Tolkien Studies: An Annual Scholarly Review (Volume I, 2004)

Editors’ Introduction

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his is the first issue of Tolkien Studies, a refereed journal dedicated to the scholarly study of the works of J. R. R. Tolkien. Tolkien Studies is the first academic journal solely devoted to Tolkien. As editors, our goal is to publish excellent scholarship on Tolkien as well as to gather useful research information, reviews, notes, and documents. With the exception of a lead article in each issue (solicited from acknowledged experts in the field) all articles published have been subject to anonymous, external review. All articles require a positive judgment from the Editors before being sent to reviewers, and articles that the Editors agreed upon had to receive at least one positive evaluation from an external referee in order to be published. In the cases of articles by individuals associated with the journal in any way, each article had to receive at least two positive evaluations from two different outside reviewers. All identifying information was removed from the articles before they were sent to the reviewers, and all reviewer comments were likewise anonymously conveyed to the authors of the articles. The Editors agreed to be bound by the recommendations of the outside referees. Douglas A. Anderson Michael D. C. Drout Verlyn Flieger Tolkien Studies encourages researchers to send us offprints of articles for inclusion in the yearly Bibliography and Year’s Work. These, and copies of books for review, should be sent to: Tolkien Studies c/o Prof. Michael D. C. Drout Wheaton College Norton, MA 02026 Electronic submissions should be sent to any of the following Douglas A. Anderson <[email protected]>: Michael D. C. Drout <[email protected]> Verlyn Flieger

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Acknowledgments The Editors would like to thank Wheaton College, Norton, MA, for institutional, technical, and clerical support. Editorial assistants Laura Kalafarski, Stefanie Olsen, and Mariah Herbst were instrumental in bringing the first issue to press as were Marilyn Todesco and Ken Davignon. Thanks also to Vaughn Howland and Patrick Conner.

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Conventions and Abbreviations Because there are so many editions of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, citations will be by book and chapter as well as by page-number (referenced to the editions listed below). Thus a citation from The Fellowship of the Ring, book two, chapter four, page 318 is written (FR, II, iv, 318). The Silmarillion indicates the body of stories and poems developed over many years by Tolkien; The Silmarillion indicates the volume published in 1977. Abbreviations B&C

Beowulf and the Critics. Michael D. C. Drout, ed. Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies 248. Tempe, AZ: Arizona Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, 2002.

Bombadil

The Adventures of Tom Bombadil and other verses from the Red Book. London: George Allen & Unwin, 1962.

FR

The Fellowship of the Ring. London: George Allen & Unwin, 1954.Second edition, revised impression, Boston: Houghton Mifflin,1987.

H

The Hobbit. London: George Allen & Unwin, 1937. Fiftieth anniversary edition, Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1987.

Jewels

The War of the Jewels. Christopher Tolkien, ed. London: HarperCollins; Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1994.

Lays

The Lays of Beleriand. Christopher Tolkien, ed. London: George Allen & Unwin; Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1985.

Letters

The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien. Humphrey Carpenter, ed. with the assistance of Christopher Tolkien. London: George Allen & Unwin; Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1981.

Lost Road

The Lost Road and Other Writings Christopher Tolkien, ed. London: Unwin Hyman; Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1987.

Lost Tales I

The Book of Lost Tales, Part One. Christopher Tolkien, ed. London: George Allen & Unwin, 1983; Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1984. vii

Lost Tales II The Book of Lost Tales, Part Two. Christopher Tolkien, ed. London: George Allen & Unwin; Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1984. LotR

The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien; the work itself irrespective of edition.

MC

The Monsters and the Critics and Other Essays. London: George Allen & Unwin, 1983; Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1984.

Morgoth

Morgoth’s Ring. Edited by Christopher Tolkien. London: HarperCollins; Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1993.

PS

Poems and Stories. London: George Allen & Unwin, 1980; Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1994.

Peoples

The Peoples of Middle-earth. Christopher Tolkien, ed. London: HarperCollins; Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1996.

RK

The Return of the King. London: George Allen & Unwin 1955. Second edition, revised impression, Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1987.

S

The Silmarillion. Christopher Tolkien, ed. London: George Allen & Unwin; Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1977.

Sauron

Sauron Defeated. Christopher Tolkien, ed. London: HarperCollins; Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1992.

Shadow

The Return of the Shadow. Christopher Tolkien, ed. London: Unwin Hyman; Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1988.

Shaping

The Shaping of Middle-earth. Christopher Tolkien, ed. London: George Allen & Unwin; Boston Houghton Mifflin, 1986.

TL

Tree and Leaf. London: Unwin Books, 1964. Second edition, London: Unwin Hyman, 1988; Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1989.

TT

The Two Towers. London: George Allen & Unwin, 1954. Second edition, revised impression. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1987.

Treason

The Treason of Isengard. Christopher Tolkien, ed. London: Unwin Hyman; Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1989.

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UT

Unfinished Tales of Númenor and Middle-earth. Christopher Tolkien, ed. London: George Allen & Unwin; Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1980.

War

The War of the Ring. Christopher Tolkien, ed. London: Unwin Hyman; Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1990.

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Light-elves, Dark-elves, and Others: Tolkien’s Elvish Problem

TOM SHIPPEY

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n chapter 15 of C. S. Lewis’s 1938 novel Out of the Silent Planet, Elwin Ransom the philologist for the first time encounters a sorn, one of the tall, intellectual species that inhabits the highlands of Mars. They fall into a discussion of Oyarsa, the spiritual being who rules the planet, and Augray the sorn tells him that Oyarsa is an eldil. The eldila seem insubstantial to humans and Martians, Augray explains, but this is a mistake. The eldila can go through walls and doors not because they themselves are insubstantial but because to them our material world is insubstantial. “These things are not strange,” says Augray, “though they are beyond our senses. But it is strange that the eldila never visit Thulcandra”—Thulcandra being “the silent planet” itself, Earth: “‘Of that I am not certain,’ said Ransom. It had dawned on him that the recurrent human tradition of bright, elusive people appearing on the earth—albs, devas, and the like—might after all have another explanation than the anthropologists had yet given.” What, one may well ask, are “albs” and “devas”? The second word presents no difficulties. If one looks it up in the Oxford English Dictionary, the sense given for “deva,” entirely appropriately for the context above, is “‘a bright, shining one’. . . a god, a divinity; one of the good spirits of Hindu mythology.” All the OED has to offer for “alb,” however, is that it is a tunic or ecclesiastical vestment, while “albs” does not occur at all. Tolkien’s connections with this passage are multiple. In the first place it is generally agreed that Elwin Ransom is an affectionate portrait of Tolkien himself. In the second place, the whole novel is now known to have grown out of the famous agreement by Tolkien and Lewis, in 1936, to write separate fictions, Lewis taking the theme of space-travel and Tolkien that of time-travel.1 Tolkien’s contribution was never finished or published in his lifetime, seeing print eventually first as “The Lost Road” and then as “The Notion Club Papers,” in volumes V and VIII respectively of “The History of Middle-earth.”2 In both, the name Elwin, or forms of it such as Alwyn or Alboin, are significant.3 However, the immediate connection with the passage above is that “albs” is surely a word borrowed by Lewis from Tolkien, perhaps in conversation. *albs is in fact the unrecorded and hypothetical, or “reconstructed” ProtoCopyright © 2004, by West Virginia University Press

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Tom Shippey Germanic form of the word which descends into English as “elf,” into Old English as ælf, into Old Norse as álfr, into Middle High German as alp, and so on. It then makes an entirely suitable match with “deva,” being mythological, widespread, and bearing witness to a human attempt to label some phenomenon outside their normal comprehension. Only Tolkien is likely to have told Lewis such a thing. It would be entirely typical of Lewis, whose recorded remarks show several errors in Old English morphology, though he taught the subject at Magdalen College,4 to mis-hear it, and to assume the -s was a plural ending, so making “alb-s” (wrongly) parallel with “deva-s.” What the word and the passage show is that Tolkien had considered the whole problem of the variant forms of “elf ” in Germanic languages, and presumably talked about it. It must have been a topic of Inkling conversation, one of several we can infer from cross-comparison of Lewis’s, Tolkien’s, Williams’s, and Barfield’s works (and possibly others as well). If Tolkien had considered the problem, we may again well ask what conclusions he had come to, and what further problems in the conflicting traditions of North-West Europe he would have encountered. The purpose of this essay is to suggest that it was indeed in these problems— even more than in the traditions—that Tolkien found inspiration for his fiction in the various versions of the Silmarillion, and eventually in sections of The Lord of the Rings. The problems take a certain amount of explanation. One may begin with the thought, fundamental to the early investigators of comparative philology and mythology, that if a word existed in several “cognate,” i.e., clearly related but nevertheless independent, forms in different languages, then the word and presumably the concept behind it must go back to a time before the languages separated from each other: the word and idea of “elf,” then is quite literally immemorially old.5 But how does one then cope with the fact that the different linguistic and cultural traditions often seem to have quite different ideas of what the word means? Does this just mean that the word never did have any clear, agreed, stable referent (probably because the whole thing was pure fantasy, “just mythical,” made-up from nothing)? Such an answer makes good sense, but was entirely unacceptable to Tolkien. This is the opinion of “the anthropologists” which Lewis’s Ransom suddenly finds himself doubting.6 Or is it the case that we have not understood the data? That we need to think differently, as Augray the sorn tells Ransom he must rethink the idea of eldila? This was the view of Tolkien and the Inklings. The data as regards elves had been known to investigators, at least in great part, since well before Tolkien’s time.7 There are some ten words for “elf ” in Old English, the male and female forms ælf and ælfen, and the compound words land-, dún-, feld-, munt-, sæ-, wæter-, wudu-, and possibly

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Light-elves, Dark-elves, and Others berg-ælfen, or, more rarely, -ælf, i.e., “hill-, land-, field-, mountain-, sea-, water-, wood-,” and once again “mountain-elf.” These look promisingly precise and varied, but are in fact almost always glosses, words written in over a Latin text to translate a hard word in Latin, in this case and respectively to items four to nine in the list above castalides, moides, oreades, naiades, nymphae, and dryades. The simplest explanation is that an AngloSaxon translator long ago, stumped for an equivalent to “naiad, nymph, dryad,” decided not unreasonably to solve all his problems at once and create “sea-elf, water-elf, wood-elf,” etc. Meanwhile Anglo-Saxon medical or magic texts throw up another run of more interesting if more threatening compounds, such as ælfadl, wæterælfadl, ælfsiden, ælfsogo∂a, the names of “elf-diseases” like (it has been suggested) chicken-pox, dropsy, lunacy, epilepsy, anaemia.8 The last is a guess from ælfsogo∂a, “elf-sucking,” and indicates that one way elves were thought to work their damage was by a kind of vampirism, while we also hear several times of “elf-shot” or ylfa gescot, which implies a belief (perhaps illustrated in one of these texts) in invisible disease-bearing darts. Elves also appear to have been associated with sexual temptation. Several charms associate the elves with nihtgengan, “night-walkers,” with “temptations of the fiend” and with †am mannum †e deofol mid hæm∂, “the people the devil has sex with.” It is not surprising that Anglo-Saxon elves are commonly called “malignant” by modern scholars.9 And yet it is a compliment for a woman to be called ælfsciene, “elf-beautiful,” and Anglo-Saxons stubbornly continued to give their children names like Ælf-wine, Ælf-red, Ælf-stan, and so on, “Elf-friend, Elf-counsel, Elf-stone.” Some of the names, like the common Alfred and the rare Elwin (as in Elwin Ransom), have remained in use to this day, though no longer with any sense of their meaning, and some of the beliefs about sexually alluring elves, elf-hills, and elf-changelings also lasted into the modern period. The Scandinavian tradition is even more well-attested, though not as old, and on the face of it rather different. The álfar are mentioned thirty times in the poems of the Elder Edda, though in a rather restricted list of uses: usually they occur in association with either the Æsir, the pagan gods, or with the iötnar, the giants, as if to imply universality: “everyone knows it, elves and gods,” “tell me its name among the elves, tell me its name among the giants,” and so on. There are hints of meaning in the poems of the Elder Edda, as there are here and there in sagas. But the work which attracted most attention from the beginning of modern investigation, and which seemed closest to giving answers of the thoroughness and complexity which philologists demanded, was the Prose Edda of Snorri Sturluson, the nearest thing we have to a mythical handbook of pre-Christian belief. Commentators often forget that Snorri was not writing a pagan text. He wrote his work in the 1230s, by which time Iceland had been Christian 3

Tom Shippey for more than two centuries, and Snorri’s own family had been Christian for six generations. He knew no more about what pagans really did, or really thought, than we would about the folk-beliefs of the eighteenth century. His work was in essence an attempt to explain poetic diction, the phrases used and allusions made in traditional poetry, but to do this he had to tell stories, often about the gods, giants, elves, dwarves, and other supernatural creatures of the pre-Christian world. The connected nature (and the literary power) of what Snorri wrote perhaps aroused unreal expectations in his first modern admirers, for what Snorri says about elves is hard to make out. He invariably uses álfr as a compound, one of these being Álfheim or “Elf-home.” But every other time he uses álfr, he prefixes it with a word of color, ljós-, dökk-, or svart-, i.e., “light-elves,” “dark-elves,” “black-elves.” A critical passage is this one: Sá er einn sta∂r †ar er kalla∂r er Álfheimr. ˇar byggvir fólk †at er ljósálfar heita, en dökkálfar búa ni∂ri í jör∂u, ok eru †eir ólíkir †eim sønum en myklu ólíkari reyndum. Ljósálfar eru fegri en sól sønum, en dökkálfar eru svartari en bik. There is one place that is called Alfheim. There live the folk called light-elves, but dark-elves live down in the ground, and they are unlike them in appearance, and even more unlike them in nature. Light-elves are fairer than the sun to look at, but dark-elves are blacker than pitch.10 What Snorri says is clear and unequivocal, but it raises an immediate problem. “Dark-elves” (dökkálfar), he says, are “black” (svart). Surely that means that they are “black-elves” (svartálfar)? But everywhere else in Snorri’s work, it is clear that when he says “black-elves” (svartálfar), he means “dwarves”: Odin sends Skirnir í Svartálfaheim til dverga nokkurra, “to the home of the black-elves to certain dwarfs,” and Loki too goes into Svartálfaheim where he too “comes across a dwarf.” There is a simple explanation here, which is that while Snorri identifies four groups, lightelves, dark-elves, black-elves, and dwarves, there are really only two: the last three are just different names for the same group. The first group, meanwhile, are very like angels, or for that matter eldila—these are Lewis’s “albs”—while the last group have been made to seem faintly diabolic, quite like the Anglo-Saxon elves of the medical textbooks, indeed. This line of thought has the blessing of being clear, and of not multiplying entities, but it was once again quite unacceptable to early investigators, including Tolkien: it meant, in effect, throwing away their best text, just as my suggestion about a baffled Anglo-Saxon translator above meant saying that dún-ælf and the rest were just “ghost-words,” with no real meaning in Anglo-Saxon culture. Neither proposal has been popular, and Tolkien devoted considerable fictional energy to providing 4

Light-elves, Dark-elves, and Others more face-saving refutations to both. It is not absolutely clear when Tolkien focused for the first time on what we may call the “elf-problem.” When he did do so, though, it would be natural for him to look at what “the authorities” said, and entirely characteristic of him (as happens so often with Tolkien and the OED) then to found a theory on profound disagreement with scholarly opinion, and to make a determined attempt to protect the original sources, if necessary by explaining how they could have been mistaken. The author of Sir Gawain, after all, or perhaps the scribe who copied him, had made the same mistake as C. S. Lewis, taking a singular ending in -s to be a plural, writing wodwos for what should have been *wodwosen. It was the job of the true scholar, Tolkien thought—he exemplifies it frequently in his edition of the Old English Exodus and the “Finnsburg” poems—to rescue poems and myths from their careless or uncomprehending scribes and annotators. And this is what he tried to do, in my opinion, with the elves. The original sources mentioned above had been known to scholars for centuries, if with very little original circulation. Snorri’s Prose Edda, for instance, had been edited by the Dane Peter Resen (Resenius) as early as 1664, while the Old English medical texts and glosses had been discovered at various times up to the 1830s. The “elf-problem,” however, did not surface until scholars began to ask themselves not just about the words, but about what they represented. And here two famous scholars, in particular, are likely to have attracted Tolkien’s attention. The first was the Dane, N.F.S. Grundtvig (1783-1872). There are several reasons why Tolkien might have paid careful attention to him. Nikolai Grundtvig was, for one thing, the first person in modern times to read Beowulf intelligently. (It was he, for instance, alone of the first seven reviewers of the first modern edition of the poem, Grímur Thorkelín’s of 1815, who realized that the poem began with a funeral, not a Viking raid as the editor had thought.) He continued to be an active scholar for nearly sixty years after that, with particular interest in Beowulf, in Old English, and in Northern mythology. But even more importantly, Grundtvig did for Denmark what Tolkien would have liked to do for England: he gave it a history and a mythology founded on ancient sources, but released again into national life and national politics by his popular writings, his many songs and hymns, and his creation of the Grundtvig High Schools with their avowed aim of protecting national culture, primarily from German encroachment.11 Grundtvig in Denmark, Lönnrot of the Kalevala in Finland: if Tolkien ever had “role-models,” they would be these. Grundtvig’s first book on mythology, Nordens Mytologi, was published in 1808, at which point works like Beowulf were still unpublished. Grundtvig rewrote the work as (different spelling) Nordens Mythologi in 1832, and in

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Tom Shippey this he turned his attention to “Vætter, Alfer, og Dværge,” “Wights, Elves, and Dwarves”; he was, I believe, the first to note and be concerned about Snorri’s inconsistencies in the Prose Edda, as noted above. His solution was to go part of the way toward the reductionist four-groups-down-to-two model outlined above, with one significant compromise. Light-elves were obviously angelic, and black-elves were evidently dwarves, but perhaps dark-elves were different from both: Alfer var det gamle Nordens Engle, og Dværgene kun et Mellem-Slags af dem: hverken Lys-Alfer eller Mörk-Alfer, men saa at sige Skumrings-Alfer. Elves were the angels of the ancient North, and dwarves only a middle grade of them: neither light-elves nor darkelves, but so to speak elves of the twilight.12 The trouble with this otherwise neat solution, one might say, is that it puts black-elves in between the other two groups, where one might expect them to be a limiting term. But it does introduce the rather attractive idea of Skumrings-Alfer, “elves of the twilight.” Jacob Grimm’s Deutsche Mythologie, the first edition of which was published in 1835, may have owed more to Grundtvig’s pioneering work than Grimm was prepared to admit. The philological battle-lines were already drawn up—they were to become real battle-lines in the two Prusso-Danish wars over Schleswig-Holstein, or Slesvig-Holsten, in 1850-51 and 1864—with the Germans, and Grimm in particular, claiming that Scandinavian languages were really just a branch of “Germanic,” with the Eddas and sagas in effect common intellectual property, and Scandinavian scholars replying furiously that Scandinavia had a right to cultural as well as political autonomy. It was a problem and an annoyance for Grimm that the Middle High German word for “elf ” seemed to have been lost, to be replaced in modern German by a borrowing from English, Elfe, Elfen. Grimm dealt with this by deleting the latter from his Deutsches Wörterbuch or “German Dictionary” and inserting a modernized version of the former: Elb, Elbe. But he too was bothered by Snorri, though his solution was significantly worse than Grundtvig’s, vague and indecisive. I give it below, in sections, in Grimm’s German and in the translation of J. S. Stallybrass, with my own attempts to explain what he meant interpolated: Man findet in dem Gegensatz der lichten und schwarzen elbe den dualismus, der auch in anderen mythologien zwischen guten und bösen, freundlichen und feindlichen, himlischen und höllischen geistern, zwischen engel des lichts und der finsternis aufgestellt wird. (Grimm 1:368) 6

Light-elves, Dark-elves, and Others Some have seen, in this antithesis of light and black elves, the same Dualism that other mythologies have set up between spirits good and bad, friendly and hostile, heavenly and hellish, between angels of light and of darkness. (Stallybrass 2: 444-5) Grimm is here, I think, contradicting Grundtvig without mentioning him. He feels that Grundtvig has abandoned Snorri’s tripartite division too readily: Sollten aber nicht drei arten nordischer genien anzunehmen sein: liosálfar, döckálfar, svartálfar? But ought we not rather to assume three kinds of Norse genii, liosálfar, döckálfar, svartálfar? The trouble with this is Snorri’s statement above that dark-elves are black, which would lead to the first reduction, dark-elves = black-elves. But Grimm cannot accept this because he knows it would lead on to black-elves = dwarves. He therefore continues: ich erkläre damit freilich Snorris satz “döckálfar eru svartari en bik” für irreleitend. No doubt I am thereby pronouncing Snorri’s statement fallacious: “dark-elves are blacker than pitch.” The easiest way out at this stage is to say, rather unconvincingly, that maybe Snorri was half-right, did not choose his words carefully, at any rate has to be overruled: döckr scheint mir weniger das entschieden schwarze, als das trübe, finstere; nicht niger, sondern obscurus, fuscus, aquilus. Döckr seems to me not so much downright black as dim, dingy; not niger but obscurus, fuscus, aquilus. Grimm backs this up with a sentence about a reference to dwarves and a dwarf name that contain or resemble the word iarpr, “dark,” which actually does not seem to help his case that dark-elves are different from black-elves and dwarves, but concludes that rejecting Snorri’s one-off statement on the whole saves more trouble than it creates: dann bliebe die gleichstellung der zwerge und schwarzelbe gültig, aber auch jener alteddische unterschied zwischen zwergen und dunkelelben gerechtfertigt.

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Tom Shippey In that case the identity of dwarfs and black elves would still hold good, and at the same time the Old Eddic distinction between dwarfs and dark elves be justified. Grimm then embarks on a lengthy search for other references in German story to tripartite color-systems, but ends abruptly, perhaps aware of his own inconclusiveness: Festgehalten werden muss die identität der svartálfar und dvergar. One thing we must not let go: the identity of svartálfar and dvergar. Snorri can be trusted, then, when he says something Grimm is prepared to accept, but has to be ruled out when his statement is unwelcome. I believe that Tolkien must have read this passage in the most familiar account of Northern mythology and was probably annoyed by it. However, along with Snorri and Grundtvig and the other Old English texts mentioned above, Grimm’s argument does raise a whole sequence of problems which cry out for some better solution. I would list them as follows: 1) 2) 3) 4) 5)

What are light-elves and dark-elves, and what is the difference between them if it is not a matter of color? If it is not a matter of color, why does Snorri say that dark-elves are black? If dwarves are different from elves, as almost all early evidence agrees, then why call them black-elves? What are all these Old English groups, like wood-elves and seaelves, and where do they fit in? Is there anything to be said for Grundtvig’s idea that there may have been “elves of the twilight”?

Anyone familiar with The Silmarillion can see how clearly and incisively, if imaginatively, Tolkien was in the end to answer these questions. Did he have the questions, if not the answers, in mind from the beginning? He was to say of himself at one point, with reference to ents, “As usually with me, they grew rather out of their name, than the other way about” (Letters 313), and I would suggest that the same may be true of Tolkien’s elves. One of the starting points of his whole developed mythology was this problem in nomenclature, this apparent contradiction in ancient texts and in one ancient text in particular, a problem made only more challenging by the groping attempts of earlier scholars to solve it. 8

Light-elves, Dark-elves, and Others However, as the twelve volumes of The History of Middle-earth have made abundantly clear, it was also characteristic of Tolkien to edge up on the solution to a problem through several or many stages of dissatisfaction. The Book of Lost Tales thus does not, as far as I can see, contain the basic distinction later to be made between Light-elves and Dark-elves: such references as are indexed are to later stages of Tolkien’s conception. There is however an interesting passage in Lost Tales I which suggests that Tolkien was already considering the terms, and was perhaps aware of Grundtvig’s compromise solution quoted above. In “Gilfanon’s Tale,” just after the first mention of “Dark Elves,” we are told of “a certain fay . . . Tu the wizard”: wandering about the world he found the . . . Elves and drew them to him and taught them many deep things, and he became as a mighty king among them, and their tales name him the Lord of Gloaming and all the fairies of his realm Hisildi or the twilight people. The missing word in the phrase “the . . . Elves” above, Christopher Tolkien reports, could be either “dim” or “dun” (Lost Tales I 244). “Dun” would correspond to one of the Anglo-Saxon glossary words noted above, but “dim” is one of Grimm’s suggestions, at least as translated by Stallybrass.13 Meanwhile “Gloaming” is a good translation of the first word in Grundtvig’s phrase Skumrings-Alfer, but “twilight people” is used as well. Perhaps Tolkien had already rejected the concept “black-elves,” looking on this as an uninformed variant on “dwarves,” as it seems to be, but at this point had no explanation of “dark-elves” other than to say that they were only to be glimpsed at twilight. The index of Lost Tales II supports the suggestion that Tolkien was groping, for there one finds ten different groups of elves, but not yet “Light-elves.” The tale of “The Fall of Gondolin” already has the character of Meglin (later Maeglin), son of Eöl, but very little is said of the latter other than “that tale of Isfin and Eöl may not here be told” (165). “The Lay of the Fall of Gondolin,” included among the “Poems Early Abandoned” in The Lays of Beleriand, goes a little further in describing the capture of Isfin by Eöl: “that she ever since hath been / his mate in Doriath’s forest, where she weepeth in the gloam; / for the Dark Elves were his kindred that wander without home” (146). But though the idea of a White Lady glimpsed in the half-light was to remain through to The Silmarillion, there is no further advance on the dark/light distinction. Tolkien seems to have no clear idea of what a “dark-elf ” is, in which, of course, he is in agreement with his predecessors; and the term “light-elves” is not used at all. This last was to change with the writing of “The Earliest 9

Tom Shippey Silmarillion,” in the late 1920s, where we find (Shaping 13) the division of the Eldar into three groups, “Light-elves,” “Deep-elves,” and “Seaelves,” corresponding closely though not exactly to the Vanyar, Noldor, and Teleri of The Silmarillion. The real breakthrough comes, however, in the “Quenta” of 1930. Here we find that the Quendi, led by Ingwë, are “the Light-elves,” the Noldoli, led by Finwë, are “the Deep-elves,” and the Teleri, led by Elwë, are “the Sea-elves” (Shaping 85). A vital addition, though, is that “many of the elfin race were lost upon the long dark roads . . . and never came to Valinor, nor saw the light of the Two Trees. . . . The Dark-elves are they.” One might note at this time the use of the invented Anglo-Saxon terms Léohtelfe, deorc-elf[e],14 in “The Earliest Annals of Valinor” (Shaping 286, 288), words which correspond exactly to Snorri’s ljósálfar, dökkálfar. This decision to make the light/dark distinction not a matter of color, as Grimm had tacitly assumed, was a brilliant stroke, rather like Augray the sorn explaining the eldila. But one result was that it left Eöl, identified already as a Dark Elf, see above, without any clear mark of distinction. He is mentioned in both “The Earliest Silmarillion” and the “Quenta” as “the Dark-elf Eöl” (Shaping 34, 136, with variant spellings), but in both cases this could just mean that he is a Dark-elf, one of the Dark-elves: there is nothing particular to mark him out. His son Meglin, though, is picked out as “swart” (Shaping 141), a word that goes back to Lost Tales I (165), as if Tolkien had not yet quite abandoned hope of reconciling Snorri’s dökkálfar and svartálfar —could Eöl be seen as “a” Dark-elf, but also “the” Swart-elf ? This hint was never taken up, and indeed may never have been in Tolkien’s mind, but as so often with Tolkien, it seems that for him to solve one problem was to generate another. Tolkien was to develop his basic distinction between those who had and those who had not seen the Light of the Two Trees in “The Lhammas” and “The Quenta Silmarillion” (see Lost Road 197, 215), while some of his terminology became canonical in the familiar passage from chapter 8 of The Hobbit, published in 1937, about the Wood-elves: “more dangerous and less wise” than “the High Elves of the West,” these latter further particularized as “the Light-elves and the Deep-elves and the Sea-elves.” As for the Wood-elves, they: lingered in the twilight of our Sun and Moon, but loved best the stars; and they wandered in the great forests that grew tall in lands that are now lost. They dwelt most often by the edges of the woods, from which they would escape at times to hunt, or to ride and run over the open lands by moonlight or starlight, and after the coming of Men they took more and more to the gloaming and the dusk.15

10

Light-elves, Dark-elves, and Others They are, in other words, very much Skumrings-Alfer, twilight-elves. At this stage, one might say, Tolkien had settled the first and fifth of the questions outlined above and made space for a solution to the fourth. The other two, however, remained quite obscure: why dark-elves might be black, as Snorri reported, and what if anything they had to do with dwarves. Both are nevertheless settled firmly and even convincingly by the re-organization of the story of Eöl, Dark Elf par excellence, in chapter 16 of the Silmarillion. It is astonishing how much of previous speculation is taken up and dealt with on pages 132-3 of that work. We learn first that Eöl “was named the Dark Elf,” and here it is his personal appellation, not just a generic description. The reason he is “the Dark Elf ” is that he has left Doriath for Nan Elmoth, and “there he lived in deep shadow, loving the night and the twilight under the stars.” He resents in particular the Noldor among the Light-elves, as usurpers, “but for the Dwarves he had more liking than any other of the Elvenfolk of old.” From them he learns metalwork and devises a metal of his own. “He named it galvorn, for it was black and shining like jet, and he was clad in it whenever he went abroad.” His son Maeglin is called (by his mother) Lómion, “Child of the Twilight.” From these few sentences one could construct a story which would explain all that Snorri says, without corroborating it. It would not be true that there were three kinds of elf, for there were no “black-elves,” no svartálfar at all. Just the same, in later story someone might well think there were, for while there were no “black-elves,” there was an elf always dressed in black, whom someone might have labeled “the Black Elf.” Similarly, this svartálfr was certainly not a dwarf, but was associated with them and shared some of their characteristics, like the fascination with metalwork. Again, in careless repetition “like” could become “the same as.” Finally, there may be no such generic term as a Skumrings-Alf or “twilight elf,” but if Maeglin is “Child of the Twilight,” then his father might again, mistakenly, be heard as “the twilight,” especially as that is the time he goes abroad. One may at this point see the force of Christopher Tolkien’s repeated statements that the Silmarillion was seen all along by his father as a “compendium,” which needs to be read from the point of view of someone looking back at events from a much later period.16 A text, to Tolkien Sr., was not just the words on the page one happened to be reading, it was also the whole history of how the words got there—a history, in many of the works he devoted his professional life to studying, of misunderstanding and downright error. One might paraphrase by saying that Tolkien (like Grimm) was prepared to say that Snorri Sturluson had just got it wrong. But unlike Grimm he insisted on providing a story to explain how Snorri got it wrong, and to make that explanation plausible and even natural. In much the same way, Tolkien approached the oddly contradictory Anglo-Saxon accounts, where descriptions of malignant elves contrasted 11

Tom Shippey with a seeming deep-rooted respect for them. In The Lord of the Rings he confronts this problem at least three times. The feeling that elves are dangerous is expressed first by Boromir, who does not want to enter the Golden Wood of Lothlórien, because “of that perilous land we have heard in Gondor, and it is said that few come out who once go in; and of that few none have escaped unscathed” (FR, II, vi, 353). Aragorn corrects Boromir, but does not entirely deny what he says. Boromir’s feelings are then echoed by Éomer (TT, III, ii, 34-35), who uses “elvish” to mean “uncanny,” and also believes the Lady of the Wood to be some kind of sorceress. This time Gimli corrects him. Just the same, though both men are misinformed, there is a basis for their fear and suspicion, as Sam Gamgee points out. When Faramir, wiser than his brother, nevertheless hints that Galadriel must be “perilously fair,” Sam picks up the implied criticism and half-agrees with it: “I don’t know about perilous. . . . It strikes me that folk takes their peril with them into Lórien, and finds it there because they’ve brought it. But perhaps you could call her perilous, because she’s so strong in herself. You, you could dash yourself to pieces on her, like a ship on a rock; or drownd yourself, like a hobbit in a river. But neither rock nor river would be to blame” (TT, IV, v, 288). At the end of a long chain of transmission it might be agreed that to be ælfsciene like Galadriel would be an immense compliment, but at the same time that any association with elves might well be disastrous for ordinary people; the end of this chain is line 112 of Beowulf, eotenas ond ylfe ond orcneas, in which elves and orcs have become much the same thing.17 Tolkien put a very high value on his ancient texts, like Beowulf and the Prose Edda, but he knew they were the work of fallible mortals, and probably several generations away from what he would have regarded as authentic tradition. What he meant to do, then, was to recover the authentic tradition which lay further back than any account we possess, the tradition which gave rise to Snorri and Beowulf and the Eddic poems and the AngloSaxon charms and all the other scraps of evidence, which however integrated them, resolved their contradictions, and explained the nature of their misunderstandings. The idea that there was some such authentic tradition is the thought that strikes Ransom/Tolkien in Lewis’s story quoted at the start of this essay. It is possible, of course, that the whole idea is mistaken, and highly probable that even if there were to have been some original single integrated conception of “elves” or “devas” then, it is now beyond recall. Nevertheless, Tolkien’s reconstructions are not only imaginative, they are also rigorous, controlled both by respect for evidence and awareness of the nature of the evidence. Philology was a hard science, not a soft science. This is one of the qualities which makes Tolkien’s work inimitable.

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Light-elves, Dark-elves, and Others NOTES 1

The best account of this is John D. Rateliff (199-218).

2

There is a full-length study of them by Verlyn Flieger, A Question of Time: J.R.R. Tolkien’s Road to Faërie.

3

I discuss the origin and significance of the name in its variant forms in chapter 9 of The Road to Middle-earth, 3rd ed.

4

Lewis for instance wrote a piece in praise of Tolkien, the title of which began “Hwæt we holbytlan . . . ,” clearly echoing the opening words of Beowulf, “Hwæt we Gar-Dena. . . .” But Gar-Dena is genitive plural. The genitive plural of holbytla would be, not holbytlan, but holbytlena. Lewis was extremely learned and an excellent Classicist, but he could not be called a philologist in Tolkien’s sense of the word

5

This point is made explicitly by Max Müller in his essay “Modern Mythology” (1856). The essay is best known now for Müller’s attempt to relate all myth to celestial phenomena, for his argument that myth is “a disease of language,” and for the parody of the whole theory by R. F. Littledale, “The Oxford Solar Myth,” in which the Rev. Littledale proved by Müller’s own methods that Müller was himself a solar myth. Most of the essay, however, is a reasoned statement of the methods of comparative philology, before the proposal is made that a similar technique could be used to create comparative mythology. Both Müller’s and Littledale’s pieces can be found reprinted in Müller, Comparative Mythology: An Essay. Tolkien refers to Müller, while inverting the “disease of language” thesis, in “On Fairy-Stories.”

6

It is not absolutely clear which anthropologists Lewis meant here, but probably not American structural or cultural anthropologists. He was probably thinking of post-Müllerian schools of thought like the followers of J. G. Frazer, or the “ritual” school of Jane Harrison. Lewis’s essay “The Anthropological Approach” attacks later and minor members of these groups (301-11), and they appear in disguised form in his 1956 novel Till We Have Faces.

7

I discuss the data at much greater length in “Alias Oves Habeo: The Elves as a Category Problem.” The essays in the collection to which it belongs discuss the accounts of various groups of Germanic nonhumans, elves, dwarves, trolls, dragons, etc., but all contributors have been warned not to discuss Tolkien. The problem now is to imagine any solutions other than Tolkien’s: a measure of his success.

8

See the valuable book by M. L. Cameron, Anglo-Saxon Medicine. As a

13

Tom Shippey professor of biology, Cameron is able to talk about the recipes and their possible efficacy in a pragmatic way. 9

See, for instance, Nils Thun (378-96) and also Heather Stuart (31320).

10 For the original, see Sturluson (19), translated in Faulkes (19-20). 11 For an account in English of Grundtvig’s life and works, see Allchin. 12 Grundtvig, Nordens Mythologi (1832), 263, with my translation. 13 In context “dun-elves” sounds better, but in that case one wonders whether Tolkien could be playing on the two senses of the word, Old English dún-ælf, “mountain-elf,” and modern English “dun,” i.e., “dark.” 14 The form deorc-elfa in Shaping (288) is another genitive plural. 15 The text given appeared first in the revised edition of 1966. Earlier versions have slightly different wording, and the “twilight” is “the twilight before the raising of the Sun and Moon” (Hammond and Anderson 32). 16 Christopher Tolkien makes the point in Lost Tales I: “To read The Silmarillion one must place oneself imaginatively at the time of the ending of the Third Age—within Middle-earth, looking back” (4). This is good advice, but the exercise becomes much easier if one has prior experience of the way texts and stories change over time. 17 The line is part of the introduction of the monster Grendel. The poet says that all the monster-species derive from the first murderer, Cain, and exemplifies them as “ettins and elves and (?) demon-corpses, and the giants, who fought against God for a long time.” This is the most “hard-line” hostile statement made about elves in any ancient source, and must have caused Tolkien some thought, as it comes from a text he respected and valued greatly: it was often identified by early scholars as an interpolation, not the work of the original poet. WORKS CITED Allchin, A. M. N.F.S. Grundtvig: An Introduction to His Life and Work. Oakville, CT: Aarhus University Press, 1997. Cameron, M. L. Anglo-Saxon Medicine. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993.

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Light-elves, Dark-elves, and Others Flieger, Verlyn. A Question of Time: J.R.R. Tolkien’s Road to Faërie. Kent, Ohio and London: Kent State University Press, 1997. Grimm, Jacob. Deutsche Mythologie, 4th ed. 3 vols. Berlin: Dümmler, 187578. ______. Grimm’s Teutonic Mythology, translated by J. S. Stallybrass. 4 vols. London: George Bell and Sons, 1882-88. Hammond, Wayne G. with Douglas A. Anderson. J.R.R. Tolkien: A Descriptive Bibliography. Winchester: St Paul’s Bibliographies; New Castle, DE: Oak Knoll Books, 1993. Lewis, C. S. “The Anthropological Approach.” In Selected Literary Essays of C.S. Lewis, edited by Walter Hooper. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969. Müller, Max. Comparative Mythology: An Essay, edited by A. Smythe Palmer. London: Routledge; New York: Dutton, 1977. Rateliff, John D. “The Lost Road, The Dark Tower, and The Notion Club Papers: Tolkien and Lewis’s Time Travel Triad.” In Tolkien’s Legendarium: Essays on The History of Middle-earth, edited by Verlyn Flieger and Carl F. Hostetter. Greenwood: Westport, CT, 2000. Shippey, Tom. The Road to Middle-earth. 3rd ed. Boston: Houghton and Mifflin, 2003. ______. “Alias Oves Habeo: The Elves as a Category Problem.” In The Shadow-walkers: Jacob Grimm’s Mythology of the Monstrous, edited by Tom Shippey. Tempe: Arizona State University Press, forthcoming. Sturluson, Snorri. Edda: Prologue and Gylfaginning, edited by Anthony Faulkes. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982. Sturluson, Snorri. Edda, translated by Anthony Faulkes. London: Dent, 1987. Stuart, Heather. “The Anglo-Saxon Elf.” Studia Neophilologica 48 (1976): 313-20. Thun, Nils. “The Malignant Elves,” Studia Neophilologica 41 (1969): 37896.

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Tom Shippey on J. R. R. Tolkien: A Checklist Compiled by DOUGLAS A. ANDERSON BOOKS: The Road to Middle-earth London: George Allen & Unwin, 1982 [hardcover] Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1983 [hardcover] London: Grafton, 1992 [trade paper, revised and expanded] London: HarperCollins, 1997 [trade paper] Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2003 [trade paper; third revised edition] J. R. R. Tolkien: Author of the Century London: HarperCollins, 2000 [hardcover], 2001 [trade paper] Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2001 [hardcover], 2002 [trade paper] REVIEWS, FOREWORDS AND JOURNALISM (INCLUDING INTERVIEWS): “Blunt Belligerence.” TLS, 26 November 1982, 1306. [Review of Mr. Bliss (1982) by J. R. R. Tolkien] “Defending Middle-earth.” Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts 9 no. 3 (1998): 251-53. [Review of Defending Middle-earth (1997) by Patrick Curry] “A Feeling for Language.” Christian History 22, no. 2 (May 2003): 14. “The Foolhardy Philologist.” TLS, 13 May 1977, 583. [Review of J. R. R. Tolkien: A Biography (1977) by Humphrey Carpenter] “Foreword” to The People’s Guide to J. R. R. Tolkien, edited by Erica Challis, 13-15. San Diego: Cold Spring Press, 2003. “Foreword” to A Tolkien Compass, edited by Jared Lobdell, vii-xi. Chicago: Open Court, 2002. “An Interview with Tom Shippey,” by Nils Ivar Agøy. Angerthas 20 (June 1987) and Angerthas 21 (October 1987); reprinted in Angerthas 31 (Angerthas in English 2; July 1992): 27-49. “An Interview with Tom Shippey.” Houghton Mifflin promotional Copyright © 2004, by West Virginia University Press

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Tom Shippey on J.R. R. Tolkien materials, May 2001. [Republished at: http://greenbooks.theonering. net/turgon/files/060101.html Accessed January 2004] “An Interview with Tom Shippey.” Questions and answers with Tom Shippey, posted at HarperCollins website, October 2001. [http://www.tolkien.co.uk/jrrtolkien/interviews_shippey.asp Accessed January 2004] “An Introduction to Elvish.” Mallorn, no. 13 (1979): 7-10. [Review of An Introduction to Elvish (1978), edited by Jim Allan] “J. R. R. Tolkien: A Descriptive Bibliography.” The Library, 6th series, 17 no. 1 (March 1995): 91-93. [Review of J. R. R. Tolkien: A Descriptive Bibliography (1993) by Wayne G. Hammond with the assistance of Douglas A. Anderson] “Not Worn Lightly.” TLS, 9 January 2004, 18. [Review of The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King film by Peter Jackson] “A Philologist in Purgatory.” TLS, 28 August 1981, 975-76. [Review of The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien (1981), edited by Humphrey Carpenter] “The Plot Unravels.” TLS, 20 December 2002, 18. [Review of The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers film by Peter Jackson] “Shot from the Canon.” Chronicle of Higher Education, 7 September 2001. “Silmarillion: The Oddest Tolkien Yet.” Oxford Mail, 15 September 1977, 4. [Review of The Silmarillion (1977) by J. R. R. Tolkien] “Take Courage—Things May Not Be as Bad as They Seem.” Daily Telegraph, 2 January 2003. “Temptations for All Time.” TLS, 21 December 2001, 16-17. [Review of The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring film by Peter Jackson] “Tolkien and Me.” Posted at Borders.com, June 2001 [Offline, January 2004]. “Tolkien’s Art.” Notes and Queries 225 (n.s. v. 27 no. 6; December 1980): 570-572. [Review of Tolkien’s Art (1979) by Jane Chance Nitzsche] “Tom Shippey’s Favourite Books on J. R. R. Tolkien.” Guardian Unlimited, December 2001 [http://books.guardian.co.uk/top10s/

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Tom Shippey on J.R.R. Tolkien top10/0,6109,608925,00.html Accessed January 2004] “Why the Critics Must Recognize Lord of the Rings as a Classic.” Daily Telegraph, 2 January 2002. CRITICAL ARTICLES: “Allegory Versus Bounce: Tolkien’s Smith of Wootton Major,” with Verlyn Flieger. Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts 12, no. 2 (2001): 186-200. “Commentary” and translation of “The Clerkes Compleinte” by J. R. R. Tolkien. Arda 1984 (1988): 3-8. “Creation from Philology in The Lord of the Rings.” In J.R.R. Tolkien: Scholar and Storyteller, edited by Mary Salu and Robert T. Farrell, 286316. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1979. “Goths and Huns: The Rediscovery of Northern Cultures in the Nineteenth Century.” In The Medieval Legacy, edited by Andreas Haarder, 51-69. Odense, Denmark: Odense University Press, 1982. “Grimm, Grundtvig, Tolkien: Nationalisms and the Invention of Mythologies.” In The Ways of Creative Mythologies: Imagined Worlds and Their Makers, vol. 1, edited by Maria Kuteeva, 7-17. Telford: Tolkien Society Press, 2000. “Light-elves, Dark-elves and Others: Tolkien’s Elvish Problem.” Tolkien Studies 1 (2004): 1-15. “Long Evolution: The History of Middle-earth and Its Merits.” Arda 1987 (1992): 18-39. “A Look at Exodus and Finn and Hengest.” Arda 1982-83 (1986): 72-80. “Noblesse Oblige: Images of Class in Tolkien.” Lembas Extra 93/94 (1994): 27-43. “Orcs, Wraiths, Wights: Tolkien’s Images of Evil.” In J. R. R. Tolkien and His Literary Resonances: Views of Middle-earth, edited by George Clark and Daniel Timmons, 183-198. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2000. “The Other Road to Middle-earth: Jackson’s Movie Trilogy.” In Understanding “The Lord of the Rings,” edited by Neil D. Isaacs and Rose A. Zimbardo. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, forthcoming. “Tolkien and Iceland: The Philology of Envy.” Delivered at the Sigurður Nordal Institute, September 2002. [Posted at: http://www.nordals. hi.is/shippey.html. Accessed January 2004] “Tolkien and the Gawain-Poet.” Proceedings of the J. R. R. Tolkien Centenary 19

Tom Shippey on J.R.R. Tolkien Conference, edited by Patricia Reynolds and Glen H. GoodKnight, 213-219. Altadena: Mythopoeic Press, 1995. [Co-published issue of Mallorn no. 30 and Mythlore no. 80.] “Tolkien and ‘The Homecoming of Beohrtnoth.’” Leaves from the Tree: J. R. R. Tolkien’s Shorter Fiction, edited anonymously, 5-16. London: Tolkien Society, 1991. “Tolkien and the West Midlands: The Roots of Romance.” Lembas Extra 1995 (1995): 5-22. “Tolkien as a Post-War Writer.” Scholarship & Fantasy: Proceedings of the Tolkien Phenomenon (1993), edited by K. J. Battarbee. Anglicana Turkuensia 12 (1993): 217-36. [Reprinted in Proceedings of the J. R. R. Tolkien Centenary Conference, edited by Patricia Reynolds and Glen H. GoodKnight Altadena: Mythopoeic Press, 1995, 84-93.] “Tolkien’s Academic Reputation Now.” Amon Hen 100 (1989): 18-22. “Tom Shippey Speaks at the Tolkien Society Annual Dinner, Cambridge, April 23, 1983.” In Digging Potatoes, Growing Trees, vol. 1, edited by Helen Armstrong, 31-52. Swindon: The Tolkien Society, 1997. [Also headed: “… I Thought of the Incident of Zeebrugge, Which Nobody Wrote about at all...”] “Tom Shippey Speaks at the Tolkien Society Annual Dinner, Norwich, April 13, 1991.” In Digging Potatoes, Growing Trees, vol. 2, edited by Helen Armstrong, 13-23. Swindon: The Tolkien Society, 1998. [Also headed: “What Have These People Got in Common? One Thing … They Had All Been Shot at.”] “Tom Shippey Speaks at the Tolkien Society Annual Dinner, York, April 19, 1980.” Digging Potatoes, Growing Trees, vol. 1, edited by Helen Armstrong, 6-30. Swindon: The Tolkien Society, 1997. [Also headed: “Inspiration and Invention, or, Where Tolkien Got Stuck”] “The Undeveloped Image: Anglo-Saxon in Popular Consciousness from Turner to Tolkien.” In Literary Appropriations of the Anglo-Saxons from the Thirteenth to the Twentieth Century, edited by Donald Scragg and Carole Weinberg, 215-236. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000. “The Versions of ‘The Hoard.’” Lembas 100 (2001): 3-7. “A Wose by any Other Name.” Amon Hen 45 (1980): 8-9.

