Critical Companion to J.r.r. Tolkien

Critical C ompanion TO

J. R. R. Tolkien

Critical C ompanion TO

J. R. R. Tolkien A Literary Reference to His Life and Work

Jay Ruud

Critical Companion to J. R. R. Tolkien Copyright © 2011 Jay Ruud All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage or retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher. For information contact: Facts On File, Inc. An imprint of Infobase Learning 132 West 31st Street New York NY 10001 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Ruud, Jay. Critical companion to J. R. R. Tolkien / Jay Ruud. p. cm.—(Critical companion) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-8160-7794-6 (alk. paper) ISBN 978-1-4381-3684-4 (e-book) 1. Tolkien, J. R. R. (John Ronald Reuel), 1892–1973—Handbooks, manuals, etc. 2. Tolkien, J. R. R. (John Ronald Reuel), 1892–1973—Information resources. I. Title. PR6039.O32Z8187 2011 823'.912—dc22 2010041579 Facts On File books are available at special discounts when purchased in bulk quantities for businesses, associations, institutions, or sales promotions. Please call our Special Sales Department in New York at (212) 967-8800 or (800) 322-8755. You can find Facts On File on the World Wide Web at http://www.infobaselearning.com Text design by Lina Farinella Composition by Hermitage Publishing Services Cover printed by Yurchak Printing, Inc., Landisville, Pa. Book printed and bound by Yurchak Printing, Inc., Landisville, Pa. Date printed: September 2011 Printed in the United States of America 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 This book is printed on acid-free paper.

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For Alyce and Wesley J.

Contents Acknowledgments

ix

Introduction

xi

Part I: Biography

1

Part II: Works A to Z The History of Middle-earth and Other Unfinished Tales

19 431

Part III: Related Entries

449

Part IV: Appendices Chronology of Tolkien’s Life and Works Internet Sources on Tolkien Bibliography of Tolkien’s Works Bibliography of Secondary Sources

625 627 630 633 636

Index

641

Acknowledgments I owe special thanks to Matt Bessing, university archivist at Marquette University Libraries’ Special Collections, for permission to use materials in the J. R. R. Tolkien Collection at Marquette’s Raynor Memorial Libraries in Milwaukee. I also thank the staff of the Torreyson Library at the University of Central Arkansas, particularly for the assistance of the interlibrary loan librarians in obtaining texts not readily available. Special thanks, as always, goes to Stacey Jones for her support and for her proofing and editing

assistance. I also want to thank Lieutenant Colonel Benjamin F. Jones, Ph.D., military historian at the United States Air Force Academy, for his contributions to the entries related to World War I in Part III of this text. Finally, I want to acknowledge my gratitude to my literary agent, Jodie Rhodes, and to my editor, Jeff Soloway, and the staff at Facts On File.

ix

Introduction J. R. R. Tolkien is one of the most popular authors of all time. If one excludes texts such as the Bible, the Koran, and Quotations from Chairman Mao, then The Lord of the Rings, having sold an estimated 150 million copies, ranks among the top two or three best-selling books ever written; The Hobbit, with 100 million copies sold, is also in the top 10 in sales. Add to this the fact that the three New Line Cinema films based on The Lord of the Rings, issued between 2001 and 2003, grossed nearly $3 billion worldwide and individually are three of the top 20 highest-grossing films in history. There are Tolkien societies not only in Britain and the United States, but also in dozens of countries across the globe, including Bulgaria, Indonesia, Peru, Japan, Turkey, Finland, and Costa Rica. The Hobbit has been translated into more than 40 languages, and when one types “Tolkien” into Google, nearly 7 million Web sites are listed. A BBC survey in 2003 found The Lord of the Rings to be Britain’s “best loved book.” More surprisingly, polls conducted in 2004 in both Germany and Australia found Tolkien’s fantasy trilogy to be the favorite text in those countries as well. In 1999, customers of Amazon. com voted The Lord of the Rings to be their favorite book of the millennium. Based on figures like these, there is no question that J. R. R. Tolkien is a popular-culture juggernaut, and the Tolkien industry is one of the most lucrative and successful entertainment ventures ever developed. The Tolkien family is certainly among the wealthiest in the United Kingdom, based on the success of their patriarch in life and

the unparalleled posthumous success of his works, engineered by his son and literary executor, Christopher Tolkien, in the years since. But popularity is not necessarily a sign or predictor of literary respectability. Although Time magazine listed The Lord of the Rings among its top 100 Englishlanguage novels of the last century, a similar list compiled by the Modern Library board snubbed Tolkien entirely (although Modern Library’s Readers’ List put The Lord of the Rings at number four). This division between readers and scholars reflects a dichotomy that has existed since the publication of The Lord of the Rings. Early reviews of the books were split. Many critics, represented most vehemently by the poet Edwin Muir in the Observer, were unimpressed and thought the books juvenile. “The astonishing thing,” Muir wrote, “is that all the characters are boys masquerading as adult heroes.  .  .  . [H]ardly one of them knows anything about women, except by hearsay. Even the elves and the dwarfs and the ents are boys, irretrievably, and will never come to puberty” (qtd. in Carpenter 223). But others, such as W. H. Auden in the New York Times, were zealously appreciative of the books. Auden wrote: [I]f one is to take a tale of this kind seriously, one must feel that, however superficially unlike the world we live in its characters and events may be, it nevertheless holds up the mirror to the only nature we know, our own; in this, too, Mr. Tolkien has succeeded superbly, and what happened in the year of the Shire 1418 in the Third Age of Middle Earth is not only

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xii   Critical Companion to J. R. R. Tolkien f­ascinating in a.d. 1954 but also a warning and an inspiration. No fiction I have read in the last five years has given me more joy than “The Fellowship of the Ring.”

Ultimately, of course, enthusiasts like Auden won over most critics and scholars. In 1968—at the height of the first wave of Tolkien hysteria that swept the United States with the paperback publication of the trilogy’s second edition in the mid-1960s—Notre Dame University Press issued a collection of essays entitled Tolkien and the Critics, an anthology of articles by literary scholars seriously considering Tolkien’s novels as literature worthy of academic study. Not long afterward, in 1972, the respected Marlowe scholar Paul H. Kocher published a book-length study of Tolkien called Master of Middle-Earth: The Achievement of J. R. R. Tolkien. These early studies were followed by a plethora of other books over the next few decades. In 1969, the Mythopoeic Society founded the journal Mythlore, a scholarly periodical devoted to the works of Tolkien, C. S. Lewis, and Charles Williams. In 1970, the Tolkien Society began publishing the journal Mallorn, originally a kind of newsletter but one that has developed over the years into a serious scholarly journal devoted exclusively to Tolkien. In 2004, Tolkien scholars Douglas A. Anderson, Michael D. C. Drout, and Verlyn Flieger began publishing, through the University of West Virginia Press, the annual journal Tolkien Studies, billed as the first purely academic journal devoted to Tolkien. At the time of this writing, the annual bibliography of the Modern Language Association lists a total of more than 2,200 scholarly works devoted to Tolkien written since 1968. It is safe to say that Tolkien’s works have now reached a level of academic respectability, thus making a book like this one possible: a book designed to be an introduction to Tolkien’s complete works for teachers or students first approaching the serious literary study of Tolkien the author. The likely catalyst for the eventual scholarly acceptance of Tolkien’s works was probably his own stature as a philological scholar. Academics knew him as the author of the single most influential article ever published on the Old English

epic Beowulf (“The Monsters and the Critics”) and as the coeditor of the first teaching edition of the great Middle English romance Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Thus, many of the early studies of Tolkien were written by scholars of medieval literature interested in discussing the influence of medieval texts, especially works in Old English and Old Norse, on Tolkien’s fiction. The early Tolkien and the Critics collection includes an essay by Patricia Spacks (“Power and Meaning in The Lord of the Rings”) in which she looks at Tolkien’s use of the concept of the Old English and Old Icelandic hero; an essay by Thomas Gasque (“Tolkien: The Monsters and the Critters”) that considers the monsters at the center of Tolkien’s works in the light of Tolkien’s own essay on Beowulf; and another essay by John Tinkler (“Old English in Rohan”) that examines the influence of Old English on the language of the Rohirrim in The Lord of the Rings. This approach, emphasizing Tolkien as medievalist, continues into the 21st century, in more subtle and complex studies that continue to be produced. In her 2003 collection Tolkien the Medievalist, editor Jane Chance (herself a well-known medieval scholar) writes that “Tolkien from the beginning responded to his modern contexts by retelling the medieval sources and adapting his medieval scholarship to his own voice” (4), and adds that her book’s purpose is to suggest new ways in which Tolkien’s medievalness and his medievalism informed and shaped his fantasy, through the collaborations he enjoyed professionally and the academic debates in which he participated at a particular moment in contemporary history, through the actual literary and mythological contexts he spent most of his life understanding, and through the modes and genres he revitalized— retextualized—in the fantastic histories of Middle-earth he created. (Chance 11)

It would be a mistake, though, for scholars or teachers to assume that Tolkien’s only appeal is his medievalism, that sense of the long ago and far away in which readers might find an escape from the problems of the modern world. Against this view, one might place the rather astonishing claim

Introduction   xiii made by Tom Shippey (another medievalist) at the beginning of his book J. R. R. Tolkien: Author of the Century: “The dominant literary mode of the twentieth century has been the fantastic.” Shippey further asserts that “when the time comes to look back at the century, it seems very likely that future literary historians, detached from the squabbles of our present, will see as its most representative and distinctive works books like J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings” (vii). Lest he be thought mad, Shippey supports his claim by listing texts such as George Orwell’s 1984 and Animal Farm, William Golding’s Lord of the Flies, Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five, Thomas Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow, and other writers as diverse as Anthony Burgess, Terry Pratchett, and Don DeLillo, all of whom write in a “fantastic” mode. Shippey goes on to argue that it is not simply the appeal of “escapism” that has led these writers to this metaphoric mode, but rather that writers such as Tolkien, Orwell, Vonnegut, and Golding were reacting to “the most traumatically significant events of the century,” and that they “had to find some way of communicating and commenting upon them”—a process that often led them to fantasy (viii). This recognition of the importance of fantasy in Tolkien’s works—and an understanding of precisely what Tolkien’s view of fantasy was—are essential for a basic understanding of Tolkien’s achievement. Central to Tolkien’s view is his indispensable Andrew Lang lecture from 1939, “On Fairy-Stories,” in which he outlines the characteristics and uses of what he calls “fairy-stories.” In that lecture, Tolkien argues that fantastic tales are not, as is commonly believed, only for children. He asserts that the author of a “fairy-story” takes on the role of the “sub-creator” of a “secondary world”—a world that, if fully realized, allows both children and adults to willingly suspend their disbelief, to use the English poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s phrase. Thus, fairy-stories should be judged on their own merits, according to the criteria of the genre. Tolkien goes on to maintain that fairy-stories provide four things to readers, whether those readers are children or adults: fantasy, recovery, escape, and consolation. “Fantasy,” Tolkien says,

Cover of the 2002 edition of J. R. R. Tolkien: Author of the Century, by Tom Shippey, published by Mariner Books

allows the reader to engage his or her imagination and participate in a higher form of art than mere realism, enabling the reader, through a kind of “secondary belief,” to experience what he calls “enchantment.” “Recovery” is another act of the imagination: Fairy-stories allow readers to transcend their accustomed manner of viewing things, enabling them to see things from a new, different perspective, the perspective of a different world, as if they were children seeing things for the first time. As for “escape,” Tolkien is aware of the negative connotation that such a term carries, but insists that there are two kinds of “escape”: One might be running away from something, like a deserter, but one might also be running to something better, like a prisoner escaping from a concentration camp. For Tolkien, escape from a technological, industrialized

xiv   Critical Companion to J. R. R. Tolkien world into a fairy-story may be a good way of indicating the negative aspects of such progress—certainly in The Lord of the Rings the Shire is a much pleasanter place before the arrival of Sharkey and his industrialization. The “consolation” of the fairy-story is its happy ending, which Tolkien calls the eucatastrophe. This is a sudden, unexpected positive turn of the plot, what Tolkien sees as an unexpected act of grace (the opposite of the catastrophe at the end of a tragedy). This, Tolkien asserts, is not sentimental or unrealistic, but is rather the highest function of the fairy-story. Tolkien, a devout Catholic all his life, virtually never overtly inserted his theological beliefs into his fiction, and he had a strong distaste for didacticism of any kind. This did not, however, preclude him from dealing with generically spiritual themes in his works. The eucatastrophe of the fairystory, he contends in his lecture, is a glimpse of miraculous grace, which for him is the great truth of the human condition. Fairy-stories, then, are on their deepest level not “unrealistic,” but are rather the truest of all forms of literature. Reading Tolkien with these qualities in mind will be a good step toward understanding him on the deepest level.

How to Use This Book

This book does not attempt to be comprehensive. The sheer volume of Tolkien criticism over the past 40 years would make such an attempt impossible. Instead, it is intended to be an introduction to Tolkien and his works for students, teachers, and general readers. Reading the summaries and commentaries on Tolkien’s various works should serve as a good aid for nonexpert readers of Tolkien’s published texts, and Part III, “Related Entries,” should give valuable background information for those works. The book may also be helpful as a reference for more experienced teachers and scholars in providing handy reviews of various texts or characters. Part I is a short biography of Tolkien that describes his personal and academic life and the events, such as World War I, that significantly affected his life and works. Part II consists of entries on Tolkien’s works. Tolkien wrote fiction and poetry, as well as scholarly articles and published lectures, and the sheer number of his pub-

lications is somewhat daunting. Indeed, more has been published under his name since his death in 1973 than was ever published in his own lifetime, as Christopher Tolkien has made a point of editing and publishing all of Tolkien’s unpublished works, including many drafts and unfinished texts. This process began in the mid-1970s, most importantly with the publication of The Silmarillion, the compilation of the entire history of Tolkien’s imagined world of Arda. It continues even today, with the recent publication (in 2009) of Tolkien’s retelling of the most important myth of the medieval Germanic peoples, The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún, originally composed some 70 years earlier. I have thus been compelled to make some deliberate choices. Part II is divided into two sections. The first, and by far the larger, part contains entries on the works that Tolkien managed to complete. These include all of the novels, stories, and poems he published during his lifetime. If the poems were published separately but are collected in a text like The Adventures of Tom Bombadil, then the poem is discussed as a part of the collection rather than independently. I have included, as well, all of the scholarly articles Tolkien published, either alone or jointly, as well as lectures he gave that were published in his life (such as his influential lecture “On Fairy-Stories”) or published after his death (such as, for example, his “Valedictory Address” at Oxford). I have also included completed works of Tolkien’s that had not been published by the time of his death but that were published as complete texts later, such as The Silmarillion, Roverandom, or The Children of Húrin. Far more space has been allotted to The Lord of the Rings than to any other text, because of its size and prominence in Tolkien’s canon. The Hobbit and The Silmarillion are also dealt with at some length. Selected characters from the major works are discussed. Many of the minor works are discussed much more briefly, but I hope still with enough detail to be of good use to a beginning student of Tolkien’s complete oeuvre. A separate section in Part II, called “The History of Middle-earth and Other Unfinished Tales,” includes entries on the two volumes of “Unfinished Tales” and the 12-volume series The History of Middle-earth, published by Christopher Tolkien

Introduction   xv between 1983 and 1996. These books contain early drafts of The Silmarillion and The Lord of the Rings, as well as other unfinished stories, such as The Lost Road or The Notion Club Papers. They are all discussed more briefly. I have chosen not to include Tolkien’s translations of medieval texts (such as Pearl or Sir Orfeo) among his original works. Nor have I included his editions of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight or the Ancrene Wisse or his early publication of A Middle English Vocabulary along with his original works, since these, in fact, are not “original” in the same sense that his fiction or scholarly articles are. Brief discussions of these texts are included among the additional entries in Part III. Nor, finally, have I chosen to include letters to the editor, interviews, short prefaces to other authors’ works, reviews, or juvenilia, or discuss them anywhere in the book. In my judgment, these very minor texts are more curiosities than substantive parts of Tolkien’s literary or scholarly canon, and, in any case, do not provide any new insights into Tolkien’s work. While some of these choices may seem arbitrary or capricious, the fact is that in a work like the present volume, as Tolkien wrote in a 1954 letter to Naomi Mitchison, “One must stop somewhere” (Letters 179). Part III, as already indicated, presents related entries, including not only the texts mentioned above, but also people, places, and events important in Tolkien’s private and professional life, as well as writers who influenced him. It also defines terms, characters, and events important in Tolkien’s private mythology, and includes entries related to the popular film and radio versions of Tolkien’s works. To indicate cross-references, any term or name is an entry in Part III is printed in small capital letters on its first appearance in any other entry in Part II or III.

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Part IV of the book contains appendices. These include a chronology of Tolkien’s life and times, an annotated list of useful Internet sites on Tolkien, a bibliography of Tolkien’s works, and a bibliography of secondary sources on Tolkien. I hope that all of these resources in a single volume will be valuable to students and to teachers approaching their first serious study of Tolkien as a literary artist. One further note: All quotations of the Bible in this text are to the original Jerusalem Bible of 1966, in accordance with Tolkien’s Roman Catholic faith and in recognition of the fact that he himself served as one of the editors of that volume. Quotations from the Jerusalem Bible are cited “JB.” Further Reading Auden, W. H. “The Hero Is a Hobbit.” New York Times (October 31, 1954). Available online. URL: http://www.nytimes.com/1954/10/31/books/ tolkien-fellowship.html. Accessed August 5, 2010. Carpenter, Humphrey. Tolkien: A Biography. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1977. Chance, Jane. “Introduction.” In Tolkien the Medievalist, edited by Jane Chance, 1–12. London and New York: Routledge, 2002. Shippey, Tom. J. R. R. Tolkien: Author of the Century. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2000. Isaacs, Neil D., and Rose A. Zimbardo, eds. Tolkien and the Critics: Essays on J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings. Notre Dame and London: University of Notre Dame Press, 1968. Tolkien, J. R. R. The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien. Edited by Humphrey Carpenter. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1981. ———. “On Fairy-Stories.” In Tales from the Perilous Realm, 315–400. Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2008.

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Part I

Biography

Biography   3

J. R. R. Tolkien (1892–1971) J. R. R. Tolkien more than once expressed the opinion that an author’s biography was really no help in understanding his work. In response to a request for biographical detail from a student writing a thesis in 1957, he noted: “I do not feel inclined to go into biographical detail. I doubt its relevance to criticism” (Tolkien, Letters 257). In 1971, he wrote to another would-be biographer: “One of my strongest opinions is that investigation of an author’s biography .  .  . is an entirely vain and false approach to his works—and especially to a work of narrative art (414). In this, at least, he was in agreement with the proponents of the school of New Criticism that dominated literary scholarship during the latter decades of his academic career. This may be particularly true in the case of Tolkien himself, whose medium was fantasy, or, as he called it in his famous 1939 lecture, “fairy-stories”—fiction that sprang from his imagination rather than stemming directly from the experiences of his everyday life. Still, since to Tolkien the fantasy writer was not simply a whimsical dabbler in dreams but rather a godlike creator of a secondary universe whose truths applied to our own reality, it is worth looking at his life to see where he may have originally encountered these truths, and why he sought to express them in the way that he did. The authoritative biography of Tolkien is that by Humphrey Carpenter, published in 1977. Most of the following is based on that book. Another important book focused mainly on Tolkien during World War I and the years leading up to it is John Garth’s excellent Tolkien and the Great War (2003). A recent brief but serviceable biography intended for high school students is Leslie Ellen Jones’s J. R. R. Tolkien: A Biography (2003). Childhood and Youth John Ronald Reuel Tolkien was the eldest son of Arthur Reuel Tolkien and Mabel Tolkien (née Suffield). The Tolkien name, clearly not a native British surname, was the somewhat Anglicized

Cover of a 2000 edition of J. R. R. Tolkien: A Biography, by Humphrey Carpenter, published by Mariner Books

version of the German Tollkühn, a term meaning “foolhardy.” According to family legend, it was originally a nickname given to a Tolkien ancestor after he led a reckless attack on Turkish forces during the siege of Vienna in 1529. The Germanic background of the name suggests that Arthur Tolkien’s family immigrated to Great Britain from Saxony sometime in the 18th century, probably as a result of the Prussian invasion of Saxony in 1756. They lived originally in London and went by the surname Tolkiehn. Tolkien’s grandfather, John Benjamin (1807–96), spelled the name Tolkien. He was a piano manufacturer and a music seller in Birmingham, in the English west country. He and his wife, Mary Jane Stow, had three daughters and four sons in addition to Arthur Reuel Tolkien, the bank clerk who became Tolkien’s father.

4   Critical Companion to J. R. R. Tolkien Tolkien’s mother, Mabel Suffield, came from the solidly British stock of Suffields originally living in Evesham in the West Midlands. Mabel’s father and grandfather, both named John, had been drapers in Birmingham, and so it was in the city of Birmingham that Arthur Tolkien met Mabel. Arthur, then a clerk at Lloyds Bank, proposed to 18-year-old Mabel in 1888, but her father would not approve a formal betrothal because of her youth. A year later, Arthur sailed for South Africa for a post in the Bank of Africa, and in 1891, Mabel (now 21) sailed for Cape Town to marry the 34-year-old Arthur, who had done well in Africa and been promoted to bank manager in Bloemfontein in the Orange Free State. They were married in the cathedral at Cape Town on April 16, 1891, and the couple’s first child was born in Bloemfontein on January 3, 1892. The boy was named John—the Christian name of both of his grandfathers—but by friends and family was always called by his middle name, Ronald. He was given the second middle name of Reuel, the middle name of his father. The unusual appellation, which Tolkien in turn gave to each of his own children, was from the Old Testament, another name for Jethro, the Midianite priest who became the father-in-law of Moses. The name in Hebrew means “friend of God,” a designation Tolkien no doubt cherished and wished to bequeath on his own children. According to one story, one of the Tolkiens’ African servants—a houseboy named Isaak— caused a stir with Arthur and Mabel when, enchanted by the white baby (something he had never seen before), he brought the child home to show his family, without first telling the parents he was doing so. The Tolkiens were understanding, and Isaak was not dismissed; in gratitude, he later gave his own son the middle name of “Mister Tolkien.” Ronald lived in Bloemfontein for only a few years, but he kept some vivid memories of the place throughout his life. In particular, he recalled his fear at being bitten in the foot by a tarantula—an encounter with a large, hairy spider that was later to find its way into both The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, although Tolkien himself denied the connection.

Arthur liked the South African life, but Mabel disliked the hot summers and dry winters. Nor did she appreciate the casual racism she found among the Europeans she met there. In 1893, her sister Edith Mary (“May”) visited with her husband, Walter Incledon, but this was not enough to quell Mabel’s longing for home. Besides, the young Ronald did not seem to adapt well to the climate of South Africa, and after their younger son, Hilary Tolkien, was born in 1894, the Tolkiens decided that Mabel should return to England for an extended visit with her parents while Arthur stayed on in Bloemfontein. In April 1895, Mabel and the boys set sail for England. Unfortunately, in his family’s absence, Arthur Tolkien contracted rheumatic fever and died in South Africa on February 15, 1896. With Arthur’s small investment in Bonanza Mines yielding about 30 shillings a week, his death left the family poor but not destitute. Mabel decided that she and her two young sons could not stay in her parents’ crowded house in town, and by the summer she had found an affordable cottage in the small village of Sarehole, just outside of Birmingham. For the next four years, the family lived here, with the boys enjoying the countryside, and particularly the variety of trees in the neighborhood. Perhaps these pleasures were behind Hilary Tolkien’s decision to become a fruit farmer as an adult. They were certainly behind Tolkien’s image of the Shire in his later works of fiction. In the meantime, Mabel tutored Ronald and Hilary in such subjects as music, art, and languages, particularly Latin and French. Ronald did not take well to music but became very proficient in drawing (a talent he kept up for most of his life), and he had a real gift for languages. He also became an avid reader, especially of old tales like the story of Sigurd and the dragon Fáfnir, as told in Andrew Lang’s Red Fairy Book. At the age of seven, he even wrote his own story, centered on a green dragon. In 1900, the family moved to Moseley, near the center of Birmingham, so that the eight-yearold Ronald could attend King Edward’s School (the best in Birmingham and his father’s old school) without having to walk the four miles from Sarehole. That same year, Mabel and her elder sister, May

Biography   5 Suffield Incledon (now returned from Africa with two children of her own) took a step that was to influence the remainder of Ronald’s life: Together, they converted to the Roman Catholic faith. Since anti-Catholic sentiments were particularly strong in England at the time—in 1896 the Vatican had proclaimed that Anglican Holy Orders were not valid— Mabel and her children were ostracized by both sides of the family, all of whom were strong Anglicans or at least Protestant. Mabel’s father, who had been raised a Methodist but had become a staunchly anti-Catholic Unitarian, disowned his daughter and stopped contributing the small monthly allowance he had provided for the family’s support. In 1901, the family moved again, to King’s Heath, a more pleasant place than Moseley. Ronald enjoyed the railway line near the house and was fascinated by the names that he saw on the coal trucks—names like Nantyglo and Penrhiwceiber. It was his introduction to the Welsh language. Mabel, however, was unhappy in King’s Heath and had discovered the Birmingham Oratory (founded in 1848 by Father John Henry [later Cardinal] Newman), a church she particularly liked in the pleasant suburb of Edgbaston. In 1902, she moved the family to Oliver Road in Edgbaston, where, cut off from all her family (May having been forbidden by her husband to ever enter a Catholic church again), Mabel formed a friendship with Father Francis Morgan. Father Morgan, an Oratory priest who was half Welsh and half Spanish, was to become an important factor in Ronald’s subsequent life, throughout which he remained a devout Catholic. That year, Ronald and Hilary were enrolled in Saint Philip’s Grammar School, a cheaper and closer alternative than King Edward’s. It was run by the Oratory priests and would give the boys a Catholic education. But it became clear to Mabel that the school was substandard, and she took Ronald out of the school and continued to educate him herself. The following year, Ronald won a Foundation Scholarship to King Edward’s, which allowed him to return there in fall 1903. At King Edward’s, he excelled at Greek, and through his schoolmaster, George Brewerton, he was introduced to the Middle English of Geoffrey Chaucer and became fascinated with the history of the English language.

In 1904, disaster struck the Tolkien family once more when Mabel Tolkien was diagnosed with diabetes, a disease that, in the days before insulin, was often fatal. After several weeks in the hospital, she was able to spend the summer with her sons at the Worcester village of Rednal, a retreat for Oratory clergy that Father Morgan had been able to secure for her. Her condition began to deteriorate in the autumn, however, and in early November she fell into a diabetic coma. She died six days later, on November 14, 1904. Twelve-year-old Ronald blamed his mother’s death on the relatives who had shunned and neglected her because of her conversion to Catholicism, and he thought of her as something of a martyr to the faith. For the rest of his life, he retained an emotional connection to his faith that stemmed at least in part from his association of it with Mabel. Now Ronald and his 10-yearold brother, Hilary, were orphaned and virtually friendless, except for Father Morgan, whom their mother had named as their guardian. Father Morgan first placed the boys with their aunt by marriage, Beatrice Suffield (recently widowed spouse of Mabel’s brother William). She was the only one of the boys’ relatives whose neutrality on religion ensured she would not attempt to send the boys off to a Protestant boarding school against their mother’s wishes. Although Beatrice was generous in giving the boys room and board, she was unaffectionate and out of touch with their emotional life—at one point going so far as to burn all of their mothers’ papers and letters in the belief that no one would be interested in them. Ronald and Hilary grew to dislike living with her, preferring to spend as much time as possible at the Oratory with Father Morgan, helping with Mass and studying the priest’s Spanish books. During the summers of these years at “Aunt Bea’s,” Father Morgan spent holidays with the boys at Lyme Regis. In fall 1905, Hilary was admitted to King Edward’s, and he and Ronald generally walked to school from the Oratory every morning. At school, Ronald was now mastering Latin, Greek, and German, and under the tutelage of Robert Cary Gilson, King Edward’s headmaster, he was beginning to think about the principles of language itself. Through Brewerton’s influence, he was also

6   Critical Companion to J. R. R. Tolkien ­studying Anglo-Saxon and reading Beowulf as well as Middle English classics such as Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and Pearl. He liked these two particularly because of their West Midland dialect, which he thought of as the language of his own Suffield ancestors. More exotically, he began to study Old Norse as well as the ancient Gothic language, and he became interested in a translation of the medieval Finnish epic the Kalevala. He also began to invent his own languages. Using the Spanish books of Father Morgan’s library, he first invented a language he called Naffarin, with words influenced by Spanish vocabulary but utilizing a different grammatical structure. In addition, he invented an ancient Germanic language similar to Gothic. At the same time, he was inventing private alphabets. By this time, he had also become close friends with his fellow student Christopher Wiseman, who shared his passion for languages and for rugby. Love and Separation In 1908, Father Morgan found lodgings for the boys that he thought might be more comfortable for them than Aunt Bea’s house. This was in a home with rooms to let on Duchess Road just behind the Oratory, run by a Mrs. Faulkner. Ronald, now 16, and his 14-year-old brother moved into a room on the second floor of Mrs. Faulkner’s house, where there was one other lodger: a pretty 19-year-old orphaned girl named Edith Bratt. Ronald and Edith became fast friends and, over the course of the next year, romantically involved. By this time, he was a senior student at Saint Edward’s, had joined the debate team, and had made the school rugby team. Most important, however, he was working on studying classical texts in order to obtain an Oxford University scholarship. During all of this, Father Morgan discovered Ronald’s romantic connection to Edith and forbade the 17-year-old Tolkien to continue his relationship with her. He moved Ronald and Hilary to a new boardinghouse, but this did not end the relationship. While these events were going on, Ronald was required to travel to Oxford to take the highly competitive scholarship exam. He failed to receive a scholarship.

Meanwhile, Edith, now 21, had decided to leave Birmingham to live with H. C. Jessop and his wife, friends of hers in Cheltenham, and when Father Morgan heard of another clandestine meeting between the young couple, he forbade Ronald to see or write to Edith again until his 21st birthday—some three years hence—or there would be no support for his university career. By contemporary standards, it seems incredible that Ronald should have obeyed his guardian’s wishes. But his respect and loyalty to the priest were deep and ingrained, and after Edith left Birmingham on March 2, Ronald determined not to communicate with her for three years. In fall 1910, cut off from Edith, Tolkien immersed himself in activities with friends of his own gender. The following year, this took the form of a “tea club” that he formed with Christopher Wiseman, Rob Gilson (son of the school’s headmaster), and G. B. Smith (a younger student with an interest in English poetry). The group called itself the t. c. b. s.—that is, the Tea Club, Barrovian Society, after Barrow’s Stores, the tea room in which they typically met. The group remained close and continued to correspond and to comment on one another’s literary efforts until 1916. But Ronald’s chief concern during autumn 1910 was preparing to retake the Oxford scholarship exam. This time his study paid off, and he was awarded a scholarship worth £60 per year. With support from Father Morgan, he would be able to attend Oxford the following year. In the spring term, he was a prefect at King Edward’s as well as secretary of the Debating Society and of the rugby team. That summer, he traveled in Switzerland with Hilary (who had dropped out of school to work on a farm), and in October he went off to Oxford. At Oxford, Tolkien was a resident at Exeter College, where his rooms were his first real home since his mother’s death seven years earlier. He enjoyed university life; he liked the male camaraderie and joined the debating society. He also started his own club, the Apolausticks (the “selfindulgent”)—like the T. C. B. S., a group with whom he could discuss ideas and smoke his pipe (a habit he had picked up from Father Morgan). Like many freshmen today, Tolkien became a bit too

Biography   7 interested in the university’s social life and began to lag in his study of classics, though he maintained an interest in Germanic literature. He was inspired by his comparative philology instructor, Joseph Wright, who encouraged him to study Welsh, which the young Tolkien found the most beautiful of languages. Returning to Birmingham for the Christmas holiday of 1911, Tolkien reunited with his old friends Wiseman, Gilson, and Smith, all still at King Edward’s, where they were staging a production of Richard Brinsley Sheridan’s The Rivals. His friends persuaded Ronald to take the role of Mrs. Malaprop, which he did to great acclaim. Back at Oxford in 1912, he continued his reading of Welsh and began studying Finnish, a language that had interested him since he had read a translation of the Kalevala. The Finnish inspired him to change the direction of the imaginary languages he had been playing with, and to create a new one with Finnish influence. This language eventually became the high-elven speech Quenya in his mythological narratives. But with the Christmas holiday of 1912 drawing near, Ronald was more focused on his personal life: His 21st birthday was approaching—and with it, the end of his enforced separation from Edith Bratt. He wrote to her immediately on January 3, repeating his vow of love and asking when they could be married. But when Edith wrote back, it was to tell him that she was now engaged to a man named George Field. On January 8, Ronald took the train to Cheltenham, and by the end of the day he had persuaded Edith to break off her engagement and promise to marry him. Writing to Father Morgan about this was difficult for Tolkien, since the priest still disapproved of the match and Ronald depended on his financial support to stay at Exeter College. But Father Morgan grudgingly accepted the renewed relationship. Now Ronald had to concentrate on the rigorous Honor Moderations (second-year examinations) in February—required exams in all his subjects that would allow him to continue in his studies. Having coasted through his first two years, he tried cramming two years of work into six weeks, and achieved a disappointing Second Class on

his exams. While this was not disastrous, it was unpromising for someone who by now had decided on an academic career. Tolkien did, however, receive an “alpha plus” on his paper in comparative philology, and at the suggestion of the Exeter College rector, he decided to change his course of study to the English School, where he could focus more on the philological studies that he enjoyed. Here, Tolkien worked under the young New Zealand scholar Kenneth Sisam, and he worked in Old and Middle English as well as Old Norse, becoming enamored of the mythology of the Elder Edda (now more commonly called the Poetic Edda). Struck by a line in the Old English poem Crist that read Eala Earendel engla beorhtast (“Earendel brightest of angels”), Tolkien wrote a poem the following summer describing Earendel as the evening star, sailing a ship across the heavens. It was his first step toward the construction of his own mythology. In the meantime, at Ronald’s urging, Edith had agreed to convert to Catholicism. As a result, she was cast out of her friends’ house in Cheltenham and took a house in Warwick with her older cousin, Jennie Grove. Edith had enjoyed her life in Cheltenham and would miss the friendships she had formed there. Furthermore, she never felt comfortable with Catholicism, disliking Confession in particular, and this was a source of some friction between her and Ronald in later years. Tolkien spent June 1913 with Edith and Jennie in Warwick, then took a job as a tour guide, escorting two Mexican boys and their aunt to Paris and then to Dinard in Brittany. He did not like the French, writing to Edith that he found them vulgar and indecent, and the fact that the boys’ aunt was killed by a motorist in Dinard did not help Tolkien’s mood or attitude toward the French. He vowed never to take such a job again. In the fall term, his friend G. B. Smith came to Oxford’s Corpus Christi College. Meanwhile, Gilson and Wiseman had gone on to Cambridge, and the four friends remained in touch. When Edith joined the Roman Catholic Church on January 8, 1914 (the anniversary of her reunion with Ronald), Tolkien finally told his friends about her, and they were officially betrothed in the church in Warwick.

8   Critical Companion to J. R. R. Tolkien Back at Exeter in spring 1914, Tolkien had formed another club with his friend Colin Cullis called the Chequers, which met for dinner on Saturday nights in Cullis’s rooms. Tolkien was also president of the debating society by now, and he won his college’s Skeat Prize for English studies. He use the £5 in prize money to buy books of medieval Welsh and some books by William Morris, whose House of Wolfings, set in a forest named Mirkwood, sought to recreate in English the style of Old Norse narratives. That summer, Tolkien was inspired as well by the landscape of Cornwall, which he explored with Father Vincent Reade, an acquaintance from the Birmingham Oratory, and he later visited Hilary at a farm in Nottinghamshire. The Great War By late summer 1914, however, Britain was at war with Germany and Austria. Hilary had enlisted as a bugler. Ronald was ambivalent. More than anything, he wanted to finish his studies and obtain a First Class degree. But back at Oxford, he found that no one he knew had returned to school other than Colin Cullis, whose poor health had kept him from enlisting. Tolkien soon found that G. B. Smith had returned as well, and he and Smith enlisted in a program that allowed them to train as officers while remaining for the time at the university. During the Christmas holidays of 1914, ­Tolkien went to London for a reunion of the T. C. B. S. with Smith, Gilson, and Wiseman. Their talks convinced him that he wanted to be a poet, and he began composing poems such as “The Voyage of Earendel the Evening Star,” “The Man in the Moon Came Down Too Soon” (eventually published nearly 50 years later in his Adventures of Tom Bombadil); and “Goblin Feet” (inspired by some of Francis Thompson’s verses), which was published the following year in Blackwell’s annual volume of Oxford Poetry. He shared all of his poetry with Smith, who wanted to know just what the Earendel poem was all about. Tolkien expanded it to the “Lay of Earendel” in 1915, in which Earendel comes to the land of Valinor with its gold and silver trees, including motifs that would appear again in The Silmarillion. In addi-

tion, he had worked his imaginary language to such an advanced level that he began to write poetry in it, and to invent a history of the people that spoke this language. He also had time to study, and in June 1915 Tolkien took his final examinations in English language and literature, achieving First Class Honors. But with graduation came his commission as second lieutenant in the Lancashire Fusiliers (13th Battalion; to his disappointment, Smith was posted to the 19th). He was stationed in Bedford, and later his battalion moved to Staffordshire. In early 1916, he decided to go into signaling because of his interest in languages, and became the battalion’s signals officer. But as deployment to France loomed, Tolkien knew that he must marry Edith before leaving, since the reality was that he might never return. They were married on March 22, 1916, in the Catholic church in Warwick. After their honeymoon, Edith moved with Jennie Grove to Great Haywood in Staffordshire to be near Ronald’s camp. But almost immediately Tolkien’s battalion was ordered to France, and on June 4 they set off for the western front, where they arrived in time for the Battle of the Somme. During this time, Tolkien grew to dislike most of his fellow officers, but he came to form a real respect for the enlisted men—ordinary men quietly and stolidly doing their duty. He said later that these men were his inspiration for the character of Sam Gamgee in The Lord of the Rings. While Tolkien’s battalion waited in reserve, the British and French attacked the German trenches on July 1, 1916. Some 20,000 allied troops were killed in that initial attack, including, as Tolkien was to find out two weeks later, Rob Gilson. Gilson, an officer in the Cambridgeshire Battalion, was one of 500 from that battalion who died that day. Tolkien’s battalion marched into the trenches on July 14 to find terrible conditions and rotting corpses in every corner. They took part in several attacks and suffered heavy losses, though Tolkien remained unhurt. He even occasionally was able to meet G. B. Smith when both were rotated out of the trenches. On October 27, however, Tolkien was diagnosed with pyrexia, more commonly known as “trench fever,” a typhoid-like illness spread by lice,

Biography   9 which infected thousands of men. He was sent to a hospital in Le Touquet, but when his fever failed to break, he was put on a ship back to England on November 8 and hospitalized in Birmingham. By mid-December 1916, he was well enough to spend Christmas with Edith at Great Haywood, where he received a letter from Christopher Wiseman, now serving in the navy. Wiseman’s letter contained the news that G. B. Smith had been killed on December 3. Smith had been wounded in the thigh and developed gangrene. The deaths of his close friends affected Tolkien profoundly. In particular, he had believed that the T. C. B. S., with its four remarkable young men, had been destined as a group to achieve great things. He had written to Smith after the death of Gilson that he believed “the T. C. B. S. had been granted some spark of fire—certainly as a body if not singly—that was destined to kindle a new light. . . . That the T. C. B. S. was destined to testify for God and Truth in a more direct way even than by laying down its several lives in this war” (qtd. in Garth 180). With Gilson gone, that dream seemed a mirage. When Smith died as well, the dream was shattered. Certainly Tolkien felt that way looking back at the experience in 1940, when he wrote of his experience in the Great War: “I was pitched into it all, just when I was full of stuff to write, and of things to learn; and never picked it all up again” (qtd. in Garth 308). Tolkien was in and out of hospitals for most of the next two years. At times he was well enough to take on active duties in a variety of camps across England, in Yorkshire and then in Staffordshire. He was promoted to full lieutenant, but he was often ill and needed to be hospitalized, and so never returned to France, where his entire battalion had been either killed or taken prisoner by spring 1918. During his convalescence, Tolkien began to put together his personal mythology in a more ordered form, partly as a way of honoring the encouragement his fallen comrades (particularly Smith) had given him, and partly, no doubt, as a kind of escape from the horrors he had seen at the Somme. He began to record early versions of his stories in a notebook that later became The Book of Lost Tales. In it were the earliest versions of the

stories that came to be collected in The Silmarillion, including “The Fall of Gondolin” and “The Children of Húrin” (posthumously published as a separate novel). One day, when he was walking with Edith in a grove of trees with an undergrowth of hemlock in the Holderness peninsula near Roos, she spontaneously sang and danced for him—an act that inspired his story of Beren and Lúthien. That tale, of a mortal man who falls in love with an elf maiden he sees dancing in the wood, became the central story of The Silmarillion and a recurring theme in his personal mythology. On November 16, 1917, Edith gave birth to the couple’s first child, John Francis Reuel Tolkien. The name Francis was in honor of Father Morgan, who baptized the child (John Francis grew up to be a Catholic priest himself). Ronald, now a father as well as husband, began looking for academic employment that he might move into at the conclusion of the war. In Oxford, his former Old Norse professor William Craigie, now on the staff of the New English Dictionary (later known as the Oxford English Dictionary), told Tolkien that he could secure a post for him as an assistant lexicographer, and when the armistice was signed on November 11, 1918, Tolkien moved to Oxford with his family to take up his new position. Early Career For two years, Tolkien worked for the dictionary, researching etymologies and in the process learning a great deal about languages. He also began to keep a diary written in an invented alphabet that he called the Alphabet of Rúmil, a learned elf in his mythology. This later became the Fëanorian alphabet (Tengwar), which he used to keep his diary from 1926 to 1933, and which became the elvish alphabet of The Lord of the Rings. He also began to take in pupils as a tutor, primarily teaching Anglo-Saxon to students from Oxford University’s women’s colleges. He found time to keep working on his Book of Lost Tales, and in spring 1920 he read “The Fall of Gondolin” to Exeter College’s Essay Club—a club that included future Inklings Nevill Coghill and Hugo Dyson. He and Edith were happy in Oxford, but that summer a position as reader in English language (the equivalent of

10   Critical Companion to J. R. R. Tolkien associate professor) came open at the University of Leeds (see Leeds, University of), and to his surprise, Tolkien was offered the position. Leeds was a factory town in the industrial north, and Tolkien was at first unhappy there. Edith had stayed in Oxford until the delivery of their second child, whom they named Michael Hilary Reuel Tolkien, and she and the children did not move to Leeds until the beginning of 1921. The ­English department head, George Stuart Gordon, gave Tolkien sole responsibility for developing the course in Old and Middle English, and Tolkien took to his task with enthusiasm. In 1922, he was joined by a new junior lecturer, E. V. Gordon, a Canadian who had been one of Tolkien’s students in 1920. Gordon and Tolkien established the Viking Club at Leeds, where they drank beer, sang songs in Old Norse, and recited nursery rhymes in Old English. The popularity of their classes soared. The two of them also began working on a new edition of the Middle English poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight for use in university classes. It was published by Clarendon Press in 1925, and the revised edition of this text remained the standard edition of the poem for decades. In 1923, Ronald and his family visited Hilary, who had bought a small orchard near his mother’s ancestral home of Evesham in Worcestershire. Here Tolkien turned again to work on his Book of Lost Tales, though he seemed reluctant to finish it. Instead, he began to rewrite the stories, and reworked two of the tales—the story of Túrin and that of Beren and Lúthien—into verse. In 1924, he was created professor of English language at Leeds (the equivalent of full professor), and he and Edith bought a house on the edge of the city, where Edith gave birth to their third son. Ronald wanted to name him after his old friend Wiseman, so the child was christened Christopher Reuel Tolkien. Oxford In 1925, William Craigie left his position at Oxford University, and the Rawlinson and Bosworth Professorship of Anglo-Saxon came vacant. Tolkien applied for it, and, against the stiff competition of his former teacher Kenneth Sisam, he was appointed to the post.

Back in Oxford, the Tolkiens moved into a modest house on Northmoor Road in 1926. Four years later, they bought a larger house just down the block. In all, they stayed on Northmoor Road in North Oxford for 21 years, Ronald living the typical life of an Oxford don, lecturing by day and often working on his mythology well into the night. In 1929, Edith and Ronald had their fourth and last child, Priscilla Mary Reuel Tolkien—finally the girl Edith had wanted. At Oxford, the English faculty of Tolkien’s day was divided between the philologists (those whose main interest was the study of the language and its history, and who generally saw no reason to study any literature written after Chaucer) and the literature people (who insisted on the study of later writers like Shakespeare and Milton). Tolkien set about trying to introduce changes that would heal this division and animosity. His bestknown contribution to academic scholarship—the lecture “Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics” (delivered in 1936 and published the following year)—was a model of this inclusive attitude, as he insisted that the poem was not simply a text to study for linguistic purposes, but a great story. He published other important scholarly works, including a landmark essay on the use of dialect in Chaucer’s Reeve’s Tale, and he planned several other collaborations with E. V. Gordon, including an edition of the Middle English Pearl. But these projects were abandoned after Gordon’s untimely death in 1938. Tolkien’s closest associate and friend at Oxford University was the medievalist from Magdalen College, C. S. Lewis, whose friends all called him Jack. The two met initially at a faculty meeting in May 1926, and at first they were wary of each other since Tolkien was on the philological side and Lewis the literary side of that divided faculty. But a year later, Tolkien invited Lewis to join a new club that he had formed called the Coalbiters, whose goal was to read and study Old Norse literature. The two soon became fast friends and began to read and comment on each other’s poetry. More significant, Lewis credited Tolkien and their friend Hugo Dyson, a frequent visitor to Oxford, with his conversion to Christianity.

Biography   11 In the early 1930s, Tolkien, Lewis, and Dyson became the nucleus of another informal club that became known, famously, as the Inklings. The group also included, at various times, Jack’s brother W. H. “Warnie” Lewis, Nevill Coghill, and Owen Barfield. The group regularly met on Tuesday mornings at the pub called the Eagle and Child (or, as they called it, the Bird and Baby) and on Thursday nights in Jack’s rooms at Magdalen, where they would read works in progress to one another. Tolkien, by now known to Lewis and the other members of the group as “Tollers,” sometimes read from the two long related poems he kept working on: his “Gest of Beren and Lúthien” in rhymed couplets and a poem on Túrin (from his “Children of Húrin” tale) in alliterative verse after the style of Beowulf and other Old English poetry. More often, though, he read from early drafts of what was to become The Silmarillion. Several years earlier, in 1926, he had written a 20-page “Sketch of the Mythology” of his Middle-earth for one of his former teachers at King Edward’s, R. W. Reynolds. In 1930 he expanded this text to a fuller summary that he called Quenta Noldorinwa (“History of the Noldor,” one of the branches of elves). Christopher Tolkien has said that this was the only complete summary of the Silmarillion story that his father ever made. Throughout the 1930s, Tolkien worked on the text he was now calling Quenta Silmarillion, which was intended as a substantial summary of the entire mythology of what are called in The Lord of the Rings the “Elder Days,” the First Age of Middleearth. It is from this latter text that he seems to have read to the Inklings.

and which was eventually published in 1949. In addition, from 1920, when his son John was three years old, until his daughter, Priscilla, was grown, Tolkien wrote a letter to his children each year from “Father Christmas” or from one of his helpers—his friend the Polar Bear or his secretary Ilbereth the elf. These letters would be accompanied by Tolkien’s own drawings and were eventually published posthumously in 1975. Most important, sometime around 1930, Tolkien began telling his children a story about a small fellow with hairy feet who led a life not much different from that of, say, a middle-class Oxford don, but who was dragged off on an adventure by a wizard and a group of dwarves—an adventure that somehow crossed into the territory of his personal mythology that formed the body of The Silmarillion. As Tolkien later told it, the idea came to him one day while he was marking end-of-term

The Hobbit In the meantime, Tolkien was also making up stories to entertain his children. Among these were the adventures of a four-foot-tall fellow with a blue jacket and yellow boots named Tom Bombadil, which Tolkien turned into a poem called “The Adventures of Tom Bombadil” and published in Oxford Magazine in 1934. Another story in this vein was Farmer Giles of Ham, which Tolkien had completed and read to an undergraduate society at Worcester College, Oxford University, in 1938,

Cover of a 2002 annotated, revised, and expanded edition of The Hobbit, published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. The cover image shows the dragon Smaug guarding his stolen treasure on Lonely Mountain.

12   Critical Companion to J. R. R. Tolkien examinations and found that one student had left a page blank. On that page, Tolkien absently began to write the sentence “In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.” At the time, he said, he did not know what a hobbit was, or why he lived in a hole, and decided that he would find out. For some time, he apparently produced only a map of the land where the story is set (this later became Thror’s map in the novel). But at last the story that emerged from this was the one that Tolkien told his children, and he eventually began to read it and pass it around to some of his friends, showing an incomplete manuscript to Jack Lewis late in 1932. But he had abandoned the story immediately after the death of the dragon Smaug. He seemed to think of the story only as entertainment for his children and saw no reason to finish it now that his boys were getting older. That may have been the end of the novel, had not one of the friends with whom Tolkien had shared the incomplete manuscript been a graduate student named Elaine Griffiths. In 1936, Griffiths was working on revising a translation of Beowulf for the publishing firm Allen & Unwin. When her former classmate Susan Dagnall, a junior editor from the firm, came to Oxford to discuss the translation with her, Griffiths mentioned to Dagnall the wonderful unfinished children’s story that Professor Tolkien had shown her. Dagnall visited Tolkien and asked to read the manuscript, which she enjoyed so much that she urged him to finish it and let Allen & Unwin consider its publication. Tolkien was able to complete the manuscript by October. In the belief that children themselves ought to decide what a good children’s book is, the company’s chairman, Stanley Unwin, gave the manuscript to his 10-year-old son, Rayner Unwin. Rayner was enthusiastic about the story, and Allen & Unwin published The Hobbit, or There and Back Again—with illustrations by Tolkien himself—in 1937. It received very favorable reviews, including one by Jack Lewis in the Times, and in 1938 it was published by Houghton Mifflin in the United States, where it received a prize from the New York Herald Tribune as the best children’s book of the year.

The Long Quest for the “New Hobbit” Stanley Unwin, recognizing the popularity of The Hobbit, began to press Tolkien for a sequel. Tolkien sent the publisher a number of texts, including the children’s stories Farmer Giles of Ham and “Mr. Bliss” as well as the disconnected manuscript pieces of The Silmarillion, but none proved satisfactory. What was wanted was a “new Hobbit,” and Tolkien began to work on a sequel in December 1937. The first chapter, “A long expected party,” was submitted early in 1938, and Rayner Unwin was very happy with it, which encouraged Tolkien to go on with the story. But Tolkien did not know where the story would take him, and as it began to involve the One Ring and the Dark Lord, the tale became more of a sequel to the more serious Silmarillion than to the lighthearted children’s story of The Hobbit. This was on Tolkien’s mind when he was asked to give the Andrew Lang Lecture at the University of Saint Andrews in March 1939 and decided on the topic “On Fairy-Stories.” Here he made it clear that “fairy-stories” are not merely for children but are the subcreation of a secondary world that reflects reality and reveals the truth. That would clearly be the goal for what he now began to call The Lord of the Rings. But now World War II intruded on the Tolkien household, doubtlessly contributing to the dark tone that the book was taking. The Tolkiens’ eldest son, John, who had been training for the priesthood in Rome, had to be evacuated back to England. Michael had been at Oxford University’s Trinity College for a year but was now in the service as an antiaircraft gunner. Christopher was at Trinity College himself, so Priscilla was the only child still at home. The Inklings still met regularly, and Tolkien shared chapters of his “new Hobbit” with them, but his feeling for the group had lost some of its enthusiasm. Part of the reason for this was the inclusion of Charles Williams. When Williams had come to Oxford in 1939 and joined the group, he was already an established novelist, but not one whose work Tolkien admired, even though his books were in the fantasy genre as well. Tolkien also seems to have been jealous of Williams’s influence on

Biography   13 Lewis, and was also cooling in his friendship with the now staunchly Anglican Lewis as a result of Jack’s vehemently Protestant theological writings. And while Allen & Unwin clamored for the completed manuscript of the “new Hobbit,” at various times during the war years, Tolkien simply stopped writing, unable to get past certain points and worrying about reworking earlier details to perfection. In 1943, he wrote a story about an artist named Niggle, who wished to paint a leaf but who “niggled” so much about details that the leaf became connected to everything else in creation, and it seemed impossible to finish it. “Leaf by Niggle” is the story of Tolkien worrying about his own great project. By 1944, Christopher Tolkien was serving in the Royal Air Force, and Tolkien wrote him regularly about the progress of his book and his readings to the Inklings. By the end of the war, he had finished book 4 and was exhausted. A number of other things were changing in Tolkien’s life. In May 1945, just after the war ended in Europe, Charles Williams died. The loss disturbed Tolkien, though it devastated Lewis. Tolkien was named Merton Professor of English Language and Literature in 1945, a position he was to keep until his retirement from Oxford in 1959. Christopher returned to Oxford to resume his studies at Trinity College, and he became a regular member of the Inklings. But with John now a Catholic priest in the Midlands and Michael working as a schoolmaster and married with a son of his own, the Tolkiens no longer needed their large house on Northmoor Road, so they moved into a smaller house that they rented on Manor Road. A few years later, they moved a short distance to a more comfortable house on Holywell Street. Tolkien’s scholarly work seemed to lag just as much as his work on The Lord of the Rings. After publishing a significant article in 1929 on the Ancrene Wisse, a Middle English manual for anchoresses (women who lived in physical isolation for spiritual purposes) written in his favorite West Midland dialect, he had undertaken in the 1930s to produce an edition of the text, but now, in the mid1940s, it seemed to scholars that the work would never be completed.

The Hobbit was reprinted in 1946, and Tolkien now assured his publishers that he was nearing the end of The Lord of the Rings. In 1947, Rayner Unwin came to Oxford as an undergraduate, and Tolkien felt that The Lord of the Rings was close enough to completion to let Rayner read a typescript of it. Rayner wrote his father that the book was “weird” and that he was not sure who would read it, but that it was a “brilliant and gripping story” and that Allen & Unwin should publish it. Tolkien rushed to finish the book by the end of 1947, but then insisted that he needed to revise the entire manuscript to make sure everything was consistent. The manuscript was not ready for submission until fall 1949. Jack Lewis, who read the final manuscript before Tolkien sent it to a publisher, called it “almost unequalled in the whole range of narrative art known to me” (qtd. in Carpenter 204). Allen & Unwin had been waiting for the sequel to The Hobbit for a dozen years, but by 1949 Tolkien was not sure that they were the right publisher for his manuscript. They had published his Farmer Giles of Ham that year, and Tolkien had been annoyed at what he considered their failure to promote the book. More important, he had become convinced that he wanted The Lord of the Rings published together with The Silmarillion, which Allen & Unwin had previously rejected as a sequel to The Hobbit. Stanley Unwin was not interested in such a project. Through the Dominican priest Father Gervase Mathew, a sometime member of the Inklings, Tolkien had met Milton Waldman of the Collins publishing house, and Waldman had shown interest in publishing not only The Lord of the Rings but the earlier work as well, which Tolkien considered the necessary backbone of his entire mythological system. But The Silmarillion was nowhere near ready for publication, and when he told the publishers that it would be nearly the length of The Lord of the Rings when completed, Collins balked. They already wanted him to cut The Lord of the Rings manuscript, and with the cost of paper soaring after the war, they finally backed away after some three years of negotiation. So it was that in June 1952, Tolkien wrote to Rayner Unwin that

14   Critical Companion to J. R. R. Tolkien he had changed his mind and would let Allen & Unwin have The Lord of the Rings if they still wanted it. Rayner was delighted to have the manuscript and, after considering the expense, decided to publish it in three separate volumes, which would be sold at 21 shillings each. It was enough to make a small profit on each book. But the expense was significant. He wrote to his father that publication would be a risk, and that the company could stand to lose perhaps £1,000 on the venture, but that Tolkien’s novel was a work of sheer genius. Stanley Unwin agreed to a proposal that gave Tolkien no guaranteed royalties, but rather a half-share of all profits. This would make it easier for the firm to recover the costs on what he assumed would be a losing proposition. Tolkien agreed, and he also agreed to separate titles for the three volumes: The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers, and The Return of the King (although Tolkien, believing the latter title gave away too much of the plot, wanted the third volume to be called “The War of the Ring”). In the midst of the dislocation of moving again, this time to the Oxford suburb of Headington (Priscilla had now left Oxford and was working in Bristol, so the Tolkiens needed a smaller house), Tolkien made his final revisions to The Fellowship of the Ring. In summer 1954, the first volume appeared. Lewis gave The Fellowship of the Ring a glowing review in Time & Tide, though Edwin Muir was less complimentary in the Observer. Still, the reviews were generally positive and increased demand for the book, which went into a second printing six weeks after its initial appearance. Houghton Mifflin published The Fellowship of the Ring in the United States in October to a highly appreciative review in the New York Times by W. H. Auden. The Two Towers came out in November in Britain and shortly thereafter in America, and there was great anticipation of the third volume. But Tolkien had insisted on the need to publish certain appendices and a detailed map of Gondor and Mordor with the third volume, and these were not close to being finished. He had been traveling to receive an honorary Doctorate of Letters from the National University of Ireland in Dublin and another from

University of Liège in Belgium. In May 1955, his appendices finally reached Allen & Unwin, with the map drawn by Christopher, now a tutor in the English faculty. But during the summer, when the publisher raised a number of questions about the third volume, Tolkien was in Venice with Priscilla and could not answer them until he returned. Finally, The Return of the King appeared in October 1955. Wealth and Fame Sales for the books were steadily increasing. In 1956, Tolkien received his first check from Allen & Unwin, a payment in excess of £3,500. Fearing the bite that income taxes would take from this income, he soon made a deal with Marquette University in Milwaukee, which bought the original manuscripts of The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and Farmer Giles of Ham for £1,250. By this time, Tolkien’s friendship with Lewis had again cooled somewhat. In part, this may have been caused by some jealousy of Lewis’s success with his Narnia novels, which Tolkien disliked as too blatantly Christian and also saw as a kind of pale imitation of his own mythological cycle. Besides, Lewis had tossed those books off at such a rate—seven in seven years, as compared with the 16 years Tolkien had spent on The Lord of the Rings—that it must have irritated Tolkien a great deal. When Lewis was elected to the newly created Chair of Medieval and Renaissance Literature at Cambridge University and thus was away from Oxford for a large part of the year, he and Tolkien saw each other only rarely. Lewis’s marriage to the American divorcée Joy Davidman in 1957 also contributed to the rift between them, the Catholic Tolkien disapproving of divorce and jealous of the time Lewis spent with her. In 1959, Tolkien, now 67, retired from teaching. He was becoming more and more concerned about Edith’s health as she became increasingly hobbled by arthritis, and he wanted to spend more time with her. In his retirement, he seldom socialized with anyone from either Exeter or Merton College, both of which granted him honorary fellowships in 1963. The only regular social contact he had was weekly lunches with Norman Davis,

Biography   15 a former student who was now Merton Professor of English Language and Literature. He seldom saw his son John, who had a parish in Staffordshire, or Michael, who was teaching in the Midlands and now had two daughters and a son. He frequently saw Christopher, who was now a lecturer at Oxford’s New College and married to a sculptor, and Priscilla, who was working in Oxford as a probation officer. But his children had their own careers and families, and Tolkien spent most of his time working. First, he had to complete the long-delayed edition of the Ancrene Wisse, which was finally published by the Early English Text Society in 1962. Then he worked to finish translations of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and Pearl that he had been laboring on for years (these were posthumously published, along with a translation of the Middle English romance Sir Orfeo, in 1975). He also was one of 27 collaborators on the Jerusalem Bible, a new Catholic translation of the Bible that appeared in 1966. In 1961, his elderly aunt Jane Neave wrote to him, asking if he would put out a small book about Tom Bombadil that old folks

Photograph of J. R. R. Tolkien from the back cover of the 1966 Ballantine Books paperback edition of The Hobbit

like her might be able to afford for Christmas presents. He obliged by producing The Adventures of Tom Bombadil, made up mostly of poems he had written during the 1920s and 30s, with the addition of two newer pieces. The book came out in 1962, shortly before his Aunt Jane’s death. But chiefly in his retirement Tolkien looked forward to spending more time on his Silmarillion, which now, encouraged by the success of The Lord of the Rings, Allen & Unwin was interested in publishing. Of course, he decided that it was necessary to rewrite the entire manuscript. But that process of revising was constantly interrupted. Tolkien was receiving a great deal of “fan mail,” which he always tried to open and respond to himself. In addition, he had a tendency to become distracted, whether by drawing flowers with elvish names, or doing crossword puzzles, or playing Patience (Solitaire) until late in the evening. But he was bored with retirement, and he missed the male companionship that his teaching and days with the Inklings had given him. This feeling was deepened by the death, at age 64, of C. S. Lewis on November 22, 1963. Tolkien wrote to Priscilla that the news was “like an axe-blow near the roots.” He began to keep a diary in another newly invented alphabet, a diary that revealed a man frustrated and depressed over his boredom, his inability to work, and his advancing old age. It was a gloom that eventually led him to compose a new story, Smith of Wootton Major, a tale published by Allen & Unwin in 1967. In 1965, meanwhile, an unauthorized paperback edition of The Lord of the Rings was published in the United States by Ace Books. In response, Tolkien’s American publisher, Houghton Mifflin, rushed to get both The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings into print in paperback versions in association with Ballantine Books. The furor over the copyright dispute made headlines and helped the paperback versions to become best sellers. Ace finally agreed to pay Tolkien royalties on all copies sold and promised not to publish a second edition. Meanwhile, the books had become a sensation in the United States. On college campuses in the late 1960s, Tolkien became a cult figure, and the paperbacks sold millions of copies.

16   Critical Companion to J. R. R. Tolkien

Front cover of the 1966 paperback edition of The Hobbit, published by Ballantine Books

Retirement While the hardcover publication of his trilogy had made him comfortable in the mid-1950s, the paperback sales and cult status of the 1960s made Tolkien wealthy. But it also made him quite uncomfortable. His address in Headington was a matter of public knowledge, so visitors were constantly knocking at his door, looking for autographs, or trying to take pictures of him and Edith through the windows. His telephone number was also public, so he often received phone calls in the middle of the night from fans in America who had not considered the time difference. These factors, plus the fact that Edith’s arthritis made it very diffi-

cult for her to take care of much around the house, convinced the Tolkiens to move to a place where they could be more comfortable as well as more anonymous. They chose Poole, a suburb of the seaside town of Bournemouth. Bournemouth was a resort town that Edith had frequented for years during the summer, and she was happy and had friends here. In particular, she and Ronald were close friends with their doctor, Denis Tolhurst, and his wife, Jocelyn. Nor did Edith feel the sense of inferiority that she had often felt in Oxford. Though Tolkien was gratified by Edith’s happiness, he personally disliked Bournemouth. He had hated to leave Oxford and felt cut off from the intellectual conversation he had enjoyed with his male friends and with Christopher. But he was not distracted by clamoring fans here and was able to devote some real attention to his revisions of The Silmarillion, so on the whole he was less despondent than he had been during his last years in Oxford. But The Silmarillion was a problem. He had written so many versions of each chapter that it was difficult to choose what to include. Furthermore, he had to be certain that every detail of the story harmonized with the details of The Lord of the Rings—not only for his own satisfaction but for that of the millions of readers who were waiting for the book. His wide-ranging interests in the “subcreation” of his secondary world led him off into tangents that prompted him to write long essays on details like the manner in which elves aged and other technical minutiae concerning Middle-earth. Still, he made some progress until Edith became ill in November 1971 with an inflamed gallbladder, from which she would not recover. She died, age 82, on November 29. Tolkien had Edith buried in the Catholic section of Wolvercote Cemetery, north of Oxford. After the initial shock of her death passed, he realized that he could no longer stay in Bournemouth and looked for a way to return to Oxford. He was grateful when Merton College made him a resident honorary fellow, offering him rooms in Merton Street, where he would be looked after by a college “scout” (servant) and his wife, Charlie and Mavis Carr. Tolkien accepted the offer with gratitude and moved into his new rooms in March 1972.

Biography   17 His days in Merton Street were generally happy ones. His needs were looked after by the Carrs, and Allen & Unwin had provided him with a secretary, Joy Hill, to attend to all of his fan mail. He spent quite a bit of time with Christopher; Christopher’s second wife, Baillie Tolkien, and their children, Adam and Rachel; as well as Christopher’s son Simon from his first marriage. Tolkien saw a good deal of Priscilla, and he was able to visit John’s parish in Stoke-on-Trent. He reestablished ties with his old friend Christopher Wiseman, and even was able to get to Evesham to spend time on the fruit farm with his brother, Hilary. He also was made a CBE (Commander of the Order of the British Empire) by Queen Elizabeth; received an honorary degree from the University of Edinburgh; and, in June 1972, received an honorary doctorate of letters from his own beloved Oxford University, for his contributions to philology. Still, he made little progress on The Silmarillion, that unending project on which he had spent 60 years of his life. He discussed it often with Christopher, from whom he had secured a promise to complete the task of revising and publishing the book should he die before it was completed. Tolkien does not seem to have thought that probable, however. He knew that one of his grandfathers (old John Suffield) had lived to be nearly 100 and expected much the same of himself. Still, he was lonely without Edith, and his health began to deteriorate. On August 28, 1973, he made a trip back to Bournemouth to visit the Tolhursts on the occasion of Jocelyn’s birthday. But he became ill on the evening of August 30 and was taken to a hospital the next day. He was diagnosed with a bleeding ulcer that developed into a chest infection. John and Priscilla rushed to Bournemouth to be with him, though Christopher and Michael were out of the country and could not be reached. Ronald Tolkien died on Sunday morning, September 2. He was 81. In accordance with his wishes, Tolkien’s children buried him in the same grave as Edith’s in Wolvercote Cemetery. Their headstone reads: Edith Mary Tolkien, Lúthien, 1889–1971 John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, Beren, 1892–1973

Four years later, Christopher Tolkien, the son who had always been most like his father and most enamored of the Tolkien mythology, made good on his pledge to finish The Silmarillion. With the assistance of the Canadian fantasy author Guy Gavriel Kay, he brought the manuscript into complete and coherent shape, and it was published by Allen & Unwin in 1977. Sales of the book were surprising even to Allen & Unwin, and they inspired Christopher to embark on a long project to see all of his father’s manuscripts put before the public. In 1980, he published Unfinished Tales of Númenor and Middle-earth—selections of incomplete manuscripts found among Tolkien’s papers. Over the next 15 years, Christopher waded through the lengthy and complex material in his father’s The Book of Lost Tales, ultimately publishing 12 volumes of what he called The History of Middle-earth. The last of these volumes, The Peoples of Middle-earth, was finally published in 1997. These volumes were not best sellers, but they did keep Tolkien’s name and work in front of the public for all those years until Peter Jackson’s astoundingly successful film versions of the three parts of The Lord of the Rings were produced from 2001 to 2003, grossing nearly $3 billion worldwide. Although Christopher himself expressed doubts about the films’ ability to recreate his

The gravestone of J. R. R. Tolkien and his wife, Edith Mary Tolkien  (Photo by Alida Carvalho; used under a Creative Commons license)

18   Critical Companion to J. R. R. Tolkien father’s vision, the films renewed a huge interest in the trilogy and in Tolkien’s other works, as has a planned new film version of The Hobbit. Christopher himself has capitalized on the new interest by publishing two new texts from his father’s papers—the novel The Children of Húrin in 2007 and the poetic The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún in 2009. The novel is a version of the story of Túrin that Tolkien had worked on between 1951 and 1957 but then abandoned; it was one of the earliest stories he had conceived in his Book of Lost Tales. The Sigurd and Gudrún text is a poetic retelling of the story of the Norse hero Sigurd and the dragon Fafnir, as told in the Poetic Edda and the Völsunga Saga. Tolkien had originally written it in the 1920s. The legacy of J. R. R. Tolkien remains alive today, not simply through the efforts of his son to make available all of his unfinished or abandoned papers, nor merely because the tales have proven so

effective as film adaptations, but because the magic of his imagination and the truth of the secondary world he created so vividly continues to speak to new generations of readers year by year. As one of Tolkien’s early songs from The Hobbit asserts, “the road goes ever on and on.” Further Reading Carpenter, Humphrey. Tolkien: A Biography. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1977. Garth, John. Tolkien and the Great War: The Threshold of Middle-earth. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2003. Jones, Leslie Ellen. J. R. R. Tolkien: A Biography. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 2003. Rogers, Deborah Webster, and Ivor A. Rogers. J. R. R. Tolkien. Boston: Twayne, 1980. Tolkien, J. R. R. The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien, edited by Humphrey Carpenter. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1981.

Part II

Works A to Z

Adventures of Tom Bombadil, The   21

Adventures of Tom Bombadil, The  (1962) Tolkien’s lyric poetry is not his strongest literary achievement. Many of his “poems” are more accurately described as occasional verse, inspired by some social or family event that he wanted to commemorate. Many others are inventions that reflect aspects of his legendarium and imitate the forms of ballad, folktale, nursery rhyme, and occasionally Anglo-Saxon heroic meter. None are typical lyric poems in the modern sense—emotional utterances, spontaneous confessions, suggestive patterns of images. They use the traditional conventions of rhyme, meter, and alliteration, and are often incomprehensible to readers unfamiliar with the “Faërie-land” of Tolkien’s imagination. The Adventures of Tom Bombadil is a collection of 16 of these kinds of poems. The character of Tom Bombadil had his origin in a Dutch doll owned by Tolkien’s son Michael. Michael’s older brother, John, had stuffed the doll into a lavatory, and after Tom was rescued, Tolkien wrote the poem “The Adventures of Tom Bombadil,” which he published in Oxford Magazine in 1934. He sensed something deeper than a simple doll in the character of Bombadil, even in this early poem, where Tom is presented as a kind of nature spirit. After the success of The Hobbit, Tolkien suggested a sequel that featured Tom Bombadil, but the publisher was not interested. Still, Tolkien managed to include Bombadil in the story after all. In The Lord of the Rings, Tom is deliberately enigmatic, according to a 1954 letter Tolkien wrote to one of the editors at Allen & Unwin, since he is capable of great power but has seemingly renounced power and control, taking “delight in things for themselves” (Tolkien, Letters 179). Critics have described him as a nature spirit; as the Vala Aulë the Smith (Hargrove); or the archetypal “Divine Child” who, in Jungian psychology, denotes rebirth and victory over death, as well as “life affirming gaiety . . . and literal selflessness” (Jensen and MacDonald 40). These characteristics can be seen in the poems in this collection that are actually concerned with Bombadil himself.

The collection owes its origin to a request from Tolkien’s elderly aunt, Jane Neave, who in 1961 asked for a publication about Tom Bombadil that might be suitable for Christmas presents. Tolkien put together a group of poems from the 1920s and 1930s, only three of which actually concerned Tom Bombadil himself, and added a mock-scholarly preface in which he claims that the poems have been taken from the Red Book of Westmarch, the purported source of the stories told in both The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. Some of the selections, he says, are in the hands of Bilbo or of Sam Gamgee, while others are traditional songs of the Shire, or were written in the margins of the book by other hands, probably from “oral tradition,” Tolkien says (Tales from the Perilous Realm 170). Ultimately, Tolkien included 16 poems on a variety of topics in the book that was published by Allen & Unwin in 1962. All but two of the verses had been composed during the 1920s and 1930s, the exceptions being “Cat” (written for Tolkien’s granddaughter Joan Anne in 1956) and “Bombadil Goes A-Boating” (composed anew in 1961 for this particular collection). The book was published in the United States by Houghton Mifflin in 1962 and then reprinted in the collection The Tolkien Reader in 1966. Most recently, it has been reprinted in Tales from the Perilous Realm (Houghton Mifflin, 2008), and, since this is the most accessible edition of the text, it is the one cited in the following discussions.

“The Adventures of Tom Bombadil” Synopsis This is an episodic narrative poem in which Tom Bombadil, a “merry fellow” in a blue coat and yellow boots, has four brief adventures and a wedding. First, he is described as dangling his beard and hair into the water of the Withywindle, when the River-woman’s daughter, Goldberry, pulls him under the water, and he calls to her to come back, though she runs off to her mother’s house. In the second adventure, Tom is swallowed by Old Man Willow, an animated tree on the shore, but Tom is able to talk Old Man Willow into going back to sleep. In the third tale, Tom is pulled down into the holes of the Badger family, but Tom talks them into going back to sleep

22   Adventures of Tom Bombadil, The peacefully as well. Next, a Barrow-wight—a spirit haunting the graves of the Barrow-downs—catches him and threatens to drag him under the earth. But Tom escapes, consigning the Barrow-wight back to his grave beneath the ground. In the morning, he awakens, dons his coat and boots, and goes back to find Goldberry. When he catches her, he holds her fast so that she cannot escape, and tells her to forget her mother’s deep pool, for she will find no lover there. He marries Goldberry at the end of the poem, and the badger folk dance, the Willow taps the windows, and the Barrow-wight cries in his mound. But they all sleep again until the sun rises, and Goldberry combs her golden hair. Commentary “The Adventures of Tom Bombadil” was first published in Oxford Magazine in 1934, and parts of it appear, of course, in The Fellowship of the Ring. In his preface to the collection, Tolkien suggests that this poem and the next originated in Buckland, because they show a close familiarity with that countryside—he explains, for example, that the Mithe (in the following poem) was “the outflow of the Shirebourn,” where there was a landing stage for boats (172). Tolkien also claims that these first two poems indicate that the hobbits of Buckland were familiar with Tom Bombadil, though they probably had little understanding of his powers. They thought of him as “benevolent . . . mysterious maybe and unpredictable but nonetheless comic” (172). This particular poem is not really comic, however. It involves a climactic series of dangers in Bombadil’s environment—the water, the grasping Willow, the badgers’ lair, and finally the specter of the Barrow-wight—that threaten to engulf or bury him, but it demonstrates that in each case Bombadil is able to neutralize the threat, usually through his own soothing words that put the danger to sleep. His nonintrusive and peaceful mastery of the environment enables him, in the end, to marry the daughter of the River. The poem suggests something of Bombadil’s mythic significance—it is he who keeps the natural world in order while becoming a part of it, in a loving relationship as its “husband” and lord but not as its despot. The unusual verse form of the poem is heptameter (seven foot) couplets using “feminine” rhymes

(in which rhyming stressed syllables are followed by identical unstressed syllables, as in fellow and yellow). Feminine rhymes were particularly common in Chaucer’s couplets, because of the common occurrence of the unstressed final e in Middle ­English, and this may in part have influenced Tolkien. A stronger influence was almost certainly the ballad stanza of the late Middle Ages. Consider the seven-foot lines of couplets like the following: Back to her mother’s house in the deepest hollow Swam young Goldberry. But Tom, he would not   follow; (176; emphasis on stressed syllables mine)

This might just as well have been printed as a fourline ballad stanza, with alternating lines of four and three feet and rhyming, like most ballads, abcb. Back to her mother’s house in the deepest hollow Swam young Goldberry. But Tom, he would not follow;

Nor is it difficult to see how these lines might be influenced by the standard form of Anglo-Saxon alliterative verse. The verse form of Beowulf and The Battle of Maldon, this form uses lines of four stressed syllables, with two of these on either side of a caesura, or pause, in mid-line. The above lines might easily be read as follows: Back to her mother’s house  in the deepest  ­hollow Swam young Goldberry.  But Tom, he would   not follow;

Thus, the lines read like Old English lines, though without alliteration. It seems quite possible that both the ballad stanza and Old English verse form, both of which were basic to the medieval literature Tolkien studied professionally, influenced his choice of verse form for these first two poems.

“Bombadil Goes Boating” Synopsis In the autumn, when Tom sees a brown leaf fall, he decides to mend his boat and take it down the Withywindle. As he begins his journey, a Little Bird calls to him, saying he knows where Tom is going and

Adventures of Tom Bombadil, The   23 asking if it should warn the one Tom intends to visit. Tom threatens the bird and warns it not to tell the Willow-man. The Willow-wren then says it will use no names but will have the man meet Tom by the Mithe for drinks. Tom laughs, says perhaps he will go there, and begins floating down the river. Next, he is accosted by the Kingfisher and tells it he is off to visit some friends of his along the Brandywine (i.e., hobbits). The bird asks if Tom will say hello to the Kingfisher’s relatives, but Tom says he is off for fun, not to run errands, and tells the bird to go preen itself. The bird flies off, dropping a blue feather that Tom puts in his hat. Tom is then stopped by an otter, who playfully threatens to overturn his boat, and Tom tells it not to tease him or he will give the otter’s pelt to Barrow-wights. Finally, he passes a haughty swan, whom he teases for its arrogance. Tom steers his boat to Hays-end and Breredon, where the hobbits tauntingly threaten not to let him cross the Brandywine. Tom threatens to call the orcs on them. He tells them he is going to drink by Shirebourn, and asks that they ferry him there in their wherry. When Tom gets to the steps of the Mithe, no one is there to greet him. Then “Muddy-feet” Maggot comes up and calls Tom a beggarman who cannot pay for a drink. Tom claims that Maggot owes him a tankard of ale because he is late for their meeting. He rides in Maggot’s wagon to his house, and there they have drinks, tell tales, and dance with Maggot’s sons and daughters. Old Maggot falls asleep, and before dawn Tom slips away without a trace. His boat is brought back up to the Withywindle three days later by the otter folk. When they arrive home at Tom’s creek, they find they have left the oars behind. It is long before Tom returns to claim them. Commentary For the verse form of this poem, Tolkien again uses the heptameter couplets that may owe their inspiration to ballad stanzas and Old English alliterative verse. Unlike the previous poem, however, this one was not published earlier. It is the only poem composed specifically for the collection The Adventures of Tom Bombadil. Though its verse form is similar to the first poem, it differs significantly in tone. This is another poem that Tolkien claims was written in Buckland, and here particularly is dem-

onstrated the comic aspect of Bombadil, whose exchanges with the birds and animals, as well as the hobbits themselves, are intended comically, although they do contain some rather violent and abusive images, like Tom’s threat to the Willowwren “I’ll burn you, / roast you on a willow-spit” (182) or his warning to the otter “I’ll give your otter-fell to Barrow-wights. They’ll taw you!” (185). These exchanges may have been suggested to Tolkien by the late medieval and early modern Scottish genre of poem called the flyting, in which two poets alternate hurling scurrilous invectives at each other as a kind of roughly comic harangue. The Scottish poet William Dunbar was the most famous composer of flytings. One possible source of such poems is purportedly the boasting matches that might take place among warriors in Old ­English heroic poetry, a practice also apparent in Old French chansons de geste, such as the Song of Roland. These, of course, may have suggested the method to Tolkien, but the comic intent of the verse puts the poem more in line with the flyting than earlier heroic verses.

“Errantry” Synopsis This poem focuses on a protagonist without a name—he is called simply a “passenger, / a messenger, a mariner” in the first two lines. Addicted to wandering in search of adventure, like the knights errant of medieval romances, he builds a gondola propelled by the wind, roving across 17 rivers and various lands. Pausing in his wandering, he tries to persuade a butterfly to marry him, and when he is refused, he sets a trap of airy filaments to ensnare her and keeps her on nests of flowers, making gifts of precious jewels to her. She quarrels with him, however, and he takes up his wandering again, flying on the wings of a swallow. He seeks for battle over the sea, and makes a shield and arms of precious stones and ivory to do battle with the elves of Faërie and, subsequently, with insects like dragonflies and Dumbledors. His battles finished, he travels home on a ship of leaves. But he finds his home unexciting, and when he calls his former deeds to memory, he decides to start his wanderings again.

24   Adventures of Tom Bombadil, The Commentary “Errantry” was first published in the Oxford Magazine in November 1933. The title comes from a word meaning “wandering,” but with specific connotations of wandering in search of chivalrous adventure, as the main character of this poem does. Like the knight of a chivalric romance, the protagonist of this poem seeks the love of a beautiful maiden who does not return his affection, and he fights gallant battles in lands across the sea. The somewhat surprising aspect here, however, is that the knight errant is quite tiny, small enough to fall in love with a butterfly and to do battle with bumblebees (the original meaning of “Dumbledors,” Harry Potter fans will be interested to know). The poem is in some ways in the same category of the “precious” depiction of fairies that characterize something like Michael Drayton’s Nymphidia, a text that Tolkien later eschewed in his lecture “On Fairy-Stories.” Perhaps for this reason, the pseudo-scholarly speaker of the preface to The Adventures of Tom Bombadil assigns the text of the poem to Bilbo, but says it is probably an early composition, created after Bilbo first learned of elves but before he had become truly familiar with their language or names (171). The mock-scholarly persona also makes the connection between this poem and the poem about Eärendil the Mariner that Bilbo recited in the House of Elrond in The Fellowship of the Ring: “In origin a ‘nonsense rhyme’, it is in the Rivendell version found transformed and applied, somewhat incongruously, to the High-elvish and Númenórean legends of Eärendil” (170). Christopher Tolkien has written: “No poem of my father’s had so long and complex a history as that which he named Errantry.” (Treason 84) The transformation of the poem from the “nonsense rhyme” into Bilbo’s composition of “Highelvish” lore is traced in some detail in chapter 5 of Christopher’s The Treason of Isengard (volume 7 of The History of Middle-earth). Christopher points to the conception of the poem as an effort read to C. S. Lewis and a group of undergraduates in the early 1930s, and he points to an additional five drafts of the poem before its publication in the Oxford Magazine. There are subsequently some 15

manuscript and typescript drafts of the “Eärendil version” of the poem, which Christopher separates into two groups: an earlier group in which the first line of the poem is “There was a merry messenger” or something similar, and a later group in which the first line is some variant of “Earendel was a mariner” (86–95). The verse form of “Errantry” is particularly complex, a fact on which J. R. R. Tolkien commented in a 1952 letter to Rayner Unwin in which he also promised to send the publisher a collection of such poems at some future date. “Errantry” is the “most attractive” of these poems, he tells Unwin, and then comments on its verse form: It is for one thing in a metre I invented (depending on trisyllabic assonances or near assonances, which is so difficult that except in this one example I have never been able to use it again—it just blew out in a single impulse). (Letters 162–163)

Of course, Tolkien did use the form again, in Bilbo’s Rivendell song, but perhaps he considered the two to be essentially the same poem. It is also somewhat strange for him to describe a poem that went through at least six drafts before its initial publication to have blown out “in a single impulse.” But the meter is indeed remarkable. Although lines are grouped into verse paragraphs, the poem essentially is divided into four-line sections of iambic tetrameter that rhyme abcb, like ballad stanzas. In addition to this, however, there is a secondary near-rhyme in the second and fourth lines, wherein the first half of each line echoes the final three syllables of the previous line. Thus, in the following quatrain He wove a tissue airy-thin to snare her in; to follow her he made him beetle-leather wing and feather wing of swallow-hair. (192)

“follow her” in line 2 rhymes with “swallow-hair” of line 4. At the same time, the “snare her in” of line 2 forms a half-rhyme through assonance (repeated vowel sounds) with “airy-thin” in line 1, while “feather wing” of line 4 actually rhymes with “leather wing” of line 3. This is the “trisyllabic

Adventures of Tom Bombadil, The   25 assonance” that Tolkien spoke of in his letter to Unwin. This verse form is highly musical, and it is no accident that this poem was one of those set to music by Donald Swann in the collection called The Road Goes Ever On: A Song Cycle.

“Princess Mee” Synopsis Princess Mee is a tiny fairy princess who wears a silver kerchief, a necklace of stars, and a girdle of “diamond dew.” During the day she walks under a blue hood, but at night she dances under a starlit sky in slippers of fishes’ mail on a pool whose surface is like a mirror. When she looks down, she sees another princess dancing beneath her, toe to toe. But Shee is dancing upside down, and she looks upward at Mee as Mee gazes down at her. Only their feet can touch, because no elven lore can tell Mee how to get to a land where the people hang upside down. Commentary This poem, which bears some similarity to “Errantry” in its concern with precious tiny fairy people, may be included as a kind of companion piece to that poem, the princess being the female counterpart of the protagonist of “Errantry.” As published in The Adventures of Tom Bombadil, it is a revision of the poem “Princess Ni,” which the young professor Tolkien first published in a collection called Leeds University Verse, 1914–1924. Thematically, it is a simple variation of the Narcissus myth, as the princess becomes fascinated by her own reflection, believing it to be another person altogether—a “Shee” rather than a “Mee”— but one whom she can never meet. In his preface, Tolkien claims that this poem was one of the scattered verses found in the margins of the Red Book. The verse form of “Princess Mee” is unusual, consisting of six-line groups that rhyme aabccb, in which the third and sixth lines are trimeter, while the others are short dimeter lines. Tolkien uses the same verse form, but with the lines printed differently, in “The Man in the Moon Came Down Too Soon,” later in this collection.

“The Man in the Moon Stayed Up Too Late” Synopsis At a certain inn, they brew the beer so brown that the Man in the Moon decides to stop in and sample it. In the inn, the ostler has a pet cat that plays a five-stringed fiddle, and the innkeeper has a dog that loves to laugh at jokes. They own a haughty cow who likes to dance to music, and they have a special store of silver dishes and spoons. As the Man in the Moon drinks, the cat plays, the dog chases his tail, and the cow dances on the green while a spoon and dish dance on the table. But the Man in the Moon stays drinking so late that the horses of his carriage (the moon itself) begin to stomp uneasily, since it is after 3 a.m. and the sun will be rising soon. The ostler tries to wake him but cannot, and the cat plays a jig that should wake him. Finally, they roll the Man in the Moon up the hill, while the cat continues to play, and the cow leaps over the moon-carriage, while the dog laughs and the dish and spoon run off. When the sun comes up, she is surprised to see everyone go off to bed. Commentary This poem, first published as “The Cat and the Fiddle: A Nursery Rhyme Undone and Its Scandalous Secret Unlocked,” appeared in the OctoberNovember issue of Yorkshire Poetry in 1923. It is much better known, of course, as the poem recited by Frodo at the Inn of the Prancing Pony in chapter 9 of The Fellowship of the Ring (170–172). In his pseudo-scholarly preface, Tolkien attributes this poem to Bilbo. His narrator in The Fellowship of the Ring indicates that only a few snatches of the poem are still remembered, a comment that clarifies what Tolkien is doing with this version: He recognized the nonsense of the nursery rhyme “Hey-Diddle-Diddle” and imaginatively sought to recreate an “original” version of the poem in which all the elements of the surviving version made sense. Thus, for instance, the cow is in fact able to jump over the moon because the moon is parked on earth, having been brought down by the Man in the Moon himself.

26   Adventures of Tom Bombadil, The Tolkien retells the story in 13 five-line stanzas rhyming abccb, in which the third and fifth lines are in trimeter and the other three lines in tetrameter. Thus, he calls to mind the traditional abcb ballad stanza, with alternating tetrameter and trimeter lines, used by the nursery ditty “Hey-Diddle Diddle,” but he suggests that, like the story itself, the “original” verse form was a bit more complex. Tom Shippey notes the similarity between Tolkien’s story and the Greek myth of Phaeton, who drove the chariot of the Sun close enough to scorch the earth, thus giving the poem a mythic significance beyond the nonsense lyrics of the nursery rhyme (37). Shippey also suggests that Tolkien opted to write on “the Man in the Moon” as opposed to, say, “Old King Cole” or “Little BoPeep” because he was familiar with a well-known Middle English lyric poem in the Harley MS. 2253 called “Mon in the mone” (37). That lyric is particularly interesting because its speaker—a peasant from Tolkien’s beloved West Midlands—catches the Man in the Moon cutting his hedges and plans to bring him back to his house and get him drunk. Then, When that he is dronke as a dreynt mous, Thenne we schule borewe the wed ate baily.   (132)

That is, when he is as drunk as a drowned mouse, they will take him to the bailiff to redeem his pledge—i.e., make him pay. It seems likely that the idea of the drunken Man in the Moon was first suggested to Tolkien by this poem.

“The Man in the Moon Came Down Too Soon” Synopsis The Man in the Moon, having grown tired of his world of silver, pearl, and diamond richness and his lonely tower, begins to descend a secret stairway leading down to the earth, where he hopes to find vibrant colors and take part in the festive celebrations of men. He loses his footing on the way down, however, and falls into the Bay of Bel, where some fishermen pick him up and send him to land

with the morning fish, advising him to find an inn and get some sleep. But in the town, he can find no houses open and no people about. Finally, he comes to an inn with a light on inside, and he asks for a warm fire, wine, and songs of old, but the surly cook tells him he will find none of that here. The cook allows him to enter in exchange for silver and a pearl. For 20 more pearls, he lets the Man in the Moon sit by the fire, and the cook gives him food and drink only after the Man in the Moon pays for them with his crown and his cloak. Even so, all he gets to eat is old porridge. He has arrived much too soon for the yuletide feasting. Commentary Like the previous poem, this was also first published in 1923, as “Why the Man in the Moon Came Down Too Soon” in A Northern Venture: Verses by Members of the Leeds University English School Association. As a poem concerning the Man in the Moon, it seems a companion piece to the betterknown previous poem. It has quite a different tone, however, from the rollicking earlier verse, and the Man in the Moon seems more dignified than the character in the previous poem. In his mockscholarly preface, Tolkien associates the previous poem with Bilbo, but he says that this poem probably originated in Gondor, noting the reference to the “Bay of Bel,” near Belfalas in southern Gondor. This, as far as Tolkien is concerned, would explain the differences in characterization. The language of this poem may also be said to be more self-conscious than the more folksy nursery rhyme of the previous poem: Shoon in the first stanza, for instance, and ingle-nook in stanza 11, are consciously archaic words, while lunatic (insanity associated with the phases of the moon), as applied to the Man in the Moon in the final stanza, is the sort of learned pun unlikely to have been a part of Bilbo’s composition. The poem is written in 12 eight-line stanzas rhyming abcbdefe, in alternating tetrameter and trimeter lines, very much like two traditional ballad stanzas yoked together. Tolkien, however, uses an internal rhyme in each of the longer tetrameter lines, as in “The Man in the Moon had silver shoon” and “In his mantle grey he walked on day” (emphasis mine). In fact, the verse form recalls that of

Adventures of Tom Bombadil, The   27 “Princess Mee,” whose dimeter couplets could just as easily have been printed as tetrameter lines with internal rhymes, and would therefore have been identical to the verse form of this poem.

“The Stone Troll” Synopsis A troll with a seat of stone is chewing on an old bone, since he has been able to get no meat. When Tom passes by, he recognizes the bone as his dead uncle’s shinbone, which the troll has dug up from a graveyard. The troll says that the uncle no longer needed his shinbone, but Tom demands that the troll relinquish the bone. The troll, in turn, threatens to eat Tom’s own shin, since he has had no meat of late. Tom eludes the troll’s grasp and slips behind him, thinking to teach him a lesson by giving him a hard boot to his backside. The troll’s seat, however, is as hard as stone, and Tom only hurts his foot. The poem ends with Tom at home, nursing his lame foot, and the troll still gnawing the shinbone. Commentary In his preface, Tolkien attributes this poem to Sam Gamgee, and in this, of course, he is following his use of the poem in The Fellowship of the Ring, where Sam recites the poem after he and Aragorn and his fellow hobbits see the three trolls that Gandalf had turned to stone in The Hobbit (219–220). There is not much to the poem other than the comic situation involving the character of Tom—who, given the context of the poem in his collection, might be assumed to be Tom Bombadil, since he wears “big boots.” However, the language of the two characters in the poem—including expressions like “my nuncle,” “without axin’ leave,” and “he don’t need his shinbone” (209–210)—which is deliberately colloquial and lower-class and therefore appropriate for a troll, is less so, one would think, for Tom Bombadil, if that is indeed who the “Tom” of the poem is meant to be. An early version of the poem had appeared as “The Root of the Boot” in the 1936 collection Songs for the Philologists. The poem has a particularly complicated verse form, made up of eight seven-line stanzas rhyming aabccac. The first three

lines are in tetrameter verse, the fourth trimeter, the fifth dimeter, the sixth tetrameter, and the seventh trimeter. The trimeter lines form a refrain, so that the last line of each stanza echoes (with slight variations) the fourth line. The short fifth line of each stanza invariably consists of a pair of rhymes for the last two syllables of the refrain, so that in the first stanza, the last words of line four (“for meat was hard to come by”) provides the key to the two rhymes of line five: “Done by! Gum by!” Finally, the first line of each stanza contains an internal rhyme, as in the initial line of the poem: “Troll sat alone on a seat of stone” (209; emphasis mine). The verse form, one of Tolkien’s most complex, is in some contrast with the simple, nonsense story of the poem.

“Perry-the-Winkle” Synopsis A lonely troll laments the fact that he lives by himself and that all people seem to fear him, despite his having sworn off thievery and the eating of meat. He decides to take the initiative and go into the Shire, to the town of Michel Delving, to find a friend. Old Mrs. Bunce and Mayor Pott run from him in fear, while in the marketplace Farmer Hogg spills his ale and Bill Butcher throws a knife at him. The troll sits and weeps until young Perrythe-Winkle pats his head and befriends him. The troll takes Perry-the-Winkle off to his house, cooks him a feast, and teaches the young hobbit to bake. When the Winkle returns to the Shire, the other hobbits wonder where he has been, and he tells them he has fed on cramsome bread in the troll’s house. The people all go to visit the troll and ask for cramsome bread, but the troll says he only bakes on Thursdays and only has enough to share with Perry-the-Winkle, sending Pott and Bunce and Hogg all back empty-handed. Over time, Perrythe-Winkle grows quite fat and becomes a great baker, but he still visits the troll every Thursday for his delicious cramsome bread. Commentary Once again, Tolkien pairs poems by subject matter, this one, concerning a troll, complementing the

28   Adventures of Tom Bombadil, The previous poem, “The Stone Troll.” Tolkien attributes this poem to “S.G.” in the Red Book, clearly an indication that it, like the previous poem, was composed by Sam Gamgee. The verse form is much simpler than that of “The Stone Troll,” however. It is made up of 16 eight-line stanzas rhyming ababcdcd, each with alternating tetrameter and trimeter lines, very similar to two ballad stanzas combined into a unit. Thematically, this poem has certain similarities with the earlier “The Man in the Moon Came Down Too Soon.” In both cases, the protagonist is lonely and isolated, and decides to take the initiative to end his alienation and to establish relationships with others. In the case of the Man in the Moon, this does not lead to anything like the sort of happiness he had hoped for. This appears at first to be the case with the troll as well, until he meets Perry-the-Winkle, and his venture pays off in his finding, apparently, a friend for life. The name Perry-the-Winkle recalls, of course, periwinkle, the purple vine also known as myrtle. Whether Tolkien intended to suggest anything with this name is unclear. In the ancient and classical world, myrtle was a vine sacred to both Aphrodite and Demeter (goddess of the harvest). In the story, Perry-the-Winkle does reap a great harvest, an abundance of good food, in his friendship with the troll. The Tolkienesque invention “cramsome bread” seems to be the most delightful item in these meals. Perhaps this name suggests nothing more than that the bread is so delicious it is hard to resist the temptation to “cram some” into one’s mouth. In Tolkien’s Middle-earth, it seems related to cram—a kind of tasteless hardtack bread made by the men of Dale and eaten by the dwarves in The Hobbit. Clearly the troll’s recipe is much more flavorful than that of the cooks of Dale.

“The Mewlips” Synopsis The Mewlips are a mysterious race of creatures who wait in their houses for passersby to ring their bell or knock on their door. There are gargoyles on their walls and slime, drooping willows, and croaking gorcrows around their houses. They dwell beyond

the Merlock Mountains in a dark and moldy valley, and they wait, counting their gold, in dark cellars lit by a single candle. Their houses drip, and they peer out, sliding their fingers through cracks, until they grab visitors and put them into a sack. If you want to find the Mewlips, you must go along the lonely road through “spider-shadows” and marshes, where you will find them, and they will feed. Commentary In his pseudo-scholarly preface, Tolkien does not specifically mention “The Mewlips,” but it must be included in those poems that come from the oral tradition of the hobbits. The poem shows some vague knowledge of the world outside of the Shire—the Merlock Mountains seem likely to be the Misty Mountains, while the marsh of Tode is probably the Dead Marshes, and the wood with the “spider-shadows” is almost certainly Mirkwood. The Mewlips themselves, however, seem to be a completely legendary race, a kind of bogeyman that forms a frightening part of the hobbits’ folk memory. Perhaps their image developed from dim memories of orcs or trolls who devoured hobbit ancestors. The oddest aspects of the description, however, are that, first, the Mewlips seem to live in houses, and second, the poem’s speaker seems to be considering paying them a call. In fact, the original version of this poem, published in the February edition of the Oxford Magazine in 1937, was entitled “Knocking at the Door: Lines induced by sensations when waiting for an answer at the door of an Exalted Academic Person,” and it is attributed to “Oxymore.” Thus, it appears that the origin of the poem was an imagined social visit paid by an Oxford undergraduate, perhaps a “sophomore,” to some eminent scholar (possibly Tolkien himself?), and the trepidation the young fellow must feel standing on the doorstep of such a revered person. Perhaps it is a memory of such a visit paid by Tolkien himself to someone like Joseph Wright in his own undergraduate days. The “gorcrows” were probably simple crows, cawing in the trees around the visitor, and one might even guess that the “Mewlips” may have been the scholar’s cats, creeping around the shadows of the house and making the visitor nervous. It is typical of Tolkien to

Adventures of Tom Bombadil, The   29 have scrapped the initial context of this poem and ultimately to have incorporated it into his larger mythology of Middle-earth. The poem consists of eight stanzas of four lines each, and it is divided into two sections, each of which is introduced by three ballad-like stanzas of alternating tetrameter and trimeter lines rhyming abab, followed by a stanza of four hexameter lines rhyming aabb. The three shorter stanzas in each section describe the house and the Mewlips themselves, while the longer stanzas describe the road to the Mewlips’ dwelling. The first section focuses chiefly on the house itself and the visitor’s trepidation, while the second centers on the Mewlips’ response to their visitors and the visitor’s final destruction.

“Oliphaunt” Synopsis The animal itself is the narrator of this brief poem: He tells us he is grey, is big as a house, has horns, and tramples trees. He lives in the south and lives for long years. He never lies down, even to die. He is the largest of all animals, and those who have seen him can never forget him, though he will seem like a myth to those who have not. Commentary This bestiary-like poem is well-known to readers of The Two Towers, where it is recited by Sam and said to be a traditional poem of the Shire. Tolkien reiterates this information in the pseudo-scholarly preface to The Adventures of Tom Bombadil. Tolkien had written the poem by 1944, since he mentions it in a letter to Christopher Tolkien dated April 30 of that year. Quoting the entire poem, he tells Christopher that he has reached the point in the narrative of The Lord of the Rings at which “Sam has gratified a life-long wish to see an Oliphaunt, an animal about which there was a hobbit nursery rhyme (though it was commonly supposed to be mythical).  .  .  . I hope that has something of the ‘nursery rhyme’ flavour” (Letters 77). In fact, the poem is not much like a nursery rhyme. It is 22 lines in dimeter couplets (not a typical nursery rhyme verse form) and rather has the

flavor of one of the riddles exchanged by Bilbo and Gollum in The Hobbit: Grey as a mouse, Big as a house, Nose like a snake, I make the earth shake, (47)

This sounds a good deal like Gollum’s riddle: Alive without breath, As cold as death; Never thirsty, ever drinking, All in mail never clinking. (Tolkien, The Hobbit   83)

Thus, as with the riddles of The Hobbit, the ultimate source of the kind of poetry represented by “Oliphaunt” is the Old English riddle tradition. Similarly, the word Oliphaunt itself is a medieval version of the modern elephant, used most prominently in the well-known Old French epic The Song of Roland, in which the ivory horn blown by Roland’s comrade Oliver is referred to throughout as the “oliphaunt.” In Tolkien’s mythological world, the hobbit term oliphaunt is used for the animal called the mûmak by men. These great beasts, much larger than modern elephants, inhabit the lands of the Haradrim (in the South, as the poem states) and are used by warriors of that realm in their siege of Minas Tirith in The Return of the King. Most hobbits have considered the oliphaunt a mythical being, but Sam has always wanted to see one, and he recites this poem just before he gets his first glimpse of one in The Two Towers (254–255). It should be noted that, once again, Tolkien has paired two consecutive poems in this collection: Both “The Mewlips” and “Oliphaunt” describe beasts of Middle-earth thought by hobbits to be mythical. In the case of the Mewlips, they are probably correct. As for the oliphaunt, it is a beast that truly exists.

“Fastitocalon” Synopsis The poem’s speaker, apparently a sea traveler, describes the island of Fastitocalon. It seems a good place to land, though it is bare of vegetation and

30   Adventures of Tom Bombadil, The only a few seagulls are sitting there. They do not sink, the narrator says, but their job is to wink at those who stop to rest briefly on the island. In fact, those who stop there to light a fire are foolish, for although he (the island) seems to be asleep, he will dive into the water when he feels anyone walking on his great shell, drowning them in the process. Fastitocalon is the most dangerous monster in the sea. He is the last of the great turtle-fish. To save your life, therefore, do not set foot on uncharted islands. Better still, do not leave the land! Commentary Writing under the pseudonym of “Fisiologus,” Tolkien published “Adventures in Unnatural History and Medieval Metres, being the Freaks of Fisiologus” (which later became the poem “Fastitocalon”) in the Stapeldon Magazine in 1927. The idea of the poem had been suggested to Tolkien by the Old English poem “The Whale,” which survives with two other poems (“The Panther” and “The Partridge”) in the famous manuscript called The Exeter Book (“The Whale” 171–174) as part of an Anglo-Saxon version of the Latin Physiologus, or bestiary (hence Tolkien’s adopted pen name for the original publication). In a letter of March 5, 1964, to a reader named Eileen Elgar, Tolkien explains the Greek origin of the name Fastitocalon: The learned name in this case seems to have been Aspido-chelo¯ne ‘turtle with a round shield (of hide)’. of that astitocalon is a corruption no worse than many of the time; but I am afraid the F was put on by the versifier simply to make the name alliterate, as was compulsory for poets of his day, with the other words in his line. (Letters 343)

The lines in question (ll. 6–7) read “þam is noma cenned / fyrnstreama geflotan, Fastitocalon” (“The Whale” 171), which Tolkien translates “to him is a name appointed, to the floater in the ancient tides, Fastitocalon” (Letters 343). He says that he chose the name simply because “it sounded comic and absurd enough to serve as a hobbit alteration of something more learned and elvish” (343). Tolkien goes on to tell Mrs. Elgar that the Anglo-Saxon poet had altered the monster’s

description to make it more whale-like, and to present it as an allegory of the devil, but he insists that, because of the meaning of the original Greek, the name originally referred to a giant turtle (344). Thus, the monster of Tolkien’s poem has a hard shell, the better to be mistaken for an island by unwary travelers. The form of the poem is complex. It consists of two divisions, the first of which (in 15 lines) introduces the island of Fastitocalon, while the longer second part (in 29 lines) reveals the true nature of the beast and warns travelers to avoid such “islands.” The lines within these sections sometimes group themselves into patterns of six lines rhyming aabccb, with two tetrameter lines followed by a trimeter line, or into quatrains rhyming abba, where the a lines are trimeter and the b lines tetrameter. Interspersed are short dimeter, or even monometer, lines, but there is no overall metrical pattern to the poem. What seems consistent is that the brief lines, such as “Beware” and “Be wise!,” clearly mark transitional points in the poem (222–223). It is conceivable that Tolkien chose the verse form, in which patterns seem to emerge but nothing is clear, in order to reflect the nature of Fastitocalon, whose shape and true essence are never completely definite.

“Cat” Synopsis The pet cat sleeping peacefully may give the impression that all he needs is cream and the occasional mouse. But he may very well be dreaming about his forebears, the ferocious hunting cats of the East who, lionlike, feasted on great beasts and on human beings. Though these relatives of his now roam wild far away, and he is tame, he still remembers his fierce roots. Commentary One of the newer poems in the collection, “Cat” was, according to Humphrey Carpenter, written in 1956 for Tolkien’s granddaughter Joan Anne (Carpenter 244). But the poem is more than a nonsense piece for children. It raises interesting questions about animal psychology and what might be called

Adventures of Tom Bombadil, The   31 the “collective unconscious” of domesticated animals, and whether the fire of their free ancestors still moves within them. The poem is made up of 27 lines, mainly in quatrains rhyming abcb with alternating trimeter and dimeter lines, until the final seven lines, which begin with an unrhymed line that breaks off—“where woods loom in gloom” (225)—and then finish with two tercets rhyming aaabbb. But the poem also uses triple internal rhyme (in a line like “The fat cat on the mat”) or sometimes triple assonances (as in the line “The giant lion with iron”) in the longer lines, and either internal rhyme (“may seem to dream”), assonance (“walks in thought”), or alliteration (“or deep in den”) (224) in the shorter lines. Such a variety of sound play must have delighted Tolkien’s nine-year-old granddaughter. Finally, the rhyming final tercet gives the poem a solid sense of closure and makes the last lines—“kept as a pet, / he does not forget” (225)— quite memorable and even ominous.

“Shadow-Bride” Synopsis A man lives alone and sits perpetually still like a statue, but he casts no shadow. Even the owls who perch on him under the June stars believe he is dead. A lady in grey comes by and stops for a moment to braid flowers into her hair, at which point the man awakens and holds her to him closely, so that he is wrapped in her shadow. However, the lady will not dwell there. She lives deep in the caverns of the earth, but once a year, when the hidden things of the earth awaken, she rises and dances with the man, and they cast a single shadow. Commentary This is a short poem of three six-line stanzas rhyming ababcdcd, in alternating tetrameter and trimeter lines. Tolkien had used the same verse form earlier in this collection in “Perry-the-Winkle,” and it is one of the simpler forms that he used. In his preface, he claims that the poem was one of those scribbled in the margins of the Red Book of Westmarch and therefore was a poem of the Shire, perhaps one that reflected some bit of hobbit folklore

(169). The poem was reportedly originally written in the 1930s and published in a magazine called the Abington Chronicle, although I know of no scholar who has verified that report. The poem has some of the eeriness of “The Mewlips,” though it is less frightening than unsettling. It seems the man is under some sort of spell and comes alive only when the lady visits, and she seems to come out only in June, perhaps at Midsummer’s Eve. Pagan Midsummer Eve celebrations were popular in northern Europe in the earlier Middle Ages as a way of marking the summer solstice—and Tolkien refers to the traditional part of the Shire calendar called the lithe or Midyear’s Day holidays (The Return of the King 384). Among the traditions associated with the celebration in Scandinavia was the lighting of bonfires to keep away witches, evil spirits, and other supernatural beings believed to roam the night at that time. Dancing was also a part of traditional pagan rituals, which were associated with fertility festivals. These motifs seem to be behind Tolkien’s poem. The man, enchanted by the spell of some witch or fairy, awakens from his enchantment only on Midsummer’s Eve, when the barrier between our world and the fairy world breaks down and his fairy mistress rises. The detail of the shadow is curious. The man’s lack of shadow seems to be a part of his spell, though it, too, may be associated with midsummer, when the sun is highest and at noon would cast the shortest shadow of the year. A lack of shadow seems associated here with a lack of consciousness or substance, since a true body needs to exist for it to cast a shadow. Only when the man dances with his fairy lover does he indeed have a shadow—but it is hers. His true substance, it seems, comes only from her.

“The Hoard” Synopsis There is a time, before dwarves or dragons existed, when the world is filled with silver and gold, and the elves fashion many fair objects from these precious metals, until in their greed some pile the wealth into deep holes, and a shadow falls on Elvenhome.

32   Adventures of Tom Bombadil, The An old dwarf lives in a cave and forges coins and rings on his anvil and hopes to wield kingly power through his wealth. But he grows old and dim, and is destroyed by a dragon. Eventually, an old dragon guards the treasure, his belly crusted with gems from lying on the hoard, and he broods, thinking only of thieves who might rob him of his wealth. A young warrior comes into his hoard and kills him. Finally, an old king sits on his throne, devoid of all joy but thinking only of his treasure locked in his underground vault. His glory is no more, and he has lost his subjects’ love. He does not notice the invading army that burns his halls. Now the hoard lies behind iron doors in the underground vault, buried under a green hill on which the sheep graze. It will wait there while the elves sleep. Commentary With this poem, the tone of the collection definitely takes a more serious turn. Tolkien acknowledged this in a letter he wrote to his illustrator, Pauline Gasch, on December 6, 1961, calling the poems in the new book “light-hearted . . . but not very profound in intention” until one reaches “The Hoard,” which is certainly not lighthearted, even though “the woes of the successive (nameless) inheritors are seen merely as pictures in a tapestry of antiquity and do not deeply engage individual pity” (Letters 312). He goes on to mention that the poem had originally been inspired by a single line of Beowulf (l. 3,052), which he quotes as iúmonna gold galdre bwewunden and translates as “the gold of men of long ago enmeshed in enchantment” (312). In fact, the poem had initially been published The Gryphon magazine in January 1923, and reprinted in revised form in the Oxford Magazine in 1937, with that line of Beowulf as its title. The poem is divided into five verse paragraphs made up of tetrameter couplets and in lengths varying from 16 lines in the first two sections to 20 in the third, to 16 in the fourth section and eight in the final. All of the sections deal with the corrupting influence of greed on a successive number of owners of the treasure hoard. The elves assemble the hoard first, and when they are destroyed, it falls to a greedy dwarf, who grows

old and never hears the dragon that comes and destroys him for his treasure. The dragon, too, grows old, and it never hears the approach of the young knight, who grows into an old, greedy king and never hears the army that comes to destroy him. The hoard is left in the end without an owner, although the last line mentions the sleeping elves, with the possible implication that when they awaken, they will once more find the treasure and the cycle will begin all over again. The treasure seems never to truly belong to anyone—a truth that Tolkien would have found expressed at some length in Boethius’s Consolation of Philosophy, one of the most influential books of the Middle Ages and one with which Tolkien was quite familiar. Treasure is only a temporary happiness because, like all the gifts of Fortune, it is a thing of the earth and not of eternity. Certainly the poem is evidence of Tolkien’s early interest in the legends of treasure-guarding dragons like Fafnir, demonstrated most recently by the publication of The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún. It was a legend he would return to in The Hobbit, of course, but the theme of the destructiveness of greed is one that runs throughout Tolkien’s major works, from the revolt of the Noldor in The Silmarillion to the obsession with Rings of Power in The Lord of the Rings. And it was a theme that Tolkien clearly saw as important to Old English poetry, most notably Beowulf. He makes that connection clear in his verse form, for despite the rhymes, he mentions in the above quoted letter to Pauline Gasch that the poem is “written in [a] mode rather resembling the oldest English verse” (Letters 312). By this he is referring to both the rhythm of the lines—each has four strong accents, two on each side of a pause or caesura—and the use of alliteration in most of the lines. For example, in the third and fourth lines, in the green grass they silver spilled, and the white waters they with gold filled. (228)

there is a clear pause after “grass” and after “waters,” and there is a strong alliteration in the stressed syllables green grass, silver spilled, and white waters. Of all the poems in The Adventures of Tom Bombadil, “The Hoard” is most clearly inspired by Tolkien’s love of Anglo-Saxon.

Adventures of Tom Bombadil, The   33

“The Sea Bell” Synopsis The speaker of the poem finds a white seashell on the shore, which looks like a “sea-bell.” As he puts it to his ear and hears the sounds of the sea and of distant lands, a boat appears suddenly, and he leaps into it, crying, “Bear me away!” He is taken to a forgotten land, somewhere beyond the known lands, and finds a kind of earthly paradise, filled with precious gems and stones, with running water, green meadows, and flowers like fallen stars. He also hears the sounds of distant music, laughter, and dancing, but when he tries to force his way into the company of the dancing folk, they disappear. In a kind of desperate act of arrogance, the speaker makes himself a mantle of leaves and a crown of flowers, and he stands on a hill declaring himself king of the realm, ordering the people to come forth and answer to him. But a dark cloud comes over him, and he is cast down and must wander like a beast in the woods, out of his wits, for a year and a day. Ultimately, the spell is lifted, but he finds himself grown old. He makes his way to the sea again, through darkness and cold, and finds the boat still waiting for him. He returns to his own land, where he finds he is still clutching sand and bits of shell from the far land. But even in his own country, all houses are shut against him, and he is isolated, and as the poem ends, the speaker laments that “still they speak not, men that I meet” (237). Commentary W. H. Auden applauded “The Sea Bell” as Tolkien’s best poem, calling it “wonderful” in a letter to the author in 1967, in response to which Tolkien told Auden that the poet’s praise “made me wag my tale” (Letters 379). Interestingly, in his letter to Pauline Gasch in December 1961, he had written that he thought “The Sea Bell” was “the poorest, and not one that I [should] really wish to include” (312). He had published the original version of the poem in the Oxford Magazine in 1934, where he had entitled it “Looney,” a term describing the poem’s protagonist, for in that earlier version, the poem begins with a question posed to the

speaker: “Where have you been; what have you seen / Walking in rags down the street?” (qtd. in Shippey, J. R. R. Tolkien 281). As Tom Shippey points out, Tolkien revised the poem extensively, leaving out the initial question, doubling its length, and perhaps most important, making the speaker’s expulsion from the land a kind of punishment for his hubris by adding the section in which he names himself king (Shippey, Road 284). The poem owes something to Old English “elegiac” poems such as The Wanderer and The Seafarer, whose elegiac mood comes from the speaker’s isolation from all those around him because of his earlier loss of his lord and kindred. But it resembles even more closely later medieval tales of those who have visited the land of Faërie and can no longer relate to the “real” world. The Arthurian legend of Lanval comes to mind, although in that work, Lanval is welcomed into fairyland but, rejecting Arthur’s court, returns to the world of his fairy mistress. The Middle English poem of Sir Orfeo also may have influenced the poem, since the protagonist of Sir Orfeo wanders like a wild man in the woods after his wife is stolen by fairies, and he comes upon fairy folk who flee from him, although he ultimately returns safely to society. In Tolkien’s own Smith of Wootton Major, the protagonist visits Faërie on numerous occasions, is consistently isolated from the inhabitants, and ultimately is forbidden to return. Thematically, then, the poem relates to a number of Tolkien’s scholarly interests as well as his literary productions. The theme of alienation also links this poem to several others in the collection, including such apparently lighter poems as “The Man in the Moon Arrived Too Soon,” “Perry-theWinkle,” and “Shadow-Bride.” But Tolkien himself makes a connection between the poem and The Lord of the Rings by claiming, in the pseudoscholarly preface, that the verses are of hobbit origin and that a hand in the manuscript has written “Frodos Dreme” next to the poem. The narrator dismisses any suggestion that the poem was actually composed by Frodo, but says that “it was associated with the dark and despairing dreams which visited him in March and October during his last three years” (173). This may, of course, simply be a

34   Adventures of Tom Bombadil, The way of linking the new collection with its author’s recent popular publication. Or it may be a brief commentary on the sorts of dreams that Frodo may have been suffering through during the uncomfortable years after his return to his everyday life in the Shire, where, like the poem’s protagonist, he can never feel comfortable again. But the suggestion also affects the way readers approach the poem: If it is a dream, then it becomes a dream vision, like the Old English Dream of the Rood, in which a significant message is encoded for the dreamer and, at the same time, for the reader. In fact, the poem fits more strictly into Tolkien’s definition of the “fairy-story,” but without the eucatastrophe (the sudden happy reversal) that characterizes the end of such tales, according to his famous lecture “On Fairy-Stories.” Tolkien employs the same verse form here that he had used in “The Man in the Moon Came Down Too Soon,” composing collections of tetrameter quatrains that rhyme abcb, and use internal rhyme in the first and third lines of each quatrain.

“The Last Ship” Synopsis Just before dawn, as a cock is crowing, Fíriel looks out and sees a glimmering light. In her bare feet, she descends her stair and walks out into the dewy grass. The dew clings to her gown like jewels as she rushes down to the river with her hair flowing free behind her. She hears the sound of music and then sees a ship of gold and white, rowed by elves in silver garments and drawn by swans. She asks where the elves are going—is it to cold northern isles? They answer that they are going back to Elvenhome, the Undying Lands over the western seas. They are leaving Middle-earth forever, the place where “grass fades and leaves fall” (241). But the elves stay their oars momentarily. They tell Fíriel that they can take one more passenger. If Fíriel wishes to leave the fading earth, she can come with them—if she does so now, for this is their “last call” (241). Fíriel takes one step toward them, but then stops. She lets the boat drift by and calls that she cannot come, for she was born “Earth’s daughter” (241).

Her gown no longer glistens like jewels, and she walks back to the shadow of the house, where she puts on a brown smock, braids her long hair, and begins her work. The sunlight fades. Over the long years, no more elven ships have sailed, and the song of the elves has faded as well. Commentary An early version of this poem, called “Firiel,” was published in 1934 in The Chronicle, Convent of the Sacred Heart, produced by the convent at Roehampton, London. Perhaps knowing he was writing for a mostly female audience for that periodical influenced Tolkien’s choice of a young woman as the protagonist of his poem. In his adaptation of the poem for The Adventures of Tom Bombadil 27 years later, he gave it a darker tone than it had originally shown. Tom Shippey has considered Tolkien’s changes from the original poem, which depicts Firiel (as she is called in the 1934 version) taking one step before her resolve fails, after which she goes back into the house to breakfast amid the chatter of her family. The early poem ends with the line “please, pass the honey.” The later poem, of course, has no such closure but instead ends with the sunlight fading and the song of the elves dying away. As Shippey concludes: In “The Last Ship” the sense of loss, and of death, is very much stronger than in “Firiel,” and is presented as an inevitable loss. Fíriel is made of “clay,” like all children of Adam, she is “Earth’s daughter,” and this is the fate she has to accept—indeed her name, we are told in the 1962 mock-editorial “Preface,” simply means “mortal maiden.” Hers is an “anti-fairy story,” about the “Escape from Death” rejected. (Shippey, J. R. R. Tolkien 280–81)

Shippey is referring to Tolkien’s essay “On FairyStories,” wherein he asserts that, along with “recovery,” “fantasy,” and “consolation,” one of the major things fairy stories have to offer readers is “escape,” specifically escape from the mundane, the dismal, and the limitations of our humanity—including the greatest of all limitations, death. In the poem, Fíriel rejects her chance to escape. The crowing cock heralding the dawn of a new day, her bejeweled gown,

“Ancrene Wisse and Hali Meiðhad”   35 her hair flowing free, all suggest the idea of escape and new life in the poem’s early lines. In the end, she wears a colorless brown smock and braids her hair, accepting the constrictions of her earthbound life. The poem is certainly elegiac in the sense in which Tolkien uses the term in his essay on “Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics,” wherein he sees the poem as an elegy of the pagan past. In “The Last Ship,” the elvish past of Tolkien’s mythology is evoked, the time of interaction between our world and the world of Faërie, as a time of light and music—a time that is no more, as our mundane world in the shadows of Middle-earth is all we have left. Like Fíriel, we are children of the earth. The poem is made up of 13 eight-line stanzas, rhyming ababcdcd, in alternating tetrameter and trimeter lines. Curiously, Tolkien makes all of the b and d rhymes (in the trimeter lines) feminine (that is, the rhyming stressed syllables are followed by identical unstressed syllables). The fact that each stanza ends on a falling note—the unstressed rhymes—adds to an atmosphere of uncertainty or unsettledness, two qualities of the life Fíriel has chosen—or resigned herself to. Further Reading Carpenter, Humphrey. Tolkien: A Biography. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1977. Hargrove, Gene. “Who is Tom Bombadil?” Mythlore 47 (Autumn 1986): 20–24. Jensen, Klaus, and Ruaridh MacDonald. “On Tom Bombadil: the Function of Tom Bombadil.” Mallorn: The Journal of the Tolkien Society 44 (August 2006): 37–42. “Mon in the mone.” In Middle English Lyrics, edited by Maxwell S. Luria and Richard L. Hoffman, 131– 132. New York: Norton, 1974. Shippey, Tom. J. R. R. Tolkien: Author of the Century. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2000. ———. The Road to Middle-Earth: How J. R. R. Tolkien Created a New Mythology. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2003. Tolkien, J. R. R. The Adventures of Tom Bombadil. London: George Allen & Unwin, 1962. ———. The Adventures of Tom Bombadil. In Tales from the Perilous Realm. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2008, 167–242.

———. “Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics.” In The Monsters and the Critics and Other Essays, edited by Christopher Tolkien, 5–48. G. Allen & Unwin, 1983. ———. The Fellowship of the Ring. 2nd ed. London: G. Allen & Unwin, 1967. ———. The Hobbit. Rev. ed. New York: Ballantine, 1965. ———. The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien. Edited by Humphrey Carpenter. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1995. ———. “On Fairy-Stories.” In Tales from the Perilous Realm. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2008, 315–400. ———. The Return of the King. 2nd ed. London: G. Allen & Unwin, 1967. ———. The Treason of Isengard. Vol. 3 of The History of Middle-earth. Edited by Christopher Tolkien. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1989. ———. The Two Towers. 2nd ed. London: G. Allen & Unwin, 1967. “The Whale.” In The Exeter Book, edited by George Philip Krapp and Elliott Van Kirk Dobbie, 171– 174. Anglo Saxon Poetic Records, vol. 3. New York: Columbia University Press; London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1936.

“Ancrene Wisse and Hali Meiðhad”  (1929) The essay “Ancrene Wisse and Hali Meiðhad,” despite its unassuming title, is probably Tolkien’s most important scholarly article, with the exceptions of the well-known “Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics” and “On Fairy-Stories.” In it, Tolkien compares the language of the Corpus Christi MS. Cambridge 402, called the A manuscript of the Ancrene Wisse, with that of the Oxford manuscript Bodley 34 (called manuscript B), containing the complete compilation of what is now called the Katherine group: the saints’ legends of Katherine, Juliene, and Margaret and the homilies Sawles Warde and Hali Meiðhad. Shortly after publishing this article, Tolkien intended to undertake the production of an edition of the Ancrene Wisse for the Early English Text Society (finally published in

36   “Ancrene Wisse and Hali Meiðhad” 1962). He was to continue working on MS. Bodley 34 for decades with his student, friend, and collaborator S. R. T. O. d’Ardenne, whose edition of the Life of Saint Juliene was essentially cowritten by Tolkien, and whose edition of the Bodley manuscript from 1977 had begun as a collaboration with Tolkien. Tolkien’s observations about the language of the two manuscripts colors both his and d’Ardenne’s editions of the texts, and they influenced scholarship on the texts for many years. Tom Shippey has called this article “the most perfect though not the best known of [Tolkien’s] academic pieces” (39). Synopsis Tolkien’s chief argument in this essay is that the A and B manuscripts, though clearly written in two different hands, were both written in the same standardized dialect. He begins by looking at manuscript A, asserting that, unlike manuscripts produced by scribes in other parts of England, its language is self-consistent with remarkably regular phonology and grammatical inflections. The language of this manuscript, he suggests, has developed very regularly from Old English. Further, he goes on to argue, the language of A is identical to the language of manuscript B, and he calls this single language AB. Tolkien compares the regularity of usage and spelling in these two texts to modern printed books. He proposes that the two manuscripts were produced in virtually the same time and place, a circumstance that, he says, “suggests obedience to some school or authority” (109). Because of the unlikelihood of Middle ­English scribes transcribing or translating from different dialects in such a regularized manner, Tolkien suggests that the original versions of the Ancrene Wisse and the texts of the B manuscript were produced in the AB language as well. To a linguist, therefore, the two manuscripts are “virtually originals” (112). Tolkien speculates further that the two manuscripts are not more than a decade or so apart in their composition, and that they both belong to the same fairly small geographical area, probably Herefordshire, since both manuscripts were associated with that area and it is unlikely that, had they been

produced somewhere else, they would both have coincidentally ended up in Herefordshire. In the second part of the essay, Tolkien marshals the strongest evidence for his argument. Essentially, the evidence has to do with the fact that both A and B keep a very regular distinction between Old English weak verbs, so that some verbs (such as to hear) had an –eth ending in the third-person singular and an –ath ending in the third-person plural, while others (to look, for example) used –ath in the singular but –iath in the plural. The AB manuscripts even add something to the Old English paradigm preserved in these inflections by distinguishing another type of verb, illustrated by the verb fondin, which is –eth in the singular and –ith in the plural. In fact, Tolkien notes more than 8,800 instances of such verbal inflections, with only six exceptions to the pattern for every 1,000 occurrences. The regularity of these forms in the two manuscripts is undeniable. This conjugation keeps an Old English inflection that was dropped soon after the Norman Conquest in most parts of England and does not appear with such consistency in other manuscripts, therefore arguing for a distinctive and sophisticated standard literary language in this particular part of England in the early 13th century (the date of the production of these manuscripts)—characteristics that suggest a school or community. The AB language, conservative in spelling and grammar and preserving some archaic vocabulary and alliterative style, suggests, as well, a continuity rather than a broken tradition of English literary language after the Norman Conquest. Commentary Michael D. C. Drout writes: “The identification of the AB language was one of the great triumphs of English philology of the twentieth century.  .  .  . It convinced everyone immediately when it appeared” (122). It was certainly Tolkien’s most influential work of sheer philological scholarship. Drout notes that subsequent scholars have further narrowed the provenance of the AB community to Wigmore Abbey in northwest Herefordshire, and dated the manuscripts to shortly after 1224, since the manuscripts mention Dominicans and Francis-

“Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics”   37 cans, who did not arrive in England until after that date. Later scholars have also connected the group of texts known as the “Wooing Group” to the AB school of the early 13th century. Although other scholars have challenged some of Tolkien’s specific points, the general consensus of scholars remains in agreement with his conception of a conservative standardized written West Midland dialect well after 1066 (Drout 122). Further Reading Drout, Michael D. C. “J. R. R. Tolkien’s Medieval Scholarship and Its Significance.” Tolkien Studies: An Annual Scholarly Review 4 (2007): 113–176. Shippey, Tom. The Road to Middle-Earth: How J. R. R. Tolkien Created a New Mythology. Rev. ed. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2003. Tolkien, J. R. R. “Ancrene Wisse and Hali Meiðhad.” Essays and Studies 14 (1929): 104–126.

“Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics”  (1936) Tolkien’s best-known and most influential scholarly publication, “Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics” was originally presented as the Sir Israel Gollancz Memorial Lecture at the British Academy on November 25, 1936, and was published the following year in Proceedings of the British Academy. Tolkien’s lecture changed the way scholars looked at the epic poem Beowulf, and it is still acknowledged today as the most important single critical text ever published on the poem. Tolkien already held Oxford’s prestigious Rawlinson and Bosworth Chair of Anglo-Saxon Studies, but it was the publication of his Beowulf lecture that cemented his scholarly reputation. His essay marked a turning point in criticism of the poem: After Tolkien, scholars would focus on the poem’s central concerns, rather than on what might be learned of history, language, or archeology from its study. The essay as originally published (as Michael Drout has shown) was a compilation and culmination of a series of lectures Tolkien had given at Oxford in the 1930s, in which he worked through

his ideas about Beowulf. In part, Tolkien’s stance in this lecture was influenced by the environment among the English faculty of 1930s Oxford, among whom there was a rift between the philologists and the literature scholars. The philologists, including Tolkien, were those whose chief interest was the study of the history and development of the English language, and who did not believe in any need for university courses in English writers after Chaucer. The literature faculty, which included Tolkien’s friend C. S. Lewis, urged the literary study of writers like Shakespeare and Milton, who wrote in modern English. Tolkien was active in trying to bridge this gap between the two factions, and his essay on Beowulf is a piece by a philologist insisting that the major text of the Old English period be read as literature, not as a vehicle for language study. This influential essay has been reprinted many times. In the following, citations are to the edition published by Christopher Tolkien in the anthology The Monsters and the Critics and Other Essays (1983), since that is probably the most readily available version. Synopsis Tolkien begins with the contention that critics of Beowulf have been much more interested in unimportant things than in the poem as a work of art. He proposes to consider the monsters (Grendel and the Dragon) and their role in the structure of the poem. Tolkien first disagrees with critics who see Beowulf chiefly as a historical document. History is not literary criticism, and to suggest reading Beowulf this way is to imply that it has no literary merit, which Tolkien rejects. Most critics, Tolkien contends, have written in the belief that the poem was something it is not, and he lists “primitive, pagan, Teutonic, an allegory .  .  . an epic .  .  . a heathen heroic lay, a history of Sweden, a manual of Germanic antiquities, or a Nordic Summa Theologica” as among the numerous things that Beowulf is not (7). A few things that critics have begun to accept are, in fact, true, and this is where Tolkien begins: Beowulf is a poem that was written “by an Englishman using afresh ancient and largely

38   “Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics” t­ raditional material” (9). The question to ask is what the poet did with that material. To illustrate the current state of criticism, Tolkien develops an “allegory of the tower”: A man inherits some land on which are many old stones that at one time formed a great hall. Some of the stones have already been used to build the house the man is living in. From the others, he builds a high tower. When his friends come to visit, they see that the stones of the tower are old and once formed a great hall. They knock over the tower and begin examining the stones. Some even decide that there is coal underneath the tower, and begin to dig there. Even the man’s descendants agree that the tower was a “muddle.” But no one ever bothered to climb the tower, from the top of which the man could view the sea. As Tom Shippey interprets the allegory, the tower is, of course, Beowulf, and its builder is the Beowulf poet. The stones are the ancient heroic songs that the poet alludes to and borrows from. The house is the Christian poetry (like the Old English Exodus), patterned on the old oral poetry. The friends are earlier critics who value not the poem itself but the materials it is made of, while the descendants are more recent critics who wish the poet had written about something else (Shippey 162–163). Tolkien first takes on the eminent W. P. Ker (one of the “recent critics” just mentioned), whose influential comments on Beowulf in The Dark Ages (1904) had colored criticism of the poem for some 30 years. Ker had suggested that, while the poem had a certain dignity of style, it had a trite story and weak structure, and it focused on irrelevant things while relegating the really important themes to the background. Another prominent Beowulf scholar, Ker’s disciple R. W. Chambers, had repeated similar criticisms in his “Beowulf and the Heroic Age in England” (1925), where he had implied that the main plot of Beowulf is nothing but a “wild folk tale” about monsters (12). All readers must sense, Tolkien argues, that the Beowulf poet was a serious person of enormous intellect. Why should such a person write more than 3,000 lines on something he considered trivial? It is more logical to assume that the poet did what he did by design. Clearly, what is at the center

of his poem should be taken seriously. The monsters, Tolkien insists, are central to the theme and structure of the poem. dragons, he says, are quite rare in northern literature, and he cites, apart from this one in Beowulf, only Fafnir, the great dragon slain by Sigurd, most revered of all the northern warriors, hero of the Völsunga Saga and the Elder Edda (i.e., the Poetic Edda), and alluded to in Beowulf. Thus, a dragon like Fafnir, whose slaying was the greatest feat in all of northern heroic legend, cries out to be taken seriously. All critics agree that the poetry of Beowulf has a profound dignity, and Tolkien attributes this specifically to the poem’s theme—that Beowulf and all men like him, and all of their works, are doomed to die. And this theme is directly related to the monsters. The poem’s “dignity,” as Tolkien sees it, is the result of its author—a Christian poet—looking back on a pagan past. Thus, the poem is not, as some scholars had seen it, a record of its own times, but rather an elegy of the pagan past. The poet, writing in the time of Bede (the late seventh or early eighth century), saw himself as an antiquarian and used deliberately archaic language as well as the countless allusions to the pre-Christian pagan warrior society to give his story an inner consistency. For the Christian poet, the use of Old Testament imagery (Grendel as the descendant of Cain; the Danes returning like the Israelites to the worship of idols in times of distress) helped to create this pre-Christian atmosphere as well. What the Beowulf poet does so well, Tolkien asserts, is focus on the pagan warrior culture and myth, which Tolkien assumes must have been similar in England to its expression in Old Norse Icelandic texts. He calls it the “theory of courage, which is the great contribution of early Northern literature” (20). In this, the only redemption or immortality for humankind was the praise of the poet. Courage in that culture, where even the gods are doomed, meant courage in a losing cause. It meant a will to fight on when all hope was lost. It meant that the real battle was the battle against the monsters—the embodiments of darkness and chaos and the forces of ultimate doom against which human struggle is futile. Beowulf’s monsters are not trivial child’s play but the manifestation of ultimate enmity.

“Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics”   39 Beowulf is not an epic at all, Tolkien argues. Rather, it is what he calls a “heroic-elegaic poem” dealing with the darkness of antiquity. Further, the poem is not intended to be a straightforward biography of Beowulf, or to have a coherent story arc from beginning to end. The poem is more like masonry than music, Tolkien suggests. Like the Old English poetic line, divided into two halflines of unequal length, balancing one another, the poem itself is divided into two parts: the young, unproven Beowulf’s adventures among the Danes and his battles with Grendel and his mother; and the old, famous Beowulf’s fight with the dragon as king of the Geats. In keeping with the elegiac theme, Beowulf’s heroic rise is balanced by his inevitable death. Finally, Tolkien denies the contention of some previous scholars that Beowulf is a “primitive” poem. Rather, he says, it is a late poem whose creator sought to preserve the pagan materials from which it was made before they passed completely out of memory, but sought to use them in a new way, treating them poignantly because their time had passed. The poetry of Beowulf’s funeral dirge, Tolkien says, is hopeless and far off—“an echo of an echo” (33). He insists that the poem is a powerful piece of art, written in a language still in some way connected with our own. After the conclusion of the essay, Tolkien includes four appendices, in which he considers first Grendel’s Titles (the words used to describe Grendel); then the words Lof and Dom as well as Hell and Heofon; and finally looks specifically at lines 175–188, where he thinks a passage from the original poem has been altered. In these appendices, Tolkien’s own philological interests are paramount, rather than the kind of literary approach that the essay itself has advocated. Commentary There is little to add to Tolkien’s argument. The importance of this essay is underscored by the number of times it has been published. It was reprinted separately by Oxford and other publishers at least seven times through 1978, and it has been included in Lewis E. Nicholson’s An Anthology of Beowulf Criticism (1963), Donald K. Fry’s The Beowulf Poet

(1968), Joseph Tuso’s Norton Critical Edition (1975; an abridged version), Harold Bloom’s Beowulf: Modern Critical Interpretations (1987), as well as Christopher Tolkien’s anthology The Monsters and the Critics and Other Essays. This is not to say that Tolkien’s essay has not been challenged on any of its points. Tolkien’s most notorious point of controversy is his dating of the poem to “the time of Bede.” In fact, Beowulf’s date has been one of the most hotly debated topics surrounding it, and Tolkien provides no particular reason for his assumption that the poem was composed in the late seventh or early eighth century. Scholars, reckoning the death of Beowulf’s King Hygelac in the year 521 (as recorded by the early medieval historian Gregory of Tours), place Beowulf’s action in the early sixth century. Like most of his predecessors, Tolkien was assuming an early date for the poem’s composition, perhaps as early as the late seventh century, the golden age of Northumbria that produced the scholarly Bede, generally recognized as the most learned man of his time in all of Europe. But other scholars suggested a late eighth-century date, coinciding with the reign of the powerful and influential king Offa of Mercia. More recent scholars, however, have proposed a later date, close to the date of the manuscript (around 1000 c.e.), and they argue, like Tolkien, that the language of the text is deliberately archaic. Many modern scholars wish that Tolkien had given his reasons for believing in the earlier date. Another point of controversy in Tolkien’s text is his assertion that the poem has a two-part structure, with the dragon fight of the old Beowulf balancing and contrasting the monster fight of the young Beowulf. Tolkien’s former tutor Kenneth Sisam differed from Tolkien on a number of points and argued that the two-part structure of the poem, balancing youth versus age, was unconvincing, since the young Beowulf is completely confident and the old Beowulf seems just as capable of fighting dragons as he would have been at any earlier time. Other theories have been suggested, notably by Alvin A. Lee, who describes a structure of “elegy within elegy” for the poem, with the inner elegy of the failure of heroic society within the foregrounded elegy of Beowulf’s own heroic exploits;

40   “Bilbo’s Last Song (At the Grey Havens)”  and by John Leyerle, who describes an “interlacing” structure, in which the story of the Frisians parallels and intertwines with that of Beowulf himself in the poem. Another aspect of Tolkien’s essay that critics have commented on is his view of just how the Christian poet establishes his conception of past time, of the “past within the past.” Fred C. Robinson argues that the Beowulf poet achieves this effect of two related but temporally separate cultural moments specifically through language, through the changing sense of words whose meanings have shifted from pagan to Christian times. Such disagreements are to be expected in scholarly discourse, particularly after more than 70 years. The scholarly discussion allows for, even encourages, differences of opinion. It should not be forgotten, however, that in this case it was Tolkien’s article that initiated the discussion in the first place. Further Reading Chambers, Raymond Wilson. “Beowulf and the Heroic Age in England.” In Beowulf, translated by Archibald Strong, London: Constable & Co., 1925. Drout, Michael D. C., ed. J. R. R. Tolkien’s Beowulf and the Critics. Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, 248. Tempe: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2002. Ker, W. P. The Dark Ages. London: Blackwood and Sons, 1904. Lee, Alvin A. The Guest-Hall of Eden: Four Essays on the Design of Old English Poetry. New Haven, Conn., and London: Yale University Press, 1972. Leyerle, John. “The Interlace Structure of Beowulf.” University of Toronto Quarterly 37 (October 1967): 1–17. Robinson, Fred C. Beowulf and the Appositive Style. Hodges Lectures. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1985. Shippey, Tom. J. R. R. Tolkien: Author of the Century. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2000. Sisam, Kenneth. The Structure of Beowulf. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1965. Tolkien, J. R. R. “Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics.” Proceedings of the British Academy 22 (1936): 245–295.

———. “Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics.” In The Monsters and the Critics and Other Essays, edited by Christopher Tolkien, 5–48. London: G. Allen & Unwin, 1983.

“Bilbo’s Last Song (At the Grey Havens)”  (1974) “Bilbo’s Last Song (At the Grey Havens)” is a short poem of 24 lines published posthumously, originally as a poster. The date of the poem’s original composition is difficult to pinpoint. Tolkien’s close friend and contact from his publisher Allen & Unwin, Joy Hill, found the manuscript of the poem among some of Tolkien’s books when she was helping him set up an office and library at his new house in Poole in 1968; it dropped out from between two books as she was carrying them. Tolkien later gave her the manuscript of the poem (along with its copyright) as a thank-you gift for all she had done for him. Hill first published the poem in the form of a poster and later showed it to Donald Swann, who had composed the music for the collection The Road Goes Ever On (1967). Swann set the piece to music and included it in the second edition of that collection in 1978. In 1990, Bilbo’s Last Song (At the Grey Havens) appeared as a small book for children, illustrated by Pauline Baynes and published by Knopf, who reissued it in 2002. Synopsis The poem is written in three eight-line stanzas rhyming aabbccdd. The lines are tetrameter, and most of them include some alliteration—“Day is ended, dim my eyes” (l. 1)—and sometimes assonance—“but islands lie behind the Sun” (l. 13). In the first stanza, the narrator speaks of the end of day and a long journey before him. He takes leave of his friends and prepares to take passage on a ship bound toward the sunset. In the second stanza, the sails are filled with wind from the east, and the narrator anticipates a long trip beneath the “ever-bending sky” (l. 12), where he expects to find islands somewhere behind the sun in a place where

“Chaucer as a Philologist: The Reeve’s Tale”   41 he can rest. In stanza 3, the narrator looks to be guided by the Lonely Star beyond the lands to the west, and he sets out to find the blessed beaches, fields and mountains in the “heavens fair and free” (l. 19). He bids a final farewell to Middle-earth as he sees the Lonely Star above his mast. Commentary It is certainly possible to read this poem metaphorically, and to see it as an older narrator anticipating his own death and looking forward to a journey to heaven. But anyone familiar with Tolkien’s work beyond The Lord of the Rings will recognize that this poem alludes in some detail to Tolkien’s notion of an undying land to the west, a land sacred to the elves that can only be reached on a ship that can sail the Lost Road—the road that travels straight beyond the bend of the horizon. Such a ship must be guided by the star of Eärendil, referred to (as is the Lost Road itself) in the final stanza. The same basic outline can be seen in a number of Tolkien’s earlier poems, including early published poems such as “The Happy Mariners” (1920), “The Lonely Isle” (1924), and “The Nameless Land” (1927). But there is no reason to believe that “Bilbo’s Last Song” is, in fact, that early. The details of the Lost Road and bent horizon have more in common with “Imram,” which was composed about 1945 and published 10 years later. This poem may have been composed about the same time as “Imram.” In other words, while the elegiac strain of farewell that pervades the poem may seem appropriate to Tolkien’s old age and his own imminent farewell to Middle-earth, there is no reason to believe that the poem was composed at any time close to 1968, when Joy Hill found it. Nor is there any particular reason to conclude that Tolkien originally intended the poem to be composed by Bilbo and sung at the Grey Havens when the old hobbit boards a ship for the West, along with the elves and with Frodo, at the end of The Return of the King. It is certainly appropriate for that occasion, but nothing in the poem suggests that the narrator is Bilbo, or a hobbit, or that the War of the Ring has just concluded. Tolkien may have originally composed the poem as one of his lyrics of longing for the elven isles that provided him fantasy and escape throughout

his life. He may have associated it with Bilbo as he was completing The Lord of the Rings, and perhaps intended to include it in the chapter on “The Grey Havens,” but he finally decided against doing so. Further Reading Tolkien, J. R. R. Bilbo’s Last Song (At the Grey Havens). London: George Allen & Unwin, 1974. ———. Bilbo’s Last Song (At the Grey Havens). Rev. ed. Illustrated by Pauline Baynes. New York: Knopf, 2002. ———. The Road Goes Ever On: A Song Cycle. Rev. ed. Music by Donald Swann. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1978.

“Chaucer as a Philologist: The Reeve’s Tale”  (1934) Tolkien seems to have been particularly fond of Chaucer’s “The Reeve’s Tale,” even going so far as to present, completely from memory, an abridged version of the tale in the person of Chaucer himself in a live performance at the “Oxford Diversions” in July 1939. It is easy to see why the tale interested Tolkien the philologist: Much of the humor in the story comes from the speech of the two main characters, the Cambridge students John and Aleyn, whose home was far in the north, and whose language was filled with vocabulary, pronunciations, and grammatical forms that Chaucer’s audience would have recognized as characteristic of the Northern dialect of Middle English. It is, as far as we know, the first time that dialect was used for comic purposes in English literature. One of Tolkien’s more significant scholarly publications, the essay “Chaucer as Philologist: The Reeve’s Tale” was delivered originally as a lecture at the meeting of the Oxford Philological Society on May 16, 1931. It appeared in print three years later, in the Transactions of the Philological Society for 1934. Tolkien had delayed publication of the paper, he declares in a headnote to the article, because he felt it needed more study and a closer examination of more manuscripts than he had been able to complete, and therefore he published it

42   “Chaucer as a Philologist: The Reeve’s Tale” “with apologies, practically as it was read” (109). Even so, the essay is some 70 pages of close study of the language of the two clerks (the students) in the tale. The article was the most important study to that point of the language in the tale, and it still provides important details, though some of Tolkien’s conclusions have been called into question by further scholarship. It has recently been reprinted in Tolkien Studies in 2008, and citations of the article in this commentary are to that text, since it is more easily accessible than the original publication. Synopsis Tolkien begins with a general commentary in which he calls the dialect in “The Reeve’s Tale” a primarily linguistic joke, one that is “unparalleled in Chaucer’s extant writings,” or, for that matter, anywhere else in Middle English literature (Tolkien, Tolkien Studies 110). He goes on to argue that Chaucer does not simply give a few instances of popular London stereotypes of Northern English, but in fact seems to have had far more intimate knowledge of the dialect than would have been common in his day, except to one who was himself particularly interested in philology. Chaucer would have gained a good deal of his knowledge of the dialect from reading, Tolkien suggests, but since it was also true that many of the Scandinavian influences on the language of the North also affected East Anglia, Chaucer may have heard more of these dialectal variations than might be expected. Tolkien then moves to a more detailed examination of the specific passages, and he compares seven of the most significant manuscripts of The Canterbury Tales to see what variations occur: the Ellesmere, the Hengwrt, the Cambridge University Library Gg MS., the Corpus Christi College MS., the Petworth MS., the Lansdowne MS., and the Harleian MS. 7334. In particular, he is concerned that southern scribes of these manuscripts had tried to standardize the northernisms that Chaucer had put into his original text. Tolkien sees this as occurring in all seven manuscripts. Accordingly, his practice in general is to adopt the readings from the manuscripts that preserve Northern dialect characteristics. Thus, for example, even though

only the Petworth MS. spells wh– words with an initial qu– (a clearly Northern characteristic), he assumes that Chaucer indeed used that spelling, particularly since the Petworth tends to standardize almost everything else. Tolkien then presents his own reconstructed text of some 98 lines, in the form that he believes Chaucer wrote his text. He follows this with some seven pages of textual notes, commenting on every Northern form in those lines and providing manuscript variations. He then adds a section in which he categorizes the kinds of dialectal features in his reconstructed text—first, into “sounds and forms,” which include most prominently the use of the Northern dialectal a¯ in place of the more standard ¯o in other Middle English dialects, and the verbal inflection –es where other dialects would use –eth or –en. Second, Tolkien considers “vocabulary,” in which he discusses some 28 words not likely to have been common in the south, most important the purely Scandinavian word slik and the word wanges, which Tolkien discusses for three pages in an attempt to argue that the word, usually translated as “jaws,” should, in fact, be translated “cheeks.” All of this is followed by a concluding essay in which Tolkien points out that there are 127 examples of very accurate northernisms in these lines. Most common, there are 37 instances of the use of a¯ for ¯o ; 19 examples of inflexions with –s instead of the more common southern forms; 12 words using the spelling s– for the common southern sh–, and eight instances of the use of the Northern es (is) in places where southerners would commonly have used am or art. In addition to this, Tolkien notes that there are perhaps 15 cases in which southern forms have crept into Chaucer’s presentation of the Northern dialect (and all but six of these, Tolkien believes, may have been the fault of scribes). All of this suggests to Tolkien that “Chaucer had acquired fairly detailed knowledge of the language of the North, and . . . such linguistics observations interested him” (148). Tolkien concludes the essay with a guess that Chaucer intended the two clerks to have come specifically from the area of Durham, in particular because the unusual word slik for such was common there.

Children of Húrin, The   43 Tolkien includes three appendices to the article, which examine in more detail the history and likely provenance of the words Tulle, Slik, and Geen and Neen (these last two specifically in the Ellesmere MS.). The article concludes with 12 pages of notes (124 notes in all). Commentary Tolkien’s detailed analysis of Chaucer’s use of the Northern dialect is still the starting point for any modern study of the subject, although most contemporary scholars doubt that Chaucer was as meticulous about, or as interested in, the precise features of dialect as Tolkien seems to believe. Thus, Tolkien’s reconstructed text, most modern scholars believe, is far more consistent and accurate than Chaucer’s original text. Further, Tolkien’s assumption that manuscript scribes unconsciously normalized Chaucer’s forms and spellings is not generally accepted. Rather, many now believe that some of the scribes, recognizing Chaucer’s intent, added some northernisms of their own. In addition, scholars now believe that Middle English scribes were quite knowledgeable about dialects and often carefully altered spellings in texts from other dialects to reflect the new dialects they were adopting them into. It is now generally believed that the early Hengwrt MS. was produced by a careful scribe who most closely reproduced Chaucer’s original text, and the text of the Hengwrt shows a good deal less consistency in its Northern forms than Tolkien does in his reconstructed text. Many of these points are discussed in some detail in Horobin’s article cited below. Jill Fitzgerald has commented on the context of this essay in the political atmosphere of Oxford’s English program in 1931—an atmosphere that divided the philologists of the department, among whom Tolkien counted himself—and the “literature” people, who saw linguistic study as tangential to literature and increasingly sought to marginalize it within the program. Fitzgerald calls Chaucer’s lecture “a tongue-in-cheek attempt by Tolkien to convince his audience (and certainly his skeptics) that Chaucer was philologically savvy, and would have felt right at home within the Oxford ‘language school’ ” (41).

Further Reading Fitzgerald, Jill. “A ‘Clerkes Compleinte’: Tolkien and the Division of Lit. and Lang.” Tolkien Studies 6 (2009): 41–57. 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, no. 2 (April 2001): 97–105. Tolkien, J. R. R. “Chaucer as a Philologist: The Reeve’s Tale.” Transactions of the Philological Society (1934): 1–70. ———. “Chaucer as a Philologist: The Reeve’s Tale.” Tolkien Studies 5 (2008): 109–171.

Children of Húrin, The  (2007) The Children of Húrin is a novel brought out by Christopher Tolkien in 2007 from his father’s manuscripts. It is the story of Túrin Turambar, son of the elf friend Húrin, who had defied the evil Morgoth and was cursed along with his descendants. In his preface to the book, Christopher asserts that in all of his father’s many tales of the Elder Days, Tolkien had chosen three in particular for special treatment in unpublished book-length narratives. The first of these was the story of the “Fall of Gondolin,” which Christopher says was composed in about 1916–17; the second is “The Tale of Tinúviel,” containing the story of Beren and Lúthien (first composed in 1917), which Tolkien had considered central to The Silmarillion (Aragorn tells a kernel of this tale to the hobbits on Weathertop in The Fellowship of the Ring); and, finally, the story of Túrin Turambar, the basic form of which was in existence, Christopher says, by 1919. In his appendices, Christopher further explains the evolution of the novel’s text. In the 1920s, his father had abandoned the first form of the text, “Turambar and the Foalókë” (1919), as it appeared in The Book of Lost Tales, and began to recast the story as an alliterative poem in the style of AngloSaxon poetry. Tolkien wrote some 2,000 lines of this poem, The Lay of the Children of Húrin, before he abandoned it as well, some time around 1924 or 1925. In the late 1920s and early 1930s, he worked

44   Children of Húrin, The on a prose version of the story, the Narn i Hin Húrin (Tale of the Children of Húrin), which Christopher ultimately printed in Unfinished Tales of Númenor and Middle-earth. Tolkien returned to the story in chapter 21 of The Silmarillion (“Of Túrin Turambar”), which was intended as a summary of the vast mythology he had created concerning the Elder Days, the First Age of Middle-earth. But after the publication of The Hobbit in 1937, when his publisher was demanding a “new Hobbit,” Tolkien temporarily abandoned The Silmarillion right in the midst of the Túrin story. Finally, in 1951, after the completion of The Lord of the Rings and other projects, he returned to the tale of Túrin. He worked on it from about 1951 until abandoning it again later in the 1950s. He left behind numerous bits and pieces of the text, all of which Christopher says he examined in putting together the latest text in a coherent and continuous narrative. Two other versions of this story were already in print at the time of this novel’s publication. One is the brief summary form of the story in The Silmarillion. The other is a fragmentary version published in Unfinished Tales. Christopher discusses the relationship of these texts in his appendix to the book. But, as with The Silmarillion itself, there is some difficulty in reading such reconstructed texts as if they were the final intent of the author. Still, since Christopher was Tolkien’s closest confidante and so knew his father’s intent better than anyone else, and since, as Tolkien’s literary executor, Christopher can be presumed to be following his father’s wishes as closely as possible, the text of The Children of Húrin must be assumed to have some authority, though perhaps not so much as texts that were published, or at least complete, in Tolkien’s own lifetime. Christopher Tolkien, 81 years old at the publication of The Children of Húrin, continues to publish new texts from his father’s unpublished papers. His reference to the two other long tales that Tolkien intended as separate significant texts— “The Tale of Tinúviel” and “The Fall of Gondolin”—opens the door for two more such projects in the future, although whether Christopher has the time or energy to engage in such projects is a question.

Christopher informs the reader in his introduction that the events of Túrin’s life occur some 6,500 years before the Council of Elrond in The Lord of the Rings. Such are the vast spaces of time between the First Age of Middle-earth and the Third Age. An alliance of elves and men has for some centuries been carrying on an endless war against the evil Valar, Morgoth, and his armies. The novel opens with this scenario. Reviews of the book were mixed upon its publication in April 2007. In the Washington Post, Elizabeth Hand wrote that “The Children of Húrin possesses the mythic resonance and grim sense of inexorable fate found in Greek tragedy.” In Salon, Andrew O’Hehir mentioned the previous versions of the Túrin story in The Silmarillion and Unfinished Tales, but said: “It emerges here for the first time as a full-fledged adventure yarn, complete with narrative urgency, fear of the unknown and recognizably human characters.” In the Daily Telegraph, however, Philip Hensher took issue with Tolkien’s inflated, unnatural style, asserting: “It is still that joke Edwardian-Biblical with made-up irregular past tenses . . . and absurd plurals.” But even Hensher admitted that “The Children of Húrin . . . provides, however, along with a great deal of absurdity, a glimpse of the sheer mythical power that is turning [Tolkien] into a long-term object of interest.” Synopsis Chapters 1–3: Húrin and the Curse of Morgoth The book begins with a genealogy. In chapter 1, “The Childhood of Túrin,” we learn that Húrin and his brother Huor are children of Galdor the Tall, son of Hador the Goldenhaired, head of one of the three great houses of the Edain, or “elf friends,” and that Hador is vassal to the elf king Fingolfin, who had given him lands in Dor-lómin. Húrin married Morwen of the house of Bëor the Old, another of the three great houses. They have two children: a son called Túrin and a daughter, Urwen, whom all call Lalaith (i.e., “Laughter”). Túrin loves his sister warmly. Húrin and Huor, while patrolling the northern borders of their land, are attacked by orcs but escape, only to be lost in the hills. Two eagles carry the brothers to the secret valley of Tumladen, into

Children of Húrin, The   45 the hidden elvish city of Gondolin. Here they are befriended by the elf king Turgon, but after some time they ask permission to leave and return to their people. Turgon grants their request on the condition that they never reveal that they have been in the elves’ city. Not long after their return, there is talk of a new campaign to be mounted against the evil Morgoth and his fortress at Angband. But Morgoth sends an “evil breath” from the North that brings an epidemic, striking down a number of children and youths among the human beings. Túrin, five years old at the time, becomes ill. When he recovers, he asks to see Urwen, but his mother tells him that the girl has died. Túrin can talk about his sorrow only to the lame servant Sador, to whom Túrin gives the nickname “Labadal” (or “Hopafoot”). He begins to spend much time with Sador as the servant tells him stories of wars with the orcs in days gone by. Túrin tells Sador that, like his father, he wants to become a soldier under an elf king. Húrin, contemplating the coming war with Morgoth, warns Morwen that she must flee their home if things do not go well in the impending battle. She decides that she will flee to the elvish kingdom of Doriath, though Húrin has doubts about that plan. Later, on Túrin’s birthday, his father gives him an elvish knife that Túrin, out of love for his friend, gives to Sador. The chapter ends when Húrin, now summoned to war, leaves home at the head of a large troop of men from his household and the surrounding land. He raises the eight-year-old Túrin on his shoulders, proclaiming him the heir of the House of Hador, and all the men draw their swords and call out their battle cry. The second chapter (“The Battle of Unnumbered Tears”) starts with a description of the great battle known as Nirnaeth Arnoediad, or the Battle of Unnumbered Tears, which begins on Midsummer morning. The elves are arrayed in two great armies: Maedhros, eldest of the sons of the elf king Fëanor, leads his army from the west. In the east is the army of Fingon, king of the Noldor (the “deep elves”), in whose ranks are Húrin with his brother Huor and all the men of Dor-lómin. Morgoth sends an army to meet Fingon, attempting to draw him into a rash attack before he can unite

with Maedhros’s army. When heralds from Morgoth’s army mutilate a blinded prisoner—Gelmir son of Guilin—to demonstrate how they will treat prisoners, Gelmir’s brother Gwindor, who is in Fingon’s ranks, flies into a rage. He mounts and leads a frantic attack on the host of Morgoth, and Fingon’s whole army follows. They destroy the ranks of the decoying army and move all the way to the walls of Angband. But after four days, Fingon’s army is surrounded. At that point, Turgon arrives with unlooked-for reinforcements from Gondolin. Meanwhile, however, Morgoth’s forces have crushed the army of Maedhros in the West, and they return to assail the army of elves and men. The chief Balrog—Gothmog, Morgoth’s captain—is successful in separating the hosts of Turgon from Fingon. He kills Fingon with an axe after another Balrog has bound him with steel cable. Now all the forces of Angband bear down on Turgon and his followers, among whom now are Húrin and his men. Húrin insists that Turgon flee the battle in order to keep the hopes of elves and men alive in the secret city of Gondolin. Turgon and his forces begin a retreat down the narrow passes of the Sirion River, with Húrin and the men of the House of Hador acting as a rear guard. Turgon is able to escape into the mountains, but the men of the rear guard are surrounded and killed to a man, including Huor. Húrin, left alone, kills 70 of the enemy with an axe, until he is taken alive into Angband. The brief third chapter (“The Words of Húrin and Morgoth”) recounts Húrin’s torture as Morgoth attempts to wrench from him the location of the hidden elvish city of Gondolin. Húrin refuses to give up the location, and the chief part of the chapter is made up of the interview between Morgoth and Húrin. Morgoth offers Húrin freedom or a captainship in his army for the information, but Húrin mocks him, calling him blind and saying he knows Morgoth’s offers are lies. Morgoth then tells Húrin that his lands, his wife, and his family are now in Morgoth’s power, and Húrin answers that Morgoth will never find Turgon’s city through them, since they know nothing of it. Morgoth curses Húrin and his wife and children, saying that his thoughts and his hate will follow them everywhere, but Húrin mocks the curse, saying that in bodily

46   Children of Húrin, The form Morgoth cannot reach them. But Morgoth insists that he is all-powerful, that he is first of the Valar and made the world. Húrin says this is a lie, that Morgoth is only an escaped slave of the Valar. Morgoth chides Húrin that he has learned this from the elves, but the elves have fled and deserted him. Finally, Húrin taunts Morgoth that he cannot pursue his enemies beyond the Circles of the World—to which Morgoth replies that there is only nothingness beyond this world. Húrin calls him a liar, but Morgoth takes Húrin into Angband and sets him in a chair in which he is cursed forever to sit and to see through the eyes of Morgoth the brutal fates of those he loves. Chapters 4–5: Doriath Chapter 4 (“The Departure of Túrin”) relates how in Dor-lómin, no word comes of Húrin’s fate, but the land is overrun by Easterlings—men who had sided with Morgoth in the war, enslaved the young, and killed or drove out the old. Morwen and her house are safe initially, however, since the Easterlings fear her as a friend of elves. One of the Easterlings, the brutal Brodda, keeps Húrin’s people in a stockade like cattle, although he chooses to marry Aerin, one of Húrin’s kin, in the hope of establishing himself and his descendants as lords of the country. Túrin wants to know why his father has not returned, and Morwen says that he may be dead, captured, or in flight and unable to return. Túrin, believing that nothing could keep his father from them if he were alive, seems certain he is dead. Morwen, meanwhile, fears that sometime soon Brodda will crush her house and take Túrin as a slave. In the autumn, she tells her son that he must leave his home and go to the elf king Thingol in Doriath, where she had told Húrin she herself would flee. Túrin is hesitant to leave and discusses the situation with Sador. Sador had been carving a great chair for Húrin but had abandoned the work and put it in a corner when Húrin failed to return from battle. Now he is looking at using the chair for firewood, since the house is nearly destitute. He convinces Túrin that he must not end up a slave and reminds him that he had vowed to become a soldier under an elf king. He also tries to give

Túrin back his knife as a parting gift. Túrin refuses the gift, and along with two venerable companions from the house, Gethron and Grithnir, he leaves his mother. Soon after they leave, Morwen gives birth to another daughter, whom she names Niënor (“Mourning”). Túrin and his companions are lost in Doriath when they encounter the elvish hunter Beleg the Strongbow. When Beleg learns that Túrin wishes to become one of King Thingol’s knights to avenge his father against Morgoth, Beleg brings him to Thingol’s great hall of Menegroth. Here, the king receives Túrin kindly, for the sake of Húrin and of his kinsman Beren (who had been married to Thingol’s daughter Lúthien). Thingol places the eight-year-old Túrin on his knee, thus accepting him as his foster son. Eventually, Grithnir dies in Doriath, and Gethron leaves with an elvish escort to see him back to Dor-lómin. Here, the elves invite Morwen to come to Doriath as well, but she is too proud to leave her home and believes that Niënor is too young for the journey. Instead, she sends the Helm of Hador, a great gold-adorned helmet that has been handed down from the patriarch himself and has the power to shield its wearer from wound or death. On its crest is an image of the great dragon Glaurung. Thingol gives the helmet to the young Túrin, as yet too small to wear it. But Túrin, crushed by his mother’s failure to come to him, is unimpressed. In the next chapter (“Túrin in Doriath”), the queen Melian (a Maia [see Maiar], one of the angelic Ainur, who has put a magic protective ring around Doriath) takes a special interest in Túrin, assigning a young maiden of the forest named Nellas to play with him and teach him the ways of the woods. Nellas also teaches him the Sindarin language of the elves. When he grows older, Túrin seeks the company of warriors and eventually stops visiting Nellas, though she still keeps an eye on him without his knowledge. Through the years, Túrin hears regularly from Morwen and learns ancient lore as well as archery and swordplay from Beleg Strongbow. As he grows, he becomes taciturn and morose but is generally respected by the elves, with the exception of the king’s adviser Saeros, who is haughty and envious of Túrin’s position.

Children of Húrin, The   47 After nine years in Doriath, Túrin no longer hears news from home because Morgoth’s orcs have shut off communication to Dor-lómin. The 17-year-old Túrin now seeks out King Thingol, finding him under a beech tree with Melian, his queen. He asks the king for his helmet; for armor, a sword, and a shield; and for companions to attack Angband. Thingol tells him that the time is not right for such an attack, but says that Túrin may join his knights fighting the orcs on his borders. He advises Túrin to be patient and to train himself in the arts of war, and Melian supports the king’s advice. Túrin accordingly takes his dragonhelm and joins Beleg Strongbow and the rest of the king’s forces on the northern march. For three years, Túrin fights among the marches. One day, he returns to Menegroth to have his arms repaired, and while there he joins the king’s retainers dining in the hall. The king and queen happen to be away from court that day, and Túrin unwittingly sits in Saeros’s place. When Saeros arrives, he pretends to be unoffended and sits opposite Túrin, but he attempts to draw Túrin’s ire with veiled insults. This culminates when Saeros, calling attention to the shaggy hair Túrin wears, asks whether the women of his country have such shaggy hair, and whether they run naked “like deer clad only in their hair?” (87). Túrin heaves a drinking cup into Saeros’s face and draws his sword. The king’s retainer Mablung stops Túrin from doing more damage, and Túrin leaves the hall without a word. Mablung then turns on Saeros, whom he accuses of bringing the evil of Morgoth into the palace. The next morning, while Túrin is making his way back to the marches, Saeros ambushes him with a drawn sword and attempts to kill him. Túrin ducks just in time, then draws his sword, vowing to take revenge for the insult Saeros had given his mother. Túrin breaks Saeros’s shield and disarms him, but rather than kill him, he decides to shame Saeros. He strips him of his clothing and forces him to run naked through the woods, chasing him with his sword drawn. Mablung and other of the king’s retainers come upon the chase, and try to stop Túrin. But Túrin continues to chase Saeros, who in fear attempts to leap over a deep cleft in the rocks, but falls to his death instead. Túrin calls Saeros a

fool, saying he would not have harmed him. Mablung wants Túrin to return to Menegroth for the king to judge his actions, but Túrin now distrusts the king since he had the poor judgment to name Saeros as an adviser. Túrin refuses to return and takes his leave of Mablung. When the king returns, he sets up a court of inquiry into these events. Mablung reports that Saeros had provoked the quarrel in the hall. King Thingol pardons Túrin for his acts in the hall but cannot forgive his hounding Saeros to his death. He would banish Túrin from Doriath and asks whether anyone present has anything to say on Túrin’s defense. Beleg Strongbow enters the king’s hall in haste, saying that he has brought a witness: It is Nellas, the maiden of the woods who has watched over Túrin without his knowledge for many years. Nellas reveals that it was Saeros who first attacked Túrin, and that Túrin spared his life after he had defeated the king’s counselor. When the king has heard this testimony, he revokes his sentence and pardons Túrin. He appoints Beleg to search for Túrin wherever he may be found, to give him the king’s pardon and bring him back to Doriath. Then Thingol gives Beleg the sword Anglachel, and as Beleg takes it, Melian warns him that because the elven smith who made it did so with ill will, the sword would “not love the hand that it serves; neither will it abide with you long” (97). Chapters 6–9: The Outlaw Túrin In chapter 6 (“Túrin among the Outlaws”), after leaving Doriath, Túrin travels west, to a wood south of the river Teiglin. Here dwell people without a lord who live in scattered homesteads but are at the mercy of marauding orcs and of outlaw bands of men. One such band of some 50 men is led by Forweg. The outlaws track Túrin when he comes into their wood and surround him with arrows loaded. Forweg tells him that the band allows no one to enter their realm without either killing him or exacting a ransom. Túrin laughs at the idea of ransom, saying that they can search his body for anything they can find after they have killed him, but that he intends to take many of them with him. One of the outlaws fires upon him without orders

48   Children of Húrin, The just as he is bending down to pick up a stone, and when the arrow misses, Túrin fires the stone at the outlaw, breaking his skull and killing him. Túrin offers to join the band and take the place of the man he has killed, and Forweg allows this, asking his men if any object. Andróg, a murderer who had fled from Dor-lómin to join the outlaws, objects but backs down rather than challenge Túrin to fight. Calling himself Neithan (“the Wronged”), Túrin joins the band, thinking he has nowhere else to go. After a time, he becomes hardened to the cruel ways of the outlaws. One day, he notices that Forweg and Andróg are not with the band, and he wanders off by himself. Suddenly, a young woman with torn clothes runs fearfully out of a thicket, and when a man comes rushing out in pursuit, Túrin draws and kills him before he sees that it is Forweg. He is followed by Andróg, who chides Túrin for killing Forweg. An outlaw, Andróg says, knows only the law of his own needs. Túrin tells him to leave the woman alone or join Forweg in death. He then sends the woman back to her home. Returning to the outlaw band, Andróg reports what has happened but says he does not understand Túrin’s actions, to which Túrin responds that Andróg cannot claim to be one of the People of Hador (i.e., one of the true Edain). Túrin adds that he will now be leader of the band or will leave it, unless anyone wants to fight him. Andróg knows he cannot best Túrin in a fight and grudgingly agrees, along with the rest of the outlaws, to take Túrin as their leader. Túrin has the notion that he may be able to turn this band into a small fighting army, and he decides to lead them away from the homes of men to train in the wild. After a year of searching, none of Thingol’s messengers have been able to find Túrin. Beleg has not given up the search, however, and finally comes to the homes of the Woodmen, where he hears a story of a tall and lordly man who had rescued one of their daughters from outlaws, but seemed to be one of them. Beleg recognizes that this must be Túrin, and he begins following the outlaws’ trail. By now the orcs of Morgoth have invaded that land, killing and burning many of the homesteads. Túrin takes one of his men, Orleg, to spy on the orcs, leaving the band hiding in a cave under the

leadership of Andróg. The orcs discover Túrin and Orleg spying, and Túrin flees westward (away from his band’s camp) to elude them. While Túrin is gone, Beleg finally tracks the outlaw band down in their cave. He approaches peacefully, but the outlaws, knowing he is the one who has been trailing them so long, distrust him, and Andróg wants to kill him as a spy of Doriath. But others dissuade him, and Beleg is tied to a tree with no food or water until he tells them the message that he insists he can reveal only to their leader. When Túrin returns and sees Beleg treated thus, he is angry with his men, but then he realizes that he shares their blame because of his own often expressed distrust of Thingol’s people. With a pang of self-reproach, Túrin vows never to raise his hand again against elves or men. At this, Beleg awakens. He tells Túrin that he has been pardoned, and that he has come to recall Túrin to Thingol’s service. But Túrin is not immediately impressed and says he will need to make a choice. In the morning, Túrin tells Beleg that he will not return to Doriath. He has too much pride to be treated like a small boy who has been forgiven. Despite Beleg’s doubts, Túrin says he loves his band of outlaws because they are his own kind, and he believes he can change them into better men. He tells Beleg of his desire to fight against Morgoth in his own way, and he asks the elf to stay with him. Beleg is tempted by his friendship, but as they discuss their next step, Túrin professes not to remember the elf maiden Nellas, and Beleg shows some frustration at Túrin’s apparent ingratitude. Then, when Beleg proposes that the band go to Dimbar, the northern march of Doriath, Túrin refuses to go where he would be under Thingol’s sway. Beleg now decides it would be wiser to leave Túrin and his band. On Beleg’s return to the halls of Menegroth, his news saddens Thingol. Melian the queen gives Beleg a gift of lembas, the elves’ special waybread. From here Beleg returns to the marches, but in the winter he disappears from them again. In chapter 7 (“Mîm the Dwarf”), Mîm and his two sons are introduced as the last of the pettydwarfs in Middle-earth. They were a people that hated all races but themselves—not only orcs but

Children of Húrin, The   49 elves as well, especially the Noldor, whom they blamed for stealing their underground fortress of Nargothrond. One day, as Túrin is pondering how he might find a secure refuge for his band, one of his watchmen sees three grey figures burdened with large sacks moving among the stones. Túrin calls to them to stop, but they run away. Two are swifter than the third, and Andróg shoots at them, while the third is captured by the band. This is Mîm, who begs Túrin for his life. Túrin agrees to spare him if he leads the band to a place of shelter, and Mîm agrees to lead them to his own home. As they camp overnight, some of the bandits insist on binding Mîm. In the morning, he tells Túrin that a dwarf will not forgive being bound, and is ready to be killed rather than guide them any farther. But Túrin refuses to kill him and orders him to lead them on, saying at the same time that he will never let Mîm be bound again. Soon the band sees Mîm’s home: a lonely, flat-topped hill in the midst of the plain called Amon Rûdh (“the Bald Hill”). Mîm leads them up the steep slopes along secret paths and enters a large cave near the hill’s top, which he now calls Bar-en-Danwedh (“the House of Ransom”). Here, he speaks to another dwarf, his son, and then, apparently angry, rushes down a passageway. Andróg, fearing treachery, wants to charge after the dwarves and attack them, but Túrin leads the way and comes upon Mîm kneeling next to the body of another dwarf. Túrin offers to help with the healing arts he learned from the elves, but it is too late: Mîm’s son has died. Túrin now tells Mîm that he holds himself in the dwarf’s debt, and he offers to pay a danwedh (a gold tribute), if he is ever able to, in honor of Mîm’s son. Mîm accepts this with good grace but demands that Andróg, the one whose shot killed his son, be made to break his bow and arrows and lay them at his son’s feet. Andróg does this grudgingly. Mîm also adds his curse that if Andróg ever uses these weapons again, he will die with an arrow in his throat. The outlaw band decides to make Mîm’s house their refuge, and he agrees to help teach them the secret ways in and out. When they try to look through the sacks he was carrying, they find only roots, which the dwarf shows them how to eat.

The outlaws stay at Amon Rûdh for a full year, and as the time wears on, they begin to be less and less comfortable with Mîm, while at the same time Túrin becomes rather close to the dwarf and likes to listen to his tales. One day in midwinter, a hooded visitor walks into the cave. As the outlaws leap up, the figure reveals himself as Beleg. Túrin is glad to see him, but Andróg is suspicious. Beleg has brought the Helm of Hador with him, for Túrin to use in his battles with the orcs. He has also brought the lembas bread. Túrin gladly accepts the helmet but will not take any gift from the elves, he says. Beleg reminds him that his arms and his education all came from the elves, and says that his men may need the nourishment of the bread even if Túrin himself scorns it. Túrin accepts Beleg’s rebuke and declares that Beleg shall be his counselor in all things. In chapter 8 (“The Land of Bow and Helm”), Beleg soon makes himself useful to the band with his healing arts, but Mîm, who hates all elves, is jealous of Beleg’s close relationship with Túrin. As the year progresses, more and more orcs come out of the north. In the spring, Túrin dons his great helmet and begins to lead his men on a series of successful raids on groups of orcs. In one of these battles, Andróg, whom the dwarf had cursed if he ever used a bow again, breaks his vow in battle with the orcs and is wounded in the throat by a poisoned orc arrow. Beleg, however, is able to heal the wound, giving Mîm all the more reason to hate the elf. But he renews his curse on Andróg. As the band’s success against the orcs becomes widely known, the reputation of the Two Captains—known as the Helm and the Bow—spreads throughout Beleriand. More and more men are drawn to join the company until it has become a significant army. Morgoth deliberately withholds his greatest strength in the hope of making his enemies overconfident. Túrin, in fact, claims lordship over the entire land west of Doriath, calling himself Gorthol (“the Dread Helm”). His new confidence bothers Beleg, who warns Túrin that Morgoth will eventually come in force against Amon Rûdh. But Túrin swears to defend the southern road against Morgoth’s orcs.

50   Children of Húrin, The Morgoth now knows that the Helm, Túrin, is the son of Húrin, and he longs to bring him to Angband to share his father’s curse. Orc spies surround Amon Rûdh until Mîm, aware of their presence, determines to betray Túrin’s band to them. (Curiously, in a footnote, Tolkien adds that “another tale” that is told is that the orcs captured Mîm’s son and forced him to reveal the location.) Mîm tells the orcs that he will lead them to the hideaway if the orcs promise to pay him the weight in iron of any men they kill or capture, and their weight in gold for Túrin and for Beleg. He also demands that he be given back his home when the orcs are finished with it, that Túrin be allowed to go free, and that Beleg be left for Mîm himself to deal with. The orcs agree, but they have no intention of fulfilling any of the demands, except for Mîm’s demand for Beleg, whom they do not care about. Morgoth, however, has demanded that Túrin be brought to him, and the orcs dare not disobey that command. They also decide to keep the dwarf’s son Ibun as a hostage. When the orcs storm Amon Rûdh, the men are caught by surprise, and many are killed. Beleg and Túrin escape into the cave and seal the entrance, but they are shown a secret staircase to the hilltop that Andróg had discovered. They and their men are able to destroy the orcs that have made it that far, and they hold off those climbing the rock. But they have no shelter and are picked off one by one. Andróg, fighting most valiantly, is shot down by an arrow. Finally, only Beleg and Túrin are left. Túrin is captured while Beleg is bound hand and foot and left on the rock. On their way out, the orcs ravage the cave but do not find the dwarf. They then leave Amon Rûdh, intending to bring Túrin to their master. Now Mîm appears on the top of the fortress, intent on taking out his hatred on Beleg. First, he purposefully sharpens his knife while standing over the bound, prostrate Beleg. But as it happens, Andróg is still alive and sees what is happening. With his last breath he draws a sword and frightens Mîm away. Then he cuts Beleg’s bonds to save him, saying with his dying breath that his wounds are too deep for Beleg’s healing to help them. When, in chapter 9 (“The Death of Beleg”), Beleg realizes that Túrin has been taken, he sets

out to track the orcs. On the way, he comes across a worn-out, injured elf who identifies himself as Gwindor, son of Guilin—the same elf who had led the charge against the orc armies at the Battle of Unnumbered Tears. Captured and tortured in Angband, he had escaped, though one of his hands had been cut off. The two of them hide in the trees as an army of orcs goes by, and they see that the orcs have Túrin as prisoner and are using wolves as guards. When the orcs camp for the night and all are asleep, Beleg quietly shoots four of the wolf guards and cuts Túrin down from the tree to which he has been tied. They take him to a spot above the camp, and Beleg cuts Túrin’s bonds with his sword Anglachel, but the sword slips and cuts Túrin’s foot. At this, the unconscious Túrin is aroused. He sees the figure above him with the sword and, believing it to be an orc, wrestles the sword from him and kills him. Just then there is a terrific flash of lightning that reveals to Túrin what he has done. He is astounded and sits unmoving beside Beleg’s body. After the great storm that follows, the orcs realize they have lost Túrin and head back to Angband to report their failure. Gwindor is finally able to arouse Túrin enough to get his help in burying Beleg and, using Melian’s lembas to sustain them in their journey, he takes the grieving Túrin to the restorative springs of Eithel Ivrin. Túrin drinks from the spring and is finally able to weep, after which he composes a song for Beleg called Laer Cú Beleg (“The Song of the Great Bow”). Now Túrin asks the elf guide his name and is told that he is Gwindor, who has been prisoner in Angband. Túrin asks whether he has seen Húrin, but Gwindor answers that, though he has not seen him personally, the rumor in Angband is that Húrin continues to defy Morgoth, and that Morgoth has laid a curse on Húrin and all of his kin. Túrin responds that he can certainly believe it. Now Gwindor leads Túrin into his old home, the great underground elvish fortress of Nargothrond. Chapters 10–11: Túrin in Nargothrond In chapter 10 (“Túrin in Nargothrond”), Finduilas is introduced. Daughter of the elf king Orodreth of Nargothrond, she had been in love with Gwindor

Children of Húrin, The   51 before he went to war. Now, though no one else recognizes Gwindor (so changed is he by the ordeal of Morgoth’s prison), she does so and welcomes him. Túrin is also welcomed, but he hides his true name, calling himself Agarwaen, son of Úmarth (“Bloodstained, Son of Ill-fate”). The elves reforge the sword Anglachel, and he renames it Gurthang (“Iron of Death”). As he begins to do mighty deeds against the orcs, the elves begin to call him Mormegil (“the Black Sword”). King Orodreth respects Túrin’s skill as a warrior and makes him one of his counselors. Now Túrin advocates for open warfare against Morgoth, rather than the kinds of guerrilla tactics the elves have been using. Gwindor opposes this advice, urging the king not to meet Morgoth in open war, since he will only destroy them when he discovers the secret location of the fortress of Nargothrond. Gwindor prefers to keep safe, he says, until the Valar come. Túrin scoffs at this, saying that the Valar have scorned men and elves, and adding that the only Vala they need to deal with is Morgoth, who he says will find them no matter how hard they try to remain hidden. For himself, he declares that he will spend his life in battle, alluding to his father’s defiance of Morgoth as a great deed. Gwindor answers that the elves await the fulfillment of a prophecy of help from the Valar that gives the Eldar hope. He also reminds Túrin of the need to protect those who cannot fight. Túrin maintains his insistence that fighting Morgoth is the best choice. Eventually Túrin’s counsel wins over King Orodreth and most of the elves of Nargothrond, and the elves begin to fight the orcs openly, while Gwindor is discredited. Túrin builds a great bridge over the Narog River to allow the armed forces easier access to the fortress. The elves are so impressed by Túrin’s skill in war that they give him a suit of dwarf mail and a gilded dwarf mask that he wears into battle. Finduilas, the king’s daughter, is also moved by him. She begins to spend time with him and tells him that she does not believe his true name is Agarwaen. She calls him Thurin (“the Secret”). Túrin notices that Gwindor is now cool toward him, and he is troubled, thinking that the reason for this coolness is that the king is following Túrin’s counsel rather than Gwindor’s; of course, it is actu-

ally Finduilas’s attentions to Túrin that Gwindor resents. When he confronts Gwindor, the elf spurns him, saying he has lost everything to Túrin. Túrin still does not understand, but Gwindor goes to Finduilas and confronts her. He tells her it is not wise for elves to wed men, because men are so short-lived. He also tells her that a curse is upon Agarwaen and reveals to her that his true name is Túrin, son of Húrin. Finduilas answers that indeed she loves Túrin, but that he does not return her love. Having learned his true identity, Finduilas confronts Túrin with it. Túrin then goes to Gwindor and accuses the elf of betraying him, fearing that the curse of Morgoth will be upon him if his name is known. Gwindor replies that Túrin’s doom is in himself, not his name. As the chapter ends, we are told that at that time, Morwen finally fled from Dor-lómin with her daughter Niënor, reaching Thingol in Doriath, although she finds that Túrin is no longer there and that there is no news of him. The next chapter (“The Fall of Nargothrond”) opens when Túrin has been in Nargothrond five years and is in command of all of King Orodreth’s forces. Two elves come to the fortress bearing a message from Círdan, the elf king building ships at the mouth of the River Sirion far in the South. The Vala Ulmo, lord of the waters, has appeared to Círdan in a dream, telling him to warn Nargothrond to “Shut the doors of the fortress, and go not abroad” and to “Cast the stones of your pride into the loud river, that the creeping evil may not find the gate.” Orodreth can make nothing of these prophesies, and he turns to Túrin, who treats the messengers rudely. If Ulmo wants to send them a message, he says, he should speak plainly. When one of the messengers, Arminas, asks Túrin if he is of the House of Hador, Túrin scolds him for being loose of tongue and says that here he is called Agarwaen. The argument escalates, and Arminas says that he asked the question because he did not seem like his father or his uncle Huor. When Túrin answers that he is not the first son to resemble his mother, Arminas tells him that it was his haughty behavior and lack of courtesy that made him doubt the relationship. Túrin tells the messengers to leave. But the king worries about their warning, and some

52   Children of Húrin, The want the bridge over the Nargoth thrown down (the “stones of their pride”), but Túrin will listen to no one. Not long after, Morgoth sends a huge host of orcs toward the South, led by the great dragon Glaurung. Glaurung burns the entire Guarded Plain between Nargothrond and the River Teiglin, and Túrin, with King Orodreth, responds by leading all the warriors from Nargothrond out to meet him. But none can stand against Glaurung, and the orcs drive the elves back. Orodreth is killed, and Gwindor is mortally wounded. As the elves flee, Túrin drags Gwindor into some trees. Gwindor tells Túrin that he regrets bringing him to Nargothrond, because he has lost the city and his love, as well as his life, through Túrin’s actions. He is beyond healing, Gwindor says, but he begs Túrin to get back to Nargothrond and save Finduilas, telling him that she alone stands between Túrin and his doom. Túrin rushes back to the city, but the dragon and his army have arrived first and have used the great bridge over the Nargoth to enter the fortress easily. By the time Túrin arrives, all the men have been killed, the fortress ransacked, and the women still alive are being rounded up to be taken as slaves to Angband. As Túrin rushes toward the city, he comes face-to-face with the dragon, who lies at the end of the bridge. When Túrin looks into the dragon’s eyes, he is frozen, and Glaurung speaks to torment Túrin’s mind, calling him an outlaw, the slayer of his friend, a foolhardy captain, and the deserter of his family. His mother and sister go in rags, the dragon tells him, while he is arrayed as a prince. As Túrin stands like stone, the orcs herd away the captive women of Nargothrond, including Finduilas, who calls out to him to no avail. Glaurung releases his hold on Túrin only after the captives have gone. Then Túrin tries to attack the dragon, who taunts him, saying his death will not help his mother and sister. Túrin tries to stab the dragon’s eyes, and the dragon, acknowledging Túrin’s valor, gives him his freedom—freedom, he says, to seek his mother and sister, whom he says the orcs will kill as they burn the house of his fathers. The dragon laughs as Túrin speeds back across the bridge, heading for Dor-lómin, for he has succeeded in sending Túrin on a fool’s errand and

ensured the fate of Finduilas, whose cries Túrin hears echo in his ears as he chooses to rescue his own kin first. Chapter 12: “The Return of Túrin to Dor-lómin” Túrin struggles northward, making his way first to the springs of Eithel Ivrin, where he had been healed after his accidental slaying of Beleg, but the springs are frozen and cannot restore him. He fights the winter storms to come finally into Dorlómin, returning to the place of his birth after 23 years. He finds the land bleak and changed, with boorish people speaking the tongue of the Easterlings, and the old language of the land spoken only by serfs. Morwen’s house is deserted, plundered by Brodda, and Túrin must go to the house of Brodda to seek shelter. Here his old kinswoman Aerin allows him to sit with the servants by the fire. When he asks for news, most of those around him draw back. One old man tells him to speak quietly if he is going to use the old language, in order to avoid suspicion. Túrin asks the old man what has happened to Morwen. He tells Túrin that Morwen and her daughter have been gone for more than a year, and explains that the Easterlings feared her as a “Witchwife” (or elf friend), and so did not try to harm her, though they stole from her, and but for Aerin’s charity, Morwen and her daughter may have starved. Where she is now, no one knows. Now the old man identifies himself as Túrin’s old friend Sador, and he warns Túrin not to speak the old tongue. Túrin calls him Labadal, thus revealing his identity through his old nickname for the servant. Sador tells Túrin to come outside, and there asks whether he has come back to fight the Easterlings. Túrin says he is searching only for Morwen and his sister, but Sador says that they went away secretly and the rumor was that Túrin had sent for them. But he tells Túrin that Aerin will know. Over Sador’s objections, Túrin strides into the great hall where a banquet is in progress and demands to see the master of the house. Brodda angrily identifies himself, and Túrin chides him for his lack of courtesy, claiming to be a kinsman of his wife, Aerin, and demands to speak with her. He approaches Aerin and asks what has happened to

Children of Húrin, The   53 the lady Morwen and her daughter, Niënor. Aerin, fearing her husband, says she knows nothing. When Túrin responds that he does not believe her, Brodda tells him to leave before he has Túrin hanged, at which Túrin seizes Brodda and puts his black sword to his throat. He identifies himself as Túrin, the lord of Dor-lómin, and demands answers from Aerin. She confirms that Brodda was the one that plundered Morwen’s house, and that Morwen has gone to Doriath, where she expected to find Túrin. Now Túrin realizes that Glaurung’s spell had deceived him. In anger, he breaks Brodda’s neck and kills three more Easterling lords at the table. All the older inhabitants of the kingdom rise up and slay the Easterlings present. After the battle, Sador approaches him, wounded unto death. He tells Túrin to leave, since all will now come against him. Aerin seconds his warning, declaring that she will certainly be killed now as well. Túrin tells her to come away, and he will bring her to Morwen, but she refuses, saying she is too old. As Túrin flees toward the mountains, many of the rebels come with him. They look back to see that the hall has been set afire, and one rebel named Asgon tells Túrin that it must be Aerin herself who has burnt the palace. Túrin spends the winter with the rebels in a cave in the mountains, and with spring he leaves them. They tell him that they will be hunted as outlaws now, and ask him not to return unless he brings an army to deliver them from their bondage. Chapters 13–15: Túrin and Niënor in Brethil In chapter 13 (“The Coming of Túrin into Brethil”), Túrin is troubled as he leaves his people in Dor-lómin, but he is comforted that his mother and sister are under the protection of Melian in Doriath. Thinking of how the curse has worked on him, he believes people are safer if he avoids them. Now he turns to thoughts of rescuing Finduilas, but finds he is too late to pick up any trail. But as he passes through the forest of Brethil, he meets a few remaining Edain, People of Haleth, whose leader is the lame Brandir, son of Handir. Túrin comes upon a group of these men surrounded by orcs near the edge of the forest. Out of sight, he makes a great deal of noise, as if shouting

to many men, then bursts out of the wood, waving as if for his men to follow. The orcs recognize his sword and flee, and Túrin, supported by the men of Brethil, slaughters many orcs before the rest escape. The men, led by Dorlas, are glad to welcome him, and Túrin tells them he is an orc slayer and that his name is Wildman of the Woods. He tells them that he seeks Finduilas, but Dorlas tells him his search is in vain: This band had attacked a host of orcs a month earlier that held many prisoners, and as soon as they were ambushed, they had killed all the women among their prisoners. Finduilas had ended her life pinned to a tree by a spear. Her last words had been a request to Dorlas to tell Mormegil she was there. Túrin asks to be brought to her grave, where he faints in sorrow. Dorlas tells his men that clearly this man must be Mormegil, the Black Sword of Nargothrond, and they bring him on a bier to Brandir’s fort, Ephel Brandir. Brandir is alarmed to see Túrin and warns that he will be the doom of his people. Túrin is nursed back to health in Brethil, and he resolves to stay here, renouncing his name and family in the hope of bringing no more sorrow to them. He now calls himself Turambar (“Master of Doom”). He becomes well liked among the people of Brethil, but often goes orc hunting with some of the people, to Brandir’s displeasure, since his hope is to preserve his people by living in Brethil in secrecy. He convinces Túrin to lay aside his black sword, to hide his identity from their enemies, and so Túrin fights with the bow and the spear. Dorlas, however, asks about the rumor that Mormegil was in fact Túrin, son of Húrin, and Túrin asks him, as a friend, to keep that rumor to himself. Meanwhile in Doriath, spring has arrived in chapter 14 (“The Journey of Morwen and Niënor to Nargothrond”), and survivors of the destruction of Nargothrond begin to arrive, seeking refuge with Thingol. Some say that the dragon is still in Nargothrond, and some say that the Mormegil has been killed or put under a spell by Glaurung. They also say that the Mormegil is none other than Túrin, son of Húrin. At this, Morwen frets and aches to know the truth. Thingol also wants to know the truth, but he tries to dissuade Morwen, saying that this may be

54   Children of Húrin, The the work of Morgoth to draw them into some rash action, and further that Túrin himself would not want her and her daughter wandering outside the protection of Melian’s girdle. When Morwen complains that she is like a prisoner here, Thingol tells her she is free to go at any time. But Melian cautions her not to go. Morwen will not take this advice and determines to go in search of her son. But Thingol refuses to send any of his people with her. When Morwen takes leave of Niënor and departs the next day, Thingol sends Mablung with a company of 30 of his best men to follow her and intervene if she is in danger. When Morwen comes to the great river Sirion and cannot cross, Mablung reveals himself and leads Morwen to a ferry that the elves use to cross the river. When Morwen counts 31 cloaked elves crossing on the ferry, she demands to know who has joined them. The cowl falls back on the last elf, revealing the blond curls of the disguised Niënor, who has followed Mablung’s company. Morwen orders her to go back, but Niënor says she will go wherever her mother goes. It would be wisest for both of them to return to Doriath, she says, but she will go with Morwen wherever she decides. Morwen relents and allows Niënor to come along. A frustrated Mablung thinks this is madness, but Morwen tells him to seek news of Nargothrond and of her son, as the king commanded him, and says that she and Niënor will come with him. The land is eerily silent as the group travels for three days from Sirion to the banks of the Narog. Here, Mablung, filled with foreboding, tries to persuade Morwen not to continue. She refuses to turn back, but Mablung, having been ordered to protect her, demands that she and Niënor be taken to the top of the nearby hill of Amon Ethir rather than go forward into Nargothrond. From this hill, Mablung sees the doors of Nargothrond standing ominously open. Leaving 10 of his elves to guard Morwen, he takes the other 20 and moves toward Nargothrond. Here, just within the doors, lies Glaurung, who has been watching the elves’ every movement. The dragon comes out of the fortress and breathes fire into the Narog, sending up a huge cloud of steam. Mablung’s host scatters as he ducks behind a rock. Believing that riders from Amon Ethir will be head-

ing back toward Doriath to warn them that Glaurung has come, Mablung is determined to search the halls of Nargothrond to find out what he can about the fate of Túrin. Those on Amon Ethir see the dragon issue forth, and they begin retreating eastward toward Doriath. But the fog of the dragon reaches their horses, who panic and run wild. One of the elves sees Morwen and her horse disappear into the fog, crying for Niënor. But Niënor has been thrown from her horse, and by the time she recovers, she is alone. She decides to return to the hill, where she hopes to meet up with Mablung. She climbs to the hilltop, only to find herself face-to-face with the dragon. Strong as she is, Niënor cannot resist the hypnotic power of the dragon, who tells her that Túrin has been here but, rather than defend Glaurung’s helpless victims, has fled at the dragon’s approach. Niënor denies this, saying the children of Húrin are not cowards, and Glaurung recognizes her as Túrin’s sister. At that, he is able to wipe out her memory and leave her mind in darkness. Now Mablung, having found nothing in Nargothrond, exits the doors just as the dragon, now exhausted and needing rest, is returning. Glaurung senses where Mablung is hiding and laughs, telling Mablung to go to Amon Ethir and see what has become of his charge. Mablung rushes to the top of the hill, where he finds the mindless Niënor. Lamenting, he begins to lead her back eastward. They are met by three of the elves who had fled at the appearance of the dragon, and they begin to work their way back to Doriath. Niënor gains strength on the way, though she remembers nothing. As they approach the borders of Doriath, the party stops to rest, and Niënor lies down to sleep. But suddenly they are assailed by a band of orcs. Niënor awakens and flees, the orcs giving chase, and though the elves catch the orcs and kill them all, Niënor has disappeared. When Mablung returns to Doriath, he asks the king to choose a new commander since he has failed. But Melian tells him he did all he could. Still, Niënor is lost as well as Morwen, and Mablung decides to go out from Doriath with a small company. For three years, he searches for signs of either mother or daughter.

Children of Húrin, The   55 In chapter 15 (“Niënor in Brethil”), Niënor, having run until nightfall, falls asleep in the wood and then awakens, freed from her madness but still without any memory. Naked, she wanders the forest of Brethil, without food or any idea how to find it. In this condition, she is found lying on the grave of Finduilas by a group of Brethil woodmen led by Túrin Turambar. Túrin puts his cloak around her and asks her who she is and what has happened to her. She cannot answer but only weeps, and the woodmen feed her. Túrin gives her the name Niniel (“Maid of Tears”). She repeats the name, and they take her toward their home at Ephel Brandir. Niniel falls sick on the way and is ill for many days, cared for by Brandir with his skill in healing. During her illness, she will lie still only when Túrin is near her. When she finally awakens, the women of Brethil begin to teach her to speak, as if she were a child. As she learns, she often seeks out Brandir, who in his wisdom knows most about the names of things. Brandir grows to love her, but her love is set only on Túrin. One autumn day, she asks him about himself, and he tells her his name is Turambar, “Master of the Dark Shadow,” but tells her nothing specific of his parentage. He does say, however, that he escaped his darkness only when she escaped hers, and wonders to himself whether her coming from the green mound of Finduilas’s grave is a sign. With the new year, and with Niniel now fully recovered (though still without a memory), Túrin asks to marry her. Brandir cautions her to wait before accepting the proposal. He tells her there is a shadow on Turambar. Niniel says that shadow has passed, and that she has heard from Dorlas that Túrin is the greatest captain of the land. Brandir agrees, and he tells Niniel that in fact Túrin was a great captain of Nargothrond and is believed to be the son of Húrin of the House of Hador. He warns Niniel that Túrin is likely to go off to war again soon and succumb to the shadow. Niniel is undaunted but still asks Túrin to wait; this makes Túrin displeased with Brandir. In the spring, Túrin renews his suit and tells Niniel he will either go to war or marry her and settle down, to do battle only to defend her. Niniel agrees, and they are married in midsummer.

Chapters 16–18: Túrin and the Dragon As chapter 16 (“The Coming of Glaurung”) opens, Glaurung rules as dragon-king of the entire former realm of Nargothrond, and with his orc army, he begins to harass the borders of Brethil, the only haven left for men defying Morgoth. When Dorlas can no longer hold the orcs off or keep them out of Brethil, he comes to Túrin and begs his help. Now Túrin takes up his great black sword Gurthang once more, and the woodsmen rally to him. They are able to slay all orcs in the woods and defeat a second army that Glaurung sends against them. Túrin, now acting as lord of Brethil, vows to face his fate at last and go to confront the dragon. As spring comes, Niniel becomes pregnant, but her health seems to decline. Meanwhile, fires have been seen raging in the north, and Túrin recognizes that these are set by Glaurung, who is seeking him. One day in summer, two men report that they have seen the dragon himself, near the river Teiglin on the western border of Brethil. But before the dragon lies a deep ravine that Glaurung must cross to get into Brethil. Túrin addresses the men of the forest, saying that they must use cunning against the dragon. He tells the men to prepare to flee, saying that if Glaurung comes, they must abandon Ephel Brandir, for the dragon will destroy it. But Túrin vows to fight the dragon, believing Glaurung to be vulnerable in his belly. He asks for a few allies to help him go after the dragon, and Dorlas volunteers. When no one else follows suit, Dorlas condemns Brandir’s counsels of peace and asks for someone to take the lame Brandir’s place and ensure that the House of Haleth will not be shamed. Brandir’s kinsman Hunthor rebukes Dorlas, saying that the dragon has come precisely because they had ignored Brandir’s counsel, but he volunteers to join Túrin in going against the dragon. Túrin tries to patch things up with Brandir before going, saying that he should stay behind since his healing power will be needed by his people. But Brandir says that the shadow on Túrin will lead to evil. Nor is Túrin’s farewell to Niniel any warmer, since she begs him not to go and to flee with her, and he refuses, saying they would not be safe. As he, Hunthor, and Dorlas reach the river, they find that

56   Children of Húrin, The the dragon lies on the other side, preparing to try to cross the ravine at night. Túrin tells his two companions that they must go into the ravine to come up in the path that the dragon will be forced to take to cross the divide. Túrin believes that the dragon intends to try to leap across the ravine. Meanwhile, Niniel has told Brandir that she cannot abide waiting for news of Túrin, and she intends to follow him. Brandir tries to prevent her, but she cries out to all the people of Brethil that she will not wait to hear tidings of the battle but will go to meet them. Many decide to go with her, including the wives of Dorlas and Hunthor. Many simply are curious to see the dragon. A large group, therefore, leaves Ephel Brandir and makes its way by nightfall to the falls of Celebros, not far from the ravine where Glaurung lies waiting. When they have left, Brandir addresses the remaining people, telling them to choose a new leader since his counsel is scorned. He breaks his staff and sets out to follow Niniel, whom he loves, bringing his sword and limping after the others toward the dragon’s ravine. As chapter 17 (“The Death of Glaurung”) opens, Turambar reaches the pass at Cabed-enAras, where the dragon waits. Túrin climbs down the cliff on one side and crosses the wild water. When he looks behind him, only Hunthor has followed. Dorlas fails to cross, and Hunthor maligns him for his bold words to Brandir. The two make their way along the stream and begin to climb the cliff where the dragon sleeps, hoping to come up beneath him to his unprotected underbelly. But the climb is too hard, and they decide to wait to see where the dragon will attempt to cross the ravine. Túrin falls asleep but is roused by the sound of the dragon stirring above. Glaurung breathes a blast of fire into the ravine and then leaps across. Túrin and Hunthor rush to get beneath the dragon as he clambers up the other side of the cliff. Hunthor reaches out to save Túrin from falling, and just as Túrin is thanking him, a boulder comes down and sweeps Hunthor from the cliff. Túrin drags himself up just as the bulk of Glaurung’s belly sags over him, and Túrin thrusts upward with his black sword, sinking it to the hilt in the dragon’s underside. Glaurung screams in

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pain and falls, carrying Túrin’s sword with him. He writhes in great death throes until he is finally silent. Now Túrin climbs down and stands over the dying dragon. He pulls his sword out of the dragon’s belly and gloats that Túrin son of Húrin is now avenged. But the dragon’s blood burns Túrin’s hand and he cries out, at which the dragon stirs and looks on Túrin with such hatred that Túrin falls down in a swoon. Those watching from the falls of Celebros are terrified by the dragon’s screams, and believe that he is killing his attackers. They watch to see whether Glaurung stirs further. Niniel sits motionless until she is found by Brandir as he finally arrives. The others tell him that the dragon has crossed the river and that Túrin must certainly be dead. Seeing Niniel’s sorrow, he throws his cloak around her shivering body. He then takes her by the hand and begins to lead her away, hoping to escape Brethil and the dragon’s wrath. But Niniel stops him, saying she only wants to be led to the Black Sword, her beloved husband. She runs away from him in the direction of the dragon, and Brandir drags himself after her. Niniel finally finds her way to the body of the dragon and sees a man’s body lying next to it. She takes Túrin’s body in her arms and sees that he still breathes. Binding his burnt hand with a piece of her garment, she cries for him to awaken. At this, Brandir catches up to her, but he halts before reaching her as the dragon stirs. With his dying breath, Glaurung greets Niënor and reveals to her that Túrin is her brother. He calls Túrin treacherous, faithless, and accursed, saying that his worst deed should be felt inside of Niënor herself. As the dragon dies, Niënor remembers everything. She bids Túrin a final farewell and rushes off, with the stricken Brandir chasing her again. She runs to the edge of the cliff and casts herself off. From that time forward, the place is known as Cabed Naeramarth (“the Leap of Dreadful Doom”). In horror, Brandir does not know whether to hate or pity Túrin, but he decides to go back to his people to tell them of the dragon’s death. He comes across Dorlas and shames him for leaving his companions. Dorlas makes to attack Brandir but is killed by Brandir’s sword before he can strike a

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Children of Húrin, The   57 blow. When Brandir reaches the people, still waiting at the falls of Celebros, he reveals to them the whole story: The dragon is dead, but so are Túrin and Niniel, his sister and wife. He makes them follow him back to give Túrin an honorable burial. In chapter 18 (“The Death of Túrin”), Túrin finally awakens to find his hand bandaged, and he wonders what has happened. He rises and, exhausted, begins to walk toward the falls of Celebros, hoping someone will be there to lead him back to the healing hands of Brandir. He arrives, only to find a group setting out to bury him, and they turn on Brandir as if he is mad. Túrin assumes that Brandir has bandaged his hand, and he chides the others for deriding Brandir, whom he says at least had the courage to come to find him. When Túrin asks where Niniel is, Brandir replies only that she is not there. Túrin says this is well and asks for a horse or bier to bear him to his home, where he expects to meet her. But Brandir replies, finally, that she is dead. Dorlas’s wife speaks up to say that Brandir is not to be believed, since he also just brought the news of Túrin’s death, calling it good tidings. The angry Túrin turns on Brandir, accusing him of jealousy and of trying to come between Túrin and Niniel. Brandir responds that he saw Niniel leap from the cliff and reveals that it was because she had learned she was Túrin’s sister. Túrin shakes Brandir, admitting that indeed he is Túrin, son of Húrin, as Brandir has guessed, but he insists that his sister Niënor is safe in Doriath. However, Brandir tells him that it was Glaurung the dragon who revealed the truth in his dying gasps. In his rage, Túrin threatens to kill Brandir for secretly telling her his true identity. Brandir stands firm, saying that if Túrin kills him, then the dragon’s slanderous words about him were true, and that in death he shall at least be with Niniel. With that, Túrin kills Brandir with his sword Gurthang, and the rest of the people flee from him. Túrin runs wild through the woods until his grief is spent, then decides he must go to Doriath and see whether his sister is there. En route, he passes Haudh-en-Elleth, the mound where Finduilas was buried, and he asks her to send him counsel now. Even as he speaks, 12 elvish huntsmen come upon

him, led by Mablung, who greets him kindly. He reveals that he had seen Glaurung go forth and had heard that the Black Sword of Nargothrond was active again, and he had come to warn Túrin of the dragon’s approach. The elves are impressed to find that Túrin has killed the dragon, and Túrin says he has come to find news of his mother and sister. At this, Mablung reveals how Morwen was lost and Niënor run wild in the woods. Túrin astounds the elves by laughing at the “sweet grace of fortune.” When Túrin asks whether she was small and brown with dark hair, Mablung says that she was fair and tall. The crushed Túrin curses his blindness and Doriath. He flees from them, and Mablung tells the amazed elves that they must follow him. Túrin outstrips them, however, and comes to Cabed Naeramarth, where Niniel had leapt to her death. He refuses to defile the place with his own leap, but instead asks the cursed blade of Gurthang to drink his blood. The blade itself answers, saying that to forget the blood of its master Beleg, and of the unjustly slain Brandir, it will kill Túrin swiftly. And it does. The elves come upon the place and mourn, Mablung regretting that his words caused Túrin’s death. When they lift Túrin, they find that his sword has broken. They burn the body of the dragon and lay Túrin in a mound with the shards of his sword. They place a large stone on the mound, with the names of Túrin Turambar and Niënor Niniel upon it, though her body is never found. This is the end of the story of the children of Húrin. But in a kind of epilogue, Tolkien relates that after Niënor and Túrin’s deaths, Morgoth releases Húrin from his imprisonment. Húrin wanders until he comes to the stone on Túrin’s grave. Another old, ragged wanderer is there at the stone. It proves, in fact, to be Morwen. “They are lost,” she says of their children, and she asks Húrin, if he knows, to tell her how the two children had gotten together: “How did she find him?” Húrin does not answer, but rather holds the weakened Morwen for a while, until she dies in his arms. Commentary Chapters 1–3: Húrin and the Curse of Morgoth It is certainly true that the story of Húrin’s family, haunted as it is with the curse that destroys

58   Children of Húrin, The every member of his clan, is (as noted in Elizabeth Hand’s review) very similar to Greek tragedy. The House of Atreus was cursed when Atreus fed his brother Thyestes a meal of Thyestes’ own children, thus leading to the tragedies of Atreus’s son Agamemnon and grandson Orestes: Such cannibalism offended the gods and must therefore be expiated through the working out of the curse. Oedipus brings a curse upon the House of Thebes through his patricide and incest—deeds that offend the gods even if done unwittingly—thus bringing about his own destruction and that of his children. So Húrin brings a curse on his family by offending the godlike Morgoth, who is one of the Valar, or “great spirits” of the world—but one who (like Lucifer in Christian tradition) had rebelled and is now the embodiment of evil. This, of course, is where the analogy with Greek tragedy breaks down in the case of Húrin. Húrin’s actions are, in fact, noble and valorous, and his defiance of Morgoth in not revealing the location of the secret elvish city of Gondolin is an extreme act of virtue. The curse, in the case of Húrin’s family, is undeserved. The scene depicting Húrin’s defiance of the power of Morgoth is actually quite similar in structure and tone to a medieval saint’s legend, a genre with which Tolkien, as a scholar of medieval literature, would have been very familiar. The climax of many of these tales involves the saint being brought before a judge or other pagan official, who threatens the saint with punishment for refusing to fulfill the requirements of pagan law, usually involving the worship of some pagan deity. In a spirited debate, the saint always proves the intellectual superior of the judge and successfully defends Christianity against the demands of paganism. But the judge, defeated in this verbal sparring, ends by subjecting the saint to brutal torture until the saint dies as a martyr. Thus, Saint Agatha, for example, in Aelfric’s Old English legend, is put upon the rack and has her breast cut off. A similar pattern occurs in the third chapter here: The evil judge Morgoth attempts to persuade Húrin to join him— to come over to the “pagan” side—first by offering rewards (a leadership role in Morgoth’s army), then by promising reprisals (threatening harm to Húrin’s wife and children). Finally, he tries to convince

Húrin that he is all-powerful and had created the world—an invitation, essentially, for Húrin to worship him as a pagan god. Like the saints before him, Húrin scorns this offer, and like the pagan judges of the legends, Morgoth devises an unspeakable torture—this one uniquely horrifying and apparently Tolkien’s own invention: Húrin will be forced to watch Morgoth’s curse unfold on his family, and to see it all through Morgoth’s eyes—a fate suggesting that he may also feel Morgoth’s hatred as well as the fallen Valar perverse joy at Húrin’s own family’s torments. Another medieval source to which these first chapters allude is the popular 11th-century Old French epic The Song of Roland. This occurs specifically at the end of the second chapter, when Húrin insists on leading a rearguard action that will allow Turgon and his army to escape Morgoth’s forces and thus keep hope alive for the vanquished elves and men. As Roland, leading Charlemagne’s rear guard against the Saracens in the Old French poem, is surrounded and his rear guard all slaughtered (including his friend Oliver), so Húrin’s army of the House of Hador is cut down completely (including Húrin’s brother Huor). Alone on the battlefield, Húrin kills 70 of the enemy, just as Roland continues to slay Saracens even when he is the only French soldier left alive. In the case of both the saint’s life and The Song of Roland, Tolkien alludes to a religious sensibility that pits truth against falsehood, good against evil, the true faith versus the enemies of the faith. That is the sense that pervades the story of The Children of Húrin. Finally, it should be pointed out that the tragedy that lies behind this story is really less like Greek tragedy and much more akin to the sort of tragic sense peculiar to Icelandic family sagas. These texts were of particular interest to Tolkien the medievalist. The most highly regarded of the various forms of Icelandic sagas (or prose tales), the family sagas nearly always told tragic stories that involved legal disputes and blood feuds. Usually the sagas depicted a noble man against a bullying antagonist who tried to swindle or take advantage of the nobler protagonist, often ending in the nobler character’s death. His family may end up taking revenge on the bullying antagonist. In the

Children of Húrin, The   59 Icelandic family saga, there is no family curse per se, but the saga generally begins with an introduction of the main characters and their family backgrounds, and will also focus on some character traits in the protagonists that will be important in the story’s development. In part, the tragedy develops as a result of these character traits; in part, there is also a feeling of a kind of inexorable fate or destiny that was a significant aspect of the Old Norse or Germanic worldview (wyrd, as the AngloSaxons called it)—a fate to which even the gods were subject. But because the stories progress and the tragedies occur, through the inherent traits of the main characters, it might be said that in Icelandic family sagas, character is fate. Thus, as with the family saga, this novel begins with a detailed genealogy that begins with Hador and goes through his son Galdor the Tall to his grandsons Húrin and Huor. Húrin, we are told, has a fiery spirit and a steadfast will. We also meet Húrin’s wife, Morwen, of the kindred of Beren. She is described as dark, proud, and given to sadness because of the history of her people. Ultimately, we are introduced to Túrin, who is dark like his mother and, like her, given to dark moods as well, but with his father’s fiery temper. He is described as slow to forgive any perceived insult but also, because of his strong passions, quick to show pity. These traits, in him as a child, will ultimately determine Túrin’s tragic destiny. It should also be noted that the one person the boy Túrin is especially close to is his sister Urwen. He mourns her death in secret, having been forbidden by his mother to speak her name after she is dead. But this early love and grief foreshadows Túrin’s later tragedy and may, like those aforementioned character traits, establish a pattern of behavior that will ultimately lead Túrin to his destruction. Chapters 4–5: Doriath When the eight-year-old Túrin is forced to leave his mother for Doriath, the narrator describes this as the “first sorrow of Túrin.” Not long after, when Thingol’s messengers return alone from visiting Morwen, it is referred to as the “second sorrow of Túrin.” The implication seems clear that there will

be a long list of the sorrows of Túrin, although the narrator does not count each of them as he does here. All of Túrin’s life, these two references seem to imply, will be one sorrow piled upon another. Thingol’s placing the young Túrin on his knee is a highly symbolic act, indicating, as the narrator says, the acceptance of Túrin as his foster child. This reflects the practice common in Old Norse society, where to be “knee-seated” (knésetja) is to enter into fosterage. The practice, equally common in medieval Celtic society, obliged the foster parent to care for, raise, and educate the foster child, creating an intimacy that continued even after the child had reached adulthood. Often a foster child would be part of an arrangement that created a kind of political bond between the families, though in practice the child would often feel more allegiance to his foster parents than to his birth parents. Here, Thingol is taking responsibility for Túrin and agreeing to educate him according to his noble status. Thus, his early education with Nellas in the ways of the wood and his later training in war from Beleg are in part the fulfillment of Thingol’s fosterage commitment. It is important to note in these first five chapters how clearly the story of Túrin conforms to the archetypal hero myth as outlined by scholars including Joseph Campbell and Northrop Frye. This is not to say that Tolkien deliberately set out to follow the universal patterns manifest in the lives of mythic heroes, but rather that, in constructing his own mythology, Tolkien reflected the mythological cycles he was aware of, and thus inevitably created a story that follows the archetypal pattern. In the archetypal hero myth, the hero is born into a dangerous situation in which an attempt is made to kill him, but he escapes, often to a foster parent. The hero’s story thus begins with a separation. As the hero begins to mature, he experiences a call to adventure. This is the event that inspires the hero to undertake a quest or embark on a journey into the unknown. The call may come as a result of some crisis or simply as a response to the realization that something must be changed or restored. To accept the call, the hero must cross the threshold of adventure, some physical or symbolic boundary through which he must pass from the world of the

60   Children of Húrin, The familiar to the world of the unknown. Usually the hero encounters threshold guardians who try to block his passage. He also may meet helping figures or mentors (sometimes the guardians themselves become helping figures), and from one of these the hero may well receive a magic talisman or other divine gift that will help him in the coming task. One need only glance at the preceding list to note its clear application to the Túrin story: The young Túrin must flee from his home to escape the Easterlings, who want to kill him, and also to hide from the wrath of Morgoth, who cannot see him in the hidden realm of Doriath, protected as it is by the magical Girdle of Melian. He therefore grows up insulated from the dark world beyond Doriath, but when he reaches near-manhood, and the lines of communication have deteriorated so that he can get no more news from his mother in Dorlómin, Túrin feels it is time for him to avenge his father and reestablish his family honor. He is ready to cross the threshold of adventure, but Thingol proves to be a threshold guardian, in the short run preventing Túrin from crossing into the unknown. Thingol does, however, prove a helper figure as well, and he provides Túrin with the magic talisman—the Helm of Hador. Beleg Strongbow also acts as a helper figure to the young Túrin, teaching him the arts of war on the northern marches. The crisis of Saeros’s death three years later, however, spurs Túrin to reject the safety of Thingol’s kingdom and to cross the threshold of adventure, leaving behind Thingol, the threshold guardian, and entering into the world of the unknown, the world of adventure. The motif of the jealous counselor is a relatively common one in medieval romance: The hero through his own virtues becomes a favorite of the prince and thereby arouses the envy of others in the court. Here the direct effrontery of Saeros is a rather extreme form of the motif. One parallel to Tolkien’s use of the motif at this point is the story of Tristan, as told by the medieval German poet Gottfried von Strassburg. In that text, members of the court of King Mark are so jealous of Tristan’s influence with the king that they pressure King Mark to marry the Irish princess Isolde and to send Tristan to negotiate for her, in the hope

that Tristan will die in the process. It may be that Saeros owes something to this tradition. More clearly direct sources for the general outline of Túrin’s story are enumerated by Marie Barnfeld in her article “Túrin Turambar and the Tale of the Fosterling.” Tolkien himself acknowledges in a 1955 letter to W. H. Auden that the character of Kullervo in the Finnish mythological cycle told in the Kalevala was the model for Túrin (Tolkien Letters 214). Like Kullervo (as well as the Norse Sigurd, the Welsh Peredur, and the Irish hero Finn Mac Cumail), Túrin is a “battle orphan.” Kullervo’s father dies in battle against evil forces. He grows up as a serf (Marie Barnfeld sees a parallel between this and Túrin’s kin as thralls to the Easterlings) and at one point is treated so badly by the wife of his master, the smith Ilmarinen, that he kills her and is forced to flee—an act that Barnfield relates to Túrin’s vengeance on Saeros, which likewise causes him to flee (Barnfield 29). Another “battle orphan” Barnfield does not mention, but whose story bears some resemblance to Túrin’s, is Tristan (also a dragon slayer), whose father, Rivalin, dies in battle and who later returns to his country of Parmenie in order to deliver it from the tyranny of the usurper King Morgan. Chapters 6–9: The Outlaw Túrin In medieval literature in general, dwarves tend to be untrustworthy or wicked beings, their physical abnormalities symbolizing their twisted moral or ethical values. In the characterization of Mîm, Tolkien was likely influenced by interpretations of the Nibelungs of Germanic mythology, whose name appears most prominently in the title of the early 13th-century epic Nibelungenlied. As Deborah Webster Rogers and Ivor A. Rogers point out, in Norse mythology, Nibelungs are etymologically natives of Nifflheim, a cold “other world” inhabited by svatalfar, or black elves. Jacob Grimm had found reason to identify these svatalfar with dwarves, and in Wagner’s influential operatic version of the Nibelungs’ story, they are clearly “dwarfish miners and smiths” (Rogers and Rogers 83). Tolkien eschewed any comparison with Wagner’s Ring Cycle, but he does call his petty-dwarfs by the name of Nibin, a label related to the Germanic Nibelun-

Children of Húrin, The   61 gen. It is important to note that these creatures— Mîm and his sons—are specifically identified as the last of the petty-dwarves in Middle-earth. They are thus distinguished (in their hatred of other sentient beings) from the more common dwarves appearing in Tolkien’s other works; these are descended from the beings that Aulë the Smith tried to create without the aid of Ilúvatar, but whom the creator god Ilúvatar had granted free will and blessed after all (The Silmarillion). This background explains Mîm’s treacherous character to some extent, but Tolkien does allow us some sympathy for Mîm, first in depicting the loss of his son and then in showing Túrin’s interest in his culture. Nor is his final treachery unmotivated, since at least the possibility exists that the orcs are forcing him to betray Túrin’s band by holding his only remaining son captive. His dislike of Beleg is the result of ancient ethnic animosities, and that of Andróg the understandable resentment of one whose arrow killed his son without cause. In the end, Mîm is not simply a villain. Still, Túrin’s trust of Mîm proves to have been ill-founded. This is not the case, however, with the faith that he shows in his own race of men, even men as corrupted as his outlaw band have become. While Túrin has shown a good deal of stubbornness and shortsightedness in his dealings with elves (as Beleg’s chastising of him over his refusal to accept the lembas bread suggests), his faith in his own race, even as outlaws, proves sound for him, despite the readers’ likely sympathy for Beleg’s opinion that such faith is misplaced. This is true even for the worst of the outlaws, the murderer Andróg, whose distrust of Beleg is the logical development of his earlier assertion that the only law outlaws need to follow is the law of their own needs. In the end, Andróg’s selfless act of saving Beleg with his dying strength demonstrates that Túrin was, in fact, correct: Any human being is redeemable. There is certainly some influence of the medieval outlaw tradition on the Túrin story as told in these chapters. Certainly Túrin’s entry into the band, in which he defeats one of the outlaws in a physical contest, is reminiscent of some of the stories surrounding that most famous of medieval bandits, Robin Hood, who, when defeated by Little

John, invites the victor to join his band. But as Barnfield points out, Tolkien seems to have been more closely following the 14th-century Tale of Gamelyn in Túrin’s story. Like Túrin, Gamelyn is orphaned at a young age and grows up a thrall to his elder brother, who refuses to give Gamelyn his inheritance. Gamelyn tries to avenge himself on his brother (as Túrin will upon Brodda, who is keeping his own lands unjustly), but is defeated and then rescued by a faithful old servant, after which he flees into the forest to become an outlaw. Parallels to some of these events (the orphan, the bullying overlord, the outlawry) are already apparent in Túrin’s story, and others (i.e., the faithful old servant) will soon become apparent. Finally, the most striking event of these “outlaw” chapters must certainly be Túrin’s sudden and shocking slaying of Beleg. Throughout these chapters, Beleg has been Túrin’s best friend and confidant, as their coupling as “the Helm and the Bow” indicates (the Helm of Hador being fairly clearly borrowed from the “Helm of Dread” that Sigurd takes from the hoard of the dragon Fafnir in the Norse legend) (Barnfield 32). One might argue, of course, that if Túrin was, in fact, correct in his first impression, and Beleg was an orc standing over him with a sword, he was probably right to strike first and leave no time for contemplation. However, the fact that he must have known immediately that his bonds had just been cut should certainly have given him pause, if only for an instant. Certainly in part a working out of Túrin’s family curse, this accidental murder is at the same time another clear illustration of character as fate in the novel: Túrin’s rashness, his bias toward action rather than contemplation, toward immediate reflex response as opposed to any kind of reflective consideration of the value of different courses of action—this is what leads to Beleg’s death, not any abstract curse of Morgoth that lies beyond Túrin’s own responsibility. The accidental killing of one’s best friend is another motif that was not uncommon in medieval myth and literature. Perhaps best known, and most immediately known to Tolkien himself, is the story of the brothers Balin and Balan as told in Malory’s Morte Darthur. In that tale, the two brothers, both

62   Children of Húrin, The in armor and without any insignia to indicate their true identities, fight to the death, and only as they are dying do they recognize what they have done. Still, even that story, full of poor judgment and rash decisions, seems less disturbing than that of Túrin, whose response allows no time for reflection at all and leaves him paralyzed with grief until he can be restored at the springs of Eithel Ivrin. Túrin’s subsequent composition of the song in praise of Beleg is reminiscent of David’s song for Jonathan after the slaying of his best friend in battle at Mount Gilboa. The lament (in 2 Samuel 1.19–26) sings specifically of “the bow of Jonathan” (1.22, JB) and suggests another possible source for the motif of Túrin’s outlawry, for David, too, was forced to flee from King Saul and to take his army into the wilderness like a band of outlaws, until David could win his way to his true inheritance. Chapters 10–11: Túrin in Nargothrond One of the great villains of Tolkien’s mythology is the dragon Glaurung, created directly by Morgoth and thus the father of all dragons, including Smaug of The Hobbit and the deadly Ancalagon the Black, whose death will usher in the end of the First Age at the climax of The Silmarillion. Tolkien’s interest in dragons was kindled when he was very small, and read the story of Sigurd and the dragon Fafnir in Andrew Lang’s Red Fairy Book. In his previously cited letter to W. H. Auden, Tolkien recalled that the first story he tried to write, at the age of seven, was about a green dragon (Letters 214). Later, of course, he would become familiar with a number of dragons in Norse mythology and legend. In his essay “Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics,” Tolkien asserts that of the many dragons of Germanic literature, “there are only two that are significant”—these being the dragon (or wyrm) of Beowulf and Fafnir, slain by Sigurd in the Völsunga Saga (253). In this Tolkien ignores a number of other fascinating dragons, including the dragon slain by Tristan in Gottfried von Strassburg’s version of that legend—a legend with which Túrin’s has other things in common as well (see above). Jonathan Evans has studied Tolkien’s use of medieval dragon lore and tells us, first of all, that

there is no consistent or coherent tradition in the Middle Ages: Sources for ideas about dragons come into medieval myth and legend from “medieval European geography, ancient Semitic and Hellenistic cosmology and cosmogony, Roman mythology and popular legend, Latin hagiography, and Germanic legend and folklore” (181). Following the Danish scholar Axel Olrik’s categories, Evans refers to the hero who fights a dragon to obtain treasure as the “Sigurd” type, and the hero who fights to save his people as the “Thor” type. One who fights to free a captive woman is the “Saint George” type hero—a type that does not figure in Tolkien’s mythology (Evans 181). Tolkien creates his own myth of the origins of dragons in Morgoth’s enmity, but he focuses especially on the motif of the dragon’s lust for hoarded treasure. In addition to this, Tolkien takes from the Völsunga Saga the theme of the dragon as a rational, speaking creature (Evans 185). Like many medieval dragons, Glaurung is also a fire-breather, though unlike most of his descendants in Tolkien’s mythology, he is apparently unable to fly. In this (like the wyrm of Beowulf), he is more serpentine than Tolkien’s later dragons— recalling, perhaps, the serpent of Genesis and, like that serpent, proving to be the “most subtle” of all the beasts. For Glaurung’s phenomenal rhetorical skills are what Tolkien chiefly emphasizes. The dragon has the ability to cloud the minds of his victims—to hypnotize them, as it were, and to make them believe things that are simply not true, but using half-truths and the victims’ own self-doubts to convince them of things that appear to be true. It is this uncanny ability, not his fire-breathing or his great strength, that makes Glaurung the formidable villain that he is. Also of profound significance in these chapters is Gwindor’s assertion that Túrin is not subject to the curse of Morgoth, but carries his doom within himself. These are words that Túrin does not understand or heed, but they emphasize the Norse saga tradition in which character is fate. In fact, Túrin’s impetuosity and stubbornness, as well as his bias for action over consideration, are precisely what lead him to reject and desert the protection of Doriath, and that lead him ultimately to slay his best friend,

Children of Húrin, The   63 Bereth. The same egocentrism and inability to consider the feelings of others that lead him (to Beleg’s disgust) to completely forget his elven benefactor, Nellas, blinds him to the feelings of Finduilas and the real motives of Gwindor. Finally, his concern for his own kind—here, his mother and sister—is the motive used by the dragon to convince Túrin to first save his mother and sister, and to ignore the clear warning of Gwindor that Túrin’s fate will be determined by his saving—or failure to save—Finduilas. Túrin’s character is his doom in the novel because he steadfastly refuses to learn anything from his own prior experiences, and the destructive love triangle created in these chapters will be repeated again, with even worse results, later in the book. But the clearest indication in these chapters of Túrin’s responsibility for his own ultimate downfall is his dismissive attitude toward the elvish messengers who bring him news of the Vala Ulmo’s warning that the bridge to Nargothrond, the “stones of pride,” must be cast down. While Túrin scoffs at this, it is Túrin’s bridge that allows the dragon and the orc army to pass into Nargothrond and destroy the elvish stronghold. If this were a Greek tragedy, such arrogance on Túrin’s part would be called hubris. In the Norse context, as Richard West points out, Túrin’s actions could be described as characteristic of ofermod—the Old English term used in the poem The Battle of Maldon to describe the English commander Beorhtnoth’s foolhardy overconfidence in gallantly allowing the Viking invaders to establish themselves on his beach before doing battle. This kind of overconfidence is characteristic of Túrin, and it will prove disastrous for him later on. Something should be said here, as well, of Túrin’s sword. In Tolkien’s earliest version of the story, the sword was forged for Túrin in Nargothrond from the iron of a meteorite that fell from heaven (Barnfield 30). As Tolkien revised the story, however, the sword acquired a darker history. Here, it is Beleg who receives the sword Anglachel from Thingol. The sword was forged by a dark elf named Eöl, who gave the sword to Thingol for the right to live in the forest of Nan Elmoth in Thingol’s domain. But the prize was given grudgingly, and all the bitterness of the dark elf survives

in the sword. Melian warns Beleg of the dark heart in the sword, saying that it will neither love nor stay long in the hand that wields it. This is the sword that Túrin wrests from Beleg in order to kill him. The broken pieces of this sword are then reforged in Nargothrond for Túrin, who renames it Gurthang (“iron of death”) and with it earns his reputation as Mormegil, the Black Sword of Nargothrond. But Túrin never gives a thought to the malice within the sword, the malice that seems to have encouraged his slaying of Beleg—a malice that will reappear before the end. Medieval legend abounds in important swords that take on a kind of personality of their own (such as Arthur’s Excalibur), and famous swords that, for various reasons, are broken (such as Roland’s Durendal). The most immediate source for Tolkien’s black sword is probably Norse mythology. Again, in the Völsunga Saga, the hero Sigmund dies in battle against a disguised Ódin, who shatters his sword. Sigmund leaves the pieces of his sword to his unborn son, Sigurd, and as Sigurd prepares to fight the dragon Fafnir, he has the dwarf Regin reforge the pieces of his father’s weapon into a new sword that he names Gram, with which he can cut through an anvil of iron. Another famous sword from Norse legend also may have influenced Tolkien’s Gurthang: The sword Tyrfing is significant in the poem “The Waking of Angantyr” from the Elder Edda (or the Poetic Edda, as it is more commonly known). In this story, the king Svafrlami traps two dwarves, whom he forces to make him a magic golden-hilted sword that can cut through iron and will never rust or miss a stroke. But the angry dwarves curse the sword so that it will cause evil whenever it is drawn, and will kill its bearer. This bears a striking resemblance to the black sword of Túrin. Chapter 12: “The Return of Túrin to Dor-lómin” Here, at last, Túrin is able to take his revenge on those that robbed him of his heritage. In so doing, he is playing the part of the Kalevala’s Kullervo, who kills his evil uncle Untamo and his supporters, who have stolen the lands of his father and enslaved his mother. Barnfield points out how Kullervo’s singleminded quest of his vengeance, which he pursues

64   Children of Húrin, The even as he hears news of his family members dying, one by one, parallels Túrin’s obsession with returning to Dor-lómin (30), neglecting his responsibility to save Finduilas even as he seeks to save his mother and sister, who the lying words of Glaurung have led him to believe are prisoners in Dor-lómin. There are reminders of the Völsunga Saga here as well, as Aerin, having helped Túrin destroy her unloved husband, burns down her house, apparently choosing to die in a funeral pyre with Brodda. It is an act, as West asserts, reminiscent of Signy’s choice of self-immolation after she has helped Sigurd destroy her own husband (243). Despite Tolkien’s acknowledged debt to the Kalevala and to the Sigurd story, the archetypal return and revenge motif that informs this chapter is Odysseus’s return to Ithaca in The Odyssey. Odysseus, in disguise as a homeless beggar and befriended by a loyal old swineherd, ultimately kills the houseful of suitors who have been laying waste his household and destroying his son’s birthright. In Tolkien’s story, Túrin appears as a beggar at Brodda’s gates and is mistreated by his discourteous host. Ultimately, allied with the faithful old servant Sador, Túrin takes his revenge and slaughters Brodda and his fellow Easterlings present in the hall. Unlike Odysseus, however, Túrin’s vengeance is incomplete and does nothing to free his people: Sador is killed in the battle, and the other survivors of the House of Hador who took part in the battle are reduced to hiding in the woods as outlaws. What they need is for Túrin to come back at the head of an army that will wipe out the Easterlings and free the men of Dor-lómin from bondage and servitude. This remains a loose end in Túrin’s story, and by the end of his tale, he has never returned to his home, nor does he ever give these people another thought. Chapters 13–15: Túrin and Niënor in Brethil These three chapters may be the longest sustained narrative of the Túrin story, which up to this point has been highly episodic. Here, several motifs from previous episodes are repeated once more, though one cannot help but notice that the parallels seem lost on Túrin himself, so that there is no indication of his having learned from previous experience. As

he had in Nargothrond, Túrin here opposes the policies of the previous leaders by insisting that the men of Brethil fight the orcs openly rather than remain hidden, as Brandir would have them do. While Túrin’s approach is undoubtedly more “heroic,” it may also be more foolhardy—more characteristic of the Old English ofermod, considering that it was precisely this attitude on Túrin’s part that led to the destruction of Nargothrond. Brandir is quite correct in his prediction that Túrin will be the destruction of Brethil. Further, Túrin’s love of Niënor, which wins her despite Brandir’s hopeless love, uncomfortably parallels the earlier triangle that included Finduilas and Gwindor—a triangle that had ended disastrously for both Gwindor and Finduilas. This does not bode well for Niënor or Brandir, nor can the fact that Túrin first discovers Niënor lying senseless and naked on the grave of Finduilas be disregarded as a powerful warning that this relationship is doomed from the start. Still, again, Túrin seems completely unaware that he has been here before. Mablung’s leaving Doriath to make a determined search for Morwen and Niënor certainly recalls Beleg’s earlier search for Túrin, and therefore puts Mablung’s future in some doubt. Further, the dragon Glaurung’s confrontation of the hapless Niënor parallels his earlier encounter with Túrin, only with even more severe results, as the dragon’s hypnotic stare is able to wipe Niënor’s memory away completely, with disastrous consequences. The role of Morwen in these chapters gives us a fascinating insight into the character of Túrin himself. Morwen’s insistence on her own way, despite the wiser advice of Thingol and Melian as well as Mablung, demonstrates clearly that Túrin is indeed his mother’s son. Niënor’s own impetuosity in following her mother in disguise indicates that she belongs to this family as well. Stubbornness and family loyalty seem particularly characteristic of the family of Húrin, and the last we see of Morwen, she is riding aimlessly through the confusing fog, seeking news of her daughter. Morwen will not be seen again, at least while her children are still alive. The incest theme, of course, is the most significant aspect of these chapters. It has certainly been hinted at as the story has unfolded: Túrin’s inordi-

Children of Húrin, The   65 nate love of his first sister, Urwen, a love whose full grief his mother prevents him from voicing after Urwen’s untimely death, foreshadows his later love for Niënor. His strong loyalty to his own kind (the men of his outlaw band, for instance) and, further, to his own family (as evinced by his choice to seek his mother and sister rather than to save Finduilas) might suggest the possibility of a natural inclination toward his own sister at this point, particularly when neither of them is aware of the relationship. This motif is again one that Tolkien seems to have borrowed from Kullervo’s story in the Kalevala. Kullervo, whose sister has been lost in the woods, comes upon a beautiful blond woman skiing, whom he pulls into his sleigh and seduces. Neither knows of their relationship, but it is later revealed that they are brother and sister, and Kullervo’s impulsiveness is certainly an important factor in the disastrous mistake. Tolkien’s other most significant source, the Völsunga saga, also includes an incestuous encounter, deliberately arranged by Signy, who seduces her unwitting brother Sigmund. In the case of Túrin and Niënor, neither party can be held accountable for what happens, and though his character may have predisposed him to be attracted to his sister, for once Túrin cannot be blamed for the disaster. One might argue that, knowing he had another sister, he should have been careful to learn of Niënor’s parentage before marrying her. But there was no indication that she would ever recover her memory, and there was certainly no reason for him to suspect that she could possibly be his sister, who he thought was safely hidden away in Doriath. It might be useful here to consider the lengths to which Túrin goes, throughout this novel, to disguise his true identity and so keep himself hidden from the wrath of Morgoth and his curse. Certainly his anger at the southern elves who visit him in Nargothrond and recognize him as one of the House of Hador is evidence of this motive. But there is far more to it than that. The many names that Túrin adopts are all in reaction to something that has happened to him, or are names that others have given him in response to actions he has taken. Elizabeth Broadwell explores the complexity of these various names, noting that when Túrin takes

on a new name he is essentially creating “a new identity for himself by establishing a new ‘reading’ of his history” (35). Thus, Túrin’s various names are his own attempts to redefine himself, or the attempts of others to define him as they see him. As Broadwell puts it, the renaming is “an act of interpretation and not a statement of fact,” so that Túrin “chooses his appellations in accordance with how he wishes to perceive himself and be perceived by others” (36). First, among the outlaws, he names himself Neithan (“the Wronged”), in response to what he interprets as his unjust treatment by Thingol in Doriath. But later, at the head of his outlaw army with Beleg (“the Bow”) at his side, he earns the name Gorthol (“the Dread Helm”) from orcs and men alike. Having killed Beleg, however, he drops his association with the Helm, and when he comes to Nargothrond, he names himself Agarwaen, son of Úmarth (“Bloodstained, Son of Ill-fate”). At this point, he feels guilt-ridden (“bloodstained”) for the death of Beleg, and he sees Morgoth’s curse on his father as the driving force behind his own evil fate. But in Nargothrond, his martial feats earn him the name of Mormegil (“the Black Sword”)—another name that defines him in his role as slayer of orcs. After the fall of Nargothrond and his recognition of his failure to save Finduilas, Túrin calls himself “Wildman of the Woods” when he comes to Brethil. In this, Tolkien plays on a popular motif in medieval literature, in which the hero’s mind is so radically disturbed by events that he can no longer function in society and becomes like a beast for a time, until his mind is somehow restored. The prototype of this figure is King Nebuchadnezzar, who, in the Book of Daniel, spends seven years living like a beast as a result of his sins. Popular in Irish myth, particularly in poetry associated with Suibne Geilt, the wild man of the woods motif appears in a good deal of medieval romance literature: Merlin runs mad in despair after a battle in Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Vita Merlini (1150). The eponymous hero Yvain runs wild after betraying his lady in Chrétien de Troyes’ romance (1175). Lancelot runs mad after Guinevere discovers his unintended infidelity with Elaine in Malory’s Le Morte Darthur (1470). All of these examples involve extreme

66   Children of Húrin, The reactions to traumatic events and involve a process by which the “wild man” regains sanity and ultimately is restored to health. When Túrin calls himself “Wildman of the Woods,” this is the tradition upon which Tolkien draws. But, in fact, if Túrin is truly disturbed by the events that have occurred at Nargothrond or by his desertion and betrayal of Finduilas, he never shows any signs of the kind of trauma that these medieval protagonists show. The point may be that Túrin is aware that he should feel traumatized by guilt, but in fact he is not so deeply moved as the name might suggest. Finally, of course, Túrin calls himself Turambar, the “Master of Doom.” In this, he has made a conscious decision to free himself from the curse of Morgoth through his own actions (Broadwell 37). But as it works out, the title is ironic. While Túrin may believe he is master of his own fate, he so names himself at precisely the moment when he is about to unwittingly commit incest with his sister. Túrin’s many names may be a way for him to reinvent or reimagine himself, but in fact there is nothing he seems able to do to circumvent his coming doom. Túrin’s failure as hero or deliverer is underscored by an allusion in the text to another popular motif of medieval romance. The leader of the men of Brethil is the lame figure Brandir. Barnfield sees a relationship between the lame Brandir and the figure of the Maimed King in the Welsh romance of Peredur, one of the versions of the Perceval story, which was the source of the Grail legend in medieval literature. Peredur’s Maimed King is an embodiment of the Fisher King, who in the Grail legend rules over the Waste Land. The task of the Grail Knight is to restore the fertility of the Waste Land—often by defeating a dragon—and thereby restore the health of the maimed Fisher King. As Barnfield points out, in early versions of the Túrin story, Tolkien had named the lame figure Brethil Tamar. Later on he changed the name to Brandir, and Barnfield notes that Robert de Boron had named the Fisher King Bron (probably related to the name of the Celtic god Bran), so that Tolkien seems deliberately to play on the name of the Maimed King with the name Brandir (Barnfield 32).

The irony of these allusions is, of course, that Túrin does not succeed in restoring the health of Brandir. He does slay the dragon, but in doing so he saves neither himself, his sister, the kingdom, nor Brandir, but instead brings destruction on all. Chapters 16–18: Túrin and the Dragon Tolkien’s bringing Húrin and Morwen back together at the very end of the story provides a sense of closure, a completion of the circle, that the otherwise rather episodic tale of Túrin Turambar would not possess. It reminds readers of the curse upon Húrin’s house with which the story began, and it leaves us wondering, with Morwen, about the inexorable evil behind a world in which Túrin and Niënor would not only meet by chance but have no way of recognizing each other. “How did she find him?” is indeed the question we are left to ponder. Túrin’s story in this climactic section most closely parallels the Kullervo story from the Kalevala. When Kullervo’s sister realizes that she has had sex with her own brother, she rushes from the sled in which he has seduced her and runs into a swirling river, where she drowns in a whirlpool—a death similar to Niënor’s leap into the river. In the Kalevala, Kullervo does not kill himself immediately following his sister’s suicide, but takes his revenge first on Untamo. It is after he returns home to find all his family dead that he pulls out his sword, a gift from the sky god, and asks the sword to devour his guilty flesh. This must be the direct source for Túrin’s death scene, in which Túrin speaks directly to his own sword, Gurthang, asking it to drink his blood. In Túrin’s case, the sword itself answers, essentially agreeing that to slay Túrin will be appropriate recompense for being forced to kill Beleg and Brandir unjustly. One might interpret this psychologically. The blade has not spoken before, though Melian has warned that there is a curse upon the sword stemming from its maker’s bitter heart. But it has certainly never displayed a consciousness before, and here it may be easy to assume that the consciousness is projected onto the sword by Túrin himself, whose guilt is destroying him and here speaks from the sword that condemns him.

Children of Húrin, The   67 Niënor’s plunge from the cliff that ever after bears the name Cabed Naeramarth (“the Leap of Dreadful Doom”) after her act may have another source as well. There are distinct parallels with the medieval Czech legend of the Divoka Šarka (“wild Sharka”), an Amazon-like warrior princess who seduced Ctriad, the leader of the men (with whom the women were at war) and then betrayed him to his death. One version of her legend says that she had fallen in love with Ctriad and, in remorse, threw herself off a cliff that now bears her name. Whether Tolkien knew any version of the Sharka story is uncertain, but the strong parallel to Niënor’s suicide, and Tolkien’s interest in medieval legends in general, suggest the possibility. Túrin’s manner of slaying the dragon—waiting below the cliff to stab him in his vulnerable underbelly—seems derived directly from Sigurd’s slaying of Fafnir in the Völsunga Saga. In that text, Sigurd crawls into a valley over which the dragon will pass on his way to drink, and stabs the beast through the heart from below. Tolkien may also draw once again on the Tristan legend for some of the details of the dragon slaying: In Gottfried von Strassburg’s text, Tristan kills a dragon that has been ravishing Ireland, in order to win the hand of Isolde, who had been promised by her father, King Goram, to the dragonslayer. Tristan cuts out the dragon’s tongue as proof of his victory, but the venom of the tongue poisons him and he is left unconscious, only to be found later by Isolde, who nurses him back to health. Túrin’s fainting and apparent death after killing Glaurung, and the burning of his hand by the dragon’s blood, are reminiscent of Tristan’s ordeal, as is his being found and cared for by Niënor before her suicide. The most important question to ask here at the end of the Túrin story is one raised in the beginning: The inexorable fate common in the greatest of Greek tragedies seems to lie behind Túrin’s adventures, and Tolkien very clearly relates Túrin’s story to that of Oedipus, the unwitting incest bringing about the hero’s ultimate downfall. As Jocaste hangs herself and Oedipus puts out his own eyes when they discover that they have blindly stumbled into incest, so Niënor throws herself (and

her unborn child) from a cliff and Túrin plunges a sword into his own heart when they find out the same thing. For Oedipus, it is the fate that the gods seem to have woven for him that works its way out despite the hero’s attempts to avoid it; for Túrin, it is the curse that Morgoth, and his creature Glaurung, have wrought upon him despite his attempts to hide from his fate behind various pseudonyms and reinventings of himself. But for Aristotle, the leading classical authority, tragedy involves far more than this. The tragic hero, in Aristotle’s view, should be neither evil nor perfectly good, but rather a person, better than the average, who falls from a position of power or privilege not because of vice or depravity, but rather because of some mistake or error of judgment— which Aristotle calls hamartia. In Greek tragedy, one common form of hamartia is hubris, the pride or overweening self-confidence that leads a protagonist to disregard a divine warning or to violate an important moral law. In the case of Túrin, we have already seen occasions of his ofermod, the result of his stubborn refusal to listen to others, his overconfidence in his own abilities, his lack of empathy, and his inability to learn from his mistakes. The plot of a tragedy, as Aristotle conceived it, includes a catastrophe both destructive and painful, initiated by some reversal, or peripeteia, which also brings about what Aristotle calls anagnorisis (that is, recognition or tragic knowledge). The reversal that occurs at the climax of Túrin’s story is the revelation to him that Niënor is his own sister; thus, the reversal contains within it some kind of hamartia, though Túrin’s resistance of the truth causes him to murder Brandir, whom he accuses of lying. Only when the story is confirmed by Mablung does Túrin accept the truth about his marriage and, if his conversation with his sword indicates his own self-knowledge, does he finally accept the consequences of his slaying of Beleg and Brandir. Aristotle’s final criterion for tragedy—the catharsis of pity and fear felt by the audience—is somewhat subjective. Readers will have to determine for themselves whether they feel pity and fear at Túrin’s story. We certainly pity Niënor, and probably Brandir as well. Túrin may ultimately be

68   Children of Húrin, The his own worst enemy, but it would be difficult to make the case that he deserves his fate. That may allow us to pity him as well, and to fear the kind of irrational evil that seems to pervade the universe of Túrin’s legend. Characters Beleg Strongbow  Beleg is an elf who defends the northern march of Doriath. Essentially his role is to be a faithful, courageous, and wise helper figure to Túrin. He meets the young Túrin when he arrives in Doriath and brings him to King Thingol. As Túrin grows, Beleg teaches him how to use a sword and a bow. When he is of age, Túrin joins Beleg in defending the kingdom’s borders. Beleg brings Nellas in as a witness to clear Túrin’s name after the unfortunate death of Saeros, and—after receiving the black sword Anglachel—is sent by the king to find and pardon Túrin after he has fled. Beleg finds Túrin a leader of outlaws, and when his offer of clemency is rejected, he returns to Doriath. Ultimately, though, he leaves the elvish kingdom and joins Túrin (bringing him his great Helm of Hador), becoming his chief counselor and, with Túrin, gaining the reputation of orc killers as “the Bow and the Helm.” After their betrayal by Mîm the dwarf, Beleg is left bound to a rock but is saved from Mîm’s vengeance by the outlaw Andróg. Freed, Beleg tracks down Túrin to save him from his orc captors, but when Túrin awakes and sees a figure bent over him with a sword, he wrests the sword from Beleg and kills him before he realizes who it is. Brandir  Brandir is the lame leader of a remnant of the People of Haleth who inhabit the forest of Brethil. His character may owe something to the maimed Fisher King of the Grail legend. In The Children of Húrin, Brandir plays the role of a kind of Cassandra figure, who continually issues warnings or speaks the truth and is never believed. When the unconscious Túrin is brought to his fort, Brandir warns that the Black Sword of Nargothrond will bring destruction to Brethil. Brandir loses influence with his people when Túrin becomes popular and persuades them to hunt orcs;

Brandir is dismayed because he believes survival lies in keeping their refuge a secret from Morgoth. A healer, Brandir cares for the amnesiac Niënor and falls in love with her, though she wishes only to marry Túrin. Brandir warns her that there is a shadow on Túrin, and that he believes him to be Túrin, the son of Húrin. When the dragon comes toward Brethil, Túrin becomes the de facto leader of the people, and though he tries to assuage Brandir’s resentment, Brandir again predicts disaster for Túrin. When Niënor follows Túrin to the dragon, Brandir renounces his leadership of the tribe and follows her. When he catches up to her, he leads her to the site of the dragon battle, where they believe Túrin has been killed. When the dying Glaurung tells Niënor her true parentage, Brandir is unable to catch up to her before she throws herself from the cliff. He reports to his people that both Niënor and Túrin have died, but when the recovered Túrin appears, the people will not believe Brandir’s story of Niënor’s death, and when he tells Túrin of his incest, the angry Túrin will not believe him and kills him with the black sword Gurthang. Glaurung  The chief villain of the story of Túrin is the dragon Glaurung, the father of all dragons, having been created by Morgoth. He is not a flying dragon, but more of a serpent who, like the serpent of Genesis, is able to convince his victims that the lies he is telling are the truth. These powers of rhetorical persuasion and the powerful malice behind them, rather than the dragon’s physical power or fire-breathing abilities, are what make him such a memorable villain. Túrin’s connection with the dragon is suggested quite early, since on the crest of the Helm of Hador that the young Túrin receives is an image of the dragon Glaurung. Glaurung is sent to attack Nargothrond at the head of an army of orcs, and he uses the bridge Túrin has built to enter the fortress and destroy the elves. He faces Túrin, calls him an outlaw and friend slayer (referring to Beleg), and persuades him to rush off to save his mother and sister (although they are at the time safe in Doriath) and to abandon Nargothrond and Finduilas, the elven maiden

Children of Húrin, The   69 who loves him. Later, when Mablung brings Morwen and Niënor to Nargothrond, he finds the dragon in possession of the fortress. Glaurung sends a fog that separates the riders, so that Morwen is lost and Niënor is alone. When Niënor comes face-to-face with him, he claims that Túrin has fled like a coward. She refuses to believe him, revealing her own relationship with Túrin, after which the dragon wipes out her entire memory and leaves her helpless and alone. Finally, when Glaurung moves to attack Brethil, Túrin is able to strike a death blow to the dragon’s underbelly, but the dying Glaurung is still able to reveal to Niënor her unwitting incest with her own brother, and the monstrous relationship she has with the child inside of her. It is Glaurung’s final declaration that pushes Niënor to her suicide. Niënor  (Niniel)  Essentially an innocent victim caught up in the massive carnage of Túrin’s tragedy, Niënor is Túrin’s sister, the youngest child of Húrin and Morwen, born after Túrin has left his home in Dor-lómin. With her mother, Morwen, she flees for refuge to Doriath. With Morwen and accompanied by Mablung, she goes in search of her brother, sneaking after them, disguised as an elf. Separated from her mother and her elvish guardians, she is confronted by the dragon Glaurung, whose hypnotic power wipes out her memory. She is left alone and naked, wandering in the woods, until Túrin finds her (ironically on the grave of the elf maiden Finduilas). Túrin names her Niniel (“Maid of Tears”) and brings her back to Ephel Brandir, where Brandir heals her and she falls in love with her brother, Túrin. Unaware of their relationship and despite the warnings of Brandir, who loves Niniel as well, the two marry, and Niënor conceives. She follows Túrin when he goes to do battle with the dragon, and when she comes upon the fallen Túrin, she bandages his hand before the dragon awakes and, in his final words, reveals to her the truth of her marriage. Unable to live with the guilt of her incest, Niniel (now revealed as Niënor) throws herself from a cliff, ever afterward known as Cabed Naeramarth (“the Leap of Dreadful Doom”).

Túrin Turambar  Túrin is also variously known as Neithan (“the Wronged”), Gorthol (“Dread Helm”), Agarwaen (“Bloodstained”), Thurin (“the Secret”), Adanedhel (“Elf-man”), Mormegil (“the Black Sword”), Wildman of the Woods, and Turambar (“Master of Doom”). Túrin is the son of Húrin of the House of Hador (lord of Dor-lómin) and Morwen, the daughter of Baragund of the House of Bëor. As such, he is heir to the lands of Dor-lómin, a position he loses to invading Easterlings after his father is captured and forced by Morgoth to sit and watch through Morgoth’s own eyes the doom that falls upon his children. Ultimately, Túrin avenges himself by slaying Brodda in Dorlómin, but he never regains that land for himself. This failure encapsulates the many failures of Túrin’s life. Each new name that he gives himself, or that others give him, is a way, first, of disguising himself from the eye of Morgoth, who searches for him in order to bring his doom upon him; and, second, of redefining himself based on events that have happened in his life. Thus, he is “the Wronged” among the outlaws when he believes he has been cast out of Doriath unjustly. Later, he is the “Dread Helm” among the outlaws, when he earns a reputation as an orc slayer. He is “the Bloodstained” in Nargothrond because he has killed Beleg, and he is called “the Secret” by Finduilas because he reveals so little of himself. He is named “Elf-man” in Nargothrond because he adapts to the elvish life so well. Later he is “the Black Sword” because his sword does so much damage among the orcs. He is Wildman of the Woods after his deeds have led to Nargothrond’s destruction, and he is the “Master of Doom” in Brethil when he has decided to face his doom whatever it brings. How much of what happens to Túrin is the result of Morgoth’s curse and how much is the result of his own character is a matter of some debate, and Tolkien certainly allows for both interpretations. Clearly, the dragon’s discovery of his sister sets in motion the chain of events that will destroy both Túrin and Niënor, and the curse that lies behind the Black Sword may have something to do with his killing of his friends. But Túrin is responsible for a good portion of his own woes because of his own

70   “City of the Gods, The”  flawed character. He is described as handsome and tall, as well as courageous and strong. He is darkhaired like his mother, Morwen, and like her, he is dark of mood and seldom merry. He is prideful and stubborn, preferring his own judgment to that of others, even when they are older and wiser. He is unforgiving of any kind of insult, real or perceived, and he is unable to see the true motives of many of those he befriends. Nor is he able to learn from his own experiences, until in his final recognition he understands his own sins. Further Reading Barnfield, Marie. “Túrin Turambar and the Tale of the Fosterling.” Mallorn 31 (December 1994): 29–36. Broadwell, Elizabeth. “Essë and Narn: Name, Identity, and Narrative in the Tale of Túrin Turambar.” Mytholore 64 (Winter 1990): 34–44. Evans, Jonathan. “Medieval Dragon-lore in Middle Earth.” Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts 9 (1998): 175–191. Hand, Elizabeth. “The Return of the King: A New Novel from the Creator of Middle-Earth.” Washington Post, 22 April 2007, p. BW07. Hensher, Philip. “Húrin the Money.” Daily Telegraph, 28 April 2007. Available online. URL: http://www. telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/3664772/Hurinthe-money.html. Accessed June 11, 2008. O’Hehir, Andrew. “Lord of the Ruins.” Salon (April 17, 2007). Available online. URL: http://www. salon.com/books/feature/2007/04/17/hurin/. Accessed June 11, 2008. Rogers, Deborah Webster, and Ivor A. Rogers. J. R. R. Tolkien. Boston: G. K. Hall, 1980. Tolkien, J. R. R. “Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics.” Proceedings of the British Academy 22 (196): 245–294. ———. The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien. Edited by Humphrey Carpenter. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1981. ———. The Tale of the Children of Húrin. Edited by Christopher Tolkien. London: HarperCollins and Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2007. West, Richard C. “Túrin’s Ofermod: An Old English Theme in the Development of the Story of Túrin.” In Tolkien’s Legendarium, edited by Verlyn Flieger and Carl F. Hostetter, 233–245. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 2000.

“City of the Gods, The”  (1923) “The City of the Gods” is a sonnet composed by Tolkien on April 30, 1915—a few days after his composition of two other poems, “Goblin Feet” and the unpublished “You and Me.” The poem was published in the magazine The Microcosm, printed at Leeds in 1923. In manuscript, the sonnet was originally called “Kôr: In a City Lost and Dead,” making it clear that Tolkien had in mind the elven city of Eldamar, deserted by the elves when they left the Undying Lands and marched into the world, according to the private mythology that Tolkien was beginning to forge in his imagination. The story had changed a great deal by the time it was published in The Silmarillion more than 50 years later, but the early version of the legendarium is preserved in the two volumes of The Book of Lost Tales, edited by Christopher Reuel Tolkien and this particular poem is reprinted on page 136 of the first volume of that text. Synopsis The poem begins by describing a great city standing atop a high black hill, looking out at an azure sea and sky. The city boasts great marble temples and white halls, and on the walls are shadows of great trees, which look like black pillars. But the city is completely deserted, the halls and temples are silent, the towers standing hot and empty in the sun. Commentary Tolkien’s poem is a sonnet, but not a conventional English or Italian sonnet. Tolkien’s poem rhymes ababcdcdeefggf, thus structurally following neither the four-part English sonnet (with its three quatrains and ending couplet) nor the two-part Italian type (with its octave and sestet). In its own way, however, Tolkien’s poem falls structurally into two sections: As Joe Christopher has pointed out, the first 10 lines of the poem are a single sentence, describing the city itself; the last four lines are another single sentence, revealing the emptiness of the city (144). The first section of the poem ends

“Clerkes Compleinte, The”    71 with the couplet in lines 9 and 10, giving the lines a clear sense of finality. Christopher, using the poem as an example of Tolkien’s unappreciated skill as a lyric poet, goes on to consider the poem’s style and its artful use of sound. The diction, he says, is old-fashioned, and in its excess of adjectives, it emulates the romantic poets of the early 19th century, though the word order of “marble towers white” (splitting up the adjectives) is in the style of Milton (144). Christopher points out, as well, Tolkien’s use of assonance, with the vowel sounds of gigantic and rampart, as well as sable and gazing, in the first few lines of the poem, and the alliteration of gigantic, gazing, ground, and gleam, all of which serve to unify the description (144). He also points out how Tolkien slows the poem down in the final two lines by adding an extra stress, first in the phrase “And no voice stirs” (145). Technically, Tolkien has used a combination of an iamb (“And no”—an unaccented syllable followed by an accented syllable) and a spondee (“voice stirs”—two consecutive accented syllables). In this, he was again emulating the romantic poets, specifically John Keats, who had famously used the line “And no birds sing” in his haunting “La Belle Dame Sans Merci.” That Tolkien was thinking specifically of Keats’s poem is suggested by the fact that, as Christopher Tolkien reveals in his discussion of the poem in The Book of Lost Tales, Part One, J. R. R. Tolkien had originally written “and no bird sings” in his line 13, before changing it for publication (136). The allusion says something about the poem’s tone. The tone of Keats’s poem is one of loss and longing, the “knight at arms” in the poem pining hopelessly for the “belle dame,” whom he has seen but now lost. That feeling of loss is present in Tolkien’s poem as well, the beauty of the city never to be seen again by its inhabitants, all of whom have disappeared. But the tone is created first by the extra stressed syllable, slowing the poem’s final lines, even if the allusion to Keats goes undetected. By itself, “The City of the Gods” is a poem that creates a sense of wonder at the beautiful city on the hill, and a sense of loss and mystery at its desertion. This is all its original audience would have, or

could have, seen in the poem. For Tolkien himself and his current readers, however, the poem had and has another level, relating as it does to the elven city of his original legendarium, deserted by the “Noldoli” (the original version of the Noldor) when they left the Undying Lands for the original version of Middle-earth. Further Reading Christopher, Joe R. “Tolkien’s Lyric Poetry.” In Tolkien’s Legendarium: Essays on the History of Middle-earth, edited by Verlyn Flieger and Carl F. Hostetter, 143– 160. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 2000. Tolkien, J. R. R. The Book of Lost Tales I. Vol. 1 of The History of Middle-Earth, edited by Christopher Tolkien. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1983. ———. “The City of the Gods.” Microcosm 8, no. 1 (Spring 1923): 8.

“Clerkes Compleinte, The”  (1922) Tolkien wrote “The Clerkes Compleinte” while he was a reader (lecturer) at the University of Leeds (see Leeds, University of). Having recently completed his A Middle English Vocabulary, Tolkien seems to have been inspired to put his familiarity with the language to use by composing his own poem in Middle English, in imitation of the first lines of Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales. The irony of the poem is that Tolkien uses this format to express his early frustration with the place of language study in the curriculum. He published the poem anonymously in the Gryphon, the local student/faculty publication, signing the poem “N.N.”—presumably for “No Name.” In 1984, the poem was reprinted in the Swedish journal Arda by Anders Stenström with the aid of Tom Shippey. It has since been reprinted in an article by Jill Fitzgerald, who notes that Christopher Reuel Tolkien had discovered a manuscript of “The Clerkes Compleint” that his father had reviewed after 1925, changing the venue of the poem from Leeds to Oxford in a marginal note (48– 49). Fitzgerald prints this version of the poem with

72   “Clerkes Compleinte, The”  its Oxford emendations, and this is the version of the poem referred to in the following commentary. Synopsis When the dark, cold rains of October have drenched the earth, and the skies are filled with clouds of black smoke, and the east wind Eurus bites the flesh, and stray cats yowl in the streets, then people think about registering for university classes. In the north, students (or “clerks”) travel to Leeds, darkest town of Yorkshire, to seek the deep wells of lore. In that season, the poem’s speaker (a clerk himself) stands among 500 other clerks who, he guesses, want to learn old tongues of France, England, Prussia, and Spain, or perhaps history, or law. There are even some bold ones who think to learn Greek or make their heads ache with philosophy. And yet, he says, there is a huge number, more than he can count, who want to learn to weave cloth, or steep hides in fat, or burn coal. A large group wants to study mathematics, or chemistry or physics, and strange sciences of fish and flowers and old stones. Such a din is made that the air shakes, and there are cries in the speaker’s ears of fees and matriculation and examinations. There is so much confusion that he cannot understand anything anyone is asking him. The speaker is therefore sent away, outside the gates, to bewail his fate for a year before he dare attempt to drink of the clerks’ well again. Commentary Tolkien’s poem comprises 60 lines written in decasyllabic couplets, like Chaucer’s General Prologue. It is easy to see where he has borrowed from Chaucer’s opening lines, though he has made the time of year fall rather than spring, so that the cold rains of October have replaced the gentle rains of April, and the east wind Eurus has replaced the warm west wind, Zephyrus. Howling cats have replaced singing birds, and the university has replaced the cathedral as the place of pilgrimage. Fitzgerald notes lines borrowed from the epilogue to Chaucer’s “The Man of Law’s Tale”—“yit nas bot litel Latin in her mawe” (l. 28)—as well as from the portrait of the Manciple in the General Prologue—“& wisdom of an heep of lerned men” (l.52) (Fitzgerald 51). The

tone and situation of the second part of Tolkien’s poem, with its overwhelming crowds of people and great noise, recall the confusion of Chaucer’s The House of Fame or the indeterminate ending of The Parliament of Fowls, wherein, as here, the answer to the chief question of the parliament (who will the female eagle marry?) is put off for a year. The “Compleinte” is, specifically, a genre of medieval love poem in which the lover bewails the fact that his beloved will grant him no favor. Chaucer himself had written a number of such lyrics, including “A Complaint to his Lady” and “The Complaint unto Pity,” as well as the parodic “Complaint to his Purse,” in which he replaces his lady with his empty moneybag, which also grants him no favors. Similarly, Tolkien has replaced the Clerk’s love of a lady with his love of learning, so that when he is cast out in the end to wait a year to matriculate, he bewails the fact that his beloved (the university) will show him no mercy. In part, the poem shows Tolkien’s disappointment with Leeds, as he describes the “black cloud” of industrialization in the beginning and shows the students’ interests in manufacturing and business trades crowding out the humanities and adding to the young clerk’s bewilderment. Fitzgerald sees in the poem “a deeply personal sense of marginalization and a sense of professional lament” over the place of philology in the university curriculum (51). While I am not convinced that this is Tolkien’s sole intent in this poem, which seems chiefly to be a humorous depiction of university bureaucracy putting up roadblocks to students with a real desire to learn, I do agree that the poem is a harbinger of the disillusions that will become more manifest in texts such as his “Valedictory Address to the University of Oxford” (1959). Further Reading Fitzgerald, Jill. “A ‘Clerkes Compleinte’: Tolkien and the Division of Lit. and Lang.” Tolkien Studies 6 (2009): 41–57. N. N. [Tolkien, J. R. R.] “The Clerkes Compleinte.” Gryphon Journal of the University of Leeds 4, no. 3 (December 1922): 95. Sternström, Anders. “The Clerkes Compleinte Revisited.” Arda 6 (1986): 1–13.

“Devil’s Coach-Horses, The”    73

“Devil’s Coach-Horses, The”  (1925) One of Tolkien’s earliest philological publications, “The Devil’s Coach-Horses” followed shortly after “Some Contributions to Middle-English Lexicography,” and in the same journal. As in that earlier article, Tolkien here focuses on a particular word that he believes has been mistakenly cited in the Oxford English Dictionary: Specifically, he focuses on the word eaueres in the Middle English Hali Meiðhad from the Bodley 34 manuscript on which he was to spend a good deal of his scholarly attention over the next several decades in his study of what he called the AB dialect of the West Midlands, as manifested in the Katherine group (a group of texts collected in the manuscript, to which Hali Meiðhad belongs). Synopsis Tolkien focuses on the following sentence from the 1922 Early English Text Society edition of Hali Meiðhad: Bt hwam hit is iwriten þus þurh þe prophete, þet ha in hare wurðinge as eaueres forroteden .  .  . þa ilke sari wrecces þe i þe fule worðinge vnwedde waleweð beoð þe deofles eaueres, þet rit ham & spureð ham to don al þet he wule (qtd. in Tolkien 331)

This is translated: Of whom it is written thus by the profet (sic), that they in their filth rotted like boars . . . the same sorry wretches that unwedded wallow in the foul mire at the devil’s boars, who rides them and spurs them to do all he will (qtd. in Tolkien 331)

Tolkien notes that the edition’s editors cite these two occurrences of eaueres as the only Middle ­English survivals of the Old English eofor, meaning boar. However, Tolkien argues that the editors are incorrect. In the West Midland dialect of this manuscript, Tolkien insists, the Old English diphthong eo would have resulted in the Middle

English spelling of eoueres rather than the eaueres of the manuscript. He reasons, rather, that the word in the passage in question is derived from the Old English eafor, meaning “packhorse,” and developed from the Old English aferian, meaning “transport.” He notes that in Northern dialects of Middle English, the word aver survives as a term for “draft horse.” He postulates that the proto-Germanic root of the word is abaz, meaning “work,” cognate with Latin opus. Tolkien supports his argument by reference to the specific prophet referred to in the passage, whom he identifies as Joel, and cites Joel 1.17, which reads in the Clementine Vulgate computruerunt jumenta in stercore suo—that is, “the draft-horses have rotted in their dung” (the Nova Vulgate, published in 1979 after Vatican II, revises jumenta to semina—i.e., grain—but neither Tolkien nor the author of Hali Meiðhad would have been affected by this change). In the end, Tolkien is amused by the picture of the devil given in this passage, in which he is riding not fiery steeds but rather “heavy old dobbins” that need a lot of spurring (336). Commentary There is no question that in terms of scholarship, this early article is, as Tom Shippey has called it, “distinctly peripheral” (39). Still, Michael D. C. Drout has noted that the article is valuable in demonstrating Tolkien’s approach to scholarship: “He is far, far more attentive to spellings than many scholars of Middle English, refusing simply to rationalize them as the inconsistent productions of scribes but rather taking them as strong evidence for dialects and language relationships” (117). His focus on spelling and what it could reveal about dialect would be the basis of his more significant contributions to dialect study that were to come later, most importantly in his 1929 article “Ancrene Wisse and Hali Meiðhad” in the journal Essays and Studies. Further Reading Drout, Michael D. C. “J. R. R. Tolkien’s Medieval Scholarship and Its Significance.” Tolkien Studies: An Annual Scholarly Review 4 (2007): 113–176.

74   “Dragon’s Visit, The”  Shippey, Tom. The Road to Middle-Earth: How J. R. R. Tolkien Created a New Mythology. Rev. ed. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2003. Tolkien, J. R. R. “The Devil’s Coach-Horses.” Review of English Studies 1, no. 3 (1925): 331–336.

“Dragon’s Visit, The”  (1937) Tolkien’s humorous poem “The Dragon’s Visit” was originally written in about 1928 and revised in 1937 for publication in the Oxford Magazine of February 4 that year. The poem was part of a series of poems from that earlier date called “Tales and Songs of Bimble Bay.” Tolkien might have been inspired to rework the poem at this particular time because of his recently completed work on The Hobbit with its famous dragon Smaug. Douglas A. Anderson mentions that Tolkien revised the poem again late in 1961, intending to include it in The Adventures of Tom Bombadil, which was published the following year. But he was not able to revise the poem satisfactorily and left it out of the final publication. He went back to it in late 1964, however, adding an additional stanza and publishing the poem in a collection called Winter’s Tales for Children in 1965. Lin Carter reprinted the revised poem in 1969 in The Young Magicians, and the poem was published again—both in its original version and with its revised ending—in the marginal notes of Anderson’s The Annotated Hobbit (Anderson 309–312). The following commentary is based on the version as printed by Anderson. Synopsis A green dragon from beyond the Blue Mountains is lying in the sun on Mr. Higgins’s cherry trees with their white blossoms. When Mr. Higgins is told of this, he fetches his garden hose and sprays the dragon, waking him from his dreams. The dragon enjoys the cool spray and decides to stay and sing a dragon song for Mr. Higgins and his neighbors— Mrs. Biggins, Box, and Tupper. But Mr. Higgins sends for the fire brigade, who come with a long ladder and golden helmets. This makes the dragon

sad, because it reminds him of how knights used to come hunting for dragons to steal their gold. The fire brigade’s Captain George comes up the ladder, and the dragon asks that the people leave him alone, warning them that if they do not, he will knock down their church steeple, burn their trees, and eat Captain George, Mr. Higgins, Box, Tupper, and Mrs. Biggins all for dinner. But Captain George orders the fire hoses to be turned on the dragon, and he becomes angry, threshing his tail until the white blossoms of the cherry trees flutter to the ground. When the people begin to prod his tender belly with poles, the green dragon rises up and smashes the town. He eats Mr. Higgins (who is tough) and Box (who tastes like his name), and buries Tupper, Captain George, and Mrs. Biggins on a cliff as he munches his supper. The dragon sings a dirge for Mr. Higgins, and as it grows dark he looks back to his own country, contemplating the people of Bimble Bay. He laments that they have neither the wit to admire a dragon or the courage to kill him, and he flies home over the sea to a meeting of green dragons. Commentary Tolkien was fascinated by dragons his entire life. The first story he ever wrote, at the age of seven, was a tale about a great green dragon. The poem about “The Dragon’s Visit,” composed nearly 30 years later, also concerns a green dragon, and in its humorous depiction of the dragon and the bumbling characters of Bimble Bay, it seems aimed chiefly at children. The amusing incompetence of the human figures in the story is similar to his later children’s story, Mr. Bliss. The humorous dragon who wanders far from his home in the mountains is much more reminiscent of the dragon Chrysophylax Dives in Father Giles of Ham than of the more frightening and sinister dragons Smaug or Glaurung in Tolkien’s more serious The Hobbit or The Children of Húrin. The detail of the dragon’s tender belly, however, is taken from Tolkien’s favorite Old Norse story of Sigurd, who killed the dragon Fafnir by striking him in the belly from below. It may be that Tolkien considered the poem’s original ending, in which the dragon eats or buries all of the human characters, to be too dark, espe-

“English and Welsh”    75 cially if the poem were to be republished as a children’s story. Even though the dragon is presented sympathetically, he is still, after all, a dragon, who is shown destroying an entire town. Anderson points out that in the revised version of the poem that appeared in 1965, the dragon fails to eat Mrs. Biggins, and as he spreads his wings to fly away, the old lady stabs him to the heart through that tender belly. She apologizes, saying that she hates to kill such a splendid creature, but she just had to stop his wanton violence. The dragon dies with a sigh, thinking, “At least she called me splendid” (311–312). Further Reading Carpenter, Humphrey. Tolkien: A Biography. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1977. Carter, Lin, ed. The Young Magicians. New York: Ballantine, 1969. Tolkien, J. R. R. The Annotated Hobbit: Revised and Expanded Edition. Edited by Douglas A. Anderson. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2002. ———. “The Dragon’s Visit.” Oxford Magazine 55, no. 14 (February 4,1937): 342. ———. “The Dragon’s Visit.” In Winter’s Tales for Children I, edited by Caroline Hillier, 84–87. Illustrated by Hugh Marshall. London: Macmillan; and New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1965.

“English and Welsh”  (1955) Tolkien’s “English and Welsh” was the inaugural Charles James O’Donnell Lecture, delivered at Oxford on October 21, 1955. These lectures, a joint venture of the universities of Wales, Edinburgh, and Oxford, were established for the purpose of considering the Celtic element in the English language. Tolkien’s was the first lecture of the series given at Oxford. As Humphrey Carpenter notes (223), it was delivered the day after the publication of The Return of the King, and Tolkien acknowledges at the beginning of his lecture that this major work of fiction was inspired to some extent from “what I personally have received from the study of things Celtic” (162).

The essay was subsequently published in the collection Angles and Britons in 1963. In 1984, Christopher Tolkien printed it in the collection The Monsters and the Critics and Other Essays, and it is to this latter edition that citations in the following discussion refer. Synopsis Tolkien begins his lecture with the thesis that an understanding of Welsh is of great importance for the history of English, though its influence is less obvious than that of French or Old Norse. He first deals with some aspects of what he calls “the confusion between language (and nomenclature) and ‘race’; and the romantic misapplication of the terms Celtic and Teutonic (or Germanic)” (173). He traces English attempts, beginning under the Tudor monarchs, to eradicate the Welsh language by ensuring that all court proceedings in Wales be conducted in English, which was the impetus for William Salesbury’s first Welsh-English dictionary. Such uniformity is useful for governments, Tolkien says, because it makes people easier to handle, the assumption being that language preserves culture. But Tolkien goes on to debunk the simple notion that the Teutonic English drove out the British Celts. He lists a number of “English” names that have clearly derived from Welsh (for example, Gough, Dewey, Merrick), and even notes that the West Saxon royal line that produced Alfred the Great begins with the manifestly Celtic name of Cerdic and contains as well other Welsh names, probably borrowed (169). The middle section of Tolkien’s lecture focuses on the relationship between Welsh and English during the period of the Anglo-Saxon conquest and its immediate aftermath. The Celtic British language had entered Britain in what Tolkien calls an archaic form 1,000 years before the fifth-century Anglo-Saxon invasion. It had become “naturalized” to the island, and had begun to develop in ways that differed from its most closely related continental relatives, remaining rather conservative compared to Celtic languages in Gaul. Similarly, Tolkien says, English remained conservative in comparison with other Germanic languages, preserving, for example, the th- and w- sounds,

76   “English and Welsh”  when no other Germanic language has preserved both sounds. Certainly during the Anglo-Saxon Conquest, the British people had no incentive to learn ­English. Eventually, however, the English would need to obtain information from the Welsh. Tolkien suggests that this may have been done first through Latin, since it was likely that someone on either side would have known that language. But he also points out the Old English word wealhstod, meaning “interpreter”—a word that seems to have originated in Britain, rather than on the Continent. The English word seems to have been known in Welsh as well: Tolkien mentions a character in the Welsh tale Kulhwch and Olwen named Gwrhyr Gwalstawt Ieithoed, that is, “Gwrhyr interpreter of tongues” (181), Gwalstawt being a Welsh spelling of wealhstod. The word walh or wealh was an English term used specifically for speakers of Celtic languages, or of Latin, which is more closely related to Celtic languages than other northern European tongues. When Latin became less common in Britain, the term was used exclusively for Welsh. It also became a term for “slave,” but specifically a slave of Celtic origin. Tolkien goes on to note a few specific ways that Welsh may have influenced English. He considers Asser’s Life of Alfred, from ca. 900, which records a number of Welsh place-names that suggest some survival of Welsh as far east as Wiltshire even in the later ninth century. He records, as well, two curious parallels between English and Welsh: One of these is the fact that both languages form the future and consuetudinal (or habitual) tenses of the verb to be with words beginning in b- (something that does not occur in languages with which they are more closely akin). Second, both English i-mutation and British i-affection (the fronting of vowels due to inflection) behave in a similar manner. These may, of course, be coincidental similarities, but they may also be similarities caused by mutual influence though social contact. In the last few pages of the lecture, Tolkien asserts what was probably his most controversial point, but the one that is likely to be the most memorable part of his comments. “No language is justly studied merely as an aid to other purposes,”

he says. “It will in fact better serve other purposes, philological or historical, when it is studied for love, for itself” (189). Tolkien says that he loves the Welsh language because it is “beautiful,” and thereby suggests criteria for a kind of aesthetics of phonology. Trying to analyze it, he mentions a fondness for nasal consonants, for the soft w sound, and for voiced spirants (or fricatives) spelled in Welsh f and dd. Each of us, Tolkien says, has a “native” language, which is not the same thing as our first spoken language, our “cradle tongue.” It has to do, rather, with what he calls “inherent linguistic predilections” (190) that cause most Englishmen to find the sound of Welsh pleasurable. Tolkien admits that such pleasure is difficult to analyze, and suggests that one reason may be one’s finding in the learned language “desirable features that his own or first learned speech has denied him (191). He goes on to discuss his experiences becoming acquainted with other languages—Latin, Greek, French (which he disliked), and Spanish (which he found more pleasurable than any other Romance language, though he does not suggest why). He speaks of the kinship he felt with old Gothic when he first discovered it, and the thrill that he received from Finnish. But Welsh, he says, caught him at an early age, when he saw the Welsh names on coal trucks that drove by. The language “flickered past on station-signs, a flash of orange spelling and a hint of a language old and yet alive; even in an adeiladwyd 1887, ill cut on a stone slab, it pierced my linguistic heart” (192). Unable to find any books on Welsh in his youth, Tolkien reveals that when he won the Skeat Prize for English at Exeter College in 1914, he ironically spent his prize money on a Welsh grammar. Commentary The desire to separate notions of language from notions of race, which lay behind Tolkien’s opening remarks, may seem an odd concern to 21stcentury readers, but it should be pointed out that when Tolkien delivered this lecture in 1955, Europe was only 10 years removed from the conflagration of World War II, which had been fueled in part by Nazi race theories, based on the mark-

“Enigmata Saxonica Nuper Inventa Duo”    77 edly unscientific application of the linguistic term Aryan to concepts of “race.” However, Tolkien’s notions of “native language” as opposed to “cradle language” are surprisingly unscientific for someone so invested in the precise workings of language, and reveal a kind of romantic view of the beauty of linguistic sounds, even without their associated meaning, that seems to have fired his love of languages from a very early age. There are, of course, some specific conjectures that Tolkien makes, all tantalizingly fascinating but none provable, suggesting that a Welsh influence on English may explain some aspects of the language (the particular form taken by i-mutation, the unusual development of the be verb) that cannot really be explained by the study of the development of Germanic languages. Tolkien’s interest was chiefly in medieval Welsh, and he was familiar, of course, with the Celtic origins of the Arthurian legend, as well as with the Mabinogion. He mentions medieval Welsh texts, such as Kulhwch and Olwen, with which he was quite familiar, as well as the manuscript called the Red Book of Hergest (one of the chief manuscript sources for the Mabinogion), owned by Oxford’s Jesus College and clearly familiar to Tolkien. Clearly, the Red Book of Westmarch, presented in The Lord of the Rings as the chief source for that tale as well as for The Hobbit, is an allusion and perhaps a tribute to the Welsh language and literature that helped inspire Tolkien’s legendarium. In particular, the Welsh language that he loved influenced the phonology and the grammar of the invented language that he originally called Gnomish but later changed to Sindarin, the language of the Grey-elves of Middle-earth. Since the geography and history of Middle-earth developed out of Tolkien’s invented languages, it can safely be said that his love of Welsh was the cornerstone of his entire invented mythology, of The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and The Silmarillion. Tolkien’s interest in and close study of the Welsh language can be demonstrated by his heavily annotated copy of John Morris-Jones’s A Welsh Grammar: Historical and Comparative (Oxford, 1913)—the book he bought with his Skeat Prize money, now in Oxford’s English Faculty Library.

Further Reading Carpenter, Humphrey. Tolkien: A Biography. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1977. Tolkien, J. R. R. “English and Welsh.” In Angles and Britons: O’Donnell Lectures, 1–41. Cardiff: University of Cardiff Press, 1963. ———. “English and Welsh.” In The Monsters and the Critics and Other Essays, edited by Christopher Tolkien, 162–197. London: Allen & Unwin, 1983.

“Enigmata Saxonica Nuper Inventa Duo”  (1923) In 1923, Tolkien contributed four works to A Northern Venture, a booklet of 23 poems by faculty and students in the University of Leeds (see Leeds, Univeristy of) English department. The booklet was published by the Swan Press, and probably compiled and edited by Sydney Matthewman, a Leeds alumnus who ran the press. Tolkien’s contributions were “The Happy Mariners”; “The Man in the Moon Came Down Too Soon”; and, by far the strangest submission, “Enigmata Saxonica Nuper Inventa Duo,” (“Two Saxon Poems Recently Discovered”). The latter comprised a pair of original poetic compositions in Old English, written in imitation of traditional Old English riddles. Tolkien was certainly familiar with the 95 riddles that appear in the 10th-century Old English manuscript called the Exeter Book. Like most riddles, the point of these genuine Old English poems is their description of some object using a number of elements, any of which may suggest other possible answers, but which when taken together can have only one solution. The Exeter Book riddles follow the conventional Old English poetic meter, using a four-stress line divided by a caesura in the middle. At least one of the stressed syllables in the first half-line alliterates with the first stressed syllable in the second half-line. Furthermore, in the case of the riddles, the speaker of the poem is often the object itself, speaking in the first person, so that the last

78   “Enigmata Saxonica Nuper Inventa Duo”  line of the poem includes a question such as “What am I called?” Tolkien follows these conventions in his own “newly discovered” riddles. Both follow the expected Anglo-Saxon metrical conventions, and the first poem is written in the first person. The poems are difficult to find in their original publication (of which only a few hundred copies were printed), but they were reprinted in The Annotated Hobbit: Revised and Enlarged Edition (124–125), annotated by Douglas Anderson; this includes a translation of the second riddle. The texts can also be found online at a site administered by Jonathan B. Himes at the following address: http://faculty. jbu.edu/jhimes/tolkienriddles.html. Synopsis The first riddle is 10 lines in the first person. The speaker is a chamber with white walls, in which hangs a wondrous silklike garment. There, a golden apple glistens behind glass. There are no doors to this stronghold, but thirsty thieves will break in and steal his treasure. “Say what I am called,” the poem ends. The answer to the riddle is an egg. The second poem is briefer, only six lines. It describes a female, Hild Hunecan, who wears a white tunic and has a red nose. The longer she stays, the less she thrives. Her hot tears drop, but then turn cold. The poem ends with a demand to the searoþancla maga—“wise lad”—to say what this thing is. The answer is a candle. Commentary Any discussion of Tolkien and riddles must include an acknowledgment of the famous riddle contest between Bilbo and Gollum in The Hobbit. In that context, Tolkien made use of some traditional riddles that dated back to Anglo-Saxon times. One of Bilbo’s first riddles is an old children’s rhyme: A box without hinges, key, or lid, Yet golden treasure inside is hid. (Tolkien, The   Hobbit 83)

This is, of course, a much simpler version of Tolkien’s first Old English riddle. Tom Shippey comments on this in relation to Tolkien the philologist: One of Tolkien’s practices as a historical linguist

would have been the determination of the early forms of modern words—original forms of words of which there is no written record, but that can be postulated on the basis of known historical changes. Such reconstructed words are always written with an asterisk, denoting their hypothetical nature. In the case of his first Old English riddle, Shippey says, Tolkien has created an “asterisk riddle”—that is, it can be seen as “what a modern children’s riddle’s ancient ancestor must have looked like” (Shippey 26). Thus, Tolkien’s Old English riddle is put forward as the precursor of the well-known children’s riddle that Bilbo asks Gollum. For the second riddle, no direct source has been found. There is no reason to believe that Tolkien did not invent the riddle himself. In a letter to Allen & Unwin dated 1947, he claims that the riddles in The Hobbit are all his own invention, with the exception of the egg-riddle, the traditional “Thirty White Horses” riddle for “teeth,” and the “No-legs” riddle (Tolkien, Letters 123). If Tolkien made up riddles in modern English rhyming verse as found in the fifth chapter of The Hobbit, there is no reason to believe he would be less likely to make up the riddle he was putting into original Old English verse. The only difficult part of the second riddle is the use of the strange name, Hild Hunecan. Hild is, of course, related to Hilda and was a common Old English name, meaning “battle.” Hunecan, on the other hand, is quite unusual and has no particular meaning in Old English, although it is phonologically related to the word hunigcamb, which means “honeycomb” in Old English. Since candles were made of beeswax, which is made from beehives, the name Honeycomb is appropriate for the personified candle. Tolkien the historical linguist made the riddle’s answer less obvious by creating a name that might reasonably, over time, have developed from an original name of hunigcamb. Further Reading Shippey, Tom. J. R. R. Tolkien: Author of the Century. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2000. Tolkien, J. R. R. The Annotated Hobbit: Revised and Expanded Edition. Edited by Douglas A. Anderson. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2002.

“Evening in Tavrobel, An”    79 ———. “Enigmata Saxonica Nuper Inventa Duo.” In A Northern Venture: Verses by Members of the University of Leeds University School Association, 20. Leeds: Swan Press, 1923. ———. The Hobbit. Rev. ed. New York: Ballantine, 1965. ———. The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien. Edited by Humphrey Carpenter. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1981.

“Evening in Tavrobel, An”  (1924) The short poem “An Evening at Tavrobel” was published in the collection Leeds University Verse 1914–1924, and it was probably written earlier rather than later in the decade covered by the volume, about 1916. The poem’s focus on the precious and the diminutive recall more than anything else Tolkien’s first published poem, “Goblin Feet,” which he later eschewed. He may have felt similarly about “An Evening in Tavrobel,” since he seems never to have made an effort to have it reprinted. Synopsis The poem is in two parts. In the first part, the speaker describes a time in late May as the day is coming to an end and the sun is going down, spilling its light on the hawthorn and the buttercups. The “gleaming spirits” dance and sip the radiance of the sun from the flowers. The second and longer part of the poem concerns the time after the rise of the moon, and describes the dew on the leaves and grass, looking like crystal or like gems. Tiny faces among the leaves sip the dew out of tiny jars of “unimagined frailty.” These tiny folk are thirsty, perhaps, from their noontime dancing. Commentary The poem consists of two parts. Part 1, concerned with the sunlight hours, is eight lines of tetrameter couplets. Part 2, focusing on the evening, has a slightly more complex pattern. Its 12 lines rhyme aabbccdeedff. The first 11 lines are, once again,

tetrameter lines, while the final line is pentameter, the extra syllable giving the poem a sense of finality and closure. The delicacy of the description owes much to Victorian depictions of fairies, and it certainly contrasts sharply with Tolkien’s ultimate concept of elves in The Silmarillion or The Lord of the Rings. In the next few years, Tolkien would come to abhor imagery like the “infinitesimal” dewdrops (l. 14) or the “unimagined frailty” of the jars (l. 18) that he includes in this poem. His use of the obscure and pretentious term plenilune for “full moon” might be expected of a philologist, but it seems unlikely Tolkien would have used it in his later works. Further, archaic poetic diction such as “ ’Tis the time” (l. 1), unnatural accents like “spilléd” (l. 6), and unnatural inversions of word order such as “Now wane they all” (l. 9) are unfortunate survivals of the worst of 19th-century poetry that seem amateurish in the 1920s world of Eliot and Yeats. Tolkien would eventually abandon all such devices. Of most interest for Tolkien’s later development is the title of the poem, in which he associates the fairies of the poem with Tavrobel, the chief city of the elves on the island of Tol Eressëa in his later personal mythology. While the poem itself may have been written in 1916, by the time of its publication in 1924 Tolkien had formed an early version of his legendarium. In the first version of what was eventually to become The Silmarillion, Tolkien developed a character, Eriol, a mariner who lands on Tol Eressëa and visits with the elf Gilfanon in the House of Hundred Chimneys in Tavrobel, where he learns elven lore. Tolkien is said to have modeled the city of Tavrobel on the English town of Great Haywood, where Tolkien resided in 1917 during his recovery period after his bout of trench fever in World War I. Since the poem seems to predate that association, it is likely that the title was assigned to the poem well after its composition. Further Reading Tolkien, J. R. R. “An Evening in Tavrobel.” In Leeds University Verse 1914–1924, 56. Leeds: Swan Press, 1924.

80   Farmer Giles of Ham

Farmer Giles of Ham  (1949) Tolkien’s novella Farmer Giles of Ham was originally composed in the 1930s and, like The Hobbit, was initially an entertainment for Tolkien’s young children. Apparently inspired originally by the local place-names of Worminghall (meaning “dragon-hall”) and Thame (pronounced “tame”), Tolkien set the story in an imaginary British history and used it to work out how those villages might have been given those names—how a tame dragon, that is, might be kept in a hall. Thus, the “Little Kingdom” of the story is in fact Oxfordshire and neighboring Buckinghamshire, during the mythic period before the rise of King Arthur and after the time of King Lear and Old King Cole, as fictionally recorded in the spurious history of medieval chronicler Geoffrey of Monmouth and his successors. When his publisher asked for a successor to The Hobbit, Tolkien offered Farmer Giles, but Allen & Unwin declined, preferring something more about hobbits. In 1938, however, Tolkien revised the text when he was invited to give a lecture on fairy stories to students at Worcester College at Oxford University, and read the story rather than a lecture, to the great amusement of the audience. He subsequently resubmitted the story to Allen & Unwin, who accepted the longer version of the tale, though they continued to press for the “new Hobbit” on which Tolkien continued to work, and which would become The Lord of the Rings some 15 years later. World War II caused delay in the publication of Farmer Giles, as did Tolkien’s dissatisfaction with the original illustrator for the book. Ultimately, Pauline Baynes was chosen to illustrate the text, and her pseudo-medieval line drawings were very much to Tolkien’s taste (Baynes would later illustrate C. S. Lewis’s Narnia books, as well as some of Tolkien’s later texts, such as Smith of Wootton Major). Farmer Giles was finally published in 1949, after another revision apparently done about 1947. It was the most successful of Tolkien’s minor works, probably because of its lighthearted, mock-heroic tone. Humphrey Carpenter notes that Tolkien had planned a sequel to the novel, featuring Farmer

Giles’s son and a return of the dragon, but Tolkien never finished it (166). The novella has since been published in a single volume together with Tolkien’s later fantasy Smith of Wootton Major. It was also honored with a special 50th-anniversary edition in 1999, which included Tolkien’s original text of the story as well as the final published version. Most recently, it has been published in the collection Tales from the Perilous Realm (2008), with new illustrations by Alan Lee. Citations of the story in my text are to this most recent edition. Synopsis The text begins with a mock-serious scholarly foreword that places the tale in its “historical” context (before King Arthur and after King Cole) and indicates that the story has been translated from its original insular Latin. The narrator asserts that the story has come not from historical annals but rather from popular lays—the sort of lays that are referred to several times in the story. The implication of the foreword—that this mock-heroic tale can be taken as a serious story—adds to the humor of the text. Farmer Giles (full name Ægidius Ahenobarbus Julius Agricola) is introduced as an average, unheroic man with a red beard, living in the rather average village of Ham in a small part of the Middle Kingdom of Britain. Giles has a wife and a dog named Garm, who can speak in the vulgar tongue. As the story begins, a large, dim-witted giant from the Wild Hills (who is both nearsighted and hard of hearing) has come into the Middle Kingdom, where, oblivious to the damage he causes, he unwittingly tramples cattle, trees, and homes. At dinnertime, the giant wants to go home, where he has left his best pot on the fire, but he realizes he is lost. He blunders into Farmer Giles’s village. At this point, the dog Garm sees the approach of the giant and rushes to inform his master of the danger. Pressed to protect his property, Farmer Giles rather anachronistically grabs his blunderbuss and rushes out, firing at the giant. The shot hits the giant’s nose, and the naive giant believes he has been stung by a large horsefly. He turns around, leaves the Middle Kingdom, and finds his way back home, where he discovers that his new pot is

Farmer Giles of Ham   81 ruined. Meanwhile, Garm has roused all of Giles’s neighbors and boasted about his master’s courage, so that Giles becomes a hero in the village, and his reputation spreads throughout the country. His heroism comes to the attention of the king of the Middle Kingdom (of which Giles’s village is a part), Augustus Bonifacius Ambrosius Aurelianus Antoninus Pius, who sends a letter praising Giles’s feat, accompanied by an ancient sword (of the long, heavy sort that were by then out of fashion at the king’s court). Just as stories of Giles’s courage are spreading around the Middle Kingdom, the giant has begun telling tall stories of his own back in the Wild Hills, about the wonderful land he had explored that contained the large, stinging insects. Word of this fertile and unprotected land eventually reaches the ears of the dragons in the mountains, who are hungry in the cold winter. A dragon named Chrysophylax Dives (“Rich Guardian of Gold” in Greek) hears these rumors the giant is spreading and, believing that there are no longer any knights in the Middle Kingdom, begins heading south to explore. He ravages every village he can, consuming people and their cattle (including the parson of the nearby town of Oakley), and the people of Ham, in a panic, turn to Giles to save them from the dragon as he had previously rescued them from the giant. Giles tries to put the villagers off, saying it is a bad time for him to be gone from his farm. The parson, however, stays with Giles and invites himself to dinner at Giles’s house, where he asks to see the sword Giles received from the king. When Giles takes it down from his cupboard, the sword leaps out of its sheath and Giles cannot sheathe it again. The parson looks carefully at the sword and sheath, and finds an old inscription there, in an ancient tongue. The parson borrows the sword and takes it home, looking in his old books to decipher the markings. He finds that the sword is, in fact, the famous sword Caudimordax (“Tailbiter”), the sword of Bellomarius, the great dragon slayer of legend. It will not stay sheathed if a dragon is close by. The parson tells everyone in the village about the sword, and they all clamor around Giles, calling on him to fight the dragon while the parson explains the history of the sword.

