When is noon, anyway?

Florian

New Member
"Noon" derives from latin "nona", the ninth hour, which is three post meridiem (excuse the pretentious latin, I didn't want to have to say "noon is three hours after noon"). In the English spoken in our world, the time referred to by that word has moved up three hour to midday, what evidence do we have that referent of the equivalent Westron word has not moved by a similar amount in the other direction? So Bilbo may as well have missed the second breakfast, elevenses, luncheon and the afternoon tea by the time the noon-bell rings.
 
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That does explain the time factor - I've been trying to figure out how early the Council would have to have started to have reached this point by 12 noon. This is late October - my first thought was that it started earlier than I had been thinking, but in late October the sun would not have been bright when Frodo emerged from the house before the Council early enough for that to work at that time of year. But if we're looking at 3:00 PM, it makes much more sense. Thanks for the scholarship.
 
Unfortunately, If we are going to go with Roman time-keeping, we have to remember that the Romans did not have hours of standard length. To the Romans, there were 12 hours between sunrise and sunset, and 12 hours between sunset and sunrise. So, the length of an hour varied by date and latitude, and the length of an hour was different during the day and the night. Only on the equinoxes, would the Roman hours approximate our own.

So, if we use Roman time-keeping for Rivendell on October 25, and estimate that Rivendell is about the same latitude as Oxford, England. Then, on October 25, sunrise will be at 6:47 Greenwich Mean Time, and sunset at 4:50 GMT (ignoring the correction for the fact that Oxford is slightly west of Greenwich). Thus, each hour during the day would be 50.25 minutes long.

So, in Rivendell, 'nones', or the ninth hour during the Council of Elrond, would have started at 14:18pm our time. There would still not have been enough time to cram in the Council of Elrond.

Of course, we have no idea what time 'noon' meant in Elvish timekeeping. It could well be that the Elves used the term 'noon' to signify the start of twilight? (A significant time for them.) Still, JRRT, translating into English, would probably have used some different term if he understood the time of the bell to be anything other than mid-day.

Now, in my opinion, there is no way the Council could have been concluded between its start, and solar noon. (The start must have been what? 8:00? 8:30 at the earliest? Frodo watched the sun rise above the Misty Mountains (later than it would have risen over a flat horizon) before attending the Council, and at the start of the Council, "The light of the clear autumn morning was now glowing in the valley". For the sun to have got that high after a 6:47 sunrise, must have taken more than an hour?) . The Council just cannot be done in 3.5 or 4 hours. If the Elves used (for some reason) Roman time, adding another 2 hours 18 minutes still wouldn't do it in my opinion.

Could it be that the power of Elrond, through his Ring, managed to slow time? Slowing time is a very Elvish and Elvish Ring desire? Galadriel manages to manipulate at least the perception of time, later in Lothlorien.

Did 'noon' mean 'solar noon' (as should be if JRRT's translation was good)? Did Elrond manage to slow time so that at least 8 hours of Council were packed in between 8:00 and 12:00? Could it be that the effect was so subtle that almost no one noticed? Was only Bilbo's belly immune from the effect? When Bilbo made his plea for lunch, was that because in the un-spelled world, it really would have been noon? After that, the Council had to get through Bilbo's tale (without omitting a single riddle); Frodo's tale (with interruptions and questions) Gandalf's tale; and then the whole discussion. That had to take at least 4 hours in normal time? Maybe more?
 
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Flammifer, I think you must be right - manipulating time is such an elfish thing to do - and the Fellowship will experience more markedly in Lorien. The time of year was what I kept running up against, though I didn't go into the detail you did. Elrond could decide on a time for the Council to end, and expand time to make that happen through all the talk.
 
Is the text actually saying that it is noon?

Bilbo says he he misses his meal (which should have been at noon and was seemingly skipped) and would like to postpone further discussion to after dinner (which seemingly should be served any time soon). Dinner is usually served lets say around 7p.m. So this passage suggests to me that it is around 6.30 p.m.

