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cimorene[H]e saw a slender glittering warrior come forth from the door [...], who stood for a moment looking round about, and then came lightly and swiftly toward him; and lo! it was the Sun-beam, with a long hauberk over her kirtle falling below her knees, a helm on her head and plated shoes on her feet.
—William Morris, The Roots of the Mountains
Mentions of this book before I read it indicated to me that it was the inspiration behind several chunks of The Lord of the Rings for Tolkien, one of these being the "warrior women". There is a woman who swears herself to the war-god as a result of being disappointed in love, and some other echoes of Eowyn's story discussed in my previous post on the subject, The romances of Morris's Roots of the Mountains as forerunners of those in LOTR. But saying that The Roots of the Mountains' fighting women inspired LOTR, though possibly true, is quite misleading, because there is so much more warrior woman in The Roots of the Mountains.
In The Roots of the Mountains, Victorian socialist and medieval fanboy William Morris created a fantasy version of pre-Christian central european Gothic tribes in an idyllic egalitarian agrarian society where women hold political influence and freely fight in war against barbaric colonizing enslavers.
This fantasy society isn't closely based on any sources - the nearest is the bits of the poem Hlöðskviða or "The Battle of the Goths and Huns" preserved in a 13th century Icelandic "legendary saga" (fornaldarsaga) (ie not a historical saga; though the poem doubtless has its origin in some real poems/songs) - and while the image of the Germanic warrior woman or Valkyrie certainly exists in Norse and germanic folklore, Morris's world in ROTM goes far beyond that.
There is one warrior maiden, Hervör, in The Battle of the Goths and Huns, the sister of the king, who leads the army defending a border outpost and falls in battle. There's another warrior maiden, also named Hervör, their ancestress, in the rest of The Saga of Hervör and Heidrek, who is portrayed as a very Bad Sort who loves nothing more than senseless violence and theft from childhood and spends several years traveling and dressing (in service as a fighting man) as a man under the male name of Hervard. (The later Hervör who falls in battle is heroic; it's only the earlier one who is a Bad Sort.) It appears that in the world of the saga this crossdressing in order to fight is not unthinkable, but it does seem to be rare. (Perhaps the fact that she has to adopt a male identity is the best argument for this.) There are fighting women in other sagas (the most famous example being, perhaps, Brunhild in the Ring of the Nibelungs), but according to Wikipedia, still no accepted historical evidence of the practice.
Of the three female main characters (out of five) in The Roots of the Mountains, one is The World's Greatest Archer, typically a woodswoman and huntress, and a fierce fighting maiden all the time; one is a young athlete who was always skilled at fighting and makes a vow to go to war as a result of her broken heart, but throws herself gloriously into the fighting as a leader of the people; and one is a wise political leader who refuses to take up arms herself, but goes into the battle in full armor with her people.
‘And when I go down to the battle,’ said he, ‘shalt thou be sorry for our sundering?’
She said: ‘There shall be no sundering; I shall wend with thee.’
Said he: ‘And if I were slain in the battle, would’st thou lament me?’
‘Thou shalt not be slain,’ she said.
There are still plenty of women who don't go to battle in The Roots of the Mountains, too, and their choice is valid! But the ability to fight and the will to fight are fully accepted and fairly widespread for women throughout the four societies he portrays, (1) the Burgdalers (town dwellers), (2) the shepherds, (3) the woodsfolk, and (4) the Children of the Wolf, who have been living hidden in Mirkwood, the forest which lies between the dalesmen and the eastern invaders, and protecting the border from their SECRET BASE in the hidden Shadowy Vale.
First we learn of the fighting women of the Children of the Wolf - a mysterious, rather fantastical people, throwbacks to the heroic age, and thus possibly more apt to exotic things like warrior maidens:
Then the Sun-beam spake to Gold-mane softly, and told him how this song was made by a minstrel concerning a foray in the early days of their first abode in Shadowy Vale, and how in good sooth a maiden led the fray and was the captain of the warriors:
‘Erst,’ she said, ‘this was counted as a wonder; but now we are so few that it is no wonder though the women will do whatsoever they may.’