But Giles continues to make more excuses, adding that he cannot go to fight a dragon without any armor. The miller, who enjoys seeing Giles put on the spot, suggests that Giles’s old leather jerkin be used as makeshift dragon armor, and the blacksmith agrees to stitch metal rings on the leather to make a kind of chain mail. The same is done with an old pair of the farmer’s breeches. They also suggest that the carpenter make a wooden shield. On the day of Epiphany, the villagers bring the makeshift armor to Giles, and, having run out of excuses, he makes ready to leave, donning the armor and a leather helmet. He wears a felt hat and a grey cloak over the armor so that the clanging of the metal will not warn the dragon of his coming ahead of time, and, taking his dog and his grey mare, he sets off to find the dragon. Giles searches for some time near the villages that the dragon has ravished, but he cannot find him and begins to think that perhaps he has done all he needs to do to keep his reputation. He is about to turn back when, upon turning a corner, he comes upon the sleeping dragon. Garm runs away yelping for help, and Giles is so startled that he falls into a ditch, dropping his sword. The dragon faces Giles and asks with knowing irony whether Giles has been looking for him, and whether what Giles is wearing is a new fashion. Giles answers in the same spirit, implying that he should be off after his dog. Then the dragon mentions that Giles has dropped something, indicating Tailbiter. When Giles bends to retrieve the sword, the dragon pounces, but as Giles’s hand closes around the sword, it springs to action of its own will. The startled dragon stops, asks what Giles has in his hand, and when he learns it is the fabled sword Tailbiter, he grovels before Giles. Giles tells Chrysophylax that he only wants the worm gone from the land, and lunges at him with the sword, which wounds the dragon in the wing. Unable to fly away, Chrysophylax begins to run, and Giles chases him on his horse, sword flashing, coming to a stop finally in the midst of the village of Ham, where the exhausted dragon can run no more. The villagers surround Chrysophylax, who finally pleads for his life, promising to pay for all the damage he has caused with his own treasure,

82   Farmer Giles of Ham which he promises is quite vast. After much discussion among the townspeople about how much treasure would be an appropriate ransom, and how it should be distributed among the villagers, they strike a bargain with Chrysophylax that the dragon will return in eight days (on the feast of Saints Hilarius and Felix), and deliver all of his treasure to Giles, who will divide it among the villagers after recompensing other villages for their loss at the hands of the dragon. Chrysophylax agrees and sets off, though the blacksmith warns that they cannot trust the dragon and will never see any of the treasure. Now the king, Augustus Bonifacius, quickly hears about the treasure that the dragon is about to bring to Ham, and, being of the opinion that any treasure delivered to a part of his kingdom does in fact belong to the Crown, arrives in Ham four days later with a large retinue of knights and a huge baggage train. He has all the village assemble in Farmer Giles’s pasture and explains how all the treasure by rights belongs to him as sovereign. He does promise a reward to Giles. The townspeople grumble, having expected to share out the treasure themselves, but Giles is content, since he has come through the trouble with the dragon unscathed and looks forward to getting at least some recompense. The king’s company pitches their tents, and they await the return of the dragon, eating up all of the village’s store of food in the meantime while grumbling about their poor entertainment. The king promises to pay the village for all, but they are not aware of how empty the royal treasury actually is. On January 14, the Feast of Hilarius and Felix, everyone is expecting the return of Chrysophylax, but the day comes and goes with no appearance by the dragon. The blacksmith gloats, though the villagers still believe the dragon will return, saying that he must have been slowed down by his injured wing. After two more days, the king loses his patience (and besides, the food has run out), so he and his knights return to court, and he tells Farmer Giles that he will communicate with him soon. A week later, a Latin letter arrives for Giles that the parson must read out in the common tongue. The letter directs Giles to ride forth immediately and join the knights of the royal court on a quest

to travel north, confront the dragon, and return with the treasure. Giles sets out, grumbling, but not before taking a length of rope along with him at the parson’s suggestion. Giles does not take Garm this time, but the dog cries that his master will never return home. When Giles reaches the royal court, he finds the knights ready to set out, and they leave on the quest immediately, without letting Giles or his horse rest. They journey for four days until they reach the Wild Hills, and there they come upon the tracks of the dragon. Giles leads them westward, toward the dark mountains, while the knights and their minstrels sing songs. With all this noise, Giles figures, there is no chance of surprising the dragon in his lair. Giles’s grey mare begins to limp as they draw near the mountains, and Giles eventually has to climb down and walk with the horse, now bringing up the rear of the procession, with the pack mules. By now, the knights are paying them no mind and are debating matters of etiquette as they move along. Suddenly, about noon, Tailbiter leaps out of its sheath, and without warning, the dragon comes bearing down on the procession from the sky. The knights and horses all turn in panic and are caught in a cloud of dragon smoke. Chrysophylax kills several of the knights, knocks others off their horses, and chases away the rest as the horses turn to run (much to the relief of their riders). Giles’s grey mare holds her position, though. She recognizes the dragon and knows she has chased him before. She also seems to know that a firebreathing dragon is worse behind you than in front of you. Chrysophylax swoops toward them, sees Tailbiter unsheathed and waiting, and immediately pulls up, landing on a nearby hillside. Giles and Chrysophylax have another conversation, in which Giles denies having come to kill Chrysophylax, despite his accompanying the knights, whom the dragon recognizes as those who kill dragons. Giles has only come to collect the debt owed him, which Chrysophylax is a month late in paying. The dragon politely wishes that Giles had not bothered to come, but ultimately he agrees to pay the treasure he has promised Giles. Under threat of the sword, the dragon makes three trips into his cave, bringing out more treasure each time,

Farmer Giles of Ham   83 as Giles keeps insisting it is not enough. Finally, the dragon promises to be Giles’s friend forever if he will leave what remains of the treasure. Giles agrees, but he ties down the dragon’s wings with his rope and makes the dragon lug the treasure back to the Middle Kingdom. The grey mare has suddenly lost her limp on the way back, during which they run into six horses and servants that had fled from the dragon previously. Giles hires them to help get the dragon back home, giving them the job of guarding him at night, when he must be tied to stakes. Three days later, they enter their own country again, and they are refreshed in the first village they find. Here Giles hires 12 young lads to join the procession and accompany him through the countryside. They are cheered in each town they visit, and the news of the return reaches the king’s court. But rather than visiting the capital, Giles heads south straight for Ham, where he is received as a hero, and where Garm is so happy to see his master that he turns somersaults. Giles takes the dragon, his six servants, and his 12 lads up to his farm, where only the parson is invited to call. Meanwhile, word reaches the king that Giles has returned with the dragon and the treasure. He is overjoyed until he learns that Giles has turned aside from the capital completely and taken Chrysophylax to Ham. Still, the king expects Giles to report to him at the first opportunity. After 10 days, the angry king sends a messenger instructing Giles to report to the king immediately. The messenger returns to say Giles will not come, and a second messenger, threatening Giles with imprisonment if he fails to report, also comes back emptyhanded. The king wants to send men to fetch Giles to him in chains, but his men hesitate for fear of the dragon and of Tailbiter. Exasperated, the king summons his remaining knights and rides toward Ham to take matters into his own hands. The villages he passes through give him a cold welcome. Finally, the king arrives at the bridge leading across the river into Ham, and finds Giles on the bridge, mounted on his grey mare and holding Tailbiter in his hand, while Garm lies in the road. Farmer Giles addresses the king calmly, much as he had the dragon. When the king demands that

Giles beg his forgiveness or be hanged, Giles refuses, and when the king demands his sword back, Giles demands the king’s crown. The furious king orders his men to seize Giles, but when they come forward, Chrysophylax himself appears from beneath the bridge, and orders the knights to flee or die. He scratches the king’s white horse as well, and when that horse flees, so do all the others. The king, however, is able to control the horse and comes back alone to face Giles. Unable to convince Giles to give up any of the treasure, he challenges the farmer to single combat. Giles laughs, saying he does not wish to harm the king, and bids him to be off. From that point on, Giles is by popular acclaim the lord of the “Little Kingdom” (i.e., modern Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire)—which for all practical purposes has seceded from Augustus Bonifacius’s Middle Kingdom—and becomes known as Dominus de Domito Serpente, or Lord of the Tame Worm, a title eventually shortened to Lord of Tame. The king tries several times to take back the Little Kingdom from the farmer he regards as a usurper, but always fails. At first, Giles pays the king a nominal tribute of six oxtails and a pint of bitter every Saint Matthias’s Day to commemorate the meeting on the bridge. Eventually, he becomes prince, and there is no more tribute. The 12 lads Giles brought home with him become founding members of a new order of knighthood called Wormwardens, and Garm wears a gold collar and demands respect from all the other dogs. Giles is finally crowned king in Ham, with the name Ægidius Draconarius, though he is more commonly called Old Giles Worming. The parson becomes a bishop, and the church of Ham is enlarged substantially. These events explain some of the place-names that have survived in the Little Kingdom. Ham, seat of the Lord of Tame, eventually came to be called Tame, oddly spelled Thame. Further, Giles’s knights built a large hall northwest of the village that they called Aula Draconaria, or Worminghall. Though many years have passed, and kingdoms have risen and fallen, the names Thame and Worminghall (now pronounced Wunnle) still survive. In an envoy, or afterword, the narrator reveals that Chrysophylax, after many years, was granted

84   Farmer Giles of Ham his freedom (he had grown even larger and was very expensive to feed anyway), and after agreeing to perpetual peace with the Little Kingdom, he flew home to his cave, where he was forced to defeat (and ultimately devour) another dragon who had usurped the cave and the remainder of his treasure in his absence. After some time, Chrysophylax decided to look up the dim-witted giant who had started the whole adventure in the first place. The giant was quite taken aback when he heard of the blunderbuss, responding, “I thought it was horseflies.” Commentary The germ of the idea for Farmer Giles of Ham was clearly, as noted above, Tolkien’s curiosity about the place-names of Thame and Worminghall, towns near to Tolkien’s Oxford that still bore these ancient names. In a 1939 letter to C. A. Furth at Allen & Unwin, Tolkien indicated that the origin of the tale was in a “local family game” (Letters 43). Tom Shippey identifies the capital of the Middle Kingdom, 20 leagues distant from Ham in the story, as Tamworth, capital of Mercia in Anglo-Saxon times and some 68 miles from modern Thame (a league being slightly more than three miles); he looks to Wales as the home of the giants, and the Pennine mountains as the land of dragons (Shippey, Road 98). Tolkien’s initial interest, as is so often the case with his fiction, is linguistic, as he imagines a situation where the “worm” (or dragon) lives in a “hall” and is “tame,” and then composes a story to account for the events. He even is able to air one of his pet linguistic peeves when he calls the unpronounced “h” in Thame “folly without warrant,” attacking what Shippey calls “part of the wave of Book-latinisms which have given us Thames and Thomas and could and debt and doubt and half the other non-sounded, unhistorical, unEnglish inserted letters that plague our spelling to this day” (Road 100). Indeed, it would seem that the tale of Farmer Giles of Ham is generally a rejection of the learned, the fashionable, and the foreign in favor of the popular, the traditional, and the homegrown. Tailbiter, the great sword that Giles receives from the king, is cast off because it is out of fashion, and thus the foolish king cannot

see its solid value. Shippey points out how Giles’s speeches as king use the “vulgar tongue” rather than the kind of book Latin that the king uses in his flowery proclamations. Even the pseudo-editor of the text declares that the source of his tale lies in popular lays rather than in learned history (Road 98). This general trend is manifest also in Tolkien’s choice of protagonist for the tale. Giles is hardly the conventional hero. He is not noble-born, he does not seek glory, he does not rush unflinching into danger, and he has no use at all for any rules of chivalry. He is a rather overweight, slow, redbearded peasant farmer who is moved to action mainly by unlooked-for danger to his own property and by the pressure of his neighbors. He triumphs not so much through skill or courage but mainly through luck, a magic sword, and a dogged determination to do what needs to be done. For Jane Chance, Giles’s story is a vindication of Tolkien’s view of the common man: Accused by some of being classist, racist, or even fascist, Tolkien in fact believes in the practical everyday virtue and dependability of the common people. Chance includes Farmer Giles along with Smith of Wootton Major and The Lord of the Rings as fantasies where “[p]eace and harmony among members of different classes represent the utopian vision in which Tolkien most delights” (156). It is Giles, the farmer of solid peasant stock, who succeeds in capturing the dragon, while the knights sent by the king are too concerned with privilege and etiquette to do anything but perish before the dragon’s wrath. Tolkien had learned through his experiences in World War I to rely on the common sense, discipline, and duty of the common soldiers, and shows in this tale how one of that stock performs heroic acts and ultimately ascends to the throne of his own kingdom, sharing the wealth of the dragon among his townspeople in a manner that appears democratic or even, dare we say it, socialist. So much for Tolkien’s fascism. Of course, labeling Tolkien’s political views based on the fantasies he wrote is an inexact science and, in the end, not very helpful. There is no doubt, however, that he did extol the virtues of the common Englishman. In the case of Farmer Giles,

Farmer Giles of Ham   85 however, some readers have found the protagonist rather unsympathetic. It could certainly be argued that in making Giles contrast the conventional noble, brave, and handsome young hero of a typical romance, Tolkien could not help but make Giles rather uninteresting—a taciturn, lazy, opportunistic, but practical and lucky fellow. But readers have not read Farmer Giles of Ham for the sustained interest they have in Giles’s character. The reason this tale has been Tolkien’s most popular story outside of his Middle-earth legendarium is chiefly its humor. Tolkien, of course, was fascinated by the great dragon-slaying stories of northern mythology: the story of Sigurd and Fafnir (of which he wrote his own version in the 1920s) and the story of Beowulf (on which he published his most famous scholarly essay in the 1930s). In The Hobbit, Tolkien had played with the conventions of the dragon story, using the comically unheroic Bilbo to confront the malicious power of Smaug. Here, Tolkien goes even further, parodying the entire dragon-slaying tradition. Not only are the knights too interested in petty questions of social rank to be effective in the dragon hunt, but the “hero” is what Shippey calls “a kind of anti-Beowulf” (J. R. R. Tolkien 290), whose armor and steed owe more to Don Quixote than to the Völsunga Saga. Even the dragon himself, the avaricious but somewhat cowardly Chrysophylax, whose fear of Giles’s sword exceeds his greed for his treasure, is a parody of the avaricious and diabolical dragons like Fafnir or Tolkien’s own Smaug and Glaurung. Unlike the smooth-tongued Glaurung from Tolkien’s story of Túrin, Chrysophylax makes only rather bungling attempts to entice Giles through deceptive words and lying suggestions. His attempts to deceive Giles about how much treasure he has are easy to see through, and his promise to return with the treasure would only fool someone quite inexperienced at conversing with dragons; Giles will not be fooled a second time. Tolkien may admire the heroism of Sigurd and Beowulf. But, as he says in his short essay on The Battle of Maldon included in his Homecoming of Beorhtnoth, Beowulf’s attack on the dragon was a case of ofermod, the kind of self-destructive pride that deprived his tribe of its leader. Giles’s more

practical approach to the problem not only spares the life of the dragon and tames him, but also gains the treasure for his townspeople without sacrificing the hero’s life. Tolkien’s parody thus undercuts the value of the dragon slayer, at least in everyday society. One of the most clearly inside jokes of the story has to do with the anachronistic blunderbuss that the supposedly pre-fifth-century Giles happens to have hanging on his wall. The pseudo-editor of the tale stops at this point, noting that the question of what on earth a blunderbuss was had been asked of “Four Wise Clerks of Oxenford,” who, after some consideration, responded: “A blunderbuss is a short gun with a large bore firing many balls or slugs, and capable of doing execution within a limited range without exact aim. (Now superseded in civilized countries by other firearms.)” (108). Tolkien is quoting here the definition of “blunderbuss” from the Oxford English Dictionary, on which he himself had worked before taking up his teaching position at the University of Leeds (see Leeds, University of) after World War I. The four wise Oxford clerks are undoubtedly the four editors of the OED—James Murray, Henry Bradley, W. A. Craigie, and Tolkien’s own mentor, C. T. Onions. In a letter to Naomi Mitchison (who had written Tolkien to express her enjoyment of Farmer Giles after its publication in 1949), Tolkien discusses the “blunderbuss,” calling it an outrageous anachronism, but “not really worse than all mediaeval treatments of Arthurian matter,” and noting that some people found such anachronisms amusing. He admits that he “could not forgo the quotation (so very Murrayesque) from the Oxford Dictionary” (Letters 133). Thus, he pokes a bit of fun at his own linguistic profession. For the most part, though, the professional linguist is depicted quite positively in the story, in the form of the minor but vital character of the parson. The parson is the only one who can read the old inscriptions on the great sword Caudimordax and thus recognize its importance. He is the first one to realize that the dragon is not planning to return, and it is he who has the foresight to advise Giles to take with him a length of rope, with which Giles is able to tie down the dragon’s wings and therefore

86   Farmer Giles of Ham tame him. Shippey indicates that a reader might see in the parson a “for once self-flattering image of Tolkien’s own trade: runology paying off, linguistic skills abetting plain horse sense” (J. R. R. Tolkien 292). It is chiefly the role of the parson in the tale that led Shippey to conclude that Tolkien intended Farmer Giles to be read allegorically, much as he intended the near-contemporary text Leaf by Niggle to be: It is very nearly irresistible to conclude that in his mixture of learning, bluff and sense the parson represents an idealized (Christian) philologist; in which case the proud tyrant of the Middle Kingdom who discards his most trenchant blade looks very like literary criticism taking no notice of historical language study! One could go on: Farmer Giles would be the creative instinct, the rope (like Tailbiter) philological science, the dragon the ancient world of the Northern imagination brooding on its treasure of lost lays, the Little Kingdom the fictional space which Tolkien hoped to carve out, make independent and inhabit. (Shippey, Road 99)

Shippey’s suggestion, however, has received virtually no critical support. Even Shippey has come to admit that his earlier interpretation was a case of “furor allegoricus, or allegorist’s mania,” adding that the tale “makes too much sense as a narrative in its own right to need an allegorical reading” (J. R. R. Tolkien 289). Still, it must be admitted that the parson’s ability to interpret ancient runes gives him an authority no one else in the story has, and that his appreciation of the ancient sword contrasts the attitudes of the petty tyrant and his foppish knights, whose only interest is the current fashion. Tolkien is very clearly underscoring the value of his own professional interests in the face of those who, like the literary critics of his own Oxford, may mistakenly disdain those interests. Characters Chrysophylax  Chrysophylax Dives (“Rich Guardian of Gold”) is in some ways like any other dragon in legend: He guards his great treasure in his lair

until hunger drives him to rampage the countryside that he believes is vulnerable. For this particular dragon is something of a coward. He attacks the Middle Kingdom only after he hears the giant’s report that it is a rich land but undefended. Chrysophylax wants no part of any knights that he might have to fight. When he first meets Giles, he thinks of him only as an old fool and expects to spring upon him when his back is turned, but Chrysophylax is quite surprised when Giles pulls the sword Tailbiter on him. Instead of fighting the assailant to his death, as a Fafnir or a Smaug would do, Chrysophylax wheedles his way out of his predicament when Giles and the citizens of Ham have him cornered in the village, promising everyone “ ‘a really good present, if you will only let me go home and fetch it’ ” (135). Like all dragons, his sincerity is suspect, and he cannot be trusted to keep his word, but his concern for his own life ultimately tames him. Chrysophylax is not shy when he knows he has a clear chance of winning the battle, and he makes short work of all the king’s knights that are sent against him. But when he faces Giles and Tailbiter, he knows he is in real danger, and he submits, finally giving Giles most of his treasure and agreeing to be his friend. He easily routs the king and his cronies when they come to Ham, but the power of Tailbiter keeps him tame. He gains back some of his self-esteem at the end, when he is released and goes back to his own lair, where he defeats the upstart dragon who has moved in on his treasure. Like a good politician, Chrysophylax chooses his battles, fighting only when he is sure to win, and saying only what will keep him from having to fight a losing battle. Farmer Giles  Ægidius Ahenobarbus Julius Agricola de Hammo—or, in the vulgar tongue, Farmer Giles of Ham—is the story’s protagonist. He is introduced as a bully and a braggart, as one who cares little about the outside world and is comfortable on his own farm, not caring much for gossip or adventure. He is fat and has a fat wife. He has a red beard, which may suggest his irascible nature, since the first time we see him in the story, he is threatening to skin his dog Garm alive after Garm wakes him in the middle of the night to warn him about

Farmer Giles of Ham   87 the giant that has come to Ham. Giles is able to defeat the giant, and he is vain enough to enjoy the fuss made about him in the village afterward, but when his reputation makes him the likely person to confront the rampaging dragon, he is annoyed and hides his sword, kicking his dog in frustration. Giles, who has little native courage and not much imagination, makes a rather unattractive hero. However, Tolkien uses Giles to suggest the ability of the common, everyday person to rise to the occasion when duty and necessity demand it. Armed with his magic sword, Giles defeats the dragon, ultimately taming the creature and bringing him and his treasure home to Ham. He also defies the king, whom he is canny enough to recognize is incompetent, tyrannical, and unfit to rule. He refuses to fight the king in single combat when challenged, for chivalry is not practical, and he is a practical warrior. Finally, he establishes himself as king of his own Little Kingdom, in which he shares the treasure among his townspeople and promotes those, like the parson, who have been of valuable service. In the end, Giles displays a great deal of common sense, some basic generosity, and the ability to rise to the occasion and do what is necessary. king Augustus Bonifacius Ambrosius Aurelianus Antoninus Pius is the pretentious name of the king of the Middle Kingdom, of which Giles’s village of Ham is a part. The king is presented as a greedy and arrogant petty tyrant, whose concern is only for his own gain and not for the good of his people. He also cares nothing for history or old legends, showing interest only in what is new and fashionable. He first appears in the story after hearing of Giles’s defeat of the giant, and he sends the farmer an old sword, which, being heavy and substantial, is not currently in fashion. Thus, he makes it appear that he is magnanimously recognizing Giles’s feat, while in fact giving away nothing that he truly values. Later, when the king hears of the treasure that the dragon has promised Giles, he determines that any treasure brought into his kingdom belongs to the Crown. He brings his great retinue to Ham, demands to be fed and entertained by the townspeople, and waits for the dragon. When the dragon fails to appear, he leaves without paying the towns-

people for their hospitality, and demands that Giles join his knights to search for the dragon and bring back the treasure. When Giles returns to Ham with the treasure, the king expects Giles to appear before him to deliver the gold. He is infuriated when Giles does not appear, and, after his messengers are sent back to him without a satisfactory answer, he rushes to Ham in a rage, taking what is left of his retinue with him and threatening to seize and imprison Giles. The king’s chief flaw here is his arrogance: He is so used to being obeyed that he believes he deserves the respect of his people no matter what he does, and fails to realize that he has only been obeyed in his tyranny because he had the army to enforce his will. Now, with his knights destroyed by the dragon, and moving with a weak force against a powerful adversary who also happens to have a tame dragon on his side, the king is astounded when his entire retinue is chased off by the dragon without a battle. Perhaps it is to his credit that he returns alone to demand from Giles what he sees as his right and to challenge him to single combat. But Giles sees his demands for what they are—the impotent claims of one bereft of power. The demand for single combat is one last gesture toward chivalry on the part of the king, but Giles is practical enough to recognize that giving up his advantage for the sake of chivalry is illogical, and he does not even consider it. parson  The parson is a relatively minor character in the tale, but one who has a significant effect on the action. Perhaps the embodiment of the philologist, the parson provides Giles with valuable information when he is able to decipher the script on the ancient sword and identify it as Tailbiter, sword of the dragon slayer Bellomarius of ancient legend. As the most learned man of the village, the parson recognizes before anyone else that the dragon will not return. Further, he has the foresight to advise Giles to bring a rope when he goes in pursuit of the dragon. One might assume that the parson knows how greatly Chrysophylax fears Tailbiter, and he knows that Giles is likely to be merciful as long as Chrysophylax makes good on the treasure, and so he anticipates that Giles

88   Finn and Hengest: The Fragment and the Episode will need the dragon’s help transferring the treasure into Ham. The parson does not have any particular prescience; rather, he is logical and wise, and so he can see further than others in the village. He gets his reward in the end, including a bishopric and an enlarged church. Further Reading Carpenter, Humphrey. Tolkien: A Biography. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1977. Chance, Jane. “Subversive Fantasist: Tolkien on Class Difference.” In The Lord of the Rings 1954–2004: Scholarship in Honor of Richard E. Blackwelder, edited by Wayne G. Hammond and Christina Scull, 153–168. Milwaukee, Wisc.: Marquette University Press, 2006. Shippey, Tom. J. R. R. Tolkien: Author of the Century. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2000. ———. The Road to Middle-Earth: How J. R. R. Tolkien Created a New Mythology. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2003. Tolkien, J. R. R. “Farmer Giles of Ham.” In Tales from the Perilous Realm, 99–165. Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2008. ———. Farmer Giles of Ham: The Rise and Wonderful Adventures of Farmer Giles, Lord of Tame, Count of Worminghall, and King of the Little Kingdom. 50th anniversary ed. Edited by Christina Scull and Wayne G. Hammond. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1999. ———. The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien. Edited by Humphrey Carpenter. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1981.

Finn and Hengest: The Fragment and the Episode  (1983) Tolkien’s study of Finn and Hengest was published posthumously in 1983, edited by Alan Bliss, his former student. Bliss had apparently presented a paper on “Hengest and the Jutes” in the early 1960s, only to find that Tolkien had anticipated many of his points in his unpublished lectures. Tolkien agreed to share his lecture notes with Bliss. Those notes,

however, were never put into order before Tolkien’s death in 1973, and Bliss ultimately received them, in some disarray, from Christopher Tolkien in 1979. The lectures, given by Tolkien mainly during the late 1920s and 1930s, were apparently revised at least twice, once in 1940 or so, and again in the early 1960s, when Tolkien came out of retirement to give some lectures at Oxford University during the temporary absence of C. L. Wrenn. Bliss believed that at least one section of the notes, the glossary of names, had been revised in anticipation of possible publication. The book is a detailed study of two Old English texts: the “Finnsburg Fragment,” a brief segment of some 47 lines that survive from what must have been a pagan heroic lay; and the “Finnsburg Episode,” which appears as an imbedded tale in lines 1,063–1,159 of the Old English epic Beowulf. The texts are interrelated in that they are retellings of the same story, one that Tolkien believes must have been one of the most popular heroic legends in England between the sixth to eighth centuries, since “Of the five extant OE heroic poems or fragments, three refer to it” (15). The obscure, allusive nature of the two texts, however, has made the story a matter of some controversy among modern scholars for more than a century. The story of the fragment appears to precede that told in Beowulf. In the fragment, the young Danish king Hnæf and 60 of his retainers are trapped inside a great hall by enemies referred to as ēotenas. After five days of battle, one of the Danes is finally killed. In Beowulf, the story is told by a scop, or bard, in Heorot, the Danes’ great mead hall. He focuses on Hnæf’s sister, Hildeburh, who is married to Finn, king of the Frisians, who watches the battle between the Frisians and Danes. Both her brother, Hnæf, and her son have been killed, and most of the Frisians as well. Finn comes to a momentous decision: He agrees to a truce with the Danes, who are now without a chief, and he allows the survivors to stay in his hall through the winter and accept him as their temporary king. When spring returns, however, Hnæf’s retainer, Hengest, is eager to return home. But before he leaves, Hun-

Finn and Hengest: The Fragment and the Episode   89 laf’s son places the sword Hildeleoma in his lap, and he remembers his duty of vengeance. He slays Finn and many of his retainers, then takes Hildeburh back to her own people. Synopsis The book is divided into several sections. After a brief introduction in which Tolkien discusses the Frisians and refers to the story in question by the name given it in Beowulf—the Freswœl (i.e., the “Frisian massacre”), the book includes both texts in Old English. These are followed by a lengthy “Glossary of Names,” which is chiefly a detailed philological and historical exploration of the names used in both the fragment and the Beowulf episode. The next section is a textual commentary on both texts, running to more than 60 pages. This is a particularly detailed philological commentary in which Tolkien expresses his chief findings regarding the relationship of the two texts. Tolkien’s chief conclusions are these: First, that Hengest is, in fact, a historical figure, not a legendary one, and is identical with the Hengest who was described by Bede and others as the leader of the AngloSaxon invasion of England in the mid-fifth century, whose story had been handed down in oral form before being recorded in these two fragments. Second, Tolkien posits what he referred to as the “Jutes-on-both-sides theory” to explain the fact that the Beowulf poet uses the term ¯e otenas to describe some of the warriors on both sides of the dispute. The term, Tolkien argues, means “Jutes,” and he believes that some of the warriors supporting the Frisian Finn were of Jutish origin, as were some of those in the Danish prince Hnæf’s retinue—including his chief supporter, Hengest. The battle itself, in fact, according to Tolkien’s theory, may have simply been a quarrel between two factions of Jutes in the middle of which Finn and Hnæf were caught. The book then gives Tolkien’s prose translations of both the fragment and the episode, concluding with Tolkien’s “Reconstruction” of the story, as he interprets it: Hnæf and his men have conquered northern Jutland and forced the former inhabitants, all Jutes, to flee. Many of these have taken refuge with Finn and the Frisians. But Finn has also married Hnæf’s sister, Hildeburh.

He has sent their son Friðiwulf to be fostered in Hnæf’s household. Sometime in the mid-fifth century, Hnæf sails to Frisia bringing Finn’s grown son home to his father. With him are at least 60 retainers, including Hengest, who, with another band of Jutes, has taken service with Hnæf. Among Finn’s retainers is Garulf, a Jutish chief dispossessed by Hnæf, and Garulf’s Jutes are feuding with Hengest’s because of his alliance with the Danes. When Finn, who in Tolkien’s interpretation is an honorable host, discovers the animosity, he allows Hengest and his men to stay in the hall and moves his own Jutish followers to another building. But the Frisian Jutes attack the hall during the night. Seeing the attack coming, Hnæf and his men bar the doors. Garulf falls first in the attack. Now the Frisians join their Jutish allies and reinforce the attack on the hall, but the Danes are able to hold the attackers off for five days until the Frisians finally force their way in, and ultimately both Hnæf and Friðiwulf are killed. Tolkien believes that Friðiwulf must have been fighting on the Danes’ side, since he is ultimately laid next to Hnæf on the funeral pyre, as described in Beowulf. Finn, who has not taken part in the battle, tries first to make peace only with the Danes in the hall, but the Danes insist that Hengest and his Jutes be included in any truce. According to the agreement, to which both sides swear, the Danes and their Jutish allies consent to put down their weapons and to accept Finn as their protector and be his guests through the winter. For his part, Finn will punish any of his own men who attempt to renew the feud. The participants swear oaths to abide by this truce, and the Hnæf and Friðiwulf are given honorable funerals. Hengest and his allies spend the winter abiding by their oaths, but they are haunted by the obligation to avenge their lord against Finn’s Frisians. When the son of Hunlaf lays the sword Hildeleoma, probably Hnæf’s own sword, in Hengest’s lap, Hengest decides that his duty of vengeance is more important than his oath to Finn. The Danes sail home in the spring, but Hengest stays with Finn, until the Danes return in force to attack Finn’s hall, at which point Hengest opens the gates to the invaders. After Finn and all his men are killed,

90   “For W.H.A.”  Hengest and the Danes return home, taking Hildeburh with them. For Tolkien, Hengest’s oath breaking is a major reason for his ultimate “exile” to England, where he ultimately made a new home for himself and his Jutish descendants. Commentary Tom Shippey writes that the compilation of Tolkien’s notes on Finn and Hengest, as published by Bliss, “has had no academic impact at all—no one ever cites it,” noting as well that “it is extremely hard to follow, detail-crammed past ready comprehension” (267). This is all the more surprising, of course, because Tolkien’s first publication on Beowulf (“The Monsters and the Critics”) was so remarkably influential. But perhaps it should not be surprising at all. As Bliss himself remarks in his preface to the book, “Inevitably a great deal has been written about Finn and Hengest” in the 50 years since Tolkien first delivered his lectures, “which is not taken into account” (Tolkien viii). Thus, Tolkien’s work seems somewhat outdated from a scholarly perspective. Tolkien’s conclusion that the events in the texts are historical is not generally shared by most recent scholars, who see them as mythologizing the figure of Hengest. Nor does everyone agree that the Hengest of these texts is the same Hengest who invaded Britain in the fifth century. The name Finn seems more likely to be Scandinavian than Frisian, and the name of Finn’s father, Folcwald, may be cognate with the Norse name Folkvaldr, a term for the god Frey. Thus, some scholars see the Freswæl as originally a mythic story involving the Norse gods. Michael D. C. Drout, however, believes that “If Tolkien had made his argument more accessible in form, or if Bliss had re-worked it to make the argument clearer, we might be further advanced today in Beowulf studies” (132) as more scholars would have read—and understood—Tolkien’s points. Further Reading Drout, Michael D. C. “J. R. R. Tolkien’s Medieval Scholarship and Its Significance.” Tolkien Studies: An Annual Scholarly Review 4 (2007): 113–176.

Shippey, Tom. J. R. R. Tolkien: Author of the Century. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2000. Tolkien, J. R. R. Finn and Hengest: The Fragment and the Episode. Edited by Alan Bliss. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1983.

“For W.H.A.”  (1967) “For W.H.A.” is a short poem published in the journal Shenandoah in which Tolkien praises the poet W. H. Auden, thereby returning the favor of Auden’s laudatory poem “A Short Ode to a Philologist,” which had been published five years before in English and Medieval Studies Presented to J.R.R. Tolkien on the Occasion of his Seventieth Birthday. Auden had been impressed by Tolkien as a professor during his Oxford days, but the two became closer associates after Auden’s glowing review of The Fellowship of the Ring in the New York Times in October 1954. Auden followed this in 1956 with a similarly enthusiastic review of The Return of the King, in which he defended the genre of fantasy and compared The Lord of the Rings with Milton’s Paradise Lost. The two men corresponded and eventually became good friends. Auden’s poem to Tolkien called the professor a “bard” of Anglo-Saxon. Tolkien, never one to act quickly, took some five years to respond, but did ultimately return the compliment in commemoration of Auden’s 60th birthday. In his poem, he enacted Auden’s characterization by, in fact, composing a poem in Old English in which he praised Auden as wóþbora, a singer or poet or, more literally, one who carries poetry within. Tolkien includes a Modern English translation on the facing page. Synopsis Tolkien’s poem is in three verse-paragraphs. In the first, without naming him, Tolkien lists Auden’s praiseworthy qualities: He is someone with “poetry in him,” with “persuasive eloquence,” who reads widely and remembers old legends. He is a trustworthy friend. In the second section, Tolkien calls Auden “noble hearted” and favored by fate. He names

“Goblin Feet”    91 him Wystan, associating the name with the father of Wiglaf, the loyal thane in Tolkien’s beloved Beowulf. He also recalls that the name was that of one of Byrhtnoth’s loyal retainers who died at his side in The Battle of Maldon. This Wystan follows after them and is of similar character, and Tolkien hopes he will be remembered forever where the “word-lovers” (searoþancle) “revive the vanished voices of the makers” (97)—that is, where philologists like Tolkien bring to life the long-dead voices of the poets of old. The poem concludes with an envoy in which Tolkien says he has “linked together” the lines as a “tardy” praise of the poet and as thanks for Auden’s poem, a task he has completed despite his old age. He signs the poem “J. R. R. T.” in the Modern English version, but in the Old English he signs “Rægnold Hrædmóding”—that is, “Ronald the Hasty.” Commentary Tom Shippey comments briefly on this poem, noting how the poem begins with the categorization of Auden as wóþbora and ends with the promise that the “word-lovers” (i.e., philologists) will give him lasting praise. Shippey associates the first element of wóþbora with the first part of the god Woden’s name, and also with the archaic word wood in its sense of “mad.” Thus, the word invokes the madness or “mystic rage” of the bard, taken as it were by the god-force. It was a state, Shippey says, that both poets and philologists could appreciate (28–29). The Old English poem is composed in an alliterative verse form conforming to the rules of classical Anglo-Saxon poetry, as might be demonstrated by two lines from the poem’s envoy: Awræc wintrum fród, Wíhstan léofa, þeah ic þorfte hraðor þancword sprecan. (Though weighted by years, Wystan my friend: A tardy tribute and token of thanks.)

Each line has four stressed syllables, two on each side of a pause or caesura. The first stressed syllable after the pause must alliterate with one or both stressed syllables before the pause. The final stressed syllable does not alliterate. Here, the first

line contains a pause after the comma. The first syllable of Wihstan, coming immediately after the caesura, is stressed, and it alliterates with the first syllable of wintrum as well as the second syllable of awrœc in the first half-line. Similarly, the first syllable of þancword alliterates with the beginning of þorfte in the first part of the second line. (The word þeah is not a stressed syllable, so its alliteration is coincidental). As for the strange form of his name in the Old English conclusion, it may be an ironic suggestion of Tolkien’s reputation for procrastination—calling himself “hasty” after taking five years to reply to a short poem can only be intended humorously. Further Reading Auden, W. H. “Ode to a Philologist.” In English and Medieval Studies Presented to J. R. R. Tolkien on the Occasion of his Seventieth Birthday, edited by Norman Davis and C. L. Wrenn, 11–12. London: Allen & Unwin, 1962. Shippey, Tom. The Road to Middle-earth. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2003. Tolkien, J. R. R. “For W.H.A.” Shenandoah: Washington and Lee University Review 18, no. 2 (Winter 1967): 96–97.

“Goblin Feet”  (1915) Tolkien’s first publication of any consequence was the poem “Goblin Feet,” which appeared in Oxford Poetry 1915 (a volume that also featured poetry by his friend G. B. Smith, as well as Aldous Huxley and Dorothy Sayers). He had written it during a period of creativity that followed his Christmas “Council of London” with his friends from the t. c. b. s.—Smith, Rob Gilson, and Christopher Wiseman—in December 1914, before Smith and Gilson left for the Great War. “Goblin Feet” was written April 27–28, 1915, reportedly to please Edith Bratt, soon to become Edith Tolkien, who reportedly loved stories about “spring and flowers and trees, and little elfin people” (Carpenter 74). Christopher Tolkien notes that the poem was written the same days as the

92   “Goblin Feet”  unpublished “You and Me and the Cottage of Lost Play,” a verse later expanded into a tale that Tolkien originally intended as the introduction to The Book of Lost Tales, the early version of his legendarium that finally developed into the published version of The Silmarillion. “Goblin Feet” describes diminutive fairies, their tiny wings and feet, and the human desire to follow them in their musical flight. The precious, tiny fairies are the sort made popular in sentimental Victorian tales that Tolkien later came to despise, preferring the more mysterious and dangerous elves of medieval texts. In 1971, when he was asked for permission to reprint the poem in an anthology, he reportedly said, “I wish the unhappy little thing, representing all that I came (so soon after) to fervently dislike, could be buried for ever” (Book of Lost Tales 32). Still, the poem reflects a very early stage of Tolkien’s fascination with what he called the world of Faërie, and it demonstrates a desire for one of the chief benefits of the fairy story as he came to see it: escape—in this case probably escape from the world war that he knew he was about to become a part of. Synopsis The poem’s speaker begins by saying that he has gone off down the road where the fairies are flying, like a grey band. The air all around him is filled with tiny flying things, and as he follows the road, he hears the tiny trumpets of leprechauns and the feet of little gnomes. He breaks out into short exclamatory phrases, such as “O! the lights! O! the gleams! O! the little twinkly sounds!” (l. 13). In the second verse, the speaker says he must follow them down their crooked lanes in the moonlight. But the fairies fade as they go around a turn in the path, and the speaker feels a loss. He begs to be allowed to follow them, and when the second stanza breaks down into more exclamatory phrases, they are now expressing a longing for what seems to have passed away. In the last line, the speaker laments the loss of the experience: “O! The sorrow when it dies.” Commentary The poem comprises two stanzas, each divided into a 12-line section and a four-line section, or qua-

train. The longer section rhymes aabaabccdccd, the a and c lines being trimeter lines and the longer b and d lines hexameter. The quatrain rhymes aabb, in tetrameter lines that are mainly anapestic. As mentioned earlier, Tolkien himself rejected the poem. It is precisely the sort of overly precious look at fairyland that he reproved the Elizabethan poet Michael Drayton for in his famous lecture “On Fairy-Stories,” calling Drayton’s Nymphidia “one of the worst [fairy-stories] ever written” (“On Fairy-Stories” 319). The repeated emphasis on the “littleness” of the fairies, with their “happy little feet”; the self-consciously archaic participles like “a-sighing” and “a-coming”; as well as the plethora of sentimental ejaculations beginning with “O” and punctuated by exclamation points—all of these serve to make the poem, like most of Tolkien’s poetry of this early stage, suited largely for children, or for children as Tolkien may have imagined them to be at this point in his life. Still, there is in “Goblin Feet” a kernel of Tolkien’s later mythology. The fairy world is one of enchantment, one that entices us to follow and seek it, and one that causes great pain when we are no longer able to enter it. The sentiment at the end of the poem is reminiscent of Tolkien’s later tale, Smith of Wootton Major, when the protagonist must leave the land of Faërie for the last time and grieves: “The high field where he stood was silent and empty: and he knew that his way now led back to bereavement” (Smith 265). For Tolkien, the war, which would in the next few months claim the lives of two of his best friends (Smith and Gilson), breaking up forever the T. C. B. S., was especially important to escape from, at least for the moment. Further Reading Carpenter, Humphrey. Tolkien: A Biography. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1977. Tolkien, J. R. R. The Book of Lost Tales I. Vol. 1 of The History of Middle-Earth, edited by Christopher Tolkien. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1983. ———. “Goblin Feet.” In Oxford Poetry 1915, edited by G. D. H. Cole and T. W. Earp, 64–65. Oxford: Blackwell, 1915.

“Happy Mariners, The”    93 ———. “On Fairy-Stories.” In Tales from the Perilous Realm, 315–400. Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2008. ———. Smith of Wootton Major. In Tales from the Perilous Realm, 243–281. Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2008.

“Happy Mariners, The”  (1920) Tolkien’s lyric poem “The Happy Mariners” was published in Oxford’s Stapeldon Magazine in 1920 and reprinted in slightly revised form in A Northern Venture: Verses by Members of the University of Leeds University English School Association in 1923. The Leeds version is reprinted and readily available, along with a later revision of the poem (from ca. 1940) in the second volume The Book of Lost Tales, edited by Christopher Reuel Tolkien. The poem was written in July 1915. Christopher Tolkien notes that the poem was begun in Birmingham about July 11 and completed in Bedford, where J. R. R. Tolkien had begun his military training on July 19 (Book of Lost Tales I 277). The poem hints at a much broader context, and in fact it does relate very directly to the private mythology that was beginning to take form in Tolkien’s imagination—although none of the original readers of Oxford’s Stapeldon Magazine or Leeds’s A Northern Venture would have understood any such allusions. Synopsis In the version of the poem from A Northern Venture, as printed in The Book of Lost Tales II (273– 274), it begins with the speaker describing a tall, windswept tower that looks like a spike of pearl, standing on the dark rock of an isle far to the west. Fairy boats sail by, carrying light that divers have saved from the depths of the sea. The voices of the sailors sometimes rise to him in song, with the sound of a silver lyre or the sound of dancing feet and a trembling gong. In a second verse, the speaker calls to the mariners in an apostrophe, imagining them sailing on

to the extreme West, a place of stars and fountains and the gates of night, while the speaker stays closed in the tower. The mariners do not pause at his tower, but sail on, singing and following, he says, the path of Eärendil, the “shining mariner” (274), to the blessed isles of the West. From the West, from over the edge of the world, a wind blows back, whispering of the golden rains of the blessed realm. Commentary It seems likely that the appeal of “The Happy Mariners” to its original readers, including the editors of the two publications that first printed the poem, was the tone of haunting mystery surrounding the description. Who is the speaker? Why is he in the tower? Who is Eärendil and why are the western isles so great an attraction? Who are the mariners in the fairy boats and how can their cargo consist of light? None of these questions have answers for readers unfamiliar with Tolkien’s private mythology, but there is an archetypal power of the light in the west that draws the imagination: Because of the universal experience of sunset, the light lingering in the west has a kind of beauty and a sense of loss that draws us to it, and that is the sense that the poem appeals to. The sense of abandonment and longing in the speaker who cannot follow the happy mariners is one to which many readers can relate. The poem as first printed consists of two 19-line verse paragraphs, the apostrophe to the fairy mariners comprising the second half. The lines are generally pentameter, with occasional tetrameter lines interspersed with no apparent pattern. There is no particular rhyme scheme, though rhyme is used, often to signal some important shift in content. The lines of the first verse paragraph rhyme abcbdefegghijikllmm, the gg couplet in the middle shifting attention to the boats that sail by, and the two couplets at the end giving the stanza a sense of closure as well as, perhaps, mimicking the fairy song they describe. The second verse paragraph begins with the same rhyme as the final couplet of the first (long rhyming with song and gong), connecting the second stanza to the first, but it displays an overall rhyme scheme

94   “Happy Mariners, The”  of abcbcdeedffgghhijji, utilizing significantly more rhymes than the first verse paragraph, reflecting, perhaps, the greater order and harmony in those ideal blessed realms that the speaker dreams of. This is as much as might be gleaned from the poem as originally published. Since Christopher Tolkien’s publication of the two volumes of The Book of Lost Tales, however, making available his father’s very early drafts and notes as he developed his personal mythology that was finally published as The Silmarillion, it is possible to glimpse, at least in part, how this short poem reflects those early ideas. In particular, “The Happy Mariners” relates to the lost tale called “The Hiding of Valinor” as well as to the later “Tale of Eärendil” (for which Tolkien wrote only drafts of outlines of the narrative). Christopher notes that his father first worked on these early stories during 1916–17, while he was serving in the war, and abandoned them several years later. In the draft of “The Hiding of Valinor,” as published in the first volume of The Book of Lost Tales, it is told that the Valar (the godlike guardians of the world), having created the sun and moon, thought to make the sun dip beneath the earth but were unable to do so, and that some of the sun’s radiance escaped to linger as secret sparks in many an unknown ocean cavern. These have many elfin divers, and divers of the fays, long time sought beyond the outmost East, even as is sung in the song of the Sleeper in the Tower of Pearl. (215)

In an endnote on this passage, Christopher asserts that “The Happy Mariners” is “virtually certainly” the song of the Sleeper in the Tower of Pearl, referring to lines 10–13, in which the fairy ships are said to hold “hoarded sparks of orient fire” that had been found by divers “in waters of the unknown Sun” (221). The identity or purpose of the Sleeper is never made clear in Tolkien’s manuscripts, though had he completed the planned early version of the “Tale of Eärendil,” these things would undoubtedly have been clarified. In its final form as published in The Silmarillion, the motif of the Sleeper and the Tower of Pearl have been dropped. But in “The Cottage of the Lost Play,” the introduc-

tory section of the Lost Tales, we meet the figure of Littleheart, who accompanied Eärendil on his journey to the West, and it is said that it was the ringing of Littleheart’s gong (alluded to in line 19 of the poem) “that awoke the Sleeper of the Tower of Pearl that stands far out to west in the Twilit Isles” (Book of Lost Tales I 15). In his outline of “Tale of Eärendil,” Tolkien never clarifies just who the Sleeper is, nor why his awakening is significant. Other details of the poem are clarified by passages in “The Hiding of Valinor.” Christopher mentions two specifically (Book of Lost Tales II 274): The “dragon-headed doors” of Night, mentioned in line 23 of the poem, and the “jacinth wall of space” allude directly to the description in “The Hiding of Valinor” of the gate created by the Valar in the “Wall of Things”—the boundary at the end of the world: [T]hey drew to the Wall of Things, and there they made the Door of Night.  .  .  . There it still stands, utterly black and huge against the deep-blue walls. Its pillars are of the mightiest basalt and its lintel likewise, but great dragons of black stone are carved thereon. (Book of Lost Tales II 215–216)

For Tolkien, then, the poem’s meaning is much deeper and more allusive than it would have been for any of his original readers. For his current readers, familiar with The Silmarillion, “The Happy Mariners” is an interesting glimpse into the earliest versions of his legendarium. Further Reading Tolkien, J. R. R. The Book of Lost Tales I. Vol. 1 of The History of the Middle Earth, edited by Christopher Tolkien. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1983. ———. The Book of Lost Tales II. Vol. 2 of The History of the Middle Earth, edited by Christopher Tolkien. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1984. ———. “The Happy Mariners.” Stapeldon Magazine 5, no. 26 (June 1920): 69–70. ———. “The Happy Mariners.” In A Northern Venture: Verses by Members of the University of Leeds University School Association, 25. Leeds: Swan Press, 1923.

Hobbit, or There and Back Again, The   95

Hobbit, or There and Back Again, The  (1937)

“Barrels Out of Bond,” in which Bilbo comes up with the plan of how to save the dwarves, the narrator makes these comments:

The origin of The Hobbit is well known. One day in the late 1920s, Tolkien was grading essays when he came across a blank page and absently wrote the sentence “In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.” In a letter to W. H. Auden more than 25 years later, he wrote, “I did nothing about it, for a long time, and for some years I got no further than the production of Thror’s Map” (Letters 215). In the early 1930s, the story of the hobbit became one that he shared with his three sons during what he called their “winter reads.” By 1932, Tolkien had completed a manuscript that he shared with his Oxford friends, but most of those scholars saw the book as merely a children’s story. In 1936, Tolkien’s student Elaine Griffiths showed the manuscript to Susan Dagnall of George Allen & Unwin, who brought it to the attention of Stanley Unwin. Unwin asked his 10-year-old son, Rayner Unwin, to read it, and after Rayner gave it a positive review, Stanley published the book in 1937, with a cover designed by Tolkien himself and decorated with Old English runes. A first edition of 1,500 sold out quickly, and the book was published in the United States by Houghton Mifflin early in 1938. When Unwin asked for a sequel to The Hobbit but showed no interest in The Silmarillion, Tolkien began work on The Lord of the Rings. In order to make The Hobbit fit more coherently as a “prequel” to the trilogy, Tolkien revised the chapter on Gollum (“Riddles in the Dark”), changing the part played by the ring, so that in the revised version, Gollum blames Bilbo for what he sees as the theft of his ring and curses Bilbo forever. It was this revised chapter that was published in the second edition of The Hobbit in 1951. Tolkien later worked on another revision of The Hobbit, in which he tried to alter the narrative voice, the avuncular tone of which he, and a number of readers, had come to see as occasionally condescending and intrusive. Certain passages are clearly imagined as narrated by an older figure addressing children; for example, in the chapter

It was just at this moment that Bilbo suddenly discovered the weak point in his plan. Most likely you saw it some time ago and have been laughing at him; but I don’t suppose you would have done half so well yourselves in his place. (Hobbit 177)

This is undoubtedly the kind of passage Tolkien had in mind when he wrote to Auden that the novel “was unhappily really meant, as far as I was conscious, as a ‘children’s story’, and as I had not learned sense then, and my children were not quite old enough to correct me, it has some of the sillinesses of manner caught unthinkingly from the kind of stuff I had had served to me” (Letters 215). However, when Tolkien sought to revise the book, he was discouraged from doing so by readers who thought that it would simply not be The Hobbit without that narrator. The second edition, with the revised Gollum chapter, appeared in 1951, and subsequent editions followed in 1966 (to compete with a pirated edition that had been released in the United States by Ace Books), 1978, and 1995. At this point, The Hobbit has sold more than 100 million copies and has been translated into more than 40 different languages, making it not only one of Tolkien’s most popular works, but one of the most popular children’s books of all time. Citations of the text in the following commentary are to the second edition of the text as revised in 1966. An annotated version of the text edited by Douglas Anderson appeared in 1988 and was revised and reprinted in 2002. A two-part film version of the book produced by Peter Jackson (director of The Lord of the Rings) is projected to appear by 2012, an event that will probably spark a new edition and renewed interest in the book. The Hobbit may be considered in a number of different ways. It is, as Tolkien intended, a fairy story for children, and Bilbo, as a small person leaving home for the larger world, is in some ways a typical fairy-tale hero. (Bilbo is, however, 50 years old, which is certainly atypical for such a hero.) His career conforms to the conventional structures

96   Hobbit, or There and Back Again, The

Movie set for the village of Hobbiton, home to Bilbo and Frodo Baggins, in Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings film trilogy  (Photo by Rob Chandler; used under a Creative Commons license)

of folktales and mythic archetypes of the hero as outlined by scholars such as Vladimir Propp and Joseph Campbell, and particularly to the patterns of narrative romance as outlined by Northrop Frye in his Anatomy of Criticism. The conventional patterns in the novel should not be surprising, since Tolkien was drawing on traditional Old Norse and Old English literature (including, in particular, stories of the dragon slayers Sigurd and Beowulf), as well as medieval chivalric romance as the sources for his narrative. The basic form of the medieval romance involves an initiation (Bilbo’s adventure with the trolls), a quest (Bilbo’s journey to the Lonely Mountain to find the dragon’s treasure), a descent into an underworld (Gollum’s cave, the elven king’s castle, and the dragon’s lair), and a return. More specifically, Bilbo’s adventure recalls romances concerned with the quest for the Grail. Such romances involve a wasteland; the restoration of a king; and a protagonist who, like Bilbo, asks questions.

The novel also can be seen as a bildungsroman, a “novel of education” or “formation novel” that traces the development of a young person from childhood or adolescence into maturity in a kind of quest for identity, in the manner of Dickens’s Great Expectations, Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, or Goethe’s Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship. Of course, Bilbo is only young in experience, but he, too, must mature; in fact, many medieval romances, including Chrétien de Troyes’s Perceval, the original Grail romance, are stories of a maturing hero on a quest for identity. Given The Hobbit’s generic affinity with fairy tales, folktales, myth, romance, and bildungsroman, it seems natural to look at the book in terms of what the psychologist Carl Jung called archetypes; Jung looked particularly at myths, romances, and folktales for examples of archetypes, or universal symbols. The application of Jungian principles of maturation and psychological development to

Hobbit, or There and Back Again, The   97 the character of Bilbo began with Dorothy Matthews’s article “The Psychological Journey of Bilbo Baggins” in 1974, and it was developed at greater length in William H. Green’s book-length commentary The Hobbit: A Journey into Maturity in 1995. Both of these studies are referenced in the commentary below. Synopsis Chapter 1: “An Unexpected Party”  Bilbo Baggins is a hobbit, living in a quite luxurious hole in the ground under the Hill in the village of Hobbiton in the Shire. hobbits, the narrator tells us, are little people, shorter than dwarves, who love to eat and smoke pipes, and have large, hairy feet on which they wear no shoes. They enjoy the comforts of home and tend to be suspicious of anyone engaging in unusual behavior, such as having adventures. Bilbo’s father was a very respectable and ordinary hobbit, but his mother, Belladonna Took, daughter of the Old Took, came from a family that was more irregular by hobbit standards, since some of its members had occasionally had adventures in times past. One of Bilbo’s more distant ancestors, Bullroarer Took, had won the Battle of the Green Fields by riding a horse and cutting off the head of a goblin. Bilbo, however, has succeeded in suppressing this Took side of his nature for 50 years. One May morning, while Bilbo is enjoying a pipe outside his front door, he greets a stranger who is passing by and smokes with him for a brief time. The stranger reveals himself to be Gandalf the Grey, a powerful wizard and former friend of Bilbo’s mother and grandfather, the Old Took. Bilbo had known Gandalf as a child, and he remembers the fireworks shows the wizard had put on. Gandalf tells Bilbo he is looking for someone to take part in an adventure, but Bilbo wants nothing to do with it, though he does invite Gandalf to tea the next day. When Bilbo goes into his house, Gandalf makes a mark on the door with his staff. The next morning, when a knock comes on his door, Bilbo assumes Gandalf has come to tea. But the visitor turns out to be a dwarf named Dwalin, who enters his house and sits down to tea. Soon after, another dwarf, Balin, arrives and joins the

first. He is followed soon after by Kili, Fili, Dori, Nori, Ori, Oin, Gloin, Bifur, Bofur, Bombur, and finally the dwarves’ leader, Thorin Oakenshield, accompanied by Gandalf himself. At first, Bilbo is kept quite busy as the host, rushing to find food and drink for all of his unexpected guests. But he is also fascinated by the songs the dwarves sing about hidden gold, guarded by a dragon under a faraway mountain. Finally, Thorin begins to address the company. He speaks of departing the next morning on a dangerous journey from which some may not return, and he refers to Bilbo as a “fellow conspirator.” This shocks Bilbo so much that he screams and leaves the room. The dwarves complain to Gandalf that Bilbo does not seem to be the right kind of person for their adventure, but Gandalf assures them that he is quite fierce. Bilbo, listening from the other room, yields to the Took side of his nature and reenters the room, insisting that, while he is sure they have all come to the wrong house, he is prepared to do whatever it is they want from him. Gandalf reveals that it was he who recommended Bilbo as a burglar and explains to the dwarves that Bilbo is his choice, reminding them that if they decide not to bring Bilbo, there will be 13 of them, an unlucky number. He then shows them all an old map, obtained, he says, from Thorin’s father, whom Gandalf had met, he says, in the dungeons of the Necromancer. By then the old dwarf was nearly mad, and it has taken Gandalf some time to track Thorin down. Thorin vows to kill the Necromancer, but Gandalf insists that such a task is beyond the strength of all living dwarves together. The map reveals the Lonely Mountain, which had been Thorin’s home before the dragon Smaug laid waste to the lands around it, including the town of Dale, where men had lived who were friendly to the dwarves. Smaug occupied the Lonely Mountain and killed all the dwarves within, stealing their vast treasure for himself. Thorin had been away from the mountain at the time, and his grandfather and father had escaped, apparently through a secret door. Gandalf’s map reveals the door’s location, and Bilbo’s job will be to find his way into the dragon’s lair through that door. Gan-

98   Hobbit, or There and Back Again, The dalf also gives Thorin a key, handed down from Thror, Thorin’s grandfather. The long trek to the mountain, including a journey through the dark and dangerous forest of Mirkwood, will be the group’s business for the next several weeks. As Bilbo, Gandalf, and all the dwarves retire for the night, Bilbo wonders what he has gotten himself into while he falls asleep listening to Thorin singing in the next room. Chapters 2–3: Trolls In chapter 2 (“Roast Mutton”), when Bilbo awakens the next morning, the dwarves have gone, and as he cleans up the mess, he is relieved not to have to go on the adventure, though also somewhat insulted that they have left without him. But Gandalf appears and shows Bilbo the note that Thorin and Company have left on his mantelpiece, agreeing to pay him one-fourteenth share of the treasure and all traveling expenses, and directing him to meet them at the Green Dragon at exactly 11 a.m. Bilbo is forced to rush out the door without his hat or walking stick, and he realizes that he has forgotten his pocket handkerchief but has no time to turn back. He arrives at the Green Dragon just in time, borrows a hood from Dwalin, mounts a pony Thorin has provided for him, and sets off eastward with the dwarves. Soon they are joined by Gandalf, who has brought Bilbo a number of pocket handkerchiefs and his pipe. At first, the journey is pleasant as the group rides through familiar hobbit lands. But by the time they get into the sparsely populated Lone-lands near the end of May, Bilbo begins to grow tired of the journey and wishes he was back in his warm hobbit hole. One night, after riding through a downpour, the group must camp for the night and have supper; however, they realize that Gandalf has left them, and they are unable to start a fire. One of the ponies bolts and is nearly swept away by a river along with Fili and Kili before the two young dwarves can rescue him. As it is, the food the pony was carrying is carried off by the river, leaving the company cold, hungry, and wet. Just then, they catch sight of a fire in the distance. The dwarves decide that Bilbo, as their designated burglar, should go and investigate. As Bilbo

creeps close to the clearing, he finds that there are three trolls—Bert, Tom, and William—sitting around the fire, roasting mutton. Not sure what is expected of him, Bilbo decides to try out his new profession as burglar and pick the pocket of one of the trolls. As it turns out, trolls’ purses have a life of their own, and when Bilbo snatches one from William’s pocket, it cries out, and Bilbo is caught. As they hold him, the trolls begin to argue about whether something as small as Bilbo is worth eating, and they demand to know whether there are any others around. The terrified Bilbo first says, “Yes, lots,” but he then corrects himself, saying, “No, none at all.” As the trolls begin to fight one another, the battered Bilbo is able to crawl outside the circle of firelight. Just then, however, Balin appears; having heard nothing from Bilbo, the dwarves have decided to investigate. The trolls, realizing that Bilbo had meant there were no more hobbits about, but lots of dwarves, pop Balin into a sack and lie in wait for the other dwarves. One by one, all of the dwarves are captured in this way, until at last Thorin appears. Bilbo, hiding behind a tree, is able to warn Thorin of the trolls, and he puts up a terrific fight, but eventually he, too, is captured and bagged, while Bilbo hides in the top of a bush. At that point, Gandalf returns, though no one sees him. The trolls begin to argue about how to kill the dwarves and how to prepare them for eating, and Gandalf, disguising his voice to imitate the trolls themselves, keeps the three of them arguing and fighting one another until the dawn breaks. At that point, the trolls turn to stone, for all trolls must be hidden underground before sunrise or they revert to the stone from which they were made. Gandalf and Bilbo free the dwarves and, with the help of a key Bilbo has found on the ground, they are able to search the trolls’ underground hideout, where they find food as well as some pots of gold coins. Gandalf and Thorin appropriate two well-made swords belonging to some of the trolls’ victims, while Bilbo finds a knife in a leather sheath that he can use as a short sword. After a sound sleep, the company loads their ponies with the new provisions and buries the gold where they hope

Hobbit, or There and Back Again, The   99 to find it again on the way back. As they start off, Gandalf explains that he had been scouting out the road ahead, and he had heard from the elves that a trio of trolls was active along the road, which is why he was able to hurry back to save them. The company continues its trek eastward in chapter 3 (“A Short Rest”), approaching what Gandalf tells them is the edge of the Wild. The weather is better, but the dwarves refrain from the singing they had engaged in earlier in the trip, as danger seems to be all around them. After crossing a river, they come within sight of the distant Misty Mountains. Bilbo mistakes the first mountain for the Lonely Mountain, goal of their quest, but Balin disillusions him, saying they still have a long way to go. Bilbo once again longs for home. Their goal for the night, however, is Rivendell, home of Elrond and the Last Homely House west of the mountains, where they can rest. Gandalf leads them along a difficult road marked by white stones, until at last they reach the Valley of Rivendell. Here their cares seem lifted from them, and the teasing songs of elves greet them from the woods around them as they descend to the valley. These elves invite them to supper, but the company wants to move on to Elrond’s house. Bilbo has always liked elves and has loved to listen to their songs. The dwarves are traditionally suspicious of elves but suppress their distaste for their company in order to gain much-needed rest. Elrond, a descendant of elves and heroes of ancient days, proves to be a generous host, and the company stays with him for two weeks. Bilbo eats his fill of cakes and enjoys the elves’ tales and songs so much that he wishes he could stay longer in Rivendell, preferring it even to going back to his own home. But eventually the time comes for the company to resume its journey. Before they leave, Elrond is able to read the inscriptions on the swords that Gandalf and Thorin have brought from the trolls’ hoard. He informs them that both swords were forged by the elves of ancient Gondolin before that city was destroyed in the “goblin wars.” Thorin’s sword is named Orcrist (“Goblin Cleaver”), while Gandalf’s is called Glamdring (“Foehammer”) and was worn by the high king of Gondolin himself.

Elrond also examines their map, and he is surprised to find it inscribed with Moon-letters— runes that may only be seen by the light of the same moon under which they were written. These runes tell how to find the secret door into the Lonely Mountain: “Stand by the grey stone when the thrush knocks .  .  . and the setting sun with the last light of Durin’s Day will shine upon the key-hole” (62). Thorin explains that Durin’s Day (named for the father of the dwarvish race) is the dwarves’ New Year—the first day of the last moon of autumn. Thorin also reveals that he is himself the heir of Durin. The next day is Midsummer’s Day, and the company leaves Rivendell refreshed and ready to ride toward the Misty Mountains. Chapters 4–7: Goblins and Wolves  In chapter 4 (“Over Hill and Under Hill”), the company makes its way up into the mountains, staying on the right path only through Gandalf’s leadership. The dwarves are hopeful that they can reach the Lonely Mountain by Durin’s Day, but Gandalf, who has seen much of these wild regions, is much more cautious and aware of the dangers of their road. The weather is turning colder, and one night, during a terrible thunderstorm, the group is forced to seek shelter. Fili and Kili, the younger dwarves, are sent ahead to find some protected place, and they return with the news that they have found a dry cave large enough to shelter in overnight with the ponies. Here all the dwarves fall asleep, as does Gandalf. But Bilbo has trouble sleeping and has a nightmare in which a large crack opens in the cave. He awakens to find that the dream is true—all of the company’s ponies have been led through a large crack and from it have issued numerous large goblins. He lets out a cry just in time to warn Gandalf, who disappears in a flash of light and smoke, striking several goblins dead as he does so. But the others grab Bilbo and the dwarves and drive them through the crack into the depths of the mountain, spurring them on with whips and singing that they are to be brought “down to goblin-town.” They arrive in a great fire-lit cavern, where they are brought before the Great Goblin, who accuses

100   Hobbit, or There and Back Again, The Thorin of spying on them and of being a friend of elves. When the Great Goblin recognizes Thorin’s sword as Orcrist, a legendary goblin-slaying sword that the goblins call “Biter,” he is enraged and rushes at Thorin. Just then the cavern is plunged into darkness, and the shining blade of Glamdring (which the goblins call “Beater”) flashes out, killing the Great Goblin on the spot. Gandalf’s voice then commands them to “follow me quick,” and Bilbo and the dwarves rush to escape. Gandalf leads them farther and farther into the mountain, and the dwarves take turns carrying Bilbo, who is unable to keep up on his own. With the goblins in hot pursuit, Gandalf and Thorin turn a corner and unsheathe their swords, waiting for the goblins to come. The pursuers are surprised by Beater and Biter, and many are slaughtered before they retreat. Again the dwarves flee, with the goblins now pursuing more stealthily. Finally, they creep up behind Dori while he is carrying Bilbo and seize the dwarf from behind. Bilbo tumbles off into the darkness, where he strikes his head on a rock and passes out. When Bilbo comes to at the beginning of chapter 5 (“Riddles in the Dark”), he finds himself alone in the darkness and begins groping his way along on all fours. His hand comes across a metal ring, which he absentmindedly puts into his pocket. Again he wishes he were back home, cooking bacon and eggs, and, finding his pipe and tobacco, he thinks about having a smoke but can find no matches. In looking for them, however, he does feel his short sword, which he draws. When it begins to glow, he knows that it, too, is an elvish blade from Gondolin, and with determination he decides to move on, looking for a way out. On he goes through the dark tunnels and deeper into the mountain until he splashes into an underground pool or lake, Not knowing how deep it is or what is in it and being unable to swim, Bilbo hesitates, wondering what to do next. The water turns out to be the home of a slimy creature called Gollum, who lives on an island and navigates the lake in a small boat. Gollum has large bright eyes that see in the dark, and he has lived alone under the mountain for untold years, surviving on fish and goblin meat. He speaks to himself in

a hissing language and calls himself “Precious.” He approaches Bilbo in his boat, wondering what he is and if he will be good to eat. Soon he engages Bilbo in a riddle contest, declaring that if Bilbo wins, he will show the hobbit the way out of the caverns, but if Gollum wins, he will eat Bilbo for dinner. The riddle contest goes back and forth for some time: In fear for his life, Bilbo is distracted and has difficulty focusing on Gollum’s riddles, while Gollum has a hard time remembering details concerning the outside world, having lived in the gloom of the cave for centuries. Finally, Bilbo, desperately trying to think of a riddle to stump Gollum, puts his hand in his pocket and wonders aloud, “What have I got in my pocket?” Interpreting this as Bilbo’s riddle, Gollum protests that it is unfair and that he must be allowed three guesses. Believing he has the game won, Bilbo asserts that this is indeed his riddle, but he allows Gollum the three guesses. Gollum fails to answer correctly, and Bilbo demands that he keep his word and show him the way out. Gollum says that before leading Bilbo out of the cave, he must pick up something he needs for the journey, and he goes to his island to look for it. But soon, he begins to panic, crying out that he has lost what he needs, which he calls his “precious” and his “birthday present.” Bilbo asks what he has lost, and Gollum, now suspicious, demands to know what Bilbo does, in fact, have in his pocket. Gollum realizes that Bilbo has his ring, and Bilbo realizes that the ring is what Gollum is seeking. As Gollum rushes to attack him, Bilbo accidentally slips his finger into the ring, and Gollum dashes past him without seeing him. This confuses Bilbo until, following the creature, he learns from Gollum’s incessant whining monologue that the ring makes its wearer invisible. Now Gollum, believing that Bilbo has lied to him about knowing the way out, makes a dash for the exit in hope of heading off Bilbo and getting his “birthday present” back. The invisible Bilbo follows quietly behind, hoping that Gollum will lead him out. They reach the entry to a passage that Gollum says leads to the exit, but he can smell goblins down the passage and, unprotected by the ring, is afraid to enter. But as he turns, it is clear that

Hobbit, or There and Back Again, The   101 he has caught Bilbo’s scent and knows he is near. Now Gollum blocks the passage, poised to attack Bilbo if he can determine just where he is. Bilbo, his sword drawn, is tempted to kill the creature, but a moment of pity stops him. The fight is not fair, he decides, since Gollum is unarmed and Bilbo is invisible, so instead of murder, he opts to leap over Gollum into the passageway. He does this successfully, racing down the passage with Gollum fearing to follow and crying out impotently after him that he “hates Baggins forever.” Now Bilbo, no longer wearing the ring, emerges into a large, open area, where a great stone door stands ajar. But the area is filled with armed goblins, who start toward him, and he slips on the ring once more. In the confusion, the invisible Bilbo is able to make his way to the door, which is open just enough for him to squeeze through. But the goblins see a shadow in the doorway and come after him, just as he gets stuck in the door, caught by his brass buttons. With one last lurch, he squeezes through, leaving his buttons behind, to the puzzlement of the goblins. As Bilbo makes his way from the cave at the beginning of chapter 6 (“Out of the Frying-Pan into the Fire”), he finds himself alone again and without any notion of where he is or where his friends are. He realizes, looking back, that he has come out on the other side of the Misty Mountains and is at the edge of the Land Beyond. But he also recognizes that his friends are probably still in the caverns under the mountains, prisoners of the goblins. After some soul-searching, he resolves that he must return to the caves and help his friends if he can. But just as he begins making his way back, he hears voices and discovers it is the dwarves and Gandalf discussing whether to go back to look for him. While some of the dwarves are of the opinion that Bilbo has been more trouble than he has been worth so far, Gandalf insists that Bilbo will be a valuable member of the company, and he will not go on without him. Bilbo, wearing the ring, sneaks past Balin, who is standing guard, and appears in the circle, surprising everyone. When he tells them how he managed to escape (keeping to himself the part about the magic ring), he gains the dwarves’ grudging respect.

Gandalf convinces the group that they must set off quickly, since the goblins will be after them to avenge their lost leader. Having come out of the mountains far to the north of their road, they must travel south, and as they do, Bilbo complains of hunger—none of them has eaten for several days, since their ponies have been lost and eaten by the goblins. Now they move ahead, sliding down a rocky slope, until evening falls, when they hear the howling of a pack of wild wolves, called wargs. Gandalf instructs the company to climb trees, and he and the dwarves immediately do so, though Bilbo needs the help of Dori to get into one of the trees just in time as hundreds of wargs enter the clearing. Gandalf, who understands the language of the wolves, learns that they have come to this clearing to meet with the goblins of the mountains, with whom they have planned a joint raid on the human settlers who have been coming into the region from the south. The goblins are late, however, and Gandalf realizes it is because of the confusion surrounding the death of the Great Goblin and the company’s own escape from the caverns. The wargs have Bilbo and his friends trapped in the trees, but Gandalf begins to sow confusion among them by tossing fiery acorns at them, setting many of them afire. At that point, the goblins arrive, and the goblins decide to use the fires Gandalf has started against him. They pile fern and brushwood around the trees in which the dwarves are perched, and set fire to the heaps. As the fire spreads to the trees, the goblins taunt the dwarves, asking why the little birds do not fly away. Gandalf climbs to the top of his tree, ready for one final stand, when suddenly he is snatched up in the talons of a great eagle. This is the lord of the eagles, who has noticed the smoke and fire in the woods and who is a natural enemy of the wargs and goblins. Other great eagles snatch up the dwarves, and Bilbo holds on to Dori’s feet and is flown to safety in the eagles’ eyrie. Gandalf is known to the lord of the eagles and, in fact, had once helped him when he was wounded. Now Gandalf asks that the eagles fly the company far away, across the plains. The eagles cannot fly too close to the homes of men or they will be suspected of trying to steal sheep and be

102   Hobbit, or There and Back Again, The shot with arrows, but the lord of the eagles promises to take the company as far as they can. In the meantime, they bring rabbits, hares, and small sheep for the company to feast on, and after a good meal, they all rest in the eyrie for the night. Bilbo dreams he is back in his home, but that he has lost something important. Chapter 7 (“Queer Lodgings”) begins the next morning: Bilbo travels on the back of a great bird as 15 eagles fly the travelers to a large rock, the Carrock, standing upon the plain to the south. Here Gandalf tells the company that it is nearly time for him to leave them, since he had only intended to travel with them until they had crossed the Misty Mountains. But he says that they are near the house of Beorn, a skin-changer who routinely changes himself into a great bear, and if they approach him cautiously and do not anger him, Beorn will be able to help them. Gandalf indicates that he and Bilbo will go first to meet the reclusive Beorn in his large wooden house, and the others should follow two by two at five-minute intervals. Beorn, a huge man with black hair and beard, is initially not particularly welcoming, but when Gandalf explains that they have been beset by goblins and wargs, he invites them in to tell their story. Gandalf tells the tale in such a way that the constant interruptions as the dwarves keep arriving creates a great deal of suspense, and Beorn is less put out by the arrival of so many guests than he is eager to hear the end of the story. Beorn is sympathetic to the company once he finds that they have killed the Great Goblin, and he is angered by the treacherous alliance of the wargs and goblins. He then invites the travelers to stay for supper, where they are waited on by Beorn’s friendly horses and other animals, and entertained by Beorn’s tales of the forest of Mirkwood, which they must pass through to get to the Lonely Mountain. As Bilbo and the dwarves retire for the evening, Gandalf tells them that, for their own protection, they should not venture out of the house during the night. During the night, Bilbo hears the sound of growling and scratching at the door outside the house. The next morning, Bilbo awakens to a fine breakfast, but neither Gandalf nor Beorn is in the

house. Gandalf returns by evening and tells the company that he had gone out in the morning and seen the tracks of many bears outside the house and had followed the tracks back toward the clearing where the travelers had encountered the wargs and goblins a few nights earlier. When Beorn returns the following morning, he is in high spirits and reveals that he had confirmed Gandalf’s story about the death of the Great Goblin; he has also brought back the head of a goblin and the skin of a warg that he killed on his trek the previous night. Now convinced that the travelers are friends, Beorn offers them large stores of food and ponies to carry it, as well as bows and arrows to help the company through Mirkwood. He directs them to follow a little-known road through the forest that will take them almost directly to the Lonely Mountain. He also warns them not to drink from or bathe in the dark stream that runs through Mirkwood and never to stray from the path. Finally, he instructs them to send his ponies back when they reach the entrance to the forest. They journey to the edge of the forest, and as they ride, Bilbo notices a large bear that seems to be tracking them at a distance. When they reach the edge of the forest and are hesitant to send the ponies back to Beorn, Gandalf warns them that the skin-changer is close by. He also bids them farewell, saying he must now be about his own business. As Gandalf rides off, he gives the travelers one more important warning: Do not leave the path. Chapters 8–10: Mirkwood Chapter 8 (“Flies and Spiders”) opens with the company walking in single file, beginning their long trek through Mirkwood, the largest forest in all of Middle-earth. The trees are so high that they block all sunlight, and the walk is filled with gloom. They sleep on the path and avoid lighting fires because the light attracts beasts on both sides of the road, and the eyes of many looking back out at them are eerily insect-like. Their supply of food and water is becoming dangerously low, and when the dwarves come to the black stream that crosses their path, they would have been tempted to drink deeply from it if Beorn had not warned them against it. As it is,

Hobbit, or There and Back Again, The   103 they are not able to get across because the bridge has long since rotted away. But Bilbo, whose eyes are sharper than any of the dwarves’, sees a small boat on the other bank of the river, some 12 yards away. Following Bilbo’s directions, Fili is able to snag the boat with an iron hook attached to a rope, and he pulls it to their side of the river. Using the rope, they are nearly able to get the entire company across the stream four at a time. But just as the last pair of dwarves are about to cross, a deer comes galloping down the path and leaps across the stream. Thorin, thinking fast, is able to shoot the deer with an arrow, but it falls on the opposite side of the stream. In the meantime, Bombur has fallen in the water, and as the dwarves fish Bombur out of the river, the boat drifts off. Though saved from drowning, Bombur is asleep and cannot be awakened. More deer come running across the path, and the dwarves waste all their arrows shooting at them before Thorin can stop them. Their bows are now useless. The company keeps moving on, carrying the unconscious Bombur and becoming more hungry, thirsty, and disheartened as the days drag on. At the dwarves’ urging, Bilbo climbs to the top of one of the tallest trees to check whether he can see the end of the forest, but he can see nothing but the tops of trees. The dwarves are disappointed, and that night they eat the last of their food. The next morning, Bombur awakens, but when he realizes there is no food, he wishes he were back asleep. That night, the dwarves see a fire in the woods and hope that whoever has started it can give them some food. They smell roasting meat and rush forward to see a company of elves, but as soon as the elves see the dwarves, they and the fire disappear. Sometime later in the night, the dwarves see a campfire once again, and this time Bilbo goes first into the circle of firelight, but the elves disappear again. By now, the dwarves are far off the path, but they have decided that keeping to the path will do them no good if they starve to death. When the fire appears a third time, Thorin enters the firelight, but once again the elves disappear, and there is a great ruckus as the dwarves run about wildly. Bilbo, alone and under some enchantment, falls asleep and does not awaken until the next morning.

When he awakes, Bilbo realizes that his feet are bound together by some sticky substance, which he soon realizes is the thick web of a giant spider. The spider is attempting to poison him, but Bilbo fights it off, finally managing to draw his sword and kill the beast. He passes out from the struggle but comes to feeling far more confident in his own abilities, and he names his sword Sting. Slipping on his ring to become invisible, he searches for his friends and finds them all bound up by the webs of giant spiders and hanging upside down from large branches, surrounded by huge spiders intent on eating them. The invisible Bilbo throws stones at the spiders and taunts them with insulting songs in order to lure them away from his friends, then doubles back and begins cutting his friends loose. When the spiders return, they surround the dwarves, and Bilbo is forced to let the dwarves in on the secret of his invisibility. Under the cloak of the ring, Bilbo is able to kill many of the spiders with Sting, and the others finally flee. When Bilbo and the dwarves finally have time to take stock, they realize that everyone is accounted for except for Thorin. Thorin, as it happens, had been taken prisoner by the Wood-elves the night before and was thrown into their dungeon when he would not tell their king why his company is crossing Mirkwood. As chapter 9 (“Barrels out of Bond”) opens, Bilbo and the dwarves are starving, disgruntled because of the loss of Thorin and desperate to try to find a way out of Mirkwood. As they stagger in what they hope is the direction of the road, they are apprehended by troops of armed Wood-elves. Bilbo is able to slip on his ring in time to avoid capture, and he follows the blindfolded dwarves and their captors over the bridge into the cavern fortress of the elven king. The king interviews them but gets no more information from them than he had gotten from Thorin, and he puts all 12 of them into his dungeon, in separate cells. Bilbo wanders about the halls of the castle for two weeks, knowing that the dwarves’ lives are in his hands but unsure what to do. The only way into the castle is a magical door from which it will be impossible to escape, but in exploring the cavern, Bilbo learns a great deal about the workings of the elven king’s fortress.

104   Hobbit, or There and Back Again, The One day, Bilbo learns that Thorin is a prisoner and is able to find his cell. Thorin is astounded to hear Bilbo through the keyhole of his cell and gives him a message to take to the rest of the dwarves: Tell the elven king nothing about their quest. Thorin has no wish to share any of his treasure with the elves. In his exploration of the fortress, Bilbo has discovered that a stream runs under the castle, and that the elves put empty wine barrels through a trapdoor into the stream so that they will float downstream all the way down the river to Laketown on Long Lake, outside of Mirkwood. During a festival one evening, Bilbo is able to steal the keys from a drunken jailer and release all of the dwarves from their cells. His plan is to conceal each of the dwarves in a barrel and float them all to freedom in Lake-town, but the dwarves balk at this, fearful that they will drown or be battered by the current. However, having no alternative, they agree to the plan, and Bilbo seals them up in barrels. He then returns the keys to the stillsleeping jailer and hops atop one of the barrels himself as they are tossed into the stream by a group of elves. After a rough ride in which he has difficulty keeping his head above the water, Bilbo and the barrels containing the dwarves get free of the castle and float to the point where the stream empties into the river flowing toward Lake-town, where a group of elves binds the barrels together into a kind of raft and sends them downstream. Bilbo rides the raft all the way to Lake-town. In chapter 10 (“A Warm Welcome”), as Bilbo floats down the river on the raft of barrels, he sees the Lonely Mountain in the distance, but he does not like the looks of it. He listens to the talk of the raftsmen and learns that the landscape has changed a great deal in recent years. It has been desolated since the coming of the dragon and the destruction of the dwarves’ kingdom, so that, despite the instructions of Gandalf and of Beorn, Bilbo and the dwarves have by chance entered the lands east of Mirkwood in the only way that was still available to them—the river. Though Bilbo is unaware of it, Gandalf has heard of this difficulty from far away and is now coming to help.

The barrels containing the dwarves finally come to rest on the shore of Lake-town on Long Lake, and a shivering Bilbo is able to free, first, Thorin, and then the rest of the dwarves, from their hiding places. For the most part, they are battered, wet, and unhappy. Some are unable to move at all, and they all have a difficult time feeling grateful to Bilbo for their escape, but Thorin grudgingly admits that they could not have escaped without the hobbit’s help. Thorin sets off with Bilbo, Fili, and Kili to find the master of the city. They encounter some of the town guard, who are quite taken aback to have visitors in their midst, and Thorin announces that he is Thorin, son of Thrain, son of Thror, King under the Mountain, and insists that they take him to their master. The guards do so. They interrupt the master while he is dining with the elvish raftsmen, and Thorin enters the hall with a loud proclamation that he is the heir of the king and has returned. The elves recognize him as the prisoner of their king, and Thorin agrees that he and his fellows were waylaid unjustly by the elven king but that he could not be held against his will. The master wants to remain on good terms with the elven king, but he is also aware of a prophecy known to all of Lake-town that the dwarf king would return and bring prosperity back to the land. The Master is spared from a difficult decision when the people, who have heard the news, proclaim Thorin the king who has returned, and they celebrate him and his company as heroes. Meanwhile, the elven king of Mirkwood, having heard that the dwarves are in Lake-town, surmises that they intend to claim the treasure of Thror, but he vows that they will not bring it back through Mirkwood without a price. After two weeks of adulation among the Lake men, Thorin and his fellows agree that the time has come for them to make their way to the mountain. The master of Lake-town, skeptical about Thorin’s claims and doubtful about the dwarves’ success against the powerful dragon Smaug, is glad to see them go. But he does offer them aid, and when they leave, they leave well-provisioned with horses and supplies. The master also provides them boats to travel the length of the lake, but when they set

Hobbit, or There and Back Again, The   105 off in the cold winds of autumn, Bilbo is deeply unhappy about the coming adventure. Chapters 11–14: The Dragon in the Mountain  In chapter 11 (“On the Doorstep”), the men of Lake-town spend three days rowing Bilbo and his companions across Long Lake and into the River Running, which flows through the wasteland known as the Desolation of Smaug toward the Lonely Mountain. When they drop the dwarves off near the mountain, the men quickly turn and begin to row back, fearful of being so close to the mountain and the lands ruined by the dragon. The company now makes its way toward the mountain, looking into the Valley of Dale at the remains of the town and the scorched land of the dragon. Thorin and Balin (who was with Thorin on the day the dragon attacked the mountain) remember the beauty and greenness of the valley before the coming of Smaug. They gaze on the front gate of the mountain, from which the river flows, and it seems clear to Bilbo that the dragon is still alive, since smoke issues from the gate. Balin says that the dragon may have simply filled the mountain with his reek, and may not be there at all, but the travelers trek to the other side of the mountain, to try to find the secret door on Thorin’s map. Although they find the correct place, they cannot make the magical door open with picks, shovels, or any kind of mining tools that they have brought from Lake-town, although they try to do so for some days. Bilbo hears the dwarves grumbling that they should send their burglar, Bilbo, in through the front door, now that he has the ring of invisibility. He wishes for his hobbit hole and hopes that Gandalf will return soon. Now Thorin comments that autumn is coming to an end and winter will soon be upon them. The following day, Bilbo notices that, as the sun is setting, the sliver of the autumn moon is rising. At that point, his attention is drawn to a thrush knocking a snail against the rock near the magic door. Remembering the runes on Thorin’s map, he realizes it is Durin’s day and calls to the dwarves. As the last ray of the suns hits the door, a crack can be seen in the rock. At Bilbo’s urging, Thorin

grabs the key from around his neck and turns it in the door, which the dwarves are now able to shove open. Before them gapes a long, dark tunnel into the heart of the mountain. When chapter 12 (“Inside Information”) opens, Thorin indicates that the time has now come for the burglar—Bilbo—to perform the function for which he has been employed. Bilbo grumbles that he has already earned the dwarves’ gratitude for saving them twice, but he agrees to enter the tunnel, asking which of the dwarves will come with him. Only Balin volunteers, and he agrees only to go in part of the way, so as to relay any news back to the rest of the company outside the door. The two of them walk down until the door is barely visible, and here Balin stops, letting Bilbo go on alone. As Bilbo draws closer and closer to the center of the mountain, he sees a red glow far in front of him and feels the heat of the dragon. There, alone in the tunnel, Bilbo performs the most courageous act of his life: He decides to go on. In the great central hall of the mountain, Bilbo finds Smaug asleep on a huge hoard of treasure, his soft underbelly encrusted with precious stones embedded in his flesh through years of lying on them. Quietly and carefully, Bilbo steals a large two-handled cup and quickly makes his way back up the tunnel to report back to the dwarves and show them his find. Shortly thereafter, however, the dragon awakens and discovers his cup is missing. Enraged, he explodes from the mountain’s front gate and begins to search for the thief. Bilbo convinces the others that they must hide in the tunnel, but Bombur and Bofur, who have been with the ponies in the valley below, must be hauled up on ropes before all the dwarves duck into the tunnel just in time. Smaug sees the horses and begins chasing them, devouring six of them before going back to his cave to rest. Now the dwarves are at a loss, not knowing what to do next. They turn to Bilbo for leadership, and the hobbit, slipping on his ring, decides to make another venture down the tunnel to see whether he can find the dragon’s weak spot. When he comes near the end of the tunnel, Smaug greets him. The dragon cannot see him but can smell him, and he begins a conversation with Bilbo. When the

106   Hobbit, or There and Back Again, The dragon asks his name, the hobbit answers in riddles, giving himself a number of titles (including “barrelrider” and the one “chosen for the lucky number”). Smaug tries to seduce Bilbo with his hypnotic voice, planting doubts in the hobbit’s mind about the sincerity and loyalty of the dwarves—they are cowards, he says, who want Bilbo to do all the dangerous work and have no intention of giving him his share of the treasure. At the same time, Bilbo tells Smaug that the dwarves intend to regain their treasure and to take revenge, but he also flatters the dragon, admiring his jewel-encrusted belly, at which the arrogant dragon rolls over and unwittingly reveals to Bilbo an unprotected area on his left breast. Foolishly, he taunts the dragon as he leaves, and he must run as fast as he can back along the passageway, though he is still scorched by the dragon’s fiery breath that follows him up the narrow tunnel. When he has emerged from the tunnel among the dwarves again, Bilbo tells them what he has learned, but he is irritated by a thrush that seems to be listening. Thorin cautions him not to be annoyed, for the thrushes on the mountain are beneficent creatures. Thorin adds that in the old days, the men of Dale had known the secret of deciphering the thrushes’ language. Bilbo tells the dwarves that he made a mistake in calling himself “barrel-rider,” since the dragon would make the connection with the men of Lake-town and may seek to take vengeance on them for helping the dwarves. He also insists that the dwarves all enter the tunnel and close the outside door, since Smaug will certainly be looking for it, knowing that Bilbo had entered his lair through the other end. They come into the tunnel but are hesitant to close the door (having no certain way of opening it again). As they sit in the dark, Bilbo confronts Thorin with the dragon’s accusations, but Thorin assures Bilbo that he can choose his own 14th of the treasure. Carried away by thoughts of the riches, Thorin and Balin speak longingly of some of the treasure’s most storied objects, in particular the great jewel known as the Arkenstone of Thrain, the “Heart of the Mountain.” Bilbo finally persuades them to close the door, which they do just in time, as the frustrated Smaug smashes the entire side of the

mountain in which the door stands. Then, his rage boiling, he begins to fly south along the River Running, ready to take revenge on Lake-town. After what seems days of waiting in the tunnel’s darkness, the companions become anxious in chapter 13 (“Not at Home”). They try to get back out of the tunnel door, but find that the dragon’s violence has caused a cave-in, and there is no way to reach the door. The dwarves are inclined to despair, but Bilbo, quoting maxims of his father, such as “Where there’s life there’s hope,” determines that the only way out is down through the dragon’s lair, and he leads the dwarves in that direction. At the end of the tunnel, Smaug’s hall is so dark that Bilbo tumbles out of the tunnel onto the floor. At first, he looks around and notices a white gleam on top of the shadowy mound of treasure. Once he is certain Smaug is not at home, he calls for light, and Oin and Gloin run back up the tunnel to fetch torches and tinder-boxes. At first, the dwarves hang back in the tunnel, giving Bilbo a torch to search the hall. Bilbo looks around at the treasure and finds that the white glow at the top is in fact the great Arkenstone, the “Heart of the Mountain.” He needs two hands to lift it but places it in an inner pocket. He has been promised his own choice of the treasure and thinks that this should be his choice. On his way back to the tunnel, a bat startles him and he drops the torch, so that he calls for help. Hesitantly, the dwarves come looking for him. Now that they know the dragon is not here, they begin to look longingly at the great hoard. They wander through it, picking up jewels and arming themselves with the gold-plated armor and weapons in the hoard. Thorin gives Bilbo, as the first installment of his payment, a small elvish coat of mail made of an impenetrable silver material called mithril. Through it all, Thorin keeps searching for something he cannot find—the Arkenstone, as Bilbo realizes. Bilbo reminds the dwarves that, while they do not know where Smaug has gone, he could well return at any moment. Thorin, remembering the way through his ancestral home, leads the group through the cavern’s chambers, including the great chamber of Thror, and follows the Running River

Hobbit, or There and Back Again, The   107 out the front gate of the mountain, where they look out over the ruined town of Dale. Hungry and tired, the company is led by Balin to a rock fortress on the southern spur of the mountain, used as a lookout tower by the dwarves in their days of prosperity. Here the company stops to sleep for the night. In chapter 14 (“Fire and Water”), the narrator flashes back two days earlier to Smaug after he had vented his rage on the side of the mountain. Having fixed his blame on the people of Lake-town (also called Esgaroth) for their part in aiding the dwarves’ expedition, Smaug begins to travel down the River Running to Long Lake to punish the town. When the men of Esgaroth see the flames of the dragon’s rage from a great distance, many believe that the old tales of the lake running yellow with gold are coming true, but one grim-voiced man, Bard (a descendant of Girion, king of Dale), warns that the dragon is coming, and at his urging the town prepares for the attack, cutting bridges to the mainland to halt Smaug’s advance. Smaug flies over the city breathing fire, setting the town ablaze as the people, including the Master, try to escape in boats. A company of archers remains, led by Bard, and they fire arrows at the swooping dragon, but the arrows only glance off his jewel-encrusted underbelly. Finally, only Bard is left defending the city, and he is down to his last, black arrow—one that he has inherited from his father and his father’s fathers, and one that has never failed him. Suddenly, he feels an old thrush land on his shoulder and is astounded to realize that he can understand the thrush’s language. The thrush—apparently the same one that had listened to Bilbo’s conversation with the dwarves—tells Bard to look for the bare spot in the dragon’s left breast. Bard does, and his arrow flies true, piercing the dragon and killing him. The dragon falls from the sky, crushing the town. Most of the townspeople have survived the onslaught, and although their town is in ruins, they are grateful to Bard for saving them, and many want to proclaim him king, to the master’s chagrin. But the smooth-tongued master turns the townspeople’s attention to the dwarves, whom he blames for bringing the dragon’s wrath upon them, and

reminds the people that there are now mounds of unprotected treasure in the mountain. Bard postpones any notion of becoming king, though he harbors a desire to reestablish the city of Dale near the mountain. Meanwhile, birds bring the news of Smaug’s death to the elven king in Mirkwood, who sends a host of his own people into the east. The elves first help the homeless people of Lake-town build shelters and prepare for the coming winter, but then they turn toward the mountain and its treasure. They begin to make their way to the mountain, along with many of the men of Esgaroth, 11 days after Smaug’s death. Chapters 15–17: War  As the dwarves are waiting with Bilbo at the mountain in the opening of chapter 15 (“The Gathering of the Clouds”), the thrush returns and tries to communicate with them, but none of the dwarves is able to understand, though Balin comments to Bilbo that in the old days, dwarves were able to communicate with the ravens of the mountain. The thrush flies off and returns with a very old raven, Roäc, the son of Carc, the chief raven from the days of Thror. The raven informs them that Smaug is dead, and the dwarves rejoice, but the bird then warns them that the elven king is coming north with Bard and the men of Esgaroth, believing that they are owed a share of the treasure. Roäc advises them to trust Bard (and not the Master of the city), but Thorin is prepared to trust no one. He asks the raven to get word to his cousin Dain in the Iron Hills to come swiftly with an army of dwarves to defend the treasure. Then Thorin brings all the dwarves back into the mountain to secure it from attack. The dwarves work quickly, sealing up the main gate into the mountain with a stone wall, and when the elvish army arrives, they find the dwarves holed up in an impenetrable fortress. When Bard comes before the gate with banner bearers from the Forest and Esgaroth, Thorin asks who it is that comes armed for war against Thorin, son of Thrain, son of Thror, King under the Mountain. Bard is surprised to find the dwarves still alive, but he asks to parley, claiming to be owed a part of the treasure as slayer of the dragon. He also reminds Thorin that some

108   Hobbit, or There and Back Again, The of the treasure belonged to the city of Dale, and that Bard is Gilion’s heir. Further, he asks that the dwarves share some of the treasure with the men of Esgaroth because of the hardship they have suffered on account of the dwarves. These strike Bilbo as quite reasonable points, but Thorin dismisses the last argument out of hand and says he will not parley with anyone as long as an armed host is encamped in front of his gates. The heralds return to the elvish host, but when they return, they tell Thorin that Bard is entitled to one-twelfth of the dragon hoard, from which he is willing to contribute to the aid of the people of Esgaroth, but they advise Thorin that, if he desires friendship with his neighbors, he would do well to consider contributing some of his own wealth to the relief of the lake men. Thorin’s only answer is to fire an arrow at the herald that sticks in his shield. At this, the heralds say that Thorin has chosen enmity, and they declare the mountain under siege. The dwarves, they say, can eat their gold. Bilbo is appalled by this turn of events and has no desire to be besieged in the dwarves’ fortress, particularly when all there is to eat is the tasteless biscuit called cram. For many days, the siege goes on. As chapter 16 (“A Thief in the Night”) begins, the dwarves have been spending much of this time cataloguing and arranging the huge hoard, but Thorin looks constantly for the Arkenstone, the great jewel of his fathers and the single item worth more to him than all the rest of the treasure. He vows vengeance on anyone who finds the stone and keeps it from him, but Bilbo, with the Arkenstone wrapped in the bundle he uses as a pillow, says nothing. The old raven brings Thorin news that his kinsman Dain is now within two days’ march of the mountain, with a host of 500 dwarves ready for combat. Roäc advises Thorin that this path is unwise, for even if the dwarves fight off the elven king’s army, he will incur the ill will of all his neighbors, with winter coming on fast and no food. But the stubborn Thorin insists that winter will wear on the besieging army as well, and he refuses to back down. Now Bilbo hatches a plan by which he hopes to avert bloodshed. In the evening, while Bombur is

on watch, Bilbo conceals the Arkenstone in a rag and tells Bombur that he cannot sleep. He offers to take Bombur’s watch, promising to wake him at midnight, when Bombur’s watch is scheduled to end. Now unseen, Bilbo slips on his ring and makes his way to the elven army. He reveals himself to the first elves he meets, insisting that they take him to Bard. Brought before Bard and the elven king in their tent, Bilbo takes out the Arkenstone, offering it to Bard (in token of his own share of the treasure) as a bargaining tool to make peace with Thorin in exchange for a fair portion of the treasure that Bard has deserved. Astounded, the elven king offers Bilbo sanctuary in his camp, anticipating Thorin’s rage at what he will no doubt consider Bilbo’s betrayal. But Bilbo insists that he must return to his friends, for he feels he cannot desert them after they had been through so much together. Besides, he says, he promised to wake Bombur up before midnight. As Bilbo begins to leave, an old man in a dark cloak who had been sitting at the tent door rises and proclaims, “Well done!” It is Gandalf, who adds that there is always more to Bilbo than anybody expects. There is no time for long discussions, but Gandalf tells Bilbo that things are drawing to a close now, and that there are other surprises in store. Bilbo hurries back to the mountain, awakens Bombur, and falls asleep himself, dreaming of bacon and eggs. Chapter 17 (“The Clouds Burst”) opens as trumpets blare the next morning, and heralds from the besieging army ask to parley with Thorin because “matters had changed.” Thorin believes that the elven king and Bard have learned of Dain’s approach and so realize that they no longer have the advantage. Bard, the elven king, and an old man wearing a cloak and hood and carrying a wooden casket approach, but instead of backing down, they ask whether Thorin has changed his mind, and whether anything can convince him to part with a portion of his treasure. Thorin scoffs that nothing they can offer will change his mind, at which they open the casket and reveal the Arkenstone of Thrain, which Bard offers in exchange for his fair share of the treasure. Thorin demands to know where they obtained the Heart of the Moun-

Hobbit, or There and Back Again, The   109 tain, and Bilbo admits that he gave it to them, adding that, since Thorin had promised him that he might choose his own fourteenth share of the treasure, he had chosen the Arkenstone and had chosen to give it away. Furious, Thorin threatens to throw Bilbo from the mountain, wishing Gandalf were there and cursing the wizard for choosing Bilbo. The old man reveals himself to be Gandalf, telling Thorin that his wish is granted, and he talks Thorin out of this rash threat. Thorin agrees to yield one-fourteenth of the treasure, the portion belonging to Bilbo, in exchange for the Arkenstone, but demands that Bilbo leave his company immediately, promising to send the gold and silver after him. Privately, Thorin still hopes that, with Dain’s arrival, he will be able to regain the Arkenstone and keep the entire treasure as well, so much has the craving for treasure taken hold of his heart. When Dain and his army arrive, Bard goes to meet him, not wishing to allow the dwarves into the mountain until Thorin has made good on his promise to send out Bilbo’s share of the treasure. Bard wishes to strike at the dwarves to prevent them from going farther, but the elven king wants to delay, hoping still for reconciliation. But seeing this hesitancy, the dwarves strike first, and as the battle threatens to erupt, there is a sudden shift in the weather. The skies grow dark, thunder erupts, and a swarm of what seem to be black birds bears down upon them from above. Gandalf steps forth and warns that an army of goblins and wargs, accompanied by a cloud of bats, is approaching swiftly from the north. In the face of this threat from a common enemy, the dwarves, men, and elves put aside their differences and strike a hasty alliance. Now begins what will become known as the Battle of Five Armies. The elves assemble on one spur of the mountain, and the men and dwarves on the other. As the host of goblins approaches, the elven king attacks, beating back the first assault. The dwarves and men join the battle, and initially they seem on the edge of victory, until another onslaught of goblins and wolves comes sweeping over the mountain. But now Thorin, King under the Mountain, leads his armed band out from the mountain and rallies the scattered allies to him. Still, this seems not

enough to turn the tide of the battle. Bilbo, invisible with his ring, has taken a stand near the elven king, and with his keen vision he is the first to see, approaching from the west against the sunset, an army of great eagles. He cries out that the eagles are coming, but is struck by a stone from above and is knocked unconscious. Chapters 18–19: The Road Home  In chapter 18 (“The Return Journey”), Bilbo comes to on the battlefield and looks about him, seeing only dead goblins. He understands that the battle has ended in victory, but does not know how. When he sees a man climbing toward him, he calls out, but when the man asks where the voice has come from, Bilbo realizes that he is still wearing his ring. He quickly removes it and greets the man, who had been sent to find him on the battlefield and had nearly given up hope. He tells Bilbo that he must be brought to Thorin Oakenshield at once. When Bilbo enters Thorin’s tent, he finds the dwarf king dying of wounds suffered in battle. Thorin reconciles with Bilbo, taking back the words he spoke at the gate. Bilbo bids Thorin farewell and weeps for him outside his tent. As Bilbo recovers with Gandalf, he learns how the battle was won. The eagles had been monitoring the mustering of the goblins for some time and had gathered forces to follow them to the mountain. During the battle, they had driven the goblins from their positions on the mountain and into the valley, where they were engaged by the elves and dwarves. Still, the wargs and goblins outnumbered the allies, and the outcome was in doubt until Beorn himself had appeared, in the form of a bear, and swept all before him. Most of the enemy ultimately fled the battle, and the elves, dwarves, and men pursued them, slaughtering the great majority. In the end, three-quarters of the goblins of the North were slain in that battle, and peace returned to the North for many years. Finally, Thorin is buried in the mountain, with the Arkenstone on his breast and the sword Orcrist restored to him by the elven king. Kili and Fili, who were killed in the battle while defending Thorin, are buried there as well. The other dwarves stay with Dain, who is now King under the Mountain.

110   Hobbit, or There and Back Again, The One-fourteenth of the treasure is given to Bard, as Thorin had agreed. Dain wishes to give Bilbo a great reward as well, but in the end Bilbo will accept only a small chest of gold and one of silver, just as much as a small pony might carry on his way back to his home in the West. Bilbo bids farewell to his companions, and with Gandalf and Beorn, he sets off for home in the company of the elven king and his host. Bilbo and his two companions part with the elves at the entrance to Mirkwood, preferring to take the long way around the forest to the north rather than the gloomy path through Mirkwood. But before they bid the elven king farewell, Bilbo gives him the gift of a silver and pearl necklace he had received from Dain. It is, he says, in exchange for the meals and lodging the king had unknowingly given the invisible Bilbo when the dwarves were in his dungeons. The elven king accepts the gift and names Bilbo “elf-friend.” Gandalf and Bilbo stay in Beorn’s house through the yuletide and into the spring, when they leave to continue their journey home. Bilbo, weary of his adventures, can only think of his comfortable armchair. As chapter 19 (“The Last Stage”) opens, Gandalf and Bilbo leave Beorn’s house and move on until, at the beginning of May, they reach Rivendell, where the elves welcome them again with songs from the trees. They stay in Rivendell for a week, telling the stories of their adventures. Here Bilbo learns that after Gandalf left the dwarves, he joined with his fellow wizards, who were able to drive the Necromancer from his stronghold in the south of Mirkwood. Finally, they leave Elrond, and as they make their way home, they take the time to recover the trolls’ gold that the dwarves had buried. Bilbo says he has plenty of wealth and offers this gold to Gandalf, but Gandalf insists that Bilbo should take some of it for himself, saying that he may have more need of it than he knows. When Bilbo returns to his house on June 22, he is shocked to arrive in the middle of an auction where all of his possessions are being sold. Having been away for more than a year, Bilbo has been presumed dead, and his cousins, the SackvilleBagginses, are measuring his house to see whether their own furniture will fit. They are not particu-

larly happy to see him turn up alive. It takes years for Bilbo to get all of his possessions back, and he is forced to buy back some of his furniture himself just to speed the process along. The Sackville-Bagginses never believe it is truly Bilbo who has returned, and while Bilbo lives a long life in his old home and remains an elf friend and a companion of dwarves and wizards, he is never able to shake his reputation among his neighbors for being a bit odd. He is a favorite among his nieces and nephews, however, although even they do not completely believe all of the stories he tells of his adventures. But several years after his return, one autumn evening while he is writing his memoirs (“There and Back Again: A Hobbit’s Holiday”), he has a visit from Gandalf and Balin. They chat about old times, and Balin tells him of how Dain’s kingdom is thriving, how Bard has rebuilt Dale, and how the valley is now fertile and there is a great traffic of goods among men, elves, and dwarves. Bilbo marvels that the old legends have indeed come true, and Gandalf asserts that this is not to be wondered at: Ancient prophecies are no less true just because one has had a hand in bringing them about himself. Commentary Chapter 1: “An Unexpected Party” Tolkien establishes the novel’s tone from the very first sentence. One recognizes that a hobbit is not a creature of the “real” world, and that with these words the reader is entering an imaginary universe, the parameters of which the narrator is about to establish. First, the nature of hobbits themselves must be clarified. While initially the idea of human-like creatures living in well-decorated holes in the ground seems a bit outlandish, it is clear that the other traits of hobbits—their rather smug provincialism, their lack of curiosity, and their fundamental desire for good food and drink and the comforts of home—are those of a large portion of the human population, probably (as Tolkien most likely deemed) of the majority of the citizens of provincial England. Bilbo Baggins, who remains chiefly concerned with his food, his comfort, and the neatness of his house, is in many ways typical of hobbits in general. The name hobbit is relatively close

Hobbit, or There and Back Again, The   111 to rabbit, and this may be why Tolkien chose to have hobbits live in holes and give them furry feet. But Tolkien himself vehemently denied the suggestion of any connection between hobbits and rabbits (Shippey, Road 67). In any case, the consciousness of hobbits is essentially that of humans, though their diminutive size may suggest the limitations of their imaginations and aspirations. Tolkien did suggest that the name hobbit might have been partially influenced by Sinclair Lewis’s 1922 novel Babbit, whose characters, like most hobbits, are complacent, self-satisfied, and lack imagination. Tolkien makes a point of examining Bilbo’s individual character in this chapter, based chiefly on his heredity. On his father’s side, Bilbo is a Baggins, and therefore a very conventional hobbit. On his mother’s side, however, Bilbo is a Took, and the Tooks are less “respectable” from the conventional point of view, but in fact are more adventurous, more inclined to be unconventional and curious about the outside world, as was Bilbo’s glorious ancestor, Bullroarer Took. This inner conflict will play in Bilbo’s psyche throughout the novel. Although Bilbo is some 50 years old when the story begins, The Hobbit is essentially a bildungsroman—a novel about a young person’s initiation into maturity. The comforts that Bilbo enjoys—his focus on eating and drinking and staying warm and cozy in his protected environment—are the comforts of an infant. The bachelor Bilbo has never experienced anything that has challenged him or made him grow as an individual, and the comfortable home and income he inherited from his father and his Took forebears have made it unnecessary for Bilbo to have to work to provide himself with anything necessary to his life. In some ways he is, essentially, a middle-class Edwardian English gentleman pulled, quite by surprise, into a medieval Norse adventure (Shippey, J. R. R. Tolkien 11)— all of which explains why contemporary readers identify much more readily with Bilbo than with Gandalf, the dwarves, or the elves in the story. But perhaps more important, in symbolic terms, the hole in which Bilbo lives is a yonic symbol, an image of the womb protecting Bilbo but keeping him an infant (Matthews 30). Like many fairy tales, which involve children whose basic virtues

enable them to overcome threatening aspects of the larger world (like Jack’s giant or Hansel and Gretel’s witch), Bilbo’s story will be the symbolic representation of what the psychologist Carl Jung called the process of individuation, or maturing, as Bilbo will pass through a number of incidents that will aid in his psychological development into an adult. On another level, one of the story’s major themes is the capability of a relatively unimportant, ordinary person to exhibit great courage and resourcefulness when put into extreme or dangerous circumstances. Bilbo’s maturing process will put him in these kinds of situations, and he will reach within himself for resources that he may not have known he had. Many of these resources undoubtedly spring from Bilbo’s unconventional Tookish side, and that aspect of his nature is what makes Gandalf choose him for this adventure. Matthews equates Bilbo’s Tookish side with his masculinity, which she notes is being repressed in his womblike hobbit hole (31). Gandalf recognizes that, while Bilbo may appear to be a typical hobbit, no more daring than any other, there is actually “more to him than meets the eye,” as the narrator will remind us repeatedly. As for Gandalf himself, the wizard will, of course, become a major character in The Lord of the Rings, but his importance in this novel is chiefly as a guide and adviser to the hobbit and his companions. In his biography of Tolkien, Humphrey Carpenter traces the conception of Gandalf to a German postcard that Tolkien bought on a trip to Switzerland in 1911. The card was a reproduction of a painting called Der Berggeist (“The Spirit of the Mountain”) by the artist J. Madelener. It depicted a whitebearded man in a dark cloak and a wide-brimmed hat. Years later, Tolkien wrote on the paper cover where he kept the postcard “Origin of Gandalf” (Carpenter 51). In The Hobbit, Gandalf is the archetypal “wise old man” figure common to romance narratives (as defined by Northrop Frye and others)—“romance” in the sense of a heroic tale in a remote setting dealing with mysterious, adventurous, or supernatural events (rather than in the sense of “a love story”). Typically, such figures are guides and protectors of the protagonist, and they embody wis-

112   Hobbit, or There and Back Again, The dom and often benevolent power as well. The fact that Bilbo fondly remembers Gandalf’s fireworks is an indication that his Tookish side is attracted to the kind of supernatural power and wisdom that Gandalf embodies. With the introduction of the dwarves, Tolkien’s world becomes much more recognizable as having roots in a variety of earlier narratives. In the Old Norse and Germanic folklore with which Tolkien was quite familiar, dwarves were often associated with the accumulation of treasure, and dragons with the hoarding of such treasure. From their actions and their plans, we learn a number of things about these particular dwarves in this chapter: They enjoy feasting and songs, but they are also a clannish and proud folk, whose traditions and heritage mean a great deal to them. They are also motivated by what may be an inordinate lust for riches, and by revenge, for the dragon has killed Thorin’s father and grandfather, the King under the Mountain, and those deaths cry out for vengeance. In this way, the dwarves’ mores are quite similar to those of Old English or Old Norse warriors, for whom the king’s first responsibility was the sharing of treasure with his retainers, and the warrior’s first responsibility was to protect or to avenge his lord in battle. In Germanic legends, though, the greatest heroes—Sigurd or Beowulf— are slayers of dragons, and the irony in this situation is that the dwarves have come seeking Bilbo, the most unlikely such hero imaginable. As it happens, however, the dwarves are not looking for that kind of hero, but rather for a burglar who might be able to steal some of the treasure. This is a role that Bilbo may actually be able to fill. Other than Balin, all of the names of the dwarves (as well as the name Gandalf) appear in an Old Norse poem Völuspá, part of the Icelandic collection called the Elder Edda, or Poetic Edda (Shippey, Road 70). As for the plot of The Hobbit, it follows the traditional romance form of the quest, a journey to accomplish a significant task, in this case the recovery of the dwarves’ lost treasure from the dragon who guards it. It should be noted that one of the things that inspires Bilbo, awakening his “Took side,” and stirring him to accept the dwarves’ proposal, is the

song that they sing about the journey and the gold at the end of it. Tolkien is always concerned with the power of language to move and to inspire, and he puts lines like “We must away ere break of day / To seek the pale enchanted gold” (27) into the dwarves’ mouths to motivate Bilbo to agree to the adventure. Admittedly, the other thing that motivates Bilbo is his wounded vanity when he overhears Gloin remark that he “looks more like a grocer than a burglar” (30). If this seems to be a somewhat childish reason to make such an important decision, remember that at this point Bilbo really is not much more than a child, and his maturing process is just starting. One other element of the opening chapter is worth commenting on, and that is the voice of the narrator. Whereas in Tolkien’s other major works (The Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion), he uses an omniscient narrator who presents the material objectively and without comment, the narrator of The Hobbit is an intrusive voice that consistently comments on the actions of the story and engages in a kind of conversation with the reader. The narrator’s tone, however, is avuncular, and his relationship to the reader almost condescending, very much like an older adult telling a story to small children. While this, in fact, was certainly Tolkien’s intent as he told the story in its first form to his own children, passages like “And what would you do, if an uninvited dwarf came and hung his things up in your hall without a word of explanation?” (20) or “He may have lost the neighbours’ respect, but he gained—well, you will see whether he gained anything in the end” (16) begin to sound a little patronizing as the novel goes on, and it is no coincidence that Tolkien abandoned this kind of narrative voice in his later works. In a 1967 interview, Tolkien admitted his mistake in this regard, saying “The Hobbit was written in what I should now regard as a bad style, as if one were talking to children. There’s nothing my children loathed more” (qtd. in Tolkien, Annotated Hobbit 76). Chapters 2–3: Trolls  The scene that initiates Bilbo into the world of adventure is a semicomic one involving conventional monsters of Old Norse mythology, a trio

Hobbit, or There and Back Again, The   113 of trolls. William Green notes that on two occasions in Snorri Sturluson’s Prose Edda, Thor has traveled to the East to fight trolls (51). Furthermore, Gandalf’s trick of keeping the trolls arguing until dawn, when they must turn to stone at the first light of day, is also a motif seen in Old Norse poetry—although in at least one poem the trick is actually applied to a dwarf named Alvis, who comes to ask for the hand of Thor’s daughter in marriage, and whom Thor keeps talking until sunrise (Green 55). It has also been suggested that this scene owes something to the story of the Cyclops in The Odyssey. As Odysseus used trickery to prevent the Cyclops from eating all of his companions, Gandalf tricks the trolls into arguing until sunlight and so prevents them from eating the dwarves. The depiction of the trolls in this scene equates them essentially with rather coarse, vulgar humans. They have the curiously common English names of William, Bert, and Tom, and they speak with cockney accents and phrasing, as in “And time’s been up our way, when yer’d have said ‘thank yer, Bill,’ for a nice bit o’ fat valley mutton like what this is” (46). Deborah and Ivor Rogers suggest that the trolls’ speech is modeled on the language of enlisted men or “Tommies” from his regiment whose speech patterns Lieutenant Tolkien may have witnessed during World War I (66). Essentially, then, the trolls act like low-class oafs. The dwarves act in a manner that readers will come to expect as the story progresses: They hold back and send Bilbo in to test the waters in any dangerous situation. The dwarves need food, and the firelight and smell of mutton are enticing, but they send Bilbo ahead to scout things out. Bilbo, however, proves himself to be quite nearly useless in the ensuing crisis. He does have one special talent: the ability to move very quietly and stealthily. This, of course, will serve him well later on in dealing with the dragon, but at this point it enables him to sneak up on the trolls without detection. However, Bilbo’s first decision is a foolish one. Seeing himself as the hero of a fairy tale, a kind of “Jack and the Beanstalk” character, Bilbo decides to try to pick the pocket of one of the trolls, unaware of the remarkable vocal talents of trolls’ purses. His bad decision nearly gets him

killed, and his inability to warn the dwarves nearly does the same for them. To a large extent, it is Bilbo’s own insignificance that saves him at this point, since he is able to crawl away while the trolls are bickering, and their capture of the 13 dwarves causes them to forget all about Bilbo. It is pure luck that ultimately saves him and the dwarves, since Gandalf happens to show up at precisely the right time. Bilbo has not acquitted himself well in this first adventure. He does discover the trolls’ key while crawling away and so is able to contribute something useful to the company’s progress after all. But the best that can be said about Bilbo at this point is that he is lucky. If the story of The Hobbit is the story of Bilbo’s maturation and the development of his heroic status, it would seem that little progress has been made at this point. But a close examination suggests otherwise: Bilbo has exited his womblike hobbit hole and begun the journey. He has faced a dangerous enemy and survived. He has shown some courage in approaching the trolls alone, and he has demonstrated that he has more than his share of luck. Accordingly, Bilbo receives the elvish blade that he will use as a sword throughout the novel. As Matthews reminds us, the sword is a phallic symbol, and even in its simplest terms, it suggests maturing manhood (29). The episode also recalls scenes from medieval romances (Green compares it to the story of Perceval) in which the young knight takes the arms or armor from the first knight he defeats in his adventures (Green 56). Although here the “defeat” has been a matter of trickery, Bilbo, Gandalf, and the dwarves are following tradition when they arm themselves from the trolls’ cave. The initial danger overcome, the company is able to rest after the first leg of their journey in Rivendell, where the reader is introduced to elves. One’s first impression of the elves of Rivendell is probably that they are a good-natured but rather flippant people, since they seem to spend a good deal of time laughing and singing in the trees and making fun of their visitors. Tolkien makes the elves’ songs bright and lively, with anapestic rhythms (“O! What are you doing, / And where are you going?” [57]) as opposed to the dwarves’

114   Hobbit, or There and Back Again, The heavier, longer iambic lines (“Far over the misty mountains cold / To dungeons deep and caverns old” [27]), making the elves seem quite lighthearted, perhaps even frivolous. But one soon comes to realize that this is probably the dwarves’ view of them, and that because of ancient rivalries between the two races, the dwarves’ opinion of elves is not necessarily to be trusted. Bilbo, we are told, loves the elves, and their lord, Elrond, brings a gravity and high seriousness to the society of Rivendell. It seems apparent that when The Hobbit was first conceived, Tolkien intended it to be an independent children’s story, unconnected to his huge mythological project that was becoming the Quenta Silmarillion. Including Elrond, however, squarely placed the hobbit’s adventures among the greater tales of Middle-earth, for Elrond had been a part of those tales among Tolkien’s unpublished manuscripts since at least 1926. Elrond’s ability to interpret the “moon letters” on Thorin’s treasure map and his knowledge of ancient runes are to be expected of one who is himself so ancient: When he speaks of the swords Orcrist and Glamdring being forged by his elvish kinsmen for the elf and goblin wars, he is speaking of the years before the fall of Gondolin—an epic story of the First Age of Middle-earth that Tolkien had begun crafting as early as 1917. Elrond’s father, Eärendil, had escaped from Gondolin when it fell to the forces of Morgoth, the evil one, near the end of the First Age, and thus Elrond feels a kinship with those who forged these ancient swords. The naming of the swords places these weapons, and Bilbo’s quest, among the great heroic legends of the past: They recall Arthur’s Excalibur, Roland’s Durendal, or Hrunting, the sword of Unferth that ultimately fails Beowulf—swords through which great deeds were done, and which therefore earned their names. Such names anticipate great deeds to be done in the present story as well. The runes on the swords that must be read by Elrond, ancient in wisdom, also recall the scene in Beowulf when Beowulf brings to the wise king Hrothgar the hilt of the ancient sword that he has found in the den of Grendel’s mother, and the old man examines the ancient runes on the sword hilt.

Rivendell is a paradisal garden of a sanctuary in which Bilbo would love to stay, but from which he must be expelled if he is to continue his development. At the end of the chapter, therefore, he and the dwarves continue their journey toward their first great natural barrier, the Misty Mountains, which they must cross to continue their quest for the Lonely Mountain and the dragon’s treasure. Chapters 4–7: Goblins and Wolves  As scholars have noted (William H. Green especially), this third part of the story repeats many of the same motifs as the previous section, but at greater length. Bilbo and his companions are put in great danger by monstrous foes, but they are saved in the end from an unexpected source. At the same time, Bilbo matures through the experience and comes out of it with a symbolic talisman—this time the magic ring—that symbolizes his growth. As the section begins, Bilbo and his companions seek shelter in a cave in the Misty Mountains, and Bilbo awakens just in time to see the wall open and a horde of goblins rush in. Bilbo’s cry of alarm warns Gandalf, who is able to save the dwarves from capture temporarily. It is another instance of Bilbo’s luck—a feature that Tolkien emphasizes a number of times in this text. Bilbo’s luck is not simply blind chance happening to work in his favor, but rather luck in the sense one sees it in Old Norse sagas, where luck, as Shippey says, is a kind of possession (J. R. R. Tolkien 27). In the Vinland sagas (the Greenlanders’ Saga and the Saga of Erik the Red), Leif Ericksson, known as “Leif the Lucky,” is not simply the recipient of occasional good fortune but, rather, has a kind of supernatural knack for finding wealth or new lands. Bilbo seems to have that same kind of supernatural gift, which protects him in times of danger and enables him to discover important things that others may have missed—the trolls’ key in the previous section, the magic ring in this one. The scene in chapter 5 in which Bilbo finds the ring and overcomes Gollum is the best known in the novel, since so many subsequent events— chiefly in The Lord of the Rings—depend upon it. It begins simply enough: Bilbo, once again like a child, must be carried on Dori’s shoulders as the

Hobbit, or There and Back Again, The   115 dwarves flee from pursuing goblins. Bilbo falls, loses consciousness, and wakes later, alone in the dark. He finds the ring while crawling on his hands and knees in the dark and pockets it absentmindedly. It seems an unremarkable event, but as the narrator says, “it was a turning point in his career, but he did not know it” (76). Scholars and readers have had a great deal to say about this chapter, in particular with regard to its symbolism. It is fairly easy to recognize that Bilbo’s descent into and reemergence from the underworld follows a pattern familiar in a great many myths and heroic narratives common to a number of cultures: Odysseus’s descent to Hades to confer with the shade of Tiresias, Aeneas’s descent to see the soul of his father in book 6 of the Aeneid, and Dante’s journey through the Inferno come immediately to mind. Such universal patterns or symbols are called archetypes. On one level, this particular archetype suggests death and rebirth—the death of Bilbo’s old, childish self and his rebirth as hero. It is certainly the case that once Bilbo has passed this point (and has obtained the ring), he is no longer a burden to the company and begins to prove himself a valuable companion. And as Matthews points out, the description of Bilbo as he squeezes through the narrow crack that the goblins have left in the open cave door reads like nothing if not a birth narrative (33): He squeezed and squeezed, and he stuck! It was awful. His buttons had got wedged on the edge of the door and the door-post.  .  .  . He gave a terrific squirm. Buttons burst off in all directions. He was through . . . (95)

But there is more to this symbolic pattern than this. The psychologist Carl Jung called this archetype of darkness the shadow. The Jungian shadow is often personified in myth or legend as a dark being—Darth Vader, for instance, or Satan himself perhaps—that represents the dark part of ourselves that we do not recognize or acknowledge. It may show itself, as Green notes, in traits we dislike in other people but fail to recognize in ourselves. For Jung, coming to terms with the shadow is essential for individuation, or becoming a whole and mature human being. That Gollum represents Bilbo’s

shadow is apparent first in the symbolic sense, as Bilbo confronts Gollum here in the dark cave, reminiscent of the darkness of the subconscious mind. But as Green asserts, Gollum is also Bilbo’s double, living as he does, alone in a cave underground, and he tends to be somewhat sneaky, achieving his ends by deception rather than direct confrontation (Green 75). Bilbo does ultimately come to terms with Gollum, pitying the creature and sparing his life rather than killing him when he has the chance. When Bilbo recognizes Gollum as a fellow creature deserving of his pity, he has come to terms with his shadow. As Green concludes, the ring, the perfect circle, becomes a symbol of the wholeness and unity of self that Bilbo achieves (Green 81; Matthews 32). The leap that Bilbo makes over the crouching Gollum at the entrance to the tunnel leading out of the cave is also a symbolic leap forward—an act of courage and daring that mark his maturing personality. Gollum’s name has no known source and presumably imitates the gulping sound he makes in his throat. But it is possible that Tolkien may have had in mind the creature of Jewish folklore called the golem, a being made of clay but animated, often, in medieval legend, by a rabbi. It was an incomplete and uncultivated being, and in the classic version of the story, the golem becomes violent and uncontrollable. Tolkien’s Gollum displays a number of these characteristics. The riddle contest is quite appropriate for Bilbo. Even though he holds his elf-blade in readiness, Bilbo’s real talent is in his wits, and the riddle contest with Gollum is a battle of wits. In part, as Christopher L. Couch notes, it prepares Bilbo for a later, more dangerous battle of wits with the dragon (12). Couch points out that Tolkien was familiar with Old English riddles, in particular the nearly 100 riddles at the end of the 10th-century Exeter Book manuscript. Certainly Gollum’s riddles are similar to these Old English ones, although his subjects (all-concealing darkness, all-devouring time) are particularly appropriate for him. The riddle contest has other sources as well. Since Bilbo’s life depends on his answers, the contest immediately recalls the riddle of the Sphinx in the Oedipus story. But there are closer analogues in

116   Hobbit, or There and Back Again, The Old Norse literature. In the poem Vafthruthnismol from the Poetic Edda, or Elder Edda, Ódin, in a quest for knowledge, visits the home of the giant Vafthruthnil disguised as a traveler named Gagnrath. The giant insists that they have a contest to determine which of the two is more intelligent, and he asks Ódin five questions, all of which Ódin answers. Ódin follows with 12 questions of his own, which the giant answers. Ódin then asks questions he really wants to learn the answers to, concerning the doom of the gods and, specifically, the identity of his own destroyer. In the end, Ódin (rather unfairly) asks Vafthruthnil what Ódin whispered into his son’s ear before his death. Recognizing Ódin at last, the giant admits that the god is wiser and lets him leave. The later Saga of King Heidrek, surely based largely on Vafthruthnismol, involves a question-game with the lives of the participants on the line, and it ends with Ódin asking the same question of Heidrek that ended the earlier text. In both these Norse texts, Ódin, like Bilbo, wins by asking a personal question, the answer to which his adversary has no way of knowing. In Bilbo’s case, once again, it is purely a matter of luck that he asks, “What have I got in my pocket?” His supernatural luck this time saves his life. It is important to note that the “Riddles in the Dark” chapter that most readers know and that is summarized here is the revised chapter that appears in the second edition of The Hobbit, published in 1951. In the original 1937 version, Gollum promises Bilbo a present (i.e., the ring) if Bilbo wins the contest, and when he cannot find the ring, he shows Bilbo the way out of the cave instead. In the revised version, Gollum is presented more negatively, since he searches for the ring, intending to use it to disappear so that he can secretly kill Bilbo. But the invisible Bilbo follows Gollum to the exit while Gollum actually converses with himself (the text of the first version is available in The Annotated Hobbit 128–135). Tolkien explained the discrepancy by saying that the original version had been taken from Bilbo’s own story as presented in his manuscript (“There and Back Again”), and that Bilbo had at first tried to whitewash his actions in obtaining the ring (Rogers 70). Because of the way Tolkien’s conception of the ring had developed, he

was able to use his revision of this chapter to better prepare readers for Gollum’s dual personality in The Lord of the Rings, and the negative effects that the ring has on its owners—both Gollum and, in the deceptive nature of Bilbo’s “first version” of the story, the hobbit himself. Bilbo’s first decision once he has escaped from the cave is a clear indication of his maturing ethical judgment: Believing that Gandalf and the dwarves are still trapped under the mountain, he is convinced that he must return to the goblins’ caverns to help them. This is a far cry from the Bilbo of the first chapter, who had been relieved to think that the dwarves had gone off on their adventure without him. Bilbo, of course, does not have to go back to rescue the dwarves, but the important thing here is that he was willing to do so. Instead, the travelers are soon pursued and surrounded by the combined forces of wargs and the goblins of the mountains. The wargs are essentially werewolves—an Old English term meaning “man wolves.” Werewolves appear in one of Tolkien’s favorite sources, the Völsunga Saga. These wargs look like wolves but are able to speak and have the organization and cunning of men. The goblins are also speaking and thinking creatures, but they are motivated solely by hunger, greed, and hatred. Essentially, as Tolkien readily acknowledges in a 1954 letter to Naomi Mitchison (Letters 178), his goblins are based on the creations of George McDonald in his classic children’s book The Princess and the Goblin, although, as Green asserts, Tolkien’s goblins are far more seriously evil than McDonald’s (69). As this third section of the novel draws to a close, the company is saved once again in a somewhat unexpected way—this time by the eagles, who serve the function of the helpful animals that often appear in romance narratives, in opposition to the hostile animals so clearly represented by the wargs. Further, just as the second section ends with a respite for the company in the Last Homely House of Elrond Halfelven, so this third section ends with a restful interlude in the home of Beorn. Beorn is a shape-changer of the sort that appears in some Norse sagas. In Egil’s Saga, for example, Egil’s grandfather, Kvedulf, is introduced

Hobbit, or There and Back Again, The   117 as one who can change into a wolf, while Queen Gunnhilda in the form of a swallow is nearly the cause of Egil’s death. Shippey also notes that the protagonist of the Saga of Hrolf Kraki is known as Böthvarr Bjarki (“Little Bear”) and is apparently a were-bear (J. R. R. Tolkien 31). Beorn’s ability to change into a bear, then, is not unique in the kind of world Tolkien was recreating from his sources. The name itself is a pun, as Green points out, playing on the similarity between the Old Norse words bjorn (or bear) and beorn (or warrior) (114). Tolkien suggests that Beorn had formerly lived in the Misty Mountains and was forced to leave once the goblins moved in, and he looks forward to the time when the goblins will be destroyed and he can go back. In his enmity with the goblins, Beorn is clearly to be seen as a good and admirable character. Paul W. Lewis suggests that Beorn is, in fact, a kind of early precursor of Tom Bombadil in The Fellowship of the Ring, noting in particular their closeness to nature, which in Tolkien always seems to be an indication of virtue (Lewis 154). Beorn farms, lives in harmony with his animals (demanding that his ponies be brought back from the edge of Mirkwood when he loans them to the dwarves), and is a vegetarian. His help sends the troop on its way well provisioned to begin their trek through the great forest, but Gandalf’s warning that he must leave them on their own for that journey causes the company a good deal of anxiety. Chapters 8–10: Mirkwood  Just as Bilbo’s adventure with Gollum repeated several of the motifs of his encounter with the trolls, so do many details of this fourth section of the novel parallel events in the previous sections. William Green lists the companions’ hunger, the gloomy setting (the dark forest this time rather than a cavern), the crossing of water that leads the travelers into danger, the dwarves’ capture and imprisonment in bags by enemies who mean to devour them, Bilbo’s awakening alone after losing consciousness, the interrogation of the dwarves by a king in an underground hall, the escape via an unusual means of transport (the barrels rather than the eagles this time), and the attainment of a final safe refuge (Green 83). More important, this sec-

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tion presents another stage of Bilbo’s maturation, containing a descent into the darkness, confrontation of an archetypal shadow, and a rebirth. The scene of action this time is Mirkwood, a frightening and dangerous forest over which a darkness has fallen in recent years because of the presence of “the Necromancer,” who has risen to power and established himself in the southern part of the forest. This, of course, is Sauron, as will become clear later in The Lord of the Rings, though Tolkien seems not to have finalized that aspect of his mythography at the time he was writing The Hobbit. The name and idea of Mirkwood were adopted, as Shippey points out, from the Old Norse Poetic (Elder) Edda, where Myrcvið inn ókunna (“Mirkwood the Unknown”) is mentioned several times as an eastern boundary through which the Burgundians must travel to the stronghold of Attila the Hun (J. R. R. Tolkien 33–34). It also functions here as the dark wood common to fairy tales such as “Hansel and Gretel” or “Little Red Riding Hood.” In this fantasy world, the companions are subject to the conditions of the fairy tale, one of which is the ancient motif of the “fairy tale prohibition” that Tolkien himself discusses in his essay “On FairyStories” (67). Briar Rose must not touch a spindle, Cinderella must leave the ball by midnight, Bluebeard’s wife must not look in one of the rooms of the castle. In this case, the dwarves must not leave the path or there will be dire consequences, as Beorn and Gandalf warn them three times. As in the traditional fairy story, the reader knows that the prohibition will be violated and the protagonists will suffer the consequences. In the case of the starving dwarves, it is only as a last resort that they leave the paths when they see the elves’ fires. Tolkien has peopled Mirkwood with elves, in this case what he would call in The Silmarillion Avari—Grey-elves—rather than the High-elves from whom Elrond is descended. The picture of elves presented here seems inspired by the kinds of elves or fairies that appear in medieval Breton lays and other romances inspired by them. The disappearing circles of singing elves in the wood, for instance, occurs most famously in Chaucer’s “Wife of Bath’s Tale.” Most specifically, as Shippey has pointed out, the first evidence of the

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118   Hobbit, or There and Back Again, The elves in Mirkwood is inspired by the Middle English romance of Sir Orfeo (a text Tolkien taught often, and that he translated into modern English) (J. R. R. Tolkien 35). In Sir Orfeo, while wandering in the wood, Orfeo comes upon the King of Faërie hunting. Tolkien translates the passage thus: There often by him would he see when noon was hot on leaf and tree, the king of Faërie with his rout come hunting in the woods about with blowing far and crying dim, and barking hounds that were with him;   (ll. 281–286)

In chapter 8 of The Hobbit, the travelers first become aware of the forest’s inhabitants when they are trying to cross the black stream, they hear the sound of a horn and of hunting dogs, and a deer leaps across the stream among them. The elves, however, are not kindly disposed toward the dwarves—this is clear later on when Thorin is brought before the elves’ king and prefers to be thrown into a dungeon rather than reveal his quest. Their failure to welcome the famished dwarves within the circle of their fires stems from this animosity and is nearly the dwarves’ undoing. The danger this time is more horrifying than either Gollum or the three trolls of the previous sections. If Mirkwood is an archetypal symbol of the unconscious self, the spiders represent the nightmare terrors lurking in the depths of the psyche. Indeed, Bilbo has been sleeping when he awakens to find himself in the nightmare of the giant spider’s web. As Rogers points out, the horror of the situation may have come from Tolkien’s own deepest subconscious fears: As a very young child in South Africa, he had been bitten by a tarantula (72), and the image of that may have haunted him still in his adult years (Ungoliant in The Silmarillion and Shelob in The Lord of the Rings repeat this same motif). Bilbo’s ability to slay the spider without the aid of anything but his own sword gives him a new confidence and is clearly a step in his maturing process. The fact that he names his sword “Sting” at this point marks a rite of passage for him: Like the sword, he has a new identity, one that is bold and dangerous to his enemies.

J. R. Wytenbroek calls this adventure the second stage of Bilbo’s maturation process. Rather than fleeing from evil, Bilbo has confronted and overcome it, and Wytenbroek attributes this new strength to Bilbo’s earlier confrontation of his shadow in the form of Gollum (7). Unlike Gollum, however, whom Bilbo ultimately accepts and for whom he has compassion, the spiders represent what Wytenbroek calls the embodiment of primordial darkness, an inhuman evil that is “the incarnation of nightmare. . . . [The spiders] are the demons of the soul, and they must be routed and conquered” (8). Bilbo’s conquest of the spiders, alone and unaided, is his symbolic conquest of his most deeply rooted fears and thus a stage of maturation beyond his earlier confrontation of his own shadow. His manner of defeating the giant spiders— through his invisibility, his craftiness, his verbal insults that madden the creatures and his stonethrowing that hobbles them—is not the approach of the typical hero. Bilbo is more what Green calls a trickster figure in this episode (87). There are no direct confrontations or acts of physical strength, no clashes of warriors in single combat. This is not who Bilbo is; it is not who most people are. Bilbo the hobbit, a small person in the wide world, is an ordinary person who is capable of heroic actions that involve personal courage, a sense of responsibility toward his friends, and willingness to sacrifice himself for the good of the whole group. These are qualities that any person may display, and they form one of Tolkien’s major themes that also runs through The Lord the Rings: the ability of ordinary people to perform extraordinary acts of courage in difficult circumstances. The growth in Bilbo’s character is acknowledged after he saves the dwarves from the spiders when it is discovered that Thorin has disappeared. At this point, all of the dwarves look instinctively to Bilbo for leadership: Where were they, and where was their path, and where was there any food, and what were they going to do next? These questions they asked over and over again, and it was from little Bilbo that they seemed to expect to get the answers. (163)

Hobbit, or There and Back Again, The   119 Of course, Bilbo cannot answer any of these questions, and the next day, as the companions are desperately trying to find their way back to the path to get out of the forest, they are captured by the same elves that have already imprisoned Thorin. Bilbo’s invisibility allows him to escape capture and to sneak into the elves’ fortress undetected, but it is clear that the dwarves will need rescuing once again. This time, however, the problem is a more difficult one. The trolls, Gollum, and the spiders all offered real and imminent threats to the lives of Bilbo and his companions, and their defeat—and, in the case of the spiders, wholesale slaughter—was unquestionably the triumph of good over evil. Moral ambiguity enters Bilbo’s world in the castle of the elves. The elves are not evil and are holding the dwarves because they have passed into the elves’ land and refuse to give an accounting of themselves. Bilbo realizes that the dwarves’ stubbornness and greed is in part responsible for their predicament, along with the mysterious enmity between elves and dwarves that he does not understand. As Green points out, rescuing the dwarves this time is less a matter of courage and more one of “discretion, tact, and cleverness,” as Bilbo recognizes it would be wrong to harm the elves and is even uncomfortable taking their food during the time he must remain invisible within their walls (Green 83). His respect for the elves is clear when, having put his escape plan into motion, he returns the keys to the sleeping jailer, so as not to get the hapless elf into trouble. As with most of Tolkien’s legendarium, the dwarves’ escape from the elves’ prison has roots in mythic literature. One story that scholars have compared to this one is the tale of Odysseus’s escape from the Cyclops in The Odyssey. Green lists the following parallels in the stories: Both begin with the protagonists trapped underground; both involve getting the watchman falling asleep, and his inability to see the protagonist; both involve the group escaping while hiding in things that the watchman must open the door to let out; and in both cases, the hero’s own escape is the most difficult, as Odysseus must hold onto the lead ram while Bilbo has to grab onto the last barrel that is flung into the river (Green 91). Again, as with all of

Tolkien’s “borrowings,” the source has been completely absorbed into the overall logic of the entire fantasy world. It is worth noting that here, once again, Tolkien uses birth imagery as Bilbo escapes from the elves’ cave, shooting forth in a gush of water from his womblike prison (Matthews 36). Bilbo has been reborn again, having gone through a further maturation process in his adventures with the spiders and the elves. As Bilbo floats down the river, he is struck by the barrenness of the landscape throughout the area surrounding the distant Lonely Mountain, and he learns from the talk of the raftsmen that the land has become desolated since the coming of the dragon. Clearly the medievalist in Tolkien has constructed a wasteland here that recalls the motifs of the Grail legend. In its earliest Celtic form, the wasteland is associated with the infertility and impotence of its ruler, originally the maimed “Fisher King.” The fertility of the land and the healing of the king can be accomplished by the Grail Knight. In the Perceval legend, Perceval must ask the appropriate question (“Who is served by the grail?”) in order to bring about this restoration. In other manifestations, the Grail itself may be the vessel that heals the king, and so the knight’s quest is to find it. Here, restoration of the land’s fertility must come with the slaying of the dragon. Since the object of Bilbo’s quest is the dragon hoard, perhaps the symbolic Grail is part of that treasure. The inhabitants of Lake-town—living, as they do, on the lake itself—may well be a remnant of the former Fisher King’s people, but they seem themselves to have degenerated. As Green asserts, they are chiefly interested in business and trade, and their leader is “a selfish and cowardly pragmatist” (85). They have neither courage nor virtue, and they are mainly concerned with their own self-interest when they welcome Thorin as the returned King under the Mountain, since they believe he will bring them a new golden era. The novel’s fourth section ends, like the previous sections, with the company safe in a new refuge after passing through great danger. But the moral ambiguity introduced into the story with the elves’ castle continues here, for Lake-town is not the paradisal refuge of Rivendell, nor even the house of

120   Hobbit, or There and Back Again, The the isolated but clearly righteous Beorn. It is a town of folk who are, like the land they inhabit, decayed and in need of restoration. No wonder Bilbo ends this section worried about the pending adventure on the mountain. Chapters 11–14: The Dragon in the Mountain  Part 5 of the novel contains, once again, some of the motifs of earlier sections, most notably Bilbo’s descent into the cave, his confrontation of a great danger there, the spectacular deliverance of the companions and their emergence from the cave, and Bilbo’s obtaining a valuable talisman—this time the Arkenstone of Thrain to go along with his sword and ring. Notably missing from the end of this section is the respite received at Rivendell, Beorn’s House, and the lake town of Esgaroth. In fact, the dwarves’ exploration of Smaug’s abandoned cave could have been such a respite, but like the reader, the dwarves are at this point unaware of the deliverance that has occurred with the death of the dragon. As Green points out, that news is conveyed only through the highly uncharacteristic flashback that begins chapter 14. The effect of this is heightened suspense as the book draws to its climax (Green 96). The fifth section begins, as Deborah and Ivor Rogers point out, with events reminiscent of the scene in The Fellowship of the Ring in which the entire fellowship waits outside the gate to Moria and cannot get in until Gandalf stumbles upon the secret password that opens the gate (73). Here Bilbo finds the way in partly by luck (as he did in discovering the key to the trolls’ cave) but also partly by his noticing what is going on around him—the thrush, the setting sun, the sliver of moon. This is Durin’s Day as he has heard it described from the runes on Thorin’s map. Once the way in is discovered, it is, of course, up to Bilbo to descend into the passageway down to the dragon’s den. This, after all, was the reason he was brought along on the adventure: He is a burglar, and now he must steal some part of the treasure. He sees the glow of the dragon at the end of the tunnel and knows that he is heading directly into the dragon’s lair, and he is completely alone. He has symbolically faced his inner fears

and demons in the previous two episodes, wherein the archetypal darkness of his unconscious and of his shadow were overcome. He has performed acts worthy of a mythic hero and been admired by the dwarves for his courage and resourcefulness. Now, alone in the dark tunnel, Bilbo engages in an internal struggle that no one else witnesses. From the traditional heroic point of view, he has done nothing. But Tolkien’s narrator makes it clear: Going on from there was the bravest thing he ever did. The tremendous things that happened afterward were as nothing compared to it. He fought the real battle in the tunnel alone, before he ever saw the vast danger that lay in wait. (205)

Tolkien, though a medievalist, is still a modern writer, and his view of heroism is a modern one: True courage is internal. Brave acts are the outward manifestation of an internal state of mind, and so it is with Bilbo. Ultimately what Bilbo finally snatches from the hoard of the sleeping dragon is a great two-handled cup. In this, Tolkien was clearly borrowing from the last part of Beowulf, in which a thief rouses the wrath of a dragon by stealing a cup from its hoard, and the dragon lays waste to Beowulf’s land after the thief brings Beowulf the cup that was stolen. In the same way, Smaug, enraged when he realizes that something is missing from his treasure, rushes out to burn the mountainside, including the door that he realizes must have been the burglar’s way into his den. Once more, it is Bilbo, through a kind of intuition that seems part of his luck, who warns the dwarves that they must come inside the tunnel to escape the dragon’s fire. Although they lose their horses, it is only Bilbo’s foresight and quick response that save the dwarves from certain death. Bilbo again must take the lead as he and the dwarves are trapped within the tunnel into the mountain. Invisible, he makes his way back to the dragon’s lair and this time actually engages Smaug in conversation. Tolkien’s model for dialogue with dragons was in fact Sigurd’s conversation with the wounded dragon Fafnir in “The Lay of Fafnir,” a poem from the Poetic Edda. In that poem, Sigurd conceals his name from Fafnir,

Hobbit, or There and Back Again, The   121 while Fafnir sows distrust in Sigurd’s mind toward his mentor, the dwarf Regin. Here, Bilbo also conceals his identity, instead giving Smaug riddling descriptions of himself as “clue-finder,” “the guest of Eagles,” and “Barrel-rider.” The exchange recalls the earlier riddle contest with Gollum, and Bilbo seems to have learned something from that contest that helps him with his quick thinking here, for the narrator says he is “pleased with his riddling” (213), although he does give the dragon reason to suspect the men of Lake-town of aiding the dwarves. Smaug, at the same time (like Fafnir with Sigurd), succeeds in undercutting Bilbo’s trust of the dwarves, pointing out how they are waiting outside and sending Bilbo in to do the dangerous work. Readers familiar with The Silmarillion (or the more recent The Children of Húrin) will recognize the parallel to Glaurung’s confrontation with Túrin. As Rogers and Rogers point out, Bilbo the burglar is more successful in resisting the dragon’s wiles than the traditional hero, Túrin, who succumbs easily, and with disastrous effects (74). The traditional hero in The Hobbit is the man Bard. At first, he is simply a “grim-voiced man” who warns the men of Esgaroth that they must prepare for the coming of the dragon. Bard is a descendant of Girion, lord of Dale, before that city’s destruction. This, along with his residence in the Lake-town, associates him with the archetypal figure of the Fisher King in the Grail myth, whose restoration will reinvigorate the Waste Land. In fact, he is able to begin the process of healing by slaying the dragon that has laid waste the land. But he is only able to do this because, first, he has inherited his ancestors’ ability to understand the language of the thrushes; and, second, because Bilbo, in the unlikely role of Grail Knight, has been able to discover the necessary information (as the Grail Knight was required to ask the right question)—in this case regarding the weak spot in the soft underbelly of the dragon. That is the spot to which Bard directs his final arrow, the symbol of his heritage handed down from his fathers. Even Bard, however, is not a completely traditional hero. Shippey points out that, in fact, it is not the battle rage of the berserker nor the one-onone heroism of Beowulf’s episodes of single combat

that wins the day against Smaug. Rather, it is the modern and very British concept of discipline— the coolness of the well-trained soldier who does his duty under fire and is ready and prepared to carry out orders under any circumstances (Road to Middle-earth 81–82). In the midst of the panic and of all others fleeing the city under Smaug’s attack, Bard keeps his own troops together and under control, steady in their defense of the city, and it is this discipline that enables him to fight to his last arrow. This is the sort of military discipline that had secured the British Empire through the 19th century, and it was the sort of training Lieutenant Tolkien would have had, and instilled in his own troops, at the Battle of the Somme. “It is discipline that does for Smaug,” Shippey says, so that “The death of Smaug, like Bilbo in the dark, lets us see courage in a modern way” (Road 83). In the meantime, of course, Bilbo and the dwarves have been exploring the halls of Thorin’s forefathers, filled with the dragon’s hoard. While Bilbo receives the wondrous gift of the elven mithril coat, and there is a good deal of joy in the treasure, this joy is purely a joy in earthly treasures, and Bilbo comes to see his companions’ limitations, perhaps in particular since he has been prepared to see them in this light by the dragon’s persuasive speech. Much of their motivation has been simply greed, and now Thorin is nearly mad with desire for the Arkenstone. That great jewel, the Heart of the Mountain, is for the dwarves a treasure of special, even mythic, proportions—it is essentially their Holy Grail. As Douglas Anderson points out, the word comes from the Old English word eorclansta¯n, meaning “precious stone”—a word appearing in line 1208 of Beowulf (in Tolkien, Annotated Hobbit 293). By this time, Bilbo himself has matured to the extent that he has outgrown the dwarves, whose desire for the treasure seems excessive to him. As the narrator says, “Mr. Baggins kept his head more clear of the bewitchment of the hoard than the dwarves did” (228). As for the Arkenstone, Bilbo has already taken it and hidden it in his cloak. One might look at this as an act of greed on his part, and it is clear that he is momentarily overcome by the beauty of the great jewel. This may seem

122   Hobbit, or There and Back Again, The like the kind of “bewitchment” the narrator had denied in Bilbo. Nor is it clear why he does not yield the stone to Thorin when he knows that the dwarf lusts after it. It appears that Bilbo is not sure himself why he has kept the Arkenstone, which suggests that the act is another instance of Bilbo’s intuition, a part of his “luck.” He suspects that the stone will be important in the future and wants to be able to control what happens to it. It is worth noting that in these chapters, specifically in chapters 12 and 13, Bilbo begins to quote his father as he thinks over how to respond to the challenges of the dragon. “ ‘[T]hird time pays for all’ as my father used to say,” he says when he understands that Thorin expects him to visit the dragon’s lair and thereby earn his reward, though he has already saved the dwarves twice (203). “ ‘Every worm has his weak spot,’ as my father used to say,” he says when he is about to go down into the dragon’s lair for the second time (using worm in the sense of the Old English wyrm, meaning “serpent” or “dragon”) (211). Finally, when he and the dwarves are trapped in the tunnel without food and their only way out is through the dragon’s lair, Bilbo quotes his father for the third time: “ ‘While there’s life there’s hope!’ as my father used to say” (223). It is surprising to see Bilbo quoting his father, the Baggins side of his personality, at the moments when he is about to confront the dragon, the most dangerous aspect of the adventure that he has come on at the urging of his Tookish side. But in fact, Bilbo’s adventures with trolls, goblins, wargs, and spiders, not to mention his dangerous meeting with Gollum, have clearly satisfied his Tookish side, and the maturation symbolized by the rebirths he has experienced in the past several chapters has meant, as well, the integration of all parts of his personality into a unified self. While the Bagginses may have been unexciting and incurious people, “solid and comfortable” as the narrator says early on (17), there is also something very practical and reliable about such people. And while they might not be anxious or do anything “queer” like travel on adventures, they could be counted on to do what was expected of them. In this sense, Bilbo’s Baggins side makes him solid and dependable, makes him willing to do the job he was hired

to do, even though it means meeting a live dragon. It is this Baggins side that will not let Bilbo neglect his duty, and in this sense it might be remarked that Bilbo’s kind of courage is not much different from Bard’s—both rely on the more modern sense of duty and discipline to get their jobs done. Chapters 15–17: War Without a doubt, the most remarkable aspect of these chapters is Bilbo’s selfless “betrayal” of the dwarves. In an action that completely redefines the concept of heroism that has been one of the novel’s major themes, Bilbo chooses to turn over the Arkenstone, for Thorin the embodiment of treasure and the power of his kingship, to the dwarves’ enemies. Green has defined Bilbo’s behavior in these chapters by reference to Carl Jung’s notion of mystical participation (Green 88). This is what Jung called the behavior associated with group identity, the unconscious identification of the individual will with the collective will, the extreme manifestation of which is mob behavior. Such identification causes individuals to accept or even participate in behavior that they would never agree to on their own, so that morality becomes a matter of popular opinion. As Green says, “the trouble with mystical participation is that the morality and taste of a single person is often superior to that of any group” (88). Through their various adventures to this point, Bilbo has grown to identify himself with the dwarves and their goals, but in order to become a completely individuated character (to use Jung’s terminology), Bilbo must separate himself from the group, particularly when the group is making unethical decisions. This is indeed Bilbo’s finest hour, all the more remarkable for his ability to distance himself from his companions when he recognizes the error of their ways. At this point, Bilbo has reached his highest level of maturity and individuation. But these events mark Thorin’s lowest point. He has proclaimed himself King under the Mountain and assumed his hereditary role, including possession of the treasure. In this role, he is essentially acknowledged by the ravens that served his grandfather, but when the ravens advise him against his rash preparations for war, he ignores them. Bilbo recog-

Hobbit, or There and Back Again, The   123 nizes that Thorin will not hear dissenting opinions, and his plan is the only thing that will prevent a disastrous battle. For Thorin is beyond reason: As Rogers and Rogers point out, he has taken what in traditional literature might be seen as a heroic stand, adamantly guarding his home and treasure against impossible odds (75). But, in fact, Thorin is denying the rights of all other claimants to the treasure despite the legitimate demands of Bard, whose slaying of the dragon made Thorin’s position possible. Green suggests that the dragon has simply been replaced by Thorin, whose madness he calls “dragon sickness,” a condition that involves both his mad determination to defend the mountain against impossible odds and his unquenchable lust for the Arkenstone, the symbol of his own power and ego. According to Green, Thorin is “Inflamed to suicidal stubbornness by belief that the Arkenstone is near,” and “would only become worse if he possessed it” (100). His confrontation with Bard’s herald, when he fires an arrow that strikes the herald’s shield, underscores his contrast with the true hero. Bard’s arrow had struck true, penetrating the dragon’s breast. Thorin’s has stuck quivering in the shield of his enemy. In Freudian terms, Thorin’s arrow, a phallic symbol, has shown itself impotent, and the kingdom he seeks to establish can only be sterile and infertile. If Bilbo is the Grail Knight, he has here found a way to restore fertility to the wasteland created by the dragon—and perpetuated by the dragonlike greed in the heart of Thorin. In the original Grail legend, as related in Chrétien de Troyes’ Conte le Graal, Perceval fails to ask the right question (“Who is served by the Grail?”) and so fails in the quest. Bilbo, who has shown himself a champion questioner and solver of riddles in the Gollum episode as well as with the dragon, seems here not only to have asked the right question about the Arkenstone, but worked out the answer as well. No one will truly be served by returning the stone to Thorin. But the Arkenstone can serve all parties with an interest in the treasure by serving as a means by which war between dwarves, elves, and men can be avoided. What may be even more surprising at the end of this episode is Bilbo’s declining the elf king’s

offer of sanctuary. His sympathy toward Bombur, whom he fears will be blamed if he fails to return, and his overall loyalty to his friends, even though their cause is wrong, are admirable qualities, but more impressive than these is his forthright admission to Thorin that he has given the Arkenstone to the dwarves’ enemies. This full acceptance of the responsibility and willingness to take the full consequences of his decision mark the apex of Bilbo’s development. If heroism is a main theme of the novel, as Rogers and Rogers say, “the question of what a hero does is answered, no matter how unheroic the manner of his actions” (76). Not surprisingly, Gandalf reappears at precisely the moment of Bilbo’s decision to return to the dwarves. Up until the moment when he left the company upon their entrance into Mirkwood, Gandalf had been the group’s leader and protector. But in Mirkwood and the elven king’s castle through their adventures with Smaug on the mountain, Bilbo has been serving in that capacity, tentatively at first but with more and more conviction until this moment, when the matured Bilbo has been forced to act the role of the adult in the face of Thorin’s petulant obsessions. As Green remarks, “Gandalf returns precisely when Bilbo has successfully enacted the Gandalf-role in his absence, when the hobbit no longer needs him” (101). Chapter 16 contains two important biblical allusions. The title of the chapter, “A Thief in the Night,” alludes to the passage in 1 Thessalonians 5:2, where Paul tells the church that the day of the lord—i.e., judgment day—will come “like a thief in the night”—that is, unexpectedly. I would suggest that Tolkien was echoing, as well, Christ’s sermon near the end of the Gospel according to Matthew, wherein he advises his listeners to be watchful, for no one will know when the kingdom of heaven will come. In Matthew 24:23, he declares that if a householder had known when the thief would come, he would not have allowed the thief to break in. Bilbo is, of course, literally a thief in the night, but the allusion suggests something about his task: perhaps that it is a judgment on Thorin, for one thing; and perhaps that Bilbo, who brings peace by his sacrifice, is in this context a Christ figure—the one who will come, according to Paul, like a thief

124   Hobbit, or There and Back Again, The in the night. But the second allusion also recalls that same sermon in Matthew: In the parable of the talents, the Master says to his faithful servant, “Well done, good and faithful servant” (Matthew 25:21, JB), as Gandalf says to Bilbo at the end of this chapter. Thus, Bilbo is pronounced a faithful servant to the master (who represents the Lord in the parable). If Tolkien was indeed suggesting parallels between Bilbo’s actions and Christ’s sermon on the coming of the kingdom and the Day of Judgment, he was also alluding to a swift and unanticipated judgment. In the context of The Hobbit, that may in fact suggest the surprising attack by the goblins and wargs—in some ways a judgment on the others, who are so caught up in their quarrel among themselves that they have had no inkling of the coming danger. While Bilbo’s heroics have prevented war, they have earned him Thorin’s sworn enmity. But, of course, there can be no lasting peace, as the armies of goblins and wargs descend upon the assembled armies unlooked for. What this says about peacemakers is uncertain. They may be blessed as the children of God according to the beatitude from the Sermon on the Mount, but it seems that as long as there is pure irrational evil in the world—of the sort represented by the goblins and wolves—then their efforts may be doomed to failure. There are times, it seems, when one must fight to defend life and freedom. And in those cases, one must choose the right side. In this way, Thorin redeems himself. It is clear to him that he must stand with elves and men in this battle, and his unexpected last charge from the mountain turns the tide of battle, at least momentarily. Although his attack will mean his death, it is also his salvation. This sixth section ends like the previous sections: with a divine deliverance that comes without warning. This time, it is once again the eagles who come to the rescue and reinforce the armies of Bilbo’s side. Bilbo himself, invisible through the power of his ring, is knocked unconscious just as he proclaims the coming of the heavenly birds, and so he does not see Beorn himself arrive to sweep all before him. For the third time, Bilbo passes out, to awaken (as he did in Gollum’s cave and in Mirkwood) to a new stage of his maturity. But this third

time (the critical number in all folk traditions) will usher Bilbo into a new world. Chapters 18–19: The Road Home This final section of the novel brings a sense of closure to Bilbo’s adventures by, first, restoring relationships among the different races of people (men, elves, and dwarves) and between individuals among them (Bard, Thorin, and Bilbo); second, by taking us through Bilbo’s return journey, thereby closing the circle of his going forth and his coming back to the place he had left; and third, by demonstrating that Bilbo has come back a changed hobbit, a more mature and complete individual. The conclusion begins with Thorin’s restoration to sanity and his reconciliation with Bilbo. Thorin’s realization during the battle of who his true allies were sparked him to heroic action, and although it cost him his own life and those of his close kinsmen Fili and Kili (who, in the fashion of medieval Germanic warriors, had lost their lives on the battlefield protecting their liege lord), he has been restored to sanity and healed of the dragonmadness that had obsessed him. For his part, Bilbo kneels before Thorin as King under the Mountain and receives his blessing—a mixture, as Shippey points out, of “ancient epic dignity and a modern wider awareness: on the one hand, ‘I go now to the halls of waiting, to sit beside my fathers,’ on the other, recognition of ‘the kindly West’ and ‘a merrier world’ ” (J. R. R. Tolkien 44). It is a mixture that Bilbo himself now encompasses in his own now balanced personality. For his part, he leaves the tent and weeps, his tender, “kindly” side manifesting itself at this point. There is a kind of irony in the fact that Thorin is buried with the Arkenstone on his breast. It is not unlike the funeral pyre of Beowulf, which contains all the treasure of the dragon that he died to achieve. The treasure, the Arkenstone, was never anything more than a symbol, and its power as a symbol was generated largely by Thorin himself. Now that he is dead, the symbol will be buried with him, and he himself will become the Heart of the Mountain. When the treasure is finally divided, Bilbo very sensibly realizes that he could never carry his fourteenth share back home with him, and he takes

Hobbit, or There and Back Again, The   125 only two small chests. The journey home with Gandalf allows Bilbo, and the reader, to spend a little more time with Beorn (with whom they spend the winter months) and Elrond (whom they visit again in the spring), and it also allows Gandalf and Bilbo to recover the trolls’ treasure that they had buried on the first stage of their journey. Each of these help to bring a sense of closure to the narrative, as Bilbo comes full circle in returning home. When Bilbo does arrive back in the Shire, however, it is clear that he is not simply returning to his old life. Bilbo himself is a different person, so his home is not the same, either. The first hint of this comes when he breaks into spontaneous song (“Roads go ever on and on”) at the sight of his own hill in the distance. Gandalf’s reaction to the song is, simply, “You are not the hobbit that you were” (284). This fact is underscored symbolically as Bilbo arrives at his own house and finds that his neighbors and relatives all believe he is dead and are auctioning off his furniture. His cousins, the SackvilleBagginses (who are in the process of “sacking” his home, or “villa”), refuse to believe that he is the real Bilbo Baggins. It has been suggested that here again, Bilbo’s story parallels that of Odysseus (as it has before, in the “Barrels out of Bond” chapter), as the returning warrior must rid his home of those who are ransacking it in the belief that he has died. In fact, the old Bilbo has died and been given new life as a completely individuated individual, one who is unafraid of his adventurous side but also, as he revealed in the last few chapters, one who sees the virtue of his practical and humble side as well. But Tolkien does not end the story here. In one final coda, Gandalf and Balin visit Bilbo years later, and he learns how things have turned out under the mountain, where a new master has taken charge of Lake-town and all are living in peace and prosperity. The old songs, Bilbo notes, “have turned out to be true, after a fashion” (286), and Gandalf chides him for his skepticism. Prophecies, the wizard says, are no less true just because one is himself involved with bringing them to pass. The question raised has to do with destiny and free will, and Tolkien hints here at a characteristically medieval view of the matter. God’s foreknowledge, which would be the origin of any true prophecy,

does not preclude free will, since God, from his eternal vantage point, sees what humans will do without causing those actions and shapes his providential plan accordingly. It was an argument made famous by Boethius in the sixth century, and it was Boethius’s Consolation of Philosophy that popularized the views throughout medieval Europe. In the end, just as he had throughout the novel, Tolkien bases The Hobbit on a well-mixed variety of medieval sources. Characters Bard Although he does not appear until very late in the novel, Bard is a character of major significance, as the one who actually slays the dragon Smaug. Bard is first introduced as a “grim-voiced fellow” (235) who warns the people of Esgaroth, the Lake-town, to prepare for the attack of the dragon, and who later commands a troop of bowmen who, displaying a very British kind of discipline, defend the city to the last man as the dragon sweeps over them breathing fire. Bard is descended from Girion, the last lord of Dale, the city destroyed by the dragon when he also destroyed the dwarves’ kingdom of Erebor and captured the Lonely Mountain and its hidden treasure. As a true descendant of the royal line, he understands the speech of the thrushes, and at the vital moment of the dragon attack, the thrush informs him of the weak spot in the dragon’s belly. Bard sends his last black arrow, one inherited from his princely forebears, straight and true into Smaug’s heart. Afterward, Bard leads an army of men, allied with the elven king of Mirkwood, to the Lonely Mountain to claim a share of the treasure, and he narrowly avoids a disastrous war with the dwarves when he and they are forced to fight the Battle of the Five Armies against goblins and wargs. Bard ultimately rebuilds Dale and reestablishes his kingship there. In some ways, Bard recalls the Fisher King of the Grail legend, whose restoration to the throne heals the dragon’s wasteland and brings fertility back to the kingdom. As the tale’s traditional hero, Bard also acts as a foil to Bilbo, whose heroism is of a very different variety but is real nonetheless.

126   Hobbit, or There and Back Again, The Bilbo Baggins  Bilbo is a hobbit—a small person half the height of a human, with large hairy feet— who lives in a well-furnished hole in The Hill. Hobbits are generally a highly provincial group, devoted to the comforts of home (particularly their meals) and to small, everyday occurrences. Bilbo himself is the son of Bungo Baggins, a very respectable hobbit, and Belladonna Took, the beautiful daughter of the Old Took, whose family was reputed to have fairy ancestors. From them Bilbo has inherited the luxurious hobbit hole called Bag End. He has also inherited the two sides of his nature: the stolid, respectable Baggins side and the adventurous Took side. At the beginning of the novel, the middle-aged Bilbo has managed to suppress his adventurous Took side for all his adult life, but it is awakened by the wizard Gandalf, who chooses him to be the 14th member of an expedition for treasure to the Lonely Mountain with Thorin Oakenshield and 12 other dwarves, for whom he is to act as burglar. The journey becomes not only the story of adventure and a quest for treasure, but the story of Bilbo’s development as a character, from the protected infantilism of his womblike hole to the heroism of one who confronts a dragon. Bilbo makes a rather poor showing early in the quest, though he survives near capture by trolls through his own luck and Gandalf’s protection, and he receives the talisman of the elven blade Sting after this initiation into the heroic role. Later, in the goblins’ cave fortress, Bilbo must be carried by the dwarves as they flee from the goblins, until he is lost and knocked unconscious. After he awakes, he finds a ring (again, through his uncanny luck) and is confronted by the creature Gollum, whom he defeats in a riddle contest by asking what he has in his pocket (it is the ring, which was Gollum’s treasure). He escapes from Gollum and the goblins through the power of the ring, which makes him invisible, and through this adventure, he gains confidence. After Gandalf leaves the company before they plunge into the darkness of Mirkwood, Bilbo rescues the dwarves from giant spiders through his invisibility and his short sword Sting. When Thorin Oakenshield is captured by Wood-elves, the other dwarves begin to look to Bilbo for leadership. After the other dwarves are captured, Bilbo finds a way to

rescue them from the elven king’s dungeons, and he sends them down the river packed in empty barrels. By now Bilbo has become the group’s de facto leader, and it is he who is sent into the lair of the dragon, from whom he steals a cup. The dragon, Smaug, engages Bilbo in a conversation and learns something about the dwarves from this, but Bilbo learns more: He sees a weak spot in the underbelly of the dragon that the birds eventually tell the archer Bard about, and Bard is able to destroy the dragon based on the intelligence Bilbo has found. By this time, Bilbo has embraced his adventurous Took side but has also begun to quote from his father, accepting some of the wisdom of his more staid and provincial Baggins side. He has reached a state of maturity that Carl Jung called individuation. He has also fulfilled most of the expectations of the archetypal hero of myth and legend. Bilbo’s greatest heroic act, one that demonstrates his ultimate personal development, occurs after the dragon’s death, when he and Thorin’s company are besieged in the mountain by the forces of men and elves who want their just share of the treasure. Bilbo’s gift to the elven king of the Arkenstone of Thrain, the one great jewel of the treasure for which Thorin will do anything, ensures that the standoff will end peacefully—or would if the army of goblins and wargs did not arrive just when peace was about to conclude. In this act, Bilbo finds a higher morality than that of his peers and stands apart from them as a true hero. When he returns to his home at Bag End, he finds that he has been presumed dead and that his cousins are about to take possession of his home. In fact, he has changed and is not the same hobbit he was when he left. Although he is able to get his home back and settle back into his comfortable life again, he never loses the reputation of one who is a friend of elves and wizards. Gandalf  Gandalf the wizard had his origins in a picture postcard that Tolkien brought back with him from a holiday in Switzerland in 1911. The picture, from a painting by J. Madelener called Der Berggeist (or “spirit of the mountain”), shows an old man with a white beard, wearing a cloak and a wide-brimmed hat (Carpenter, Tolkien 51).

Hobbit, or There and Back Again, The   127 Gandalf has encouraged the expedition of Thorin and Company, and he apparently recognizes something in Bilbo that others cannot see when he recommends the hobbit as the 14th member of the expedition. It is Gandalf who gives Thorin the map of Thror, which holds the key to entering the dragon’s den. Aside from being the moving force behind events in the book, Gandalf takes the part of the archetypal “Wise Old Man” figure of the story, like Merlin in the Arthurian legend. He is a protective father figure who helps the group out of predicaments with the trolls and the goblins, but he leaves them at a crucial time—their entry into Mirkwood. In terms of Bilbo’s growth as a character, Gandalf must leave the company, since Bilbo can never mature into the hero he becomes unless he leaves the protection of the father figure and is forced to face dangers on his own. It is only when Bilbo has reached the pinnacle of his heroic stature that Gandalf reappears to pronounce the judgment “Well done” upon Bilbo’s actions (258). Gandalf seems less powerful here than he will be in The Lord of the Rings. Along with Bilbo, he hides from the trolls and bests them only through trickery. He cannot defend the company against the army of goblins and wargs and is caught in the trees with them. He is, however, a respected counselor and adviser to those in power. Still, there is in The Hobbit a small indication of his role in The Lord of the Rings. He speaks with Thorin in the first chapter about finding the dwarf’s father in the dungeons of “the Necromancer” (37), and he later tells the dwarves that he cannot accompany them to Mirkwood because of “some pressing business away south” (137), which turns out to be helping to expel this Necromancer (who is, in fact, Sauron) from his fortress of Dol Guldur in the south of Mirkwood. In these episodes, Gandalf can be seen to presage his broader and more powerful role in the trilogy. Gollum  The creature Gollum appears in only one chapter of The Hobbit—“Riddles in the Dark”—but he is one of the most memorable of the novel’s characters and one who becomes vitally important in The Lord of the Rings. Here, Gollum is a creature who lives by stealth in an underground cave, sub-

sisting on the slimy fish he finds in the underground lake or on the flesh of goblins that have become separated from their fellows and whom Gollum kills and eats through the power of invisibility that he has from his ring. The ring, he says, was his birthday present, and he refers to it as his “precious”—a term he also seems to use when talking to himself (a habit he seems to have developed from long years of living alone in the darkness). Thus, he either personifies the ring in his own mind or sees it as an extension of himself. This explains why he is so devastated when he finds he has lost the ring, and why he hates Bilbo so ferociously when he realizes that Bilbo has, in fact, found it and used it to become invisible to escape his vengeance. In The Hobbit, the origins of the creature Gollum are never explored, nor is the origin of the ring itself. The name Gollum presumably is an imitation of the sound the creature makes in its throat when it swallows, although the name also sounds like the legendary golem of Jewish folklore—a mindless inhuman automaton. But there is some humanity in Gollum, who seems to enjoy the riddle contest with Bilbo (at least as long as he thinks he will be able to eat Bilbo in the end) as an actual social event that allows him to interact with another sentient creature for the first time in untold years. Gollum’s mind is still keen, if twisted, and he is able to solve Bilbo’s riddles and pose difficult ones of his own, although his riddles tend to be about things he knows best: a mountain, fish, and time. In some ways, Gollum is also a foil to Bilbo, reflecting perhaps in an extreme way on what Bilbo would have become if he had never left his own comfortable underground home: completely self-centered and thinking only about his next meal and the personal treasures he has hoarded. Smaug  Smaug is the great dragon that, in the days of Thorin’s grandfather, destroyed the dwarves’ kingdom of Erebor as well as the city of Dale at the foot of the Lonely Mountain, drove out the dwarves and men, and claimed the great treasure trove of the dwarves as his own. In The Hobbit, revenge on the dragon and reclaiming the treasure are the ultimate goals of the expedition of Thorin and company, although no one seems to

128   Hobbit, or There and Back Again, The have had any idea what, precisely, to do about the dragon that sits brooding on the treasure hoard. He is depicted as a great serpent with huge wings and fiery breath that he uses to burn and flatten the city of Lake-town in the novel. His hide is thick and resistant to blades or arrows, and although his underbelly is soft, his years of lying upon the treasure have encrusted it with precious stones that serve as an impenetrable armor. Smaug knows every item in his hoard intimately, and he is infuriated when he finds that Bilbo has snatched a drinking cup from it. His keen sense of smell detects the invisible Bilbo when the hobbit comes down the tunnel to his hoard the second time, and his conversation with Bilbo at that point reveals the dragon to be intelligent and subtle. He sees through Bilbo’s riddles and plants seeds of doubt in Bilbo’s mind concerning the dwarves’ appreciation of his services. Smaug is also vengeful, attempting to destroy the dwarves and all their ponies after the theft of his cup and traveling south to destroy Esgaroth, the Lake-town, for the village’s part in aiding the dwarves and Bilbo on their journey. Of course, this results in his death, for Bilbo has seen the weak spot on his left breast during their conversation, and that information is carried to the archer Bard by an old thrush. Bard’s arrow strikes Smaug’s heart and kills him. Tolkien based the character of the dragon chiefly on two sources. One was the third section of Beowulf, which depicts a great fire-breathing dragon who sits brooding on a treasure hoard, destroys a kingdom because of the theft of a cup from his hoard, and ultimately is killed by King Beowulf. The other source was the dragon Fafnir in Old Norse literature, particularly his depiction in “The Lay of Fafnir,” from the Elder Edda, where the dragon (wounded in his soft underbelly) is depicted as devious and tries to plant doubts in Sigurd’s mind about his mentor, the dwarf Regin. Tolkien uses the same idea of an insinuating beast whose hypnotic voice attempts to confuse and mislead his victim in his story of Túrin, both in The Silmarillion and in The Children of Húrin. Thorin Oakenshield  Thorin is the grandson of Thrain, the last dwarvish King under the Moun-

tain in Erebor and heir to that kingdom. When he was a young man, the dragon Smaug drove him, along with his father and grandfather, from the Lonely Mountain, usurping their fortress and the great treasure they had accumulated there. At the beginning of The Hobbit, Thorin plans to lead 12 of his followers on an expedition to his ancestral home in an attempt to take revenge on the dragon and to recover some portion of his family’s lost treasure. In this he has the help and guidance of the wizard Gandalf the Grey, who recommends the hobbit Bilbo Baggins as a 14th member of the expedition. Thorin acts as leader of the expedition, although he is not particularly effective. He speaks authoritatively, but in the beginning it is Gandalf who sees the company through its difficulties, and eventually it is Bilbo who rescues the dwarves from their difficulties and who actually confronts the dragon. In large part, Thorin is a foil to Bilbo: Whereas Bilbo is a humbler, self-effacing figure whose growing confidence never manifests itself as bluster or egoism, Thorin is highly conscious of his birth and his position, stubbornly resisting any perceived diminution of his authority. His obstinate silence in the face of the elven king’s questions about his presence in Mirkwood may seem like bold defiance, but it is part of a tendency that ultimately nearly destroys him and his companions. Like most dwarves, Thorin has a deep fondness for treasure, and when he has gained back the dragon’s hoard and reclaimed his hereditary position as King under the Mountain, that fondness is transformed into pure greed, and his natural haughtiness is twisted into arrogance, ingratitude, and rashness. He refuses to share the treasure with the lake men who helped him on his journey, or with Bard, the dragon slayer, defying their besieging army and provoking them to attack. When he learns that Bilbo has given the besieging army the Arkenstone of Thrain, chief object of Thorin’s desire, he breaks with the hobbit who has saved his life, disavowing him. Thorin redeems himself in the end, however, and recognizes the madness into which his greed has led him. He becomes a true leader, charging from his mountain fortress with his followers and

“Homecoming of Beorhtnoth Beorhthelm’s Son, The”    129 rallying men, elves, and dwarves to him as he leads a final charge in the Battle of the Five Armies. Dying from his wounds, in his final meeting with Bilbo he renounces his harsh words and recognizes the hobbit’s simple wisdom and courage as preferable to his own behavior. He is buried under the Lonely Mountain, with the Arkenstone on his breast.

———. The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien. Edited by Humphrey Carpenter. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1981. Wytenbroek, J. R. “Rites of Passage in The Hobbit.” Mythlore 13, no. 4 (Summer 1987): 5–8, 40.

Further Reading

“Homecoming of Beorhtnoth Beorhthelm’s Son, The” 

Campbell, Joseph. The Hero with a Thousand Faces. 3rd ed. Novato, Calif.: New World Library, 2008. Carpenter, Humphrey. Tolkien: A Biography. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1977. Couch, Christopher L. “From Under Mountains to Beyond Stars: The Process of Riddling in Leofric’s The Exeter Book and The Hobbit.” Mythlore 51 (Autumn 1987): 9–13, 55. Frye, Northrop. Anatomy of Criticism. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1957. Green, William H. The Hobbit: A Journey into Maturity. New York: Twayne, 1995. Jung, Carl G. Four Archetypes: Mother, Rebirth, Spirit, Trickster. Translated by R. F. C. Hull. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1969. Lewis, Paul W. “Beorn and Tom Bombadil: A Tale of Two Heroes.” Mythlore 97/98 (Spring/Summer 2007): 145–159. Matthews, Dorothy. “The Psychological Journey of Bilbo Baggins.” In A Tolkien Compass, edited by Jared Lobdell, 27–40. LaSalle, Ill.: Open Court, 1975. Propp, Vladimir. Morphology of the Folktale. 2nd ed. Translated by Laurence Scott. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1968. Rogers, Deborah Webster, and Ivor A. Rogers. J. R. R. Tolkien. Boston: G. K. Hall, 1980. Shippey, Tom. The Road to Middle-Earth: How J. R. R. Tolkien Created a New Mythology. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2003. ———. J. R. R. Tolkien: Author of the Century. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2000. Tolkien, J. R. R. The Annotated Hobbit: Revised and Expanded Edition. Edited by Douglas A. Anderson. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2002. ———. The Hobbit. Rev. ed. New York: Ballantine, 1966.

Tolkien called this short and fairly obscure oneact play a “recitation for two persons,” though it has rarely been performed. The text was apparently composed by 1945, but it was not published until 1953, when Tolkien had it printed in the scholarly journal Essays and Studies, along with a foreword and afterword analyzing The Battle of Maldon, the Old English poem on which it is based. During his lifetime, it was acted only once, in a 1954 BBC radio performance. While the radio production was apparently successful, Tolkien was unhappy with it, since the actors ignored the fact that their lines were written in a modern version of Old English alliterative verse. Humphrey Carpenter mentions that Tolkien later made a recording of his own that was more the way he had envisioned the recitation, using a tape recorder in his office. The play has since been staged twice in London, in 1975 and 1991, but it has not made for particularly memorable theater. It is virtually the only dramatic piece Tolkien ever composed. Tolkien’s recitation is essentially a sequel to the Old English Battle of Maldon. The original poem was composed shortly after the historical 991 c.e. skirmish between Viking invaders and English defenders led by Beorhtnoth, earl of Essex (called Byrhtnoth in the poem). The Vikings, who had been plundering towns along the coast, had sailed into the mouth of the River Blackwater, where they were able to camp on the island of Northey. The island seemed ideal for their purposes since it was connected to the mainland by a narrow path that was above water only at low tide. Beorhtnoth led a force made up of his own close retainers as well as some of the local peasants who had been

(1953)

130   “Homecoming of Beorhtnoth Beorhthelm’s Son, The”  pressed into service. The battle was a disaster for the English, and Beorhtnoth and all of his retainers were killed in the action. The poem is a fragment, missing its beginning and end. But what has survived seems to depict actual events fairly accurately. The Vikings are trapped on the island, with the English controlling the causeway. But in an ill-advised act of chivalry, Beorhtnoth allows the Vikings to cross to the mainland to do battle. He is killed in the fighting, at which one of the home guard, Godric, son of Odda, leaps upon Beorhtnoth’s horse and flees the battle. This causes a general rout, as most of the drafted peasants (believing that their lord has fled) turn and run from the battle as well. Beorhtnoth’s household retainers, however, band together, following the ancient Germanic warrior tradition that enjoins them to keep fighting to avenge their fallen lord. The latter part of the poem consists mainly of a series of speeches by Beorhtnoth’s men—Ælfwine, Offa, Leofsunu, Dunnere, and Eadward—culminating in a rousing call to action by the old retainer Beorhtwold. His words are a brief and memorable summation of the heroic code, and may be the most famous lines of poetry in Old English: Hige sceal þe¯ heardra,   heorte þe¯ ce¯nre, Mo¯d sceal þe¯ ma¯re   þe¯ u¯re mægen lytlað. (Cassidy and Ringler, ll. 312–313) “Will shall be the sterner, heart the bolder, spirit the greater, as our strength lessens.” (Tolkien 5)

The speeches are followed by bold forays into single combat by the speakers. The end of the poem has been lost, but the inevitable conclusion would have been the slaughter of all the noble retainers. By all accounts, Beorhtnoth was a devout man who was known as a protector of monasteries. Thus, the poet could portray him as a defender of the Christian faith against pagan Norsemen; therefore, it makes sense that the abbot of Ely took his headless body from the battlefield after the slaughter and had it buried in the abbey at Ely. Tolkien begins with this fact and builds his story around two of the earl’s servants who are sent to the battle-

field the night after the skirmish to find the body and bring it back to the monastery. In the conversation that ensues between the old, pragmatic Tídwald and the young, idealistic Torhthelm, Tolkien explores the nature of heroism and the role of poetry in the idealization of heroism. Synopsis The play opens on a dark battlefield. The silence is broken by the voice of Torhthelm, a young apprentice gleeman, or scop (bard), who calls out to an approaching figure, demanding he identify himself. The figure is Tídwald, an old ceorl, or lower-class freeman. The young man has been fearful, standing alone among the corpses, but Tídwald (or Tída as he is nicknamed) reassures Torhthelm (or Totta for short) that the two of them will soon find “the master” close by. Totta is jumpy, but Tída tells him to forget his “gleeman’s stuff,” for all the ghosts are underground, or with God. An owl hoots, which Totta takes as a bad omen, and he begins to speak in the discourse of heroic poetry, asking where Beorhtnoth lies tonight, “your head so hoar upon a hard pillow, / and your limbs lying in long slumber” (7). The searchers first come upon the body of Wulfmær. Totta, thinking it is Beorhtnoth’s nephew by that name, asserts that all the old songs say that the nephew will always be near to aid the uncle. But Tída says that this is the other Wulfmær, the young son of Wulfstan. Totta reveals that this fallen warrior was a year younger than himself. Then, close by, Tída finds the body of Ælfnoth, another youth and friend to Wulfmær, and both loyal to their lord. Totta curses the bearded warriors who fled the battle and left youngsters like Ælfnoth to die. Tída emphasizes the hard loss of one with so much promise, and he remembers Ælfnoth’s outspoken nature, in which, Tída says, he resembled Offa. At the mention of Offa, Totta remembers how that seasoned warrior made himself unpopular by chiding others who boasted of their prowess, urging them to make their words good on the field of battle. But Offa is silenced now. Tída tells Totta that he will be tested in battle soon as well, and he will see how difficult it is to make good one’s vaunts against cold steel. At these words, the lantern light

“Homecoming of Beorhtnoth Beorhthelm’s Son, The”    131 falls on the face of a dead Dane, and Totta begs Tída to put out the lantern so that he does not have to look at the grotesque face. In the tangle of bodies, they discover a leg as “thick as three men’s thighs” (9), which they take to be Beorhtnoth, who was purportedly a giant of a man, some six feet, nine inches tall. Totta immediately composes a dirge in heroic form for the master, whom he calls “a prince peerless in peace and war, / just in judgment, generous-handed / as the golden lords of long ago” (9). Even Tída admits the value of such words, but he reminds Totta there is work to be done. Then Totta finds the master’s gold-hilted sword, a find that pleases Tída, who feared it had been stripped from the body by the Vikings, or by scavengers after the battle. The shocked Totta then discovers that Beorhtnoth’s head has been hacked off. The veteran Tída remarks that war was always so—even in the heroic battles of old that Totta sings of. As the two of them bear their lord’s body away, Totta again raises a chant: “Build high the barrow,” he chants, “his bones to keep!” And, in words recalling the end of Beowulf, he calls Beorhtnoth of the friends of men first and noblest, to his hearth-comrades help unfailing, to his folk the fairest father of peoples. Glory loved he; now glory earning his grave shall be green, while ground or sea, while word or woe in the world lasteth. (10–11)

Tída says that Totta’s words are good but reminds him that they live in Christian times, that this is not Beowulf they are bearing, and there will be a Christian funeral and no pyre. Totta stops suddenly, telling Tída to look yonder where a shadow is moving, crouched in the darkness. Tída cannot make them out, but he does hear murmuring voices when Totta tells him to listen. Cautiously laying the body down, they hear steps as two of the men come their way. Tída challenges the scavengers, saying that if they are looking for the fighting he is there to oblige them. There is a scuffle, and Totta kills one of the scavengers with Beorhtnoth’s sword. Tída tells him that the men would have run away and need not have been killed. If Totta had killed a Dane, Tída says,

then he could boast—but not over this. At the mention of the Danes, Totta urges Tída to move quickly, for fear they will return. Tída says there is no chance of that, for the Danes are celebrating their victory somewhere in their long vessels. These men they have encountered are only “corpse-strippers.” Totta sees another thief in the shadows and wants to fight him, but Tída advises they let him be, so they do not lose their way. They continue ahead, trying to find the wagon they had brought. They nearly step into the water and realize they are now at the causeway. Totta wonders aloud how the Vikings were able to cross that causeway unchallenged, and Tída reveals that he had heard that morning in Maldon that Beorhtnoth had allowed them to do so in order to show himself more valorous and “to give minstrels matter for mighty songs” (14). Totta laments in formal language that the line of great Saxon earls is ending, while Tída responds that it is the common people who suffer because of it, and no one sings their praises. Totta believes that Æthelred will never be defeated by Anlaf of Norway, and Tída simply says he hopes not. They load the body onto the cart and begin to drive it toward Maldon, where the abbot is waiting. On the way, the exhausted Totta longs for sleep, and Tída says he will have to lie in the wagon with Beorhtnoth’s corpse. When Totta balks, Tída chides him, noting that the act would seem romantic to him if a poet spoke of how “ ‘I bowed my head on his breast beloved, / and weary of weeping woeful slept I’ ” (16). Totta sleeps, and from a dream he pronounces lines that deplore the passing of days; then, from within the dream, he cries out at the coming of darkness and says he that hears voices in a hall chanting, “Heart shall be bolder, harder be purpose, more proud the spirit as our power lessens!” (17). At this point, the cart hits a bump, and the jolt awakens him. Tída tells Totta that the words of his dream sounded “queer” and “heathenish.” His own view of the future is that it will be the same as the past: For the common folk, work and war are their perpetual companions. As the play ends, the voices of the monks of Ely Abbey join together in a Latin dirge, in the

132   “Homecoming of Beorhtnoth Beorhthelm’s Son, The”  midst of which a voice, in English, interrupts with a rhyming couplet, saying, “Sadly they sing, the monks of Ely isle! / Row, men, row! Let us listen here awhile!” (18). As the boat passes, the monks’ dirge fades out. Commentary Readers familiar with The Battle of Maldon may be curious as to why Tolkien chose to spell the name Byrhtnoð, protagonist of the poem, as Beorhtnoth, despite the spelling in the original manuscript. In an unpublished paper on the subject, Alexander M. Bruce suggests two possible reasons: First, the beorht form is the standard Wessex word for “bright,” and it is possible that Tolkien sought to regularize the Northumbrian form Byrhtnoð to fit the West Saxon setting of the battle and of his play. However, Bruce notes, Tolkien was far more likely to preserve an older, dialectal form of a word, rather than regularize it. Instead, Bruce favors the argument that Tolkien changed the spelling in order to suggest a parallel with the name of Beowulf, the greatest Anglo-Saxon literary hero, particularly since Tolkien’s text is essentially a study of heroism. Tolkien effectively provides his own commentary for his text. In an introductory note on “Beorhtnoth’s Death,” he describes the Battle of Maldon itself and the poem it generated, noting as well the abbot of Ely’s burial of the earl after the battle. Tolkien mentions that he took the words of Offa directly from the poem: Swa¯ him Offa on dæg   ær ¯asæde, on þa¯m meþelstede,   þa¯ he¯ gemo¯t haefde, þæt þær mo¯delı¯ce   manega spræcon þe eft æt þearfe   þolian noldon. (Cassidy   and Ringler, ll. 198–201) It was just as Offa once said to Byrhtnoth at an open council in the meeting place, that many who spoke proudly of their prowess would prove unworthy of their words under   battle-stress. (Crossley-Holland 16)

The names of the two Wulfmærs as well as Ælfnoth, all of whom die beside Beorhtnoth, are also taken from the poem. As for the words of Tot-

ta’s dream, Tolkien indicates that he has placed Beorhtwold’s famous lines into the dreaming Totta’s mouth to suggest that the words were proverbial, and that Beorhtwold, therefore, would have been more likely to have actually uttered them. Finally, Tolkien attributes the rhymed couplet at the end of the poem to lines from the Histoira Eliensis, referring to King Canute, the Danish king who became sovereign of England after the defeat of the Saxon king Æthelred the Unready, the reigning king at the time of the Battle of Maldon. Tolkien says that the rhymed lines are a foreshadowing of the passing of Old English alliterative style and its replacement by rhymed verse. Old English alliterative meter consisted of lines of four stressed syllables (with any number of intervening unstressed syllables), separated by a pause or caesura in the middle of the line. The first stressed syllable of the second half-line must alliterate with one or both of the stressed syllables in the first half-line. The fourth stressed syllable did not alliterate. Thus, in the line Hige sceal þe¯ heardra,   heorte þe¯ ce¯nre,

the first syllable of heorte is the key to the alliteration, and it alliterates with the first syllables of Hige and heardra in the first half-line. The final stressed syllable (the first in c¯e nre) does not alliterate. In Totta’s version of the line, Heart shall be bolder, harder be purpose

the first syllable in harder alliterates with Heart, the first stressed syllable of the line. Tolkien is consistent throughout the text of this dialogue in having his characters speak in this alliterative style. In his afterword to the piece, entitled “Ofermod,” Tolkien examines Beorhtnoth’s controversial decision to allow the Vikings to cross the causeway. The poet’s attitude is expressed in these lines: Ða¯ se eorl ongan   for his ofermode ¯alyfan landes to¯ fela   la¯þere ðe¯ode. (Cassidy   and Ringler, ll. 89–90)

Tolkien translates these as “then the earl of his overboldness granted ground too much to the hateful people” (22). That ofermod implies the poet’s

“Homecoming of Beorhtnoth Beorhthelm’s Son, The”    133 disapproval is made clear, Tolkien argues, by the fact that the only other character in Old English literature to whom the word is applied is Lucifer. Tolkien compares Beorhtnoth with Beowulf, who is described at the end of his own epic as lofgeornost (“most desirous of glory”), but who, through his eagerness for fame in his battle against the dragon, left his people without a lord and, ultimately, doomed them. Beorhtnoth’s gesture, motivated as it was by his desire for glory, was irresponsible because it cost his followers their lives in a futile cause. This does not lessen our appreciation of the courage of Beorhtnoth’s retainers, nor does it diminish the value of the heroic code expressed by Beorhtwold. In fact, it increases that value. By contrast, we can see that “the heroism of obedience and love [i.e., that of Beorhtwold and the other retainers] not of pride or willfulness [i.e., that of Beorhtnoth himself] that is the most heroic and most moving” (22). In this, Tolkien was undoubtedly remembering his own experiences in World War I, where he was far more struck by the everyday courage of the enlisted men than he was impressed by his own officers, and from which experience he was to fashion the simple hobbits as the true heroes of his own epic The Lord of the Rings. Tom Shippey has also suggested that Tolkien may have believed that attitudes like those of Beorhtnoth were in part responsible for the rise and fanatic progress of Nazism: Christian men, even Christian warriors, should not be seduced by the “theory of courage” . . . or by “the doctrine of uttermost endurance in the service of indomitable will,” as expressed by Beorhtwold. This was exactly the “Ragnarök spirit” which had led to and been painfully crushed in World War II. (Shippey 296)

Tolkien does not deny the heroism of the old songs—Totta is not simply a naive youth, but one whose words can create the image of true courage. Though Tolkien never says this, it may be that Totta is intended to represent the poet who ultimately immortalized The Battle of Maldon in verse and passed on the words that encapsulated the heroic code. Tída, however—the pragmatic and skeptical veteran—gives us a clear image of

what war is like for those who actually must do the fighting in the trenches. Tolkien seems to have had sympathy for both points of view, but in the end he may come down on the side of the skeptic: Totta’s dream, as Tída recognizes, is clearly a dream of the Norse myth of Ragnarök—the end of the world at which the heroes from Valhalla (the voices in the hall) rise to engage in the final, hopeless battle. Their heroism is admirable. But, as Shippey argues, they are in the context of Totta’s dream “clearly pagan, indeed Manichean” (295). As Tída says, we live in different times, and whichever words are used to describe events, war is still war and death is still death, and for the vast majority of mankind, little really changes. The cause one is dying for really does matter. And in the Christian context in which both the poem and Tolkien’s play are written, the hopeless last stand is replaced by grace and ultimate triumph. Characters Tída  (Tídwald)  His name, meaning something like “the rule of time,” suggests a great deal about Tídwald. He seems to be the veteran of many campaigns (though he was not in this particular battle), and thus knows the great gap between the heroic song and the ugliness of death and strife on the battlefield itself. He has no sympathy for unnecessary killing and consistently pokes holes in Totta’s romanticizing notions. Behind all the old songs, Tída knows, “you can hear the tears” (10). A Christian with little sympathy for the pagan attitudes of the heroic songs, Tída also knows that it is the common people like himself who bear the chief brunt of wars, and no one ever sings about their struggles. Totta  (Torhthelm)  Torhthelm (the name means “shining helmet”) is very young and, Tolkien tells us in his opening note, the son of a gleeman (a bard). He is apparently an apprentice minstrel or scop himself. He knows nothing of real battle except what he has heard in the old songs, which have made it seem romantic and heroic. On the battlefield in the dark, he is easily spooked by shadows or noises, and he strikes out in fear against one of the scavengers, killing him with his lord’s sword.

134   “Imram”  Lest he see this as a heroic feat, Tída makes it clear to him that the death was unnecessary. Totta’s dream of ultimate glory against the coming darkness of Ragnarök underscores his romantic notions of war. Shippey calls him “a young fool whose mind has been addled by the heroic lays he repeatedly mentions” (295), though this may be a bit harsh. He does not yet know what war is really like, but he admires true courage. He must learn to distinguish between the courage of the soldier in the trenches and the ofermod of Beorhtnoth. Further Reading Bruce, Alexander M. “Tolkien’s Spelling Beorhtnoth: A Case Study in Correcting the Past.” Paper presented at annual meeting of the Southeastern Medieval Association, Nashville, Tenn., October 15–17, 2009. Carpenter, Humphrey. Tolkien: A Biography. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1977. Cassidy, Frederic G., and Richard N. Ringler, eds. “The Battle of Maldon.” In Bright’s Old English Grammar and Reader, 3rd ed., 360–371. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1971. Crossley-Holland, Kevin, trans. “The Battle of Maldon.” In The Anglo-Saxon World: An Anthology, 11–19. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999. Nelson, Marie. “ ‘The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth Beorhthelm’s Son’: J. R. R. Tolkien’s Sequel to ‘The Battle of Maldon.’ ” Mythlore 26, nos. 3–4 (2008): 65–87. Shippey, Tom. J. R. R. Tolkien: Author of the Century. Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2000. Tolkien, J. R. R. “The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth Beorhthelm’s Son.” Essays and Studies of the English Association n.s. 6 (1953): 1–18. Reprinted in The Tolkien Reader, 3–24. New York: Ballantine Books, 1966.

“Imram”  (1955) Imram is an Irish Gaelic word meaning “sea voyage,” and the Irish literary genre of imrama refers to stories involving adventures on the sea. The best known of these tales is the Navigatio Sancti Bren-

dani, the legend of Saint Brendan “the Navigator,” a tale that survives in some 120 manuscripts and was translated into several languages. In “Imram,” Tolkien retells the story of Saint Brendan’s legendary sea journey, adapting the tale’s Christian imagery to his own mythological world. Tolkien probably composed the original version of this poem in about 1945; he included it in The Notion Club Papers, a novel about time travel whose characters were based on his companions in the Inklings. The novel, begun when Tolkien was in the middle of his work on The Lord of the Rings, was eventually abandoned, but Tolkien took the poem, presented in the manuscript as “The Death of St Brendan,” and published a slightly revised version some 10 years later in the journal Time and Tide under the new title “Imram.” It was reprinted by Christopher Tolkien, along with the entire surviving manuscript of The Notion Club Papers, in Sauron Defeated, the ninth volume of The History of Middle-earth. The following commentary refers to the published version of the poem, as reprinted in Sauron Defeated, pages 296–299. Synopsis The poem begins as Saint Brendan has returned from his voyage and lies on his deathbed in his monastery. One of his fellow monks asks him about his voyage, whether he found heaven or paradise on his journey, and Brendan’s answer forms the bulk of the poem. The memory of his voyage has faded, but Brendan remembers clearly three things: a cloud, a tree, and a star. Since he speaks of the things that “we” saw on the journey, it seems clear that he was accompanied on his odyssey by some of his fellow monks. The cloud, he recalls, was formed by a volcanic mountain that they saw jutting from beneath the waves, the remnant of a land of kings that had sunk beneath the ocean. As they journeyed farther, they came to a hidden island where, in a dale, a great tree grew, fairer, Brendan says, than any that grew in Paradise. The tree had white leaves and grew taller than any they had ever seen. The monks began to sing, but at the sound a great number of birds flew from the tree, and they heard another song, but not of birds or men or angels.

“Imram”    135 Perhaps, Brendan suggests, there is a third “fair kindred” (l. 93) lingering in the world. The brother remarks that Brendan has told only of the cloud and the tree, and asks what he can say about the star. Brendan responds that he saw the star far and high over the horizon, where the earth curved away from the straight road west—a road taking one over “an unseen bridge” that goes on “to coasts that no man knows” (ll. 107–108). His fellow monk asks Brendan to tell him of that land, but Brendan will only speak of the scent of flowers and tells his fellow that anyone wanting to know more of that land must make the journey himself. At this, Brendan’s story ends, and in the last stanza, the bells of the monastery ring out, as Brendan has died. In the end, we are told he is journeying to a place from which no ship ever returns, while his bones rest in Ireland. Commentary The historical Saint Brendan was a sixth-century Irish monk. Whether he ever made any sort of sea voyage is unknown, but his legend, which apparently had taken shape by the ninth century and was first committed to writing in the 10th, is a fantastic tale of exploration of the islands in the western sea. In the legend, Saint Brendan sets sail with a group of 14 monks, though three more join at the last minute—three who ultimately do not return. They sail west in search of the “Earthly Paradise.” As is typical of Irish imrama, they wander from island to island. One island on which they rest turns out to be a giant whale—an incident that forms the basis for Tolkien’s poem “Fastitocalon,” which is printed as part of The Adventures of Tom Bombadil. They also stop on an island of silent monks; an island of sheep; and another island on which Judas Iscariot stands on a rock, where he allowed a respite from hell every Sunday. In addition, there is a Paradise of Birds who sing hymns in a great tree; a crystal column (which may suggest Tolkien’s column of cloud); and the Land of Promise, where a young man tells them they must now return to Ireland, where they will be laid to rest. Clearly Tolkien selected only a few images from this story—images that he was able to use to relate to his own mythology. The volcanic cloud rises

from a mountain that juts from the ocean floor, where a great island, a land of kings, has sunk beneath the waves. This is certainly Tolkien’s Númenor, which sank into the sea at the end of the Second Age of Middle-earth. The island with the great tree (which Tolkien, significantly, has made a White Tree) is Tol Eressëa, the Lonely Isle that was home of the elves in the West. Thus, the white tree is Celeborn, descended from a scion of Telperion, the original white tree of Valinor. The third “fair kindred” refers, of course, to the elves, neither men nor angels, singing around the great tree of Elvenhome. The star that marks the “old road” to the Undying Lands is more obscure, but key is the fact that the “unseen bridge” moves off toward the star from the horizon where “the round world plunges steeply down” (ll. 104–106). In Tolkien’s myth of the end of the Second Age, the Valar sank Númenor under the sea and turned the disc of the world into a sphere, moving the Undying Lands of Valinor out of reach of any visitors from Middle-earth. Norma Roche has traced the history of the motif of paradise in the west, noting particularly the land of Elysium in Greek mythology, or Tir-nan-Og (the “land of youth”) in Irish myth, from which mortals are not able to return to the mundane world. This was the land that was visited in the well-known imram The Voyage of Bran, which probably influenced the legend of Saint Brendan. Tolkien was, in turn, influenced by this motif (Roche 17–18). The verse form Tolkien chose for his poem seems at first to be a simple ballad stanza, with alternating tetrameter and trimeter lines rhyming abcb. But he does not use these quatrains as separate stanzas. Only a few of the brother monk’s questions are given in the form of a single quatrain. Generally, Tolkien combines any number of the quatrains into verse paragraphs, often running the sense of them together rather than using a full stop at the end of the quatrain. As Joe Christopher has pointed out, Tolkien also uses internal rhyme, usually rhyming the first stressed syllable of the tetrameter lines in each quatrain with the last word of the line, so that in the first line, “At last out of the deep sea he passed,” the second word last rhymes with the final word passed. The third line of the poem—

136   “ ‘iþþlen’ in Sawles Warde” “under clouded moon the waves were loud”—demonstrates how Tolkien works through much of the poem, focusing on stressed syllables rather than complete words, so that only the stressed syllable of clouded links it to the final word loud (Christopher 153). This happens as often as not in the poem, and it suggests the influence of Old English accentual poetry on Tolkien’s versification in this text: He uses rhyme rather than alliteration, but does manage to connect each half of his four-stress lines through sound, as Old English alliterative poets did. As an aside, Joe Christopher notes that in the manuscript of The Notion Club Papers, the poem on Saint Brendan is written and shared by the character Frankley (Christopher 154), who according to Christopher Tolkien is his father’s representation of C. S. Lewis (Sauron Defeated 150). Joe Christopher suggests that the poem on Saint Brendan is particularly suited to a character based on Lewis, who was himself Irish, and who enjoyed experimenting with verse forms (154). Further Reading Christopher, Joe R. “Tolkien’s Lyric Poetry.” In Tolkien’s Legendarium: Essays on the History of Middle-earth, edited by Verlyn Flieger and Carl F. Hostetter, 143– 160. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 2000. Roche, Norma. “Sailing West: Tolkien, the Saint Brendan Story, and the Idea of Paradise in the West.” Mythlore 17, no. 4 (Summer 1991): 16–20, 62. Tolkien, J. R. R. Sauron Defeated. Vol. 9 of The History of Middle-earth, edited by Christopher Tolkien. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1992. ———. “Imram.” Time and Tide (3 December 1955): 1,561.

“ ‘iþþlen’ in Sawles Warde”  (1947) In a brief article published in English Studies with the Belgian scholar (and his former student) S. R. T. O. d’Ardenne, Tolkien dealt with a crux in the Bodley 34 manuscript that he and d’Ardenne were editing at the time. The essay focuses on a single

sentence in the text of Sawles Warde (“Guardian of the Soul”), a 13th-century allegory that is considered part of the Katherine group of related texts in which Tolkien was particularly interested, largely because of their West Midland dialect, which was similar to that of the Ancrene Wisse, the text he was editing for the Early English Text Society. The poem is an expanded version of De custodia interioris hominis (“On the keeping of the inner self”), usually attributed to St. Anselm. Synopsis Noting that the word iþþlen, as it is transcribed by recent editors, is meaningless, Tolkien and d’Ardenne suggest that either editors have misread it or that it is “a corruption of some genuine word” (168). In the passage in question, Wit is the master of the House of the Soul. The housewife, Will, is lax in her discipline of the servants (the five senses), and unless Wit is awake to control them, the servants will conspire to let Will do anything she likes. Tolkien and d’Ardenne look at the original passage, which reads “þah we hit ne here nawt: we mahen [?] ha re nurhð. & hare untohe bere, a þet hit cume forð. &ba wið luue tuhte ham þe betere,” where there is a missing verb between mahen and ha. They translate this passage as “Though we do not hear this (sc.? The actual swearing of the conspirators) we can [?] their noise and their unruly clamor, until it comes out, and with fear and love teach (train) them to do better” (169). Thus, the scribe of the Bodley manuscript has apparently left out the verb in the sentence. Tolkien and d’Ardenne note that the word transcribed as iþþlen is written above the line with a caret, indicating that it belongs between mahen and ha, and that this insertion is not in the same hand as the text. They suggest that a reader of the manuscript, noting the absence of a verb in the sentence, tried to emend the text and insert a verb guessed at from the context. The word is not, however, iþþlen, as previous editors would have it. The six letters are, rather, rw?len. (The Middle English wynn looks very much like a thorn [þ] but is the symbol for w). Thus, the emender of the text meant to say that we (that is, the readers?) can “rule” the clamor of the servants. Tolkien and d’Ardenne point out that the

“Lay of Aotrou and Itroun, The”    137 emender misunderstood the allegory, placing the we of the text into it rather than outside of it, but in any case the emendation of “rule” makes more sense than the meaningless iþþlen. In fact, the two other extant manuscripts of Sawles Warde (Royal 17 A xxvii and Cotton Titus D xviii) read felen and fele, respectively, at this point, and that was certainly the author’s intent. The Bodleian (or B) scribe made other mistakes as well, and even in this passage, his hit cume forð is rendered wit cume forð in the other two manuscripts, which makes more sense in the context, wherein Wit would be seen as coming out to quiet the rowdy senses. “Poor B was a blunderer, and not always very attentive to the sense,” write the authors (in what sounds very much like one of Tolkien’s remarks) (170). But Tolkien and d’Ardenne admit, as well, that the author of Sawles Ward had created some confusion in the beginning of his text, introducing the “we,” the real persons, in the midst of his allegory about their own psyches. Commentary This brief article, trifling as it is, is still good evidence of the precision and thoroughness of Tolkien’s scholarship. From the time he began work on his edition of the Ancrene Wisse, he was focused on poems in the Katherine group (to which Sawles Warde belongs), which he saw as displaying the same dialectal characteristics as the Ancrene Wisse. Tolkien was engaged in a thorough examination of MS. Bodley 34 with Professor d’Ardenne, and had been collaborating with her on an edition of The Katherine Group, which he never lived to complete. d’Ardenne published the edition in 1977, without Tolkien’s name as coeditor. This article was a small stop along the way, published in 1947, when the two were able to resume work after the war and had worked out an answer to this single crux in the manuscript. Further Reading d’Ardenne, S. R. T. O., ed. The Katherine Group: Edited from MS. Bodley 34. Paris: Société d’Edition Les Belles Lettres, 1977. Tolkien, J. R. R., and S.R.T.O. d’Ardenne. “ ‘iþþlen’ in Sawles Warde.” English Studies: A Journal of English Letters and Philology 28 (1947): 168–170.

“Lay of Aotrou and Itroun, The”  (1945) Tolkien’s longest published poem (at more than 500 lines), “The Lay of Aotrou and Itroun” is modeled on the Breton lays popularized by Marie de France in the 12th century and adapted by ­English poets, including Geoffrey Chaucer, in the 14th century. A lay was typically a short romance based on early Celtic legends. These legends had been preserved and popularized in oral form by Breton minstrels, from whose songs Marie and others composed French verse romances. Marie’s were written in octosyllabic couplets. They were concerned with knights and ladies, with love, and with fairy magic or other sources of wonder. Joe Carpenter notes that the earliest manuscript of Tolkien’s poem is dated September 1930 (168). The poem was eventually published in 1945 by Gwyn Jones, one of Tolkien’s fellow philologists, in the Welsh Review, probably because of the Celtic roots of the poem’s genre. It has not, to my knowledge, been republished, although it is available in e-text versions. Synopsis In “Britain’s land beyond the seas” (l. 1)—that is, in Brittany—stands a ruined toft now covered in green, where once a mighty lord dwelt. This lord (Aotrou) has a wife (Itroun) whom he loves deeply, but he has no child and so fears that he will die without an heir and that his lands will pass to a stranger. Therefore, he visits a witch who lives in a cave, famous for her spells and potions. He comes to her at night, and she already knows his name and his desire. She laughs, goes into her cave, and emerges with a glass phial containing a magic potion. He thanks her and offers to pay her gold, but she refuses payment, telling him to wait to see whether the potion is successful. If it is, then she will ask for recompense, and she may ask for something other than gold. When Aotrou returns home and sleeps beside Itroun, he dreams of children walking with him in his gardens, until the morning makes shadows move across the wall. When he awakes in the

138   “Lay of Aotrou and Itroun, The”  morning, he commands a feast to be prepared as a sign of recommitment to his wife, as if it were a second wedding feast. He tells her that they will pretend that their love is new, and says that they will pray that their heart’s desire will come to pass this year. At the mock-wedding feast, he raises a cup of silver to Itroun and drinks to her love, and she drinks as well, not knowing that he has put the witch’s potion into her wine. As the days pass, Aotrou continues to dream of children walking in his garden. In the spring, there is a new celebration as Itroun gives birth to twins, a boy and a girl. The overjoyed Aotrou now has all he wanted, and he desires to be of service to his lady, offering to bring her anything her heart desires. She tells him that she desires nothing but to have him always at her side. But Aotrou keeps insisting, and finally Itroun tells him she craves cold water and venison “of the greenwood deer” (l. 236), but considers these foolish cravings, since her deepest desire is to have Aotrou with her. But Aotrou, obsessed with doing her some service, rides forth to the wood. Here he catches sight of a white doe, which he chases recklessly through the forest until sunset, when he loses sight of her. But there in the wood he sees a fountain—it is a fairy fountain, and he finds he is in the enchanted forest of Broceliande. Unwittingly, he washes his face and then catches sight of a smiling fairy princess, the Corrigan, sitting on a silver chair and beckoning to him. It is the witch he had visited, who now demands payment for fulfilling Aotrou’s wishes; the payment is to forget his wife and wed the Corrigan. Aotrou resists, saying that he loves his wife, and he curses the doe that led him to this place. The Corrigan gives Aotrou a choice: Wed her or be turned into a stone statue standing by the fountain. Aotrou says he will do neither, but will return to his own home and the waters of Christendom. The Corrigan tells him that in that case, he will die from her curse. Aotrou rejects this, saying he will die when God wills. Aotrou finds his way home to his own castle and asks his steward to make him a bed, for his heart is swelling and his legs are numb. When he dreams, he sees not his children but the Corrigan, old and ugly in the form of the witch, sit-

ting next to the fountain. When the day is past, Aotrou mumbles that his death is near, but says, “Grieve not my wife!  .  .  . do not tell, / though I am wounded with a spell!” (ll. 381–382). Thus, his arrival and his condition are kept from Itroun, who keeps asking whether Aotrou has returned. On the third day, she dresses in her fairest dress and waits, but Aotrou does not come, and when she hears the mourning in the house, she asks who is being brought to the churchyard. She is told that a stranger has died. She suspects that the people know more than they are saying, but they will not answer her. In the morning, she says she will go to church and asks what raiment she should wear. Her women tell her that black is now the custom. When she enters the church wearing black, she sees her husband lying on the bier. Itroun goes to bed to weep, and a dirge is sung in the castle, while beside a fountain in Broceliande, a cold laughter rings out. Itroun dies of grief soon after, and she lies next to her husband. Whether their children grow up or live long, they will never know. The poem ends with a prayer that God keep us all from evil counsel and from despair, until we dwell with the Virgin Mary, queen of heaven, by the waters of Christendom. Commentary Like Marie de France herself, Tolkien uses octosyllabic couplets to compose his imitation Breton lay, though he also uses some alliteration. Generally, two of the stressed syllables in each line alliterate, as, for example, in lines 6 and 7: where lords and ladies once were seen, where towers were piled above the trees   (italics mine)

The poem’s subject matter conforms to that of the typical Breton lay, since it is concerned with the love of Aotrou and Itroun and the magic of a fairy creature, the Corrigan. Tolkien also uses a number of terms and allusions that place the poem in a Breton setting: The names Aotrou and Itroun, for example, are Breton words for “Lord" and "Lady” (Carpenter 168). A Corrigan (or Korrigan) is a fairy or dwarflike spirit in Breton folklore who is beautiful in the dark but old and shriveled

“Lay of Aotrou and Itroun, The”    139 in the daylight. Such creatures were said to haunt wells and fountains, and to bear a particular enmity to Christianity and the Virgin Mary. As for the forest of Broceliande, it is a legendary Breton forest with a magical fountain in Chrétien de Troyes’s 12th-century Le Chevalier au lion (“The Knight of the Lion”), and in Old French legends of Merlin, it is associated with the site of the enchanted prison where the famous mage was held captive by the nymph Niniane. Tolkien’s poem repeats a number of motifs common to Middle English lays, especially those of Chaucer. Brittany is described as a place of “stony shores and stony caves,” recalling the rocks that so disturb Dorigen in “The Franklin’s Tale” (a story the narrator himself describes as a Breton lay). The rash promise that Aotrou makes to the Corrigan is another motif used in “The Franklin’s Tale” when Dorigen promises to be Aurelius’s lover if he removes the rocks. The witchlike lady who can be beautiful and wishes to be the knight’s lover recalls the loathly lady of “The Wife of Bath’s Tale.” The direct source for Tolkien’s poem seems to have been a Breton song called “Le Seigneur Nann et la Fée,” in which a childless lord obtains a fertility potion from a witch, promising her a later reward. He is led into the woods by a white hart, who proves to be the witch and demands his love in payment for the potion. The lord refuses, choosing death instead (see Yates). Tom Shippey notes that Tolkien has added a number of elements to the story that have turned it into a parable of Christian faith. Shippey asserts that Aotrou’s sin was despair: He saw no answer coming to his prayer for a child, and so turned to the witch’s potion. His rejection of the Corrigan is put explicitly into Christian terms, as he announces his intent to leave the Broceliande spring for the waters of Christendom at home (Shippey 280). Jane Chance goes deeper into Aotrou’s motives, finding his sin in his using his wife as a mere tool for his own ends (he gives her the potion without her knowledge and never bothers to determine what her own desires are). He fails to hear her when she asks him to stay and is more concerned with doing a chivalrous deed in catching the doe, demonstrating his excessive pride (Chance 121–132).

As Chance sees it, Aotrou might have redeemed himself had he given Itroun her true desire and stayed by her side. As the white doe led Aotrou deep into the enchanted forest to the Corrigan and her magic fountain, Itroun could have led Aotrou to the Virgin Mary and what he himself calls the “waters blest of Christendome” (Chance 124). While all of this is true, there is still a problem with the poem from a Christian standpoint. Aotrou did make mistakes, first by despairing of having children and later by using and deceiving his wife. But he rejects the Corrigan. He will not betray his wife with her, and he essentially chooses death in order to return to his home and the waters of Christendom. This should be enough to gain his salvation, for he has forsaken his sin. The thing that dooms him—what ultimately leads to the Corrigan’s triumphant laugh at the fountain—is his refusal to see his wife after his return to the palace. Once again, he seems to be thinking of her: He wants to spare her the pain of seeing him die. But this is what Chance would have called a chivalric rather than a Christian act. Aotrou believes he is being “noble,” but he is denying his wife the chance to be with him—the only thing she ever asked— and denying himself the opportunity of her leading him to those blessed waters. He dies as he began, in despair. And the fact that the castle is now in ruins suggests that his children were not able to keep his property intact or in the family. Ultimately everything Aotrou did was in vain. Further Reading Carpenter, Humphrey. J. R. R. Tolkien: A Biography. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1977. Chance, Jane. Tolkien’s Art: A Mythology for England. 2nd ed. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2001. Shippey, Tom. The Road to Middle-earth: How J. R. R. Tolkien Created a New Mythology. 2nd ed. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2003. Tolkien, J. R. R. “The Lay of Aotrou and Itroun.” Welsh Review 4, no. 4 (December 1945): 254–266. Yates, Jessica. “The Source of ‘The Lay of Aotrou and Itroun.’ ” In Leaves from the Tree: J. R. R. Tolkien’s Shorter Fiction, edited by Tom Shippey, et al., 63–71. London: Tolkien Society, 1991.

140   “Leaf by Niggle” 

“Leaf by Niggle”  (1945) The short story “Leaf by Niggle” is a brief autobiographical allegory written at a time when Tolkien was experiencing some frustration with the progress of his sequel to The Hobbit, which was beginning to develop into the massive Lord of the Rings trilogy. The central character, Niggle, is obsessed with painting a huge picture, which he keeps adding to and never seems able to finish. He is almost certainly a figure of the author himself, writing a story that seemed to keep expanding. There is some disagreement as to when the story was first written. In his biography, Humphrey Carpenter suggests that the story was composed some time in 1943, when Tolkien was “dead stuck” about midway through the trilogy (Tolkien 194). But Tolkien himself recalled, in a letter to Jane Neave in 1962, that the story was written “just before the War began, though I first read it aloud to my friends early in 1940” (Letters 320). If one accepts the earlier date, then the story may arise more generally from Tolkien’s attempting to deal with The Lord of the Rings as well as his ongoing and endless Silmarillion project, in addition to the expectations placed upon him as professor of Anglo-Saxon studies at Oxford University. Tom Shippey, who believes the story was written in 1938 or 1939, asserts that “One would have to say .  .  . that Niggle’s ‘great picture’, existing only in the mind, was something like a completely finished and integrated version of the whole history of Arda from Creation to the end of the Third Age” (269) Tolkien describes the inception of the story several times in his letters. In response to Stanley Unwin’s expressed interest in the tale, Tolkien wrote in a letter of March 18, 1945, that, in contrast with his usual struggle to shape a piece of writing, this one “cost me absolutely no pains at all. . . . I woke up one morning . . . with that odd thing virtually complete in my head. It took only a few hours to get down, and then copy out. I am not aware of ever ‘thinking’ of the story or composing it in the ordinary sense” (Letters 113). In other words, the story seems to have come to Tolkien in a dream, one that all but wrote itself. This might

explain the different tone and style apparent in the story: It is virtually the only piece of Tolkien’s writing that can properly be called allegory, a style that he generally despised. The dream inspiration may also explain the story’s autobiographical nature. Like all dreams, this one was communicating something to the dreamer about his inner self. In the above-mentioned letter to Jane Neave, Tolkien admits that some elements of the story were biographical but specifies only the fact that he had been fretting about a neighbor’s great poplar tree, which, he writes, “had been savagely mutilated some years before, but had gallantly grown new limbs .  .  . and now a foolish neighbour was agitating to have it felled.” He adds: “Every tree has its enemy, few have an advocate” (Letters 321). The tree, its leaves, and ultimately a whole natural landscape are the subject of Niggle’s great canvas in the story. Tolkien’s story was first published in the Dublin Review in January 1945. According to Shippey, the Review’s editor wrote to Tolkien in September 1944, requesting a story that “would help his magazine to be ‘an effective expression of Catholic humanity’ ” (J. R. R. Tolkien 266). Tolkien sent him “Leaf by Niggle,” and it was printed the following January. Shortly after its appearance, Stanley Unwin suggested the possibility of publishing a collection of Tolkien short stories, to include “Leaf by Niggle,” but Tolkien declined, saying that the latter was the only story he had completed at the time. Allen & Unwin did ultimately publish “Leaf by Niggle,” but not until 1964, when it came out with Tolkien’s essay “On Fairy-Stories” in a thin volume entitled Tree and Leaf. The contents of Tree and Leaf were subsequently published in The Tolkien Reader in 1966. Most recently, “Leaf by Niggle” has been reprinted in the collection Tales from the Perilous Realm (2008), and it is to the text of that book, as the most recent and readily accessible edition, that citations in the following discussion refer. Synopsis Niggle is a little man, an unsuccessful painter living in a society that does not seem to value his art. We learn in the first sentence that he also has a

“Leaf by Niggle”    141 long journey to make at some undefined time in the future—a journey he is not keen to make, but that he cannot avoid. He puts off preparing for his trip because he is working on a large painting. The huge canvas, to which ultimately all of Niggle’s other paintings become attached, forming its borders, becomes so large it must be kept in a separate garage, and Niggle can only work on it from a stepladder. Niggle can make little progress on the painting because he is so consumed with details— with the detail, for instance, of a single leaf, which develops into a tree, then a forest, then an entire landscape with distant mountains. Each individual leaf is painted in beautiful detail, and this obsession with detail makes it unlikely that Niggle will ever finish the entire canvas, especially when he must, at some point, make his journey. Niggle is also distracted by other demands on his time, and by people who visit his house, some with the expectation of his vacating it soon and with an eye toward moving in themselves. He has let the house and garden go somewhat; at one time, he grew potatoes in the garden, but he no longer does so. During these visits, he usually fidgets with his pencils and cannot wait to get back to his painting. He is particularly annoyed by his neighbor, the gardener Mr. Parish, who has no appreciation for Niggle’s painting but does complain that Niggle’s garden needs tending, and warns that one day an inspector will come to look at that plot. Parish does occasionally bring some of his own potatoes to Niggle, but more often he asks Niggle to do odd jobs for him. Parish is lame, there are a number of things he is unable to do for himself, and Niggle is his only real neighbor. Niggle sees these interruptions and requests as a nuisance, and he knows they are keeping him from finishing his project. But he helps Parish as best he can anyway, out of a sense of duty, and because, as the narrator says, “he was kindhearted, in a way” (285). One night, Parish comes to see Niggle with a request. His wife is ill, Parish says, and his roof is leaking, He wants Niggle to ride into town on his bicycle to fetch a doctor and a building contractor. He even goes so far as to suggest that Niggle’s canvas might be put to some practical use by helping to repair the leak in Parish’s roof. Although he knows

it may prevent him from finishing his picture, Niggle tells himself that Parish really is lame, and his wife really is sick. He rides his bicycle in the rain to town, where he speaks with the doctor and the builder. The doctor does not come until the following day, and then he has two patients to attend to, since Niggle has become ill from his chilling bicycle ride. The builder never does appear. When Niggle has finally recovered from his illness and is about to resume work on his painting, having envisioned some wonderful additions to it during his convalescence, he is interrupted by the Inspector, who tells him that his neighbor’s house must be fixed. While Niggle argues that the builder has not come, that the town council should do something about it, the Inspector says that these things are not possible, and that, according to the law, houses come first, so Niggle’s canvas must be used to repair Parish’s roof. At that point, the Driver comes in, come to fetch Niggle for his long anticipated journey. Niggle has procrastinated and failed to prepare for the trip, and as he leaves, he is just able to grab a small bag with some paints and his sketches. He is taken to a train and forgets even his small bag on the train. Thus, he arrives at his destination without luggage, and the Porter tells him that, this being the case, he must be sent to the Workhouse. Here, Niggle is set to doing a number of physical tasks, mainly involving digging, carpentry, painting baseboards, and other jobs that, over the course of what seems a century, teach him to manage his time, to be satisfied with his work, and to stop his niggling. Eventually, he is taken off everything but digging. Finally, he is assigned to complete his rest in the dark. After he has rested for some time, Niggle hears the voices of what seems like a Court of Inquiry, apparently debating his case. The First Voice seems unsympathetic, seeing little in Niggle’s case that warrants any kind of special treatment. But a Second Voice consistently defends Niggle, commenting first on the quality of his painting, declaring that “a Leaf by Niggle has a charm of its own” (298), and then on Niggle’s constant jobs done for Parish, without the expectation even of gratitude. Finally, the Second Voice points to Niggle’s

142   “Leaf by Niggle”  bicycle ride in the rain, which almost ensured that he would never finish his own painting—an act that the Second Voice interprets as “a genuine sacrifice” (299). For these reasons, the Second Voice asserts that Niggle should now be given “Gentle Treatment.” Niggle is overwhelmed by these words and actually blushes in the dark, and he hides his face. As the narrator says, “It was like being publicly praised, when you and all the audience knew that the praise was not deserved” (300). When the First Voice finds that Niggle has been listening, he asks for a reaction, and Niggle can only ask about Parish, expressing concern for his old neighbor and praising him for the potatoes he used to sell him. After this, the First Voice agrees that it is time for Niggle to go to “the next stage.” The next day, Niggle finds himself on a green hill. He has been sent to work here as a gardener, and he soon comes to realize that he is in fact working within his own painting—there is his tree, the surrounding forest, even the distant mountains. But what he is now living in is not the incomplete realization of his own painting; rather, it is the true and perfect execution of his idea in the realm of ultimate reality. Before long, Parish arrives as well, now healed of his infirmities and open to the beauty of the place. He helps Niggle in his role as gardener, and they work together to increase the beauty of the forest. After some time, Niggle and Parish meet a shepherd who offers to guide them to the distant mountains. He tells Niggle that the land he is in is Niggle’s Picture, though some is also now Parish’s Garden. Parish, surprised, now appreciates the beauty of Niggle’s painting. Niggle is anxious to visit the mountains, but Parish is not yet ready; in particular, he wants to wait for his wife to arrive before he goes any farther. But Niggle sets out with the shepherd. In two brief conclusions to the story, Tolkien illustrates how the story ends in the world that Niggle left, and also in the world that he entered. In the first section, the self-important Councilor Thompson, who seems to have moved into Niggle’s house, dismisses Niggle as “a silly little man .  .  . Worthless” and of “no use to Society at all” (309). Niggle’s canvas has been used to repair Parish’s

house, but Atkins, a schoolmaster, tells Tompkins that he has saved a corner of that great canvas, which he finds moving. Most of it crumbles away, but Atkins has a small portion of it, a single leaf, framed and put in a museum, where it is labeled “Leaf: by Niggle.” Eventually, however, a fire destroys both the museum and the painting, and Niggle is completely forgotten. In the second conclusion, however, the Second Voice is heard, planning to keep the forest of Niggle’s picture available as a “holiday, and a refreshment” for those passing this way, as an “introduction to the mountains” (311). The First Voice agrees, and says that the region must then have a name. The Second Voice informs him that the Porter has already given it a name: “Niggle’s Parish.” He has informed Niggle and Parish about the development. The mountains, he says, rang with laughter. Commentary “Leaf by Niggle” is one of Tolkien’s most atypical texts. There is a mysterious, almost Kafkaesque feel to the story in its early pages, with the mysterious journey that must be made; the giant canvas that takes over Niggle’s entire life; his bicycle ride in the rain to authority figures that refuse to help; the laws of which Niggle seems unaware, but which the Inspector comes to enforce; the carriage and train ride to a mysterious destination where he is blamed for having no luggage, though he had no time to pack; and even the end, in which Niggle’s memory is swept away like the carcass of Franz Kafka’s Gregor Samsa or his Hunger Artist to make way for the more socially useful future. It is difficult to imagine a writer with whom Tolkien had less in common than Kafka, but the atmosphere of futility and foreboding, of inexorable justice and bewildered victim, permeates much of the text. This can, of course, be explained by the inspiration of the story in the author’s dreams, the source of Kafka’s tales as well. That dreamlike quality may explain the other very unusual aspect of the story: the use of allegory. Tolkien famously disliked allegory. Referencing The Lord of the Rings, he wrote in 1957 that “There is no ‘symbolism’ or conscious allegory in my story. Allegory of the sort ‘five wizards = five senses’ is wholly

“Leaf by Niggle”    143 foreign to my way of thinking” (Letters 262). Concerning “Leaf by Niggle,” he wrote to Jane Neave in 1962 that the story “is not really or properly an ‘allegory’ so much as ‘mythical’ ” (Letters 320). But even Tolkien must have known he was quibbling. In 1954, he had written the draft of a letter to Peter Hastings in which he stated that the story was in fact an allegory of the creative process: Referring to “sub-creation” as “a term in criticism of art,” he says that he “tried tried to show allegorically how that might come to be taken up into Creation in some plane in my ‘purgatorial’ story Leaf by Niggle” (Letters 195). In his 1939 lecture “On Fairy-Stories,” Tolkien had discussed the literary artist as “sub-creator” and explained how human nature, fallen from its original perfect state, still retains in part some aspect of its original condition, which was created in the image of God. Thus, sub-creation, or secondary creation, is a means by which we exercise the godlike qualities placed in us by the Primary Creator (this common theme of sub-creation is probably why Tolkien thought it appropriate to publish the two texts together in the 1964 volume Tree and Leaf). In “Leaf by Niggle,” the role of the secondary creator is taken by Niggle himself, whose great painting is almost certainly representative of Tolkien’s own sub-creation, his Lord of the Rings project, which may have begun as a simple sequel to The Hobbit, but which was growing exponentially even as he worked on it and, like Niggle himself, despaired of ever completing it. After all, Tolkien, like Niggle, was a “niggler”—that is, one who put far too much effort into minor details. In a 1961 letter to Rayner Unwin, he calls himself “a natural niggler, alas!” (Letters 313). Tolkien was obsessed with the details of his mythology—his invented languages, the details of Arda’s history—so much so that he was never able to complete his lifetime project, his Silmarillion. Like Niggle, Tolkien’s other projects were ultimately subsumed into the great canvas of Middle-earth. The Hobbit, for example, was not intended to be a story of Middle-earth, but once Elrond appeared, the tale became a small part of that vast history. And like Niggle, Tolkien was a procrastinator as well, and thus seldom finished anything he started, as Christopher Tolkien’s

12-volume History of Middle-earth—a collection of drafts and unfinished fragments—demonstrates. There is no doubt that Niggle’s life is an allegory of Tolkien’s own. Tolkien scholar Tom Shippey gives a detailed analysis of the points of similarity between Niggle’s situation and Tolkien’s. From the first sentence of the story, Shippey insists, the allegory is clear. Niggle must go on a journey, which traditionally is an allegorical image of death. So it is in the familiar morality play Everyman. But Shippey cites what may have been for Tolkien a more natural source: the opening of the Old En­glish poem Bede’s Death-Song, which reads Fore thaem neidfaerae—that is, “(Be)fore the need-fare.” Shippey glosses this as “need-faring,” or a journey that one needs to make—which is to say death (Shippey 267). Shippey finds other aspects of Niggle’s story clearly applicable to Tolkien’s. The story begins in the autumn. Tolkien himself would have been in his late 40s in 1939, and may have begun to feel his own mortality. The various interruptions to Niggle’s painting represent all the responsibilities of Tolkien’s life as a professor—“lectures, graduate supervisions, faculty meetings, examination setting and marking, involvement in faculty appointments, etc.”—that kept Tolkien from working on his pet project, his legendarium. Niggle thus neglects his garden—Shippey notes that after 1939, Tolkien published almost no scholarly work at all (272). The visitors who come to see the house Shippey identifies as younger academics waiting for Tolkien to give up his chair in Anglo-Saxon studies (273). He sees Parish as another aspect of Tolkien’s personality—the practical, scholarly, domestic side (Parish is married, as Tolkien was but as Niggle is not). The Inspector and the Carriage Driver, who are described as if they are twins—the narrator says that the Driver is “Very much like the Inspector .  .  . almost his double” (294)—Shippey also sees as a bifurcation of Tolkien himself. All of these aspects of Tolkien’s psyche represent, Shippey says, “in their different ways, Tolkien’s own mixed judgement on Tolkien” (274). There is much to admire in Shippey’s analysis. His discussion of Parish, the Inspector, and the Driver, however, seems less convincing than the

144   “Leaf by Niggle”  rest of his argument, chiefly because he ignores Tolkien’s Christian (and, more specifically, Catholic) purpose in this text. Tolkien himself calls “Leaf by Niggle” his “purgatorial” story in the above cited letter to Peter Hastings, and the workhouse in the text is clearly an allegory of purgatory. As Rogers and Rogers assert, “we need not imagine Niggle with all his self-absorptions and laziness upon him precipitated into the Creator’s direct presence” (57)—he first needs purgatory to cleanse him for the transition. It is the laziness, the procrastination, and the niggling that are purged from his personality during his time in the workhouse, so that he develops into one who completes his tasks and who feels a satisfaction in having done them. This, in part, is why he is allowed to move to the “next step.” But one must also consider the Second Voice, which argues for Niggle at the end of his time in the workhouse. Shippey thinks that the two voices may represent two of the four “daughters of God” (familiar from medieval allegory)—Justice and Mercy (276). But I think it far more likely, since the voices pass judgment on the souls of purgatory, that these represent the first and second persons of the Trinity—the justice of the Father and the mercy of the Son. Indeed, it is the Second Voice that enumerates Niggle’s positive achievements. These include, first, his painting, and second, his answering so many “calls” to help his neighbor Parish. The First Voice grouses that Niggle “should not have neglected so many” of the requirements of the law (299). But what is the law? Surely in this context it is the law of God, the Old Testament law, which Christ summed up in his version of the Great Commandment: “You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind,” coupled with the second: “You must love your neighbour as yourself” (Matthew 22.37–39, JB). As Tolkien presents his idea of sub-creation, Niggle’s secondary creation of the beautiful landscape was a demonstration of his love of God, emulating the Primary Creator with the glimpse of paradise Niggle tried to bring into the world. His love for his neighbor is demonstrated by the errands he ran for his only close neighbor, Parish—in particular the self-sacrificing errand performed on his bicycle in the rain. Ultimately, it is

Niggle’s concern for Parish, and his defense of his neighbor’s own rather poor record, that convinces the First Voice that he is ready to move on. For these reasons, it seems unlikely that Parish is, at least consistently, another aspect of Tolkien himself. Parish must be read as Niggle’s neighbor in the metaphorical sense that Christ used the term in the parable of the Good Samaritan—that is, one’s neighbor is another human being in need. The equation of the Second Voice with the second person of the Trinity is finally made manifest when Niggle blushes in the realization that he is undeserving of the Second Voice’s advocacy. This experience of grace is what truly saves Niggle, not the deeds he performed or did not perform. And it is this experience of grace that sanctifies him enough to show real love for his neighbor in his concerns for Parish and his fate. If the law of Niggle’s worldly experience indeed represents the law of God, then the identity of the Inspector and the Driver becomes more clear. In Tolkien’s Catholic view of death, it would be important, if one were about to die, to make a final confession to a priest. A priest would also be necessary to perform the sacrament of extreme unction (the “last rites”) for the dying man. Here, the Inspector is allegorically Niggle’s confessor, who points out to him the ways in which he failed to follow the law (and even exacts a kind of penance in demanding that the painting be used to help repair Parish’s house). The Driver is, allegorically, the priest who performs the last rites, who transports Niggle to the train heading for purgatory, and allows him to grab a small bag—that is, make a small, last-minute spiritual preparation—before sending him off. Since both the Inspector and the Driver are, allegorically, priests, they can be said to resemble each other, all dressed in black, so that they are “nearly doubles.” Finally, a word must be said about the forest, the realization of Niggle’s painting, where he rests after his time in the workhouse of purgatory. While readers tend to associate this area with heaven, that seems to be a misreading. Surely heaven is in the distant mountains to which the shepherd (i.e., the “Good Shepherd,” allegorically the human incarnation of the Second Voice) offers to lead

“Leaf by Niggle”    145 Niggle when he has waited as long as he desires in the forest. The forest is the real manifestation of Niggle’s idea, but it must always have been here. The idea that Niggle strove to bring into secondary creation was a glimpse of, and a yearning for, this ultimate reality, the Earthly Paradise where human beings were intended to live and where Niggle and Parish, like Adam before the Fall, do their gardening. Tolkien knew that Dante had placed the Earthly Paradise on the top of Mount Purgatory, and that seems to be what the forest suggests here. If it were heaven itself, there would be no reason to go on farther into the mountains and no reason for Parish to wait. If Parish were a perfected soul, he would not need to wait for his wife or have any doubts about continuing into the mountains. As in Dante’s Divine Comedy, Tolkien’s souls move out of purgatory only when they have been perfected and recognize themselves that they are ready to move on. If it was indeed, as Carpenter says, “despair over his failure to finish The Lord of the Rings” that “had given birth to Leaf by Niggle” (242), then the story itself served as Tolkien’s catharsis, for if Niggle is ultimately saved, and his sub-creation accepted as contributing to his salvation (even though unappreciated and ultimately forgotten on earth), then Tolkien could expect the same fate. What had begun as a Kafkaesque tale of futility has ended as a Dantesque Divine Comedy, with all conflicts resolved in the end through the laughter in the mountains of heaven. Characters Niggle  Niggle, the story’s protagonist, is a little man who likes to spend his time working on his great painting rather than taking care of other responsibilities, including his garden and other things required by the law. He tends to procrastinate and keeps putting off the necessary preparations he should be making for a journey he will soon have to take. He is also a niggler, spending far more time than necessary on tiny details in his painting, so that he is, in fact, a much better painter of leaves than of trees. But his great painting keeps expanding into a huge landscape, and there seems to be little chance of his ever finishing it before he must

go on a journey that he cannot avoid. Finally, he is bothered quite often by his neighbor, Parish, who keeps asking him to do small chores for him. At one point, Niggle rides his bicycle through the rain to fetch a doctor for Parish’s wife, and a builder to fix his roof. The illness that results keeps Niggle from working on his painting until the Inspector comes, telling him that he has not lived up to the law, and that his painting must be used to fix Parish’s roof. At the same time, the Driver comes to take Niggle on his journey. At the end of the journey, Niggle is put in a workhouse, where he is set to completing small jobs until he learns the satisfaction of a job well done and to manage his time. Brought to judgment, Niggle is accused by the First Voice but defended by the Second Voice, who includes Niggle’s painting and his helping his neighbor as things to his credit. Niggle is then set in a forest that seems to be his own painting completed and come to life. He also meets Parish there, and the two together beautify the forest. Niggle then moves on to the mountain, led there by a shepherd. Parish  Parish is Niggle’s neighbor. He is dutiful in working his garden, from which he brings Niggle potatoes. He has a wife he cares for and a painful leg that makes him lame. He constantly annoys Niggle with small tasks that he needs help with around his house. He cares nothing for Niggle’s painting, thinking of it as a waste of time and energy, and suggests that the canvas be used to fix his own roof. He seems a practical but somewhat self-centered and unimaginative man, devoted to his wife but with a tendency to exaggerate his own needs (portraying his wife’s cold as a dire illness for which Niggle must ride through the rain to find a doctor). Parish’s only good points seem to be his love of his wife and his occasional generosity in bringing Niggle potatoes. But he also apparently is more scrupulous than Niggle in following the law. These things seem ultimately to have enabled him to come into the forest at the end of the story. After his time in the workhouse, Parish is able to recognize the beauty of the forest, and he seems to have lost his limp (perhaps the physical symbol of his

146   Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún, The spiritual handicap in failing to see the significance of Niggle’s painting). Further Reading Carpenter, Humphrey. Tolkien: A Biography. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1977. Rogers, Deborah Webster, and Ivor A. Rogers. J. R. R. Tolkien. Boston: Twayne, 1980. Shippey, Tom. J. R. R. Tolkien: Author of the Century. Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2000. Tolkien, J. R. R. “Leaf by Niggle.” Dublin Review 432 (January 1945): 46–61. ———. “Leaf by Niggle.” In Tales from the Perilous Realm, 283–312. Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2008. ———. The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien. Edited by Humphrey Carpenter. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1981.

Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún, The  (2009) Sometime between 1925 and 1939, when Tolkien was regularly teaching both formal and informal courses in Old Norse language and literature at Oxford University, he wrote two lengthy poems concerning the most important and best known of all Old Norse legends, that of the Völsung family and the dragon slayer, Sigurd. The first of these, to which Tolkien gave the Old Norse title Völsungakviða en nýja (the “New Lay of the Völsungs”), consists of 339 stanzas written in imitation of Old Norse Eddic (or, as Tolkien refers to it, Eddaic) poetry, and is divided into 10 separate sections, including an introduction that includes the Norse creation story. The second long poem, apparently written about the same time, is called Guðrúnarkviða en nýja (the “New Lay of Gudrún”) and contains 166 similar stanzas concerning the fate of Sigurd’s wife and her Burgundian family. The narrative, preserved in a number of medieval sources, is based on a kernel of historical truth, and this history is reviewed in some detail in Christopher Tolkien’s Appendix A to his edition of the two lays. In brief, the Burgundians (called the

Niflungs in the poem) were a powerful Germanic tribe, originating in Scandinavia, who had set up a kingdom at Worms on the Rhine. In 437, they and their king Gundahari suffered a disastrous defeat at the hands of the Huns (though there is no record of Attila having taken part in that battle). In addition, Attila is known to have died after a night of carousing at his wedding feast (to a Germanic princess named Ildico), choking on his own blood. Legends grew almost immediately of his actually having been murdered by his new bride. It is not difficult to recognize the characters of Gunnar and Atli for Gundahari and Attila, or to see a glimpse of Gudrún in the murderous Germanic bride. Tolkien’s favorite source for the story is the collection of Old Norse poems known as the Elder Edda (or Poetic Edda), a 13th-century compilation of traditional poems whose original versions probably date back hundreds of years. However, since the lone manuscript of the Elder Edda—the Codex Regius—is missing about eight pages in the midst of the Sigurd story, Tolkien was forced to consult what he considered less inspired versions of the tale that were available in the Prose Edda of Snorri Sturluson and the somewhat confused narrative of the Völsunga Saga. The precise relationship of Tolkien’s text to these sources is explained in detail in the introduction, notes, and appendices to the edition of the poems that Christopher Tolkien brought out in 2009, some 80 years after their original composition. It is not known why Tolkien did not seek to publish the poems in his lifetime. Apparently he had written both texts out in a fair hand, according to Christopher, but then set them aside, although there are a few subsequent corrections that suggest he might have been considering their publication at a later date (Tolkien, Legend 40). That date may have been about 1967, for in March that year, Tolkien wrote to W. H. Auden, praising the poet for his translation of the Eddaic poem The Song of the Sybil and noting: In return again I hope to send you, if I can lay my hands on it (I hope it isn’t lost), a thing I did many years ago when trying to learn the art of writing alliterative poetry: an attempt to unify

Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún, The   147 the lays about the Völsungs from the Elder Edda, written in the old eight-line fornyrðislag stanza. (Letters 379)

Why such a plan was abandoned is unclear, though the nature of the texts may have made them difficult to publish. They are not original fiction, nor are they a translation. They are retellings that borrow extensively from original texts but seek to create a coherent story where the sources are full of contradictory material. Further, Christopher Tolkien expressed some trepidation himself in an interview on the eve of the book’s publication: I dare say that a good many will be instantly put off by the very idea of “long narrative poems in verse” and pursue it no further. . . . My hope is that some of those who appreciate and admire the works of my father will find it illuminating in respect of Old Norse poetry in general, in his own treatment of the fierce, passionate and mysterious legend, and in this further and little known aspect of him as both philologist and poet. (qtd. in Flood)

It is also fairly likely that those Tolkien “fans” who think of him only as a popular writer will be put off by the considerable scholarly apparatus that Christopher Tolkien has included with the poems. His introduction includes one of his father’s lectures—an introduction to the Old Norse poems in the Elder Edda, delivered in 1926—as well as brief introductions to Snorri’s Prose Edda and to the Völsunga Saga, plus the elder Tolkien’s own notes on his poems. Christopher also annotates the poems themselves fairly extensively, and he includes appendices on the historical origins of the Burgundian legends and two of Tolkien’s other older translations of Norse poems, one into Old English. One of the more valuable parts of the introduction is Christopher’s explanation of the verse form of the lays. This form, known in Old Norse as fornyrðislag (as Tolkien mentioned in his letter to Auden), essentially followed the same rules of alliteration and stress common to Old English poetry—that is, a full line consisting of four stressed syllables and any number of unstressed syllables. The line was divided by a heavy caesura, or pause,

on either side of which were two half-lines with two stressed syllables each. The first stressed syllable in the second half-line was called the “head-stave,” or höfuðstafr, by Snorri Sturluson (Tolkien, Legend 49), and one or both of the stressed syllables in the first half-line must alliterate with it. The final stressed syllable should not alliterate. These are the basic rules, though Christopher’s introduction goes into far more detail on the types of half-lines that might be used. Old Norse poetry differed from Old English poetry, however, in its use of stanzas. Eddaic poetry generally used four-line stanzas. For this reason, as he suggests in his introductory 1926 lecture, Tolkien believed that Old English poetry tended toward the epic, but that the “strophic” poetry of the Eddaic poems was “undeveloped .  .  . on the formal side, though strengthened and pruned. But even here the ‘strophic’ form—the selection of the dramatic and forcible moment—is what we find, not the slow unfolding of an epic theme” (20). In this vein, Christopher quotes his father as describing the intent of Old Norse poetry as “seizing a situation, striking a blow that will be remembered, illuminating a moment with a flash of lightning” (7), all of which occurs in the short strophes, in the published text printed as eight-line stanzas rather than four (the half-lines separated as independent lines for the sake of readability). Tolkien attempted to imitate this style of immediacy and conciseness in his simulated Old Norse verse. At least some early readers of the text have thought him successful in this endeavor. In an early review for the Washington Post, Elizabeth Hand wrote: “There are many such lightning strikes here, especially in ‘The Lay of Gudrún,’ which has passages that recall the hair-raising siege of Helm’s Deep in ‘The Lord of the Rings’ ” (Hand). However, Adam Roberts, while conceding that there are flashes of “vehement vividness” in the poetry, concludes that there is little nuance in the characterization, and hence nothing that bridges the gap between the medieval legends and the modern world: “No bridge, but an embalmed limb of the dead past” (Roberts). This last response is specifically the sort that Christopher Tolkien had feared in the interview quoted above.

148   Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún, The Ultimately, it may be that The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún may not appeal to all Tolkien readers, but it should be of profound interest to those who take a scholarly interest in his sources, or who, like Tolkien himself, are enamored of the Germanic past and the Northern heroic code that enlivened it.

Völsungakviða en nýja (New Lay of the Völsungs) Synopsis “Upphaf”  (“Beginning”)  The Great Gods build the world out of the yawning abyss, and in their joy they create men as well. But their joy is short-lived, as they are attacked by the giants, friends of the ancient darkness, who threaten to destroy the new creation. On their golden thrones, the gods take counsel, and finally Thór is able to drive off the enemies with the thunder of his hammer. But the gods cannot rest. A seer raises up her song, telling of the last battle of the gods, when the giant Surt will slay Frey the fair; the dragon of the deep will kill Thór; and the wolf called Fenrir will be the doom of Ódin, chief of gods. The only hope is that, on the day of Doom, a great mortal hero with a reputation as a slayer of serpents will rise and defeat the giant, wolf, and dragon, and even though the gods would die, a new world would be born. In response, while the other gods restore the beauties of the world, Ódin wanders the earth to gain wisdom and to sow his seed, begetting heroes among men. He builds the great hall of Valhöll (Valhalla) for the great warriors among men to wait until the last battle, where they will fight on the side of the gods. All of them sit and await the coming of the chosen one, the great warrior foretold by the seer. “Andvara-gull”  (“Andvari’s Gold”)  Three of the Æsir (the gods)—Ódin, Loki (the trickster), and Hœnir—are walking the earth when they come to a waterfall. Here they see an otter that has caught a salmon, and apparently on a whim Loki inexplicably throws a stone at the otter, killing it. The gods then take the fish and the otter’s pelt with them, until they reach the house of a demon

named Hreidmar, who recognizes that the otter slain by Loki was his son, Otr, who was a shapeshifter and would assume an otter’s form to fish. The angry Hreidmar calls his other sons, Regin and Fáfnir, who bind the gods in unbreakable chains, demanding that they fill the otter’s pelt and cover it with gold until no part of it could be seen, in payment for Otr’s life. Loki searches out Rán, queen of Ægir the sea god. She loans him her magic net, with which Loki catches the dwarf Andvari, from whom he extorts a ransom of gold. Andvari attempts to keep back a single golden ring, but Loki will not allow it, and in response Andvari curses the gold and all who own it. Loki returns to free Ódin and Hœnir, covering the otter pelt in gold. But a single otter’s whisker protrudes, and Ódin is forced to cover the whisker with Andvari’s golden ring. Loki foresees the doom of kings with this gold, but Ódin says his concern is for the ages to come. Hreidmar is unconcerned about curses, and thinks only of his gold. “Signý”  Völsung is a descendant of Ódin living on the sea in the North. For a wife, Ódin has given him a beautiful Valkyrie (one of Ódin’s warrior women who choose dead heroes for Valhalla). Völsung’s wife bears him his firstborn son, Sigmund, and a twin sister, Signý, followed by nine other sons. One day, a messenger arrives from Siggeir, king of Gautland, who seeks the hand of Signý in marriage. Sigmund believes the Gauts (equivalent of the Geats in the Old English Beowulf) will make strong allies, and although Signý has strong forebodings, Völsung agrees to the marriage. After some time, Siggeir brings a large entourage to Völsung’s hall for a great wedding feast. During the feast, an old man named Grímnir (who is Ódin in disguise) plunges a sword into the great tree that supports the hall and challenges all the men present to pull it out. When all have tried and failed, Sigmund pulls it out easily. Siggeir desires the sword for himself and offers Sigmund gold for it, but Sigmund vows he will never sell the sword. Siggeir departs angrily. When Völsung and his sons later come to Gautland to visit Signý, she meets them on the shore and warns them that Siggeir has laid a trap for

Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún, The   149 them. But her warning is too late, and the Gauts attack them on the beach. Völsung is cut down after killing many Gauts himself, but his sons are all captured. Signý pleads with Siggeir to spare her brothers’ lives, but the king orders that they be tied to trees in the forest, where he leaves them for a she-wolf to devour nightly, one by one. On the 10th night, his brothers all dead, Sigmund kills the she-wolf by biting out its tongue and escapes into a cave, where he is visited by Signý in the shape of an elf maiden, who lays with him. Nine months later, she gives birth to a son, Sinfjötli. When Sinfjötli is grown, his mother sends him to Sigmund’s cave, bringing the sword of Grímnir that Sigmund had pulled from the tree. He recognizes Sinfjötli as his own son, and for some years, father and son roam Gautland in the form of werewolves, slaying and plundering Siggeir’s kingdom. Eventually they come to the king’s palace, where they kill the watchmen and burn the hall, swearing that none will escape alive. But when they call to Signý to come from the burning hall and leave with them, she refuses, turning back to die with her husband. “Dauði Sinfjötla”  (“The Death of Sinfjötli”)  Carrying plunder from the Gauts’ treasure, Sigmund and Sinfjötli sail back to their homeland, where they rule together from Völsung’s old hall. They are successful in several wars, slaying seven kings and accumulating a good deal of wealth, with the help of Grímnir’s sword. Sigmund eventually marries a woman taken captive from one of the conquered tribes. The woman loathes Sinfjötli, who killed her father in war. The queen poisons a cup of wine and brings it to Sinfjötli, but Sigmund, sensing treachery, drinks it instead and is unharmed, because he is immune to poison. The furious queen brings back a poisoned drink of beer, but once again Sigmund drinks it instead of his son. Finally, the queen brings a cup of poisoned ale, which Sinfjötli drinks when the queen dares him to do so. The grief-stricken Sigmund carries the body of his son to the shore, where a boatman takes it to Valhalla, leaving Sigmund alone on the shore. In Valhalla, Sinfjötli is welcomed by his grandfather Völsung, who says that they still await the “World’s chosen” (91).

“Fœddr Sigurðr”  (“Sigurd Born”)  Sigmund, alone and childless, rules his realm until he has grown old. But he has heard of the great beauty of Sigrlinn, daughter of Sváfnir. Despite seven kings’ sons who seek her in marriage, Sigrlinn chooses to marry the greybeard Sigmund, and she sails with him to the land of the Völsungs. Sigmund’s rival suitors, however, come to declare war on him. Sigmund meets the invading army with the sword of Grímnir and slays many of the enemy until an old, one-eyed man with a spear (once again, the disguised Ódin) appears before him. Sigmund strikes the spear with Grímnir’s sword, the gift of Ódin, and the sword shatters to pieces. Mortally wounded, Sigmund falls to the ground, and when Sigrlinn finds him, he tells her that Ódin has called him to Valhalla. But before he dies, Sigmund tells Sigrlinn that she will have a child, and that child will be the dragon slayer. He tells her to keep the shards of his sword, which he names Gram, so that it might be reforged for his son. After his death, Sigrlinn is taken away into slavery, disguised as a bondwoman. When she delivers the child, she names him Sigurd and tells the midwife that the child is the heir of Völsung and the seed of Ódin. The woman prophesies that Sigrlinn will marry a great king. “Regin”  When Sigrlinn is married to the king of that country she had been brought to, her son, Sigurd, is sent to Hreidmar’s son Regin to be fostered. Regin, a skilled smith, lives in the forest and is wise in many matters. He tells Sigurd the story of Otr’s ransom and the gold of Andvari. When Hreidmar had refused to share the treasure with his surviving sons, Fáfnir had killed him and, refusing to share with Regin, had transformed himself into a dragon and now sits and guards the gold in a cave on Gnitaheiði. Regin tries to goad Sigurd into attempting to kill the dragon Fáfnir, and Sigurd wants to know if Regin’s motive is revenge for his father’s murder or desire for the gold. Regin claims that he only seeks justice, and Sigurd is welcome to the gold. Twice Regin tries to forge Sigurd a sword capable of slaying the dragon, but the sword breaks both times. Sigurd, however, obtains the pieces of Gram from his mother, and from these Regin forges

150   Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún, The an incomparable sword. Sigurd now believes he is ready to face the serpent, but Regin tells him that Gnitaheiði is far off, and he will need a good horse. Sigurd obtains a horse from an old man, “mantled darkly” (107)—probably the disguised Ódin once again. The horse is Grani, a descendant of Ódin’s own eight-legged horse, Sleipnir. Sigurd rides with Regin to Gnitaheiði. He conceals himself in a hollow over which the dragon will have to pass when he comes out of his lair to drink, and he waits. When Fáfnir passes over him, Sigurd drives Garm deep into the beast’s soft underbelly, piercing his heart. As the dragon dies, he asks the name of the man who has slain him, but Sigurd will not reveal his name. Fáfnir then asks who has egged Sigurd on to attack him, and Sigurd replies that he is Sigmund’s son and was egged on only by his own heart. But Fáfnir knows that Regin must have had a hand in this plot, and he tells Sigurd of the curse on the treasure as he dies. Now Regin creeps forward and tries to claim a share of the treasure, in exchange for having forged the sword. Sigurd responds that it was courage, not the sword, that prevailed against the dragon. But Regin cuts the heart out of the dragon’s breast and asks Sigurd to roast it for him, thinking to gain the dragon’s wisdom. As Sigurd roasts the heart, he burns his finger, and when he places the finger in his mouth and tastes Fáfnir’s blood, he is immediately able to understand the language of the birds. The birds warn Sigurd of Regin’s treachery, and Sigurd looks to see his foster father sneaking toward him through the high grass, intending to kill him for the dragon’s treasure. Sigurd cuts off Regin’s head. He then feeds on Fáfnir’s heart himself, loads the treasure onto Grani’s back, and rides off. As he rides, he listens to the voices of the finch and the raven. The finch sings of the beautiful woman Gudrún and her brothers, Gunnar and Högni, who rule a kingdom near the Rhine. The raven sings of the Valkyrie Brynhild, sleeping on a high mountain behind a wall of fire. “Brynhildr”  Sigurd rides Grani to the top of the mountain Hindarfell, where he sees what he thinks is a man in armor lying asleep within a ring of fire. Sigurd urges Grani to leap the wall of fire, and when

he lifts the helmet of the unconscious warrior, he realizes it is a woman. He cuts away the corslet that seems to be stifling her, and she awakens. She is Brynhild, a Valkyrie who has disobeyed Ódin and been doomed to marry a mortal man. But she has vowed that she would only marry the prophesied “World’s chosen,” the dragon slayer. Only such a warrior would be able to come to her within the wall of fire. Sigurd describes his descent from Ódin and his slaying of Fáfnir, Brynhild recognizes him as the chosen one whom the warriors await in Valhalla, and she and Sigurd pledge their troth to each other. Brynhild warns Sigurd not to break his oath and not to be blinded by the beauty of princesses or enchanted by witch-hearted women. She also reveals that long life is not part of his fate. The two ride down from the mountain together, but Brynhild suddenly reveals that she was a queen in her former life, and she says that she will only marry Sigurd when he has won his own kingdom. She returns to her native home, and Sigurd continues his ride to the house of Gjúki. “Guðrún”  In the court of Gjúki, king of the Niflungs, the princess Gudrún awakens from a disturbing dream. She tells her mother, Grímhild, how in the dream she had caught a stag with a golden coat, but the stag was shot and killed by an arrow from a wild woman. She was given a wolf in compensation, but the wolf bathed her in her brothers’ blood. Grímhild comforts her daughter, saying that evil dreams are often a token of good things to come. Gudrún sees an armed rider approaching, and Sigurd soon arrives at the Niflung court. King Gjúki awaits him with his sons Gunnar and Högni. They welcome Sigurd when they discover he is of the house of Völsung, and he sits down to a feast with them. Gunnar takes the harp and sings of the Niflungs’ long war with the Huns, after which Sigurd sings his own song of the hoard of Fáfnir and the awakening of Brynhild. While her sons rejoice and invite Sigurd to stay with them at their court, Grímhild ponders the golden hoard and thinks of her daughter Gudrún. Sigurd becomes the companion in arms of Gunnar and Högni, and with his support they are victo-

Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún, The   151 rious in battles with the Huns and the Danes. But in the midst of his glory, Sigurd thinks about the land of the Völsungs and longs to reconquer his father’s kingdom. With the help of the Niflungs, he sails to his homeland with a great host and makes himself lord of the land. But Völsung’s ancient house is now in ruins, and when Sigurd comes there, he meets Ódin, waiting in the guise of Grímnir, who tells him that his fate is not to be found here: He is now a king in his own right, and he must go back over the sea to where his bride awaits him. A great feast is held in Gjúki’s court to celebrate Sigurd’s return, and at the feast Grímhild whispers to Gjúki that they should offer him their daughter to wed and so keep Sigurd in their court forever. Sigurd, however, is thinking only of Brynhild’s words—that she would marry him when he was king of his own lands. Grímhild, who knows the lore of witchcraft, mixes a powerful potion that will force Sigurd to forget Brynhild, and he drinks it unwittingly. When Gudrún enters the hall in her gleaming gown, Sigurd’s mind is enchanted. “Svikin Brynhildr” (“Brynhild Betrayed”)  Brynhild has been waiting year after year in her own hall, as one after another king comes riding to woo her. They find no friendly greeting, and few ever return. Ódin calls on her in the form of an ancient king who tells her that she will wed a mortal king within two years. The god then surrounds her hall with a wall of fire, and Brynhild is convinced that only the World’s chosen, Sigurd, can visit her now. In the land of the Niflungs, Sigurd marries Gudrún, and at the magnificent wedding feast, the brothers Gunnar and Högni swear oaths of eternal brotherhood with Sigurd. But there is a shadow in Sigurd’s heart. Meanwhile, word has spread of the beautiful and wealthy queen Brynhild, whom none can win to wife. Grímhild convinces Gunnar that, with Sigurd’s help and the help of her own sorcery, he can win this queen. Convinced, Gunnar rides forth with Sigurd and Högni to seek Brynhild’s hall. They arrive to find the wall of fire that separates them from Brynhild. Gunnar attempts to leap the flames, but his horse Goti refuses to make the jump.

He asks Sigurd for the loan of Grani, but Grani will allow no one but Sigurd to ride him. Through the magic of Grímhild, Sigurd is transformed into the likeness of Gunnar, and in that form, he rides Grani through the flames. Thus, Sigurd meets Brynhild in the guise of Gunnar and, as Gunnar, claims her for his bride. She is surprised that it is not Sigurd who has come, but she is bound by her oath to marry the only man who can ride through the wall of fire. That night, she and Sigurd sleep in the same bed, but they sleep with the unsheathed sword Gram between them. In the morning, while she is still asleep, Sigurd takes the ring from her finger and replaces it with the gold ring from Andvari’s hoard. He then awakens her and tells her he will ride home to prepare the wedding feast, and she promises to marry Gunnar on the appointed day. “Deild”  (“Strife”)  Brynhild arrives at the Niflung court on the appointed day and is married to Gunnar, but she is stunned to see Sigurd at the wedding feast, with Gudrún at his side. When Sigurd sees Brynhild, the effect of Grímhild’s potion wears off, and he remembers his oaths to Brynhild that he can now no longer fulfill. He sits like a carven stone, unmoving. Later, when the men have gone hunting, Gudrún and Brynhild go to wash in the Rhine. After Gudrún washes her hair, Brynhild insults her, moving deeper into the river so that the water that has washed Gudrún’s hair will not touch hers. Gudrún snaps that she is more of a queen than Brynhild, and that she is married to a greater warrior, since Sigurd has slain the dragon. Brynhild insists that the one who leaped the wall of fire is a greater man, at which the scornfully laughing Gudrún reveals that it was Sigurd, not Gunnar, who made that leap. The ring on Brynhild’s finger, she says, is the ring Andvaranaut, which Sigurd had obtained from the dragon’s hoard. Brynhild, shamed and grieving, retires to her bower in a rage. Brynhild refuses all food and drink for days, and when Gunnar tries to speak with her, she calls him a coward and curses him for making her break her oath to marry Sigurd. Sigurd is then sent to her, but she curses him and Gudrún as well, though he tells her of the potion and of the love he still bears her, but she says it is too late. Her only com-

152   Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún, The fort for him is to tell him he will at least die by the sword. Sigurd even offers to kill Gunnar and forsake Gudrún for her, but Brynhild says she will be no one’s wife, least of all his. Sigurd returns to Gudrún, whose words he blames for the situation, and says that Gunnar should go to Brynhild. Gunnar goes to her, offering her gold, but she calls him the Völsung’s servant and says she will desert him and make him a laughingstock if he does not kill Sigurd. For Sigurd, she claims, has shamed him by lying with her after he had passed the wall of fire. This lie convinces Gunnar to take Sigurd’s life, but he ponders how to do it without breaking his oath of brotherhood. Gunnar consults with Högni, who suggests that Brynhild is lying out of spite and jealousy. But Gunnar believes Brynhild and offers the additional argument that without Sigurd they would be masters of their own kingdom again, and they would gain possession of the dragon’s treasure. Högni believes that the brothers will miss Sigurd’s sword in future battles, but he yields to Gunnar’s urging. The brothers call their half brother Gotthorm, who had sworn no oath of brotherhood with Sigurd, and convince him to take on the murder of Sigurd. While Sigurd is hunting with his falcon in the forest, Gotthorm accosts him, calling him “wifemarrer” (171) and accusing him of wishing to rule the Niflungs’ lands. But Sigurd, his hand on the hilt of Gram, warns Gotthorm to leave if he values his life. Gotthorm obliges, but the next morning he sneaks into Sigurd’s bedchamber and stabs him while he lies in Gudrún’s arms. As he dies, Sigurd tells Gudrún that he never broke his oath to Gunnar or slept with Brynhild and asks Gudrún not to hold her brothers guilty for his death, placing sole responsibility on Brynhild. As Gudrún cries out in anguish, Brynhild hears the cry and laughs at her torment. She addresses Gunnar, telling him that the Niflungs are now cursed for slaying their blood brother, who was completely innocent of her charge—the sword Gram lay unsheathed between them the whole night. In addition, she tells Gunnar she will end her life, leaving him forever. Although Gunnar and others in the court try to dissuade her, Högni asserts that she is evil and the Niflungs will be

better off without her. She arms herself like a warrior and then falls upon her sword. As she dies, she makes an appeal to be burned with Sigurd on his funeral pyre, with the sword between them. The Niflungs follow her last request, and when the flames have burned their bodies, Sigurd and Brynhild make their way into Valhalla, where Sigurd is welcomed as the “World’s chosen,” and the narrator reveals that Brynhild shall arm him on the last day, when he will stand against the enemies of the gods. His presence brings hope of a new world to be rebuilt as the old world perishes. Thus, Sigurd passed, the hope of Ódin; but the story of Gudrún’s woe will last until the end of days.

Gud¯rúnarkviða en nýja, eða Dráp Niflunga (New Lay of Gudrún, or The Slaying of the Niflungs) Synopsis After Sigurd’s murder, Gudrún is unable to bear the sight of her mother or her brothers. She wanders, grief-stricken, into the forest, but even though she hates her life, she cannot bring herself to end it. In the meantime, King Gjúki has died, and as new rulers of the realm, Gunnar and Högni face an imminent threat: Atli, king of the Huns, is moving from the east into the territory of the Goths, conquering everyone in his path. He is greedy for gold and has heard of Fáfnir’s hoard; he has also heard of Gudrún’s beauty, and he desires both. Gunnar is unsure whether to face Atli on the battlefield or try to appease him with gold, and while Högni repents the loss of Sigurd, he still advises resisting Atli by force. But Grímhild sees an opportunity and suggests that they make an alliance with Atli by offering him Gudrún’s hand in marriage. They search for Gudrún and find her in the forest, where she has been weaving a tapestry that tells the story of the New Lay of Sigurd: It depicts the gold of Andvari, the hall of the Völsungs and Grímnir’s gift, Signý’s death in the hall of Siggeir, Sinfjötli’s funeral, the reforging of Gram and the slaying of the dragon, and Sigurd’s arrival at the Niflung court. Gunnar and Högni offer to pay a

Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún, The   153 large wergild (tribute) for Sigurd’s death, but Gudrún simply ignores them. Grímhild tries to win her with the power and wealth she will have as Atli’s queen, but Gudrún speaks only of the days before her marriage, when only dreams vexed her. She remembers the dream of the murdered hart and how, in the dream, her mother gave her a wolf to comfort her, one who bathed her in her brothers’ blood. It seems clear that Atli is the wolf Grímhild offers in exchange for the dead Sigurd. Although she hates them, she does not want her brothers’ blood spilled by the wolf, as the dream portends. But Grímhild persists, arguing that Brynhild, not her brothers, was responsible for Sigurd’s death. Although Gudrún still refuses to marry, Grímhild threatens to curse her if she does not yield. The unwilling Gudrún marries Atli, who is happy with her beauty and with thoughts of the dragon’s gold. After swearing oaths of perpetual friendship with her brothers, he returns to Hunland with Gudrún as his queen. Expecting some of Fáfnir’s treasure as part of the wedding alliance, Atli is disappointed when none ever arrives, and he ponders what to do about it. Gudrún is aware of his thoughts and fears what they may portend. After some years, Atli decides to send a messenger, his herald Vingi, to Gunnar’s court to summon the Niflungs to a great feast, where, Vingi says, they will receive royal gifts. Annoyed by what he sees as Atli’s arrogance, Gunnar turns to Högni and asks whether they are vassals of Atli, that they should respond to his summons. Högni is concerned, he says, because Gudrún has sent him a ring wound round with wolf hair—an evil portent that Högni reads as warning of a trap. But Gunnar says that she has sent him a wooden plank carved with runes that promise good. When Grímhild looks at the runes, however, she says that the original message—warning of danger—has been scraped off and overlaid with new runes. Gunnar accuses Vingi of guile and refuses to come. Vingi taunts Gunnar by implying that it is the woman Grímhild who really rules the Niflungs. Then he suggests that, in fact, Atli wanted Gunnar and Högni to act as regents for their nephews, Atli’s sons Erp and Eitill, who are too young to rule if anything happens to Atli. Although Högni

scoffs at this as a ruse, Gunnar declares he will go to Hunland. Högni agrees to come as well, though he asserts that this may be one time they should listen to their mother’s advice. Vingi swears that he should be hung from the gallows if he is lying, and the Niflungs ready themselves for the journey. They leave with a small party as Grímhild watches, foreseeing their deaths. The Niflungs cross forests and row across a great river. At the end of the long journey, the Niflungs arrive at Atli’s hall and sound their horns. But they discover that the gates are barred against them, and the perfidious herald Vingi reveals that they have been tricked, and that Atli plans to hang them and let the ravens eat their flesh. Högni responds that, although heralds are by custom considered untouchable, Vingi has forfeited that right through his treachery. The Niflungs hang Vingi from an oak tree before the Huns’ gates. The enraged Huns throw themselves into battle with the Niflungs, who fight so fiercely that they drive the Huns back inside the hall. Atli appears and, calling the Niflungs his vassals, tells them they can ransom their lives by giving him the dragon’s gold, which he claims is Gudrún’s by right. Gunnar refuses, and Atli claims that, as Gudrún’s husband, he will kill them in revenge for their murder of Sigurd. Gunnar is not fooled and answers that he knows it is only greed that motivates Atli. The furious battle now resumes as the Niflungs force their way up Atli’s stairs. Within the hall, Gudrún knows that her brothers are certain to be killed, and although she hates them, she cannot bear the idea of Atli’s murdering them. She calls to the Goths in Atli’s court— those whom Atli has conquered—to remember their past wrongs at Atli’s hands and to arm themselves to help the Niflungs against the Huns. The Goths respond, and with these reinforcements, the Niflungs fight more fiercely, singing songs of Germanic warriors of the past as they battle the Huns. Högni’s son Snævar is killed, but Högni battles on, grimly, and the Niflungs and their allies force their way into the hall, cornering Atli and threatening to make Gudrún a widow again. But Gudrún pleads for Atli’s life, calling on her brothers to make up for previous wrongs (their murder of Sigurd) by showing mercy to Atli. They agree to this and release

154   Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún, The Atli with scorn, telling him that he has been saved by a woman’s robes rather than his warrior’s armor. But Högni believes that in letting Atli go, they have doomed themselves. The freed Atli immediately sends riders throughout his kingdom to assemble a large host. That evening, as the Goths and Niflungs begin to fall asleep within the hall, Högni notices what looks like a line of fire approaching the hall. Gunnar rallies the men in the hall, recognizing the fire as the torches of an army come against them. After fierce fighting, the defenders of the hall are able to hold the doorways against the attackers. For five days, Atli and his forces besiege the Niflungs, until his counselor Beiti advises him to set fire to the hall to drive the Niflungs out. The fire forces Gunnar and Högni out of the hall as the ceiling threatens to fall upon them. Still fighting, Högni using his teeth when he is weaponless, the Niflungs and Goths are ultimately brought to bay. Högni is immediately thrown into a cell, but Atli brings Gunnar before Gudrún, telling her that in revenge for Sigurd, he will throw Gunnar into his serpent pit. As he follows this by trampling on Gunnar, Gudrún calls Atli an evil man but pleads for her brothers’ lives, reminding Atli that they are the uncles of his heirs. Atli is unmoved and says he will release the brothers only if they will give up the dragon’s treasure. Finally, Gunnar agrees to give Atli his share of the gold, but says that he fears Högni will never give up his half. If Atli will bring him Högni’s heart, Gunnar says, he will know that his brother is dead and so will yield all the treasure to Atli. Atli’s counselors caution him not to kill Högni, fearing the wrath of the queen. Instead, they convince him to kill the slave Hjalli. Hjalli cries out in fear, and Högni asks that they take his own heart instead, but the Huns slay the slave. When they bring Gunnar the heart of Hjalli, Gunnar scoffs, saying that Högni’s heart would never quake in such a cowardly way. Atli responds by sending his men to kill Högni. The Niflung lord laughs defiantly when the Huns cut out his heart, and when they bring it to Gunnar, he knows by its firmness that it is truly the heart of Högni. He reveals that now he alone knows the secret of where the treasure is: The gold

was cast into the Rhine on Sigurd’s death, he says, and he will never reveal its location to Atli, whom he now curses. Mad with rage, Atli orders Gunnar to be thrown naked into a pit of vipers. Gudrún, now hardened with hatred for her husband, sends Gunnar a harp, on which he plays in the pit, singing songs of the gods, of ancient heroes, and of the future fall of the Huns. For some time, the snakes are charmed, until finally one of them bites him on the chest. The sound of the harp stops, and Gudrún hears Gunnar’s death cry. When she hears it, she calls her sons, Erp and Eitill, to her. After Gunnar and Högni are burned on a funeral pyre, the Huns hold a great funeral feast for their own fallen comrades. In the midst of the feast, Gudrún enters the hall, bearing two goblets. She gives one to Atli and toasts him with the other. Atli drinks deep and laughs, for though he regrets losing gold, he has destroyed Gunnar. Then Gudrún announces that, because Atli disregarded her when she pleaded for her brothers’ lives, she has slain their children, Erp and Eitill, and that he has eaten their hearts as part of his feast and drunk their blood from goblets formed from the boys’ skulls. She has fed their bodies to the dogs. Atli collapses, falling on his face in a swoon. The Huns bring the king to his bed, but later that night, Gudrún enters the bedchamber and stabs Atli in the breast. As he dies, Atli curses Gudrún, crying that she should be burned at the stake, but she answers tauntingly that it is Atli who will burn. She has already set fire to the hall, and it goes up in flames as the dawn arrives. Once again, Gudrún wanders in madness through the world, until she comes to the sea. Here, after a long lament in which she briefly summarizes her tragic life, she tries to drown herself, but the waves reject her. Calling on Sigurd to remember their wedding vows and come for her, she casts herself into the sea once more and this time succeeds in drowning herself. Thus, Tolkien says, glory and gold end, and the night falls. He addresses his audience as “lords and maidens,” asking them to lift their hearts for this ancient “song of sorrow.” Commentary “This is the most unexpected of Tolkien’s many posthumous publications,” writes Tom Shippey in

Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún, The   155 his review of The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún— unexpected because it is based on the surviving legends of Old Norse pagan society rather than on elements of Tolkien’s personal legendarium, and unexpected because the raw brutality of the story contrasts with the kind of “fairy-story” genre Tolkien preferred. But Tolkien seems to have had two chief objectives in his retelling of the legend: First, he wanted to give modern readers a sense of the style and power of the original story; second, he wanted to try his hand at making a coherent whole out of the complex and sometimes contradictory story preserved in his sources. The problem of those sources is what Shippey refers to as the Königsproblem (that is, the chief or main problem) of all Germanic philology. As both Shippey and Christopher Tolkien report, the story of Sigurd survives in several medieval sources, most notably in 15 of the 29 poems collected in the Codex Regius, but also in the Völsunga Saga, in abbreviated form in Snorri Sturluson’s Prose Edda, in the obscure Thiðrekssaga, and in the early 13thcentury German epic the Nibelungenlied. Where possible, Tolkien followed the story in the Eddaic poems, but the missing pages of the Codex Regius leave the middle of the Sigurd story a mystery. Both Snorri and the author of the Völsunga Saga may have been familiar with the missing Eddaic poem, but their versions of the story differ. Hence the Königsproblem. Thus, the first point of discussion for these two lays is the question of what Tolkien took from his sources and how he has smoothed out the inconsistencies in the story. These questions are dealt with at great length in Christopher Tolkien’s notes on the poems, and in a recent article in the journal Mythlore, Pierre H. Berube has provided a detailed chart noting the specific source for each stanza of the poem and the elements of the original plot that Tolkien altered. Those interested in the specific details of Tolkien’s blending of sources should consult those two texts, but here is a general summary of the relationships: “Upphaf,” the first poem in the New Lay of the Völsungs, was based chiefly on the poem “Völuspa,” the Sybil’s prophecy, from the Elder Edda. Andvari’s Gold is taken chiefly from the poem “Reginsmál” in the Elder Edda,

with some additions from the Prose Edda and the Völsunga Saga. “Signý” is based on the Völsunga saga, though the name Grímnir is borrowed from the Eddaic poem “Grímnismál,” and Tolkien has omitted the four sons that Signý had with Siggeir, all of whom were killed by Sigmund and Sinfjötli. For “Dauði Sinfjötla,” Tolkien used the saga again, as well as “Frá dauði Sinfjötla,” a brief prose passage in the Elder Edda. Here, Tolkien omitted the irrelevant story of Helgi Hundingsbani, the son of Sigmund’s wife. For “Fœddr Sigurðr,” Tolkien again relied on the Völsunga Saga, though he took the name Sigrlinn (for Sigmund’s mother) from the Nibelungenlied. “Regin” is based chiefly on the saga, though Tolkien used Snorri’s Edda as well as the Eddaic poems “Reginsmál” and “Fáfnismál.” He rejects the detail of the saga that has Sigurd save a portion of Fáfnir’s heart that he later gives to Gudrún. The poem “Brynhildr” follows the saga and to some extent the Eddaic poem “Sigrdrífumál,” but this is the point at which, after the conclusion of “Sigrdrífumál,” the eight-leaf gap in the Codex Regius begins. Thus, Tolkien must rely chiefly on the Völsunga Saga for the rest of Sigurd’s story. He first deletes the story of Aslaug, the daughter of Sigurd and Brynhild in the saga, which Tolkien thought irrelevant and a later addition to the story. Further, he invents the detail of Brynhild’s refusal to marry Sigurd until he has his own kingdom: This is one of Tolkien’s major additions to the story, and it explains Sigurd’s departure from her and subsequent association with the Niflung court. The story of “Gudrún,” including the crucial detail of the magic potion that erases Sigurd’s memory of Brynhild and explains his willingness to marry Gudrún, is taken almost solely from the Völsunga Saga. Tolkien thus rejects the unflattering tradition, preserved in the Thiðrekssaga, that Sigurd married Gudrún over Brynhild simply because it was a better match. Tolkien leaves out the couple’s son, Sigmund, mentioned in the saga. Gunnar’s songs at the feast in the “Gudrún” poem are based on tales from King Heidrek’s Saga and the Eddaic poem “Atlakviða.” In “Svikin Brynhildr,” Tolkien relied again on the saga, but the reappearance of Ódin, who places a second wall of fire around Brynhild, is Tolkien’s

156   Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún, The invention, to explain why Sigurd must ride through the flames to win her a second time. For the final poem of the New Lay of the Völsungs, “Deild,” Tolkien follows the saga for the first eight stanzas, but after the quarrel of the two queens, Tolkien is once again able to rely on the Elder Edda, as the gap in that manuscript ends at about this point, in the middle of a poem called “Brot.” For the climactic scenes of the deaths of Sigurd and Brynhild, Tolkien follows the fragmentary “Brot” as well as the Eddaic poem “Sigurðarkviða en skamma.” He thus rejects the tradition, preserved in the Nibelungenlied, that Sigurd was killed outdoors. He rejects, as well, the Völsunga Saga’s addition that Gudrún bore Sigurd a posthumous daughter named Swanhild. As the story continues into the New Lay of Gudrún, Tolkien relies most heavily on the two Eddaic poems “Atlakviða” and “Atlamál,” though he considered the “Atlakviða” to be more authoritative, preserving an older tradition. Tolkien rejects the detail of Grímhild giving Gudrún a magic potion to get her to agree to the marriage with Atli as a redundant later addition. In following the Eddaic poems, Tolkien also rejects the tradition preserved in the Nibelungenlied and the Thiðrekssaga that makes Gudrún complicit in the plot to kill her brothers. The queen’s call to the Goths in Atli’s court to help the Niflungs is Tolkien’s own invention, as is Gudrún’s plea to her brothers to have mercy on Atli. For details of the final battle, Tolkien does rely on the Nibelungenlied and on the Old English Fight at Finnsburg. But once the brothers are captured, Tolkien returns to the Eddaic sources, “Atlakviða” and “Atlamál.” For the final elements of the story, Gudrún’s suicide, Tolkien uses the poem “Gudrúnarkvöt” from the Elder Edda. Such a brief summary gives an overall view of how Tolkien wove his various sources into a coherent whole and what details he chose to add or to leave out. But perhaps the most important addition he made in the sources was the near apotheosis of Sigurd and the role he is projected to play in the ultimate doom of the gods. This innovation gives Tolkien’s Lay of the Völsungs a unified story arc, transforming it from a series of loosely related

snippets and giving the whole story an underlying purpose. As Tolkien tells it, the prophetess in “Upphaf” foresees that on the day of doom for the gods, the “World’s chosen,” from the seed of Ódin, will finally defeat the forces of evil, and a new world would rise from the ashes of the old. Thus, Valhalla is created to receive all of the greatest warriors, and thus Ódin creates a line of his own descendants, the Völsungs, in the mortal world. When Völsung welcomes Sinfjötli to Valhalla, Tolkien reminds the reader that they are still awaiting the “World’s chosen.” The story comes full circle when Brynhild and Sigurd arrive, and he is welcomed as the chosen one. Pierre Berube sees this innovation as Tolkien’s “Christianizing” the legend, turning Sigurd into a kind of savior or Christ figure (47). Certainly there are some similarities between Sigurd and Christ— the Norse warrior, after all, is the descendant of a god, is the gods’ chosen and will be responsible for a new world after the last battle. But these resemblances are fairly superficial. Ódin is not the Christian God, nor is Sigurd his only Son. Sigurd dies, but he is no martyr, and his death has nothing to do with the salvation of human souls. The Norse Ragnarök is no Christian Armageddon, though it does pit the gods against the forces of evil. Sigurd will bring no immortality to the soul; she will only ensure that there will still be a physical world for humans to live in after the death of the gods. Tolkien, devout Catholic that he was, would have seen no convincing similarities in the two figures, and his famous dislike of allegory makes it unlikely that he intended Sigurd to “represent” Christ in any deliberate way. The real purpose of Tolkien’s invention of Sigurd as the “World’s chosen” is to establish a unifying motif for the entire Völsung legend. Tolkien’s familiarity with that legend, and the legend of the Burgundians or Niflungs, in all of its forms, is clear in the skillful blending of texts in his retelling of the story. The legend was so much a part of his imagination that many of the narrative’s elements reappear in Tolkien’s own works. Most obviously, Sigurd’s slaying of Fáfnir is the model for Túrin Turambar’s slaying of Glaurung in The Children of Húrin. Even Túrin’s method of slaying the dragon—waiting in a ditch to strike him from

Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún, The   157 below in his soft underbelly—is borrowed from Sigurd’s successful attack on Fáfnir. The death of Smaug in The Hobbit, when Bard’s arrow pierces the unprotected spot on the dragon’s belly, is also inspired by Sigurd’s story. The dangerous conversations that Tolkien’s heroes have with dragons—as Túrin’s with Glaurung, or Bilbo’s with Smaug— also have their seeds in the Sigurd legend, as his reluctance to reveal his name to the dying Fáfnir in Tolkien’s version of the story illustrates. Other motifs that Tolkien borrows include the withered tree that stands in the Völsungs’ hall when Sigurd returns to reconquer his land. This is surely the inspiration for the withered tree that stands in the court of Minas Tirith until the return of the King in The Lord of the Rings. Further, Sigmund’s broken sword, that is restored to his heir Sigurd and reforged, is clearly the original of Elendil the Tall’s sword Narsil, reforged for his heir Aragorn in The Lord of the Rings. Certainly the depiction of Ódin as a bearded old man with great powers who wanders the earth is reminiscent of the figure of Gandalf, as, to a lesser degree, the warrior maiden, the Valkyrie Brynhild, suggests the character of Éowyn, shield-maiden of Rohan in The Lord of the Rings. Smaller motifs appear as well. The birds that speak to Sigurd after he tastes the heart of Fáfnir recall the birds that carry the message of Smaug’s weak spot to Bard in The Hobbit. The incest of Sigmund and Signý foreshadows that of Túrin and Nienor in The Children of Húrin. And, of course, Andvari’s ring, the most visible part of the dragon hoard on which the curse is laid, may have had some role in Tolkien’s invention of the One Ring. On a deeper level, however, perhaps the most significant aspect of this greatest of Norse myths for Tolkien’s own work is that quality Tolkien referred to in his famous Beowulf essay as the Northern theory of courage: the willingness, even the necessity, to continue fighting in a lost cause even to the death. Lasting glory only comes with the heroic and unflinching defense against impossible odds. This is manifested most clearly in the legend by the Niflungs’ struggle against the overwhelming force of Atli’s host and, memorably, in Högni’s defiant laughter as his heart is cut from his bosom. This is

precisely the spirit that lies behind the last stand of the Rohirrim at Helm’s Deep in The Two Towers, or the struggle of the badly outnumbered western alliance at the Black Gate of Mordor in The Return of the King. It is the force that strengthens Frodo and Sam as they struggle with their burden toward Mount Doom, even though they have lost any real hope of getting there and have abandoned the notion of getting away from Mordor once their impossible deed is done. For Tolkien, this very notion of the Northern heroic code is doubtless the chief theme of the pair of lays that make up The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún. Sigurd’s immortality is not only in Valhalla and in the ultimate survival of Ragnarök. It is also in the poems and sagas that have survived celebrating his courage in the mortal world. The manner in which Gunnar and Högni meet their deaths ensures that their names will not die, but that they will be remembered in songs like those Gunnar sings during the battle in the hall and during his ordeal in the snake pit. Thus, Tolkien is able to say at the end of his work that the story will be known “till the end of days.” Such days are now over, and the heroic age is past, but the legend of their courage may still inspire us: Thus glory endeth, and gold fadeth, on noise and clamours the night falleth. Lift up your hearts, lords and maidens for the song of sorrow that was sung of old. (308)

Two other themes also seem to be important to Tolkien in this work, both of which are inherent in the original myth. The first is the sacredness of oaths. At a time when one’s integrity was determined by his truth and loyalty, the breaking of an oath was regarded as a significantly heinous act. Here, the oaths of eternal brotherhood sworn between Gunnar, Högni, and Sigurd is the backdrop to the Niflungs’ conspiracy to Sigurd’s murder. Even though they technically try to keep their oath by having their half brother do the actual murder, Högni certainly recognizes this as a sham and is completely accurate in foreseeing how much

158   Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún, The they will regret this action—for, as it turns out, Sigurd is not present to help the brothers in their war with Atli. As for Atli, he seems never to have given a second thought to his oath of friendship sworn to the Niflungs, and thus, on an ethical scale, is clearly more culpable than the brothers. But the whole disastrous story ultimately stems from Sigurd’s broken oath to Brynhild and Brynhild’s own broken oath to marry only the “World’s chosen.” Even though it is Grímhild’s magic potion that causes Sigurd’s betrayal, he dies, as does Brynhild, as a result. Oath breaking is a terrible evil in the world Tolkien creates. Oath breaking is particularly serious in marriage. The theme of marriage—in particular the importance of marrying the appropriate spouse—is pervasive in The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún. Some marriages—the intended marriage of Sigurd and Brynhild, for instance—seem to be ordained by the gods, and their consummation is essential to the welfare of human society. But an imprudent marriage, or one brought about through coercion, trickery, or foolishness, harms not only the participants but their children, families, and wider societies. This, at least, is how relationships develop through The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún. The central marriages of the legend—Sigurd’s to Gudrún and Gunnar’s to Brynhild—end disastrously because that is the manner in which they began. Brynhild’s oath and Ódin’s plans clearly intended Brynhild for Sigurd, and that should have been the marriage that took place. But Grímhild’s meddling, both with her memory-sapping potion and her shape-changing charms, caused the wrong couplings to occur, leading to the untimely deaths of Sigurd and Brynhild, the dissolution of both marriages, and the disruption of Burgundian society. When the marriage bond is further sullied by Grímhild’s insistence on Gudrún’s remarriage to Atli for the purpose of appeasing his military threat and feeding his lust and greed, the result is ultimately the deaths of Gudrún’s brothers, Atli’s sons, and Atli himself, followed, ultimately, by Gudrún’s suicide. The lesser marriages in the legend follow this same pattern. It is part of Ódin’s overall plan to marry his descendant Völsung to a Valkyrie, and the result of this union is the great warrior Sig-

mund. Signý’s misgivings about her marriage to Siggeir are ignored by her father and brother, and the result is the Gautish massacre of Sigmund’s brothers. Sigmund’s own marriage forced on a captive woman won in the wars is disastrous, resulting in his son’s death. Another marriage, which may seem at first ill-advised, is Sigmund’s late marriage to the young beauty Sigrlinn. Society as a whole deems it an inappropriate marriage, a fact underscored when the seven kings’ sons make war on Sigmund. The fact that Sigmund is killed by Ódin himself in the resulting war may suggest that this marriage was ill-advised. But the marriage was the wish of both Sigmund and Sigrlinn, and it results in the birth of Sigurd, the dragon slayer and the “World’s chosen.” Sigmund’s death was a part of Ódin’s plan all along, for he is less concerned with the politics of the human world than he is with peopling Valhalla with heroes. There should be no impediments, Tolkien seems to suggest, to the marriage of true minds. Nor should marriages be manipulated for selfish ends by others who seek to override the couples’ own wishes. No good comes of such marriages. Beyond its themes, a few words should be devoted to the poetry of Tolkien’s narrative. The overall rules of the Old Norse fornyrðislag are given in the introduction above, but it may be worthwhile to consider the effects of that style in Tolkien’s hands. Shippey discusses some of these effects in his review, calling some of the verses obscure and difficult to follow. This is the result, he says, of “concision taken to its limits.” The brief parallel clauses and phrases will have what Shippey calls “unspoken connections” that must be supplied by the reader, who may at times find them difficult to determine. When Brynhild contemplates her situation after learning that it was Sigurd, not her husband, Gunnar, who rode to her through the flames, and she asserts “Mine own must I have / or anguish suffer, / or suffer anguish / Sigurd losing” (157), the rhetorical device she uses is chiasmus— corresponding pairs arranged in inverted order—a device, as Shippey points out, quite common in Old Norse poetry, but in this case, Shippey says, “the exact nature of Brynhild’s dilemma escapes me.” It seems probable that, since Brynhild has just

Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún, The   159 referred to “the fates that forged our days” (157), it is her own fate that she refers to, so that she will suffer anguish if she defies her fate as it has now worked itself out, or she will suffer anguish in losing Sigurd. She has only anguish to look forward to in either case. But there is no question that this highly allusive, suggestive, and concise poetry raises many unanswered questions. Shippey points to the passage in which servants return to Signý to report what they have found in the forest where Sigmund was bound: “she-wolf lying / torn and tongueless / by the tree riven” (82). For a reader to know that Signý had smeared Sigmund’s mouth with honey, and that Sigmund had bitten out the wolf’s tongue when she came to taste his mouth, one must read Christopher Tolkien’s commentary, as Shippey notes—or one must already be familiar with the legend, as the first audiences for Tolkien’s sources would have been. When Tolkien tries to recreate that poetry for a modern audience, however, that audience of readers will have a more difficult time with such indeterminate stanzas. Other aspects of Old Norse style find their way into Tolkien’s poetry. The sententious nature of Old Germanic poetry in general finds its way into passages like Völsung’s advice to Signý that “Fate none can flee. / Faith man can hold” (78). Tolkien also occasionally makes use of litotes, the ironic understatement common to Old English as well as Old Norse. “Laughter she knew not,” he says of Gudrún when she is married to Atli (95). More often he employs kenning, the truncated metaphor that was the most common of the figures of speech in Old Norse poetry. When Sigmund battles the seven sons of kings that have come to contest his marriage to Sigrlinn, Tolkien says, “Fate him fended / fearless striding / with dew of battle / dyed to shoulder” (94). Blood is, of course, the “dew of battle,” but in a kenning, the literal term is never stated, and the figurative term (the dew) is in the form of a possessive (it is the dew of battle). Thus, later, during the Niflungs’ battle against the Huns, Tolkien says that “the smiths of battle / smote the anvils,” comparing warriors striking armor with swords or battle-axes to blacksmiths beating anvils with hammers.

Finally, the aspect of Old Norse poetry that Tolkien seems to have admired most is what he calls, in his lecture on the Elder Edda included as part of the introduction to this text, its “attempt to hit you in the eye” (17). The strophic form of Norse verse (as opposed to the slow, continuous compounded effect of Old English poetry) is specifically concerned, Tolkien says, “with the selection of the dramatic and forcible moment” (20). There are a remarkable string of such moments in these two lays. The spectacular feat of Sigurd’s leaping the ring of fire surrounding Brynhild is one kind of dramatic moment captured by Tolkien’s lines “Greyfell Grani / glory seeking, / leaped the lightning / lightning sinewed” (119). A different kind of forceful moment can be seen when Högni is finally captured by the Huns: “Last fought Högni / alone hopeless; / his teeth tore them / as they tied him down” (290). Again, a deeper kind of moment—horrible and dramatic—is found in the lines describing Högni’s death: “Loudly laughed he / at life’s ending, / when knife was come / to Niflung lord. / The heart they cut / from Högni’s bosom; / to Gunnar bore it / on golden dish” (295). Thus, Tolkien’s most memorable and dramatic lines tend to portray the kind of heroic code, the courage in the face of impossible odds, that he saw manifested in Old Germanic literature in general. Characters Atli  King of the Huns, Atli (based on the historical Atilla) is depicted in Tolkien’s text as a fierce warrior king, driven by a desire for the reputedly beautiful Gudrún and by his greed for the gold of the dragon’s hoard. He is also characterized by a barbaric cruelty. His hosts seem unstoppable as they sweep westward, and the danger of their invasions causes the Niflungs to debate how best to meet his challenge. It is Grímhild who suggests that the Niflungs, in the path of Atli’s conquests, should hold out the beautiful Gudrún as an enticement for Atli to become their ally, a plan that works well, although Atli seems to have expected the dragon’s treasure to come with his bride. Atli apparently assumed that, as Sigurd’s widow, Gudrún would have inherited Fáfnir’s gold. When this does not materialize, Atli sends word

160   Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún, The to her brothers to come to a feast in his hall, but it is a trap in which he plans to capture Gunnar and Högni and force them to give him the gold. Tolkien makes Atli even less sympathetic than his sources do when he adds the incident of the Niflungs’ sparing of Atli, followed by his immediate plans to destroy them in return for their mercy. His cruelty takes the form of cutting out the heart of Högni and throwing Gunnar into a pit of vipers, but Gudrún’s revenge—the death of his sons and his unwitting cannibalism of them—seems almost too horrible even for him. He dies a well-deserved death at the hands of his wife. Brynhild  Brynhild is a Valkyrie—a warrior woman with a superhuman status, employed by the chief Norse god Ódin to “choose” the slain warriors to people Valhalla, to aid the gods in their final battle with the forces of evil. Brynhild, having disobeyed Ódin, is to be punished by being wed to a mortal. In Tolkien’s text, Bryhild has, therefore, vowed to be married only to the “World’s chosen”—the dragonslaying warrior who will be the survivor of the last battle. Ódin has accordingly placed her asleep behind a wall of flames on the top of a mountain, so that only the greatest warrior can reach her. This, of course, is Sigurd, who leaps the flames and awakens her. The two exchange pledges, but Bryhild herself makes the mistake of postponing their marriage, urging Sigurd to gain a kingdom before actually marrying her. At this point, Brynhild returns to her own kingdom—presumably the one she had held before becoming a Valkyrie. Here, she is the object of many suitors, all of whom she turns away, but Ódin visits her and tells her that she will be married to a mortal king within two years. Once again, he surrounds her hall with fire. Once again, only Sigurd can leap the flames, but (having been robbed of his memory through Grímhild’s enchantment) he does so in the shape of Gunnar, and the confused Brynhild pledges herself to marry Gunnar. When Brynhild finds she has been duped and betrayed, her fury is of precisely the sort one would expect from a Valkyrie. Although in Tolkien’s version Sigurd, his memory returned, is willing to leave Gudrún and be with her, Brynhild will settle for

nothing short of complete revenge on Sigurd for having broken his oath, and on Gudrún for having married her betrothed. Her lie to Gunnar, claiming that Sigurd has slept with her, forces Gunnar to arrange the death of Sigurd, and when Brynhild has accomplished her revenge on both Sigurd and Gudrún through Sigurd’s murder, she falls on her own sword. Tolkien provides an ending for Brynhild and Sigurd that places them together in Valhalla, awaiting the last battle—so that, in fact, Brynhild gets her will in the end. Brynhild is a strong and violent character, all the more striking for being a woman. Her desire for revenge is, in fact, fairly common in Norse literature and culture, although generally revenge was sought for the death of one’s kinsman or lord. Brynhild is unusual in seeking revenge so intensely for a personal slight. Grímhild  The queen of the Niflungs, Grímhild is married to Gjúki and is clearly the power behind the throne. While Tolkien never presents the king taking any action, Grímhild is consistently behind most of the developments in the story. It is Grímhild who brings about Sigurd’s marriage to Gudrún by giving him the potion that wipes Brynhild from his memory. It is Grímhild who orchestrates Gunnar’s marriage to Brynhild by working the spell that disguises Sigurd as Gunnar. Grímhild, who seems to see things far more clearly than Gunnar does, is able to recognize that the purported runic message from Gudrún has been altered and should not be trusted. Högni, the son who most takes after her, is quick to agree with her assessment, but the impetuous Gunnar disregards their advice. But Grímhild is not afraid to use her children to achieve ends that may benefit the royal family as a whole, marrying Gudrún off first to Sigurd and then to Atli, without taking Gudrún’s own preferences into account. Tolkien omits the portion of the myth that depicts her using another memory potion on Gudrún, preferring to portray her threatening Gudrún with a curse in order to gain her consent. Grímhild is ruthless, practiced in the black arts, and possessed of foresight—which enables her to recognize that when her sons leave the Niflungs’ hall, they are going to their deaths.

Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún, The   161 Gunnar  The eldest of the Niflung brothers, Gunnar is the heir of Gjúki and becomes king of the Burgundians upon his father’s death. He takes an oath of eternal brotherhood with Sigurd, which he subsequently breaks when he believes that Sigurd has slept with Brynhild. After Sigurd’s death, he and his brother, Högni, take charge of Sigurd’s treasure hoard. He is complicit in Grímhild’s scheme to marry Gudrún to Atli, and travels to the Huns’ hall, only to be attacked and ultimately captured by Atli. When threatened with death if he does not reveal the location of the dragon’s treasure, Gunnar insists that Högni be killed before he will reveal the treasure’s location, since Högni will never give up his half of the treasure. When he sees the heart of Högni brought before him, Gunnar, now certain that no one else can ever reveal the treasure’s location, refuses to talk. Atli casts him into a pit of serpents, where he is killed by the bite of a poisonous snake. As Tolkien presents him, Gunnar is a character who is bold but rash and easily manipulated. His courage is unquestioned: he fights beside Sigurd and Högni in wars that spread the influence and authority of the Burgundians. He does not shrink from overwhelming odds in fighting Atli and his Huns. He faces certain death rather than give in to Atli’s demands that he reveal the location of the treasure, and he dies without complaint, but he lacks Höogni’s judgment. When Brynhild lies to him about her relationship with Sigurd and threatens him with shame, Gunnar decides he must take revenge, despite Högni’s warning. When Vingi, Atli’s lying messenger, remarks that Burgundy is apparently governed by a woman as it appears that Gunnar will take Grímhild’s warning to heart, Gunnar immediately relents and recklessly announces he is coming, even though both he and Högni suspect a trap. When the Niflungs and the Goths have defeated the Huns and Atli is at their mercy, Gunnar listens to Gudrún, who pleads for her husband’s life, and he shows Atli mercy, even though he knows Atli will not keep the peace. But on the positive side, Gunnar is well versed in ancient lore, and when he is first introduced, welcoming Sigurd to the Niflung court, Gunnar spends time with the harp, singing old heroic lays.

He sings, as well, during the first battle with the Huns, recalling the feats of old Gothic heroes when the Goths join the Niflungs in the battle. Finally, when Gudrún gives him a harp in the snake pit, Gunnar spends the last moments of his life singing ancient heroic lays, charming the serpents until one bites him. Thus, he dies the death of a Norse warrior, singing rather than despairing in the face of imminent death. Gudrún  Through most of the narrative in both of Tolkien’s lays, Gudrún is little more than a pawn in the schemes of her mother, Grímhild, and later of her second husband, Atli. The first we see of her, she is revealing to her mother the content of a prophetic dream, in which she loves a stag that is slain by her brothers and is then given a wolf that spills her brothers’ blood. Grímhild convinces her that the dream is not significant, then marries her to Sigurd. While this marriage seems to be something Gudrún wants and is happy with, nothing in the poem suggests that she has been consulted. She makes a fatal mistake when, goaded by Brynhild, she reveals that it was Sigurd, not Gunnar, who leapt the wall of fire to win the Valkyrie, and therefore Gudrún, not Brynhild, was married to the “World’s chosen.” Sigurd’s murder in their own bed drives Gudrún into despair and madness. Her wandering alone in the forest was a conventional medieval image of madness, familiar to Tolkien from such works as the Middle English verse romance Sir Orfeo, which Tolkien later translated into modern English verse. Like her brother Gunnar, Gudrún can be manipulated by her mother, and Grímhild (who has been content to leave her alone in the woods up to this point) persuades Gudrún to marry Atli, using threats when her cajoling fails to work. Gudrún attempts to send warnings to the Niflungs through the ring she sends to Högni and the runic tablet that is altered, but she fails to prevent their coming to Hunland. She does plead for the life of her new husband, even though the marriage does not seem to be a happy one. Presumably, she has no desire to be a widow twice. This is the first time in the story that Gudrún acts of her own will, and she is successful in persuading her brothers to spare

162   Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún, The Atli’s life. It turns out to be a disastrous act, since Atli returns to kill both of her brothers and, unlike them, will not listen to her pleas to spare their lives. This is the point at which the old Gudrún—the pliable young woman whose desire is to please—disappears. Once again, she is plunged into a kind of madness, this time a violent state, killing her own children, feeding them to her husband and to the dogs, and making drinking vessels of their skulls. Once she has horrified even the barbarous Atli with her cruelty, she kills him with her own hands and finally takes her own life. Högni  The son of Gjúki, king of the Burgundians or Niflungs, Högni is the brother and companion of Gunnar, and he becomes his brother’s closest adviser when the latter becomes the Niflung king. With Gunnar, Högni swears eternal brotherhood with Sigurd, and so he is equally guilty when the two of them plot Sigurd’s death. Högni, however, is a foil to Gunnar in the sense that, whenever Gunnar is about to make a questionable decision, Högni always provides a commonsense counterpoint that Gunnar fails to listen to. When Brynhild accuses Sigurd of sleeping with her, Högni is of the opinion that she is lying, though Gunnar believes her. When Gunnar decides to take Sigurd’s life, Högni correctly remarks that the Niflungs are sure to miss Sigurd’s sword in the future. When Gunnar decides to disregard his mother’s advice and go to Atli’s court with the lying herald Vingi, Högni remarks that perhaps they should listen to their mother this time. In every case, Högni is right and Gunnar is wrong. In this way, Högni seems to be the poet’s device for foreshadowing problems that will occur as a result of Gunnar’s actions. Högni is also remarkable for his courage. He is in many ways the epitome of the Norse warrior. He has a grim streak of pessimism, always expecting the worst, but he fights without ceasing even when his cause is completely lost. Atli’s soldiers must completely overpower him and imprison him, for he will not stop fighting, even when he has no weapons, fighting with his teeth when he has nothing else. Finally, knowing that his death is waiting, he volunteers to give up his own life rather than allow the Huns to kill the slave Hjalli. When they

do come to cut out his heart, Högni laughs in scorn and defiance. His death is the most remarkable and memorable of all the deaths in Tolkien’s lays, and the one that most embodies the Norse code of courage. Sigmund  Sigmund is the son of Völsung, descendant of Ódin, and father of Sigurd the dragon slayer. At the wedding feast of his twin sister, Signý, and Siggeir, king of the Gauts, Sigmund angers Siggeir by pulling a sword out of the tree in the middle of the Völsungs’ hall where it has been placed by Ódin. Siggeir wants the sword for himself, but Sigmund denies him. With his father and his nine brothers, Sigmund is attacked upon visiting Gautland. He is then tied up in the woods, where his brothers are devoured nightly by a she-wolf. He destroys the wolf by biting out its tongue after Signý has smeared honey on his mouth to attract it, and when he goes into hiding, his sister visits him and sleeps with him in the form of an elf maiden. She subsequently gives birth to his son, Sinfjötli. When Sinfjötli grows up, he seeks Sigmund out in his cave, bringing him the sword he had initially pulled from the tree. In the form of werewolves, Sigmund and Sinfjötli spend some years plundering Gautland, until, one night, they sneak into Siggeir’s hall, slaying the watchmen and setting fire to the hall. When they call for Signý to come with them to escape the flames, she refuses and goes back into the hall to burn with her husband. Sigmund rules the lands of the Völsungs with his son, Sinfjötli, and they are successful in numerous wars with neighboring tribes. Sigmund marries a woman taken captive in one of these wars; she wants to kill Sinfjötli because he had killed her father in battle. Sigmund, who cannot be harmed by poison, twice thwarts her by drinking the poison, but the third time she is successful in getting Sinfjötli to drink his death. Later, Sigmund marries the beautiful young princess Sigrlinn, but seven sons of kings who were suitors for the maiden make war on him. During the battle, Sigmund meets the god Ódin in disguise, who strikes him down, breaking his sword. As Sigmund dies, he tells Sigrlinn, pregnant with his son, to save the shards of the sword, which he has named Gram, and give them to the boy.

Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún, The   163 Sigmund is a great warrior, though he is not the “World’s chosen.” The vengeance he takes on Siggeir is precisely the sort of action expected, even required, of a Norse warrior against someone who has killed his father and brothers, and Sigmund fulfils this obligation with appropriate ferocity. He does try to prevent his foreign wife from taking revenge against his son, but is unsuccessful. He accepts his death like a true warrior as well, telling Sigrlinn that Ódin has called him to Valhalla. He leaves the world as boldly as he lived in it. Signý  The twin sister of Sigmund and the daughter of Völsung, Signý is also a descendant of Ódin and therefore displays fierce warrior instincts, even though she is a woman. Married against her will to a king she cannot love—one who, despite her pleas, leaves her 10 brothers to be devoured by a wolf—Signý becomes an active force in the revenge that must be undertaken, as a sacred obligation, against the one who destroyed her father and her family—the man who happens to be her own husband. Since Sigmund has been bereft of all allies, and cannot take on Siggeir and his entire Gautish army alone, Signý sleeps with her brother to provide another Völsung, another descendant of Ódin, to assist Sigmund in his revenge. Thus, Sinfjötli is born. In a surprising turn of events, however, Signý chooses in the end to die with her husband rather than escape with her brother and son. In terms of the overall narrative of Tolkien’s lays, Signý can be seen as a foil to other women in the story, particularly to the chief female protagonist, Gudrún. Like Gudrún, Signý is forced to marry against her will, and like Gudrún, her husband kills her brothers. Signý sets in motion the events that will allow Sigmund to take revenge for his murdered family members. Gudrún, bereft of all her family, must take on the role of avenger herself. Both successfully achieve vengeance, but whereas Gudrún destroys her sons and husband with her own hands, avenging her brothers even though she hated them for their murder of Sigurd, Signý chooses to recognize that she also has obligations to her husband. Both heroines kill themselves in the end, but Signý chooses to die with her husband, while Gudrún wants no part of hers—although she

dies thinking of her first husband, the one she truly loved. The situations of the two women raise questions about the importance of conjugal v. consanguineous relationships among the Norse peoples. Sigurd  Sigurd is the greatest of all Norse heroes, the hero of the several versions of the Niflung legend. Tolkien makes him the “World’s chosen”—the warrior, descended from Ódin, destined to enter Valhalla and fight alongside the gods in the last battle, from which, through his prowess, a new world will be born. His career on earth, as far as Tolkien’s story is concerned, is therefore lived chiefly for the purpose of preparing him for his transcendent destiny. Thus, if his life seems a failure on earth, that is immaterial. It is his ultimate purpose in the next world that is truly important. Sigurd is fostered by the dwarf Regin, a blacksmith, who persuades him to help kill the dwarf’s brother Fáfnir, who has been transformed into a dragon. To make this possible, the smith must reforge the shards of Sigmund’s sword, Gram. Sigurd also receives the gift of the steed Grani from a disguised Ódin. He successfully kills the dragon, and then, having tasted the dragon’s heart, he is warned by the birds to beware of Regin, whom he ultimately kills. Subsequently, Sigurd rides to the top of mountain Hindarfell, finds the Valkyrie Brynhild sleeping within a ring of fire, and awakens her. The two pledge their faith to each other, but Sigurd must go off to achieve his own kingdom before Brynhild will marry him. Thus far, all of the events of Sigurd’s life—the reforging of the sword, the slaying of Fáfnir, the supernatural warning about Regin, the ride across the flames on Grani—point to some great destiny that he is poised to fulfill, presumably with his marriage to the Valkyrie Brynhild, which will cement his role as the “World’s chosen,” since she has been promised the greatest warrior in the world as her mate. Grímhild’s magic, however, tampers with that destiny, causing Sigurd to forget Brynhild and marry Gudrún, and later to disguise Sigurd as Gunnar so that he wins the hand of Brynhild, not for himself but for his Niflung brother-in-law. Even so, Sigurd offers Brynhild the option of forsaking their marriages and ­honoring

164   Letters from Father Christmas their original oaths, but when she refuses, he returns to Gudrún. Unconquerable on the field of battle, Sigurd can only be slain treacherously, while in bed with Gudrún. He is killed by the agent of his wife’s brothers, who thereby break their oath of eternal brotherhood they had sworn to Sigurd. Upon his death, however, Sigurd is welcomed into Valhalla by his ancestors, who recognize him as the “World’s chosen.” Tolkien has made Sigurd a warrior whose valor and prowess are without equal. But he has also removed any details from his sources that would place Sigurd on shaky ground morally. In Thiðrekssaga, Sigurd is presented as marrying Gudrún simply because it is a more advantageous match than Brynhild’s. Such petty concerns are beneath Tolkien’s Sigurd, and thus he adopts the device of the magic potion. Further, in the Völsunga Saga, Sigurd and Brynhild have a child, Aslaug. Since Tolkien is at pains to make it clear that Sigurd never violated Brynhild’s purity—that the sword Gram lies between them at night—he eliminates the child, as he also eliminates the son, Sigmund, that the Völsunga Saga says Sigurd has with Gudrún. The child’s existence would have complicated Sigurd’s offer to dissolve his marriage and keep his original oath to Brynhild. Thus, Tolkien presents Sigurd as purely as he can, so that of all the warriors in the legend, he is the one deserving of the epithet “World’s chosen.” Further Reading Berube, Pierre H. “Tolkien’s Sigurd & Gudrún: Summary, Sources, & Analogs. Mythlore 28, nos. 1–2 (Fall/Winter 2009): 45–76. Flood, Alison. “Tolkien Breaks Silence Over JRR’s ‘Fierce, Passionate’ Poem,” Guardian, 5 May 2009. Available online. URL: www.guardian.co.uk/ books/2009/may/04/jrr-tolkien-sigurd-gudrunpoem. Accessed July 10, 2010. Hand, Elizabeth. “That Familiar Ring.” Washington Post, 5 May 2009. Available online. URL: www.washing tonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/04/ AR2009050403462.html. Accessed July 10, 2010. Roberts, Adam. “The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún by J. R. R. Tolkien.” Strange Horizons, 6 July 2009. Available online. URL: www.strangehorizons.com/

reviews/2009/07/the_legend_of_s.shtml. Accessed July 10, 2010. Shippey, Tom. “Tolkien Out-Wagner’s Wagner.” Times Literary Supplement, 6 May 2009. Available online. URL: entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_ entertainment/the_tls/article6232731.ece. Accessed July 10, 2010. Tolkien, J. R. R. The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún. Edited by Christopher Tolkien. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2009. ———. The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien. Edited by Humphrey Carpenter. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1981.

Letters from Father Christmas (Father Christmas Letters) 

(1976) From 1920 until 1943, Tolkien wrote annual letters to his children in which, as Father Christmas, he answered their own letters and told them stories about life at the North Pole. The letters began when his eldest son, John Francis Reuel Tolkien, was three years old, and continued until his youngest child, Priscilla Mary Reuel Tolkien, was 14. The letters begin very simply as brief notes suitable for very young children, but they become more complex, introducing characters such as Father Christmas’s clumsy helper, the North Polar Bear, the Man in the Moon, the elf Ilbereth, as well as other elves and goblins. As the children grew older, Tolkien also included details concerning Father Christmas’s origins in pagan rather than Christian celebrations of the winter solstice, as well as snippets of imaginary elvish and goblin languages. In addition to the letters, Tolkien included his own color drawings, purportedly by Father Christmas and sometimes the Polar Bear, as well as hand-drawn North Pole stamps on the envelopes. Humphrey Carpenter describes several ways in which each letter might arrive: At first it might be left on the fireplace with a snowy footprint left behind to indicate Father Christmas had called. Later, one of the local postmen would be brought into the game and would deliver the letters, so that

Letters from Father Christmas   165 the children could not help but believe they were real. According to Carpenter, even when the older children deduced the true author of the letters, they never spoiled the game for the younger ones (164). Tolkien’s children saved their father’s letters and drawings over the years, and after Tolkien’s death in 1973, his daughter-in-law, Baillie Tolkien (second wife of Christopher) collected and edited the letters, publishing them with Allen & Unwin as Father Christmas Letters in 1976. That same year, they were published by Houghton Mifflin in the United States and Methuen in Canada. Facsimiles of the letters themselves, showing Father Christmas’s thin, shaky handwriting as well as the Polar Bear’s heavy printing, were reproduced in color along with transcriptions of the letters and color reproductions of the charming illustrations, which are detailed and colorful, whimsical, stylized, and amusing. The first edition, however, had left out some of Tolkien’s letters and illustrations, and a second edition was published in 1999, including the previously unprinted letters and pictures. The second edition also retitled the collection Letters from Father Christmas. It is from that edition that citations are drawn in the following discussion. Synopsis The first letter is dated December 22, 1920, and lists a return address of “The Christmas House, North Pole.” In it, Tolkien includes a color drawing of Father Christmas with a large bag slung on his back, and another of his house, which looks much like a large, well-lighted igloo surrounded by pointed towers. The second letter comes in 1923, and Father Christmas here hopes that John will enjoy the Lotts Bricks. He sends love to baby Michael (see Tolkien, Michael Hilary Reuel), and hopes that John can read his shaky handwriting, saying he is 1924— no, 1927 years old. In 1924, Tolkien wrote two very short letters, dated Christmas Eve—one to John and one to Michael. In each, he hopes they will enjoy the gift he has brought them (an engine for Michael, a “station” for John), and says he is very busy with new stockings to fill. In the letter for 1925, Tolkien begins to devote more time to the letters and introduces more

details about Father Christmas’s life. This letter, sent from the “Cliff House, Top of the World, near the North Pole,” says that some gifts have been spoiled, that he has been forced to move house very close to Christmas, and that he does not have the North Polar Bear to help him, so he must write just one letter between the two boys. He goes on to tell a story about how his hood blew off and was caught on the top of the North Pole, and how the Great Bear climbed the pole to get it but fell down through the roof of his house, putting out the fires and flooding the basement with snow, ruining many presents. He includes pictures of his ruined house and his new Cliff House. There is a P.S. from the “Great (Polar) Bear,” who lives with Father Christmas and asks to be excused for his thick writing because he has a fat paw. He includes “magic wishing crackers” with the letter. From this point the letters and the stories they tell become much more complex. In the letter for 1926, Father Christmas tells how the North Polar Bear got into the “Rory Bory Aylis” (16), setting off a huge explosion and breaking the moon into four pieces, forcing the Man in the Moon to take refuge in Father Christmas’s house, where he eats a lot of chocolate before moving back and repairing the moon. Meanwhile, the explosion frightened the reindeer, who bolted and spilled presents all over as Father Christmas chased them. The North Polar Bear adds his own comments, disregarding Father Christmas’s complaints and saying it was quite funny to see Father Christmas chasing the reindeer. The bear also mentions a new character, the Snowman, who is Father Christmas’s gardener. The Snowman reappears in the 1927 letter, in which the North Polar Bear accidentally forces him over the cliff, where he breaks himself as well as the presents in Father Christmas’s sleigh. They will have to build another gardener when they are not so busy, Father Christmas says. But it has been very cold and very dark since, as Father Christmas reminds the children, the Northern Lights were all put out last year and will not return until 1928. Also, the Man in the Moon has paid Father Christmas a visit, and the Northern Polar Bear was left to watch him but let him drink too much brandy so that he went to sleep and spent a whole night away

166   Letters from Father Christmas from the moon. This allows the dragons to nearly destroy the moon, and the Man in the Moon must use his most powerful magic to get the dragons back into their caves. Father Christmas also mentions that he has heard the Tolkiens have a visitor from Iceland with them; he says that Iceland is close to his house, though the reindeer do not like to fly over it because of the volcanoes. The letter for 1928 is happier, since the Northern Lights are back, and it is not so dark and cold at the North Pole. The North Polar Bear has had an accident, falling down the stairs in the Cliff House while trying to carry too many things (the bear adds a note that he slipped on soap that someone had left at the top of the stairs). Father Christmas finds this very funny and draws a picture of it, which the Polar Bear does not find amusing. Father Christmas mentions that John has stopped writing, and so he has had to guess at a gift for him. In 1929, a letter arrived from the Polar Bear in November, wishing John a happy birthday and mentioning that he had hurt his paw cutting a Christmas tree but that it was healing nicely. The spelling is poor, but the bear reveals that at the North Pole, they all speak the “Arktik langwidge” (30), and he writes in that language, “Mára mesta an ni vela tye ento, ya rato nea,” which means “Goodby till I see you next and I hope it will bee soon” (30). A letter from Father Christmas follows at the usual time. He talks about a bonfire that they have had, at which the Snow-elves let off rockets and melted a hole in the ice, waking up the Great Seal. The bear also seems to have gone to Norway, which is apparently where he hurt his paw while staying with a woodcutter named Olaf. Finally, Father Christmas mentions that he visits the children of England, Scandinavia, and Germany (as well as North America), and tells how many of his lists were scattered when the Polar Bear opened the window during a gale. Finally, Father Christmas includes a special drawing of himself in his sleigh over the North Sea just for Christopher. In 1930, a letter arrived again in November, this time from Father Christmas himself, thanking the children for their letters and saying that the Polar Bear sends his love—he is just recovering from the Whooping Cough. In the Christmas letter that fol-

lows, Father Christmas explains how the Polar Bear was not able to help with the presents this year because of his illness, and how he had been trying to help with the reindeer but was caught out in a six-foot snowfall and became even sicker. He mentions that the Polar Bears’ nephews came to a party they had celebrating the Bear’s recovery, and then briefly suggests things about his own family—his father, old Grandfather Yule as well as his green brother whose name, like Father Christmas’s own, is Nicholas, after the saint who used to give secret presents. He signs the letter “Father Nicholas Christmas” (39). In 1931, Father Christmas writes an early letter on October 31, saying he has already received letters from the children. He says that the weather has been warm, and a postscript from the Polar Bear says that Father Christmas slept through most of the warm summer, and that he hopes for snow because his coat has gone yellow. In the actual Christmas letter for 1931, Father Christmas reminds the children that many families have little to spend on Christmas this year, and some have little or nothing to eat. But he does tell how the Polar Bear, who has become lazy because of the heat, took two snowboys down into the cellar to help with firecrackers, and when the snowboys misbehaved, a fire started that singed the bear’s coat. He also says that two of the Polar Bear’s nephews, Paksu and Valkotukka (the names mean “fat” and “white-hair”), have been staying as houseguests for some time and are causing a good deal of mischief by swallowing balls of yarn, throwing ink into the fire, and crawling into the cupboard and eating puddings raw. He tells them that he is training some new reindeer from Lapland, and ends by saying he hopes John will hang a stocking one last time even though he is more than 14, and that he looks forward to little PM (Priscilla) hanging up hers for the first time. In 1932, an even more complex plot emerges. In the November 30 letter, Father Christmas tells the children that he has not seen the Polar Bear since the beginning of the month and is getting anxious. In the Christmas letter for 1932, the longest of all the Father Christmas letters, Tolkien records a complicated story in which the Polar Bear

Letters from Father Christmas   167 is missing for several weeks, and a Cave Bear comes to Father Christmas’s house to ask him to come to help the Polar Bear and to bring a light. The Cave Bear leads Father Christmas into a deep cave, which belongs to the Cave Bear but is inhabited by a large number of goblins, who apparently have been digging tunnels to Father Christmas’s cellar and stealing toys. Father Christmas and the Cave Bear find the North Polar Bear, who has been lost, but they also illuminate the walls of the cave and find many cave paintings, done by ancient men when the North Pole was actually in another position, before it shifted. The cave paintings include mammoths and woolly rhinoceroses and bears. There are also later goblin drawings, and some of goblins are riding drasils—extinct small horses— which proves the drawings are very old. The cave is ultimately cleared out when Father Christmas and the Polar Bear blow green smoke into the depths of the caverns, and when the goblins run out the other end of the cave, a group of Red Gnomes, the goblins’ traditional enemies, is waiting for them. At the end of the letter, Father Christmas says that the Polar Bear has created his own alphabet from some of the marks on the cave, and he challenges the boys to try to decipher the letter that the Polar Bear has sent along with Father Christmas’s (they have been learning Latin, Greek, and French, so they should be able to read it). A facsimile of the letter is included in the book. There is a brief letter from December 2, 1933, in which Father Christmas acknowledges the children’s letters and says things have gotten cold and work is beginning. He also says to tell Priscilla that his beard is very soft. In the Christmas letter, Father Christmas says that there has been much excitement, and that the Polar Bear has indeed saved Christmas this year. The goblins, angered over being chased from the caves the previous Christmas, had returned with all of their relatives from all the mountains of the world. Father Christmas had been awakened one night by the sound of a goblin at his window, riding a bat—something that had not occurred since the goblin war of 1453. He had rushed to his storage cellars to find the Polar Bear battling a thousand goblins in the cellar, who had set fire to many of the toys. Although

Father Christmas and the Bear were able to put out the fire and chase the goblins from the house, many of the goblins ran off with the reindeer, and Father Christmas was forced to blow his Golden Trumpet to call his friends to help. But finally, the reindeer were rescued, and after several battles, Father Christmas and his allies were able to chase the goblins from the land. In 1934, an early October letter is addressed only to Christopher. By this time, his brothers were undoubtedly too old for Father Christmas, and Priscilla was too young to read. He is awake, Father Christmas assures Christopher, but the Polar Bear is still asleep. In the Christmas letter, Father Christmas says that it has taken all summer to repair the damage done by the goblins, but otherwise it has been a warm but uneventful year. He describes an outdoor Boxing Day party that they are planning, around a great Christmas tree brought from Norway and planted in a pool of ice. In a picture, he draws the Polar Bear and his two nephews, Paksu and Valkotukka, playing on the ice with some Cave Cubs and the Cave Bear “Cave Brown Cave.” In 1935, there is one letter from December 24, addressed to the “dear Children.” Father Christmas says that the weather has been cold and very snowy, and that Polar Bear was forced to go to northern Greenland to take care of Paksu and Valkotukka, who had the mumps, and was stuck there until Friday the 13th of December because of the snow. In the meantime Father Christmas has been employing a large number of Red Elves to help, although they make everything a game so that things do not get done very fast. When Polar Bear returned, he warned that goblins were breeding everywhere (though not so much in England) and that there may be more trouble with them soon. But Father Christmas has armed his elves with magic sparkler spears. In the letter for 1936, Father Christmas apologizes for his inability to write a long letter, and the bulk of the letter itself is taken up by a smaller, steadier hand, which proves to be that of Father Christmas’s new secretary, the elf Ilbereth. Ilbereth writes that the business at the North Pole is becoming more efficient, as the Polar Bear hired

168   Letters from Father Christmas a number of red and green elves to help with the packing, organizing, and addressing of packages. This worked so well that everything was ready by December 19, at which point the Polar Bear decided to relax in a hot bath, but he fell asleep in the bathtub with the water running and subsequently flooded the English room with six inches of water. Father Christmas includes a picture so that the children may see how funny it all is. The Polar Bear adds his own postscript, in which he says he has found a copy of the goblin alphabet he invented, which he sends along. In 1937, Father Christmas’s letter is addressed to Christopher, Priscilla, and “other old friends” (82). In it, he says he was worried when he did not hear from them, and he sent a messenger, who found their house boarded up, but now Father Christmas realizes that they have moved to the house next door. He says that he is sorry about their father’s eyes and throat, and says that he would have liked to send them a number of “Hobbits,” but that he assumes they probably have enough. He then turns the letter over to Ilbereth, who he says can now write in Arctic, Latin, Greek, Elvish, and Runic alphabets. Ilbereth then talks of more mischief that Paksu has gotten into with Polar Bear, and how the warm weather this year caused a lake to form around the North Pole, in which Polar Bear tried to canoe, but kept falling in. Ilbereth also tells how Polar Bear tried to decorate the big tree himself and ended up setting his fur on fire with a candle. He wonders how roasted Polar Bear would taste, and at this Polar Bear inserts his own comment: “Not as good as well spanked and fried elf” (86). Ilbereth ends with a snatch of elvish writing to show the children what the alphabet looks life, and Polar Bear adds a note that he is practicing a new kind of writing that he has invented. The 1938 letter, one of the longer letters in the collection, is addressed only to Priscilla, but in it Father Christmas sends love to Christopher and hopes he is feeling better. He decides to write this letter in rhymes, thinking Priscilla might like that. In mainly tetrameter couplets, Father Christmas tells a fairly typical story of Polar Bear’s mishaps for the year: He stepped on a rusty nail and was on crutches in December, burned his paws trying to

roast chestnuts, and fell through the roof trying to clear snow off it. The goblins have not been heard from, though they are, Father Christmas says, taking hold in many lands. Ilbereth and Polar Bear make comments on Father Christmas’s rhyme in the margins. When Father Christmas says, “So please forgive me, dear Priscilla, / if I pretend you rhyme with pillow,” Polar Bear scrawls “She won’t” in the margin (90). Toward the end of the letter, Ilbereth takes his own turn at rhyming and claims that Polar Bear has eaten too much and mixed pickles and milk together so that he has gotten a stomachache. Polar Bear answers with his own rhymes—his are dimeter couplets—denying Ilbereth’s charges and calling him a “thinuous elf.” When the elf comments “He means fatuous,” the bear denies it, since the elf is not fat at all, but rather “thin and silly” (90). In the letter, we find that Priscilla is now “half past nine” (though Ilbereth notes “She is not a clock!”) (90), and that her official number in Father Christmas’s client log is 56,785. The letter for 1939 is rather brief, and in it Father Christmas complains that things have been difficult for him because of “this horrible war” (96). He includes a picture of himself carrying packages to the sleigh sheds, with Paksu carrying a torch and looking quite proud of himself. Polar Bear has not helped much this year, so there is little to report about accidents. The bear has been sick, but he decided to get well after a few weeks. He has drawn trees that look like umbrellas in the picture (though Polar Bear notes that they are the “Best part of it”), and he wonders why Priscilla does not have toy Polar Bear cubs instead of Bingos or Koala bears. In 1940, there is a letter from Polar Bear to Priscilla dated December 23, which is quite brief but expresses relief that Priscilla is back, because the bear had thought that the house had been abandoned. A letter from Father Christmas dated Christmas Eve tells Priscilla that the “horrible war” (100) has reduced their stocks, and that Polar Bear has been trying to revise their address list. A picture is included of Polar Bear dancing with four penguins, and Father Christmas explains that, while penguins do not live at the North Pole, these

Letters from Father Christmas   169 penguins were “evacuees,” though they have come not to escape the war but rather to save Father Christmas, whom they had incorrectly heard had been blown up by goblins. The letter to Priscilla from 1941 has a return address of “Cliff House, near (stump of) North Pole” (102). The realities of war have reached the North Pole, and Father Christmas says many children have not written to him because so many people have lost their homes and are displaced. In addition, the goblins have returned and brought war to the North Pole. Thousands of them have tried to overrun the north (Polar Bear claims it was a hundred million). Father Christmas was besieged in his Cliff House while Polar Bear “fired rockets into the goblin hosts as they poured up the long reindeer-drive” (103). Father Christmas blew on his great horn Windbeam, which summoned snowboys, polar bears, and hundreds of elves to their aid, though they took some three days to arrive. Polar Bear, after driving off dozens (he himself says a million) goblins while swinging blazing branches at them, then took a band of his relatives to the new goblin tunnels and blew up the entrance to them with gunpowder. The North Pole itself cracked and fell over in the struggle, but ultimately the goblins were defeated and driven off. In the 1942 letter to Priscilla, Father Christmas says that Polar Bear could not find a letter from her, so he has had to guess at what she wants. Perhaps she has been too busy at her new school to write. He complains that his stores are lower than they have ever been, but says they have had a peaceful year, and he is throwing a big party for the bear cubs (including, of course, Paksu and Valkotukka) as well as the snowboys and elves. The tree will be at the bottom of the staircase, and he hopes that Polar Bear will not fall down the steps into it. He also says that he has caught Polar Bear in a cupboard, and that the bear has wrapped a surprise for her. Polar Bear has also been making a lot of fresh gunpowder in case it is needed, and mentions that Billy—Priscilla’s own bear—would probably like to be there. In a postscript, Polar Bear sends his love and a message to Billy, saying he is sorry he could not send him a really good bomb to show him what a good explosion looked like.

The final letter to Priscilla, in 1943, is very much a farewell letter from Father Christmas, who knows that the 14-year-old girl will be hanging up her stocking for the last time. He says that he will certainly always remember her, and will come back when she has children of her own. The year has been miserable in many of his favorite places, Father Christmas says, but all is well at the North Pole. His stocks are quite low, but he hopes to replenish them soon. Polar Bear is too tired to write, but asks whether Priscilla still has her own bear. Father Christmas tells Priscilla to give his love to John, Michael, and Christopher and all of their pets, and he closes with “Very much love from your old friend, Father Christmas” (110). Commentary In many ways, the Letters from Father Christmas is Tolkien’s most successful publication intended solely for children. This is probably because the letters were never meant for wide circulation: Tolkien wrote them specifically for his own children. He knew his audience intimately, knew what kinds of things they were interested in, and knew exactly the tone and narrative voice to use with them. That confidence and natural touch are precisely what make these letters such entertaining reading. Three aspects of these letters deserve further comment. First, it is interesting to observe how the letters reflect what must have been current interests on the part of the children, including current events that they were aware of and in some cases disturbed by. The most complex of the letters, that of 1932, introduces cave art at the North Pole and suggests that the pole was not always on the same part of the earth’s surface. Examples of Paleolithic art in the caves of Europe had first been described in the 1860s, although archaeologists had not accepted these as genuine until early in the 20th century. Although the Christmas letter was written eight years before the discovery of the spectacular paintings in Lascaux, one of the more remarkable caves—the one at Pech Merle in the French Pyrenees east of Cahors—had just opened to public viewing in 1926. Perhaps it was this cave that had piqued the interest of the older Tolkien children, and that Tolkien decided to incorporate

170   Letters from Father Christmas into his vision of Father Christmas’s domain. His inclusion of tiny horses suggests, as well, an interest in the evolution of the horse from the eohippus as described and popularized by Thomas Huxley in the late 19th century. As for the shifting of the North Pole, the theory of “continental drift” had been introduced in 1915 by the German geophysicist Alfred Wegener in his book The Origin of Continents and Oceans. Wegener had died in 1930, shortly after the publication of a revised and expanded edition of his work, and that recent edition may have sparked the children’s interest in the idea and Tolkien’s allusion to it in this text. Of course, even though the North Pole is, somewhat like Middle-earth, one of Tolkien’s successful “secondary creations” (as he calls them in his essay “On Fairy-Stories”), there are connections between this world and the primary one in which Tolkien and his children live. Father Christmas does, after all, visit England, Germany, Scandinavia, Canada, America, and other parts of our world. Thus, the Great Depression cannot be ignored even at the North Pole, so that in 1931 Tolkien has Father Christmas specifically address the fact that many children this year were quite poor and some may not even have enough to eat. When, in 1938, Father Christmas says that the goblins are beginning to take over many lands, he may very well be thinking of fascism, and the goblin war at the North Pole in 1941 is a way of suggesting that even in the Faërie-like land of Father Christmas, evil must be resisted with force. Nor do the shortages of the war spare Father Christmas’s larders, as he complains each year of the war how empty his storehouses are. Second, even though he enjoyed the game and tradition of Father Christmas and the legends surrounding him, Tolkien, as Catholic and scholar, could not help speculating in his letters on the true nature of this traditional figure. Possibly on some of these occasions, he was responding to questions his children may have had about Father Christmas’s background. But for the most part, he was probably seeking some clarification and consistency for his own satisfaction. Thus, in an early letter (1923), he claims to be 1924 years old, then changes that to 1927. At this point, Tolkien was probably considering scholarly estimates about the birth of Christ,

which put the date at about 4 b.c.e., since that was the time of Herod the Great’s death. Later (in the letter of 1930), perhaps to one of the children’s questions as to why Father Christmas is sometimes called Saint Nicholas, Tolkien finds an elegant solution that separates the mythic figure from the revered Catholic saint: He was named after the saint, Father Christmas says, because Saint Nicholas was known for giving secret presents, as he does each Christmas. But in the same letter, Tolkien gives Father Christmas a father, “Grandfather Yule,” and a “green brother,” whose name is also Nicholas. These family relationships suggest a connection not with the Christian celebration but rather with the pagan festival of the winter solstice, celebrated as “Yule” by the pre-Christian Germanic peoples, and paralleled by the “green” celebrations of Midsummer’s Day (personified in Father Christmas’s brother). Recognizing that Father Christmas was really a part of the secular celebration of the season, and not really associated with the birth of Christ, Tolkien spends some time here situating the Father Christmas tradition with the celebrations of the natural cycle of the seasons to which ancient men were attuned. Finally, Tolkien the philologist is quite evident even here in a variety of ways. His interest in language appears most obviously in the names of his bears: The North Polar Bear’s true name, he says in the 1929 letter (30), is Karhu, which is actually Finnish for “bear.” Tolkien’s interest in Finnish dated back to his early teen years, when he first became enchanted by the Kalevala, and here he gives all of his polar bears Finnish names: Paksu and Valkotukka, the Polar Bear’s nephews, have names that mean “fat” and “white-hair,” Father Christmas says in his 1931 letter, but he does not mention that the language they come from is, in fact, Finnish. A further linguistic borrowing of some interest is the name of the small “dachshund” horses that the goblins are riding in their old cave painting in 1932. These are called drasils. As any medieval scholar would recognize, this is the Old Norse word for “horse” or “steed,” used, for example, in the term Yggdrasil (“the steed of Ódin”), the name of the great ash tree that holds up the nine worlds of Norse cosmography.

Letters from Father Christmas   171 Further, Tolkien includes snippets of his own linguistic inventions, the imaginary languages that were the impetus for his entire legendarium, conceived, as he claimed, to provide a context in which his languages would be spoken. These instances are discussed at some length in Paul Nolan Hyde’s article “A Philologist at the North Pole.” First, Tolkien has the Polar Bear create a new alphabet—one easier for his large paws to write, and one based on the goblin drawings in the cave of the 1932 letter. This letter, read in columns from top to bottom, is in English but presented in the bear’s “goblin alphabet” (56). Deciphered, it reads “I wish you al [sic] a very happy Christmas and a splendid New Year with lots of fun and good luck at school [.] You are getting so clever now what with Latin and French and Greek that you will easily read this and see much love from P[.]B[.]” (Hyde 25). A more difficult test for the children comes in the 1937 letter, in which the elf Ilbereth writes a message in elvish script (86). Hyde recognizes that Ilbereth’s letters are Sindarin Tengwar script as presented in appendix E. II of The Return of the King (Tolkien Return 396). Again, this is a message in the English language, written in elvish script, which Hyde reads as “A very merry Christmas to you all” (Hyde 24). The most difficult linguistic challenge in the letters is Polar Bear’s message in the Arctic tongue, “Mára mesta an ni vela tye ento, ya rato nea,” which he says means “Goodby till I see you next and I hope it will bee soon” (30). Hyde spends some time deciphering this, pointing out that five of the words look like genuine words in Spanish, but that their meaning is different, and goes on to conclude that “Arctic is an ursine dialect of Quenya” (Hyde 26). Hyde goes on to present an etymology of each word in the passage, showing how each may be related to a word in recorded Quenya as Tolkien presented or glossed it, accounting for dialectal differences that may have occurred over time, and concludes that “Tolkien adapted a dialect of Quenya to the speaking creatures of the North Pole, probably taking into account the nature of Polar Bears . . . and the vast amount of time that had passed since the elven tongues were universally spoken in Middle-earth” (Hyde 27).

While this may seem more complex than necessary for annual letters to children, Tolkien would probably not have thought so. He was, after all, creating a secondary world, and any reader of The Lord of the Rings knows that the verisimilitude of a secondary world depends in large measure on the completeness of the cultural context into which that world is placed. As subcreator, he needed to make the North Pole that kind of world. As Hyde concludes, “in order for the children to believe, the father had to believe first” (27). Characters Father Christmas  The author of the majority of the letters, Father Christmas is more than 1,900 years old and, because of his age, writes in a shaky hand. He receives letters from children all over the world, but Tolkien makes it clear that he thinks of Father Christmas in his cultural role as a product essentially of the Germanic peoples, so that he lists England, Germany, Scandinavia and places settled by those people—Canada, the United States, Australia, New Zealand—as his territory. He is named for Saint Nicholas but was born in a pre-Christian ceremony of nature worship surrounding the winter solstice, so that he says his father is “Grandfather Yule,” and he has a “green brother,” presumably the spirit of the summer solstice. Father Christmas is presented as kind, loving to children, sympathetic to their problems, and taking delight in giving presents in secret, like his namesake. North Polar Bear  (Karhu)  With a name that is Finnish for “bear,” the great Polar Bear is Father Christmas’s main helper at the North Pole, but from the beginning he is presented in a kind of slapstick manner as a fairly clumsy and awkward beast. His “helping” often turns into disaster for Father Christmas: He breaks the North Pole while chasing Father Christmas’s hood, he blows up the Northern Lights and extinguishes them for more than a year, he floods the storage bins when he leaves the water running in his bath. But he does seem to work hard and is genuinely fond of Father Christmas, and he also proves to be brave in his fights against the goblins, and more than once saves Christmas itself from disaster. Karhu is a bear of some intellect, as

172   “Light as Leaf on Lindentree”  well. His first language is Arctic, which explains his poor spelling in English, but he invents his own alphabet based on the goblin cave paintings. He also enjoys a kind of good-natured bickering with both Father Christmas and the elf Ilbereth. Ilbereth  Father Christmas begins to employ the elf Ilbereth as his secretary in 1936, and it is Ilbereth who writes most of the letters for 1936 and 1937. He writes in a smaller but steadier hand than Father Christmas, and particularly likes to write about things that make Polar Bear look foolish. He seems to be a very efficient elf who helps to make Father Christmas’s affairs work in a more businesslike manner. Ilbereth disappears from the letters after 1938, however, perhaps because Priscilla, the sole recipient of the letters after this point, was not interested in him, or perhaps because Tolkien, now working more seriously on his legendarium and the place of The Lord of the Rings in it, no longer felt happy about presenting elves in the trivial manner he had been following in the case of Ilbereth. Further Reading Carpenter, Humphrey. Tolkien: A Biography. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1977. Hyde, Paul Nolan. “A Philologist at the North Pole: J. R. R. Tolkien and The Father Christmas Letters.” Mythlore 15, no. 1 (Autumn 1988): 23–27. Tolkien, J. R. R. Father Christmas Letters. Edited by Baillie Tolkien. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1976. ———. Letters from Father Christmas. Rev. ed. Edited by Baillie Tolkien. Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1999. ———. The Return of the King. 2nd ed. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1965.

“Light as Leaf on Lindentree”  (1925) The poem “Light as Leaf on Lindentree” tells the story of Beren’s encounter with Lúthien, called Tinúviel (i.e. “Nightingale”) in the poem. Christopher Tolkien discusses the complex textual his-

tory of this poem in The Lays of Beleriand (1985), where it is printed as a song sung by the character Halog in the unfinished “Lay of the Children of Húrin” (129–131). In brief, Christopher notes that there are three typescript manuscripts of the poem, variously titled “Light as Leaf on Lind” and “As Light as Leaf on Lindentree.” The earliest typescript is dated by Tolkien as begun 1919–20 and completed at the University of Leeds (see Leeds, University of) in 1923, then “retouched” in 1924. A second draft included several introductory lines in alliterative verse. That is the version that was apparently published in 1925 in the journal the Gryphon, and it is essentially the version inserted into the “Lay of the Children of Húrin.” A third typescript included some revisions Tolkien made to the poem after it was published (Tolkien, Lays 142–152). A much altered version of the poem is included as the song sung by Aragorn on Weathertop in chapter 11 of the first book of The Fellowship of the Ring (204–205). The following commentary is based on the version printed in The Lays of Beleriand, that being virtually the text of the poem as originally published, the version in The Fellowship of the Ring having been altered to fit the evolved state of Tolkien’s mythology. Synopsis In the woods, among the long grass and the fallen leaves of many years, Tinúviel dances under the trees to the music of Dairon’s flute. Beren, who has come from the far country, watches her through the hemlock leaves. Entranced by the magic of the music, Beren forgets his loneliness and steps into the clearing to dance with Tinúviel—but when he steps out, she and Dairon have disappeared. Beren is left in the wood of Doriath, longing for the music, but now the hemlock has faded and the forest is dying. He seeks Tinúviel for a year and finds her again under the moonlight dancing on a green hillock in Doriath, with an unseen Dairon again playing his flute. When Beren tries to dance with her once more, she flees, and he sees no impression of her feet in the grass. He calls longingly after her, and when she hears his lonely voice calling, she pauses. When she stops, he catches her in his

“Lonely Isle, The”    173 arms—and now they dance forever in the moonlight beneath the trees until the music fades. They will dance wherever the long grass grows and the leaves pile over the years, but Dairon’s flute has no longer been heard in Doriath since Beren’s coming. Commentary The poem consists of nine stanzas of eight tetrameter lines each, rhyming abacbabc. This creates a two-part stanza with a pivotal point in the fourth line, and most of the stanzas contain a full stop at that point. Generally, the first quatrain of the stanza creates a scene, and the second quatrain describes the action that occurs in that scene—as, for example, in the first stanza, where the woods are described and then Tinúviel’s dance within it. Or in some stanzas, the first quatrain describes one action and the second the resulting or necessarily succeeding action, as in the fifth stanza, which begins “He sought her . . .” and moves, in the second quatrain, to “He found her . . .” The meeting of Beren and Lúthien was central to Tolkien’s mythology. In some early versions of the story, Beren and Lúthien were both elves, although in this poem, the elves Dairon and Lúthien disappear when Beren appears, as elves generally do when interrupted by other races (as, for example, in The Hobbit, where the Wood-elves in Mirkwood disappear when the dwarves come into their circle). In the final story as published in The Silmarillion, it is the love of Beren and Lúthien that leads to the theft of the Silmaril from the crown of Morgoth. From their marriage—the intermarriage of elf and human—spring Elwing, the spouse of Eärendil the Mariner, whose children are Elrond and Elros. Thus, Beren and Lúthien were also the ancestors of the kings of Númenor, and ultimately of both Aragorn and Arwen Evenstar. For Tolkien’s mythology, the meeting of the two lovers in the wood was essential, as it was for his own life, since he modeled it on his own experience with Edith Bratt, dancing in a clearing among flowering hemlock in the woods at Roos. The incident, occurring after Tolkien had been invalided home from the Battle of the Somme with trench fever, affected his imagination more vividly than any other in his life, and the tale of Beren and

Lúthien, including her father’s creation of the obstacles to their love because of the difference in their races, paralleled Tolkien’s own romance with Edith, forbidden by Father Francis Morgan, his guardian, until he had reached the age of majority. In his early versions of the story, like this poem, the elvish minstrel Dairon appears as a rival to Beren, but all mention of Dairon is excluded from the poem as it appears in Aragorn’s version in The Fellowship of the Ring. By the time he had written that later version, Tolkien’s legendarium had moved somewhat closer to its final form. Further Reading Tolkien, J. R. R. The Fellowship of the Ring. Being the First Part of The Lord of the Rings. 2nd ed. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1965. ———. The Lays of Beleriand. Vol. 3 of The History of Middle-earth. Edited by Christopher Tolkien. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1985. ———. “Light as Leaf on Lindentree.” Gryphon, n.s. 6, no. 6 (June 1925): 217.

“Lonely Isle, The”  (1924) Subtitled “For England,” the poem called “The Lonely Isle” was written in June 1916, when Tolkien was waiting in Calais to join his company, the 11th Lancashire Fusiliers. The homesick young lieutenant was thinking of his crossing of the channel, and what might have been his last view of England as he was deployed to France in the midst of World War I. Years later, two years into World War II, he wrote a long letter to his son Michael Hilary Reuel Tolkien, March 6–8, 1941, in which he spoke of his marriage to Edith Bratt on March 22, 1916, followed quickly by his shipping out: “May found me crossing the Channel (I still have the verse I wrote on the occasion!) for the carnage of the Somme” (Letters 53). The verse, of course, is “The Lonely Isle,” though the actual date of his crossing was June 6. The poem was published in Leeds University Verse 1914–1924. It has been reprinted on page 145 of John Garth’s Tolkien and the Great War,

174   Lord of the Rings, The and references to the poem in the following commentary are to that version, as the most easily accessible. Synopsis Tolkien begins the first stanza with an apostrophe to England, which he calls a glimmering, lonely island of white rock, surrounded by the sea. He then addresses the tide, on which, he says, “the shoreland spirits ride,” as well as the white birds who cry on the beaches and skim the waters about him as he leaves the shore. In the second stanza, Tolkien remarks that he will always remember the sight of the gleaming white rock, appearing in his memory through “a mist of tears.” He remembers places he had been as a child among the flowers—where, after sundown, fairies danced to the music of their harps. In the gloom where he now resides, he longs for those places and the fairies’ citadel. He bids the lonely isle farewell. Commentary The tone of the poem is a feeling of loss and longing for something that has slipped away. The white cliffs of Dover stand out in the speaker’s vision of the “Lonely Isle,” but what probably comes as a surprise to most readers is the imagined fairy dances in the English gardens. Tolkien’s vivid imagination was already at work creating the mythology that would be his life’s work, and as Tom Shippey points out, at this early stage he was not really thinking of creating a mythology for England so much as a mythology of England: One extremely unexpected aspect of Tolkien’s early writings is his determined identification of England with Elfland. As soon as this phrase is used it sounds implausible, as Tolkien would have sensed as acutely as anyone. Nevertheless, he persisted in trying to equate the two places. Tol Eresëa, the Lonely Isle, is England. (Shippey 303)

The poem is divided into two 12-line stanzas of hexameter lines rhyming ababccdedeff. Thus, each stanza is divided into two parts, each consisting of a quatrain and concluding couplet. This signals a

shift in each stanza after the central couplet: In the first stanza, the sense shifts from a focus on the waters to the speaker’s address to the birds; in the second, the sense shifts from the memories of the music and gardens to the actions of the fairies. The final line, bidding farewell to the island, is a tetrameter line, drawing attention to itself by its brevity and thus giving the poem a sense of finality and emphasizing the farewell. Structurally, then, the poem is skillfully wrought. Its imagery draws on the nature poetry of the romantic poets, to which Tolkien adds a bit of the prettiness of the fairy poetry of his early years (poems like “Goblin Feet”). But the poem’s language seems self-consciously “poetic,” filled with archaic language—“O all ye hoary caverns”—and unnaturally stressed syllables required by the meter, as in “Ye plumèd foams,” and this certainly limits its appeal to contemporary readers. Further Reading Garth, John, Tolkien and the Great War: The Threshold of Middle-Earth. London: HarperCollins; Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2003. Shippey, Tom. The Road to Middle-Earth: How J. R. R. Tolkien Created a New Mythology. Rev. ed. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2003. Tolkien, J. R. R. The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien. Edited by Humphrey Carpenter. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1981. ———. “The Lonely Isle.” In Leeds University Verse 1914–1924. Leeds: Swan Press, 1924, 57.

Lord of the Rings, The  (1954–1955) The Lord of the Rings is the crowning achievement of Tolkien’s literary career, and the one narrative by which he is chiefly remembered and admired. In the more than 50 years since the trilogy’s initial publication, it has been republished several times, most notably in a second, revised edition with a new preface in 1965. It has also been translated into virtually every European language, as well as most major

Lord of the Rings, The   175 Asian languages. It is one of the best-selling books in the world, having sold an estimated 150 million copies since its first inception. Precise figures are impossible to come by because of the text’s many translations and editions, but the trilogy undoubtedly ranks with a handful of texts just below the Bible, the works of Chairman Mao, and the Koran in sales. At least a third of the books’ sales have been recently inspired by Peter Jackson’s enormously popular film adaptations of the narrative. The text began as a sequel to the very successful The Hobbit, which Allen & Unwin had published in 1937. Tolkien had tried to interest his publisher in The Silmarillion, but they were not enthusiastic about that unwieldy text; instead, they were looking for “a new Hobbit.” In 1938, Tolkien presented them with the opening chapter, “A Long-Expected Party,” and they were eager to see more, though at that time even Tolkien was unsure what shape the narrative would take. By the time he was invited to give his Andrew Lang lecture “On Fairy-Stories” in 1939, he was more sure of the serious direction the narrative was about to take. During the first years of World War II, Tolkien worked on his manuscript, juggling his other responsibilities until he was completely bogged down in 1943 and ceased working on the manuscript altogether. He took it up again in 1944, sending bits of it regularly to his son Christopher Tolkien, who was serving in the Royal Air Force. By the end of the war, he had finished book 4. When Rayner Unwin, his publisher’s son—who, as a 10-year-old, had recommended that his father publish The Hobbit—came to Oxford in 1947, Tolkien was comfortable enough to let him read the nearly finished draft of the whole work. Rayner told his father that the book was “brilliant” and, though he was not sure who would read it, it needed to be published. Still, Tolkien took another two years to edit and revise the manuscript to remove any inconsistencies, so that it was not until the fall 1949, a full dozen years after its inception, that the book was ready. By this time, however, he had become convinced that he wanted The Lord of the Rings published with The Silmarillion as a companion piece, and since Unwin had no interest in the latter text, Tolkien began negotiations with Collins

Cover of a 1991 illustrated edition of The Lord of the Rings, published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. The cover image shows Frodo, Sam, and Gollum hiding outside the Black Gate as the guards pass.

to publish both books. But when Collins discovered that The Silmarillion was projected to be as long again as The Lord of the Rings, they dropped their interest in the project. Finally, in 1952, Tolkien gave up on the idea of The Silmarillion’s publication and went back to Allen & Unwin, offering them the rights to The Lord of the Rings if they were still interested. In fact, they were, though how to package and market the 1,200-page behemoth of a book was a problem. The expense of the publication would be significant, and there were a good many doubts about the books's ability to find an audience. Rayner Unwin, now a part of the business, decided to publish it in three volumes with separate titles, to be sold at 21 shillings apiece, hoping in that way

176   Lord of the Rings, The to at least recover the cost of the printing, although he indicated he would be willing to lose perhaps £1,000 on the venture just to see the book in print. Tolkien himself was unhappy with the three-volume approach and, in a letter to M.A. student Caroline Whitman Everett, wrote that “[t]he only units of any structural significance are the books” (qtd. in Chance, Tolkien’s Art, 145). Each of the six books had its own title in Tolkien’s manuscript (and in the following commentary I have retained those titles). But to further mitigate anticipated financial losses to the firm, Tolkien signed an unusual contract, in which he agreed to forgo any advance or royalties until the company had made a profit on the book, in exchange for receiving a hefty 50 percent of profits as royalties. This proved in time to be one of the most lucrative publishing contracts ever signed. When the books appeared—The Fellowship of the Ring and The Two Towers in 1954 and The Return of the King in 1955—they received mixed reviews, though C. S. Lewis and W. H. Auden both wrote enthusiastic endorsements. The hardcover editions sold steadily until the mid-1960s when, appalled by Ace Books’ American publication of an unauthorized paperback edition of the trilogy, Tolkien and his publisher negotiated with Ballantine books and Houghton Mifflin to bring out a second edition, including a paperback edition, with a U.S. copyright in 1965. Almost immediately, the book became popular with the student and counterculture movement of the late 1960s, who were attracted most likely by Tolkien’s aversion to capitalism and his environmental views, and who began sporting pins reading “Frodo Lives” and “Go-Go-Gandalf.” From that point on, the books became a phenomenon, and their popularity has never waned, reaching another peak early in the 21st century with the production of the acclaimed films from New Line Cinema that grossed well over a billion dollars worldwide. Praise for the books has been effusive of late. In 1999, Amazon.com named The Lord of the Rings as the “Best Book of the Milennium.” A 2003 reader’s poll in Britain conducted by the BBC named The Lord of the Rings the nation’s “best-loved book,” and the same result was reached in similar polls

in Australia and in Germany the following year. Scholars and critics have been much more divided in their opinions, however. Literary scholars have sometimes dismissed the work as escapist, the characters as flat and undeveloped, the theme as cliché, and the language as overwrought and archaic. But such scholars are generally making the mistake of evaluating not what Tolkien wrote but what they believe he ought to have written. In fact, the difficulty of The Lord of the Rings for some modern readers is that it is not a novel in the modern sense at all. As biographer Charles Moseley writes: The Lord of the Rings ignores the whole development of the novel . . . from Conrad through Joyce and Kafka and Woolf, from Hardy through Lawrence. It ignores the extraordinary strengths of that form in the delicate exploration of the self, drawing on the work of Freud and his successors. It does not even ground itself in the realist conventions of the nineteenth-century novel. (33)

In fact, the book is not a novel in this limited sense. Rather, it is a “fairy-story” of the sort that Tolkien defines in his famous essay on the genre: It presents a world invented through an act of imagination that asks for a “secondary belief” on the part of the reader; it allows us to see the world in a new way and allows us to escape from the ugliness of contemporary industrialization and the woes of the universal human condition; and it ends with a eucatastrophe (a sudden happy turn of the plot) that reflects what Tolkien considered the transcendent truth of miraculous grace. Clearly, these are not the characteristics of the modern novel. Instead, Tolkien’s work is much closer to medieval romances such as Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and, to an even greater degree, to Germanic epics such as Beowulf. Calling The Lord of the Rings Tolkien’s “epic,” Jane Chance has noted that epics such as Beowulf are common in periods of historical transition. Citing Tolkien’s own famous essay on Beowulf, Chance goes on to find in his text a tension between “Germanic heroism and Christianity” similar to that which Tolkien finds in Beowulf itself. Certainly both of these

Lord of the Rings, The   177 value systems are important in The Lord of the Rings, but Tolkien does not seem to present them in conflict: Middle-earth is a pre-Christian society, but those figures like Frodo and Sam, Aragorn and Théoden, who most clearly embody what Tolkien called in his Beowulf lecture the Northern heroic code—the courage to fight on in a hopeless cause rather than yield to the enemy—are also those who seem to be in touch with a kind of transcendent spirituality that recognizes a power for good beyond Middle-earth, often embodied in the Eldar—the high elves who have had some glimpse of the Undying Lands to the west. Tolkien uses Beowulf as a model for The Lord of the Rings in other ways as well. For example, the Beowulf poet will often give good and bad examples of historical or legendary figures in contrast with one another, as he does in lines 883–901, where he contrasts the heroic deeds of the dragon slayer Sigemund with the evil Danish king Heremod; or lines 1,925–1,941, where he contrasts the virtuous Geatish queen Hygd with the wicked queen Modthryth, destroyer of warriors. Tolkien includes the examples of the heroic and the recreant kings in Théoden and Denethor, of the good and evil wizards in Gandalf and Saruman, of the steadfast and the unfaithful warriors in Faramir and Boromir. Most important of all, perhaps, are Tolkien’s two Ring-bearers—the stalwart Frodo and the corrupted Gollum—since Frodo must consistently see in Gollum the image of what he may become, and must hope that there is in Gollum some human spark that may still be redeemed. Charles Moseley compares this relationship to other literary doubles—the kind of doppelgänger figures common especially in 19thcentury texts such as Joseph Conrad’s The Secret Sharer. Modern psychological readings of such characters regard them as representations of hidden or repressed aspects of the protagonist’s personality— aspects that the protagonist must acknowledge and struggle against. Moseley states: Gollum is in something very like this sort of relationship to Frodo: he is a shadow. Both bearers of the Ring, they are curiously attracted to each other. . . . The motif of the divided self runs pretty deep in Tolkien’s life and work . . .” (58)

Jane Chance is particularly interested in this theme of the divided self, seeing Frodo as a divided “hero and monster” who in the course of his quest finds “the landscape of the self to be a harsher terrain than that of Mordor” (Tolkien’s Art 182). These are only a few of the themes dealt with in the complex narrative of The Lord of the Rings, though they might be helpful to keep in mind for a reader working his or her way through the text for the first time. Only in a very small way do they help explain the fascination that the text has had for readers worldwide. In the following discussion, page numbers refer to the second edition of the text, as published by Houghton Mifflin in 1965. Synopsis for The Fellowship of the Ring Book 1: The Ring Sets Out Chapter 1: A Long-expected Party  Bilbo Baggins, hero of The Hobbit, has lived for 60 years in the Shire since his return from his travels, and most hobbits are fascinated by his legendary wealth as well as his apparent perpetual youth, although they also find him very “queer” because of his interest in dwarves and elves and life outside the Shire. On the occasion of his 111th birthday, Bilbo decides to throw a huge party, sharing the celebration with his favorite cousin, Frodo Baggins, who shares his birthday (September 22) and whom Bilbo had adopted as his heir years before and brought to live with him at Bag End. Frodo will turn 33 the same day Bilbo turns 111, and 33 is the age of maturity among hobbits. The party is a great success, in part because of the spectacular fireworks that the wizard Gandalf provides. What most of the partygoers do not know, for Bilbo has revealed it only to Gandalf and Frodo, is that Bilbo has been feeling restless lately and wants to leave the Shire. He has chosen this party to say good-bye to his friends and relatives. After a magnificent dinner, Bilbo addresses 144 of his relations. He tells them that he is fond of them all, and then announces that he is leaving. He says good-bye, slips on his magic ring, and disappears, much to the astonishment of the assembled crowd.

178   Lord of the Rings, The The ring, of course, is the one that had belonged to the creature Gollum but that Bilbo had found in the caverns under the Misty Mountains and kept for himself in The Hobbit. Bilbo goes to Bag End and removes the ring, placing it in an envelope for Frodo that he intends to leave on the mantel. Gandalf meets Bilbo in his home and promises to keep an eye on Frodo. But Bilbo has put the envelope with the ring in his pocket. Gandalf is able to persuade Bilbo to follow his original intention and leave the ring to Frodo. He is already suspicious of the strange hold that the ring seems to have on Bilbo and of the unusually long life (111 years) Bilbo has enjoyed since obtaining the ring. When Bilbo leaves, with three dwarves as companions, he says he is as happy as he has ever been. When Frodo appears, Gandalf tells him that Bilbo has left and shows him the envelope with the ring, though he warns Frodo not to use it, and to keep it safe. The next day, Frodo is very busy giving farewell presents that Bilbo had left for several of his relatives; he has a particularly difficult time with the Sackville-Bagginses, who had expected to inherit Bag End until Bilbo adopted Frodo. Gandalf stops by once more on his way out of the Shire to warn Frodo again to keep the ring secret and safe. He cannot yet tell Frodo what he fears but says that when he returns, he may have more information. Gandalf leaves, and Frodo does not see him again for some time. Chapters 2–5: From Hobbiton to Buckland  In chapter 2 (“The Shadow of the Past”), 17 years go by as Frodo settles in as master of Bag End. Gandalf visits him occasionally the first few years, but he has no further revelations about the ring. Frodo continues to celebrate Bilbo’s birthday along with his own, certain that his cousin is still alive somewhere. And like his vanished kinsman, Frodo does not appear to age. As time passes, however, dark rumors begin to reach the Shire concerning the rise of an evil power far to the southeast in the land of Mordor—though, for the most part, the hobbits ignore these rumors. Finally, when Frodo is nearing 50 years old, Gandalf reappears. He asks Frodo for the ring, which he tosses into the fire, to Frodo’s chagrin.

Cover of a 2003 coloring-book edition of The Lord of the Rings, published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. The image shows the glowing One Ring inscribed with writing in the language of Mordor.

When he retrieves it from the fire, the ring is still cool, but strange markings have appeared on it. Frodo can make nothing of these marks, but Gandalf can read them. In the language of Mordor, the script says, “One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them / One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them” (59). This confirms Gandalf’s worst fears. Now he tells Frodo the history of his ring: Far in the past, the elves of Eregion had created 19 rings of power for the Dark Lord, Sauron. Three of these were for the elves, seven were for dwarf lords, nine were for mortal men. But the devious Sauron has created his own ring, the most powerful of all, to rule all of the others and enslave those who owned them. The men who owned the nine rings have by now

Lord of the Rings, The   179 become Ringwraiths, the most fearsome servants of Sauron. Most of the dwarf rings have been lost or destroyed, but Sauron has recovered three of them. The three elven rings have been hidden from Sauron, but if he were to regain the One Ring, he would be able to control them as well. Frodo asks how the ring could have come to him. Gandalf explains that at the end of the last age, Sauron had been defeated by an alliance of men and elves, led by Elendil the Tall and the elf king Gil-galad. Both leaders were killed in the battle, but Elendil’s son lsildur cut the ring from Sauron’s finger. He wore the ring himself but was killed by orcs while traveling north along the Great River. The ring lay lost at the bottom of the river for hundreds of years, until one day two hobbit-like creatures, Déagol and Sméagol, found it by chance—or, as Gandalf suggests, the One Ring itself felt that it was time to be found. Sméagol, insisting that the ring was his because it was found on his birthday, killed Déagol to attain the ring, and then, consumed by it, spent hundreds of years underground with the ring, his “Precious,” until he had turned into the creature called Gollum. And it was from Gollum that Bilbo had obtained the ring. Gandalf continues, explaining that some of this information he has found from interviewing Gollum himself. But now Sauron, who is unspeakably evil, is rising to power again and lacks only the One Ring to gain the power to enslave all of Middleearth. Sauron has captured Gollum and learned from him the names of Baggins and the Shire. He is searching for the ring now, says Gandalf, who urges Frodo to leave the Shire soon to avoid Sauron’s agents and to keep the ring from him. The horrified Frodo declares that it was a pity Bilbo did not kill Gollum when he had the chance. But Gandalf replies, “It was Pity that stayed his hand” (68), adding that, while Gollum may deserve death, many who die deserve life, and therefore one should not be so quick to dispense life and death. Gollum may yet have some important part to play. Frodo wants to destroy the ring now, but Gandalf tells him that the One Ring can only be destroyed in Orodruin, the Cracks of Doom in Mordor, where it was originally forged.

All of this is overheard by Frodo’s gardener, Sam Gamgee, who is keen to accompany Frodo on his journey. Gandalf catches Sam listening outside the window and threatens him. But it turns out that Sam is simply interested in the old stories like those that Bilbo used to tell, and he is eager to see elves. He wishes to accompany Frodo on any trip he may be making. Frodo puts off his departure from the Shire for some months, finding it difficult to leave his home. Finally, having promised Gandalf that he would leave by the fall, he works out a plan to leave without drawing too much attention, buying a small house in Buckland, east of the Shire, where his good friend Meriadoc (“Merry”) Brandybuck lives. Frodo had grown up there before moving in with Bilbo, and he wants the folk of Hobbiton to think he is simply returning to his boyhood home and not leaving the Shire altogether. Accordingly, he finally sells Bag End to the Sackville-Bagginses. This is how chapter 3, “Three is Company,” begins. Gandalf, who had been urging Frodo to leave, has gone off on one of his mysterious errands again, though he has promised to be back to help Frodo get started on his journey. Frodo is worried about the wizard’s failure to return but knows he cannot put off his departure any longer, and on his 50th birthday, he leaves Bag End, accompanied by Sam and by his close friend Peregrin (“Pippin”) Took. The three begin their journey by foot, but along the way, they are surprised by the sound of horse’s hooves on the road behind them. Frodo, with a sudden anxious qualm, urges the others to hide away from the road. The rider appears, a large man all dressed in black, with his face concealed by a black hood and riding a black horse. This frightening figure stops near where Frodo is hiding and sniffs the air. At the same time, Frodo feels a strong compulsion to put the ring on his finger. Finally, the Black Rider moves on, much to Frodo’s relief. He learns from Sam, however, that the black-cloaked figure had been asking questions about Frodo the previous morning in Hobbiton. Now the three travelers make their way even more cautiously. Another Black Rider (or perhaps the same one having overtaken them again) passes them later,

180   Lord of the Rings, The

Cover of a 2005 coloring-book edition of The Fellowship of the Ring, published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. In the cover illustration, Frodo hides from a Ringwraith.

with results similar to the first time. But again the black figure rides on, and Frodo and his fellows subsequently meet a group of elves whom Frodo recognizes as High-elves by their song of Elbereth, the Vala (or angelic being) also known as Varda. According to elven lore, it was she who created the stars, and so she was especially honored by all of the Eldar. The elves are led by Gildor Inglorion, one of the House of Finrod. Gildor provides food and drink for the travelers and allows them to spend the night with the elves. He talks to Frodo long into the night, explaining that the Black Riders are among the most dreaded servants of Sauron himself. He urges Frodo and his companions to make their way to Rivendell, the elvish stronghold

of Elrond Halfelven, as quickly as possible, whether Gandalf rejoins them or not. He names Frodo “elf friend,” but he and his group are gone by the time Frodo and his friends awaken in the morning. As chapter 4 (“A Short Cut to Mushrooms”) begins, the hobbits awake refreshed and find that the elves have left them breakfast. They then decide to take a shortcut cross-country to the Brandywine River, where Merry is supposed to meet them. This should keep them out of the way of the Black Riders as much as possible. It has now become clear that this may be a very dangerous journey, and Frodo asks Sam whether he is still willing to accompany him on the way. Sam immediately reiterates his loyalty, asserting that any Black Riders will have to go through Sam if they want to harm Frodo. Even as they begin their shortcut, however, they see another Black Rider on the road and successfully avoid it. They travel across the land all day, hearing frightening noises behind them, but they come at last to an estate owned by a farmer named Maggot. Frodo remembers Farmer Maggot from his youth, when the farmer set his dogs on Frodo for stealing mushrooms from his land. Despite these unpleasant memories, Frodo finds that Farmer Maggot is quite friendly and hospitable to the travelers, particularly since he seems to know Pippin very well. Farmer Maggot reveals that one of the Black Riders had paid him a visit earlier that day, asking questions about Frodo. He offers to help the travelers by giving the three hobbits a ride to the ferry on the Brandywine River in his covered wagon. They arrive at the ferry safely and find Merry waiting there to take them into Buckland. As he leaves them, Farmer Maggot gives Frodo a basketful of mushrooms. As the fifth chapter (“A Conspiracy Unmasked”) opens, the hobbits make their way to the ferry and begin to cross the Brandywine River, catching a glimpse of a Black Rider on the bank they have just left. Merry assures Frodo that the only place the horseman can cross the river is some 20 miles north, giving Frodo some breathing space. Before long, they reach their destination in Buckland: Frodo’s newly purchased home in Crickhol-

Lord of the Rings, The   181 low. Merry and their friend Fatty Bolger have been working on Frodo’s new house to make it warm and friendly when he arrives. Frodo is grateful, and the hobbits are soon making merry with food and drink. But Frodo’s worries weigh heavy on him. He begins to explain to his friends why the Black Riders are following him, and Merry tells him that his friends already know that he intends to leave the Shire altogether. They also realize that, in the face of the danger from the Black Riders, he must leave even more quickly than he anticipated. They reveal that they have for some time been aware of the magic ring Frodo has inherited from Bilbo and of Gandalf’s dire warnings about it. Sam, they reveal, has been their spy in this matter. But Merry and Pippin now insist that they will accompany Frodo and Sam wherever the adventure takes them. At first, Frodo is shocked and distressed that his friends would form this conspiracy. But finally he is grateful for their willingness to make such a sacrifice and put themselves in danger, for him. They agree that they must leave Crickhollow the following morning and decide to leave Fatty Bolger behind to keep up the appearance for as long as possible that Frodo is still living in Buckland. Fatty will also be able to tell Gandalf what has happened if the wizard does finally come through the Shire searching for Frodo. On Merry’s advice, the group decides to set off through the Old Forest in order to avoid the road and the Black Riders. The Old Forest that borders Buckland has an ominous reputation among hobbits, and Fatty warns that it is as dangerous as the Black Riders. But Merry asserts that some among the Brandybucks have been in the forest, and Frodo agrees that it seems best to avoid the Black Riders at whatever cost. At this, the hobbits decide to get some rest before their journey, and Frodo has a disturbing dream in which he is trying to climb a tall, white tower that stands on a high ridge, in order to get a view of the sea, when there is a sudden flash of light and a peal of thunder. Chapters 6–8: From Buckland to Bree  Chapters 6 (“The Old Forest”) begins with Frodo being awakened by Merry. He finds the others already preparing to leave, and just after 6 a.m., the party

begins its trek with six ponies. Fatty Bolger rides with them as far as the edge of the forest, and then bids them farewell. Merry takes them along a hedge to an opening that leads into the trees. He intends to lead them through the center of the woods directly to the other side. But the hobbits find the forest disconcerting. The woods seem to display a palpable malice toward them, and Merry tells them that the trees of the Old Forest are more aware of their surroundings than other trees, sometimes tripping intruders with roots or dropping branches on them. They reach a place called Bonfire Glade, where long ago the hobbits of Buckland burned large numbers of trees. That history seems to be part of the reason for the apparent animosity between the trees and the travelers. After some time, the hobbits can see that the path through the forest is shifting, as trees appear to move to block their way and force them deeper into the center of the forest, toward the stream called the Withywindle. They follow a path along the stream until, overcome by an uncanny sleepiness, they settle down for a nap near a huge old willow tree. The willow, it turns out, is one of the most malevolent of the trees of the forest. Sam gets up to check on the ponies, and when he returns he finds that the tree has tossed Frodo in the water and is trying to drown him with a root. Sam is able to save Frodo from drowning, but the two of them are unable to rescue Merry, whose legs are hanging from a hole in the tree that has tightened around him, or Pippin, who has disappeared inside the tree. In a panic, Frodo begins running down the path, calling for help. Fortunately for the hobbits, a very strange man named Tom Bombadil happens to be coming down the path from the other direction. Bombadil wears bright blue clothes and yellow boots and constantly sings jovial songs about himself and his love for Goldberry, the river’s daughter. He listens to Frodo’s explanation of their plight and explains that he knows Old Man Willow and his tricks. He sings to the tree and apparently hits the right notes, as Old Man Willow suddenly lets Pippin go and spits Merry out completely. Having saved the hobbits, Bombadil now invites them to spend the night in the safety of his home

182   Lord of the Rings, The on the edge of the forest, where he lives with Goldberry. He is in a hurry to get home, however, and the hobbits cannot keep up, so he tells them to follow his lead along the path. Soon he is out of sight, and they can no longer hear his singing, but they push onward. As the sun is setting, they glimpse the river and see they are on mown grass. The path leads to a house, and they hurry forward, hearing Tom’s voice and the high clear voice of Goldberry answering him. Soon they are at Tom’s threshold. Chapter 7 is entitled “In the House of Tom Bombadil.” As the hobbits enter the house, they are greeted by Goldberry, daughter of the river, a beautiful elf queen with long blond hair. She sits in a chair surrounded by water lilies, and her dress is green with silver accents that look like beads of dew. The hobbits are speechless when they see her, until Frodo, calling her “Fair Lady Goldberry,” sings to her some of the verses he heard Bombadil speak earlier. Goldberry welcomes the hobbits, bidding them make merry and fear nothing, for they are in the house of Tom Bombadil. Tom leads the hobbits to a room where they can wash and get ready for supper. Goldberry is busy getting the table ready, and Frodo asks her who exactly Tom Bombadil is. Her answer is mysterious: He is the master of the woods, the water, and the hill, she tells him. But when Frodo assumes that he owns all the land about them, she dismisses the idea, saying he has no need to own anything, nor any reason to fear anything. As the hobbits eat the generous meal, they find themselves singing aloud in the comfort of Tom’s house. After supper, Goldberry retires for the evening, and Frodo asks Bombadil if he appeared when he did by chance or because Frodo was calling him. Tom replies that it was, in fact, just chance, but that he had been expecting them. When Frodo begins to question him more, asking about Old Man Willow, Tom responds that the night is not the time for questions, and they must wait for the morning. That night, all the hobbits but Sam experience disturbing dreams. Pippin dreams of being trapped inside Old Man Willow. Merry dreams that he is drowning in a slimy bog. Frodo dreams of a tower in a ring of hills, with a white-haired man atop the tower who is borne away by an eagle. This is

followed by the sound of hoofs galloping from the east, and, Frodo wakes up, fearing the Black Riders. But the fact that they are in the house of Tom Bombadil comforts each of the hobbits, and they sleep again, feeling safe. When they awaken the next morning, they are served a hearty breakfast, but it has begun to rain steadily, a state Tom Bombadil describes as “Goldberrry’s washing day.” The hobbits end up spending the entire day with Tom, listening to his stories of the forest and its inhabitants—the trees and animals. He tells them that Old Man Willow’s strength is green but his heart is rotten. He also speaks of the Barrow-downs on the edge of the forest, through which the hobbits must pass on their journey east, warning them of barrow-wights, or evil spirits who wander those hills. Tom’s memory is long, for he was here, he says, long before anything else existed. He is, he tells the hobbits, the Eldest, who was in Middle-earth before the coming of the elves and before the creation of rivers and trees—before the coming of the first Dark Lord (Melkor) in the First Age. Goldberry returns as the light begins to wane, and the hobbits have another merry supper at Tom Bombadil’s house. After supper, Tom begins to speak to the hobbits of the Shire and of their own quest. They are surprised to learn that he already knows a good deal about them. He asks to be shown the One Ring, and Frodo hands it to him without objection. Tom places it on his finger, but the ring has no effect on him at all, nor does Tom seem to desire it. He hands it back to Frodo, who is afraid that somehow his ring has been replaced by another. He furtively tries it on his finger, but Tom is able to see him even though he is invisible to the others. Now Tom tells the hobbits they must be on their way in the morning, and he teaches them a rhyme to sing if they run into trouble the next day on the Barrow-downs and need to call on him for help. Then they retire for one more night of safe sleep in Tom’s house. As the eighth chapter (“Fog on the Barrowdowns”) begins, the hobbits awake the next morning and eat breakfast alone. The day is fine and clear as they set out, and Tom waves and wishes them good speed from his doorway. Shortly after

Lord of the Rings, The   183 they start out, Frodo remembers that they have not bid farewell to Goldberry, but as they look back, they see her beckoning to them from the hilltop. From here they can see the Barrow-downs to the east, and Goldberry tells them to hurry on their way, reminding them to follow the path north, keeping the downs to the east. They travel on, making good time until about noon, when they come to a hill with flattened top. From here, they can see the eastbound road far to the north and realize that they have come farther than they thought. They sit down against a single large stone in the middle of the circle, eating a fine lunch provided by Tom Bombadil. The next thing they know, the hobbits are waking up hours later in the midst of a fog. Looking toward the west, they see the sun setting, and, unwilling to stay any longer in the hollow, they pack up and leave down the northern slope of the hill, assuming that if they head toward the north, they will come to the road eventually. They walk single-file through the fog, Frodo followed by Sam, then Pippin and Merry. But the group loses its way in the fog, and Frodo’s horse runs away. He calls out to his friends, only to hear cries that sound like “help, help!” He follows them up a hill, where a tall figure towers over him and seizes him in its cold grip. When Frodo comes to, he finds himself lying on a stone inside one of the barrows. In a sickly green light, he sees his three friends, lying unconscious, wearing strange garments with gold jewelry and crowns and lying with a single sword across their three throats. Frodo hears a voice chanting some ritual verse, and sees a withered arm reaching around a corner to grasp the sword. He fights off the temptation to put on his ring and escape himself, and instead he picks up a short sword lying near him in the barrow and strikes at the grasping arm with it. He severs the hand from the arm and hears a shriek as the light goes out. He has fallen on his friends and finds them cold. Suddenly remembering the verse Tom Bombadil had taught him, he sings it out loudly from within the barrow. After a long moment, he hears an answering song coming from far off: It is Tom Bombadil. Before long, daylight begins to stream into the barrow as a

stone is removed, and Tom himself enters. He sings a song that expels the old barrow-wight and urges Frodo to help him carry his three friends out of the barrow and into the sunlight. They lay the three hobbits in the sun, and Tom sings them into waking. He then goes and gathers the hobbits’ five ponies, bringing them with his own horse, Fatty Lumpkin, with whom they have been safely spending the night. Sam, Merry, and Pippin change into new clothes from their packs, and Tom brings out a good deal of treasure from the barrow, laying it on the hilltop. From it he chooses a brooch for Goldberry and provides each of the hobbits with a long dagger to be used as a sword. These were made long ago, he says, by the men of Westernesse, who opposed the Dark Lord before being defeated by the king of Carn Dûm. Some of them, he says, still walk the land, forgotten but protecting those who are unaware. The hobbits do not understand, but Tom moves on, accompanying the travelers on Fatty Bumpkin for the rest of the day as they move north to the road. As they reach the end of his lands, Tom tells the hobbits that they should be safe from the Black Riders for at least the next day or two, but he cannot guarantee it. He tells them to go east to the village of Bree, where they will find an inn called the Prancing Pony. They can lodge there for the evening. As they make their way toward Bree, Frodo reminds his friends not to mention the name of Baggins and to refer to him only as Mister Underhill. Chapters 9–12: From Bree to Rivendell  In chapter 9 (“At the Sign of the Prancing Pony”), the hobbits arrive at Bree, the chief city of a small populated area known as Bree-land. In Bree, “big people” (i.e., men) and hobbits live peacefully together; they are also familiar with dwarves and elves, who sometimes pass this way. The men of Bree claim to be descendants of the first men to come into the western part of Middle-earth. For that matter, the hobbits of Bree believe themselves to be the first hobbit settlers of the area. Bree is also the occasional home of Rangers, mysterious wandering men who travel as far as the Misty Mountains to the east and keep largely to themselves when they visit the

184   Lord of the Rings, The town. The four travelers are stopped at the city gate by a gatekeeper who demands to know their business. It has become very unusual for hobbits of the Shire to come as far east as Bree, and there are suspicious people about in these days. But Merry gives his name as Brandybuck, and the gateman relents but warns them they will not be the only guests at the Prancing Pony. Arriving at the inn, the hobbits find the innkeeper, Barliman Butterbur, to be friendly, talkative, and quite busy with his many customers. Frodo registers as Mr. Underhill, as Gandalf advised him. Butterbur is stirred by a memory but cannot seem to put his finger on what that name means to him. The innkeeper has an assistant, a hobbit named Nob, who sees the travelers to their room and makes sure that they have food and drink, and that their horses are tended to. Butterbur tells the hobbits that they are welcome to join the other guests in the common room if they like. Frodo, Pippin, and Sam decide to enjoy the company, but Merry holds back, saying that he may go for a walk later to get some air. In the common room, Frodo finds that the hobbits of Bree are an inquisitive group, and as a cover he tells them that he and his friends are researching a book about hobbits outside the Shire. The Bree hobbits are eager to share information, so that Frodo is deluged. They also are very curious about the name Underhill, and some of the local hobbits of that name adopt him as a long-lost cousin. Eventually, however, the group in the common room becomes more interested in Pippin, who has had a good deal to drink and begins to tell amusing stories of recent events in the Shire. At this point, Frodo becomes aware of a dark, weather-beaten man in a corner who is studying him closely. He asks Butterbur who the man is and is told his name is Strider, and he is a Ranger. His attention makes Frodo nervous, and when Pippin begins to tell the story of Bilbo’s farewell party, Strider beckons Frodo over. He tells “Mr. Underhill” quietly that his companion is saying too much, and Frodo realizes that Pippin may very well mention the Ring of Power that caused Bilbo’s disappearance. Frodo decides to draw the room’s attention to himself instead and stands on a table

to sing a song that Bilbo had taught him—a long nursery rhyme about a cat that could play the fiddle, a cow, the Man in the Moon, a small dog, and some silverware. The group applauds the song with delight and asks Frodo to sing it again. Frodo, carried away by their appreciation, begins the song again. He has, however, been nervously holding onto the ring as it hangs from a chain inside his shirt, and at one point he accidentally stumbles off the table and the ring slips on his finger. The crowd gasps at his vanishing, and they begin to look around suspiciously while Frodo nervously crawls back to the corner next to Strider and removes the ring. Strider, now calling Frodo by the name “Mr. Baggins,” tells him he has simply made matters worse and insists on seeing him later in private to discuss a matter of importance. Frodo agrees, then comes forward, insisting to the crowd that he did not vanish but simply crawled off unseen. The hobbits and men leave the inn unconvinced, and Butterbur asks Frodo to please let him know if he plans to engage in any acrobatics again. But he also tells Frodo that he has remembered something that he needs to tell Mr. Underhill in private, and he will come to his room later to see him. Chapter 10 is entitled “Strider.” When Frodo and his friends make their way back to the parlor, they find that Merry has left, but that Strider has slipped in and is waiting to speak with them. He tells Frodo that he has good advice to give him, but wants a reward. Frodo is suspicious and wonders what this strange-looking vagrant can want from him. But the only “reward” Strider asks is to be allowed to accompany the hobbits to Rivendell. He is an expert guide in the wilderness east of Bree, he says, and can help to protect them. He also tells them that he overheard them talking with Tom Bombadil on the road and knows that “Underhill” is an assumed name. The hobbit he is looking for, he says, is named Frodo Baggins. One of the men of Bree, Bill Ferny, was in the common room tonight, and he seemed to be in league with an ill-favored southerner visiting the inn. Both were particularly interested in Frodo’s disappearing act. They are sure to sell the information to the agents of the enemy, Strider tells Frodo, and the hobbit will need him to help them avoid the terrible Black Riders.

Lord of the Rings, The   185 But Frodo is cautious, as is Sam, and wants to know more about this Ranger before trusting him. At that point, the innkeeper, Butterbur, enters the room. He brings with him a letter from Gandalf, dated Midsummer’s Day. Gandalf had urged Butterbur to find someone to deliver the letter to Frodo Baggins in the Shire as soon as possible, but Butterbur had found no one traveling that direction, and then had forgotten about the letter. Gandalf had also told Butterbur that his friend would be coming from the Shire later and would be traveling under the name Underhill. Butterbur has finally recalled the letter, and he gives it to Frodo. He also warns him that Black Riders were in town a few days earlier, looking for Mr. Baggins. Strider tells Butterbur that the Riders are from Mordor, and the shaken Butterbur agrees to help protect the hobbits for the night. He then leaves the room. Frodo reads the letter, in which Gandalf urges him to leave the Shire at once, in midsummer, rather than wait until the autumn. Gandalf warns him not to travel at night and not to use the ring under any circumstances. Gandalf also directs Frodo to trust his friend Strider, whose real name is Aragorn. Gandalf includes a rhyme concerning the Ranger, suggesting that “All that is gold does not glitter,” and prophesying that “Renewed shall be the blade that was broken, / The crownless again shall be king” (182). The last lines make no sense to Frodo, but the first phrase clearly applies to Strider himself, who is certainly more than he appears to be. Sam is still distrustful of Strider, claiming there is no way to know that this particular fellow is the real Strider to whom Gandalf refers. At this, Strider rises to his full height and places his hand on his sword hilt, frightening the hobbits and declaring that if he actually wanted the ring, he could have simply taken it by now. He then subsides and declares that he is Aragorn, son of Arathorn, and is therefore only there to help them. He draws the sword, revealing that the blade is broken, as mentioned in Gandalf’s poem. But both he and the hobbits worry about what has happened to Gandalf, who has not been seen since midsummer. At that point, Merry bursts in with Nob. He says that he has seen a Black Rider in the village, and

that he attempted to follow it. But he was suddenly struck senseless; Strider says it was from the breath of the Rider. It was there, near Bill Ferny’s house, that Nob came upon him with two men stooped over him. Now Strider warns that the Riders will know everything about the evening from Ferny. He advises the hobbits not to go to their rooms, but to go with Strider in the parlor. He and Nob gather the hobbits’ luggage from their rooms and bolster the beds to make it appear that the hobbits are sleeping in them. The hobbits then drop off to sleep in the parlor, under the watchful eye of Strider. Chapter 11 (“A Knife in the Dark”) begins during that night, back in Frodo’s newly purchased home at Crickhollow. Here, Fatty Bolger is disturbed during the night by three Black Riders prowling about in front of the house. Finally one voice threatens at the door “Open in the name of Mordor,” and the door is broken in. Fatty, however, has escaped out the back and, babbling with fear, taken refuge in the nearest house a mile off. His incoherent prattle convinces the hobbits of Buckland that they are under attack, and they blow the Horn-call of Buckland to prepare for battle— for the first time in more than a century. The Black Riders, finding nothing in the house, now flee, having discovered that neither Frodo nor the ring is at Crickhollow. Meanwhile, the hobbits’ rooms at the Prancing Pony have been ransacked. Strider finds the rooms ravaged and the bolsters slashed. The travelers also find that the stable has been broken into and all the horses, including their ponies, have been driven off. Butterbur feels responsible and gives Strider money to buy another horse; the only one in town belongs to the devious Bill Ferny, who charges three times the horse’s worth. (We are told, however, that the hobbits’ horses found their way to Fatty Lumpkin and eventually were returned to Butterbur by Tom Bombadil.) The pony is in poor shape but glad to be freed of his worthless master, and they load him with their supplies. The travelers, unable now to leave early and unobserved, begin their trek east as the whole town (curious about the robbery as well as Frodo’s act the previous night) lines the road out of the village. At the end of town, a smirking Bill Ferny tells Sam not to mistreat his pony.

186   Lord of the Rings, The Sam responds with a warning to Ferny to keep his ugly face out of sight and then plunks him with an apple. They end up naming the pony Bill. The travelers soon leave the road, with Strider leading them, hoping to avoid detection by the Black Riders. They travel in relative peace for some five days through forest, hills, and marshes. They are aiming for Weathertop, the highest peak in the hills halfway between the Shire and Rivendell, and the place where Strider believes Gandalf may try to meet them if he learns they have come this way. On this ridge, the men of the West had built a great watchtower called Amon Sûl, from which Elendil watched for the arrival of the elven king Gil-galad in the days of the Last Alliance. Strider sings a song of Gil-galad, and the hobbits realize that he knows a great deal of ancient lore. On the sixth day, the hobbits reach Weathertop. Strider finds some fresh runes scratched on a stone that he believes may have been put there by Gandalf, suggesting that the wizard had been there some three days earlier (on October 3), but apparently it had been too dangerous to stay. Sam and Pippin have found newly chopped firewood and signs of a recent camp, which makes the travelers hopeful that Gandalf had really been there. In the meantime, however, Strider has spotted Black Riders far below on the road. Strider believes he may have been too careless on the hilltop since, although the Riders are blind, their horses can see and they can detect the presence of living things with their other senses. Strider decides to build a campfire, knowing that the Black Riders fear fire. To keep up their spirits, the hobbits ask for more stories about Gil-galad. Frodo tells what he knows, but Strider stops him, wishing to avoid stories concerning the enemy while his servants are so close. Instead, Strider sings the story of Beren and Lúthien (called Tinúviel, the Nightingale)—a song of love between an elven princess and a mortal man in the First Age. He tells of how the two of them stole one of the Silmarils from the crown of the Great Enemy (older than Sauron, who was his servant). Elrond was descended from their union, Strider says, as were all the kings of Númenor, the men of the West. Strider’s eyes shine as he tells the story.

Suddenly, the hobbits become aware of black shadows coming over the crest of the hill and moving toward them. Strider tells them to sit in a circle, and he prepares to defend them. Frodo feels an irresistible urge to put on the ring and finally yields to it. When he does, he can see the five dark figures clearly, with their white faces and burning eyes—but they can see him as well. One of them is taller than the others and wears a crown, and this one dashes forward toward Frodo. In desperation, Frodo cries out the names Elbereth and Gilthoniel, and he lunges with his knife at the Black Rider’s feet. But the Rider stabs Frodo in the shoulder with a knife, and when Strider rushes forward with a firebrand, driving the Riders off, Frodo passes out, slipping his ring off as he does. When Frodo regains consciousness at the beginning of chapter 12 (“Flight to the Ford”), he asks his friends what has happened and where the “pale king” has gone. The others are confused—they saw him disappear and saw a shadow move past them, but obviously they did not see what he was able to see with the ring on his finger. The Black Riders have allowed themselves to be driven off for now, believing that Frodo is dead or dying. Strider finds the knife that wounded Frodo, and the blade crumbles in his hand. But Strider recognizes that the cursed blade carries a power that he cannot dispel. He tends to the wound as best he can, using a medicinal plant called athelas that he crumbles and boils in water. Its scent calms all of the hobbits. But a cold numbness is spreading through Frodo’s shoulder, and Strider realizes that they must get Frodo to Rivendell quickly, since only Elrond may be able to heal this wound. Unfortunately, Weathertop is still a fortnight’s journey from Rivendell. The next morning, the pony’s burdens are divided among the other travelers and Frodo is mounted on him for the duration of the journey. For five days, they travel cross-country, after which Strider says they must return to the road in order to cross the River Hoarwell on the Last Bridge. The Riders have made no further appearance, and the travelers worry that they are waiting ahead to ambush them. Strider finds a green elf-stone on the road, which he sees as a positive sign that they may cross the bridge without trouble. At the next river,

Lord of the Rings, The   187 the Bruinen, is the ford that leads into Rivendell. After the bridge, they are forced north, following a ravine. Around them are the ruins of ancient fortifications, and Frodo, recalling Bilbo’s stories of trolls in this part of the world, asks Strider if trolls built these ruins. Strider informs him that trolls build nothing; the ruins were made by men who fell under the evil influence of Angband in the ancient days. When Pippin asks how he knows such things, Strider replies that the heirs of Elendil do not forget the past. After some days of cold, wet weather, Strider tells the hobbits that they have come too far north and must scramble over the ridges to head back toward the ford of Bruinen. Finally, the exhausted hobbits can go no farther, and a worried Sam asks Strider what is wrong with his master. Strider tells him that the poison of the wound is beyond his skill but tells him not to give up hope. The weather is better the next day, and the hobbits start out with better spirits. They find a door in the rock that they are certain leads to a troll hole, but Strider says the trolls are long gone. Pippin and Merry go ahead of the others for a space, but they return in fear, saying they have seen three giant trolls standing in a clearing below. Strider goes to the place and breaks a stick on one of the trolls, who proves to be made of stone. The hobbits realize that these are the three trolls that were turned to stone during Bilbo’s journey east many years earlier. This lightens their spirits somewhat, and Frodo and Merry ask for a song. Sam entertains them with a song about trolls, which Frodo guesses is his own composition. Frodo expresses a belief that Sam will end up becoming a wizard or a warrior, though Sam says he wants neither. That evening, they hear the sound of another horse and are frightened. As the rider approaches, it turns out not to be a Black Rider at all, but an elf prince riding a great white horse. Aragorn recognizes the elf as Glorfindel, from Rivendell. He explains that Elrond had had word (sent from Gildor) that “the Nine” were abroad, that Frodo and his companions were bearing a great burden through the wilderness, and that Gandalf was missing. Elrond had sent three riders to search for the hobbits, and Glorfindel had been looking for them

for some time. It was he who had left the elf-stone at the bridge, seven days earlier. Glorfindel looks at the hilt of the knife that wounded Frodo and recognizes the evil. He insists that the travelers make their way to Rivendell without stopping, and he puts Frodo on his great horse, which he says will keep him from danger and not let him fall off. Frodo protests that he will not leave his friends behind in danger, to which Glorfindel responds that they would be in no danger without Frodo and that which he carries. For three days, Glorfindel pushes them on with little rest, sustaining them with a liquor from the leather cask he carries. Frodo’s wound is worsening, and he fades in and out of reality. When the Ford of Rivendell is in sight, Glorfindel hears noises in the trees and then cries “Fly! The enemy is upon us!” (225). Five Black Riders emerge from behind them and take up the chase. Frodo hesitates, until he realizes that his mind is reflecting the will of the Riders, who are trying to make him stay. Glorfindel gives the horse a command in elvish, and it springs toward the ford. The rest are left behind as the Riders chase Frodo, and as he approaches the ford, four more Riders emerge to cut him off. But Glorfindel’s horse is able to outrun them all and crosses the ford ahead of them. From the far side, Frodo calls back, shouting at the Nine to go back to Mordor and follow him no more. The lead Rider calls back, saying they will take Frodo and the ring to Mordor. With his last breath, Frodo swears by Elbereth and by Lúthien that they shall have neither him nor the ring. Three of the Riders now try to cross the ford, when suddenly a loud rush of water is heard, and huge white waves looking like white horses sweep down the river, washing away the three Riders and their horses. The horses of the other six Riders, seized by a kind of madness, rush into the water and are swept away as well. Finally, Frodo loses consciousness again. Book 2: The Ring Goes South Chapters 1–2: In the House of Elrond  In the first chapter (“Many Meetings”), Frodo awakens in a bed and room he does not recognize, wondering aloud where he is and what time it is. A voice that he recognizes as Gandalf’s answers him, telling

188   Lord of the Rings, The him he is in the House of Elrond in Rivendell, and that it is the morning of October 24. Frodo is delighted to see Gandalf, who tells him that he has been unconscious and under Elrond’s healing care for four days and three nights. His friends are safe, Gandalf tells him, and Sam has not left his side for the entire time. Frodo nearly died because a piece of the Morgul-knife that wounded him was still in his shoulder. It has now been removed, taking him out of danger, but Gandalf informs Frodo that the enemy’s intent in wounding him was to turn Frodo into a wraith like the Black Riders themselves, under the power of the Dark Lord. The Riders, Gandalf reveals, are the nine Ringwraiths, prisoners of Sauron’s Rings of Power. Thus, Frodo was in greatest danger when he wore the ring and could see the Ringwraiths in their own form. Gandalf reveals that he has been imprisoned himself and that was why he did not appear to help the hobbits on their journey, but he will not elaborate, he says, until Frodo is more completely recovered. Frodo is grateful for Strider, and Gandalf informs Frodo that Strider (Aragorn) and the other Rangers are descendants of the men of the West and their kings. The white figure at the ford, Gandalf says, was Glorfindel himself. Glorfindel is one of the Eldar who had lived across the great ocean, and who therefore exists in both realms at once, so that the white figure was Glorfindel as he is seen in the Blessed Realm. The river itself had been commanded by Elrond, and the waves had destroyed the Riders’ horses and thus crippled the Riders temporarily. But the river could not destroy them. Elrond, Frodo learns, has called a great council for the next day, to discuss what is to be done about the ring. Frodo sleeps again until evening, when he awakes, dresses, and is met by Sam, who is overjoyed at his recovery and takes him down to feast. He is reunited with Pippin and Merry, and at the feast he has his first glimpse of Elrond, master of Rivendell, whose name comes into so many stories. He also observes Arwen Evenstar, Elrond’s daughter, whose legendary beauty is said to resemble that of Lúthien herself. Frodo is seated next to a white-bearded dwarf, who identifies himself as Gloin. Frodo is delighted to meet a companion of his kinsman Bilbo, and he asks about the Lonely

Mountain, where he learns that Dain is still king, and that Dale is ruled by the grandson of Bard. Gloin has brought his son, Gimli, along with him to Rivendell. After the feast, the group goes into the Hall of Fire, where songs, poems, and tales will be rehearsed. Here Frodo discovers Bilbo waiting for him. The old hobbit is overjoyed to see Frodo and claims to have missed dinner because he has been working on a new poem. He is awaiting his friend the Dúnadan, who is coming to help him finish it. Bilbo wonders about all the fuss over his old ring and asks to see it. Reluctantly, Frodo holds it out to him and seems to see Bilbo change into a greedy, grasping creature. Frodo pulls the ring back, and Bilbo understands why he can no longer have anything to do with it. Soon Strider arrives; he is the one whom Bilbo had called “the Dúnadan” (meaning “the Man of the West”). He consults with Bilbo about his poem, and Bilbo then performs it—a long poem about Eärendil the mariner and his journey to Valinor with the Silmaril in the First Age. Afterward, Bilbo and Frodo go off to Frodo’s room to gossip about the Shire, and as they leave the Hall of Fire, Frodo notices Aragorn standing next to Arwen while Elrond sings a song of Elbereth. Frodo and Bilbo chat for some time, until Sam comes in to make sure that Frodo gets some sleep before the next day, when the Council of Elrond will take place. The next morning, Frodo meets Gandalf and Bilbo on the way to Elrond’s council. When he arrives, he sees that Aragorn is there, as well as Gloin with his son, Gimli. Glorfindel is present, along with other counselors of Elrond’s household, including Erestor. The elf Galdor, representing Círdan the Shipwright of the Grey Havens, is attending. Another elf named Legolas, son of the king of Mirkwood, is present, as is the newly arrived Boromir, from the southern kingdom of Gondor. Boromir has come in quest of an interpretation of the dream his brother Faramir has had, in which a voice bade them seek the sword that was broken, where Isildur’s Bane will be revealed and a Halfling shall stand forth (259). Gloin is the first to speak. He says that 30 years have passed since Balin led a party to try to resettle

Lord of the Rings, The   189 the mines of Moria, the ancestral home of the dwarves. There has been no word, but about a year ago a messenger from Mordor arrived at the gates of the Kingdom Under the Mountain, promising to exchange the resettling of Moria, plus three of the dwarves’ original seven Rings of Power, for information concerning a hobbit and a small ring he had found. Dáin forestalled the messenger, but Gloin has come to warn Bilbo. Elrond now announces that the council has been called to decide the fate of this ring. He begins to tell the whole story of the One Ring. Much of it Gandalf had already told Frodo. Elrond recounts the story of the fall of Númenor and the coming of the men of the West, Elendil and his sons Isildur (who became king of Arnor in the north) and Anárion, who ruled Gondor in the South, and of the last alliance formed between Elendil and Gil-galad. Elrond recalls the scene of the battle, and the astounded Frodo asks how that is possible, but Elrond reveals that his father was Eárendil, and his mother, Elwing, was granddaughter of Lúthien. Elrond’s memory stretches through three ages of Middle-earth. He was herald of Gil-galad at the Battle of Dagorlad before the Black Gate of Mordor. He remembers Elendil dying, his sword Narsil breaking beneath him, and he recalls Isildur’s using the shard of Elendil’s sword to cut the One Ring from Sauron’s hand. Boromir was unaware of this, and Elrond tells how Isildur lost the ring, a story known to very few. But Valandil, heir of Isildur, was safe at Rivendell, and there Ohtar, Isildur’s squire, brought the shards of the sword, which have yet to be reforged. The kingdom of Arnor was broken and the men scattered. Gondor survived, with two great towers (Minas Ithil—Tower of the Rising Moon— and Minas Anor—Tower of the Setting Sun), and with the White Tree that Isildur had brought from Númenor flourishing. But the line of kings failed, and the tree withered, and evil creatures of Mordor occupied the easternmost of the two great towers, while the other was renamed Minas Tirith, the Tower of the Guard. At this point, Boromir interrupts, asserting that Gondor still holds its own, a bulwark for all the lands to the west, but a new strength in Mordor

has arisen and has now swept through Gondor’s eastern settlements. Boromir says he has sought Elrond’s house for 110 days, seeking the answer to a recurring prophetic dream that his brother has been having, telling him to seek for the sword that was broken, and warning him of the finding of Isildur’s Bane. At this Aragorn comes forth, laying his sword on the table before Elrond, declaring it to be the Sword that was Broken. Boromir asks who he is, and Elrond reveals that Aragorn is, in fact, Isildur’s heir. At this point, Frodo shows the ring itself, Isildur’s Bane. Aragorn says that the sword has been passed from heir to heir over the centuries, with the legend that it would be reforged when Isildur’s Bane was found. The time has come, he says, and he offers his sword for the defense of Minas Tirith. Boromir is suspicious, but Aragorn makes his claim for the Rangers of the North, saying that they have protected the kingdoms of the North for many years, hunting down servants of the enemy without thanks or recognition of any kind. Bilbo stands to recite the poem “All that is gold does not glitter. . . ,” a poem quoted in Gandalf’s letter to Frodo and apparently one of Bilbo’s own compositions. Now the time has come for Bilbo to reveal how the ring was found again. Frodo then completes the story by accounting for his adventures since he obtained the ring. Galdor asks how it can be shown that this is indeed the One Ring, and he asks where Saruman the White is, who is most learned in the lore of the Rings of Power. Gandalf answers that although Saruman had long tried to allay any of his fears, he long had suspected Bilbo’s ring was the One Ring. He traveled to Gondor’s library, where a scroll made by Isildur himself traced the letters to be found on the ring if it were cast into the fire. At the same time, Aragorn had tracked Gollum, captured him, and brought him with a halter on his neck to the elves of Mirkwood. Here Gandalf had questioned him, learned where and at what time he had found the ring, and learned that he had been questioned, as well, in Mordor. Sauron, therefore, knew everything that their council now knew, and he had dispatched the Nine Ringwraiths to look for the ring. At this point, Legolas speaks up, informing

190   Lord of the Rings, The the council that he has been dispatched to bring the news that Gollum escaped from the elves of Mirkwood during an attack by orcs. Now Gandalf takes up the tale, telling how he learned from another wizard, Radagast, that the Nine were abroad, and that Saruman the White, chief of the order of wizards, wanted to consult with Gandalf. But when Gandalf arrived at Saruman’s fortress at Isengard, Saruman trapped him. Saruman, Gandalf reveals, decided to abandon the side of the free peoples of Middle-earth, and he has put himself in league with Sauron, either in the belief that ultimately he will be able to wrest power from him, or to actively pursue the ring and make himself the sole power in Middle-earth through it. He tried to get Gandalf to join him, and when Gandalf refused, Saruman imprisoned him atop the high tower of Orthanc to force him to give up the ring. At this point in Gandalf’s tale, Frodo cries out that he had seen this in a dream. Fortunately, Radagast sent the great eagle Gwaihir, who bore Gandalf away before Saruman, or any of the orcs or wolves manning his fortress, was aware. The eagle took Gandalf to Rohan, where he received a cold welcome but was able to borrow the great horse Shadowfax and ride to the Shire. Now Gandalf tells of trying to track Frodo, his relief in finding that Strider had been guiding them, his battle with the Black Riders on Weathertop, and his flight to Rivendell to arrive three days before the ring. Saruman’s desertion is a hard blow for the council. But the question now is what to do with the ring. It is suggested that Tom Bombadil, whom the elves call Iarwain, should take it, but Gandalf argues that it would matter little to him, and he would forget about it. Boromir argues that they should use the ring itself to defeat Sauron, but— using the example of Saruman—Gandalf and Elrond argue that the ring itself is pure evil, and that anyone using it would become corrupted and set himself up as a new Dark Lord. Gloin wishes to use the other Rings of Power to unite against Sauron—the three elf-rings and the remaining dwarfrings. He now reveals that Balin had gone to Moria in part to find Thrór’s ring. But Gandalf divulges what he found long ago in Dol Guldur: Sauron

had captured Thráin, son of Thrór, and recovered that ring. Besides, the elf-rings cannot be used for war, and their power may be dependent on the One Ring. Only two options are left: Hide the ring forever or destroy it. Taking it into the West or casting it in the sea is the first option, but one that the enemy will suspect. Destroying the ring is a step that Sauron would never consider, since he judges all others by his own desire for power. It must go to Mount Doom in Mordor to be unmade, the council decides. But who will carry it? Bilbo stands up to volunteer, but Gandalf gently reminds him that his time with the ring is over. Finally, Frodo volunteers, and Elrond agrees that it seems to be his lot. Sam leaps up from a corner where he has been hiding and insists that Frodo will not go to Mordor alone. Chapters 3–5: Rivendell through Moria  The third chapter (“The Ring Goes South”) begins immediately after the Council of Elrond, as Merry and Pippin accost Frodo and Sam, angry that Sam will be allowed to accompany Frodo but they will not. Gandalf and Bilbo arrive, and Gandalf tells Frodo that Elrond is sending out many scouts in all directions from Rivendell, to learn what has happened to the Black Riders and to find where Gollum may have gone. Frodo will not be able to start out until the scouts return—and that will not be until winter, a bad time to begin a journey. In the meantime, Bilbo asks Frodo to help him write the book he is working on concerning his adventures and those of Frodo as well. After two months, the scouts begin to return. They have found eight of the black horses dead, but they have not accounted for the last of the Black Riders. No trace of Gollum has been found. Elrond asks Frodo again if he is willing to make the journey south, and Frodo reiterates his commitment. Elrond decides to send a small party with Frodo as far as they are willing to go. The party will comprise nine walkers, to balance the nine Black Riders. Gandalf will go with Frodo and Sam, and Legolas will go to represent the elves, while Gimli, son of Gloin, will represent the dwarves. Aragorn and Boromir will both join the company; although they will leave to help the defense of Minas Tirith, their road will be the same

Lord of the Rings, The   191 for many miles. Finally, Merry and Pippin insist on making the last two of the group. Elrond hesitates, but Gandalf argues that their friendship may be worth more than wisdom or power in this quest. In preparation for the journey, the elves reforge the sword of Elendil, which Aragorn renames Andúril (“Flame of the West”). Bilbo gives Frodo his old sword, Sting, as well as the mithril coat of mail he received from Thorin Oakenshield on his journey to the Lonely Mountain. Frodo wears the mail coat secretly under his outer garments. Boromir carries a long sword and blows his war horn as they start out. Gandalf carries the elven blade Glamdring. Legolas is armed with a bow and arrows, and Gimli with a mail coat and an axe. Merry and Pippin carry the swords from the barrow. Sam insists on bringing the pony Bill to bear their supplies, and as they leave, he realizes he has forgotten to bring a length of rope. As the company leaves, Elrond tells them that any one of them is free to leave the group at his own desire, except the Ring-bearer, who must see the task through to the end. The company starts south in late December, traveling at night to avoid detection. They move south, west of the Misty Mountains, for two weeks, until they must cross the mountains, which now bend southwest. Gimli recognizes that under these mountains lies Khazad-dûm, the ancient dwarvish stronghold that the elves call Moria. As Aragorn keeps watch during the day, a great flock of black crows flies low over them, apparently deliberately spying on them. They begin to try to cross the mountains over the peak of Caradhras, but a heavy snowstorm traps them on a cliff on the mountain as boulders begin falling around them. They begin to wonder whether Sauron himself is controlling the weather. When the dawn comes, the company can see that there is no going forward—the snow has blocked the path and made it impassable. However, the way back down is also blocked. Boromir and Aragorn are able to push through the worst part of the snow, and Legolas, able to walk on top of the drifts, guides them to where the others will be able to walk. Eventually, with the men carrying the hobbits and Gimli riding Bill amid the baggage,

the company is able to scramble back to the foot of the mountain, defeated and frustrated. As chapter 4 (“A Journey in the Dark”) begins, Gandalf now urges that the company go under the mountains instead of over them—through the mines of Moria. Those who know of the mines, all but Gimli, are hesitant to travel that way, since they know the mines are now inhabited by orcs and foul creatures of evil. Boromir wants to go around the mountains through the Gap of Rohan, near the Isen River, but Gandalf refuses to bring the ring anywhere near Isengard, where Saruman may try to take it. Going underground will hide them from the eye of Sauron, Gandalf argues, and besides, there may be dwarves in Moria, since Balin was known to have entered the mines 30 years before. Boromir says he will not go through Moria unless the vote of the whole company is against him. Frodo suggests waiting until morning to vote. At that point, in the howling of the wind, the sound of wolves is heard. Now the members of the company are decided: They must go through Moria, rather than risk pursuit by wolves all the way to Rohan. During the night, the chief wolf is seen watching the company, and Gandalf challenges him. He leaps toward the company but is killed mid-leap by Legolas’s arrow. Soon the company is attacked on three sides by wolves, and they fight them boldly until Gandalf causes a great fire in the trees and frightens the wolves off. The next day, they make for the western gates of Moria as quickly as possible, for Gandalf wants to be there by nightfall at the latest. The way is difficult, but when they have climbed toward the cliff face where the gates should be, they find their way blocked by a dark, stagnant pool. Working their way around the pool, they finally come to the face of the cliff, but no gates are visible. Gandalf then pronounces an ancient spell over the cliff, and in the moonlight, the outline of the gates appear, carved with symbols of the dwarvish king Durin I as well as of the elves of that country, for the gates were made at a time when elves and dwarves were still great friends. The inscription over the gate reads: “The Doors of Durin, Lord of Moria. Speak, friend, and enter.” Gandalf assumes this means that if one is a friend, he should speak a password

192   Lord of the Rings, The and be able to enter. Confidently, he begins to go through every spell and password of which he is aware. Finally he calls out the word open in every language ever spoken in Middle-earth. Nothing works. Gandalf throws down his staff and sits on the ground. After some time, he rises, laughing, and calls out the word Mellon; the gates begin to open outward. He had been misreading the gate, he says: It should not be read “speak, friend, and enter”; rather, the inscription was “say ‘friend’ and enter.” The password was the elvish word for friend. Over Sam’s objections, Gandalf asserts that the pony Bill cannot come with them into the mines, and he whispers to the pony a kind of blessing that he hopes will help him return to Rivendell. As the company divides up the supplies Bill was carrying, a tentacle suddenly comes from the dark pool and grabs Frodo by the ankle. With Sam’s help, Frodo is able to struggle free, but 20 more tentacles appear. The group rushes through the gates into Moria, and the tentacles slam shut the doors and damage them so that they cannot be opened from within. The company has no choice now but to walk through the mines. His staff glowing as a guiding light, Gandalf leads the company into the caverns, accompanied by Gimli. Sam mourns Bill, sure that either the tentacles or the wolves will have eaten the faithful pony. But the company goes on through the dark, avoiding treacherous fissures and other obstacles. Here Sam truly misses the rope he had neglected to bring. They come to a room with a well and decide to rest there, but Pippin in his curiosity drops a stone into the well. The sound of the splash echoes in the cave, and a tapping like the sound of hammers begins. They move on for two nights, during which Frodo is certain he hears soft footsteps following them, and at one point he is sure he sees two points of light, like tiny eyes, watching. As the company walks on, impressed by the workmanship but appalled by the gloom, Sam wonders why the dwarves would live in such a place. Gimli corrects him, recalling the rich splendor of Moria at its height. He sings a song of Durin, who founded the great city. Gandalf tells the history of the dwarves’ mining here, acknowledging that over the years the orcs have plundered any gold

Cover of a 2002 coloring-book edition of The Fellowship of the Ring, published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. In the cover illustration, the fellowship walks through the halls of Moria, the former underground city of the dwarves.

and precious jewels in the place, but recalling that it was mithril, or Moria-silver, that was the basis of the dwarves’ wealth. Malleable and durable, mithril was still the most valuable substance in Middleearth, and when Gandalf mentions that Bilbo had a mithril coat, Gimli is astounded. As Frodo keeps quiet, he learns that the mail shirt is worth more than the entire Shire. It was mithril that Balin and his company hoped to find when they returned here. And it was mithril that caused the downfall of Moria, for the dwarves eventually dug too deep and awakened the evil known as “Durin’s bane.” As they push forward, moving closer to the eastern gates of Moria, a shaft of light leads them to a room where a stone slab marks a tomb. As Gandalf interprets the runic inscription on the tomb, he reads “Balin Son of Fundin.” Gimli covers his face. As the fifth chapter (“The Bridge of Khazaddûm”) opens, the fellowship begins to look around

Lord of the Rings, The   193 the room where Balin lies. They find bones and broken axes, and finally a tattered book, the Book of Mazarbul, written in several hands. Gandalf can make out only some of the entries, but through the book he learns that Balin had made himself lord of Moria, though after only five years he was slain by an orc’s arrow, and the rest of his company were besieged and finally attacked and wiped out by an army of orcs and by the creature they call the “Watcher in the Water”—clearly the tentacled beast that had attacked Frodo. Gandalf gives the Book of Mazarbul to Gimli to peruse later. He wants to guide the company back to the hall, from which he now believes he can find the way out, since the book has clarified the location of this chamber, six levels above the eastern gates. Suddenly, a loud sound of drumming reaches the company. A great host of orcs is approaching the west door of the chamber. Gandalf steps outside and flashes his staff, then ducks back in to report that he cannot count the large number of orcs, and that they have at least one great cave troll with them. As they try to slam shut the western door, the troll’s foot blocks it, but in an inspired burst, Frodo stabs the foot with Sting, its elven blade now shining in the presence of orcs, and the door is shut. The orcs burst in, but the fellowship fights them off valiantly, killing 13 orcs and causing the rest to retreat. Now the company prepares to flee from the eastern door, but before they can, a huge orc chieftain bursts in, leading a new charge. He drives a spear into Frodo, knocking him back before Aragorn slays him and the orcs fall back again. Now Aragorn picks up Frodo and the company flees. On the way, Frodo tells Aragorn to put him down, he can run himself. This shocks his companions, but there is no time now for explanations. Gandalf insists that the company flee down and to the right, and leave him to defend the door alone. After some time, there is a great white flash, and Gandalf joins them, shaken. They flee for about an hour, but with no sound now of pursuit. When they stop for a brief rest, Gimli asks Gandalf what happened, and Gandalf explains that he had tried putting a shutting spell on the door, but that something had come into the room behind it and

had broken the spell. It was a creature of great power that Gandalf had not met before and that had nearly destroyed him. But the strain that broke the door also buried the chamber and blocked their pursuers. Gandalf then marvels that Frodo is alive, but Frodo does not mention the mithril shirt. They are now one level below the eastern gates, and about a quarter of a mile away. Behind them is a great fire coming from the lower depths. Before them is a narrow bridge spanning a great chasm that must be crossed before they reach the gate. The army of orcs has come up behind them, but they are cut off by the fiery chasm, and arrows rain down on the fellowship. Gandalf urges Gimli to lead the way across the bridge, but at that point the orc army grows quiet and parts, and a huge, dark monster appears among them with a sword and whip of fire. It is a Balrog—Durin’s bane. Urging the others on, Gandalf stands in the middle of the bridge, facing the Balrog alone. He asserts that the Balrog “cannot pass,” telling it to return to the Shadow. When the Balrog tries to wield its sword, Gandalf’s sword Glamdring breaks the weapon of the Balrog. Then, as the Balrog begins to cross the bridge, Gandalf strikes the bridge with his staff, which shatters but crumbles the bridge itself. The Balrog falls into the abyss, but as it falls, its whip wraps itself around Gandalf’s ankle and pulls him down. Aragorn and Boromir, who have refused to leave Gandalf, spring forward, but as Gandalf falls, he grasps the edge of the bridge momentarily and tells them to “Fly, you fools!” (345). Then he falls. The company stands shocked, but Aragorn rallies them, saying they must obey Gandalf’s last command, and that he will lead them now. They flee through a great hall to the wide, broken eastern gates of Moria, where they scatter a small band of orcs waiting at the entrance and fly out into the sun, until they reach Dimrill Dale. Here, outside of the danger of Moria, the company is finally overcome by grief. Chapters 6–8: Lothlórien  As chapter 6 (“Lothlórien”) begins, Aragorn knows that the company is still not out of danger, and he will not let them mourn long, insisting that they must move on.

194   Lord of the Rings, The Gimli begs leave to look first at the landmarks of his people that stand before the gates of Moria. He invites Frodo to come with him, and Frodo and Sam look upon Durin’s Stone, which marks the place where Durin, father of Gimli’s race, first looked into the great pool known at the Mirrormere. They then look into the pool and see the mountains reflected behind them. Although it is broad daylight, they also see the mirror image of seven stars, the Crown of Durin, which the dwarves say will wait there until his return. Now the companions turn their faces toward Lothlórien, the fairest of all elven dwellings in Middle-earth. Aragorn says his heart will be glad to arrive there and hastens the company on. Before long, Frodo and Sam begin to lag behind, since both were hurt in the battle. Aragorn and Boromir carry the two hobbits to a resting place, where Aragorn treats Sam’s scalp wound and demands to look at Frodo’s chest where the orc’s spear struck him. When he sees the mithril coat, there is much admiration among the company, and after Aragorn has treated Frodo’s bruises, he advises Frodo not to take the coat off through his journey if he can help it. They forge on toward the golden wood of Lothlórien, but as Frodo walks in the rear with Gimli, he thinks he hears something behind them and once again believes he sees two eyes observing them from afar. The blade of Sting is not glowing, however, so he knows there are no orcs present. Finally, as night is falling, the company reaches the outskirts of the golden wood. Boromir is hesitant to enter, saying the wood has an evil name in Gondor, but Aragorn dismisses these fears, saying that only those who bring evil with them need fear the woods of Lothlórien. When they reach the stream of Nimrodel, a storied river among the elves, Legolas urges them all to wade across and camp on the other side, for the waters are healing. Frodo crosses, and he feels his weariness washed away. As they rest, they listen to the sound of the water, and Legolas sings a song of Nimrodel, the maiden named for the stream, and how she was lost trying to make her way to her lover, Amroth, waiting in a ship at the Grey Havens. The people of Lórien, Legolas adds, are called the Galadhrim

(“Tree-people”) because they make their homes in the trees, and Gimli suggests that for the evening, staying in the trees may be safer for the company as well. They go deeper into the forest, and Legolas begins to climb one of the mallorn trees with golden leaves, but he is soon warned off by a cry from the tree. He urges all the others to be quiet and not to move and converses with the voice from the tree in the language of the Sylvan elves. They send a ladder down and ask for Legolas and Frodo to climb up. Along with Sam, they climb to a platform in the tree, where three elves sit. One, called Haldir, speaks to Frodo in the Common Tongue, explaining that, since the elves of Lothlórien seldom have dealings with outsiders anymore, he is one of the few elves that can speak the language. He says that Elrond’s messengers have been to Lórien and told them of Frodo, and he informs them that the elves are ready to give them shelter temporarily. Legolas and the hobbits are welcome, he says, and so is Aragorn, whose name is well known in Lothlórien. As for Gimli, Haldir is less welcoming but finally agrees that the dwarf may enter Lothlórien if blindfolded and guarded by Legolas and Aragorn. Haldir now invites them all to sleep in the tree platforms, or flets, for the night. During the night, Frodo awakens to the sound of a company of orcs passing into the forest in pursuit of the fellowship. Haldir tells him that the elves have led the orcs in the wrong direction and that they will be dealt with further on by elvish troops. But Frodo also senses another creature climbing the tree, its bright eyes staring upward at him. The creature is frightened away when Haldir returns, and the elf tells Frodo that it was no orc, but hobbit-like in form. The next morning, the elves lead the travelers into the center of their realm, but before passing there, they insist that Gimli be blindfolded. Gimli refuses, saying he will leave and return to his own lands rather than be humiliated in this manner. Aragorn suggests that the entire company be blindfolded, and this appeases Gimli, though Legolas is unhappy. As they cross into the heart of Lothlórien, Frodo feels that he has been transported back to an ancient and fairer world.

Lord of the Rings, The   195 They walk for a day and a half before they are met by an army of elves, who tell Haldir that the orc raiders have been defeated and scattered. The army has also seen a small bent creature running away, but not knowing whether it was good or evil, they had spared its life. They bring another message as well: By permission of the Lady of the Galadhrim, the companions are to walk without blindfolds—even the dwarf, who thus becomes the first of Durin’s race to see the heart of Lothlórien. They can rest where they are and then make their way to the city of the Galadhrim by dusk. When the blindfolds are removed, Frodo beholds a beautiful and timeless wood, and a great tree on a hill that is the ancestral home of Amroth. He climbs to the flet, and from there he can see the city in one direction, and in another the southern end of Mirkwood, where Haldir tells him a dark power has returned to Sauron’s old fortress of Dol Guldur. When Frodo comes down the tree, he finds Aragorn waxing nostalgic at the foot of the hill, where he says his heart will dwell forever. He and Frodo leave the place, but Aragorn will never return to that spot. As the seventh chapter (“The Mirror of Galadriel”) opens, Haldir leads the company to Caras Galadhon, the chief city of Lórien, where they are shown to a large hall high up the tallest mallorn trees in the forest and are greeted by Lord Celeborn and the Lady Galadriel, the sovereigns of the golden wood. They are surprised that only eight travelers have come, since Elrond’s messenger had said the company would have nine members. When they hear that Gandalf has fallen in Moria, they are distraught at the news. Celeborn is especially disturbed to hear that a Balrog has been disrupted in Moria and blames the dwarves, even regretting the safe passage he has granted Gimli. But Galadriel defends the dwarves, saying that surely if she and her husband were exiled from Lórien, they would want to return no matter what darkness had befallen the place, just as dwarves now would want to see Khazad-dûm and its time-honored beauties. At these kind words, Gimli is so moved that he bows to her, saying that she and the living land of Lórien are more beautiful still. Galadriel goes on to say that they are aware of the company’s quest, and she warns that it “stands

upon the edge of a knife” (372). It may yet succeed, she says if all of the company are true. At this, she looks deep into each of the travelers’ hearts. Only later, when they discuss this among themselves, do they realize that she had been testing each of them, offering each in turn a choice between continuing the quest or abandoning it in favor of whatever they most desire. Frodo and Boromir are particularly affected by the Lady’s searching eyes, but neither will reveal what she offered them. Boromir repeats his distrust of her, but Aragorn dismisses such talk. The fellowship remains in Lórien for several days. This gives them all time to rest, heal, and properly mourn Gandalf. Legolas spends a good deal of time exploring the golden wood, most often in the company of Gimli, which the others find remarkable. Over the days, the elves of Lórien sing songs of Gandalf, calling him by his elvish name of Mithrandir, and Frodo is, for the first time, inspired to compose his own song of Gandalf, which he recites to Sam. But one evening, Frodo confesses to Sam that he is becoming restless and feels that they should be starting back on their quest. Unexpectedly, the two of them are approached by the Lady Galadriel, who silently beckons them to follow. They go with her to the southern border of the city and down a long flight of steps to a hollow formed by a silver stream coming from the side of the hill. A basin of silver is here, filled with water, and, calling it the “Mirror of Galadriel,” the Lady blows upon the water, inviting the hobbits to gaze into it, if they will. The mirror, she says, may show the past or present, or the images of things that may occur in the future. When Sam looks, he sees a vision of Frodo, pale and unconscious, and himself desperately searching for something in a narrow corridor. This is followed by a vision of the Shire being destroyed by the felling of trees and the smoke of a great red-brick building. Sam immediately wishes to return to protect his home, but Galadriel warns him that this is only a possible future, and that those who use the mirror to determine their actions may find that they bring the future about by trying to stop it. Sam resolves to return home only with Frodo. When Frodo gazes into the mirror, he first sees, from a distance, a figure that looks like Gandalf,

196   Lord of the Rings, The but dressed in white, so he realizes it may be Saruman. He then sees Bilbo, pacing his room. This is followed by the vision of a great ship coming from the west and establishing a fortress of seven towers. In the midst of battle, another ship, bearing the symbol of a white tree, appears, and then a small ship that sails away. Finally, Frodo has a vision of a great unblinking eye staring at him, looking everywhere for him. The weight of the One Ring becomes so great that it nearly pulls him into the water, and Galadriel breaks the illusion by warning him not to touch the mirror. She says she knows he saw the eye of Sauron, and tells him that she knows the mind of Sauron herself, as far as it affects the elves, and that she has kept his eye from reading her thoughts. As Galadriel speaks, Frodo sees on her finger a white-stoned ring, and she confirms to him that she does wear Nenya, the Ring of Adamant (also called the Ring of Water), one of the three great rings of the elves. She explains to Frodo that his coming and his quest are bitter to the elves: If he is unsuccessful, then Sauron will be victorious. If Frodo is successful, then the power of the elves will be diminished as her ring will lose its power, and they will then pass from Middle-earth. Impressed by Galadriel’s wisdom, Frodo offers to give her the One Ring. First Galadriel laughs, declaring that he has paid her back for her earlier testing of him. She has been tempted to take the ring from Frodo now that he is defenseless in her realm, and this in itself is evidence of the ring’s evil. She would, she says, purpose to use the ring for good, but would ultimately turn into something terrible and corrupt. She refuses. She has, she says, passed the test. She will diminish and pass into the West. That night, all the company is summoned again to the chamber of Celeborn, who tells them that the time has come for those who wish to move on, although anyone not intending to follow the quest further is welcome to stay in Lórien. Looking into their hearts, Galadriel informs him that all the fellowship will move on. But where will they go? Boromir has always intended to go to Minas Tirith, and Aragorn had planned to go there with him, but now that he has replaced Gandalf as leader, he does not feel he can abandon the ring. The com-

pany debates the point, some believing it would be better to go first to Minas Tirith rather than directly into Mordor. But Frodo will not choose. The great river Anduin cannot be crossed without boats, and if the company starts out from Lórien on the west bank of the Anduin, they will end up in Minas Tirith; if from the east bank, they will head toward Mordor. Celeborn gives the company boats as a parting gift, to allow them to navigate down the Anduin for several days—it will enable them to move more quickly and postpone their decision. Chapter 8 (“Farewell to Lórien”) begins the next morning, as elves bring the company gifts from the Lady, including lembas (a waybread that will give them energy and stay fresh for many days) and elven cloaks that will help them blend into their surroundings. They are led through the city to the south, where they find boats waiting for them on the Silverlode River, equipped with lengths of rope, which delights Sam. Aragorn is in one boat, with Frodo and Sam; Boromir steers another, with Merry and Pippin; and Legolas and Gimli are in the third. As the companions begin to learn how to use the boats, they are met in the middle of the river by a great boat in the shape of a swan. Here Celeborn and Galadriel sit with their court. They have come to bid the company farewell and have brought a feast. They all move onshore to partake of the banquet. Here, Celeborn tells them what the lands will be like south of Lórien, and he advises Boromir to leave the party at the island of Tol Brandir, before the river plunges down the cataracts of Rauros and then becomes a fen. Finally, the time has come for a parting cup of white mead. Galadriel gives each member of the company a special gift. To Aragorn, she gives a sheath for his sword and then inquires whether he has any other gift to ask of her. He responds that at one time she held the only treasure he desired, but that it was not hers to give to him. She then bestows on him a brooch with a stone that she says she had given her daughter Celebrían, who had passed it to her own daughter—Arwen Evenstar. With this gift, Galadriel names Aragorn Elessar, “the Elfstone of the house of Elendil” (391). To Boromir she gives a belt of gold, and to Merry and Pippin belts of silver. To Sam she gives

Lord of the Rings, The   197 and as the Silverlode empties them into the broad Anduin. For some time, they still hear her voice as it sings a sad song in the elvish tongue, and Gimli in particular mourns the loss of the beauty of Lórien and its Lady. Legolas tries to comfort him, but Gimli knows that, unlike elves, the memories of dwarves cannot approach the reality of the waking world. As they float on, the sound of the river puts Frodo to sleep.

Cover of a 2002 edition of The Lord of the Rings: The Art of The Fellowship of the Ring. This illustrated book examines the artists and craftspeople who created “the sets, props, creatures, and locations” in Peter Jackson’s movie adaptation of The Fellowship of the Ring. The cover image shows the fellowship floating down the Anduin River.

a wooden box with earth from Lórien, and she tells him that if he scatters the earth in his garden in the Shire, few gardens in Middle-earth will rival his. Legolas receives a long bow of Lórien strung with elf hair, with a quiver of arrows. Galadriel then asks Gimli what a dwarf might request of the elves, and Gimli asks for a strand of her hair. She gives him three strands, and Gimli promises to keep them as a pledge of goodwill between elves and dwarves forever. To Frodo, Galadriel gives a glass phial containing the light of Eärendil, the morning star. It will give him light in the darkest places, she tells him. Finally, the company takes off in their boats. For some time, they watch Galadriel’s white figure on the shore as they leave Lórien farther behind

Chapters 9–10: Lórien to Amon Hen  In chapter 9 (“The Great River”), the fellowship drifts down the wide Anduin River. As they travel farther from Lothlórien, the land becomes more barren and desolate to the east; to the west is a flat land of thick reeds, which is part of Rohan. They see few living things stirring, except for a phalanx of back swans. On the fourth evening, Sam sees what looks like a log with eyes floating near Gimli’s boat. When they are camped for the night, he mentions this to Frodo, who says he, too, has seen the eyes following them through Moria and at the foot of the tree in Lothlórien. They suspect that it is the creature Gollum. Sam stands watch that night and wakes Frodo later to take over. Frodo sees Gollum near one of the boats, but the creature runs when Frodo pulls out Sting. Aragorn awakens and says that he has known about Gollum for some time and has been trying to catch him at night. He sees the creature as dangerous in himself, but also liable to set any enemies on them that he can. The company moves on down the river, trying to travel by night. On the eighth night, they come upon the rapids of Sarn Gebir sooner than expected, and they are attempting to paddle away from the rapids when they are attacked by a party of orcs from the eastern bank of the river—set on their trail, they suspect, by Gollum. Amid the flying arrows of the orcs, the company is able to make their way to the west bank, and Legolas leaps out with his bow ready. At that point, a huge, dark creature flies toward them from above, striking terror into all the company. Frodo feels a chill from his wounded shoulder and tries to hide. But Legolas brings the creature down with one arrow, and it falls on the east bank. They hear no more from the orcs that night, and Gimli praises Legolas for his

198   Lord of the Rings, The shot, saying the beast reminded him of the Balrog in Moria. Frodo says it was not a Balrog but will not say what he thinks it was. Now the company must decide whether to continue on the river or turn toward Gondor, as Boromir argues. Aragorn insists that he will travel farther downstream, to the ancient high seat on Amon Hen, made in the time of the great kings of Gondor, and there decide which direction to choose. He and Legolas explore the path along the stream to see whether the company can carry their boats beyond the rapids, and this proves to be possible, although it is difficult work and takes them a full day to complete. But they continue in their boats down the river until they pass through the Gates of Argonath, Pillars of the Kings. Here, on either side of the river, great stone pillars rise, on which are carved the images of Isildur and Anárion. The hobbits are frightened at this monument of ancient power, but Aragorn is inspired, saying that here the heir of Elendil, Elessar the Elfstone, has nothing to dread. But he wishes that Gandalf were there, so that he could more easily choose to go with Boromir to Gondor. Passing through the gates, the boats make for Amon Hen, the Hill of Sight, one of three islands in an oval lake called Nen Hithoel. They have now reached the point where they must choose their next destination: Gondor or Mordor. As chapter 10 (“The Breaking of the Fellowship”) begins, the company lands on the west bank of the river at the foot of Amon Hen and spends the night onshore. In the morning, Aragorn puts the choice to the fellowship: They can no longer put off the decision of whether to go to Gondor or on to Mordor. When no one responds to Aragorn’s request for counsel, he turns to Frodo and tells him that the decision must be his, as the Ringbearer. Frodo asks for an hour alone to consider the choice. The others agree and wait in their camp while Frodo wanders off into the woods. He comes to a clearing and sits on a large flat stone. As he ponders his decision, he feels hostile eyes on his back, but when he turns, he sees Boromir approaching him in a friendly manner. Boromir offers to help Frodo make his decision. He questions the wisdom of tak-

ing the ring into the enemy’s own territory, and he suggests that, wielded by the right man—Aragorn, for instance, or even Boromir himself—the ring could be the instrument of conquest over the Dark Lord and any other enemies. Frodo, remembering the words of Elrond and Gandalf, counters that any good deed done with the ring will turn to evil, for that is the nature of the ring. As Boromir works himself into a kind of madness, he lunges at Frodo, meaning to take the ring from him by force. At that point, Frodo puts the ring on his finger and disappears. Suddenly aware of what he has been doing, Boromir cries out that his madness has passed and begs Frodo to come back. Invisible, Frodo flees to the top of the hill, climbing into the great stone seat. From this seat, the ring allows him to see imminent war on all sides as the forces of the enemy gather throughout Middle-earth. Frodo is able to look into Mordor itself where, once again, he is aware of the searching eye of Sauron. Frodo falls from the seat and hides his head, torn between the eye that seeks him and a voice that tells him to take off the ring. He does so just as the shadow of a dark arm passes over him and passes on to the West. Now Frodo has come to a decision. He has known all along that he must take the ring to Mordor but has been afraid to do it and has been tempted by the easier road to Minas Tirith. But if Boromir can be overcome by greed for the ring, Frodo is not certain he can trust any of the rest of the fellowship, except perhaps for the other hobbits—and he is not willing to put his friends in danger. He must, he reasons, move off to Mordor alone. He puts the ring back on his finger and starts down the hill. Back in their camp, the other companions are discussing the decision Frodo must make. Most of them would prefer to go with Boromir to Minas Tirith, though Gimli says he will go with Frodo wherever he goes. Aragorn suggests that everyone need not go into Mordor with Frodo—eight could not do any more than two or three, and he suggests that Pippin and Merry go to Gondor with Boromir, but the hobbits insist that they will stay with Frodo. They believe that Frodo is hesitating because he does not know which is the best decision. But Sam

Lord of the Rings, The   199 insists they are wrong: Frodo, he says, knows that there is only one choice, but he is afraid to take the ring into Mordor. At that point, Boromir stumbles into camp, asking if Frodo has come back. He says that he tried to persuade Frodo to come to Minas Tirith, and that when he became angry, Frodo disappeared. Aragorn suspects that more occurred, but Boromir will not elaborate, and now all the company runs off to look for Frodo. Aragorn chases Sam up the hill and says that they should stay together. He finds Frodo’s tracks and begins to follow his trail up toward the stone chair. Sam is unable to keep up, but pauses to consider. Frodo, he knows, has resolved to go to Mordor—and, further, has resolved not to subject any of the others to the dangers of the journey. Frodo, therefore, must be taking one of the boats to move off to the other shore. Rushing down the hill, Sam finds one of the boats floating away, apparently with no one in it. He jumps for the boat, misses it, and sinks into the water. Frodo, having now removed his ring, reaches in and pulls Sam out. Sam insists on going wherever Frodo goes, and although Frodo tries to convince him that he should go on alone, Sam steadfastly refuses to leave him. Frodo finally agrees, and the two hobbits cross the lake, landing on the east shore, and set out to cross the grey hills called Emin Muil, from which they will descend into the Land of Shadow. Commentary for The Fellowship of the Ring Book 1: The Ring Sets Out Chapter 1: A Long-expected Party  The chief purpose of the initial chapter is the transition it makes from The Hobbit, which most of Tolkien’s readers would have already read before coming to this book, and the wider, deeper story of The Lord of the Rings. Thus, Tolkien begins with Bilbo, the protagonist of the earlier novel, and the title of this chapter, “A Long-expected Party,” parallels and contrasts with the opening chapter of The Hobbit— “An Unexpected Party,” in which Bilbo unexpectedly entertains 13 dwarves who want him to come on an adventure. As in the earlier book, the chapter ends with the superannuated Bilbo setting out

on another adventure. But as his first adventure allowed him to return home with the One Ring as a talisman, this time he must leave the ring behind before he leaves. Thus, the ring proves to be the main point of transition between stories, and Bilbo’s passing it on to Frodo signifies his passing of the heroic mantle to Frodo as well. The fact that this is Frodo’s 33rd birthday, marking his coming of age, underscores the significance of his receiving the ring at this transitional point of his life. But whereas the ring played only a small part in Bilbo’s story, it will become the central focus of The Lord of the Rings. Gandalf’s concern and his urging Frodo to keep it secret and safe serve to focus the reader’s attention on the object. Our curiosity is aroused, as well, by Bilbo’s reluctance to give up the ring—he has pocketed the envelope containing it without even realizing he has done so, and Gandalf must remind him to leave the ring behind. This early, somewhat humorous incident foreshadows the ring’s very serious effects: It will grow to dominate anyone who tries to wield it, inspiring in its bearer a possessive greed and lust for power. The basic modesty and simplicity of hobbits make them less vulnerable than other races to the ring’s allure, but Bilbo’s actions reveal that he has not escaped unscathed from the ring’s power. Chapters 2–5: From Hobbiton to Buckland  The second chapter places Frodo’s story into the vast and complex history of Middle-earth that is represented in Tolkien’s The Silmarillion, the legendary history he had been compiling for more than 20 years when he began working on The Lord of the Rings in 1938. Gandalf’s conversation with Frodo occurs late in the Third Age of Middle-earth, but the ring is a talisman of the Second Age, and its history spans more than three millennia. The story of Elendil, Gil-galad, and the Last Alliance had already been composed in all its detail years earlier, and Gandalf’s allusions to those tales have the tone of one referencing a much deeper history. This is precisely the sort of conversation that gives The Lord of the Rings such a sense of depth, a sense that we are reading not simply about a fantasy world, but about a world that exists with its own long history.

200   Lord of the Rings, The That sense does occasionally come through in The Hobbit, but not nearly to this extent. Gandalf’s discussion of his finding and questioning Gollum does indicate how The Hobbit fits into this history. As for Gollum himself, Gandalf provides some foreshadowing in his comment that Gollum will yet have some part to play in the outcome of this affair. Further, his reaction to Frodo’s outburst that is “a pity” Bilbo had not killed Gollum when he had had the chance provides a part of the moral compass that will drive the events of the story: Pity is what stayed Bilbo’s hand. Mortals were not meant to make decisions about who should live and die. Though Gandalf does not use the term, he clearly implies that human beings should not assume the role of God over life and death. The ring, of course, would give its wearer that kind of power. Here at the beginning, Gandalf chides Frodo for suggesting that Bilbo should have employed such power. This conversation leads directly to Gandalf’s rejection of the ring itself when Frodo offers it to him. The ring is a great temptation, because one can always assert that his intention is to use it for good. But it is a short step from imposing one’s concept of goodness on others to enforcing one’s decrees with whatever ruthless power one can muster. The power of the ring will inevitably corrupt anyone who wields it. One of Frodo’s chief motivations in agreeing to keep the ring and to get it out of the Shire is to protect the Shire from corruption. Gandalf and Aragorn both express similar comments later on, as if the Shire itself is an idyllic place whose inhabitants should continue in blissful ignorance of the dangers of the outside world. Eventually, of course, the Shire must be dragged into the conflict, but at least for the moment, many of the characters seem to think that its isolated innocence is worthwhile. Tolkien has provided, in the Shire, a fairly clear model of an agrarian English countryside, and one might suspect that he is recalling the Oxfordshire of his youth, prior to World War I, free from the evils of war and therefore worth preserving in his memory as an ideal. Some critics, however, have seen embodied in the Shire a paternalistic society of upper-class gentleman landowners (like Frodo) and workingclass gardeners (like Sam) or peasant farmers (like

Farmer Maggot) who call their betters “master” and speak in dialect. Sam’s first words are nearly a caricature of the dimwitted peasant: “Lor bless you Mr. Gandalf, sir!” (72), and later “Don’t let him hurt me, sir! Don’t let him turn me into anything unnatural! My old dad would take on so” (73). This, coupled with Frodo’s own comment about the inhabitants of the Shire—that at times he has found them “too stupid and dull for words” (71)—suggests an initial characterization of Sam as a working-class stereotype and Frodo as an aristocratic snob, with the reader perhaps inferring that Frodo’s attitude is Tolkien’s as well. Jane Chance has argued, however, that these initial characterizations simply put Frodo and Sam in the position of needing to learn about true nobility. Chance looks at the ways in which Tolkien presents class and regional, and ultimately racial and national, differences, and the suspicions that various groups have about the “Other” in all these cases. This sort of distrust must ultimately be overcome as the free peoples of Middle-earth unite against the Dark Lord, and Chance points out that “Only in the most enlightened countries and cultures of Middleearth are the inhabitants able to recognize nobility as cutting across race and national origin” (“Subversive Fantasist” 165). In the end, Sam proves himself as noble as Frodo. Tolkien, Chance argues, is ultimately egalitarian in his views: He “intends a level playing field for aristocrat, bourgeois, and commoner” (“Subversive Fantasist” 162). In fact, once Frodo has reached Crickhollow, it is clear that Sam is not the ignorant rustic that he plays, for he has been gathering information and conspiring with Merry, Pippin, and Fatty Bolger to discover as much as possible about Frodo’s plans. Therefore, they know nearly everything about his journey and are prepared to help him or accompany him as far as needs be. They are particularly worried about him because of the appearance of the Black Riders. As we will learn later, the Black Riders are the Nazgûl, or Ringwraiths—the nine mortal men who became slaves to their own rings of power and thus became the enemy’s perpetual servants. No longer human in any sense, they live as undead and disembodied creatures, visible only in their own shadow world but with great power

Lord of the Rings, The   201 in the world of the living, channeling the power of their master, Sauron. Their connection with the One Ring gives them the ability to sense its presence and to mentally compel Frodo to place it on his finger. The evil presence of the Riders is counterbalanced in this section by the hobbits’ chance meeting with Gildor Inglorion and his fellow elves on the road. Gildor tells Frodo he is of the House of Finrod. In Tolkien’s legendarium, Finrod was the eldest son of Finarfin, one of the chief Noldor who returned to Middle-earth from Valinor, the Blessed Realm, in the First Age. It was Finrod (the brother of Galadriel, whom the hobbits will meet later) who built the secret elven kingdom of Nargothrond and was the first of the High-elves to welcome men, the Second-born race, to Middleearth. Gildor, in the spirit of the founder of his house, shows a remarkable acceptance of the hobbits, who are to him a race of Others—going so far as to name Frodo “Elf-friend.” Gildor now lives in Rivendell, and his advice to Frodo to make his way there is precisely what Gandalf would have told him. It becomes clear later that it must have been Gildor who alerted Elrond to the plight of Frodo in the wild, causing the lord of Rivendell to send scouts out looking for him. Thus, like his kinsman Bilbo, Frodo sets out at the age of 50 to cross the Wild Lands with the aim of coming to rest in the elven refuge of Rivendell. The age of 50 seems to suggest for Tolkien a kind of symbolic transitional point: It is halfway to 100, and perhaps for his long-lived hobbits, Tolkien saw it as a point midway on their life’s journey, as Dante’s narrator is when he begins his quest in the Divine Comedy. Bilbo’s quest was to obtain a treasure; Frodo’s is to rid himself of one, if the ring can be called a treasure. Gandalf was the catalyst behind both hobbits’ journeys, but in Frodo’s case, the wizard is not present as the quest begins, even though Frodo’s is the more dangerous journey. Chapters 6–8: From Buckland to Bree  The animosity of the trees in the Old Forest toward travelers is the sort of personification of inanimate objects that Tolkien may have seen as typical of what he called “fairy-stories.” But it is deeper than

that and foreshadows the more dangerous rising of the trees of Fangorn Forest that occurs in The Two Towers. Both support one of the underlying themes of The Lord of the Rings, which is the importance of our relationship with the environment. Decades before the environmental movement became popular in the 1970s, Tolkien was emphasizing the importance of forests and the natural world, and the grim effects that industrialization was having on that world. Saruman’s destruction of the forest to build his arms factory in The Two Towers and the later pollution of the Shire by unbridled industrialization at the end of The Return of the King underscore the theme first introduced here by the Bucklanders’ burning of trees and the Old Forest’s subsequent enmity. In his lecture “On FairyStories,” Tolkien had alluded specifically to the escape that fairy stories provide from the internal combustion engine and all that implies, insisting that industrial progress does not necessarily make life better. In The Lord of the Rings, he puts forward the agrarian Shire as an ideal, destroyed by “Sharkey’s” industrialization. Tom Bombadil appears as the friend of the environment: He can sing Old Man Willow out of devouring Merry and Pippin. But just who Tom Bombadil is—and, perhaps more important, why he is in the story at all—remains a mystery to most readers. Originally, according to Humphrey Carpenter, he was a Dutch doll that belonged to Tolkien’s son Michael (see Tolkien, Michael Hilary Reuel) (162). In 1934, Tolkien had published a poem called “The Adventures of Tom Bombadil” in Oxford Magazine. In early drafts of The Lord of the Rings, Bombadil found his way into the manuscript, and Tolkien, after several drafts, decided to keep him in—a decision that has puzzled many readers, including Peter Jackson, who left Bombadil out of his acclaimed film version. Tolkien himself said in a 1954 letter to Naomi Mitchison, a proofreader at Allen & Unwin, that Bombadil was an intentional enigma. He is, in a narrative about power and control, someone who has “renounced control,” who takes “delight in things for themselves,” who is, in other words, a “natural pacifist” (Letters 179). Bombadil seems capable of great magic, but he is not a wizard. He dwells in the forest and is wed to an elf

202   Lord of the Rings, The queen, but he is no elf. The ring has no effect on him, nor does he seem to care about it. Goldberry says that he is the master of the woods, the water, and the hill. He himself says that he is Eldest and has been in Middle-earth since before the First Age. Early commentators generally considered Bombadil a kind of personification of nature or the earth itself. In a 1968 essay, for example, Edmund Fuller describes him as “unclassifiable other than as some primal nature spirit” (23). Tom Shippey follows Tolkien himself in calling Tom Bombadil a genius loci or “spirit of the place”—the spirit, specifically, of the rural environs of Oxfordshire and Berkshire (J. R. R. Tolkien 63). Deborah and Ivor Rogers eventually went beyond this interpretation, suggesting that, since Bombadil describes himself as “Eldest”—he “was here already, before the seas were bent,” so that he “remembers the first raindrop and the first acorn” and “knew the dark under the stars when it was fearless” (142)—he is the embodiment of Divine Wisdom, as described in Proverbs 8:23–30: From everlasting I was firmly set, from the beginning, before earth came   into being. The deep was not, when I was born, there were no springs to gush with water. Before the mountains were settled, before the hills, I came to birth; . . . . . When he fixed the heavens firm, I was there, when he drew a ring on the surface of   the deep, . . . . . when he laid down the foundations of   the earth, I was by his side . . . (JB)

Rogers and Rogers suggest that in Bombadil’s marriage to Goldberry, Tolkien presents an ideal marriage, pictured as “a union of consciousness with nature,” making their connection an instance of cosmic harmony (101). This explanation underscores Bombadil’s connection to divinity but does not do much to explain his function in the text. Gene Hargrove later argued that, based on his age and his power, and in particular his singing—

which Hargrove calls “fundamental to his being in a profound way that distinguishes him from all other beings encountered in the trilogy” (22)— Bombadil can be identified as one of the Valar in Tolkien’s mythology. The Valar, as described in the Ainulindalë (the creation myth that opens The Silmarillion), were among those who sang the universe into being, and then entered it to assist in the completion of the plan in the mind of Ilúvatar, the creator god. Hargrove even identifies Bombadil specifically with Aulë the Smith—the Vala most interested in men and elves and himself the creator of the race of dwarves—and Goldberry with Aulë’s consort, Yavanna, who is responsible for the growing things of Middle-earth. Paul Lewis has accepted this argument in a recent article. And given Bombadil’s powers as well as his propensity to accomplish things through song, it is not unlikely that Tolkien conceived of him as a Vala, although I cannot accept the argument that he is specifically intended to be Aulë—why, if he were Aulë, would he take so little interest in the affairs of dwarves, for instance? And why would Goldberry, as the powerful Yavanna, seem to take so little part in the affairs of the forest beyond making dinner and making it rain? Besides, in Tolkien’s 1934 poem, Goldberry is the daughter of a haglike river deity; she is certainly no Vala. Finally, the identification of Bombadil does little to explain his function in the narrative. More recently, Klaus Jensen and Ruairidh MacDonald have considered Bombadil from the perspective of Jungian psychology. They see some connection between Bombadil and the trickster archetype, since the trickster’s task is to “facilitate psychological transitions by breaking down old barriers and outdated conscious attitudes,” and Bombadil enters the story just as the hobbits have left the Shire and must confront the wider world (Jensen and MacDonald 37). But in Bombadil they see none of the trickster’s negative qualities (e.g., his uncontrollable mischievousness), and identify him instead as the archetypal divine child, the wise fool, and ultimately the divine jester. As divine child, he represents birth, rebirth, and triumph over death—evidenced especially in his rescue of the hobbits from their burial in the barrows (Jensen and MacDonald 39). But a further function of

Lord of the Rings, The   203 the divine child is to bring one back to his original roots. In the case of Frodo, suddenly cut off from his roots, Bombadil represents “life affirming gaiety, ‘earthiness’, and literal selflessness”—the best characteristics of hobbits (Jensen and MacDonald 40). Further, as divine jester, Bombadil makes fun of the ring itself, denigrating its power, and modeling for Frodo a return to the world’s original state of harmony, where it is possible, like Bombadil, to transcend the power of the One Ring (Jensen and MacDonald 42). This transcendence does not seem to be a real option for any of the other characters in the story, however. It will not defeat Sauron, and it will not destroy the ring; Frodo and his friends must move on. One other aspect of these chapters worth commenting on is the function of dreams, a topic explored extensively by Verlyn Flieger, especially in her book A Question of Time. Of course, Tolkien would have been used to the significance of literary dreams through his study of medieval literature, with its ubiquitous dream visions and prophetic visions. But Flieger notes Tolkien’s interest in dreams, especially owing to his reading of Jung and Freud in the 1920s, leading him to explore such visions in The Lord of the Rings as a way to “reach into unsuspected regions of the mind, bridge time and space, and so demonstrate the interrelationship between dreaming and waking that the two states of being can be seen as parts of a greater whole” (A Question of Time 176). The first significant dream of this sort is Frodo’s in the house of Tom Bombadil, when he unwittingly dreams of Gandalf’s rescue from Orthanc by eagles—an event that occurs even as he is dreaming it, and whose significance he does not recognize until he hears Gandalf’s version of events in Rivendell. Flieger calls this a “full-fledged dream-vision, an out-of-body experience in which the dreamer travels to another place and there witnesses an actual event that he could not possibly see in real life” (A Question of Time 189). I would suggest that Tolkien, based on his reading of Macrobius’s influential fourth-century Commentary on the Dream of Scipio, would have categorized this as a visio or prophetic vision, in which one dreams something that ultimately comes true (Macrobius 90).

The other significant dream is Merry’s after his rescue from the Barrow-wight. To clarify, the barrows are stone-chambered burial mounds in which the men of Westernesse—the Dúnedain from whom Aragorn is descended—had buried their dead long ago in the Second Age of Middle-earth. The Barrow-wights are evil spirits, the ghosts of the men of Angmar killed in these downs in battle in the middle of the Third Age. Tolkien borrowed the concept of the Barrow-wight from the draugr of Old Norse legend. As it appears in the narrative Waking of Angantyr from the Elder Edda (or Poetic Edda, as it is more commonly known), or in sagas such as the Saga of Hromund Gripsson, the draugr was an undead spirit that haunted its own gravesite, protecting its treasures. Here, the Barrow-wights are the slain followers of the Witch-king of Angmar, who waged unrelenting war on the Dúnedain of the North, destroying their kingdoms until his defeat by united forces of elves and the men of Gondor in the Battle of Fornost in the year 1975 of the Third Age (1,043 years before the events of this chapter). The Witch-king became a Ringwraith, chief of the Nazgûl and one of the Black Riders now pursuing Frodo. There is no evidence that the Barrow-wight of this chapter is in contact with the Ringwraiths or has any notion the Frodo bears the One Ring. The Barrow-wights seem to capture any travelers they can in order to perform a kind of ritual sacrifice, in which they dress the prisoners in the garments of their enemies, Dúnedain of the North killed in battle in these downs in the distant past, and then slaughter them. Merry, dressed in white with a golden circlet around his head, cries out as he awakens: “Of course, I remember! . . . The men of Carn Dum came on us at night, and we were worsted. Ah! The spear in my heart!” He clutched his breast. “No! No!” he said, opening his eyes. “What am I saying? I have been dreaming.” (154)

Carn Dum was the capital of Angmar. Merry is here remembering, in a dream, the death of one of the men of the North in an attack by the followers of the Witch-king more than a thousand

204   Lord of the Rings, The years before—and remembering it as if it happened to him. Macrobius never deals with this kind of dream. Flieger links it to Tolkien’s interest in the idea of “inherited memory,” a concept Tolkien gleaned from Carl Jung’s idea of the collective unconscious, and that he explored in The Lost Road (abandoned about 1936) and The Notion Club Papers (abandoned about 1946), two unfinished time-travel novels on which he was working about the time he finished the chapter on the Barrow-downs in 1938. In those texts, the protagonists experience dreams through which they relive things that happened to their own ancestors in the distant past. In Merry’s case, however, there is no direct line of descent from the defeated warrior in the barrow—who is, Flieger asserts after an examination of Tolkien’s appendices to The Return of the King, the prince of Cardolan, slain after being besieged here in 1409 (Flieger, “The Curious Episode” 109). Rather than an inherited memory, Merry’s dream is an extra-personal experience from the past that overpowers him. The event has the function, Flieger concludes, of stressing “the immediacy of the past in the present” (“Curious Incident” 109), a major theme of the novel. This incident, though never recalled as the story progresses, does have one significant effect on subsequent events: Tom Bombadil arms each of the hobbits with a blade from the barrow. Thus, the blade that Merry carries is one forged by the Dúnedain of the North specifically to fight the Witch-king of Angmar. As Shippey points out, it is this blade that Merry will use to bring down the Witch-king himself, lord of the Nazgûl, in The Return of the King (Road 105). Chapters 9–12: From Bree to Rivendell  The Prancing Pony in Bree is another safe haven for Frodo and the others, like the house of Tom Bombadil earlier and as Rivendell will be at the end of this book. As he had in The Hobbit, Tolkien alternates dangerous adventures with places of refuge on Frodo’s quest. Bree is a fascinating place: Unique in Middle-earth, it is a place where hobbits and men live together and with apparent camaraderie. Here Pippin and Frodo enjoy the comforts of good food and fellowship in a way reminiscent of a British

public house like Tolkien’s favorite Oxford house, the Eagle and Child. In the early chapters of this section, Tolkien provides a few concrete details that help the reader distinguish the characters of Merry and Pippin, two figures that to this point have simply been Frodo’s companions, the “other” hobbits. But from the beginning of chapter 9, Merry emerges as a more mature and levelheaded character. It is he who stands upon his dignity with the town’s gatekeeper, cowing him and gaining entry for the travelers. Merry also forgoes the drinking in the pub, preferring a walk by himself, which ultimately allows him to uncover Bill Ferny’s complicity with the Enemy. Merry displays an innate courage in actually following one of the Black Riders to see where it travels. Pippin, on the other hand, is unrestrained and spontaneous but also reckless, as he shows when he talks too much without realizing the damage he may do by mentioning Bilbo’s disappearance at his birthday party. The character of the One Ring itself also becomes somewhat more clear in chapter 9, as it “accidentally” slips onto Frodo’s finger at the climax of his performance, causing him to disappear and thereby become the focus of every gossip in Bree. Frodo will become more and more aware that the ring has a will of its own: As much as Sauron wishes to regain it, the ring itself longs to be reunited with its creator and master. Frodo must not be caught off guard, and his own will must be strong enough to resist the ring and its pull. Most important, of course, the character of Strider is introduced in the first two chapters of this section. To Butterbur he is simply a “Ranger,” one of the vagabond wanderers for whom he seems to have little use. When Strider offers his services to Frodo, he seems someone of questionable character, and it is no wonder that Sam, always cautious and slow to trust anyone outside of his group, is reluctant to take Strider at his word. But it is clear from the beginning that Strider knows a great deal more about the Black Riders, the ring, and Frodo’s own situation than anyone else the travelers have met aside from Tom Bombadil. And Gandalf’s letter makes it clear that Strider is an important figure, a friend, and someone the

Lord of the Rings, The   205 hobbits should trust to help them cross the Wild Country to Rivendell. The hobbits do not understand the last part of Gandalf’s poem, proclaiming that the “blade that was broken” shall be renewed, and that the “crownless again shall be king.” But the reader has been given enough information at this point to guess at Strider’s identity. His real name, Gandalf says, is Aragorn. Frodo does not seem to recall, but Gandalf had mentioned Aragorn in the second chapter, calling him “the greatest traveler and huntsman in this age of the world” (67) and describing how he had tracked down Gollum. Gandalf, of course, had also told Frodo of Elendil’s death in the battle to overthrow Sauron, and how his son and heir, Isildur, had cut the ring from Sauron’s hand. Gandalf had mentioned, as well, the loss of the ring upon Isildur’s death as he came north. From Tom Bombadil, the hobbits have heard about the fall of the northern kingdom of the men of Westernesse, overthrown by the king of Angmar, and Bombadil has told them that “some still go wandering, sons of forgotten kings walking in loneliness, guarding from evil things folk that are heedless” (157). The clues to Aragorn’s identity as Isildur’s heir are all in place once Gandalf’s letter is read, and his identity is underscored when he reveals that he is the bearer of the broken sword that Gandalf referred to in his verses. Once Strider begins helping the hobbits on their journey, his superior talents as a tracker, healer, and fighter become manifest. He detects Gandalf’s earlier presence on Weathertop, fights off the Black Riders with fire, and keeps Frodo alive through his knowledge of herbs, long enough for the rescue from Rivendell to arrive. Clearly Aragorn is a hero of a different stature than the hobbits. Frodo has by now begun to develop beyond the comfortable middle-aged hobbit of the earlier chapters. In the barrow, he had roused himself from his fear and cut off the wight’s hand with his sword before summoning Bombadil. On Weathertop, he has used his blade against the chief Black Rider himself. Finally, at the Ford of Bruinen, he confronts the Riders, telling them to go back to Mordor and leave him. However, he has shown a weakness of will in putting the ring on his finger in response to the unspoken urging of the Nazgûl, and

he has suffered a nearly mortal wound as a result. As a hero, these adventures have initiated him into heroic status, and his near-death experience will serve as a symbolic death, from which he will be resurrected a new and stronger character, willing to take on the duty of Ring-bearer. But Frodo, like Bilbo before him, is an “everyman” character, whose adventures demonstrate the heroic potential in the most normal individuals when they are confronted with extreme circumstances. Aragorn, on the other hand, is the more typical epic hero. He descends from a line of kings, he has qualities that give him heroic stature—courage, wisdom, authority, determination, and a preordained destiny—and he intends to assume his rightful role as king. Like a Beowulf or a Roland, the fate of his entire nation depends upon him. His role will become more significant as the story progresses—although, ultimately, it is the “everyman” Frodo, and not the epic hero Aragorn, who is most instrumental in defeating the Dark Lord. A key to Aragorn’s character is the song that he sings on Weathertop in chapter 11. This is the story of Beren and Lúthien, a tale central to Tolkien’s legendarium and a key chapter of The Silmarillion. It is the story of a mortal man, Beren, who falls in love with the ethereal elven beauty Lúthien, and how the two of the together are able to obtain one of the Silmarils from the crown of the Dark Lord, Melkor. From this union, ultimately, came Eärendil, ancestor of all the kings of Númenor and, hence, of Aragorn himself. The story clearly has a significance for Aragorn beyond this, however, as he sighs at the end of the song and “his eyes shone, and his voice was rich and deep” as he explains the song to the hobbits (206). Only after the company has reached Rivendell does the reason for Aragorn’s behavior here become apparent: It seems clear that Aragorn has a special relationship with Arwen, daughter of Elrond. Like his forebear Beren, Aragorn is in love with an elven princess. Thus, he is more than the epic hero in the mold of Beowulf; he is also the romance hero, inspired by his love for a fair mistress. As Aragorn’s quest is to regain his kingdom, that goal is in part inspired by his desire to be worthy of the fair Arwen. Like the knight who succeeds on his quest in a medieval

206   Lord of the Rings, The romance narrative, Aragorn hopes to win his lady through achieving his task. Glorfindel is a more minor character here, but, like Aragorn, he has a significant history. In Glorfindel’s case, that history goes far beyond his function in this story. He is depicted as an elf of the House of Finarfin, and thus he is related to Gildor Inglorion, whom Frodo had met earlier, and, more significantly, to Galadriel, daughter of Finarfin, whom he will meet in book 2. Glorfindel is depicted as Elrond’s chief counselor in Rivendell. The reader can hardly be expected to know what Tolkien knows: that Glorfindel had been in command of the elvish army that defeated the Witchking of Angmar in the Battle of Fornost 1,100 years earlier. But in The Silmarillion—unpublished, of course, at the time of the release of The Fellowship of the Ring—Tolkien had introduced Glorfindel as an elf of the hidden elven kingdom of Gondolin in the First Age. He had escaped the destruction of Gondolin along with Tuor and Idril and their son Eärendil (the father of Elrond), and saved them by doing battle with a Balrog as they fled. Glorfindel and the Balrog had both fallen, struggling, to their deaths. In The Return of the Shadow (1986), Christopher Tolkien explains that his father, on the principle that elvish names are unique to the individual, had decided that “Glorfindel of Gondolin . . . and Glorfindel of Rivendell were one and the same,” and that Glorfindel “had been released from Mandos [the house of the dead in Valinor, the blessed Realm] and returned to Middle-earth in the Second Age” (Tolkien Return of the Shadow 214–215). Intentional or not, for a reader coming to The Lord of the Rings with The Silmarillion in the background, Glorfindel becomes a figure and foreshadowing of Gandalf himself: Like Gandalf, Glorfindel sacrificed himself to save the company he was leading by falling during a battle with a Balrog. And like Gandalf, Glorfindel was resurrected to become a significant player in the battle against Sauron. Thus, book 1 ends with a figure looking forward to the climactic event of book 2. Book 2: The Ring Goes South Chapters 1–2: In the House of Elrond  The second book opens as Frodo awakens in the House

of Elrond to find Gandalf at his bedside. Frodo has been unconscious for three days and four nights, and his awakening is a kind of resurrection to a new life—a life, as it turns out, of new courage and also new responsibilities. Frodo is hardly the same hobbit he was when he started his journey from Bag End. Two details of particular significance in the first chapter are Frodo’s reuniting with Bilbo and the introduction of the Lady Arwen. Frodo is, of course, overjoyed to see Bilbo again. The old hobbit is now 128 years old and much more frail than Frodo remembers, due mainly to Bilbo’s separation from the One Ring, which had unnaturally extended his life. Frodo finds that Bilbo is well respected among the elves; that he has been busy writing the book of his adventures, to which he hopes to add Frodo’s as well; and that even Aragorn knows him well enough to help him compose his poetry. Of course, Bilbo is modest and realistic, knowing that his songs do not rival those of the elven masters. He even has what Aragorn calls the “cheek” to sing a song of Eärendil in the house of Elrond (250). For readers unfamiliar with The Silmarillion, this is a rather obscure comment. But for those acquainted with Tolkien’s legendarium, it makes perfect sense. Elrond, whose great age astounds Frodo in the next chapter, has been in Middle-earth since the First Age; thus, he is more than 6,000 years old and was an eyewitness to the events that brought the One Ring into Isildur’s hands when Sauron first fell. Aragorn’s comment about the song of Eärendil follows from the fact that Eärendil was actually Elrond’s father. Eärendil was a mortal man, the great hero of the First Age. He escaped from the downfall of Gondolin (through Glorfindel’s sacrifice) and ultimately married the elven princess Elwing, granddaughter of Beren and Lúthien. With the help of the Silmaril that Elwing had inherited from her parents, Eärendil had sailed to the Blessed Realm of Valinor, and had convinced the Valar (the angelic beings charged with the governance of the earth, or Arda) to intercede in the war between the fallen angel Morgoth and the races of elves and men. Eärendil still steers his ship among the stars, and the Silmaril is the morning or evening star. Significantly for this particular scene,

Lord of the Rings, The   207 Eärendil had two sons with Elwing: Elrond and Elros, both called Halfelven. The sons were given the choice to share the fate of mortal men or of the long-lived elves. Elrond chose the life of the elves, while his brother chose mortality and became the first of the kings of Númenor, of the men of the West—and thus was the ancestor of Aragorn. Thus, Bilbo, as oldest and, one would hope, wisest of the hobbits, displays his knowledge of ancient lore through his song, which the elves are polite enough to ask to hear again. But more important for the story as a whole is Bilbo’s interaction with Frodo over the ring. Gandalf warns Bilbo that it will do no good if he tries to “meddle with it again” (244), but he whispers to Frodo that he would like to have a look at it once more. Frodo feels “a strange reluctance” to show him, but pulls it out on the chain that is around his neck and quickly snatches it back when Bilbo tries to hold it. He finds that Bilbo has become “a little wrinkled creature with a hungry face and bony groping hands” (244). The brief scene demonstrates the corrupting effect of the ring, even on so good a soul as Bilbo, who is very nearly overcome by a greed that could potentially alienate him from his most beloved kinsman. This is what the power of the One Ring can do to even the simplest and least treacherous of souls. Frodo’s reaction may in part be the early manifestation of the desire to keep the ring for himself, but for the most part it is probably his sensing of Bilbo’s greedy motives. The confrontation separates Bilbo from Frodo by underscoring Bilbo’s inappropriateness as Ring-bearer for this new adventure. Up to this point, Frodo’s adventures have essentially retraced Bilbo’s, in his journey from Hobbiton to Rivendell—even to the point of passing by the petrified trolls from Bilbo’s first adventure. But now the torch has clearly been passed to Frodo, and Bilbo himself realizes this when, in the following chapter, he gives Frodo his elven blade Sting as well as his mithril coat. It is a scene that formally depicts the transference of the heroic mantle from one generation to the next. Following closely Frodo’s near-death and resurrection, this handing down of heroic talismans ceremoniously marks Frodo’s initiation into heroic status that has taken place in the journey to Rivendell.

The introduction of the Lady Arwen Evenstar into the narrative is another detail that readers may not yet understand in its full significance. Arwen is Elrond’s daughter by the elven princess Celebrían, daughter of Galadriel and Celeborn, the sovereigns of Lothlórien who will come into the story later. Celebrían had been attacked and wounded by orcs thousands of years before, and she had passed over the sea to Valinor, while Arwen stayed for most of her life in Lórien with her grandmother Galadriel, only occasionally visiting Rivendell. Thus, her presence at this feast is unusual, and—since there is no other lady of the house—her presiding with Elrond over the meal is a rare treat. When Bilbo comments to Aragorn that he had expected to see him with the Lady Arwen, and when Frodo sees them together in the Hall of Fire, it becomes apparent that there is a particular connection between the two. Now the special meaning of Aragorn’s song of Beren and Lúthien on Weathertop is clarified, as Aragorn, like his forebear Beren, seeks to wed the elven princess who is said to resemble her famous ancestor, Lúthien herself. The ultimate significance of this alliance for Arwen will become clear only much later. As one of the family of the Halfelven, Arwen may also choose to become mortal, and if she marries Aragorn, she will have opted for his mortality. The second chapter, “The Council of Elrond,” is probably the most important chapter in The Fellowship of the Ring in terms of exposition. It is certainly the longest, at nearly 15,000 words, and, as Tom Shippey has pointed out, it is a chapter in which nothing happens (J. R. R. Tolkien 68). It is essentially a chapter made up of people talking; therefore, it has the potential to deflate reader interest. The fact that few if any readers have been put off by the chapter is a testament to Tolkien’s narrative skill. As Shippey enumerates, there are no fewer than 12 speakers in the chapter, seven of whom the reader has not met before; further, Gandalf, who delivers the longest speech, quotes directly from seven additional speakers (J. R. R. Tolkien 68). The variety certainly helps break up the exposition, and the fact that at this point readers have enough information to be in suspense as to what will be done with the ring keeps interest high. Besides, a great number of things are ­clarified in this ­chapter:

208   Lord of the Rings, The We learn that Sauron knows the name Baggins and knows someone from the Shire has the ring; we learn that Gollum has given Sauron this information and that Gollum has subsequently escaped from the elves of Mirkwood; we learn that Aragorn is indeed Isildur’s heir and may have a right to the throne of Gondor; we learn the details of how Elendil’s sword was broken when Isildur cut the One Ring from Sauron’s finger; we learn that the Riders of Rohan—whom we have not yet met— may be wavering in their alliance with the free peoples of Middle-earth; and, most significant, we learn that Saruman, chief wizard, has become a powerful enemy. Further, in this chapter, as Shippey argues, Tolkien uses his interest in language to indicate character and cultural difference among the speakers by their different manners of speech. Shippey points out the archaic nature of the elder statesman Elrond’s language, both in vocabulary and in his tendency to invert word order, as in a sentence like “Only to the North did these tidings come” (257). Glóin is taciturn and his sentences are short, often lacking transitional phrasing, Shippey argues. Boromir and Aragorn contrast each other, Boromir using a formal, almost “Elrondian” style, according to Shippey, and Aragorn a more colloquial, sometimes even “chatty” style, as with Boromir’s challenging “Mayhap the Sword-that-was-Broken will stem the tide—if the hand that wields it has inherited not an heirloom only, but the sinews of the Kings of Men” and Aragorn’s deflecting “Who can tell? . . . but we will put it to the test one day” (281). Perhaps the most sophisticated use of language is in Saruman’s speeches as reported by Gandalf. As Shippey asserts, Saruman uses the most modernsounding language, and he constantly equivocates, shifting from one view to another as he tries to persuade Gandalf to join him, ultimately resorting to abstractions that make it difficult to pin down what he means. “His message,” Shippey argues, “is in any case compromise and calculation” (J. R. R. Tolkien 75), and Shippey quotes the following example of the voice of Saruman: “We can bide our time, we can keep out thoughts in our hearts, deploring maybe evils

done by the way, but approving the high and ultimate purpose: Knowledge, Rule, Order; all things that we have so far striven in vain to accomplish, hindered rather than helped by our weak or idle friends. There need not be, there would not be, any real change in our design, only in our means.” (272–273)

This is Machiavellian in the worst sense of the word, in which the end justifies the means, and it is sophistry in the way only a skilled modern politician can perform it, disguising a wrong cause in fair words. No wonder Shippey calls Saruman the “most contemporary figure in Middle-earth” (J. R. R. Tolkien 68–77). Saruman’s desertion of the cause is the most significant revelation to come from this council. Tolkien has been careful to depict Saruman as a leader, head of the White Council, most learned of the allies in matters of ancient lore, particularly as regards the One Ring. But Gandalf makes it clear that Saruman is ready to abandon his allies in order to be on the winning side. It is unclear at this point what Saruman’s ultimate plan is, since he implies, first, that he would like to find the ring and wield it himself, but second, that he is willing to become Sauron’s ally, in the belief that he will ultimately be able to control and direct Sauron’s power. One wonders, considering what seem to be the limits of Gandalf’s power, how Saruman, another wizard, can believe he would have the power to control Sauron. Before dismissing Saruman’s plans as delusions of grandeur, however, it would be advisable to consider the role of wizards in Tolkien’s legendarium. In The Silmarillion, it is recorded that in the year 1,000 of the Third Age, the Valar sent five angelic beings into Middle-earth, whose specific purpose was to give aid to the Free Peoples (that is, elves, men, and dwarves, and presumably hobbits) against the devices of Sauron. These beings are called Istari by the elves but wizards in the language of Westron. Elsewhere in The Silmarillion, it is recorded that Olórin, the wisest of all the Maiar (heavenly beings slightly less powerful than the Valar), was especially concerned with aiding mortal men, and that he came to Middle-earth as

Lord of the Rings, The   209 one of the Istari, where he was called Mithrandir by the elves and Gandalf the Grey among men. Thus, Saruman is in fact a Maia, like Sauron himself, and therefore may well have had the ability to challenge Sauron. The Istari, however, had been expressly charged by the Valar not to subjugate the races of Middle-earth and not to match Sauron’s power with a direct challenge of their own. Therefore, Saruman’s deliberate intent is to violate the specific directives of the Valar, and both to dominate Middle-earth and to contest Sauron’s power with his own. It is no wonder that Gandalf eschews him. One other passage in this chapter that will be particularly obscure to one unfamiliar with The Silmarillion is the allusion to the White Tree in Elrond’s description of Gondor before the fall of the eastern tower of Minas Ithil and the desertion of the city of Osgiliath: There in the courts of the King grew a white tree, from the seed of that tree which Isildur brought over the deep waters, and the seed of that tree before came from Eressëa, and before that out of the Uttermost West in the Day before days when the world was young. (257)

The White Tree of Númenor, called Nimloth, had grown in the king’s court on that island kingdom before the corruption of the kings by Sauron in the Second Age. It had been grown from a seedling of Celeborn, the White Tree of the elves of the island of Tol Eressëa, which in turn had grown from a seedling of a White Tree of the elves of Valinor itself. That tree, Galathilion, had been created for the Eldar by the Vala Yavanna and modeled on the Silver Tree of the Valar, Telperion, which had lighted Valinor before its destruction by Melkor (Morgoth), the fallen Vala, and the subsequent creation of the sun and moon. In Númenor, the White Tree was a symbol of the Númenóreans’ faith in the Valar and alliance with the Eldar—until Sauron destroyed both the tree and that faith. Isildur, however, had stolen a fruit from Nimloth and brought it with him when he and his father, Elendil, fled Númenor’s destruction and landed in Middle-earth, and the seed was planted at Minas Ithil. When Sauron destroyed

that tree as well, Isildur planted a seed at Minas Arnor in memory of his brother Anárion. That last tree had withered by the time of the council, though the blighted tree has been left standing in Minas Tirith. The tree symbolizes the former glory of Gondor, its historical connection with Númenor, and the spiritual connection of mortals with the Valar, the creatures of heaven. The restoration of the tree will prove a significant moment in the return of the rightful king to Gondor at the end of The Lord of the Rings. The one thing that actually does happen in this chapter to move the plot along is the decision reached by the council: The One Ring must be destroyed. And when the question comes up as to who must bear the ring to the only place it can be unmade—the Cracks of Doom in the volcanic Orodruin, in the very center of Mordor itself—none of the council dares speak, except for Bilbo, whose offer, at the age of 128, to carry the ring himself is a bit of comic relief that reminds us, again, that he is no longer the hero. It is Frodo who must step forward, but he must do so on his own. Well aware of his own limitations, his offer is made simply in a small voice: “I will take the Ring .  .  . though I do not know the way” (284). It may be one of the most modest acceptances of the hero’s role in all of literature, but it is a sincere acceptance. Before Rivendell, Frodo was not likely to have considered himself up to such a task. But now, toughened by his difficult road and his near-mortal wound, Frodo recognizes that duty and responsibility call him to this charge. In this he is a modern hero: Untempted by fame, fortune, honors or other rewards, Frodo’s only motivation is his responsibility to do right in the defense of those things, like the Shire, that he holds dear. This sense, in both Frodo and Sam, will become more manifest as their quest goes on. Chapters 3–5: Rivendell through Moria  The first matter of significance in chapter 3 is the reforging of the sword of Elendil. Like the great swords of medieval epic and romance, this sword has a name—Narsil (“Sun and Moon”). When it is reforged by the elves, Aragorn renames it Andúril (“Flame of the West”). It can hardly be a coincidence that this echoes the name of Roland’s great

210   Lord of the Rings, The sword, Durendal, in the Old French epic Song of Roland—perhaps the most famous broken sword in medieval literature. There, Roland had broken his own sword with his dying strength, to ensure that no enemy Saracen would be able to wield it. In essentially reversing the first two syllables of the name of Roland’s sword, Tolkien underscores the contrasting role of Aragorn’s sword—broken on the enemy, Saracen, it is reforged to wage new war upon his forces. But the more direct source for the motif of Tolkien’s reforged sword was undoubtedly the sword of Sigurd in the Völsunga Saga, as Lin Carter has pointed out (Carter 159). Sigurd had inherited the fragments of his father Sigmund’s sword, broken in battle with a disguised Ódin. The sword is reforged by the dwarf Regin and named Gram by Sigurd, who uses it to defeat the dragon Fafnir. As Sigurd’s reforged sword symbolizes his reaching the status of the mature hero and equips him to perform the greatest feat of martial prowess in Norse mythology, so Aragorn’s sword has done the same for him. The Fellowship is ultimately made up of nine members (to contrast the nine Black Riders), and they leave Rivendell in late December. As a medieval scholar, Tolkien would certainly have been aware of the traditional symbolic associations of these details. He may very well have been thinking of one of his favorite medieval texts, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, whose hero faces beheading during the Christmas season but escapes and is given, essentially, new life—armed with a hard-won selfknowledge. Certainly Christmastide would suggest hope and renewal, even a sense of divine guidance, to Tolkien the Christian. Of course, Middleearth is not a Christian world, but the symbolism of Christmas as a season has to do with its association with the winter solstice: At the nadir of the natural cycle, Christmas occurs when the world is darkest, but at precisely the time when light begins to come back into the world. Thus, it is a time of celebration of the renewal of the natural cycle and an archetypal period of new beginning. And therefore, despite the gloominess the characters feel at the idea of facing the elements in the dead of winter, there is some hope for the expedition suggested in the very date of their departure.

The number 9 has profound mythic significance. As the last simple number, it often symbolizes finality or a boundary or limit—or, indeed, an ultimate achievement. In medieval theology, there are nine orders of angels, and there are nine spheres in the heavens. In Norse mythology, there are nine worlds. Of particular interest to Tolkien was probably the association of the number with the chief Norse god Ódin, who, according to the poem “Hávamál” in the Poetic Edda, voluntarily hung on Yggdrasil, the great ash tree that formed the world’s axis, in order to learn the secret wisdom of runes. Tolkien certainly does not want the reader to necessarily think of these specific associations of the number 9, but the number does suggest completeness—and the council has taken care to make sure that representatives of all the free peoples of Middle-earth are a part of the Fellowship. The number is also associated with achievement, sacrifice, and wisdom—and as the Fellowship continues on its way, it is clear that both wisdom and sacrifice will be necessary to the achievement of its purpose. The first challenge for the Fellowship is their attempt to cross the Misty Mountains by climbing Mount Caradhras. The travelers actually feel that the mountain itself is defying them and deliberately or consciously barring their advance. This is not unlike the hobbits’ experience in the Old Forest, where the trees bore a malevolent will toward the intruders. Once again, the relationship of various peoples with nature is a complicated one, and Tolkien continues to suggest that nature is not merely a passive observer of human actions: At times it may even have malicious intent. The blizzard that makes the mountain impassable actually has its roots in Tolkien’s own past. He experienced a frightening avalanche when hiking through the Swiss Alps at the age of 19 and finally had found a way to use the experience in his own fiction (Carpenter 50–51). The storm on Caradhras also gives Tolkien an opportunity to show Boromir at his best. Up to this point, he has been characterized chiefly by his tendency to doubt and question: He doubts the council’s wisdom in sending the One Ring to Mordor; he questions Aragorn’s true lineage; he

Lord of the Rings, The   211 doubts the ability of Frodo to complete the quest. He will, even in the next chapter, question the decision of Gandalf and Aragorn to take the company through Moria. But at this point, the reader observes his strength and initiative in clearing snow from the path. More important, Boromir displays a protective affection for the hobbits, particularly Merry and Pippin, that makes him a more sympathetic character, and makes his later actions the more lamentable. Pippin is another character who is more fully developed in this section, although it is chiefly his impetuosity and immaturity that are underscored when he foolishly drops a stone into the well in Moria. It is never made clear, but since the thumping begins immediately after the stone is dropped, it appears that it is Pippin’s thoughtless act that warns the orcs of the company’s presence in the mines. It may even be Pippin’s stone that alerts the Balrog. In the caves of Moria, Tolkien once again makes use of the archetypal descent motif that he had used in The Hobbit. Traditionally, a character’s descent into darkness is a symbolic death and rebirth, as it was in The Hobbit, where Bilbo emerged with Gollum’s ring. The rebirth is symbolic because of some psychological transformation that has occurred in the darkness. As mentioned in the discussion of Gollum’s cave in The Hobbit, Carl Jung had called this archetype of darkness the shadow—the darkness in ourselves that we must face in order to mature and move on in the process of what he labeled individuation. The first shadow that Frodo and the others face in Moria is the fear of death itself—confronted first in the tomb of Balin and ultimately in the personified form of the great shadow-beast, the Balrog. The second shadow is the loss of the father figure of Gandalf, and the forced maturity that comes from such a loss. First-time readers of The Fellowship of the Ring recognize the Balrog only as a shapeless monster of dark fire and great power that would be the death of all in the company if they were not protected by Gandalf. In Tolkien’s mythology, a Balrog is a fallen Maia—one of the angelic beings of the same rank as Sauron who, like Sauron, fell from the true intent of Ilúvatar, the creator god, and followed Melkor (Morgoth), the renegade Vala (one of the

higher order of angelic beings) before the First Age of Middle-earth. Creatures of flame hidden in darkness, many Balrogs were destroyed in the wars that ended the First Age, but those that survived hid themselves deep underground. This particular Balrog had been disturbed by the dwarves’ deep mining in Moria and had destroyed them, including their kings. It is therefore known as “Durin’s bane.” As a Maia himself, Gandalf is the only one with enough power to stand against the Balrog. His confrontation with the monster on the bridge in Khazad-dûm is one of mythic proportions. In fact, Tolkien seems to have borrowed it from Old Norse myth. Marjorie Burns has pointed out the parallels between the bridge of Khazad-dûm and Bifrost, the rainbow bridge in Norse mythology that connects Midgard (i.e., “Middle-earth”) with Asgard, the realm of the gods (Burns 58–59). At Ragnarök, according to Snorri’s Prose Edda, the giants will attack Asgard over the rainbow bridge, led by the fire giant Surt, who will kill the god Frey. Bifrost itself will collapse from the weight of the giants who cross it. All of this, of course, parallels the events in Tolkien’s story—the Balrog is itself a kind of fire-giant; the bridge collapses; and Gandalf, like Frey, is killed. The allusions to Ragnarök give Gandalf’s fall a kind of mythic stature. But there is more to his sacrifice than this. Alexander Bruce has pointed out another analogue for the scene on the bridge, from the Old English heroic poem The Battle of Maldon. In that poem, an English force has trapped an invading host of Vikings on an island, from which they can reach the mainland only along a narrow causeway over which just one warrior can advance at a time. The English earl, Byrhtnoth, gives up the advantage and allows the entire Viking force to cross, even though the bridge could have been defended by a single warrior. The result is disastrous for the English defenders, and Byrhtnoth is one of the first to fall. But Byrhtnoth’s retainers boldly fight on, loyal to their lord, fighting all the harder because they know they are doomed. Tolkien had a keen interest in this poem, and in about 1945, he wrote a verse drama depicting the aftermath of that battle, called “The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth Beorhthelm’s Son.” He eventu-

212   Lord of the Rings, The ally published this, along with two commentaries on the poem itself, in 1953. In his commentary, Tolkien considered Byrhtnoth’s actions and the poet’s use of the term ofermod with regard to them. The term, implying “overboldness,” is the poet’s condemnation of Byrhtnoth’s actions. Byrhtnoth’s misplaced chivalry, apparently designed to win him greater glory than simply defending the easily guarded bridge would do, is an example of rash irresponsibility. Byrhtnoth was in a position of responsibility, and his duty toward his followers was more important than his own desire for glory. Through his excessive pride, he led his men into a situation in which they would lose their lives in a futile cause. The retainers who fought to the death after the fall of their lord followed the heroic code of the North, the code by which even the gods fought in a lost cause at Ragnarök. But in Gandalf’s fall, this code is by contrast augmented by what Tolkien calls “the heroism of obedience and love” (“Homecoming” 22). As Bruce sees it, Gandalf’s defense of the bridge at Khazad-dûm—like the causeway in Maldon too narrow for more than one to cross at once—is a demonstration of what Byrhtnoth should have done: He acts “to save his loyal companions, not to jeopardize them” (157). Aragorn and Boromir, who attempt to rush to Gandalf’s defense, act the part of Byrhtnoth’s loyal retainers, ready to “fulfill their obligation to their leader, fighting for him even unto death” (Bruce 157). This will be the spirit shown by the noblest and most sympathetic characters throughout The Lord of the Rings. In this case, Gandalf releases them from their obligation of love and loyalty by ordering them to “Fly, you fools!” (345). As a result, when the company emerges from the dark mines of Moria, they are indeed changed, having confronted the specter of death and having lost their leader, their surrogate father. Bereft of Gandalf’s guidance and wisdom, they are orphaned and will need to depend more on themselves and their own judgments. They have all been forced into an accelerated maturing process, Frodo in particular, since he will now have to make decisions regarding the ring without Gandalf’s wise counsel. Even Aragorn feels unequal to the task when he

must step into the leadership role and take on the full weight of the quest himself, realizing he cannot simply follow his own inclination and go directly to Minas Tirith with Boromir. Instead, he must be responsible for all the free peoples of Middle-earth who depend on the success of this mission. But he knows that haste is required, and that he must lead the company into the safety of Lothlórien as quickly as possible. Chapters 6–8: Lothlórien  In a pattern similar to the structure of The Hobbit, Tolkien continues to alternate chapters of great danger or high adventure with chapters of respite. Thus, just as, after the dangerous and life-threatening flight to the ford under pursuit by the Black Riders, Frodo was able to recover in Rivendell, so here, after the horror of Moria and Gandalf’s death, the company is able to grieve and recover in the protection of Lothlórien. The elven realm of Lothlórien (sometimes called simply Lórien or the Golden Wood) had been founded, according to Tolkien’s mythology, in the Second Age of Middle-earth and was created on the model of Doriath, the secret realm of Thingol and Melian in the First Age, where Galadriel had lived for many years. In its welcoming character, the Golden Wood contrasts with more threatening woods in The Lord of the Rings, such as the Old Forest or Fangorn. Tolkien’s elves live in harmony with the trees and the rest of nature, in contrast with the other Free Peoples and in severe contrast with characters like Saruman and Sauron, who think only to bend nature to their own will. It seems clear that Tolkien based his elvish kingdom on ancient and medieval Celtic depictions of fairyland. In Celtic tradition, the crossing of water typically symbolized the crossing of a threshold into a Faërie realm, as it does, for example, in Marie de France’s Breton lai (lay) Lanval, in which Lanval’s crossing of the stream brings him to the realm of his fairy paramour. This carries over into later medieval texts with Celtic roots, such as the motif of the wounded Arthur’s being carried across the water to Avalon, where in the kingdom of Faërie his life will be restored. Tom Shippey cites an instance in the later medieval poem Pearl, a favorite of Tolkien’s in which

Lord of the Rings, The   213 an uncrossable stream divides a father from his dead daughter, who lives in Paradise. Shippey sees parallels between that 14th-century West Midland poem and Tolkien’s Lórien (J. R. R. Tolkien 197). More important, however, is probably the general similarity between Lórien and Celtic Faërie realms. Marjorie Burns notes that not one but two rivers— the Nimrodel and the Silverlode—must be passed to gain entrance to Lórien, and that, furthermore, all waters within the Golden Wood are associated with Galadriel herself, the Faërie queen. This is appropriate, since Galadriel, as the bearer of the elven ring of power Nenya, the Ring of Waters, is she who directs the waters and their power (Burns 64–65). Although Lórien is a hidden and protected land, its mood is one of nostalgia and a sense of loss bordering on the elegiac. In part, this is related again to Tolkien’s Celtic sources: As Burns points out, the Faërie worlds of Celtic myth grew out of the earlier Celtic myth of the Tuatha Dé Danann, the displaced gods of Irish myth, in whose realm time moved differently, without much relation to time in the mundane world. Thus, as Burns says, “In Lothlórien, the past maintains a presence and the future is not fully obscured” (70). This sense of time explains how the Fellowship can stay in Lothlórien for a month and yet believe they have only been there a few days. It also explains the workings of Galadriel’s mirror, in which one can see shadows of events that may come to pass. But the powerful sense of the weight of the past cannot be explained by these things alone. In Lothlórien, we are made to feel for the first time the timelessness and the great age of the elves, and to recognize that a place like the Golden Wood may provide a temporary escape from evil but cannot stand against the power of a direct attack from Mordor. Galadriel says of herself and her consort Celeborn in “The Mirror of Galadriel” chapter: “I have dwelt with him years uncounted; for ere the fall of Nargothrond or Gondolin I passed over the mountains, and together through the ages of the world we have fought the long defeat” (372). This is not an optimistic view of the future. It is influenced in particular by what Tolkien called the heroic code of the North, the courage of fighting on in a losing cause, and perhaps putting off that final

defeat for as long as possible through courageous and stalwart defense against the encroaching and inevitable end represented in Norse mythology by the idea of Ragnarök. It was the spirit that inspired the Anglo-Saxon warriors at the end of The Battle of Maldon to fight on to death after their lord had fallen. The elves in Tolkien’s Middle-earth have fought that long defeat for thousands of years but are now faced with their own Ragnarök. Later in the same chapter, Galadriel tells Frodo and Sam, “Do you not see now wherefore your coming is to us as the footstep of Doom? For if you fail, then we are laid bare to the Enemy. Yet if you succeed, then our power is diminished, and Lothlórien will fade, and the tides of Time will sweep it away. We must depart into the West, or dwindle to a rustic folk of dell and cave, slowly to forget and to be forgotten.” (380)

It is true that, if Galadriel had accepted Frodo’s offer of the ring, she could have grown supremely powerful and ruled all Middle-earth, replacing the Dark Lord with what she calls a queen who would be beautiful and terrible. But that would only be another kind of defeat, a defeat of all that the Eldar have stood for. And so she refuses. Having passed what she calls “the test,” she will “diminish, and go into the West, and remain Galadriel” (381). Whatever the fate of the ring, the time of elves will end with the conclusion of Frodo’s quest. Middle-earth will be dominated by the Dark Lord, or the elves’ powers will fade and the Age of Men will come to pass. Lórien, therefore, is in its final autumn, and that explains the elegiac mood of these chapters. Galadriel herself, like the wood that she inhabits, is at least partly based on Celtic sources. In particular, Burns argues that the goddess called the Morrígan was especially influential in Tolkien’s conception of Galadriel. The Morrígan was a fertility goddess, and one especially associated with the waters. In this, she certainly parallels Galadriel, mistress of the waters, whose soil that she gives Sam will later bring a new fertility to the Shire (Burns 110–111). But the negative aspects of the Morrígan’s personality—her identity as a war goddess sometimes antagonistic to Celtic heroes— does not seem to fit Galadriel’s profile, unless one

214   Lord of the Rings, The c­onsiders, as Burns does, Galadriel’s earlier history. In The Silmarillion, Galadriel is the one woman from among the Noldor who takes a leading part in the Noldor’s rebellion against the Valar and their exodus from Valinor (Burns 109). It is, in fact, due to that rebellion that Galadriel has been dwelling in Middle-earth for so long, even after many of her kinsmen have taken ship and returned to the Blessed Realm. At the end of the First Age, with the defeat of Morgoth, the Valar had issued a pardon to the Noldor and allowed those who wanted to return to Valinor. Galadriel was not among those who were pardoned, however—either by her own choice or by direct order of the Valar. Her hopeless longing for Valinor is expressed in both of the songs that she sings in these chapters, and it contributes to the elegiac tone. “Too long I have dwelt upon this Hither Shore,” she sings, “but if of ships I now should sing, what ship would come to me, / What ship would bear me ever back across so wide a Sea?” (389). In a long draft of an unsent letter to a Mr. Rang dated August 1967, Tolkien wrote that after the First Age, the Valar allowed the exiled elves to return to Valinor, “save for a few chief actors in the rebellion of whom at the time of the L.R. only Galadriel remained” (Letters 386). But as Tolkien conceives it (and again, this could only be apparent to a reader familiar with The Silmarillion, and therefore to none of Tolkien’s original readers in 1954), Galadriel’s refusal to take the ring, her renunciation of power for the sake of the greater good, breaks through the prohibition of the Valar and allows for her ultimate return to the Blessed Realm upon Sauron’s defeat. In another letter, to Ruth Astin dated January 25, 1971, Tolkien asserted that Galadriel “was pardoned because of her resistance to the final overwhelming temptation to take the Ring for herself” (Letters 407). All of this hardly explains completely the person of Galadriel, one of the most significant figures in The Lord of the Rings. She is also, as several readers have noted, suggestive of the Virgin Mary so important to Tolkien’s Catholic faith. She serves as an object of veneration and even adoration, particularly for Gimli, Sam, and Frodo, and as Burns asserts, Sam’s later invocation of her as “Lady” to

whom he seemingly prays for “light and water” on the way to Mount Doom in The Return of the King puts her in a position very similar to that of the Blessed Virgin (Burns 196). Tolkien himself recognized and admitted the parallel, noting as well the tendency of some readers to equate lembas, the elvish daily bread that Galadriel gives to the travelers, to the Holy Eucharist, whose nourishment sustains them in their darkest hours (Letters 288). To the dwarf Gimli, whom she wins over despite his dishonorable treatment at the hands of her kinsmen by showing a sincere sympathy with his love of Moria, Galadriel is certainly a figure recalling the beloved ladies of medieval courtly romance or the courtly love lyrics at their purest or most refined—like Dante’s lyrics in praise of Beatrice, for instance: She is a being of ethereal or otherworldly beauty whom the lover can only praise and adore, without hope or expectation. Gimli’s request of a strand of Galadriel’s hair to treasure recalls Lancelot’s enamored stupor when he sees the golden hairs of Queen Guinevere on her comb in Chrétien de Troyes’s romance The Knight of the Cart. In all of these aspects, Galadriel is essentially the archetypal figure that Jung calls the anima—the most complex of Jungian archetypes. The anima is the female “soul-image” of a man’s psyche (in a woman, it is the male animus). It represents in part the unconscious psychological characteristics of the opposite sex within each of us. The anima figure in a dream, myth, or literary text takes the form of the ideal woman, who may act as an inspiration, an ideal, and an object of adoration, as Galadriel does here for Gimli, Frodo, and Sam in particular. Her character as an archetype, or universal symbol in what Jung calls the collective unconscious of humanity, may help to explain the power of her image felt by nearly all readers. The influence of Galadriel is felt throughout the rest of The Lord of the Rings, not only through Sam’s prayerlike appeals to her and Frodo’s reliance on her phial of light during his darkest moments, but also through the events witnessed in her mirror. We know that the pool may depict past, present, or future, and that the events of the future are only possible eventualities. But the images foreshadow several coming events, and intensify the

Lord of the Rings, The   215 suspense of the plot, since like Frodo and Sam we know something of what is coming, but not enough to understand it at the moment. Thus, with Sam, we foresee Frodo’s possible demise at the hands of Shelob and his own indecision concerning the ring, and we see the pollution of the Shire that must be cleansed upon the hobbits’ return to their own country. Frodo foresees the resurrected Gandalf, but he is unsure who it may be. He sees the past, the establishment of the Kingdom of Gondor. And he sees the unmistakable Eye of Sauron searching for him, and feels for the first time how weighty the ring is, a weight that can only increase the closer he brings it to its creator. No wonder he almost immediately offers its burden to Galadriel. That offer, however, is also evidence that Frodo is not yet so attached to the ring and its alluring power that he cannot freely give it up. That the anima figure of Galadriel evokes from Frodo this sacrificial act is testament to the ideal of goodness that he will aspire to, just as her sacrificial refusal embodies the ideals of Frodo’s inner soul. One final aspect of this section that requires comment is the relationship of Aragorn with Lórien and with Galadriel herself. On the hill of Cerin Amroth, Frodo witnesses Aragorn in a reverie, remembering some past time, and hears him utter the words “Arwen vanimelda, namarië!” (367). In Quenya, the language of the High-elves, the words mean “Farewell, beloved lady Arwen.” Aragorn’s memory is apparently of having to bid farewell to Arwen at this place, a parting that must have occurred at least 38 years in the past, since Celeborn remarks that it has been that long since Aragorn was last in Lórien. It will become clear later that Aragorn and Arwen had actually pledged their love to each other on this spot many years earlier. Aragorn apparently respects and admires Galadriel, for he will hear no malice spoken of her and chides Boromir for his suspicions of the lady, saying there is no evil in her or the land of Lórien unless a man brings it there himself (373). But in his last meeting with Galadriel, he strongly hints that it has been her influence that has kept him and his beloved Arwen apart so long: “Lady, you know all my desire, and long held in keeping the only treasure that I seek. Yet it is not yours to give

me, even if you would, and only through darkness shall I come to it” (391). Galadriel, Arwen’s grandmother, may well have objected to her marrying a mortal, as Elrond must have objected as well. In this, Aragorn is in the position of Beren in the old myths, kept from marrying his beloved Lúthien by her suspicious father. The implication of Aragorn’s assertion that he will win Arwen through the darkness may imply his hope that he will win her when he wins his kingdom, which can only happen with the defeat of the Dark Lord. In any case, at his parting from Lórien, apparently for the last time, Aragorn receives from Galadriel the brooch that Arwen has left for him, as she proclaims him Elessar, the Elfstone. It seems to imply a change in her attitude toward him—her own hope that Aragorn will come into his kingdom, and that he can win Arwen for his own. Chapters 9–10: Lórien to Amon Hen  From the east side of the River Anduin, the orcs attack the travelers, aided by a monstrous flying beast; Frodo’s shoulder tells him that this must be the new steed of the Black Riders that will make their presence even more terrifying than before. Though Tolkien consistently denied any allegorical intent in The Lord of the Rings, readers have often seen his repeated association of the enemies of the Free Peoples with the East as an allusion to the Axis powers of World War II—all located to the east of Britain—during which Tolkien wrote the bulk of the novel. Or the East could possibly suggest the Soviet Union during the cold war era when the book was published. From assumptions like this, it is an easy leap to interpret the One Ring as the atomic bomb. But surely Tolkien never intended anything so cut and dried. That the enemies come from the East is simply a function of the geography of his Middle-earth, in which, long before World War II, he had placed Valinor in the West. In his introduction to the second edition of The Fellowship of the Ring, Tolkien says of his story that “Its sources are things long before in mind, or in some cases already written, and little or nothing in it was modified by the war that began in 1939 or its sequels”; he adds that “I think that many confuse ‘applicability’ with ‘allegory’ ” (7). Because of its universal themes of the corrupting influence of power,

216   Lord of the Rings, The the implacability of evil, the need for courage in the face of what Galadriel calls “the long defeat,” and the saving virtues of loyalty and sacrifice, the story may seem to apply to many situations in historical or contemporary times. But that applicability is not the same thing as allegory. We are reminded of the One Ring’s corrupting influence by the revelation that the footsteps and the eyes that Frodo has been observing following the company since their trek through Moria do indeed belong to Gollum, as Aragorn himself confirms. Gollum’s hopeless subservience and monomaniacal following of the ring wherever it leads makes him a pathetic creature, but one who, as Gandalf said much earlier, may still have a part to play in the unfolding drama of the Ring-bearer. The most tragic instance of the ring’s corrupting power is the case of Boromir. He has been portrayed from the beginning as proud and brave, an intrepid warrior who traveled alone for 100 days to reach Rivendell. His pride in the courage of his people bursts forth in “The Council of Elrond” chapter earlier in the book. His loyalty and courage are manifested in his protection of the hobbits on Caradhras and his leaping forward to defend Gandalf against the Balrog. But from the beginning, his chief concern has always been for his people and his city, and with defending them from the inexorable power in the East that bears down upon them more fiercely each year. This is why he cannot understand the decision to destroy the ring. His reasoning is that Minas Tirith fights in a just cause, and therefore any weapon employed in the war on the side of Minas Tirith is justified. The more powerful the weapon, the better, since the just cause justifies the use of any force available. Like Saruman, and like most modern politicians, Boromir’s reasoning is that the end justifies the means. It was the argument that justified the use of the atomic bomb to end World War II. What the argument does not take into account is the corrupting power of the evil that has been employed in the just cause. Elrond and Gandalf recognize this. But Boromir does not, and he becomes more and more obsessed with bringing the ring to Minas Tirith as the company travels down the river. When he begins talking to himself, it is fairly clear that his

own obsessions—spurred on no doubt by the influence of the ring itself—have driven him into a kind of madness. When Frodo will not listen to what Boromir considers reason, he threatens to take the ring by force, and Frodo is frightened into using it to escape. It is only then that Boromir’s essential goodness breaks through his mad ambition, and he realizes the wrong he has done, stumbling back to camp to warn the company that Frodo has disappeared. Frodo’s will—unencumbered as it is by pride and ambition—proves stronger than Boromir’s in resisting the call of the ring. In the last chapter of The Fellowship of the Ring, Frodo experiences a great struggle alone. When he has made his way to the throne atop Amon Hen, still wearing the ring, he can see into Mordor itself and becomes aware of the searching eye of Sauron. When he throws himself from the seat, he finds himself drawn to the Eye, no doubt influenced by the ring he is wearing. Another voice seems to be telling him to take off the ring, and he is torn between the two forces. Ultimately, though, it is his own will that saves him: Suddenly he was aware of himself again. Frodo, neither the voice nor the Eye: free to choose, and with one remaining instant in which to do so. He took the Ring off his finger. . . . A great weariness was on him, but his will was firm and his heart lighter. He spoke aloud to himself. “I will do now what I must,” he said. (417)

This is Frodo’s bravest moment. Alone, freed from the pressures that have tried to shape him, he makes the choice to go on, and to go on alone, to fulfill what he sees as his obligation and duty. Readers of The Hobbit will recall that Tolkien makes a similar comment about Bilbo, whose most courageous action is his going on down the tunnel toward the dragon after an internal struggle. Going on from there was the bravest thing he ever did. The tremendous things that happened afterward were as nothing compared to it. He fought the real battle in the tunnel alone, before he ever saw the vast danger that lay in wait. (The Hobbit 205)

Lord of the Rings, The   217 It is the same here. For Tolkien, real courage is internal, a matter of the will. It may not necessarily manifest itself in great deeds of valor or prowess on the battlefield. It has to do with mastery of the will in dangerous or even hopeless circumstances. Frodo has determined to do his duty, at great personal sacrifice. By the end of the chapter, Sam has joined him, his love and loyalty motivating him so strongly that he does not engage in the internal struggle that tormented Frodo. He plunges into the river without even thinking. Frodo and Sam, the figures of sacrifice and loyalty, head into the next book against all the powers of darkness. Synopsis for The Two Towers Book 3: The Treason of Isengard Chapters 1–2: Pursuit to Rohan  In a chapter entitled “The Departure of Boromir,” book 3 begins where book 2 left off, with Aragorn still searching for Frodo as he climbs Amon Hen. He finds Frodo’s tracks heading down the hill from the high seat atop the mountain, and decides to sit in the seat before following Frodo’s tracks, but he can see nothing useful from the throne. Suddenly, he hears the blast of Boromir’s horn sounding an alarm. He hastens down the hill toward the sound of the horn, but when he arrives at a glade down the slope of the hill, he finds he is too late. Boromir is lying with his back to a tree, pierced by many orc arrows. As he dies, Boromir admits that he had tried to take the ring from Frodo by force and believes he has been justly punished for that act. He tells Aragorn that orcs have carried off the hobbits, but he dies before he can tell Aragorn whether Frodo was with them. More than 20 orcs lie slain around Boromir’s body, and when Legolas and Gimli join Aragorn, the three of them put Boromir into a funeral boat and send him down the river, to go over the falls of Rauros. They sing him a dirge and then try to decide what course of action to take next. Since one boat is missing, along with Sam’s pack, they conclude that Frodo and Sam have headed toward Mordor alone. They examine the bodies and the gear of the dead orcs and find that some are them are taller than the orcs of Mordor, and they bear arms inscribed with a runic S. They conclude that the orcs are in the service of Saruman, not Sauron,

since the Dark Lord does not use elf runes or go by his proper name. Aragorn makes the choice to follow the orcs that have taken Merry and Pippin, believing that he and Legolas and Gimli may be able to do more to save the two younger hobbits, who are in more immediate danger, than to help Frodo, who has chosen to go on alone. As the second chapter (“The Riders of Rohan”) opens, Aragorn, Gimli, and Legolas follow the trail of the orcs who have taken Merry and Pippin, although they are far behind and have little real hope of catching them. Before they have gone far, they find a pile of dead orcs, the apparent result of an internal squabble among the enemy band. None of the slain orcs are of the powerful variety with the mark of Saruman on their gear, and

Cover of The Lord of the Rings: The Art of The Two Towers, by Gary Russell, published in 2003 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. This illustrated book examines the artists and craftspeople who created “the sets, props, creatures, and locations” in Peter Jackson’s movie adaptation of The Two Towers. The cover shows Saruman’s tower in the foreground, with Barad-dûr, Sauron’s Dark Tower, in the distance.

218   Lord of the Rings, The ­Aragorn surmises that the orcs loyal to Saruman have won the debate. The company must be heading toward Isengard. But there is no sign yet of Merry or Pippin. They chase the orcs into the realm of Rohan, and finally they come across an elven brooch and some hobbit tracks leading off from the main trail. It is clear that one of the hobbits—probably Pippin, judging from the size of the tracks—has deliberately left the brooch behind to help the pursuers in their chase. Somewhat heartened, the three companions keep pushing as fast and as long as they are able, but at night they are forced to rest, chiefly because, as Gimli argues, the trail cannot be followed in the darkness. Eventually, even Legolas cannot keep the orcs in sight any longer. The three companions travel on, relentlessly but hopelessly, traversing 45 leagues (135 miles) in four days. But they are no closer to the orcs. Suddenly, Legolas sees a large group of men approaching on horseback. Aragorn tells the others that he is familiar with the Rohirrim, the Riders of Rohan, and that they are true, generous, and brave. They are related to the Bardings of Dale in the North and have been allies of Gondor for many years. Aragorn does not believe the rumor Gandalf had heard that the Rohirrim now pay tribute to Mordor. At first, the riders pass by the three companions, who are camouflaged in their elven cloaks. But Aragorn cries out to them, and the three are soon surrounded by the 105 horsemen and addressed by their leader, Éomer. The initial confrontation is a tense one, for the Rohirrim are suspicious of any strangers in their land, and when he learns that the companions have come through Lórien, Éomer remarks on the reputation of the Lady of the Wood as a sorceress. This incurs Gimli’s wrath, and the dwarf threatens Éomer with his axe until Aragorn can smooth things over. Ultimately, Aragorn reveals his identity as Isildur’s heir and draws the Sword that was Broken, demanding that Éomer help them or face his anger. In the exchange that follows, Éomer reports that his troops have just massacred and burned the orcs that Aragorn has been chasing, and that they found no hobbits among them. Aragorn reveals the deaths of

Gandalf and of Boromir, both of which sadden Éomer, though he admits that his king, Théoden, has recently had little good to say of Gandalf. The Rohirrim are not allied with Mordor, though the Dark Lord’s orcs do steal their horses when they can. They are indeed at war with Saruman, and thus have destroyed the orcs who bore his symbol. Éomer is amazed to hear of Halflings (hobbits), the long-lost heir of Isildur, and such matters, remarking that legends have become reality. He tries to persuade Aragorn to come with him to the palace of King Théoden, hoping that the sword of Elendil will be the ally of the Rohirrim. He also hints at dissension within the court, suggesting that Saruman has some influence there. Aragorn refuses, saying that he and his companions must seek their friends, to find whether they may be still alive. Finally, Éomer offers the companions horses, first securing a promise from Aragorn to bring the horses back to Meduseld, Théoden’s hall, when his business is accomplished. Aragorn pledges to come when he is able. The companions make much better time on horseback, and soon they come to the edge of Fangorn Forest, where the Rohirrim had encountered the orcs. They find a fresh mound of earth surrounded by 15 spears, for the bodies of the Rohirrim that were killed in the skirmish. They also find the burned corpses of the defeated orcs, but can find no evidence that Merry and Pippin are among the dead. For the evening, they camp near the woods, but Aragorn warns Gimli not to cut any living wood from the forest to build a fire. Fangorn is a wood as ancient as the Old Forest of Tom Bombadil, but larger and even more mysterious. That evening, while Gimli stands watch, an old man in a cloak and a wide-brimmed hat appears briefly at the edge of the forest. When the dwarf starts, Aragorn and Legolas awaken, and Aragorn tries to address the old man, but he disappears into the forest. At that point, Legolas realizes that the horses have disappeared. The companions will have to walk now, all the way to Meduseld. Legolas believes that the old man must have been Saruman himself. Chapters 3–4: Fangorn  With the third chapter (“The Uruk-hai”), the focus shifts to Pippin

Lord of the Rings, The   219 shortly after his capture with Merry. He awakens tied up among a large band of orcs. He was apparently knocked unconscious during the skirmish with Boromir, and he wonders what happened to Boromir and where Merry is. He is eventually reunited with Merry, who is weak and wears a bandage on his head. The swiftly moving orcs have been carrying the hobbits on their backs for many miles. Pippin soon realizes that the orcs are not a united group but, rather, represent three separate tribes. Some are orcs from the mines of Moria, who have come south to take revenge on the travelers who had killed so many of their fellows. A second group, led by a short, broad orc named Grishnákh, wants to head for Lugbúrz, the orcish name for Barad-dûr, the dark tower of Mordor. But the third group, the tall, powerfully built orcs who are identified as Uruk-hai, are led by Uglúk, who insists on bringing the hobbits to his master, Saruman. While the other orcs would prefer to kill Merry and Pippin immediately, Uglúk forces them to obey Saruman’s command to bring the hobbits in unharmed, since they are in possession of something necessary for the war. When Grishnákh’s faction threatens to rebel, Uglúk beheads two of them and quells the dissent temporarily. A third orc is killed by Uglúk’s followers, and falls on top of Pippin. Pippin contrives to cut the bonds on his wrists with the sword of the fallen orc that has landed on him, but then loosely replaces the bonds so that it appears his hands are still tied. At this point, Grishnákh and a few dozen of his followers leave the group. Uglúk kills a few more of the northern orcs before they fall in line. Eventually, Uglúk decides to cut the ropes on the hobbits’ ankles and force them to run, since his orcs are tired of carrying them. Pippin has been holding out the hope that Aragorn and the others may be pursuing the orcs in an effort to rescue them, but he realizes that, with all of the orc footprints, even a Ranger would not be able to see the hobbit tracks among them. So he deliberately begins dashing off the path, as if he were trying to escape. When his guards come to force him back, he deliberately lets fall his elven brooch, hoping that Aragorn might find it and see his tracks, and thereby know that he and Merry are with the orcs.

Through the orcs’ conversation, Pippin hears that a lone rider has seen the orc band and ridden off, presumably to bring the news to other Riders of Rohan. At this news, Uglúk orders that the company keep moving both day and night. Uglúk allows a group of more than 100 of the northern orcs to break off and run away, telling them to make for the forest if they want to find safety. At that point, Grishnákh reappears with his troops, and he and Uglúk make a temporary alliance to fight against the Riders of Rohan, who are now in sight and in pursuit. The hobbits’ legs are tied, and they are carried again. By the next afternoon, the main body of the Uruk-hai overtakes the northerners that ran away, and Grishnákh’s orcs of Mordor follow close behind. The Rohirrim continue to gain on them, slaughtering any stragglers that come into their path. That night, some three furlongs from Fangorn Forest, the orcs are overtaken and surrounded by the Riders. The orcs expect them to attack at dawn, and when Uglúk is away, trying to protect the perimeter, the hobbits are accosted by Grishnákh, who begins searching them. Realizing that Grishnákh knows about the ring and is seeking it, Pippin pretends that he and Merry have it and will trade it to Grishnákh for their freedom. Instead, Grishnákh picks them up and tries to sneak off with them, but his way is blocked by one of the Riders, and when he draws his sword to kill his prisoners, he is felled by a Rohirrim spear. As the circle of riders closes around the orcs, Merry and Pippin find themselves outside the circle. With his free hands, Pippin is able to untie their feet and eat a bite of the elvish lembas, which refreshes them. They begin to crawl toward the forest, reaching it as the battle begins. From the edge of the wood, they witness the slaughter of the orcs, but as they see Uglúk and some of the other Uruk-hai running toward the forest in an attempt to escape, Merry and Pippin dash into Fangorn Forest to hide and therefore do not witness Uglúk’s end at the hands of the Rohirrim. As chapter 4 (“Treebeard”) opens, Merry and Pippin have fled into Fangorn Forest. Merry, who had spent some time looking at maps while they were in Rivendell, has some notion of where they

220   Lord of the Rings, The are, and he knows that the river flowing through the forest is called the Entwash. The hobbits remember that Celeborn had warned them about entering Fangorn, but they believe that whatever dangers it holds, it is better than being recaptured by orcs. They have gone some three or four miles into the forest when they come upon a rocky wall with what seems a naturally formed stairway leading to the top of a small hill. They climb up, hoping to get a look at the land about. At the top of the hill, however, they meet a creature whom they at first take to be a stumpy oak tree. In fact, it is an ent—a manlike creature, but some 14 feet tall, with limbs and a skin that make him like a tree in appearance. This is Treebeard, known as Fangorn in elvish, a very ancient creature who speaks to them in the common language—which he finds very “hasty,” preferring to say things in the Old Entish tongue, in which every name tells the entire story of a thing. Treebeard does not recognize the race of hobbits, saying they are not mentioned in the old songs. He sings them a poetic list of names, in which he enumerates elves, dwarves, men, and ents as the four “free peoples.” Merry and Pippin convince him to add another line to the old list, naming “Half-grown hobbits, the hole-dwellers” (68), and Treebeard is pleased to do so. As they converse, Merry and Pippin learn that Treebeard is acquainted with Gandalf and is disturbed to learn of Gandalf’s death. He knows Saruman as well, but when the hobbits ask him which side he is on, Treebeard refuses to choose, since no one, he claims, is on his side, the implication being that his is the side of the trees, the forests, nature itself. They find that he is, however, quite angry with Saruman. Not only has Saruman destroyed a portion of Fangorn Forest by felling the trees, he has also engaged in unnatural practices in creating the race of orcs called the Uruk-hai. The first Dark Lord, Morgoth, had created orcs as an ironic imitation of elves, Treebeard says, and in the same manner created trolls in order to mimic ents like himself. But Saruman has made the Uruk-hai by mixing the races of orcs and men, and Treebeard finds this deplorable. The destruction of the forest by Saruman’s orcs distresses Treebeard the most, however, and he has determined to call an Entmoot—a meeting of the

ents—in order to rouse them to take some action against Isengard. Merry and Pippin travel on Treebeard’s branchlike arms as he moves through the forest to his own home. The hobbits spend the evening before the Entmoot at Treebeard’s house, a comfortable, natural setting, where they are fed and where they are given an ent draught to drink. Treebeard says that the Shire with its lovely gardens, as Merry and Pippin have described it, sounds like a place that the entwives would like, and he asks anxiously whether they have ever seen any sign of entwives there. He is disappointed when they answer in the negative. Treebeard tells them that the ents are a dwindling population, for though they live for great ages, there are no new entings born. This is because long ago the ents became separated from the entwives and have never been able to find them. The following day, Treebeard carries the hobbits to the Entmoot, where a few other ents have already begun to arrive. They begin their meeting, but as ents take their time about deciding anything, considering other creatures overly “hasty,” the meeting promises to last a good while, and Treebeard entrusts Merry and Pippin to one of the younger, more “hasty” ents, Bregalad (or “Quickbeam”), who has a house nearby and who has already made up his mind on the question of war with Saruman. He tells the hobbits how Saruman’s orcs destroyed the Rowan trees near his home—old friends that had grown there for many years, and who no longer answered to their long names. For two full days, the Entmoot considers Treebeard’s proposal. Finally, on the afternoon of the third day, Merry and Pippin hear a chanting from the Entmoot, as the ents begin to march, intoning “To Isengard with doom we come! / With doom we come, with doom we come!” (89). Treebeard comes by, with 50 ents following two abreast, and, calling to Bregalad and the hobbits to join the moot, takes up Merry and Pippin again in his arms. As they march forward, he admits to the hobbits that the ents may very well be marching to their own doom, but that the current state of affairs made it likely that even if they did nothing, doom would find the ents. As they continue their march toward Nan Curunir, the valley just west

Lord of the Rings, The   221 of Fangorn where Isengard is located, Pippin looks behind, and it seems to him that the army of ents has swollen—or that perhaps the trees themselves had awakened and joined the march of the ents. Chapters 5–8: The Defeat of Isengard  Chapter 5 (“The White Rider”) returns to Aragorn, Gimli, and Legolas at the site of the battle between the orcs and the Rohirrim. As morning comes, they are able to find traces of what may have happened to the hobbits. Severed bonds and crumbs of lembas bread show them that at least one of the hobbits is still alive and has apparently escaped bondage and had a snack outside the circle of battle—an act that Legolas says is definitive proof that the person in question is a hobbit. The traces do lead into Fangorn, and despite their misgivings, the three companions feel bound to enter the forbidding forest to search for their friends. In the forest, they find two sets of hobbit tracks and are heartened to know that both hobbits are alive. But they now face the difficult task of tracking them through Fangorn Forest. Having succeeded in tracking Merry and Pippin to the hill on which the hobbits had met Treebeard, the three hunters are considering what to do next when Legolas glimpses a bent, grey figure approaching. Gimli believes it is the old man he had seen at the forest edge the previous evening and tells Legolas to shoot him, since it must be Saruman. As the figure draws closer, Gimli moves toward him with his axe, and Aragorn draws his sword. But the strange figure addresses them in a familiar manner, and when the three hunters ask him if he knows what has happened to their friends, he does not answer but instead leaps up onto the rock, where his grey clothes fall away and he reveals clothing of dazzling white. But to their astonished joy, it is not Saruman the White who has come to them but Gandalf the Grey, who has been resurrected as Gandalf the White. His memory seems slightly fuzzy, for, as he says, he has “passed through fire and deep water” since their parting, but he has returned “at the turn of the tide” (98). As they address him as Gandalf, he pauses and thinks, remarking that, yes, Gandalf had been his name, and tells them they might still

address him as Gandalf. But he has also become, he says, what Saruman should have been. Gandalf, coming more and more to himself, tells the companions about Saruman and his intention to seize the ring for himself, thus betraying Sauron. But he rejoices that Saruman has unwittingly aided their cause. By insisting that his Uruk-hai bring the hobbits to Isengard unharmed, he has ensured that Merry and Pippin would be brought to Fangorn— where they would never have come otherwise. And it is their arrival in Fangorn that has now been the spark to ignite the ents. While Legolas and Aragorn are astonished to hear that there are still ents in the world, Gandalf explains that they are indeed in Fangorn, led by Treebeard, whom Gandalf identifies as the oldest living being in Middle-earth. The wrath of the ents is now bent toward Isengard, and Gandalf foresees disaster for Saruman. As for Frodo, Gandalf says that he has now brought the ring out of reach of any of the Free Peoples, and when he hears that Sam is traveling with Frodo, he is pleased. Gandalf is aware that Sauron very nearly learned of where the ring was, but that the danger of that has passed; he seems to be alluding to Frodo’s struggle on Amon Hen. Gandalf says that he himself had gone to a high place to challenge the Eye of Sauron, and the implication is that it was Gandalf’s voice that was in Frodo’s head at that time, telling him to remove the ring. But Sauron, says Gandalf, is making one fatal mistake: He believes that the ring is intended for Minas Tirith, and that a challenger will come from there at some point who will wield the ring and try to take his throne. He cannot conceive of the possibility that they may be planning to destroy it. Since Merry and Pippin are safe, Gandalf advises Aragorn to fulfill his promise and journey next to Edoras to see Théoden, king of the Rohirrim; Gandalf promises to go with him. Aragorn, recognizing Gandalf’s new, superior status, acknowledges him as leader of the forces of the Free Peoples against Mordor and says he will follow Gandalf, the White Rider. Gandalf goes on to tell the companions what happened after he and the Balrog fell in Moria. They fell for a long time, he says, until they landed in the water and continued to sink to the bottom.

222   Lord of the Rings, The The Balrog’s fire was quenched, but he had become a snakelike monster of slime. Finally, Gandalf began to get the better of him in their struggle, at which point the monster fled up through the secret paths in Moria, until it had reached Durin’s Tower, the highest peak of Moria, always with Gandalf clinging to its heel. There the Balrog flamed anew, and Gandalf fought with it until he was finally able to cast the Balrog from that height and destroy it. Afterward, Gandalf seems to have wandered, dazed, until he was picked up by the eagle Gwaihir the Windlord. He had been sent by Galadriel to search for Gandalf and took Gandalf to Lórien to recuperate. There, Gandalf was healed and clad in white, and he comes now bearing messages from Lady Galadriel. To Aragorn, this takes the form of a cryptic song declaring that the time has come for the Lost to ride south, warning him that his path must be dark, and the Dead will watch the road to the sea. To Legolas, there is a brief warning verse that he should beware the cry of the sea, for it will turn his heart from the forest. To Gimli, the lady simply says that her thoughts are with him; she calls him Lockbearer and advises him to take his axe only to the right tree. Now Gandalf calls Shadowfax, the great white steed of Rohan that will be the mount of the White Rider. With Shadowfax come the other two horses that had run from Aragorn’s company the previous night—they had not run away but had run to meet Shadowfax, the horse Legolas calls their “chieftain” (108). Aragorn and Legolas mount the other two horses, Gandalf takes Gimli before him on Shadowfax, and the four set off over the march of Rohan to Edoras and the halls of Meduseld, home of King Théoden of Rohan—as Aragorn had promised Éomer. In chapter 6 (“The King of the Golden Hall”), the company rides most of the night, resting only briefly. In the morning, Legolas sees in the distance the golden hall of Meduseld. Gandalf warns the company to speak carefully and be on their guard, for the Rohirrim are cautious and suspicious in these days of threatening war. As they approach the great hall, the riders pass through the tombs of Théoden’s ancestors, 16 kings in a line stretching back some 500 years. Aragorn chants a song in the

Rohirrim tongue, an elegiac song about past glories that have fled. When the company comes to the gates of the city Edoras, they are challenged by a guard in the local tongue, to which Gandalf responds, wondering why they do not use the common speech. Only those who speak the language of the Rohirrim are welcome these days, the guard tells them as he eyes their horses. Aragorn responds that of course these are horses of Rohan, loaned them by Éomer only a few days earlier. He asks whether Éomer has not already told the guards to expect them, but gets an evasive response from the guard, who adds that Wormtongue has brought the orders that no stranger should pass the gates of the city. At the mention of that name, Gandalf demands he be allowed to speak to Théoden in person, giving his name and those of his companions. The guard brings the news to the palace and returns with the response that the visitors are to be allowed entry. When the companions come to the doors of the Golden Hall, however, they are stopped again by the guard Háma, who insists that they leave all weapons outside the palace. Legolas leaves his without argument, but Aragorn is loath to leave Andúril in the hand of any man. With any other sword, he says, he would not mind. There is a tense moment when Háma suggests that it must be left, or face the swords of all the host of Rohan alone. Gimli, standing forward with his axe, remarks that Andúril would not be alone. Gandalf steps in and leaves his own sword, the elvish blade Glamdring, and persuades Aragorn to do the same. But Aragorn warns the guard that harm will come to any man save the heir of Elendil who dares to draw the Sword that was Broken. Háma is impressed, seeing his visitors as legends come to life. When he tries to force Gandalf to leave his staff, however, the wizard claims that as an aged man, he needs the staff to lean on. When they enter the hall, the four companions see that Théoden seems an old, infirm man. Among other things, he is mourning the recent death of his only son, Théodred. He sits on his throne attended by his beautiful niece, Éowyn, and the pale, sinister counselor Gríma, known as Wormtongue. Supported by Wormtongue, Théoden gives Gandalf a cold welcome, accusing him of coming only to

Lord of the Rings, The   223 bring bad news and to ask for favors. But Gandalf throws off his grey disguise, stands tall in his white garments, and uses his staff to rain thunder on the hall and stun Wormtongue into a groveling hulk on the floor. He exposes Wormtongue’s influence on Théoden as serving the interests of Saruman and takes the king aside to tell him of the political realities currently faced by Rohan, and to persuade Théoden to throw off his infirmities and to take up the sword again. Gandalf wants to know whether Éomer has been imprisoned, and Théoden answers that he has been on the advice of Wormtongue. Gandalf pleads for his release, and the king sends for Éomer. As Gandalf encourages Théoden to take up arms against Saruman, Théoden realizes he does not know where his sword is—he had given it to Worm­ tongue for safekeeping. When Éomer appears, he kneels and offers his sword to his king. The two are reconciled, and Théoden agrees to lead his army against the forces of Isengard. He has also realized that Gríma Wormtongue has been misleading him. He calls for Gríma and demands his sword, which the counselor brings to him. The king has decided to ride at the head of his own troops into battle. He accuses Gríma of treachery, but the counselor protests his innocence and loyalty. Testing that claim, Théoden gives Wormtongue the choice to ride with him into battle or to leave Rohan immediately. Gríma shows his true colors when he spits at Théoden and runs off. The kingdom now cleansed of the evil influence of Wormtongue, the king celebrates that night in his great hall. During this time, the Lady Éowyn seems particularly drawn to Aragorn, though he tries not to encourage her interest. Gandalf asks Théoden to grant him the great horse Shadowfax as a gift outright rather than a loan, and the king agrees. He also provides mail armor and weapons to Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli. He then rallies his troops and prepares the following morning to set forth into battle. He proclaims his nephew Éomer his heir, and on the advice of the guard Háma, he names his niece Éowyn to act as regent until his return from the war. As the army leaves, Éowyn watches them go, alone before the doors of the great hall.

As the seventh chapter (“Helm’s Deep”) opens, the Rohirrim ride south of the river Isen, making their way for the place where a company of riders has been defending the ford and where Prince Théodred had been killed. It takes the host the better part of two days to arrive, and on the way Legolas, with his keen elvish sight, can see a great cloud of shapes rising from Isengard, though he cannot say what they are. Before the army reaches the ford, they are met by a survivor of the battle there, telling them they have come too late, that the forces of Rohan have been overwhelmed by a huge army of orcs from Isengard. Many of the troops have been scattered, but Erkenbrand of Westfold has gathered as many men as he could find to try to retreat into Helm’s Deep, a fortified valley. The ancient stronghold of Helm’s Deep has never been captured as long as men have defended it. Gandalf advises Théoden to take the army to that fortress rather than making for the fords, and then, without explanation, he indicates that he must ride off on another errand. He gallops away on Shadowfax, telling Théoden to wait for him at Helm’s Gate. As the army travels through the night, their scouts warn them that orcs, some riding wolves, are already in the valley and making for Helm’s Deep. They are joined by wild men of Dunland, traditional enemies of the Rohirrim who believed themselves dispossessed by Rohan hundreds of years before. Théoden’s forces pass through the fortified Deeping Wall as well as Helm’s Dike, where Éomer proposes to leave a rear guard to defend a gap in the dike before the main company advances to Helm’s Gate, where some of the men that Erkenbrand had left to guard the fortress rejoice that the king has come to aid them. But they tell Théoden that Erkenbrand has not come back to Helm’s Deep since he left for the fords. Most of the families of Westfold, they are told, have taken refuge in the caves of Helm’s Deep. Now the king and his men take their stand behind the fortification called the Deeping Wall, a great wall 20 feet high. Soon after they do this, they hear the sounds of fighting from Helm’s Dike, and before long, men from the rear guard come rushing back to the gate to report that, though they filled the valley with the bodies

224   Lord of the Rings, The of orcs, they could not withstand the full onslaught and were forced to retreat. Sometime after midnight, thousands of orcs pour through Helm’s Dike toward the gate, beginning their assault on the fortress. They are met by a hail of arrows and stones and are driven back time and time again by the defenders, but each time they are able to advance farther. Finally, they are at the gate, trying to batter it down. Éomer and Aragorn dash out to the gate and momentarily scatter the orcs and wild men trying to force the gate, many of whom flee at the sight of the restored Andúril. But as the pair begin to retreat back behind the wall, they are attacked from behind, until Gimli steps out with his axe and dispatches the orcs assaulting them. When Gimli returns, he boasts to Legolas that his axe has killed two orcs, only to hear that Legolas has slain 20 with his bow. The two begin a grim competition as the night goes on, counting enemies each has slain. But as the battle rages through the night, it seems more and more hopeless for the Rohirrim, for the orcs are simply far too numerous, and it seems the defenders must inevitably be worn down. Yet Aragorn tells Éomer that, if they can only hold out until dawn, he will feel some hope. Just then, an explosion rocks the Deeping Wall: Saruman has supplied his forces with a substance that is able to blast a hole in the great wall itself. Immediately, Aragorn leads men down to fight at the breach in the wall, but they are not able to hold out long. He and Legolas are parted from Gimli and Éomer, and they can only hope that their friends have made it to safety. Then Legolas goes off in search of more arrows, while Aragorn escapes into the Hornburg, the fortified bastion at the gate that is the strongest fortress in the Deep. The wall has been breached and most of the defenses taken, but the king and his closest retainers are in the tower. Théoden has resolved not to be taken in the tower, though, but to lead his men in one last charge with the coming of dawn. Aragorn steps out on the tower battlements and signals to parley with the orcs, but the Uruk-hai taunt him, telling him to bring out the king or they will tear him from his hole. Aragorn, in a tone of royal authority, defies the orcs, telling them that the Hornburg has never been taken by an enemy,

and warning them that when the dawn comes, they will be destroyed. It is, of course, a bluff, so far as Aragorn knows. When the first light of dawn arrives, the orcs blow up Helm’s Gate with their blasting powder, but at the same time, a trumpet sounds and Théoden rides out with his host, with Aragorn at his right hand, and the riders destroy all the orcs in their path as they ride to Helm’s Dike. At the sound of the horn, warriors pour out as well from the caves, where many Rohirrim have taken refuge, and they fall on the orcs at the same time. At the dike, the king’s troops turn to make another charge and notice that outside the dike, not two furlongs distant, a great forest has seemingly sprung up overnight. Many of the orcs, disturbed by the trees and afraid of the king, begin to retreat in the opposite direction, or try to climb out of the valley they are now trapped in, when suddenly Gandalf, the White Rider, appears on the other side of the valley, leading a host of Rohirrim captained by Erkenbrand of Westfold. Between the two armies, the panicking orcs flee into the trees; none of them will escape from that forest. “The Road to Isengard” is the title of the eighth chapter, and as indicated, it deals with a march from Helm’s Deep to Isengard, where Gandalf is determined to go following the defeat of Saruman’s troops at Helm’s Deep. Once the battle is over, Théoden and Aragorn are reunited with Gandalf, as well as Gimli and Éomer, who had been trapped outside the walls when the final battle began. Théoden believes that the trees were part of Gandalf’s wizardry, but Gandalf laughingly says that they were none of his doing. Gandalf informs the king that he must go straight to Isengard, and Théoden agrees to go with him, taking Éomer and a small party of 20 riders in addition to Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli. First, the aftermath of the battle must be dealt with, and the Rohirrim bury their own dead (including the king’s guardsman Háma), but they are not sure what to do with the thousands of orc carcasses, which on Gandalf’s advice they pile high and leave for the time being. They compel the captured men of Dunland to help with the cleanup, but then promise them clemency if they will take an oath not to make war on

Lord of the Rings, The   225 Rohan again. This astounds the Dunlanders, who had been told by Saruman that the Rohirrim would burn them alive. In the afternoon, Gandalf and his party leave for Isengard, though they are wary of traveling though the forest surrounding them. As they ride, Legolas feels the anger of the trees, though he recognizes it is not directed at their party. They come from Fangorn, he surmises. He desires to know the trees more intimately. Gimli, meanwhile, marvels at the magnificent glittering caves of Aglarond that he has just had a glimpse of at Helm’s Deep. The elf and dwarf make a pact to visit the caves and Fangorn Forest together if they are able to do so after the war. Once Gandalf’s party is through the woods, Legolas sees eyes among the trees and wishes to go back among them, but Gandalf stops him and they then become aware of the ents, herding the trees, who pay the travelers little heed. Théoden wonders at the evidence that what he always thought of as children’s stories—the shepherds of the trees— have in fact come to life before his eyes. The company continues toward Isengard, and Théoden is hesitant to pass by the fords of Isen, where his men were slaughtered by the orcs, fearing that carrion birds may have befouled the bodies of his soldiers. However, he discovers on arriving at the fords that Gandalf has already seen to the respectful burial of the dead, setting many of the scattered forces he had recovered to that task before sending them back to Edoras to protect the people left in Éowyn’s care. When the company camps for the night, a mysterious dark mist comes upon them, and Gandalf warns them to draw no weapons and let it pass by. At the same time, back at the Hornburg, the men left at Helm’s Deep hear a great noise, and in the morning, the trees have all departed, and the dead orcs have all been covered with mounds of boulders. As the company comes to the foot of the Misty Mountains, within the valley called the Wizard’s Vale, they come to the land called Isengard. The terrain was once blooming with gardens and orchards, but now it seems to have been disfigured by Saruman’s devices, his burning of trees to manufacture weapons of war. The company sees the

black stone tower of Orthanc ahead, but the waters of the valley seem to flow only sluggishly, and a mist hangs on the land that suggests something on fire. The company passes a pillar with the white hand, Saruman’s symbol, upon it, but the pillar is destroyed, and the walls of the fortress of Isengard are crushed into rubble. On a pile of debris near the gate, drinking wine and smoking their pipes after a fine dinner, sit Merry and Pippin. Merry greets the king of Rohan with great ceremony, stating ironically that Saruman is currently consulting with Wormtongue in his tower, and noting that Treebeard has left them at the gate to greet the king. Gimli and Legolas are frustrated but overjoyed to find the objects of their desperate search safe and comfortable, and Théoden is fascinated at meeting Halflings, another race he thought was imaginary. When Pippin begins relating for Théoden the history of smoking leaf from the Shire, Gandalf interrupts by asking where Treebeard is. Merry directs Gandalf and Théoden to where Treebeard awaits at the northern wall of the conquered citadel. Chapters 9–11: Saruman Defeated  In the beginning of chapter 9 (“Flotsam and Jetsam”), while Gandalf goes with Théoden and the other Rohirrim to confer with Treebeard, Aragorn and his companions stay to enjoy a happy reunion with Merry and Pippin. The hobbits provide their friends with a fine dinner from the stores they have salvaged from the ruin of Isengard, and they cap the meal off with pipeweed from the Shire itself, which they have found in one of the barrels. Gimli is disappointed that he has lost his pipe, but Pippin reaches into his jacket pocket and pulls out a spare pipe, which he gives to Gimli. At this point, Gimli concedes that Pippin has paid him back for the hardships he endured trying to track the hobbits down. Pippin learns that it has been only nine days since they were carried off by the orcs, and he tells the story of Boromir’s last fight and of the desperate flight of the orcs across Rohan. Aragorn returns their knives to Merry and Pippin, and gives Pippin the elven brooch he had dropped. The hobbits are happy to have their things returned, and now Merry launches into the story of their ­meeting

226   Lord of the Rings, The with the ents, and of the Entmoot that ended in the march on Isengard. He describes how the ents’ numbers were swelled by the huorns—ents that had become wild and treelike over the ages, but whose wrath had been stirred against Saruman and his tree-killing orcs. He also tells how the ents broke through the fortress’s stone gates and walls with amazing power and strength. Pippin tells how Saruman fled from the gates into the tower of Orthanc. From within the tower, he was able to set some of his machinery in motion, and to send tongues of fire spurting from the plains around Orthanc. When an ent named Beechbone was set burning like a torch from Saruman’s liquid fire, the ents went into a rage, crumbling the rocks themselves and breaking the dams on the River Isen, diverting it into Isengard, flooding and destroying all of Saruman’s devices below ground and drowning any orcs that were left in the fortress. Pippin then relates Gandalf’s arrival the previous night and their surprise at seeing him alive, but Gandalf was there chiefly to ask Treebeard to send some forces to help with the defense of Helm’s Deep, which, of course, he sent. That night, the hobbits felt some worry over their friends caught in the great battle, but they were also relieved that Gandalf was in charge of things again. Gimli then asks about Wormtongue, and Pippin tells of Wormtongue’s arrival on horseback that morning. Treebeard had questioned him, and he said he had messages for Saruman. Treebeard lifted Wormtongue and pushed him through the gate so that he could see the destruction wrought by the ents and huorns. At that point, Wormtongue had begged to be allowed to leave, but Treebeard forced him to wade through the water and to join his master in Orthanc. Afterward, Treebeard had left Merry and Pippin at the gate to greet Gandalf and the king of Rohan when they arrived, with all proper courtesy, and the hobbits had found their food and pipeweed among the flotsam and jetsam of the flood. Aragorn, however, is concerned that pipeweed from the Shire has been found in the possession of Saruman, and he plans to mention it to Gandalf. After their meeting with Treebeard, Gandalf and Théoden regroup with Aragorn, Legolas, Gimli, and the hobbits at the beginning of chapter

10 (“The Voice of Saruman”). Gandalf reveals that he will need to approach the tower of Orthanc and converse with Saruman. He tells the others that they may come with him if they desire, but that they must not underestimate the power of Saruman, who may be cornered and trapped but is extremely dangerous still. In particular, Saruman’s voice has the power to entice and to persuade in ways they cannot fathom, so they must be extremely careful in listening to him. Théoden insists he will come, and Éomer will accompany him, as Aragorn accompanies Gandalf. Gimli wants to see how closely Saruman resembles Gandalf himself and insists on coming with Legolas as representatives of their peoples. The hobbits and the other Rohirrim hold back from the tower as the six others approach it. Gandalf calls for Saruman to show himself, but he is answered first only by the voice of Gríma

Cover of a 2002 illustration edition of The Two Towers, published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. The cover image shows Gandalf at the foot of Saruman’s tower, Orthanc.

Lord of the Rings, The   227 Wormtongue, asking what it is the visitors want of them. Gandalf rebukes him and demands that Saruman himself come forth. Finally, Saruman does appear on a balcony high up the tower of Orthanc. He is dressed in white robes that seem to change into various colors as he stands, and he begins to speak in sweet, persuasive tones, specifically addressing Théoden and asking why the king has made war on poor, innocent Isengard, offering friendship and a mutually beneficial alliance. Gimli scoffs at Saruman’s words, calling him a liar, and Saruman momentarily loses control and snaps at the dwarf. But all eyes are on Théoden: Gandalf does not interrupt or try to dissuade the king in any way, since he knows the king must approve or resist Saruman’s argument on his own; and the Riders of Rohan all seem completely won over by Saruman’s self-serving pleading. Théoden remains silent for some time, and his Riders believe he has been won over and is about to consent to Saruman’s wiles. Éomer is not fooled and speaks out, recalling the king’s own dead son, Théodred, as well as his guard Háma, whose body was mutilated by Saruman’s orcs at Helm’s Deep. Again, Saruman flashes anger at Éomer but then resumes his cajoling, offering Théoden the promise of peace. Finally, the king speaks, and it is with a controlled rage: They can have peace, he says, when Saruman and his master Sauron and all their works are dead. Saruman, showing his true colors, throws scorn upon Théoden and all his house, and then addresses Gandalf. Having failed with the others, Saruman tries his persuasive techniques on Gandalf, urging him to join Saruman, his fellow wizard, and desert the lesser folk that he has been helping. It seems a rather pathetic attempt, since Saruman’s voice has failed with all the others on his doorstep, to try his powers on the one most able to resist. Gandalf reminds Saruman of his last visit to Orthanc, and then turns the tables. Gandalf recognizes that Saruman is still a powerful wizard who once acted for the good, and offers him a chance to ally himself with his conquerors and to help them in the coming war with Mordor. But Saruman, in his great pride, refuses Gandalf’s offer disdainfully and turns to walk back into his refuge. In a voice of great

power, Gandalf calls Saruman back, and the vanquished wizard turns to hear Gandalf pronounce sentence on him: Formerly Saruman the White, he is now cast out of the Order of Wizards and out of the White Council. Gandalf himself has become the White, and in a show of great power, he shatters Saruman’s staff, taking from him his powers as a wizard. Letting out a cry, Saruman falls back and then crawls into Orthanc. At that point, a heavy, shining globe is hurled from an upper window of Orthanc, bouncing off the rail of the balcony and down near Gandalf’s feet. Pippin picks it up. It is clear that the object has been thrown by Wormtongue, but whether he intended to hit Saruman or Gandalf with it is unclear. Gandalf quickly goes to Pippin and takes the globe, hiding it in his cloak, remarking that this is a thing of great value and not an object Saruman would have wanted to have hurled out of Orthanc. As the chapter draws to its close, Gandalf asks Treebeard to keep watch over Saruman. He cannot be driven from Orthanc, which has proved to be impenetrable, even to the ents. But he is still a dangerous enemy, and Gandalf asks that the ents flood Isengard again, to prevent Saruman’s escape from the tower through any underground passageways he may have built. Treebeard promises that the ents will be vigilant. Before Gandalf and his party leave, however, a pained shriek comes from the tower, and Gandalf guesses that Saruman has just realized what Wormtongue has thrown away. In chapter 11 (“The Palantír”), Théoden sends two riders ahead while the rest of the group follows at a more leisurely pace, making their way back to Edoras. Pippin rides with Aragorn, and Merry rides behind Gandalf on Shadowfax and asks him how far the wizard plans to take them that night. Gandalf says that the riders have been sent to Helm’s Deep, where the king and his retainers will proceed in small groups through the hills, as they try to keep their movements less visible to the enemy. They ride out of Isengard to the end of the valley, and there they camp for the night. Pippin has difficulty sleeping. He envies Merry, thinking he must have been able to get more information out of the wizard than Pippin was able to get from Aragorn. But he is also obsessed with looking once again into the

228   Lord of the Rings, The stone from Orthanc that he glimpsed briefly before Gandalf took it from him. Merry urges Pippin to forget about the stone and not to meddle in the affairs of wizards, for such meddling is dangerous. But Pippin cannot let his obsession go, and when Merry has fallen asleep, he sneaks out of bed and makes his way to the place where Gandalf is sleeping. Even in his sleep, though, the wizard is keeping the crystal globe close to him, bundled in a cloth. Very carefully, Pippin takes a large stone from the ground and replaces the crystal one, which he takes away with him to a green hillock near his own bed. He bends down and looks into the stone but very shortly cries aloud and collapses. Gandalf quickly arrives, bundles the stone into his cloak again, and examines Pippin, who is lying rigidly on the ground, crying out “It is not for you, Saruman,” and saying that he will soon send for it (198). But Gandalf is able to revive the hobbit, and Pippin apologizes. Gandalf demands to know exactly what Pippin saw in the stone. Pippin says that he saw a dark tower and terrible winged creatures flying around it. One of these came toward him, but he was not able to get away. Then, Pippin says, he came—presumably the Dark Lord himself—and he could see Pippin. Then Sauron, assuming that Saruman had captured Pippin, ordered the hobbit to tell Saruman that the hobbit was not his, but belonged to Sauron himself, who would send a messenger to collect him. Gandalf chides Pippin for his foolishness, but recognizes that Sauron will now turn against Saruman, thinking that the old wizard has captured the Ring-bearer but refuses to turn him over. This means their enemies will be divided. The stone of Orthanc is part of the inheritance of the kings of Gondor, a legacy from Númenor itself, and Gandalf gives the stone to Aragorn as his birthright. Pippin must not be allowed near it, Gandalf says, and he warns Aragorn to be cautious about using it. But because of Pippin’s actions, Gandalf decides that he must leave the group as they make their way to Helm’s Deep, and take his own route to Minas Tirith. Before the group breaks up, a winged beast—the monstrous new mount of the Nazgúl—passes overhead. Now Gandalf takes Pippin on Shadowfax and rides toward Gondor. On the way, Gandalf explains that the seeing-stone

is a palantír—one of seven such stones used for communicating over great distances, forged long ago in Eldamar, probably by Fëanor himself, chief craftsman of the Noldor in the lands beyond the sea. They had been a gift to the kings of Númenor and had come into Middle-earth with Elendil. But most were now lost, though it is clear that Sauron and Saruman were in possession of two of them. Gandalf tells Pippin to sleep, promising him that in two days’ time he will see the white towers of Minas Tirith. Book 4: The Ring Goes East Chapters 1–3: Sméagol  In the first chapter of book 4 (“The Taming of Sméagol”), the narrative returns to Frodo and Sam, taking up the thread of their story three days after they left the rest of the Fellowship at Amon Hen. They have been trying to make their way across the grey hills of Emyn Muir en route to Mordor, but have been frustrated by often having to retrace their steps upon finding their first way impassable. They are also disconcerted because they have seen and heard evidence that Gollum has been following them all along the way, and they have seen his eyes staring at them from out of the darkness at night. They have had little to eat but crumbs of lembas cakes, and they are tired. They continue to follow the ridge of the Emyn Muir without being able to climb down into the marshes that they must cross to get to Mordor, and when the ridge begins curving to the north, they are forced to follow it. After a long day of scrambling over the rocks, they realize that they have been going downhill and that they are now on a low cliff from which they may be able to descend to the valley. Sam convinces Frodo to let him go first and tries to climb down, but when he is unable to find a foothold, Frodo pulls him back up. Then Frodo looks over the cliff, but as he is doing so, a storm comes up and he slips over the edge, coming to rest on a ledge only a few yards down. Neither he nor Sam is able to see in the darkness. Sam frets that he cannot aid Frodo, and Frodo tells him to wait until the storm passes. Besides, he says, Sam cannot do anything without a rope. At that point, Sam remembers the rope from Lórien still in his pack. He tosses it to Frodo and

Lord of the Rings, The   229 is able to pull his master back up. When the skies clear, they tie the rope to a stump and then use it to climb down the cliff, thus escaping from the Emyn Muir. Sam is only disgruntled that he will now have to leave the rope, but when he gives it a final tug, it unties itself from the stump and comes down to him. Frodo believes that the knot has come loose, but Sam is sure that there is a bit of elven magic in the rope. As night falls, Frodo and Sam begin to work their way back southward over the rocky feet of the grey hills, making directly for Mordor once again. But when they stop to sleep, Frodo sees a spidery shape climbing down the cliff face to come after them. It is Gollum. Quietly, camouflaged in their elven cloaks, the hobbits wait behind a boulder for Gollum to descend, and when he drops the final 12 feet of the cliff, Sam pounces on him. Gollum fights wildly and gets the better of Sam until Frodo draws his sword, Sting, and holds it to the creature’s throat. Gollum begs for his life, but Sam distrusts him, fearing the creature will try to kill them in their sleep. But Frodo remembers Gandalf’s words, that pity had stayed Bilbo’s hand when he could have killed Gollum, and that Gollum may well have a part to play. He decides to have pity on Gollum, to Sam’s surprise and chagrin. Frodo tells Gollum that they must bring him along, since they cannot trust him if they let him go. When he informs the creature that they are going to Mordor and guesses that Gollum has been summoned to return to the Dark Lord once more, Gollum has an attack of fear, reliving his torture in the Dark Tower. He also demonstrates that he is a divided soul—Sméagol, Gollum says, disappeared when they took his Precious away, and cannot be found again. But Frodo suggests that they may find Sméagol once again, if Gollum comes with them. Frodo hopes that Gollum, who has been this way before, can help them find the path into Mordor. When Frodo and Sam try to rest before taking off again, however, holding Gollum between them, the creature attempts to bolt as soon as he believes they are asleep. Sam pounces on him immediately, and Frodo tells Sam to tether Gollum to them by the ankle with the elven rope. But the creature

cannot abide the touch of the rope made in Lórien, and it causes him severe pain. Frodo will only agree to take the rope off if Gollum will make a vow that he would not dare to break. In a clear voice, the creature announces that “Smeágol will swear on the Precious” (224), and he would swear, in particular, never to let “Him” have the ring. Frodo, knowing that the ring is treacherous, insists that Gollum swear by the ring, rather than on it, and Gollum kneels before Frodo, swearing to serve the master of the ring and agreeing to guide Frodo and Sam across the marshes on a path he found that orcs were not aware of. As he begins to lead them toward the Black Gate, Gollum seems eager to please his new master and resumes his given name of Sméagol. Sam, however, remains wary of the creature’s intent. In the second chapter (“The Passage of the Marshes”), Gollum/Sméagol leads Frodo and Sam over the rocky terrain at the foot of the Emyn Muir, toward a spot where they can travel safely over the Dead Marshes. He insists on traveling at night, since he fears the sun. Frodo and Sam continue to sustain themselves with lembas cakes, but Gollum is not able to eat the elvish food. He is starving and craves fish. When the three of them stop to rest, Sam and Frodo agree that one of them must always be on watch, but Sam falls asleep on his watch and sleeps through the day. When he and Frodo awake, they find that Gollum is gone. But Gollum reappears, his face covered with mud. Apparently he has found something to eat. Meanwhile, Sam informs Frodo that they only have enough lembas for three more weeks. He fears they will not have enough for the return journey. Frodo, however, does not expect to have to make a return journey. On the third day, Gollum has reached the place where he begins to guide the hobbits through the Dead Marshes, moving so quickly that Frodo and Sam sometimes have difficulty keeping up with him, especially since the ring is beginning to weigh heavily on Frodo. Around them in the darkness, they can see what seem to be the flames of candles lighting up the marshes. Gollum warns them not to look into the mire while the lights are lit, but Sam catches glimpses of dead faces in the water— the faces of men, elves, and orcs. Frodo stares and

230   Lord of the Rings, The seems mesmerized by the faces so that Sam has to rouse him to move on. Gollum tells them that long ago, a great battle was fought near this place, before the Black Gates of Mordor, and that the swamp has since absorbed the graves of all the dead from that battle. They continue to trudge through the foulsmelling marshes until they are disgusted by their own reek. At one point, a huge, dark shape glides over them, and a feeling of dread overcomes them. Gollum is particularly affected and identifies the shadow as one of the Ringwraiths. The wraiths see everything, Gollum says, and report everything back to the Dark Lord. He cowers and will not move on until the moon sets. From that moment, Sam senses a change in Gollum’s behavior, feeling that his helpfulness is much more of a pose. Again the Nazgûl passes over, and the same fear comes upon them. Finally, they leave the Dead Marshes behind, and on the fifth day of their trek with Gollum, they begin to cross the barren, poisoned desolation that lies before the gates of Mordor. This land of grey and white ash heaps is a wasteland where nothing will grow after Sauron has blighted the land. The exhausted travelers lie down in a pit to sleep through the day. When Sam awakens, he witnesses Gollum standing over the sleeping Frodo in a heated conversation with himself, and Sam pretends to be asleep in order to overhear what Gollum is saying. The Sméagol side insists that he must keep his word to the master of the ring, but the Gollum side argues that he should take the ring for himself and thus become his own master. When Gollum speaks, his hand moves forward toward Frodo; when Sméagol speaks, the hand draws back. Gollum says that he cannot allow “Him” (i.e., the Dark Lord) to get the ring, and he fears that the Ringwraiths will take it to Him. He also wonders aloud whether “She” will help, and Sam cannot understand whom “She” refers to. Finally, Sam pretends to wake up, and Gollum ceases his private debate. Sam rouses Frodo, who awakens refreshed and commends Gollum for keeping his word to them. He need only guide them now to the Black Gate, and then he is free to leave them. But as midnight comes on, the dark terror of a flying Nazgûl passes

over them for the third time, and Gollum panics, saying that the wraiths must sense the ring, their master. He will not move forward until Frodo threatens him once again with Sting. As the short third chapter (“The Black Gate is Closed”) begins, the three travelers finally arrive at Mordor before the next day dawns. Mordor, surrounded on three sides by the Ered Lithui (Ash Mountains) and the Ephel Dúath (Mountains of Shadow), can be entered on this side only through the pass of Cirith Gorgor, across which the Dark Lord has erected a great stone barrier, with a single Black Gate. On either side of this pass is a cliff on which stands a tall, ancient tower, built by the men of Gondor after the first defeat of Sauron but long since abandoned, and now guarding the pass for the Dark Lord as the “Teeth of Mordor.” Gazing on this sight from a hiding place inside a hollow, and on the great armies of orcs whom they witness changing the guard as dawn approaches, Frodo and Sam contemplate the hopelessness of any attempt to enter Mordor undetected. When Gollum declares that he knew the gate would prove impassable, Sam angrily asks why they were brought here at all, and Gollum answers truthfully that Frodo had insisted. He was merely doing what he had sworn to do. Frodo declares his intent to enter Mordor in any case, which Gollum pleads with him not to do. He cannot bring the ring to Him, he says—better Frodo should keep it to himself or give it to Sméagol. When Frodo asserts that he will complete his mission and enter Mordor, Gollum reveals that there may be another way in. Sam is disinclined to trust either side of Gollum’s personality (which he has privately named “Slinker” and “Stinker”) and believes that Frodo’s kindness may be leading him into error with Gollum. But Frodo suddenly takes Gollum to task, telling him directly that he must stop coveting the ring—he will never own it again, and he must get used to that fact. But he has decided to trust Sméagol, who twice before has proven trustworthy. Gollum tells them of a road that goes south, where they can attempt to enter Mordor through the mountains above the old fortress of Minas Morgul (formerly Minas Ithil, the Tower of the Moon built by Isildur). It is a terrible place, manned by

Lord of the Rings, The   231 what Gollum calls “Silent Watchers,” but there is a secret path of stairs that leads over the mountains. It is dangerous, but Gollum convinces the hobbits that Sauron is focusing his attention on the Black Gate, where he believes an attack will come, and is less vigilant along the other points of his border. While Frodo tries to decide what to do, four more Nazgûl appear on their winged steeds above, and it seems as if the Dark Lord must be on the watch. After the winged figures swoop low into Mordor, Frodo hears another frightening sound— laughter, gruff voices, and clanking weapons coming from below. Gollum peers out from the lip of the hollow and reports that a large army of fiercelooking men has entered the gates. They have long hair, gold jewelry, and round shields, and they wear red paint on their faces. Sam, remembering fanciful rhymes from his childhood, asks whether the men had brought any Oliphaunts with them, but Gollum has never seen or heard of such a creature. Finally, Frodo stands up, declaring that he wishes they had a thousand Oliphaunts and Gandalf riding at the head of them. But since they do not, he says he will choose the secret path by Minas Morgul. Gollum agrees to guide them there and says to rest until the sun, “Yellow Face,” has gone away. Chapters 4–6: A Captain of Gondor  In the fourth chapter (“Of Herbs and Stewed Rabbit”), the hobbits follow Gollum’s lead, avoiding the road south for fear of meeting servants of Sauron, but traveling parallel to the road and continuing to move by night while they rest during the day. There are 30 leagues to travel to Cirith Ungol, and Gollum wants to cover the ground in four days. Before long, they pass into a green and fruitful country, once known as Ithilien. Although this land is now under the dominion of the Dark Lord, it has not been so for long, and therefore maintains a good deal of its original goodness. They wash and replenish their drinking supply at a clear lake, but they remain hungry, still with nothing but lembas to eat. Sam would like to save some of the elven bread for what he—more optimistic than his master—hopes will be a return journey. They climb from the lake to higher ground to camp for the day. When Gollum prepares to go

off looking for food, Sam asks the creature to hunt for some food that the hobbits may be able to eat as well, and Gollum agrees. Frodo is already napping, and when Gollum leaves, Sam spends a few moments looking at the sleeping face of his master. While he thinks about how great his affection is for Frodo, it strikes him that his master is looking older, and he also appears to be thin and drawn. Soon Gollum returns with two rabbits. Sam plans to boil them and make a rabbit stew, regretting that he can find no potatoes but finding other herbs growing in that place to sweeten the stew. Gollum is horrified, preferring his rabbit raw, but Sam tells him to find another one for himself in that case. Before he leaves, though, Gollum warns Sam that a cooking fire may well draw unwelcome guests to this place—a warning reiterated by Frodo when Sam awakens him, but Frodo is so pleased to have fresh rabbit stew to eat that he soon forgets his concern about the fire. After the welcome meal, Sam takes his pot back down to the lake to wash his cooking gear in the stream that feeds the clear lake, but when he looks back at their camp, he sees that the fire is indeed making too much smoke, and he hurries back to smother it. He is too late, however, for the hobbits immediately hear voices in the woods around them, and soon four well-armed men surround them. The men, speaking in the Common Tongue, are unsure what they have come upon, debating whether Frodo and Sam may be elves or orcs. They learn that the leader of the men is Faramir, captain of Gondor, and Frodo tells them that he has been a companion of their countryman Boromir. At the mention of Boromir’s name, the men become quieter and more attentive. Frodo identifies himself and Sam as Halflings, and he recalls to Faramir the riddle that Boromir brought to Rivendell, concerning the Sword that was Broken (which he identifies as Aragorn’s). As for Isildur’s Bane, Frodo sidesteps the question, saying that the answer to that riddle is hidden. The men also ask about the skulking figure that they saw disappearing, and Frodo says that the creature had been traveling with them but was not one of them, though he asks that Gollum not be harmed, for he is under the hobbits’ protection.

232   Lord of the Rings, The Faramir, still somewhat suspicious of the hobbits, has two men guard them, for their own protection as well as his own, but leaves in order to lead an ambush of a large troop of southern men, the Haradrim, coming up from the south to join Sauron’s forces. Sam watches the attack from the branches of one of the surrounding trees, and while he is dismayed by the battle itself, he is astonished and ultimately delighted when he sees a huge form crashing through the trees, like a grey moving house. It is an Oliphaunt that he has seen, though he doubts that anyone back in the Shire will ever believe that he saw one. Finally, the men of Gondor prove successful in the battle, but they will need to retreat swiftly, the guard Mablung tells Sam, for Sauron will send a large force after them when he discovers what has happened. Sam bids them farewell and intends to sleep, but Mablung seems certain that Faramir will want to bring Sam and Frodo along on the retreat. Sam awakens from a nap to find that Faramir has returned from the battle at the beginning of chapter 5 (“The Window on the West”) and has begun to question Frodo more thoroughly about his mission here. Faramir wants to know specifically what Frodo’s purpose is in coming south from Rivendell. He wants to know the meaning of the prophecy that a Halfling will come, and he demands to know the precise character of Isildur’s Bane. Frodo tells Faramir as much as he feels he can, hiding Boromir’s attempt to overpower him and steal his burden. Faramir suspects that the hobbit’s burden may be a great weapon that perhaps should be in the hands of Gondor, but Frodo claims that if any man has a right to it, it is Aragorn, Isildur’s heir. Frodo tells Faramir that if he doubts their word, he can ask Boromir himself, who Frodo assumes must by this time have reached Minas Tirith. At this point, Sam interrupts, demanding that Faramir get to the point and stop harassing Frodo, declaring that Sauron would be very happy to see his enemies arguing in this way. Faramir asks if Frodo remembers a special item associated with Boromir, and Frodo answers that he remembers his horn, which is what Faramir was looking for. At this point, Faramir reveals that Boromir is his own brother, and that a few nights previously, he had been on watch and saw a boat

float by on the Anduin River, in which lay the dead body of his brother. His horn had been cloven in two, and he wore a golden belt of elvish make. Frodo and Sam at first do not believe Faramir’s words, thinking he is trying to trick them somehow. But they identify the golden belt as the gift of the Lady of Lórien, and show him the clasps of their own elven cloaks to convince him that they are of the same workmanship. Now certain that Faramir is telling the truth, the hobbits fear that all of the company have perished. Frodo asks Faramir to be allowed to continue on his mission, but Faramir is unsure. He assures Frodo that some of his fellowship must have survived to put Boromir into the boat, but says he will take the night to decide what to do with Frodo and Sam. Faramir directs his men to move back to their hidden base before the enemy sends troops out to hunt them. As they make their way back, Faramir walks with the hobbits. As they walk, Sam wonders where Gollum has gone and thinks he notices the creature following them. But Faramir tells them that he could not speak more openly in front of his men, and he continues their conversation in private. He understands more than the hobbits have assumed. He is sure that they did not part well from Boromir, and that somehow Isildur’s Bane, which Frodo is carrying, was the cause of this rift and, perhaps, his brother’s death. When Frodo says that there was no contention among the company, Faramir guesses that it was Boromir alone who had caused trouble concerning the task. He remarks that since his childhood, Boromir had been proud and stubborn and one who sought to attain glory in war. Boromir has always been impatient that the stewards of Gondor were not kings, and Faramir traces the reasons to ancient lore, much of it contained in the books and parchments of Gondor’s treasuries. He mentions Gandalf’s visits to Minas Tirith to use these ancient texts, and he is shocked to learn of the wizard’s fall in Moria. For himself, Faramir says, he understands the necessity of war against an enemy like Sauron, who seeks to destroy them, but does not seek glory for its own sake. As for Isildur’s Bane, Faramir says, he would not pick it if it were lying in the street. Now, as the company draw close to the secret base of Henneth Annûn,

Lord of the Rings, The   233 the hobbits are blindfolded so that they cannot learn the way into the stronghold. When the blindfolds are removed, Frodo and Sam find themselves in a cave in a tall mountain behind a beautiful waterfall, the “Window of the Sunset.” One of his men tells Faramir that a strange creature has been seen following them in the woods, and the hobbits recognize that this must be Gollum, though they say nothing about him. Tables are set for the meal, and the hobbits sit with Faramir, who spends much of the meal discussing the history of Gondor, how they came to be allied with the Riders of Rohan, and how over the years their power and glory have declined. The men of Gondor, he says, have always known their descent from Númenor, and have classified men according to three types, depending on their relationship with those who were called to go over the sea to Númenor: High, the men of Gondor and other Dúnedain; Middle, such as the Rohirrim; and Wild, such as the Haradrim who have joined forces with the enemy. The men of Gondor, he says, have become over the years more like the Middle sort. The hobbits, in their turn, talk about their adventures, especially the role that Boromir played in their battles against the orcs. Sam asks Faramir why there is so little about the elves in his lore, but Faramir sees the elves as a strange people, mysterious and dangerous. Sam extols the virtues of the elves of Lórien, and particularly of the Lady Galadriel, saying that men bring their own evil with them when they enter that realm. In his effusiveness, he accidentally blurts out how it was in Lórien that Boromir first manifested his desire for the ring. Faramir is stunned by the revelation and sees the irony of their escaping Boromir to run into the hands of his brother and a fully armed company of warriors of Gondor. Frodo and Sam draw their swords in defense, but Faramir tells the hobbits not to fear. He has given his word that he would not touch Isildur’s Bane if it were placed before him, and he will keep his word. Frodo reveals his task, to destroy the ring in the Cracks of Doom, and Faramir promises to help Frodo in any way that he can. Frodo, exhausted from his burden and from his sudden fear, passes out, and Faramir catches him before he falls. The chapter ends as Sam tells

Faramir that he has shown the highest quality. He compares Faramir to Gandalf, and Faramir says that perhaps Sam discerns in him the distant air of Númenor. As the sixth chapter (“The Forbidden Pool”) opens, Frodo is awakened before dawn by Faramir, who says he needs Frodo’s advice on a particular matter. Sam awakens just in time to follow the two of them out of the cave. They walk to a cliff overlooking a beautiful pool, and Faramir asks Frodo to look into the pool at the dark creature that is splashing about in it. The hobbits immediately recognize Gollum. Faramir asks Frodo whether he should have his guards kill the creature—as, in fact, they are prepared to do with arrows from the cliff. But Frodo asks Faramir to spare the creature. He has followed them there drawn by his connection to the ring, which Frodo tells Faramir that Gollum had once carried himself. But at this point, another craving has led him to the pool, Frodo says, as they watch Gollum bring out a fish to eat. The guard asserts that the penalty for entering the sacred pool of Henneth Annûn without permission is death, but Frodo argues that Gandalf had insisted that Gollum be spared. Faramir is not willing to follow the letter of the law in this case, and he allows Frodo to choose. If Frodo can convince Gollum to surrender and become the prisoner of the men of Gondor, he will not order his men to shoot. Frodo agrees to speak with the creature and makes his way down to the pool, knowing that there are men with bows at the ready, prepared to slaughter Gollum if he fails. He slowly approaches Gollum, who is muttering aloud about his desire to get back the ring and to kill the men who guard this place. Frodo tries to persuade Gollum to come out of the pool, but Gollum is initially resistant. Finally, Frodo commands Gollum by virtue of the Precious to follow him, and Gollum comes out with his fish. He is immediately trapped and bound, and he clearly feels that Frodo has betrayed him. He spits at Frodo as the men take him away. Back in their hideout, Faramir interrogates Gollum. The creature is uncooperative, and Frodo feels ashamed to have tricked him. But he tries to get Gollum to trust Faramir, and to keep him from harm. When Faramir declares that the penalty for

234   Lord of the Rings, The coming to that place uninvited is death, Frodo is able to convince Gollum to swear on the Precious never to return to that place. Gollum tells Faramir that he has never been in that part of Gondor before, and Frodo is able to convince Faramir to believe him. Frodo continues to plead that Gollum not be harmed, and Faramir agrees, but only on condition that Gollum be bound to Frodo as his servant. He will be safe, Faramir tells Gollum, as long as he is with Frodo, but if he is found by himself anywhere in the realm of Gondor, Gollum’s penalty will be death. Frodo reminds Faramir that he has still not passed his sentence on the hobbits themselves, and Faramir declares that Frodo is free to wander anywhere in Gondor by Faramir’s proclamation for one year, after which, if he still is in the kingdom, he must present himself to the Steward of Gondor himself to extend his welcome. But when Faramir learns that the way Gollum intends to lead Frodo is over the pass near Minas Morgul, he is concerned. He warns Frodo that Minas Morgul is the tower inhabited by the Nine Ringwraiths themselves, and it is a terribly dangerous place. The pass itself, Cirith Ungol, holds other dangers that Gollum has not told them of, Faramir feels. Gollum cannot be trusted, he says, but Frodo answers that unless Faramir has another path to suggest into Mordor, he is bound to follow Gollum on this one. Faramir is interested in the story of how Gollum may have come into possession of the ring in the first place but realizes there is no time for such tales now. He takes his leave of Frodo and Sam, doubting whether he will ever see them alive again. But he does express the hope that one day, when they are old and all their adventures are past, he and Frodo may sit together in chairs, and he can hear Frodo tell Gollum’s story. Chapters 7–10: The Pass of Cirith Ungol  In chapter 7 (“Journey to the Cross-roads”), Frodo and Sam prepare to leave Faramir and his group. Faramir provides the hobbits with food and water and warns them not to drink water from any stream flowing out of Morgul Vale. As a parting gift, he gives Frodo and Sam walking sticks made from the strong wood of Gondor. He tells them that his

scouts have reported an eerie, portentous silence on the roads, but he advises them to stay off the road as long as they can, traveling south through the trees parallel to the road. Finally, Gollum rejoins them, and Faramir declares that he should be blindfolded before leaving the hideaway, but he does not insist that the hobbits be so treated. When Gollum reacts with horror to the blindfold, Frodo insists that he and Sam be blindfolded first, to show Gollum that there is no danger. The hobbits leave Faramir with formal expressions of goodwill on both sides. As the three continue their journey southward, Gollum bristles at what he considers his ill-treatment by the men of Gondor, though Frodo argues that he should be grateful to them for not harming him. Gollum somewhat insincerely says he forgives them, and he forgives Frodo as well for tricking him. They continue to travel only at night, in order to avoid being seen. But all the way, a dark cloud emanates from Mordor and covers the sky, so it is difficult to tell the difference between day and night. All is quiet—even the birds are not singing. When they stop to rest, Gollum disappears for several hours, and Sam assumes he has been hunting for food. But he arrives in the evening and rouses the hobbits from sleep, urging them to move forward quickly. He continues to push them to move with greater speed all night long. On their third day, the trees thin out and Gollum becomes more fearful. They see a road coming down from the Tower, Minas Morgul, but Gollum says they cannot take this road. Frodo and Sam feel the need to rest, and Gollum reluctantly agrees. They rest in one of the few remaining trees. Around midnight, Gollum wakes up and urges the hobbits to move again, and they begin to trek eastward through brambles and hollows, away from the road. There is a dull, red glare over Mordor to the east. Finally, they lie down to rest in a hollow, from which Frodo can see the Morgul Valley. Gollum, more agitated than ever, says that they must hurry to the Cross-roads. As Frodo and Sam try to have an evening meal before sleeping, Gollum disappears again without explanation. Frodo takes first watch, and Sam dreams of smoking his pipe in the Shire. He awakens three hours later to find that the day has become even darker. He

Lord of the Rings, The   235 discusses with Frodo his distrust of Gollum, and Frodo reminds him how the creature helped them through the marshes. Now Frodo sleeps, and Sam hears him speak Gandalf’s name when he dreams. Again, Gollum reappears and spurs the hobbits forward, saying that they must go by way of the Cross-roads. When they come to this place, a circle of trees where four roads meet, Frodo looks westward along the road to Osgiliath, the deserted city, and on toward Gondor itself. He catches a glimpse of the sun as it sets, and notices it shining on an ancient statue of one of Gondor’s kings. The head of the statue has been knocked off and replaced by a stone with the Eye of Sauron painted upon it. But he finds the king’s head lying at the side of the road and sees that silver and gold flowers have encircled the brow of the broken head. He cries out to Sam that the king has been given a crown—he sees this as a sign that the Dark Lord cannot reign forever. But as he says this, the sun sets, and the darkness engulfs them. As the eighth chapter opens (“The Stair of Cirith Ungol”), Gollum urges the hobbits to leave the statue and keep moving. They leave the circle and move onto the road that leads to the dark mountains, reaching the shadow of Morgul Vale with darkness on their hearts and with the burden of the One Ring weighing heavily on Frodo. When they look up and see the city of the Ringwraiths, they are transfixed by terror until Gollum exhorts them to move quickly. They move toward Gollum’s secret path, but Frodo suddenly veers toward the Tower of Minas Morgul and begins to walk blindly toward the bridge leading into the Ringwraiths’ city. Sam and Gollum are able to pull him back. Frodo can feel the ring resisting him as he turns away from the tower, but he is able to overcome it through his sheer willpower and Sam’s support. Over rough country and through a foul stench, they trudge behind Gollum, who hurries far ahead of them, urging them on. At the top of a bare rock, Frodo stops to rest, complaining of the ring’s weight, but Gollum and Sam press him to move on, for they are still where they might be seen from the tower. Before they can move on up the secret path, however, a great red flame erupts from beyond the mountains, followed by a great crack of thunder.

The Tower of Minas Morgul answers with flaming blue lightning, and with a loud terrifying wail, the gates of the city open and a huge army of blackuniformed orcs issues forth, led by the mounted Lord of the Nazgûl, wearing a crowned helmet. At the sight of the Black Rider, Frodo’s old wound begins to throb. The Nazgûl pauses suddenly before stepping on the bridge, as if sensing something, and at that moment Frodo feels an overwhelming urge to put on the ring. He resists—in fact, knowing how the ring desires only to betray him, Frodo has no desire to succumb to its pressure. His hand moves almost of its own accord toward the ring hanging from his neck but seizes instead the nearly forgotten phial of Galadriel, and as he holds it, his thoughts of the ring disperse. Soon, the Black Rider moves on, the great army following him until they disappear into the west. Frodo knows that the war with Gondor has now been launched, and he worries for Faramir, trying to defend Osgiliath at the ford of the Anduin River. He despairs that even if he performs his task, there will be no one left to tell about it, for it will be done too late. But Sam and Gollum rouse him, and the three continue on the path, Frodo holding his staff in one hand and Galadriel’s phial in the other, until they come to the first of Gollum’s staircases. They climb a straight stairway, and Gollum keeps driving them to continue up another stairway, this time a winding one. Finally, after miles of pushing themselves to keep climbing under Gollum’s constant urging, Frodo sees high above what seems to be the highest point of this path and notices that a guard tower flanks the path. Gollum acknowledges that all ways into Mordor are watched, but this path may be watched the least—and besides, he says, the guards here may have all marched off with the army. Sam understands this but insists that they must rest for a while before moving on, and he and Frodo find a crevice in a rock where they rest. They have a small meal, what they believe will be their last together before entering Mordor, and wonder whether any water here may be safe to drink. Sam begins to talk about the idea of adventure and wonders what kind of tale he and Frodo are involved in. In the great old tales, Frodo says, the heroes never knew how things would turn out,

236   Lord of the Rings, The and Sam agrees, saying that Beren never knew he would end up with the Silmaril from Morgoth’s crown. He was in a worse place than the hobbits are now. But then Sam recognizes that the light of Galadriel’s phial is the same light that Beren found, and he suggests that the great tales never end. He wonders how their own tale will be told in ages to come—how hobbits will want to hear the story of Frodo, bravest hobbit of them all, while Frodo insists that they will want to hear of Samwise, since Frodo would not have gotten far without him. They wonder whether Gollum might see himself as a hero and then realize that Gollum has disappeared again. They continue to discuss Gollum’s trustworthiness, and while neither of them trusts the creature completely, Frodo argues that they could not have reached this point without him, whatever his final plan is. The hobbits fall asleep, leaning on one another. When Gollum finally returns, he is moved by their close friendship and reaches out to stroke Frodo. Sam awakens and, seeing Gollum touching Frodo, reacts angrily, calling him a sneak. Gollum assumes his earlier attitude, offended at the remark. When Frodo awakens, he tells Gollum that, since they have nearly reached the end of the path into Mordor, he considers Gollum’s promise to him fulfilled and tells the creature he is now free to go wherever he wishes, as long as it is not to the servants of Sauron. Gollum refuses, saying that they cannot find the way themselves, and he promises to lead them farther. In chapter 9 (“Shelob’s Lair”), Gollum leads the hobbits to a cave, which he says is the opening of the tunnel he has been leading them to. The tunnel is pitch black, and from it emanates the foul stench that has been plaguing the hobbits throughout their climb. Gollum insists it is the only way to get up and over the pass, and so Frodo and Sam cautiously enter. They must go forward by feeling the walls on either side, and although for a while they hear Gollum in front of them, after some time he is gone completely. They lose all track of time as they feel their way along the tunnel, and although they occasionally pass a corridor moving off to the left and right, they know to keep going straight through the main corridor, which goes steadily up

the mountain. At one point, however, they pass a large opening, from within which they sense a powerful and hostile will. From this same area, they realize, the foul smell originates. They move past this opening as quickly as they can, but soon they are aware of a terrifying, frightening hissing sound behind them. They can see nothing but know that they are confronting a great horror. Sam calls out for Frodo to use Galadriel’s phial, and Frodo raises the light to reveal two great clusters of eyes. The terrified hobbits begin to run up the tunnel, but they soon realize that the monster is only toying with them and continues to follow right behind them. In an act of desperate courage, Frodo once again takes out the star-phial and draws his elven sword, Sting, turning to the monster and stepping resolutely forward. The monster, cowed by the light and sword, backs off and slinks down the passage. Now Frodo and Sam rush as fast as they can up the tunnel until they come to an exit, but they find it is blocked by a cobweb with strands as thick as great ropes. Sam cannot cut the ropes with his sword, but Frodo believes his elven blade will have better success and gives Sam Galadriel’s phial to hold up and ward off the monster if she should come upon them here. The monster, the narrator tells us in a long aside, is Shelob, a powerfully evil being in giant spider shape. She has dwelt in these mountains since long before the coming of Sauron and is the last child of the monstrous Ungoliant, ally of Morgoth in the First Age. She does not fear the Dark Lord and feasts on whatever creature comes into her domain. Gollum, it seems, has been sneaking off to counsel and appease her, promising her sweet hobbit meat in the hope that he can pick up the precious ring when she has finished, for she has no interest in things that she cannot devour. Frodo is finally able to cut an exit through the web, and he and Sam dash through it out into the open. Frodo sees the pass before him and makes for it with all the speed he can, thinking he is finally free of the tunnel. Sam falls behind but is far more cautious. He sees ahead of him that Shelob has emerged from a different opening out into the pass and is between Sam and Frodo—avoiding Sam, apparently, because he is carrying Galadriel’s light. Sam begins to shout to Frodo, but before Frodo

Lord of the Rings, The   237 hears, Sam is attacked from behind by Gollum, who attempts to choke him. Enraged at the creature’s betrayal, Sam fights him off fiercely, is able to beat him twice with his staff before it breaks, and then chases the creature with his sword. He has chased Gollum back into Shelob’s tunnel before the stench of that passage reminds him of Frodo’s danger, and he turns back to protect his master. By this time, however, Shelob has stung Frodo into unconsciousness and has bound him in the strong filaments of her web. As chapter 10 opens (“The Choices of Master Samwise”), she looms over Frodo, beginning to drag him back into her lair. In a blind fury, Sam rushes in, seizes the elven blade that Frodo has dropped, and rushes at the monster, cutting off one of her claws and extinguishing one of her great eyes before she has a chance to react. He then tries to cut her underside with the sword, but the hide of her belly is too tough to be pierced by the strength of man or hobbit. The enraged monster cannot reach Sam with her venomous sting and so tries to crush him with her weight, heaving her belly up over him and pushing down. But Sam holds Sting up with both hands, and with her own strength Shelob forces herself down on the sword, impaling her own breast to cause such damage as she has never felt. The monster retreats, readying herself for a final attack on Sam using her deadly venomous sting, but at the last moment, Sam brings out Galadriel’s phial and challenges the monster, singing lines from an elvish song. His courage causes the phial to burst forth in a tremendous light, terrifying Shelob so that she retreats, in great pain and mental anguish, back into her hole. When Sam bends over Frodo’s body, he sees no sounds of life. His master is cold, and Sam can feel no pulse, He cuts away the binding web and holds Frodo’s cold body in his arms, realizing with a start that he had seen this image before, in the Mirror of Galadriel in Lórien. He cannot revive Frodo and is convinced his master is dead. For some time, he sinks into black despair, but then he rallies himself, trying to decide what he must do now. At first, he considers hunting down Gollum and taking revenge. But he is reluctant to leave Frodo without burying him properly, and he considers the options.

Before long, enemy troops will find them and will take Frodo and give the ring to the enemy—Sam will not be able to protect his master against all of Mordor. Ultimately, Sam realizes that he is now the last member of the Fellowship of the Ring, the only one who can still carry out the quest they were given in Rivendell—to destroy the One Ring. He lays out Frodo’s body, leaving him in his mithril coat but taking Sting and leaving his own sword from the barrow. Then he takes the ring and puts it around his own neck, immediately feeling the great weight of it. Bidding Frodo farewell, and promising to return to find his body if he is able once the task is done, Sam starts off. Still second-guessing himself, Sam stops at the cleft on the top of the pass, under the guard tower, to look back at Frodo’s body. Just then, he hears the sound of orcs coming up the path toward him from the other side of the mountain, and when he turns, he sees the lights of more orcs coming from the tunnel below. He fears he has been seen and that he is about to be captured, and with a sudden inspiration, he slips on the ring. While this makes him invisible to the orcs, he feels vulnerable, as if the great red Eye of Sauron is searching for him in the phantom world of the ring. But he becomes aware that, with the ring on, he is able to understand the language of the orcs, and as the two groups of orcs come together, he realizes that they have seen Frodo’s body. At this point, Sam regrets his decision and tells himself that his place was always at Frodo’s side, ring or no ring. He races back down the path, ready to pull out Sting and slaughter as many orcs as he can defending his master’s body. But before he can reach the spot, the orcs have lifted Frodo’s body and carried it back into the tunnel. He races to keep up and follows them back down the tunnel, where they make their way toward a side branch that leads up into the tower on the cliff. A stone door closes after the orcs, and Sam is left outside, unable to get through. However, the captains of the two orc groups—Gorbag and Shagrat—stay behind and have a conversation on the other side of the stone door, a conversation that Sam is able to overhear. He learns that the orcs believe that a great warrior has come up the pass and wounded

238   Lord of the Rings, The Shelob. He also learns that Frodo is not dead at all—that he has been stunned and temporarily paralyzed by Shelob’s venom, but is still alive, and Shagrat’s men have orders to strip such intruders and report to Sauron any garments, weapons, letters, or rings that they may be carrying. Sam is shocked to learn that Frodo is alive. As he hears Shagrat and Gorbag move off with their troops, he desperately tries to open the stone door, banging on it with his elven sword. In the glow of the sword, he is able to see that the wall is only about twice as tall as himself, and he is able to climb over it and into the orcs’ tunnel. He races through the tunnel, trying to catch up with the two captains, whom he hears speaking again, Shagrat saying that he will keep Frodo in the top of the tower for protection, since Sauron has ordered that no harm is to come to such visitors before they are brought before the Dark Lord himself. But Sam is unable to catch up before the orcs have all entered the tower and have shut and locked the double doors leading into it. As book 4 ends, we know that Frodo is alive, but Sam is stranded alone outside the tower. Commentary for The Two Towers Book 3: The Treason of Isengard Chapters 1–2: Pursuit to Rohan  For the first time in The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien moves his narrative focus away from the hobbits in these opening chapters of the second volume. For the most part, one of the hobbits, usually Frodo or Sam but sometimes Merry or Pippin as well, provides the central consciousness around which the narrative develops. Technically, Tolkien utilizes a limited omniscient point of view, in which the narrator focuses on a single character’s thoughts and impressions, and Tolkien’s focus on those of the hobbits through most of his trilogy explains to a large degree the popularity of The Lord of the Rings as opposed to, for example, The Silmarillion, where there is no similar focus. Hobbits, unlike the other races of Middle-earth, have no exotic powers, as elves or dwarves or wizards do. Even the men of Middle-earth are valiant and stalwart by nature. Hobbits, on the other hand, are simple creatures who like a good meal and the comforts

of home. The average reader must identify far more with Pippin or Sam than with Aragorn. Tolkien’s genius, keeping The Lord of the Rings close to its readers’ hearts, is the focus on hobbits rather than elves or men. In these first chapters, though, he is forced to break that pattern because the narrative has separated the hobbits from his other important characters. Thus, Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli become the focus of these chapters, and they are usually considered as a group. Occasionally, we may see the tracks of the orcs through Aragorn’s eyes; or see a great distance through the eyes of Legolas; or, at the end of the second chapter, see the old man at the edge of the forest through the eyes of Gimli. But no one of these characters receives the focus that the hobbits do when they are in the narrative. We see Boromir for the last time in the opening chapter of The Two Towers, and here Tolkien completes a minor theme of his story, which has been the tragedy of Boromir. A prince of his own city and a brave and true defender of the just cause against the powers of darkness, Boromir succumbs to a desire for the ring not chiefly through personal ambition but through a desire to save his city and to defeat the forces of evil. His “tragic flaw”—or hamartia, in the words of Aristotle, the first tragic theorist—is his failure to understand the ring’s corrupting force even in the hands of a benevolent wielder. Gandalf and Galadriel had understood this, but they were not tragic figures. Boromir fails to comprehend this until, finally, the ring’s influence turns him into a figure of evil himself, threatening Frodo and grasping for the power that he sees within his reach. Boromir finds redemption in this opening chapter, sacrificing his own life in his unsuccessful attempt to save Frodo’s kinsmen. His confession to Aragorn in the end demonstrates what Aristotle called anagnorisis, a tragic knowledge that suffering may bring to the hero. “I am sorry. I have paid” (16) he says, simply but eloquently in his dying voice. Boromir is set in a boat that floats down the River Anduin, in a manner that recalls the ship burials of medieval Norsemen and other Germanic tribes, as depicted in the burial of Scyld Scefing at the beginning of Beowulf. To some extent, though, the scene is also reminiscent of certain scenes in

Lord of the Rings, The   239 Malory’s Le Morte Darthur, where a body is placed in a boat only to be found much later, after it has drifted downstream, by another significant character. This is what happens with the body of the Fair Maid of Astolat, whose corpse is placed in a boat that eventually drifts by Arthur’s castle in Camelot, and her story is made known. In The Two Towers, Boromir’s body will eventually be found by his brother Faramir, far down the river in Gondor. The meeting with the Riders of Rohan is a tense scene, in part illustrating the dissension that the rise of Sauron has sown even among groups who should by nature be firm allies against his power. In this scene, we are introduced to Éomer, a significant character in many ways representative of his people. Upon their approach to the three companions, the Rohirrim encircle them with their horses—much in the manner of Plains Indians in old American westerns, as Shippey points out (J. R. R. Tolkien 101), rather than recalling anything in any of Tolkien’s European sources. It may be that, in imagining a warrior society dependent as the Rohirrim were on horses, Tolkien’s first thoughts were of the American Indians of the plains. For that is what the Rohirrim are: a warrior society, headed by a king who sits in a great hall surrounded by his closest retainers, very much like an Anglo-Saxon chief sitting in a mead hall. In Éomer and his companions we have our first glimpse of the similarity between the Rohirrim and the early Anglo-Saxons. Éomer is certainly a bold warrior, one who has slaughtered the orcs who dared to cross his lands. If he shows little courtesy to Aragorn and his companions, it is partly because they, too, have entered his realm without leave, and because they refuse to answer his questions. Of course, Aragorn and the others, on a secret mission whose true purpose must be withheld from even the ears of most of their allies, have good reason to keep their own counsel, but to Éomer this must look suspicious. Éomer stands out from the rest of his party in his wearing a white horsetail plume in his helmet. Shippey uses the term panache to describe both the plume, which in later episodes will identify him on the battlefield, and the qualities of its bearer—“the virtue of the sudden onset, the dash that sweeps away resistance” (Road 128).