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The Adapted Text: The Lost Poetry of Beleriand GERGELY NAGY

T

he Silmarillion is perhaps the linguistically most refined work of J.R.R. Tolkien. Polished for a lifetime, it is not surprising that it is written in a most remarkable and memorable of styles. In fact it has more than one style (as it is more than one text). Several distinct styles can be found in the variants of the Silmarillion tradition (now available in the volumes of The History of Middle-earth), which David Bratman distinguishes as the Annalistic, Antique, and the Appendical (71-75). But in the published Silmarillion, one has the feeling the categorization which Bratman suggests for the contents of the History volumes does not fit perfectly: styles change within units of the text, and the three categories seem somewhat loose and vague anyway. The movements of style and the resulting disunity in the 1977 text produce a fitting effect: Tolkien succeeds in implying, merely by the stylistic differences, that the Silmarillion is indeed a compendious volume, “made long afterwards from sources of great diversity” (S 8). Taking into account that it is in fact an editorial text, selected and made consistent from the numerous versions, according to (with some remarkable exceptions, I believe to its advantage)1 the latest intentions, by Christopher Tolkien, its style definitely signals how truly compendious it is—it suggests a history for the text, an evolution, in which the cryptic and compressed narrative of the 1926 “Sketch of the Mythology” or the Quenta Noldorinwa (written in the 1930s) became expanded to the majestic story (and language) in the Silmarillion. Part of the fiction (and the point) of the Silmarillion is, however, that inside the textual world it is not a unified text either, but a compendium, a collection of texts. As such, it surely has a history there too; the different versions of the presentation frame (from the Lost Tales to the “latest intentions”) hint that Tolkien imagined it to be a sort of comprehensive manuscript of a (narrative or historical) tradition.2 There are a number of conclusions to be drawn from viewing the Silmarillion text so (of which I hope to make a more extensive study in the future); in this paper I will examine one of the aspects which bears closely on both the stylistic refinement and its implications, and on the history of the texts. It is clear that we are meant to view the Silmarillion thus, and in the manuscript analogue its being an editorial text diminishes in problematic value. The text of the 1977 Silmarillion as we now have it includes and preserves many traditions—that is what its compendious nature means. But the curious duplication of the text (the supposition that it is, just as it Copyright © 2004, by West Virginia University Press

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Gergely Nagy stands, a text inside the textual world too) makes this actually a double claim. The text has a history in “primary philology” (= Tolkien philology, as texts by J. R. R. Tolkien), and another one within, for “secondary philology” (as I elsewhere called this level).3 The two provenances may partly be parallel; but the differences in style in the 1977 Silmarillion text do more than suggest history and leave it at that. They also suggest different things for primary and secondary philology; and the difference is significant and critically meaningful. Doubtless many readers have noticed that amidst the surges of style in the Silmarillion (from the elevated “mythological prose” of the Ainulindalë to the drier “descriptive prose” of, say, “On Beleriand and Its Realms”) there are passages, short strings of sentences, individual sentences, or even single clauses which read as if they were poetry adapted to prose. In primary philology, this feeling is sometimes justified when we look up the variants and sources in the history of the text—but only in the stories which Tolkien wrote in verse, and the “adapted passages” are found much more widely than that. In secondary philology, however (up to a certain level parallel to this, since the verse works are also “duplicated texts,” the “adapted sources”), the case is more complex. The “adapted” passages do not indicate “lost Tolkien texts”: they indicate poetic works in the textual world (a number of which are mentioned but never written).4 In the manuscript context and the provenance of texts, this is in no way unusual: verse adapted to prose (and vice versa) is frequently found in medieval manuscripts and is equally easy to pick out. Malory’s “Tale of King Arthur and the Emperor Lucius” betrays its source, the alliterative Morte Arthure in a similar way. Had this vanished (as it nearly has, except for the single remaining manuscript), Malory’s text would be an indication that such a poetic work had once existed; it would point to it, even though the alliterative Morte was not extant. The adapted texts in the Silmarillion also indicate poetic tradition in the textual world, both deepening the breadth of cultural implications in the text (and enriching the world it creates) and offering us fragments of the actual text of these lost poetic works. Like philologists writing on the lost poetic sources of an extant prose text, we will have to take a textual approach to be able to determine the significance of this phenomenon in the Silmarillion. We will have to consider the textual features that make a passage “adapted”: its syntactic and rhetorical structures, rhythm, and euphony devices; these will have to stand out in marked contrast to the context. It is only then that we can go on to the interpretation of the implications, the suggestions about the poetic traditions and the texts themselves which become meaningful when integrated into the whole system of the Silmarillion. There is a wellmarked contrast between the styles of the Ainulindalë and most of the

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The Adapted Text Quenta Silmarillion proper; our task will be to examine when the stylistic differences within one text lend support to a theory of “adaptedness,” and further, what this theory means in the interpretation of the whole. Many of the passages that stand out from the stylistic register of their context do so by virtue of their rhetorics, their stricter syntactic patterns. This is in some cases underlined by the specific use of rhythm, alliteration, and rhymes. Let us look at some examples:5 1.

and they built lands and Melkor destroyed them; valleys they delved and Melkor raised them up; mountains they carved and Melkor threw them down; seas they hollowed and Melkor spilled them; and nought might have peace or come to lasting growth, for as surely as the Valar began a labour so would Melkor undo it or corrupt it. (S 22)

2.

Then he looked upon their glory and their bliss, and envy was in his heart; he looked upon the Children of Ilúvatar that sat at the feet of the Mighty, and hatred filled him; he looked upon the wealth of bright gems, and he lusted for them; but he hid his thoughts, and postponed his vengeance. (S 65)

3.

and they came to the Enchanted Isles and escaped their enchantment; and they came into the Shadowy Seas and passed their shadows, and they looked upon Tol Eressëa the Lonely Isle, but tarried not; and at the last they cast anchor in the Bay of Eldamar. (S 248)

One might argue that these are not necessarily adapted from poetry; they simply show a conscious use of the syntactic structure of parataxis and balanced clauses—their authors were good rhetoricians at any rate. They all share a repeated pattern: two clauses connected with a simple conjunctive “and” (in boldface; occasionally with “but”), the first and second clauses bearing a structural and thematic similarity to each other (in italics; e.g., in example 1: “they built lands,” “valleys they delved,” “mountains they carved,” and “seas they hollowed,” where even the inversion adds a further stylistic overtone to the parallel); a clever utilization of polysyndeton and parallel syntactical structures. Further devices are to be observed in other examples: 4. and the House of Fëanor hastened before them along the 23

Gergely Nagy coast of Elendë: not once did they turn their eyes back to Tírion on the green hill of Túna. ... but at the rear went Finarfin and Finrod, and many of the noblest and wisest of the Noldor; and often they looked behind them to see their fair city. (S 85) 5.

I would not have any say that Túrin was driven forth unjustly into the wild, and gladly would I welcome him back; for I loved him well. ... I will seek Túrin until I find him, and I will bring him back to Menegroth, if I can; for I love him also. (S 200)

In these, parallel structures are not confined to clauses only. Example 4 uses antithesis in parallel structures (very appropriate for the contrast between the attitudes of the different Noldorin houses); while in 5 (from a dialogue of Thingol and Beleg) we see tripartite parallel sentences (except for Beleg’s short conditional clause), concluding on the same thematic note (and nearly the same words). The structures in examples 1-5 are all syntactically grounded stylistic devices, making use of parallel clauses, parataxis, and repetition. Other traits which might indicate stylistic differences from the context are more specifically poetic devices. The following passages will be sufficient to demonstrate them: 6.

7.

But now upon the mountain-top dark Ungoliant lay; and she made a ladder of woven ropes and cast it down, and Melkor climbed upon it and came to that high place, and stood beside her, looking down upon the Guarded Realm. (S 74) Then Finrod was filled with wonder at the strength and majesty of Menegroth, its treasuries and armouries and its [many-pillared halls of stone]; and it came into his heart that he would build wide halls behind ever-guarded gates in some deep and secret place beneath the hills. (S 114) 24

The Adapted Text 8.

The light of the drawing of the swords of the Noldor was like a fire in a field of reeds. (S 191)

Example 6 uses paratactic structures very similar to those seen in 1-3, while also occasionally taking up alliteration (boldface) and starting with a line whose rhythm definitely stands out from the context.6 Example 7 makes much more of alliteration, and further introduces rhymes (italicized; both internal, as in line 3, and end-rhyme, as in lines 7-8). The whole of the passage is strongly rhythmical (the last line can be a shorter “coda,” a closure to the “stanza”; and line 4 is in fact a verse line from one of Tolkien’s other poems7). Finally, example 8 again exhibits a very interesting regularity of beat. This is partly again syntactical, since the pattern of multiple genitives determines the first line, but it goes on to the second line, where the alliteration underscores the effect. It is surprising how well these passages sound (and even scan, especially example 8) when read out loud; but that still does not make them “adapted.” Research into the primary history of these passages shows that they are definitely not “adapted” from verse (with the exception of line 4 of example 7; see n. 7 above). They come from the “prose Silmarillion tradition,” and are nearly all present in comparable form in some earlier version (except example 1, for which I have found no source,8 and example 5, which emerged in the more or less independent “Túrin tradition”9). They evolved sometimes suddenly,10 sometimes by slow steps of refinement,11 sometimes obviously by editorial action.12 Slow shifts of structure and wording produced these texts (occasionally with the discarding of versions which would perhaps have done better13), and a detailed collation can reveal much about how Tolkien reformulated his sentences and worked step by step in shaping the language of his text. In fact, the text had really become a “tradition,” where with time the work incorporated many layers and changes that are preserved or discarded according to the needs of the actual version worked on. The secondary history, however, is more suggestive. These passages, as the final result of the painstaking stylistic development, stand out from their context by their marked language use: in the textual world, they can be indicative of conventions of style in certain narrative situations. All the passages mark central scenes, climaxes, or privileged points in the narrative; their author was obviously aware of how such climaxes and centers should be handled stylistically. As examples 1-5 show, certain rhetorical and syntactical structures were held to be appropriate; the noted affinity of “high material” to parataxis is definitely borne out in these parts. Thus, on the one hand, these examples of the adapted texts can give us an insight into the ways stylistic conventions function in the minds of fictitious authors in the textual world (which at the same time implicitly argues that the Silmarillion constructs numerous such authors 25

Gergely Nagy and author roles—again, as obviously part of its “meaning”); but on the other hand, the contrast between these examples and their contexts can suggest conclusions about the transmission of the texts. It is equally possible that these passages stand out because of a certain “stylistic leveling,” carried out by the scribes or adapters (or perhaps editors) transmitting the texts. Marked style in central scenes and climactic parts is always more likely to be preserved in redaction than in cases where the redactor does not sense the scene to be central or important; and while authors can easily be supposed to be conscious of stylistic conventions, scribes and redactors perhaps cannot. The implications of these parts, in terms of the secondary history of the texts, thus yield conclusions both about the origin of the text (its author and its conventional context) and its provenance, both its production and reception. One could reply that the examples are still not necessarily poetry adapted to prose; they are simply “poetic prose,” which is not quite the same thing. The style of the Silmarillion, of course, is generally poetic anyway, except for the stretches of “descriptive narrative” (interpolations in a thematically compiled narrative manuscript?); it merely rises higher sometimes, as sometimes it descends lower. But even to judge the whole text “poetic,” and suppose that the passages cited are “more poetic” (still not amounting to “poetry proper”) is to evaluate by distinct criteria of style—in other words, to suggest poetic qualities a text has to stand in a context of poetic conventions, and it is exactly this that I am arguing the adapted texts indicate. They do not have to be actually adapted from verse (as most of them are not, and we would not know anyway if they were in the textual world); the point is that they indicate conventions. In another example, we can easily observe how the devices seen above sometimes appear in such density that the reader can hardly avoid the conclusion of adaptedness: 9.

and even as the Noldor set foot upon the strand their cries were taken up into the hills and multiplied, so that a clamour as of countless mighty voices filled all the coasts of the North; and the noise of the burning of the ships at Losgar went down the winds of the sea as a tumult of great wrath and far away [all who heard that sound were filled with wonder]. (S 106)

Here we have all: parataxis (though somewhat looser), alliterative patterns bridging the lines, the rhythm of the genitives (their quick pace even suggesting the crackling of the fire?) and of the final line (the part of which I enclosed in square brackets is incidentally a perfect blank verse line). Tolkien once started an alliterative poem on “The Flight of the 26

The Adapted Text Noldoli” (given in Lays), though it never reached the actual crossing; one is tempted to speculate that this short fragment might have come from its textual world counterpart. Further conclusions are possible about the implied poetic conventions from the evidence of the adapted texts. In the primary history of the texts, these passages sometimes really find a foundation in a real poetic tradition: that of Tolkien’s own poetic texts. The cases in point are those when the passage in question is not from a story that is treated in those poetic works, but just a short textual bit that agrees with the poetic corpus (sometimes even against the prose). One such case is “he piled the thunderous towers of Thangorodrim” (S 118). This occurs in the Quenta Silmarillion (§105; late 1930s); but before that, the prose tradition invariably spoke only of the “towers of Thangorodrim,” never supplemented with the alliterating epithet. The “thunderous towers,” however, can be seen in more than one place in both the verse Túrin (ll. 714 and 951) and the Lay of Leithian (ll. 2051 and 3281).14 Both poems preceded the writing of the Quenta in the late 1930s, and I think it is evident that the epithet came to the prose tradition from the poetic one—a corroborated case of adaptation where the fragment of poetry embedded in the prose points justifiably to the poetic use. Another such detail is the curious imagery which accompanies Lúthien’s remaining at the gates of Menegroth during the Hunting of the Wolf: “[a] dark shadow fell upon her and it seemed to her that the sun had sickened and turned black” (S 185). An irregular (because of the alliteration in the second half-line) alliterative line might be hiding in this (if it is, it is unattested); but at least the image of the “sickening sun” is paralleled in the verse Túrin,15 again pointing to a use of the image in the poetic tradition. These details suggest, firstly, that a tradition does exist. Epithets are apparently used in it;16 alliteration is a structural as well as a euphonic device (otherwise alliterating phrases would not travel together). If such indications are supported by the material of primary philology, there is no reason to disregard the implications in secondary philology. Perhaps the most easily accessible part of the implied poetic convention is its forms; we have already seen that alliteration and rhyme, certain rhythms (iambic?) are among the formal features (see Wynne and Hostetter 116, 118-20, 122). Some other examples will show what else we can recover. Another phrase belonging here is “wild and wary as a beast” (S 165), which appears in the prose Túrin tradition (UT, 110), but has a parallel in the Lay of Leithian.17 “[A] dark lord upon a dark throne in the North” (S 205) recalls the Ring Poem’s repeated formula for Sauron, while 10. and far and wide in Beleriand the whisper went, under wood and over stream and through the passes of the hills. (S 205) 27

Gergely Nagy seems to point to the similar structures in Bilbo’s first “poem” in The Hobbit (chapter 19, 359-60 and see below n. 7) and is marked by a characteristic rhythm. Two other instances of adapted verse lines are “and waited while the long years lengthened” (S 44) and “and none were safe in field or wild” (S 195): both exhibit easily scanning rhythm and rather conventional-looking phrasing, in the first case underscored by the use of alliteration and the figura etymologica. Alliteration and rhythm are beautifully seen together in 11. But there was a deep way under the mountains delved in the darkness of the world by the waters that flowed out to join the streams of Sirion. (S 125) Finally, in two further examples rhythm and alliteration work closely together to produce a most remarkable effect: 12. Wisdom was in the words of the Elven-king, and the heart grew wiser that hearkened to him. (S 140-41) 13. Little foresight could there be [for those who dared to take so dark a road]. (S 84) These pleasantly scanning lines (again, a faultless blank verse line is found in example 13) reinforce our conclusions about formal characteristics in the implied poetic traditions. Many of these conclusions are in fact corroborated by what we know about Elvish poetic modes (Wynne and Hostetter);18 Tolkien (and his editor, Christopher Tolkien) here builds into his text parts which not only create cultural practices as mere facts or frameworks but also give some of their content. We have already encountered cases where this reference to a poetic tradition was (in a general way) supported; in some longer stretches and numerous smaller examples adaptation from verse is a fact in the primary history of the texts. These examples, in stories which had been treated by Tolkien in poetic form, allow a useful glimpse of the process of what Tolkien does when he is really adapting from his own verse. Not only do these instances show the actual passage of the text from poem to prose; in the secondary layer, they also suggest cultural practices which integrate into the contexts seen in the Silmarillion, practices that seem to appear as “narrated,” described. Most of such actually adapted texts come from the verse Túrin, but the Lay of Leithian is also a source. Only a few of them longer than a phrase or a few lines, they corroborate the theory of poetic style and its conventions inside the textual world (like “wild and wary as a beast,” already quoted, or “guard him and guide him” [S 209], a favorite phrase in the Túrin story19). 28

The Adapted Text A relatively large number of lines go back explicitly to the verse Túrin. In one certainly adapted line, “bearing a burden heavier than their bonds” (S 208)20 we can actually see how the adapter straightens out the syntax of the line (and makes a perfectly regular clause out of exactly the same phrases—which is still betrayed by its rhythm and alliterations). Other such lines are “that grief was graven on the face of Túrin and never faded” (S 208),21 and “he walked as one without wish or purpose” (S 209).22 Lines whose origin I cannot clearly establish also fall into the pattern, and look very much like the actually adapted texts in their poetic devices. “[H]e listened to his lore and the tale of his life” (S 204), “in the dim dusk of the winter’s day” (S 204), “in a mirror mishapen by malice” (S 214), and the couplet “she fled as in a madness of fear, / swifter than a deer” (S 219) are all lines where the beat, alliterations, and rhymes strongly suggest a poetic source. The verse Túrin never advanced to the later part of the story where these are found; but the lines do not appear to my knowledge in the Unfinished Tales ‘Narn’ or the Quentas either. There are also lines which derive from the prose texts, with conclusions very similar to what we have already seen. “[S]et a doom upon them of darkness and sorrow” (S 197), although it has parallels in the verse Túrin,23 is really closer to the wording of the Quenta Silmarillion (ch. 16 §22), as is “during that time his grief grew less” (S 199)24 to Quenta Silmarillion ch. 17 §34.25 Saeros’s taunt with its firm three-line structure also comes ultimately from there (ch. 17 §39 = UT 80), while the line “he was senseless in a sleep of great weariness” (S 207) from the Quenta Noldorinwa (§12, with minor variation). The dying Glaurung’s slandering of Túrin to Nienor (S 223), with its perceivable line structure and alliterations, has a source in the Unfinished Tales “Narn” (138), and Túrin’s plea to his sword to “slay me swiftly” (S 225) also derives from there (UT 145).26 These fragments of the poetic tradition testify for the formal features we have already deduced, and fill the bare suggestions of conventional poetic forms with content—here we have scraps from the poetic handling of the Túrin story, both primary and secondary, both extant and lost. Secondary philology is all the more central here, because the Túrin part explicitly claims a poetic source, the Narn i Hîn Húrin. Elsewhere I have examined the critical importance of this suggestion in detail (see my “Great Chain”); what is significant in the present context is that such source references, coupled with lines adapted from poetry (both in fact, as can be shown by collation, and in fiction, as in the cases where no primary poetic source can be found but formal features of the texts in question place them in close connection with corroborated instances) form a special set within the corpus of the adapted texts. Perhaps a source reference in the vicinity or thematic sphere of such texts can be

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Gergely Nagy used as complementary evidence of the text’s integrity with the poetic tradition (as in the case of the fragment from the Noldor poem [example 9, perhaps also 8]—the Noldolantë, mentioned earlier [S 98], could then be equated with the source of this fragment); such instances would be of especial importance in the study of the implied poetic conventions and practices. Further grounding is available in this class of instances for the interaction of prose and verse traditions, the stylistic conventions for central/climactic scenes, and I believe that even something about the compositional principles and methods, some of the implied cultural context of the poetry can be recovered. The first such important passage from the Túrin story is: 14. Then Túrin stood stone still and silent, staring on that dreadful death, knowing what he had done. (S 208) The image itself is part of the prose tradition;27 but that, in turn, and much of the actual wording of the text as well, goes back to the verse Túrin (ll. 1273-74): stone-faced he stood standing frozen on that dreadful death his deed knowing Nearly all the alliterating words, together with the alliteration pattern itself, doubtless derive from the poem; the imagery and to some extent the very phrasing of this very moving central scene traveled between the versions virtually unchanged. One is, then, tempted to see an analogue in the following passage: 15. tall and terrible on that day looked Túrin, and the heart of the host was upheld as he rode on the right hand of Orodreth. (S 212) Though I have found no source, either in the prose or in the verse traditions, for these lines (the verse Túrin never reached this point in the story), the parallels with the previous example strongly suggest to me a similar evolution: style and the formal devices of the poetic convention are equally well preserved in this other (though minor) climactic scene. Perhaps the best example for the processes of adaptation, also indicative of compositional methods, is seen in the scene of Fingolfin’s duel with Morgoth. This is recounted in the Lay of Leithian, prompted by the description of Anfauglith and the gates of Angband (ll. 3478-3634); otherwise it is not related to the story of the Geste. The very fact that it is inserted points to a compositional method which is characterized by its “situationalism”: mention of a place, or name, or event, can set the author at any point to present other stories or episodes which have a 30

The Adapted Text connection to the “cue,” even if they do not advance the action, fragment it, or impede upon its forward thrust. This is a feature reminiscent of the methods of oral composition; the oral poet’s control on the store of formulae and narrative “chunks” he has in his head is fundamentally different from the relationship of his literate colleague to his materials in being much more determined by his mnemotechnics and mechanisms of preservation (Havelock 175). Parallels can be found in Homer, for example: the catalogue of ships in Book 2 of the Iliad grows out of Helen’s showing the Greek leaders to the Trojans from the walls. This is a link backwards, and at once a historical contextualizing; but it surely does not advance the plot, nor is it a necessary requisite (Havelock 177-79). There are similar “situational” anticipations and recountings in the Silmarillion (most notably in “Of Thingol and Melian,” S 55). The oral poet has to repeat, tell the stories again and again, in order to keep them known and remembered, and to remember them himself (Havelock, 91-93; see further 145-64); this is why he goes into them as soon as they are “cued.” C. S. Lewis’s commentary on the Lay of Leithian in one place picks out something similar (when Thingol’s minstrels recall the stories of Fëanor and the Silmarils, lines 1132-61) as “expanded by the late redactors who found their audiences sometimes very ignorant of the myths” (Lays 391). This is partly the same case (though this passage is more of a digression, modeled on those in Beowulf, than a “situational episode” launched by a “cue” in the narrative), since both later interpolation and original narrative aim at the preservation of stories. The difference is again in the authorial vs. redactorial layers, which thus are clearly visible (at least to Lewis) in the poetic work itself. But as author and redactor in this case stand in two readily distinguishable cultural contexts, orality and textuality as the source of texts are brought up for critical consideration. The passage from the Silmarillion that can be counted as adapted runs as follows: 16. for the rocks rang with the shrill music of Fingolfin’s horn, and his voice came keen and clear down into the depths of Angband; ... Therefore Morgoth came, climbing slowly from his subterranean throne, and the rumour of his feet was like thunder underground. (S 153) The passage, as example 14 above, is extant in the prose tradition,28 but very close similarities exist between it and a part in the Lay of Leithian (lines 3545-47 and 3558-62): while endless fastnesses of stone 31

Gergely Nagy engulfed the thin clear ringing keen of silver horn on baldric green. ... Then Morgoth came. For the last time in these great wars he dared to climb from subterranean throne profound the rumour of his feet a sound of rumbling earthquake underground. On the one hand, we see again that this tragic climax keeps its poetic form in the prose redaction; and on the other, we again get a glimpse of the actual poetic texts which might serve as sources in other places in the narrative. The actually adapted texts do more than imply an underlying tradition in verse: they in fact preserve it, and had Christopher Tolkien not decided to publish The Lays of Beleriand, these instances would be the only traces of it left (compare the case of Malory and the nearly vanished Morte Arthure). It is not surprising, in textual-world terms, that there are so many adapted lines and passages in this part of the Silmarillion—these are culturally central stories in the textual world (“the human-stories of the elves,” as Tom Shippey applied Tolkien’s phrase for them). We have here further suggestions about the cultural use of the poetic tradition in the textual world, to create heroic narrative poems of these central stories. It is then perfectly natural that prose adaptations from these high-prestige poetic compositions stay closer to the texts of the poems: again, not only origin but also transmission details are implied. I have saved for the end three examples which could easily have fitted elsewhere, but which I consider to be most representative and suggestive, worthy of individual scrutiny. We have seen in the primary history that the adapted texts were either derived from the prose tradition, reached by small steps of refinement from early versions sometimes not at all outstanding (indeed often not very easily distinguishable); or were derived from the poetic works; or appeared all of a sudden in one or other version. The following examples are, I assume, no exceptions, though for one of them I have not been able to find any comparable parallels. These are also the most interesting cases of the adapted text, in terms of secondary philology: beautiful and perfectly crafted lines of great style and poetry, tight structure, a very high standard of refinement. Great poetry is implied to be behind them. The first of these is a part of the Quenta Silmarillion proper, Ch. 1, that to my knowledge has no extant parallels; its use of nearly all the devices we have found to belong to the implied poetic tradition places it with the adapted texts.

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The Adapted Text 16. Green things fell sick and rotted, and rivers were choked in weeds and slime, and fens were made, rank and poisonous, the breeding place of flies; and forests grew dark and perilous, the haunts of fear; and beasts became monsters of horn and ivory and dyed the earth with blood. (S 36) The paratactic and repetitive structure at once draws attention to this passage. Made up of three two-line units, each telling about the corruption of a certain sphere, plus an initial 1+1 pair, its parallels are thematic as well as structural. The rhythm of the lines is broken twice with the shorter fourth and sixth lines, while the assonance of “slime” and “flies,” and the fuller rhymes “poisonous” and “perilous” (italicized), strengthened by the alliteration, keep the composition together. Alliteration further links (very appropriately) “fens” and “flies,” “forests” and “fear.” This “stanza’ is highly reminiscent of the style of the Ainulindalë, both formally (as seen in example 1) and thematically, and suggests a lost poetic tradition of the cosmogony, in fragments and style preserved in the prose redaction.29 And this is, I believe, unmistakably poetry. Another gem of stylistic polishing has a long textual history, but it is no less outstanding and suggestive for that. It is in the Quenta Silmarillion proper, Ch. 7, and appeared for the first time in comparable form in the Quenta Noldorinwa (§3), then went through the Quenta Silmarillion (§46) and both versions of the “Later Quenta” (§49b); but it was longer and less concentrated. About Fëanor’s work, we are told: 17. Then he began a long and secret labour, and he summoned all his lore, and his power, and his subtle skill; and at the end of all he made the Silmarils. (S 67) The longer and earlier versions of these three lines had none of this crystallized compactness, welded together by the rhythm (both of the paratactic structure and of the enlisting of Fëanor’s “tools”: lore, power, and skill) and the pattern of alliteration. It also did not have the effective closure of the last iambic line (in this case not a blank verse line, since it is one foot longer than that), nor the assonance of the last couplet. The alliteration pattern took long to establish: up to the “Later Quenta,” Fëanor’s labour was said to be “long and marvellous,” even though the verb “summon,” which ultimately, I believe, influenced the insertion of “secret,” had been present since the Quenta Silmarillion version. Here again we can see in the history a change (in the end discarded) which was for the worse. While the third “tool” on the list had always been “subtle”(“subtle magic” in the Quenta Noldorinwa, “skill” in the Quenta Silmarillion), it was 33

Gergely Nagy changed to “subtle craft” in the “Later Quenta,” but then evidently back again to fit the pattern—I assume authorially, since the versions known to me require an unjustifiable amount of editorial change to produce the reading quoted. What secondary history this fragment comes from we cannot tell; yet it points surely toward a poetic text in the textual world. The last and most complex of the adapted texts I would like to draw attention to is also in the Quenta Silmarillion proper, in the “interpolated” descriptive chapter “Of the Sindar.” The style of this chapter is generally eclectic (it would probably be classified to belong either to the Annalistic or the Appendical style), due to its “compilation nature”; it tells of many things,30 and one has the feeling it is heavily compressed.31 But at one point, as if in summary, the following three sentences are inserted: 21. In Beleriand in those days the Elves walked, and the rivers flowed, and the stars shone, and the night-flowers gave out their scents; and the beauty of Melian was as the noon, and the beauty of Lúthien was as the dawn in spring. In Beleriand King Thingol upon his throne was as the lords of the Maiar, whose power is at rest, whose joy is as an air that they breathe in all their days, whose thought flows out in a tide untroubled from the heights to the depths. In Beleriand still at times rode Oromë the great, passing like a wind over the mountains, and the sound of his horn came down the leagues of the starlight, and the Elves feared him for the splendour of his countenance and the great noise of the onrush of Nahar; but when the Valaróma echoed in the hills, they knew well that all evil things were fled far away. (S 95) This is already present in the “Grey Annals,” with two variant readings.32 The three long sentences, each starting with “In Beleriand” and each describing a different aspect of one-time Beleriand, are truly remarkable

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The Adapted Text for their tight but graceful structure, touching imagery, and majestic style. Though they exhibit no use of rhythm or alliteration comparable to previous examples, I have classed them as definitely adapted text, since the very conscious use of syntactical structures itself creates a rhythm which is genuinely poetic. In addition to the “In Beleriand” starting, shared by all “stanzas,” two of them (the first and the third) also have time clauses at the start, in the same position as second line. It is these two stanzas that make more use of parataxis, thus “framing” the second stanza which is exclusively hypotactic. The three stanzas are unified by their imagery and their use of comparisons and similes: the pattern is given in the first stanza, after a four-line quick-paced setting which supplies the tone of the imagery as well. Images of nature, more and more complex, dominate the stanzas. They do not only become more complex linguistically (with more and more adverbials in the subordinate clauses) but also in conception: by the time we reach the second stanza, the similes of Thingol and the Maiar decidedly go into abstractions, leading on to the description of Oromë, very appropriately. The Oromë stanza, by the way, is less distinctively stylized than the rest; one is tempted to suspect an impatient fictitious redactor who did not clearly understand the purpose of the natural images and was not very well-versed in theology. The third stanza, as C. S. Lewis would have put it, is perhaps corrupt; but the beauty of the original can still be seen, since the original design is discoverable. The “In Beleriand” stanzas are a striking instance of what differences style can produce even within a single text—which itself is interpolated as “different” into the narrative thrust of the “tale of the Noldor.” They illustrate perfectly that these differences are anything but mere ornament. They are there for specific reasons; either because the author or the editor put them there, or let them stand there. But both ways, they point to something prior to the work of the author and the editor. They imply texts and forms, conventions and traditions, which stand behind any text in a compendium; and, perhaps more importantly and most clearly perceivably in these stanzas, they sometimes supply the actual words that stand in the background. Tolkien’s texts work in a variety of ways to produce depth behind themselves. This feeling of depth can be illusory, or it can be real: I hope to have shown that at least in some instances in the Silmarillion, the “poetic depth” created by the adapted texts is very real. For, returning to the earlier counterpoint, even if we say that these are not “adapted poetic texts” but simply “poetic prose,” we have presupposed poetic style and poetic convention already. Like Old English “rhythmical prose,” which is very hard to differentiate from Old English “alliterative verse proper,” the adapted texts cannot be proclaimed non-poetic and their poetic suggestions denied. If we did not know alliterative verse,

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Gergely Nagy its patterns and beats, we would never be able to detect “rhythmical prose”: we judge poetic prose in terms of (and in forms of) poetry, and this finally shows that poetry is the reference point. It is a fact of cultural history that narratives are composed first in verse (which offers better mnemotechnical opportunities) and only then in prose: Tolkien’s text and Tolkien’s world follow this rule. In striving for verisimilitude and authenticity, Tolkien apparently repeats cultural history. One cannot write a mythology, primarily because myths are not written; what is great about Tolkien is that he manages to write not only texts but traditions. He goes even further: he supplies the background of his narratives with poetic traditions which are not there—but the very supposition uncovering this fact is based on pieces which are there, actual fragments from fictitious poetic traditions. This congenial device makes use of the painstaking stylistic refinement, and again shows up how important textual transmission is to the interpretation of Tolkien—indeed, how very crucial textuality is in Tolkien’s mythopoesis. In terms of primary interpretation, this is significant and is perfectly integrated to the system of the Silmarillion. This work is not only about telling stories that go with other stories (like the Lord of the Rings or the Hobbit): it is about the story of stories, both in a historical and a metafictional sense. Tolkien shows us how narratives are preserved; yet not only narratives are his concern but also language, the actual words that tell the tale. The preservation of style together with matter is a wellknown phenomenon, as is the editor’s and redactor’s leveling of style. The Silmarillion discusses how stories come to be told in exactly these words: either the author (origin) or the editor/redactor (transmission) is conscious of the stylistic conventions. Both ways, the point is the existence and content of the conventions; Tolkien manages to have it both ways, and say something both about the nature of the poetic narrative sources (the cultural contexts, contents, and use) and the implied manuscript context (transmission). The Silmarillion, exactly as it stands in the 1977 text, is a profound work: an anatomy of story. I said earlier that Tolkien’s texts have subtle ways to create depth behind themselves, and I have examined in detail one of these ways; but it has in this inquiry, I hope, become clear that Tolkien has even subtler ways to fill this depth. The Silmarillion text, being a compilation of traditions and an editorial text, both in the primary and the textual worlds, works very much like an actual manuscript, holding in itself traces not only of the traditions that went into its making, but very often of the actual texts. This is no lost poetry of Tolkien, however; this is Tolkien’s prose, paradoxically, one might say, giving us a glimpse of the lost poetry of Beleriand.

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The Adapted Text NOTES 1

See the section “Myths Transformed” in Morgoth’s Ring, and Bratman (77).

2

Cf. Charles Noad ( 37).

3

In “The Great Chain of Reading: (Inter-)Textual Relations and the Technique of Mythopoesis in the Túrin Story.”

4

Such are, for example, the Aldudenië of Elemmírë (S 76), the Noldolantë of Maglor (87), the Narsilion (99), the Fall of Gondolin (242), and the Lay of Eärendil (246). Tolkien actually started to write the last two (see both in Lays).

5

In all quotations from the Silmarillion, the changed typography of the text and all emphases are mine, which I will not be indicating separately. The reference to the page number of the text is found parenthetically after each quotation. I introduce the lineation of the texts because it helps to show the poetic qualities (or occasionally, the “unpoetic” qualities of prose printed as verse) of the passages.

6

To some extent similar is the passage at S (107) “There upon the confines of Dor Daedaloth, the land of Morgoth . . . though he was wrapped in fire and wounded with many wounds.” Alliteration also gains prominence here, and parataxis no longer dominates the syntax. One of the lines (“Fëanor was surrounded, with few friends around him”) also has a certain rhythmic quality: reinforced by the alliteration, its effect is not unlike that of Old English alliterative poetry. The phrase “wrapped in fire” could easily come from exactly this poetic tradition: cf. Beowulf, l. 2595 (fyre befongen).

7

Most readers know this line from Gimli’s song in Moria (FR, II, iv, 329-30); it originally stood in the Lay of Leithian, l. 14, though it seems (see n. to ll. 14-18, which are the lines that appear in Gimli’s song: Lays 193) that the “many-pillared halls of stone” ultimately derive from C. S. Lewis’s commentary on the Geste. See further, Lays 375-76. In referring to texts in the History of Middle-earth series, I will always use the internal divisions of the texts concerned: lines, or paragraphs. In referring to notes, or material in the commentaries, I will refer by page number. The source of the texts referred to as sources below is as follows. The verse Túrin and The Lay of Leithian were published in Lays, “The Sketch of the Mythology” and the Quenta Noldorinwa (called the Quenta) are to be found in Shaping. The Quenta Silmarillion, the Later Annals of Valinor, and “The Fall of Númenor” are in Lost Road, while the “Later Quenta” and the Annals of Aman appear in 37

Gergely Nagy Morgoth’s Ring. The “Grey Annals” appear in War of the Jewels. 8

Perhaps a sentence in the Quenta Silmarillion §11 (“they laboured at their first tasks in the ordering of the World and Morgoth contested with them, and made war”) could be considered the ultimate source; but I found no intermediate stages in the stylistic evolution.

9

The lines quoted in example 5 are found word for word in the Narn i Hîn Húrin (UT 85).

10 Example 4 appeared in the Quenta Silmarillion §69 in substantially the same form; the parallel referred to in n. 6 was likewise an insertion in the Quenta Silmarillion §88 (though the Later Annals of Valinor, at Valian Year 2995, had the phrase “wrapped in fire”). Example 8 also emerged in the Quenta Silmarillion, in chapter 16 §11: the difference is only two words which later on fell out of the text. 11 Examples 2, 3, and 6 derive in some embryonic but recognizable form from the 1926 “Sketch of the Mythology,” and made it through the Quenta Noldorinwa and the Quenta Silmarillion (sometimes modified between the two versions). Examples 2 and 6 were further refined in the “Later Quenta Silmarillion.” 12 Example 6 had always been bipartite, its first line (or its source) separated from the rest by several sentences (they were in different paragraphs in the Quenta Silmarillion and the first version of the “Later Quenta” [§§56-7]); it was in the second version of the “Later Quenta” that the first line in this form emerged (§57), but the rest disappeared there, and was put there, I assume editorially, from the Annals of Aman §§107-8, where it occurs (although in slightly different form). Interpolation from the Annals of Aman was a frequent editorial practice in the construction of the 1977 Silmarillion. 13 Like the inversions in the Quenta Noldorinwa version of example 2, line 7: “his thoughts he hid and his vengeance he postponed.” 14 In referring to Tolkien’s long narrative poems, I will refer by the line numbers of the first version, unless otherwise noted. 15 Second version, l. 492: “and the stars were hid and the sun sickened.” See also: “it seemed to her [Nienor] that the sun sickened and became dim about her” (UT 119). This instance shows the connectedness of the two great poetic traditions, the Túrin and the Beren stories; the affinity, it appears, remains even in their later prose redactions (as the prose “Narn” in UT). 16 The use of epithets (in many cases alliterating) is a standard practice

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The Adapted Text both in the prose tradition (e.g., the relatively stable epithets of Fëanor’s sons, S 60) and in the poetic one (e.g. Húrin’s and Túrin’s epithets in the verse Túrin, or those of Fëanor’s sons in Leithian, passim). 17 Line 655: “as wild and wary as a faun” (the alliteration stays even though Leithian is a work in rhymed couplets). “Wild and wary as the beasts” is also said of the Púkel-men in the Lord of the Rings (RK, V, v, 105). 18 The article treats formal and linguistic features only and does not discuss thematic aspects and implications of the cultural context. Also, we cannot be sure that only Elvish poetic tradition went into Bilbo’s Silmarillion manuscript. 19 It is paralleled by “he guarded and guided his grim comrade” in the verse Túrin, l. 1427. 20 Cf. the verse Túrin, l. 1336: “a burden bore he than their bonds heavier.” 21 Cf. the verse Túrin, ll. 1419-20: “That grief was graven with grim token / on his face and form nor faded ever.” 22 Cf. the verse Túrin, l. 1422: “Thence he wandered without wish or purpose.” 23 First version, ll. 99-100; second version, ll. 240-42. 24 Cf. the verse Túrin, l. 334: “his lot was lightened.” 25 Cf. also §30, and UT (74). 26 But cf. the verse Túrin, l. 1363: “and slay me swift, O sleep-giver.” 27 “Sketch” 12, “he is turned to stone”; Quenta Noldorinwa §12, “he is turned as to stone.” 28 In fact, it derives with very minor variations from the Quenta Silmarillion §144. One phrase also seems to have a parallel in the “Sketch,” 8: “The North shakes with the thunder under the earth.” In the Hobbit, the phrase “roaring like thunder underground” is applied to Smaug when he discovers the theft of the cup by Bilbo (273), and in outline V to “The Story of Frodo and Sam in Mordor,” Orodruin produces a “constant rumble underground like a war of thunder” (Sauron 11). In the Lord of the Rings, this becomes “a deep remote rumble as of thunder imprisoned under the earth” (RK, VI, iii, 216-17). The image, as can be seen, was very appealing to Tolkien and his fictitious authors. 39

Gergely Nagy 29 A passage similar in its use of rhythm and alliteration is found in the Akallabêth (“And Men dwelt in darkness . . .”; S 260), and derives ultimately from the second version of “The Fall of Númenor” (§1). 30 Elwë and Melian; the Dwarves, their cities and cultural interactions with them; the building of Menegroth; Lenwë and the Nandor; the runes of Daeron, up to the point when the passage comes. 31 It in fact is: it comes from the “Grey Annals,” the last version of the “Annals of Beleriand,” and illustrates very well what happens when a text in the Annalistic style is presented as continuous prose. Its origin thus explains both its diversity of material and something of its style, and opens up a further direction of adaptedness (here from annals)— another case where the textual tradition from which an adaptation comes is clearly thematized. 32 The passage is in the annal to year 1350 of the “Grey Annals”; it compares Thingol to “the sons of the Valar,” and makes thought flow in a tide “from the heights to the deeps.” In the case of “deeps” to “depths,” the change is clearly according to a pattern (perhaps there is also an assonance with “rest”); the other change is necessitated by the loss of the concept of the “sons” of the Valar.

WORKS CITED Bratman, David. “The Literary Value of The History of Middle-earth.” In Tolkien’s Legendarium: Essays on The History of Middle-earth, ed. Verlyn Flieger and Carl E. Hostetter. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 2000. Havelock, Eric A. Preface to Plato. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1963. Nagy, Gergely. “The Great Chain of Reading: (Inter-)Textual Relations and the Technique of Mythopoesis in the Túrin story.” In Tolkien the Medievalist, ed. Jane Chance, ed. New York and London: Routledge, 2002. Noad, Charles. “On the Construction of ‘The Silmarillion.’” In Tolkien’s Legendarium: Essays on The History of Middle-earth, ed. Verlyn Flieger and Carl E. Hostetter. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 2000. Wynne, Patrick, and Carl F. Hostetter. “Three Elvish Verse Modes: Annthennath, Minlamad thent / estent, and Linnod.” In Tolkien’s

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The Adapted Text Legendarium: Essays on The History of Middle-earth, ed. Verlyn Flieger and Carl E. Hostetter. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 2000.

