s***@gmail.com
2017-02-22 09:46:20 UTC
I've been away for a few years (it took me that long to figure out how to
post from Google Groups rather than from a news client) and on return find
it's too quiet! What's going on? Has most everyone moved away to the Far Downs,
or Facebook (which I refuse to join) or perhaps Reddit, which isn't so fussy
about subscribers' personal details) (and which I did join). However, the Reddit
posting rules are so complicated that I wouldn't know where to post FF like
this. (Any clues appreciated, TIA) However at least I'm glad to have discovered
another active venue for Tolkien fans.
Anyway, here's a spoof I had fun with:
cc alt.fan.tolkien
A TALE OF ARCHET
Of the four villages in Bree-Land, Archet was the least involved in the hobbits'
adventures. It lay in the Chetwood Forest out of sight from Aragorn's route from
Bree and was inhabited mainly by clumsy (and rarely sober) Big Folk, there being
little else to do around the village except visit the pub after work and drink
oneself into stupefaction.
The Archeters' first inkling of any sinister events in Bree-Land, the arrival of
a stray (and badly frightened) pony, occurred well after Frodo &Co had departed
to the East.
[Note that "unusual" in this context means something different from our
understanding of the word; it being as routine for them to deal with dwarves,
trolls and pyrotechnic lizards as it is for us to be accosted by telemarketers,
panhandlers and scam artists.]
Scene 1, Archet village gates
[Enter Aragorn &Co, accosted by various villagers; one of whom acts as impromptu
gate-keeper]
VILLAGER: Halt, Who goes there?
HERALD: Announcing His Majesty King Ellesar, who is Strider, who is Aragorn
son of Arathorn, King of Gondor and Arnor of the Numenorians and all
the Western Lands.
WOMAN: The Numa-who?
PEASANT: Perhaps he means the Numa-Numa song, Dragostia Din Tei.
ARAGORN: No, no, it's "Numenorians". We all are. We're all Numenorians,
and I am your king.
WOMAN: I didn't know we had a king. I thought we were an autonomous collective.
DENNIS: You're fooling yourself. We're living in a dictatorship. A self-
perpetuating autocracy in which the working classes--
WOMAN: Oh there you go, bringing class into it again.
DENNIS: That's what it's all about if only people would--
ARAGORN: Please, please good people. Who is your lord?
WOMAN: We don't have a lord.
ARAGORN: What?
DENNIS: I told you. We're an anarcho-syndicalist commune. We take it in turns
to act as a sort of executive officer for the week.
ARAGORN: Yes.
DENNIS: But all the decisions *OF* that officer have to be ratified at a special
biweekly meeting.
ARAGORN: Yes, I see.
DENNIS: By a simple majority in the case of purely internal affairs,--
ARAGORN: Please, my good man.
DENNIS: --but by a two-thirds majority in the case of more--
ARAGORN: [trying his best to be patient, and barely succeeding] All right!
All right. I get the gist of it. But now I am your king, I tell you.
WOMAN: Well, I didn't vote for you.
ARAGORN: You don't vote for kings.
WOMAN: Well, 'ow did you become king then?
ARAGORN: Well first of all, I am the descendant and heir of Isildur,
son of Melendil, Faithful of the Numenorians.
WOMAN: Wot, Isildur? The bloke what tried to keep the Enemy's Ring of Power for
'hisself and brought about all this mischief for the past three thousand years?
Hardly a good recommendation, I should think. What other qualifications have
you got?
ARAGORN: When Faramir the Ruling Steward asked the people of Minas Tirith if
I should be King and enter into the City and dwell there, the people replied
"Yea!" with one voice.
WOMAN: Minas Tirith? Why, that's far off, away South. In Gondor of all places!
This here isn't no Gondor, it's the Autonomous Realm Formerly Known as Arnor.
ARAGORN: But then I was crowned by Gandalf the Wizard with the ancient winged
crown of the Sea Kings, worn by Melendil, who said, "Out of the Great Sea
to Middle-earth I am come. In this place will I abide, and my heirs, unto
the ending of the world."
WOMAN: Well, la dee dah -- anyone can make fancy talk like that, but it don't
make them no king. Nor you neither, for that matter.
ARAGORN: [sighs] Thirdly, when Dame Ioreth the Wise quoted old lore, saying,
'The hands of the King are the hands of a healer and so the rightful King could
ever be known,' I was sought out and brought to the Houses of Healing to tend
the wounded.
DENNIS: Listen -- some crone in Gondor taking you for a medic is no basis
for a system of responsible government. Supreme executive power derives from
a mandate from the masses, not from some old wives' tale.
ARAGORN: Please!
DENNIS: Well you can't expect to wield supreme executive power just because some
geriatric city matron thinks you're a decent healer.
ARAGORN: Look, I am called Strider, who with the other Rangers guarded you
ceaselessly while you slept...
