The J. R. R. Tolkien Companion and Guide: Volume 3: Reader’s Guide PART 2
The J. R. R. Tolkien Companion and Guide: Volume 3: Reader’s Guide PART 2
Christina Scull
Wayne G. Hammond
Volume 2 of the most comprehensive in-depth companion to Tolkien’s life and works ever published. This volume includes a superlative day-by-day chronology of Tolkien’s life, presenting the most detailed biographical record available.The J. R. R. Tolkien Companion and Guide is a comprehensive handbook to one of the most popular authors of the twentieth century.One of two volumes comprising this definitive work, the Reader's Guide is an indispensable introduction to J. R. R. Tolkien's life, writings, and art. It includes histories and discussions of his works; analyses of the components of his vast 'Silmarillion' mythology; brief biographies of persons important in his life; accounts of places he knew; essays on topics such as Tolkien's interests and attitudes towards contemporary issues, ideas found in his works, adaptations, and invented languages; and checklists of his published works, his poetry, his pictorial art, and translations of his writings.
Copyright (#ulink_7ffa6aed-b649-58b9-a75f-39b077ec5090)
HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd.
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Published by HarperCollinsPublishers 2017
Copyright © Christina Scull and Wayne G. Hammond 2006, 2017
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Source ISBN: 9780008214531
Ebook Edition © November 2017 ISBN: 9780008273491
Version: 2017-10-20
Dedication (#ulink_74e40f16-2b80-5fde-82c4-377ba7216dd1)
In Memory of RAYNER UNWIN Mentor and Friend
Contents
COVER (#u4701b3dc-d1cc-593f-bc5c-9f077fc0abed)
TITLE PAGE (#u11f9d32b-99b8-5133-8cbb-b3862d9b1676)
COPYRIGHT (#ulink_a85d3f1f-756c-5184-a600-83dac149090a)
DEDICATION (#ulink_dcbc370b-95a6-5ed0-94fd-1833cefff510)
I
PREFACE
CHRONOLOGY
NOTES
INDEX
II
PREFACE
LIST OF ARTICLES (#ulink_6ab6b2f5-2f8c-51ad-b9fe-ce145b765fc1)
READER’S GUIDE A–M
III
READER’S GUIDE N–Z (#udd7e0d2c-561d-5a72-93f6-cdb7b548df55)
N (#ulink_1d920822-99d6-5f41-b7c9-323d92609369)
O (#ulink_1e89ed20-8db5-5211-ac57-2dfdcbd2653b)
P (#ulink_94166511-9b2a-5316-8adc-be2a55c3c312)
Q (#ulink_3622e0b1-e425-570d-aef7-903d471bc97d)
R (#ulink_f2d68a44-88f6-5aab-accd-8e66fcd97c08)
S (#ulink_f9a9503a-6dde-5f10-924b-33278bd357de)
T (#ulink_fe062ad1-4b6a-50fc-bb29-3dce58a1b3b8)
U (#ulink_893ea9a4-3329-5243-853c-613ce97a33b6)
V (#ulink_ea35fe66-f70b-56f7-9d84-782df5583484)
W (#ulink_48419c33-1d72-5fd2-a68b-3c0bee35f342)
X, Y, Z (#ulink_3bc688c1-1915-59c0-be44-8310d728f2a1)
FAMILY TREES (#ulink_14e994c8-88e7-58f9-b8e3-d7938d9639a3)
BIBLIOGRAPHIES
Published Writings & Art Poetry & Translations (#u203fc7b7-30c0-5b41-94c1-b755737caee2)
WORKS CONSULTED (#ulink_1d9c0b82-67ff-5868-aa04-4c3e372a9b83)
INDEX (#ulink_f306e722-d919-5419-851d-398bc1ef8596)
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
OTHER BOOKS BY
ABOUT THE PUBLISHER
LIST OF ARTICLES (#ulink_a0c287df-6adb-5f03-a688-0fe2dbeb1b8c)
Abercrombie, Lascelles
Ace Books controversy
Acocks Green (Warwickshire)
Acta Senatus
Adaptations
The Adventures of Tom Bombadil (poem)
The Adventures of Tom Bombadil and Other Verses from the Red Book
Ae Adar Nín
Ainulindalë
Akallabêth: The Downfall of Númenor
Alcar mi Tarmenel na Erun
Aldarion and Erendis: The Mariner’s Wife
Aldershot (Hampshire)
Allegory
The ‘Alphabet of Dairon’
Aman
Ambarkanta: The Shape of the World
‘The Ambidexters Sentence’
Ancrene Riwle
Ancrene Wisse and Hali Meiðhad
Annals of Beleriand
Annals of Valinor
Appearance
An Application for the Rawlinson and Bosworth Professorship of Anglo-Saxon … Oxford
Art
The Art of The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien
The Art of The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien
Arthur and the Matter of Britain
Athrabeth Finrod ah Andreth
Atlakviða
Atlantis
Attacks of Taste
Auden, Wystan Hugh
‘Of Aulë and Yavanna’
Authorial Presence
Barfield, Arthur Owen
Barnett, Allen
Barnsley, Thomas Kenneth
Barnt Green (Worcestershire)
Barrie, James Matthew
Barrowclough, Sidney
The Battle of Maldon
The Battle of the Eastern Field
The Battles of the Fords of Isen
Baynes, Pauline Diana
Bedford (Bedfordshire)
‘Of the Beginning of Days’
‘Of Beleriand and Its Realms’
Belgium
Bennett, Henry Stanley
Bennett, Jack Arthur Walter
Beowulf
Beowulf: A Translation and Commentary Together with The Sellic Spell
Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics
‘Of Beren and Lúthien’
Beren and Lúthien (book)
Berkshire
Bibliographies
The Bidding of the Minstrel, from the Lay of Eärendel
Bilbo’s Last Song (at the Grey Havens)
Biographies
Birmingham and environs
Birmingham Oratory
Blackwell, Basil Henry
Bliss, Alan Joseph
‘The Bodleian Declensions’
Bombadil Goes Boating
The Book of Lost Tales
The Book of Lost Tales, Part One
The Book of Lost Tales, Part Two
Bournemouth (Hampshire)
Bowra, Cecil Maurice
Bradley, Henry
Braunholtz, Gustav Ernst Karl
Brett-Smith, Herbert Francis Brett
Brewerton, George
Brogan, Denis Hugh Vercingetorix
Brookes-Smith family
Brown, Walter Rolfe
Bryson, John Norman
Buchan, John
Buckhurst, Helen Thérèse McMillan
Burchfield, Robert William
Calligraphy
Cambridge (Cambridgeshire)
Campbell, Alistair
Campbell, Ignatius Roy Dunnachie
Carr, Charlie
Carroll, Lewis
Carter, Douglas
Cat
Cecil, Edward Christian David Gascoyne
Celtic influences
Chambers, Raymond Wilson
Chandler, Pamela
Chaucer, Geoffrey
Chaucer as a Philologist: The Reeve’s Tale
Cheddar Gorge and Caves (Somerset)
Cheltenham (Gloucestershire)
Chesterton, Gilbert Keith
Childe, Wilfred Rowland Mary
Children
The Children of Húrin (book)
Círdan
Cirion and Eorl and the Friendship of Gondor and Rohan
The City of the Gods
Classical influences
The Clerke’s Compleinte
Clevedon (Somerset)
A Closed Letter to Andrea Charicoryides … Sometimes Known as Charles Williams
Coghill, Nevill Henry Kendal Aylmer
Collecting and sales
Collingwood, Robin George
‘Of the Coming of Men into the West’
‘Of the Coming of the Elves and the Captivity of Melkor’
Common Eldarin Noun: Structure
‘Common Quendian Declension’
Comparative Tables
The Complaint of Mîm the Dwarf
Composition, Manner of
The Converse of Manwë and Eru
Cornwall
Corrected Names of Chief Valar
The Corrigan
Cowling, George Herbert
Craigie, William Alexander
The Creatures of the Earth
Criticism
Cromer (Norfolk)
Cuivienyarna
Cullis, Colin
Dagnall, Margery Kathleen Mary, known as Susan
Dangweth Pengoloð
Darbishire, Helen
D’Arcy, Martin Cyril
D’Ardenne, Simonne Rosalie Thérèse Odile
‘Of the Darkening of Valinor’
Davis, Norman
Dawkins, Richard MacGillivray
Day, Mabel Katherine
De Zulueta, Francis
Declension of Nouns
A Description of the Island of Númenor
The Devil’s Coach-Horses
The Disaster of the Gladden Fields
Walt Disney Studios
Dobson, Eric John
Domestic duties
Doworst
The Dragon’s Visit
Dragons
Drama
The Drowning of Anadûnê
Dundas-Grant, James Harold
Of Dwarves and Men
Dyson, Henry Victor Dyson
Éalá Éarendel Engla Beorhtast
Earendel at the Helm
‘Early Chart of Names’
‘Early Noldorin Grammar’
‘Early Qenya Pronouns’
Earp, Thomas Wade
Eddison, Eric Rucker
‘Of Eldamar and the Princes of the Eldalië’
Eldarin Hands, Fingers & Numerals
The Elvish Alphabets
Elvish Song in Rivendell
Emery, Augustin Robert
The End of the Third Age: The History of The Lord of the Rings, Part IV
England
English and Medieval Studies Presented to J.R.R. Tolkien …
English and Welsh
English language
‘English–Qenya Dictionary’
Enigmata Saxonica Nuper Inventa Duo
Of the Ents and the Eagles
‘The Entu, Ensi, Enta Declension’
Environment
Eriol and Ælfwine
Errantry
Escape
‘Essay on Phonetic Symbolism’
Essays Presented to Charles Williams
Etymologies
Eucatastrophe
An Evening in Tavrobel
Everett, Dorothy
Examinations
Fairbank, Christian Albert Hastings
Fairford (Gloucestershire)
Fairy-stories
The Fall
The Fall of Arthur (poem)
The Fall of Arthur (book)
The Fall of Númenor
Fandom and popularity
Farmer Giles of Ham
Farnell, Lewis Richard
Farrer, Katharine Dorothy
Fastitocalon
‘Fate and Free Will’ (notes)
Fate and free will (topic)
The ‘Father Christmas’ letters
‘Of Fëanor and the Unchaining of Melkor’
The Feanorian Alphabet
Field, Geoffrey Simpson
‘Of the Fifth Battle: Nirnaeth Arnoediad’
Filey (Yorkshire)
Finn and Hengest: The Fragment and the Episode
Firth, Charles Harding
‘Five Late Quenya Volitive Inscriptions’
The Five Wizards
Fletcher, Ronald Frank William
‘Flight of the Gnomes’
The Flight of the Noldoli from Valinor
‘Of the Flight of the Noldor’
Folkestone (Kent)
Food and drink
For W.H.A.