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“Do the Atlantis story and abandon Eriol-Saga” VERLYN FLIEGER

“O

nce upon a time,” wrote Tolkien to a publisher in 1951, “I had a mind to make a body of more or less connected legend . . . which I could dedicate . . . to England; to my country” (Letters 144). Much as he described (though perhaps not quite as he intended) his legendarium of Middle-earth, now published in entirety many years after his death, is indeed “a body of more or less connected legend.” It is also a body of overlapping, competing, endlessly revised, and often incomplete texts, the outcome of more than half a lifetime’s worth of invention. In such an assembly of material it is perhaps over-optimistic to expect total consistency, and with a few exceptions such as Ainulindalë, the stories of Beren and Lúthien, and those of Túrin Turambar, such consistency is not there. What is there, underlying all the intertangled, often unfinished texts, is a fixed purpose—Tolkien’s intent to create a mythology for England. It might be asked, “Why for England especially?” England had managed without a mythology for centuries and suffered no apparent damage. Tolkien, however, was not the only Englishman who felt the lack. E. M. Forster, although no mythologist, had asked rhetorically in Howards End, “Why has not England a great mythology?” lamenting that, “Our folklore has never advanced beyond daintiness, and the greater melodies about our country-side have all issued through the pipes of Greece. . . . England still waits for . . . the great poet who shall voice her, or, better still, for the thousand little poets whose voices shall pass into our common talk” (Forster 279). Tolkien’s letter expressed much the same sentiment: “I was from early days grieved by the poverty of my own beloved country; it had no stories of its own . . . . There was Greek,” he wrote, “and Celtic, and Romance, Germanic, Scandinavian, and Finnish (which greatly affected me) but nothing English, save impoverished chapbook stuff ” (Letters 144). 1 It is not unreasonable to suppose that Tolkien might have seen himself as Forster’s “great poet,” perhaps even, through the multiple voices of his mythology, as “the thousand little poets” as well. Both Tolkien and Forster were responding to a perceived connection between mythology and nationalism that engendered what Tom Shippey has called a mythological “arms race” (Shippey, “Grimm, Grundtvig, Tolkien” 8). Beginning with the Grimms in the early nineteenth century, folklorists had ransacked the attics of the past for ancient texts whose stories and myth-embedded language would support cultural identity and encourage nationhood. Tolkien’s comment about Finnish is especially Copyright © 2004, by West Virginia University Press

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Verlyn Flieger apposite. Elias Lönnrot’s Kalevala, a compilation of mythic songs from rural Finland, gave the Finns a sense of national identity, and Lönnrot’s example clearly spurred Tolkien to attempt something similar. While still a student at Oxford, he had written of Kalevala, “I would that we had more of it left—something of the same sort that belonged to the English” (Carpenter 89). To want “something of the same sort” for England would hardly be surprising in an imaginative young Englishman whose country was at war, and Tolkien’s ambition was apparently already forming in the years 1914–1916.2 Clear in itself, his ambition raises two related questions. What exactly did he mean by a mythology that “belonged to the English”?3 And how would he ensure that his invented one “belonged?” In answer to the first question, he meant it would embody what he saw as the English (not British) heritage, and would incorporate into a fictive legendarium elements from myth and history that fostered a sense of specifically English identity, as Kalevala had done for the Finns. The larger question is “How would his invented mythology belong?” His answer to that is more complex and convoluted, for there is evidence to suggest that it underwent a structural re-conception at a particular point in its development. The evidence is minimal, but provocative in its implications. It is a single cryptic note Tolkien jotted to himself on a scrap of paper at some time in the winter of 1945–46. Telegraphically brief, and neither explained nor elaborated, the note requires decoding, and even then is open to more than one interpretation. It reads simply, “Do the Atlantis story and abandon Eriol-Saga, with Loudham,4 Jeremy, Guildford, and Ramer taking part” (Sauron 281). Reading this over half a century after it was written, we cannot be certain what the note meant to Tolkien at the time, although item by item its component parts are identifiable. The first item, the “Atlantis story” relates to The Notion Club Papers, the narrative he was working on at the time, in which “Loudham, Jeremy, Guildford and Ramer” are principal characters. Its unfinished text is included in Volume 9 of The History of Middle-earth, Christopher Tolkien’s compendious edition of his father’s mythology. The second item, the far older and longer “EriolSaga” begun in 1917, was in fact the “body of more or less connected legend,” the frame and content of the mythology as a whole. It comprises Volumes 1 through 5 of The History. The two verbs in the note—do and abandon—seem plain and straightforward. It is only when all the terms are arranged in the sentence that the trouble begins, for the meaning of the whole is obviously greater than the sum of its parts. Fortunately, there are clues pointing toward meaning, all of them having to do with narrative structure. To gather them, we have to range over a wide span of years from 1917 to 1945-46. For clue number one

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“Do the Atlantis Story and abandon Eriol-Saga” we must go back to 1936, the year of Tolkien’s bargain with C. S. Lewis that he would write a time-travel story and Lewis a space-travel one.5 Tolkien’s response to the bargain was The Lost Road, the original Atlantis story and precursor of The Notion Club Papers. As Tolkien sketched it out, a contemporary English father and son on the coast of Cornwall, Alboin and Audoin Errol,6 were the frame for a journey into English history and myth. Clue number two takes us back to 1917 and the story of Eriol, the voyager who sailed westward to the Lonely Isle of Tol Eressëa,7 and there heard and recorded “The Lost Tales of Elfinesse” (Lost Tales I 22), stories told by the “fairies” (also called “Gnomes,” later Noldor) of the creation of the world and the history of Middle-earth. This was the Eriol-Saga. Clue number three brings us again to the mid-forties, the time of The Notion Club Papers and its accompanying note, which heralded an apparent change in the narrative intent of that story. The relevance to the note of clue number one, The Lost Road, lies as much in what Tolkien planned as in what he actually wrote, for the story was never finished. His outline, however, took the Errol father and son through successively earlier episodes in real history to their final destination in the imaginary pre-historic Second Age of Middle-earth. Here they would both witness and experience the destruction of his island of Númenor. Like the real-world myth of Atlantis when its people angered the gods, Númenor and its inhabitants were (with a few exceptions) to be overwhelmed by a great wave and drowned in the sea. In each episode, the recurring pair were to be known by some form (Langobard, AngloSaxon, Elvish) of their modern English names8 (all of them translatable as “Bliss-friend” and “Elf-friend”). The noteworthy aspect of the story was that the vehicle for their travel would be no Wellsian time-machine, but instead their ancestrally transmitted memories of a past they could not have experienced in their own personae. However, like so many of Tolkien’s efforts, this first time-travel venture was a casualty of his frequent writing habit of leaving one thing unfinished to begin another. The story had progressed no further than two or three chapters, with sketches and outlines for the historical and mythic episodes, when work slowed to a halt and the time-travel idea was shelved. A probable reason was the immediate success of The Hobbit in September 1937, followed by Tolkien’s equally immediate start on the requested sequel in December of that same year. His writing time thereafter was almost entirely occupied with “the new Hobbit” which became The Lord of the Rings. Nearly ten years later, taking a break from his labor on this unexpectedly long work, Tolkien turned again to time-travel and Atlantis with The Notion Club Papers. This he described to Stanley Unwin as, “taking up in an entirely different frame and setting what little had any value in

45

Verlyn Flieger the inchoate Lost Road” (Letters 118). What “had value” was apparently the concept of inherited memory leading to the destruction of Atlantis/ Númenor, while the “entirely different frame” completely changed the setting, the characters, and the format. The scene was re-located from Cornwall to his contemporary Oxford, the father and son protagonists re-imagined as the members of an Oxford club, and the narrative re-cast as the recently discovered minutes of club meetings. Although The Notion Club Papers is the lineal descendent of The Lost Road, it is a considerably more complex and sophisticated piece of work. The rather stilted dialogue of the Errol father and son is replaced by the energetic debates of the Notion Club, a fictionalized portrait of Tolkien’s actual Inklings (notion, i.e., inkling). The result is verisimilitude; the exchanges among the members have the crackle and bite of real conversation. That in its inception The Notion Club Papers had intentional autobiographical elements is beyond doubt. Indeed, the earliest drafts assign specific characters (Loudham, Jeremy, Ramer, and Guildford among them) the identities of Tolkien and his fellow-Inklings Lewis, Havard, and Dyson, with other minor characters more or less recognizable as well. These resemblances are not accidental, nor are they capricious. Although in subsequent revisions, this specificity is swallowed up in the fiction, it remains to affect the current of the narrative, like rocks just below the surface of a river. Like Tolkien, many members of the Club are scholars attached to Oxford colleges. More like Tolkien, several are philologists by training. Even more like Tolkien, they have specific interests that mirror his own— curiosity about the history of languages, a love for fairy-tales, a knowledge of North-West European mythology, and (most important to the Papers) a highly developed taste for science fiction. In fact several, rather like the author of The Notion Club Papers, are themselves writers of such fiction. This new format and cast of characters allowed room for more discussion, and gave Tolkien the chance to hand off to various speakers theories about narrative techniques—for science fiction in particular and fantasy worlds in general. These are the conceptual background for his apparent decision to: “Do the Atlantis story and abandon Eriol-Saga, with Loudham, Jeremy, Guildford, and Ramer taking part” (Sauron 281). This brings us to clue number two and the Eriol-Saga. Like The Lost Road and The Notion Club Papers this was a frame-story, this one with a double function. First, the frame was to set up a context in which mythic stories could believably be told and transmitted, a situation within which the entire mythology would be unfolded. Second, and within this context, it was to establish the “Englishness” of the legendarium. As Christopher Tolkien writes:

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“Do the Atlantis Story and abandon Eriol-Saga” The story of Eriol the mariner was central to my father’s original concept of the mythology. . . . In those days . . . the primary intention of his work was to satisfy his desire for a specifically and recognizably English literature of “faerie.” . . . In his earliest writings the mythology was anchored in the ancient legendary history of England; and more than that, it was peculiarly associated with certain places in England (Lost Tales I 22). Since the mythology was to be “of faerie,” that is to say, Elvish, there had to be a way to make it the property of Men and thereby “English.” Eriol the voyager was the link. He was at first imagined as belonging to a vague historical period before the Anglo-Saxon invasions of the island of Britain, and, according to Christopher Tolkien, was to be “close kin of famous figures in the legends of North-western Europe” (Lost Tales I 22). He was called Angol “after the regions of his home,” and was thus a kind of proto-Angle, a pre-English inhabitant of Europe. Later, his name now changed to Ælfwine, he became “an Englishman of the ‘Anglo-Saxon period’ of English history, who sailed west over sea to Tol Eressëa,” which would, at the end of the story “become [my emphasis] England, the land of the English” (Lost Tales I 24).9 In the earliest versions of the myth, then, England, though not originally named as such, was to be present as both a historical and a geographical reality.10 The figure of Eriol, however, went through further changes. Christopher Tolkien states plainly that his role was at first to be more important in the structure of the work than (what it afterwards became) simply that of a man of later days who came to “the land of the fairies” and there acquired lost or hidden knowledge, which he afterward reported in his own tongue: at first, Eriol was to be an important element in the fairy history itself—the witness of the ruin of Elvish Tol Eressëa.11 The element of ancient English history or “historical legend” was at first not merely a framework, isolated from the great tales that afterwards constituted “The Silmarillion,” but an integral part of their ending. (Lost Tales I 23) It was later, in what Christopher Tolkien calls the “second [“unrealized”] ‘Scheme’ for the Tales,” that the concept of Tol Eressëa as England was dropped in favor of an actual Britain (here named Luthany), that Eriol was changed to Ælfwine, and the role of “the witness of the ruin” was diminished. “His part,” writes Christopher, was now “only to learn and record” (Lost Tales II 301).

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Verlyn Flieger The English “anchor” continued to drop away as the mythology developed through its many overlapping and competing prose and poetic versions, and Eriol/Ælfwine continued to recede in importance, while the tales of Fëanor and the Silmarils, of the children of Húrin and their tragic fate, and the great romance of Beren and Lúthien, came more and more to appear on their own. But as we have seen, like The Lost Road, the entire mythology was put aside late in 1937, when Tolkien began the sequel to The Hobbit, which became the Lord of the Rings. Fortunately for the reading public, that work (after long genesis) was brought to completion and published. Less fortunately, both the EriolSaga and his two tries at the time-travel Atlantis story were left unfinished at Tolkien’s death. This was a pity, because each venture had, in a different way and at a different time in its author’s creative life, explored uncharted narrative ground—the former by marrying actual history and real-world myth to a fictive mythology, and the latter by using memory as a vehicle for time-travel. At first glance, however, there is little in either venture that suggests, as does Tolkien’s note, that one might either give way to, or lead to the other. The third and final clue is the narrative line of the third frame-story, The Notion Club Papers. According to Christopher Tolkien, the story divides into two distinct though chronologically sequential parts. Part One, existing in manuscript versions A, B, C, and final D, Tolkien called “The Ramblings of Ramer,” and with reason, for it is almost entirely theoretical and highly discursive. Criticism of a science fiction story by Michael Ramer leads to vigorous debate about space-travel, the plausibility of current literary devices for getting off the planet, and finally to Ramer’s account of his actual psychic experiments and “rambles” along that line. It seems clear that Tolkien’s initial impulse was a reply to C. S. Lewis’s space-travel stories. Not only was his early working title, “Out of the Talkative Planet,” an obvious reference to Lewis’s Out of the Silent Planet, but Lewis and his space novels are (among others) specifically singled out for criticism. All this becomes a long preamble to a tale when space-travel gives way to time-travel in Part Two, the whole of manuscript E, called “The Strange Case of Arundel Lowdham.” Now the emphasis shifts from the “ramblings” of Ramer to the un-summoned Númenorean memories of Lowdham, the frame of the rest of the narrative. Theory becomes an introduction to actuality, past events erupt into the present, and happenings of an increasingly psychic nature engulf the meetings. The latter half of manuscript E, the part most explicitly like The Lost Road, was (at the point where the story breaks off) developing as a journey via successive identities back through real time into mythic time and ultimately to Tolkien’s entirely imaginary Second Age and the destruction of Númenor. With such marked change, it seems reasonable 48

“Do the Atlantis Story and abandon Eriol-Saga” to conjecture that the narrative intent of the story might also have shifted ground from Part One to Part Two. It is at this crucial point that the two items cited in the note—the Atlantis story and the Eriol-Saga—apparently collided, for according to Christopher Tolkien, the note was “undoubtedly” written “before [Tolkien] began the writing of the manuscript E,” which explicitly takes up the Atlantis story. My suggestion is that the note had to do with the frame, and that it was Tolkien’s answer to the question of how his invented mythology would belong to the English. He was contemplating conceptual changes that would connect one frame (the Atlantis story) to the other (the Eriol-Saga), and would extend the “Englishness” of his mythology beyond history and pre-history into the realm of psychohistory and para-psychology. Both changes concerned strategy of presentation, finding a way to portray the story convincingly as a mythology. Most real-world mythologies, such as Kalevala, are set before the public by collectors or compilers like Lönnrot, who function as the editorial “bridge” over the inevitable disconnect between the old (frequently oral) stories and the modern audience from a different time or culture reading a written text. Admiration for Kalevala notwithstanding, Tolkien had no ambition to be a folklore collector. His dismissal of English “chap-book stuff ” makes it clear that he had rejected that route out of hand. He wanted instead to be the sole inventor of a cohesive fictive mythology, in his own words, “a body of more or less connected legend, ranging from the large and cosmogonic, to the level of romantic fairy-story . . . which I could dedicate . . . to England” (Letters 144). The crucial element is the phrase “to England.” To invent a mythology is one thing; to persuade a particular (in this case specifically English) reading public of its validity not just as myth but as their myth —however fictive—is quite another. For this Tolkien needed some kind of sub-creative credibility,12 a source that could convincingly transmit the ancient stories to future English audiences, and an equally plausible means by which they could arrive in the contemporary (presumably English) reader’s hand. He had models aplenty, but like Lönnrot, they all, to some degree, emphasized their distance from the material they retold. For example, Snorri Sturluson’s thirteenth-century Prose Edda, which Tolkien knew well, re-told Norse myths. The first section, Gylfaginning (“The Deluding of Gylfi”) used the traveler Gylfi, whose by-name, like Eriol’s, was Gangleri (“Wanderer”). Gylfi journeyed to the home of the gods to question them (also like Eriol) about the creation and nature of the world. Snorri’s own Prologue, however, made it clear that as an enlightened Christian and a thoroughly modern man, he did not believe the stories he set down.

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Verlyn Flieger The medieval clerics who copied at second or third hand the stories we call “Celtic” mythology were often at pains to de-mythicize them. The redactor of the Táin Bó Cúalnge (the epic Cattle Raid of Cooley) in the Book of Leinster stated firmly, “I who have written this story, or rather this fable, give no credence to the various incidents related in it. For some things in it are the deceptions of demons, others poetic figments; some are probable, others improbable, while still others are intended for the delectation of foolish men” (O’Rahilly 272). The nineteenth-century ballad collectors such as Bishop Percy and Francis Child, as well as more scientific folklore scholars such as the Grimms and Lönnrot, all looked on the stories they collected and published as fossils of ancient beliefs which they sought to preserve. Tolkien’s comment on this was that they were “using the stories not as they were meant to be used, but as a quarry from which to dig evidence, or information about matters in which they are interested” (“On Fairy-Stories” 119). There were, alternatively, the great romantic frauds, the Chattertons and Macphersons who out of a love for myth or in a real effort to stimulate interest—or both—passed off their own inventions as the real thing. But they were frauds whose inevitable unmasking not only disqualified but cheapened what they wrote. The task Tolkien set himself was not just to create a mythology but to give it credibility. The great collections Tolkien knew were no longer tales told by the faithful, but specimens gathered between covers for analysis and classification. How was he to find a middle ground as neither scientist nor fraud? What would be his strategy of presentation? He had avoided the problem in The Hobbit by writing it as a children’s book. It faced him squarely with the Silmarillion, which did not fit under the children’s book rubric.13 Who would be telling his stories, to whom, and why? His first answer had been Eriol/Ælfwine, but the note accompanying The Notion Club Papers seems to signal a change in approach. When Tolkien wrote it, he obviously had something in mind which we can only guess at now: how “doing” the Atlantis story related to “abandoning” the Eriol-Saga, and what would have been the consequences of such a move. One possibility has been proposed by Christopher Tolkien, who says, “The only explanation that I can see is that the ‘Eriol-Saga’ had been, up to this time, what my father had in mind for the further course of the meetings of the Notion Club, but was now rejecting in favour of ‘Atlantis.’ In the event he did not do so; he found himself drawn back into the ideas he had sketched for The Lost Road” (Sauron 281–82). This is a reasonable scenario, but not the only conceivable one. It is also possible that Tolkien might have been contemplating a less sweeping, yet more structurally and psychologically profound change. Now the

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“Do the Atlantis Story and abandon Eriol-Saga” words “do” and “abandon” come into play. While they can suggest that Tolkien might have been considering exchanging one frame for another, they might equally suggest that, in order to save all the work already done on the Eriol-Saga without carrying it further, he meant instead to find a mechanism by which the two frames could meet and join. Abandonment does not necessarily mean wholesale rejection. It could as easily mean simply leaving the Eriol-Saga where it was and bringing the Atlantis story back through time to connect to it. The Notion Club Papers would become the mythology’s entry-point and the Atlantis story the mechanism of transmission for the whole. Such a connection, had it been carried out, would have brought about fundamental changes. As mentioned above, it would have stretched history into psycho-history. In addition, it would have solved a practical problem of increasing concern to Tolkien—how to bring a mythical, ahistorical, flat-earth “faery” mythology into a realistic, historical, round world. In Part Two of the Papers Jeremy poses the question Tolkien was trying to answer: “If you went back would you find myth dissolving into history or history into myth?” He then goes on to make what is a halfrhetorical but in light of Tolkien’s note a most revealing query: “Perhaps the Atlantis catastrophe was the dividing line?” (Sauron 249). Atlantis was going to be precisely that in Tolkien’s mythology, the line which both divided and connected the Atlantis story and the Eriol-Saga In his essay “On the Construction of ‘The Silmarillion,’”14 Charles Noad states that The Notion Club Papers “reveals Tolkien’s thought concerning the relationship of his myth to history. Discussions . . . hint at a way in which the past as recalled by myth and legend might have a reality of its own, distinct from the ‘true’ past” (Noad 50). Noad asserts that the appearance of Númenor, first in The Lost Road and subsequently in The Notion Club Papers, had two effects on Tolkien’s overall concept. First, “it introduced the concept of a transition from a flat to a round world.” Second, “it implied that there was a good deal of unrecorded history between the era of the Elvish myths and our known history” (63). Taking these in order, we can see first, that the transition from a flat world to a round one came naturally out of the most Atlantean aspect of the story, the Drowning of Númenor, in which cataclysm a chasm opened in the sea and the flat world was “bent” and rounded on itself. The Lost Road of the title story is the straight way West, left hanging in the upper air when the lower world falls away beneath it. Second, the timegap between the modern time-travelers and the events of the Eriol-Saga leaves ample space “between the era of the Elvish myths and our known history.” Although Noad does not cite it, a statement Tolkien made in a 1945 letter to Christopher supports this position: “I do not now feel either

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Verlyn Flieger ashamed or dubious on the Eden ‘myth,’” wrote Tolkien. “It has not, of course, historicity of the same kind as the N[ew] T[estament], which are virtually contemporaneous documents, while Genesis is separated by we do not know how many sad exiled generations from the Fall, but certainly there was an Eden on this very unhappy earth” (Letters 109-110). The timing of the letter (earlier in the same year he began The Notion Club Papers), the sentiment expressed, and the phrase “exiled generations,” all strongly suggest that Tolkien might have seen a connection between the posited Genesis–New Testament gap and the similar stretch of history between his own Genesis (Ainulindalë in the Eriol-Saga) and the Atlantis story. His frequent allusions to his Elves in Middle-earth as “exiles” would support this view. The change would have dramatically altered the character and personality of the witness. Noad declares that Tolkien “considered jettisoning the entire Pengolo∂-Ælfwine framing device, and instead having the myths retold by Númenoreans and their successors,”15 thus allowing for “a new form of transmission” (64). If, as seems likely, these Númenorean successors were to culminate in Loudham, Jeremy, Guildford, and Ramer, the form of transmission would necessarily be new because the witness or witnesses would be fundamentally different. Instead of inhabitants of a pre-historic, mythic, primarily Elvish world, they would be contemporary Englishmen of Tolkien’s own time and Tolkien’s own town of Oxford. This strategy has implications for narrative style, which would replace generic fairy speech with contemporary, even colloquial English. Eriol, even when he became Ælfwine, was little more than a formal mouthpiece for questions, and as a listener had little discernible personality. The Notion Club members, especially Lowdham, are bursting with personality. They are not listeners; they are talkers, debaters, and interrupters. They are opinionated, abrasive, argumentative, intellectually curious. It is not an accident that the working sub-title of The Notion Club Papers was “Out of the Talkative Planet.” The change in setting and dramatis personae is for the better; but just what about the Atlantis story could have been the catalyst that turned Tolkien back to re-consideration of the Eriol-Saga? The most obvious candidate is Lowdham, whose character becomes more strongly marked as the story progresses, and who as Alwyn (Ælfwine) Arundel (Eärendel, Elendil), is clearly scheduled to assume the role of witness. Christopher Tolkien writes: Only when the manuscript B was completed (and the text of “Part One” of the Papers very largely achieved) did the thought enter: “Do the Atlantis story.” With Loudham’s standing beneath the Radcliffe Camera and staring up at the 52

“Do the Atlantis Story and abandon Eriol-Saga” sky the whole course of the Papers was changed. . . . But when my father wrote “Do the Atlantis story” he also said that the “Eriol-Saga should be abandoned,” although there is no mention of any such matter in Part One. (Sauron 281–82) More than the course of the Papers would have changed. Blended with the Papers, the nature of the mythology itself would have altered, for it would have offered a particularly and peculiarly Tolkienian answer to the question “In what way would the story be English?” Finally, to the earlier-conceived historical and geographical connection would be added a psychological and psychic one. Now it would be English not simply because it was about England or because it happened in England, but because it was ingrained in the memory of countless generations of Englishmen, memory revived, re-experienced, and repossessed by Lowdham (and presumably also by Jeremy, Guildford, and Ramer), through the genetic re-collections of their ancestors. This is to say the least a mode predicated not on Wellsian time-machinery but on Jungian psychology and the theory of the collective unconscious, plus something as close to reincarnation as makes no matter. Part One of the Papers finds the members of the Club arguing about the necessity for aesthetic harmony between an author’s way of “getting there” (whether “there” is through time or space) and the “there” that is got to. Defending his story’s way of getting there, Ramer argues that it should not affect the story thus arrived at, for it is a mere frame, a device and no more. Guildford responds that it must, instead, be a coherent part of the picture. “An author’s way of getting to Mars, say, is part of his story of his Mars. . . . It’s part of the picture . . . and it may seriously affect all that’s inside” (Sauron 163). He then offers his own method of getting there. It is, he tells the Club, “the only known or likely way in which anyone has ever landed on a world,” which is, “Incarnation. By being born” (Sauron 170). On this premise, Tolkien’s way of getting to “his Mars,” i.e., Númenor and its mythic past, by inherited memory would also “seriously affect all that’s inside.” It would make English history and myth, as well as his own pre-English mythology, the property of inborn, genetically transmitted remembrance, possessed by the English whether they know it or not. In addition, these changes would have had a practical effect on the credibility mechanism, the way in which the story comes to the modern reader. In his later commentary on his own publication of the Silmarillion Christopher Tolkien wrote that it was “certainly debatable whether it was wise to publish . . . a version of the primary ‘legendarium’ standing on its own and claiming, as it were, to be self-explanatory.” “The published work,” he wrote, had “no ‘framework,’ no suggestion of what it is and how (within the imagined world) it came to be. This,” he declared, “I 53

Verlyn Flieger now believe to have been a mistake” (Lost Tales I 5). Tolkien would have agreed. Lack of framework is precisely the problem, a problem with which he found himself unendingly concerned. It was not easy, for he had to drive three horses simultaneously, and they were not all trotting in the same direction. The first horse carried the source of the stories and the situation within the fiction itself wherein they arose, the internal tale-teller and primary audience. For expediency, we may designate this first horse as the framestory of the voyager Eriol/Ælfwine. The second horse was the vehicle by which the stories were preserved and/or passed down. Somehow there had to be some reliable means other than oral transmission for the bringing forward of the tales from age to age. This, too, was originally assigned to Eriol/Ælfwine, who recorded the tales in a fictive book. Both together we may take to be the Eriol-Saga. These two horses trot along comfortably together. The third horse, not entirely broken to harness, was to carry the ultimate means of transmission, the rationale for the book as finally published and held in the modern reader’s hand. The first and second horses carry the story from oral to written form. Although Eriol-Ælfwine is told the tales, and although as originally conceived, he is the direct link between the stories and the reader, the actual vehicle of transmission is a written book. Tolkien’s earliest title of The Book of Lost Tales makes this explicit, and he had inserted behind the early versions of the Lost Tales evidence to suggest the presumptive existence of a written text, which text had a variety of origins. Among them was: The Golden Book of Heorrenda being the book of the Tales of Tavrobel (Lost Tales II 290) As its title implies, this was to be the work of one Heorrenda16 “of Hægwudu,” the son of Eriol (nicknamed Wæfre), who was “using those writings that my father . . . did make in his sojourn in the holy isle [Tol Eressëa]” (Lost Tales II 291). Another version, following the switch from Eriol to Ælfwine, gave the book not only an origin but a precise location: The Golden Book of Tavrobel the same that Ælfwine wrote and laid in the House of a Hundred Chimneys at Tavrobel, where it lieth still to read for such as may (Lost Tales II 310). Tolkien’s fragmentary “The History of Eriol or Ælfwine” as set out by Christopher Tolkien, states that Eriol is bidden to “write [my emphasis] down all he has heard,” that his book “lies untouched . . . during many

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“Do the Atlantis Story and abandon Eriol-Saga” ages of Men,” and is added to by the “compiler of the Golden Book” (Lost Tales II 282). Against this is written Tolkien’s note that “it may perhaps be much better to let Eriol himself see the last things and finish the book” (Lost Tales II 282). Another note specifies, “The last words of the Book of Tales. Written by Eriol at Tavrobel before he sealed the book,” while yet another proposes a “Prologue by the writer of Tavrobel [presumably the “compiler of the Golden Book” cited above] telling how he found Eriol’s writings and put them together” (Lost Tales II 287). It seems clear that Tolkien was of several minds as to just how to have the tales transmitted, and tried out a variety of redactors and/or compilers for the book. This brings us to the third and most problematic horse, the final means of transmission, the rationale for the book in the reader’s hand. Whether Eriol “sealed the book,” or a later compiler found and continued the account, there still had to be a plausible way for it to be published. How did it get from Eriol or Heorrenda or an unnamed compiler, to the modern reader? Who brought it into print, and how, and why? The Eriol-Saga had no answer to this question. The Atlantis story as told in The Notion Club Papers did. Tolkien’s answer, his transmission device, was the nesting of text within text within text, each deriving from a successively earlier time.17 The primary-level, or “outside,” text is presented as the publication of the recently-discovered minutes of the Notion Club found “on the top of one of a number of sacks of waste paper in the basement of the Examination Schools at Oxford” (Sauron 255), and edited by their discoverer, “Mr. Howard Green.” Mr. Howard Green, Tolkien’s imaginary Snorri-cumLönnrot, is a type familiar in nineteenth-century adventure fiction, the remote but realistic pseudo-editor who provides the occasion for the story and interjects explanatory notes and comments. H. Rider Haggard was fond of the device, employing it in She and King Solomon’s Mines, and Tolkien has followed in his footsteps. Contained within the pages of Mr. Green’s “book” is the secondarylevel single page from the much older manuscript book in the possession of Edwin (Eadwine, Audoin) Lowdham, father of Notion Club member Alwin Arundel (Ëarendil, Elendil, Alboin, Ælfwine, Elwin) Lowdham.18 This page is itself a transcription by yet a third party of a considerably more ancient Númenorean book written by Elendil which has somehow survived the cataclysm of the downfall of Númenor. Within the fiction the second text is introduced by Lowdham, who describes it as a manuscript leaf, “some sort of a diary or notes in a queer script. . . . I only found one loose leaf of it among the papers that came to me” (Sauron 235). When he and Jeremy stumble away from a meeting on the night of the storm Lowdham inadvertently leaves behind “a leaf of paper.” It is picked up by Ramer, who identifies it as “the leaf of his father’s

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Verlyn Flieger manuscript that he told us about” (Sauron 255). Showing it to the Club at a later meeting, he comments that “this stuff looks to me like the work of a man copying out all he had time to see, or all he found still intact and legible in some book” (Sauron 259). Unable to recognize the script (it is in fact Fëanorian Tengwar; see the reproductions of this page in Sauron Defeated [319–21]), but making an educated guess that the language is Anglo-Saxon, Ramer decides to get the help of an Anglo-Saxon expert, and takes the page “round to old Professor Rashbold at Pembroke” for translation.19 Rashbold quickly pegs it as “Old English of a strongly Mercian (West-Midland) colour,” and comments that “the style has the air of a translation” (Sauron 257). If it is a translation, who was the translator? Remembering that Lowdham found it among his father’s papers we might be tempted to assign the task to old Edwin Lowdham. Further embedding awaits us, however, for Edwin Lowdham was the possessor but not necessarily (in his own persona, at least) the translator. This is an even earlier avatar, as Tolkien’s sketches, outlines, and notes make clear. In two projected continuations of the “King Sheave” episode that closes the last recorded meeting of the Club, Tolkien has Ælfwine and Tréowine, the AngloSaxon avatars of Lowdham and Jeremy, set out to sea and sail West. Both continuations bring the voyagers to the Straight Road, but their ship is driven back by storm. The sketches break off there, with an outline for their projected continuance following: Tréowine [Jeremy] sees the straight Road and the world plunging down. Ælfwine’s [Lowdham’s] vessel seems to be taking the straight Road and falls [sic] in a swoon of fear and exhaustion. Ælfwine gets view of the Book of Stories; and writes down what he can remember. Later fleeting visions. Beleriand tale. Sojourn in Númenor before and during the fall ends with Elendil [Lowdham] and Voronwë [Jeremy] fleeing on a hill of water into the dark with Eagles and lightning pursuing them. Elendil has a book which he has written.” His descendants get glimpses of it. Ælfwine has one. (Sauron 279) In the context of this outline, the “book” must be seen not just as 56

“Do the Atlantis Story and abandon Eriol-Saga” an imaginative concept, but as the prototype credibility device for the whole mythological conceit. “The Book of Stories” of which Ælfwine gets a view is very probably a version of the Golden Book (whether of Tavrobel or Heorrenda). If Ælfwine “writes down what he can remember,” it would presumably be in his own language, Anglo-Saxon. Ælfwine’s earlier, Númenorean self, Elendil, who survives the downfall, has yet another book “which he has written.” According to the outline, Elendil’s descendants “get glimpses of it,” and Ælfwine (clearly one of those descendants) “has one.” This is quite probably the source of the page from Edwin Lowdham’s manuscript, that portentous clue to the past which is dropped by Lowdham, picked up by Ramer, and translated by old Rashbold of Pembroke. Elendil’s “book” leads to Ælfwine’s translation which leads to Edwin Lowdham’s manuscript, of which the single leaf dropped by Lowdham and picked up by Ramer is embedded in the Notion Club “papers,” the minutes found by Mr. Howard Green who then becomes both editor and publisher of The Notion Club Papers.20 Here is where and how the Atlantis story connects to the book which contains the Eriol-Saga. The journey into the past brings the protagonists closer with each successively older identity until they hold in their hands the book or books in which the earliest stories were brought forward. In his commentary appended to the narrative portions of The Lost Road, Christopher Tolkien writes: With the entry at this time of the cardinal ideas of the Downfall of Númenor, the World Made Round, and the Straight Road, into the conception of “Middle-earth,” and the thought of a “time-travel” story in which the very significant figure of the Anglo-Saxon Ælfwine would be both “extended” into the future, into the twentieth century, and “extended” also into a many-layered past, my father was envisaging a massive and explicit linking of his own legends with those of many other places and times: all concerned with the stories and dreams of peoples who dwelt by the coasts of the great Western Sea. All this was set aside during the period of the writing of The Lord of the Rings, but not abandoned, for in 1945, before indeed The Lord of the Rings was completed, he returned to these themes in the unfinished Notion Club Papers. (Lost Road 98) Tolkien’s proposal to do the Atlantis story and abandon the EriolSaga would bring the Eriol-Ælfwine figure into the present not just by “extending” him into the future but by starting him off there. The reader would encounter the “faërie” myth by way of a more novelistically 57

Verlyn Flieger conceived work, which would in turn affect the ethos and spirit of the legendarium contained within both. It would have made the “Englishness” a genetic—even psychic—as well as historic and geographic element in the story. This is a profound change. The position of The Notion Club Papers in Tolkien’s development as a writer is important here. It is not unreasonable to assume that confidence in his own powers as a writer had been strengthened, first by the success of The Hobbit, and second by his more recent experience in sustaining a story of much greater length and complexity. By 1945 he had been at work on The Lord of the Rings—with intermittent starts and stops— for some eight years. He had had sufficient practice at writing fiction that he might now have felt ready to take some risks. Certainly, he was preparing to deal, in fiction and through barely disguised fictive voices, with experiences of the mind and psyche to which he had heretofore only briefly alluded.21 The mystical strain in Tolkien’s nature is at its clearest in the parapsychological spin he puts on the characters in The Notion Club Papers, which deals with reincarnation, out-of-body experiences in time and space, the psychic import of dreams, and most important of all, collective unconscious manifest in inherited memory. These were the kinds of things he had more cautiously (and safely) dealt with by way of fantasy in The Lord of the Rings 22 but was now ready to risk addressing in more realistic fiction. By using regression through the serial identities and memories of Notion Club members as his path backward into the mythology, Tolkien would be providing a series of specifically and genetically English embedded frame-narrators, each contained in the one before him, and all leading the reader deeper and deeper into the fiction and the mystery. Rather surprisingly, there is a hint of something like this in The Lord of the Rings, as I noted, in a slightly different context, in A Question of Time. Early in the story Merry Brandybuck, rescued from the Barrow by Tom Bombadil, experiences for a fleeting instant a memory from the ancient past of being speared through the heart by “the men of Carn Dûm” (FR, I, viii, 154). This is a flashback to an episode from the Second Age of the parent mythology, the Silmarillion, and is clearly an occurrence of which the present-day Merry has no first-hand knowledge nor any conscious recollection. It is a brief moment, no more; it has no apparent significance beyond itself, and nothing in the rest of the story depends on it. Still, it is there. Such incidents are more numerous, more psychologically portentous, and more essential to the plot in The Notion Club Papers. Here the protagonists experience multiple flashbacks—recall Lowdham “standing beneath the Radcliffe Camera and staring up at the sky”—to anterior

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“Do the Atlantis Story and abandon Eriol-Saga” memory, referring to “the Eagles of the Lords of the West,” “Zigûr” (Sauron), and “Elven-Latin,” all of which were intended to pay off in the Númenorean climax to the story. Such episodes do not come out of nowhere, but are grounded in their author’s own consciousness. References both implicit and explicit to reincarnation, genetic memory, and the concept of inherited memory of a homeland and of its (literally) “native” language are scattered throughout Tolkien’s published Letters. Here are some examples: Letter # 44 to Michael Tolkien. “Though a Tolkien by name, I am a Suffield by tastes, talents, and upbringing, and any corner of that country [Worcestershire] (however fair or squalid) is in an indefinable way “home” to me as no other part of the world is” (Letters 54). Letter # 95 to Christopher Tolkien. “It is things of racial and linguistic significance that attract me and stick in my memory. Still, I hope one day you’ll be able (if you wish) to delve into this intriguing story of the origins of our peculiar people. And indeed, of us in particular. For barring the Tolkien (which must long ago have become a pretty thin strand) you are a Mercian or Hwiccian (of Wychwood) on both sides” (Letters 108). Letter # 163 to W. H. Auden. “I am a west-midlander by blood (and took early to west-midland Middle English as soon as I set eyes on it)” and “I daresay such linguistic tastes . . . are as good or better a test of ancestry as blood-groups” (Letters 213). Letter # 165 to Houghton Mifflin Co. “It is, I believe, as much due to descent as to opportunity that Anglo-Saxon and Western Middle English have been both a childhood attraction and my main professional sphere” (Letters 218). And most conclusively, I think: Letter # 153 to Peter Hastings. “‘Reincarnation’ may be bad theology (that surely, rather than metaphysics) as applied to Humanity. . . . But I do not see how even in the primary World any theologian or philosopher, unless very much better informed about the relation of spirit and body than I believe anyone to be, could deny the possibility of re-incarnation as a mode of existence, prescribed for certain kinds of rational incarnate creatures” (Letters 189). The recurrent mention of Mercian or West-Midland ancestry points 59

Verlyn Flieger pretty clearly not just to Tolkien’s forebears, but to the page from Edwin Lowdham’s diary identified by old Rashbold as Mercian and WestMidland. Add to these inherited “taste,” tastes as a “test of ancestry,” the combination of “racial and linguistic significance,” childhood attraction “due to descent,” and finally “the possibility of re-incarnation as a mode of existence for certain kinds of rational incarnate creatures.” The sum of all these is evidence of the author’s personal belief as well as a writerly preference for “descent,” “ancestry,” and “reincarnation” as a viable mode of time-travel.23 The Notion Club Papers anatomizes the concept. Part One, “The Ramblings of Ramer,” is directly relevant to the mechanical problem of transmission. Whatever was Tolkien’s original intent for this, it becomes a set-up for Part Two, where, in “The Strange Case of Arundel Lowdham,” the story gets down to business, to time-travel, and to incarnation. Or reincarnation. Here we see, in the memory-flashbacks first of Lowdham, and then of Jeremy, and later their combined memories as they travel up and down the west coasts of Britain and Ireland, how incarnation would work as a time-travel device. During the great storm that breaks up the meeting on night 61, the two begin to experience actual regression in time and identity directly back to Númenor and the corresponding— perhaps identical—storm that brings about its downfall. They move into Númenorean identities, call each other by Númenorean names— Abrazàn and Numruzìr—and apparently occupy Númenorean space. These regressions continue after they leave the meeting and Oxford itself and go in search of their memories. What, finally might have been the effect on the mythology had Tolkien carried through his intent to abandon the Eriol-Saga and do the Atlantis story? The answer can be found in his own notes to The Notion Club Papers where the concept apparently developed. These, plus his references in the Letters to inherited memory and recognition of an unknown “home” and language, all support the likelihood that “the Atlantis story” would have changed the approach—and through that the ethos and spirit—of the whole legendarium. There would have been a radical re-vision of the over-arching concept of “belonging” to England. The traditional method of starting a mythology at the beginning with Creation would have been replaced with the far less conventional narrative entry from what for Tolkien would have been the middle, (i.e., modern, reader-contemporary period). The imagined End (which he never got to) would still be far off in a future quite clearly still ahead of our own world. In addition, the shift would have augmented the rather tenuous and changeful thread of historical and territorial continuity— whether as Tol Eressëa or actual Britain—with the para-psychological thread of continuity through memory. More radical still, such memory

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“Do the Atlantis Story and abandon Eriol-Saga” would have been presented as passing through a series of successively receding incarnations of the same two individuals. Thus the mythology would have been “for England” in a psychical, as well as historical sense. The change would have made the mythology the common possession of a generic collective memory, as well as of a shared piece of ground and its shared history. Tolkien’s sketches and outlines for continuation of The Notion Club Papers, as well as for the earlier The Lost Road, indicate that this would have been played out in episodic recapitulations of existing incidents in English myth and history—such as his fully realized treatments of the mythical arrival of King Sheave, and the historical raid of the Danes at Porlock. These were to reappear through memories, with “Loudham, Jeremy, Guildford, and Ramer taking part,” and were to culminate in the book or perhaps books referred to in Tolkien’s notes—the Book of Stories, and Elendil’s book. The entire concept could be re-stated in the words Tolkien used to describe the work of the Beowulf poet. It is “an historical poem about the pagan past, or an attempt at one—literal historical fidelity founded on modern research was, of course, not attempted. It is a poem by a learned man writing of old times [my emphasis], who looking back on the heroism and sorrow feels in them something permanent and something symbolical” (“Monsters” 26). Like Tolkien’s profound and scholarly, but also highly personal vision of Beowulf, his own mythology is meant to give “the illusion of surveying a past, pagan but noble and fraught with deep significance—a past that itself had depth24 and reached backward into a dark antiquity of sorrow”25 (“Monsters” 27). It could be argued nonetheless that the whole question is not just moot but irrelevant, since Tolkien never followed through, either by completing The Notion Club Papers as a self-contained work, or by effecting the enormous shift in perspective and psychology that “doing” Atlantis as the frame and entry-point for the whole mythology might have brought about. The change was never carried out, and what we have is what we get. What we get is an unfinished symphony whose implications outrun its execution. Over against this, I would argue with Sir Philip Sidney that “the skill of the artificer standeth in the idea or foreconceit of the work and not in the work itself ”; or at least, that the idea or foreconceit is as important as the execution. This is especially so in the case of Tolkien, where the skill of the artificer is contained in the foreconceit, though the work itself was never fully realized. The whole notion of conceiving and carrying through a singly authored, wholly invented mythology needs further examination. Tolkien’s method of making it English through memory ancestrally transmitted and re-experienced in episodes from English myth and history should be reconsidered in light of Shippey’s concept of the

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Verlyn Flieger mythological “arms race,” the pervasive ambition of European cultures to stake a claim to nationhood through myth. Finally, the actual structure of the legendarium and its potential changes merit close interrogation. Fragmentary, confusing, and inconclusive though the evidence may be, the working out of Tolkien’s dream of a “mythology for England”— the soaring height of the ambition, the breadth and depth and range of the undertaking, and the resultant complicated collection of stories, sketches, notes begun, abandoned, and begun again, always moving in the direction of a complex but deeply-felt vision—invites inquiry beyond what it has so far received.

NOTES 1

This is probably a reference to a kind of popular folklore that was the stock reading matter of ordinary people during the eighteenth and much of the nineteenth centuries. Popular with the pre-industrial rural and urban poor, chapbooks continued as a staple of children’s literary fare in the twentieth century. They told the stories of figures such as Guy of Warwick, Bevis of Hampton, Hugh of Lincoln, and the Seven Champions of Christendom.

2

The relationship of war to mythology and nationhood merits attention. One example is Germany’s use of the Siegfried myth in World War II. A less ominous, but equally telling example of Tolkien’s felt connection is his poem “The Voyage of Earendel,” written in September 1914, a month after England entered World War I in August of 1914. Another early poem, “The Shores of Faery,” was written sometime in 1915. Tolkien was called up to military service in July 1915. I suggest that the imminence of war, with its implied destruction of existing culture, fueled, if it did not create, Tolkien’s desire to give his country a mythology. See Shippey, “Grimm, Grundtvig, and Tolkien.”

3

Some answers, of course, have already been offered. Jane Chance’s Tolkien’s Art: A Mythology for England discusses the general concept, but chiefly in the context of Tolkien’s medieval scholarship and its relation to The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. Tom Shippey offers the concept of an “asterisk–mythology” in his article “Long Evolution: The History of Middle-earth and its Merits” in Arda, 1987. See also Carl Hostetter and Arden Smith’s “A Mythology for England” in Proceedings of the J.R.R. Tolkien Centenary Conference held in Oxford in 1992, which examines the Englishness of Tolkien’s mythology from a linguistic perspective. In that same volume Anders Stenström’s “A Mythology? For England?” diagrams and deconstructs the not62

“Do the Atlantis Story and abandon Eriol-Saga” quite accurate but nonetheless by now almost canonical phrase “a mythology for England.” 4

Tolkien varied between two spellings of this name, but finally settled on Lowdham. In my own discussions, I will use this form, but will quote it as it appears in Tolkien’s texts.

5

Tolkien wrote that “Lewis said to me one day: ‘Tollers, there is too little of what we really like in stories. I am afraid we shall have to try and write some ourselves. We agreed that he should try ‘space-travel’ and I should try ‘time-travel’” (Letters 378).

6

In his commentary on The Lost Road, Christopher Tolkien notes the similarity between Errol and Eriol, and allows the possibility that the resemblance might have been intentional.

7

The history of Tol Eressëa is complex. Originally conceived as an island in the West cut loose and dragged near to “the Great Lands” (later Middle–earth), it then occupied the geographical location of England. As will be seen, this concept was soon dropped.

8

Earlier versions of the names included Anglo-Saxon Eadwine and Ælfwine, modern Edwin and Elwin, the Númenorean Elendil and Herendil. The Notion Club Papers featured Alwyn Lowdham, son of Edwin Lowdham.

9

See Lost Tales II (219-92) for Christopher Tolkien’s discussion in “The History of Eriol or Ælfwine” of his father’s correlation of places in Tol Eressëa with actual places in England.