More difficult is the passage after, which says that the noon-bell rang at that moment. One explanation came to my mind when I heard the church bells today. At least here in Bavaria they all ring loud and long every day at 12p.m. Nowadays it might have nostalgic reasons or might tell working people when it is time for lunch break, but traditionally (this is a catholic region) they are a reminder of the "Angelus" - a prayer dedicated to the Virgin Mary which is prayed every day. You can observe that in monasteries, seminaries or shrines.
Now, as Rivendell is a elven pilgrammage site and Elbereth is a figure of Virgin Mary in some way (in ex. compare the Elbereth poem and the Salve Regina prayer) we can draw a parallel here. Knowing that Tolkien was a practicing Catholic, he surely knew the Angelus (and its time) by heart and prayed it at noon, at least when serving in the oratory in his youth. Anyway, what if the noon-bell is not about a specific time but about a specific act? It could be the bell which rings when it is time for the elves to sing or meditate on Elbereth, which is skipped in the text. Well..., maybe the downcasting of eyes as if in deep thought is a sort of prayer to Elbereth (btw. Mary has the title "Lady of Good Counsel").
This theory might be far-fetched but it fits to Tolkiens way of hiding religious references without deleting them in full. Why the translator did translate this bell into noon-bell and not Elbereth-bell or prayer-bells or similar I can't explain. Surely the connection between noon and prayer was stronger in the 1940s. I know, lots of maybes here. Just a theory, not my opinion.
To sum up, maybe the noon-bell is not rung at noon but later during the late afternoon. That would give us enough time for the Council of Elrond.

What do you think?
 
Hi SwallowedUpInVictory,

Good speculations.

In England, (not usually in the USA) 'dinner' is still the word often used for the mid-day meal, and even more so in JRRT's day. I think it is clear that Bilbo is using 'dinner' to mean the noon meal. "I am only an old hobbit, and I miss (not 'missed') my meal at noon. Can't you think of some names now? Or put it off till after dinner"? ('Miss' in this sentence implies, 'I shall miss', or 'I do miss'. 'Missed' would imply, 'I have missed'.)

i like your conflation of Elbereth and the Virgin Mary. However, I think JRRT too good a translator to use 'noon bell' if the bell were not at noon. He could have (as you suggest) translated whatever the original Westron was into something like 'Elbereth bell' instead?

I do think that there is not enough time for the Council between say 8:00 and noon. My explanation is that Elrond played some Elvish magic on time, or the perception of time, so they were able to get 8 hours of Council squeezed into 4 hours.
 
Hi SwallowedUpInVictory,

Good speculations.

In England, (not usually in the USA) 'dinner' is still the word often used for the mid-day meal, and even more so in JRRT's day. I think it is clear that Bilbo is using 'dinner' to mean the noon meal. "I am only an old hobbit, and I miss (not 'missed') my meal at noon. Can't you think of some names now? Or put it off till after dinner"? ('Miss' in this sentence implies, 'I shall miss', or 'I do miss'. 'Missed' would imply, 'I have missed'.)
Thanks for your reply. I am not a native speaker. I guess I got confused by terms such as 'dinner jacket/suit' or 'candelight dinner' which are probably american.
But nevertheless I did a word search for dinner in my digital copy of the fellowship and quite surprisingly it always refers to dinner as a kind of evening meal. See for example the dinner-party at Bilbos feast or Frodos parents dying after dinner at moonlight and the last dinner at Crickhollow. Therefore I still hold on to my theory that Bilbo is talking about the evening meal. Curious that Tolkien uses the word different then most english people would though.

Regarding 'I miss' I understand it like 'I still miss my meal' and not 'I miss out on my meal'. Like when you say 'I miss my mother' if you havent seen her for long.

But I agree with you that noon-bell would be strange as a translation for a bell rung in the late afternoon. Except when you read about the etymology of the word noon. It comes from Latin none which is the ninth hour which is a special praying time, especially in medieval time. At that hour Jesus supposedly did his last prayer and died. The latins translated it with 3p.m. Which brings us closer but still is not right before supper and so doesnt help us as much.
But more interesting is that the christian ninth hour actually goes back to the judaic ninth hour, the evening praying time, an hour where JHW is especially responsive to prayers throughout the old testament. So etymologically speaking the none-bell is an evening bell. And even more interesting is that at the ninth judaic hour the sacrifices were celebrated in Jerusalem (which makes the death of Jesus at that hour and at passover so symbolic). at just that time Frodo decides to go on a self-sacrificial journey for worlds' benefit. I wonder how much Tolkien knew of this.
Noon/none was connected to praying for many populations throughout history whether it was to God or to Mary. Maybe it is similar in Middle-earth
 
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I agricultural societies, the main meals are early in the day - before and after hard work in the fields, sustenance is needed, and with early hours, a lighter meal at night makes more sense. So it would make sense that in the Shire, the noon meal would be called dinner. Nowadays, dinner is usually an evening meal - and if you're really posh, it's long after farmers have gone to bed.
 