A Fourteenth-Century Romance
Fox, Adam
France
Fraser, John
Freston, Hugh Reginald
From the Many-Willow’d Margin of the Immemorial Thames
Gardner, Helen Louise
Gawain’s Leave-taking
Gedling (Nottinghamshire)
‘Gerald of Wales on the Survival of Welsh’
Gilson, Robert Cary
Gilson, Robert Quilter
Glip
Glorfindel
‘The Gnomes Come to the Great Lands’
Gnomish Grammar
Gnomish Lexicon
‘The Gnomish Lexicon Slips’
Goblin Feet
‘Goldogrin Pronomial Prefixes’
Gollins, Annie
Good and Evil
Gordon, Eric Valentine
Gordon, George Stuart
Gordon, Robert Hope
Grahame, Kenneth
Great Haywood (Staffordshire)
Green, Roger Gilbert Lancelyn
The Grey Bridge of Tavrobel
Griffiths, Mary Elaine
Grove, Mary Jane, known as Jennie
Habbanan beneath the Stars
Haggard, Henry Rider
Hall, William Ernest
Halsbury, John Anthony Hardinge Giffard, Earl of
The Happy Mariners
Hardie, Colin Graham
Harrogate (Yorkshire)
Havard, Robert Emlyn
Health
The Heirs of Elendil
Henry Bradley, 3 Dec., 1845–23 May, 1923
‘Heraldic Devices of Tol Erethrin’
Hill, Margaret Joy
Historical and cultural influences
The History of Galadriel and Celeborn and of Amroth King of Lórien
The History of Middle-earth
The History of The Hobbit
The History of The Lord of the Rings
The Hoard
The Hobbit
Holy Maidenhood
The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth Beorhthelm’s Son
Hope and despair
The Horns of Ylmir
Hove (Sussex)
The Hunt for the Ring
Illustration
Imram
Incledon family
‘Index of Names for The Lay of the Children of Húrin’
The Inklings
‘Introduction to the “Elder Edda”’
Ireland, Republic of (Eire)
The Istari
Italy
‘Iþþlen’ in Sawles Warde
J.R.R. Tolkien: Artist and Illustrator
J.R.R. Tolkien’s Letters to Rhona Beare
Jennings, Elizabeth Joan
The Jerusalem Bible
Jones, Gwyn
Kainendan
Kalevala (including The Story of Kullervo)
Katherine Group
Ker, Neil Ripley
King Edward’s School, Birmingham
‘The Koivienéni Manuscript’
Lancashire Fusiliers
Lang, Andrew
Languages
Languages, Invented
Lascelles, Mary Madge
The Last Ark
The Last Ship
Laws and Customs among the Eldar
The Lay of Aotrou and Itroun (poem)
The Lay of Aotrou and Itroun (book)
The Lay of Beowulf
‘Lay of Eärendel’
Lay of Leithian
The Lay of the Children of Húrin
The Lay of the Fall of Gondolin
The Lays of Beleriand
Lea, Kathleen Marguerite
Leaf by Niggle
Leeds (Yorkshire)
Leeds, University of
Leeds University Verse, 1914–24
The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún (including Völsungakviða en nýja and Guðrúnarkviða en nýja)
Of Lembas
The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien
Lewis, Clive Staples
Lewis, Warren Hamilton
Lhammas
Libraries and archives
Light
Light as Leaf on Lindentree
Lincoln (Lincolnshire)
The Line of Elros: Kings of Númenor
The Little House of Lost Play: Mar Vanwa Tyaliéva
London
The Lonely Isle
The Lord of the Rings
Loss
The Lost Road (story)
The Lost Road and Other Writings
Lyme Regis (Dorset)
McCallum, Ronald Buchanan
MacDonald, George
McFarlane, Kenneth Bruce
McIntosh, Angus
Mackreth, John
Madlener, Josef
‘Of Maeglin’
Of Maeglin: Sister-son of Turgon, King of Gondolin
Magic
Malvern (Worcestershire)
The Man in the Moon Came Down Too Soon
The Man in the Moon Stayed Up Too Late
MS. Bodley 34: A Re-Collation of a Collation
Maps
Mary Michael
Masefield, John Edward
Massiah-Palmer, Werner William Thomas
‘Matar and Tulir’
Mathew, Anthony Gervase
Measures, Alfred Ernest
Melkor Morgoth
‘Of Men’
The Mewlips
Middle English ‘Losenger’
A Middle English Vocabulary
Milford-on-Sea (Hampshire)
Mills, Stella Marie
Mr. Bliss
Mitchison, Naomi Mary Margaret
Mitton family
The Monsters and the Critics and Other Essays
Morgan, Francis Xavier
Morgoth’s Ring: The Later Silmarillion, Part One: The Legends of Aman
Morris, William
Mortality and immortality
Mountain family
Murray, Robert Patrick Ruthven
Music
Mythopoeia
‘Name-list to The Fall of Gondolin’ (#ulink_017ea0e4-4166-510c-812e-592020b15b9d)
The Name ‘Nodens’ (#ulink_6eb329d3-bad8-51fc-bf7e-654c76020ae1)
The Nameless Land (#ulink_ec9e33b1-c876-5174-969a-0dc8193a981f)
Names (#ulink_cbd6ed89-9458-51d8-ab88-09f816a7e0a7)
Names and Required Alterations (#ulink_22212781-fa38-5307-98d3-6e78a29eaaef)
‘Names of the Valar’ (#ulink_d3b3a581-1df4-579d-93c9-0f2ce31e2d31)
Napier, Arthur Sampson (#ulink_b6d13896-dd42-5727-ae79-de117939ea5e)
Narn i Chîn Húrin (#ulink_65e65c92-fd48-59f9-813f-bc62cda86b70)
Narqelion (#ulink_aa5c5916-51a8-5097-a246-2629f6079f31)
Nature (#ulink_5d0f8ada-a00f-5750-be2a-51fea5bf69a3)
Neave, Emily Jane (#ulink_a058b35e-853a-5dee-9d43-ca25dca5ab90)
Nesbit, Edith (#ulink_e551a10b-6f2c-5a30-8f8e-bb3eb049ccda)
Netherlands (#ulink_cab8dea0-a0cc-58f3-969a-60b05b641df4)
A New Glossary of the Dialect of the Huddersfield District (#ulink_15b57cf0-9c7f-5b9f-8eca-1c395020666c)
The New Shadow (#ulink_976643fd-1fd0-5b04-af84-13c66c984019)
Newby, Percy Howard (#ulink_2c5d68ef-f1a4-55ec-a995-7cf2d888b864)
Newcastle upon Tyne (#ulink_b2eaa9d0-9a06-5818-96a8-c6372e172431)
Nichol Smith, David (#ulink_ea5aeece-1394-5806-8b86-fe7430ab5a02)
Nieninque (#ulink_0985ef24-5774-53a3-b947-e83c5ccf2941)
Noel (#ulink_f34a8e94-6f1c-53e0-987f-38284041afae)
‘Of the Noldor in Beleriand’ (#ulink_002fac82-56bb-5c7a-9e93-c1fd7e11447d)
‘Noldorin Dictionary’ (#ulink_c8dcf3b6-b261-5c66-96da-e96025e16b42)
‘Noldorin Word-Lists’ (#ulink_6b9fdeb3-d17a-570e-9f0d-e95b34be3460)
Nomenclature of The Lord of the Rings (#ulink_1e45f834-bf6e-5049-bcc6-69c0284c967c)
A Northern Venture (#ulink_414d89c2-6675-53fe-a924-4d05aca20838)
Northernness (#ulink_f8c8a783-2f4f-5dbf-a482-b6c319bd15c1)
Notes for Qenya Declensions (#ulink_bf5a947b-e3e6-56e7-975e-726f0ba35de9)
Notes on Motives in the Silmarillion (#ulink_185cc3b9-a10f-51e8-acaf-c675dbb53cbe)
‘Notes on Óre’ (#ulink_91da7dc8-69de-5d3b-a0fd-ab751a9d0975)
The Notion Club Papers (#ulink_e5129dac-169d-5fd6-ac84-f7396b758df7)
Nouns (#ulink_694bde40-b149-594a-ab58-97bef61ccbb8)
Númenor (#ulink_63f3d4cb-8429-5ca9-aad2-be4d09cb3e78)
Númenórean Linear Measures (#ulink_69267527-c9ee-5cd0-be89-59f56c62262a)
Official Name List (#ulink_5b7c9527-18c1-5ef7-9403-591c5c3ea83a)
The Old English Apollonius of Tyre (#ulink_b78f5c5f-4e95-5b94-b53d-aa909ef86981)
The Old English Exodus (#ulink_a1caa815-6bdf-5434-b2a0-8fef9e7f9a5a)
‘Old English Verse’ (#ulink_17148264-0187-5fdd-b86e-67615cf2abc4)
Oliphaunt (#ulink_07c1a78b-c907-570b-b446-ed66714fbb56)
On Ælfwine’s Spelling (#ulink_beab9196-6711-5f82-bcf0-d132e7d76511)
On Fairy-Stories (#ulink_8db783e9-799d-5f59-8827-e85696e342ed)
On ‘The Kalevala’ or Land of Heroes
Once upon a Time
Onions, Charles Talbut
Orcs
Otley (Yorkshire)
Otsan
Over Old Hills and Far Away
Oxford and environs
Oxford, University of
Oxford English Dictionary
Oxford English Monographs
Oxford English School (topic)
The Oxford English School (essay)
Oxford Letter
Oxford Poetry 1915
The Palantíri
Payton, Ralph Stuart
Payton, Wilfrid Hugh
Pearl
The Peoples of Middle-earth
Perry-the-Winkle
Philology
Pictures by J.R.R. Tolkien
Pity and mercy
‘The Plotz Declension’
Poems and Stories
The Poetic and Mythologic Words of Eldarissa
Poetry
Political thought
Poole (Dorset)
Possessiveness
Power
Prefatory Remarks on Prose Translation of ‘Beowulf’
Prejudice and racism
Primitive Quendian Structure
Princess Mee
The Princess Ní
‘The Problem of Lhûn’
The Problem of Ros
Progress in Bimble Town
The Prophecy of the Sibyl
Publishers
Qenya: Descriptive Grammar of the Qenya Language
‘Qenya Conjugations’
‘Qenya Declensions’
Qenya Grammar
The Qenya Verb Forms
‘Qenya Word-Lists’
Qenyaqetsa
Quantock Hills (Somerset)
Quendi and Eldar
Quenta Noldorinwa
Quenta Silmarillion (1930s–1950s)
‘Quenta Silmarillion’
Quenya: Outline of Phonology
Quenya Verb Structure
Quest
The Quest of Erebor
Raleigh, Walter Alexander
Ransome, Arthur Michell
Rattenbury, R.M.
Reade, Francis Vincent
Reading
Realities: An Anthology of Verse
Recordings
Recovery
Rednal (Worcestershire)
The Reeve’s Tale
Reincarnation of Elves
Religion
Research v. Literature
‘Of the Return of the Noldor’
The Return of the Shadow: The History of The Lord of the Rings, Part One
Reynolds, Richard William
Rhodes, Philip Grafton Mole
Rice-Oxley, Leonard
Ridley, Maurice Roy
Of the Rings of Power and the Third Age
The Rivers and Beacon-Hills of Gondor
The Road
The Road Goes Ever On: A Song Cycle
Romanticism
Roverandom
‘Of the Ruin of Beleriand and the Fall of Fingolfin’
‘Of the Ruin of Doriath’
Salu, Mary Bertha
Sarehole (Warwickshire)
Sauron Defeated: The End of the Third Age (The History of The Lord of the Rings, Part Four); The Notion Club Papers and The Drowning of Anadûnê
Sayer, George Sydney Benedict
Science
Scotland
The Sea
The Sea-Bell
The Seafarer
A Secret Vice (lecture)
A Secret Vice: Tolkien on Invented Languages (book)
Sellic Spell
Shadow-Bride
Shakespeare, Donald William Edward, known as Anthony
Shakespeare, William
The Shaping of Middle-Earth: The Quenta, The Ambarkanta and the Annals Together with the Earliest ‘Silmarillion’ and the First Map
The Shibboleth of Fëanor
The Shores of Faery
‘Sí Qente Feanor’
Sidmouth (Devon)
Sigelwara Land
‘The Silmarillion’ (legendarium)
The Silmarillion (published book)
‘Of the Silmarils and the Unrest of the Noldor’
Simpson, Percy
‘Of the Sindar’
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (poem)
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (W.P. Ker Lecture)
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Pearl and Sir Orfeo
Sir Orfeo
Sisam, Kenneth
Sketch of the Mythology
Smith, Albert Hugh
Smith, Geoffrey Bache
Smith of Wootton Major
Smithers, Geoffrey Victor
Smoking
Societies and clubs
Some Contributions to Middle-English Lexicography
Some Notes on ‘Rebirth’
A Song of Aryador
Songs for the Philologists
Source criticism
South Africa
Spiders
Sports
Staffordshire
Staples, Osric Osmumd
Stevens, Courtenay Edward
Stewart, John Innes Mackintosh
The Stone Troll
Stonyhurst (Lancashire)
The Story of Kullervo (book)
Sub-creation
Suffield family
‘Of the Sun and Moon and the Hiding of Valinor’
Sun The Trees Silmarils
Swann, Donald Ibrahim
Switzerland
‘Synopsis of Pengoloð’s Eldarinwe Leperi are Notessi’
Tal-Elmar
The Tale of Years
‘Tales and Songs of Bimble Bay’
Tales from the Perilous Realm
T.C.B.S.
