humanities.lit.authors.shakespeare

In article
<0115ea7d-432a-4976-b92c-c1a5eb8f0478@u69g2000hse.googlegroups.com>,
Art Neuendorffer

(aneuendorffer114200@comicass.nut) wrote:

[...]
> The Red-Herring League
> -------------------------------------
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/League_(unit)
> .
> <> America, although no longer an official unit in any nation. The league
> most frequently expresses the distance a person, or a horse,

...or, in the case of the Neufer league, the distance a horse's
hindquarters can walk in an hour...

> can walk
> in 1 hour of time (usually about 3.5 miles or 5.5 kilometres).
[...]
> * Measurements in the Lord of the Rings, by J.R.R.Tolkien, are
> expressed in leagues.

No, Art; only some of the characters (e.g., Gimli the Dwarf) use
leagues. The hobbits themselves (and Gandalf and Aragorn when
traveling with them) generally use miles. E.g., from page 283 of the
Ballantine paperback edition of _The Fellowship of the Ring_, in the
second line one finds

"In this way they coVERed almost twenty miles before
nightfall...[emphasis added]"

Or, on page 388 of the same edition, one finds

" 'There was a door south-west of Caradhras, some fifteen miles as
the
crow flies, and maybe twenty as the wolf runs,' answered Gandalf
grimly."

Or, a few pages later,

"The Company were footsore and tired; but they trudged doggedly
along the rough and winding track for many miles."

You're out of your league, Art.
> ----------------------------------------------------------
> Half a league, half a league,
> Half a league onward,
> All in the valley of Death
> Rode the six hundred.

Line 4 in the second stanza reads, as I recall,

"Someone had blundered:"

As usual, that would be aneuendorffer114200@comicass.nut.

> Art Neuendorffer