easily belong to old Farmer Maggot. There's even a plausible Brandywine Bridge.
How much of it was a direct lift on Tolkien's part is debatable. I think it's more likely that the Ribble Valley is a beautiful, well-preserved example of the traditional England that Tolkien loved so much and was looking to evoke. I'd be reluctant to claim that it provided specific, direct inspiration in and of itself. I also don't buy the favourite local boast, which is that Pendle Hill inspired the Lonely Mountain, given that The Hobbit predates Tolkien's association with the area, and that Pendle is a flat-topped rolling hill, not a mountain - but anything is possible. With his interest in fairytale and folklore, he may have spent more time studying Pendle than I know.
Still, standing behind the statue with my Tolkien-inspired thoughts suddenly and sharply reminded me of something that I've believed since I started studying the texts properly in my late teens - namely, that Tolkien was a war poet just as much as Wilfred Owen, Siegfried Sassoon and the rest of them. His work just took a different form. That's a whole essay by itself and I won't start going into it here, but the cold and the memorial and the melting snow and my own sad news rushed together with my Tolkien musings, and suddenly the photograph seemed like the perfect response to today's prompt. I hope it counts.
no subject
Date: 2018-03-05 08:43 pm (UTC)