Tengwesta Qenderinwa
St Teresa Gale
‘Of Thingol and Melian’
Thompson, Francis
Thompson, Louis Lionel Harry
Thompson, William Meredith
Tidworth (Wiltshire)
Tinfang Warble
Tolhurst, Bernard Joseph
Tolhurst, Denis Anthony
Tolkien family
Tolkien, Arthur Reuel
Tolkien, Christopher Reuel
Tolkien, Edith Mary
Tolkien, Hilary Arthur Reuel
Tolkien, John Francis Reuel
Tolkien, Mabel
Tolkien, Michael Hilary Reuel
Tolkien, Priscilla Mary Anne Reuel
Tolkien Estate
Tolkien on Tolkien
The Tolkien Reader
‘Tom Bombadil: A Prose Fragment’
The Town of Dreams and the City of Present Sorrow
Translations
Travel and transport
The Treason of Isengard: The History of The Lord of the Rings, Part Two
Tree and Leaf
The Trees of Kortirion
Trimingham, Harold Gilbert Lutyens
Trought, Vincent
Of Tuor and His Coming to Gondolin
‘Of Tuor and the Fall of Gondolin’
‘Of Túrin Turambar’
‘The “Turin Wrapper”’
Turlin and the Exiles of Gondolin
Turville-Petre, Edward Oswald Gabriel
Turville-Petre, Joan Elizabeth
Unfinished Tales of Númenor and Middle-earth
Unwin, Rayner Stephens
Unwin, Stanley
Valaquenta
Valedictory Address to the University of Oxford
‘Variation D/L in Common Eldarin’
‘Of the Voyage of Eärendil and the War of Wrath’
Wade-Gery, Henry Theodore
Wagner, Richard Wilhelm
Wain, John Barrington
Waldman, Milton
Wales
The Wanderer
The Wanderings of Húrin
War
The War of the Jewels: The Later Silmarillion, Part Two: The Legends of Beleriand
The War of the Ring: The History of The Lord of the Rings, Part Three
Wardale, Edith Elizabeth
Warwick (Warwickshire)
West Midlands
Weston-super-Mare (Somerset)
Whitby (Yorkshire)
Whitelock, Dorothy
Wilkinson, Cyril Hackett
Williams, Charles Walter Stansby
Wilson, Frank Percy
Windle, Michael William Maxwell
Winter’s Tales for Children I
Wiseman, Christopher Luke
Women and marriage
‘Words of Joy’
Words, Phrases and Passages in Various Tongues in The Lord of the Rings
Wrenn, Charles Leslie
Wright, Joseph
Writing systems
Wyke-Smith, Edward Augustine
Wyld, Henry Cecil Kennedy
The Year’s Work in English Studies
Yorkshire
N (#ulink_0401a4ca-19e5-51e8-b3ab-c43c370d9251)
‘Name-List to The Fall of Gondolin’. Unfinished compilation of names in Qenya and Gnomish (Noldorin, later Sindarin; see *Languages, Invented) occurring in The Fall of Gondolin in *The Book of Lost Tales as ‘set forth by Eriol at the teaching of Bronweg’s son … Littleheart’ (*The Book of Lost Tales, Part Two, p. 148). Tolkien evidently compiled this list in more or less alphabetical order from the *Official Name List (?1917–?1919), but it extends only as far as the letter L. *Christopher Tolkien incorporated information from the list in the Appendices (‘Names in the Lost Tales’) to *The Book of Lost Tales, Part One and The Book of Lost Tales, Part Two. The complete list was published in Parma Eldalamberon 15 (2004), pp. 19–30, edited with commentary and notes by Christopher Gilson and Patrick H. Wynne.
Included with the ‘Name-List’ proper is another projected list of names, abandoned after only three entries, probably the beginning of a list for The Cottage of Lost Play (The Book of Lost Tales).
The Name ‘Nodens’. Note, first published as Appendix I, pp. 132–7, in the Report on the Excavation of the Prehistoric, Roman, and Post-Roman Site in Lydney Park, Gloucestershire by R.E.M. Wheeler and T.V. Wheeler (Oxford: Printed at the University Press by John Johnson for The Society of Antiquaries, 1932). See further, Descriptive Bibliography B13.
The report is concerned with excavations in 1928–9 of a promontory fort or small embanked hill-town of five acres, established at Lydney in or shortly before the first century BC. ‘Soon after A.D. 364–7 a temple, dedicated to the otherwise unknown deity Nodens, was built within the earthwork, and with the temple, which was of unusual plan, were associated a guest-house, baths, and other structures, indicating that the cult was an important centre of pilgrimage’ (Wheeler and Wheeler, p. 1). Tolkien observes in his note that the name Nodens occurs in three inscriptions; otherwise, ‘from the same place and presumably roughly contemporary, there is in early Keltic [Celtic] material no trace of any such name or stem’ (p. 132). He relates Nodens to Núadu (later Núada) Argat-lám, the king of the Túatha dé Danann, ‘the possessors of Ireland before the Milesians’ (p. 133), and to other Nuadas in Irish. ‘It is possible to see a memory of this figure in the medieval Welsh Lludd Llaw Ereint (“of the Silver Hand”) – the ultimate original of King Lear – whose daughter Creiddylad (Cordelia) was carried off, after her betrothal to Gwythyr vab Greiddawl, by Gwynn vab Nudd, a figure having connexions with the underworld’ (p. 133). The normal Welsh form of Nuada or Nodens is Nudd.
Tolkien researched Nodens and wrote a note on the subject probably in 1929 or 1930, at the request of R.E.M. (later Sir Mortimer) Wheeler, Keeper and Secretary of the London Museum. Wheeler had the finished note in hand apparently well before 2 December 1931, when he informed Tolkien that a report on the Lydney Park excavations was to be issued by the Society of Antiquaries, including Tolkien’s note, and enclosed a proof. Tolkien replied to Wheeler by 9 December, evidently having had related thoughts on the possible evolution of the name Lydney out of Lludd. He wrote at once to his colleague Allen Mawer, then Director of the Survey of English Place-names, about the history of Lydney, but the data Mawer could supply were indeterminate.
Tolkien wrote a paragraph on the subject nevertheless, commenting on the obscurity of the origin of the place-name Lydney, and that it did not shed light on the problem of Nodens. Lydney was an English settlement, not the site of the temple to Nodens, though Tolkien thought that it might contain a pre-English name with a different original focus. Because of the uncertainty of this argument, however, or because production was already too far advanced to permit an addition, the note was omitted from the published report by Wheeler and Wheeler.
See further, comments by Carl Phelpstead in Tolkien and Wales: Language, Literature and Identity (2011), ch. 4. A prefatory note in the Report lists those who did the actual work of the excavation and mentions others who visited the site and helped to identify the finds. Among the latter was *R.G. Collingwood who, like Tolkien, was a fellow of Pembroke College, *Oxford, and was almost certainly responsible for Tolkien being asked to help with the mythological–philological problem of Nodens.
Tolkien himself, however, is not named in the list, and there is no evidence that he participated in the dig at Lydney Park, stayed there as a guest of the Wheelers on a number of occasions, or even visited Lydney, the surrounding Forest of Dean, or nearby Puzzlewood, all of which have been suggested as influences on *The Hobbit and *The Lord of the Rings. Mortimer Wheeler’s letters to Tolkien in 1931–2 in fact are formal and courteous, with no sign of the familiarity that would be evident between friends. Nor is there any reason to believe, despite much wishful thinking, that Tolkien was influenced in writing The Hobbit by the folk-connection between Lydney and dwarves, hobgoblins, and little people, or – at an even further stretch – that he took the idea of the ring in The Hobbit (later the One Ring in The Lord of the Rings) from a gold ring lost by the Roman Silvianus at the temple of Nodens at Lydney in the late fourth century, found 100 miles away in 1786, and now at The Vyne near Basingstoke, Hampshire.
The Name ‘Nodens’ was reprinted in Tolkien Studies 4 (2007), pp. 177–83.
The Nameless Land. Poem, first published in *Realities: An Anthology of Verse (1927), pp. 24–5.
The ‘nameless land’ is Eressëa, the home of the Elves in the True West of the world. The poet speaks of its golden ‘lingering lights’, its ‘grass more green than in gardens here’, its ‘dells that immortal dews distill / And fragrance of all flowers that grow’. It is unattainable, ‘a thousand leagues’ distant, a land ‘without a name / No heart may hope to anchor near’, more fair than Tir-nan-Og (the land of youth in Irish legend) and ‘more faint and far’ than Paradise, a ‘shore beyond the Shadowy Sea’. The poet dreams that he sees ‘a wayward star’ – the mariner Eärendel (or Eärendil) sailing the heavens – and refers to ‘beacon towers in Gondobar’ (‘city of stone’), one of the Seven Names of Gondolin.
According to a note on one of its typescripts, Tolkien wrote The Nameless Land at his home in Darnley Road, *Leeds, in May 1924, ‘inspired by reading *Pearl for examination purposes’. Like that medieval poem, The Nameless Land has both rhyme and alliteration, and the last line of each stanza is echoed in the first line of the next (‘And the woods are filled with wandering fire. / The wandering fires the woodland fill’). On 18 July 1962 Tolkien wrote to his Aunt *Jane Neave (Letters, p. 317):
The poem [Pearl] is very well-known to mediaevalists; but 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. NO scholars (or, nowadays, poets) have any experience in composing themselves in exacting metres. 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) …. I send you the original stanzas of my own – related inevitably as everything was at one time with my own mythology.
Tolkien later revised The Nameless Land as The Song of Ælfwine (on Seeing the Uprising of Eärendel), with the intermediate title Ælfwine’s Song Calling upon Eärendel, tying the poem more explicitly to his mythology. Ælfwine, a mortal mariner who finds the sea-path to Eressëa, figures in *The Book of Lost Tales, *The Lost Road, and *The Notion Club Papers; see *Eriol and Ælfwine. Many texts of The Song of Ælfwine survive in manuscript and typescript. Two of these were published, together with The Nameless Land, in *The Lost Road and Other Writings (1987); see in that volume, pp. 98–104.
See further, Stefan Ekman, ‘Echoes of Pearl in Arda’s Landscape’, Tolkien Studies 6 (2009).
Names. On 4 January 1892, the day after his son was born, *Arthur Tolkien wrote to his mother: ‘The boy’s first name will be “John” after his grandfather, probably John Ronald Reuel altogether. Mab [*Mabel Tolkien] wants to call it Ronald and I want to keep up John and Reuel’ (quoted in Biography, p. 12). Arthur chose ‘John’ for his own father (see *Tolkien family), but Mabel’s father was also a John (John Suffield, see *Suffield family). Tolkien explained the choice of names in a letter to Amy Ronald on 2 January 1969:
I was called John because it was the custom for the eldest son of the eldest son to be called John in my family. My father was Arthur, eldest of my grandfather John Benjamin’s second family; but his elder half-brother John had died leaving only 3 daughters. So John I had to be ….