This impetuous, emotional, flamboyant quality seems characteristic of the Rohirrim in general, and their leader in particular. Finally, the appearance of the old man dressed in white at the edge of Fangorn Forest as the second chapter ends is important to note. To Gimli, the figure looks like Gandalf, but at this point it is generally assumed that Gandalf has died. In this way, the appearance serves as a kind of foreshadowing of the appearance of the White Rider later on in Fangorn itself. The fact the figure dresses in white and wears a wide-brimmed hat rather than a hood suggests that it is not Gandalf but rather Saruman, who as a wizard will resemble Gandalf a great deal. When the horses run away, it appears as if the wizard has caused them to leave, making things more difficult for Aragorn and his companions. But we learn later that the horses ran because they wished to meet the great horse Shadowfax. Further, we learn later that Gandalf has now become the White Wizard. Thus, the appearance of the old man remains a mystery, suggesting like many other things in these chapters that the line between good and evil is a highly ambiguous one, and that it is often very difficult to make clear moral choices in a world where good and evil are not clearly discernible. Tolkien is often regarded as a black-and-white thinker whose War of the Ring pits the forces of good against the forces of evil with no question of which is which. It is certainly true that there are moral precepts that Tolkien presents as given: Ruthless power is evil, free choice is good. But characters like Boromir and, to a much larger extent, Saruman reveal that things are not always so clear cut, and that one may do evil with the best of intentions if one is seduced by things that may only seem good at the time. Tolkien will explore an even more ambiguous treatment of the dichotomy of good and evil later on in his presentation of Gollum/ Sméagol in book 4. Chapters 3–4: Fangorn  As this section begins, Tolkien changes his focus from the pursuing to the pursued, and tells the story of Merry and Pippin’s abduction, chiefly through the eyes of Pippin. In this, Tolkien is using a type of narrative composition called interlacing, a technique he would have

240   Lord of the Rings, The learned from medieval romances such as Thomas Malory’s Le Morte Darthur and Malory’s French sources, especially the 13th-century French Vulgate Quest of the Holy Grail. In these complex narratives, involving numerous knights all on separate quests and adventures, the narrator would move back and forth between the separate strands of the story, telling the different tales simultaneously. Here, Tolkien moves back in time to just after the hobbits have been kidnapped, and he follows their adventures as captives of the orc band. He returns to Pippin as the narrative focus, once more foregrounding the experiences of the hobbits. The story first puts its readers, like Pippin, in a confused, squabbling army of bickering orcs, made up of three different groups: those of the Misty Mountains, those of Mordor, and those of Isengard—the fighting Uruk-hai, who prove dominant. There is a clear contrast with the meeting in the previous chapter of the Rohirrim and Aragorn’s small company. Uglúk asserts his authority by indiscriminately killing anyone who questions his decisions, a form of intimidation apparently acceptable to his comrades and effective among the other groups. At one point, he slaughters an entire company of rebels. The message seems clear: While Éomer might misunderstand, distrust, and carefully examine the claims of interlopers in his land, he is unwilling to kill these outnumbered strangers—even though Gimli actually threatens him with his axe for his disrespect of the lady Galadriel—because the free peoples of Middle-earth (those not under Sauron’s shadow) value life as a good in itself. While they do not hesitate in defense of their land to take the lives of enemies (like the orcs) sworn to their destruction, they will not harm strangers that they do not know to be their foes. The ents are a race free of Sauron’s shadow but not allied with Sauron’s enemies, either. The source of Tolkien’s ents was originally in Old ­English poetry, where the term seems to have referred to a race of giants who were great builders. In the elegaic lyric The Wanderer, ancient ruins are said to be enta geweorc (l. 87)—the work of giants or ents. In the gnomic verses contained in Maxims II, Roman cities are again referred to as enta geweorc (l. 2). That Tolkien had this specific passage in

mind is underscored by the fact that the gnomic or “wisdom” verses of Maxims II are precisely the kind of poem that Treebeard himself recites as he categorizes the races of Middle-earth. For the Anglo-Saxons, the ents were thus an ancient race of giant builders who were now extinct. Tolkien seems to have borrowed the idea of a race of giants, and also their impending extinction—for which he imagined the story of the lost entwives to explain the cause of the decline. Tolkien’s ents are, of course, also very ancient—the oldest living beings in Middle-earth—and perhaps it was this great age that led him to associate them with the forests, as if to say that their great age has made them one with the land itself. There may have been other medieval sources that suggested this connection to Tolkien: Edward Pettit lists several of them, the most convincing of which are examples of talking trees in Old Norse literature, including a “Treeman” in Ragnars Saga Loðbrókar (16). The separation of the ents from the entwives—the result, as Corey Olsen asserts, of their conflicting active and contemplative attitudes toward the natural world (51)—is a tragedy that, among other things, may remind readers that success in the war against Sauron depends on cooperation among the various constituents. For them to fall apart would mean extinction. The idea of the trees going to war Tolkien himself attributes to his youthful enthusiasm for the phrase in Macbeth concerning Birnam Wood coming to high Dunsinane hill (Letters 212). Tolkien wanted to go beyond Shakespeare’s men with branches and truly allow the wood to move. Beyond this, however, the ents seem clearly to be suggestive of the natural world itself. Thus, when the hobbits ask whose side they are on, Treebeard cannot really answer. Nature does not take sides in human affairs. However, when mistreated, the natural world will respond. Abuses of nature have their consequences. Saruman and his orcs have destroyed the trees, and therefore the forest itself will rise against him. Though Tolkien may not have known about the threat of global warming, he depicts the fierce consequences of a mistreated environment against those who presume to engage in such acts. Once roused, Fangorn Forest will not

Lord of the Rings, The   241 stop until Saruman’s power has been reduced to nothing. This is not vengeance so much as the natural consequences of his own actions. Chapters 5–8: The Defeat of Isengard  The most astounding aspect of these chapters is certainly the reappearance of Gandalf. Most readers, like the rest of the Fellowship, have given him up for dead. In archetypal terms, Gandalf has journeyed into the dark underworld, struggled with hell and death itself in the overcoming of his shadow (in the form of the Balrog), and emerged a stronger, more perfect Gandalf, ready now to lead all of the Free Peoples in their struggle against the powers of absolute darkness. Tolkien had precedents enough in the myths and literary texts that provided his sources—like Odysseus, like Virgil, like Dante, like Christ harrowing Hell, Gandalf emerges from the pit with his eye turned toward his destiny. But more than anything, as Verlyn Flieger has pointed out (“Missing Person” 13) Gandalf’s story is like Christ’s. He was dead and is resurrected. In his rising, he brings hope for salvation, and he brings a power that transcends the abilities of his allies in the struggle. He is, as Tolkien explained in the draft of a letter to Robert Murray in 1954, an Istari, which is to say an angelic being sent to Middle-earth specifically to deal with the problem of Sauron. He was incarnate in a human body (like the other Istari, including Saruman), and thus he could indeed die. He and the other Istari were also subject to all the temptations of the world and could indeed fall like Sauron himself (as, of course, Saruman does). But only Gandalf, Tolkien says, “fully passed the tests, on a moral plane anyway,” for on the bridge in Moria he makes a true sacrifice “for his companions,” which is also an abnegation of himself in conformity to ‘the Rules’: for all he could know at that moment he was the only person who could direct the resistance to Sauron successfully, and all his mission was vain. He was handing over to the Authority that ordained the Rules, and giving up personal hope of success. (Letters 202)

Thus, Gandalf, an incarnate spirit sent by a benevolent “Authority” and incarnate in human

flesh, willingly sacrifices himself to save his companions and truly dies. He rises again in glory as the White Rider. He is beyond question Tolkien’s Christ figure, but he is not Christ: The orthodox Catholic Tolkien would not have created such a character. “The Incarnation of God is an infinitely greater thing than anything I would write,” he wrote in the draft of an unsent letter in 1956 (Letters 237). Gandalf is not divine; he works in the world chiefly through other people. He cannot save souls; he can only help the rational beings of Middle-earth fight against evil in hope and faith, but without knowledge of how the end will turn out. Gandalf has supernatural powers, demonstrated in his command of the great steed Shadowfax, in his defeat of Wormtongue, and more fully in his later ability to command and cow Saruman. But he cannot—or does not—make fire rain from the sky to destroy the orcs at Helm’s Deep. His greatest strength is in his ability to lead and to persuade, as he does with Théoden. Tolkien wrote that the assignment of the wizards in Middle-earth was to “advise, instruct, arouse the hearts and minds of those threatened by Sauron to a resistance with their own strengths; and not just to do the job for them” (Letters 202). And although Théoden thinks that the forest that marches to Helm’s Deep is the work of Gandalf, it is not. As Gandalf himself realizes, something higher is involved in the working out of events. It has long been recognized that Théoden’s people, the Riders of Rohan, are closely modeled on Anglo-Saxon society. John Tinkler pointed out a number of Old English elements in the names of Rohan (Tinkler 164–169). The word Théoden literally means “prince” or “king” in Old English, while eoh, the Old English word for “horse,” appears in a number of character names, including Éomer as well as his sister Éowyn, which literally means “joy in horses.” Gríma means “mask”—an appropriate name for the king’s hypocritical adviser. And Gríma is the son of Gálmód, a word that in Old English means “licentious” and underscores Gríma’s lustful attentions to Éowyn. Further, Théoden’s Golden Hall is named Meduseld, a term literally meaning “mead hall” in Old English. Jorge Luis Bueno Alonso points out a number of parallels, as well, in the architecture, the burial

242   Lord of the Rings, The mounds (which he compares to places like the famous Sutton Hoo mound in East Anglia), and the armor (particularly the helmets) of the Rohirrim and the Anglo-Saxons (Alonso 29–32). The parallel with Anglo-Saxon society is first introduced in the poem that Aragorn chants as the companions pass by the tombs of the Kings of Rohan. The first lines, in the “common speech,” run thus: Where now the horse and the rider? Where the   horn that was blowing? Where is the helm and the hauberk, and the   bright hair flowing? Where is the hand on the harpstring, and the   red fire glowing? (112)

Although the form of these lines does not replicate Old English verse, the alliteration of h’s does recall that verse. More important, the ubi sunt (“where are they”) theme of these lines, the mournful tone questioning where the glories of the past have gone, captures precisely the mood of Old English elegaic verse, a major genre of Old English poetry. These themes appear most notably in “The Wanderer,” whose narrator asks: Where has the horse gone? Where the man? Where the giver of gold? Where is the feasting-place? And where the   pleasures of the hall? (Crossley-Holland 52)

The parallels, in particular to the Old English epic Beowulf, continue as the companions approach Meduseld. The hall, like Hrothgar’s Heorot, is an architectural jewel. Like Beowulf, Gandalf and the others are challenged by the guard and requested to leave their weapons before being allowed into the hall. Like Hrothgar, King Théoden seems old and overcome by grief. Like Unferth, Gríma insinuates that the newcomers will not truly be the allies they purport to be. In this kind of warrior society, it is imperative that Théoden be able to lead his men in battle, particularly against a foe that has slain his son and heir. Indeed, it would be his sacred duty to avenge his son’s death. If we can impose AngloSaxon societal values on the Rohirrim, as these parallels suggest that we may, then Gríma’s advice to Théoden to make peace with Saruman and go on with the slayers of his son as allies is advice that

betrays all the deepest expectations of his culture. Following this advice would probably lose Théoden his leadership role, and perhaps even destroy the unity of his tribe. It is vital not only for the sake of the anti-Sauron faction, but for the king’s own sake and that of his nation, that Gandalf step in and cleanse the kingdom of Gríma’s influence. Of the figures at Théoden’s court, his niece, Éowyn, may be the most intriguing. Tolkien is often criticized for his lack of female characters, and this criticism is justified for the most part. Tolkien’s chief sources and inspirations are Old English poetry, most of which celebrates the warrior code and the bond between king and retainer in a warrior society, a bond called the comitatus by the Latin writer Tacitus. There is little room for women in such a society. But there are exceptions in Tolkien’s work (just as there are in Old English poetry), although two of the important exceptions in The Lord of the Rings—Galadriel and her granddaughter Arwen—tend to serve more as ideals and inspirations than as real agents in their own right who contribute to the action of the plot. The chief exception is Éowyn, who will become an important character as the narrative moves along. But even Éowyn is not a “typical” woman. She is strongly attracted to Aragorn, though her love is unrequited. She loves chiefly Aragorn’s authority, his prowess, his courage. Her love of him is hero worship, as Marion Zimmer Bradley has stated: Éowyn does not want Aragorn so much as she wants to be Aragorn (83). She is in love with the thing that she herself wishes to be most like. Éowyn is rankled by the constrictions placed upon her as a woman in her society, and she wants to ride to battle as the men of her tribe ride. Putting her in command of the women and children who remain behind may be intended to assuage her bitterness, but it clearly does not have that effect. As a woman character, Éowyn is far more like a Judith—the biblical heroine whose prowess defeats the Assyrian army in the Anglo-Saxon epic bearing her name—than she is like the women who narrate Old English poems such as “The Wife’s Lament,” who mourn because of their separation from their husbands. But Tolkien does not present Éowyn’s desire for her chance at martial glory as unnatural. Rather, it is

Lord of the Rings, The   243 ultimately rewarded with true glory. It may be that Tolkien recognized the limitations of the all-male comitatus and saw the inequalities inherent in the stereotyping of gender roles. Little needs to be said here about the battle of Helm’s Deep itself. It is a fairly common narrative motif concerning the outnumbered force besieged by overwhelming enemy forces. It is the familiar and stirring story of the Spartans at Thermopylae or the Texan defense of the Alamo—or the story of The Battle of Maldon (retold by Tolkien in “The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth Beorhthelm’s Son”). In a context influenced by Anglo-Saxon or Germanic tradition, it is clear that the members of the warrior society must perform their duty and defend their posts to the death—courage and commitment growing stronger as their strength grows weaker, to paraphrase Maldon, one of Tolkien’s favorite poems. The difference here, of course, is that the cavalry arrives in time to save the Rohirrim. Ultimately, it is supernatural assistance that intercedes at Helm’s Deep, first in the form of Gandalf and then in the form of the ents. This, in fact, is how Gandalf himself interprets the ents’ arrival. Had Saruman not demanded that his orcs bring the hobbits to him, they never would have come near Fangorn Forest, and had they not arrived there, then the ents would not have marched. Gandalf sees a providential hand in the matter, although there is no overt religious interpretation suggested. Finally, in the story of Helm’s Deep, there is a foreshadowing of the much greater and more fiercely contested battle before the city of Minas Tirith in the third volume of the trilogy. In fact, it is crucial to Tolkien’s construction of The Lord of the Rings as a fairy story, in the sense outlined in his earlier lecture on the topic. Richard Fehrenbacher, who sees The Two Towers in particular as a revamping of the elegaic Anglo-Saxon Beowulf as a fairy story, emphasizes Tolkien’s notion of the eucatastrophe—the sudden reversal that provides the happy ending of the fairy story (111). The arrival of Gandalf and the ents is one of the great eucatastrophes of the trilogy. For Tolkien, such events are glimpses of miraculous grace—what he calls a joy beyond the physical world. They are the highest function of the fairy story and provide here,

as Gandalf says, evidence of a greater power shaping events. One last item of interest in these chapters is the developing friendship between Gimli the dwarf and Legolas the elf. Representative of two races that are traditional enemies, Gimli and Legolas develop a friendly rivalry inspiring them to acts of prowess with axe and bow at Helm’s Deep. Later, they more surprisingly agree to visit each other’s ideal natural beauties: Gimli will visit the ancient and mysterious Fangorn Forest with Legolas, while the elf will visit the wondrous caves of Aglarond with Gimli. Differences do not have to cause divisions: All the peoples of Middle-earth do not need to take the path of the ents, where division leads to extinction. Chapters 9–11: Saruman Defeated  The reuniting of Merry and Pippin with Aragorn, Gimli, and Legolas restores the hobbits as the central focus of the narrative, a restoration that is underscored by their immediately relating the story of the march of the ents and the fall of Isengard. Structurally, the scene is a kind of respite after the suspense of the battle at Helm’s Deep, the sharing of food that the hobbits have scavenged from Isengard serving a hiatus function similar to that of Rivendell or Lórien earlier. Further, when Pippin gives Gimli his pipe and shares his pipeweed, it is a warm symbol of domesticity, peace, and camaraderie, and represents the simple pleasures of home that would be lost in a world dominated by Sauron’s tyranny. But within this somewhat idyllic scene is the seed of another potential crisis that Aragorn comments on briefly, though the uneasiness disappears among other more immediate concerns. However, the question remains: How does pipeweed from the Southfarthing district of the Shire happen to be here, stored among Saruman’s provisions at Isengard? Saruman himself makes his first appearance in The Lord of the Rings (other than the secondhand references to him that Gandalf makes during the Council of Elrond) in chapter 10, and here he is characterized chiefly by his voice. Once again, Saruman is presented like a contemporary politician: His chief power is his ability to persuade, and his words—sometimes cajoling, sometimes threatening—do have a profound effect on a number

244   Lord of the Rings, The of the men of Rohan—including, it appears for a few moments, their king. There is no question that Tolkien is presenting here the dangers of sophistry. He was certainly familiar with the Sophists of classical Greece, whose goal was to train young men for political careers by teaching them rhetoric—in particular (at least according to Plato) by teaching them tricks to argue for any position, right or wrong, through quibbling; entrapping or confusing their opponents; slander and emotional appeal; shouting their opponents down; and using epigrams or other “sound bites,” in the manner of countless political pundits employed in the media today. Defining or finding truth was not a part of the Sophist agenda—it was, in fact, irrelevant to their arguments. So it is with Saruman. In fifth-century b.c.e. Athens, Socrates and Plato condemned such practices and sought to find ways of reasoning that could get at truth. Aristotle developed a rhetoric that focused on rational argument and the goodwill and character of the speaker, who must be honest and free from self-interest. I have already argued that Gandalf’s chief power is not his magic spells but his ability to persuade and to unite the enemies of Sauron and to lead without desiring power himself. He has already rejected the One Ring—an act of which Saruman would have been incapable. Thus, Gandalf is the Aristotelian rhetorician, whose motives are pure and whose arguments are truthful. Only clear-thinking listeners who can recognize the untruths are able to resist Saruman, as Éomer and Gimli do. But his lack of success with Théoden and his attempt to entrap Gandalf himself demonstrates how much power Saruman has lost. Originally, of course, Saruman was leader of the White Council and an Istari like Gandalf, sent in human form to help the free peoples of Middleearth resist the yoke of Sauron. Originally, Saruman’s voice would have been truthful and his motives pure. Tolkien implies that as the wizard was drawn more and more into corruption by his own lust for power, the more sophist his voice became, and consequently, corruption has weakened his persuasive power. That corruption is symbolized by the whiteness of his robes, which reveals itself to be made up of a rainbow of colors that only appear to be white, just as Saruman himself only

appears to be honest. Gandalf, whose robes are now pure white, speaks with a voice that embodies the power and influence of the Valar, the angelic beings who sent the Istari from the West, and he breaks Saruman’s staff. Saruman, who had thought his power and rank unassailable, is surprised by this, but he learns in no uncertain terms that he has not been acting in accordance with, and is no longer in favor with, those powers. One of Saruman’s great treasures has been the palantír of Orthanc, which Wormtongue foolishly hurls from the tower in an uncontrollable fit of anger. The palantíri were apparently suggested by the popular (Tolkien might say “debased,” imagining his Faërie version to have come first) notion of the “crystal ball.” In his legendarium, as outlined in The Silmarillion, the palantíri were far-seeing stones with which one could see and communicate with anyone else who might be looking into a stone anywhere else in the world. The stones were originally made in Valinor in the Uttermost West, presumably by Féanor himself, greatest of the Noldor craftsmen and fashioner of the Silmarils, the great jewels that sparked war and rebellion among the elves. A number of palantíri had been given to the men of Númenor in the Second Age when they were still friendly with the Eldar of Valinor, and when the island of Númenor was destroyed, Elendil and his sons brought seven of the seeingstones with them to Middle-earth. These were placed at various strongholds in Arnor and Gondor, the Númenórean realms in exile. Most of these were lost, but clearly Saruman has discovered the palantír of Orthanc (formerly one of Gondor’s fortresses), while Sauron has been using the palantír of Minas Ithil (now Minas Morgul). The connection explains how Saruman could have been corrupted by Sauron, whose will and influence seem to have been aimed at Saruman through the palantír. These things become apparent when Pippin looks into the stone. Pippin has consistently been the most immature and rash of the four hobbits (as, for example, he is when he disturbs the well in Moria). Here, having glanced briefly at the stone before Gandalf quickly covered it, Pippin is tormented by an apparently irresistible urge to look again. It is unclear whether this is due to some

Lord of the Rings, The   245 power of the stone itself or, more likely, the power of Sauron. He ignores Merry’s advice and incurs Gandalf’s wrath, and he is stricken unconscious by the experience. Gandalf’s reaction does suggest that Pippin should have had the will to resist, but it seems that Pippin’s bad judgment has resulted in a providential stroke of luck: Sauron—whose sight Pippin cannot experience and still remain conscious—believes that Pippin is the Ring-bearer and that Saruman has captured him. These assumptions take Sauron’s attentions away from the borders of Mordor just as Frodo and Sam, it is hoped, are endeavoring to make their way into that land of shadows. Book 4: The Ring Goes East Chapters 1–3: Sméagol  The fact that Gollum is pitied by Bilbo, Gandalf, and Frodo, and is put into a position of trust in a way that contrasts sharply with other servants of Mordor, is a phenomenon that deserves consideration. One of the criticisms often made of Tolkien is his creation of a black-andwhite world of good versus evil, and the attendant mindset that allows for the slaughter of innumerable orcs without any hint of remorse on the part of their slayers—even to the point of depicting a grimly humorous contest between Legolas and Gimli over the number of orcs they can kill. In some ways, this reflects the common manner of conducting war propaganda, through which an enemy is made into an “Other” in every imaginable way, minimizing any qualms of conscience the soldier might have at killing such an enemy. Saruman, the consummate modern politician, has engaged in this kind of “othering” with the men of Dunland, whom he convinces that the Rohirrim will burn alive any prisoners they take. There are, however, some differences between Tolkien’s orcs and our “othering” of wartime enemies. Orcs are beyond salvation in Tolkien’s picture of Middle-earth. It must be remembered that men, elves, hobbits, and ents are creatures made by the creator god Ilúvatar. In The Silmarillion, we learn that the dwarves were created by the Vala Aulë but lived as automatons until Ilúvatar took pity on them and adopted them as his own, thus giving them free will and, hence, souls. Orcs, we

are told by Treebeard in book 3, were created by the original Dark Lord (the fallen Vala Morgoth) as a kind of mockery of Ilúvatar’s elves. Saruman, taking his cue from Morgoth’s perversion of the natural process, creates his Uruk-hai largely in mockery of men. Thus, the orcs are pure evil: They are demonic forces that bear no resemblance to any human enemies. The human allies of Sauron or Saruman—like the men of Dunland mentioned earlier—are considered salvageable, so that the Rohirrim make a treaty with the men of Dunland even after they have fought against them. This is the spirit in which Gollum must be considered. Gollum—originally called Sméagol and originally a hobbit-like being—has done evil and has been corrupted by nearly 500 years in possession of the One Ring. But as a creature of Ilúvatar, Gollum retains his free will. He has a soul that can be saved. What Frodo recognizes in him is the strain and madness that the burden of the ring might have on the Ring-bearer. Frodo sees his own possible future in Gollum. But even after nearly five centuries, Gollum is not without a spark of good. It takes Frodo’s trust of him to bring out some of that goodness: Gollum swears by the ring to be loyal to the Ring-bearer and to bring Frodo to Mordor, and he keeps his word. He makes no attempts on the hobbits’ lives, nor does he run off when he gets the chance. Certainly a part of this is his desire for the ring and his need to be near it, but the bizarre argument that he has with himself—the inner division between Sméagol the creature of Ilúvatar and Gollum the creature of the One Ring— indicates that there is within him a will that wishes to be free of the ring, and if that is the case, then there is still hope for him in this universe. Sméagol wishes to remain faithful to his new master. But Gollum is concerned chiefly with the ring itself, fearful that “He” (i.e., Sauron) will obtain it, and wondering if perhaps “She” (unidentified as yet, but we ultimately come to know that he is speaking here of the giant spider-creature Shelob) will assist Gollum. Surely David Callaway is not completely accurate when he argues that “Gollum is not more evil in the beginning than either Frodo or Bilbo, he is just controlled by the Ring for a longer period of time” (17)—for it must be remembered that Smé-

246   Lord of the Rings, The agol killed his cousin to gain possession of the ring in the beginning—but it is true that Gollum is not completely evil at any time, and he always represents what Bilbo or Frodo could have become if they had carried the ring for a longer time than they did. Gollum leads the hobbits on his own secret path through the Dead Marshes, where orcs do not travel. Readers may be fascinated by the faces of the dead that stare up from the mire and dissatisfied with Gollum’s laconic explanation that there was a great battle here long ago. Tolkien’s explanation is that the marshes were originally much smaller, but during the long Third Age of Middleearth, they expanded to the east, toward Mordor, and eventually engulfed the graves of all those who fell at the Battle of Dagorlad—the great, ancient battle to which Gollum alludes. This was the final battle at the end of the Second Age, involving the Last Alliance of elves (led by Gil-Galad, the king of the Eldar of Middle-earth) and men (led by Elendil, king of the Dúnedain) waging war for months on the plain before Mordor against Sauron and his forces. Sauron was ultimately defeated, but the graves of that battle’s myriad dead, absorbed by the marshes, show forth here with a kind of eerie enchantment. The second path to which Gollum begins to lead the hobbits, once they realize that there can be no entrance through the Black Gates, is one that passes close by Minas Morgul. At this point, the hobbits do not know the significance of this place. It is, in fact, the tower originally built by Isildur in the Second Age and named Minas Ithil, or the Tower of the Moon. After a two-year siege in the middle of the Third Age, the tower was captured by the Nazgûl, Sauron’s Black Riders, presumably in anticipation of his reappearance. At that point, it became known as Minas Morgul (the “Tower of Black Magic”). It was there that the Nazgûl found the palantír of Minas Ithil, which they gave to Sauron and which he used to communicate with Saruman and presumably to watch other parts of Middle-earth. Thus, this place and the path that runs by it are more dangerous than Gollum makes out, and though he mentions the “Silent Watchers,” he fails to clarify that these are the Nazgûl

themselves, the very creatures who have already terrified and wounded Frodo and who fly overhead, observing all that move around the borders of Mordor. Therefore, although Sméagol is keeping his word and doing his best to guide Frodo into Mordor, Gollum is also leading him into dangers of which he does not speak. Chapters 4–6: A Captain of Gondor  This section opens with a domestic chapter about rabbit stew. Like the earlier chapter in which Merry and Pippin are reunited with the other members of the Fellowship at Isengard, this chapter provides a kind of respite after the arduous journey through the marshes. Sméagol appears here at his best—he provides game for the hobbits as well as himself, and for the first time, he and Sam treat each other with what approaches a good-natured civility. Frodo requires a deep rest as the burden of the ring has been exhausting him. Here Tolkien provides a scene in which Sam contemplates the sleeping Frodo, and affection surges within him when he notices the wrinkles around his master’s eyes. Sam’s selfless loyalty and concern for Frodo presage the increasingly heavy responsibilities he will be taking on as the quest continues. In particular, this scene foreshadows and parallels the scene later in book 4 in which Gollum contemplates the sleeping Frodo. Sam’s single-minded concentration on his master’s welfare explains his sometimes unreasonable distrust of Gollum. Clearly it is wise to be cautious of Gollum, since he has a reputation for treachery. But Frodo is able to see some goodness in Gollum (and despite Sam’s qualms has also demonstrated that he is not blind to Gollum’s treacheries), while for his part, Sméagol keeps his word as he has sworn to and guided the hobbits faithfully this far. It may be that Sam resents Gollum taking some of Sam’s job away from him, in becoming the one that Frodo must depend on most during the quest. But while Sam cannot bring himself to empathize with Gollum the way Frodo does, he feels another kind of empathy toward the end of this chapter. As the men of Gondor ambush a company of Southrons coming to join Sauron’s army, one of these southern men of Harad lands dead at his feet:

Lord of the Rings, The   247 He was glad that he could not see the dead face. He wondered what the man’s name was and where he came from; and if he was really evil of heart, or what lies or threats had led him on the long march from his home; and if he would not really rather have stayed there in peace. (269)

Sam refuses to “other” the enemy soldier and cannot help but see the dead man as an individual, and one that may have been saved. The appearance of the Oliphaunt in this chapter is juxtaposed to Sam’s view of the dead man. Sam is chagrined by the dead man and then immediately thrilled by the sight of the Oliphaunt. What Tolkien does in these few pages is demonstrate in miniature his theory of the imagination expressed in his famous essay “On Fairy-Stories.” There, Tolkien had listed four uses of such tales: enchantment, recovery, escape, and consolation. Here, Sam is first confronted with the reality of death, the greatest limitation on human life and the one from which human beings by nature seek most desperately to escape. The escape for Sam comes here in the form of enchantment—what Tolkien calls an act of imagination that allows for a secondary reality. The Oliphaunt, a creature of the imagination as far as Sam has known up to this point, crosses into his world of belief. Within Tolkien’s secondary creation, the imagination can discover many things to believe in to escape the horrors of the mundane primary world. Thus, Sam engages in an act of recovery as well—the ability, as Tolkien put it, to transcend our normal way of looking at the world to see it from a different perspective, to see it anew. Seeing the Oliphaunt gives Sam that new perspective—just as seeing the hobbits gives that perspective to Faramir and the men of Gondor who come with him. Such small instances of enchantment, escape. and recovery are common in The Lord of the Rings, supporting the larger movements of the plot that demonstrate these themes on a greater scale. Faramir is a major character in the trilogy, and one who at this point embodies for the reader the character of the men of Gondor—just as, earlier in The Two Towers, Éomer embodied the character of

the men of Rohan. Tom Shippey has shown how closely parallel are the two scenes in which these characters make their first appearance (Road 129– 131). Éomer and his men surround Aragorn and his companions as trespassers in the Mark; Faramir and his troops surround Frodo and Sam as trespassers on the borders of Gondor. Both threaten to detain the strangers, but in the end neither does so. As Shippey points out, however, Éomer is less polite than Faramir, and is skeptical and even insulting with regard to Galadriel and the elves of Lórien, while Faramir seems wiser, more courteous, and better disposed toward the elves than his counterpart of Rohan. Indeed, when Éomer asks Aragorn, “Are you elvish folk?” (34), he does not imply that he would regard an affirmative answer in a positive light. As for the Lady of the Golden Wood, Éomer assumes that “if you have her favour, then you also are net-weavers and sorcerers, maybe” (35). But when Faramir first sees the hobbits, he says that they cannot be elves because “Elves are wondrous fair to look upon, or so ’tis said” (265). Furthermore, as a kind of grace before meals, the men of Gondor look with reverence to the West, toward the Númenor that was and the Elvenhome that is, and the eternal lands beyond. In addition, Faramir is more astute in relating to his guests, while Éomer seems less mature and less guarded. For while Faramir never mentions that Boromir is his brother, or that he knows Boromir is dead, until he has heard everything that Frodo has to say (and has detected Frodo’s lack of forthrightness regarding his relationship with Boromir), Éomer blurts out all of his thoughts without caution, even making known his low opinion of the new state of affairs at his uncle’s court. If these two men are representative of their respective cultures, one might say that Rohan is a less refined and more plainspoken culture, while that of Gondor is a more sophisticated and less straightforward one. If Rohan parallels the culture of Anglo-Saxon England, Gondor more closely parallels that of the high medieval courts of England or France. One of Faramir’s more remarkable claims is his categorizing of men into three types: “For so we reckon Men in our lore, calling them the High, or Men of the West, which were the

248   Lord of the Rings, The Númenóreans; and the Middle Peoples, Men of the Twilight, such as are the Rohirrim and their kin that dwell still far in the North; and the Wild, the Men of Darkness.” (287)

Passages like this one add fuel to the charges of those critics who have characterized Tolkien as classist, racist, or even fascist. Brian Rosebury describes some of Tolkien’s readers as finding in his works a “coded right-wing polemic” (160), and Nick Otty calls Middle-earth politics “openly paternalistic” (172). Fred Inglis compares Tolkien to Wagner, stating that both “prefigure the genuine ideals and nobilities of which Fascism is the dark negation” (39). Certainly if one applies Faramir’s categorization to Tolkien’s contemporary world, it may well imply that certain nations or races are superior to others, and readers might be tempted to do what Tolkien never did (and probably never would have done) and start classifying—beginning, perhaps, with the British people as, clearly, belonging in the “High” category. While it seems quite unlikely that Tolkien ever voted for the Labour Party, to interpret this passage in such a manner is to misread it completely. One must first remember that even more specific classifications are made among the elvish peoples of Middle-earth, so that the High-elves, the Eldar, comprise those who had made the journey to Valinor in the First Age. The experience of the light of Valinor, the eternal earthly paradise, makes those elves spiritually superior to the Grey-elves, who did not make that journey. It is the same with the three classes of men in Faramir’s reckoning. The Dúnedain, ancestors of the men of Gondor, were the survivors of Númenor, the island created by the Valar for those men who supported the elves in their war against the fallen Vala Morgoth in the First Age. The Númenóreans were in regular contact with the elves of Tol Eressëa, but they were not allowed to set foot on the Undying Lands. Still, they were spiritually enlightened by this contact, and that is why they and their descendants are classified as High. As for the Middle level of men, those of the “twilight” like the Rohirrim, these are men who know enough to shun the darkness of Morgoth as

persisting in Sauron, even though they may not recognize the spirituality of the elves or sense the supremacy of the creator god Ilúvatar. As for the Wild Men, those like the Dunlendings whom the Rohirrim spare after the battle at Helm’s Deep, or the Haradrim whom the men of Gondor have just defeated, these are men who have continued to live in darkness, lied to or enslaved by the Dark Lord. It is in a spiritual sense that these men are inferior, but Tolkien implies that there is still hope for them: The Dunlendings may well be won from their misplaced alliance with Saruman. As for the Haradrim, Sam’s musings upon the fate of the dead man he sees at least raise the question of the man’s intentions, which may not indeed have been consciously or deliberately evil. Thus, if there is any intended application to the primary world in Faramir’s speech, it has nothing to do with race, class, or ethnicity, but with the state of the soul. As for Faramir, there is no question that he represents the ideal High category of man. There is, of course, the fear that he will be like his brother, with the same ambitions for himself and his city that led Boromir to try to take the ring. But Faramir is not his brother. In the first place, he does not value war for its own sake: He is a skilled warrior when he must be, but he is chiefly a man of peace. More important, before he knows what it is, he swears not to touch the talisman Frodo bears. When he finds through Sam’s drunken slip what that talisman is and knows he has Frodo in his power to do with as he pleases, his true impulse is to keep his word. In addition, he is wise enough to know, like Gandalf and Galadriel, that the power of the ring is not a power to be desired. Thus, Faramir acts in the novel as a foil to his brother. He shows himself to be the man that Boromir might have been, and perhaps should have been. One other aspect of these chapters that must be considered is Frodo’s “betrayal” of Gollum when he coaxes him out of the forbidden pool only to be captured by the men of Gondor. While Faramir is presented as noble for keeping his word, this is actually the second time in this section that Frodo has been less than completely honest. He had earlier hidden Boromir’s betrayal from the men of Gondor, refusing to speak ill of his former com-

Lord of the Rings, The   249 panion even after that companion had betrayed him. For this, most readers will probably admire him. As for his deception of Gollum, readers will understand that Frodo was forced into dishonesty in order to save Gollum’s life, and the majority of people would have certainly done the same. But Frodo’s conscience does bother him, and Gollum sees his lying as a betrayal. This act causes the first rift between Frodo and his reluctant servant, and it damages the very fragile trust that had been building up to this time. The damage, unfortunately, is never completely healed. Frodo’s deceptions in these chapters demonstrate again that those readers who accuse Tolkien of simple black-and-white thinking are quite mistaken: There are times, it seems, of moral ambiguity when truth is not the same as virtue and when goodness is not simple. Chapters 7–10: The Pass of Cirith Ungol  One of the more remarkable images of these chapters is the fallen king’s statue, covered with graffiti and replaced by a grotesque image of the red eye of Sauron. The head has broken from the statue and lies in the path as the hobbits make their way to the pass at Cirith Ungol, and Frodo and Sam are momentarily mesmerized by it. The image recalls Percy Bysshe Shelley’s famous poem “Ozymandias,” wherein the fallen statue in the desert suggests the transience of earthly power. Tolkien gives the image a new twist, for while it does recall the long-fallen kings of the Second Age, the fallen head is encircled by a garland of white and yellow flowers that have grown there naturally. It is a moment of hope before the plunge into the darkness, foreshadowing the return of the king of Gondor. This is one of the few overt suggestions in The Lord of the Rings of a kind of providential order to events, since the fact that this “crown” is a natural phenomenon implies some power beyond that of the factions of Middleearth that may be ordering events to its own ends. That transcendent power makes itself felt elsewhere in this section in the form of Galadriel’s phial, the other talisman that Frodo carries around his neck. Frodo has not given it a thought since he obtained it as Galadriel’s gift in Lórien, but the phial proves to be Frodo’s strength and salvation throughout these chapters. When the armies of

Mordor pour from Minas Morgul, the chief Nazgûl senses Frodo’s presence, and Frodo’s hand reaches for the ring in what could have been a fatal gesture. But at the last moment his hand grasps the phial instead. Later, Tolkien depicts Frodo and Sam in a fascinating metatextual discussion about how their adventure will be told and received, and Sam realizes that the light in Galadriel’s phial is the light of the same Silmaril that Beren wrested from the crown of Morgoth in the greatest of the old stories that he has heard sung. The Silmarils, it should be recalled, embodied all that remained of the light of the Two Trees of Valinor that lighted that prelapsarian paradise in the days before Morgoth’s rebellion. Eärendil, who in The Silmarillion had inherited the Silmaril of Beren, became the morning star, whose light is captured in Galadriel’s phial. Thus, Galadriel’s phial contains light from the perfect age of the Undying Lands. It is sacred light, a spiritual light that sustains Frodo as he faces the power of the Ringwraith. That light becomes even more important in the confrontation with the terrifying Shelob later on. Significantly, Shelob is the offspring of Ungoliant. According to The Silmarillion, Ungoliant was a Maia of great power who allied herself with Morgoth in the Elder Days. In fact, it was Ungoliant, in the grotesque form of a giant spider, who poisoned the Two Trees and brought their light to an end. In Middle-earth, she parted from Morgoth to live her own isolated life in the mountains of Beleriand, where she had a number of offspring. Clearly Gollum has been planning to lead the hobbits into Shelob’s grasp for some time, in order to reclaim the ring for himself. But Galadriel’s phial proves to be most effective against her assault. She fears the light: The sacred light of the earthly paradise that her mother had failed to destroy completely has come back in a new form to blind Shelob in her den of darkness. Frodo’s exclamation when he holds up the light against the loathsome Shelob, which seems to come from outside his own consciousness, is a cry that must have originated in the Undying Lands themselves: It is a cry in Quenya, the speech of the High-elves, and reads “Aiya Eärendil Elenion Ancalima!” (329). This translates as “Hail Eärendil, brightest of stars,” which itself

250   Lord of the Rings, The is a paraphrase of the Old English poetic line from Cynewulf’s Crist II, which Tolkien said was the inspiration for the name of his hero Eärendil— "éala éarendel engla beorhtast," which means “Hail Eärendil, brightest of angels!” There is another significant archetypal pattern of symbolic death and rebirth occurring in these chapters as well. Once again, Frodo and Sam journey through a dark place where they meet a shadow-creature in the form of the embodiment of their greatest fears. In the previous descent, the Fellowship had fought their way out of Moria after confronting the Balrog, and they were reborn into greater maturity in Lórien, forced to go on by themselves without the archetypal father figure of Gandalf. Here, confronted by another supernaturally powerful figure, the hobbits must defend themselves, for there is no Gandalf or Aragorn to protect them. Shelob is an archetypal “terrible mother” figure who devours her own children. It is the light of Galadriel, the archetypal good mother, that enables the hobbits to fight off the monster’s power. But when Frodo runs from the tunnel, carelessly leaving the light behind, he is stung by the monster and falls as if dead. The symbolic death and rebirth of the archetypal descent nearly becomes a literal death for Frodo. But in terms of mythic archetypes, Frodo should awaken from his near-death state reborn in some meaningful way. Perhaps the most important aspect of these chapters in terms of overall significance for the trilogy as a whole is the way that Sam emerges here as the focal character of the narrative. The burden of the ring saps more and more of Frodo’s strength, so that he is often resting or sleeping. By the end of Book 4, he is unconscious. It is Sam’s perspective that provides the central consciousness on which the third-person narrative centers. We are aware as book 4 goes on how much jealousy plays a part in Sam’s distrust of Gollum. To have the treacherous creature entrusted with being his master’s guide certainly feels to Sam as if his position has been usurped. Nearly his only civil exchange with Gollum occurs as he is making the rabbit stew, since for once Sam truly feels useful at that point. But there is no question that readers must feel Sam’s faithfulness and blunt courage make him one of the

most sympathetic of all characters in the trilogy. It is, therefore, a crushing reversal when it is Sam’s misplaced protective instincts that bring about the events that come closer to killing his master than anything else in the novel. The climactic moment in the relationship between Frodo, Sam, and Gollum—and the turning point of book 4—occurs when the hobbits take a brief respite before moving into the tunnel. Gollum returns to find them sleeping, leaning against one another, and momentarily reaches out to touch Frodo. We are not told what Gollum is thinking at the time, although the scene parallels the earlier one in which Sam had gazed on the sleeping Frodo and felt a great wave of affection for him. It seems likely that Sméagol, coming upon the hobbits in such a fraternal position, feels the same kind of affection for his new master—the only person in nearly 500 years to treat him with respect and encouragement—and feels, as well, a desire to have the kind of relationship with Frodo that Sam does. When Sam awakens suddenly, he explodes at Gollum, calling him a sneak and ordering him away from Frodo. “The fleeting moment had passed, beyond recall,” Tolkien writes (324). This was the moment at which Gollum had teetered on the brink. Had his kindly impulses prevailed, he would probably not have betrayed Frodo to Shelob, and Gollum himself may have had a chance to be saved. As Rogers and Rogers assert, the dependable Sam “commits the most tragic deed in the story, killing the very last kind impulse possible to the ruined Gollum. After that, Gollum debates and chooses no more, but only presses ahead in his Ring-madness. Sam’s action helps bring Frodo nearer to death than any minion of Mordor can” (Rogers 112). This is Sam’s greatest failure, though he himself does not recognize it as such. After Shelob’s attack, in fact, he feels as if he had been justified in his suspicions of Gollum all along, and when he tries to avenge himself after Gollum’s treachery, chasing him back into the tunnel, he leaves Frodo alone long enough to allow Shelob to stun his master and encase him in her web. It is Sam’s subsequent behavior that he himself considers inexcusable. Assuming that Frodo is dead, he takes the ring him-

Lord of the Rings, The   251 self to finish the quest. But when Frodo is taken by orcs and Sam discovers he is still alive, he berates himself, convinced that his one duty is to stay with and protect his master. Critics have suggested that this is a case where Sam’s wrong decision resulted in unanticipated benefits: If he had not taken the ring, it would be in the hands of Sauron. Further, Sam is the only person at this point who would have been able to wear the ring without drawing Sauron’s gaze, since he has never worn it before and has pure motives for putting it on. There is no question that Sam is wrong for berating himself over this. The number one priority is to destroy the ring. If Frodo cannot do this, then no one but Sam has the power to complete the task. He has no way of knowing that Frodo is alive, and therefore his devotion to Frodo must be secondary to the fate of Middle-earth at this point. Staying with Frodo’s corpse will not defeat Sauron. Carrying out the task of the Fellowship will. Sam’s instincts are wrong in both cases in this section, although his motives are unselfish. But Tolkien may be suggesting here that the right motives are not enough. They must be coupled with right actions, and those may need careful and measured planning. Still, what is also clear in Sam’s experience is that real valor—the sort that involves the assumption of a difficult duty even if the task may seem hopeless—is not the province only of the Aragorns or Faramirs of the world. Anyone, even the least likely, even the seemingly inconsequential servant, is capable of great courage. Synopsis for The Return of the King Book 5: The War of the Ring Chapters 1–3: The Brink of War  Book 5 begins where book 3 left off, as Gandalf and Pippin ride Shadowfax toward Gondor (chapter 1, “Minas Tirith”). They travel by night and keep out of sight during the day to avoid detection by the spies of the Dark Lord. On the way, they begin to see fiery beacons springing up across the land. These are beacons of war, Gandalf says, which are lit to warn Rohan that Gondor is in need of support. After three nights, they come to Minas Tirith, the great capital city of Gondor, whose gates they enter at dawn. They ride upward through the seven circular

walled tiers of the White Tower, and Pippin is in awe of the great white city, though he notes that it seems to be falling into decay. Finally, they reach the great citadel at the center of the city, where Steward Denethor holds court. They pass into the courtyard without challenge, the guards having been alerted to their coming. Gandalf dismounts and lets Shadowfax be led away. Here in the courtyard they see a green fountain and a dead tree that was once the flowering White Tree of Gondor. Gandalf takes them down a passage leading into the hall of Denethor. As they move into the presence of the steward of Gondor, Gandalf warns Pippin that Denethor will want to speak to the hobbit particularly, since he will want to hear about his son Boromir from the person who saw him last. Gandalf also warns Pippin to be careful not to say too much, and in particular not to mention Aragorn. As they enter the Hall of Kings, Pippin notices that the great throne is empty, while Denethor, as steward, sits in a black stone seat on the floor. Gandalf greets him, saying he comes with important counsel for this dark time. He introduces Pippin as one of the Halflings present at the death of Boromir. The steward is a sturdy old man who sits in gloom, staring at something in his lap. This turns out to be the broken horn of Boromir. Pippin begins speaking about when the horn was sounded last and how Boromir had given his life trying to rescue Pippin and his kinsman. Denethor speaks with Pippin for some time, generally ignoring Gandalf, who sits impatiently listening to the conversation. He and Gandalf exchange intense glares as Denethor closely questions Pippin about the Fellowship. Pippin scrupulously avoids any mention of the One Ring. His narrative of Boromir’s sacrifice kindles in Pippin the realization that he in fact owes his life to Gondor. On a gallant impulse, Pippin offers his sword and his service to the steward of Gondor. Denethor, somewhat bemused, accepts the offer and has Pippin swear to him an oath of fealty. After an hour of speaking with Pippin, Denethor calls a servant to take Gandalf and Pippin to their quarters, saying that Gandalf can come to speak with him at any time. Gandalf shows some anger at being kept silent while Denethor has questioned Pippin, while Denethor suggests that Gan-

252   Lord of the Rings, The dalf merely wants to manipulate him. Denethor will continue to rule Gondor, he says, in his own way until the king returns. Gandalf snaps back that while Denethor is charged with keeping the kingdom of Gondor together until the king’s return, Gandalf himself has no interest in ruling Gondor or any other realm, but rather in preserving whatever good he can in Middle-earth through the dark times at hand—for, he says, he is also a steward. Pippin understands little of this, and after they are shown to their quarters, he asks Gandalf if the wizard is angry with him. Gandalf laughs and says that Pippin did very well in the interview, but he warns that Denethor is very perceptive and has a great talent for guessing men’s true thoughts. The blood of the great lords of Númenor runs in the steward’s veins, Gandalf says, as it does in his son Faramir’s, and Gandalf expresses the wish that Faramir be returned to Gondor. He warns Pippin to be careful in Denethor’s service. Then he leaves to take part in a council of war. He asks that Pippin check on Shadowfax to make sure he is being well cared for. After Gandalf leaves, Pippin is met by Beregond, one of the steward’s guardsmen, who has been assigned to give Pippin some instructions in the passwords he will need to know, as well as some of his duties as a member of the guard. Beregond has heard rumors of thousands of Halflings coming to the aid of the city, and Pippin has to disappoint him. He tells Beregond about his experiences so far, though he slips once in mentioning Aragorn, quickly covering by saying that he was merely another man who had come along. His chief questions have to do with when mealtimes are. After checking on Shadowfax, Pippin and Beregond look out over the land. Pippin sees the great plain of the Pelennor lying before the city and the curve of the River Anduin in the distance. He sees the ruin of the great city of Osgiliath, which Beregond tells him had been the old capitol of Gondor before it was captured and burned by the forces of darkness in the distant past. In his youth, Denethor had retaken the city, but the Nazgûl recently captured the far side of Osgiliath. Gondor still controls the near side, thanks to the valor of Boromir. Beregond and Pippin begin to discuss the imminent war, and

Beregond seems to have little hope for the coming struggle. Just then, one of the Black Riders passes far overhead on its monstrous flying steed, and Pippin and Beregond both feel terrible dread. When this has passed, though, Pippin says he will not yet despair—Gandalf fell and was raised again, he says, and so he will continue to have hope. After the noon meal, Beregond has to return to duty but tells Pippin to find his son, who will give him a tour of the city. Pippin finds the boy, Bergil, who at first thinks that Pippin is another boy. The two of them watch the gate as reinforcements arrive at Minas Tirith from the Outlands, mainly from the south. The most important of these are the forces of Dol Amroth, led by their prince. Several groups appear, but in every case there are fewer than had been hoped for or anticipated, because the southern lands are already under attack by an army from Umbar, one of the nations of men who have allied itself to Sauron. As evening falls, Pippin has his meal with Beregond and the rest of the guard in the citadel, and as he leaves to go back to his quarters, Beregond tells him that he will be summoned to Denethor in the morning. Pippin finds his lodgings, though all the lights of the city are out as a wartime precaution. Further, a black cloud seems to have descended on Minas Tirith. Gandalf finally arrives but is clearly fretting over the fact that Faramir has not yet returned. He tells Pippin to sleep and await Denethor’s summons. There will be no dawn, he says, because “The Darkness has begun” (45). Chapter 2 (“The Passing of the Grey Company”) returns to Aragorn, Théoden, and those left behind by Gandalf and Pippin. Théoden plans to lead his men to a muster he has called where all the forces of Rohan are to meet in preparation for marching to Minas Tirith. But Aragorn makes it clear he must go immediately to the White Tower, and Legolas and Gimli choose to accompany him. Merry would like to come along as well, but feels he may have obligations to Théoden. At first, they all travel with Théoden and his escort, but in the evening they hear the sound of hoofbeats behind them and turn to face the intruders. Éomer challenges the newcomers, demanding to know what their business is in Rohan. Their spokesman, Hal-

Lord of the Rings, The   253 barad, answers that they are Dúnedain, Rangers from the North, and are seeking Aragorn, for they have received a mysterious message that Aragorn is in need of his kinsmen, and that they should meet him in Rohan. Aragorn gladly greets the 30 kinsmen who have come to seek him. They are accompanied by Elladan and Elrohir, the sons of Elrond, who have also come to join Aragorn. Elrohir delivers a message from Elrond, telling Aragorn to “remember the Paths of the Dead” if he is in haste. Halbarad holds a staff with a standard wrapped about it, sent from Arwen. Aragorn tells Halbarad to hold onto the standard for now. That night, when they have returned to Helm’s Deep, Aragorn takes no rest but confers by himself with Halbarad all night. Gimli and Legolas discuss matters and come to realize that it was Galadriel who must have sent the message to Rivendell and the Rangers. As they meet Théoden for the midday meal, the king asks Merry to sit and speak with him, telling the hobbit that he would like his company and would like to make him his squire. Merry takes out his sword and lays it in Théoden’s lap, pledging fealty to the king of Rohan. When Aragorn returns from his consultation with his kinsman, he has decided on a desperate course. He cannot stay with Théoden and go to the muster of Rohan, because he believes he will arrive in Minas Tirith too late if he does. He will, instead, take the Paths of the Dead. Although he is warned that the living cannot travel that road, Aragorn believes that the heir of Isildur should be able to go that way in safety. He tells his friends that he has looked into the palantír, and when they are shocked at his presumption, he reminds them that the seeing-stone is in fact his own property by right. After a prodigious struggle, he was able to bend the power of the stone to his own will, and to reveal to Sauron something that the Dark Lord had not known before: that the heir of Isildur was alive, and that the Sword that was Broken had been reforged. Gimli wonders if Sauron may launch his forces all the sooner, and Aragorn responds that he hopes the new knowledge will provoke Sauron into rash decisions. He has also seen that a great host of men allied with Sauron is

approaching Minas Tirith from the south and may destroy the city before the Rohirrim can ride to help with the city’s defense. As for the Paths of the Dead, Aragorn recites an ancient prophecy that the dead will awaken when the king’s heir from the north summons them to the Stone of Erech. Aragorn then explains that in the last war with Sauron, Isildur had set up a black stone from Númenor on the Hill of Erech. On this stone, the men of the mountains had taken an oath that they would support Isildur in his war with the Dark Lord. But they broke their oath and failed to come when Isildur summoned them to battle, and as a result Isildur cursed them. They were never to have rest until they had fulfilled their oath. Thus, Aragorn, as Isildur’s heir, should be able to call the oathbreakers to allegiance at the Stone of Erech. Aragorn and his Rangers ride, with Legolas, Gimli, and the sons of Elrond, across the Mark of Rohan until they reach Dunharrow the next morning, where Éowyn has been left in charge of the women and children of Rohan. Éowyn, clearly attracted to Aragorn, is appalled at his decision to tread the Paths of the Dead. She begs him not to take that road, but he insists that he must, and when she cannot change his mind she begs to come with him. Aragorn tells her that her duty is to stay with her people, at which Éowyn bristles, claiming that she can handle herself in battle as well as a man. The next morning, Éowyn meets them, armed and on horseback. She begs Aragorn to take her with him, but once again he refuses and leaves with his Rangers while Éowyn watches as if made of stone. Down beneath the mountain outside of Dunharrow, Aragorn and his grey company enter the dark Paths of the Dead. Gimli is terrified, though Legolas, as an elf, has no fear of death. As the company rides through the darkness, they can hear the voices of an invisible army behind them. When they arrive at a large, open area, they come upon the mail-clad skeleton of a warrior who had died in the distant past, trying to hack his way through a locked stone door. Aragorn gazes at the bones, then declares that he cares not where the door leads, for that is not his errand. He announces that he is summoning the dead to the Stone of Erech.

254   Lord of the Rings, The The company rides on, out of the cave and into a ravine. They ride on for hours, the host of the dead trailing behind them with tattered banners flying. Finally, they reach the Hill of Erech and climb to its top, where before the great black stone, as tall as a man, Aragorn addresses the oathbreakers in a loud voice, demanding to know why they have come to this place. The answer comes in a single voice from the darkness: “To fulfil our oath and have peace” (63). Aragorn announces that he is Elessar, heir of Isildur, and will hold their oaths fulfilled once all servants of Mordor are driven from this country. At that, Halbarad unfurls the banner he has been carrying, and it is black. After camping that night at the Stone, the company moves south, traveling through the land where the inhabitants have fled to the hills at the rumor that the King of the Dead is approaching. They continue to move south toward the darkness of war. In chapter 3 (“The Muster of Rohan”), the narrative returns to Merry, who has been riding for two days on a small pony at Théoden’s side, telling him stories of the Shire as the king moves toward Edoras, where he has sent word that all the troops of the Mark are to muster. On the third day, Merry rides behind the king, worrying about Pippin and Gandalf, as well as Aragorn, Legolas, Gimli, and finally Frodo and Sam. As they travel on, they meet troops of Rohirrim traveling toward the muster at Edoras. Théoden learns that Gandalf has brought news to them of Théoden’s victory and of the muster. Théoden reveals that he plans to lead the army of Rohan into Gondor, though Éomer tries to persuade him to stay behind and let the younger men fight. At last, the king’s company arrives at Dunharrow, where they are greeted by a fully armed Éowyn, who meets them on horseback and tells Théoden that Aragorn has taken the Paths of the Dead, despite her attempts to dissuade him. At this, Théoden and Éomer are saddened, believing that Aragorn and his companions have gone to their deaths for no good reason, at a time when their prowess was most needed. The king and his troops stop at Dunharrow for the night, and Merry, as the king’s squire, serves him

at dinner, then sits at his side as Théoden tells of the legends associated with the Paths of the Dead, in particular of Baldor, son of Brego, who entered the Door to the Paths many generations before and was never heard from again. But Théoden remembers that Brego had gone with his son, and told how a strange man sat at the door and warned Baldor that the time had not yet come for the door to be passed. This gives Théoden some hope that perhaps Aragorn will be safe, since the time may now have come that was implied in that warning. The meal is interrupted when a messenger from Gondor arrives and is shown in to the king. At first Merry thinks that it is Boromir come alive again, but it is the herald Hirgon from Minas Tirith. He brings a red arrow, symbol of Gondor’s greatest need. Rohan’s help is needed as Minas Tirith stands in the utmost peril. Théoden assures the herald that Rohan is mustering all its forces even now, and that they should be ready to ride for Minas Tirith soon. He can bring 6,000 warriors, he says, and be at Minas Tirith in a week’s time. The herald protests that he fears this will be too late to save the city. The next morning, there is no dawn—the darkness coming from Mordor has engulfed Rohan as it has Gondor. Théoden and his men make for Edoras as swiftly as they can. Merry, whom Éowyn has outfitted with a helmet, shield, and leather armor at Aragorn’s request, is released from service by Théoden, who tells him that the Rohirrim must ride to Gondor with all the speed they can. Merry’s pony cannot keep up, and no rider can take him on one of the larger horses. He must therefore stay with Éowyn, who will remain behind to govern the people in the king’s absence. Merry protests that he has no wish to be left behind but wants to do his part in the war as his friends are doing. The king will not listen. On the ride to Edoras, Merry notices a slightly built young warrior looking at him. He is struck by the intense look in the rider’s eyes, which strikes him as the hopeless look of one seeking death. On they ride to Edoras, and the narrator cites 21 lines of verse that he says poets afterward wrote of the ride to Minas Tirith that Théoden led for five days and nights. When the company reaches Edoras,

Lord of the Rings, The   255 and the king unites his 6,000 warriors for immediate departure for Gondor, Théoden bids Merry farewell, despite the hobbit’s continued protests. But as the great host sets out, Merry is approached by the young warrior he had seen earlier on the ride. The warrior promises to take Merry on his own horse, concealing the hobbit under his cloak until they are well on their way. A will like Merry’s, the Rider says, should not be denied. And so Merry begins the arduous ride into Gondor. On the way, reports come to the king that orcs and other servants of Sauron are threatening Rohan itself, but Éomer says they must ride on now. They must go forward in haste, though hope begins to fail in their hearts. Chapters 4–7: The Battle of the Pelennor Fields  Gandalf rouses Pippin at the beginning of chapter 4 (“The Siege of Gondor”), giving him a small ration of breakfast before taking him to Lord Denethor. Pippin grumbles at the scanty rations, until Gandalf reminds him that it was his own recklessness that forced the wizard to bring him to Minas Tirith. When they appear before Denethor, the steward tells Pippin he will be the new esquire of his chamber and asks that Pippin sing him songs of the Shire for entertainment. Pippin doubts that this will be appropriate in such an exalted world, but Denethor sends him to the armory to be outfitted with the uniform of the Tower Guard—black with an image of the white tree on the surcoat. Pippin spends his first day in the steward’s service standing by and listening to Denethor’s consultations with Gandalf and with the other captains. He has a midday meal in the mess with Beregond, who is concerned that Faramir has not yet returned. Pippin remarks that Gandalf, too, is worried about Faramir. As they speak at the wall of the citadel, they hear the terrifying shriek of the Nazgûl. Looking down at the Pelennor Fields, they see five winged horrors circling a group of men galloping over the plain toward the city. When one of the men blows his horn, Beregond recognizes that it is Faramir leading a remnant of his company back to the city. As the men fall from their horses in terror, the five Black Riders swoop toward them, but suddenly Pippin sees Gandalf streaking toward the

men on Shadowfax. He fires a shaft of white light at one of the Nazgûl, driving him away, and then gathers Faramir onto Shadowfax, bringing him into the city with his men. Faramir is immediately escorted into the presence of Denethor, accompanied by Gandalf and Pippin. He is taken aback at the sight of Pippin, and reveals that he had seen two other Halflings on the mission from which he has just returned. He tells of his encounter with Frodo and Sam, and of their association with Gollum. Gandalf is disturbed to hear that they had planned to enter Mordor through Cirith Ungol, and asks when Faramir parted from them. Faramir says it has been only two days, and Gandalf surmises that there has not been enough time for them to have reached that dangerous pass yet, so the new offensive by Sauron must be unrelated to Frodo’s journey. Denethor, however, has understood more of Faramir’s story than expected. He berates Faramir for not bringing him the “mighty gift” that he may have had from Frodo. Denethor never names the ring but does seem to know the quality of Frodo’s burden. Boromir, he says, would have brought the talisman to him; it could have been hidden away, and used only when all else seemed lost for Gondor. He goes so far as to tell his son that he wishes it had been Faramir, and not Boromir, who was killed. He is angry and jealous of Faramir’s respect for Gandalf. Gandalf argues that, given the nature of the object, Boromir would not have brought the ring to him but would have claimed it for himself, and that no good could ever come from the ring. Further, Gandalf reminds Denethor that there are other realms than Gondor that must be considered. There is great strain, again, between the two old men, but finally Denethor relents somewhat, saying that there must not be division among the enemies of the Dark Lord. The meeting breaks up, and as they make their way back to their quarters, Gandalf wonders what has happened to make Sauron begin the war so soon—sooner, Gandalf is sure, than he intended. He guesses correctly that Aragorn may have challenged him through the palantír. Pippin asks Gandalf why Frodo might be traveling with Gollum. Gandalf replies that he sensed that Gollum would have some part to play, but does not

256   Lord of the Rings, The know whether it will be good or ill and worries about Frodo and Sam if Gollum proves treacherous. The following morning, Denethor summons Faramir and puts him in charge of defending Osgiliath, where he is certain the first wave of Sauron’s attack will come. Faramir, though still exhausted from his previous duties, accepts the assignment and rides off on what seems a suicide mission with as many men as can be spared. As he leaves, Gandalf warns him not to throw his life away, advising him that he will be needed in Minas Tirith before the end. The next day—the fourth since Pippin arrived at Minas Tirith—news comes from Osgiliath that the enemy has crossed the Anduin, and that Faramir’s men, outnumbered 10 to one, are retreating toward the city. Sauron’s troops are being led by the prince of the Nazgûl himself. When Gandalf hears this, he knows that he is needed more there than in the city, and he rides off toward Osgiliath. From the walls, Pippin sees red flashes erupting at the barricades that protect the Pelennor Fields. After some time, Gandalf himself rides back with some horsemen and wagons full of wounded men. He goes to Denethor, who is anxious to know whether Faramir has returned. Gandalf answers that Faramir is with the rear guard, trying to ensure an orderly retreat, having lost two thirds of his army. He warns that the chief Nazgûl is captain of the forces of Mordor, and Denethor taunts Gandalf, asking if he has returned because he was overmatched. Gandalf does not take the bait but does remark that ancient lore says the chief Ringwraith cannot be defeated by the hand of man. They go down, then, to observe the retreat. By now it has become a rout, but Prince Imrahil of Dol Amroth issues from the city with Gandalf and his men and is able to bring most of the retreating army into Minas Tirith. However, Faramir has been struck by one of the Nazgûl’s arrows. The prince retrieves Faramir’s unconscious body and brings him into the city. The city is now besieged by Sauron’s army of orcs. Although the walls of Minas Tirith are strong enough to resist any direct assault, Sauron’s troops have brought huge catapults with them and are able to launch burning missiles over the walls and into the first ring of the city. As the inhabitants

rush to put out the fires, the enemy begins launching new missiles that fill the people with despair: They are the severed heads of the men who fell at the defense of Osgiliath, their faces branded with the great red Eye, symbol of Mordor. In the meantime, Faramir lies near death in Denethor’s chamber, his grief-stricken father mourning at his side. He believes Faramir will die and that his line will end. He seems to have already given up on the city’s defense and blames Gandalf for his role. When members of the guard come to him with reports and asking questions about Gondor’s defense, he sends them away, saying he is beyond care. They can follow the “Grey Fool” Gandalf now for all he cares. Thus, it is Gandalf who takes command of the defense. He and the prince of Dol Amroth rush about Minas Tirith encouraging the troops, but morale sags when they are gone as the city’s defenders give way to despair. By the middle of the night, all of Sauron’s troops have crossed the Anduin, and they begin their full assault on Minas Tirith. Soon the first wall is breached, and the first circle of the city is on fire. When messengers report this to Denethor, he tells them simply to go back and burn. He then orders his servants to bear Faramir into the Hall of Kings, where his ancestors lie. They are to place Faramir on a marble bier and build up a pyre around it, to burn Faramir and himself. Pippin looks on with horror, convinced that the steward has gone mad. He tells the servants not to obey their lord, but they insist on carrying out his last orders. Pippin rushes from the chamber to find help and runs into Beregond. He tells Beregond what is happening, but Beregond hesitates to leave his post. Pippin says that he must choose between following orders and saving Faramir’s life. Then he rushes off to find Gandalf. Pippin reaches the great gate that guards the first ring of the city of Minas Tirith, in time to see the gate assaulted three times by a huge battering ram that the orcs name “Grond.” On the third strike, the gate is smashed, and the Lord of the Nazgûl, the disembodied wraith of the Witch-king of Angmar, enters the city. At his approach, the soldiers of Gondor panic and flee. Only Gandalf on Shadowfax waits to meet the Witch-king in

Lord of the Rings, The   257 an epic confrontation: “You cannot enter here,” he cries. “Go back to the abyss prepared for you!” (103). The Witch-king laughs and draws his flaming sword. But just at that moment, a cock crows in the city, and in the distance it is answered by the sound of horns. The Rohirrim have arrived. Chapter 5 (“The Ride of the Rohirrim”) begins the previous day when, after four days of riding, Merry is trying to rest as the Rohirrim make camp. He is feeling small and insignificant, like a piece of luggage. Dernhelm speaks very little, and the Riders of Dernhelm’s company seem to have agreed to ignore him rather than make it known to the king that Merry has come along against his orders. Merry is feeling lonely and wishes that Pippin were with him. As the army rests, Théoden and Éomer confer with Ghân-buri-Ghân, the leader of a tribe of wild men of the woods called Woses. The Woses are a tribe of small, gnarled men who have inhabited these lands since long before the Númenóreans came to Middle-earth. They have never been friends of the Rohirrim but fear and hate the orcs who now roam the hills. They are willing to ally themselves with Rohan, not to fight on their side in battle but to bring them information and guide them to Minas Tirith in a way that avoids the Dark Lord’s forces. They want the “gorguns”—the orcs— driven out. All they ask in return is to be left alone. All roads to Minas Tirith are blocked by orcs, Ghan-buri-Ghan tells Théoden, but he offers to guide the Rohirrim along a secret path that will lead the Riders to Minas Tirith while circumventing these known roads. Théoden agrees, and the Rohirrim break camp. Over the next several hours, Ghan-buri-Ghan leads them through the forest, and the Riders come out of the woods only a few miles from Minas Tirith not long before sunrise. Here Ghan-buri-Ghan takes leave of them, but not before he shares his sense that a change in the wind is coming—it will soon be blowing from the south, he says, and may blow away the dark gloom from Mordor that has been hanging over the land. As the Riders move forward, they discover the bodies of two men, one of whom is clutching the red arrow of Minas Tirith. Although the corpse has been beheaded, the Rohirrim realize that this

must be Hirgon, and that he did not reach Minas Tirith. Thus, Théoden realizes that Denethor never received the news that Rohan was coming, and the folk of Minas Tirith may be despairing of any help. Now the Rohirrim ride toward Minas Tirith, dispatching the small groups of orcs who, left behind to guard the series of walls before the Pelennor Fields, are not taking part in the assault on the city itself. As they ride, Dernhelm leaves his place in the ranks and moves close behind the king. Merry, riding with Dernhelm, now begins to wonder what indeed he can do in the coming battle, and he feels more and more like excess baggage. Now the Riders are within sight of the White Tower, and they see a flash of light as the outer wall is breached by the army of Mordor. Théoden bows his head, and Merry fears that they have come too late. But the wind does change, a breeze from the south begins, and the light of dawn breaks through the darkness. Théoden raises his head, blows his horn, and, chanting the lines of a battlepoem, charges forward, followed by the entire army of Rohan, who sing as they ride into battle. In the opening of chapter 6 (“The Battle of Pelennor Fields”), the war reaches its full fury as it erupts in the Pelennor Fields that lie before Minas Tirith. The Witch-king, disturbed by the light that has pierced the darkness before the Dark Lord had planned, and aware that his army has unexpectedly been set upon from behind, slips away from the gate of Minas Tirith and vanishes. Meanwhile, the Rohirrim are battling the Southron armies and winning the field from them. Suddenly, a huge, dark shape blocks out the sun above Théoden and his closest retainers. When they look up, they see a gigantic, featherless, birdlike creature on which rides the lord of the Nazgûl. The other Riders flee, either from fear or from an inability to control their terrified horses. Snowmane, Théoden’s horse, rears up and then falls, crushing the king beneath him. The monstrous flying steed lands, and the Witch-king moves toward Théoden to ensure his death. At that point, the young Dernhelm stands between the Nazgûl and his fallen lord. The only one of the king’s thanes who has not fled or been driven

258   Lord of the Rings, The off, he challenges the Witch-king. Merry, thrown from Dernhelm’s horse, is crawling unnoticed on his hands and knees, but he recognizes Dernhelm’s voice when he hears it. He looks and sees that same look of grim determination unto death that he had seen on the road from Dunharrow. At the challenge, the Witch-king scoffs, answering, “Come not between the Nazgûl and his prey!” (116). He advises the young warrior to step away, for no living man can harm the lord of the Nazgûl. At that, Dernhelm laughs, removing her helmet to reveal herself as Éowyn, princess of the Rohirrim. She is, she reveals, no man at all. At this, the Ringwraith hesitates. His winged steed moves to attack Éowyn, but with a swing of her sword, she beheads the beast. The incensed Nazgûl leaps from his mount and shatters Éowyn’s shield with a blow from his club, breaking her arm in the process. Merry, who has crept behind the Nazgûl, now strikes with his sword just as the Witch-king is raising his club for another blow. As the Nazgûl stumbles from Merry’s thrust to his leg, Éowyn thrusts her sword into the emptiness beneath the Nazgûl’s crown. The wraith’s armor now falls empty to the ground, and Éowyn falls as well, severely wounded. The dying Théoden, recognizing Merry, says he will not be able to sit in his hall and hear Merry tell tales of the Shire. He wishes he could see his dear Éowyn again, but he dies before he realizes that Éowyn is lying fallen beside him. As Merry looks about, he sees the white plume of Éomer leading the Rohirrim over their foes to the north, and sees Prince Imrahil of Dol Amroth leading the forces of Gondor from Minas Tirith, now beating the enemy from their gates. To the south, the men of Harad still threaten, and more soldiers are pouring onto the field from Osgiliath. But Éomer rides up, grieved to see his king lying near death. Théoden names Éomer his successor as king. When Éomer sees his sister lying in the dust beside the king, he grimly leads the Rohirrim in a frenzied attack on the enemy to avenge their deaths. Mourners carry the bodies of Éowyn and Théoden toward the city, but before they do, Prince Imrahil notices that Éowyn is still breathing and sends a messenger back to the city at full speed to bring aid for her before he rides off to the battle.

Before long, however, the battle turns against Rohan. Éomer’s berserk charge swept all away before him but soon had him surrounded, and other forces of Mordor are keeping Prince Imrahil’s army from joining forces with Rohan. As the battle turns, a fleet of black-sailed enemy ships is seen coming up the Anduin toward Minas Tirith. The forces of Minas Tirith, stunned and disheartened, turn back for the city, but Éomer battles on, laughing bitterly as he expects to die fighting. Suddenly, the lead ship raises a black banner bearing the symbol of the white tree of Gondor with seven stars and the crown of Elendil. It is the banner Arwen sent to Aragorn from Rivendell, the banner of Gondor’s king, and the ships are filled with Rangers and allies of Minas Tirith from the south. Aragorn comes ashore with his forces, and he and Éomer greet each other on the field of battle before rejoining the fray. The Dark Lord’s troops are astounded at the wizardry that has suddenly turned their ships into ships of Gondor. Aragorn, wielding the reforged sword of Elendil, drives all before him, and in the end, the forces of Mordor are chased from the battle, and Aragorn, Imrahil, and Éomer ride back to Minas Tirith. But they leave many fallen on the field, and the chapter ends with a dirge for Théoden and the fallen of Rohan. Chapter 7 (“The Pyre of Denethor”) returns to the moment when Pippin finds Gandalf facing down the lord of the Nazgûl. When he hears the horns of Rohan, Pippin is elated, but after the Ringwraith disappears and Gandalf is prepared to ride Shadowfax into the fray, he rushes to detain Gandalf and explains to him the urgency of saving Faramir from Denethor’s suicidal madness. Though he feels needed on the battlefield, Gandalf decides he must first save Faramir. Gandalf and Pippin arrive at the gate to the citadel and find Beregond gone, which gives them some hope that he has indeed left his post to try to prevent Denethor’s plan. But as they move forward, they find one of Denethor’s guards slain at the door leading to the steward’s halls. They pass on, racing toward the tombs of the dead kings, as Gandalf laments the enemy’s ability to sow division even here among those allied against him.

Lord of the Rings, The   259 When they reach the door to the tombs, they find Beregond with drawn sword, trying to prevent two of Denethor’s servants from bringing torches into the mausoleum to light Denethor’s pyre. Two others lie, already thwarted by Beregond’s sword. Gandalf, appearing in a flash of white light, cows the servants and prevents their approach to the tombs, but inside the mausoleum he finds Denethor, sword drawn, ready to fight anyone opposing his mad will. With a wave of his hand, Gandalf sends the sword flying from Denethor’s grip. The wizard rushes to the pyre on which Faramir has been laid and carries him down from the oil-soaked wood piled around the prince’s body waiting to be set afire. Faramir’s fever is already burning him, Denethor says, and all the world will soon be burning. Gandalf chides him for deserting his duty to defend the city, and declares that it is not Denethor’s place to decide when to die, still less to decide when his son is to die. At this, Denethor laughs and reveals that he has a palantír in his possession. Through the seeingstone, he says, he has learned that Mordor is invincible, and that there is no hope for the forces of the West. He has seen the enemy’s black ships coming up the Anduin, making for Minas Tirith. Those who do not wish to be slaves of the Dark Lord must die now, the steward claims. He accuses Gandalf of desiring power for himself, standing behind every throne in Middle-earth. Nor is he prepared to see his throne taken away from him by the “upstart” Aragorn. When Gandalf asks him what he desires, he answers that he wishes to rule over Gondor in peace, as in the past, and that if he cannot have that, he wishes to die. At those words, Denethor draws a knife and lunges toward Faramir’s body, but Beregond blocks his way. The frustrated Denethor blames Gandalf for stealing his knights from him, but vows that he will not let the wizard take away from him the right to determine his own end. He calls his two faithful servants to him, takes the torch from one of them, and leaps upon the funeral pyre, setting it alight. There, he burns to death. Gandalf chides Denethor’s servants for their blind abetting of their master’s suicidal madness, and advises that they learn from Beregond’s disobe-

dience, without which Faramir would now be dead. He and Beregond carry Faramir to the Houses of Healing, hoping that he will recover. But as they leave the tombs, the Hall of Stewards collapses from the flames. Suddenly, a loud scream is heard coming from the battlefield, and at that moment a great weight seems to be lifted from the hearts of the defenders of Minas Tirith. As Pippin and Beregond leave Faramir with the women in the Houses of Healing, Gandalf looks over the wall to the Pelennor Fields, and he is able to perceive through his own inner sight what has occurred on the battlefield— the destruction of the Witch-king as well as the fall of Théoden and of Éowyn. Certain he could have prevented the latter losses, Gandalf bemoans the fact that the enemy’s influence in Minas Tirith prevented him from getting to the battlefield earlier. The palantír is the channel through which that evil has come. Gandalf now understands Denethor’s madness. Desperate for information, Denethor had begun using the palantír after Boromir had left Minas Tirith. Too strong of will to succumb to Sauron’s power, Denethor nevertheless was allowed to see in the stone only those things that would cause him to despair. Now Gandalf decides to go down to the field with Pippin, advising Beregond that he will probably have to resign from the Guard but, on Gandalf’s recommendation, should be assigned to watch over Captain Faramir in the Houses of Healing. Chapters 8–10: Taking the War to Sauron’s Gates  In the eighth chapter (“The Houses of Healing”), Merry staggers into Minas Tirith, following the bodies of Théoden and Éowyn as they are carried into the city. His own arm pains him as it grows cold; he has been unable to move it since he stabbed the Nazgûl, but he has been overlooked by the men on the battlefield. On the streets of Minas Tirith, however, he runs into Pippin. Merry’s fellow hobbit is overjoyed to see him but is immediately concerned when he sees how weak and ill his friend is. Supporting Merry, Pippin begins to lead him to the Houses of Healing. On the way, they pass Bergil, and Pippin directs the boy to ask Gandalf to come. Merry can go no farther, and Pippin sits in the road with Merry’s head in his lap. Soon Gandalf

260   Lord of the Rings, The arrives and tenderly carries Merry to the Houses of Healing, remarking that the hobbit should have been brought into the city with great honor after his courage on the battlefield. Now Faramir, Éowyn, and Merry are all resting in the Houses of Healing. Faramir is burning with fever, but Merry and Éowyn suffer from a malady called the Black Shadow because of their contact with the Nazgûl, and it is a malady that the healers of Gondor cannot cure. The oldest woman in the house, Ioreth, remembers the old lore that says, “The hands of the king are the hands of a healer, and so shall the rightful king be known,” and she wishes for a king in Gondor. At that word, Gandalf leaves in haste. Outside the city walls, Aragorn makes his way toward the gates with Imrahil and Éomer. But he chooses to pitch tents and raise his banner outside the gates rather than enter, for he feels the time is not yet ripe. Imrahil and Éomer make their way to the citadel, where they find the steward’s chair empty and the body of Théoden lying in state. Éomer wants to know where his sister is. He is told that she still lives and is in the Houses of Healing, along with the steward of Gondor. Éomer, with a new hope awakened, makes his way to the Houses along with Prince Imrahil, and at the doors to the Houses, they meet Gandalf with a cloaked figure. From the wizard they learn of Denethor’s death and Faramir’s illness. Aragorn urges that Imrahil take temporary control of the city until the time is right for Aragorn to claim his throne, while all agree that Gandalf shall command all the forces of the West in the war with Sauron. As the four enter the Houses of Healing, Pippin greets Aragorn with great joy as “Strider,” and Imrahil is amused by the name. At this, Aragorn reveals the elfstone that he wears and declares himself Elessar, the Elfstone and Renewer, and his house shall be called Telcontar—“Strider” in the high tongue. He asks the old woman Ioreth for the herb athelas, known as kingsfoil, but she says that the healers know of no medicinal value to this herb and so do not keep any on hand. He asks her to bring any that can be found in the city, and bring it quickly. Aragorn now tells the others that Faramir is in most immediate danger, from a Southron

arrow and from grief and sorrow over his father’s rejection. Now the herb master enters, repeating that the herb known as kingsfoil has no medicinal value, though there is a doggerel verse about it that ends “Life to the dying / In the king’s hand lying!” Gandalf impatiently orders him to leave and find some. Aragorn kneels at Faramir’s side, hand on his brow, calling his name. Finally, the boy Bergil arrives with six leaves of kingsfoil. Aragorn crushes the leaves in boiling water, and the fumes revive Faramir, who immediately recognizes Aragorn as his king. When Aragorn comes to Éowyn, he recognizes that she will need a strong will to live, but that her unhappiness is deep. Éomer does not blame Aragorn for his sister’s unrequited love. Gandalf reviews her life, trapped taking care of an old man and poisoned by the wiles of Wormtongue. Aragorn believes her love for him is only the love of the promise of glory. He knows that he can wake her from her stupor, but he fears that if she wakens to despair, she will die. Using his kingsfoil leaves, he begins to bring her around, then leaves her chamber, telling Éomer to call her name. She wakens, hears of Théoden’s passing, and urges Éomer to make Merry a Rider of the Mark for his courage. In Merry’s room, Aragorn is able to heal the hobbit as well, whose first words as he awakens are that he is hungry. Merry mourns for Théoden and grieves that he will not be able to sit and smoke his pipe with the king, telling him tales of the Shire. Aragorn tells him to think of the king whenever he does smoke. When Aragorn leaves, Merry calls for his pipe. Aragorn tells the warden of the Houses of Healing that Faramir and Éowyn must remain there for several days, and that Faramir should not yet be told of Denethor’s death. Merry, however, will be ready to get out of bed tomorrow. Word has spread to the people of Minas Tirith that the king has returned, and as the night wears on, the people, calling him “Elfstone,” beg him to lay healing hands on their kinsmen who lie hurt and wounded. Aragorn sends for the sons of Elrond, and among the three of them they are able to heal many. But before dawn, Aragorn slips out of the city and back to his tent.

Lord of the Rings, The   261 In chapter 9 (“The Last Debate”), Gimli and Legolas enter Minas Tirith to seek out Merry and Pippin in the Houses of Healing. The companions are reunited joyfully. Merry and Pippin want to know about the Paths of the Dead, and while Gimli is loath to speak of the experience, Legolas relates how Aragorn roused the army of the dead and led them to the Anduin River, where they encountered the Corsairs of Umbar, the great fleet of Sauron’s forces who were assaulting Gondor’s allies to the south, cutting them off from joining the defense of Minas Tirith. Under Aragorn’s command, the army of ghosts attacked the enemy ships, driving the sailors into a terrified panic and causing them to flee or throw themselves overboard into the river. Aragorn subsequently released the Legion of the Dead from their oath and set them free from their age-long curse. Sauron’s ships, manned by Gondor’s allies who had been cut off before, now sailed up the Anduin under Aragorn’s authority with as much speed as could be mustered, Aragorn fretting all the time that they may be too late to save Minas Tirith. But, as Merry and Pippin knew, a fresh wind from the south had come up, scattering the darkness of Mordor and helping the ships to arrive just in time. At the end of their story, Legolas and Gimli find it remarkable that the very weapons of Mordor itself—darkness and terror—had been turned against the Dark Lord and had overcome his army. While the four friends are discussing their parts in the battle, Aragorn is holding a council of captains in his tent. Gandalf recalls for Aragorn, Éomer, and Imrahil the foreboding words of Denethor: “You may triumph on the fields of the Pelennor for a day, but against the Power that has now arisen there is no victory.” Denethor was not mistaken, Gandalf asserts, though his response was unfortunate. What Denethor saw in the palantír was the truth. The forces of the West cannot win a war against Sauron. Sauron has not even sent forth the greater part of his army. Gandalf has known this for some time. It is why the Council of Elrond chose to destroy the One Ring. If Frodo can succeed in destroying it, then Sauron’s power will be crushed. It is the only hope that the free peoples of Middle-earth have. If Sauron recovers the ring, then all hope is lost.

Gondor and Rohan can fortify their own strongholds and stave off the inevitable for a little longer, or they can follow Gandalf’s advice: Since Sauron expects the allies to follow up their victory at the Pelennor Fields with an attack by the new king who will wield the ring against him, if the captains launch an attack on Mordor now, it will distract the Dark Lord long enough to enable Frodo and Sam to complete their quest. The Eye of Sauron must be drawn away from his own lands to focus on the attack. In particular, he must believe that Aragorn is coming against him with the ring, moving with rashness and overconfidence before he has been able to master the use of the ring. Gandalf’s plan, then, is to use the armies of Gondor and Rohan as a decoy to give Frodo a chance to destroy the ring. Aragorn agrees to go immediately, but says he will not force anyone to come along who is unwilling. Imrahil declares that he recognizes Aragorn as king and will follow him wherever he leads. But as temporary regent of Minas Tirith, he insists that a force remain behind to protect the city from further attacks. Ultimately, the captains decide to set out in two days’ time to challenge the Gates of Mordor with a force of 7,000 men. When the army sets out from Minas Tirith two days later (at the beginning of chapter 10, “The Black Gate Opens”), Merry is forced to stay behind in the Houses of Healing. Pippin marches in the ranks of Gondor’s forces under the command of Prince Imrahil, while Legolas and Gimli ride with Aragorn. Imrahil ensures that some troops are left behind to protect the city as the relatively small force makes its way toward Mordor. They camp near Osgiliath on the first night, and though Aragorn sends out scouts, they encounter no enemy forces. On the second day of the march, the army turns aside from Minas Morgul, attempting to draw Sauron’s attention away from the path they know that Frodo has followed. On the third day, as they march closer to Mordor, Gandalf encourages the heralds to blow their trumpets and announce that the king of Gondor has come. Nothing greets them but silence. Two days after they have turned north from Minas Morgul, the army is attacked by a force of

262   Lord of the Rings, The orcs and Easterlings, but the army fights them off. Aragorn and the captains of Gondor are little heartened by this, as Aragorn believes that Sauron was simply testing them, trying to give them a false sense of security by allowing them to win an easy fight. But on the sixth day out from Minas Tirith, Nazgûl begin to follow the army’s movements. By this time, they have made their way to the Dead Lands, and the combination of the desolate country and the Ringwraiths overhead begins to prove too much for many of the young recruits. Aragorn allows the most frightened of them to turn back, though to save some of their honor, he orders them to take the island of Cair Andros in the Anduin River and hold it from the enemy. With the loss of these troops, Aragorn reaches the Black Gate with a force of fewer than 6,000. Aragorn approaches the Black Gate with Gandalf, Imrahil, and the sons of Elrond. Legolas, Gimli, and Pippin come along as representatives of their respective races, the free peoples of Middleearth. Their herald calls for Sauron to come out and submit to the army of Gondor. After some time, the black gate opens, and they are soon met by an envoy from within Mordor. It is the lieutenant of the dark tower of Barad-dûr, accompanied by a black-uniformed escort. After the lieutenant mocks Aragorn and his claims of kingship, Gandalf intervenes, warning the lieutenant that he and all of Sauron’s servants are in more peril than they know. At this, the lieutenant produces Frodo’s mithril coat and Sam’s sword along with his elven cloak from Lórien. At the sight of these, Pippin lets out a spontaneous cry, and although Gandalf silences Pippin, the cry has convinced the lieutenant that these items have come from someone of value to Gandalf and the rest. He tells them that the spy will be tortured mercilessly if Aragorn and Gandalf fail to accept Sauron’s terms, which include the army’s retreat, their recognition of Sauron’s sovereignty over all lands east of the Anduin, and their pledge to pay him tribute and never attack him again. A captain from Mordor will be appointed to rule Rohan from Isengard. Gandalf rejects the terms with anger and threatens the messenger, who, suddenly fearful, races back to the Black Gate as it opens and Sauron’s

army pours out. Gondor’s defenses are arrayed quickly, with Aragorn and Gandalf on one hill and the forces of Rohan and Dol Amroth on another. Pippin, who at first was shocked at Gandalf’s refusal to bargain for Frodo’s life, now stands in the fray next to Beregond among the forces of Gondor. They are beset by a force of hill trolls, one of whom attacks Beregond. Pippin manages to stab the troll with his sword and is nearly crushed when the heavy troll falls upon him. As he begins to lose consciousness, he imagines he hears a voice cry that the eagles are coming. Passing out, his last thoughts are that he has confused his own story with Bilbo’s adventure, long ago at the battle of the Lonely Mountain. Then his mind goes black. Book 6: The End of the Third Age Chapters 1–4: The Destruction of the Ring  In book 6, the narrative returns to Frodo and Sam, and in chapter 1 (“The Tower of Cirith Ungol”), Sam awakens to find himself outside the brazen underground gates of the tower, where the orcs have taken the unconscious Frodo. Convinced that he will not get into the tower by this gate, he makes his way up and out of the tunnel to search for another way in, wondering as he does so whether any of their friends give any thought to him and Frodo and their quest. The narrator assures us that Aragorn, now commanding the Black Fleet; Pippin, now watching Denethor’s madness; and Merry, now riding with the Rohirrim, all think of them. Unsure of his next move, Sam looks up at the tower from outside Shelob’s lair. Absently, he puts on the ring, immediately feeling its great weight. His vision turns hazy, but his hearing becomes acute. He can hear the orcs fighting among themselves in the tower. He realizes that the two orc captains, Shagrat and Gorbag, must at last have come to blows, but chiefly he fears for Frodo’s safety in such a situation. He runs over the crest of the mountain to seek entrance to the tower, and at that point he has crossed into Mordor itself. Removing the ring, Sam can now see the desolate land, the smoke-blackened sky, and Orodruin, Mount Doom, belching fire. Gazing at the full might of Cirith Ungol, he realizes with a start that this fortress had been built to keep enemies in Mor-

Lord of the Rings, The   263 dor, not out of it. The tower was the work of the men of Westernesse after the great battle at the end of the Second Age and was meant to prevent the servants of Sauron escaping, though ultimately the tower had fallen to those very servants. Sam begins to feel the hopelessness of his quest, and the lure of the ring begins to work on him. He imagines putting it on to become “Samwise the Strong,” gathering an army and subduing the Dark Lord and all his creatures. But ultimately Sam’s common sense and his devotion to Frodo enable him to resist the ring’s temptation and to realize that Sauron would immediately find and capture him if he used the ring. He eschews its use and walks toward the main gate to the tower to find his way in. Although no orcs defend the gate, it is guarded by two great stone figures with glowing eyes— Watchers who form a magical barrier to the Tower. Sam comes up against this invisible wall and cannot go any farther, but when he thinks to take out Galadriel’s phial, he holds it up, and its blaze of light enables him to push quickly through the gate and into the tower. The Two Watchers cry out as he enters, and Sam knows that his entrance cannot be a secret. But all he finds in the tower are the dead bodies of orcs of both camps, who have killed one another in a quarrel. Sam begins to move through the tower, assuming that Frodo will be kept far in the back and high up. He meets only one orc as he moves through the passage, and this one runs in fear when Sam draws Sting, assuming from his shadow that Sam is the great elf warrior that had killed Shelob. Sam chases the orc as he runs away, demanding to be shown the way up the tower. The bodies of the orcs have begun to make him fear that no one—including Frodo—is left alive in the fortress. Finally, after climbing several hundred steps, Sam hears voices. He finds the door to the chamber and hears Shagrat speaking to the orc who had fled from him. The wounded Shagrat threatens the other orc, Snaga, demanding that he take the news of Frodo’s capture to Sauron. When Snaga defies him, Shagrat chases him out of the room. Sam watches him as he puts down a small packet and draws a long knife, looking after the fleeing Snaga,

when to Sam’s astonishment one of the bodies in the room rises and crawls toward Shagrat, holding a spear. But Shagrat turns in time to see him. It is Gorbag, and Shagrat tramples his body and slashes it with his knife to ensure Gorbag is dead. Sam decides to seize the moment to spring on Shagrat, to take him by surprise while brandishing Sting. Shagrat holds onto his bundle and, unable to fight while he holds it and cowed by the invisible power of the ring, the orc pushes by Sam and flees down the stairs. Sam is tempted to follow but decides he must first find Frodo. However, his search seems fruitless. After climbing another dark stairway, he comes to a dead end, and, sitting down in frustration, he suddenly begins to sing. His song grows stronger until he realizes that he can hear another faint voice singing along. At that, he hears a door open in the passage above him and the voice of Snaga telling the voice to keep quiet. Sam sees a light and looks into an open doorway, where he sees Snaga bring a ladder, and finally Sam understands that Frodo is being kept in a chamber that can only be reached through a trapdoor into the tower’s topmost chamber. As he hears Snaga threatening his master and flogging him with a whip, Sam rushes up the ladder, slashing Snaga’s whip hand from his arm with a blow from Sting. The orc rushes at Sam, bowling him over, and in the struggle Snaga falls to his death through the open trapdoor. Sam finds Frodo naked, beaten, and lying semiconscious on a heap of rags. He can hardly believe that Sam has rescued him, as he cowers in the corner of the room. Frodo is in despair that he has lost the ring and has failed in his quest, but Sam reveals that he has saved the ring, at which Frodo is at first elated but then momentarily turns against him suspiciously. He apologizes as he takes the ring from Sam, but there are awkward moments as Sam suggests that, the burden being so very heavy, he might help Frodo carry it at times. Frodo then reacts with anger, seeing Sam as a thieving orc that wants to steal his precious ring. When that temporary quarrel has subsided, Sam leaves Frodo in order to find something for the two of them to wear that might disguise them as they make their way through Mordor.

264   Lord of the Rings, The When Sam returns, he calls up to Frodo, using the elvish cry Elbereth as a password, since no orc would utter it. A disgusted Frodo sees that Sam has brought orc clothing, armor, and helmets for the two of them to wear. Sam packs his elvish cloak in his backpack and, after eating a bit of what is left of Faramir’s provisions and leftover crumbs of the elvish lembas, the two hobbits set out. Once more using Galadriel’s phial, they pass the gate of the Two Watchers by crying out elvish phrases as they pass. But when they run through the gate, they hear a crack as the keystone in the gate’s arch crashes down, the Watchers begin to wail, and from the dark sky the cry of a Nazgûl answers as the wraith plummets down moments after Frodo and Sam have escaped the tower. As chapter 2 (“The Land of the Shadow”) opens, Frodo and Sam run from Cirith Ungol as quickly as they can while the Nazgûl perches on the ruined gate and screams an alarm. The hobbits are escaping along a path cut into the mountains, and they fear that they will be found out, even in their orc garb, since they are running from rather than toward the alarm. They wish they could get off the path, but since they are moving along a cliff, that would only be possible if they had wings. As a bell rings and the sound of horns issues from Cirith Ungol, Frodo and Sam come to a long bridge, which they begin to scurry across. Before reaching the end, however, they hear the sound of orcs approaching from the other side, and they jump off the bridge, fortunately dropping only a dozen feet into a patch of thorny bushes. From here they scramble down the rocks to the valley and begin to head north rather than making directly for Mount Doom, since they are trying to avoid orcs who might be searching for them. The terrain is rough and waterless, and Frodo is forced to stop after a short way because he is unable to keep going with the weight of the ring compounded by the heavy orcish mail he is wearing. Frodo has lost hope and cannot even bring to mind his memories of the Shire, but he feels he must go on as long as he has the ring. He removes the mail shirt and wears Sam’s elven cloak instead, and they continue moving, Sam wishing that he could stand before Galadriel and ask for some light and some freshwater.

As they move northward along an orc path, the sun appears in the east, and the darkness seems to clear from the western skies. Sam feels uplifted and says he feels a change in the wind. Not long after, they hear from far off in the west the death cry of the Witch-king. Sam feels a new hope, but Frodo still feels only the burden of the ring—they must go east, he tells Sam, not west. They eat a few morsels of lembas, but soon after, they come across a small stream of freshwater, where they are able to quench their thirst and refill their water bottle. Sam is overjoyed and hopes sometime to be able to tell the Lady about the light and water they have received. After moving on some way, Frodo decides it is time for them to turn east, but he wants to rest in a hole in the cliffs for a while first. They climb to a hiding place, where they eat half of what is left of Faramir’s provisions and drink a little more. They know they are about to cross the dry and terrible plain of Gorgoroth that lies before Orodruin. While Frodo sleeps, Sam looks out on the land, then looks to the west, where he sees a bright star in the sky. Its beauty reminds him that there is a goodness that the darkness of Mordor can never obliterate. He begins to worry less about his own fate or Frodo’s, and drops off to sleep. In the morning, after a small breakfast, Frodo and Sam climb to where they can look down on Gorgoroth. They see Mount Doom still 40 miles away, across the broad land where a few villages can be seen, as well as regiments of Sauron’s army. Frodo sees no hope of reaching the mountain, but he insists on pressing on. However, he cannot see a way down and so decides to go farther north before turning east. They trudge farther along the valley, where they hear the voices of two orcs and hide. The orcs argue about having lost the scent of the great elf warrior or whatever it is they are supposed to be tracking, and they also refer to a creature that has escaped from them; their description makes it clear this was Gollum. Finally, one of the orcs repeats the rumor that the chief Ringwraith has been killed. After the orcs pass, Frodo and Sam discuss the antagonism all orcs seem to feel toward one another. Sam also tells Frodo that he knew Gollum was still alive. When Frodo asks how he knew, Sam tells him all he knows of Gollum’s

Lord of the Rings, The   265 betrayal of them to Shelob. Then the hobbits start off again. The exhausted Frodo tells Sam that Sting is now his, for he does not feel that he will be able to strike a blow with it again. The hobbits move by night, and in the morning they rest. Sam asks how much longer it will take to reach the mountain, and Frodo reckons that, with going north and then crossing the plain, it will be another week. Sam recognizes that they will run out of food before reaching the mountain. Frodo agrees to try to walk faster, though the weight of the ring wears on him more and more. After trudging through one more night, they come to what seems a dead end. They can go no farther on their present course without walking straight into an orc stronghold. But if they take the road that they see winding down to the plain, they will be in the direct view of orc fortifications in the area. Sam feels that they must chance the road, and Frodo is willing to follow but must rest first. Sam gives him a few crumbs of food and the last of their water, and while Frodo sleeps, he goes in search of water in the vicinity. He finds a small stream and drinks, filling his water bottle, but when he turns back, he catches a glimpse of a shadowy creature lurking near Frodo’s hiding place. When he comes back to Frodo, he wakes him, telling him that he has seen Gollum, and that they must not both sleep at the same time. He asks Frodo to watch while he sleeps, since he cannot keep his eyes open. Frodo starts awake, having fallen asleep despite himself. He finds that the water bottle is empty, but he sees no sign of Gollum. He and Sam begin down the path toward the plain and have gone some 12 miles when they hear the sounds of orcish troops behind them on the road. They have a steep drop on one side and a cliff wall on the other, and so they have nowhere to run. Assuming they will be taken, they sit at the side of the road, pretending to be tired orc soldiers having a rest. The commander of the orc company assumes they are deserters and rouses them, taking them with him to rejoin their company in Udûn, the dark vale between the Black Gate of Mordor and Carach Angren, the fortress guarding the passage from Gorgoroth to the gate. Sam and Frodo are forced to move quickly to keep pace, and Frodo is hardly able to stand when the

company they are with meets several other companies at a crossroads. In the confusion and orcish quarreling that follows, Sam and Frodo are able to crawl away unnoticed in the darkness. When they have reached a hiding place away from the road, Frodo collapses as if dead. In chapter 3 (“Mount Doom”), as the next morning dawns and Sam gazes out on the barren landscape and calculates how long it will take to reach the mountain, he comes to the grim realization that he and Frodo will barely have enough food to get there. There will be nothing for the return journey, even if they are still alive. Resigned but more resolute than ever to see the task through to completion, he rouses Frodo. The two hobbits make their way over the rugged plain of Orodruin, moving parallel to the road from hollow to hollow to try to stay hidden, although they see no sign of orcs or men as they trudge wearily toward the Cracks of Doom. The physical and psychological weight of the One Ring becomes heavier and heavier on Frodo, who can no longer remember much of the past but can only see in his mind’s eye a wheel of fire. Sam offers to carry the ring for a time, but Frodo refuses angrily, then admits that he cannot let anyone else have it. Eventually, the hobbits are forced to lighten their load. They decide they will need nothing for the return trip since there will be none, and they will need no armor since they will be too weak to fight if found out. They cast off their orc armor and anything in their packs that is not absolutely necessary, keeping only what is left of their food, the sword Sting, Galadriel’s phial and rope, and the box she had given Sam. They move on unseen as Aragorn and Gandalf lead the armies of the West toward the Black Gate, and Sauron’s eye is turned in that direction. After three days of dragging themselves across the rugged terrain of Orodruin, Frodo and Sam have reached the foot of Mount Doom, but the weary Frodo collapses and can go no farther. Sam, who has grown more and more determined as they have approached the mountain, now lifts Frodo on his back and carries him up the slope, telling Frodo that if he cannot carry the ring itself, he will carry it along with its master. He finds the burden much lighter than he expected, partly because Frodo is

266   Lord of the Rings, The worn and gaunt from his struggle and lack of food, and partly because Sam’s spirit has given him a newfound strength this close to the conclusion of the quest. When Sam is spent, they rest, and he notices that Sauron’s road to the volcanic peak is only a little above them. He and Frodo crawl over the rocks to reach the road. Here, looking east, Frodo glimpses the tower of Barad-dûr and the great Red Eye of Sauron, gazing north toward the Black Gate. Frodo, believing he has been seen, collapses. He falls to the ground and cries to Sam to help him. Sam holds Frodo’s hands, then lifts his master once more on his shoulders and begins to carry him along the road. At last, the hobbits are within sight of the volcanic fissure. But suddenly, something crashes into Sam from behind, knocking him down. It is Gollum Now frantically aware of Frodo’s intentions, Gollum attacks Frodo, calling him a wicked master and a cheat. The two struggle, Frodo showing surprising strength in defense of the ring, and Gollum worn down by strain and privation. Frodo throws Gollum off, commanding him to get down and to “Begone, and trouble me no more!” Frodo backs away, and Sam comes between him and the creature, telling his master to move on, for he will deal with Gollum. Frodo moves along the path toward the cliff looking over the Cracks of Doom while Sam threatens Gollum with his sword. But Gollum pleads for his life, and Sam, having seen and felt for himself the power of the ring, has a new sympathy for the creature whose life was so grotesquely distorted by that power. He tells Gollum to be off, and to stay away or he will not be merciful again. Gollum moves away, and Sam turns to rush after Frodo, failing to see Gollum turn and slink stealthily behind him. When Sam catches up with Frodo, he finds his master standing on the edge of the precipice, and here, finally, at the end of the quest, the power of the One Ring at last overcomes Frodo. In a strong and commanding voice, Frodo asserts that he chooses not to do what he came for, and he claims the ring as his own. Placing it on his finger, Frodo disappears. But at that moment, the great Eye of Sauron is drawn toward Mount Doom, and the

Dark Lord realizes his terrible miscalculation. In something like a panic, he sends all of the Nazgûl speeding toward Frodo as fast as they can fly. But at the same moment, Sam is again struck from behind, and when he looks up he sees Gollum struggling madly with an invisible adversary. To Sam’s horror, he sees Gollum viciously bite an invisible object, and suddenly Frodo is visible once more and Gollum stands triumphantly holding the ring, having bitten Frodo’s finger off to obtain it. While Frodo has fallen to his knees, his hand bleeding, Gollum holds the ring aloft to gaze at it, dancing about until suddenly he stumbles over the cliff and falls, holding the ring and crying “Precious,” into the Cracks of Doom. Now, as the mountain begins to shake violently, Sam picks up Frodo and rushes out into the daylight. The fire that erupts from the mountain consumes the Nazgûl as they are caught in the conflagration and disintegrated. The hobbits huddle on the side of the mountain, expecting to be swept away momentarily with the destruction of Orodruin. Frodo’s hand is forever maimed, but he has come to himself again, relieved that the quest has been achieved. He was not strong enough to destroy the ring himself, but he marvels that Gandalf’s words have proved prophetic: Indeed, Gollum had an important part to play before the end of the story, and so Frodo believes they should forgive him. But he tells his faithful servant that he is happy to have Sam with him now, “at the end of all things” (225). As chapter 4 (“The Field of Cormallen”) opens, the narrative returns to Gandalf, Aragorn, and the armies of the West in their desperate battle at the Black Gate. Surrounded by countless orcs and men allied with Sauron, Aragorn and the other captains fight a desperate battle in the north of the battlefield, while Gandalf stands calmly in the midst of the turmoil, looking to the sky. Suddenly, he cries out that the eagles are coming, as from the north Gwaihir the Windlord, lord of the great race of eagles of Middle-earth, arrives with an army to take part in the struggle. The folk of the West are heartened by this, but at the same time Sauron’s army suddenly becomes aware of the turning of Sauron’s attention away from the battle—for his Eye has, of

Lord of the Rings, The   267 course, been drawn suddenly to the Ring-bearer on Mount Doom. The forces of the Shadow suddenly begin to falter in their will, and when the Nazgûl leave the field, the hosts of Mordor are overcome with fear. When a great roar issues from the mountains of Mordor, Gandalf announces in a great voice that the ring has been destroyed, and that Sauron’s power has ended. For the most part, the armies of Mordor turn and flee at the news. Though Gandalf knows that Sauron’s realm is falling apart, he has not forgotten that Frodo and Sam may still be alive and may need a quick rescue from the crumbling of Mordor. He leaves Aragorn to deal with the Southron and Easterling men who have chosen to put up a defense after all and asks Gwaihir to bear him once again, and to bring two of his most trusted eagles along to search the wreckage of Mount Doom for any survivors. Meanwhile, Frodo and Sam have tried to climb off the mountain but have been trapped by the flow of lava below them. As they sit, awaiting their doom, Sam wonders how the songs will tell their story after they have perished. But Gwaihir, swooping toward the erupting Mount Doom with great speed, spots them huddling unconscious against the mountainside, and his two companions swoop down and pick the hobbits up before they can be harmed. When Sam awakens, he is in a soft bed, and for a moment he believes that he has been dreaming. But when he turns over and finds Frodo lying next to him, he sees that his master’s hand is missing a finger and realizes the entire quest was real. He also finds that Gandalf is waiting in the room with them, and Sam is overjoyed, having still believed, of course, that the wizard had died in Moria. The great Shadow has departed, and they are in Ithilien, Gandalf informs Sam—the eastern part of the kingdom of Gondor. It is two weeks since the fall of Sauron (on March 25), which will forever after mark the beginning of the New Year in Gondor. The king, Gandalf says, is waiting to see the two of them, and he says they should come dressed in the clothes they wore into Mordor. When they rise to follow him, Gandalf also shows them that he has saved their two gifts from the Lady Galadriel— Frodo’s phial and Sam’s box.

When Gandalf leads Frodo and Sam out onto a green lawn to an opening in the wood, they are greeted by a great crowd of knights who bow to them with honor. Trumpets are blown, and the people greet the hobbits with applause and with music. When they reach the throne, they are surprised to see that it is Aragorn himself—Strider, as Sam calls him—who seats them together on the throne as the place of honor. Now a minstrel of Gondor approaches and, to Sam’s great delight, sings to them a lay of “Frodo of the Nine Fingers and the Ring of Doom.” A great celebratory feast follows, during which Frodo and Sam are able to reunite with Legolas and Gimli. Two esquires appear to serve the head table, one in the livery of Rohan and the other in that of the guards of Minas Tirith, and Sam remarks on such young boys serving in the army, then recognizes that the two servers are actually Merry and Pippin. The old friends exchange stories of their adventures, and we learn that Gimli had saved Pippin at the Black Gate by pulling him from under the dead troll the hobbit had killed in the thick of the battle. Sam is astounded by Merry and Pippin’s size, for they seem to have grown three inches apiece since he last saw them. Gimli remarks that it is the result of drinking ent draughts. Finally, Gandalf advises Frodo and Sam that they should return to bed. The hands of the king are the hands of healing, Gandalf remarks, but the hobbits had been so close to death that Aragorn had a very difficult time calling them back from the brink, and Gandalf believes that Frodo and Sam should get some more rest now. All of the friends go to their beds, except Legolas, who requires only to relax his mind, which he does by walking in the fair woods of Ithilien. Legolas remarks, though, that the proximity of the Anduin increases his longing for the sea and the desire to sail into the West like the rest of his race. Frodo and Sam continue to recuperate in Ithilien for many days, always hearing more of the great adventures their friends have had. Meanwhile, Aragorn has been making ready for his army’s return to Minas Tirith, and he plans to set out on the first of May to march to the city as its rightful king.

268   Lord of the Rings, The Chapters 5–9: The End of the Third Age  Chapter 5 (“The Steward and the King”) returns to Minas Tirith, where the people wait anxiously for news from the front. Particularly anxious is Éowyn, Lady of the Mark, who is restless in the Houses of Healing. Hoping to get news of Aragorn and keen to go into battle herself, she asks the warden for news of the war and longs for something to do to help the city. The warden tells her that Faramir is in charge as steward of the city, and she insists on being brought to him. Faramir is also in the Houses of Healing, recovering from his wounds and eager himself for news from the East. When the warden brings Éowyn to him, he is walking in the garden. He sympathizes with Éowyn, who wants to be allowed to leave the Houses of Healing, but he says he trusts the warden, who does not believe she is ready yet to be released. She expresses the wish to be able to look eastward, and Faramir tells her she is welcome to walk in the garden, where she can look to the east. He expresses the wish that she will walk with him, because her beauty is a comfort to him. Éowyn thanks him for permission to walk there but declines his invitation to keep him company. Faramir consults with the warden and with Merry to learn all he can about the Lady of Rohan. He realizes that she loves Aragorn hopelessly, and that her wish has been to die in battle. Éowyn gradually begins to walk more regularly with Faramir, and he gives her a blue mantel of his mother’s to keep her warm on their walks. Suddenly, they see a dark cloud rise from the east. They are momentarily frightened, but the wind blows the cloud away, and in that moment an inexplicable mood of joy sweeps over all of Minas Tirith. Faramir kisses Éowyn’s brow, and the men of the city break into spontaneous song. Shortly after, an eagle arrives in the city, bringing the news that “the Dark Tower is thrown down,” that “the Black Gate is broken,” and that “your King shall come again.” The eagle exhorts the city to “Sing and be glad” (241). During the days that follow, the city celebrates. Merry is sent to help bring supplies to the army, and Faramir assumes his duties as steward. Éomer has sent for Éowyn, but she refuses to leave and seems distressed as she walks in the garden until

Faramir comes to visit her. He guesses that her refusal to travel east results either from the fact that it was Éomer, not Aragorn, who sent for her, or from her reluctance to leave Faramir. The lady says she wants no man’s pity, and Faramir understands that this is what Aragorn has given her. But he tells her that his love has nothing to do with pity but with respect for her valor and nobility. At this declaration of his love, the shadow passes from Éowyn’s heart, and she realizes her love for the steward. She agrees to marry him. After weeks of joyous preparation, the company returns from the East. Lord Aragorn steps forward from the host and advances to the gate, where he is met by Faramir, who cries out to the crowd that the king has returned to claim his throne. He asks the multitude if the king shall enter the city, and they cry out “yea!” Then Faramir has a casket brought forth containing the age-old crown of Eärnur, the last king of Gondor, white with wings adorned with silver and pearls. Aragorn, taking the crown, recites the words that Elendil spoke when he landed in Middle-earth after the fall of Númenor: “Out of the Great Sea to Middle-earth I am come. In this place will I abide, and my heirs unto the ending of the world” (246). But Aragorn will not place the crown on his own head. He asks for Frodo to bear the crown to him, and for Gandalf to crown him. Thus, he begins his reign. The reign of Aragorn is a renaissance for Minas Tirith, as the walls are rebuilt, trees are planted, and fountains are built throughout the city. Envoys come from distant countries, and Aragorn forgives those men who fought for Sauron if they come before him suing for peace. The office of steward of Gondor he maintains, and he gives Faramir Ithilien to rule, where Éowyn agrees to live with him. On May 8, the Rohirrim leave to return to the Mark, and the sons of Elrond ride with them. But although the hobbits begin to feel a desire to return to the Shire, Aragorn persuades them to stay a bit longer, promising that a great day is coming and that he wants all of his friends present for it. One morning, as midsummer is approaching, Gandalf leads Aragorn outside the city to a mountainside, where he speaks to the king about the future. The Third Age is over, he says, and the

Lord of the Rings, The   269 Fourth Age, the Age of Men, has begun. The Eldar will all be leaving Middle-earth before long, for with the destruction of the One Ring, the power of the three elven rings is now no more. Gandalf, too, must pass from Middle-earth, for his purpose here was specifically to combat Sauron. But Aragorn expresses his concern for the future of his kingdom, knowing that he is not immortal and that he has no heir. As they move along a snowy path together, Aragorn is shocked to find a sapling of the White Tree, the ancient symbol brought from the West by Elendil and his sons. This is the sign he has been waiting for—the sign of the Kingdom of Gondor and the line of its king, now wondrously restored like this tree, whose seed must have lain in the earth for ages before sprouting. Aragorn brings the sapling into the city, removes the remains of the dead tree before the Citadel, and replaces it with the new sapling. The sign is fulfilled the day before Midsummer, when a company of Eldar approaches the city. Elrohir and Elladan, sons of Elrond, lead the company bearing a banner of silver, followed by Glorfindel and all the household of Rivendell, and by Galadriel and Celeborn on white steeds with a great grey-clad company from Lothlórien. At the end of the procession rides Arwen Evenstar, accompanied by her father, Elrond, bearing a scepter. When the king welcomes them, Elrond surrenders the scepter, and Arwen herself, to Aragorn. Aragorn then marries Queen Arwen on Midsummer’s Day, and all of Minas Tirith rejoices. In chapter 6 (“Many Partings”), Frodo comes to King Elessar (Aragorn) and Queen Arwen to let them know that he and the other hobbits wish to return home to the Shire. But first, he wishes to visit Rivendell to see Bilbo. The king and queen understand, and Arwen makes Frodo a gift of a white gem that he may wear around his neck, telling him that the stone will be a comfort when dark memories trouble him. She also tells him that she has made the “choice of Lúthien”: She will not return to Rivendell with her father, and will not pass over the sea to the West when the Eldar make that journey. Instead, she gives Frodo her place on that journey if he desires it. Aragorn also tells Frodo that he and the queen will accompany them

as far as Rohan, since they will be traveling there for the funeral of Théoden. A few days later, Éomer arrives with a company from the Mark to carry the body of Théoden home to rest among his ancestors. Éomer is impressed by the elven women he sees, and he asks Gimli if the dwarf’s axe is handy, for he has now seen Galadriel and refuses to admit she is the fairest lady living. That honor, he avers, must go to the Lady Arwen. Gimli excuses him, saying that Éomer has chosen the Evening while the dwarf has chosen the Morning. Soon after, the company travels toward Rohan, and Merry, as the king’s squire, rides with Théoden’s bier, holding his coat of arms. As the company passes through the grey wood north of Gondor, a herald calls that King Elessar gives the forest to Ghân-buri-ghân and his people. After 15 days, the company reaches the Mark, and a state funeral is held for Théoden, at which poetry is sung and Merry weeps. At the feasting after the funeral, Éomer announces that the Lady Éowyn is to be the wife of the new steward of Gondor. After the feasting, the folk of Rivendell and of Lórien take leave of Rohan and Gondor. Arwen spends a long time speaking with her father alone in the hills, and no one knows what they say to each other. Since the hobbits will be going with Gandalf and Elrond to Rivendell, Éowyn gives Merry a parting gift: a horn that is an heirloom of the royal house of Rohan, whose sound will hearten his friends and discomfort his foes. The company spends two days at Helm’s Deep after leaving Edoras, and here Legolas fulfills his promise to visit the glittering caves with Gimli, though he is able to say little about them afterward. From here, the travelers come to Isengard, where they meet again with Treebeard. The ents have turned Isengard into a beautiful natural park. Treebeard tells Gandalf how he passed on news of the war to Saruman when the fallen wizard would come to the window of his prison in Orthanc. Finally, Treebeard reveals that he released Saruman and Wormtongue from their prison, since they seemed impotent now and the ent could not stand to see living things caged. Gandalf is anxious about this news because he still believes Saruman is capable of

270   Lord of the Rings, The mischief, particularly for anyone within the sound of his voice. He suspects Saruman’s release has been the result of this voice having had its effect on Treebeard. Isengard itself by right has now reverted to the king, who gives it to Treebeard and the ents so long as they agree to keep an eye on Orthanc. Now Legolas and Gimli take their leave of the rest of the company, so that Gimli can repay the elf and explore the ancient trees of Fangorn with him before they make their way back to Mirkwood and the Lonely Mountain. Merry and Pippin have a last drink of ent draught before saying good-bye, and Treebeard reminds all the travelers to send word if they hear anything of the lost entwives in their countries. Traveling north, the company comes upon two old ragged men making their way along like beggars. These are, they find, Saruman and Gríma Worm­tongue. Gandalf once again offers mercy to Saruman, and Galadriel supports him, but Saruman is too bitter and resentful to accept any help from those he deems his enemies. Though he seems powerless, he spitefully vilifies the hobbits, and though Merry offers him some pipeweed, Saruman hints that the hobbits may find things changed in the Shire when they return. This disturbs the hobbits, and Sam in particular worries about getting back as soon as possible. Saruman and Gríma head off in another direction rather than go the way that Gandalf’s company is going, and as they move off, Gríma grumbles that he hates Saruman and wishes to leave him, but when Gandalf says, “Then leave him!” Gríma keeps moving ahead fearfully. The travelers continue north, and the folk of Lórien depart for their own country. Those who remain finally reach Rivendell and find Bilbo looking very old in a small room in the House of Elrond, surrounded by paper and pencils. He is happy to see them, particularly since the next day is his birthday. He will be 129 and hopes ultimately to live to 131 and surpass the Old Took as the longest-lived hobbit. All of Rivendell celebrates Bilbo’s birthday the next day. In the days that follow, the hobbits tell Bilbo all about their adventures, but he keeps falling asleep, and it is clear he will never write the story of their quest. After two weeks, Frodo knows he must get back to the Shire, and Bilbo gives him

three books of lore that he has translated from elvish, asking Frodo to complete the editing of them. He himself will not return to the Shire, Bilbo says, for he is now too old to travel. He bestows gifts on the hobbits before they depart, giving Frodo his sword Sting and his mithril coat (forgetting he had already done so earlier). He gives Sam a bag of gold from Smaug’s treasure, and to Merry and Pippin he gives pipes made for him by the elves. But the giving of gifts reminds Bilbo to ask what has happened to his old ring, and Frodo tells him he has lost it. Then Bilbo remembers that Frodo’s task had been to lose the ring. Frodo promises to come back to show Bilbo his story once he has written it, but the next day, as they bid farewell, Elrond tells Frodo in private that he need not return to Rivendell, for in autumn the following year, he himself will pass through the Shire with Bilbo. The hobbits begin the last leg of their journey, from Rivendell back to the Shire, accompanied only by Gandalf, who has decided to pay a visit to his old friend Butterbur at Bree. Chapter 7 (“Homeward Bound”) opens as they begin their trek. Not long into the journey, however, comes October 6, the anniversary of Frodo’s near-fatal wound on Mount Weathertop, and all that day his shoulder pains him and a shadow is upon him. Some wounds, Gandalf tells him, can never be completely healed. These feelings are gone by the next day, however, and for the rest of the journey the companions enjoy a leisurely ride, except when they actually ride by Weathertop itself, and Frodo cannot bear to look at it. When the companions arrive at Bree, they are somewhat discomfited to find that the once friendly and boisterous town now is secured by strong gates and vigilant guards. When they look in at the Prancing Pony, Butterbur and Nob are very happy to see them, but the inn appears to be doing little business, with only a few people in the common room. After the innkeeper shows them to their rooms and provides them a warm fire, he sits with them and tells them of the changes in the town. The folk around Bree apparently have been awed by the warrior gear the companions are wearing, a comment that surprises them since they have grown so used to such gear over the past year. They

Lord of the Rings, The   271 tell Butterbur all about the happenings in the wider world, and though he is somewhat impressed, he is more concerned over events closer to home. He is not able to provide the hobbits with pipeweed from the Southfarthing in the Shire since it is no longer available. More disturbingly, Butterbur tells them that Bree and its environs have recently been beset by gangs of bandits, so that no one feels safe, and no outsiders ever come to Bree anymore. None of them had appreciated what the Rangers had done for them until they left, he admits. Five residents have been killed recently—three men and two hobbits. Bill Ferny, they are not surprised to learn, has joined the bandits. But Gandalf does bring good news to Butterbur. There is a new king who will make the roads safe again, he assures the innkeeper, even as far as Deadman’s Dike to the north, which Butterbur swears is haunted. And the new king will make sure that Bree is protected, since he is quite fond of it. Butterbur is astounded to learn that it is Strider who has become king. But Gandalf comforts the innkeeper with the prediction that business will pick up now that things will be made safer again. At the end of the evening’s conversation, Sam hears the welcome news that Bill the pony has returned to Bree and has been cared for in Butterbur’s stables. The following night, the Prancing Pony is quite lively as a number of locals are drawn by curiosity to see the hobbits, especially Frodo, remembering his disappearing act the previous year. They ask him if he has finished his book yet, and Frodo answers honestly that he has many notes and will be working on the text of the book as soon as he returns home. Anxious to get back to the Shire after Butterbur’s hints, the hobbits leave the following day. Bill the pony is with them, to Sam’s delight, helping to carry their load. Sam in particular remembers his vision in the mirror of Galadriel, and Gandalf reminds them that Saruman is still free, and that he had already had an interest in the Shire, evidenced by the pipeweed found at Isengard. Gandalf, however, informs the hobbits that he will not be going to the Shire with them. He plans to break from them in order to spend some time conferring with

Tom Bombadil. Although the hobbits had hoped for his help, he tells them that his time is over. The hobbits themselves, he says, have grown up and learned to meet life’s difficulties, and he leaves it to them to handle the problems in the Shire. When the party has reached the Barrow-downs, Gandalf rides off on Shadowfax. Thus, it is Frodo, Sam, Merry, and Pippin who return to hobbit country by themselves, just as they had started out the previous year. When the hobbits arrive after dark at the bridge over the Brandywine in chapter 8 (“The Scouring of the Shire”), they find it blocked by a spiked gate on either end. When they demand admittance, a voice calls out from a guardhouse that there is no admittance between sundown and sunrise. Soon a crowd of hobbit guards meets them, and though one of them recognizes Merry, the guards still refuse the hobbits entry, saying that the “Chief” up in Bag End has made these rules and must be obeyed. Frodo realizes that this chief must be his greedy cousin, Lotho Sackville-Baggins, and declares that it is time he was put in his place. The hobbit guards are afraid that the chief’s “Big Man” will come to punish them, and Frodo realizes that Lotho must have hired thugs to enforce his rules. Merry and Pippin are unmoved and climb the gate to let themselves in, at which the guards flee. Bill Ferny appears and tries to bully the hobbits with his size, but Merry calls him a ruffian and tells him to open the gate on his side or be run through by Merry’s sword. This cows the bandit, and he opens the gate and then runs off, but not before Bill the pony gives him a kick as he moves by. The four companions enter the guardhouse, where Pippin tears down a list of rules. They learn that food, pipeweed, and other commodities are scarce in the Shire because the men who have been brought in as “gatherers” and “sharers” have been confiscating much of the harvest either for their own use or to ship south. They also learn that the chief has spies everywhere. They spend the night in the guardhouse and decide to travel the 40 miles to Hobbiton the next day, but they find that their presence has already been reported, and by the end of the day, they are accosted by a large group of “shirriffs” (i.e., sheriffs) who try to arrest them. The

272   Lord of the Rings, The companions laugh, and Frodo informs the head shirriff that he will go where he likes on his own business. He happens to be going to Bag End just now, and the shirriffs are welcome to come along if they like. However, the companions have come some 22 miles and would like to rest for the night, but they learn that the inns are closed because the chief does not like others drinking beer. Sam learns from one of the shirriffs, an old friend named Robin Smallburrow, that many of the hobbits hate Lotho’s rule, but the chief’s men are everywhere, throwing them into prison and beating them if they try to stand up for themselves. After staying at the shirriff house that night, the four companions push on toward Bywater, where their quick marching soon leaves the shirriffs behind. When they reach Bywater and try to find food and rest at the Green Dragon, they find the place deserted, and they find half a dozen “squint-eyed and sallow-faced” ruffians lounging outside the building (283). These, Merry remarks, are very like many that he saw at Isengard. When the men try to waylay them, brandishing clubs, the hobbits defy them, and the men suggest that the little people have become too “uppish,” but now that the one they call “Sharkey” has arrived, the hobbits will all know their place. Frodo tells them that a new age has arrived, that the king has been restored, and that their time is over, but they scoff at the idea of “King’s messengers,” until Pippin reveals his uniform of Gondor and draws his sword, informing them that he is himself a messenger of the king. As the other hobbits draw their swords, the men flee. Afterward, Frodo tells the others that he now realizes that Lotho is a pawn and probably a prisoner, and they must rescue him from this Sharkey and his gang of wild men. Sam rides off to enlist the aid of Tom Cotton, oldest farmer in the district (and to say hello to Farmer Cotton’s daughter Rosie). Merry blows his war horn and raises the village to come and drive the ruffians out. Around a large fire, Frodo and his friends consult with Farmer Cotton, who reveals that Lotho had been buying up as much of the Shire as he could. Ultimately, his business practices caused a food shortage, after which he brought in a gang of men who soon controlled the Shire by fear

and intimidation; there are now some 300 such men in the Shire. Frodo wants to drive the usurpers out without shedding blood, though Merry is certain they will have to fight. At least, Frodo pleads, no hobbit should shed the blood of another hobbit. Before long, a group of 20 thugs comes into the city, threatening to lock up 50 hobbits and whip the others if they do not return to their homes. They come to Farmer Cotton, warming his hands by the fire, and threaten him without realizing that they are being surrounded by the entire village—200 hobbits all bearing weapons. Merry demands that the men lay down their weapons, but the leader springs at Merry with a knife and club. He is cut down immediately by four arrows, and the other men surrender without a fight. After the skirmish, Sam goes off to find the Gaffer, his father. Cotton tells Frodo how the mayor and even Lobelia Sackville-Baggins had been dragged off to the prisons for resisting the men, and how Sharkey, the new boss, seems to have taken over at Bag End. They learn that Pippin’s kinsmen, the Tooks, have been resisting Sharkey and his brigands, and are dug in to their hills, though their land is guarded heavily by Sharkey’s men. Anticipating a more concerted attack from the thugs, Pippin rides to Buckland to bring back reinforcements. Pippin returns with 100 fighting hobbits from the Took clan just in time, as shortly thereafter an army of 100 men closes in on the village. Merry sets a trap for these just as he had the smaller group earlier, but this group is more inclined to fight. By the end of the battle, 70 of the men have been killed, 12 taken prisoner, and the rest have fled. Frodo’s part in the battle had been to restrain his fellow hobbits from killing even those men who surrendered. The Battle of Bywater will become famous in hobbit history, and it will be the last battle ever fought in the Shire. Now the time has come to visit Bag End. As the four companions enter Hobbiton, they are alarmed to see how many homes and gardens have been destroyed and how many trees have been cut down, while ugly, dark-colored mills are pouring black smoke into the air. It reminds Sam of Mordor itself. When he finds the Party Tree— the tree under which Bilbo had given his party

Lord of the Rings, The   273 speech—cut down, he is near tears and finds himself mocked by Ted Sandyman, one of the few hobbits who seems to enjoy the new order. But Sandyman is silenced when Merry tells him they have come to remove his boss. When the companions arrive at Bag End, they find the place deserted, full of rats and filth. But as they turn to leave, they are met by Saruman, standing in the doorway. Frodo realizes that Sharkey is actually Saruman. The fallen wizard laughs, enjoying the revenge of having ruined the hobbits’ home after they had ruined his. Frodo orders him to leave, but the hobbits of the village, surrounding the door of Bag End, want the wizard killed. Saruman claims that if his blood is spilled in the Shire, it will be forever cursed. Frodo dismisses that claim as just another lie, but he will not have Saruman harmed. Saruman calls to Wormtongue, who crawls after him, but as he passes by Frodo, Saruman flashes a knife and tries to stab the hobbit. Frodo’s mithril coat turns the blade, and though Sam raises his sword, Frodo still insists that Saruman be spared. Angered that Frodo has robbed his revenge of its sweetness by his compassion, Saruman starts off after announcing that he foresees Frodo will have neither health nor long life. But Frodo calls to Wormtongue, offering him the chance to stay since he has done Frodo himself no harm. At that, Saruman laughs, revealing that Wormtongue has stabbed Lotho in his sleep and hidden the body. Furious at this revelation and claiming the deed was done on Saruman’s orders, Wormtongue leaps upon Saruman’s back and slits his throat. When he then tries to run, he is cut down by arrows. Saruman’s corpse emits a grey mist that hovers momentarily, until a wind out of the west scatters it to nothingness. The cleansing of the Shire begins immediately, led by Frodo and his friends. The first order of business in chapter 9 (“The Grey Havens”) is to release the prisoners locked up by the short-lived police state. Crowds of hobbits are there to cheer at the release of Hobbiton mayor Will Whitfoot and Fatty Bolger—no longer deserving of his nickname after months of low rations in prison—as well as Lobelia Sackville-Baggins, who, bereaved at Lotho’s death, gives Bag End back to Frodo.

The newly constructed factories and houses put up during Lotho’s reign are quickly torn down, but the trees and gardens cannot be replaced so easily, and Sam, who takes control of this task, grieves that it is likely that the Shire will not be restored to its former beauty until the time of his great-grandchildren. But Sam makes use of Galadriel’s gift: Her box contains a heap of grey dust and the seed of a mallorn tree. Sam scatters the dust throughout the Shire, and in one year’s time, the dust does the work of 20 years of normal growth, restoring many of the trees and gardens in the land. Sam plants the mallorn seed at the spot where Bilbo’s Party Tree had grown, and it springs to life over the course of the year. It is a year of unheard-of plenty in the Shire, and a year when many children are born as well. Merry and Pippin move in together in a house at Crickhollow, and they are celebrated as heroes throughout the Shire. Frodo, on the other hand, retires in obscurity, spending much of his time writing. Frodo wants Sam to move in with him at Bag End, but Sam reveals his plan to marry Rose Cotton. Frodo insists that they both move into Bag End with him. In the autumn, once again on October 6, Frodo suffers from his wound on Weathertop. He is ill again in March, on the anniversary of the One Ring’s destruction, but hides it from Sam, for Sam and Rose have just had a baby girl whom, on Frodo’s suggestion, they name Elanor, after the golden flower of Lothlórien. In September, Frodo remarks to Sam that Bilbo’s birthday is coming up, and that he will be 131 and will therefore pass the Old Took as the longestliving hobbit in history. Frodo tells Sam that he will be taking a trip to mark the occasion and asks his friend to see him on his way. Sam agrees to do so, but he cannot leave Rose and Elanor for more than a few days. Frodo promises Sam will return in no more than a fortnight. Before they leave, Frodo hands over to Sam the keys to Bag End as well as the large red book he inherited from Bilbo (later known as the Red Book of Westmarch). It is now nearly finished, with the story of the War of the Rings completely told. The last pages in the book, Frodo says, are for Sam to complete. The two of them set out on September 21, camping that night in the Green Hills. The next

274   Lord of the Rings, The day, toward evening, Sam hears Frodo singing an old walking song, and soon he is aware of an answering song in the elvish tongue coming from the valley. As Frodo and Sam halt, they are soon met by a great procession of elves, led by Elrond and Galadriel, wearing two of the three elven rings—Elrond’s golden Vilya and Galadriel’s silver Nenya. They are followed by Bilbo himself, who tells Frodo that he has passed the Old Took today and is ready for another journey. Frodo tells him he will be going with him, for the Ringbearers should make the journey together. Sam, astounded, asks where they are going. Frodo tells him they go to the Grey Havens, to pass into the West with the elven folk. Sam has much still to do in Middle-earth, Frodo tells him, for he will have more children, will be mayor for as long as he likes, and will keep alive the memory of the Third Age, now gone. Sam accompanies them to the shore of the Great Sea, where at the Grey Havens Gandalf is waiting for them, mounted on Shadowfax. Gandalf now openly wears the third of the Three Rings— Narya, with its fire-red stone. As they are speaking with the wizard, who has also chosen to pass out of Middle-earth with the elves and the Ring-bearers, Merry and Pippin come riding up. Having been warned by Gandalf, they have come to bid Frodo farewell. Frodo says good-bye to his friends, and the ship sets sail. It sails on over the western sea until Frodo sees a green country waiting for him, with the sound of singing coming over the water. Sam, Pippin, and Merry have a silent ride back to the Shire, though they are comforted by one another’s presence. Sam turns off to ride home to Bag End, where Rose is waiting in the warm house and places Elanor in his lap. He takes a deep breath and says, “Well, I’m back.” Commentary for The Return of the King Book 5: The War of the Ring Chapters 1–3: The Brink of War  These three chapters return to the complex interlacing structure Tolkien had used in The Two Towers, book 3, but now includes three strands: Pippin in the Guard of Minas Tirith, Aragorn taking the Paths

of the Dead, and Merry riding among the cavalry of Rohan. Suspense is built as all three converge at the siege of Minas Tirith, where they must come together to battle the forces of the Shadow. The formidable figure of Denethor looms over chapter 1, as we witness his stubborn face-off with Gandalf through the somewhat naive eyes of Pippin. It is clear that Denethor’s resentment of Gandalf is deeply ingrained, and it seems to be a resentment based on Gondor having acted as a bulwark against the armies of Sauron for time beyond measure—a bulwark that has protected the safety of other lands and peoples. It is the safety of Gondor and of Minas Tirith that most concerns Denethor, and he clearly feels Gondor has given more than its share. Of course, part of that sacrifice has been Boromir, and Denethor sees his other son, Faramir, as unable to fill the void left by Boromir’s

Cover of the first edition of The Return of the King

Lord of the Rings, The   275 death, particularly since Faramir is a closer ally of Gandalf’s. But Gandalf declares himself to be a steward as well, and thus the theme of good stewardship is raised. Denethor will prove to be a poor steward. Partly this is because he believes himself to be Gondor’s true ruler, resenting the need for a king to return. This leads him ultimately to the act of hubris involved in looking into the palantír and, drawn to despair by Sauron’s machinations through that seeing-stone, giving up on the city before it has fallen. Gandalf, the good steward, was sent into the world with the other Istari in order to rally the forces of the West against the evil Shadow of Sauron. Gandalf never tries to be king of Middleearth; he sees his task strictly as that of a steward, knowing that the true king of Middle-earth is a power beyond that physical realm. It is Saruman who attempted to transcend the power of the steward, and in this Saruman and Denethor are similar. The White Tree that stands dead in the court of Minas Tirith is a significant symbol. It is, as those familiar with The Silmarillion would know, descended from Telperion, the Eldest of Trees, one of the Two Trees of Valinor that lighted Arda before the creation of the sun and moon. Telperion and Laurelin the Golden were destroyed by Morgoth in the Elder Days, but a scion of that tree, Galathilion, was planted by the High-elves in Eressëa in the Undying Lands before the First Age, and a seedling of that tree was planted in Númenor and was named Nimloth. A seedling of this tree, the symbol of the friendship of the Edain with the High-elves and with the Valar above them, was brought to Middle-earth by Elendil when he fled the destruction of Númenor, and that was the source of the White Tree of Minas Tirith. The tree thus symbolizes the line of Elendil, the royal line of Gondor. By the time Pippin arrives in Minas Tirith, the tree has been dead for hundreds of years. It would appear that the line of Elendil and Isildur is just as barren as the dead tree. The first chapter of book 5 is an important one in the development of Pippin’s character. Pippin, youngest of the hobbits to set out from the Shire, has up to this point been distinguished chiefly by his immaturity. He drank too much at the Pranc-

ing Pony and so drew unwanted attention with his loose tongue. He dropped a stone into the well in Moria just for the sake of curiosity, and as a result may have been the one to have aroused the Balrog. Most recently, of course, he has given in to his curiosity and gazed into the palantír, an act that could have given away Gandalf’s entire plan. In this chapter, however, Pippin shows clear signs of maturing. The observation of Denethor’s grief over Boromir’s death makes him feel a debt of responsibility to Gondor and its people, since Boromir died defending Pippin and Merry. To Gandalf’s astonishment, Pippin therefore makes the magnanimous gesture of pledging his service to Denethor, who makes him a soldier in the Guard of Minas Tirith. After this, Pippin no longer acts in an immature or irresponsible manner. Though he does not always know the right course to take, in his actions from this point on, he will consistently be mindful of consequences. Pippin’s pledge to Denethor is a clear parallel to Merry’s similar gesture in chapter 2. But Merry is actually encouraged by Théoden, who asks him to sit with him to tell him stories and proposes that he become the king’s squire. Merry also has already been acquainted with the king, and he better understands what he is letting himself in for when he pledges his fealty to Théoden. Pippin, once again, is shown to be impulsive in his decisions in comparison with the more thoughtful and levelheaded Merry. Merry, however, has his own issues with being left behind. He has always been more of a leader than Pippin. It was he who first led the hobbits out of the Shire into the Old Forest and who followed the Black Rider on his own in Bree. And it was Merry who dreamed of being the ancient warrior when unconscious in the Barrowdowns. Perhaps this indicated a natural tendency toward action and admiration for heroism. In any case, it is not in Merry’s character to accept being told to stay at home when the Rohirrim ride to battle in Gondor. It is not surprising that Éowyn, in disguise as Dernhelm, recognizes Merry’s plight. It would be impractical for Merry to attempt to keep up with the Riders mounted on a pony his own size, but Éowyn, banished herself from battle, knows how

276   Lord of the Rings, The it feels to be eager to fight in resistance to tyranny, eager to take part in the most important events of her time, whose outcome will determine the fate of all the peoples of her world, and to be told that she cannot participate. In her case, because she is a woman and because of the social expectations for her gender, the role of warrior is not open to her. Merry, as a hobbit, is in much the same situation. But there is, of course, more to Éowyn’s rebellious disguise than this. She had been spurned by Aragorn prior to Théoden forbidding her to ride into battle. As noted earlier, Éowyn’s love of Aragorn seems to be intimately mingled with her desire for heroic action. Aragorn is her hero—the person she wants to be herself. Tolkien has a precedent for the woman warrior in some of the Old Norse sagas, in particular the 13th-century Hervarar saga, in which the woman Hervor fights in disguise as the Swedish hero Hjalmar. Éowyn tells Aragorn, “I can ride and wield blade, and I do not fear either pain or death” (58). What she does fear is to be kept in a “cage” until “all chance of doing great deeds is gone beyond recall or desire” (58). Her society, like that of the Anglo-Saxons, values heroic deeds, by which one might be immortalized in song. When she is denied the opportunity of riding with Aragorn, and assumes he is riding to his death in pursuing the Paths of the Dead, Éowyn no longer sees any purpose to her life, and the look that Merry sees in the eyes of “Dernhelm”—the look of “one without hope who goes in search of death” (76)—is a precise reflection of her mood: Aragorn, her love, is as good as dead, and it is only through a heroic death that she can achieve her heart’s desire. For Aragorn, the ride along the Paths of the Dead is the premier indication of his mythic status. Like Gandalf previously, and like other archetypal heroes of myth such as Odysseus or Aeneas, Aragorn must visit the realm of the dead and return, transformed. Aragorn has learned of a previously unsuspected army moving to attack Gondor unexpectedly from the south, and he knows that Minas Tirith will fall if that army is not stopped. On Elrond’s advice and on the strength of ancient prophecy, he determines to walk the Paths of the Dead. As Margaret Sinex points out, Aragorn is in a transitional time at this point (156). Until now,

he has been cautious about claiming his heritage. But he is about to enter Gondor itself and proclaim to Minas Tirith that the king has returned. His descent to the dead and his ascent from there onto the field of victory will be his greatest transformation: When he has trod the Paths of the Dead, he will be reborn as something greater than he was before. And he will prove himself worthy of his kingship by his ability to lead his living men on these paths and to gain the alliance of the Army of the Dead, thus displaying, as Sinex asserts, “his ability to command and his power to elicit the love of others” (165). Sinex also points out some of the parallels between Tolkien’s conception of the Grey Company and certain 12th-century Latin depictions of the Exercitus mortuorum (“Army of the Dead”). These early descriptions, written before the concept of purgatory had developed to the degree it had by the time of Dante, present large groups of ghosts who wander the earth, either penitent for sins and hoping for ultimate salvation, or participating in earthly battles. Sinex sees Tolkien as making use of both traditions. She describes ghostly characters among an army of knights in book 8 of Orderic Vitalis’s Ecclesiastical History (ca. 1133), asking a living priest to perform services for them to expiate their sins on earth. These knights ride all in black and are well armed (157–158). In his 12th-century Expugnatio Hibernica, the Welshman Giraldus Cambrensis describes a fully armed troop of the dead attacking the English army at the siege of Osraighe (Sinex 164). Thus, Tolkien’s Army of the Dead—who broke their oath to support Isildur in his war on Sauron and have done penance for some 3,000 years by remaining in Middle-earth in ghostly form—wish to expiate that sin in order to have peace. Like Vitalis’s army, they are dark and fully armed, and like Giraldus’s troops, they make war on the living. Once again, Tolkien’s roots in medieval history help to inform a part of his text. Chapters 4–7: The Battle of the Pelennor Fields  The Battle of the Pelennor Fields is the culmination of the action that has been leading up to a major confrontation between Gondor and Mordor. As the most extensive battle scene in The

Lord of the Rings, The   277 Lord of the Rings, it provides a certain satisfaction for readers as the forces of the West prove victorious, at least temporarily. The manner in which Tolkien presents the battle, however, is somewhat remarkable, given Tolkien’s own real-world experience in the trenches of World War I. Certainly a part of his reason for creating Middle-earth was for the kind of escape from the contemporary world that he discusses in his lecture “On Fairy-Stories.” Tolkien viewed the Great War and the industrialization of the English landscape as the great evils of modern times from which he desired to escape. But we are given a romanticized picture of warfare in his text, rather than an image of the horror that he personally knew war to be. In part, this is the result of Tolkien’s conscious archaism. His heroes use swords, bows and arrows, and axes rather than guns, mortar, and gas. His rhetoric in the battle scenes is also more deliberately archaic than in other parts of the trilogy. Andrew Lynch points out how the prose of Tolkien’s battle description reads (in its meter and its alliteration) like the lines of traditional English alliterative verse (80), such as the following lines describing Théoden’s cavalry assault on the Southron men in Sauron’s army: “.  .  . and his spear was shivered as he threw down their chieftain. [/] Out swept his sword, and he spurred to the standard, [/] hewed staff and bearer, and the black serpent foundered” (Return of the King 114).

Not only is the diction of the battle scene medieval, but the attitude of the main characters is as well. Engaged in what seems a hopeless effort against overwhelming forces, Tolkien’s characters tend to embody what he called the Northern heroic code: the grim determination to fight on against all odds in a losing cause, to die rather than surrender. When Éomer sees the black sails of Sauron’s allies coming up the Anduin from the south, he grows stern: He let blow the horns to rally all men to his banner that could come thither; for he thought to make a great shield-wall at the last, and stand, and fight there on foot till all fell, and do

deeds of song on the fields of Pelennor, though no man should be left in the West to remember the last King of the Mark. (122)

However, as Lynch points out, the actual descriptions of the battle owe more to Victorian attitudes than to medieval ones. “If the key to Tolkien’s stylistic archaism is his nostalgic desire to reconnect with a heroic past,” Lynch argues, “then the nostalgia is empowered by such links with a recent era of medievalist idealism” (86), that era being the Victorian. The two sides in the war, based on moral alignments, are much more similar to Tennyson’s depiction of his imagined Arthurian world in Idylls of the King than to battles described in Malory. (Perhaps the naming of the battleground “Pelennor Fields” is deliberately intended to call to mind the Arthurian world in an allusion to King Pellynor, one of Arthur’s earliest allies.) In any case, Lynch is accurate in his assessment that the captains of the West fight the war according to Victorian notions of chivalry, while the echoes of modern warfare as Tolkien really knew it appear in the descriptions of “nameless conscripts, machines, slaves, and creatures of Sauron” (87). As shall become apparent later on, the trench-warfare experience is much more applicable to Frodo and Sam in Mordor than here on the open battlefield, where, as Lynch sums up, “As in Tennyson, the idea of war as an ennobling cultural and moral struggle is allowed precedence over the unpleasant history of war itself” (90). There are, however, certain unmistakably medieval aspects to Tolkien’s description of the battle. The cock that crows at the end of the fourth chapter, to be answered by the horns of Rohan that signal the change in the course of the battle, marks a moment of archetypal significance. Tolkien makes use of the images of darkness and light throughout The Lord of the Rings, but here he seems to allude to traditional religious imagery associated with the dawn. In particular, Tolkien would have been aware of the popular Hymnus ad Galli Cantum (hymn to the song of a cock), written by the fourth-century Christian poet Prudentius, which was known throughout Europe in the Middle Ages. The hymn begins with the voice of a cock

278   Lord of the Rings, The announcing the dawn and likening it to the coming of Christ: The bird that is herald of the day foretells by its note the nearing dawn; now Christ the awakener of our minds calls us to life, crying “Away with beds of sickness, slumber, and sloth. Be wakeful, pure, upright and sober, now I am near at hand.” (qtd. in Hatto 277 and 279)

In the poem, evil relishes the darkness and sin encumbers the heart, but the light of dawn brings the light of salvation and, in an image of Judgment Day, chases away the demons of evil and sin. But the voices of Christ our teacher from the towering height [of heaven] forewarns us that day is now nigh at hand, lest our mind be enslaved to slumber, and lest even to the end of an indolent life sleep should weigh down our heart buried in guilt and forgetful of the light that is its own. (qtd. in Hatto 279)

In the poem, the cock’s crow heralds individual rebirth as well as universal judgment, and Tolkien taps into the latter implications in his use of the cock crow in Minas Tirith. The battle of the Pelennor Fields is an archetypal battle between good and evil, and like the dawn of Judgment Day, the cock crow signals the coming of the forces of light—the horns of Rohan—that will chase off the demons of darkness. One particular detail of the siege of Minas Tirith that Tolkien borrows directly from medieval warfare is the Dark Lord’s forces’ catapulting of the severed heads of the defenders of Osgiliath into the city to quash morale. Tolkien was well aware that, according to the historian William of Tyre, during the First Crusade, the crusaders hurled the severed heads of captured Turks into the city of Nicea when it was under siege. Since this was done by western Europeans, Tolkien could not be said to rely on the reality of “chivalry” in medieval warfare for his model. Indeed, such barbarism belongs only to the enemy. Again, ultimately, Tolkien’s ideal picture is far more Tennysonian and idealistic than medieval. The one major figure in these chapters who fails to embody the Northern heroic code is Denethor,

steward of Gondor. Denethor, it is discovered, has been looking into a palantír. Tolkien has constructed this section so that three figures in a hierarchical relationship have all used a seeing-stone: Pippin, whose will was far too weak to compete with Sauron, and who passes out, nearly destroying his mind; Aragorn, who has, in fact, been able to manipulate the will of Sauron by revealing his existence as Isildur’s heir and drawing the Dark Lord’s attention away from Frodo and the real threat to his power; and Denethor, whose will was strong enough to battle Sauron’s, but who was not strong enough to resist the Dark Lord’s manipulations. Like Aragorn, Denethor has seen the advance of the Black Ships from the south, coming to destroy Minas Tirith. But while Aragorn’s response is to raise up the Grey Company and rush south to battle the oncoming ships, Denethor’s is to despair. In this, Denethor’s weakness is the foil of Aragorn’s strength, and it is one of the signs that Aragorn is the rightful king of Gondor, which Denethor can never be. Like Pippin, the steward’s mind is affected, and his despair seems to drive him mad. Rather than fight valiantly to the last in a losing cause, as the Northern heroic code would demand, Denethor chooses to give up without striking a single blow. His heir, Faramir, is much more the traditional hero. His loyalty to his lord demands that he perform whatever duty his father lays upon him, even when it is the hopeless defense of Osgiliath, a task that Denethor has set for him at least in part to torment Faramir because he has lived while his brother Boromir has died. A far less obedient servant is Pippin, who looks beyond loyalty to common sense and knows that following Denethor’s orders about the funeral pyre will be madness, killing Faramir along with his father. Fortunately for Faramir, both Pippin and Beregond intervene. There are times when loyalty and obedience to orders are less important than doing what is right, just, or sane. Denethor’s foil as an aged leader facing significant moral and political decisions is, of course, Théoden. Jane Chance, who (recalling Tolkien’s literary sources) calls the two figures “the good and bad Germanic lords,” notes that their names “sug-

Lord of the Rings, The   279 gest anagrams of each other (Théo + den : Dene + thor)” (Tolkien’s Art 172). In Denethor’s case, the old man begins very much in control and degenerates into madness and weakness. In the case of Théoden, we see him first as a decrepit monarch far past his prime, easy prey to the enticing lies of Wormtongue. Like Denethor, Théoden’s disintegration seems to have been hastened by the death of his son. But Gandalf is able to rouse Théoden from his stupor and convince him that courage is needed against the forces of darkness. This Gandalf is unable to do with Denethor, who will not trust the wizard and whose enticing lies are coming directly from Sauron. A last charge like Théoden’s would have been far more glorious for Denethor, and far more useful to the cause of the West, than his inglorious suicide. Tolkien’s language underscores his interest in kingship and succession in these scenes with Denethor and Théoden. I have called the language medieval above, but there are passages here that might be called Shakespearean: In particular, Michael D. C. Drout has called attention to the similarity of the Ringwraith’s warning “Come not between the Nazgûl and his prey” (116) to King Lear’s famous line “Come not between the dragon and his wrath”—the clearest of several allusions Drout finds to Shakespeare’s King Lear. The play, concerned as it is with the madness of an old king and his worries over his succession, suggests a context in which to read the problems of Denethor and Théoden. As Drout states, “Tolkien realized that the Lear parallel illuminated some of the complexities of the issues of kingly and stewardly responsibility and succession” (144). Like Lear, Denethor has disinherited his most loyal and deserving child. Like Lear, Théoden had divested himself of royal responsibility, and only now in leading his cavalry in its last charge is he able to regain the authority that he had lost. The theme of disobedience so important to Denethor’s story also has parallels in the narrative of Théoden. Like his fellow hobbit and foil Pippin, Merry also chooses to disobey his master. Merry’s reasons are not as noble as Pippin’s: He disobeys not to save a life but to assert his own self-worth. Éowyn’s reasons are similar, but more desperate.

She feels hopeless and, in the spirit of the Northern code, decides to die fighting the enemy. Both Merry and Éowen have disobeyed their lord in order to underscore their own human value. In a society that devalues the courage of women and hobbits, they perform the most significant single battle of the war. Just as Tolkien’s ents moving the forest to attack Isengard borrowed an idea from Shakespeare’s Macbeth, in which Birnam Wood comes to Dunsinane Castle, so in the destruction of the Lord of the Nazgûl Tolkien alludes to another of the witches’ prophesies from that play: As Macbeth could not be harmed by one of woman born, so the Witch-king of Angmar cannot be slain by the hand of a man. And so it is at the hands of a woman, Éowyn, and a hobbit, Merry, that the wraith is finally destroyed. Merry’s and Éowyn’s disobedience seem to have played directly into the hand of fate. Careful readers will see an even greater irony and an even greater indication that fate, or perhaps providence itself, is behind the Witch-king’s death, for the blade used by Merry to smite the Nazgûl from behind is the same one that had been buried in the Barrow-downs with the warrior who had momentarily possessed Merry’s consciousness—a warrior slain by the Witch-king in the previous age, when the king had been corrupted in his bodily form by one of the nine Rings of Power given to mortal men. It was a blade originally forged thousands of years before for the specific purpose of slaying the Witch-king, and now it has reappeared to fulfill its original purpose. Just as Merry’s actions parallel Pippin’s, so the shieldmaiden Éowyn’s parallel and contrast the lord Faramir’s. Éowyn directly disobeyed her uncle’s orders in order to ride with him against the enemy and silently rode in his closest guard in the battle, so that in the face of the Nazgûl’s onslaught, she became the only one of his guard who did not desert him. Faramir obeys his father’s command to defend Osgiliath, an act both he and Gandalf recognize as hopeless. But Faramir’s obedience parallels Éowyn’s disobedience in that both are means of demonstrating their value and their courage to father figures who they believe have overlooked their worth. But the hero-king Théoden’s last words express his love for his niece. As for Dene-

280   Lord of the Rings, The thor, it is his belief in Faramir’s doom and lament for the loss of his last surviving son that finally pushes him into complete madness. Fate may also be taking a hand in bringing Faramir and Éowyn, orphaned and wounded the same day and both feeling the emptiness of the unloved, together in the Houses of Healing. The Woses are the mysterious tribe of “wild men” who aid the Rohirrim by showing them the secret paths through the Druádan Forest and therefore enable them to reach the Pelennor Fields in time to turn the tide of battle. Tolkien takes the Rohirrim name of these men, “wood woses,” from the Old English word wuduwasa, which referred to a hairy, troll-like creature that inhabited the woods. But the elvish term for these people is Drúedain, and while they come only briefly into the great sweep of Tolkien’s legendarium, he did write an essay concerning their history that Christopher Tolkien published in Unfinished Tales of Númenor and Middle-earth. (393–404). In the First Age of Middle-earth, they had come north and lived chiefly in the White Mountains, though a branch of them allied themselves with the Folk of Haleth in the Forest of Brethil. After the fall of Morgoth, some of them were allowed to accompany the Edain to Númenor, though they seem to have returned to Middle-earth before the destruction of that realm. The Woses hated orcs but were also persecuted by other men, and they chiefly wanted to live unmolested in their woods—a gift that their alliance in the War of the Ring would ultimately earn them. Chapters 8–10: Taking the War to Sauron’s Gates  The first thing about these chapters that may be confusing to general readers of Lord of the Rings is the association of the king with healing. This stems in part from the belief, popular in ­England as well as in France during the Middle Ages and Renaissance, that the king could cure certain diseases (specifically scrofula, known as the “King’s Evil”) by touch. Monarchs were purportedly given this power through their descent from the last Anglo-Saxon king, Edward the Confessor, who was supposed to have received the gift ultimately from Saint Remigus, who had converted Clovis

to Christianity. But in a broader sense, as Verlyn Flieger has pointed out, the idea of the king’s healing power “derives from the early Celtic principle of sacral kingship, whereby the health and fertility of the land are dependent on the coming of the rightful king” (“Frodo and Aragorn” 50), and Aragorn is clearly a sacral king in this sense since he heals the wounded warriors but will also, upon his assumption of the throne, turn his hand to the restoration of the land laid waste by war. Karen Simpson Nikakis has, more recently, expanded on this concept, focusing on the sacrificial nature of sacral kingship, a sacrifice that can be noted in these chapters on the Houses of Healing as Aragorn, overwhelmed by people throughout the city who come to him begging for healing once the word has spread that he is in the city, labors far into the night with the sons of Elrond, until he can stand no more and must slip away to rest. For chiefly, Aragorn’s healing touch serves as one of the proofs of his rightful claim to the throne of Gondor. Since only the true king is able to use the herb athelas to heal the people, Aragorn’s ability to do so, and his demonstration of this power throughout the night in Minas Tirith, does more to convince the common citizens of his legitimacy than the unfurling of his banner in the battle or his bearing the reforged sword of Elendil. Anyone might unfurl a banner, and any sword might be put forward as Narsil reconstituted, but only through his own hands could a king’s touch heal. Faramir, it should be remembered, immediately acknowledges Aragorn as his king. The chapter ends with Aragorn’s claim to the throne validated, but with unhealed psychic injuries still tormenting Faramir and Éowyn, whose outcomes will not be known for some time. The story of Aragorn’s defeat of Sauron’s armada and subsequent passage up the Anduin to arrive at the Pelennor Fields in time to ensure victory is narrated secondhand by Legolas. This is the second time Tolkien has used this device rather than the interweaving that is more typical of his style. The other occasion was Merry and Pippin’s narration of the downfall of Isengard in the “Flotsam and Jetsam” chapter of The Two Towers. Certainly part of Tolkien’s purpose in using this method is simply

Lord of the Rings, The   281 to create some variety in the narrative. But there are significant similarities between the two situations. On that earlier occasion, as with this one, the companions have been reunited after a long separation, and Tolkien finds it natural to depict them discussing the things they have been involved in during that time. But more important than this, both narrations occur after members of the company have reappeared in a spectacular manner that astounds the others. While the reader has had an inkling that the ents would conquer Isengard, or that Aragorn’s Army of the Dead will prevail against Sauron’s corsairs, the other characters have had no such forewarning. Thus, Tolkien’s method of narration here allows the reader to engage in the sense of wonder these events kindle in the minds of the other characters, while still serving the purpose of enfolding the plot. The remainder of book 5 is concerned with the hopeless offensive launched by Gandalf and Aragorn against the Black Gates of Mordor itself. Essentially, the debate over the wisdom of this plan is a rehash of the “Council of Elrond” chapter in The Fellowship of the Ring. It is hopeless to believe that the armies of the West can prevail over the overwhelming forces of Mordor; in this, Denethor had been correct. The option of prolonging the war by returning to their own lands and waiting for Sauron to bring his wrath upon them is a possibility, and it may seem the wiser course since a direct assault on Mordor is folly. But this course will only end in what Galadriel had called “the long defeat” (Fellowship 347). The only hope that the free peoples of Middle-earth have is in the quest of Frodo and Sam. The only way for Gondor and Rohan to aid that quest is to keep Sauron’s Eye from noticing the two insignificant hobbits moving through his land. The open challenge is therefore necessary to accomplish this. It works because Sauron is what he is. It is easy to read Tolkien as a black-and-white thinker who sees his characters as either good or evil, but his individual characters do not necessarily fall so readily into these categories. Characters may fall to temptation by making the wrong choices, as Saruman and Denethor do. They may struggle and be brought back to goodness, as Théoden and Boromir

do. There may be hope even for the least likely characters, like Gollum, or danger that even the most virtuous, like Frodo, may ultimately succumb. In all cases it is a matter of choice, of free will. In all cases, the choice of evil is either the choice to despair (in the case of Denethor or Théoden) or the choice to embrace power as an expediency (in the case of Boromir or Saruman). These choices all involve the loss of hope and of faith. The right reaction to this kind of loss, in Tolkien’s world, is the adoption of the Northern heroic code, the determination to fight on even in the face of certain defeat. The wrong reaction is to become exactly what you were fighting against, seeing it as “the only option.” The One Ring implies unlimited power—it has the potential to make its bearer like a god. It is essentially the forbidden fruit, promising the godlike knowledge of good and evil, and each character tempted by it reenacts his own version of the Fall. Sauron is evil. But he was not created so. He was an angelic being, one of the maiar that fell with Melkor in The Silmarillion and became that first Dark Lord’s trusted lieutenant. He made his choice between good and evil long ages past, and if vice and virtue are habits, as Thomas Aquinas wrote, then Sauron is so inured in the habit of vice that he cannot understand any choice other than the expedient. Thus, Gandalf’s gambit works because Sauron cannot conceive of any choice other than using the ring. He has seen Aragorn through the palantír and believes that the new king of Gondor must be in possession of the ring, since he knows it to be in the hands of the West. He is counting on the new king to try to use the ring against him before understanding perfectly how to wield it, and he expects to crush Aragorn and his army in the confrontation at the gate. Sauron cannot conceive of having the ring and not using it. That choice would simply never occur to him, nor would the choice of destroying the ring and renouncing power. This is why his whole concern is the army marching against him. Aragorn must be coming to wield the ring’s power against Sauron because that is what he would do. The habit of evil blinds him even to the possibility of choices that do not involve expediency, power, or self-interest.

282   Lord of the Rings, The The exchange with Sauron’s lieutenant at the Black Gate is one that no doubt removes the last shreds of hope from many in the Army of the West. Producing Frodo’s mithril coat, Sam’s sword and elven cloak stuns the captains of the West: If Frodo and Sam have been captured, then their quest has failed and hope for the destruction of the One Ring must be abandoned. If that must be abandoned, then this battle will be fruitless. The lieutenant does give Gandalf Sauron’s terms, which are essentially a surrender and a pledge to live enslaved to Sauron’s power. It is the choice of despair. Instead, Gandalf makes the heroic choice, the one called for by the Northern heroic code: The armies of the West will fight on in the face of certain defeat. Aragorn has already let go those soldiers who were not ready to make that grim choice. The others knew that this was probably a suicide mission to begin with, and they are ready to fight on even when all hope is gone. Pippin is one of those soldiers. He has seen firsthand the evils of despair when he witnessed Denethor’s degeneration into madness. He has also witnessed the virtues of fighting on against impossible odds in the case of his kinsman Merry, whose attack on the invincible Witch-king helped turn the tide of the Battle of the Pelennor Fields. Pippin shows a glimpse of his native uncontrolled impetuosity when he reacts so visibly to the items taken from Frodo and Sam, but he may be forgiven that lapse, since of all the army, he is closest to his fellow hobbits. But his conduct in the battle cannot be faulted, and when he saves the life of Beregond by slaying the great troll, Pippin establishes himself as heroic in the same vein as Merry—the one positive outcome he could hope for in this last battle. It should be noted, however, that while Pippin does not seem to read the lieutenant’s reactions as well as the lieutenant reads his, we should not assume that Gandalf or Aragorn fail to do so: Clearly the lieutenant needed Pippin’s outburst to confirm that the “spy” was someone valued by the captains of the West. That can only mean that the enemy has not yet recovered the ring. Further, the lieutenant spoke of a single spy, indicating that one of the hobbits, at least, had not been captured. For

Gandalf, the evidence may even provide more hope than less: It is proof that the ring is still in play, and that at least one hobbit is still at large in Mordor. Gandalf’s choice to fight to the death is one that, in his own mind, may still be of more practical use than a simple heroic last stand. Book 6: The End of the Third Age Chapters 1–4: The Destruction of the Ring  These chapters mark the climax of Tolkien’s epic story: the achievement of the quest, the turning point in the battle between light and darkness that will affect all of Middle-earth. Supported by the sacrificial attack by the armies of Gondor and Rohan at the Black Gate, which draws Sauron’s Eye away, and dragged to the precipice of Mount Doom by his own staunch will and by the unwavering determination of Sam, Frodo takes hold of the ring . . . and refuses to give it up. For many readers, this comes as a shock and a disappointment. Having struggled with Frodo mile by mile on his arduous journey, readers are stunned by his failure to finish his task. But of course, unlike Frodo, those readers have not been carrying the burden of the ring all that way. Tolkien admitted that Frodo was a failed hero in some sense, but he insisted that Frodo’s failure was not a moral one. In the draft of a 1963 letter to a reader, Mrs. Eileen Elgar, Tolkien wrote: We are finite creatures with absolute limitations upon the powers of our soul-body structure in either action or endurance. Moral failure can only be asserted, I think, when a man’s effort or endurance falls short of his limits, and the blame decreases as that limit is closer approached. (Letters 326)

In Frodo’s case, Tolkien asserts, even though he had performed all that was physically and psychologically possible for any hobbit to do, the pressure of the ring on Frodo’s psyche at that last moment “would reach a maximum—impossible, I should have said, for any one to resist” (Letters 326). Tolkien concludes that ultimately, Frodo cannot justly be thought to have failed: Frodo undertook his quest out of love—to save the world he knew from disaster at his own expense, if he could; and also in complete humil-

Lord of the Rings, The   283 ity, acknowledging that he was wholly inadequate to the task. His real contract was only to do what he could, to try to find a way, and to go as far on the road as his strength of mind and body allowed. He did that. (Letters 327)

It is certainly true that Frodo did exactly this. But we should ask at the same time, what, precisely, prevented him from finishing the task. Certainly the pressure of the ring is the overt cause. But through many chapters, the reader has seen the relentless attack on Frodo’s body and spirit from the great burden he carries and the hardship of the journey. John Garth has compared the experience of Frodo and Sam to that of soldiers, like Tolkien himself, in World War I. While it is true, as noted above, that the picture of warfare in the great battles of the War of the Ring resembles the Victorian idealism of Tennyson, Frodo and Sam resemble much more closely the soldiers in the trenches that Tolkien would have known firsthand at the Somme. Tolkien wrote that the landscape of the Dead Marshes and the mounds before the Black Gate were inspired by the devastation of the land he saw after the Somme (Letters 303), and the same could probably be said for the terrain of Gorgoroth itself within Mordor. Within these landscapes, Garth notes the hobbits duck from hole to hole, hiding like men in the trenches (45). But Garth’s argument is most potent, I think, when he compares Frodo’s besieged psyche to that of a soldier suffering from shell shock—the new and widespread malady of modern warfare born in the trenches. The unrelenting pressure of the ring’s burden finally affects Frodo’s blasted consciousness so that he loses all memory and sense of anything outside his immediate circumstances and sees only the ring itself, like a ring of fire, before his eyes. When Sam tries to cheer him by recalling for him the rabbit stew they had enjoyed before meeting Faramir’s band, Frodo answers that he does not remember. “At least I know that such things happened, but I cannot see them. No taste of food, no feel of water, no sound of wind, no memory of tree or grass or flower, no image of moon or star are left

to me. I am naked in the dark, Sam, and there is no veil between me and the wheel of fire. I begin to see it even with my waking eyes, and all else fades.” (215)

Garth quotes a London Times reporter, writing about shell shock in 1915, who writes that one suffering from this condition may “become blind or deaf or lose the sense of smell or taste. He is cut off from his normal self and the associations that make up that self” (qtd. in Garth 50). Such a description fits closely with Frodo’s condition at the moment of his failure of will at the Cracks of Doom. Tolkien’s experiences in the Great War also go a long way in explaining the character of Sam as it develops through this last book. In a 1941 letter to his son Michael Tolkien, then in officer training, Tolkien remarked that he shared Michael’s “deep sympathy and feeling for the ‘tommy’, especially the plain soldier from the agricultural counties” (Letters 54). At the time, he was deliberately putting that sympathy into practice in the creation of Samwise Gamgee. Humphrey Carpenter quotes Tolkien as remarking that Sam “is indeed a reflexion of the English soldier, of the privates and batmen I knew in the 1914 war, and recognized as so far superior to myself” (81). Garth remarks on how similar Sam’s relationship to Frodo is to that of the working class enlisted men who acted as orderlies (“batmen”) to officers in the British army during the war (43). Tolkien’s respect for these men was based on their remarkable ability to endure the daily hardships of war and still display great courage in battle for the sake of duty. He knew they were common men from rural or working-class backgrounds who had volunteered for such service for the good of their country, and not for glory or gain, and wanted only to return to their everyday lives at the war’s end. Of all the characters in The Lord of the Rings, this best describes Sam, whose love of his home and the simple pleasures of his life sustain him throughout the quest as he pines for the Shire. But it is only on the last hopeless leg of their journey over the ruined plain of Gorgoroth, where Sam admits to himself that “there will be no return” (211), that we first hear of his love for Rosie Cotton: “ ‘If that is the job then I must do it. But I would dearly like

284   Lord of the Rings, The to see Bywater again, and Rosie Cotton and her brothers, and the Gaffer’ ” (211). In a 1951 letter to publisher Milton Waldman, Tolkien wrote, “I think the simple ‘rustic’ love of Sam and his Rosie (nowhere elaborated) is absolutely essential to the study of his (the chief hero’s) character, and to the theme of the relation of ordinary life (breathing, eating, working, begetting) and quests, sacrifice, causes, and the ‘longing for Elves’, and sheer beauty” (Letters 161). Sam’s pure and simple love for Rosie is a part of his love of his country life, a love that motivates his steadfast devotion to Frodo and to his duty. It is a part of what makes him humble, which is his chief virtue as temporary bearer of the ring. Although he has visions of becoming “Samwise the Strong,” they are fleeting, and his own self-effacing humor saves him from such pretensions, as he plays at being “the great elf-warrior” to scare the orcs. Perhaps no other character could have taken the ring at this point in the narrative and not been overcome by its lure to power. But Tolkien, in the above comment, calls Sam “the chief hero” of the work. In a vast work that includes traditional heroes such as Aragorn and Gandalf, Théoden and Faramir, as well as the unconventional hero—Frodo, self-sacrificing bearer of the ring and protagonist of the story to this point—it seems somewhat disingenuous for Tolkien to call Sam the “chief hero.” But, in fact, it is clear that without Sam, Frodo would have faltered on the path and never reached Mount Doom. When Frodo’s strength and will begin to wane, it is only Sam’s staunch determination and commitment to doing the job he has set out to do that brings Frodo to the completion of the quest. Like Frodo, Sam is exhausted, hungry, parched, and fearful on the slopes of Mount Doom. But he has not come all this way to give up. Of all the characters in the novel, Sam most closely exemplifies the words of Beorhtwold in the Old English poem The Battle of Maldon: “Will shall be the sterner, heart the bolder, spirit the greater, as our strength lessens.” (Tolkien, “Homecoming” 5)

This is the most famous statement of the Northern heroic code in Anglo-Saxon poetry, and it

illustrates precisely Sam’s exploits through these chapters. When Frodo has been so worn down that he can only crawl, the weakened Sam’s will literally becomes sterner and his heart bolder, and through grim determination alone, he lifts Frodo onto his shoulders and carries him up the mountain: Sam struggled on as best he could, having no guidance but the will to climb as high as might be before his strength gave out and his will broke. On he toiled, up and up, turning this way and that to lessen the slope, often stumbling forward, and at the last crawling like a snail with a heavy burden on its back. When his will could drive him no further, and his limbs gave way, he stopped and laid his master gently down. (218)

Sam is, in fact, the chief hero of the book in that he is the one character without whom the quest could never have been accomplished. There is another way in which Sam differs from all of the other characters in The Lord of the Rings (with the possible exception of Tom Bombadil), and this has to do with a spiritual revelation that he has here, in the darkest hour of the quest. When he sees a single white star through the gloom of the night sky of Mordor, Sam is suddenly taken by the beauty of that star—a beauty far beyond the reach of anything Sauron or his armies of darkness can do: The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him. For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach.  .  .  . Now, for a moment, his own fate, and even his master’s, ceased to trouble him. (199)

Even if Sauron succeeds in regaining the One Ring, or in crushing all resistance, his is only a temporary victory in an eternal war that the powers of darkness can never ultimately win. It is the most religious moment of the trilogy. Tolkien had little patience with the overt Christian allegory in C. S. Lewis’s Narnia stories, and

Lord of the Rings, The   285 while he had forged a creation myth for his mythology with strong Christian overtones in The Silmarillion, he leaves such motifs out of The Lord of the Rings. But that does not make the trilogy void of spirituality, and Sam, rustic and even vulgar as Tolkien makes him, is the character most strongly affected by spiritual things. Sam’s inordinate attraction to and love of the elves is his recognition that their beauty is as close a reflection of the Undying Lands to which they are more closely attuned than other races. His profound devotion to the Lady Galadriel is a particularly vivid example of this. In these chapters, as the hobbits drag themselves through the Wasteland of Mordor, Sam imagines what he would say to the Lady if he could see her now. He would ask, he says, for freshwater and some daylight (195). When the wind shifts shortly after and blows some of the gloom away, and when they find freshwater later that day, Sam rejoices, crying, “ ‘If I ever see the Lady again, I will tell her! . . . Light, and now water!’ ” (198). It would seem that the Lady, like the Virgin Mary responding to a petition, has granted Sam’s prayer. But it would be a mistake to think of the incident in that way. Galadriel is no Virgin Mother. Readers of The Silmarillion will know that she was one of the leaders of the Noldor rebellion that brought the High-elves into exile from Valinor. Her many years in Middle-earth, after so many of her kinsmen have returned to the West, have in part been a penance for that rebellion. But these things are beyond Sam’s knowledge, and what he sees in the Lady is that she is one who had actually seen and retained memories of the Undying Lands of the West. More than any other Eldar, she embodies the light of that land, which is ultimately the light of the Valar, the angelic beings who rule all the earth in the name of the creator god Ilúvatar. The answer to Sam’s prayer may be coincidence, or it may be the reward of his faith, the assurance of which he receives in looking at the star. Even if these things underscore Sam’s role as the “chief hero” of the text, this is not to say that Sam always does the right thing or that he makes no mistakes along the way. The greatest of his mistakes is almost certainly the moment in The

Two Towers when he attacks Gollum just at the moment when the creature happened to be feeling most profoundly a newfound love for Frodo as his master. Sam had never understood Frodo’s attempts to redeem the creature, and his accusation that Gollum is trying to harm his master effectively shuts the door on any salvation for Gollum. Tolkien called that act “the most tragic moment in the Tale” (Letters 330), and although Sam never understands his failure at that point, here at the climax of the story, Sam relents his earlier hatred of the creature. Even after Gollum has attacked him from behind as they climb toward the Cracks of Doom, Sam cannot help pitying him, with an understanding newly achieved from having borne the ring himself, even for so short a time. Though Sam could easily kill Gollum, having the creature at his mercy with Sting drawn poised above him, he cannot bear to take his revenge and merely chases Gollum off. In the end, Sam’s mercy saves the quest. Had Sam slain Gollum, of course, the creature would not have returned to wrestle the ring from Frodo and fall with it into the Cracks of Doom. These things do not explain, however, Tolkien’s choice to make Gollum the one ultimately responsible for the accomplishment of the quest. Surely David Callaway is overstating the case when he calls Gollum the true hero of The Lord of the Rings. “Although it often appears that evil will triumph within Gollum, it never can,” Callaway writes. “Gollum becomes a symbol of the absolute persistence of good in Middle-earth” (22). This is based on the conjecture that Gollum consciously sacrificed himself to destroy the ring. But Tolkien’s text reads “even as his eyes were lifted up to gloat on his prize, he stepped too far, toppled, wavered for a moment on the brink, and then with a shriek he fell” (224). His plunge is clearly described as accidental, and Tolkien himself wrote that Gollum’s “repentence is blighted” and his goodness lost (Letters 330). He does conjecture that had Gollum fully repented and regained his virtuous side, he very well may, in the end, “have sacrificed himself for Frodo’s sake and have voluntarily cast himself into the fiery abyss” (Letters 330). But this is not what happens.

286   Lord of the Rings, The In fact, what does occur is that Gollum, fully committed to his own egoism and still under the power of evil that the ring represents, destroys it by pure accident caused by his overzealous pursuit of it. Gandalf was correct when he foresaw that Gollum had a part to play in Frodo’s quest, but since Gollum ultimately rejects repentance and spiritual renewal, that part turns out to be played against his will. Given the spiritual aspect that the story has taken on at this point, it may be relevant to consider Frodo’s failure here in a theological sense, as an illustration of the Christian doctrine that no human being, despite his best efforts, is able to achieve salvation on his own. The startling end provided by Gollum’s entrance suggests divine intervention in the final achievement of the quest. The irony that it is actually Gollum who brings this about should not be lost on readers. This unanticipated development suggests another theological point: that God is capable of turning all things to good in accordance with his will. Tolkien underscores this doctrine elsewhere, in particular in his Ainulindalë (published as the opening segment of The Silmarillion), which tells the story of Ilúvatar’s creation of the universe as a Great Music, into which the fallen “angel” Melkor introduces discord, which the creator is then able to resolve into harmony. Here, the discord of Gollum’s evil purposes is turned by providence into the greater good of the ring’s destruction. Sam’s vision of a transcendent goodness that lies above and beyond the ability of Sauron or any creature of Middle-earth to mar is manifested here as the shaping hand of destiny. As Gandalf recognized when he denied bringing the army of ents to Helm’s Deep in The Two Towers, there is another power at work beyond the actions of the chief agents in this story. That providential hand may be at work, as well, earlier in these chapters when Sam, nearly despairing over his inability to find Frodo within the dark passages of the tower, begins to sing a song of his own making that praises the beauty of western lands and elven stars. The song seems to come to Sam without his conscious knowledge, as Tolkien says, “softly, to his own surprise, there at the vain end of his long journey and his grief, moved by what thought in his heart he could not tell,

Sam began to sing” (184). But it is the sound of Sam’s song that causes Frodo to answer him in a faint voice and allows Sam to find and rescue him. It is a theme that Tolkien had used, as well, in his story of the two Noldor princes Fingon and Maedhros in The Silmarillion. There, Morgoth had captured Maedhros, and his kinsman Fingon had long sought him, until, while searching the land of Angband, Fingon began to sing a song made long before in Valinor itself, and heard Maedhros’s answering song from where he hung by his wrist upon a precipice high above. In both cases, the song is an inspiration, as music seems typically in Tolkien to be an expression of the spiritual in living creatures. In Fingon’s story, Thorondor, lord of the eagles, appears as an answer to Fingon’s prayer and lifts him up to his kinsman high on the precipice, ultimately rescuing them both by transporting them to safety. Later in The Silmarillion, it is eagles who rescue Beren and Lúthien after their theft of the Silmaril from Morgoth’s crown. The eagles that appear at the end of The Hobbit help turn the tide in the Battle of the Five Armies. And earlier in The Lord of the Rings, Gandalf tells of his rescue from Isengard by the great eagle Gwaihir. The arrival of the eagles here at the Black Gate (which through Pippin’s thoughts Tolkien deliberately relates to their arrival in Bilbo’s story) is a deus ex machina that Tolkien clearly was fond of using (Rogers calls it aquila ex machina [“eagle from a machine” 76]). Only the eagles could have rescued Maedhros or Gandalf; only the eagles can possibly reach Frodo and Sam on Mount Doom in time to save them from the eruption of the mountain and the collapse of Mordor. It is not simply that Tolkien is fond of using eagles as the cavalry, arriving at the last moment to save the day. They have a profounder significance within his legendarium. In Tolkien’s “A Description of the Island of Númenor,” published in Unfinished Tales of Númenor and Middle-earth, Tolkien describes the religious practices of the Númenóreans. The only birds able to fly to the peak of their sacred mountain of Meneltarma, a place dedicated to the worship of the creator god Ilúvatar, are the eagles, who are called “Witnesses

Lord of the Rings, The   287 of Manwë”—Manwë being the chief of the angelic Valar who govern the world under Ilúvatar’s guidance (Unfinished Tales 174). Thus, the eagles are sacred birds in Middle-earth. For Tolkien, their surprising rescues are concrete instances of what, in his famous essay “On Fairy-Stories,” he calls eucatastrophe—the sudden turn of events, paralleling the catastrophe of tragedy, that brings about the unlooked-for happy ending of the fairy story. In a letter to his son Christopher in 1944, Tolkien says that the eucatastrophe is important because “it is a sudden glimpse of Truth,” a Truth beyond the physical mundane world that allows us to recognize “that this is indeed how things really do work in the Great World for which our nature is made” (Letters 100). The devout Catholic Tolkien has in mind, of course, the Christian truth that transcends the physical world, and later in the same letter, he refers to his use of the eagles at the climax of The Hobbit as his most worthwhile use to date of that notion of eucatastrophe (Letters 101). Once Frodo and Sam have been rescued, they are treated to a celebration and feast given in their honor, at which they are also reunited with Merry, Pippin, and the other surviving members of the Fellowship. It is significant that these apparently insignificant little people have proven themselves courageous, stalwart, faithful, and dependable. They are the modern heroes—like the British soldiers Tolkien called “tommys”—who do their duty and look for no fanfare. But here, at least, for once, they are recognized by the epic heroes of the great world as the saviors of Middle-earth, and songs are composed about their feats. This celebratory chapter is a necessary conclusion to the achievement of the quest itself, and it forms a transition into the novel’s final chapters involving the new age and the return home. Significantly, the hobbits learn in this fourth chapter that the calendar of the new Fourth Age of Middle-earth will now begin with March 25—the date of the destruction of the One Ring and the fall of Sauron. As Rogers and Rogers point out, March 25 was the traditional English New Year’s Day up until 1751 (113). This was Lady Day, or the Feast of the Annunciation—the day on which Jesus Christ was conceived by the Holy Spirit in the womb of the Virgin Mary (Decem-

ber 25 being exactly nine months later). When Mary agreed to bear the Son of God, the process of man’s redemption began. Nearly coinciding with the spring equinox, this day and season of renewal seemed an appropriate time to begin the new year. In Tolkien’s text, suggestive as these chapters have been of a Christian context, the coincidence of the beginning of the Fourth Age (the renewal of the world) with Lady Day (the regeneration of human life) is a subtle but important allusion to his Catholic faith. Chapters 5–9: The End of the Third Age  It is fairly common for readers of The Lord of the Rings to feel that Tolkien has spent too much time on the closing of the novel. After all, the quest has been achieved, the ring destroyed, and Sauron’s power overthrown. Frodo and Sam have survived the ordeal and can now go home. But there are three things that such readers miss. First, what gives Tolkien’s secondary creation of Middle-earth the remarkable verisimilitude that it has is the enormously detailed context given it by the vast legendarium the author created. It was not in Tolkien’s nature to leave anything unexplained or any questions unresolved. Thus, all loose ends must be tied up and all characters accounted for before he can end his story. Second, a part of the quest has always been the restoration of the Númenórean kings: Since it was Isildur who refused to destroy the ring upon Sauron’s first defeat at the end of the Second Age—a failure that ultimately allowed for Sauron’s return and the failure of Gondor’s line—it still remained for Tolkien to narrate the restoration of that line before the close of his story. Third, Tolkien was not so naive as to believe that the defeat of a single enemy, no matter how much that enemy might embody evil, could mean that all evil had been overcome forever. Life consists of fairly constant resistance to evil in one form or another, and to assume that these characters would live “happily ever after” would be a mistake. Tolkien’s final five chapters address each of these issues. He first deals with the wounded heroes from the Battle of the Pelennor Fields who have been

288   Lord of the Rings, The left behind in Minas Tirith to recover from their wounds, and so have been unable to ride with Aragorn and Gandalf to the Black Gates. Faramir and Éowyn are highly sympathetic characters, both of whom have been rejected by a significant figure in their lives—Faramir by his father and Éowyn by the one she thought she was in love with. In addition, they are both mourning for a father figure. Thus, they both have psychological as well as physical wounds that need healing. In Éowyn’s case, despair is even taking away her will to live. The union of these two characters is remarkably satisfying for the reader, who may not have anticipated a good end for either of these underappreciated orphans. Their courtship is the first sign of the restoration of light and life to Gondor. Even though as readers we already know the outcome of the last battle, we are able to see the tension and anxiety that those left behind are feeling concerning the assault on the Black Gates, and with Faramir, Éowyn, and Merry, we are able to experience the great joy when news comes from the front. That news is delivered by a great eagle, the sacred bird who might be seen as a divine messenger (241). Indeed, as Tom Shippey has pointed out, the eagle’s song echoes the style and verbiage of an Old Testament Psalm. The use of “ye” and “hath” immediately recall the style and language of the King James Bible, but more specifically the “Sing and rejoice” line of the second stanza of the eagle’s song recalls the “Rejoice in the Lord” of Psalm 33, while the spirit of “your King hath passed through” and “your King shall come again” strongly recalls “the King of glory shall come in” in Psalm 24 (Shippey, Road 200). The eagle’s language here also recalls Christian underpinnings of the previous chapters that culminate in the ring’s destruction. The pairing of Faramir and Éowyn serves another function as well, in that it foreshadows the more significant marriage of Aragorn and Arwen that follows in the next chapter. Readers who have grown fond of Éowyn over the course of the novel may be highly disappointed that Aragorn ultimately weds the elf maiden rather than the undeniably likable shield-maiden of Rohan. Tolkien makes it easier for readers to accept this development by first finding a suitable spouse for Éowyn and ensur-

ing a happy ending and satisfactory closure for her and for Faramir. The reason that Aragorn’s marriage comes as something of a surprise to many readers is simply that, aside from a few brief lines and a few obscure allusions in The Fellowship of the Ring, and the royal banner that Aragorn receives from Rivendell, Arwen has played virtually no part in the great events narrated in the trilogy. The background of their story lies beyond the pages of the novel Tolkien has written, but it is a part of that vast legendarium that provides the context for the story and gives substantial life to Tolkien’s “secondary creation” (as he calls it in his essay “On Fairy-Stories”). The story of Aragorn and Arwen is provided in part 5 of Appendix A, attached to the end of The Return of the King. Here, Tolkien tells of how Aragorn, raised by Elrond in Rivendell, meets and falls in love with Elrond’s daughter Arwen, and how the two pledged their love to each other on the hill of Cerin Amroth in Lórien. At that time, Arwen made the “choice of Lúthien”—that is, the choice that Lúthien made for Beren—to share in the destiny of men rather than that of the Eldar, and thus become mortal like her beloved Aragorn. Elrond was not happy with this development and told Aragorn that he would only let his daughter go for the high purpose of restoring the line of Númenórean kings in Gondor. Therefore, he refused to give Arwen in marriage until Aragorn had succeeded in making himself king of Arnor and Gondor, and it is not until after the fall of Sauron that the wedding can take place. Aragorn’s wedding is essential to ensure the continuance of his line; thus, the great ceremony surrounding it is a celebration and recognition that the restored royal house of Isildur will not be barren. But before it takes place, an even more important symbol must be renewed: the dead tree that stands in the courtyard of Minas Tirith. I have discussed above the ultimate descent of the White Tree of Gondor from Telperion, the White Tree of Valinor. This ancient pedigree gives the White Tree a heavy symbolic significance. Christopher Vaccaro explores some of the implications of this tree of Gondor. In Númenor and in Valinor, the White Tree was the center of the

Lord of the Rings, The   289 culture, as it was when first replanted in Minas Tirith. Vaccaro says that in these societies “the tree’s very presence signifies a community’s faith in the presence of the divine within the materials of the earth. It suggests abundance, fecundity, and regeneration” (23). Vaccaro traces the archetypal significance of trees in Tolkien’s medieval and biblical sources, including the ash tree Yggdrasil, the World Tree, in Norse mythology, as well as the oak Irminsul, a “holy pillar” that symbolized the power of Thor. He also discusses the Tree of Life in the Book of Genesis, which, according to Christian folklore, was also made into the cross on which Christ was crucified. Vaccaro sees as most significant the messianic reference in Isaiah 11:1 to the rod that emerges from the root of Jesse, a symbolic reference to the Messiah as essentially the return of the Davidic royal line (23–28). In these later examples, the regeneration and fertility associated with the tree are spiritual in nature, and to an extent, so is the restoration of the tree of Gondor. The White Tree symbolizes a faithfulness to the light of the Undying Lands in the West and to the spiritual awareness that such faith indicates in the novel, but practically it also symbolizes the regeneration and fertility of the royal line. As Vaccaro points out, in Númenor “[t]he care Nimloth receives is a direct indication of the degree of faithfulness of the Numenorean kings,” so that Tar Palantír, the 23rd king, prophesied that when the tree died, the line of kings would die out as well (27). Thus, it is essential that here, at the beginning of his reign, Aragorn find a scion of the White Tree to use as emblem and foundation for his faithful and fertile reign, before marrying Arwen as the consummation of that promise. After the celebration of the midsummer wedding, the time has come for the hobbits to depart, and the next chapter’s purpose is essentially to help bring closure to the narrative by literally retracing the hobbits’ journey in reverse and giving the readers a last look at most of the important characters of the trilogy. Thus, with the hobbits we revisit Rohan and see Théoden laid to rest with his ancestors, we part from Galadriel and Celeborn as they turn off for Lothlórien, and we see the aging Bilbo in Rivendell. Along the way, as promised, Legolas

visits the caverns of Aglarond at Helm’s Deep with Gimli, and the dwarf explores the trees of Fangorn Forest with Legolas. And the hobbits again visit Treebeard at Isengard. The party passes Saruman and Wormtongue on the road as well, so that even as the novel closes, we are reminded that evil has not been eradicated—a fact that is underscored on the path from Rivendell to Bree when the hobbits pass Weathertop and Frodo remembers his wound that will never fully heal. Closer to home, Gandalf leaves the hobbits to spend some time with Tom Bombadil, and even Bill the Pony shows up again, to Sam’s great delight. Essentially, the hobbits have come full circle and the quest has ended. But two nagging items remain at the end of chapter 7. First, we know that something important is passing away. The Third Age of Middleearth is over, and Gandalf has already made it clear that, since he was sent to Middle-earth for the purpose of opposing Sauron, his time is over. Since the Fourth Age is the age of men, the elves will be passing from Middle-earth as well, and this is why Arwen’s decision not to pass into the West with the rest of her race so poignantly affects her father at this time. The renewal of the Fourth Age applies only to men (and to hobbits, who seem closely related to men in Tolkien’s taxonomy). For others, it is an ending. Even the ents, oldest living creatures in Middle-earth, seem destined to pass away, as we recall when Treebeard reminds the travelers to look for the entwives when they return to their countries. This mood of loss returns particularly powerfully in the final chapter. The other issue is the problem of Saruman, which remains unresolved by the time the hobbits return to the Shire. Tolkien, with a passion for closure, must tie up the loose end of Saruman, but this is not the only purpose of the penultimate “Scouring of the Shire” chapter. To some readers, the chapter seems out of place and anticlimactic— after all the hobbit companions have been through, they must return to a Shire that has changed into a police state and are forced to actively resist the powers that control the government. Aside from demonstrating the persistence of evil, this chapter serves three other functions. First, it demonstrates that the world is made up of complex relationships,

290   Lord of the Rings, The and that no one corner of that world can remain isolated from the rest. The Shire has existed in isolation for centuries only because the Dúnedain, Rangers of the North, had kept out the evil forces of Sauron. But that condition of infantile insulation cannot exist forever. Frodo and his friends, veterans returning home from the war, find that things are not as they left them. In part, this is because it is the nature of things to change, and so their homes could not remain frozen like the snapshots they carried with them in their minds. But partly, too, it is because they have changed: When they left the Shire, they were essentially boys playing a dangerous game, and their vision of the Shire of their youth was an idealized one. The greed of Lotho Sackville-Baggins and the small-minded industrialism of Ted Sandyman were there when they left but have grown more threatening in their absence. Second, the events of this chapter enable Merry, Pippin, Frodo, and Sam to demonstrate the maturity they have gained over the course of their quest. Like the quests of medieval romance, this quest has not only been about the One Ring; it has also been the archetypal quest for the self—a process that has allowed the hobbits to achieve full maturity and selfhood. The fact that Merry and Pippin have grown three inches is merely the physical manifestation of their psychological growth. It is no coincidence that Gandalf leaves the hobbits in order to visit Tom Bombadil before they enter the Shire, even though he knows they will face challenges at home. Nor do the hobbits grumble at his parting, as they would have done not many months before. They no longer need the father figure to guide them through difficult times. They are self-reliant and lead a very efficient rebellion against Sharkey and his cohorts, arousing the spirit of defiance and self-determination among their fellow hobbits, who have only lacked their leadership to rise in defense of their own freedom. Thus, the society of the Shire itself reflects the maturity displayed by the individual hobbits. The “Scouring of the Shire” chapter, then, is not a digression from Tolkien’s main plot but the necessary conclusion of the archetypal quest motif—the return home and demonstration of the heroes’ new maturity. It is, essentially, the return of Odysseus to Ithaca.

But there is yet another function served by this chapter. Tolkien knew the difficulties of the soldier returning home from the front, having done so after the Somme, and having seen others of his generation coming back from the Great War. He knew that war changed men, and that such a return was more difficult for some than for others. While Merry and Pippin demonstrate their effectiveness in another combat situation, Frodo’s reaction is much the opposite. He has seen enough of war and violence and does his best to avoid violence at all costs. At least he tries to ensure that no hobbit will spill the blood of another hobbit, and that prisoners will be spared death or abuse by their captors. He has himself been a prisoner of orcs and knows what torture is. He has seen how of all creatures, only orcs shed one another’s blood indiscriminately. Men may kill one another in war, but he has seen Aragorn’s mercy to former enemies. Frodo has always been a passive hero. His heroism has taken the shape of courage in the face of danger, of brave endurance of hardship, of strength of mind under extreme pressure. But it has not taken the form of great martial acts, as those of which Merry and Pippin have shown themselves capable. Tolkien implies that men like Frodo are needed to restrain the violent tendencies of society. Although there are times when evil must be fought, as Merry and Pippin demonstrate, Tolkien makes it clear that the peacemakers are indeed blessed. Frodo has always been the moral and practical leader of the hobbits, and the fact that he rather than one of the lesser characters demonstrates this pacifist tendency suggests that Tolkien believes that peace must be the prevailing concern of society. Frodo’s qualities of peace and mercy, as well as the respect he is able to command from his fellow hobbits, enable him to convince the hobbit populace to show mercy to Saruman. Frodo spares the former wizard not out of fear—he does not believe Saruman’s claim that his blood will curse the Shire, and proclaims it immediately to be a lie—but rather out of the higher demand for mercy over justice, a concept he has learned from Gandalf. Just as Frodo sensed that there was good in Gollum and tried to bring it out after Gan-

Lord of the Rings, The   291 dalf’s insistence that Gollum had some role still to play, it may well be that Frodo suspects some good must still live within Saruman (whom Gandalf also spared), whose joy in his ability to bring pain to the Shire is muffled by Frodo’s mercy. If there is any good in Saruman, Wormtongue’s murder of his master guarantees that it never has time to blossom. But that does not make Frodo’s mercy wrong. In fact, Frodo’s attitude toward war in this chapter is not quite pacifist—he does recognize that it is necessary to defend society against tyranny—but it does essentially follow the Christian notion of the “just war” as proposed originally by St. Augustine and codified by Thomas Aquinas in the 13th century. As Aquinas stated: [I]t may happen that the war is declared by the legitimate authority, and for a just cause, and yet be rendered unlawful through a wicked intention. Hence Augustine says (Contra Faust. xxii, 74): “The passion for inflicting harm, the cruel thirst for vengeance, an unpacific and relentless spirit, the fever of revolt, the lust of power, and such like things, all these are rightly condemned in war.” (Thomas Aquinas 2.2, q. 40, a. 1)

Frodo’s readjustment to civilian life continues to be difficult in the final chapter of the trilogy. Merry and Pippin thrive in the roles of returning heroes and continue to capitalize on their experience of the wide world. Sam is the least changed of all: He had kept his humble, practical common sense throughout the adventure, and he returns to a normal life, marrying and having children and eventually becoming mayor of Hobbiton, though he treasures his memories of the elves and names his first daughter Elanor after the star-shaped flower of Lórien. But even he is not unchanged, and many readers have noted that his last line in the book, “Well, I’m back” (311), is not the same thing as saying, “Well, I’m home”—he has returned, but things are not the same as before he left, and never will be. But Frodo has the most difficult adjustment. Like the shell-shocked veteran he resembles, he suffers from a kind of post-traumatic stress, becoming violently ill on October 6, the anniversary of his near-fatal wound. His prolonged contact

with the great power of the ring has made him unfit for the common joys of ordinary life. He tells Sam: I have been too deeply hurt, Sam. I tried to save the Shire, and it has been saved, but not for me. It must often be so, Sam, when things are in danger: some one has to give them up, lose them, so that others may keep them. (309)

Frodo’s sacrifice has been for others—for Sam and Rosie and Elanor—but he has changed too much to benefit from the sacrifice himself. Ultimately, he is unable to adjust to life back in the Shire, and he uses the gift that Arwen gave him: her passage on the ship from the Grey Havens that will leave Middle-earth for the Undying Lands. The meeting with Elrond, Galadriel, Bilbo, and Gandalf (with Shadowfax) and all of the Eldar provides the reader with a last look at the glory of the Third Age, which is now passing into eternity. It is the final closure of the narrative: The hero (and in this case, an entire race of heroes) must leave the mundane world. In Frodo’s case, it is not by death, but by a kind of apotheosis: He will go to the Undying Lands, where he will live among the Valar, the holy ones. It is not unlike the end of the traditional hero myth wherein the hero may become a constellation or otherwise take on some sort of eternal life. The implication of Frodo’s passing here is that he will be granted the perpetual life of the Eldar themselves, rather than passing away as a normal mortal. But while the passing is a remarkable and mythic end for Frodo, it is also the end of the Eldar’s influence in Middle-earth, the passing away of a great age. The three elven rings (it comes as no great surprise that they have been secretly wielded by Galadriel, Elrond, and Gandalf) have no more power, and the age of the Eldar has passed. The mood of this last chapter in particular is a distillation of the nostalgia and world-weariness that has been apparent throughout the novel in the scenes taking place in elvish territory such as Rivendell or, in particular, Lothlórien. Shippey, citing Northrop Frye, remarks that the mythic hero’s death typically evokes an elegaic mood (a mood of loss, of grieving for the past) and compares Tolkien’s ending to that of Beowulf or Tennyson’s Idylls of the King, where

292   Lord of the Rings, The the old order passes away to be replaced by a new one (Road 211). Without doubt, Tolkien is here mirroring his chief inspiration for his entire legendarium—that is, Old English poetry. The powerful strain of elegy that runs through poems like “The Wanderer” and “The Seafarer” is nowhere as strong as it is in Tolkien’s beloved Beowulf. In Tolkien’s groundbreaking essay on the poem, he calls Beowulf a “heroic-elegaic poem” by a Christian poet that looks back with some nostalgia on a pagan past that is gone forever. Here, the world of the Eldar has passed, and Tolkien as narrator provides us with an elegy of their passing. Part of the world that the Beowulf poet remembers in his poem is what Tolkien calls the “theory of courage, which is the great contribution of early Northern literature” (“Beowulf” 20). According to this “theory,” courage to fight on when all hope was gone was the ultimate value of life in a world in which even the gods were destined to be destroyed—the kind of courage exemplified in particular by Frodo and Sam in their hopeless quest through Mordor. The only possible immortality in such a world is the immortality provided by the poet, who could record heroic feats in songs of praise that might pass into legend and myth. The poet of Beowulf, Tolkien says, was trying to preserve the memory of that pagan lifestyle before it disappeared completely from the world. But he treated it with a different tone, an elegaic one, because it was a time that had passed. Tolkien adopts such a tone in the “Grey Havens” chapter (and, indeed, in much of The Return of the King). But his discussion of Beowulf also explains his persistent references to Bilbo’s memoirs, passed on to Frodo, who completes them with his own story and passes them on to Sam. Tolkien has presented heroic song among the elves in Rivendell and the Riders of Rohan, and in Gondor as well when the minstrel sings the song of “Frodo of the Nine Fingers and the ring of Doom” (232), and these are depicted as tales that would be handed down over generations. But Tolkien himself lives in an age of written texts, as did the Beowulf poet, and there is at least an implication that the written memoirs of Bilbo and Frodo have been the source for Tolkien’s trilogy.

Thus, Tolkien presents himself not as the inventor of the story but rather the one who, like the Beowulf poet, passes on the tales of an age long past—an ancient tradition that is no more, and whose passing he mourns with his elegaic tone. The fiction here is that the trilogy is not a fiction: Tolkien is not inventing these stories; he is merely passing them on. They are part of the “cauldron of story” that he mentions in his essay “On Fairy-Stories,” and so they belong not to him but to us all. Characters Aragorn  (Strider, Elessar) Aragorn is the traditional hero of The Lord of the Rings—the noble warrior who, through valiant martial acts, wins back his crown and marries the fair maiden in the end. Tolkien’s choice to make hobbits (the everyday people) the protagonists of his story forces Aragorn into a subordinate position in the narrative, but the reader’s response to Aragorn remains what it would be for a conventional medieval epic or romance hero—a King Arthur, a Roland, or a Beowulf. Aragorn is heir to the throne of Isildur, rightful king of Gondor, who leads his followers against the Dark Lord Sauron and eventually returns victorious as king of the united Gondor and Arnor, the Northern Kingdom, ushering in a kind of renaissance after the War of the Ring. Aragorn first appears in The Lord of the Rings as the rough and suspicious-looking Ranger called Strider, sent by Gandalf to help Frodo and his companions on their journey to Rivendell. From the beginning, he must caution them against carelessness as the Black Riders pursue them. He is able to protect them on Weathertop from a full assault by the Riders, and is able temporarily to stave off the lethal effects of Frodo’s wound until he can reach Rivendell and Elrond’s care. In Rivendell, Aragorn reforges the sword of his ancestor Elendil to use in the coming struggle against Sauron. A logical choice to join the Fellowship of the Ring, he takes over as leader of the Fellowship when Gandalf falls to the Balrog in Moria. Aragorn leads the group to Lothlórien and then down the river Anduin to Parth Galen, where the Fellowship is broken after Boromir’s death, Frodo’s departure for Mordor, and Merry and Pippin’s capture by orcs. With Legolas

Lord of the Rings, The   293 and Gimli, Aragorn pursues the orcs into Rohan, where he is befriended by Éomer, captain of the Rohirrim. Reunited with Gandalf at Fangorn Forest, he accompanies the wizard to Edoras, where they gain the alliance of Rohan’s King Théoden. With the Rohirrim, Aragorn fights at the Battle of the Hornburg at Helm’s Deep, after which he is with Gandalf and Théoden when they confront Saruman at Orthanc. Here he gains possession of a palantír, which is by rights his own property as Isildur’s heir. Through this seeing-stone, he strives mentally with Sauron himself, revealing his existence to the Dark Lord and displaying the reforged sword. This helps to draw Sauron’s attention from the true threat, which is Frodo and the ring. From here, Aragorn travels the Paths of the Dead, demanding the allegiance of the Army of the Dead, oathbreakers who can be put to rest by fulfilling their oath to Isildur through aiding his heir. He leads the Grey Company against Sauron’s fleet of corsairs approaching Minas Tirith from the south, and captures the ships, which he sails with an army of Gondor’s allies up the Anduin in time to turn the tide of the Battle of the Pelennor Fields. He refuses to enter the city as king after the battle but does enter secretly to heal the wounded in the Houses of Healing, an act that signifies he is the true king. He leads the army in a final desperate assault on the Black Gate of Mordor, which gives Frodo and Sam enough time to complete their quest and destroy the One Ring. At the conclusion of the war, he returns to Minas Tirith; is crowned by Gandalf; finds a seedling of the White Tree—symbol of his line; and marries Arwen, the elf maiden who is daughter of Elrond. He takes the name King Elessar, using the Quenya name meaning “elfstone,” referring to the green stone he wears around his neck, a gift from Arwen. Aragorn is more than a two-dimensional hero. He is humanized by his doubts, his humility, his hesitancy to claim his throne, and his frustrated love for Arwen: Her father will permit her to marry no one less than the restored king of Arnor and Gondor. Aragorn’s descent to the dead and return to the world as the conquering hero parallel similar descents of epic heroes like Odysseus and Aeneas,

and put him into that mythic category. In Tolkien’s appendices to The Return of the King, much of Aragorn’s back story is told: He was raised in Rivendell by Elrond, in order to keep his existence a secret from Sauron. Elrond finally revealed his true identity to him when he was 20 years old. At that same time, he met and fell in love with Elrond’s daughter, Arwen. Elrond did not encourage their courtship, so Aragorn left Rivendell and for decades fought against the Dark Lord, serving in disguise for a time with both King Thengel of Rohan and with Ecthelion, steward of Gondor. At the age of 49, he met Arwen again in Lórien, where they pledged their love to each other on Cerin Amroth. He forged a friendship with Gandalf during these years, and shortly before the War of the Ring, at Gandalf’s request, he tracked down and captured the creature Gollum. After the War of the Ring, Aragorn reigned for 120 years as King Elessar, bringing peace and prosperity to the reunited kingdoms of Gondor and Arnor, after which he was succeeded by his son Eldarion. After his death, Arwen (having renounced her immortality) pined for several years before dying in Lothlórien and being buried on Cerin Amroth. Bilbo Baggins  Bilbo, as protagonist of The Hobbit, is discussed at length in the commentary on that work. In The Lord of the Rings, his importance lies chiefly in his relationship with his cousin Frodo. He passes on the One Ring to Frodo, and thereby inadvertently ensures that Frodo must be the Ringbearer, taking on the task of destroying the ring to keep it from the hands of Sauron. Bilbo, having never married, adopts the orphaned Frodo as his heir. After reaching the advanced age of 111, Bilbo decides to leave the Shire forever and to live among his friends, the elves, at Rivendell. He bequeaths his home, Bag End, to Frodo, along with most of his possessions, including the ring. When Frodo arrives at Rivendell and confers with Bilbo, he finds Bilbo living as an honored friend of the elves; in fact, Bilbo volunteers to bear the ring to Mordor himself, though his offer is not taken seriously because of his advanced age. But he gives Frodo his elven mithril mail coat, which will turn any blade, as well as his elvish sword Sting.

294   Lord of the Rings, The When Frodo returns to Rivendell, he finds Bilbo much frailer than before, and the older hobbit gives Frodo the Red Book of Westmarch, in which he has recorded his memoirs, and in which he wants Frodo to record his own. At the end of the trilogy, Bilbo travels with Elrond and the court of Rivendell to the Grey Havens to take a ship to the Undying Lands beyond the western sea. He is joined by Frodo, both Ring-bearers being unable to live any longer in the mundane world. Bilbo’s function in the novel is significant: The fact that he bore the ring for more than 60 years without succumbing to its evil influence is good evidence that hobbits, as a humble and simple people, may provide a Ring-bearer most able to accomplish the quest. But the dangers of the ring are also evident in Bilbo. Gandalf must warn him several times to leave it behind at Bag End, though it still mysteriously finds its way into Bilbo’s pocket. When he asks to see the ring in Rivendell, Bilbo snatches at it like a greedy animal, an act that Frodo ultimately repeats when he believes that Sam wants to take the ring from him in Mordor. Bilbo’s other function in the tale is that of storyteller. His memoirs and notes recorded in the Red Book are passed on to Frodo, and ultimately to Sam. The implication is that Tolkien used this book, or some text derived from it, to provide the story that he records as The Lord of the Rings. Boromir  Boromir, eldest son of Denethor of Minas Tirith, is heir to the stewardship of Gondor. One of the Fellowship of the Ring, Boromir proves a courageous but flawed individual who yields to the temptation of the One Ring and attacks Frodo at Amon Hen, but ultimately he redeems himself, giving his life in a fruitless attempt to save Merry and Pippin from the orcs who kidnap them. Boromir first appears in The Lord of the Rings at the Council of Elrond. He has come to Rivendell seeking an interpretation of a dark dream that his brother Faramir has had, in which a voice directed them to seek the sword that was broken, where they would find Isildur’s Bane and where a Halfling would stand forth. Boromir had insisted that he take on the arduous journey to Rivendell, which has taken him more than three months, in order to

find someone to make sense of the prophetic dream. In Imladris, he takes part in the Council of Elrond, arguing from the beginning that the ring should be brought to Minas Tirith, to be used as a last resort to protect the city. Although the council decides otherwise, Boromir becomes a part of the Fellowship and proves his worth on Mount Caradhras, where he burrows through the snow and (having grown fond of Merry and Pippin) carries the hobbits to safety. In Lórien, Boromir is uncomfortable with Galadriel’s reading his thoughts, and on the way down the Anduin, he continually tries to persuade Aragorn that the company should go first to Minas Tirith. His obsession with the ring grows as the company travels farther south, until he begins talking to himself about it. On Amon Hen, the lure of the ring finally proves too powerful for Boromir to resist. He finds Frodo alone on the mountain, and after trying unsuccessfully to convince the hobbit to bring the ring to Gondor, he tries to take it from him by force, so that Frodo is obliged to use the ring to escape. Boromir repents immediately and returns to camp to report Frodo’s disappearance. In the opening chapter of The Two Towers, Boromir fights boldly, slaying 20 orcs before succumbing himself as he attempts to protect Merry and Pippin from the company of orcs who have come to take them to Isengard. In his dying words, he repents his madness and accepts his death as a just retribution. Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli give him an honorable funeral and send his body down the river (where it is eventually seen by Boromir’s brother, Faramir). Boromir’s actions convince Frodo to go on alone, since he feels he cannot trust any of his companions not to give in to the One Ring’s allure. However, good comes from this evil (a theme that consistently recurs throughout The Lord of the Rings), since the orcs who attack the camp kidnap the wrong hobbits, and the ring eludes their grasp. Boromir is strong, courageous, intrepid, and proud. He is justly proud of his people for their long defiance of Sauron, and he is the champion and hope of these people. Born into a ruling family, he chafes at the restriction placed on him, that he must be steward and not king in Gondor. Essen-

Lord of the Rings, The   295 tially, Boromir is a tragic figure. His obsession with the ring proves to be the flaw that initiates his downfall, which is deserved but understandable, since he hopes to use the ring for good, unaware that it can only corrupt those who desire its power. In the end, he achieves a tragic knowledge, recognizing his error and his failure. Denethor Denethor II is the 26th and last of the line of ruling stewards of Gondor. He is proud, willful, courageous, and, until his reason leaves him at the end of his life, a wise ruler. In his youth, even as heir to the stewardship, Denethor was overshadowed by the deeds of Thorongil, who was actually Aragorn in disguise and had come to Gondor to serve Denethor’s father, Ecthelion II. From this point, Denethor became suspicious that Gandalf was planning to put Aragorn on the throne of Gondor as Isildur’s heir, a development he opposed since it would disinherit his own line. He married Finduilas, the daughter of Adrahil, prince of Dol Amroth (and sister of Prince Imrahil, ally of Gondor and Captain of the West in The Return of the King). With her, Denethor fathered two sons, Boromir and Faramir, but when Finduilas died after 12 years of marriage, Denethor became even more solitary and withdrawn than he had been before. With the foresight characteristic of the Dúnedain, Denethor anticipated early in life that Sauron’s great assault on Minas Tirith would come during his stewardship. Accordingly, he did everything he could to build up the city’s defenses and to keep the enemy from encroaching on Gondor’s territory, fortifying an outpost at Osgiliath and harassing Southron men coming north to join with Sauron’s legions. Seeking all the knowledge he could find concerning Sauron’s forces, he began to look into the palantír of Minas Tirith, where he was able to see only what the Dark Lord permitted him to see. Since this included solely images of Mordor’s invincible power, Denethor grew more and more despairing. His stubborn self-reliance and willfulness, coupled with his distrust of Gandalf, cut him off from the wisest counselors and allies available to him, ultimately making him feel the weight of responsibility alone, against overwhelm-

ing odds. The death of Boromir, his son and heir, left him feeling hopeless. Denethor first appears in The Lord of the Rings when Gandalf brings Pippin to see him. His distrust of Gandalf is clear in that scene, though his love for his son is manifested in his tenderness toward the hobbit. Spiteful of his living son, whom he blames for not bringing him the One Ring when he had the opportunity, and whom he consequently wishes had died in Boromir’s place, Denethor sends Faramir on a suicide mission. But when Faramir is brought back wounded and near death, this event—coupled with the dangers he has seen in the palantír, which probably include the fleet of Sauron’s Corsairs moving up the Anduin toward Minas Tirith—seems to unhinge Denethor’s last hold on sanity. Despairing, convinced that his line and his city are on the verge of dying, he builds a funeral pyre on which he plans to burn himself and the unconscious Faramir. It is only the quick actions of Pippin, who calls the guard Beregond and Gandalf to help, that save Faramir, but no one can save Denethor from himself, and he dies in flames. Denethor’s story is a tragic one. He has many of the virtues and all of the vices of his son Boromir, but unlike his son, he has no moment of redemption or self-realization in the end. As a warrior lord, he compares unfavorably to Théoden, king of the Mark, who dies fighting in what seems a lost cause, rather than despairing and shunning the final battle. Elrond  Elrond’s central role in the councils of the leaders of the West in their struggle against the Dark Lord is clear in The Lord of the Rings from very early in the story. His palace of Rivendell in the valley of Imladris is the first goal of the hobbits as they leave the Shire, and it becomes more and more important as an isle of safety and refuge as Frodo and his companions flee across Eriador with the Black Riders in hot pursuit. It is Elrond’s skill at healing that ultimately saves Frodo’s life, and this, we realize, is only a small portion of his great understanding of what Tolkien calls “lore.” Thus, Elrond’s home is first and foremost a haven against the forces of Mordor. Far from being

296   Lord of the Rings, The a fortress, however, the sanctuary of Rivendell is a place of feasting, merriment, and the sharing of elven lore through song. It keeps alive the spirit and culture of the Eldar during the dark days of Sauron’s creeping shadow. With Lothlórien, it is one of the only safe havens for elves and men, and it is kept so—as it becomes clear at the end of The Return of the King—by Elrond’s possession and use of Vilya, greatest of the Three Rings of Power possessed by the elves. In The Fellowship of the Ring, the Council of Elrond in Rivendell is the primary event that initiates Frodo’s quest to destroy the One Ring. Elrond’s preeminence is clear both as convener of the council and as the speaker with the greatest experience, wisdom, and personal knowledge of events. Elrond’s own memory extends back over more than two ages of Middle-earth. Having witnessed firsthand Isildur’s fascination with the ring and refusal to destroy it, Elrond knows better than anyone the danger of the Free Peoples’ trying to use the ring themselves. Thus, he supports and aids Frodo’s quest. Later in the trilogy, he sends his sons to help Aragorn in his battle against the Corsairs and on the Pelennor Fields, and ultimately he gives his daughter Arwen to be Aragorn’s bride. Finally, at the end of The Return of the King, Elrond joins Galadriel, Gandalf, and the Ring-bearers as they sail into the West, leaving Middle-earth forever. Most of Elrond’s story is untold in The Lord of the Rings and must be gleaned from the appendices to The Return of the King and from The Silmarillion. He was born in the waning years of the First Age, and therefore by the time of the War of the Ring, he was more than 6,000 years old. He was the son of the mortal Eärendil the Mariner and the elf princess Elwing; thus, he and his brother, Elros, were peredhil, or half-elven. At the end of the First Age, the Valar gave Elrond and Elros the opportunity to choose whether they would embrace the fate of elves or of men. Elros chose the fate of men and became the founder of the line of kings of Númenor (and therefore was the distant ancestor of Aragorn). Elrond chose the fate of elves and became a part of the retinue of Gil-galad, last king of the Eldar in Middle-earth. Midway through the Second Age, Gil-galad sent Elrond into Eregion

(just west of the Misty Mountains near Moria) to help defend the territory against Sauron, who had recently come to power. But that country fell to the Dark Lord, and Elrond fled with the surviving Noldor of that region to the valley of Imladris, where he built Rivendell. At the end of the Second Age, Elrond took part as herald of King Gilgalad in the Last Alliance of elves and men that finally defeated Sauron, though both Gil-galad and Elendil, leader of men, were killed. It was apparently at that point that Gil-galad bequeathed the ring Vilya to Elrond. Early in the Third Age, Elrond married Celebrían, who was the daughter of Celeborn and Galadriel, and with her had three children: their sons Elladan and Elrohir and their daughter, Arwen. Over the years, Rivendell became more and more a place of refuge, especially when the power of Sauron began to grow again. When the northern kingdoms of the Dúnedain were wiped out, Elrond did all he could to help the surviving Dúnedain, even to the point of protecting the heirs of Isildur and keeping safe in Rivendell the broken sword of Elendil, which prophecy said would be forged again when the one arose who would reunite the Dúnedain kingdoms. Aragorn was raised in Rivendell as Elrond’s own son until he was old enough to learn his true parentage. In Rivendell, Aragorn and Arwen fell in love, but Elrond forebad their marriage, knowing that it would almost certainly mean that Arwen would choose the fate of her husband rather than her people. He told Aragorn that he would only allow Arwen to marry one who was king of both Gondor and Arnor. After the War of the Ring, when Aragorn had restored the royal line of Elendil, Elrond gave Arwen in marriage to Aragorn. He spent a long time in council with his daughter, and she made the choice to become mortal. Thus, when Elrond rode to the Grey Havens at the end of The Return of the King, he rode without his beloved Arwen, who had given up her place on the ship to Frodo, the Ring-bearer. Éowyn  Tolkien is often criticized for his lack of strong women characters, and if one considers Galadriel to be the chief female character in

Lord of the Rings, The   297 The Lord of the Rings, it is easy to understand that criticism, since she is an ethereal, ideal presence rather than an active character in the narrative. Tolkien’s main sources are Old English poems and Norse sagas whose chief action concerns the generally male-dominated subject of warfare, so this is not surprising. However, in some medieval Norse sources, women appear as “shield-maidens”: unmarried women who choose to fight alongside men as warriors. The most famous of these women is undoubtedly Brynhild in the Völsunga Saga, but shield-maidens appear in other sources as well, including Hervarar Saga, Hrólfs Saga Gautrekssonar, and the Gesta Danorum. Thus, Tolkien has literary precedents for his most dynamic female character: Éowyn, shield-maiden of Rohan, is the one woman in the text of The Lord of the Rings who performs heroic actions as important as those of the male characters. Éowyn was the daughter of Théodwyn, King Théoden’s sister, and Éomund, marshal of the Mark. After her parents’ early death, she and her brother, Éomer, were raised by their uncle the king, who regarded Éowyn as his own daughter. This was both a blessing and a curse, since it meant that she spent her life in constant attendance on Théoden during his long decline into depression and dotage. She grew to deplore the decline of the royal house of Rohan, and she desired to bring its glory back. Éowyn learned the skills of riding and swordplay as well as any male Rider of Rohan, but she was never given the opportunity to use them as she was consistently relegated to the kinds of services deemed more appropriate for a woman. She saw the opportunities her brother, Éomer, had to perform martial feats of glory and wanted such opportunities for herself. When Éowyn first appears in The Two Towers, she is strongly attracted to Aragorn, the ideal warrior king. As suggested in the commentary, many critics agree that it is not really the case that Éowyn is in love with Aragorn so much as that Éowyn actually wants to be Aragorn. But her attraction is not reciprocated. Telling her that he is pledged to Arwen, Aragorn rejects her, though he pities her—something that she cannot bear. Aragorn also turns her down when she insists on

riding with him along the Paths of the Dead, and when he leaves, she mourns both for his almost certain death and her own inability to accompany him into battle. Ordered by Théoden to remain in Rohan as viceroy as he takes the host of Rohan into battle against Mordor, Éowyn decides to disobey and to ride along, disguised as a young male warrior named Dernhelm. She carries Merry along with her, since he has also been ordered not to ride, and Merry sees in her eyes a kind of desperation: Éowyn seems to look upon the battle as a kind of suicide. If she cannot change her life, she will die gloriously in battle like the warrior she longs to be. She nearly gets her wish in the Battle of the Pelennor Fields. Fiercely loyal to her father figure, she is the only one of the Rohirrim to stand by her lord Théoden when he is felled by the seemingly invincible lord of the Nazgûl. In this, she demonstrates as well as anyone in the novel the spirit of what Tolkien called the Northern heroic code. Like an AngloSaxon warrior, she will not leave her fallen lord no matter how overwhelming the odds are against her; rather, she will fight on to the death. With Merry’s help, she is able to kill both the Nazgûl and his monstrous steed and thus fulfill the prophecy that the Chief Nazgûl could not be slain by any man. Having developed the sickness known as the Black Breath, contracted through contact with the Nazgûl, Éowyn is taken into Minas Tirith to be cared for in the Houses of Healing. Here Aragorn cures the physical illness but worries that Éowyn has lost the will to live. But in the Houses, she heals in spirit as well when she meets and falls truly in love with Faramir, a man who, rejected and undervalued himself, really understands her and admires her for herself. Ultimately, the two are married, and Éowyn becomes the Lady of Ithilien. Faramir  Faramir was the younger son of Denethor, steward of Gondor, and was the brother of Boromir, one of the Fellowship of the Ring. He became steward of Gondor upon the death of his father and thus oversaw the ceremonies that crowned Aragorn king of Gondor. After the War of the Ring, he was made prince of Ithilien and married Lady Éowyn of Rohan.

298   Lord of the Rings, The Faramir first appears in The Two Towers as the captain of a select company from Gondor waging a kind of guerrilla war on Sauron’s forces in Ithilien. Here Frodo and Sam come into his power, and in a situation clearly meant to show him as a foil to his brother, Boromir, Faramir declines to try to take the One Ring from Frodo. In this same scene, Faramir reveals that, although war is inevitable if an implacable enemy seeks to enslave his country, he does not love battle or seek glory as its own end. In fact, Faramir is more interested in music and in lore, and therefore is less valued by his father than Boromir, to whom martial prowess is all. Faramir is an adept warrior who, although sent into what appears to be a suicide mission by his father, returns to Minas Tirith leading an orderly defeat from the city’s outer defenses at Osgiliath, only to be wounded by an arrow from the Lord of the Nazgûl. This brings him near death, and his father, Denethor, believing that his line has ended and despairing of life, nearly burns Faramir on his own funeral pyre. Only the quick thinking of Pippin and the intervention of Gandalf save Faramir from burning. Faramir is finally healed through the efforts of Aragorn, the true king, and while he recovers in the Halls of Healing, he meets Éowyn, the wounded shield-maiden of Rohan. Here the son rejected by his father falls in love with the lady rejected by her lover (Aragorn), and the two form a special bond. At the end of The Return of the King, Aragorn makes him and his heirs stewards of Gondor in perpetuity, as well as prince of Ithilien and lord of Emyn Arnen (the hills country across the Anduin River from Minas Tirith). He lives in Emyn Arnen after marrying the Lady Éowyn of Rohan. More than his father or his brother, Faramir is the character in the novel who embodies the character of the men of Gondor. He is a powerful and courageous warrior but is also a lover of peace, and his respect for history and the arts exemplifies the qualities that make the people of Gondor superior to many other nations of men and underscores their relationship with the men of Númenor, who had lived close to the elves and to the Undying Lands.

Frodo Baggins  Frodo is the protagonist of The Lord of the Rings, the character on whom the fate of all the free peoples of Middle-earth depends. His quest to destroy the One Ring, the Ring of Power created by the Dark Lord Sauron to control all men, elves, and dwarves, is taken on voluntarily as Frodo, aware of his own weaknesses, sets off to unmake the ring in the place where it was first forged—Mount Doom in Sauron’s dark land of Mordor. Frodo, the son of Drogo Baggins and Primula Brandybuck, was orphaned at the age of 12 and later adopted by his cousin Bilbo. He and Bilbo had the same birthday—September 22—and Bilbo’s 111th birthday party, which opens The Lord of the Rings, is Frodo’s 33rd, the time when hobbits traditionally come of age. He becomes Bilbo’s heir and inherits the ancestral home, Bag End, upon Bilbo’s departure, living there for 17 years until, at age 50, he is persuaded by the wizard Gandalf to leave the Shire and take the ring with him. Aided by his friends (Merry, Pippin, and Sam) and the Ranger called Strider, Frodo arrives at Rivendell after a near-fatal wound from one of the Nazgûl, or Ringwraiths, but in Rivendell he agrees to take on the burden of bearing the ring. Accompanied by eight others (including the dwarf Gimli, the elf Legolas, and the man Boromir from the kingdom of Gondor), Frodo sets out for Mordor. On the way, Boromir is corrupted by desire for the ring and attacks Frodo, after which Frodo goes on alone, accompanied by his servant, Sam. They are aided by the creature Gollum, and after serious hardships and dangers, Frodo and Sam arrive at the Cracks of Doom. Here, however, Frodo is not able to fulfill the quest. Overcome by the lure of the ring, he claims it for himself, and it is only when Gollum snatches the ring from him that it falls, with Gollum himself, into the fiery mountain. Frodo is not a typical hero. He is not unusually brave, powerful, or talented. He makes some serious mistakes at the beginning of his quest, procrastinating so that he leaves the Shire too late (after the Black Riders are already seeking him), acting foolishly at the Prancing Pony in Bree and drawing attention to himself, and yielding to the temptation to put on the ring on Weathertop. But he matures during his journey and comes back a wiser though

Lord of the Rings, The   299 wounded personality. His choice as Ring-bearer demonstrates that even the least likely person may be heroic if he steps forward to do what needs to be done at the right time. Further, the more traditional heroes of the story—Aragorn, Gandalf, and the rest—could not have managed the task of the Ringbearer because they are not possessed of the humility needed to resist the call to power that emanates from the ring. Even Frodo is unable to resist it at the last moment. But he does demonstrate a remarkably stalwart endurance, a persistence against great odds, a kind of passive heroism. Further, he shows great sympathy and charity when he attempts to draw out the good that he feels is still within Gollum during the time that creature leads him toward Mordor. For Frodo, Gollum serves as an important example. He demonstrates what the ring can do to its bearer if the bearer gives in to it, and he also gives Frodo some hope: If there is still good in Gollum that can be reached, and if the creature can be saved, then Frodo can see hope for himself for surviving the ordeal of bearing the ring. Frodo is celebrated in song and legend after the quest is over as “Frodo of the Nine Fingers,” but he returns home to the Shire a somewhat broken hobbit, recalling a shell-shocked returning veteran from World War I. He cannot adjust to life in the Shire and ultimately passes over the sea to the Undying Lands, so that he achieves a kind of apotheosis at the end of the story. It is Frodo’s own version of the story, recorded in the Red Book of Westmarch, that is purportedly Tolkien’s source for the story of the War of the Ring and the end of the Third Age. Galadriel  In The Lord of the Rings, Galadriel appears as the queen of the woodland realm of Lothlórien. She is tall and beautiful, with golden hair, and is clearly the most powerful of the Eldar in Middle-earth. She rules the Golden Wood with her husband, Celeborn, and keeps her woodland realm hidden from the outside world. Aragorn, however, is able to lead the Companions of the Ring into the secret wood after the fall of Gandalf in Moria, and by Galadriel’s permission, the members of the Fellowship are sheltered and cared for until they are ready to move on in their quest.

Galadriel’s power is clearly as great as any in Middle-earth. With the help of Nenya, one of the three great elven rings, she is able to keep Lothlórien a refuge hidden from Sauron and his minions. She also has the ability to see into the thoughts of others, a power that makes some of the Fellowship uncomfortable—most notably Boromir, whose desire for the ring cannot be hidden from her. With her mirror, Galadriel is able to show Frodo and Sam glimpses of the future that may help them in their quest. She also distributes valuable gifts to the Fellowship to aid them on their way, including grey elven cloaks that keep them warm and keep them from being seen too easily; a box of soil and the seed of a Mallorn tree, which help Sam regenerate the Shire upon his return; and, most notably, a phial that provides light in the darkest places for Frodo and Sam. Galadriel makes her deepest impressions first on Gimli, who serves her and protects her image the way a medieval courtly lover might protect the name of his beloved (to him she gives a lock of her golden hair); and, second, on Sam, for whom she serves as a kind of ideal anima figure, whose image comes before him with the light of her phial in the difficult places of Mordor and Shelob’s lair. Most impressively, Galadriel is one of two figures (the other being Gandalf) to whom Frodo offers the One Ring. Her power and apparent goodness make such a deep impression on the hobbit that he honestly believes she would be a better keeper of the ring than he. To her credit, Galadriel recognizes that the power of the ring can only corrupt good intentions, and it would ultimately turn her into a Dark Queen to replace the Dark Lord; therefore, she refuses the offer. She is last seen in The Return of the King riding westward to the Grey Havens after the end of the War of the Ring, where she boards a ship to the Undying Lands and passes away into the West with the Ring-bearers, Gandalf, Elrond, and many of her people. Readers of The Lord of the Rings may know little of Galadriel’s back story, though much of this is revealed in the appendices to The Return of the King and in The Silmarillion. Galadriel was the daughter of Finarfin and sister of Finrod, and hence one of the great queens of the Noldor, or High-elves.

300   Lord of the Rings, The She was the only woman to take a leading role in the rebellion of the Noldor in Valinor, siding with Fëanor in inciting the Noldor to leave the Undying Lands—against the express wishes of the Valar (the guardian angels of Arda)—to seek out Morgoth in Middle-earth and make war upon him after his theft of the Silmarils. During the long struggle in the First Age of Middle-earth, Galadriel lived for the most part in Doriath with Thingol, and she became very close to Melian, the Maia who had married Thingol. From Melian she learned a great deal of wisdom. In Doriath, she married the Sindarin elf Celeborn, and with him she had one child, her daughter, Celebrían. Galadriel and Celeborn escaped the destruction of Doriath near the end of the First Age; in fact, Galadriel was the only one of the leaders of the Noldorian exodus who survived the First Age. When, at the end of the age, the Valar permitted all Noldor who wished to return to the Undying Lands, Galadriel was expressly excluded from the pardon. During the Second Age, she and Celeborn founded the kingdom of Lothlórien, which Galadriel modeled on Melian’s Doriath, even giving the land a protective shield, like the Girdle of Melian, to keep it hidden. During the Third Age, Galadriel was the most powerful of the Eldar remaining in Middle-earth, and she was a persistent and dedicated foe of Sauron, aiding his enemies to the best of her ability. Soon after the beginning of the Third Age, her daughter, Celebrían, married Elrond Halfelven and with him had two sons (Elladan and Elrohir) and a daughter, Arwen. Celebrían was wounded by orcs and passed over the sea to the west, but Arwen spent much of her youth with her grandmother in Lothlórien. Galadriel, in league with Elrond, was instrumental in preventing the union of Arwen and Aragorn until Aragorn had attained the throne of Gondor. In the end, it was in part Galadriel’s stalwart opposition to Sauron, but more important her rejection of the One Ring when she had it in her grasp, that ensured her final pardon by the Valar and the end of her exile from the Blessed Realm. When she refuses the ring in The Fellowship of the Ring, Galadriel remarks that she has passed the test, and that she will now diminish and pass into

the West. Without a knowledge of her history, it is difficult for a reader to see exactly what she means by this. The test, however, seems to have been a test of her desire for ultimate power—a desire that she had manifested when she rebelled against the Valar in the First Age. By the time of the War of the Ring, that desire is apparently not as powerful as her desire for justice and the defeat of the Dark Lord, and thus she finally earns her pardon. Gandalf  (Mithrandir)  Gandalf is the archetypal “wise old man” figure, familiar from tradition (e.g., Merlin) and popular culture (e.g., Obi-wan Kenobi, Albus Dumbledore). David Riga has explored Gandalf’s relationship to the Merlin tradition, pointing out what Tolkien has drawn from that tradition and how he has transformed it. Most important, Tolkien has de-emphasized the wizard figure’s character as powerful magician and stressed instead the traditional role as teacher and counselor (Riga 31). He has also made Gandalf a force for good, displacing the dark side of Merlin’s traditional character (represented in his traditionally having been the son of a demon) onto Saruman, the dark necromancer (Riga 34). Thus, Gandalf is an authority figure embodying qualities such as wisdom, morality, and a willingness to help the hero. Gandalf is popularly perceived as a “wizard,” while in fact (according to The Silmarillion) he is a spiritual being—a Maia—sent into Middle-earth about the year 1000 in the Third Age by the Valar (the angelic guardians of Arda) for the sole purpose of combating the evil potential of Sauron. Gandalf and the other members of his order (the Istari) were given mortal bodies—ageless, like those of the elves, but, like the elves, capable of destruction. Of the five Istari, Gandalf the Grey ranks second to Saruman the White in power. Ultimately, Gandalf is the only one of the Istari who remains faithful to his responsibility over the course of two millennia, and it is Gandalf who is most responsible for the final defeat of the Dark Lord. In The Lord of the Rings, Gandalf is the first to recognize that Bilbo’s ring is the One Ring, and he is instrumental in Bilbo’s transferring the ring to Frodo and in spurring Frodo to bring it to Rivendell. At the Council of Elrond, Gandalf best

Lord of the Rings, The   301 knows the ring’s history and is most fully aware of its dangers. He proposes destroying the ring in the Cracks of Doom, and he subsequently becomes leader of the Fellowship of the Ring, pledged to aid the Ring-bearer as far as possible. Gandalf, however, falls in Moria in battle with the Balrog, saving the rest of the fellowship from a monster beyond any of their powers. It must be assumed that Gandalf does die in Moria, his mortal body destroyed along with that of the equally powerful Balrog. Gandalf, however, is sent back into the world and given a resurrected body as Gandalf the White, presumably for the purpose of completing his task of defeating Sauron. On his great horse Shadowfax, Gandalf the White rides to Edoras, where he is able to help King Théoden turn from listening to the persuasive defeatism of Gríma Wormtongue, Saruman’s spy, and to persuade the king to join in the fight against Saruman. At the Battle of the Hornburg, Gandalf arrives with the dawn, bringing reinforcements who turn the tide of the battle. He confronts Saruman at Orthanc, breaking his staff and expelling him from the Order of the Istari. After Pippin’s unauthorized use of the palantír, Gandalf takes the hobbit on Shadowfax to Minas Tirith, where he attempts to counsel the maddened steward Denethor. When the Battle of the Pelennor Fields erupts, Gandalf stands at the gates of the city, confronting the Lord of the Nazgûl alone when he breaks down the gates and threatens to enter the city. Finally, acknowledged by Aragorn to be the true leader of all the armies of the West in the war on Sauron, Gandalf helps lead the army in its last desperate attack on the Black Gate of Mordor. Here, he fights bravely until the eruption of Mount Doom indicates the destruction of the ring and sends Sauron’s troops into a disordered rout. As an acknowledgment of his indispensability in the achievement of the reunited kingdom of Gondor and Arnor, Aragorn gives Gandalf the privilege of crowning him king. With the destruction of Sauron, Gandalf’s purpose in Middle-earth has been accomplished, and at the conclusion of The Lord of the Rings, he rides to the Grey Havens, where he passes over the sea to the Undying Lands.

Gandalf is a fascinating character. Bristly and quick-tempered, he can also be jovial and goodhumored in friendly company. He is Frodo’s mentor and, with the possible exception of Elrond, the wisest of all the captains of the West. The folk of the Shire see him as simply a wonder-worker who can set off colorful fireworks. In Rohan and Minas Tirith, he is viewed by some as a troublemaker, always showing up just as danger is about to ensue. Among the elves, he is welcomed as Mithrandir, the Grey Pilgrim. He wears the ring Narya, the ring of fire and one of the three elven rings kept hidden from Sauron. Despite his great power, Gandalf never tries to force any of the free peoples of Middle-earth to follow him or do as he demands. That, he realizes, would be the way of Sauron, and he knows that to displace a tyrant by becoming as bad as what one fights is no victory. This is why he also refuses to wear the One Ring when Frodo offers it to him. His way must be by persuasion and exhortation, enabling the Free Peoples to fight for themselves. Only when the forces arrayed against them are beyond the power of mortals to engage does Gandalf step in to show his own great power, as he does against the Balrog and against the Witch-king. The most obvious Christ figure in the trilogy, Gandalf faces temptation to power in the form of the ring; sacrifices himself for his companions; dies; and is reborn in a new body, arrayed in pure whiteness, to lead the allied forces of the West against a creature of pure evil in an Armageddon-like battle. Ultimately, he saves Middle-earth. As a Christ figure, Gandalf is particularly significant in this novel because of his moral counsel. Most notable in this vein is his advice regarding Gollum: When Frodo remarks that he wishes Bilbo would have killed the creature, Gandalf cautions him that life and death are not his to give, and that Gollum still has a part to play in the working out of events. Similarly, he spares the life of Saruman, who twice comes within his power. All life is precious, Gandalf seems to suggest, and redemption is possible even for the Gollums of the world. Gimli  Gimli’s father, Gloin, was one of the dwarves who traveled with Bilbo to the Lonely

302   Lord of the Rings, The Mountain in Tolkien’s earlier book, The Hobbit. In The Lord of the Rings, Gloin is sent to Rivendell as an ambassador from the reestablished Kingdom Under the Mountain, and he brings Gimli along. At the Council of Elrond, Gimli volunteers to represent his people as a member of the Fellowship of the Ring. As one of Durin’s line, Gimli is deeply moved by the Fellowship’s visit to Moria (or Khazad-dûm), the ancestral home of his people, and he is devastated to learn that his kinsman Balin, who had sought to reestablish a dwarf presence there, had been slaughtered with all his party by orcs. Gimli is also the first of his people to enter Lothlórien since the time of Durin. Because of the distrust between the peoples, the elves insist that Gimli be blindfolded, a condition over which he is ready to break from the Fellowship. Aragorn’s suggestion that all the company be blindfolded appeases Gimli. In Lórien, Gimli becomes devoted to Galadriel, and at their parting, he begs her for a lock of golden hair. He becomes her champion and defender and later challenges Éomer of Rohan to answer him in battle if he does not admit that Galadriel is the fairest creature in Middle-earth. After the Fellowship of the Ring is broken, Gimli joins Aragorn and Legolas in their pursuit of Merry and Pippin, carried off by orcs toward Isengard. Gimli fights at Helm’s Deep, where he and the elf Legolas engage in a contest to determine which of them can destroy the most orcs. It is at Helm’s Deep that Gimli first becomes aware of the caves of Aglarond and swears he will come back to explore them, obtaining a promise from his new close friend Legolas to accompany him in exchange for his exploring the forest of Fangorn with the elf. Gimli follows Aragorn on his trek through the Paths of the Dead, though terrified of the journey—a feeling he chides himself for since dwarves are at home underground. With Aragorn and Legolas, he helps bring the fleet up the Anduin River to raise the siege of Minas Tirith. Ultimately, he rides with the armies of the West to make war at the Black Gate, where he fights with honor. Gimli is proud of his heritage, tenacious, stalwart, strong with his axe, and loyal to his friends. His love for Galadriel and his lifelong friendship with Legolas earn him the title “elf friend.”

After the War of the Ring, according to Tolkien’s appendices to The Return of the King, Gimli brought a company of folk from the dwarf kingdom in Erebor south to Helm’s Deep, where he became lord of the Glittering Caves of Aglarond. He and his people forged new gates of mithril for the city of Minas Tirith, to replace those that had been broken down by the Witch-king, and he remained great friends with the people of Rohan and Gondor, and with the elves of Ithilien, whose lord was his good friend Legolas. Finally, after the death of Aragorn, Legolas longed to follow his people across the sea to the Undying Lands, and he took with him Gimli, the elf friend who left Middle-earth not only to remain with his friend Legolas but also because he desired to see the Lady Galadriel once more. Gollum  (Sméagol)  Gollum was in possession of the One Ring for some 500 years before it was taken from him by Bilbo Baggins in the riddle contest described in The Hobbit. Apparently originally a member of the branch of hobbits called Stoors, who lived not in the Shire but in the Gladden Fields east of the Anduin River, Gollum’s true name was Sméagol. His cousin Déagol had found the ring in the river, but Sméagol, immediately overtaken by an irresistible desire for it, killed his cousin and kept the ring for himself, eventually leaving civilization to dwell in the darkness of the caves under the Misty Mountains with his one obsession, the ring, which he called his Precious. The first references to Gollum in The Lord of the Rings occur in the Council of Elrond, where Gandalf tells of how the creature had left the mountains to try to track down Bilbo and the ring but was captured by servants of the Dark Lord and held prisoner by Sauron for some time. From him, Sauron learned of the existence of “Baggins” and ultimately sent out the Black Riders to track down Frodo and the ring. Gandalf also reveals that after Gollum was freed by Sauron, Aragorn had captured him, and Gandalf had questioned him to complete his knowledge of the whole history of the ring. He had then been turned over to the elves of Mirkwood to hold as prisoner, but Legolas reveals to the council that Gollum has escaped after a raid by orcs and is now at large again.

Lord of the Rings, The   303 As the story of The Fellowship of the Ring progresses, Gollum remains in the background but very much on the minds of the Fellowship. He enters Moria and follows the company through the mines, where Gandalf tells Frodo that Gollum should not be killed, and that the creature has some important part to play in the quest of the One Ring. Gollum continues to track the company through Lórien, where he is chased away by elves. He appears in the water one night as Aragorn watches the company’s boats on the Anduin. He continues to follow Frodo and Sam as they make their way toward Mordor, until finally the hobbits are able to capture him in the Emyn Muil, tying him with elven rope, which burns his skin. Sam is ready to kill the creature, but Frodo takes Gandalf’s words to heart, so that finally Gollum takes an oath by the ring itself to be a faithful servant of Frodo, master of the Precious. Sam continues to be suspicious of Gollum as he leads the hobbits faithfully through the Dead Marshes, and then toward Cirith Ungol, the least heavily guarded path into Mordor. Frodo, however, straining more and more under the pressure of the ring, feels that there must be some spark of good in Gollum; in fact, Frodo must believe this, because he must believe that he will come out of this quest with his true self intact. Frodo’s merciful treatment of Gollum seems to be taking effect, as Sméagol— he goes by his true name when he faithfully serves his master—remains true to his word. Their relationship is strained when Frodo tricks Gollum into capture by the men of Faramir’s company, but he does so only to save Gollum’s life. At one point, Tolkien presents the two sides of Gollum’s personality in a debate over whether to betray Frodo. The turning point in Gollum’s struggle comes through a misunderstanding. Finding his master asleep, Gollum feels an unwonted surge of affection and, reaching toward Frodo with a touch of love, he is chastised by Sam, who believes he intends Frodo harm. Thwarted in his good intentions, Gollum finally yields to his worse nature and betrays the hobbits to Shelob, hoping to obtain the ring after the monster has finished with the hobbits. When this plan fails, Gollum attacks the hobbits on Mount Doom. Sam interposes himself between Gollum and Frodo, but this time cannot bring him-

self to slay the creature. He chases Gollum off, only to see him reappear at the Cracks of Doom to struggle with Frodo for possession of the ring after Frodo claims it for his own. When Gollum bites off Frodo’s ring finger to obtain the ring, he falls with it into the Cracks and is destroyed along with his Precious. There is virtually nothing admirable about Gollum as a character. He is a sneak, a liar, a murderer, and a thief. He breaks his oath and betrays the hobbits to a monstrous spider, and even at his best, he is groveling, fawning, insincere, and annoying. Yet there is a spark of good in him. It struggles with his dominant personality, and Tolkien pictures this in the form of an outward discussion between the two halves of Sméagol’s psyche. Even after 500 years of greed, egotism, and obsession, he is able to appreciate the kindness that Frodo shows him and is on the verge of responding in kind before Sam’s destructive accusation. Gollum demonstrates Tolkien’s belief that anyone is capable of redemption. Legolas A Sindarin (or Grey) elf, Legolas is the son of Thranduil, king of the Woodland Realm. He is sent to Rivendell as a messenger, where he reports to the Council of Elrond, bringing the news that in the course of an orc attack, the creature Gollum has escaped from the elves of Mirkwood. He subsequently represents his people as one of the nine companions forming the Fellowship of the Ring. He travels with the Ring-bearer through Moria to Lothlórien, and when the Fellowship is broken, he joins Aragorn and the dwarf Gimli to pursue the orcs who have kidnapped Merry and Pippin. After reuniting with Gandalf and meeting with King Théoden of Rohan, Legolas takes part in the battle at Helm’s Deep. With Aragorn, he travels the Paths of the Dead and defeats Sauron’s southern fleet, afterward sailing to Minas Tirith from the south and helping to win the Battle of the Pelennor Fields. Legolas brings to the quest of the One Ring the sharp eyes and endurance of his race, as well as great skill with a bow and a spirit of loyalty to the cause and company of the Fellowship. In particular, he becomes great friends with the dwarf Gimli, despite the historical animosity between their two

304   Lord of the Rings, The peoples. They form a friendly rivalry in the battle at Helm’s Deep, counting the number of orcs each is able to fell. With Gimli, he explores the caves of Aglarond at Helm’s Deep, and the dwarf returns the favor by exploring Fangorn Forest with Legolas. Fangorn, whose trees are the oldest in Middleearth, is a place of wonders for Legolas, who, like all elves, loves the woodlands. In his journey south with Aragorn, the woodland elf Legolas gets his first glimpse of the sea, a glimpse that wakes in him a longing characteristic of his people. According to the appendices to Tolkien’s Return of the King, after the War of the Ring, Legolas brought a contingent of elves from the Woodland Realm to Ithilien, that war-torn area between Gondor and Mordor, in order to restore the land. After the death of King Aragorn, Legolas finally succumbed to his longing for the sea and sailed westward to the Undying Lands, taking with him his lifelong friend, Gimli. lord of the Nazgûl  (Witch-king of Angmar)  When the Black Riders first appear in The Fellowship of the Ring, they are shadowy figures whose main function seems to be to terrify Frodo as well as the readers. Their identity and background are unknown—they are simply ghostlike beings in black cloaks riding black steeds, who have clearly been sent by Sauron to seek out the One Ring and its bearer. Strider makes it clear to Frodo and his companions that the Riders are even more dangerous than they seem. On Weathertop, Frodo’s use of the ring puts him into the Riders’ state of being and brings him face-to-face with the lord of the Ringwraiths, who wounds him nearly to the death before Aragorn can rescue him. It takes all of Elrond’s skill to heal Frodo of the Black Breath, the malady caused by a wound from the “morgul blades” of the Riders. Meanwhile, although the Riders have been swept away by the waters of the Bruinen, like Pharaoh’s army in the book of Exodus, they cannot be killed in this way and thus will return on monstrous flying steeds in the later volumes of the trilogy. Frodo, and the reader, learn much more of the Riders’ background by the time they leave Rivendell. The Riders are, in fact, the Nazgûl, or Ringwraiths. They are men who, seduced by the power

that Sauron’s Nine Rings gave them, used the rings for their own evil purposes and became enslaved to the ring’s true master, Sauron. Now they have become wraiths—insubstantial bodies but still capable of great feats of power and terror—and they are the Dark Lord’s most feared weapons. The chief of these wraiths, the lord of the Nazgûl, was originally a human sorcerer and king who in earlier days was known as the Witch-king of Angmar. The Witch-king is the chief captain of Sauron’s armies. His fortress is Minas Morgul, past which Frodo and Sam must make their way as they enter Mordor. Fortunately for the hobbits, they arrive just as the lord of the Nazgûl is riding out at the head of the great host that is about to assail Minas Tirith, and although he seems to sense Frodo’s presence, or the ring’s, he pauses only briefly before moving ahead with the army. In the Battle of the Pelennor Fields, the Witchking drives all before him. He wounds Faramir with an arrow and brings on the Black Breath, so that Aragorn’s touch is required to heal the wound. He has reached the gates of the city when he finds Gandalf standing against him. We do not see how that confrontation turns out, since at that very moment, the Riders of Rohan arrive unexpectedly, and the Nazgûl chief turns to encounter this new threat. He strikes down Théoden but is confronted by the disguised Éowyn. According to an old prophecy, the Witch-king cannot be slain by the hand of man, and he laughs as he tells Éowyn so. She informs him that she is a woman, and when the hobbit Merry strikes the first blow, Éowyn finishes the task, destroying the Witch-king and robbing Sauron of his most trusted aide. Some of the lore from the rest of Tolkien’s legendarium adds to an understanding of the Witchking’s character. He was originally Númenórean but left Númenor before its destruction to become an ally of Sauron in Middle-earth. He and the other Nazgûl first appeared as Ringwraiths in the third millennium of the Second Age, but they disappeared after Sauron’s defeat. They returned as Sauron began to grow in power, and the Witchking built his realm in Angmar in the middle of the Third Age. He established his realm in the North, building a fortress at the northernmost peak of the

Lord of the Rings, The   305 Misty Mountains. After the Dúnedain kingdom in the North had split into three squabbling territories, he was able to conquer each kingdom one by one. When he attacked the western kingdom of Cardolan in the year 1409, many of the remaining Dúnedain there took refuge in the Barrow-downs, from which they fought a guerrilla war against the Witch-king. They were ultimately wiped out, but the sword with which Merry first wounds the Nazgûl lord in The Return of the King is a sword from the Barrow-downs, forged originally to battle the Witch-king. After setting up his throne in the city of Fornost, the Witch-king was ultimately defeated by a force of men from Gondor (led by Eärnur) and elves from Rivendell (led by Glorfindel). A great battle was fought between the North Downs and Lake Evendim, and the Witch-king was defeated. Angmar fell, and the Witch-king returned to Mordor, where he and the other eight Nazgûl captured Minas Ithil from Gondor and renamed it Minas Morgul in the year 2000 of the Third Age. Eärnur, having become king of Gondor, rode out against the Witch-king at Minus Morgul but was never seen again. Thus, the Witch-king was responsible for the death of the last monarch in the line of Anárion, and Gondor was left without a king. When Sauron returned to Mordor, the Witchking was sent to be lord of Dol Guldur. Later, at the outset of the War of the Ring, the Witch-king led the assault on Osgiliath when it was defended by Boromir and Faramir, but from there he left in secret with the rest of the Nazgûl to search for Baggins in the Shire on information supplied by the captured Gollum. This is the point at which the Nazgûl’s role in The Lord of the Rings begins. As a character, the Witch-king has little to distinguish him beyond his ghostly evil. But he is Tolkien’s premier example of what can happen to a man who, obsessed by power and greed, ceases to be completely human. The Witch-king lacks distinguishing characteristics because he lacks the humanity that would make him an individual. Merry (Meriadoc) Brandybuck  Merry is a close friend of Frodo and, with Pippin and Sam, accompanies him from the Shire to Rivendell when

Frodo leaves Hobbiton with the One Ring. He is overcome in the Barrow-downs and nearly turned into a human sacrifice there by Barrow-wights before being rescued by Tom Bombadil. However, he obtains a sword from the arms in the barrow, one that had been forged ages before against the Witch-king of Angmar. Merry becomes one of the Companions of the Ring and travels with the Fellowship through Moria and Lórien before being captured with Pippin by orcs at Parth Galen. The orcs, who seek to bring the hobbits to Saruman at Isengard, are slaughtered by the Rohirrim under the command of Éomer, while Merry and Pippin escape into Fangorn Forest. Here, they are befriended by Treebeard the ent, and their story helps to rouse the ents to make war on Isengard and subdue Saruman. After that battle, Merry pledges his loyalty to Théoden, king of Rohan, and becomes the king’s squire, but Théoden will not allow Merry to ride with him and the other Rohirrim to raise the siege of Minas Tirith. But the disguised Éowyn takes Merry on her own horse all the way to Gondor. There, in the Battle of the Pelennor Fields, Éowyn and Merry defend the fallen Théoden from the Witch-king, chief of the Nazgûl, and are able to slay him, Merry striking the blow with the ancient sword that had been forged to battle the Witch-king in the distant past. He comes close to dying of the Black Breath, contracted when he wounded the Nazgûl, but is healed by the hand of Aragorn, the true king. Upon his return to the Shire, Merry is instrumental in defeating the supporters of “Sharkey,” or Saruman, at the Battle of Bywater. For this, he is honored for the rest of his life in the Shire. From the beginning of the tale, Merry seems to have more confidence and common sense than the other hobbits. He leads them through the Old Forest, and in Bree, it is Merry who spends his time patrolling outside the Prancing Pony until he spots a Black Rider and brings the news to the others. His natural courage is displayed when he chases the Black Rider himself. Merry also dreams of being the ancient warrior when he is unconscious in the Barrow-downs, which may be an indication of his innate bravery. When, because of his size, he is left behind as the Rohirrim ride to battle, he cannot

306   Lord of the Rings, The bear feeling useless, and his courage and loyalty are manifested in his battle with the Witch-king. Finally, Merry takes command and conducts the hobbits’ strategy at the Battle of Bywater, after which he is a great hero of the Shire. In the appendices to The Return of the King, Tolkien recorded the major events that affected Merry after the end of the War of the Ring. He was made a knight of Rohan by King Éomer and ultimately became master of Buckland after his father’s death, when he became known as “Meriadoc the Magnificent.” Like Pippin, he was one of the counselors of the Northern Kingdom after King Aragorn reestablished that realm. Eventually, he married Fatty Bolger’s sister, Estella. Toward the end of his life, Merry traveled with Pippin back to Rohan and was with King Éomer before his death, after which the two hobbits moved on to Minas Tirith, where they eventually died and were buried with great honor. Pippin (Peregrin) Took  Pippin (Peregrin) is the youngest of the hobbits who leave the Shire in the company of Frodo in order to bear the One Ring to Rivendell. At 28, he has not yet reached 33, at which point hobbits traditionally come of age. Pippin is chosen to be one of the Fellowship of the Ring, traveling through Moria and Lothlórien with the rest of the company until he and his kinsman Merry are captured by orcs at Parth Galen and carried off toward Isengard, despite the best efforts of Boromir, who is killed trying to protect them. He and Merry are able to escape into Fangorn Forest when the band of orcs carrying them is attacked and destroyed by the Rohirrim. Here they meet the ent Treebeard who, after hearing their story, convinces his fellow ents to lead an attack on Saruman at Isengard. After that battle, briefly reunited with Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli, Pippin makes the error of looking into Saruman’s palantír, or seeingstone, where he comes under the Eye of Sauron. For his own protection, he is immediately rushed by Gandalf to the city of Minas Tirith, where he pledges his fealty to Denethor, steward of Gondor, and becomes a guard of the citadel of Minas Tirith. He is instrumental in saving the life of Denethor’s son Faramir when the mad steward seeks to burn his son on the funeral pyre he has prepared for him-

self. Pippin later goes with the forces of the West to attack the Morannon, the black Gate of Mordor, and he kills a giant troll in that battle. After the conclusion of the War of the Ring, Pippin is made a knight of Gondor and king’s messenger by Aragorn, the new king of Gondor. After returning home with his fellow hobbits, Pippin is instrumental in defeating the supporters of Saruman in the Battle of Bywater. Pippin begins the story as an impetuous and overly curious youth whose ungoverned impulses sometimes get him or his companions into trouble. At the Prancing Pony in Bree, where the hobbits are trying to keep a low profile, Pippin entertains his new acquaintances in the pub with tales of the Shire, and he nearly tells the story of Bilbo’s disappearance before he is interrupted by Frodo. In Moria, Pippin drops a stone into a well out of curiosity, an act that apparently alerts the enemy to the company’s presence in the mines. Worst of all, Pippin’s curiosity about the palantír comes close to getting him killed and nearly alerts Sauron to the Fellowship’s secret plans to destroy the One Ring. There are times, however, when Pippin’s impetuosity demonstrates an inherent kindness or courage that demands the reader’s sympathy. When Gimli grumbles about the difficulty he and Legolas and Aragorn have had tracking the hobbits, Pippin offers him his own pipe so that the dwarf can smoke the pipeweed they have found at Isengard. When he and Merry are captured by the orcs, Pippin finds a way to cut his bonds and leave a trail that helps Aragorn track them. As the story moves on, Pippin’s spontaneity is channeled into sometimes impulsive acts of social responsibility. He pledges his service to Denethor largely in compensation for the life that Boromir gave to protect him. He recognizes Denethor’s madness and warns Gandalf and the guard Beregond in time to save Faramir. He slays the troll at the Black Gate chiefly to save the life of his friend Beregond. Back in the Shire, Pippin rides through the night of November 2 to bring back forces led by his father, Paladin, who help to win the Battle of Bywater. Pippin ends the story a great hero, one who has developed significantly from the immature hobbit of the tale’s opening chapters.

Lord of the Rings, The   307 In his appendices to The Return of the King, Tolkien provides information about Pippin’s life after the War of the Ring. He succeeded his father as 32nd thain (nominal ruler) of the Shire and, along with Merry and Sam, was a counselor of the reestablished Northern Kingdom under Aragorn. He married Mistress Diamond of Long Cleeve (who was a descendant of the famous Bullroarer Took), and they had a son named Faramir (who later married one of Sam Gamgee’s daughters). Toward the end of his life, Pippin returned to Minas Tirith with Merry, and the two were ultimately buried there among the heroes of Gondor. Sam (Samwise) Gamgee  Sam is Frodo’s faithful friend and servant, without whom Frodo could not have achieved his quest to destroy the One Ring. It is Sam’s relentless dedication to accomplishing the task he has set out to do, even when it entails carrying Frodo up the side of Mount Doom, that led Tolkien to call him the “chief hero” of The Lord of the Rings. Sam begins as a simple and common hobbit, with the everyday virtues of common sense, humility, and loyalty, and ultimately develops into a mature hobbit of great courage who embodies what Tolkien called the Northern heroic code—the determination to fight on against overwhelming odds even when the cause seems hopeless. Sam is the son of Hamfest Gamgee, known as “the Gaffer,” whom he succeeded as gardener at Bag End. From Bilbo, Sam learned to read and to appreciate the wider world, particularly the lore of the elves. Devoted to Frodo after Bilbo departed Bag End, Sam insists on making the journey to Rivendell with Frodo and accompanying him with the rest of the Fellowship of the Ring when it is decided that the One Ring must be destroyed. Sam alone travels with Frodo through the dead lands that lead to Mordor, and he distrusts the help of Gollum. So distrustful is he of Gollum that his outburst at the point when the creature is feeling the first inklings of love for his master, Frodo, destroys the best chance for Gollum’s rehabilitation. Sam partly atones for this later when he refuses to kill Gollum at the Cracks of Doom, but the damage that he did with the earlier incident cannot be undone.

In Mordor, however, Sam inadvertently saves the quest when he briefly becomes the Ring-bearer due to his belief that Frodo has been killed; hence, he prevents the orcs searching Frodo’s body from finding the ring. Sam’s courage and faithfulness allows him to rescue Frodo from the Tower of Cirith Ungol and to inspire Frodo to keep going as the stress becomes more and more crushing the closer the hobbits get to the Cracks of Doom; he finally carries Frodo on his shoulders for the last part of the journey. Sam’s unflinching devotion to his “master” may rankle many contemporary readers, particularly contemporary American readers, smacking as it does of the very class-conscious British society of the earlier 20th century. One wonders whether the “ideal servant” represented by Sam is a figment of Tolkien’s upper-class imagination. The world of Middle-earth, however, is not the modern world but one inspired by the medieval texts with which Tolkien was familiar, and in such a society a masterservant relationship is not out of place. In contemporary terms, Sam is a common man who, placed in extraordinary circumstances, proves capable of heroic deeds. He does so largely because he is motivated by a selfless love and a sense of duty. But he is also successful because he is capable of seeing beyond the present evil to the ultimate victory of goodness and beauty. He has a spiritual sense that leads him almost instinctively to love the elves and their lore, and that causes him, when staring at a star breaking through the gloom of Mordor, to recognize the eternal goodness that transcends the temporary evil of Sauron in Middle-earth. Sam is a great lover of the Shire, and of its trees and gardens. Upon the hobbits’ return to the Shire, he uses a box of earth from the elvish realm of Lothlórien to bring fertility back to the land, planting the seed of a Mallorn tree in the place of Bilbo’s Party Tree, which had been destroyed in his absence. Sam adjusts well to everyday life in the Shire, even after his adventures in the wide world, and he marries Rosie Cotton and has a daughter whom, at Frodo’s suggestion, he names Elanor. The three move into Bag End with Frodo until Frodo goes over the sea to the Undying Lands, leaving Bag End to Sam.

308   Lord of the Rings, The According to the appendices to The Return of the King, Sam became mayor of Hobbiton and was reelected six times; had 13 children; and finally, after the death of Rosie, left the Shire and passed over the sea to the Undying Lands as the last of the Ring-bearers. Saruman the White (Sharkey)  Saruman is, like Gandalf, one of the Istari (known as wizards), whom the Valar (the angelic guardians) sent from Valinor to Middle-earth in about the year 1000 of the Third Age. Their task was to counter the growing power of Sauron and to unite the Free Peoples of Middle-earth against the Dark Lord’s aggression. Saruman, called the White, was chief of the Istari, and grew wise and powerful. He was the subtlest of all the enemies of Sauron, and the most articulate and persuasive speaker on the White Council—an assembly of the leaders of the West (including the Istari and the chief leaders among the Eldar) who met periodically to confer about how to deal best with Sauron’s threat. He became so powerful that he was made leader of the White Council. Saruman befriended the men of Rohan and of Gondor, and he spent a good deal of time in the libraries of Minas Tirith, researching the history of the Second Age and the Rings of Power that Sauron caused to be forged by the elves of Eregion. In particular, he became an expert on the history of the One Ring. Through his wisdom and foresight, he was able to discern that the One Ring had become active in Middle-earth again, and that it was searching for its true master, Sauron. About this same time, he also persuaded Beren, the ruling steward of Gondor, to let him have the keys to Orthanc, the great tower in the fortress of Isengard, which Gondor had built to guard the strategically located Gap of Rohan. Unbeknowst to his fellow members of the White Council, Saruman wanted access to the tower so that he could search for the palantír (a seeing-stone) that he knew was still held in Orthanc. We first hear of Saruman at the Council of Elrond in The Fellowship of the Ring. Here Gandalf reports that Saruman had captured him and held him prisoner in Orthanc. This was merely the culmination of a number of steps Saruman had taken that

indicated he had become more interested in consolidating his own power than in blocking Sauron’s plans. When the White Council had met some years before, and Gandalf had proposed that the council take steps to eliminate the Necromancer in Dol Guldur (who was, in fact, Sauron before his return to Mordor), Saruman, as leader of the council, had blocked the proposal. It is now clear that, desiring the ring for himself, he hopes to be able to track any progress made by the ring in moving toward Sauron. In addition, Saruman has taken control of Orthanc himself and has begun to fortify it, with the goal of launching an attack on Rohan first. In preparation for this, he has sent his spy, Wormtongue, to the court of Théoden, king of the Mark, with the hope of keeping the king weak and impotent. By the time he had imprisoned Gandalf, it had become clear that Saruman had been using the palantír to gather as much knowledge as he could, and that he had locked wills with Sauron himself through his use of the seeing-stone. Saruman believes that he has fooled Sauron into thinking that he will be an ally of the Dark Lord, when in fact he seeks the ring only for himself. He believes, in addition, that Gandalf has knowledge of the ring’s whereabouts. As the story unfolds in the trilogy, Saruman’s true colors are revealed. In preparation for war, Saruman has committed what Tolkien represents as crimes against nature. He appears to have bred orcs with men to produce a kind of hybrid superorc, the Uruk-hai. He has also created factory-like buildings to manufacture weapons, and to fuel his enterprises, he has been despoiling Fangorn Forest, which lies on his borders. He also sends his orcs, under his insignia of the White Hand, to capture hobbits from the Company of the Ring and bring them to Orthanc. This makes it clear that through his network of spies and from his research into historical lore Saruman has worked out that the ring is in the possession of a hobbit. Finally, he sends his army of orcs to crush Rohan. These last three acts finally bring about Saruman’s downfall, for Merry and Pippin, escaping from their orc kidnappers into Fangorn Forest, befriend the ent Treebeard, who is already angry at the destruction of the trees in his care, and the

Lord of the Rings, The   309 hobbits’ story ultimately sends the ents to war on Isengard. Further, Gandalf exposes the treachery of Wormtongue, and the newly revitalized Théoden is able to destroy the orc army at Helm’s Deep—with the help of Gandalf and the ents. Saruman is defeated but unrepentant in his tower and still possesses his great powers of persuasion. Confronted by Gandalf, Théoden, Aragorn, and others in his tower of Orthanc, he is unable to regain Théoden’s trust with his wheedling rhetoric, and his power and staff are broken by Gandalf, who has become Gandalf the White, replacing him in authority. Ultimately released from prison by the kindly Treebeard, Saruman makes his way with his bitter servant Wormtongue to the Shire, where he has kept spies for some time, and where he has, in Frodo’s absence, lent support to Lotho SackvilleBaggins in his rise to dictatorial status. When Saruman arrives in the Shire, he has Lotho murdered and, as “Sharkey,” takes over control for himself, destroying much of the beauty of the Shire by his own devastating brand of industrialization, just as he had plundered Fangorn. Saruman has always been an egoist concerned ultimately with his own power, and even in his fallen and shamed state, he seeks to become powerful even in the small corner of Middle-earth called the Shire. Furthermore, he blames the hobbits for his own downfall, and this forms a large part of his motivation for destroying the beauty and peace of the Shire. Defeated by the hobbits, he is pardoned by Frodo, an act of mercy that takes the vindictive joy out of his evil policies. In the end, his throat is slit by his own servant, Wormtongue, and he is scattered like smoke. He will never return to Valinor. Saruman, a foil to Gandalf, is a powerful wizard corrupted by his own pride, which colors any good intentions until it becomes his sole motivation for anything he does. Called a “politician” by Tom Shippey, Saruman is a very modern character whose concerns are all for self but who can cover over selfish intentions with convincing language. Sauron (Dark Lord, Lord of the Rings)  The title character of The Lord of the Rings, Sauron is the focus of the narrative for nearly the entire trilogy. The actions of all of the other characters are

intended either to aid or thwart him in his desire to rule all of Middle-earth through coercion and terror. His forces—made up of orcs, trolls, evil or deluded men, werewolves, and the terrifying Nazgûl (the Ringwraiths)—seem overwhelming, and for most of the book, the resistance of the Free Peoples to his domination seems a lost cause. Glorious acts might be performed in a war against this enemy, but victory by force will not be possible. But since much of Sauron’s power is contained in the One Ring of Power, the one hope left to the Free Peoples is the destruction of the ring, which offers the promise of ultimate power—and which is, because of its connection with Sauron, an ultimately corrupting power. When Sauron actually does appear in the narrative, it is as a disembodied, searching red Eye. Essentially Sauron is pure will, a will to power, and his Eye is cast on those things he desires, those things he wishes to dominate. In particular, the Eye is searching for the Ring of Power. Frodo experiences it first on Amon Hen, when he places the ring on his finger and feels the Eye searching for him. Pippin stares into the Eye when he looks into the palantír of Orthanc, and it shocks him into unconsciousness. As he moves closer to Orodruin and the Cracks of Doom, Frodo feels the Eye searching for him, and when the ring is thrown into the volcano, Sauron’s Eye is drawn there and knows it has been fooled. For the most part, the presence of Sauron is made known throughout the trilogy by the Nazgûl, his most terrifying servants, who appear first as Black Riders seeking for Frodo in the Shire and all the way to Rivendell. The Witch-king of Angmar, chief of the Nazgûl, is doing his master’s will when he attacks Frodo on Weathertop and Faramir on the Pelennor Fields, as well as when he besieges Minas Tirith and kills King Théoden. Sauron himself is disembodied, a fact that makes him all the more clearly a figure of pure evil, the abstract evil that permeates the world and against which human beings must constantly strive in any variety of specific and concrete forms. It is clear in The Lord of the Rings, however, that Sauron did at one time possess a body. Through The Fellowship of the Ring, and particularly in the

310   Lord of the Rings, The “Council of Elrond” chapter, we learn that midway through the Second Age of Middle-earth, Sauron had tricked the elves of Eregion, known for their craftsmanship, into forging the Rings of Power— three for the elves, seven for the dwarves, and nine for mortal men—while he forged the One Ring in secret for the purpose of controlling all the others and bringing their owners under his authority. We also learn of his final defeat at the end of the Second Age by the Last Alliance of elves and men, led by Gil-galad and Elendil. He had killed both his enemies but was nearly destroyed himself, and Isildur, son of Elendil, had cut the ring from Sauron’s finger. Tolkien’s full legendarium, particularly as published in The Silmarillion, does provide a good deal more information about Sauron’s origins and history. He was originally a Maia in the service of Aulë the Smith, craftsman of the Valar. The Maiar were angelic creatures somewhat lower than the Valar (others appearing in The Lord of the Rings are Gandalf, Saruman, and the Balrog). But early in the First Age of Middle Earth, Sauron was seduced by the rebel Vala Melkor, known as Morgoth. During the wars that pitted the Valar and the Eldar against Morgoth and his creatures—orcs, dragons, Balrogs, and werewolves—Sauron acted as Morgoth’s chief lieutenant. Most significant, he held the fortress of Angband for Morgoth, and it was there that he imprisoned Finrod and Beren, as told in The Silmarillion, ultimately killing Finrod (son of Finarfin and brother of Galadriel). But as the tale of Beren and Lúthien tells, Lúthien was able to save Beren with the help of the great hound Huan, who fought Sauron (who had taken the shape of a wolf to do battle). Defeated, Sauron had to surrender his fortress and flee Angband. At the end of the First Age, when Morgoth was driven forever from Arda, the Valar offered Sauron clemency, but only on condition that he return to Valinor to be judged. This was essentially Sauron’s last chance to repent and to turn from evil, but his pride was too great to allow him to submit to such judgment, and he escaped and hid himself for the first several hundred years of the Second Age. But by about the year 1000 of the Second Age, Sauron had begun to build up his fortress of Barad-

dûr in Mordor. Disguised under the name of Annatar, he won the trust of the Noldor of Eregion, and about 1500, he began working with them to produce the Rings of Power. He placed much of his own power in the One Ring, and with it he completed his fortress in Mordor. Once he had corrupted men with the Nine Rings, he began to style himself “King of Men”—a claim that aroused the ire of the men of Númenor. An invasion of Middle-earth by Ar-Pharazon and the Númenóreans scattered Sauron’s forces, who fled in fear, and Sauron surrendered and was taken back to Númenor. Within 50 years, however, he had succeeded in corrupting Ar-Pharazon, playing on his fear of death and persuading him to attack Valinor and the Undying Lands themselves. The Valar destroyed Númenor, and in the destruction, Sauron lost whatever beauty he had possessed and was never again able to assume a fair form. But he did return to Mordor and ultimately was defeated by the Last Alliance at the end of the Second Age. In the Third Age, Sauron did not fully emerge until the end of the third millennium, although he had directed his Nazgúl against the Dúnedain kingdoms while he searched in vain for the lost One Ring. Disguised as “the Necromancer” in Dol Guldur, his identity was ultimately revealed, and he returned to Mordor, where he gathered his power to finally crush the Free Peoples. That is the point at which The Lord of the Rings begins. Théoden  Théoden, 17th king of Rohan, ascended to the throne at the age of 36 upon the death of his father, Thengel. He was a promising leader in his youth, but personal tragedies sapped his resolve and his vigor so that, as he grew older, his spirit declined and he lost the will to command. He was married to Queen Elfhild, who died while giving birth to their only son, Théodred. Théoden’s beloved sister, Théodwyn, also died early in his reign, leaving two young children, Éomer and Éowyn, whom Théoden raised as his own, their father (Éomund of Eastfold) having also died, in battle with orcs. The wizard Saruman, hoping to capitalize on Théoden’s weakness, seduced Gríma (known as Wormtongue), one of the counselors of Rohan,

Lord of the Rings, The   311 into his service, apparently promising the traitor Théoden’s niece, Éowyn, as his prize. Using deceit and flattery, Gríma wormed his way into Théoden’s confidence to become his chief counselor, feeding the king defeatist and hopeless counsel, and turning him against his nephew, Éomer, chief representative of the war party that now advocates for decisive armed resistance to Saruman. When Théoden first appears in The Two Towers, he is in mourning over one more tragedy: His son and heir, Théodred, has just been slain by Saruman’s orcs. When Gandalf, Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli arrive at the palace of Edoras, Théoden is all but paralyzed with despair and apathy, and through Wormtongue’s urging, he greets Gandalf with insolence and discourtesy. But Gandalf exposes Gríma’s treachery and sees that he is exiled, and also restores Éomer to the king’s good graces. More important, Gandalf is able to cure Théoden of his depression and to restore the king’s confidence. Théoden was not feeble in body, only in spirit, and now, restored to vitality, he rides at the head of his own army to Helm’s Deep, where he and his people hold out against the overwhelming force of Saruman’s orcs until Gandalf arrives with reinforcements and Saruman is defeated. With Gandalf and Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli, Théoden confronts Saruman at the tower of Orthanc, and despite Saruman’s attempts to cajole him into an alliance, Théoden resists the temptation to succumb once again to flattering words and rejects Saruman completely. Later, when he receives the summons from Gondor telling him that Minas Tirith is under attack, Théoden decisively leads 6,000 Rohirrim cavalry on a quick march south in time to break the ranks of the enemy forces laying siege to Minas Tirith. He leads a gallant charge across the Pelennor Fields and defeats the army of Haradrim, Southron men in league with Mordor. After this successful charge, however, Théoden is attacked by the Lord of the Nazgûl and mortally wounded. His death is avenged by his niece, Éowyn, and his squire, the hobbit Merry, and he names Éomer his heir with his dying breath. After the conclusion of the War of the Ring, Éomer brings Théoden’s body back to Rohan to rest with his royal ancestors in his native soil.

In many ways, Théoden serves as a foil to Denethor, steward of Gondor. Like Denethor, he loses his son; like Denethor, he falls into despondency. But whereas Denethor ultimately gives in to despair, declining to lead his own people even as they are under attack by the forces of Mordor, choosing instead to die on his own funeral pyre in anticipation of his city’s conflagration, Théoden opts to ride at the head of his own army, despite his advanced age, and to fight valiantly, even for a cause that seems hopeless. Thus, Théoden embodies what Tolkien called the Northern heroic code— the courage to keep fighting in a losing cause, until death if necessary. Théoden is Tolkien’s ideal of the Germanic warrior king. Treebeard (Fangorn)  Treebeard is an ent, a herder and guardian of the trees of Fangorn Forest, who befriends Merry and Pippin in The Two Towers and, as a result of their news concerning Saruman, is instrumental in convincing the other ents to attack Isengard and bring an end to Saruman’s destructive plans. Saruman’s industrialization of the land bordering Fangorn Forest, and his destruction of the trees in conjunction with that process has angered the ents for some time, but Merry and Pippin’s reports demonstrate Saruman’s broader intentions and his desire for supreme power. It is at this point that Treebeard calls an Entmoot—a kind of parliament of the ents. Because ents, who manifest many of the qualities of the trees they tend, take such a long time to speak or to decide on anything, Entmoots generally last for quite some time, but this one is over in only a few days, and the ents, now aroused, march on Isengard. When they are angry, ents are able to perform immediately the kind of feats that trees can perform over long ages, so that they are able to move earth and crack rocks in only a short time. With Treebeard in command, the ents destroy Saruman’s factories and flood Isengard, bringing the wizard’s power to an end. It seems clear that Treebeard is also responsible for sending a force of ents and huorns (ents who have become nearly indistinguishable from trees) to Helm’s Deep to help destroy the orcs there. Finally, Treebeard is left to guard Saruman, but in the end he allows the

312   Lord of the Rings, The deposed wizard to go free since he cannot bear to see any living thing locked in a cage. Treebeard (the name is a translation of his Sindarin name, Fangorn) seems chiefly to represent the characteristics of ents in general. Some 14 feet tall and bearded, he looks like a cross between a tree and a man. He speaks and acts slowly, often chastising Merry and Pippin for being so “hasty.” At the time of the War of the Ring, he is the oldest living being in Middle-earth. He was born before the First Age, apparently at the same time that the elves were awakened, and he tells the hobbits that ents were taught to speak by the elves. Ents seem to be the spirits and protectors of nature; thus, Treebeard cannot stand to see a man imprisoned since for him freedom is the natural state of living things. The tragedy of the ents, which Treebeard bemoans often, is their separation from the entwives at the end of the First Age. The entwives, who were concerned with vegetables, flowers, and other kinds of vegetation, crossed the Anduin River and were never seen again by the ents, who stayed in Fangorn Forest, the oldest forest in Middle-earth (along with the Old Forest near the Shire), and have been left to grow old without hope of renewal or of producing entlings. This is a curious aspect of the novel, and it may be Tolkien’s way of suggesting that once the Fourth Age of Middle-earth began—which is the age of men—there would be no one left to protect the natural resources of the world except for men themselves, who must care for the trees the way the ents would if they were still alive. Further Reading Alonso, Jorge Luis Bueno. “ ‘Eotheod’ Anglo-Saxons of the Plains: Rohan as the Old English Culture in J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings.” Anuario de investigación en literatura infantil y juvenil (2004): 21–35. Beowulf: A New Verse Translation. Translated by Seamus Heaney. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2000. Bradley, Marion Zimmer. “Men, Halflings, and Hero Worship.” In Understanding the Lord of the Rings: The Best of Tolkien Criticism, edited by Rose A. Zimbardo and Neil D. Isaacs, 76–92. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2004. Bruce, Alexander M. “Maldon and Moria: On Byrhtnoth, Gandalf, and Heroism in the Lord of the

Rings. Mythlore 26, nos. 1–2 (Fall/Winter 2007): 149–159. Burns, Marjorie. Perilous Realms: Celtic and Norse in Tolkien’s Middle-earth. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2005. Callaway, David. “Gollum: A Misunderstood Hero.” Mythlore 37 (Winter 1984): 14–22. Carpenter, Humphrey. Tolkien: A Biography. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1977. Carter, Lin. A Look Behind The Lord of the Rings. New York: Ballantine, 1969. Chance, Jane. “Subversive Fantasist: Tolkien on Class Differences.” In The Lord of the Rings 1954–2004: Scholarship in Honor of Richard E. Blackwelder, edited by Wayne G. Hammond and Christina Scull, 153–168. Milwaukee, Wisc.: Marquette University Press, 2006. ———. Tolkien’s Art: A Mythology for England. Rev. ed. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2001. Crossley-Holland, Kevin, trans. “The Wanderer.” In The Anglo-Saxon World: An Anthology, 50–53. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984. Drout, Michael D. C. “Tolkien’s Prose Style and its Literary and Rhetorical Effects.” Tolkien Studies 1 (2004): 137–162. Fehrenbacher, Richard W. “Beowulf as Fairy-story: Enchanting the Elegaic in The Two Towers.” Tolkien Studies 3 (2006): 101–115. Flieger, Verlyn. “The Curious Incident of the Dream at the Barrow: Memory and Reincarnation in Middle-earth.” Tolkien Studies 4 (2007): 99–112. ———. “Frodo and Aragorn: The Concept of the Hero.” In Tolkien: New Critical Perspectives, edited by Neil D. Isaacs and Rose A. Zimbardo, 41–62. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1981. ———. “Missing Person.” Mythlore 12, no. 4 (Summer 1986): 12–15. ———. A Question of Time: J. R. R. Tolkien’s Road to Faërie. Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 1997. Fuller, Edmund. “The Lord of the Hobbits.” In Tolkien and the Critics: Essays on J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, edited by Neil D. Isaacs and Rose A. Zimbardo, 17–39. Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1968. Garth, John. Tolkien and the Great War: The Threshold of Middle-earth. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2003.

Lord of the Rings, The   313 Hargrove, Gene. “Who is Tom Bombadil?” Mythlore: A Journal of J. R. R. Tolkien, C. S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature 47 (Autumn 1986): 20–24. Hatto, Arthur T. EOS: An Inquiry into the Theme of Lovers’ Meetings and Partings at Dawn in Poetry. The Hague: Mouton, 1965. Inglis, Fred. “Gentility and Powerlessness: Tolkien and the New Class.” In J. R. R. Tolkien: This Far Land, edited by Robert Giddings, 25–41. London: Vision Press; Totowa, N.J.: Barnes and Noble, 1983. Jensen, Klaus, and Ruaridh MacDonald. “On Tom Bombadil: the Function of Tom Bombadil.” Mallorn: Journal of the Tolkien Society 44 (August 2006): 37–42. Jung, Carl G. The Archetypes of the Collective Unconscious. 2nd ed. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1968. ———. Four Archetypes: Mother, Rebirth, Spirit, Trickster. Translated by R. F. C. Hull. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1969. Lewis, Paul W. “Beorn and Tom Bombadil: A Tale of Two Heroes.” Mythlore 97/98 (Spring/Summer 2007): 145–159. Lynch, Andrew. “Archaism, Nostalgia, and Tennysonian War in The Lord of the Rings.” In Tolkien’s Modern Middle Ages, edited by Jane Chance and Alfred K. Siewers, 77–92. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005. Macrobius. Commentary on the Dream of Scipio. Translated by William Harris Stahl. New York: Columbia University Press, 1952. Maxims II. In Bright’s Old English Grammar and Reader, 3rd ed., edited by Frederic G. Cassidy and Richard N. Ringler, 373–375. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1971. Moseley, Charles. J. R. R. Tolkien. Plymouth, U.K.: Northcote House, 1997. Nikakis, Karen Simpson. “Sacral Kingship: Aragorn as the Rightful and Sacrificial King in The Lord of the Rings.” Mythlore 26 (2007): 83–90. Olsen, Corey. “The Myth of the Ent and the Entwife.” Tolkien Studies 5 (2008): 39–53. Otty, Nick. “The Structuralist’s Guide to Middleearth.” In J. R. R. Tolkien: This Far Land, edited by Robert Giddings, 154–78. London: Vision Press; Totowa, N.J.: Barnes and Noble, 1983.

Pettit, Edward. “Treebeard’s Roots in Medieval European Tradition.” Mallorn 42 (August 2004): 11–18. Riga, Frank P. “Gandalf and Merlin: J. R. R. Tolkien’s Adoption and Transformation of a Literary Tradition.” Mythlore 27, nos. 1–2 (Fall/Winter 2008): 21–44. Rogers, Deborah Webster, and Ivor A. Rogers. J. R. R. Tolkien. Boston: G. K. Hall, 1980. Rosebury, Brian. Tolkien: A Cultural Phenomenon. Houndmills, U.K.: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003. Shippey, Tom. J. R. R. Tolkien: Author of the Century. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2000. ———. The Road to Middle-Earth: How J. R. R. Tolkien Created a New Mythology. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2003. Sinex, Margaret A. “ ‘Oathbreakers, why have you come?’ Tolkien’s ‘Passing of the Grey Company’ and the Twelfth-century Exercitus mortuorum.” In Tolkien the Medievalist, edited by Jane Chance, 155–168. Routledge Studies in Medieval Religion and Culture. London and New York: Routledge, 2003. Tinkler, John. “Old English in Rohan.” In Tolkien and the Critics, edited by N. D. Isaacs and R. A. Zimbardo, 164–169. Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1968. Thomas Aquinas, Saint. Summa Theologica. 3 vols. Translated by the Fathers of the English Dominican Province. New York: Benziger Brothers, 1947. Tolkien, J. R. R. “Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics.” In The Monsters and the Critics, and Other Essays, edited by Christopher Tolkien, 5–48. Boston: G. Allen & Unwin, 1983. ———. The Fellowship of the Ring. Being the First Part of The Lord of the Rings. 2nd ed. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1965. ———. “The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth Beorhthelm’s Son.” Essays and Studies of the English Association n.s. 6 (1953): 1–18. Reprinted in The Tolkien Reader, 3–24. New York: Ballantine Books, 1966. ———. The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien. Edited by Humphrey Carpenter. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1995. Tolkien, J. R. R. “On Fairy-Stories.” In Essays Presented to Charles Williams, edited by C. S. Lewis, 38–89. London: Oxford University Press, 1947.

314   “Middle English ‘Losenger’: Sketch of an Etymological and Semantic Enquiry”  ———. The Return of the King. Being the Third Part of The Lord of the Rings. 2nd ed. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1965. ———. The Return of the Shadow. Vol. 6 of The History of Middle-earth. Edited by Christopher Tolkien. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1986. ———. The Two Towers. Being the Third Part of The Lord of the Rings. 2nd ed. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1965. ———. Unfinished Tales of Númenor of Middle-earth. Edited by Christopher Tolkien. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1980. Vaccaro, Christopher T. “ ‘And one white tree’: The Cosmological Cross and the Arbor Vitae in J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion.” Mallorn: Journal of the Tolkien Society 42 (August 2004): 23–28. “The Wanderer.” In Bright’s Old English Grammar and Reader, 3rd ed., edited by Frederic G. Cassidy and Richard N. Ringler, 323–339. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1971.

“Middle English ‘Losenger’: Sketch of an Etymological and Semantic Enquiry”  (1953) In 1951, Tolkien’s former student S.R.T.O. d’Ardenne invited him to give a lecture at the University of Liege in Belgium. On d’Ardenne’s suggestion, Tolkien focused his lecture on the single Middle English word losenger, a lecture that would later be published in Essais de philologie moderne for 1953. With characteristic thoroughness, Tolkien argued (chiefly on the basis of the endings of the word’s ancestors) that, although the Middle English word had been borrowed from Old French, the French word had been borrowed earlier from Anglo-Saxon, before the speakers of that language immigrated to the island they were to call England. It was a decidedly minor point, but with it Tolkien meant to illustrate the extremely complex relationship between Romance and Germanic languages in northern Gaul in the early Middle Ages.

Synopsis Tolkien begins his address by describing his first encounter with the Middle English word losenger in Chaucer’s Legend of Good Women while he was still at King Edward’s School. The word meant “flatterer,” the young Tolkien was told, because it referred to someone using the kind of language used on lozenges—the pieces of glass at the bottom of stained-glass church windows that extolled the virtues of the benefactors who paid for the windows. The elder Tolkien denies this connection, noting that, while there are two identically spelled words in Old French—one of which meant “lozenge” and the other “flatterer”—there was no connection between the senses or etymologies of the two words. In Old French, Tolkien notes, the word losengeour had the connotations of flatterer, slanderer, backbiter, and liar, and the range of meaning moved from simple flattery to more malicious flattery to even more malicious slander to outright lying; therefore, the chief emphasis on the word was on falsehood rather than on praise. Because of this range, Tolkien doubts that the word developed simply or directly from los, the Old French word for praise. For Tolkien, it seems more likely that the root word lozenge had not degenerated in meaning from “praise” to “lying,” but instead had occasionally ameliorated from “falsehood” to “commend.” At this point, Tolkien cites G. Baist, who had connected the Old French lozenge with the Old Norse lausing and Old English leasung, both of which meant “falsehood,” and so argued that the French lozenge was originally a loan word from some Germanic language of Gaul. Tolkien, however, takes this suggestion further. He proposes that the Germanic word lausing entered the Old French language in the north of Gaul and became associated with the Romance word lauðenja, meaning “praise,” and subsequently acquired a range of connotations ranging from “false accusation” to “false adulation.” Tolkien then looks at Germanic cognates apparently derived from the hypothetical protoGermanic lausinga: After looking at variants

Mr. Bliss   315 in Gothic, Old Norse, Old Saxon, Middle High German, and Frisian, Tolkien shows that only in continental Anglo-Saxon does the term laus imply “lying.” He then examines the suffix -enge, which he asserts is a development of the -inge ending common in Anglo-Saxon and no other Germanic language. To further establish his point, he looks at examples of words with forms of -inga in the suffix that appear in early Carolingian texts, a form common only in Anglo-Saxon. Thus, the French loanword in Middle English had originally been an Anglo-Saxon loanword in Old French, and its borrowing in Middle English times was a kind of homecoming. Commentary There is little to add to Tolkien’s own argument. Michael D. C. Drout briefly discusses the article in his long essay on Tolkien’s medieval scholarship, likening it to the earlier “Iþþlen in Sawles Warde” as an essay on a single word, the argument of which revolves around the spelling of a part of the word (119). For modern readers not as immersed in philology as Tolkien was, such essays may well appear trivial, and certainly by comparison with Tolkien’s great essay on “Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics,” this essay is a decidedly minor achievement. But the importance of such articles is what the single example implies about the larger context: Here, the history of the word losenger makes a powerful argument against any sort of oversimplification of the relationship between English and French in the history of the English language. The Norman Conquest does not necessarily answer all questions about the matter. Further Reading Drout, Michael D. C. “J. R. R. Tolkien’s Medieval Scholarship and Its Significance.” Tolkien Studies: An Annual Scholarly Review 4 (2007): 113–176. Tolkien, J. R. R. “Middle English ‘Losenger’: Sketch of an Etymological and Semantic Enquiry.” In Essais de philologie modern, 1951, 63–76. Bibliothèque de la Faculté de Philosophie et Lettres de l’Université de Liège, fasc. 129. Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1953.

Mr. Bliss  (1982) Mr. Bliss is a picture book intended for children, telling of the misadventures of Mr. Bliss after he buys his first automobile. Tolkien’s own drawings (in ink and colored pencil) served as illustrations for the book, which he originally created in the late 1920s or early 1930s. Text and illustrations work together ineluctably in the book as Tolkien created it, with the text sometimes commenting on or referring directly to the pictures. There is some controversy about the precise date of the story. Humphrey Carpenter says that it originated in 1932, when Tolkien bought a new car and proceeded to have several mishaps with it (163), and most critics have accepted this explanation. But Christina Scull and Wayne Hammond have recently called this view into question, noting that Michael Tolkien’s diary dates the origin of the story to 1928, and that a letter from Michael’s wife to the Sunday Times claims that the car was inspired by a favorite toy car belonging to Christopher Tolkien; further, the bears in the story were based on the favorite teddy bears of Tolkien’s three sons (Scull and Hammond 1:590–591). But Scull and Hammond note that the name Gaffer Gamgee, which appears in the story, was one that Tolkien used to describe a local Cornwall gossip whom his family had run into on an outing in 1932, thus suggesting, again, that the story was produced in that year—unless, of course, Tolkien had first used the name in Mr. Bliss and applied it to the man the Tolkiens had met a few years later (1:591). It is certainly possible that Michael recorded Tolkien’s first telling of the story, and that the final manuscript was produced in 1932. In any case, after the great success of The Hobbit in 1936, Tolkien sent Allen & Unwin the manuscript of Mr. Bliss as a possible follow-up, and although the publishers liked the story, they thought that the cost of printing the color illustrations would be prohibitive and rejected the manuscript. The story languished until 1957, when Tolkien sold the manuscript, along with early drafts of The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and Farmer Giles of Ham, to the library of Marquette University in Milwaukee for their

316   Mr. Bliss s­ pecial collections and archives, receiving £1,250 in exchange. He turned down an offer to publish the book in 1964, apparently at that time having lost interest in the book. Interest in the manuscript among publishers remained, however, and the book was finally published in Great Britain by Allen & Unwin in 1982, with an American edition by Houghton Mifflin following in 1983. The book was published with color facsimiles of Tolkien’s handwritten story and illustrations, and with print versions of Tolkien’s sometimes difficult-to-read text on facing pages. While some critics compared it to the picture books of Beatrix Potter and to the style of Edward Lear, the book was not a best seller, and it is little known even by Tolkien fans. It did, however, inspire a 33-minute Russian animated film using Tolkien’s original drawings, released in 2004. In 2007, HarperCollins issued a 25th-anniversary revised version of the book, though this is not readily available. Synopsis Mr. Bliss lives in a very tall house, with a high front door to accommodate the very tall hats he wears. He has a pet Girabbit who lives in his garden but looks in the bedroom windows upstairs. One morning, having discussed the fine weather with his Girabbit, Mr. Bliss decides to buy a motorcar, puts on his tall green hat, and rides off to the village on his bicycle. He agrees to pay five shillings for a bright yellow car and an additional sixpence for red wheels. But he has forgotten his money and leaves the bicycle at the car dealer as collateral, agreeing to pick it up when he brings back the money. Mr. Bliss drives off, planning to visit his friends, the Dorkinses. But when he turns a corner, he runs into Mr. Day, knocking over his barrow of cabbages. He puts the cabbages in the back of his car and gives Mr. Day a ride, since the old man is too bruised to walk. But when Mr. Bliss makes a left turn, he runs into Mrs. Knight, knocking over her donkey cart of bananas. They pile the bananas on top of the cabbages, put Mrs. Knight in with Mr. Day, and tie the donkey to the back of the car. Mr. Bliss now drives along the road into the woods, where three bears—Archie, Teddy, and Bruno—stop the car by standing in the road. The

bears threaten to eat them if they do not allow the bears to eat the cabbages and bananas, which they proceed to pile on the back of the donkey. The bears lead the donkey away and then insist on taking a ride in the car. They squeeze in the back seat, forcing Mrs. Knight into the front, where Mr. Bliss is so crowded he can barely steer. The donkey is tied to the back again, and Mr. Bliss drives to the top of the hill, but when the car begins to go down, it goes so fast that the donkey is dragged flying through the air, Mr. Bliss crashes into the Dorkinses’ garden wall at the bottom of the hill, and everyone is thrown from the car and over the wall on impact. Meanwhile the Dorkinses—Fattie, Albert, Herbert, and Egbert—are eating soup on their lawn when Mr. Bliss and his passengers all fall out of the sky onto them, breaking their soup tureen. The Dorkinses are quite upset, but they remain polite and ask the visitors to lunch. Mr. Bliss and Mrs. Knight are happy to accept, but the bears decline the offer and go for a walk in the garden instead. When the others go for a walk after lunch, they find the bears sleeping under an apple tree and nearly all the cabbages, green apples, and potatoes in the garden eaten. The angry Dorkinses insist that the bears leave, but they simply go back to sleep, until Albert lets the dogs loose. Then the bears flee over the wall, calling back that they have plenty of bananas and cabbages at home. At this, Mr. Day and Mrs. Knight become angry over the loss of their produce and demand that Mr. Bliss let them chase the bears in his car. Mr. Bliss insists that he will not chase the bears unless the Dorkinses and their dogs come as well, but when everyone piles into the car, they realize it is too damaged to start. Mr. Bliss ties the donkey to the front of the car, hoping to get him to pull the car home. They bring out three ponies as well, and the four animals are all tied to the front of the car. Eventually, the car is pulled up the hill and back down the other side, though they must keep the brake on to avoid running over the animals. At an inn at Cross Roads, they stop for tea. By the time they leave the inn and head into the woods, it has become dark, and they begin to wish they had not come—especially the dogs, who

Mr. Bliss   317 would like to be back in their kennels. Soon they abandon the car and go forward with the ponies and donkey. It is now quite dark, and Mr. Bliss thinks he will sit and wait for everyone to come back, but Mrs. Knight chides him into continuing. When the dogs turn the next corner in the road, they begin howling and bolt back. Mr. Bliss runs away as fast as he can, but the others see the bears in front of them, all shining with a fluorescent glow (they have painted themselves with a paint that glows in the dark). The Dorkinses, Mr. Day, and Mrs. Knight cower in fear, but the bears laugh and, having had their joke, invite everyone to supper. They have a jolly party and call for Mr. Bliss, but he is nowhere to be found. After supper, it being too late to go home, the bears invite everyone to stay the night. Meanwhile, Mr. Bliss has run all night. At dawn, he is atop a hill, looking down at his own house, from which he notices a flag is flying. He goes down into the village to Binks, the car dealer, but finds no one is awake yet. So he takes his bicycle and rides home, intending to bring back his money, but from his bedroom window Mr. Binks sees him ride away and assumes Mr. Bliss is trying to avoid paying for his car. He goes to complain to Police Sergeant Boffin. Back at the bears’ house, Mr. Day has decided he wants his barrow replaced, and Mrs. Knight feels the same about her cart. The Dorkinses want a new soup tureen. All of them pile into the car with the bears and set off to find Mr. Bliss, who they feel is responsible. They reach the village, where Mr. Binks is trying to get Sergeant Boffin to find Mr. Bliss and arrest him while a whole group of townspeople (including a “Gaffer Gamgee”) stands around. The people all laugh when the car comes up, loaded and dented as it is, pulled by the animals. Mr. Binks falls into a gutter. He then asserts that Mr. Bliss owes him for the car and joins the group as they head toward Mr. Bliss’s house. Meanwhile, Mr. Bliss has returned home to find the Girabbit in the house with his head sticking out the chimney, chewing on a piece of carpet. This is what had looked like a flag from the hilltop. Mr. Bliss had forgotten to feed him, and he had eaten his way through two ceilings into the attic and up

the chimney. Mr. Bliss cannot get the Girabbit to leave the house and so makes himself brunch and falls asleep. But just after 11 o’clock, the Girabbit wakes him and says he can see a lot of people coming toward the house, all of them apparently angry with him. Mr. Bliss locks himself in the house and looks out the bedroom window. As Mr. Binks demands his money, the townspeople chant that “’e means to ’ave it” (40), and Boffin threatens to arrest him. But the Girabbit, whom no one has ever seen before, sticks his head back out the chimney and threatens to stomp on them all if they do not go away. Everyone runs down the hill, Fattie and Sergeant Boffin rolling like barrels into a ditch. Mr. Bliss comes out of the house and laughs, until the bears pop out from behind a hedge and ask if they can help. Mr. Bliss asks if they can help get his Girabbit out of the house, and (promising to send him a bill) they try. When the Girabbit sees the bears, he is frightened and jumps through the window. As the Girabbit runs away, the people run from him. Mr. Bliss sheds tears at losing his pet. The bears make up a bill, and Mr. Bliss pays them. He also pays for the car; pays Mr. Day, Mrs. Knight, and the Dorkinses for all of his damages (including hiring their ponies); pays for the damages to his own house; and pays the sergeant for a pet license for the Girabbit. He never rides in his motorcar again and gives it to Mr. Day and Mrs. Knight for a wedding present (they set up a grocery called Day and Knight’s). Everyone, including the bears, attends the wedding, where Mr. Bliss plays a concertina and is delighted when the Girabbit pushes his head through the window in the middle of the party. He asks the animal where he has been, and the Girabbit tells him to ask the Dorkinses and the bears. The bears go home to find that the Girabbit has eaten all their food, and the Dorkinses find he has eaten the tops off all their trees. They send Mr. Bliss another bill, but since he is now out of money, he sends them fourpence in stamps and a bill of his own for frightening his Girabbit. They are not on friendly terms after that. The story ends with Mr. Bliss driving a donkey cart and living happily with his Girabbit, whom the children of the town love to look at. He has thrown

318   Mr. Bliss away his tall green hat and now wears a white one in summer and a brown one in winter. Commentary One of the quirkiest of all Tolkien’s publications, Mr. Bliss seems like no other children’s picture book of its time. It has far more text, and sometimes the text crowds out the pictures so that they become marginal illustrations. Furthermore, the rough-and-tumble plot, which Tom Shippey has described as depicting “a vanished vulgar England where everybody did—and spoke—exactly as he pleased, and life was consequently a series of amiable abrupt collisions” (1,306), has no sound resolution, so that the book does not attempt to teach any kind of moral lesson but essentially aims at appealing to children’s sense of slapstick humor. No one in the text can be seen as a positive role model for children. In this, of course, Tolkien’s sense of what real children liked (and he was writing this first for his own real children) was quite accurate and served him well in avoiding didacticism and emphasizing pratfalls. But a lack of didacticism does not mean that Mr. Bliss has nothing serious to communicate. Although Tolkien’s famous lecture “On Fairy-Stories” was delivered in 1939—at least seven years after his composition of Mr. Bliss—its precepts are perfectly applicable to this story. In his lecture, Tolkien argued that one of the most important qualities of the fairy story is its ability to create an escape for its readers. That escape, for Tolkien, might very well be the escape from what he calls the “Robot-Age”—the age of the internal combustion engine and other technological innovations that for Tolkien do not necessarily make for a better world (376–379). Mr. Bliss’s misadventures with his motorcar make his abandonment of the car understandable and, in fact, a good example of the kind of escape Tolkien advocates. But his definition of escape includes, more important, escape from the normal limitations of the human life. These include the limitation on what Tolkien calls a primal human desire—the desire to communicate with other living things (“On Fairy-Stories” 382). In Mr. Bliss, the characters all communicate with the bears, but more important,

Mr. Bliss communicates with his wonderful pet, the Girabbit—a remarkable beast that appears to be half rabbit, half giraffe, with an incredibly long neck capable of looking out of a chimney. This creature also illustrates another of the chief qualities of the fairy story: the fantasy that allows us to transcend our mundane ways of looking at the world. We are aware of no Girabbits in our own world, to our great loss, but seeing one in the world of Mr. Bliss allows us to use our own imagination to engage in “secondary belief,” and ultimately to be able to look at our own world with a new perspective—a third quality of the fairy story that Tolkien calls recovery (“On Fairy-Stories” 373). Seeing a Girabbit in Mr. Bliss will let us look differently at rabbits and giraffes in our own world. The most important quality of fairy stories, according to Tolkien, is what he calls consolation. Specifically, this is the consolation brought about by the happy ending, and the best fairy stories contain a consolation that occurs through some unexpected twist of the plot—what Tolkien calls eucatastrophe (the opposite of the unexpected catastrophe that characterizes tragedy) (“On FairyStories” 385). This, Tolkien says, is the depiction of an act of grace. For Tolkien, this is the reflection of the great spiritual truth of his Christian conviction, the grace that comes undeserved and unlooked for. In Mr. Bliss, that eucatastrophe comes when the Girabbit returns, after Mr. Bliss thinks he has lost his unique pet along with all of his money. Though he has an empty money box at the end of the story, Mr. Bliss has severed ties with his fair-weather friends the Dorkinses, seen his other friends happily married, and settled down to live happily with his faithful Girabbit. Thus, in the end, Mr. Bliss has in fact achieved the promise of his name—he is blissful. This state has come through his escape from the mundane modern technical world, and from the consolation of his living with the Girabbit, a product of the imagination and an animal with whom Mr. Bliss is able to communicate and to have a close relationship. It is not difficult to see that the story is structured according to the binary oppositions of the motorcar and the Girabbit. When Mr. Bliss is at home with the Girabbit, in the land of imagination,

Mr. Bliss   319 he is happy. When he is in the industrialized world of the automobile, he has one misadventure after another, crashing into his friends and their gates and destroying property. Meanwhile, the neglected Girabbit wreaks havoc on Mr. Bliss’s house. The Girabbit stands up to Mr. Bliss’s creditors and the villagers, frightening them away and saving Mr. Bliss. The imagination is a refuge and an escape in the story. But the Girabbit runs away, frightened by the bears. It is hard to determine the function of the mischievous bears in the narrative as fairy story. They take the role of archetypal trickster figures of folklore, amoral comic troublemakers whose function seems, essentially, to undermine cultural norms and rules, as comedy often does. In Tolkien’s story, the bears are based on the favorite teddy bears of his three young sons, and they were probably the characters with whom Tolkien’s children would have identified most clearly in the story. Therefore, they may be the characters with whom young children reading or hearing the story for the first time might identify. In a sense, identification with the bears may be an escape for young readers—essentially a freedom from the constrictions of normal society, a kind of saturnalia from which, at the end of the story, the child as reader might emerge and return to the obedient behavior expected of him or her. As for Mr. Bliss, once he has abandoned the automobile altogether and given it away, his life returns to bliss as his Girabbit comes home. In the story, the motorcar—symbol of the technological world—and the Girabbit—symbol of the world of imagination—cannot exist together, and when Mr. Bliss commits to the world of imagination, he escapes from the mundane and attains his consolation, his eucatastrophe. Characters Bears  The three bears—Archie, Teddy, and Bruno—were modeled on the favorite teddy bears of Tolkien’s young sons, John, Michael, and Christopher. In the story, they are mischief makers who steal Mr. Day’s cabbages, Mrs. Knight’s bananas, and most of the vegetables from the Dorkinses’ garden. They also frighten everyone with their

fluorescent painted bodies at night in the woods, though they seem to do everything in a sense of fun and invite their “victims” to supper. In the end, they make Mr. Bliss pay them a fee for getting the Girabbit out of the house, even though he runs away. Mr. Bliss  The protagonist and title character of the story, Mr. Bliss likes very tall hats, lives in a house with tall doors and windows, and owns a Girabbit—a talking pet that is half rabbit and half giraffe. Mr. Bliss buys an automobile on a whim, has a number of misadventures with it involving his friends (Mr. Day, Mrs. Knight, and the Dorkinses) and a group of animals, including three mischievous bears. He runs in fear from one of the bears’ tricks and returns to his house, where he is besieged by his friends, who demand restitution for the things that he has destroyed with his car, and by the car dealer, who demands payment. His Girabbit, having frightened the intruders off, runs away when the bears are hired to remove him from the house, but at the wedding of Mr. Day and Mrs. Knight, to whom Mr. Bliss has given his motorcar, the Girabbit returns, and Mr. Bliss is happy to live with him again. Girabbit  The Girabbit is a rabbitlike creature who lives in Mr. Bliss’s garden, but who uses his long, giraffelike neck to peek in the windows of Mr. Bliss’s house. He predicts a fine day when Mr. Bliss goes off to buy his car. But Girabbits have skin like a raincoat, and so think all days are fine. The Girabbit has a hole in the ground in which he hides when people come by (since Mr. Bliss has never bought a license for him). He also has difficulty seeing unless things are close up. When Mr. Bliss neglects to feed him before leaving, the Girabbit enters the tall house and eats his way through two floors, sticks his head out of the chimney, and looks like a flagpole as he eats a large piece of carpet. He frightens away the people chasing Mr. Bliss by sticking his head out the chimney but runs away when he sees, close-up, the three bears trying to shoo him from the house. The Girabbit returns during the wedding of Mr. Day and Mrs. Knight, having eaten all of the bears’ food and the tops off

320   “MS. Bodley 34: A Re-collation of a Collation”  the Dorkinses’ trees. He goes back to being Mr. Bliss’s pet, and both are quite content in the end. Further Reading Carpenter, Humphrey. Tolkien: A Biography. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1977. Scull, Christina, and Wayne G. Hammond. The J. R. R. Tolkien Companion and Guide. 2 vols. London: HarperCollins; Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2006. Shippey, Tom. “Blunt Belligerence.” Times Literary Supplement, 26 November 1982, 1,306. Tolkien, J. R. R. Mr. Bliss. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1982. ———. “On Fairy-Stories.” In Tales from the Perilous Realm. Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2008, 315–400.

“MS. Bodley 34: A Re-collation of a Collation”  (1948) In 1948, with his former student and collaborator, the Belgian scholar S.R.T.O. d’Ardenne, Tolkien published a brief and rather scathing article attacking R. Furuskog’s recently published “Collation of the Katherine Group (MS Bodley 34).” As Michael Drout puts it, Tolkien was here engaging in “academic territory-marking intended to preserve his and d’Ardenne’s scholarly ownership” of MS Bodley 34 (146). That was the manuscript containing the texts known as the Katherine group, on which the two had been working for more than a decade, and of which, ultimately, they planned to publish an edition. Synopsis As the article begins, Tolkien and d’Ardenne acknowledge that Furuskog’s collation has been done with great care, but they suggest that his article will be confusing to students because he has not taken scribal intention into account. Mere slips in penmanship are recorded by Furuskog as misspellings, so that he records as senie a word that was obviously intended to read seme. Recording such things,

Tolkien and d’Ardenne assert, is like recording as a scribal mistake a word in which the scribe had not completed crossing his t. The word was not confused by either the scribe or the reader and therefore should not be noted. A number of these kinds of “mistakes” are discussed in the article. Tolkien and d’Ardenne go on to take issue with some of Furuskog’s speculations as to why the scribe may have done certain things—as, for example, when he says that the scribe may have spelled schulde as sculde because space was limited at the end of the line, when in fact in the very next line the scribe runs past the end of intended margin by six characters. Tolkien and d’Ardenne maintain that a number of Furuskog’s errors stem from his use of photostats of the manuscript, rather than the manuscript itself (which was, of course, readily available to Tolkien at the Bodleian Library). Other errors, they remark, stem from an “insufficient acquaintance with the work and habits of this particular scribe” (66). After a fairly lengthy list of what they see as “errors,” Tolkien and d’Ardenne maintain that they have recorded only the details that they deemed “of greater importance” (72). Commentary There is little to add to Tolkien and d’Ardenne’s own assessment, and there is little new knowledge put forth in the essay, other than what is essentially a difference in scholarly approach. It is likely that the approach advocated by Tolkien and d’Ardenne is indeed the more useful. They indicate in the essay that their own edition of the manuscript “will, we hope, shortly be in print” (72), and they note that, while it undoubtedly will contain errors of its own, it will have the advantage of being produced by scholars who were by now as familiar with the manuscript as its own scribe had been. Of course, the edition was not published until 1977, after Tolkien’s death and some 30 years later, and then only under d’Ardenne’s name, Tolkien having long since abandoned the project to her. Further Reading d’Ardenne, S. R. T. O., ed. The Katherine Group: Edited from MS. Bodley 34. Paris : Société d’Edition Les Belles Lettres, 1977.

“Nameless Land, The”    321 d’Ardenne, S. R. T. O., and J. R. R. Tolkien. “MS Bodley 34: A Re-Collation of a Collation.” Studia Neophilologica 20, nos. 1/2 (1947–48): 65–72. Drout, Michael D. C. “J. R. R. Tolkien’s Medieval Scholarship and Its Significance.” Tolkien Studies: An Annual Scholarly Review 4 (2007): 113–176.

“Nameless Land, The”  (1927) Like Tolkien’s later poem “Imram,” “The Nameless Land” deals with a deathless, mythic land to the west and makes use of the legend of the Irish voyager Saint Brendan. The poem employs the association, particularly popular in Celtic mythology, of an ideal deathless land to the west, across the great ocean. Of course, Tolkien used this tradition in his own mythology, in which Valinor and the sacred elvish home of Tol Eressëa lie to the west of Middle-earth, and in which, when the Valar destroyed Númenor at the end of the Second Age, the deathless lands were separated from the bent earth and could be reached only by a lost road that traveled straight on above the horizon where the earth curved downward. The poem was published in 1927 at Leeds in a collection called Realities: An Anthology of Verse. A note on the surviving typescript of the poem dates its first composition to 1924. It was later reprinted in The Lost Road and Other Writings, (volume 5 of The History of Middle-earth, edited by Christopher Tolkien) along with two later revisions of the poem. In these later revisions, the verses became associated with Ælfwine, the English seaman who finds the lost road to Tol Eressëa in early versions of what was to become The Silmarillion. The latest revision of the poem in manuscript is entitled “The Song of Ælfwine,” subtitled “On seeing the uprising of Eärendil,” and it begins “Eressëa! Eressëa!” Synopsis In the first stanza, Tolkien describes the land in paradisal terms as lying under a golden light that shines on silver-leaved trees and grass greener than any English gardens. It is a land of agelessness and unending afternoons, where voices sing and

wandering fires fill the woods. The second stanza focuses on the wandering fires and the way they fill all of the glades and dells, which are also filled with music and the perfume of flowers, as well as the sound of waters that run down to the unexplored sea. In the third stanza, Tolkien notes that a great gulf of darkness and water that cannot be crossed lies between our own country and this nameless land, where the water of the sea foams against “cliffs of crystal.” Stanza 4 suggests something of the nature of the inhabitants of that land: Their hair, gold and silver in the sun or moon, flies free as their bare feet dance, and they wear only the wind and the air. Neither Bran nor Brendan ever saw anything so fair. The final stanza, separated from the others by three asterisks, departs from the pure description of the previous stanzas and focuses on the speaker’s personal longing for the land of dreams: It is fairer and freer than Tir-nan-Og, fainter and farther than Paradise itself. He addresses the land itself in an apostrophe as the place where lost things are and no man may go, The speaker says that in his dreams, he sees the land and a star that beckons, fairer than a beacon from the tower of Gondobar. Commentary The poem’s Celtic roots are evident in the reference to Brendan and also to Bran, the hero of another famous tale of sea wandering that predates the legend of Saint Brendan. The mention of Tirnan-Og, the mythic western land of Irish legend, is another Celtic allusion. But essentially the poem reflects Tolkien’s personal mythology, as the later revisions demonstrate. The land is almost certainly Tol Eressëa, and the inhabitants are Tolkien’s elves, with their wandering fires around which they sing in the woods and dells, their golden hair flowing free. The star of the last stanza is the star of Eärendil, and the tower of Gondobar alluded to is another name for Gondolin, Tolkien’s hidden city of the elves. The poem consists of five stanzas of 12 tetrameter lines, rhyming ababababbcbc. In addition to the rhyme, Tolkien uses alliteration in each line, so that in most lines, either two or three of the four stressed syllables alliterate. In the first line, for example,

322   “Nameless Land, The”  “there lingering lights do golden lie” (emphasis mine) uses three alliterating l sounds; the fourth line, “With silver leaves a-swinging clear,” alliterates the s-sounds of two of the stressed syllables. Furthermore, Tolkien links the stanzas of the poem through repetition of words or phrases, so that the phrase “wandering fire,” which appears in the last line of the first stanza, is repeated in the first line of the next stanza, and then becomes “wandering fire” in the last line of the second stanza, to be repeated in the first line of the third. The phrase “blowing free,” which ends the third stanza, is repeated in the first line of stanza 4, while it becomes simply “free” in the final line of the stanza, to be repeated in line one of stanza 5. The poem ends with the line “The lights of longing flare and die”—which hearkens back to the lights of the first line of the poem, which reads “There lingering lights do golden lie.” This very complex pattern is a precise copy of the verse form of the late 14th-century poem Pearl (by the anonymous poet of Tolkien’s beloved Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, and one that Tolkien at this point may have been in the midst of translating into modern English). Pearl also uses 12-line stanzas with the same rhyme scheme as Tolkien’s and four-stress alliterative lines, as well as the device of repeated words or phrases that link the five stanzas to one another, and each five-stanza section to the next, until the end of the poem, where the last line links, by repetition, to the poem’s first line. Christopher Tolkien notes that in the 1924 typescript of the poem, Tolkien had written that the poem was “inspired by reading Pearl for examination purposes” (109). Clearly that poem suggested to Tolkien the form of his own, and many years later (in 1962), he sent a copy of his poem to his aunt Jane Neave, remarking that “I never agreed to the view of scholars that the metrical form was almost impossibly difficult to write in, and quite impossible to render in modern English. . . . I made up a few stanzas in the metre to show that composition in it was not at any rate ‘impossible’ (though the result might today be thought bad)” (Letters 317). He promised to send her a copy of his own translation of Pearl as well. But it also seems likely that the imagery of Pearl influenced Tolkien’s descriptions of the “Nameless

Land” as much as the verse form did: In Pearl, the narrator, in a dream, is granted a glimpse of paradise itself, where his own Pearl (apparently his dead daughter) now lives. In Tolkien’s own translation of the poem, he writes: Wondrous was made each mountain side With crystal cliffs so clear of hue; About them woodlands bright lay wide, As Indian dye their boles ere blue; The leaves did as burnished silver slide That thick upon twigs there trembling grew. When glades let light upon them glide They shone with a shimmer of dazzling hue. (Tolkien, Sir Gawain 126).

The silver leaves, the dazzling light, the wooded glades, and, most specifically, the crystal cliffs all appear in Tolkien’s poem, suggesting the connection in Tolkien’s mind of his nameless land with the paradise of Pearl. Tom Shippey first suggested the connection between the descriptions of the two lands (286), and Stefan Ekman has considered the parallels at some length, noting, in addition to the above details, the fact that both lands exist across a body of water impossible to cross, and the suggestion that the vision of this poem, as the vision of Pearl, occurs in a dream (61). Further Reading Ekman, Stefan. “Echoes of Pearl in Arda’s Landscape.” Tolkien Studies 6 (2009): 59–70. Shippey, Tom. The Road to Middle-Earth: How J. R. R. Tolkien Created a New Mythology. Rev. ed. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2003. Tolkien, J. R. R. The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien. Edited by Humphrey Carpenter. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1981. ———. The Lost Road and Other Writings. Vol. 5 of The History of Middle-earth, edited by Christopher Tolkien. New York: Ballantine, 1987. ———. “The Nameless Land.” In Realities: An Anthology of Verse, edited by G. S. Tancred, 24–25. London: Gay and Hancock, Ltd., 1927. Tolkien, J. R. R., trans. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Pearl, and Sir Orfeo. New York: Ballantine Books, 1975.

“Name ‘Nodens,’ The”    323

“Name ‘Nodens,’ The”  (1932) One of Tolkien’s more unusual scholarly publications was an appendix to a 1932 archaeological report on the excavation of an ancient Roman temple complex at Lydney Park near Gloucester. The site was excavated in 1928 by Sir Mortimer Wheeler, who argued that the temple had been erected sometime after 364 c.e. and had continued as an active temple well into the fifth century. Apparently the temple was devoted to a mystery cult of some kind, surviving long after the introduction of Christianity into England. It was eventually abandoned and fell into oblivion, but some memory of the site’s association with pagan rites must have survived, since, as Tom Shippey notes, the location of the temple was called “Dwarf’s Hill” even into modern times (35). Three inscriptions were found on the site referring to the god to whom the temple was dedicated, who was called Nodenti in one inscription, Nodonti in another, and Nudente in the third. In his appendix to the report, Tolkien sought to establish the etymological and linguistic explanation for these names, and thereby discover the identity of the mysterious god of the Lydney Park temple site. His rigorous, far-reaching, and creative study of the name Nodens has until recently remained obscure, but has been described by Michael D. C. Drout as a vivid illustration of Tolkien’s “amazing facility with phonological systems” (120). Synopsis After a detailed explanation of the variation o/u spellings as probable Latin attempts to approximate the Celtic ou sound, Tolkien concludes that the inscriptions represent a hypothetical Celtic root noudont- with Latin case endings. He then reveals that this combined name is “precisely the form required as the older stage of the (Old and Middle) Irish mythological and heroic name Núadu (later Núada)” (133). Tolkien goes on to explain that this Núadu (called “Núadu of the Silver Hand”) was king of the Túatha dé Dannan of Irish legend—ancient possessors of Ireland who are probably to be iden-

tified with the ancient Irish gods and goddesses. Outside of Ireland, the name of Núadu occurs only in Britain at this site. Tolkien suggests the likelihood that Núadu/Nodens was a Goidelic (insular Irish Celtic) god exported east to Britain. He particularly suggests a connection with the legendary Welsh figure of Lludd Llaw Ereint (Ludd of the Silver Hand)—the original of the King Lear legend. The Irish Núadu, according to his myth, lost his hand in battle with the Firbolg and the Fomorians, and after the battle, the Fomorians ruled Ireland for seven years. But the Túatha dé Dannan created a new hand for him, one made of silver, which functioned like a real hand. With it, he reconquered the island and ruled for another 20 years. After looking at a number of other figures in Irish legend named Núadu, Tolkien argues that these are probably either from disconnected stories concerning the Túatha dé Dannan chief or are separate figures named after the god. In either case, he concludes that there was probably originally a divine figure who is represented in later legend as Nuada of the Silver Hand, whose name between ca. 100 and 300 c.e. was Noudus, Noudont- in both the Goidelic and British forms of Celtic, and who is identical with the No¯dont- in the temple inscriptions. Tolkien now changes the direction of his study, from etymology to definition. Noting that the -ont suffix is typically used in forming participles in Indo-European languages, he asserts that the root of the name must then have originally been a verb. But there is no such verb as noud- in any Celtic language. There is, however, such a verb in Germanic. Differences in consonant and vowel development between Celtic and Germanic languages suggest that the Germanic cognate of noud- should be neut-, and Tolkien demonstrates that this stem is common in Germanic languages. He cites Gothic, Old English, Old Saxon, and Old High German examples where the verb means “to acquire or have the use of.” But he notes that the earliest use of the term in Gothic, the oldest recorded Germanic language, is “to catch, entrap.” This, he believes, is the sense of the root in the name Nodens, which,

324   “Once Upon a Time”  because the participial ending makes it adjectival in form, suggests that the name was originally an epithet used for the god, which ultimately became a substitution for his name. The god, therefore, must have been known as the “catcher,” the “snarer,” or the “hunter.” More than this, Tolkien says, philology cannot add, so it cannot be known whether the god was a “hunter” or “grabber” in a sinister sense or merely a god of hunting. But given his name, Tolkien finds it suggestive that the one thing most commonly associated with Núada was his magic grasping hand, without which he had no power. Commentary Tolkien’s essay on the name Nodens has always been one of his more obscure texts. Tom Shippey drew attention to the article in the first edition of The Road to Middle-earth, in which he used the essay as an example of the “interaction of poetry with philology” that was the impetus in Tolkien’s mind for his creation of Middle-earth (35). For Michael D. C. Drout, the essay is a testament to Tolkien’s astounding ability “to move freely through multiple languages, which are littered with borrowings and false cognates, and somehow pick out those words that were most likely to have been related to one another” (119–120)—a feat all the more remarkable for Tolkien’s having had none of the handy computerized dictionaries or concordances available to today’s scholars. The current mild resurgence of interest in this article has prompted its reprinting in the 2007 issue of Tolkien Studies, so that it is now much more readily available than it has been in the past. Further Reading Drout, Michael D. C. “J. R. R. Tolkien’s Medieval Scholarship and Its Significance.” Tolkien Studies: An Annual Scholarly Review 4 (2007): 113–176. Shippey, Tom. The Road to Middle-Earth: How J. R. R. Tolkien Created a New Mythology. Rev. ed. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2003. Tolkien, J. R. R. “Appendix I: The Name ‘Nodens.’ ” In Report on the Excavation of the Prehistoric, Roman, and Post-Roman Sites in Lydney Park, Gloucestershire. Reports of the Research Committee on the Society of

Antiquaries of London 9, 132–137. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1932. ———. “The Name ‘Nodens.’ ” Tolkien Studies 4 (2007): 177–183.