10 Both the pseudo-geography and the pseudo-history of this scheme underwent a complicated series of changes over the course of Tolkien’s long development of the story. I will deal here with only the last and most radical modification. For the others, the reader is referred to Christopher Tolkien’s painstaking unraveling of this extremely complicated matter in Lost Tales I, and “The History of Eriol or Ælfwine” in Lost Tales II. 11 The concept of Tol Eressëa went through many changes, and its “ruin” is difficult to pin down. Christopher Tolkien may be alluding to some obscure references in Tolkien’s notes to the Battle of the Heath of the Sky-roof, which Eriol witnessed. See his discussion in Lost Tales II (285–293). 12 “Sub-creation” was Tolkien’s term for the construction of an imaginary or “Secondary” world inviting “Secondary” belief. Successful sub-creation required the “inner consistency of reality”

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Verlyn Flieger (“On Fairy-Stories” 168). 13 Tolkien’s New York Times obituary quoted him as saying of The Hobbit that “it’s not even very good for children. . . . I wrote some of it in a style for children. . . . If I hadn’t done that, though, people would have thought I was loony” (New York Times, September 3, 1973). 14 In Tolkien’s Legendarium: Essays on The History of Middle-earth, ed. Flieger and Hostetter. 15 Pengolo∂ was a later narrator/scribe who contributed to the “book,” and thus added to the Eriol/Ælfwine frame. 16 The name Heorrenda had for Tolkien its own peculiar place in his connection of his invented mythos to English literature and history. In the chapter called “The History of Eriol, or Ælfwine and the End of the Tales” in Lost Tales II, Christopher Tolkien notes that his father’s Ælfwine character was at one point intended to be the son of one Déor the Minstrel, explaining that, in the great Anglo-Saxon manuscript known as the Exeter Book there is a little poem of 42 lines to which the title of Déor is now given. It is an utterance of the minstrel Déor, who, as he tells, has lost his place and been supplanted in his lord’s favour by another bard, named Heorrenda. . . . From this poem came both Déor and Heorrenda. . . . I do not think that my father’s Déor the Minstrel of Kortirion and Heorrenda of Tavrobel can be linked more closely to the Anglo-Saxon poem than in the names alone—though he did not take the names at random. He was moved by the glimpsed tale [of Déor] (even if, in the words of one of the poem’s editors, “the autobiographical element is purely fictitious”); and when lecturing on Beowulf at Oxford he [Tolkien] sometimes gave the unknown poet a name, calling him Heorrenda. (323) In his edition of Beowulf and the Critics, Tolkien’s hitherto-unpublished drafts of Tolkien’s Beowulf essay, Michael Drout points out in his introduction that “in other lecture notes (which, according to dates on some associated envelopes, seem to have been written or at least re-copied in 1962) Tolkien suggests that the Beowulf poet should be called “Heorrenda rather than X.” Drout also notes that in Bodleian Library, MS Tolkien A28 C, fol. 6v “rather than X” is written interlinearly in pencil and marked for insertion with a caret (Drout 18). At some level, then, Tolkien intended an association of his own mythos not just with English history and literature, but with a specific

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“Do the Atlantis Story and abandon Eriol-Saga” poet and poem. 17 Tolkien even got the jump on his own time-scale by setting the Papers themselves forward from his own time of composition (c. 1945-46) first to a fictive future of “approximately 1980 to 1990” (Sauron 155) when the Notion Club was presumed to have thrived, and then to the even later “discovery” and publication of the papers in the early years of the 21st century. 18 See Christopher Tolkien’s note 60 in Sauron Defeated that, “In [ms.] E, Jeremy addresses Lowdham as Ëarendil, subsequently changed to Elendil” (290). 19 This insertion of himself into the story—German Tol-kühn translates into English as Rash-bold, and Tolkien’s first appointment at Oxford was as Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon at Pembroke College—is Tolkien’s most explicit autobiographical reference, the ultimate in textual embedding, as well as a wholly personal inside joke. 20 Tolkien also used the device in The Lord of the Rings. The first edition Foreword states that it is “drawn for the most part from the memoirs of the renowned Hobbits, Bilbo and Frodo, as they are preserved in the Red Book of Westmarch,” which was “compiled, repeatedly copied, and enlarged and handed down.” The uncredited “editor” has “supplemented this account” with “information derived from the surviving records of Gondor (FR, 1st ed., Foreword 7). This strategy was present even in the earliest draft chapters of The Lord of the Rings. In The Return of the Shadow. Bilbo himself introduces the idea at the Council of Elrond, saying plaintively that he is just “getting on with my book,” and adding, “If you want to know, I am just writing an ending for it. I had thought of putting ‘and he lived happily ever afterwards to the end of his days . . . and anyway there will evidently have to be several more chapters, even if I don’t write them myself ’” (405). The second edition Prologue notes that the “book,” which was “in origin Bilbo’s private diary,” was continued with Frodo’s “account of the War,” and added to by Sam (FR, Prol. 14). Bilbo and his successors function as both Gangleri and Snorri, with the “outside” voice of the Prologue introducing both the story and the history of the story, reinforcing the conceit that “this account of the Third Age is drawn mainly from the Red Book of Westmarch,” which is “that most important source for the history of the War of the Ring” (FR, Prol. 14). The divisions of the Prologue—a socio-historical account of hobbits, a discussion of pipe-weed, a note on the political structure of the Shire, and a final “Note on the Shire Records” (not in the first 65

Verlyn Flieger edition)—serve to frame, historicize, and validate the account of the finding of the Ring, and to support the impression that the “book” is an actual artifact. The Lord of the Rings is thus presented as a living narrative—the story itself; as a means of transmission—the “book”; and as the mechanism to bring the book to the reader—the editorial Prologue. The device appears again in The Adventures of Tom Bombadil, presented as a spin-off of The Red Book. Here another pseudoeditor ascribes the verses to “The Red Book,” and assigns authorship to “Bilbo and his friends, or their immediate descendants” (Bombadil 7). 21 Such allusions include his comment in “On Fairy-stories” that “in dreams strange powers of the mind may be unlocked,” and his repeated references in his letters to his recurring “Atlantis” dream of the great green wave that overwhelmed him and from which he always awoke “gasping.” 22 See my discussion of Frodo’s dreams in A Question of Time, chapter eight. 23 In this context, it is important to note that it was not just recurrence of identity, but lineal descent that provided the operative concept. A note appended to The Notion Club Papers specifies that “the theory is that the sight and memory goes [sic] on with descendants of [the Númenorean identities] Elendil and Voronwë (= Tréowine) but not reincaration; they are different people even if they still resemble one another in some ways even after a lapse of many generations” (Sauron 278). Tolkien’s later note, given by Christopher Tolkien on page 281, reads simply “Loudham’s ancestry,” and suggests that Tolkien intended to amplify the concept by tracing Lowdham’s descent, though how far back he would have gone cannot be determined. Lowdham’s father is Old Edwin (Eadwine, Audoin, Elendil, Ëarendil). 24 See Tom Shippey’s discussion of “depth” in The Road to Middle-earth (272-81). 25 Michael Drout points out that Tolkien’s A-Text states that: “Beowulf ” is not an actual picture of historic Denmark and Sweden circa 500 A.D. But it is with certain defects, of course, at a general view, a self-consistent picture, an imaginative construction. The whole must have succeeded admirably in creating in the minds of the poet’s contemporaries the illusion of surveying a past, pagan but not ignoble and fraught still with deep significance—indeed a past that had itself depth and reached back into the mists. This last is an effect of and a

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“Do the Atlantis Story and abandon Eriol-Saga” justification of the use of episodes and allusions to old tales— which are all notably darker more pagan and despairing than the foreground. Tolkien’s B-Text, which is closer to the published essay, expands this: Beowulf is not an actual picture of historic Denmark or Gautland or Sweden circa A.D. 500. But it is (with of course certain defects here and there of minor detail) at a general view a self-consistent picture, an imaginative construction. The whole must have succeeded admirably increating in the minds of the poet’s contemporaries the illusion of surveying a past, pagan but not ignoble and fraught still with a deep significance, a past that itself had depth and reached back into the mists of countless human sorrows. This impression of depth is an effect and a justification of the use of episodes and allusions to old tales-which are all notably darker, more pagan, and despairing than the foreground (Drout 75, 139). In writing about the Beowulf poet Tolkien was also writing about himself; his clear intent in his own work was not to give “an actual picture” of the pre-historic mythic past of England, but rather “a self-consistent picture, an imaginative construction.” WORKS CITED Carpenter, Humphrey. J.R.R. Tolkien: A Biography. London: George Allen & Unwin, 1977. Chance, Jane. Tolkien’s Art: A Mythology for England. Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky, 2001. Flieger, Verlyn. A Question of Time. Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 1997. Forster, E. M. Howards End. Everyman’s Library 25. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1991. Hostetter, Carl, and Arden Smith. “A Mythology for Emgland.” In Proceedings of the J.R.R. Tolkien Centenary Conference 1992, edited by Patricia Reynolds and Glen GoodKnight. Altadena: Mythopoeic Press, 1995. Noad, Charles. “On The Construction of ‘The Silmarillion.’” In Tolkien’s Legendarium: Essays on The History of Middle-earth, edited by Verlyn Flieger and Carl Hostetter. Westport. CN: Greenwood Press, 2000. 67

Verlyn Flieger O’Rahilly, Ceile, ed. Táin Bó Cúalnge, from the Book of Leinster. Dublin: Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 1967. Shippey, Tom. “Grimm, Grundtvig, Tolkien: Nationalisms and the Invention of Mythologies.” In The Ways of Creative Mythologies: Imagined Worlds and Their Makers, Vol. I, edited by Maria Kuteeva. Telford: the Tolkien Society, 2000. ______. “Long Evolution: The History of Middle-earth and its Merits.” Arda 7 (1987): 18-39. ______. The Road to Middle-earth, 2nd ed. London: Grafton, 1992.

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Identifying England’s Lönnrot ANNE C. PETTY

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olkien’s fascination with the Finnish national epic, Kalevala, created by nineteenth-century physician and folklorist Elias Lönnrot, is well recognized. Anyone who has read his collected letters knows this. In 1914, he wrote the following to his fiancé Edith Bratt: “Had an interesting talk with that quaint man Earp I have told you of and introduced him (to his great delight) to the ‘Kalevala,’ the Finnish ballads. Amongst other work I am trying to turn one of the stories—which is really a very great story and most tragic—into a short story somewhat on the lines of Morris’ romances with chunks of poetry in between” (Letters 7). Fifty years later he was still fascinated, as he revealed in a 1964 letter to Christopher Bretherton: “The germ of my attempt to write legends of my own to fit my private languages was the tragic tale of the hapless Kullervo in the Finnish Kalevala. It remains a major matter in the legends of the First Age (which I hope to publish as The Silmarillion), though as ‘The Children of Húrin’ it is entirely changed except in the tragic ending” (345). That fascination went further and deeper than the single story idea of the hapless Kullervo, as I intend to show in this study. The attractiveness of the Kalevala, according to Michael Branch, in A History of Finland’s Literature, “lies in the grandeur and universality of its themes, the coherence of its plots, and the splendor of its poetry” (4), qualities that kept Tolkien engaged with the material for many years of his life. Humphrey Carpenter, Tolkien’s official biographer, dates Tolkien’s first encounter with the Kalevala around 1911 during his final term at St. Edward’s School, shortly before his enrollment at Oxford. According to Carpenter, “He wrote appreciatively of ‘this strange people and these new gods, this race of unhypocritical lowbrow scandalous heroes,’ adding ‘the more I read of it, the more I felt at home and enjoyed myself.’ He had discovered the Kalevala in W. H. Kirby’s Everyman translation, and he determined to find an edition in the original Finnish as soon as possible” (57). Thus began Tolkien’s long-term association with this Finnish source that would surface in his own work as both content (the Silmarils, and various treatments of Túrin Turambar) and form (the sprawling collection of myths, tales, annals, poems, and chronicles of the Silmarillion proper, as well as Quenya, the Elvish language inspired by Finnish). In casting his vast world of Middle-earth as England’s pre-history, transmitted from fictional sources (Elves of Tol Eressëa) to historical Copyright © 2004, by West Virginia University Press

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Anne C. Petty scribes (Eriol/Ælfwine from The Book of Lost Tales), Tolkien assumed the role of mediator, the scholar-scribe who gathers ancient knowledge and shapes it for consumption by later societies. The several guises Tolkien used for this purpose of mediation are well documented in Verlyn Flieger’s article, “The Footsteps of Ælfwine,” from Tolkien’s Legendarium. In an ironic case of life imitating art imitating life, Christopher Tolkien, as literary executor, performed for his father’s repository of invented mythology and legends the same kind of service Lönnrot accomplished for the Finnish folk epic. Looked at from this perspective, the label of “England’s Lönnrot” applies equally well to both father and son, although for very different reasons. As mediator, according to Tom Shippey, J. R. R. Tolkien was following the model of earlier “philologist-creators” whose great projects of national identity reconstruction were both “literary and linguistic” (Author xv). Included in this grouping with Lönnrot and his contemporaries are the German brothers Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, who published three volumes of fairy tales as well as a critically acclaimed German Grammar; Danish cleric, philosopher, reformer, poet, and educator Nikolaj Frederik Severin Grundtvig and his son Sven, a University of Copenhagen lecturer and archivist; and Jørgen Moe and his son Moltke of Norway, whose editions of Norwegian tales and legends became the foundation for the Norwegian Folk Archives. The important point of commonality among these figures is their response to the national Romanticism movement sweeping across northern Europe in the 1800s. Thus, for each, a nation’s language was recorded through folklore and sanctioned through literature to the point where it “became a means of defining the identity of the nation” and “if the traditions they found appeared fragmentary and deteriorated, it was the task of collectors and editors to ‘restore’ them” (Kvideland and Sehmsdorf 4). Most influential for Tolkien, of course, was Elias Lönnrot’s restoration of Finnish language and folkloric heritage through his creation of the Kalevala and Kantele. Shippey’s notion of the philologist-creator provides three productive ways of looking at the Kalevala’s influence over Tolkien’s writing: intention, language, and content. Each of these perspectives is explored below. Intention This first element concerns the compiler’s objective, what Lauri Honko refers to as “the collector’s purposive role in the making of the text and the editor’s impact on the final form” (3). According to F. P. Magoun, Lönnrot’s commentaries from his prefaces to both the old and new Kalevala clearly state that he intended his rune-collecting work to serve as an ethnic memory of the ancient Finnish people and their language. He feared that the knowledge contained in the runes would disappear and be 70

Identifying England’s Lönnrot lost forever from the national consciousness. In the 1849 Preface to the New Kalevala, Lönnrot explained that because “these poems are coming to be the oldest specific memories surviving for the Finnish people and the Finnish language as long as these exist at all, one is called upon to arrange them with all possible care and diligence” (Magoun 374). This is not unlike Tolkien’s stated purpose in constructing his history of Middleearth, which he included in a synopsis of The Lord of the Rings sent to editor Milton Waldman at the Collins publishing house: I had a mind to make a body of more or less connected legend, ranging from the large and cosmogonic, to the level of romantic fairy-story—the larger founded on the lesser in contact with the earth, the lesser drawing splendour from the vast backcloths—which I could dedicate simply to: to England; to my country. (Letters 144). For both men, the perceived goal was not the desire to gain fame as a published author but to render a service to the literary heritage of their individual nations—in other words, to provide historic continuity with the past through an epic that would serve as a mirror of the national soul expressed in its folk poetry, whether performed by Finnish runesingers or Elvish bards. To set this issue in context, this section addresses Lönnrot’s role as a folklorist and his achievement in creating the Kalevala. From that basis, we can move to the ways in which Tolkien’s work reflects Lönnrot’s influence, including the fact that Christopher Tolkien ultimately performed Lönnrot’s role by collecting and editing his father’s vast unpublished material into The Silmarillion, Unfinished Tales, and The History of Middle-earth. The succinct biographical note appearing in the Everyman’s Library edition of W. F. Kirby’s 1907 translation, Kalevala: The Land of the Heroes, provides these bare essentials: “ELIAS LONNROT. Born 1802. Finnish philologist, poet, and folklorist. Practised medicine in country districts, where he transcribed traditional ballads, among them the Kalevala cycle, which he published from 1838 to 1849. Became professor of Finnish literature at Helsinki, and died 1884” (ii). As one of Shippey’s philologistcreators, Lönnrot’s abilities as a collector and editor of folklore went far beyond merely transcribing traditional ballads in the unique scheme he developed for that purpose. Encouraged and funded by the Finnish Literary Society, Lönnrot’s official collecting forays into the Archangel Karelia region began in 1831 and continued through 1835, although he had done some transcribing of rune singing before this. Inspired both by amateur folklore enthusiasts such as C. A. Gottlund and several highly capable singers having many poem variants at their command, the idea of creating a national epic for Finland was in Lönnrot’s mind as 71

Anne C. Petty a goal very early in his career (Branch 22), not unlike Tolkien’s youthful ambitions concerning his proposed mythology for England. As significant as Kalevala was in establishing Finland’s folklore heritage for posterity, it certainly was not the first attempt to study and catalog the structures, myths, and motifs of Finland’s native poetry. To set Lönnrot’s work in context, one needs to look back at least a century before the 1835 publication of Kalevala. As Felix Oinas explains in his Studies in Finnic Folklore: Homage to the Kalevala, a number of significant studies and attempts at collection were underway as early as 1700 with Daniel Juslenius’ arguments that Finnish folklore demonstrated “the great age of Finnish culture” (10). Of greater importance is the work of Henrik Porthan, especially his five-part De poesi Fennica (1766-78), wherein, says Oinas, his “recognition of the significance of folksong variants for establishing the earlier forms of the songs makes him a forerunner of the comparative study of folklore.” Another work, Mythologia Fennica, written in 1789 by Porthan’s contemporary, Christfrid Ganander, provided an encyclopedia of folk beliefs and heroes derived from folk poetry, a valuable resource for Lönnrot and his contemporaries in the Finnish Literary Society of the early 1830s. The published collections of Zachris Topelius in 1822 helped confirm the need for a more aggressive attempt to gather and document these epic-style poems sung mostly in the eight-syllable trochaic line now known as Kalevala-meter. The stage was set for the Finnish Literary Society’s choice of Lönnrot as their best emissary in the field, following his completion of a doctoral degree in medicine from the University of Helsinki in 1832. Although Lönnrot was a meticulous compiler who kept copious notes and transcriptions, the fact that he was also a composer of his own Kalevala-meter verse, which he wove into the fabric of the original material, was not immediately apparent when the first version of the epic was published (Kuusi, Bosley, and Branch 30). Perhaps to understand the dilemma created by this fact, it should be stated what the Kalevala is not. The cycle of 50 runos (runes or verses) is not a single long epic with a continuous plot that has been handed down intact from ages past. As a compilation of verses sung by many different runesingers over many generations, the Kalevala cycle is also not the work of a single poet, and yet, in one sense, it is, which presents the problem of what Lauri Honko calls the “oral/literary paradox.” In the preface to his 1988 translation, Eino Friberg stated the problem in this way: “The ambiguity between the Kalevala as a published work and the Kalevala as an oral folk expression through the runo-singers has, of course, been a general feature in discussion of the work ever since Lönnrot’s day” (11). Although the verses were collected from mostly uneducated rural singers, Lönnrot himself determined the arrangement of the verses into a kind of loose history of

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Identifying England’s Lönnrot two warring territories (Kaleva’s region and the land of Pohjola). This was arbitrary on his part and bears little resemblance to the context in which he may have heard and collected the runes. It must also be taken into account that he composed the opening and closing lines himself, to establish a symmetrical framework for the story groupings. He had absorbed the style and spirit of the authentic verses, but in content and placement these verses are clearly his own work, added to create a framework for the organization he planned to impose on the collected material. Summing up Lönnrot’s role, Matti Kuusi states, “While in terms of its basic components the Kalevala has its origin in folk poetry, its overall shape and structure are the work of Elias Lönnrot” (30). In a similar vein, Tolkien liked to say that he was merely recording the events of The Lord of the Rings instead of creating the book. Temperament and creativity had an effect on both Lönnrot’s and Tolkien’s output that was similar. In the face of their far-reaching aspirations, both men were endless revisers, each expressing real fears that his work might prove overwhelming and never see the light of day. Both authors found themselves plagued by self-doubt regarding the worth of their efforts due in large part to consistency issues and the compulsion toward perfection. As he struggled to complete The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien worked backward through the continually evolving Silmarillion, trying to maintain consistency within his steadily developing mythology. Similarly, Lönnrot’s arrangement of the runes consumed years of his time as he tried to visualize a somewhat consistent storyline that could also encompass the many magic charms, runes of domestic rites and ceremonies, and stand-alone tales such as that of Kullervo. “Dubious, to say the least,” wrote Lönnrot in his Preface to the 1835 Old Kalevala, “of my ability to produce something suitable, I have occasionally been plagued with doubt to such an extent that I have been on the verge of throwing the whole thing into the fire. This temptation arose because I did not believe it in my power to edit these songs as I wanted to” (Magoun 374). Tolkien wearily confessed to his publisher that instead of writing a simple sequel to The Hobbit, he had instead created a monster. Both authors seem to have experienced recurring creative burnout, as evidenced in letters to friends and colleagues that describe each pouring over stacks of manuscripts late into the night, often foregoing food and sleep in an attempt to finish the work to his own satisfaction. Like Tolkien, Lönnrot was a copious letter writer, documenting his process and concerns over his work to friends, relatives, and academic associates. The practice served both men, who were very private and cerebral, with a means of dealing with their frustrations and reaching out to others of like mind. “I begin to feel a bit desperate: endlessly frustrated,” Tolkien wrote to his son Christopher in 1969 and several months later echoed

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Anne C. Petty those sentiments, “When you pray for me, pray for ‘time!’” in a letter to his son Michael (Letters 401, 404). For posterity, the collected letters of both authors have proved invaluable in the study of their art and intentions. Language The two-fold meaning of language in the context of this paper reflects the dichotomy of the philologist/creator: (1) the creation of language (as original invention, in Tolkien’s case, or its elevation to official status and national symbol, as fostered by Lönnrot), and (2) the actual word choice employed by both men in the writing of their literary creations. The philologist part of the equation, language creation, was one of Tolkien’s most astonishing abilities and provides a direct link to the Kalevala. Evidence from his letters reveals that he was captivated by both the sound and look of Finnish: The archaic language of lore is meant to be a kind of “Elvenlatin.” . . . Actually it might be said to be composed on a Latin basis with two other (main) ingredients that happen to give me “phonaesthetic” pleasure: Finnish and Greek. It is however less consonantal than any of the three. This language is High-elven or in its own terms Quenya (Elvish). (176) The above excerpt from Tolkien’s 1954 letter to Naomi Mitchison establishes the initial connection between Quenya and Finnish, and in his letter to W. H. Auden the following year, that connection is further revealed: Most important, perhaps, after Gothic was the discovery in Exeter College library, when I was supposed to be reading for Honour Mods, of a Finnish Grammar. It was like discovering a complete wine-cellar filled with bottles of an amazing wine of a kind and flavour never tasted before. It quite intoxicated me; and I gave up the attempt to invent an “unrecorded” Germanic language, and my “own language”—or series of invented languages—became heavily Finnicized in phonetic pattern and structure. (Letters 214) In J.R.R. Tolkien: Author of the Century, Shippey confirms the aural appeal Finnish had for Tolkien, explaining that “again and again in The Lord of the Rings he has characters speak in these languages without bothering to translate them. The point, or a point, is made by the sound alone—just as allusions to the old legends of previous ages say something without the legends necessarily being told” (xiv). 74

Identifying England’s Lönnrot The pleasure Tolkien derived from Finnish was not limited to its phonaesthetic qualities; there is evidence that he also found it visually pleasing. The visual aesthetic of Finnish as written out likely played an important factor in Tolkien’s development of the tengwar or script for Quenya. The notion that Tolkien’s artistic eye loved the look of letters on the page as well as the sound of the language, the “allusive as well as communicative qualities,” is established by Wayne Hammond and Christina Scull. A masterful calligrapher, Tolkien “knew the beauty of a page fully written in tengwar” (201), for example, as shown in Aragorn’s letter to Sam, included by Christopher Tolkien in Sauron Defeated. As Hammond and Scull describe it, “It is a beautiful manuscript even to those who cannot read the words—rhythmic, graceful, and exotic, like the movements of a dancer” (201). It is not difficult to see where the suggestion for these beautiful rows of em curves and graceful descenders could have first appealed to Tolkien. Printed Finnish with its limited number of consonants and doubled, umlauted vowels produces a very similar effect. Look, for example, at lines 335-40 at the end of Runo 1 from the untranslated Kalevala (SKS 2000 edition): Polvin maasta ponnistihe, käsivarsin käännältihe. Nousi kuuta katsomahan, päiveä ihoamahan, otavaista oppimahan, tähtiä tähyämähän. (6) It is not necessary to understand the language in order to appreciate the unique visual effect of printed Finnish. For comparison, the script running across the title pages of all three volumes of The Lord of the Rings provides a good example of how the shape and flow of tengwar characters echoes passages from the Kalevala. The second meaning of language listed above concerns the issue of textualization, the rendering of core epic ideas into words, whether oral (primary) or written (secondary), a wordsmithing process of prime importance to both Lönnrot and Tolkien. In Lönnrot’s case, his objective was to transform his codification of various oral performances into written, literary form, thereby creating a master version of the epic in question, preserving the flavor of the singers’ individual performances while combining them into one coherent version. According to Honko, although this approach was completely acceptable in Lönnrot’s day, it has been looked on with disfavor from later folklore scholars concerned with accuracy in reporting and preservation. Current thinking has shifted yet again, coming to a realization that “what we experience as literary value or beauty is there in the original oral textualization and is merely 75

Anne C. Petty magnified, not created, in the written codification. The linguistic power of the oral genre becomes accentuated in the new non-oral form capable of living on as a piece of literature proper” (Honko vii). In Tolkien’s case, the oral epic and lyric poetry of his legendarium give the illusion of collected folk poetry handed down orally and eventually textualized in the pages of such records as the Quenta Silmarillion and the Red Book of Westmarch. In this way, the poetry of Middle-earth supplies the depth of authenticity required in Tolkien’s mythmaking process. The Kalevala textualization existed in three different versions, each more filled out and ambitious than the one before, as Lönnrot observed and recorded more songs during his years traveling through East Karelia. His Proto-Kalevala contained sixteen verses but was not published. Sensing that much more could be gathered, Lönnrot made further forays into the White Sea Karelia district, which brought him into contact with singers that greatly changed his ideas about the epic he was compiling (Oinas 33). He observed that the highly talented singers possessed a mental catalogue or vocabulary of poem segments and phrases for particular characters’ storylines and could spontaneously arrange them while performing. Thus, no one performance of a given epic segment, of “Väinämöinen” or “Lemminkäinen,” for example, was ever the same. The mini-epics he heard were fluid in content and detail, while remaining constant in theme and general storyline. This special folksong language in which many standard expressions are known to the singers of the epics is referred to as the “epic register,” and an individual singer’s ability to use this epic register becomes his or her “epic idiolect” (Honko 21). It was not possible to completely predict in what way any given version or arrangement of epic elements would be performed; part of their creativity was to draw spontaneously from their mental store of poem segments—their inherited epic register. Lönnrot realized that he could consider his collection of thousands of poetry lines as his own epic register and the two versions of the Kalevala as the product of his own epic idiolect. The Old Kalevala (as it later became known), which appeared in 1835 and contained thirty-six songs, was followed fourteen years later by the New Kalevala, Lönnrot’s 1849 compilation that became the “official” version. It consisted of fifty verses organized into fourteen mini-epics. As well as epic poems, the New Kalevala also contains numerous charms, spells, lyric folksongs, festival songs for weddings and feasts, and maxims. A sense of the wider pool of folk poetry available to Lönnrot in shaping his epic can be found in the anthology Finnish Folk Poetry: Epic, compiled and translated by Matti Kuusi, Keith Bosley, and Michael Branch. This concept of epic register is applicable to Tolkien as well. Both epic register and idiolect are useful in characterizing the language of Tolkien’s poetry and his formal “high” narrative style, often described

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Identifying England’s Lönnrot as biblical. For example, the phrases “beyond all hope” or rescue “unlooked for” appear frequently through all his fiction, and especially at moments of high emotion and epic drama, indicating that these are significant entries in his personal epic register. A random sampling from the Silmarillion finds the phrases occurring in the tale of the Fifth Battle, “For unsummoned and unlooked for Turgon had opened the leaguer of Gondolin” (190); in the return of the Noldor to Middle-earth where the Elves of Beleriand express amazement at “their mighty kindred, who thus returned unlooked-for from the West in the very hour of their need” (108); after Beren’s first encounter with Lúthien Tinúviel, “[b]eyond his hope she returned to him where he sat in darkness” (166); in the overthrow of Morgoth during the War of Wrath, where the slaves imprisoned in Angband “came forth beyond all hope into the light of day” (252). In The Lord of the Rings, we find the phrase spoken by Aragorn at Gandalf ’s appearance in Fangorn, “Beyond all hope you return to us in our need!” (TT, III, v, 98); he speaks a variant when the Rangers arrive after the battle of Helm’s Deep, “Of all joys this is the least expected!” (RK, V, ii, 47); at the battle of the Pelennor Fields, Éomer speaks the phrase to Aragorn, “Yet twice blessed is help unlooked for, and never was a meeting of friends more joyful” (RK, V, vi, 123). A variant of this register entry can be found in both The Hobbit and The Return of the King when rescue comes unexpectedly from the eagles. Both Gandalf and Bilbo utter the same cry: “The Eagles are coming! The Eagles are coming!” (H, xvii, 345; RK, V, x, 169). Marjut Huuskonen’s article on the 1999 symposium on oral and traditional epics at the University of Turku (occurring on the occasion of the 150th anniversary of the New Kalevala) states that Lönnrot was acknowledged not only as “a collector, a scribe and a compiler but as a singer with a mental text of an epic in his mind” (Kuusi, Bosley, and Branch 21). As has just been demonstrated, this assessment applies equally well to J. R. R. Tolkien. The problem of textualization applies as well to Christopher Tolkien’s published form of the Silmarillion. Did his father intend the tales to be ordered in that way or for those versions to become the published ones? No one knew his father’s mind better than Christopher regarding the state of the Silmarillion material, yet even so, there is no way to know for certain, given the elder Tolkien’s penchant for revision and reworking, what a final version would have looked like. Like Lönnrot, Christopher Tolkien was required to make executive decisions, some small (punctuation and spelling consistency) and some larger (arrangement and sequencing), in order to publish a “master” version from many different versions and fragments available.

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Anne C. Petty Content Entire books have been written about the organization and content of Lönnrot’s Kalevala, and it is beyond the scope of this paper to investigate all the ways in which Kalevala influence can be found in Tolkien’s works. One can cite, for example, the cosmological runes (Tolkien’s “Ainulindalë”); epic themes such as doomed lovers (Beren and Lúthien, Túrin and Finduilas) or a magical object that holds the fate of the realm (the Silmarils and the One Ring); episodic stories grouped into larger sections (the tales of the Quenta Silmarillion); character archetypes (the wise shaman as Gandalf and the god of the underworld as Melkor, Morgoth, or even Shelob); stylized poetic conventions (repetition, redundancy, epithets, the power of three); native language of the epic (the evolving lexicon of Quenya); magic revealed in the power of song (Lúthien’s song that conquers the stronghold of Angband or Yavanna’s singing that calls into being the Two Trees of Valinor); or the landscape of mysterious islands bordered by misty coasts and inland waterways (the topography of Middle-earth and Númenor). For the purpose of this study, the field of discussion has been narrowed to the elements that most directly link Tolkien with Lönnrot, in other words, those aspects of the Kalevala that earn Tolkien the label of England’s Lönnrot. Where content is concerned, this means the tale of Kullervo and the core epic of the Sampo. We know that Tolkien borrowed the idea of Lönnrot’s amalgamated character Kullervo because he states this fact in his letters, as mentioned above. As Lönnrot had done with his source runes, Tolkien applied his own textualization to the story elements he found in the Kalevala. Using his own epic register, he reforged the Finnish material into a tragedy that would fit into the larger scheme of the Quenta Silmarillion, which included villains such as Morgoth and Glaurung and helpers such as Beleg and Gwindor (in the published edition of the Silmarillion). In the same way, Lönnrot had found a kernel of a story in many separate lines of collected poetry, about the ill-fated youth whose behavior brings him to ruin, that particularly appealed to Lönnrot’s sense of tragedy. Unlike Tolkien’s skillful blending of Túrin into the Silmarillion backstory, Kullervo’s tale does not fit seamlessly into the other mini-epics of Väinämöinen, Lemminkäinen, and the Sampo, but sits within the larger framework of the Kalevala in runes 31-36. Kullervo’s story begins with the invocation to tragedy, when his doom is recognized at birth (in W. F. Kirby’s translation): “Presently when I am bigger, And my body shall be stronger, I’ll avenge my father’s slaughter, And my mother’s tears atone for.” 78

Identifying England’s Lönnrot This was heard by Untamoinen, And he spoke the words which follow: “He will bring my race to ruin, Kalervo reborn is in him.” (71) In similar fashion, from the Silmarillion, Tolkien began his tale “Of Túrin Turambar” with the explicit statement that here is an account of high tragedy involving a doomed youth: “Here that tale is told in brief, for it is woven with the fate of the Silmarils and of the Elves; and it is called the Tale of Grief, for it is sorrowful, and in it are revealed most evil works of Morgoth Bauglir” (S 198). Randel Helms’ treatment of the Silmarillion includes a lengthy discussion of Tolkien’s use of the Kullervo story, observing that the idea of the tale “bubbled slowly in the back of his mind, waiting to attach itself to a larger, more comprehensive theme” and that “it is a tale that begs to be transformed” (6), which coincidentally describes Lönnrot’s reaction to the story as well. Regarding Tolkien’s use of the Sampo legend, the connection is by inference rather than direct borrowing. For one thing, the sampo—the object itself—was never defined by Lönnrot or his source singers in either version of the Kalevala, which leaves its use as inspiration for subsequent authors wide open. According to K. Börje Vähämäki, this mysterious object is the “single most studied and explored element” of Kalevala research, including such efforts as Julius Krohn’s Finnish-language Poetry During the Era of Swedish Rule (1862), E. N. Setälä’s The Sampo Riddle (1932), Matti Juusi’s The Sampo Epos (1949), and Juha Pentikainen’s Kalevala Mythology (1989), which comes down to Vähämäki’s assessment that the “options are endless” (Karni and Jarvenpa xvi). The Sampo cycle, common to many collected folksongs, was incorporated by Lönnrot “as the nucleus for the Kalevala,” according to Oinas, consisting of “three main episodes: the creation of the world, the forging of the Sampo, and the theft of the Sampo” (38). How this basic pattern was woven into Tolkien’s legendarium can be seen in the history of the Silmarils. In his in-depth explication of the Sampo/Silmaril connection, “What Tolkien Really Did with the Sampo,” Jonathan B. Himes asserts that as an “object of mystery,” the Sampo provided ample fuel to Tolkien’s creative fire such that he incorporated its properties into several mythical objects of cosmic importance: the three jewels forged by Fëanor, and the Two Trees sung into existence by Yavanna. Randel Helms asserts that “in many of its details the story of the Silmarils is a recasting of the story of Ilmarinen, Wainamoinen, and the Sampo” (44). Indeed, there are numerous clues in Tolkien’s Silmarillion material, both in the Silmarillion and in The War of the Jewels, that lead back to the Kalevala and the Sampo. A general list could include the inspiration to create an object of power (Runo X:96-100); its forging by a smith/artisan 79

Anne C. Petty of great skill (X:270-422); its theft by deception and spell casting, especially by one who had a part in the inspiration to create it (XL:65-170); the thief and his accomplice making a fast getaway with the Sampo, leaving its owners behind in a stunned state (XLII:171-260); the fight to recover the Sampo resulting in its breaking into several pieces (XLIII:259-294); a curse uttered on the heads of all who would steal the Sampo’s parts (XLIII:305-330); the effects of the curse being felt throughout the region; the sun and moon being stolen by the agent of darkness (XLVII:1-40); the supreme power replacing the stolen light with a new sun and moon (XLVII:41-82); a piece of the celestial light/fire being swallowed by a creature (XLVII:248); when the creature’s belly is split open, the fire burning the hands of the one who retrieves it (XLVII:201-248); a great war fought to retrieve the objects of light from the dark stronghold where it is hidden (XLIX:111-230); and finally, departure of a sky-ship bearing the sage/shaman who offers hope of another Sampo (L:480-500). The leap is not far to envision Fëanor’s creation of the Silmarils from the celestial light of the Two Trees, the theft of the Silmarils by Melkor and his accomplice Ungoliant through surprise and a spell of darkness, Fëanor’s fateful oath that brings doom on the heads of his lineage and all who take possession of the Silmarils, the way in which the Silmarils burn the hands of all who touch them with less than pure intent, the separation of the three jewels when Beren and Lúthien take one from Morgoth’s iron crown, the march of the Valar on Thangorodrim to overthrow Morgoth and regain the jewels, and Eärendil’s appearance in the heavens in his sky ship with the Evening Star (Silmaril) on his brow. Of particular interest to this discussion is Christopher Tolkien’s undertaking in assessing and assembling the Silmarillion materials. Charles E. Noad’s article, “On the Construction of ‘The Silmarillion,’” emphasizes the nature of the task Tolkien left behind for his literary executor and son. According to Noad, Christopher Tolkien’s own introduction to the Silmarillion material admits of the “underlying textual complexity at which the published version did not hint.” This returns to the same Kalevala dilemma discussed in the beginning of this paper, that the source material is “an assemblage of texts, each with its own history and provenance, and, by implication, a relationship between the world in which it is a text and the world of which the text itself speaks” (32). Christopher Tolkien’s Foreword to the first volume of The Book of Lost Tales neatly sums up the many daunting challenges of his role as both executor and philologist-creator. In addressing both his own doubts and those of noted scholars about the publication of the 1977 single volume titled the Silmarillion, he noted the following: It is certainly debatable whether it was wise to publish in 1977 a version of the primary “legendarium” standing on 80

Identifying England’s Lönnrot its own and claiming, as it were, to be self-explanatory. The published work has no “framework,” no suggestion of what it is and how (within the imagined world) it came to be. This I now think to have been an error. (Lost Tales I 5) As Christopher Tolkien headed into what could be considered his life’s work, The History of Middle-earth, he could not foresee then how many volumes and years it would take to adequately rein in the massive repository of his father’s imagination. Like Lönnrot before him, he expressed doubt that such a compendium would even be possible: “I have applied to this present book an ‘overriding’ title intended to cover also those that may follow it, though I fear that ‘The History of Middleearth’ may turn out to have been over-ambitious” (9). As it turns out, his ambitions were equal to the task and, like Lönnrot, the “fearsome textual jigsaw puzzle” became a widely acclaimed product that could only have been rendered by the unique combination of philological expertise and creative desire to learn and embrace a thing for its own sake. The Legacy of Lönnrot’s Kalevala and Tolkien’s Legendarium “Epic is about heroes making history, or what passes for history,” wrote Keith Bosley in the introduction to his 1988 Kalevala translation (xiv). This exactly describes the nature of the argument this paper has investigated. The Kalevala and the mythology of Middle-earth were both compiled and invented by their authors, each of whom created a fictional framework upon which to hang their tales. Tolkien’s invented world is presented with such authenticity and depth of detail that readers can easily imagine his having collected and transcribed the histories of Arda from ancient sources, which was his expressed intent: “I have long ceased to invent. . . . I wait till I seem to know what really happened. Or till it writes itself ” (Letters 231). Where Lönnrot is concerned, one must be prepared to recognize both his tenacious skills as a collector and objective recorder of native folk poetry and his literary skill in fashioning an authentic cohesive framework for the epic from the raw materials of oral verses. In attempting to create a mythology for England, ostensibly to replace that which was lost during the Norman invasion and onward (Letters 144), Tolkien joined the ranks of other scholar/authors who wished to access national spirit through both research and literature. While it is clear that both Finland’s language and national epic were among Tolkien’s earliest sources of literary inspiration, what may not be as apparent are the ways in which temperament and creative output further connect all three philologist-creators under examination here. Like Lönnrot’s massive collection of over 65,000 lines of folk poetry (according to University

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Anne C. Petty of Helsinki Professor Matti Kuusi), the material comprising Tolkien’s legendarium, including its underpinning mythology and evolving languages, threatened to spill out of his control (Letters 333). It would, in fact, prove to be greater than one person could master, eventually pulling son Christopher into its shaping as well. What readers absorb from these author/editors is a vision—a sense of ancient times, told with realistic depth and detail—that reflects universal themes and motifs of exuberance, contentiousness, warlike aggression, loyalty versus deception, wickedness and guilt, generosity and trust, innocence and the ensuing heartbreak over its loss. The heroes of these works seem real and flawed, which makes their fate compelling. The longevity of both the Kalevala and J. R. R. Tolkien’s published fiction attests to the talents (as well as the obsessions) of these two similar authors, and, through the efforts of Christopher Tolkien, readers will likely be devouring the majesty of the Silmarillion tales and the desperation of the Ring quest, as well as the mystery of the Sampo, well into the new millennium. Comparison of Lönnrot and Tolkien as mediators of literature and language reveals scholars with a similar obsessive attention to detail and a similar taste for epic sweep and high tragedy. Although Lönnrot succeeded in completing what most consider his masterwork during his lifetime, and Tolkien did not (if you consider the Silmarillion material his life’s work), the challenges and difficulties each encountered were driven by the same grandiose vision of a literary epic drawn from the national character of their respective countries. By adding Christopher Tolkien’s twelve-volume History into the mix, the cycle is now complete. WORKS CITED Carpenter, Humphrey. J. R. R. Tolkien: A Biography. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1977. Bosley, Keith, trans. The Kalevala, compiled by Elias Lönnrot, 1849. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989. Branch, Michael. “Kalevala: from myth to symbol.” Written for Virtual Finland, www.virtualfinland.com, by Professor Michael Branch, School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University of London, March 9, 2000. Flieger, Verlyn, and Carl F. Hostetter, eds. Tolkien’s Legendarium: Essays on The History of Middle-earth. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 2000.

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Identifying England’s Lönnrot Friberg, Eino, trans. The Kalevala: Epic of the Finnish People, compiled by Elias Lönnrot. 1849. Helsinki: Otava Publishing Company, Ltd., 1988. Hammond, Wayne G., and Christina Scull. J. R. R. Tolkien: Artist & Illustrator. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1995. Helms, Randel. Tolkien and the Silmarils. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1981. Himes, Jonathan B. “What Tolkien Really Did with the Sampo.” Mythlore 22, no. 4 (2000): 69-85. Honko, Lauri. Textualization of Oral Epics. New York: Mouton de Gruyter, 2000. Huuskonen, Marjut. “Making the Brilliants Shine: The Kalevala and the World’s Traditional Epics.” Folklore Fellows Network 18 (November 1999): 16-21. Jones, Michael Owen, ed. The Kalevala: Essays in Celebration of the 150 Year Jubilee of the Publication of the Finnish National Epic. Los Angeles: UCLA Center for the Study of Folklore & Mythology, 1987. Karni, Michael G., and Aili Jarvenpa, eds. Sampo: The Magic Mill. Minneapolis: New Rivers Press, 1989. Kirby, W. F., trans. Kalevala: The Land of the Heroes, compiled by Elias Lönnrot, 1849. New York: E. P. Dutton & Co. Inc., 1907. Kuusi, Matti, Keith Bosley, and Michael Branch, eds. Finnish Folk Poetry: Epic. Helsinki: Finnish Literature Society, 1977. Kvideland, Reimund, and Henning K. Sehmsdorf, eds. Nordic Folklore: Recent Studies. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1989. Magoun, Francis Peabody Jr., trans. The Kalevala or Poems of the Kaleva District, compiled by Elias Lönnrot, 1849. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1963. Noad, Charles. “On the Constructions of ‘The Silmarillion.’” In Tolkien’s Legendarium, edited by Verlyn Flieger and Carl F. Hostetter. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 2000. Oinas, Felix J. Studies in Finnic Folklore: Homage to the Kalevala. Indiana University Uralic and Altaic Series 147. Helsinki: Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura, 1985. Pentikainen, Juha Y. Kalevala Mythology, translated by Ritva Poom. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1989. 83

Anne C. Petty Schoolfield, George C., ed. A History of Finland’s Literature. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1998. Shippey, Tom. J.R.R. Tolkien: Author of the Century. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2001. ______. The Road to Middle-earth. 2nd ed. London: Grafton, 1992.