My father favoured John Benjamin Reuel (which I should now have liked); but my mother was confident that I should be a daughter, and being fond of more ‘romantic’ (& less O[ld] T[estament] like) names decided on Rosalind. When I turned up … Ronald was substituted ….
Reuel … was (I believe) the surname of a friend of my grandfather. The family believed it to be French (which is formally possible); but if so it is an odd chance that it appears twice in the O[ld] T[estament] as an unexplained other name for Jethro Moses’ father-in-law. All my children, and my children’s children, and their children, have the name. [Letters, pp. 397–8]
At his confirmation in 1903 Tolkien took the additional name ‘Philip’ but used it only rarely.
In an autobiographical statement written in 1955 Tolkien explained his surname as ‘a German name (from Saxony), an anglicization of Tollkiehn, i.e. tollkühn. But, except as a guide to spelling, this fact is as fallacious as all facts in the raw. For I am neither ‘foolhardy’ [= tollkühn] nor German, whatever some remote ancestors may have been’ (Letters, p. 218). Tolkien’s aunt Grace Mountain (see *Mountain family) alleged that their surname had originally been von Hohenzollern, after that district of the Holy Roman Empire from which the family had come. ‘A certain George von Hohenzollern had, she said, fought on the side of the Archduke Ferdinand of Austria at the Siege of Vienna in 1529. He had shown great daring in leading an unofficial raid against the Turks and capturing the Sultan’s standard. This (said Aunt Grace) was why he was given the nickname Tollkühn, “foolhardy”; and the nickname stuck’ (Humphrey Carpenter, Biography, pp. 18–19). The story was also told of a French variation of the surname, du Téméraire, but may be no more than family lore. Research by Polish Tolkien enthusiasts such as Ryszard Derdzinski, reported on the website Tolknięty (tolkniety.blogspot.com) indicates that certain family members emigrated to England from Gdańsk around 1772, having belonged to a family of Gdańsk (Danzig) furriers whose history reached back into fourteenth-century Prussia and thirteenth-century Saxony.
On a copy of a George Allen & Unwin (*Publishers) press release, not before 1968, Tolkien wrote his surname phonetically and gave instructions for its pronunciation: ‘(tôl kēn) tĺkeen (sc. tolk does not rhyme with yolk; the division is tol–keen in which tol rhymes with doll and kien (NOT KEIN) = keen as ie in field and many other words’ (Tolkien–George Allen & Unwin archive, HarperCollins). It was, and is, frequently misspelled Tolkein. Tolkien complained of this in a letter to Graham Tayar in June 1971, ‘in spite of all my efforts to correct this – even by my college-, bank-, and lawyer’s clerks!’ (Letters, p. 410). On 12 October 1966 he wrote to Joy Hill at Allen & Unwin about a document from the Performing Rights Society: ‘I wish producers of documents would see to it that they give me my correct name. My third name appears as Revel twice in each of the Deeds. My surname is Tolkein on one of them’ (Tolkien–George Allen & Unwin archive, HarperCollins). Even on his tombstone Reuel at first was carved Revel.
The phonetic rendering of Tolkien’s surname should be understood to place the stress on the first syllable. The same pronunciation is described by Clyde S. Kilby in ‘Many Meetings with Tolkien’ (an edited transcript of remarks at the December 1966 meeting of the Tolkien Society of America), published in Niekas 19 (c. 1968). Henry S. Resnik, however, in remarks at a July 1966 meeting of the Tolkien Society of America, said on the basis of a half-hour telephone interview that Tolkien ‘pronounces his name tul-KEEN …. His American publisher pronounces it TUL-kin, and I took him as the leading authority, but apparently Tolkien knows’ (‘An Interview with Tolkien’, p. 43).
Arthur and Mabel Tolkien called their son by his second name, Ronald, as did his other relatives and his wife. In his letter to Amy Ronald, Tolkien said that when he was a boy in England Ronald was a much rarer name than it later became: it was shared by none of his contemporaries at school or university ‘though it seems now alas! to be prevalent among the criminal and other degraded classes. Anyway I have always treated it with respect, and from earliest days refused to allow it to be abbreviated or tagged with. But for myself I remained John. Ronald was for my near kin. My friends at school, Oxford and later have called me John (or occasionally John Ronald or J. Rsquared)’ (Letters, p. 398). Tolkien occasionally signed himself ‘John’ to Edith Bratt (*Edith Tolkien) when they were courting.
To intimates such as Edith or his Aunt *Jane Neave he would sign his letters ‘Ronald’. To friends such as *Katharine Farrer and *Donald Swann he signed ‘Ronald Tolkien’, and to *C.S. Lewis ‘J.R.R.T’. His formal signature was ‘J.R.R. Tolkien’. In 1964, when Allen & Unwin wanted to include a facsimile signature on the title-page of *Tree and Leaf, as was their custom for publications in their ‘U Books’ series, and sent Tolkien a sample with ‘Ronald Tolkien’, he wrote to Ronald Eames at Allen & Unwin: ‘I do not and never have used the signature “Ronald Tolkien” as a public or auctorial signature and I do not think it suitable for the purpose’ (3 February 1964, Tolkien–George Allen & Unwin archive, HarperCollins). In letters from his *T.C.B.S. friends Tolkien was called variously ‘Gabriel’, ‘Gab’, ‘Cludhari’ – nicknames whose origin is obscure and not mentioned in surviving correspondence – but mainly ‘John Ronald’, with isolated instances of ‘Ronald’ or ‘JRRT’. His few surviving letters to the T.C.B.S. are signed ‘John Ronald’. In a letter to *Joy Hill of 26 December 1971 he noted that his contemporaries used to write his initials as ‘JR
T’ and pronounce them ‘to rhyme with dirt’ (collection of René van Rossenberg).
According to Humphrey Carpenter, when Tolkien ‘was an adult his intimates [presumably other than family] referred to him (as was customary at the time) by his surname, or called him “Tollers”, a hearty nickname typical of the period. To those not so close, especially in his later years, he was often known as “J.R.R.T.”’ (Biography, p. 13).
The correspondence between Tolkien and the publishing Unwins, *Stanley and *Rayner, is an interesting lesson in the nuances of methods of address. In 1937 Tolkien wrote to ‘Dear Mr Unwin’ and signed himself ‘J.R.R. Tolkien’; Stanley Unwin replied to ‘Dear Professor Tolkien’. During 1944 they wrote to ‘Dear Unwin’ and ‘Dear Tolkien’. In 1946, after Stanley Unwin received a knighthood, Tolkien began his letters ‘Dear Sir Stanley’, while Unwin continued to write ‘Dear Tolkien’. Despite the fact that he had been addressing letters to ‘Dear Tolkien’ for some time, on 28 July 1947 Stanley Unwin wrote: ‘Dear Tolkien (If I may thus address you in the hope that you will call me “Unwin”)’ (Tolkien–George Allen & Unwin archive, HarperCollins). Tolkien replied: ‘Dear Unwin, I will certainly address you so, cum permissu [with permission], though it hardly seems a fair exchange for the loss of “professor”, a title one has rather to live down than to insist on’ (Letters, p. 120).
When Rayner Unwin began to correspond with Tolkien in 1952 he addressed him as ‘Dear Professor Tolkien’, and Tolkien replied to ‘My dear Rayner’ or ‘Dear Rayner’. At first Tolkien signed his letters ‘J.R.R. Tolkien’, but by about 1960 he began to sign ‘Ronald Tolkien’. On 15 December 1965 Tolkien wrote to Rayner Unwin:
Do you think you could mark the New Year by dropping the Professor? I belong to a generation which did not use Christian names outside the family, but like the dwarves [in his mythology] kept them private, and for even their intimates used surnames (or perversions of them), or nicknames, or (occasionally) Christian names that did not belong to them. Even C.S. Lewis never called me by a Christian name (or I him). So I will be content with a surname. I wish I could get rid of the “professor” altogether, at any rate when not writing technical matter. It gives a false impression of “learning”, especially in “folklore” and all that. It also gives a probably truer impression of pedantry, but it is a pity to have my pedantry advertised and underlined, so that people sniff it even when it is not there. [Letters, pp. 365–6]
From that point Rayner wrote to ‘Dear Tolkien’. Seven years later, on 30 March 1972, Tolkien wrote to Rayner Unwin: ‘Would it be possible for you to use my Christian name? I am now accepted as a member of the community here [Merton College] – one of the habits of which has long been the use of Christian names, irrespective of age or office – and as you are now a v[ery] old friend, and a very dear one, I should much like also to be a “familiaris”’ (Letters, p. 418).
He did not care whether he was addressed as ‘Professor’ or ‘Mr’; on 12 December 1955 he wrote to Mr Smith at Allen & Unwin that ‘there is no need to alter “Mr” to “Professor”. In proper Oxford tradition professor is not a title of address – or was not, though the habit has drifted in from places where “professors” are powerful little domestic potentates’ (Letters, p. 230).
Names and Required Alterations. Parallel list of names in Qenya (later Quenya, see *Languages, Invented) from The Cottage of Lost Play (*The Book of Lost Tales), with equivalents in Gnomish (Goldogrin, later Sindarin), published in Parma Eldalamberon 15 (2004), pp. 5–18, edited with commentary and notes by Patrick H. Wynne.
This work appears to date from ?1917–?1919. An appendix ‘assembles a variety of isolated words, linguistic notes, and phonological charts from the Lost Tales [Book of Lost Tales] notebooks that could not be conveniently presented in previous issues of Parma Eldalamberon’ (p. 6).
‘Names of the Valar’. List of names of the Valar (*‘The Silmarillion’), arranged by gender, published as part of ‘Early Qenya Fragments’ in Parma Eldalamberon 14 (2003), pp. 11–15, edited with commentary and notes by Patrick Wynne and Christopher Gilson.
Originally written only in Qenya (later Quenya, see *Languages, Invented), Gnomish (Goldogrin, later Sindarin) forms were added later by Tolkien. The work is contemporary with *The Book of Lost Tales, but probably later than *Corrected Names of Chief Valar, i.e. from the ?first half of 1919.
Napier, Arthur Sampson (1853–1916). A.S. Napier, educated at Owens College, Manchester and Exeter College, *Oxford, taught at Berlin and Göttingen before becoming the Merton Professor of English Language and Literature at Oxford in 1885. In 1903 he became, as well, Rawlinsonian Professor of Anglo-Saxon. Napier’s appointment to the Merton Professorship, on the establishment of that chair, strengthened the language side of English studies at Oxford – he was one of three professors of *Philology, together with John Earle and F. Max Müller – to the regret of those who pictured the philologists ‘lecturing simultaneously on Beowulf to empty benches, while there was no one to lecture on Shakespeare and Milton’ (D.J. Palmer, The Rise of English Studies (1965), p. 87). In fact, Napier would later play a key role, with *Walter Raleigh, in bifurcating the Oxford English syllabus to make it more attractive to students whose primary interest was literature rather than language (from 1908 only four of ten papers were required in common of all students reading English, with the other six oriented to suit the language or literature specialty).
Never robust, during the last ten years of his life Napier was frequently in ill health, but was ably assisted by *Kenneth Sisam, whose B.Litt. thesis Napier supervised. Tolkien later recalled meeting Napier when, as an undergraduate at Oxford, he changed his course of study from Classics to English Language and Literature: ‘I recall that I was ushered into a very dim room and could hardly see Napier. He was courteous, but said little. He never spoke to me again. I attended his lectures, when he was well enough to give them’ (letter to *N.R. Ker, 22 November 1970, Letters, p. 406). These definitely included, in Michaelmas Term 1913, lectures on English Historical Grammar and on Old English Dialects, and in Michaelmas Term 1914 and Hilary Term 1915, on *Pearl and *Beowulf (see further, Chronology).
