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Times article laughed off the Web? - Lord of the Rings news - J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings

July 30, 2000 at 04:34:02

In a quiet move sure to be seen as a sign of humiliation and trepidation, The Times appears to have removed the much-derided Cate Blanchett article which included a citation from The Tolkien Sarcasm Page.

The article was nonetheless reprinted in whole or in part on several Tolkien movie news Web sites, and doubtless has been passed around in email and newsgroups. The Times has been severely criticized for sloppy research as it fell neatly into a trap laid for lazy students who persistently search the Internet for book reports they don't want to write.

"For the uninitiated, Galadriel is the good sister of the evil but beautiful Queen Beruthiel, who imprisons the Fellowship of the Ring in the forest of Lothlorien. In the book, Galadriel frees them from her sister's clutches."

These words may be engraved in the memories of Tolkien fans around the world for years to come, symbolizing the lack of thorough research which has come to characterize so many media efforts to bring J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings to the masses.

For the journalists in the audience, here is a broad hint: J.R.R. Tolkien has sold more than 100,000,000 books this century. More people have read his stories than have read Shakespeare. Only the Bible is more popular. Tolkien is already well-known to the masses.

For those Tolkien fans who know about Galadriel but would like to know more about Beruthiel, Tolkien discussed her in an interview with a fanzine in the 1960s, and also revealed some information about her in an unpublished manuscript Christopher Tolkien referred to in Unfinished Tales.

Beruthiel is mentioned only once in The Lord of the Rings, when Aragorn reassures members of the Company of the Ring that Gandalf will find his way through the darkness of Moria. "He is surer of finding the way home in a blind night than the cats of Queen Beruthiel."

Beruthiel was a Black Numenorean princess who married Tarannon Falastur, twelfth King of Gondor and the first of the so-called Ship-Kings. She was something of a sorceress and was apparently quite evil. Tolkien based her story on the Norse myth of the sea-god Njord and his giantess wife Skadi.

Thor killed Skadi's father, so she demanded compensation from the gods. She wanted a husband, and so the Aesir agreed to give her one, but they tricked her. They made her choose by the feet alone of the available suitors. Skadi saw Njord's feet were the cleanest and believed she would be getting Baldur, but the sea-god's feet were so clean because they were washed by the sea.

Skadi and Njord had an unhappy marriage, and she retreated to her father's hall in the mountains, while he continued to live by the sea.

Beruthiel settled in a house in Osgiliath, the city that Isildur and Anarion built on the bridge spanning the Anduin river in the heart of their realm. She had a garden filled with "tormented sculptures beneath cypresses and yews", and she set her cats to spy upon Gondor and its people. Tarannon lived in a grand house by the sea which stood on pillars over the water.

Beruthiel had ten cats: nine black ones and one white cat which she used to spy upon the black cats. The people of Gondor feared the cats and dared not touch them. The reason for Beruthiel's exile is lost in an illegible part of the manuscript, but Tolkien concluded her story by writing that Tarannon "had her set on a ship alone with her cats and set adrift on the sea before a north wind. The ship was last seen flying past Umbar under a sickle moon, with a cat at the masthead and another as a figure-head on the prow."

Cate Blanchett has been cast as Galadriel in Peter Jackson's three-film production "The Lord of the Rings". Her comments in previous interviews have shown she has read Tolkien's book and understand's Galadriel's character very well.