DENNIS: Oh, yes, we've 'eard of you all right. AND your patronizing attitude:
"If simple folk are free from care and fear, simple they will be, and we must
be secret to keep them so." Well pardon my simplicity, but---
ARAGORN: ALL RIGHT THEN, AND FOURTHLY, I have an army of 50,000 Foot and
10,000 Horse.
PEASANTS: [fall silent while looking nervously about]
WOMAN: Oh, well in that case why didn't you say so in the first place?
ARAGORN: ...and that's not even counting the forces of my good friend and ally
Eomer, King of Rohan.
PEASANTS [show surprise]
DENNIS: Rohan? As in Rohirrim?
ARAGORN: Yes, one in the same.
DENNIS: They were almost our kin folk. We got along well with them, we did.
That is, up until the day when they all left without so much as a by your leave.
One day they was quietly going about tendin' their mega-Clydesdales and carving
Celtic knotwork, like, and by next morning they had simply vanished, lock, stock
and barrel. Uncanny it was. Of course glad enough we'd be to 'ave 'em back
as good neighbors, mind you.
ARAGORN: Very well then. I hereby declare the Village of Archet to be an enclave
territory of the Kingdom of Rohan.
DENNIS: There you go again, as 'asty as an Ent (not!). You just don't get it,
do you. Like some true autocrat, goin' about proclaiming this and declaring
that without the consent of the subjects involved. Like you were some kind of
Lord of Creation. Now may it please your majesty, like the sayin' goes, after
some proper discussion we'll seek a consensus on this proposal, as so we shall
regard it, and let you know the outcome in due course.
Scene 2: The check-in desk at Inn of The Prancing Pony, Bree
[enter Aragorn &Co, greeted by Barliman]
BARLIMAN: [all in a rush, breathlessly] Welcome Master Strider and it's glad we
are to see you again we are sir and where have you been and what have you been
up to all this time you've been away we've surely missed you with all the
troubles we been having lately with robbers and suspicious squint-eyed
characters about...
ARAGORN: [as Barliman runs out of breath] Well I've just been dealing with
a rogue Maia and a renegade wizard and a few thousand orcs and other baddies,
but none of them gave me such an awkward time as those Archet villagers over in
the Chetwood.
BARLIMAN: Wot, them!? Oh they're a terrible cranky lot they are, sir, and
insolent! Why, simply no respect for authority at all and I would have warned
you about 'em if I'd known you were going that way...
The end
post from Google Groups rather than from a news client) and on return find
it's too quiet! What's going on? Has most everyone moved away to the Far Downs,
or Facebook (which I refuse to join) or perhaps Reddit, which isn't so fussy
about subscribers' personal details) (and which I did join). However, the Reddit
posting rules are so complicated that I wouldn't know where to post FF like
this. (Any clues appreciated, TIA) However at least I'm glad to have discovered
another active venue for Tolkien fans.
Anyway, here's a spoof I had fun with:
cc alt.fan.tolkien
A TALE OF ARCHET
Of the four villages in Bree-Land, Archet was the least involved in the hobbits'
adventures. It lay in the Chetwood Forest out of sight from Aragorn's route from
Bree and was inhabited mainly by clumsy (and rarely sober) Big Folk, there being
little else to do around the village except visit the pub after work and drink
oneself into stupefaction.
The Archeters' first inkling of any sinister events in Bree-Land, the arrival of
a stray (and badly frightened) pony, occurred well after Frodo &Co had departed
to the East.
[Note that "unusual" in this context means something different from our
understanding of the word; it being as routine for them to deal with dwarves,
trolls and pyrotechnic lizards as it is for us to be accosted by telemarketers,
panhandlers and scam artists.]
Scene 1, Archet village gates
[Enter Aragorn &Co, accosted by various villagers; one of whom acts as impromptu
gate-keeper]
VILLAGER: Halt, Who goes there?
HERALD: Announcing His Majesty King Ellesar, who is Strider, who is Aragorn
son of Arathorn, King of Gondor and Arnor of the Numenorians and all
the Western Lands.
WOMAN: The Numa-who?
PEASANT: Perhaps he means the Numa-Numa song, Dragostia Din Tei.
ARAGORN: No, no, it's "Numenorians". We all are. We're all Numenorians,
and I am your king.
WOMAN: I didn't know we had a king. I thought we were an autonomous collective.
DENNIS: You're fooling yourself. We're living in a dictatorship. A self-
perpetuating autocracy in which the working classes--
WOMAN: Oh there you go, bringing class into it again.
DENNIS: That's what it's all about if only people would--
ARAGORN: Please, please good people. Who is your lord?
WOMAN: We don't have a lord.
ARAGORN: What?
DENNIS: I told you. We're an anarcho-syndicalist commune. We take it in turns
to act as a sort of executive officer for the week.