Narn i Chîn Húrin. Prose narrative of the story of Túrin (see *‘Of Túrin Turambar’), published with notes and commentary in *Unfinished Tales (1980), pp. 57–162, as Narn i Hîn Húrin: The Tale of the Children of Húrin (see below). Some sections of draft and further commentary were included in the account of the Grey Annals in *The War of the Jewels (1994).
When *Christopher Tolkien edited Unfinished Tales he thought that the whole of the Narn was a work of the late 1950s, but during the writing of *The History of Middle-earth he realized that the latter part of the Narn, from the section headed ‘The Return of Túrin to Dor-lómin’ to ‘The Death of Túrin’ (Unfinished Tales, pp. 104–46), was written c. 1951 and in close association with the Grey Annals (*Annals of Beleriand). ‘The manuscript was headed (later) “The Children of Húrin: last part”, and at the top of the first page my father wrote “Part of the ‘Children of Húrin’ told in full scale”’ (The War of the Jewels, p. 144). Up to the point where the Men of Brethil discuss what action to take against Glaurung, preliminary drafting for the manuscript text ‘consists of little more than scribbled slips. From here on … there are in effect two manuscripts’, one of which Christopher Tolkien calls ‘the draft manuscript’, being a ‘continuation of the original, which became so chaotic with rewriting’ that Tolkien made a fair copy (The War of the Jewels, p. 152). In his comments on the relevant portion of the Grey Annals in The War of the Jewels (pp. 144–65) Christopher Tolkien includes comparisons of various versions of the story of Túrin, lengthy extracts from drafts for the Narn, and synopses for the end of the story which show Tolkien hesitating over the dénouement.
Tolkien possibly chose to begin this prose account part way through the story because he had already written a lengthy account of Túrin’s earlier life in alliterative verse in the 1920s (*The Lay of the Children of Húrin), but nothing at length of his later life since *The Book of Lost Tales. The part of the Narn dealing with Túrin’s earlier life, however, is a work of the late 1950s.
In The War of the Jewels Christopher Tolkien describes ‘a twelve-page typescript composed ab initio by my father and bearing the title “Here begins the tale of the Children of Húrin, Narn i Chîn Húrin, which Dírhaval wrought”’ (p. 314). This provided the text for the first part of the Narn (Unfinished Tales, pp. 57–65), but two passages describing the sojourn of Húrin and Huor in Gondolin and an account of the Nirnaeth Arnoediad were omitted, since similar texts taken from the Grey Annals had appeared in *The Silmarillion. Christopher Tolkien comments at length on differences between these passages in the Narn and the Grey Annals, and his use of elements from both in The Silmarillion (The War of the Jewels, pp. 165–70, 314–15). He notes in Unfinished Tales that the next section
(to the end of Túrin in Doriath) required a good deal of revision and selection, and in some places some slight compression, the original texts being scrappy and disconnected. But the central section (Túrin among the outlaws, Mîm the Petty-dwarf, the land of Dor-Cúarthol, the death of Beleg at Túrin’s hand, and Túrin’s life in Nargothrond) constituted a much more difficult editorial problem. The Narn is here at its least finished, and in places diminished to outlines of possible turns in the story. My father was still evolving this part when he ceased to work on it ….
For the first part of this central section, as far as the beginning of Túrin’s sojourn in Mîm’s dwelling on Amon Rûdh, I have contrived a narrative, in scale commensurate with other parts of the Narn, out of the existing materials (with one gap …). [p. 6]
But from that point he found the task of compiling a continuous narrative impossible, and instead published a series of disconnected fragments and notes as an Appendix.
For the part played by Narn i Chîn Hurin in the evolution of Tolkien’s mythology, see entries for *‘Of Túrin Turambar’ and other chapters of The Silmarillion.
Christopher Tolkien returned to the story of Túrin in *The Children of Húrin (2007), re-editing the Narn i Chîn Húrin and associated material to provide a continuous narrative with a minimum of editorial presence. Although this involved reworking in some parts, changes to the actual story were few and not of great significance. In *The Lost Road and Other Writings Christopher explains that in Unfinished Tales he ‘improperly’ replaced [Elvish] Chîn with Hîn ‘because I did not want Chîn to be pronounced like Modern English chin’ (p. 322; in Exilic Noldorin ch is pronounced as in Scottish loch). In The War of the Jewels (pp. 142, 145, 146, 149, 151) he notes editorial changes he made in the text published in Unfinished Tales, as well as authorial emendations.
Tolkien also wrote two versions of an introductory note to the Narn, probably c. 1958, which explains its origins within the context of the *‘Silmarillion’ mythology. A brief summary appeared in Unfinished Tales (p. 146); both texts, under the title Ælfwine and Dírhaval, were published with commentary and notes in The War of the Jewels, pp. 311–15. The Narn began as a lay in an Elvish mode of verse written in Sindarin (*Languages, Invented) by Dírhaval, a Man who lived at the Havens towards the end of the First Age and gathered all the information he could about the House of Hador. According to the first version, Ælfwine (see *Eriol and Ælfwine) translated the lay into the English of his time as a prose narrative, from which the Modern English version is said to have been made. The second version is purported to be written by Ælfwine himself, explaining that he did not feel able to translate the work into verse.
The first version is a manuscript with the title Túrin Turumarth; the second is an untitled, much shorter typescript which Tolkien attached to the twelve-page typescript he had made of the opening of the Narn.
See also *‘The “Túrin Wrapper”’.
CRITICISM
In his review of Unfinished Tales (‘Dug Out of the Dust of Middle-earth’, Maclean’s, 26 January 1981) Guy Gavriel Kay wrote that
Túrin Turambar is Tolkien’s most tragic character – perhaps his only tragic figure. His story is told in The Silmarillion: victim of the curse of a fallen god, condemned to bring evil on those who aid him, tangled in a web that leads to a bitter ending of unwitting incest with a long-lost sister and ultimate suicide. Here the same tale is retold, at three times the length and in detail that would have overwhelmed the spare narrative style and the overriding shape of The Silmarillion. The story was inspired by a part of the Finnish myth-cycle, *The Kalevala, but in the fated inevitability of its conclusion, Túrin’s saga moves and feels like something out of Greek tragedy. The reader’s affinity for the longer or the shorter version will depend on whether he prefers his tragedy austere or baroque. [p. 46]
Thomas M. Egan in his review ‘Fragments of a World: Tolkien’s Road to Middle-earth’, Terrier 48, no. 2 (Fall 1983), wrote:
Adventure tales like ‘Narn I Hîn Húrin’ … grip us with the moral drama of Good and Evil involved. The language … is almost always quasi-Biblical, elegant in tone and forcing us to slow down in our reading habits. It is the context the author uses to explore a human soul, when it ultimately finds despair and loss, rather than the optimistic triumph of the Ring heroes [in *The Lord of the Rings] …. The mood is sometimes bitter but never cynical. Incest, rape, murder are all here as Tolkien explores his version of the modern anti-hero. Túrin Turambar seems cursed by fate …. But Tolkien adds the depths of his convictions to the tale. The respect for the power of human free will, that which links the soul to God (Eru) Himself … appears here as always operating. Even when it is denied or misused, the author always puts in the concrete details of other characters or situations to remind us that things could have gone so differently – if the dominating figure was willing to curb his pride, chastise his lust for revenge (even when severely provoked) and especially, learn the elusive art of possessions (rather than letting things control the individual). [p. 10]
Narqelion. Poem in Qenya (later Quenya, see *Languages, Invented), a lament to autumn, with passing references to Eldamar and the Gnomes (a kindred of the Elves) from the *‘Silmarillion’ mythology, inspired by the poem Kortirion among the Trees (*The Trees of Kortirion). (Compare Quenya Narquelië ‘sun-fading’, the name of the tenth month given in The Lord of the Rings, Appendix D.) A single text survives, apparently begun in November 1915 and completed in March 1916. Four lines were published in Biography (1977). The complete poem was first published, with a commentary, in ‘Narqelion: A Single, Falling Leaf at Sun-fading’ by Paul Nolan Hyde, Mythlore 15, no. 2, whole no. 56 (Winter 1988), pp. 47–52. The poem, with extracts from Hyde’s article, was also printed in Vinyar Tengwar 6 (July 1989), pp. 12–13.
A fuller linguistic analysis of the poem, ‘Bird and Leaf: Image and Structure in Narqelion’ by Patrick Wynne and Christopher Gilson, was published in Parma Eldalamberon 3, no. 1, whole no. 9 (1990); it includes an English translation from Qenya. A facsimile of the manuscript of Narqelion was published (p. 5) in Vinyar Tengwar 40 (April 1999), which number also includes ‘Narqelion and the Early Lexicons: Some Notes on the First Elvish Poem’ by Christopher Gilson, a new linguistic analysis made in light of Elvish lexicons published in 1995 and 1998 (see *Gnomish Lexicon and *Qenyaqetsa). Gilson provides both a literal translation of the poem into English prose and a fresh translation in verse.
Natura Apissee Songs for the Philologists
Nature. Tolkien’s love of and delight in all aspects of the natural world – plants, trees, birds, weather, sky, the changing seasons – as they appear in a rural or even a town landscape, is made abundantly clear in his correspondence. To quote only a few examples from letters to his son *Christopher: ‘A lovely morning dawned …. A mist like early Sept[ember] with a pearl-button sun … that soon changed into serene blue, with the silver light of spring on flower and leaf. Leaves are out: the white-grey of the quince, the grey-green of the young apple, the full green of hawthorn, the tassels of flower even on the sluggard poplars. The narcissuses are a marvellous show …’ (18 April 1944, Letters, p. 73); ‘The most marvellous sunset I have seen for years: a remote pale green-blue sea just above the horizon, and above it a towering shore of bank upon bank of flaming cherubim of gold and fire, crossed here and there by misty blurs like purple rain’ (22 August 1944, Letters, p. 92);
It froze hard with a heavy fog, and so we have had displays of Hoarfrost such as I only remember once in *Oxford before … and only twice before in my life. One of the most lovely events of Northern Nature. We woke … to find all our windows opaque, painted over with frost-patterns, and outside a dim silent misty world, all white, but with a light jewelry of rime; every cobweb a little lace net, even the old fowls’ tent a diamond-patterned pavilion …. The rime was yesterday even thicker and more fantastic. When a gleam of sun … got through it was breathtakingly beautiful: trees like motionless fountains of white branching spray against a golden light and, high overhead, a pale translucent blue. It did not melt. About 11 p.m. the fog cleared and a high round moon lit the whole scene with a deadly white light: a vision of some other world or time. [28 December 1944, Letters, p. 107]
Towards the end of his life, in a letter to *Rayner Unwin, Tolkien described a more formal display in the Fellows’ Garden at Merton College: ‘The great bank … looks like the foreground of a pre-Raphaelite picture: blazing green starred like the Milky Way with blue anemones, purple/white/yellow crocuses, and final surprise, clouded-yellow, peacock, and tortoiseshell butterflies flitting about’ (16 March 1972, Letters, p. 417). And his delight in watching birds is shown in another letter to Christopher:
There is a family of bullfinches, which must have nested in or near our garden, and they are very tame, and have been giving us entertainment lately by their antics feeding their young, often just outside the dining-room window. Insects on the trees and sowthistle seeds seem their chief delight. I had no idea they behaved so much like goldfinches. Old fat father, pink waistcoat and all, hangs absolutely upside down on a thistle-spray, tinking all the while. [7 July 1944, Letters, p. 87]
In turn Tolkien applied his keen interest in the world around him, observed in minute detail and vividly described, to the invented landscapes of his fiction, giving them the substance of reality. *The Lord of the Rings is particularly rich in this regard, from Goldberry’s gown ‘green as young reeds, shot with silver like beads of dew’ and her belt ‘of gold, shaped like a chain of flag-lilies set with the pale-blue eyes of forget-me-nots’ (bk. I, ch. 7), to elanor, athelas, niphredil, and mallorn, to landscapes like that in Book I, Chapter 6, where the four hobbits approach the River Withywindle:
Coming to the opening they found that they had made their way down through a cleft in a high steep bank, almost a cliff. At its feet was a wide space of grass and reeds; and in the distance could be glimpsed another bank almost as steep. A golden afternoon of late sunshine lay warm and drowsy upon the hidden land between. In the midst of it there wound lazily a dark river of brown water, bordered with ancient willows, arched over with willows, blocked with fallen willows, and flecked with thousands of faded willow-leaves. The air was thick with them, fluttering yellow from the branches; for there was a warm and gentle breeze blowing softly in the valley, and the reeds were rustling, and the willow-boughs were creaking.