“Once Upon a Time”  (1965) “Once Upon a Time” is a brief poem of three stanzas first published (along with Tolkien’s poem “The Dragon’s Visit”) in Caroline Hillier’s collection of Winter’s Tales for Children in 1965. It is difficult to determine when the poem was actually composed. It features Tom Bombadil and his wife, Goldberry, who first appear in the 1934 poem “The Adventures of Tom Bombadil,” so this poem must be later than 1934. Perhaps it was written while Tolkien was composing the Tom Bombadil section of The Fellowship of the Ring (probably in the early 1940s). But he had just assembled a number of poems for the collection called The Adventures of Tom Bombadil in 1962, and it is certainly a good possibility that if Tolkien had written “Once Upon a Time” before then, it would have been included in that volume rather than in Hillier’s three years later. Perhaps it was inspired by his work on the earlier collection. Synopsis In the first stanza, Goldberry is enjoying the white blossoms of May in “elvish land”; she wears a wildrose crown, stoops over lilies, and blows a “dandelion clock.” In the second stanza, it is evening, and the flowers have closed up, but the dew is white in the light of the moon, and Tom walks shoeless in the dewy grass of the wood. In the third stanza, Tom notices tiny creatures called lintips, who walk the forest floor, apparently drinking the dew. Tom asks them to mind his toes, but they steal away laughing. Tom bemoans the fact that of all creatures, the lintips will not speak with him, and he wonders if they have come down from the moon itself, or from the winking stars. Commentary The poem is made up of three stanzas of 14 lines each, rhyming in couplets aabbccddeeffgg. In a loose

“On Fairy-Stories”    325 way, the lines mimic Old English meter (though without the alliteration), since each has four stressed syllables with a pause in mid-line, and the lines tend to have any number of unstressed syllables. The second line, for example, has 11 syllables and uses a predominantly anapestic meter (“there was snow in summer where the blossom lay”), while the sixth line has only eight syllables and an iambic meter (“the earth-stars with their steady eyes”). The first lines of each stanza begin with related half-lines—“Once upon a day . . . ,” “Once upon a night . . . ,” and “Once upon a moon . . .”—while the last lines of each stanza begin with the same repeated half-line, “Once upon a time . . .” The poem is a pleasant-sounding metrical exercise. In its content, it is little more than a simple celebration of wonder at natural beauty and a fanciful invention of tiny, precious creatures reminiscent of Tolkien’s very early poetry. Further Reading Tolkien, J. R. R. “Once Upon a Time.” In Winter’s Tales for Children I, edited by Caroline Hillier, 56. Illustrated by Hugh Marshall. London: Macmillan; New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1965.

“On Fairy-Stories”  (1939) Tolkien originally presented his essay “On FairyStories” when he was invited to give the annual Andrew Lang lecture for 1939 at the University of Saint Andrews in Scotland. Lang—a Scottish novelist, poet, historian, and anthropologist who had died in 1912—is best known today for the collections of folk tales that he published under the titles The Green Fairy Book, The Yellow Fairy Book, The Grey Fairy Book, and so on. These were the parts of Lang’s large canon that most interested Tolkien and inspired him to choose the genre of the fairy story as the topic of his lecture. Since Tolkien had recently published his own fairy story, The Hobbit, which by this time was becoming popular in the United States as well as in Britain, the choice seemed a natural one. Further, Tolkien was at this point just beginning his conception of what would

become The Lord of the Rings, so the lecture is a point of transition between these two major works. The lecture was not published, however, until 1947, when C. S. Lewis included it in a volume of essays dedicated to fellow Inkling Charles Williams. Williams had lived in Oxford during World War II, and Lewis was planning the book as a Festschrift to commemorate Williams’s return to London at the conclusion of the war with the rest of the staff of the Oxford University Press. But Williams died suddenly on May 15, 1945, and the volume remained unpublished until Lewis brought it out as a memorial volume in 1947. By this time, Tolkien was deep into the composition of The Lord of the Rings, and the expanded essay was in some ways a manifesto explaining and defending the kind of story he was writing. By 1964, the publication of The Lord of the Rings trilogy was beginning to make Tolkien something of a literary phenomenon, and his readers were becoming interested in his other publications. Tolkien’s theoretical conception of the nature of fairy stories was an issue of some interest, but Lewis’s Festschrift was hard to find by this time, and Harper­ Collins decided to republish the essay along with the short story “Leaf by Niggle” in a hardcover edition entitled Tree and Leaf. Two years later, Ballantine Books brought out a small paperback edition of both texts from Tree and Leaf, along with three other Tolkien pieces (“The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth Beorhthelm’s Son,” “Farmer Giles of Ham,” and “The Adventures of Tom Bombadil”) called The Tolkien Reader. In 2008, the essay (as it appeared in Tree and Leaf) was included as an appendix to the publication Tales of the Perilous Realm, which republished most of the texts from The Tolkien Reader (except for “The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth Beorhthelm’s Son”) but adds the novella Roverandom and the story “Smith of Wootton Major.” Also in 2008, Verlyn Flieger and Douglas A. Anderson brought out an expanded edition of the text with commentary and notes for HarperCollins. Their text includes both the authoritative text of the essay plus the texts of earlier drafts, in addition to notes and commentary. Citations of the essay in my text are to the Flieger and Anderson edition, which promises to be the standard text of the work.

326   “On Fairy-Stories”  Synopsis Tolkien begins his essay by proposing to answer three questions: What are fairy stories? What is their origin? And what is the use of them? In his definition of the genre, Tolkien first discounts the “prettiness” of stories such as Michael Drayton’s Nymphidia, which he calls one of the worst fairy stories ever written, insisting that fairies (the equivalent of elves, as Tolkien sees them) are to be taken more seriously than they are in such frivolous tales. Edmund Spenser was more in the true tradition with his Faerie Queen. True fairy stories are not so much about fairies as they are about the world that fairies inhabit—the realm of Faërie—which Tolkien asserts contains the earth itself as well as “dwarfs, witches, trolls, giants, or dragons” (32), and good fairy stories concern the adventures of men in Faërie, or the Perilous Realm. The story may have any variety of purposes, he says, with but one proviso: The magic in the story must always be taken seriously, never trivialized or explained away. Based on these criteria, Tolkien is careful to distinguish genuine fairy stories from traveler’s tales (such as Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels), science fiction (such as H. G. Wells’s The Time Machine), dream tales (such as Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland), and beast fables (such as Beatrix Potter’s Peter Rabbit). The dream tale Tolkien discounts because it cheats the reader of what he calls the “primal desire” behind fairy stories, which is the “realization . . . of imagined wonder” (35); thus, the fairy story, he says, must be presented as “true.” As for the beast fable, Tolkien says that indeed such tales reflect another human “primal desire,” which is the desire for communion with other living things, but since beast fables only have the animals talking among themselves, rather than depicting human interaction with other species, it does not satisfy this desire the way a true fairy story would. In considering the origins of fairy stories, Tolkien disagrees with the two prevailing theories of his time—the mythic theory favored by Max Müller and the anthropological approach of Andrew Lang (Flieger and Anderson 11). He first discounts the tendency of anthropologists and folklorists to lump together stories containing the same folklore motifs

(the detachable heart, for instance) as if there were no difference among them. Tolkien insists that the individual details are what is important in the stories. He also disputes the tendency of Müller and others to believe that the origin of fairy tales is ultimately in nature myths that have dwindled over the years into “mere” folk and fairy tales. The fairy story, he declares, is primary. He goes on to declare that the origin of fairy stories is very ancient and historically complex, but that it involves three things: independent invention, inheritance, and diffusion. Diffusion he calls “borrowing in space” and inheritance “borrowing in time”; neither of these is fundamental, and both lead back to invention, which is key. This invention, Tolkien asserts, is a function of the fantasy (which might also be called the “imagination” or “fancy”). Through this power of mind, Faërie is created when imagined objects or events attain a narrative reality and the inventor of the tale becomes what Tolkien calls a “sub-creator.” He leaves this important point to return to it later, and goes on to speak metaphorically about a great “Cauldron of Story” in which heroes, events, and ancient cultural practices are tossed together and stirred around and from which individual tales are created. What, he asks, is the appeal of such stories in the present? One appeal, he says, is the very real appeal of antiquity, which allows us to stand outside of our own time. Another is the appeal of certain elements that tellers and readers simply recognize as having a universal literary “significance”—as, for example, the fairy tale prohibition, which has the mythical significance of temptation. From the question of origins, Tolkien moves on to the more complex question of the uses of fairy stories, which is his longest and most intricate section. First, he takes on the commonly held belief that fairy stories are of interest, and therefore of use, primarily to children. Children are neither more nor less interested in fairy stories than adults are, Tolkien says, but by some “accident of domestic history,” the tales have been “relegated to the ‘nursery’ ” (50). Such a banishment, Tolkien argues, has cut such tales off from adult art and hence has nearly destroyed the genre. He goes on to consider one of Andrew Lang’s expressed opinions about the

“On Fairy-Stories”    327 suitability of fairy stories for children, in particular his claim that children have an “unblunted edge of belief” and an “appetite for marvels” (51)—a claim that Tolkien interprets to mean that the teller of fairy stories therefore depends on the credulity of the young audience and their inability to distinguish between fact and fiction. This, Tolkien argues, is hardly the appeal of fairy stories. Instead, Tolkien returns to his earlier notion of the inventor as sub-creator. When the sub-creator has made a complete secondary world, consistent and fully realized within the bounds of the story, then children—and adults as well—can willingly suspend their disbelief or, as Tolkien puts it, engage in “Secondary Belief”—a belief that accepts the inner reality of the story and believes in its “truth” as long as the reader’s mind is there within that story’s bounds. Tolkien, recalling his own experiences reading things like Lang’s Green Fairy Book, asserts that his interest in fairy stories never had anything to do with wondering whether they were “true” in the “real world”; rather, he was influenced by the tales’ depiction of desirability—a world with dragons like Fafnir was a desirable “Other World.” Fairy stories, Tolkien concludes, should not be associated exclusively with children. Like every other literary genre, they should be written well and judged on their aesthetic merits. Turning them into juvenilia sentimentalizes them and creates a falsification of values. Tolkien says that fairy stories as literature offer four things in particular (things that adults need just as much as children): fantasy, recovery, escape, and consolation. In his discussion of fantasy, Tolkien returns once again to the notion of sub-creation and secondary belief. Imagination he defines as the human ability to form “mental images of things not actually present” (60). The imagination, through art, allows for the sub-creation of a secondary world. The qualities of strangeness and wonder in that secondary creation are what make for fairy stories, according to Tolkien. Further, fantasy is that quality of imagination that allows for the secondary creation of “unreality”—that is, of things unconnected with the “Primary World.” For Tolkien, this ability leads to a higher, not a lower, form of art, which

he calls enchantment. In discussing this, Tolkien defends fantasy against those who might call such stories “lies” by quoting his poem “Mythopoeia,” which he says he wrote in response to a man who had once described them thus. The poem defends the artist, the sub-creator, as one emulating God himself, the primary creator. Fairy stories also allow for what Tolkien terms “recovery.” By this he means the ability to transcend our common, everyday manner of viewing things in order to view them again from a new or a different perspective, the perspective of a different world. This, as he had asserted earlier, is the value of setting fairy stories in antiquity. In this, he defends the association of fairy stories with childishness, suggesting that they allow us to see the world anew, like children seeing it for the first time. We need the ability to see dragons and centaurs so that we can look at dogs and horses in a fresh way. As for escape, Tolkien is keenly aware that one of the criticisms of fairy stories is that they are merely escapist. But for him, this is not necessarily a bad thing. One must not confuse the liberation of a confined prisoner to the flight of a deserter. If one is escaping from Nazi occupied territory (Tolkien says in his post–World War II text), this should not be seen as a negative thing. The “long ago and far away” setting of the fairy story can indeed be seen as an escape from the internal combustion engine and what he calls the “Robot Age,” but these kinds of technological developments do not necessarily make for a better life, and the fairy story illustrates that. But, Tolkien explains, human beings desire escape from any number of other more universal conditions—“hunger, thirst, poverty, pain, sorrow, injustice, death” (73)—and fairy stories allow them to do so. The stories also provide an escape from universal human limitations, in particular satisfying a desire to plumb the depths of the sea; or fly through the sky; or, more basically, to commune with other living things—to speak the languages of animals. Finally and most important, fairy stories allow readers to escape the greatest limitation of all: death itself. This is where Tolkien begins to speak of the quality of fairy stories that he calls consolation—the consolation of the happy ending. For

328   “On Fairy-Stories”  this, Tolkien coins a new term: eucatastrophe. This is the sudden joyous turn of the plot, a kind of unlooked-for act of grace, that leads to the happy ending of the tale. One might, for example, think of the arrival of the eagles in the Battle of the Five Armies at the end of The Hobbit. This kind of sudden reversal is naturally the direct opposite of the catastrophe, or “overturning” of events (Aristotle’s peripeteia) that destroys the world of the tragic hero. The happy ending of the fairy story is a eu- (i.e., good) catastrophe, or turning point. For Tolkien, this is the highest function of the fairy story and the aspect that gives it its most profound significance. The story’s eucatastrophe is a glimpse, Tolkien says, of miraculous grace, of a joy beyond the physical world. In an epilogue, he describes the incarnation of Christ, and the salvation of human beings through that incarnation, as the world’s great eucatastrophe and the world’s great truth. Fairy tales, therefore, are a means by which we can glimpse the underlying reality or truth of the human condition. Commentary Tolkien’s essay “On Fairy-Stories” is, with his essay “Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics,” one of his most important contributions to literary scholarship. It was revolutionary in its time, asking readers to take seriously a genre that had for long years been “relegated to the nursery.” It remains an eloquent and fervent defense of what today we usually call fantasy, written by one of the pioneers of the genre and, indeed, its most popular and acclaimed practitioner. As Verlyn Flieger and Douglas A. Anderson assert, Tolkien created in this essay a set of criteria and a vocabulary by which fairy stories could be critiqued and discussed by scholars (19). Much of the argument is clear from the summary given above, but some of the elements of the text may be clarified by further commentary. R. J. Reilly has argued that Tolkien’s description of the imagination creating a secondary world through art is essentially an expression of the romantic notion of creative imagination, or what Samuel Taylor Coleridge called secondary imagination. In chapter 13 of his Biographia Literaria, Coleridge saw poetry as the product of this sec-

ondary imagination, which mirrored what he called the primary imagination—the creative power of perception that echoed in the human mind the primary creative act of God. Human beings halfcreated the world they saw through their own perception using primary imagination and, in literature, could create another world through secondary imagination (Reilly 149). It seems probable that Tolkien had some form of Coleridge’s assertion in mind when he began to think about writers as sub-creators. His notion of the secondary world created by writers does seem to go even further, however, as he goes beyond what Coleridge refers to as the “willing suspension of disbelief” and insists that readers of a good fairy story employ what he refers to as “Secondary Belief.” The reality of the literary text is accepted by the reader as long as the secondary world has its own inner consistency provided by the sub-creator. For Tolkien’s major texts—The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings—the reader senses thousands of years of history and tradition, the created world Tolkien established in the decades that he worked on The Silmarillion, his full legendarium. Thus, Secondary Belief forms a large part of the experience of reading those particular fairy stories. Tolkien had apparently been developing this concept of sub-creation for a number of years, for he mentions it in a poem called “Mythopoeia” that he had written for C. S. Lewis some years earlier (Carpenter 190), and he includes the poem in the text of his lecture; this is the poem that he says he had written for “a man” (i.e., Lewis) who had calls myths “lies.” According to Deborah and Ivor Rogers, the poem grew out of a 1931 dispute between Lewis on one side and Tolkien and Hugo Dyson on the other. Lewis had remarked that he enjoyed reading the Old Norse myths but still referred to them as “lies” because they were not factual. Tolkien and Dyson reportedly argued vehemently about the notion of truth in narrative, disputing the proposition that a text must correspond to something in the real world in order to be “true.” In the relevant lines from the poem, Tolkien insists that human nature, though fallen from what the Creator may originally have intended, still maintained the power of sub-creation, mirroring God himself:

“On Fairy-Stories”    329 Dis-graced he may be, yet is not de-throned, and keeps the rags of lordship once he owned: Man, Sub-creator, the refracted light through whom is splintered from the single   White to many hues, and endlessly combined in living shapes that move from mind to mind.   (65)

Again, the romantic roots of Tolkien’s theory are revealed in the poem, with its allusion to Shelley’s “Adonais” and the “dome of many-colored glass” that “stains the white radiance of eternity.” In Tolkien’s image, the whiteness of the mind of God is refracted into a variety of colors through the minds of human beings, who become sub-creators as a reflection of the divine primary Creator. Flieger and Anderson point out how Tolkien illustrates this idea in The Silmarillion, when the Vala Aulë the Smith creates the race of dwarves, excusing himself before the creator god Ilúvatar by saying he was inspired by the God’s creative activity to imitate it (103). The influence of the romantic poets on Tolkien’s conception of the fairy story may also be apparent in his notion of recovery. Just as the German romantic theorist Friedrich von Hardenberg (“Novalis”) decreed that romanticism’s goal was “to make the familiar seem strange and the strange familiar”—a dictum Wordsworth and Coleridge followed in the poetry of the Lyrical Ballads—so Tolkien sees the task of the fairy story to, first, make the secondary world of the story consistent within itself, thus making the strange familiar; but, second, to allow the reader to look on his or her own world from a new perspective, thus making the familiar seem strange. Finally, the end of the lecture is remarkable in that Tolkien openly expresses his religious beliefs here. Unlike Lewis, Tolkien eschewed direct Christian themes or allegories in his creative fiction. The spiritual practices of Middle-earth are never mentioned in The Lord of the Rings, although there is some notion of these in The Silmarillion, as well as some parallels to Judeo-Christian traditions. Still, Tolkien seems to have considered Lewis’s more manifest Christianity a flaw in his

writing: He says, for example in a letter to David Kolb in 1964, that he found the Narnia series to be “outside the range of my sympathy” (Letters 352). Thus, it may seem somewhat surprising to find Tolkien here calling the incarnation of Christ the great eucatastrophe of human history, and noting that fairy stories—insofar as their happy endings reflect this greater, overall happy ending of the human race—are, in fact, more realistic, and more important, than other forms of literature. But he feels he can make such remarks here because this is a lecture and essay and not a work of fiction, and therefore his standards for fiction do not apply. Further, the sub-created world is not the primary world and must be consistent within itself. If it is the world of Faërie, then it will not have the same practices and traditions as the primary world, and Christian elements will be out of place. But if the truths of Christianity are universal, as Tolkien believed they were, then those truths could be expressed in the secondary world through parallel myths, rather than direct allusion to the Christian tradition. This is what occurs in Tolkien’s fairy stories. Further Reading Carpenter, Humphrey. Tolkien: A Biography. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1977. Flieger, Verlynn, and Douglas A. Anderson, eds. Tolkien on Fairy-Stories: Expanded Edition, with Commentary and Notes. London: HarperCollins, 2008. Reilly, Robert J. “Tolkien and the Fairy Story.” In Tolkien and the Critics: Essays on J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, edited by Neil D. Isaacs and Rose A. Zimbardo, 128–150. Notre Dame, Ind., and London: University of Notre Dame Press, 1968. Rogers, Deborah Webster, and Ivor A. Rogers. J. R. R. Tolkien. Boston: Twayne, 1980. Tolkien, J. R. R. The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien. Edited by Humphrey Carpenter. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1981. ———. “On Fairy-Stories.” In Essays Presented to Charles Williams, edited by C. S. Lewis, 38–89. London: Oxford University Press, 1947. ———. “On Fairy-Stories.” In Tree and Leaf. London: Allen & Unwin, 1964, 3–86.

330   “Oxford English School, The”  ———. “On Fairy-Stories.” In The Tolkien Reader. New York: Ballantine, 1966, 3–84. ———. “On Fairy-Stories.” In Tales from the Perilous Realm. Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2008, 315–400.

“Oxford English School, The”  (1930) Tolkien had been advocating a change in the requirements of the Oxford English School’s separate language and literature programs since his appointment as Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon Studies in 1925. The subject is treated, sometimes humorously, in a number of his poems and other texts, but in 1930 he put his case directly to readers of the Oxford Magazine, the weekly publication for the university community recognized for its commentary on the institution’s affairs. Synopsis In a brief essay of some four pages, Tolkien puts forward his proposal for curricular reform. He begins by noting that an English school at an English university presents certain problems, since unlike any other language school, its subject matter is, in fact, vernacular. Language and literature programs are the results of two different approaches to dealing with this special problem. Tolkien would like to see those titles eliminated, but he identifies the first as a program that studies any aspect of English letters through the 14th century and deals exclusively with linguistic history in anything after 1400. The literature curriculum, on the other hand, includes a cursory and solely linguistic approach to the first six centuries of English letters, and a purely literary interest in the remainder. Tolkien complains that a student in the literature track can get, at best, an elementary knowledge of Old and Middle English, and by school regulations cannot write an examination paper in the literature of those periods. On the other hand, a student in the language track is hardly allowed to consider any literature of the modern period.

Both of these situations are unsatisfactory, Tolkien insists. He asserts that literature candidates must deal with Old and Middle English texts as literature. As for the language side, his own area, he has more specific requirements to advocate: He gives his support to the requirement of Old Icelandic in the program, and he compares a program with Old and Middle English, including Old Icelandic studies, to a program in classics. A study of the Norse relationship with Old English provides literary and historical value, Tolkien says, and Middle English, with its various dialects and what he calls “disordered texts of dubious tradition” (780), provides a difficult area for linguistic and critical training. And the study of the literature in these languages—of word meanings, syntax, meter, and allusion—rounds out a philological education. Tolkien ends the essay with several specific recommendations for changing the language side of the English program. Shakespeare is no longer to be necessarily included in this new program, though Chaucer should be studied in detail. Historical, paleological, and archeological options should be available to students as supporting courses. Old and Middle English books, as well as Old Icelandic texts, should be prescribed and read in some detail, and examination papers should reflect this and should include two papers on Old Icelandic and at least one specifically on Chaucer. Tolkien concludes that his proposal is not the only possible revision of the language curriculum, but it is the most practical at present and would provide a “rational and exacting discipline” (782). Commentary Tolkien’s concerns in this essay are concerns that defined much of his academic career. Earlier in his career at Leeds (see Leeds, University of), in his Songs for the Philologists, he had written a humorous poem, “Two Little Schemes” (called “Lit” and “Lang”), in which “Lit” is lazy and dislikes philology, and ultimately, when she dies, the doctors are unable to find her brain. Late in his career, indeed in his “Valedictory Address” delivered upon his retirement from Oxford University in 1959, Tolkien expressed deep regrets that his beloved language curriculum had,

“Prefatory Remarks on Prose Translation of ‘Beowulf’ ” (“On Translating Beowulf”)   331 during the course of his academic career, experienced a slow and inexorable decline, rather than seeing the kind of renaissance he had anticipated in this 1930 article. In the later address, he bemoans the fact that Old English, the root of the English literary tradition, has ceased to be a requirement for undergraduates. He bemoans, as well, the continued division between “Lang” and “Lit,” noting that it was philology that rescued Chaucer from oblivion, but that Chaucer has now become the exclusive property of the “Lit” side of the discipline. Both sides of the program, he was still insisting as he retired, should study both literature and language. Further Reading Tolkien, J. R. R. “The Oxford English School.” Oxford Magazine 48, no. 2 (May 29, 1930): 778–782.

“Prefatory Remarks on Prose Translation of ‘Beowulf’ ” (“On Translating Beowulf”)  (1940) Tolkien’s “Prefatory Remarks,” more commonly known as “On Translating Beowulf,” were part of the introductory material to a newly revised prose translation of the Old English epic poem published by his publisher, Allen & Unwin, in 1940. C. L. Wrenn, responsible for the revised translation, was Tolkien’s colleague at Oxford University from 1930 to 1939, and it was Tolkien himself who had recommended Wrenn in 1938 when Elaine Griffiths was unable to complete the revision of Clark Hall’s translation herself. In fact, Wrenn completed the revision rather quickly, but the publication was delayed because Tolkien was slow to finish his prefatory remarks, delaying publication of the text until 1940. Although far less influential than his famous essay on “Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics,” Tolkien’s essay on translation is valuable for its insights on translation of Old English in general, as well as its detailed consideration of Old English meter. It was reprinted in 1984 in the collection The Monsters and

the Critics and Other Essays, edited by Christopher Tolkien, and it is the version in that volume that is referred to in the following discussion. Synopsis Tolkien’s remarks fall into two parts. In the first section, he discusses his own principles in translating Old English poetry and some of the mistakes that he feels modern translators make. He begins by considering the purpose of a translation of something like Beowulf. Asserting that there is no substitution for reading the poem in its original language, he first calls a prose translation of the poem “an abuse” if used for such a purpose (49). However, such a translation may be used fruitfully, he says, as an aid to understanding the original: “But you may be engaged in the more laudable labour of trying actually to read the original poem. In that case the use of this translation need not be disdained . . . for a good translation is a good companion of honest labour” (50). Tolkien goes on to enumerate some of the problems of translating Beowulf in particular. First, it is difficult or impossible to find modern ­English words with precisely the connotations of the Old English words they are intended to translate. Using the Anglo-Saxon word eacen as an example, he notes that it is translated as “stalwart,” “broad,” “huge,” and “mighty” the several times it is used in the current translation, and notes that these are generally correct in the contexts in which the word is used, but that they fail to express the connotation of the word in the original, where it implied not just size and strength but “an addition of power, beyond the natural” (51). Translation is hampered, as well, by the fact that, because Old English poetry was neglected for so long and survives in only a relatively few examples, some of the words used may occur only once in the entire corpus of poetry. Further, the “descriptive compounds” of Old English poetry are very difficult to translate: The kenning usually translated as “swan road” actually means “swan riding”—i.e., the “the region which is to the swimming swan as the plain is to the running horse or wain” (52). It is difficult to translate such a concept with a single word or pairing of words.

332   “Prefatory Remarks on Prose Translation of ‘Beowulf’ ” (“On Translating Beowulf”) Tolkien goes on to discuss the diction of a proper translation of Beowulf. The original prose translation by Clark Hall used certain colloquialisms, such as “lots of feuds” (l. 2,028), which are completely unsuited to the diction and tone of the poem in its own day. Even in the eighth century (when Tolkien thought the poem was composed), its style would have been “poetical, archaic, artificial,” so that some of the words used by the poet may never have been used in normal conversation even at the time of the poem’s composition (54). Still, the translator should not choose words that are now archaic, but should opt for a formal language that creates the high-sounding, serious, and consciously poetic tone of the original work. In part 2 of his essay, Tolkien considers the special problem of meter. His goal here is to show how meter and alliteration work together in the poem to form well-crafted lines of verse, the subtleties of which cannot be captured even in a good verse translation, although to attempt to make such a translation is a worthwhile project that helps one to understand the poem. Tolkien begins by considering six different patterns used in the half-lines of Old English verse, the basic building blocks of Anglo-Saxon poetry. These patterns reflect different combinations of stressed and unstressed syllables (what Tolkien calls “lifts” and “dips”), and he illustrates each with an example, as follows. Type A half-lines follow a “falling falling” pattern (lift followed by dip, followed by another lift and dip), as in the line “knights in armour.” Type B is a “rising rising” pattern, as in “the roaring sea.” Type C is what Tolkien calls a “clashing” pattern (dip, rise, then rise, dip), as in “on high mountains.” Type D.a. uses what Tolkien calls “falling by stages,” in which a secondary stress is placed on a syllable between a rise and dip, as in “bright archangel.” Type D.b. follows a pattern of what Tolkien calls “broken fall,” in which a lift follows a falling phrase, as in the line “bold brazenfaced.” Finally, the type E half-line follows a “fall and rise” pattern, as in “high crested helms” (62). From here, Tolkien goes on to discuss more specific variations among the patterns of lines, then he focuses on alliteration. He asserts that, in spite of

common opinion, alliteration, while a significant aspect of Old English poetry, is not fundamental to it, since the meter would have essentially the same quality without it. He goes on to describe how one “lift” in each half-line must alliterate, and how the “head-stave,” or key to the alliteration, is the initial lift in the second half-line. Consequently, the second “lift” in the second half-line falls off in both force and significance. The function of alliteration in the Old English poetic line is, Tolkien goes on to say, “to link the two separate and balanced patterns together into a complete line” (67). He speaks of double alliteration occurring particularly in lines that he calls “overweighted” lines—lines, that is, in which a dip might be replaced by a long subordinate stress, such as the word men in the line “brave men blithely.” Tolkien concludes with the notion that the entire poem of Beowulf is itself structured like a line of its own verse in macrocosm, balancing two great parallel blocks: the young Beowulf and the old. Commentary Tolkien’s essay seems a curious introduction to a prose translation of the poem, since it throws doubt on the value of any prose translation, and even his admission that the text might have some value if used to help one read the original seems grudging. Tolkien’s purpose is to describe the difficulties of translating Anglo-Saxon poetry and the importance of seeing it as poetry. There is little to add to Tolkien’s own argument, which is quite clear and detailed. Particularly in the second part of the essay, he is at pains to put to rest the attitude of earlier Beowulf scholars, debunked in his famous lecture of a few years earlier, that Beowulf is of interest chiefly as a historical, linguistic, and cultural document. Instead, as he makes clear in his complex discussion of the mechanics of Anglo-Saxon poetry, Beowulf is a sophisticated artistic achievement by a skillful artist, and Tolkien’s discussion makes us appreciate that. One could look at Tolkien’s recently published version of The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún to see his principles of translation in action, as he uses the same patterns there in his emulation of Old Norse poetry.

Roverandom   333 Tolkien’s insistence in the first part of the essay that the tone of a modern translation of Beowulf must reflect the mode of the original text—that it should be formal, elevated, traditional, and to some extent artificial—may be in some ways a justification of the prose style he was forging for what was to become The Lord of the Rings. That, at least, is Humphrey Carpenter’s contention. As Carpenter says, the essay gives an argument in favor of the adoption of a “high style” when dealing with heroic matters. Consciously or unconsciously, he was really discussing The Lord of the Rings, which at that time (the beginning of 1940) had reached the middle of what was to become book 2 (Carpenter 192). Further Reading Carpenter, Humphrey. Tolkien: A Biography. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1977. Tolkien, J. R. R. “On Translating Beowulf.” In The Monsters and the Critics and Other Essays, edited by Christopher Tolkien, 49–71. G. Allen & Unwin, 1983. ———. “Prefatory Remarks on Prose Translation of ‘Beowulf’.” In Beowulf and the Finnesburg Fragment. A Translation into Modern English Prose by John R. Clark Hall, new edition revised by C. L. Wrenn, viii–xli. London: George Allen & Unwin, 1940.

looking for it for two days. Tolkien made up the story of a little black-and-white dog, turned into a toy by a cranky wizard and forced into several adventures before becoming a real dog again, in order to console Michael for the loss. Although the story began as an oral tale, Tolkien seems to have returned to it around 1927 and made a written draft of it, revising it into its present form about the time he was working on The Hobbit in 1936. After the success of The Hobbit, when Allen & Unwin asked Tolkien for any other children’s stories he might have, Tolkien included Roverandom among the texts he supplied to his publisher in 1937 along with his shorter Mr. Bliss and Farmer Giles of Ham. But the publisher was not interested. The manuscript of Roverandom subsequently languished for some 60 years, until, discov-

Roverandom  (1997) Tolkien’s children’s tale Roverandom is a novella of some 25,000 words, published posthumously in 1997 in a minutely annotated edition edited by Wayne G. Hammond and Christina Scull; it contains five original illustrations created by Tolkien himself. The book had its inception in an incident that occurred in 1925, when the Tolkien family was visiting Filey, a seaside town in Yorkshire. Tolkien’s second son, Michael Hilary Reuel Tolkien, who was five years old at the time, had a favorite toy—a lead model of a black-and-white dog—that he carried with him everywhere. While Tolkien played with Michael and eight-year-old John Francis Reuel Tolkien on the beach, Michael left the toy dog in the sand and later was unable to find it, though the family continued

The Bodleian Library, the main research library of the University of Oxford. The manuscript of Roverandom was discovered among Tolkien’s papers in this library.  (Photo by Roman Kirillov; used under a Creative Commons license)

334   Roverandom ered among Tolkien’s papers in Oxford University’s Bodleian Library, it was brought out in Hammond and Scull’s edition. It has since appeared with several of Tolkien’s other lesser works in Houghton Mifflin’s compilation Tales from the Perilous Realm, with an introduction by Tom Shippey that abridges a good deal of Hammond and Scull’s information. Citations to the text in the following are to the latter edition, which is probably the most easily accessible. Synopsis The story is divided into five short chapters. In the first, the black-and-white puppy Rover, who belongs to an old lady with a pet cat named Tinker, is playing in his yard with a yellow ball when an old man in a ragged coat comes walking along his garden path and picks up Rover’s ball. The old man is the wizard Artaxerxes, and he is thinking of turning the ball into something else, but the angry Rover barks at him to put down the ball. When the wizard fails to comply, Rover bites his trousers, ripping a hole in them. The angry wizard shrinks Rover into a tiny, toy-sized dog who is unable to move but can only sit up and beg. He is allowed to move about briefly after midnight, but must stay in the begging position during the day. Rover worries what will happen if the cat Tinker finds him, but before he knows it, he is picked up and shoved into a box. He finds himself in a toy shop, where he is put into the window and is sold to a woman with three little boys. She brings him home and gives him to little boy number Two, and Rover is thinking only of running away and getting back to his yard and yellow ball. But Rover does manage to fall from the pocket of boy number Two while the boy is playing on the beach, and the boy is unable to find him again. At first Rover is excited, but soon he begins to feel lonely lying motionless on the beach, and then he becomes afraid as the tide begins to come in. He soon finds, however, that he can move again. He has been reanimated by another wizard, Psamathos Psamathides (oldest of the sea sorcerers). Psamathos laughs at how tiny Rover is and tells him that he cannot undo Artaxerxes’ spell to bring Rover back to his proper size. He may, however, be able to send Rover home,

but Rover is unsure about whether he wants to go back in his present condition, for fear of what the cat Tinker might do to him. Psamathos says he will have to consider what else to do with Rover, as the little dog eats and then goes to sleep in the sand. In the second chapter, Rover wakes up to find a large seagull named Mew waiting for him. At Psamathos’s request, Mew is about to transport Rover far out into the sky, along the path of the moon. Riding on Mew’s back, Rover looks down at the sea and passes over an island that Mew tells him is the Isle of Lost Dogs, where deserving lost dogs can go and eat bones off of trees—but they are not going there. Instead, they continue to fly over the edge of the world and on to reach the moon itself, where the Man-in-the-Moon, greatest of all wizards, resides. They arrive on the moon, a white world with tall mountains. The seagull takes Rover to a tall, white tower, where an old man with a white beard greets them. He is the Man-in-the-Moon, who soon whistles to call his own dog, also named Rover, down from the sky, where the flying dog has been worrying moonbeams. Rover and the moonRover exchange insults—a sure sign that they will soon be good friends. Mew, who turns out to be the Man-in-the-Moon’s postman, has delivered a letter from Psamathos explaining Rover’s history. The Man-in-the-Moon gives Rover a pair of wings like his own dog, and soon he and the moon-Rover are playing around the tower and flying about the light side of the moon. The Man-in-the-Moon warns Rover not to worry the moonbeams and not to harm his white rabbits, and to come home when he is hungry. He renames Rover “Roverandom,” so as not to confuse him with his own dog. Roverandom and the moon-Rover spend many days playing and exploring, getting to know the flowers, the tall trees, the birds and white mice and grey squirrels as well as the tiny white sheep in the mountains of the moon. But there are also large grey spiders and dragons to be found. Roverandom learns that the Man-in-the-Moon sees everything that happens on this side of the moon with his long telescope and spends his days making dreams for the other side of the moon. At one point, the two dogs rove far from the Man-in-theMoon’s house and go nearly to the edge of the

Roverandom   335 moon’s dark side, and here it begins to snow. The snow makes Roverandom homesick. But it is quite cold, and the two dogs crawl into a very warm cave. This turns out to be the lair of the Great White Dragon—who on earth had fought the Red Dragon during Merlin’s age. The White Dragon was a pest that the Man-in-the-Moon had difficulty controlling. The dragon chases the dogs out of his lair and, meaning to kill them, flies after them. A great burst of fireworks shoots off from the Man-in-the-Moon’s tower and helps guide the dogs home. Just as Roverandom flies above the tower and is about to be swiped by the dragon’s claw, the Man-in-the-Moon sends forth a spell from the tower that strikes the dragon in the vulnerable underbelly, sending him crashing into a mountain. The dogs fly into the tower safely, and the dragon never is able to get the splotches off his belly from the spell. He becomes known as the Mottled Monster. In the third chapter, the Man-in-the-Moon decides that it is time to take Roverandom to explore the dark side of the moon. He takes him down deep into the cellars below his tower and opens a large door. Roverandom is afraid to go through the door, and so he is picked up and dropped through by the Man-in-the-Moon. The dog falls for a long way until he slows down and nearly stops, after which he uses his wings and flies out the hole on the other side of the moon. He finds himself in a dark valley covered with black clouds, through which he can see a single star. When the Man-in-the-Moon climbs out, he chases off a large, poisonous black spider. There are a number of dark insects on this side, but the Man-in-the-Moon tells Roverandom that he is the first dog on earth to ever see this side of the moon. Soon the dog hears the voices of numerous children, and when he and the man go down a long path into the next valley, accompanied by the sound of nightingales singing, they climb down into a twilight garden with children everywhere. The man will not tell Roverandom how they have gotten there, but it is clear that they are all children who are in their beds dreaming on earth. The children play with the Man-in-theMoon, who tells them not to laugh too hard or they will wake up. To his surprise, Roverandom meets little boy number Two in the valley and has great

fun romping and playing with him, until the boy wakes up and vanishes. Now the man takes Roverandom back to the light side, and Roverandom asks him if dreams come true. The man, knowing he is thinking of the little boy, lets Roverandom look through his telescope to view the boy on earth. He sees the boy looking for him on the beach, but also sees the wizard Artaxerxes waiting for Roverandom. The wizard still holds a grudge and is not happy about Psamathos reversing a part of the spell he had put on the dog. After this, Roverandom flies about with moon-Rover again, who is jealous at first because he has never been to the dark side. One day, after Mew has brought the Man-inthe-Moon news from earth, Roverandom complains to the man that he has a pain on his inside and wants to go home. The man tells him that he has had news that Artaxerxes has married the mermaid daughter of the mer-king and has gone to live at the bottom of the sea to become the oceans’ resident magician, so there is no danger about Roverandom’s returning now. When Mew comes back to the moon, he takes Roverandom on his back. Roverandom bids farewell to moon-Rover, who, we are told, was later able to visit Roverandom on earth for holidays. In chapter 4, the longest in the book, Roverandom returns to the beach and to Psamathos. Roverandom would like to return to boy number Two, but Psamathos points out the problem that the dog is really the property of the old lady, not little boy number Two. But Psamathos is unable, after all, to return Roverandom to his normal size—Artaxerxes has remembered him and put his strongest spell upon him. There is nothing to be done, Psamathos tells Roverandom, but go to the bottom of the sea and apologize to Artaxerxes and politely ask the wizard to return him to his proper form. Psamathos calls Uin, oldest of the Right Whales, who takes Roverandom into his mouth and carries him to a path through a forest on the bottom of the sea. Roverandom enters a great palace filled with merpeople and comes to a great ornate door, where he barks until the door is answered by Artaxerxes himself. But the wizard is in the middle of a party and does not want to be interrupted, so he has

336   Roverandom Roverandom wait in the hall. Tired of waiting, the dog peeks into the ballroom, where he is picked up by Mrs. Artaxerxes and placed in her lap, despite a growl from her mer-dog, who turns out also to be named Rover. Thus, here, too, the protagonist’s name will be “Roverandom.” The mer-Rover and Roverandom exchange insults and, of course, become good friends. Mrs. Artaxerxes tells the two dogs to go off and play, warning them not to worry the fire-fish or chew the sea anemones, and tells them to come back for supper. She also convinces Artaxerxes to use his fountain pen–shaped wand to give Roverandom a fishtail so that he can swim as well as mer-Rover. The two dogs play in the sea, chasing each other. Mer-Rover tells the story of how he came to be in the sea: He had stowed away on his master’s ship, the Red Worm, until it was boarded and sunk by the men of another ship, the Black Swan. When his master had dived into the sea to escape, he had dived after him, and although his master had drowned, Rover had been adopted by the mer-people and become the pet of the king. After supper, Roverandom tries again to get Artaxerxes to change him, but the wizard is too busy to pay him any attention. At bedtime, Uin the whale asks why he has not been turned back yet, and Roverandom tells him. The whale goes to report this to Psamathos. Roverandom stays in the underwater palace for many days, and one day he goes on a long frolic with mer-Rover, exploring the South Pacific. When he comes back, Artaxerxes still will not listen to him, for he is trying to deal with a number of complaints about how he is handling his official role as PAM (Pacific Atlantic Magician). So Roverandom continues to play, having fun with the mer-children, who very nearly make him forget boy number Two. One day, Uin turns up and gives the two dogs a long ride, taking them over to the eastern edge of the world on one trip and later returning and taking them to the Magic Isles of the West, where they are able to glimpse Elvenhome. But Uin tells them to keep quiet about this, and he returns them to the palace. By this time, Roverandom is ready to rip Artaxerxes’ new trousers as well, so tired is he of waiting. But the wizard is traveling in a large

seashell-shaped coach (drawn by seven sharks) to look in on the giant ancient Sea-serpent, who seems to be showing signs of waking up. When he reaches the cave of the great serpent, Artaxerxes sees only the serpent’s tail sticking out. Roverandom, who has followed the wizard, takes a nip at the first shark’s tail, thinking to annoy the magician who has failed to help him. Unfortunately, the first shark bites the tail of the next, and so on, until the seventh shark bites the tail of the Sea-serpent. The monster stirs and begins to turn in his sleep, causing a series of great undersea earthquakes. When the PAM returns home, he finds the mer-people up in arms, demanding that he do something to stop the commotion caused by the serpent. Artaxerxes retires for two weeks to work up his greatest spell, which he casts at the serpent, succeeding only in giving the monster a bad dream and awakening him. Fortunately, the Sea-serpent only yawns and goes back to sleep, but he threatens to come out and destroy everything if the wizard does not leave him alone. At this, the mer-people insist that Artaxerxes be exiled. Roverandom, however, is sympathetic and apologizes to the wizard for hurting his reputation. Artaxerxes, glad to see someone treating him with respect, promises to return Roverandom to his proper size as soon as they have returned to the land. Before he leaves, he burns his magic books and buries most of his spells (which later cause a good deal of mischief in the mer-people’s kingdom, causing them to revise their opinion of his magical powers). Mrs. Artaxerxes leaves the kingdom with her husband, carrying a bag of jewels from her father, the king. The merdog, sad to see Roverandom go, gets his promise to meet and play by the seaside sometimes. The wizard, his wife, and the little dog are transported by Uin back to the shore. Back on shore as the final chapter opens, Roverandom asks Artaxerxes to keep his promise, but the wizard discovers that he has left all his magic back under the sea. He is quite upset about this until Mrs. Artaxerxes reveals that she has saved his fountain-pen magic wand, which the wizard then uses to remove his spell from Roverandom and return the little dog to his normal size—although he finds he has grown some over the months he has been under the spell. He bids farewell to the

Roverandom   337 wizard, his wife, and the whale. (We are told that the wizard set up a tobacco shop on the beach and made money selling a candy called Pam’s Rock, while his wife made even more money renting tents and vans and giving swimming lessons). Roverandom makes his way back to his own garden gate, where he finds his yellow ball and boy number Two playing with it. Thrilled that his dream has come true, he finds that the little old lady is boy number Two’s grandmother, and, although she believes none of the boy’s story, she gives the dog to the boy. Roverandom goes to visit the grandmother often with boy number Two, and he grows to be a wise, large, and respected dog, and a good friend of the wizard Psamathos, whom he visits often as well. The only one who believes none of Roverandom’s tale is Tinker, but she is just a jealous cat. Commentary It is not difficult to understand why Roverandom was not published during Tolkien’s lifetime. From any objective point of view, it is a mediocre work. It seems to be directed mainly at very small children, but its length and vocabulary would make it impossible for those children to read. In addition, it suffers from the same intrusive avuncular narrative voice that many readers object to in The Hobbit, a later and far superior tale. “Who do you think opened it?” the narrator asks when Roverandom barks at the mer-palace door (65). “You can make up your mind whether Psamathos had anything to do with these events, when we come to them” he tells us later (78). It is the same rather annoying voice that Tolkien used in The Hobbit, something even his children objected to in that work. Aside from these things, the story seems rambling and episodic, and finally, since the small dog’s adventures under the sea almost precisely parallel those that he has on the moon, it seems redundant as well. The random nature of the dog’s adventures is alluded to even in the story’s title—Roverandom. Since the protagonist is a small dog who gets into a great deal of trouble when he is impolite to an old man who proves to be a wizard, and he is only able to be set right when he ultimately apologizes to the wizard in the end, the story may be read as a didactic tale, meant to teach young children the lesson

that they should be polite to adults even if those adults may not seem to be important. Since Roverandom also gets into mischief when he wanders too far from home (at which point he disturbs the White Dragon on the moon) and shows impatience (as when he bites the shark’s tale under the sea), it seems likely that the story is also intended to warn children against those undesirable traits as well. But most important, there seems to be a “Wizard of Oz” flavor to the story in that Rover’s desire to wander away from what is clearly his proper and intended home—with boy number Two—is shown to be an unproductive desire. The kind of absolute freedom (the “randomness”) that the dog has on the moon and under the sea proves to be less desirable for him than his freely chosen submission to the love of the boy. In his mirror selves—the moon-Rover and the mer-Rover—Roverandom meets versions of himself that could become permanent, but he is not satisfied in either case and longs to get back to the boy. The point of “randomness” being so evident from the story’s title suggests that Tolkien saw the theme as central to the story, and it seems likely that the devout Catholic Tolkien is alluding to the idea of Christian freedom as expressed by Saint Paul, who says in Romans 6:17–18: But thank God you submitted without reservation to the creed you were taught. You may have been freed from the slavery of sin, but only to become “slaves” of righteousness. (JB)

Further, as a medievalist, Tolkien would have known that Boethius had made similar statements in his highly influential sixth-century Consolation of Philosophy. Happiness is what all men desire, Boethius argued, and true happiness is identical with the Good. Evil men, therefore, are unhappy and also powerless, since they are unable to achieve what they truly want. Those who follow virtue are powerful, free, and happy: Only the wise can do what they want to do; the wicked can follow their desires, but they cannot accomplish what they want. For they do what they feel like doing,  .  .  . But they are bound to fail, since shameful behavior does not bring happiness. (62)

338   Roverandom That is, random freedom is simply the freedom to sin. True freedom is the freedom to be what God intended us to be, which we can only be when we become “slaves” to righteousness. As a dog, Roverandom’s true freedom is to be what he was created to be—a boy’s companion. In this regard, the dark side of the moon proves to be an important archetypal symbol in the story. In a scene paralleling the mythic descent into the underworld of characters like Odysseus and Aeneas, Roverandom faces what Carl Jung called the “shadow”: that aspect of his personality that he has not wished to face before. In Roverandom’s case, it is the fact that he should have stayed with boy number Two instead of striving to get away. This problem is resolved in the dream sequence on the moon’s dark side, but a question remains as to how it might be resolved in waking life. That problem is disentangled in the end in a deus ex machina when Roverandom’s legitimate owner, the old woman, proves to be the boy’s grandmother. This may seem too much of a stretch at first, but it is precisely what Tolkien refers to in his famous essay “On Fairy-Stories” as a eucatastrophe—a sudden reversal that brings about an unexpected happy ending (the opposite of the catastrophe that brings about the disaster in a tragedy). For Tolkien, this moment of unlooked-for grace is the essence of the fairy story (“On FairyStories” 384). Other criteria mentioned in that essay that are manifested in Roverandom include the notion of escape. In particular as regards Roverandom, the kind of escape Tolkien was envisioning is what he calls in his essay the desire to escape universal human limitations and satisfy our desire to fly through the sky or explore the depths of the sea (both of which the protagonist of this story is able to do)—or commune with other living things (as Roverandom does with Mew the Seagull or Uin the Whale) (“On Fairy-Stories” 326). The story having been an early effort, there are some aspects of it that Tolkien went on to denigrate in the essay “On Fairy-Stories.” There, Tolkien stressed that fairy stories should not be simply regarded as juvenilia, though it is difficult to regard Roverandom as anything else. Further, he condemned tales like Michael Drayton’s Nymphidia

because of their “prettiness” and failure to take seriously the realm of Faërie (“On Fairy-Stories” 319–320). Yet the tone and content of Roverandom appear to do the same sort of thing. Finally, the tale’s didacticism is something that the mature Tolkien would probably have disavowed. For him, the essence of the fairy story is the sense of wonder evoked by the secondary world created in the story. The story should not be intended as a simple fable. Roverandom does contain some fragments of the medieval roots of Tolkien’s more substantial works. Tom Shippey points out that the White Dragon on the moon is the one that appears in legends of Merlin, where it represents England, constantly at war with the Red Dragon of Wales, while the great Seaserpent at the bottom of the ocean alludes to the great Midgard serpent in Norse mythology who will kill the god Thor on Ragnarök, the day of doom. Further, the mer-dog’s story about his master recalls the saga of the Norwegian king Olaf Tryggvason, whose ship was called the Long Serpent and who died after jumping overboard during the Battle of Svold in 1000 c.e. (“Introduction” xv). There is even a brief allusion to Tolkien’s Middle-earth legendarium, as the western lands that Roverandom and mer-Rover visit with the whale Uin are, in fact, the Undying Lands of Tolkien’s mythology, including Eldamar, the lands of the Eldar on Tol Eressëa: Roverandom thought he caught a glimpse of the city of the elves on the green hill beneath the Mountains, a glint of white far away; but Uin dived again so suddenly that he could not be sure. . . . [Uin said] “No one from the Outer Lands is supposed ever to come here; and few ever do now. Mum’s the word!” (80)

Despite these few glimpses of more serious matters, however, Roverandom remains a very minor work in the Tolkien canon. Characters Artaxerxes Artaxerxes is a wizard whose pants are torn by the small dog Roverandom, and retaliates by putting a spell on the dog, turning him into a toy. He later marries the daughter of the king of the mer-people and becomes the official PAM (Pacific

“Secret Vice, A”    339 and Atlantic Magician), but he is deposed and exiled when he fails to calm the great Sea-serpent in the cave on the ocean floor. He finally looks kindly on Roverandom and takes the spell off when the dog apologizes and is the only one to treat him with respect after his fiasco with the Sea-serpent.

erxes’ pardon and be turned back to normal, and he finally receives his wish after showing respect to the wizard. In the end, he becomes the pet of boy number Two, who turns out to be his original owner’s grandson.

Man-in-the-Moon  The most powerful of all wizards, the Man-in-the-Moon lives on the moon with his pet dog, Rover. He uses a telescope to keep an eye on everything going on in his realm, and he also spies on the earth with it. He concocts spells in the basement of his great tower and has difficulty controlling the Great White Dragon, who lives on the moon. He spends much of his time creating dreams for the children who visit the dark side of the moon in their sleep. He takes Roverandom to that side to meet boy number Two, an experience that leads Roverandom to realize what his true self may be.

Boethius. The Consolation of Philosophy. Edited by Douglas C. Langston. Translated by Richard H. Green. Norton Critical Edition. New York: Norton, 2010. Shippey, Tom. Introduction to Tales from the Perilous Realm, by J. R. R. Tolkien, ix–xxviii. Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2008. Tolkien, J. R. R. “On Fairy-Stories.” In Tales from the Perilous Realm, 315–400. Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2008. ———. Roverandom. Edited by Wayne G. Hammond and Christina Scull. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1997. ———. Roverandom. In Tales from the Perilous Realm, 1–97. Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2008.

Psamathos Psamathides  Psamathos Psamathides is an important wizard who lives buried in the sand on the seashore. He is ugly and has long ears, and he sleeps in the sand, waking only to complain about people bothering him during his favorite time to sleep. He is a rival of Artaxerxes and seeks to reverse the other wizard’s spell, but he can only turn Roverandom back into a living dog, failing to break the curse that keeps him the size of a toy. He sends Roverandom to the Man-in-the-Moon on the back of the seagull Mew and sends him to confer with Artaxerxes on the ocean floor in the mouth of the great whale Uin. Roverandom  The protagonist of the story, Rover is a small black-and-white dog belonging to an old lady. He is not well behaved, insults a wizard (Artaxerxes), and is accordingly turned into a toy. He becomes the property of little boy number Two, who loves him but loses him. In his attempt to return to his normal size, he is aided by two other wizards (the Man-in-the-Moon and Psamathos). He spends time first on the moon, where he meets boy number Two again on the dark side in a dream and realizes that he wants to be with the boy. He goes under the sea to ask for Artax-

Further Reading

“Secret Vice, A”  (1931) The lecture “A Secret Vice” was first presented in 1931—probably, Christopher Tolkien suggests, to a philological society (3). It survives in a single manuscript, which Tolkien apparently revised for another presentation some 20 years later (since at one point in the surviving manuscript he changes a phrase from “more than 20 years” to “almost 40 years” (Tolkien 3). The manuscript bears the title “A Hobby for the Home,” but in a 1967 letter to Charlotte and Denis Plimmer, who had interviewed him for the Daily Telegraph, Tolkien refers to the lecture by the title “A Secret Vice”: The amusement of making up languages is very common among children (I once wrote a paper on it, called A Secret Vice), so that I am not peculiar in that respect. The process sometimes continues into adult life, but then is usually kept a secret. (Letters 374)

340   “Secret Vice, A”  The lecture was not published until Christopher Tolkien included it in The Monsters and the Critics and Other Essays, and references to the text in the following commentary are to that edition. Synopsis Tolkien begins by claiming to admit to a “secret vice,” which he calls an art form. He defines the practice of which he speaks as “the construction of imaginary languages in full or outline for amusement, for the pleasure of the constructor or even conceivably any critic that might occur” (202). He remembers how, during an army training lecture in World War I, he overheard a man next to him saying to himself, “Yes, I think I shall express the accusative case by a prefix!” (199), indicating that the man, like himself, practiced the “secret vice” of constructing imaginary languages. Children very naturally engage in this activity. Tolkien recalls children he has known engaging in such invention with something called Animalic—a kind of “nursery language” in which the vocabulary consisted of the names of animals, bird, and fish, replacing common English words. Tolkien notes a later development from the same children called Nevbosh (i.e., “New Nonsense”), which was essentially a code in which English words are given a slightly different or scrambled spelling (woc = cow, for instance) but follow the same syntax and idiom of English itself. Though these examples are rather crude and basic, Tolkien asserts that the pleasure of inventing languages is keener than that involved in learning a foreign tongue, because it is “more personal and fresh, more open to experiment of trial and error” (206). It is also pleasurable because the forms of words themselves can be beautiful, and a person with a sensibility to languages can perceive this beauty without knowing the meanings of the words. Tolkien discusses one Nevbosh word—lint, for cleverness—that even after many years he still recalled because of its pleasurable sound. Thus, the next step in developing an invented language (after a codelike system such as Nevbosh) is what Tolkien calls the “refinement of word-form” (207). His next example of an invented language is his own Naffarin. Unlike Nevbosh, which had actually been used

between certain children to communicate, Naffarin had no such purpose, and Tolkien expresses a doubt that communication was the original impulse in the invention of language; he thinks it was, rather, the aesthetics of sound. He says that Latin and Spanish influenced many of the sound choices in this latter invented language, and certain sounds familiar in English (w, þ, š, ž), š as in “shot,” ž as in “measure” were rare in Tolkien’s Naffarin. Finally, Tolkien gives an example of a language that demonstrates all three of what he considers the main interests of those who practice this unusual hobby: first, a beauty in its word forms, displaying ingenuity in the relationship between symbol and sense; second, a complex grammar, which is a more purely intellectual interest; and finally, a “hypothetical historical background,” which is crucial “for the giving of an illusion of coherence and unity to the whole” (210). The making of language and the making of mythology are related enterprises: For an invented language to achieve true individuality, Tolkien says, it must “have woven into it the threads of an individual mythology” (210). For the sake of example, Tolkien gives three poems, all written in Qenya (the earlier form of what became Quenya, the language he had developed as the language of the High-elves in his evolving legendarium), and he gives English translations of each of these—“The Last Ark,” “Ninnies” (meaning “Snowdrop”), and “Eärendil at the Helm”—all of which relate to his invented mythology. Finally, he provides an eight-line excerpt from another poem, concerning the story of Lúthien in that same mythology, but in a separate but related language, Noldorin (an early form of Sindarin, the language of the Grey-elves). Commentary Tolkien’s lecture explains his penchant for creating languages, which he calls a “secret vice” since it seems unrelated to those things (business, utility, profit) that generally preoccupy adults in the modern world and therefore is seldom admitted by those who practice it. But he asserts that such an activity has value, and he places it in the category of art. He argues convincingly that such a creative activity is natural and inherent since so

“Sigelwara Land”    341 many children practice it; and, less convincingly, that creativity rather than communication was the impetus behind the invention of language in the first place. The essay is interesting as Tolkien’s justification of his practice, though less interesting to those with a deep fascination with Quenya or Sindarin, since aside from including examples of poetry in the two elvish tongues, Tolkien provides nothing beyond a translation to help his audience understand the vocabulary, pronunciation, or grammar of the two languages. These he includes elsewhere, notably in Appendix E of The Return of the King (“Writing and Spelling”); the drafts of that appendix printed as “The Appendix on Languages” in The Peoples of Middle-earth; the excerpts from the “Quenya Lexicon” and the “Gnomish Lexicon” in The Book of Lost Tales, parts 1 and 2; and the significant early essay entitled “Quendi and Eldar” in The War of the Jewels, edited by Christopher Tolkien. Finally, Tolkien gives here a succinct explanation of the relationship between language and history or myth as he conceived of it, and essentially explains that the impetus for the development of his own complex legendarium was to provide a context and history for his invented languages. As he wrote in a letter to Christopher in 1958, Nobody believes me when I say that my long book is an attempt to create a world in which a form of language agreeable to my personal aesthetic might seem real. But it is true. An enquirer (among many) asked what the L.R. [Lord of the Rings] was all about, and whether it was an “allegory.” And I said it was an effort to create a situation in which a common greeting would be elen síla lúmen’ omenielmo, and that the phrase long antedated the book. I never heard any more. (Letters 264–265)

Further Reading Tolkien, Christopher. Foreword to The Monsters and the Critics and Other Essays, edited by Christopher Tolkien, 1–4. Boston: Houghton-Mifflin, 1984. Tolkien, J. R. R. The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien. Edited by Humphrey Carpenter. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1981.

———. “A Secret Vice.” In The Monsters and the Critics and Other Essays, edited by Christopher Tolkien, 198–223. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1984.

“Sigelwara Land”  (1932–1934) In a relatively long two-part article published in the first and third volumes of the Oxford journal Medium Aevum, Tolkien characteristically explores the etymology and significance of a single Old English word, Sigelwara, appearing in the Old English poem Exodus (l. 68), where Sigelwara land is described as a land of parched hills whose inhabitants are burned brown by the heat of the sun. The land of the Sigelwara is clearly Ethiopia, for Old English texts consistently translate the Latin Æthiopes or Æthiopia as Sigelwaran or some variant thereof, but Tolkien asserts that the Old English word must have existed prior to the introduction of the Latin texts in England (otherwise the Anglo-Saxon translators would have followed the normal practice of simply incorporating the Latin term rather than trying to translate it), and therefore he searches for the earlier meaning of the term that made translators substitute it for the Latin. These articles have not been reprinted, so references in the following synopsis and commentary are to the original texts in Medium Aevum. Synopsis Tolkien first examines every occurrence of the Old English word for “Ethiopian,” giving special precedence to its use in the commentary on the Vespasian Psalter (MS. Cotton Vespasian A.I), which he dates to the ninth century. The form of the word used in that manuscript—Sigelhearwan—Tolkien takes to be the original form of the word in Old English, and after citing numerous later examples of the word over the next two centuries, he separates it into its two main elements and plans to explore the meaning and development of these. The word is not, he asserts, a “learned fabrication” coined to substitute for the Latin Ethiopia, nor could it be a “self-explanatory compound” (1.192).

342   “Sigelwara Land”  Rather, it seems to be derived from the AngloSaxons’ “half-mythical geography” (1.192). Tolkien begins by considering what sorts of things were associated with Sigelhearwan in the Old English period. Dragons were believed to inhabit the region, which was also known for its variety of gems and precious stones. The people were said to have strange customs and diets, and they lived next to the land of the Anthropophagi (i.e., cannibals). “Ethiopia was hot and its people black,” Tolkien notes. “That Hell was similar in both respects would occur to many” (1.192). In the second part of the article, Tolkien first examines the probable etymology of Sigel. After examining the various occurrences of this element in Old English, he concludes that it probably meant “sun” and that it was coined in Old English before any knowledge of Latin or Greek. Tolkien suggests that sigel (with the original meaning “sun”) was the Old English name for the S-rune, and thus it was part of a specialized vocabulary and therefore less common than the more widely used sunne. He concludes that sigel is probably “ancient and preEnglish,” its original form having been sugil and developing sygil/sygel/sigel. However, Tolkien notes that another Old English word, originally sigil (borrowed from Latin sigilla) but developing into sigel, meaning “jewel,” was also known in Old English. The two words have different histories but may have been collated in the later Old English period, so that the “sun” may have been seen metaphorically as a “jewel” in the sky. Since Ethiopia was associated with both the sun and with jewels, the word makes sense as the first element of the name for that country. As for the second element, Hearwa, Tolkien notes that the term is never found by itself in Old English, but always in combination with Sigel-. Tolkien looks for the ancestry of the term in other languages, ultimately suggesting it as cognate with the Gothic hauri (“coal”) and the Old Norse hy-r (“fire”), and asserting its relationship to the Old English heroþ (“hearth”) and hierstan (“to roast”), all of which may be cognate with the Latin carbo (“soot”). Considering the two elements of the term together, Tolkien speculates that for the Anglo-

Saxons, the term Sigelhearwan may have brought to mind “rather the sons of Múspell [i.e., the Germanic fire-giant] than of Ham [the son of Noah traditionally viewed as the ancestor of the people of Africa], the ancestors of the Silhearwan with red-hot eyes that emitted sparks, with faces black as soot” (2.110). Commentary Tolkien’s argument, though filled with careful and meticulous philological scholarship, ultimately ends in sheer speculation. But it is speculation of a fascinating nature. It gives what Tom Shippey has called “glimpses of a lost mythology” (42), a mythology that lay in the etymology of a word that, in its straightforward denotation, simply means “Ethiopian.” Michael D. C. Drout, referring to Tolkien’s approach to his topic in this study, says that “the creativity with which Tolkien approaches the problem (and the creativity required to identify it) illustrates [an] important aspect of his scholarship” (118). Certainly it is difficult to imagine another linguist with the imagination—or the audacity—to publish conclusions based on such mythological speculations. One of the reasons that the Sigelwara Land articles have been of interest to Tolkien’s literary fans is the connection, pointed out by Shippey and repeated by a number of critics since, of the redeyed, dark-featured, fire-flashing inhabitants of Sigelwara Land and Tolkien’s own mythological creation, the Balrogs. Further, Shippey has also noted that the “sun-jewel” dichotomy of the word sigel may have “helped to create (or corroborate) the image of the silmaril, that fusion of ‘sun’ and ‘jewel’ in physical form” (Shippey 42). More recently, Brian McFadden has considered how Tolkien’s familiarity with the Old English descriptions of the Sigelwara influenced his portrayal of the Southrons in The Lord of the Rings. McFadden’s article, of course, does not deal with Tolkien’s Medium Ævum essays directly, but rather with the criticism that Tolkien has often faced for his largely negative portrayal of people of color. But Tolkien’s depiction of the Haradrim, for example, does not necessarily conform to the stereotype of demonic beings from a hell-like country. Sam’s

Silmarillion, The   343 contemplation of the humanity of the fallen Harrad warrior in The Lord of the Rings makes it plain that it is only Sauron’s use of lies and fear (especially the fear of death) that has brought the Southron men to his side in the war. Men can be manipulated but are not necessarily evil, and Tolkien’s denouncing of Nazi racial myth in his letters, as well as his vocal antiapartheid stance in his “Valedictory Address,” points to a far more enlightened attitude toward race than he is generally given credit for (McFadden 163–166). The Balrog-like depiction of the Ethiopian “Other” in this article is a scholarly examination of attitudes of the Old English period, not a reflection of Tolkien’s. Further Reading Drout, Michael D. C. “J. R. R. Tolkien’s Medieval Scholarship and Its Significance.” Tolkien Studies: An Annual Scholarly Review 4 (2007): 113–176. McFadden, Brian. “Fear of Difference, Fear of Death: The Sigelwara, Tolkien’s Swertings, and Racial Difference.” In Tolkien’s Modern Middle Ages, edited by Jane Chance and Alfred K. Siewers, 155–169. New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2005. Shippey, Tom. The Road to Middle-Earth: How J. R. R. Tolkien Created a New Mythology. Rev. ed. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2003. Tolkien, J. R. R. “Sigelwara Land” [1]. Medium Ævum 1, no. 3 (December 1932): 183–196. ———. “Sigelwara Land” [2] Medium Ævum 3, no. 2 (June 1934): 95–111.

Silmarillion, The  (1977) After the huge success of The Lord of the Rings trilogy, particularly in the late 1960s in the United States, Tolkien fans worldwide were eager for more. Tolkien was never able to put the vast mythological material that formed the history of Middleearth into a coherent and publishable form in his own lifetime, but when he died in 1973, he left the task to his son and literary executor, Christopher Tolkien, who, under pressure from publishers and fans, took his father’s notes and drafts and (with the capable assistance of fantasy writer Guy

Gavriel Kay) fairly quickly brought out a booklength text published as The Silmarillion in 1977. A number 1 New York Times best seller, it was one of the most anticipated publications of the 20th century, and finally one of the most disappointing. The millions of Lord of the Rings fans who opened The Silmarillion were frustrated to find that not only were there no hobbits in the text, there was no single developed protagonist or antagonist, nor was there even a single unified plot with a clear climax and denouement. Instead, readers were presented with a lengthy chronicle spanning thousands of years, hundreds of characters, three continents, and mythic archetypes of biblical proportions. As Tom Shippey has written, “The Silmarillion can never be anything other than hard to read. . . . [I]t is unlikely that it would ever have been published in any form, let alone so many of its forms, without the prior success of The Lord of the Rings” (J. R. R. Tolkien 261). In the years since its initial publication, readers have learned to appreciate The Silmarillion for what it is rather than for what they wanted it to be: a relatively brief survey of Tolkien’s entire mythic concept of Middle-earth, a mythology he refined and reimagined for six decades, from his earliest conception of the story of Túrin Turambar in 1914 until his death in 1973. It is a mass of material that provides a minutely detailed context for the stories of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, and that contains the nuggets of stories that might have ultimately been developed as independent novellength narratives of their own, as Christopher Tolkien has most recently done with his reworking of The Children of Húrin (2007). Since 1977, Christopher Tolkien has also published the 12 volumes of what he has called The History of Middle-earth, in which he has printed various versions and unfinished drafts of the tales contained within The Silmarillion. He has also included a commentary of his own, in which he describes his process. J. R. R. Tolkien had begun a version of the Túrin story in 1914 and completed a story on the fall of Gondolin in 1916. He collected a number of stories in The Book of Lost Tales but never finished that collection as he went on to work on independent poetic ­versions

344   Silmarillion, The

Cover of a 2004 illustrated edition of The Silmarillion, published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. In the cover illustration, the ships of the Teleri head to the city of Alqualondë.

of The Lay of Leithian (which is the story of Beren and Lúthien) and The Lay of the Children of Húrin. Later, in 1926 he wrote a 28-page “Sketch of Mythology,” which summarizes much of the story of The Silmarillion. With the success of The Hobbit, Tolkien’s publisher Allen & Unwin began asking for a sequel, and in 1937 Tolkien provided an expanded version of the “Sketch” that he called the Quenta Silmarillion (History of the Silmarils). His publisher rejected the manuscript, calling it “chaotic,” and eventually Tolkien abandoned that text to work on The Lord of the Rings. He returned to the Silmarillion material in the 1950s but ultimately became wound up in theological and philosophical aspects of the work, and he went back to revise many of the earlier portions of his mythology. Although he worked and reworked the material, he was never able to complete it to his own satisfaction.

Christopher Tolkien took on the enormous task of putting this mass of material together into a coherent whole. For the most part, he attempted to use material that had been reworked since the time of Lord of the Rings in order to present his father’s most current vision of the story, but in some cases he had to go much further back, even occasionally as far back as The Book of Lost Tales from 1917. Some of Tolkien’s original draft manuscripts were not available to him at the time of the composition of The Silmarillion, and Christopher has conceded in some of the later volumes of The History of Middle-earth that he might make different choices among the sometimes contradictory drafts now than he did when he published the book. Many of the later chapters of The Silmarillion were quite incomplete when Christopher came to them. He has even revealed that at least for one important chapter of The Silmarillion, “Of the Ruin of Doriath,” Tolkien had not made any revision of the story since a short sketch in the early 1930s, and therefore Christopher had to construct most of the narrative largely on his own. Thus, the place of The Silmarillion in Tolkien’s corpus is a matter of some dispute. My purpose here, however, is to examine the text as it stands. In fact, the volume contains five separate texts. One is the Quenta Silmarillion itself. This is by far the longest section, comprising 23 chapters at the center of the book. This is preceded by two preparatory texts: the Ainulindalë, which is the Middle-earth creation myth; and the Valaquenta, a mythological Who’s Who of the Valar (the godlike “angels” who are the creator’s surrogates on Middle-earth). At the conclusion of the Quenta Silmarillion, which summarizes the history of the First Age of Middleearth, are appended Akallabêth, which recounts the destruction of Númenor, perhaps the major event of the Second Age; and, finally, Of the Rings of Power and the Third Age, which takes the story from Sauron’s defeat by Elendil the Tall and Gilgalad at the end of the Second Age to Sauron’s reemergence, the coming of the wizards, the reestablishment of the Kingdom of Gondor, and the role of the hobbits in the destruction of the One Ring that constitute the bulk of the history of the Third Age. All of these texts were originally inde-

Silmarillion, The   345 pendent, but it was Tolkien’s expressed wish that they be published together. What The Silmarillion becomes, then, is a kind of universal history of Middle-earth, from the creation through the end of the Third Age. The Silmarillion remains a difficult text to deal with, but one that, if read in the spirit Tolkien intended, a rewarding one. The depth of Tolkien’s other works is clarified by an understanding of this one. Its largely episodic nature, however, makes it more fruitful to analyze its constituent parts, beginning with the creation myth itself. Synopsis Part 1: Ainulindalë In what is essentially the creation myth of his mythological cycle, Tolkien tells the story of how the creator god Ilúvatar (also called Eru) thinks into being the angelic spirits called the Ainur. He then teaches the Ainur the art of music and bids them sing a great song. As each individual Ainu sings the song reflecting that part of Ilúvatar’s mind to which each is attuned, the Ainur become aware of one another, and they sing in great harmony as the individual musical themes join with one another. Now Ilúvatar wills that the Ainur sing together a grand harmonious design that is his will, but as they begin to sing together, Melkor, the most powerful of all the Ainur, begins to sing discordant notes that reflect his own will apart from that of Ilúvatar—a will that includes his desire to fill the void with beings of his own creation. Ilúvatar introduces his first great theme to the Ainur chorus, but Melkor mars it with his discord. Ilúvatar introduces a second great theme, but Melkor spoils this one as well. By this time, some of the other Ainur have been won over to Melkor’s discordant song and join him in his disharmony. Finally, Ilúvatar projects his third great theme, and when Melkor attempts to impose his own disharmony on this also, Ilúvatar ends the music with a triumphant closing chord that includes Melkor’s notes. Thus, despite Melkor’s attempts at disharmony, Ilúvatar is able to incorporate Melkor’s discordant themes and create beauty after all. Now Ilúvatar reveals to the Ainur that their music has actually been a design for the creation of

a world (called Arda). He shows the Ainur within the void the vision of the beauties of Arda in all its splendor, containing the defects that Melkor’s discord had produced, but incorporating those defects into the grand plan of Arda in such a way as to make it even more beautiful. The Ainur also see in this vision the creation of the Children of Ilúvatar (both elves and men) and the great history that Ilúvatar plans for them, and they long for these children with a deep love—all except the jealous Melkor, who envies the Children of Ilúvatar the gifts that have been planned for them. As the Ainur view the beauties of Arda, they come to see water as the element that most purely reflects the harmony of their creative song, and the Ainu Ulmo is mentioned as most closely identified with that element. Ilúvatar points out to Ulmo that Melkor’s discord, which had introduced extreme cold and heat into the world, has affected Ulmo’s original conception of water in such a way as to create snow, ice, and clouds—beauties that would not otherwise have been conceived. Ulmo says that he and Manwë, most powerful of the loyal Ainur, will now have more beautiful music to share. When Ilúvatar takes away the vision of Arda, many of the Ainur (including Melkor himself) become anxious, desiring to be a part of this new world and help the Children, whom they have seen and loved. In response, Ilúvatar sets time in motion by placing the vision of Arda in the void and making it physical and real. A number of the most powerful Ainur enter into time, with the understanding that they cannot alter the music that has designed the entire history of the world. The Ainur that enter the world to share it with the Children of Ilúvatar from the beginning of time are called the Valar, among whom Melkor is also included. When the Valar enter the world, they find that it has not yet become the Arda of their vision. Rather, it is at its very beginning, and they, as the Powers of Arda, must labor to bring about the vision that their song created. Ulmo, the lord of waters, and Aulë the Smith, or craftsman, of the Valar, do the most work to prepare the world for the coming of the Children. Melkor, however, lays claim to the world for himself and works to undo or hinder the progress of the other Valar, so that

346   Silmarillion, The nothing they try to build is quite what they originally envision. Manwë, who becomes the chief of the Valar, gathers to himself the loyal Valar as well as Maiar (some of the lesser Ainur who entered Arda with the Valar) to unite against Melkor, who has his own allies among the Maiar, and Melkor withdraws when he sees the Valar walking in visible form upon Arda. Melkor then takes physical form himself and makes war on Manwë and the Valar. But despite Melkor’s intrusions, Arda is ultimately prepared for the coming of Ilúvatar’s Children. Commentary Of all the different sections of The Silmarillion, the Ainulindalë has been the subject of the most scholarly discussion, perhaps because of what it reveals about Tolkien’s theological views. Originally written in 1919 or early 1920 (while Tolkien was working on the Oxford English Dictionary) as “The Music of the Ainur,” the Ainulindalë was included as a part of the first volume of The Book of Lost Tales (40–62) and went through several revisions before its inclusion in The Silmarillion in 1977. The text begins with a description of the creation of spiritual beings prior to the formation of the material universe, a tradition long present in the Christian church. These beings are not gods, though they function in the narrative of The Silmarillion in ways that recall the Old Norse or Greek deities. It is quite clear here, though, that these beings, the Ainur (the Valar and the Maiar), are more akin to the angels of the Christian tradition, and that Ilúvatar (also known as Eru) creates them purely from his own thought, before the creation of the physical universe. To them he then reveals the conception of his creation, in which they participate by joining in the music through which he creates. The text describes the creation of the world as a threefold process: First, Ilúvatar composes the musical symphony in which the Ainur contribute their own parts; second, Ilúvatar reveals to the Ainur the vision of the world their music has brought into being; and finally, Ilúvatar brings the world into physical existence by, as he says, casting the “Flame Imperishable”—a kind of divine spark of life that Tolkien himself likened to the Holy

Spirit (Kilby 59)—into the void and begins the process of creation in the world of time. The fact that Ilúvatar is described as creating through music may be the most memorable image of the text. The creator is here depicted as a creative artist, working according to aesthetic principles (Collins 257–265). In this he is not unlike the author himself—a notion that Tolkien explored in his essay “On Fairy-Stories,” in which he spoke of the author as “sub-creator.” But his use of music as the force through which God creates the world is not original with Tolkien. Howard Davis points out that the Finnish Kalevala describes the gods singing the world into creation (8). But essentially it is a Platonic idea, first expressed in Plato’s Timaeus. If the universe is a system whose natural laws enable it to run in perfect harmony, then music is the perfect metaphor for the creative act. Tolkien’s creation myth, therefore, has its roots in the medieval notion of the “music of the spheres,” a concept as old as Pythagoras, who saw a universal harmony in the orderly cosmos. Thus, when Macrobius (in his Somnium Scipionis), or Chaucer (in his Parliament of Fowles), or Dante (in his Paradiso) describes a soul lifted into the heavens, he is described as charmed by the beautiful melodies caused by the moving of the perfectly harmonious heavenly spheres (Davis 9). The Neoplatonic influence on Tolkien’s conception of God is apparent in the very first sentence of the Ainulindalë: “There was Eru, the One, who in Arda is called Ilúvatar” (15). Verlyn Fleiger has pointed out that the linguist Tolkien would have known the Proto-Indo-European root er- (meaning “to set in motion”), and he therefore used that as the root for the name of the creator God as First Mover, the One who set all things in the universe in motion (130). Tolkien’s use of the term the One to speak of this God is also Neoplatonic, a designation of the philosophical Monad “beyond human knowing or naming” (Flieger 127). In going on to say that Eru is called Ilúvatar (“All Father”) in Arda (the world of men and elves), Tolkien suggests as well the limitations of mortal knowledge concerning the One, who can only be spoken of in metaphorical terms like “father,” since humans cannot know the true essence of the One (Flieger 130–131).

Silmarillion, The   347 Yet despite its unusual imagery and its philosophical underpinnings, this is very much a JudeoChristian creation story. From the beginning, this is a universe that requires the actions of creatures with free will (i.e., the Ainur and, ultimately, men and elves, the Children of Ilúvatar) to come to its projected ideal. As Ralph Wood has pointed out, it is a world in which “there is room for development and alteration. There is also room for choice” (12). Tom Shippey draws a parallel between Tolkien’s theology in Ainulindalë and that of Milton and St. Augustine as summarized in C. S. Lewis’s Preface to Paradise Lost (Road to Middle-earth 236): In the first place, Lewis asserts that God’s creation was good, and that any evil in creation has come from the perversion of good. Thus, even Lucifer must have been created good and perverted that goodness through self-will. In Tolkien’s text, the Lucifer role is taken by Melkor, who deliberately mars the music of Ilúvatar’s creation with his own discord, thus perverting what was originally good. Melkor’s decision to weave ideas of his own into the fabric of Ilúvatar’s creation imply Melkor’s pride in placing his will above that of the creator; as with Lucifer, the first sin is pride. Further, Lewis describes the impotence of those who try to thwart God’s plans, showing how these only become God’s tools, bringing about his will unwittingly. God has the power to incorporate the plans of the wicked into his own providence, and to bring good out of evil. Metaphorically, Ilúvatar does just this at the end of the music of creation, ending on the great chord that incorporates Melkor’s dissonant notes into the overall beauty of the song. Since the song metaphorically represents the world itself in its created form, the resolving of the discord represents the final transformation of evil into good and the ultimate defeat of Melkor’s plans. Further, John Houghton has pointed out that Tolkien’s presentation of the Ainur (the angels) participating in creation, while seemingly unorthodox from a Christian point of view, in fact is also anticipated in Augustine’s commentary on the literal meaning of Genesis, wherein the saint “describes the angels as God’s gardeners, and agents to whom all creation is subject. . . . They play a role in the unfolding of creation, as do human beings on a lesser scale” (7).

But the Ainulindalë does not end with the song of creation itself. Several of the eager Valar are so enamored of the beauty of creation and the vision of the two races of Children of Ilúvatar (elves and men) that they enter the physical world itself. Here they find that the song, which was complete in the eternity of Ilúvatar’s heaven, is actually a world of process in the material universe of time. Tolkien’s conception of eternity here is consistent with that of medieval thinkers such as Boethius, who, in his sixth-century Consolation of Philosophy, had discussed the nature of eternity as timelessness rather than as endless time. In a timeless state, past, present, and future exist in a perpetual state of completion. In the world of time (called Arda), however, they must follow one another sequentially. Having entered time at the beginning of creation, the Valar must become workers who shape the world according to Ilúvatar’s plan and prepare it for the coming, in the fullness of time, of the Firstborn— the elves—and the Second-born of the Children— the race of men. Melkor, however, has a will in conflict with Ilúvatar’s mind and continually tries to mar his creation, as he had marred the Great Music. But as he had done with the discord, Ilúvatar brings goodness and beauty out of those efforts. Thus, Melkor’s invention of extreme cold and heat turns the beauty of water into the previously impossible beauties of ice and cloud. In the end, what Tolkien has done is retell the Genesis story with a different set of images. He found it necessary to do so as part of his creation of what he initially conceived of as a new mythology for England. Writing at a time when science was severely challenging the truth of ancient religious myths, Tolkien sought to reassert the truths of religion by repackaging the myth. As Houghton writes, Tolkien sought to restore “the power of myth (and, indeed, the power of language itself), by bringing us to look at words and concepts in a new light” (8). Specifically, there are three major truths in this myth, as enumerated by Elizabeth Whittingham: that life contains an ongoing struggle between good and evil; that these forces are not evenly matched in this conflict, because Ilúvatar/God is ultimately in control of all things; and that, finally, Ilúvatar will turn evil into good in accordance with his own

348   Silmarillion, The will (212–217). These themes ultimately color all of the stories in the long history of The Silmarillion (Whittingham 220–227). Synopsis Part 2: Valaquenta The second section of The Silmarillion, called Valaquenta (“The History of the Valar”), is composed as if it is an account by the elves of the origin and character of the Valar, worshipped as gods in the early days of the world. They are not gods, of course; they are the Ainur, who, having been shown the world’s beauty by the creator Ilúvatar, are so enamored of the world that they chose to enter time. We are told that the Valar are purely spiritual beings, but that in Arda (the world), they dress themselves in physical bodies and genders as people might put on clothing. The Valaquenta goes on to list the most important of these beings and to describe their major powers and abilities. There are 14 chief Valar as enumerated in Valaquenta. The evil one, Melkor, was also one of the Ainur but is not counted among the Valar. Chief among the Valar is Manwë, who is lord of the air. In the mind of Ilúvatar, Manwë was coequal with Melkor, but although Melkor was more powerful, Manwë was more closely attuned to Ilúvatar’s thoughts. He loves the winds, the clouds, and the birds, and he is called Súlimo (“Lord of the Breath of Arda”). Manwë’s consort is Varda, whom the elves call Elbereth (“Queen of the Stars”). The light of Ilúvatar is in the beauty of her face. Of all the Valar, Melkor fears Varda the most because she rejected him even before the Ainur made the Great Music. Ulmo is lord of the waters. While Manwë and Varda dwell together in Valinor, land of the Valar, Ulmo dwells alone and is seldom with the other Valar. Elves and men are especially dear to him, and so he never is far from them. He seldom takes bodily form, so his spirit inhabits all the waters of Arda, and he hears things that the other Valar do not. Aulë is nearly as powerful as Ulmo. He is lord of the earth—that is, of all the substances of which the earth is made, including stone, metals, and jewels. Working with Manwë and Ulmo, he helped

shape all the continents at Arda’s beginning. Now he is a craftsman and a smith, and he delights in handiwork and works of skill. Melkor is jealous of Aulë because, like Aulë, he is interested in making things, though Melkor wants to make things of his own, while Aulë understands the relationship between things he makes and the will of Ilúvatar. Therefore, Melkor continually tries to mar his work. Aulë is particularly a friend of the Noldor, the order of elves known for their craftsmanship. Yavanna is the earth mother and consort of Aulë. She loves all the things that grow on Arda. The elves call her Kementári (“Queen of the Earth”). The Fëanturi are two brothers known as the “masters of spirits.” Their names are Námo and Irmo, though they are often called Mandos (i.e., “Death” or “Doom”) and Lórien (i.e., “Dreams”), the names of their dwelling places. Námo, the elder, is keeper of the Houses of the Dead in Valinor. He knows the future but will reveal what he knows only if Manwë requests it. His spouse is Vairë, the Weaver, who weaves all past, present, and future events into her webs of time, and her tapestries hang in the halls of Mandos. The younger of the brothers, Irmo, is the lord of dreams. His spouse is Estë, or the lady of rest. She is a healer who lives with Irmo in the beautiful gardens of Lórien in Valinor, a place of perfect rejuvenation. Nienna is sister of the Fëanturi, and she dwells alone in the farthest western part of Valinor. Her gift is mourning, and she often visits the halls of the dead at Mandos, where she comforts the dead by turning their mourning into wisdom. She teaches the virtues of pity and of hope. The master of physical strength is Tulkas. Golden-haired, jovial, and ruddy-faced, he is swift, powerful, and tireless. Of the Valar, he was last to come to Arda, to help the Valar in their war with Melkor. He is not wise but is a faithful friend. His consort is Nessa, who, like him, is swift-footed. She loves the deer, and she is mistress of dancing. Nessa’s brother is Oromë, a hunter of evil beasts and monsters who loved Middle-earth and was the last of the Valar to leave it for Valinor. He rides a great white horse named Nahar and has a great hunting horn called Valaróma. He also delights in the trees. The elves call him Aldaron, or Tauron (“Lord of

Silmarillion, The   349 the Forests”) in the Sindarin tongue. His spouse is Vána, the sister of Yavanna. She is mistress of the springtime, and the flowers open and birds sing at her coming. Of the Valar, the eight highest are called the Aratar, or the High Ones of Arda; these are Manwë, Varda, Ulmo, Yavanna, Aulë, Mandos, Nienna, and Oromë. Valaquenta continues with a discussion of the Maiar. These are Ainur who also came into Arda but are less powerful than the Valar. They tend to be the servants or helpers of the Valar, and they seldom appear in Middle-earth in physical form. The most important of the Maiar are Ilmarë, the handmaid of Varda; and Eönwë, the herald of Manwë. Ossë, one of Ulmo’s followers, is master of storms and waves. At one point, Melkor attempted to recruit Ossë, promising to give him the powers of Ulmo over the seas. But his allegiance was won back to the Valar by another of the Maiar, Uinen, the Lady of the Seas, who is the only one capable of restraining Ossë and his storms. Thus, sailors will often pray to Uinen. Melian, servant to both Estë and Vána, lived in Lórien before coming to Middle-earth, and of her much would be said in the Quenta Silmarillion. Olórin was the wisest of all the Maiar and, like Melian, dwelt in Lórien; he spent a good deal of time with Nienna, learning from her pity and patience. When Olórin came to Middle-earth, he became a close friend of the elves and later of all the Children of Ilúvatar, and he pitied their sorrows. Valaquenta ends with a consideration of the “Enemies,” focusing mainly on Melkor. The Ainu name of Melkor, the text says, he has forfeited, and the Noldorian elves have given him the name of Morgoth (i.e., “The Dark Enemy of the World”). He had great might but misused it and desired to hold all of Arda in his dominion. He warred for ages against the Valar, and for a long time he ruled most of Arda. Morgoth had allies, as well, from among the Maiar, who were drawn to him during the Great Symphony. He also drew allies later from others whom he corrupted. Among these were the Valaraukar, who were called Balrogs in Middleearth. But the worst of all was the Maia called Gorthaur the Cruel, or Sauron by the elves. Originally a Maia in the service of Aulë, Sauron became

the chief lieutenant of Morgoth, and when Morgoth was cast into the void, he rekindled the evil of Morgoth in Middle-earth. Commentary Valaquenta is an account of those Ainur who chose to enter Arda, the created world, after Ilúvatar brought it into being in the physical universe. It is divided into three sections. “Of the Valar” is a catalogue of the most powerful of these supernatural entities, including the eight chief Valar, described like the gods of a polytheistic religion. “Of the Maiar” describes some of the lesser angelic beings who assist the Valar in their stewardship of the created world. “Of the Enemies” describes Melkor, the most powerful of those Ainur who supported him and were therefore corrupted along with him. The first draft of the text of Valaquenta was composed, according to Christopher Tolkien, in 1930, as the first pages of a typescript containing what the elder Tolkien called “The Quenta,” or “Qenta Noldorinwa” (The Shaping of Middle-earth 92). It remained the first chapter of the “Quenta Silmarillion” as Tolkien revised that text, until about 1958, when, in further revisions, he seems to have separated it from the rest of his text. When Christopher Tolkien published The Silmarillion in 1977, he included the Valaquenta as a separate text before the Quenta Silmarillion proper. In 1986, that early version was published with the entire 1930 text of “The Quenta” in The Shaping of Middleearth, volume 4 in the 12-volume History of Middleearth (92–268). While Tolkien made it clear in the previous section, Ainulindalë, that the Valar’s powers are dependent on the will of Ilúvatar and that they are essentially angel-like beings rather than gods, it is clear that, as they appear to the inhabitants of Middle-earth, the Valar are quite like deities. It seems clear that Tolkien had in mind at least the conventional Greek and Old Norse pantheons when he created the eight principal Valar. It is possible that the categories “Ainur” and “Valar” were suggested to Tolkien by the terms Aesir and Valir, the two rival clans of Norse gods. Manwë, the sky lord and chief among the Valar, seems clearly to be a Zeus figure, although many of his attributes (as

350   Silmarillion, The Marjorie Burns has shown) suggest the chief Norse god Ódin: Manwë is patron of the art of poetry and sits on a high throne from which he can look out at all the world, both of which are also characteristic of Ódin, and like Ódin, Manwë holds the eagles sacred (Burns 224–225). As for the other Valar, Ulmo suggests the sea god Neptune and Mandos recalls Hades, god of the dead. Varda, the beauty who rejected Melkor, may suggest Aphrodite. Yavanna, associated with plants and the earth, is like a vegetation god, similar to the Greek Demeter, while the earth lord Aulë, who is interested in fashioning things out of the things concealed in the earth, is like the Greek Hephaestos or the Roman Vulcan. The jovial, golden-haired Tulkas, famous for his strength, is suggestive of the Norse god Thor. Nessa, who loves the deer, suggests Artemis or Diana, while her brother Oromë, slayer of monsters, recalls Diana’s brother Apollo, who slew the great Python in Greek myth. Other connections are certainly possible, but these give an idea of the extent to which Tolkien may have drawn on existing pagan pantheons for his angelic group. The Maiar are listed as somewhat lesser angelic beings who support the work of the Valar in Middle-earth. Of these, the ones who will be most important in the Quenta Silmarillion and beyond are Melian and Olórin. Melian ultimately weds the Eldar Thingol, king of Doriath, and becomes his queen. Her circle of enchantment, called the “Girdle of Melian,” will protect Doriath from the shadow of Morgoth through the ages, and her child Lúthien, most beautiful of all the Children of Ilúvatar, becomes perhaps Tolkien’s most important heroine. As for Olórin, he is the wisest of all the Maiar. He is particularly interested in helping mortal men against the forces of Morgoth, and when he comes into Middle-earth, it is as one of the Istari (or wizards) in the Third Age, when he becomes known as Mithrandir among the elves, or Gandalf the Grey among men. As for the “enemies,” we learn that many of the chief supporters of Melkor (the Lucifer figure of this mythology) are Maiar, the equivalent of fallen angels in a Christian context. Chief among these is Sauron, who will become Dark Lord him-

self after Melkor/Morgoth is cast into the void. The Balrogs who support Melkor (and later Sauron) are also Maiar—a fact that explains why only Gandalf (another Maia) is ultimately able to do battle with such a creature in Moria in The Fellowship of the Ring. Synopsis Part 3: Quenta Silmarillion Chapters 1 and 2: Creation Myths  The Quenta Silmarillion, or The Silmarillion proper, takes up this long central part of the book. The first chapter, “Of the Beginning of Days,” relates that, according to the elves, Arda was beset by war even before it was given its shape by the Valar. Tulkas the Strong came into Arda to help the Valar against Melkor, who was unable to stand before Tulkas’s strength and hid in the outer darkness. The Valar then began to arrange the lands and the waters, and Yavanna planted the seeds she had in her keeping to produce living things on Arda. The Valar formed the lands of Arda into a symmetrical continent, and Aulë created two great lights, one in the north (called Illuin) and one in the south (called Ormal), to light the new world. The Valar lived in the middle of Arda, on the island of Almaren in the Great Lake. Then Manwë gave a great feast on Almaren to allow the Valar to rest from their labors, but while the Valar were distracted and while Tulkas slept, Melkor gathered to himself those of the Maiar whom he had perverted to his service and set up a dwelling place for himself in the north of Arda, building a large fortress underground that he named Utumno. From there, he did damage to Arda, bringing sickness to the plants and turning many beasts into monsters. Also from this fortress, he and his allies attacked the Valar’s dwelling place and broke down and shattered the two great lights. This destroyed the symmetry of the lands, breaking up the continent and raising the seas. Then Melkor hid in Utumno before Tulkas could find him, and the Valar were forced to spend their strength in preserving what was left of the world. This ended the period known as the Spring of Arda. Now the lands of Arda were divided into two great continents: Middle-earth in the east and the

Silmarillion, The   351 land of Aman far to the west, across the great ocean. Melkor’s dwelling was in Middle-earth, and the Valar removed to Aman, which they fortified by building up the great mountain range called the Pelóri. Manwë set up his throne on the highest peak of those mountains, called Taniquetil, from which he could look out over the sea. Behind the mountains, the Valar made their realm of Valinor, the blessed land of the Deathless, and their city of Valmar. At the western gate of Valmar was the green mound called Ezellohar, and here Yavanna caused to grow the Two Trees of Valinor—Telperion the White and Laurelin the Golden, each of which lighted Valinor for 12 hours every day. But the Valar did not forsake Middle-earth, though that was where Melkor kept his home. They knew, after all, that the Children of Ilúvatar were destined to come into being soon. While Manwë watched, Ulmo consistently touched Middle-earth with his waters, and Yavanna often visited the outer lands to heal the harm done by Melkor to her growing things. Oromë the Hunter would often ride through Middle-earth and destroy the evil beasts that Melkor had created. In the meantime, after the Valar had left Middle-earth, Ilúvatar pondered Arda and his planned creation of his children—elves and men. Elves would have the greater bliss in the world, but men would have the gift of mortality, which would inspire them to seek restlessly beyond the world. In the short second chapter, “Of Aulë and Yavanna,” Aulë is so impatient to see the Children of Ilúvatar that he cannot wait, and in anticipation he creates his own breed of sentient beings: the dwarves, whom he desires to teach all about craftsmanship and whom he makes strong and steadfast in order to stand up to the power of Melkor. When Ilúvatar discovers what he has done, he chides Aulë for going beyond his authority and warns him that the dwarves as created would simply be puppets, doing whatever Aulë directed them to do. Aulë apologizes, saying he was only emulating the work of his father, Ilúvatar, and offers the dwarves to him as a gift, declaring that he would destroy them if Ilúvatar so wished. But Ilúvatar pities Aulë and his creations, and he adopts the dwarves as his children but says that they cannot

come to Arda before the elves, who are intended to be the firstborn. Thus, Aulë puts the seven forefathers of the dwarves to sleep in various parts of Middle-earth and continues to wait for the coming of the elves. Aulë had told none of the other Valar of his work, but now he reveals to Yavanna what has occurred. Yavanna then expresses her fears that Aulë’s creations will have little regard for her living things, and in particular they will cut down her trees, but Aulë answers that the same will be true of elves and men—that Ilúvatar will give his children dominion over the living things of Arda. Disturbed, Yavanna speaks with Manwë, who confirms Aulë’s claim. Yavanna, already worried about Melkor marring her creatures, wishes that she could keep them safe from the power of others. Manwë asks which of all her creatures she would save, and she says that the trees are most dear to her. Then Manwë recalls details of the Great Song, and remembers that there will be great eagles who will act as guardians among the kelvar (animals), while among the olvar (plants) there will be Shepherds of the Trees (i.e., the ents). Chapters 3–5: Sundering of the Elves  At the beginning of chapter 3 (“Of the Coming of the Elves and the Captivity of Melkor”), Middle-earth lies in twilight under the stars after the destruction of the two Great Lamps, and those seeds Yavanna had set growing during the Spring of Arda she now causes to lay dormant to prevent their corruption by Melkor. Oromë still hunts in Middle-earth, but Melkor is building up his strength in the North. In addition to Utumno, where he assembles his allies (the Balrogs and other Maiar he had perverted), he also builds Angband, a fortress near the northwestern shores of the great sea, and sets the renegade Maia Sauron to guard it. The Valar confer about what to do with Melkor. They fear he will corrupt the Firstborn of Ilúvatar’s Children, the elves, though they do not yet know when these will appear. But Mandos says that the elves are destined to awake and to look first upon the stars. On hearing this, Varda goes to Middle-earth and places a number of new, bright stars in the sky, including Menelmacar (i.e., Orion)

352   Silmarillion, The

Cover of a 2001 edition of The Silmarillion, published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. In the color illustration, elves awaken on Cuiviénen Bay.

with his shining belt, and the seven stars called the Sickle of the Valar (i.e., the Big Dipper) as a challenge to Melkor. At last the elves awaken, along a bay called Cuiviénen (“Water of Awakening”), far in the east of Middle-earth. They look at the stars and grow to love them, and so ever after they will be most devoted to Varda, whom they call Elentári (“StarQueen”). They make their earliest home near these waters and call themselves Quendi, meaning “those that speak.” But Melkor becomes aware of their existence and is able to capture some of them when they wander alone away from their settlements. From these captured elves, imprisoned in Utumno, Melkor will fashion the perverted race of orcs to serve as his army, conceived as a mockery of Ilúvatar’s children.

Finally, one day, in his riding through Middleearth, Oromë comes upon the elves, many of whom fear him. But he stays among them for some time, then rides back to Valinor to tell the Valar of his discovery, after which he rushes back to protect the elves. Now the Valar decide that they must defeat Melkor, so that he cannot destroy the Children of Ilúvatar. They storm into Middle-earth and crush Melkor’s power in the Northwest, driving all of his allies to take refuge in Utumno. They also set a guard on Cuiviénen, so that the elves know nothing of the great battle aside from the shaking earth and the flashing fire of the North. After a long siege and battles that rearrange the lands of Arda, widening the Great Sea between Aman and Middle-earth, Utumno is finally taken. Melkor does battle with Tulkas and is captured and bound by a great chain forged by Aulë (though many evil things remain hidden in the pits of Utumno, and Sauron is never found). Melkor is taken back to Valinor, where he begs for forgiveness at the feet of Manwë but is denied and cast into prison in Mandos, the hall of the dead, from which there is no escape, to be kept there for three ages. After another council, the Valar decide to bring the Firstborn to Valinor, although there are some dissenting Valar (particularly Ulmo) who believe the elves should stay and remake Middle-earth. Oromë brings the elves the invitation of the Valar, first bringing their three leaders—Ingwë, Finwë, and Elwë—to see Valinor and to persuade their people to follow Oromë on the long journey. Most of the elves are willing to follow, but some refuse the invitation and prefer to stay in Middleearth. These elves become known as the Avari (“the unwilling”). Oromë names those who follow the Eldar (“people of the stars”). There are three houses of Eldar: the Vanyar (the house of Ingwë), who follow willingly and remain forever in Valinor; the Noldor (the house of Finwë), who go willingly to Valinor but eventually will come back to Middle-earth; and the Teleri (the house of Elwë), who become enamored of the water and stay for a time on the shore of the Great Sea before a number of them finally cross to Valinor. A large number of them decide to stay in Middle-earth, however, and become known as the Sindar.

Silmarillion, The   353 The brief fourth chapter is entitled “Of Thingol and Melian.” Melian is a Maia, akin to Yavanna, and lives in the gardens of Lórien, where her beauty and the sound of her singing are unsurpassed—she even teaches the nightingales how to sing. Upon the awakening of the elves at Cuiviénen, Melian leaves Valinor and comes into Middle-earth, filling it with music and nightingales’ song. Elwë, leader of the Teleri elves, has stopped in East Beleriand on the journey to the West, and one day, when he is passing through the enchanted woods of Nan Elmoth to seek his friend Finwë, lord of the Noldor, he comes across Melian. The two look into one another’s eyes and stand enchanted for many years as the trees grow around them. Most of the Teleri despair of seeing Elwë again, and they follow his brother, Olwë, into Valinor. But many of his people stay to search for Elwë, and these elves eventually become the Sindar. When Melian and Elwë emerge from Nan Elmoth, they found the elvish kingdom of Doriath, and Elwë becomes known as Elu Thingol (“King Greymantle”), and his people, the Sindar, are named the Grey Elves. Melian is his queen for all his life, and from their union is to come the fairest of all the Children of Ilúvatar. At the opening of chapter 5 (“Of Eldamar and the Princes of the Eldalië”), the Vanyar and the Noldor reach the western shore of Middle-earth at the mouth of the River Sirion, where they meet with Ulmo, who uproots an island from the ocean and brings it like a boat to carry the Vanyar and Noldor over the sea, where they enter Valinor and finally end their Great Journey. The Teleri, however, have still not reached the sea, and many are still searching for Elwë. When they hear that the others have left, many of the Teleri take Olwë as their leader and move on to the western shore. As they wait on the shore, they develop a great love of the sea. After some years, Ulmo returns to Middle-earth to take the Teleri to Valinor. Ossë grieves, since he would like to keep the elves in Middle-earth, and he persuades some of the Teleri to stay. These are called the Falathrim, who become mariners because of their love of the sea, and they are led by Círdan the Shipwright. The friends of Elwë would leave Mid-

dle-earth, but desire for their lord keeps them, and when he finally returns to them, they dwell in joy in the forest, though they always long for Aman. As for the Teleri who left with Ulmo on the floating island, they still long for Middle-earth. Ossë, understanding their hearts, stops the island and fixes it in the Bay of Eldamar, in sight of Aman, where it becomes known as Tol Eressëa (“the Lonely Isle”). Here the Teleri live as they wish for many years. Meanwhile, the Vanyar and Noldor long to see the stars, and the Valar create a gap in the mountains, where the elves raise a green hill called Túna, looking toward the Lonely Isle, and a great city called Tirion. Yavanna makes the elves a tree similar to Telperion, the White Tree of Valinor, and the elves called it Galathilion. One of this tree’s offspring is later planted on the Lonely Isle and is named Celeborn. Among the Valar, Manwë and Varda are closest to the Vanyar, but Aulë loves the Noldor and teaches them his skills. The Noldor soon become expert craftsmen, and it is they who first discover gems in the earth, which they cut and shape and with which they enrich all of Valinor. Of the Noldor, Finwë is king. He has three sons: Fëanor, Fingolfin, and Finarfin. Fëanor is the most skillful, and he has seven sons: Maedhros, Maglar the singer, Celegorm, Caranthir, Curufin the crafty, and the twins Amrod and Amras. Fingolfin is the strongest of Finwë’s sons; his sons are Fingon and Turgon, and his daughter is Aredhel, the White Lady of the Noldor. Finarfin’s sons are Finrod, Orodreth, Angrod, and Aegnor, and their sister is Galadriel, fairest of all the Noldor. After long years, the Teleri on the Lonely Isle are at last overcome by their desire for the light of Aman. Ossë teaches them to build ships and sends swans to pull their ships onto the shores of Aman. Here they build their city of Alqualondë, where their mansions are made of pearls. As for the other families of the Eldar, the Vanyar eventually abandon Tirion and go to live on Manwë’s mountain. The Noldor stay in Tirion and become closer to the Teleri. Fëanor and his sons travel throughout Aman, learning all they can. Celegrom in particular is close to Oromë and learns everything about the birds and beasts of Aman, which contains all of

354   Silmarillion, The the creatures that have ever lived on Middle-earth, except the evil creatures made by Melkor. Chapters 6–9: The Silmarils and the Oath of Fëanor  As the sixth chapter (“Of Fëanor and the Unchaining of Melkor”) opens, it is what Tolkien calls “Noontide of the Blessed Realm,” since all three branches of the Eldar are with the Valar in Aman, and the evil Melkor is in captivity. The skill and knowledge of the Noldor grow steadily, and they even begin to record their language. At this time is born Finwë’s eldest son, Curufinwë, called Fëanor (“Spirit of Fire”) by his mother Míriel. But the birth seems to take something out of Míriel, and she begins to lose strength and the will to live. Míriel is taken to Lórien to be in Irmo’s care, and as she parts from Finwë, she asks him to hold her “guiltless” in this and in everything that comes after. The spirit departs from her body as she sleeps in Lórien and goes to the house of Mandos. The grieved Finwë now gives his son all his love. Fëanor grows to be the most clever of all the Noldor, with a fiery spirit and an inflexible will. He creates the writing system that the elves continue to use, and he discovers how to create gems more brilliant than those from within the earth. Fëanor marries Nerdanel, whose intelligence masters his, but who is more understanding and patient. She is able to temper his fiery spirit for a time, but eventually they grow apart. She bears Fëanor seven sons. In the meantime, Finwë remarries the Vanya Indis the Fair. She bears him two sons, Fingolfin and Finarfin, but Fëanor dislikes his father’s remarriage and is estranged from his family. At this point, the three ages to which Melkor had been sentenced to be chained in Mandos are completed, and he comes before the Valar. Although he has nothing but hate and envy in his heart for both the Valar and the Eldar, he humbles himself to Manwë and begs to be allowed to live in and contribute to the society of Valinor. Nienna supports his plea, and Manwë grants him pardon, though Melkor is not allowed to leave the city of Valmar. Ulmo and Tulkas are suspicious but accept Manwë’s judgment. Melkor feigns love for the Noldor in particular, and he gives them much help in their works, at the same time planting subversive

thoughts in their minds. In particular, he shares his knowledge with Fëanor, but Fëanor always hated Melkor. In chapter 7, “Of the Silmarils and the Unrest of the Noldor,” Fëanor, now at the height of his skills and powers, creates the most famous works ever devised by the elves: the three great jewels called the Silmarils, in which he captures the light of the Two Trees of Valinor. All the residents of Aman are delighted with the beauty of these living jewels, and the Varda protect the Silmarils with a charm that will wither any evil hand that touches them, while Mandos prophesies that the fate of all Arda is interwoven with the jewels. Melkor lusts after the Silmarils and lays plots to have them, to destroy Fëanor, and to break the friendship between the Valar and the elves. He begins by spreading lies and rumors among the Noldor concerning the Valars’ desire that the elves dwell in Valinor. Melkor implies that the Valar did this to prevent the elves from establishing their own great realms in Middle-earth. He also reveals to them Ilúvatar’s plan to create men, the second race of his Children, and suggests that the intent of the Valar was to see the elves disinherited and their rightful lands go to men. Fëanor, unaware that these rumors come from Melkor, begins to desire freedom from the Valar. At the same time, he becomes more and more jealous of the Silmarils and keeps them locked away in Tirion. Because of Melkor’s rumors, Fëanor also begins to suspect that his half brother Fingolfin intends to supplant him and usurp the leadership of the Noldor from their father, Finwë. In the meantime, Melkor also teaches the Noldor to make weapons, and Fëanor and others begin to wear them. Fëanor also begins to speak openly about leading all who would follow him back to Middle-earth. Fingolfin visits Finwë, complaining that Fëanor speaks as if he were king, and offers to support his father against Fëanor. But Fëanor enters as Fingolfin is speaking, and he threatens his brother with a sword. As a consequence, Fëanor is summoned before the Valar. They discover that Melkor is behind the Noldor’s unrest, and Tulkas leaves to find him. But Mandos sentences Fëanor to 12 years of exile from Tirion. Fëanor and his seven sons take

Silmarillion, The   355 the Silmarils and set up a stronghold in the North at Formenos; Finwë comes with them, leaving Fingolfin to govern the Noldor. Melkor is in hiding, but one day he appears in Formenos and tries to persuade Fëanor to leave Valinor, promising to aid him if he does so. Fëanor, however, sees that his real desire is for the Silmarils and curses Melkor, shutting the door in his face. Finwë sends messengers to the Valar that Melkor has been in Formenos, and Tulkas and Oromë immediately begin a search, but Melkor has now passed out of Valinor in the form of a cloud and cannot be found. Unable to find Melkor and assuming he would rebuild his stronghold in the North, Manwë redoubles the watch along Aman’s northern border as chapter 8 (“The Darkening of Valinor”) begins. But Melkor has gone south, to the unexplored extreme southern stretches of Aman, where in the dark region of Avathar he finds Ungoliant, one of the Maiar originally corrupted by his song but who now lives here unsuspected, in the form of a monstrous spider that devours light and turns it into darkness. Taking the shape of a tall, dark lord that he was to keep forever after, Melkor persuades Ungoliant to help him take his revenge on the Valar, promising her anything her hunger demands. They set off under a cloak of darkness to pass the mountains and enter Valinor. In Valinor, the Valar are holding a high feast to celebrate the harvest and praise Ilúvatar. Manwë has invited all the Valar, Maiar, and Eldar to his halls on Taniquetil, and he hopes to assuage the discontent of the Noldor. Most of the great houses of the Eldar are present, though Finwë stays away, feeling unwelcome as long as Fëanor is banished. Fëanor himself has been commanded to come, and before all present Fingolfin extends his hand in forgiveness to Fëanor, promising to follow him. As this is concluded, the gold and silver light of the Two Trees begins to mingle in Valimar, and at this point Ungoliant and Melkor hurry into the deserted city and attack the trees. Under the darkness created by Ungoliant, Melkor wounds the trees with his spear, and Ungoliant sucks the light from them until they wither and die. The light of the trees extinguished, Valinor is plunged into

darkness. Manwë’s holy mountain falls silent, and the Teleri on the shores are shocked by a cold wind from the east. Looking down, Manwë sees the blacker darkness of Ungoliant within the dark engulfing Valinor. He sets Oromë and Tulkas in pursuit, but they are confounded by the darkness, and Melkor escapes. The crucial ninth chapter (“Of the Flight of the Noldor”) begins as the Valar sit in the shadows in their Ring of Doom, contemplating the loss of the Two Trees. Yavanna says that she cannot recreate the light of the trees, but that she might be able to revive it if she were able to use the light trapped within the Silmarils. But Fëanor answers that, like Yavanna’s Trees, his Silmarils could be made only once, and he is unwilling to let them be destroyed. He will not give up the jewels willingly, he says, and if the Valar force him to do so, he will know that they are the kin of Melkor. At this point, messengers come from Formenos with the news that a great darkness has invaded that fortress; stolen all of the jewels kept there, including the Silmarils themselves; and, worst of all, has slain Finwë. Now Fëanor curses Melkor, renaming him Morgoth (“Black Foe of the World”), the name by which he is known ever after by the Eldar. Fëanor also curses the Valar for summoning him away from Formenos and his father. By now, Ungoliant and Morgoth have escaped to the North and crossed the Helcaraxë, the narrow, icy strait lying between Aman and Middle-earth in the Far North. As they draw near to Morgoth’s old stronghold of Angband, he wishes to escape Ungoliant, but she perceives this and demands her payment in the form of the jewels plundered from Formenos. Morgoth gives her most of these but refuses to give up the Silmarils. Ungoliant encloses Morgoth in a strangling web, but his great cries arouse the Balrogs that still live in the depths of Angband, and they come to his rescue, driving away Ungoliant, who flees to the Far South. Morgoth now rebuilds his power in Angband, breeding ever more monsters and orcs for his army. He also makes an iron crown in which he places the three Silmarils, and he calls himself King of the World. But his hands are burned black forever and cause him perpetual pain because he has touched the Silmarils.

356   Silmarillion, The In the meantime, Fëanor disregarding Manwë’s order of exile, summons all the Noldor to the summit of Túna, calling for them all to follow him in pursuit of Morgoth to make war on him and regain the Silmarils. At the same time, he repeats Morgoth’s insinuations and lies, urging the Noldor to seek their freedom from the Valar and return to Middle-earth, where they can have their own realms and where they can turn back the coming of the Younger Children of Ilúvatar, men, and claim the inheritance of Middle-earth for themselves. He also swears a terrible oath with all his seven sons, swearing by the name of Ilúvatar that they will take vengeance on anyone—whether Vala, elf, man, or any other creature—who keeps any one of the Silmarils from them. Fingolfin opposes Fëanor’s plan, and their argument threatens to become violent. Their brother Finarfin tries to make peace and tries to persuade the Noldor against making decisions without careful consideration. But Fingolfin’s son Fingon and Finarfin’s daughter Galadriel speak in favor of making the journey to the Hither Lands, swayed by the idea of gaining the realms of Middle-earth. A warning comes from Manwë, advising the Noldor to stay but acknowledging that they are free to leave if they choose. But if they opt to leave, Manwë foresees sorrow for them and declares that they cannot defeat Morgoth. Fëanor responds that they have seen sorrow already in Aman, and that even if he cannot defeat Morgoth, he will not sit idly by but will attack him. In the end, most of the Noldor want to make the journey, but a majority will not follow Fëanor and prefer Fingolfin as their king. All but a tenth of the Noldor begin the journey, some following Fëanor but most following Fingolfin, including the reluctant Finarfin. Now, as the great host of Noldor sets out, Fëanor realizes that they cannot walk all the way but will need ships. He attempts to enlist the aid of the Teleri, but they refuse to give up their ships, declaring that their ships are to them what the Silmarils are to Fëanor. Fëanor orders his followers to take the ships at Alqualondë by force, and in the ensuing battle, many Teleri and Noldor are killed, but the Teleri are defeated when the Noldor are reinforced by the arrival of Fingolfin’s followers,

who join in the battle without knowing why it is being fought. The Noldor now continue northward, where the sea is not as wide between Aman and Middle-earth. Some go by ship and some by land. In the waste of Araman far north of Valinor, the figure of Mandos appears to them and pronounces the Doom of the Valar, afterward known as the Prophecy of the North. The Noldor have stained the land of Aman with the blood of their kindred, Mandos says, and therefore they shall themselves shed blood. The oath Fëanor has sworn will be their curse. Aman will be forever shut up against their return. While the Eldar cannot die of natural causes, they can be killed, and many will be, or they will die of grief. Those who do not will dwell in Middle-earth and will wane and be weary of the world in the face of the men who come after. At this, Finarfin and some of his followers turn back to be pardoned by the Valar, but Finarfin’s sons follow Fëanor and Fingolfin northward. When the host reaches the Far North, they balk at the dangerous crossing of the icy Helcaraxë, but there are not enough boats to take all the host across to Middle-earth by sea. Here Fëanor betrays Fingolfin, leaving him and his followers behind and crossing to Middle-earth on the Teleri’s white ships with his own followers. Over the objections of his eldest son, Maedhros, Fëanor refuses to send any ships back for the host of Fingolfin, and he orders the ships burnt. Fingolfin continues the journey by leading his people over the crushing ice of Helcaraxë, though many are killed in the crossing. Chapters 10–12: Middle-earth before the Return of the Noldor  Tolkien interrupts the tale of the Noldor and the Silmarils with three chapters that establish the background and conditions of Middle-earth at the time of the Noldor migration. In chapter 10, “Of the Sindar,” he describes how Elwë (Thingol) and his consort, the Maia Melian, have established their kingdom in Middle-earth in the forest of Neldoreth. He relates that the elves of Beleriand, including not only the Teleri who followed Círdan the Shipwright but also the Avari who had resisted the call of the Valar, all acknowledge the supremacy of Thingol, and under him they

Silmarillion, The   357 become known as the Sindar, or the Grey-elves. Under the tutelage of Melian, the Grey-elves learn remarkable skills and craftsmanship, and Thingol’s realm reaches a peak of culture unique in Middleearth. During this time as well—the end of the first age of Melkor’s imprisonment—Thingol and Melian give birth to Lúthien, most beautiful of all the elves born in Middle-earth. During the second age of Melkor’s imprisonment, the dwarves (whom the Sindar called Naugrim) make their first appearance in Beleriand, having crossed over the Blue Mountains. The dwarves learn the Sindarin tongue, and the two races become wary friends. The dwarves build great underground cities in the mountains, called Gabilgathol and Tumunzahar, but the greatest of all is Khazad-dum. They also display great skill in forging works of metal and stone. At the end of the second age of Melkor’s imprisonment, Melian warns Thingol that the peace they have enjoyed for long ages will someday come to an end, and in exchange for gifts of pearls that Thingol receives from Círdan—including a great pearl called Nimphelos that is the size of a dove’s egg—the Naugrim build the great underground fortress of Menegroth in the forest of Neldoreth. The dwarves report to Thingol that evil beasts and orcs have begun to appear roaming in the northern reaches of Beleriand. A group of the elves who had followed Lenwë into the East after the call of the Valar now recross the Misty Mountains into Thingol’s realms, migrating away from the evil creatures that have appeared there. Thingol welcomes their leader, Denethor, and grants them permission to live in Ossiriand, the land of seven rivers just west of the Blue Mountains. They remain a separate people from the Sindar, calling themselves the Laiquendi (or Green-elves). Upon the advice of the dwarves and the Laiquendi, Thingol begins to prepare for war, commissioning the dwarves to make them swords and other weapons, as well as bright mail armor. About this time, Thingol’s loremaster Daeron invents the runic alphabet, called Cirth. The Sindar themselves never find much use for the runes, but the dwarves adopt them immediately and use them, passing knowledge of them to many other peoples as well.

But peace is indeed coming to an end. Morgoth returns to Middle-earth and reinforces his stronghold at Angband, and Ungoliant enters the mountains south of Dorthonion, which become known as the Ered Gorgoroth (the “Mountains of Terror”). Having built the great towers of Thangorodrim, Morgoth now lets a great army of orcs issue forth from Angband in two great hosts, moving south on either side of Neldoreth in order to attack Thingol’s kingdom. With the help of the dwarves and of the Laiquendi, Thingol defeats the eastern army of orcs, but not without cost: The Laiquendi are killed in great numbers and lose Denethor, their king. Afterward, many of them return to Ossiriand, where they live in secret and without a king, while others stay in Neldoreth and become a part of the Sindar. But the orc army of the West has been victorious and pushed Círdan’s people to the very edge of the land. Now Thingol withdraws his army into Neldoreth, and Melian creates a great circle of protection around the wood, which none can ever pass without the permission from her or from Thingol. This becomes known as the Girdle of Melian, and the land it protects is known ever after as Doriath. But now there is news in Middle-earth that surprises even Morgoth: Fëanor has landed in the North at the Firth of Drengist, and he has brought with him and army of the Noldor. Chapter 11, “Of the Sun and the Moon,” returns the action to Valinor and to the level of myth: After Melkor has fled from Valinor, the Valar sit in deep thought in their Ring of Doom. They consider the past and the future, and they stir again finally upon learning that Fëanor has reached Middle-earth. They mourn for the Two Trees, but also for Fëanor, whose magnificent potential has been warped by Melkor’s machinations. At first, Yavanna and Nienna try to heal the Two Trees, but ultimately their efforts are only able to bring forth a single silver blossom from Telperion and one golden fruit from Laurelin. These two blossoms are given to Aulë and his people, who create containers to preserve their light, and the Valar now decide to give these vessels to Varda, to send them across the sky to light Middle-earth and become the lights of heaven. For the Valar

358   Silmarillion, The do not want to abandon the Noldor or the Avari who had remained in Middle-earth, and they also understand that the time is drawing close for the arrival of men, the younger Children of Ilúvatar, and though for these same Children they decide to refrain from making war on Melkor, for fear of men’s mortality, they still wish to distress Melkor with the light. The Valar name the silver moon Isil, and the Maia Tilion, one of Oromë’s hunting companions, is chosen to guide Isil across the sky. The golden sun is named Anar, and the maiden Arien, who had tended the golden flowers in the gardens of Vana before the destruction of the Two Trees, is chosen to steer the sun on its course. Isil is the first of the vessels to rise among the stars, and when it has passed across the sky seven times, Anar arises. Tilion, drawn by the beauty of the sun, is less orderly in his movements than Anar, and thus the movements of the two lights are not perfectly coordinated, as was Varda’s original intent. When Morgoth sees the lights, he sends his creatures to attack Tilion, but Tilion is able to fight off Morgoth’s creatures. Morgoth fears Arien and does not dare assail her; in fact, his power grows less the more bound he is to the earth, and the more of his own power he disperses into his own evil creatures. He keeps himself hidden in his own dark strongholds and seldom issues from them, shrouding all Angband in dark smoke and clouds. The Valar, seeing Morgoth’s arrogant attempt to destroy the moon itself, want to protect Valinor against any approach from the evil in Middle-earth, and they raise up the mountains of the Pelóri even higher than before. They also form the Enchanted Isles around their shores, which have the power to bewilder any ship that attempts to approach the lands of Aman. Only one person will ever be able to make the journey across the sea and touch the Undying Lands, and he will be the greatest mariner of all. One more significant development occurs in Middle-earth prior to the arrival of Fëanor, and this is told in chapter 12, “Of Men.” This brief chapter at last introduces the race of men into Tolkien’s mythology. We are told, first, that a new way of reckoning time came into existence with the coming of the sun, and further, that the years of the sun

were briefer than the years of the Trees of Valinor. But the sun also brought a second spring to Arda, and seeds that Yavanna had planted ages ago in the dark now sprouted and grew. At the same time, with the coming of the sun are awakened the first ancestors of men, the Second-born of the Children of Ilúvatar. They arise first in Hildórien, in the far eastern area of Middle-earth, and they are drawn to the light of the sun, which in those early days rises in the West. The men make contact with the Dark Elves, those Avari who had never left Middleearth. Eventually, they spread in every direction and become known to the Sindar and the Noldor as well. While men and elves in those days are about the same size and physical makeup, the elves are a fairer race and, unlike men, are not subject to disease or the effects of old age. Like men, elves can be killed, but they are stronger and more resilient than men. Nor do the elves understand human mortality, and they do not know what happens to men in the House of Mandos. The elves believe that perhaps the fate of men after death is not the Valar’s to decide. The Valar never appear to guide the men as they had the Eldar, and so men tend to fear the Valar and distrust them. Ulmo, through his waters, keeps track of them and sometimes communicates with them, but unlike the elves, men are less able to understand these messages, though they do develop a love for the waters. Elves and men form an alliance against Morgoth but are to become estranged eventually, and the Eldar are ultimately to wane and fade from Middle-earth, leaving it to the authority of men. Chapters 13–16: Establishment of the Noldor in Beleriand  Chapter 13 (“Of the Return of the Noldor”) begins when Fëanor and his host land on the shores of the Firth of Drengist, and the burning of their ships draws the attention of Morgoth. As the Noldor begin to set up an encampment on the banks of Lake Mithrim, they are attacked without warning by Morgoth’s forces. But Morgoth’s orcs are no match for the Noldor, and they are soundly defeated, as is the host that comes north from besieging Círdan the Shipwright. Fëanor pursues the orcs all the way to Angband, where he is sur-

Silmarillion, The   359 rounded by Balrogs, whom he continues to fight until Gothmog, Lord of Balrogs, strikes him down. Just then, Fëanor’s sons arrive to help him and are able to drive off the Balrogs. But as they try to bring their father back to Mithrim, he realizes he is dying. Fëanor curses Morgoth three times before his death and reminds his sons of their oath, urging them to avenge his death. Then his fiery spirit passes from him, and his body is turned to ashes. In Mithrim, the Noldor meet some of the Sindar, who tell them of King Thingol in Doriath, and who also send word to Thingol of the help that has come unexpectedly to Middle-earth. Now Morgoth sends an embassy to sue for peace, and Maedhros, eldest son and heir of Fëanor, goes with his brothers to meet Morgoth’s emissaries. But Maedhros is ambushed and brought as a prisoner to Angband, where he is hanged by his right wrist from a rock face high on the tower of Thangorodrim. By this time, Fingolfin and his host have arrived in Middle-earth, just as the sun first appears over Beleriand. At this, all of Morgoth’s servants cower in Angband, afraid of the light. Fingolfin’s people distrust Fëanor’s, and the two hosts of Noldor dwell apart. But Fingon, son of Fingolfin, resolves to end the rift among the Noldor. He goes in search of his old friend Maedhros, but though he searches through Angband and climbs all over Thangorodrim, still he cannot find any sign of Maedhros. Finally, in scorn of the orcs who still hide underground away from the light, he sings a song of the Noldor made long before in Valinor. Before the song is ended, he hears another voice echoing the song from above. Looking up, he sees Maedhros hanging high on the precipice above him. Fingon can see no way to save Maedhros, and Maedhros begs Fingon to kill him with an arrow to end his suffering. Sorrowing, Fingon agrees, but he prays to Manwë to show pity. At this, Thorondor, the lord of the great eagles, appears and lifts Fingon up, carrying him to Maedhros. He can find no way to free Maedhros’s wrist from the steel link that holds it, but Fingon cuts off Maedhros’s hand to free him, and the eagle delivers them to safety. Back among the Noldor, Maedhros denounces his father’s desertion of Fingolfin’s host and acknowledges Fingolfin as the rightful king of the

Noldor. King Thingol, meanwhile, will allow only the Noldor descended from Finarfin to visit him in Doriath, because Finarfin was married to his own niece, Eärwen, Olwë’s daughter. He tells Finarfin’s son Angrod that the Noldor are welcome to settle in Hithlum and Dorthonion and all the lands east of Doriath, but not in places where they will disturb his subjects. The sons of Fëanor (all but Maedhros) are displeased by this welcome, and some of the bitterness remains between the house of Fëanor and those of Fingolfin and Finarfin. The Noldor begin to settle in Beleriand. The people of Caranthir, son of Fëanor, encounter the dwarves as they move far to the east, and the two peoples learn much from one another, though there is distrust between them. After 20 years, Fingolfin holds a Feast of Reuniting, attended by his own people as well as the sons of Fëanor, sons of Finarfin, Ciran and his people from the Havens, many of the Sindar, and Green-elves from Ossiriand, though Thingol sends only two representatives from Doriath. Strong alliances are made at this feast, and peace lasts for many years. After another 30 years, Turgon, the son of Fingolfin, and his friend Finrod, the son of Finarfin, take a journey south along the River Sirion. As they sleep, they receive a vision from Ulmo, warning them that evil would soon rise again in Middle-earth. Finrod visits Thingol along with his sister, Galadriel, and admires the stronghold of Menegroth, wishing he could build a fortress of his own. Thingol tells him of a place on the River Narog, and here, with the help of the dwarves of the Blue Mountains, he builds the great fortress of Nargothrond. He also has the dwarves make the great golden necklace called Nauglamír, beset with numerous gems Finrod had brought out of Valinor, which was the most admired work created in the First Age of Middle-earth. Finrod makes his home in Nargothrond with his people, and he is called Felagund (“Hewer of Caves”). But Galadriel stays in Doriath, having fallen in love with Thingol’s kinsman Celeborn. Here she learns great wisdom from Melian. Meanwhile, Turgon, who could not forget the beauty of Tirion in Valinor, found the valley of Tumladen (with Ulmo’s help) and made plans to

360   Silmarillion, The build a new city there in the style of Tirion upon Túna. Now Morgoth tries again to catch the Noldor by surprise, and he sends out his hosts once more upon Fingolfin and Maedhros. But once again, the orcs are destroyed in what becomes known as Dagor Aglareb, the Glorious Battle. Now the Noldor set a strong watch on Morgoth’s fortress, establishing the Siege of Angband, which lasts for 400 years. Still, Morgoth sends out parties of his followers, who capture elves and extract information from them, and he thereby learns of all the dissension among the elves. After 100 years, he sends a small army that circles to the west but is destroyed by Fingon. Finally, Morgoth realizes that his orcs are no match for the Noldor, and he devises new terrors. He creates the first of the fire-breathing dragons, Glaurung, who comes out of Angband at night after another 100 years; however, being less than half-grown at that time, Glaurung is ultimately defeated by Fingon and his archers. There is peace again for 200 years more, during which the Sindar and the Noldor become a single people in many places. The Noldor remain the more powerful warriors and the greater sages, but the Sindar are the fairer singers and are one with the woodlands. In the next chapter (“Of Beleriand and Its Realms”), Tolkien interrupts the narrative to describe in some detail the geography of Beleriand, the western part of Middle-earth. He begins in the North, where Morgoth has established his realm and caused the Ered Engrin (“Iron Mountains”) to rise up to defend his fortress of Angband with its deep, subterranean dungeons. Above the gate leading under the mountains and into Angband, Morgoth raises up the giant towers of Thangorodrim, composed of the slag and refuse from his tunnels. West of the Iron Mountains is the cold realm of Hithlim, held by the chief Noldor Fingolfin (whose people live in Mithrim on the shores of the great lake) and his son Fingon (whose people live in Dor-lómin). Fingolfin’s younger son, Turgon, holds the land of Nevrast west of Hithrim, a land warmed by the sea. East of Hithlim, the highlands of Dorthonion look out over the fields of Ard-Galen to the north.

This sparsely populated area is controlled by Angrod and Aegnor, sons of Finarfin, who hold the lands as vassals of their older brother, Finrod. Finrod Felagund holds the largest realm in Beleriand. He controls the Pass of Sirion and builds the tower of Minas Tirith on the isle of Tol Sirion. This fortress he leaves in the control of his brother Orodreth after he builds the more powerful fortress of Nargothrond. Finrod controls all of the area west of the River Sirion, which is called the Realm of Nargothrond, save only for the Falas on the sea, which is held by Círdan the Shipwright and the Sindar. With Círdan’s aid, some of the Noldor of Nargothrond explore the Isle of Balar, which they seek to make into a last refuge against Morgoth’s forces, if it is needed. East of the Sirion, the Ered Gorgoroth (“Mountains of Terror”) separate Dorthonion in the North from Nan Dungortheb, where the hideous renegade Maia Ungoliant has polluted the land, and where her offspring, in the form of giant spiders, still weave their webs. The water of this land is poisonous and turns mad any who drink it. South of Nan Dungortheb lie the woods of Doriath, the hidden kingdom of Thingol and his Maia consort, Melian. Within Doriath are the forest of Neldoreth, the greater woods of Region, the Caves of Menegroth in the east, and a narrow woodland west of the Sirion called Nivrim or the West March. All these lands are defended by the Girdle of Melian, which prevents anyone from entering Doriath except by permission of King Thingol or Melian. East of Doriath and running north and south is the River Gelion. Between the Gelion and the Ered Luin (“Blue Mountains”) that form the eastern border of Beleriand are seven tributaries of the Gelion and a plain called Ossiriand (“Land of the Seven Rivers”). Here is where the Laiquendi (Green-elves) live. Finally, the lands to the east of Dorthonion, northeast of Doriath, and northwest of Ossiriand are the most vulnerable places in Beleriand, and these are fortified by the Noldor of Fëanor’s clan. To the north is the cold plain of Lothlann, whose southern border is a march guarded by Maedhros. South of the March of Maedhros is Himlad, an

Silmarillion, The   361 area is held by Celegorm and Curufin, younger sons of Fëanor. Fëanor’s second son, Maglor, defends a gap between the northern tributaries of the River Gelion, while another son of Fëanor, Caranthir, defends the land east of the Gelion and north of Ossiriand known as Thargelion, where the Noldor first met the dwarves. Fëanor’s people seldom come into the south of Beleriand, except for the young twins Amrod and Amras, who live there. Finrod Felagund was known to visit Ossiriand, where he befriended the Green-elves, but none of the Noldor have passed over the Blue Mountains to the region east of Beleriand. In chapter 15 (“Of the Noldor in Beleriand”), having taken part in the third battle with Morgoth, called the Dagor Aglareb (“Glorious Battle”), Turgon (second son of Fingolfin) begins to feel uneasy, and he goes back to the hidden valley of Tumladen that Ulmo had shown him, lying encircled by the Echoriath, a ring of mountains between the pass of Sirion and the high plain of Dorthonion. Turgon, who has it in mind to rebuild the city of Tirion that he had left in Aman, takes with him his most skilled artisans, and for 52 years they labor to build the great city that comes to be known as Gondolin. As Turgon prepares to settle in the hidden city, Ulmo reminds him that he still is under the Doom of Mandos and warns him that he may well face treachery from within his city some time in the future. He advises Turgon to leave armor and a sword in Nevrast, so that Ulmo can send a messenger, identified by this armor, to warn Turgon of coming trouble. Turgon then returns to Nevrast and leads his own people and others who wish to join him. They move into the hidden city, where they remain hidden for several centuries, protected by Ulmo from the River Sirion, away from the strife that will devastate Beleriand. Gondolin becomes as fair a city as Tirion, and fairer than anything else in the city is Turgon’s daughter Idril. Meanwhile, Galadriel is dwelling in Doriath, where she has a close relationship with Melian, but Melian senses that Galadriel is being secretive, since she will never speak about what occurred in Valinor after the darkening of the Two Trees. Melian is suspicious about the reason for the Noldors’ return to Middle-earth, and since they

have no communication from the Valar, she believes they may have been exiled from Aman. Finally, Galadriel reveals the story of the Silmarils and Morgoth’s murder of Finwë, but she will tell Melian nothing about the terrible oath taken by the sons of Fëanor, nor about the Noldors’ slaying of their Teleri kinsmen or the burning of the ships. When Melian tells Thingol what she has learned, Thingol is encouraged that he can now be certain that the Noldor would never slack in their enmity toward Morgoth, but Melian warns him that there is a shadow over the sons of Fëanor, and that while they may be powerful defenders of Beleriand, they may be less than trustworthy. She foresees, as well, that the Silmarils will never be recovered through the power of the Noldor. But eventually the details of the flight of the Noldor from Valinor are revealed, chiefly through rumors that Morgoth begins to circulate among the Sindar. When these details become known to Círdan the Shipwright, he carries the story to Thingol, arriving by chance during a visit of Galadriel’s brothers Finrod and Angrod. An angry Thingol confronts these children of Finarfin, charging them with entering Doriath with the blood of their kinsmen on their hands. While Finrod refuses to implicate any of the other leaders of the Noldor, Angrod bristles at the accusation and denies the guilt of Finarfin’s people in the treachery of Fëanor’s sons, and he reveals to Thingol the entire story of the Noldor’s exodus from Aman. The irate Thingol expels Finrod and Angrod but agrees not to bar the children of Finarfin or Fingolfin from entering Doriath. He does, however, decree that none of his subjects will use the language of the Noldor in his realm. The Sindar thereafter refuse to speak Quenya, which becomes a language spoken only by the Noldor princes among themselves. As a result, Quenya becomes the language of ancient lore, but Sindarin becomes the everyday language of the Eldar in Middle-earth. Sometime later, when Galadriel is visiting Finrod in his fortress of Nargothrond to attend a banquet to which all the children of Finarfin are invited, she asks her brother why he has no wife. Finrod tells her that no son of his will inherit his kingdom—that is, he has apparently decided never

362   Silmarillion, The to marry. The narrator then reveals that in Valinor Finrod had been deeply in love with Amarië, one of the Vanyar, but like the rest of her kin, she had refused to leave Valinor with the Noldor. In chapter 16 (“Of Maeglin”), we learn that among those of Fingolfin’s kindred who have joined Turgon in the hidden city of Gondolin is his sister, Aredhel. But Aredhel soon grows restless at being confined to that hidden city and tells Turgon she wishes to leave. Although Turgon is reluctant to have anyone who knows the secret location of Gondolin out in the larger world, he finally grants Aredhel permission to visit their brother Fingon in Hithlum. But when Aredhel leaves Gondolin with a small escort, she directs them to the homes of Fëanor’s sons. Thingol refuses them leave to travel through Doriath, and so Aredhel and her escort take the pass between Doriath and the Ered Gorgoroth (the “Mountains of Terror”), where they become lost and are separated. The escort searches for Aredhel for some time in vain, and they finally decide to return to Gondolin with the news that Aredhel may well have been captured or killed. Aredhel, however, arrives on her own in Himlad, where she hopes to find Celegorm and Curufin, two of the younger sons of Fëanor. They are away from home, but their people welcome Aredhel, and she agrees to stay until they return. She grows restless, however, as time passes and begins to wander in the areas around Himlad, until one day she becomes lost in the dark forest of Nan Elmoth. The Dark Elf named Eöl is the only resident of Nan Elmoth. He has left Doriath, preferring the solitude and darkness of this forest, and distrusts the Noldor, whom he blames for stirring Morgoth’s wrath against Middle-earth. Eöl has befriended the dwarves, however, and from them he has learned much concerning the skills of metal working, inventing for himself a supple but impenetrable metal that he has named galvorn. Eöl enchants Aredhel so that she cannot find her way out of the wood, and he draws her to his home, where he welcomes her and is able to win her assent to be his wife. He charges her not to seek any of the Noldor and to eschew the daylight. For a time, Aredhel seems content to stay with the Dark Elf, and they have a son together. Eöl will not name

Illustration of the Dark Elf Eöl enchanting Aredhel in The Silmarillion  (Illustration by Tom Loback; used under a Creative Commons license)

the child for 12 years, but Aredhel calls him Lomin (“Child of the Twilight”). Finally, Eöl names the boy Maeglin (“Sharp Glance”), because he seems to be able to see within people and know their thoughts. The boy is strong and speaks seldom. He resembles the Noldor in his looks, but in temperament he is more like his father, and with Eöl, he visits the dwarves and learns much from them about metals and mining. Still, Maeglin develops a closer relationship with his mother, and he is fascinated by the stories she tells of her people. In particular, he focuses on her tales of Turgon and is interested to hear that Turgon’s only heir is his daughter Idril. But Maeglin’s father forbids him to seek the company of any of his Noldor kin, and this estranges him from Eöl. Finally, one day in midsummer, when Eöl is away feasting with the dwarves, Maeglin convinces his mother, who now longs to be back with her people,

Silmarillion, The   363 to take him with her to Gondolin. He and Aredhel leave Nan Elmoth, telling the servants that they are going to seek the sons of Fëanor—but they turn instead toward Gondolin. When Eöl returns to find his wife and son gone, he pursues them among Fëanor’s kin, but Curufin tells him to go back to Nan Elmoth, chastising Eöl for marrying Aredhel without her family’s blessing. The angry Eöl, now convinced that Aredhel is returning to Gondolin, pursues his wife and son in that direction, tracking them even to the gates of Turgon’s Hidden Kingdom. But Turgon welcomes Aredhel and Maeglin to Gondolin, and is so delighted with his nephew Maeglin that he confers on him the city’s highest honors. Maeglin is awed by the beauties of Gondolin but is most impressed by Turgon’s daughter, his cousin Idril. In the meantime, however, Eöl has found his way to the gates of Gondolin, where he has been captured by the guards. When he tells them he is the husband of Aredhel, they send word to Turgon. Aredhel admits that this is true and asks that Eöl be brought before Turgon for judgment. Like his son, Eöl is amazed by Gondolin but unlike Maeglin, he only hates the Noldor more. Turgon welcomes him hospitably but informs Eöl that now that he has been permitted to enter Gondolin, he must stay, since none are allowed to leave the Hidden Kingdom. A defiant Eöl refuses to acknowledge Turgon’s authority and declares that Aredhel can stay if she wants to, but he will take Maeglin with him and leave. Maeglin, however, makes no answer to his father. Turgon insists that Eöl must choose to live or die in Gondolin, as Maeglin must. In a rage, Eöl declares that he chooses death for both himself and his son, and he suddenly produces a hidden dart that he casts at Maeglin. With a mother’s protective instinct, Aredhel springs in front of her son and is struck herself by the dart. Eöl is taken away in bonds, and although both Aredhel and Idril try to intercede, when Aredhel dies during the night from the poisoned dart, Turgon condemns Eöl to death. As Turgon’s men prepare to cast Eöl from the walls of Gondolin, Maeglin says nothing, and Eöl dies cursing his son, predicting that he will achieve nothing in Gondolin but a death like his

father’s. Idril, witnessing Maeglin’s indifference to his father, determines never to trust him again. As time goes on, Maeglin becomes second only to Turgon in power and influence in Gondolin. He helps Turgon’s people mine the hills surrounding Gondolin and helps to make strong arms for them. He is a bold warrior and also a wise counselor, though he never reveals his own heart. He loves Idril, but she distrusts him and will have nothing to do with him, and as the years pass Maeglin becomes more and more interested in his own power. Chapters 17–18: The Coming of Men and the Death of Fingolfin  Finrod Felagund, son of Finarfin and lord of Nargothrond, is the first of the Eldar to encounter men in Beleriand. In chapter 17 (“Of the Coming of Men into the West”), after hunting with Maedhros and Maglor, sons of Fëanor, Finrod travels alone into Ossiriand (land of the Green-elves), where one night he sees a fire and hears singing. Unobserved, he watches a group of men (people under Bëor the Old’s leadership) for some time, until they fall asleep around the fire. Drawn to these “second-born” Children of Ilúvatar, Finrod enters their camp, takes up their harp, and sings a song about the making of Arda and about the Valar in Aman. The men awake, each understanding in his own mind the strange language of Finrod’s song, and they grow in wisdom through Finrod’s lore, as he stays with them for some time and soon learns their language. From this time on, the men of Bëor’s line are ever loyal to Finarfin’s folk. In his talks with Bëor, Finrod learns little of the origins of men. They had been born and lived in Eriador, east of the Blue Mountains, and were now journeying westward to what they hoped was a better life. Bëor alludes to dark times in the East, but he can be no more specific than that. In fact, Morgoth had been aware of the awakening of men in that far-off land and had been among them, trying with his lies to prevent their growth and their alliance with the Eldar, but because of his wars with the Eldar in the North, he had been forced to abandon his plans in Eriador. Finrod does learn that other groups of men are also making their way into Beleriand.

364   Silmarillion, The The Green-elves appeal to Finrod to use his influence on the men of Bëor to urge them to leave Ossiriand, since they are disturbed by the way men cut down trees and hunt the beasts of the wood. Accordingly, Bëor’s people move into the land of Estolad, east of Doriath. But Bëor himself begs leave to return with Finrod to Nargothrond, where he becomes the elf lord’s vassal and lives out the remainder of his life in his service. However, other groups of men soon arrive in Beleriand. The Haladin move into Thargelion, the land between the Blue Mountains and the River Gelion. The third host of men, the tall warriors of Marach, settle just south of Bëor’s people in Estolad and form a close bond with them. Over the years, many elves come to visit these “second born,” to whom they give the name Edain—a term that eventually is used only for the three branches of men who are known as “Elf-friends.” Fingolfin, high king of the Noldor, welcomes men into Beleriand and grants them permission to settle in his realm. But Thingol, king of Doriath, is troubled, having had portentous dreams about the coming of men, and he decrees that no men be allowed to enter Doriath. In Doriath itself, Melian reveals to Galadriel that one of the men of Bëor’s house would enter Doriath, and the songs that his deeds would inspire would endure beyond the changing of Middle-earth. Morgoth’s earlier infiltration of the ranks of men does come to fruition in some groups, however. Bereg from Bëor’s people and Amlach from Marach’s speak openly of the folly of allying themselves with the elves against Morgoth. Someone believed to be Amlach asserts that the Eldar wished to enslave men with their stories of the Valar and an evil power in the North. Many listen to him and determine to sever their relationship with the Eldar. When Amlach himself hears these things, he is convinced that Morgoth is indeed working among men and pledges himself to serve Maedhros in war against Morgoth. Other people of both Bëor and Amlach decide to return to Eriador over the Blue Mountains. The Haladin, however, remain in Thargelion, where they live in separate households and have no central authority. Morgoth sends an army of

orcs to attack them, and because of their lifestyle, they find it difficult to unite in their own defense. Haldad gathers brave men to himself and builds a stockade at the place where the rivers Gelion and Ascar merge, and he gathers most of the women and children there, but the stockade remains under siege. Haldad and his son are killed in battle with orcs, but Fëanor’s son Caranthir arrives with his host of Noldor and drives off the orcs, lifting the siege. Seeing the courage of the Haladin, he then offers them protection if they will settle on lands in his realm. But Haldad’s daughter Haleth, now leader of her people, turns the offer down, preferring to remain independent. She leads her people on a hazardous trek north of Doriath and settles in the Forest of Brethil, land belonging to Fingon but not within the Girdle of Melian. Thingol is not pleased with this, but Finrod is able to persuade him to allow the Haladin to settle there on condition that they guard the Crossings of the Teiglin against any of Morgoth’s followers. While some groups of men live among the elves, and all men eventually adopt the Sindarin language, for the most part the Eldar see the importance of letting men live on their own lands with their own rulers. Thus, Fingolfin gives Hador the Goldenhaired sovereignty over Dor-lómin, where he becomes the greatest of the Edain. Hador’s people are tall, blond, and blue-eyed, and from his house would come Túrin the dragon slayer. But Túrin was dark with grey eyes like his mother’s people, the house of Bëor. Boromir, grandson of Bëor, is established as lord of Dorthonion, and from this house would come Beren, who would marry the Eldar Lúthien, Thingol’s daughter, and sire the line of the kings of Númenor. At this time, Morgoth finds it difficult to further any of his plans, since the alliance of men and elves is too strong for him, and men in general are wiser and live longer once they arrive in Beleriand. Bëor the Old finally dies at the age of 93, having served Finrod for 44 years. But the Eldar are nonplussed when confronted with the mortality of men. They are unfamiliar with the concept, with the exception of death in war, and they cannot see what happens to men beyond this life.

Silmarillion, The   365 Thus, the three great houses of men—the Edain, or elf friends—were the house of Bëor, the house of Hadan, and the people of Haleth. Their friendship with the Eldar benefited them by increasing their wisdom and their life span, and they are a far greater race than those men who stayed east of the Blue Mountains and never interacted with those who had seen the lights of Valinor. At the opening of chapter 18 (“Of the Ruin of Beleriand and the Fall of Fingolfin”), now that the Eldar have been reinforced by the coming of men, Fingolfin believes that it may be time for a full-scale attack on Angband. The other Noldor have become complacent, however, through four centuries of peace, and only Aegnor and Angrod, sons of Finarfin, support him. He gives up plans to attack. But Morgoth has not been idle, and in the 455th year of the Noldor’s coming to Middle-earth, he unleashes the Fourth Battle, or the Battle of the Sudden Flame. It begins when a surge of flaming lava and toxic fumes issues from Angband, killing a host of besieging Noldor, inundating Ard-galen, and changing that plain into the wasteland of Anfouglith, the “Gasping Dust.” The bioterrorism is followed by a host of orcs led by the dragon Glaurung and a contingent of Balrogs. They sweep the Noldor and their allies out of the North and back into their fortified kingdoms in Doriath, Nargothrond, and Ossiriand, and some even flee back across the Blue Mountains to the east. Both Angrod and Aegnor fall in battle, and Finrod is nearly killed in the pass of Sirion, but Barahir of Bëor’s kindred saves him. A grateful Finrod swears an oath of loyalty and perpetual aid to Bëor’s house, sealing it with the gift of a ring to Barahir. However, Barahir’s brother Bregolad is killed, leaving Barahir lord of Bëor’s people. He returns with his troops to Dorthonion, only to find that his people have been dispersed. Hador the Goldenhaired of Dor-lómin, son of Marach, is slain commanding Fingolfin’s rear guard (leaving his son Galdor the Tall lord of his people), though Fingolfin remains in command of Hithlum in the Northwest, and Maedhros (joined by Maglor) still holds Himring in the East. But Fëanor’s other sons, Celegorm and Curufin, cannot hold Himlad in the Northeast, and they flee to Nargothrond with Finrod Felagund.

In despair over the loss of so many of his kinsmen, and in the belief that the Noldor have lost all, Fingolfin rides alone to the Gates of Angband and, in his rage, challenges Morgoth to single combat, calling him a coward for staying behind his gates. Although he alone of all the Valar knows fear, Morgoth arms himself and passes through his gates. Fingolfin has no real chance against Morgoth’s might but wounds him seven times and ultimately severs his foot before Morgoth crushes him with the great mace Grond. Morgoth intends to throw Fingolfin’s body to the wolves, but Thorondor, king of the eagles, swoops down, claws Morgoth’s face, and carries Fingolfin’s body to a mountain in Gondolin, where Turgon erects a memorial to his father. When Fingon succeeds his father as high king of the Noldor, he sends his son Gil-galad to the Grey Havens, presumably to place him out of harm’s way. As for Morgoth, he never completely recovers from the battle with Fingolfin, nor from the scar given him by Thorondor. In Dorthonion, after their women and children have fled into Brethil, Barahir and his son Beren lead their followers in battle against Morgoth’s troops until there are only 12 men left, and they are forced to hide in the moors. Meanwhile, on the River Sirion, the stronghold of Minas Tirith is captured by Sauron, and Orodreth is forced to flee for refuge with his brother Finrod in Nargothrond. During this time, Morgoth’s servants move throughout Beleriand, spreading misinformation among elves and men. In addition to the Edain, darker groups of “swarthy” men begin moving into Beleriand as well, and some of these Morgoth is able to enlist in his own service. Maedhros, however, allies himself with Ulfang and Bór, two of the leaders of the newcomers. At the same time, the Haladin are defending Brethil, the gateway to Nargothrond, and with the aid of the Sindar of Doriath, led by Beleg Strongbow, they destroy an orc host making its way south. The two young sons of Galdor, Húrin and Huor, fight in the battle and are nearly killed, but Ulmo protects them. They become lost in the mist and are rescued by Thorondor the great eagle, who carries them high in the air to Gondolin. They are welcomed and cared for by Turgon and his

366   Silmarillion, The people, though Maeglin warns them that the law requires them to stay in Gondolin forever. Turgon, however, ultimately consents to the boys’ desire to return home, since they arrived from on high and did not know the way into the fortified city. After securing an oath from them to keep Gondolin’s secret, he allows Huor and Húrin to return home after a year in the same way they arrived—borne by the great eagle. Once returned to Brethil, the boys will not say where they have been, though some of their people are able to guess, and word of those suspicions gets back to Morgoth himself. In Gondolin, Turgon has now learned that the siege of Angband has broken. He will not risk his own troops yet, though he does send ships to the West in order to seek Valinor and plead with the Valar for forgiveness for the Noldor and help against Morgoth. But these attempts prove fruitless, and few sailors return. Meanwhile, Morgoth fears the strength of Nargothrond and Gondolin, particularly since he does not know their locations. Nevertheless, he sends an orc army into Hithlum seven years after the Fourth Battle. They succeed in killing Galdor and are about to defeat Fingon’s army, until, sailing up the Firth of Drengist, the ships of Círdan arrive at the last moment to drive the orcs off, and the Noldor pursue them into the Iron Mountains. Galdor’s death leaves Húrin as leader of the House of Hador in Dor-lómin. He marries Morwen of the House of Bëor, who had fled from the fighting in Dorthonion with the other women of her house. By this time, all of the 12 remaining followers of Barahir in Dorthonion have been killed except for the young Beren alone, who has been able to escape and make his way into Doriath, the first of the Edain to be allowed into that protected realm. Chapter 19: “Of Beren and Lúthien”  Barahir and his 12 companions of the House of Bëor manage to remain hidden from Morgoth’s vengeance near the lake called Tarn Aeluin in Dorthonion, until one of their number, Gorlim, slips away to return to his home to find whether his wife, Eilinel, is still alive. Gorlim is captured by Morgoth’s lieutenant, Sauron, and tortured for information about Barahir’s whereabouts. But Gorlim refuses to talk

until Sauron promises to reunite him with Eilinel in exchange for Barahir’s location. Gorlim reveals Barahir’s hiding place, and Sauron reveals that Eilinel is dead, ultimately killing Gorlim to keep his word and reunite the couple. Sauron sends his troops to slaughter Barahir and his men. Barahir’s son Beren is away from the camp at the time, but he is warned of his father’s peril by the ghost of Gorlim. Beren arrives too late to warn Barahir, but he follows the orcs, and when he sees the orc captain holding aloft as a trophy his father’s hand, which still bears the ring of Finrod, Beren rushes in, kills the captain, and escapes with his father’s hand before the orcs are able to react. Beren wanders in Dorthonion for four years alone, until the evil becomes so widespread that he escapes through the Ered Gorgoroth (Mountains of Terror) and is able to work his way through the Girdle of Melian into Doriath itself. Here, under the moon, he comes upon Thingol’s daughter Lúthien dancing under the trees. Enamored, he pursues her, but she disappears. Calling after her by the name of Tinúviel (“Nightingale”), he follows after her until her song brings the spring into Doriath. Finally, she stops to meet him, and at once she loves him—an act that entwines her in his mortal fate. Lúthien returns often to be with Beren through the spring and summer, until the minstrel Daeron, jealous of Lúthien’s love for Beren, betrays their secret to Thingol. An angry Thingol confronts his daughter about her meetings with Beren, but she reveals nothing. He sends a party after Beren, but Lúthien brings him to her father first. Beren reveals his love for Lúthien, which Thingol sees as a crime deserving death. Even when Beren shows Thingol Finrod’s ring, the king is unmoved. In exchange for his daughter, he says he will accept only a Silmaril from the iron crown of Morgoth. If Beren can bring him that, Thingol says, then he can have Lúthien if she assents. Though Thingol believes he has solved the problem by setting Beren an impossible task, Melian foresees dire consequences. Lúthien will sing no more in Doriath, and Thingol’s desire for the Silmaril has drawn Doriath into the curse of the Noldor. Beren leaves on his impossible quest and stops first in Nargothrond to visit Finrod. Showing his

Silmarillion, The   367 father’s ring, he calls on Finrod to make good his pledge to Barahir. Finrod agrees to accompany Beren, though only 10 of his followers opt to come along with him. He leaves his throne to his brother Orodreth in his absence. But Fëanor’s sons Celegorm and Curufin still reside in Nargothrond, and their oath urges them to resent anyone else’s interest in the Silmarils, which they claim as their own. The curse of Mandos holds them in its power, and they begin to plan to usurp the throne of Nargothrond while Finrod embarks on what they see as his suicide mission. As Beren and Finrod make their way north with their 10 companions, they do battle with a group of orcs and disguise themselves in the orcs’ gear and weaponry, also taking on the orcs’ semblance through Finrod’s magic. But Sauron is suspicious of them and brings them before him, whereupon he and Finrod engage in a contest of songs of power. When Sauron alludes to the Noldor’s kinslaying at Alqualondë, Finrod’s disguise is penetrated, and Sauron imprisons them all. He is not able to learn Finrod’s name, however, and in the dark pit of their imprisonment, one after another of their companions is devoured by werewolves. In Doriath, Lúthien senses Beren’s danger, and her fears are confirmed by her mother, Melian. She intends to go to Beren’s aid and asks Daeron for help, but the minstrel betrays her to Thingol once again, and to prevent her going into danger, the king imprisons Lúthien in a high tower. Undeterred, Lúthien is able to use her arts to grow her hair to such a length that she can weave from it a long rope as well as an enchanted, sleep-inducing cloak, and with these, she is able to escape from the tower and from Doriath. Meanwhile, Celegorm and Curufin have been hunting Sauron’s werewolves with the help of the great hound of the Valinor, Huan—one of Oromë’s hunting dogs that he had given to Celegorm. According to prophecy, Huan was destined to die in Middle-earth, fighting the greatest of all wolves. Huan discovers Lúthien and brings her to his master, and Celegorm is smitten with her. Hiding his prior knowledge of Beren’s quest, he offers to help her if she returns with him to Nargothrond. But Celegorm and Curufin betray Lúthien, steal her

cloak, and imprison her, sending Thingol a message that Celegorm intends to marry Lúthien. Since he also plans to usurp the throne of Nargothrond, this connection with Doriath would make Celegorm the most powerful of all the Eldar. Huan, however, has developed affection for Lúthien and helps her to escape. The hound steals back her cloak and allows Lúthien to ride him like a pony all the way to the realms of the North. Meanwhile, Sauron has killed all of his prisoners but Finrod and Beren, and having concluded that Finrod is a high prince of the Noldor, he resolves to destroy him last. Sauron sends a werewolf to devour Beren, but Finrod, determined to make good his pledge to aid Barahir’s family, breaks his bonds and struggles with the werewolf. He kills the monster with his bare hands and thereby saves Beren, but he is mortally wounded in the process and dies in the pit. When Lúthien arrives at Sauron’s tower of Tolin-Gaurhoth, she sings a song that penetrates the walls of the prison, and Beren answers, singing of the Seven Stars that signify the fall of Morgoth. Hearing the song, Sauron sends werewolves to attack Lúthien, but Huan defeats them all. When Draugluin, lord of the werewolves of Angband, is defeated, he crawls back to Sauron before he dies, Conveying the news that Huan is outside. Sauron disguises himself as a wolf and goes to fight Huan, and while that battle rages, Lúthien takes control of Sauron’s stronghold, releasing all his captives. Beren remains in his pit, mourning Finrod’s death, and here Lúthien finds him. The captives released by Lúthien make their way back to Nargothrond, where, when the treachery of Celegorm and Curufin is revealed, the Noldor unite behind the House of Finarfin and acclaim Orodreth as their king. Celegorm and Curufin are exiled, and only the loyal hound Huan is willing to leave Nargothrond with them. The brothers decide to take refuge with Maedhros in Himring, but en route they encounter Beren and Lúthien. Curufin attempts once more to seize Lúthien, but Beren leaps onto Curufin’s galloping horse and throttles him. Celegorm attempts to ride Beren down with a spear, but Huan, choosing loyalty to Lúthien over his master, protects Beren. At Lúthien’s urging,

368   Silmarillion, The Beren spares Curufin’s life but strips him of his horse and weapons, including the knife Angrist, which can cleave iron. As Curufin rides off on Celegorm’s horse, he fires two arrows. Huan catches one of these, but the other wounds Beren. Lúthien returns with him to Doriath and heals his wound. The healed Beren then steals away one evening, leaving Lúthien in the protection of Huan, in order to complete his quest for the Silmaril. Beren pauses on his trek north, pondering the distant peaks of Thangorodrim, and sings a song of parting to Lúthien. To his surprise, she hears him and comes to him disguised as a bat riding the back of Huan, who is disguised as the great werewolf Draugluin. Beren cannot keep Lúthien from making this journey with him, and Huan, granted the gift of speech, asserts that Lúthien’s love has now intertwined her fate with his. But Huan says he can go no farther with them. They arrive at Angband, where Lúthien is able to lull to sleep the great wolf Carcharoth, who guards the gates. When she comes before Morgoth, he pierces her disguise, and boldly she names herself and offers to sing for him. Enamored of her beauty, Morgoth consents, but Lúthien’s song puts all his servants to sleep, and she follows this by casting her cloak over Morgoth’s eyes, causing him to nod in slumber as well. At this, his crown falls from his head. Now Beren takes the knife Angrist and cuts one of the Silmarils from Morgoth’s crown. The Silmaril does not burn his hand, and he is filled with the desire to take all three of the jewels from the crown. But Morgoth is struck in the face by a piece of the crown and he and his servants begin to wake. Beren and Lúthien now dash for the gates, but Carcharoth has awakened and attacks them. Beren holds out the Silmaril to ward him off, but Carcharoth bites off Beren’s hand at the wrist, swallowing both it and the Silmaril. The great jewel burns his insides (in accordance with the Valar’s curse on the jewels) and, maddened by the pain, Carcharoth begins a rampaging charge across the land, destroying anything in his path. With the last of her strength, Lúthien revives the swooning Beren, but the servants of Morgoth have now awakened and are coming for the lovers. At that point, three great eagles, led by their

chief Thorondor, swoop down to rescue the lovers, taking them back to the borders of Doriath. Here Lúthien is able to heal the gravely wounded Beren, and Beren convinces her to return to Doriath, which has grown dark and silent in her absence— particularly since Daeron the minstrel has also left Doriath. Thingol has sent word to Maedhros, looking for his daughter, but his messengers have been killed by the berserk Carcharoth. Now Lúthien and Beren come before Thingol, and Beren, displaying his injured arm, asserts that there is indeed a Silmaril in his hand. Thingol, having heard their epic tale, finally grants Beren permission to marry Lúthien. Doriath remains in danger from the rampaging Carcharoth, however, and now Thingol and Beren, with Mablung and Beleg, begin to hunt the wolf with the help of Huan. When they track down the mad wolf, Beren is severely wounded, but Huan attacks the wolf and fights bravely until he has killed Carcharoth. However, Carcharoth’s poisoned fangs have also killed Huan, and the faithful hound dies beside Beren, speaking one last time in words of farewell. Mablung cuts open the wolf and retrieves Beren’s uncorrupted hand, which still holds the Silmaril. Returning to Thingol’s hidden halls of Menegroth, Beren looks his last upon his beloved Lúthien. She begs Beren to wait for her in the halls of Mandos. Her grieving spirit leaves her own body and travels to Mandos, where her song, the most sorrowful ever heard in Arda, so moves him that he allows her to see again the spirit of Beren. Lacking the power to change the fates of men, Mandos seeks the counsel of Manwë, who can most clearly read the will of Ilúvatar. The Valar give Lúthien two choices: She may live in Valinor—where Beren cannot come—and forget the griefs of her life, or she may return with Beren to Middle-earth and take upon her the mortality of men, there to suffer a second death with Beren. She chooses the latter of these, and her choice joins the two kindreds of the Children of Ilúvatar. Chapters 20–21: Túrin Turambar  In chapter 20 (“Of the Fifth Battle: Nirnaeth Arnoediad”), Beren and Lúthien return to Middle-earth, where

Silmarillion, The   369 they meet with a sorrowful Melian, grieving the fate of her now mortal daughter. The lovers leave Doriath to dwell in Ossiriand, where they have a son, Dior. Their final fate is unknown. Maedhros, however, is heartened by the tale of their success, as it proves that Morgoth is not invincible. He forges the Union of Maedhros, trying to unite all men and elves in Beleriand for an assault on Morgoth. But the Oath of Fëanor and the arrogant behavior of Celegorm and Curufin mean that neither Orodreth nor Thingol assents to be part of the alliance. Some of the people of Nargothrond and Doriath do take part, but they insist on marching under the banner of Fingon. In addition, the men of Brethil—led by Haldir, lord of Haleth’s people—and the men of the House of Hador—led by the brothers Huor and Húrin take part—as well as the Easterlings under Ulfang and Bór, have allied with Maedhros, as have the dwarves of Belegost. The alliance first retakes the highlands of Dorthonion from Morgoth’s forces. Maedhros intends to march toward Angband through Anfauglith, the land called the Gasping Dust, hoping to draw out Morgoth’s army. At that point, a beacon will be lighted in Dorthonion, upon which Fingon’s army would sweep in from the west. Through his spies, however, Morgoth is aware of the planned assault. Fingon sees black smoke rising from Angband and knows Morgoth is preparing for war. He is gladdened, however, by the surprise arrival of his brother, Turgon, with 10,000 troops from Gondolin. Meanwhile, Maedhros has delayed his advance, having been convinced by the Easterling traitor Uldor that Morgoth’s army is approaching Himring. Meanwhile, a camouflaged army of orcs is moving toward Hithlum, but Húrin convinces the elves not to attack the orcs, saying that Morgoth’s intent is always different than it seems. Fingon will not move his army out until the signal beacon is lit, and Maedhros will not light the beacon. But the orc captain has been told to draw out Fingon’s army at any cost. Accordingly, he produces the prisoner Gelmir, a Noldor of Nargothrond, and proceeds to cut off the elf’s hands, feet, and finally his head, in sight of Fingon’s army. Gelmir’s brother, Gwindor, is among Fingon’s forces and, mad with rage, rides to assault the orcs, inspiring a large contingent of

the Noldor to follow him. Fingon’s entire army joins in the chase, and they pursue the orcs all the way to Angband. Here, however, all the elves of Nargothrond are killed except for Gwindor himself, who is taken prisoner. Now the men of Brethil are slaughtered as Fingon’s army is forced into retreat, but at that point Turgon’s host enters the fray from the south, and Maedhros finally arrives from the east. At this point, with all the host of Beleriand in his grasp, Morgoth sends the full strength of his army out of Angband, led by a host of Balrogs and dragons. Still, the Noldor may have been able to stand if it were not for the treachery of Uldor, whose men now attack Maedhros from behind. Maedhros and what remains of his forces now escape into the East. The dwarves of Belegost, who are better able to withstand the dragons’ fire than the elves, continue to fight until their lord Azaghâl actually wounds Glaurung’s belly and forces the dragons to retreat. But Azaghâl dies of his wounds, and the dwarves bear his body away, leaving the battle in their mourning, with no intention of returning. Now outnumbered three to one, Fingon’s army faces defeat. Fingon’s guard is killed, but he continues to fight until he comes to face Gothmog, the lord of the Balrogs, and is slain. On the urging of Húrin, Turgon returns to Gondolin with the remainder of his host, so that the hope of the Edain and the Eldar does not disappear completely. Huor prophesies that from Turgon’s line and his own, a new hope would arise—a prophecy overheard by Maeglin. Turgon retreats, but the men of Dor-lómin continue to fight, defending their own homes, until Huor and his men are killed, and a madly fighting Húrin is finally taken prisoner. The battle becomes known among men and elves as the Nirnaeth Arnoediad, or the Battle of Unnumbered Tears. When it has finished, Fingon’s kingdom is destroyed, along with all the House of Hador. Fëanor’s sons are defeated, and the remnant of the Noldor are scattered through Ossiriand. Trust between elves and men is shattered because of Uldor’s treachery. The Easterlings who had helped Morgoth are confined to Hithlum in the Northwest, where they abuse the remnant of the House of Hador who still remain in Dor-lómin. Beleriand

370   Silmarillion, The is now overrun by orcs, wolves, and other creatures of Morgoth, so that many of the Eldar still alive seek refuge with Círdan’s people in the Havens, but these, too, are soon attacked by Morgoth’s forces, and the elves there are forced to escape in ships, fleeing to the Isle of Balar. Among these is Gilgalad, son and heir of Fingon. At Turgon’s urging, Círdan sends seven ships to the West to seek the aid of the Valar. Only one of the elves returns, however. His name is Voronwë, and he is saved from the wrath of Ossë only by Ulmo himself. Among the Eldar, only Nargothrond, Doriath, and Gondolin remain as strongholds against the power of Morgoth. Of these, Morgoth fears Gondolin the most, for he senses that his destruction will come from Turgon. He tortures Húrin mercilessly to learn the location of Gondolin, but Húrin only mocks Morgoth. At this, Morgoth curses Húrin and all his family, and he devises a last torment: He binds Húrin to a chair upon the tower of Thangorodrim and causes him to see through Morgoth’s own eyes, to watch helplessly Morgoth’s curse unfold among his wife and children. Ultimately, Morgoth causes the dead from the fifth battle to be piled together upon Anfauglith, forming a great hill that is finally covered with grass—the only place grass will grow on that barren waste. The elves call the hill Haudh-en-Ndengin (“Hill of the Slain”) or Haudh-en-Nirnaeth (“Hill of Tears”), and none of Morgoth’s creatures ever dares to tread upon it. The 21st chapter (“Of Túrin Turambar”) begins with some genealogy: Of the sons of Galdor, Huor married Rían, who gave birth to a son, Tuor. Tuor was fostered by the elves of Mithrim, after the mourning Rían died upon the Hill of the Slain, where Huor was buried. Húrin married Morwen, who gave birth to Túrin and his sister Lalaith, who died at the age of three. Another daughter was born to Morwen after Húrin’s capture in the Battle of Unnumbered Tears. When Morgoth’s Easterlings moved into Dor-lómin, Morwen sent the boy Túrin to Doriath, claiming kinship with Beren and asking Thingol to foster the child. Morwen gives birth to a girl, Nienor, and as the situation worsens in Dor-lómin, Thingol sends messengers to bring Morwen and her daughter

safely to Doriath. She refuses to leave but sends the dragon-helm of Hador to Túrin as his heirloom. After nine years, all communication with Dorlómin ceases, and Túrin, now a man, joins Beleg Strongbow in defending the marches of Doriath against the orcs of Morgoth. When, after three years, he returns to Doriath from the marches and is seated at dinner in Thingol’s hall at Menegroth, the elf Saeros mocks his unkempt appearance and suggests that the women of Túrin’s clan must run naked like beasts in the woods. Túrin throws a drinking vessel at Saeros, and the next day the elf accosts him in the forest, but Túrin overpowers him and forces him to run naked until, in fear, Saeros leaps off a cliff and is killed. When this is discovered, the elf Mablung tries to persuade Túrin to return to Menegroth for Thingol’s judgment, but Túrin refuses, leaving Doriath altogether and joining a band of outlaws living in the woods west of the River Sirion. Meanwhile, Thingol pardons Túrin in absentia and gives Beleg leave to search for him. Beleg tracks Túrin to his outlaw band and is captured and tortured by the gang before Túrin forces them to release him. After this, Túrin vows never again to harm any but those who serve Morgoth. He refuses Beleg’s offer of pardon from Thingol, and Beleg returns to Doriath. Here he is granted permission to join Túrin, and the king presents him with the sword Anglachel—a sword forged by the Dark Elf Eöl, who filled it with his malice. Beleg accepts the sword, though Melian foresees the sword’s betrayal of its master. One day, Túrin’s band encounters three petty dwarves, one of whom they capture and compel to show them his hidden stronghold near the summit of the great hill of Amon Rûdh. When they arrive, the dwarf Mîm discovers that one of his sons has been killed by an arrow from Túrin’s band. When Túrin offers to pay Mîm a blood price in gold for his son, the dwarf sees that Túrin understands his ways and allows the company to use his halls as their hideout. As winter settles in, Beleg finds Túrin’s company and joins them. Mîm hates Beleg, however, because of an ancestral hatred of elves, who had once hunted Mîm’s people. With Beleg and his band, Túrin (now wearing the Helm of Hador) engages in a kind of guerrilla

Silmarillion, The   371 war against Morgoth’s forces, who have invaded the area. Morgoth hears news that the Helm of Hador has appeared and knows it must be the son of Húrin who wears it. He sends troops to the area of Amon Rûdh, and they capture Mîm, who, under threats, leads them to Túrin’s fortress. Most of the band is killed, and Beleg is severely wounded, while Túrin is taken captive. Beleg recovers enough to track the orcs who have taken Túrin. As he pursues them, he encounters an aged elf named Gwindor—Gelmir’s brother, whom Morgoth had captured in the Battle of Unnumbered Tears but had now escaped. Gwindor has seen the orcs pass by, and Beleg and Gwindor both pursue Túrin. They find him unconscious and are able to drag him away from the orc camp at night after killing his guards. But when Beleg pulls his sword to cut Túrin’s bonds, Túrin awakens and, taking Beleg to be an orc sent to kill him, wrests the sword Anglachel from Beleg’s grasp and slays him with it—thus fulfilling Melian’s prophecy. Túrin is paralyzed with remorse for what he has done, and Gwindor is able to guide him to Eithel Ivrin, a spring of healing water, where Túrin is able to recover his sanity. Túrin and Gwindor then continue south along the Narog until they are stopped by the sentinels of Nargothrond and are taken to Orodreth, lord of that realm. Gwindor is not recognized by his own people, except by Finduilas, the daughter of Orodreth, whom he had loved before his imprisonment. She knows him, and Túrin is permitted to stay in Nargothrond as Gwindor’s companion. In Nargothrond, Túrin soon becomes respected, though he will not reveal his true identity, in the hope of evading Morgoth’s curse on his family. Finduilas falls in love with Túrin, and the jealous Gwindor warns her against loving a mortal man, revealing to her, as well, Túrin’s real name and family. Túrin is angry with Gwindor for this, but Orodreth values Túrin all the more and now listens to Túrin’s counsel more than ever. Túrin advises open war with Morgoth’s forces and persuades the king to build a great bridge across the Narog, through which the armies of Nargothrond could march to war. Under his leadership, Morgoth’s forces are driven from the land. In the mean-

time, Morwen and Nienor have finally decided to flee Dor-lómin and make their way to Doriath, where they find that Túrin is no longer there. Two elves from Círdan’s people arrive in Nargothrond, where they warn Orodreth that Ulmo has revealed to Círdan that Nargothrond is in great peril, and they must destroy the bridge across the Narog and return to the secrecy they maintained in the past. An angry Túrin refuses their warning. But it proves to be true, as Morgoth sends a huge force against them, led by the dragon Glaurung. The elvish army goes out to meet them, but Orodreth is slain and the army destroyed. Gwindor is mortally wounded but begs Túrin to get back to Nargothrond and save Finduilas, warning Túrin that if she dies, Túrin, too, will face his doom. Túrin arrives too late. The bridge he had refused to demolish had made it easy for Glaurung and Morgoth’s army to enter Nargothrond, and by the time Túrin arrives, the women have been killed or taken into captivity. Túrin himself comes face-toface with Glaurung, and the dragon is able to hold Túrin rapt in a stupor while Finduilas and others are driven past him as slaves. Glaurung forces Túrin to see himself through the dragon’s eyes as a failure and betrayer of his friends, and when the dragon finally releases Túrin from his spell, he convinces him that Morwen and Nienor are facing immediate danger in Dor-lómin. The credulous Túrin abandons his quest to rescue Finduilas and starts off for Dor-lómin to save his mother and sister. When Túrin arrives in Dor-lómin, he learns from his mother’s cousin Aerin that she and Nienor had left for Doriath some time earlier, and he realizes that the dragon had lied to him. He kills the Easterlings who have taken over his homestead and enslaved Aerin, and then he flees, a wanted man pursued by the Easterling allies of Morgoth. Túrin now resumes his search for Finduilas; however, he learns from a group of men of Brethil whom he saves from a band of orcs that all the prisoners of Nargothrond have been killed, including Finduilas, who was pinned to a tree by a spear. Her dying words were a plea that Túrin be told of her whereabouts. Túrin finds her and buries her in a mound that becomes known at Haudh-en-Elleth (the Mound of the Elf-maid).

372   Silmarillion, The Túrin swoons at Finduilas’s grave and is taken by the men of Brethil to their home, a settlement of the remnant of Haleth’s people, now ruled by the lame lord Brandir, son of Handir. Brandir is a healer and is able to heal Túrin, who names himself Turambar (Master of Doom), hoping again to hide himself and evade Morgoth’s curse. When the few survivors of Nargothrond seek refuge in Doriath, they tell Thingol about the dragon and report that Túrin is either dead or in the power of the dragon. Morwen, over Melian’s objection, determines to leave Doriath and search for her son. Unable to dissuade her, Thingol sends Mablung and an escort to accompany Morwen, and Nienor accompanies them in secret. The company arrives at Amon Ethir (the Hill of Spies), and they look toward Nargothrond, where they see no sign of Morgoth’s host. But Glaurung has seen their approach and breathes a blinding fog upon them that panics their horses. Morwen is lost and never seen again. Nienor is thrown from her horse, and climbs Amon Ethir, thinking to reunite there with Mablung. Instead, she comes face-toface with the dragon, who puts her under a spell of forgetfulness. She stays there immobile for days until Mablung finds her and tries to lead her back to Doriath, but they are accosted by a band of orcs, and Nienor flees. Although the elves try to find her, they cannot, and Nienor runs into the forest of Brethil, where she falls asleep on Finduilas’s funeral mound. Túrin himself finds her there. He returns with her to live among the people of Brethil, where she is healed by Brandir but is still unable to remember anything, even her name. Túrin calls her Niniel (“Tear Maiden”). She grows to love Túrin, but Brandir loves her, and he reveals to her Túrin’s real name and parentage. Although this gives her a sense of foreboding, she still agrees to marry Túrin when he tells her that he will go back to the wars if she refuses him. They are wed, and she becomes pregnant, but eventually Túrin is forced back to the wars, where he breaks out his black sword to fight the invading orcs. Word that the black sword Anglachel has returned comes to Glaurung, and the dragon leaves Nargothrond and moves on Brethil.

Now Túrin intends to attack the dragon and asks for companions to help him. Only Dorlas agrees at first, abusing Brandir and his house for not agreeing to help. Hunthor, Brandir’s kinsman, agrees to go along, upholding the honor of his house. Túrin tells the rest of the people to stay at Ephel Brandir, but to prepare to flee if he is unsuccessful against the dragon. After the three companions set out, Niniel/ Nienor follows, unable to be parted from Túrin, and Brandir follows her out of love. As they approach the dragon, Dorlas hangs back out of fear. Túrin and Hunthor try to approach Glaurung as he sleeps beside the River Teiglin, but when the dragon rises, they are forced back, and Hunthor is killed. Túrin is able to follow the dragon, however, and plunges his sword into the belly of the beast, after which he falls, mortally wounded. When Túrin pulls his black sword from Glaurung’s belly, the venomous dragon blood burns his hand, and he falls unconscious. Glaurung’s mortal screams, however, have convinced the people of Brethil that Túrin has been killed. Brandir begins to lead Nienor away, but she insists she must find Túrin and rushes toward the scene of the battle. She finds Túrin unconscious beside the dragon and bandages his damaged hand. At this point, Glaurung opens his eyes. The dragon recognizes Nienor and lifts his spell from her memory. As he dies, he congratulates her on finding her brother again. Nienor, realizing her incest and horrified at the conception of the child within her, throws herself from the cliff of Cabed-en-Aras and into the swirling waters of the Teiglin. Brandir, who has limped after her and witnessed everything without being able to stop it, returns to his people and reports that both Nienor and Túrin are dead. Túrin’s death he calls good news, considering the disaster the son of Húrin has brought to the people of Brethil. But Túrin revives and makes his way back to Brandir’s people. Here he learns of Nienor’s death and of their relationship. He is also informed that Brandir thought his death good tidings, and, believing that Brandir has lied about Nienor out of jealousy, draws his black sword and kills Brandir. Túrin flees to the forest, to Haudh-en-Elleth, the grave of Finduilas, where he asks the spirit of

Silmarillion, The   373 the elf maiden for guidance. At that point, Mablung arrives with a party of elves. They have come to seek Túrin, having had word that the black sword was active again. Túrin begs for news of his mother and sister from Doriath, and he is told that Morwen is lost and Nienor was left wandering in the forest without her memory. Convinced now that Brandir was telling the truth, Túrin runs from Mablung and the elves and goes to Cabed-en-Aras, where his sister/wife plunged to her death. Here he unsheathes his black sword and speaks to it, asking it to end his life. The sword answers, saying that the blood of Beleg and the innocent Brandir would be avenged. Setting the hilt of Anglachel on the ground, Túrin casts himself upon the sword point and dies. Mablung finally arrives, only to find Túrin’s body. The elves burn Glaurung’s body on a great pyre and cover Túrin with a mound of earth at the place where he died. They sing a dirge for him and for Nienor, and put their names on a stone set upon the grave. Chapters 22–23: The Fall of Doriath and Gondolin  In chapter 22 (“The Ruin of Doriath”), Húrin. having spent 28 years as Morgoth’s prisoner, is finally freed; since his children are now dead, Morgoth cannot enjoy his torment any more, but he thinks he may use the liberated Húrin to do more harm to elves and men. The aged and grim-looking Húrin is shunned by the people he meets and tries to make his way to Turgon’s hidden kingdom of Gondolin. Unable to find it or the eagles that guard the way, Húrin cries out in frustration to Turgon to let him in. At this, the servants of Morgoth who are watching him discover the general vicinity of Gondolin. But Thorondor the chief eagle also hears the cry and reports Húrin’s presence to Turgon. In appreciation of Húrin’s courage and pity for his suffering, Turgon asks Thorondor to bring him into Gondolin, but when the eagle returns, Húrin has disappeared. After a deep sleep in which he dreams he has heard Morwen calling to him from Brethil, Húrin makes his way south until, at the grave of Túrin, he finds Morwen, kneeling before the memorial to her children. Húrin quietly holds her hand as she asks,

“How did she find him?” As the sun sets, Morwen dies, and Húrin buries her next to her children. The grieving Húrin now makes his way south to the ruins of Nargothrond, where he finds that Mîm, the Petty Dwarf, now lives there, having coveted the treasure of Glaurung. But Húrin, having seen his son’s fate through Morgoth’s eyes, knows that Mîm had betrayed Túrin, and despite the dwarf’s offer of the treasure in exchange for his life, Húrin slays Mîm. He then examines the great treasure within Nargothrond but leaves taking only Nauglamír, the storied necklace that the dwarves had made for Finrod Felagund. Húrin carries the necklace into Doriath, where he is welcomed by Thingol, but he throws the necklace at the king’s feet, scornfully calling it payment for the king’s “protection” of Húrin’s family. Melian makes peace between the two men, however, convincing Húrin that his view of matters as seen through Morgoth’s eyes has been skewed, and that Thingol really has been a friend to Húrin’s family. Chastened, Húrin picks up Nauglamír and presents it respectfully to Thingol. When Húrin leaves Doriath, he wanders to the West, until eventually he ends his life by casting himself into the sea. Thingol admires Nauglamír and is determined to have it remade to hold the Silmaril that he received from Beren and with which he has become obsessed. He contracts with a group of dwarves visiting from Nogrod, but when they have finished the task, they refuse to give up the necklace, claiming that their ancestors had made Nauglamír for Finrod, and that upon Finrod’s death the necklace had reverted to the dwarves. Thingol knows that it is the Silmaril they desire. He orders them out of Doriath, but they rebel, killing the king and stealing the Silmaril. As they try to make their way back to Nogrod, however, they are caught by elves from Doriath, who slaughter most of them and take back the Silmaril, which they return to Melian. Two dwarves escape to Nogrod and spread the story that Thingol had ordered their kinsmen to be killed. Although the dwarves of Belegost advise against it, the dwarves of Nogrod go forth to make war on Doriath. Meanwhile, the grieving Melian decides that she can no longer stay among the Eldar and must

374   Silmarillion, The now return to the Ainur in Valinor. She confides this to Mablung, leaving the Silmaril with him and asking him to send word of what has happened to Beren and Lúthien. When she leaves, Melian takes with her the powers that kept Doriath safe over the long years; therefore, when the dwarf army arrives, it strikes into the heart of Doriath. The elvish leaders are disorganized, and the dwarves overcome them, killing Mablung and many other elves, destroying Menegroth, and taking back Nauglamír with the Silmaril. In Ossiriand, Beren and Lúthien hear of the sacking of Doriath and the theft of the Silmaril, and with their son, Dior, and a host of Green-elves, Beren leads an assault on the dwarves as they are returning to Nogrod. He slaughters the dwarves (including their king) and recovers Nauglamír and the Silmaril, which he presents to Lúthien. Afterward, Dior, as the heir of Thingol, brings his own family to rule in Doriath. But not long after, on an autumn night, a Green-elf comes from Ossiriand with Nauglamír. There is no message, but Dior understands that Beren and Lúthien have passed out of the world of men. When the sons of Fëanor learn that the Silmaril has been returned to Doriath, they send a message demanding that the jewel be turned over to them. Dior refuses to acknowledge their claim, and Celegorm leads his brothers and a host of Noldor to attack Doriath again. This is the second time that elves have killed other elves, both times the result of the oath of Fëanor. In the ensuing battle, Celegorm, Curufin, and Caranthir are all killed, but so are Dior and his wife, Nimloth. Their sons, Elured and Elurin, are left by the invaders to die in the woods (against the wishes of Fëanor’s son Maglor, who searches for them unsuccessfully). The sons of Fëanor fail to recapture the Silmaril, however, as Dior’s daughter, Elwing, flees with Nauglamír to the mouth of the River Sirion. Chapter 23 (“Of Tuor and the Fall of Gondolin”) begins several years earlier than the previous chapter. After his father, Huor (Húrin’s brother), is killed in the Battle of Unnumbered Tears, Tuor is raised among the Grey-elves in the caves of Androth. When Tuor is 16, the elves decide to try to make their way south to the Havens of Sirion,

but a host of orcs and Easterlings attack them en route, and Tuor is captured and enslaved by Lorgan the Easterling. After three years, however, he escapes and returns alone to the caves of Androth, and from where he wages a single-handed guerrilla war on the Easterlings for four years. The Vala Ulmo, however, is determined to use Tuor to accomplish his plans for Gondolin. He inspires Tuor to leave Androth and travel west across Dor-lómin until he passes through Annonin-Gelydh (Gate of the Noldor) into the long-abandoned Nevrast, the ancestral home of Turgon and the Noldor before they moved into Gondolin. Tuor lives alone for a year in Nevrast until, one day, he observes seven swans in the sky, which he takes as a sign. He follows the swans to the deserted halls of Vinyamar near the western sea, where he finds a sword and armor left there by Turgon himself at the command of Ulmo. Arming himself, he makes his way to the shore, where Ulmo speaks to him out of a storm, ordering him to find the hidden land of Gondolin, and giving him a cloak that will make him invisible. The next morning, Tuor meets a lone elf on the shore. This is Voronwë, the only survivor of the mariners sent by Turgon to try to reach Valinor. Voronwë agrees to lead Tuor to the hidden realm of Gondolin. As they pass eastward under the Mountains of Shadow, traveling through the grim winter, they pass a tall man with a black sword—ironically, Tuor’s cousin Túrin Turambar—but they do not recognize him and pass without a word. Tuor and Voronwë are immediately taken prisoner upon their arrival at the gates of Gondolin. But when Tuor displays the arms he has brought from Vinyamar and claims to bring a message from Ulmo, he is brought before the high king, Turgon. To him, Tuor reveals his message: The works of the Noldor are about to be destroyed, in fulfillment of the curse of Mandos, and Turgon must leave Gondolin and take his people to safety at the mouth of Sirion. Turgon’s pride rebels at these words, and Maeglin speaks out against Tuor’s message. Turgon listens to Maeglin since he says what Turgon wants to hear, and instead of fleeing to safety, Turgon trusts in Gondolin’s impenetrability. Now he forbids any of his people ever to leave the city,

Silmarillion, The   375 and shuts it off completely from the outside world, obtaining news only through Thorondor, the lord of the eagles. From him, Gondolin hears of the fall of Nargothrond and of Doriath. Tuor remains in Gondolin, where, after seven years, he ultimately gains Turgon’s respect and falls in love with Turgon’s daughter and heir, Idril. Tuor thus incurs the jealousy of Maeglin, who wants Idril for himself. But Turgon gives his permission for Idril and Tuor to marry (the second such coupling of the races of elves and men), and ultimately their union produces Eärendil, a boy with the strength of men and the wisdom of elves. All this time, Morgoth has been searching for Gondolin, having found the approximate location through Húrin’s unwitting cries directed at Turgon after his release from Morgoth’s captivity. Morgoth has been searching the area around the mountains protected by the great eagles, and Idril, who is more farseeing than most of the Eldar, feels a dread of what is coming and prepares a secret escape route out of Gondolin. In the meantime, Maeglin has disobeyed Turgon’s orders and gone outside of Gondolin’s walls, where he is captured by orcs and threatened with torture if he does not betray the secret of Gondolin’s location. Morgoth also promises him lordship of Gondolin and of Idril if he cooperates, and these inducements persuade Maeglin to betray the city. He returns to Gondolin to await his time. Morgoth waits for the day of a great festival, and with all the folk of Gondolin on the city walls awaiting the sunrise, Morgoth’s host—an army of orcs, Balrogs, dragons, and wolves—sweeps down upon them from the north and overruns the city, despite a heroic defense. Turgon falls in the battle. During the battle, Maeglin captures Idril and the seven-year-old Eärendil, but Tuor assails him and drives Maeglin off the walls of Gondolin, where he falls to his death. Tuor and Idril then gather together as many of their people as they can, and with the city burning around them so that they are hidden in smoke, they escape through the secret route Idril had established. As they attempt to climb through the mountains, however, the group is attacked in a treacherous pass called the Eagle’s Cleft by a Balrog and a troop of orcs. The elf Glor-

findel steps up to do battle with the Balrog, and the two fall together from the cliff. Meanwhile, Thorondor and his eagles are able to fight off the orcs, after which Thorondor retrieves Glorfindel’s body, and he is given a hero’s burial under a mound on which, thereafter, golden flowers grow perpetually. Tuor and Idril, with Eärendil and the other survivors of Gondolin’s fall, are able to trek to safety at the mouth of the Sirion, where they encounter the survivors of Doriath, including Dior’s daughter, Elwing, and the people of Círdan from Balar. When the news of Turgon’s death comes to the island of Balar, Fingon’s son Ereinon Gil-gilad is chosen as high king—the last high king of the Noldor in Middle-earth. Now, while Morgoth glories in his triumph over elves and men, Ulmo pleads with the Valar to send assistance to the two races in Middle-earth. But Manwë is unmoved, for the time has not yet come for the Valar to return, and only one who came to Valinor to speak on behalf of elves and men could convince Manwë to relent. Meanwhile, Tuor—feeling the effects of old age and a longing for the sea, the realm of his lord Ulmo—builds a ship and, with Idril, sails into the West. Nothing is ever heard of them again, but in ages after, it was sung that Tuor, of all mortal men, is the only one whose fate became one with the Noldor. Chapter 24: “Of the Voyage of Eärendil and the War of Wrath”  Eärendil, son of Tuor and Idril, eventually becomes lord of the refugees from Doriath and Gondolin who have settled in Arvernien at the mouth of the Sirion, and he marries Elwing, daughter of Dior of Doriath. With her, he has twin sons, Elrond and Elros, who come to be called “half-elven.” Eärendil feels a call to the sea and befriends Círdan, who helps him build the great ship Vingilot. He desires two things: to find his parents, who have never returned from their sailing to the West; and to reach the shore of Aman to plead for help from the Valar. He makes several journeys, leaving Elwing at home, but he is unable to achieve either of his goals. The four surviving sons of Fëanor, aware that Elwing still holds the Silmaril of Beren and Lúthien, are unable to escape their oath. They send word to

376   Silmarillion, The Sirion demanding the Silmaril, but the elves there refuse to give it up, and the sons of Fëanor march against Sirion, initiating the third kinslaying among the Eldar. They destroy the Sirion settlement and capture Elrond and Elros, but Amrod and Amras are killed, leaving Maedhros and Maglor as the only surviving sons of Fëanor. The Sirion refugees who survive the attack flee to join Círdan on the isle of Balar, but Elwing, refusing to part with the Silmaril, throws herself into the sea. Ulmo, however, saves Elwing, transforming her into a great white bird bearing the Silmaril upon her breast. Eärendil, having had a premonition of danger to his family, is steering Vingilot toward home when, one night, he sees the white bird approaching like a fast-moving cloud. When she lands on the ship, Elwing returns to her true form. Eärendil steers for home but finds only ruins, and he and Elwing grieve for the loss of their home and capture of their sons. (In fact, Maglor is fostering the two boys and has grown fond of them.) Now Eärendil turns his ship toward Aman, determined to obtain the help of the Valar. Eärendil wears the Silmaril on his brow, and with Elwing and three loyal sailors (Falathar, Erellont, and Aerandir), he sails west. By virtue of the Silmaril, he is able to sail through the enchantments and land on the shores of Valinor, the first mortal ever to do so. Fearing the wrath of the Valar, he orders his men to stay with the ship, but Elwing insists on coming with him. He leaves her behind, though, when he reaches the pass of Calcirya, declaring that this is his fate alone. Having arrived on a festival day, he finds Tirion deserted and fears that evil has come to Valinor. Finally, Manwë’s herald Eönwë comes to meet Eärendil and leads him before the Valar. He begs the Valar to pardon the Noldor for their offenses and to give aid to elves and men in their desperate war against Morgoth. Because Eärendil has come as one representing both races, Manwë grants his prayer. But since it had been forbidden for mortal men or descendants of the Noldor to set foot on Valinor, Manwë decrees that neither Eärendil nor Elwing can ever return to Middle-earth. Further, they and their sons, Elrond and Elros, must choose their own fates—either that of the elves or that of

mortal men. Elwing chooses the fate of the Eldar, and Eärendil (though more inclined to the race of men) cannot bear to be parted from her and so chooses the elves’ fate as well. The Valar give Eärendil’s three mariners a boat of their own and send them back to Middle-earth with a strong wind. They turn Vingilot into a craft that sails the heavens, and on it Eärendil travels with the Silmaril on his brow, so that he appears to be a new star to the people of Middle-earth, which they name Gil-estel (Star of High Hope). Elwing takes residence in a white tower and, like the sea birds, is given the gift of flight, so that she can fly up to meet Eärendil as he returns each night from his travels. The star has a different effect on Morgoth, giving him cause for doubt. Having destroyed the Noldor’s links with the Valar, split the forces of the Eldar, and crushed Nargothrond, Doriath, and Gondolin, he feels secure in his kingdom and fears no interference from Valinor. But he is wrong: In response to Eärendil’s plea, the Valar make ready to march. They enlist the aid of the great host of Vanyar—the elves who stayed in Valinor—and the Noldor under Finarfin who never left Aman. At the pleading of their kinswoman Elwing, the Teleri agree to transport the host to Middle-earth on their ships, but because of the first kinslaying at Swanshaven, they will not fight for the Noldor in Beleriand. Eönwë leads the great host across Beleriand. On the desolate plain of Anfauglith, the armies of the West clash with Morgoth’s forces in what comes to be known as the Great Battle, or the War of Wrath. No elves of Beleriand take part in the battle, but remnants of the Edain, the three houses of elf friends, join the Valar. Other men—Easterlings who had supported Morgoth before—fight on his side (something the elves never forget through the ages). In the fierce battle, most of the orcs are killed, as are the majority of Balrogs—though some of these escape to hide deep in the earth. In a final desperate attack, Morgoth unleashes an army of dragons, who at first drive the Valar’s army back. But Eärendil arrives in the sky in Vingilot and, along with Thorondor and the eagles, battles the dragons until Eärendil defeats Ancalagon the Black, chief

Silmarillion, The   377 of the dragons, who in his fall crushes the towers of Thangorodrim. Now Morgoth is alone, hiding deep within the fortress of Angband. But Morgoth is captured, and though he sues for pardon, he receives none. Eönwë takes the two remaining Silmarils from Morgoth’s iron crown, and turns the crown into a collar with which he chains Morgoth. The Valar release all the prisoners of Angband. But the battle has been so globally destructive that all the land of Middle-earth has been reconfigured, with most of Beleriand now flooded by the sea. Hills have been flattened and valleys raised, and the great River Sirion has disappeared. Now Eönwë sends a summons to all the elves in Middle-earth to abandon Beleriand and sail west. Maedhros, however, still tormented by his oath, will not answer the summons, and though his brother Maglor is weary and ready to stand in judgment before the Valar, Maedhros persuades him to pursue their oath. The two remaining sons of Fëanor send Eönwë a message demanding that he return the Silmarils to them, but Eönwë will not hear of it, declaring that the brothers had forfeited any claim they may have had to the jewels by their treachery and fratricide. He determines to bring the Silmarils back to Valinor, but when Maedhros and Maglor sneak into Eönwë’s camp one night, slay the guards, and steal the Silmarils, he lets them escape. Maedhros and Maglor each take one of the jewels, but Eönwë’s assessment proves true: The brothers are unworthy of the Silmarils, which burn their hands as they try to hold onto them. In torment, Maedhros casts himself and the Silmaril into a fiery chasm in the earth. Maglor’s pain is so great that he throws the Silmaril far into the sea. But his longing for the jewel is never quenched, and he spends the rest of his life wandering the shores of Middleearth, singing a lament for the lost Silmaril. The three great jewels of Fëanor have now their final resting places: one in the sky, one in the earth, and one in the sea. The Eldar who return to Valinor are ultimately pardoned by the Valar and forgiven by the Teleri for their part in the kinslaying. Most of the returning elves take up residence in Tol Eresseä. Thus, the curse of Mandos is finally laid to rest. Some of

the elves choose to stay in Middle-earth, however, having lived and suffered so long in that place. The leaders among these are Gil-galad, the high king of the Noldor; Círdan the Shipwright; and Celeborn of Doriath and his wife, Galadriel (the last of those who had led the Noldor to Beleriand). Of the half-elven children of Eärendil and Elwing, Elros chooses to assume the fate of mortal men, but Elrond opts for the fate of the elves. As for Morgoth, he is thrown into a timeless void beyond the Walls of the World. The Doors of Night that enter this realm are watched perpetually by a guard set by the Valar, and by Eärendil in his great ship of the sky. But the seed of hate sown by Morgoth in the hearts of men and elves remains and cannot be eradicated. Commentary Chapters 1 and 2: Creation Myths  These two chapters might be lumped together, as Tom Shippey notes (J. R. R. Tolkien 237), with the preceding Ainulindalë and Valaquenta as part of a whole creation cycle. Some of the narration overlaps the events told in those earlier works. Here, the narration is presented as the elves’ own version of these events. This is not unusual in Tolkien’s texts, and in this the construction of The Silmarillion resembles the early chapters of Genesis, wherein the creation of the world is told in two different versions (the seven days of creation in the first chapter and the Adam and Eve story in the following chapters). The story of the Valar subduing Melkor and shaping Arda; their creation of the two great lamps to illuminate the disk of the world; the bringing forth of life; the reemergence of Melkor and his marring of Arda and destruction of the great lights; the Valar’s retreat to Aman; and, in perhaps the most memorable image of this chapter, Yavanna’s creation of the Two Trees of Valinor (Telperion the silver and Laurelin the gold)—all had originated in much earlier drafts. First was the “Sketch of Mythology” from the early 1920s (published in The Shaping of Middle-earth, 12–47), expanded into the “Quenta Noldorinwa” version of 1930 (printed in The Shaping of Middle-earth, 92–268), and then into the Quenta Silmarillion of 1937 (included in The Lost Road and Other Writings). The ­version

378   Silmarillion, The from the 1950s (more detailed than the one appearing in The Silmarillion) appears in the Book of Lost Tales I and later revisions from that same decade in Sauron Defeated (volume 9 of The History of Middle-earth). The Two Trees of Valinor are a striking aspect of this first chapter, recalling not only the Tree of Life and the Tree of Knowledge from Genesis (thereby suggesting Valinor as a kind of Paradise) but also Yggdrasil, the great ash tree that upholds the nine worlds of Norse mythology, thus essentially connecting heaven and earth. Trees were venerated in early Germanic cultures, and their importance in Tolkien’s mythological world probably stems from this. In part, the trees underscore Tolkien’s conception of Arda as originally a discshaped world, thus allowing the Two Trees to light the entire continent of Aman for 12 hours at a time. But the fact that the trees of Valinor give off light at all is especially curious and unusual. The Trees’ light is even described as if it were a palpable thing, for as Varda saves the dew from the trees, she preserves both water and light (39). There is not much difficulty seeing the symbolism of this, however. Tolkien’s archetypal association of light with goodness and darkness with evil permeates all of his work, and Melkor’s inexorable evil, which spreads over Middle-earth as a palpable shadow, has its counterpart here in the light of the Trees, which symbolize and embody the lasting goodness of Valinor. One other aspect of this first chapter worth commenting on is the introduction of the idea that mortality is a special gift given by Ilúvatar only to men, the Second-born of his Children. This section was, in earlier drafts, a part of the Ainulindalë. Christopher Tolkien placed it in this chapter, intending it, perhaps, as a smoother transition into the story of the elves’ awakening that follows. This concept of Ilúvatar’s gift will arise later on, especially in the Akallabêth, describing the fall of Númenor, as the men of that time no longer see mortality as a gift. The gift ensures “that the hearts of Men should seek beyond the world and should find no rest therein” (41)—that is, unlike the elves or even the Valar, the fate of men is not tied to the fate of Arda; therefore, unlike the elves, men will

not be burdened with the increasing sorrows of the years, but will leave Arda behind “to seek beyond the world” (41). Where their spirits go, however, is unknown, even to the Valar. However, this gift is tied to their gift of freedom: Men shall “shape their life . . . beyond the Music of the Ainur, which is as fate to all things else” (41). This cannot be interpreted as merely free will itself, since the Valar and elves have that gift as well. It must refer to the gift of immortality in a world beyond that shaped by the music, freedom altogether from the destinies of the created universe in a new place where they can live again. As for the second chapter, it must be noted that Tolkien himself never put these stories of the creation of the dwarves and the creation of ents and eagles together. Aulë’s creation of dwarves is alluded to in the Annals of Beleriand and the Quenta Silmarillion from the 1930s (printed in The Lost Road and Other Writings) and was part of the Quenta Silmarillion of the 1950s, but it appeared later in the text, in the chapter “The Naugrim and the Edain” (printed in Sauron Defeated). In that same version of the Quenta, but in a different part of the text, is a section entitled “Of the Ents and the Eagles,” which comprises the second part of this chapter. Christopher Tolkien put these two pieces together. His purpose seems to have been the logical connection between the creation of the dwarves and Yavanna’s fear for her own creations, especially the trees, at the hands of Aulë’s race. It also makes for a more coherent narrative to tell the story of the dwarves’ creation prior to that of the elves, since Tolkien says that it happened first. Thus, it made some narrative sense for Christopher Tolkien to move these stories earlier in the overall narrative. The most important aspect of this chapter thematically is the parallel between Aulë’s presumption and the evil wrought by Melkor, whose marring of the music of creation was a manifestation of his pride and a substitution of his will for that of Ilúvatar. Aulë’s creation of the dwarves, however, is an act of love rather than pride. In his impatience for the Children of Ilúvatar to appear in Middle-earth, Aulë creates the Seven Fathers of the dwarves in order to have a people to care for

Silmarillion, The   379 and to share his crafts with. Where Melkor seeks power—wishing to dominate Arda itself and the creatures of Arda, including the Children of Ilúvatar when they appear—Aulë desires no lordship, as he tells Ilúvatar (43), although his creations have no will other than by Aulë’s own commandment. Hence, they fall short of the creations of Ilúvatar (including the Valar) who act according to their own free wills. Similarly, Melkor cannot create anything of his own apart from Ilúvatar’s will. Instead, he mars all of the creation and the Valar’s work that he can, and he creates the race of orcs (as far as can be told from the text) by perverting the elves whom he has captured and brought to his dungeons. Perhaps most significant, Aulë repents his impatience and presumption, admitting his mistake and offering to Ilúvatar the gift of his newly created race. He even offers to destroy the beings he has made. His repentance and willingness to destroy his creation rather than thwart the will of Ilúvatar gains Aulë forgiveness. Moreover, the dwarves beg for mercy and this in addition to Aulë’s repentance gains the dwarves themselves independent existence, with the gift of free will that Ilúvatar had preserved for his own creations. Had Melkor truly repented, could Ilúvatar have forgiven him as he did Aulë? Could the orcs have been granted a place in Ilúvatar’s creation if they had begged for mercy? The answer to these questions must certainly be yes, but the fact that Melkor’s self-will is unrelenting ensures that such a decision need never be made. In both cases, however, Ilúvatar ultimately is able to bring good out of evil, harmony out of discord (as in the Great Symphony). The free will that Ilúvatar has granted the Valar and, here, the dwarves as well, ensures that decisions will be made that run counter to the will of Ilúvatar. But true repentance and confession can gain forgiveness for those acts. It should be noted, however, that Sauron began as a Maia attached to Aulë, and that Fëanor was the greatest of Aulë’s elvish craftsmen. Tolkien seems to have seen a certain danger in great skill at creative craftsmanship—perhaps a tendency for the craftsman to value the created object more than Ilúvatar’s own creation, and therefore to prefer one’s own will to God’s.

But there are two prayers in this chapter: The second is that of Yavanna. Since she needs no forgiveness, her prayer is pure and inspired only by her concern for the plants and animals of Arda, which she had made in accordance with Ilúvatar’s original music. Her prayer is for protection, and it is answered by the promise of the eagles, who will protect the animals, and ents, who will protect the trees. The fulfillment of her prayer is of a different order than that of Aulë. Manwë recalls the music of Ilúvatar and remembers that the eagles and ents were part of the original music. This does not seem to be true of Aulë’s dwarves, although it is clear that Ilúvatar has accounted for them and has incorporated them into the music of the universe, accepting them and bringing good out of evil. Chapters 3–5: Sundering of the Elves  These three relatively short chapters essentially complete the exposition of the Quenta Silmarillion. The mythological origins of Tolkien’s secondary world have been established, and the legendary beginnings of the elves have been explained. The first defeat of Melkor, and his chaining for three ages, has cleared the way for the Firstborn of the Children of Ilúvatar to make their appearance. In part, these chapters are a kind of etiological myth concerning the origin of the elvish people, not unlike, for example, the origin myth of certain Native American tribes that describe the people entering the world through a hollow log or some similar vehicle. The awakening of the elves under the stars is a beautiful image, and as an origin myth, it explains the instinctive love for the stars of Varda’s heaven among elves of all houses. Further, the description of the elvish diaspora seems likewise to be an etiological myth, like the Tower of Babel story in Genesis, to account for the diversity of elvish peoples. Tolkien’s conception of elves has its origins in Old Norse mythology, where, according to the Prose Edda, at least three kinds of elves were distinguished: ljosálfar, or “light-elves”; dökkálfar, or “darkelves”; and svartálfar, or “swart-elves.” Old English texts, on the other hand, mention “wood-elves” (see Wood-elves) and “water-elves” (Shippey, J. R. R. Tolkien 228). Thus, Tolkien inherited the notion

380   Silmarillion, The of great diversity among elves, but he connects his diversity to the history of the race. For Tolkien, there are, first, two main categories of elves: These are the Eldar, who comprise those elves who followed Oromë on the Great Journey to the West; and the Avari (“the unwilling”)—those who refused the invitation of the Valar. Among the Eldar, there are three branches of elves: the Vanyar (the house of Ingwë), the Noldor (the house of Finwë), and the Teleri (the house of Elwë). The Vanyar follow the Valar to Aman and remain in the Undying Lands. The Noldor also travel to Aman, but most of them eventually return to Middle-earth. The Teleri are more complicated and diverse. Many of them love Middle-earth too much to leave, and a group of them drop out of the journey before crossing the Misty Mountains. These are known as the Nandor. Some of the Nandor eventually cross the Misty Mountains into Beleriand and become known as the Laiquendi, the Greenelves of Ossiriand in the First Age. Another large group of Teleri decide later to stay in Middle-earth, residing in the woods of Beleriand with their lord Elwë, who sets up a kingdom in Doriath, or with Círdan the Shipwright, who has become enamored with the sea. These Teleri become known as the Sindar, the Grey-elves. Finally, a group of Teleri, led by Elwë’s brother Olwë, are eventually taken to Aman, though later than the Vanyar and Noldor. The Vanyar, Noldor, and the Teleri who come to Aman are collectively called the Calaquendi (that is, Elves of the Light, also known as High-elves), because they have seen Valinor in the days of the Two Trees. In contrast, the Avari and the Nandor come to be called the Moriquendi (that is, Elves of the Darkness), so called because they had not seen the light of those Two Trees. The Sindar, though numbered among the Eldar, are not among the Calaquendi, since they had never seen the light of the Trees of Valinor. A part of Tolkien’s purpose in including the elves in his legendarium is that his secondary world is modeled largely on medieval romance and myth, in which men share the world with elves or fairies as well as dwarves, dragons, and other creatures. But the theological context into which the elves’ story is placed in The Silmarillion, with its

clearly religious opening text, raises the question of why in Tolkien’s world there are two different races that make up the Children of Ilúvatar. Why should the elves be a part of that theological relationship, and how might this reflect on our world? Tolkien is known to have scorned the idea of allegory in his work, but it seems likely that there is what Tom Shippey has called a “parallel mythology” in which the events and figures of Tolkien’s world have “a kind of relationship to Christian myth” (J. R. R. Tolkien 238). It may be that the elves exist in order to demonstrate by contrast that mortality truly is a gift, not a curse, for men. This “gift of Ilúvatar” enables men, alone among all the races of Middle-earth, to transcend the world. The elves illustrate what it would be like for men without that gift—an ultimate world-weariness and a connection to the ravages of time that cannot be severed. But there is, perhaps, another theological use for the Firstborn. In the salvation history that Tolkien would have adhered to as a Roman Catholic, the first of God’s chosen people would have been the Jews, and the second the Christians. The Old Testament Jews, like the elves, had no belief in an afterlife beyond the physical world—the concept of resurrection entered Judaism in intertestament times. Further, the elvish system of writing, the Tengwar, consisted of letters designating consonant sounds, with vowels indicated by diacritical marks—a system similar to Hebrew script. Tolkien, of course, is not implying a one-to-one correspondence between the elves and the Jews in any allegorical sense, but he may be implying a difference between the two races (elves and men) that corresponds in some ways between human beings pre- and post-incarnation of Christ. Both races are beloved of God, but the kind of life promised to pre-incarnation humanity—perpetual existence in the Earthly Paradise—has been replaced by eternal life through Christ in Tolkien’s Christian view. So the elves, bound to Arda as they are, find their ultimate existence in perpetuity in the Earthly Paradise of Valinor, while the Second-born Children are promised eternal life as the Gift of Ilúvatar. Tolkien’s attitude toward Jews has been questioned in the past, with some critics suggesting a

Silmarillion, The   381 racist or anti-Semitic streak in the author. Part of the evidence for this is one of his letters to Naomi Mitchison, in which he compares the dwarves to Jews: “I do think of the ‘Dwarves’ like Jews: at once native and alien in their habitations, speaking the languages of the country, but with an accent due to their own private tongue” (Letters 229). Taken out of context, this comment may strike one as anti-Semitic, though clearly Tolkien is only saying that in terms of being a race without a homeland, the situation of the dwarves is similar to that of the Jews prior to the establishment of Israel. Theologically, Tolkien’s dwarves may suggest Gentiles more clearly than Jews: As Aulë’s creations, they are essentially the adopted Children of Ilúvatar— not those through whom the original promise was made, but those to whom the promise has been subsequently extended through the grace of God. It is the elves who receive the original blessing, intended for them from before the beginning of the world. These relationships are not to be pressed too minutely, because Tolkien is not dealing in allegory. The races of free people of Middle-earth parallel a number of theological concepts in Tolkien’s Christian worldview, and that seems to be their purpose within the context of the Ainulindalë. One other aspect of this section worth mentioning is the love and marriage of Melian and Elwë. This turns out to be the first of several instances of the intermarriage of different races in Tolkien’s works. Here, the marriage is between the semiangelic Maia Melian and the elf prince Elwë. But their daughter Lúthien will ultimately marry a mortal man, Beren, in what was to be Tolkien’s personal favorite of his private myths. The BerenLúthien assignation becomes the prototype of similar intermarriages—including that of the mortal Tuor with the elf maiden Idril, from whose union comes Eärendil (greatest hero of the First Age), and the later marriage of Aragorn and Arwen (both of whom are descendants of Beren and Lúthien) in The Lord of the Rings. Richard West notes that a first encounter in the woods is common to these affairs, underscoring Tolkien’s intent to make the different encounters parallel to one another (261). There are a number of explanations for this repeated motif. First and most simply, Tolkien was

familiar with the enchantment of mortals by ladies of the fairy realm in medieval romance, including Nimue’s enchantment of Merlin in Morte Darthur and, more comparably, Lanval’s taking of a fairy mistress in Marie de France’s lay. Particularly in the latter case, the lady’s fairy powers put the man in a position of servitude and thereby demonstrate the ideal courtly love relationship, in which the lady is seen as a paragon or ideal, made of finer stuff than her lover, who strives to be worthy of her. This may explain why, in Tolkien’s cross-racial pairings, the woman is always from what may be perceived as the more refined race—a Maia in the case of Elwë, elves in the case of Beren or of Tuor. Second, Tolkien is utilizing the common mythological pattern in which the birth of a great hero is surrounded by unusual or supernatural events: Helen is the result of Zeus’s coupling with Leda in the form of a swan; Merlin is born from the union of an incubus with a mortal woman (according to Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia Regum Brittaniae). From these unusual couples spring the figures of Lúthien (central figure in the story of the greatest feat of heroism performed in the war against Morgoth), Eärendil (savior of Middle-earth at the end of the First Age), and ultimately Aragorn (restored king of Gondor at the end of the Third Age). Finally, Tolkien himself gives some idea of how he wanted readers to think about these interracial unions. As West has pointed out (262), Tolkien comments on them in a very lengthy letter to Milton Waldman: [I]n Men (as they now are) there is a strand of “blood” and inheritance, derived from the Elves, and .  .  . the art and poetry of Men is largely dependant [sic] on it, or modified by it. . . . Of course in reality this only means that my “elves” are only a representation or an apprehension of a part of human nature, but that is not a legendary mode of talking. (Letters 149)

Thus, Tolkien suggests that a psychological reading of his mythology would see the elves as representing certain aspects—aesthetic and creative—of humankind, and that these are the qualities that account for the production of music, poetry, and the arts by the human race.

382   Silmarillion, The Chapters 6–9: The Silmarils and the Oath of Fëanor  In these chapters, Tolkien presents the Noldorian prince who stands as perhaps the most significant character of The Silmarillion. Fëanor is the sub-creator par excellence, whose perfection of the more ancient Tengwar into Fëanorian script gave the Eldar the means by which to record history and poetry. He is thought to have created, as well, the palantíri (or seeing-stones) that were valued later in Númenor and used by Gandalf and Saruman in Middle-earth in The Two Towers. As described in these chapters, he also created deathdealing arms that may have been intended for defense but in these chapters are clearly used by the Noldor to slaughter their own kindred, the Teleri, to secure their ships. The greatest of Fëanor’s creations are the Silmarils, wherein the master craftsman succeeded in capturing the light of the Two Trees. These magnificent jewels, after which the Quenta Silmarillion is named, become the objects of lust and greed and the ultimate cause of the great upheavals of war and strife that tear apart all of Arda for the remainder of the Third Age. Fëanor is in many ways a tragic hero in the classical sense. Like the great heroes mentioned in the previous section, he has a remarkable birth story, but one that bodes very ill: His mother, Míriel, is so undone by his birth that, with a certain apparent premonition, she loses the will to live. Fëanor is the greatest of the Eldar in his intellect and his skill, but his skill is the cause of a haughty kind of pride, and his pride in his creations engenders a possessiveness that turns to greed. Thus, like the tragic hero, Fëanor falls because of his own flaws. As Eric Schweicher has argued, Tolkien sees the chief motive of “sub-creation” as an attempt to preserve those things that the sub-creator loves about the primary world and desires to preserve in the form of art (Schweicher 168). This certainly is true in the case of the Fëanorian alphabet, and it proves disastrously true in the case of the Silmarils. For the jewels do preserve the light of the paradisal moment of Valinor’s “Noontide.” Fëanor’s pride, jealousy, and greed stem from the possessiveness he feels for his greatest creation, and his hoarding of the jewels and refusal to allow the Valar to use

them to regenerate the Two Trees allow Melkor’s theft of the Silmarils and Finwë’s murder. Ultimately, the terrible oath sworn by all Fëanor’s sons leads to the murder of their kindred and the curse of Mandos—a curse whose power we see throughout the remainder of the book. This curse, too, is reminiscent of Greek tragedy, as, for example, the curse on the House of Atreus that leads to Agamemnon’s death and Orestes’ murder of Clytmnestra. The Valar’s curse on the House of Fëanor is merely logical foresight of how their great oath will ultimately destroy not only Fëanor but each of his sons as well. While many Tolkien scholars insist that Tolkien’s chief literary inspiration comes from the Germanic mythology of northern Europe, readers often see a parallel between the story of Fëanor and the Silmarils and the story of the Fall of Man in the Book of Genesis. Given the clearly Judeo-Christian creation story with which The Silmarillion begins, it is not implausible to see in this another parallel myth. Tolkien himself wrote that “There cannot be any ‘story’ without a fall—all stories are ultimately about the fall—at least not for human minds as we know them and have them” (Letters 147). The fall of Fëanor, unlike the Fall of Adam and Eve, does not affect his entire race, but it does affect all of his descendants and close kin. Adam’s fall involves disobedience that sets his will above God’s; Fëanor’s involves a haughtiness whereby he puts himself above the level of the Valar, considering their governance “tyranny” (as Milton’s Satan thought of God’s authority in Paradise Lost). The Fall of Adam and Eve results from their free choice of evil over good; in The Silmarillion, nine of every 10 Noldor leave Valinor by their own choice. The descendants of Adam continue to sin, as Cain kills his brother Abel in a jealous fit; similarly, Fëanor’s jealousy and greed leads to the first kinslaying among the elves, and Fëanor’s sons continue their father’s evil as well. The overarching pattern of the Fëanor story parallels the Fall of Man (Sanford 15): Valinor is essentially paradise or Eden. Melkor plays the role of the serpent in the garden, whose guile feeds Fëanor’s arrogance and his mistrust of the Valar. Fëanor’s great temptation is the work of his own hands, the

Silmarillion, The   383 Silmarils—in some ways a more profound symbol than the Tree of Knowledge, since it turns so much on the notion of self-love rather than love directed outward. Finally, Adam and Eve are barred from returning to Eden, just as the Noldor are forbidden by Mandos ever to return to Valinor. In Christian theology, redemption does occur through the sacrifice of Christ. The elves will be forgiven, ultimately, through a different kind of redemption. Part of this is earned much later when Eärendil sails to Valinor, returning one of the Silmarils and asking for the Valar’s forgiveness and mercy. But that redemption is also earned through an agelong struggle against the stark evil represented by Melkor/Morgoth and the great heroism achieved by the Eldar in that struggle. As Sanford points out, this aspect of Tolkien’s legend represents a view characteristic of the mythology and worldview of the medieval Germanic peoples, including the Anglo-Saxons (as represented in Tolkien’s beloved Beowulf): According to this view, human beings, struggling against the monsters that embody the darkness of the hostile world, are doomed ultimately to fail and be overcome. But there is a kind of redemption in the courage and heroism against overwhelming odds. According to Sanford, Tolkien believed that “Northern mythology asks more of men than Christianity, because it offers no easy reward of heaven, no salvation except the satisfaction of having done what is right” (Sanford 17). Three other points are significant in these chapters. First, it may be somewhat surprising that the Valar are willing to release Melkor from his imprisonment. Manwë, wisest of the Valar, is supported by Nienna, the Valar of pity and mourning, in his decision to set Melkor free. Readers might see this as foolishness, but of course the Valar are not omniscient, and their awareness of their own free wills enable them to understand that a reasoning creature like Melkor, one of their own, is indeed capable of reform. It has been clear from the beginning that each of the Valar sees a portion of the mind of Ilúvatar—which explains their ignorance of Melkor’s true heart, but also suggests that Ilúvatar himself, who is indeed in part the pity that Nienna represents, is at least in part willing to have

mercy on Melkor even now. Melkor who destroys that trust and mocks that pity, but this does not diminish the virtue of mercy. Second, the character of Fingolfin forms an important foil to that of his half brother Fëanor. In an act not unlike Nienna’s, Fingolfin forgives his brother even after Fëanor threatens him with a sword. This, in addition to his great courage in leading his people across Helcaraxë, makes him a much more sympathetic character than Fëanor and suggests that the Noldor are not completely lost. The same might be said of Finarfin, who tries to make peace between his brothers and ultimately refuses to follow Fëanor, preferring to stay in Valinor. Subsequently, the more admirable of the Noldor throughout the First Age are descendants of Fingolfin (including Fingon, whose courage rescues Maedhros from Morgoth, and Turgon, lord of Gondolin) or of Finarfin (including Finrod, lord of Nargothrond, and Galadriel). The fact that Galadriel was one of the first of the Noldor to follow Fëanor argues a particular ambition in her and may partially explain her long attachment to Middleearth. It also puts into context the famous passage in The Fellowship of the Ring in which Frodo offers Galadriel the One Ring, embodiment of all power, and makes her refusal to take the ring all the more significant. Finally, it should be noted that some scholars have wondered about the scene in which Melkor accompanies Ungoliant in her attack on the Two Trees. In Tolkien’s latest version of this story, which appears in the Quenta Silmarillion text of the late 1950s, Melkor stays behind near the sea while Ungoliant does her work. In this published version of The Silmarillion, Christopher Tolkien has chosen to use an earlier version of the story, though he has never explained why he chose to do so in this case. Several earlier versions of the events of these chapters appear in the 12-volume History of Middleearth. Very early versions of “The Coming of the Elves” and of “The Theft of Melko” appear in The Book of Lost Tales I (History of Middle-earth, volume 1). Versions from “The Sketch of the Mythology” and the early Quenta Nolorinwa appear in The Shaping of Middle-earth (History of Middle-earth, volume 4), and the version in the 1937 Quenta Silmarillion

384   Silmarillion, The appears in The Lost Road and Other Writings (History of Middle-earth, volume 5). In Morgoth’s Ring (History of Middle-earth, volume 10), the Silmarillion version from the late 1950s appears. Finally, “The Shibboleth of Fëanor,” concerning Fëanor’s struggle with Fingolfin, is included in The Peoples of Middle-earth (History of Middle-earth, volume 12). Chapters 10–12: Middle-earth Before the Return of the Noldor  Having focused for much of the early part of the book on the High Elves, most particularly the Noldor, the direction of The Silmarillion takes a turn here, by contrast, to fill in the history of the Grey Elves (the Sindar), and their lives in Middle-earth before the return of the Noldor. It should be noted that in no version of the Quenta Silmarillion drafts does Tolkien include this 10th chapter. Christopher Tolkien has taken it essentially from the “Grey Annals,” a part of the “Annals of Aman,” which appears in The War of the Jewels (History of Middle-earth, volume 11), and it was Christopher who placed the chapter here. Whether or not that was according to his father’s wishes cannot be determined, but it certainly makes sense to include it here. One of the first notable things about this section is the introduction of the dwarves. Although, as was made clear in chapter 2, the dwarves were required to sleep until after the awakening of the elves, by this 10th chapter, they are well established in Middle-earth and in their great ancestral home of Khazâd-dûm. They speak the Sindarin language, and they enthusiastically adopt the runic alphabet invented by the Sindar. Their interests tend to be in digging and working the hidden parts of Arda, and in accumulating wealth. They dig the underground fortress of Menegroth for Thingol, but they do it for a hefty price. The fact that they are less prone to get along with the Noldor or the Avari suggests that they are a proud people easily moved to aggression if they feel that their interests have been violated. It has been suggested, as well, that chapter 10 presents a contrast between the Noldorian and Sindarian cultures, since the Sindar decide to build their city as a fortress underground, while the Noldor had built their great city, Tirion upon

Túna, high on a hill. More than anything, this suggests a certain wariness on the part of the Sindar, since with the return of Morgoth, evil things—orcs, for example—have been seen wandering about Beleriand. The Noldor, too, will adopt this strategy—at least in the fortress of Nargothrond—once they have been long enough in Middle-earth. The creation of the sun and the moon is another chapter that seems somewhat out of place here, because it seems to belong to the more mythological cycle of tales at the beginning of the book. Perhaps that is why the description here and in other later drafts of the Quenta Silmarillion is much less detailed than the earliest version of the story as it appears in The Book of Lost Tales I (History of Middle-earth, volume 1). But in the chronology of Tolkien’s world, the sun and moon must be created after the light of the Two Trees (whose brightness they embody) has been extinguished and needs to be replaced. And it is under the light of the sun and moon that the Second-born of Ilúvatar’s children, the race of men, must flourish. Light, as always in Tolkien’s work, suggests the good, and contrasts with the evil of Morgoth or, later, of Sauron, whose power is consistently imagined as a “Shadow” or darkness. Thus, here the Valar create the sun and moon in part to discomfit their great enemy, Morgoth. At the same time, of course, they also reinforce the land of Aman, protecting it from any possible invasion by Morgoth, but at the same time barring the Noldor from ever returning—much as Eden is guarded by sword-bearing cherubim after the expulsion of Adam and Eve. Although they have apparently deliberately alienated themselves further from the elves, it must be remembered that this alienation was the Noldor’s own free choice. In chapter 12, men finally make their appearance in Middle-earth. Unlike the elves or even the dwarves, however, they are given no origin story. The fact that the Quenta Silmarillion was conceived as a history of the elves, composed by elves, does in part explain this lack. It is also likely that Tolkien, whose goal seems to have been to create a parallel mythology to Northern myth and Christian tradition, stopped short of creating an alternative mythology of human origins. At least he does not do so in the Quenta Silmarillion, and a

Silmarillion, The   385 letter to Milton Waldman suggests that this omission was deliberate (Letters 147–148). In his early notes, however, there is a brief prospectus of an “origins” tale, called “Gilfanon’s Tale,” which is printed in The Book of Lost Tales I (History of Middle-earth, volume 1). A later account of the fall of men through the machinations of Morgoth is told in “Adanel’s Tale,” printed in Morgoth’s Ring (History of Middle-earth, volume 10). Chapters 13–16: Establishment of the Noldor in Beleriand  In these chapters, we return to the history of the Noldor and their settlements in Beleriand, the westernmost part of Middle-earth. A great deal happens and is told in rather brief form in chapter 13, which sweeps over some 600 years of history. One theme struck in the chapter is the division among the elves, as Fingolfin’s people distrust Fëanor’s people, and Thingol distrusts all the Noldor except those related to his kinsman Finarfin. While Morgoth’s orcs can score no lasting victories over the elves, there is ominous foreboding in Morgoth’s creation of dragons and other horrors, but even more in the dissension among the Eldar. Three incidents in chapter 13 are particularly worth comment. The first is the death of Fëanor. His final defeat is tragic in a sense, as his fiery and impetuous temper leads him to pursue his enemies even to the gates of Angband, where, having outrun his sons and the rest of his host, he is cut down by Balrogs—fallen Maiar whose power is even greater than his own. But there is no anagnorisis, or tragic knowledge, in Fëanor’s case as he dies insisting that his sons dedicate themselves to revenge and to remembering the terrible oath that has already lost them the goodwill of the Valar and sparked the crime of their earlier kinslaying. The second incident is the remarkable tale of Maedhros and Fingon. This is a tale of mythic proportions: The binding of Maedhros high on the stone tower of Thangorodrim has been compared to the binding of Prometheus in Greek myth, or the binding of Loki in Old Norse mythology (Rogers and Rogers 88). Both of those legends involved punishment of a supernatural being for some sin committed against the gods—the theft of fire for man in the case of Prometheus, the murder of the

beloved god Baldr in the case of Loki. Here, the punishment is the result of defying the darkness of Melkor, the fallen Vala, thus putting Maedhros in a more heroic light than the other figures. But, like those figures, the elf Maedhros is immune to death, unless he is killed in battle, and so he may suffer hanging from the tower indefinitely. Fingon’s discovery of Maedhros is probably inspired by the legendary account of the imprisonment of Richard the Lionheart (Rogers and Rogers 88). Richard was captured in 1193 and held by Leopold V of Austria, and according to legend, Richard’s minstrel, the trouvére Blondel de Nesle, searched throughout Europe for his master. Before the walls of the Durnstein fortress, where Richard was imprisoned, Blondel sang the first verse of a song they had composed together, and when he heard a voice from within singing back the second verse, Blondel knew he had discovered the king. The parallels between this tale and those others of myth and legend explain the archetypal power of this episode. Fingon’s great act of heroism, intended as a restorative act to reconcile the different branches of the Noldor, thus gains weight from its mythic power. It is the first of several restorative acts that occur in The Silmarillion. It succeeds for some time in reconciling the Noldor, but the curse of Maedhros has made it clear that such reconciliation is only temporary. The third aspect of chapter 13 that invites comment is the journey of Finrod (son of Finarfin) and Turgon (son of Fingolfin) and the consequences of the warning they receive from Ulmo. This concern of Ulmo for the Eldar is a kernel of hope, indicating that at least one of the Valar has not abandoned Middle-earth altogether. Finrod’s admiration of Menegroth inspires him to create his own hidden fortress of Nargothrond, while Turgon’s fond memory of Tirion causes him to recreate that city in the valley of Tumladen. Both hidden realms will prove significant in the coming wars against Morgoth. Discussion of the hidden elvish kingdoms and other geographical matters leads into the brief chapter 14, in which Tolkien describes in some detail the geography of Beleriand. His conception of this geography can be seen first taking shape in an early map that he apparently made in the

386   Silmarillion, The late 1920s, included in The Shaping of Middle-earth (History of Middle-earth, volume 4) and in a revised version of this map from the early 1930s published in The Lost Road and Other Writings (History of Middle-earth, volume 5). An early version of this chapter also appears in the 1937 version of the Quenta Silmarillion, also published in The Lost Road. The most significant event of chapter 15 is Thingol’s discovery of the treachery of Fëanor and the kinslaying of his own people, the Teleri, at Alqualondë. It is this news that deepens the rift between the Sindar and the Noldor, and although Thingol will not bar the people of Finarfin, who are his own relatives through Finarfin’s wife, Eärwen, his forbidding the use of Quenya in his kingdom ensures that Sindarin will become the everyday speech of the elves, while Quenya will be known only to those who study ancient lore. For Tolkien, who first began his history of Middle-earth to create a context for his invented languages, this was a matter of no small significance. Chapter 15 also serves the function of anticipating significant future events, in particular the eventual fall of Gondolin. Ulmo tells Turgon that the seclusion of Gondolin will not allow him to hide from the curse upon the Noldor, and warns him that treason will come from within. But Ulmo reveals that one from Nevrast, Turgon’s old home west of Dor-lómin, will come to warn him when the danger is approaching. Thus, Ulmo instructs Turgon to leave a helmet, mail, and sword in his house in Nevrast that the prophesied messenger will bring with him and thus make himself known. Chapter 16 is a transitional chapter. It completes the preparation undertaken in many of the earlier chapters by introducing the character of Maeglin, the necessary element in the coming fall of Gondolin. It also marks a change in style and tone in the chapters of The Silmarillion, since rather than the sweeping narrative covering epic space and eras of time, the chapter focuses, as most of the later chapters will, on a single individual who plays a significant role in the history of Middle-earth. The arrogance and willfulness of Aredhel are clear from her actions, and she seems more like her kinsman Fëanor than her brother Turgon. Indeed, she cannot abide in Gondolin but wants to seek

out the sons of Fëanor herself. The “Dark Elf” Eöl is a smith and craftsman who distrusts the Noldor and seeks his dwelling in the darkness of the forest. He is essentially a creature of malice and darkness. Maeglin, the result of their union, has the arrogance of his mother and the malice of his father, as well as his father’s love of the mines of the earth. It is clear by the end of this chapter that Maeglin’s presence in Gondolin will prove disastrous. Antecedents of these chapters appear in a number of volumes of The History of Middle-earth, including the outlines for “Gilfanon’s Tale” in The Book of Lost Tales I, “The Fall of Gondolin” in The Book of Lost Tales II, the “Lay of the Fall of Gondolin” in The Lays of Beleriand (History of Middleearth, volume 3), the “Sketch of Mythology” and the Quenta Noldorinwa in The Shaping of Middleearth, the 1937 version of the Quenta Silmarillion in The Lost Road and Other Writings, and The Grey Annals in The War of the Jewels (History of Middleearth, volume 11). Chapters 17–18: The Coming of Men and the Death of Fingolfin  With chapter 17, the direction of The Silmarillion is altered by the arrival of men in Beleriand, men who are potentially powerful allies of the elves in their struggle against Morgoth. Although the book purports to be a compilation of the mythology and history of the elves, the chief heroes of the climactic chapters of the book will all be men—Beren, Túrin, and Eärendil. It is clear that they bring an energy to the story that contrasts with the Firstborn Children. Men do not have the wisdom or beauty of the elves, but they seem to be braver, more inclined to action, and more impetuous—qualities stemming at least in part from their mortality. They simply do not have the time and leisure for the elves’ patience, nor do they have time to acquire the elves’ wisdom. Further, although, like the assumed elvish compilers of the legends in The Silmarillion, we know nothing of the prior history of men east of the Blue Mountains, but we do know that they have come into Beleriand to escape “dark times” there. While Tolkien’s “parallel mythology” describes the fall of Melkor (like that of Lucifer in Christian tradition) as well as the fall of the Noldor (paralleling that of Adam and Eve in its resulting

Silmarillion, The   387 loss of Paradise), Tolkien never addresses the fall of men in his legendarium. Some sort of corruption from original innocence seems to have taken place in Eriador, the land east of the mountains, long before Bëor’s fleeing the “dark times” of that land. Unlike the elves, men were never granted fellowship with the Valar and know of them only through hearsay. Nor, of course, have they ever seen the light of Valinor, and they are much more susceptible to the wiles of Morgoth, who has already been at work corrupting them well before the first group of men are led over the Blue Mountains. Therefore, they prove to be a mixed blessing to the Eldar. The three houses of the Edain (the House of Bëor, the House of Hador, and the People of Haleth) prove valuable allies, but other tribes of men—later arrivals in Beleriand known as Easterlings—are persuaded to join with Morgoth. The most striking scene in these chapters is undoubtedly the awakening of Bëor and his men by the sound of Finrod’s harp. The music, which enchants the men, probably owes something to stories of the Celtic underworld, in which travelers come to a fairy world where they are enchanted by music. The music is unearthly and seems to belong to a realm beyond the hearers’ ordinary lives. It inspires or awakens them to a new experience of the ethereal or otherworldly, as it does, for example, in the Old Irish “Colloquy of Old Men,” in which Saint Patrick and his companions are depicted falling asleep to the music of the fairies. Here, the men awaken to the enchanting music of the elven world, an otherworld for them in contrast to the darkness of Eriador. This music that enchants is related to the music of the Ainulindalë through which the world was created, a music whose harmonies brought the physical world into being in the first place. The spiritual longing it creates in Bëor is certainly owing to his recognition that Finrod, like the other Eldar, carries with him to some faded degree the spiritual light of Valinor, and it is this light that draws the Edain to the Eldar. It is a light that Bereg and Amlach or the later Easterlings, by contrast, seem never to recognize. For that matter, the Green-elves of Ossiriand are not interested in having men living among them—unlike Finrod, they do not see the potential

in these Second-born of Ilúvatar’s Children. Nor, of course, does Thingol, whose isolation in Doriath becomes more pronounced as he refuses to have men within his realm. Indeed, Finrod himself never completely understands men—nor can any of the Eldar completely understand what happens when Bëor finally dies. When men reinforce the Noldor’s power in Middle-earth, Fingolfin believes the time is ripe to lift the long Siege of Angband and assault Morgoth directly, but the other Noldorian princes are unwilling to do so, and ultimately Morgoth begins the battle on his own terms. His destruction of the land itself creates a wasteland, while his powerful dragon Glaurung is able to decimate the alliance of elves and men. The Fourth Battle is the first in which the Eldar suffer significant losses, and it leaves Morgoth in power in Beleriand. But significant results of the battle include the saving of Finrod’s life by Barahir, an act that earns the people of Bëor the undying gratitude of the lord of Nargothrond. But Barahir’s people are scattered, and with 12 of his kindred, he fights a guerrilla war against Morgoth’s forces occupying Dorthonion. Barahir’s son is Beren, who, as the lone survivor of his father’s kindred, makes his way into Doriath. Significant, too, is the death of Hador, leaving Galdor the Tall as lord of Dor-lómin. His sons, Húrin and Huor, will be protected by Turgon in Gondolin and will incur the wrath of Morgoth. Húrin will be the father of Túrin Turambar, while Huor will be the grandfather of Eärendil. The backgrounds of these three great heroes—Beren, Túrin, and Eärendil—being established, the stage is set for the final climactic adventures of The Silmarillion. Before those adventures begin, however, one final episode demands attention in chapter 18. This is Fingolfin’s spectacular, if ill-advised, challenge to Morgoth. In an act recalling the end of his brother Fëanor, Fingolfin rides alone to Angband to challenge Morgoth to single combat. This motif— recalling other episodes in myth and legend dating as far back as David and Goliath in I Samuel, or the challenge of Menelaus to Paris in book 3 of The Iliad—is particularly important in Germanic legend and culture. Tyr is known as the Norse god of war, but seems to have had the function in particular of

388   Silmarillion, The presiding over incidents of single combat. In Norse mythology, such combats (like Beowulf’s fight with the dragon) were often hopeless, as was Tyr’s own single combat with Garm, the hound of Hel, at Ragnarök. Fingolfin’s challenge to Morgoth is likewise a hopeless one, but all the braver for that. The fact that the challenge strikes fear into Morgoth’s heart, and that the wounds he receives from Fingolfin and from the great eagle will pain him ever after, serve to foreshadow his ultimate defeat in demonstrating his vulnerability. The stories in these chapters are first told in the Quenta Noldorinwa (published in The Shaping of Middle-earth) and expanded in the 1937 Quenta Silmarillion (published in The Lost Road and Other Writings). The genealogy of the Edain is expanded and included in The Grey Annals (published in The War of the Jewels), with additional matter concerning the three houses published in The Peoples of Middle-earth (History of Middle-earth, volume 12). Some of the material is also included in earlier form in “The Geste of Beren and Lúthien” (published in The Lays of Beleriand). Chapter 19: “Of Beren and Lúthien”  The story of Beren and Lúthien is the first of what Tolkien considered the three great tales of his legendarium, the other two being the story of Túrin Turambar and the tale of the fall of Gondolin. Of all his tales, though, the story of Beren and Lúthien was without doubt his personal favorite, and that is because it was his most personal. The meeting of the two lovers, where Beren watches Lúthien dance beneath the trees, was inspired by Tolkien’s own experience of watching his wife, Edith, dance beneath a grove of hemlock trees in the woods near Roos in Yorkshire in November 1917, when the young lieutenant Tolkien was home on leave from the Great War, recovering form trench fever. He always identified Edith as his Lúthien (putting that name on her tombstone 55 years later), and he wrote the first version of this tale shortly after that inspiring dance late in 1917. There are some dozen or so treatments of the story among Tolkien’s unpublished papers. The earliest surviving version is the “Tale of Tinúviel” in The Book of Lost Tales II. He wrote the poem “Light as Leaf on Lindentree” in 1925, later revis-

ing it as Aragorn’s song on Weathertop in The Fellowship of the Ring (the mortal Beren’s love for the elven princess paralleling Aragorn’s own love for Elrond’s daughter, Arwen). Between 1925 and 1931, Tolkien composed “The Lay of Leithian” in rhyming couplets, and that poem appears in The Lays of Beleriand. Versions of the story appear in the “Sketch of Mythology” and the Quenta Noldorinwa in The Shaping of Middle-earth, as well as the 1937 Quenta Silmarillion and The Later Annals of Beleriand in The Lost Road and Other Writings. Tolkien also worked on another retelling of the story for “The Grey Annals” in the 1950s, which appears in The War of the Jewels. What we are given in The Silmarillion is basically a summary of the tale in nothing like the epic scale that Tolkien seems to have conceived the story. The tale as told in The Silmarillion makes use of a number of motifs that are common in the myths, legends, and folklore with which Tolkien would have been familiar. The “impossible task” that Thingol sets for Beren is quite common in folklore, as is the helpful animal figure (in the form of Huan, the Hound of Valinor). More specifically, Lúthien’s imprisonment in the tower and escape through means of her own long hair is clearly reminiscent of Rapunzel, while the hunt for the rampaging wolf Carcharoth recalls the hunt for the boar Twrch Trwyth in the Welsh story of Culhwch and Olwen. The experience of Beren in Sauron’s dungeon, where, one by one, his companions are devoured nightly by a wolf, recalls the story of Sigmund in the Old Norse Völsunga Saga, while Beren’s loss of his hand to the wolf Carcharoth parallels the myth of the Norse god Tyr, who loses his hand to the great wolf Fenrir. Lúthien’s death from sorrow parallels that of the old Irish tale of Dierdre of the Sorrows, while her plea to Mandos to allow her and Beren to return to life and to Middleearth clearly parallels not only the Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice, but also the Middle English romance of Sir Orfeo, which Tolkien knew and admired, translating it into modern English during World War II. But as Richard West has pointed out, these many parallels do not constitute specific sources for Tolkien’s text; rather, what Tolkien’s text embodies are “echoes, even when we can-

Silmarillion, The   389 not pinpoint an exact source. Tolkien studied and taught myths and legends and fairy tales all his life, and they were an integral part of his mental furniture and imaginative make-up” (West 264). What Tolkien creates thereby is a tale that in itself seems authentically a part of the great body of folklore of the world. More important is how this tale acts as a central motif in Tolkien’s own legendarium. Aside from recounting the greatest and most triumphant single feat in the elves’ long struggle against Morgoth— the winning of one of the Silmarils from Morgoth’s iron crown—the tale recounts not only the heroism of Beren but also the even more courageous acts of Lúthien: She rescues Beren from Sauron’s prison; she sings Morgoth and his guards to sleep; and she wins Beren’s life back from the house of the dead, willingly sacrificing her own elvish immortality in the process. She is by far the most actively heroic woman in Tolkien’s work, and one whose presence contradicts the conventional criticism that Tolkien eschews strong female characters. With regard to The Silmarillion as a whole, Lúthien’s race is probably more significant than her gender: She is an elf, and Beren is a man. It is only through their union that the Silmaril can be achieved, and this proves to be a microcosm for the entire long war with Morgoth: Only by joining forces do the Children of Ilúvatar stand a chance against the shadow created by Morgoth and his forces of darkness. Thingol, the once noble king of the secret kingdom of Doriath, fails to see this, and in this tale we see the beginning of his descent from isolationism to distrust to resentment and greed. In some ways, this is no great surprise. David Greenman, who sees the entire Silmarillion as an epic tragedy, asserts that Thingol (along with Fëanor and Finrod) can be seen as a tragic figure, his tragic “flaws” being “pride and selfish desire,” the latter of which is manifest from the beginning, when he spends years in the wood with Melian rather than leading his people to Valinor (22). From this point in the story on, Thingol does show signs of corruption, and he is certainly mistaken about the union of elf and man: The great success to come—the journey of Eärendil to Valinor—can only come about through the alliance of men and elves.

As Tom Shippey has pointed out, it is Thingol’s “rash promise” that lies at the heart of this tale (Road to Middle-earth 259). Like Dorigen in Chaucer’s “The Franklin’s Tale,” who in jest promises to love the squire Aurelius if he can clear the coast of rocks, Thingol gives Beren an impossible task, chiefly as a way of saying that he will never give Beren his daughter. He is probably quite surprised that Beren swears to fulfill the quest. His mistake is in assuming the task’s impossibility, and when Beren retrieves his own severed hand from the belly of the wolf, it clasps the Silmaril, ironically fulfilling Beren’s vow to return with the Silmaril in his hand. This means of fulfilling the oath parallels Beren’s earlier use of his father’s severed hand to recall Finrod to his oath to assist Barahir and his kindred, and convince the king of Nargothrond to help Beren in his quest for the Silmaril. Clearly, oaths and their fulfillment are a major theme in this tale. Finrod fulfills his oath, even though it means his death, as Beren fulfills his against all odds. Thingol pledges to Lúthien not to harm Beren but fulfills this pledge only technically, since sending Beren on the quest for the Silmaril is essentially, in Thingol’s mind, sending him to certain death. The other oath that predates and undermines all of these other oaths is the great oath of Fëanor and his sons, since Celegorm and Curufin are motivated by their envy of anyone else seeking the Silmarils in their betrayal of Lúthien, their attempt to kill Beren, and their desire to dethrone Orodreth. It is clear that oaths are powerful in this story, and their power may be for good or ill. They should not be taken lightly. Chapters 20–21: Túrin Turambar  Chapter 20 is something of a transitional chapter. The success of Beren and Lúthien in the previous chapter has emboldened Maedhros to try another attack on Morgoth’s forces, while the failure of that attack plunges Middle-earth into Morgoth’s power in such a way that only the three hidden kingdoms of Nargothrond, Doriath, and Gondolin remain outside his influence, and it is this situation that provides the background to Turin’s exploits in chapter 21. The alliance formed under Maedhros is doomed to failure for two reasons: First, the heirs of Fëanor

390   Silmarillion, The continue to suffer the consequences of the kinslaying at Alqualondë and of their own divisive behavior, so that Doriath and Nargothrond will not give their full support. Second, the men of the East have proven corruptible and treacherous, so that the alliance of men and elves crumbles from within. Only a true alliance of the two races can achieve the kind of success forged by Beren and Lúthien. In many ways, the Union of Maedhros parallels the earlier attempt by Fingolfin to assail Angband that resulted in the disastrous Fourth Battle. Fingolfin was unable to put together a complete alliance of the enemies of Morgoth, and in the Battle of the Sudden Flame, he was crushed by Morgoth’s new terrors. When Fingon’s army pursues the orcs to Angband itself, it simply recalls Fingolfin’s earlier pursuit, and that of Fëanor before him, both of which ended in death. Fingon, too, is slain, and Turgon is saved, but only because of the heroics of Húrin and Huor. Significantly, Huor’s prophecy that a descendant of his line and Turgon’s will bring a new hope to elves and men is overheard by Maeglin. Huor refers to the union of his son Tuor and Turgon’s daughter Idril, who will become the parents of Eärendil, whose courage and daring will bring the Valar back to intercede in Middle-earth. But Maeglin’s desire for Idril will feed his resentment of this union and help to bring about the fall of Gondolin. This allusion to the one who will be the redeemer of Middle-earth also provides an ironic contrast with the protagonist of chapter 21, the heroic Túrin, son of Húrin. Túrin has been compared to a number of epic or tragic heroes of myth, including particularly Kullervo, from the Finnish Kalevala, who also commits incest with his sister; Oedipus; Beowulf; and Sigurd, the Norse dragon slayer of the Völsunga Saga. Yet in terms of its meaning in the context of the whole Silmarillion, Túrin’s story is more reminiscent of Samson’s in the Book of Judges (chapters 13–16) than any of these other tales. Samson was the great hero of the Israelites during a period of their domination by the Philistines He seemed destined to lead the Israelites to victory over their oppressors, but he failed to do so largely through his own stubbornness and lack of judgment, including misdeeds involv-

ing his lust for the Philistine woman of Timnah; then for a harlot from Gaza; and finally for Delilah, through whose machinations he loses his eyes. As a redeemer, Samson fails. The same may be said of Túrin. His strength, courage, and feats of arms are nearly beyond parallel in the long history of Middle-earth. His defeat of the dragon is here, as it was in Beowulf, the climax of a grand career at arms. But his headstrong nature and his lack of judgment lead him, and those who depend upon him, into grave danger time and time again. And his repeated ill-advised relationships with women—first Finduilas and then Nienor—cause him to lose his friends and, eventually, his life. As a redeemer, he falls far short of the mark, and for redemption Middle-earth must look beyond its own borders, something only the prophesied Eärendil will be able to do. These two chapters make up essentially the story that Christopher Tolkien has compiled at more length in the recently published The Children of Húrin, and for a detailed commentary on that story, the section of this volume concerned with that book should be consulted. One particular aspect of the story dealt with briefly here is its structure as tragedy. Like the greatest of Greek tragedies, Túrin’s involves a family curse, like that placed on the House of Atreus in Aeschylus’s Oresteia or on the House of Thebes in Sophocles’ Oedipus plays. Túrin’s resemblance to Oedipus is obvious in the unintentional incest that ultimately dooms him. Like Oedipus, Túrin has attempted to avoid the curse placed upon him, chiefly by disguising his identity. But, in fact, much like Oedipus himself, it is Túrin’s own character—his rashness and overconfidence, as well as his refusal to listen to others—that leads to his downfall. In this, the Túrin story conforms well to the classical description of tragedy outlined by Aristotle in the Poetics. Aristotle defined a tragic hero as one who is superior in important ways to the average person, but who falls from a high position into disaster or death because of what Aristotle called the hero’s hamartia—an error of judgment that results in some catastrophe for the hero or his society. Túrin’s incest is certainly an error of judgment, but as with most tragic heroes, the error

Silmarillion, The   391 springs from some “tragic flaw” in Túrin’s own character—in this case, specifically, his arrogance or overconfidence, which prevents him from listening to others. It is, in fact, what Aristotle and the Greek tragedians would have called hybris. From Aristotle, the tragic catastrophe involved a peripeteia, or reversal of circumstances. In Túrin’s case, this occurs with the knowledge that his wife, who is about to become the mother of his child, is actually his own sister. Aristotle also described the importance of anagnorisis, or recognition, in the plot of a tragedy. This “recognition” is generally a tragic knowledge that comes to either the hero or to his society as a result of the hero’s suffering. Túrin’s recognition that he has unjustly caused the deaths of Brandir and of Beleg, his two closest friends, leads him finally to kill himself with the same sword that killed the two of them. Finally, Aristotle discussed the effect of tragedy on its audience. Tragic events evoked the emotions of pity and fear, to bring about a catharsis of those emotions. Certainly there are characters to pity in Túrin’s story, including Niënor, Brandir, Finduilas, and probably Beleg as well. Túrin is certainly to blame, but there is much to admire in him, including his willingness to fight while other leaders in the story seem to live in fear of taking any action. It may be, then, that we pity him as well, for the consequences of his actions seem out of proportion and undeserved. And this, for Aristotle, was precisely what a tragic hero should be. The first version of the Túrin story, called “Turambar and the Foalókë,” was composed in 1919 and appears in The Book of Lost Tales II. Tolkien then decided to write the story as a poem in Old English alliterative poetic style, The Lay of the Children of Húrin, which he ultimately abandoned in the mid-1920s. He subsequently revised this version and composed the prose Narn i Hin Húrin (“Tale of the Children of Húrin”) in the 1920s and early 1930s. He had written part of a version of the story for the 1937 Quenta Silmarillion but abandoned that project when the publisher showed no interest. Still, he began working on the story again in the 1950s after he had completed The Lord of the Rings, but he never completed it or put everything into a coherent form, until Christopher Tolkien

assembled the notes, first for The Silmarillion and finally for the more complete text of The Children of Húrin. Chapters 22–23: The Fall of Doriath and Gondolin  The 22nd chapter is largely a transitional one, moving from the story of Túrin Turambar into the third of Tolkien’s conceived “great tales,” the epic story of the fall of Gondolin. The character who connects these tales is Húrin. Having seen his family destroyed through Morgoth’s own eyes, he is let loose into the world, and his meeting with Morwen at the grave of their children brings the story of Túrin to a tragic close, with Morwen’s bewildered “How did she find him?” underscoring the cruel fate that seems to have dogged her children’s lives after Morgoth’s curse. Further, Húrin unwittingly contributes to the destruction of Gondolin, for his desperate and frustrated cries to Turgon in the mountains surrounding the hidden kingdom reveal to Morgoth the vicinity in which to search for Turgon’s realm. It must be noted that Húrin plays a large part in the destruction of Doriath as well, because he brings the necklace Nauglamír to Thingol. There may be a kind of satisfaction in Húrin’s slaying of the dwarf Mîm, who had betrayed Húrin’s son Túrin. But his choice of Nauglamír as the “gift” to bring to Thingol in ironic thanks for protecting his family proves to be fatal to Thingol and his entire kingdom. The hint of greed shown by the king in his desire for the Silmaril brought back by Beren shows up again here, as Thingol wants to display the Silmaril in Nauglamír itself, the most magnificent work of the dwarves of the First Age. This leads to his slaying by the dwarves in Doriath, who see the necklace as their own property (its rightful owner, Finrod, being deceased), and this leads to the first all-out war between elves and dwarves, and ultimately to the second kinslaying of the elves, when the sons of Fëanor, compounding the evils wrought by the disastrous oath, storm Doriath to steal the Silmaril. Of course, there would have been no way for the dwarves, or subsequently Celegorm and his brothers, to enter Doriath at all, had not Melian returned to Valinor and taken her protective girdle with her. The story of Doriath’s ruin

392   Silmarillion, The may be the saddest in The Silmarillion because it does not occur through the malice of Morgoth but, rather, through distrust among the free peoples of Middle-earth, which leads elves and dwarves to fight one another instead of their common enemy; and through personal greed and obsession (on the part of Thingol and Celegorm), which leads elves to kill one another. The lesson of Doriath is the lesson that a house divided against itself cannot stand. It is important to note that chapter 22 is one in which Christopher Tolkien was most intrusive in his editorial reconstruction of his father’s “intent.” He says as much in his notes at the end of “The Tale of Years” in The War of the Jewels (History of Middle-earth, volume 11). Some of the details of the story as printed in The Silmarillion had absolutely no authority, he says, in his father’s writings: It seemed at that time that there were elements inherent in the story of the Ruin of Doriath as it stood that were radically incompatible with “The Silmarillion” as projected, and that there was here an inescapable choice: either to abandon that conception, or else to alter the story. I think now that this was a mistaken view, and that the undoubted difficulties could have been, and should have been, surmounted without so far overstepping the bounds of the editorial function. (356)

In earlier versions of the story, for example, the treasure of Nargothrond only reaches Doriath when Húrin asks for Thingol’s help to carry it. Thus, his gesture of throwing Nauglamir at Thingol’s feet does not appear. Further, in earlier versions, Thingol refuses to pay the dwarves for their work and thus comes across as far less noble than he appears in the rest of The Silmarillion as it finally took shape. In “The Tale of Years,” Tolkien seems to have forgotten about the Girdle of Melian and had the dwarvish army enter Doriath without explaining how it was done, though he seems to have made a note in the manuscript to the effect that this would have been impossible, and he noted elsewhere the possibility of having Thingol leave Doriath for some reason, where the dwarves could meet and kill him, after which the grieving

Melian would leave Middle-earth and her protective girdle would be withdrawn from Doriath. In the final version of the story as it appears in The Silmarillion, Christopher and Guy Kay created a number of the incidents that made coherent sense of the parts of the story that Tolkien had actually written. Those component parts are all published in The History of Middle-earth. They appear in “The Tale of the Nauglafring” and “The Tale of Turambar” in The Book of Lost Tales II, in the “Sketch of the Mythology” and the Quenta Noldorinwa in The Shaping of Middle-earth, and in “The Wanderings of Húrin” and “The Tale of Years” in The War of the Jewels. The following chapter, on the fall of Gondolin, is a somewhat abbreviated form of one of the three great tales that Tolkien had worked on for more than 50 years. In this context, Tuor serves as a more successful foil to his cousin Túrin—a relationship underscored by the chance meeting of the two in which neither recognizes the other. Like Túrin, Tuor is raised by elves and becomes a mighty warrior, one who, like Túrin, engages in guerrilla tactics during the darkest period of Beleriand while Morgoth reigns in uncontested supremacy over all the land outside of the three hidden elvish kingdoms and the mouth of the Sirion. But whereas Túrin’s rash counsel is always to wage open warfare, so that in Nargothrond he persuades the king to disregard the elvish messengers of Círdan the Shipwright when they bring warnings from the Vala Ulmo, Tuor himself brings Ulmo’s warning to Turgon, guided by the single surviving messenger sent by Turgon to try to reach Valinor. But in Gondolin Maeglin takes on Túrin’s role as antagonist and convinces Turgon to stay and trust in Gondolin’s impregnability. Tuor’s fortunes in love contrast sharply with Túrin’s as well. Like Túrin with Finduilas, Tuor wins the love of Idril from a rival suitor whom she has known much longer. But while Túrin is unable to rescue Finduilas from the orcs, Tuor defeats Maeglin on the walls of Gondolin and saves his wife and son. And while the child of Túrin’s illfated marriage to Nienor dies in the womb upon Nienor’s suicide, Tuor’s child with Idril will grow

Silmarillion, The   393 to be the deliverer of both men and elves, the great mariner Eärendil. It would be a mistake to see Tuor’s success in contrast with Túrin’s failures as blind chance dooming the one and uplifting the other. Nor is it truly the curse of Morgoth that dooms Túrin’s family. As has already been made clear, Túrin’s problems are often of his own making, the result of his own arrogance or rashness. These are traits Tuor does not share—he is dutiful and diligent in carrying out Ulmo’s will, and is patient enough to win Turgon’s respect and his blessing to marry Idril, after seven years as a loyal subject in Gondolin. In his marriage to Idril, Tuor also parallels Tolkien’s earlier great hero, Beren. Tuor and Idril join in the second wedding of elf and man. Just as the uniting of Beren and Lúthien led to the success of the earlier quest for the Silmaril, so the union of Tuor and Idril will lead to the ultimate success of elves and men in the seemingly perpetual war against Morgoth. But Turgon here serves as a foil to Thingol earlier: While his failure to accept Ulmo’s warning leads to Turgon’s downfall, his acceptance of his daughter’s marriage to Tuor of the Edain, in contrast to Thingol’s earlier rejection of Beren and his attempt to send his daughter’s suitor to his death, underscores Turgon’s greatness of heart as well as Thingol’s degeneration into distrust, selfishness, and poor judgment after long years of isolation in Doriath. This is not to say that Turgon himself always shows the best judgment. Certainly his trust of Maeglin ultimately contributes to the destruction of Gondolin. Maeglin’s lust for Idril and his jealousy of Tuor’s having obtained both Idril’s love and Turgon’s trust, gives him motive enough to betray Gondolin, at least if he gives any credence to Morgoth’s lying promises that he will make Maeglin lord of Gondolin and of Idril. But Tolkien expects his readers to remember that the blood of the Dark Elf Eöl runs in Maeglin’s veins, and the bitterness of that Dark Elf is a part of Maeglin’s nature. Besides, Eöl had also cursed his son with his dying breath. In Tolkien’s world, it is possible to make choices for good or evil no matter what nature one is born with—the contrast of Tuor and Túrin makes that crystal clear. But it would seem

that a nature like Maeglin’s ensures that the choice to betray Gondolin will be much easier to make. The other cursed figures in The Silmarillion—the children of Húrin and the sons of Fëanor—make bad choices as well, but the curse seems something like an inherited tendency to make self-destructive choices, rather than a compulsion outside of the character’s will. The epic qualities of the fall of Gondolin most closely parallel the story of the destruction of Troy in Virgil’s Aeneid. Betrayed by treachery, the city is demolished by enemies that had for many years sought a way to destroy it. Tuor’s escape from the devastated Gondolin with his wife and child recalls Aeneas’s flight from the burning Troy with his wife, Creusa, and son, Ascanius. But while Aeneas loses Creusa in the escape, saving Ascanius, who embodies the promise of the rebirth of Troy in the Roman nation, Tuor is able to save not only the young Eärendil, the embodiment of hope for elves and men in Middle-earth, but Idril as well, by defeating the traitor who brought down the city. Indeed, there is no lack of heroism in the epic story of Gondolin’s fall. The valiant Glorfindel, who falls from the cliff fighting the Balrog in order to save Tuor and Idril, prefigures Gandalf and his sacrifice in Moria in The Fellowship of the Ring. The tale of the fall of Gondolin has a complex textual history that began with a very early version written in 1916–17 and revised in about 1920, which is printed as “The Fall of Gondolin” in The Book of Lost Tales II. While at the University of Leeds (see Leeds, University of) in the mid1920s, Tolkien wrote the beginning of Lay of the Fall of Gondolin but abandoned it after some 130 lines of hexameter couplets. A brief commentary on this poem appears in Christopher Tolkien’s edition of The Lays of Beleriand. Later versions of the story are found in the Quenta Noldorinwa and also in the “Horns of Ylmir” in The Shaping of Middleearth, and in “The Wanderings of Húrin” in The War of the Jewels. But nowhere does Tolkien give the story the epic treatment that he had conceived for the tale. Chapter 24: “Of the Voyage of Eärendil and the War of Wrath”  All versions of The Silmarillion

394   Silmarillion, The are intended to end with the voyage of Eärendil and the final defeat of Morgoth. The story of Eärendil is central to Tolkien’s conception of the First Age, since it brings about the redemption of Arda. As Tom Shippey has written, “In a clearly limited and deliberately imperfect way, Tolkien’s Silmarillion closes with an analogue of intercession, forgiveness, and salvation coming necessarily outside a ruined Middle-earth, just as it began with analogues of the Fall of Angels and the Fall of Man” (Tolkien 258–259). Tolkien’s story should not be mistaken as a retelling of the redemption of the human race in a Christian sense—there are too many differences in the details of the story (Eärendil is neither divine nor martyred through self-sacrifice, and the Valar are not to be confused with the Almighty). More important, the devoutly Catholic Tolkien would not have conceived of any substitution for the onetime salvation through Christ. Nor should we see the story of Eärendil as an allegory of Christ in the usual sense of the word, since correspondences between men and elves, Eärendil and Christ are too imperfect to work as allegory. Still, Eärendil is undeniably a Christ figure, and the most profitable way of seeing the story is typologically. Tolkien the medievalist was well aware of the medieval method of reading the Old Testament in such a way as to see the New Testament prefigured in the pre-Christian events. The First Age of Middle-earth is certainly a pre-Christian age, and Eärendil’s intercessory voyage to Valinor to bring about the decisive war of the Valar on Morgoth that finally undoes the curse of Mandos and the “fall” of the Eldar parallels the Christian story of salvation through Christ. But read typologically, Eärendil’s story merely anticipates that greater sacrifice to come and indicates God’s control over all of history to the extent that He places these hints of what is to come through this story as much as through, say, the story of Jonah being swallowed and regurgitated by the great fish, interpreted by medieval readers as a prefiguring of Christ’s death and resurrection. The fact that the Eärendil story is a tale of great prominence in The Silmarillion should not be surprising, since it was the very first of any of the stories late collected in this volume that Tolkien conceived of. It had its origin in 1914 (as Hum-

phrey Carpenter relates in his Tolkien biography), owing its conception to a single word in an Old English poem from the Exeter Book that Tolkien was working on at the time. The poem, at that time attributed to Cynewulf, is called Crist I by modern editors. The lines in question are as follows: Eala earendel,   engla beorhtast, ofer middangeard   monnum sended

In modern English, the lines say “Oh, Earendel, brightest of angels, sent to men above Middle-earth .  .  .” (Carpenter 64). What struck Tolkien about these lines was the word earendel, which seemed to him a word surviving from a much earlier age. Carpenter quotes Tolkien as declaring that he “felt a curious thrill” upon seeing the word (64). Shippey notes that the context of the passage is an appeal spoken by the patriarchs and prophets in hell, asking for an angel (in the originally theological sense of a divine messenger) to bring them hope in the deorc deaþes sceadu (“the dark shadow of death”) (Road 245). The lines are a deliberate echo of the biblical “the people who sat in darkness have seen a great light” from Isaiah 9.2 and Matthew 4.16, and Tolkien interpreted the passage to refer to John the Baptist. But the word earendel continued to intrigue him, and researching the background of the word brought him to the occurrence of cognate words in other medieval Germanic languages. Its original meaning seems to have been something like “luminous wanderer,” thus suggesting it was the name of a star or planet (perhaps the morning star, the planet Venus). As Shippey notes, the character Aurvandil appears in the Icelandic Prose Edda as a companion of the god Thor. Aurvandil’s toe becomes frostbitten and is thrown into heaven by the god to become a star. There is also a Middle High German poem called Orendel, whose protagonist is a shipwrecked prince who, rescued by a fisherman, obtains a grey robe from a whale—a robe that turns out to be the seamless robe worn by Christ at the crucifixion. Orendel returns to his native country and converts his land to Christianity (Road 246–247). Thus, Tolkien surmised that the name earendel connoted a bright star as well as a messenger of hope. From these associations, the tale of Eärendil took shape.

Silmarillion, The   395 In its first form, the story was a lyric poem Tolkien wrote in 1914 called “The Voyage of Earendel the Evening Star,” and it recounted the nightly voyage of a star-ship that sailed across the heavens until the morning light. He returned to these verses in 1915, when he showed them to his friend G. B. Smith, who asked him what the poem was really about. Tolkien replied that he did not know but would “try to find out”—implying, as Carpenter says, that he saw himself not “as an inventor of story but as a discoverer of legend” (75). Thus, in 1915 he worked on a much expanded poem called “The Lay of Earendel,” in which Earendel sails to a land called Valinor, where the Two Trees grow. By 1933, when Tolkien published a fanciful lyric called “Errantry” (The Tolkien Reader 211–214), the more serious aspects of Eärendil as deliverer seem to have dropped out, but when Bilbo sings a “Song of Eärendil” (modeled closely on the earlier “Errantry”) in the “Many Meetings” chapter of The Fellowship of the Ring, the significance of Eärendil in Tolkien’s legendarium has been solidified. One can see this taking shape in “The Tale of Earendel” in The Book of Lost Tales II. A word should be said about the difference in tone in this chapter from most of those that have preceded it. With the Eärendil story, Tolkien moves from the realm of heroic legend back into the realm of myth with which The Silmarillion began. In creating a kind of quasi-biblical account of pre-Christian Middle-earth, Tolkien has followed the structure of the Christian scriptures, which tell the story of the faithful in this world bounded by the mythic beginning and ending of the universe in Genesis and Revelation. So Tolkien, having related the beginnings of Arda in mythic form, returns to the narrative of myth here in the end. Like Saint Brendan in Irish myth, Eärendil searches the western sea, hoping to find his parents or to set foot on the Undying Lands. Like many figures of Greek mythology, Elwing is transformed into a bird by the Valar. Like many of the great heroes of those Greek myths, Eärendil is placed in the heavens and becomes a star—a star that gives hope to the Eldar and fills Morgoth with foreboding. Ultimately, the Valar’s War of Wrath on the forces of Morgoth transforms the land, sinking most of Beleriand

under the sea and reducing what is left to a frozen wasteland. Thus, the near-apocalypse of the Valar’s invasion takes the form, as well, of an etiological myth explaining the configuration of the continent of Middle-earth. It is also important to address the ultimate fate of the Silmarils and the working out of Fëanor’s oath. With only two of Fëanor’s sons left alive, and with Morgoth defeated and the land purged of his evil, Tolkien reminds his readers that some sort of evil is always present. In something of an anticlimax, Maedhros insists on fulfilling his oath, bringing the reluctant Maglor with him. Warned by the Valar that the curse on the jewels, which will not allow the unworthy to touch them, will certainly apply to them now that they have degenerated into evil and three times have been involved in the slaying of other elves, Maedhros and Maglor still take hold of the jewels by dishonorable means—through theft rather than battle—and the jewels burn their hands to the point where they are unable to keep them. As the Silmarils find their final resting places in the earth, air, and water, they become a part of the elemental fabric of the created world. Perhaps, in their inexplicable beauty, that is what they have always signified. By the end of the Quenta Silmarillion, the stage is set for the great conflicts that mark the Second and Third Ages of Middle-earth. Though Morgoth is gone, the evil that he wrought is not eradicated. Sauron is still at large, and there are Balrogs, orcs, and dragons that survive. There is still distrust among elves, men, and dwarves. The world has been reshaped to provide the setting for later events. Gil-galad is high king of the Noldor in Middle-earth, and the Valar are about to create Númenor for the Edain. Although many of the elves accept the Valar’s invitation to come to the Undying Lands, many remain in Middle-earth, including Galadriel, princess of the Noldor and the only leader of the Noldorian exodus still alive by the end of the First Age. Significantly, the children of Eärendil and Elwing make their choices to follow the fate of men or elves: Elrond chooses the fate of the Eldar and becomes a potent force throughout the next two ages, in addition to begetting Arwen Evenstar, whose beauty was compared to Lúthien’s.

396   Silmarillion, The Elros chooses the fate of men, and through him will come the great kings of men, including, after two long ages, Aragorn Elessar, whose marriage to Arwen would unite human and elf once more and begin the Fourth Age in hope. Synopsis Part 4: Akallabêth Men had come into being in Middle-earth during the darkness of Morgoth, and many of them had been lured to side with Angband. But many also became friends of the elves, and these were known as the Edain. From these had sprung Eärendil, whose efforts had convinced the Valar to intercede in Beleriand on behalf of elves and men. Following the War of Wrath, when the Valar called the elves to return to Valinor, they created a great island for the Edain in the ocean between Aman and Middleearth that came to be called Númenor. Men set sail for Númenor, drawn by the star of Eärendil. They were led by Elros Half-elven, son of Eärendil and Elwing, who became the first king of the men of Númenor. Later known as the Dúnedain, these men were given the gift of long life, and Elros himself lived 500 years. Men flourished in Númenor, becoming skilled craftsmen and mariners. They were often in communication with elves from Avallónë (the city of the Eldar on the island Tol Eressëa), who brought them gifts including a white tree, Nimloth, that was descended from the tree Yavanna had given the elves in Tirion. The Númenóreans also spoke the language of the elves and often took elvish names as well as human ones. Yet the Valar forbade them from sailing to Aman, fearing that men would envy the undying Valar and Eldar. Men did not understand this prohibition but respected it, though they sailed over the rest of the world. Often they came to Middle-earth, where their kinsmen had degenerated into ignorance and barbarism. These Middle-earth men saw the Númenóreans as gods and learned from them. After several centuries, however, some of the Dúnedain become discontented with their fate, resenting the deathless Eldar, and under TarAtanamir (13th king of Númenor), they protest the ban against sailing to the West, which they believe is keeping them from attaining immortality.

Manwë sends word, explaining that Aman did not bestow deathlessness, and that immortality was not a reward for the elves, nor was death punishment for men (such ideas came from Morgoth); death was, rather, a condition of mortal life that only Ilúvatar could alter. But the answer fails to satisfy the Dúnedain, and under Atanamir’s son Tar-Ancalimon, a group called the King’s Men openly oppose the Valar and the Eldar, set all their energies to prolonging life and building up wealth, and worship Ilúvatar no longer. A rival group, however, called the Elendili (“Elf-friends”) still trust the Valar and keep faith alive. During this time, many of the Dúnedain return to Middle-earth, this time as conquerors, setting up dominion over the men of those lands. Ultimately, the elvish language is suppressed in Númenor, and visits from the Eldar cease. No longer do they care for Nimloth, the White Tree. The elf friends, distrusted by the King’s Men, are moved to the eastern parts of Númenor, to prevent any contact with the Eldar of Avallónnë. At the same time, many of the elf friends ally themselves with Gil-galad in his war against the resurgent Sauron, who has set himself up as Morgoth’s successor in Middle-earth. Sauron hates the Dúnedain and fears them, but he is able to lure several of them with his Rings of Power, and with the help of his newly formed Ringwraiths, he attacks the Númenórean colonies on the sea. Inzelbêth is a beautiful and noble lady and one of the elf friends of Númenor. She marries the arrogant king Ar-Gimilzôr, but theirs is a loveless marriage. They have two sons. The eldest, Inziladûn, is like his mother, and when he becomes king, he repents the deeds of his forefathers and tries to restore Númenor to friendship with the Valar and the tending of the White Tree. He even takes the elvish name Tar-Palantír (“Far Seeing”), and prophesies that the kings of Númenor will die out when the White Tree is no more. But Tar-Palantír’s younger brother, Gimilkâd, takes after his father and opposes Palantír as a member of the King’s Men. Although Gimilkâd dies relatively young, his son Pharazôn, haughty and greedy, succeeds to the throne upon Palantír’s death by marrying his near kinswoman Míriel,

Silmarillion, The   397 Palantír’s daughter, against all custom and law. He names himself Ar-Pharazôn (“the Golden”) and calls Míriel Ar-Zimraphel. He is the 24th and last king of Númenor. Ar-Pharazôn hears that Sauron holds the men of Middle-earth in subjugation, calling himself “King of Men” and planning to destroy Númenor. Ar-Pharazôn decides to invade Middle-earth and bring Sauron down. He brings a great host to confront Sauron, whose armies flee in terror from the Dúnedain. Aware that he cannot defeat the Númenóreans by force of arms, Sauron attempts to use subterfuge instead, and he swears allegiance to Ar-Pharazôn. But the king will not trust him and has him brought as prisoner back to Númenor, the grandeur of which only aggravates Sauron’s resentment. Sauron is able to convince the lords of Númenor that he is a sincere ally of the Dúnedain. He promises new wealth and convinces them that the Valar are keeping them from lands that should be theirs. Through these lies, he is able to sway the lords of Númenor from worship of Eru (Ilúvatar), whom Sauron claims is a false god and toward the worship of Melkor. Ar-Pharazôn ultimately turns to the worship of Melkor/Morgoth, and with him the majority of the Dúnedain join in rites that include human sacrifice. Only Amandil, the lord of Andúnië (haven of the elf friends on Númenor’s west coast) remains suspicious of Sauron. Sauron uses his influence to have Amandil dismissed from the king’s service, but he still fears Amandil and his family—his son Elendil and grandsons Isildur and Anárion. Although Amandil tries to protect the worship of Ilúvatar, ArPharazôn forbids such worship on pain of death. Sauron then advocates that the White Tree of Nimloth be cut down, but before this happens, Isildur is able to circumvent the guards around the tree and, though wounded, is able to bring back a fruit of the tree to Amandil. The seed blossoms, and a new tree begins to grow. Nimloth is felled and burned in a great temple built by Sauron for the worship of Melkor. Under Ar-Pharazôn’s reign, Númenor becomes more rich and powerful than it has ever been—subjugating the men of Middle-earth, stealing their wealth, and

sacrificing them on the altars of Melkor. But the life spans of the Dúnedain begin to dwindle, and the Númenóreans now fear death and become violent against one another. As Ar-Pharazôn nears death himself, Sauron persuades him to invade Aman, make war on the Valar, and force them to grant him immortality. When Amandil hears of this mad scheme, he determines to duplicate the feat of his ancestor Eärendil and sail secretly to the West to warn the Valar and enlist their aid. He takes three loyal friends with him and sails west, meanwhile urging his son Elendil to gather the faithful together and sail from Númenor into permanent exile. Amandil’s mission is unsuccessful, however, since the arrogance of the Númenórean kings cannot be forgiven by the Valar. It is unknown whether Amandil ever saw Manwë, but he himself is never seen again among men. Elendil and his followers escape Númenor just as great storms and portents strike the land from the west. Lightning strikes the temple of Melkor but does not destroy it, and when Sauron stands at the temple challenging the lightning and is not harmed, the men of Númenor regard him as a god. Even when the mountain Meneltarma spews smoke, the Númenóreans disregard the omen. ArPharazôn launches his host and sets sail for the forbidden shores of Aman. The fleet sails past Tol Eressëa, but Ar-Pharazôn feels some doubt before landing on Aman. His pride overcomes his misgivings, however, and the host invades the shores. They find none of the Eldar, all of whom have fled for refuge to Túna. Ar-Pharazôn claims the land for himself as the Númenórean host camps before the elvish city. Now Manwë appeals to Ilúvatar, and the creator remakes the world itself. He causes the mountains to fall and bury Ar-Pharazôn and all his host, while he simultaneously opens a great chasm that swallows the Númenórean ships, and ultimately the entire island of Númenor itself. This dismays Sauron, who had thought to profit from the destruction of the Dúnedain. Further, Sauron himself loses his human shape forever. Although he cannot die, he returns to Middle-earth, where he has forged his Rings of Power and assumes the form of a great eye.

398   Silmarillion, The Ilúvatar also removes Aman completely from communication with the rest of the world, which he remakes into a sphere. Only the Eldar will now know the secret straight path to the Undying Lands. Now a great wind rises and blows the nine ships of Elendil to Middle-earth. Elendil leads a host of descendants of Elros and brings the seedling of the white tree as well as the Seven Stones (the palantíri, or “seeing-stones”) that had been gifts from the Eldar. In Middle-earth, the land has also been renewed by the upheaval. Here the Dúnedain found new cities and kingdoms, teaching the men of Middle-earth new arts and skills. But in the lore of men remains the memory of the lost continent, which they call Akallabêth (“the downfallen”) or, in the tongue of the Eldar, Atalantë. Commentary In a sweeping summary encompassing the events of more than 3,000 years (the bulk of the entire Second Age), Akallabêth chronicles the history of the men of Númenor, the island continent established by the Valar specifically for the Edain—the allies of the Eldar in the war against Morgoth. It demonstrates the fact that evil remains in Middle-earth despite the expulsion of Morgoth, and that men remain corruptible because of Ilúvitar’s gift to them of free will. The story provides the background for a number of specific details of The Lord of the Rings, including the origin of Sauron’s concept of the Rings of Power and of the Ringwraiths, or Nazgûl; the ancestry of Aragorn and the kings of Gondor; the origin of the palantíri through which Sauron is able to seduce Saruman the White; and the source of the White Tree of Gondor, descended from the sapling of Nimloth preserved by Isildur. It is immediately apparent that this story is Tolkien’s reinterpretation of the ancient myth of Atlantis, particularly when we are told in the end that the Quenya name for the island continent that was swallowed by the sea is Atalantë, the elvish word for “Downfallen.” Tolkien himself never acknowledged that the similarity of names was deliberate and simply called it a “curious chance” in one of his letters (Letters 347). Still, it is difficult to believe that some unconscious association did not influence his construction of the story. Maria

do Rosario Monteiro notes the similarities between Tolkien’s Númenor and Plato’s version of Atlantis as described in Plato’s Timaeus and Critias. Both islands are created by the “gods” (Númenor by the Valar and Atlantis by Poseidon). Both have a geometric form implying perfection (Númenor a fivepointed star, Atlantis a circle). Both have a tall, central mountain peak that is the chief venue of worship for their societies. And finally, both are originally Utopian societies (Númenóreans are given the gifts of wisdom, power, and long life) that ultimately decay (Monteiro 635). An even more likely allusion in Akallabêth is in the name Avallónë for the city of the Eldar on Tol Eressëa, which maintains a steady contact with the Númenóreans early in the Second Age. In Quenya, the name means “near Valinor,” but the word has an unmistakable echo of the isle of Avalon in Arthurian tradition—the fairyland where King Arthur is taken after the Battle of Camlann, to be healed of his wounds and from which he is expected to come again. Inhabited by elves and the nearest portion of the Undying Lands, Avallónë resembles Arthur’s fairy kingdom to no small extent. Further Celtic influences in the Akallabêth, as noted by Marie Barnfield, are apparent in the geography of Númenor: The central mountain that Monteiro linked to Atlantis is, according to Barnfield, a reflection of the hill of Uisneach in ancient Ireland, sacred to the Mother Goddess. Further, the star shape of Númenor reflects the five-fold division of Ireland (Barnfield 9–10). Tolkien’s chief source for the Akallabêth, however, is neither the Greek myth of Atlantis nor Arthurian legend, but the Old Testament, particularly the Books of Judges, Samuel, and Kings. In those books, the Israelites settle the Promised Land and forge the Kingdom of Israel, but the nation prospers only so long as the people are faithful to Yahweh and His Law. When they do evil in the sight of the Lord, such as happens with Ahab and Jezebel and their worship of the Canaanite gods at the time of Elijah, they are thrown down and subjugated by the Syrians and, earlier, by the Philistines or other enemies. When their evil has reached a peak intolerable to God, they are crushed by the empire of the Assyrians and, later, the Babylo-

Silmarillion, The   399 nians. In Númenor, evil takes the form of distrust of the Valar, jealousy of the Eldar and their earthly immortality, and discontent with the will of Ilúvitar that men should die. Ultimately, it means that the worship of Ilúvatar is neglected and finally replaced with, of all things, worship of the evil and outcast Melkor (this, of course, through the influence of Sauron himself). Like Elijah, the only faithful prophet of the Lord (1 Kings 18), Amandil is exiled from the court and lives in isolation, keeping the worship of Ilúvatar alive with his sons and few followers in a small corner of Númenor. Although there are periods of good kings such as Palantír, who, like Judah’s King Josiah (2 Kings 22–23) seek to return the people to the true faith, these only temporarily forestall the deluge. The Akallabêth is the only place in any of Tolkien’s major texts in which he directly considers the religion of Arda. Although the Valar are quite similar to pagan Norse or Greek deities, they are never worshiped as gods in Middle-earth. They are known to be beings of great power, but it is always clear that the ultimate source of power is the Creator God, Eru or Ilúvatar. But Ilúvatar is presented as a transcendent god who has left the care of Arda in the hands of his lieutenants, the angel-like Valar—chief among them, Manwë. It is also clear that the Valar are neither omniscient nor always indisputably wise: Although they are more in tune with the will of Ilúvatar, they also have free will and can err. Certainly their abandonment of Middle-earth to Morgoth was a questionable decision, since it left the Children of Ilúvatar in a hopeless situation, despite giving them the opportunity for valorous action and to choose between good and evil. Forbidding the Númenóreans from ever setting foot on the Undying Lands may not have been a completely wise decision either, since it only bred envy and distrust in men—although the purpose of this decree may well have been specifically to prevent such envy. The Tree of Nimloth, however—a scion of the White Tree of Valinor, given to Elros by the Eldar of Tol Eressëa—becomes the symbol of the light, that grace of God that perpetually contrasts the shadow of evil, of Melkor, and of Sauron. Men of Númenor, acquainted with the power and good-

ness of Eru through their early connections with the Valar and the Eldar, worship the Creator God and prosper, developing their arts and sciences extensively, gaining in power, extending their realms into Middle-earth itself, and lengthening their natural lives to an unheard-of degree. Nimloth is the center of the cult of Eru on Númenor, and its burning by Sauron and Ar-Pharazôn is the act that embodies the apostasy of the king and his followers. While turning from Eru does cause a falling off in the length of their lives, the Númenóreans remain extremely powerful—powerful enough that Sauron himself fears them and cannot stand against them when they invade Middle-earth. But Sauron is cunning enough to know that, while the strength of men is beyond his power to defeat, their abandonment of Eru makes them all the easier to turn to his will through false preaching, and when he wins them to the worship of Melkor, it is only a small step to urge them to the invasion of Valinor itself. At this presumption, Ilúvatar can no longer remain detached. Like some of the earlier tales of the First Age, the story of Númenor’s destruction is another analogue of the Fall. Ar-Pharazôn, the embodiment of all the discontented in Númenor, has everything— long life, riches, power—yet cannot have immortality. Like Eve in the Garden of Eden, he is tempted by the promise of being like a god, of living forever, and for this he does the one thing forbidden to him: He invades Valinor. The punishment of Númenor takes the mythic form of a wrathful God who remakes the entire world—once again, an act with biblical parallels, specifically in the story of Noah’s flood (Genesis 6–9). In Genesis, God opens up the Firmament to let the waters of the heavens flood the earth, allowing the waters of the great deep surrounding the earth in as well. Essentially, he destroys the creation he had formed out of the waters of chaos by letting those waters destroy his creation, and then he remakes the world again. This is precisely what Ilúvatar does here: Not only does he send Númenor to the depths, destroying all life on that island, but he remakes the world. Just as the first chapter of Genesis describes the earth as a flat disc, so The Silmarillion has thus far

400   Silmarillion, The conceived of Arda as a flat disk prior to the Valar’s destruction of Númenor. After the Valar remake the world, Arda is now reformed into a sphere, separating Middle-earth from the Undying Lands in such a way that only the Eldar will ever be able to find the way back to Valinor. But, like Noah and his family, a small group of the faithful survive the chaos of Númenor’s downfall. Elendil and his sons preserve the true faith as well as the best parts of the civilization of Númenor, and they bring these into Middleearth. Aside from Noah, this recalls the remnant of Israel that the Old Testament prophets say will survive the destruction of Israel and Judah (as in, for example, Isaiah 10:21, Ezekiel 6:8, Micah 2:12, and Romans 9:27). These will restore the faith and their descendants will prosper. Unlike the remnant of Israel that returns to the Promised Land after the Babylonian Captivity, they will not return to Númenor, which is gone forever; but they will restore the glory of Númenor—and the veneration of the White Tree, which Isildur has saved—in their kingdoms in Middle-earth. Like most of the texts included in The Silmarillion, Akallabêth has a long and complex history. In the mid-1930s, Tolkien corresponded with C. S. Lewis about space travel and time travel. From these discussions emerged Lewis’s space trilogy (beginning with the novel Out of the Silent Planet), while Tolkien was to write a novel of time travel, which he began writing under the title “The Lost Road.” He soon abandoned “The Lost Road” but developed a portion of that text into an early sketch of the Akallabêth told from the perspective of the elves called “The Fall of Númenor.” “The Lost Road” and “The Fall of Númenor” both appear in volume 5 of the The History of Middleearth (The Lost Road and Other Writings). Some of the Númenórean material was included in another abandoned novel, The Notion Club Papers, begun in 1945 and published in Sauron Defeated (History of Middle-earth, volume 9). At about the same time that he was writing The Notion Club Papers, Tolkien wrote a new version of the story of Númenor called “The Drowning of Anadúnê,” this time told from the perspective of the Númenóreans themselves. This text also appears in Sauron Defeated

(History of Middle-earth, volume 9). Of course, the story of the downfall of Númenor also appears in abbreviated form in appendix A of The Return of the King, written in the early 1950s. But the final draft of the tale, called “The History of the Akallabêth,” was completed around 1958, and selections of it appear as the fifth section of The Peoples of Middleearth, the 12th and last volume in The History of Middle-earth, edited by Christopher Tolkien. Synopsis Part 5: Of the Rings of Power and the Third Age In a final section that overlaps the earlier Akallabêth, this narrative begins at the close of the first age, when Morgoth has been overthrown by the armies of Valinor. Morgoth’s chief lieutenant, Sauron, surrenders to Eönwë, the commander of the host. Despite Sauron’s apparent repentance, Eönwë declares it would be inappropriate for him, a Maia, to pass judgment on another Maia, and tells Sauron he must come to Valinor and plead his case before Manwë. Instead Sauron flees, hiding himself until the host of Valinor has withdrawn from Middle-earth with most of the Eldar. The influence of Morgoth still motivates Sauron, and he soon falls back into his evil ways. After the War of Wrath, much of Beleriand has been destroyed. Most of the families of elf friends have moved to Númenor. In Middle-earth, the Noldor under Gil-galad live in Lindon near the gulf of Lhun at the Grey Havens, while the Teleri who had lived in Doriath now live with some of the sylvan elves in the forests. Another group of Noldor, led by Celebrimbor, lives beside the Misty Mountains near the dwarvish kingdom of Moria, where a friendship grows between the two races and the Noldor become the greatest elvish craftsmen since Fëanor himself. Sauron, however, is hatching new evil. His chief aim is to corrupt the elves. Disguised as “Annatar” (“Lord of Gifts”), he goes among the elves, trying to pass himself off as a friend. Gil-galad and Elrond are unimpressed and cast him out of their settlement at Lindon. But he is able to make headway among the Noldor of Eregion near the Misty Mountains, where he proposes that the elves work to make Middle-earth as magnificent as Valinor

Silmarillion, The   401 itself. He asserts that Gil-galad is jealous and wants to ensure the supremacy of his own realm, and he teaches the Noldor crafts that had been long forgotten among the Eldar. Through Sauron’s urging, the elves of Eregion begin to make Rings of Power. In secret, Sauron forges the One Ring, with which he can control all other Rings of Power and those who wear them. But as soon as Sauron puts the One Ring on his finger, the elves are aware of what has happened and remove their own rings. His subterfuge having failed, Sauron wages open war against the elves, claiming ownership of all the Rings of Power because he had helped the Eldar make them. The elves flee, and Sauron is able to recover all but three of the rings. These are the last three rings that were made, created by the elf lord Celebrimbor himself (grandson of Fëanor). Called Narya, Nenya, and Vilya (the rings of fire, water, and air), these three are the most powerful rings made by the elves, and have the power to delay the world-weariness that affects the Eldar with the ravages of time. These rings have never been touched by Sauron, but are still subject to the One Ring. The elves are able to keep these rings, though Sauron desires them most; therefore, the Eldar give them secretly to the wisest among them in order to keep them hidden. In the ensuing warfare, Celebrimbor is slain, and the doors of Moria are closed, after which Elrond establishes the haven in Rivendell, which the elves call Imladris. Sauron gives the recovered rings to the other races of Middle-earth—seven to the dwarves and nine to men. The dwarves prove to be nearly immune to Sauron’s manipulation, focused mainly on gaining wealth rather than power with their rings. But the men prove to be easily controlled, chiefly because of their desire for immortality, and they are ultimately consumed by the rings, turning finally into the specters called Ringwraiths, invisible to all but him who wears the One Ring, to which they are enslaved. These are the Nazgûl. Sauron is now established as the Dark Lord of Middle-earth, though he still avoids battle with Gil-galad. When the Númenóreans come to aid Gil-galad, Sauron is cowed into using guile rather than force, and he returns with them as a prisoner to Númenor, where he ultimately contrives

the destruction of their entire civilization. When Númenor is sunk into the sea, Sauron’s fair form is lost, though he returns to Middle-earth as a spirit. Here he finds that Gil-galad has established his hegemony, and soon Elendil and his sons arrive, landing in Lindon and welcomed by Gil-galad. In the North, the Dúnedain establish their kingdom of Arnor in the region called Eriador. Here Elendil rules, and his sons, Isildur and Anárion, move up the River Anduin from the south to found the kingdom of Gondor. Osgiliath, built on both sides of the Anduin, is Gondor’s chief city, but the brothers also build two fortress cities, Anárion’s Minas Anor (“Tower of the Sun”) to the west and Isildur’s Minas Ithil (“Tower of the Moon”) to the east. Sauron dwells in Mordor and fortifies himself with the vast fortress of Barad-dûr. The Númenóreans have brought with them the White Tree descended from Nimloth (which is planted by Isildur at Minas Ithil), as well as the Seven Stones, the far-seeing palantíri, each of which could show what was occurring in the vicinity of the others, and through which one of great will could direct his gaze to see anything he desired. Three stones are entrusted to Elendil, while Isildur and Anárion each hold two. With these the Númenóreans are able to keep track of their enemies’ movements. Sauron is implacable in his war with the elves and their human allies. He attacks Minas Ithil and destroys the White Tree, though once more Isildur is able to escape with a seedling. While Anárion is besieged in Osgiliath, Isildur travels north to reach Elendil. Now Elendil and Gil-galad form the Last Alliance, and they are joined by Durin’s folk, the dwarves of Moria. They besiege Mordor for seven years, during which Anárion is killed. Finally, Sauron comes out onto the plain of Dagorlad and does battle. He is able to kill both Gil-galad and Elendil, whose sword, Narsil, is broken in the battle. Isildur, however, brings Sauron down, and with the remnants of Narsil, he cuts the ring from Sauron’s finger, forcing Sauron once more to flee, disembodied, from his defeat. This begins the Third Age of Middle-earth. In memory of his brother, Isildur plants the White Tree at Minas Anor, which is renamed Minas

402   Silmarillion, The Tirith (“Tower of the Guard”). Though warned by Elrond and Círdan that the One Ring should be destroyed in the fires of the Cracks of Doom where it was made, Isildur ignores their advice and claims the ring for himself. He begins to make his way to Eriador, to his father’s realm, but is ambushed by orcs along the way. His sons are all killed with the exception of his youngest, Valandil, who is safe at Rivendell. Isildur himself, invisible through the power of the One Ring, escapes to the river, but there the ring slips from his finger. He is revealed and killed by the orcs, and the ring is lost. Three of Isildur’s party survive and take refuge in Rivendell, where they give the shards of Narsil to Valandil as his heirloom. Elrond foresees that the sword of Elendil will not be reforged until the One Ring is rediscovered and Sauron returns to power. Valandil returns to Eriador, but over the centuries, the power of Arnor wanes, and its heritage is forgotten as it breaks into many petty kingdoms. Eventually, the Dúnedain are reduced to strange wanderers over the land. Gondor in the South endures much longer, rivaling Númenor in its splendor, but ultimately it, too, declines, and the watch it had undertaken on Mordor is forgotten. Mordor captures Minas Ithil, and it is renamed Minas Morgul. Osgiliath is abandoned. Eärnur, the 33rd and last king of Gondor, rides off to do battle with the lord of the Nazgûl, and he never returns. Now the Nazgûl begin preparing Mordor for their Dark Lord’s return. Since Eärnur left no heir, the steward of Gondor, Mardil the Faithful, takes the reins of the city, and in his wars, he is aided by the Rohirrim from the north. Together, they are able to keep Mordor at bay for a while. Rivendell remains a refuge from the Dark Lord, and here the heirs of Isildur are typically raised, as Elrond keeps the shards of Narsil. At the Grey Havens, Círdan the Shipwright maintains a safe dwelling, while Galadriel and Celeborn reign in Lórien. The three rings are being kept safely and in secret. Vilya (the sapphire ring of air) is with Elrond, and Nenya (the adamant ring of water) is with Galadriel, but only those two know where the third ring, Narya (the ruby ring of fire), is kept. Still, it is known that if the One Ring could be found and destroyed, the power of those

three rings would come to an end, and at that point, the time of the elves in Middle-earth would be at an end. Sauron finally does reappear, making his fortress in the fortified hill of Dol Guldur in Greenwood the Great, renamed Mirkwood as the darkness begins to engulf it. Only in the northern parts of the forest, where Thranduil has established an elven kingdom, is the darkness unable to penetrate. As these events are transpiring, five messengers arrive from the West. These are old men called the Istari, or wizards, and they include Saruman, Gandalf, and Radagast. Of these, Saruman is the wisest, but Gandalf is most vigilant. When Gandalf discovers the darkness in Mirkwood, he brings it to the attention of a White Council with Elrond, Círdan, Galadriel, and Saruman. The council names Saruman chief of wizards, and he immediately begins to research the Rings of Power. Meanwhile, Gandalf explores for himself the darkness of Dol Guldur, finding to his horror that Sauron himself has returned and, from this stronghold, is seeking news of the Rings of Power and of Isildur’s heirs. Gandalf brings this news back to the council and advocates open war on Sauron now, though Saruman disagrees, claiming to believe that the One Ring is lost to the sea and hence no danger. In fact, Saruman has begun to desire the One Ring himself, and he hopes to keep Sauron active long enough for the ring to resurface. But when he fears that Sauron’s minions are searching the river near where the ring was lost, Saruman relents and agrees to go to war with Sauron. They are able to drive Sauron from Dol Guldur, but it is already too late, because Mordor has been rearmed, and Sauron immediately returns here and rebuilds the Dark Tower of Barad-dûr. Now Saruman withdraws to his tower of Isengard to bide his time. No one knows at the time that the One Ring has indeed been found and is held by Halflings (hobbits) in the Shire in Eriador. Gandalf takes steps to keep the ring from Sauron even as the Dark Lord sends his Nazgûl to search the Shire. As Elrond had foreseen, Isildur’s heir, Aragorn, is revealed, reforges Elendil’s sword, and leads Gondor to war with Mordor while the Halflings Frodo and Sam do what Isildur had failed to do an age before: destroy

Silmarillion, The   403 the One Ring in the Cracks of Doom in Sauron’s own realm. This is the end of Sauron. As Gondor thrives in the aftermath of Sauron’s destruction and the return of its king, the Age of Men has begun, and the Age of Elves is ending. The time has come for the last Eldar of Middleearth to make their way to the Grey Havens, where they will board Círdan’s ships and pass into the West. As they take sail for Valinor, it is revealed that the third ring, Narya, the ring of fire, had been held by Círdan but given to Gandalf in the hope that the wizard might use its fire to set men’s hearts aflame to defeat the Dark Lord. As the Eldar leave Middle-earth, the Third Age comes to an end. Commentary The Silmarillion comes to an end with this brief summary of the Second and Third Ages of Middleearth (a total of some 6,462 years in 20 pages). This fifth part completes the entire history of Middle-earth from its creation to the beginning of the Fourth Age, the Age of Men (and thus, perhaps as Tolkien would have conceived of it, our own age). It thus supplies the complete context for the stories of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. This section clarifies the origin of the Rings of Power, of the One Ring, and of the Nazgûl. It provides us with the history of Gondor and its alliance with Rohan, the decline of the Northern Kingdom, the establishment of Sauron’s stronghold in Mordor, and the first defeat of Sauron. It clarifies how the One Ring was lost, how Elendil’s sword was broken, how the pieces came to Rivendell, and why the heirs of Isildur are raised there, as well as why a steward reigns in Gondor. This section also clarifies some things that are never truly made clear in The Lord of the Rings, such as who the wizards are and where they came from, what the power of the Three Rings is, and why the elves all leave for the Undying Lands at the end of The Return of the King. Above all, it demonstrates what a small piece of Tolkien’s entire legendarium is related in the epic tale of The Lord of the Rings, since its plot takes up only two pages at the end of the 304-page volume of The Silmarillion. The concept of magical rings of power does not, of course, originate with Tolkien. He was aware of

numerous medieval legends of magical rings. Chrétien de Troyes’s Lancelot has a ring given to him by the Lady of the Lake that allows him to determine whether or not magic is being used on him. Chrétien’s Yvain is given a magic ring by a ladyin-waiting that turns him invisible and saves him from the knights of a castle whose lord he has just killed. More important for Tolkien were the Old Norse legends, such as the story of the Völsunga Saga, wherein the dwarf Andvari creates a magic ring that is taken from him by Loki, after which Andvari lays a curse on the ring that will befall any mortal who wears it. This, of course, is the ultimate source of Richard Wagner’s Ring operas. None of these, or of the many other examples of special or magical rings that exist in folklore around the world, is a direct source for Tolkien’s ideas of the Rings of Power, but (as with many other themes) they provide him with another motif that added to the genuine feel of his personal mythological cycle. The story here in part 5 in many ways resembles Elrond’s account of history in “The Council of Elrond” chapter of The Fellowship of the Ring. Of course, it also repeats some information from the appendices of The Return of the King, and Christopher Tolkien explains the composition of this chapter in The Treason of Isengard (History of Middle-earth, volume 7). Tolkien’s technique of repeating similar motifs, evident in other tales of The Silmarillion, is apparent once again in the history of the Third Age and the Rings of Power: Like his grandfather Fëanor, Celebrimbor is the most skillful elf of his generation, having learned a good deal about craftsmanship from the dwarves of Moria (rather than directly from Aulë, as Fëanor had). Like Fëanor, Celebrimbor forges the greatest works of skill produced in his age, the Rings of Power, and he does this at the advice and urging of a fair-seeming villain (Sauron this time, rather than Melkor himself). Like the Silmarils, the three elven Rings of Power are sought fervently by the Evil One, which is why the Eldar entrust them only to the three wisest among them. Ultimately, the most powerful ring, the One Ring, into which Sauron has put much of his own power, is lost to him, and this he seeks with desperation.