(In The House of the Wolfings - that is, before the Wolfings came to the Shadowy Vale, and at least a couple of hundred years before ROTM - the army is made up mostly of men, but a few young women choose to join. And a company of the best and bravest young women riders of the Wolfings are used as scouts and messengers by their priestess, who sends them to the other clans of the Goths, the massing war parties, and the boundaries of the wood to spot where the Romans are approaching (after the departure of the fighting men). She tells them all to carry a hidden small sharp dagger in case they are captured by the Romans, who are known to torture captives, so that they can kill themselves if they can't withstand the torture without betraying their people. The story later tells us that this happened to several of the maidens.) The Sun-beam's foster sister Bow-may intended from the first to fight, and takes the first opportunity to ask Face-of-god where he got his extremely good armor, and if she can have some:
She laughed and handled the skirts of his hauberk as she said:
‘Show us the dint in thine helm that the steel axe made this morning.’
‘There is no such great dint,’ said he; ‘my father forged that helm, and his work is better than good.’
‘Yea,’ said Bow-may, ‘and might I have hauberk and helm of his handiwork, and Wood-wise [her brother] a good sword of the same, then were I a glad woman, and this man a happy carle.’
But next we learn that the settled town-dwelling society of Burgdale, which at first seemed like a traditional early medieval setting, enthusiastically accepts the vow of the Bride to dedicate herself to the war god and fight in the battle for her people, and that many other young maidens are inspired to follow her example:
‘Hearken, Iron-face! Chief of the House of the Face, Alderman of the Dale, and ye also, neighbours and goodmen of the Dale: I am a woman called the Bride, of the House of the Steer, and ye have heard that I have plighted my troth to Face-of-god to wed with him, to love him, and lie in his bed. But it is not so: we are not troth-plight; nor will I wed with him, nor any other, but will wend with you to the war, and play my part therein according to what might is in me; nor will I be worser than the wives of Shadowy Vale.’ [...]
‘There is war in the land, and I have seen it coming, and that things shall change around us. I have looked about me and seen men happy and women content, and children weary for mere mirth and joy. And I have thought, in a day, or two days or three, all this shall be changed, and the women shall be, some anxious and wearied with waiting, some casting all hope away; and the men, some shall come back to the garth no more, and some shall come back maimed and useless, and there shall be loss of friends and fellows, and mirth departed, and dull days and empty hours, and the children wandering about marvelling at the sorrow of the house. All this I saw before me, and grief and pain and wounding and death; and I said: Shall I be any better than the worst of the folk that loveth me? Nay, this shall never be; and since I have learned to be deft with mine hands in all the play of war, and that I am as strong as many a man, and as hardy-hearted as any, I will give myself to the Warrior and the God of the Face; and the battle-field shall be my home, and the after-grief of the fight my banquet and holiday, that I may bear the burden of my people, in the battle and out of it; and know every sorrow that the Dale hath; and cast aside as a grievous and ugly thing the bed of the warrior that the maiden desires, and the toying of lips and hands and soft words of desire, and all the joy that dwelleth in the Castle of Love and the Garden thereof; while the world outside is sick and sorry, and the fields lie waste and the harvest burneth. Even so have I sworn, even so will I do.’
[The spokesman of the people responding on their behalf to the Alderman:] 'As for the maiden, she is both lovely and wise. She hath a sorrow at her heart, and we deem that we know what it is. Yet hath she not lied when she said that she would bear the burden of the griefs of the people. Even so shall she do; and whether she will, or whether she will not, that shall heal her own griefs. For to-morrow is a new day. Therefore, if thou do after my rede, thou wilt [...] remember all that we have to do, and that war is coming upon us. And when that is over, we shall turn round and behold each other, and see that we are not wholly what we were before; and then shall that which were hard to forgive, be forgotten, and that which is remembered be easy to forgive.’