The scene is not unlike that Tolkien would have found on the banks of the River Cherwell near Oxford, which he and his family would occasionally explore. Cerin Amroth, on the other hand, has no analogue in our world, but Tolkien permits his reader to stand in its midst through vivid description of its natural features:
They were standing in an open space. To the left stood a great mound, covered with a sward of grass as green as Springtime in the Elder Days. Upon it, as a double crown, grew two circles of trees: the outer had bark of snowy white, and were leafless but beautiful in their shapely nakedness; the inner were mallorn-trees of great height, still arrayed in pale gold …. At the feet of the trees, and all about the green hillsides the grass was studded with small golden flowers shaped like stars. Among them, nodding on slender stalks, were other flowers, white and palest green: they glimmered as a mist amid the rich hue of the grass. Over all the sky was blue, and the sun of afternoon glowed upon the hill and cast long green shadows beneath the trees. [bk. II, ch. 6]
Tolkien devotes almost a page to describing Ithilien in close detail, its abundance of plant life seeming Edenic after the Dead Marshes and the approaches to Mordor:
All about them were small woods of resinous trees, fir and cedar and cypress … with wide glades among them; and everywhere there was a wealth of sweet-smelling herbs and shrubs …. Here Spring was already busy about them: fronds pierced moss and mould, larches were green-fingered, small flowers were opening in the turf ….
Many great trees grew there, planted long ago, falling into untended age amid a riot of careless descendants; and groves and thickets there were of tamarisk and pungent terebinth, of olive and of bay; and there were junipers and myrtles; and thymes that grew in bushes, or with their woody creeping stems mantled in deep tapestries the hidden stones; sages of many kinds putting forth blue flowers, or red, or pale green; and marjoram and new-sprouting parsleys …. The grots and rocky walls were already starred with saxifrages and stonecrops. Primeroles and anemones were awake in the filbert-brakes; and asphodel and many lily-flowers nodded their half-open heads in the grass …. [bk. IV, ch. 4]
Above all, Tolkien felt a deep affection for trees. Photographs often show him in their company: of these the most notable are Lord Snowdon’s portrait of Tolkien reclining against the roots of a great tree behind his home in *Poole, and the last photograph of him taken by his grandson Michael George (see *Michael Tolkien) on 9 August 1973, in the Botanic Garden, Oxford, standing with his hand on the trunk of a Pinus nigra, one of his favourite trees (now unfortunately no longer standing). *Joy Hill recalled that the last time she visited him in August 1973 he did not want to work, but took her on a long walk. They visited the Botanic Garden, walked by the river to look at willows, then went through the Botanic Garden again. He asked her to bring a camera on her next visit, so that he could have photographs of the trees.
Tolkien was saddened to see so many trees ill-treated or felled in both countryside and town. He wrote in an autobiographical note for the Houghton Mifflin Company in the summer of 1955: ‘I am (obviously) much in love with plants and above all trees, and always have been; and I find human maltreatment of them as hard to bear as some find ill-treatment of animals’ (Letters, p. 220). His friend *George Sayer noted that Tolkien, during walks in the country while on a visit to *Malvern in 1947, ‘liked to stop to look at the trees, flowers, birds and insects that we passed’, but
his greatest love seemed to be for trees …. He would often place his hand on the trunks of ones that we passed. He felt their wanton or unnecessary felling almost as murder. The first time I heard him say ‘ORCS’ was when we heard not far off the savage sound of a petrol-driven chain saw. ‘That machine,’ he said, ‘is one of the greatest horrors of our age.’ He said that he had sometimes imagined an uprising of the trees against their human tormentors. [‘Recollections of J.R.R. Tolkien’, in Proceedings of the J.R.R. Tolkien Centenary Conference 1992, ed. Patricia Reynolds and Glen H. GoodKnight (1995), p. 22]
By 1947 Tolkien had already written the chapters in The Lord of the Rings dealing with the march of the Ents on Isengard. Many readers have found the Ents, the shepherds of the trees, among Tolkien’s most original and most vivid creations. The chapter ‘Treebeard’ (bk. III, ch. 4), he said, seemed to write itself; and there the Ent Quickbeam’s lament for the rowan trees cut down by Saruman’s orcs certainly echoes Tolkien’s feelings. In a letter to the Daily Telegraph he wrote:
In all my works I take the part of trees as against all their enemies. Lothlórien is beautiful because there the trees were loved; elsewhere forests are represented as awakening to consciousness of themselves. The Old Forest was hostile to two legged creatures because of the memory of many injuries. Fangorn Forest was old and beautiful, but at the time of the story tense with hostility because it was threatened by a machineloving enemy. Mirkwood had fallen under the domination of a Power that hated all living things but was restored to beauty and became Greenwood the Great before the end of the story. [30 June 1972, Letters, pp. 419–20]
In the same letter he commented on ‘the destruction, torture and murder of trees perpetuated by private individuals and minor official bodies’ (p. 420), perhaps thinking of the poplar tree which was an inspiration for his story *Leaf by Niggle. He told his Aunt *Jane Neave that ‘there was a great tree – a huge poplar with vast limbs – visible through my window even as I lay in bed. I loved it, and was anxious about it. It had been savagely mutilated some years before, but had gallantly grown new limbs – though of course not with the unblemished grace of its former natural self; and now a foolish neighbour was agitating to have it felled. Every tree has its enemy, few have an advocate’ (8–9 September 1962, Letters, p. 321). At the end of Leaf by Niggle the great tree that Niggle had attempted to paint, but could reproduce his vision only imperfectly, is made real, whole and glorious.
Trees figured prominently in Tolkien’s imagination no less than in Niggle’s. In *‘The Silmarillion’ the Two Trees that lit Valinor with their unsullied light are of primary mythical importance; the light provided by the Sun and Moon, created from the fruit and flower of the Trees after they had been defiled, is of lesser kind. In *On Fairy-Stories Tolkien refers to a symbolic ‘Tree of Tales’, which he himself drew several times (the ‘Tree of Amalion’, see Artist and Illustrator, pp. 64–5). He described it to Rayner Unwin on 23 December 1963 as ‘a ‘mythical “tree”, which … bears besides various shapes of leaves many flowers small and large signifying poems and major legends’ (Letters, p. 342).
In *Smith of Wootton Major a birch tree protects Smith from the Wind and is stripped of all its leaves. In The Lord of the Rings there are also the Party Tree at Bag End, the Old Forest and Old Man Willow, the holly trees at the entrance to Moria and the crescent moon-bearing trees on the doors of the west gate, Fangorn Forest, the woods of Ithilien, the White Tree embroidered on Aragorn’s banner and found by him as a sapling, and finally the trees felled by Saruman in the Shire and replaced by Sam.
Dylan Pugh discusses trees in myth and history in relation to Tolkien’s writings in ‘The Tree of Tales’, Mallorn 21 (June 1984). In ‘Tolkien’s Trees’, Mallorn 35 (September 1997), Claudia Riiff Finseth comments that Tolkien gives us in his fiction
all kinds of forests and groves in which to find adventure – and he does more. He ascribes to his individual trees and forests a fantastic variety of meanings and possibilities by drawing from and adding to the rich symbolism of trees that has developed throughout the history of literature. Tolkien describes the trees with which we are familiar – oak, birch, willow – so that we see them with a fresh eye. He creates new trees for us such as we have never seen growing on our earth. He gives us a chance to look at things from a treeish point of view, which is to say a fresh point of view, and from there he can give an added dimension to his human characters, who define themselves in part through their attitude towards trees.
Indeed, she comments that ‘as a lover of trees and a man who abhorred the needless destruction of them, Tolkien the writer often defined his characters as good or evil by their feelings about trees’ (p. 37).
Verlyn Flieger, however, in ‘Taking the Part of Trees: Eco-Conflict in Middle-earth’, in J.R.R. Tolkien and His Literary Resonances (2000), points out some inconsistencies in Tolkien’s attitude to trees. She notes that the ‘well-ordered, well-farmed countryside’ of the Shire (The Lord of the Rings, Prologue) and even ‘Frodo’s peaceful sunlit garden … must at some earlier time have been wrested from what Tom Bombadil calls the “vast forgotten woods” [bk. I, ch. 7] of which the Old Forest is the sole survivor’ (p. 150). And she discusses whether there is any difference between hobbits cutting down and burning trees to prevent the Old Forest advancing into the Shire, and Saruman’s orcs felling trees in Fangorn, and between the Ents’ anger at the Orcs and the hostility towards Hobbits from Old Man Willow and trees in the Old Forest.
In Tolkien in the Land of Heroes: Discovering the Human Spirit (2003) Anne C. Petty comments that
Tolkien’s love of the outdoors and the wildness of the natural world took hold early and continued throughout his life. His role as a crusader for nature in the face of mechanized progress seems to have been triggered when his mother moved the family from rural Sarehole to industrial Birmingham, and escalated after his return from the war – an attitude you can see developing if you read his collected letters sequentially. Nature itself becomes a sentient character in Tolkien’s writings, and its destruction in his tales serves as a grand symbol for what he felt was wrong with society (whether modern-day industrialists or corrupted wizards).
The forces of evil are frequently associated with scenarios that demonstrate the horrible things done to the natural world, especially to trees. But rather than just creating ongoing lament for the death of trees Tolkien takes advantage of the printed page to provide an outlet for revenge. He creates champions and personifications of nature who can take up the crusade for him, righting the wrongs inflicted on hill and tree by those who mar the landscape with evil intent. Although his stance on defending nature and trees in particular, was notoriously embraced by the ‘green’ activists of the sixties and several more aggressive ecology movements since then, you won’t find any evidence that he supported these groups …. But the dismantling of Isengard by Ents and Huorns is one of the most satisfying acts of retribution committed to paper. In this sense Tolkien’s pen was definitely mightier than any sword he might have waved trying to stop the felling of trees or building of parking lots. [pp. 219–20]
See further, the rest of her chapter ‘In Defense of Nature’, pp. 219–43.
Patrick Curry has written (in ‘Nature’, J.R.R. Tolkien Encyclopedia, ed. Michael D.C. Drout (2007), p. 453) that one of the most distinctive marks of Tolkien’s fiction
is the extent to which its natural places are so individual, varied, and fully realised. Furthermore … they are never mere settings for the human drama; rather they participate in and help determine the narrative. The various places of Middle-earth could themselves be said to figure as characters in the stories of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.
In Tolkien’s stories, no aspect of the natural world – geology, flora, fauna, weather, and the stars and Moon – is wholly neglected, and most receive respectful, even loving attention at some point. Nature is never abstract but rather as we actually expreince it, sensuous and particular. Thus, the power of place is paramount, just as it was in aboriginally mythic and enchanted nature – and still is, in so far as such a sensibility still survives.