404   Silmarillion, The Thus, one difference in the story of the Third Age is that Sauron is not able to obtain the objects of power that he seeks, and ultimately this is his destruction. Nor is there an apocalyptic intervention by the Valar that alters the face of the planet, as there is to end the First Age—or, for that matter, a destruction of continents and a remaking of the entire world by the Creator God, as there is at the end of the Second Age. Here, presumably because Sauron is a Maia and not, like Melkor/Morgoth, one of their own kind, the Valar send five Maiar to deal with him. The strategy, of course, nearly fails—three of the Istari are not directly involved in the downfall of Sauron at all, while Saruman, repeating the pattern of other significant falls in The Silmarillion, yields to the temptation of the One Ring, and only Gandalf aids the free peoples of Middle-earth in their desperate struggle. As in the First Age, it seems that the Shadow is about to swallow all of Middle-earth. When that age had reached its most critical point, all hope rode on the shoulders of Eärendil in his highly improbable attempt to sail to Valinor. But Eärendil was a great mariner, and as the product of the union of elf and man, he was the logical choice to carry the hopes of both peoples to the Valar and beg their aid. At the end of the Third Age, even more improbably, all hope is put on the small shoulders of a Halfling, who goes not to the Blessed Lands but into the fortress of the Shadow itself—not to ask for help but to perform an act of courage and duty through which the Shadow will be dispersed. Thus, in withdrawing from taking an active role in the affairs of Middle-earth, the Valar essentially force people to take responsibility for their own fates. There is truly no supernatural aid coming to help Frodo, only the aid of his friend and fellow Halfling (Sam’s name does not appear in the text here). After he is finished, even the elves leave Middle-earth, leaving men alone to combat any future threats to their peace and harmony. Finally, The Silmarillion ends in a manner consistent with its themes from the beginning. Ilúvatar created all conscious beings—the Valar and Maiar as well as the Firstborn and Second-born Children—with free will. Any person can choose between conflicting courses of action, but also must

be willing to deal with the consequences of those choices, whether these involve swearing the oath of Fëanor, fighting a dragon, or bearing the One Ring. There is certainly no guarantee that evil has been defeated for good with the beginning of the Fourth Age. Just because Sauron is gone, the evil that he bred has not ceased to exist—just as it did not cease at the end of the First Age after Morgoth was exiled from the created universe. In the Age of Men, humans must be vigilant. In the end, Tolkien teaches responsibility. Characters Since The Silmarillion covers some 7,000 years of history from the time of the creation of the sun, in addition to unknown thousands of years before that creation, its cast of characters (even relatively important ones) is far too long to rehearse here. I include only the most important of the characters and discuss most of the important secondary characters in Part III of this volume. Beren  (Beren One-Hand)  The most famous and admired of the Edain (the men of Middleearth known as elf friends) during the First Age, Beren was the son of Barahir (the grandson of Bëor the Old) and hence heir of the First House of the Edain. Beren was an outlaw, fighting a guerrilla war against Morgoth’s forces in the highlands of Dorthonion until he finally fled across the Ered Gorgoroth (Mountains of Terror) and came to the elven kingdom of Doriath. Here, as he wandered through the beech trees, he saw the beautiful elf maiden Lúthien Tinúviel dancing in the trees, but she fled when she saw him. Later, she promised him her love beside the river Esgalduin. But Lúthien was the daughter of Thingol, who subsequently set the task of acquiring one of the Silmarils as her bride-price. Beren set out to achieve the great jewel. Because of his father’s friendship with Finrod Felagund, the elvish king of Nargothrond, Beren asked for aid from Finrod, who accompanied him with eight other elves on his quest. They were captured by Morgoth’s forces and imprisoned, and Finrod was killed saving Beren from a wolf in Sauron’s dungeons. But Lúthien, with the aid of Huan (one of

Silmarillion, The   405 Oromë’s hunting dogs) was able to rescue Beren, and Beren then cut a Silmaril from Morgoth’s crown; however, his hand holding the Silmaril was bitten off by the wolf Carcharoth. Beren and Lúthien were rescued by eagles, but later Beren regained the Silmaril as he was killed in battle with Carcharoth. Lúthien subsequently died of grief, forsaking her own immortality to follow Beren. Because of their great love, the greatest ever known, Mandos gave Lúthien and Beren the chance to return to Middle-earth from the dead. The two lived happily with their son Dior at Tol Galen (“the Green Isle”) in the river Adurant in Ossiriand, just west of the Blue Mountains. Beren left Tol Galen only once, to avenge the death of Thingol at the hands of the dwarves of Nogrod who had sacked the elvish kingdom of Doriath and stolen the Silmaril. The story of Beren and Lúthien was, according to Tolkien, preserved in a long Sindarin poetic lay composed in the First Age. The lay was purported to be so long that only Elrond could remember it in its entirety. Beren was the great-grandfather of Elrond and was also the ancestor of the kings of Númenór. The Silmaril he had wrested from Morgoth became the chief heirloom of his house, and it was passed on to the great hero Eärendil the Mariner, who sailed with it to Valinor. Tolkien first conceived the story of Beren and Lúthien around 1918 when, walking in a grove at Holderness, his wife, Edith, began whimsically to sing and dance under the trees. The story he constructed from this incident became the central story of The Silmarillion, and throughout his life he identified himself and Edith with Beren and Lúthien. On their headstone in Wolvercote Cemetery are carved the names “Edith Mary Tolkien, Lúthien, 1889–1971” and “John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, Beren, 1892–1973.” Eärendil the Mariner  Eärendil (his name is Quenya for “Lover of the Sea”) was the son of Tuor (an Edain of the Third House and grandson of Galdor) and the elven princess Idril, daughter of Turgon of Gondolin. A great hero of the First Age, Eärendil accomplished what no other man had ever done: With his wife, Elwing, he sailed his

ship Vingolot to Valinor, where, as representative of both men and elves, he pleaded with the Valar to intercede in Middle-earth and defeat the evil of Morgoth. As a result of his intercession, the Valar launched the War of Wrath in Middle-earth, which destroyed Morgoth and ended the First Age. Eärendil was born in Gondolin, but after the fall of that city, he grew up in Arvernien with Círdan the Shipwright and learned to love the sea. He eventually became lord of Arvernien and married Elwing, daughter of Dior and granddaughter of Beren and Lúthien. When Arvernien was destroyed by the sons of Fëanor, Eärendil was at sea, but Elwing came to him in the form of a bird, carrying the Silmaril that she had inherited from her father. Wearing the Silmaril on his brow, Eärendil made his way back to the Undying Lands, where the great jewel was first made. The Valar granted Eärendil’s request, but because he was mortal and had walked in Valinor, he could not return to Middle-earth. The Valar put him in the sky, along with Vingolot and the Silmaril. From here, he destroyed the dragon Ancalagon in the War of Wrath, and afterward he served as a light to the Edain to guide them toward the newly created continent of Númenor. As a star, he seemed to correspond to Venus, the Morning Star. His children, Elrond and Elros, known as the Halfelven, were allowed to choose whether to adopt the fate of men or of elves. Elrond chose the life of the Eldar, while Elros chose to live as a man and founded the line of kings of Númenor. Eärendil was renowned for his courage, daring, and determination to succeed where no man had ever done so before. In the history of the First Age, he is very much a Christ figure who takes the fate of men and elves on himself and restores them to the good graces of the supernatural powers of his world after their own deeds have alienated them from the Valar. This does not mean that Eärendil was the “Christ of Middle-earth,” but only that he was a figure of that greater sacrifice in Tolkien’s worldview. Fëanor  (Curufinwë)  In many ways, Fëanor is the most important character in all the Quenta Silmarillion. He created the Silmarils in the first

406   Silmarillion, The place, and it is the terrible oath that he swore, and compelled his sons to swear as well, that sparked the agelong war that the Noldor waged to recover the great jewels. Born Curufinwë, Fëanor was the son of Finwë, patriarch of the Noldor, and his first wife, Míriel. Fëanor’s name means “Spirit of Fire,” a name he was given by his mother, who sensed the fiery spirit within him and, with some premonition, left her earthly life shortly after his birth. He was the most skilled of all the Eldar, and he invented Tengwar, the elvish system of writing. With the help of the Vala Aulë, he learned the art of creating gems and crystals, including the palantíri, or seeing-stones, used later by the Númenóreans and brought by them to Middle-earth. His greatest creations were the three Silmarils, magnificent gems in which the light of the Two Trees of Valinor was captured and through which that light survives after the trees’ destruction. Melkor, the fallen Vala, lusted after the Silmarils, and through his wiles, he was able to create suspicion and animosity between Fëanor and the Valar, as well as between Fëanor and his half brother Fingolfin. When Fëanor drew a sword (also his own invention) on his brother, he was exiled for 12 years from Tirion. When the Two Trees were destroyed, Fëanor refused to give up the Silmarils to enable the Valar to recreate the trees, but he soon learned that Melkor had killed his father, Finwë, and stolen the Silmarils. At that point, Fëanor resolved to follow Melkor, whom he now names Morgoth (“Dark Enemy”) to Middle-earth, where he had fled. Fëanor then led the Noldor in their revolt against the Valar, swearing with his sons the terrible Oath of Fëanor, whereby they swore by Ilúvatar and all that is holy that they might be consumed by everlasting darkness if they ever fail to pursue anyone who attempted to keep the Silmarils, their rightful inheritance, from them. In thus swearing, Fëanor and his sons ensured the ultimate destruction of the Noldor through their own hatred and desire for revenge. As a result of this oath, Mandos issued a great curse on the house of Fëanor. Manwë banishes Fëanor and his followers from ever returning to Aman, but Fëanor went on with his mad scheme, instigating the kinslaying of the Teleri at

Alqualondë in order to steal their ships, and deserting Fingolfin and his followers in the Far North, forcing them to make the perilous crossing of the Helcaraxë without the aid of ships. Upon setting foot in Beleriand, the Noldor defeated the orcs in the 10-day Battle Beneath the Stars, but the berserk Fëanor pursued the orcs even to the gates of Morgoth’s fortress of Angband, where he was set upon by a group of Balrogs and mortally wounded, urging his sons with his dying breath never to give up their oath. Fëanor is the first of several tragic figures in the Quenta Silmarillion. He is the most skilled and clever of all the elves, but his superior intellect and craftsmanship instill a kind of haughtiness and greed in him, and make him impatient with others and quick to anger. The Curse of Mandos is similar to family curses familiar from Greek tragedy. But Fëanor’s fall occurs as a result of his own hubris— he believes he is wiser and stronger than the Valar, and his defiance of them ultimately destroys him and brings untold grief on all of his people. Finrod Felagund  Finrod was a prince of the Noldor, eldest son of Finarfin and later lord of the fortress of Nargothrond, one of the three great hidden elvish realms in Beleriand during the dark years of the First Age. He was called Felagund (“Cave Hewer”) by the dwarves, who helped him to create his kingdom in the caves of Narog. He was a great friend of men. But he never married, having been in love in Valinor with the Vanyar Amarië, who had refused to come with him to Middle-earth. Although his father chose not to follow Fëanor to Middle-earth after the kinslaying at Alqualondë, Finrod and his sister, Galadriel, were among the leaders of the host that followed Fingolfin to Beleriand. Upon reaching Middle-earth, Finrod settled first on the island of Tol-Sirion, where he built the tower of Minas Tirith. But the Vala Ulmo persuaded Finrod to move elsewhere, and showed him the Caverns of Narog where he built Nargothrond. Finrod, always an avid traveler, was exploring the realm of Ossiriand when he became the first of the Eldar to meet with men as the Secondborn were making their way into the West. He entered their camp while they were sleeping and

Silmarillion, The   407 began to sing to them, instructing them about Ilúvatar and the creation of Arda, as well as in other things. These were the men of Bëor’s house, the First House of the Edain, who from that moment remained loyal to Finrod and his house. Bëor himself lived with Finrod in Nargothrond and served him for 44 years, until his death. In the Dagor Bragollach (“Battle of Sudden Flame”), Finrod’s host and the men of the House of Bëor were defending the Pass of Sirion. In the battle, the House of Bëor was nearly annihilated but held the pass. Finrod was beset by orcs but was saved by Bëor’s son Barahir. In gratitude, Finrod gave Barahir a ring and pledged always to aid Barahir’s house. After Barahir’s death, his surviving son, Beren, came to Nargothrond with the ring and asked for Finrod’s help in attaining a Silmaril from the crown of Morgoth. Having given his pledge, Finrod accompanied Beren on his quest but was imprisoned with Beren and their eight companions in the dungeons of his former fortress of Minas Tirith after being defeated by Sauron in a duel of songs. In the dungeons, Finrod lost his life trying to defend Beren from a ravenous wolf. Finrod is one of the most sympathetic of the major characters in the Quenta Silmarillion. He is courageous, powerful, kind, faithful, and true. Though one of the great lords of the Noldor, he never shows signs of the pride that so often afflicts his kinsmen. Lúthien Tinúviel  Much of Lúthien’s life has already been told in the above entry on her beloved Beren. But as Tolkien’s most important female character, Lúthien merits an entry of her own. She was born of the union between the elf Elwë Thingol and Melian the Maia, the only recorded marriage between one of the Firstborn and one of the Ainur who performed the Great Song at the beginning of creation. Their offspring, Lúthien, could not fail to be the most beautiful of all the Children of Ilúvatar. Lúthien dwelt happily in Doriath within the protection of the Girdle of Melian that kept all evil out of Thingol’s realm. But one day she was seen dancing in Neldoreth by Beren, one of the Edain of the First House. He fell in love with her imme-

diately, naming her Tinúviel, or “Nightingale,” for her beautiful voice. She reciprocated his love and, as a result, became mortal like him. Despite Thingol’s objections, even his Rapunzel-like locking of her in a tower, Lúthien escaped her father’s kingdom to help Beren on his quest. There is no question that without Lúthien, Beren would have failed to achieve the Silmaril. She brought the hound Huan to enable Beren’s escape from Sauron’s dungeon, and only her singing and dancing were able to lull Morgoth and the wolf Carcharoth enough to allow Beren to snatch the jewel from Morgoth’s crown. Lúthien healed Beren’s wound after Carcharoth devoured his hand, and even more important, it was she who, upon Beren’s death in the hunt of the wolf, went to the House of the Dead, like Orpheus in Greek myth, and moved Mandos to pity until, recognizing their love as the greatest in Arda, he allowed Beren to return to Middle-earth to live another life in Ossiriand. Here, Lúthien gave birth to Dior, and through him, she was the ancestor of Elrond and the beautiful Arwen Evenstar, as well as Elros and all the line of kings of Númenor. Known for her beauty—as well as her dancing and singing, which had the power to charm Beren, Huan, Morgoth, and even Mandos—Lúthien was also courageous, faithful, and resourceful. She defied her father and king because her love for Beren was more important to her than all other considerations. Some readers might find her somewhat rash, but hers is a boldness born of a great love that made her fearless in the face of the greatest dangers in the created world. Melkor  (Morgoth)  The great antagonist of The Silmarillion and the embodiment of the Shadow during the First Age, Melkor began as the wisest and most powerful of the Ainur who took part in the Great Song that created the universe. Through his self-will, he attempted to shape the song to his own design, but Ilúvatar’s will ultimately created harmony out of the discord Melkor sought to introduce. Later, Melkor entered the world of time with the other Valar and used his self-will to mar the creation wrought by the others. He attempted to dominate all of Middle-earth, winning some of

408   Silmarillion, The the Maiar to his will, including Sauron and the Balrogs. He also perverted some of the elves, whom he envied and hated, transforming some that he captured into orcs. Melkor was condemned by Manwë to three ages in the Hall of the Dead, and upon his release, he attempted to use guile rather than strength to pervert the good of Ilúvatar’s creation. He created dissension among the Noldor, destroyed the Trees of Valinor, killed Finwë, and stole the Silmarils, fleeing to Middle-earth, where he had built the stronghold of Angband earlier. Now known as Morgoth, the Dark Lord set about building an army of orcs to defend his stolen Silmarils from the invading Noldor and corrupting many of the newly created men. His army was defeated in their first battle with the Noldor, and although his Balrogs were able to kill Fëanor, he retreated into Angband to build up his army. After a siege lasting 400 years, Morgoth’s newly strengthened army burst from Angband and, with the help of the dragons he had created, defeated the Eldar and began a long conquest of all of Beleriand. Morgoth was wounded in single combat by Fingolfin and the eagle lord Thorondor. That wound, and his loss of the Silmaril through the wiles of Beren and Lúthien, proved that Morgoth was not invincible and kept the elves and the Edain in hope during the darkest days of his reign. Finally, it was that recovered Silmaril that helped Eärendil find his way to Valinor to convince the Valar to launch the War of Wrath, which brought Morgoth down. Never known for his personal courage, Morgoth was captured in his fortress and cast forever out of the created universe. But the evil he began lived on in his followers, including Sauron, the orcs, and the men he had corrupted. Clearly a satanic figure in the mythology of Middle-earth, Melkor cannot be considered as a typical character or discussed in human terms that consider his motivations. Like Lucifer, he is discontented with following the will of God and therefore wants to set himself up as a god in his own right. He is a fallen angel who, in the created universe, wants to impose his will on all creation. What he wants from the beginning is power. He proves that Ilúvatar has given all of his creatures free will, and in willing that which is contrary to the will of Ilú-

vatar, he is the father of evil. His ultimate defeat, even when all looks lost for the Children of Ilúvatar, reenacts the Great Music, demonstrating Ilúvatar’s ultimate power to bring harmony out of the chaos created by Melkor’s evil. Thingol  (Elwë)  The king of the secret elven kingdom of Doriath, Thingol—first known as Elwë—is one of the most enigmatic figures in all of The Silmarillion. Elwë awakened with the first elves at Cuiviénen and, went to Valinor with Finwë and Ingwë. When he returned, he persuaded his people, the Teleri, to make the Great Journey into the West. But in the wood Nan Elmoth, Elwë came upon the Maia Melian, and his love for her was so great that he neglected his journey for many years, until ultimately the majority of the Teleri followed Elwë’s brother Olwë to Valinor. Thus, Elwë never went back to Valinor but stayed with Melian in Middle-earth, where he became lord of the Sindar, or Grey Elves, and became known as Thingol (“Grey Cloak”). He and Melian gave birth to Lúthien, their only child and most beautiful of all the elves. His realm of Doriath was the most powerful elvish kingdom in Middleearth until the arrival of the Noldor exiled from Valinor. With the arrival of Morgoth, Doriath was enclosed in the Girdle of Melian, cutting Doriath off from all outsiders except those that the king and queen would allow to enter. Specifically, when he learned of the slaying of his people, the Teleri, at Alqualondë, Thingol refused to allow anyone from the House of Fëanor to enter his realm. The only Noldor allowed to visit Doriath were those descended from Finarfin, who had married Thingol’s kinswoman, the Teleri Eärwen; thus, Galadriel was able to spend many years in Doriath as Melian’s guest. Distrusting men, Thingol also closed Doriath to any of the Edain. But Beren was able to enter Doriath, the first of men to do so. Thingol was distrustful, not wanting his daughter married to one of the Secondborn, and so he gave Beren the impossible task of bringing back a Silmaril. He also became the typical blocking figure in a love story, trying to keep Lúthien from Beren by locking her in a tower. Ultimately reconciled with Beren, Thingol finally left

Silmarillion, The   409 Doriath to lead the hunt of the great wolf Carcharoth in which Beren was killed. But he did finally obtain the Silmaril from Beren’s hand in the belly of the wolf. After his reconciliation with Beren, Thingol was more accepting of the Edain, and when Beren’s kinswoman Morwen sent her son Túrin to Doriath for safety, he agreed to become the boy’s foster father for Beren’s sake. Later, he gave his protection to Morwen herself, and to her daughter, Nienor. Possession of the Silmaril, however, seemed to awaken the emotion of greed in Thingol. When Húrin brought him the necklace Nauglamir, Thingol wanted to have the Silmaril set in the necklace and hired dwarves to do the work. But the dwarves, desiring the treasures for themselves, killed Thingol in his palace. Beren and Lúthien later regained the jewel, but after Thingol’s death, Melian returned to Valinor, and with her protective girdle gone, Doriath soon fell. Thingol as a character displays an inborn ability to recognize the good in his desire for Valinor, a love of justice in his refusal to allow Fëanor’s sons access to his kingdom, personal courage in his hunt for the wolf, and great kindness in his treatment of Túrin and his family. But he is cautious to a fault, keeping himself isolated for centuries in Doriath and forbidding the Edain entrance to his realm. His self-imposed isolation reveals a kind of selfishness as well, a characteristic apparent from the beginning of his story, when he prefers Melian to all the beauty of Valinor and delays his people from making their trip. This turns to distrust as well, and his proposed quest for Beren is, as far as he knows, a death sentence for his daughter’s suitor. Ultimately, his selfishness turns to an obsessive desire to keep the Silmaril and display it in grandeur, and this is his undoing. Turgon the Wise  One of the most important princes of the Noldor, Turgon was the second son of Fingolfin, and through most of the First Age of Middle-earth, he was lord of the hidden kingdom of Gondolin, last of the elven realms of Beleriand to fall to Morgoth. With the death of his brother, Fingon, he became high king of the Noldor in Mid-

dle-earth, and upon his death, that title passed to Fingon’s son, Gil-galad. Turgon at first refused to follow Fëanor into Middle-earth but finally agreed to follow Fingolfin. His wife, Elenwë, was among the Noldor killed in the disastrous crossing of the Helcaraxë when Fëanor abandoned Fingolfin’s host. Turgon arrived with his daughter, Idril, in Beleriand and built the city of Vinyamar in Nevrast, where he drew a large portion of Fingolfin’s folk to him. But he was warned by the Vala Ulmo to build a new fortified city in the valley of Tumladen, hidden in the mountains. After decades of labor laying the foundations of Gondolin, Turgon returned to lead his people to the hidden city, where he reigned for 500 years. Turgon would allow none of his people to leave the city because he never wanted its location revealed, but he relented when his sister, Aredhel, desired to wander. He allowed her to return with her son, Maeglin, whom she had begotten with the Dark Elf Eöl and saw as the potential heir of Turgon. Maeglin gained favor in Turgon’s eyes and desired Idril, though she did not return his love. The eagles and their leader, Thorondor, were always friends and protectors of Gondolin, and at one point they brought the young men Húrin and Huor of the Third House of the Edain into Gondolin to save them from orcs. Turgon fostered the children for a year before sending them back to their homes with the promise never to reveal the location of Gondolin. But Turgon sensed the ultimate defeat of the Noldor and began to send mariners to try to find their way back to Valinor and plead with the Valar to send help against Morgoth. Still, Turgon decided to join his brother, Fingon, under the Union of Maedhros in the Battle of Unnumbered Tears. The battle was nearly disastrous for Turgon, but the courage of Húrin and Huor and their followers made it possible for Turgon to retreat to safety in Gondolin, which remained hidden, despite Morgoth’s efforts to wrest its location from the captured and tortured Húrin. Ultimately, Tuor, the son of Huor, came to Gondolin, bringing the warning of Ulmo that Turgon and his people should flee the city and travel to Arvernien. Although he had followed Ulmo five

410   Silmarillion, The centuries before, this time Turgon disregarded the warning, trusting in Gondolin’s invulnerability. But Húrin, finally released from Morgoth’s fortress, inadvertently led Morgoth’s forces to the vicinity of Gondolin, and Maeglin, captured by Morgoth’s soldiers, betrayed the city. The subsequent invasion destroyed Gondolin, with Turgon dying in the battle. Idril, however, escaped with Tuor, and their child was Eärendil. Turgon is presented as a wise ruler who foresees Morgoth’s power, keeping his people safe for centuries and seeking out the Valar’s help before any of the other Noldor seem aware of the need to do so. He is cautious but perhaps too trusting, allowing his sister to have her will, allowing Húrin to leave the city walls, and allowing Maeglin free rein in the city. Finally, he is too trusting in his city’s impregnable status, disregarding even the advice of Ulmo, to his ultimate undoing. Túrin Turambar A longer analysis of the character of Túrin appears at the end of the entry on The Children of Húrin commentary, but because of his significance in The Silmarillion, a brief analysis is included here. His adopted name, Turambar (“Master of Fate”), is ironic, since from his beginning, Túrin seemed doomed by his fate, particularly because of the curse that Morgoth put on his father, Húrin, and all his family. Túrin was the son of Húrin, of the third House of the Edain, and Morwen, a daughter of the First House (the House of Bëor), but was raised by Thingol in Doriath. Self-exiled from Doriath, Túrin became a great fighter, whether with his outlaw band or as adviser to Orodreth of Nargothrond. His own bad advice led to the destruction of Nargothrond by Glaurung the dragon, and his rashness also led him to kill his best friend, Beleg Strongbow. But bad luck and the evil will of the dragon Glaurung seemed to be behind his marriage to his sister, Niniel, and, ultimately, her suicide. Túrin was courageous and powerful. His greatest feat was the slaying of the dragon, but his stubbornness, pride, and unwillingness to listen to anyone else’s opinions also led him to a number of disastrous acts, including the murder of his friend Brandir. His suicide after his sister’s death was an

appropriately tragic end to this failed hero of the Edain. Further Reading Barnfield, Marie. “More Celtic Influences: Númenor and the Second Age.” Mallorn 29 (August 1992): 6–13. Burns, Marjorie. “Gandalf and Odin.” In Tolkien’s Legendarium: Essays on The History of Middle-earth, edited by Verlyn Flieger and Carl F. Hostetter, 219– 231. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 2000. Carpenter, Humphrey. Tolkien: A Biography. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1977. Collins, Robert A. “ ‘Ainulindale’: Tolkien’s Commitment to an Aesthetic Ontology.” Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts 11, no. 2 (2001): 257–265. Davis, Howard. “The Ainulindale: Music of Creation.” Mythlore 32 (Summer 1982): 6–10. Flieger, Verlyn. “Naming the Unnameable: The Neoplatonic ‘One’ in Tolkien’s Silmarillion.” In Diakonia: Studies in Honor of Robert T. Meyer, edited by Thomas Halton and Joseph P. Williman, 127–132. Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1986. Greenman, David. “The Silmarillion as Aristotelian Epic-Tragedy.” Mythlore 53 (Spring 1988): 20–25, 42. Houghton, John. “Augustine and the Ainulindale.” Mythlore 79 (Summer 1995): 4–8. Kilby, Clyde S. Tolkien and the Silmarillion. Wheaton, Ill.: Harold Shaw, 1976. Monteiro, Maria do Rosario. “Númenor: Tolkien’s Literary Utopia.” History of European Ideas 16 (1993): 633–638. Rogers, Deborah Webster, and Ivor A. Rogers. J. R. R. Tolkien. Boston: G. K. Hall, 1980. Sanford, Len. “The Fall from Grace—Decline and Fall in Middle-earth: Metaphors for Nordic and Christian Theology in The Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion. Mallorn 32 (September 1995): 15–20. Schweicher, Eric. “Aspects of the Fall in The Silmarillion.” In Proceedings of the J. R. R. Tolkien Centenary Conference 1992, edited by Patricia Reynolds and Glen GoodKnight, 167–171. Altadena, Calif.: Mythopoeic Press, 1995. Shippey, Tom. J. R. R. Tolkien: Author of the Century. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2000.

“Sir Gawain and the Green Knight”    411 ———. The Road to Middle-earth: How J. R. R. Tolkien Created a New Mythology. Rev. ed. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2003. Tolkien, J. R. R. The Book of Lost Tales I. Vol. 1 of The History of Middle-earth. Edited by Christopher Tolkien. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1983. ———. The Book of Lost Tales II. Vol. 2 of The History of Middle-earth. Edited by Christopher Tolkien. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1984. ———. The Lays of Beleriand. Vol. 3 of The History of Middle-earth. Edited by Christopher Tolkien. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1985. ———. The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien. Edited by Humphrey Carpenter. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1981. ———. The Lost Road and Other Writings. Vol. 5 of The History of Middle-earth. Edited by Christopher Tolkien. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1987. ———. The Peoples of Middle-earth. Vol. 12 of The History of Middle-earth. Edited by Christopher Tolkien. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1996. ———. Sauron Defeated. Vol. 9 of The History of Middle-earth. Edited by Christopher Tolkien. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1992. ———. The Shaping of Middle-earth. Vol. 4 of The History of Middle-earth. Edited by Christopher Tolkien. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1986. ———. The Silmarillion. Edited by Christopher Tolkien. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1977. ———. The Treason of Isengard. Vol. 7 of The History of Middle-earth. Edited by Christopher Tolkien. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1989. ———. The War of the Jewels. Vol. 11 of The History of Middle-earth. Edited by Christopher Tolkien. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1994. West, Richard C. “Real-World Myth in a Secondary World: Mythological Aspects in the Story of Beren and Lúthien.” In Tolkien the Medievalist, edited by Jane Chance, 259–267. Routledge Studies in Medieval Religion and Culture. London and New York: Routledge, 2003. Whittingham, Elizabeth A. “The Mythology of the ‘Ainulindalë’: Tolkien’s Creation of Hope.” Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts 9 (1998): 212–228. Wood, Ralph C. The Gospel According to Tolkien: Visions of the Kingdom in Middle-earth. Louisville, Ky., and London: Westminster John Knox Press, 2003.

“Sir Gawain and the Green Knight”  (1984) When Tolkien was invited to present the W. P. Ker Memorial Lecture at the University of Glasgow on April 15, 1953, he chose the great 14th-century alliterative poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight as his subject. He had just completed his translation of the poem into modern English, and that translation was performed later that year as a radio drama by the BBC, so in the text of the lecture he frequently quoted from his own translation. The translation was later published posthumously by Christopher Tolkien, along with his father’s translations of Pearl and Sir Orfeo, two other 14th-century poems. The lecture was unpublished until Christopher Tolkien printed it in the 1984 collection The Monsters and the Critics and Other Essays. In the introduction to that volume, Christopher notes that only a single typescript of the lecture is still extant, an indication that at one point Tolkien had planned to publish it (2). Citations of the text in the following discussion are to Christopher Tolkien’s edition. Tolkien’s essay, and thus my synopsis of it, assumes a familiarity with the poem. Readers unfamiliar with the plot of the poem might look at the entry on Sir Gawain and the Green Knight below, in the “Related Entries” section of the book. Synopsis Tolkien notes the deep mythic roots of the story of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, but he says that his chief interest is in fit 3 of the poem, the temptation scenes featuring Gawain and the wife of Lord Bertilak, which he calls the “kernel” of the poem. In fact, of course, the temptation begins as early as stanza 39, when Gawain first sees and is smitten by the beautiful mistress of the castle, and it continues for some 1,000 lines. The poet’s purpose is essentially a moral one, Tolkien asserts. Gawain’s entire motive in taking up the Green Knight’s challenge in the first place is not pride but, rather, its opposite: the “humility and self-sacrifice” of protecting King Arthur,

412   “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight”  his lord (75). The trap is sprung on him when the Green Knight is not killed by his decapitation. Still, Gawain has vowed to take a blow from the Green Knight and must keep his word and uphold the honor of his order. When he sets out the emphasis on the Pentangle as his heraldic symbol, this is extremely important: The Pentangle symbolizes nothing less than perfection in Gawain’s faith, courtesy, and behavior. The rest of the story is set up to be a test of the perfection for which Gawain strives. It is important that the castle appears as an answer to Gawain’s prayer. It is presented specifically as a Christian space, where King Arthur and his knights are held in high esteem. This is the setting in which Gawain’s temptation will occur. All that he stands for as a Christian knight is to be examined in this place. Yet within this space is presented the old folktale motif of the “Perilous Host” whose every command must be obeyed, no matter how absurd it may seem. Thus, the “exchange of winnings” bargain is struck (80). Tolkien admits that the hunting scenes paralleling the “wooing” scenes create a remarkable structure for fit 3, but says that they are not his interest. For his purposes, he remarks that the hunting scenes do help portray the castle and its lord as “real.” His interest is in the test of Gawain, and he begins by asking the question of what may have happened if Gawain had actually failed the test—that is, if he had given in to the wife’s temptations and moved to have sex with her despite his scruples. Tolkien suggests that since the “magic” element of the story is clearly part of the equation, it is likely that the lady would have been protected by some magic spell, such as the one that protected the Green Knight from harm. For the poet, the entire point to which everything else in the poem is secondary is Gawain’s behavior in the face of temptation. Tolkien argues that, from the moment that the lady puts her arms around Gawain in lines 1,224–1,225, the temptation to adultery is in play, and it “remains in force throughout his dealings with her” for the rest of the poem (84). Gawain’s behavior at dinner the next day betrays his confusion and temptation. His courtesy—a code of behavior that includes the flattering deference to ladies in the game of courtly

speech—compels him to keep conversing with the lady, but the flirtatious nature of that courtly game puts him in greater danger. He attempts to leave the castle, motivated by what Tolkien calls “moral wisdom” (85), but his promise to the lord keeps him from leaving. The theme of religion is reintroduced (for the first time since the discussion of the Pentangle) in line 1,769, when the poet calls on Mary to protect her knight, reaffirming that what is at stake here is not simply Gawain’s polite behavior, but sin and damnation. The pivotal stanza for Tolkien is the one in which Gawain is depicted going to confession. “It is not too much to say,” he asserts, “that the whole interpretation and valuation of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight depends on what one thinks of the thirtieth stanza of the Third Fit” (87). Gawain has kept the gift of the (supposedly) lifesaving green girdle from Lord Bertilak, and some would consider that a sin. If it is, then Gawain should have confessed it. The fact that he keeps the girdle after the confession might suggest that he has made a bad confession, either by not confessing his possession of the girdle, or by not truly repenting it and keeping it afterward in order to save his own life. Tolkien insists, however, that Gawain’s actions indicate that he has made a good confession. Therefore, as far as the poet is concerned, keeping the girdle is not a sin. Either Gawain did not mention it, since he recognized that Bertilak’s “exchange of winnings” game had nothing to do with morality, or he did mention it, and the priest recognized that keeping it was no sin. Here Tolkien gets to his chief argument: that there are two planes of behavior in Sir Gawain— one pertaining to the transient world and its values (which include the code of chivalry and courtesy) and the other having to do with the true, permanent world of the spirit, whose values are true morality. Gawain’s membership in a class that takes seriously the games of courtly behavior make his dilemma particularly difficult: Insulting the lady, behaving discourteously, is for him a highly significant breach. He abandons one aspect of courtesy right away—the idea that the knight should always do the will of a lady—although, as Tolkien says, he maintains the “verbal shadow” of that behavior in

“Sir Gawain and the Green Knight”    413 not rejecting her advances point-blank. If it came to it, however, Gawain would have been forced to “abandon even his technical courtesy of manners,” Tolkien declares, and directly refuse her (92). The confession scene, then, is placed very deliberately where it is, to indicate that the poet considered the games of courtly manners to be “on an inferior plane to real virtue” (92). Tolkien considers the arguments one might make for Gawain’s culpability in keeping the green girdle. He suggests that there are three: First, he has accepted a gift without giving a gift in return, which would be a general breach of courtly behavior; second, he has not shared the girdle with his host, which is a breach of his agreement with Bertilak; and third, using the girdle as protection from the blow of the axe might be seen as cheating on his initial bargain with the Green Knight. In fact, the Green Knight seems only to consider the second of these failures when he accuses Gawain of failing slightly in courtesy. The first fault can be excused since, as Gawain says, he has nothing with him that he might exchange for so fine a gift, and the lady presses it on him despite that. As for the third possible failure, Gawain’s using a little magic to ward off the axe’s blow would only be fair, considering the Green Knight was able to survive Gawain’s blow through his own magic. Besides, Gawain does not really seem to have had a great deal of faith in the girdle’s protection: As Tolkien says later, Gawain submits himself to God’s will on the day he goes to meet the Green Knight, and is clearly “in great fear of imminent death” (102) as he faces the axe. As for the pact with Bertilak, there is no question that Gawain has failed. But Tolkien argues that the degree of his failure, and the plane on which he failed, must be taken into account. The poet presents what Tolkien calls three “planes” of behavior: jesting pastimes (the plane on which the pact with the lord of the castle takes place), courtesy as a code of courtly behavior (including the flirtatious game of courtly speech to ladies), and the plane of serious moral laws. For Gawain, the demands of courtesy and morality begin to diverge during his temptations. At this crisis, Gawain chooses virtue, while “preserving a graciousness of

manner and a gentleness of speech belonging to the true spirit of courtesy” (95). As for the girdle, Gawain simply wished to save his life. His only fault was breaking what Tolkien calls the “purely jocular pact” with Bertilak. As for any breach of courtesy, when Gawain presents his case before the court of King Arthur, the supreme authority on courtly manners, his “failure” is simply laughed at. Gawain still feels ashamed, but Tolkien dismisses that. One may believe in grace and that one’s sins are forgiven, “but the sting of shame on morally less important or insignificant levels will bite still after long years as sharp as new” (98). In Gawain’s case, the shame comes because, as a representative of the Round Table, he feels he should have stood his ground against the Green Knight without any sort of magic help, but with faith in his own chivalry. Commentary Tolkien’s interest in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight began while he was still in King Edward’s School in Birmingham, under the tutelage of George Brewerton, who had also gotten the young Tolkien interested in Beowulf. Sir Gawain, written in the West Midland dialect of Middle English, was especially interesting to Tolkien because it was composed in the language spoken by his ancestors on his mother’s side, who had come from that area of England (Carpenter 35). The moral quest of the hero, the elements of fairy story, and the suggestion of a deep mythic history underlying the narrative itself all contributed to his own mythic invention and the narratives that sprang from it. Tolkien’s fascination with the poem took a scholarly turn when he and his University of Leeds (see Leeds, University of) colleague E. V. Gordon put together the first edition of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight intended for students. It was the publication of this text in 1925 that essentially made Tolkien’s scholarly reputation and may have been largely responsible for securing him his first position at Oxford University. Tolkien and Gordon’s publication, making the difficult poem accessible for students, was instrumental in the poem’s being taught in undergraduate classrooms.

414   Smith of Wootton Major As mentioned above, Tolkien also made a translation of the poem into modern English. He sent a draft of the translation to the BBC in 1950 and was told that the BBC was interested in broadcasting it, but Tolkien had not revised it to his own satisfaction until 1953, when radio broadcasts of the poem were made in four parts in December. His comments in the Ker lecture, therefore, were made in the midst of his revision of his translation. Although he was interested in publishing the translation, he was unable to do so in his lifetime, and Christopher Tolkien finally published it in 1975. Tolkien’s remarks, therefore, are significant in that they consider a poem that was a very large part of his professional and imaginative life. A commentary on his commentary seems somewhat redundant, so I will simply mention a few points that scholars of the poem might raise in reading Tolkien’s remarks. There are aspects of the poem that Tolkien does not touch upon, but he says from the beginning that he is focusing only on the temptation scenes. Still, it would be good to know what Tolkien thought of Bertilak’s announcement that Morgan le Fay was behind the entire scheme, or of the poet’s setting of the poem within the mythic history of England, suggesting the rise and fall of kingdoms. How does this relate to the poet’s assertion that Arthur and his court are in their youth? Do any of these questions relate to the poem’s moral point? Furthermore and more important, it is clear from the Gawain poet’s other poems (Pearl, Patience, Cleanness) that for him the word courtesy has much broader connotations that those Tolkien seems willing to acknowledge in his commentary. The Virgin Mary is the “queen of courtesy” in Pearl, while God himself is described as courteous in Patience. This seems different from the contrast between moral virtue and courtesy that Tolkien focuses on in his commentary. Further Reading Carpenter, Humphrey. Tolkien: A Biography. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1977. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. 2nd ed. Edited by J. R. R. Tolkien and E. V. Gordon. Revised by Norman Davis. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1967.

Tolkien, J. R. R. “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.” In The Monsters and the Critics and Other Essays, edited by Christopher Tolkien, 72–108. Boston: Allen & Unwin, 1983. Tolkien, J. R. R., trans. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Pearl, and Sir Orfeo. New York: Ballantine Books, 1975.

Smith of Wootton Major  (1967) The last story Tolkien completed before his death was Smith of Wootton Major, at about 50 pages a very long short story or a very short novella. The tale was begun in 1964, when the 73-year-old Tolkien agreed to compose a preface to a new edition of George MacDonald’s The Golden Key, a 19th-century fantasy novel that Tolkien had mentioned in his essay “On Fairy-Stories.” Tolkien apparently felt a distaste for MacDonald’s fiction, believing that MacDonald trivialized the fairy stories he told (Rogers and Rogers 58). He intended the preface to define the concept of “Faërie” and originally intended to illustrate his ideas through a brief anecdote about a cook and a cake. The cake would be overly sweet with a dolly fairy on top—a metaphor, according to Deborah and Ivor Rogers, of MacDonald’s saccharine tales (Rogers and Rogers 58). That anecdote began to grow until it had become its own story, and although the preface was never completed, the story was published by Allen & Unwin in 1967. Tolkien’s original title for the story was “The Great Cake,” but he says in a 1966 letter to his grandson Michael George Tolkien that the altered title was intended to suggest something out of the Boys’ Own Paper (a periodical for boys that published adventure stories and the like) or an early work by P. G. Wodehouse (Letters 370)—Tolkien was probably thinking of the Wodehouse novels Psmith in the City, Leave it to Psmith, or Psmith, Journalist, published between 1910 and 1923. The allusion to the Boys’ Own Paper should not, however, suggest that Smith of Wootton Major was intended to be a children’s book. Quite the opposite, as Tolkien asserted in a letter to the reviewer Roger

Smith of Wootton Major   415 Lancelyn Green in December 1967: “[T]he little tale was (of course) not intended for children! An old man’s book, already weighted with the presage of ‘bereavement’ ” (Letters 388–389). As an “old man’s book,” Smith of Wootton Major may well have autobiographical elements in it. Tom Shippey has claimed that the tale is, like the earlier “Leaf by Niggle,” an “autobiographical allegory” (J. R. R. Tolkien 296). That claim has been challenged by Verlyn Flieger, particularly in her 2005 edition of the story, which also contains a previously unpublished essay of Tolkien’s in which he discusses the tale’s background and meaning. The story has also been published, with illustrations by Pauline Baynes, together with Farmer Giles of Ham in 1969. It has most recently been published again in the collection Tales from the Perilous Realm (2008), along with Leaf by Niggle, Farmer Giles of Ham, Roverandom, The Adventures of Tom Bombadil, and the essay “On Fairy-Stories.” Synopsis Wootton Major is not an unusual village except for its festivals, which involve memorable gastronomical delights. The most impressive building in the town is the Great Hall and Kitchen, and the town’s most respected citizen is the Master Cook. The town’s annual festivals are famous, the largest of which is the Feast of Good Children, a week-long festival held each winter. But the most anticipated of all feasts is the village’s “Twentyfour Feast,” an event that occurs only once every 24 years. This feast is given in honor of 24 children, and the climax of the feast is always the Great Cake. Typically, because the Twenty-four Feast comes around only once in any generation, no Master Cook has ever had a chance to create more than one Great Cake, and the tenure of every Master Cook is ultimately judged by the quality of the Great Cake he produces when his turn to prepare the feast comes around. One day, the reigning Master Cook startles the town by deciding to take a holiday, something no Master Cook has ever done before. He is gone for several months, and when he returns, he is a changed man—merrier than he had been before, and apt to break into song at village feasts. He has

also returned with an apprentice. It has been common practice for Master Cooks to take apprentices, who would then be promoted to Master Cooks themselves upon their master’s retirement. But this apprentice is not from the village, and he is only a teenager. His name is Alf, and most call him Prentice. After just three more years, the Master decides to take another holiday, but he tells Alf that he will not return. The townspeople, judging Alf to be too young and unreliable to be Master Cook, appoint instead Nokes, a man who had helped the former master in emergencies, but whom the master had not deemed talented enough to have as apprentice. Nokes is married with children, and the villagers see him as a solid citizen who will not take off on them without notice. But Nokes has little talent and even less imagination. He is able to do a tolerable job by using recipes left by previous Master Cooks, and by watching Alf on the sly, for Alf has stayed on as Nokes’s apprentice. When it comes time to make his Great Cake, the inept Nokes is stymied at first. He decides that the cake should have a sweet sugar icing (which Alf is good at making) and should have a fairy theme, believing that both sweets and fairies are things children are fond of. In the center of the cake, he places a little doll with a wand and pink icing around her feet. Searching for something to make the cake itself special, Nokes looks in a black spice box. Here he finds a tarnished silver star, which Alf tells him with conviction is a faystar that has come from the land of Faërie. Nokes, of course, sees this as juvenile drivel, but he decides to bake the star in the cake, along with various other trinkets that the children might find. The feast itself is fairly successful. The cake is passable, though there is only just enough of it. The children enjoy the trinkets—some get none, some get more than one, and there is one boy with a silver coin who gives it to Nell, the girl sitting next to him who had found no lucky trinket in her cake. However, no one finds the fay-star. Nokes thinks it may have melted into the cake, but Alf believes one of the children has swallowed it. This proves to be the case: The young boy who had shared with the girl at the feast, a son of the

416   Smith of Wootton Major village blacksmith, had indeed swallowed the star. At first, there is no effect, but six months later, on the morning of his 10th birthday, the boy hears the birds singing, and they remind him of the land of Faërie. He begins to sing, and the star falls from his mouth. He catches it in his hand and instinctively slaps his forehead, where the star stays. From this point on, the boy’s eyes grow brighter, and his voice grows more pleasant so that villagers like to hear him speak or sing. As he grows, he learns to be a blacksmith like his father and is known by the name Smith. He is skilled at making useful things, but he can also make beautiful things: iron in the shapes of leaves or blossoms for decorative purposes. He marries Nell and enjoys a life of special skill that seems to come from the star on his forehead. But the star gives him something else: It is a passport to Faërie. For many years, Smith is able to wander in the land of Faërie. He often goes off on “business,” and when he returns, Nell and his children, Ned and Nan, can see the fay-star shining brightly on his brow. The star is his key to enter Faërie, and it protects him from small dangers, while the powers of the realm protect him against greater ones. His adventures as he explores the region are dreamlike, and he cannot clearly remember them. At one point, he is walking on a seashore and sees a great warship returning to the strand, with elven warriors singing of victory. In another adventure, he glimpses the King’s Tree, rising high into the air and bearing innumerable flowers, each different from the next. In a third, he sees a lake in a valley in the Outer Mountains of the realm. He sees in the lake strange shapes and fiery creatures, but when he tries to step into the lake, he finds that it is not water but solid material. Suddenly, a great wind blows, and he grasps onto a birch tree that saves him from blowing away. The birch is stripped of its leaves, and when Smith offers to do something to thank the birch, the tree tells him to leave and not return, for he does not belong in this place. On another occasion, Smith penetrates into the Inner Mountains and into the Vale of Evermorn, where he finds maidens dancing on the green beside a river. A young maiden steps out, calling him Starbrow and observing that he has become

bold, but she warns him that he may be in trouble if he has come this far without leave of the queen. Nonetheless, she smiles and draws him into the dance, after which she gives him a white flower and tells him that they may meet again if the queen permits it. When Smith returns home from this journey, his star is glowing particularly bright. He shows his family the flower, and his son, Ned, looking at his long shadow, tells his father he looks like a giant. The flower never withers, and Smith makes a box to keep it in. It becomes a family heirloom, passed down for generations. Time has been passing in the village. Nokes has long since retired, and Alf has become Master Cook. He has hired an apprentice from the village named Harper and has baked his Great Cake at the Twenty-four Feast after the one at which Smith received his fay-star. It was 12 years after this that Smith received the flower from the fairy mistress. Now time is drawing near for the next Twenty-four Feast, where Alf will become the first Master Cook ever to preside over a second one. In the autumn of that year, Smith visits Faërie again and, following a summons through the mist of the mountains, comes face-to-face with the Queen of Faërie. He realizes she is the maid he had danced with years before, and he looks down in shame when he remembers the travesty of the doll on the cake at the feast where he received the star. The queen tells him not to be ashamed of his people, for even a doll is better than no memory of Faërie at all. But she tells Smith that she can give him no more and instructs him to take a message to the king to say The time has come. Let him choose. Smith says he does not know where the king is. But the queen leaves him as he kneels. On his journey home, Smith meets a tall stranger who calls him Starbrow. The stranger says he is returning to the village and walks with Smith. He tells Smith that he knows where the king is and promises to deliver the message. But when they get to the edge of Faërie, the stranger pulls back his hood and reveals himself to be Alf. Alf now tells Smith that it is time to give up the fay-star on his brow. Smith is hesitant to give it up, but acknowledges that it was only lent to him. Alf tells Smith to give him the star. It was Smith’s maternal grand-

Smith of Wootton Major   417 father, named Rider, who had been the Master Cook who first made Alf his apprentice, and who had brought the star back from Faërie. Now it is Smith’s turn to pass the star on. Alf asks him which child he would like to have receive the star at the Twenty-four Feast. Smith has a grandchild, but the child is too young. So he chooses Townsend’s Tim, grandson of Nell’s sister, who also happens to be the great-grandson of Nokes. Smith returns to his home, where he shows his son a gift for his new grandson, Nan’s child. It is a dainty thing of silver from Faërie. But he tells his son that he will now be home for good. Ned sympathizes and remembers the day he called his father a giant—that shadow, he says, was the truth. Two final episodes end the story. First, Alf visits old Nokes in his retirement and reveals to him what had happened to the silver star from his Great Cake. Alf tells him the truth, but Nokes will not believe in anything as silly as Faërie. The corpulent Nokes scoffs, joking that perhaps one of Alf’s fairy friends might wave his wand and make Nokes thin. In anger, Alf reveals himself to Nokes in his full stature as King of Faërie, making the old man tremble. But Alf leaves and Nokes falls asleep, and when Nokes awakens, he believes he has had a dream. But he has little appetite and loses a great deal of weight, though he refuses to believe that any magic has caused it. Smith watches the Twenty-four Feast and sees Tim swallow the fay-star unaware. Tim does not notice anything, but later in the feast, he breaks into a graceful dance such as he has never done before. After the feast, Alf announces that he will be leaving the village for good, and he makes Harper his successor as Master Cook. Only Tim, of all the children, whispers to Alf that he will miss him. And when Alf has left, most families do not miss him. Old Nokes has the last word, observing that he never really liked Alf, for he was artful and “too nimble.” Commentary One of the curious things about Smith of Wootton Major is its structure. Tolkien has deliberately truncated the portions of the story that might be of most immediate interest to readers—the adven-

tures Smith has in Faërie—and has dealt with more than 40 years of those adventures in what is no more than a brief digression, enumerating several dreamlike encounters, each punctuated by a memorable image or two, but amounting to no more than some brief impressions. Essentially, the story focuses on two fully drawn episodes: The first describes the Twenty-four Feast in which Smith obtains the silver fay-star; the second depicts the events around the Twenty-Four Feast that occurs 48 years later, when Smith must give up his star and pass it along to young Townsend’s Tim. Structurally, then, the story parallels Tolkien’s beloved Beowulf. In his famous essay “Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics,” Tolkien had asserted that the poem was not an epic but rather a heroic elegy, and he had described the poem’s two-part structure—the first part depicting the exploits of the young, unproven Beowulf, the second his fight with the dragon some 50 years later. In Beowulf, Tolkien sees this structure as demonstrating how Beowulf’s heroic rise is balanced by his inevitable death, thus underscoring the poem’s elegiac mood. Tolkien may well have had something similar in mind for Smith of Wootton Major, particularly considering his previously cited comment that it was an “old man’s book, already weighted with the presage of ‘bereavement.’ ” Like Beowulf, Smith is conceived as elegiac in tone. Smith is no traditional hero, but the mood of loss hangs over the tale. Certainly this comes through in Smith’s surrendering his star and accepting the inevitable loss of Faërie in his life. A reader feels it, as well, in Smith’s inability ever to find the King’s Tree again after his first glimpse of it in Faërie, and in the great wind that strips bare the birch tree in his other adventure. Alf’s leaving the village at the end of the tale brings its own sense of loss, and even giving the unimaginative Nokes the story’s last word suggests a loss of connection with, or even recognition of, the world of Faërie among the great majority of humankind. What “Faërie” means in this context is probably best explained with reference to Tolkien’s influential lecture “On Fairy-Stories.” There, Tolkien had extolled fairy stories as the purest form of

418   Smith of Wootton Major “sub-creation,” the process by which an artist creates a secondary world with an inner consistency. Sub-creation, for Tolkien, is the act by which a human being might emulate the Primary Creator— God himself—and thereby in some way restore the image of God in which man was originally made. The loss of Faërie in the world of Wootton Major is not only the manifestation of lack of imagination, it is also the demonstration of a loss of real spirituality. If Smith of Wootton Major reflects something of the “old man” Tolkien’s own “presaged bereavement,” then it seems likely that Tolkien must have identified with Smith. Perhaps he felt that the time was coming when he would have to curtail his own visits to Faërie. Indeed, he may well have felt that this, his last completed story, was, in fact, that farewell. Who was to take up the fay-star after him he may not have known, or at least he may have thought that it might not be one of his own disciples, as Smith could not keep the star in his own family. Perhaps, too, Tolkien identified with Alf, whose departure from Wootton Major was little noticed or remarked, and Tolkien may have felt that human society after he left it would still be populated and governed chiefly by the Nokeses of the world. These simple parallels seem fairly clear. Tom Shippey, as mentioned above, would go much further, however, believing that the story is an “autobiographical allegory.” In particular, he focuses on the stripped birch tree in Smith’s third adventure in Faërie, and on the name Nokes. Shippey notes, first, that Tolkien consistently uses “nunnation” in the story—that is, the English tendency to put an n at the beginning of names that normally begin in vowels, as in Smith’s wife, Nell (short for Eleanor), and his children Ned (short for Edward) and Nan (a nickname for Ann). Nokes, by analogy, may thus stand for “Oaks” (Shippey, Road to Middleearth 273). In The Return of the Shadow, Christopher Tolkien notes that for Tolkien, “Oak” was associated particularly with the “A-scheme” of the English studies curriculum at the University of Leeds (see Leeds, University of) (145). Shippey explains that Tolkien had introduced a system with two tracks for English students—the

“A” track for literature students and the “B” track for students focusing on language and philology. He symbolized the two tracks by the Old English names of trees beginning with the two letters: ác (oak) for the A scheme, and beorc (birch) for the B scheme (Shippey, Road to Middle-earth 273–74). Given these associations, the story seems to suggest that the “literature” people—who would probably be those interested in modern literature rather than older texts for which they would have to concern themselves with philology—are in general allied with the Nokeses of the world, those with little imagination and no patience for Faërie. As for the birch tree, Smith is able to cling to it to save himself from the great wind, but ultimately it is stripped bare. Is the implication here that Tolkien’s interest in philology was able to ground him and to provide some kind of protection from the winds of change that swept his world? But the fact that the tree is stripped gives little hope for its survival in the postmodern world. Shippey’s interpretation is ingenious and probably reflects a part of Tolkien’s subtext in the story, but surely Tolkien could not have expected the typical reader to know anything about his private symbolism. This may be one reason that Verlyn Flieger has downplayed the allegorical aspect of the tale. She concedes that “critics who see allegory [in the tale] .  .  . are responding to real signals,” but she asserts that the application of too much specific meaning burdens and crystallizes a story whose greatest charm lies in its unpretentious air, its effortless ability to imply without stating” (233). Flieger’s own interpretation of the birch-tree episode underscores the uniqueness of the tone of the scene within the tale. She calls it “Tolkien’s clearest picture of the ‘otherness,’ the utter . . . strangeness of this world. Sometimes the human figure cannot bridge the gap” (246). Tolkien, of course, famously disliked allegory and specifically denied its use in this tale, agreeing in a letter to Roger Lancelyn Green with the latter’s review of the story, which cautioned that looking for meaning in the story would be like cutting a rubber ball apart to look for its bounce (Letters 388). Still, Tolkien himself admitted that parts of the story could be read allegorically, suggesting

Smith of Wootton Major   419 that the Great Hall might be an allegory of the village church, and the Master Cook the village parson (Smith 2005, 100). This suggestion of Tolkien’s leads one to read the festivals of Wootton Major as, metaphorically, spiritual rites, with the cakes supplied by the Master Cook representing spiritual nourishment. Nokes, who has no imagination, no understanding of or capacity for sub-creation, and therefore no connection with the likeness of God, cannot possibly provide true spiritual nourishment, and his own sub-creation, his Great Cake, is nothing but a sugary veneer of spiritual truth. Tolkien seems to imply that a priest, a spiritual guide, must be like an artist—that is, capable of imaginative sub-creation in his own right—capable, Tolkien’s Catholicism would say, of turning the bread and wine into the true body and blood of Christ. Shippey goes so far as to propose that Nokes’s marriage implies that he is a member of the Protestant clergy, and that Tolkien was intimating a spiritual decline from England’s Catholic to her Protestant clergy (Road to Middle-earth 275). This seems to push the allegory too far, as Flieger would doubtless assert. Smith, too, is married, and is in direct contact with Faërie. Nokes’s marriage is a necessary plot point for the story, since it is one of his descendants to whom the fay-star is to be bequeathed. It seems unlikely that Tolkien is being sectarian here. But this does raise the question that puzzles a lot of readers: Why is it the great-grandson of the boorish Nokes who receives the star? One possible answer is that the star represents a kind of grace, and like the grace of God, it blows where it lists—that is, it may appear anywhere in any given generation. It does seem to go to children who are predisposed to qualities associated with the likeness of God in man. In Smith’s case, it was his generosity to Nell displayed during the feast; in the case of Tim, it is perhaps his kindness as well—he is, after all, the only child to express his regrets at Alf’s departure. More important, the passing on of the star, while it may be a part of the “bereavement” Tolkien referred to, is not a completely negative act. It ensures that the experience of Faërie will continue into the next generation, and it ensures that no

matter what happens, the Nokeses cannot completely extinguish the light of sub-creation, the likeness of God. In his essay “On Fairy-Stories,” Tolkien had written that the chief characteristic of fairy stories was the happy ending, what he called the eucatastrophe—a sudden unexpected reversal that brought about the joyous conclusion. Tolkien saw this eucatastrophe as a kind of unlooked-for grace and asserted that it paralleled and so recalled the great truth of human history, the ultimate eucatastrophe of Christ’s incarnation and resurrection. Smith’s leaving the star to the descendant of Faërie’s great enemy is thus the story’s eucatastrophe. It is an unexpected turn of events, but it assures the happy ending—the survival of humankind’s connection with Faërie. That Tolkien saw this connection as something essential in the tale is clear in the draft of his unpublished essay on Smith, printed by Flieger in her edition of the story. Much of this essay is devoted to the text’s backstory. Tolkien had insisted, in his essay “On Fairy-Stories,” that the ideal sub-creation must have an inner consistency, and he builds an inner consistency for Smith of Wootton Major in his creation, for his own use, of the characters’ backstories. In particular, he focuses on Rider, Smith’s maternal grandfather and the former Master Cook, discussing his assumption of the position of apprentice after the accidental death of the previous apprentice shortly before the Winter Festival (Smith 2005, 88–90). He also discusses the motives of the king of Faërie, whose 58 years among the humans of Wotton Major is revealed to be the result of a natural elvish fondness for humans, and their realization that, as Tolkien says, “love of Faery is essential to the full and proper human development. The love of Faery is the love of love; a relationship towards all things, animate and inanimate, which includes love and respect, and removes or modifies the spirit of possession and domination” (Smith 2005, 94). This connection, vital to the welfare of human beings, is perceived to be slipping away, and the cultivation of visitors like Smith is necessary to revitalize that relationship. While it may be true, as Shippey says, that “Defeat hangs heavy in Smith of Wootton Major”

420   Smith of Wootton Major (Road to Middle-earth 277), the story is ultimately not about defeat but survival and hope. It is not about victory, for Nokes still has the last word, but the star is still passed on. In a broader sense, Tolkien himself, taking leave of Faërie in this his last story, has used the story itself as if it were a fay-star, and he has passed it on to his readers. In possession of Tolkien’s stories, they, too, can enter Faërie— and they can quiet the voices of the Nokeses. The story is Tolkien’s ultimate victory. Characters Alf Alf is the apprentice cook who appears early in the tale, brought back from an unknown land by the first Master Cook of the story and left to break the news of the cook’s departure to the village. As an outsider and a youth, Alf is not trusted with the position of Master Cook, and the villagers pass him over in favor of the solid citizen Nokes. Nokes learns by watching Alf (though he would never admit to doing so), and he relies on the apprentice to make his Great Cake a passable one. Alf reveals that he knows a great deal about Faërie since he recognizes the worth and function of the silver star that Nokes believes is a simple trinket, but Nokes pays no attention to Alf’s comments about Faërie, regarding such talk as childish nonsense. Eventually, however, Alf does become Master Cook, and he is the only one ever to be in the position of providing a Great Cake for two Twenty-four Feasts. His cakes and other creations are truly inspired, and it is Alf who is aware of Smith’s digesting the fay-star. The name Alf seems like a simple name, perhaps the name of a country youth. But as Shippey points out, “Alf” is the modern spelling of the Old English word ælf, meaning “elf” (Road to Middleearth 276). It is no great surprise that Alf turns out to be the king of Faërie. In this capacity, however, he shows great power, expanding in stature and authority in his confrontation of Nokes at the end of the story. As Tolkien asserts in his essay on the story, Alf lives 58 years among humans in order to try to repair the relationship between elves and humans that has become strained but that people need in order to reach their full potential (Smith 2005, 94–96). He embodies the character of Faërie itself, showing a generally sanguine disposition full

of creativity and imagination (like the fairy dance or the King’s Tree that Smith observes) but capable of dangerous potency (like the wind that strips bare the birch tree in Smith’s other journey). And like Faërie itself, Alf’s special nature is apparent only to those, like Smith, who are capable of seeing beyond the mundane. Nokes is unable to recognize Alf’s qualities even when confronted with them head-on. Nokes  Nokes is an untalented, unimaginative plodder who is thrust into the position of Master Cook despite his lack of qualifications because people see him as a responsible citizen who is not likely to run off, like the previous cook. Nokes essentially learns on the job, mainly by copying things that his apprentice, Alf, does, and by looking at recipes of previous cooks. But his work is not inspired, and the Great Cake that he makes for the children at his “Twenty-four Feast” is merely a kind of sweet façade with no real substance. Nokes is not himself a “sub-creator,” and therefore in Tolkien’s scheme he displays little of that divine spark that someone like Smith exhibits. Nokes has no use for fantasy, believing it is something that appeals to children, but which they fortunately grow out of. All he knows of Faërie is a doll with a wand that he places on his Great Cake, an image over which Smith hangs his head in embarrassment when he meets the queen of Faërie. In his unpublished essay on the story, Tolkien affirms that Nokes at least has some fondness for children and enough of a vague idea about Faërie to put the dressed-up doll on the cake—a gesture that even the queen acknowledges is at least better than nothing (Smith 2005, 97). But Nokes is neither willing nor able to be corrected in his attitudes. Even after Alf reveals himself to be the Faërie king and frightens Nokes, the boorish cook believes he has had a dream and refuses to see the truth, even believing that there is a “logical” explanation for the loss of weight Alf cursed him with. The story ends with Nokes unchanged from the oaf he has always been. Smith  The story’s protagonist, Smith is nearly 10 years old when he receives a fay-star at Wootton

“Some Contributions to Middle-English Lexicography”    421 Major’s great “Twenty-four Feast.” The star seems to enhance Smith’s natural talents for creating things out of metal; it also acts as his free pass into the land of Faërie, which he explores periodically for nearly 50 years. He marries and has two children and, by the story’s end, a grandson, but his family always senses that his adventures in Faërie give him a knowledge and a stature beyond the everyday world. This is underscored in particular after the adventure in which he dances with the fairy maiden and receives from her the never-fading flower that becomes an heirloom of Smith’s family. Both the queen and king of Faërie let Smith know that, after 48 years, his time in Faërie must end. Smith is reluctant to give up his star, but he recognizes that such things are loaned to us only temporarily, and then must be shared with others. Smith displays his empathy for others early on, at his first Twenty-four Feast, when he shares his trinket with Nell. Over the course of his life, the brief glimpses we get of him interacting with his family and others in the village show him to be a man on friendly terms with his neighbors and loved by his wife and children. His empathy and general fairness of mind are displayed again at the end when, rather than pass the star along to one of his own family, he chooses a deserving member of Nokes’s family. Tolkien may well have identified himself with Smith, for he makes Smith the man of imagination, and one who is himself a sub-creator of sorts, as demonstrated by the remarkably beautiful and imaginative things he can make out of metal. Further Reading Flieger, Verlyn. A Question of Time: J. R. R. Tolkien’s Road to Faërie. Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 1997. Rogers, Deborah Webster, and Ivor A. Rogers. J. R. R. Tolkien. Boston: G. K. Hall, 1980. Shippey, Tom. J. R. R. Tolkien: Author of the Century. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2000. ———. The Road to Middle-earth: How J. R. R. Tolkien Created a New Mythology. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2003. Tolkien, J. R. R. The Return of the Shadow. Volume 6 of The History of Middle-earth. Edited by Christopher Tolkien. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1986.

———. Smith of Wootton Major. London: G. Allen & Unwin, 1967. ———. Smith of Wootton Major. Edited by Verlyn Flieger. New York: HarperCollins, 2005. ———. Smith of Wootton Major. In Tales from the Perilous Realm, 243–281. Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2008.

“Some Contributions to Middle-English Lexicography”  (1925) Tolkien’s earliest scholarly article, “Some Contributions to Middle-English Lexicography,” is precisely what the title indicates: a fairly random selection of lexicographic notes on Middle ­English words that Tolkien thought had not yet been adequately explained in certain texts. It was published in 1925 in the first volume of the Review of ­English Studies, and to my knowledge, it has not been reprinted. Synopsis Tolkien first comments on the term long home (meaning “the grave”), noting that the OED (i.e., the publication now known as the Oxford ­English Dictionary) cites its first use in Robert Manning’s early 14th-century Handling Sin, but Tolkien traces it to Old English verse in the Fates of the Apostles. He next spends a number of paragraphs on the term burde, meaning “lady” or “damsel.” The term is first recorded in Layamon’s Brut in the early 13th century, but Tolkien tries to show its etymology. Taking his cue from the Old English word freoþowebbe, or “peace-weaver,” a term for a woman, he finds examples where the MiddleEnglish burde means “weaver” or “embroideress.” He then asserts that the Old English byrdan (which appears only in compounded or inflected forms such as bebyrdan and gebyrdan), meaning “embroideress,” is the origin of the Middle English word, which has been generalized to mean “lady,” one who would do the embroidering.

422   Songs for the Philologists Tolkien then moves on to consider nine words appearing in the glossary of the 1922 Early English Text Society publication of Hali Meidenhad. The word wori (“make war”) is probably related to the Old English wo¯rian (“wander, be confused, fall to pieces”). The word mirð Tolkien considers a misreading of the manuscript hand; it should probably be nurð, a word for “noise” that Tolkien points out is common in the Ancrene Riwle (or Ancrene Wisse) and texts of the Katherine group (which would include Hali Meidenhad). Numnen Tolkien considers misreading for munnen (“mention”), another word common to these texts. The word haesci (“become exasperated”) is related, according to Tolkien, to an unrecorded Old English word, hetsian, itself related to hete (“hatred”). The word suti, glossed in the EETS (Early English Text Society) volume as “sooty,” is an adjective related to the Middle English noun su¯t (grief), and thus means “grievous.” As for uleð, Tolkien notes that the u here is probably a v, which would be the voiced form of the consonant f, so that the word is probably an unusual spelling of fleð. Tolkien sees this as a third person singular form developed from an unrecorded Old English verb flæ(ha)n, meaning “speak fair, flatter, cajole, wheedle.” Greni is glossed under grani (“groan”) in the glossary, but Tolkien says it is probably related to the Old English grennian (“gnash the teeth in anguish”). The word medi in the phrase medi wið wicchen is not an error for medli (“meddle”), Tolkien argues. Rather, it is related to mede (“payment”), and thus he suggests that medi wið wicchen means “bribe” or “purchase the services of witches.” Finally, in the alliterative formula heme and hine (“inhabitants”), heme means something like “villagers, rustics,” since heme is related to the Old English -hæm, i.e. the inhabitants of a -ha¯m, used in place-names.

oversights that he finds in either the Oxford English Dictionary or publications of the Early English Text Society. Tolkien is particularly interested in a group of Middle English texts, including the Ancrene Wisse (a rule for anchoresses that he was to publish on four years later and, ultimately, produce an edition of for the EETS) and the Katherine group— a group of texts related to the Ancrene Wisse in the manuscript tradition, including three saint’s lives (St. Katherine, St. Juliana, and St. Margaret), Sawles Warde (“Care of the Soul”), and Hali Meidenhad (“Holy Maidenhood”). In his comments on the language of the latter poem, Tolkien is setting the groundwork for his later article and edition of the Ancrene Wisse. He was especially concerned with establishing a connection between poems attributed to the Old English poet Cynewulf and the Middle English texts in question, all in a West Midland dialect (which Tolkien saw as the language of his own ancestors). He was seeking to establish a direct line of descent from the language of Cynewulf to the standard dialect of the Southwest Midlands in the Middle English period, a conservative standard dialect he labeled “AB.”

Commentary

Songs for the Philologists 

Tolkien calls his article a collection of “very minor notes” (210), but it is part of a larger effort to produce a much-needed dictionary of Middle English, and as a philologist, he is particularly concerned with compiling an accurate record of the language. Thus, he feels compelled to correct any mistakes or

Further Reading Tolkien, J. R. R. “Ancrene Wisse and Hali Meiðhad.” Essays and Studies 14 (1929): 104–126. ———. “Some Contributions to Middle-English Lexicography.” Review of English Studies 1, no. 2 (1925): 210–215. Tolkien, J. R. R., ed. The English Text of the Ancrene Riwle: Ancrene Wisse: Edited from MS. Corpus Christi College, Cambridge 402. Introduced by N. R. Ker. EETS o.s. 249. London: Oxford University Press, 1962.

(1936) Known among Tolkien collectors as the rarest of all Tolkien publications, with only some 14 copies currently extant, Songs for the Philologists was a pri-

Songs for the Philologists   423 vately published collection of 30 mostly original songs (often sung to traditional tunes) by J. R. R. Tolkien and E. V. Gordon, written in modern English, Old English, Old Norse, Latin, and Gothic. The songs were originally typescripts compiled between 1921 and 1926 for the Viking Club at the University of Leeds (see Leeds, University of), a club of undergraduate students interested in reading Old Norse sagas and in drinking beer. In 1936, a former Leeds student and member of the Viking Club, A. H. Smith, then an instructor at University College London, gave copies of the typewritten pages to a student group as a printing exercise using a reconstructed antique handpress. Realizing his mistake in not obtaining permission from either Tolkien or Gordon to print the texts, Smith decided not to distribute the printed copies. They were stored in a private printing house on Gower Street until German bombs during World War II caused a fire at that location that destroyed nearly the entire print run. Only a few copies survived, probably mainly in the hands of those involved in the original publication. Synopsis Of the 30 poems in the collection, 13 were original poems by Tolkien. Of these, four have been reprinted, with translations, as an appendix to Tom Shippey’s book The Road to Middle-earth. These are readily available, and I discuss them in some detail. Other than “The Root of the Boot,” which Tolkien published later as “The Stone Troll,” the other poems are simply not available generally, unless one has access to one of the few editions of the text still extant, or a copy. I am grateful to Marquette University’s library for granting me access to consult their copy of the text.

“From One to Five” The first of Tolkien’s contributions to the collection, “From One to Five” appears on page 6 of the 32-page book. It is a counting rhyme sung to the tune of the nursery rhyme “Three Wise Men of Gotham,” who went to sea in a bowl. In the printed version of the text, Smith has changed the lyrics concerning Leeds to fit London’s University College.

The song consists of five stanzas, in each of which is briefly described some difficulties run into by certain unnamed scholars or their students. In the first, a Durham playwright has lost his play and so can collect no royalties. In the second, a Yorkshire (i.e., Leeds) student is unable to learn much from his three dons—“Had the boy been brighter / Their task had been lighter—O yea!” Tolkien writes. The third stanza mentions the difficulties of two London students with learning Old Norse, and the fourth describes four “noodles” who nearly fail in the English school. The fifth stanza describes five young ladies who want to print a book and use the fattest of them as an ink ball! It would seem that the second and third stanzas of this counting song have been accidentally reversed in the printing, since stanza 2 describes three wise men of Yorkshire.

“Syx Mynet” This song is a composition in Old English, intended to be sung to the tune of the nursery rhyme “I Love Sixpence” and meaning much the same thing, mynet being the Old English term for “coin.” The traditional song has the narrator spending one penny and bringing another home to his wife, leaving him with fourpence. When he spends two more pennies and brings two home to his wife, he has spent his sixpence. The poem appears immediately following “One to Five.” Each stanza of the poem rhymes aaabccb, and metrically the first four lines are in trimeter, the last three in tetrameter.

“Ruddoc Hana” Another of Tolkien’s Old English poems, “Ruddoc Hana” follows “Syx Mynet” in the collection. These verses are intended to be sung to the tune of the folk song “Who Killed Cock Robin?” Hana means “cock” and Ruddoc is “robin” in Old ­English. The original poem is a series of questions and answers: Who killed Cock Robin? The Sparrow, with his bow and arrow. Who saw him die? The Fly with his eye. Who caught his blood? The Fish with his dish. The Rook will be the parson, and the Thrush will sing a dirge in Tolkien’s version.

424   Songs for the Philologists Following the structure of the original song, Tolkien’s Old English version consists of nine stanzas rhyming abba and using dimeter lines. The stanzas are printed in two columns on the page, except for the first, which stands alone. The stanzas all follow the question/answer pattern, as in the following, in which the narrator asks who will be the priest, and the Rook answers that he will. He promises to bring his book, and asserts that he feels sore pain in his breast: “Hwa weorþeþ préost?” “Ic,” cwæþ se hróc, “Ic bringe mine bóc; Sár is min bréost.”

“Bagme Bloma” Written in Old Gothic, “Bagme Bloma” is reprinted, with a modern English translation, in Tom Shippey’s Road to Middle-earth. The title means “Flower of the Trees,” and the poem praises the birch. The first stanza praises the fine leaves and shining bows of the birch, which the speaker personifies, calling it “fair-haired and supplelimbed,” and “ruler of the mountain” (Shippey 354). In the second stanza, the tree responds to the blowing wind, bending her bow and trembling, speaking a blessing on the people. When a thunderstorm breaks out in the evening, scattering the leaves, the white birch still stands, now bare of leaves, as ruler of the mountain. The poem is supposed to be sung to the tune of a song entitled “O Lazy Sheep,” though scholars have been unable to identify that particular song. It is in three six-line stanzas, following a Germanic four-stress alliterative line similar to that Tolkien would have encountered in Old English or Old Norse poetry.

“Éadig Béo Þu” “Bagme Bloma” is followed immediately by a related poem, the Old English “Éadig Béo Þu,” which is also reprinted and translated by Shippey as “Good Luck to You.” The speaker hopes for lasting joy and a pleasant life for the “good man” and

“dear woman,” and he hopes also that the one who has worked here (presumably at the university), and who has “expounded runes and ancient texts” (Shippey 355) may be happy at his feasts and maintain his learning. In the second stanza, the narrator again wishes for happiness in the future as now, and he hopes cups will be filled in times to come. He calls for more mead, since doom is ultimately waiting and work will be long. In the third and final stanza, the speaker asks that the teacher and student both praise the birch. The oak, he says, will fall into the fire and burn, but the birch will shine on in splendor. The poem, we are told, should be sung to the tune of “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.” Alliteration is used in each line, and there are four-stress lines with a caesura or pause in the middle. However, the lines do not seem to follow the classical rules of Old English alliteration, by which the third stressed syllable should be the key to each line’s alliteration. Instead, the poem is in three eight-line stanzas that rhyme ababcdcd.

“Ides Ælfscýne” Sung to the tune of “Daddy Neptune,” the Old English “Ides Ælfscýne” appears in the appendix to The Road to Middle-earth with the Modern ­English title “Elf-fair lady.” In this poem, the narrator recounts how, as a boy, he was met by a maiden who told him that the two of them must never be separated on earth. The distressed speaker replies, “Alas! must never more be separated on earth” (Shippey 358). The lady then kisses him under the moon, grasps him in her arms, and takes him away into darkness. The speaker responds again in fear, “Alas! where the shadow-way always flickered” (358). She spirits him away on a boat, where he says his longing grows. He reaches a far country with green grass, golden wheat, and the maiden’s white dog, but a dwarf lurks there under the mountains. Weary of his exile, the narrator prays to God from this country where there is no sun but instead a great jewel in the sky. Finally, after 50 years, the speaker is returned to his own land, but those who knew him before are now all dead, and he dwindles there, “grey and alone” (358).

Songs for the Philologists   425 Metrically, “Ides Ælfscýne” is a tour de force in which Tolkien composes six seven-line stanzas where lines 1, 3, and 6 have four stresses while the other lines have three. Lines 4, 5, and 7 all end in the same word, with line 5 repeating nearly all of line 4 and introducing a two-line response, spoken by the poem’s protagonist, beginning with “Wá!” or “Alas!” in each stanza. Further, Tolkien uses internal rhyme in each line except the second, and in that second line at least two of the stressed syllables alliterate in each stanza.

one of two alternating three-line refrains, which rhyme bcb for the odd-numbered stanzas and bbb for the even-numbered ones. Each of the refrains includes an echo of the first lines of the Old English Beowulf. The alliterative lines are longer than the typical lines of Old English poetry, each containing six stressed syllables. Often Tolkien uses internal rhyme in the first half-line, but not in as regular a pattern as he did in the previous poem.

“Ofer Wídne Gársecg” (“Across the Broad Ocean”)

Tolkien’s next effort is the short poem “La Húru,” which is supposed to be sung to the tune of “O’Reilly,” although it is not clear which specific folk tune is being referred to, since several Irish ballads concern an “O’Reilly.” In Old English, the title simply means “Oh, surely!” The song consists of three Old English stanzas. Each stanza contains four tetrameter lines with the same rhyme (except the third stanza, in which the third line does not rhyme), and each is followed by four repetitions of the line “La húru, la húru, la leofa, la hu!” (“Oh surely, oh surely, oh dear, oh how!”). The lines use alliteration but do not follow the classical Old English poetic meter. Essentially, the poem is a drinking song and does not rise above the sentiments of the second stanza: “Ic drince, ic drence, ic scence þe þín; / We hebbað up hornas nu tyn siðum tyn” (“I drink, I drench [myself], I give drink to you; / We lift up the drinking horns ten times ten”).

Tolkien’s next contribution, “Ofer Wídne Gársecg,” was to be sung to the tune of “The Mermaid,” and it was also reprinted and translated by Shippey, who titles it “Across the Broad Ocean.” When a cold wind blows across the ocean, a young man falls into the water and swims until he meets mermen near the bottom of the sea. A voice in the first person, presumably that of the narrator, sings a refrain, saying that he has seen the power of the Spear-Danes’ kings, and also the wedding (“bridal”) under the sea. The mermaid rises from her chair and welcomes the young man to the land of the mermen, holding out her hand. The firstperson voice intrudes again with a second refrain, saying he has seen the power of the Danish kings and also the bridal of the mermen’s land. The young man answers the mermaid, telling her that he cannot stay, but she demands that he marry her and tells him to go back and tell his companions that he has married a wife from the mermen. His companions, who are searching for him, cry aloud as they search the sea bottom, but he springs up and tells them to go back, for he has been invited to stay by the queen of the mermen. He tells them to distribute all his goods to his relatives. The poem ends as the steersman bids the young man an angry farewell, saying, “Hell take you, near the deep seabottom” (Shippey 361). The poem is written in five four-line stanzas rhyming aabb. Stanzas 1, 3, and 5 employ the same b rhyme (-éah), while stanzas 2 and 4 each use -and as their b rhyme. Each stanza is followed by

“La Húru”

“I Sat upon a Bench” Immediately following “La Húru” is another drinking song, this one in modern English, called “I Sat upon a Bench,” to be sung to the tune of “The Carrion Crow,” a traditional song that begins “An old crow sat upon an oak.” Tolkien’s version begins “I sat upon a bench and I up and I sang.” His song consists of six stanzas rhyming abaabb in roughly tetrameter lines, in which the first and third lines are identical and the second and sixth repeat the nonsense phrase “Fol de rol de rol de rol de rol de-rido.” The poem moves from the first stanza, in which the speaker exclaims, “The beer’s a-going round,

426   Songs for the Philologists let the world go hang!” to the second stanza where the benches and tables begin to shake, until in the third, the benches fall over and the barrels are broken. In the fourth stanza, the speaker, lying on the floor, says that the tide is coming in and there is beer on the shore, and in the next verse asks the wind to blow the froth to him. The song concludes as the speaker declares it would be a merry death to drown in such a sea.

writes, “As Birch bears the palm from each bush and each tree.” Thus, the poem becomes another of Tolkien’s jabs at the “literature” camp within the English program. It is not clear whether the song originally contained this final stanza, which was left off when Smith’s students printed the text, or whether Tolkien himself added the stanza later, to apply the poem’s moral to his situation at Oxford.

“Natura Apis: Morali Ricardi Eremite”

“The Root of the Boot”

Tolkien’s next poem is another lyric, also to be sung to the tune of “O’Reilly.” There is a bit more substance to this one. The Latin title means “The Nature of the Bee,” and it is subtitled “The Moral of Richard the Hermit.” The poem is a song of praise for the clean, hardworking, and sometimes bellicose bee. The “Richard the Hermit” of the title is Richard Rolle of Hampton, a famous 14th-century English hermit and mystic who had written an allegory of the bee, which he had praised as an example of how human beings should live: They should be industrious and pure, and be willing to fight the devil if he tempts them from the true path of faith. The poem comprises five four-line stanzas, each of which has four identical rhymes. Each stanza is followed by a refrain “With a fal-lal-lal lal and a z z z z / a z z z z z, z z z z z,” to be repeated three times. The bee, we are told, is never idle, for lazy drones are booted from the hive. The bee is not lightly blown by the wind but, rather, has good earth as ballast. The bee polishes her wings and may sting creatures of a lower kind because, as the fifth stanza says, according to Aristotle, bees will protect their homes from thieves, for they are not meek creatures. In an annotated copy of the text of this poem (a photocopy of which can be viewed in the Marquette University library special collections), a sixth stanza is added in what appears to be Tolkien’s own hand. In it, he specifically associates the bee with the letter B and the birch tree—two symbols of the “language” curriculum within the English department, as opposed to the “literature” track: “O B bears the flower of the ABCD,” he

“The Root of the Boot,” another Modern English poem, is to be sung to the tune of “The Fox Went Out on a Winter’s Night.” It concerns a troll with a seat of stone, and it is the only one of the Songs for the Philologists that Tolkien reprinted much later in his collection The Adventures of Tom Bombadil. There, the poem is called “The Stone Troll,” and it is discussed above in my commentary on that text.

“Frenchmen Froth” Tolkien’s next poem, “Frenchmen Froth,” praises England, its language, and those who study that language, as opposed to those who simply follow the latest trends in teaching (specifically, he aims his criticism at those who focus on literature rather than language). The song is to be sung to the tune of “The Vicar of Bray”—a satirical 18th-century ballad concerning a clergyman who keeps changing his convictions, depending on who happens to be in political power at any given time. Tolkien’s poem is printed as four stanzas of 10 lines each, rhyming ababababcc. The first eight lines alternate tetrameter and trimeter meter, and the final two lines as printed have seven feet each—though essentially each line is another tetrameter and trimeter line run together. In the poem, English is said to be a language superior to French, and a course of study superior to mathematics or classics. Those who study literature are called “moles”—presumably because they have their heads underground and cannot see the true light. Tolkien concludes the poem with the line “They only earn the English name who learn the English tongue, sir!”

Songs for the Philologists   427

“ ‘Lit’ and ‘Lang’ ” (“Two Little Schemes”) The last poem Tolkien wrote for the collection is called “ ‘Lit’ and ‘Lang’ ”—or, alternately, “Two Little Schemes.” It was supposed to be sung to the tune of the nursery rhyme “Polly Put the Kettle On.” The song deals directly with the two “schemes” that students could follow in the ­English curriculum at the University of Leeds: One of these was essentially a literature track, the other focused on language. Tolkien, whose responsibility for Old and Middle English placed him squarely in the “Lang.” camp, characterizes “Lit.” as the enemy of “Lang.,” and as someone too lazy to take the time to understand the words in what she is reading. She ultimately dies of “homophomes” (since she is unable to distinguish between words that sound the same and mean different things), and when an autopsy is done on her body, the doctors cannot find a brain. “Lang.” does not mourn long—she wipes away one tear and then has another drink. The poem has two stanzas of 12 lines each, rhyming aaabcccbcded. The first line is repeated in lines 2 and 3, while the fifth line is repeated in lines 6 and 7. The meter is essentially tetrameter, although lines 4, 8, 10, and 12 are shorter—either dimeter or trimeter. Commentary The poems in Songs for the Philologists are best understood if one keeps in mind the context in which they were written and the fact that they were never intended for publication. The Viking Club was interested in male camaraderie, in drinking at pubs, and in philology, particularly Old Norse and Old English. Further, there is an “us against them” subtext that was certainly a part of what drew the group together, as a united front against the “literature” side of the department that they saw as wrongheaded and as encroaching on their rightful place. These are university politics that Tolkien certainly took seriously, but which in a group of like-minded scholars he could treat in a jocular vein, since he was essentially preaching to the choir. And if the entire group joined in singing

some of these songs, they also served to cement their unified stance. As Tom Shippey has described it, Tolkien himself had devised the system adopted at Leeds in the early 1920s that split the English curriculum into two “schemes” or tracks. The “A-scheme” was intended for students focusing on the study of literature, while the “B-scheme” was for the philologists, those who wanted to study language. Tolkien was unable to introduce the same scheme in 1930 at Oxford, and he spent a long, losing battle over the course of his entire academic career to retain the requirements of linguistic study for those obtaining degrees in English. Tolkien adopted the Old English rune ác (the equivalent of “A”), which literally means “oak,” to symbolize the “A-scheme,” and the rune beorc (that is, “B”), meaning “birch,” for the “B-scheme.” Shippey discusses this division particularly in his commentary on Tolkien’s later story Smith of Wootton Major, in which the protagonist must cling to a birch tree in the land of Faërie to save himself from a savage wind (Shippey 273). This most clearly explains the first two poems Shippey translates in his text—those he refers to as “birch poems.” “Bagme Bloma” (“Flower of the Trees”)—which Shippey notes is the only extant poem in Old Gothic—is a song in praise of the birch tree, which stands as ruler of the mountain and is firm even in the midst of winds that blow its leaves away. No doubt Tolkien was suggesting that the birch, philology, is under attack as “ruler of the mountain,” or the English curriculum, but that it will not be swayed by every shift in the wind— perhaps every new educational fad; it will remain steadfast as it always has. The other “birch poem,” “Éadig Béo Þu” (“Good Luck to You”), is mainly a drinking song for the Viking Club, calling on students and faculty together to drink more mead and to praise the birch. The oak, he says, will fall into the fire and burn. Tolkien apparently foresaw the eventual ruin of the “literature” faction—a kind of conflagration as he presents it here—while the “language” faction would continue to shine. Some of Tolkien’s other poems in the collection pertain to this same division. “Natura Apis: Morali Ricardi Eremite,” which praises the bee in terms borrowed from the hermit Richard Rolle, is

428   “Valedictory Address to the University of Oxford”  intended to praise not only the animal “bee” but the letter B—hardworking and upright as it is. The final stanza of the poem, which made that connection manifest, was left out of the 1936 printing of the Songs but was reinserted by hand in Tolkien’s own typescript copy of the poem. In other poems, the professors of “literature” are more directly assailed. One of these is “Frenchman Froth,” which praises the English language and condemns those who simply follow the latest pedagogical fads (the blowing winds of “Bagme Bloma,” one might guess). It fairly clearly attacks the “literature” faction of the faculty, but on another level, it attacks them more subtly by setting the song to the tune of “The Vicar of Bray,” who in the song is someone with no real convictions and changes with every political wind that blows. Another poem in a similar vein is, of course, the final poem, “ ‘Lit.’ and ‘Lang.,’ ” in which “Lit.” is incurably lazy and, ultimately, found to be brainless. Shippey calls the latter poem “the worst [Tolkien] ever wrote,” and says he can only hope “that something must have gone wrong with it en route to the printer” (6). In fact, however, the poem is simply a bit of barbed fun and is probably no worse than a number of other poems in the collection. The other two poems that Shippey reprints— “Ides Ælfscýne” (“Elf-fair Lady”) and “Ofer Wídne Gársecg” (“Across the Broad Ocean”)—belong to a category he calls “trapped mortal” poems. These involve mortal beings who are in some way trapped by supernatural beings of some sort, representing the dangerous side of “Faërie” that Tolkien had discussed in his lecture “On Fairy-Stories” and had demonstrated himself in his own fairy story, Smith of Wootton Major. In the first of these poems, the protagonist is held captive by a mermaid, queen of the beings under the sea. In the second, a young man is trapped for 50 years by a beautiful fairy maiden. While “Daddy Neptune,” the tune to which “Ides Ælfscýne” is set, is a patriotic song that seems unrelated to Tolkien’s poem, in “The Mermaid,” the tune to which “Ofer Wídne Gársecg” is to be sung, a captain spies a mermaid combing her hair, and ultimately the ship sinks. As Shippey suggests, Tolkien seems to have been engaging in an imaginative reconstruction of Old English “ances-

tors” for later ballads such as “The Mermaid”; some of Child’s ballads, such as the ancient Scottish “Tam Lin” and “The Queen of Elfan’s Nourice” (in which a woman is brought to Faërie to nurse elvish babies); or other traditional ballads, such as “The Daemon Lover” (in which a woman is wooed away from her husband and children by one who turns out to be the devil) and “Agnes and the Merman” (a Norse ballad of a woman wed eight years to a merman who returns to the world) (Shippey 353). Most of the other poems are what Shippey calls simply jeux d’esprit (spirited games), remarkable essentially as demonstrations of Tolkien’s facility in reinvigorating even a dead language like Old English, as, for example, his Old English renderings of the traditional nursery rhymes “I’ve Got Sixpence” (“Syx Mynet”) and “Who Killed Cock Robin?” (“Ruddoc Hana”) (353). And, of course, some of them are simply drinking songs, part of the spirit of the Viking Club or, indeed, of any college fraternity. Further Reading Shippey, Tom. The Road to Middle-Earth: How J. R. R. Tolkien Created a New Mythology. Rev. ed. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2003.

“Valedictory Address to the University of Oxford”  (1959) Tolkien delivered his “Valedictory Address” at Oxford on the occasion of his retirement from the Merton Chair of English Language and Literature on June 5, 1959. He had held the Merton Chair since 1945, prior to which he had been the Rawlinson and Bosworth Chair of Anglo-Saxon Studies (to which he was appointed in 1925). Thus, he had held two distinguished Oxford chairs for some 34 years when he chose to retire at the age of 67. In the speech, Tolkien does what any valedictory speaker does: He takes leave of his position and colleagues and wishes them well. But he also uses the opportunity to have a final word in the ongoing Oxford battle between the literary critics

“Valedictory Address to the University of Oxford”    429 and the philologists, a battle he had been engaged in all his academic life. The address was first published in 1979 in the collection J. R. R. Tolkien, Scholar and Storyteller. Christopher Tolkien published a revised edition, based on his father’s manuscript corrections, in 1983 in The Monsters and the Critics and Other Essays. It is the latter edition to which the following commentary refers. Synopsis Tolkien opens the address with some humor, commenting that he had never given an inaugural address when he was appointed to his first chair at Oxford, so he was in the unusual position of giving his inaugural address 34 years later, on his retirement. Sadly, he laments jokingly, he still has nothing to say. For a valedictory address, one must take a broad view, Tolkien says, while he has always been most interested in “minor” details, such as the implications of a single word. In fact, Tolkien is referring to his own chief interest in philology, which he now moves on to defend against its detractors, whom he dubs “misologists.” Tolkien calls the current undergraduate English program at Oxford a “sausage factory,” churning out students educated according to a uniform plan, and he comes down hard on the graduate “research” degree, which he believes encourages candidates to attempt to add new knowledge to a field before they have had a chance to read deeply in the previous body of knowledge. In particular, Tolkien is unhappy that Old English is being lost as a requirement for students in the program. Old English, he says, is not simply the “root” of the ­English literary tradition, as most would acknowledge; it is itself one of the great flowerings, and should be appreciated as such. Tolkien then reaches the chief argument of his address: the division, which he sees as unnatural, between the study of language and the study of literature in Oxford’s Honour School of English. He chooses to refer to them as “Lang and Lit,” since he feels that the separation of one from the other degrades both, and they are therefore not worthy in this context to be called by their respectable names of language and literature. Looking back on his

own days as an undergraduate, from 1912 through 1915, he remembers that the rift was already forming, but he insists that by definition the word language includes literature, just as the word literature, from its original sense of a “collection of letters,” is the equivalent of Greek grammatike and philologia— “that is, the study of grammar and idiom, and the critical study of authors (largely concerned with their language)” (232). Since either word includes the other by definition, Tolkien believes that the department should use one or the other as its title, and not imply a separation where there should be none. In the current state of the program, however, Lang has effectively been relegated to Anglo-Saxon studies. But Tolkien calls this situation “the product of ignorance and muddled thinking” (234). He argues that it confuses three things: First, it takes a significant attention to linguistic matters to intelligently read texts from any literary period, including the “modern.” Second, linguistic history concerns itself with all periods of literature, and the attention it pays to the specific sounds and structure of individual words (the minutiae Tolkien spoke of as his chief interest in the beginning of the address) involves the same concerns that are important for the study of poetry. Third, knowledge of the language of a given literary period adds more to the understanding of literature of the period than the study of printing techniques, or cultural concerns, or any other studies that have less direct connection with the literature itself. Chaucer, for example, Tolkien claims was rescued from obscurity by the close study of his language, but now seems to have been co-opted to be the sole property of the Lit people. Study of Milton, on the other hand, may involve the separate study of Milton’s spelling, yet this is the province of Lit rather than Lang because Milton is not a medieval writer. Tolkien concludes his address with the sort of personal remarks more typically expected at such a moment. He congratulates his successor to the Merton Chair—Norman Davis, Tolkien’s former student and a native of New Zealand. He suggest that it is right to have a representative of the Southern Hemisphere succeed to the Merton

430   “Valedictory Address to the University of Oxford”  Chair, but he reminds his audience that he was himself born in South Africa and, in a final eloquent plea, says of the land of his birth “I have the hatred of apartheid in my bones” (238)—but goes on to suggest that the separation of language and literature is an apartheid he detests at least as much. Finally, Tolkien shares some fond memories of older generations of Oxford dons, including Joseph Wright, W. A. Craigie, Henry Bradley, and C. T. Onions. He offers a five-line lament of bygone days in Old English from the poem The Wanderer, then he retreats, saying “But that is ‘Language’ ” (239). Instead, he gives a four-line lament in his own invented elvish tongue, adding, “But that is ‘Nonsense’ ” (239). He ends on a note of optimism, remarking on his own students who have gone on to great learning, and on the many worthy scholars still at work, and he notes that the dréam (the Anglo-Saxon word for gladness in the hall) “is not yet silenced” (240). Commentary Tolkien’s feelings are quite clear in this address, which Tom Shippey has called “somewhat embittered” (274) as they express his impatience with Oxford professionals in his own field who “suppose their dullness and ignorance” concerning philology or the study of language is in fact “the human norm” (Tolkien 225). Shippey suggests that the culture gap between adherents of Lang and Lit is

pronounced even among Tolkien scholars themselves, many of whom, he laments, “could not tell Old English from Old Norse, and genuinely thought the difference didn’t matter” (Shippey 334). Like his own Galadriel, Shippey suggests, Tolkien had spent his professional life fighting the “long defeat” as he strove to keep language, or philology, from losing ground in the English curriculum (332). Certainly it has been a losing battle, as the study of Old English and the history of the English language have generally been relegated to obscure positions far from the core of most departmental programs, certainly in Britain and, even more so, in the United States. Still, the address remains a useful commentary and reflection on Tolkien’s academic career. Further Reading Shippey, Tom. The Road to Middle-earth: How J. R. R. Tolkien Created a New Mythology. Rev. ed. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2003. Tolkien, J. R. R. “Valedictory Address to the University of Oxford.” In The Monsters and the Critics and Other Essays, edited by Christopher Tolkien, 224–240. London: Allen & Unwin, 1983. ———. “Valedictory Address to the University of Oxford, 5 June 1959.” In J. R. R. Tolkien, Scholar and Storyteller: Essays in Memoriam, edited by Mary Salu and Robert T. Farrell, 16–32. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1979.

The History of Middle-earth Other Unfinished Tales

and

Book of Lost Tales, Part 2, The   433 Note: This section contains entries on works left incomplete at the time of J. R. R. Tolkien’s death but later edited and published by Tolkien’s son Christopher.

Book of Lost Tales, Part 1, The  (1983) Part 1 of The Book of Lost Tales, published by Christopher Tolkien in 1983, was compiled from his father’s notes and early drafts dating back to 1916 and 1917, when Tolkien was beginning to construct the earliest iterations of his mythology of Middle-earth. Though abandoned some years later, the tales collected here are the first versions of what was later to become The Silmarillion. In the beginning of this first book, Tolkien creates the frame tale of a mortal mariner named Eriol, who travels across the great western ocean of Arda to reach Tol Eressëa, the Lonely Isle of the elves that stands in the Bay of Eldamar off the coast of the Undying Lands of the Valar (in later drafts, Eriol becomes a medieval Englishman named Ælfwine). Eriol takes lodging in what is called “The Cottage of Lost Play,” where he meets the elvish loremaster Lindo. The rest of the book purports to be the true histories and legends of the elves that Eriol learns from Lindo. There are nine more tales that make up part 1. These include “The Music of the Ainur” (an early version of the Ainulindalë); “The Coming of the Valar and the Building of Valinor” (which tells the stories that would eventually become the Valaquenta and the earliest chapters of the Quenta Silmarillion); “The Chaining of Melko” (Melko being the first version of the name Melkor, the renegade Vala in The Silmarillion); “The Coming of the Elves and the Making of Kôr” (Kôr being the early name for what was to be called Tirion in The Silmarillion); “The Theft of Melko and the Darkening of Valinor” (telling the story of chapter 8 of the Quenta Silmarillion); “The Flight of the Noldoli” (Noldoli being the early name for the elves known as the Noldor); “The Tale of the Sun and Moon”; “The Hiding of

Valinor”; and “Gilfanon’s Tale: The Travail of the Noldoli and the Coming of Mankind.” The Book of Lost Tales is of interest to serious scholars because of what it reveals about Tolkien’s process of composition. He worked on the stories of The Silmarillion from the time he was 25, composing these early drafts, until his death nearly 60 years later. He constantly revised, changed names, and added or removed themes and motifs all along the way. Thus, when reading these tales, a reader familiar with The Silmarillion finds many similarities but a number of differences as well. Christopher Tolkien includes an editorial commentary following each of the tales and adds the texts of some of Tolkien’s poems associated with the tales; he also includes notes on elvish vocabulary and names. The first part of The Book of Lost Tales was to become the first work in the 12-volume work The History of Middleearth, eventually published by Christopher Tolkien. Further Reading Tolkien, J. R. R. The Book of Lost Tales I. Vol. 1 of The History of Middle-earth. Edited by Christopher Tolkien. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1983.

Book of Lost Tales, Part 2, The  (1984) The second part of The Book of Lost Tales, which was to become volume 2 of the 12-volume The History of Middle-earth, edited by Christopher Tolkien, was published a year after part 1 and takes up where that part left off. Whereas the first part contains early versions of the history of Valinor, part 2 is made up of early drafts of five tales Tolkien considered central to his mythology of the First Age of Middle-earth: “The Tale of Tinúviel,” the first version of the story of Beren and Lúthien; “Turambar and the Foalókë,” the initial draft of the tale of Túrin Turambar, retold in chapter 21 of the Quenta Silmarillion and ultimately published in book form as The Children of Húrin; “The Fall of Gondolin”—retold, but in a less complete version, as chapter 23 of the Quenta Silmarillion; “The

434   Lays of Beleriand, The Nauglafring,” a story of Nauglamir, the gold necklace made by the dwarves for the elven king Finrod—a story not told in full in The Silmarillion; and “The Tale of Eärendel,” the fullest account of the travels of Eärendel the Mariner, the mortal who sailed to the Undying Lands of the Valar, told in part as the last chapter of the Quenta Silmarillion. The book ends with a sixth section called “The History of Eriol or Ælfwine and the End of the Tales,” which is chiefly an essay about the changes in the frame of the tales. As was true of the first part of The Book of Lost Tales, the tales included here were composed by Tolkien around 1916–17, during his convalescence in England from the trench fever he had contracted in France. The tale of Beren and Lúthien was inspired by his wife Edith’s spontaneous dancing under a grove of trees, and it was to become the central tale of his mythology. Most of these tales reach their ultimate form in The Silmarillion, and as with the tales of part 1, it is instructive to follow Tolkien’s choices as he moved from draft to draft during the six decades he composed his mythology of Middleearth. Tolkien worked on these prose versions of his tales for several years before abandoning them to work on verse narratives of “The Lay of Lethian” (concerning the Beren story) and “The Lay of the Children of Húrin” (retelling the story of Túrin Turambar). As he did with part 1, Christopher Tolkien provides editorial essays on the various stories, as well as vocabulary notes and other aids. Further Reading Tolkien, J. R. R. The Book of Lost Tales II. Vol. 2 of The History of Middle-earth. Edited by Christopher Tolkien. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1983.

Lays of Beleriand, The  (1985) The third volume of Christopher Tolkien’s compilation of The History of Middle-earth, The Lays of Beleriand contains some of the most important of Tolkien’s long, unfinished poems. The chief poems contained in this volume are “The Lay of the Children of Húrin,” an abandoned early version of the

tale of Túrin Turambar later published in prose in The Silmarillion and at greater length in The Children of Húrin; and “The Lay of Leithian” (subtitled “Release from Bondage”), which is an early verse fragment of the tale of Beren and Lúthien, also ultimately published in prose in The Silmarillion. The volumes in Christopher Tolkien’s history follow a roughly chronological sequence, so that the first two books, volumes 1 and 2 of The Book of Lost Tales, contain the earliest of Tolkien’s unfinished manuscripts, up until about 1920. The Lays of Beleriand includes material from the early 1920s through about 1931—poems that he began while at the University of Leeds (see Leeds, University of). “The Lay of the Children of Húrin” is composed in four-stress alliterative verse in a modern English imitation of the verse form of Beowulf, even to the point of imitating Beowulf’s initial “Hwæt” with its opening “Lo! The golden dragon. . .” (5). The story tells of the curse placed on Húrin’s children by the evil Morgoth, and of the ill-fated adventures of Húrin’s son, Túrin, who seems tragically fated. Part 1 of the poem deals with “Túrin’s Fostering,” part 2 is called “Beleg,” and part 3 is “Failivrin” (Tolkien’s early name for Finduilas, daughter of the elven king Orodreth of Nargothrond). The poem breaks off after 2,276 lines. Tolkien worked on a second, revised version of the poem, also included in The Lays of Beleriand, but this poem, also in alliterative verse, breaks off after only 817 lines. Christopher Tolkien says that his father abandoned “The Lay of the Children of Húrin” in about 1925 in order to work on “The Lay of Leithian,” a poem concerning the love of a man and an elven princess that was, perhaps, Tolkien’s personal favorite tale. The first version is called “The Gest of Beren and Lúthien,” the word Gest calling up images of the French Chansons de Geste, which were medieval songs of adventure, such as the Chanson de Roland. Like most medieval French verse, Tolkien’s poem is composed in octosyllabic couplets, beginning with the lines A king there was in days of old: Ere Men yet walked upon the mould His power was reared in cavern’s shade, His hand was over glen and glade. (189)

Lost Road and Other Writings, The   435 The king, of course, is the elf king Thingol, and the caverns are his kingdom of Doriath. The poem comprises 13 cantos and a fragment of a 14th, and it ends after 4,224 lines. The narrative breaks off at the point where the wolf Carcharoth bites off Beren’s hand in which he holds the Silmaril. Tolkien had given C. S. Lewis a copy of “The Lay of Leithian” to read in 1929, and Tolkien apparently made some revisions to the manuscript based on Lewis’s recommendations. But he seems to have abandoned the poem for some 18 years before returning to it sometime in 1949 or 1950, apparently immediately after completing his manuscript of The Lord of the Rings. This intended complete reworking ends after about 660 lines, though fragments of other parts of the poem are also extant. The Beren and Lúthien story, so close to Tolkien’s heart, never seems to have been completed to his satisfaction, and the story as it appeared finally in The Silmarillion is only a shadow of what Tolkien had imagined. The Lays of Beleriand also includes three other fragments of tales (all in alliterative verse) that were to become important in Tolkien’s legendarium, each of which was composed probably at Leeds in the early 1920s. These include “The Flight of the Noldoli from Valinor,” a fragment of 146 lines concerning what would become the story of the Noldor’s flight; a fragment of 38 lines from a projected “Lay of Eärendil”; and a few lines from an abandoned alliterative “Fall of Gondolin” poem, for which Christopher does not give the entire text since, as he says, “it does not, so far as the main narrative is concerned, add anything to the Tale” (176). Further Reading Tolkien, J. R. R. The Lays of Beleriand. Vol. 3 of The History of Middle-earth. Edited by Christopher Tolkien. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1985.

Lost Road and Other Writings, The  (1987) The fifth of the 12 volumes in The History of Middle-earth, in which Christopher Tolkien assem-

bled, edited, and published his father’s unfinished drafts and other papers concerning his legendarium, The Lost Road and Other Writings compiles papers concerning chiefly the First Age and Second Age of Middle-earth, dating mainly from the 1930s up until about 1938, when, Christopher says, “he set them for long aside” (1). Thus, this is the last volume of the History dealing with the early Silmarillion writings before Tolkien turned to The Lord of the Rings, which occupied him for the next dozen years. The book is divided into four sections. The first part includes the related texts of “The Downfall of Númenor” and “The Lost Road.” The second section gathers texts concerning Valinor and Middle-earth prior to the Third Age. It includes “The Later Annals of Valinor,” “The Later Annals of Beleriand,” an early version of the Ainulindalë, a text called “The Lhammas” concerning the languages of elves and other peoples, and a draft of the Quenta Silmarillion. The third part of the book contains “The Etymologies,” a list of words and roots of words that has provided scholars with their best knowledge of the elven languages of Middleearth. Finally, the book contains three appendices. One of these is basically a commentary on Tolkien’s genealogies of elves and men of the First Age—Christopher includes only information not found elsewhere. Second is a brief selection from an alphabetical “List of Names” from the First Age—again, Christopher lists only a few of special interest. The third appendix is a copy of the second “Silmarillion Map,” which Tolkien had drawn and that provided Christopher with the model for the map he included in the published Silmarillion. Of most literary interest in the volume is the text of Tolkien’s unfinished story of “The Lost Road.” It is preceded in this volume by a brief description of “The Fall of Númenor,” in which Tolkien first incorporates his fascination with the myth of Atlantis to his own developing legendarium, essentially forming the basis of his Second Age. “The Lost Road” is his first attempt to give that new myth literary expression. His approach in this text originated in a conversation he had with C. S. Lewis sometime in about 1936. Tolkien reports that Lewis had said to him, “ ‘Tollers, there

436   Lost Road and Other Writings, The is too little of what we really like in stories. I am afraid we shall have to try and write some ourselves,’ ” after which “We agreed that he should try ‘space-travel’, and I should try ‘time-travel’ ” (Letters, 378). Thus, Tolkien’s story puts the downfall of Númenor in the context of a timetravel story. Tolkien completed only the first two chapters of “The Lost Road,” plus a third chapter and part of a fourth concerning Númenor itself, which were projected to come at the end of the book. The method of time travel Tolkien planned to use was the vehicle of dreams. In the opening chapters, he introduces Oswin Errol and his son, Alboin (whose name means “elf-friend”), and then Alboin’s son, Audoin. Tolkien focuses on the father-son relationship in these chapters, which were intended to set the pattern for the rest of the book. The Númenórean chapters, intended for the book’s conclusion, also involve a father and son, Herendil and Elendil (whose name also means “elf-friend”). But Tolkien’s intent was not to have the modern characters, Alboin and Audoin, travel directly back to Atlantis or Númenor in a vision; rather, he intended the time travel to take place in stages, so that they would become a father and son at various stages of history as they gradually made their way back to the mythic time of Númenor, moving through chapters set in Anglo-Saxon England with the father and son Ælfwine and Eadwine (for which he did an outline), a chapter set in the ancient Ireland of the Tuatha-de-Danaan, a chapter set in the frozen north of the Ice Age, and finally the story of Elendil and Herendil in Númenor. In a lengthy 1964 letter to Christopher Bretherton, Tolkien explains his plan for the book in this way: The thread was to be the occurrence time and again in human families .  .  . of a father and son called by names that could be interpreted as Bliss-friend and Elf-friend. These no longer understood are found in the end to refer to the Atlantid- Númenórean situation and mean “one loyal to the Valar, content with the bliss and prosperity within the limits prescribed” and

“one loyal to friendship with the High-elves.” (Letters 347)

The Lost Road itself is an image that appears in a number of Tolkien’s poems and texts as the straight road to the Undying Lands of the West that was hidden after the sinking of Númenor, when the world was bent. Tolkien submitted his sample chapters and outline to Allen & Unwin in 1937 as a possible sequel to The Hobbit, but the draft was rejected as far too complex for a popular audience, perhaps too complex to ever be completed. Tolkien himself seems to have agreed with this assessment, and he abandoned it shortly after. He wrote later that the timetravel format “was too long a way round to what I really wanted to make, a new version of the Atlantis legend. The final scene survives as The Downfall of Númenor” (Letters 378). The other most interesting part of this volume is the essay called “The Lhammas” (or “Account of Tongues”), two versions of which Christopher Tolkien includes in this book. The essay, probably composed in the mid-1930s, is a major source for a description of the languages of Middle-earth, and Tolkien considered it an essential part of his legendarium, planning to include it as a concluding section of the published Silmarillion. It includes, of necessity, a summary of elvish history. According to Tolkien’s description, the Valar had a language of their own that Oromë taught to the elves, from which all of the later elvish tongues descended. Tolkien describes, as well, the language of orcs, which also derived from the Valar as perverted by the renegade Vala Morgoth; and the language of dwarves, taught them by Aulë the Smith. Men speak a variety of languages, influenced by the peoples—dwarves, Dark Elves, Green Elves, or others. Further Reading Tolkien, J. R. R. The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien. Edited by Humphrey Carpenter. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1981. ———. The Lost Road and Other Writings. Vol. 5 of The History of Middle-earth. Edited by Christopher Tolkien. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1987.

Morgoth’s Ring   437

Morgoth’s Ring  (1993) Morgoth’s Ring is the 10th book in the 12-volume work The History of Middle-earth, edited by Christopher Tolkien. The previous four volumes had comprised working drafts of The Lord of the Rings, composed between 1938 and 1950. In Morgoth’s Ring, Christopher Tolkien includes revisions of the early parts of the Silmarillion project that Tolkien returned to between 1950 and 1952, and again from 1957 to 1958. The book is divided into five parts, as follows: The first includes late revisions of the Ainulindalë, the creation song, an earlier draft of which had appeared in The Lost Road and Other Writings. There are three versions of this text, the last of which appears to be the chief source for the final published version in The Silmarillion. The second part is “The Annals of Aman.” These provide a detailed chronology of the history of Arda from the creation up to the First Age, ending with the flight of the Noldor. Also included in this section is an explanation of Valian Years—that is, the years that passed in Valinor during the time of the Two Trees, before the sun was created. Originally, the Valar intended 10 solar years to equal one Valian year, but the sun and moon proved too difficult to control so precisely, so that at one point Tolkien says that the Valar came to Arda 5,000 Valian years before the first rising of the moon, which was the equivalent of 47,901 solar years, so that a Valian year is slightly more than 9.58 solar years. The third, and by far the longest, section of the book is the large-scale revision of the earlier Quenta Silmarillion. Two “phases” of this revision are given: an earlier one, composed about 1950– 51; and a second, later revision, dating probably 1957–58. These revisions of the earlier Quenta Silmarillion from the 1930s expand the role of Fëanor and focus more directly on Melkor/Morgoth as the originator of evil in Arda. Tolkien was revising his earlier legends in order to relate them more coherently to one another and to the published Lord of the Rings material. It was a massive task that, ultimately, seems to have frustrated him, since he was never to finish it.

The fourth part of the book is an independent text called “Athrabeth Finrod ah Andreth,” which in Sindarin means “The Debate of Finrod and Andreth.” The text, probably composed about 1959–60, is a conversation between the elven king Finrod Felagund (king of Nargothrond), and a “Wise-woman” of the mortal house of Beorn. The two discuss the separate fates of elves and men, and the woman expresses her belief that human mortality is one of the evils brought about by Melkor when he tried to mar Ilúvatar’s creation. Finrod disagrees, saying that Melkor is not so powerful. The creator god will not allow himself to be separated from his children, and he urges Andreth to live in hope. The two go on to discuss the possibility of intermarriage between the two kindreds. This section also contains “The Tale of Adanel,” a Middle-earth version of the idea of original sin. The volume ends with a section Christopher Tolkien calls “Myths Transformed.” This section includes a number of short fragments, mainly notes and questions Tolkien wrote to himself as he reconsidered the basic ideas behind his entire legendarium at this point. He explores the origin of orcs, the nature of the Valar, the evil of Melkor, the meaning of the Two Trees, and the chronology of his mythology. At one point, “The making of the Sun after the Death of the Trees is not only impossible ‘mythology’ now—especially since the Valar must be supposed to know the truth about the structure of Eä (and not make mythical guesses like Men) and to have communicated this to the Eldar . . . it is also impossible chronologically in the Narrative” (389). Clearly, Tolkien was rethinking everything during these years. At another point, he asks an important question: “Sauron was ‘greater,’ effectively, in the Second Age than Morgoth at the end of the First. Why?” (394). The answer to this question contains the title of this book: “Sauron’s, relatively smaller, power was concentrated; Morgoth’s vast power was disseminated. The whole of ‘Middle-earth’ was Morgoth’s Ring.” Further Reading Tolkien, J. R. R. Morgoth’s Ring. Vol. 10 of The History of Middle-earth. Edited by Christopher Tolkien. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1993.

438   Peoples of Middle-earth, The

Peoples of Middle-earth, The  (1996) The final installment of the mammoth 12-volume The History of Middle-earth, edited by Christopher Tolkien, The Peoples of Middle-earth is something of a catch-all volume that includes a large variety of pieces. The bulk of them relate to the six explanatory appendices that appear at the end of The Return of the King, the final volume of The Lord of the Rings. Part 1 of the book, entitled “The Prologue and Appendices to The Lord of the Rings,” comprises most of the volume and presents the earlier versions of the appendices. Apparently a good part of these were written as Tolkien was completing that great work from about 1948 to 1950, and they were revisited in 1952 as the text of the novel was being prepared for publication. It was clear to Tolkien that he needed to fill in gaps of history that pertained to the end of the Third Age of his legendarium, and since there was no immediate prospect of publishing The Silmarillion, he included the appendices as the best possible alternative. Part 1 contains nine sections: “The Prologue,” “The Appendix on Languages,” “The Family Trees,” “The Calendars,” “The History of the Akallabêth,” “The Tale of Years of the Second Age,” “The Heirs of Elendil,” “The Tale of Years of the Third Age,” and “The Making of Appendix A,” including “The Realms in Exile,” “The Tale of Aragorn and Arwen,” “The House of Eorl,” and “Durin’s Folk.” Part 2 of the volume, “Late Writings,” contains some of the last of Tolkien’s writings, dating chiefly after 1969. This is the section from which Christopher seems to have taken the volume’s title as these texts deal chiefly with some of the peoples of Middle-earth. The pieces included in this section are “Of Dwarves and Men”; “The Shibboleth of Fëanor,” concerning historical phonology in the elvish language Quenya; “The Problem of Ros,” a linguistic essay on the meaning of the ending –ros in names like Maedhros or Elros; “Glorfindel,” differentiating between the two characters, Glorfindel of Gondolin and Glorfindel of Rivendell; “The Five Wizards,” describing the different functions

of the Istari; and “Círdan,” concerning the important secondary character Círdan the Shipwright. In part 3, “The Teachings of Pengoloð,” Christopher Tolkien includes two texts composed in the 1950s, the “Danweth Pengoloð” and “Of Lembas.” Here, Pengoloð, an elf of Gondolin, writes an answer to a question asked by the Anglo-Saxon Ælfwine concerning the difference between elven languages. The brief piece on Lembas describes that particular elven food. Part 4, “Unfinished Tales,” contains the fragment of “The New Shadow,” briefly conceived as a sequel to The Lord of the Rings and narrating events that occur more than a century after the fall of Sauron. It was written in about 1958 but was soon abandoned. The last fragment in “Unfinished Tales” is a story called “Tal-Elmar,” set in Middle-earth before the fall of Númenor. The story, also written in the 1950s, is told from the point of view of one of the “wild men” who witnesses the arrival of Númenóreans in his native Middle-earth. Further Reading Tolkien, J. R. R. The Peoples of Middle-earth. Vol. 12 of The History of Middle-earth. Edited by Christopher Tolkien. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1996.

Return of the Shadow, The  (1988) The Return of the Shadow is the sixth book in the 12-volume series The History of Middle-earth, edited by Christopher Tolkien. In the first five volumes, Christopher had collected and published J. R. R. Tolkien’s notes and drafts from 1918 to 1937, concerned mainly with the legends that became The Silmarillion. In 1937, Tolkien began working on the “new Hobbit” project that Allen & Unwin had asked for. The Return of the Shadow begins to collect the early drafts of what was to become The Lord of the Rings. The book includes Tolkien’s drafts of the first part of The Fellowship of the Ring, written between

Sauron Defeated: The End of the Third Age   439 1937 and 1939. The 25 chapters of the book are divided into three “phases” that show the evolution of Tolkien’s conception of the work from what promised to be another fairly brief and lighthearted adventure yarn into a more complex and multifaceted novel. The first phase, written between late 1937 and September 1938, carries the story from Bilbo’s birthday party (originally his 70th) to the arrival in Rivendell of Bingo and Trotter (the original names of Frodo and Strider, although Trotter is initially another hobbit). The text shows that Tolkien wrote four separate drafts of the first chapter as he searched for a direction for the project. After the 12th chapter, Christopher includes a chapter 13, “Queries and Alterations,” in which Tolkien lists a number of notes regarding the first draft of his text. Clearly at this point, Tolkien had taken some time to look at what he had written thus far and had concluded that he needed to revise his text. Tolkien expressed this uncertainty in a letter to Stanley Unwin written on February 18, 1938, saying, “I find it only too easy to write opening chapters—and for the moment the story is not unfolding.  .  .  . I squandered so much time on the original ‘Hobbit’ (which was not meant to have a sequel) that it is difficult to find anything new in that world” (qtd. in Tolkien, The Return of the Shadow 44). In Christopher’s estimation, in roughly September and October 1938, before the Oxford term began, Tolkien rewrote the entire manuscript from the beginning through the hobbits’ stay with Tom Bombadil in what Christopher calls the “second phase.” In this second phase, a Black Rider appears for the first time, at which point the story of the One Ring and its significance begins to take shape. In the “third phase,” apparently written during fall 1938, Tolkien apparently edited and revised the chapters he had written in “phase two” and added complete rewritings of three more chapters, bringing the character by now known as Frodo into Rivendell. In addition, “phase three” includes a foreword written by Tolkien to provide background information about hobbits. In December 1938, Christopher suggests, Tolkien put aside the manuscript for a time, stopping at the point at Elrond’s

house in which Frodo asks what has become of Balin and his companions. In August 1939, Tolkien apparently returned to his manuscript and once more wrote notes, questions, and outlines. These are included in The Return of the Shadow in a chapter called “New Uncertainties and New Projections.” These include some radical suggestions for revisions, including making Bilbo the hero throughout the story, or making Frodo more of a comic character. But they also include a very brief outline of the end of the story—the destruction of the One Ring on Mount Doom. Following these questions and notes, Tolkien seems to have continued the story with three more chapters, finally answering Frodo’s question beyond which he had been unable to advance previously. “In the House of Elrond,” “The Ring Goes South,” and “The Mines of Moria” bring the companions (thus far not including Gimli or Legolas) to the tomb of Balin. At this point, Tolkien was stymied, and he laid aside the manuscript for some time. This is where The Return of the Shadow ends. Tolkien’s process after this picks up again in the following volume, The Treason of Isengard. In addition to these early drafts, The Return of the Shadow also contains illustrations, including the earliest map of the country south of Rivendell and a plan of the town of Bree. The title of the book, The Return of the Shadow, came from an original discarded title for the first of Tolkien’s original six books of The Lord of the Rings. Further Reading Tolkien, J. R. R. The Return of the Shadow: The History of the Lord of the Rings, Part I. Vol. 6 of The History of Middle-earth. Edited by Christopher Tolkien. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1988.

Sauron Defeated: The End of the Third Age  (1992) Sauron Defeated is the ninth volume in the 12-volume series The History of Middle-earth, edited by Christopher Tolkien. It is the third volume in the

440   Sauron Defeated: The End of the Third Age subgroup called The History of the Lord of the Rings; as such, it follows the volume called The War of the Ring, which had brought the story to the end of book 5 of the novel. Sauron Defeated includes the drafts written by Tolkien in August and September 1948. It also includes the text of The Notion Club Papers, an incomplete time-travel novel that Tolkien began writing in 1945, interrupting and delaying the completion of The Lord of the Rings manuscript. Tolkien had conceived the climax of his story— the destruction of the One Ring in the fiery cracks of Mount Doom—fairly early in the composition of The Lord of the Rings, soon after he had decided on the significance of the ring Bilbo acquired in The Hobbit. Early notes and outlines also include details about Frodo’s inability to destroy the ring and Gollum’s reappearance in the end. But Tolkien struggled with how, precisely, to structure that climactic scene. One early sketch has Sam hurl himself and Gollum into the fiery pit after Gollum has wrested the ring from Frodo. Another has Sam push Gollum over the edge. A third suggests that Gollum may repent at the last minute and leap into the fissure with the ring. These alternative versions make up the first chapter of part 1 of Sauron Defeated. The remainder of part 1 completes the story of The Lord of the Rings as told in book 6 of that text, in drafts that follow the final sequence fairly closely. There are interesting differences in the first draft of the “Scouring of the Shire” chapter, however. In his early drafts, Tolkien has Frodo take a much more active role in the defeat of “Sharkey” and his ruffians. It is Frodo who directs the Battle of Bywater, and Frodo himself deals the death blow to Sharkey on the steps of Bag End. In this early version, Sharkey is one of the orcs from Isengard, not Saruman himself, who enters the story only in the latest drafts. Also included in these early drafts is an epilogue, set in Sam’s house in the year 1436, long after the War of the Ring. There are two completely different forms of the epilogue. Essentially, it shows Sam interacting with his children as he reads to them from the Red Book of Westmarch, shows them a letter from King Elessar, and answers a number of questions about the wider world. This epilogue

was apparently written very late in the composition of The Lord of the Rings, and it was abandoned only at the last minute on the advice of readers of the manuscript. In April 1954, Tolkien wrote to Naomi Mitchison (who was reading page proofs of the novel) concerning the family life of hobbits and noting: “An epilogue giving a further glimpse (though of a rather exceptional family) has been so universally condemned that I shall not insert it. One must stop somewhere” (Letters 179). Part 2 of Sauron Defeated includes The Notion Club Papers. It may seem strange to include it in this volume, which is the fourth part of what Christopher Tolkien calls The History of the Lord of the Rings, since, of course, it has nothing to do with The Lord of the Rings. However, Tolkien began working on this abandoned novel in December 1945 and apparently continued to work on it until August 1946, so that the work is contemporary with his composition of the last part of The Lord of the Rings—in fact, it seems to have delayed the composition of the final book of the larger novel by the better part of a year. The Notion Club Papers was Tolkien’s second attempt to write a time-travel story: He and C. S. Lewis had earlier made a pact to wrote two books: Lewis was to write a spacetravel book (which appeared as Out of the Silent Planet), while Tolkien was to write the book about time travel. His first attempt, called The Lost Road, he had abandoned in 1936. The story of The Notion Club Papers centers on the activities of an Oxford discussion group with an uncanny resemblance to the Inklings, the group to which Tolkien and Lewis belonged. During meetings of the club, the character Alwin Arundel Lowdham describes the dreams he has been experiencing about the island of Númenor. Through his dreams, Lowdham has learned a great deal about the languages of Númenor, including Quenya, Sindarin, and even Adûniac—the vernacular language of Númenor that was the ancestor of Westron, the common speech of Middle-earth. The story of The Notion Club Papers is itself set in the future. It is purportedly told in the records of the meetings of the Oxford society during the years 1986–87. These papers, we are told in a foreword, were found on the top of a pile of waste-

Shaping of Middle-earth, The   441 paper in Oxford in 2012. The work as it survives is divided into two parts. The first part begins as one of the society’s members, Michael Ramer (presumably a caricature of Lewis) has finished reading a story about space travel to the group. They subsequently discuss time travel and space travel in fiction, and they argue about whether such devices are any more believable than fantasies of elves or fairies. The second part focuses more on dreams as a vehicle for the truth and the question of whether one’s dream can reveal truths about the ancient past or the future. At this point, Lowdham’s dreams become the focus of the narrative. Eventually, Lowdham is revealed to be the descendant of Tolkien’s quasi-historical character Ælfwine, the explorer of Anglo-Saxon days who, in early versions of the Silmarillion story, reaches the Elvenhome at Tol Eressëa. Another of the Notion Club members, Wilfrid Jeremy, turns out to be the descendant of Ælfwine’s companion Tréowine. Furthermore, Ælfwine and Tréowine are, in turn, the descendants of Elendil and Voronwë of Númenor. Through their dreams, Lowdham and Jeremy are experiencing events from the voyages of Ælfwine as well as memories of the destruction of Númenor itself. Tolkien abandoned the manuscript of the novel completely in 1946, leaving only a few notes concerning his plans for the rest of the story, in which he notes that in the end, Lowdham and Jeremy would have very vivid dreams of the drowning of Númenor under the sea. One of the things that may have distracted Tolkien from finishing The Notion Club Papers was his interest in composing a new account of the destruction of Númenor. Part 3 of Sauron Defeated includes drafts of this account, called The Drowning of Anadûnê. Christopher begins this section with a third version of The Fall of Númenor, composed after earlier drafts of the 1930s but before 1942. This is chiefly for purposes of comparison with the later texts. The story of The Drowning of Anadûnê is more detailed, and Christopher includes three early drafts of it, saying it is the direct source for the later Akallabêth, which appears as a part of the published text of The Silmarillion. The chief difference between The Drowning of Anadûnê and The Fall of Númenor is that the latter is told from the point of

view of the elves, while the former is told through the eyes of the Númenóreans themselves. At the end of part 3 of Sauron Defeated, Christopher also includes “Lowdham’s Report on the Adûniac Language,” a 20-page discussion of the elements of Adûniac, the native language of Númenor, which was to have been a part of The Notion Club Papers. This text is supplemented by some further notes made by Tolkien. These are invaluable for those interested in Tolkien’s invented languages, since they are the only significant source of information about Adûniac. A paperback edition of the first part of this volume, eliminating The Notion Club Papers and the later material and focusing only on the material from The Lord of the Rings, was published in 2000 under the title The End of the Third Age. Further Reading Tolkien, J. R. R. The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien. Edited by Humphrey Carpenter. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1981. ———. Sauron Defeated: The End of the Third Age: The History of the Lord of the Rings, Part 4. Vol. 9 of The History of Middle-earth. Edited by Christopher Tolkien. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1992.

Shaping of Middle-earth, The  (1986) The Shaping of Middle-earth is the fourth volume of the 12-volume series The History of Middle-earth, edited by Christopher Tolkien. It follows the volume entitled The Lays of Beleriand, which contains the verse narratives that Tolkien had written between 1918 and 1930. The Shaping of Middleearth covers a similar period of time, but it includes Tolkien’s prose writings from about 1926 to the mid-1930s. In these texts, the stories that would become The Silmarillion are much more fully developed than they were in the earlier Book of Lost Tales 1 and 2. These tales are also evidence that Tolkien was beginning to focus less on poetic versions of his tales and more on prose.

442   Treason of Isengard, The The volume is divided into seven parts. The first part, “Prose Fragments Following the Lost Tales,” contains three short fragments. The first one, called “Turlin and the Exiles of Gondolin,” adds some new material to the story of the fall of Gondolin. The second is a fragment dealing briefly with the flight of the “Gnomes” from the Undying Lands—later, of course, to become the Noldor. The third fragment is a brief sketch of a plan for the story of the flight of the Gnomes. Part 2 of the book is “The Earliest ‘Silmarillion.’ ” This is, in fact, the “Sketch of the Mythology,” a brief synopsis of the complete story of the First Age of Middle-earth. Tolkien had composed the “Sketch” in about 1926 to accompany a draft of his “Lay of Leithian” as well as his alliterative poem on Túrin and the dragon, which he was sending to his former teacher R. W. Reynolds for feedback. Reynolds was unimpressed by the poems but liked the “Sketch.” His criticism may have been one of the reasons that Tolkien turned more to prose narratives after 1926. Tolkien revised the “Sketch” heavily between 1926 and 1930. Part 3 of this volume is called the “Quenta,” or, more fully, the “Quenta Noldorinwa.” This is a history of the “Noldoli,” or “Gnomes,” the original names for the Noldor, and it comprises a rewrite and expansion of the “Sketch of the Mythology” composed in 1930. This is, in fact, the last complete compilation that Tolkien ever made of his legendarium. Although the “Quenta” does not include that elaborate frame story of the AngloSaxon mariner who finds Tol Eressëa (as found in The Book of Lost Tales 1), an appendix to this chapter does give an Old English translation of the first part of the “Quenya,” said to be composed by Ælfwine or Eriol. A second appendix also includes the text of a poem called “The Horns of Ylmire” [i.e., Ulmo], which was intended as a part of the verse narrative “The Fall of Gondolin.” Part 4 gives reproductions of “The First ‘Silmarillion’ Map,” probably made by Tolkien at the University of Leeds (see Leeds, University of) to accompany either his Children of Húrin narrative or the “Sketch of the Mythology.” Part 5, “The Ambarkanta,” is a short but significant essay dealing with the shape of the world (and hence the

piece from which the title of this volume comes). The essay describes the original shape of the world as well as its bending and reshaping into a globe after the fall of Númenor. In part 6 of The Shaping of Middle-earth, Christopher Tolkien includes “The Earliest Annals of Valinor,” composed by his father in the early 1930s. These “Annals,” a year-by-year chronology, delineate the history of Aman from the time the Valar entered Arda (the created universe) to the time of the elves’ return to Middle-earth and the creation of the sun and moon. These annals are followed in the text by part 7, “The Earliest Annals of Beleriand,” also written in the early 1930s. These annals narrate the history of the elves in Middleearth from the return of the Gnomes (i.e., Noldor) to Middle-earth until the final defeat of the Dark Lord, Morgoth. Both sets of annals are accompanied by a translation into Old English, again said to have been made by Ælfwine or Eriol. Further Reading Tolkien, J. R. R. The Shaping of Middle-earth. Vol. 4 of The History of Middle-earth. Edited by Christopher Tolkien. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1986.

Treason of Isengard, The  (1989) The seventh volume in the 12-volume series The History of Middle-earth, edited by Christopher Tolkien, The Treason of Isengard is the second of the four volumes dealing with early drafts of The Lord of the Rings. The book consists of 26 chapters and an appendix “On Runes,” and it was composed between fall 1939 and spring 1942, following the material contained in The Return of the Shadow. That earlier volume had included three “phases” of the writing of the first part of what was to be The Fellowship of the Ring, during the years from 1937 to 1938, ending at the point where the company had come to Moria and stood before the tomb of Balin. Here, Tolkien wrote in the foreword to The Fellowship of the Ring, “I halted for a long while” (5).

Treason of Isengard, The   443 In fact, what this volume suggests is that Tolkien was engaged in attempts to solve a particular problem that had been nagging him for some time: He needed to explain why Gandalf had not returned to Hobbiton to escort Frodo and his companions to Rivendell. The first chapter of The Treason of Isengard presents Tolkien’s notes, exploring several possibilities, including Gandalf being besieged in a tower by the Black Riders, or being held captive by a malevolent Treebeard. Tolkien also begins to develop new ideas about the character of Trotter, originally another hobbit but now possibly a disguised elf or, perhaps, a man of Elrond’s household whose real name is Aragorn. Eventually the idea of Aragorn as a Ranger and descendant of Elendil emerges. About the same time as these notes were taking shape, Tolkien went back for another revision of book 1, a “fourth phase” in which he made a fair copy of what he had written, editing and revising as he went along, taking the story from Bilbo’s birthday party to Frodo’s arrival at Rivendell. Chapters 2 and 3 of this volume summarize those changes. The fourth revision was probably finished by the end of 1939. Now Tolkien seems to have laid aside the manuscript and made no further progress until August 1940, when he seems to have continued with what was to become book 2. But the whereabouts of Gandalf were still a thorny issue, and in the fourth chapter of this volume—“Of Hamilcar, Gandalf, and Saruman”—Christopher includes fragments and ideas from Tolkien’s notes in which he explored the idea of Frodo’s hobbit friend Hamilcar Bolger being kidnapped by the Black Riders, of Gandalf using Hamilcar as a decoy, and finally of Gandalf being held prisoner by Saruman. The addition of the element of Saruman gave the novel a new direction, complicating the Fellowship’s journey south and creating a two-front war for the forces of the West. The twist added a complexity to the novel that virtually assured it would be years more before it could be completed. Tolkien now began rewriting what was to be the second book of his story. He reworked the “Council of Elrond” chapter five times (versions two through five make up chapters 6 and 7 of this volume) until he had something approaching the final version

of that chapter. He brought the story to the point where he had left it in 1939—to Balin’s tomb—and then, in chapter 10 of this volume, Tolkien continues the story through the fall of Gandalf with the Balrog (he had originally considered having Gandalf fall to a Black Rider). Chapter 11 gives a prospectus of the rest of the story. The following chapters take the story through Lothlórien and introduce Galadriel. In chapter 15, Christopher includes sketches of the first map of Middleearth. Chapter 16 includes another prospectus, as Tolkien outlines a plan for the remainder of book 2 and part of book 3, making notes on the journey of Frodo, Sam, and Gollum toward Mount Doom. In chapters 17 through 22, Tolkien writes the first draft of the journey from Lórien to Amon Hen, including the betrayal of Boromir, and moves on to the Riders of Rohan, a sketch of the Uruk-hai, the introduction of the (finally) benevolent version of Treebeard, and Gandalf’s return as the White Rider. This chapter is followed by another outline, in chapter 25, in which Tolkien ponders how to structure the plot, now in three separate strands. Ultimately, in the last chapter of this volume, Gandalf and his companions come to Edoras and the court of Théoden. At this point, Tolkien has not yet conceived the character of Wormtongue as Saruman’s spy. However, he does include a connection between Eowyn and Aragorn, and his notes reveal that at this point, at any rate, he had planned for Aragorn to make Eowyn his queen in the end. As with the previous volume, the title of this book is the rejected title of one of the six books of the novel as Tolkien had conceived it. The Treason of Isengard was the rejected title of what would become book 3. The next volume in The History of Middle-earth, The War of the Ring (volume 8), comprises Tolkien’s early drafts and revisions of The Lord of the Rings after spring 1942. Further Reading Tolkien, J. R. R. The Fellowship of the Ring. London: G. Allen & Unwin, 1954. 2nd ed. 1967. ———. The Treason of Isengard: The History of the Lord of the Rings, Part 2. Vol. 7 of The History of Middle-earth. Edited by Christopher Tolkien. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1989.

444   Unfinished Tales of Númenor and Middle-earth

Unfinished Tales of Númenor and Middle-earth  (1980) Unfinished Tales is a miscellaneous collection of Tolkien’s unpublished stories, some more complete than others, published by Christopher Tolkien in 1980, three years after the publication of The Silmarillion. Unlike the edited version of The Silmarillion, in which every effort was made to smooth out inconsistencies and create a complete, coherent, and polished narrative out of Tolkien’s unfinished notes and drafts, in Unfinished Tales, Tolkien’s drafts are published as he left them, incomplete and unpolished. As a result, the book’s critical reception was not encouraging, as critics tended to find the book pedantic, incomprehensible, and even boring. Scholars and avid Tolkien fans were more positive, however, and Christopher may have taken from this the cue to publish all of his father’s papers in what was to become the 12-volume series The History of Middle-earth. Some of the tales are more detailed than the briefer versions of the stories found in The Silmarillion, and some add detailed background to aspects of The Lord of the Ring as well. Unfinished Tales is divided into three main sections, corresponding to the ages of Middleearth to which the tales belong. Part 1, consisting of tales of the First Age, begins with a fragment called “Of Tuor and his Coming to Gondolin.” Written in 1951, it was the beginning of a wholesale revision of Tolkien’s earlier story “Of Tuor and the Fall of Gondolin,” first composed in 1917, but this revised version was abandoned when Tuor reaches the last gate on their approach to the hidden city. This is followed by a very detailed version of the story of Túrin Turambar, another of the very early elements of Tolkien’s legendarium. He wrote an early prose version of it, as well as an incomplete alliterative verse narrative. The Narn I Hin Húrin, or Tale of the Children of Húrin was a later attempt at a longer, more complete narrative. As printed here, the beginning and end of the story are quite complete, though the middle section is not, and fragments of it are given in an appendix.

This version, however, was the chief source for the 2007 publication of The Children of Húrin in novel form. Part 2 of the book comprises texts related to the Second Age of Middle-earth. It begins with “A Description of the Island of Númenor.” This is an invaluable essay, written sometime in the early 1960s, which describes the physical features of Númenor and includes the only map that Tolkien ever made of the island. It is followed by the story of “Aldarion and Erendis,” subtitled “The Mariner’s Wife,” which Christopher says was “left in the least developed state of all the pieces in this collection” (8). Still, it is unique in Tolkien’s writings, being set on the island of Númenor during the reign of the island’s sixth king, and concerns a decision by the king to revisit Middle-earth for the first time. The third text in part 2 of the book is “The Line of Elros: Kings of Númenor,” a chronological record that seems to have been Tolkien’s latest word on the subject, and that corrects some small errors in the appendices to The Return of the King. Finally, the section concludes with a text related to Middle-earth in the Second Age: “The History of Galadriel and Celeborn.” This is a complex compilation by Christopher of his father’s various and changing ideas about Galadriel, pointing out the inconsistencies and the evolution of his thoughts about her, about her role in the rebellion of the Noldor, and about the reasons for her remaining in Middle-earth. It is a story that touches on various other aspects of Middle-earth and includes several appendices on subjects such as “The Silvan Elves and their Speech” and “The Boundaries of Lórien.” Part 3 of Unfinished Tales contains five pieces concerning the Third Age of Middle-earth. Christopher calls all of these texts “late,” although precise dates are not available for them. This seems to mean that they were composed during the 1950s or even the 1960s, or at least what Christopher calls “the final period of my father’s writing on Middle-earth” (11). The first of these, “The Disaster of the Gladden Fields,” concerns the place where Isildur was attacked by orcs and lost the One Ring. The second text, “Cirion and Eorl and the Friendship of Gondor and Rohan,”

War of the Jewels, The   445 is made up of fragments concerning the early history of Gondor and Rohan and the aid that Eorl, lord of the Rohirrim, gave to Cirion, steward of Gondor, at the Battle of the Field of Celebrant. The third text, “The Quest of Erebor,” is an account, in Gandalf’s own words, of his meeting with Thórin Oakenshield before his visit to Bilbo Baggins in The Hobbit. It was apparently intended to be included in The Lord of the Rings, providing a link between that work and the earlier one. Christopher quotes from a 1964 letter in which Tolkien says, “I actually wrote in full an account of what really happened before Gandalf’s visit to Bilbo and the subsequent ‘Unexpected Party,’ as seen by Gandalf himself. It was to have come in during a looking-back conversation in Minas Tirith; but it had to go . . .” (12). The fourth text in part 3, “The Hunt for the Ring,” contains several fragments concerning the Black Riders and their hunt for Frodo and the One Ring. These are followed by another fragment, “Concerning Gandalf, Saruman, and the Shire,” which deals with Saruman’s first contacts with the Shire. Since these texts refer to specific page numbers from the published Lord of the Rings, but differ from the appendices in the dates they give for some events, Christopher believes that they were written after the publication of The Fellowship of the Ring but before the publication of The Return of the King. Part 3 ends with a short piece on “The Battle of the Fords of Isen,” which is a historical essay describing the defense of the Fords of Isen against the forces of Saruman by Éomer and Théodred. There is a fourth section of the Unfinished Tales, including three descriptive pieces dealing with “The Drúedain” (the Wild Men of the Drúedain Forest) dating back to the First Age; “The Istari,” giving the fullest account in existence of the five wizards; and “The Palantíri,” the seeing-stones of Númenor. Finally, the book includes a copy of the original map of Middle-earth. Further Reading Tolkien, J. R. R. Unfinished Tales of Númenor and Middle-earth. Edited by Christopher Tolkien. London: George Allen & Unwin, 1980.

War of the Jewels, The  (1990) The War of the Jewels, subtitled The Later Silmarillion, Part Two, takes up where the earlier Morgoth’s Ring left off. Like the previous volume, it collects Tolkien’s drafts, outlines, and plans for what was to be published ultimately as The Silmarillion. These pieces, composed between 1950 (after the completion of The Lord of the Rings) and Tolkien’s death in 1973, are concerned with the later part of the Silmarillion story, legends of Beleriand (as opposed to the legends of Aman, which comprise Morgoth’s Ring). The War of the Jewels is volume 11 of the 12-volume series The History of Middle-earth, edited by Christopher Tolkien. At this time, Tolkien realized that his vast legendarium now needed to be revised in order to make it consistent with the published texts of The Lord of the Rings, and he began a long and somewhat overwhelming rewrite of the texts he had worked on earlier in the 1930s. The War of the Jewels consists of four parts: “The Grey Annals,” “The Later Quenta Silmarillion,” “The Wandering of Húrin and Other Writings,” and finally “Quendi and Eldar.” The longest section of the book, “The Grey Annals,” is a reworking of the earlier “Annals of Beleriand” (begun about 1930). The updated and expanded version was composed in about 1951. It is a year-by-year record of significant events in Middle-earth, from the awakening of the elves at Cuiviénen up until the death of Túrin Turambar in the year 499 of the First Age. Part 2 of the book, “The Later Quenta Silmarillion,” begins at the point where Morgoth’s Ring had ended. It includes revised drafts of the narrative of the Quenta Silmarillion, beginning with the coming of men into Beleriand, continuing through the siege of Angband and the building of Gondolin, and then through the wars with Morgoth and the eventual downfall of the Noldor. Christopher Tolkien does not include the entire manuscripts of these texts; rather, he includes revised fragments with commentary, comparing them to the pre-Lord of the Rings manuscript of the Quenta Silmarillion as published earlier in The Lost Road and Other Writings (volume 5 of The History of Middle-earth).

446   War of the Ring, The Part 3 of this volume contains “The Wanderings of Húrin,” an account of what happens to Húrin after his release by Morgoth, as he continues to work out the curse on his family, inadvertently bringing about the fall of Doriath. Also in part 3 are some shorter pieces not contained in the Quenta Silmarillion, including “Ælfwine and Dírhaval,” “Maeglin,” “Of the Ents and the Eagles,” and “The Tale of Years” (a supplement and continuation of “The Grey Annals,” dealing with the years 500–600 of the First Age). The last part of the book, “Quendi and Eldar,” was an essay written by Tolkien in about 1959. Of particular interest to those interested in Tolkien’s invented languages, it discusses the variety of elvish languages, with names and their meanings in the elven tongues, and, as an appendix, a version of the story of the elves’ awakening at Cuiviénen. Further Reading Tolkien, J. R. R. The War of the Jewels: The Later Silmarillion, Part Two. Vol. 11 of The History of ­Middle-earth. Edited by Christopher Tolkien. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1994.

War of the Ring, The  (1990) In The History of Middle-earth series, edited by Christopher Tolkien, The War of the Ring is volume 8, or part 3 of the four-part History of the Lord of the Rings, in which it follows The Treason of Isengard and precedes Sauron Defeated. In this volume, Christopher includes drafts and outlines composed between mid-1942 and fall 1947. These drafts carry the story of The Lord of the Rings from the battle at Helm’s Deep to the opening of the Black Gate of Mordor, which ends what was to become the fifth book of the novel. The War of the Ring is divided into three parts. Part 1, which Christopher entitled “The Fall of Saruman,” was probably written over the summer break of 1942. It begins with a chapter on chronology, in which Christopher discusses the difficulties Tolkien needed to work out with the timing of the two parallel stories—of Merry, Pippin, and Tree-

beard on the one hand, and of Gandalf, Aragorn, and their companions on the other. Part 1 then continues with drafts and descriptions of Tolkien’s composition of the last half of book 3 of The Lord of the Rings, including the chapters on “Helm’s Deep,” “The Road to Isengard,” “Flotsam and Jetsam,” “The Voice of Saruman,” and “The Palantír.” The palantír, which in the first draft shatters to pieces on the rock beside the stair to Orthanc, seems to have been a new twist, and Tolkien spent a good deal of time developing its use and history. After the burst of creative energy that produced the chapters of part 1, Tolkien seems once again to have set aside the manuscript, finding it difficult to begin the next section, which was to carry Frodo and Sam on the road to the evil pass at Cirith Ungol (or Kirith Ungol, as Tolkien spells it in this draft). He seems to have taken up the tale again in spring 1944. Part 2, which Christopher entitles “The Ring Goes East,” takes the narrative through what would be book 4 of the novel. Christopher found this part of the novel the easiest to piece together, since he had regular letters from his father during this time (when he was in the service in World War II), describing precisely where he was in the story. In these chapters, Gollum makes his first appearance in the story, as does Faramir. In a letter to Christopher dated May 6, 1944, Tolkien wrote: A new character has come on the scene (I am sure I did not invent him, I did not even want him, though I like him, but there he came walking into the woods of Ithilien): Faramir, the brother of Boromir—and he is holding up the “catastrophe” by a lot of stuff about the history of Gondor and Rohan (with some very sound reflections no doubt on martial glory and true glory): but if he goes on much more a lot of him will have to be removed to the appendices. (Letters 79)

Faramir is first called “Falborn,” and the first draft of his chapter includes a long speech of his explaining the linguistic history of the men of Middleearth—something Tolkien was keenly interested in but that, as he predicted, was eventually removed to the appendices. Part 2 thus contains essentially

War of the Ring, The   447 the chapters that comprise book 4 of the novel, ending with the chapter “Kirith Ungol.” Part 3, called “Minas Tirith,” addresses the manuscripts and drafts that were eventually to become book 5 of The Lord of the Rings. Christopher asserts that Tolkien began the composition of book 5 in October 1944 (despite comments made by Tolkien himself that he had written chapters 1 and 3 of book 5 in 1942). However, it seems clear that at that time, Tolkien composed some part of the chapters “Minas Tirith” and “The Muster of Rohan” as well as several outlines, maps, and sketches to help with the story’s conception. But Tolkien fully expected to finish the book with part 5: He told Stanley Unwin in a letter of March 1945 that the text was to be “divided into Five Parts, of 10–12 chapters each (!). Four are completed, and the last begun” (Letters 114). Perhaps finding a way to finish it by the end of part 5 was what stymied Tolkien, but after fall 1944, he had abandoned the manuscript, not returning to it until his summer vacation in 1946. By that time, he seems to have accepted the fact that there would indeed be a sixth book. The drafts follow the final sequence of events rather closely and deal with preparations for the war in Minas Tirith, the siege of Gondor, the

ride of the Rohirrim, the Battle of the Pelennor Fields, Denethor’s madness and death, events in the Houses of Healing, and the debate and journey of the captains of the West to confront Sauron at the Black Gate of Mordor. The book ends with a copy of and a commentary on the second working map of Gondor and Rohan, probably used by Tolkien during the composition of book 5. As with the previous two volumes, the title of this one was one of the original rejected titles for the six books of The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Ring was Tolkien’s working title for book 5, which takes up much of this volume. The remaining parts of The Lord of the Rings—the concluding chapters—form the contents of the following volume in The History of Middle-earth series: volume 9, or Sauron Defeated. Further Reading Tolkien, J. R. R. The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien. Edited by Humphrey Carpenter. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1981. ———. The War of the Ring: The History of the Lord of the Rings, Part 3. Vol. 8 of The History of ­Middle-earth. Edited by Christopher Tolkien. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1990.

Part III

Related Entries

Aman   451 Ælfwine  In the second revision of Tolkien’s leg(what was to become The Silmarillion), Ælfwine is the name of an Anglo-Saxon mariner, born in Essex during the reign of Alfred the Great, as recorded in the second part of The Book of Lost Tales. His father is called Déor (a famous scop, or singer, in a well-known Old English poem). Ælfwine (whose name means “Elf-friend”) is captured and enslaved by Vikings, but he escapes and finds his way to the shore of the Western Sea, from which the elves of England sail for the West. He sets sail with a crew of Englishmen to find the magic isles of the West, until he is marooned on the island of the Old Man of the Sea, who tells him of the Lonely Isle to the west. Reunited with his English companions, he sails farther west, and he is finally drawn by music to the harbor of the elves. Ælfwine leaps into the sea and is never heard from again. Ultimately, he reaches Tol Eressëa, the Lonely Isle, and there he was apparently to have heard the stories of elvish history from a wise elf named Pangolod, and to have recorded them in what was to become The Silmarillion. Tolkien, however, abandoned this frame for the story, preferring ultimately to publish the stories without an intermediary like Ælfwine or his predecessor in the first version of the frame narrative, Eriol. endarium

Further Reading Tolkien, J. R. R. The Book of Lost Tales II. Vol. 2 of The History of Middle-earth. Edited by Christopher Tolkien. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1984.

Ainur  In Tolkien’s mythological cycle, the Ainur were the first beings created through the thoughts of Ilúvatar, the creator god. The Ainur, or “Holy Ones,” are bodiless spirits or angel-like beings. According to Tolkien’s creation myth, the Ainur join together to sing what Tolkien calls the Ainulindalë, the Great Music through which the world, or Arda, is created. After seeing a vision of the world, the majority of Ainur remain with Ilúvatar, but two other orders of the Ainur—the Valar and the Maiar—choose to enter the world of time and work to create the world they have envisioned. But Melkor (Morgoth), one of the most powerful of the Ainur, had attempted to mar the Great Music, and

he enters the world with the Valar in order to hamper its creation. In this he is joined by other Ainur of the Maiar level, most notably Ungoliant, the Balrogs, and the incomparably wicked Sauron. Ultimately, both Melkor and Sauron are cast out from the presence of Ilúvatar into the Void. Aman  The continent of Aman (which means “Blessed Realm” in the High-elven language of Quenya) was located in the Far West of Arda, the world in Tolkien’s mythology. It lay across the great sea of Belegaer, far from Middle-earth, and to the west of Aman was the great encircling sea called Ekkaia, which extended to the edge of the Walls of the Night. Initially, Aman was uninhabited, but when Almaren, the original home of the Valar in Middle-earth, was destroyed by the evil Melkor (Morgoth), the Valar removed to Aman, where they later invited the elves to dwell. Here the Valar built the realm of Valinor and hedged it in to the east by the wall of mountains called the Pelóri. Beyond the mountains was a coastal strip that became Eldamar, where the elves built the great city of Tirion on the hill Tuna. This was the home of the Noldor and some of the other Eldar, though the Vanyar generally lived in Valinor itself, or in the foothills of the Pelöri. The land to the northeast of the mountains was the uninhabited Araman, and to the southeast lay Avathar, also empty of people. Just off the coast of Aman was Tol Eressëa, the island home of the Teleri. In the extreme north of Aman, the Blessed Realm was separated from the extreme northern part of Middle-earth only by a narrow strait called the Helcaraxe. After the revolt of the Noldor, the Valar created the Enchanted Isles between Aman and Middle-earth to keep mariners from finding their way to Aman. After the War of Wrath, in which the Valar crushed Morgoth at the end of the First Age, Beleriand was destroyed, and thus Middle-earth was reduced and could no longer be reached across the Helcaraxe, but only by the elves’ ships. When the men of Númenor broke the law of the Valar and landed in Aman in the Second Age, the creator god Ilúvatar sank Númenor into the sea and reshaped the world, bending it into a sphere and

452  Amanyar removing the road that led to Aman across the sea, thus separating Aman from Middle-earth forever. The elves, however, were still able to follow a straight road, removed from the curve of Arda, and return to Aman in their ships. Aman was also referred to as “the Undying Lands,” since those who lived there were immortal. Amanyar  Of the three kindred groups of Eldar (or elves) who were led by the Vala Oromë on the “Great Journey” to the West in Tolkien’s mythology, Amanyar was the name given to those who completed the journey (as opposed to the Úmanyar, who did not complete it). Oromë discovered the elves on one of his hunting trips to Middleearth and summoned them to Aman, the blessed land of the Valar in the West, across the Great Sea. A number of the Amanyar (specifically the Noldor) eventually returned to Middle-earth, seeking the Silmarils—three great jewels that were stolen by Morgoth. Anárion  One of the great heroes of men in the Second Age of Middle-earth, Anárion was the younger son of Elendil the Tall, first king of Gondor. Along with Elendil and his older brother, Isildur, Anárion escaped from the drowning of Númenor in two ships, and with Isildur he helped found the Númenórean realms in exile. Anárion set up his kingdom at Minas Anor, and his lands were called Anórien. In the year 3429 of the Second Age, Sauron attacked Gondor. In the assault, Anárion took command of the southern army and defended the capital of Osgiliath. After Sauron retreated to Mordor, Anárion joined in what was called the “Last Alliance of Elves and Men,” formed by Isildur and Elendil with the elven king Gil-galad. They entered Mordor to besiege Barad-dûr, the Dark Tower that served as Sauron’s fortress. Here, Anárion was slain by a stone cast from the Dark Tower. After his death, his son Meneldil became king in Gondor, and subsequent kings were descended from him. Ancrene Wisse  (Ancrene Riwle)  (ca. 1190–1220)  The Ancrene Wisse, or Guide of Anchoresses, is an early 13th-century treatise that survives in 11 dif-

ferent Middle English manuscripts, plus two French versions and four Latin translations of the English text—numbers that suggest the popularity of the work in its time. Tolkien became interested in the text largely because of its West Midland language, a dialect that he felt connected the text to the speech of his own childhood home near Birmingham. He classified the language of the text as “AB”—a conservative standard written dialect that included a number of French and Norse loanwords and that maintained a good deal of Old English syntax. Tolkien first wrote an article on the text in 1929, and in the 1930s he took on the task of producing an edition of the Ancrene Wisse. Like most of his scholarly work, that edition languished until he finally was able to complete it, and it was published by the Early English Text Society in 1962. According to the text, the Ancrene Wisse was composed for three sisters who had become anchoresses and who had requested a written rule to direct their daily routines. An anchoress was a woman who pursued a strict religious vocation that was inspired by early Christian desert fathers. The intent of the anchoress was to withdraw completely from the world and to devote her life to prayer. With the permission of her bishop, the anchoress would be sealed in a small cell, usually attached to a church. The cell may have small windows for food, communication, and the receiving of Mass, but the anchoress would remain walled in and would not leave the cell. Since an anchoress was not necessarily a member of a formal religious order, she was not subject to a particular rule, and therefore some, like these sisters, requested the regulation of some religious authority. The text of the Ancrene Wisse is composed of eight sections. The first (on “Devotions”) and the eighth (on “The Outer Rule”) are chiefly concerned with daily physical routines and actions. The middle sections (on “The Five Senses,” “The Inner Senses,” “Temptations,” “Confession,” “Penance,” and “Divine Love”) deal more with the inner life and spiritual progress of the anchoress, which was her chief concern. Whoever was the author of the Ancrene Wisse, it is likely that he had some familiarity with previous monastic rules, such as the Rule of Saint Bene-

Arda   453 dict and the Rule of Saint Augustine. Certainly the influence of Augustine as well as Saint Jerome can also be seen in the text, as can the influence of the Bible. Further Reading Georgianna, Linda. The Solitary Self: Individuality in the Ancrene Wisse. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1981. Robertson, Elizabeth. Early English Devotional Prose and the Female Audience. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1990. Tolkien, J. R. R. “Ancrene Wisse and Hali Meiðhad.” Essays and Studies 14 (1929): 104–126. Tolkien, J. R. R., ed. The English Text of the Ancrene Riwle: Ancrene Wisse: Edited from MS. Corpus Christi College, Cambridge 402. Introduction by N. R. Ker. EETS o.s. 249. London: Oxford University Press, 1962.

Anduin  The Anduin is the greatest river in Tolkien’s Middle-earth during the Third Age. In the language of men, Westron, it is called the Great River. Its source is far in the North in the area called Wilderland, and it flows southward between Mirkwood and the Misty Mountains, where the plain it creates is called the Vales of Anduin. The lands of Rohan, Anórien, Ithilien, and Lebennin are all drained by the Anduin or its major tributaries (the Gladden, the Celebrant, the Entwash, the Sirith, and others). In The Lord of the Rings, the Great River acts as the major border between the provinces dominated by Sauron and the lands of the West as it passes southeast of the White Mountains and west of the Ephel Dúath, the outer fences of Mordor. Finally, the Anduin turns westward and, through its wide delta (known as the Ethir Anduin), empties into the sea at the Bay of Belfalas, just south of the fortress of Gondor called the Dol Amroth. In all, the Anduin flows for some 1,500 miles. Andúril  See Narsil. Angband Angband was the name of the realm in the Far North ruled by Morgoth (Melkor), the renegade Vala. Containing mines, a factory, and an

impregnable prison, Angband and its underground fortress of Utumno were held by Morgoth’s allies Sauron and the Balrogs against the Valar, who ultimately were able to destroy it in the Battle of the Powers. But Morgoth subsequently stole the great jewels called the Silmarils from the High elves and brought them to Middle-earth. During the War of the Jewels that he subsequently fought with the elves, Morgoth built his mighty mountain fortress of Thangorodrim in Angband to protect the Silmarils, which he had placed as jewels into his iron crown. He also used Angband to breed the monsters he formed, including orcs and dragons. In the great battle that ended the First Age of Middle-earth and devastated all of the great land of Beleriand, Angband was destroyed by the Valar. Nothing remained of the place except the great Northern Waste, characterized only by the bitter cold that Morgoth himself had brought into the world. Apolausticks  The word apolaustic means “devoted to enjoyment.” When Tolkien was a freshman at Exeter College, Oxford University, missing the camaraderie he had enjoyed with his male friends in the t. c. b. s. Tea Club at King Edward’s School in Birmingham, he decided to organize a similar but more sophisticated society among his fellow students. They called themselves the Apolausticks—that is, “those who devoted themselves to having a good time.” For the most part, the group engaged in discussions, debates, and the exchange of papers, and they also hosted extravagant dinners. Devoted as he was to Edith Bratt, Tolkien always enjoyed being a part of a group of males engaged in amiable debate, food, drink, and tobacco. The Apolausticks were the second such group Tolkien organized, and as such they were precursors of the more famous and influential Inklings, which Tolkien was later to form with C. S. Lewis and other Oxford dons. Arda Arda is the name of the created world in Tolkien’s legendarium. It was conceived in the song of the Ainur at the beginning of creation and was intended to be a perfect, temperate, and symmetrical home for men and elves, the Chil-

454  Ardenne, S. R. T. O. d’ dren of Ilúvatar.

The Valar, those of the Ainur most enamored of the vision of Arda and most attuned to the mind of Ilúvatar, entered Arda and did their best to shape it according to Ilúvatar’s plan as revealed in his Great Music. But Melkor (later Morgoth), the renegade Vala, worked hard to undermine and mar the world’s creation, and thus the Valar were not successful in making the world perfect. Arda was originally a flat disk, with two major continents, Aman and Middle-earth, separated by the great sea Belegaer and surrounded by a great encircling sea called Ekkaia, which reached to the Walls of the Night at the edge of the world. In the First Age, Aman and Middle-earth were barely separated in the Far North by the narrow strait called the Helcaraxë. Over the millennia, the face of Arda changed several times. When the Noldor rebelled against the Valar and left Aman for Middle-earth in pursuit of Morgoth, the Valar placed the Enchanted Isles in the ocean between the continents, in order to prevent ships from finding their way to Aman. At the end of the War of Wrath, which defeated Morgoth and ended the First Age, the land of Beleriand in the northeast of Middleearth was destroyed, thus taking away the path between continents over the Helcaraxë. In the Second Age, the Valar created the great island of Númenor between Aman and Middle-earth, and gave it as a reward to the Edain, who had resisted Morgoth’s evil. But when the Númenóreans invaded Aman itself, Númenor was sunk into the sea, and the creator god Ilúvatar performed the Change of the World by reshaping Arda into the sphere on which we now live, and separating Aman from the rest of Arda. Only the Eldar could sail their ships on the Straight Road, avoiding the curvature of the earth. Arda was also sometimes known as Eä, although that term more properly refers to the whole of creation, including the heavens. Ardenne, S. R. T. O. d’  (Simonne Rosalie Thérèse Odile d’Ardenne)  (1899–1986)  Simonne Rosalie Thérèse Odile d’Ardenne was a Belgian medievalist who had been Tolkien’s student at Oxford and

later became his collaborator and a good friend of the Tolkien family. She came to Oxford as a graduate student in 1932, and on the recommendation of C. T. Onions, Tolkien became her tutor. He worked closely with her and she even lodged at the Tolkien home. She received her B.Litt. in 1933, producing an edition of the Middle English Life and Passion of St. Juliene as her thesis. That edition of a text in the West Midland dialect on which Tolkien was focusing his own efforts was clearly a collaborative effort, and d’Ardenne freely admitted that this was so, but although she gratefully acknowledged Tolkien’s help, the edition was published in 1936 under d’Ardenne’s name exclusively, and it was reprinted by the Early English Text Society in 1961. The publication enabled d’Ardenne to receive an appointment as professor of comparative grammar at the University of Liège in 1938. Humphrey Carpenter has suggested that, ironically, d’Ardenne’s edition of St. Juliene “contains more of [Tolkien’s] views on early Middle English than anything he ever published under his own name” (Tolkien 140). In 1938, Tolkien’s collaborative partner E. V. Gordon died. Gordon seems to have worked best on scholarly projects when he had collaborators, and he had begun a collaborative project with d’Ardenne to publish the Katherine group of texts in the Bodley 34 manuscript. The war, however, interrupted this project. During World War II, d’Ardenne lived in a small German-occupied village in Belgium with her elderly father. She apparently risked her life to help Allied soldiers escape from Belgium, including one incident when she used a horse and cart to safely drive an RAF pilot disguised as a peasant out of the village, under the noses of the SS guards. In a letter addressed to Stanley Unwin in March 1945, Tolkien remarks that he is “in trouble . . . with my lost friend Mlle. Simonne d’Ardenne, who has suddenly reappeared, having miraculously survived the German occupation, and the Rundstedt offensive (which rolled over her) waving the MSS. of a large work we began together and promised to the Early English Text Soc.” (Letters 114). At the conclusion of the war, d’Ardenne came to Oxford as a British Council Scholar from 1945

Astin, Sean   455 to 1947, and during that time she and Tolkien made progress on the Bodley 34 manuscript, ultimately publishing two articles—“ ‘Iþþlen’ in Sawles Warde” in English Studies in 1947, and “MS. Bodley 34: A Re-Collation of a Collation” in Studia Neophilologica for 1947–48. During that period, she also translated his yet-unpublished story Farmer Giles of Ham into French (her translation was published in 1975). Tolkien visited d’Ardenne in Belgium in 1950 and 1951, when, on her suggestion, he lectured on the Middle English word losenger, a lecture that later appeared in Essais de philologie moderne for 1953. In October 1954, Tolkien visited d’Ardenne in Liège for the last time in order to receive an honorary doctorate from the university, an honor d’Ardenne had arranged for him. By that time, however, it must have become clear to d’Ardenne that Tolkien was unable to help her finish the edition of the manuscript. She ultimately published it herself in Paris in 1977, and the revised edition, with the coeditor E. J. Dobson, appeared through the Early English Text Society in 1981. D’Ardenne remained a friend of the Tolkien family, corresponding with them regularly until her death in 1986. She was especially close to Tolkien’s daughter, Priscilla Mary Reuel Tolkien, and bequeathed her the letters that Tolkien had written her over the 40 years of their acquaintance (none of which had appeared in Humphrey Carpenter’s edition of Tolkien’s letters). Further Reading d’Ardenne, S. R. T. O., and J. R. R. Tolkien. “ ‘Iþþlen’ in Sawles Warde.” English Studies: A Journal of ­English Letters and Philology 28 (1947): 168–170. ———. “MS Bodley 34: A Re-Collation of a Collation.” Studia Neophilologica 20, nos. 1/2 (1947–48): 65–72. Carpenter, Humphrey. Tolkien: A Biography. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1977. Tolkien, J. R. R. The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien. Edited by Humphrey Carpenter. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1981. ———. “Middle English ‘Losenger’: Sketch of an Etymological and Semantic Enquiry.” In Essais de philologie moderne (1951), 63–76. Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1953.

Arnor  In Tolkien’s legendary history, Arnor was the name of the northern kingdom of the Númenóreans and, with Gondor, was one of the two “realms in exile” of the Dúnedain in Middle earth. Arnor means “Land of the King,” and it was founded (in the year 3320 of the Second Age) by Elendil the Tall after he and his sons escaped the destruction of Númenór by the Valar near the end of the Second Age of Middle-earth. At first, Elendil ruled over both realms, and upon his death in 3341, Isildur inherited the thrones of Arnor and of Gondor. Isildur was killed by orcs in the second year of the Third Age as he was making his way north to the capital at Annúminas. His young son, Valandil, became king of Arnor, though he was safe in Rivendell at the time. Unlike the united Gondor, which flourished for more than 1,000 years, Arnor was divided among the sons of its 10th king, Eärendur, into three separate kingdoms—Arthedain, Cardolan, and Rhudaur—and so fell into decline. Arthedain remained the more powerful kingdom, with its capital at Fornost. Attempts were made to reunite the three kingdoms, but the alliance of Rhudaur with the evil realm of Angmar sparked wars between the different states. Attempts were also made to reunite Arnor with Gondor under King Arvedui of Arthedain (1944 of the Third Age), but Gondor rejected that possibility. And despite Gondor’s attempt at an alliance with Arthedain, that kingdom, and Arnor itself, was destroyed by the alliance of Rhudaur and Angmar in 1974 of the Third Age, leaving only a small remnant of the Dúnedain (descendants of Númenór), who wandered as “Rangers” in the north. Although the pure line of descent from Isildur was kept alive in Arnor for all the centuries of the Third Age, there was no kingdom to rule, until Aragorn II, known as Elessar (“elf-stone”), became lord of the reunited kingdoms of Arnor and Gondor at the beginning of the Fourth Age, as told in Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings. Astin, Sean  (1971–  )  Sean Astin became a worldwide star through his role as Samwise Gamgee in Peter Jackson’s acclaimed trilogy of films for New Line Cinema, based on Tolkien’s The Lord

456  Auden, W. H of the Rings. Astin was especially acclaimed for his performance in The Return of the King (2003), as he steadfastly and resolutely carried Frodo (played by Elijah Wood) up the mountain in Mordor to the Cracks of Doom. Astin was born to the award-winning actress Patty Duke in Santa Monica, California, on February 25, 1971; his birth name was Sean Patrick Duke. His mother married the actor John Astin (best known as Gomez in The Addams Family television program) on August 5, 1972, and Astin soon adopted Sean. It was long assumed that Sean’s biological father was Desi Arnaz, Jr., with whom Duke had had an earlier relationship, but DNA testing later determined that Sean’s biological father was actually the rock promoter Michael Tell, to whom Duke had been married for just a few weeks in 1970. Sean refers to all three men as “Dad,” but he considers his true father to be John Astin, who raised him. Sean Astin has appeared in more than 40 films, beginning at the age of 13, when Steven Spielberg picked him to star as Mikey Walsh in the popular preteen movie The Goonies (1985). Some of his other significant roles include Sergeant Richard “Rascal” Moore in Memphis Belle (1990); Billy Tepper in Toy Soldiers (1991); and Rudy Ruettiger in the inspirational Rudy (1993), in which, for just one game, Ruettiger ultimately achieves his dream of playing football for the University of Notre Dame. Astin began directing his own movies with Kangaroo Court (1994), which received an Academy Award nomination in the short film category. He directed another short film, The Long and Short of It (2003), with cast members from The Two Towers, and the film premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2003. Recently, he appeared as Twoflower, Discworld’s first tourist, in a British Sky One television production of fantasy writer Terry Pratchett’s novel The Colour of Magic (2008), along with David Jason, Tim Curry, Jeremy Irons, and Astin’s fellow Lord of the Rings alumnus Christopher Lee. Astin attended Crossroads High School in Santa Monica, where he was a classmate of actor Jack Black. Astin later graduated with honors from the University of California, Los Angeles, with a

B.A. in history and American literature and culture. Astin married Christine Harrell, his coproducer on the film Kangaroo Court, on July 11, 1992. The couple live with their three daughters in Los Angeles. In 2004, Astin published an autobiography (cowritten with Joe Layden) entitled There and Back Again: An Actor’s Tale (the title is the subtitle of Tolkien’s The Hobbit), which focuses particularly on his experiences making The Lord of the Rings. Astin has also been active in a number of social causes that have been important to him. Because his mother is bipolar, Astin has been active in educating the public in the identification and treatment of mental disorders. He has been spokesperson for the National Center for Family Literacy as well. He is also a strong supporter of the AIDS Healthcare Foundation, and of the environmental group The Wildlife Waystation. In 2003, he was appointed to the President’s Council on Service and Civic Participation. Further Reading Astin, Sean, and Joe Layden. There and Back Again: An Actor’s Tale. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2004.

Auden, W. H.  (Wystan Hugh Auden)  (1907– 1973)  The acclaimed poet W. H. Auden was one of the first enthusiastically positive reviewers of The Lord of the Rings, and he subsequently became a friend of and frequent correspondent with Tolkien. Although he had first become acquainted with Tolkien as an undergraduate at Oxford through the professor’s lectures on Beowulf, Auden’s admiration for the three volumes of Tolkien’s trilogy, expressed in rave reviews in the New York Times, helped boost American sales of the books in the mid-1950s and helped forge a lasting friendship between the two writers. Auden was born on February 21, 1907, in York, England, and was educated in private schools and at Christ Church, Oxford University. He was impressed by the long lines of Anglo-Saxon poetry he studied in Tolkien’s classes, and he was influenced by the verse of Thomas Hardy, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Wilfred Owen, T. S. Eliot, and William Butler Yeats. In the late 1920s and 1930s, he was at the center of a group of English poets

Auden, W. H   457 with leftist sympathies whose poetry responded to the social ills of the Great Depression. He taught school in England from 1930 to 1935, then went to Spain with the intent of supporting the leftist Republican cause against the Fascists. Appalled by the Republicans’ destruction of the Catholic churches, however, he returned to England. After visiting Iceland and China, he moved to the United States, eventually becoming a U.S. citizen in 1946. He taught at a number of American schools and was professor of poetry at Oxford from 1956 to 1961. In his poem “September 1, 1939,” Auden had written that “we must love one another or die.” He grew to regret this kind of grand pronouncement, as well as the general idea that poetry should be used as a vehicle for social and political change, and he began more to believe, as he says in his poem “In Memory of W. B. Yeats,” that “poetry makes nothing happen.” Through World War II, Auden’s verse became more colloquial and ironic, and in his later poetry, he focused much more on the personal, though he retained an extraordinary technical virtuosity, producing large numbers of ballads, sonnets, canzones, haiku, and other traditional forms, as well as forms influenced by folk material such as the blues. In his later life, he became a member of the Church of England, and embraced the close companionship of American writer Chester Kallmann. In 1973, at the age of 64 he returned to Oxford in order to be part of a larger university community once again. This community included Tolkien, although both he and Tolkien were to die before the year was out. In a letter to Tolkien, Auden recalled his days as an Oxford student and being mesmerized by Tolkien’s animated Old English readings of Beowulf. It was, Auden said, the voice of Gandalf. But it was not until Auden’s rave review of The Fellowship of the Ring, “The Hero is a Hobbit,” in the New York Times for October 31, 1954, that the two writers began to correspond and become friends. Auden praised the novel as an example of the heroic quest and insisted that although it was set in an imaginary world, its themes were universal and were important for the real world of 1954. Auden wrote a similarly enthusiastic review of The Return of the

King in 1956. In the latter review, he continued his defense of the genre, explaining how the quest is the perfect mythic image of human life. He praised the detail with which Tolkien created his imaginary world, a world that Auden compared with Milton’s in Paradise Lost. While acknowledging Milton’s superiority, Auden praised Tolkien’s depiction of good versus evil, asserting that evil in Tolkien has all the advantages but one: It lacks imagination, and therefore cannot conceive of the hobbit Frodo as Ring-bearer. Tolkien acknowledged that he owed Auden a great deal for championing his trilogy. In the mid1950s, he began to write to the poet, and in a number of letters, he spoke about things as varied as his interest in language being the seed of the stories he created, his avoidance of Christian allegory, and his conception of ents. Their friendship was strained a bit in 1966, when London papers reported Auden’s comments to an American audience about Tolkien’s house being drab and ugly, though Auden was apparently simply trying to underscore Tolkien’s humility and very ordinary lifestyle. On the occasion of Tolkien’s 70th birthday, Auden wrote a brief poem in his honor entitled “A Short Ode to a Philologist,” a poem that concludes with the lines “a lot of us are grateful for / What J. R. R. Tolkien has done / As bard to Anglo-Saxon” (12). Tolkien returned the favor in one of his last poems (published in 1967), writing a tribute to Auden in Old English, with a facing-page modern English translation. In the poem, Tolkien refers to Auden as wóþbora—that is, one who has poetry within him. W. H. Auden died in Vienna, Austria, on September 29, 1973. Further Reading Auden, W. H. “At the End of the Quest, Victory.” New York Times, 22 January 1956. Available online. URL: http://www.nytimes.com/1956/01/22/books/ tolkien-king.html. Accessed June 17, 2010. ———. “The Hero is a Hobbit.” New York Times, 31 October 1954. Available online. URL: http://www. nytimes.com/1954/10/31/books/tolkien-fellowship. html. Accessed June 17, 2010. ———. “A Short Ode to a Philologist.” In English and Medieval Studies Presented to J. R. R. Tolkien

458  Aulë the Smith on the Occasion of his Seventieth Birthday, edited by Norman Davis and C. L. Wrenn, 11–12. London: George Allen & Unwin, 1962. Tolkien, J. R. R. “For W.H.A.” Shenandoah: The Washington and Lee University Review 18, no. 2 (Winter 1967): 96–97. ———. The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien. Edited by Humphrey Carpenter. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1981.

Aulë the Smith  In Tolkien’s mythology, Aulë is one of the greatest of the Valar. Also known as the Maker, Aulë was responsible for making and shaping the materials out of which the world, Arda, was formed. His interest in the materials of the physical world and in works of skill make him of all the Valar, closest to Melkor (Morgoth), the enemy, but he is distinguished from the evil one by his kindness and humility, and by his lack of interest in power. He created the the Two Great Lights that lit Middle-earth in the first days of Arda, and he is particularly loved by the dwarves, who call him Mahal and look upon him as their creator. Impatient to behold men and elves, the two families that form the Children of Ilúvatar, Aulë created the dwarves, making them, like himself, enemies of Melkor and interested particularly in crafts and in the substances of the earth. Ilúvatar ultimately blessed the race that Aulë made, giving them free will and essentially adopting them as free peoples. In addition to the dwarves, Aulë was particularly admired by the Noldor, that branch of elves most interested in craftsmanship. They call Aulë “Friend of the Noldor.” Aulë lives in Valinor with his consort, Yavanna, whose main interest is the growing things of Arda. Avari  The name Avari means “the unwilling” or “the refusers,” and the term refers to those elves who refused the summons of the Valar to make the Great Journey from Cuiviénen (the bay where all elves awakened) to Valinor (where the Valar lived), as related in the third chapter of the Quenta Silmarillion. It is believed that these became the Silvan, or Wood-elves. They are not numbered among the Eldar, who made the Great Journey.

Bakshi, Ralph  (1938–  )  Ralph Bakshi is a director and producer of animated films who created the first movie version of The Lord of the Rings, a 1978 film that ended midway through the plot of The Two Towers. A planned sequel completing the story was never filmed. Bakshi was born in Haifa, Palestine (now Israel), on October 29, 1938, and moved with his parents to Brooklyn after World War II. He started work as a cel polisher (cleaning stray marks from animation cels one at a time) for Terrytoons television studio after his graduation from high school in 1957, gradually working himself up to artist and, ultimately, director. At Terrytoons, he worked on such popular cartoon shows as Mighty Mouse, Heckle and Jeckle, and Deputy Dawg. He moved to Paramount in 1967 and, working with producer Steve Krantz, helped create the animated Spiderman TV series and other projects. But in the early 1970s, Bakshi decided to produce his own independent animated films for more adult audiences. Krantz suggested that he consider cartoonist Robert Crumb’s Fritz the Cat comic book as a possible subject, and the two of them were able to obtain the film rights from Crumb. Fritz the Cat premiered in 1972 with an X rating from the Motion Picture Association of America, the only feature-length animated film ever to receive such a rating. But the film was received well and became the most successful independent animated film ever made. Bakshi made seven more animated features over the next 11 years, including the controversial Heavy Traffic (1973), Coonskin (1975), and Hey Good Lookin’ (1982). He became known for fantasy films such as Wizards (1977) and Fire and Ice (1983), but most importantly for The Lord of the Rings (1978). After a good deal of negotiation, Bakshi gained the rights to Tolkien’s novel, and he was able to get United Artists to finance the film. John Hurt voiced the part of Aragorn, Anthony Daniels played Legolas, and Billy Barty was Bilbo. Bakshi used rotoscoped animation for the film—a technique by which animators trace over live-action film movement frame-by-frame. It was a new idea in animation and impressed many viewers and critics, but reviews were otherwise mixed: Tolkien fans

Barfield, Owen   459 were unhappy with some changes made in the story (Sauron, for instance, defeats the Last Alliance and is killed by Isildur, who sneaks up on him from behind). Other critics found it full of meaningless violence or said that viewers unfamiliar with the books would not be able to follow the story (especially since it ended in the middle of things). Still, the film won the Golden Gryphon at the Griffoni Film Festival and grossed more than $30 million on an $8 million investment, but United Artists refused to fund the sequel. In 1987, Bakshi returned to television, where he produced Mighty Mouse: The New Adventures for two years. He then directed the animated feature film Cool World (1992), which was rewritten so many times during production that Bakshi no longer had control of the story, and the film was a failure both critically and financially. Later, he produced more animated TV films, including the series Spicy City (1997). More recently, Bakshi, who lives in New Mexico, has focused on painting. He founded the Bakshi School of Animation and Cartooning in 2003, the same year he won the Maverick Tribute Award at the Cinequest Film Festival. In 2005, a threeday retrospective of his films was held at American Cinematheque in Hollywood and the Aero Theater in Santa Monica. Balrog  Balrogs were Maiar that followed the evil Vala Melkor (Morgoth) in his rebellion against Ilúvatar. They were the most powerful and evil of Morgoth’s allies, save only Sauron himself. They appeared as monsters of fire with flaming whips but shrouded in shadows and apparently humanshaped within the darkness. The elves called them Valaraukar. When he returned to Middle-earth after stealing the Silmarils, Morgoth was trapped in the web of the evil Ungoliant, who wanted the Silmarils for herself, but Balrogs saved him. The chief Balrog, Gothmog, was Morgoth’s lieutenant in the War of the Jewels and was responsible for killing Fëanor, leader of the Noldor, who had brought the war to Middle-earth. Most Balrogs were killed in the Great Battle that ended the War of the Jewels at the close of the

First Age of Middle-earth, but some survived the destruction of Morgoth’s fortress of Thangorodrim in that battle, and they hid themselves under the earth. One of these fled to the roots of the Misty Mountains and remained there until disturbed by dwarves of Moria mining mithril in the year 1980 of the Third Age. This Balrog killed the dwarves’ king Durin VI and his son, Náin I, after which the dwarves fled Moria and ever after named that Balrog “Durin’s bane.” Even the orcs and trolls that peopled Moria later in the Third Age feared the Balrog, who was finally slain by Gandalf in the year 3019 after an epic 10-day struggle. Barad-dûr  (Dark Tower, Lugbúrz)  Barad-dûr was the Dark Tower of Sauron, called Lugbúrz in the Black Speech of the orcs. In its day, it was the most powerful fortress on Arda (the earth), as Morgoth’s fortress of Angband was the great stronghold of the First Age. The Dark Tower was located on a southern spur of the Ered Lithui, the “Ashy Mountains” that formed the northern border of Mordor. Sauron first constructed Barad-dûr early in the Second Age of Middle-earth, building it with the aid of the One Ring, so that as long as the ring was in Middle-earth, the foundations of the tower could not be destroyed. When the Last Alliance of elves and men finally destroyed Barad-dûr after a seven-year siege at the end of the Second Age, they could not destroy the foundations, because the One Ring still survived. After Sauron arose again secretly late in the Third Age, he hid in Mirkwood, in his smaller stronghold of Dol Guldur, while the tower of Baraddûr was being rebuilt. He moved his power into the Dark Tower again in 2951, but the tower was finally demolished irrevocably when the One Ring was destroyed in the year 3019 of the Third Age. Barfield, Owen  (Arthur Owen Barfield)  (1898– 1997)  Owen Barfield was a founding member of the Inklings, the discussion and social group that included Tolkien and C. S. Lewis. A very close personal friend of Lewis, Barfield was a profound thinker, publishing influential works on language, meaning, and consciousness that had a significant influence on Tolkien.

460   Barfield, Owen Barfield was born in north London on November 9, 1898. He was the youngest of four children of a solid middle-class family. His father was a solicitor, and his mother, who tutored him at home until he was eight, was an intellectual suffragette who taught him to love music and the works of Charles Dickens. Barfield entered Highgate School, where he received a traditional classical education in Latin and Greek. Previous Highgate students had included Gerard Manley Hopkins and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, on whose ideas Barfield was eventually to publish an important book. Also at Highgate, Barfield met his lifelong friend Alfred Cecil Harwood, whose tastes and interests mirrored his own. In 1916, both Barfield and Harwood obtained scholarships to Oxford, but both had to postpone entry to serve in World War I. Barfield spent the war as a signal officer in Belgium, and in October 1919, he claimed his Oxford scholarship and entered Wadham College, where he decided to study English literature, having spent much of his time in the army reading poetry. He went on to receive his degree in 1921 with First Class Honors, and he obtained an advanced B. Litt. degree in 1927. At Oxford, Barfield met C. S. Lewis, who had also just returned from the war and was studying at University College. The two immediately became close friends and remained so until Lewis’s death in 1963. In 1923, Barfield also became interested in the ideas of Rudolf Steiner, founder of the movement called anthroposophy—a spiritual philosophy based on the belief in an independent, objective, and knowable spiritual world that could be accessed through human consciousness independent of the senses. Lewis, a confirmed agnostic at the time, considered such ideas nonsense. This kicked off a spirited intellectual debate between Barfield and Lewis, at Oxford and in the years following, often in letters that have survived—a debate they referred to as “the Great War.” Lewis later said that Barfield had convinced him to abandon “chronological snobbery”—the notion that the ideas of earlier times were invalid—while Barfield said that Lewis had shown him how logic provided a necessary restraint on the unchecked imagination.

Barfield’s interest in anthroposophy had come about through his joining an English Folk Dance society in 1922 with his friend Harwood. Two women involved in the society were Maud Douie (a professional dancer) and Daphne Oliver. Oliver convinced the others to go to some anthroposophical lectures, and Harwood, who married her, became an enthusiastic devotee of the philosophy. Barfield married Douie and, in 1925, took a flat in London and began to pursue a writing career. He published a fairy tale called The Silver Trumpet in 1925 and, a year later, a philological work called History in ­English Words. In 1928, he published his important work Poetic Diction, which he dedicated to Lewis. The latter work was particularly influential and focused on the way the human imagination worked with words and with metaphors to generate meaning. Lewis, by now a devout theist, in part because of his debates with Barfield, returned the compliment and, in 1936, dedicated his first major scholarly book, The Allegory of Love, to Barfield, whom he called “the “wisest and best of my unofficial teachers.” But Barfield was not able to make a living by writing, and in 1929, he joined his father’s law firm. For the next three decades, he worked as a London solicitor, though he continued to write, mainly essays related to his interest in anthroposophy. He did visit Oxford often, where he was a founding member of the Inklings. In London, Barfield was a member of a weekly lunch group that included T. S. Eliot. In 1949, Barfield was baptized into the Anglican Church, into which he was enthusiastically welcomed by the now thoroughly Christian Lewis. By the late 1950s, Barfield was able to retire from his legal work and move to Kent, where he worked full time at writing, producing a number of important works, beginning in 1957 with his Saving the Appearances, a major study of the evolution of human consciousness. He followed this with several other significant works, including What Coleridge Thought (1971); The Rediscovery of Meaning (1977); and History, Guilt and Habit (1979). In the meantime, he served as a visiting professor at Drew University in 1964, and over the next decade or so, he lectured at several other North American institutions, including Brandeis and the State University of New York at Stony Brook. His wife

Battle of Maldon, The   461 died in 1980, and in 1986, Barfield moved into a retirement home in East Sussex, where he died on December 14, 1997, at the age of 99. Barfield’s influence on Tolkien occurred, no doubt, largely in Inklings discussions, in which their mutual interest in words and meaning must have been galvanizing. Indeed, Tolkien later mentioned an Inklings discussion in which Barfield suggested that the word wrath was derived from the verb writhe, suggesting the metaphor of being twisted up inside (Tolkien 22). But it is certainly true that Barfield’s written works were also of interest to Tolkien, in particular Poetic Diction (1928), in which Barfield considered the relationship of language and myth making in the primitive mind, and how it is through the imaginative process of expanding language and knowledge that human consciousness has evolved. Further Reading Barfield, Owen. Poetic Diction: A Study in Meaning. 3rd ed. Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 1973. Tolkien, J. R. R. The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien. Edited by Humphrey Carpenter. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1981.

Battle of Dagorlad  The decisive battle of the Second Age of Middle-earth took place in the year 3434 of the Second Age, on the plain north of the Black Gate of Mordor, a plain that came to be known as Dagorlad (“Battle-plain”). The conflict pitted the forces of Sauron against the Last Alliance of men and elves, led by the Dúnedain, high king of Arnor and Gondor; Elendil the Tall; and Gil-galad, the High-elven king of both the Noldor and Sindar. Sauron’s forces were ultimately defeated after several months. The graves of the men, elves, and orcs who fell in this great battle were eventually submerged in the Dead Marshes that formed north of Mordor. Subsequently, the army of the Last Alliance entered Mordor and laid siege to the tower of Barad-dûr for seven years until Sauron came out to do battle. He was defeated, but both Elendil and Gil-galad were killed in the ensuing battle, which essentially ended the Second Age of Middle-earth.

Battle of Maldon, The  (ca. 1000)  The Battle of Maldon is a poem written in Old English alliterative verse that describes a battle between Viking invaders and a local English army led by Earl Beorhtnoth of Essex. The battle ended in Beorhtnoth’s death and in defeat for the English, but the poem—written shortly after 991, when the events occurred—turns that loss into a celebration of traditional Germanic heroic ideals. This was one of Tolkien’s favorite poems, and in 1953 he published a radio play entitled The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth, Beorhthelm’s Son, written in alliterative verse and conceived as a sequel to The Battle of Maldon. In Tolkien’s play, two of Beorhtnoth’s servants visit the battlefield to search for their master’s body. Ultimately, the play calls into question the heroic code so eloquently expressed in the poem. The Battle of Maldon occurred during the reign of King Ethelred the Unready (that is, the ill-advised), when Viking invaders had stepped up their raids of the southern English coast. The poem describes how the Danes had established a base on the island of Northey in the mouth of the River Blackwater. The island could be approached only by a narrow causeway that was exposed only during low tide. On August 11, 991, Beorhtnoth led his troops against the Danes. In the poem, at first the English control the causeway, but after a plea from the Vikings, Beorhtnoth allows them to cross over from the island to do battle. The poet calls this ofermod, which Tolkien interpreted as a kind of brash overconfidence that would lead to Beorhtnoth’s destruction. Beorhtnoth is killed, and most of his army, recruited from local farms, runs away. But his personal retainers, men of noble blood, choose to follow the traditional Germanic warrior code, which holds that after their leader falls, they must fight on to victory or death. A series of retainers recite noble sentiments and go into the fight, until the old retainer Byrhtwold pronounces what has become the most famous summation of the warrior code in Old English: Hige sceal þe¯ heardra, heorte þe¯ ce¯nre, Mo¯d sceal þe¯ ma¯re / þe¯ u¯re mægen lytlað. (Cassidy and Ringler 1971, ll. 312–313)

462   Battle of the Pelennor Fields [Courage shall grow the harder, heart the keener, Spirit the greater, as our strength lessens.]

The end of the poem has not survived, but we know that the outcome of the battle was the ultimate slaughter of the English who fought on. Tolkien, pondering the idea of heroism in conjunction with his nearing completion of The Lord of the Rings in 1953, uses the characters of his Homecoming of Beorhtnoth to explore the idea of heroic sacrifice and its practical value. In Tolkien’s sequel, the young minstrel Torhthelm’s romantic views are thrown into question by the sight of Beorhtnoth’s headless body, while Tidwald, the middle-aged farmer, remarks that all wars have been about suffering and tears. Further Reading Cassidy, Frederic G., and Richard N. Ringler. Bright’s Old English Grammar and Reader. 3rd ed. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1971. Tolkien, J. R. R. “The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth Beorhthelm’s Son.” Essays and Studies of the English Association n.s. 6 (1953): 1–18.

Battle of the Pelennor Fields  The most important battle of the Third Age of Middle-earth took place on March 15, 3019, in the farmlands known as the Fields of Pelennor, before the city of Minas Tirith. An army from Mordor comprising some 30,000 orcs, Haradrim, and Easterlings and led by the lord of the Nazgúl, overran Osgiliath and broke through the Rammas (the perimeter wall) and into the Pelennor Fields, where they besieged the city for two nights. On the third day, the armies of Mordor employed a huge battering ram called Grond (named for Morgoth’s battle mace), with which they smashed the city gate of Minas Tirith. Just as the Nazgúl lord prepared to enter the city, a cavalry of 6,000 Riders of Rohan attacked the army of Mordor from the north. Led by King Théoden, the Rohirrim scattered the orcs and destroyed most of the siege engines, although Théoden himself was killed by the Nazgúl, who in turn was killed by Théoden’s niece Éowyn and

the hobbit Meriadoc Brandybuck. But the forces of Mordor regrouped and prepared a counterattack. Now led by Gothmog, who brought in all the reserves of Sauron’s army, the invaders began driving back Gondor’s infantry, while the Haradrim’s Oliphaunts slowed down the advance of the Rohirrim, now led by Théoden’s nephew Éomer. At this point, black sails were seen coming up the great river Anduin from the south. But the ships bore an army from Lebennin led by Aragorn, heir to the ancient throne of Gondor. These attacked the army of Mordor from the south, and now an army issued from Minas Tirith itself, driving into Sauron’s forces from the west. With the Rohirrim continuing their assault from the north, the forces of Mordor were caught and either fought to the death or retreated eastward into the river Anduin, where many of them drowned. By the end of the day, all the invaders had been killed or driven out. Battle of the Somme  No other battle thunders in British memory like the Somme. It immediately became, and remains to this day, a touchstone and a symbol for British soldiers’ World War I experience. British and French troops fought the German armies in the blasted and burnt-out shallow valley of the Somme River in summer 1916, two years into the war—a war defined by its industrial-age weapons and its new, modern machines such as the airplane, the submarine, the flamethrower, poison gas, and the tank. But none of these new weapons shook the earth—and killed men—like artillery. While cannon fire was nearly 400 years old, artillery was now exponentially more deadly due to the perfection of rifled barrels and smokeless powder and the complete implementation of 20th-century industrial mass production. Even more important, the soldiers on both sides were raised, trained, and equipped as mass popular armies and roused in their national cause. No longer impressed into service against their will like the British 18th- and 19th-century conscript armies of Marlborough or Wellington, these modern British soldiers believed in the rightness of their cause and the evil nature of their enemy. But while much was new, the soldiers bore many traditional and

Battle of the Somme   463 romantic attitudes about warfare bred from their public-school educations. So, too, did their generals, whose ideas on how to seize and maintain the initiative were from a bygone era. Believing the offensive was necessary for winning battles and wars, the generals stubbornly sought it as the waypoint to victory. But since the war had bogged down in November 1914, and the front had solidified, no one had yet reachieved the offensive. All the combatant nations were stuck in the mire of old methods but assumed their élan could get them over the top and into the enemy’s trenches if they could just summon enough soldierly spirit and welltimed artillery fire. But by 1916, the Germans had finally given up on achieving the offensive as they realized that fighting defensively proved to be the best way to bleed the enemy into defeat. So, instead, they launched an operation, which induced the French to pour soldiers into their waiting trap of artillery, infantry, and poison gas at Verdun, south of the Somme River. As Verdun was historically vital to the French identity, the Germans needed little to induce them beyond the threat of taking this medieval city. But it was working too well, and having begun their attack on Verdun in February,

Wounded British soldiers walking to a dressing station during the Battle of the Somme. Tolkien’s unit, the 11th Lancashire Fusiliers, suffered heavy casualties.  (Photo by Lt. Ernest Brooks)

by the end of June, both sides had fired 20 million artillery shells and sustained 200,000 casualties apiece. Reacting to this, the British had agreed to extend their Expeditionary Force’s lines to the south, allowing the French to concentrate forces more effectively. As Verdun ground on, the British generals offered to launch an offensive to take off the pressure along what was a quiet part of the front, and the French encouraged them to begin as soon as possible. After considerable planning and logistical preparation, the British began their offensive on July 1, 1916. Tolkien’s own unit, the 11th Lancashire Fusiliers, were ordered to the front in mid-July, and they suffered heavy casualties. The difficulty, of course, was getting past the German trenches and machine-gun nests woven into fields of barbed wire reinforced by exploding artillery shells. Compounding the British army’s difficulty was the fact that a large number of the soldiers to be used in the offensive had yet to see any action. The British government had vast numbers of recruits and draftees to put into their forces, and now these new soldiers, from a wide array of British society, were marching up to their trenches. This meant that while veterans realized they needed to coordinate their infantry with the artillery to allow for timed fire in what was termed rolling barrages, the planners believed it would be too complicated for inexperienced officers and men to actually do. Therefore, they wrote orders for simply going over the top in coordination with units to their left and right. In the six days prior to the infantry effort, the artillery fired approximately 1.5 million shells in order to obliterate enemy support trenches, pillboxes, and fortified lines. But all that firepower still proved inadequate. The British army suffered 57,000 killed and wounded by the end of the first day, but with the fighting persisting at Verdun, the British commanders kept up the pressure and conducted the Battle of the Somme in eight phases over the next five months, suffering 419,654 casualties. Their French comrades suffered nearly 200,000 in their Somme operations. The Germans estimate they suffered 600,000 casualties, but no one knows a certain figure. For their efforts, the

464   Battle of Unnumbered Tears

A British trench during the Battle of the Somme  (Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons; photo by Lt. J. W. Brooke)

British and French soldiers gained slightly under five miles. The horror reverberated for years and even exasperated the American general staff in World War II who argued for an immediate invasion of the Continent in 1942. “It is no use,” one of Churchill’s advisers told them, “you are arguing against the casualties on the Somme.” Further Reading Garth, John. Tolkien and the Great War: The Threshold of Middle-Earth. London: HarperCollins; Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2003. Keegan, John. The Face of Battle. New York: Penguin Books, 1978. ———. The First World War. New York: Vintage, 1998.

—Lieutenant Colonel Benjamin F. Jones

Battle of Unnumbered Tears  See Nirnaeth Arnoediad. Beleriand  Beleriand was the name for the westernmost lands of Middle-earth during its First Age, bordered on the east by the Blue Mountains (Ered Luin) and cut in two by the great river Sirion flowing north to south. These lands were the home of the Grey-elves, called the Sindar, who stayed in Middle-earth rather than follow the call of the Valar that brought their brothers, the Vanyar and the Noldor, across the western sea to the Undying Lands of Aman. The Sindar loved the lands west of the Blue Mountains and stayed there with their king, Elwë, who became known as Thingol Greycloak. After the evil Vala Melkor, known to the elves as Morgoth, stole the Silmarils and fled from

Beowulf   465 Aman to north of Beleriand, many of the Noldor returned to Beleriand to make war on Morgoth to force the return of the jewels, and in this they were aided by their Sindar kinsmen. In the fourth century of the First Age, men also began to move into Beleriand, and the men of the Three Houses known as “Elf-friends” (the Edain) settled in Beleriand and fought on the side of the elves against the forces of Morgoth, who had set up his great stronghold of Angband in the north. The forces of Morgoth proved too strong for the men and elves of Beleriand, and after long years of warfare, Beleriand was overrun by Morgoth’s forces, and the great elvish strongholds of Nargothrond and Gondolin were besieged and destroyed, driving the men and elves into hiding, in particular in Thingol’s secret realm of Doriath. Finally, the Valar took matters into their own hands and came across the great sea to destroy Morgoth’s fortress at Angband in the last great battle of the First Age, although in the process, all the land of Beleriand was sunk into the ocean, with the exception of Lindon, where, at the two capes of Forlindon and Harlindon, the Valar established the Havens, from which the elves of Middle-earth could sail west to the Undying Lands of the Valar. Bëor the Old  Bëor (whose birth name was Balan) was the leader of the earliest band of men to enter Beleriand in the fourth century of the First Age; thus, he was the founder of one of the three great branches of the Edain, or “Elf-friends.” He settled first in Estolad, between the River Gelion and the elvish kingdom of Doriath. Bëor became the ally and vassal of Finrod, the eldest son of Finarfin, who had founded the elvish stronghold of Nargothrond. He served Finrod for some 44 years, and was called Bëor the Old when he died at the age of 93. The House of Bëor was to produce the great heroes Beren and Túrin, as well as Elrond Halfelven. Beowulf  (eighth–10th century)  The important Tolkien critic Tom Shippey has written that “[t]he single work which influenced Tolkien most was obviously the Old English poem Beowulf” (344). Tolkien taught the poem in its original Old E ­ nglish

every semester of his professional career, and he knew it intimately. He made his own translation of the poem and, in 1936, published the single most influential essay ever written on the text. The poem’s influence can be seen in every one of Tolkien’s major works. Beowulf is an epic poem of 3,182 lines in Old English alliterative verse. It celebrates the old Germanic heroic tradition but criticizes it at the same time from the point of view of an eighth-century Christian poet. The poem has survived in one late 10th-century manuscript in the British Library known as Cotton Vitellius A.xv. The poem tells the story of the Geatish warrior Beowulf, who arrives at the great mead hall Heorot to help the Danish king Hrothgar rid his kingdom of the monster Grendel, who has been terrorizing Hrothgar’s warriors for 12 years. The king’s retainer Unferth challenges Beowulf’s reputation while drinking in the mead hall that night, but Beowulf makes his beot (i.e., “boast,” though with the function of a vow) that he will destroy the monster. He sleeps with his men in the hall that night, and when Grendel skulks in and kills one of his retainers, Beowulf fights him hand-to-hand, ultimately tearing the monster’s arm off. After Grendel slinks away to die, the Danish scop (bard or singer) celebrates Beowulf’s victory with a song of praise. The Danes are surprised soon after when Grendel’s mother invades their settlement and kills one of Hrothgar’s retainers in revenge for her son. Beowulf follows her to her lair in a dark pond. He dives in and fights her in an underground cavern, where his sword (lent him by Unferth) melts when it touches her. He finally kills her with a magic sword he finds hanging in her lair. Then, having saved Hrothgar’s realm, Beowulf takes his leave, returning to his homeland to serve Hygelac, king of the Geats. Ultimately, Beowulf himself becomes king, ruling for 50 years before he is forced to protect his own people from a fire-breathing dragon. He takes 11 men with him but vows to fight the monster alone. He is hard put to kill the dragon, however, until his young kinsman Wiglaf (the only one of his men who has not fled to the woods) comes into the dragon’s lair to help him. Although he slays

466   Birmingham Oratory the dragon, Beowulf is burned so badly that he succumbs to his wounds. At the end of the epic, Wiglaf shames the Geats for deserting their king, and he predicts the dissolution of the Geatish tribe. This is followed by Beowulf’s funeral. Interwoven in the main plot of the Beowulf poem are constant allusions to Germanic legend and history. Most of these allusions are concerned with the destructive aspects of feuding in Germanic society and the questionable aspects of the warrior code. Tolkien certainly adopts this highly allusive style, often alluding in texts such as The Lord of the Rings to events that occurred much earlier, in the First Age or Second Age of Middle-earth. In addition, although he admired and emulated the sublime tone and grand epic scale of the poem, Tolkien also adopted the poet’s skeptical attitude toward the heroic code, making the great protagonists of his most important work not epic heroes but everyday people—hobbits. There are other, more specific echoes of Beowulf in Tolkien’s work. Certainly the dragon Smaug in The Hobbit owes something to the dragon of Beowulf, sitting in its lair guarding its treasure trove. The scene in The Two Towers in which Gandalf and the fellowship come to Théoden’s hall has a number of verbal parallels to Beowulf’s arrival at Heorot, and Théoden’s hall, with its painted pillars and tapestries on the walls, bears a strong resemblance to Heorot as described in Beowulf. Frodo’s dagger that disappears after striking the Ringwraith in The Fellowship of the Ring recalls the sword Beowulf borrowed from Unferth. And the list could go on and on. It might be said that Tolkien did as much for Beowulf as Beowulf did for him. In his highly significant essay on “Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics,” Tolkien took to task previous critics of the poem, who tended to be interested only in what it could reveal about Germanic history and culture and the Old English language, considering the monsters peripheral to the poem and characteristic of unsophisticated, childish storytelling. Tolkien insisted that the poem should be read as a poem, and that the monsters were figures of great significance in the literary creation of a dark and hostile world.

Tolkien made a complete translation of Beowulf into modern English prose, as well as an incomplete verse translation. Michael Drout, a scholar from Wheaton College in Massachusetts, has taken on the task of publishing these translations, accompanied by Tolkien’s notes on the poem, in a twovolume edition. This project is due for completion in the next few years. Further Reading Klaeber, Friedrich, ed. Beowulf and the Fight at Finnsburg. 3rd ed. Boston: D. C. Heath, 1950. Shippey, Tom. The Road to Middle Earth. Rev. ed. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2003. Tolkien, J. R. R. “Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics.” Proceedings of the British Academy 22 (1936): 245–295.

Birmingham Oratory  See Oratory. Blanchett, Cate (1969–  )  Cate Blanchett played the beautiful and powerful elven queen Galadriel in Peter Jackson’s blockbuster Lord of the Rings trilogy. Her benevolent presence helps light the way for Frodo and Sam even in the darkest places of Mordor. Born Catherine Elise Blanchett in Melbourne, Australia, on May 14, 1969, Cate is the daughter of Robert Blanchett, a Texas naval officer who married her mother, June, a teacher, then moved to Australia and became an advertising executive. Robert died when Cate was 10 years old. She has said that as a child, she dreamed of living in a haunted house, where she might meet her father again. She attended the Methodist Ladies College in Melbourne, where she was captain of her drama team, and went on to attend Melbourne University to major in fine arts and economics. But she dropped out and traveled to England and then Egypt, where she took part as an extra in an Egyptian movie. It was an unpleasant experience, but when she returned to Australia, she enrolled in the National Institute of Dramatic Arts in Sydney, from which she graduated in 1992. Blanchett’s first critical success came when she played opposite Geoffrey Rush in David Mamet’s play Oleanna in Sydney. She continued to work in

Bloom, Orlando   467 the theater and in television until her first motion picture role, as a nurse in the 1997 film Paradise Road with Glenn Close and Frances McDormand. She followed this with a major part in the film Oscar and Lucinda with Ralph Fiennes, a role that brought her to the attention of the director Shekhar Kapur, who immediately cast her to star in a film he was making called Elizabeth. Her portrayal of the great English queen made Blanchett a major star, winning her a Golden Globe and netting her her first Oscar nomination in 1998. In the meantime, while she was appearing on-stage in Chekov’s The Seagull, Blanchett met the playwright Andrew Upton. They were married in the Blue Mountains National Park in New South Wales in December 1997, just before she began filming Elizabeth. After Elizabeth, Blanchett appeared in The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999) and An Ideal Husband (based on Oscar Wilde’s play) (1999) before agreeing to the role of Galadriel. Blanchett claimed in a Fox TV interview that she accepted the role because she had always wanted to appear in a film wearing pointed ears, and rumor has it that she kept and bronzed the prosthetic ears that she wore in the role. While the three Lord of the Rings films were released in 2001, 2002, and 2003 respectively, Blanchett could also be seen in Charlotte Gray (2001) and Veronica Guerin (2003). In 2004, she played Katharine Hepburn in Martin Scorsese’s The Aviator, a role that won her an Academy Award. She also appeared in the Oscar-nominated film Babel in 2006, and she reprised her role as Elizabeth in the sequel, entitled Elizabeth: The Golden Age, in 2007, garnering another Oscar nomination. Also in 2007, Blanchett received another Academy Award nomination for her portrayal of Bob Dylan in the acclaimed Todd Haynes film I’m Not There. In 2008, she appeared as a Russian agent in Steven Spielberg’s Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Blanchett and her husband lived in Brighton, England, for a number of years before returning to Sydney late in 2006, where they have bought and restored a historic mansion called Bulwarra. They have made the 1877 mansion “eco-friendly” and now live there with their three children. An

activist concerned about climate change, Blanchett is the ambassador for an online campaign organized by the Australian Conservation Foundation. In 2007, she directed her first stage production, the play Blackbird, for the Sydney Theatre Company. She and Upton have now become artistic codirectors of that company. Bloemfontein  J. R. R. Tolkien was born in the city of Bloemfontein, South Africa, on January 3, 1892. His father, Arthur Tolkien, was bank manager in the city, and his mother, Mabel Tolkien, had joined him there in 1891. Bloemfontein was capital of the Orange Free State, now the Free State Province of South Africa. The town had been founded in 1846 and declared a municipality in 1880, and in 1890 it was connected to Cape Town by a rail line. Although located on a dry plateau about 1,400 meters (app. 4,600 feet) above sea level on the River Modder, the town was named Bloemfontein, meaning “spring of flowers” in the Afrikaans language—a name it reputedly deserves. It is currently not only the capital of the Free State but also the judicial capital of all of South Africa. Tolkien lived in Bloemfontein only a few years, later saying that his earliest memories were of a “hot country,” and he reportedly remembered being bitten by a tarantula. But his health was not good, and his mother disliked Africa; so, after his brother, Hilary Tolkien, was born in 1894, Mabel took the boys to England for an extended stay. Tolkien’s father, Arthur, died in Bloemfontein of rheumatic fever early in 1896, and the family never returned. Bloom, Orlando  (1977–  )  Orlando Bloom was a young and virtually unknown actor before playing the part of Legolas in Peter Jackson’s film trilogy of The Lord of the Rings. As a result of the popularity of the films, he has since become one of the best-known and most sought-after performers in the world. Orlando Jonathan Blanchard Bloom was born in Canterbury, England, on January 13, 1977. His mother was Sonia Copeland, who was the daughter of a British doctor living in Calcutta, India. She was married to Harry Bloom, a well-known

468   Bloom, Orlando antiapartheid activist in South Africa who died when Orlando was four years old. At the age of 13, Orlando learned that Bloom was not his biological father, and that his real father was the educator Colin Stone, who lived with his mother and became legal guardian of Orlando and his older sister, Samantha, after Harry Bloom’s death. Because of his dyslexia, Orlando Bloom had difficulty at Canterbury’s St. Edmunds School, although, with his mother’s encouragement, he took an interest in the fine arts and enjoyed photography, pottery, and sculpture. He was also active in a local theater group, and he and his sister also competed successfully in poetry and Bible-reading competitions. In 1993, he moved to London to study drama, photography, and sculpture at the Fine Arts College in Hampstead. He also joined the National Youth Theatre in London, where he spent two years before obtaining a scholarship to study at the British American Drama Academy. At the same time, he was able to land small parts on several British television programs, including Casualty, Midsomer Murders, and Smack the Pony. In 1997, he made his film debut with a small part in the critically acclaimed movie Wilde, with Stephen Fry, Jude Law, and Vanessa Redgrave. Bloom now entered the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, where among other things he received significant training in stage combat, which was to prove valuable in the kinds of films he was ultimately to star in. While attending the Guildhall School in 1998, he fell three stories from a rooftop terrace and broke his back. At first he was told he may never walk again, but with the help of steel plates supporting his spine, he walked out of the hospital on crutches 12 days later. He returned to the stage at the Guildhall School, where, one night in 1999, the director Peter Jackson was in the audience. After the performance, Jackson met Bloom and asked him to audition for his Lord of the Rings series. Bloom originally auditioned for the part of Faramir but was cast instead as Legolas, and he went on to film for 18 months in New Zealand. He had another accident while filming, falling off a horse and breaking a rib, but he finished the scene. When The Fellowship of the Ring appeared in 2001, Bloom’s Legolas was an instant favorite. The

Cover of a 2003 coloring-book edition of The Two Towers, published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. The cover shows the character Legolas as played by Orlando Bloom in Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings film trilogy.

sport of archery suddenly became extremely popular in Great Britain, and Bloom became one of the world’s most recognizable stars. Bloom also appeared in the popular war film Black Hawk Down in 2001, and in 2003 he starred with Johnny Depp and Keira Knightley in the blockbuster Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl. He subsequently played Paris in the epic film Troy in 2004 and had the lead roles in Elizabethtown and the medieval epic Kingdom of Heaven in 2005. His appearance in the two later films in the Pirates of the Caribbean series cemented Bloom’s reputation as an action hero in costume epics. He also appeared in the television program Extras, playing an egotistical parody of himself who

Boyd, Billy   469 passionately hates Johnny Depp. By 2007, however, Bloom, who had originally trained to be a stage actor, was hoping to get back to live theater. In summer 2007, he appeared in a London revival of David Storey’s play In Celebration. He has also reportedly received an invitation from the Royal Shakespeare Company to appear in Stratford, which he hopes to accept between film commitments. Raised as an Anglican, Bloom is now a practicing Buddhist. He is also involved with an environmental company called Global Green. He has also been approached by UNICEF to serve as one of their international ambassadors. He reportedly wears a replica of the One Ring from the Lord of the Rings trilogy; the ring bears the inscription “To wherever it may lead.” Bournemouth  The city of Bournemouth is a resort town on the southwest coast of England, 105 miles southwest of London. Tolkien and his wife, Edith Bratt Tolkien, spent summer holidays in Bournemouth for some three decades, always staying in the same room at the Hotel Miramar and taking a second room to serve as Tolkien’s study. The couple retired to Poole, a suburb of Bournemouth in the 1960s, and Tolkien died in Bournemouth in September 1973. In Tolkien’s day, Bournemouth was part of Hampshire, but after a reorganization in 1974, it is now the largest city in Dorset. Founded in 1810, the town became a tourist attraction in the 1840s because of the new awareness of the health benefits of seawater and fresh air, and after the railroad came to Bournemouth in 1870, the town grew exponentially from about 15,000 to 60,000 inhabitants by 1900. The city remains popular with tourists because of its sandy beaches and luxury hotels, just as it was when the Tolkiens first began vacationing there in the 1930s. Edith was always happy in Bournemouth and had good friends there, particularly Jocelyn and Denis Tolhurst. Tolkien himself disliked the town and disliked leaving Oxford upon his retirement, but he found that he could work undisturbed on The Silmarillion there and liked it for that reason. When Edith died in 1971, Tolkien moved

back to Merton Street in Oxford. He died when he returned to Bournemouth to visit the Tolhursts in 1973. Boyd, Billy  (1968–  )  Billy Boyd was a talented but virtually unknown Scottish stage and television actor when he was cast as the hobbit Peregrin “Pippin” Took in New Line Cinema’s Lord of the Rings film trilogy, a role that made him famous worldwide. William Boyd was born on August 28, 1968, in Glasgow, Scotland. He lived in Easterhouse, one of the rougher neighborhoods of Glasgow, and later moved to Cranhill, another working-class neighborhood. His father, William, was a laborer in a brewery, and his mother, Mary, was a clerk in a car rental business. Even as a child, young Billy showed some talent for acting, appearing as the Artful Dodger in a school production of Oliver Twist when he was 10. Although his parents supported his ambitions, they both died within a year when Billy was in his early teens, and he and his older sister, Margaret, moved in with their grandmother. In secondary school, although discouraged by his counselor, Billy continued his interest in acting, until the theater building at his high school burned down and the school discontinued the theater program. But he joined an amateur theater group and continued acting. At 16, Boyd appeared in a Glasgow Theatre Guild musical production of Hans Christian Andersen. However, economic necessity eventually forced him to drop out of school at the age of 17 and go to work as an apprentice bookbinder. For more than six years, he worked at a bookbinder in the northern Glasgow suburb of Bishopbriggs—ironically spending some of that time binding copies of Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings. Unhappy with his career, he decided to quit his job and move to the United States for at least a year, but he called the Royal Scottish Academy for Music and Drama before he left to ask if he might apply there on his return. Learning that they still had room for that year’s class, Billy applied and was accepted into the school’s three-year course in dramatic arts. He worked at a bar, a pizza place, and a comedy club to help support himself through college, and he was eventually able to land roles in

470   Bratt, Edith a few stage productions at the St. Andrews Theatre as well as a role in the television series Taggart. At this point, his agent called and asked him if he wanted to audition for The Lord of the Rings. He did not expect much, but a few months after the audition, the director Peter Jackson came to Scotland to meet him, and shortly thereafter, he was offered the role of Pippin. Jackson decided to keep Boyd’s Scottish accent in the role of Pippin, reasoning that, since Tolkien writes that one of the Tooks invented the game of golf, Tolkien must have conceived of the Tooks as Scottish. Boyd also wrote the song “The Steward of Gondor,” which he can be seen singing in The Return of the King. An accomplished musician, Boyd plays the guitar, bass, and drums, and he has his own rock band called Beecake. Also interested in writing, he and fellow Lord of the Rings alumnus Dominic Monaghan have written a screenplay about two Englishmen in Miami, a script Boyd says they began writing while sitting in the branches of Treebeard in The Two Towers. Aside from his band and the time he spends on his favorite sport of surfing, Boyd also is an expert in foil fencing and martial arts. Since The Lord of the Rings, he has been busy with other acting projects as well. He played the coxswain Barrett Bonden in Peter Weir’s film of Patrick O’Brian’s Master and Commander in 2003, and he has appeared in several stage productions, such as a rock-and-roll production called The Ballad of Crazy Paola and David Grieg’s play San Diego at the Edinburgh Royal Lyceaum theatre. He has also acted in a few other films, including On a Clear Day (2005) and Stone of Destiny (2008). He and his companion, Ali McKinnon, have a son named Jack William Boyd, born in 2006. They live in Lesmahagow, near Boyd’s hometown of Glasgow. Bratt, Edith  (Edith Mary Tolkien)  (1889–1971)  Edith Bratt, Tolkien’s wife of more than 50 years, was born in Gloucester, England, on January 21, 1889. Her mother was Frances Bratt, the unmarried daughter of a shoemaker, who had come to Gloucester to avoid the scandal the birth would cause in her hometown of Wolverhampton. The identity of Edith’s father is unknown, but it has

been suggested that it was the married paper dealer Alfred Frederick Warrilow of Wolverhampton, for whom Frances had worked as a governess. Edith was raised in the Birmingham suburb of Handsworth by her mother and by her cousin, Jennie Grove. As a child, she was interested in music and was sent to a girls’ boarding school specializing in music, where she became a talented pianist. After she was orphaned in 1908, she moved into a boardinghouse in Birmingham. That year, fellow orphans J. R. R. Tolkien and his brother, Hilary Tolkien, moved into the same boardinghouse, and over the course of the next year, the 20-yearold Edith and 17-year-old John Ronald Reuel developed a romantic relationship. But Tolkien’s guardian, Father Francis Morgan, saw Edith as a distraction from the boy’s schoolwork, and objected to her Anglican faith. He moved Tolkien to another boardinghouse and forbade him to see her until he turned 21. When Edith turned 21, she left Birmingham to live with friends in Cheltenham. Tolkien was accepted into Exeter College at Oxford University, and he did not communicate with Edith for three years, but on the eve of his 21st birthday in 1912, he wrote to her and asked her to marry him. By this time, she was engaged to another man, George Field, but Tolkien took the train to Cheltenham to see her on January 8, and by the end of the day, he had persuaded her to break her engagement and marry him. He was able to obtain Father Morgan’s blessing and was also able to convince Edith to convert to Catholicism. This decision estranged her from her friends in Cheltenham, and she was forced to leave her life there and live with her cousin, Jennie Grove, in Warwick. Edith disliked Catholicism, in particular Confession, and her religion was a continuing source of conflict with Tolkien during their marriage. But she did convert on January 8, 1914, and they were betrothed in the Catholic church in Warwick. World War I intruded on the couple’s life and on Tolkien’s education, and in 1916, facing deployment to France, Tolkien decided to marry Edith in the Church of St. Mary Immaculate in Warwick on March 22, 1916. Edith and Jennie Grove moved to Staffordshire immediately in order to be near Tolk-

Brewerton, George   471 ien’s camp, but his battalion was ordered to France without delay. Later in the year, however, Tolkien returned, suffering from trench fever. He spent several months recuperating, and during this time, while walking with Tolkien in a grove of trees in Holderness, Edith spontaneously sang and danced for him beneath the trees. It was an event that had a significant effect on him, and he used it to create what was to be one of the central myths of his Silmarillion—the story of Beren and Lúthien, wherein the mortal Beren falls in love with the elven princess Lúthien when he comes upon her dancing in the woods. Edith gave birth to the couple’s first child, John Francis Reuel Tolkien, on November 16, 1917. Her husband began work for the Oxford ­English Dictionary after the war, and then took a job at the University of Leeds (see Leeds, University of) in 1920. Edith stayed in Oxford until the birth of their second son, Michael Hilary Reuel Tolkien, in October 1920, after which she and the family moved to Leeds. When Tolkien was promoted in 1924, he and Edith bought a house on the edge of town, and Edith gave birth to Christopher Reuel Tolkien. Edith enjoyed Leeds and had friends among the younger families there, but the family moved back to Oxford when Tolkien was appointed Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon there in 1925. In 1929, Edith gave birth to the couple’s fourth child, Priscilla Mary Reuel Tolkien, the daughter that Edith had always wanted. Beginning in the 1930s, Edith and Tolkien began to spend summer holidays at the seaside town of Bournemouth, some 100 miles southwest of London. Edith enjoyed Bournemouth a great deal. She formed a number of friendships there and enjoyed staying at the Hotel Miramar. In Oxford, the naturally shy Edith often felt inferior to Tolkien’s educated friends. She was also uncomfortable with the burdensome social hierarchy in Oxford. In Bournemouth, she could relax and be herself. As the years passed, Edith’s health declined, and she suffered increasingly from arthritis. Tolkien retired from teaching in 1959 in order to spend more time with her. As his worldwide popularity increased throughout the 1960s, he and Edith were constantly annoyed by fans in their Oxford home,

and Edith was less and less able to move comfortably or take care of her house. In 1968, she and Tolkien decided to move permanently to Poole, a suburb of Bournemouth, where she was content and happy, particularly enjoying her friendship with her doctor, Denis Tolhurst, and his wife, Jocelyn. But her health declined, and her gallbladder became inflamed in November 1971. Edith Bratt Tolkien died on November 29, at the age of 82, and was buried in the Catholic section of Wolvercote Cemetery in Oxford. Tolkien was later buried in the same grave, and beside her name on the headstone is inscribed the elvish name Lúthien. Brewerton, George  (fl. 1903–1904)  The teacher at St. Edward’s School who had the greatest influence on the young J. R. R. Tolkien was the assistant master George Brewerton, who was Tolkien’s instructor in the sixth form in 1904. Brewerton was one of the few instructors at the school whose specialty was English literature, a subject that generally was limited to the study of Shakespeare, in whom Tolkien had little interest. But he called Brewerton a “fierce teacher,” and he was inspired by Brewerton’s teaching of The Canterbury Tales, in particular his oral reading of Chaucer in Middle English. When Brewerton became aware of Tolkien’s interest in Middle English, he loaned the young scholar his own Anglo-Saxon primer, and Tolkien, thrilled with the language as the ancestor of his own, read Beowulf, first in translation and then in the original Old ­English. Brewerton also directed Tolkien to Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, a 14thcentury poem in the West Midland dialect of Middle ­English. This was a poem Tolkien admired not only for its story but also because he recognized that the language was that spoken by his mother’s Suffield ancestors living in Evesham, and he felt a real connection with it. He went on to study the Gawainpoet’s other great West Midland text, Pearl. His Old English studies also led him to branch out into the study of related medieval languages, including Old Norse and Gothic. This was all done with the help and encouragement of Brewerton, who must be credited with awakening the young Tolkien’s budding interest in medieval languages and literature, and, ultimately,

472   Bryson, John helping him establish the foundation on which to build his literary and scholarly legacy. Bryson, John  (1896–1976)  John Bryson was a fellow and tutor, and later librarian, at Balliol College, Oxford University. He knew C. S. Lewis well and was Lewis’s main competition for the position of fellow at Magdalen College in 1924. He lost out to Lewis but subsequently obtained his post at Balliol. In 1927, Bryson was one of a group of Oxford faculty who attended Tolkien’s Coalbiters, an informal seminar on Old Norse language and literature that Tolkien conducted in order to promote the introduction of Old Norse into the curriculum at Oxford. Bryson was born in Portadown, county Armagh, in Ulster. His chief area of scholarly interest was the Victorian period, and he wrote a book on Robert Browning, produced an edition of Matthew Arnold’s poetry and prose, and edited a book of Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s correspondence with Jane Morris. An aesthete as well as a literary scholar, Bryson accumulated a fine collection of Pre-Raphaelite works, including some by Rossetti, Edward Burne-Jones, and Ford Madox Brown. When Bryson died in 1976, he left his collection to the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford. Campbell, Alistair  (1907–1974) Alistair Campbell was an Anglo-Saxon scholar at Oxford University, successor of Tolkien’s colleague C. L. Wrenn in the position (Wrenn had himself succeeded Tolkien). After 1959, he was one of Tolkien’s friends and most frequent visitors during Tolkien’s retirement at Sandford Road on the outskirts of Oxford, one of the few connections he had kept with the academic life of the university at the time. He also visited Tolkien regularly at his Merton Street flat during the final years of Tolkien’s life. Campbell had studied at Birmingham and had come to Balliol College in Oxford for postgraduate study, taking a degree in 1931 with a thesis on Old English diphthongs for which Tolkien and C. T. Onions were the chief examiners. He lectured at Balliol from 1946 to 1953, and then until 1963 was university lecturer in medieval English. In 1963, he succeeded Wrenn as Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon.

Campbell wrote an essay entitled “The Old ­ nglish Epic Style” for the Festschrift honoring E Tolkien on his 70th birthday (1962). He also published a standard Old English Grammar (1959) and an edition of the Battle of Brunanburh (1938), as well as other texts. Captain of the White Tower  The traditional title of the commander of the forces of Gondor, the guards of the Citadel, was “Captain of the White Tower.” In the time of the kings of Gondor, the title was held by the heir to the throne. During the period of Gondor’s stewards, however, the title passed to the heir to the stewardship. In The Lord of the Rings, the title is held first by Boromir, then is presumably passed to Faramir; both are the sons of Denethor II. Carr, Charlie and Mavis  Charlie Carr and his wife, Mavis, were “scouts” (that is, domestic servants) at Merton College, Oxford University. After the death of Edith Bratt Tolkien, Merton invited J. R. R. Tolkien to be a resident honorary fellow of the college, and the college provided him with a flat at 21 Merton Street, Oxford. Tolkien moved there in March 1972. The Carrs lived in the basement of the flat, and as part of the agreement, they were to act as caretakers of Tolkien’s rooms and provide him breakfast in his apartment each morning. The Carrs proved to be more than mere hired help, however. In their kindness, they befriended the 80-year-old Tolkien and invited him to meals with their family, cooking for him when he was ill or otherwise unwilling to eat at the college. He grew to be a favorite of the Carrs’ children and grandchildren, and one story relates that once, when Tolkien’s assistant, Joy Hill, could not reach him and grew alarmed, she visited the flat and found that Tolkien had been in the Carrs’ rooms the whole time, watching the Wimbledon tennis tournament on their television. Celeborn  Celeborn, known as “the Wise,” was a Sindarin elf, a kinsman of Thingol (his name means “Silver Tree”). During the First Age, he lived in Doriath with Thingol, where he married

Círdan the Shipwright   473 the Noldorin princess Galadriel. After the destruction of Doriath, he went to Avernien at the mouth of the river Sirion with the other survivors, and those of Gondolin. At the end of the First Age of Middle-earth, Celeborn and Galadriel lived in Lindon with Gilgalad, and they later traveled to Eregion (the Noldor kingdom near Moria) with his kinsman Thranduil. When Eregion fell to Sauron, Galadriel and Celeborn, pining for Doriath, created the realm of Lórien in the Mellyrn woods where the Celebrant River joins the Anduin, while Thranduil became lord of the great Greenwood in the North. After Lórien was assaulted several times by Sauron’s forces from Dol Guldur in the south of Greenwood (now called Mirkwood), Celeborn led the army of Lórien that captured Dol Guldur. Although Galadriel returned to Valinor at the end of the Third Age, Celeborn remained in Middle-earth as king in Lórien. But without Galadriel, he suffered from world-weariness and took refuge in Rivendell with the sons of Elrond. From here, it is said, he finally passed over the sea to the West. Celebrimbor  Celebrimbor (the name means “Silver Hand”) was a high prince of the Noldor. He was the son of Curufin and, thus, the grandson of Fëanor, but he repudiated his father when Curufin plotted with his brother Celegorm to usurp the throne of Nargothrond in the absence of Finrod. At the end of the First Age, Celebrimbor remained in Middle-earth along with other Noldorian princes when many of the Eldar returned to Valinor at the invitation of the Valar. The last of Fëanor’s descendants in Middle-earth, Celebrimbor inherited some of his grandfather’s skill as a craftsman. Early in the Second Age (in the year 750) he settled with his people in Eregion, the lands west of the dwarfish kingdom of Moria, and the friendship between elves and dwarves was the closest that had ever existed between those two races in Middle-earth. They learned from one another to improve their crafts, and Celebrimbor himself designed the ornamented doors of Moria described in The Fellowship of the Ring. This great curiosity was to be the downfall of the elves of the Eregion, for when Sauron appeared

in disguise among them, promising to teach them new skills, particularly the making of rings, they were intrigued. Ultimately, Celebrimbor’s folk forged the Nine (the rings given to mortal men, the Nazgûl) and the Seven (the rings given to the dwarf lords). With his own hand, Celebrimbor forged the Three elf-rings Narya, Nenya, and Vilya (the rings of fire, water, and air). When Sauron placed the One Ring on his finger, with the intent of holding all others in his power, Celebrimbor immediately became aware of the spell and removed the Three, hiding them away from Sauron’s grasp. When Sauron’s forces invaded Eregion later in the year 1697 of the Second Age, they scattered the Noldor and killed Celebrimbor, but they were unable to regain the Three, nor were they able to capture Moria. Children of Ilúvatar  (Children of Eru, Children of the Earth, Children of the World)  The Children of Ilúvatar—also called the Children of Eru, Children of the Earth, or Children of the World— are the two races of elves and men in Tolkien’s mythology. In the Ainulindalë, these two races are conceived by Ilúvatar in the third movement of the Great Music that creates the world. The elves are the Firstborn, or Elder Children, brought to life under the stars in the time before the creation of the sun and moon. Men—also called the younger Children, the Second-born, or the Followers—are created later, somewhere in the eastern part of Middle-earth, and appear among the elves some 300 years after the Noldor, or High Elves, have returned to Middle-earth from Valinor. Into the dominion of elves and men, Ilúvatar has placed the natural world of Arda, his creation. To elves he has granted life as long as Arda lasts. To men, however, he has given the gift of death, a boon that allows men to transcend the confines of the world. While clearly Ilúvatar intended men and elves to be allies, the enmity of Melkor (later Morgoth) is able to breed distrust between them, since such alliances tend to be quite difficult in practice. Círdan the Shipwright  Círdan is an important secondary character in a number of Tolkien’s works, most notably The Silmarillion. One of

474   Cirth the chief princes of the Sindar, Círdan was lord of the Falas on the western coast of Beleriand during the First Age. The Maia Ossë, a subordinate of Ulmo and steward of the inner seas of Arda, persuaded Círdan and other Teleri to stay in Middle-earth rather than follow the Valar to Valinor. Círdan’s people, who loved the sea, were Arda’s first shipbuilders. He was particularly close to Elwë (Thingol) and to Finrod and his brothers. Indeed, having been forewarned in a dream by Ulmo of the coming destruction of Nargothrond, he attempted to warn Orodreth, who was unfortunately dissuaded from following Círdan’s advice by Túrin Turambar. When the Falas was captured by Morgoth’s forces in the year 474 of the First Age, Círdan and the remnant of elves and Edain who had escaped Morgoth’s grasp took refuge on the Isle of Balar. Here, Círdan eventually built the great ship Vingilot, on which Eärendil sailed to the West to obtain the help of the Valar. After the destruction of Beleriand in the War of Wrath that closed the First Age, Círdan ruled over Lindon (now the westernmost part of Middle-earth) and of the Grey Havens, from which elvish ships periodically set sail for the West and Valinor. During the Second Age, Círdan was one of the keepers of the Three Rings. To him was entrusted Narya, the Ring of Fire, which he gave over into Gandalf’s keeping when the wizard arrived in Middle-earth midway through the Third Age. Under Gil-galad, Círdan was part of the Last Alliance of men and elves that defeated Sauron at the conclusion of the Second Age. In the Third Age, Círdan was an ally of the Dúnedain of Eriador. In the year 1974, Círdan led an army from Lindon into the Battle of Fornost, where, in alliance with King Arvedui of Arthedain, they defeated the Witch-king of Angmar (who was later to become the lord of the Nazgûl). Toward the end of the Third Age, Círdan served on the White Council with Gandalf, Saruman, Elrond, and Galadriel. Throughout the ages of Middleearth, Círdan remained the elves’ shipmaster, and he is said to have finally left Middle-earth during the Fourth Age, on the very last ship that sailed west from the Grey Havens.

Cirth  (Certhas Daeron)  The Cirth, or Certhas Daeron, were letters forming an alphabet devised by the elven scholar Daeron of Doriath, who was loremaster of King Thingol during the First Age. The Cirth were designed to be used in inscriptions, to be carved into wood or stone, rather than written with a pen or brush. In compiling his imaginary Cirth, Tolkien relied on the historical Futhorc— the runic alphabet used in Old Norse and Old ­English inscriptions. In Tolkien’s legendarium, the Sindar seldom used the Cirth but instead adapted the Tengwar script devised by the High Elves in Aman. The Cirth were, however, adopted by the dwarves in the First Age, who used them exclusively for inscriptions in their language, and who spread the alphabet’s use throughout Middle-earth. The men of Rohan and of Dale made use of the Cirth as well. In The Lord of the Rings, the most significant use of the Cirth is seen in the inscription on Balin’s tomb in Moria (Tolkien, Fellowship 333). The Cirth are described in detail, with a chart of each runic letter, in Appendix E of The Return of the King. In Quenya, the Cirth were called certar; in Westron they were called runes. Further Reading Tolkien, J. R. R. The Fellowship of the Ring. Being the First Part of The Lord of the Rings. 2nd ed. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1965. ———. The Return of the King. Being the Third Part of The Lord of the Rings. 2nd ed. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1965.

Coalbiters  (Kolbitar)  The Coalbiters—or, to give them their more proper Old Norse name, the Kolbitar—were members of a loosely formed “club” that Tolkien began in about 1926 and that lasted for some six or seven years during his early years as an Oxford don. He had modeled the group on an earlier group, the Viking Club, which he had formed at the University of Leeds (see Leeds, University of) with E. V. Gordon. The name Coalbiters was derived from the Icelandic term for those who sat so close to the fire that they “bit the coal.” This suggested both the comfortable intimacy of the group and the idea of telling old stories while gathered near a fire.

Coghill, Nevill   475 The purpose of the Coalbiters was to study the language, literature, and mythology of the Old Norse, an important element of medieval literature and culture that Tolkien saw as much neglected in his day. The group met as a seminar several times each term, and at the meetings the members would take turns reading, translating, and discussing passages of Old Icelandic sagas or poetry, working their way through various texts. Members of the group included George Stuart Gordon (president of Magdalen College), C. T. Onions (editor of the Oxford English Dictionary), John Bryson of Balliol College, Nevill Coghill of Exeter College, R. M. Dawkins (professor of Byzantine and Modern Greek), G. E. K. Braunholtz (professor of comparative philology), Bruce MacFarlane (professor of history), and John Fraser (professor of Celtic). By January 1927, drawn by his interest in Northern mythology and possibly his friendship with Gordon, Bryson, and Coghill, the new Fellow of English Language and Literature at Magdalen College, C. S. Lewis, joined the group. Tolkien had met Lewis earlier, but their mutual interest in Old Norse literature now drew them together and helped them form a friendship. Although the Coalbiters group had run its course by about 1932, having read through numerous Norse texts, Tolkien and Lewis, along with a core group of other Coalbiters, went on to form an even more influential group, the Inklings. Codex Regius  See Eldar Edda. Coghill, Nevill  (Nevill Henry Kendal Aylmer Coghill)  (1899–1980)  Nevill Coghill was an Oxford tutor in English and became a member of the Inklings, the informal group that included Tolkien, C. S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Coghill’s good friend Hugo Dyson. Coghill was best known for his translation of The Canterbury Tales, published by Penguin in 1951, and for his theatrical endeavors, which included a musical version of The Canterbury Tales. Coghill was born in County Cork, Ireland, the son of Sir Egerton Bushe Coghill and Elizabeth Hildegarde Augusta Somerville. He was educated at Haileybury College in Hertfordshire and then,

upon graduation, joined the Royal Field Artillery and fought in World War I from 1917 to 1918, attaining the rank of second lieutenant. After the war, Coghill enrolled in Exeter College, Oxford University, attaining a B.A. in 1922 and an M.A. in 1925. Here, in 1919, he first met Tolkien, and he was present as an undergraduate at Exeter’s Essay Club in March 1920 to hear Tolkien read a version of his tale of “The Fall of Gondolin.” After receiving his M.A., Coghill became a fellow of Exeter College and a tutor of English literature, counting W. H. Auden among his students. He married Nora Elspeth in 1927, and the couple had one daughter, Carol, before they divorced in 1933. In the late 1920s, Coghill became a member of the Coalbiters, the group formed by Tolkien to study Old Norse literature and language that also included Lewis and Dyson. In 1937, Coghill became the oldest editor of the Oxford Poetry Journal, and in the late 1930s and 1940s, he became heavily involved in the Oxford University Drama Society, where he became well known for his productions performed in the gardens of Oxford’s colleges. In the late 1930s, with the poet John Masefield, Coghill began the summer festivities that he called the Oxford Diversions, and he was able to convince Tolkien to take part, once to perform Chaucer’s “The Nun’s Priest’s Tale” (in 1938), and the following year to perform “The Reeve’s Tale.” Coghill became so appreciated as a director that he directed a 1945 production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the Haymarket Theatre in London starring John Gielgud, and in 1949 he was highly acclaimed for his Oxford production of The Tempest, in which he built a wooden bridge under the water of Worcester College lake, enabling Ariel to appear to run across the surface of the water. In the meantime, he was translating Langland’s Piers Plowman and Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales for BBC radio broadcasts, later publishing both. His Canterbury Tales translation was acclaimed for making Chaucer’s text accessible to the general public. He also published his critical study The Poet Chaucer in 1949. In 1957, Coghill was named Merton Professor of English Literature for Oxford University, a chair he filled until his retirement in 1966.

476   Cracks of Doom Continuing his theatrical interests after his retirement, Coghill directed Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor in a famous 1966 Oxford production of Christopher Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus. In 1969, he collaborated with Martin Starkie on the West End and Broadway musical production of The Canterbury Tales, which received five Tony nominations. In 1973, he and Starkie collaborated again on a much less successful sequel, The Homeward Ride. Coghill died at the age of 81 in November 1980. Cracks of Doom  See Orodruin. Craigie, W. A.  (William Alexander Craigie)  (1867–1957)  W. A. Craigie was Tolkien’s tutor in Old Norse at Oxford University, and he was also instrumental in finding the newly graduated Tolkien a position with the Oxford English Dictionary in 1918. Craigie was also the Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon at Oxford from 1916 to 1925, when Tolkien succeeded him. Craigie was a Scot, born in Dundee on August 13, 1867, and educated at the University of St. Andrews. He completed his education at Balliol and Oriel colleges in Oxford, and also studied Scandinavian languages in Copenhagen. From 1893 to 1897, Craigie taught at St. Andrews, then returned to Oxford to assist James A. H. Murray and Henry Bradley on the staff of the Oxford English Dictionary, becoming the project’s third editor in 1901. He continued to work on the dictionary until 1933. He joined the Taylor Institution, Oxford, in 1905 as a lecturer in Scandinavian languages, a position he held until 1916, and it was in this capacity that he tutored the undergraduate Tolkien. During this time, he also published the books The Religion of Ancient Scandinavia (1906) and Icelandic Sagas (1913). Subsequently, he assumed the chair of Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon, and in 1923 he produced a textbook of Easy Readings in Anglo-Saxon (1923). Craigie left Oxford in 1925 to accept a position as professor of English at the University of Chicago, where he was also editor of the Dictionary of American English on Historical Principles. He wrote A Study of American English in 1927 and began publication of A Dictionary of the Older Scottish Tongue

in 1931. In 1952, Craigie published Specimens of the Icelandic Metrical Romances. He died in Oxfordshire on September 2, 1957. Cuiviénen  The bay called Cuiviénen (the Quenya, or elvish, word for “Water of Awakening”) was located in the far eastern part of Middle-earth, on the east shore of the inland sea called Helcar and at the foot of the Eastern Mountains called the Orocarni. Here, in the First Age of Middle-earth, the Firstborn of Ilúvatar, the elves, first awakened, beginning their existence on Arda. When the elves awakened, the first things they saw were the stars (in Tolkien’s mythology, this occurred before the creation of the sun and moon). Thus, the elves always loved the stars and were especially devoted to Elentári (“Star-Queen”), their name for Varda, the Vala who made the stars. The elves lived near the shore of Cuiviénen during the early years of existence, until Oromé appeared to them and invited them to make the long journey to Valinor. After the ambassadors Ingwë, Finwë, and Elwë traveled to Valinor to see what it was like, they were able to persuade most of their kinsmen to follow Oromé on the long journey westward, and the elves left Cuiviénen, the bay of their origin. The story of the waking of the Firstborn is told in chapter 3 of The Silmarillion. Tolkien composed a more detailed version of the elves’ awakening in about 1959, entitled Cuiviénenyarna or “The Legend of the Awakening of the Quendi.” In this version, which Tolkien styled as an elvish fairy story, the elves awaken in pairs, beginning with Imin (whose name means “First”), who awakens next to his wife, Iminyé, and continuing through Tata (“Second”) and his wife, Tatié, to Enel (“Third”) and his wife, Enelyé. As these six elves begin to walk through the Wild Wood that surrounds the shore of Cuiviénen, they come across more pairs of elves—an initial group of 12 whom Imin chooses to be his comrades, a second group of 18 whom Tata selects as his folk, and a third of 24 whom Enel claims. As they travel deeper into the woods, Tata claims another group of 36 tall elves to follow him, and Enel takes a group of 48 elves whom he finds singing in the woods. Imin had hoped to find a sixth group more

Cynewulf   477 numerous still, but there are no other elves to be found. Imin and his group ultimately become the elves known as the Vanyar, while Tata’s people form the elves known as the Noldor, and Enel’s folk become the Teleri. In this version, Ingwë, Finwë, and Elwë are not the patriarchs of their kindreds but, rather, their ultimate leaders on the great journey westward. This story was published in 1994 by Christopher Reuel Tolkien in volume 11 of The History of Middle-earth, The War of the Jewels (420–424). Further Reading Tolkien, J. R. R. The War of the Jewels. Vol. 11 of The History of Middle-earth. Edited by Christopher Tolkien. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1994.

Cullis, Colin  (1892–1919)  Colin Cullis was one of Tolkien’s closest friends during his student days at Exeter College, Oxford University, where both men began as classicists. In their freshman year (1912), Cullis and Tolkien formed the group called the Apolausticks, a word designating those who were “devoted to having a good time.” The group’s activities included discussion and debate as well as hosting sumptuous dinners. Cullis and Tolkien also participated in the Exeter College Essay Club and were officers in the Stapeldon Society, Exeter’s debating club, revising the constitution of the organization in January 1914. They also started another social club together, called the Chequers Club, which met on Saturday nights for dinner in Tolkien’s college rooms or in Cullis’s. When Tolkien returned to Oxford for the new term in autumn 1914, he found that most of his friends had already joined the armed forces following the outbreak of war with Germany. Cullis, however, had been declared unfit for service due to poor health. Tolkien had found that he could train as an officer while finishing his degree, and he decided to take this route. He and Cullis then moved out of their college rooms and took a flat together on St. John Street in Oxford. Tolkien completed his degree in 1915 and joined the Lancashire Fusiliers. Cullis remained in London during the war and worked as an interpreter. Spared the dangers of the battlefield because of his health,

Cullis nevertheless died during the influenza pandemic of 1919, shortly after Tolkien left the army in July. Cynewulf  (ca. 770–ca. 840)  The Old English poet Cynewulf was the author of at least four poems composed in the late eighth and early ninth centuries: Christ II (or The Ascension) and Juliana in the manuscript known as the Exeter Book, and The Fates of the Apostles and Elene in the Vercelli Book. Cynewulf was a Christian poet who used the meter and style of Anglo-Saxon heroic poetry to tell the Christian story. Nothing is known about him aside from his name, which is included in the epilogues of these four poems, spelled out in runes. The poet was apparently from Northumbria or Mercia, since his dialect is Anglian, typical of those two areas. His poems typically treat at the lives of Christ or his apostles or saints as models of living morally in anticipation of coming judgment. In Tolkien’s time, Cynewulf was also thought to be the author of the Exeter Book’s Christ I (also known as the “Advent Lyrics”). Tolkien came across this poem in 1913, after transferring his course of study from classical studies to the English school, where he could focus on philology. Tolkien was arrested by the line in the poem that read “Eala Earendel engla beorhtast” (“Earendel brightest of angels”), and the following summer he wrote a poem that described Earendel the evening star, who sailed his ship across the night sky. This poem marked the beginning of Tolkien’s construction of his personal mythology. In addition to Christ I, Cynewulf has been claimed as the author of various other Old ­English poems, including The Dream of the Rood, The Phoenix, and Andreas. But modern scholars only accept the four poems that appear to include his runic signature. There is even some question as to whether Cynewulf existed at all, or whether his name is some sort of pen name created as a kind of game by a group of poets. There is presently no way to determine the truth. Further Reading Olsen, Alexander Hennessey. “Cynewulf.” In Old and Middle English Literature, edited by Jeffrey Helter-

478  Dagnall, Susan man and Jerome Mitchell, 51–61. Detroit: Gale Research, 1994. Sisam, Kenneth. “Cynewulf and His Poetry.” Proceedings of the British Academy 18 (1932): 1–28.

Dagnall, Susan  (Margery Kathleen Mary Dagnall)  (1910–1952)  Susan Dagnall was an editorial employee at George Allen & Unwin when she procured the manuscript of Tolkien’s The Hobbit and helped to launch his literary career. Dagnall had studied English at Oxford and was acquainted with Tolkien’s disciple, the graduate student Elaine Griffiths when both were members of the Society of Oxford Home Students, an organization for Oxford’s women students, who had first been awarded degrees in 1920. Dagnall began working as a volunteer at Allen & Unwin upon graduation in 1933, and she worked her way into a full-time job after about six months. In 1936, she was head of the advertising department at Allen & Unwin, but she did editorial work for the firm as well and was in Oxford to meet Elaine Griffiths concerning a revision that the publisher was planning for John R. Clark-Hall’s 1911 translation of Beowulf. Griffiths had been recommended for the task by her mentor, Tolkien. Presumably Dagnall learned from Griffiths about the children’s book that Tolkien had been circulating among his friends. Dagnall was able to borrow the still incomplete book from Tolkien and, having read it, convinced him that the book was worth publishing. She brought it back to her firm, placing it in the hands of the publisher Stanley Unwin, who would make the final decision as to the book’s publication. Dagnall continued to work for Allen & Unwin for several years, and she continued to work with Tolkien; it was she who received the first chapters of The Lord of the Rings. She left the firm when she married Richard Grindle to become a full-time wife and mother. Dagnall was killed in an automobile accident in Weybridge in 1952, two years before the publication of The Fellowship of the Ring. Dagorlad, Battle of  See Battle of Dagorlad. Davidman, Joy (Helen Joy Davidman Gresham)  (1915–1960)  Joy Davidman was the wife of C. S.

Lewis, whom she married in 1956. Davidman was an American poet and a divorcée, whose relationship with Lewis seems to have been at least partially responsible for an estrangement in the relationship between the two writers after the mid-1950s. Born on April 18, 1915, Davidman was the daughter of a secular middle-class family of New York Jews and was well educated and well off during the Great Depression. She enrolled in Hunter College in New York at the age of 15 and completed her M.A. at Columbia University before she was 20, subsequently taking a teaching position at Roosevelt High School. Her experiences during the depression and her impressions of the Spanish civil war made her lose faith in the capitalist system, and she began to study Marxist thought. She joined the Communist Party in 1938, publishing her first book of poetry, Letter to a Comrade, in the same year. Davidman won the Yale Younger Poets Award for this book and shared the 1939 Loines Memorial Award with Robert Frost. As Davidman developed professionally over the next several years, she worked as a screenwriter for MGM; wrote for the communist periodical New Masses; and published a novel, Anya, in 1940. She was instrumental in the publication of the antifascist anthology War Poems of the United Nations in 1943, and in 1950 she published the novel Weeping Bay. Meanwhile, in 1942 she had married the writer William Lindsay Gresham, with whom she had two children, David and Douglas. But the marriage was deeply troubled, Gresham’s alcoholism and infidelity leading eventually to their divorce in the early 1950s. By this time, Davidman had begun reading some of C. S. Lewis’s theological works. In her 1951 essay “The Longest Way Around,” she discusses her conversion from atheism to Christianity, largely due to Lewis’s influence. She began to correspond with him, and after her divorce, she moved to ­England, where she became Lewis’s close intellectual friend. In 1956, Lewis agreed to marry Davidman in a civil ceremony in order to allow her to stay living in England. Their relationship continued to become closer, until it was discovered that Davidman was suffering from bone cancer. She and Lewis were married in a Church of England ceremony

Davis, Norman   479 in Davidman’s hospital room on March 21, 1957. Davidman rallied from the disease for a time, but she ultimately succumbed on July 13, 1960. She was 45 years old. Lewis, devastated by her death, published A Grief Observed in 1961 under a pseudonym—a text that explores his loss and the questions of faith that it created. Tolkien was, apparently, confused by Lewis’s relationship with Davidman. In part, his Catholic sensibilities probably objected to her divorced status. But, as Humphrey Carpenter suggests, he may also have been resentful of having to share Lewis’s time with her, particularly since in his younger years, the bachelor Lewis “had liked to ignore the fact that his friends had wives to go home to” (Carpenter 237). Still, Tolkien seems to have sympathized with Lewis’s domestic grief over his wife’s illness, a sympathy that can be seen in a letter he wrote to Katherine Ferrer on the very day of Lewis’s wedding at Davidman’s bedside: I believe you have been much concerned with the trouble of poor Jack Lewis. Of these I know little beyond the cautious hints of the extremely discreet Havard [R. E. Havard, a doctor and member of the Inklings]. When I see Jack he naturally takes refuge in “literary” talk (for which no domestic griefs and anxieties have yet dimmed his enthusiasm). (Letters 256).

Further Reading Carpenter, Humphrey. Tolkien: A Biography. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1977. Tolkien, J. R. R. The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien. Edited by Humphrey Carpenter. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1981.

Davis, Norman  (1913–1989)  Norman Davis was Tolkien’s student and ultimately his successor as Merton Professor of English Language and Literature at Oxford University. Davis was born in Dunedin, the second-largest city on the south island of New Zealand, and the principal city of the Otago region. He attended the Otago Boys’ High School from 1926 to 1929, and went on to earn an M.A. degree from the University of Otago, New Zealand’s oldest university, in 1933. In 1934,

he received a Rhodes scholarship to continue his study of English at Merton College, Oxford University, where he studied medieval language and literature under Tolkien, who considered him one of the best students he had taught and who became a lifelong friend. Davis obtained a second B.A. at Merton in 1936, and subsequently a diploma in comparative philology. Upon leaving Merton, he lectured in English at Kaunas University in Lithuania in 1937, and at Sofia University in Bulgaria beginning in 1938. When World War II broke out, Davis was named assistant press attaché in the British Legation in Sofia because of his knowledge of the country and his talent for languages (ultimately he is purported to have spoken some 16 languages)— qualities for which he was recruited as a covert operative for British intelligence. In this capacity, Davis was forced to leave the country, and in 1941 he was condemned to death in absentia by the Bulgarian government, but he continued his covert work under an assumed name in Istanbul. He was successful in safely evacuating the leader of the Bulgarian resistance movement, Gregori Dimitrov, from the country. For this, Davis was made an MBE (Member of the Order of the British Empire) in 1945. Davis married Magdelene (Lena) Bone in 1944, and at the conclusion of the war, he returned to academia, lecturing at the University of London and then at Oxford (where he tutored Rayner Unwin) before being appointed professor at Glasgow University in Scotland in 1949. He taught at Glasgow for 10 years until he was appointed Merton Professor of English Language and Literature to succeed Tolkien in 1959. After Tolkien’s retirement, Davis and Lena had a regular weekly lunch date with Tolkien and his wife, Edith Bratt Tolkien. As a scholar, Davis became a highly respected authority on medieval English literature. He revised Tolkien and E. V. Gordon’s standard edition of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight in 1967. His most significant contribution was his edition of the Paston family letters, some 900 letters from three generations of a 15th-century ­English family published in 1971. With C. L. Wrenn, he

480  Dawkins, R. M also edited the Festschrift English and Medieval Studies Presented to J. R. R. Tolkien on the Occasion of his Seventieth Birthday in 1962, contributing his own essay, “Man and Monsters at Sutton Hoo,” to the collection. Davis edited the Review of English Studies for many years, and as honorary director of the Early English Text Society, he was finally able to get Tolkien to finish his long-delayed edition of the Ancrene Wisse for the society’s publication. Davis’s wife, Lena, his closest companion, died in 1983. In 1984, Davis returned to Otago to receive an honorary degree of doctor of literature. He died in Oxford on December 2, 1989. Dawkins, R. M. (Richard MacGillivray Dawkins)  (1871–1955)  R. M. Dawkins held the Bywater and Sotheby Chair of Byzantine and Modern Greek Language and Literature at Oxford University from 1920 until his retirement in 1939. Born on October 24, 1871, he had studied engineering in London before obtaining a fellowship to read classics at Emmanuel College, Cambridge University, and then studied dialectology at the British School of Archaeology at Athens, becoming director of that school from 1906 to 1914 and overseeing a number of important archaeological digs. During World War I, he worked for British intelligence on the Greek island of Crete. Dawkins published his first book, Modern Greek in Asia Minor, in 1916. He later published Modern Greek Folk-Tales (1953), More Greek Folk-Tales (1955), and an edition of the Byzantine Chronicle of Makhairas (1932). Upon his retirement, he was made an honorary fellow of Exeter College, and he lived in rooms there until his death at 83 on May 4, 1955. Tolkien was most familiar with Dawkins as a member of the Coalbiters, the group he had formed in 1926 to read Old Norse. Dawkins, a skilled linguist, knew Sanskrit, German, Italian, Irish, and Finnish as well as Greek, and reportedly was second only to Tolkien among the Coalbiters in his facility with Old Norse. He also was Tolkien’s colleague on the Committee for Comparative Philology. In a letter to Stanley Unwin dated October 15, 1937, after the publication of The Hobbit, Tolkien wrote of the book’s reception at Oxford, sug-

gesting that a review of the novel in the Times (London) had “convinced one or two of my more sedate colleagues that they could admit knowledge of my ‘fantasy’ (i.e. indiscretion) without loss of academic dignity. The professor of Byzantine Greek [Dawkins] bought a copy, ‘because first editions of “Alice” are now very valuable’ ” (25). Further Reading Tolkien, J. R. R. The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien. Edited by Humphrey Carpenter. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1981.

Dol Guldur A fortress built on a rocky hill in the southwestern part of Greenwood the Great, Dol Guldur (whose name means “Hill of Darkness” in Sindarin) was built by Sauron about midway through the Third Age of Middle-earth. Once the Dark Lord had occupied the tower, it was engulfed in dark clouds, and evil creatures began to terrorize the forest, whose name was subsequently changed to Mirkwood. The White Council (which included the Istari, or wizards, as well as the chiefs of the Eldar) became aware of the evil, but they assumed that one of the Nazgûl had taken possession of the place. The master of Dol Guldur was known as the Necromancer. The council had no suspicion that Sauron himself was growing in power. Nor did Sauron wish to be known. When Gandalf found his way into Dol Guldur in the year 2063 of the Third Age, Sauron escaped detection and fled into the East. Some 400 years later, however, he returned even more powerful than before. Finally, Gandalf again entered the tower in the year 2850, and there he found the imprisoned dwarf Thrain (father of Thorin Oakenshield and heir to the dwarvish Kingdom Under the Mountain east of Mirkwood, as recounted in The Hobbit). It was then that Gandalf discovered the real identity of the Necromancer was, in fact, the resurgent Sauron himself. Armed with this knowledge, Gandalf urged the White Council to crush Dol Guldur before Sauron became too strong. But Saruman the White, head of the council, cautioned them against such action, and the White Council did nothing until the year 2941, when

dragons   481 they finally forced Sauron from Mirkwood. By then, however, Sauron’s power was great, and he moved into Mordor, where he was unassailable, and from where he sent members of the Nazgûl to refortify Dol Guldur. From Mordor, Sauron was able to launch attacks on the elves’ kingdom of Lórien during the War of the Ring, but three times those assaults were turned back. After the destruction of Mordor, Celeborn and Galadriel led an army of elves against Dol Guldur and destroyed the tower. Doriath Doriath (the name means “Land of the Fence” or “Girdle”) was the great hidden kingdom of the Grey-elves during the First Age of Middle-earth. It was established in the forest of Neldoreth in the ancient land of Beleriand by Thingol (i.e., Elwë), lord of the Teleri, who had fallen in love with the Maia Melian and remained in Middle-earth rather than sailing for Valinor with the other Eldar. The land was bordered on the north by the great valley of Nan Dungortheb and included the woods of Region and of Nivrim (called the “West March”), as well as the fortified Caves of Menegroth in the East. To protect their realm of Doriath from the forces of the evil Morgoth, Melian created a protective barrier called the Girdle of Melian to surround all of Neldoreth. Thus, Doriath remained separate and uninvolved in the wars of the First Age, since no one could enter or leave the kingdom without the permission of Thingol or Melian. Upon hearing of the slaughter of the Teleri at Alqualondë, the furious Thingol further isolated his realm from many of the Noldor by forbidding any elves of the house of Fëanor to enter his kingdom. Only those of Finarfin’s kindred were welcome, because of their descent from Thingol’s kinswoman Eärwen; thus, Finarfin’s daughter Galadriel spent many years as a guest of Melian in Doriath. Thingol also forbade the use of the Quenya tongue—the language of the Noldor—within his realm, so that Sindarin became the common language of the Eldar in Middle-earth. Further, having had a disturbing dream concerning men, Thingol prohibited any of the Edain from crossing into Doriath as well.

That prohibition was broken by Beren, lone survivor of a group of outlaws from the First House of the Edain who had waged guerrilla warfare against Morgoth’s forces. Beren loved Thingol and Melian’s daughter Lúthien, and ultimately delivered to Thingol the outrageous bride-price he asked for her: one of the Silmarils from the iron crown of Morgoth himself. The Silmaril ultimately proved to be the bane of Doriath, however, for Thingol was murdered by visiting dwarves from Nogrod who wanted the Silmaril for themselves. The dwarves were subsequently killed making their way back to Nogrod by avenging elves from Doriath, who brought the Silmaril back to Melian. The dwarves made war on Doriath, but Melian, unable to remain in Middle-earth without Thingol, returned to Valinor and thus removed the protective Girdle from the hidden kingdom. Doriath was sacked by the dwarves, who also took back the Silmaril. Beren and Lúthien and an army of Green-elves slaughtered the dwarves and retrieved the great jewel. Their son Dior eventually moved in to rule Doriath, but the kindred of Fëanor demanded that the Silmaril be given to them. When Dior refused, Celegorm attacked Doriath with a host of Noldor. Many elves on both sides were killed— after Alqualondë, the second occasion of elf slaying elf—but Dior’s daughter Elwing fled with the Silmaril to the mouth of the river Sirion. Doriath was left deserted, its remaining inhabitants following Elwing to the Sirion. dragons  (drakes, Great Worms) Dragons (also called drakes or “Great Worms”) were evil creatures of Middle-earth, apparently created by Morgoth during the First Age, after he had returned to his fortress of Angband with the stolen Silmarils. Of course, Tolkien modeled his dragons on those he knew from Old English and Old Norse literature, in particular the fire-breathing serpent of Beowulf and the great dragon Fafnir, who was great and powerful, with an impenetrable hide, and was killed by Sigurd’s sword thrust into his soft underbelly. Tolkien’s dragons are malicious, large, powerful, intelligent, and devious. With the dragons of

482  Dúnedain medieval literature, they share the quality of avarice: They love to obtain and sit upon hoards of treasure, guarding against any intruder who might steal anything from them. Considering Fafnir and the Beowulf dragon, Tolkien seems to have conceived of three separate types of dragons for Middle-earth. The earliest of these were the fire drakes of Urulóki, and the father of all these dragons was Glaurung, the villainous worm in the story of Túrin Turambar. Glaurung was a fire-breathing dragon but could not fly (thus resembling the Beowulf worm). He was cunning and could twist the mind of anyone that looked into his eyes or listened to his seductive voice. Like Sigurd, Túrin was able to kill Glaurung with a thrust to his belly. Tolkien also seems to have depicted “cold drakes”—wellarmored dragons that were huge and powerful but could not spew fire. These lived exclusively in Ered Mithrin, the Grey Mountains north of Mirkwood, where they harassed the dwarves. The third strain of dragon was the flying variety. Morgoth bred these creatures specifically for the Great Battle that occurred at the end of the First Age, in which he released them and for a time turned the tide of that battle. The most famous of these flying, fire-breathing serpents was Ancalagon the Black, who was slain by Eärendil the Mariner in the Great Battle. His fall in that battle crushed the mountainous tower of Thangorodrim. Subsequently, flying dragons passed out of history until the Third Age, when they reappeared in the North. One of these was Scatha, who guarded a great hoard of dwarves’ treasure in the Grey Mountains and was ultimately slain by Fram, the lord of Éothéod. But the most famous was Smaug, who drove the dwarves from Erebor and their Lonely Mountain in the year 2770 of the Third Age, and guarded their treasure hoard until he was slain by Bard in 2941, as related in The Hobbit. Dúnedain  The word Dúnedain means “Men of the West” in the Sindarin language. The Dúnedain were the men of Númenor, and the folk of Middle-earth descended from them, including the Rangers of the North and the men of Gondor in the Third Age of Middle-earth.

After the defeat of Morgoth at the end of the First Age, the Valar sought to reward the Edain, the elf friends among men who had aided the Eldar in their war against Morgoth. Thus, the island of Númenor in the ocean west of Middleearth was given to the Edain, and early in the Second Age, most of them sailed to Númenor and settled there. From the beginning, the Númenóreans were a nobler race than most other men, partly because of the elven blood of their kings: The first king of Númenor was Elros, the half-elven brother of Elrond, who had chosen a mortal life in contrast with his brother. The realm of Númenor lasted for some 3,000 years, during which the Númenóreans became more and more powerful, but through their own arrogance and through the wiles of Morgoth’s former lieutenant, Sauron, Númenor became corrupt and rebellious against the Valar, and for their presumption, their island was destroyed and sunk under the sea. A remnant of faithful Númenóreans escaped the deluge, however, and, led by Elendil the Tall, sailed east to settle in Middleearth again. In Middle-earth, the Dúnedain established the kingdoms of Arnor in the North (whose king was Elendil’s son Isildur) and Gondor in the South (whose king was Anarion, Elendil’s other son), called the Númenórean Realms in Exile. Over the centuries, however, Arnor was divided and finally overthrown by the armies of Sauron. The Dúnedain of Eriador in the North were reduced to wandering Rangers who acted as a kind of guerrilla force protecting the area from the wiles of Sauron. Gondor, however, survived the centuries, though the line of kings descended from Anarion failed. Isildur’s line, though, remained intact, so that Aragorn could, at the end of the Third Age, claim the throne of Gondor as true king of the Dúnedain. The Dúnedain’s language was Westron, the tongue of Númenor. But the faithful of Númenor and their true Dúnedain descendants always remembered their kinship and friendship with the Eldar, and many were comfortable speaking Sindarin as well. Some even knew Quenya, the ancient tongue of the Noldor and of traditional elvish lore.

dwarves   483 Durin I  (Durin the Deathless) Durin was the oldest of the Seven Fathers of the race of dwarves. When he was awakened at the birth of his kind, Durin made his way to Azanulbizar, the great valley between two eastern arms of the Misty Mountains. He explored the area and gave it its name, as well as naming the glassy lake of Kheled-zâram. In that lake, he saw reflected the seven stars that came to be known as “Durin’s Crown” (identified with the modern Big Dipper), which could be seen in the lake even in the daylight. Above the lake, in the caves of the Misty Mountains, he began the construction of Khazad-dûm (which the elves called Moria), greatest of all the realms of his people. Durin lived to such an advanced age that his people called him Durin the Deathless. The dwarves also believed in his return, and the five successors of Durin as head of his people, Durin’s folk, were so much like him that they were all named Durin as well, a further indication of his deathless quality. Durin’s folk  (Longbeards) Durin’s folk, who traced their origins to Durin I, eldest of the founding fathers of the race of dwarves, were the most numerous and powerful of their race through the first two ages of Middle-earth. Also known as the “Longbeards,” they were known for their lengthy facial hair, which for them symbolized wisdom and seniority, and which they often wore forked and tucked into their belts. Durin’s folk had their home in Khazad-dûm, where they grew in power and wealth through the mining of the valuable silver called mithril, and through their contact with the Noldor, or Eregion, who called the dwarves’ home Moria. Their friendship with the elves led to their participation in the Last Alliance of elves and men, which ended the Second Age of Middle-earth. Durin’s folk continued to prosper well into the Third Age, but a great Balrog ultimately drove them from Khazad-dûm, and they were divided, settling ultimately in mines in the Grey Mountains and the Iron Hills, and temporarily prospering in Erebor, in a kingdom under the Lonely Mountain, until they were driven from there by the great

dragon Smaug. That kingdom was reestablished in the year 2941 of the Third Age after the death of Smaug. The kings of Durin’s folk possessed the only one of the Seven Rings of Power that still survived into the Third Age, and as a result, they were the particular targets of Sauron, who desperately wanted to regain the ring. Sauron ultimately recovered the ring after capturing and imprisoning Thrain in his fortress of Dol Guldur. dwarves  One of the major races among the free people of Middle-earth, the dwarves were originally created by the Vala Aulë the Smith, who was impatient for the awakening of the Children of Ilúvatar. At first, the dwarves were soulless, puppet-like creatures, but in his mercy, Ilúvatar recognized and blessed the dwarves, and they became beings with a free will. However, the Seven Fathers of the dwarves were put to sleep until after the awakening of the elves. When the dwarves awoke, they formed into seven kindred, each with its own king. The greatest cities of the dwarves were Nogrod and Belegost in the Blue Mountains to the north, and Khazad-dûm (which the elves called Moria) in the Misty Mountains to the southeast. Dwarves took after their maker and, like Aulë, became great craftsmen, and were most interested in the riches of the earth—gold, silver, stone, and gems—and thus were most often miners and smiths. They tended to love treasure for its own sake. They were quick to anger and often stubborn and ungenerous, though they got along well with the Noldor, sharing their interest in craftsmanship. Dwarves were hardy and short (four to five feet tall), usually wearing beards and wielding axes in battle. They spoke Khuzdul, a secret language among themselves, but spoke Sindarin or Westron when dealing with other races. They called themselves Khazâd, which was the name Aulë had given them. To the elves of the First Age, they were known as Naugrim (the “fire people”). The ultimate fate of the dwarves is unknown. The elves believed that dwarves had no existence beyond Middle-earth and died when their bodies did. The dwarves themselves, however, had faith that Aulë would save them and finally bring them

484  Dyson, Hugo into the halls of Mandos to share the fate of the Children of Ilúvatar. Dyson, Hugo  (Henry Victor Dyson)  (1896– 1975)  Hugo Dyson was a member of the Inklings and a fairly close friend of Tolkien and of C. S. Lewis. Like Tolkien, Dyson had served in the trenches in World War I, and he went on to read English at Exeter College, Oxford University, where he first met Tolkien in 1919. He was present with another future Inkling, Nevill Coghill, at Exeter’s Essay Club in March 1920, when Tolkien read an early version of his “Fall of Gondolin” tale to the society. Having obtained his B.A. in 1921 and his B.Litt. in 1924, Dyson was appointed to teach at the University of Reading, where he remained for more than 20 years. During this time, Dyson often visited Oxford, lecturing in university extension courses and occasionally joining in meetings of the Inklings. He was a particular friend of Lewis’s brother W. H. “Warnie” Lewis. Most famously, it was Dyson who, having joined Lewis and Tolkien for dinner at Magdalen College on the evening of Saturday 19, 1931, spent most of the evening supporting Tolkien in an argument with Lewis about the nature of myth and the Christian story of the Crucifixion. Lewis had declared that he saw nothing significant that the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ added to Christianity, while Tolkien and Dyson argued that the story of Christ deserved the same unquestioning appreciation as the great myths Lewis admired, and asserted that, just as language was a means of expressing ideas, myth was a means of codifying truth. In a letter to Arthur Greeves composed some 12 days later, Lewis attributed his conversion to Christianity largely to this conversation (Carpenter, Tolkien 146–147). In 1945, Merton College named Dyson a fellow and tutor of English literature, and he came to Oxford permanently. Charles Williams had died that year, but Dyson’s arrival in Oxford in some ways reinvigorated the Inklings. He was a boisterous, animated, and vociferous conversationalist who loved to debate and to dominate a conversation, and who preferred talk to the literary readings that were part of the Inklings’ meetings. He is pur-

ported to have interrupted Tolkien’s reading from the manuscript of The Lord of the Rings with a cry of “Oh God, not another elf!” Still, Tolkien seems to have been fond of Dyson, though he does characterize him as “noisy” on two separate occasions in his letters (Letters 83, 128). Dyson was well respected as a scholar, although, like Tolkien, he produced only a small quantity of scholarly work. He is best known for his Augustans and Romantics, 1689–1839, coauthored with John Butt and others in 1940; and for his lecture The Emergence of Shakespeare’s Tragedy, delivered to the British Academy in 1950 and published two years later. His reputation as a Shakespearean led to his hosting televised performances of Shakespeare’s plays in the early 1960s, and his appealing screen presence resulted in an offer to portray the character of the renowned literary scholar Walter Southgate in the acclaimed film Darling in 1965— Dyson’s only film credit. Dyson retired from Merton College in 1963 and moved to 32 Sandfield Road in Headington, a suburb east of Oxford, where he lived until his death in 1975. This is significant because between 1959 and 1968 Ronald and Edith Bratt Tolkien lived on the same street, at 76 Sandfield Road. Dyson is buried in Holywell Cemetery in Oxford, not far from fellow Inkling Charles Williams. Further Reading Carpenter, Humphrey. Tolkien: A Biography. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1977. Tolkien, J. R. R. The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien. Edited by Humphrey Carpenter. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1995.

Eagle and Child  The Eagle and Child is a pub located at 48/49 St. Giles’ Street, Oxford, and is famous as a favorite meeting place for Tolkien, C. S. Lewis, and other members of the Inklings during the period from 1939 through 1962. The group would meet regularly on Tuesday mornings for a drink and chat before lunch in the Rabbit Room, located in the back of the pub. A muchphotographed plaque commemorating the Inklings hangs on the wall in the Rabbit Room, along with other memorabilia (including a napkin signed by

Eagle and Child   485

Sign for the English pub the Eagle and Child, where Tolkien and his fellow Inklings met from 1939 to 1962  (Photo by Gunnar Bach Pedersen)

Tolkien, Lewis, and others, commemorating their drinking the barkeep’s health). The building housing the Eagle and Child was built in the 16th century, and until very recently it was owned by University College. It has functioned as a pub since at least 1650 and has been known as the Eagle and Child since 1684, when the proprietor, Richard Platt, was granted permission to hang a sign depicting an eagle carrying a child in the manner depicted on the crest of the earl of Derby. The sign and crest are probably an allusion to the Greek myth of Ganymede being borne off by Zeus in the form of an eagle, but the unusual combination did inspire the Inklings to nickname the pub the “Bird and Baby.” Tolkien mentions the “Bird and Baby” in several letters, and the following passage from a letter to his son Christopher Tolkien in 1944, mentioning Charles Williams as well as C. S. Lewis and his brother, W. H. “Warnie” Lewis, gives a sense of the tone and camaraderie of the place in those days:

On Tuesday at noon I look in at the Bird and B. with C. Williams. There to my surprise I found Jack and Warnie already ensconced. (For the present the beer shortage is over, and the inns are almost habitable again.) The conversation was pretty lively—though I cannot remember any of it now, except C.S.L.’s story of an elderly lady that he knows. (Letters 95)

In 1962, Tolkien and his fellows apparently shifted their allegiance and began to meet across the street at the Lamb and Flag pub instead, but it is still the Eagle and Child that draws the most sightseers in Oxford. In 2004, the building was put up for sale and was bought by St. John’s College, which also now owns the Lamb and Flag. Further Reading Tolkien, J. R. R. The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien. Edited by Humphrey Carpenter. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1995.

486   eagles eagles  The eagles are the greatest of the birds of Middle-earth. Conceived of as much larger than eagles of the contemporary world, the great eagles of Tolkien’s legendarium were created by Yavanna and Manwë prior to the awakening of the elves, and they were directed to aid the Children of Ilúvatar in their battle against Morgoth in the First Age. The eagles could live for hundreds of years, and they could easily carry humans in their great talons. Led by their chief, Thorondor, they nested in the mountains south of the elven kingdom of Gondolin and protected that realm from Morgoth’s spies for much of that age. They also fought against the Dark Lord’s dragons in the Great Battle that ended the First Age. During the Second Age, they flew to Númenor to warn the men of the coming destruction. In the Third Age, the great eagles nested in the Misty Mountains and were led by a great new chief, Gwaihir. They were devoted to aiding the Istari, particularly Gandalf, in their struggle against Sauron. It seems clear that Tolkien associated the eagles with his concept of eucatastrophe—the sudden, unlooked-for gift of grace that brings about the happy ending of the fairy story, as he wrote in his well-known 1939 lecture “On Fairy-Stories.” The fact that they were sacred to the Valar (the angelic beings, like Yavanna, who acted as stewards of Middle-earth), and the fact that they could appear suddenly and without warning in the literal heavens, made them ideal for this purpose. Thus, in The Silmarillion, Thorondor saves Fingon and Maedhros from Thangorodrim, and he rescues Beren and Lúthien as they flee from Angband. Gwaihir rescues Gandalf, Thorin, Bilbo, and the other dwarves from orcs in The Hobbit, and he brings his eagles in like a cavalry to aid in the Battle of the Five Armies at the end of that book. In The Lord of the Rings, he rescues Gandalf from Orthanc and arrives to help in the battle before the Black Gates. Most important, he and his companions save Frodo and Sam from the Cracks of Doom and the destruction of Mordor. Easterlings  The tribes of men living in the eastern part of Middle-earth—that is, outside of the chief areas of Tolkien’s legendary civilizations of

elves and men—were called Easterlings. Tolkien uses the term for the men who entered Beleriand in the First Age, some having been lured there by Morgoth. Unlike the three houses of the Edain, the Easterlings were not elf friends, and they were described as short, broad, and dark, or “swarthy.” In his essay “Of Dwarves and Men,” Tolkien notes that the dwarves were familiar with the Easterlings before elves had met men, and therefore Easterling speech showed a kinship with the language of dwarves (Peoples 296). In The Silmarillion, Maedhros planned an attack on Morgoth and forged a union that consisted of some of his own kinsmen, some of the dwarves of Belegost, and men from Brethil as well as from the House of Hador (led by Huor and Húrin). To these he added two captains of the Easterlings, Ulfang and Bór. Although Bór’s forces remained faithful to their alliance, Ulfang’s son Uldor betrayed Maedhros by delaying his attack with false information and then, in the battle itself, attacked Maedhros’s forces from behind as they faced the armies of Morgoth. The result was the terrible defeat that the elves named Nirnaeth Arnoediad (Battle of Unnumbered Tears). Huor and his men were killed, and Húrin was imprisoned. The Easterlings who had helped Morgoth in the battle were given territory in Beleriand to rule, and Dor-lómin, the homeland of the House of Hador, was ruled over by the Easterling Brodda, who abused the remnant of Húrin’s people and married Aerin, Húrin’s kinswoman, in order to give himself a rightful claim to the country. Húrin’s son, Túrin, returned to slay Brodda, however, and ultimately the Easterlings in Beleriand were destroyed in the Great Battle with the Valar that ended the First Age. Tolkien also uses the term Easterlings to describe some of the men who allied themselves with Sauron in the Third Age. The host of Mordor that overran Osgiliath, invaded Gondor, and besieged Minas Tirith at the Battle of the Pelennor Fields included a force of Easterlings, who were men living in the area east of the Sea of Rhûn who had maintained their enmity with Gondor and Rohan since early in the Third Age, mainly at Sauron’s urging. It seems likely that Tolkien saw the Easterlings of both the First and Third Ages

Elbereth   487 as related—a primitive tribe or collection of tribes living outside of civilization. He specifically calls these men “of cruel and evil kind,” and says they are the descendants of those who allied themselves with Sauron in the Second Age (Peoples 328), and it might be assumed they are descendants of the Easterlings of the First Age as well. Further Reading Tolkien, J. R. R. The Peoples of Middle-earth. Vol. 12 of The History of Middle-earth. Edited by Christopher Tolkien. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1996.

Edain  (Atani) Also called the Atani, the Edain were the men named “Elf-friends” by the Eldar during the First Age of Middle-earth. They crossed into Beleriand from the east in the fifth century of the First Age, and many of them allied themselves with the elves in their long wars with Morgoth during that time. The Edain were divided into three kindreds, or “houses.” The First House of the Edain was the House of Bëor, a dark and grey-eyed people. They were the first men to cross into Beleriand, and they allied themselves with Finrod and the Noldorin House of Finarfin, settling in Dorthonion. Some men of the First House, led by Beleg, refused to take part in the wars and migrated south, out of Beleriand. But during the Dagor Bragollach (the fourth battle in the war on Morgoth), Barahir, captain of the First House, was killed rescuing Finrod. Though most of his house was destroyed, Beren survived to ultimately wed the Eldarian princess Lúthien. The Second House of the Edain was also known as the Haladin. After being decimated by orcs, they were subsequently led by the woman Haleth and settled ultimately in Brethil on the borders of Doriath, pledging to Thingol that they would defend the strategic Crossings of Teiglin. Over the years, they were joined in Brethil by refugees from the First House and, for a time, were led by Túrin Turambar of the Third House. The men of the Third House were tall, strong, and fair, and were led initially by Marach. They settled ultimately in Dor-lómin and were allied with

the Eldarian House of Fingolfin. In Dor-lómin, they were led by Hador the Goldenhaired and became the most affluent of the Edain. They were also the most renowned in battle. Led by Hador’s grandsons Huor and Húrin, they were nearly all destroyed in the Nirnaeth Arnoediad (Battle of Unnumbered Tears), but Tuor and Túrin continued to resist Morgoth. In the second union of Edain and Eldar, Tuor married Idril, the elven princess of Gondolin, and their child, Eärendil, ultimately sailed to the West and won the support of the Valar in order to win the last great battle against Morgoth that ended the First Age. As a reward for their valor in the wars against Morgoth, the Valar gave the island of Númenor to the Edain. It was the westernmost inhabitable land of Middle-earth, closest to the Undying Lands. The Edain were also granted longevity and lived in close friendship with the Eldar of Eldamar. The elves called the men of Númenor the Dúnedain, or Men of the West. When Númenor fell, the faithful Dúnedain, led by Elendil the Tall, made their way back to Middle-earth and founded the kingdoms of Gondor and Arnor. Elbereth  (Varda)  The name Elbereth means “Star Queen” in Sindarin, the language of the Grey-elves of Beleriand. Elbereth was one of the greatest and most beautiful of the Valar, the godlike guardians of Middle-earth, and was known as Varda in the High-elven Quenya tongue. She was the consort of Manwë, chief of the Valar, and lived with him in the domed palace of Ilmarin, standing atop Taniquetil, the highest peak on Arda, and looking out over the sea. Elbereth (Varda) was the Vala most associated with light. It was she who created the stars and put them in their courses, and therefore she was dearest to the elves, who first awakened under the beauty of the stars. It was she who lighted the lamps of the Valar and set the sun and moon in the sky. She also blessed the Silmarils and set the star of Eärendil in its motion across the heavens. The Grey-elves also called her Gilthoniel (“the Kindler”) and often used both names when invoking her aid. The Sindarin people sang the hymn “A Elbereth Gilthoniel” to her, in which she is pictured

488  Eldar as standing on the mountain’s slope and listening to the prayers of men and elves. In The Lord of the Rings, Sam sings this hymn to her while clutching the phial of Galadriel, after which the phial’s light (which is the light of Eärendil) shines forth to aid him against the monstrous spider Shelob. Eldar  The term Eldar is a Quenya word meaning “People of the stars,” and it refers to the three kindreds of elves who made the “Great Journey”; they are otherwise known as the “High-elves.” After the awakening of the elves under the stars at Cuiviénen in the beginning of the First Age, the Vala Oromë summoned the elves to Aman, the Undying Lands to the west of Middle-earth. The Vanyar were quickest to answer the summons, followed by the Noldor, and both groups eventually made their way west into Beleriand and ultimately to the sea, where they were towed to the western lands by the Vala Ulmo. The Vanyar and Noldor ultimately lived in Valinor. The third kindred, the Teleri, were slower to leave Beleriand, and some never did. But eventually part of them went over the sea, settling on the Lonely Isle of Tol Eressëa and later at Alqualondë on the coast of Aman. In Valinor, the Eldar grew in wisdom, power, and virtue by association with the Valar. The Noldor became great craftsmen, their greatest representative being Fëanor, who developed, among other things, the Fëanorian alphabet and the great jewels known as the Silmarils. The Teleri who stayed in Beleriand came to be known as the Sindar, or the Grey-elves. As for the Noldor, they were eventually led out of Aman and back to Middle-earth by Fëanor, in pursuit of the Silmarils stolen by Morgoth. In Middle-earth, they became the allies of men, their natural allies as the Second-born of the Children of Ilúvatar, although without the help of the Valar, both elves and men would have been overcome by the power of Morgoth, the rebel Vala who had set up his kingdom in Middle-earth. Many of the Eldar returned to Aman after the First Age, but those who remained were in continual struggle with Morgoth’s minion and successor, Sauron. Furthermore, all of the Eldar had a longing for the Undying Lands to the west, instilled

in them by the summons of Oromë, and for the sea, which was the path over which they must travel to reach the West. By the end of the Third Age, the time of the Eldar in Middle-earth was waning, and nearly all of them took ships from the Grey Havens to travel west to Aman. The Eldar were tall and fair, with grey eyes. The Vanyar were blond, as were the Noldor of the House of Finarfin (including Finrod and Galadriel), though the other Eldar had dark hair. Even in Middle-earth, the Eldar who had seen the light of the Two Trees of Valinor retained something of the grace of that place that enabled them to stand against the agelong pressure of Sauron’s darkness. Elder Edda  (Poetic Edda, Codex Regius)  More commonly called the Poetic Edda in current scholarship, this anonymous collection of 38 Old Norse poems has also been called the Elder Edda—the name Tolkien always used—or as Codex Regius, the name of the single Icelandic manuscript in which the poems survive. The manuscript was discovered in 1643 and given to the king of Denmark, whereupon it was housed in the royal library until 1971. Recent scholarship has determined that the poems were drawn together in this manuscript in about 1280, making it actually more recent than the Prose Edda of Snorri Sturluson, written about 1225. However, it is certainly true that the poems in the Codex Regius must have been in circulation in earlier versions as early as the late 10th century, and most of them deal with pagan Norse myths and legends. Since Iceland was not Christianized until 1000 c.e., the original versions of these poems are the oldest record of pagan Germanic religion. The poems in the Edda are of two types: There are 15 mythological poems about the gods and 23 poems dealing with legendary heroes. The most important mythological poem is the first poem in the collection, “Völuspá,” in which the chief god, Oðin, calls up a wisewoman from the dead, who tells the story of the creation of the cosmos, and of its end. The heroic poems are concerned almost exclusively with the dragon slayer Sigurd and his contemporaries, particularly his wife, Guðrun.

Elendil the Tall   489 Like all traditional Germanic poetry, the Eddaic poems use four-stress alliterative lines separated into half-lines by a caesura. In Old Norse poetry, unlike Old English, these lines are typically arranged into four-line stanzas. This kind of meter is called ljóðaháttr, or “chant meter,” in Old Norse. Unlike poems in other Germanic languages, however, the Eddaic poems also use stanzas wherein the second and fourth lines use abbreviated two- or three- stress meter. The Eddaic poets typically use this meter in presenting characters’ direct speech. Tolkien, of course, was intimately familiar with the poems of the Elder Edda. He would have used them in teaching when he lectured in Old Norse, and also read and translated them with his group of Oxford scholars known as the Coalbiters. In 1926, he read a paper on the Elder Edda to the essay club at Exeter College. In his own fiction, Tolkien was indebted to the story of Sigurd and the dragon in his depiction of Túrin Turambar as a dragon slayer. Most significantly, of course, Tolkien used the Eddaic poems as the source for The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún, his retelling of the story of Sigurd and of Gudrún and her Burgundian family in English (with the addition of the Norse creation story from the Völuspá), but using a close modern English approximation of Old Norse alliterative meter. Tolkien wrote the two long poems at some point between 1925 and 1939, when he was teaching Old Norse at Oxford, though the poems were not published until 2009. Elendil the Tall  (Elendil the Fair, Elendil the Faithful)  Elendil was the first high king of Arnor and Gondor, the Númenórean realms in exile. He established these kingdoms in the year 3320 of the Second Age, after leading a band of the “Faithful” in nine ships from the destruction of Númenor back to Middle-earth. Having established his kingdom, he joined forces with Gil-galad, the elven king, to form the Last Alliance of elves and men to assault Mordor and defeat Sauron, though the effort cost both him and Gil-galad their lives. Elendil was born in Númenor in 3119 of the Second Age. His father, Amandil, was the lord of the Andúnië (i.e., the Faithful)—the faction of Númenóreans who still venerated the Valar and

remained faithful to the spiritual ways of the Eldar, despite the corrupting influence of Sauron, who had spread unrest and dissatisfaction among the Númenóreans and had induced Ar-Pharazôn, king of Númenor, to attempt an invasion of Aman itself. Elendil and the remnant of the Faithful, including his sons Isildur and Anárion, boarded nine ships to flee the island before the Valar destroyed it in retribution, and the great storms that followed the sinking of the island into the ocean separated the ships of Elendil and his followers. He arrived with four ships in Lindon (Gil-galad’s realm), vowing as he came out of the sea that he and his heirs would abide in Middle-earth until the end of the world— a vow that Aragorn repeated when he reestablished the line of Elendil as king of Gondor and Arnor at the end of The Return of the King. Separated from their father by the storm, Isildur and Anárion landed three ships in the South, at the mouth of the Anduin River. They had brought with them a seedling of the White Tree Nimloth (descended from Galathilion, a silver tree of Valinor), and the seven seeing-stones that were gifts of the Eldar. The Dúnedain (or “Men of the West,” as they were called), established their kingdoms of Arnor in the North and Gondor in the South. Elendil was high king and ruled from the city of Annúminas in Arnor. Isildur and Anárion ruled the kingdom of Gondor, where Isildur built the fortress city of Minas Ithil, east of the Anduin, and Anárion built Minas Anor, west of the river. Osgiliath, the capital city, was built on the river between the two fortresses. Sauron, however, had escaped the ruin of Númenor and fled into Mordor to build his strength. But when he found the Númenóreans building a kingdom on his doorstep, he struck quickly. In 3429, he attacked and captured Minas Ithil. Isildur fled north to raise an army with Elendil, while Anárion reinforced and held Osgiliath. Elendil made his alliance with Gil-galad in 3430, and after gathering a huge army of men and elves, they marched south in 3434, meeting and defeating Sauron’s forces at the Battle of Dagorlad. Sauron retreated into his fortress of Barad-dûr, and for seven years, Elendil’s army laid siege to the tower. During the siege, Elendil’s

490   elves son Anárion was killed. Finally, Sauron came out of his tower and engaged Elendil and Gil-galad in single combat on the slopes of Orodruin, Mount Doom. Although Sauron was defeated and his body destroyed (though his spirit escaped to return to power in the Third Age), both Gilgalad and Elendil were killed, and Elendil’s great sword Narsil was broken when he fell. His son Isildur, now high king of Arnor and Gondor, cut the One Ring from Sauron’s hand with the shards of Elendil’s sword. Elendil the Tall was also known as Elendil the Fair and Elendil the Faithful. His banner displayed the White Tree with seven stars (representing the seven ships that survived the storm after the fall of Númenor and landed in Middle-earth. This standard became the symbol of the royal house of Gondor. Aragorn was the 38th generation in direct descent from Elendil, whereas Elendil was in the direct line of descent from Elros, first king of Númenor and the brother of Elrond Halfelven. elves  The elves were the Firstborn of the ChilThey appear in all of Tolkien’s writings concerning Middle-earth, but their story is told most fully in The Silmarillion, which records the entire history of the race, from their inception until the end of the Third Age, when the Age of Men begins. The elves dated their existence from their awakening under the stars at the bay of Cuiviénen far in the East. The Valar, bent on keeping the Children of Ilúvatar away from the evil power of the renegade Vala Melkor, invited the elves to come to Valinor. Oromë, the Vala most fond of Middle-earth, brought the three leaders of the elves (Ingwë, Finwë, and Elwë) to see the Undying Lands and afterward to convince their people to follow him to the West. This caused the first sundering of the elves, for although most were willing to follow Oromë, many opted to remain in Middle-earth, and these elves became known as the Avari (i.e., “the unwilling”). They later became the Wood-elves of Middle-earth. Those who did follow Oromë were called the Eldar (“the people of the stars”), and these were separated into three kindreds: the people of Ingwë, called the Vanyar, dren of Ilúvatar.

who followed Oromë immediately and remained perpetually in Valinor among the Valar; the people of Finwë, the Noldor, who also went with Oromë eagerly but later returned to Middle-earth in pursuit of Melkor (Morgoth) and the stolen Silmarils; and the house of Elwë, the Teleri, who followed more slowly, having become attached to Middleearth and to the water and the forests. Elwë himself met the Maia Melian on his way through Beleriand and fell in love with her, and although most of the Teleri ultimately followed Elwë’s brother Olwë over the sea, where they lived chiefly on the island of Tol Eressëa and in the port of Alqualondë on the coast of Aman (the Undying Lands). Elwë stayed in Middle-earth, and those who stayed with him became known as the Sindar, the Grey-elves. In Middle-earth, the Noldor, whose return to Middle-earth included a rebellion against the Valar and the slaying of many of their kindred, the Teleri, at Alqualondë, still became known as the High-elves when they returned, because of their enlightened status, having lived in Valinor under the light of the Two Trees. Elwë, now known as Thingol, lord of the Grey-elven kingdoms of Beleriand, at first welcomed the Noldor to Middle-earth, but when he heard of the kinslaying, he forbade the use of the High-elven language Quenya in his realms, allowing only the Grey-elves’ own tongue, Sindarin. The elven kingdoms of Middle-earth thrived in the First Age, and when men, the Second-born of the Children of Ilúvatar, appeared, the elves at first eagerly befriended them. Some men betrayed the elves in battle with Morgoth, however, and distrust grew among men and elves, except for the Edain (the elf friends who were faithful allies) and their descendants. After a long war with Morgoth, the High-elven fortresses of Nargothrond and Gondolin and Thingol’s Grey-elven realm of Doriath were all destroyed. In the Second Age, there were elvish kingdoms in Eriador and farther east, including Lothlórien, Imladris (i.e., Rivendell), the Woodland Realm, and Eregion, and populations of Eldar and Sindar were mixed. Although elves did not generally get along with dwarves, there was a friendship at this time between the dwarves of Moria and the Noldorian elves of Ere-

ents   491 gion, and through their alliance the Rings of Power were forged, including the three that belonged to the elves and helped sustain them against Sauron in the Third Age. After the elven king Gil-galad joined forces with the Númenórean lord Elendil the Tall to defeat Sauron in the Last Alliance of elves and men, the Third Age began. Eventually, the elves of Middle-earth began to pass into the West, and by the beginning of the Fourth Age, the Age of Men, the elven population had dwindled, and the elves that remained in Middle-earth were secretive and hidden. Elves were tall, loved the stars, the woodlands, and the waters, and had always a desire within them, implanted by the Valar, to pass to the Undying Lands in the West. Elves did not die of natural causes. They could be killed, however, or could die of grief. When this happened, the elf went to the Halls of Mandos in Valinor. They loved beauty and hated evil, especially those who had seen Valinor. They called themselves the Quendi (“the speaking ones”). ents  The ents are herders of trees in Tolkien’s legendarium. They seem to have originally been trees themselves, ones that were animated by Yavanna (the Vala who protected the growing things of Arda) early in the Elder Days in order to act as guardians to the olvar (the living plants) of the world, at least until the time of the dominion of men. The oldest of all living things in Middle-earth, the ents were apparently originally semiconscious beings, indistinguishable from the trees around them, who were taught to speak by the Eldar soon after the great awakening of that race. Thus, the elves awakened the ents and helped them find their purpose. Ents were some 14 feet tall and appeared like a cross between a tree and a man. They differed as much as one tree from another, each ent taking on the characteristics of the sort of tree from which he was descended. The ents developed their own form of speech, a slow, deliberate language that mirrored their way of thinking. They were slow to anger but extremely powerful once aroused, with the ability to focus many years of tree roots’ ability to crumble earth and stone into a few seconds, as

they demonstrated in their attack on Isengard in The Return of the King. They were therefore more powerful than trolls, which Treebeard asserts were created by the evil Morgoth in the First Age in mockery of the ents, as orcs were made to parody the elves. Ents did not die naturally, but they could burn. They could also devolve back into wild, treelike spirits known as huorns. They were named ents by the Rohirrim, in whose language (as in AngloSaxon) the word meant “giants.” The elves referred to them as Onodrim. For the most part, the ents of the early days wandered among the great forests throughout Beleriand and the East. As the land changed and the great forests dwindled, they were confined to the oldest woodlands in Middle-earth, so that by the

Cover of a 2005 coloring-book edition of The Two Towers, published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. In the cover illustration, the hobbit Merry sits atop Treebeard.

492  Eriador Third Age, they lived mainly in Fangorn Forest, the largest of the forestlands surviving from that early time. The ents rarely took part in activities involving the other peoples of Middle-earth, living in isolation and tending their trees. Only twice did they become involved in the affairs of others. The first was in the First Age, when they helped to defeat the dwarves of Nogrod, who had killed the Sindarin lord Thingol and sacked his fortress of Menegroth in Doriath. The second, and last, time was when they joined the Rohirrim in their war on Saruman, helping to demolish Isengard. Ents, however, seem to have faded from existence in the Fourth Age. This is largely because, during their long years, they had gradually grown apart from the entwives. Over the years, the entwives became more interested in grasses, flowers, and other lesser vegetation than in trees, and they began to cultivate gardens, while the ents did not wish to leave their forests. The entwives crossed the Great River near the end of the First Age, in an attempt to flee the shadow of Morgoth. Entwives became beloved of men, who enjoyed their gardens, but ultimately their gardens were wiped out in the wars of Middle-earth, and they were dispersed. The ents lost contact with them completely. By the end of the Third Age, there had been no entings born for centuries, and the race was doomed to extinction. Eriador  In Tolkien’s geography of Middle-earth, Eriador was the broad region that stretched from the Blue Mountains (Ered Luin) in the West to the Misty Mountains in the East. The Greyflood (Gwathlo) and the Glanduin Rivers formed its southern boundary, and in the north by Forochel, a kind of tundra area some 300 miles north of the Shire. The name Eriador means “Lonely Land” in Sindarin. During the First Age, the elves lived mainly in Beleriand, west of Eriador. The Edain entered Beleriand from Eriador, but the men who remained in Eriador in the First Age (the Easterlings) were generally under Morgoth’s power. But when Morgoth was defeated at the end of the First Age, Beleriand was nearly all destroyed. Near the end of the Second Age, the Dúnedain moved into

Eriador and founded the kingdom of Arnor, which became strong and prosperous. During the Third Age, however, wars and the creeping influence of Sauron destroyed Arnor, and Eriador became sparsely populated, with only a few scattered settlements. Rivendell was a haven for elves, and hobbits lived in the Shire and with a small number of men in Bree-land. With the restoration of Aragorn as king of Arnor at the beginning of the Fourth Age, Eriador became prosperous once again. Eriol  In the frame story that Tolkien originally intended for the mythological stories that ultimately became The Silmarillion, Eriol (whose name means “one who dreams alone”) was a Germanic warrior from northern Europe who traveled to the western lands and brought back the stories told by the elves. In Tolkien’s story, as told in The Book of Lost Tales, Eriol’s original name was Ottor. He had a love of the sea and became a sailor who was shipwrecked on an island in the Western Sea. There, an old man told him of the Lonely Isle far to the west, which Eriol subsequently sought and finally found. This was Tol Eressëa, the island of the elves, who tell him tales of the beginning of the world, which he records for posterity. Ultimately, Eriol helps the elves in an attempt to come to the aid of their elvish kinsmen in the world of men, by moving Tol Eressëa east across the ocean until it stood offshore where England now stands. The elves are unsuccessful and are destroyed by orcs and evil men. Subsequently Eriol’s sons, Hengest and Horsa, conquer the island and call it England. Like their father, they are friendly with the remaining elves, who become a part of their tradition. Tolkien borrows the names Hengest and Horsa (whose names literally mean “Horse and Horse”) from the earliest histories of the Anglo-Saxon invasions, like that of the Venerable Bede. Tolkien had consciously set out to create a mythology for England, and Eriol’s story was his way of linking his legendarium to the history of his homeland. However, he abandoned this idea fairly early in the process of developing the story, and by late 1920 had replaced Eriol with a different intermediary, called Ælfwine.

Exeter College   493 Further Reading Tolkien, Christopher, ed. The Book of Lost Tales I. The History of Middle-earth. Vol. 1. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1984. Tolkien, Christopher, ed. The Book of Lost Tales II. The History of Middle-earth. Vol. 2. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1984.

Eru  See Ilúvatar. Exeter College  Exeter was the college at Oxford University where Tolkien spent his undergraduate years. Exeter is one of the oldest colleges at Oxford, having been founded in 1314 by Walter de Stapeldon, a Devonshire man who was bishop of Exeter and treasurer of England under Edward II. The col-

lege, then known as Stapeldon Hall, was founded to provide an educated clergy for Stapeldon’s diocese, and therefore in the beginning it drew students mainly from Devon and Cornwall. Centrally located between Turl Street, Broad Street, and Brasenose Lane, several of Exeter’s current buildings, including the Hall, were constructed in the 17th century. Others, including the library and the chapel, are Gothic revival buildings from the 1850s. Designed by the architect George Gilbert Scott, the chapel is modeled on Sainte Chapelle in Paris. The Pre-Raphaelites William Morris and Edward Burne-Jones were both graduates of Exeter, and their works adorn the chapel. Tolkien was awarded an Open Classical Exhibition (a small scholarship worth £60 per year) to

The lodgings at Exeter College, Oxford, where Tolkien spent his undergraduate years  (Photo used under a Creative Commons license)

494   Exodus Exeter College in December 1910. He began his study of classics at Exeter in 1911 during Michaelmas Term (the first term of the academic year, from the end of September through Christmas). He lived in Swiss Cottage, one of Exeter’s buildings on Turl Street, until Trinity Term (the last of the three academic terms at Oxford, from mid-April through mid-June) of 1914. There, he typically had breakfast in his rooms (served by his “scout,” or college servant) and had dinner with other Exonians in the Hall. From the beginning of his time at Exeter, Tolkien was very much involved in the college’s social life, playing on the Exeter College Rugby Team and acting as an officer in both the Essay Club and the Stapeldon Society. As an officer in the latter organization, he helped to organize a lavish dinner for the Senior Common Room on June 6, 1914, to celebrate the 600th anniversary of the college’s founding. Tolkien’s social life took something of a toll on his study of the classics, and he fell behind in his studies. When he proposed to Edith Bratt after his 21st birthday in January 1913, he vowed to buckle down and do better, but when he took his mid-course Honour Moderations, he was able to achieve only a class II—a disappointingly mediocre performance. However, Lewis Farnell, the new rector of Exeter, understood that Tolkien’s true calling was philology and recommended that he change his program to English language and literature—a new and somewhat obscure program in 1913. Farnell even saw to it that Tolkien was able to keep his £60 annual scholarship. Tolkien thrived in the new environment, and later in 1913, he presented a paper on Norse sagas to the Essay Club. When war broke out in 1914, Tolkien chose to finish his studies rather than go immediately into the service, although during the first term of 1914, there were only 75 undergraduates left at Exeter College. With about 25 other Exonians, he delayed enlistment and took part in the university’s Officer Training Corps Course II, which required him to attend military lectures and to drill some six-anda-half hours per week. In summer 1915, Tolkien received first-class honors on his final examination, and he was commissioned in the Lancashire Fusiliers upon leaving Exeter College.

