What actually is Lembas?

what actually is lmas that webr galadrial gives the fellowship that seems almost too good and too nutritious to be true hi everyone this is Robert welcome to indeep geek on this channel we cover the Lord of the Rings A Song of Ice and Fire and much more if you love in-depth discussion of great fantasy and science fiction this is the place for you welcome of all the gifts that gadriel gave the fellowship the stocks of limbus webr was one of the most important without its sustenance it's highly unlikely that Frodo and Sam would have made it as far as they did the plain of goroth is an arid Wasteland and without the lmus they would literally have starved before getting close to Mount Doom and it keeps Aragon gimly and legal asses strength up as they run for days after the Orcs that had captured Mar and Pippen but what is it simply put it is a crisp dry meal-based cake or biscuit with great nutritional value it reminds gimly of cram a biscuit-like travel food made by the men of Dale and Lake town and shared with the dwarves of arabor but it is tastier much tastier actually he declares that it is even nicer than the Honey Cakes of the beornings High Praise indeed lmas is light brown on the outside and creamy white inside it is traditionally packed up in leaf wrappings and if left unopened and unbroken can last for considerable periods of time being way bre webr being the literal translation of lmas it is intended to be taken on Journeys though unlike cram it's more for emergencies than General usage in the films Legolas claims that one small bite is enough to fill the stomach of a grown man Q jokes about how much of it Mary and Pippen have already eaten in the books it still seems filling though perhaps not to quite the same extreme extent when handing it over to the fellowship one of the elves says that one cake will keep a traveler on his feet for a day of long labor even if he be one of the tall men of minth the inspiration for this near magical food has been the cause of much speculation its closest real world equivalent that tolken will definitely have been aware of is a hard Tac a hard baked bread that could last for extended periods of time without going off and was often used as rations for Sailors on long trips and as a soldier in World War I tolken probably had some there may also be a link if only a linguistic one to Lama sprad a tradition where a loaf of bread from the first crop of wheat each year traditionally at Lis tide was taken to church and blessed but most Scholars see the strongest link here with communion Wafers tolken disliked allegory but even the greatest writers cannot help allow some of their own worldview to creep into their writings and tolken in one of his letters even acknowledged Ed the similarity between lmas and Eucharistic bread bread and yet not bread Wafers presented as a gift not earned and capable of sustaining body and soul in the long journey of Life others have noted a similarity to Mana from Heaven which appears in the Hebrew Bible and the Old Testament sustaining the Israelite people in their Journeys through the desert indeed the origins of lmus in Middle Earth are Godly in as much as they come from the gods The Valor the corn that it is made from grows in the undying lands and it was yavanna who first harvested it and made lmas arom the hunter then gave it to the elves on their first great Voyage West when the Valar called to them to leave Middle Earth and reside with them in a man so this was literally a gift from the gods a foretaste of the undying lands they were traveling to as a gift from yavan the secret to making it passed on to melan the Maya Who became became Queen of the elves in Dorth it then became a tradition that lmas could only be made by women who were known as the yaneli in honor of yavan only they knew its secret recipe and only queens of the elves were allowed to store and distribute it and they became known as M this was a special holy item of nourishment not one that was for every day and it was not one usually for non- elves so holy was it that it was felt that Mortals who tasted it would forever long for immortality and a life among the elves potent stuff and when you think about it three of the six non- elves who ate it in the story Sam Frodo and gimy all did decide to sail west eventually we actually have quite a lot of information about lmas for what could have been just a random food stuff in tolkin legendarium and that's because it's one of those topics that tolken took it upon himself to write a lengthy essay on of lmas which you can find in the book peoples of Middle Earth in there we discover a few secrets of how lmas was made it uses a special kind of corn or wheat that came from the Western continent a man and although it was Hardy and needed relatively little sunlight to grow and could seemingly grow in any season other than winter it did need to be protected it couldn't grow in the shadow of any other plants and would Wilt in Northerly winds while morgoth lived in the north we read that the Eldar grew it in guarded lands and sunlit Glades and they gathered its great Golden Ears each one by hand and set no blade of metal to it the ears were used to make glenas and the stalks did not go to waste being woven into baskets even the straw byproduct was useful being impervious to mold rotten insects all of which of course begs the question why why was this corn so special the the answer of course is