In On Fairy-Stories Tolkien wrote of ‘the desire of men to hold communion with other living things …. Other creatures are like other realms with which Man has broken off relations, and sees now only from the outside at a distance, being at war with them, or on the terms of an uneasy armistice’ (*Tree and Leaf, pp. 19, 60–1). In his fiction men and animals often exist in close relationship. Huan the hound and Carcharoth the wolf are important to the ‘Silmarillion’ tale of Beren and Lúthien (*‘Of Beren and Lúthien’). Among Tolkien’s writings for children, Mr Bliss (*Mr. Bliss) interacts with bears, Farmer Giles (*Farmer Giles of Ham) with his dog Garm, Father Christmas (*The ‘Father Christmas’ letters) with the North Polar Bear, Beorn of The Hobbit with his animal servants. Birds, some of which can speak with humans, take active roles in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. And in the latter book, horses are featured as characters in their own right, particularly Shadowfax and Bill the Pony. Animals are also the subjects of several of Tolkien’s poems, such as *Fastitocalon and *Oliphaunt, drawn partly from the medieval bestiary tradition. Unusually, *Roverandom is told from the viewpoint of an animal, a dog who converses with other dogs, the gull Mew, and the whale Uin.
Some of Tolkien’s pictures made from nature – his talents as an artist were in landscape rather than portraiture – are also memorable, though one feels that, like Niggle, Tolkien often caught only a shadow of what his inner eye could see. Still, it would be difficult to think of any artist who could capture visually the Mallorn trees of Lothlórien (Artist and Illustrator, fig. 157; Art of The Lord of the Rings, fig. 64) which Tolkien described so hauntingly in words. Nor could his watercolour of Taur-na-Fuin (Artist and Illustrator, fig. 54; Art of The Hobbit, fig. 48) fully convey the claustrophobic picture of those woods Tolkien describes in The Tale of Turambar: ‘a dark and perilous region so thick with pines of giant growth that none but the goblins might find a track, having eyes that pierced the deepest gloom’ (*The Book of Lost Tales, Part Two, p. 78).
Some of his more successful illustrations celebrating aspects of nature and landscape are The Gardens of the Merking’s Palace (Artist and Illustrator, fig. 76), with its depiction of an underwater world full of colour; ‘Mr Bliss on the Hillside’ (Artist and Illustrator, fig. 83), with a view into the distance similar to many in the Cotswolds Tolkien knew so well; four watercolours for *The Hobbit with contrasting landscapes – the well tended sunny fields of The Hill: Hobbiton-across-the-Water, the deep valley of Rivendell, the wildness of the Misty Mountains in Bilbo Woke Up with the Early Sun in His Eyes inspired by Tolkien’s 1911 visit to Switzerland, and the light glimpsed through an avenue of trees in Bilbo Comes to the Huts of the Raft-Elves (Artist and Illustrator, figs. 98, 108, 113, 124; Art of The Hobbit, figs. 11, 23, 39, 64); and the stylized late The Hills of the Morning (Artist and Illustrator, fig. 1). Tolkien also made topographical drawings and watercolours which suggest weather, season, or time of day: the detailed view of the garden at 20 Northmoor Road in Spring 1940, the rainstorm in the background of Lambourn, Berks, the light filtered through the trees in Foxglove Year, and the sky, clouds, and shadows in Summer in Kerry are particularly noteworthy (Artist and Illustrator, figs. 3, 11, 17, 29).
See further, Lara Sookoo, ‘Animals in Tolkien’s World’, J.R.R. Tolkien Encyclopedia, ed. Michael D.C. Drout (2007); and Gregory Hartley, ‘Civilized Goblins and Talking Animals: How The Hobbit Created Problems of Sentience for Tolkien’ in The Hobbit and Tolkien’s Mythology: Essays on Revisions and Influences, ed. Bradford Lee Eden (2014). See also *Environment.
Neave, Emily Jane (née Suffield, 1872–1963). From 1885 to April 1892 Emily Jane Suffield, commonly known as Jane, attended King Edward VI High School for Girls in *Birmingham. The convenience of the School to New Street Station allowed Jane to pass private messages from her elder sister Mabel (*Mabel Tolkien) to *Arthur Tolkien on the railway platform, before their father (see *Suffield family) would permit Mabel to be formally betrothed. In October 1892 Jane was appointed a mistress at Bath Row School, one of King Edward’s Schools for Girls. In 1893–6, concurrent with her teaching duties, she studied geology, botany, and physiology at Mason College, the predecessor of the University of Birmingham, earning a Bachelor of Science degree in 1895 under the examinations of the University of London. From ?1897 she worked in Liverpool, organizing a science school (or the science department of a school; the exact circumstances are not known), but returned to Bath Row School in June 1899. From 1900 to 1903 she was a member of the Church Party on the Birmingham School Board.
In spring 1895 Mabel Tolkien brought her two sons to England from *South Africa. She taught her boys many things, but it was Jane who instructed her young nephew Ronald Tolkien in geometry. At this time, and for the next few years, Jane still lived in the Suffield family home in the Birmingham suburb of Kings Heath. There she met a lodger, Edwin Neave (1872–1909), the son of a Salford pawnbroker, now or later an inspector for the Guardian Fire Insurance Company (later the Guardian Assurance Company): he would sit ‘on the stairs singing “Polly-Wolly-Doodle” to the accompaniment of a banjo and making eyes at Jane. The family thought him common, and they were horrified when she became engaged to him’ (Humphrey Carpenter, Biography, p. 18). (In *Finn and Hengest Tolkien speculates (p. 52) that the surname Neave ‘probably’ is related to the name Hnæf via Middle English neve ‘nephew’ and modern dialectal neve, neive.) In 1902 Edwin was promoted to agent in his firm and in 1904 moved to *Hove. Ronald Tolkien stayed in Hove with Edwin temporarily while his mother was in hospital.
In summer 1905 Edwin was appointed Resident Secretary (manager) of the Nottingham branch of the Guardian Assurance Company. This further promotion evidently enabled him at last to support a wife. Jane Suffield resigned from her teaching position on 31 May 1905, and she and Edwin were married in Manchester in August of that year. They settled in the village of *Gedling, from which Edwin could commute to Nottingham by train. Their marriage was cut short, however, by Edwin’s death from bronchial pneumonia on 11 May 1909.
Jane subsequently obtained the post of Lady Warden at University Hall, University of St Andrews, the first residence hall for women students in *Scotland (opened 1896). She was later praised for her ‘wise and gentle wardenship’ and for her learning: ‘Her vivid mental life knew no boundaries, her knowledge of English Literature was so vast that one felt she should have been a professor, perhaps of poetry, a scholar and the author of many books. But she loved her own subject best and followed with intense interest its philosophy and new developments all through her life’ (obituary in the St Andrews Alumnus Chronicle, quoted in Andrew H. Morton and John Hayes, Tolkien’s Gedling, 1914: The Birth of a Legend (2008), p. 17). Tolkien visited his aunt in St Andrews on at least two occasions. On one of these, probably in 1910, he made a drawing, St Andrews from Kinkell Brak, and on another, in 1912, he wrote a short poem, The Grimness of the Sea (*The Horns of Ylmir).
While in St Andrews Jane became close friends with James and Ellen Brookes-Smith (*Brookes-Smith family), whose daughters attended a school in the city. Ellen was a kindred spirit, and in July 1911 the two became joint owners of two farms and adjacent land in Gedling, Church Farm (renamed Phoenix Farm) and Manor Farm, following their auction that March when Jane had independently bid for Church Farm. The 1911 Census, conducted on 2 April, records Jane as a boarder at Church Farm, presumably to look at the property with its tenant farmer, Arthur Lamb.
In late summer 1911 Jane and her nephews, Ronald and *Hilary Tolkien, joined a walking tour in *Switzerland organized by the Brookes-Smiths. In 1912 she resigned her position at St Andrews and moved to Gedling; she is listed in a local directory for 1912 as a ‘farmer’. With Ellen Brookes-Smith she managed and worked Phoenix Farm and Manor Farm. Hilary Tolkien joined them there, having chosen a life in agriculture. Ronald visited his aunt and brother and the Brookes-Smiths at Gedling on several occasions, and made at least three drawings of Phoenix Farm.
The Neave–Brookes-Smith partnership was dissolved in 1922, a result, perhaps, of the deep depression into which English agriculture fell immediately after the end of the First World War. Jane then appears to have lived briefly in Devon before buying another farm, at Dormston, Inkberrow, Worcestershire. Known as Dormston Manor Farm as well as a variety of other names, most notably ‘Bag End’, it comprised just over 200 acres and included among several buildings an early manor house which had been substantially rebuilt in 1582. This was a substantial dwelling, brick at the front and half-timbered at the back, and with three wings. From 1923 until 1927 Jane worked the farm in partnership with Marjorie Atlee, a former pupil who had worked at Gedling as a ‘land girl’ and in 1927 married Jane’s nephew Frank Suffield (son of Mark Oliver Suffield). Jane’s father, John Suffield, spent much time at Bag End in his final years.
In 1931 Jane sold the Bag End farm except for two cottages. She let one of these and lived for a short while in the other (Church Cottage) before moving to Chelmsford in Essex. According to Andrew Morton (see references below), Jane now pursued an interest in medieval mysticism and moved to Chelmsford to be near the Diocesan retreat run by the mystic Evelyn Underhill. In 1937, however, she returned to Church Cottage, where she stayed for ten years. Later she lived in a caravan on Hilary Tolkien’s farm in Blackminster, and finally in Gilfachreda in West Wales with Frank and Marjorie Suffield.
Tolkien wrote of his Aunt Jane to Joyce Reeves on 4 November 1961: ‘The professional aunt is a fairly recent development, perhaps; but I was fortunate in having an early example: one of the first women to take a science degree. She is now ninety, but only a few years ago went botanizing in Switzerland’ (Letters, p. 308). Asked by Jane earlier that year ‘if you wouldn’t get out a small book with Tom Bombadil at the heart of it, the sort of book that we old ’uns can afford to buy for Christmas presents’, Tolkien assembled *The Adventures of Tom Bombadil and Other Verses from the Red Book (1962). It was published just in time to delight his aunt a few months before her death.
See further, including photographs of Jane Neave, Morton and Hayes, Tolkien’s Gedling, 1914; Andrew H. Morton, Tolkien’s Bag End (2009); and Maggie Burns, ‘Jane Suffield’, Connecting Histories website.
Nesbit, Edith (1858–1924). Despite the death of her father when she was three, the English writer E. Nesbit enjoyed a generally happy childhood with her mother and siblings: she was the youngest of five surviving children. Her marriage in 1880 to Hubert Bland was unconventional: both had lovers, and Bland’s two illegitimate children were brought up together with the three surviving children of the marriage. Hubert and Edith were also founding members of the Fabian Society, formed to propagate evolutionary socialism. After Hubert’s death Nesbit married an old friend, Tommy Tucker, with whom she lived the rest of her life. Among Nesbit’s likely lovers, certainly a close admirer, was *R.W. Reynolds, one of Tolkien’s masters at *King Edward’s School, Birmingham. Nesbit dedicated her adult novel The Incomplete Amorist (1906) partly to Reynolds and used his Christian name for one of the Bastables in her children’s fiction.
To supplement family income Nesbit sold poems and juvenile and adult fiction to magazines, much of it hack-work. It was not until she was almost forty that she wrote the first of the children’s stories that brought her fame. Her stories of the Bastable family began to appear in 1897, and were published in book form as The Story of the Treasure Seekers in 1899. Tales of children trying to find ways to make money to amend the fortunes of their impoverished family, they were appreciated by readers of all ages. Further books about the Bastables followed, including The Wouldbegoods (1901) and The New Treasure Seekers (1904). *Roger Lancelyn Green notes in Tellers of Tales: Children’s Books and Their Authors from 1800 to 1964 (rewritten and rev. edn. 1965) that it was from her own ‘holiday life that Edith derived the joyous recollections of childhood’ evident in her work (p. 208). ‘She had, as perhaps no other author has quite possessed it, the power of becoming a child again, of thinking and inventing with her child characters, speaking and writing from their point of view – but with the skill and discrimination of a practised author’ (p. 206). The Railway Children, probably her best known story about ordinary children and their leisure activities, was first published (in book form) in 1906.