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Sir Orfeo:

A Middle English Version By J.R.R. Tolkien

Edited, with introduction and notes by

CARL F. HOSTETTER

Introduction

I

n 1944, the Academic Copying Office in Oxford published an unknown (but presumably small) number of copies of an anonymous, twentypage booklet titled Sir Orfeo. The first sixteen pages of this booklet comprise a version of the Middle English poem that, while based for the most part on the text of the fourteenth-century Auchinleck Manuscript, has been altered and emended throughout in accordance with the grammar of the earlier South-Eastern dialect of Middle English. The result is a Middle English version of the poem that is not only, as the booklet’s author observes, “much more metrical” than that of Auchinleck, but that—if the author’s theory that the poem was composed in Essex in the thirteenth century is accurate—is closer to what must have been the original form of the poem than are any of the three surviving manuscripts, which have been “infected . . . with the forms of later language and different dialect.” Although the booklet itself does not bear its author’s name, it has been identified as a work by J.R.R. Tolkien. In their J.R.R. Tolkien: A Descriptive Bibliography, Wayne G. Hammond and Douglas A. Anderson note of this booklet that one of the five known copies, held by the English Faculty library at Oxford, “contains a note, reported to be in Tolkien’s hand, which states that this edition of ‘Sir Orfeo’ was prepared for the naval cadets’ course in English, which Tolkien organized in January 1943 and directed until the end of March 1944” (209). Hammond and Anderson further report the existence of three other copies of the booklet in which the lines of the poem have been numbered in pencil, by tens, in what appears to be Tolkien’s hand. Two of these copies have in addition a few textual emendations in pencil, again apparently in Tolkien’s hand. It is upon one of these two emended copies that the present edition is based. Copyright © 2004, by West Virginia University Press

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Carl F. Hostetter J.R.R. Tolkien’s Middle English version and Modern English translation The attribution to Tolkien of this Middle English version of Sir Orfeo and its brief accompanying note is further supported by certain similarities with Tolkien’s Modern English verse translation of Sir Orfeo and its brief accompanying note, published posthumously in the book Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Pearl, and Sir Orfeo (23, 123–37).1 Both notes locate the composition of the poem in “the South-East of England,”2 and both notes use precisely the same phrase in describing the transmission of the poem as having been subject to “the corruptions of error and forgetfulness.” Comparison of the poems themselves reveals, in addition to striking correspondences of formatting and punctuation,3 a number of instances in which Tolkien’s translation departs from the texts of the surviving manuscripts in precisely the same manner that the Middle English version does: (In the following comparisons, V = the Middle English version of the booklet, T = Tolkien’s translation, A = Auchinleck MS, H = MS Harley 3810. Both V and T use A as the source for all lines except 1–24 and 33–46, which are supplied by H.) l. 4:— H has frely †ing where V has ferly thing. In his note on this line Sisam glosses frely as “goodly,” and remarks that the Lai le Freine (a poem of the Auchinleck MS that has essentially the same opening lines as the H version of Sir Orfeo) has here ferly, which he glosses as “wondrous” (209). In his companion Vocabulary, Tolkien glosses frely in Sisam’s text as “pleasant” (deriving it from Old English frèolic of the same meaning) and ferly in Sisam’s note as “wonderful” (< OE får-lice “suddenly”), corresponding to a noun of the same form that he glosses as “marvel.” T has “marvellous thing,” suggesting that the ME form underlying the translation is ferly, and hence agreeing with V against the MS. l. 82:— A has out of hir witt “out of her wit” where V (correcting a defective rhyme) has out of mende “out of mind.” T has “out of mind.” ll. 241, 245, 249:— A has He †at hadde ywerd “He that had worn,” He †at hadde had castels “He that had had castles,” and He †at had yhad kni°tes “He that had had knights,” respectively, each a relative construction employing the pronoun †at. V has He hadde ywered “He had worn,” He hadde had castels “He had had castles,” and He hadde yhad kni°tes “He had had knights,” respectively, in each case dropping the relative pronoun (presumably to improve the meter). T has “He once had . . . worn,” “He once had castles,” and “He once had many a . . . knight,” respectively, like V omitting the relative “that.” 86

Tolkien’s Middle English Sir Orfeo l. 265:— A has His here of his berd, blac “His hair of his beard, black” where V has His her and berd, all blake “His hair and beard, all black.” T has “His hair and beard all black.” l. 368:— A has was all of burnist gold “was all of burnished gold,” while V has was maked al of burnissed golde “was made all of burnished gold.” T has “was builded all of burnished gold.” l. 381:— A has what he wold haue ydo “what he would have done,” while V (correcting a defective rhyme) has what his wille were “what his will were.” T has “what might be his will.” l. 392:— A has non armes nade “no arms had,” while V has no fet no armes nadde “no feet nor arms had.” T has “[had] no arms, nor feet.” Other examples could be cited, but these are the most striking. It should be noted that there are instances where the translation agrees with the MS against the Middle English version (e.g., in l. 419, A has “‘O lord,’ he seyd, ‘Õif it †i wille were’” where V has “and seide: ‘O lord, if thi wille were’”; while T has “‘O lord,’ said he, ‘if it be thy will’”), and it must be allowed that a verse translation necessarily makes concessions to language and meter that may obscure or falsely emphasize details of the relationship between the source(s) and the translation. Nonetheless, these examples strongly suggest that Tolkien’s translation of Sir Orfeo was based at least in part on the booklet’s emended Middle English version. The date of Tolkien’s Modern English translation of Sir Orfeo does not appear to have been established with much precision. Christopher Tolkien wrote, in his Preface to Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Pearl, and Sir Orfeo only that it was, like the c. 1944 Pearl and the c.1950 Sir Gawain, “also made many years ago” (7). Concerning Basil Blackwell’s ultimately unrealized plans of c. 1942-44 to publish Tolkien’s translation of Pearl, see Hammond and Anderson’s Bibliography (32123). The Bodleian Library catalogue of its Tolkien manuscript holdings has the following entry: “A33/1 Typescript and manuscript transcripts and translations of Sir Orfeo [fols. 1-47], with . . . various drafts of the translation of Pearl, with . . . letters from (Sir) Basil Blackwell about the translation, 1942-4”; but while it may be more than mere archival accident that Tolkien’s “transcripts and translations of Sir Orfeo” are located with letters of 1942-44 concerning his work on another Middle English poem, this evidence is circumstantial at best. Humphrey Carpenter’s statement that “Tolkien had originally translated [Sir Orfeo] for a wartime cadets’ course at Oxford” (141) would, if accurate, seem to demonstrate that Tolkien produced both his Middle English version and his translation of Sir Orfeo for the naval cadets’ course, i.e., c. 1943-44. But it may be that Carpenter has simply confused Tolkien’s translation with the present Middle English version. 87

Carl F. Hostetter However, that Tolkien’s translation appears to be based at least in part on his Middle English version of 1944 strongly suggests that it was made in or after 1944. There is in addition one piece of evidence internal to the translation that suggests very strongly that it was made before 1945: lines 363–64 of the translation (“The vault was carven and adorned / with beasts and birds and figures horned”) show that when he translated them Tolkien still read animal “animal” in l. 364 for a form that was corrected to aumal “enamel” in a 1945 revision to his Middle English Vocabulary (see the Appendix below for details). If the translation was in fact based on his 1944 Middle English version of the poem, it is then very likely that the translation was likewise made in, or not long before, 1944. Tolkien’s version and Sisam’s edition In 1922, Tolkien published A Middle English Vocabulary, his first book, which comprised a complete glossary of the Middle English poems included by his colleague and former tutor Kenneth Sisam in his Fourteenth Century Verse and Prose, which was first published the previous year. (Tolkien’s Vocabulary was intended to be published together with Sisam’s collection as a single volume, but delays in the Vocabulary’s preparation resulted in their separate initial publications.) Among the poems in Sisam’s collection is an edition of Sir Orfeo. Tolkien’s version follows Sisam’s edition very closely, not only in formatting and punctuation, but also in sharing certain readings that, according to Bliss, are original to Sisam’s edition, as well as in adopting most of Sisam’s editorial revisions and suggestions. (In the following comparisons, V = Tolkien’s Middle English version of the booklet, S = Sisam’s edition, A = Auchinleck MS, H = MS Harley 3810. Both S and V use A as the source for all lines except 1–24 and 33–46, which are supplied by H.) Sisam notes that the “original text preserved final -e better than the extant MSS” (208), and provides the following examples of “restored” readings: l. 119:— And seyd †us †e king to l. 172:— ˇat no†ing help †e no schal l. 357:— Al †e vtmast wal l. 466:— So, sir, as °e seyd nou†ė Tolkien’s version of these lines agrees with Sisam’s restoration of final -e precisely. It seems possible to suppose that Tolkien’s impetus to produce an emended version of Sir Orfeo originated in this note. 88

Tolkien’s Middle English Sir Orfeo l. 4:— H, S have frely “goodly,” but Sisam notes that “Lai le Freine has ferly ‘wondrous’” (208). V has ferly. l. 12:— H has moost to lowe, which S emends to moost o loue based on the corresponding line of the Lai le Freine (208). V has moost of loue. l. 20:— H, S have Maden layes and °af it name. Sisam remarks that the “curious use of it after the plural layes is perhaps not original” (209). V has sg. lay. l. 46:— H, S have Suche ioy and melody in his harpyng is. Sisam remarks that “ioy and overload the verse, and are probably an unskilful addition to the text” (209). V has such melodie. . . . l. 82:— S has reuey<se>d but Sisam suggests that “some such form of ravished is probably right” (209). V has rauissed. ll. 157–8: A, S have the rhymes palays: ways. Sisam suggests that the original rhyme was “perhaps palys: wys ‘wise.’” V has palise: wise. l. 247:— A, S have comensi. Of this line, Sisam notes that “the metre points to a disyllabic form . . . comsi” (209 n. 57). V has cömsi. l. 285:— S, V have dim. Bliss notes that Sisam was the first to print dim, where earlier editors had written dun (53). l. 333:— A has wroche, which S emends to wreche (and was apparently the first to do so, judging by Bliss’s note [53] in which he takes Sisam to task for emending what he notes is a genuine form). V has wreche. l. 363:— A has auowed, which S emends to anowed, a reading adopted by Tolkien as V’s anourned. l. 419:— A, S have ‘“O lord,’ he seyd, ‘°if it †i wille were.’” Sisam remarks that this line is too long metrically, and suggests that it may once have been: “And seyd ‘Lord, °if †i wille were’” (210 n. 382). V has “and seide: ‘O lord, °if thi wille were.’” l. 483:— A has “Bot wi† a begger ybilt ful narwe,” which S emends to “Bot wi† a begger y bilt ful narwe.” Sisam explains that “ybilt of the MS. and editors cannot well be a pp. meaning ‘housed.’ I prefer to take bilt as sb. = bild, build “a building”; and to suppose that y has been miswritten for √, the contraction for yn” (211). V has “but with a begger in bilt ful narwe.” Taken together, these comparisons indicate that Tolkien’s Middle English version of Sir Orfeo was based on Kenneth Sisam’s edition, while his Modern English translation was based on his own Middle English version; and further that the translation was, like the version, made in 1944.

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Carl F. Hostetter Sir Orfeo

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We reden ofte and finde ywrite, as clerkes don us to wite, the layes that ben of harping ben yfounde of ferly thing. Sum ben of wele, and sum of wo, and sum of ioye and merthe also; sum of trecherie, and sum of gile, and sum of happes that fallen by while; sum of bourdes, and sum of ribaudrie, and sum ther ben of the fairie. Of alle thing that men may se, moost of loue forsothe they be. In Britain thise layes arn ywrite, first yfounde and forth ygete, of aventures that fillen by dayes, wherof Britouns made her layes. When they owher mighte yheren of aventures that ther weren, they toke her harpes tho with game, maden lay and °af it name. Of aventures that han befalle I can sum telle but nou°t alle. Herkne, lordinges that ben trewe, and I wol °ou telle of Sir Orphewe. Orfeo was yore a king, in Ingelond a hei° lording, a stalworth man and hardi bo, large and curteis he was also. His fader was cömen of King Pluto, and his moder com of King Iuno, that sum time were as godes holde for auentures that thai dede and tolde. [Orpheo most of onything loued the gle of harping; siker was euery god harpour of him to haue moche honour. Himselue loued for to harpe and laide theron his wittes scharpe.

Text of Sir Orfeo Copyright © 2004, the J.R.R. Tolkien Copyright Trust

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He lerned so, ther nothing was a better harpour in no plas; in the world was neuer man yborn that euer Orpheo sat beforn, and he mi°te of his harping here, he schulde thinke that he were in one of the ioyes of Paradis, suche melodie in his harping is.] This king soiourned in Traciens, that was a citee of noble defens; for Winchester was cleped tho Traciens withouten no. He hadde with him a quen of pris, that was ycleped Dame Heurodis, the fairest leuedi for the nones that mi°te gon on bodi and bones, ful of loue and godenesse; ac no man may telle hir fairnesse. Bifel in the cömessing of May, when miri and hot is the day, and oway beth winter-schoures, and eueri feld is ful of floures, and blosme breme on eueri bou° oueral wexeth miri anou°, this iche quen, Dame Heurodis, tok to hir maidenes two of pris and wente hir in an vndrentide to playe bi an orchard-side, to se the floures sprede and springe, and to yhere the foules singe. Thai sette hem doune alle thre vnder a fair ympe-tre, and wel sone this faire quene fel on slepe opon the grene. The maidnes durste hir nou°t awake, but lete hir ligge and reste take. So sche slepe til afternon, that vndertide was al ydon. Ac as sone as sche gan awake, sche cride and lothli bere gan make, sche froted hir honden and hir fet, and crached hir visage, it bledde wet; hir riche robe hye al torende,

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and was rauissed out of mende. The two maidnes hir biside no durste with hir leng abide, but ourne to the palais ri°t and tolde bothe squier and kni°t that her quen awede wolde, and bade hem go and hir atholde. Kni°tes and leuedis ourne tho sexti damiseles and mo; in the orchard to the quen hye come, and her vp in her armes nome, to bed hye brou°te hir atte laste, and helde hir there fine faste; ac euer sche held in one cri, and wolde vp and wende owy. When Orfeo herde that tiding, neuer him nas wers for no thing. He com with kni°tes tene to chaumbre ri°t biforn the quene, and biheld, and seide with grete pitee: “O leue lif, what is tee, that euer °et hast ben so stille, and now gredest wonder schille? Thi bodi, that was so whit ycore, with thine nailes is al totore. Allas! thi röde, that was so red, is now al wan as thou were ded; and also thine fingres smale beth al blodi and al pale. Allas! thi louesome ey°en two loketh so man doth on his fo. A! dame, ich biseche merci. Let ben al this rewful cri, and tel me what the is, and hou, and what thing may the helpe now”. Tho lay sche stille atte laste, and gan to wepe swithe faste, and seide thus the kinge to: “Allas! mi lord, Sir Orfeo, seththen we first togider were, ones wrothe neuer we nere, but euer ich haue ylöued the as mi lif, and so thou me.

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Ac now we mote dele atwo; do thi beste, for I mot go”. “Allas!” quath he, “forlorn icham. Whider wiltow go, and to wham? Whider thou gost, ichil with the, and whider I go, thou schalt with me”. “Nay, nay, sir, that nou°t nis. Ichil the telle al hou it is: as ich lay in this vndertide, and slepe vnder our orchard-side, ther come to me two faire kni°tes wel y-armed al to ri°tes, and bade me cömen an hi°ing and speke with her lord the king. And ich answerde at wordes bolde, I durste nou°t, no I nolde. Thai priked o°ain as thai mi°te driue; tho com her king also bliue, with an hundred kni°tes and mo, and damiseles an hundred also, alle on snow-white stedes; as white as milk were her wedes: I no sei° neuer °et bifore so faire creatures ycore. The king a croune hadde on his molde, it nas of siluer, no of rede golde, ac it was al on precious ston, as bri°te so the sönne it schon. And as sone as he to me cam, wolde ich, nolde ich, he me nam, and made me with him ride opon a palfray bi his side, and brou°te me to his palise wel atired in iche wise, and schewed me castels and tours, riuere, forest, frith with flours, and his riche stedes ichon; and seththen me brou°te o°ain hom into our owen orchard, and seide to me thus afterward: “Loke, dame, that tow be to-morwe her vnder this ympe-tre, and than thou schalt with ous go,

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and liue with ous euermo; and °if thou makest ous ylet, whar thou be, thou worst yfet, and totore thine limes al, that nothing helpe the no schal; and thei° thou best so totorn, °et thou worst with ous yborn’.” When King Orfeo herde this cas, “O we!” quath he, “allas! allas! Leuer me were to lete mi lif than thus to lese the quen mi wif !” He asked conseil at iche man, ac no man helpe him no can. Amorwe the vndertide is cöme, and Orfeo hath his armes nöme, and wel ten hundred kni°t with him, ich y-armed stout and grim; and with the quene wenten he ri°t vnto that vmpe-tre. Thai made scheltröm in iche side, and saide thai wolde ther abide, and die there euerichon, er the quen schulde fram hem gon. Ac °et amiddes hem ful ri°t the quene was oway ytwi°t, with faierie was forth ynöme; men niste wher sche was bicöme. Tho was ther crying, wep and wo. The king into his chaumbre is go, and ofte swoned opon the ston, and made swiche diol and swiche mon that nei° his lif was al yspent: ther was non amendement. He cleped togider his barouns, erles, lordes of renouns; and when thai alle ycömen were, “Lordinges”, he saide, “biforn °ou here ich ordainy min hei°e steward to wite mi kingdom afterward; in mi stede ben he schal, to kepe mi londes oueral. For now ichaue mi quen ylore, the fairest leuedi that euer was bore,

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neuer eft I nil no woman se. Into wildernesse ichil te, and liue ther euermore with wilde bestes in holtes hore. And when °e vnderstonde that I be spent, make °ou than a parlement, and chese °ou a newe king. Now doth °our best with al mi thing. Tho was ther weping in the halle and gret cri among hem alle; vnnethe mi°ten olde or °önge for weping speke a word with tönge. Thai kneled adoune alle yfere, and praide him, °if his wille were, that he no schulde fram hem go. “Do way!” quath he, “it schal be so”. Al his kingdom he forsok; but a sclauine on him he tok; he nadde no kirtel, no no hod, scherte, no non other god. But his harpe he took algate, and dede him barfot out of °ate; no man moste with him go. O way! what ther was wep and wo, when he that er was king with croune wente so pouerlich out of toune! Thurgh wode and ouer heth into the wildernesse he geth. Nothing he fint that him is aise, but euer he liueth in gret malaise. He hadde ywered fow and gris, and on bedde purpre bis; now on harde hethe he lith, with leues and with gresse him writh. He hadde yhad castels and tours, riuere, forest, frith with flours; now thei° it cömsi snewe and frese, this king mot make his bed in mese. He hadde yhad kni°tes of pris bifore him knelande, and leuedis; now seth he nothing that him liketh, but wilde wormes bi him striketh. He that hadde yhad plentee

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of mete and drink, of ich deintee, now may he al day digge and wrote er he finde his fille of rote. In sömer he liueth bi wilde frute and berien but gode lite; in winter may he nothing finde but rote, grasses, and the rinde. Al his bodi was oway ydwine for misaise, and al to-chine. Lord! who may tellen al the sore this king suffred ten °er and more? His her and berd, al blake and rowe, to his girdelstede were growe. His harpe, whereon was al his gle, he hidde in an holwe tre; and when the weder was cler and bri°t, he took his harpe to him wel ri°t, and harped at his owen wille. Into alle the wode the soun gan schille, that alle the wilde [bestes] that ther beth for ioie abouten him thai teth; and alle the foules that ther were come and sete on ich a brere to here his harping a-fine, so miche melodie was therine; and when he his harping lete wolde, no best bi him abide nolde. He mi°te se him bisides oft in hote vndertides the king o Faierie with his route cömen hunten him al aboute, with dim cri and blowinge, and houndes also berkinge; ac no best thai neuer nome, no neuer he niste whider thai bicome. And other while he mi°te him se as a gret ost bi him te wel atourned ten hundred kni°tes, ich y-armed to his ri°tes, of cuntenaunce stout and fers, with manie desplayed baners, and ich his swerd ydrawen holde; ac neuer he niste whider thai wolde.

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And other while he sei° other thing: kni°tes and leuedis come dauncing in queinte atire, gisely, queinte pas and softely: tabours and trumpes °ede hem bi and al manere menstraci. And on a day he sei° him biside sexti leuedis on horse ride, gentil and iolif as brid on ris: nou°t o man amonges hem nis. And ich a faucoun on honde bere, and riden on hauking bi o riuere. Of game thai founde wel god haunt: maulard, hairoun, and cormeraunt. The foules of the water ariseth, the faucouns hem wel deuiseth; ich faucoun his praye slou°. That sei° Orfeo and lou°: “Parfay!” quath he, “ther is fair game, thider ichil, bi Godes name! Ich was ywöne swiche werk to se”. He aros and thider gan te. To a leuedi he was ycöme, biheld, and hath wel vndernöme, and seth bi al thing that it is his owen quen, Dame Heurodis. Õerne he biheld hir, and sche him ek, ac noither to other a word no spek. For misaise that sche on him sei°, that hadde ben so riche and hei°, the teres felle out of hir ei°en. The other leuedis this ysei°en, and maked hir oway to ride, sche most with him no leng abide. “Allas!” quath he, “now me is wo. Whi nil deth now me slo? Allas! wreche, that I no mi°te die now after thisse si°te! Allas! to longe last mi lif, when I no dar nou°t with mi wif, no hye to me, o word speke. Allas! whi nil min herte breke! Parfay!” quath he, “tide what bitide, 97

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whider so thise leuedis ride, the selue way ichille strecche; of lif no deth me no recche”. His sclauine he dede on also spac, and heng his harpe opon his bac, and hadde wel god wil to gon: he no spared noither stub no ston. In at a roche the leuedis rideth, and he after, and nou°t abideth. When he was in the roche ygo wel thre milen other mo, he com into a fair cuntraye, as bri°t so sönne on sömeres daye, smothe and plain and al grene, hille no dale nas non ysene. Amidde the londe a castel he sei°, riche and real and wönder hei°. Al the vtemaste wal was cler and schene as cristal; an hundred tours ther were aboute, degiseliche, and batailed stoute; the butras com out of the diche, of rede golde y-arched riche; the vousour was anourned al of ich manere diuers animal. Withinne ther were wide wones alle of preciouse stones. The werste piler on to biholde was maked al of burnissed golde. Al that lond was euer li°t, for when it was the therke ni°t, the riche stones li°te gönne, as bri°t as doth at none sönne. No man may telle, no thenche in thou°t, the riche werk that ther was wrou°t; bi alle thing him thinkth it is the proude court of Paradis. In this castel the leuedis li°te; he wolde in after, °if he mi°te. Orfeo knokketh atte gate, the porter redi was therate, and asked what his wille were. “Parfay!” quath he, “icham harpere,

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thi lord to solace with mi gle, °if his swete wille be”. The porter vndede the °ate anon, and let him in the castel gon. Than gan he biholde abouten al, and sei° ther liggeand within the wal folk that thider were ybrou°t, and thou°te dede and nere nou°t. Sum ther stode withouten hadde, and sum no fet no armes nadde, and sum thur° bodi hadde wounde, and sum ther laye wode, ybounde, and sum y-armed on horse sete, and sum astrangled as thai ete, and sum in water were adreinte, and sum with fire were forschreinte. Wiues ther laye on childbedde, sum were dede and sum awedde; and wönder fele ther laye bisides, ri°t as thai slepe her vndertides. Eche was thus in this warld ynöme and thider with fairie ycöme. Ther he sei° his owen wif, Dame Heurodis, his leue lif, slepen vnder an ympe-tre: bi hir wede he knew that it was he. When he biheld thise meruailes alle, he wente into the kinges halle. Than sei° he ther a semly si°t, a tabernacle blissful, bri°t; therinne her maister king him sete, and her quene, fair and swete. Her crounes, her clothes, schine so bri°te that vnnethe biholden hem he mi°te. When he hadde biholden al that thing, he kneled adoune biforn the king, and seide: “O lord, °if thi wille were, mi menstraci thou schulde yhere”. The king answerde: “What man artow that art hider ycömen now? Ich, no non that is with me, no sente neuer after the; seththen that ich her regni gan,

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I no fond neuer so hardi man that hider to ous durste wende, but that ichim walde ofsende”. “Lord”, quath he, “trowe ful wel, I nam but a pouer menestrel; and, sir, it is the manere of ous to seche mani a lordes hous; thei° we nou°t welcöme be, °et we mot proferi forth our gle”. Biforn the king he sat adoune, and tok his harpe miri of soune, and tempreth it as he wel can, and blissfule notes he ther gan, that alle that in the palais were come to him for to here, and liggeth adoune to his fete, hem thenketh his melodie so swete. The king herkneth and sitt ful stille, to here his gle he hath god wille; god bourde he hadde of his gle, the riche quen also hadde he. When he hadde stint harping, seide to him than the king: “Menstrel, me liketh wel thi gle. Now aske of me what it be, largeliche ichil the paye. Now speke, and tow mi°t assaye”. “Sir”, he seide, “ich biseche the thattow woldest °iue me that iche leuedi bri°t on ble that slepeth vnder the ympe-tre”. “Nay”, quath the king, “that nou°t nere! A sori couple of °ou it were, for thou art lene, row, and blac, and sche is louesum withouten lac; a lothlich thing it were forthi to sen hir in thi cömpaini”. “O sir”, he seide, “gentil king, °et were it a wel fouler thing to here a lesing of thi mouthe, so, sir, as °e seide nouthe, what ich wolde aski, haue I scholde, and nedes thi word thou most holde”.

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The king seide: “Seththen it is so, take hir bi the hond and go; of hir ichil thattow be blithe”. He kneled adoune, and thonked him swithe; his wif he tok bi the honde, and dede him swithe out of that londe, and wente him oute of that thede: ri°t as he com the way he °ede. So long he hath the way ynöme, to Winchester he is ycöme, that was his owen citee; ac no man knew that it was he. No forther than the tounes ende for knoweleche no durste he wende, but with a begger in bilt ful narwe ther he tok his herbarwe to him and to his owen wif, as menestrel of pouer lif, and asked tidinges of that londe and who the kingdom held in honde. The pouer begger in his cot tolde him euerich a grot: hou her quen was stole owy ten °er ygon with faiery; and hou her king en exile °ede, but no man wiste in whiche thede; and hou the steward the lond gan holde; and other mani thing him tolde. Amorwe, o°ain the none-tide, he maked his wif ther abide; the beggeres clothes he borwed anon, and heng his harpe his rigge opon, and wente him into that citee, that men mi°te him biholde and se. Erles and barounes bolde, buriais and leuedis gunne him biholde. “Lo!” thai seide, “swiche a man! Hou long the her hongth him opan! Lo, hou his berd hongth to his kne! He is yclönge also a tre!” And as he °ede bi the strete, with his steward he gan mete, and loude he sette on him a cri:

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“Sir steward”, he seide, “merci! Icham an harpour of hethenesse; help me now in this destresse!” The steward seide: “Cöm with me, cöm! Of that ichaue thou schalt haue söm. Euerich harpour is welcöme me to for mi lordes loue Sir Orfeo”. In castel the steward sat atte mete, and mani lording was bi him sete. Ther were trömpours and tabourers, harpours fele and crouders. Miche melodie thai maked alle, and Orfeo sat stille in halle, and herkneth. When thai ben al stille, he tok his harpe and tempred schille, the blisfulest notes he harped there that euer man yherde with ere; ich man liked wel his gle. The steward biheld and gan y-se, and knew the harpe also bliue. “Menstrel”, he seide, “so mote thou thriue, wher haddestow this harpe and hou? I praye thattow me telle now”. “Lord”, quath he, “in vncouthe thede, thur° a wildernesse as I °ede, ther I founde in a dale with liouns a man totore smale, and wolues him frete with tethe scharpe. Bi him I find this iche harpe; wel ten °er it is ygo”. “O”, quath the steward, “now me is wo! That was mi lord Sir Orfeo. Allas! wreche, what schal I do, that haue swiche a lord ylore? A way! that euer ich was ybore! that him was so harde grace y°arked, and so vile deth ymarked!” Adoune he fel aswon to grounde. His barouns him tok vp in that stounde and telleth him hou it geth … it is no bot of mannes deth. King Orfeo knew wel bi than his steward was a trewe man

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and loued him as he au°te do, and stont vp and seith thus: “Lo, Steward, herkne now this thing: °if ich were Orfeo the king, and hadde ysuffred ful °ore in wildernesse miche sore, and hadde ywönne mi quen owy out of the londe of faiery, and hadde ybrou°t the leuedi hende ri°t here to the tounes ende, and with a begger her in ynöme, and were miselue hider ycöme pouerliche to the, thus stille, for to assaye thi gode wille, and °if ich founde the thus trewe, no schulde thow it neuer rewe: sikerliche, for loue or aye, thou schulde be king after mi daye. And °if of mi deth thou hadde ben blithe, thou schulde haue voided also swithe.” Tho alle that therinne sete that it was King Orfeo vnder°ete, and the steward him wel yknew; ouer and ouer the bord he threw, and fel adoune to his fete; so dede euerich lord that there sete, and alle seide at o crying: “Õe beth our lord, sir, and our king!” Glade thai weren of his liue. To chaumbre thai ladde him also bliue, and bathed him and schof his berd, and tired him as king apert. And seththen with gret processioun thai brou°te the quen into the toun with al manere menstracie. O lord! ther was gret melodie! For ioie thai wepe with her ei°en that hem so sounde ycömen sei°en. Now Orfeo newe corouned is, and eke his quen Dame Heurodis, and longe liued afterward, and seththen king was the steward.

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Harpours in Bretaine after than herde hou this meruaile bigan, and made herof a lay of god liking and nempned it after the king: that lay is “Orfeo” yhote, god is the lay, swete is the note. Thus com Sir Orfeo out of care. God graunte ous alle wel to fare.

[Tolkien’s editorial note] There are three MSS. of this poem: A (Auchinleck, before 1350); H (Harley, fifteenth century); B (Bodleian, Ashmole, fifteenth century). The introduction, lines 1–24, and also lines 33–46, are from H. The rest of this version is based on A, though the spelling has in a few points been altered, and final -e has been restored or omitted in accordance with the grammar of earlier Southern English. In a few cases the lines have been emended by small changes, especially of word-order. The result is a much more metrical version than that offered even by MS. A, though several lines (as e.g. 96) remain obviously defective and corrupt. The defective rhymes of the MSS. in lines 81–2 (torett … witt); 149–50 (on hed … gold red); 157–8 (palays … ways); 381–2 (he wolde haue ydo … a minstrel, lo!) have been remodelled in accordance with evidence supplied by other poems of the same MS. (A) or of similar date and origin. Some rhymes, however, remain defective, as for instance 413 sete (for the sg. sat) with 414 swete. Sir Orfeo appears to be a translation or adaptation made from a now lost Old French original in the thirteenth century in the South-East of England (that is probably in Essex); but it passed through several hands of copyists, or the mouths of reciters, between the author and the oldest surviving MS., and these, in addition to the corruptions of error and forgetfulness, have infected it with the forms of later language and different dialect: the influence of Northern and (probably) South-Western dialect can be detected in MS. A. The original appears to have used the old native form hye or he for sche and they (thai), though these are the forms used in the MS. in all but a few cases (note the rhyme in 185–6). MS. A uses † throughout for the th that is here substituted. ° is used for gh in the middle or ends of words; at the beginning of words it is the equivalent of modern y, as also in compounds: as vnder°ete = underyete, 576. Comparison of readings With the exception of Tolkien’s substitution of th for † throughout, his indications of short ö, and differences of single vs. double quote, all 104

Tolkien’s Middle English Sir Orfeo differences of orthography, form, word-order, and punctuation between Tolkien’s version and Sisam’s edition (imprint of 1928) are indicated, as of course are all additions by Tolkien. These notes, therefore, when used in conjunction with Tolkien’s Middle English Vocabulary, provide a key to Tolkien’s own gloss for nearly all forms. In the few cases where Sisam’s edition differs in a significant manner from Bliss’s edition (1954), this is also indicated. In these indications citations from Tolkien’s version are given in bold before a square bracket; those from the editions follow in italics. Readings from Bliss’s edition are preceded by an abbreviation indicating the source MS: A = Auchinleck; B = Ashmole 61 (Bodleian 6922); H = Harley 3810; L = Lay le Freyne (Auchinleck f.261a ff.). Lines 1–24:— These lines, and ll. 33-46, corrupt in A, are provided by H. Sisam also gives these lines from H. 1. reden] redyn. finde ywrite] fynde ywryte. 2. us] H vs. wite] wyte. 3. harping] harpyng. 4. ferly] frely. Cf. Sisam’s note: “Lai le Freine has ferly ‘wondrous’” (208). 6. ioye] H joy; L ioie. Lines 7–8:— These lines follow ll. 9–10 in H. Sisam likwise transposes these lines. This ordering agrees with that of the corresponding lines of L: “Sum be†e of wer and sum of wo, and sum of ioie and mir†e al-so, and sum of trecherie and of gile, of old auentours †at fel while.” 7. trecherie] trechery. gile] gyle. 8. while] whyle. 9. bourdes] bourdys. ribaudrie] rybaudry; H rybaudy. 10. fairie] feyré. 12. of loue] o loue; H to lowe; L o loue. 13. Britain thise] Brytayn †is. arn] arne. ywrite] ywryte; H y-wrytt. 14. first] furst. forth] for†e. 15. fillen] H fallen. 16. Britouns] Brytouns. 17. owher mighte yheren] myght owher heryn; H my°t owher heryn. 18. weren] weryn. 19. harpes tho with] harpys wi†. 20. lay] layes. Cf. Sisam’s note: “The curious use of it after the plural 105

Carl F. Hostetter layes is perhaps not original. Lai le Freine has: And maked a lay and yaf it name” (209). 22. I] Y. telle ] telle, . alle] all. 23. Herkne, lordinges] Herken, lordyngys. 24. I] y. Sir] H Syr. 25. was yore a king] was a king; A was a kinge. 26. Ingelond a hei°] Inglond an hei°e. 28. curteis] curteys. 30. moder com of] moder of. 31. holde ] yhold, . 32. auentures] auentours. tolde] told. Lines 33–46:— These lines, corrupt in A, are provided by H. Sisam also gives these lines from H. 33. onything] ony †ing. 34. loued] louede; H lovede. harping] harpyng. 35. siker] syker. god] gode. harpour] harpoure; H harpure. 36. him] hym. honour] honoure; H honour. 37. Himselue] Hymself. harpe ] harpe, . 38. laide] layde. 39. lerned] lernyd; H lerned. 40. harpour] harper. 41. yborn] born. 42. euer] H onus. Bliss notes that “All editors except Ritson [Ancient Engleish Metrical Romanceës, 1802] have printed euer for the onus of the manuscript” (55). beforn] byforn. 43. mi°te] my°t. harpyng] harping. here] H her. 44. were] H wer. 45. ioyes] ioys. Paradis] Paradys. 46. harping] harpyng. suche melodie] suche ioy and melody. Cf. Sisam’s note: “ioy and overload the verse, and are probably an unskilful addition to the text” (209). 47. soiourned] soiournd. 48. citee] cité. 51. He hadde with him] ˇe king hadde. pris] priis. With Tolkien’s metrically improved version cp. the corresponding lines of H: “He ha† a quene, ful feyre of pris”; and of B: “And with hym hys quen off price.” 52. Heurodis] Herodis; A Heurodis. 53. leuedi for the nones ] leuedi, for †e nones, . 106

Tolkien’s Middle English Sir Orfeo 54. mi°te] mi°t. 55. and godenesse] and of godenisse. 56. fairnesse] fairnise. 57. Bifel in] Bifel so in. 59. schoures] schours. 60. floures] flours. 63. iche] ich. 64. tok to hir maidenes two of pris ] Tok to maidens of priis, . With Tolkien’s metrically improved version cp. the corresponding line of H: “Toke with hur ii. maydenes of pris.” 65. wente hir in] went in. 66. playe] play. orhcard-side] orchard side. 67. springe] spring. 68. yhere] here. singe] sing. 69. sette] sett. doune alle] doun al. 71. faire] fair. 72. maidnes durste] maidens durst. 74. but] bot. reste] rest. 75. afternon] afternone. 76. ydon] ydone. 78. cride] crid. 80. bledde wet] bled wete. 81. torende] torett. 82. rauissed] reuey<se>d; A reueyd. Cf. Sisam’s note: “reuey<se>d or some such form of ravished is probably right” (209); and cp. B ravysed. out of mende] out of hir witt. 83. two] tvo. maidnes] maidens. 84. durste] durst. hir leng] hir no leng. 85. but ourne] bot ourn. palais ri°t] palays ful ri°t. 86. tolde] told. 87. wolde] wold. 88. bade] bad. atholde] athold. 89. Kni°tes and leuedis ourne tho] Kni°tes vrn, and leuedis also, . 90. sexti damiseles] damisels sexti. mo; ] mo, . 91. quen] A quene. 93. to bed hye brou°te hir] and brou°t hir to bed. laste] last. 94. helde] held. faste] fast.

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Carl F. Hostetter 95. one] o. 96. wolde] wold. and wende owy] and owy. 97. herde] herd. 99. com] come. 100. chaumbre] chaumber. biforn] bifor. 101. seide] seyd. pitee] pité. 102. leue lif] lef liif. Cf. Sisam’s note concerning this line: “O lef liif (where the metre indicates leuè for the original)” (287). tee] te. 103. °et] °ete. 105. whit] white. 108. is now al] is al. 111. louesome] louesom. two] to. 114. Let] Lete. rewful] reweful. 116. helpe] help. 117. laste] last. 118. faste] fast. 119. seide] seyd. kinge] king. 122. wrothe] wro†. 123. but] bot. 124. lif] liif. 125. mote] mot. dele atwo] delen ato. 126. beste] best. I] y. 130. I] y. 131. nis. ] nis; . 133. lay in this] lay †is. 135. two faire] to fair. 136. wel] wele. 137. bade] bad. hi°ing] hei°ing. 138. king] A kinge. 139. answerde] answerd. bolde] bold. 140. I durste] Y durst; A Y no durst. I nolde] y nold. 141. mi°te] mi°t. 144. damiseles] damisels. 145. alle] al. snow] snowe. 146. milk] milke. 147. I] Y. sei°] sei°e. °et] °ete. 148. faire creatures] fair creatours. 108

Tolkien’s Middle English Sir Orfeo 149. a croune hadde on his molde] hadde a croun on hed. 150. rede golde] gold red. 151. al on] of a. 152. bri°te so] bri°t as. 153. sone] son. 154. wolde] wold. nolde[ nold. 156. palfray ] palfray, . 157. brou°te] brou°t. palise] palays. 158. wel atired in iche wise] wele atird in ich ways. With ll. 157–58 cf. Sisam’s note: “The original rime was perhaps palys: wys ‘wise’” (209); and cp. H palys: y-wys. 160. riuere, forest] riuers, forestes. Cf. l. 246. 162. brou°te] brou°t. 163. owen] owhen. 164. seide] said. 165. dame, that tow] dame, to-morwe †atow. Cf. Sisam’s note to l. 102: “assimilation of unlike sounds, as †atow 165 for †at †ow” (209). 166. to-morwe her] ri°t here. With Tolkien’s metrically improved version of ll. 165–66 cp. the corresponding lines of B: “And seyd, ‘Madam, loke †at thou be / to-morow here, vnder †ys tre.” 172. helpe] help. 173. thei°] †ei. 174. °et] °ete. 175. herde] herd. 177. lif] liif. 178. wif] wiif. 179. conseil] conseyl. iche] ich. 180. helpe him] him help. With Tolkien’s metrically improved version cp. the corresponding line of B: “Bot no man helpe hym ne canne.” 182. nöme] ynome. Cp. H name, B nam. 183. wel] wele. kni°t] kni°tes. him, ] him . 185. quene] quen. 187. iche] ich a. 188. saide] sayd. wolde ther] wold †ere. 189. die there] dye †er. 190. schulde] schuld. Cf. l. 225. 191. °et] °ete. 192. quene] quen. ytwi°t] ytui°t; A y-tvi°t. 109

Carl F. Hostetter 193. faierie was forth] fairi for†. 194. niste wher] wist neuer wher. With Tolkien’s metrically improved version cp. the corresponding line of B: “The ne wyst wer sche was com.” 195. crying] criing. wep] wepe. 196. chaumbre] chaumber. 197. ofte] oft. 199. nei°] nei°e. lif] liif. was al yspent] was yspent. 202. erles] erls. 203. alle] al. 204. saide] said. biforn] bifor. 208. oueral] ouer al. 209. For ] For, . 211. I] y. 212. wildernesse] wildernes. 215. vnderstonde] vnderstond. I] y. 218. thing. A †inge. 219. weping] wepeing. halle ] halle, . 220. gret] grete. 221. mi°ten olde or °önge] mi°t old or °ong. 222. weping] wepeing. tönge] tong. 223. adoune alle] adoun al. 224. praide] praid. 225. schulde fram] schuld nou°t fram. Cf. l. 190. 227. forsok] forsoke. 228. but] bot. sclauine] sclauin. tok] toke. 229. nadde no kirtel, no no hod] no hadde kirtel no hode. 230. scherte, no non other god] schert, <no> no no†er gode. 231. But] Bot. harpe] harp. took] tok. 232. of] atte. 233. moste] most. 234. wep] wepe. 235. he that er was king] he, †at hadde ben king. croune ] croun, . 236. wente] went. toune] toun. 237. Thurgh] ˇurch; A ˇurth. 238. wildernesse] wildernes. 239. aise] ays. 110

Tolkien’s Middle English Sir Orfeo 240. but] bot. malaise] malais. 241. He hadde ywered fow and gris] He †at hadde ywerd †e fowe and griis. 242. bedde purpre bis; ] bed †e purper biis, . 243. harde] hard. 244. and with gresse him] and gresse he him. 245. He hadde yhad] he †at hadde had. 246. riuere] riuer. Cf. l. 160. 247. now thei°] now, †ei. cömsi snewe] comenci to snewe. Cf. Sisam’s note to l. 57: “The metre points to . . . comsi in l. 247” (209). 249. He hadde yhad] He †at had yhad. pris] priis. 250. bifore] bifor. knelande] kneland. leuedis; ] leuedis, . 252. but] bot. 253. hadde] had. plentee] plenté. 254. deintee] deynté. 257. wilde frute] wild frut. 258. but] bot. 260. but] bot. grasses] grases. 261. ydwine] duine. 262. misaise] missays. to-chine] tochine. 263. tellen al the] telle †e. 264. suffred] sufferd. °er] °ere. 265. her and berd, al blake] here of his berd, blac. 266. were] was. 267. harpe] harp. 269. and when] and, when. cler] clere. 270. took] toke. harpe] harp. 271. owen] owhen. 273. It is unclear why Tolkien has bracketed “[bestes].” It appears in A, and has no brackets in Sisam. 276. brere ] brere, . 277. a-fine] afine. 278. melodie] melody. therine] †erin. 279. wolde] wold. 280. nolde] nold. 281. mi°te] mi°t. 282. hote] hot.

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Carl F. Hostetter 283. Faierie] fairy. route] rout. 284. cömen hunten] com to hunt. aboute] about. 285. blowinge] bloweing. 286. berkinge] wi† him berking. 287. neuer] no. 288. niste] nist. 289. mi°te] mi°t. 291. wel] wele. 294. manie desplayed] mani desplaid. 295. ydrawen holde; ] ydrawe hold, . 296. niste] nist. wolde] wold. 297. sei°] sei°e. 298. come dauncing] com daunceing. 299. queinte] queynt. 300. queinte] queynt. softely: ] softly; . 301. trumpes] trunpes. bi ] bi, . 302. manere] maner. 303. sei°] sei°e. 304. horse] hors. 305. ris: ] ris,— . 306. nis] †er nis. 307. honde] hond. 308. hauking] haukin. 309. god] gode. haunt: ] haunt, . 310. maulard, hairoun] maulardes, hayroun. cormeraunt. ] cormeraunt; . 311. The] †e. 312. wel] wele. 313. praye] pray. 314. sei°] sei°e. Orfeo ] Orfeo, . 317. ywöne] ywon. 318. aros ] aros, . 320. wel] wele. 322. owen] owhen. Dame] Dam. 323. Õerne] Õern. ek] eke. 324. spek] speke. 325. misaise] messais. sei°] sei°e. 112

Tolkien’s Middle English Sir Orfeo 326. hadde] had. hei°] so hei°e. 327. felle] fel. hir ei°en] her ei°e. 328. ysei°en] ysei°e. 330. leng] lenger. 333. wreche] A wroche. I] y. mi°te] mi°t. 334. die] dye. thisse si°te] †is si°t. 335. longe] long. lif] liif. 336. I] y. wif] wiif. 338. herte breke!] hert breke? 339. what] wat. 340. thise] †is. 341. ichille strecche] ichil streche. 342. lif] liif. recche] reche. 343. sclauine] sclauain. 344. heng] henge. harpe] harp. 345. hadde] had. god] gode. gon: ] gon,— . 346. spared] spard. 350. wel] wele. milen] mile. 351. cuntraye] cuntray. 352. sömeres daye] somers day. 354. nas non] nas †er non. 355. londe] lond. sei°] si°e. 356. real and] real, and. hei°] hei°e. 357. vtemaste] vtmast. 358. cler] clere. schene] schine (cf. the entry Schene in Tolkien’s Vocabulary). 359. aboute] about. 360. degiseliche] degiselich. batailed stoute] bataild stout. 362. golde] gold. 363. anourned] anowed. A auowed. Cf. Bliss’s note that “Sisam’s emendation to anow[rn]ed fails to carry conviction” (54). 364. manere] maner. animal] A aumal; see the Appendix. 365. Withinne] Wi†in. were] wer. 366. alle] al. preciouse] precious. 367. werste] werst. 368. maked al] al. burnissed golde] burnist gold. 370. was the therke] schuld be †erk and. 113

Carl F. Hostetter 371. li°te] li°t. 372. none sönne] none †e sonne. 375. alle] al. thinkth] †ink †at. 377. li°te] ali°t. 378. wolde] wold. mi°te] mi°t. 380. redi was] was redi. 381. his wille were] he wold haue ydo. 382. harpere, ] a minstrel, lo! Cf. Sisam’s note to this line): “The line is too long” (210). 383. thi lord to solace] To solas †i lord. 386. let] lete. in] into. 387. gan he] he gan. biholde] bihold. abouten] about. 388. sei° ther] sei°e †ful†. Sisam indicates with daggers that ful in this line is a corruption; he suggests that perhaps “ful should be deleted as a scribe’s anticipation of folk in the next line” (210-11). 389. folk] of folk (see previous note). thider were] were †ider. 390. thou°te dede ] †ou°t dede, . nere] nare. 391. ther stode] stode. hadde] hade. 392. no fet no armes nadde] non armes nade. 393. thur° †urch; A †urth. bodi] †e bodi. 394. ther laye] lay. 395. y-armed] armed. horse] hors. 397. in water were adreinte] were in water adreynt. 398. were forschreinte] al forschreynt. 399. laye] lay. 400. were dede ] ded, . 401. laye] lay. 404. and thider with fairie] wi† fairi †ider. 405. sei°] sei°e. owen wif] owhen wiif. 406. leue liif] lef liif. 407. slepen] slepe. 408. hir wede] her clo†es. knew] knewe. 409. When he biheld thise meruailes] And when he hadde bihold †is meruails. 410. wente] went. 411. sei°] sei°e. 412. blissful, bri°t; ] blisseful and bri°t..

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Tolkien’s Middle English Sir Orfeo 413. therinne] ˇerin. him sete] sete. 414. quene, ] quen. 415. bri°te ] bri°t, . 416. biholden hem he mi°te] bihold he hem mi°t. 418. adoune biforn] adoun bifor. king, ] king. . 419. and seide: “O lord, °if thi wille were] “O lord,” he seyd, “°if it †i wille were.” Cf. Sisam’s note to l. 382: “l. 419 may once have been: And seyd ‘Lord, °if †i wille were.’” (210); also note B: “And seyd: ‘Lord, and †i wyll were.” 420. schulde] schust. 421. answerde] answerd. artow ] artow. 424. sente] sent. 425. her] here. 426. I] Y. hardi] folehardi. 427. durste] durst. 428. but] bot. walde] wald. 430. I] Y. but] bot. menestrel] menstrel. 431. manere] maner. 433. thei°] †ei. welcöme] welcom no. 434. °et] °ete. 435. Biforn] Bifor. adoune] adoun. 436. harpe miri] harp so miri. soune] soun. 437. it ] his harp, . wel] wele. 438. blissfule] blisseful. 439. alle] al. palais] palays. 440. come] com. 441. adoune] adoun. 442. melodie] melody. 444. god] gode. 445. god] gode. 447. stint harping] stint his harping. 448. seide to him than] †an seyd to him. 449. wel] wele; A wel. 451. largeliche] largelich. paye] pay. 452. assaye] asay. 453. seide] seyd. 454. thattow] †atow.

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Carl F. Hostetter 455. iche leuedi ] ich leuedi, . ble ] ble, . 459. row] rowe. 460. louesum ] louesome, . 462. cömpaini] compayni. 463. seide] seyd. 464. °et] °ete. wel] wele. 466. seide] seyd. 467. wolde] wold. I scholde] y schold. 468. thi word thou most holde] †ou most †i word hold. 469. seide] seyd. 470. hond ] hond, . 471. thattow] †atow. 472. adoune] adoun. Sisam begins a new paragraph with this line. 473. wif] wiif. honde] hond. 474. londe] lond. 475. wente] went. oute] out. thede: ] †ede,— . 476. com] come. 479. owen citee] owhen cité. 480. knew] knewe. 482. no durste he] no durst. 483. but] bot. in bilt] y bilt; A y-bilt. narwe ] narwe, . 484. herbarwe ] herbarwe, . 485. owen wif] owhen wiif. 486. menestrel] a minstrel. lif] liif. 487. londe ] lond, . 488. honde] hond. 489. cot] cote. 490. tolde] told. 492. ygon] gon. faiery] fairy. 494. but] bot. wiste] nist. 495. holde] hold. 496. thing] †inges. tolde] told. 497. o°ain the none-tide] o°ain nonetide. 498. wif] wiif. 499. beggeres] beggers. 500. harpe] harp. 501. wente] went. citee] cité. 116

Tolkien’s Middle English Sir Orfeo 502. mi°te] mi°t. biholde] bihold. 503. Erles] Erls. barounes bolde] barouns bold. 504. buriais] buriays. gunne him biholde] him gun bihold. 505. Lo! ] Lo, . seide] seyd. 506. her hongth] here honge†. 507. hongth] honge†. 508. yclönge] yclongen. 509. bi] in. H has by. 511. sette] sett. cri] crie. 512. seide] seyd. 513. hethenesse] he†enisse. 515. seide] seyd. cöm! ] come; . 516. söm] some. 517. Euerich harpour] Euerich gode harpour. welcöme] welcom. to ] to, . 519. In castel] In †e castel. 521. trömpours] trompour<s>. 522. fele ] fele, . 523. melodie] melody. 524. in halle] in †e halle. 526. tok] toke. harpe] harp. 527. blisfulest] bli<sse>fulest. 528. euer man yherde] euer ani man yherd. 529. wel] wele. 530. y-se] yse. 531. knew] knewe. harpe] harp. also] als. 532. seide] seyd. mote] mot. 533. wher haddestow] where hadestow. harpe ] harp, . 534. I praye thattow] Y pray †at †ou. 536. thur°] †urch; A †urth. wildernesse] wildernes. I] y. 537. I] y. 538. liouns] lyouns. tortore] totorn. 539. tethe scharpe] te† so scharp. 540. I find] y fond. iche harpe] ich harp. 541. wel] wele. °er] °ere. 544. I] y. 546. that euer ich] that ich. 547. harde] hard. 117

Carl F. Hostetter 549. Adoune] Adoun. 550. stounde ] stounde, . 551. geth … ] ge†— . 552. is] nis. mannes] manes; A mannes. 553. knew wel] knewe wele. 555. au°te do] au°t to do. 556. seith] seyt. 560. wildernesse] wildernisse. 561. ywönne] ywon. 562. londe] lond. faiery] fairy. 566. miselue] miself. 567. pouerliche] pouerlich. 568. assaye] asay. 569. and °if ich] and ich. 570. no schulde thow] †ou no schust. 571. sikerliche] sikerlich. aye] ay. 572. schulde] schust. daye] day. 573. of mi deth thou hadde] †ou of mi de† hadest. 574. schulde] schust. 575. alle] al †o. therinne] †erin. 577. wel yknew] wele knewe. 578. threw] †rewe. 579. adoune] adoun. fete] fet. 580. there] †er. 581. alle seide] al †ai seyd. crying] criing. 583. Glade] Glad. weren] were. 584. chaumbre] chaumber. also bliue] als biliue. 585. him ] him, . schof] schaued. 586. as king] as a king. 588. brou°te] brou°t. toun ] toun, . 589. manere menstracie] maner menstraci. 590. O lord!] Lord! gret melodie] grete melody. 591. ei°en] ei°e. 592. sei°en] sei°e. 593. Now Orfeo] Now King Orfeo. corouned] coround. 594. and eke his] and his. 595. longe liued afterward, ] liued long afterward; . 118

Tolkien’s Middle English Sir Orfeo 596. king was] was king. 598. herde] herd. 599. god liking ] gode likeing, . 600. king: ] king; . 601. is “Orfeo”] “Orfeo” is. 602. god] gode. 603. out of care] out of his care. 604. graunte] graunt. wel] wele.