that it came from the undying lands it was full we're told of the strong life of a man which it could impart to those who had the need and right to use the bread so although tolken shies away from describing things as magical per se there is definitely something well magical about this the properties of both the lmus itself and the straw made from the corn are about Abiding and staying strong being impervious to aging with buting going off this is the undying lands in action we shouldn't therefore be looking for scientific explanations of exactly what it is as tolken piy remarks in one of his letters we are not exploring the moon or any other more improbable region no analysis in any laboratory would discover chemical properties of lmus that made it Superior to other cakes of wheat meal tolken goes on to say that it also has a much larger significance of what one might hesitatingly call a religious kind this becomes later apparent especially in the chapter Mount Doom and subsequently we'll get onto that Mount Doom chapter in a moment for now the important point is that lmus is special not because of Any elf technological secret but for Magical and spiritual reasons it can grow only when not impacted by the decay of Life on Middle Earth the shade of normal plants or Mor goths erupting influence and crucially it only imparts its magical properties to bless those who have both the need and the right to use the bread it wasn't just magic wayy bread that anyone could use it was a gift almost like a blessing from the gods for those who needed it as marry notes lmas does put heart into you a more wholesome sort of feeling too than the heat of that orc draft needless to say those without right and need for it not not only don't get its blessing but seem actively repelled by it the Orcs that capture Frodo seemingly hate the look of it and Gollum is rather dramatically disgusted by everything to do with it so now we're starting to understand why this was so special to the elves and why they gave it out so infrequently particularly to Outsiders the first instance we read of this happening was when melan herself gave some lmus to bellg the elf to share with Turin the human whose tragic story we read in the children of hurin in the silmarilion we read that she gave him store of lmas the waybread of the elves wrapped in leaves of silver and the threads that bound it were sealed at the knots with the Seal of the queen a wafer of white wax shaped as a single flower of Tel perion for according to the customs of the alelia the keeping and giving of lbas belonged to the queen alone in nothing did melan show greater favor to Turin than in in this gift for the Eldar had never before allowed men to use this wbr and seldom did so again we hear of its later being given to the elf Sailors who sailed West at the behest of turgon seeking aid from The Valor only one of them vonwe survived and shared his lmus with tuor another human and turin's cousin when they traveled to gondin finally we have Galadriel gifting it to the fellowship a gift which will literally save Frodo and Sam's lives and in turn allow them to save Middle Earth it's easy to gloss over the gift as just a glorified packed lunch for the fellowship but this was so much more it was Galadriel gifting the blessing of the Gods on them and although it had been given before to a couple of very special humans this was the first time we read of that it was given to Hobbits and a dwarf as well the gift of it to gimly is quite significant actually given the historic enmity between those two races lmas is very special to the elves almost holy but it is also natural yes it has so-called magical properties but it is also grown and cultivated made according to a clear recipe and needs to be stored in certain ways it is one of the clearest examples of how tolken treated the natural world and our interaction with it as special which brings me back to that chapter Mount Doom that tolken specifically says shows the relig or spiritual significance of lmas we read this from near the very end of Fredo and Sam's Journey the lmas had a virtue without which they would have long ago Lain down to die it did not satisfy desire and at times Sam's mind was filled with the memories of food and the longing for simple bread and meats and yet this waybread of the elves had a potency that increased as Travelers relied on it alone and did not mingle it with other Foods it fed the will and it gave strength to endure and to master senu and limb beyond the measure of mortal kind to tolken the natural world around him was special and so food made from that with a Pure Heart and Hand in ways the gods themselves had handed down and given as a gift freely and used as a last resort in a good cause can be more than just food it can be a blessing nourishment for more than just normal physical needs magical and sometimes just sometimes maybe even a little bit holy like lmas if you'd like to see more videos on the world of JRR talken and the Lord of the Rings please click on the link to the playlist on the left of your screen or if you'd like to support this channel the best way to do that is by clicking on the link to my patreon page on the right of the screen thanks for watching that's all for this time I'll see you again soon

Channel: In Deep Geek

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Id: ncA9fOsljPM

Length: 12min 4sec (724 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 26 2024