The Real Middle Earth by Brian Bates

The Real Middle Earth by Brian Bates

Author:Brian Bates
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781466891098
Publisher: St. Martin's Press


13. Shapeshifters

In the real Middle-earth, it was believed that certain people could alter their shape and spirit from human to animal form. So that they appeared, sounded and behaved like animals. Some of these people were wizards and witches, who shapeshifted to acquire the knowledge, wisdom and guile of animals – as well as the ability to fly. Also, great warriors took on the shape of impressive animals in order to explode into combat with their fighting power. Manannan, a Celtic night-visiting god, is described in the Book of Fernay to have come to Middle-earth to claim his son, Mongan, and teach him the magic of the spirit-world. Mongan goes to the Otherworld, stays there until he is sixteen, learning the secrets of shapeshifting. Eventually he returns to his earthly family as a wizard. Manannan prophesies of his son:

He will be a dragon before the host at the onset,

He will be a wolf of every great forest.

He will be a stag with horns of silver …

He will be a speckled salmon in a full pool,

He will be a seal, he will be a fair-white swan.

He will be throughout long ages

An hundred years in fair kingship …

Mongan transforms variously into animals of water, land and air, learning the qualities of each element – although he is destined to die in human form.

Such an attitude – that animals were possessed of such power that humans could seek to become like them, was very different from the Christian perspective being preached ever more frequently in ancient Europe. It was a distinctive tenet of the new religion that man (with a soul) was a creature quite separate and superior to animals:

And God blessed Noah and his sons, and said unto them, ‘Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth. And the dear of you and the dread of you shall be upon every beast of the earth, and upon every fowl of the air, upon all that moveth upon the earth, and upon all the fishes of the sea; into your hand are they delivered. Every morning thing that liveth shall be meat for you; even as the green herb have I given you all things.

The animals were provided merely for people to exploit. But the indigenous people of Middle-earth had a more intimate perspective on animals. They hunted them for food, skins, bone handles for tools, and so on. But as we shall see they were seen as, in some respects, superior to humans.

Although the ability to transform into animals was accepted as possible, it was exceptional. Even so, 2,000 years ago, all people were naturally closer to, and more familiar with, wild animals. The Celts, Anglo-Saxons and Norse shared their lands with wild creatures of all shapes and sizes: brown bears; packs of silver-grey wolves; honey-hued deer on delicate, springy legs; mighty stags with rutting, raking antlers; scurrying hares; silent snakes, from harmless slow worms to adders with fangs which could deliver a bite so poisonous a person could die from it;



Download



Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.