Radagast the Brown

A very unexpected thought occurred to me this morning, and I haven't been able to shake it yet, so I am just logging it here, like other things.

For now, as captured in previous posts, my story involves Faramir and Peter as two Beings that will make a journey off of this world, having keys regarding doorways and passages.  And I have Peter so far as Thomas B. Marsh in the early 1800's.  Given that it seems many, if not all, of these characters I am thinking through have some attachment to Tolkien's stories, it would make sense that Peter would have also played one of the characters in LOTR and/or the Silmarillion.  This thought has been in the back of my mind, but not really a priority to think through too much (Marsh himself wasn't even on my mind until Leo brought him up a couple weeks ago).

And I wasn't thinking about him this morning either, but suddenly the character of Radagast came bounding into my mind, and I needed to figure out what to do with him, or at least it seemed like a good time to think on him a bit.

Radagast has only come up once in this blog, when I used a quote that Saruman had spoken to Gandalf, and which Gandalf related to Elrond's Council.  In that quote, Saruman spoke of Radagast extremely derisively:

' "Radagast the Brown!" laughed Saruman, and no longer concealed his scorn. "Radagast the Bird-tamer! Radagast the Simple! Radagast the Fool! Yet he had just the wit to play the part that I set for him. For you have come, and that was all the purpose of my message. And here you will stay, Gandalf the Grey, and rest from journeys. For I am Saruman the Wise, Saruman Ring-maker, Saruman of Many Colours!"

'I looked then as saw that his robes, which had seemed white, were not so, but were woven of all colours, and if he moved they shimmered and changed hue so that the eye was bewildered.'

Radagast seemingly has no other role to play in the LOTR than to act as a dupe in Saruman's plan to trap Gandalf.  This is not completely true, however, in that although he unwittingly sent Gandalf into a trap, he was also responsible for Gandalf's rescue.  It was he who sent the eagle Gwaihir to Orthanc, but that just made up for his earlier unwitting mistake.

Other than that, however, Radagast has no real role.  He is one of the loose ends in the story - almost relegated to a plot device or convenience with, again, the only real mention of him being Saruman's comments about how simple and foolish Saruman thought he was.

I am not 100% sure why yet, at the moment, so will do some more thinking on this for sure, but I currently suspect that it is Radagast who is Peter-Marsh.  We will see how this one ages also, but Radagast's name itself seems initially promising once I looked it up.

Tolkien wrote in a note from 1954 that Radagast's name was actually an old Numenorian name that meant 'tender of beasts'.  Given how Radagast is portrayed in relation to his interest in animals, this makes sense.   However, in 1972, Tolkien appears to backtrack on this just a bit, and suggested that the name wasn't interpretable.

Whatever the original language or meaning of Radagast was, anyone who has read any sampling of my posts knows that this shouldn't stop us from investigating the name for double meanings in other languages.  That seems to be how the game works in a number of instances, and as I have mentioned elsewhere, it need not be limited to English-only name games.

So, I looked up Radagast.  It is surprisingly straightforward, and extremely relevant to our story here and what I have just been writing about Peter and his involvement in paths and doors in and through space.  Kind of crazily relevant, actually, as these seem to typically work out recently.  Here is what we have:

Rada:  Track, path, way (also "rad" = pass, path, back, return" and "rat" = walk, go in a line "as a road")

Gast:  Void

So, we have something like "Path/ way void"  or, more cleanly, "Path back space".  Void here is meant to signify the void beyond the world, or outer space we might think of it.

That all works pretty well, if you ask me, so I am going to chalk it up to a double meaning name.  And just like Faramir, I think this name describes a future role.  I mean, without the story I have touched on here, the name interpretation of "Path void" for Radagast makes absolutely zero sense.  But, since we have Beings travelling through space to other worlds in my story, that name definition makes a great deal of sense.

Recall that Faramir, like Radagast, has a name that people have indicated doesn't have a clear meaning.  I have translated it in a very straightforward way as "Hunter of Jewels" or "Jewel Hunter", which is also a description of his future role - to hunt for and gather the Jewels that Jesus says he will gather.

So, we also have that linkage between Faramir and Radagast, in that they both have names that are as easily translatable from Elvish as they come, but both meanings have been obscured and are not intelligible or have any meaning, really, to their stories as found in LOTR.  It is only in considering the story for both of these characters as explored here (with Radagast being Peter), that the interpretations have any real meaning.

In searching this a bit this afternoon, I also came across one additional detail related to Radagast.

Tolkien left notes (later captured in the History of Middle-earth series that Christopher Tolkien published) that suggest he had considered having Isengard be given to Radagast once Sauron was defeated.  

We actually don't know if this occurred or not.  We do know that in the final draft that Aragorn gave the valley to the Ents, who replanted trees and orchards in the valley.  It was renamed as the Treegarth of Isengard.  Given that Radagast represents Yavanna in Middle-earth (the same Yavanna who is known as the Queen of the Earth and that I have guessed is the mother of Eonwe-Faramir in Valinor), I wouldn't find it surprising if we would find Radagast there among them.

The thing I found interesting about that, however, is that Radagast taking over, or at least moving in as Saruman moves out, might parallel our future story.  At some point Saruman, who currently rules over this Earth, will get the boot.  We might see Radagast then replacing him, which is also poetic justice for how lowly Saruman thought of him.

This also makes sense in imagining Peter and his keys and authority.  Peter-Radagast would have authority with things having to do with this world, which might also be his by right, given his potential kinship with both Yavanna and Faramir (i.e., it might be that he is also family with them in some way).

So, in summary, we have Radagast as Peter, and thus two wizards - him and Faramir - working together in their respective capacities of gathering the Family of Light and creating a path or way for them to go home.  

I don't know - I have to think through it a bit more, but as of right now this could make sense.