On his right were the folk of the House of the Steer: the leader of that House was an old white-bearded man, grandfather of the Bride, for her father was dead; and who but the Bride herself stood beside him in her glorious war-gear, looking as if she were new come from the City of the Gods, thought most men; but those who beheld her closely deemed that she looked heavy-eyed and haggard, as if she were aweary. Nevertheless, wheresoever she passed, and whosoever looked on her (and all men looked on her), there arose a murmur of praise and love; and the women, and especially the young ones, said how fair her deed was, and how meet she was for it; and some of them were for doing on war-gear and faring to battle with the carles; and of these some were sober and solemn, as was well seen afterwards, and some spake lightly: some also fell to boasting of how they could run and climb and swim and shoot in the bow, and fell to baring of their arms to show how strong they were: and indeed they were no weaklings, though their arms were fair.
And finally when the fighters muster we see how many fighting women there are in the whole host: apparently eight, counting the Bride, out of 1 581 fighters from the Dale (Woodlanders and Folk of the Vine ie grape-growers); 50 women out of 235 Children of the Wolf. A sample of the muster scenes:
Then Fork-beard of Lea, a man well on in years, led on the men of the Vine, an hundred and a half and five men thereto; two score of them bare bow in hand and were girt with sword; the rest bore their swords naked in their right hands, and their shields (which were but small bucklers) hanging at their backs, and in the left hand each bore two casting-spears. With these went two doughty women-at-arms among the bowmen, tall and well-knit, already growing brown with the spring sun, for their work lay among the stocks of the vines on the southward-looking bents.
‘War-leader, this is Red-wolf of the Woodlanders leading the men who go under the sign of the War-shaft, to the number of an hundred and two.’
Then he passed on, and his men after him, tall, lean, and silent amidst the shouting. All these men bare bows, for they were keen hunters; each had at his girdle a little axe and a wood-knife, and some had long swords withal. They wore, everyone of the carles, short green surcoats over their coats of fence; but amongst them were three women who bore like weapons to the men, but were clad in red kirtles under their hauberks, which were of good ring-mail gleaming over them from throat to knee.
Of the female fighters, we later learn that another besides the Bride was injured, and Bow-May's hand gets hurt and her bow broken, but she keeps fighting. Morris also portrays them fighting heroically alongside the male warriors in his battle scenes:
There now standeth Bow-may far-sighted and keen-eyed, her face as pale as a linen sleeve, an awful smile on her glittering eyes and close-set lips, and she feeling the twisted string of the red yew and the polished sides of the notch, while the yelling song of the Dusky priests quavers now and ends with a wild shrill cry, and she noteth the midmost of the priests beginning to handle his weapon: then swift and steady she draweth home the notches, while the yew bow standeth still as the oak-bole ere the summer storm ariseth, and the twang of the sixteen strings maketh but one fell sound as the feathered bane of men goeth on its way
But amongst the bowmen forth came the Bride in her glittering war-gear, and stepped lightly to the front of the spearmen. Her own yew bow had been smitten by a shaft and broken in her hand: so she had caught up a short horn bow and a quiver from one of the slain of the Dusky Men; and now she knelt on one knee under the shadow of the spears nigh to her grandsire Hall-ward, and with a pale face and knitted brow notched and loosed, and notched and loosed on the throng of foemen, as if she were some daintily fashioned engine of war.
[A] plummet of sling-lead smote his helm, and he fell to earth; but leapt up again straightway, and heard as he arose a great shout close to him, and a shrill cry, and lo! at his left side Bow-may, her sword in her hand, and the hand red with blood from a shaft-graze on her wrist, and a white cloth stained with blood about her neck; and on his right side Wood-wise bearing the banner and crying the Wolf-whoop; for the whole company was come down from the slope and stood around him.
Now once more was Bow-may by the side of Face-of-god; and if she had not the might of the mightiest, yet had she the deftness of the deftest. And now was she calm and cool, shielding herself with a copper-bossed target, and driving home the point of her sharp sword; white was her face, and her eyes glittered amidst it, and she seemed to men like to those on whose heads the Warrior hath laid the Holy Bread.