Revisions to the printed text of 1944 Tolkien’s pencilled revisions (incorporated into text) l. 75: afternone > afternon l. 76: ydone > ydon l. 96: and owy > and wende owy l. 281: Hi > He l. 309: haunt > haunt: l. 600: nemoned > nempned l. 11: se > se, l. 70: Vnder > vnder l. 192: ytwi°t > ytwi°t, l. 323: °erne > Õerne l. 381: were > were. l. 391: sum > Sum l. 452: assaye.” > assaye”. l. 453: “Sir,” > “Sir”,

l. 456: ympe-tre.” > ympe-tre”. l. 457: “Nay,” > “Nay”, l. 521: tabourers > tabourers, l. 533: Wher > wher l. 568: wille > wille, l. 582: °e > Õe l. 587: and > And Note: Auchinlech > Auchinleck

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Carl F. Hostetter Editorial changes Appendix: Revisions to Sisam’s Fourteenth Century Verse and Prose due to Tolkien The first edition (1922) of Tolkien’s Middle English Vocabulary contains the following corrigenda to Sisam’s text: p. xlv, l. 7: for carat read caret p. xlvii: for Jessop read Jessopp p. 21, l. 259: for be read he p. 28, l. 493: for enn read en p. 43, footnote to l. 69: omit “for:” p. 62, l. 100: for tyste read tyste (Morris); and adjust note at p. 225. p. 103, l. 254: for largeand read large and p. 175, l. 1: for Daib. read Diab. [sic; l. 1 of the page, but l. 99 of the poem —CFH] p. 214, note to a: for “The best . . . are” read “This poem is largely a translation of sentences excerpted from Rolle’s Incendium Amoris, cc. xl–xli (Miss Allen in Mod. Lang. Review for 1919, p. 320). Useful commentaries are” p. 226, note to l. 153: in l. 8 for tô read tǭ p. 243, n. to ll. 5–6: for “external covering” read “covering over it” p. 291, table, last column, 1 sg.: for “-e or (e)s” read “(e) or (e)s” Sisam’s text was corrected in exact accordance with these corrigenda when it was reprinted in 1923. In 1945 (according to Bliss, see below; the earliest example I have seen is in the 1946 impression), the entry Animal (Sir Orfeo l. 364) in the Vocabulary was altered from: Animal, n. animal, ii 364. [OFr. animal.] in the first edition (1922) to: Animal, n. ii 364, a misreading for aumal q.v. at the same time adding this entry: Aumal, n. enamel, ii 364. [OFr. aumail.] Line 364 of Sisam’s text of Sir Orfeo was corrected accordingly by 1967 (but not as of 1950). Presumably at the same time animal was emended to aumal, the following was added to Sisam’s notes on Sir Orfeo (Sisam 1967 210): 120

Tolkien’s Middle English Sir Orfeo 364. aumal, “enamel.” Holthausen’s correction for animal (Anglia, vol. xlii, p. 427) is confirmed by the MS. The reference is to the following in Holthausen’s 1918 article, “Zum mittelenglischen Romanzen” (“On the Middle English Romances”): Animal ist sinnlos, O bietet amell, H metalle. Ersteres wird richtig sein, vgl. das NED. unter amel “email.” Natürlich wäre hier emal zu schreiben. Animal is senseless, [MS Ashmole 51] offers amell, [MS Harley 3810] metalle. The first would be correct, compare the OED under amel “enamel.” It would be natural to write emal here. Holthausen’s misgivings about animal are apparently motivated solely by a judgment that it yields an inappropriate sense. There is no indication in his article that he based his proferred reading, emal, on an examination of the Auchinleck MS itself. By contrast, Bliss, in his first edition of Sir Orfeo (1954), reading directly from the MS, gives the form as aumal (32), noting: 364. All editors have printed animal for aumal, although there are only five minims in the manuscript, and although the noun animal is not recorded until the end of the sixteenth century (OED s.v.). The correct reading was pointed out by Professor J. R. R. Tolkien (A Middle English Vocabulary, impression of 1945, s.v. animal) (54). However, in the second edition (1966), Bliss revised this note to read: 364. All editors have printed animal for aumal, although there are only five minims in the manuscript, and although the noun animal is not recorded until the end of the sixteenth century (OED s.v.). The correct reading was first published by Professor C. L. Wrenn, TPS [Transactions of the Philological Society] (1943), 33. See RES [Review of English Studies] N.S. viii (1957), 58 footnote 4 (54). (The citation in Wrenn reads: “Auchinlek’s anmal, then, may well be an error for aumal (u and n scribal confusion), which is a quite plausible form of amal,” that of RES is to Tolkien’s student and protégé S.R.T.O. d’Ardenne’s review of the first edition of Bliss’s Sir Orfeo, to which the RES editor supplied this footnote: “The reading aumal seems to have been published first by Professor C. L. Wrenn in ‘The Value of Spelling as Evidence,’ Trans. Phil. Soc., 1943, p. 33; but the manuscript had been so read by Miss S. I. Tucker in 1938.”)

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Carl F. Hostetter Hence, although Sisam’s note correctly refers to Holthausen as first noticing the difficulty with the reading animal, it was not he but Wrenn who first published the correct MS reading aumal. It appears that Wrenn, not Tolkien, was ultimately responsible for the change in the Vocabulary—that Tolkien’s Middle English version of Sir Orfeo, printed in 1944, has the reading animal suggests that he did not himself arrive at the correct reading aumal before 1944, and thus after Wrenn—but it may be presumed that it was Tolkien who was proximately responsible for it. It is interesting to note that Tolkien’s English translation of l. 364 (Tolkien 1975 131), “with beasts and birds and figures horned,” shows that he still read animal when he made the translation, suggesting that he made his translation before 1945. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I am grateful to Wayne Hammond for providing me with a photocopy of Tolkien’s Middle English version of Sir Orfeo, and for suggesting this study of it. I am further grateful to Wayne and to Christina Scull and Arden R. Smith for their assistance in the pursuit of various references and in researching the revisions to Tolkien’s Vocabulary and Sisam’s reader. I also thank the Tolkien Estate for their very kind permission to republish the complete text of Tolkien’s version of Sir Orfeo. NOTES 1

In his preface to Sir Gawain, Christopher Tolkien notes that at that time (1975) he was “not able to discover any writing by my father on the subject of Sir Orfeo” other than the “very brief factual note on the text” that is given in the introduction (8). He was unaware at that time of the existence of his father’s Middle English version (private correspondence). (Tolkien did in fact leave some writings on the poem, not seen by this editor, now held by the Bodleian Library.)

2

A judgment notably not shared by Sisam, who describes its dialect as South-Western (cf. 13, 207).

3

This despite the restructuring of sentences sometimes required by verse translation. It should be noted, however, that it will be argued below that the formatting and punctuation of the Middle English version is due to that of Sisam’s edition; hence that of Tolkien’s translation may also be due to Sisam, directly or indirectly.

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Tolkien’s Middle English Sir Orfeo WORKS CITED Bliss, A. J., ed. Sir Orfeo. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1954. ———. Sir Orfeo. 2nd ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1966. Carpenter, Humphrey. Tolkien: A Biography. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1977. d’Ardenne, S.R.T.O. Review of Sir Orfeo, edited by A. J. Bliss. Review of English Studies, New Series VIII (1957): 57–59. Hammond, Wayne G. and Douglas A. Anderson. J.R.R. Tolkien: A Descriptive Bibliography. New Castle, DE: Oak Knoll Books, 1993. Holthausen, F. “Zum mittelenglischen Romanzen,” sec. VIII. Anglia XLII (1918): 425–29. Sisam, Kenneth. Fourteenth Century Verse and Prose. Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1921. I also make specific reference to the imprints of 1923, 1928, 1946, 1950, and 1967, each of which was (slightly) revised from previous versions. Where no imprint is specified, references apply to any of these imprints. Tolkien, J.R.R. A Middle English Vocabulary. Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1922. I also make specific reference to the imprint of 1945, which was (slightly) revised from previous versions. Where no imprint is specified, references apply to any of these imprints. Tolkien, J.R.R., trans. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Pearl, and Sir Orfeo. Introduction by J.R.R. Tolkien. Edited with a preface by Christopher Tolkien. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1975. [Tolkien, J.R.R., ed]. Sir Orfeo. Oxford: The Academic Copying Office, 1944. Wrenn, C. L. “The Value of Spelling as Evidence.” Transactions of the Philological Society (1943): 14–39.

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Frodo’s Batman MARK T. HOOKER But be not afraid of greatness. Some men are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them. ——William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night

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hile The Lord of the Rings was not published until the early 1950s, it is nevertheless to some extent a product not of World War II but of the six months during which Tolkien fought with the 11th Lancashire Fusiliers during World War I, before trench fever took him back to England. Tolkien wrote that Sam was “a reflection of the English soldier, of the privates and batmen I knew in the 1914 war, and recognized as so far superior to myself ” (Carpenter 91). For the modern reader, the most likely association with the word batman is Batman and Robin of film and comic book fame. Tolkien, however, had another image in mind. Before World War II, when officers were indeed gentlemen, in the British sense of the word, having a soldierservant was the accepted order of the day. The word batman comes not from cricket bats, as some have suggested, but from the French word bât, which means pack saddle. A batman was, therefore, the man who took care of the luggage carried on the pack-horse or pack-mule. In time, the word also came to mean an officer’s valet, who, among other things, also took care of his officer’s baggage. The literature of World War I recounts a number of examples of the loyalty and devotion of batmen to the officers they cared for. An examination of these stories, which were written by British line officers who, like Tolkien, saw combat in World War I, offers an insight into the kind of batmen with whom lieutenant Tolkien came into contact in the 1914 war. We have no evidence that Tolkien read these stories himself, but the characteristics of the batmen described in them are much the same as the characteristics that Tolkien ascribes to Sam. “He [Sam] did not think of himself as heroic or even brave, or in any way admirable— except in his service and loyalty to his master,” wrote Tolkien in a letter to a reader (Letters 329). William Noel Hodgson (1893-1916) wrote under the pseudonym “Edward Melbourne.” A lieutenant with the Devonshire Regiment, he died in the first day of the Battle of the Somme. He was a Georgian poet Copyright © 2004, by West Virginia University Press

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Mark T. Hooker in the style of Rupert Brooke, and he also wrote stories and essays about the war. His short story “Pearson”1 is a tale about his resourceful batman named Pearson (77-81). Lieutenant Colonel Graham Seton Hutchison (1890-1946)—the author of numerous books on World War I—wrote a biography of his batman, Peter McLintock (Biography of a Batman 21122). The relationship between Hodgson and his batman is the kind that P. G. Wodehouse (1881-1975) parodied in his Jeeves and Wooster stories. Shortly after Jeeves had been engaged, Bertie Wooster tries to establish who is in charge in their relationship by saying that he is not one of those men who becomes an absolute slave to his valet. Jeeves’ irreproachably polite reply, however, leaves no doubt as to the absurdity of Bertie’s statement (“Jeeves Takes Charge” 8). Hodgson’s story, being much more compact, gets straight to the point. Hodgson has learned that it is best to “acquiesce in all that Pearson does”: He is my servant, and if he were Commander-in-Chief, the war would be over in a week. But I should get no baths, so I am glad he isn’t. And I doubt whether he would care to be, himself; at present he is supreme in his own sphere, and knows it and knows that the other servants know it. The only thing that he does not know is his own limitations—nobody else does either—they have never been reached. . . . A good soldier servant is one of the greatest marvels of our modern civilization. To posses one is better and cheaper than living next door to Harrods. Do you want a chair for the [Officers’] Mess? You have only to mention it to Pearson. Are you starving in a deserted village? Pearson will find you wine, bread and eggs. Are you sick of a fever? Pearson will heal you. From saving your life to sewing on your buttons, he is infallible. (77) To prove his point about Pearson’s ingenuity, Hodgson offers the reader some concrete examples. Having relocated his unit into some filthy trenches, Hodgson soon discovers that he is infested with lice. Pearson’s unhesitating reaction to this news is that the lieutenant requires a bath and a change of clothes. He will see to it. Hodgson, bowing to what he perceives as the reality of trench warfare, dismisses Pearson’s reply with a joke. If Pearson would be so kind as to call him a cab, he could drop in on his tailors on the way to the Jermyn Street Baths. The reality of trench warfare, however, proved to be what Pearson made of it. A short while later, Pearson called Hodgson back to his dug-out, where a hot bath and change of clothes awaited. To those who have never experienced the privations of combat, Hodgson’s description of this exploit as “epic” may 126

Frodo’s Batman seem overblown. It is not. In combat, where clean, dry socks seem worth their weight in gold, a warm bath and a complete change of clothes would ransom a host of kings. Hodgson’s mention of Pearson finding a chair for the Officers’ Mess is echoed in the other story he tells about Pearson. The empty house that they had taken over to use as the Officers’ Mess had a cold stone floor. In response to a comment by the President of the Mess, Hodgson offhandedly volunteers Pearson to get them a carpet to make the Mess more comfortable. This time it is the President of the Mess who represents the accepted perception of the reality of life in a combat zone in World War I. He doubts that it is possible; after all, “the boy is not a conjurer.” Hodgson’s belief in Pearson’s “genius” prompted him to bet the President of the Mess five francs that Pearson could produce a carpet for the Mess by tea time the next day. The most likely source of carpets in the area was a nearby town that was under daily enemy artillery fire. Pearson asked Hodgson for permission to go to the town to look for a carpet, but Hodgson refused because of the danger. The next day, just before the deadline for the bet, Pearson appeared in the Mess, covered in sweat, carrying a carpet and two rolls of linoleum. He had gone to the town anyway, because Hodgson had not expressly forbidden him to go. “I could not let you lose a bet, sir, for the sake of a little trouble,” said Pearson. As if in anticipation of the incredulous, modern, peacetime reader, Hodgson closes his paean to Pearson with the comment that “there are many like him, I am sure, though I prefer to think of him as supreme. But when next a soldier friend boasts of his servant—as they always do— sooner or later, remember that he is not always such a liar as he appears.” Tolkien’s readers would do well to remember Hodgson’s caution, when they consider Sam’s role in Tolkien’s works. Tolkien is—as Hodgson put it—“boasting” about the batmen of his acquaintance, all rolled into one fictional character. “You’re a marvel,” says Frodo to Sam in the Tower of Cirith Ungol, echoing Hodgson’s comment about Pearson, when Sam produces the Ring that Frodo had imagined lost (RK, VI, i, 188). Hutchison’s batman was named Peter McLintock. He was, said Hutchison, “the best, most intimate friend man ever had” (211). He was “a faithful servant, a friend and counselor, an ever-present companion to give me confidence in the darkness of a dangerous night, and good cheer, when fortune favored a visit to battalion headquarters” (215). [Peter’s] friendliness took complete possession of the necessary, though often inconvenient, affairs of life. In such things Peter’s service was priceless. No matter at what hour I would return to the cubby hole for sleep, it was as dry and as warm as human ingenuity could devise. Eggs and small 127

Mark T. Hooker comforts he conjured from behind the lines without any promptings from me. . . . He would . . . prepare a varied menu from interminable bread, plum-and-apple jam, and the sickly meat and vegetable ration. He would clean my limited wardrobe, wash and mend the socks and shirts, keep me supplied with tobacco, dry my boots and stockings. The batman was Multum in parvo to his charge, omnipresent, yet ubiquitous. . . . And he would run when his officer went over the top, and fight by his side. When the officer dropped, the batman was beside him.” (219-20) Peter’s friendship expressed itself in “little acts of vigilant kindness. Opportunities for the rendering of trifling services and for the doing of kindness were for ever present, every hour and every day. The batman’s attitude was one of selfsubordination, and he tarried neither to consider the worthiness of his charge nor the nature of the service asked. He gave freely, the man of humble origin and pursuit, to one at least temporarily exalted with authority. By his ready service, words and gestures he won affection, by his forethought and unknown sacrifices he penetrated quietly and unobtrusively into the heart of the master of his goings and of his comings.” (221-22). These two short stories by Hodgson and Hutchison taken together provide a list of traits that any good batman should have. Sam has a great many of them. He does not have the trait of healing, which Tolkien gives to others of more stately bearing, like Elrond and Aragorn. He also has no opportunity to dry Frodo’s boots and stockings, since Hobbits do not wear shoes. Tolkien clearly establishes the relationship between Sam and Frodo as “master” and “servant” by spreading those two descriptors throughout the text. As Frodo prepares to leave the Shire, the excuse given for Sam going with him is that Sam was going “to do for Mr. Frodo” (FR, I, iii, 78), which is another way of saying that he is going to be Frodo’s valet or butler. At the feast in Rivendale, Sam begs to be allowed “to wait on his master” (FR, II, i, 240). Tolkien accentuates this by peppering Sam’s speech with plenty of “Mr. Frodo, sir,” echoing the customary form of address of a valet to his master and a soldier to an officer. Tolkien also drops a number of hints as to Sam’s duties at Bag End as the story progresses. As Frodo awakens in the Tower of Cirith Ungol, for example, Sam tries “to sound as cheerful as he had when he drew back the curtains at Bag End on a summer’s morning” (RK, VI, i, 187). This phrase evokes an image almost straight out of Jeeves and Wooster. Tolkien makes Sam 128

Frodo’s Batman sound almost like Jeeves, when Sam replies with an unperturbed “Very good, sir!” to Frodo’s announcement that he is leaving the Shire for good and that neither of them may ever come back (FR, I, iv, 96). Hodgson’s comment about having to give up hot baths were Pearson to become Commander-in-Chief and his story about the clean clothes and the hot bath find a brief reflection in Tolkien’s tale in Pippin’s offhand comment upon awakening in the fir-wood after their first night out of the Shire. Pippin commands Sam to have his breakfast ready at nine thirty, and inquires if his bath water is hot yet (FR, I, iii, 81). Both requests would be logical, if made of a batman or valet, and Sam takes no offense at them, reflecting Hutchison’s description of Peter McLintock’s attitude of selfsubordination, which Hutchison said kept him from considering the nature of the service asked or the worthiness of his charge. While Sam clearly has an attitude of selfsubordination, he, unlike Hutchison’s Peter McLintock, does have a considered opinion as to the worthiness of his charge. Sam had always felt that Frodo was so kind that he was in some ways blind to what went on around him. At the same time he held fast to the contradictory opinion, that Frodo “was the wisest person in the world” (with the possible exception of Bilbo and Gandalf) (TT, IV, iii, 248). In fact, Sam loved Mr. Frodo (TT, IV, iv, 260; RK, VI, i, 177). This is a very different picture of the relationship between an officer and his batman than the ones presented in Hodgson’s and Hutchison’s short stories. Perhaps Pearson and McLintock both loved their charges, too, but their charges were simply not aware of the fact, just as Hutchison was not aware of all the sacrifices that McLintock made for him. One of Hutchison’s “unknown sacrifices” can be found echoed in the chapter “Mount Doom,” in which Frodo and Sam are struggling through Mordor toward their final goal, almost out of water to drink. Sam lets Frodo drink from their meager supply of water, but does not drink any himself (RK, VI, iii, 213, 216). Frodo is almost unaware of everything at this point (RK, VI, iii, 215), but the narrator lets the reader in on Sam’s secret. Earlier in the tale, as they are just leaving the Shire, Tolkien has Frodo complain in jest that they have saddled him with all the heaviest things in his pack. Sam stoutly volunteers to take on some of Frodo’s burden, saying that his pack is quite light, which the narrator pointedly informs the reader is a not true. At this stage of their journey, Frodo is still alert enough to recognize that Sam is making a sacrifice for him, and makes a resolution to look into it at their next packing (FR, I, iii, 80). Forethought was one of Hutchison’s characteristics for Peter McLintock. Sam shows himself worthy of this appellation in the scene in which he is checking the contents of his pack, one that Aragorn notes was “rather large and heavy” (TT, III, i, 21). It held Sam’s “chief

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Mark T. Hooker treasure,” his cooking utensils, a box of salt, a supply of tobacco, flint and tinder for starting fires, woolen hose, linen, and a number of small things that Frodo had forgotten, that Sam planned to produce in triumph when Frodo asked for them on the trail (FR, II, iii, 293). One of these items finds a special resonance in Hutchison’s comment about how McLintock kept him supplied with tobacco, as well as in Tolkien’s tale, where a whole segment of the “Prologue” is devoted to “pipe-weed” (FR, Prol., 17-18). Most importantly for the story, Sam’s pack also held a length of Elvish rope, which they would need later in the mountains (TT, IV, i, 214-17). At the Breaking of the Fellowship, Sam is the one who “grabbed a spare blanket and some extra packages of food” before they left (FR, II, x, 423). All these things point to Sam’s forethought. McLintock’s “little acts of vigilant kindness,” as Hutchison termed them, can be seen in Sam’s actions too. In the morning, after the Hobbits’ first encounter with the elves on their way to Rivendale, for example, Frodo awakes to find Pippin already up. Pippin prods him to get up and have some of the food that the elves left them. The bread was as delicious as it was the night before and Pippin would have eaten it all, if Sam had not insisted that he leave some for Frodo (FR, I, iv, 95). Both Hodgson and Hutchison comment on their batman’s skill at supplementing their rations. In “Of Herbs and Stewed Rabbit,” Sam exhibits the same sort of initiative as was exhibited by the two real-life batmen, by “conjuring up”—as Hutchison put it—some rabbits for Frodo to eat. That Gollum was actually the one who caught the rabbits is unimportant. It was Sam who sent him out to hunt them (TT, IV, iv, 260). The same was probably true of Pearson and McLintock. To the batman’s charge, it was not important who took the eggs out from under the chicken, but rather who arranged for them to appear unexpectedly on his plate at breakfast. Hodgson’s image of Pearson coming up with “wine, bread and eggs” when he was “starving in a deserted village” finds its reflection in Tolkien’s chapter on the Tower of Cirith Ungol. The tower could hardly have been more deserted. It was strewn with the bodies of the Orcs that had killed one another (RK, VI, i, 179). Tolkien plays on the emptiness, repeating it for effect. “[I]t was empty, save for two or three more bodies sprawling on the floor. . . . The dead bodies, the emptiness,” intones the narrator. “‘I do believe that there’s nobody left alive in the place! . . . I’ve met nothing alive, and I’ve seen nothing,’ said Sam” (RK, VI, i, 181, 189). The plot line remains the same in Tolkien’s version of the tale, but there is a slight adjustment to the details. It is not that Sam found them some food. His find was some clothing for Frodo. It was Frodo himself who found the food among some rags on the floor (RK, VI, i, 190). Sam’s success in his scavenger hunt for clothes is no less a triumph

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Frodo’s Batman of “conjuring,” as both Hodgson and Hutchison put it, even though he was not the one to find the food. Hodgson’s comment about the range of Pearson’s services is likewise echoed in Tolkien’s tale. Hodgson pairs saving his life with sewing on his buttons to show the incredibly wide gamut of services that Pearson provided for him. In Tolkien’s tale, the explicit comparison is missing, but the attentive reader can easily construct a similar one from the events of the tale. Saving Frodo’s life comes most vividly to mind in “The Choices of Master Samwise,” in which Sam defends Frodo from Shelob. Sam, in fact, stood ready on numerous occasions to defend Frodo. For example, as the company flees the Black Riders on their way to Buckland, the narrator says that the Black Riders would have to ride over Sam to get to the wagon where Frodo was hidden (FR, I, iv, 106). Pippin says, “‘Sam is an excellent fellow and would jump down a dragon’s throat to save you’” (FR, I, v, 114). These efforts at saving Frodo’s life can easily be paired with the simple task of having Sam run down to his home to drop off the key to Bag End as they departed (FR, I, iii, 79). Sewing on a button or dropping off a key are inconsequential services when compared to saving one’s life, but they are part and parcel of the job of a batman. Tolkien also manages to work in a jest in much the same vein as Hodgson’s throw-away line about calling him a cab so that he could drop in on his tailors on the way to the Jermyn Street Baths. In the Tower of Cirith Ungol, after Sam frees Frodo from the Orcs, and they prepare to flee the tower, Frodo, with a wry smile, poses the equally nonsensical question of whether Sam has made inquiries about inns along the way (RK, VI, i, 190). In the context of LotR, Hutchison’s description of the confidence that McLintock’s companionship gave him in the darkness of a dangerous night finds a special resonance in Tolkien’s tale of a journey into a land of unabated darkness. Hutchison’s terse description pales, of course, in comparison to the detail of Tolkien’s, but the two, nevertheless, describe the same bond to be found between an officer and his batman in combat. Understanding this relationship is one of the key difficulties for the modern, peacetime reader. An officer and his batman were from different social classes. While Frodo represents the English officer and gentleman, born to greatness, as it were, Sam—like Pearson and McLintock—was not born to greatness, but had greatness thrust upon him. The change in the relationship between Sam and Frodo as the quest progresses reflects a change in the English class structure that was brought about by World War I. The literate divide, for example, was only one of a number of very real class factors that were a part of Tolkien’s time. The need for reading and writing was not at all a universally accepted idea among Hobbits. Bilbo had taught Sam to read and write, but Sam’s father was not so sure

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Mark T. Hooker that it was a good idea (FR, I, i,32). In his short story “Half and Half,” Hodgson explains how the factor of class difference was made less distinct by the war. This is the story of a sergeant from the Highlands, whom Hodgson deftly characterizes by replicating the sergeant’s accent, a technique that Tolkien also used, though sparingly. In Tolkien’s tale, Sam’s father, the Gaffer, and a stranger from Michel Delving both say “jools” instead of “jewels,” the crowning touch to a dialogue full of turns of phrase that mark them as men of limited education. Sam’s dialogue is peppered with a number of less obvious turns of phrase that clearly mark him as a member of that class as well. Hodgson’s story begins with the sergeant asking: “Wull Ah tell ye the tale of Micheal Starr thet wes in oor regiment?” (103). This opening line characterizes the sergeant much more deftly and economically than a long, detailed narration. He was a “man of humble origin and pursuit,” as Hutchison termed McLintock. Having established who the sergeant was, Hodgson turns quickly to the relationship between himself—an officer and a gentleman—and the sergeant. “It was curious,” said Hodgson, “how intimate we had become, he and I, although at the time neither of us was aware of the incongruity.” The incongruity that Hodgson finds “curious” was that in peacetime, neither the sergeant, nor Hodgson would have had a relationship that allowed them to swap stories in the fashion described in Hodgson’s short story. This is the same incongruity that troubles the modern peacetime reader. In the next sentence, Hodgson explains how this change in their relationship had come about. “There are, I suppose, times when an unconscious strain tunes all our natures up to a single note, and though he was as fully armed with the carelessness of experience as I was with the recklessness of ignorance, we must both of us have been at high tension, for as I realized two days later I had had neither bite nor sup for thirty hours and never knew I was hungry.” Tolkien shows exactly the same fine edge of the strain of combat in “The Tower of Cirith Ungol,” in which, having rescued Frodo, Sam is reminded of food and water by Frodo’s wry question about the inns along the way. “I don’t know when drop or morsel last passed my lips. I’d forgotten it, trying to find you,” says Sam (RK, VI, i, 190). Relationships like these, forged in the strain of combat, changed post-war English society profoundly. In Tolkien’s version of this change, Sam becomes Frodo’s heir, and goes on to become Mayor of the Shire, the most famous gardener in history, and keeper of the knowledge of the Red Book (RK, VI, ix, 309). It is an interesting change, that has Sam wearing more than one hat, which is an aptly appropriate metaphor for English society, which indeed did, and to some extent still does, judge

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Frodo’s Batman a man’s social status by the hat that he wears. Sam moved up in social status, but kept to his roots. The change in the society of the Shire is also less widespread than in England after World War I. Sam was, after all, the only representative of his class to participate in the perilous adventure that reshaped class relationships. There were a great many more British private soldiers and batmen who went off to war and discovered that things could be different. Sam’s participation in the quest to destroy the Ring was a “punishment” for eavesdropping on Frodo and Gandalf, when they were planning Frodo’s departure (FR, I, ii, 73). Gandalf does not say what kind of punishment Sam will receive. A reader with no foreknowledge of the tale could suppose that the punishment would be having to leave the Shire (uncommon for Hobbits), or that it would be exhausting, or uncomfortable, or even terrifying, but because Tolkien does not say what the punishment is, the reader—and Sam—are not immediately scared off by it. Sam’s reaction to this “punishment” is one of enthusiasm. He is happy to go, because he will get to see “Elves and all! Hooray!” (FR, I, ii, 73). It is only later—much like the British soldiers who went off to World War I full of enthusiasm—that Sam will find out how terrifying his quest is. “And we shouldn’t be here at all, if we’d known more about it before we started,” says Sam to Frodo (TT, IV, viii, 320). Tolkien repeats the plot line of Sam listening at the window later in the episode at the Council of Elrond, but with a slight difference. Sam has taken up his new job of batman, helping and serving Frodo. Elrond’s pronouncement upon discovering Sam, therefore, is not a punishment, as was Gandalf ’s, but an evaluation of his performance in his new role as Frodo’s batman (FR, II, ii, 284). From this point on Sam is Frodo’s “ever-present companion,” to use Hutchison’s description of his batman, Peter McLintock. As Frodo and Sam discuss leaving Lórien to get on with their quest, Tolkien shows Sam in the role of counselor, another of Hutchison’s descriptions of Peter: “You’re right,” said Sam. . . . I don’t want to leave. All the same, I’m beginning to feel that if we’ve got to go on, then we’d best get it over. “It’s the job that’s never started as takes longest to finish, as my old gaffer used to say. And I don’t reckon that these folk can do much more to help us, magic or no.” (FR, II, vii, 376) Job is a key word in the story, and Tolkien repeats it again and again to help define Sam’s character and explain his motivation. The word job presents a problem for some modern—especially American—readers who think first of mac-jobs and unskilled labor, and only later, if at all, 133

Mark T. Hooker think of the other meanings of the word job that were more common in the time that Tolkien was writing The Lord of the Rings. The MerriamWebster Dictionary defines job as: job \jäb\ n. 1: a piece of work 2: something that has to be done: DUTY 3: a regular remunerative position — jobless adj.12 Sam’s job has to be understood in the context of the duty of a batman: to serve and protect his charge. The second meaning from The MerriamWebster Dictionary—duty—comes clearly to the fore in “The Tower of Cirith Ungol,” in which Sam “turned quickly and ran back up the stairs. ‘Wrong again, I expect,’ he sighed. ‘But it’s my job to go right up to the top first, whatever happens afterwards’” (RK, VI, i, 184). As Sam and Frodo draw closer to Mount Doom, Tolkien’s attention returns to Sam’s job. Even though his death appears to be the most likely outcome, duty and honor require that Sam—like Hutchison’s and Hodgson’s batmen—go on. “‘So that was the job I felt I had to do when I started,’ thought Sam: ‘to help Mr. Frodo to the last step and then die with him? Well, if that is the job then I must do it’” (RK, VI, iii, 211). Tolkien’s description of Sam’s job here is exactly the same as the job description that Hutchison gives for a batman: “And he would run when his officer went over the top, and fight by his side. When the officer dropped, the batman was beside him.” Hodgson was killed during an attack on German positions south of Mametz. Pearson was found dead at his side. They are buried together with their comrades in arms in the trench they died taking. Peter McLintock died at Hutchison’s side and is buried in Ration Farm Military Cemetery, la Chapelle-d’Armentières, France. Tolkien gave the story of his batman a happy ending: Sam returned to the Shire to marry his sweetheart, Rose Cotton. Sam’s job was indeed a “punishment,” and in more ways than just the privations that he suffered when he accompanied Frodo to Mount Doom and back. To do his job, Sam had to leave Rose Cotton and she was not particularly pleased with him for that. She viewed the year that he was gone with Frodo as “wasted” (RK, VI, ix, 304). This, in general, mirrors a feeling about the service of private soldiers (enlisted men) that was widespread in England in the period following World War I. NOTE 1

Dated March 23, 1916

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WORKS CITED Carpenter, Humphrey. J.R.R. Tolkien: A Biography. London: George Allen & Unwin, 1977. Hodgson, William Noel. Verse And Prose In Peace And War. London: Smith, Elder & Co., 1916, 1917. Hutchison, Graham Seton. The W Plan. London: Thornton Butterworth Ltd., 1929. ———. Biography of a Batman. London: Eyre and Spottiswoode. 1929. (Reprinted from the English Review, August 1929.) ———. Colonel Grant’s To-morrow. London: Thornton Butterworth, 1931. ———. Footslogger: An Autobiography. London: Hutchison, 1931. ———. The Sign of Arnim. New York: Cosmopolitan Book Corporation, 1931. ———. Warrior. London: Hutchison & Co. Ltd., 1932. ———. Life Without End. New York: Farrar & Rinehart, 1934. ———. Pilgrimage. London: Rich & Cowan, 1935. (A guide to the battlefields of France and Belgium.) ———. According to Plan. London: Rich and Cowan, 1938. Wodehouse, P. G. (Pelham Grenville). Selected Stories. New York: The Modern Library, 1958. ———. Jeeves and The Feudal Spirit. Kent: Hodder and Stoughton, 1977. ———. Jeeves and The Hard-boiled Egg and Other Stories. London: Bloomsbury, 1997. ———. Jeeves Omnibus. London, Jenkins, 1931, ———. Life with Jeeves. Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin Books, 1981. ———. Right ho, Jeeves. c. 1922. London: Barrie & Jenkins, 1978. ———. Stiff upper Lip, Jeeves. c. 1963. New York: Perennial Library, 1990. ———. Thank You, Jeeves. London: H. Jenkins, 1956. 135

Mark T. Hooker ———. The Inimitable Jeeves. c. 1923. London: Vintage, 1991. ———. The Return of Jeeves. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1954. ———. Very Good, Jeeves! London: H. Jenkins, 1958.

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Tolkien’s Prose Style and its Literary and Rhetorical Effects MICHAEL D. C. DROUT

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hile J.R.R. Tolkien’s prose style in The Lord of the Rings has been both attacked and defended, its details have seldom been analyzed in terms of specific aesthetic effects.1 This lacuna in Tolkien criticism is certainly understandable, given the perceived necessity of first defending Tolkien’s work as a worthy object of serious literary (rather than sociological or pop-cultural) study: critics have spent much effort countering ill-informed and even logically contradictory claims about Tolkien’s work, and the discussion of writing style has had to be given short shrift in the effort to make the study of Tolkien academically respectable.2 But the analytical neglect of Tolkien’s prose style has had the unfortunate effect of ceding important ground to Tolkien’s detractors, who, with simple, unanalyzed quotations, point to some word or turn of phrase and, in essence, sniff that such is not the stuff of good literature.3 I would even contend that a reaction against Tolkien’s non-Modernist prose style is just as influential in the rejection of Tolkien by traditional literary scholars as is Modernist antipathy to the themes of his work, the ostensible political content of The Lord of the Rings, the popularity of the books, or even Tolkien’s position outside the literary mainstream of his day (all of which have been well documented and countered by recent critics).4 A complete analysis (or justification) of Tolkien’s style is beyond the scope of any one essay, but in this paper I hope to make a start at a criticism of some of the passages most obviously unlike traditional Modernist literature: the battle of Éowyn against the Lord of the Nazgûl and Denethor’s self-immolation. The style of these passages is not, contra some of Tolkien’s most perceptive critics, over-wrought or archaic. Rather, Tolkien produces a tight interweaving of literary references—specifically, links to Shakespeare’s King Lear in both style and thematic substance— with grammatical, syntactic, lexical, and even aural effects. His writing thus achieves a stylistic consistency and communicative economy that rivals his Modernist contemporaries. At the same time his treatment of Lear shows his engagement with ideas (in this case, the problem of pride and despair among the powerful) that have long been considered among the great themes of English literature. Copyright © 2004, by West Virginia University Press

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Michael D.C. Drout Because the following analysis will repeatedly switch from sentencelevel writing, to discussion of characters, to the themes of the book, it is necessary to quote the key passage: But lo! suddenly in the midst of the glory of the king his golden shield was dimmed. The new morning was blotted from the sky. Dark fell about him. Horses reared and screamed. Men cast from the saddle lay grovelling on the ground…. The great shadow descended like a falling cloud. And behold! it was a winged creature: if bird, then greater than all other birds, and it was naked, and neither quill nor feather did it bear, and its vast pinions were as webs of hide between horned fingers; and it stank. . . . Upon it sat a shape, black-mantled, huge and threatening. A crown of steel he bore, but between rim and robe naught was there to see, save only a deadly gleam of eyes: the Lord of the Nazgûl. To the air he had returned, summoning his steed ere the darkness failed, and now he was come again, bringing ruin, turning hope to despair, and victory to death. A great black mace he wielded. But Théoden was not utterly forsaken . . . one stood there still: Dernhelm the young, faithful beyond fear; and he wept, for he had loved his lord as a father. Right through the charge Merry had been borne unharmed behind him, until the Shadow came; and then Windfola had thrown them in his terror, and now ran wild upon the plain. Merry crawled on all fours like a dazed beast. . . . Then out of the blackness in his mind he thought that he heard Dernhelm speaking. . . . “Begone, foul dwimmerlaik, lord of carrion! Leave the dead in peace!” A cold voice answered: “Come not between the Nazgûl and his prey! Or he will not slay thee in thy turn. He will bear thee away to the houses of lamentation, beyond all darkness, where thy flesh shall be devoured, and thy shrivelled mind be left naked to the Lidless Eye.” A sword rang as it was drawn. “Do what you will; but I will hinder it, if I may.” “Hinder me? Thou fool. No living man may hinder me!” Then Merry heard of all sounds in that hour the strangest. It seemed that Dernhelm laughed, and the clear voice was like the ring of steel. “But no living man am I! You look upon a woman. Éowyn I am, Éomund’s daughter. You 138

Tolkien’s Prose Style stand between me and my lord and kin. Begone, if you be not deathless! For living or dark undead, I will smite you, if you touch him.” (RK, V, vi, 114-117) We begin our analysis with a subtle literary reference to King Lear that connects triangularly the Lord of the Nazgûl, Denethor, and Shakespeare’s mad King.5 This reference is the Lord of the Nazgûl’s threat “Come not between the Nazgûl and his prey” which echoes King Lear’s “Come not between the dragon and his wrath” (I, i, 122). The two passages are syntactically identical, relying on the fronting of the verb “come” in order to delete the dummy morpheme “do” (the effect of this grammatical shift will be discussed in detail below). While it is true that the Lear passage and the RK passage do not mean identical things (the Nazgûl is talking about something physical; Lear is more metaphorical), the similarity is significant: the passages can be transformed from one to another with the mere substitution of two nouns, one of these being the substitution of one monster for another (Nazgûl for dragon). This reference, then, connects the Lord of the Nazgûl to Lear and invokes, through the principle of metonymy, the greater, “more echoic” context of the referenced literary tradition,6 creating a set of interconnecting references that can tell readers more about the characters involved than is explicit in the narrative. These links also provide some hints that can be used to understand better the complex interplay of ideas (aesthetic, political, moral, and religious) in The Lord of the Rings. Now one mere turn of phrase would indeed be a lot to hang a comparison on, but there are additional similarities as well as other information that we can use to show Tolkien’s knowledge of and interest in Lear. Both these similarities and the shared themes, moreover, connect Lear not only to the Lord of the Nazgûl, but also to Denethor. Examining, via the materials published by Christopher Tolkien in The History of the Lord of the Rings, the development of this passage and the description of Denethor’s suicide suggests that an original connection with Lear in the Éowyn passage went on to shape further the development of the character and actions of Denethor. That is, what was at first a one-time stylistic invocation of King Lear ended up shaping a number of characters, making more complex Tolkien’s discussion of kingship, and allowing a further analysis of the moral and religious problems associated not only with the phenomenon that Tolkien, following W. P. Ker and E. V. Gordon, called “northern courage,” but also with the problems of kingship (legitimacy, authority, duty toward people) that are important components of The Return of the King.7 When Denethor finally descends into madness and attempts to burn himself and Faramir alive, he orders his servants (hitherto blocked by Beregond at the door of the tombs) to bring him a torch: “‘Come hither!’ 139

Michael D.C. Drout he cried to his servants. ‘Come, if you are not all recreant!’” (RK, V, vii, 130). Similarly Lear calls Kent “recreant” after Kent has criticized Lear’s treatment of Cordelia (I, i,170). “Recreant” is an unusual word even in such similar contexts.8 While it appears in Chaucer, Malory, and also in Shakespeare’s Henry VI part II, the OED lists no uses after 1897.9 I have been unable to find it anywhere else in Tolkien’s corpus of writings, suggesting that, although it is an anachronistic word, it is not a diagnostically Tolkienian anachronism (such as “pale” used as to describe a jewel or light, “fell” used both as an adjective and a noun, or, perhaps the infamous “eyot”).10 Thus its use bespeaks a connection with (although it does not prove a definite source in) Lear that is not contradicted by further parallels. Additional scenes link Lear and The Return of the King. The scene in which Imrahil shows Éowyn to be alive by noting that her faint breath shows on his polished vambrace is similar to the scene in Lear where the King tries to determine if Cordelia still lives. Tolkien writes: Then the prince seeing her beauty, though her face was pale and cold, touched her hand as he bent to look more closely on her. “Men of Rohan!” he cried. “Are there no leeches among you? She is hurt to the death maybe, but I deem that she yet lives.” And he held the bright-burnished vambrace that was upon his arm before her cold lips, and behold! a little mist was laid on it hardly to be seen. (RK, V, vi, 121) Compare Lear: “Lend me a looking glass; / If that her breath will mist or stain the stone, / Why, then she lives.” (V, iii, 266-67) The rage of Éomer upon finding Éowyn apparently dead is also similar to Lear’s rage at the death of Cordelia: “Éowyn, Éowyn!” he cried at last: “Éowyn, how come you here? What madness or devilry is this? Death, death, death! Death take us all!” Then without taking counsel or waiting for the approach of the men of the City, he spurred headlong back to the front of the great host, and blew a horn, and cried aloud for the onset. Over the field rang his clear voice calling: “Death! Ride, ride to ruin and the world’s ending!” (RK, V, vi, 119) Compare Lear: “And my poor fool11 is hanged! No, no, no life? Why should a dog, a horse, a rat have life,

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Tolkien’s Prose Style And thou no breath at all? Thou’lt come no more Never, never, never, never, never!” (V, iii, 311-14) While the lines themselves are not identical, the repetition is similar: first the “no, no, no life?” parallel the “death, death, death! Death take us all!” and then the repetitions of “never” and “death” (we can attribute the five “never”s against the four “death”s to the requirements of pentameter). Furthermore, there are similarities in the immediate situations: at the loss of a beloved female relative, the protagonist goes mad—of course Lear has been quite mad for some time before Cordelia’s death, but her death is the final straw. Lear himself dies, while Éomer only rides off “to ruin and the world’s ending,” but the madness and grief are identical—and the substantive differences between Lear’s, Éomer’s, and Denethor’s actions when faced with similar situations, which I discuss in detail below, are actually emphasized by this initial similarity. The Fool in Lear mentions seven stars (I, v, 35), as does the rhyme that Gandalf recites to Pippin: “Seven stars and seven stones / And one white tree,” (TT, III, xi, 202).12 And the tone of the passage when the Doctor in Lear offers consolation to Cordelia: “Be comforted, good madam. The great rage / You see, is killed in him” is similar to the scene in the Houses of Healing at the conclusion of which Aragorn says, “The worst is now over. Stay and be comforted” (RK, V, viii, 141). Finally, the scene in which Denethor asks Pippin what services the hobbit can perform as esquire (RK, V, iv, 79-80) is similar to the scene in which Lear asks Kent what services he can perform (I, iv, 31). No single one of these parallels is in itself entirely conclusive (though note that I have presented them in descending order, from most probable to least), but we have additional evidence that Tolkien had thought a great deal about King Lear, its literary worth, and its position in English literature. That Tolkien knew King Lear well, and that he admired the play, seems clear from the following passages from Beowulf and the Critics: On page xxvi, when everything seems going right, we hear once again that “the main story of Beowulf is a wild folk-tale.” Quite true of course, as it is of King Lear except that silly would in the latter case be a better adjective.” (40)13 Are we to refuse “King Lear” either because it is founded on a silly folk-tale (the old naif details of which still peep through as they do in Beowulf) or because it is not “Macbeth”? Need we even debate which is more valuable? (55) Yet it is not—for it is a “folk-tale” used by a considerable poet for the plot of a great poem, and that is quite a different thing. As different as the Lear of Shakespeare from the same 141