Tolkien remained loyal to Exeter after the war, taking part as an honorary member of the Essay Club from 1919 to 1920 while he worked as a freelance tutor and at Oxford. He read his tale of the fall of Gondolin to the Essay Club in 1920 and, returning to Oxford as Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon in 1926, read a paper on the Old Norse Elder Edda to the club. As a professor, he was chiefly attached to Pembroke College and, for much of his career, Merton College, but he was made an honorary fellow of Exeter in 1958. Exodus  The Old English poem Exodus is a retelling of the story of Moses from the biblical Book of Exodus. It appears as the second poem in Oxford’s famous Junius manuscript (following Genesis and preceding Daniel) and is conceived as an epic poem focusing on Moses as epic hero. Like the conventional Germanic hero, Moses is a leader of battles and a speaker of gnomic wisdom. The poem takes its material chiefly from the 13th and 14th chapters of Exodus, centering on the Hebrews’ flight from Egypt, the parting of the Red Sea, and the destruction of Pharaoh’s army. The poem describes armor and weapons consistent with Anglo-Saxon England and presents the Hebrews plundering the bodies of the defeated army, as a victorious Germanic band would have done after a battle. The poem invites an allegorical reading of the events of Exodus that would have been typical of Christian readings of the story in the eighth century, when the poem was probably composed: a reading in which the fleeing people of Israel represent Christians escaping the prison of earthly life and moving toward their eternal home. Thus, Pharaoh suggests the devil, and the crossing of the Red Sea symbolizes the act of baptism that defeats the devil. Tolkien began work on the poem in 1925, planning at some point to produce a scholarly edition of it. He never completed his edition, but his continued interest in the poem is clear, for example, from his two-part article “Sigelwara Land,” published in Medium Ævum in 1931–33 and concerned with a single word in line 68 of the poem. Eventually, John Turville-Petre edited and published Tolkien’s nearly complete edition of the poem in 1981, using

Fingon   495 Tolkien’s edited text, his partial translation of the first 505 lines of the poem, and his lecture notes on the poem from the 1930s and 1940s. In the edition as published, Tolkien’s notes focus chiefly on the text of the poem, though there is little in the way of detailed commentary on the poem itself. As Michael D. C. Drout has written, “there is no sustained development of an interpretive argument, a lack which is very unfortunate for Old English studies” (131).

In fact, she seems to have believed George would have been her only chance for a happy marriage. On January 8, Tolkien took a train to Cheltenham and met Edith at the station. By the end of the day, he had persuaded her to break her engagement to George and to marry him instead. George was reportedly distraught at the news when Edith wrote to him, sending back his ring. He was, eventually, reconciled to the loss and returned to cordial relations with Edith.

Further Reading

Fingon  Fingon, called “the Valiant,” was a high king of the Noldorian elves in Middle-earth from 456 to 472 of the First Age. He was the eldest son of Fingolfin (Fëanor’s brother); the brother of Turgon, Aredhel, and Argon; and the father of Gil-galad. Born in Eldamar in the Undying Lands, Fingon was friendly with his cousins Maedhros (son of Fëanor) and Angrod and Aegnor (sons of Finarfin), and even though he disliked Fëanor, he sided with the other young Noldorian princes in the decision to follow Morgoth into Middle-earth and recover the Silmarils. He took part in the kinslaying of the Teleri at Alqualondë, and with his father, brother, and the kin of Finarfin, he was betrayed at the Helcaraxë when Fëanor stranded them, taking his own kin across the water in the boats stolen from the Teleri and forcing the hosts of Fingolfin and Finarfin to cross the dangerous ice on foot. The breach caused by Fëanor’s actions remained for many years after the Noldor reached Middle-earth, but after the death of Fëanor, Fingon, remembering his old friendship with Maedhros, took it upon himself to heal the rift between the Houses of the Noldor. Maedhros had been captured by Morgoth and was chained high on the face of towering Thangorodrim, and Fingon searched for his old friend diligently until he found him hanging from the chain. With the aid of the great eagle Thorondor, Fingon was able to save Maedhros, though he had to cut off his cousin’s right hand to free him from the chain. In gratitude for his rescue, and in regret for having earlier deserted Fingolfin’s host at the Helcaraxë, Maedhros renounced all claim to the high kingship in deference to the House of Fingolfin.

Drout, Michael D. C. “J. R. R. Tolkien’s Medieval Scholarship and Its Significance.” Tolkien Studies: An Annual Scholarly Review 4 (2007): 113–176. Godden, Malcolm. “Biblical Literature: The Old Testament.” In The Cambridge Companion to Old English Literature, edited by Malcolm Godden and Michael Lapidge, 206–226. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991. Tolkien, J. R. R. The Old English Exodus. Edited by Joan Turville-Petre. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981. ———. “Sigelwara Land” [1]. Medium Ævum 1, no. 3 (December 1932): 183–196. ———. “Sigelwara Land” [2]. Medium Ævum 3, no. 2 (June 1934): 95–111.

Fëanorian alphabet  See Tengwar. Field, George  George Field was the unfortunate fiancé of Edith Bratt whose engagement Tolkien persuaded Edith to break off after his 21st birthday. Living in Cheltenham with her family friends, the Jessops, after Tolkien’s guardian Father Francis Morgan had forcibly separated the young couple, Edith had grown close to her school friend Molly Field and her family, who lived nearby. For three years, she had no contact with Tolkien (as he had promised Father Morgan). On January 3, 1913, just after midnight on his 21st birthday, Tolkien wrote to Edith and renewed his declaration of love for her. But he received an immediate reply from Edith, saying that she had agreed to marry George Field, Molly’s brother. She had believed that Tolkien had forgotten about her, and she found George to be kind and likely to make a good husband.

496   Finwë During his father’s kingship, Fingon settled in Dor-lómin, fighting bravely in the Wars of Beleriand and eventually befriending the Edain of the House of Hador. In the year 260 of the First Age, the dragon Glaurung issued from Angband, but Fingon rode against him and, with a ring of archers, forced the dragon to return to Morgoth’s fortress until he was fully grown some centuries later. In 455 of the First Age, Morgoth broke out of Angband in the Dagor Bragollach (“Battle of the Sudden Flame”), and Fingon joined his father, marching to the aid of their kinsman Finrod. But the battle ended in the defeat of the Noldor, who suffered great losses and were driven back into the mountains. The despairing Fingolfin went alone to the gates of Angband and challenged Morgoth to single combat, and though he was able to give Morgoth seven wounds, in the end he was defeated and killed. At that point, his son Fingon became high king of the Noldor. Seven years later, Morgoth attacked Fingon’s home territory, but Fingon was ultimately able to turn back the orc armies with the aid of the Edain Húrin and the last-minute arrival of Círdan the Shipwright. In 472, Fingon joined forces with Maedhros and took the war to Morgoth in what became known as the Nirnaeth Arnoediad (“Battle of Unnumbered Tears”). Although Fingon enjoyed great success in the battle, in the end he was surrounded and killed by Gothmog, the lord of the Balrogs. Fingon’s brother Turgon succeeded him as high king, although after the Nirnaeth Arnoediad, he retreated into the secrecy of the hidden kingdom of Gondolin. When Gondolin fell, it was Fingon’s son Gil-galad who became high king of the elves. Finwë  Finwë was the first high king of the Noldor, one of the three great kindreds of the Eldar. He was among the elves who awakened at Cuiviénen under the stars, and he was one of the three representatives chosen (with Ingwë and Elwë) to visit Valinor at the invitation of Oromë. Upon his return to Middle-earth, he led the Noldor across the western sea to dwell among the Valar in Aman. Finwë and his people dwelt in Tirion, the chief city of Eldamar in Aman, and there, under Finwë’s

leadership and the benevolent rule of the Valar, the Noldor learned great skills, particularly craftsmanship from Aulë the Smith. Finwë married Míriel, who gave birth to a son, Curufinwë, later known as Fëanor (“Spirit of Fire”). Fëanor became the cleverest of the Noldor, and their greatest craftsman. But Míriel, exhausted and, apparently, deeply depressed after her son’s birth, asked for permission to retire to the gardens of Lórien, where ultimately, with the consent of Manwë himself (chief of the Valar), she was permitted to go to sleep in the gardens and never to awaken. Shocked at this event—elves typically married for life, and no elf had ever before willingly chosen death—Finwë took a second wife from among the Vanyar. Her name was Indis, and she was known for her fair hair. She bore Finwë two more sons (Fingolfin and Finarfin) and two daughters, Findis and Irimë. His firstborn, Fëanor, was never on close terms with his half siblings, but Finwë always had a great love for Fëanor, who was all he had left of his beloved Míriel. Fëanor, however, was stirred against the Valar by Melkor (Morgoth), the rebel Vala, and at one point he threatened his own brother Fingolfin with a sword. For this offense, Fëanor was banished from Tirion for a period of 12 years, and Finwë, who could not bear to be without his beloved firstborn, went to live with Fëanor at the fortress of Formenos during his exile. After Melkor had brought about the death of the Two Trees, he traveled to Formenos, where the Silmarils, Fëanor’s most precious creations, were held in a treasure vault. In defending the vault, Finwë was killed by Melkor and the Silmarils were stolen. This was the act that prompted the flight of the Noldor, as Fëanor led them back to Middleearth to recover the Silmarils. First Age  The First Age of Middle-earth is difficult to define. It is not always clear whether Tolkien thought of the First Age as beginning with the creation of Arda by Ilúvatar and the entry of the Valar into creation, or with the awakening of the elves at Cuiviénen; or whether it includes the period of the Two Trees in Valinor; or whether these events are to be thought of separately as the Elder Days, the First Age beginning with the

First Age   497 creation of the sun and moon, and the return of the Noldor to Middle-earth. The only canonical source concerning the ages of Middle-earth, Appendix B in The Return of the King, contains annals for the Second Age, the Third Age, and later events that would constitute the beginning of the Fourth Age. But for the First Age, all that is recorded is that it “ended with the Great Battle, in which the Host of Valinor broke Thangorodrim and overthrew Morgoth” (Tolkien, Return of the King 363). Because the sun was not created until the destruction of the Two Trees, it is difficult to reckon time prior to this, since the years of the trees were in no way equivalent to years of the sun. However, Tolkien did leave a revised manuscript of “Grey Annals” (updated after the publication of The Lord of the Rings in the later 1950s and published in The War of the Jewels) that includes events from the Years of the Trees. He begins these annals in what he names the year 1050 in the time of Valinor, which was the year of the awakening of the elves. In 1090, the Valar first overcame Melkor (Morgoth), who had set up a stronghold in the north of Middle-earth. In 1102–05, Oromë brought Ingwë, Finwë, and Elwë to Valinor as ambassadors, and in 1115, the elves began their great westward journey. In 1130, Elwë, king of the Teleri, met the Maia Melian in the forest and was enchanted. Ulmo summoned the Eldar to the shores of Beleriand in 1132, and he began to transport them over the sea. Elwë emerged from the woods in 1152 and established his kingdom over all of Beleriand with the Teleri who remained in Middle-earth with him, and his people became the Sindar. The dwarves appeared in Beleriand in 1250, and Elwë, now known as Thingol, employed them to build his palace at Menegroth. Back in Valinor, Melkor destroyed the Two Trees in 1495 and fled to Middle-earth, where he created his stronghold of Angband. In 1497, Melkor, now called Morgoth, attacked Thingol’s kingdom, and although Thingol drove the orcs off, his kinsmen were defeated and driven to the shore, and Thingol in response withdrew within Doriath behind the Girdle of Melian. In that same year, the Noldor returned to Middle-earth and fought a

second battle against Morgoth, but in his passion, Fëanor was killed. After this battle, Morgoth was able to capture Maedhros, eldest son of Fëanor, and in 1498, he hanged Maedhros by his wrist high on the tower of Thangorodrim. In 1500, Fingolfin and his people crossed the icy Helcaraxë and came into Middle-earth. At this point, the Elder Days, or the years of Valinor, came to an end, as the sun and moon were hung in the heavens. Thus, in the Year of the Sun 1, the Eldar of Middle-earth looked up at the new creation with hope. The latter part of the First Age, then, is reckoned according to the years of the sun. The most important events of this age are as follows: In the year 60, Morgoth launched what the elves called the Dagor Aglareb (the “Glorious Battle”), attacking the highlands of Dorthonion, in which the forces of Fingolfin and Maedhros destroyed the orcs within sight of Angband itself. After this, the elves began the Siege of Angband. In the year 104, the hidden city of Gondolin was completed by Fingolfin’s son Turgon. In about 305, men first arrived in Beleriand, and in about 310, Finrod (eldest son of Finarfin) first met Bëor the Old’s Edain in Ossiriand. This First House of Edain was succeeded by the Haladin, who first came to Brethil in about 370; and the House of Hador, who settled in Dorlómin in about 425. In 455, Morgoth launched the Dagor Bragollach (“Battle of the Sudden Flame”), which broke the Siege of Angband, and Morgoth’s army of orcs, Balrogs, and the dragon Glaurung defeated the Noldor and their Edain allies. Afterward, Fingolfin was killed in single combat with Morgoth. Ten years later, Beren first met Lúthien, and the pair of them gave hope to the free peoples of Middle-earth by achieving the quest of the Silmaril in 468. In 473, the Union of Maedhros was crushed in the Nirnaeth Arnoediad (“Battle of Unnumbered Tears”). Fingon was killed, Húrin was captured, and Turgon became high king of the Noldor. From this point, Morgoth was effectively lord of Middle-earth. Only the hidden fortifications of Doriath, Gondolin, and Nargothrond survived. In 487, Túrin Turambar came to Nargothrond and persuaded the king Orodreth to assume a

498   Fourth Age more aggressive posture toward Morgoth. In 496, led by Glaurung, the host of Morgoth destroyed Nargothrond. Turin fled to Brethil, where in 501 he was able to slay the dragon Glaurung and died himself. In 502, Tuor, who had been taken into Turgon’s hidden city of Gondolin, married Turgon’s daughter, Idril. Their son, Eärendil, was born in 504. But in 505, Thingol was killed by dwarves. Eventually, Melian returned to Valinor, and Doriath was sacked by the sons of Fëanor. In 511, Gondolin fell to Morgoth, and Turgon was killed as a result of the treachery of Maeglin. Tuor, Idril, and their son Eärendil fled to the Havens of Sirion, where Fingon’s son Gil-galad was named high king of the Noldor. In about 543, Eärendil became lord of the people of the Havens and married the elven princess Elwing, who shortly afterward gave birth to Elrond and Elros. After this, dates are even more uncertain, but it was about the year 600 when Eärendil the Mariner made his way to the Undying Lands and brought the plea of elves and men to the Valar, and the Valar launched the War of Wrath, which finally destroyed Morgoth for good and completely reshaped Middle-earth. This is the undisputed end of the First Age, as Tolkien says in Appendix B of The Return of the King. He adds: “Then most of the Noldor returned to the Far West and dwelt in Eressëa within sight of Valinor; and many of the Sindar went over Sea also” (363). Further Reading Tolkien, J. R. R. The Return of the King. 2nd ed. London: G. Allen & Unwin, 1967. ———. The War of the Jewels: The Later Silmarillion, Part Two. Vol. 11 of The History of Middle-earth. Edited by Christopher Tolkien. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1994.

Fourth Age  The Fourth Age of Middle-earth is the one least chronicled by Tolkien. It began officially with the passing of the Ring-bearers from the Grey Havens in 3021 of the Third Age. Its ending is unknown. Tolkien makes it clear, though, that the Fourth Age is the Age of Men. During the Fourth Age, nearly all of the remaining elves passed over the sea to the Undying Lands, and

any of them remaining in Middle-earth, as well as dwarves and other folk, dwindled and lived in secret, for their age was over. Only a few events at the beginning of the Fourth Age can be mentioned, such as are recorded in Appendix B of The Return of the King, where they are given in Shire reckoning rather than as years of the Fourth Age. During these years, the hobbits of the Shire became more influential in the affairs of Middleearth, as in the year 13 of the Fourth Age, King Elessar, of the united Kingdom of Arnor and Gondor, made Merry (Master of Buckland), Pippin (Thain of the Shire), and Sam (Mayor of Hobbiton) “Counsellors of the North-kingdom.” In the year 32, King Elessar gave the Westmarch to the Shire as a gift. In the year 62, after the death of his beloved wife, Rose, Sam Gamgee gave the famous Red Book of Westmarch to his daughter Elanor and took a ship from the Grey Havens, becoming the last of the Ring-bearers to travel west. King Éomer of Rohan died in the year 64, and King Elessar died in Gondor in 120 of the Fourth Age. In the year 172, a copy of the Red Book of Westmarch was made by Findegil, the king’s scribe in Gondor. This is the latest date that Tolkien recorded. Perhaps the reason that the Fourth Age is not better documented is that Tolkien conceived of the Fourth Age as including historical time. After all, the persistent frame story for The Silmarillion material proposed that a historical Anglo-Saxon named Ælfwine or Eriol found his way to Tor Eressëa and brought back the stories of the elves. Thus, the age of men must become the age of historical men. Tolkien does give one opinion about our relationship to the ages of his legendarium. In a letter addressed to Rhona Beare from about 1958, Tolkien wrote that there was a “long but undefined gap in time between the Fall of Barad-dûr and our Days,” and then in a footnote, he added: I imagine the gap to be about 6000 years: that is we are now at the end of the Fifth Age, if the Ages were of about the same length as S.A. and T.A. [Second Age and Third Age]. But they have, I think, quickened; and I imagine we are actually at the end of the Sixth Age, or in the Seventh. (Letters 283)

Gilson, Rob   499 Further Reading Tolkien, J. R. R. The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien. Edited by Humphrey Carpenter. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1981. ———. The Return of the King. 2nd ed. London: G. Allen & Unwin, 1967.

Gil-galad  Gil-galad was the last high king of the Noldor in Middle-earth. He was the son of Fingon, and thus the grandson of Fingolfin. Gil-galad was born in the First Age in Hithlum in the north of Beleriand, the original home of the House of Fingolfin when they returned to Middle-earth. His birth name was Ereinion, a Sindarin name meaning “scion of kings,” but he came to be called Gilgalad (Sindarin for “radiant star”), and took that name when he became high king. When Fingolfin was killed in single combat with Morgoth after the battle called the Dagor Bragollach, Fingon became high king. Thinking to keep his son out of danger, Fingon decided to send Gil-galad to the Falas, the Noldor settlement on the southern coast of Beleriand ruled by Círdan the Shipwright, far from the fighting. Fingon himself was subsequently killed by Balrogs in the Nirnaeth Arnoediad (“Battle of Unnumbered Tears”), making Turgon, Fingolfin’s second son, high king. Eventually, Morgoth’s forces overran the Falas, and Gil-galad fled with Círdan and the other elves to the island of Balar off the coast of Beleriand. When Gondolin finally fell, and Turgon was killed, Gil-galad was named high king of the Noldor. During the Second Age, Gil-galad first created the new elven realm of Lindon in what had formerly been Ossiriand. The only part of Beleriand to have survived the War of Wrath, it had now become the extreme western edge of Middle-earth. Lindon thrived until the return of Sauron. When Sauron’s treachery regarding the Rings of Power was discovered by the elves of Eregion, Gil-galad became the secret guardian of Vilya, greatest of the Three Rings of the elves. He fought with Sauron’s forces throughout the dark years of Sauron’s domination, often with the help of the men of Númenor before Sauron was able to corrupt

that island and incite its rebellion and consequent destruction. After the fall of Númenor and the arrival in Middle-earth of Elendil the Tall and his sons, who established Gondor and Arnor as the Númenórean Realms in Exile, Gil-galad formed the Last Alliance of elves and men with Elendil and his forces, and together they defeated Sauron at the Battle of Dagorlad, where Gil-galad’s feats as warrior made famous his great spear Aeglos. Elendil and Gil-galad subsequently besieged Sauron in the tower of Barad-dûr, finally overthrowing the dark lord but dying themselves in the process. Gil-galad was reportedly burned to death by the heat of Sauron’s black hand. This action ended the Second Age in the year 3441. Gil-galad left no heir, and the elves of Middleearth never again had a high king. He bequeathed the ring Vilya to Elrond, who held it through the Third Age. Gilson, Rob  (Robert Quilter Gilson)  (1893– 1916)  Rob Gilson was one of Tolkien’s closest friends at King Edward’s School in Birmingham. With G. B. Smith, Christopher Wiseman, and Tolkien, Gilson was a part of the t. c. b. s., Tolkien’s earliest club formed for the purpose of fun and intellectual discussion. Gilson was an artist who liked to sketch churches and was interested in Renaissance painting as well as neoclassical art, interests encouraged particularly by his stepmother, Marianne (his own mother had died in 1907). In school, Gilson (whose father, Robert Cary Gilson, was chief master) was on the staff of the school magazine as well as the library, and he took part in the Literary Society, the Debating Society, the Officer Training Corps, the Shooting Club, and the Musical and Dramatic Society. Here his interest in the 18th century inspired him to support a production of Sheridan’s The Rivals at King Edward’s in 1911, in which all of the T. C. B. S. members took parts, Tolkien playing Mrs. Malaprop. In 1912, Gilson went on to Trinity College, Cambridge University, to read classics, and received first class honors in 1914, though he planned to switch to the study of architecture. He and Tolkien kept in touch, and during holidays

500  Goblin Wars from Oxford, Tolkien was a frequent visitor at the Gilson family home in Marston Green near Birmingham. In November 1914, four months after the beginning of the war in Europe, Gilson succumbed to pressure and guilt and enlisted as a second lieutenant in the Cambridgeshire Battalion, Suffolk Regiment. He was in London during the Christmas holidays of 1914, and there he saw Tolkien and the other members of the T. C. B. S. It was a meeting and a celebration from which Tolkien emerged convinced he wanted to be a poet. The next year, Tolkien published “Goblin Feet” in the Oxford Poetry journal. During 1915, Gilson was training in various locations in Britain, including Cambridge, Yorkshire, and Salisbury Plain. He was also trying to win the hand of Estelle King, the daughter of an American consul. He met with his fellow T. C. B. S. members for the last time in September 1915 in Lichfield. Immediately after the holidays, Gilson shipped for France on January 8, 1916. Though appalled by the war and uncertain in command, he was apparently well liked by the men of his battalion. His family and friends preserved many of his letters home, including those to Estelle, and they express some of these deep emotions in a manner that, according to John Garth, caused Christopher Wiseman to fear for his sanity. The Battle of the Somme began on July 1, 1916. Tolkien’s own Lancashire Fusiliers were being held in reserve while Gilson’s battalion was on the front lines near Becourt. On the first day of the battle, trying to take the village of La Boiselle, Gilson led his men in an advance into No Man’s Land. He was killed by an exploding shell and lies buried in Becourt Cemetery. He was 22. Further Reading Garth, John. Tolkien and the Great War: The Threshold of Middle-Earth. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2003.

Goblin Wars  See Wars of Beleriand. Gondolin  One of the first of the stories Tolkien conceived for what became his legendarium, the earliest version of the story of Gondolin, or the Hidden Kingdom, was first composed in about

1916. In 1920, he read a verse narrative of “The Fall of Gondolin” to Exeter College’s Essay Club at Oxford. The details of the story changed and grew over the years, but the tale of Gondolin’s rise and fall remained central to the stories that were to become The Silmarillion. Gondolin was the fairest of all the elven cities of Middle-earth. It was designed by Turgon, son of Fingolfin, to resemble the great elven city of Tirion in Eldamar, the Elvenhome in Aman that the Noldor had left to return to Middle-earth. Thus, like Tirion, it was built of white stone and stood on a hill, the Amon Gwareth, on which were beautiful fountains of water. In the year 52 of the First Age, the Vala Ulmo guided Turgon from Nevrast, on the coast of Beleriand, to the hidden valley of Tumladen in the mountains of Echoriath, and there Turgon built his city. By the year 104, the city was completed, and Turgon returned to Nevrast to lead his people to the new city in the hidden valley. They entered the city secretly, and it was required that none of them leave, in order to keep the city’s location hidden from the Dark Lord, Morgoth. Turgon first named the city Odonlindë, the Quenya word for “rock of the music of water,” but it became better known by its Sindarin name, Gondolin, which means “hidden rock.” There was only one way to enter Gondolin, and that was through the “Way of Escape,” which was extremely difficult to find or recognize, and which was heavily guarded at all times by the citizens of Gondolin. The great eagles who nested in the mountains also helped to guard the area surrounding Gondolin from any of Morgoth’s spies who might come in that direction. Thus, Gondolin remained safe and hidden for more than four centuries, during the Wars of Beleriand and the period of the Siege of Angband. In general, the people of Gondolin remained aloof and unconnected to the events outside their realm. Two centuries after Gondolin’s founding, Aredhel, Turgon’s sister, became restless, and she was allowed to leave the city. She returned 20 years later with a youth named Maeglin, who became the first outsider allowed into Gondolin since its inception. Aredhel introduced Maeglin as her son

Gondor   501 by the Dark Elf Eöl, who was revealed to have followed Aredhel and Maeglin into Gondolin. While Maeglin was willing to accept Turgon’s authority, Eöl refused to do so and chose to die rather than submit. He also did not want his son subject to Turgon, and he tried to kill Maeglin with a poisoned dart but missed his son and struck Aredhel instead, who soon succumbed to the poison. After the deaths of Aredhel and Eöl, Turgon accepted Maeglin into Gondolin, and Maeglin became a valued member of the city. About a century later, Gondolin’s secret would again be breached. After the battle called the Dagor Bragollach, when Morgoth broke the siege and utterly defeated the Noldor and their allies, the two young brothers Húrin and Huor, of the House of Hador, were cut off from their comrades. They were saved by the eagles, who brought them to Gondolin for protection, and Turgon, at the request of Ulmo himself, gave the boys sanctuary. They remained in Gondolin for about a year before returning to their homes. As the elves began to plan a counterattack against Morgoth to avenge their losses at the Dagor Bragollach, Turgon began his own preparations to strike at Morgoth. When the great battle called Nirnaeth Arnoediad (“Battle of Unnumbered Tears”) began in the year 473, Turgon led a host of 10,000 from Gondolin into the battle, to the great surprise of Morgoth’s forces as well as his allies. The battle was a disaster for the elves and men, but Turgon was able to retreat to Gondolin and still keep the city’s location secret as Húrin and Huor acted as a rear guard for Turgon’s forces and kept Morgoth’s host from following Turgon’s retreat. In the defense of Gondolin, however, Huor was killed, and Húrin was captured and tortured by Morgoth. Fingon was killed as well, making Turgon now the high king of the Noldor in Middle-earth. Some 23 years later, Huor’s son Tuor arrived in Gondolin, sent there by Ulmo and guided by Voronwë, one of the Gondolindrim who had been sent west to attempt (unsuccessfully) to find a way to Valinor. This was according to the strategy of Turgon, who hoped to find a way to persuade the Valar to come to the aid of the Eldar in Middle-earth. Turgon gave Tuor asylum, and in the

years that followed, Tuor fell in love with Turgon’s daughter Idril, marrying her in 502 in what was only the second intermarriage between man and elf (the first having been that of Beren and Lúthien). Meanwhile, Húrin was released by Morgoth and, searching for the entrance to Gondolin, inadvertently led Morgoth’s spies to the area in which the city was hidden, though he could not find the entrance. By now, Doriath and Nargothrond had both fallen, and Gondolin alone remained of the elven fortresses in Middle-earth. But Maeglin, jealous of Idril’s marriage to Tuor, plotted to betray the secret of the Way of Escape to Morgoth’s forces, and in 511, Gondolin was sacked by Morgoth’s armies, and Turgon was slain. Tuor, Idril, and their child Eärendil were able to escape the catastrophe. They found refuge with the folk of Círdan the Shipwright, and ultimately it was Eärendil, the child of Gondolin, who completed Turgon’s strategy, made his way to the Undying Lands, and persuaded the Valar to intercede on behalf of elves and men and come to Middle-earth to destroy Morgoth. Gondor  Gondor was the southern kingdom founded by the refugees from the sunken island of Númenor near the end of the Second Age of Middle-earth. Elendil the Tall and his sons, Isildur and Anárion, founded the kingdoms of Gondor and Arnor, in the North, as the Númenórean Realms in Exile. Gondor bordered Mordor to the east and was therefore the bulwark throughout much of its history against the power of the Dark Lord, Sauron, whose fortress lay in Mordor. Osgiliath was the first capital of Gondor, and there Isildur planted the White Tree that he had brought from Númenor, a tree that became the symbol of the royal line. Osgiliath was guarded to the east by Minas Ithil (the Tower of the Moon) and to the west by Minas Anor (the Tower of the Sun). Not long after the founding of Gondor, Elendil and his sons joined the elven king Gil-galad in the Last Alliance of elves and men and defeated Sauron in the Battle of Dagorlad, after which they besieged Sauron in his fortress of Barad-dûr until, in defeating Sauron, Gil-galad and Elendil were both slain. Anárion also perished in the

502  Gondor b­ attle, but Isildur survived and took the One Ring from Sauron’s hand. Thus, in the year 3441, the Second Age came to an end. Leaving Anárion’s son Meneldil in charge of Gondor, Isildur took the ring north to rule over Arnor, but he was killed by orcs at the Gladden Fields, and the ring was lost. Gondor’s power grew steadily in the Third Age under its Dúnedain kings, all descended from Anárion. The realm fought off an attack by Easterlings in 492 and prospered during a golden age beginning in the ninth century, reaching its greatest heights during the reign of King Hyarmendacil, under whom the borders of Gondor reached eastward to the Sea of Rhún, north to Mirkwood and the borders of Arnor, and south to the country of the Haradrim. But three disasters struck Gondor over the next several centuries that forced the nation into a decline. The first of these disasters was the civil war known as the “Kin-Strife.” In 1437, Castamir, admiral of Gondor’s navy, overthrew Gondor’s rightful king, Eldacar, who was unpopular because his mother had not been one of the Dúnedain. Eldacar’s son was killed in the uprising, and Eldacar fled to the North. The usurper reigned in Osgiliath until 1447, when Eldacar returned with an army from the North and, joined by his supporters within Gondor, drove Castamir and his supporters out of Gondor, though in the process of this strife, Osgiliath was laid in ruins, its bridge was destroyed, and its Palantír (see palantíri) was lost. The second disaster to befall Gondor was the Great Plague of 1636. Much of Gondor was depopulated, including Osgiliath, which fell into ruins and the White Tree died. King Tarondor found a sapling from the White Tree and brought it to Minas Anor before moving the capital in 1640. The third crisis to strike Gondor was an attack by a people called the Wainriders (a nation of Easterlings) while the strength of the country was still recovering from the devastation of the plague. The war lasted from 1851 to 1954, and ultimately the northern army was defeated by the Wainriders, who laid the country to ruins. At the same time, seeing Gondor’s weakness, an army of Haradrim from the South threatened an attack. Gondor’s southern army, reinforced by refugees from the North,

crushed the Haradrim under General Eärnil, who then marched on the unsuspecting Wainriders and defeated them as well. Thus, Gondor survived the war but was much devastated. Subsequently, when Gondor’s King Ondoher was killed in battle along with his sons, Eärnil, a distant relative of the king, claimed the throne. Ondoher’s son-in-law Arvedui, heir to the throne of Arthedain in the North and heir to the line of Isildur, also claimed the throne, arguing that his son would be heir to a reunited kingdom of Gondor and Arnor, but his claim was rejected by the Council of Gondor, who held that the king of Gondor must be a descendant of Anárion. In any case, the possibility of reunification was quenched in 1974, when the northern kingdom fell to the Witch-King of Angmar, chief of the Nazgûl (Ringwraiths). Eärnil’s son Eärnur later distinguished himself at the Battle of Fornost against the forces of the Witch-king. When Eärnur came to the throne, the Nazgûl were able to capture Minas Ithil and make it their fortress, renaming it Minas Morgul in 2002. From here, the Witch-king challenged Eärnur to single combat, and the king rode off to meet him, never to return, in 2050. He had no heir, and the line of Anárion failed. From this point on, Gondor was governed by ruling stewards, and the position was made hereditary. The stewards of Gondor ruled for more than 1,000 years, and during that time, Gondor provided a bulwark against Mordor and the designs of the Dark Lord. Minas Anor was renamed Minas Tirith (the “Tower of the Guard”). In 2510, Gondor was invaded once more by Easterlings. When the army of the steward Cirion was cut off from retreat to Minas Tirith, he sent a plea for help to the northern tribe called the Éothéod, whose chief, Eorl, answered the call and helped Gondor win the Battle of the Field of Celebrant. In gratitude, Cirion gave Eorl the northern part of the kingdom, which was then renamed Rohan, and a permanent alliance was made between the two peoples. During the War of the Ring, Sauron sought to crush Gondor by first conquering all of Ithilien and then besieging Minas Tirith in 3019. With the aid of the Rohirrim and of Aragorn, the heir of Isildur, Gondor was victorious at the Battle of the Pel-

Gordon, George Stuart   503 Fields. Upon Sauron’s final defeat, Aragorn was made king of Gondor and Arnor, restoring the line of Isildur and replanting a scion of the White Tree in the courtyard of Minas Tirith.

ennor

Gordon, E. V.  (Eric Valentine Gordon)  (1896– 1938)  E. V. Gordon was Tolkien’s colleague at the University of Leeds (see Leeds, University of) from 1922 until Tolkien left for Oxford in 1925. He and Tolkien collaborated on what was to become the standard scholarly edition of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, first published in 1925. The two were close friends and maintained a working relationship long after they were no longer daily colleagues. They had plans to collaborate on other projects, including an edition of the Middle English Pearl as well as the Old English elegiac poems The Wanderer and The Seafarer, but Tolkien’s busy schedule made such collaborations difficult. Gordon was born on Valentine’s Day 1896 (hence his middle name) in Salmon Arm, British Columbia. He attended Victoria College and then McGill University in Montreal before going to University College, Oxford University, on a Rhodes scholarship in 1915. Kenneth Sisam was one of his tutors at that time, but World War I interrupted his studies. When he returned to Oxford in 1919, Tolkien (then also working for the Oxford ­English Dictionary) was his tutor. He received his B.A. in 1920 but left Oxford in 1922 before completing his B.Litt. degree, in order to join Tolkien as an assistant lecturer at Leeds. Like Tolkien, Gordon was completely in sympathy with the “B curriculum,” or the philological side (as opposed to the “literature” side) in Leeds’s English program, and therefore he was particularly focused on Old and Middle English as well as Old Norse. With Tolkien, he formed the Viking Club at Leeds—a group of faculty and students interested in drinking beer and in reading Old Norse literature. Gordon was responsible for several of the poems in Songs for the Philologists, a compilation published by a former student (A. H. Smith) teaching at University College, London, in 1936. After Tolkien left Leeds in 1925, Gordon succeeded him as department chair. Shortly after, he published An Introduction to Old Norse in 1927 (still

the most valuable work on the subject)—a text that Tolkien proofed and provided suggestions for. In 1930, Gordon married his former student Ida Lilian Pickles, who had received a Ph.D. in philology and was to become a respected scholar in her own right; the couple had four children. In 1931, Gordon left Leeds to accept an appointment as Smith Professor of English Language and Germanic Philology at the University of Manchester. Gordon continued to publish while at Manchester, putting out an edition of the Old English poem The Battle of Maldon in 1937 (for which Tolkien also read a proof). He also advised his friend Eugène Vinaver regarding the latter’s work on his famous edition of Sir Thomas Malory’s Works that was published in 1947. After the publication of The Battle of Maldon, Gordon agreed to join George Leslie Brook in producing an edition of Layamon’s Brut for the Early English Text Society, but Gordon died in summer 1938, at the age of 42. His wife, Ida, was able to complete the edition of Pearl, acknowledging Tolkien’s help when the book was finally published in 1953. Gordon, George Stuart  (1881–1942)  George Stuart Gordon attended the University of Glasgow, where he took a degree in classics, and later Oriel College, Oxford University, where he took firsts in classical moderations in 1904 and humane letters in 1906. He subsequently lived abroad in Paris, broadening his knowledge of modern history and politics. In 1907, probably through the influence of his former Glasgow professor Walter Raleigh, who had moved there, he became a fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford, where he stayed for six years until his appointment as professor of English language and literature at the University of Leeds (see Leeds, University of) in 1913. After World War I, Gordon began a wholesale restructuring of the English program at Leeds along the lines of Oxford’s curriculum, and in 1920 he hired Tolkien to the post of reader in English language. Tolkien worked under Gordon for only two years but developed a strong affection for him and admiration for what he had been able to accomplish at Leeds as department head. In 1941—in anticipation of Gordon’s impending death from a

504  Gresham, Joy terminal illness—Tolkien wrote in a draft of a letter to R. W. Chapman of Oxford University Press that Gordon “created not a miserable little ‘department,’ but a team. A team fired not only with a departmental esprit de corps, determined to put ‘English’ at the head of the Arts departments, but inspired also with a missionary zeal” (Letters 57). In 1922, Gordon left Leeds to become Merton Professor of English Literature at Oxford, bringing some of that missionary zeal with him to the position. He claimed in his inaugural lecture as Merton Professor that English no longer could see its task as simply to delight and instruct—it must now (in the wake of the devastating Great War) take over where politics and religion had failed, saving souls and healing the state. He kept his Merton position for six years and was instrumental in supporting the appointment of Tolkien as Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor in 1925. Gordon’s edition of Shakespeare’s Richard II also appeared that year, and his book on Shakespeare’s English came out in 1928. That same year, Gordon was named president of Magdalen College, Oxford, where in 1933 he also became a professor of poetry. From 1938 to 1941, Gordon was vice chancellor of Oxford University. Gordon remained a friend of Tolkien’s at Oxford, at first joining Tolkien’s group of Coalbiters who read Old Norse sagas together. Tolkien also presented Gordon with a complimentary copy of The Hobbit when it was published in 1937.

founded in the first year of the Second Age under the High-elven king Gil-galad. The Havens were located at the mouth of the River Lhûn at the eastern end of the Gulf of Lhûn. After Gil-galad fell at the Siege of Barad-dûr, when the army of the Last Alliance defeated Sauron at the end of the Second Age, the lordship of the Grey Havens fell to Círdan the Shipwright. Over the course of the Third Age, it was Círdan’s task to build ships for the elves who wished to leave Middle-earth to sail westward to the Undying Lands of Aman. The Grey Havens, like the other important homes of the Eldar (Rivendell and Lothlórien), were threatened but remained untouched by the malice of Sauron during the War of the Ring. At the end of the Third Age, after the defeat of Sauron and the coronation of Aragorn as king of the reunited Gondor and Arnor, most of the Eldar, including Elrond and Galadriel, traveled to the Grey Havens to take ships to the West, along with Gandalf as well as Bilbo and Frodo, the Ring-bearers. The Grey Havens were the last stronghold of elvish civilization in the Fourth Age. How long it lasted is unknown, as eventually nearly all of the elves traveled west. Tradition says that Sam Gamgee was able to take one of the last ships to leave the Grey Havens, having been a Ring-bearer himself for a short time. It is said that Círdan remained at the Grey Havens until the very last ship left Middle-earth, leaving that world to men.

Further Reading

Griffiths, Elaine  (Mary Elaine Griffiths)  (1909– 1996)  Elaine Griffiths was a student of Tolkien’s who became a family friend. Most important for Tolkien’s career, it was Elaine Griffiths who brought the manuscript of The Hobbit to the attention of the editors of George Allen & Unwin, thereby helping to launch Tolkien’s literary career. Griffiths attended Oxford University as a member of the Society of Oxford Home-Students, the organization for women who attended Oxford classes while living with private families in the city rather than in one of the colleges. (In 1952 the organization was renamed St. Anne’s College and was incorporated into the university by royal charter.) Griffiths lived at the hostel of Cherwell Edge,

Tolkien, J. R. R. The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien. Edited by Humphrey Carpenter. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1981.

Gresham, Joy  See Davidman, Joy. Grey-elves  See Sindar. Grey Havens  The Grey Havens were originally a part of the elven kingdom of Lindon, established in the land previously known as Ossiriand, the only part of Beleriand to survive the War of Wrath that ended the First Age. Called Mithlond in the Sindarin elvish tongue, the Grey Havens were

Grove, Jennie   505 which, since the Vatican first permitted Catholics to study at Oxford, served as a living space for the university’s Roman Catholic women. In 1933, Griffiths began work on a B.Litt. degree, working with Tolkien as her thesis adviser. Tolkien, who had taken on the task of editing the Middle ­English treatise Ancrene Wisse, set Griffiths to work making a diplomatic (i.e., exact) transcription of the manuscript; her thesis was to be “Notes and Observations on the Vocabulary of Ancrene Wisse.” She proceeded to make a glossary and index for the text, and continued to work on the project until Trinity Term (April-June) of 1936. Ultimately, however, she abandoned the project and never finished her degree. But she had been tutoring undergraduate students at Cherwell Edge during that period and found that she much preferred working with students to the intensive research required for the B.Litt. In the meantime, however, Tolkien had recommended Griffiths to Allen & Unwin to revise John R. Clark Hall’s old translation of Beowulf and the Finnesburg Fragment, a task for which the publisher had first approached Tolkien. Griffiths was making some progress on the revision in 1936 when Susan Dagnall, former classmate of Griffiths who was now a member of Allen & Unwin ’s staff, came to Oxford to consult with her about the project. While the two were visiting, Griffiths—one of the few friends Tolkien had allowed to read his typescript of The Hobbit—told Dagnall about the professor’s remarkable children’s story, and urged her to stop by Tolkien’s house on Northmoor Road and ask to see the text. Dagnall did so and took the manuscript back to Allen & Unwin, which eventually, of course, led to the book’s publication. Ultimately, Griffiths was unable to finish the revision of the Beowulf translation, and at her request, she was released from her contract in 1938, being replaced by another colleague of Tolkien’s, C. L. Wrenn of the University of London. That year, Griffiths became a fellow and tutor in the Society of Oxford Home-Students, holding a number of positions in that organization (later St. Anne’s College) and on the university level until she retired in 1976. She published the essay “King Alfred’s Last War” in the 1962 Festschrift English

and Medieval Studies Presented to J. R. R. Tolkien on the Occasion of His Seventieth Birthday. Tolkien seems to have referred to Griffiths as the “queen of hobbits,” partly because of her small stature and probably partly because of her role in the publication of that book. The most expensive Tolkien book ever sold at auction (for $104,000) was Griffiths’s personal copy of the first edition of The Lord of the Rings. In volume 1, Tolkien has penned in the high elven tongue Quenya “Elainen tarin Periandion ar meldenya anyaran” (“to Elaine, Queen of Hobbits and my very old friend”). Grove, Jennie  (1864–1938)  Jennie Grove was an older cousin of Edith Bratt who helped to raise Edith when she was living with her mother, Frances Bratt, in Handsworth. Jennie could boast that she was related to George Grove, who was responsible for the Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (1878). She spent her youth in Blundell Sands near Liverpool, had little formal education, and as a child suffered an injury to her back that handicapped her; as a result, she grew to be only 4′8″ tall. Despite her physical limitations, Jennie acted as a surrogate mother to her cousin Edith, who was 25 years her junior. When Edith was shunned by her former friends and ejected from the Jessops’ house in Cheltenham after converting to Catholicism, it was Jennie who moved in with her to her new home in Warwick in 1912. She continued to live with Edith and moved with her to Great Haywood in Staffordshire in order to be close to Tolkien, who was posted there in 1916. When World War I ended and Tolkien was able to return to his studies in Oxford, Jennie moved in with Tolkien, Edith, and their new baby, John Francis Reuel Tolkien. She continued to live in Oxford with the Tolkiens, leaving them only when the family moved to Leeds in 1921. Jennie remained close to the family throughout her life, often visiting them for long periods and acting as a grandmother to the children, though she maintained her own residence in Birmingham. The Tolkien children called her “Auntie Ie,” which is what John had called her when he was too young to pronounce her name properly.

506  Hador the Goldenhaired Hador the Goldenhaired  (Hador Lórindol)  Hador was the greatest of all the Edain of the First Age, the leader of what became known as the Third House of the Edain. He was the son of Hathol and the descendant of Malach Aradan, who first led the men of the Third House into Beleriand from the East. Hador was known by the elves as Hador Lórindol, or Hador the Goldenhaired. He was an elf friend and served Fingolfin, high king of the Noldor, in Middle-earth. For his service, Fingolfin granted Hador the lands of Dor-lómin, where his people of the Third House prospered for some time and Hador, as their leader, was considered the equal of the elven lords of Beleriand. He married Gildis and, with her, was the father of Gundor, Glóredhel, and Galdor the Tall; through Galdor, he was also the grandfather of Húrin and Huor. Fingolfin also gave Hador the dragon-helm created by the great dwarvish smith Telchar, a helmet fashioned in the likeness of the great dragon Glaurung. Hador was the tallest of all the men of Beleriand, and therefore he the only man who could wear the helmet. It passed down through his family, ultimately to his great-grandson Túrin Turambar. Hador’s great-great-grandson was Eärendil the Mariner. In the great battle known as the Dagor Bragollach (“Battle of the Quick-flame”), Hador led Fingolfin’s rear guard. Falling back after Morgoth’s assault, Fingolfin’s army was driven to the Mountains of Shadow (the Ered Wethrin), and Hador and his son Gundor were killed at the foot of the mountains at Eithel Sirion, the source of the great river Sirion. The lordship of the Third House then fell to Galdor. Thereafter, his people were known as the House of Hador. Haladin  The Haladin were the second tribe of men to cross the Blue Mountains from the east into Beleriand, following the House of Beor the Old, and thus were known as the Second House of the Edain. The Haladin were not as tall nor as interested in elven learning as the other two houses, preferring to live freely and quietly in the forests. Their language seems to have been unrelated to that of the other two houses of men. The Haladin first sought to live in Ossiriand, but the

Green-elves of that region were inhospitable, and the Haladin moved north to Thargelion, the land ruled by the Noldor under Caranthir, the fourth son of Fëanor. They did not seek Caranthir’s leave to settle in his lands, and Caranthir ignored their presence for a time. In Thargelion, the Haladin lived in isolated homes without any leader. But the Dark Lord, Morgoth, seeking to prevent any alliances between the elves and the new race of men, sent an army of orcs into Thargelion to annihilate the Haladin. Rising to the occasion, Haldad of the Haladin led the people to a point where the rivers of Ascar and Gelion intersected, and there he built a fortress to protect the remaining Haladin, mainly women and children, from enemy attacks. Haldad and his son Haldar were killed by the orcs, but his daughter Haleth was able to keep the people together and safe in the fortress for seven more days, until Caranthir arrived with a force of Noldor and drove out the orcs. Caranthir offered the remnant of the Haladin refuge and land in Thargelion, but Haleth did not want the Haladin to serve any lord, and therefore she left that land, leading her people on an exodus east of the river Celon and into Estolad, where they settled briefly. She then led the Haladin through the terrifying Nan Dungortheb (“the valley of dreadful death”) between the Mountains of Terror and the Girdle of Melian, which protected Doriath, finally reaching Talath Dirnen, the forested plain between the Narog and Teiglin Rivers. Some remained there, but most moved on with Haleth when the Sindarin elf king Thingol of Doriath granted the Haladin the neighboring Forest of Brethil in exchange for their guarding the crossing of the Teiglin River from Morgoth’s orcs. The Haladin, now generally known as the House of Haleth, dwelt in Brethil for many years, and like Thingol himself, they generally kept out of the great wars that the Noldor were fighting with Morgoth, though they continued to fight any orcs encroaching on Brethil or the crossing of the Teiglin. When Haleth died without an heir, the leadership of the tribe passed to her brother Haldar’s son, Haldan, and eventually to his son, Halmir. Halmir had four children, two of whom married spouses from the House of Hador, the

Hardie, Colin   507 Third House of the Edain. Halmir’s eldest son, Haldir, married Hador’s daughter Glóredhil, and his daughter Hareth married Hador’s heir Galdor the Tall; from their union were born the great warriors Húrin and Huor. After the disastrous Dagor Bragollach, in which Hador was killed, Húrin and Huor were fostered for a time in Brethil by their grandfather’s people. When the Union of Maedhros was formed, Halmir decided to break the long-standing policy of his people and take part in the war, though he died before the battle. His heir, Haldir, then led the Haladin to battle in what became known as the Nirnaeth Arnoediad (“Battle of Unnumbered Tears”). Haldir was slain, and his son Handir, who became titular leader of the Second House, was killed shortly after by an orc raid on Brethil. Handir’s son, Brandir the Lame, became chieftain and returned to his tribe’s earlier strategy of nonengagement. When Túrin Turambar, great-grandson of Halmir, came to Brethil, he was able to sway many of the people to a more aggressive posture, and he replaced Brandir as leader of the Haladin in all but name. But Túrin’s wars proved disastrous for the Haladin. His slaying of Brandir and his subsequent suicide left the Haladin without an effective leader, and a civil war within their ranks destroyed the House of Haladin and scattered its survivors. By the year 500 of the First Age, the House of Haleth had ceased to exist. Haradrim  (Southrons)  In Tolkien’s legendarium, the men called the Haradrim were inhabitants of the land of Harad, south of Gondor and Mordor. To the east, they bordered the land of Khand. Their northern border was formed by the Mountains of Shadow and by the River Harnen, which emptied into the Bay of Belfalas in the West. Around the harbor of the bay was the land known as Umbar, from which the seafaring Corsairs launched attacks to the north. The Haradrim were also called Southrons. They were implacable enemies of Gondor and thus aligned themselves with Mordor during the War of the Ring. In The Lord of the Rings, the Haradrim are presented as a primitive, impoverished, and warlike

people who lived in a harsh desert land or, in Far Harad, in a tropical jungle. In the Second Age, the Haradrim were ruled by Black Númenóreans— those men of Númenor who had been corrupted by Sauron and had become enemies of the Valar and the Eldar. During the Third Age, the Haradrim began to pose a serious threat to Gondor’s southern borders. While there were many tribes of Haradrim, some of them mutually hostile, they were united in their hatred of Gondor and their devotion to Sauron. The Haradrim had made war on Gondor at least three times in the Third Age prior to the War of the Ring. But in that war, they took part most memorably in the Battle of the Pelennor Fields, where some are depicted riding giant and aggressive elephantlike animals that they call mûmakil. As the mûmakil threatened to rout the Rohirrim in the battle, King Théoden was able to slay one of them in the battle, which gives hope to the defenders of Minas Tirith. The Haradrim fought also at the Black Gate as an integral part of Sauron’s army. The Haradrim are described as a tall people with dark skin and black hair, dressed in red with gold ornaments and carrying spears with spiked shields. One of the memorable scenes of The Two Towers occurs when Sam comes across a slain Harad warrior after a skirmish led by Faramir and his Rangers. Sam’s empathy with the dead man allows him to recognize the humanity of his enemy. This scene underscores the difference between the men and the orcs, trolls, and other races among Sauron’s host. There can be no empathy with the creatures that the Dark Lord has made in mockery of Ilúvatar’s creations. But men, no matter what their allegiance, are the Second-born Children of Ilúvatar in Tolkien’s legendarium, and therefore are sacred to him. Accordingly, when the War of the Ring is over and Sauron is defeated, peace is made with the Haradrim. Hardie, Colin  (Colin Graham Hardie)  (1906– 1998)  Colin Hardie was a renowned classicist and member of the Inklings, a group he joined through his association with C. S. Lewis at Magdalen College, Oxford University.

508  Havard, R. E Hardie was the son of William Ross Hardie, who was a fellow of Balliol College, Oxford, and a professor of Latin at Edinburgh University. Born on February 16, 1906, he attended Edinburgh Academy and then Balliol College, where he earned a number of awards for classical study from 1925 to 1928. He was appointed a junior research fellow for 1928–29 and was elected fellow and tutor in 1930. In 1933, he was elected director of the British School at Rome, and he spent three years there, developing a love for Italy and doing scholarly work on Virgil and on Dante. When Italy invaded Ethiopia in 1935, Hardie and his librarian, E. K. Waterhouse, were placed on leave of absence, and they traveled together to Greece, Syria, Jerusalem, and Istanbul. In 1936, Hardie returned to Oxford as a fellow and tutor at Magdalen College, where he remained until his retirement in 1973. As a tutor, he was reputed to be somewhat reserved and distant, but he was appreciated for his level of scholarship, particularly in teaching Dante, Virgil, and Homer. In addition to his membership in the Inklings, he was secretary of the Oxford Dante Society for 30 years, a society to which Tolkien also belonged. Perhaps it was his interest in Dante that led Hardie to join the Roman Catholic Church in 1945, an act that one can imagine Tolkien congratulating him on. In 1940, Hardie married Christian Lucas; the couple had two sons and were together for 58 years. He was appointed public orator for Oxford in 1967, a role that required him to give public orations in Latin at certain significant university events. He held this position until his retirement in 1973. In this capacity, Hardie conferred honorary degrees on public figures including Willy Brandt and Indira Gandhi. He also gave the public address on the occasion of Tolkien’s honorary doctorate of letters in June 1972. Hardie retired to Sussex, where he spent time on gardening and forestry, though he missed Oxford and its academic resources. He died in Chichester, West Sussex, on October 17, 1998. Havard, R. E.  (Robert Emlyn Havard)  (1901– 1985)  R. E. Havard was the only nonliterary member of the Inklings. He was the physician of C. S.

Lewis (and later of Lewis’s wife, Joy Davidman), and his literary interests led him to join the group on Lewis’s invitation. He also became the Tolkiens’ family doctor about the time of World War II. Havard studied chemistry at Keble College, Oxford University, until his conversion to Catholicism in the mid-1920s. Since Keble College prohibited Roman Catholics from attending until the 1940s, Havard moved his studies to Queen’s College, after which he studied medicine at Cambridge University and at Guy’s Hospital in London. While a student at Queen’s College, he published an influential article entitled “The Influence of Exercise on the Inorganic Phosphates in the Blood and Urine” in the Journal of Physiology in 1926. He received the Oxford degree of doctor of medicine in 1934 while teaching in the Biochemistry Department at the University of Leeds (see Leeds, University of), and later that year, he returned to Queen’s College, Oxford, as a research fellow. Back in Oxford, Havard became a general practitioner and met Lewis. Once, when he was late for a meeting of the Inklings, Lewis’s brother, W. H. “Warnie” Lewis, called him a “useless quack,” and Lewis was so amused at the epithet that he made it a permanent nickname for Havard, abbreviating it to U.Q. Hugo Dyson once referred to Havard as “Humphrey” when he had forgotten his name, and this also became attached to him, so that he was frequently referred to as “Dr. Humphrey Havard.” Havard became a fairly close friend of Tolkien’s as well, attending the same church and often sitting with him at Mass. In 1943, Tolkien acted as godfather to Havard’s son, David. During World War II, Havard volunteered for military service and did research on antimalarial drugs. In Tolkien’s unfinished The Notion Club Papers, Havard appears as the character Dolbear. Lewis dedicated his novel Prince Caspian to Havard’s daughter, Mary Clare. Havard retired to the Isle of Wight in 1968 but managed to visit the Tolkiens occasionally before they died in the early 1970s. Helm’s Deep  Helm’s Deep was one of the most important defensive fortifications in the Westfold of Rohan. It was a gorge cut into the Ered Nimrais (the White Mountains) below the three high-

Hill, Joy   509 est peaks, called the Thrihyrne. The gorge was formed by the Deeping Stream, which flowed out of Helm’s Deep through the only entrance into the gorge, called Helm’s Gate. Across this entrance was a combination of defensive works, including the Deeping Wall that spanned the opening, and the fortress called the Hornburg. Along the Deeping Coomb (the valley of the stream) was Helm’s Dike, a fortified trench that was the first line of defense an enemy had to pass. Additionally, the Deeping Stream was responsible for a vast system of glittering caves under Helm’s Deep called the Aglarond. Helm’s Deep was named after Helm Hammerhand, the ninth king of Rohan. In the year 2758 of the Third Age, when Rohan was invaded by their traditional enemy, the Dunlendings, Helm lost the Battle of the Crossings of Isen and was forced to retreat to the Hornburg. Here, he held out against a siege through the long winter—a winter characterized by famine and bitter cold. Near the end of that winter, Helm was found frozen to death one morning on Helm’s Dike, having gone out during the night to harass the enemy. The Hornburg was also the site of a decisive battle in the War of the Ring, as Théoden, king of the Mark, defended the fortress against an attack by an overwhelming army of orcs, Dunlendings, and Uruk-hai in the service of the traitor Saruman. The Rohirrim held out until Gandalf arrived with reinforcements, and an army of ents and Huorns surrounded the enemy, ultimately annihilating them. After the War of the Ring, the dwarf Gimli settled in the Aglarond along with a group of dwarves from Erebor, and became known as the Lord of the Glistening Caves. High-elves  See Noldor. Hill, Joy  (Margaret Joy Hill)  (1936–1991)  Joy Hill is sometimes referred to as Tolkien’s secretary, which is not quite accurate. She was an employee of his publisher, George Allen & Unwin, and her job was essentially to deal with subsidiary rights and permissions involving Tolkien and some of the publisher’s other prominent authors. Eventually, she

was assigned to deal with Tolkien’s voluminous fan mail—a monumental task in the late 1960s. In this capacity, she visited Tolkien often, in Oxford and later in Poole, a suburb of Bournemouth, when he retired there with his wife, Edith Bratt Tolkien, and became a close friend of both Tolkien and Edith. Hill began work at Allen & Unwin in her teens, as secretary to Rayner Unwin. She had not heard of Tolkien before and apparently misspelled his name on correspondence. She later recalled being sent to visit Tolkien in Oxford, carrying a number of gifts from readers addressed to him that had been tied to her arms because her hands were full of letters. Tolkien laughed and told Edith that a walking Christmas tree had just arrived. On another occasion when she was bringing parcels to Tolkien, he joked as he was opening one package that if he found a diamond-studded gold bracelet inside, it would be hers. The gold bracelet offer became a standing joke between the two of them. As Tolkien’s representative for subsidiary rights, Hill was particularly involved in Donald Swann’s project of setting Tolkien’s poems to music for the publication of The Road Goes Ever On: A Song Cycle, and in developing a concert performance of the songs with Swann and William Elvin. In 1965, Hill began helping Tolkien with his fan letters. A glance at some of Tolkien’s letters to Hill shows what a monumental task this must have been. On May 10, 1963, Tolkien wrote her that he would consider her suggestion to remove his name from the Oxford telephone directory, since that seemed to be a channel through which a number of his fans had been able to call his home directly (Letters 368–369). On December 12, 1966, he forwarded Hill a letter and samples that he had received from a fan who wanted to write a sequel to The Lord of the Rings. He was not sure about his legal rights and said that he supposed “there is no legal obstacle to this young ass publishing his sequel, if he could find any publisher, either respectable or disreputable, who would accept such tripe.” However, he thought a letter from the publisher might be more effective than one from himself, since he recalled “I once had a similar proposal, couched in the most obsequious terms, from a young woman, and when I replied in the

510   Hobbit, The ­ egative, I received a most vituperative letter” n (Letters 371). When Tolkien and Edith moved to Poole near Bournemouth in 1968, Hill was a frequent visitor, since the fan mail was relentless. Tolkien, however, had an accident on the stairs shortly before the move and broke his leg. He subsequently asked Hill if she would help him set up a library and office in his new home, and she agreed. While she was helping with the move, a typescript of a poem fell out from between two books she was carrying. It turned out to be a copy of the poem “Bilbo’s Last Song,” which Tolkien apparently had misplaced or even forgotten about some years earlier. Two years later, on September 3, 1970, Tolkien made Hill a gift of the manuscript, and its copyright, in gratitude for all of her help. It was, he said, in lieu of the gold bracelet he had promised her. Hill eventually published the poem in the form of a poster in 1974, the year after Tolkien died. She also provided it to Donald Swann to include in the revised edition of his song cycle in 1978 Tolkien moved back to Oxford after Edith died in 1971, and Hill continued to visit him regularly there until his death in 1973. After Tolkien’s death, her services were no longer required at Allen & Unwin, and she held a number of jobs with Penguin Books; Faber & Faber; Imperial College, London; and the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award program. Hobbit, The (animated film)  See Rankin/Bass Productions. Hobbit, The (radio adaptation)  See adaptations.

radio

hobbits  (Halflings)  Hobbits, or the “Little People” (called Halflings in Westron), were a race originally related to men, but they were distinguished from men by their short stature (usually between three and four feet tall); by their large, hairy feet with leathery soles; and by their longevity. Hobbits often lived to be more than a century old, and therefore their age of maturity was considered to be 33. Thus, a hobbit at the age of 50—as Bilbo Baggins was in The Hobbit—was still a relatively young hobbit. Hobbits had excellent eyesight

and could move very quietly when they wanted to. They generally lived in homes dug into hillsides. The hobbits of the Shire, where most of them lived during the Third Age, typically had curly brown hair, wore bright colors (particularly yellows and greens), and enjoyed frequent meals. Nothing is known about the origins of hobbits. Their earliest known home was in the vales of the Anduin River in the northern region of Middleearth, between the Misty Mountains and the forest of Mirkwood. Thus, early in the Third Age, hobbits lived in close proximity to the Éothéod, the ancestors of the Rohirrim, and as a result, the language of the hobbits (a dialect of Westron) had some elements borrowed from the language of Rohan. The word hobbit itself comes from the word holbytlas, originally the Rohirric word kûddûkan, meaning “hole dweller.” In about 1050 of the Third Age, when Sauron’s evil shadow fell on Mirkwood, the hobbits fled westward over the Misty Mountains. By this time, there were three distinct groups of hobbits. The Harfoots, who were the most numerous and enjoyed hills and highlands more than other hobbits, were the first to cross the mountains. The Fallohides, the least numerous of the hobbits, were more at home in the woodlands and were fairer than the other hobbits. They crossed the mountains north of Rivendell. The Stoors, who were most at home near the water, were the most reluctant to leave the Anduin valley, and they took a more southerly route to the West (it is believed that Sméagol, known as Gollum, was originally a hobbit of the Stoors clan). Eventually, nearly all of the folk from all three branches of hobbits came to settle in the area between the river Baranduin (which they renamed the Brandywine) and the Weather Hills, which became Breeland. In 1601—the year 1 in Shire Reckoning—the Fallohide brothers Marcho and Blanco were given the land west of the Brandywine by King Argeleb II of Arnor, and thus the Shire was founded. Many hobbits of Bree moved into the Shire, and after 1630, many Stoors came north from Dunland to settle there as well. At first, the hobbits paid allegiance to the kings of Arnor, even, according to their traditions, send-

Holm, Ian   511 ing a company of archers to defend him in the Battle of Fornost. But when the northern kingdom fell in 1974, the hobbits of the Shire elected a thain from among their own leaders. The thain’s duty was to summon the Shire-moot (a kind of parliament that met in times of crisis); to call to for the Shire-muster (the mobilization of the militia); and to lead the militia, or Hobbitry-in-arms, into battle if necessary. Since the hobbits lived in relative isolation and took no part in outside affairs, emergencies were very rare, and the office of thain was mostly a ceremonial one. The first thain was Bucca of the Marish, head of the Oldbuck family, and the office of thain was hereditary among his descendants until the large Oldbuck clan moved across the Brandywine and established the separate principality of Buckland, changing their name to Brandybuck in the process. After this, the title of thain went to the patriarch of the Took family. The most serious crisis faced by the Shire came in 2747 under Thain Isengrim Took II, whose son, Bandobras Took, known as “Bullroarer,” led the Hobbitry-in-arms against a band of marauding orcs, defeating them in the Battle of Greenfields. For the most part, however, the Shire maintained its peaceful, isolated existence, due largely to the efforts of Gandalf and of the Rangers of the North, descendants of the Dúnedain of the northern kingdom, who patrolled Eriador and protected the Shire from danger. By the end of the Third Age, of course, the Shire was brought into the War of the Ring, not only by the Ring-bearers themselves, but by the encroachment of Saruman and his allies, whom Frodo, Sam, Merry, and Pippin were forced to eject upon their return from the war. As the Fourth Age began, the Shire once more paid its allegiance to the restored king of Arnor. Holm, Ian  (Ian Holm Cuthbert, Sir Ian Holm)  (1931–  )  Sir Ian Holm is a widely acclaimed veteran stage and screen actor whose best-known role may be that of Bilbo Baggins in Peter Jackson’s films of The Fellowship of the Ring (2001) and The Return of the King (2003). Holm was born Ian Holm Cuthbert in Goodmayes, Essex, on September 12, 1931. His father

was a psychiatrist and his mother a nurse at the Essex mental hospital, but he was raised in London, where, after seeing a performance of Les Miserables at the age of seven, he became fascinated with acting. He studied at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts and, in 1950, joined the Royal Shakespeare Company, where he stayed for 13 years and developed a range and ability to play many different kinds of roles. Holm broke into television playing Richard III in a BBC production called War of the Roses in 1965. He won a BAFTA award for best supporting actor in 1969 for his role in the film The Bofors Gun. He also had small roles in the acclaimed films Mary, Queen of Scots and Nicholas and Alexandra in 1971. In 1967, he was on Broadway, where he won a Tony award for his role as Lenny in the premier performance of Harold Pinter’s The Homecoming. He continued to work onstage until 1976, when he suffered a serious case of stage fright while performing in Eugene O’Neill’s The Iceman Cometh. Subsequently, he became familiar to American television audiences through his roles as the scribe Zerah in the 1977 miniseries Jesus of Nazareth and as Heinrich Himmler in the 1978 miniseries Holocaust. In 1981, he received an Academy Award nomination for his role as Sam Mussabini in the Oscar-winning Chariots of Fire. He returned to the theater in 1993 and was awarded the London Critics Circle Theatre Award for best actor for his role as Andy in the premier production of Harold Pinter’s Moonlight. Holm’s other best-known film roles have been in Terry Gilliam’s films Time Bandits (1981) and Brazil (1985), as Captain Fluellen in Kenneth Branagh’s Henry V in 1989, and as Polonius in Franco Zeffirelli’s Hamlet in 1990. He starred as Mitchell Stevens in the acclaimed 1997 film of Russell Banks’s novel The Sweet Hereafter, and he was seen by a far larger audience that same year as Father Vito Cornelius in the Bruce Willis blockbuster The Fifth Element. But perhaps his most significant role of 1997 was his stage performance of King Lear for the Royal National Theatre company, for which he appeared naked onstage during the storm scene and was awarded the London Theatre Circle Critics Award for best actor. He reprised the role of Lear for an ExxonMobil television production the

512   Ilúvatar following year, for which he was nominated for an Emmy award in 1999. Holm was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 1989, and he was knighted in 1998 for his contributions to British theater. In 2001, he appeared as Bilbo in The Fellowship of the Ring, having previously played Frodo Baggins in the 1981 BBC radio broadcast of The Lord of the Rings. Since his appearance in The Return of the King, Holm has appeared in Martin Scorsese’s The Aviator (2004), in The Lord of War (2006), and in O Jerusalem (2006), and he was the voice of Skinner in 2007’s animated Ratatouille. Holm has been married four times. He has two children (daughters Jessica and Sarah Jane) with his first wife, Lynn Mary Shaw, and a son (Harry) with his second wife, Sophie Baker. With photographer Bee Gilbert, with whom he had a longterm relationship after his first marriage, Holm has two other children, Barnaby and Melissa. He was also married to the actress Penelope Wilton, from whom he divorced in 2001, and is currently married to the artist Sophie de Stempel. Ilúvatar  In the creation myth of Tolkien’s mythology, Ilúvatar is the creator god. His name means “All Father” in Quenya, the language of the High-elves. He is also called Eru, the Quenya word for “One,” implying his unity as the monotheistic god. The Valar, who appear in Tolkien’s legendarium with great powers in the created universe, are angelic beings, not gods, and they do only what they see as the will of Ilúvatar. Ilúvatar appears only in the Ainulindalë, the creation story published at the beginning of The Silmarillion. Here, alone in his timeless existence, Ilúvatar created the immortal beings called the Ainur, each of whom saw a part of Ilúvatar’s omniscient mind. He revealed more to the Ainur in three great musical themes, from which the vision of the created universe was revealed to them. When the rebellious Ainu Melkor tried to insert discord into the harmony of Ilúvatar’s music, Ilúvatar incorporated Melkor’s music and made it part of his harmony. Ilúvatar then gave being to the vision of creation, and Arda, the world, came into existence. The Valar—the Ainur most interested

in the creation—entered Arda themselves and worked to complete the vision of Ilúvatar. In general, Tolkien’s Ilúvatar is a transcendent figure, working in the world chiefly through the Valar, who know his will. He is known to have intervened directly in the events in Arda only four times: He directly created the elves, and also the race of men, and thus these were called the Children of Ilúvatar. He also blessed the creation of the dwarves by the Vala Aulë the Smith. Finally, he responded to the prayers of the Valar after the rebellion of Númenor in the Second Age, and reshaped Arda into a globe, obscuring the straight road that led to Aman, the Undying Lands. While the Valar, in particular Manwë, know much of Ilúvatar’s mind, some things—including the destiny of men and the end of Arda—are known only to Ilúvatar. Imladris  See Rivendell. Incledon, Marjorie  (1891–1973) and Mary  (1895–1940)  Marjorie and Mary Incledons were Tolkien’s first cousins on his mother’s side and the relatives he was closest to throughout his life. Mabel Tolkien’s sister, May Suffield (born Edith Mary Suffield) married Walter Incledon, and the couple moved to South Africa early in 1893 with their infant daughter Marjorie. Mother and daughter lived in Bloemfontein with the Tolkiens. After Mary was born, May and her two daughters followed Mabel and the two Tolkien boys back to England, probably by 1899, leaving Walter to compete his business in South Africa. Tolkien’s father, Arthur, had died in 1896, and Mabel had decided to convert to Catholicism, a decision that her sister May shared. The two of them took instruction at St. Anne’s in Birmingham and joined the Roman Catholic Church in 1900. The conversion was temporary for May, whose husband, upon his return from South Africa, forbade her to ever set foot in a Catholic church again. Still, the Incledons were Mabel’s closest family, and May was at her bedside when she died in 1904. The family lived in Kings Norton in the West Midlands and, later, Barnt Green near Bir-

Inklings   513 mingham. Tolkien and his brother, Hilary Tolkvisited them often, especially on holidays, and were close to their two cousins. Marjorie and Mary influenced Tolkien in one significant way: When they were children, they invented their own language, which they called “Animalic.” It was a secret language in which the names of animals were substituted for normal words. Humphrey Carpenter gives the example “Dog nightingale woodpecker forty,” which in Animalic meant “You are an ass” (36). The young Tolkien thought Animalic quite fun and mastered it quickly, so that even when Marjorie lost interest, he kept using the language with May. Eventually, he and May created a more complex secret language, which they named “Nevbosh” or “The New Nonsense.” Tolkien speaks of both of these languages in his lecture “A Secret Vice,” though he uses no names. They were his first taste of what would become his practice of creating new languages, such as Quenya and Sindarin, around which he was to develop his legendarium. Tolkien continued to spend holidays with the Incledons. Apparently they enjoyed amateur theatricals during the Christmas holidays, and in 1912, just before Tolkien’s 21st birthday, he composed a play entitled “The Bloodhound, the Chef, and the Suffragette,” in which he also acted the lead role. The plot of the play involved an heiress in love with a poor student. The young woman is trying to hide from her father until her 21st birthday, in two days’ time, when she will be free to marry the student (Carpenter 59). The plot, of course, was a thinly disguised reference to Tolkien’s own situation: In another two weeks, he himself would be free to marry Edith Bratt. Tolkien remained close to his cousins. Mary, who converted to Roman Catholicism herself, became godmother to her cousin’s eldest son, John Francis Reuel Tolkien. She lived in London, never married, and died of cancer in 1940. Marjorie became a successful artist, eventually training at the Brighton School of Art and exhibiting her paintings at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition. She also never married, living in Sussex with her father until his death, after which she moved to Ditchling. She remained in touch with Tolkien ien,

and visited him in August 1973, shortly before his death. She died later that year, at the age of 80. Further Reading Carpenter, Humphrey. Tolkien: A Biography. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1977. Tolkien, J. R. R. “A Secret Vice.” In The Monsters and the Critics and Other Essays, edited by Christopher Tolkien, 198–223. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1984.

Ingwë  In Tolkien’s legendarium, Ingwë was (with Finwë and Elwë) one of the three elvish ambassadors invited by Oromë to visit Valinor and to encourage their kindred to follow them in a migration from Middle-earth to the Undying Lands to the West, where they would be companions of the godlike Valar. Upon his return to Cuiviénen, the elves’ “awakening waters,” Ingwë convinced his kindred, the Vanyar (the “fair elves”), to follow him immediately to that promised land. The Vanyar were the least numerous of the three kindred of elves who set off for Valinor, but they were the swiftest to migrate to the West, where they at first took up residence at Tirion, the chief city of Eldamar, and later moved to the foot of the mountain of Taniquetil, the highest mountain in Aman and the dwelling place of Manwë, chief of the Valar, and his consort, Varda (Elbereth). Ingwë was named high king of the elves in Aman and, thereby, high king of all the Eldar. Ingwë remained with his kindred in Aman and never returned to Middle-earth. It is possible that the name Ingwë, which means “chief” in Quenya, was originally borrowed from the Norse name Ing or Yngvi, which were other names for the Norse god Freyr—who, according to myth, is lord of the light elves in Alfheim, “elf home.” Ing is also the mythological ancestor of the “Ynglings,” or Swedes. Inklings  The Inklings were an informal group, composed mainly of Oxford academics, who met fairly regularly from about 1933 or 1934 through the 1950s, mainly to share and discuss manuscripts of works in progress. There was never a formal structure to the group, so, of course, there are no

514   Inklings official records of its meetings. What is now known about them has been gleaned chiefly from the anecdotal memories of its various members, many of which are, as might be expected, contradictory. Tolkien’s own account of the group is probably as accurate a memory as any: The name was not invented by C.S.L. (nor by me). In origin it was an undergraduate jest, devised as the name of a literary (or writers’) club. The founder was an undergraduate at University College, named Tangye-Lean.  .  .  . [B]oth C.S.L. and I became members. . . . The club soon died . . . but C.S.L. and I at least survived. Its name was then transferred (by C.S.L.), to the undetermined and unelected circle of friends who gathered about C.S.L., and met in his rooms in Magdalen. Although our habit was to read aloud compositions of various kinds (and lengths!), this association and its habit would in fact have come into being at that time, whether the original short-lived club had ever existed or not. C.S.L. had a passion for hearing things read aloud, a power of memory for things received in that way, and also a facility in extempore criticism, none of which was shared (especially not the last) in anything like the same degree by his friends. (Letters 387–388)

Original members of the Inklings were, for the most part, men who had earlier been a part of Tolkien’s Coalbiters, the group that had gathered regularly to read Icelandic sagas in the late 1920s. As Tolkien’s letter indicates, C. S. Lewis seems to have been the primary moving force behind the group, and Tolkien was his chief ally from the beginning. Other early members included the philosopher Owen Barfield, the English tutor Hugo Dyson, the classical scholar Colin Hardie, Lewis’s brother W. H. “Warnie” Lewis, and the Chaucer scholar and dramatist Nevill Coghill. Others who became members included Lewis’s physician Robert Havard as well as the Oxford Byzantine scholar Father Gervase Mathew. The most significant addition to the group was the fantasy novelist Charles Williams, who joined at Lewis’s invitation in 1939 and was an essential member

of the Inklings until his untimely death in 1945. Others who joined the group after World War II included Tolkien’s son Christopher Tolkien; the Anglo-Saxon scholar C. L. Wrenn; the poet John Wain; and J. A. W. Bennett, who succeeded Lewis as professor of medieval and Renaissance English at Cambridge. As is apparent from this list, the group was British, academic, actively Christian, and male. Indeed, there was a good deal of consternation among the members when Lewis sought to include his wife, Joy Davidman (American, Jewish, atheist, and female), in the group. Typically, the group met in Lewis’s rooms at Magdalen College—though there was a time in the late 1940s that those meetings alternated with meetings in Tolkien’s rooms at Merton College—on Thursday evenings for conversation, drinks, and tobacco, and for readings and feedback on their work. Members of the group were reportedly brutally honest in their criticism of one another’s manuscripts—Lewis was , as Tolkien says in the above letter, a particularly astute critic of manuscripts he heard for the first time. A good dramatization of what the Thursday meetings of the Inklings must have been like is given in Tolkien’s unfinished novel The Notion Club Papers, in which the several characters are in some ways caricatures of some of the Inklings. The text of The Notion Club Papers is one that Tolkien did, in fact, read to the group. Eventually, however, the Thursday meetings of the club dwindled. By the end of 1949, they appear to have ceased altogether. There may be any number of reasons for this. The death of Williams was certainly a blow. Dyson famously hated listening to the manuscripts and would complain “Not another elf!” during Tolkien’s readings. And, of course, there was a cooling of the friendship between Tolkien and Lewis over the years. Members of the group also famously met regularly on Tuesday mornings before lunch at a pub— usually, but not exclusively, at the Eagle and Child on St. Giles, which they nicknamed the “Bird and Baby.” They did not, contrary to popular belief, read their manuscripts at the pub, since ­English lectures during World War II were generally given at the Taylor Institution, just a short

Isildur   515 walk from the Eagle and Child. The meetings at the pub survived much longer than the sessions at Magdalen, continuing in some form even into the 1960s. But by then Tolkien had retired, and Lewis was often at Cambridge University, where he had been elected to a chair in 1954. Such groups can, even in the best circumstances, be no more than temporary. But the exchanges of the Inklings did have some permanent effects. There is no question that Lewis’s Out of the Silent Planet and The Problem of Pain, Tolkien’s The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, and Williams’s All Hallows’ Eve all benefited from sharing—contemporary writers might call it workshopping—with the other Inklings. Further Reading Carpenter, Humphrey. The Inklings: C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, Charles Williams, and Their Friends. New York: Ballantine, 1981. Tolkien, J. R. R. The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien. Edited by Humphrey Carpenter. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1981.

Isengard  Isengard (the name means “iron enclosure” in the language of the Rohirrim) was a circular fortress built by the men of Gondor during the Second Age of Middle-earth as a stronghold to protect the northern part of their empire. It was located in the valley of Nan Curunír near the source of the River Isen, somewhat north of the Gap of Rohan. Isengard consisted of a large, natural stone wall that encircled a plain about a mile in diameter, at the center of which was built a great stone tower called Orthanc, which rose 500 feet above the plain and was topped by four great spikes. Orthanc could be entered only through a single door atop a long stairway. In the days of Gondor’s power, the guardian of Orthanc could communicate with the capital by means of a palantír, or seeing-stone (see palantiri). Isengard lay in Calenardhon, the part of Gondor ceded to the Rohirrim after the Battle of the Field of Celebrant in the year 2510 of the Third Age. Gondor retained its ownership of the fortress, but it fell into disuse, and in about 2700, it was taken over by the Dunlendings, enemies of Gondor. King

Fréaláf of Rohan drove the Dunlendings out in 2759, and at that point, Beren, ruling steward of Gondor, granted the wizard Saruman permission to take up residence in Isengard and gave him the keys to Orthanc. Eventually, Saruman, under the influence of Sauron, turned Isengard into a center for the manufacture of arms and the breeding of warrior orcs and Uruk-hai, until he had built a huge army. Then, in 2963, Saruman claimed Isengard for his own and fortified it against attack. It became the base of the wizard’s operations as he sought to seduce the Rohirrim and to recover the One Ring. In the process of his unconstrained arms buildup, Saruman had destroyed parts of Fangorn Forest and thus, unexpectedly, had aroused the wrath of the ents. An army of ents destroyed Isengard and demolished Saruman’s army, trapping Saruman and his henchman Wormtongue in Orthanc. Wormtongue rashly threw the palantír out of Orthanc at Gandalf when Gandalf and his party came to confront Saruman, and thus it came into the hands of the leaders of the free peoples. Saruman remained in Orthanc, guarded by the ents, but their leader, Treebeard, could not abide seeing a living thing caged and so freed Saruman at the end of the War of the Ring. At the beginning of the Fourth Age, ownership of Orthanc reverted to King Elessar of Gondor and Arnor, and the palantír was housed in Minas Tirith. The new forest that grew where Isengard had been was renamed the Treegarth of Orthanc. Isildur  The eldest son of Elendil the Tall, and thus one of the first leaders of the Dúnedain who fled the destruction of the island of Númenor, Isildur was one of the founders of the kingdoms of Gondor and Arnor in Middle-earth. In his youth on Númenor, Isildur had proven his courage when he was seriously wounded in the act of stealing the fruit of the White Tree Nimloth, the scion of the tree of the Eldar in Tol Eressëa that grew in the courtyard of Númenor’s king. When Númenor fell, Isildur escaped in three ships and made his way to Palargir in Middleearth, where he and his brother Anárion founded Gondor and became joint kings of that realm. He

516   Istari built Minas Ithil, the “Tower of the Moon,” on the eastern border of Gondor, closest to Sauron’s dark land of Mordor. But in the year 3429 of the Second Age, Sauron captured Minas Ithil, and Isildur was forced to escape to his father’s people in Arnor while Anárion defended the capital of Osgiliath. In 3434, joining the Last Alliance of elves and men, led by Elendil and the elf king Gil-galad, Isildur returned to Gondor and defeated Sauron’s armies at the Battle of Dagorlad, then joined his father in the siege of Sauron’s fortress of Baraddûr. Although Elendil and Anárion were killed in combat with Sauron, the Dark Lord fell in 3441, and Isildur cut the One Ring from Sauron’s finger, keeping it for himself. Isildur ruled in Gondor for two years, during which time he planted the seed of the White Tree in Minas Anor, the “Tower of the Sun,” in memory of his brother. He left Gondor in the hands of Anárion’s son, Meneldil, and traveled north to assume the kingship of Arnor. While en route, however, he and his company were attacked by orcs in a place called the Gladden Fields. Although he attempted to escape by wearing the One Ring and swimming across the Anduin River, the treacherous ring slipped off his finger and was lost in the river, and Isildur was killed, along with his three oldest sons. Isildur’s youngest son, Valandil, was being fostered in Rivendell at the time and therefore escaped the slaughter. Through Valandil, the line of Isildur was preserved for three millennia, until at the end of the Third Age Aragorn reclaimed the kingdom of Gondor as Isildur’s heir. Istari  (wizards)  The Istari (called “wizards” in Westron) were a group of five immortal beings sent to Middle-earth by the Valar in the year 1000 of the Third Age. In The Silmarillion, Tolkien mentions a powerful Maia named Olórin and later mentions that Gandalf the Grey was called Olórin in the West (i.e., in the Undying Lands of Aman). Thus, it seems probable that the Istari were originally Maiar. Their assigned task was to counsel the free peoples of Middle-earth in the coming conflict against Sauron, which the Valar had foreseen. The Istari were forbidden under any

circumstances to force their will upon the free peoples, or to challenge Sauron’s power directly with their own. The Istari took the form of old men, the Secondborn of the Children of Ilúvatar, an appearance that gave them an aura of wisdom and somewhat belied their vigor and physical powers. Thus, as a Maia, Gandalf was able to match the overwhelming power of the Balrog in Moria. The Istari wielded staffs, through which their powers seemed to be focused, so that when Saruman disobeyed the Valar’s express charge and attempted to dominate the men of Middle-earth, Gandalf broke Saruman’s staff and in the process cast him from the order of the Istari. Each of the five Istari was associated with a particular color. Saruman the White was the first of the Istari to enter Middle-earth. He explored the entire continent, including the extreme East, ultimately settling in Isengard. Of all the wizards, he was most interested in the ancient lore of Middleearth and became fascinated with the lore of the Rings of Power, an interest that ultimately led to his disobedience of the Valar and his own expulsion from the order of Istari. Radagast the Brown was most interested in animals of Middle-earth, especially the birds. Though an ally of Gandalf, he took no part in the War of the Ring, although he did help to rescue Gandalf from Saruman’s tower. According to an unpublished essay on the Istari included in Christopher Tolkien’s publication of Unfinished Tales of Númenor and Middle-earth, the other two Istari were the Blue Wizards, Alatar and Pallando, who traveled into the Far East with Saruman and never returned to the western part of Middle-earth. Thus, Gandalf the Grey was the only one of the five Istari who actively engaged in the assignment laid upon them by the Valar. From the beginning, he sought to counter Sauron’s evil by getting the various free peoples—men, elves, dwarves, ents, and even hobbits—to work together and to defend their own interests against the evil of the Dark Lord. His charge done, Gandalf returned to Valinor at the end of the Third Age, and it may be assumed that Radagast and the Blue Wizards followed him.

Jackson, Peter   517 Jackson, Peter  (Peter Robert Jackson)  (1961–  )  Sir Peter Robert Jackson was the director responsible for bringing to the screen the enormously successful Lord of the Rings trilogy for New Line Cinema. He is also involved in a project to produce a two-film version of The Hobbit, which began filming in 2011. Jackson was born to working-class parents Joan and William Jackson in Pukerua Bay near Wellington, New Zealand, on October 31, 1961. When his family was given a Super-8 camera, Jackson began to produce films with his friends, trying to reshoot his favorite movie, King Kong, with stop-action models when he was nine years old. As a teenager, fascinated by special effects, he made a short film called World War Two, in which he poked holes in the film in scenes where guns were fired to simulate the gun’s flashing. When he was 22, Jackson embarked on a project with some of his friends that would become the film Bad Taste. He was director, producer, and actor in the movie, which he filmed using a secondhand $250 camera. The project took four years to complete, but when it was finished in 1987, a friend in the movie industry suggested to Jackson that the film had commercial possibilities, and he entered it in the Cannes Film Festival, where it won several awards and ultimately became a cult classic. Now a bona fide filmmaker, Jackson made his first professional film, the zombie comedy Braindead, in 1992, and began to get a reputation as a maker of “splatter” films with bloody endings. He won critical acclaim for his film Heavenly Creatures (1994), starring a young Kate Winslet, and earned an Academy Award nomination for the screenplay, which he cowrote with his partner, Fran Walsh. The success of Heavenly Creatures brought Jackson to the attention of the American company Miramax, which signed him to a “first-look” deal, which allowed Miramax the right of first refusal of any new project Jackson was developing. In 1996, he made his first big-budget Hollywood film, the horror-comedy The Frighteners with Michael J. Fox, which he was able to film entirely in New Zealand. That film was a commercial and critical failure. By then, he and Walsh had had two children, Billy (born in 1995) and Katie (1996). He had also

started working on the script for a remake of King Kong, which he badly wanted to film but was as yet unable to interest a studio in it. The major turning point of Jackson’s career came in 1997, when he secured the rights to film The Lord of the Rings. Miramax initially agreed to a two-film version of the novel but later began to pressure Jackson to turn it into a single film. Eventually, he signed a three-film deal with New Line Cinema. Jackson did most of the filming of the trilogy in New Zealand, shooting from October 11, 1999, to December 22, 2000. The Fellowship of the Ring was released in 2001, The Two Towers in 2002, and The Return of the King in 2003. Together, the three films garnered 17 Academy Awards, 11 for The Return of the King alone, including the Oscar for best director, best picture, and best adapted screenplay, which Jackson again shared with Fran Walsh. The films grossed more than $1 billion in the United States alone, and some $3 billion worldwide. Jackson himself is estimated to have personally netted $125 million from the films. Jackson’s father, William, had died during the filming of the trilogy, and his mother died three days before The Fellowship of the Rings was released. Jackson now owns their house in Pukerua Bay. For their contributions to New Zealand cinema, Jackson and Walsh were both awarded the Companion of the Order of New Zealand Merit in March 2002. In 2010, he was made Knight Companion. Since the success of The Lord of the Rings trilogy, Jackson has been able to complete his remake of King Kong, which was not received well by critics but grossed more than half a billion dollars in 2005. He was paid $20 million up front for directing this film—the most ever paid a film director before the production of a movie. In 2009, he completed The Lovely Bones, based on Alice Sebold’s novel. That same year, he also produced the well-received science-fiction film District 9. He is committed as producer of an animated film based on the popular Tintin comic-book character, to be directed by Steven Spielberg. Most important for Tolkien enthusiasts, Jackson is still involved in the project to make a film version of The Hobbit. Jackson and Walsh have written the screenplays for both films, and Jackson was to begin filming in New Zealand in 2011.

518   Jerusalem Bible Jerusalem Bible  The Jerusalem Bible was the first Catholic translation of the Bible into English since the Douay-Rheims edition of 1610, and the first based on original Greek and Hebrew sources (earlier translations had been based on St. Jerome’s Latin Vulgate version, itself a fourth-century translation). It was assembled by a group of scholars in Great Britain, including general editor Alexander Jones of Christ’s College, Liverpool, and 27 other scholars, one of whom was the eminent Oxford philologist J. R. R. Tolkien. In 1943, Pope Pius XII issued the encyclical letter Divino Afflante Spiritu, which called for a new Roman Catholic translation of the scriptures from original texts into contemporary languages. The cause was taken up by a group of Dominican scholars at the École Biblique in Jerusalem, who worked for years on a new translation into French, which appeared first in 1956 as La Bible de Jérusalem, then in a revised one-volume edition in 1961 under the general editor Père Roland de Vaux, O.P. The project had two chief goals: First, the translators sought to provide an accurate text of the Bible in contemporary language; second, they wanted to provide accurate, scholarly, nondogmatic explanatory notes for readers. The English version of the text was published soon after, undoubtedly in part to compete with the Protestant Revised Standard Version, which had come out in 1951. The English translators followed the principles laid down by the French scholars, translating the notes and introductions to individual books with little change from the French. Some of the translations of the English text were made from the French, but all were compared for accuracy with the original Greek and Hebrew. The result was an English version of the Bible that clearly reflected Roman Catholic tradition (books of the Deuterocanon were printed as part of the Old Testament rather than in a separate section of the book, for example), but that was highly accessible to English readers (biblical names were included in the familiar English form of the Authorized King James, or of the Revised Standard Version). Published with the full support of the Roman Catholic Church, the Jerusalem Bible in English is recognized as one of the best modern English

translations of the scriptures, widely admired for its literary quality—a quality partly attributable to Tolkien’s influence. The Book of Jonah is reputedly almost completely Tolkien’s work. Jessop, Charles and Margaret  Charles and Margaret Jessop were elderly friends of Edith Bratt’s family with whom she lived after she moved to Cheltenham in Gloucestershire in 1910. She moved there after Father Francis Morgan, Tolkien’s guardian, forbade him from pursuing his relationship with Edith. Edith referred to the Jessops as “Uncle and Auntie Jessop.” While living with them, she became an active member of the Anglican church in Cheltenham and was engaged to George Field, the brother of one of her friends from school. However, having turned 21 in January 1913, Tolkien, free from Father Morgan’s authority, arrived in Cheltenham and persuaded Edith to marry him instead of Field. When Edith told the Jessops that she had agreed to marry Tolkien and to join the Catholic Church, they responded that she was no longer welcome to stay with them, and told her to leave their house. Kalevala  The Kalevala is a collection of Finnish songs that is often referred to as the Finnish “national epic,” though it is not an epic in the traditional sense (like The Iliad, The Aeneid, The Song of Roland, or Beowulf) of being a unified narrative about a figure on whom the fate of a nation depends. Rather it is, like the Norse Elder Edda, a collection of traditional tales in verse. Tolkien came across the Kalevala at about the time he was finishing his studies at King Edward’s School and preparing to go to Oxford University, reading it first in an Everyman translation by W. H. Kirby. By about 1912, Tolkien had found a Finnish language edition of the Kalevala, and although he was never able to learn Finnish as well as he knew, for instance, Gothic or Old Norse, he was able to work his way partly through the text and learn enough Finnish to use it as an influence on his invented language of Quenya, which he was developing at the same time. The Kalevala was a nationalistic project undertaken by Dr. Elias Lönnrot (1802–84), a Finnish

Kalevala   519 medical doctor turned philologist. Finland, which for centuries had been under Swedish rule, was ceded to Russia in 1809, and under the Russians, the country enjoyed virtual independence, with its own parliament under the czar as grand duke. This sparked a burgeoning nationalism among the Finns, and Lönnrot began a study of his native tongue as an aspect of this national movement. Like the Grimm brothers in Germany, he began to collect traditional folktales, particularly from the eastern provinces of the country, especially northern Karelia. Beginning in about 1827, Lönnrot made repeated trips to this district to collect songs, ballads, and stories. By 1835, he had collected enough to publish a compilation arranged as a continuous story in 32 cantos, or runos, with Lönnrot supplying narratives of his own to provide necessary transitions between the songs at some points. This initial publication is called the Old Kalevala. In 1849, Lönnrot issued a revised and expanded version, in 50 runos, which is the text now commonly known as the Kalevala. The complex collection of stories begins with a creation story and the birth of Väinämöinen, a wise old man who is the central character of the tales. The first 10 runos deal with him and his influencing the great smith Ilmarinen to forge the Sampo. He intends to win the hand of the Maid of the North by offering the Sampo to her mother, Louhi, queen of the northern land of Pohja. It is Ilmarinen, however, who eventually wins the Maiden’s hand. The Sampo itself is a magic talisman never completely described, though it seems to bring good luck to any who have it. Eventually, Ilmarinen and Väinämöinen travel back to Pohja and are able to steal away the Sampo after Väinämöinen has lulled everyone to sleep through his singing. Later, the Sampo is lost in the sea. In revenge, Louhi steals the sun and the moon from the sky, and though Ilmarinen and Väinämöinen retrieve the sun and moon, in the last runo, the child of Marjatta, the result of a Virgin birth, expels Väinämöinen and becomes king of Karelia (the last, of course, is probably an allegorical rendering of the eclipsing of ancient mythology by Christianity). In the middle of the Kalevala (runos 31–36) is the story of Kullervo, who, his family having been

decimated by his uncle Utanmo, is sold as a slave to Ilmarinen. Ultimately he causes the death of Ilmarinen’s wife, who has abused him. He is eventually reunited with his family and seduces a maid who proves to be his sister. He finally takes revenge on Utanmo, but returns home to find his entire family dead, and finally he kills himself. Tolkien was enchanted by the tales. In 1914, he began a prose and verse redaction of The Story of Kullervo, and in November that year, he delivered a paper on the Kalevala to the Sundial Society at Corpus Christi College, Oxford University, reprising the paper at Exeter College the following year. Also in 1914, he painted a watercolor illustration entitled The Land of Pohja, depicting Louhi’s stealing of the sun and moon. It is fairly easy to see the influence of the tales in the Kalevala on the creation of Tolkien’s own legendarium, which was beginning to take shape in these years and took its final form in The Silmarillion and The Children of Húrin. The mysterious Sampo is almost certainly the chief source for the Silmarils, those powerful jewels forged by the elven smith Fëanor and stolen by Morgoth until one, at least, is reclaimed by Beren and Lúthien, who lull Morgoth to sleep (Himes). The hiding of the sun and moon may recall the darkening of Valinor and the destruction of the Two Trees. The ancient Väinämöinen, oldest of living beings, might suggest the character of Treebeard and, in his continual singing, may be one of the sources for Tolkien’s character of Tom Bombadil, according to David Elton Gay. But the most significant influence of the tales of the Kalevala on Tolkien’s mythology is in the development of the character of Túrin, whose life—including the destruction of his family, his revenge, his incest and his suicide— all follow the pattern of Kullervo’s life. The Kalevala has been translated into some 45 languages since its original publication in 1849, and it has undoubtedly played a part in the Finnish nationalistic movement that culminated in its independence from Russia in 1917. Its trochaic tetrameter meter inspired Longfellow’s 1855 poem The Song of Hiawatha, and its Kullervo story inspired Sibelius’s 1892 symphony of that name. For Tolkien, it was a valuable inspiration for myth-

520   Katherine group making when his mind was beginning to look in that direction. Further Reading Gay, David Elton. “J. R. R. Tolkien and the Kalevala: Some Thoughts on the Finnish Origins of Tom Bombadil and Treebeard.” In Tolkien and the Invention of Myth: A Reader, edited by Jane Chance, 295–304. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2004. Himes, Jonathan B. “What Tolkien Really Did with the Sampo.” Mythlore 22, no. 4 (Spring 2000): 69–85. Kirby, W. R., trans. Kalevala: The Land of the Heroes. Compiled by Elias Lönnrot. 1907. Reprint, New York: Dutton, 1951. Magoun, Francis Peabody, Jr., trans. The Kalevala, or Poems of the Kaleva District. Compiled by Elias Lönnrot. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1963. Tolkien, J. R. R. The Children of Húrin. Edited by Christopher Tolkien. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2007. ———. The Silmarillion. Edited by Christopher Tolkien. London: Allen & Unwin, 1977.

Katherine group  The Katherine group is a set of related Middle English texts that includes three Saints’ Lives (Saint Katherine, Saint Juliana, and Saint Margaret) as well as the devotional text Hali Meiðhad (“Holy Maidenhood”) and Sawles Warde (“Care of the Soul”). The group is named after Saint Katherine, the work that appears first in the most important manuscript containing all these texts, the Oxford MS Bodley 34. In the manuscript tradition, the Katherine group is closely associated with the Ancrene Wisse (“Rule for Anchoresses”), a text that Tolkien spent a great deal of time on, finally completing the Early English Text Society edition of it in 1962. For example, the British Library MS Cotton Titus D.xviii contains two incomplete texts of the Ancrene Wisse and three texts from the Katherine group (Saint Katherine, Sawles Ward, and Hali Meiðhad). Both are related, as well, to another group of texts called the “Wooing group,” a group of texts focusing on the Christian soul as the Bride of Christ. The chief of these

texts, The Wooing of Our Lord, is also included in the Cotton Titus D.xviii manuscript. While these texts are related thematically, all emphasizing the desirability for women to choose the virgin life and the joys of marriage with Christ, their relationship is even more apparent through an examination of their West Midland language. Tolkien spent a good deal of his scholarly life examining the language of the Ancrene Wisse and the texts of MS Bodley 34. For years, he worked with his former student and good friend, the Belgian scholar S. R. T. O. d’Ardenne, and provided a good deal of support and ideas for d’Ardenne’s 1977 edition of the poems of the Katherine group. Tolkien’s chief thesis in this long study, which many scholars believe is his most lasting contribution to scholarship, is the proposal of what he called the AB language. This was what Tolkien characterized as a standardized literary dialect in which all of these texts were written. Unlike texts produced in other parts of England, he demonstrated that these texts showed a consistency in spelling and grammar that suggested a “school” or authority of some kind that helped to standardize the language. He believed that the dialect was localized to the area of Herefordshire, and that the language had developed very regularly directly from Old English. Further Reading d’Ardenne, S. R. T. O., ed. The Katherine Group: Edited from MS. Bodley 34. Paris : Société d’Edition Les Belles Lettres, 1977. Tolkien, J. R. R. “Ancrene Wisse and Hali Meiðhad.” Essays and Studies 14 (1929): 104–126.

Kay, Guy Gavriel  (1954–  )  Guy Gavriel Kay is a Canadian writer of fantasy novels who was Christopher Tolkien’s assistant for his edition of The Silmarillion. Kay was born in Saskatchewan on November 7, 1954, to parents of Jewish background; his father was a surgeon and his mother an artist. He grew up in Winnipeg, Manitoba. While working on his degree in philosophy from the University in Manitoba in 1974, he accepted Christopher Tolkien’s offer to move to Oxford and help him produce the much-anticipated compilation of Tolkien’s legendarium. He had met Christopher

King Edward’s School   521 through his parents, who were friends of Christopher’s second wife, Baillie. Upon the completion of the Silmarillion project, Kay returned to Canada, earning a law degree from the University of Toronto in 1978. He practiced law for only a year or so, and in 1982 he became a scriptwriter and producer for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s radio program The Scales of Justice. At the same time, he began writing fantasy novels. Kay published his own fantasy trilogy, The Fionavar Tapestry, between 1984 and 1986. The main characters of these novels—The Summer Tree (1984), The Wandering Fire (1986) and The Darkest Road (1986)—are students at the University of Toronto who are enmeshed in a fantasy world. Kay’s later novels are quasi-historical fantasies, often revising history as he rewrites the past. These novels include Trigana (1990); Arbonne (1992); The Lions of Al-Rasson (1995); Sailing to Sarantium (1998) and its sequel, Lord of the Emperors (2000); and The Last Light of the Sun (2002), set in Renaissance Italy, medieval France, reconquista Spain, Byzantium, and ninth-century England, respectively. Although his novel Ysabel (2007) is set in contemporary Provence, it still uses historical fantasy as the major element of the plot. His most recent novel, Under Heaven (2010), is set in China’s Tang dynasty. In 2003, Kay published a volume of poetry called Beyond This Dark House. Kay has twice won Canada’s Aurora Award for science fiction and fantasy, and he has also been honored with Mexico’s International Goliardos Award for his fantasy novels. He learned a great deal about writing and about fantasy from his work on The Silmarillion, and he has acknowledged Tolkien’s influence on his novels.

without change. Accordingly, they did not share this language with any of the other peoples of Middle-earth, preferring to keep it as the language of their own history and lore. They spoke the language of men or elves with non-dwarves but would only use Khuzdul among themselves, and then not as an everyday language but one that embodied the lore of ancient days. Only certain dwarvish battle cries and some place-names, such as Khazaddûm (which the elves called Moria), were generally known. In this the language was similar in some ways to classical Hebrew, a similarity Tolkien acknowledged in a 1955 letter to Naomi Mitchison: “I do think of the ‘Dwarves’ like Jews: at once native and alien in their habitations, speaking the languages of the country, but with an accent due to their own private tongue” (Letters 229). The language as Tolkien developed it apparently was harsh-sounding to many of the other peoples of Middle-earth, using a large number of aspirated stops (e.g., kh-, th-, ph-, where the h represents a puff of air after the consonant) and a number of voiced spirants (like the z, zh, v, and soft th sounds in English). The only significant example of Khuzdul in The Lord of the Rings is the inscription on Balin’s tomb in The Fellowship of the Ring, which is written in Cirth, or runic letters; transcribed into the Roman alphabet, it reads: “Balin Fundinul Uzbad Khazad-Dumu” (“Balin, son of Fundin, Lord of Moria”) (Tolkien 333–334). This does demonstrate the aspirated k as well as the spirant z in Uzbad and Khazad. Further Reading

Khazad-dûm  See Moria.

Tolkien, J. R. R. The Fellowship of the Ring: Being the First Part of The Lord of the Rings. 2nd ed. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1965. ———. The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien. Edited by Humphrey Carpenter. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1981.

Khuzdul  In Tolkien’s mythology, Khuzdul is the name of the secret language of the dwarves, which was given to them by their creator, the Vala Aulë the Smith, upon their first awakening. The language was devised by Aulë, rather than being developed naturally, and perhaps because of this, the dwarves wished to keep it in its original state,

King Edward’s School  King Edward’s School in Birmingham, England, was established in 1552 (under the reign of King Edward VI), and during Tolkien’s childhood, it was generally acknowledged to be the best grammar school in the city. In Tolkien’s day, it was located in the center of the city on New Street, near the New Street rail-

522   King Edward’s School way station. The school building, built in 1838 in the Gothic Revival style, was designed by Charles Barry, the architect of the Houses of Parliament. Tolkien’s father, Arthur Reuel Tolkien, had attended King Edward’s School, and both Ronald and Hilary Tolkien were expected to matriculate there as well. Ronald took the entrance exam for the school in 1899, when he was seven years old, but failed it. He did pass the exam a year later, after his mother focused her efforts more seriously on teaching him what he needed to know before beginning his formal studies. Tolkien began at King Edward’s in 1900, but when his mother moved the family to Edgbaston in 1902, Ronald and Hilary were enrolled at the more economical (but inferior) St. Philips Grammar School. Ronald was able to obtain a scholarship to King Edward’s in 1903, and he returned there for the rest of his early schooling. In 1903, Tolkien was placed in the Sixth Class at King Edward’s School. His schoolmaster was George Brewerton, who taught his students ­English literature and had them reading Shakespeare and Chaucer. King Edward’s had both a modern (or “scientific”) track and a classical track for those intending to go to Oxford or Cambridge. Tolkien was enrolled in the classical track, and by

this time he was also enthusiastic about studying Greek for the first time. After Mabel Tolkien died in 1904, Ronald and Hilary were placed with their aunt, Beatrice Suffield, and were able to continue at King Edward’s. In 1905, Tolkien became friends with Christopher Wiseman, a year his junior and his rival in Latin and Greek studies in the Fifth Class under the instruction of C. H. Heath. By the time he had reached the First Class (senior year) at the age of 16, Tolkien was under the headmaster Robert Cary Gilson, whose son, Rob Gilson, also became one of Tolkien’s closest friends. Under the elder Gilson’s tutelage, Tolkien began to study classical linguistics, an interest that flourished when Brewerton introduced him to Anglo-Saxon and to Beowulf, and he began, as well, to invent his own languages. He also obtained a copy of Joseph Wright’s Primer of the Gothic Language and began to share his enthusiasm for philological studies with Wiseman, who was himself beginning to study Egyptian hieroglyphics. Beyond his study of language, Tolkien was also involved in a number of school activities at King Edward’s. The school divided the boys into four houses, which competed against one another as well as against other schools in sports. Tolkien’s was Measure’s House, and he played on his house

King Edward’s School, Birmingham, where Tolkien spent his early school years  (Photo by Robert Kirkup Dent)

Kullervo   523 rugby team in 1909, becoming captain in 1910, his last year at King Edward’s. He was also in the Debating Society from at least 1909 on, acting as the group’s secretary during his last year. He read a paper on Norse sagas to the Literary Society in 1911, and he served as editor of the King Edward’s School Chronicle (the school newspaper) for June and July 1911. In 1907, an Officer Training Corps was begun at King Edwards, and by 1911, Tolkien was a corporal in this organization. During the summer of 1911, Tolkien also became librarian at King Edward’s. A number of his friends acted as sub-librarians, including Wiseman, Gilson, and others. The group began to have tea in the library, eventually moving out to a tea room called Barrow’s Stores. The group grew to include other members, including G. B. Smith, and began calling itself the Tea Club, Barrovian Society (Barrovian after “Barrow’s”), or the t. c. b. s for short, first as a kind of a lark but eventually as a close-knit group (with Tolkien, Smith, Wiseman and Gilson particularly) who shared their thoughts and interests; the group continued well after they had left King Edward’s. Tolkien returned to King Edward’s often after his graduation, taking part in such activities as the Old Edwardians’ annual dinner. Since one of the school’s 21 governors was always nominated by Oxford University, Tolkien was appointed to King Edward’s governing board from 1937 until he resigned in 1941, finding himself unable to continue because of the burden of his duties at Oxford. King Edward’s continues to this day to be one of the best-respected day schools in England. Kullervo  The main character of the central episodes of the Finnish Kalevala, Kullervo was a significant influence on Tolkien’s legendarium, and his story seems to have suggested a number of details in Tolkien’s story of Túrin Turambar, as told in The Silmarillion and later, more completely, in The Children of Húrin. Tolkien made clear his debt to the Kullervo story in a 1955 letter to W. H. Auden, wherein he noted that this part of The Silmarillion was “an attempt to reorganize some of the Kalevala, especially the tale of Kullervo the hapless, into a form of my own” (Letters 214). The story

Painting entitled Kullervo’s Curse. Kullervo, the main character of the Finnish Kalevala, influenced Tolkien’s legendarium.  (Painting by Akseli Gallen-Kallela)

is not completely consistent, since the Kalevala was assembled from separate folktales, so that at one point Kullervo seems to be the result of a virgin birth but is later hailed as the son of Kalervo. His mother is young in the beginning but seems to have aged a great deal by the end. Kalervo seems surely dead in the beginning but lives again by the end, as do his children. Kullervo is the son of Kalervo, who is killed along with all his tribe by his jealous brother

524  Lancashire Fusiliers Untamo. Only one young woman survives, and Untamo carries her back to his farm. Not long afterward, she gives birth to a fatherless child whom she names Kullervo (“Pearl of Combat”). At the age of three months, the magical child begins to speak vows of vengeance, threatening to destroy Untamo’s tribe. Untamo tries unsuccessfully to kill the child three times, but the power within Kullervo is too strong, and he survives. Once the child is grown, Untamo tries to make him a servant in his household, but Kullervo is unfit for any of the jobs he is set to and decides to sell Kullervo into slavery with the smith Ilmarinen. Ilmarinen’s wife inexplicably hates the youth Kullervo, and she sends him out to tend a herd of her cattle, giving him a loaf of bread with a large stone baked inside for his lunch. When Kullervo sit down to eat, he cuts the bread with his knife, his only memento from his childhood and his loving mother, but the knife’s blade breaks on the stone. In vengeance, Kullervo drives the cows into a fen and replaces them with bears and wolves, and when Ilmarinen’s wife goes to milk them, they tear her to pieces. Kullervo flees with the intention of avenging his family on Untamo. He returns to his home to find that his father is actually still alive and living with his mother, who has given birth to his sister in his absence, but that the sister has recently disappeared. For the first time, we learn that Kalervo is his father. Like Untamo earlier, Kullervo’s father has difficulty finding a task that Kullervo can do, since he is too strong to complete most tasks successfully. Finally, his father sends Kullervo to pay the taxes and grain levy owed by the family, and during his return, he meets a peasant girl whom he entices into his sleigh. She is reluctant, but he forces her into the sleigh and then seduces her with silver and fine clothing. Later, after some questioning, she realizes that Kullervo is her own brother, and in horror at her deed, she throws herself into a river and drowns. Still, Kullervo insists on taking revenge on Untamo. No one can dissuade him, and eventually everyone turns away from him. Even when he hears of the deaths of his father and mother, as well as a surviving (and previously unmentioned) sister and brother, he will not turn from his single-minded

pursuit of vengeance. Ultimately, Kullervo is able to obtain a magic sword from Ukko, the thunder god, and with it he manages to slaughter Untamo and his entire tribe. When he returns home, he finds all his family dead, and he goes off into the woods to the place where he sister slew herself. He asks the magic sword if it will kill him. The sword answers that it is indifferent as to whom it kills, and Kullervo falls upon it, causing his own death. Tolkien’s Túrin is similarly the survivor of his tribe’s decimation, and he unwittingly impregnates his own sister, who also kills herself. Like Kullervo, Túrin is so obsessed with vengeance that he sacrifices the lives and welfare of his allies for his revenge. His sword also speaks to him just before he kills himself on it. While much of Túrin’s story is based also on that of the Norse Sigurd and includes other aspects that fit into Tolkien’s broader story of the First Age of Middle-earth, the tragedy of Kullervo seems likely to have been the first impetus for the story. Further Reading Tolkien, J. R. R. The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien. Edited by Humphrey Carpenter. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1981. Magoun, Francis Peabody, Jr., trans. The Kalevala, or Poems of the Kaleva District. Compiled by Elias Lönnrot. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1963.

Lancashire Fusiliers  Like many British Army units, the Lancashire Fusiliers have a long and interesting history. The unit that J. R. R. Tolkien served in during the Great War claimed its lineage from the 20th Regiment of Foot created during the Glorious Revolution of 1688, participated in the American Revolutionary War and the Peninsular War, and saw action in later 19th-century battles such as Omdurman (September 2, 1895), which the British easily won, and Spion Kop (January 23–24, 1900), which proved a bitter loss. More important, the regiment was one of the main force units in the Gallipoli campaign (April 25, 1915–January 9, 1916) the year before Tolkien joined it. Those battalions took severe losses with the 1st Battalion of the Lancashire Fusiliers, finding themselves with only 425 officers

Lancashire Fusiliers   525 and men a month after landing on the Dardanelles’ shores with 1,029 in its ranks. In the first few hours of combat, six officers and men were awarded the Victoria Cross, equivalent to the American Medal of Honor. Winning “six Victoria Crosses before breakfast” became a part of the regiment’s lore. But the Gallipoli effort, as First Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill called it, to find a weakness in the enemies’ lines, ultimately proved a disaster. The prime minister had to fire Churchill from the cabinet, and he took a combat post in France. The remainder of the Lancashire Fusiliers, along with the unit’s new recruits, were transferred to France as well and began to arrive there in July 1915. Lancashire, in England’s Northwest, includes the medium-sized cities of Blackburn, Bury, Burnley, Preston, and Blackpool. Like many regiments of the day, the Lancashire Fusiliers attempted to recruit from its home area but took soldiers and officers from wherever it could find them. Britain’s secretary of state for war, Lord Horatio Kitchener, took the unpopular but prescient view that the war would be long and bloody and require more men than anyone could imagine. The government backed his efforts and created what is England’s most famous recruiting poster, with Kitchener’s iconic moustache and the line “Your country needs you” succeeding in recruiting millions of men and women. The Lancashire Fusiliers grew from its pre-war authorization of eight battalions to 30 and was assigned to what ultimately became the new British Fourth Army. The new battalions joined those battalions that returned from the Gallipoli campaign and another that had fought at the Battle of Cambrai and took positions in the trenches vacated by French divisions needed to defend Verdun. Miners and weavers from north of Manchester and west of the Yorkshire Dales filled the ranks of many of the new battalions, including the 13th and the 11th Battalions, both of which counted Lieutenant J. R. R. Tolkien among their number at various times. As the Battle of the Somme (July–November 18, 1916) began, six of the regiment’s battalions were up in the trenches, with others in reserve. Tolkien, who had first taken a lieutenant’s commission in the 13th Battalion, had transferred to the 11th when he went to France and then later served as the 11th Bat-

talion’s signal officer. The 11th was held in reserve for the battle, which meant it would be available to exploit weaknesses in the German lines or, should disaster strike, blunt any German successful counteroffensive. Sixteen days after the offensive began, the 11th was ordered up to the new front in order to push the initial gains from the newly occupied German trenches. The effort took its toll as, over the next two weeks, the battalion endured 267 casualties in their attack to push further into no-man’sland, as the troops referred to that muddy mass of exploded land. After being in the reserve for most of August and September, the 11th Battalion was pulled out of the Somme in late October and, along with its parent 25th Division, reassigned to the British Second Army. On October 27, 1916, Tolkien was diagnosed with the typhoid-like illness called trench fever, and he was ultimately invalided back to England, where he spent the remainder of the war. The 11th Battalion of the Lancashire Fusiliers went on to participate in many of the war’s later actions, the larger ones being the Third Battle of Ypres in July 1917 and the Somme (again), Aisne, and Lys battles during the Allied offensives of 1918. These massive efforts by the Allies all along the front finally succeeded in convincing the Germans to negotiate an armistice that November. The British Army dissolved the 11th Battalion in France as it now no longer needed “Kitchener’s Army.” By the time the war ended, the Lancashire Fusiliers had amassed an impressive number of decorations, and the regiment’s soldiers were awarded 19 Victoria Crosses, more than any other regiment. Today, the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers incorporates the Lancashire Fusiliers, whose regimental museum is in Bury, Lancashire. Further Reading Brennan Croft, Janet. War and the Works of J. R. R. Tolkien. Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 2004. Fusiliers Museum Web site. Available online. URL: http://www.mikebooth2009.com. Accessed June 27, 2010. Garth, John. Tolkien and the Great War: The Threshold of Middle-earth. New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2005.

526  Lang, Andrew Kincaid-Smith, Malcolm. The 25th Division in France and Flanders. London: Harrison and Sons, 1918. Moorhouse, Geoffrey. Hell’s Foundations: A Social History of the Town of Bury in the Aftermath of the Gallipoli Campaign. New York: Henry Holt, 1992.

Lang, Andrew  (1844–1912) Andrew Lang was an extremely prolific Scottish historian, poet, journalist, anthropologist, novelist, and translator. He is probably best remembered for his Fairy Book series, which influenced the young Tolkien. In these books, Lang published a variety of folklore, including versions of fairy tales, myths, and legends, including “The Story of the Three Bears,” “Little Red Riding Hood,” “The Snow Queen,” “Rapunzel,” and “The Emperor’s New Clothes.” Lang was born in Selkirk, Scotland, on March 31, 1844, the eldest son of John and Jane Lang. He grew up reading Grimm’s Fairy Tales, Shakespeare, and Walter Scott, and developed a lifetime inter-

Engraving of Andrew Lang, Scottish writer and scholar, whose Fairy Book series influenced Tolkien  (Engraving by T. Johnson, after a painting by W. B. Richmond)

est in folklore and myth. He attended Edinburgh Academy and the University of Saint Andrews before moving on to Balliol College, Oxford University, where he studied classical languages and took first-class honors when he received his degree in 1866. Pursuing his classical interests, he ultimately published prose translations of both Homer’s Odyssey (1879) and the Iliad (1883). He was made a fellow of Merton College in 1868 and began to translate French poetry, including the works of Villon, Ronsard, and others. In 1872, Lang published Ballads and Lyrics of Old France, and he subsequently published several volumes of his own verse. In 1875, Lang married Leonore Blanche Alleyne, and left Oxford for London, where he became an editor and columnist for Longman’s Magazine. He soon became a popular contributor to other periodicals as well, famous for his wit. He and Leonore traveled a great deal, particularly to France and Italy, and Lang became an avid collector of folktales from numerous countries and cultures, from Africa to China to North America to Russia, Germany, Norway, and Greece, as well as his native Scotland. Leonore collaborated with him in collecting and translating the stories into English for his Fairy Books, the first of which (The Blue Fairy Book) was published in 1889. This was followed by The Red Fairy Book in 1890—the one that most interested Tolkien, particularly since it included “The Story of Sigurd” as its last tale. Lang published 10 other Fairy Books before his death. He did return briefly to academia in 1888, when he was appointed Gilford Lecturer at the University of St. Andrews. Lang also published some fairy stories of his own, including Prince Prigio in 1889 and Prince Ricardo of Pantouflia in 1893. He edited the poems of Robert Burns in 1896, but his most important scholarly work was Myth, Ritual, and Religion (1887), in which he argued that folklore was not an outgrowth of mythology but, rather, its foundation. He also wrote several historical books, among them the groundbreaking The Mystery of Mary Stuart (1901) and the controversial John Knox and the Reformation (1905). Much preferring romance to the realism popular in his day, he was close friends with

Lee, Christopher   527 both Robert Louis Stevenson and H. Rider Haggard, with whom he wrote the novel The World’s Desire (1890), a fantasy novel based on the story of Odysseus. Lang received honorary doctorates in classics from both the University of St. Andrews (in 1885) and Oxford University (in 1904). A lifelong student of magic and the occult, he was voted president of the Psychical Research Society in 1911. He died of angina pectoris in Banchory, Scotland, on July 20, 1912, and was buried in the cathedral precincts of the University of St. Andrews. In his honor, St. Andrews instituted the prestigious annual Andrew Lang Lecture Series, at which Tolkien delivered his famous lecture “On FairyStories” in 1939. In his lecture, Tolkien refers to Lang several times, agreeing with Lang’s negative assessment of modern tellers of fairy tales who try to make their fairies precious things with gossamer wings, but disagreeing with Lang’s perception that in some ways the fairy-tale author trades on the credulity of children. Tolkien disagrees in particular with Lang’s assumption that fairy stories are chiefly created for children. And although he finds Lang’s own story Prince Prigio unsatisfactory in some ways, he praises what he calls its eucatastrophic ending as wholly appropriate to a fairy story. languages  See Khuzdul, Naffarin, Quenya, Sindarin, Westron. Laurelin  Laurelin, whose name is Quenya for “gold-song,” is the younger of the Two Trees of Valinor. Laurelin was also called Culúrien, Malinalda, and the Golden Tree. The Vala Yavanna sang into existence Laurelin and her mate, the silver tree called Telperion, to light Valinor in the Elder Days before the making of the sun and the moon. The trees flourished on the hill Ezellohar at the western gate of the city of Valimar. Those were the days of the Spring of Arda, a paradisal existence before the evil Melkor (Morgoth) brought discord into the world. The leaves of Laurelin were light green with golden edges, and her flowers were golden and shaped like horns. Her dew was like a light golden rain that was collected by Varda in her wells. Lau-

relin provided a golden light to all of Valinor for six hours, and then for an hour her light would blend with the silver light of Telperion before going out and leaving the silver tree to light the world for six more hours. Melkor hated the light of the trees, and with his ally Ungoliant, who take the form of a giant spider, he destroyed the trees and fled to Middle-earth. This brought to an end the Years of the Trees. Yavanna, unable to recreate the trees, fashioned instead the sun and the moon out of the last fruit of Laurelin and the last flower of Telperion, and thus ushered in the First Age of Middle-earth. After the death of the trees, their true light survived only in the three Silmarils, jewels fashioned by the great Noldor craftsman Fëanor—but the Silmarils had been stolen when Melkor fled from Valinor. Although other trees were made in the likeness of Telperion (including, ultimately, the White Tree of Gondor), the only image of Laurelin made in later years was the Glingal, or “Hanging Flame,” an artificial tree of gold that was created by Turgon and stood in the royal court of Gondolin. Lee, Christopher  (Christopher Frank Carandini Lee)  (1922–  )  The British actor Sir Christopher Lee was born in London on May 27, 1922. He has appeared in nearly 300 films and television productions—more than any other actor in the world. His films have also grossed more money than those of any other actor, the bulk of those earnings coming from his performances as Count Dooku in episodes 2 and 3 of George Lucas’s Star Wars series, and as Saruman in Peter Jackson’s film versions of The Lord of the Rings trilogy. Of all the actors in the New Line Cinema’s Lord of the Rings films, Lee was most familiar with Tolkien’s novels. He said that for years he had had a desire to play Gandalf, but his age precluded his physically taking on the part once Jackson began filming, so he was cast as Saruman, the other wizard. Lee had actually met Tolkien, and he has tried to reread the trilogy once a year. Lee was the son of an officer in the King’s Royal Rifle Corps and a beautiful mother who was painted by Sir John Lowery, among others. His parents divorced in 1926, and his mother ­remarried

528  Leeds, University of a banker, whom she later divorced as well. Lee attended Wellington College until he was 17, winning honors in classics, and then worked as a shipping clerk before enlisting in the Royal Air Force in 1941. He trained as an intelligence officer and served in North Africa, Sicily, and Italy during World War II, attaining the rank of flight lieutenant by the end of the war. When Lee left the service, he joined the Rank Organisation (a British entertainment company) in 1946 and appeared in some 30 films over the next decade, including an uncredited appearance in Laurence Olivier’s Hamlet in 1948. In 1957, he began his association with Hammer Films and appeared in The Curse of Frankenstein (1957), Dracula (1958), The Mummy (1959), and The Hound of the Baskervilles (1959), all costarring Peter Cushing. Lee played Count Dracula in several more Hammer films in the 1960s and also starred in The Face of Fu Manchu (1965), playing Fu Manchu in a number of Hammer sequels as well. By the 1970s, Lee wanted to move out of his horror film niche, and he played Mycroft Holmes (Sherlock’s brother) in Billy Wilder’s The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes (1970); Francisco Scaramanga in the James Bond film The Man with the Golden Gun (1974); and, perhaps most memorably, the villainous Rochefort in Richard Lester’s acclaimed films of The Three Musketeers (1973) and The Four Musketeers (1974). He moved to Hollywood after the success of these films and remained a busy working actor, though most of the movies he made were unremarkable. He played a German officer in Steven Spielberg’s 1941 in 1979 and reprised his role as Rochefort in Return of the Musketeers (1989). Ultimately, he moved back to London. Since the late 1990s, Lee’s career has seen a remarkable revival. In 1998, he starred in the film Jinnah, in which he played Muhammad Ali Jinnah, founder of modern Pakistan, a performance Lee believes was the best of his career. He had a small role in Tim Burton’s Sleepy Hollow in 1999, and he has worked with Burton on Corpse Bride (2005), Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005), and Sweeny Todd (2007), though his part in the latter film was later cut. Most recently, he sup-

plied the voice of the Jabberwock in Burton’s Alice in Wonderland (2009). On television, he has portrayed the character Flay in the BBC miniseries Gormenghast (2000), based on Mervyn Peake’s novels, and the Grand Master of the Templars in the BBC production of Sir Walter Scott’s Ivanhoe (1997). During the same period, of course, he played Count Dooku (a name purportedly coined to allude to his many portrayals of Count Dracula) in both Attack of the Clones (2002) and Revenge of the Sith (2005) as well as Saruman in the Lord of the Rings trilogy. The multitalented Lee is a classically trained vocalist, as well, and has made numerous musical recordings, most recently providing vocals for the CD Charlemagne, a symphonic metal concept album released in March 2010 (Lee traces his descent from Charlemagne himself, through his mother’s family, the Carandini). He speaks several languages, being fluent in Spanish, French, German, and Italian. In 1961, he married the Danish model Birgit “Gitte” Kroencke, and the couple have one daughter, Christina Erika Carandini Lee. He was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 2001 and was knighted on Queen Elizabeth II’s birthday in 2009. Leeds, University of  Tolkien’s first significant academic appointment was in 1920, as reader in English language at the University of Leeds in Yorkshire. He was hired by George Stuart Gordon, who had come there from Oxford University to take the position of professor of English language and literature in 1913. Gordon’s task was to redesign the English department in what was, at the time, a new university with a history of instruction in the scientific and medical fields but little emphasis on the humanities. The university was formed in 1904, when the Leeds School of Medicine merged with the Yorkshire College of Science. Gordon was hired to develop the English program in order to strengthen the arts curriculum, and he set out to reform the curriculum in the image of Oxford. World War I interrupted these plans, but at the war’s conclusion, Gordon redoubled his efforts. Having begun to offer courses in both medieval English language

legendarium   529

The School of English at the University of Leeds, where Tolkien had his first significant academic appointment  (Photo by Stefan Baguette; used under a Creative Commons license)

and literature and in post-Chaucerian literature, he hired Tolkien in 1920 in order to strengthen the program in philology, giving Tolkien free rein to develop the program as he saw fit. Ultimately, the program at Leeds was divided into Scheme A, concentrating on literature, and Scheme B, focused on language. Scheme B required students to show a competent knowledge of one classical and at least one modern European language. They were required to take three semester courses in periods of English literature and a course in English literary history. But chiefly they took courses in the history of the English language, early English verse and prose, and the Gothic language, and they could choose from courses in Old Norse, Old High German, Old French, or paleography. In addition, Tolkien had formed the Viking Club, made up of students and faculty interested in improving their knowledge of Old Norse. George Gordon returned to Oxford in 1922, but the new department head, Lascelles Abercrombie, left Tolkien in charge of philology. By the time Tolkien was promoted to professor of English language in 1924, E. V. Gordon had joined the faculty at Leeds, and he and Tolkien were at work on a scholarly edition of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. By the time Tolkien left Leeds, the number of students in the language branch of English had grown from 5 to 20.

Tolkien left Leeds in 1925 to assume the Rawlinson and Bosworth Professorship of Anglo-Saxon at Oxford, by then having built a solid program at Leeds. Years later, he became rather angry at an introduction to the Swedish translation of The Lord of the Rings, which implied that he had felt out of place in Leeds and rushed back to Oxford, where he was at home. In 1961, he wrote to his publisher: “I was devoted to the University of Leeds, which was very good to me, and to the students, whom I left with regret. The present students are among my most attentive readers, and write to me (especially about the Appendices). If [the Swedish introduction’s] nonsense was to come to the notice of the University it would give offence” (305–306). Further Reading Tolkien, J. R. R. The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien. Edited by Humphrey Carpenter. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1981.

legendarium  Legendarium refers to a literary collection of legends. It was a term used in medieval Latin for collections of saints’ legends, and Tolkien apparently borrowed the Latin noun to refer to his own collection of legends, the artificial “mythology of England” that he created and compiled in The Silmarillion and other texts concerning the vast history of Middle-earth. Some scholars limit the use of the term legendarium to The Silmarillion and to the early texts that lay behind it, including The Book of Lost Tales I and II, the “Sketch of the Mythology,” and the early and late forms of the Quenta Silmarillion. Christopher Tolkien uses the term primary ‘legendarium’ in his introduction to the 12-volume History of Middle-earth series to refer to The Silmarillion and its antecedents only (Book of Lost Tales 5). But the key here is the adjective primary, which could simply mean “first” rather than “most important.” Thus, other scholars use the term legendarium more broadly, to include all of Tolkien’s writings about Middle-earth, including The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. Tolkien used the term legendarium to refer to his mythology of Middle-earth in four of his letters written between 1951 and 1955, when he was

530  Lewis, C. S trying to argue for the publication of his Silmarillion material. In 1954, he seems to imply that the legendarium was the material that provided the background for The Lord of the Rings: “My legendarium, especially the ‘Downfall of Númenor’ which lies immediately behind The Lord of the Rings, is based on my view: that Men are essentially mortal and must not try to become ‘immortal’ in the flesh” (Letters 189). In a later letter to W. H. Auden, however, Tolkien asserts instead that The Lord of the Rings is a part of the whole legendarium: “But the beginning of the legendarium, of which the Trilogy [i.e., The Lord of the Rings] is part (the conclusion), was an attempt to reorganise some of the Kalevala” (Letters 214) Thus, Tolkien himself may provide a justification for either use of the term. For purposes of this text, I use the word legendarium to refer to all of Tolkien’s invented legends of Middle-earth, from the creation of Arda through the beginning of the Fourth Age, the Age of Men, just before the dawn of recorded history in our own world. Further Reading Tolkien, J. R. R. The Book of Lost Tales I. Vol. 1 of The History of Middle-earth. Edited by Christopher Tolkien. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1984. ———. The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien. Edited by Humphrey Carpenter. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1977.

Lewis, C. S.  (Clive Staples Lewis, Jack Lewis)  (1898–1963)  C. S. “Jack” Lewis was born in Belfast, Northern Ireland, on November 29, 1898. His father was a solicitor and his mother a mathematician who taught Lewis to love books. She died when Lewis was nine, and he became very close to his brother, Warren—W. H. Lewis, whom he called “Warnie.” The two boys invented an imaginary land called Bloxen and wrote stories of adventures there. After an unpleasant year at Malvern College in 1913–14, Lewis was educated in Surrey by a private tutor, W. T. Kirkpatrick, who taught him Greek and fed his interests in books such as Gulliver’s Travels, Norse myths, and historical novels such as Ben-Hur, until he moved on to The Odyssey, Milton, and Spenser. From about the age of 13, Lewis became an atheist, influenced by his

own life experiences, his natural pessimism, and some of his reading. Lewis won a scholarship to read classics at University College, Oxford University, in 1917, and attended for a single term before enlisting for military service in France. He served from 1917 to 1919 in the Somerset Light Infantry. While convalescing from a wound received in the Battle of Arras, Lewis formed a relationship with Mrs. Janie King Moore, the mother of one of his former classmates and a woman more than 20 years his senior who was separated from her husband. He hid the relationship from his father, but lived with Mrs. Moore in Oxford until her death in 1951 at the age of 79. Lewis returned to University College in 1919, graduating in 1923, and became a fellow and tutor at Magdalen College from 1925 to 1954. In 1926, Lewis first met Tolkien at a meeting of English faculty at Merton College. Tolkien, as a philologist, was a member of the group favoring the “language” curriculum at Oxford, while Lewis was firmly in the camp of the “literature” faculty. But the two were soon to become close friends, and they began working to revise the Oxford curriculum according to their mutual interests. Lewis became a member of Tolkien’s group the Coalbiters, who met regularly to study Old Norse language and literature. In about 1929, Lewis abandoned his youthful atheism and became a deist. A few years later, after a well-documented dinner at Magdalen on September 19, 1931, Tolkien and Hugo Dyson held an animated conversation with Lewis about mythology and religion that went far into the night. Largely as a result of that conversation, Lewis soon after embraced Christianity—though, to Tolkien’s disappointment, he joined the Anglican rather than the Catholic Church. This conversion did make his relationship with Mrs. Moore difficult, since she had openly become an atheist. But Lewis became a prominent Christian writer, publishing such works as The Problem of Pain (1940) and The Screwtape Letters (1942). Tolkien was particularly moved by The Great Divorce (1945), Lewis’s book on heaven and hell. In a letter to Christopher Tolkien in 1944, Tolkien mentions that his new story about purgatory, Leaf by Niggle, may owe some of its inspiration to Lewis’s book (Letters 80–81).

Lewis, C. S   531 In the mid-1930s, Lewis and Tolkien formed another group, which included Dyson, Lewis’s brother Warnie, and others. The group, the Inklings, met weekly at Lewis’s rooms in Magdalen and informally for lunch at Oxford pubs such as the Eagle and Child. Its members met chiefly for purposes of socializing, eating, drinking, smoking, and sharing manuscripts. Sometime around 1936, Lewis and Tolkien decided that there were not enough books of the sort that they liked to read, and determined to write some themselves. Lewis would write a book on space travel, while Tolkien would write one on time travel. Lewis ultimately produced Out of the Silent Planet (1938) and continued the series with Perelandra (1943) and That Hideous Strength (1945), books that, in the shadow of the devastation of World War II, demonstrate a conflict between Christian values and those of pure science. Tolkien began The Lost Road, a book on time travel that, he later said, “after a few promising chapters, ran dry” (Letters 378). The character of the philologist Elwin Ransom in Lewis’s trilogy is based at least in part on Tolkien. Tolkien, however, disliked That Hideous Strength a great deal, believing it had been ruined by the influence of Charles Williams, who had joined the Inklings in about 1939 and whose “Arthurian-Byzantine mythology,” Tolkien claimed in a letter to Rayner Unwin, “spoiled the trilogy of C.S.L. (a very impressionable, too impressionable, man) in the last part” (Letters 349). Nor did Tolkien much like the other fantasy series for which Lewis became even more admired, his Chronicles of Narnia, a series unified by the experiences of a group of children and the allegorical figure of Aslan, the Christ-like lion who rules Narnia. Tolkien had little patience for allegory and disliked its use in Lewis’s series. In 1964, he wrote to David Kolb that “it is sad that ‘Narnia’ and all that part of C.S.L.’s work should remain outside the range of my sympathy, as much of my work was outside his” (Letters 352). Tolkien himself shared both The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings with the members of the Inklings. He said later that, while he did not recognize that he had received any influence from Lewis, what he did receive and most appreciate was encourage-

ment. In a 1961 letter, he wrote “indeed I owe to his encouragement the fact that in spite of obstacles (including the 1939 war!) I persevered and eventually finished The Lord of the Rings. He heard all of it, bit by bit, read aloud.” (Letters 303). Lewis also wrote enthusiastic reviews of both The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, and certainly these reviews were a great encouragement to Tolkien. The Inklings gradually petered out by the late 1940s. Tolkien had begun to distance himself from the group little by little after Charles Williams’s entry, and the rift that had occurred during those years did not heal after Williams’s death in 1945. Lewis seems also to have begun to be frustrated at Oxford, where he was passed over for the Merton Professorship of English Literature in 1946, and again for the Goldsmiths’ Professorship of English Literature in 1947. In 1950, he again failed to obtain the professorship of poetry that went to C. Day Lewis. Lewis, whose scholarly output had always been significantly greater than Tolkien’s, must have felt some annoyance at his inability to obtain a professorship at Oxford. Among his most influential scholarly works were The Allegory of Love (1936), a study of the literature of “courtly love”; A Preface to “Paradise Lost” (1942); a volume on the sixteenth century in the Oxford History of English Literature (1954), and The Discarded Image, a study of medieval and Renaissance literature published posthumously in 1964. When the Chair of Medieval and Renaissance English was opened at Cambridge University in 1954, it was offered to Lewis (in part through the influence of Tolkien, who convinced him to take the position). Thus, from 1954 until his death in 1963, Lewis was a fellow at Magdalene College at Cambridge. Late in his life, Lewis began a relationship with the Jewish-American poet Joy Davidman, a divorcée with two children. After corresponding with her about his novels for some time, he met Davidman in 1952. In 1956, Lewis married Davidman in a civil ceremony, apparently so that she could remain in England when her visa lapsed. Soon after, doctors discovered that she had bone cancer, and Lewis married her in an Anglican ceremony in her hospital room in March 1957. Davidman ulti-

532  Lewis, W. H. “Warnie” mately died in July 1960, and Lewis wrote A Grief Observed (1961) under a pseudonym, exploring the ways in which her death had forced him to question his own faith. In a 1964 letter to Christopher Bretherton, Tolkien acknowledged that a gap had formed between him and Lewis during their last years, first because of Williams’s influence; then due to the Davidman marriage, which Tolkien did not find out about until some eight months after it occurred; and then through a notice in the Times (London). He wrote that “C.S.L. was my closest friend from about 1927 to 1940, and remained very dear to me. His death was a grievous blow. But in fact we saw less and less of one another after he came under the dominant influence of Charles Williams, and still less after his very strange marriage” (Letters 349). Lewis himself died of kidney failure on November 22, 1963, the same day as the John F. Kennedy assassination. On the day of his funeral, November 26, Tolkien wrote to his daughter, Priscilla Mary Reuel Tolkien: “[T]his feels like an axe-blow near the roots. Very sad that we should have been so separated in the last years; but our time of close communion endured in memory for both of us” (341). Further Reading Tolkien, J. R. R. The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien. Edited by Humphrey Carpenter. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1981.

Lewis, W. H. “Warnie”  (Warren Hamilton Lewis)  (1895–1973)  W. H. “Warnie” Lewis was the elder brother of C. S. Lewis (who called him his dearest and closest friend) and a charter member of the Inklings. Tolkien knew him in that venue as a retired military officer who lived with his brother in Oxford and an amateur historian who wrote books on French history. Lewis was born in Belfast on June 16, 1895, and after their mother died in 1908, both he and his younger brother, whom he called Jack, attended Wynyard, an English boarding school near London. In 1909, Lewis transferred to Malvern College in Worcestershire, graduating in 1913. He won a “prize cadetship” to the Royal Military

Academy in Sandhurst in 1914, and was commissioned as a second lieutenant after the outbreak of World War I. He shipped for France on November 4, 1914, and served with the 4th Company, 7th Divisional Train, British Expeditionary Force. Lewis spent 18 years on active duty, serving in Belgium, Sierra Leone, and two tours in China, before retiring in 1932 with the rank of captain. He was recalled to active service in 1939 with the rank of major, but in 1940 he was put on the reserve list for the duration of World War II, which he spent serving with the 6th Oxford Home Guard Battalion. From 1943 until Jack Lewis’s death in November 1963, Warnie Lewis served as his brother’s private secretary. He was a regular participant in meetings of the Inklings, and his diaries (selections of which are published in the book Brothers and Friends) give a valuable picture of what went on at those storied meetings. Perhaps inspired by the literary efforts of other members of the group, Warnie began his first book in the 1930s, a history of France during the reign of Louis XIV called The Splendid Century. Tolkien reports in a letter addressed to his son Christopher Tolkien that the Inklings heard the last chapter of Warnie’s book in September 1944 (Letters 93). Lewis wrote six more books on France and also edited his brother’s letters after Jack died. Before his own death 10 years later, he deposited most of the Lewis family papers, including his diaries, in the Marion E. Wade Center at Wheaton College in Illinois. He died on April 9, 1973. Lewis is reputed to have been a genial and considerate man. He seems to have had a pronounced sense of humor. Tolkien wrote to Joy Hill at his publisher that Warnie’s way of dealing with fans who called his home in Oxford asking to speak to C. S. Lewis “was to lift the receiver and say ‘Oxford Sewage Disposal Unit’ and go on repeating it until they went away” (Letters 369). Warnie Lewis did, however, battle with alcoholism from an early age, which was sometimes difficult for his brother to deal with. Further Reading Kilby, Clyde S., and Marjorie Lamp Mead, eds. Brothers and Friends: The Diaries of Major Warren Ham-

Lothlórien   533 ilton Lewis: An Intimate Portrait of C. S. Lewis. San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1982. Lewis, W. H. The Splendid Century: Some Aspects of French Life in the Reign of Louis XIV. London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1953. Tolkien, J. R. R. The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien. Edited by Humphrey Carpenter. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1981.

Lindon  In the geography of Tolkien’s Middleearth, Lindon was the elvish name for the lands lying west of the Ered Luin (the Blue Mountains). In the First Age, it was the land of the Laiquendi elves, and was called Lindon by the Noldor. After the final great battle of the First Age, in which the Valar defeated Morgoth, nearly all of Beleriand was destroyed. Lindon was all that remained of that traditional elvish homeland, and therefore was of great significance to the Eldar. In the Second Age, Lindon, now divided by the Gulf of Lhûn, was the kingdom of Gil-galad, high king of the Eldar in Middle-earth, and it was from Lindon that he led his army out to face Sauron in the Last Alliance of elves and men that ultimately destroyed Sauron’s empire and brought the Second Age to an end. In the Third Age, Círdan the Shipwright ruled Lindon, from whence he often aided the Dúnedain in their wars against the Witch-king of Angmar, taking part in the decisive Battle of Fornost. Círdan also presided over the Grey Havens in Lindon, and from there, an increasing number of the Eldar took ships back to the Undying Lands as the time of the elves drew to a close with the end of the Third Age. Thus, Lindon was the elves’ last foothold in Middle-earth. Lord of the Rings, The (animated film)  See Bakshi, Ralph. Lord of the Rings, The (feature films)  See Jackson, Peter. Lord of the Rings, The (radio adaptation)  See radio adaptations. Lórien  See Lothlórien.

Lothlórien  (Lórien)  Lothlórien, sometimes called simply Lórien, was the elven kingdom between the Misty Mountains the Anduin River founded in the Second Age of Middle-earth. Lothlórien is the Sindarin word for “dream-flower,” while Lórien means “dreamland.” In the great forest of Lothlórien, called in Westron the “Golden Wood” and made up of golden Mallorn trees, the beauty and timelessness of the Elvenhome in the Undying Land of Eldamar were preserved. Here alone in Middle-earth, for those who stayed in Lórien, time seemed to stand still, as in a waking dream—hence the kingdom’s identification of “Dreamland.” The Golden Wood was originally planted by Galadriel, although it is unclear when that occurred. It may have been during the Second Age, since she had received the first seeds from Gil-galad, who had obtained them from his ally, Tar-Aldarion, the king of Númenor, where they grew naturally. But the first inhabitants of the area were Silvan or Wood-elves, although their first recorded lord was the Sindarin elf Amdír, who emigrated from west of the mountains with some of his kindred. When Eregion was destroyed in the elven war with Sauron in 1697 of the Second Age, a good number of Noldor from that kingdom fled for refuge to Lothlórien. The people of Lothlórien tried to stay out of the tumultuous wars of Middle-earth, but ultimately Amdír did lead a force from Lothlórien to join the Last Alliance of elves and men to destroy Sauron at the end of the Second Age. Half the army was killed in that battle, along with Amdír himself. His son Amroth became king of Lothlórien and, like his father, tried to keep Lothlórien above the disturbances in the outside world. But in 1981, the Balrog that lay hidden in Moria for several millennia was unleashed, and the dwarves and elves of that region fled south. Many of the people of Lothlórien fled as well, including Amroth and his beloved Wood-elf maiden, Nimrodel. It was at that point that Galadriel and her consort, Celeborn, moved to Lothlórien and became lords of the kingdom, ruling from the capital city of Caras Galadhon. Their granddaughter, Arwen (daughter of Elrond), spent many years in Lórien,

534  MacDonald, George and it was here that she pledged her love to Aragorn on Cerin Amroth (where Amroth’s home had been). Galadriel used the power of Nenya, the Ring of Power that she wielded, to preserve Lothlórien from change, death, and decay over the long years of the Third Age. Galadriel had modeled Lothlórien on the ancient elven kingdom of Doriath, where she had stayed in the First Age and which had been guarded from evil by the Girdle of Melian. The ring Nenya served a similar function in Lothlórien, and prevented those with evil intent from entering the Golden Wood. During the War of the Ring, Lothlórien was attacked three times from Dol Guldur, Sauron’s citadel in Mirkwood. Celeborn and Galadriel led their forces against the fortress and destroyed it. When Galadriel returned to Valinor at the end of the Third Age, Celeborn remained in Middleearth. He founded a larger realm in East Lórien on the other side of the Anduin. Arwen returned to Lórien to die on Cerin Amroth, but after that the wood was deserted. MacDonald, George (1824–1905)  George MacDonald was a Scottish writer and clergyman, the author of a number of Victorian fantasy stories mainly for children. The son of a farmer from Aberdeenshire, MacDonald was born on December 10, 1824, and educated in country schools. He attended Aberdeen University in the 1840s, and from there he attended Highbury Theological College in London, studying to become a Congregationalist minister. In 1850, MacDonald took a position as pastor of the Congregational church in Arundel in West Sussex, but he resigned three years later after charges of heresy, having rejected the Calvinist doctrine of predestination. In 1851, he had married Louisa Powell, with whom he had a large family of six sons and five daughters. MacDonald spent some time in Algiers for health reasons, but he returned to England to work as a tutor, a freelance preacher, and a writer as he tried to support his growing family. Often he was forced to rely on the charity of friends such as Lady Byron and John Ruskin. He also counted Lewis Carroll, Mark Twain, Walt Whitman, G. K. Chesterton, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and

Edward Burne-Jones among his friends. He published chiefly poetry in the 1850s, but also wrote a fantasy novel for adults called Phantastes (1858), which eventually became one of his best-loved works. He achieved popular success with the publication of his novels David Elginbrod (1862), Alec Forbes (1865), and Robert Falconer (1868), which dealt with country life in Scotland. In the early 1870s, MacDonald began writing for children, publishing the fantasies At the Back of the North Wind (1871) and The Princess and the Goblin (1872). During that decade, he gave a successful lecture tour in America, and although he was offered a ministerial position there, he opted to return to England. In 1877, MacDonald received a pension from Queen Victoria. He also traveled to Italy that year, hoping that the warmer climate would help one of his daughters, who was in ill health. The daughter died, but MacDonald found that the climate did improve his own ill health, and he spent much of the last 20 years of his life in Bordighera, Italy. He published another children’s fantasy, The Princess and Curdie (1883) and an adult fantasy called Lilith (1895) in these years. After his wife died in 1902, MacDonald returned to Surrey, where he died in Ashstead on September 18, 1905. C. S. Lewis greatly admired MacDonald for his works of high imagination and his use of myth and symbol. Tolkien had read much of MacDonald’s work and alluded to specific texts in both his letters and his lecture notes for “On Fairy-Stories.” He acknowledged the influence of MacDonald, in particular his depiction of goblins, which Tolkien said had shaped his own vision of the creatures in The Hobbit. In his lecture “On Fairy-Stories,” Tolkien mentions that he encouraged his own children to read books that he had himself enjoyed, naming specifically MacDonald’s The Princess and the Goblin. Rereading MacDonald later in life, however, Tolkien found that he no longer liked him as much as he did in his youth, finding him somewhat preachy—no doubt the remnant of MacDonald’s pastoral vocation. The Great Cake in Tolkien’s story Smith of Wootton Major is said to be a symbol of what, by that time, Tolkien had come to consider MacDonald’s saccharine fiction.

Mandos   535 Magdalen College Although he was more closely allied with Exeter College, where he resided as a student, and Merton College, where he was a professor of English language and literature, Tolkien spent a good deal of time at Magdalen College, particularly through his association with C. S. Lewis. Magdalen is one of the oldest and wealthiest colleges in Oxford University, having been founded in 1458 by William Waynflete, bishop of Winchester. Its tower, dating from 1492, is a famous Oxford landmark. John Lyly, Edward Gibbon, William Tynsdale, Oscar Wilde, and T. E. Lawrence were all Magdalen alumni. Magdalen was Lewis’s home from the time he became a fellow there in 1925. Tolkien visited Lewis there regularly on an informal basis, and on one of these occasions in September 1931, while he was dining with Lewis and Hugo Dyson, the three men engaged in a lengthy conversation about myth and religion, which led to Lewis’s conversion to Christianity. The Inklings met regularly in Lewis’s rooms at Magdalen every Thursday evening for dinner, discussion, and the reading of manuscripts. Tolkien would have first read most of The Lord of the Rings aloud in this setting. Other Inklings who were fellows at Magdalen included Colin Hardie and J. A. W. Bennett. Tolkien’s earlier mentors, C. T. Onions (editor of the Oxford English Dictionary) and George Stuart Gordon (president of Magdalen College and former head of Tolkien’s department at the University of Leeds [see Leeds, University of]), were also fellows there. Tolkien frequently attended meetings of the Early English Text Society council, which met at Magdalen from 1945 to 1963. Maiar  The Maiar (singular Maia) belonged to the race of Ainur, the angelic beings who, the first creations of the god Ilúvatar, helped sing the great creation song, the “Ainulindalë,” included by Tolkien in the first text of the published Silmarillion. A number of Maiar entered Eä, the created universe, in order to aid the greater Ainur, the Valar, whose purpose was to bring to fruition the divine plan for Arda, the earth. However, some of the Maiar, most notably the Balrogs and the Dark

Lord Sauron, were corrupted by the renegade Vala Melkor and tried instead to mar the goodness of Ilúvatar’s work. Perhaps the most important of the Maiar with regard to the history of men and elves is Melian, consort of the elf-king Thingol and guardian of the Sindarin kingdom of Doriath in the First Age of Middle-earth. Her protective girdle insulated the kingdom against the wiles of Melkor (also called Morgoth) until Thingol’s death caused her to depart Middle-earth altogether. She was also the mother of the beautiful elf Lúthien, who married the man Beren. Other notable Maiar include Ossë and Uinen, who assisted the Vala Ulmo as guardians of the sea; Ëonwë, herald of the chief Vala Manwë; and Arien and Tilion, the Maiar who guided the sun and moon, respectively, across the sky. It is also fairly certain that the Istari, the wizards sent by the Valar in the middle of the Third Age to aid the free peoples of Middle-earth against the onslaught of Sauron, the Lord of the Rings, were Maiar. These included, of course, Gandalf (whose original Maiar name was Olorin) and Saruman (known as Curunir among the Maiar), as well the Brown Wizard Radagast and Alatar and Pallando, known as the Blue Wizards. Mandos  (Námo)  In Tolkien’s legendarium, also known as Námo, Mandos was one of the powerful Valar, the angelic guardians of Arda. He was the brother of the Valar Irmo and Nienna and the spouse of Vairë the Weaver, whose tapestries in his halls told the history of the world. Mandos was the Vala who knew the fates of all things within the great design of Ilúvatar, the creator god, and revealed those fates to Manwë upon request. He was only the revealer of fates, not the determiner, and therefore he dispensed his prophecies without emotion. He dwelled in the western part of Valinor, where he kept the Houses of the Dead, the dwelling place of elves after they die. It was Mandos who pronounced the Doom of the Noldor, warning that Valinor would be forever shut against them when, because of the oath of Fëanor, they insisted on leaving Arda to pursue Morgoth. According to legend, he was moved to pity only

536  Manwë once, when Lúthien came to the Houses of the Dead and sang to him over the death of Beren, and in response, Mandos, with Manwë’s permission, granted the two of them a new mortal life in Middle-earth, where the couple lived for another 40 years. Manwë  (Elder King, Súlimo)  By virtue of his ability to best understand the will of Ilúvatar, Manwë (whose name means “Blessed One”) was the chief of the Valar, the angelic guardians of Arda. His spouse was Varda, known to the elves as Elbereth. Manwë was the brother of Melkor (Morgoth), the renegade Vala who warred against the elves in Beleriand in the First Age of Middleearth, and with Melkor he was mightiest among the Ainur. His province was the wind, the air, the clouds, and creatures of the air, such as eagles, who were especially dear to him. He also loved poetry and was fond of the elves, especially the Vanyar, who dwelled close to him in Arda. Manwë was known as the king of Arda or the Elder King, and he lived in Ilmarin at the top of Taniquetil, the highest peak in Arda. He was also called Súlimo, or “Lord of the Breath of Arda.” Manwë was compassionate and wise, though he was unable to prevent other rational creatures from making bad choices, and therefore he could not prevent the revolt of the Noldor or the downfall of Númenor, nor was he able to recognize deliberate deception when Melkor persuaded him to release him from imprisonment before the First Age. Manwë, in his physical form, had blue eyes and wore long blue robes. He carried a scepter of sapphire, created for him by the Noldor. Masefield, John  (1878–1967)  John Masefield was Britain’s poet laureate for 37 years—from 1930 until his death in 1967—thus serving longer than any other laureate except Alfred, Lord Tennyson. Masefield was best known for his poems about the sea, such as “Sea Fever” and “Cargoes,” as published in his first volume, Salt-Water Ballads (1902). He also caused a stir in the literary world in 1911 with his long narrative poem The Everlasting Mercy, whose colloquialism and coarse language anticipated the development of much 20th-century literature.

Masefield was born in Ledbury, Herefordshire, on June 1, 1878. Orphaned at the age of six, he was raised by an aunt. He boarded at King’s School in Warwick from 1888 to 1891 but was unhappy there and signed aboard the training ship HMS Conway, where he learned seamanship and spent a good deal of his time reading and writing. In 1894, he shipped aboard the Gilcruix bound for Chile, but he was hospitalized for sunstroke on reaching South America. He finally returned to England in 1895, immediately signing on a ship bound for New York. He lived for a few years in the United States, working at a carpet factory and reading avidly, sometimes purchasing 20 books a week. He returned to England in 1897, inspired by his reading of Keats, Shelley, Dickens, Kipling, and especially Chaucer, and determined to succeed as a writer himself. Masefield began writing for newspapers, eventually joining the Manchester Guardian in 1907, but he continued to work on his own poetry and fiction. He was beginning to find publishers for his poems and brought out his first volume at the age of 24. In 1903, he married Constance Crommelin, a classically educated mathematics teacher with whom he had two children. Masefield wrote two novels and two verse dramas before returning to poetry in 1911 with The Everlasting Mercy, which he followed with other long narrative poems, including The Widow in the Bye Street and, in 1919, Reynard the Fox (inspired to some extent by Chaucer). By then he was well known to the public and critically acclaimed. During World War I, he served in the Red Cross in France and aboard a hospital ship. Masefield also wrote the novel Gallipoli, published in 1916 to counter German propaganda about the British failure in the Dardanelles. He gave a lecture tour in America in 1918, giving encouragement to American soldiers about to enter the war, and he was given honorary doctorates by both Yale and Harvard. Masefield settled near Oxford in the 1920s, receiving another honorary doctorate, this time from Oxford University, in 1921. In 1923, he brought out his Collected Poems, which was a best seller. That same year, he organized the Oxford Recitations, a contest to promote the public read-

McKellen, Ian   537 ing of poetry. Tolkien seems to have met Masefield at one of these, since in a 1938 letter to the poet, he recalls hearing Masefield read Chaucer’s “The Monk’s Tale” in a “modified modern pronunciation” (Letters 40). In 1929, Masefield changed the contest format to that of a festival, which came to be called the “Summer Diversions” and on which he worked with Neville Coghill. In his capacity as organizer of these festivals, Masefield invited Tolkien to read Chaucer’s “The Nun’s Priest’s Tale” in 1938 and “The Reeve’s Tale” in 1939. When Robert Bridges died in 1930, George V appointed Masefield poet laureate. He also was awarded the Order of Merit in 1935. In his official capacity, Masefield began the practice of awarding Royal Medals for Poetry, given to poets under 35 publishing their first or second volume of poetry. Masefield’s wife’s death in 1960 was a great blow to him, but he continued to work, publishing his last book, In Glad Thanksgiving, at the age of 88. He died on May 12, 1967, and his ashes were placed in Poet’s Corner in Westminster Abbey, near his beloved Chaucer. Tolkien’s personal opinion of Masefield’s poetry (at least his later efforts) does not appear to have been particularly high. In a letter to his grandson Michael in 1965, he calls Masefield’s verse on the death of T. S. Eliot, published in the Times (London), a “perfect specimen of bad verse, a ludicrous ‘all-time low’. . . . Almost down/up to Words­ worth’s zero-standard” (353). Further Reading Tolkien, J. R. R. The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien. Edited by Humphrey Carpenter. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1981.

Mathew, Father Gervase  (Father Anthony Gervase Mathew)  (1905–1976)  Father Gervase Mathew was a Dominican priest and respected Oxford scholar who was an occasional member of the Inklings. Educated at Balliol College, Oxford University, Mathew joined the Dominican order in 1928 and took the saint’s name Gervase. In 1934, he was ordained a priest, and he spent the rest of his life at Blackfriars, the Oxford Dominican house. In a

1945 letter of condolence to the widow of Charles Williams, Tolkien mentions that he would be going to Blackfriars, where Father Mathew would be saying Mass (Letters 115). Mathew was Oxford’s university lecturer in Byzantine studies from 1947 until 1971, and he may be best known for his book Byzantine Aesthetics (1963). His other scholarly books include Byzantine Painting (1950); The Court of Richard II (1968); and his first work, The Reformation and the Contemplative Life (1934), written with his brother, Archbishop David Mathew. He regularly lectured at Oxford in history, theology, and English. For some years, his English lectures were coordinated with those of C. S. Lewis, and when Lewis left for Cambridge in 1954, Mathew took over his course “Prolegomena to Medieval Literature.” Mathew seems to have invited himself to the meetings of the Inklings, once he became aware of them. He recollected that he began attending meetings as early as 1939, when he heard Lewis read from his story The Dark Tower. But he may have been misremembering: W. H. “Warnie” Lewis’s diaries do not mention him as present until 1946. He did contribute an essay on “Marriage and Amour Courtois in Late FourteenthCentury ­England” to Lewis’s tributary volume for Charles Williams in 1947. It was largely through the Inklings that he became friendly with Tolkien, and when Tolkien was becoming frustrated with Allen & Unwin over his manuscript of The Lord of the Rings, Mathew tried to help by suggesting that Tolkien send the manuscript to his friend Milton Waldman at Collins. Tolkien explored the option, which turned out to be ill-advised, but it was an example of Mathew’s penchant for trying to be helpful to his friends. Further Reading Tolkien, J. R. R. The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien. Edited by Humphrey Carpenter. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1981.

McKellen, Ian  (Sir Ian Murray McKellen)  (1939–  )  The British-born actor Ian McKellen is perhaps best known for his role as Gandalf in Peter Jackson’s New Line Cinema productions of

538  McKellen, Ian The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers, and The Return of the King, a role for which he earned an Academy Award nomination for best supporting actor; he won a Screen Actors’ Guild award for The Fellowship of the Ring. He is slotted to reprise the role in the planned two-part film of The Hobbit. McKellen was born in Burnley, northern ­England, on May 25, 1939, and grew up in the coal mining town of Wigan in south Lancashire. He moved to Bolton when he was 12, when his father was made borough engineer and surveyor for that city. He developed an interest in theater at school, and at the age of 13, he made his first appearance in a production of Shakespeare, playing Malvolio in Twelfth Night at a Bolton the-

Cover of a 2005 edition of The Lord of the Rings, published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. The illustration shows the wizard Gandalf.

ater. With a school group, he began attending summer camps at Stratford, where he was able to attend performances at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre featuring the likes of Laurence Olivier, Edith Evans, Peggy Ashcroft, Charles Laughton, John Gielgud, and Paul Robeson. He won a scholarship to study English at Saint Catharine’s College, Cambridge University, but lost the scholarship after two years, having fallen behind in his studies while acting in some 21 undergraduate productions at Cambridge. As a member of the Marlowe Society, he appeared in productions of Doctor Faustus and Henry IV with fellow students Trevor Nunn and Derek Jacobi. He did ultimately obtain his degree in 1961, after which he pursued an acting career seriously. McKellen first appeared in Coventry in the Belgrade Theatre’s production of A Man for All Seasons. He continued in regional theater for four years before joining Olivier’s National Theatre Company at the Old Vic. Through the 1970s and 1980s, he performed with both the Royal Shakespeare Company and the Royal National Theatre, playing Macbeth and Iago in productions directed by Nunn, both of which were turned into television productions as well. In 1980, he played Salieri in Amadeus on Broadway and bought a riverside home in Limehouse in sight of the Tower Bridge with his earnings. He won the London Evening Standard Theatre award for his lead role in Coriolanus in 1984, and the Laurence Olivier Theatre Award in 1985 for his performance in Wild Honey. In 1989, he won both the London Critics Circle Theatre Award and the London Evening Standard Theatre Award for best actor as Iago in Othello. In 1991, he again won the Laurence Olivier award for Richard III. McKellen became better known in North America through film roles he began to take during the 1990s. He appeared in Six Degrees of Separation in 1989, then was widely acclaimed for his Richard III in 1995. He received more critical attention for playing a Nazi in Apt Pupil (1998) and was nominated for an Academy Award for his role in Gods and Monsters (1998). He was hired by Bryan Singer to play Magneto in the original X-Men in 2000, and during that film’s production, he was cast as Gandalf in The Lord of the Rings.

Merton College   539 Recently, McKellen has reprised the role of Magneto in two sequels to X-Men. He returned to the Royal Shakespeare Company and was once again directed by Trevor Nunn in The Seagull and King Lear, the latter of which was also produced for television in 2008, winning McKellen an Emmy nomination. In 2009, he played opposite Patrick Stewart in a popular London revival of Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot. For his services to the arts, McKellen was made Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 1979, was knighted in 1990, and was named to the Order of Companions of Honour by Queen Elizabeth II in 2007. He is one of very few openly gay knights, having come out in 1988 on BBC Radio 3 when the Thatcher government’s Local Government Act made the “public promotion of homosexuality” illegal. McKellen has been a political activist ever since, working with groups advocating social and legal equality for gay and lesbian citizens. Melian  The Maia (see Maiar) Melian was of the kindred of Yavanna of the Valar. In Valinor, she tended the gardens of Lórien, but she journeyed to Middle-earth in the time of the Two Trees before the First Age, where she loved to wander in the deep forests of Beleriand. There, in the woods of Nan Elmoth, she encountered the elven prince Elwë, who would become better known as Thingol, or King Greymantle. Thingol was en route to the sea with his people, the Teleri, following the call of the Valar to cross over to the Undying Lands, but when he met Melian, he was enamored. He could neither speak nor move but stood entranced by her beauty for long years, until the trees had grown around them. Some of the Teleri stayed behind to search for Thingol; the others passed over the sea to the Undying Lands under the leadership of Thingol’s brother Olwë. When he finally recovered from his trance, Thingol married Melian, and together they gathered the rest of the Teleri around them and founded the kingdom of Doriath. It was the only marriage in Middle-earth between one of the angelic Ainur and one of the race of elves. Melian’s power, beauty, and wisdom made Doriath a safe and pro-

tected place, even when the renegade Vala Melkor, known as Morgoth, attempted to destroy the will of Ilúvatar by usurping Middle-earth from elves and men. Melian wove a web of enchantment around Doriath, called the Girdle of Melian, that kept intruders from finding their way into Doriath, and kept the searching eye of Morgoth from penetrating the woodland kingdom. When the Noldor returned to Beleriand from Valinor, Melian allowed Galadriel to live in Doriath for many years, counseling and teaching her. She also gave shelter and guidance to Túrin Turambar and his mother. Melian and Thingol had one child, Lúthien, the most beautiful of her race. When the mortal man Beren entered Doriath and fell in love with Lúthien, Thingol sent him on a quest to bring back one of the Silmarils from the crown of Morgoth, even though Melian advised against it, warning that it would ultimately bring doom to Doriath. When Thingol was killed over the Silmaril by the dwarves of Nogrod, Melian lost her desire to continue in Middle-earth. She withdrew her power from Doriath and returned to Valinor and the Halls of Mandos to mourn her husband and her daughter, who had chosen a mortal life in her marriage to Beren. In Sindarin, the language of the Grey-elves of Doriath, the name Melian means “beloved.” Merton College  When Tolkien was elected Merton Professor of English Language and Literature in 1945, he became a fellow of Merton College at Oxford University. Here, he was given rooms where he could receive students and friends, although they were not the rooms he had hoped for: He wrote to his son Christopher Tolkien in October 1945 that “I walked round this afternoon with Dyson [his fellow Inkling who had also just become a fellow at Merton] who was duly elected yesterday, and is now ensconced in the rooms I hoped for, looking out over the meadows!” (Letters, 116). He changed to better rooms in 1947, and better rooms still in 1954. Until his retirement in 1959, he kept his library here as well. He also hosted meetings of the Inklings in these rooms from at least 1947, with alternating meeting in C. S. Lewis’s rooms at Magdalen College. Tolkien

540  Merton College

Merton College, Oxford University, where Tolkien was elected professor of English language and literature in 1945  (Photo by Matt Brown; used under a Creative Commons license)

was an active member of the college, serving on the Library Committee, the Wine Committee, and the Stipends Committee over the years. He also served as sub-warden from 1953 to 1955, which meant he served on the Finance Committee and numerous other ad hoc committees during that time. Off campus, Tolkien and his wife, Edith Bratt Tolkien, lived in houses owned by Merton. Tolkien was made emeritus fellow of Merton in 1963. When Edith died in 1971, Merton made him a resident fellow, giving him rooms at 21 Merton Street. In May 1973, he was made an honorary fellow of the college, and when he died later that year, Merton held a memorial service for him in the chapel. Merton was the first self-governing college at Oxford, having been founded in 1264 by Walter de

Merton, chancellor of England under King Henry III and later bishop of Rochester. The Merton quadrangle is the oldest in Oxford, formed by the Treasury (built around 1290); the Sacristy (completed about 1311); and the Library, the oldest in Oxford, dating from 1373–78. The Merton Chapel houses a 13th-century choir and a 15th-century tower, and it contains a screen designed by Christopher Wren in 1673. Famous Mertonians over the centuries have included John Wyclif, William Harvey, Lord Randolph Churchill, and T. S. Eliot. Further Reading Tolkien, J. R. R. The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien. Edited by Humphrey Carpenter. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1981.

Minas Ithil   541 Middle English Vocabulary, A  Tolkien’s first academic publication of any kind was a 168-page glossary of Middle English words, first published separately in May 1922, and then in June 1922 as a supplement to Kenneth Sisam’s anthology Fourteenth Century Verse and Prose. Sisam, who had first planned the anthology for language students with Oxford professor A. S. Napier, but Napier’s death in 1916 and Sisam’s service in World War I intervened. After the war, Clarendon Press was eager to publish Sisam’s planned anthology as a textbook, and Tolkien, Sisam’s former student, was enlisted to compile a glossary for the book. Tolkien was unable to complete the work, even though Sisam had asked the University Press to give Tolkien time off from his full-time job at the Oxford English Dictionary, before he was appointed to an academic post at the University of Leeds (see Leeds, University of). Tolkien did send a draft to the publisher in February 1921, though it was not yet complete, and Sisam’s book was published in October 1921 without the glossary. When it was reprinted in 1922, Tolkien’s glossary was a part of it. In fact, Tolkien had done a lot more work on the glossary than anyone had expected. Peter Gilliver, Jeremy Marshall, and Edmund Weiner note that the Middle English texts in Sisam’s textbook contain 43,000 words, and that the published glossary contains 4,740 words with 6,800 definitions and nearly 15,000 textual references, in addition to 1,900 cross-references and 236 proper names (36). Tolkien was not interested in doing anything but a detailed and thoroughly professional job with the glossary. In his headnote to the glossary, Tolkien says that he has tried give “exceptionally full treatment to what may rightly be called the backbone of the language” (Tolkien 3). He goes on to say that he has attempted to give Old English or Old French etymologies to help students distinguish between words with the same spelling that may have different origins, and he has marked long vowels in a way that allows students to see the quality of those vowels in Old English or Old Norse as well (something most students consider more information than they need). Sisam’s text—reprinted for decades and finally in paperback form in 1975, and reissued again in

2005 as A Middle English Reader and Vocabulary by Dover Press—has been one of the most widely used anthologies of Middle English material for more than 70 years, and Tolkien’s glossary has been the chief aid to students reading those texts. Further Reading Gilliver, Peter, Jeremy Marshall, and Edmund Weiner. The Ring of Words: Tolkien and the Oxford English Dictionary. New York: Oxford University Press, 2006. Tolkien, J. R. R. “A Middle English Vocabulary.” In Fourteenth Century Verse and Prose, edited by Kenneth Sisam, unpaginated appendix. Rev. ed. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1950.

Minas Anor  See Minas Tirith. Minas Ithil  (Minas Morgul)  Minas Ithil, or the “Tower of the Moon,” was a fortified city built in the year 3420 of the Second Age by Isildur high in the Ephel Dúath, the Mountains of Shadow that form the western border of Mordor. It was the companion city of Minas Arnor (the “Tower of the Sun”), built about the same time by Isildur’s brother Anárion across the river Anduin on the eastern slopes of the Ered Nimrais. Both towers were built originally to guard Osgiliath, the capital of the realm of Gondor. Minas Ithil was renowned for the beauty of the moonlight that filled its lower courts and lit its marble walls. It housed a palantír, one of the seeing-stones (see palantiri) of Númenor that Elendil the Tall had brought with him when he came to Middleearth, and with this stone the tower communicated with the other outposts of Gondor. The Dark Lord, Sauron, captured Minas Ithil in the year 3449 of the Second Age, but after Sauron’s defeat by the Last Alliance, which ended the Second Age, the men of Gondor once again inhabited the city. In the year 2000 of the Third Age, the tower was besieged by the Nazgûl—the Ringwraiths enslaved to Sauron’s power—and Minas Ithil fell after two years. The palantír was captured and taken to Sauron in Barad-dûr, and Minas Ithil came to be known as Minas Morgul, from which the terrifying Nazgûl unleashed war on Gon-

542  Minas Morgul dor. When it was retaken at the end of the Third Age, it was destroyed, having been too long in the hands of evil for men to live there again. Minas Morgul  See Minas Ithil. Minas Tirith  (Minas Anor)  Minas Tirith was originally called Minas Anor (Sindarin for “Tower of the Sun”). It was founded in the year 3320 of the Second Age by Anórien on the slopes of the Ered Nimrais, or the White Horn Mountains, west of the river Anduin, and like its companion fortress Minas Ithil, it was built to defend Osgiliath, the capital of Gondor located on the river. Therefore, it was built into the side of Mount Mindolluin, which served as its back wall. Minas Ithil was taken by Sauron in 3349, and although it was repopulated in the Third Age, it never regained its prominence. Conversely, Minas

Cover of a 2002 edition of The Return of the King, published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. The illustration depicts the fields outside Minas Tirith, the capital city of Gondor.

Anor was rebuilt in 420 of the Third Age, and the beautiful new city became the summer residence of the kings of Gondor. At the same time, Osgiliath itself was torn by plague and civil war, and in 1640 of the Third Age, the king moved his court from Osgiliath to Minas Anor. In 1900, the White Tower, citadel of Gondor, was built, and after the Nazgûl captured Minas Ithil in 2000, Minas Anor was renamed Minas Tirith, the “Tower of Guard.” In 2475, Osgiliath was taken by the enemy, and Minas Tirith became the last of the great cities of Gondor. Minas Tirith housed a seeing-stone, a palantír (see palantiri), used to communicate with Minas Ithil and other sites. It also was home of the White Tree, which withered when the line of kings failed. From this point, Minas Tirith was the capital of Gondor and the center of resistance to the ambitions of the Dark Lord to bring all of Middle-earth under his power. The city was made up of seven levels, with walls protecting each separate level, so that an attacking army would have to breach each of the seven walls in succession to take the citadel, standing on the seventh level 1,000 feet above the plain. The Great Gate of the first level faced the east, the direction of Mordor. The field before Minas Tirith was the site of the Battle of the Pelennor Fields in the year 3019 of the Third Age, when the armies of Sauron, led by the lord of the Nazgûl, besieged the city and were ultimately defeated by the cavalry of Rohan and the fleet from southern Gondor led by Aragorn, as related in The Return of the King. Aragorn, of course, made Minas Tirith the capital of his restored kingdom at the beginning of the Fourth Age, and he replanted the White Tree. Mirkwood  (Greenwood the Great)  Originally called Greenwood the Great, Mirkwood was the largest surviving forest in the west of Middle-earth in the Third Age. This vast woodland lay east of the river Anduin, and it was some 400 miles from north to south, and 200 miles from east to west at its widest points. It was inhabited in the north by the Wood-elves under their king, Thranduil, who counted Legolas among their number. In about the year 1050 of the Third Age, the dark tower of Dol Guldur was raised in the south-

mithril   543 ern part of Greenwood the Great, and from this time, the wood was renamed Mirkwood, a rendering of the Sindarin elvish name Taur e-Ndaedelos (“Forest of Great Fear”). That tower, occupied in secret by Sauron and the Nazgûl, cast a dark shadow over the forest, and the woodland became home to black squirrels, orcs, and giant spiders. The Old Forest Road, which had passed through the woods to emerge at Celduin, the River Running, south of Lake-town, fell into disuse after that time, and few travelers passed through the forest. Thorin and Company crossed the forest on an old elven route in 2941, encountering spiders as well as the Wood-elves, as told in The Hobbit, but few others dared to do so. After the War of the Ring, Mirkwood was restored to its earlier glory, and the elves renamed it Eryn Lasgalen (“Wood of the Green Leaves”). Thranduil remained in control of the Woodland Realm in the northern part of the forest, while the southern part became known as East Lórien and was ruled for a time by Celeborn. Misty Mountains  The Misty Mountains are the largest and highest mountain range in Middleearth, stretching some 800 miles from their northernmost peak, Gundabad, to the peak of Methedras and the Gap of Rohan to the south. The name is derived from the Sindarin name Hithaeglir (“Peaks of Mist”) and refers to the shroud of mist that hovers around their high peaks. The mountains were raised before the First Age of Middle-earth by the evil Melkor (Morgoth) as a means of disrupting the Vala Oromë, who liked to ride across Middle-earth while hunting. In effect, Melkor had also erected a great barrier to hinder the migration of the Eldar, moving toward the west at the invitation of the Valar. To aid the movement of the elves, Oromë created the High Pass, or the Pass of Imladris, as a way over the mountains. Traversing it certainly delayed the Eldar: Many of them crossed the mountains, but a large number of Teleri under the leadership of Lenwë gave up at this point and came to be known as the Nandor (“those who turn back”). The dwarves later used the High Pass to connect the road west of the mountains to the road going

through Mirkwood to the east. In the Second Age, Gil-galad and Elendil the Tall used this pass to march on Mordor with the Last Alliance of elves and men, and Isildur was killed by orcs guarding the road to this pass after that first war with Sauron. The Redhorn Pass, on the southern side of Barazinbar (or Caradhras) was also an important pass through the mountains. In The Fellowship of the Ring, the nine companions try to cross the mountains through the Redhorn Pass, fearing that the High Pass would be watched by orcs and the Gap of Rohan would bring them too close to Isengard, but a blizzard drives them down, forcing their fateful decision to enter Moria. The Misty Mountains were special to the dwarves because they housed the great dwarf citadel of Khazad-dûm (which the elves called Moria). Durin himself was purported to have awakened on Mount Gundabad in the North. Throughout the Third Age, and for much of the Second, the Misty Mountains were the abode of orcs, who made any passage very dangerous. But the mountains were also home to the great eagles, led by their lord, Gwaihir, whose eyries were high in the central Misty Mountains. mithril  Mithril (the name means “grey gleam” in Sindarin) was the most precious metal in Middleearth. It could be found only in a single vein running below the Misty Mountains on the eastern border of Eregion. It was there that the dwarves established the underground mines of Khazaddûm, known to the elves as Moria. The dwarves loved mithril above all things, and the elves found it of great value as well, for it was both beautiful and useful. As Gandalf explained while leading the Fellowship through Moria, mithril shone like silver but would never tarnish. It could be beaten and shaped like copper or gold and was uncommonly light, but at the same time, it was as hard as steel. Thus, a mithril coat like Bilbo’s could turn the blade of a sword, as Frodo found when he inherited the coat from Bilbo. Mithril was so valuable that it made the dwarves of Moria, Durin’s folk, fabulously wealthy, and it drew Celebrimbor to settle in Eregion with his

544  Monaghan, Dominic band of Noldor. In their desire to mine more of the metal, the dwarves delved deeper under the mountain of Caradhras, seeking the mithril mother lode, and in doing so, they unwittingly disturbed a Balrog that had been imprisoned there. In the year 1980 of the Third Age, the Balrog destroyed the dwarves and came to be known as “Durin’s Bane” as the dwarves were forced to abandon their ancestral home. Thus, the precious metal that had been the foundation of the dwarves’ wealth ironically also became the means of their destruction. No more mithril was mined after 1980, making any surviving mithril even more valuable. Aside from Frodo’s mail coat, there are three other significant mithril items in The Lord of the Rings. First, the Noldor of Eregion used mithril to make the alloy ithildin (“star moon”), a substance used on gateways and other entryways. Ithildin was visible only by starlight or moonlight, and only after the one seeking entrance had pronounced the correct formula. Second, Galadriel’s Ring of Power, Nenya—the Ring of Water—was forged of mithril and bore a stone of adamant. Third, the helmets worn by the citadel guards of Minas Tirith were made of mithril as well, having been passed down from the days of the kings, because mithril armor did not wear out. Monaghan, Dominic (1976–  ) Dominic Monaghan is a German-born British actor best known for his role as Merry in Peter Jackson’s New Line Cinema film versions of The Lord of the Rings. He was born on December 8, 1976, in Berlin, Germany, to Maureen and Austin Monaghan, a nurse and a science teacher, respectively. The family, including Monaghan’s older brother Matthew, lived in Berlin, Düsseldorf, and Stuttgart before moving to Manchester when Dominic was about 12 years old. With this background, Monaghan speaks fluent German as well as English. Monaghan was inspired by George Lucas’s Star Wars films as a child and dreamed of becoming an actor. He attended Saint Anne’s High School, where he acted in plays including Oliver Twist, A Christmas Carol, and Bugsy Malone. He then studied English literature, drama, and geography at Aquinas College before costarring for four seasons

in the British television series Hetty Wainthropp Investigates, beginning in 1996. In 1999, he landed the starring role in another British series, Monsignor Renard. Monaghan’s television roles made him a familiar face to British audiences, and he was able to land the role of Merry in Jackson’s film trilogy. Like the other eight actors who played members of the Fellowship of the Ring, Monaghan has tattooed on his right arm the Tengwar character for the number 9. He has remained in contact with his fellow actors in the films, particularly with costar Billy Boyd, who played Pippin, and the two have reputedly been working on a screenplay together. Since the release of the Lord of the Rings films, Monaghan has become even more familiar to American audiences for his role as Charlie Pace in the popular television series Lost, on which he appeared in more than 70 episodes from 2004 through 2008. Disappointed at his character’s diminishing role, he was content to have his character killed off, though he returned in several episodes in the 2010 season of the series. After Lost, Monaghan took the role of Simon Campos on the new science fiction series FlashForward, which premiered in 2009. Monaghan has worked with animal rights and environmental groups, and he enjoys outdoor sports. An avid soccer fan, he is a huge supporter of his hometown Manchester United. He lives in Los Angeles, and had been in a relationship with Lost costar Evangeline Lilly, who played Kate Austen on the show. Mordor  Mordor was the realm of the Dark Lord Sauron during the Second Age and Third Age of Middle-earth. The name is Sindarin for “black land,” and in the common tongue, Westron, it was often called the Land of Shadow. It was located east of the lower Anduin River and bordered on Gondor to the west and Harad to the south. Sauron first occupied Mordor in the year 1000 of the Second Age, choosing it for his kingdom because of the mountains that protected the land on three sides—the Ered Lithui or Ashy Mountains to the north and the Ephel Dúath, or Mountains of Shadow, to the west and south. Here Sauron

Morgan, Father Francis   545 constructed the great tower of Barad-dûr from which he ruled. A significant landmark in Mordor was the volcano Orodruin, the Cracks of Doom, whose smoky fumes made the plain of Gorgoroth a wasteland surrounding it. It was in Orodruin that Sauron forged the One Ring. In the south of Mordor was the agricultural region called Nurn, worked by men enslaved by Sauron. The giant spider Shelob had lived in the mountain pass called Cirith Ungol for long years before the coming of Sauron, making that area a place of evil even before Sauron’s arrival. But from the time of Sauron’s entry, the whole land was a place of darkness, and he populated it with evil creatures, including orcs. Sauron lived among the elves of Eregion from about 1200, and eventually he persuaded them to forge the Rings of Power. He returned to Mordor and forged the One Ring around 1600, and then he launched his first war against the elves in 1693. He destroyed Eregion and gathered the Rings of Power to himself, but he was ultimately defeated and returned to Mordor in 1701. By 1800, Sauron was ready again to go to war, this time with the men of Harad and the Easterlings as allies, and he had given the nine Rings of Power to the men who were to become the Nazgûl. None in Middle-earth could match his power until Ar-Pharazôn, king of Númenor, forced his capitulation in 3262. But Sauron, taken to Númenor as prisoner, ultimately caused the destruction of that island kingdom. When Númenor was destroyed, Sauron lost his bodily shape, but he returned to Mordor in disembodied form; unable to assume a fair form, he assumed a new and terrifying bodily form and, from here, attacked Gondor in 3429. Mordor was invaded by the army of the Last Alliance, led by Gil-galad and Elendil the Tall, and Sauron was finally defeated, the One Ring being cut from his finger by Isildur. The army of the alliance razed Barad-dûr to the ground and drove Sauron’s servants out of Mordor. During the Third Age, Gondor erected fortresses along the borders of Mordor, but civil war and plague weakened the kingdom’s resolve and power, and after 1636, Gondor abandoned its border strongholds, allowing the Nazgûl to reenter

Mordor in 1980 and prepare the land for Sauron’s return. They captured Minas Ithil in 2002 and brought its palantír (see palantiri) back to Mordor. In 2951, Sauron came back and openly began rebuilding the dark tower of Barad-dûr, where he housed the palantír and kept watch on all he surveyed with his great, unblinking eye. As told in The Return of the King, the Black Gate of Mordor was besieged by the armies of Gondor and Rohan during the War of the Ring, and Sauron unleashed the full weight of his armies against the besiegers, but unbeknownst to him, the hobbits Frodo and Sam, and the creature Gollum, had entered Mordor and caused the destruction of the One Ring in the Cracks of Doom where it was forged. Sauron himself perished with the ring, and the country of Mordor was devastated by the eruption of Orodruin and accompanying earthquakes and floods. Barad-dûr collapsed, as did the Black Gate and the rest of Mordor’s fortifications. Early in the Fourth Age, Aragorn, new king of Gondor, declared that all the slaves of Mordor were to be freed and given land to settle in Nurn, which had escaped much of the devastation of the collapse of Mordor. Morgan, Father Francis  (Father Francis Xavier Morgan)  (1857–1935)  Father Francis Morgan was Tolkien’s legal guardian after the death of his mother, Mabel Tolkien, in 1904. Morgan was generous but strict with Ronald and his brother, Hilary Tolkien, and he pushed Tolkien to obtain a university scholarship. He also stepped in to stop the romance between Tolkien and Edith Bratt, which Tolkien agreed not to pursue until after his 21st birthday. Morgan was part Spanish and part Welsh. Tolkien described him as a flamboyant man, loud but affectionate, and attributed such characteristics to his Spanish heritage (Carpenter 27). He had attended the Oratory school in Birmingham, subsequently returning to the Oratory as a novice. He was ordained a priest at the age of 25. When Mabel Tolkien converted to Catholicism and was virtually shunned by her family and friends, it was Father Morgan who became her chief support. After her first diabetic episode in 1904, Father Morgan

546  Moria arranged for her to recuperate at Rednal, a retreat center for Oratory priests. When Mabel died in November that year at the age of 34, Father Morgan was with her at her deathbed, and she named him guardian of her two young sons, Ronald (12) and Hilary (10). Father Morgan first placed the boys with Beatrice Suffield, Mabel’s aunt, but she was indifferent foster parent, and the boys were not happy there. They preferred to be with Father Morgan, helping him serve Mass in the Oratory church. During summer holidays, he would take the boys to Lyme Regis on the Channel coast. Morgan had a private income from his Spanish family’s sherry interests, and he used this money to enhance the small investments that Mabel had left for the boys’ upbringing. He encouraged their Catholic education and made his own library available to Ronald and Hilary. There is no doubt that Tolkien felt a huge debt of gratitude to Father Morgan for these things, and for the love he experienced from the priest. Decades later, he wrote that “I first learned charity and forgiveness from him” (Letters 354). Ultimately, Father Morgan placed the boys in a boardinghouse run by a Mrs. Faulkner. It was there that Tolkien met Edith Bratt, another orphan living in the house and three years his senior. Father Morgan was appalled when he discovered their budding romance, partly because Edith was not a Catholic and partly because he thought that she would distract Tolkien from his studies and ruin his chances to obtain an Oxford scholarship. He demanded that Tolkien have no more contact with Edith, threatening to cut off any support for Tolkien’s academic career if he ever saw her again before he reached the age of 21. Tolkien, completely dependent on the priest, agreed to the restriction. In 1913, days after his 21st birthday, Tolkien wrote to Edith from Oxford and, discovering that she was engaged to another man named George Field, traveled immediately to where she was staying in Cheltenham. He returned to Oxford engaged to her, and Father Morgan grudgingly gave his blessing to the couple. Since Tolkien had reached the age of majority, Morgan was no longer his legal guardian, but he still provided financial support for Tolkien’s education and continued to do so after

the engagement. The wedding took place in Warwick in 1916, and Tolkien was hesitant to inform Father Morgan of the event until two weeks prior to the ceremony. For the remaining 19 years of his life, Father Morgan visited Tolkien occasionally in Oxford, and in 1928 he joined the Tolkien family on holiday in Lyme Regis, no doubt stirring childhood memories for Tolkien. In 1972, Tolkien wrote to his grandson Michael: “I remember after the death of Fr Francis my ‘second father’ . . . saying to C. S. Lewis: ‘I feel like a lost survivor into a new alien world after the real world has passed away’. . . . In 1904 [after Mabel’s death] we . . . had the sudden miraculous experience of Fr Francis’ love care and humour” (Letters 416–417). Further Reading Carpenter, Humphrey. Tolkien: A Biography. Boston : Houghton Mifflin, 1977. Tolkien, J. R. R. The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien. Edited by Humphrey Carpenter. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1981.

Moria  (Khazad-dûm)  Moria (meaning “Black Pit”) is the Sindarin elvish name for the magnificent underground city of the dwarves called Khazad-dûm (“Mansion of the Dwarves”) in their own tongue. It was the greatest of the dwarves’ dwelling places, having been carved out of stone under the Misty Mountains by the legendary dwarf patriarch Durin I early in the First Age of Middle-earth. Durin’s Tomb was located there, as well as the Mirrormere, the lake in which Durin first saw the stars of Durin’s Crown. Moria was gradually expanded to include most of the area beneath the mountain peaks of Zriakzigil, Bundushathûr, and Barazinbar (also called Caradhras). The population swelled at the end of the First Age when the dwarf homes at Nogrod and Belegost were destroyed. Early in the Second Age, the dwarves of Moria discovered mithril, the beautiful and durable metal that was to become the most valuable substance in Middle-earth, and which could only be found in a single vein in Moria. At that point, Durin’s folk forged a close friendship with the Noldor of Eregion, the plain

Morris, William   547 west of the mountains, for the descendants of the great elvish craftsman Fëanor particularly loved mithril and were drawn to Eregion by love of the metal. The dwarves built a tunnel to Eregion, with a great gate called the Doors of Durin, designed by the Noldor’s chief, Celebrimbor himself, opening onto the region. When Sauron made war on the elves of Eregion, the dwarves of Moria were able to shut their impregnable gates and survive the onslaught. Thus, Moria survived the Second Age and passed into the Third Age intact and still in great wealth. But in 1980 of the Third Age, the dwarves of Moria dug too deeply under Caradhras, releasing the Balrog hidden there. The Balrog killed the dwarves’ king, Durin VI, and henceforth was known as “Durin’s Bane.” All the dwarves of Moria were slain or driven out. After several hundred years, Moria became a home for orcs of Mordor. These orcs killed the dwarfish king Thrór when he entered Moria alone in 2790, which touched off a war between the dwarves and orcs. Although the dwarves were victorious in 2799, their king, Dáin, rejected the idea of resettling Moria because of the presence of the Balrog. In 2989, a group of dwarves under Balin reestablished a dwarf kingdom in Moria, but they were slaughtered by orcs in 2994. When the Fellowship of the Ring entered Moria in 3019, the Balrog was slain by Gandalf. Whether the dwarves resettled Moria in the Fourth Age, after the Balrog had been killed and Sauron defeated, is a question Tolkien never addressed. Morris, William  (1834–1896)  William Morris was one of the leading figures in the Victorian PreRaphaelite movement in the arts, an associate of Edward Burne-Jones, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and Charles Algernon Swinburne. Morris was a tapestry artist as well as a poet and novelist, and his romantic fascination with medieval legend made him one of Tolkien’s early idols. After 1870, he became one of England’s leading socialists. Morris was born into a well-to-do family in Walthamstow, near London. As the eldest son, he came into an annual income of £900, a significant among at that time. As a child, he was fasci-

nated by the Middle Ages, and had read all of Sir Walter Scott’s Waverley novels by the time he was nine. His father died when Morris was 14, at which point he entered Marlborough College, where he was influenced by the High Church Oxford Movement and for a time thought of becoming an Anglican priest. He entered Exeter College in 1853 with that goal in mind, and it was here that he met Edward Burne-Jones, who was to remain his lifelong friend. At Exeter, Morris belonged to a circle of budding artists fascinated by medieval art and literature, inspired by Tennyson’s Idylls of the King and Thomas Carlyle’s Past and Present. Morris immersed himself in medieval codes of chivalry and began to write verse influenced by Tennyson, Keats, and Chaucer. In 1855, after a walking tour of medieval cathedrals in France, Morris and Burne-Jones decided to abandon their studies for the priesthood and devote themselves to art.

Portrait of William Morris by George Frederic Watts in 1870. As a leading figure in the Pre-Raphaelite movement in the arts, Morris inspired Tolkien.  (Portrait by George Frederic Watts)

548  Morris, William In 1856, Morris began work at an architectural firm, moved in with Burne-Jones, and met Rossetti and Swinburne. The group painted the Oxford Union frescoes in 1857, and that same year, Morris met one of Rossetti’s models, Jane Burden, whom he married in 1859, when she turned 18; the couple had two daughters. By now, Morris was publishing his poetry, including The Defense of Guenevere in 1858. Within a few years, however, Jane had begun a long affair with Rossetti. In 1860, Morris commissioned Philip Webb to design his Red House in London, which Morris and his fellow artists proceeded to decorate in medieval fashion, including tapestries and stained glass. This experience led him to found the company Morris, Marshall, Faulkner and Company with Burne-Jones, Webb, and Rossetti. It was here that he designed his famous wallpaper patterns. In 1861, Morris also began writing his long poem The Earthly Paradise. Probably recoiling emotionally from a marriage in which his wife was engaged in an affair with his friend, he withdrew into his poetry, publishing The Life and Death of Jason in 1867. Morris began studying Old Icelandic in 1868, and he published translations of The Saga of Gunnlaug Worm-tongue and The Story of Grettir the Strong in 1869, following these with his prose translation of The Völsunga Saga in 1870. Also in 1870, Morris found a new enthusiasm that would influence the rest of his life: socialism, which he saw as the answer to the poverty and unemployment that were the result of Victorian industrialism. The following year, he moved his family, with Rossetti, into Kelmscott Manor in Oxfordshire. He became sole proprietor of Morris and Company in 1875. In the late 1870s, he published Sigurd the Völsung and The Fall of the Niblungs, but he was chiefly interested in politics. Morris founded the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings in 1877. In 1878, he moved his family to Kelmscott House in Hammersmith, where he began to create his famous tapestries. He became even more active in politics, becoming more and more radical in his views. He declared himself a socialist in 1883, the same year that he was made an honorary fellow of Exeter College. In 1884, he founded the Socialist League, editing

its journal Commonweal after 1885. At the same time, he was arrested because of a free-speech demonstration. Still, he had time for fiction, and he published his first prose romance, The House of the Wolfings, in 1888, followed by The Roots of the Mountains in 1890. In 1889, he broke from the Socialist League and formed the Hammersmith Socialist Society. In 1891, Morris founded Kelmscott Press. The following year, despite his pronounced socialist politics, he was offered the position of poet laureate on the death of Tennyson, but he declined. He continued to write prose romances, and he published The Wood Beyond the World in 1894 and The Well at the World’s End in 1896. That same year, he published the Kelmscott Chaucer, with illustrations by Burne-Jones. He died at Kelmscott House on October 3, 1896. Two more of his prose romances, The Water of the Wondrous Isles and The Sundering Flood, were published posthumously in 1897. There is no question that Morris’s influence, especially on the young Tolkien, was enormous. When he won the Skeat Prize in English at Exeter College in 1914, Tolkien used some of the money to buy Morris’s The Life and Death of Jason, as well as The House of the Wolfings and Morris’s translation of the Völsunga Saga. More than once, Tolkien acknowledged his debt to Morris. In a letter to Edith Bratt in October 1914, he mentions his interest in the Finnish Kalevala, saying, “I am trying to turn one of the stories—which is really a very great story and most tragic—into a story somewhat on the lines of Morris’ romances with chunks of poetry in between.” (Letters 7). This was “The Story of Kullervo,” which Tolkien soon abandoned, but whose form and style were, as Tolkien told Edith, strongly influenced by Morris. Much later, in a letter to Rayner Unwin in 1960, discussing the landscape of the Dead Marshes in The Two Towers, Tolkien wrote: “The Dead Marshes and the approaches to the Morannon owe something to Northern France after the Battle of the Somme. They owe more to William Morris and his Huns and Romans, as in The House of the Wolfings or The Roots of the Mountains” (Letters 303). As Humphrey Carpenter points out in his biography, Tolkien found that “Morris’s view of literature coincided

Mortensen, Viggo   549 with his own. In this book Morris had tried to recreate the excitement he himself had found in the pages of early English and Icelandic narratives” (70), which was precisely what Tolkien was trying to do. Carpenter goes on to note that the structure of Tolkien’s first attempts at telling the stories of what would become The Silmarillion owes a great deal to the structure of Morris’s The Earthly Paradise, “for, as in that story, a sea-voyager arrives at an unknown land where he is to hear a succession of tales. Tolkien’s voyager was called Eriol” (90). More recently, Chester N. Scoville listed a number of other details that Tolkien borrowed or learned from Morris, noting in general that the one thing the two had most in common was that they saw a great many admirable qualities in the Middle Ages. Scoville explored the reasons that Morris, despite his socialist politics, was appealing to Tolkien, and concluded that For Morris, the Middle Ages provided clues that could lead humanity to heaven on earth or something very close to it; for Tolkien, they provided clues that could—just—hold off hell on earth, so that humanity could still have inklings of, and desire for, the real heaven. (101)

Further Reading Carpenter, Humphrey. Tolkien: A Biography. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1977. Scoville, Chester N. “Pastoralia and Perfectability in William Morris and J. R. R. Tolkien.” In Tolkien’s Modern Middle Ages, edited by Jane Chance and Alfred K. Siewers, 93–103. New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2005. Tolkien, J. R. R. The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien. Edited by Humphrey Carpenter. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1981.

Mortensen, Viggo  (1958–  )  Best known for his role as Aragorn in Peter Jackson’s New Line Cinema’s trilogy of The Lord of the Rings, Viggo Mortensen is an accomplished Danish-American actor who is also an accomplished painter and photographer. He was born in New York City on October 20, 1958, to a Danish father and an American mother. His family traveled a good deal when he

was growing up, and he spent some years living in Venezuela, Argentina, and Denmark. His parents divorced when he was 11, and he moved with his mother and siblings back to New York. Mortensen graduated from Watertown High School in 1976 and attended St. Lawrence University in Canton, New York, where he majored in Spanish. He moved to Denmark upon graduation, working odd jobs and writing poetry and short stories. He returned to New York in 1982, hoping to make a living as a writer. Instead, he waited tables, tended bar, and took acting classes. Mortensen also began working in the theater, and he eventually appeared as an Amish farmer in Peter Weir’s 1985 film Witness, with Harrison Ford. In 1987, he moved to Los Angeles, where he appeared in the play Salvation! Have You Said Your Prayers Today? The play was not memorable, but Mortensen fell in love with and married his costar, Exene Cervenka, lead singer of the punk rock band X. The couple divorced 11 years later, but they had a son, Henry Mortensen, born in 1988. Viggo Mortensen also appeared in the play Bent at the Coast Playhouse in Los Angeles and won a Dramalogue Critics Award for his performance. He subsequently landed supporting roles in a number of films, some of them popular successes and some more “art” films, including Young Guns II (1990), Sean Penn’s The Indian Runner (1991), Carlito’s Way (1993), Crimson Tide (1995), Jane Campion’s Portrait of a Lady (1996), G.I. Jane (1997), and A Perfect Murder (1998). Mortensen was offered a role in The Lord of the Rings in 1999 and originally wanted to turn down the part. But his son, a fan of the books, convinced him to take the part. Filming had already started, and Mortensen was a last-minute replacement for Stuart Townsend. On the set, Mortensen proved himself to be an excellent swordsman and did all of his own stunts, suffering a number of injuries while doing so. His role in The Lord of the Rings trilogy catapulted Mortensen to stardom, and since the trilogy’s release, he has been regularly cast in lead roles. He received critical praise for his role as Tom Stall in David Cronenberg’s A History of Violence (2005) and won Golden Globe and Academy Award nom-

550  Mount Doom Mount Doom  See Orodruin.

Cover of a 2003 coloring-book edition of The Return of the King, published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. The cover image shows the actor Viggo Mortensen in the part of Aragorn in Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings film trilogy.

inations for playing the Russian gangster Nikolai Luzhin in Cronenberg’s Eastern Promises (2007). In 2006, he played Captain Diego Alatriste in the film Alatriste, based on Arturo Pérez-Reverte’s novels. Recently he played “the Man” in the film adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road (2009). Mortensen used some of his money from The Lord of the Rings to create Perceval Press, through which he has published his own poetry and photography, and to help other struggling artists who may not find a venue for their work. Mortensen speaks fluent English, Danish, Norwegian and Spanish. He is an avid hockey fan, following the Montreal Canadiens. He has lived in Sandpoint, Idaho, since the mid-1980s.

Naffarin  Naffarin was the name of the first serious imaginary language the Tolkien invented as a youth. Influenced by the Spanish books that his guardian, Father Francis Morgan, had loaned him, Tolkien modeled the forms of Naffarin largely on Latin and Spanish, though he gave his new language its own phonology and grammatical forms. In his lecture “A Secret Vice,” Tolkien discusses his penchant for creating languages even at an early age. Naffarin was the successor to Nevbosh (or “the new nonsense”), a codelike language he shared with his cousins, Margery and Mary Incledon. Nevbosh essentially simply respelled English words, but Naffarin, which the teenage Tolkien did not share with anyone, was far more sophisticated and had a vocabulary, spelling, and grammar independent of (though influenced by) other languages. Tolkien deliberately avoided familiar English sounds, such as those spelled with th-, sh-, and w-, so as to make Naffarin sound like a foreign tongue. His chief pleasure, he asserted, was the sounds of the words, which could be beautiful without regard to their meaning. Naffarin had no history or mythology attached to it, but it was a necessary step toward the later creation of Quenya and Sindarin, the elvish tongues for which Tolkien felt he needed to create a new world to provide a context, and which became the languages of Middle-earth. Námo  See Mandos. Nargothrond  Nargothrond was the fortified underground stronghold built by Finrod (eldest son of Finarfin) in the first century after the Noldor returned to Middle-earth. At the suggestion of the Vala Ulmo, Finrod had built his city in the caves on the River Narog, in imitation of Thingol’s underground palace of Menegroth in Doriath. With foresight, Finrod believed that it was important to create an impregnable stronghold against Morgoth, who was already spreading his darkness from Angband in the North. With the help of the dwarves of the Ered Luin (the Blue Mountains), he created an underground city and earned the sobriquet Felagund (“Hewer of Caves”).

Narsil   551 Finrod’s people were not the first to inhabit those caves, however. They had originally been settled long before by the Petty-dwarves, who had called the place Nulukkizdîn. But the Pettydwarves had been driven out long since by the Grey-elves and, as a result, had developed a fierce hatred for all elves. Part of the realm of Nargothrond was the Talath Dirnen (“Guarded Plain”) north of the fortress, a vast area patrolled largely by the Haladin of Brethil, who kept a close watch for any agents of the enemy coming southward toward Nargothrond. Finrod’s martial policy was completely defensive. In his wisdom, he foresaw that any direct confrontation with the forces of Morgoth would result in disastrous defeat for the Noldor. But after the Haladin were decimated and dispersed in the Nirnaeth Arnoediad (“Battle of Unnumbered Tears”), the Guarded Plain lay open to Morgoth’s orcs. For a time, Túrin Turambar lived in Brethil and harassed Morgoth’s allies when he could, but that had little long-term effect. Finrod chose to accompany Beren on his quest for the Silmarils and ultimately was killed in that adventure. He left the crown of Nargothrond to his brother Orodreth, whose first task was to oust the usurpers, Fëanor’s sons Celegorm and Curufin, who had sought to insert themselves into the kingship of the realm. Still, Orodreth chose to continue Finrod’s defensive policy regarding Morgoth. But when Túrin Turambar came to Nargothrond, he challenged Orodreth’s policy and persuaded the Noldor to follow his lead and meet the enemy with a full-on assault. A wide bridge was built from the fortress across the Narog, and over this bridge Túrin and Orodreth led all of their forces. Morgoth countered by sending a great army led by the dragon Glaurung. Morgoth’s army destroyed the Noldor, and Glaurung made his way quickly to Nargothrond, where the bridge made it easy for him to enter the fortress. The city was sacked, and all the inhabitants were captured or killed. Glaurung made Nargothrond his lair for five years, until he moved out to attack Brethil, where Túrin was able to slay him. For a time, the Petty-dwarf Mîm returned to Nargothrond, reclaiming his ancestral home, but

he was ultimately killed by Húrin, and from that time until the destruction of Beleriand at the end of the First Age, Nargothrond remained deserted. Narsil  The sword Narsil, famous as the sword of Elendil the Tall, was one of the most significant weapons in the history of Middle-earth. It was forged during the First Age by the skilled dwarf smith Telchar of Nogrod in the Blue Mountains; Telchar had also made the knife Angrist (which Beren used to cut the Silmaril from the crown of Morgoth) and the Helm of Hador (later worn by Túrin Turambar). Narsil was a long sword with a remarkably keen edge that, in battle, would glow red in the light of the sun, and white in the light of the moon. Thus, it received its name, which in Quenya, the speech of the High Elves, means “red and white flame.” The early history of Narsil is unknown, but by the Second Age it was in Númenor and in the hands of the lords of Andúnië, from which Elendil the Tall brought it back with him to Middleearth. Elendil, king of Gondor and Arnor, the Númenórean Realms in Exile, bore the sword when he rode with the elf king Gil-galad in the Last Alliance of elves and men as they marched against Sauron. At the Battle of Dagorlad in the year 3434, Elendil wielded Narsil so skillfully that none of Sauron’s forces could stand against him. In the final showdown with Sauron on the slopes of Orodruin within Mordor itself, Elendil was slain, and when he fell, Narsil broke beneath him. His son Isildur took the hilt of the sword and cut the One Ring from Sauron’s hand with the fragment still attached. Isildur took the shards of Narsil and the One Ring with him on the return journey to Arnor, but his party was attacked by orcs near the Gladden Fields. The ring was lost, and most of the party killed, but before his death, Isildur entrusted the shards of Narsil to his squire, Ohtar. Ohtar brought the shards to Rivendell, where Isildur’s only surviving heir, Valandil, was being fostered. The shards of Narsil became one of the chief heirlooms of the line of Isildur. Elrond prophesied at that time that the sword would not be reforged until Isildur’s Bane—i.e., the ring that had caused his death— was found again.

552  Narya Aragorn, heir of Isildur at the close of the Third Age, carried the shards of Narsil with him in his travels across the North. When the Council of Elrond resolved to send the One Ring to its destruction in the Cracks of Doom where it was made, Aragorn decided that the time had come for the reforging of the sword. With the help of the elven smiths of Rivendell, the shards of Narsil were newly formed, and Aragorn renamed the new sword Andúril, Sindarin for “Flame of the West.” He carried the sword with him on his journey south with the Fellowship of the Ring, and used it to establish his credentials as Isildur’s heir. During the War of the Ring, Aragorn used Andúril successfully in the Battle of the Pelennor Fields as well as the Battle at the Black Gate of Mordor. Thus, Andúril became as famous a sword as its original incarnation as Narsil. Narya  Narya was one of the Three Rings of the elves, forged with the other elven rings in Eregion by the Noldor craftsman Celebrimbor. However, unlike the Seven (for the dwarves) or the Nine (for men), the elven rings were made after Sauron had left Eregion, and so they escaped the taint of evil associated with the Seven and the Nine. The Three could still be sought out and controlled by the One Ring, however, so the elves kept Narya (and the two other rings, Vilya and Nenya) hidden from Sauron throughout the Second Age and used them secretly in the Third Age to fortify the resistance, will, and courage of the Eldar in the face of Sauron’s darkness. Narya was originally kept by Círdan the Shipwright through the Second Age, but knowing the task of the Istari was to combat Sauron, Círdan gave the ring to Gandalf when he arrived in Middleearth after the first millennium of the Third Age. Gandalf kept Narya through the War of the Ring. Narya was also called the Ring of Fire and the Red Ring. Its name in Quenya, the speech of the High-elves, meant “fire.” It had a red stone, and its quality, unlike the Seven or the Nine, was not to conquer or give power, but to strengthen hearts to resist evil. It also enhanced the ability of the elves to resist the world-weariness that came from their virtual immortality.

When the One Ring was destroyed at the end of the Third Age, the Three lost their powers, and Gandalf took Narya into the West with him when he sailed from Middle-earth. Nazgûl  The Nazgûl were the nine Ringwraiths— the lords of men to whom Sauron gave the Nine Rings of Power, and who, as a result, eventually became slaves of the rings and lost their human forms, being visible only to him who wielded the One Ring. They wore black cloaks and mail armor, and in that form, they terrorized the enemies of Sauron through the Second Age and the Third Age of Middle-earth. The Noldor of Eregion forged the Rings of Power at Sauron’s urging during the Second Age. They did not know that Sauron was secretly forging the One Ring through which he could control all the others. Sauron gave the Nine Rings to kings of men who craved power and therefore were easy to corrupt. Three were Black Númenóreans—men of Númenor who rejected both the Eldar and the Valar, and who had settled in Middle-earth. They were corrupted by Sauron and hated the Dúnedain; therefore, they fell easily under the power of the Nine. The Nazgûl could not be wounded except by weapons with powerful spells upon them, and any blade used against them would melt. The chief Nazgûl used a Morgul blade, which had the power not only to kill but to turn its victim into a wraith. Contact with a Nazgûl would result in a deadly disease called the Black Breath, although King Aragorn was able to combat this ailment with the herb athelas, or “kingsfoil.” The Nazgûl were blind to things in the physical world, but they had a keen sense of smell and could use the beasts on which they rode to see for them. When the Nazgûl first appeared in about 2250 of the Second Age, they were completely controlled by the One Ring, and they were Sauron’s most devoted and terrifying agents. But upon Sauron’s defeat at the end of the Second Age, the Nazgûl were dispersed and went into hiding. They emerged again in about 1300 of the Third Age in the east of Middle-earth. Their leader traveled into Arnor, where he became the Witch-king of Angmar, a

Neave, Jane   553 mighty sorcerer and conqueror who, for 700 years, sought to destroy the Dúnedain of the North. He was nearly successful, but in 1975 he was defeated at the Battle of Fornost by elven armies from Lindon and Rivendell, and he fled into Mordor, where the other eight Nazgûl had returned in 1640. Here they prepared the Dark Land for the return of its master, Sauron, rebuilding his armies. In 2000, the Nazgûl besieged Minas Ithil, and in 2002 they captured the tower from the defenders of Gondor. From that time, it came to be called Minas Morgul, the Tower of Dark Magic, and was the chief stronghold of the Nazgûl, from which the Dark Lord launched his attacks against the free peoples of the West. In 2942, Sauron reentered Mordor, from which he revealed himself openly in 2951. He sent three of the Nazgûl to his former hiding place of Dol Guldur in Mirkwood. In 3018, having obtained knowledge of the whereabouts of the One Ring from the creature Gollum, Sauron sent the Nazgûl to seek the ring in the Shire. Riding black horses, they now became known as the Black Riders, but even though the Witch-king wounded Frodo on Weathertop, they were unsuccessful in their quest, being fended off by Aragorn and Glorfindel and scattered by the flood that drowned their horses at the Ford of Bruinen. When they reappeared some months later, the Nazgûl were riding hideous flying beasts. They attacked Osgiliath with an army from Mordor, and from there the Witch-king led Sauron’s forces in the Battle of the Pelennor Fields, where he was slain by the Lady Éowyn of the Rohan and Merry the hobbit, fulfilling the prophecy that he could not be killed by a mortal man. The other eight Nazgûl continued their service to the Dark Lord at the battle at the Black Gate of Mordor, but when the One Ring was revealed by Frodo at the Cracks of Doom, the Nazgûl began a desperate flight to Orodruin to reclaim it. However, when the ring was destroyed, the Nazgûl were destroyed. Neave, Jane  (Emily Jane Suffield)  (1872– 1963)  Jane Neave (née Suffield) was the younger sister of Tolkien’s mother, Mabel Tolkien. Tolkien was closer to his Aunt Jane than to most of his

other relatives, and kept up a correspondence with her until she died at the age of 91. When Arthur Tolkien proposed to the 18-year-old Mabel Suffield, her father, John, would not allow the match, arguing that Mabel was too young. Jane was the means by which Mabel secretly exchanged letters with Arthur Tolkien before they could be formally engaged: She passed the notes to Arthur while waiting to catch the train home to the suburb of King’s Heath from her high school on the platform of the New Street Station in Birmingham. Jane attended King Edward VI High School for Girls in Birmingham, and after graduation she enrolled in Mason College in Birmingham, earning a B.S. degree in 1895, ultimately becoming a schoolteacher. Tolkien noted in a 1967 letter to Charlotte and Denis Plimmer that it was his Aunt Jane who taught him geometry (Letters 377). When Tolkien’s mother was first hospitalized for her diabetes in 1904, Tolkien was sent to live in Hove with Edwin Neave, the suitor of his Aunt Jane, who at the time was teaching at the Bath Row Girls’ School in Birmingham. Shortly afterward, in August 1905, Jane married Edwin, who had been a lodger at her family home and now worked for the Guardian Fire Insurance Company. Humphrey Carpenter writes that Neave used to sit in the Suffields’ home in King’s Heath “singing ‘Polly-Wolly-Doodle’ to the accompaniment of a banjo and making eyes at Jane.” Carpenter adds: “The family thought him common, and were horrified when she became engaged to him” (18). Perhaps this rebellious streak is what Tolkien admired in his aunt. She may have reminded him of her mother, who incurred the wrath of the family when she became a Roman Catholic. Edwin Neave died young, at the age of 37, in 1909. From 1901 until the end of 1911, Jane was Lady Warden of University Hall in St. Andrews, Scotland. In summer 1911, she joined her nephews Ronald and Hilary Tolkien on a summer holiday to Switzerland along with James and Ellen BrookesSmith, who owned a farm in Sussex where Hilary worked. After leaving St. Andrews, Jane owned a farm in Gedling, Nottinghamshire, and Hilary worked on that farm with her. She renamed it Phoenix

554  Nenya Farm, and Tolkien is known to have visited her at least three times—in 1913, 1914, and 1916. It was on this farm in 1914 that Tolkien wrote his early poem “The Voyage of Earendel, the Evening Star” (Morton and Hayes). From at least 1923, Jane had moved from Nottinghamshire to Worcestershire, where she cared for her elderly father, who was 97 when he died in 1930. He lived with her, his youngest daughter, where she was living on a farm in Dormston. Her house was at the end of a cul-de-sac that the neighbors called “Bag End” (Carpenter 106), a detail that Tolkien was happy to use seven years later as the name for Bilbo Baggins’s house. In 1961, Aunt Jane, now 89 years old, wrote to Tolkien suggesting that he “get out a small book with Tom Bombadil at the heart of it, the sort of size book that we old ’uns can afford to buy for Christmas presents” (Carpenter 243–244). Tolkien responded by putting out the collection of poems called The Adventures of Tom Bombadil in 1962. There are several letters from that period in which he corresponds with Jane about the book’s progress and also sends her some of his other work, including Leaf by Niggle and the poem “The Nameless Land,” a verse in imitation of the form of the Middle English Pearl. Tolkien seems to have had a special connection with his aunt, perhaps because she was the only other member of his family with a university education, and so he felt an intellectual connection with her. Further Reading Carpenter, Humphrey. Tolkien: A Biography. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1977. Morton, Andrew H., and John Hayes. Tolkien’s Gedling, 1914: The Birth of a Legend. Studley, Warwickshire, Eng.: Brewin Books, 2008. Tolkien, J. R. R. The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien. Edited by Humphrey Carpenter. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1981.

Nenya  Nenya, whose name is Quenya for “water,” was the second of the Three Rings of the elves in Tolkien’s legendarium. It was called the Ring of Water or the Ring of Adamant. The ring was forged, along with Narya and Vilya, the other

two rings of the elves, by the Noldor craftsman Celebrimbor in the Second Age, but unlike the other Rings of Power made for dwarves and men, it was never touched by Sauron, and therefore was not made for the sake of power or greed; rather, like the other elven rings, it was made to sustain the Eldar in their struggles against the Dark Lord. The Three were, however, subject to the power of the One Ring and therefore were concealed during the Second Age and used only secretly throughout the Third Age. Nenya was made from the precious metal mithril and bore a white stone of adamant. From the beginning, Galadriel was the bearer of Nenya, and the chief power of the ring was concealment and protection. With the power of Nenya, Galadriel preserved and concealed the kingdom of Lothlórien. Normally, the ring itself could not be seen, but it is visible to Frodo, the bearer of the One Ring, in “The Mirror of Galadriel” chapter of The Fellowship of the Ring. Sam, however, is not able to see Nenya—he manages to catch only a glimpse of a star through Galadriel’s fingers. When the One Ring was destroyed in the Cracks of Doom, Nenya’s powers faded, and thus the beauty of Lothlórien itself faded as well, as did the ability of the elves to resist the weariness caused by the endless passage of time. Galadriel passed, with Nenya, over the sea to the Undying Lands of the Uttermost West. New English Dictionary on Historical Principles  See Oxford English Dictionary. Nibelungenlied  The Nibelungenlied is the bestknown heroic epic in Middle High German. Composed in approximately 1200 c.e., the epic is one of several surviving versions of the most prominent of medieval Germanic legends, the story of the dragon slayer Siegfried (or Sigurd, as he is called in Old Norse versions of the story). It was a legend that had become connected to the history of the Burgundians of the fifth century and their struggle with Attila the Hun, and the Nibelungenlied gives a complete version of this complex story. The two halves of the story are connected through the figure of Kriemhild (known as Gudrún

Nirnaeth Arnoediad   555 in the Norse versions), sister of the Burgundian king Gunther. Siegfried, having already slain the dragon and thus in possession of the dragons’ golden hoard, comes to the Burgundian court at Worms to woo Kriemhild, but he makes an enemy of Hagen, the king’s closest vassal, who envies his great strength and prowess. Siegfried helps Gunther win the Icelandic queen Brunhild, but on their wedding night, Brunhild humiliates Gunther by rejecting him and hanging him on a nail. Siegfried then takes Gunther’s place and, using a cloak of invisibility, defeats her and symbolically takes her virginity, stealing from her a ring and belt that he gives to Kriemhild. Later, Kriemhild shows the items to Brunhild, shaming her and calling her Siegfried’s whore. Brunhild demands vengeance on Siegfried, and during a hunt, Hagen stabs Siegfried in the back. Kriemhild knows who her husband’s killer is, but she has little chance to take revenge, particularly after Hagen sinks Siegfried’s treasure in the Rhine. After 13 years, Kriemhild is wooed by Etzel (i.e., Atilla), king of the Huns. She accepts his suit in the hope that he will provide the means to achieve her revenge on Hagen and her brother. After seven years of marriage, she invites her family to visit her, insisting that they bring Hagen. When the Burgundians cross the Danube, Hagen, expecting grave danger, burns their boat to ensure that no one can flee out of cowardice. Although Etzel at first receives his in-laws hospitably, Kriemhild soon goads the warriors into action, and a full-scale battle takes place in Etzel’s hall. The Germanic warrior Dietrich, a vassal of Etzel’s, finally captures Gunther and Hagen, the only two Burgundians left alive. Kriemhild insists that Gunther be killed. When Hagen refuses to reveal the location of Siegfried’s gold, she decapitates him with her own hands. Tolkien, of course, was quite familiar with the Nibelungenlied, and it influenced some of his own fiction. In his novel The Children of Húrin, the dark elf Mîm may owe something to the mythological Nibelungs themselves, whose name etymologically is related to Nifflheim, the home of the svatalfar, or black elves (Rogers and Rogers 83). Tolkien calls Mîm and his sons Nibin, his word for Petty-dwarves.

More important, the Nibelungenlied served as one of three sources for Tolkien’s modern English retelling of The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún. Tolkien’s chief source for his version of the story was the Elder Edda, which he considered the superior rendering and the version closest to the original legend. But the manuscript of the Elder Edda is missing several leaves at the crucial point of the Sigurd story, and to complete his retelling, Tolkien had to rely on either the story as told in the Nibelungenlied, in Snorri Sturluson’s Prose Edda, or in the Old Icelandic Völsunga Saga. For most details, Tolkien was more apt to use Snorri’s Edda, but he did take a few details from the Nibelungenlied, including the name Sigrlinn (for the mother of the hero Sigmund). He relied on the Nibelungenlied most heavily in his description of the final battle in Attila’s great hall. Further Reading Rogers, Deborah Webster, and Ivor A. Rogers. J. R. R. Tolkien. Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1980. Tolkien, J. R. R. The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún. Edited by Christopher Tolkien. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2009.

Nirnaeth Arnoediad  (Battle of Unnumbered Tears)  The fifth battle of the Wars of Beleriand, taking place in midsummer of the year 473 of the First Age, ended in the greatest disaster of the war for men and elves, and became known as the Nirnaeth Arnoediad, the Sindarin term meaning “Battle of Unnumbered Tears.” The battle plan was conceived when Maedhros, eldest son of Fëanor, inspired by the success of Beren and Lúthien in obtaining the Silmaril from the iron crown of Morgoth, decided to form an alliance of men, elves, and dwarves to defeat Morgoth and win back the lands in the North that he had occupied. The alliance was weaker than it might have been since neither Thingol of Doriath nor Orodreth of Nargothrond would agree to take part, due to the arrogance of Maedhros’s brothers and the kinslayings associated with the Oath of Fëanor. Some of the elves of Doriath and Nargothrond did take part on their own, but they would only march under the banner

556  Nirnaeth Arnoediad of Fingon, the son of Fingolfin and high king of the Noldor, who did join the alliance with his old friend Maedhros. Many of the Edain joined the alliance, including the Haladin, led by Haldir, as well as men from the House of Hador, led by Húrin and his brother Huor. A force of Easterlings led by Ulfang and Bór and a troop of dwarves from Belegost all joined in what became known as the Union of Maedhros. The union divided into two forces: The eastern army, under Maedhros, planned to march on Angband over the dry plain of Anfouglith in order to draw Morgoth out. At that point, a beacon was to be lighted in the highlands of Dorthonion to signal Fingon, whose army would then come in from the west to attack Morgoth’s rear. But the plan was disrupted because the Easterling Uldor (Ulfang’s son), in secret an ally of Morgoth, delayed Maedhros’s approach to Angband with a false report of an army of orcs approaching the Noldor stronghold at Himring. Fingon waited for the signal from Maedhros, but Maedhros never gave it. A party of orcs, with orders from Morgoth to draw Fingon’s army into battle, confronted Fingon, displaying a prisoner— the elf Gelmir of Nargothrond. The orcs mutilated the prisoner and decapitated him in the sight of Fingon and his troops, at which Gelmir’s brother Gwindor, who was present among Fingon’s host, rode forward madly to avenge his brother. All the elves of Nargothrond followed him, and Fingon’s entire army began to chase the band of orcs. Fingon’s army chased the orcs all the way to Angband, but the Noldor of Nargothrond, who led the chase, were all killed, except Gwindor, who was taken prisoner. Now the forces of Angband came out in strength, and the men of Brethil were decimated as Fingon’s army was forced back. Just at that point, Fingon’s brother Turgon arrived with an army of 10,000 elves from Gondolin. At the same time, Maedhros finally arrived from the East. Now, with all the armies of Beleriand before Angband, Morgoth opened the gates and loosed his entire army, led by a company of Balrogs and dragons. The Noldor continued to fight bravely, but suddenly the full measure of Uldor’s treachery was revealed, and

he and his Easterlings attacked Maedhros’s forces from the rear. Maedhros and his elves were forced to retreat to the east, but the dwarves of Belegost, led by their lord Azaghâl, continued to fight against the dragons, and when Azaghâl wounded the dragon Glaurung in the soft belly, the dragons retreated. However, Azaghâl died of his wounds, at which point the dwarves bore his body away and left the battlefield. With Maedhros’s army shredded, Fingon’s forces, now hopelessly outnumbered, seemed doomed. Fingon’s personal guards were all killed, but he continued to fight until he was surrounded by Balrogs and was killed by their leader, Gothmog. Turgon and his forces remained, but on the advice of Húrin and Huor, Turgon retreated back into Gondolin, to keep alive the hope of the Edain and the Eldar. Huor prophesied that day that a descendant of his house and Turgon’s would bring a new hope (in this he was prophesying the coming of Ëarendil the Mariner, who would ultimately bring the Valar to destroy Morgoth). The men under Húrin fought on, ensuring Turgon’s safe retreat, but ultimately most of them were killed, including Huor, and Húrin was taken prisoner. The battle resulted in the destruction of Fingon’s kingdom and the annihilation of the House of Hador. Trust between men and elves, as well as between men and dwarves, was strained because of the actions of some in the battle. Morgoth’s allies, the Easterlings, were given control of Dor-lómin, the ancestral home of Hador’s people. Gondolin, Doriath, and Nargothrond adopted a strategy of remaining hidden fortifications rather than attacking Morgoth outright. All of Beleriand was overrun by orcs and wolves. The story of the Nirnaeth Arnoediad as told in The Silmarillion was taken from the versions included in Tolkien’s unpublished Quenta Silmarillion and the “Grey Annals.” A later version of the story has been published more recently in The Children of Húrin. In the more recent version, the betrayal of Uldor is omitted, along with any implication that Maedhros’s army might have prevailed if not for his betrayal by the men who accompanied him. Tolkien’s purpose for this change is unknown.

Noldor   557 Noldor  (High-elves)  The Noldor (whose name in Quenya means “knowledgeable”) were one of the three houses of the Eldar who, led by their patriarch, Finwë, followed the call of the Valar in the Elder Days and traveled across Beleriand to sail over the western sea to the Undying Lands. In the West, they dwelled in Tirion in Eldamar (the home of the elves) during the idyllic age of the Two Trees of Valinor. The Noldor were generally dark-haired with grey eyes, except for Finwë’s youngest son, Finarfin, and his descendants, who had golden hair. The Noldor were the kindred of elves most interested in knowledge and in craftsmanship. They studied the language of the elves and developed the Tengwar (Fëanorian alphabet) for writing Quenya. They were the favorites of the Vala Aulë the Smith, who taught them all he could, and they developed skills in the arts and in the working of stone and metal. The greatest of all the Noldorin craftsmen was Finwë’s eldest son, Fëanor, who is said to have created the palantíri, the “seeing-stones” that were later used in Middle-earth. But Fëanor’s most magnificent creations were the three great jewels called the Silmarils, which captured the light of the Two Trees. The renegade Vala Melkor (Morgoth) envied the Noldor and their skills, and he coveted the Silmarils. He began to foment discontent and internal conflict among the Noldor, particularly between Fëanor and his brother Fingolfin. In his boldest move, Melkor and his ally Ungoliant destroyed the Two Trees and killed Finwë, and then he stole the Silmarils, taking them with him back to Middle-earth. In his outrage, Fëanor vowed to follow Melkor, now known ever after as Morgoth, into Middle-earth to regain the jewels, and persuaded nine-tenths of the Noldor to follow him, causing them to swear the “Oath of Fëanor,” which bound them to pursue the Silmarils to their death. The Valar sought to dissuade the Noldor from leaving, but the Noldor’s zeal led them to disobey and to go even further by slaying their Teleri kindred at Alqualondë in order to take the Teleri ships by force. As a result of this disobedience and murder, the Valar exiled the Noldor from the Undying Lands, and Mandos appeared to them to

pronounce what became known as the Doom of Mandos, exiling them from Aman and foretelling the strife and failure that would follow the Noldor in their fruitless quest for the Silmarils. The Noldor returned to Middle-earth, where they became known as the High-elves and established great kingdoms, especially in Nargothrond and Gondolin, and where they waged war against the dark power of Morgoth until they were overwhelmed by superior numbers, by treachery, and by their own infighting. Fëanor was killed by Balrogs after the first battle against Morgoth’s forces. Fingolfin, the next high king of the Noldor, was killed after the disastrous battle called Dagor Bragollach. His son Fingon followed him as high king, but he also was killed by Balrogs at the Nirnaeth Arnoediad (“Battle of Unnumbered Tears”). His brother Turgon succeeded him as high king of the Noldor. Ultimately, Turgon’s hidden realm of Gondolin was destroyed, along with the other Noldorin stronghold at Nargothrond. But it was Turgon’s grandson Eärendil—the child of the Noldorin princess Idril and the man Tuor—who ultimately made his way back to Valinor and convinced the Valar to send aid to defeat Morgoth and deliver the elves and men of Middle-earth. After the great battle that saw the end of Morgoth, the Valar relented and allowed the Noldor to return to Aman—all except the leaders of the rebellion, among whom by now the most prominent was Finarfin’s daughter, Galadriel. Most returned, but some chose to stay in Middle-earth. Most of these settled in Lindon under the new high king, Gil-galad, son of Fingon, or in Eregion, near the dwarvish kingdom of Moria. The Noldor in Eregion, under their leader Celebrimbor, developed the skills of their ancestor Fëanor, particularly in the working of metal—especially the precious mithril that the dwarves mined in Moria. Here, too, under the persuasion of Sauron, one of Morgoth’s lieutenants who had survived the destruction at the end of the First Age, the Noldor began to forge Rings of Power for men, dwarves, and elves. But Sauron created a ring, the One, with which he ruled all the others and established himself as the ruling power of Middle-earth. Once more, the Noldor went to war, led by Gil-galad in alliance with Elendil the

558  Northern heroic code Tall, king of the Dúnedain, the men of the West. This Last Alliance of elves and men finally defeated Sauron, although Elendil, Gil-galad, and a host of other Noldor were killed in the battle that brought the Second Age of Middle-earth to an end. In the Third Age, the Noldor who remained in Middle-earth stayed mainly with Círdan the Shipwright at the Grey Havens, with Elrond Halfelven in Rivendell, or with Galadriel in Lothlórien. Periodically, ships left the Grey Havens, each time taking another group of Noldor back to the Undying Lands as they grew weary of Middleearth. Those who remained generally took little interest in the political affairs of the time, though Elrond at least provided a safe haven in Rivendell for enemies of the Dark Lord when he rose again to power. Some of them played a part in the war against Sauron, but that war was chiefly fought by men. At the beginning of the Fourth Age, all the remaining Noldor, including Galadriel, boarded ships for the Undying Lands, leaving the world of Middle-earth to men. Northern heroic code  In his seminal essay “Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics,” Tolkien discusses the Old English poem as a significant expression of pagan Germanic warrior culture, central to which is what he calls “theory of courage, which is the great contribution of early Northern literature” (20). In a culture in which even the gods were doomed to die, everlasting life could only be achieved through the praise of the poets, who immortalized heroic deeds. All causes were ultimately lost causes, since death was the end of all. True courage was the will to fight on even when all hope was gone. The classic articulation of this warrior code is that of Beorhtwold in the Old English poem The Battle of Maldon. In Tolkien’s radio play “The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth Beorhthelm’s Son,” inspired by that Old English text, the words are translated thus: “Will shall be the sterner, heart the bolder, spirit the greater, as our strength lessens.”   (Tolkien, “Homecoming” 5)

This conviction that lasting glory can come only through hopeless struggle is also characteristic of

the Old Norse sources with which Tolkien was most familiar: the poems of the Elder Edda that he translated and integrated in the recently published Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún, in which the Niflungs’s defiance of Atli’s tortures memorably embody the Germanic warrior code. At the end of his text, Tolkien asserts that, because of their courage, the story of these warriors will be told in order to inspire listeners and readers until the end of days. In Tolkien’s fiction, most notably in The Lord of the Rings, he imagines a pre-Christian society in which a version of the Germanic warrior code becomes a virtue. The last stand of the Rohirrim at Helm’s Deep, the desperate assault on the Black Gate of Mordor, and Frodo and Sam’s desperate struggle toward Mount Doom despite their almost certain knowledge that the task is impossible and that they cannot escape alive, all are expressions of this Northern heroic code. Tolkien’s characters respond to the apparent hopelessness of Sauron’s threat in one of three ways: The weaker characters despair, as Denethor does; the more devious, swayed by a desire for power, choose to become as evil as Sauron himself, as Saruman, does; but the truly virtuous characters—Gandalf, Aragorn, Frodo Sam, Faramir, Éowyn—are determined to fight on despite the likelihood of ultimate defeat. Tolkien presents this kind of courage as the proper reaction to the loss of hope. Númenor  (Elenna)  Númenor was the name of the great island kingdom of the Second Age, raised from the ocean by the Valar at the beginning of the Second Age as a reward for the Edain who had fought so valiantly in the wars against Morgoth that had ended the First Age. Its story is told chiefly in the Akallabêth, published in The Silmarillion. Númenor was located in the ocean west of Middle-earth and just east of Aman. It was also called Elenna (“starwards”), since the island was shaped like a five-pointed star. It had a tall mountain peak in its center called Meneltarma (“Pillar of the Heavens”), considered sacred to the god Ilúvatar, and from the top of which it was possible to see Tol Eressëa, the island of the elves that formed a part of the Undying Lands.

Onions, C. T   559 The Kingdom of Númenor was founded in the year 32 of the Second Age under Elros, the son of Eärendil and brother of Elrond. He reigned until 442 and established Númenor as a powerful kingdom. Under his successors, the Númenóreans became a great seafaring nation, but they were under the Ban of the Valar, which forbade them to touch the Undying Lands. This was to ensure that the Númenóreans experienced death, Ilúvatar’s gift to men, rather than the immortality of the elves. Thus, the Númenórean ships traveled east rather than west, and beginning in the year 600, under the king Tar-Aldarion, they began to travel back to Middle-earth. Over the next few centuries, the Númenóreans befriended some of the native men of Middle-earth, teaching them Númenórean arts and crafts. By 1200, they had built permanent settlements in Middle-earth, most notably Umbar and Pelargir. In the ensuing years, however, the power of Sauron grew great in Middle-earth, as he had forged the Rings of Power and now dominated all of Eriador. In 1700, with the elven stronghold of Lindon in jeopardy from the forces of Sauron, Tar-Minastir of Númenor sent a fleet of armed soldiers to Middle-earth, and with their help, Gil-galad, king of the elves, was able to defeat Sauron. But the lords of Númenor were becoming arrogant in their wealth and power, and they had begun to envy the elves their immortality and resent the doom of men, the death to which they were all subject. One manifestation of this discontent was a growing resentment against the Ban of the Valar and against the Eldar as well, as allies of the Valar. Another symptom of this frustration was a new desire to subject other peoples to their rule, to dominate lesser men with their power. Thus, they demanded tribute from the indigenous peoples of Middle-earth and created an empire ruled by tyranny. When Tar-Atanamir became king in 2251, the Númenóreans were divided between the king’s men, who spoke openly against the Valar and their ban and abandoned the language and customs of the Eldar, and the Faithful who, though a persecuted minority, remained loyal to the Valar and the Eldar and gathered together in the port city of Andúnië on Númenor’s west coast, although they

were ultimately forced to move to Rómenna on the east coast. In 3175, King Tar-Palantír attempted to return Númenor to its ancient faith in the Valar, but he was resisted by the powerful party of King’s Men and ultimately deposed by his nephew, ArPharazôn. Determined to make himself lord of all Arda, Ar-Pharazôn made war on Middle-earth in 3255, taking Sauron as prisoner to Númenor. Sauron soon became an adviser to the king, persuading Ar-Pharazôn to build a temple to Melkor; to offer human sacrifices to the Dark Lord; and to destroy the white tree, Nimloth, a scion of the White Tree of Tol Eressëa, burning it as a sacrifice to Melkor. Isildur, one of the faithful, was able to save a fruit of the tree, which he later replanted in Middle-earth. Sauron, capitalizing on the king’s fear of death, finally persuaded Ar-Pharazôn to build a mighty fleet and sail west to Valinor, breaking the Ban of the Valar and taking the Undying Lands for his own. In the year 3319, Al-Pharazon’s host landed on the shores of Aman and marched on the city of Valimar. The Valar asked Ilúvatar to intervene, and the island of Númenor was sunk beneath the ocean. Only Elendil the Tall, and the band of the faithful he led, escaped the ruin and sailed to Middle-earth, where they founded the Númenórean realms in exile, Gondor and Arnor. Onions, C. T.  (Charles Talbut Onions)  (1873– 1965)  C. T. Onions was a philologist and lexicographer who served as coeditor of the Oxford English Dictionary (OED). Born on September 10, 1873, in Birmingham, England, Onions was the son of a metalworker. He attended King Edward’s School, where he first became interested in language, and subsequently attended Mason College (which later became the University of Birmingham), where he obtained a B.A. in 1892 and an M.A. in 1895. He was then invited by James A. H. Murray, editor of what was then called the New English Dictionary on Historical Principles, to join the staff in Oxford. During those first decades at the dictionary, Onions married Angela Blythman in 1907, eventually having 10 children with her. Also, working independently, he published a

560  Oratory v­ aluable Shakespeare Glossary in 1911. By 1914, Unions was coeditor and working independently on the dictionary with his own assistants, but when World War I broke out, he entered the military. His knowledge of German made him an ideal candidate for naval intelligence. Onions returned to the OED after the war and remained as coeditor until 1933. He first met Tolkien when Tolkien came to work for the OED in 1919. In 1922, Onions also became chief editor of the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary. He was largely responsible for the final publication of the OED in 1928, after which he was given honorary degrees from Oxford, from his alma mater in Birmingham, and from the University of Leeds (see Leeds, University of). With his colleague W. A. Craigie, he edited the first supplement to the OED, which appeared in 1933. In the meantime, he founded the scholarly journal Medium Ævum in 1932 and served as its editor until 1956. In 1934, in recognition of his work with the OED, Onions was made Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE). While he was working on the dictionary, Onions was also on the faculty of the Oxford English School, as a lecturer from 1920 to 1927 and as a reader in English Phonology from 1927 to 1949. In 1923, he became a fellow of Magdalen College. As a member of the group that elected the new Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor, he was partly responsible for Tolkien’s election to that chair in 1925. Onions was subsequently a colleague of Tolkien’s on the English Faculty Board and became a regular member of the Coalbiters, the club Tolkien organized for regular readings of Old Norse sagas and poems. Onions was also appointed honorary director of the Early English Text Society in 1945, devoting a good deal of effort to extending that society’s scope of publications. But most of his efforts over the last decades of his life were devoted to the compilation of The Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, which was completed just prior to his death on January 8, 1965, at the age of 91. In a letter to his son Michael after Onions’s death, Tolkien called him “My dear old protector, backer, and friend,” and said he was “the last of the people who were ‘English’ at Oxford and at large when I entered the profession” (353).

Further Reading Tolkien, J. R. R. The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien. Edited by Humphrey Carpenter. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1981.

Oratory  The Birmingham Oratory was founded in 1848 by John Henry Cardinal Newman. Newman had become interested in the idea of an oratory as formed by Saint Philip Neri in the 16th century. Philip’s oratory began as an informal place where he and his followers would meet to pray, listen to sermons, read saints’ lives, and discuss theology. Soon it became something more formal: a place for priests to live together in community (like monks or friars) but without taking vows like the regular clergy. This was the intent of Newman’s Oratory. The original Birmingham Oratory was founded outside the city in Maryvale, but it soon moved closer to Alcester Street in the center of town, and then in 1852 to Hagley Road. Mabel Tolkien, J. R. R. Tolkien’s mother, found a spiritual home in the church of the Oratory after she converted to Roman Catholicism in 1900, finding a particularly good friend and adviser in the Oratory priest Father Francis Morgan. Father Morgan was able to find her a place to recuperate from her first hospitalization at Rednal, a retreat for Oratory clergy, and it was he whom Mabel made guardian of her two sons upon her death from diabetes in 1904. With Father Morgan as their guardian, Ronald and his brother, Hilary Tolkien, spent as much time as they could at the Oratory, helping with the Mass and looking through his library. For a year, the Tolkien brothers attended St. Philip’s School, which was run by another Oratory priest, but they soon returned to King Edward’s School, which was the best school in Birmingham. Father Vincent Reade, another Oratory priest, was also a longtime friend of Tolkien, who explored Cornwall with Father Reade in 1914 and corresponded with him about life in the military. Since Tolkien’s time, the Oratory priests have continued to work in education, serving as chaplains in schools as well as prisons and hospitals, while maintaining their community life of prayer and providing Birmingham and the surrounding

orcs   561 area with a satisfying traditional liturgy and music. At the same time, they have promoted the legacy of their founder, Cardinal Newman. Recently, Pope Benedict XVI visited Birmingham, where on Sunday, September 9, 2010, he made a private visit to the Oratory and in Birmingham’s Cofton Park celebrated Mass with the beatification of John Henry Newman, placing the former English cardinal on the official path toward sainthood. Unfortunately, the papal visit occurred amid controversy: In May 2010, it was reported that Father Paul Chavasse, provost of the Oratory, had stepped down from his position over allegations of a “close but chaste” relationship with a young man. Subsequently, three other Oratory clergy (Father Philip Cleevely, Father Dermot Fenlon, and Brother Lewis Berry) had been removed from positions at the Oratory and required to “spend time in prayer” at three separate abbeys. The reasons for their removal before the papal visit was not made public, but the situation did put Newman’s beatification under a cloud. orcs  In Tolkien’s Middle-earth, the orcs are an evil race of creatures consistently aligned with evil, devoted either to Morgoth in the First Age or Sauron or Saruman in later ages. Since no single orc in all of Tolkien’s legendarium is represented as benevolent, virtuous, or even repentant, the orcs appear to be a race of irredeemable evil. They were effectively the foot soldiers of the armies of Morgoth or Sauron, and they tended to be slaughtered wholesale in many of the battles of Middle-earth, without being greatly mourned by the narrator, by any of the free peoples, or even by their own comrades. Tolkien describes orcs as squat, bow-legged, and dark, with squinting eyes, long arms, and sharp teeth. They generally lived underground, being at home in the dark and weakened by the sun. Skilled at making weapons, they were fierce fighters, preferring above all things to kill and destroy, and they consumed raw flesh, including that of men or of their fellow orcs. Orcs were first bred by the renegade Vala Melkor, later known as Morgoth, and they first appeared in Beleriand in the First Age, after the

awakening of the elves. Significant numbers of orcs appeared in the first battles of the Wars of Beleriand between Morgoth and the Noldor. When Morgoth was destroyed by the Valar at the end of the First Age, the orcs that survived lived mainly in the Misty Mountains, where they grew to great numbers. They fought in Sauron’s host in the Second Age, and by the Third Age they could be found in Mordor, Mirkwood, the Misty Mountains, and all other dark places under the sway of Sauron. There were numerous tribes of orcs, who hated one another as much as they hated other races. Most orc languages derived from the Black Speech, invented by Sauron in the Second Age as a debased form of Quenya, but the languages differed so much that when communicating between tribes, orcs used a form of Westron. In The Hobbit, Tolkien chose to call orcs “goblins,” and in truth his picture of them owes a great deal to the traditional representation of goblins, particularly in the novels of George Macdonald. The name orc, however, is used exclusively in The Lord of the Rings. As to his source for the name, Tolkien said it was “as far as I am concerned actually derived from Old English orc ‘demon’, but only because of its phonetic suitability” (Letters 177–178). Tolkien was aware of some difficulties in his depictions of the orcs. For one thing, their origin is unclear. In Tolkien’s view, Melkor, the evil Vala, could not have been able to create any form of living thing on his own. When Aulë the Smith created the dwarves, they were soulless automatons until the creator god Ilúvatar accepted them and gave them individual life. Elves and men were made in separate direct creations by Ilúvatar himself. Evil, in Tolkien’s view, could not create—it could only destroy or corrupt. Much has been made of Treebeard’s suggestion in The Two Towers that the Dark Lord made orcs in mockery of elves. But Tolkien was quick to assert that Treebeard was a character and did not necessarily speak for the author. He wrote in a 1954 letter: “I have represented .  .  . Orcs as pre-existing real beings on whom the Dark Lord has exerted the fullness of his power in remodeling and corrupting them, not making them” (195).

562  Orodruin As Tolkien describes it, the orcs were thus originally elves on whom Morgoth had worked some great perverting power (one might think of it as a genetic experiment), after which they became a separate race. But in his picture of the Arda, Tolkien has shown that it was created, like our own world, with the possibility of corruption. The corruption of elves is not therefore in itself a difficulty: In an unsent letter from about 1958, he wrote: “The Fall or corruption . . . of all things in it [i.e., Arda] and all inhabitants of it, was a possibility if not inevitable. Trees may ‘go bad’ as in the Old forest; Elves may turn into Orcs, and if this required the special perversive malice of Morgoth, still Elves themselves could do evil deeds” (Letters 286–287). The question arises, then, that if the orcs were corrupted forms of beings originally created by Ilúvatar, why do they seem to be irredeemable? After all, after the Battle of the Hornburg at Helm’s Deep, the Rohirrim make peace with the human Dunlendings, but no such effort is made with the orcs, who are annihilated. Tolkien considered these problems, and in a letter to W. H. Auden in 1965, he wrote “I cannot claim to be a sufficient theologian to say whether my notion of orcs is heretical or not.” He quotes Frodo from book 5 of The Lord of the Rings as saying “that the orcs are not evil in original. We believe that, I suppose, of all human kinds and sorts and breeds, though some appear, both as individuals and groups to be, by us at any rate, unredeemable” (355). This may be where we must leave the question of the irredeemability of the orcs: In some beings, corruption has gone so deep as to preclude that possibility, at least according to our human judgment. If there is any sliver of hope for orcs, Tolkien seems to imply, it is known and understood by Ilúvatar alone. Further Reading Tolkien, J. R. R. The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien. Edited by Humphrey Carpenter. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1981.

Orodruin  (Cracks of Doom, Mount Doom)  Orodruin, the greatest active volcano in Middleearth, lay at the center of Sauron’s land of shadows, Mordor. Its name is Sindarin for “Mountain of

Red Flame.” Orodruin rose some 4,500 feet above the plain of Gorgoroth and was certainly one of the chief reasons that Sauron chose Mordor to be his stronghold. When he built the tower of Baraddûr, he built a road directly from the tower to the mountain and cut great chambers in the volcanic cone to gain access to the mountain’s fiery core. These chambers were called the Sammath Naur, and it was through them that one could approach the Cracks of Doom. It was here, in about the year 1600 of the Second Age, that Sauron forged the One Ring, and it was here only that the ring could be unmade. Orodruin was something more than a natural volcano. Its activity seems to have been linked somehow to Sauron’s, so that the mountain was dormant while Sauron was in Númenor in the Second Age, but when the exiles who escaped the downfall of Númenor settled in Middle-earth, they knew by the smoke that arose from Orodruin that Sauron had also escaped. There was a great eruption when Sauron fell at the end of the Second Age, and the people of Gondor at that time gave the mountain the name of Mount Doom. Boromir made it clear at the Council of Elrond in The Fellowship of the Ring that Sauron was active again when he declared that smoke was rising again from Mount Doom. When Gollum fell into the Cracks of Doom with the One Ring in 3019 of the Third Age, Orodruin experienced a major eruption that destroyed nearly all of Mordor. Osgiliath  Osgiliath was the first capital of Gondor, founded by Elendil the Tall and his sons near the end of the Second Age of Middleearth. The city lay on both sides of the great river Anduin, about halfway between the tower fortresses of Minas Anor and Minas Ithil. The city’s name was Sindarin for “Citadel of the Stars,” and its most important building was the great Dome of the Stars on the banks of the river, which housed the chief palantír, the most significant of the four seeing-stones (see palantíri) placed in the southern kingdom. For a millennium and a half, Osgiliath remained the largest and most important city of Gondor. However, in the great civil war of the Third Age

Oxford English Dictionary   563 known as the Kinstrife, Osgiliath was sacked in the year 1437 by the forces of the rebel leader Castamir. The Dome of the Stars was razed to the ground, and the chief palantír was lost forever. The city’s fortunes continued to decline when, in 1636, it was struck by the Great Plague. Much of the population succumbed to the disease, and many fled the city in fear, refusing to return even after the plague had run its course. In 1640, the king moved his court to Minas Anor, and Osgiliath began to fall to ruin. When Minas Ithil fell to the Nazgûl in 2002, Osgiliath was completely vulnerable. In 2475 it was overrun by Uruk-hai, a new race of soldier orcs bred by Sauron, but they were soon driven out. During that battle, however, the great bridge that joined the eastern and western parts of the city was destroyed, and West Osgiliath became a permanently fortified bulwark against attacks from Mordor. In June 3018, Sauron launched an attack on the city, but it was repelled by Boromir. Later, in March 3019, the western part of the city fell to the forces of Mordor, led by the Nazgûl, defeating the badly outnumbered Rangers of Ithilien under Faramir. Although Osgiliath would have returned to the sovereignty of the realm of Gondor after the War of the Ring, there is no record of its ever being rebuilt in the Fourth Age. Oxford English Dictionary  The Oxford English Dictionary, or OED, is a historical dictionary of the English language. For each entry, it lists definitions of each sense of the word separately, illustrating each meaning with a chronological series of illustrative quotations showing the use of the term in this particular sense by writers over several historical periods, beginning with the earliest recorded use of the word in that sense. The OED is thus an invaluable tool for linguistic scholars and students of literature looking for the meaning of a particular word in a specific historical period. The idea for the dictionary came from an 1857 meeting of the Philological Society of London, at which members decided that current English dictionaries were insufficient and that what was needed was a dictionary that examined the lan-

guage thoroughly from the Old English period to the present day. At that time, the dictionary was projected to be four volumes, and it was intended to include all words present in early Middle English (from ca. 1150), and to include Old English forms of those words if they existed. Herbert Coleridge and F. J. Furnivall were the first two editors, though they had made little progress when, in 1879, the Philological Society came to an agreement with the Oxford University Press and James A. H. Murray became the new editor of the work. Murray and his colleagues projected that the work on the dictionary would take 10 years to complete, but when, five years later in 1884, they had completed only the first part of the work, A–Ant, they revised their schedule. The work continued for another 44 years, with Murray being succeeded as editor in 1915 by Henry Bradley and then, shortly afterward, by coeditors W. A. Craigie and C. T. Onions. Finally, in 1928, the dictionary was completed and published as A New English Dictionary on Historical Principles, though later it came to be referred to exclusively as the Oxford English Dictionary. It has since been updated by periodic supplements, and currently it is available in new electronic forms, including an online version that is updated every three months. J. R. R. Tolkien went to work for the OED at the beginning of the year 1919, having just left the service after World War I. He had been promised a job on the staff by Craigie, his former tutor, although ultimately he worked directly for Henry Bradley. Tolkien worked for the dictionary for about 18 months in the OED offices, which were in the Old Ashmolean building on Broad Street in Oxford. Most of his job involved drafting the dictionary entries, beginning with spelling, pronunciation, and etymology, then composing the definitions and choosing and arranging the illustrative quotations. These would then be submitted to Bradley for final editing. Tolkien was chiefly responsible for the sections W–Wash, Wash–Wavy, Wavy–Wezzon, Whisking–Wilfulness, and Wise– Wyzen, all published between October 1921 and April 1928. Tolkien greatly enjoyed his work at the OED and was praised by Bradley for his knowledge of

564   palantíri Old English and his grasp of comparative philology. While working on the OED, Tolkien supplemented his salary by tutoring Oxford students, and eventually he was making enough at tutoring to resign his position at the dictionary. Shortly thereafter, he accepted a teaching position at the University of Leeds (see Leeds, University of), but he felt his time at the dictionary was extremely valuable. Humphrey Carpenter quotes Tolkien as declaring, “I learned more in those two years than in any other equal period in my life” (101). Further Reading Carpenter, Humphrey. Tolkien: A Biography. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1977. Gilliver, Peter. “At the Wordface: J. R. R. Tolkien’s Work on the Oxford English Dictionary.” In Proceedings of the Tolkien Centenary Conference 1992, edited by Patricia Reynolds and Glen GoodKnight, 173–186. Altadena, Calif.: Mythopoeic Press, 1995. Gilliver, Peter, Jeremy Marshall, and Edmund Weiner. The Ring of Words: Tolkien and the Oxford English Dictionary. New York: Oxford University Press, 2006.

palantíri  (seeing-stones)  The palantíri (singular palantír) were crystal stones (sometimes called “seeing-stones”) that could reveal things that were far away to those who gazed into them—particularly things that were close to another stone. Thus, two stones could be used to communicate over vast distances. The palantíri were created in Eldamar by Noldor craftsmen—some say by Fëanor himself—before the years of the sun began. The master stone was kept in Avallónë, the great elvish city on Tol Eressëa in the Undying Lands. But the Eldar of Tol Eressëa gave seven palantíri to Amandil, leader of the faithful men of Númenor, and when that island was sunk beneath the sea by the Valar, Amandil’s son Elendil the Tall brought the palantíri with him into Middle-earth. In Middle-earth, Elendil placed the palantíri in strategic places throughout Gondor and Arnor. The chief palantír, capable of viewing all the others at once, was in Osgiliath, capital of Gondor. Other palantíri were placed in Minas Ithil;

Minas Anor; the tower of Orthanc in Isengard; Annúminas (capital of Arnor); the hill of Weathertop in Arnor (then called Amon Sûl); and Elostirion, the tallest of the White Towers in the Tower Hills of extreme western Eriador, looking out to the sea. From the palantír at Elostirion, Elendil could look upon Eldamar and even Valinor itself. This last palantír was taken back by the Eldar of Middle-earth after Elendil’s death and was brought back to Eldamar when the white ship of the Ring-bearers sailed from the Grey Havens at the end of the Third Age. The palantíri of Weathertop and Annúminas were kept from the forces of the Witch-King of Angmar when he destroyed the northern kingdom until Fornost was conquered and Arvedui, last king of Arthedain, was sunk in a shipwreck, apparently taking the palantíri with him. The palantír of Osgiliath was lost during the civil war known as the Kinstrife in 1437 of the Third Age. But the palantír of Minas Ithil was captured by the enemy when the Nazgûl conquered that fortress in 2002, and it came into Sauron’s possession, which made the use of any other palantír in Middle-earth very dangerous. That stone was presumably destroyed when Sauron fell at the end of the Third Age. However, during the War of the Ring, Gondor’s ruling steward, Denethor II, looked into the palantír that had remained the property of Minas Anor (now Minas Tirith), and through Sauron’s manipulations, he lost his will. He burned to death with the palantír in his hands. The palantír of Orthanc became Saruman’s when he was given possession of Isengard in 2759, and he, too, was corrupted by Sauron through his use of the seeing-stone. That last stone, however, came into the hands of Aragorn, Isildur’s heir and therefore the rightful owner of the palantír. With it, Aragorn was able to see the approach of the Corsairs coming to attack Minas Tirith from the south before the Battle of the Pelennor Fields. He continued to use this palantír to help him rule his kingdoms in the Fourth Age. Pearl  Pearl is an important Middle English poem in the West Midland dialect, preserved in a single 14th-century manuscript known as Cotton Nero

Poetic Edda   565 A.x, which also includes Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and two other poems, all probably by the same poet. Tolkien was quite familiar with the manuscript, which is housed in the British Library, and, of course, made significant use of it when he composed his famous edition of Sir Gawain with E. V. Gordon in 1925. Tolkien and Gordon also planned to produce a similar teaching edition of Pearl, but with Gordon’s unexpected death in 1938, Tolkien gave up on that project. Tolkien also would have been interested in the dialect of Pearl, since much of his scholarly attentions were given to what he called the “AB language” used in other West Midland texts, which he saw as a direct development from the literary language of Old English. On a personal level, he also was interested in West Midland as the dialogue of his mother’s ancestors, who had come from this part of England. The poem is a dream vision in which the narrator laments the loss of his Pearl, which the reader gradually realizes is the speaker’s two-year-old daughter, who has died. In the poem the speaker sees her on the other side of a river, where she is a grown woman. He realizes that she is in paradise, and that she is a Bride of Christ, one of the 144,000 virgins in the train of Mary, the queen of heaven. Although the speaker expresses his doubts as to the suitability of her position in paradise, since she had been too young to perform any virtuous works, the Pearl tells him that her baptism was sufficient for her to attain the grace of heaven. The poem is remarkable particularly for its complex form. It consists of 101 12-line stanzas rhyming ababababbcbc. The four-stress lines also utilize alliteration. Stanzas are arranged in groups of five, and within each group, the c-rhymes are identical and the stanzas are linked by repeated words in the first lines of stanzas within each group. Tolkien admired this complex metrical pattern a great deal, and in 1927 he wrote the poem “The Nameless Land,” in which he imitated the verse form of Pearl. The poem is concerned with the voyage of Saint Brendan to a deathless land in the west (essentially identified with the Elvenhome in Tolkien’s developing legendarium). Pearl consists of five stanzas of 12 tetrameter lines each, and it also incorpo-

rates alliteration. There are similarities between Tolkien’s description of the “Nameless Land,” with its silver leaves, dazzling light, wooded glades, and crystal cliffs, and the description of paradise in Pearl (Shippey 286; Ekman 51). In a typescript of the poem made in 1924, Tolkien noted that he was inspired to write it while rereading Pearl. It is probable, however, that at the time he composed “The Nameless Land,” Tolkien was in the midst of making his own verse translation of Pearl into modern English, a translation in which he succeeded in rendering the complex metrical pattern for all 101 stanzas of the poem. Humphrey Carpenter, noting that the translation was begun at Leeds, dates it to the early 1920s and asserts that it was complete by 1926. Tolkien apparently laid it aside until the 1940s, when Blackwell agreed to publish it. According to Carpenter, the text had already been typeset, but Tolkien never got around to writing the introduction to the poem, and the project was ultimately abandoned (141). The translation was published posthumously in 1975, however, along with Tolkien’s translations of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and Sir Orfeo, with an introduction pieced together from his notes and previous commentary by the author’s son and literary executor, Christopher Tolkien. Further Reading Carpenter, Humphrey. Tolkien: A Biography. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1977. Ekman, Stefan. “Echoes of Pearl in Arda’s Landscape.” Tolkien Studies 6 (2009): 59–70. Shippey, Tom. The Road to Middle-Earth: How J. R. R. Tolkien Created a New Mythology. Rev. ed. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2003. Tolkien, J. R. R. “The Nameless Land.” In Realities: An Anthology of Verse, edited by G. S. Tancred, 24–25. London: Gay and Hancock, Ltd., 1927. Tolkien, J. R. R., trans. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Pearl, and Sir Orfeo. New York: Ballantine Books, 1975.

Pelennor Fields, Battle of the  See Battle the Pelennor Fields. Poetic Edda  See Elder Edda.

of

566   Prose Edda Prose Edda  (Snorra Edda)  The Prose Edda, sometimes called Snorra Edda, was composed by Snorri Sturluson, the famous Icelandic man of letters, in about 1225. The text is intended to be a kind of handbook to instruct young poets in the complex art of the Skaldic court poetry then in fashion. The Prose Edda is divided into four parts: a prologue; an outline of Norse mythology called Gylfaginning; a poetic handbook entitled Skáldskaparmál; and, finally, a sample poem (Háttatal) with commentary. The Gylfaginning is particularly valuable since it provides the only complete synopsis of Norse mythology written in the Middle Ages. The Skáldskaparmál, the longest section of the text, spends a great deal of space describing the poetic device of the kenning, the truncated metaphor that was common in Germanic poetry, but that could become highly complex and allusive in Skaldic poetry. The prologue was probably written after the rest of the text and downplays the paganism of the legends, explaining that the only true religion is Christianity. Tolkien was quite familiar with Snorri’s Prose Edda, and its influence can be seen in some of the details of his fiction. The three trolls of The Hobbit are conventional monsters in Norse mythology and may owe something to Thor’s battles with trolls in Snorri’s Edda (Green 51). Gandalf’s fight with the Balrog on the bridge of Khazad-dûm recalls Freyr’s battle with the fire giant on Bifrost during the final battle of Ragnarök in Snorri’s account of mythology (Burns 58–59). Further, Snorri distinguishes three kinds of elves: light-elves, dark-elves, and swart-elves. This variety in description may have influenced the various types of elves in Tolkien’s legendarium (Shippey 228). Tolkien’s most direct use of the Prose Edda, however, is as a source for The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún, his retelling of the Sigurd and Gudrún legend written sometime between 1925 and 1939, but published in 2009 by Christopher Tolkien. The main source for Tolkien’s story was the Elder Edda (or, as it is more commonly called, the Poetic Edda). The single manuscript of the Poetic Edda, the Codex Regius, is missing several leaves at a crucial point of the Sigurd story. Tolkien was therefore compelled to supplement the Poetic Edda’s version

by the account in Snorri’s Edda and the account in another important Old Norse source, the Völsunga Saga. Unfortunately, these two accounts do not agree, so Tolkien chose what seemed to him the most logically consistent aspects of the story from either of the two supplementary sources. Further Reading Burns, Marjorie. Perilous Realms: Celtic and Norse in Tolkien’s Middle-earth. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2005. Green, William H. The Hobbit: A Journey into Maturity. New York: Twayne, 1995. Shippey, Tom. J. R. R. Tolkien: Author of the Century. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2000. Tolkien, J. R. R. The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún. Edited by Christopher Tolkien. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2009.

Quenya  In Appendix F of The Return of the King, Tolkien describes Quenya as the language of the Noldor, or High-elves, which they brought with them to Middle-earth from Eldamar across the sea. It was, he says, the first language to be recorded in writing, since the Tengwar alphabet had been invented by the Noldor for that purpose. By the Third Age of Middle-earth—the time period described in The Lord of the Rings—Quenya was no longer a native language for any of the Eldar. Instead, it had become the language of learning and ceremony, what Tolkien calls an “Elven-latin” (The Return of the King 406), and was replaced as an everyday language by Sindarin, the language of the Grey-elves. Quenya was probably the closest of all languages to the original language spoken by all of the Eldar when they first went over the sea and left the Sindar, the Grey-elves, in Middle-earth. Since Quenya was spoken by the Noldor in the Undying Lands of Eldamar, their language changed much more slowly than that of the Grey-elves, so that when the Noldor returned to Middle-earth, they could no longer understand the speech of the Sindar, nor could they make themselves understood. When Thingol, lord of the Sindar, banned the use of Quenya in his realm as the language of kinslayers, the Noldor learned Sindarin and spoke it in

radio adaptations   567 their everyday exchanges, and Quenya became a learned tongue, further halting any changes that might have occurred in the language if it were used every day. In Middle-earth, aside from being used for learning and ceremony, Quenya words were commonly used for the names of the Tengwar letters, names for divisions of the calendar, and royal names such as that of King Elessar (the Quenya word for “elf stone”). Still, Quenya had undergone some phonological changes over the centuries. As spoken in Middleearth, Quenya differed from the original Eldarin in that the combinations mb and nd changed to m and n before stressed syllables. The Eldarin th sound was changed to s in Quenya, although it was maintained in Sindarin, while the Eldarin z had changed to r (a process known as rhotacism, which had historically occurred in Germanic languages and from these was borrowed by Tolkien for his imaginary language). Initial ch, w, ng, and ngm sounds had developed in Quenya into h, v, n, and nw. Furthermore, the vocabulary of Quenya was enriched by borrowings from the language of the Valar in Aman. Unlike Sindarin, Quenya was a highly inflected language, with 10 cases of nouns. Grammars, dictionaries, and even courses in Quenya may be found online. One particularly thorough discussion of the language can be found at the Tolkien Gateway Web site. Tolkien first began to develop Quenya as a private, invented language in about 1912, and it was initially strongly influenced by Finnish, which he had been studying on his own since becoming acquainted with the ancient stories of the Kalevala. By 1917, the language had a sophisticated structure and a vocabulary of several hundred words, and about that time, Tolkien began to work on the related language of Sindarin. These languages were central to his work. As he explained in his lecture “A Secret Vice” (1931), the languages needed a context—a place and time and history in which they must have developed. In the lecture, he says that creating language and creating a mythology are mutually interdependent acts, for if the language is to really have a life of its own, it must “have woven into it the threads of an individual mythology” (210).

Further Reading Tolkien, J. R. R. The Return of the King. 2nd ed. London: G. Allen & Unwin, 1967. ———. “A Secret Vice.” In The Monsters and the Critics and Other Essays, edited by Christopher Tolkien, 198–223. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1984. Tolkien Gateway. “Languages.” Available online. URL: http://tolkiengateway.net/wiki/Languages. Accessed July 24, 2010.

radio adaptations  The first radio adaptation of Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy aired on the BBC shortly after the publication of The Return of the King, the final volume in the story. The Fellowship of the Ring was broadcast in six episodes in November and December 1955, and The Two Towers and The Return of the King were completed in six more episodes in 1956. No known recordings of the productions have survived, though the well-known British radio actor Norman Shelley (best known for playing Winnie the Pooh in BBC radio’s The Children’s Hour) is known to have played both Gandalf and Tom Bombadil. The programs were produced by the BBC’s Terence Tiller (a poet, playwright, and Cambridge don turned radio producer), who corresponded with Tolkien about the second series of broadcasts, with questions about the script. Tolkien was not at all happy with the productions. He commented in one letter that “I think the book quite unsuitable for ‘dramatization,’ and have not enjoyed the broadcasts” (Letters 228). He was quite upset that Goldberry was presented as Tom Bombadil’s daughter, and that the Willowman was said to be in the service of Mordor. In a letter to Tiller in response to the latter’s queries, Tolkien said generally that the story was not really suitable for dramatization, but that if an attempt to dramatize the story were to be made, “it needs more space, a lot of space,” although he did sympathize with Tiller, saying, “I feel you have had a very hard task” (Letters 255). In 1968, Michael Kilgarriff (a versatile British writer and actor who had appeared in television’s Dr. Who) adapted The Hobbit for broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in eight half-hour episodes. The plot followed that of Tolkien’s revised 1951 version of the novel fairly closely, although it used the voice of

568   Rankin/Bass Productions Bilbo himself as a secondary narrator of the story, occasionally interrupting the primary narrator or “tale-bearer.” The broadcast featured the voices of veteran actors Paul Daneman as Bilbo, Anthony Jackson as the Tale Bearer, John Justin as Thorin Oakenshield, and Francis de Wolff as Smaug. The production was well received, but the master tapes for the series were all erased sometime during the 1970s. Some years later, however, the BBC was able to recover the series from an FM recording made of the original broadcasts. These were reedited and released as audio CDs in 1997. In 1979, the U.S. Public Broadcasting System aired a radio production of The Lord of the Rings, the script adapted by Bernard Mayes, a former BBC journalist who had helped to organize public broadcasting in the United States, becoming the first working chairman of National Public Radio. Mayes voiced the parts of Gandalf and Tom Bombadil in the production and used mainly local stage actors for the other roles (James Arrington played Frodo, Tom Luce played Aragorn). He also cut out narration and presented the story mainly through dialogue. The total serial, produced by Mind’s Eye, ran to 11 hours and was relatively popular in the United States, though radio drama was an unusual medium at the time. However, the actors recorded their tracks separately rather than together, with a chance to respond to one another in dialogue, and the general consensus today is that this detracted from the quality of the production. Recordings of the production are readily available. Mayes later joined the English department at the University of Virginia and eventually created their program in media studies. Generally considered the best radio adaptation of a Tolkien text, the 1981 BBC 4 production of The Lord of the Rings aired in 26 half-hour episodes. The program also aired in the United States on National Public Radio, and in Australia. Veteran BBC director Jane Morgan and her young colleague Penny Leicester were chosen to direct the series. Stephen Oliver, perhaps Britain’s foremost composer of opera and incidental music for theater at the time, composed original music for the production, and a soundtrack was released in 1981. The entire series was rebroadcast in 13 hour-long epi-

sodes in 2002 (corresponding with the release of Peter Jackson’s film versions), and CDs were reissued that year as well. Like Jackson’s films, the script for the radio production (written by veteran radio writers Brian Sibley and Michael Bakewell), omits the Tom Bombadil scenes. It also adds Tolkien’s posthumously published poem “Bilbo’s Last Song” to the last episode. Most surprising, it includes a scene in which Wormtongue is accosted by the Nazgûl, an episode that does not appear in the published novel; it is only found in Unfinished Tales of Númenor and Middle-earth. The production featured Ian Holm as Frodo, who would appear 20 years later as Bilbo in Peter Jackson’s film versions of The Fellowship of the Ring and The Return of the King. The popular British actor Bill Nighy played Samwise Gamgee. Peter Woodthorpe, as Gollum, and Michael Graham Cox, as Boromir, voiced the same parts they had played in Ralph Bakshi’s animated version of the text in 1979. Further Reading Tolkien, J. R. R. The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien. Edited by Humphrey Carpenter. Tolkien. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1981.

Rankin/Bass Productions  Formerly known as Videocraft International, Rankin/Bass Productions was a producer of animated films for cinema and television and was responsible for the animated TV versions of The Hobbit (1977) and The Return of the King (1980). The company was founded by Arthur Rankin, Jr., and Jules Bass in the early 1960s. They became known particularly for stop-action animation, using doll-like models filmed in a technique known as Animagic. Rankin/Bass employed the Japanese animator Tadahito Mochinga for the Animagic effects. For more traditional cel animation, which they began in the 1970s, they used the Japanese studio Top Craft. Rankin and Bass rose to international fame with their TV production of the Animagic Christmas special Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, which aired on NBC in 1964 with the voice of Burl Ives as the narrator and music composed by Johnny Marks, who had originally made the song famous. Rudolph

Reade, Father Vincent   569 was one of the most successful holiday specials ever made for television. Rankin and Bass followed its success with a number of similar specials, including The Little Drummer Boy in 1968 (narrated by Greer Garson), Frosty the Snowman in 1969 (narrated by Jimmy Durante), and Santa Claus Is Comin’ to Town in 1970 (narrated by Fred Astaire). Rankin/ Bass continued to produce new specials nearly every year. In 1977, as a television special airing Thanksgiving weekend in the United States, Rankin and Bass produced their version of The Hobbit. The script, written by Romeo Muller (who had written most of their other successful productions, including Rudolph), condensed Tolkien’s story into a 78-minute narrative, forcing Muller to eliminate portions of the tale, most important the entire story of the Arkenstone and all its ramifications. Bass adapted some of Tolkien’s lyrics to music for the production and, with Maury Laws, composed the film’s theme song, “The Greatest Adventure (The Ballad of the Hobbit),” sung by folk singer Glenn Yarbrough. Concept art for the production was created in the United States, but the Japanese animators at Topcraft did the animation. The production included the voices of Orson Bean as Bilbo; Hans Conreid as Thorin; famed film directors John Huston and Otto Preminger as the voices of Gandalf and the Elvenking, respectively; Cyril Ritchard as Elrond; and Richard Boone as Smaug, the dragon. The script and animation style seem aimed particularly at children, and the film succeeded quite well with that audience. Rankin and Bass won a Peabody award for the production in 1978, and it is generally considered the best of the three animated versions of Tolkien’s novels. It is available on DVD through Warner Bros., which most recently released the film in that form in 2001. Probably the least effective of the three animated Tolkien films is Rankin and Bass’s followup to The Hobbit, the animated 1980 television production of The Return of the King. Using the same animation style that was used in The Hobbit seemed inappropriate for the more adult story of The Return of the King. Furthermore, omitting such important characters as Legolas, Gimli, and Saruman undercut the story badly. Rankin and Bass

had sold the story as filling the void left by United Artists’ failure to fund Ralph Bakshi’s sequel to his 1978 animated Lord of the Rings, but the script, written once again by Muller, picks up not where that film left off, but actually where Rankin/Bass’s own Hobbit film ends, providing a brief recap of the events of The Fellowship of the Ring and The Two Towers before launching into a much abridged version of Tolkien’s last volume. Some of the actors from The Hobbit returned to voice characters in The Return of the King. Orson Bean played Frodo as well as a much older Bilbo, whom he had played in the earlier production. John Huston returned as Gandalf, and Glenn Yarborough as the main musical vocalist. William Conrad played Denethor, Roddy McDowall was Sam, Theodore Bikel voiced Aragorn, and the future nationally known D. J. Casey Kasem played Pippin. But the vast array of vocal talent could not save the truncated tale from a poor critical reception. It is available from Warner Bros. on DVD in a boxed set with The Hobbit and Bakshi’s The Lord of the Rings. Rankin/Bass produced their last stop-action Christmas special, The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus, in 1985. They went on to produce more animated TV series, including Thundercats in 1985. After 1987, Rankin and Bass parted ways, though they came together in 1999 to help create an animated film version of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s The King and I, which was a critical and popular failure in the United States. More successful was their first animated Christmas special in 16 years, 2001’s Santa Baby, with Gregory Hines and Eartha Kitt. Reade, Father Vincent  (Father Francis Vincent Reade)  (1874–1958)  Father Francis Vincent Reade was attached to the Birmingham Oratory, the same institution as Tolkien’s guardian, Father Francis Morgan. Father Reade was called “Father Vincent” to avoid confusion with Father Morgan. Tolkien formed a friendship with him and, in summer 1914, went on a walking tour of Cornwall with him, staying with Father Vincent’s mother. Tolkien wrote a number of letters back to Edith Bratt about his explorations of the Lizard Peninsula there. He apparently made sketches of the Cornish

570   Red Book of Westmarch coast, which he considered one of the most beautiful landscapes he had seen. Father Vincent was small in stature. He had earned his degree in theology from Pembroke College, Cambridge University, in 1894, and an M.A. from Ely Theological College in 1903. Originally an Anglican priest, he converted to Catholicism in 1904, after which he entered the novitiate of the Birmingham Oratory in 1906 and became a Catholic priest in 1908. He taught at St. Philip’s Grammar School and was headmaster of that school from 1910 to 1937. He was supervisor of the Oratory from 1932 to 1947. Perhaps it was Father Vincent’s scholarly tendencies that drew Tolkien to him in the mid-1910s. At any rate, the two seem to have been fairly close, and Tolkien apparently wrote to Father Vincent about his disgruntled life in the army as he went off to war in 1916. Years later, when he received letters from his son Christopher Tolkien, complaining about life in his military camp, Tolkien wrote back on May 6, 1944, comparing Christopher to “a hobbit amongst the Urukhai,” and telling him, “We don’t mind your grousing at all—you have no one else, and I expect it relieves the strain. I used to write in just the same way or worse to poor old Fr. Vincent Reade” (78). Further Reading Tolkien, J. R. R. The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien. Edited by Humphrey Carpenter. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1981.

Red Book of Westmarch  The Red Book of Westmarch is a fictional book invented by Tolkien as the purported source for his tales of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. It is first mentioned in the foreword to the first edition of The Fellowship of the Ring, in which Tolkien claims to have translated the legends from their original Westron language into English. The book was a very large volume with red leather covers, and it was said to have been begun by Bilbo Baggins. Bilbo wrote the first section of the book at Bag End after his adventures with Thorin and company in the year 2941 of the Third Age, entitling it There and Back Again. Later, in Rivendell, he made a number of Transla-

tions from the Elvish that were eventually attached to the Red Book. These were elvish legends from the elder days, and they were probably (in Tolkien’s fiction) the source for The Silmarillion. Bilbo gave the Red Book to his kinsman Frodo when the latter returned to Rivendell after the War of the Ring. Frodo spent much of his later years organizing Bilbo’s texts and adding an account of his own adventures, which he called The Downfall of the Lord of the Rings and the Return of the King (as seen by the Little People; being the memoirs of Bilbo and Frodo of the Shire, supplemented by the accounts of their friends and the learning of the Wise. When Frodo passed over the sea to the Undying Lands, he bequeathed the Red Book to Samwise Gamgee. Sam completed Frodo’s story and ultimately gave the Red Book to his daughter Elanor, whose descendants, the Fairbairns, kept the book at their home in Westmarch. Over the years, the hobbits added some of their own poems concerning the Shire and its legends, poems which probably were the source for The Adventures of Tom Bombadil. Over the years, the original Red Book was lost. However, early in the Fourth Age, King Elessar (Aragorn) of Gondor asked that a copy be made of the Red Book for his own use. Peregrin Took (Pippin), then thain (nominal lord) of the Shire, ordered scribes to make a copy, and Pippin himself delivered the book to Aragorn when he retired to Gondor in the year 63 of the Fourth Age. This was hereafter known as the Thain’s Book. About a century later, a copy of the Thain’s Book was made by the royal scribe Findegil, and it was Findegil’s book that came into the hands of J. R. R. Tolkien, and was thus the source of Tolkien’s “translations.” It seems likely that the inspiration for the Red Book of Westmarch was the historical Red Book of Hergest, a 15th-century manuscript containing Welsh legend, history, and poetry, including the Mabinogion. This book was indeed bound in red leather; it was rebound in red Moroccan leather in the 19th century. It was the property of Oxford’s Bodleian Library, and hence well known to Tolkien. Return of the King, The  (animated film)  See Rankin/Bass.

Rhys-Davies, John   571 Reynolds, R. W.  (Richard William Reynolds)  (1867–1948)  R. W. Reynolds was one of Tolkien’s most influential teachers at King Edward’s School in Birmingham. There he taught English literature, classics, and history, and he served as chairman of the literary and debating societies as well as the Library Committee, all of which Tolkien was involved with. Reynolds had been a student at King Edwards himself and had obtained his B.A. from Balliol College, Oxford University, in 1890. He flirted with a career in law, but he was more interested in literature and journalism, and for a while he wrote literary criticism for the National Observer. From 1901 to 1922, he taught at King Edward’s School, before retiring with his wife, Dorothea, to the Isle of Capri (where he was to become acquainted with D. H. Lawrence). Reynolds corresponded with both Tolkien and his good friend G. B. Smith after the two left King Edward’s, mainly about their youthful poetry. He saw Tolkien’s “fairy” poems as his most original and advised him that it was better to publish individual poems in a number of journals before trying to publish a book. Since Tolkien was in France at the time on active duty during World War I, however, Reynolds told him to publish a book if the opportunity arose, acknowledging that it would probably be ignored. When Smith was killed in 1916, his mother came to Reynolds to ask for his help in publishing a volume of her son’s poems. Tolkien and Christopher Wiseman, in the belief that they understood Smith’s later poetry better than Reynolds did, took it upon themselves to edit the volume, though Reynolds, through his contacts in the industry, did find a publisher for the volume, Spring Harvest. Reynolds corresponded with Tolkien about the Book of Lost Tales in 1917, and when that was abandoned, Tolkien sent him drafts of the “Lay of Lethian,” the alliterative version of The Children of Húrin, and the prose “Sketch of the Mythology,” which he seems to have written specifically for Reynolds to provide a context for the poems. Reynolds was not effusive, finding the works too wordy, although Tolkien seems to have been encouraged to continue developing the “Sketch.”

In a 1964 letter to his old schoolmate Denis Tyndall, Tolkien recalled behaving rather badly in “Dickie” Reynolds’s class, and noted that Reynolds “made Greek and Roman history as boring as I suspect he felt them to be; but he was immensely interesting as a person” (343). He also recalled Reynolds driving him up to Oxford in 1911 in an automobile—a “novelty” at the time (343). Further Reading Tolkien, J. R. R. The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien. Edited by Humphrey Carpenter. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1981.

Rhys-Davies, John  (1944–  )  John Rhys-Davies is an acclaimed British actor who rose to international fame in the 1980s in the role of Sallah in the blockbuster films Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989). He may be best known for his portrayal of Gimli the dwarf in Peter Jackson’s New Line Cinema film trilogy of The Lord of the Rings (for which he also voiced the role of Treebeard). Rhys-Davies was born on May 5, 1944, in Salisbury, England, to Welsh parents; his mother was a nurse and his father a Colonial service officer. Raised in Wales and in Tanzania, Rhys-Davies attended the Truro School in Cornwall, where he acted in Shakespeare at the age of 13. He then matriculated at the newly founded University of East Anglia, where he helped start the dramatic society and also acted in the Maddermarket Theatre in Norwich. Upon graduation, he taught briefly at a secondary school in Norwich, and he was married in 1966 to Suzanne A. D. Wilkinson. The following year, he was admitted to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts, from which he graduated in 1969. After his graduation, Rhys-Davies acted in a number of repertory companies and at the Royal Shakespeare Company. Throughout the 1970s, he appeared in occasional television programs, but he first won fame playing a praetorian officer in the 1976 BBC production of I Claudius, and followed this on American television as the Portuguese seaman Rodriguez in the miniseries Shogun (1980), a role for which he received an Emmy nomination.

572   riddles In 1981, Rhys-Davies appeared in Raiders of the Lost Ark, and he subsequently obtained leading roles in the films Victor/Victoria (1982), King Solomon’s Mines (1985), the James Bond film The Living Daylights (1987), Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989), and The Untouchables (1993), while still doing television work, notably War and Remembrance (1988) and Great Expectations (1989). He played Professor Maximillian Arturo in the television series Sliders from 1995 to 1997. From 2001 to 2003, Rhys-Davies played Gimli in The Lord of the Rings. He was the only one of the actors playing members of the Fellowship not to get a tattoo of the number 9 in Tengwar script, although his stunt double got the tattoo in his place. Rhys-Davies dealt with a good deal of discomfort during the filming of the trilogy, suffering from allergic reactions to the prosthetics used on his face for his role as the dwarf. Partly for those reasons, he has said that he would not be willing to take part in the projected films of The Hobbit that Peter Jackson has planned to produce. Rhys-Davies separated from his wife in the early 1980s. By then they had two sons, Ben and Tom. The two are not divorced, and Suzanne was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease in 1995. He remains close to her, though he has lived with the television personality Liza Manning since 2004 and has a daughter, Maia, with her. He has a house on the Isle of Man, but has most recently lived in Glenn Murray, north of the city of Huntly in New Zealand, where The Lord of the Rings was filmed. He is a collector of vintage automobiles, and his work most recently has been chiefly voicing animated features and computer games. He has also gained some notoriety as a spokesman for conservative political views, in particular condemning Muslim extremism as an attack on Western ideals of democracy. riddles A popular form of Old English poetry was the riddle. There are 95 short poems in traditional Old English alliterative verse preserved in the poetic manuscript called the Exeter Book. These riddles seem to have been part of a kind of “wisdom literature” common in Anglo-Saxon poetry that also includes the so-called Gnomic verses, which also appear in the Exeter manuscript. The riddles

were probably written for a learned audience at various times between the eighth and 10th centuries, and they deal with a wide variety of subjects, from the natural world to the monastic scriptorium. The challenge of these riddles derives from the description of an object that involves several elements, any one of which may more obviously suggest another answer, but which, when taken together can have only one solution. Latin riddle collections were popular in English monasteries in the eighth century, and there may be a connection between the Latin and English phenomena. A few of the riddles parallel some earlier Latin ones, but the vast majority seem to have been composed originally in Old English. Since the conventional Old English poetic device called the kenning was in essence a kind of riddle, in which the figurative term of a metaphor was stated and the reader was expected to supply the literal term himself (as in “day’s candle,” which referred to the sun), it is quite possible that the Old English riddles developed from this device. Some of the Exeter Book riddles are poems in the first person, so that the object to be identified is speaking for itself. Such poems end with a line like “What am I called?” Tolkien’s early poem “Oliphant,” which appears later in The Lord of the Rings, seems to owe something to this convention—for example: Grey as a mouse, Big as a house, Nose like a snake, I make the earth shake, (The Two Towers 254)

But Tolkien’s most extensive use of the riddle tradition is the famous riddle contest in The Hobbit—essentially a contest in which Bilbo’s life is at stake. Solving riddles is an intellectual process; Bilbo is far better with his wits than his strength, and the riddles asked by Gollum in particular are similar to those in Germanic tradition. The contest also prepares Bilbo somewhat for the later riddling conversation with the dragon Smaug. In The Annotated Hobbit, editor Douglas Anderson finds an analogue to Gollum’s riddle of the fish in the Saga of King Heidrek the Wise, and for Gollum’s riddle of time:

Road Goes Ever On: A Song Cycle, The   573 This thing all things devours: Birds, beasts, trees, flowers; Gnaws iron, bites   steel; Grinds hard stones to meal; Slays king, ruins town, And beats high mountain down. (124)

Anderson finds an analogue in the Old English “Second Dialogue of Solomon and Saturn” (127). Clearly Tolkien had Old English riddles in mind when composing this chapter. Tolkien’s fascination with the Old English riddles is most fully expressed in his publication called “Enigmata Saxonica Nuper Inventa Duo,” which in English means “Two Saxon Riddles Recently Discovered,” which he published in 1923 in the University of Leeds’s (see Leeds, University of) publication A Northern Venture. These are original compositions in Old English imitating the Anglo-Saxon riddle form. The riddles are reprinted in The Annotated Hobbit (124–125), with a translation of the second. With lines like “The longer she bides, the less she thrives” (125), the second riddle’s solution is a candle. Further Reading Tolkien, J. R. R. The Annotated Hobbit: Revised and Expanded Edition. Edited by Douglas A. Anderson. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2002. Tolkien, J. R. R. The Two Towers. 2nd ed. London: G. Allen & Unwin, 1967.

Rivendell  (Imladris)  Rivendell was an elven refuge called Imladris in the Sindarin language of the elves and sometimes called the Last Homely House in the Common Speech. It was located in northern Eriador, just east of the River Bruinen and west of the Misty Mountains. Elrond had founded the haven of Rivendell in a steep valley in the year 1697 of the Second Age, having fled there with a small host of Eldar after Sauron’s destruction of Eregion. It became the chief center of Eldar culture in Middle-earth, where the lore and music of the High-elves were studied, practiced, and celebrated. In its Hall of Fire, where a fire was kept burning in the hearth year-round, the elves gathered for storytelling and singing on high feast days. Important elves residing in Riven-

dell included Elrond’s sons Elladan and Elrohir, his daughter Arwen, the lord Glorfindel, and Elrond’s close adviser Erestor. Rivendell remained a refuge protected from Sauron throughout the Third Age. It was protected by the virtue of Elrond’s Ring of Power, Vilya. When Isildur and most of his sons were slain by orcs at the beginning of the Third Age, Elrond protected Isildur’s youngest son, Valandil, and subsequently fostered all of the chieftains of the Dúnedain through the years, including Aragorn, who was to restore the line of Isildur in both Gondor and Arnor. It was Rivendell that protected the Ringbearer Frodo from the Nazgúl, it was in Rivendell that the Council of Elrond took place that reached the momentous decision to destroy the One Ring, and it was from Rivendell that the Fellowship of the Ring set forth. At the conclusion of the War of the Ring and the beginning of the Fourth Age, the Age of Men, Elrond and many of the elves of Rivendell took ship from the Grey Havens to return to the Elvenhome in the Uttermost West. Elladan and Elrohir remained behind at that time and were later joined by Celeborn, but the power of Rivendell seems to have faded during the Fourth Age. Road Goes Ever On: A Song Cycle, The  The Road Goes Ever On is a collection of poems from Tolkien’s works, mainly The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, set to music by the popular composer Donald Swann. Accompanied by an appendix by Tolkien, the song cycle was published by Houghton Mifflin in 1967 and in England by Allen & Unwin the following year. Swann (1923–1994) was best known as the partner of Michael Flanders, with whom he composed comic songs and appeared in two-man reviews between 1948 and 1967. He had studied modern languages at Christ Church, Oxford University, in the early 1940s, leaving to serve in an ambulance unit as a conscientious objector during World War II. He returned to Oxford after the war to study Russian and Modern Greek. During his years with Flanders, he began composing music for a number of operettas and full-length operas, including an operatic version of C. S. Lewis’s Perelandra. He

574   Rohan was also taken with the poems in the works of Lewis’s fellow Inkling, J. R. R. Tolkien, and in 1965, he composed music for some of the poems in The Lord of the Rings. In March that year, he wrote to Allen & Unwin, suggesting that they publish the collection. Tolkien heard some of Swann’s compositions and approved of them. Prior to publication, Swann gained permission to perform the songs in public. In March 1966, at a special reception at Merton College in honor of Ronald and Edith Bratt Tolkien’s golden wedding anniversary, Swann performed his song cycle, playing the piano to accompany the singer William Elvin—“A name of good omen!” Tolkien is said to have exclaimed (Carpenter 245). Joy Hill at Allen & Unwin helped promote Swann’s project and arranged for a recording of the songs to be released by Caedmon records in the United States. Houghton Mifflin published the musical settings in the form of a booklet in 1967, the first printing including seven songs: “The Road Goes Ever On” (from the final chapter of The Hobbit), “Upon the Hearth the Fire Is Red” (from The Fellowship of the Ring), “In the Willow-meads of Tasarinan” (a song of Treebeard’s), “In Western Lands” (Sam’s song in the orcs’ tower), “I Sit Beside the Fire” (Bilbo’s song in Rivendell, which includes the elven text of A Elbereth Gilthoniel), “Namárië” (Galadriel’s farewell song from The Fellowship of the Ring—composed in the form of a Gregorian chant at Tolkien’s suggestion), and the early poem “Errantry” (published in The Adventures of Tom Bombadil). Tolkien’s appendix provided a linguistic discussion of the two elvish compositions in the text (“A Elbereth Gilthoniel” and “Namárië”). A second edition of the book, published in 1978, included an eighth song, the musical setting for “Bilbo’s Last Song,” the text of which Joy Hill had given Swann at Tolkien’s funeral in 1973. Years later, Swann wrote a setting for Beren’s “Song of Parting” upon leaving Lúthien in chapter 19 of The Silmarillion, the music for which was published privately in 1992. A third edition of the cycle was printed in Germany in 1993, the year before Swann’s death, and finally in London in 2002. Swann’s settings have met varied critical and popular receptions. Some have considered the

settings old-fashioned, since they are inspired by traditional English folk music, but then, Tolkien’s verse is quite traditional. Tolkien himself was very pleased with the music and thought highly of Swann himself. Further Reading Carpenter, Humphrey. Tolkien: A Biography. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1977. Tolkien, J. R. R., and Donald Swann. The Road Goes Ever On: A Song Cycle. 3rd edition. London: HarperCollins, 2002.

Rohan  Rohan was the land directly to the north of Gondor, across the Ered Nimrais (the White Horn Mountains), bordered on the east by the Anduin River and in the north by Fangorn Forest. Originally a province of Gondor called Calenardhon, Rohan was ceded to the men of Éothéod in the year 2510 of the Third Age in gratitude for their assistance in the Battle of the Fields of Celebrant. In that battle, the army of Cirion, ruling steward of Gondor, was surrounded by a host of invading Easterlings and orcs. Cirion sent a plea for aid to Lord Eorl the Young of Éothéod, whose land at that time was to the northeast, near the source of the Anduin River. Eorl led his cavalry into the battle, defeated the invaders, and earned Cirion’s gratitude and friendship. In exchange for the land of Calenardhon, the men of Éothéod swore the Oath of Eorl, affirming that they would come to the aid of Gondor at need. In Gondor, Calenardhon became known as Rohan, and the men of Éothéod became the Rohirrim. The Rohirrim themselves called their country the Riddermark, or simply the Mark, and they referred to themselves as Eorlings. The Rohirrim were famous for their horses, the most magnificent on Arda, which they bred on the great plains of their new country. They fortified their country by building up the strongholds of Dunharrow and Helm’s Deep. They built a capital at Edoras, where their kings feasted in the great hall of Meduseld. Throughout their history, the Rohirrim were harassed by Dunlendings, who invaded the country in 2758 and were finally driven out a year later.

sagas   575 an Old English alliterative verse pattern, as can be seen in the “Lament for the Rohirrim,” sung by Aragorn in The Two Towers as he, Gimli, and Legolas approach Edoras. That poem also echoes lines from the Old English lament The Wanderer.

Helmet and armor of Rohan, props from the set of Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings film trilogy

They were also troubled by marauding orcs from 2799 until 2864, when they were finally able to drive the orcs out. But with the rise of Saruman in 2960, Rohan was attacked repeatedly, until it was invaded by a great army of Dunlendings and orcs loyal to Saruman at the beginning of the War of the Ring. The Rohirrim lost two battles at the Fords of Isen, but they won a great victory at Helm’s Deep with the aid of Gandalf and the ents. Subsequently, they fulfilled the Oath of Eorl by riding to the Battle of the Pelennor Fields and helped save Minas Tirith from destruction by a huge army from Mordor, though it meant the death of their king, Théoden. Tolkien modeled his Rohirrim on the early Anglo-Saxons, whom they resemble in appearance (the Rohirrim are tall, blond, and fair) as well as their language (a number of their words use typical Anglo-Saxon sounds and spelling, notably the th- combination, and the eo- diphthong—as in the name Théoden). In addition, their songs follow

Rúmil  Rúmil was one of the Noldor living in Tirion, the chief city on the coast of Eldamar, the elven home in Valinor. A sage, scholar, and lore master, he was credited with developing the first writing system in Arda, which could be used for both inscriptions and handwriting on paper. His system was called Sarati, and each individual symbol was a sarat. It was developed especially for use with the High-elven language Quenya. Sometime later, Fëanor revised Rúmil’s system and called it the Tengwar. A skilled linguist, Rúmil made a study of the language of the Teleri when they arrived in Valinor, noting the changes that had occurred in the elven language from the time the Noldor had left Middle-earth. In Tolkien’s unpublished papers as recorded in the History of Middle-earth series edited by Christopher Tolkien, Rúmil is also depicted as having composed a number of the texts that were later translated from the elvish by Bilbo Baggins, some of which (the Ainulindalë and the Valaquenta) are included in the published Silmarillion. He is also the supposed author of the linguistic study “Lhammas,” published as a part of The Lost Road and Other Writings; the “Annals of Aman,” published in Morgoth’s Ring; and the cosmological essay “Ambarkanta,” published in The Shaping of Middle-earth. Rúmil was one of the Noldor who apparently did not follow Fëanor to Middle-earth and chose to remain in Eldamar with Finarfin. Beyond that, his fate is not known. sagas  The Old Norse sagas were medieval Iceland’s chief contribution to world literature. They were narratives written in a straightforward prose that ranged in length from brief tales to novellength stories. The earliest sagas from the 12th century were historical narratives of kings or bishops. The second category, the family sagas (such as Njal’s saga or Egil’s Saga) are the most critically

576   Salu, Mary admired category. Generally tragic stories, these are concerned with the lives of important Icelanders from the “saga age” of 900–1050, many of them the ancestors of 13th-century Icelanders for whom the narratives may have been written. Other types of sagas include the Sturlinga Saga, which focused on the more contemporary age of political and social turmoil known as the Sturling Age (1200–1264); and the legendary sagas, which dealt with Norse myths or legends, the most famous of which is the Völsunga Saga. These grew to dominate the genre by the 13th century, though they are generally considered inferior to the family sagas. In his capacity as an instructor in Old Norse language and literature, Tolkien was familiar with the entire range of sagas, and he used them with his students. It was also the goal of the Coalbiters, the group Tolkien formed at Oxford University, to read through and translate passages of the Old Icelandic sagas. Furthermore, the influence of the sagas can be seen in a number of places in Tolkien’s own fiction. Most obviously, he made extensive use of the Völsunga Saga in his modernized version of The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún. His book of The Children of Húrin is in many ways a modern version of the tragic family saga. More specifically, the character of Beorn in The Hobbit is the kind of shape-changer that is met in many of the sagas. The quality of luck that attaches itself to Bilbo himself is also a quality one finds in the sagas, in particular those concerning Lief the Lucky. In The Lord of the Rings, the character of Éowyn recalls the shield-maidens or women warriors who appear in some of the sagas. Thus, a knowledge of the Icelandic sagas adds a good deal to the appreciation of Tolkien’s fiction. Salu, Mary  (Mary Bertha Salu)  (1919–1994)  Mary Salu was a graduate student of Tolkien’s during World War II who remained a longtime family friend of the Tolkiens and ultimately edited a memorial volume of essays dedicated to her former tutor. Salu was born on August 30, 1919, the daughter of Hubert Francis and Mary Elizabeth (Burns) Salu. Her father was a confectioner, but Mary attended

the University of Newcastle upon Tyne, graduating with first-class honors, and then went on to Lady Margaret Hall at Oxford University for her B.Litt. degree. Tolkien became her tutor; in a letter to his son Christopher Tolkien in 1944, he remarked that he “tutored Miss Salu for an hour” on April 18 (Letters 73). Since Tolkien was concerned with his edition of the Ancrene Wisse at the time, Salu ended up working on that text as well. Her first major work after her B.Litt. was a translation into modern English of the Ancrene Wisse, published in 1955 with a preface by Tolkien. It was not unusual for Tolkien to befriend his graduate students. In particular, students with a Roman Catholic background, like Salu, would often become family friends of the Tolkiens, and Humphrey Carpenter lists her among friends who were frequent visitors to the Tolkiens’ home at Northmoor Road, where they lived through the 1940s and early 1950s (158). Although she returned to Northumberland and was associated for her entire academic life with the University of Newcastle on Tyne, Salu seems to have remained in touch with Tolkien. Carpenter, speaking of Tolkien after Edith’s death in 1971, writes: “He told his former pupil Mary Salu that there was a tradition of longevity among his ancestors, and that he believed he should live for many years more” (255). But that was not to be, and he died in September 1973. As a tribute to her former mentor, Salu teamed up with another of Tolkien’s past students, the Anglo-Saxonist Robert T. Farrell, to produce the volume J. R. R. Tolkien, Scholar and Storyteller: Essays in Memoriam, published by Cornell University Press in 1979. That same year, she edited the collection Essays on “Troilus and Criseyde,” published by D. S. Brewer in the Chaucer Studies series. Previously, she had collaborated with other Newcastle on Tyne English faculty on the study Attitudes to English Usage. An Enquiry by the University of Newcastle Upon Tyne, published in 1970 by the Oxford University Press. She died in 1994. Further Reading Carpenter, Humphrey. Tolkien: A Biography. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1977.

Sarehole   577 Salu, Mary B., trans. The Ancrene Wisse. With an introduction by Dom Gerard Sitwell, O.S.B., and a preface by J. R. R. Tolkien. London: Burns & Oates, 1955. Salu, Mary, and Robert T. Farrell, eds. J. R. R. Tolkien, Scholar and Storyteller: Essays In Memoriam. Ithaca, N.Y., and London: Cornell University Press, 1979. Tolkien, J. R. R. The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien. Edited by Humphrey Carpenter. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1981.

Sarehole  In 1896, the four-year-old J. R. R. Tolkien moved into a cottage at 5 Gracewell in the tiny hamlet of Sarehole near Birmingham with his brother, Hilary Tolkien, and his mother, Mabel Tolkien. The Tolkien family lived in Sarehole for

four years, until they moved to the Birmingham suburb of Moseley in 1900. In those formative early years, Tolkien spent much of his time in the green country around the village that very probably influenced his picture of the Shire in his later books, while Moseley Bog near the village could easily have been the original inspiration for the Old Forest of The Fellowship of the Ring. He implied as much in a 1956 letter, saying that he had been “brought up in an ‘almost rural’ village of Warwickshire,” and that “I take my models like anyone else—from such “life’ as I know” (Letters 235). Tolkien and his brother apparently liked to play at a nearby farm, where an old farmer chased them for stealing mushrooms (Tolkien nicknamed the

Sarehole Mill in Birmingham, England. As a child, Tolkien lived in a small cottage beside the mill.  (Photo used under a Creative Commons license)

578   Second Age farmer the “Black Ogre”) (Carpenter 21). The incident certainly influenced the chapter “A Shortcut to Mushrooms,” the fourth chapter in The Fellowship of the Ring, where it is related that Frodo had been caught many times in his youth stealing mushrooms from Farmer Maggot. Sarehole Mill, just 300 yards from Tolkien’s cottage, was the most interesting landmark in the village and the favorite playground for Tolkien and Hilary, for which the miller and his son shouted at the boys. The children were particularly afraid of the miller’s son, whom Tolkien nicknamed the “White Ogre.” The son probably became the model for the miller Ted Sandyman in The Lord of the Rings. On the River Cole, the mill (probably the original of Hobbiton’s great mill) was built in 1765 and was one of only two working water mills in the area. Standing where the original Biddle’s Mill was built in 1542, it was restored in 1969. Tolkien wrote this in a 1968 letter to Nicholas Thomas: “As for knowing Sarehole Mill, it dominated my childhood. I lived in a small cottage almost immediately beside it, and the old miller of my day and his son were characters of wonder and terror to a small child” (Letters 390). Tolkien revisited Sarehole with his family in 1933 and was sad to see that it had changed a great deal. Eventually it was incorporated into the city of Birmingham. The mill still stands as a museum, and Moseley Bog is a nature preserve. Further Reading Carpenter, Humphrey. Tolkien: A Biography. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1977. Tolkien, J. R. R. The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien. Edited by Humphrey Carpenter. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1981.

Second Age  The Second Age of Middle-earth is the age that immediately followed the War of Wrath, which defeated the power of Morgoth and destroyed Beleriand. It ended with the War of the Last Alliance of men and elves, which defeated Morgoth’s lieutenant, Sauron, in the year 3441. A detailed chronology of the Second Age appears in Appendix B of The Return of the King (363–365).