Jewish people, at the time of Christ (and before) used the same system of hours as the Romans, with 12 hours during the day, and 12 hours during the night. This means that the length of hours varied according to the season and the latitude. Placing the 'ninth hour' at 3:00 PM our time is an inaccurate approximation.

If we place Rivendell at the latitude of Oxford, then, on the date of the Council, (October 25), sunrise would be at
6:47 AM, and sunset at 4:50 PM. Thus, each hour during the day would be 50.25 minutes long. That would make 2:18PM (our time) the ninth hour in Rivendell. Still not enough time for the Council, assuming it started at 8:00 or 8:30 AM.

However, there is a complication in Jewish time. Although the Vilna Gaon, and Rabbi Hai Gaon held that the daylight hours started at sunrise, and finished at sunset (the Roman practice), most Jewish law considered the daylight hours to begin at dawn, and end when the first three stars were visible in the sky at night.

If we use the more common Jewish definition of the beginning and end of the daytime hours, then day (on October 25 at the latitude of Oxford) would begin at 5:35 AM and end at 5:04 PM (our time). This would make each daylight hour 57.4 minutes long, and the ninth hour would be 2:12 PM (our time). (The sixth hour, or 'noon' would be 11:19 AM our time.) Even less time for the Council of Elrond.

We know that the Council cannot have started until at least 8:00 AM our time, perhaps later? Frodo watched the sun rise above the Misty Mountains (later than it would have risen over a flat horizon) before attending the Council, and at the start of the Council, "The light of the clear autumn morning was now glowing in the valley". For the sun to have got that high after a 6:47 sunrise, must have taken more than an hour?

So, I don't think the Jewish definition of hours helps us any in figuring out the time consumption of the Council of Elrond.
 
Of course saying that jewish ninth hour was in the evening and different to european ninth hour doesnt make sense. What I should have said is that medieval theologians always connected the ninth hour to the jewish evening prayer time (even though noon was around 3p.m.). I thought about editing my post last night but then I forgot about it. Sorry that I didnt expresss myself clear here.

So we are not talking about a physical equivalence but of a metaphysical interpretation which lead to the connection of none/noon and evening in the middle ages. How exactly that came to be I dont really know but I guess that theologians connected Jesus' hour of death with the sacrificial hour in the evening. Maybe the connection was emphasized by the darkness that came over the whole land at Easter Friday.

So the transitions would be: noon-bell -> none-bell -> afternoon-prayer-bell -> jesus-hour-of-death-bell -> sacrifice-time-bell -> evening-bell
Hence noon-bell could be a bell to remind people of praying and self sacrifice that is rung in the evening

This argumentation is fun but cannot be seriously defended in my opinion. But then I find it strange that Bilbo seems to use the word dinner here as a kind of lunch but in the rest of the book it is used as an evening meal.
 
Looking at the etymology of the word ‘dinner’ we get a wealth of information.

Etymonline - Dinner

This means that it is simply the first large meal of the day, with it originally coming from a term that transliterates to ‘breakfast’.

Thus, the use of the word dinner doesn’t exactly help us determine the time. If the noon-bell rang at around 2pm then the meal served would likely be fairly large if no other food was served between breakfast and that time.

So, it might fit and provide an extra two hours for the Council compared to our current thinking as to when noon occurs.
 
A word about the Jewish evening prayer. There are actually two services that nowadays are generally prayed together, one immediately following the other. First is the afternoon prayer, then the evening prayer service. They are usually prayed together these days for convenience gathering a minyan (10 men needed for certain prayers to be said). Daily prayer can be done by individuals alone, but especially for mourners in the first year after the death of a family member, and for those observing the anniversary of a death, a minyan is gathered since these prayers can only be prayed with a minyan. But this convenience of putting the two services together often means that the eveing prayer is said before the sun goes down.
 
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