Michael D.C. Drout tale recounted in the chronicle of Layamon—indeed the difference is greater, for already in Layamon we have a tale told with art, not a mere example of “story-motives.” (97). And that plot is not perfect as the vehicle of the theme or themes that come to hidden life in the poet’s mind as he makes his poem of the old material. As is true enough of Shakespeare’s use of old material. King Lear is a specially clear example. (140 n.) Tolkien’s statement that he disliked Shakespeare has been much quoted,14 though Shippey has shown the influence of Macbeth and A Midsummer Night’s Dream on The Lord of the Rings (Road 133-44). That Tolkien uses Lear in Beowulf and the Critics as a rhetorical example of what is excellent in literature does not prove that he ascribed to this view, but it does show, I think, that he knew the play and its links to Layamon’s Brut well enough. It seems no great logical leap, then, to deduce that when Tolkien began to grapple with issues of kingship,15 madness, and succession in The Lord of the Rings, King Lear came to mind.16 Looking at the evolution of the key passages discussed above also supports this view. The first appearance of the idea that Éowyn will slay the Lord of the Nazgûl appears in one of the outline passages in The War of the Ring: “Théoden slain and Éowyn slays the King of the Nazgûl and is mortally wounded. They lie in state in the white tower” (War 25556). This plan was then revised: “Charge of the Riders of Rohan breaks the siege. Death of Théoden and Éowyn in killing the Nazgûl King,” and again revised to: “Final assault on Minas Tirith [added: [11 >] 10 night]. Nazgûl appear. Pelennor wall is taken. Sudden charge of Rohan breaks siege. Théoden and Éowyn destroy Nazgûl and Théoden falls [struck out: Feb 12]” (War 260). A later version describes the charge of Rohan and Théoden’s death, but does not mention Éowyn. Christopher Tolkien notes that “in outlines I, II and III it is said that Théoden and Éowyn (who is not mentioned here) ‘slew’ or ‘killed’ or ‘destroyed’ the King of the Nazgûl” (War 267 n. 41). A further outline gives another method of bringing Êowyn into the battle: Go back to Merry. Charge of Rohan. Orcs and Black Riders driven from the gate. Fall of Théoden wounded, but he is saved by a warrior of his household who falls on his body. Merry sits by them. Sortie saves King who is gravely wounded. Warrior found to be Éowyn. The Hosts of Morghul reform and drive them back to the gate. At that moment a wind rises, dark is rolled back. Black ships seen. Despair. Standard of Aragorn (and Elendil). Éomer’s wrath. Morghul taken between 2 forces and defeated. Éomer and 142

Tolkien’s Prose Style Aragorn meet. (War 275) These various outlines show that Tolkien was struggling with the shape of the narrative of the Battle of the Pelennor Fields. At this point in the composition of RK he had not yet developed the secondary line of conflict, Denethor’s despair and madness. But now note the first wellrealized draft of the scene: But Théoden was not alone. One had followed him: Éowyn daughter of Éomund, and all had feared the light of her face, shunning her as night fowl turn from the day. Now she leapt from her horse and stood before the shadow; her sword was in her hand. “Come not between the Nazgûl and his prey,” said a cold voice, “or he will bear thee away to the houses of lamentation, beyond all darkness where thy flesh shall be devoured and thy shrivelled mind be left naked.” She stood still and did not blench. “I do not fear thee, Shadow,” she said. “Nor him that devoured thee. Go back to him and report that his shadows and dwimor-lakes are powerless even to frighten women.” (War 365-66, my emphasis) Christopher Tolkien writes: I think that my father wrote this well before the period of composition we have now reached, and I would be inclined to associate it (very tentatively) with the outline sketches for Book V, where the event described here is several times referred to, and especially with the Outlines III and V. In these, in contrast to what is said in I and II (p. 256) there is no mention of Éowyn’s wounding or death: “Théoden and Éowyn destroy the Nazgûl and Théoden falls” (III, p. 260); “Théoden is slain by Nazgûl; but he is unhorsed and the enemy is routed” (V, p. 263). Whatever its relative dating, the piece certainly gives an impression of having been composed in isolation, a draft for a scene that my father saw vividly before he reached this point in the actual writing of the story. When he did so, he evidently had it before him, as is suggested by the words of the Lord of the Nazgûl (cf. RK p. 116). (War 365-66) It therefore seems possible to interpret the process of composition as follows: Tolkien was struggling with the details of the battle before Minas 143

Michael D.C. Drout Tirith (whether this is on the Pelennor Fields or at Osgiliath is still an open question). He determined that Théoden and Êowyn would somehow destroy the Lord of the Nazgûl. He then wrote the scene quoted above and used the phrase reminiscent of Lear, “Come not between the Nazgûl and his prey.” This original reference to Lear (conscious or not) then went on to influence the rest of the narrative as Tolkien realized that the Lear parallel illuminated some of the complexities of the issues of kingly and stewardly responsibility and succession. In the outline stages of composition Tolkien foresaw Denethor’s grief and his potential conflict with Aragorn over the ending of his family’s rule: “interview with Denethor and his grief at news of Boromir” (War 276) and then developed this idea further, as Christopher Tolkien notes, Denethor’s “devastation is expressed as a surmise of Pippin’s: ‘Grief maybe had wrought it: grief at the harsh words he spoke when Faramir returned [>remorse for the harsh words he spoke that sent Faramir out into needless peril]. And the bitter thought that, whatever might now betide in war, woe or victory beyond all hope, his line too was ending” (War 337). Denethor’s anger at the ending of his line (in defeat or victory) then leads Tolkien to the analysis that there is likely to be conflict between Aragorn and Denethor: Words of Aragorn and Denethor. Denethor will not yield the Stewardship, yet; not until war is won or lost and all is made clear. He is cold and suspicious and ? mock-courteous. Aragorn grave and silent. But Denethor says that belike the Stewardship will run out anyway, since he seems like to lose both his sons. Faramir is sick of his wounds. If he dies then Gondor can take what new lord it likes. Aragorn says he will not be “taken,” he will take, but asks to see Faramir. Faramir is brought out and Aragorn tends him all that night, and love springs between them. (War 360) Denethor’s madness is not yet established (and his grief is caused solely by Boromir’s death and Faramir’s apparent fatal sickness, not by the defeat he sees coming via the palantír, which has not yet entered the story), though his anger at the thought of the loss of the Stewardship is made clear. But the combination of grief and wrath does now enter the story, only it is attached to Éomer: “Théoden falls from horse sorely wounded; he is saved by Merry and Éowyn, but sortie from Gate does not reach them in time before Éowyn is slain. Grief and wrath of Éomer” (War 359). It is at this point that Tolkien decided to introduce the madness of Denethor, the Steward’s attempted burning of Faramir, and his self144

Tolkien’s Prose Style immolation. The additional reasons for his madness (via the visions Denethor has seen in the palantír) are also developed: Gandalf sweeps aside the men and goes in. He upbraids Denethor, but Denethor laughs at him. Denethor has a palantír! He has seen the coming of Aragorn. But he has also seen the vast forces still gathered in Mordor, and says that victory in arms is no longer possible. He will not yield up the Stewardship “to an upstart of the younger line: I am the Steward of the sons of Anárion.” He wants things to be as they were—or not at all” (War 375). This section is further developed thus: But Denethor laughed. And going back to the table he lifted from it the pillow that he had lain on. And lo! in his hand he bore a palantír. ‘Pride and despair!’ he said. ‘Did you think that [the] eyes of the White Tower were blind?’ he said. [Added in pencil, without direction for insertion: This the Stone of Minas Tirith has remained ever in the secret keeping of the Stewards in the topmost chamber.] Nay, nay, I see more than thou knowest, Grey Fool. (War 378) We cannot be sure that the language from King Lear (“recreant”) has yet entered the scene, though it seems likely, since Christopher Tolkien notes that “the page continues very close to the final text” of The Return of the King, citing the page (130) on which “recreant” appears (War 378). But the word either entered at this stage, or in the final manuscript, which is not far removed from this draft. Thus we see, I think, how the first elements of Lear language (“Come not between…”) are expanded as Tolkien’s understanding of the complexities of the madness of Denethor develops. It is not necessary to pursue the detailed evolution of the more minor points of comparison (Pippin’s service with Denethor, the misting of Prince Imrahil’s vambrace by Éowyn’s breath), since they merely substantiate the more significant evidence discussed above. Rather, I now want to turn to the artistic effects generated by Tolkien’s linking to Lear via the metonymic device of stylistic similarity. We can use style and sources to create a syllogism: the Lord of the Nazgûl is to be compared to King Lear; Denethor is to be compared to King Lear;17 therefore Denethor is to be compared to the Lord of the Nazgûl.18 We can even ground this syllogism in the syntax of the most compelling similarity between Lear and RK: when Lear says “come not between the dragon and his wrath” he is speaking of himself; Lear is the “dragon” he is discussing. To begin to transform the Lear quotation into the Tolkien quotation we 145

Michael D.C. Drout substitute “Nazgûl” for “dragon.” Thus if Lear = “the dragon,” and “the dragon” = Nazgûl, then Lear = Nazgûl. And even if the above syllogisms are not convincing to all, it seems safe to say (even without the Lear comparison) that the Lord of the Nazgûl is what Denethor would have become had he somehow gained the One Ring: a mighty man with great abilities twisted into darkness. Such a comparison is not as far-fetched as it might at first seem. Note that while Tolkien’s original conception seems to have been that the Lord of the Nazgûl was a renegade member of the Istari—Gandalf reveals that the “W[izard] King . . . is a renegade of his own order . . . [?from] Númenor” (War 326)—he abandons this idea and makes the Black Captain a king of men rather than a wizard: “King of Angmar long ago” (War 334). In The Silmarillion we learn that “those [men] who used the Nine Rings became mighty in their day, kings, sorcerers, and warriors of old” and “among those [Sauron] ensnared with the Nine Rings three were great lords of Númenoran race” (S 289). It seems reasonable to infer that the Lord of the Nazgûl was one of these “Black Númenoreans” because he is the greatest of the Ringwraiths and the Númenoreans were greater than other Men. It is therefore worth noting Gandalf ’s comment to Pippin that Denethor “is not as other men of this time … and whatever be his descent from father to son, by some chance the blood of Westernesse runs nearly true in him” (RK, V, i, 32). Thus Denethor is closer in abilities—Gandalf says that he can perceive things far away if he uses his strong will—to a “pure-blooded” Númenorean (which, presumably, the Lord of the Nazgûl would be, since he would have taken up his ring before the Númenoreans mingled with “lesser” men) than other men of Gondor.19 Seeing the present actions and character of Denethor, therefore, may allow us to infer something about the past of the Lord of the Nazgûl. When we compare King Lear to both Denethor and the Lord of the Nazgûl, the resultant triangular relationship brings to the forefront several themes that Tolkien juggles throughout The Lord of the Rings but are particularly evident in this section of The Return of the King, most significantly the problem of, as Gandalf puts it, “pride and despair” among the great (RK, V, vii, 129). It is exactly “pride and despair” that drives Lear to madness and creates the wreckage of his (divided) kingdom. Madness and selfishness are of course evil things in general (see Boromir’s temptation, Gollum’s degradation), but in kings these failings are all the more dangerous because of the power focused in the person of the king. Kings are not permitted to despair; they must always hope for their people. Gandalf says essentially this to Denethor when he tells him that “your part is to go out to the battle of your City, where maybe death awaits you. This you know in your heart” (RK, V, vii, 129). This

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Tolkien’s Prose Style productive use of pride and despair is in fact the path that Éomer takes in his madness and grief—which are temporary—turning his own personal pain into an instrument for the service of his people and his cause. Éomer avoids Lear’s fate because his sense of responsibility toward his own people overcomes his individual grief (RK, V, vi, 122). Tolkien thus seems to be suggesting that madness and grief at the loss of loved ones, or at the probable loss of one’s beloved city, are not per se irrational and evil responses, but to succumb to them by committing additional evil is indeed a sin. In a medieval context, this would be the sin of “wanhope,” of abandoning faith in God and refusing to believe that one can be saved in even the darkest circumstances.20 Chaucer’s Parson’s Tale discusses this sin and its cures in great detail. Tolkien’s treatment of kingly responsibility (in Denethor, Théoden, and Éomer) is yet another example of the complexities of his thought: it is a “democratic” virtue for kings to care more about their people than themselves; the king as servant of as well as ruler over his people is a standard trope of medieval and post-medieval discussions of kingship.21 Yet Tolkien nowhere questions the authority of kings to rule based solely on their blood-lines. Théoden even describes the kingdom of Rohan as his personal property when he tells Saruman that the wizard would have no right to rule “me and mine for your own profit” even if Saruman were “ten times as wise” (TT, III, x, 185). Further complicating the matter is the real damage that Denethor does to other people through his evil actions. The madness of kings is not like the madness of ordinary men, and through Denethor’s behavior not only is his own life lost, but also those of Théoden and the porter whom Beregond slays at the entrance to the Hallows. This seems to me another clear link to Lear, where others suffer for the king’s faults. The addition of the Lord of the Nazgûl into the equation, however, shows that there is an additional telos for the despair and madness of the powerful: the ultimate, active evil of the Witch King that we see as a parallel to Denethor’s attempt to burn Faramir alive. It is of course speculation to try to determine how the Black Captain fell to Sauron, but it seems to me that Tolkien, with the triangular connection of Denethor, Lear, and the Lord of the Nazgûl, suggests that it is through the despair of not being able to accomplish one’s sworn and beloved duty to country that a man may be ensnared. Certainly Denethor had other motivations pushing him close to the edge of evil: his jealousy towards the disguised Aragorn (when Aragorn served Gondor as Thorongil) points out that Denethor too closely identifies his city’s glory and survival with his own exalted position, and Tolkien says as much in Appendix A (RK, A, 335-37). But despair at the loss in the “long defeat” (to use Galadriel’s words in FR, II, vii, 372), the very spiritual sickness

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Michael D.C. Drout that Gandalf cures in Théoden (TT, III, vi, 119-23), can be seen as that which leads a good and powerful man to evil, rather than a desire for evil for its own sake—which would certainly be the default assumption for the Lord of the Nazgûl’s original motivation for serving Sauron. Thus if I am correct in noting the parallels between Lear and Tolkien, the hackneyed criticism that all of Tolkien’s characters are either purely good or purely evil is even further shattered (not that it was very substantial to begin with).22 Not only do readers of the Lord of the Rings, as Shippey and others have noted, see the good fall away into evil (Saruman, Boromir, Denethor),23 but we may find the good that they once were in the backgrounds of those who have turned to evil. If the Lord of the Nazgûl was originally like Denethor, a great and powerful man driven to madness and enslavement by the sin of wanhope, a sin brought on by external circumstances, but nevertheless a sin, then more of the full complexity of Tolkien’s thought is evident, for the evil character was not originally evil (as Elrond says of Sauron)24 and the critics who see such characters as one-dimensionally evil thus miss the important discussion of free will and duty that undergirds Tolkien’s moral philosophy for Middle-earth.25 The dramatization of these themes in Lear is supposedly an example of the great genius of Shakespeare, a genius no one doubts. It is therefore significant, it seems to me, that Tolkien adds to the discussion not only the negative examples discussed above, but the positive examples of Éomer, Théoden, and, of course, Aragorn, the king in exile who has devoted his entire life to service before seeking rule. We might thus further extend this analysis to see parts of The Return of the King as a commentary on the themes brought forth by Shakespeare in King Lear. Lear might have avoided his madness, and he certainly would have avoided his tragedy, if from the beginning he, like Aragorn, had been focused upon his duty of service rather than the prerogatives of kingly (and fatherly) power. He might have pulled back from the brink, like Éomer, if he were able to see that his people at that moment desperately needed leadership. The above discussion suggests links between Lear and The Return of the King at both the stylistic and the thematic levels. Although such links do not prove the aesthetic worth of Tolkien’s work, they do show that The Lord of the Rings is not, as has sometimes been claimed,26 completely separate from major currents of literary style and thought (although Tolkien was of course deliberately outside the fashionable currents of his day).27 Furthermore, the literature so invoked is not the supposedly uninfluential literature of the early Middle Ages, but that of Shakespeare, the very heart of the English literary tradition, whose invocation elsewhere in twentieth-century texts is often taken as a hallmark of authorial competence and seriousness. In pointing out this linkage of

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Tolkien’s Prose Style The Return of the King to King Lear, I have shown how Tolkien was engaged directly in a continuing evaluation and elaboration of some of the great themes of English literature. In his presentation of the dangers, virtues, and duties of kingship, Tolkien has advanced Shakespeare’s discussion and raised issues as important in the twenty-first century as they were in the seventeenth. Are we to dismiss King Lear because its source is a silly folktale? Obviously not. And we would be equally foolish to dismiss The Return of the King from a discussion of the treatment of politics by twentyfirst-century writers, even though Tolkien’s work resides fully within the fantasy genre. I now return to the style as a thing in itself rather than merely as a means of invoking a larger, traditional context. As I have noted, the style of the passage in The Return of the King is metonymically linked to the passage in Lear through what can be called a “figure of grammar,” the non-standard sentence structure used by both Tolkien and Shakespeare. But what if we did not have the Shakespearean parallel? Would the style of the key sentence, and that of the passage as a whole, be effective in achieving Tolkien’s aesthetic purpose? Rosebury criticizes the battle of Éowyn and the Lord of the Nazgûl as “highly-wrought” with “risky heroic mannerisms” (Rosebury 67-68), but, as we shall see, I am not sure this judgment is entirely negative.28 It is worth making a brief linguistic analysis of the key sentence in the passage “Come not between the Nazgûl / dragon and his prey/ wrath.” First, let us examine what can be called the “canonical form” of the sentence, which would be expressed “[You] do not come between the Nazgûl / dragon and his prey/ wrath” (see Figure 1).29 The NP of the sentence is simply “You,” with the remainder of the sentence being composed of a VP inside of which is the auxilliary “do,” the negative “not” and another VP that includes the main verb “come” and the prepositional phrase “between….” To get from this structure to Tolkien’s (and Shakespeare’s) surface structure, we apply several transformation rules. “‘You’ deletion” is a standard method of marking the imperative mood (although its deletion is not required and in fact using “you” in an imperative sentence can increase the urgency of the command). In this case “‘you’ deletion” removes the obvious subject of the sentence and in fact reduces the surface structure of the sentence to a type of VP called a V-bar. This deletion of the NP would move the VP “do not come between…” to the very beginning of the sentence. The next transformation is the deletion of the dummy morpheme “do” from the beginning of the sentence, leaving us with the ungrammatical *“not come between…” With the auxilliary “do” now missing from the leftmost slot in the sentence, the main verb “come” is permitted to move to this crucial location, and the PP nested within the VP now moves up to

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Michael D.C. Drout a regular PP with two NPs and a conjunction beneath it (Figure 2). The non-canonical sentence allows the first word out of the Lord of the Nazgûl’s mouth to be an imperative verb directed at Dernhelm / Éowyn. Given the power of all the Nazgûl to summon and command that we have seen elsewhere in The Lord of the Rings30 the reader sensitive to the prose style will, for a brief moment, see the Lord of the Nazgûl’s communication with Éowyn as of a piece with his manipulation of other individuals and as fitting with the Nazgûl’s powers of domination and control. Deleting “do” also allows Tolkien to avoid even for an instant the reader’s being distracted by the function word “do,” instead beginning the dramatic confrontation with a verb of action. The use of the negative “not” immediately after “come” (permitted by the deletion of “do”) then serves to refocus the scene on the Nazgûl’s desire to destroy Theoden, not Dernhelm. One can in fact read the scene as explicating, in micro, the Nazgûl’s ravening hunger to dominate and destroy living beings. Immediately upon seeing Dernhelm/Éowyn, the Nazgûl, for an instant, seeks to summon her. He then turns to his more pressing task. The grammar of the sentence gives us a brief look at the thought processes

S NP Pron

VP Aux

NEG VP V

You

do

not

Figure 1 150

come

PP

between the Nazgûl and his prey.

Tolkien’s Prose Style of the monster. The poetic term for this forced re-interpretation of the sentence is apo koinu. Continuing the analysis of this sentence illuminates the Nazgûl’s character even more clearly. Dernhelm/Éowyn is commanded not to come “between the Nazgûl and his prey”; the Lord of the Nazgûl refers to himself in the third person, as a thing, but he also refers to Theoden’s body as his prey, using the possessive adjective to mark ownership. This jarring contrast of speaking simultaneously about oneself in the third person and proclaiming ownership (i.e., the Lord of the Nazgûl does not own himself, but he believes that Theoden’s body is his) illustrates the loss of selfhood but not loss of acquisitiveness that is perfectly in keeping with the Nazgûl’s character as a Ringwraith: note that Gollum frequently uses both the self-referential third person and the possessive. The character of a Ringwraith is exactly to have lost self while becoming possessed by insatiable desire, or as Éowyn notes in the draft passage from The War of the Ring (quoted above), the Witch King has been “devoured” by Sauron (365-66).

S VP V V

NEG

PP Prep

NP NP Det

Come

not

between the

N Nazgûl and

Figure 2 151

Conj

NP Poss his

N prey.

Michael D.C. Drout Immediately after commanding Dernhelm/Éowyn not to interfere, the Lord of the Nazgûl issues his threat, which returns to the first sense of the verb “come” with which the passage begins: “Or he will not slay thee in thy turn. He will bear thee away to the houses of lamentation, beyond all darkness, where thy flesh shall be devoured, and thy shrivelled mind be left naked to the Lidless Eye.” Now the summons that was implicit in “come” but which had been temporarily removed via “not” (thus leading to an apo koinu effect) is reinvoked and Dernhelm/Éowyn is indeed menaced with a horrible command. Note that the Nazgûl still continues to speak of himself in the third person but that his additional threat (beyond bearing Dernhelm/Éowyn away) is put into the passive voice. The Nazgûl works as the agent of the Lidless Eye and, master of power and terror or no, he lacks individual agency, even for evil. We should also respect Tolkien’s horrific artistry in the passage, particularly in the use of the phrase “shrivelled mind.” Here again Tolkien causes readers to hold two ideas simultaneously: it is Derhhelm/Éowyn’s mind that will be devoured, but the word “shriveled” invokes an image of the brain, naked and disembodied. This image is more terrifying than the ghost-like existence that the literal text of the threat suggests (i.e., if all flesh is devoured, the brain would be also), but by stylistic conflation of mind and brain conveys an image of torture that is both mental and physical.31 This image of horror is abruptly interrupted by the sound of Dernhelm/Éowyn’s sword. Tolkien’s use of the passive voice focuses the reader’s attention not on the agency of Éowyn/Dernhelm (an agency called into question by the hypnotic power of the Lord of the Nazgûl) but rather on Merry’s perception of the scene though closed eyes. Using the active voice (“Dernhelm drew his sword”) would have shattered the carefully established point of view. Éowyn’s statement “Do what you will; but I will hinder it, if I may” then grammatically echoes the Lord of the Nazgûl’s original command but turns the rhetorical tables on the monster. One “you” is deleted from the surface structure of her sentence to form the imperative, but this deletion also serves to show Éowyn’s lack of respect for the Lord of the Nazgûl. She does not address him. Rather, her reference to him is a pronoun embedded in a VP so that the “you” comes almost at the end of the sentence. Éowyn’s next words contrasts her own agency with the Nazgûl’s lack of individual freedom;she uses the pronoun “I” twice (in this exchange the Lord of the Nazgûl never uses “I,” only the object-case pronoun “me”),32 and concludes her sentence with an “if ”-clause that further emphasizes both the freedom that she possesses and her relative lack of power (in contrast to the Nazgûl, who possesses power but not freedom). The Nazgûl’s response, in the form of a rhetorical question, shows

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Tolkien’s Prose Style that Éowyn has gotten the upper hand in the verbal duel, for the Nazgûl actually states the outcome threatened by Éowyn, and even though he phrases it as a question, he nevertheless brings the idea of being hindered into being from his own mouth in an echo of Éowyn’s statement. The remainder of the scene is relatively straightforward action in standard English subject-verb-object order with one important exception, Éowyn’s statement “But no living man am I.” The transformation of “I am no living man” to “no living man am I” could be considered an archaism, since Tolkien’s sentence is in object-verb-subject order, but in fact rather than mere archaism, this modification of traditional word order is absolutely essential for aesthetic effect of the sentence, since Éowyn is again echoing and mocking the Lord of the Nazgûl’s statement “No living man may hinder me,” a statement written in subject-verb- object order. If Éowyn were to say “I am no living man,” the rhetorical effect would be lost. The further non-standard constructions in the paragraph “Éowyn I am” and “if you be not deathless” are also not uncontrolled archaisms but rather stylistic necessities. “I am Éowyn Éomund’s daughter” would place two similar names in too close proximity for the purposes of the rapidly moving paragraph (note that Tolkien does stack names in other places, but those are in moments of formal speech, not immediate combat); breaking them up with “I am” provides a pleasing aural effect. Furthermore, “if you be not deathless” is in fact grammatically accurate for the situation, though it is a subtlety of English grammar not often noted: “be,” while not a pure subjunctive, indicates the progressive aspect of an action (Kaplan 177-84). In Anglo-Saxon, which lacks a specified future tense, “beo” is in fact a present subjunctive. Since Éowyn does not at this point know if the Lord of the Nazgûl is or is not deathless, her use of “be” is both grammatically and logically justified as well as being tied to Anglo-Saxon usage, which is consistent with her being of the people of Rohan.33 The only remaining non-standard usages in the scene are the use of the interjection “lo!,” the verbs “smite” and “blench,” and the word “naught” to describe the Nazgûl’s invisible head.34 Rosebury writes that “one might well wish away the ‘lo!’ and the ‘behold!,” calling the use of “lo!” “an admittedly crude note,” although he then goes on to argue that the “exalted, as if it were scriptural style” of the passage “invites us to perceive the intervention of the Witch-king on his pterodactyllike steed as an epiphany of the diabolic” and thus might be justified (68). This is effective criticism, and all the more valuable for actually bothering to pay attention to the interplay of subject and style. But I think Rosebury is mistaken in invoking Scripture as a stylistic model for the passage.35 The use of “lo!,” while it certainly may have Scriptural

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Michael D.C. Drout antecedents, has a much closer source (for Tolkien’s writing, at least) in Anglo-Saxon literature, where the word “hwaet!” is used to mark not only the beginning of poems but also scenes of great import (the first word in Beowulf is “hwaet!”).36 Tolkien, in his translations of Beowulf rendered “hwaet” as “lo!” Likewise the words “smite” and “blench” both have immediate Anglo-Saxon antecedents, the Old English verbs “smitan” and “blencan.” These words are completely appropriate for Éowyn (she uses “smite”: “blench” is used by the narrator) because the Rohirrim speak Anglo-Saxon and thus a narrator who is associated with Éowyn would be creating a unity of affect (to use the Joycean term) by using words with Anglo-Saxon roots.37 The use of “naught” (from Old English “na” + “wiht” = no thing) serves as an additional link between the Lord of the Nazgûl and Denethor. Note that when Denethor is at the height of his rage, just before he burns himself, he tells Gandalf, “But if doom denies this to me, then I will have naught: neither life diminished, nor love halved, nor honour abated” (RK, V, vii, 130). The nothingness that Denethor, in his selfish despair, calls for is in fact the nothingness that is the Lord of the Nazgûl’s current being.38 Furthermore, Denethor’s “I will have naught, neither…” phrasing is reminiscent of Lear’s repeated negations, his “no”s and “never”s again reinforcing the triangle of Lear, Nazgûl, and Denethor. Éowyn’s final statement in the scene “I will smite you, if you touch him” is structurally parallel with her previous threat “I will hinder it, if I may,” but this time the warning is made more pointed, directly at the Nazgûl. “I will smite you” is nearly as simple a sentence as can be formed in modern English (only the modal “will” makes the sentence even slightly complex) and her change from the subjunctive “if I may” to “if you touch him” gives Éowyn complete command of the situation even though both statements are if-clauses. Just as the sound of her ringing sword begins to cut through the haze of fear generated by the Lord of the Nazgûl, so too does the parallel “steel” of her voice shatter the supernatural malice of the monster as effectively as her eventual sword stroke. This analysis, then, shows that Tolkien’s style in this particular scene (one previously singled out for criticism) is anything but simply archaic. Rather, Tolkien has created precisely controlled stylistic and grammatical effects, with a rigorously maintained point of view that not only frames the scene in terms of Merry’s presence but also links it, grammatically, metonymically, and lexically, with the rest of the world he has built and with the wider intertextual culture of which The Lord of the Rings is a part. After examining the scene in such detail it becomes clear that Tolkien’s deliberate stylistic construct is in fact remarkably rich and successful not only in his own terms but also in terms of the stylistic canons of

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Tolkien’s Prose Style Modernist Literature in which, supposedly, form follows function. The analysis also supports Ursula Le Guin’s contention that the craftsmanship of The Lord of the Rings is consistent at all levels of construction, from the individual sentence to the macro structure of the journey, a repeated stress and release pattern (105). This tightly inter-connected series of aesthetic effects (one might even call the multi-level repetition a “fractal” structure) is one of the aspects of Tolkien’s fiction that separates his from other fantasies, and other forms of literature, that are far less meticulously crafted. The foregoing analysis has provided some suggestions, I hope, for how Tolkien’s prose style might be approached without abandoning the productive research pathways of source study or thematic analysis. If I am correct, much of the great beauty and power of The Lord of the Rings comes in part from Tolkien’s ability to produce aesthetic effects simultaneously on multiple levels, so that the effects created by, say, the use of Anglo-Saxon syntax and lexicon are connected with the themes of cultural interaction and individual morality that are integral to Tolkien’s vision. Critics who have been embarrassed by the non-standard elements of Tolkien’s style (and they are more common than they are likely to admit in print) might want to reconsider their defensiveness and instead try to determine why that style, as different as it is from canonical Modernism, works so effectively to achieve Tolkien’s purposes. And critics who have focused solely on source or themes should note that the analysis of style may unearth new sources and shed new light on traditional themes as well. NOTES 1

A conspicuous counterexample is Paul Edmund Thomas’ exemplary “Some of Tolkien’s Narrators,” in Flieger and Hofstetter (161-81), but Thomas’ analysis is only tangentially related to my own in this article since I am focusing more on dialogue than narrative voice.

2

For the most effective sustained argument about the academic respectability of the study of Tolkien’s work, see Shippey, J.R.R. Tolkien: Author of the Century. For a discussion of why many other “defenses” of Tolkien have fallen short, see Drout and Wynne (11317).

3

For recent, particularly sad but entirely representative specimens of these complaints, see Turner (16) and Shulevitz. Shulevitz in fact appears willing to discount the entire Lord of the Rings because Tolkien uses the phrase “let us hasten.” For effective defenses of Tolkien’s 155

Michael D.C. Drout style, see Rosebury (54-80) and Shippey ( J.R.R. Tolkien: Author of the Century 223-25). For a Modernist defense of Tolkien’s craft see Kramer: “Now a grown-up reader, I found myself astonished by the unflagging quality of the prose, the range of Tolkien’s descriptive powers, by how integrally the plot is integrated with the landscape. . . . How many writers can write 15 pages describing a trek through a sinister forest without repeating themselves?” It is also worth noting the contradiction between some criticisms of Tolkien’s prose: on the one hand he is overly archaic and full of “wrench[ed] syntax” (Stimpson 25); on the other he writes in “transparent, workmanlike prose” (Attebery 21-23). Tolkien himself argued convincingly that his style was intentional and an essential aesthetic component of his writing (see Letter 171, Letters 225-26). 4

See Shippey ( J.R.R. Tolkien: Author of the Century 305-28 ) and Timmons (1-10).

5

There are additional parallels with H. Rider Haggard’s Eric Brighteyes, but that discussion is beyond the scope of this essay.

6

Here I am adopting John Miles Foley’s definition of metonymy: within a traditional literature, use of traditional referents (which can be formulas, type-scenes, grammatical figures or stylistic idiosyncrasies) can invoke, pars pro toto, the larger and more echoic context of the tradition (Foley 7). Foley’s work is focused on oral and oral-derived texts, but I think it can also be used to support intertextual references like this one.

7

The phrase “northern courage,” which Tolkien uses in “Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics” is not entirely original with him but has antecedents in W. P. Ker, The Dark Ages 57-58 and E. V. Gordon, An Introduction to Old Norse xxviii-xxxv.

8

Although it may have appeared in adventure romance novels of the kind that Tolkien would have read as a boy.

9

With the exception of the passage quoted above, “recreant” is not found in electronic full-text searches of H, LotR, S, UT, Farmer Giles, Smith, Roverandom, and The History of Middle-earth, volumes I-V and X. See below for a discussion of the word in History of Middle-earth volumes VI-IX. History of Middle-earth volumes XI and XII were visually but not electronically searched. A more typically Tolkienian anachronistic word might be “blench” in the same passage (though not quoted above). This word (from Anglo-Saxon blencan), is found in Layamon, Ancrene Wisse, the Owl and the Nightingale, Chaucer’s Knight’s Tale, and Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure and would be 156

Tolkien’s Prose Style more likely than the etymologically French “recreant” to be used by Tolkien independently of a specific source such as Lear. A version of “recreant,” the late Middle English “recrayed,” appears in the York Resurrection play, where it is spoken by Pilate. This parallel is suggestive because Pilate calls the soldier “false recrayed knight” (415, l. 364) while Denethor (raging in the same way that Pilate rages in medieval tradition) first says to Gandalf “Now thou stealest the hearts of my knights also” immediately before saying “Come, if you are not all recreant!” (130). This is the only time that Denethor uses the word “knight” to describe an ordinary soldier of Gondor. Otherwise Tolkien reserves “knight” (up to this point) for the mounted men of Rohan and Dol Amroth. 10 Catherine Stimpson singles out “eyot” as an example of Tolkien’s poor writing: “If we expect ‘He came to an island in the middle of the river,’ he will write ‘to an eyot he came’”(25). This cavil is effectively demolished by Rosebury, who notes (among other errors by Stimpson) that the phrase “to an eyot he came” never appears in LotR (65-66). 11 Note that “fool” here is a term of endearment for Cordelia. 12 The “seven stars” Lear refers to are the Pleiades; to my knowledge the source of the “seven stars” in Tolkien’s rhyme has not been completely explained, although the Valacirca, “the Sickle of the Valar and sign of doom” has seven stars (S 48). In the index entry under “Star, as emblem,” Tolkien writes that the banners of the seven (of nine) of Elendil’s ships which bore palantíri were adorned with stars (RK, Index, 440). See also Christopher Tolkien’s discussion in The War of the Ring of what exactly J.R.R. Tolkien meant by “the star of the Dúnedain” that is said, in the Tale of Years (Appendix B) to have been given to Master Samwise (War 309 n. 8). Perhaps the “seven stars” of Lear insinuated themselves into Gandalf ’s rhyme or into the earlier mythology and are thus the ultimate source for the number of stars on Elendil’s banner. 13 Tolkien is here referring to R. W. Chambers, “Beowulf and the Heroic Age,” the introduction to Archibald Strong’s Beowulf Translated into Modern English Rhyming Verse. 14 For Tolkien’s comment that he “disliked cordially” Shakespeare’s plays, see Carpenter’s Biography (27). 15 I am using “kingship” for what could more properly be called “kingship and / or stewardship” because, in Denethor’s mind at least, the two have become one. 157

Michael D.C. Drout 16 In fact, it is hard to imagine that in a discussion of the madness of kings King Lear would not immediately come to mind for any student of English literature. Shakespeare’s play is the locus classicus for the topic. 17 For just a moment we will set aside the Éomer / Lear comparison. 18 My contention is not completely inconsistent with Shippey’s discussion of Denethor and Saruman in J.R.R. Tolkien: Author of the Century (16974). 19 See RK, Appendix A for the blood of Númenoreans being mingled with “lesser Men” after the Kin-strife (328). See also Faramir’s comments to Frodo (TT, IV, v, 286-87). 20 This is the sin that Sam seems constitutionally unable to commit; even though he has no objective hope, he refuses to give in to despair (TT, IV, iii, 246). For a good discussion see Shippey, J.R.R. Tolkien: Author of the Century (152-55). 21 Not that Tolkien needed such sources, since the politics are obvious and important even in the twentieth century, but both Piers Ploughman (literature) and the Policraticus of John of Salisbury (philosophy) present rather extended medieval meditations upon the theme. 22 Summarized neatly and then effectively demolished in Shippey, J.R.R. Tolkien: Author of the Century (147-48). See also Rosebury (3334). 23 See Shippey, “Orcs, Wraiths, Wights” and “Tolkien as Post-War Writer.” 24 “For nothing is evil in the beginning. Even Sauron was not so” (FR, II, ii, 281). 25 For a more nuanced discussion see Ellison (21-29). 26 The criticism that there is no lineal connection between Tolkien and other important literature is the same cavil aimed at Beowulf and Anglo-Saxon literature by no less a literary luminary than Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch (21-25). 27 See Shippey, J.R.R. Tolkien: Author of the Century, 305-18. 28 Rosebury says that while the stylistic variation in the passage “could make for an unsightly patchwork . . . in fact the amplitude of the narrative is such as to allow gradual modulations between the exalted style and the plain” (68).

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Tolkien’s Prose Style 29 I have used standard tree diagrams and linguistic terminology. Abbreviations are: S = Sentence, NP = Noun Phrase, VP = Verb Phrase, PP = Prepositional Phrase, N = Noun, Prep = Preposition, Pron = Pronoun, Det = Determiner (sometimes called an article), Poss = Possessive Adjective. A canonical sentence is composed of an NP and a VP. For further explanations and discussion, see Kaplan (218-10, 230-32 and passim). 30 See FR, I, iii, 83; FR, I, xi, 207-208; FR, I, xii, 225-27; FR, II, ii, 25859;TT, IV, viii, 315-16; RK V, iv, 92-94, 97, 102-103. 31 For a similar image of monstrosity see C.S. Lewis’s That Hideous Strength. 32 The Lord of the Nazgûl uses the possessive pronoun “my” in his exchange with Gandalf (RK, V, iv, 103). 33 John Tinkler’s “Old English in Rohan” notes the use of specific Anglo-Saxon words and phrases as part of the vocabulary of the Rohirrim, but he does not examine the embedding of Anglo-Saxon words in other contexts. 34 For an explanation of Tolkien’s use of an expanded lexicon, see Flieger (Splintered Light 47). 35 Rosebury may be thinking of Luke 2:10, but there are other places in The Return of the King where the Biblical influence is far more pronounced, for example in the song of the eagle to the people of Minas Tirith after the fall of Sauron (RK, VI, v, 241). This parallel is noted by Shippey (Road 151-53). 36 “Hwaet” is literally “what,” but the word is used to begin a number of poems, including Beowulf, The Dream of the Rood, Andreas, Exodus, and Juliana. Tolkien calls it a “genuine anacrucis,” that is, an exclamation separate from the regular metrics of the line. Its purpose is to focus the reader’s attention, which it does successfully in both Old English poetry and The Return of the King. Tolkien translated “hwæt” as “lo!” He also used “lo!” in his Túrin poem in Lays. 37 Éowyn’s use of “dwimmerlaik” is also significant in establishing her as a “native speaker” of Old English (see Shippey, Road 224). Note that in his original drafts of the scene Tolkien was still struggling with the proper spelling for this word; he first tried “dwimor-lakes” (War 365 and see Christopher Tolkien’s note 2 on page 372). While I believe that the parallel use of “lo!” in RK and Beowulf weakens the case for a Scriptural parallel, I do not in this case believe that the actual details of the battle between Éowyn and the Lord of the Nazgûl are 159

Michael D.C. Drout drawn from Anglo-Saxon sources (though there are some echoes of Judith). For a scene whose dramatic contours are almost certainly drawn from Old English, and which uses Old English syntax even more obviously, see the battle between Fingon and Gothmog, Lord of Balrogs, in the Silmarillion (193). 38 For a discussion of Denethor’s “naught,” see Shippey ( J.R.R. Tolkien: Author of the Century 173-74). WORKS CITED Attebery, Brian. “Tolkien, Crowley, and Postmodernism.” In The Shape of the Fantastic, edited by Olena H. Saciuk. New York: Greenwood, 1990. Carpenter, Humphrey. J.R.R. Tolkien: A Biography. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1977. Chambers, R. W. “Beowulf and the Heroic Age.” Beowulf Translated into Modern English Rhyming Verse, edited by Archibald Strong. London: Constable, 1925. Drout, Michael D. C. and Hilary Wynne. “Tom Shippey’s J.R.R. Tolkien: Author of the Century and a look back at Tolkien criticism since 1982.” Envoi 9, no. 2 (2000): 101-34. Ellison, John A. “Images of Evil in Tolkien’s World.” Mallorn 28 (2000): 21-29. Flieger, Verlyn. Splintered Light: Logos and Language in Tolkien’s World. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans, 1983. Flieger, Verlyn, and Carl F. Hostetter, eds. Tolkien’s Legendarium: Essays on The History of Middle Earth. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 2000. Foley, John Miles. Immanent Art. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1991. Giddings, Robert, ed. J.R.R. Tolkien: This Far Land. London: Vision, 1983. Gordon, E. V. An Introduction to Old Norse. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1927. Kaplan, Jeffrey P. English Grammar: Principles and Facts. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1989.

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Tolkien’s Prose Style Ker, W. P. The Dark Ages. 1904. Westwood, CT: Greenwood Press, 1979. Kramer, Kathryn. “Eternal Sense of Place.” New York Times, 30 December 2002. Le Guin, Ursula K. “Rhythmic Patters in the Lord of the Rings.” In Meditations on Middle-earth, edited by Karen Haber. New York: St. Martins, 2001. Lewis, C. S. That Hideous Strength: A Modern Fairy-Tale for Grown-Ups. New York: Scribner, 1996. Quiller-Couch, Arthur, “On the Lineage of English Literature.” In Cambridge Lectures (London: J. M. Dent and Sons, 1943). Rosebury, Brian. Tolkien: A Critical Assessment. London: St. Martin’s, 1992. Shakespeare, William. King Lear, edited by David Bevington. In The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, vol. 5. New York: Bantam Books, 1988. Shippey, T. A. The Road to Middle-Earth. London: Allen and Unwin, 1982. ———. “Tolkien as Post-War Writer.” In Scholarship & Fantasy: Proccedings of the Tolkien Phenomenon May 1992, edited by K. J. Battarbee. Anglicana Turkuensia 12 (1993): 217-36. ———. “Tolkien as a Post-War Writer.” In Proceedings of the J.R.R. Tolkien Centenary Conference 1992, edited by Patricia Reynolds and Glen H. GoodKnight. Milton Keynes: Tolkien Society, 1995. ———. “Orcs, Wraiths, Wights: Tolkien’s Images of Evil.” In J.R.R. Tolkien and his Literary Resonances, edited by George Clark and Daniel Timmons. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 2000. ———. J.R.R. Tolkien: Author of the Century. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2001. Shulevitz, Judith. “Hobbits in Hollywood.” New York Times, 22 April 2001. Stimpson, Catherine. J.R.R. Tolkien. New York: Columbia University Press, 1969. Timmons, Daniel Patrick. “Introduction.” In J.R.R. Tolkien and his Literary Resonances: Views of Middle-earth, edited by George Clark and Daniel Patrick Timmons. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 2000.

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Michael D.C. Drout Tinkler, John. “Old English in Rohan.” In Tolkien and the Critics, edited by Neil D. Isaacs and Rose A. Zimbardo. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1968. Turner, Jenny. “Reasons for Liking Tolkien.” The London Review of Books 23, no. 22 (15 November 2001): 15-24. York Plays: The Plays Performed by the Crafts and Mysteries of York on the Day of Corpus Christi in the 14th, 15th, and 16th centuries ..., edited by Lucy Toulmin Smith. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1885.