ARAGORN: Yes.
DENNIS: But all the decisions *OF* that officer have to be ratified at a special
biweekly meeting.
ARAGORN: Yes, I see.
DENNIS: By a simple majority in the case of purely internal affairs,--
ARAGORN: Please, my good man.
DENNIS: --but by a two-thirds majority in the case of more--
ARAGORN: [trying his best to be patient, and barely succeeding] All right!
All right. I get the gist of it. But now I am your king, I tell you.
WOMAN: Well, I didn't vote for you.
ARAGORN: You don't vote for kings.
WOMAN: Well, 'ow did you become king then?
ARAGORN: Well first of all, I am the descendant and heir of Isildur,
son of Melendil, Faithful of the Numenorians.
WOMAN: Wot, Isildur? The bloke what tried to keep the Enemy's Ring of Power for
'hisself and brought about all this mischief for the past three thousand years?
Hardly a good recommendation, I should think. What other qualifications have
you got?
ARAGORN: When Faramir the Ruling Steward asked the people of Minas Tirith if
I should be King and enter into the City and dwell there, the people replied
"Yea!" with one voice.
WOMAN: Minas Tirith? Why, that's far off, away South. In Gondor of all places!
This here isn't no Gondor, it's the Autonomous Realm Formerly Known as Arnor.
ARAGORN: But then I was crowned by Gandalf the Wizard with the ancient winged
crown of the Sea Kings, worn by Melendil, who said, "Out of the Great Sea
to Middle-earth I am come. In this place will I abide, and my heirs, unto
the ending of the world."
WOMAN: Well, la dee dah -- anyone can make fancy talk like that, but it don't
make them no king. Nor you neither, for that matter.
ARAGORN: [sighs] Thirdly, when Dame Ioreth the Wise quoted old lore, saying,
'The hands of the King are the hands of a healer and so the rightful King could
ever be known,' I was sought out and brought to the Houses of Healing to tend
the wounded.
DENNIS: Listen -- some crone in Gondor taking you for a medic is no basis
for a system of responsible government. Supreme executive power derives from
a mandate from the masses, not from some old wives' tale.
ARAGORN: Please!
DENNIS: Well you can't expect to wield supreme executive power just because some
geriatric city matron thinks you're a decent healer.
ARAGORN: Look, I am called Strider, who with the other Rangers guarded you
ceaselessly while you slept...
DENNIS: Oh, yes, we've 'eard of you all right. AND your patronizing attitude:
"If simple folk are free from care and fear, simple they will be, and we must
be secret to keep them so." Well pardon my simplicity, but---
ARAGORN: ALL RIGHT THEN, AND FOURTHLY, I have an army of 50,000 Foot and
10,000 Horse.
PEASANTS: [fall silent while looking nervously about]
WOMAN: Oh, well in that case why didn't you say so in the first place?
ARAGORN: ...and that's not even counting the forces of my good friend and ally
Eomer, King of Rohan.
PEASANTS [show surprise]
DENNIS: Rohan? As in Rohirrim?
ARAGORN: Yes, one in the same.
DENNIS: They were almost our kin folk. We got along well with them, we did.
That is, up until the day when they all left without so much as a by your leave.
One day they was quietly going about tendin' their mega-Clydesdales and carving
Celtic knotwork, like, and by next morning they had simply vanished, lock, stock
and barrel. Uncanny it was. Of course glad enough we'd be to 'ave 'em back
as good neighbors, mind you.
ARAGORN: Very well then. I hereby declare the Village of Archet to be an enclave
territory of the Kingdom of Rohan.
DENNIS: There you go again, as 'asty as an Ent (not!). You just don't get it,
do you. Like some true autocrat, goin' about proclaiming this and declaring
that without the consent of the subjects involved. Like you were some kind of
Lord of Creation. Now may it please your majesty, like the sayin' goes, after
some proper discussion we'll seek a consensus on this proposal, as so we shall
regard it, and let you know the outcome in due course.
Scene 2: The check-in desk at Inn of The Prancing Pony, Bree
[enter Aragorn &Co, greeted by Barliman]
BARLIMAN: [all in a rush, breathlessly] Welcome Master Strider and it's glad we
are to see you again we are sir and where have you been and what have you been
up to all this time you've been away we've surely missed you with all the
troubles we been having lately with robbers and suspicious squint-eyed
characters about...
ARAGORN: [as Barliman runs out of breath] Well I've just been dealing with
a rogue Maia and a renegade wizard and a few thousand orcs and other baddies,
but none of them gave me such an awkward time as those Archet villagers over in
the Chetwood.
BARLIMAN: Wot, them!? Oh they're a terrible cranky lot they are, sir, and
insolent! Why, simply no respect for authority at all and I would have warned
you about 'em if I'd known you were going that way...
The end