LotR -- Book 5 - Chapter 08 - The Houses of Healing

[Lalwendë]

Originally Posted by Bethberry

Each scent subtly takes on hues and perfumes of each patient's own culture. Faramir's suggests the inheritance of Gondor and its memory of Numenor and beyond. Eowyn's partakes of the bracing cool air of high mountain tops, snow capped all year long and perhaps the northern history of the Rohirrim. And Merry's is The Shire on a warm summer day, lazy with humming warmth. Aragorn/athelas recalls them to their homes.

I like the idea that the scents recall cultural memories in each patient and that they bring each 'home' once more. This would be a fitting cure for the ailments they are suffering, which again are differing. Faramir is suffering from grief while Eowyn and Merry are suffering from 'the Black shadow'.

But one thing stands out for me as not fitting into a cultural pattern and that is one of the effects associated with Eowyn:

an air wholly fresh and clean and young, as if it had not before been breathed by any living thing and came new-made from snowy mountains hight beneath a dome of stars, or from shores of silver far away washed by seas of foam.

This does not seem to fit with any cultural ideas of the Rohirrim. They are not a sea-faring people. In fact, this would fit more with Faramir given the maritime history of the Numenoreans. Strangely, some of the words associated with Faramir actually sound more fitting to Eowyn:

the fragrance that came to each was like a memory of dewy mornings of unshadowed sun in some land of which the fair world in Spring is itself but a fleeting memory.

Hmmm...Perhaps the scents evoke not personalities, nor even cultural memories, but dreams, or that which the patient yearns for. It is quite easy to see Eowyn yearning for the 'escape' of empty seashores and the grandeur of mountains; the images used to describe the scent when she is treated are evocative of wide open spaces and freedom. But again, the words used for Faramir have me a little foxed.