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When Philology Becomes Ideology: The Russian Perspective of J. R. R. Tolkien OLGA MARKOVA Translated by M. T. Hooker Although I am old and gray of head, And free of the stresses that others all dread, I would learn English1 and only because The Professor in it wove a marvelous clause. ——Russian Tolkienist Limerick

I

nterest in the literary creations of J.R.R. Tolkien took flight almost immediately after the publication of Lord of the Rings (1955). The political system in Russia during the Soviet period, however, was not quite receptive to a book like this. The Iron Curtain kept the Russian reader well protected from everything that was happening in western society. The concepts of twentieth-century English literature were distorted and details extremely scanty. The English authors who were translated were carefully selected, and the official publication of translations of the works of such authors as G. K. Chesterton, C. S. Lewis, Charles Williams was practically impossible. That the publication of Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows was hindered because the censor thought that the chapter “Piper at the Gates of Dawn” was dangerous is an excellent example of the situation that Tolkien’s books were destined to encounter in the Soviet Union. In the 1950s, a group of translators who were devotees of western literature formed around Zinaida Bobyr, a well-known translator of science fiction. The popularity of this genre in the USSR grew in the late-1950s following the launch of the first artificial earth satellite by the Soviet Union in 1957. Bobyr’s list of translation credits includes Brian Aldiss, Isaac Asimov, John Gordon, Edmond Hamilton, Clifford Simak, and Stanislaw Lem, whom she translated from Polish. She was the one who first decided to acquaint the Soviet reader with The Lord of the Rings. In order to get around the barriers of censorship, however, she had to find a way to make it resemble the literature that was acceptable in the USSR, which meant that she had to reduce Tolkien’s text either to a fairy tale or to science fiction. Copyright © 2004, by West Virginia University Press

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Olga Markova Bobyr’s “translation” combined The Hobbit and the trilogy under the common name of The Lay of the Ring [Повесть о Kольце]. The book was subjected to a considerable abridgement, and at the beginning of each chapter there was a short “interlude.” The translator’s plan was that the book would be introduced by two letters, one written by Tolkien and one written by an imaginary friend of his. In his letter to the “readers,” Tolkien said that “he received the manuscript and the accompanying cover letter” from a friend who works at the “Institute for Difficult Studies in Derbyshire.” In this letter, the friend told Bobyr’s Tolkien that “as a result of some unbelievable circumstances” he had been part “of a certain experiment,” which “had ended tragically.” In addition to “Tolkien’s friend,” the other participants in the experiment were an Engineer, a Physicist, a Chemist, a Computer Scientist, and a Coordinator, the same cast of characters who appear in Stanislaw Lem’s Eden. The origin of the Tolkien’s renowned All-powerful Ring was explained scientifically as the Ring having been found when a drill core of basalt was melted. The heroes of the “interlude” record the Ring’s history in a series of flashbacks, drawing the conclusion that the Ring is a special “device,” “a repository of information, which it releases when subjected to sparks.”2 This approach was the translator’s idea of how to make it easier to get Tolkien into print. Fortunately, this monstrous plan was not successful, and this hideous hybrid remained a manuscript. Bobyr’s work can, however, be viewed as the first Russian novel inspired by The Lord of the Rings. The difference between this and other Russian Tolkienesque literature is that this one is attributed to Tolkien, and not to its real author. Having failed to publish The Lord of the Rings as Science-Fantasy, Bobyr tried to turn it into Fairy-Fantasy, producing yet another version of the trilogy under her editorship, adding something that finds no corollary at all in Tolkien’s works: “The Silver Crown of Westerness.” In the Chapter “Across the Mountains,” Gandalf describes it as “one of the great treasures that the foreign travelers from across the sea brought with them.” It is not just any crown either. “Whosoever dares to place the Silver Crown upon his head will receive omniscience and the greatest of wisdom, or will be turned to ashes on the spot, if he is not sufficiently prepared for it.” At the end of The Lay of the Ring, Aragorn uses the crown for his coronation. Despite all these machinations, disguising The Lord of the Rings as a translation, peppering it with elements from Russian folklore and terminology from science-fiction (the term “foreign travelers,” for example, is used as an euphemism for extra-terrestrials in Russian science fiction), even this abridged retelling was not allowed to be published. It was, however, typed by hand in three copies, which were bound into

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When Philology Becomes Ideology books that made the rounds of a small circle of the translator’s friends in the mid-1960s. It was finally officially published during Perestroika in 1990. The danger of The Lord of the Rings that was noted by some commentators was the hidden allegory “of the conflict between the individualist West and the totalitarian, Communist East.” In a newspaper article entitled “Tolkien’s Cosmos,” the social order instituted by Saruman is termed communistic, because the description of the lands under his sway could have easily been applied to the Soviet Union. Everything that the farmers grew was collected (think “collective farm”). Prohibitive rules and regulations were posted everywhere. All travelers from other countries were controlled. Defenders of justice and freethinkers were punished. The commentators’ conclusion being that “The Lord of the Rings is—among other things—a political pamphlet in which Tolkien included an encoded description of the conflict of the political darkness of the East and the freedom of the West, and a prediction of the inevitable fall of Mordor and its analog on the real earth, the Soviet Union.”3 It is interesting to notice that modern Communists think differently about this. They view the anti-industrial ideas of Tolkien’s works as a return to primordial Communism, and discuss the possibility of creating a type of “Red,” Communist fantasy, whose father could be considered Tolkien.4 Soviet censors were not so optimistically inclined, and, therefore, the first complete, officially approved translation done by Vladimir Murav’ev and Andrej Kistyakovskij (there are now nine published Russian translations) was not published until 1992. The appearance of the Murav’ev and Kistyakovskij translation was a defining moment in the history of Russian Tolkienism. The translation was maximally Russified and is very much more emotionally specific than the original. Sam and Frodo in the Murav’ev and Kistyakovskij translation are presented as very close friends, and the elves sound like uncouth teenagers when they speak. The translators emphasize aggression as a dominating motivation. In the preface to the translation, Murav’ev wrote: “The magical world, through which Mr. Baggins journeyed, is not all that magical. It is our world in disguise, but you can see through the disguise with a little experience.”5 Therefore, all of Tolkien’s text was perceived as the personal experience of someone doing battle with the Soviet power structure. In addition to that, the intentionally aggressive tone helped the translators bring out the nature of authoritarianism: “This is a book about the nature of power, which seeks after power over mankind, power without morals, an enslaving power, based on lies and violence.”6 The Lord of the Rings was turned into a three-volume banner for the fight for freedom and human rights. It was natural that this viewpoint caused a certain mutation in the perception of Tolkien’s works by the Russian

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Olga Markova reader and that the Russian brand of Tolkienism is a direct reflection of that mutation. Even in this distorted form, The Lord of the Rings became a breath of fresh air for many a Russian intellectual. The Tolkienist Movement began to take shape at Moscow State University, and, almost immediately, an informer sent the KGB a denunciation of this secretive, underground group that went off into the woods to hold secret meetings and practice hand-to-hand combat. The student body was infiltrated and it was learned that these people were reading the works of some “American” author, and that they called themselves Tolkienists.7 Inasmuch as the majority of the first Tolkienists had been in the Comsomol, and some of them had even become Communists, the essence of the movement was expressed as an opposition to the structures of government and the movement’s ideological base was a revolt against the Soviet system. It was during this time that an article appeared entitled “The Sources and Ideas of Russian Tolkienism.” An indication of its content can be found in its antecedent. In this article, A. Barkova paraphrased the well-known work entitled “The Sources and Ideas of Russian Communism” by the Russian religious philosopher N. A. Berdyaev (1874-1948), who left Russia after the Revolution of 1917, and who attained the rank of Professor at Cambridge in 1947. Much in the same way that Berdyaev shifted from a philosophy of Marxism to a philosophy of individualism and freedom, the first Tolkienists, reading the distorted Murav’ev and Kistyakovskij translation, saw in it a way out of the dead-end ideology, the structured, totalitarian world of evil, lies, and slavery. Tolkien’s were not the only ideas that were sucked into the philosophical vacuum of Russia at that time. With the fall of the Communist regime, Russia was flooded with literature of so-called “foreign Russian” authors, philosophers, and historians, who had not accepted the Revolution and fled abroad after the Soviets took power, people like Berdyaev. There were also the works of banned authors who had been imprisoned in the Stalinist camps, like Solzhenitsyn. People tried to fit Tolkien’s ideas into the Russian paradigm and interpret them in the light of the teachings of Russian philosophers and theologians. For example, the All-powerful Ring was seen by some as the allegorical embodiment of sin, that Pavel Florenskij8 expounded upon in his The Pillar and Base of Truth. The Russian analogy of Tolkien’s “secondary” world was found by others in The Rose of the World by Daniil Andreev.9 Despite efforts like these to find tangents to Tolkien in Russian culture, the reason for the popularity of this English author in Russia is that many Russian ideas are abstractly philosophical in character and are of interest only to a narrow circle of intellectuals, while Tolkien’s world is close at

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When Philology Becomes Ideology hand and seems real to many. The ideas contained in The Lord of the Rings became important and necessary in this unstable country that had long been held in intellectual slavery, because the values presented in Tolkien’s books are not abstract categories and not utopian. He translated morality from the realm of words to the realm of action, which gave birth to the need to live Tolkien’s world, and led to the creation of role-playing games. The basic trait of Tolkienesque culture in Russia at that time could be characterized as living in two worlds. Tolkien’s mythology, which took one beyond the limits of historical time, became a sort of Magic Key to the unknown universe that opened the present time to the world of antiquity. The early 1990s saw “Hobbit Games” being held in many Russian cities. In Moscow, a “City of Masters” was founded. Gaming Masters not only worked out scenarios, but also made corresponding props and costumes. In the mid-1990s, the City of Masters counted about two hundred Tolkienesque clubs and organizations as participants in the “Hobbit Games.” The role-playing movement spread as far as Siberia, where the “Siberian Con,” which consists of a program of sword-fighting tournaments, concerts of original music, an overview of the games and a grand ball, is still held today. The popularity of the Hobbit Games, was, obviously, also influenced by the fact that during the last two decades, Russian society has seen a rebirth of courtly gatherings, patriotic monarchists, Cossacks and other stylized recreations of the past, which provided an appropriate backdrop for them. Tolkien’s world, however, has proved itself much wiser and more cozy, and, therefore, many Russian intellectuals moved right in to Middle-earth. Playing at The Lord of the Rings, which at first served as a search for an alternative to Communist ideology, has today become an alternative for the contemporary ideology of the commercialization of society. Nevertheless, it would not be correct to equate Tolkienists with roleplayers, for whom the game has gradually become dominant, pushing Tolkien’s books onto the background. The Russian Tolkienist movement underwent an internal split, making it look like a tree with two crowns on a single trunk. There are scholarly Tolkienists whose primary interests are the study and translation of Tolkien’s literary legacy, and the creation of their own original songs, poems and art based on his works. There are the gamers, whose playing at Tolkien’s bright world has gone beyond the borders of a simple game, to become a lifestyle, to form a special ritual, demanding serious self-discipline. Tolkienists have turned to the sources, which form the base for The Lord of the Rings: the literary heritage of the Celts, Northern mythology

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Olga Markova and folklore, etc., and Tolkien’s works have become a guidebook into this rational, solid, inspired world. As a counterweight to the cult of technology, the cult of supermen, the cult of violence, Tolkien offered the reader a completely different path: to the earth, into the past, into the depths of myths and fairy tales, and for many this path has proved itself to be the true one, insomuch as the heroes of The Lord of the Rings live in a river of time measured in millennia, and not within the fragile shell of contemporary time, which separates the consciousness of man from its origins. Despite the depth and breadth of the Tolkien phenomenon, the mass media often refuse to note the positive facets of Tolkienism, intentionally exaggerating its sociological effect. Following a sensational article entitled “A Black Mass. A Lesson for Life,” 10 the Russian FBI (FSBRF) took an interest in Tolkienists. The author of the article accused Tolkien’s readers of Satanism and sacrificial rituals, an accusation that, when investigated, turned out to be complete nonsense and slander. A reluctance to delve deeper into the true essence of Tolkienism is also engendered by attempts to categorize it as a sect, and to view it as the emergence of neo-religiosity. These attempts are based on a chain of prerequisites. The first structural prerequisite for the formation of a “Tolkienian” religion is the presence of a “sacred text” and the possibility of the construction of a “sacred history.” The next part of the structure is the presence of Tolkienists who have not read Tolkien.11 This is bound up in the “ritual” of the giving of names, which is likened to the catechism of new converts to Christianity.12 The reasons listed above, however, are not sufficient for the creation of a “sect” or neo-religious movement, just as an author’s cult following by itself is insufficient. Structures like those above are simply a profanation, a desire to subvert Tolkien’s works into a new ideology, a myth of mass culture or a game, the rules of which have little to do with an Oxford Professor. Russians, united by Tolkien’s literary works, get together primarily to discuss his works and their own original works based on his creations. They are not locked into a “secondary world,” nor do they desire to be escapists. They are only expanding the boundaries of the real world. It is Tolkien himself who remains the Lord of the Minds of many a generation of Russian readers, and his books continue to inspire them to the creation of their own “secondary worlds.” The reason for the unflagging popularity of J.R.R. Tolkien in Russia is that the pre-historic reality of his books is a continuation of, or, perhaps, the pre-quel to the thrilling novel written by the Author of the “primary” world (i.e. God), and, therefore, in any context—even the most esoteric— Tolkien’s creations can find a lively resonance and understanding. Time

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When Philology Becomes Ideology and space are not that important here, because the tale of this English author appeals to the universe and eternity. NOTES

1

There have been three various Russian editions of The Hobbit for Russian-speaking English learners. •

Хоббит, или туда и обратно (Hobbit, or There and Back Again): Учебное пособие для педагогических институтов по специальности «Иностранный язык». М.: Просвещение, 1982.

•

Learn English with the Hobbit: Английский язык для детей. По сказке J.R.R.T. Хоббит, или туда и обратно. СПб: МП «ТЕКАРТ», 1992.

•

Hobbit, or There and Back Again. Серия: книги для чтения на иностранных языках. Издательство «Престе», 2000.

2

Семенова Н. ЂЭто не просто кольцо, а какой-то прибор» // Знание – сила. No. 9, 1997.

3

Слепцов И. Космос Толкина. // Независимая газета. 30.01.1997.

4

http://www.communist.ru/cgi-bin/article.cgi?id=0300dudko0101

5

Толкин Дж.Р.Р. Властелин колец. Т. 1. // Пер. с англ. В. Муравьева, А. Кистяковского. М., 1992. С. 15.

6

Муравьева u Кистяковского, 1992. С. 27.

7

Шлеймов Р. Хохмы железного Феликса. // Независимая газета, No. 54, 02.08.2001.

8

P. A. Florenskij (1882-1937) was a philosopher, theologian, engineer, biologist, mathematician, poet, orthodox priest, the “Russian Leonardo da Vinci.” In 1928, he was exiled to the Russian North; in 1933, he was arrested and sentenced to a Stalinist camp. He was executed by firing squad in 1937. The Pillar and Base of Truth is a religious tract, reflecting his Weltanschauung, based on the Greek Orthodox tradition, in which he tries to synthesize science and religion, sense and sensibility, reason and intuition.

9

L. Andreev (1906-1959) was a poet, author, religious philosopher, and 169

sociologist. He fought in World War II. In 1947, he was accused of “anti-Soviet literary activity,” arrested and sentenced to twenty-five years in prison. The Rose of the World is a synthesis of all the “religions of light,” in which he tries to create a meta-history of Russia, Russian culture, human evolution and “the spiritual growth of the individual.” The Rose of the World is full of the mystical revelations of different cultures and religions. In it, Andreev presents his view of the “meta-religion of the future” as well as a hierarchical system of worlds, both visible and invisible. The book offers a tossed-salad of science, social utopias, and religious inspirations, forming a kind of occult “superknowledge” and claiming the power of being able to transform the world completely. 10 Беспалов А. Черная месса. Урок на всю жизнь. // Российская газета, No. 175, 11.09.1998. 11 Сиверцев М.А. Толкинизм как элемент неорелигиозности. // Палантир, No. 24, 2000. 12 Ярцева К. Феномен неорелигиозности: ЂОбретение себя» в толкинизме. // Палантир, No. 26, 2000.

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NOTES and DOCUMENTS

A Note on Beren and Lúthien’s Disguise as Werewolf And Vampire-Bat THOMAS HONEGGER

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ource hunting can be a pleasant and rewarding way to pass the time for those Tolkien scholars who plough their strips in the field of medieval literature for professional and/or recreational reasons. The discussion of Tolkien’s possible sources and their influence on his conception of Middle-earth has yielded important insights into the meaning of his work.1 For the time being, however, it looks as if the most important parallels and analogues have been investigated, although a “sources and analogues” volume uniting the most important texts still remains a desideratum. Future scholarly endeavor in this field is therefore likely to yield results that are quantitative (“yet another parallel / source of . . .”) rather than qualitative. I do not intend to belittle the scholarly effort and diligence that go into such research,2 yet the results are, in my mind, often of minor relevance since they add little that is new to our critical understanding of the professor’s writings. Nevertheless, it would be wrong to dismiss “source hunting” altogether since there remain some areas that may profit from the identification of Tolkien’s likely models and influences. The following discussion of a possible source for Beren and Lúthien’s disguise as werewolf and vampire-bat is intended to provide an example of work in this direction. Most of Tolkien’s fiction is accessible without specific background information, which is especially true of those works that were published during his lifetime. The stupendous popular success of The Lord of the Rings would not have been possible if it had not at least halfway met the aesthetic expectations of modern readers or touched upon some half-remembered yet strongly felt desire for non-modernistic modes of narrative. Critics may wrinkle their noses at some of Tolkien’s “out-ofdate” literary techniques or ideas,3 but such criticism is the consequence of a conscious choice to use a modernistic yardstick. The Silmarillion, to consider only the first of the by now numerous posthumous publications, differs insofar as it was not designed to meet the modern reader’s expectations to the same degree as the works of fiction completed during Tolkien’s lifetime. Christopher Tolkien did his best to present the Copyright © 2004, by West Virginia University Press

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Thomas Honegger material as coherently as possible, yet even so its form and content often offend modern notions of narrative cohesion and structural propriety. It is therefore no surprise that many readers find themselves wondering what the professor might have been thinking when he wrote the texts that went into this volume. Repeated reading helps the reader get used to the style and one eventually learns to accept or even admire many of the initially bewildering elements. Yet there remain some motifs and themes that prove curiously resistant to accommodation and which may not be reconciled with modern aesthetics either by repeated reading or by consulting the usual suspects among medieval “source” texts (Beowulf, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Ancrene Wisse, Chaucer, to name the most important). It is in such “hard cases” that the unearthing of possible models can shed light on the workings of Tolkien’s literary imagination. The instance under consideration comes from the tale of Beren and Lúthien—a tale that was of such central importance to Tolkien throughout his life4 that it occurs time and again in his writings.5 The tale, as recounted in The Silmarillion, reverberates with folk tale motifs and archetypal themes and makes a strong appeal to modern readers’ emotions with its “high” style. Yet not all motifs and themes harmonize with the overall tone of the narrative. One element in particular strikes a discordant note, namely the dressing in skins episode. Beren and Lúthien, in order to avoid detection during their journey to Angband, disguise themselves as a werewolf 6 and a vampire-bat7 respectively. The basic idea of approaching Morgoth’s stronghold disguised as servants of the enemy seems to have been part of the tale right from its inception, although the narrative motivation for this stratagem is not very convincing and, as is the case in some of the briefer versions, it could be omitted.8 The discordance of the motif is felt all the more because it is not, in this form, a common motif in western (medieval) literature.9 Interestingly, the earlier versions of the episode are more indebted to the widespread “skin changing” motif 10 than to the one of “dressing in skins.” In Lost Tales II (30), Huan, the hound of the Valar, slays the big cat Oikeroi and carries his fell as a trophy. Tinúviel then uses Oikeroi’s fur to disguise Beren. She sews him into the big cat’s fell and with the help of her magic completes the disguise so that Beren comes close to being turned into a real cat.11 Here the skin is obviously more than a simple covering and it functions as an important element in the process of magic metamorphosis. The later versions, however, move further away from the classical skin changing motif, and the putting on of a skin is no longer connected with magical transformation—at least none is mentioned. We therefore have a replacement of the widespread and familiar “skin changing” motif by the significantly less popular one of “dressing in skins.” Why, we may ask, did Tolkien change this part of the tale for

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Notes and Documents: Beren and Lúthien’s Disguise the “worse” (from a modern point of view, that is)? Did he, as he so often did, imaginatively adapt a motif from medieval literature? More to the point: Is there a couple in medieval European literature who dresses in skins to remain undetected? Such a couple can be found in the alliterative Middle English romance William of Palerne (c. 1350, South-west Midlands), which is a close rendering of the French Guillaume de Palerne (c. 1200). Tolkien is likely to have known the Middle English text in the edition by W. W. Skeat, prepared for the Early English Text Society and published in 1867. The romance recounts the life and adventures of William, Prince of Apulia, who, as a baby, is abducted by a werewolf and thus saved from a murderous plot. The child is then found by a cowherd, grows up as his son and is “discovered” by the emperor of Rome, who takes him to his court and appoints him page to his daughter Melior. They fall in love and flee together, making their way to Sicily where William rescues his mother from the king of Spain’s army. The story ends with William and Melior’s marriage and his ascension to the imperial throne of Rome. The approximately 5500 lines of the romance accommodate many a fantastic event, one of which is of special interest for our present purpose. The situation is as follows: Melior is supposed to marry the son of the emperor of Greece the next day, but is determined to remain true to her beloved William. They decide to make their escape, and their servant Alisaundrine advises them to disguise themselves in polar-bear skins. The result seems to be quite convincing if we are to believe Alisaundrine, who comments on their new appearance: “Ye arn so grisli a gost a gom on to loke, / that I nold for al the god that ever God made / abide you in a brod weie bi a large mile, / so breme a wilde bere ye biseme nowthe!” (ll. 1730-33).12 Melior and William make off as “white bears” and, after their scheme has been discovered by the kitchen staff who notice the missing pelts, they change tactics and don the skins of hind and hart—hides provided by the ever helpful werewolf (who happens to be a bewitched Spanish prince in exile). William of Palerne and the tale of Beren and Lúthien have, besides the dressing in skins motif, several other elements in common. Both narratives feature father figures who are opposed to a union between daughter and hero, both tales present helpful canines that possess special powers, and the opponents in both works are sorcerers. On their own, these parallels would be of little importance since there are enough tales that contain the same elements that their occurrence in William of Palerne and the tale of Beren and Lúthien would seem fortuitous. Yet the fact that they occur together with the dressing in skins motif in both tales provides them with additional relevance and may be interpreted as evidence that Tolkien indeed knew and, in his own way, used elements from William of Palerne

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Thomas Honegger for his tale. The account of dressing in skins in the Middle English romance does not lack a certain humorous note—which is absent in The Silmarillion. The earlier versions, however, use the motif in a way that is closer to the “popular” spirit of the romance. The dressing in skins motif fits well the overall “folk tale” tone of the aetiological fable explaining the enmity between cats and dogs, which occupies a prominent place in the earliest version of “The Tale of Tinúviel” (c. 1917). The transfer of this folk tale motif to a less folksy context, as the later versions of the tale of Beren and Lúthien tend to be, lies at the bottom of the estrangement of this episode from the dominant heroic-romantic tone of the rest of the tale. Tolkien may have welcomed the fact that part of the original “popular” tale was still recognizable here and there—testifying to the long and varied history of the narrative material. Yet from a purely aesthetic point of view, the motif has become an element that must strike modern readers as odd and rather jarring. The unearthing of a parallel and possible thematic source cannot remedy this flaw, but it may help to soothe modern readers’ irritation at the “non-fit” of this element. NOTES 1

The best and most comprehensive study in this area is still Tom Shippey’s The Road to Middle-earth.

2

See, for example, the papers in Clark and Timmons, many of which discuss Tolkien’s possible sources.

3

See Patrick Curry’s essay for a comprehensive critique of the critics.

4

The gravestone of Edith Mary and John R.R. Tolkien bears, next to their Christian names, the inscription “Lúthien” and “Beren.” See Carpenter (105), for an assessment of the biographical importance of the story for Tolkien.

5

See the brief version told by Aragorn on Amon Sûl (FR, I, xi, 20306), the reference to the full version the hobbits later listened to at Rivendell (FR, II, iii, 290), and the various versions as found in The Book of Lost Tales II and The Lays of Beleriand.

6

Beren “was arrayed now in the hame of Draugluin” (S 179), i.e., Sauron’s incarnation as wolf.

7

Lúthien used the winged fell of Thuringwethil, the messenger of Sauron who flew to Angband in the form of a vampire. 174

Notes and Documents: Beren and Lúthien’s Disguise 8

The shorter versions, as found in Lost Tales II (“The Tale of Tinúviel”) or Lord of the Rings, omit this episode.

9

See the entries in Thompson (K 521.1, K 521.1.2 and K 649.7.2).

10 See Thompson (D 530 and D 531) for examples of “transformation by putting on skin (clothing, etc.)” in folk-literature. 11 The tale also exists in a typescript version that shows some changes and revisions (see Lost Tales II 41-48), but none which would affect the disguising plot. 12 Quoted from the edition by Bunt. I have replaced the letters “yoke” and “thorn” by “y” and “th” respectively. Translation: “You are so terrifying an apparition to man to look at, that I would not want, for all the goods that God ever made, to meet you on a highway by a mile, such fierce and wild beasts you seem now to be.” Beren, when looking for the first time at Lúthien in her bat-shape, is similarly frightened: “and horror was in his glance as he saw upon his flank a bat-like creature clinging with creased wings” (S 179).

WORKS CITED Carpenter, Humphrey. J.R.R. Tolkien: A Biography. 1977. London: HarperCollins, 1995. Clark, George, and Daniel Timmons, eds. J.R.R. Tolkien and His Literary Resonances. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 2000. Curry, Patrick. “Tolkien and His Critics: a Critique.” Root and Branch— Approaches towards Understanding Tolkien, edited by Thomas Honegger. Berne and Zurich: Walking Tree Publishers, 1999. Shippey, Tom. The Road to Middle-earth. 2nd ed. London: Grafton, 1992. Thompson, Stith. Motif-Index of Folk-Literature. 6 vols. Revised and enlarged edition. Copenhagen: Rosenkilde and Bagger, 1955-58. William of Palerne: An Alliterative Romance, edited by G.H.V. Bunt. Groningen: Bouma’s Boekhuis, 1985.

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NOTES and DOCUMENTS

Possible Echoes of Blackwood and Dunsany in Tolkien’s Fantasy DALE J. NELSON

J

ared Lobdell’s A Tolkien Compass (1975) published Tolkien’s “Guide to the Names in the Lord of the Rings,” but a reference that Tolkien makes to Algernon Blackwood, in the manuscript of his “Nomenclature of The Lord of the Rings” (to use Tolkien’s own title for the essay), was omitted from Lobdell’s book. Tolkien thought that the “Crack of Doom” might have been derived from something written by Blackwood that he was unable to remember more precisely (Anderson 106). However, Lobdell himself, in his 1981 book England and Always: Tolkien’s World of the Rings, suggested that Tolkien was influenced by “The Willows” and “The Glamour of the Snow,” two stories of the supernatural by Blackwood (1869-1951). These stories appeared in 1907 and 1912 collections of Blackwood’s tales. Lobdell could have suggested that a third Blackwood story, the oftreprinted “The Wendigo,” from The Lost Valley (1910), also left a mark on Tolkien’s imagination. In this story, Fifty Island Water, a remote region of Canada, is haunted by a “great Outer Horror,” the embodiment of the “Panic of the Wilderness,” which steals its victims even from their tents, bearing them aloft to race across the skies with it, their anguished cries of pain and terror descending to appall their erstwhile companions. Défago, the guide of a party of hunters, is reft away, leaving them bewildered. Blackwood’s idea of a rapidly flying horror that crosses the skies, bringing dread to those who hear it and sense its presence, is much akin to Tolkien’s conception of the soaring, mounted Nazgûl who appear from time to time to strike panic in the hearts of Sauron’s opponents. Here is a passage from Blackwood: And it was in that moment of distress and confusion that the whip of terror laid its most nicely calculated lash about [the heart of one of the hunters]. It dropped with deadly effect upon the sorest spot of all, completely unnerving him. He had been secretly dreading all the time that it would come— and come it did. Far overhead, muted by great height and distance, strangely thinned and wailing, he heard the crying voice of Défago, the guide. Copyright © 2004, by West Virginia University Press

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Dale J. Nelson The sound dropped upon him out of that still, wintry sky with an effect of dismay and terror unsurpassed. He stood motionless an instant, listening as it were with his whole body, then staggered back against the nearest tree for support, disorganised hopelessly in mind and spirit. To him, in that moment, it seemed the most shattering and dislocating experience he had ever known, so that his heart emptied itself of all feeling whatsoever, as by a sudden draught. (186) Here is Tolkien, in the chapter “The Siege of Gondor,” in The Return of the King. Pippin and Beregond are on one of the walls of Minas Tirith: Suddenly as they talked they were stricken dumb, frozen as it were to listening stones. Pippin cowered down with his hands pressed to his ears: but Beregond, who had been looking out from the battlement as he spoke of Faramir, remained there, stiffened, staring out with starting eyes. Pippin knew the shuddering cry that he had heard: it was the same that he had heard long ago in the Marish of the Shire, but now it was grown in power and hatred, piercing the heart with a poisonous despair. . . . Another long screech rose and fell, and he threw himself back again from the wall, panting like a hunted animal. (RK, V, iv, 82) Both the Wendigo and the Nazgûl are associated with sniffing. Early in Blackwood’s story, Défago makes his companion uneasy as he rises from the campfire to catch the scent of the distant creature (171), which is later said to be “acrid” and “not unlike the odour of a lion” (180), a “penetrating, unaccustomed odour, vile, yet sweetly bewildering” (200). The Ringwraith, a frightening, cloaked figure, who pursues the hobbits within the bounds of the Shire itself, sniffs from beneath its hood as it tracks them (FR, I, iii, 84-85). The Ringwraiths or Nazgûl are hunters, pursuers, as well as warriors whose chief weapon is fear. Similarly, the Wendigo is a creature that chases its quarry: “A vision of Défago, eternally hunted, driven and pursued across the skiey vastness of those ancient forests fled like a flame across the dark ruin of his [companion’s] thoughts” (187). Further, the Wendigo and the winged mount of the chief of the Nazgûl appear to be ancient creatures. One of the hunters, a “divinity student” from Scotland, thinks that the hunters had witnessed something crudely and essentially primitive. Something that had survived somehow the advance of humanity had emerged terrifically, betraying a scale of life 178

Notes and Documents: Echoes of Blackwood and Dunsany still monstrous and immature. He envisaged it rather as a glimpse into prehistoric ages, when superstitions, gigantic and uncouth, still oppressed the hearts of men; when the forces of nature were still untamed, the Powers that may have haunted a primeval universe not yet withdrawn. (Blackwood 205) The Nazgûl mount is described, at close quarters, thus: [I]t stank. A creature of an older world maybe it was, whose kind, lingering in forgotten mountains cold beneath the Moon, outstayed their day, and in hideous eyrie bred this last untimely brood, apt to evil. (RK, V, vi, 115) Here at last, incidentally, Tolkien has, like Blackwood, associated the Nazgûl mount with a vile odor. Finally, the victims of the Wendigo and the Nazgûl may become like them. There are two earthbound appearances of Défago after his kidnapping by the Wendigo. The Défago who first returns to the hunters has a distorted, animal-like face, but worst of all is the change to his feet, which have become “dark and oddly massed” (203) like those of the Wendigo. This Défago returns to the wilderness and the Wendigo. Later, the hunters find Défago, this time assuredly human, but ruined mentally and physically debilitated, awaiting them at their chief camp. Défago now tries to survive, like the Wendigo, on moss (and cannot eat food), “forlorn and broken beyond all reach of human aid” (206-7). Frodo, similarly, was in danger of becoming a wraith. Gandalf tells him, as he convalesces in Rivendell after being attacked: “They tried to pierce your heart with a Morgul-knife which remains in the wound. If they had succeeded, you would have become like they are. . . . You would have become a wraith under the dominion of the Dark Lord. . . . You were in gravest peril while you wore the Ring, for you were half in the wraith-world yourself.” (FR, II, i, 234) Whether Tolkien was consciously influenced by Blackwood’s story or not, it seems reasonable to surmise that he had read it and that it affected his conception of the Ringwraiths and their aerial mounts. Blackwood’s contemporary Lord Dunsany (1878-1957) also produced numerous volumes of fantastic fiction published when Tolkien was young. Tolkien may have read Dunsany’s fantasy when he wrote the first version of “The Mewlips” (“Knocking at the Door: Lines Induced by Sensations When Waiting for an Answer at the Door of an Exalted Academic Person,” published in the Oxford Magazine on 18 February 1937); 179

Dale J. Nelson certainly, by the time he came to revise it for inclusion in The Adventures of Tom Bombadil, in February 1967 he had sufficient acquaintance with Dunsany’s work to be able to criticize the Irish peer’s “Distressing Tale of Thangobrind the Jeweller” as being in Dunsany’s “‘worst style’” (de Camp 243). The parallels between Dunsany’s short story “The Hoard of the Gibbelins,” originally appearing in The Book of Wonder (1912), and Tolkien’s poem “The Mewlips” appear to be sufficiently strong to warrant confidence that Tolkien had read Dunsany early on and, like so many lesser fantasists, been influenced by him, if only this once. Dunsany’s Gibbelins dwell in an “evil tower . . . joined to Terra Cognita, to the lands we know, by a bridge” across the River Ocean. Their immense hoard attracts a continuous supply of would-be thieves, who inevitably end up being devoured by the wicked creatures, who “eat, as is well known, nothing less good than man” (Dunsany 63). Alderic, a knight, reasons that he can break in to the hoard if he makes a hole in the tower wall, letting water and himself into their “emerald-cellar,” but, in the event, the Gibbelins were evidently waiting for him all along, and hang him up like an animal carcass—“and the tale is one of those that have not a happy ending” (66). Tolkien’s sly Mewlips likewise dwell outside the “Terra Cognita” of the Shire of the poem’s putative hobbit-author. They dwell not by the side of Ocean, but beyond “the Merlock Mountains . . . by a dark pool’s borders,” lurking in damp cellars where they “count their gold” and await victims (Bombadil 45). Anyone who seeks their hoard will find the Mewlips, and they will “feed”; and “when they’ve finished, in a sack / Your bones they take to keep” (46). Aside from the close similarities of situation in the story and the poem, the reader will detect a charming quality of insincerity; these are narratives that “warn” of imaginary dangers. Tolkien’s letters and other sources for his life do not say very much about his recreational reading, but given his lifelong interest in literary fantasy and the parallels adduced above, one seems to be justified in suspecting that Tolkien was indebted to Blackwood and Dunsany. WORKS CITED Anderson, Douglas A. The Annotated Hobbit: Revised and Expanded Edition. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2002. Blackwood, Algernon. Best Ghost Stories of Algernon Blackwood. New York: Dover, 1973. de Camp, L. Sprague. Literary Swordsmen and Sorcerers: The Makers of Heroic

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Notes and Documents: Echoes of Blackwood and Dunsany Fantasy. Sauk City, WI: Arkham House, 1976. Dunsany, Lord. Gods, Men and Ghosts: The Best Supernatural Fiction of Lord Dunsany. New York: Dover, 1972. Lobdell, Jared. England and Always: Tolkien’s World of the Rings. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1981. ———, ed. A Tolkien Compass. La Salle, Illinois: Open Court, 1975.

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Bibliography (in English) for 2001-20021 Compiled by Michael D. C. Drout with Laura Kalafarski and Stefanie Olsen PRIMARY SOURCES Tolkien, J.R.R. The Alphabet of Rúmil & Early Noldorn Fragments. The Alphabet of Rúmil, edited by Arden R. Smith; Early Noldorin Fragments, edited by Christopher Gilson, Bill Welden, Carl F. Hostetter, and Patrick Wynne. Cupertino, CA: Parma Eldalamberon, 2001 ———. The Annotated Hobbit: Revised and Expanded Edition. Edited by Douglas A. Anderson. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2002. ———. Beowulf and the Critics, edited by Michael D. C. Drout. Tempe, AZ: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2002. ———. The Hobbit, or, There and Back Again. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2001. [Newly corrected text]. ———. The Lord of the Rings. Illustrated by Alan Lee. 3 vols. London: HarperCollins; Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2002. [Newly corrected text; published simultaneously in UK & US]. ———. “The Rivers and Beacon-hills of Gondor,” edited by Carl F. Hostetter. Vinyar Tengwar, no. 42 (July 2001): 5-31. ———. The Road Goes Ever On. London: HarperCollins, 2002. [New edition, includes new setting of “Lúthien Tinúviel”]. ———. A Tolkien Miscellany. New York: Science Fiction Book Club, 2002. [Omnibus including Smith of Wootton Major, Farmer Giles of Ham, Tree and Leaf, The Adventures of Tom Bombadil, and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Pearl, and Sir Orfeo]. ———. Tree and Leaf: Including the Poem “Mythopoeia;” “The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth Beorhthelm’s Son.” London: HarperCollins Publishers, 2001. ———. “‘Words of Joy’: Five Catholic Prayers in Quenya,” Part One, edited by Patrick Wynne, Arden R. Smith, and Carl F. Hostetter. Vinyar Tengwar 43 (January 2002): 4-38. Copyright © 2004, by West Virginia University Press

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Bibliography for 2001-2002 ———. “‘Words of Joy’: Five Catholic Prayers in Quenya,” Part Two, edited by Patrick Wynne, Arden R. Smith, and Carl F. Hostetter. Vinyar Tengwar 44 (June 2002): 4-38. BOOKS Ang, Susan. The Master of the Rings. Duxford, Cambridge [England]: Wizard Books, 2002. Birzer, Bradley J. J.R.R. Tolkien’s Sanctifying Myth: Understanding MiddleEarth. Wilmington, DE: ISI Books, 2002. Blake, Andrew. J.R.R. Tolkien: A Beginner’s Guide. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 2002. Boyd, Ian, C.S.B., ed. The Chesterton Review: J.R.R. Tolkien: Mythos and Modernity in Middle-Earth. Seton Hall University: South Orange, New Jersey, 2002. [Special issue of The Chesterton Review, 28.1and 2; individual contributions are listed below under Articles]. Bramlett, Perry C. I Am in Fact a Hobbit: an Introduction to the Life and Works of J.R.R. Tolkien. Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 2003. Bruner, Kurt D. and Jim Ware. Finding God in The Lord of the Rings. Wheaton, IL: Tyndale House, 2001. Chance, Jane. The Lord of the Rings: the Mythology of Power. 2nd ed., rev. and exp. Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky, 2001. ———. Tolkien’s Art: A Mythology for England. 2nd ed., rev. and exp. Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky, 2001. Colbert, David. The Magical Worlds of The Lord of the Rings. New York: Berkley Books, 2002. Coren, Michael. J.R.R. Tolkien: The Man who Created The Lord of the Rings. Toronto: Stoddart, 2001. Duriez, Colin. Tolkien and The Lord of the Rings. Mahwah, NJ: Hidden Spring, 2001. Duriez, Colin and David Porter. The Inklings Handbook: A Comprehensive Guide to the Lives, Thought, and Writings of C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, Charles Williams, Owen Barfield, and Their Friends. St. Louis, MO: Chalice Press, 2001. Ellwood, Robert S. Frodo’s Quest: Living the Myth in The Lord of the Rings. Wheaton, IL: Quest Books, 2002.

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Bibliography for 2001-2002 Flieger, Verlyn. Splintered Light: Logos and Language in Tolkien’s World. 2nd ed., rev. and exp. Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 2002. Fredrick, Candace and Sam McBride. Women Among the Inklings: Gender, C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, and Charles Williams. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2001. Gifford, Clive. So You Think You Know “The Lord of the Rings.” London: Hodder Children’s Books, 2002. Gillam, James H. Treasures from the Misty Mountains: A Collector’s Guide to J.R.R. Tolkien. Burlington, ON: Collector’s Guide Pub., 2001. Haber, Karen ed. Meditations on Middle-Earth. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2001. Jones, Leslie Ellen. Myth & Middle-Earth. Cold Spring Harbor, NY: Cold Spring Press, 2002. Lewis, Alex and Elizabeth Currie. The Uncharted Realms of Tolkien: A Critical Study of Text, Context, and Subtext in the Works of J.R.R. Tolkien. Oswestry: Medea, 2002. Lowson, Iain, Keith Marshall and Daniel O’Brien. World of the Rings: The Unauthorised Guide to the World of J.R.R. Tolkien. London: Reynolds & Hearn, 2002. Petty, Anne C. One Ring to Bind Them All: Tolkien’s Mythology. Tuscaloosa, AL: University of Alabama Press, 2002. [Reprint of her 1979 book with a new introduction and updated bibliography.] Smith, Mark Eddy. Tolkien’s Ordinary Virtues: Exploring the Spiritual Themes of the Lord of the Rings. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2002. [Published in the UK as A Closer Look at ‘The Lord of the Rings.’] Stanton, Michael N. Hobbits, Elves, and Wizards: Exploring the Wonders and Worlds of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings. New York: Palgrave for St. Martin’s Press, 2001. Tolkien, Christopher. The History of Middle-Earth Index. Compiled by Helen Armstrong. London: HarperCollins, 2002. West, John G. ed. Celebrating Middle-Earth: ‘The Lord of the Rings’ as a Defense of Western Civilization. Seattle, WA: Inkling Books, 2002. White, Michael. The Life and Work of J.R.R. Tolkien. Indianapolis, IN: Alpha, 2002. [Published in Great Britain as Tolkien: A Biography. London: Little, Brown, 2001]. 185

Bibliography for 2001-2002 ARTICLES Algeo, John. “A Fancy for the Fantastic: Reflections on Names in Fantasy Literature.” Names 49, no. 4 (2001): 248-53. Anand, Valerie and Dale Nelson. “Tolkien—Why Is He Important Today?” Mallorn: The Journal of the Tolkien Society 39 (2001): 38-40. Arvidsson, Hakan. “The Ring: An Essay on Tolkien’s Mythology.” Mallorn: The Journal of the Tolkien Society 40 (2002): 45-52. Bauer, Erik. “It’s Just a Movie: Erik Bauer Speaks with Peter Jackson.” Creative Screenwriting 9, no. 1 (2002): 6-12. Boyd, Ian. “J.R.R. Tolkien: Mythos and Modernity in Middle-Earth.” The Chesterton Review: The Journal of the Chesterton Society 28 (2002): 1-199.* Caldedcott, Stratford. “The Horns of Hope: J.R.R. Tolkien and the Heroism of Hobbits.” The Chesterton Review: The Journal of the Chesterton Society 28 (2002): 29-55.* Chance, Jane. “Is There a Text in this Hobbit? Peter Jackson’s Fellowship of the Ring.” Literature—Film Quarterly 30, no. 2 (2002): 79-85. Chausse, Jean. “Icons of Jesus Christ in The Lord of the Rings.” Mallorn: The Journal of the Tolkien Society 39 (2001): 30-32. Cooper, Susan. “There and Back Again: Tolkien Reconsidered.” Horn Book Magazine, March 2002, 143-50. Craig, David M. “Queer Lodgings: Gender and Sexuality in The Lord of the Rings.” Mallorn: The Journal of the Tolkien Society 38 (2001): 11-18. Crowe, Edith L. “Making and Unmaking in Middle-Earth and Elsewhere.” Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, General Fantasy & Mythic Studies 23 (3 (89)) (2001): 5669. Curry, Patrick. “Magic vs. Enchantment.” Mallorn: The Journal of the Tolkien Society 38 (2001): 5-10. Davidson, Christine. “Coming of Age: Changes of Heart: Growth and Enlightenment in The Lord of the Rings.” Mallorn: The Journal of the Tolkien Society 39 (2001): 15-22. Dubois, Tom and Scott Mellor. “The Nordic Roots of Tolkien’s Middle Earth.” Scandinavian Review 90, no. 1 (2002): 35-40. Edwards, Owen Dudley. “Gollum, Frodo and the Catholic Novel.” The Chesterton Review: the Journal of the Chesterton Society 28 (2002): 57-71.* 186

Bibliography for 2001-2002 Ellison, John. “Images of Evil in Tolkien’s World.” Mallorn: The Journal of the Tolkien Society 38 (2001): 21-29. Ellison, John A. “Treebeard’s Voice.” Mallorn: The Journal of the Tolkien Society 40 (2002): 28. Fadar, Shanti. “A Fool’s Hope: Hobbits Rush in Where Heroes Fear to Tread.” Parabola—The Magazine of Myth & Tradition 26, no. 3 (2001): 48-52. Flieger, Verlyn. “A Cautionary Tale.” The Chesterton Review: the Journal of the Chesterton Society 28 (2002): 97-103.* Flieger, Verlyn and T.A. Shippey. “Allegory versus Bounce: Tolkien’s Smith of Wootton Major.” Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts 12 (2 (46)) (2001): 186-200. Fuller, Graham. “Trimming Tolkien.” Sight & Sound 12, no, 2 (2002): 1820. Green, William H. “King Thorin’s Mines: The Hobbit as Victorian Adventure Novel.” Extrapolation 42, no. 1 (2001): 53-64. Gulliver, Peter [Peter Gilliver]. “J.R.R. Tolkien and the OED.” English Today: The International Review of the English Language 18 (4 (72)) (2002): 53-54. Horobin, S.C.P. “J.R.R. Tolkien as a Philologist: A Reconsideration of the Northernisms in Chaucer’s Reeve’s Tale.” English Studies 82.2 (2001): 97-105. Jellema, Rod. “Auden on Tolkien: The Book That Isn’t, and the House That Brought it Down.” W. H. Auden: A Legacy, edited by David Garrett Izzo. West Cornwall, CT: 2002. 39-45. Kinsella, Sean. “Elves and Angels in J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings.” Notes on Contemporary Literature 32, no. 4 (2002): 10-11. Koravos, Nikolaos. Realistic Fantasy: The Example of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings.” Mallorn: The Journal of the Tolkien Society 38 (2001): 31-35. Lane, Anthony. “The Hobbit Habit: Reading The Lord of the Rings.” The New Yorker, 10 December 2001, 98-105. Longenecker, Dwight. “The Little Way through Middle Earth.” The Chesterton Review: The Journal of the Chesterton Society 28 (2002): 105-11.* Mallinson, Jeffrey. “A Potion too Strong?: Challenges in Translating the Religious Significance of Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings to Film. 187

Bibliography for 2001-2002 Journal of Religion and Popular Culture (2002): 1. Marples, Laura. “The Hamletian Hobbit.” Mallorn: The Journal of the Tolkien Society 40 (2002): 15-21. McKillip, Patricia A. “Three Ways of Looking at a Trilogy.” New York Review of Science Fiction 13 (12 (156)) (2001): 4-5. Nelson, Charles W. “From Gollum to Gandalf: The Guide Figures in J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings.” Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts 13 (1 (49)) (2002): 47-61. Nelson, Dale. “The Lord of the Rings and the Four Loves.” Mallorn: The Journal of the Tolkien Society 40 (2002): 29-31. Newman, Kim. “Will It Ring True.” Sight & Sound 12, no. 1 (2002): 4-5 Pettit, Edward. “J.R.R. Tolkien’s Use of an Old English Charm.” Mallorn: The Journal of the Tolkien Society 40 (2002): 39-44. Pretorius, David. “Binary Issues and Feminist Issues in LOTR.” Mallorn: The Journal of the Tolkien Society 40 (2002): 32-38. Richmond, Donald P. “Tolkien’s Marian Vision of Middle-Earth. Mallorn: The Journal of the Tolkien Society 40 (2002): 13-14. Ryfle, Steve. “The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers.” Creative Screenwriting 9, no. 6 (2002): 40-42. Sarjeant, William A.S. “The Shire: Its Bounds, Food and Farming. Mallorn: The Journal of the Tolkien Society 39 (2001): 33-37. Schweitzer, Darrell. “Middle Earth Revisited; or, Back There Again.” New York Review of Science Fiction 14 (9 (165)) (2002): 8-13. Smith, Arden R. “Upphaflega .slensk heiti.” Vinyar Tengwar 42 (2001): 35-37. Smith, Patricia Burkhart. “Ring Bearer: Patricia Burkhart Smith Talks with Philippa Boyens.” Creative Screenwriting 8.2 (2001): 4,6, and 8. Timmons, Daniel. “Hobbit Sex and Sexuality in The Lord of the Rings.” Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, General Fantasy & Mythic Studies 23 (3 (89)) (2001): 70-79. Tolley, Clive. “Tolkien’s ‘Essay on Man’: A Look at Mythopoeia.” The Chesterton Review: The Journal of the Chesterton Society 28 (2002): 79-95. Turner, Allan. “Legendary and Historical Time in The Lord of the Rings.” Mallorn: The Journal of the Tolkien Society 39 (2001): 3-6. Turner, Jenny. “Reasons for Liking Tolkien.” London Review of Books, 15 188

Bibliography for 2001-2002 November 2001, 15-24. Wendorf, Thomas A. “Greene, Tolkien, and the Mysterious Relations of Realism and Fantasy. Renascence 55, no. 1 (2002): 79-100. Willhite, Gary L. and John R.D. Bell. “J.R.R. Tolkien’s Moral Imagination.” Mallorn: The Journal of the Tolkien Society 40 (2002): 7-12. OTHER MEDIA “J. R. R. Tolkien: An Audio Portrait of the author of ‘The Hobbit’ and ‘The Lord of the Rings.’” Presented by Brian Sibley. London: BBC Worldwide, 2001. Available on two compact discs and on cassette. [Includes recordings of Tolkien from the 1960s and reminiscences by people who knew him.] “A Visual Guide to J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Two Towers.” A Big Production for Kultur International. (DVD) West Long Branch, NJ: Kultur, 2002. NOTES 1

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This bibliography attempts to collect works of significant scholarly interest published in English. It will form the basis of “The Years’ Work in Tolkien Studies 2001-2002,” to be published in Tolkien Studies, vol. 2 in 2005. Please send additions and corrections to the editors. Published as part of a special issue of The Chesterton Review.

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