Magic Rings

We all know about the One Ring and its attributes. Most notably, it made its wearer invisible. Genius idea! But even though I knew Tolkien drew from medieval literature and how fond its writers were of attributing special powers to objects like named weaponry, I was surprised to come across more than just those generic influences as I began to study medieval Germanic literature.

After taking a Middle High German class, I joined a reading group in which we read Iwein, an epic Aurthurian poem by Hartmann von Aue.

Fairly early on, the titular character Iwein runs into some trouble when he goes off in search of adventure ('aventiure? waz ist daz?'). In brief, he picks a fight and kills the lord of a castle. In the process, he has the misfortune to be caught inside the castle walls to face the ire of the lord's armed men. But there's a young woman there named Lûnete who decides to help him. She gives him a ring and tells him its special attribute: when he holds it in his hand, nobody can see or find him. The ring's power of bestowing invisibility upon its bearer as long as it is held in his hand bears true; though the men of the castle seek him diligently, they can't find him.

Peter J. Yost

This is a brief section of a long tale - a few hundred lines out of more than 8,000. But it jarred me when I first read the fateful words of Lûnete in lines 1202-1207:

her Iwein, nemet diz vingerlîn.

ez ist umben stein alsô gewant:

swer in hât in blôzer hant,

den mac niemen, als die vrist

unz her in blôzer hant ist,

gesehen noch gevinden.

Lord Iwein, take this ring.

Regarding the stone, it is important:

Whoever has it in his bare hand,

him may no one, during that time

while it is in his bare hand,

see or find.

In other words, "Lord Iwen, take this ring. The stone is significant in that whoever holds it in his bare hand cannot be seen or found by anyone, as long as it is in his bare hand."

How cool is that?!

Now, this is not the only magic ring in medieval and ancient literature to grant its bearer invisibility. It's possible Tolkien was drawing from some other tale when he gave it to Bilbo as a means of escaping Gollum in The Hobbit, or that he was drawing from multiple stories. Either way, I loved stumbling upon the knowledge that Tolkien was referencing and building on other, older tales so specifically in his works.

It's kind of like finding treasure.