At the beginning of the Second Age, the elven kingdom of Lindon was founded under the king Gil-galad in what had been Ossiriand in the First Age and was now the only surviving portion of Beleriand. In the year 32, the Edain under their king Elros arrived in Númenor, the great island prepared for them near Valinor as a reward for their resistance to Morgoth in the First Age. The power of Númenor grew great over the years, and in the year 600, their ships began to bring some of the men back to explore Middle-earth. In the year 750, a group of the Noldor established a kingdom in Eregion, allying themselves with the dwarves of Moria. By about the year 1000, Sauron, who had been in hiding since the War of Wrath, began to build a stronghold in Mordor. Sauron began a policy in the year 1200 of trying to seduce the elves of Eregion, disguising his true identity and nature. He began to teach the elven smiths, helping them increase their skills. In about 1500, the smiths of Eregion began to forge the Rings of Power under Sauron’s instruction. The Three Rings of the Elves were forged in about 1590, and in 1600 Sauron forged the One Ring in Orodruin in Mordor. In Eregion, the elves realized they had been deceived and hid the Three Rings. In 1693, war began between Sauron and the elves. Eregion was destroyed in 1697, and in 1699 Sauron overran all of Eriador. But in 1701, a great host arrived from Númenor and crushed Sauron’s army. From about 1800 on, Númenóreans began to make permanent settlements in Middle-earth. But in 2251, Tar-Atanamir became king in Númenor. He began to question the Valar themselves, and to rebel against their laws and question the Númenórean alliance with the elves. At about the same time, the Nazgûl, slaves of the Nine Rings of Men, began to appear in Middle-earth, subject to Sauron and his One Ring of Power. Númenor was now divided between those who remained faithful to the Valar and those who defied them, which often included the Númenórean kings. In 2350, Pelargir, the haven of the faithful, was built in Númenor. There was civil war in Númenor in 3175 when the king Tar-Palantír tried to return Númenor to faith in the Valar. His nephew, ArPharazôn, seized power in 3255. He sailed to Mid-

Serkis, Andy   579 dle-earth in 3261 with a great host and defeated Sauron, taking him as prisoner back to Númenor. But Sauron was able to seduce the king and his counselors, playing on their distrust of the Valar. Following Sauron’s counsel, Ar-Pharazôn sailed to Valinor itself in 3319 to challenge the Valar. For his presumption, the Valar destroyed Númenor, drowning it in the sea. But a group of faithful, led by Elendil the Tall, escaped and sailed to Middleearth, where, in 3320, Elendil and his sons, Isildur and Anárion, founded Gondor and Arnor, the Númenórean Realms in Exile. At the same time, Sauron, now disembodied, returned to Mordor, from which he launched an attack on Gondor in 3429. The following year, Elendil and Gil-galad formed the Last Alliance, defeating Sauron in the Battle of Dagorlad in 3434. Sauron fled to his fortress of Barad-dûr, where he was besieged. In 3441, Sauron was finally defeated, although both Elendil and Gil-galad were killed in the final battle. Isildur took the One Ring from Sauron’s hand, and the Nazgûl were scattered. This marked the end of the Second Age. Further Reading Tolkien, J. R. R. The Return of the King. 2nd ed. London: G. Allen & Unwin, 1967.

seeing-stones  See palantiri. Serkis, Andy  (Andrew C. G. Serkis)  (1964–  )  Andy Serkis is best known for his portrayal of Gollum in the New Line Cinema Lord of the Rings trilogy, for which he was honored with a Saturn Award for best supporting actor for The Two Towers. He has also agreed to reprise the role in the upcoming film version of The Hobbit. Serkis was born in Ruislip Manor in West London on April 20, 1964. His mother, Lylie, was an English special education teacher working with handicapped children. His father, an ethnic Armenian named Clement Serkissian, was a gynecologist who had been born in Iraq and spent a good deal of time traveling and working in the Middle East. For the first 10 years of his life, Andy Serkis traveled back and forth between London and Baghdad with his brother and three sisters. He was

educated at St. Benedict’s Catholic School in London, where he developed an interest in drawing and painting. From there he attended Lancaster University, where he studied visual arts, worked at the college radio station, and became involved with stage design for student theater productions. When he was asked to play a role in the student production of Barrie Keefe’s Gotcha, his passion turned to acting. Serkis began his professional acting career in 1985 with the Duke’s Playhouse in Lancaster. He followed this by working with a number of touring companies, playing all around the United Kingdom. He began his association with the Royal Exchange in Manchester in 1989, appearing in a production of Macbeth. He returned to Manchester for She Stoops to Conquer and several other plays over the next few years, and through the 1990s, he began to make his mark in London, appearing as the Fool in King Lear and Potts in the play Mojo. At the same time, he became a popular television actor, appearing in several British miniseries and, later, on Mystery! as a grief counselor in its production of Touching Evil in 1999, and as Bill Sykes in the Masterpiece Theatre production of Oliver Twist in 2000. He made his first feature film appearance in the 1993 thriller Grushko and won acclaim for his role as a choreographer in Mike Leigh’s TopsyTurvey (2000). By this time, Serkis had married actress Lorraine Ashbourne, with whom he had a daughter, Ruby, in 1998, and a son, Sonny, in 2000. A second son, Louis George, was born in 2004. In 1999, Serkis was offered the role of Gollum in Peter Jackson’s film trilogy of Lord of the Rings, a project that took four years of his life, including two years of filming in New Zealand. But the role was to make him famous. Gollum was created through CGI technology that allowed cameras to pick up Serkis’s movements and translate them into a digitally animated character in the film. Serkis said that he created the voice of Gollum by imitating the sound of his three cats coughing up fur balls. After his work on The Lord of the Rings, Serkis returned to the London stage to perform in Sam Shepard’s play A Lie of the Mind in 2001. In 2005,

580   Shire, the he appeared again as a computer-generated figure, playing the giant ape in Peter Jackson’s remake of King Kong, for which he won a Toronto Film Critics Association Award as well as a Visual Effects Society Award for outstanding animated character in a live-action motion picture. In 2007, Serkis appeared as the serial killer Ian Brady in the television miniseries Longford, for which he was nominated for a Golden Globe award for best supporting actor. He has recently reunited with Peter Jackson and worked with Steven Spielberg as a cast member in a trilogy of films based on the French animated character Tintin. Serkis lives with his family in Crouch End in North London. He is an accomplished amateur painter and enjoys mountaineering. He is active in supporting the Hope Foundation, which provides medical care for children displaced by war and for children suffering from leukemia. Shire, the  The Shire was the home of the hoblocated in the northwestern part of Eriador, between the Brandywine River and the Far Downs. The Shire occupied an area of roughly 18,000 square miles, measuring about 120 miles from east to west and 150 miles from north to south. It was divided into four “farthings.” Hobbits also inhabited Breeland as well as Buckland to the west, but these were not originally part of the Shire. The Shire was a green and fertile land, in which grew grains, various fruits, and vegetables, as well as pipeweed, but it was decidedly a preindustrial society in the Third Age. It was essentially a pastoral land, but it was well populated with towns and villages. Its largest city was Michel Delving in the Westfarthing. By its name, its geography and climate, and its conservative attitudes, the Shire seems to be Tolkien’s imaginative recreation of an older, isolationist, pre-industrial England—perhaps the land of his boyhood in the countryside in Sarehole near Birmingham. The Shire was first settled by the brothers Marcho and Blanco, who brought a number of their kinsmen across the river from Bree. King Argeleb II of Arnor granted the land to the hobbits in exchange for their allegiance in 1601, and that became the year 1 in Shire Reckoning. Within 30 bits,

years, most of the hobbits in Eriador had moved to the Shire. When the kingdom of Arnor fell in 1974, the hobbits chose a thain to rule over the Shire. Originally this was a hereditary position in the clan of the Oldbucks. But when the Oldbucks moved across the Brandywine and established an independent realm of Buckland, changing their name to Brandybuck, the office of thain became hereditary within the Took clan. The thain was expected to call the Hobbitry-in-arms in times of emergency. However, for the most part the Shire was kept in peace, isolated from the turmoil in the rest of Middle-earth, unknowingly protected by Gandalf and the Dúnedain Rangers, who still patrolled Eriador. The only serious threat to the Shire occurred in 2747, when a troop of marauding orcs was turned back at the Battle of Greenfields by the famous Bullroarer Took. The Shire’s isolation ended in the War of the Ring, when the Nazgúl became aware of its existence and came searching for the One Ring in the possession of “Baggins.” Dominated and industrialized by Saruman, alias “Sharkey,” through Lotho Sackville-Baggins during the war, it had to be liberated by Frodo, Sam, Merry, and Pippin on their return from their adventures. In the Fourth Age, the Shire was once more part of the restored kingdom of Arnor and Gondor, and in the year 32 of the new age, King Elessar (Aragorn) made Buckland and the Westmarch (from the Far Downs to the Tower Hills) parts of the Shire, increasing its size and importance within the realm. Silmarils  The Silmarils (or silmarili in Quenya) were the greatest creations of the brilliant Noldor craftsman Fëanor. They were three great jewels in which Fëanor had succeeded in somehow capturing the light of the Two Trees of Valinor—the silver tree Telperion and the golden Laurelin, whose light brightened all of Arda. Varda (Elbereth) blessed the jewels, and laid on them the fate that they would severely burn any impure hand that touched them. When the evil Vala Melkor destroyed the Two Trees, the Valar pleaded with Fëanor to give them the Silmarils, since only through them could the light of the Two Trees be

Sindar   581 recovered, but Fëanor refused. In the meantime, Melkor penetrated Fëanor’s fortress in Formenos and stole the Silmarils (thereby permanently scarring his hands), murdering Fëanor’s father, Finwë, in the process. Melkor fled to Middle-earth and set the Silmarils in his iron crown in the fortress of Angband, while Fëanor vowed to track him down and recover the jewels. Fëanor made all of his sons swear a great oath to the creator god Ilúvatar and to the chief Valar, to the effect that the Everlasting Darkness should swallow them if they ever failed to pursue the Silmarils. This oath was to prove disastrous for the Noldor. Against the will of the Valar, they left Aman, first stealing the ships of the Teleri at Alqualondë and slaying some of their kinsmen there. The Noldor made war upon Melkor (now called Morgoth) in Middle-earth, and Fëanor was slain in the first battle; thus, the fulfillment of his oath fell to his seven sons. Despite their persistent war against Morgoth, the only Silmaril recovered during the First Age was won not by the Noldor but by Beren (one of the Edain) and Lúthien (daughter of the Sindarin king Thingol and the Maia Melian). As a brideprice for Lúthien, Beren cut the Silmaril out of Morgoth’s crown at Thingol’s urging, although the jewel was subsequently swallowed by the wolf Carcharoth, along with Beren’s hand. When the wolf was finally killed, the dying Beren delivered the jewel to Thingol. Thingol, himself overcome by the beauty of the jewel, refused to give it to the sons of Fëanor and hired the dwarves of Nogrod to mount the jewel in the necklace Nauglamir. Ultimately, the dwarves sacked Thingol’s palace of Menegroth, and later the sons of Fëanor attempted to recover the Silmaril by attacking Menegroth. There, Fëanor’s sons Celegorm, Caranthir, and Curufin were killed by Beren’s son Dior, who died himself. Dior’s daughter Elwing took the Silmaril to Arvernien, where she married Eärendil the Mariner. When the relentless sons of Fëanor attacked Arvernien, Elwing threw herself into the sea with the Silmaril, but the Vala Ulmo saved her, turning her into a bird. Two more of Fëanor’s sons (Amrod and Amras) were killed at Arvernien, but Elwing

in her bird form flew with the Silmaril to Eärendil at sea, and he subsequently sailed into the Uttermost West, the light of the Silmaril enabling him to find the route to Valinor, where he obtained the mercy of the Valar. The Silmaril was set upon Eärendil’s brow, and he was placed in the sky as a light of hope for the Children of Ilúvatar. In response to Eärendil’s plea, the Valar came to Middle-earth and destroyed Morgoth in the War of Wrath. After the battle, Morgoth’s iron crown was recovered, and the two remaining Silmarils were held by Eönwë, the Maia (see Maiar) standardbearer in the great battle. Maedhros and Maglor, the two remaining sons of Fëanor, stole the Silmarils from Eönwë. But the Oath of Fëanor and its ensuing evils—the kinslaying at Alqualondë, the attacks on Menegroth and Arvernien—had so corrupted them that their hands were not pure, and the Silmarils burned them so that they were tormented cruelly, though they would not, or could not, let go of the jewels. In agony, Maedhros finally threw himself and the stone into a fiery crevice, while Maglor threw his jewel far out into the sea. Thus, ultimately the Silmarils became a part of the three chief elements of Arda—the earth, air, and sea. Sindar  (Grey-elves)  The Sindar, also known as the Grey-elves, were originally members of the Third House of the Eldar, the Teleri, last of the elves to answer the call of the Valar and cross the western sea to the Undying Lands. The Sindar, however, did not follow the call. When their leader Elwë was lost in the forest of Nan Elmoth, enchanted by the Maia Melian, they waited for him and failed to complete the Great Journey. When Elwë finally emerged from Nan Elmoth, with Melian as his spouse, he established his realm in Doriath and became known as Thingol Greycloak, high king of the elves of Beleriand. Another group of Teleri, led by Círdan the Shipwright, stayed with the Maia Ossë on the shores of Middle-earth. Círdan made his home at the Falas on the coast, and his people became known as the Falathrim. Círdan recognized Thingol as king, and over the years, the Sindar of Beleriand created a distinguished civilization of

582   Sindarin their own. They were not great craftsmen like the Noldor, nor as learned as some of the other Eldar, but they excelled in music. Even though they did not finish the Great Journey to the West, the Sindar are numbered among the Eldar because they had been called by the Valar and responded to the call; furthermore, their king, Thingol, had been to Valinor and seen the light of the Two Trees. The Sindar lived in peace in Beleriand for a long time until, during the First Age, Morgoth came over the sea and established a realm in Angband to the north of Beleriand, with a great impenetrable fortress called Thangorodrim. To protect Doriath from the threat of Morgoth, Melian created an enchanted circle around Doriath known as the “Girdle of Melian,” which prevented anyone from entering the kingdom without Thingol’s permission. Morgoth was followed by a host of the Noldor led by Fëanor, bent on taking revenge on Morgoth for his murder of their king, Finwë, and on recovering the Silmarils that Morgoth had stolen from them. The Noldor, known as the High-elves, were not willing to acknowledge the sovereignty of Thingol, and they set up their own kingdoms in Beleriand. For his part, Thingol was unwilling to welcome any of the house of Fëanor when he learned how the Noldor had slain many of his Teleri kinsmen at Alqualondë. Thus, the Sindar were not much involved in the Wars of Beleriand, though Morgoth still sought to destroy them, and they spent most of the First Age behind their defensive girdle. Ultimately, however, Doriath was crushed by the forces of Morgoth, and at the end of the First Age, Beleriand itself was destroyed in the War of Wrath when the Valar came from Valinor to Middle-earth to defeat Morgoth. Many of the Sindar finally passed over the sea at the end of the First Age, but a fair number remained in the small coastal strip of Lindon, at the Grey Havens with Círdan. Another group of Sindar wandered for a time with Celeborn until settling in the forests in the vale of the Anduin River, in Lothlórien. Some joined Thranduil, who established a kingdom with the Wood-elves in the Woodland Realm, later called Mirkwood. Although the Sindar loved Middle-earth, they could not forever resist the call of the Undying

Lands. Once they heard the call of the sea, they were unable to rest until they had passed over the sea to the West. After the end of the Third Age, most of the Sindar set sail from the Grey Havens and passed over the sea to Eldamar, the elven home of Aman. Sindarin  The language of the Sindar, or Greyelves, was originally the same as that of the Eldar in Eldamar, but over the centuries that the two kindreds spent apart, the language of the Greyelves changed much faster and in different ways. Thus, while Sindarin is related to the High-elvish Quenya, there are pronounced differences, and by the time the Noldor arrived in Beleriand, the two languages were mutually unintelligible. While the original Eldarin tongue had apparently been a highly inflected language (one in which grammatical distinctions are indicated by word endings), Sindarin was mainly analytic (a language in which meaning depends chiefly on word order and function words). The most noticeable differences from Quenya involve phonology, or pronunciation. For example, Sindarin keeps the original Eldarin th sound, which in Quenya had developed into an s sound. Furthermore, where the original Eldarin had the sounds mb, nd, and ng at the beginnings of words or after vowels, these sounds became m, n, and n in Quenya, but generally became b, d, and g in Sindarin. A comprehensive analysis of Sindarin phonology and grammar can be found online at the Tolkien Gateway Web site. When the Noldor arrived in Middle-earth, they were quick to learn Sindarin, particularly since Thingol, lord of the Sindar, forbade the use of Quenya in his lands because it was the language of those who had killed their kin (the Teleri) at Alqualondë. Sindarin therefore became the language of daily use among all elves of Beleriand from the First Age onward. This was true even in places such as Gondolin, peopled solely by the Noldor. Among the High-elves, Quenya did survive in Middle-earth, but chiefly as the language of learning, like Latin in Western Europe after the Renaissance. The Edain learned Sindarin, and it was the language of Númenor until the kings of

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight   583 that realm forsook the Valar and the Eldar. It remained in use among the learned Dúnedain, although for the most part they spoke Westron. Still, the place-names of the kingdoms in exile, Gondor and Arnor, were Sindarin names. The royal names of the Dúnedain kings were in Quenya, but their personal names were Sindarin, so that the name Aragorn is a Sindarin name meaning “royal tree,” while Aragorn’s royal name, Elessar, is the Quenya word for “elf-stone.” Further Reading Tolkien Gateway. “Languages.” Available online. URL: http://tolkiengateway.net/wiki/Languages. Accessed July 24, 2010.

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight  Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is the most celebrated of all Middle English romances. Part of what has been called the “alliterative revival,” the poem was composed in the late 14th century in the West Midland dialect and survives in a single manuscript, the British Library’s Cotton Nero A.x., which also contains another of Tolkien’s favorite poems, Pearl. Tolkien first read Sir Gawain at the suggestion of George Brewerton, one of his early mentors at King Edward’s School in Birmingham. The young Tolkien was drawn to the poem not only because of its story, but also because of its language, for which he felt a strange affinity since he saw it as the ancient language of his mother’s ancestors, who had lived in that area of England for many generations. Ultimately, Tolkien was to make the study of West Midland texts one of the chief focuses of his scholarship. His first major publication was an edition of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, intended as a student text, and compiled with his colleague E. V. Gordon at the University of Leeds (see Leeds, University of). Tolkien also completed his own translation of the poem in the 1940s, which was published posthumously by his son and literary executor, Christopher Tolkien. The poem was also the subject of Tolkien’s W. P. Ker lecture in 1953, a text discussed in the section of this book on Tolkien’s works. The poem itself is divided into four parts, or “fitts.” The first fitt opens in the court of King Arthur at Christmastide, where the king refuses to

eat until he has seen some marvel. Immediately, a large knight rides into the hall on his great horse, armed with a huge axe. Stranger yet, both knight and horse are green. The knight announces that he has come for a game, and he challenges anyone in Arthur’s court to exchange blows with him using his axe. If one of Arthur’s knights will cut off the Green Knight’s head now, the knight says, he will return the blow a year later. No one in the court steps forward, so Arthur himself feels compelled to take up the challenge. But his nephew, Gawain, volunteers to act in the king’s stead, and he cuts off the Green Knight’s head with ease. The knight picks up his head and reminds Gawain that he must now present himself at the Green Knight’s own hall, the Green Chapel, one year hence on New Year’s Day, to take the return blow. The knight rides off, holding his head, and the court laughs, thinking of the whole exchange as a Christmas game. In fitt 2, the seasons pass and Gawain must prepare to ride off to find the Green Knight. He searches for the Green Chapel for many weeks, until on Christmas Eve he comes upon a castle where he is welcomed hospitably by the lord and his wife. The entire court at this castle is delighted to have Sir Gawain with them, knowing that he is a model of courtesy—that is, perfect knightly behavior. After celebrating Christmas, Gawain makes ready to go, but he is informed by his host that the Green Chapel is only a mile from the castle. Therefore, in the spirit of the Christmas festivities, Sir Gawain agrees to stay three more days and to participate in a game proposed by the host. The host plans to go hunting each day and to allow Gawain to rest in the court. At the end of the day, he and Gawain are to exchange whatever they may have obtained during the day. In fitt 3, Gawain realizes the danger that his agreement with the host has placed him in. Each morning, the host’s wife comes into his room and makes fairly obvious sexual advances toward him. He is in a quandary since in courtesy he cannot insult a woman, nor can he betray his host. Over the next three days, the host goes to hunt and leaves Gawain to be “hunted” by his wife. The poem alternates between hunting and wooing

584   Sir Gawain and the Green Knight scenes. Gawain successfully fends off the wife’s advances with courtesy the first two days and exchanges kisses with the host in exchange for the deer and the boar that the host has bagged. On the third day, however, Gawain is faced with a more serious moral dilemma: His host’s wife offers him a green girdle with the power to prevent any weapon from harming him. Knowing he must face the axe the following day, Gawain accepts the girdle but does not exchange it that evening for the fox that the host has hunted, and thus he breaks his word. In the fourth fitt, Gawain first goes to confession and then, wearing the green girdle, rides forth to seek the Green Chapel. He finds the Green Knight there, sharpening his axe. He bears his neck, prepared to receive the blow, but flinches when the knight feints a first blow at him. The knight chides him for not standing still, then aims another blow at him, which turns out to be another feint, but Gawain has stood still for this one. Finally, the knight swings the axe a third time, barely nicking Gawain’s flesh. When Gawain leaps back to defend himself, having now kept his word and withstood a blow, the knight laughs. He reveals that he was Gawain’s host at the castle, that his wife’s attempts at seduction were part of a test of Gawain’s courtesy arranged by Morgan le Fay, and that Gawain has acquitted himself better than any knight alive could have. The nick on his neck was a sign of Gawain’s slight mistake in concealing the girdle from his host—an act that the host regards as worthy of little blame, since it was done to save his life. But Gawain curses himself for what he regards as his failure and vows to wear the girdle perpetually as a mark of his shame. When he returns to Camelot, however, the court all agree to wear green girdles of their own, in appreciation of his great courtesy. Tolkien’s avid interest in the poem helped fuel his work with Gordon on their edition of the text. In 1921, C. T. Onions suggested to Tolkien that he might work on a student edition of Sir Gawain, and he and Gordon began work on it the following year. Published by Clarendon Press in 1925, the edition was more influential than may be apparent: As Tom Shippey says, the poem “was hardly known and certainly not a part of university syllabuses” until this

very edition (14). It was Tolkien and Gordon’s edition that gave scholars the opportunity to introduce the poem into the standard ­English curriculum. Their text became the standard edition of the poem used in classrooms throughout the ­English-speaking world where Sir Gawain was taught in the original language. The edition may have been a major factor in Tolkien’s election to the Rawlinson and Bosworth Chair of Anglo-Saxon Studies at Oxford University that same year. The intent of the edition was to present an accurate version of the text in a readable presentation, with sufficient information to make the poem accessible to students. It included an introduction and sections on the manuscript, the story, the history of the legend, the treatment of the source, the author and his work, and the West Midland dialect, as well as a select bibliography. The poem’s text is followed by nearly 40 pages of notes and appendices on the poem’s meter, language, and grammar, and finally a full glossary of nearly 80 pages. The poem was reprinted in 1936 with corrections, and it was reissued in a second edition in 1967, with new introduction, notes, and appendices by Norman Davis (Tolkien himself had told the Oxford University Press in 1959 that he could not possibly manage a complete second edition himself for some time). This text is still in print, and for decades it has remained the poem’s standard teaching edition. Tolkien’s modern English translation of the poem certainly existed in partial draft form while he and Gordon were working on the edition, since he had sent a sample of the translation to his old mentor Kenneth Sisam at the Oxford University Press in 1923. The completed translation was in existence by 1947, when his friend Gwyn Jones is known to have returned a copy of it to him after reading it. In his W. P. Ker lecture in 1953, Tolkien mentions the translation as having been recently finished, and he notes that the intent of his translation was to retain what he called the poem’s “nobility” as well as “to preserve the original metre and alliteration, without which translation is of little value” (Tolkien, “Sir Gawain” 74). The poem is built of stanzas of varying lengths, made up of any number of traditional English alliterative lines but closed by a “bob and wheel.” The

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight   585 “bob” is a short line of two syllables acting as a bridge into the four-line “wheel,” made up of essentially trimeter lines rhyming abab, the b rhymes also rhyming with the last syllable of the bob. Tolkien manages to imitate this form in stanzas such as the following from fitt 1, wherein Gawain volunteers to meet the Green Knight’s challenge: With stern face as he stood he stroked at his   beard, and with expression impassive he pulled down   his coat, no more disturbed or distressed at the strength   of his blows than if someone as he sat had served him a drink   of wine. From beside the queen Gawain to the king did then incline: “I implore with prayer plain that this match should now be mine.” (Tolkien,   Sir Gawain 36)

Tolkien quoted freely from his own translation during his Ker lecture, and later, in December 1953, the translation was read by several voices in four radio broadcasts from a script he prepared. Tolkien hoped to publish his translation in the 1950s. Stanley Unwin first heard of the translation in 1950 and asked to see it, but Tolkien was too involved with completing The Lord of the Rings to pay attention to it. In 1959, he sent the translation to Rayner Unwin, who wanted to publish it, but Tolkien decided that his Sir Gawain should be published together with his translation of the same poet’s other great work, Pearl, also made sometime in the 1940s. By 1962, he was still deciding what kind of introduction and notes should accompany the translations, and he felt he should make some revisions. However, at this point he was also working on revisions for the second edition of The Lord of the Rings, and he told Rayner in 1965 that he was still considering notes and other appendices for the translations. He was still tinkering with them eight years later when he died. As his father’s literary executor, Christopher Tolkien was most interested in first publishing a version of The Silmarillion, Tolkien’s lifework. But the translations of Gawain and Pearl

were complete and had been promised to Allen & Unwin for 14 years, so Christopher put them together with an earlier translation of the Middle ­English romance Sir Orfeo and prepared them for publication. He added an introduction cobbled together from his father’s notes, from Tolkien’s 20-minute broadcast about the poem after its radio performance, from a section Tolkien had contributed to the introduction to the edition of Pearl published by E. V. Gordon’s widow, and from notes by Christopher himself. The text was published in 1975. Critics and scholars have not been enthusiastic about Tolkien’s translation, generally preferring the earlier published translation of Marie Borroff, or the more recent ones by W. S. Merwin or Simon Armitage. Tolkien’s translation, in the opinion of many readers, may be closest to the original in style and versification, but its language is archaic, stilted, and awkward as it preserves forms of expression more natural in Middle English than in contemporary speech. Tolkien, of course, would have said that this was exactly what he wanted his translation to do. In his preface to C. L. Wrenn’s prose translation of Beowulf in 1940, Tolkien had written that there is no substitute for reading a poem in the original language. A translation is only worthwhile if it is an aid to “the more laudable labour” of reading the poem in the original, and the best translation should be an aid to that endeavor (“Prefatory Remarks” 50). His archaic language does precisely that for its readers. Further Reading Shippey, Tom. J. R. R. Tolkien: Author of the Century. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2000. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Edited by J. R. R. Tolkien and E. V. Gordon. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1925. Tolkien, J. R. R. “Prefatory Remarks on Prose Translation of ‘Beowulf’.” In Beowulf and the Finnesburg Fragment. A Translation into Modern English Prose by John R. Clark Hall, new edition revised by C. L. Wren, viii–xli. London: George Allen & Unwin, 1940. ———. “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.” In The Monsters and the Critics and Other Essays, edited by

586   Sirion Christopher Tolkien, 72–108. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1984. Tolkien, J. R. R., trans. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Pearl, and Sir Orfeo. New York: Random House, 1975.

Sirion  The Sirion was the great river of Beleriand in the First Age of Middle-earth. It ran some 400 miles from its source in the eastern Ered Wethrin (“Mountains of Shadow”) in the north to its mouth where it emptied into the Bay of Balar in the south. It was fed by the rivers Rivil, Narog, Aros, Teiglin, and Esgalduin. The upper river could be crossed by the ford called Brithiach, which connected the forests of Brethil with the northern land called Dimbar. There was a bridge as well as ferries across the river where it passed through the hidden elven kingdom of Doriath, and there was also an area of some 10 miles between the great waterfall called the Falls of Sirion and the caves to the south called the Gates of Sirion where the river followed a course underground. At the river’s source was the tower called Barad Eithel, the fortress of Fingon. South of there, near the Pass of Sirion—the steep-sided valley between the Mountains of Shadow and the mountains called the Echoriath—lay the island called Tol Sirion, built as a strategic post by Finrod Felagund but later captured by Morgoth. The River Sirion was destroyed along with the rest of Beleriand during the War of Wrath between the Valar and the forces of Morgoth, which ended the First Age. Sir Orfeo  The early 14th-century Middle ­English romance Sir Orfeo was a favorite of Tolkien’s, even though it was written in a southeastern dialect as opposed to the West Midland texts (such as the Ancrene Wisse and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight) that were the main focus of Tolkien’s scholarly work. In two of the poem’s three manuscripts, including the version used in Tolkien’s published translation of the text, a brief introduction categorizes the story as a “Breton lay,” a short romance characterized by the element of ferlie, or the marvelous. There is no known Breton source for Sir Orfeo, although the ultimate source

for the story is the Greek myth of Orpheus as told in Ovid’s Metamorphoses. The poem is made up of 604 lines in octosyllabic couplets. It tells the story of Orfeo and his wife, Heurodis. Orfeo is a great singer and is king of Thrace (which the poet equates with the ­English city of Winchester). One night, Heurodis dreams that the king of Faërie will abduct her, and although Orfeo posts a guard of 1,000 troops to guard her, he cannot prevent the dream from coming true. In despair at losing his beloved wife, Orfeo leaves his kingdom in the hands of his steward, shoulders his harp, and walks off in beggar’s rags. For 10 years, he lives in the forest as a wild man, until one day he observes 60 ladies out hawking in the woods, among whom he sees Heurodis. He follows the ladies straight into the side of a mountain, on the other side of which he finds a green kingdom with a castle. He is admitted as a minstrel into the court, where he sees the deformed bodies of people believed to be dead but in fact being held by the king of Faërie. Among these, he sees the sleeping Heurodis. Orfeo sings for the king, who is so moved that he grants Orfeo anything he asks for. Of course, he asks for Heurodis and is allowed to leave with her. When they return to Winchester, Orfeo meets his steward on the street. Though the steward fails to recognize him, he welcomes the minstrel for the sake of his master and asks him to come to the palace to entertain. When Orfeo takes out his harp to sing at the castle, the steward recognizes it as his master’s and asks where the minstrel has obtained it. When Orfeo says that he took the harp from one who had been torn apart by lions, the steward swoons in grief. At this point, Orfeo reveals who he is and rewards the steward for his faithfulness by making him heir to his throne. There are several elements of Tolkien’s canon that suggest the influence of Sir Orfeo. The poem “The Sea Bell,” for example, originally published as “Looney” in 1934, describes a figure who frightens a group of fairy folk, who disappear, causing him to wander as a wild man in the woods for many years. This does recall Orfeo’s predicament, although the motif was not uncommon in medieval literature, and the frightening of fairies around their camp-

Sisam, Kenneth   587 fires in the woods occurs, for example, in Chaucer’s “The Wife of Bath’s Tale.” It also occurs in The Hobbit, and there it seems more clearly indebted to Sir Orfeo. In that novel, when the dwarves first come across the elves in Mirkwood, they hear the sound of a horn and of hunting dogs, and a deer leaps across a stream and lands among them. As Tom Shippey has noted, in Sir Orfeo, when Orfeo comes upon the king of Faërie hunting in the wood, he first hears the sound of horns and of hunting dogs (35). More generally, it seems likely that Orfeo’s successful rescue of Heurodis also influenced the story of Beren and Lúthien as told in The Silmarillion. There, after Beren’s death, Lúthien makes a successful plea to Mandos to allow Beren to return to life in Middle-earth. In addition, the idea of the faithful steward who yields his charge back to the returning king may in part have influenced Tolkien’s picture of the ruling stewards of Gondor, the last of whom, the faithful Faramir, yields his power to Aragorn when he knows that the king has returned. Tolkien had certainly taught Sir Orfeo regularly before he made a slightly edited edition of the text in Middle English in 1943, using it in teaching a special course for naval cadets during World War II. It seems likely that he wrote his translation of the poem into modern English around this time, perhaps shortly after 1944. The translation imitates the octosyllabic couplets of the original, and, along with earlier translations Tolkien had done of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and Pearl, was posthumously published by Christopher Tolkien in 1975. Further Reading Shippey, Tom. J. R. R. Tolkien: Author of the Century. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2000. Tolkien, J. R. R. “Looney.” The Oxford Magazine 52, no. 9 (18 January 1934) 1943: 340. Tolkien, J. R. R., trans. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Pearl, and Sir Orfeo. New York: Ballantine Books, 1975.

Sisam, Kenneth  (1887–1971)  Kenneth Sisam was born in New Zealand and attended Auckland University, where he obtained a B.A. and an

M.A. degree before winning a Rhodes scholarship to Merton College, Oxford University, in 1910. There he earned a B.Litt. degree while working as an assistant to A. S. Napier, Rawlinson Professor of Anglo-Saxon and senior member of the Merton English faculty. Napier’s health began declining while Sisam was completing his thesis, an edition of the Salisbury Psalter, and as a consequence, Sisam began to teach Napier’s classes. When Tolkien switched from a concentration in classics to ­English, Sisam became his tutor. In 1915, however, Sisam left his teaching post to work for the Oxford University Press. Sisam and Napier planned to bring out an anthology of 14th-century English verse and prose, but Napier died in 1916. In the meantime, Sisam, who had been rendered unfit for military service in 1912 after an appendicitis attack and operation, joined the war effort in 1917, beginning a fiveyear stint at the Ministry of Food. He still kept in touch with the Oxford University Press and agreed to complete the anthology he and Napier had planned, but he got Tolkien to agree to produce the glossary for the volume. In 1921, Sisam published Fourteenth Century Verse and Prose, which became a staple textbook for some 60 years. Tolkien, who had taken a full-time academic position at the University of Leeds (see Leeds, University of) in 1920—apparently with Sisam’s advice and encouragement—was late in completing the glossary, but it was published as A Middle English Vocabulary in the second edition of the book. Sisam returned to the Oxford University Press in 1923 to work as junior assistant secretary under R. W. Chapman. In 1925, he sought the Rawlinson and Bosworth professorship, but it was Tolkien who received the appointment. Sisam stayed at the University Press, becoming assistant secretary to the delegates of the Oxford University Press and subsequently, when Chapman had to step down due to declining health, secretary of the press in 1942. Despite his losing the chair in Anglo-Saxon to Tolkien, Sisam and his former student remained on cordial relations. When Sisam’s daughter, Celia, earned her B.Litt. at Oxford (eventually becoming a fellow at Oxford’s St. Hilda’s College), Tolkien was her mentor. Sisam occasionally complained

588   Smith, G. B about Tolkien’s punctuality in finishing work for the press. He also took a close interest in the progress of the Oxford English Dictionary, urging along the progress of C. T. Onions and W. A. Craigie in their compilation of the 1933 supplement. Even after he retired in 1948, he still exerted a powerful influence over affairs at the press, persuading the editors in 1952, for example, to produce a second supplement rather than a complete revision of the dictionary. Sisam retired to the Scilly Isles off the Cornish coast, where he continued to write and produce significant scholarly work. In 1953, he published Studies in the History of Old English Literature, and in 1965, he produced The Structure of Beowulf, both works published by the Oxford University Press. In the latter book, Sisam disagrees with some of Tolkien’s conclusions in his “Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics” lecture. Sisam even returned to his interest in the Salisbury Psalter and, with his daughter, Celia, published an edition of the text for the Early English Text Society. In 1971, the year of his death, he and Celia collaborated on the publication of The Oxford Book of Medieval Verse. In 1970, Tolkien wrote to Neil Kerr about how much he enjoyed Sisam’s lectures: “His teaching was . . . spiced with a pungency, humour and practical wisdom which were his own. I owe him a great debt and have not forgotten it” (406). Further Reading Tolkien, J. R. R. The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien. Edited by Humphrey Carpenter. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1981.

Smith, G. B.  (Geoffrey Bache Smith)  (1894– 1916)  Born on October 18, 1894, G. B. Smith was a younger classmate of Tolkien’s at King Edward’s School in Birmingham. Like Tolkien, Smith was raised by a widowed mother, Ruth, with whom he and his brother lived in West Bromwich, five miles northwest of Birmingham. Although not a charter member of the group known as the t. c. b. s., being a few years younger than its members, he became one of the chief pillars of that society after appearing in a production of The Rivals with Tolkien,

Rob Gilson, and Christopher Wiseman at King Edward’s in fall 1911. He brought to the group a strong interest in modern English literature, especially poetry. At King Edward’s, Smith was secretary of the Debating Society and was involved in the school Literary Society as well. He won an exhibition (or scholarship) to read English at Corpus Christi College, Oxford University, and in October 1913 he joined Tolkien, who was already at Exeter College. Since Wiseman and Gilson had both gone up to Cambridge University, Tolkien’s friendship with Smith grew especially close in the months that the two were together in Oxford. They regularly exchanged poetry, and Smith was particularly instrumental in encouraging Tolkien’s budding interest in writing verse. But hostilities had begun in Europe in August 1914, and in October that year, Smith joined the Officer Training Corps. On December 1, he applied for a commission. He was first commissioned as a temporary second lieutenant by the Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry, but in April 1915 he applied for a transfer to the 19th Battalion of the Lancashire Fusiliers. In the meantime, he and Tolkien had met with Gilson and Wiseman in London for a reunion of the T. C. B. S., a meeting Tolkien later called the “Council of London,” at which they discussed at length their dreams and ambitions, and their desire to bring about a change in the artistic environment of England. Tolkien later tried to join Smith’s battalion, but he was placed instead in the 13th Reserve Battalion and was subsequently transferred to the 11th. In June 1915, Smith was promoted to full lieutenant, and in September he and the T. C. B. S. members all met for the last time before Smith shipped out to France in November. He continued corresponding with Tolkien regularly and exchanged poems with his friend. Smith suggested that Tolkien might improve his verse by reading more widely in English literature, and he recommended the new poetry of Rupert Brooke. One of Smith’s poems, “Songs on the Downs,” was published in the same issue of Oxford Poetry as Tolkien’s poem “Goblin Feet.” But Smith’s experience in the war was, like that of most of his contemporaries, a horror. He was despondent when he heard of Rob Gilson’s death

Suffield, Beatrice   589 on the first day of the Battle of the Somme, writing to Tolkien in July 1916, I am safe but what does that mater? Do please stick to me, you and Christopher. I   am very tired and most frightfully depressed   at this worst of news. Now one realizes in despair what the T. C. B. S.   really was. O my dear John Ronald what ever are we going   to do? (qtd. in Carpenter 84)

In November 1916, Smith began serving as adjutant for his battalion, now camped on the Doullens-Arras Road near a village called Souastre. Smith’s last letter to Tolkien was written from here, and it reached Tolkien in England, where he had been invalided home with trench fever. In the letter, Smith mentions what must have been often on his mind as he prepared to go on duty—the possibility that he might not survive. His last words to Tolkien were: “May God bless you, my dear John Ronald, and may you say the things I have tried to say long after I am not there to say them, if such be my lot” (qtd. in Carpenter 86). On November 29, 1916, Smith was stuck by shrapnel from an enemy shell while walking in the village. He was wounded in the thigh and right arm. By December 2, gas-gangrene had set in, and after an unsuccessful operation, he died in the early morning hours of December 3. He was buried in the Warlencourt British Cemetery in France. Geoffrey Bache Smith was 22 years old. Smith’s last wish was that his poetry be published, and his mother, Ruth, immediately contacted R. W. Reynolds, one of the masters at King Edward’s School, who had connections in the publishing industry. Reynolds enlisted the help of Tolkien and Wiseman, the latter of whom was concerned that the volume be selective, so that only Smith’s best poems were put forward. Wiseman also suggested an effective arrangement for the poems, rejecting the idea of publishing them chronologically. The earlier poetry is notable for its use of nature imagery and its optimism. The later poems, written during the war, present a much darker perspective. A few lines from Smith’s

“Songs on the Downs” suggest both his romantic outlook and his use of traditional verse forms in his poetry. In these ways, his verse was indeed similar to Tolkien’s, and perhaps, as he envisioned in his last correspondence with his friend, Tolkien did go on to voice what Smith may have wished to say himself: The years have fallen like dead leaves,  Unwept, uncounted, and unstayed (Such as the autumn tempest thieves),   Since first this road the Romans made.

Further Reading Smith, G. B. “Songs on the Downs.” In Oxford Poetry 1915, edited by G. D. H. Cole and T. W. Earp, 60. Oxford: Blackwell, 1915. Tolkien, J. R. R. The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien. Edited by Humphrey Carpenter. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1981.

Snorra Edda  See Prose Edda. Somme, Battle of the  See Battle Somme.

of the

Southrons  See Haradrim. Suffield, Beatrice  (Beatrice Bartlett Suffield)  Beatrice Suffield, née Bartlett, was married to Mabel Tolkien’s younger brother, William, and so was Tolkien’s aunt by marriage. When Mabel died in 1904, leaving her children Ronald and Hilary Tolkien orphans, she made Father Francis Morgan their guardian. By then, Beatrice Suffield was a widow, her husband having died that same year, and Father Morgan asked if she would be willing to foster the two boys. He seems to have chosen her chiefly because she lived close to his own home at the Birmingham Oratory, at 25 Stirling Road in Edgbaston, and also because she apparently had no strong religious convictions; so, unlike most of the boys’ relatives, she would not try to convert them to Protestantism. Beatrice agreed to foster them, particularly since, as a widow, she needed the four pounds and 16 shillings that Father Morgan paid her each month for the boys’ care.

590   Suffield, May Tolkien, however, hated life with his Aunt Beatrice. He found the neighborhood to be shabby and depressing, and Beatrice to be cold and without affection. Most disturbing for Tolkien, he discovered one day upon walking into the kitchen that Beatrice had just burned all of his mother’s private letters and papers, never considering the possibility that they might be of interest to the children someday. It is certainly possible that, having been widowed so recently, Beatrice was unable to show the young boys the kind of motherly affection they craved, and they spent a good deal of time with Father Morgan at the Oratory. At length, the boys finally confided to Father Morgan their true feelings about living with their Aunt Beatrice, and in summer 1908, he moved them out of their aunt’s home and into Mrs. Faulkner’s boardinghouse. Suffield, May  (Edith Mary Suffield Incledon)  (1865–1936)  May Suffield was Mabel Tolkien’s elder sister and was close to her for all of Mabel’s life. May married Birmingham businessman Walter Incledon in 1890, and their daughter Marjorie Incledon was born in 1891. While Mabel and Arthur Tolkien were living in South Africa in 1893, the Incledons visited them, partly because Walter had business interests there, and the family stayed for several years. Their second daughter, Mary Incledon, was born in 1895. Tolkien himself had been born in South Africa in 1892, and he remained close to his cousins all their lives. May moved back to England with her daughters in 1899, while Walter stayed in South Africa, to follow later. May joined her sister, Mabel, in converting to Catholicism in June 1900, an act that Walter deemed unconscionable. He had been helping to support Mabel and her sons after Arthur Tolkien died in 1896, but he now withdrew all support, and when he returned to England, he forbade May’s attendance at Catholic services. She apparently turned instead to “spiritualism” for religious solace. May lived with her family in Kings Norton, near Birmingham, after 1901. She was close to her sister when Mabel suffered her diabetic episodes in 1904, and she was at Mabel’s bedside when she died. The

Incledon family lived at Barnt Green in Worcestershire after about 1907, and the Tolkien brothers visited them regularly on holidays. Tolkien paid them a visit in 1915, after taking his degree from Oxford University and enlisting in the 11th Lancashire Fusiliers. Not much is recorded about May’s later life, though Tolkien did keep in contact with his cousin Marjorie and so would probably been in occasional contact with May as well until her death in 1936. See also Incledon, Marjorie and Mary. Swann, Donald  See Road Goes Ever On: A Song Cycle, The. T. C. B. S.  (Tea Club, Barrovian Society)  Tolkien always enjoyed the male camaraderie that a literary and social club like the Inklings could provide. He found intellectual discussion among his peers at social gatherings to be stimulating and to bring out the best in him, and therefore he was enthusiastic about starting groups such as the Apolausticks as an Oxford undergraduate, or the Coalbiters at the University of Leeds (see Leeds, University of). For Tolkien, however, the ideal model of all such societies was probably the T. C. B. S., or Tea Club, Barrovian Society, which he started with his closest friends at King Edward’s School in Birmingham, and which crystallized for him much of his early ambition and many of the guiding principles of his intellectual life. The club was formed during the summer term of 1911, when Tolkien became librarian at King Edward’s and several of his friends, including Christopher Wiseman, Rob Gilson, and Vincent Trought, were part of the library staff. During the six weeks of exams, when there was little for them to do, the group began having tea in the school library. Soon they were going out for tea at a place called Barrow’s Stores, and thus christened themselves the Tea Club, Barrovian Society, or T. C. B. S. for short. They were joined occasionally by other schoolmates. The group shared an interest in the classics, and the members seemed to enjoy sharing their individual interests: Gilson was enthusiastic about Renaissance painting, Wiseman about science and music, and Trought about his own poetry and art.

T. C. B. S   591 Tolkien shared stories and recited passages from Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Beowulf, and the Völsunga Saga. Even after Tolkien went on to Oxford in fall 1911, he was persuaded to return to King Edward’s to take part in a production of Sheridan’s The Rivals, in which he played Mrs. Malaprop to Gilson’s Captain Absolute, Wiseman’s Sir Anthony Absolute, and G. B. Smith’s Faulkland. Smith became a regular member of the T. C. B. S. after this experience. Vincent Trought died on January 20, 1912. Later that year, Wiseman and Gilson went up to Cambridge University, and in 1913, Smith arrived at Oxford, where became closer to Tolkien than the two had been at King Edward’s. T. C. B. S. seemed to be separating, but the will of the four young men who remained kept the group intact, and they would meet during vacations from school and continue to share their academic interests. Tolkien found such meetings inspiring, and he felt he could discuss things with these close friends that he might otherwise have kept private. It was certainly his interactions with this group, particularly Smith, that encouraged Tolkien to begin writing his own poetry. For Tolkien, a turning point in his life was what he later referred to as the “Council of London,” when he got together with Gilson, Wiseman, and Smith in London over the Christmas holidays of 1914. He came away from the meeting convinced that he wanted to be a poet, and he began writing pieces such as “Goblin Feet” and “The Man in the Moon Came Down Too Soon.” He shared his poetry with the other members of the T. C. B. S., particularly with Smith, whose comments seem to have motivated him to compose the “Lay of Earendel” in 1915. What seems to have come from this Council of London was a general consensus (though it was never written down as any sort of manifesto) that the four friends would strive through their artistic achievements—whether in poetry, art, or music—to reform what they deemed the corrupted state of the arts in England. They wanted to seek to raise the tastes of British society from interest in the unpleasant or seedy side of life to a love of true beauty. The last time the four friends met, after World War I had begun, was in Lichfield on September

25–26, 1915, before Smith and Gilson were sent to France and Wiseman to a ship off the coast of Scotland. Soon after, Tolkien himself was sent to France. On July 1, 1916, the first day of the Battle of the Somme, Rob Gilson was killed. In a letter to G. B. Smith written on August 12, Tolkien speaks of his ambitions for the T. C. B. S., asserting that he had hoped it would be “a great instrument in God’s hands—a mover, a doer, even an achiever of great things, a beginning at the very least of large things” (Letters 9). Gilson’s death, however, had left a hole: “I don’t feel a member of a little complete body now. I honestly feel that the T. C. B. S. has ended,” he went on to tell Smith (10). But he was not willing to abandon the goals of the society, adding that “the T. C. B. S. may have been all we dreamt—and its work in the end be done by three or to or one survivor” (10). These words proved all too prophetic, as five months later, Tolkien received word from Christopher Wiseman that Smith had died from battle wounds on December 3, 1916. Just over a year later, following Smith’s own wishes and those of his mother, Tolkien worked with Wiseman and R. W. Reynolds, their old schoolmaster from King Edward’s, to edit and publish a collection of Smith’s poems, which was published by Erskine Macdonald under the title A Spring Harvest in 1918. Tolkien continued his friendship with Wiseman, even naming his third child, Christopher, in honor of his oldest surviving friend. But the connection that the T. C. B. S. had provided was no longer there, and after 1919, Tolkien and Wiseman corresponded only occasionally. Years later, remembering those days, Tolkien would write One has indeed personally to come under the shadow of war to feel fully its oppression; but as the years go by it seems now often forgotten that to be caught in youth by 1914 was no less hideous an experience than to be involved in 1939 and the following years. By 1918 all but one of my close friends were dead. (“Foreword” 7)

Still, as he had written to Smith in 1916, Tolkien did follow through on what he perceived the ideals of the T. C. B. S. to be, even though he did it alone: His fiction, especially The Lord of the Rings

592   Telperion and The Silmarillion, celebrates the joys of close fellowship and consistently asserts a moral and ethical theme, as well as an appreciation for ethereal beauty and for spiritual values. Further Reading Tolkien, J. R. R. “Foreword to the Second Edition.” In The Fellowship of the Ring. 2nd ed. London: G. Allen & Unwin, 1965, 5–8. ———. The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien. Edited by Humphrey Carpenter. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1981.

Telperion  Telperion, the elder of the Two Trees of Valinor, was an object of joy and comfort for the Valar and veneration and wonder for the Eldar. Its counterpart, Laurelin, was the golden tree, while Telperion was silver. Its leaves were green above and silver below, and the white flowers of its boughs dripped with a dew that had a shining silver light. The trees had been created through the power of Yavanna’s song, and Varda made the stars from the dew of Telperion. When the Eldar came to Valinor, Yavanna created the white tree Galathilion from a seed of Telperion and planted it in the elves’ city of Tirion. From a shoot of Galathilion, the tree Celeborn was made, and this was planted on the elves’ island of Tol Eressëa. These trees were made in the image of Telperion, but they did not shine. Only the great Noldor craftsman Fëanor was able to capture the light of the Two Trees when he made the Silmarils. The Two Trees flourished until the event known as the Darkening of Valinor, when the renegade Vala Melkor (later known as Morgoth) and his ally Ungoliant poisoned and destroyed the Two Trees. Their light could not be recaptured, although the Valar were able to save the last white blossom of Telperion and place it into the sky, where it became the moon. When the Edain were granted the island of Númenor at the beginning of the Second Age, the Eldar provided them with Nimloth, a seedling of Celeborn and thus directly descended from Telperion. Isildur brought a scion of Nimloth to Middle-earth and planted it at Minas Ithil. When the Nazgûl captured Minas Ithil in the year 2002

of the Second Age, Isildur again saved a fruit of the tree, and he planted it at Minas Anor. The second White Tree of Gondor withered in 1636 of the Third Age, during the Great Plague that decimated the country, but a scion survived, and a third White Tree was planted by King Tarondor of Gondor in 1640. That tree also withered, in 2852, and at that time no seedling could be found. But at the beginning of the Fourth Age, Aragorn, King Elessar, with the help of Gandalf the White, found a sapling of the White Tree above the city on the slopes of Mindolluin and planted it in the citadel of Minas Tirith. Thus, the fourth White Tree bloomed, marking the return of the king of Gondor. Each of these trees was directly descended from Telperion and symbolized reverence for the Valar and the things that the Valar stood for. For a similar purpose, in Gondolin, Turgon created a white tree called Belthil, in memory of Telperion. Thus, although Telperion died before the First Age, its memory survived through the millennia in Middle-earth. Tengwar  (Fëanorian alphabet)  Tengwar (a Quenya word meaning “letters”) was a fully phonetic system of writing developed in Eldamar in the Undying Lands, first by the Noldorian sage Rúmil and later revised by Fëanor, the cleverest of all the Noldor. The system, used by the Eldar and later by the men of Númenor, ultimately spread into Middle-earth, where it was used to transcribe both the elvish languages and Westron, the common speech. The different languages in which the writing system was used were called modes. The letters were originally written with a brush or pen and, as in English, were written left to right. All of the original Fëanorian letters were made up of a vertical stem (called a telco), which might be long or short, above or below the line; and one or two curved bows (called lúva) attached to the stem. In the original Quenya mode, the Tengwar represented only consonant sounds, with vowel sounds indicated by diacritical marks (called tehtar) above the letters, not unlike Hebrew or Tibetan. In the Quenya mode, the tehtar are placed above the consonant that precedes them. In Sindarin,

Third Age   593 they are placed above the consonant that follows them. If a vowel stands on its own, or comes at the beginning of a word, or is long, the mark is placed above a special vowel holder mark. As the letters are adapted by men of Middle-earth to transcribe Westron, some of the Tengwar come to denote vowel sounds (a development identical to what happened when the Greeks adapted the Phoenician alphabet for their own use). The original Tengwar of Fëanor had 24 letters that were arranged according to four “series” (témar) indicating points of articulation for each consonant, and six “grades” (tyeller) indicating voice and manner of articulation. Thus, the témar included a series of dental consonants, another of labial sounds, and so on. The tyeller included a grade of voiceless stops (indicated by a single loop on the letter’s stem) and a grade of voiced stops (indicated by a second loop), followed by grades for unvoiced and voiced fricatives, and so on. Thus, the letter called parma (or “book”), phonetically making the p sound, is in the second series (indicating it is pronounced with the lips) and the first grade (indicating that it is an unvoiced stop or “plosive”). Later revisions of the original alphabet added an additional 12 letters, including liquids, sibilants, and semivowels. The values of the series and grades could be altered depending on the phonetic needs of the language using the Tengwar. Thangorodrim  Thangorodrim was a group of three volcanic mountain peaks in the Iron Mountains, raised above the gates of Angband by Morgoth upon his return to Middle-earth early in the First Age. The name is Sindarin for “Mountains of Oppression,” and they were the highest peaks in all of Middle-earth. They were purportedly made of rubble from the delving of Angband and slag from Morgoth’s furnaces, but they spewed smoke and lava like other volcanoes. The peaks of Thangorodrim formed a sheer cliff face, to which Maedhros was chained by his right wrist high above Angband until he was rescued by Fingon and the great eagle Thorondor, leaving his right hand behind. Later, Húrin was imprisoned on a chair high atop Thangorodrim, from which he

was forced to see through Morgoth’s eyes the curse laid upon his wife and children. In the Great Battle of the War of Wrath, the terrible flying dragon Ancalagon the Black was slain by Eärendil the Mariner, and when his mammoth body fell, it destroyed Thangorodrim. Third Age  The Third Age of Middle-earth is the one best known by readers and fans of Tolkien, since it is the age during which The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings take place. The Third Age began after the first fall of Sauron, continued to the Last Alliance of elves and men, and ended after the second and final destruction of Sauron, when the One Ring was destroyed in the Cracks of Doom in 3019 and ultimately the Eldar passed from Middle-earth along with Frodo, the Ring-bearer, in 3021. A detailed chronology of the Third Age is given in Appendix B of The Return of the King (365–377). The Third Age was characterized particularly by the waning of the power of the Eldar in Middle-earth, by the return of Sauron and the swelling of his power, and by the courage of men who rose to the task of resisting his dark powers. The most important events of the Third Age are as follows. In the second year of the Third Age, Isildur planted the White Tree in Minas Anor but was slain by orcs as he returned north to Arnor and lost the One Ring. In the year 490, Gondor was attacked by Easterlings, who were repulsed but were to remain implacable enemies of Gondor. In 861, the northern kingdom of Arnor was divided into the three kingdoms of Arthedain, Rhudaur, and Cardolan. Sometime around the year 1000 of the Third Age, the Valar sent the Istari, the five wizards, into Middle-earth, foreseeing that the free peoples would need assistance in resisting the power of Sauron, which was soon to rise again. In 1050, a darkness or evil seemed to fall upon the southern part of Greenwood the Great, which came to be known as Mirkwood. Some decades later, the Istari and the chiefs of the Eldar discovered that some dark power, perhaps one of the Nazgûl, had made a stronghold at Dol Guldur in Mirkwood.

594   Third Age By 1300, orcs had begun to appear in the Misty Mountains and to do battle with the dwarves. The Nazgûl also reappeared, and their chief came to Angmar in the North, where he became known as the Witch-king. In 1409, he attacked the kingdoms of the former Arnor. In 1432, there was civil war in Gondor, resulting in the burning of Osgiliath and the loss of the palantírí (seeing-stones). In 1601, hobbits founded the Shire. Soon after, in 1636, Gondor was devastated by a great plague. The White Tree perished, and in 1640, King Tarondor moved his court to Minas Anor, leaving Osgiliath to crumble to ruins and Mordor unguarded. In 1974, the Witch-king of Angmar overran Arthedain and captured the capital of Fornost, thus ending the northern kingdom. In the following year, the Witch-king was defeated by Eärnur of Gondor in the Battle of Fornost and fled to the North. Soon after, in 1980, the dwarves of Moria delved deep enough to disturb the Balrog who hid deep in the earth and became Durin’s Bane. In 2002, the Nazgûl, now gathered under the Witch-king, captured Minas Ithil, renaming it Minas Morgul. When King Eärnur went to Minas Morgul to do battle with the Witch-king in 2050, he did not return, and the line of kings of Gondor ended. Shortly after this, Gollum found the One Ring, lost long before by Isildur, and he eventually came to hide in the Misty Mountains. In 2475, Osgiliath was finally destroyed, and its bridge was broken. In 2510, the Rohirrim under Eorl fought alongside the forces of Gondor in the Battle of the Field of Celebrant, defeating an invading army of Easterlings and orcs, and they were granted the land of Calenardhon for their help. In 2850, Gandalf entered Dol Guldur again to find that its master was Sauron himself, who was attempting to gather all the Rings of Power. Sauron had imprisoned the dwarf king Thráin, who died in the tower. In 2941, Bilbo Baggins accompanied Thráin’s heir Thorin and Gandalf to the Lonely Mountain in Erebor, east of Mirkwood, where the dragon Smaug was killed, and dwarves, men, and elves fought the Battle of the Five Armies, defeating invading orcs and wargs

and reestablishing the dwarvish kingdom. Bilbo received the One Ring from Gollum and brought it back to the Shire in 2942. In 2951, Sauron declared himself openly and reentered Mordor. In 2953, the wizard Saruman broke from the White Council and fortified Isengard. In 2980, Aragorn, heir to the throne of Isildur, exchanged vows of love with Arwen, daughter of Elrond, in Lórien. In 3001, Bilbo gave his 111th birthday party and left the Shire, bequeathing the One Ring to Frodo. Gollum was captured in Mordor in 3009 and subjected to questioning by the Dark Lord. In 3018, the Black Riders invaded the Shire, looking for the One Ring, which Sauron had discovered was in the possession of a hobbit named Baggins. Frodo reached Rivendell with the help of Aragorn. The Council of Elrond decided that the only hope for the free peoples of Middle-earth was to destroy the ring, and Frodo set out with the Fellowship of nine companions to destroy it in the fires of Mount Doom. In 3019, Saruman was defeated, and Minas Tirith was besieged. With the help of Rohan, Sauron’s host was defeated at the Battle of the Pelennor Fields, and as a distraction, the remnant of the armies of Gondor and Rohan attacked the Black Gate of Mordor. By this time, Frodo had reached Mount Doom and, with the unintended help of Gollum, destroyed the One Ring, thus utterly annihilating Sauron and the Nazgûl. Aragorn was restored to the throne of Gondor and Arnor, and he married Arwen. Frodo and his friends returned to the Shire, where they overthrew Saruman, who as “Sharkey” had established a dictatorship there. In 3021, Frodo met the Last Riding, including Elrond, Galadriel, and Gandalf, and along with them and most of the Eldar of Middle-earth, he sailed over the sea to the Undying Lands. Thus, as the Third Age ended, great evil was defeated, but much that was good and beautiful in Middle-earth passed away. Further Reading Tolkien, J. R. R. The Return of the King. 2nd ed. London: G. Allen & Unwin, 1967.

Thompson, Francis   595 Thompson, Francis (1859–1907)  Francis Thompson was an English mystical poet best known for “The Hound of Heaven,” describing God’s pursuit of the human soul. Famed for its striking imagery and sonorous language, Thompson’s Catholic poetry was particularly attractive to the youthful Tolkien, who was familiar with Thompson’s works by at least 1910, and gave a talk on Thompson to the Exeter College Essay Club at Oxford University on March 4, 1914. Thompson was born on December 16, 1859, in Preston, Lancashire, the son of Roman Catholic parents. His father was a provincial doctor, and his mother died when he was 18. In 1870, he entered Ushaw College, a Catholic seminary near Durham, northeast England, where he excelled in letters. After seven years, however, he was judged unsuited to the priesthood and asked to leave. He subsequently attended Owens College in Manchester, where he studied medicine, probably in deference to his father, since he really detested the medical profession. By this time, he may have already been taking opium as an aid to creativity, in emulation of Thomas De Quincey. Ultimately, rather than practice medicine, Thompson fled to London, hoping to become a writer. But this proved difficult, and before long, he was reduced to selling matches and newspapers in order to eke out a living. For three years (1886–88), he was homeless, living on the streets of London, and his opium habit had become an addiction. But Thompson still was able to do some writing, and when he found a copy of a new Catholic magazine called Merrie England, he sent some poems to the editor, asking that the soiled state of the manuscript be excused since it had been composed in unusual circumstances. When the editor, Wilfrid Mevnell, got around to reading the poems, he was impressed and wished to publish them, but he was not able to communicate with Thompson. Finally, he published one of Thompson’s pieces in his magazine, hoping the author would communicate with him if he saw the publication. This worked, and Mevnell succeeded in tracking Thompson down. After paying Thompson’s opium bill to a pharmacist, Mevnell and his wife, Alice, took the poet off the street and gave him clothing, food, and shelter.

They then sent him to the Norbertine monastery in Storrington, Sussex, where, with a doctor’s care, he freed himself from his addiction and began to write poetry. His first volume, Poems (1893), contained his most famous poem, “The Hound of Heaven,” which speaks of God’s relentless pursuit of the wayward soul. The book received some appreciative reviews, including one by Edward Burne-Jones and another by George Meredith. The years 1889–96 were the most productive of Thompson’s life, and during this time, he produced two more books of poetry, Sister Songs (1895) and New Poems (1897). Mevnell also encouraged Thompson to write essays to alleviate his melancholy. One of these, his essay “Shelley,” became justly famous when it was published posthumously in 1909. Thompson relapsed into his opium addiction and was forced, again, to spend time in monastic retreats. He did have another productive period between 1901 and 1904, when he wrote hundreds of reviews and articles of a variety of subjects. But years of poverty and addiction were taking its toll on him by this time, and he had developed tuberculosis. Once again, he began consuming large quantities of laudanum. He died of tuberculosis on November 13, 1907, and was buried in St. Mary’s Catholic Cemetery in London. He was 47 years old. For the young Tolkien, Thompson was something of a neglected genius who had died young before achieving his due. Tolkien bought a copy of Thompson’s collected works in about 1913, and he was familiar enough to give a detailed exploration of Thompson’s poetry at the Exeter Club in 1914. In what might be considered youthful naïveté, Tolkien asserted that Thompson used opium only as a painkiller. In any case, in an approach anticipating the New Critical stance that would emerge in the next decade, Tolkien insisted that the poetry itself, not the biography, was what revealed the truth of Thompson’s soul. He admired Thompson’s longing for ethereal beauty, a longing that characterized Tolkien’s own early poetry as he wrote of the Elvenhome in the Uttermost West. He was certainly influenced by the vision of Silvan fairies that Thompson introduced in his volume Sister Songs.

596   Tol Eressëa Tolkien also admired Thompson’s metrical achievements and his language, which he saw as an effective combination of the archaic and the modern, of the Latinate and the Anglo-Saxon, of the scientific and the spiritual. A few direct influences from Thompson can be noted: The name Lúthien, for example, seems to come from Thompson’s place-name Luthany, the visionary land of grace in his poem “The Mistress of Vision.” Furthermore, the term Southron, which Tolkien used as a synonym for the Haradrim in The Lord of the Rings, seems to be borrowed from Thompson’s poem “At Lord’s,” a popular poem about the game of cricket. Tol Eressëa  Tol Eressëa, whose name means “Lonely Isle” in Quenya, was a large island off the eastern coast of Aman, the Undying Lands of the Valar. Originally it was a lone island in the middle of the great sea of Belegaer, between Aman and Middle-earth. When the Eldar were called to come across the sea to live in Aman, the Vala Ulmo, lord of the sea, uprooted the island from the midst of Belegaer and pushed it to Middle-earth. There he moored it in the Bay of Balar, where the Vanyar and the Noldor boarded the island and Ulmo used it to transport them to Aman. He pushed the island back across the sea again in order to pick up the Teleri, but his lieutenant, the Maia (see Maiar) Ossë, loved the Teleri and asked Ulmo not to take them away from the sea. Thus, Ulmo left Tol Eressëa permanently in the Bay of Eldamar, in sight of Aman, where it was lighted by the light of the Two Trees and became the easternmost of the Undying Lands. There was planted Celeborn, a seedling of Galathilion (the White Tree of Tirion), created for the Eldar by Yavanna in imitation of Telperion itself. From Celeborn would spring Nimloth, the White Tree that symbolized the royal line of Númenor. Most Teleri moved to the mainland of Aman eventually, founding the city of Alqualondë on the shore. But Tol Eressëa was also populated after the First Age by Eldar from Beleriand, who built the city of Avallónë on the east coast of the island. From there, they sailed frequently to Númenor until the Númenórean kings turned away from their allegiance to the Valar.

Tol Eressëa was important in the early stages of Tolkien’s legendarium, as preserved in The Book of Lost Tales I and II. There, it was the isle visited by Eriol or Ælfwine, an Anglo-Saxon mariner who finds his way to the Lonely Isle where he was told the stories that would ultimately make up The Silmarillion. Tolhurst, Denis  (1916–1998) Denis Tolhurst, Tolkien’s doctor in Bournemouth, and his wife, Jocelyn, became close friends of Ronald and Edith Bratt Tolkien when the Tolkiens retired to 19 Lakeside Road, Poole, near Bournemouth in 1968. Tolhurst had been a member of the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve in World War II and served on convoys in the North Sea. He was subsequently stationed at a transit hospital in southern India for those Allied soldiers preparing for an invasion of Burma. After the war, in 1947, Tolhurst became a police surgeon and family doctor with the National Health Service in Bournemouth, setting up a private practice after his retirement. He was an enthusiastic golfer and member of the Parkstone Golf Club well into his 80s. In a letter to his son Michael in 1963, Tolkien mentions that he is becoming “nearly as unbendable as an Ent,” but then mentions that “the excellent Doctor Tolhurst” has advised him not to take any drugs except those prescribed by a physician (Letters 340). This suggests that Tolkien was seeing Dr. Tolhurst on holidays in Bournemouth even before he and Edith moved there. He mentions Tolhurst again in a letter to his son Christopher in July 1969, after he and Edith had moved to the resort town, noting that Tolhurst, “Usually a cheerful and encouraging doctor,” was on this occasion “alarmingly serious” about Tolkien’s gallbladder (408). Tolhurst, like Tolkien a Roman Catholic, was a physician at Sacred Heart in the Richmond Hill section of Bournemouth, and although this was not their parish church, Tolkien and Edith attended Sacred Heart Church in Bournemouth because of their relationship with the Tolhursts, which became social rather than simply professional. Even when, after Edith’s death in 1971, Tolkien moved back to Oxford, he remained close to the Tolhursts and visited them for a holiday in May 1973.

Tolkien, Baillie   597 He wrote to Christopher on May 29 that “I fled from the overcrowded days of the summer term to Bournemouth from May 16–22 incl., and returned much the better. I had some good plain food, a room with a private balcony, and saw a good deal of my dear friends the Tolhursts” (430). Later that same year, Tolkien returned to Bournemouth on August 29 for Jocelyn Tolhurst’s birthday. On that day, he wrote to his daughter, Priscilla, from the Tolhursts’ house, somewhat flustered about not having a place to stay and about losing his bank card. It was his last letter, as he became ill on the evening of August 30 and was hospitalized the next day with a bleeding ulcer and a chest infection. He died on September 2, 1973. Tolkien’s relationship with his doctor friend might be illustrated by the brief verse he wrote in a birthday card to Tolhurst (quoted in Tolhurst’s obituary in the British Medical Journal): “If one would live ’tis often best / to treat one’s doctor as a jest / but if he clothes advice with wit / then wiser ’tis to follow it / quoth Gandalf.” Further Reading Tolkien, J. R. R. The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien. Edited by Humphrey Carpenter. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1981.

Tolkien, Arthur Reuel  (1857–1896) Arthur Reuel Tolkien was the father of J. R. R. Tolkien. Arthur was the eldest of eight children of John Benjamin Tolkien and Mary Jane Stowe, who had been married in All Saints Parish Church in Birmingham, where Arthur was raised. As his sons were later to do, Arthur attended King Edward’s School, the premier school for boys in Birmingham. His father, a piano teacher and tuner, had gone bankrupt, and so Arthur did not follow in the family business (which the Tolkiens had been part of for generations), instead becoming a bank clerk. At the age of 31, having been employed for some time by Lloyd’s Bank in Birmingham, Arthur became engaged to the 18-year-old Mabel Suffield (later Mabel Tolkien). But John Suffield, Mabel’s father, forbade the engagement for two years because of her youth. There was little chance for Arthur to move up in the bank by staying in Birmingham, so in 1889,

he took a job with the Bank of Africa in British South Africa. In 1890, he was promoted to manager of the bank’s branch in Bloemfontein in what was then known as the Orange Free State. In April 1891, the two years having passed and Arthur having found financial security, Mabel came to South Africa to join him, and the two were married in the Anglican cathedral in Cape Town, setting up house in Bloemfontein. Here, their first son, John Ronald Reuel (called Ronald), was born on January 3, 1892, followed by his younger brother, Hilary Arthur Reuel Tolkien, on February 17, 1894. Arthur enjoyed his work in South Africa. He had learned Dutch for business purposes, cultivated wine in the garden of his Bank House, and seemed content to stay in South Africa indefinitely. Mabel, however, had a difficult time adjusting, even though her sister and brother-in-law, the Incledons, had moved to South Africa as well. When Ronald began to suffer from the country’s heat, Mabel made the decision to temporarily return to England, where she thought the boys’ health would be better. Mabel, Ronald, and Hilary traveled back to England in 1895, though Arthur stayed in Bloemfontein to continue his work. Unfortunately, after Mabel and the boys left, Arthur’s own health took a turn for the worse. He contracted rheumatic fever in autumn 1895, and although he had largely recovered and returned to work, he suffered a relapse in January and died of a brain hemorrhage on February 15, 1896. Thus, Mabel and the boys never saw him again after they left Africa. A funeral service was held for Arthur in the Anglican cathedral in Bloemfontein, and he was buried there in the President Brand Cemetery. Tolkien, Baillie  (Baillie Klass Tolkien)  (1941–  )  The second wife of Christopher Reuel Tolkien, Baillie Klass was born in Winnipeg. She is the daughter of Alan Klass, a Manitoba surgeon and teacher and one of Tolkien’s personal friends. For a time, Baillie was Tolkien’s secretary, and she worked on the 1965 index to The Lord of the Rings, concentrating on the poems in the trilogy. Two years later, on September 18, 1967, she married Christopher, who was then a fellow of New College, Oxford University, and the couple had

598   Tolkien, Christopher Reuel two ­children: Adam Reuel Tolkien, born March 3, 1969; and his sister, Rachel Clare Reuel Tolkien, born February 13, 1971. Humphrey Carpenter remarks that after his wife Edith’s death, Tolkien enjoyed visiting Christopher and Baillie at their home near Oxford and playing with Adam and Rachel: “[H]e would forget his lumbago and run about the lawn in some game, or would throw a matchbox into a high tree and then try to dislodge it with stones to amuse them” (254). Baillie edited Tolkien’s posthumously published Letters from Father Christmas (originally titled The Father Christmas Letters) in 1976. She remains on the board of directors of the Tolkien Company and currently lives with Christopher in France. Further Reading Carpenter, Humphrey. Tolkien: A Biography. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1977.

Tolkien, Christopher Reuel  (1924–  )  The third and youngest son of J. R. R. and Edith Bratt Tolkien, Christopher Reuel Tolkien was the child who followed most closely in his father’s footsteps. He was born on November 21, 1924, while Tolkien was teaching at the University of Leeds (see Leeds, University of), but within a year of his birth, the family moved to Oxford. Christopher was named after Tolkien’s close friend from his t. c. b. s. days, Christopher Wiseman. For a period of about three years, he was forced by a heart condition to be tutored at home, where he developed an interest in railroads and in stargazing. Ultimately, like his older brothers, John Frances Reuel Tolkien and Michael Hilary Reuel Tolkien, Christopher attended the Dragon School in Oxford, and then the Oratory School in Woodcote, Berkshire. As a child, he and his siblings were the audience for Tolkien’s first version of The Hobbit as well as The Father Christmas Letters, and as he grew up, he provided feedback on The Lord of the Rings as it progressed over the 15 years Tolkien spent on the manuscript. He also worked on some of the maps for Tolkien, correcting some of his father’s inconsistencies and preparing the maps for final publication. Christopher entered the Royal Air Force in July 1943 and went to South Africa in 1944 to train as

a pilot. In March 1945, he was commissioned and served briefly for the remainder of the war, ultimately achieving the rank of flying officer. When he returned to England later that year, he entered Oxford University to study English. He studied English at Trinity College, and one of his tutors was his father’s close friend C. S. Lewis. After receiving his B.A. in 1949, he was accepted into the B.Litt. program under E. O. G. Turville-Petre and began to work as a tutor and lecturer in the ­English faculty. He also became a regular member of the Inklings, the informal discussion group that included Lewis and his father. Christopher soon took over reading portions of The Lord of the Rings to the group, most of whom agreed that his readings were better than his father’s. In 1951, Christopher married the artist Faith Faulconbridge, who had also taken an English degree at Oxford, and who had studied sculpture at the city art school. Her bust of Tolkien, cast in bronze for the English faculty library in 1966, was paid for by Tolkien himself. In about 1953, Christopher obtained his B.Litt. after producing a thesis that was an edition and translation of the Old Norse Saga of King Heidrek the Wise. He published his edition in 1960. Through the 1950s, he began making a name for himself as a scholar, publishing a well-received paper on “The Battle of the Goths and Huns” in the journal Saga-Book in 1956. He also worked with fellow Inkling Neville Coghill on editing Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, publishing with Coghill editions of “The Pardoner’s Tale” (1958), “The Nun’s Priest’s Tale” (1959), and later “The Man of Law’s Tale” (1969). In 1959, Faith gave birth to Christopher’s first son, Simon (now a barrister and novelist). In 1963, Faith and Christopher separated. That same year, Christopher reached the culmination of his academic career when he was elected a fellow of New College, Oxford University. In 1967, having divorced Faith, Christopher married Baillie Klass (see Tolkien, Baillie), with whom he had two children—Adam (born in 1969) and Rachel (born in 1971). Upon his father’s death, Christopher was named J. R. R. Tolkien’s literary executor, and so Christopher retired in 1975 to devote himself to that task, giving up his promising academic career. As his

Tolkien, Hilary   599 father’s closest literary confidante and a medieval scholar in his own right, he was uniquely suited for the work. His first significant publication as literary executor was an edition in 1975 of Tolkien’s unpublished translations of the Middle English poems Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Sir Orfeo, and Pearl. But his main focus was the preparation of a publishable text of The Silmarillion, the compilation of the legendarium that Tolkien had worked on for seven decades. With the assistance of the Canadian fantasy writer Guy Gavriel Kay, Christopher produced a best-selling edition of The Silmarillion in 1977, making the historical background of The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit available to the general public for the first time. In the meantime, his wife, Baillie Tolkien, edited Tolkien’s Letters from Father Christmas for publication in 1976. Christopher followed this by embarking on an even more daunting project: editing the thousands of pages of his father’s papers, including early drafts and unfinished versions of Tolkien’s many published and unpublished texts, making available to Tolkien fans and scholars papers that would otherwise be found only in certain libraries special collections. These publications over a 20-year period included the volume of Unfinished Tales of Númenor and Middle-earth (1980) as well as the 12-volume series The History of Middle-earth, published between 1983 (The Book of Lost Tales I) and 1996 (The Peoples of Middle-earth). In 1983, Christopher also published a collection of his father’s most important scholarly works, The Monsters and the Critics and Other Essays, making those texts more readily available to other scholars. Since the completion of The History of Middleearth project, Christopher has worked on publishing editions of complete works of Tolkien’s put together in a manner similar to his compilation of The Silmarillion. In 2007, The Children of Húrin appeared. Tolkien had first conceived of this story in 1918 and had worked on it for a time after completing The Lord of the Rings, bringing it near to completion before abandoning the project in 1957; Christopher credits his son, Adam, with assisting him in the compilation of the text. In 2009, Christopher published Tolkien’s The Legend

of Sigurd and Gudrún, a verse retelling of VölSaga of the Völsungs that Tolkien had written in the 1920s. Since his retirement from Oxford, Christopher has lived in southern France with Baillie, and their children were raised there. He remains the general manager of the Tolkien Company, which holds the copyright to nearly all of Tolkien’s published works. Recently he has gained some notoriety by bringing legal action against New Line Cinema in 2008, claiming that the company owed the Tolkien family some £80 million in unpaid royalties earned by Peter Jackson’s blockbuster Lord of the Rings trilogy. He also threatened to legally block the making of projected film versions of The Hobbit; however, as of 2009, New Line Cinema had reached a settlement with Christopher, and he has abandoned his objections to the filming of The Hobbit. sunga

Tolkien, Hilary  (Hilary Arthur Reuel Tolkien)  (1894–1976)  Tolkien’s younger brother, Hilary, was born in Bloemfontein, South Africa, two years after J. R. R. Tolkien, on February 17, 1894. He was a healthy baby, but because of his brother Ronald’s health problems, the two boys were taken to England by their mother, Mabel Tolkien, in April 1895, leaving his father, Arthur Reuel Tolkien, to continue his work in the Orange Free State. Arthur contracted rheumatic fever, however, and died in 1896. Mabel Tolkien moved to Birmingham and tried to raise her young boys on the small pension she had been left. She was assisted by Father Francis Morgan of the nearby Oratory, and about that time, she decided to join the Roman Catholic Church, creating a breach with most of her relatives as well as Arthur’s, who wanted to see the boys raised as Anglicans. Unlike his brother, Hilary did not bloom in educational settings. He attended St. Philip’s School briefly, having failed the entrance examination to King Edward’s School, where his brother attended and where his father had been educated. After Mabel’s death from diabetes in 1904, Hilary and Ronald were put in the care of Father Morgan. Hilary did join Ronald at King Edward’s in November 1904, during which time he and Ronald were living with their aunt, Beatrice ­Suffield, in

600   Tolkien, John Francis Reuel ­ gbaston. Beatrice was the recent widow of their E mother’s brother and seems to have had little affection to spare for the boys. One day, they arrived home to find that Beatrice had burned all of their mother’s papers, thinking that the boys would have no use for them. After that, they asked to be moved, and in 1908 Father Morgan found a place for them in Mrs. Faulkner’s boardinghouse in Birmingham (where Ronald met Edith Bratt). In 1910, Hilary left King Edward’s School and took a position in business with his uncle, Walter Incledon (who was married to Mabel’s sister). But he decided he would be happier in the country, working on the land. He began working on a farm in Sussex for a family called the Brookes-Smiths, with whom he and Ronald went on a walking tour of Switzerland, along with their favorite aunt, Jane Neave, in 1911. After returning from Switzerland, Hilary began working at his Aunt Jane’s farm in Nottinghamshire. When World War I broke out in 1914, Hilary enlisted as a private with the 16th Royal Battalion of the Royal Warwickshire Regiment, serving with them for three years in France, from 1915 to 1918. When he entered the army, he indicated Edith Tolkien, his brother’s wife, as his next of kin, and so when Hilary was wounded by shrapnel near Ypres, it was Edith who received the telegram. When Hilary left the service, he bought a small orchard and market garden of his own in Evesham, Worcestershire. He attended the Evesham Catholic Church, where he met his future wife, Magdalen Matthews, in the church choir. He and Magdelan were married in 1929, when Hilary was 35 years old. The couple had three sons, Gabriel (born 1931), Julian (born 1935), and Paul (born 1938). Ronald kept in close touch with his brother, despite their different interests and career paths, and he and Edith visited Hilary’s farm regularly, as did their oldest son, John, who would visit Hilary on college vacations to help him pick fruit. Late in their lives, when they were both widowers, Hilary and Ronald saw each other quite frequently, generally drinking whisky and watching cricket matches on television at Hilary’s home in Evesham. Hilary died on January 31, 1976. Recently, Hilary’s son Gabriel discovered, among some of his father’s old papers, three fan-

tasy tales written by Hilary. These tales have been published, along with some hitherto unknown family photos and letters, in a small book called Black and White Ogre Country. The stories recall the Warwickshire of the Tolkien brothers’ youth. The stories are called “Bumble Dell,” “Black & White Witches,” and “Other Stories” (a collection of anecdotes and reveries). They are children’s stories and suggest that an interest in storytelling seems to have run in Tolkien’s family, and also that Hilary may have been more of an influence on Tolkien’s storytelling than previously thought. Further Reading Tolkien, Hilary. Black and White Ogre Country: The Lost Tales of Hilary Tolkien. Edited by Angela Garner. Illustrated by Jeff Murray. Moreton-in-Marsh, Glos., Eng.: ADC Publications, 2009.

Tolkien, John Francis Reuel  (Father John Tolkien)  (1917–2003)  The oldest of Tolkien’s four children was his son John Francis Reuel; the “Francis,” of course, was in honor of Tolkien’s guardian, Father Francis Morgan. John was born in Cheltenham on November 17, 1917, as his father was recovering from the trench fever he incurred in World War I. Tolkien soon returned to Oxford to work for the Oxford English Dictionary, so John was raised in Oxford and, between 1920 and 1925, in Leeds, where his father was employed by the university. As a child, when John had difficulty sleeping, his father told him stories, and those tales from John’s youth ultimately developed into Tolkien’s published fairy stories. The Father Christmas Letters were also begun as stories for John and his little brother, Michael Hilary Reuel Tolkien. John was educated at the Dragon School in Oxford and, later, at the Oratory School in Woodcote, Berkshire, where he felt a vocation to become a priest. Following his father, John studied English at Exeter College, Oxford University, from 1936 to 1939, and then went to Rome to study for the priesthood at the English College there. In anticipation of Italy’s entering World War II on Germany’s side, the faculty and students of the English College determined that they must leave Italy, and in May 1940, dressed as lay civilians, they were able

Tolkien, Mabel   601 to flee the country at the last minute. The college reopened in Stonyhurst, Lancashire, where John continued his studies and also worked as head gardener, helping to raise food for the school. His ability in this area undoubtedly came from his working on his uncle Hilary Tolkien’s farm during his college holidays. Shortly after the war, John completed his studies and was ordained a priest in February 1946 at the Church of St. Gregory and St. Augustine, Oxford. He continued to serve as a priest for nearly 50 years, beginning at the church of St. Mary and St. Benedict in Coventry. In 1950, he moved to the Church of English Martyrs in Sparkhill, Birmingham. From 1957 to 1966, Father John was at the Church of Our Lady of Sorrows in Knutton, Staffordshire. From there he went to the Church of Our Lady of the Angels and St. Peter in Chains in Stoke-on-Trent, where the city named a street after him—“Tolkien Way”—in appreciation of his years of service in that parish. From 1987 until his retirement in 1994, Father John was at St. Peter’s Church in Eynsham in Oxfordshire. Father John was particularly interested in education during his five-decade career. He is remembered for building church schools as well as acting as chaplain to the University College in North Staffordshire, the Young Christian Students, and the Catholic Teachers Association. While at Eynsham, he was active in ecumenical efforts between Catholics and Baptists. Even after his retirement to Oxford in 1994, he remained active as chaplain of the organization of religious teachers called the De La Salle Brothers. In 1992, John worked with his sister, Priscilla Mary Reuel Tolkien, to produce The Tolkien Family Album, which includes memories and pictures from the Tolkien children’s youth. At the end of his life, Father John was accused by a former parishioner, Christopher Carrie, of sexual molestation of him when Carrie was a scout at the Church of English Martyrs in Birmingham, where Father John was acting as scoutmaster. Carrie brought his accusations against Father John to the Archdiocese of Birmingham in 1994, but the priest maintained his innocence. Shortly before his death, a police investigation determined that there was enough evidence to charge Father John, but

his ill health and impending death precluded his having his day in court. In July 2003, the Catholic Church awarded Carrie a settlement of, reportedly, some £36,800. Carrie, who self-published a book telling his story, was involved in later efforts to sue the Tolkien family. This and the fact that no other abused individuals from Father John’s parishes have come forward make Carrie’s charges less credible. Carrie’s death in 2010 means that we may never be certain of the truth in the matter. Further Reading Tolkien, John, and Priscilla Tolkien. The Tolkien Family Album. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1992.

Tolkien, Mabel  (Mabel Suffield Tolkien)  (1870–1904)  Mabel Tolkien, née Suffield, was the mother of J. R. R. Tolkien and his brother, Hilary Tolkien. She was one of six children of John and Emily (Sparrow) Suffield, whose family came from Evesham in Worcestershire; her father was a draper and traveling salesman. There is no record of her formal education, but she seems to have been well versed in the subjects she later taught her sons: languages, botany, music, and art. At the age of 18, Mabel met and became engaged to the 31-year-old Arthur Reuel Tolkien, a bank clerk; however, her father insisted on postponing the engagement for two years because of Mabel’s youth. For the next year, Mabel communicated with Arthur through letters secretly delivered to him by her younger sister, Jane (later Jane Neave). In 1889, Arthur took a job with the Bank of Africa, hoping to improve his prospects, and in 1890 he became the manager of the bank’s branch in Bloemfontein, capital of the Orange Free State. Mabel sailed to South Africa in April 1891 and married Arthur on April 16 in the Anglican cathedral in Cape Town. Their first son, John Ronald Reuel Tolkien—called Ronald—was born in Bloemfontein on January 3, 1892, and their second son, Hilary Arthur Reuel, on February 17, 1894. While South Africa agreed with Arthur and he enjoyed his work there, Mabel was unhappy, even when, in 1893, her older sister, May Suffield, moved with her husband, Walter Incledon, to South Africa. She disliked the climate, was

602   Tolkien, Michael ­ ncomfortable in society, and loathed the colou nists’ racist treatment of the natives. With Ronald suffering from the African climate, Mabel decided to take the boys and return, at least temporarily, to England. They sailed back to Birmingham in April 1895, Arthur planning to join them when he was able. Unfortunately, Arthur contracted rheumatic fever and died in February 1896, having never seen his family again. Mabel was left with an income of about 30 shillings per week from Arthur’s small investments. She had been staying with her parents in King’s Heath but decided she could not do so indefinitely and so moved her family to Sarehole, a small village in the country outside Birmingham, where they stayed for four years. Tolkien had fond memories of Sarehole, which became for him the model for the Shire. Meanwhile, Mabel tutored the boys, in Latin, German, music, and art. Ronald had no gift for music but loved art and, as might be expected, languages. From about the time of her return from South Africa, Mabel had become interested in the Roman Catholic faith, and in June 1900, she and her sister May were received into the Catholic Church, much to the chagrin of their strongly Protestant relatives, who were particularly disconcerted that Ronald and Hilary would be brought up in that faith. That same year, Ronald passed the entry exam for King Edward’s School, the most prestigious boys’ school in Birmingham. Shortly afterward, Mabel moved her family to the Birmingham suburb of Moseley. They moved again, in 1901, to a small house near King’s Heath Station, and finally in early 1902 to a house in Edgbaston, next door to the Birmingham Oratory, which had a church that Mabel liked attending and where she became close to Father Francis Morgan. At that point, Mabel transferred her sons from King Edward’s to St. Philip’s, a decidedly inferior school but one run by the Oratory priests, in order to save money. However, when Ronald won a scholarship to King Edward’s the following year, Mabel returned the boys there. The following year, Mabel was diagnosed with diabetes. She was hospitalized for some weeks, then spent the summer of 1904 convalescing in Red-

nal in Worcestershire, a retreat for Oratory priests where Father Morgan had arranged a place for her. By fall she had relapsed, however, and she died in a diabetic coma on November 14. She was 34 years old. Before her death, she had arranged that Father Morgan would become the boys’ guardian. Tolkien’s mother was a significant influence on his life, encouraging his early interest in languages and in drawing. In a 1967 letter he wrote: “My interest in languages was derived solely from my mother.  .  .  . She knew German, and gave me my first real lessons in it. She was also interested in etymology, and aroused my interest in this” (377). Her Catholicism was also important to Tolkien. He was at the impressionable age of 12 when she died, and he blamed her early death on the family who had shunned her after her conversion; consequently, he saw her as something of a martyr to the faith, which had a good deal to do with his strong devotion to the church throughout his life. He wrote as much to his son Michael in 1965: “When I think of my mother’s death .  .  . worn out with persecution, poverty, and largely consequent disease, in the effort to hand on to us small boys the Faith . . . I find it very hard and bitter, when my children stray away [from the Church]” (353–354). Further Reading Tolkien, J. R. R. The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien. Edited by Humphrey Carpenter. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1981.

Tolkien, Michael  (Hilary Reuel)  (1920–1984)  Michael Tolkien was the second son of J. R. R. Tolkien and Edith Bratt Tolkien. He was given the middle name of Hilary after Tolkien’s brother, Hilary Tolkien. Michael was born on October 22, 1920, in Oxford, though soon after his birth, the family moved to Leeds, where Tolkien had taken a job lecturing in English. From what is known of Michael’s childhood, he was an avid lover of trains; enjoyed his father’s stories; and, with his brother John Francis Reuel Tolkien, was the recipient of some of the earliest of the annual Father Christmas Letters, which Tolkien wrote his children. At the age of five, Michael had a toy dog that he treasured but lost while on

Tolkien, Priscilla   603 holiday with the family in Filey, Yorkshire, and in compensation, Tolkien wrote the story “Roverandom,” about the little dog’s adventures. Michael may have also inspired the story of Tolkien’s ents when he complained to his father after seeing a number of trees cut down and asked him to write a story of trees taking revenge. His fear of spiders also probably was the source for Bilbo’s slaughtering of the giant spiders in The Hobbit, showing Michael that spiders could always be overcome, no matter how large they were. Like his brothers, Michael was educated at the Dragon School in Oxford (Tolkien having moved back to Oxford by the time Michael started his schooling). He then attended the Oratory School in Woodcote, Berkshire, but when World War II broke out, Michael left the school and volunteered for the army. His first orders were to spend a year studying at a university, and he read history at Trinity College, Oxford University. By 1940, Michael was serving as an antiaircraft gunner during the Battle of Britain, earning the George Medal for his service in that conflict. He was injured later that year in a motorcycle accident and was hospitalized. While recovering, he met a nurse named Joan Audrey Griffiths, and the two were married in November 1941. Michael later served in coastal defense at Sidmouth, then transferred to the Royal Air Force, where he saw action as a gunner in missions over France and Germany. In 1944, however, he left the service after being found “medically unfit.” Tolkien later wrote to Stanley Unwin that Michael had been greatly damaged when he came out of the service and was, to use the common expression from Tolkien’s own World War I days, “shell-shocked.” Michael had two children by the time his service in the war was done. His son and namesake, Michael George, was born in 1943, and his daughter Joanna (or Joan Anne) was born late in 1944. Michael returned to Trinity College and finished his degree in 1945, receiving a disappointing “second,” probably the result of his interrupted studies and his own difficult emotional condition. He had some difficulty finding work after the war, first taking a job doing photographic research for the Admiralty and then teaching for a year at his alma

mater, the Dragon School. In 1947, he took a job at the Oratory School in Berkshire. His daughter Judith, his youngest child, was born in 1951. Subsequently, Michael taught at two other Catholic schools, Ampleforth in Yorkshire and Stonyhurst in Lancashire, until 1970. Tolkien and Michael corresponded and were in frequent contact over the years, though they did not see each other as often as they might have desired. Tolkien was fond of his grandchildren and wrote his poem “Cat” for Michael’s first daughter, Joanna, whose son, Royd Tolkien, appeared as an extra in the New Line Cinema film of The Return of the King. Michael’s son, Michael George, is a wellknown British poet. Michael died of leukemia on February 27, 1984. He was preceded in death by his wife, Joan, who had passed away in 1982. Tolkien, Priscilla  (Mary Reuel)  (1929–  )  Born on June 18, 1929, Priscilla Tolkien was Edith and Ronald Tolkien’s youngest child and only daughter, some five years younger than her youngest brother, Christopher Reuel Tolkien. Several of the later Father Christmas Letters were addressed most specifically to Priscilla, since she was the last of the Tolkien children to believe in Father Christmas, and her preference for stuffed bears and other animals is referred to in those letters a number of times. Priscilla attended the Rye St. Antony school for girls between 1935 and 1939, after which she was instructed by a governess for three years. From 1942 to 1947, she studied at the Oxford High School for Girls, and upon graduation, she read English at Lady Margaret Hall in Oxford, taking an honors degree in 1951. During this time, she lived at home with her parents, traveling with them to Ireland in 1951. She was always close to her parents, traveling to Italy with her father in 1955 and helping out at home when her mother, Edith Bratt Tolkien, was in poor health. Always a music lover, Priscilla inherited Edith’s piano when her mother’s arthritis rendered her incapable of playing anymore. It may say something about the opportunities for women in academia in the early 1950s that Priscilla, honors degree from Oxford in hand, was

604   trolls first employed as a secretary in Bristol from 1952 to 1954, and then became a secretary in Birmingham. But her experience in these urban areas, where she witnessed postwar urban poverty firsthand, led her to take a degree in applied social studies from the London School of Economics in 1958. In the early 1960s, she worked as a parole officer in Oxford. She observed later on that she may have taken this career path partly to separate herself from her father’s somewhat long academic shadow, and to make a mark for herself in the completely different field of social work. Eventually she did return to academia, lecturing in social work at Oxford and then working as a tutor in the social work training course at High Wycombe College from 1966 to 1971. She was at her father’s side when he died in 1973. Finally, she returned to her roots, teaching English for 12 years at Beechlawn Tutorial College in Oxfordshire and ultimately teaching classes in literature from her own home until 2005. Currently, Priscilla acts as one of the trustees of the Tolkien estate. With her oldest brother, John Francis Reuel Tolkien, she is the author of The Tolkien Family Album. Further Reading Tolkien, John, and Priscilla Tolkien. The Tolkien Family Album. London: Harper Collins, 1992.

trolls  “I am not sure about Trolls,” Tolkien wrote in a draft of a letter to Peter Hastings sometime in 1954. Unlike many other elements of his legendarium, he seems not to have completely considered the origins, history, and characteristics of the race of trolls that appears in the texts of The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and The Silmarillion. Essentially, he presents trolls as large, primitive, lumbering creatures in the service of the powers of darkness. Treebeard suggests in The Two Towers that the evil Morgoth formed trolls in the First Age in imitation of ents, in the same way that he made orcs to counterfeit elves. Of course, Tolkien makes it clear in his letter to Hastings that “Treebeard is a character in my story, not me” (Letters 190), so there is no reason to take Treebeard at his word. Further, in that same letter, Tolkien insists that Frodo may be closer to the truth when he says

of the orcs in The Return of the King, “The Shadow that bred them can only mock, it cannot make: not real new things of its own. I don’t think it gave life to the orcs, it only ruined them and twisted them” (190). If this holds true for trolls, then these hulking beings are not the creations of Morgoth but some other creatures (perhaps ents) for whose perversion the Dark Lord, Sauron, was responsible. Trolls first appear in the First Age of Middleearth as the bodyguards of Gothmog, the leader of the Balrogs at the Nirnaeth Arnoediad (“Battle of Unnumbered Tears”). They are not mentioned after the defeat of Morgoth until the Third Age, when Sauron apparently stationed some trolls among the orcs who occupied Moria after its conquest. But many trolls apparently wandered through the Misty Mountains and the lands to the west, and among these were the Stone-trolls tricked by Gandalf in The Hobbit. Although all trolls were violent killers who ate raw flesh and hoarded treasure, Tolkien seems to suggest that there were different types of trolls. These included Stone-trolls (for example, William, Bert, and Tom in The Hobbit), who wandered west of the Misty Mountains, turned to stone if caught in sunlight, and, unlike other varieties, spoke Westron instead of the Black Speech; Cave-trolls, who were scaled and green, and were part of Sauron’s garrison at Moria; and Hill-trolls and Mountain-trolls, who were also large, scaled, and powerful, and are seen in the Battle of the Pelennor Fields carrying Grond, the great battering-ram. Although Sauron made some use of these creatures in his armies, their value was limited because of their lack of intelligence. Late in the Third Age, however, Sauron bred a new kind of troll called the Olog-hai. These trolls lived in southern Mirkwood and in the mountains around Mordor. They were described as strong and agile, with the fierceness of their race but with far more cunning. This breed of troll was far more dangerous than the earlier trolls had been, and unlike the other breeds of trolls, they could endure the sunlight as long as the will of Sauron upheld them. The Olog-hai were essentially wiped out at the battle before the Black Gate of Mordor.

Ulmo   605 Further Reading Tolkien, J. R. R. The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien. Edited by Humphrey Carpenter. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1981. ———. The Return of the King. 2nd ed. London: G. Allen & Unwin, 1967.

Tulkas  Tulkas was physically the strongest of the Valar and their champion in war. He was the last Vala to enter Arda, doing so only when he knew of the war that his fellow Valar were waging with Melkor, the renegade Vala. Melkor could not stand against him and fled, and that first victory ushered in the time known as the Spring of Arda. During that time, the Two Trees were created, and Tulkas married the Vala Nessa, who was known for her ability to outrun the deer and for her love of dancing. Tulkas slept after the feast, and Melkor took that opportunity to gather the Maiar who were faithful to him and set up a stronghold in the northern part of Arda called Utumno, from where he wrought havoc on the designs of the Valar throughout the world, poisoning plants and turning animals into monsters. Tulkas again defeated Melkor, and the Dark Lord was locked away in the Halls of Mandos for three ages. Tulkas was against releasing Melkor at all, but he bowed to the judgment of Manwë and allowed Melkor to be freed once his time was served. When Melkor destroyed the Two Trees with the aid of the monstrous Maia Ungoliant, Tulkas chased them but was confounded by the darkness that cloaked Ungoliant. Tulkas is described as having had a ruddy complexion, golden hair, and a beard. He loved wrestling and enjoyed performing feats of strength. He used no weapons but his bare hands, and he laughed as he fought. He was not a reliable counselor because he was impatient, and although he was slow to anger, he was also slow to forgive. That is why he was opposed to letting Melkor out of his imprisonment the first time—a case in which his instincts proved correct. He is called Tulkas the Valiant or Tulkas the Strong. Two Trees of Valinor  See Laurelin; Telperion.

Ulmo  One of the greatest of the Valar in Tolkien’s legendarium, Ulmo was lord of the seas of Arda, and second in power only to Manwë. Thus, he is roughly equivalent to Neptune in classical mythology. His name is Quenya for “he who pours” or “he who rains.” He was also called Lord of the Waters or King of the Sea. The most musical of the Valar, he instructed the Teleri in their music. His own reflected the rhythm and the call of the sea, which lured the Eldar to make the journey to the West. His horns were called the Ulumúri, whose music could not be forgotten; they were made of white shell by the Maia (see Maiar) Salmar. Unlike the other Valar, Ulmo did not live in Valinor; rather, he moved in the great seas and oceans of the world. Nor did he ever assume a fana, or bodily form. His chief lieutenant was the Maia Ossë, who helped him move the island of Tol Eressëa across the ocean in order to transport the Eldar to Aman after they had accepted the invitation of the Valar to live among them in the Undying Lands, and finally to anchor it in the Bay of Eldamar. Ulmo himself had been against the policy of bringing the elves to Aman, but of all the Valar, only he remained in close touch with the Eldar even after the Noldor had deserted Aman and incurred the Doom of Mandos. He remained a friend of the elves and of men, the Second-born Children of Ilúvatar. His power was felt in all the rivers and streams of Middle-earth, and he spoke to elves and men through the music of his waters, through dreams, and occasionally by appearing in visions to speak directly to them. He appeared to Fingolfin’s son Turgon on the coast of Nevrast and directed him to the place where he could found the great hidden kingdom of Gondolin. Later, on the same shore, he spoke to Tuor, directing him to Gondolin with a warning to Turgon that his city would soon fall. He also urged Finrod to found the hidden fortress of Nargothrond, thus working in secret to aid the elves and men against the threat of Morgoth. He appeared several times to Círdan the Shipwright, with advice or messages to other elf lords in Middle-earth. Ulmo also saved Elwing when she was trapped at the Havens of Sirion, thus helping her bring

606   Úmanyar the Silmaril to Eärendil, and he defended Eärendil from the wrath of the other Valar when he appeared in Valinor. Ulmo helped sway the Valar to answer Eärendil’s plea and send the armies of Valinor to Middle-earth to destroy Morgoth in the War of Wrath. Úmanyar  In Quenya, the language of the Highelves, Úmanyar means “Not of Aman.” It was a term applied to those Eldar who did not complete the Great Journey to Valinor but remained in Middle-earth. Thus, the Úmanyar referred to a large number of the Teleri, including those called the Nandor (the group of Teleri who, following Lenwë, turned back when they reached the barrier of the Misty Mountains), the smaller group of Nandor called the Laiquendi (who remained in Ossiriand during the First Age of Middle-earth), and the Sindar (the Grey-elves who remained in Beleriand rather than completing the journey to the West). Also called the “Forsaken Elves,” the Úmanyar were numbered among the elves called Moriquendi—those who had never seen the light of the Two Trees of Valinor. Of the Sindar, only Elwë, known as Thingol Greycloak, was not counted among the Moriquendi, since he had been to Valinor and seen the trees and returned to lead the Teleri back before becoming enamored of the Maia (see Maiar) Melian and remaining in Middle-earth. Unwin, Rayner (Rayner Stephens Unwin)  (1925–2000)  Rayner Unwin was the son of Sir Stanley Unwin, founder of the George Allen & Unwin publishing house. Rayner reviewed Tolkien’s manuscript of The Hobbit for his father in 1936, and his positive reaction ensured the book’s publication. He took over as chairman of Allen & Unwin upon his father’s death in 1968, and ran the firm until its demise in 1985. Rayner was born into the publishing business, and his influence on The Hobbit’s publication is well documented. He was 10 years old when his father, on the assumption that children knew best what kinds of books children liked, asked Rayner to read The Hobbit and give him a report. His father paid him a shilling for the following review:

Bilbo Baggins was a Hobbit who lived in his Hobbit hole and never went for adventures, at last Gandalf the wizard and his dwarves perswaded him to go. He had a very exciting time fighting goblins and wargs. at last they get to the lonely mountain; Smaug, the dragon who gawreds it is killed and after a terrific battle with the goblins he returned home—rich! This book, with the help of maps, does not need any illustrations it is good and should appeal to all children between the ages of 5 and 9. (qtd. in Carpenter 181)

Rayner’s father agreed, and published the book in 1937. Born in London on December 23, 1925, Rayner Unwin attended Abbotsholme School in Uttoxeter, Staffordshire, and during World War II, at 17, he took a job as a book salesman for Basil Blackwell in Oxford. He was often forced to ask customers to reduce their orders because of the paper shortages caused by the war. Later, he worked as a representative for his father’s company in the Midlands and East Anglia, then at Allen & Unwin’s printing operation in Woking. In 1943, Unwin went to Oxford as a naval cadet. Near the end of the war, he joined the Royal Navy. When he returned from the war, he enrolled at Trinity College, Oxford University, receiving a B.A. in 1949. He went on to Harvard University as a Fulbright scholar, obtaining his M.A. in English in 1951, after which he finally joined the family business. A year after starting at Allen & Unwin, he married his childhood friend Carol Curwen, whose father owned Curwen Press. The couple had three daughters and a son. One of Unwin’s first tasks at Allen & Unwin was to deal with the mammoth text of Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings. It was the promised sequel to The Hobbit, which Tolkien had spent 15 years composing, but relations between Tolkien and Stanley Unwin had been somewhat strained by the latter’s refusal to publish The Silmarillion and Tolkien’s attempts to market both books to Milton Waldman at Collins. Rayner read the manuscript and, cognizant of the risk posed by the huge investment such an enormous text would require, crunched the numbers. He then told his father that The Lord

Unwin, Stanley   607 of the Rings was a work of genius, and that a careful look at the figures suggested that the company might lose as much as £1,000 on its publication. His father wrote Rayner back, saying, “If you think this to be a work of genius, then you may lose a thousand pounds.” It was Rayner Unwin who, over Tolkien’s objections, insisted on publishing the book in three volumes, but the strategy made the size and price of the books much more accessible and undoubtedly helped sales. Ultimately, Tolkien’s sales helped make the company profitable for decades, and Unwin always kept up a close relationship with Tolkien, apparently out of genuine friendship. Tolkien wrote to him in 1967: “I am singularly fortunate in having such a friend. I feel, if I may say so, that our relations are like that of Rohan and Gondor, and (as you know) for my part the oath of Eorl will never be broken, and I shall continue to rely on and be grateful for the wisdom and courtesy of Minas Tirith” (Letters 379). After Tolkien’s death in 1973, Unwin worked with Christopher Tolkien to usher through the publication of The Silmarillion and the first several volumes of The History of Middle-earth. Allen & Unwin published a number of wellknown writers, including Tolkien, Bertrand Russell, Julian Huxley, and Thor Heyerdahl. Authors liked to work with Allen & Unwin because the company never let their books go out of print, and Unwin’s interests had been far-reaching. As a result, when Rayner Unwin took over the company upon his father’s death, there were some 2,500 titles in its catalogue. This began to cause problems in the publishing climate of the 1970s and 1980s. The company was not large enough to absorb its overheads and too large to be as spontaneous as the editors would have liked. In 1985, after suffering its first annual loss, the company merged with Bell & Hymen, forming Unwin Hyman. Allen & Unwin had a 40 percent stake in the new company, and Rayner Unwin acted as chairman. But five years later, the company was absorbed by HarperCollins. Most of the former Allen & Unwin employees were let go, and most titles were discontinued; Tolkien’s, of course, were maintained. Unwin resigned from the board in protest.

Rayner Unwin was awarded the CBE (Commander of the Order of the British Empire), in 1977, and he was active in the Publishers’ Association from 1965 to 1985. He was largely responsible for bringing the 1987 International Publishers Association Congress to England for the first time in more than 50 years. He was also chairman of the British Council publishers’ advisory committee and president of the Book Trade Benevolent Society from 1989 to 1995. Unwin also wrote five books of his own, including A Winter Away from Home (1995), about the 16th-century Arctic explorer William Barents, and a history of his company called George Allen & Unwin: A Remembrance (1999). He died on November 23, 2000. Further Reading Carpenter, Humphrey. Tolkien: A Biography. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1977. Tolkien, J. R. R. The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien. Edited by Humphrey Carpenter. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1981.

Unwin, Stanley  (1884–1968)  Sir Stanley Unwin was the British publisher responsible for printing Tolkien’s The Hobbit in 1937 and The Lord of the Rings from 1954 to 1956. He was born on December 19, 1884. His father had been one of the founders of the printing firm Unwin Brothers, but Stanley did not immediately go into the family business. As a young man, he lived in Leipzig in Germany, where he worked for nine months in a bookshop and learned a good deal about the European book trade. Returning to England in 1904, he worked for his father’s stepbrother at the firm of T. Fisher Unwin, mainly utilizing his knowledge of foreign publishing rights. In 1912, he resigned in order to explore overseas British dominions and travel to the Far East with his brother-in-law, Severn Storr, all the while learning more about foreign markets. In 1914, he returned and bought the bankrupt George Allen publishing firm, founding the new firm of George Allen & Unwin. Unwin quickly gained the reputation of being a publisher willing to print all points of view, even controversial ones. In 1916, he first published the controversial philosopher Bertrand Russell. Unwin

608  Unwin, Stanley got into trouble with the director of public prosecutions in 1921 for publishing an English translation of Sigmund Freud’s A Young Girl’s Diary, considered obscene by standards of the time. Subsequently, Allen & Unwin made available works by Sidney Webb, R. H. Tawney, Mahatma Gandhi, and other more radical intellectuals, thus gaining a reputation throughout the English-speaking world as a serious publisher. In his 1926 book The Truth about Publishing, he wrote that it was sometimes entirely appropriate for publishers to print learned books that may contribute to society and gain the author recognition among academics, even if no financial profit might be expected. As a result of this reputation for publishing sometimes radical views, Unwin himself appeared on the Gestapo’s “Black List” in Nazi Germany. His staunch belief in the freedom of the press was unabated in his later years, and in 1960, he appeared as a witness for the defense in the trial over D. H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover. Over the course of Stanley Unwin’s 50 years at its helm, Allen & Unwin became one of Britain’s premier publishing houses. Unwin himself served in the Publishers’ Association and the Executive Committee of the British Council, and he was president of the International Publishing Association from 1936 to 1938 and again from 1946 to 1957. For his contributions to the industry, Unwin was knighted in 1946, and in 1966 he was made KCMG (Knight Commander of the Order of St. Michael and St. George), an order that honors individuals who have made important contributions to Commonwealth or foreign nations. The distinguished reputation of Allen & Unwin was certainly one of the things that convinced Tolkien to let them see his manuscript of The Hobbit in 1936. The story is well known of how Unwin gave the manuscript to his 10-yearold son, Rayner Unwin, and paid the boy to read it and give him an honest review of its appeal to children. Rayner loved the book, and Unwin subsequently published it, with great success, in 1937. In his 1960 autobiography The Truth about a Publisher, Unwin called The Hobbit the best book of its kind, and he named it as one of his favorite publications in his 50 years in the business. Unwin

asked Tolkien for a sequel and then waited over the next 15 years as Tolkien worked on his massive Lord of the Rings trilogy. Tolkien’s relationship with Unwin was not always completely cordial. Tolkien always thought that The Lord of the Rings should be published as a companion piece to The Silmarillion, without which its history and context would be obscure. Unwin did not think that The Silmarillion was publishable, and anyway it was unfinished and Unwin was not willing to wait another 15 years for Tolkien to complete his lengthy legendarium. Thus, when Tolkien threatened to take the project to Milton Waldman at Collins in 1950, Unwin was perfectly willing to let him go. In a letter to Waldman dated February 5, 1950, Tolkien wrote: I believe myself to have no legal obligation to Allen and Unwin. . . . But I have friendly personal relations with Stanley (whom all the same I do not much like) and with his second son Rayner (whom I do like very much).  .  .  . Sir Stanley has long been aware that The Lord of the Rings has outgrown its function, and is not pleased since he sees no money in it for anyone (so he said); but he is anxious to see the final result all the same. If this constitutes a moral obligation then I have one: at least to explain the situation. (Letters 135)

Waldman had promised to publish both volumes, but he did not have enough influence with the publisher to get Collins to agree, and ultimately Tolkien returned to Unwin, who published The Lord of the Rings in three volumes beginning in 1954, thus securing—in spite of Unwin’s pessimistic prediction—one of the best-selling books of all time. Although Unwin and Tolkien had a sometimes rocky relationship, Tolkien knew that he was indebted to Unwin for believing in him and his work, and Unwin certainly knew that Tolkien had brought huge profits to his company. This somewhat grudging respect was acknowledged when, in 1966, on Ronald and Edith Tolkien’s 50th wedding anniversary, Unwin sent the couple 50 golden roses. Stanley Unwin died on October 13, 1968.

Valar   609 Further Reading Tolkien, J. R. R. The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien. Edited by Humphrey Carpenter. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1981. Unwin, Sir Stanley. The Truth About a Publisher: An Autobiographical Record. London: Allen & Unwin, New York: MacMillan, 1960.

Uruk-hai  The Uruk-hai were a new and superior breed of orc created by Sauron toward the end of the Third Age of Middle-earth. The name Urukhai means “orc race” in the Black Speech of Mordor. Sauron had apparently been able to genetically manufacture a taller, stronger, and more intelligent strain of orc, a race far more dangerous and formidable than the earlier generations of orcs. The Urukhai first appeared in the service of Mordor when a force of them captured Osgiliath in the year 2475 of the Third Age. Sauron later used Uruk-hai in his armies on all fronts. But the Uruk-hai were not exclusively loyal to Sauron. They also began to appear in the service of Saruman later in the Third Age, and it was said that Saruman actually bred his own strain of Uruk-hai; Treebeard speculated that he had unnaturally mixed the races of orc and men in order to create an orc that was taller and more resistant to sunlight than any other breed. It was a company of Uruk-hai that attacked the Fellowship of the Ring at Amon Hen, where they killed Boromir and kidnapped Merry and Pippin, though they were ultimately killed by the Rohirrim. Saruman’s army of Uruk-hai was effectively wiped out at Helm’s Deep, but there were many Uruk-hai in Sauron’s army fighting at the Black Gate in the battle that ended the Third Age. Valar  The Valar were a particular group among the Ainur, created at the beginning of time by the creator god Ilúvatar. When the Ainur participated in the great symphony that formed the world, the Valar were so enamored of Arda that they took physical form and entered the cosmos, where they helped to bring about the life foreseen in the plan revealed by the great music and to prepare the world for the coming of the Children of Ilúvatar. Their basic story is told in the Valaquenta, the second book of The Silmarillion.

The Valar were eternal beings who would be part of the world until its end. They had no fixed form but often took on the form of the Children of Ilúvatar when they had dealings with them. There were 15 Valar that entered the world, although one of these was Melkor (later called Morgoth), whose sole purpose was to destroy or pervert Ilúvatar’s design. A major part of the function of the 14 remaining Valar was to counter Melkor’s evil intentions and to act as guardians of Arda. The 14 Valar included seven male and seven female spirits (called the Valier, singular Valië). The eight major Valar were called the Aratar. These included Manwë, their chief, whose will was most attuned to that of Ilúvatar. His consort was Várda (called Elbereth by the elves), who created the stars and the lights of the heavens. Ulmo was lord of the sea, while Yavanna was the Valië responsible for the growing things of Arda. Aulë the Smith was most interested in crafts and the fashioning of things from the substances of Arda. He created the dwarves, though they needed Ilúvatar’s blessing to become fully conscious. The Valië Nienna was concerned with mourning. Oromë was a great hunter and characterized by his prowess. Mandos was responsible for keeping the Houses of the Dead. The other six Valar were Lórien (master of dreams); Tulkas (champion of the Valar in their conflicts with Melkor); and the Valier Estë (the wife of Lórien and the Valië concerned with healing); Vairë (Mandos’s consort, who wove the tapestries of time); Vána (Oromë’s wife, who cared for the flowers and birds); and Nessa (Tulkas’s wife, who loved the dance). As the Valar built up Arda, Melkor sought to mar everything they did. He corrupted other lesser Ainur, called Maiar, and called on them to come to Arda and aid him. Another group of Maiar came to aid the Valar. The Valar first dwelled on the island of Almaren in Middle-earth under the light of the Two Lamps, but Melkor destroyed that island and threw down the lamps, after which the Valar moved to the continent of Aman in the West, where they established the kingdom of Valinor, lighted by the Two Trees, Laurelin and Telperion. Finally, in Middle-earth, the elves were created, and in order to protect them from Melkor, the Valar invited them to come to the Undying

610  Valinor Lands in the West. Ultimately, Melkor destroyed the Two Trees, and the Noldor sought to return to Middle-earth, disobeying the Valar, and sought revenge on Melkor, now called Morgoth. The Valar stayed aloof from the Wars of Beleriand between the Eldar and Morgoth until, with the elves and their allies (the Edain) in utter defeat, the Valar answered the plea of Eärendil and waged the War of Wrath against Morgoth. The Valar created the island of Númenor as a reward for the Edain at the beginning of the Second Age, but they did not intervene in the struggle against Sauron as the new age developed. They did take direct action in asking Ilúvatar to destroy Númenor and to alter the earth to eliminate the straight road to Aman when the pride of Númenor’s kings became intolerable. But they left men and elves to use their own initiative to defeat Sauron. In the Third Age, the Valar, foreseeing the return of Sauron, sent the Istari into Middleearth to help the free peoples resist and defeat him. They gave the wizards the directive not to pit their considerable power against Sauron, but to help the free peoples use their own resources to meet the challenge of the Dark Lord. Ultimately, the Valar seem to have learned through experience how best to act as guardians of Arda. Having created the shape of the continents and of all living things and directly defeated the most dangerous of supernatural evils, they grew to realize that people with free will—the men, elves, dwarves, and hobbits of Middle-earth—must be left alone to make their own choices and to resist evil on their own. Thus, as time went on, the Valar directly intervened less and less often in the affairs of Middle-earth. Valinor  Valinor is the Quenya word for the land of the Valar in Aman. It is nearly completely surrounded by the Pelóri, the great mountain chain that the Valar erected as a defense against the renegade Vala Melkor. Valinor also became the home of the Vanyar, the first great kindred of Eldar who made the westward trip across the ocean at the invitation of the Valar. Valinor’s only city, Valimar, is a city of silver and gold, and in the Elder Days it was lighted by

the Two Trees of Valinor, before Melkor and his evil cohort Ungoliant poisoned them. The western border of Valinor was formed by Ekkaia, the great outer sea of Arda. On the shores of this great sea were the Halls of Mandos, and Nienna lived close by. In the south of Valinor, Yavanna had her gardens, and Aulë the Smith lived in central Valinor. Manwë and Elbereth (Várda) lived in their mansion of Ilmarin atop the highest peak in the Pelóri, Taniquetil. Valinor bordered Eldamar, which included the coast of Aman on the eastern slopes of the Pelóri and the island of Tol Eressëa, where the Noldor and Teleri lived. Vanyar  The Vanyar (their name is Quenya for “fair ones”) were the first and the smallest of the three kindreds of the Eldar. They were called the Fair-elves because they had golden hair and fair features. Legend says that their founder, Imin, was the first of the elves to awaken at Cuiviénen. But it was Ingwë, the first of the elves to travel to Valinor at the behest of Oromë, who became king of the Vanyar and led them on the Great Journey from Cuiviénen to Belegaer, the great ocean between Middle-earth and Aman. There they became the first of the elves to travel on Tol Eressëa across the western sea to the Undying Lands. The Vanyar settled first in Tirion, the chief elvish city on the shore of Aman, but they loved Valinor and the light of its Two Trees and eventually resettled there, close to the Valar. Ingwë reigned as high king of the elves on the slopes of the great mountain Taniquetil, home of the chief Vala, Manwë, by whom the Vanyar were favored above the other elves. The Vanyar had little congress with the other Eldar, being more in touch with the angelic beings, the Valar and the Maiar. Only Ingwë’s close kinswoman Indis married outside the Vanyar kindred, becoming the second wife of Finwë, lord of the Noldor, and therefore the mother of Finarfin and Fingolfin. The fair hair and features of Indis were passed down to her descendants, including her famous granddaughter, Galadriel. When Finwë was murdered by Melkor, Indis returned to her own people, along with her daughter Findis.

Vilya   611 The Vanyar had no interest in returning to Middle-earth and lived contentedly among the Valar, so they do not come into the histories of Middle-earth as published in The Lord of the Rings or The Silmarillion, except indirectly through the deeds of the part-Vanyar Galadriel. Only once did the Vanyar take part in Middle-earth’s stormy history: When the Valar, approached by Eärendil the Mariner after his heroic journey, agreed to come to the aid of elves and men in the War of Wrath against Morgoth (Melkor) at the end of the First Age, a company of Vanyar came to Middle-earth to take part in the battle. They were led by Ingwë’s son Ingwion, and they all returned to Valinor after Morgoth’s defeat, along with most of the Eldar still remaining in the now-ravaged Middle-earth. Varda  See Elbereth. Viking Club  When E. V. Gordon became Tolkien’s colleague in the English language program at the University of Leeds (see Leeds, University of), the two former Oxonians became fast friends, both professionally and socially. Leeds did not afford the kinds of opportunities for intellectual social gatherings that the Oxford debating societies had, or that Tolkien was used to from his t. c. b. s. or his Apolausticks days, so the two professors formed a club of their own. With this group, the Viking Club, they met regularly with their undergraduate language students for the purposes of drinking beer, reading Old Norse sagas, and singing rollicking drinking songs, often in the Old Norse, Gothic, or Old English languages that they were studying. One of the by-products of this club was the increased popularity of the language program at Leeds. Before long, Tolkien and Gordon alone were teaching a third of all of the English students in the university. The second by-product was the publication of the small book Songs for the Philologists. The poems and songs in this volume had all been originally written for meetings of the Viking Club, and they included traditional songs translated into medieval Germanic languages, or original compositions in modern English sung to the tunes of traditional songs. Most of these were written to promote the study of philology

and to belittle those who chose the “easy” literature track and avoided such subjects as Old and Middle English. The songs were printed in about 1935, when A. H. Smith, a former student at Leeds, gave typescripts of the songs to some of his students at University College London, who subsequently printed them on a reconstructed wooden hand press. Because Smith had not asked Tolkien or Gordon for permission to publish the songs, the booklets were never distributed. A fire destroyed the whole run, except for perhaps 14 copies of the book in private hands. Thus, Songs for the Philologists is the rarest of all Tolkien publications. Vilya  Vilya was the first and mightiest of the Three Rings of the elves, as confirmed in the final chapter of The Return of the King. Called the Ring of Air, it was made of gold in which was set a great sapphire. Sometimes it was called the Ring of Firmament or the Ring of Sapphire, but its name in the High Elven tongue of Quenya means “air.” The specific powers of Vilya are never delineated by Tolkien, but like the other two elven rings (Narya and Nenya), Vilya was created to heal and preserve the Eldar. Since they were forged after Sauron had left Eregion, the Three were never touched by his evil in the way that the Seven Rings of the dwarves or the Nine Rings of men had been. Still, the Three were subject to the power of the One Ring and therefore were kept hidden from Sauron throughout the Second Age as well as the Third Age of Middle-earth. Vilya, as the most powerful of the Three, was sent to Gil-galad, high king of the Eldar, when Sauron destroyed the Noldor realm in Eregion. Gil-galad gave the ring to his herald Elrond, who bore the ring through the Third Age. It is possible that Elrond’s ability to cause the flood that swept away the Nazgûl who were pursuing Frodo at the end of the first book of The Fellowship of the Ring came from the power of Vilya, though Tolkien never says this directly. In any case, Vilya, like the other Rings of Power, lost its force when the One Ring was destroyed, and when Elrond passed over the sea at the beginning of the Fourth Age, he took Vilya with him.

612   Völsunga Saga Völsunga Saga  The best-known of all the legendary sagas in Old Icelandic, the Völsunga Saga is the story of Sigurd the dragon slayer; Brynhild the shield-maiden; and Sigurd’s wife, Gudrún, and her Burgundian family’s struggle against the Huns. It was the central myth of the Germanic people and was told in various forms, most famously in the Elder Edda and in the Middle High German Nibelungenlied. The saga survives in a manuscript dated around 1400, but it was probably first composed between 1250 and 1300. The author of the saga almost certainly knew the Eddaic poems, since he includes quotations from them in his text. The narrative of the Völsunga Saga is somewhat rambling, but it can be divided into six parts. The first two parts have no parallel in the Elder Edda. Part 1 tells the story of Völsung, founder of the family. His birth is supernatural, caused by his mother eating a golden apple after his father prays for an heir. Völsung becomes king of the Huns and begets 10 sons, the strongest of whom is Sigmund. Part 2 of the saga concerns Sigmund and his twin sister, Signy, who marries Siggeir, treacherous king of the Goths. At their wedding, Ódin places the magic sword Gram into an oak tree, and only Sigmund is able to remove it. When he refuses to sell it to Siggeir, the Goth ambushes Völsung and his sons when they come to visit Signy. All are killed by a great wolf—one after another on successive nights—except for Sigmund, who escapes with Signy’s help. When her children by Siggeir prove too weak to help her with her revenge, she has them killed. After years of plotting, she visits Sigmund in disguise and has a child by him named Sinfjotli. Sigmund and Sinfjotli ultimately kill Siggeir and burn his palace, at which point Signy voluntarily chooses to die in the burning building. Part 3 deals with Helgi, one of Sigmund’s sons. Part 4, of most interest to Tolkien, deals with the complex story of Sigurd, Gudrún, and Brynhild. When Sigmund is killed in battle, the sword Gram breaks. His wife, Hogni, saves the shards to give to their son Sigurd, who reforges the sword when he has come of age, and with it he helps his tutor, Regin, obtain a treasure and magic ring by killing the dragon Fafnir (who is Regin’s enchanted brother). After eating the dragon’s heart, Sigurd is

Illustration of Ódin placing the magic sword Gram into an oak tree in the Völsunga Saga  (Illustration by Emil Doepler)

able to understand the speech of birds, who warn him that Regin intends to slay Sigurd for the treasure. Sigurd kills Regin instead. From the birds, Sigurd also learns of Brynhild, a Valkyrie placed within a ring of fire for disobeying Ódin. Sigurd rides though the ring, sleeps with Brynhild, and gives her the dragon ring. He then rides to Burgundy, where he is given a potion that makes him forget Brynhild. He marries Gudrún, daughter of the king, and at the request of Gudrún’s brother Gunnar, he finds Brynhild again and, disguised as Gunnar, wins her. Later, the effects of the potion having passed, he reveals the truth to Gudrún, who discloses it to Brynhild in the course of a quarrel. Brynhild demands that Gunnar kill Sigurd. Guttorm, brother of Gunnar and Gudrún,

Völsunga Saga   613 carries out the murder, after which Brynhild kills herself, declaring that Sigurd alone was the one she loved. Part 5 of the saga is concerned with Gudrún’s marriage to Attli (i.e., Attila) and her subsequent revenge. After Gudrún’s marriage, Gunnar and his brother Hogni are invited to Attli’s hall. Before leaving, they sink Sigurd’s dragon treasure into the Rhine, vowing never to reveal its location. In Attli’s hall, they and their retainers are attacked by the Huns, and only Gunnar and Hogni are left alive to be captured. Gunnar tells Attli he will reveal the location of the treasure if Attli kills Hogni and shows him his brother’s heart. When this is done, Gunnar laughs, saying that he can now die in peace, knowing that the only other person who knew the treasure’s location is dead. Gunnar is then killed by venomous snakes. Finally, Gudrún takes revenge for the murder of her brothers by killing her children by Attli and serving him their hearts, after which she dispatches him with a sword. The final section of the saga concerns Gudrún’s later life. Svanhild, her daughter with Sigurd, marries Randver, son of King Jormunrek. Jormunrek, who wants Svanhild for himself, kills his son and has Svanhild trampled by horses, and Gudrún’s sons are all killed trying to avenge their sister. This ends the line of Völsung. Tolkien was enthralled by the Sigurd story from an early age. When he won Exeter College’s Skeat Prize for literature in 1914, he spent part of the money on a copy of William Morris’s translation of the Völsunga Saga. The Sigurd story certainly influenced a number of details in his own fiction. Jonathan Evans, for example, traces the theme of the dragon as rational creature (as seen in the characters of Glaurung and Smaug) directly to the Völsunga Saga (181), where Fafnir is presented in this way (though this can also be seen in the Elder Edda). The character of Éowyn, the warrior woman in The Lord of the Rings, may owe something to the Valkyrie Brynhild, though shieldmaidens appear in other sagas as well. The wargs that appear in Tolkien’s fiction are essentially werewolves like those that appear in the Völsunga Saga. In The Silmarillion, when Beren is trapped in Sauron’s dungeon with his companions in his

quest for the Silmaril, his friends are killed nightly by a great wolf in a narrative that closely parallels the predicament of Sigmund in the second part of the Völsunga Saga. And finally, the motif of the reforged sword of Elendil in The Lord of the Rings appears to be drawn directly from Sigmund’s sword Gram, broken in battle and reforged by Sigurd. Tolkien made his most extensive use of the Völsunga Saga in his modernized retelling of The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún, written in the late 1920s or 1930s and published posthumously in 2009. Tolkien followed most closely the poems of the Elder Edda in his adaptation, but there are portions in that text missing from the middle of the story, and Tolkien was forced to use the Völsunga Saga, Snorri Sturluson’s Prose Edda, and the Nibelungenlied to supplement the Eddaic poems to complete his

Statue of Sigurd fighting the dragon in the Völsunga Saga. Tolkien wrote a modernized retelling of The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún in the late 1920s or 1930s.  (Statue by Constantin Dausch, photo by Rami Tarawneh; used under a Creative Commons license)

614   Waldman, Milton narrative. In Tolkien’s text, most of the story of Sigmund and Signy is based on the Völsunga Saga. He also relies heavily on the saga for the conclusion of Sigurd’s story. Further Reading Evans, Jonathan. “Medieval Dragon-lore in Middle Earth.” Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts 9 (1998): 175–191. Tolkien, J. R. R. The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún. Edited by Christopher Tolkien. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2009.

Waldman, Milton  (1895–1976)  Milton Waldman was an editor at William Collins in London when he met J. R. R. Tolkien in 1949. At the time, Tolkien was completing the text of The Lord of the Rings, which he had long promised Allen & Unwin as the sequel to The Hobbit. He had also been trying to interest Stanley Unwin in The Silmarillion for some time. Tolkien was introduced to Waldman, a fellow Catholic, by his friend Father Gervase Mathew. Waldman told Tolkien how much he had enjoyed The Hobbit, and he expressed interest in its sequel. Furthermore, he was open to the possibility of publishing The Silmarillion as well, after Tolkien showed him parts of the manuscript. Ultimately, Waldman offered to publish both works, providing Tolkien had no legal (or moral) commitment to Allen & Unwin. In response, Tolkien began to press Stanley Unwin to publish The Silmarillion, arguing that it was intimately connected with The Lord of the Rings, but Unwin did not believe that The Silmarillion was publishable. If Tolkien was going to insist that the works be published together, Unwin had to decline. In spring 1950, Tolkien offered both manuscripts to Waldman, who indicated that he hoped typesetting would begin on the two works in the fall. After looking them over, however, Waldman told Tolkien that The Lord of the Rings was too long and must be cut. He also left London for an extended stay in Italy soon after, leaving Tolkien’s manuscripts with his staff at Collins, and it was clear that the rest of the editorial staff were not as interested in Tolkien’s efforts as was Waldman, and particularly were not interested in The Silmarillion. In addition, they were worried about

the length of the manuscripts, coupled with paper shortages in postwar England. By 1951, no definite publication schedule had been set, and late that year, following Waldman’s suggestion, Tolkien wrote a letter addressed to “My dear Milton,” explaining why he considered the two works to be inseparable. The letter, published as number 131 in Humphrey Carpenter’s edition of Tolkien’s Letters, is justly famous as Tolkien’s most complete statement of the relationship between the two works and of his desire to create a mythology for England, of his view of the archetypal themes of his legendarium, of his dislike for allegory, and of the impossibility of much reducing the size of The Lord of the Rings. “[E]very part has been written many times,” he says of his epic trilogy. “Hardly a word of its 600,000 or more has been unconsidered” (Letters 160). But the editors were not convinced. In the end, Tolkien returned to Unwin. Waldman later sought to gains the rights to publish The Hobbit in paperback format in 1956, but he was not able to do so. Waldman was born in the United States and educated at Yale University and then the Sorbonne in Paris. He worked at Longmans Green from 1919 to 1924 and was assistant editor for the London Mercury from 1924 to 1927. He worked at Collins from 1939 to 1953, and then was managing director of Rupert Hart-Davis from 1952 to 1955. He returned to Collins in 1955 and worked there until 1968. Waldman was also an author himself, mainly working in history and biography, especially of the Tudor period in England. He wrote Sir Walter Raleigh (1928), King, Queen, Jack: Philip of Spain Courts Elizabeth (1931), Elizabeth, Queen of England (1933), Joan of Arc (1935), Biography of a Family: Catherine de Medici and her Children (1936), Elizabeth and Leicester (1944) and finally The Lady Mary: A Biography of Mary Tudor (1972). Further Reading Tolkien, J. R. R. The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien. Edited by Humphrey Carpenter. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1981.

wargs  In Tolkien’s legendarium, wargs were a particularly evil race of wolves who allied them-

Wars of Beleriand   615 selves with the orcs of the Misty Mountains, who rode them like horses. Tolkien wrote that he used the term warg “for an evil breed of (demonic) wolves” (381). They were presented as having intelligence and understanding language, rather than simply being wild beasts tamed by the orcs. Wargs, like orcs, seem to have shunned the sun and were strongest in the darkness. The origin of Tolkien’s wargs seems to be in Old Norse mythology. In Old Norse, the term vargr was used for supernatural wolves, in particular the wolf Fenrir (who was destined to kill the god Ódin in the last battle) and his offspring Skoll and Hati, who attack the sun and moon. The idea of evil characters riding wolves also seems to come from Old Norse, where the witch Hyndla rides a wolf in the Lay of Hyndla, and the giantess Hyrrokin rides a wolf to Baldr’s funeral. Tolkien’s wargs may be descended from Morgoth’s great wolf Carcharoth, who guarded Angband and bit off the hand of Beren in the First Age. Carcharoth himself was the offspring of Draugluin, the great werewolf earlier slain by the Lúthien’s hound Huan. In any case, Tolkien first associated the idea of orcs riding wolves with the story of Beren and Lúthien in the early draft The Tale of Tinúviel, composed in the 1920s. In Tolkien’s published works, wargs appear most prominently in The Hobbit, where they are ridden by orcs hunting Bilbo, Gandalf, and the dwarves after their escape east of the Misty Mountains, where they drive Thorin and his companions into the trees and are scattered by Gandalf, who hurls flaming pinecones at them. They appear again with mounted orcs at the Battle of the Five Armies at the end of the novel. In The Fellowship of the Ring, wargs attack the Fellowship as they pass through Eregion near Moria. They also appear with orc riders at the battle at Helm’s Deep. Further Reading Tolkien, J. R. R. The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien. Edited by Humphrey Carpenter. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1981.

Wars of Beleriand  (Goblin Wars, War of the Jewels)  The Wars of Beleriand (sometimes

referred to as the Goblin Wars and, excluding the first battle, the War of the Jewels) comprised a series of six major conflicts between Morgoth and the Eldar (allied with the Edain and the dwarves) during the First Age of Middle-earth. These conflicts arose after Morgoth had killed Finwë, patriarch of the Noldor in Aman, and had stolen the Silmarils. The latter were the great jewels in which the Noldor craftsman Fëanor, son of Finwë, had captured the light of the Two Trees of Valinor. Morgoth subsequently fled to Middle-earth. Fëanor led the host of the Noldor over the sea and into Middle-earth, compelling his kinsmen to swear an oath to Ilúvatar, Manwë, and Várda (Elbereth) that called upon the Everlasting Darkness to encompass them if they failed to pursue anyone who kept any of the Silmarils. In the meantime, Morgoth had built a fortress in Angband and sent an army of orcs throughout Beleriand to seize it as his own. The first major conflict of the wars involved not the Noldor but the Sindar and the Nandor. Morgoth first sent a host of orcs to besiege Círdan the Shipwright in the Falas. Then he sent another band of troops down the valley of the Gelion River in eastern Beleriand to attack the elves of Ossiriand. However, their leader, Denethor, and his ally, Thingol of Doriath, caught the orcs between their forces and defeated them, though Denethor was killed in the action. Fleeing north, the surviving orcs were then slaughtered by the dwarves of the Blue Mountains. It was Morgoth’s first defeat in Middle-earth. The second battle occurred shortly after the first. When the Noldor landed in Middle-earth, Morgoth sent a third host of orcs to attack them as they made their landing, but he badly underestimated their strength. Even when the host besieging the Falas joined the fray as reinforcements, the Noldor still carried the day, although Fëanor was killed as he wildly pursued the retreating orcs. When Fingolfin arrived in Middle-earth with another army of Noldor, Morgoth’s forces all retreated into Angband. In the year 60 of the First Age, Morgoth launched a surprise attack. This third battle, known as the Dagor Aglareb (the “Battle Glorious”), began when Morgoth sent a band of orcs

616   Westron to attack the Pass of the Sirion River, a feint that drew the elves to that area before he released his main force to attack the highlands of Dorthonion, well to the east of the Sirion. But once again, Morgoth’s orcs were defeated when Fingolfin and Maedhros caught the orcs between them. When the orcs attempted to retreat north across the plain of Ard-galen, they were destroyed by the elves within sight of Angband. After this, the Noldor instituted the Siege of Angband, closely patrolling the Ard-galen for any sign of hostile movement from Morgoth. Except for a few small skirmishes, there was little stirring in these years, although in 260 the dragon Glaurung issued from Angband. But at that time, Glaurung was still very young, and he was easily driven back by elven arrows. From 260 to 455, the Eldar enjoyed the Long Peace, but during those years, Morgoth was busy developing new weapons and new monsters to strengthen his armies. At the same time, the Edain had entered Beleriand and allied themselves with the Eldar. The fourth battle, the Dagor Bragollach (“Battle of the Quick Flame”), began suddenly during winter 455 when Morgoth sent out flames from Angband that burned and ruined the Ard-galen all the way to the slopes of Dorthonion. The Noldor cavalry patrolling the area were decimated, the survivors forced to retreat. Morgoth’s forces seized Dorthonion, while Glaurung and a host of orcs ravaged Maglor’s Gap to the east, driving the Noldor from that region. When he saw that the defeat of the Noldor was complete on all fronts, Fingolfin rode to the gates of Angband and challenged Morgoth to single combat. Though he was killed, he had wounded the Dark Lord in seven places. During the next years, Morgoth consolidated his gains. He seemed unconquerable, but it was during these years that Beren and Lúthien were able to infiltrate Angband itself and steal a Silmaril from Morgoth’s crown. The act served no practical purpose, but it encouraged Maedhros to form the Union of Maedhros in 473 with a plan to draw Morgoth out of Angband with one army, then surprise him with the surprise attack of a second army at his flank (led by Fingon) when he had committed to attack the first. But Morgoth was prepared,

and he enticed Fingon to commit his troops too early, while Maedhros was delayed by the treachery of the Easterlings he had brought as allies. The fifth battle proved to be the most disastrous of all for the Noldor. Known as the Nirnaeth Arnoediad (“Battle of Unnumbered Tears”), the conflict left a majority of elvish and Edain warriors dead, and it left nearly all of Beleriand open for Morgoth’s taking. Following the fifth battle, only Gondolin, Doriath, and Nargothrond remained as strongholds of the Eldar, and these survived in part because they were hidden from Morgoth. But when Túrin persuaded Orodreth to attack Morgoth openly, his kingdom of Nargothrond was overrun in 496. Doriath was laid waste by dwarves and by the sons of Fëanor bent on retrieving Beren and Lúthien’s Silmaril, and Gondolin was finally destroyed, betrayed by Maeglin’s treachery, in 511. Morgoth now wielded power over all of Middle-earth. By now, Eärendil, born in Gondolin and reared in Alvernien, the island haven where the elves of the Falas had fled, was at last able to sail all the way to Aman, where he persuaded the Valar to rescue the elves and men of Middle-earth from the evil of Morgoth. In the sixth and final battle of the Wars of Beleriand, the Valar, together with a huge host of Vanyar from Eldamar, destroyed Morgoth and sank all of Beleriand into the ocean in what became known as the War of Wrath. This conflict ended the First Age and broke Morgoth’s power forever. Westron  Westron, or the Common Speech, is essentially the lingua franca of Middle-earth in the Third Age, at least the western part of Middleearth (Eriador) where the action of The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings takes place. In Appendix F of The Return of the King, Tolkien explains that Westron was essentially the language of men and had developed from Adûnaic, the language spoken by the Edain, the earliest elf friends of the First Age. When the Valar gave the Edain the island of Númenor in the Second Age, the Númenóreans spoke Sindarin with the elves, but their native speech remained Adûnaic, enriched by

Williams, Charles   617 some Sindarin vocabulary. At the height of their civilization, the Númenóreans kept fortresses along the west coast of Middle-earth, and the Adûnaic language became the language of exchange in their economic and political dealings with other men, though adopting some of the vocabulary of those other tribes. When Númenor fell and Elendil the Tall led the Dúnedain to Middle-earth, they ruled their kingdoms with their traditional language, further enriched by more elvish borrowings. Thus, the language, by now called Westron, became the common tongue of nearly all the men of Middleearth. Few men could speak the elvish tongues anymore, and therefore the elves spoke Westron with men. The dwarves spoke Westron when dealing with other races as well. Even the orcs used the Westron tongue when communicating between tribes. The language of the hobbits was essentially a rustic dialect of Westron. The men of Rohan preferred to speak their own language (which, having descended from Adûnaic, was related to Westron), although the princes of the Rohirrim could converse in Westron. The Wild Men of the Drúadan Forest, the Woses, spoke a tongue completely unrelated. The Dunlendings, an ancient race of men that had once inhabited the Ered Nimrais, or White Horn Mountains of Gondor, but had been driven north to Dunland west of the Misty Mountains, kept their own ancient language, which was only very distantly related to Westron. White Council  The White Council was a group of leaders of the Eldar and the Istari, formed to confer regarding the threat of Sauron in the Third Age of Middle-earth. Galadriel first called the White Council together in the year 2463 in the shadow of the peril that had been taking shape in Dol Guldur, directly threatening her kingdom of Lothlórien. The council originally included, among others, Galadriel herself, Elrond, Círdan the Shipwright, other elf lords (probably including Celeborn and Glorfindel of Rivendell), Gandalf, Radagast the Brown, and Saruman. The White Wizard Saruman, recognized as the wisest of the wise, was chosen as the council’s leader (though

Galadriel’s candidate for head of the council was Gandalf). The White Council met again in 2851, after Gandalf had discovered that the master of Dol Guldur was “the Necromancer,” another name for Sauron himself. Gandalf proposed an attack on Dol Guldur, but he was overruled at that time by Saruman. By the time the council met again in 2941, Saruman suspected that Sauron was searching for the One Ring in the Anduin River, and he had begun to covet the ring himself. He therefore allowed himself to be persuaded that an attack on Dol Guldur was necessary, but Sauron fled from Dol Guldur to Mordor. When the White Council met again in 2953, Saruman, by now clearly seduced by his own ambitions and desire for the One Ring, tried to minimize the ring’s importance, insisting it had long ago been washed out into the sea. But there was a great deal of tension at this meeting between Saruman and Gandalf, who now suspected Saruman’s own desire for the ring. Because of Saruman’s treachery and subsequent open defiance, the council did not formally meet again. Williams, Charles  (Charles Walter Stansby Williams)  (1886–1945)  Charles Williams is best known as a fantasy novelist and one of the most prominent members of the Inklings, the literary discussion group that included Tolkien and his close friend C. S. Lewis. He was also a poet, theologian, historian, and literary critic. Williams was born in London on September 20, 1886, to Richard and Mary Williams of Islington. He was educated in Hertfordshire at St. Albans School and obtained a scholarship to University College London in 1902, but he was forced to leave school without a degree in 1904 for lack of funds. He subsequently worked at the Methodist Bookroom in London and attended the Working Men’s College. In 1908, Williams took a job with the Oxford University Press as a proofreading assistant, and he remained on the staff, with increasing responsibilities, until his death. His most significant achievement at the press was the publication of the English language text of the Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard.

618   Williams, Charles Williams also taught evening classes in English literature and writing poetry. In 1912, he published his first book of verse, The Silver Stair, a sequence of love sonnets inspired by Dante. In 1917, he married Florence “Michal” Conway, his first love, although he also maintained a longtime devotion to Phyllis Jones, who joined the staff of the Oxford University Press as a librarian in 1924, corresponding with her and referring to her as “Celia” through her two marriages at least until 1942. Williams struggled throughout his life to reconcile this (probably unconsummated) affair with his devout Anglican faith. Also incongruous with his faith was a deep interest in magic and the supernatural: Williams joined a group called the Order of the Golden Dawn in 1917, a group interested in both Christianity and the occult. In this group, he met Evelyn Underhill (the famous student of mysticism) and later wrote an introduction to her published letters in 1943. In short, women seem to have been particularly attracted to Williams, who had a personal magnetism that created disciples. Other acquaintances found him murky or unintelligible. It is safe to say that Lewis fell into the first of these categories and Tolkien into the second. In Williams’s mature work, he stressed two chief doctrines. One was the concept of what he called the “co-inherence” of all human creatures (that is, the idea that we are all dependent on one another). The second was his “romantic theology,” or the idea that lovers should see a reflection of god in one another—a concept he found most thoroughly demonstrated in Dante and Beatrice, and which he probably applied to his infatuation with Phyllis Jones. These ideas lay behind his novels, the first of which, War in Heaven, was published in 1930. Five more appeared within the next five years, including The Place of the Lion (1931), which Neville Coghill read in 1936 and enthusiastically shared with his fellow Inkling C. S. Lewis. That same year, Williams read Lewis’s Allegory of Love for the Oxford University Press, and the two began to exchange letters. The following year, Williams’s novel Descent into Hell was published by Faber & Faber, with the wholehearted support of T. S. Eliot. Williams followed this in 1938 with his cycle of

Arthurian poetry, Taliessin through Logres, which Lewis also enjoyed, though it met with meager sales. When the war forced Williams to relocate to Oxford in 1939, Lewis invited him to become a regular member of the Inklings. Lewis and Tolkien immediately sought to bring him into the English faculty at Oxford, since faculty numbers at the time were depleted by the war, and Williams gave a series of lectures on Milton that were well attended. In 1943, he also published his most important work of literary criticism, The Figure of Beatrice. Consequently, he was awarded an honorary M.A. by Oxford University in 1943. Two of Williams’s most important late works were developed and discussed at meetings of the Inklings, where the common practice was to read working drafts to one another and receive feedback from the other members. Williams certainly read the group poems from his second volume of Arthurian poetry, The Region of the Summer Stars (1944); Tolkien remarked in a letter to Anne Barrett that “I actively disliked his Arthurian-Byzantine mythology” (Letters 349). In the same letter, he also mentioned that “I was in fact a sort of assistant midwife at the birth of All Hallows Eve [Williams’s last novel, published in 1945], read aloud to us as it was composed, but the very great changes made in it were I think mainly due to C.S.L.” (349). In general, Tolkien wrote in 1965 concerning Williams that “We liked one another and enjoyed talking (mostly in jest) but we had nothing to say to one another at a deeper (or higher) levels.  .  .  . I had read or heard a good deal of his work, but found it wholly alien, and sometimes very distasteful, occasionally ridiculous. . . . I remained entirely unmoved. Lewis was bowled over” (361–362). It has been suggested that part of Tolkien’s distaste for Williams was jealousy, since he in some ways displaced Tolkien in Lewis’s affections. It is certainly true that Tolkien disliked the final novel in Lewis’s space trilogy, That Hideous Strength (1945), in large part because of Williams’s clear influence on it. As the end of the war approached, and Williams’s return to London seemed imminent, Lewis began to plan a Festschrift in his honor. But quite unexpectedly, Williams became ill in May 1945,

Wiseman, Christopher   619 and he died suddenly after an operation on May 15. Tolkien wrote a quick note to his wife that same day, expressing his sincere condolences and saying “in the (far too brief) years since I first met him I had grown to admire and love your husband deeply, and I am more grieved than I can express” (Letters 115). Williams was buried in Holywell Cemetery in Oxford, his headstone bearing the single word poet. The celebratory volume that Lewis had planned became a memorial volume, to which Tolkien contributed his famous lecture “On Fairy-Stories.” Further Reading Carpenter, Humphrey. Tolkien: A Biography. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1977. Tolkien, J. R. R. The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien. Edited by Humphrey Carpenter. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1981.

Wiseman, Christopher  (1893–1987)  Christopher Wiseman was the son of the Methodist pastor Frederick Luke Wiseman and his wife, Elsie, both of whom encouraged Christopher’s early interest in music. Frederick Wiseman was pastor of the Birmingham Central Mission, and the family lived in Edgbaston, near Tolkien’s home. Christopher Wiseman first met J. R. R. Tolkien in the Fifth Class at King Edward’s School in Birmingham, where, at the age of 12, they became friends and rivals in the classroom and on the rugby field. Tolkien placed first in their class in 1905, and Wiseman second. They both had a strong interest in Latin and Greek, and they remained friends through the remainder of their schooling at King Edward’s. Wiseman was active in a number of school societies, serving as sports secretary, football vice captain, prefect, sublibrarian, house swimming captain, a member of the Debating Society, and editor of the school magazine. More important for Tolkien, he, Wiseman, and their mutual friend Vincent Trought formed the core of the informal society that became known as the t. c. b. s., eventually joining with Rob Gilson, son of the headmaster, and finally G. B. Smith. At King Edward’s, Tolkien was closer to Wiseman than to his other friends because of their mutual interest in religion. Tolkien was a devout Catholic and Wiseman a Methodist,

but they enjoyed discussing and debating points of religion, and came to call themselves the “Twin Brethren,” a subgroup within the larger T. C. B. S. In 1912, Wiseman went up to Cambridge to read mathematics, though he continued playing sports and composing music (one of his compositions was accepted into the Methodist Hymnal). Although Trought had died early in 1912, the remaining members of the T. C. B. S. managed to keep in touch, and to meet over school holidays. Wiseman’s family moved to Wandsworth in London in 1913, and during the Christmas holidays of 1914, the T. C. B. S. members met at Wiseman’s home in what Tolkien later was to call the “Council of London,” during which the four young men discussed their aspirations and resolved to use their artistic talents to change what they saw as the corrupt state of the arts in England. It was after this meeting that Tolkien decided to become a poet. Wiseman enlisted in the Royal Navy in 1915 as a mathematics instructor. He served on the HMS Superb during the war and corresponded regularly with Tolkien, providing his friend with commentary on his poetry, which Tolkien sent him regularly. He generally approved of Tolkien’s verse, and he was so taken with Tolkien’s poem “Woodsunshine” in 1914 that he set it to music. But he did occasionally warn Tolkien that his verse was somewhat overblown and needed the discipline of more restraint. With Tolkien, Wiseman mourned the deaths of their friends, Gilson and Smith, when both were killed in France in 1916. In fact, it was Wiseman who informed Tolkien of Smith’s demise: From the Superb, he wrote his friend on December 16, 1916: I have just received news from home about G.B.S., who has succumbed to injuries received from shells bursting on December 3. I can’t say very much about it now. I humbly pray Almighty God I may be accounted worthy of him. (qtd. in Carpenter 86)

In 1917, at Smith’s mother’s request, Wiseman worked with Tolkien and their old schoolmaster, R. W. Reynolds, to edit a volume of Smith’s poetry for publication. Wiseman was instrumental in the decision to limit the volume to poems they con-

620   wizards sidered Smith’s best, rather than simply publishing everything their friend had written. Wiseman also suggested an arrangement of the poetry that he considered effective, arguing against a simple chronological order. A Spring Harvest, the poems of G. B. Smith, was published by Erskine Macdonald in 1918. When the war ended, Wiseman returned to Cambridge, where he studied physics and later worked in Ernest Rutherford’s research lab. He taught mathematics at Kingswood School in Bath from 1921 to 1926, and he later spent more than 25 years as headmaster at Queen’s College, a private Methodist school in Taunton, Somerset. His early interest in music remained, and he often gave recitals at Queen’s College while continuing to write music as a sideline. He remained in touch with Tolkien through the years, though their career paths were so divergent that they seldom saw each other. Still, Tolkien named his third son, Christopher, after Wiseman, and he is known to have visited his old friend at his retirement home in Milford-on-Sea near Bournemouth in 1972, after his wife, Edith Bratt Tolkien, had died. He followed the visit with a letter to Wiseman dated May 24, 1973, in which he calls himself “Your most devoted friend” (Letters 429). It was their last communication, as Tolkien died early in September. Wiseman survived another 14 years, well into his 90s. Further Reading Tolkien, J. R. R. The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien. Edited by Humphrey Carpenter. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1981. Carpenter, Humphrey. Tolkien: A Biography. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1977.

wizards  See Istari. Wood, Elijah  (Elijah Jordan Wood)  (1981–  )  Elijah Wood is an American actor who gained worldwide fame in the part of Frodo in New Line Cinema’s blockbuster film trilogy of Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings. Wood was born in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, on January 28, 1981. He was the second of three children of Debra Krause Wood and Warren W. Wood,

Cover of The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King Visual Companion, published in 2003 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. The cover image shows the American actor Elijah Wood in the role of Frodo in Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings film trilogy.

who operated a delicatessen in Cedar Rapids. Wood acted in school productions of The Sound of Music and The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. His mother thought he had talent and took him to Los Angeles for the annual convention of the International Modeling and Talent Association. Wood soon began getting small acting jobs in commercials and on television. In 1990, he landed his first major film role in Barry Levinson’s Avalon. Parts followed in Paradise (1991); Radio Flyer (1992); Forever Young, with Mel Gibson (1992); and The Good Son, with Macauley Culkin (1993). In 1994, Wood appeared in the box-office failure North, but his performance was acclaimed even by critics who disliked the film. That same year he also appeared with Kevin Costner in The War, a role that netted him a nomination for a Young Star

Wrenn, C. L   621 award. In his review of the film for the Sun Times, Roger Ebert wrote: “Elijah Wood has emerged, I believe, as the most talented actor in his age group, in Hollywood history.” His subsequent role in the critically acclaimed The Ice Storm (1997) helped Wood transition into more adult roles. He followed this in 1998 with roles in the box-office hits Deep Impact and The Faculty before being chosen by Peter Jackson to appear in the hugely successful Lord of the Rings project. For the next year and a half, he was in New Zealand filming the trilogy. When The Fellowship of the Ring was released in 2001, Wood received top billing among a cast that included Ian McKellen, Cate Blanchett, Christopher Lee, Sean Bean, Liv Tyler, and Viggo Mortensen. When he left New Zealand, Jackson gave him the props of the One Ring and his sword Sting, as well as the prosthetic hobbit feet that he wore during the movie. Like the other actors who played members of the Fellowship, Wood has a tattoo of the Quenya symbol for the number 9 in Tengwar script. After the huge success of the trilogy through 2003, Wood consciously tried to take roles that resisted type casting. He appeared first in the critically acclaimed films Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004), Sin City (in which he played a serial killer), and Everything is Illuminated (2005). In 2007, he was the voice of the tap-dancing penguin Mumble, the main character of the animated hit Happy Feet. Wood has also diversified his interests in recent years. A music buff with a collection of some 4,000 CDs, he started his own record label, Simian Records, in 2005. He became the voice of the popular video-game character Spyro the Dragon in 2006. In 2008, on the program Jack Osbourne: Celebrity Adrenaline Junkie, Wood became the first person ever to cross Victoria Falls on a rope swing. Most recently, he was cast in the pilot of a TV series called Wilfred, scheduled to air on FX. In 2009, he received the Midnight Award at the San Francisco Film Festival, awarded to a young American actor for outstanding contributions to film. Wood-elves  (Silvan elves)  The Wood-elves, also known as Silvan elves, comprised those elves

living near the Ered Luin (or Blue Mountains) who were not numbered among the Eldar or the Sindar. They were more numerous than the Eldar and generally not as wise or noble, though they were still among the free peoples of Middle-earth. Most of the Silvan elves were probably descended from the Avari, those elves who refused the call of the Valar to cross the sea and live in Valinor. Some of them were probably also descended from the Nandor, the group of Teleri who began the trek to the West but were confounded by the Misty Mountains and turned back at that point. Silvan elves lived in the woods and the mountains. In the First Age, many of them lived in Ossiriand and were called the Laiquendi, or Greenelves. In the Third Age, many of them lived in kingdoms ruled by Eldar or Sindar lords, particularly in Lothlórien, ruled by the Noldor Galadriel and the Sindar elf Celeborn of Doriath; and Mirkwood, or the Woodland Realm, ruled by the Sindarin elf king Thranduil, the father of Legolas. The Wood-elves spoke a language of their own, related to Quenya and Sindarin. In the Third Age, however, all of the elves of Middle-earth seem to have communicated in Sindarin. Wrenn, C. L.  (Charles Leslie Wrenn)  (1895– 1969)  C. L. Wrenn was a British literary scholar who taught at the University of Leeds (see Leeds, University of), the University of London, and Oxford University, where he succeeded Tolkien as Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon. While at Oxford, he was an occasional member of the Inklings, the discussion group including Tolkien and C. S. Lewis. Wrenn earned his degree at Queen’s College, Oxford University. He taught at the University of Leeds from 1928 to 1930, a few years after Tolkien had left. He then became university lecturer in English language at Oxford from 1930 to 1939. He became close to Tolkien at that time, his wife, Agnes, being one of the few university wives befriended by Tolkien’s wife, Edith Bratt Tolkien. The two families vacationed together in 1932 at Lamorna Cove in Cornwall, where Tolkien and

622   Wright, Joseph Wrenn purportedly held a swimming race while wearing Panama hats and smoking pipes. In 1938, when his former student Elaine Griffiths abandoned her revision of Clark Hall’s modern translation of Beowulf, Tolkien recommended Wrenn to complete the job, which he did fairly quickly. The publication of the revised edition had to wait for publication until 1940, however, because Tolkien dragged his feet completing the preface, published as “Prefatory Remarks on Prose Translation of ‘Beowulf.’ ” By that time, Wrenn had left Oxford to accept a position as professor of English language and literature at the University of London. However, when Tolkien gave up his Rawlinson and Bosworth chair after being elected Merton Professor of ­English Language and Literature, Wrenn was named to the Rawlinson and Bosworth Anglo-Saxon chair in 1946, keeping it until he took a leave of absence in 1963. Back at Oxford, he resumed his friendship with Tolkien. Writing of attending a “ham-feast” at Lewis’s house in 1952 with some of the Inklings, Tolkien mentioned that Wrenn had attended “and he was very pleasant: a good step towards weaning him from ‘politics’ (academic)” (Letters 161). In a later letter from 1956, however, after the publication of The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien mentioned Wrenn specifically as one of his “philological colleagues” who was “shocked (cert. behind my back, sometimes to my face) at the fall of a philological into ‘Trivial literature’; and anyway the cry is: ‘now we know how you have been wasting your time for 20 years’ ” (238). Wrenn’s opinion did not, however, cause a rift in their friendship, and in 1962 he coedited (with Norman Davis) the volume English and Medieval Studies Presented to J. R. R. Tolkien on the Occasion of His Seventieth Birthday, to which he contributed an essay of his own entitled “Magic in an AngloSaxon Cemetery.” This was only one of many important scholarly publications Wrenn brought forth after his return to Oxford—far more than Tolkien had ever published himself. Aside from the revised Beowulf translation, which was reissued in 1950, Wrenn also published The Poetry of Caedmon (1947); The English Language (1949); his own edition of Beowulf

and the Finnesburg Fragment (1953), which went through three editions; An Old English Grammar (1955), cowritten with Randolph Quirk; A Study of Old English Literature (1967), which became a popular text for students; Word and Symbol: Studies in English (1967); and The Idea of Comparative Literature (1968). Further Reading Tolkien, J. R. R. The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien. Edited by Humphrey Carpenter. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1981.

Wright, Joseph  (1855–1930)  Joseph Wright was a highly influential philologist who taught Greek, Latin, and Germanic philology at Oxford University, and he was one of the most inspiring instructors of Tolkien’s university career. But it was, in fact, Tolkien’s purchase of Wright’s Primer of the Gothic Language in 1910, well before he started at Oxford, that was, apparently, a turning point in his life. Tolkien told his biographer, Humphrey Carpenter, that when he opened the book, he “immediately experienced ‘a sensation as full of delight as first looking into Chapman’s Homer” (Carpenter 37). He bought the book, he said in a 1965 letter, from “a school friend interested in missionary work, who had thought it a Bible Society product and had no use for what it was. I was fascinated by Gothic itself: a beautiful language, which reached the eminence of liturgical use” (Letters 357). Tolkien elaborated on this in a 1969 letter to his son Christopher, noting that “It was the acquisition of this by accident that opened my eyes to a window on ‘Gmc. Philology’. No doubt it contributed to my poor performance in Hon. Mods.’ Though it guided me to sit at the feet of old Joe in person. He proved a good friend and adviser. Also he grounded me in G[reek] and L[atin] philology” (Letters 397). Wright was a self-made man who rose from a working-class Yorkshire background to become the top scholar in his field and an Oxford professor of comparative philology. Born in Yorkshire, the son of a “navvy,” or common construction laborer, he began working for a woolen mill at the age of six, never having had any formal schooling. At the

Yavanna   623 age of 15, he became jealous of his fellow workers who were able to read the newspaper, and he taught himself to read and write. In the process, he became fascinated with languages and studied German and French in night school. He studied Latin and mathematics in the evening as well, still rising each day at 5 a.m. for his job in the mill. At the age of 18, he started his own night school in his mother’s cottage, teaching his fellow workers at a rate of two pence a week. Finally, at the age of 21, Wright had saved enough money for a term at the University of Heidelberg in Germany, where he studied Sanskrit, Gothic, Old Norse, Old English, and other Slavic and Germanic languages. In 1885, he was awarded his Ph.D., having written on the Indo-Germanic vowel system in Greek. When he returned to ­England, he was made deputy professor at Oxford in 1891 and, from 1901 to 1925, professor of comparative philology. At Oxford, Wright focused on Germanic languages, and in addition to the primer of the Gothic language that so excited the young Tolkien, he wrote introductory grammars for Old English, Middle English, Old High German, and Middle High German as well. His greatest interest was in English dialects, and the six-volume ­English Dialect Dictionary, published between 1898 and 1905, is still the definitive work on the subject for the 19th century. In the course of his research, Wright also formed the Yorkshire Dialect Society. During his research for the Dialect Dictionary, Wright was offered a lucrative position at a Canadian institution, but he opted to remain at Oxford. In 1896, he married his former student Elizabeth Mary Lea, whose interests were in line with his own and who coauthored his Old and Middle English grammars with him. He was also acquainted with Thomas Hardy, with whom he corresponded about his dictionary, and was much admired by Virginia Woolf. Tolkien first came to Wright in 1912 and found him to be a demanding and inspiring teacher whose enthusiasm for philology stayed with his student throughout his academic career. Years later, Tolkien remembered sitting in Wright’s large house on Banbury Road in Oxford, attending Yorkshire teas on Sunday afternoons or sitting at one end

of Wright’s huge dining room table “ ‘learning the elements of Greek philology from glinting glasses in the further gloom’ ” (Carpenter 56). Wright apparently never forgot his humble origins, and he insisted that Tolkien keep in mind the practical side of scholarship. Upon learning that Tolkien had some interest in Welsh, he told his young charge, “Go in for Celtic, lad; there’s money in it” (qtd. in Carpenter 56). In a letter to his son Michael in 1963, Tolkien recalled “words of warning given me by old Joseph Wright: ‘What do you take Oxford for, lad?’ ‘A university, a place of learning.’ ‘Nay, lad, it’s a factory! And what’s it making? I’ll tell you. It’s making fees. Get that in your head, and you’ll begin to understand what goes on’ ” (Letters 336). Wright and his wife, Elizabeth, had two children, but they died in infancy. Elizabeth survived Wright, and after his death in 1930, she wrote a biography of him called The Life of Joseph Wright (1932). His relationship with Tolkien remained strong, and in 1925 he wrote a letter to support Tolkien’s application for the Rawlinson and Bosworth Chair of Anglo-Saxon. After Wright’s death, Tolkien was named executor of his will. Further Reading Carpenter, Humphrey. Tolkien: A Biography. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1977. Tolkien, J. R. R. The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien. Edited by Humphrey Carpenter. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1981.

Yavanna  (Kementári)  One of the eight most important Valar, the godlike guardians of Arda in Tolkien’s legendarium, Yavanna is the Vala responsible for the living things of Arda, in particular the olvar, or plants. Her name in Quenya means “giver of fruits,” and she was also called Kementári, or “Queen of the Earth.” It was Yavanna who planted the original seeds of all the plants in Arda, and in the Elder Days she visited Middle-earth often, watching over her creations. Yavanna was the Vala responsible for the creation of the Two Trees in the golden age of Valinor, and she created, as well, Galathilion, the white tree of the Eldar in Valinor, in the image of Tel-

624   Yavanna perion. Galathilion was the ancestor of the White Trees of Númenor and, finally, of the White Trees of Gondor. When the evil Melkor destroyed the Two Trees, Yavanna could not recreate them. Consequently, she became the implacable enemy of Melkor and supported action by the Valar to defeat him. Yavanna was the wife of Aulë the Smith, the craftsman of the Valar, and after the destruction of the Two Trees, Aulë created the sun and moon at her request, in order to bring her seeds to life. When her husband created the dwarves, and the creator god Ilúvatar blessed their existence, Yavanna feared for the existence of her beloved trees at the mercy of the dwarves’ axes. At her request, Ilúvatar created the ents to protect the trees.

When Yavanna chose to take visible form, it was usually as a tall beautiful woman dressed in green. Sometimes, however, she would take the form of a great tree. She also was mistress of magnificent gardens in Valinor, where undying flowers bloomed. The Eldar believed that the honey of these flowers was the source of the elvish cordial called miruvóre. This golden drink, which the Eldar used at their festivals, had the property of restoring strength and vitality. In The Fellowship of the Ring, Gandalf receives a flask of miruvóre from Elrond when the Fellowship sets forth, and the wizard gives each of the Fellowship a sip of the drink during their harrowing attempt to climb Caradhras and another when they enter Moria.

Part IV

Appendices

Chronology of Tolkien’s Life and Works 1903 Tolkien leaves St. Philips. In the fall, Tolkien returns to King Edward’s School on scholarship.

1892 January 3: John Ronald Reuel Tolkien is born in Bloemfontein, South Africa, the son of Arthur Reuel Tolkien and Mabel Suffield Tolkien.

1904 November 14: Tolkien’s mother, Mabel, dies of diabetes.

1894 February 17: Tolkien’s younger brother, Hilary Arthur Reuel Tolkien, is born.

1905 Tolkien and Hilary go to live with their Aunt Beatrice in Stirling Road.

1895 Tolkien returns with his mother and brother to England.

1908 The brothers move into Mrs. Faulkner’s house in Duchess Road. Tolkien meets Edith Bratt, three years his senior.

1896 February 15: Tolkien’s father, Arthur, dies in South Africa. Summer: Mabel Tolkien and her sons move to a cottage in Sarehole, near Birmingham in the West Midlands.

1909 Father Morgan discovers Tolkien’s romance with Edith. Tolkien fails to obtain a scholarship to Oxford University.

1900 June: Mabel Tolkien and her family join the Roman Catholic Church. The Tolkien family moves to Moseley, a suburb of Birmingham. September: Tolkien begins attending King Edward’s School.

1910 Tolkien and Hilary move to a new house. Father Morgan persuades Tolkien to postpone his romance with Edith until he is 21. March: Edith moves to Cheltenham.

1901 The Tolkien family moves to King’s Heath.

1911 Formation of the T. C. B. S. Tolkien enters Exeter College, Oxford, to study Classics.

1902 The Tolkien family moves to Oliver Road, Edgbaston. Tolkien and his brother attend St. Philip’s Grammar School

1913 January: Tolkien turns 21. He renews his relationship with Edith Bratt, changes Oxford course 627

628   Critical Companion to J. R. R. Tolkien of study to English language and literature, and visits France with a Mexican family.

1922 E. V. Gordon joins the faculty at Leeds.

1914 January: Edith converts to Catholicism; she and Tolkien are formally engaged. August: Outbreak of World War I.

1924 Tolkien is promoted to professor of English. He buys a house on Darnley Road. Son Christopher Reuel is born.

1915 June: Tolkien receives a first-class degree. He is commissioned as a second lieutenant in the 11th Lancashire Fusiliers and begins his training.

1925 With Gordon, Tolkien publishes an edition of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. He is appointed Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of AngloSaxon at Oxford and buys a house on Northmoor Road.

1916 March 22: Tolkien marries Edith in Warwick. June: He is sent to France to fight in Battle of the Somme. November: He contracts trench fever and is invalided home to hospital in Birmingham. 1917 January: Convalescing in Great Haywood, Tolkien begins putting together The Book of Lost Tales (which would eventually become The Silmarillion). After Great Haywood, he returns to duty in Yorkshire, but then goes back to the hospital for much of the year. November 16: Son John Francis Reuel is born. 1918 Promoted to Lieutenant, Tolkien is assigned to the Humber Garrison and then to Staffordshire. November 11: Armistice ends the war. Tolkien returns to Oxford and begins working as assistant lexicographer for the New English Dictionary project. 1919 Tolkien moves with Edith and John to 1 Alfred Street, Oxford.

1926 Tolkien befriends C. S. Lewis. The Coalbiters are formed. 1929 Daughter Priscilla Mary Reuel is born. 1930 The Tolkien family moves to a different house on Northmoor Road. Tolkien begins writing The Hobbit, but he abandons the manuscript. 1936 Lecture on “Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics.” Susan Dagnall, an editor at Allen & Unwin, reads the incomplete Hobbit manuscript and convinces Tolkien he should finish the novel. 1937 The Hobbit published by Allen & Unwin. Stanley Unwin suggests a sequel, and Tolkien begins work on what would become The Lord of the Rings.

1920 Tolkien obtains an academic position as reader in the English language at the University of Leeds. October: Son Michael Hilary Reuel is born.

1939 Tolkien gives his lecture “On Fairy-Stories” at St. Andrews University. Charles Williams joins the Inklings. September: Outbreak of World War II.

1921 Edith, Michael, and John join Tolkien in Leeds, residing at 11 St. Mark’s Terrace.

1945 Tolkien becomes Merton Professor of English Language and Literature.

Chronology of Tolkien’s Life and Works   629 1947 The Tolkien family moves to a new house on Manor Road. 1949 Tolkien publishes Farmer Giles of Ham. The manuscript of The Lord of the Rings is completed. 1950 Tolkien offers The Lord of the Rings to the Collins publishing house. The Tolkien family moves to Holywell Street. 1952 Collins returns The Lord of the Rings, declining to publish it. Tolkien sends the manuscript to Allen & Unwin. 1953 The Tolkien family moves to the Oxford suburb of Headington. 1954 Publication of the first two volumes of The Lord of the Rings. October: Tolkien receives an honorary doctorate from the University of Liège in Belgium. 1955 Publication of The Return of the King by Allen & Unwin completes the trilogy. 1959 Tolkien retires from teaching. 1962 The Adventures of Tom Bombadil is published.

1964 Tree and Leaf is published. 1965 An unauthorized paperback version of The Lord of the Rings is published in the United States by Ace Books. An authorized publication of the trilogy by Ballantine Books comes out in paperback later in the year. 1967 Smith of Wootton Major is published. 1968 Tolkien and Edith move to Poole near Bournemouth to escape from the public spotlight. 1971 November 22: Edith Tolkien dies. 1972 Tolkien returns to live at Oxford, moving into rooms on Merton Street. He is awarded an honorary doctorate of letters by Oxford University and the CBE. 1973 September 2: Tolkien dies in Oxford. 1975 Posthumous publication of Tolkien’s translations of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Pearl, and Sir Orfeo. 1977 Posthumous publication of The Silmarillion, edited by Tolkien’s son Christopher.

Internet Sources A quick Google search of the name Tolkien yields approximately 6,820,000 hits. Obviously, only a tiny fraction of these are of any use to a scholar. Many are fan sites, although these will sometimes have information of scholarly interest. In the following list, I have included only the 16 sites that I have found most useful for teaching or research, or for valuable background information on Tolkien and his works, or that conveniently provide information that might be hard to find elsewhere.

on

Tolkien

the site is an illustrated hypertext encyclopedia of Middle-earth and the other realms of Tolkien’s Arda. Eventually the site will contain nearly 5,000 fully illustrated entries. Many are already completed and contain maps and other aids. There is a link to interactive calendars of Middle-earth, as well as a very thorough menu of other Tolkien sites on the Web. Entmoot: A Board Dedicated to the Works of J. R. R. Tolkien http://entmoot.tolkientrail.com/ This is another of the better Tolkien fan sites. Once again, this one is chiefly dedicated to discussion forums. There are many threads that can be followed on Tolkien’s various works. To contribute, you must register.

The Barrow-Downs http://forum.barrowdowns.com/index.php? One of the better “fan-based” sites, this one contains discussion forums that move through The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and The Silmarillion a chapter at a time. A Chronological Bibliography of the Writings of J. R. R. Tolkien http://www.forodrim.org/bibliography/tbchron.html This site, compiled by Åke Bertenstam, includes bibliographical references for everything Tolkien ever published in any form, including juvenilia in the King Edward’s School Chronicle, brief prefatory remarks to published works, reviews, letters to the editor, and the like, in addition to all of his poems, fiction, and scholarly works, no matter how obscure.

Gwaith-i-Pheddain http://www.elvish.org/gwaith/language.htm This is a Web site devoted exclusively to Tolkien’s invented languages of Middle-earth. You will find summaries of Quenya and Sindarin grammar, as well as courses in each that you can download. The site also contains essays on aspects of these tongues and original compositions by Tolkien enthusiasts in elven languages. Mythopoeic Society http://www.mythsoc.org/ The Mythopoeic Society is a literary and educational organization devoted to the works of Tolkien, C. S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and other fantasy writers. The society publishes the schol-

The Encyclopedia of Arda http://www.glyphweb.com/Arda This site is a work in progress, but a very valuable one. The personal project of Mark Fisher, 630

Internet Sources on Tolkien   631 arly periodical Mythlore as well as books concerning fantasy writers. It is also responsible for annual conferences, discussion groups, and awards. Their Web site includes information on these activities. Resources for Tolkienian Linguistics: An Annotated Guide http://www.elvish.org/resources.html This site, initiated and maintained by Carl F. Hostetter, is a good first site to visit for anyone interested in serious study of Tolkien’s invented languages. It includes links to excellent sites on the various languages and also the writing systems (Tengwar and Cirth), and links to courses in Quenya and Sindarin that can be downloaded free of charge. The site contains a significant collection of primary and secondary sources, reviews books and other materials, and contains recommendations for background study. This site has the advantage of having had advice from sources close to Tolkien himself. Ted Naismith: J. R. R. Tolkien Illustrations http://www.tednasmith.com/tolkien.html One of the best-known of Tolkien illustrators (famous for his calendars), Ted Naismith has a Web site featuring examples of his art, with this section devoted exclusively to his illustrations of Tolkien’s works. The site features more than 150 illustrations of Tolkien’s The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and The Silmarillion. The Thain’s Book http://www.tuckborough.net/ The Thain’s Book is an online encyclopedia of Middle-earth and Númenor. It contains a “People Index,” a “Place Index,” a “Creature Index,” a “Thing Index,” and an “Event Index,” as well as a “Full Index.” Individual entries are illustrated and include dates, vital statistics, and a genealogy for persons. The site also contains chronological charts of all four ages of Middle-earth. Like the Encyclopedia of Arda, this is a site in progress. It contained 1,436 entries at the time of this writing. Tolkien Gateway http://tolkiengateway.net/wiki/Main_Page

The Tolkien Gateway is one of the largest and most complex Tolkien sites on the Web. Founded by a Tolkien fan whose Web name is Hyarion in 2003, The Tolkien Gateway is a wiki—that is, a Web site that allows easy creation and editing of interlinked webpages, hence a community Web site. It bills itself as the largest Tolkien encyclopedia on the Internet, containing more than 8,000 articles; 5,000 images; and 100,000 edits. The site also includes its own Tolkien news Web site and runs an IRC chat network for Tolkien fans. The Tolkien Music List http://www.tolkien-music.com/ This Web site, administered by Chris Seeman, gives a discography of musical compositions and recordings inspired by or alluding to Tolkien’s literary works. The site documents more than 1,000 artists from all over the world. It provides lyrics, as well, to some of the pieces it indexes. Tolkien-Online.com http://www.tolkien-online.com/index.html This is an elaborate site with a menu that includes links to pages that give brief analyses of all of Tolkien’s major works, and to characters who appear in those works, as well as outlines and brief analyses of all volumes of The History of Middleearth. There are also pages on Tolkien news, scholarship, a biography of Tolkien, and links to other sites. The Tolkien Professor http://www.tolkienprofessor.com/ This site is particularly useful for educators. Corey Olsen, an English professor at Washington College in Maryland, launched this site in July 2009 to share his insights with general Tolkien readers beyond the walls of academia. As a specialist in medieval literature, he provides insights that are more informed than many others available on the Web. The most important aspect of the site is a collection of digital audio files that can be downloaded free of charge. These are recordings of Professor Olsen’s lectures on Tolkien’s works prepared for an undergraduate Tolkien course. The site also includes an online discussion forum, and a “virtual

632   Critical Companion to J. R. R. Tolkien bookstore” where users can browse books by and about Tolkien. Tolkien Society http://www.tolkiensociety.org/ The Tolkien Society is an organization in the United Kingdom whose aim is “to encourage and further interest in the life and works of the late Professor J. R. R. Tolkien.” The society publishes two periodicals, Amon Hen (a bimonthly bulletin) and Mallorn (an annual scholarly journal), as well as proceedings from their workshops and seminars, and details on how to order back issues of these are available on the site. A page concerning educational resources, with links to many other Tolkien sites as well as full-text online essays, is also available. This may be a good “first stop” as you explore Tolkien on the internet. Tolkien’s Middle-earth: Lesson Plans for Secondary School Educators http://www.houghtonmifflinbooks.com/features/ lordoftheringstrilogy/lessons/index.jsp This page is part of Houghton Mifflin’s Web site on Tolkien. It may be the most valuable site

for educators, particularly secondary school teachers. It contains, free of charge, resources for an entire course on Tolkien, with nine units on both The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings: “Introducing Tolkien and His Worlds”; “Riddles, Runes, and a Ring of Power”; “There and Back Again”; “One Ring to Rule Them All”; “The Tides of Fate Are Flowing”; “Treebeard’s Lament”; “Tolkien’s Moral Universe”; “War and Peace in Middle-earth”; and “The Quest Is Achieved.” Each unit contains a list of learning goals, comments for teachers, a preliminary quiz, a list of key terms, handouts, discussion topics, suggested activities, and a bibliography (with Web links). Tolkien’s Oxford http://users.ox.ac.uk/~tolksoc/TolkiensOxford/ index.html This is a very useful pictorial site that includes color photographs of places in Oxford associated with Tolkien, including all of the houses he lived in, the colleges with which he was associated, the site of his employment with the Oxford English Dictionary, his gravesite, and his favorite pub.

Bibliography

of Tolkien’s Works (chronology by date of publication)

Foreword to A New Glossary of the Dialect of the Huddersfield District, by Walter E. Haigh. London: Oxford University Press, 1928, xiii–xviii. “Ancrene Wisse and Hali Meiðhed.” Essays and Studies of the English Association 14 (1929): 104–126. “Looney.” Oxford Magazine 52, no. 9 (18 January 1934): 340. “Sigelwara Land.” Medium Ævum 1 (December 1932): 183–196; Medium Ævum 3 (June 1934): 95–111. “Chaucer as a Philologist: The Reeve’s Tale.” Transactions of the Philological Society (1934): 1–70. “Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics.” Proceedings of the British Academy 22 (1936): 245–295. “The Dragon’s Visit.” Oxford Magazine 55, no. 14 (4 February 1937): 342. The Hobbit; or There and Back Again. London: Allen & Unwin, 1937. “Prefatory Remarks on Prose Translation of ‘Beowulf.’ ” In Beowulf and the Finnesburg Fragment. A Translation into Modern English Prose by John R. Clark Hall, new edition revised by C. L. Wrenn, viii–xli. London: George Allen & Unwin, 1940. “Leaf by Niggle.” Dublin Review 216 (January 1945): 46–61. “The Lay of Aotrou and Itroun.” Welsh Review 4 (December 1945): 254–266. “On Fairy-Stories.” Essays Presented to Charles Williams, edited by C. S. Lewis, 38–89. London: Oxford University Press, 1947. (with S. R. T. O. d’Ardenne). “ ‘iþþlen’ in Sawles Warde.” English Studies: A Journal of English Letters and Philology 28 (1947): 168–170.

“Goblin Feet.” In Oxford Poetry 1915, edited by G. D. H. Cole and T. W. Earp, 64–65. Oxford, U.K.: Blackwell, 1915. “The Happy Mariners.” The Stapeldon Magazine 5, no. 26 (June 1920): 69–70. A Middle English Vocabulary. Oxford, U.K.: Clarendon Press, 1922. “The Clerkes Compleinte.” Gryphon: Journal of the University of Leeds 4, no. 3 (December 1922): 95. “Enigmata Saxonica Nuper Inventa Duo.” A Northern Venture: Verses by Members of the University of Leeds University School Association, 20. Leeds, U.K.: Swan Press, 1923. “The Happy Mariners.” A Northern Venture: Verses by Members of the University of Leeds University School Association, 25. Leeds, U.K.: Swan Press, 1923. “The City of the Gods.” Microcosm 8, no. 1 (Spring 1923): 8. “An Evening in Tavrobel.” In Leeds University Verse 1914–1924, 56. Leeds, U.K.: Swan Press, 1924. “The Lonely Isle.” In Leeds University Verse 1914– 1924, 57. Leeds, U.K.: Swan Press, 1924. “Some Contributions to Middle-English Lexicography.” Review of English Studies 1, no. 1 (1925): 210–215. “Light as Leaf on Lindentree.” Gryphon, N.S. 6, no. 6 (June 1925): 217. “The Devil’s Coach-Horses.” Review of English Studies 1, no. 3 (1925): 331–336. Gordon, E.V., co ed. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. London: Oxford University Press, 1925. 2nd ed. rev. Norman Davis, 1967.

633

634   Critical Companion to J. R. R. Tolkien (with S. R. T. O. d’Ardenne) “MS Bodley 34: A ReCollation of a Collation.” Studia Neophilologica 20, nos. 1/2 (1947–48): 65–72. Farmer Giles of Ham. London: Allen & Unwin, 1949. The Hobbit. Rev. ed. London: Allen & Unwin, 1951. “Middle English ‘Losenger’: Sketch of an Etymological and Semantic Enquiry.” Essais de philologie moderne. Paris: Société d’ Edition Les Belles Lettres, 1953. “The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth Beorhthelm’s Son.” Essays and Studies of the English Association n.s. 6 (1953): 1–18. The Fellowship of the Ring. London: Allen & Unwin, 1954. Second edition, 1967. The Two Towers. London: Allen & Unwin, 1955. Second edition, 1967. The Return of the King. London: Allen & Unwin, 1955. Second edition, 1967. “Imram.” Time and Tide 36 (December 3, 1955): 1,561. Preface to The Ancrene Riwle. Translated by M. B. Salu, introduction by Dom Gerard Sitwell. Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1956, v. Tolkien, J. R. R., ed. The English Text of the Ancrene Riwle: Ancrene Wisse: Edited from MS. Corpus Christi College, Cambridge 402. Introduction by N. R. Ker. EETS o.s. 249. London: Oxford University Press, 1962. The Adventures of Tom Bombadil. London: Allen & Unwin, 1962. “English and Welsh.” Introductory lecture in Angles and Britons. Vol. 1, The O’Donnell Lectures. Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1963, 1–41. Tree and Leaf. London: Allen & Unwin, 1964. [Reprint of Leaf by Niggle and revision of “On Fairy-Stories.”] “The Dragon’s Visit.” In Winter’s Tales for Children I, edited by Caroline Hillier and illustrated by Hugh Marshall, 84–87. London: Macmillan; and New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1965. “Once Upon a Time.” In Winter’s Tales for Children I, edited by Caroline Hillier and illustrated by Hugh Marshall, 56. London: Macmillan; New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1965. The Tolkien Reader. New York: Ballantine, 1966. [Reprints of “Homecoming,” Tree and Leaf, Farmer Giles of Ham, and The Adventures of Tom Bombadil]

“Tolkien on Tolkien.” Diplomat 18 (October 1966): 39. The Road Goes Ever On: A Song Cycle. London: Allen & Unwin, 1967. Smith of Wootton Major. London: Allen & Unwin, 1967. “For W.H.A.” Shenandoah 18 (Winter 1967): 96–97. Smith of Wootton Major and Farmer Giles of Ham. Reprint, New York: Ballantine, 1969. “A Letter from J. R. R. Tolkien.” In The Image of Man in C. S. Lewis, by William Luther White, 221–222. Nashville, Tenn.: Abingdon Press, 1969. “Once Upon a Time” and “The Dragon’s Visit.” In The Young Magicians, edited by Lin Carter, 254– 262. New York: Ballantine, 1969. “The Hoard.” In The Hamish Hamilton Book of Dragons, edited by Roger Lancelyn Green, 246–248. London: Hamish Hamilton, 1970. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Pearl, and Sir Orfeo. Edited by Christopher Tolkien. Translated into modern English. London: Allen & Unwin, 1975. The Father Christmas Letters. Edited by Baillie Tolkien. London: Allen & Unwin, 1976. The Silmarillion. Edited by Christopher Tolkien. London: Allen & Unwin, 1977. “Valedictory Address to the University of Oxford, 5 June 1959.” In J. R. R. Tolkien, Scholar and Storyteller: Essays in Memoriam, edited by Mary Salu and Robert T. Farrell, 16–32. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1979. Unfinished Tales of Númenor and Middle-earth. Edited by Christopher Tolkien. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1980. The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien. Edited by Humphrey Carpenter. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1981. The Old English Exodus. Text, translation, and commentary by J. R. R. Tolkien. Edited by Joan Turville-Petre. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981. Mr. Bliss. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1982. Finn and Hengest: The Fragment and the Episode. Edited by Alan Bliss. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1983. The Monsters and the Critics, and Other Essays. Edited by Christopher Tolkien. London: Allen & Unwin, 1983. The Book of Lost Tales I. Vol. 1 of The History of Middle-earth. Edited by Christopher Tolkien. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1983.

Bibliography of Tolkien’s Works   635 The Book of Lost Tales II. Vol. 2 of The History of Middle-earth. Edited by Christopher Tolkien. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1984. The Lays of Beleriand. Vol. 3 of The History of Middle-earth. Edited by Christopher Tolkien. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1985. The Shaping of Middle-earth. Vol. 4 of The History of Middle-earth. Edited by Christopher Tolkien. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1986. The Lost Road and Other Writings. Vol. 5 of The History of Middle-earth. Edited by Christopher Tolkien. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1987. The Return of the Shadow. Vol. 6 of The History of Middle-earth. Edited by Christopher Tolkien. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1988. The Treason of Isengard. Vol. 7 of The History of Middle-earth. Edited by Christopher Tolkien. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1989. The War of the Ring. Vol. 8 of The History of Middle-earth. Edited by Christopher Tolkien. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1990. Sauron Defeated. Vol. 9 of The History of Middle-earth. Edited by Christopher Tolkien. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1992. Morgoth’s Ring. Vol. 10 of The History of Middle-earth. Edited by Christopher Tolkien. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1993. The War of the Jewels. Vol. 11 of The History of Middle-earth. Edited by Christopher Tolkien. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1994. The Peoples of Middle-earth. Vol. 12 of The History of Middle-earth. Edited by Christopher Tolkien. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1996.

Roverandom. Edited by Wayne G. Hammond and Christina Scull. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1997. Farmer Giles of Ham: The Rise and Wonderful Adventures of Farmer Giles, Lord of Tame, Count of Worminghall, and King of the Little Kingdom. 50th anniversary edition. Edited by Christina Scull and Wayne G. Hammond. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1999. The Annotated Hobbit: Revised and Expanded Edition. Edited by Douglas A. Anderson. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2002. Smith of Wootton Major. Edited by Verlyn Flieger. New York: HarperCollins, 2005. The Tale of the Children of Húrin. Edited by Christopher Tolkien. London: HarperCollins and Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2007. “Chaucer as a Philologist: The Reeve’s Tale.” Tolkien Studies 5 (2008): 109–171. Tolkien on Fairy-Stories: Expanded Edition, with Commentary and Notes. Edited by Verlynn Flieger and Douglas A. Anderson. London: HarperCollins, 2008. Tales from the Perilous Realm. Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2008. [Reprints of Roverandom, Farmer Giles of Ham, The Adventures of Tom Bombadil, Smith of Wootton Major, “Leaf by Niggle,” and “On Fairy-Stories.”] The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún. Edited by Christopher Tolkien. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2009.

Bibliography

of

Secondary Sources Campbell, Joseph. The Hero with a Thousand Faces. 3rd ed. Novato, Calif.: New World Library, 2008. Carpenter, Humphrey. The Inklings: C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, Charles Williams, and Their Friends. New York: Ballantine, 1981. ———. Tolkien: A Biography. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1977. Carter, Lin. Tolkien: A Look Behind The Lord of the Rings. New York: Ballantine, 1969. Chance, Jane. “Subversive Fantasist: Tolkien on Class Difference.” In The Lord of the Rings 1954–2004: Scholarship in Honor of Richard E. Blackwelder, edited by Wayne G. Hammond and Christina Scull, 153–168. Milwaukee, Wisc.: Marquette University Press, 2006. Chance, Jane, and Alfred K. Siewers, eds. Tolkien’s Modern Middle Ages. New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2005. Chance, Jane, ed. Tolkien the Medievalist. London and New York: Routledge, 2002. Christopher, Joe R. “Tolkien’s Lyric Poetry.” In Tolkien’s Legendarium: Essays on the History of Middle-earth, edited by Verlyn Flieger and Carl F. Hostetter, 143– 160. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 2000. Collins, Robert A. “ ‘Ainulindale’: Tolkien’s Commitment to an Aesthetic Ontology.” Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts 11, no. 2 (2001): 257–265. Couch, Christopher L. “From Under Mountains to Beyond Stars: The Process of Riddling in Leofric’s The Exeter Book and The Hobbit.” Mythlore 51 (Autumn 1987): 9–13, 55. Crabbe, Katharyn F. J. R. R. Tolkien. New York: F. Ungar, 1981.

Alonso, Jorge Luis Bueno. “ ‘Eotheod’ Anglo-Saxons of the Plains: Rohan as the Old English Culture in J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings.” Anuario de investigación en literatura infantil y juvenil 2 (2004): 21–35. Auden, W. H. “Good and Evil in The Lord of the Rings.” Tolkien Journal 3 (1967): 5–8. ———. “The Hero is a Hobbit.” New York Times, 31 October 1954. Available online. URL: http://www. nytimes.com/1954/10/31/books/tolkien-fellowship. html. Accessed June 17, 2010. ———. “The Quest Hero.” Texas Quarterly 4 (1961): 81–93. Barnfield, Marie. “More Celtic Influences: Númenor and the Second Age.” Mallorn: Journal of the Tolkien Society 29 (August 1992): 6–13. ———. “Túrin Turambar and the Tale of the Fosterling.” Mallorn: Journal of the Tolkien Society 31 (December 1994): 29–36. Boethius. The Consolation of Philosophy. Edited by Douglas C. Langston. Translated by Richard H. Green. New York: Norton, 2010. Broadwell, Elizabeth. “Essë and Narn: Name, Identity, and Narrative in the Tale of Túrin Turambar.” Mythlore 64 (Winter 1990): 34–44. Bruce, Alexander M. “Maldon and Moria: On Byrhtnoth, Gandalf, and Heroism in The Lord of the Rings.” Mythlore 26, nos. 1/2 (Fall/Winter 2007): 149–159. ———. “Tolkien’s Spelling Beorhtnoth: A Case Study in Correcting the Past.” Paper presented at annual meeting of the Southeastern Medieval Association, Nashville, Tenn., October 15–17, 2009.

636

Bibliography of Secondary Sources   637 Croft, Janet Brennan, ed. Tolkien and Shakespeare: Essays on Shared Themes and Language. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 2007. Davis, Howard. “The Ainulindale: Music of Creation.” Mythlore 32 (Summer 1982): 6–10. Drout, Michael D. C. “J. R. R. Tolkien’s Medieval Scholarship and Its Significance.” Tolkien Studies: An Annual Scholarly Review 4 (2007): 113–176. ———. “The Rhetorical Evolution of ‘Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics.” In The Lord of the Rings 1954–2004: Scholarship in Honor of Richard E. Blackwelder, edited by Wayne G. Hammond and Christina Scull, 183–215. Milwaukee, Wisc.: Marquette University Press, 2006. ———. “Tolkien’s Prose Style and its Literary and Rhetorical Effects.” Tolkien Studies 1 (2004): 137–162. Drout, Michael D. C., ed. J. R. R. Tolkien Encyclopedia. London: Routledge, 2006. Eaglestone, Robert, ed. Reading The Lord of the Rings: New Writings on Tolkien’s Trilogy. London: Continuum, 2006. Ekman, Stefan. “Echoes of Pearl in Arda’s Landscape.” Tolkien Studies 6 (2009): 59–70. Evans, Jonathan. “Medieval Dragonlore in Middleearth.” Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts 9 (1998): 175–191. Evans, Robley. J. R. R. Tolkien. New York: Crowell, 1972. Fifield, Merle. “Fantasy in and for the Sixties: The Lord of the Rings.” English Journal 55 (October 1966): 841–844. Finn, Richard J. “Arthur and Aragorn: Journal of the Tolkien Society 43 (July 2005): 23–26. Fisher, Matthew A. “Working at the Crossroads: Tolkien, St. Augustine, and the Beowulf-poet.” In The Lord of the Rings 1954–2004: Scholarship in Honor of Richard E. Blackwelder, edited by Wayne G. Hammond and Christina Scull, 217–230. Milwaukee, Wisc.: Marquette University Press, 2006. Fitzgerald, Jill. “A ‘Clerkes Compleinte’: Tolkien and the Division of Lit. and Lang.” Tolkien Studies 6 (2009): 41–57. Flieger, Verlyn. “The Curious Incident of the Dream at the Barrow: Memory and Reincarnation in Middle-earth.” Tolkien Studies 4 (2007): 99–112.

———. “Frodo and Aragorn: The Concept of the Hero.” In Tolkien: New Critical Perspectives, edited by Neil D. Isaacs and Rose A. Zimbardo, 41–62. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1981. ———. “Missing Person.” Mythlore 12, no. 4 (Summer 1986): 12–15. ———. “Naming the Unnameable: the Neoplatonic ‘One’ in Tolkien’s Silmarillion.” In Diakonia: Studies in Honor of Robert T. Meyer, edited by Thomas Halton and Joseph P. Williman, 127–132. Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1986. ———. A Question of Time: J. R. R. Tolkien’s Road to Faërie. Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 1997. Foster, Robert. Tolkien’s World from A to Z: The Complete Guide to Middle-earth. Rev. ed. New York: Random House, 1978. Frye, Northrop. Anatomy of Criticism. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1957. Fuller, Edmund, et al. Myth, Allegory, and Gospel: An Interpretation of J. R. R. Tolkien, C. S. Lewis, G. K. Chesterton, Charles Williams. Minneapolis, Minn.: Bethany Fellowship, 1974. Garth, John. Tolkien and the Great War: The Threshold of Middle-earth. London: HarperCollins; Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2003. Gay, David Elton. “J. R. R. Tolkien and the Kalevala: Some Thoughts on the Finnish Origins of Tom Bombadil and Treebeard.” In Tolkien and the Invention of Myth: A Reader, edited by Jane Chance, 295–304. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2004. Gilliver, Peter. “At the Wordface: J. R. R. Tolkien’s Work on the Oxford English Dictionary.” In Proceedings of the Tolkien Centenary Conference 1992, edited by Patricia Reynolds and Glen Good­ Knight, 173–186. Milton Keynes, Eng.: Tolkien Society, and Altadena, Calif.: Mythopoeic Press, 1995. Gilliver, Peter, Jeremy Marshall, and Edmund Weiner. The Ring of Words: Tolkien and the Oxford English Dictionary. New York: Oxford University Press, 2006. Glyer, Diana. The Company They Keep: C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien as Writers in Community. Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 2007.

638   Critical Companion to J. R. R. Tolkien Godden, Malcolm. “Biblical Literature: The Old Testament.” In The Cambridge Companion to Old English Literature, edited by Malcolm Godden and Michael Lapidge, 206–226. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991. Goldberg, Robert. “Frodo as Beowulf: Tolkien Reshapes the Anglo-Saxon Heroic Ideal.” Mallorn: Journal of the Tolkien Society 44 (August 2006): 29–34. Green, William H. The Hobbit: A Journey into Maturity. New York: Twayne, 1995. Greenman, David. “The Silmarillion as Aristotelian EpicTragedy.” Mythlore 53 (Spring 1988): 20–25, 42. Grotta-Kurska, Daniel. J. R. R. Tolkien: Architect of Middle Earth: A Biography. Edited by Frank Wilson. Philadelphia: Running Press, 1976. Hammond, Wayne G., and Christina Scull, eds. The Lord of the Rings, 1954–2004: Scholarship in Honor of Richard E. Blackwelder. Milwaukee, Wisc.: Marquette University Press, 2006. Hammond, Wayne G., and Douglas A. Anderson. J. R. R. Tolkien: A Descriptive Bibliography. Winchester, U.K.: St. Paul’s Bibliographies, 1993. Hand, Elizabeth. “The Return of the King: A New Novel from the Creator of Middle-earth.” Washington Post, 22 April 2007, BW07. Hayes, Noreen, and Robert Renshaw. “Of Hobbits: The Lord of the Rings.” Critique 9 (1967): 58–66. Helms, Randel. Tolkien’s World. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1974. Hensher, Philip. “Húrin the Money.” Daily Telegraph, 28 April 2007. Available online. URL: http://www. telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/3664772/hurin-themoney.html. Accessed April 5, 2010. Hillegas, Mark R., ed. Shadows of the Imagination: The Fantasies of C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, and Charles Williams. Preface by Harry T. Moore. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1969. Himes, Jonathan B. “What Tolkien Really Did with the Sampo.” Mythlore 22, no. 4 (Spring 2000): 69–85. Honegger, Thomas, ed. Tolkien and Modernity 2. Zollikofen, Switzerland: Walking Tree, 2006. 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, no. 2 (April 2001): 97–105.

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Index Boldface entries and page numbers indicate major treatment of a topic. Italic page numbers denote photos or illustrations.

A AB language 36–37, 452, 520, 565 Ace Books 15 Adanedhel. See Túrin Adûnaic 616–617 “Advara-gull” (“Andvari’s Gold”) 148 “Adventures in Unnatural History and Medieval Metres” 30 Adventures of Tom Bombadil, The (collection) 15, 21–35, 554, 570 “Adventures of Tom Bombadil, The” (poem) 11, 21–22 Aeneid (Homer) 393 Aerin 52–53, 371, 486 Agamemnon 58 Agarwaen. See Túrin Agatha (saint) 58 Aglarond. See Helm’s Deep Ainulindalë 286, 345–348, 437, 451, 473, 535, 575 Ainur 345, 347, 451. See also Maiar; Valar Akallabêth 396–400, 558 Alatar 516 Aldaron. See Oromë Alf 415–417, 420 Ælfnoth 130 Ælfwine 321, 441, 451, 492, 596 alienation, in “The Sea Bell” 33 allegory elves as 380 in Exodus 494

“Leaf by Niggle” as 140, 143–144 Smith of Wootton Major as 415, 418–419 Tolkien on 142, 531 Allegory of Love, The (Lewis) 460 Allen & Unwin, works published by Farmer Giles of Ham 80 The Hobbit 12, 95, 478, 504, 606 “Leaf by Niggle” 140 Letters from Father Christmas 165 The Lord of the Rings 13, 175, 606–607 Mr. Bliss 316 Alqualondë 344, 353, 356 Aman 451–452. See also Valinor men forbidden from 396 Noldor in 596 Númenórean invasion of 397, 399 removal of 398 Valar in 351 Vanyar in 513, 596 Amandil 397 Amanyar 452. See also Noldor Amdír 533 American Indians, Rohirrim as 239 Amon Ethir 54, 372 Amon Hen 198–199 Amon Rûdh 49–50 Amon Sûl 186 Amroth 533 anachronism, in Farmer Giles of Ham 85 anagnorisis 238, 391 Anar 357–358 Anárion 452, 541

Ancalagon the Black 376–377, 482, 593 anchoresses. See Ancrene Wisse Ancrene Wisse (Ancrene Riwle) 452–453 Corpus Christi MS Cambridge 42 35–37 Griffiths’ work on 505 language of 35–37, 452 Salu edition 576 Tolkien edition 15, 35–36, 480 “Ancrene Wisse and Hali Meiðhad” 13, 35–37 Andróg 48–50 Anduin 196–198, 197, 453 Andúril. See also Narsil forging of 191, 552 in Rohan, surrender of 222 sources for 209–210, 613 Andvari 148, 403 Angband 453 Beren and Lúthien at 368 building of 351 Húrin in 45–46 Maedhros imprisoned in 359 in Nirnaeth Arnoediad 45, 556 power of Melkor in 355 siege of 360, 497, 616 Thangorodrim in 593 angels, Ainur as 347 Anglachel (Gurthang) in The Children of Húrin 47, 50, 51, 57, 63, 66 in The Silmarillion 370, 371, 372 Anglo-Saxon. See Old English Anglo-Saxons, Rohirrim as 239, 575 Angrist 368, 551 anima archetype, Galadriel as 214

641

Aotrou 137–138 Apolausticks 6, 453, 477 Aragorn (Strider, Elessar) 292–293 Arwen and 215, 288 character of 204–205 depiction in films 549, 550 early versions of 443 in The Fellowship of the Ring, synopsis 184–199 Galadriel and 215 healing powers of 280, 552 history of 205 identity of 205 as king 268–269, 276, 280, 502–503 language of 208 leadership of 212 Lothlórien and 215 marriage of 288 palantír used by 253, 278, 564 rebirth of, as king 276 in The Return of the King, synopsis 252–254, 258–262, 266–269 in Rivendell 573 as sacral king 280 sword of. See Narsil in Third Age 594 in The Two Towers, synopsis 217–218, 221–228 White Tree as symbol of 275 Aratar 349 Archie 316–317, 319 Arda 453–454 creation of 345–348, 451, 512 creation myths of 350–351

642   Critical Companion to J. R. R. Tolkien Melkor’s damage to 350 religion of 399 reshaping of 399–400 Ardenne, S. R. T. O. d’ 36, 136–137, 320, 454–455, 520 Aredhel 362–363, 500–501 Arien 357–358 Aristotle, on tragedy 67–68, 390–391 Arkenstone of Thrain 106, 108–109, 121–122 Army of the Dead 253–254, 261, 276 Arnor 455 decline of 402 founding of 401, 482, 489, 492 hobbits and 510–511, 580 Ar-Pharazôn 396–397 Artaxerxes 334, 335–337, 338–339 Arthedain 455 Arvedui 502 Arvernien 375–376 Arwen Evenstar Aragorn and 215, 288 in The Fellowship of the Ring 188 history of 207 in Lothlórien 533–534 mortality of 207, 288 in The Return of the King 269, 288 Aslaug 155, 164 Astin, Sean 455–456 Atani. See Edain Atlantis 398, 435–436 Atli 152–154, 159–160, 613 Atreus 58 Attila 146 Auden, W. H. 14, 33, 90, 90, 456–458 Augustine, on angels 347 Augustus Bonifacius Ambrosius Aurelianus Antoninus Pius. See king, in Farmer Giles of Ham Aulë the Smith 458 in creation of Arda 350–351 dwarves created by 61, 351, 378–379, 483 Khuzdul created by 521 Noldor loved by 348, 353 Tom Bombadil as 202 in Valar pantheon 348, 350 Aurvandil 394 Avallónë 396, 398 Avari 352, 458, 490. See also Wood-elves Azaghâl 369, 556

B Babbit (Lewis) 111 Baggins, Bilbo. See Bilbo Baggins Baggins, Frodo. See Frodo Baggins Bagginses (family), nature of 122 “Bagme Bloma” 424 Bakshi, Ralph 458–459 Balan, of Morte Darthur 61 Balin in The Fellowship of the Ring 191, 192–193 in The Hobbit 97, 98, 105, 110 in Moria 547 Balin, of Morte Darthur 61 ballad stanza 22, 23 Ballantine Books 15, 176 Balrogs 459 as ally of Melkor 349, 350 Fëanor attacked by 358– 359, 385 in The Fellowship of the Ring 193, 211 Gandalf’s defeat of 221–222 Glorfindel killed by 375 as Maia 211, 349, 350, 516 Melkor rescued by 355 in Moria 193, 211, 221– 222, 483, 544, 547 sources for 342, 566 in War of Wrath 376 Barad-dûr (Dark Tower, Lugbúrz) 217, 459, 489– 490, 544–545 Barad Eithel 586 Barahir 365, 366, 387 Bard 107–110, 121, 125 Barfield, Owen 11, 459–461, 514 Barliman Butterbur 184–185, 270–271 Barnfield, Marie 60 Barrow-downs 182–183 Barrow-wight 22, 203–204 Battle of Bywater 272 Battle of Dagorlad 246, 461, 489–490, 499, 516, 551 Battle of Five Armies 109 Battle of Fornost 474, 510– 511 Battle of Maldon, The 461– 462 “For W.H.A.” allusion to 91 heroic code in 284, 558 sequel to 129–134 as source for Gandalf’s death 211–212

Battle of the Pelennor Fields 462 archaism of 277 Easterlings in 486 Haradrim in 507 Helm’s Deep as foreshadower of 243 language used for 277 Minas Tirith in 542 in The Return of the King 255–259, 276–280 Rohirrim in 575 in Third Age 594 Battle of the Powers 453 Battle of the Somme 462–464, 463, 464 Gilson in 500, 591 Lancashire Fusiliers in 525 The Lord of the Rings influenced by 283 Smith in 588–589, 591 Tolkien in 8 Battle of the Sudden Flame. See Dagor Bragollach Battle of Unnumbered Tears. See Nirnaeth Arnoediad Baynes, Pauline 80 bears (characters) 316–317, 319 beast fables 326 Beleg Strongbow 46–50, 61–62, 68, 365, 368, 370–371 Beleriand 464–465. See also Nirnaeth Arnoediad; Wars of Beleriand destruction of 377, 454, 504 dwarves in 357 geography of 360–361, 385–386, 586 men in 363–364, 486, 487, 497, 506 Noldor in 359 orcs in 561 Sindar in 581–582 Beorhtnoth 129–130, 461–462 Beorhtwold 130 Beorn 102, 109–110, 116–117, 576 Bëor the Old 363–364, 365, 387, 465, 487 Beowulf 465–466 criticism on 37–39 dating of 39 in education of Tolkien 471, 522 as elegy 38–40, 292, 417 Finnsburg episode in 88–90 “For W.H.A.” allusion to 91

“The Hoard” inspired by 32 The Hobbit influenced by 120 as literature 332 The Lord of the Rings influenced by 176–177 ofermod in 85 Rohan compared to 242 structure of 39–40 sword in 114 theme of 38 Tolkien edition of 466 translation of 331–333, 505, 585 “Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics” 10, 37–40, 417, 466, 558 “Beowulf and the Heroic Age in England” (Chambers) 38 Beregond 252, 258–259 Beren 404–405. See also “Tale of Tinúviel, The” battle with Melkor 365 in The Book of Lost Tales 434 in Doriath 366, 481 in The Fellowship of the Ring 186, 205 Finrod and 551 inspiration for 9, 173 in “Light as Leaf on Lindentree” 172–173 Lúthien and 366–369, 388–389, 435, 539, 581 Silmaril recovered by 366–368, 374, 388, 389, 481, 539, 551 Sir Orfeo’s influence in 587 sources for 388–389 versions of story 388 Bible 62, 123–124, 347–348, 382–383, 399–400 Bifrost (rainbow bridge) 211 Bifur 97 Bilbo Baggins as author 24, 25, 570 Baggins nature of 122 “Bilbo’s Last Song” and 41 character of 111 as Christ figure 123–124 courage of 120, 122, 216 depiction in films 511 Frodo as successor to 207 as Grail Knight 121, 123 heroism of 95–96, 120 in The Hobbit 126 commentary on 110–125 synopsis of 97–110

Index   643 in The Lord of the Rings 177–178, 188–189, 190, 270, 274, 293–294 luck of 113, 114, 116, 120, 122, 576 masculinity of 111 maturation of 111, 113, 115–118, 121–123 Odysseus and 125 passage to Grey Havens 274 reunion with Frodo 206–207 the ring’s corrupting influence on 116, 199, 207 sword of. See Sting Took nature of 122 as trickster 118 “Bilbo’s Last Song (At the Grey Havens)” 40–41, 510, 574 bildungsroman, The Hobbit as 96, 111 Bill Ferny 184–186, 271 Bill the pony 185–186, 191, 271 birch 418, 427 Birmingham Oratory. See Oratory birth imagery 115, 119, 211, 250 Black Gate of Mordor 175, 230, 262, 266, 281, 507, 545 Black Númenóreans 507, 552 Black Riders. See Nazgûl Blanchett, Cate 466–467 Bliss, Alan 88, 90 Bloemfontein 4, 467, 597, 601 Blondel de Nesle 385 Bloom, Orlando 467–469, 468 blunderbuss 80, 84, 85 Bodleian Library 333 Bodley 34. See also Katherine group Ardenne edition of 36, 136–137, 320, 455 collation of 320 eaueres in 73 Katherine group in 520 language of 35–37 Sawles Warde in 136–137 scribe of 137, 320 Boethius 32, 125, 337–338, 347 Bofur 97 “Bombadil Goes Boating” 22–23 Bombur 97, 103, 108 Book of Lost Tales, Part 1, The 9, 10, 433 Book of Lost Tales, Part 2, The 9, 10, 433–434, 529

Bór 369, 486, 556 Boromir (grandson of Bëor) 364 Boromir (son of Denethor) 294–295 affection for Merry and Pippin 211 as Captain of the White Tower 472 character of 210–211, 216 death of 232, 238–239, 251 Faramir compared to 248 in The Fellowship of the Ring, synopsis 188–199 language of 208 the ring’s corruption of 216, 232 tragedy of 238 in The Two Towers 217, 232 Bournemouth 16, 469, 471, 596 Boyd, Billy 469–470 Bran 321 Brandir 53, 55–57, 68, 372 Bratt, Edith 470–471 in Bournemouth 469 death of 16, 17 early romance with 6, 545, 546 engagement to 7, 518 “Goblin Feet” and 91 health of 14, 16 Jennie Grove and 505 as Lúthien 9, 173, 388 marriage of 8, 597–598 Bree 183–186, 204, 270–271 Bregalad 220 Brethil Nargothrond and 551 in Nirnaeth Arnoediad 369, 487, 556 settlement of 364, 506 Túrin in 53, 55–56, 372, 507 Breton lays 137–139, 586 Brewerton, George 5–6, 471–472, 522 Brittany 138 Broceliande 138–139 Brodda 46, 52–53, 486 Bruno 316–317, 319 Brynhild 150, 151–152, 157, 158, 160, 612–613 “Brynhildr” 150 Bryson, John 472, 475 Buckland 22, 23, 511 Burgundians. See Niflungs Butterbur. See Barliman Butterbur

C Calaquendi 380 Campbell, Alistair 472 Canterbury Tales, The (Chaucer) “Chaucer as a Philologist: The Reeve’s Tale” 41–43 “The Clerkes Compleinte” influenced by 72 the Corrigan and 139 in education of Tolkien 471 The Hobbit influenced by 117 impossible task in 389 Wood-elves influenced by 117 Captain of the White Tower 472 Caradhras 191, 210, 543 Caranthir 506 Carcharoth 368, 615 Cardolan 455 Carn Dum 203–204 Carpenter, Humphrey 3, 3 Carr, Charlie 16–17, 472 Carr, Mavis 16–17, 472 Carrie, Christopher 601 Castamir 502 “Cat” 30–31, 603 “Cat and the Fiddle: A Nursery Rhyme Undone and Its Scandalous Secret Unlocked, The” 25 catharsis 391 Catholicism. See also Christianity of Edith Bratt 7, 470, 505, 518 in “Leaf by Niggle” 144 of Mabel Tolkien 4–5, 512, 545, 602 Caudimordax (Tailbiter) 81–84 Cave Bear 167 cave paintings 167, 169–170 Celeborn (elf) 135, 195–196, 269, 472–473, 533–534 Celeborn (White Tree) 353, 592, 596 Celebrimbor 400–401, 403, 473, 547, 552 Celegorm 367–368, 374, 389 Celtic. See Welsh Celtic folklore 213, 321, 323, 398 Certhas Daeron. See Cirth Chambers, R. W. 38 Change of the World 454 chansons de geste 23 character as fate 59, 61, 62–63, 69–70 Charles James O’Donnell Lecture 75

Chaucer, Geoffrey. See also Canterbury Tales, The “The Clerkes Compleinte” influenced by 72 Coghill’s work on 475–476 Legend of Good Women 314 Middle English lays of 139 study of 429 “Chaucer as a Philologist: The Reeve’s Tale” 10, 41–43 Chequers Club 8, 477 Children of Eru. See Children of Ilúvatar Children of Húrin, The 43–70 The Book of Lost Tales and 433 character as fate in 61, 62–63, 69–70 characters of 68–70 commentary on 57–68 Easterlings in 486 as Greek tragedy 67–68 Nirnaeth Arnoediad in 556 publication of 18, 599 reconstruction of 44 reviews of 44 sources for 555, 576 synopsis of 44–57 writing of 43–44 “Children of Húrin, The” 9, 11 Children of Ilúvatar 345–346, 351, 473. See also elves; men Children of the Earth. See Children of Ilúvatar Children of the World. See Children of Ilúvatar children’s literature “The Dragon’s Visit” 74–75 fairy stories as 326–327, 527 The Hobbit as 95, 112 Mr. Bliss 315–320 Roverandom 333–339 chivalric romance 24, 66 Christ figures 123–124, 156, 241, 394 Christian freedom 337–338 Christianity in “The Lay of Aotrou and Itroun” 138–139 in “Leaf by Niggle” 144 of Lewis 10, 13, 484, 530, 535 in “On Fairy Stories” 328, 329 in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight 412–413

644   Critical Companion to J. R. R. Tolkien Christmas symbolism, in The Fellowship of the Ring 210 Chronicles of Narnia, The (Lewis) 14, 329, 531 Chrysophylax 81–84, 85, 86 Círdan the Shipwright 473–474 after Nirnaeth Arnoediad 370 Falathrim under 581–582 Narya held by 552 Noldor under 533, 558 Ulmo and 605 in Wars of Beleriand 361, 615 in White Council 617 Cirith Ungol 262–264 Cirth (Certhas Daeron) 357, 474, 521 “City of the Gods, The” 70– 71 class (socioeconomic) 200, 247–248 “Clerkes Compleinte, The” 71–72 Coalbiters (Kolbitar) 10, 472, 474–475, 480, 530, 560, 576 cock’s crow, in The Return of the King 277–278 Codex Regius. See Elder Edda Coghill, Nevill 11, 475–476, 514 Coleridge, Samuel Taylor 328 “Collation of the Katherine Group” (Furuskog) 320 Collins 13, 175, 537, 608, 614 Commentary on the Dream of Scipio (Macrobius) 203 common people in Farmer Giles of Ham 84–85 as heroes 118, 133, 205, 283–284 in “The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth” 131, 133 consolation, in fairy stories 247, 318, 327–328 Consolation of Philosophy (Boethius) 32, 125, 337– 338, 347 continental drift 167, 170 Cornwall 8 Corpus Christi MS Cambridge 42 35–37 Corrigan, the 138–139 “Cottage of the Lost Play, The” 94, 433 Cotton Nero A.x 564–565, 583 Cotton Vetellius A.xv. See Beowulf

courage. See also Northern heroic code of Bard 121 of Bilbo 120, 122, 216 of Frodo 216–217 in The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún 157 in pagan warrior culture 38 courtesy 412–414 Cracks of Doom. See Orodruin Craigie, W. A. 10, 476, 563 cransome bread 27–28, 108 creation, “Leaf by Niggle” as allegory of 143 Cuiviénen 352, 352, 476–477 Cuiviénenyarna 476 Cullis, Colin 8, 477 Curufin 367–368, 389 Curufinwë. See Fëanor Cynewulf 394, 477–478 Czech legend, as source for Nienor 67

D Daeron 366, 367, 474 Dagnall, Susan 12, 95, 478, 505 Dagor Aglareb (Glorious Battle) 360, 361, 497, 615–616 Dagor Bragollach (Battle of the Sudden Flame) 616 Edain in 487 Fingolfin in 390 Fingon in 496 in First Age 497 Hador in 506 Haladin in 501 in The Silmarillion 365 Dagorlad, Battle of. See Battle of Dagorlad Dain 107–108, 188–189 Dairon 172–173 dancing, in “Shadow-Bride” 31 Danes. See Vikings Dark Ages, The (Ker) 38 Dark Tower. See Barad-dûr “Dauði Sinfjötla” (“The Death of Sinfjötli”) 149 David (bibilical figure) 62 Davidman, Joy 14, 478–479, 514, 531–532 Davis, Norman 14–15, 429– 430, 479–480 Dawkins, R. M. 475, 480 Dead Marshes 28, 229–230, 246, 548 death, in “Leaf by Niggle” 143 “Deild” (“Strife”) 151–152

Denethor 295 heroic code lacking in 278, 558 palantír used by 259, 564 resentment of Gandalf 274–275 in The Return of the King, synopsis 251–252, 255– 256, 258–259, 261 Théoden compared to 278–279 Der Berggeist (Madelener) 111 Dernhelm. See Éowyn descent motif, in The Fellowship of the Ring 211 despair, as choice 281–282 “Devil’s Coach-Horses, The” 73–74 dialect in Ancrene Wisse 452 in Hali Meiðhad 73 in Pearl 564–565 in “The Reeve’s Tale” 41–43 in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight 413, 583, 584 of trolls 113 diction, of “The City of the Gods” 70–71 Dior 374, 481 discipline, in The Hobbit 121 disobedience, in The Return of the King 278, 279–280 divine child 202–203 divine jester 203 Divine Wisdom 202 Divoka Šarka 67 Dol Guldur 480–481 building of 542–543 in The Hobbit 127 as Sauron’s fortress 402, 459 in Third Age 593–594 White Council and 617 Doom of Mandos 356, 366– 367, 377, 557 Dori 97, 101 Doriath 481 Beren in 366 in The Children of Húrin 46–47, 53–54 destruction of 373–374, 391–392, 492, 498 under Dior 374 founding of 353, 357, 539 geography of 360 Húrin in 373, 391 in “Light as Leaf on Lindentree” 172–173 men prohibited from 364

in Nirnaeth Arnoediad 390, 555–556 protection of 357, 360, 481, 539, 582 Sindar in 581 Dorkinses 316–317 Dorlas 53, 55–57, 372 Dor-lómin 46, 52–53, 371, 487, 506 dragons 481–482. See also Fáfnir in The Children of Húrin. See Glaurung creation of 360 in “The Dragon’s Visit” 74–75 in Farmer Giles of Ham. See Chrysophylax in “The Hoard” 32 in The Hobbit. See Smaug in Letters from Father Christmas 166 in medieval lore 62 in Norse mythology 62 Tolkien’s interest in 62, 85 in Völsunga Saga. See Fáfnir in War of Wrath 376 “Dragon’s Visit, The” 74–75 drakes. See dragons Draugluin 367, 615 draugr 203 Drayton, Michael 92, 326 Dream of the Rood 34 dreams, in The Fellowship of the Ring 203–204 dream tales 326 Drúedain. See Woses Dublin Review 140 Dumbledors 24 Dunbar, William 23 Dúnedain 482. See also Edain; Númenóreans Arnor and 455 decline of 402 in Eriador 492 Gondor under 502 language of 583 in The Return of the King 253 spiritual status of 248 Dunlendings 223–225, 248, 574–575, 617 Durendal 209–210 Durin I (Durin the Deathless) 483, 546 Durin’s folk (Longbeards) 401, 483 Dwalin 97 dwarves 483–484 alphabet of 357, 474 Aulë loved by 458

Index   645 in Beleriand 357 characteristics of 112 in The Children of Húrin 48–50 creation of 61, 351, 378–379, 458, 624 Doriath sacked by 373– 374, 391 Durin’s folk 483, 546 Eöl and 362 free will of 379 as Gentiles 381 in “The Hoard” 32 as Jews 381 language of 384, 436, 521, 617 in Last Alliance 401 in medieval literature 60 in Nirnaeth Arnoediad 369 Noldor and 359, 400, 473, 490–491, 546–547 Rings of Power of 401 Silmaril stolen by 481 spiritual status of 483–484 in Third Age 594 Dyson, Hugo 10, 11, 484, 514

E Eä. See Arda “Éadig Béo Þu” 424 Eagle and Child 11, 484–485, 485, 514–515, 531 eagles 486. See also Gwaihir; Thorondor Beren and Lúthien rescued by 368 creation of 378, 379, 486 as divine messengers 288 as eucatastrophe 287, 486 in The Fellowship of the Ring 190 in Gondolin 500, 501 as guardians of Arda 351 in The Hobbit 101–102, 109, 116, 124 in Misty Mountains 543 in The Return of the King 262, 266–267 as sacred 286–287 in Tolkien 286–287 in The Two Towers 222 Eänil 502 Eänur 402, 502 Eärendil 405 as Christ figure 394 “Errantry” and 24 in The Fellowship of the Ring 188 in First Age 498 Frodo compared to 404

in Gondolin 375 in “The Happy Mariners” 93 history of 206–207 as myth 395 phial of Galadriel and 249–250 plea to Valar by 375–376, 501, 557, 581, 606, 616 prophecy of 390 redemption through 394 Silmaril and 581 in The Silmarillion 375– 377, 393–395 source for 7, 394, 477 Ulmo and 606 versions of 395 Easterlings 486–487 allied with Melkor 387 in The Children of Húrin 46, 52–53 in Eriador 492 in Nirnaeth Arnoediad 369, 390, 556, 616 Tuor’s war against 374 in War of Wrath 376 eaueres 73 Ecclesiastical History (Orderic Vitalis) 276 Edain (Atani) 487. See also Dúnedain; Númenor; Númenóreans in Beleriand 465, 497 Bëor in 465 Doriath and 481 friendship with elves 365 origin of 364 in Second Age 578 in War of Wrath 376 in Wars of Beleriand 615–616 Edgbaston 5, 589–590 Edoras. See Rohan Eilinel 366 Eitill 154 Elbereth (Varda, Elentári, Gilthoniel) 348, 350, 351– 352, 476, 487 Eldacar 502 Eldamar 70, 338, 564 Eldar 488. See also Amanyar; elves; Noldor; Teleri; Vanyar in Aman 451, 596 in categories of elves 380 distrust among 385 migration of 543 origin of 352, 490 return to Valinor 269, 377 in Third Age 593 in Wars of Beleriand 615 in White Council 617 Elder Days 497

Elder Edda (Poetic Edda, Codex Regius) 488–489 cursed sword in 63 draugr in 203 heroic code in 558 The Hobbit influenced by 112, 120–121 Mirkwood and 117 riddles in 116 Sigurd story in 146, 155–156, 555 study of 7 Elder King. See Manwë elegies Beowulf as 38–40, 292, 417 “The Last Ship” as 35 The Lord of the Rings conclusion as 292 “The Sea Bell” influenced by 33 Smith of Wootton Major as 417 Elendili 396 Elendil the Tall (Elendil the Fair, Elendil the Faithful) 275, 489–490 Arnor under 455 escape from Númenor 398, 400, 559 Gondor under 501 in Last Alliance 401 palantíri of 564 in Second Age 579 sword of. See Narsil Elenna. See Númenor Elentári. See Elbereth Elessar. See Aragorn Elgar, Eileen 30 Elladan 253, 269 Elrohir 253, 269 Elrond 295–296. See also Rivendell age of 114 history of 189, 206–207, 375–376, 395 in The Hobbit 99, 110, 114 in The Lord of the Rings 188–191, 208, 269, 270, 274 Narsil and 402 in The Silmarillion 114 Vilya held by 499, 611 in White Council 617 Elros 375–376, 395, 396 elves 490–491. See also Noldor; Sindar; Teleri; Vanyar; Wood-elves alliances among 359 alliance with men 364, 389, 473, 487, 488 in Aman 451

awakening of 351–352, 379, 476, 487 in The Children of Húrin 46–47 classes of 248 corruption of 562. See also orcs as creative aspect of humans 381 death of 535 diversity of 379–380 in First Age 497 friendship with men 365 in “The Hoard” 31–32 in The Hobbit. See Noldor; Wood-elves immortality of 380 in “Imram” 135 intermarriage of 381, 389 as Jews 380 languages of 436. See also Quenya; Sindarin in “The Last Ship” 34 in Letters from Father Christmas 166, 167–168 in The Lord of the Rings 285, 289. See also specific characters men compared to 358 in “The Nameless Land” 321 orcs and 561 passing of 289, 403, 498, 504 in Prose Edda 379, 566 redemption of 383 sources for 379 in spirituality of men 248 sundering of 352–354, 379–380, 490 theological uses of 380 in Third Age 594 Ulmo and 605 Elwë. See Thingol Elwing 374, 375–376, 481, 581, 605–606 Enchanted Isles 358, 451, 454 enchantment, in fairy stories 247, 327 Enel 476–477 England, in “The Lonely Isle” 173–174 “English and Welsh” 75–77 “Enigmata Saxonica Nuper Inventa Duo” 77–79, 573 ents 491, 491–492 creation of 378, 379, 624 as guardians of Arda 351, 491, 624 in The Return of the King 269–270 sources for 240

646   Critical Companion to J. R. R. Tolkien trolls as imitation of 604 in The Two Towers 220– 221, 225–226, 243 entwives 492 eofor (boar) 73 Eöl 362–363, 386, 500–501 Éomer character of 239, 247 Faramir compared to 247 heroic code of 277 introduction of 247 name of 241 in The Return of the King, synopsis 254–255, 257– 258, 260–261, 269 Rohan represented by 247 in The Two Towers 218, 222–224, 227 Eönwë 349, 376–377, 581 ¯eotenas 89 Éowyn 296–297 character of 242, 275–276 disobedience of 279–280 Faramir and 279–280, 288 love for Aragorn 242, 276 name of 241 in The Return of the King, synopsis of 253, 254– 255, 257–260, 268–269 sources for 157, 276, 576, 613 in The Two Towers 222–223 epic, The Lord of the Rings as 176–177 epic hero, Aragorn as 205 Eriador 492 Eriol 433, 451, 492–493, 596 Erp 154 “Errantry” 23–25 Eru. See Ilúvatar Eryn Lasgalen 543 escape in fairy stories 247, 327 in “Goblin Feet” 92 in “The Last Ship” 34–35 in Mr. Bliss 318, 319 in Roverandom 338 Estë 348 eternity, Tolkien’s conception of 347 Ethiopia, in Old English 341–343 eucatastrophes Christ’s incarnation as 328 eagles in 486 in fairy stories 327–328 in The Lord of the Rings 243, 287 in Mr. Bliss 318

in Roverandom 338 in Smith of Wootton Major 419 Evans, Jonathan 62 “Evening in Tavrobel, An” 79 evil 281, 347, 561 Exercitus mortuorum 276 Exeter Book, The 30, 77–78, 115, 477, 572 Exeter College 6–7, 453, 475, 493, 493–494 Exodus 341–343, 494–495 Expugnatio Hibernica (Giraldus Gambrensis) 276

F Faërie in fairy stories 326 in “Goblin Feet” 91–92 loss of 417–418 Lothlórien as 212–213 in “The Sea Bell” 33 in Smith of Wootton Major 416–417 Fáfnir influence on Tolkien 481–482 in The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún 148, 149–150 slaying of 38, 67, 74, 150, 156–157 Smaug influenced by 120–121 in Völsunga Saga 612 fairies 79, 92, 174 fairy stories as children’s literature 326–327, 527 Christianity in 329 definition of 326 escape in 34–35 eucatastrophes in 243 The Lord of the Rings as 176, 243 Mr. Bliss as 318 origins of 326 prohibitions in 117, 326 romantic influence in 329 Roverandom and 338 Sam’s Oliphaunt as 247 secondary belief and 327 uses of 247, 326–327 faith, in The Children of Húrin 58 Falas 499 Falathrim 353, 581 “Fall of Gondolin, The” 9, 433, 500 Fall of Man 382, 399–400 Fallohides 510 Fangorn. See Treebeard

Fangorn Forest 218–221, 225, 270, 492 fantasy, in Mr. Bliss 318 fantasy stories. See fairy stories Faramir 297–298 Boromir compared to 248 as Captain of the White Tower 472 character of 247, 248 Éomer compared to 247 Éowyn and 279–280, 288 Gondor represented by 247 introduction of 247 obedience of 278, 279–280 origin of 446 in The Return of the King, synopsis 255–256, 258–260, 268–269 sources for 587 in The Two Towers, synopsis 231–234 Farmer Giles 80–85, 86–87 Farmer Giles of Ham 11, 13, 14, 80–88 Farnell, Lewis 494 fascism, accusations of 84, 248 “Fastitocalon” 29–30, 135 fate, character as 59, 61, 62–63, 69–70 Father Christmas 164–169, 171 Father Christmas Letters. See Letters from Father Christmas Fatty Bolger 181, 185 Faulkner, Mrs. 6 Fëanor (Curufinwë) 405–406 Aulë and 379 in Beleriand 358–359 death of 385 Fingon and 495 Finwë and 496 palantíri and 564 palantíri created by 382 in The Silmarillion 382–384 Silmarils and 354–356, 382, 557, 580 sons of 353 Tengwar revised by 592 as tragic hero 382 Fëanorian alphabet. See Tengwar Fëanturi. See Irmo; Mandos Feast of Annunciation 287 Fellowship of the Ring, The “The Adventures of Tom Bombadil” in 22 class in 200 commentary on 199–217

Council of Elrond in exposition in 207– 208 language used in 208 synopsis 188–190 descent motif in 211 dreams in 203–204 inherited memory in 203–204 “Light as Leaf on Lindentree” in 172, 173, 186 “The Man in the Moon Stayed Up Too Late” in 25 miruvóre in 624 Misty Mountains in 543 Moria in 547 Nazgûl in 553 publication of 14 radio adaptation of 567 reviews of 457 “The Stone Troll” in 27 synopsis of 177–199 titling of 14 winter solstice in 210 writing of 438–439 female characters 242, 296– 297, 389 feminine rhymes 22 Fenrir 615 Field, George 7, 470, 495 Fili 97, 109, 124 Finarfin 353, 354–356, 383 Finduilas 50–52, 53, 64, 371 Fingolfin death of 387–388 family of 353 Fëanor and 354–356, 383 Hador and 506 Melkor challenged by 365, 387–388 men and 364 return to Middle-earth 355–356, 359 in Wars of Beleriand 615–616 Fingon 495–496 Maedhros and 286, 359, 385 in Nirnaeth Arnoediad 369, 390, 499, 556 Finn 88–90 Finn and Hengest: The Fragment and the Episode 88–90 Finnish 7, 170, 518, 567 Finnsburg Episode 88 Finnsburg Fragment 88 Finrod Felagund 406–407 in “Athrabeth Finrod ah Andreth” 437 Bëor and 364, 465

Index   647 Beren and 366–367, 389 expelled from Doriath 361–362 men and 363–364, 365, 387 Nargothrond built by 359, 550 Ulmo and 605 Finwë 352, 353, 354–355, 477, 496, 557 Fíriel 34 “Firiel” (poem) 34 First Age 44, 496–498 First Crusade 278 Fisher King 66, 119, 121 flyting 23 “Fœddr Sigurðr” (“Sigurd Born”) 149 Formenos 355, 496 fornyrðislag 147, 158–159 Forweg 47–48 “For W.H.A.” 90–91, 457 fosterage 59 Fourth Age 287, 403, 498– 499, 580 France 7, 8–9. See also Battle of the Somme “Franklin’s Tale, The” (Chaucer) 139, 389 freedom, in Roverandom 337–338 free will in Ainulindalë 347 in choosing good and evil 281–282 of dwarves 379 in The Hobbit 125 of men 398 Northern heroic code and 281–282 responsibility and 404 Valar and 610 “Frenchmen Froth” 426 Friðiwulf 89 friends, murder of, medieval motif of 61–62 Fritz the Cat (film) 458 Frodo Baggins 298–299 as aristocrat 200 as author of The Lord of the Rings 570 as Bilbo’s successor 207 courage of 216–217 depiction in films 620, 621 dishonesty of 248–249 as divided self 177 dreams of 34, 203 Eärendil compared to 404 in The Fellowship of the Ring, synopsis 177–199 as hero 205, 209, 282–283 heroism of 290, 558

maturation of 212, 290 mercy of 290–291 passage to Grey Havens 274 as peacemaker 290–291 rebirth of 250 in The Return of the King, synopsis 262–274 reunion with Bilbo 206–207 ring acquired by 178, 199 ring offered to Galadriel 215 ring’s corruption of 216, 231, 235, 282 sense of duty of 209, 216 shell shock of 283 as soldier 283–284 in The Two Towers, synopsis 228–238 “From One to Five” 423 Furuskog, R. 320 Futhorc 474

G Gabilgathol 357 Galadriel 299–300 ambition of 383 depiction in films 466–467 in Doriath 359, 361, 481, 539 exiled from Valinor 214, 557 in The Fellowship of the Ring 195–197 history of 214, 285, 444 Lothlórien under 533–534 marriage of 473 Melian and 361 Nenya held by 554 relation to nature 213 in The Return of the King 269, 274 ring refused by 196, 213, 214, 383 Sam’s devotion to 285 sources for 213–214 in The Two Towers 222 in White Council 617 Galadriel’s mirror 195–196, 214–215 Galathilion 353, 592, 623–624 Galdor 366 Gamelyn 61 Gandalf (Mithrandir) 300– 301, 538 absence of, as Frodo’s escort 201, 443 as Aristotelian rhetorician 244 character of 241

as Christ figure 241 death of 193, 211–212, 221–222 Denethor’s resentment of 274–275 depiction in films 537–538 divinity and 241 at Dol Guldur 402 in The Fellowship of the Ring, synopsis 177–179, 185–186, 187–193 Glorfindel as foreshadower of 206 heroic code of 282 history of 208–209 in The Hobbit 97–102, 108–110, 123, 126–127 as Istari 404, 516 as Maia 208–209, 211, 349, 350 Narya held by 552 Ódin as model for 157 as Olórin 350 origin of 111 passage to Grey Havens 274, 289 reappearance of 239, 241 resurrection of 221–222, 241 in The Return of the King, synopsis 251–252, 255–262, 266–271 as steward 275 in Third Age 594 in The Two Towers, synopsis 221–228 in White Council 617 as “wise old man” 111–112 Garm 80, 82, 83, 86–87 Garth, John 3 Garulf 89 Gasch, Pauline 32 Gates of Argonath 198 Gelmir 369 Genesis story 347–348, 382–383 Gentiles, dwarves as 381 “Gest of Beren and Lúthien” 11 Ghân-buri-Ghân 257, 269 giants, in Farmer Giles of Ham 80–81, 84 Gildor Inglorion 180, 201 Gil-galad 186, 375, 401, 499, 533, 578–579, 611 Gilson, Rob 6, 8, 499–500, 522–523, 590–591 Gilthoniel. See Elbereth Gimilkâd 396 Gimli 301–302 in Aglarond 509 as courtly lover 214

depiction in films 571, 572 in The Fellowship of the Ring 188–199 friendship with Legolas 243 in The Return of the King 252–254, 261–262, 267–270 in The Two Towers 217– 218, 221–228 Girabbit 317–319, 319–320 Giraldus Gambrensis 276 Girdle of Melian 357, 360, 391, 481, 539, 582 Gjúki 150–151 Glamdring 98–100, 114, 191 Glaurung 68–69 creation of 360 Fáfnir and 156–157 Fingon and 496 in First Age 498 Nienor and 54, 64 in Nirnaeth Arnoediad 556 Smaug and 121 in Tolkien mythology 62, 482 Túrin and 52, 55–57, 64, 371–372 in Wars of Beleriand 387, 616 Glingal 527 Gloin (Glóin) 97, 188–189, 208 Glorfindel 187, 188, 206, 269, 375, 393 Glorious Battle. See Dagor Aglareb gnomes, in Letters from Father Christmas 167 “Goblin Feet” 8, 91–93, 591 goblins in The Hobbit 99–100, 101–102, 109, 116 in Letters from Father Christmas 167, 169 orcs as 561 source for 534 Goblin Wars. See Wars of Beleriand Goldberry in “The Adventures of Tom Bombadil” 21–22 in The Fellowship of the Ring 182–183 marriage to Tom Bombadil 202 in “Once Upon a Time” 324 as Yavanna 202 Golden Key (MacDonald) 414 golem 115

648   Critical Companion to J. R. R. Tolkien Gollum (Sméagol) as Bilbo’s Jungian shadow 115 depiction in films 579 in The Hobbit 100–101, 114–116, 127 in The Lord of the Rings 302–303 betrayal by 236–237, 250 in destruction of the ring 266, 285–286 divided nature of 229, 245 escape from Sauron 264–265 the fellowship followed by 192, 194, 197, 216 free will of 245 Frodo followed by 228, 265 Frodo’s deception of 248–249 as Frodo’s Jungian shadow 177 goodness in 245–246 as guide 229–236, 255–256 as hero 285–286 in history of the ring 179 interviewed by Sauron 208 the ring’s corruption of 216, 245–246 Sam and 250 original version of 116 origins of character 115 in Third Age 594 Gondolin 500–501 destruction of 374–375, 386, 392–393, 465, 498, 501, 616 founding of 361, 385, 557, 605 Huor in 44–45, 365–366 Húrin in 44–45, 365–366, 373, 391 location of 45–46 Maeglin in 362–363 in Nirnaeth Arnoediad 369, 556 Troy compared to 393 Tuor in 374–375 versions of story 393 White Tree of 592 Gondor 501–503. See also Battle of the Pelennor Fields; Minas Tirith Arnor and 455 decline of 402

Faramir as representative of 247 founding of 401, 489 Haradrim and 507 history of 233, 482 under Isildur 515–516 military of 472 as origin of “The Man in the Moon Came Down Too Soon” 26 Osgiliath in 562–563 in The Return of the King 251–252 Rohan and 402, 444, 574 stewards of 502. See also Denethor in Third Age 593–594 good, light as 378 Gordon, E. V. 503 collaboration with 10, 565, 583, 584 death of 454 friendship with 10 Songs for Philologists and 423 in Viking Club 611 Gordon, George Stuart 475, 503–504 Gorlim 366 Gorthaur the Cruel. See Sauron Gorthol. See Túrin Gothic language, study of 622 Goths, in The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún 153–154 Gottfried von Strassburg 60, 67 Gotthorm 152 grace 144, 176, 243, 419 Grail Knight 66, 121, 123 Gram 149–150, 151, 152, 210, 612. See also Grímnir’s sword Grani 150, 151 Great Depression, in Letters from Father Christmas 170 Great Worms. See dragons greed 31–32. See also treasure Greek pantheon, as source for Valar 349–350 Greek tragedy. See tragedy Green-elves. See Laiquendi Greenwood the Great. See Mirkwood Grendel’s Titles 39 Gresham, Joy. See Davidman, Joy Grey-elves. See Sindar Grey Havens (Mithlond) 504 in “Bilbo’s Last Song” 41 under Círdan 474 establishment of 465 Noldor at 558 in The Return of the King 274, 289

Griffiths, Elaine 12, 95, 478, 504–505 Gríma Wormtongue 222–223, 225–227, 241, 269–270, 273 Grímhild 150–153, 160 Grímnir’s sword 148–149 Grishnákh 219 Grove, Jennie 7, 505–506 “Guðdrún” 150–151 Gudrún 150–154, 161–162, 489, 612–613 Gud¯rúnarkviða en nýja, eða Dráp Niflunga (New Lay of Gudrún, or The Slaying of the Niflungs) 152–164 Gundahari 146 Gunnar 150–154, 157–158, 161, 612–613 Gurthang. See Anglachel Gwaihir 266–267, 486 Gwindor 45, 50–52, 369, 371, 556

H Hador the Goldenhaired (Hador Lórindol) 364, 387, 506 Haladin 364, 365, 487, 506– 507, 556 Halbarad 252–254 Haldad 364 Haldir 194–195, 369 Haleth 487, 506 Halflings. See hobbits Hali Meiðhad, eaueres in 73. See also “Ancrene Wisse and Hali Meiðhad”; Katherine group Halmir 506–507 Háma 222 hamartia 67, 390 Hand, Elizabeth 44, 147 “Happy Mariners, The” 93–94 Haradrim (Southrons) 231– 232, 248, 342–343, 507 Hardie, Colin 507–508, 514 Harfoots 510 Harley MS. 2253, “Mon in the mone” in 26 Harwood, Alfred Cecil 460 Havard, R. E. 508, 514 Havens. See Grey Havens Helcaraxë 451 Hell 39 Helm of Hador 46, 49–50, 370–371, 551 Helm’s Deep 223–224, 243, 269, 508–509 Hengest 88–90, 492 Hengwrt MS 43 Hensher, Philip 44 Heofon 39

Herefordshire 36 hero archetype, Túrin as 59–60 heroic code. See Northern heroic code heroism of Aragorn 205–206 of Bilbo 95–96, 120, 122–123 of common people 133, 205, 283–284 of Frodo 205, 207, 209, 290 of Gollum 285–286 in The Hobbit 122–123 of Lúthien 389 of Pippin 282 of Sam 283–284 Hervarar saga 276 “Hey-Diddle-Diddle” (nursery rhyme) 25–26 “Hiding of Valinor, The” 94 High-elves. See Noldor Hildeburh 88–89 Hildórien 358 Hill, Joy 17, 40, 509–510, 574 Himlad 362 History of Middle-earth, The 17, 599, 607. See also specific titles Hithlum 366 Hjalli 154 Hnaef 88–89 “Hoard, The” 31–32 Hobbit, or There and Back Again, The 11, 16, 95–129 animated film adaptation of 568–569 Bilbo as author of 570 as bildungsroman 96, 111 as children’s literature 95, 112 context for, in The Silmarillion 403 cran bread in 28 dialect in, of trolls 113 luck in 113, 114, 116, 120, 122, 576 map in 12 Mirkwood in 543 narrator of 95, 112, 337 orcs in 561 origins of 11, 95 psychological interpretations of 96–97 publication of 12, 95, 478, 504, 606, 607, 608 radio adaptation of 567–568 revisions of 95 riddles in 78, 100, 106, 115–116, 121, 572–573 as romance 96, 112, 113

Index   649 sale of original manuscript 14 songs based on 573–574 sources for 570, 587 wargs in 615 Welsh influence on 77 writing of 531 Hobbiton 96, 272–273. See also Shire hobbits (Halflings) 510–511 in “Bombadil Goes Boating” 23 of Bree 183–184 characteristics of 97 folklore of 28, 29, 31, 33–34 in Fourth Age 498 language of 617 in The Lord of the Rings. See specific hobbits nature of 110–111 in “Perrry-the-Winkle” 27 rabbits and 110–111 reader identification with 238 in Third Age 594 höfuðstafr 147 Högni 150–154, 157–158, 162, 612–613 Holm, Ian 511–512 Holy Grail 121. See also Fisher King; Grail Knight “Homecoming of Beorhtnoth Beorhthelm’s Son, The” 129–134, 211–212, 462, 558 Hœnir 148 Horsa 492 Houghton Mifflin 12, 14, 95, 165, 176 Houses of the Dead 535 Hreidmar 148 Huan 367–368 Huns 146, 150–151, 152–154 Hunthor 55–56, 372 Huor in Brethil 507 in Gondolin 44–45, 365– 366, 387, 501, 556 in Nirnaeth Arnoediad 365–366, 369, 390, 556 prophecy of 390 huorns 226, 491 Húrin in Brethil 507 curse on 46, 58, 370 in Doriath 373–374 in Gondolin 44–45, 365–366, 387, 501 in Nargothrong 373 in Nirnaeth Arnoediad 369, 390, 486, 556

release of 57, 373 reunited with Morwen 57, 66, 373 as saint 58 Hymnus ad Galli Cantum (Prudentius) 277

I identity 65–66, 205 “Ides Ælfscýne” 424–425 Idril 363, 375, 392–393, 501 Ilbereth 167–168, 172 Ilmarë 349 Ilúvatar 512 in creation of Arda 286, 345–346 in creation of dwarves 61, 379, 458 in creation of races 245 mercy for Melkor 383 names of 346 in religion of Númenor 399 imagination, in fairy stories 327, 328 Imin 476–477, 610 Imladris. See Rivendell immortality of elves 380 Imrahil 256, 258, 260–261 “Imram” 134–136 incest 64–65, 67, 149, 157, 390–391 Incledon, Marjorie 512–513, 550, 590 Incledon, Mary 512–513, 550, 590 Indis 354, 496, 610 industrialization 201, 225 Ingwë 352, 477, 513, 610 inherited memory 203–204 Inklings 513–515 Barfield in 459, 460, 461 Christopher Tolkien in 598 Coghill in 475 Dyson in 484 formation of 11, 531 Hardie in 507 Havard in 508 Lewis (C. S.) in 531 Lewis (Warnie) in 532 at Magdalen College 535 Mathew in 537 meetings of 11, 484–485, 485 in The Notion Club Papers 134, 440–441 Williams in 617–618 Wrenn in 621 interlacing, in The Lord of the Rings 239–240, 274

invention, in origin of fairy stories 326 Inzelbêth 396–397 Irmo (Lórien) 348 “I Sat upon a Bench” 425– 426 Isengard 217, 224–227, 269– 270, 280–281, 492, 515 Isil 357–358 Isildur 515–516 Arnor under 455 death of 402, 444 Gondor and 501–502 in Last Alliance 401–402 Nimloth and 397 the Paths of the Dead and 253 White Tree of Gondor planted by 592 Isildur’s sword. See Narsil Isreal, Kingdom of, Númenor as 398–399 Istari (wizards) 516. See also Gandalf; Saruman as angels 241 eagles and 486 as Maiar 208–209, 211, 516, 535 role of 208, 404 in Third Age 402, 593–594 Valar and 208–209, 610 in White Council 617 ithildin 544 Ithilien 267 “‘iþþlen’ in Sawles Warde” 136–137, 455 Itroun 137–138

J Jackson, Peter 517 The Hobbit films of 95, 517 The Lord of the Rings films of 17–18, 96, 175, 201, 517, 599. See also specific actors jealous counselor motif 60 Jerusalem Bible 15, 518 Jessop, Charles 518 Jessop, H. C. 6 Jessop, Margaret 518 Jews 380, 381 Jonathan (bibilical figure) 62 Jones, Leslie Ellen 3 J. R. R. Tolkien: A Biography (Carpenter) 3, 3 J. R. R. Tolkien: A Biography (Jones) 3 judgment, in The Hobbit 123–124

Jungian archetypes 96–97, 115, 122, 177, 211, 214 Jutes, in Finn and Hengest 89

K Kafka, Franz 142 Kalevala 60, 346, 518–520, 523–524. See also Kullervo Karhu. See North Polar Bear Katherine group 35–37, 137, 320, 454–455, 520. See also Sawles Warde Kay, Guy Gavriel 17, 520– 521, 599 Keats, John 71 Kementári. See Yavanna kenning 159 Ker, W. P. 38 Khazad. See dwarves Khazad-dûm. See Moria Khuzdul 483, 521 Kili 97, 109, 124 king, in Farmer Giles of Ham 81, 82, 83, 87 King Edward’s School 4, 521–523, 522, 590–591, 597, 599–600 King Lear (Shakespeare) 279 kings, healing powers of 280 King’s Heath 5 kingship, in The Return of the King 279 Kinstrife 502, 562–563 “Knocking at the Door” 28 Kolbitar. See Coalbiters Königsproblem 155 Kullervo 60, 63–64, 65, 66, 519, 523, 523–524

L “La Belle Same Sans Merci” (Keats) 71 Laer Cú Beleg (“The Song of the Great Bow”) 50 “La Húru” 425 Laiquendi (Green-elves) 357, 380, 621 Lake-town 104, 119–120 Lamb and Flag 11 “Lament for the Rohirrim” 575 Lancashire Fusiliers 8, 9, 463– 464, 494, 524–526, 588 Lancelot 65 Lang, Andrew 325, 326, 526, 526–527 language in The Hobbit 112 inventing 339–341 in The Lord of the Rings 208, 277, 288, 333

650   Critical Companion to J. R. R. Tolkien languages 75, 76–77, 170, 436. See also Khuzdul; Naffarin; Quenya; Sindarin; Westron Lanval 33, 212 Last Alliance of Elves and Men about 461 Anárion in 452 Círdan in 474 dwarves in 401, 483 Elendil in 401, 489 elves in 491 Gil-galad in 401, 499 Isildur in 401, 516 Misty Mountains and 543 Noldor in 557–558 Númenóreans in 559 in Second Age 579 “Last Ship, The” 34–35 Laurelin 527. See also Two Trees of Valinor “Lay of Aotrou and Itroun, The” 137–139 “Lay of Earendel” 8 “Lay of Leithian, The” 434–435 “Lay of the Children of Húrin, The” 43, 172, 434 lays 137–139, 146, 147, 158–159, 586 Lays of Beleriand, The 172, 434–435 “Leaf by Niggle” 13, 140–143, 530, 554 Lee, Alvin A. 39 Lee, Christopher 527–528 Leeds, University of 528–529, 529 in “The Clerkes Compleinte” 71–72 English department of 418, 426, 427–428, 503–504 position at 9–10 legendarium 529–530. See also Book of Lost Tales, Part 1, The; Book of Lost Tales, Part 2, The; Lord of the Rings, The; Silmarillion, The Legend of Good Women (Chaucer) 314 Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún, The 146–164 courage in 157 dragons in 32 heroic code in 558 oaths in 157–158 prophecies in 156 publication of 18, 599 sources for 155–156, 489, 555, 566, 576, 613–614 “Legend of the Awakening of the Quendi, The” 476

Legolas 303–304 depiction in films 468, 468 in The Fellowship of the Ring 188–199 friendship with Gimli 243 in The Return of the King 252–254, 261–262, 267–270 in The Two Towers 217– 218, 221–228 Leif Ericksson, luck of 114 lembas 196, 214 “Le Seigneur Nann et la Fée” 139 Letters from Father Christmas 11, 164–172, 599, 603 Lewis, C. S. 530–532 Barfield and 460 Bryson and 472 Christian faith of 10, 13, 484, 535 in Coalbiters 475 death of 15 on The Fellowship of the Ring 14 Havard and 508 “Imram” and 136 in Inklings 11, 514 on The Lord of the Rings 13 “The Lost Road” and 435–436 at Magdalen College 535 marriage of 478–479 on myth 328, 484 “On Fairy-Stories” published by 325 Preface to Paradise Lost 347 Tolkien and 10, 14, 478–479 Williams and 13, 618 Lewis, Sinclair 111 Lewis, W. H. 11, 484, 514, 530, 532–533 Leyerle, John 40 “Lhammas, The” 436 Life of Alfred (Asser) 76 Life and Passion of St. Juliene (Ardenne) 454 Life of Saint Juliene (Ardenne) 36 light as goodness 378 “Light as Leaf on Lindentree” 172–173 Lindon 474, 499, 533, 578, 582. See also Grey Havens “‘Lit’ and ‘Lang’“ (“Two Little Schemes”) 427 Littleheart 94 Lof and Dom 39 Loki 148 Lomin. See Maeglin “Lonely Isle, The” 173–174

Lonely Mountain 105–109 Longbeards. See Durin’s folk Lönnrot, Elias 518–519 “Looney” 33 lord of the Nazgûl (Witchking of Angmar) 304–305, 552–553 Arnor captured by 502 Barrow-wights and 203–204 in Battle of the Pelennor Fields 256–258 defeat of 204, 258, 259– 260, 279, 462, 553 in Third Age 594 Lord of the Rings. See Sauron Lord of the Rings, The 174– 314. See also Fellowship of the Ring, The; Return of the King, The; Two Towers, The Anduin in 453 animated film adaptation of 458–459, 569 applicability of, v. allegory 215–216 background for, in Akallabêth 398 Beowulf’s influence on 466 characters of 292–312 Christopher Tolkien’s work on 598 closure in 287 context for, in The Silmarillion 403 copyright dispute over 15 courage in 157 enchantment in 247 escape in 247 eucatastrophes in 243 as fairy story 176, 243 films of. See Jackson, Peter good and evil in, ambiguity of 239, 249, 281 greed in 32 Haradrim in 507 heroic code in 157, 558 as history 292 industrialization in 201 language in 208, 277, 288, 333 nature in destruction of 201, 220, 225, 240–241 ents as 240 relationships with 117, 191, 201, 212 New Year in 287 as novel 176 opinions on 176 Osgiliath in 563 popularity of 176 providence in 249, 286

publication of 175–176, 606–607, 608, 614 publishing contract for 176 radio adaptation of 567, 568 recovery in 247 reviews of 457 riddles in 572 Rivendell in 573 as romance 176 sale of original manuscripts 14 Sigurd story as influence on 157 songs based on 573–574 source for 570 spiders in 118 spirituality in 284–286 success of 174–175 titles of 14 wargs in 615 Welsh influence on 77 writing of 12–14, 140, 145, 175, 438–439, 440, 442–443, 446–447, 531 Lórien (place). See Lothlórien Lórien (Valar). See Irmo losenger 314–315 Lost Road 41, 398, 451–452 Lost Road and Other Writings, The 435–436 Lothlórien (Lórien) 533–534 as Faërie 212–213 in The Fellowship of the Ring 194–197 history of 212 Noldor in 558 Sindar in 582 time in 213 in The Two Towers 222 wood-elves in 621 Lotho Sackville-Baggins 271–273 loyalty, in The Fellowship of the Rings 212, 217 luck, of Bilbo Baggins 113, 114, 116, 120, 122, 576 Lugbúrz. See Barad-dûr Lúthien Tinúviel 407. See also “Tale of Tinúviel, The” Beren and 366–369, 388–389, 435, 535–536, 539, 581 in The Book of Lost Tales 434 in The Fellowship of the Ring 186, 205 heroism of 389 inspiration for 9, 173, 471 in “Light as Leaf on Lindentree” 172–173

Index   651 Silmaril recovered by 374 Sir Orfeo’s influence in 587 sources for 388–389 versions of story 388 Lydney Park excavation 323

M Mablung 54–55, 57, 64, 368, 370, 372–373 Macbeth (Shakespeare) 240, 279 MacDonald, George 116, 414, 534 Macrobius 203 Madelener, J. 111 Maedhros Fingon and 286, 359, 495 imprisonment of 359, 385, 486, 593 in Nirnaeth Arnoediad 369, 555–556 Silmaril stolen by 377, 395, 581 in Wars of Beleriand 616 Maeglin (Lomin) 362–363, 374–375, 386, 392–393, 500–501 Magdalen College 535 Maggot 23, 180, 577–578 Maglor 377, 395, 581 Maiar 535 allies of Melkor among 349, 350, 609 Balrog as 211, 349, 350, 516 entry into world 346 intermarriage of 381 members of 349 Sauron as 281, 349, 350 wizards as 208–209, 211, 516 maimed king motif 66 Mandos (Námo) 535–536 Beren and Lúthien and 368 Noldor cursed by 356, 366–367, 377, 557 in Valar pantheon 348, 350 Man-in-the-Moon 25–27, 165–166, 334–335, 339 “Man in the Moon Came Down Too Soon, The” 8, 26–27, 591 “Man in the Moon Stayed Up Too Late, The” 25–26 Manwë (Elder King, Súlimo) 536 Beren and Lúthien and 368 in creation of Arda 345

as Ódin 349–350 in Valar pantheon 348 in War of Wrath 376 Marach 364, 487 Marie de France 137, 212 Marquette University 14, 315–316 marriage, in The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún 158 Masefield, John 536–537 Master Cook 415 Master of Lake-town 104, 107 Mathew, Father Gervase 514, 537 Maxims II 240 McKellen, Ian 537–539 Melian 539 in The Children of Húrin 46–47, 48 Galadriel and 361 Húrin and 373 importance of 350, 535 as Maia 349 Thingol and 353, 373– 374, 381, 539 Melkor (Morgoth) 407–408 allies of 349, 350, 387, 451, 459 in The Children of Húrin 45–46, 49–52, 57 in creation of Arda 345– 346, 451, 454 defeat of 388 dragon created by 481 elves and 352, 473 Fingolfin’s challenge of 365, 387–388 fortress of. See Angband; Utumno imprisonment of 352, 605 as Lucifer 347 Lúthien and 368 Maedhros captured by 359, 495, 497 men and 364, 365, 473 mercy for 383 Misty Mountains created by 543 moon attacked by 358 Neldoreth attacked by 357 in Nirnaeth Arnoediad 556 Noldor attacked by 360, 557 orcs created by 352, 561 Ossë and 349 redemption of elves and 383 release of 354, 383 Silmarils and 354–355, 580–581 Tulkas and 350, 605

Two Trees of Valinor destroyed by 527 as Vala 609 in War of Wrath 376–377 in Wars of Beleriand 615–616 worship of 397 men alliance with elves 364, 389, 473, 487, 488 Aman forbidden to 396 awakening of 358, 384 in Beleriand 363–364, 386–387, 465, 486, 487, 497, 506 classes of, in The Lord of the Rings 247–248 elves compared to 358 free will of 398 intermarriage of 381, 389 language of 364, 616–617 mortality of 378, 396 origins of 363, 384–385 spiritual status of 248, 507 Túrin’s trust in 61 Ulmo and 605 Menegroth 384 Meneldil 502 Merlin 65, 139 Merry (Meriadoc) Brandybuck 305–306 Boromir’s affection for 211 character of 204, 275 depiction in films 544 disobedience of 279 dreams of 203–204 in The Fellowship of the Ring 180–199 maturity of 290 in The Return of the King 252–255, 257–262, 267–273 sword of 204, 279 in The Two Towers 217– 221, 225–227 Merton College 472, 539– 540, 540 meter 71, 77, 113–114, 332. See also verse form Methuen 165 Mew 334, 335 “Mewlips, The” 28–29 Middle-earth 351, 498. See also specific locations Middle English in “The Clerkes Compleinte” 71 glossary of 541 introduction to language 5 in language curriculum 330–331 study of 7, 421–422, 471

“Middle English ‘Losenger’: Sketch of an Etymological and Semantic Enquiry” 314–315 Middle English Vocabulary, A 541, 587 Midgard 338 Midsummer Eve, in “ShadowBride” 31 Milton, John 429 Mîm 48–50, 60–61, 370–371, 373, 551 Minas Anor. See Minas Tirith Minas Ithil (Minas Morgul) 541–542 building of 401, 489, 515–516 captured by Nazgûl 402, 545, 553, 563, 594 palantír of 564 in The Two Towers 234– 235, 246 Minas Morgul. See Minas Ithil Minas Tirith (Minas Anor) 542, 542 battle of. See Battle of the Pelennor Fields building of 360, 401, 489 naming of 401–402, 502 palantír of 564 in The Return of the King 251–252, 267–269 Sauron’s capture of 365 tree of. See White Tree of Gondor Míriel 354, 382, 496 Mirkwood (Greenwood the Great) 542–543 in The Hobbit 102–104, 117, 587 in “The Mewlips” 28 Sauron in 480–481 Sindar in 582 in Third Age 593–594 wood-elves in 621 mirror of Galadriel. See Galadriel’s mirror miruvóre 624 Mr. Binks 317 Mr. Bliss 316–319, 319 Mr. Bliss 315–320 Mr. Day 316–317 Mrs. Artaxerxes 336–337 Mrs. Knight 316–317 Misty Mountains 28, 543, 546 Mithlond. See Grey Havens Mithrandir. See Gandalf mithril 106, 483, 543–544, 546, 554 Monaghan, Dominic 470, 544 “Mon in the mone” (poem) 26 monsters, in Beowulf 38

652   Critical Companion to J. R. R. Tolkien Monsters and the Critics and Other Essays, The 411, 599 moon 357–358, 384, 624 morality, in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight 412–413 Mordor 175, 261–267, 281, 283, 544–545 Morgan, Father Francis 545–546 as legal guardian 5 Mabel Tolkien’s friendship with 5, 602 Tolkien’s romance with Edith and 6, 173, 470, 495 Morgoth. See Melkor Morgoth’s Ring 437 Moria (Khazad-dûm) 546– 547 Balrog of, disturbance of 459 building of 357, 483 doors of, design of 473 in The Fellowship of the Ring 191–193, 211–212 location of 543 mines of 543 Noldor and 400 in Third Age 594 Moriquendi 380 Mormegil. See Túrin Morrígan, the 213–214 Morris, William 547–549 mortality, as gift 378 Morte Darthur (Malory) 61–62, 239 Mortensen, Viggo 549–550, 550 Morwen in The Children of Húrin 45–46, 51, 52–54, 57, 64, 66 in The Silmarillion 372, 373 Moseley 4–5 Mount Doom. See Orodruin “MS. Bodley 34: A Re-collation of a Collation” 320–321, 455 Muir, Edwin 14 Müller, Max 326 murder, accidental, medieval motif of 61–62 music 286, 346 mystical participation 122 “Mythopoeia” 327, 328

N Naffarin 6, 340, 550 “Nameless Land, The” 321– 322, 554, 565

“Name ‘Nodens,’ The” 323–324 names as disguise, in The Children of Húrin 65–66, 69 Námo. See Mandos Nandor 380, 543, 615 Nan Elmoth 362–363 Nargothrond 550–551 in Beleriand geography 360 destruction of 54, 465, 474, 498, 616 founding of 359, 385, 557, 605 Húrin in 373 in Nirnaeth Arnoediad 369, 390, 555–556 Túrin in 50–52, 371 Narnia novels 14, 329, 531 Narn i Hin Húrin (Tale of the Children of Húrin) 44 narrator in The Hobbit 95, 112, 337 in Roverandom 337 Narsil 157, 189, 401–402, 490, 551–552, 613. See also Andúril Narya 401, 402, 403, 473, 474, 552 “Natura Apis: Morali Ricardi Eremite” 426 nature closeness to, as virtue 117 in The Lord of the Rings destruction of 201, 220, 225, 240–241 ents as 240 relationships with 117, 191, 201, 212 Nauglamír 359, 373–374, 391, 434, 581 Naugrim. See dwarves Navigatio Sancti Brendani 134 Nazgûl 552–553 in The Fellowship of the Ring 178–180, 180, 185–186, 187, 188, 200–201 Minas Ithil seized by 541, 545, 563 origins of 401 in The Return of the King 255, 262, 264, 266 in Second Age 578 in Third Age 593–594 in The Two Towers 230, 235, 246 Neave, Jane 15, 21, 553–554 Nebuchadnezzar (biblical figure) 65 Necromancer. See Sauron Neithan. See Túrin

Neldoreth 356–357, 481 Nellas 46–47 Nenya 196, 401, 402, 473, 534, 544, 554 Neoplatonism, in Ainulindalë 346 Nerdanel 354 Nessa 348, 350 Nevbosh 340, 513 New Criticism 3 New English Dictionary on Historical Principles. See Oxford English Dictionary Nibelungenlied 155–156, 554–555 Nibelungs 60–61 Nienna 348 Nienor (Niniel) 69 in The Children of Húrin 46, 51, 52–56, 64, 67 in The Silmarillion 370, 372–373 Niflungs 146, 150–154, 157 Niggle 140–145, 145 Nimloth 209, 396, 397, 399 Nimrodel 194, 533 nine, significance of 210 Niniel. See Nienor Nirnaeth Arnoediad (Battle of Unnumbered Tears) 555–556 in The Children of Húrin 45 Easterlings in 486 Fingon in 496 in First Age 497 Gondolin in 501 Haladin in 507 in The Silmarillion 369–370 trolls in 604 in Wars of Beleriand 616 Noah’s flood, destruction of Númenor as 399–400 nobility, in The Lord of the Rings 200 Nodens 323–324 Nokes 415–416, 419, 420 Noldor (High-elves) 557–558 appearance of 488 Aulë as friend of 348, 353, 458 in Beleriand 359, 385, 465 in categories of elves 380 in “The City of the Gods” 70, 71 cursed by Mandos 356, 366–367, 377, 535 discontent of 354–355 dwarves and 359, 400, 490–491, 546–547

in The Hobbit 99, 113–114 journey to Valinor 353, 596 language of. See Quenya in Nirnaeth Arnoediad 369 origin of 352, 477, 490 palantíri created by 564 redemption of 383 return to Middle-earth 356, 358, 361, 384, 495 Sauron and 400–401 in Second Age 400, 578–579 united with Sindar 360 in Wars of Beleriand 615 Noldorin 340 Nori 97 Norse mythology 60–61, 62, 112, 113, 116–117 Norse pantheon 349–350 Norse sagas 114 Northern Adventure, A 77 Northern heroic code 558 in The Battle of Maldon 461–462 of Beorhtwold 133 in Beowulf 466 free will and 281–282 in “The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth” 130 in The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún 157 in The Lord of the Rings 177 in Battle of the Pelennor Fields 277 of elves 213 of Gandalf 282 of Sam 284 Sigurd story as influence on 157 redemption in 383 Northern Lights 165–166 North Polar Bear (Karhu) 165–169, 171–172 North Pole 165–171 Notion Club Papers, The 134, 440, 508, 514 Núadu 323–324 Númenor (Elenna) 558–559 creation of 454, 610 destruction of 397, 399– 400, 436, 451–452, 545 Dúnedain and 482 Edain in 487 Elendil’s escape from 397, 398, 400 history of 396–400 in “Imram” 135 Isildur’s escape from 515

Index   653 as Kingdom of Isreal 398–399 in Second Age 578–579 in Unfinished Tales 444 Númenóreans Aman invaded by 397 language of 582–583, 616–617 mortality of 396 in Second Age 578 spiritual status of 248 Nymphidia (Drayton) 92, 326

O oak 418, 427 oaths 157–158, 212, 389 obedience, in The Return of the King 278 Ódin 148–151, 210, 349–350 Odysseus 125 Odyssey, The (Homer) 64, 113, 119, 125 Oedipus 58, 67, 115, 390 “Of Aulë and Yavanna” 351 ofermod 63, 64, 85, 132–133, 212 “Ofer Wídne Gársecg” (“Across the Broad Ocean”) 425 Offa 130, 132 Of the Rings of Power and the Third Age 400–404 “Of the Ruin of Doriath” 344 “Of Túrin Turambar” 44 O’Hehir, Andrew 44 Ohtar 551 Oin 97 Olaf Tryggvason 338 Old English in AB manuscripts 36–37, 452, 520, 565 in “Enigmata Saxonica Nuper Inventa Duo” 77–78 in “For W.H.A.” 90 “The Hoard” influenced by 32 in language curriculum 330–331, 429, 529 in Rohirrim names 241–242 study of 7, 471, 522 Old English folklore 112, 240, 379 Old English poetry 242, 331–333 Old English riddles 77–78, 572 Old English verse forms accentual 136 “The Adventures of Tom Bombadil” influenced by 22

alliterative meter 132, 332, 461–462 “Bombadil Goes Boating” influenced by 23 “The Hoard” influenced by 32 “The Sea Bell” influenced by 33 Old Germanic poetry 159 Old Icelandic 330–331 Old Man Willow 21–22, 181 Old Norse 7, 475 Old Norse literature 240, 379, 615 Old Norse poetry 147, 158– 159. See also Elder Edda Oliphaunt 232, 247, 507 “Oliphaunt” 29 Olog-hai 604 Olórin. See Gandalf “Once Upon a Time” 324–325 One Ring, the 178 as atomic bomb 215 Bilbo’s possession of 177–178 corrupting influence of on Bilbo 199, 207 on Boromir 216 Boromir’s failure to understand 238 on Frodo 231, 263, 266, 282 Frodo’s resistance to 215, 216 and Galadriel 196, 213 on Gollum 216, 245–246 inevitability of 200 on Sam 263 on Saruman 402 Denethor’s reaction to 255 destruction of 190, 209, 266, 285–286, 402, 545 Faramir’s reaction to 232, 233, 248 as forbidden fruit 281 forging of 401, 473, 545, 552, 557, 562, 578 Frodo’s acquisition of 178, 199 Galadriel’s refusal of 196, 213, 214 history of 178–179, 189–190, 199 in The Hobbit 95, 100– 101, 103, 105, 108, 109, 114–115, 116 inspiration for 157 Isildur’s possession of 401–402, 516

Sauron’s assumptions about 281 in Third Age 594 Tom Bombadil and 182 weight of 196, 215, 235, 264–266 will of 204, 216, 235 “On Fairy-Stories” 12, 92, 325–330, 527, 534 Onions, C. T. 475, 559–560, 563 Onodrim. See ents “On Translating Beowulf.” See “Prefatory Remarks on Prose Translation of ‘Beowulf’” Oratory 5, 545–546, 560–561, 589–590 Orcrist 98–100, 109, 114 orcs 561–562. See also Urukhai in The Children of Húrin 49–50, 52, 53 creation of 220, 245, 352, 604 evil of 245, 561–562 Fëanor attacked by 358–359 in The Fellowship of the Ring 193, 194, 197 language of 436, 617 in Moria 547 Neldoreth attacked by 357 in Nirnaeth Arnoediad 369, 556 Noldor attacked by 360 in The Return of the King 256–257, 263, 265 Thargelion attacked by 506 in Third Age 594 in The Two Towers 218– 219, 223–224, 237–238, 245 in War of Wrath 376 in Wars of Beleriand 615–616 Orderic Vitalis 276 Orendel 394 Orestes 58 Ori 97 Orodreth 50–52, 367, 371, 474, 497–498, 551 Orodruin (Cracks of Doom, Mount Doom) 265–266, 545, 562 Oromë (Aldaron, Tauron) 348–349, 350, 352, 452 Orthanc 217, 225–227, 226, 515, 564 Osgiliath 252, 256, 489, 502, 542, 562–563, 594

Ossë 349, 605 Otr 148 Ottor 492 outlaw tradition, medieval 61 Oxford English Dictionary 563–564 “blunderbuss” in 85 eaueres in 73 in Farmer Giles of Ham 85 Tolkien’s work on 9, 476, 560 “Oxford English School, The” 330–331 Oxford University. See also Exeter College; Merton College in education of Tolkien 6–7 philology v. literature at 10, 37, 43, 330–331, 429–430 professorship at 10 “Ozymandias” (Shelley) 249

P paganism, in Letters from Father Christmas 170 pagan warrior culture 38 Paksu 166–169, 170 palantíri (seeing-stones) 564 Aragorn’s use of 253, 278 creation of 382, 557 Denethor’s use of 259, 275, 278 history of 244, 398 in Minas Ithil 541, 545 in Minas Tirith 542 Númenóreans’ possession of 401 in Osgiliath 562 Pippin’s use of 227–228, 244–245, 278 Saruman’s use of 515 Pallando 516 Paradise in “Imram” 134–135 in “Leaf by Niggle” 144–145 in “The Nameless Land” 321 in Pearl 565 Parish 141–142, 144–145, 145–146 parson, in Farmer Giles of Ham 81, 82, 83, 85–86, 87–88 Paths of the Dead 253–254, 276 Pearl 564–565 in education of Tolkien 6, 471 Gordon edition 10, 503, 585

654   Critical Companion to J. R. R. Tolkien “The Nameless Land” influenced by 322 as source for Lothlórien 212–213 Tolkien edition 15, 585, 599 Pelennor. See Valinor Pelennor Fields, Battle of the. See Battle of the Pelennor Fields Pelóri 351, 358 Peoples of Middle-earth, The 17, 438 Peredur 66 “Perry-the-Winkle” 27–28 Phaeton 26 phial of Galadriel 197, 236– 237, 249–250 Pillars of the Kings 198 pipeweed 226, 243, 271 Pippin (Peregrin) Took 306–307 Boromir’s affection for 211 character of 204, 211, 244–245, 275 depiction in films 469, 470 disobedience of 278 in The Fellowship of the Ring 179–199 heroism of 282 maturation of 275, 290 palantír used by 227–228, 244–245, 278 Red Book of Westmarch and 570 in The Return of the King 251–252, 255–262, 267–273 in The Two Towers 217– 221, 225–228 place-names, in Farmer Giles of Ham 84 Plato 346 Poetic Diction (Barfield) 460, 461 Poetic Edda. See Elder Edda precious. See One Ring, the Preface to Paradise Lost (Lewis) 347 “Prefatory Remarks on Prose Translation of ‘Beowulf’“ 331–333, 622 priests, in “Leaf by Niggle” 144 Princess and the Goblin, The (MacDonald) 116, 534 “Princess Mee” 25, 26–27 “Princess Ni” 25 prophecies 125, 156, 279 Prophecy of the North 356 Prose Edda (Snorra Edda) 112, 146, 155–156, 379, 555, 566

providence, in The Lord of the Rings 249, 286 Prudentius 277 Psamathos Psamathides 334, 335, 337, 339 Purgatory, “Leaf by Niggle” as allegory of 144 pyrexia 8–9

Q Qenya 340 Quenta Silmarillion 11, 349, 350–396, 437 Quenya 566–567 Dúnedain knowledge of 482 Finnish as basis of 7, 518 in Letters from Father Christmas 171 Sindarin and 361, 386, 582 writing system for 592–593

R rabbits, and hobbits 110–111 race, confused with languages 75, 76–77 Radagast 516, 617 radio adaptations 567–568 Ragnars Saga Loðbrókar 240 Rangers. See Aragorn Rankin/Bass Productions 568–569 Reade, Father Vincent 569–570 recovery, in fairy stories 247, 318, 327 Red Book of Westmarch 21, 77, 273, 292, 498, 570 “Reeve’s Tale, The” 41–43 Regin 148, 149–150 resurrection 206, 221–222, 241 Return of the King, The animated film adaptation of 568, 569 closure in 287 cock’s crow in 277–278 commentary on 274–292 disobedience in 278, 279–280 industrialization in 201 inspired song in 286 interlacing in 274 language of 277, 279 light v. darkness in 277–278 obedience in 278 oliphaunts in 29 publication of 14, 274 radio adaptation of 567

reviews of 457 stewardship in 275 synopsis of 251–274 titling of 14 Victorian idealism in 277 war depicted in 277 writing of 440, 447 Return of the Shadow, The 438–439 Reynolds, R. W. 571 Rhudaur 455 Rhys-Davies, John 571–572 Richard the Lionheart 385 Riddermark. See Rohan riddles 572–573 “Enigmata Saxonica Nuper Inventa Duo” 77–79 in The Hobbit 78, 100, 106, 115–116, 121 “Oliphaunt” as 29 ring. See One Ring, the Rings of Power 401, 403, 473, 545, 552, 557, 578. See also Narya; Nenya; One Ring, the; Vilya Ringwraiths. See Nazgûl Rivals, The (Sheridan) 7, 499 Rivendell (Imladris) 573 in The Fellowship of the Ring 187–191 in The Hobbit 99, 110 Noldor at 558 in The Return of the King 270 in Third Age 594 Roäc 107–108 Road Goes Ever On: A Song Cycle, The 25, 40, 509, 510, 573–574 Roberts, Adam 147 Robin Hood 61 Robinson, Fred C. 40 Rohan 574–575, 575. See also Helm’s Deep; Rohirrim alliance with Gondor 502 Éomer as representative of 247 founding of 502 Gondor and 402, 444, 502 Isengard and 515 in The Return of the King 254–255 in The Two Towers 218, 222–223 Rohirrim. See also Rohan as American Indians 239 as Anglo-Saxons 239 in Battle of Pelennor Fields 462 heroic code of 558 language of 617 names of 241–242

in The Return of the King 254–255, 257–258 sources for 239 spiritual status of 248 in Third Age 594 in The Two Towers 218, 219, 222–227 Uruk-hai compared to 240 Roland 209–210 romance. See also lays enchantment in 381 in “Errantry” 24 The Hobbit as 96, 112, 113 interlacing in 239–240 The Lord of the Rings as 176 maimed king in 66 romanticism, influence in fairy stories 329 romantic poetry 71. See also chivalric romance “Root of a Boot, The” 27, 426 rope, elven 228–229 Rose Cotton 273, 283–284 Roverandom 334–338, 339 Roverandom 333–339, 602–603 “Ruddoc Hana” 423–424 Rúmil 9, 575, 592 runes. See Cirth

S Sador 45–46, 52–53, 64 Saeros 46–47, 370 sagas 58–59, 114, 203, 575– 576. See also Völsunga Saga Saint Brendan the Navigator 134–136, 321, 565 saint legends, medieval 58 Salu, Mary 576–577 Sam (Samwise) Gamgee 307–308 actions and motives of 250–251 as author 27, 28 courage of 251 depiction in films 455–456 elves loved by 285 empathy for enemies 246–247, 507 in The Fellowship of the Ring, synopsis 179–199 as focal character 250 in Fourth Age 498 Galadriel and, devotion to 285 Gollum and 250, 285 heroism of 283–284, 558 hymn sung by 488 loyalty of 217, 246 maturation of 290

Index   655 “Oliphaunt” and 29 as peasant 200 Red Book of Westmarch in possession of 570 in The Return of the King, synopsis 262–274 as ring-bearer 237–238, 250–251, 262–263, 284 as soldier 283–284 source for 8 spiritual revelation of 284–285 in The Two Towers, synopsis 228–238 Samson, Túrin compared to 390 Sarati 575 Sarehole 4, 577, 577–578, 580, 602 Saruman the White (Sharkey) 308–309 corruption of 244, 402 defeat of 225–227, 244, 492 depiction in films 527 destruction of nature by 220, 225 Gandalf imprisoned by 190 heroic code lacking in 558 Isengard controlled by 515 as Istari 516 language of 208, 243–244 as Maia 208–209, 281 orcs of 217–218. See also Uruk-hai Orthanc controlled by 515 plans of 208, 221 release of 269–270 robes of 244 Rohan and 575 in the Shire 272–273, 289, 290–291, 445, 580 as steward 275 Uruk-hai and 220, 609 in White Council 402, 617 Sauron (Dark Lord, Lord of the Rings, Necromancer, Gorthaur the Cruel) 309–310 as ally of Melkor 349, 350 Aragon and 253 Aulë and 379 Beren and Lúthien and 366–367 defeat of 266–267, 281, 288, 404, 461, 499, 545 destruction of the ring and 266–267

Durin’s folk targeted by 483 Eldar and 488 Eregion invaded by 473 evil as habit in 281 Finrod and 367 form of 397, 401 fortress of. See Barad-dûr; Dol Guldur Galadriel and 196 Gollum questioned by 189 in The Hobbit, as Necromancer 97, 110, 117 Istari charge against 516 knowledge of 189, 208, 221 Minas Ithil captured by 489, 516, 541 Minas Tirith captured by 365 in Mirkwood 480–481 Mordor occupied by 544–545 Noldor and 400–401, 557–558 in Númenor 401, 559 Númenóreans and 396– 397, 399, 401, 489 the One Ring and. See One Ring, the orcs under 561 Orodruin and 562 in Second Age 400–401, 578–579 in Third Age 593–594 Uruk-hai created by 609 Valar and 610 White Council and 617 Sauron Defeated: The End of the Third Age 439–441 Sawles Warde 136–137. See also Katherine group Scatha 482 “Sea Bell, The” 33–34, 586–587 searoþancle (word-lovers) 91 Second Age 578–579 secondary belief, and fairy stories 327, 328 “Secret Vice, A” 339–341, 513, 550, 567 seeing-stones. See palantíri Sergeant Boffin 317 Serkis, Andy 579–580 shadow archetype 115, 177, 211 “Shadow-Bride” 31 Shadowfax 222, 251–252, 274 shape-changers 116–117, 148. See also Beorn Shaping of Middle-Earth, The 441–442

Sharka legend 67 Shelley, Percy Bysshe 249 shell shock, of Frodo 283 Shelob 118, 236–237, 249–250 Sheridan, Richard Brinsley 7, 499 Shire, the 96, 580 folklore of. See hobbits, folklore of founding of 510–511 in The Hobbit 97, 110, 125 innocence of 200 inspiration for 4 in The Lord of the Rings 177–178, 271–274, 289–291 in “Perrry-the-Winkle” 27 Saruman in 445 sources for 602 in Third Age 594 “Short Ode to a Philologist, A” (Auden) 90, 457 “Sigelwara Land” 341–343, 494 Siggeir 148–149, 612 Sigmund (character, son of Sigurd) 155, 164 Sigmund (character, son of Völsung) 148–149, 158, 162–163, 612 Signý 148–149, 158, 612 “Signý” 163 Sigrlinn 149 Sigurd 149–152, 156, 158, 163–164, 489, 524, 612–613 Silmarillion, The 343–411. See also Ainulindalë; Of the Rings of Power and the Third Age; Quenta Silmarillion; Valaquenta Ælfwine and 451 Beren in 173 The Book of Lost Tales and 433–434 characters of 404–410 The Children of Húrin in, version of 44 disappointment of readers with 343 editing of 17, 343, 344, 378, 384, 392, 520, 599 frame story for 492, 498, 596 as Genesis 377 Glorfindel in 206 greed in 32 “The Happy Mariners” and 94 Inklings and 11 inspiration for 9 Kalevala’s influence on 523

languages and 341 in lengendarium 529 Lúthien in 173 Morris’s influence on 549 Nirnaeth Arnoediad in 556 origins of 9 publication of 13, 17, 175, 607, 608, 614 Red Book of Westmarch as source of 570 Sir Orfeo’s influence on 587 spiders in 118 structure of 344–345 summary of 11 Tavrobel in 79 Welsh influence on 77 wizards in 208–209 writing of 16, 143, 343–344 Silmarils 580–581 in Angband 453 Beren’s quest for 366–368, 388, 389, 481, 539, 551 blessing of 487 creation of 354, 382, 557 Elwing’s possession of 374, 375–376 in Fëanor’s fall 382 light of 527 locations of 377, 395 in Nauglamír 373–374 phial of Galadriel and 249 sources for 519 stolen by Maedhros and Maglor 377, 395 stolen by Melkor 355– 356, 496 in Wars of Beleriand 615 Silvan elves. See Wood-elves Sindar (Grey-elves) 581–582 in Beleriand 464 in categories of elves 380 language of 361 Noldor and 360, 582 origin of 352–353, 488, 490 wariness of 384 in Wars of Beleriand 615 Sindarin 582–583 in Doriath 481 Dúnedain knowledge of 482 in Letters from Father Christmas 171 men’s use of 364 Quenya and 566–567 Welsh influence on 77 writing system for 592–593 Sinfjötli 149, 612

656   Critical Companion to J. R. R. Tolkien Sir Gawain and the Green Knight 583–586 in education of Tolkien 6, 471 The Fellowship of the Ring influenced by 210 Gordon-Tolkien edition 10, 565 Tolkien edition 15, 411, 414, 479, 503, 529, 599 “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight” 411–414, 583 Sirion 375–376, 586 Sir Orfeo 33, 117–118, 585, 586–587, 599 Sisam, Kenneth 7, 541, 587–588 Sleeper in the Tower of Pearl 94 Smaug 97, 105–107, 120–121, 127–128, 157 Smith 415–417, 420–421 Smith, G. B. 6, 9, 571, 588– 589, 591, 619–620 Smith of Wootton Major 15, 92, 414–421, 534 Snorra Edda. See Prose Edda Snowman 165 “Some Contributions to Middle-English Lexicography” 421–422 Somme, Battle of the. See Battle of the Somme Song of Roland, The 58 Songs for Philologists 330, 422–428, 503, 611 sophistry 243–244 South Africa. See Bloemfontein Southrons. See Haradrim Soviet Union, and The Lord of the Rings 215 Sphinx, riddle of 115 spiders 103, 118, 603. See also Shelob; Ungoliant spirituality 284–286, 288–289, 399, 419, 562 stewardship, in The Return of the King 275 Sting 98, 100, 103, 113, 118, 191 Stone of Erech 253–254 “Stone Troll, The” 27 Stoors 510 Stow, Mary Jane 3 Strider. See Aragorn Sturlinga Saga 576 Sturluson, Snorri. See Prose Edda sub-creation 327, 328–329, 382, 417–418, 419 Suffield, Beatrice 5, 589–590 Suffield, Mabel. See Tolkien, Mabel

Suffield, May 4–5, 512–513, 590 Súlimo. See Manwë sun 357–358, 384, 624 “Svikin Brynhildr” (“Brynhild Betrayed”) 151 Swanhild 156, 612–613 Swann, Donald. See Road Goes Ever On: A Song Cycle, The swords. See also Andúril; Anglachel; Caudimordax; Glamdring; Orcrist; Sting of Beowulf 114 broken 63 character traits in 63 in heroic legends 114 in The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún 148–149. See also Gram of Roland 209–210 “Syx Mynet” 423

T T. C. B. S. (Tea Club, Barrovian Society) 590–592 effect of World War I on 9 formation of 6, 523 Gilson in 499 poetry of Tolkien and 8 Smith in 588 Wiseman in 619 Tailbiter. See Caudimordax “Tale of Eärendel, The” 94, 434 Tale of Gamelyn 61 Tale of the Children of Húrin 444 “Tale of Tinúviel, The” 43, 433 “Tale of Years, The” 392 Taniquetil 351 Tar-Palantír 396 Tata 476–477 Tauron. See Oromë Tavrobel 79 Teddy 316–317, 319 Teleri. See also Sindar in Aman 451, 596 attack on 356, 495 in categories of elves 380, 488 diversity of 380 language of 575 origin of 352, 477, 490 in Second Age 400 ships of 344, 356 sundering of 353 in War of Wrath 376 Telperion 592. See also Two Trees of Valinor temptation, in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight 412–413

Tengwar (Fëanorian alphabet) 9, 171, 380, 566, 575, 592–593 Thain’s Book 570 Thame 84 Thangorodrim 376–377, 385, 453, 495, 593 Thargelion 506 Théoden 310–311 Denethor compared to 278–279 name of 241 in The Return of the King 252–255, 257–258, 269 in The Two Towers 218, 222–227 Thiðrekssaga 155–156 Thingol (Elwë) 408–409 Beren and 366–368, 581 in The Children of Húrin 46–47, 48, 53–54, 59 in Cuiviénenyarna 477 Húrin and 373 Melian and 353, 373–374, 381, 539 men and 364, 387 Nauglamír and 373–374, 391 Noldor and 359, 386, 490 Quenya forbidden by 361, 386, 566–567, 582 and return to Valinor 352 Sindar under 356–357 as tragic figure 389 Turgon as foil to 393 Túrin and 46–47, 48, 53–54, 59, 370 Úmanyar and 606 Third Age 44, 593–594. See also Lord of the Rings, The Thompson, Francis 595–596 Thorin Oakenshield 97–109, 122–123, 124, 128 Thorondor 359, 365, 368, 486 Thráin 190 Thranduil 542–543 Three Rings of Power. See Narya; Nenya; Vilya Thurin. See Túrin Tída (Tídwald) 130–133 Tilion 357–358 Timaeus (Plato) 346 time 213, 345, 347 Tinker 334 Tirion 353, 361, 496, 610 Tir-nan-Og 321 Tol Eressëa 596 Ælfwine in 451 in The Book of Lost Tales, Part 1 433 as England 174 Eriol in 492

in “An Evening in Tavrobel” 79 in “Imram” 135 location of 451, 492, 605 origin of 353 Tolhurst, Denis 16, 471, 596–597 Tol-in-Gaurhoth 367 Tolkien, Arthur Reuel 4, 553, 597, 601 Tolkien, Baillie 165, 597–598 Tolkien, Christopher Reuel 598–599 birth of 10, 471 The Book of Lost Tales, Part 1 edited by 433 The Book of Lost Tales, Part 2 edited by 433–434 The Children of Húrin published by 43 on “Errantry” 24 on “Goblin Feet” 91–92 on “The Happy Mariners” 93, 94 The History of Middle-earth edited by The Lays of Beleriand 434 The Lost Road 435 Morgoth’s Ring 437 The Peoples of Middleearth 438 The Return of the Shadow 438–439 Sauron Defeated 439–441 The Shaping of Middleearth 441 The Treason of Isengard 442–443 The War of the Jewels 445 The War of the Ring 446 in Inklings 514 on The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún 147 The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún published by 146 in Letters from Father Christmas 166–168 The Lord of the Rings and 175 marriage of 597–598 The Silmarillion edited by 17, 343, 344, 378, 384, 392 in Tolkien’s legacy 17–18 Unfinished Tales edited by 444 during World War II 12

Index   657 Tolkien, Edith Bratt. See Bratt, Edith Tolkien, Hilary 599–600 Tolkien, J. R. R. 15 accusation of antiSemitism 380–381 as Beren 9, 173, 388 on biographies of authors 3 biography of 3–18 childhood of 3–6 chronology of 627–629 death of 17, 17 education of 5–7 at King Edward’s School 4, 471–472, 521–523, 522, 571, 602, 619 at Oratory 560, 569–570, 602 at Oxford 476, 622–623 female characters of 242, 296–297, 389 legacy of 17–18 on myth 484 procrastination of 143 retirement of 14–15 surname of 3 Tolkien, John Benjamin 3 Tolkien, John Francis Reuel 9, 12, 165, 166, 471, 600–601 Tolkien, Mabel 4–5, 512, 545, 553, 597, 601–602 Tolkien, Michael 602–603 birth of 10, 471 in Letters from Father Christmas 165 on Mr. Bliss 315 Roverandom and 333 during World War II 12 Tolkien, Priscilla 10, 166–169, 455, 471, 603–604 Tolkien and the Great War (Garth) 3 Tom Bombadil in “The Adventures of Tom Bombadil” 21–22 as Aulë the Smith 202 Beorn compared to 117 in “Bombadil Goes Boating” 22–23 character of 21, 201–202 as divine child 202–203 as divine jester 203 as Divine Wisdom 202 in The Fellowship of the Ring 181–183, 201 marriage to Goldberry 202 in “Once Upon a Time” 324 origins of 21

in “The Stone Troll” 27 as trickster 202 as Valar 202 Tom Cotton 272 Tooks (hobbit family) 97, 122, 511 Totta (Torhthelm) 130–134 tower, allegory of 38 tragedy Boromir’s story as 238 The Children of Húrin as 58 Fëanor’s story as 382 Thingol’s story as 389 Túrin’s story as 58, 67–68, 390–391 translation, from Old English 331–333, 585 Treason of Isengard, The 442–443 treasure dragons’ lust for 62, 482 in Farmer Giles of Ham 81–84 in “The Hoard” 31–32 in The Hobbit 105–110, 120–125 in The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún 148, 149–150, 152, 153–154, 157 Treebeard (Fangorn) 311– 312, 491 age of 221, 491 in The Return of the King 269–270 sources for 519 on trolls’ origins 604 in The Two Towers 220– 221, 225–227 tricksters 118, 202 Tristan (Gottfried von Strassburg) 60, 67 trolls 604–605 in The Fellowship of the Ring 187, 193 in The Hobbit 98, 112– 113 origin of 220, 491 in “Perrry-the-Winkle” 27–28 sources for 566 in “The Stone Troll” 27 Trought, Vincent 590–591 Tuatha Dé Danann 213, 323 Tulkas 348, 350, 605 Tumladen 359–360, 361, 500 Tumunzahar 357 Tuor 374–375, 392–393, 444, 501, 605 Turambar. See Túrin “Turambar and the Foalóke” 43, 433

Turgon the Wise 409–410 Gondolin built by 359– 360, 361, 500 as high king 499 Maeglin and 362–363 in Nirnaeth Arnoediad 369, 390, 556 as Thingol’s foil 393 Tuor and 374–375, 393 Ulmo and 605 Túrin Turambar character of 59 in The Children of Húrin 45–57, 69–70 in First Age 497–498 as Grail Knight 66 as hero archetype 59–60 identities of 65–66 names of, as disguise 65–66, 69 in Nargothrond 551 in The Silmarillion 370– 373, 389–391, 410 sorrow of 59 source for 489, 519, 523, 524 sword of. See Anglachel as tragic hero 390–391 versions of story 391 “Two Little Schemes” 330 Two Towers, The class in 247–248 commentary on 238–251 eucatastrophes in 243 industrialization in 201, 225 interlacing in 239–240 Oliphaunt in 29, 247 publication of 14 synopsis of 217–238 titling of 14 Two Trees of Valinor (Laurelin and Telperion) 527, 592 creation of 351 death of 355, 383, 497 light of 378 sun and moon created from 357–358 Yavanna and 623–624 Tyr 387–388

U Uglúk 219 Uin 335, 336–337 Uinen 349 Uldor 369, 556 Ulfang 369, 486, 556 Ulmo 605–606 affection for Eldar 385 in The Children of Húrin 51

in creation of Arda 345 Tuor and 374 Turgon and 361, 386, 500 in Valar pantheon 348, 350 Úmanyar 606. See also Laiquendi; Sindar; Teleri Undying Lands. See Valinor Unfinished Tales of Númenor and Middle-earth 17, 44, 444–445, 599 Ungoliant 118, 249, 355, 360, 383 Union of Maedhros. See Nirnaeth Arnoediad Unwin, Rayner 606–607 “Leaf by Niggle” and 140 in publication of The Hobbit 12, 95, 608 in publication of The Lord of the Rings 13, 175–176 Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and 585 Unwin, Stanley 12, 13, 95, 478, 607–609 Uruk-hai 219, 220, 240, 515, 609 Urwen 59, 64–65 Utumno 350, 352. See also Angband

V Vairë 348 Valandil 402, 516, 573 Valaquenta 348–350, 575, 609 Valar 609–610. See also individual Vala in Aman 451–452 in The Children of Húrin 51 in creation of Arda 350–351 eagles and 486 entry into Arda 345–346, 347, 454 fallibility of 399 Fëanor cursed by 382 as gods 349–350 Ilúvatar and 512 men and 387 Noldor rebellion against 214, 285 Númenórean rebellion against 396 pantheon of 348–350 relationship with men 358 in Third Age 404 Tom Bombadil as 202 in War of Wrath 616

658   Critical Companion to J. R. R. Tolkien “Valedictory Address to the University of Oxford” 330– 331, 428–430 Valhalla 156 Valian Years 437 Valinor 610. See also Aman in First Age 497 founding of 351 Galadriel’s exile from 214, 557 in “Imram” 135 “The Nameless Land” and 321 Númenórean invasion of 399 time in 437 Valkotukka 166–169, 170 Valmar 351 Vána 349 Vanyar 610–611 in Aman 451, 513 in categories of elves 380, 488 journey to Valinor 353, 513, 596 origin of 352, 477, 490 in War of Wrath 376 Varda. See Elbereth Vercelli Book 477 Verdun 463–464 verse form of “The Adventures of Tom Bombadil” 22 of “Bilbo’s Last Song” 40 of “Bombadil Goes Boating” 23 of “Cat” 31 of Eddaic poems 489 of “Errantry” 24–25 of “Fisiologus” 30 fornyrðislag 147 of “The Happy Mariners” 93–94 of “The Hoard” 32 of “Imram” 135–136 of “The Last Ship” 35 of “The Lay of Aotrou and Itroun” 138 of The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún 147 of “Light as Leaf on Lindentree” 173 of “The Lonely Isle” 174 of “The Man in the Moon Came Down Too Soon” 26–27 of “The Man in the Moon Stayed Up Too Late” 26

of “The Mewlips” 29 of “The Nameless Land” 321–322 of “Once Upon a Time” 324–325 of Pearl 565 of “Perry-the-Winkle” 28 of “Princess Mee” 25 of “The Sea Bell” 34 of “Shadow-Bride” 31 of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight 584–585 of Songs for Philologists 423, 424, 425, 426, 427 of “The Strone Troll” 27 strophic 159 of “To W.H.A.” 91 Viking Club 10, 503, 529, 611 Vikings, in Battle of Maldon 129–130 Vilya 401, 402, 473, 499, 573, 611 Vingi 153 Virgin Mary, Galadriel as 214, 285 Völsung 148–149, 612 Völsungakviða en nýja (New Lay of the Völsungs) 148–152 Völsunga Saga 612, 612–614, 613 The Children of Húrin influenced by 38, 63, 64, 65, 67 magical ring in 403 Sigurd story in 146, 155–156 wargs in 116 “Völuspá” 488 Voronwë 374 “Voyage of Earendel the Evening Star, The” 8

W Wainriders 502 “Waking of Angantyr, The” 63 Waldman, Milton 13, 537, 608, 614 Wanderer, The 240 wargs 101–102, 109, 116, 614–615 War of the Jewels. See Wars of Beleriand War of the Jewels, The 445–446 War of the Ring, The 446–447 War of Wrath Eärendil in 376–377, 394 in First Age 498 as myth 395

Silmarils in 581 Valar in 610, 616 Vanyar in 611 Wars of Beleriand (Goblin Wars, War of the Jewels) 465, 615–616. See also Nirnaeth Arnoediad Angband in 453 Balrogs in 459 Círdan in 474 Glaurung in 387 orcs in 561 Sindar and 582 Valar and 610 wealhstod (interpreter) 76 Weathertop 186, 564 Welsh 5, 7, 75–77 werewolves 149 Westron 482, 616–617 “Whale, The” 30 Wheeler, Mortimer 323 White Council 402, 474, 617 White Dragon 335, 338 White Tree of Gondolin 592 White Tree of Gondor death of 401, 502 history of 209, 275, 592 inspiration for 157 restoration of 288–289, 503 in The Return of the King 251 White Tree of Númenor. See Nimloth White Tree of Tol Eressëa 559, 592 White Trees of Valinor. See Two Trees of Valinor “Wife of Bath’s Tale” 117, 139 Wigmore Abbey 36 Wildman of the Woods. See Túrin wild man of the woods motif 65–66 William of Tyre 278 Williams, Charles 617–619 death of 13 Festschrift for 325 in Inklings 514 relationship with Tolkien 12–13, 531, 532 willing suspension of disbelief. See secondary belief winter solstice symbolism, in The Fellowship of the Ring 210 Wiseman, Christopher 6, 500, 522–523, 571, 590–592, 619–620

Witch-king of Angmar. See lord of the Nazgûl wizards. See Istari wolves 191. See also wargs; werewolves Wood, Elijah 620, 620–621 Wood-elves (Silvan elves) 621 in The Hobbit 103–104, 107–110, 117–119, 587 origin of 458, 490 Wooing group 37, 520 wóþbora (poet) 90, 91, 457 World War I. See also Battle of the Somme and depiction of war in The Return of the King 277 Gilson in 8–9, 591 Hilary Tolkien in 600 Lancashire Fusiliers in 8–9, 524–525 Lewis (C.S.) in 530 Lewis (Warnie) in 532 Smith in 8–9, 588–589, 591 Tolkien in 8–9, 173–174 Wiseman in 8–9, 591, 619 World War II d’Ardenne during 454 influence on The Lord of the Rings 215–216 John Tolkien during 12, 600–601 in Letters from Father Christmas 170 Michael Tolkien in 12, 603 Worminghall 84 Wormtongue. See Gríma Wormtongue Woses 257, 280 Wrenn, C. L. 331, 621–622 Wright, Joseph 7, 622–623 Wulfmær 130

Y Yavanna (Kementári) 623– 624 in creation myths 350 creation of dwarves and 351 ents animated by 491 Goldberry as 202 Telperion created by 592 in Valar pantheon 348, 350 Yggdrasil 378 Yvain 65