In 1900 eight short stories by Nesbit which had appeared in Strand Magazine the previous year were collected in The Book of Dragons. In writing of many of these dragons, comic figures that are no match for their child opponents, Nesbit may have been influenced by ‘The Reluctant Dragon’ by *Kenneth Grahame (1898), and Grahame’s story and Nesbit’s collection may have contributed in turn to the character of Chrysophylax in *Farmer Giles of Ham (1949).
Nesbit also wrote two stories about children travelling into their family’s past, The House of Arden (1908) and Harding’s Luck (1909). Virginia Luling has suggested (‘Going Back: Time Travel in Tolkien and E. Nesbit’, Mallorn 53 (Spring 2012)) that the first of these, in which the protagonists, Edred and Elfrida, find themselves living in the bodies of their ancestors, may have influenced Tolkien in writing *The Lost Road and *The Notion Club Papers.
But better known among Nesbit’s works are those in which contemporary children experience magical adventures, especially Five Children – and It (1902), The Phoenix and the Carpet (1904), and The Story of the Amulet (1906). Roger Lancelyn Green’s comment on the opening of the first of Nesbit’s dragon stories is also applicable to these: ‘And so straight into the realm of magic, with the prosaicness of everyday life that makes it absolutely real and acceptable; the mixture of fancy and observation which is the real child-world, the game come to life and the day-dream that stands up to the clear light of noon’ (Teller of Tales, p. 211).
On 31 August 1938 Tolkien wrote to C.A. Furth at George Allen & Unwin (*Publishers) that Nesbit was ‘an author I delight in’ (courtesy of Christopher Tolkien), and in drafts for *On Fairy-Stories he wrote of the ‘triumphant formula that E. Nesbit found in the Amulet and the Phoenix and the Carpet’ (*On Fairy-Stories (extended edn. 2008), p. 251). From The Story of the Amulet and the earlier Five Children – and It Tolkien borrowed the Psammead for his own *Roverandom (1998). In Five Children – and It, while digging a hole in a gravel-pit children find in sand at the bottom a strange creature: ‘Its eyes were on long horns like a snail’s eyes, and it could move them in and out like telescopes; it had ears like a bat’s ears, and its tubby body was shaped like a spider’s and covered with thick soft fur; its legs and arms were furry too, and it had hands and feet like a monkey’s’ (1912 printing, p. 14). It is a Psammead, or sand-fairy. It likes to sleep in warm sand, dislikes getting wet, and if disturbed can be rather gruff. Like Gandalf at the beginning of *The Hobbit it plays with the meaning of words and conventional phrases: when one of the children says that ‘now one comes to look at you’ she can see that it is a sand-fairy, the Psammead replies, with literal correctness, ‘You came to look at me several sentences ago’ (p. 16). The Psammead magically grants the children a series of wishes, almost all of which have unfortunate consequences, but luckily the magic lasts only until sunset. Similarly in Roverandom the dog Rover, who has been turned into a toy, meets a ‘sand-sorcerer’ called Psamathos Psamathides, ‘an excellent magician’ who ‘liked to lie buried in warm sand when the sun was shining, so that not more than the tip of one of his long ears stuck out’ (p. 11; ‘long ears’ was an emendation from ‘long horns’), ‘certainly was ugly’ (p. 13), and had ‘a fat tummy’ (p. 16) and ‘legs like a rabbit’ (p. 57). Psamathos saves Rover from the incoming tide, and sends him on excursions to the Moon and to the mer-king’s palace under the sea. In the earliest text of Roverandom the sand-sorcerer is actually called a psammead.
Another work by Nesbit with elements analogous to some in Tolkien’s fiction is The Enchanted Castle, first published in 1907. Among the treasures of an estate (the ‘castle’ of the title) in England’s West Country is a magic ring whose power changes according to whatever its possessor declares – sometimes unwittingly, and as always in a Nesbit story, with unfortunate consequences. Most notably, the ring can confer invisibility, but has no effect on the wearer’s shadow: ‘In the blazing sunlight that flooded the High Street four shadows to three children seemed dangerously noticeable. A butcher’s boy looked far too earnestly at the extra shadow, and his big liver-coloured lurcher snuffed at the legs of that shadow’s mistress and whined uncomfortably’ (ch. 3). The presence of a shadow cast by an otherwise unseen person recalls The Hobbit, Chapter 5, in which goblins see the invisible Bilbo’s shadow as he escapes through the back-gate, while the ability of a dog to detect someone who cannot be seen brings to mind early texts of The Lord of the Rings in which Bingo puts on the Ring, becoming invisible, in the house of Farmer Maggot, but the farmer’s dog ‘remained behind jumping and frisking round Bingo to his annoyance’ (The Return of the Shadow, p. 94) or ‘halted near Bingo sniffing and growling with the hair rising on its neck, and a puzzled look in its eyes’ (The Return of the Shadow, p. 290). In another scene, when the invisible Mabel is having tea, ‘it was rather horrid to see the bread and butter waving about in the air, and bite after bite disappearing from it apparently by no human agency; and the spoon rising with apple in it and returning to the plate empty’, or ‘a mug of milk was suspended in the air without visible means of support’ (ch. 3). Compare again, perhaps, invisible Bingo’s (later Frodo’s) visit to Farmer Maggot during which a ‘mug left the table, rose, tilted in the air, and then returned empty to its place’ (The Return of the Shadow, pp. 96, 292).
Neither Christopher nor Priscilla Tolkien recall having read The Enchanted Castle, though other books by Nesbit were on their shelves.
See further, Noel Streatfeild, Magic and the Magician: E. Nesbit and Her Children’s Books (1958), and Julia Briggs, A Woman of Passion: The Life of E. Nesbit, 1858–1924 (1987).
Netherlands. Tolkien visited the Netherlands from 28 to 31 March 1958, at the invitation of the Rotterdam booksellers Voorhoeve en Dietrich (the Dutch translation of *The Lord of the Rings had been published in 1956–7). He arrived by sea at the Hook of Holland early on 28 March, then went by train to Rotterdam. Together with a representative of his Dutch publisher, Het Spectrum, he ‘saw a good deal of the depressing world of ruined and half-rebuilt [postwar] Rotterdam … with its gigantic and largely dehumanized reconstruction’ (letter to Rayner Unwin, 8 April 1958, Letters, p. 265). In the evening he attended, as guest of honour, a ‘Hobbit Maaltijd’ or hobbit-themed dinner at the Flevrestaurant in Rotterdam. On 29 March he went with his friend, Professor Piet Harting of Amsterdam University, to the Mauritshuis at The Hague, and then to Amsterdam for a private dinner. On 30 and 31 March Tolkien visited Amsterdam and the University; there he was joined by students of the English department and ‘made an extremely hobbit-like expedition to [the distillery] Wynand Fockink’ (letter to Rayner Unwin, 8 April 1958, Tolkien–George Allen & Unwin archive, HarperCollins).
See further, René van Rossenberg, Hobbits in Holland: Leven en Werk van J.R.R. Tolkien (1892–1973); Johan Vanhecke, J.R.R. Tolkien, 1892–1992 (1992); René van Rossenberg, ‘Tolkien’s Exceptional Visit to Holland: A Reconstruction’, in Proceedings of the Tolkien Centenary Conference 1992, ed. Patricia Reynolds and Glen H. GoodKnight (1995); Johan Vanhecke, In de Ban Van de Hobbit: Leven en Werk van Tolkien (2005).
New English Dictionary see Oxford English Dictionary
A New Glossary of the Dialect of the Huddersfield District. Written by Walter E. Haigh and published by Oxford University Press (*Publishers) in January 1928, with a foreword by Tolkien, pp. xiii–xviii. See further, Descriptive Bibliography B11.
Haigh’s Glossary concerns the dialect spoken in South Yorkshire ‘in the geographical basin, measuring some ten to fifteen miles across, which lies in the south-west corner of the West Riding, close under the main ridges of the Pennines’ (p. vii). Tolkien first became acquainted with the work in 1923, ‘when Mr. Haigh had already lavished endless time and care upon it; almost my only contribution since has been to urge him to go on, and to assure him of the value of his work, not only to local patriotism, but to English philology generally’ (p. xiii). He compliments Haigh for having compiled a complete, not selective, glossary, which is essential for the full understanding of a dialect. Because it includes all types of words, including those of more recent times, it more nearly approaches ‘a true and lively picture of its dialect, and is of much greater value to philologists, than if it had dealt only with those rare or venerable words which are imagined to interest such people specially’ (p. xiv).
Tolkien commends the work also for ‘the excellence, humour, and idiomatic raciness of its illustrative quotations, which bear the mark of the native speaker.’ Dialect words are dead when isolated from ‘colloquial instances’ (p. xiv). A ‘foreigner’ to the district, Tolkien is interested in its speech because
even if not a student of dialect generally, … his attention is at once aroused by this dialect because of the very region to which it belongs – the North-West … the field of dialectal competition and mingling at a particularly important boundary, the borders of the Northern and the (Western) Midland, and the scene of the swaying fortunes of different types of English since very early times …. [p. xv]
He also remarks that
the North-West became later, in the fourteenth century, the centre of a revival of writings in vernacular speech, of which the most interesting examples preserved are poems in an alliterative metre descended from the old verse of Anglo-Saxon times, though clothed in a language now difficult to read because of its strong Scandinavian element and its many other peculiar and obscure dialectal words …. [p. xvi]
Books such as Haigh’s Glossary ‘throw valuable light on the meanings or forms of words’ in old poems, including *Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, *Pearl, and the Wars of Alexander (p. xvi).
See further, Janet Brennan Croft, ‘Walter E. Haigh, Author of A New Glossary of the Huddersfield District’, Tolkien Studies 4 (2007). Croft suggests that ‘Tolkien most likely met Haigh [1856–1931] through the Yorkshire Dialect Society’ (p. 185).
‘The New Lay of Gudrún’see The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún
‘The New Lay of the Völsungs’seeThe Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún
The New Shadow. Abandoned sequel to *The Lord of the Rings, published with commentary and notes in *The Peoples of Middle-earth (1996), pp. 409–21.
The brief text is set during the reign of Eldarion, son of King Elessar. Borlas, son of Beregond, now an old man, is visited by Saelon (in earlier versions Egalmoth or Arthael), whom he had rebuked as a boy not only for stealing good fruit, but also for destroying unripe fruit, calling his action ‘Orcs’ work’. The two discuss that occasion, the roots of evil in Men (‘the roots of Evil lie deep, and from far off comes the poison that works in us’, p. 414), and ‘rumours’ they have heard. Saelon invites Borlas, if he would know more, to come with him that evening. It is not clear if Saelon is working with or against a barely suggested conspiracy.
In a letter to Colin Bailey, 13 May 1964, Tolkien comments that he began ‘a story placed about 100 years after the Downfall [of Sauron], but it proved both sinister and depressing’, showing ‘the most regrettable feature’ of human nature,
quick satiety with good. So that the people of Gondor in times of peace, justice and prosperity, would become discontented and restless – while the dynasts descended from Aragorn would become just kings and governors …. I found that even so early there was an outcrop of revolutionary plots, about a centre of secret Satanic religion; while Gondorian boys were playing at being Orcs and going round doing damage. I could have written a ‘thriller’ about the plot and its discovery and overthrow – but it would be just that. Not worth doing. [Letters, p. 344]
Compare his letter to Father Douglas Carter, ?6 June 1972:
I have written nothing beyond the first few years of the Fourth Age. (Except the beginning of a tale supposed to refer to the end of the reign of Eldaron about 100 years after the death of Aragorn. Then I of course discovered that the King’s Peace would contain no tales worth recounting; and his wars would have little interest after the overthrow of Sauron; but that almost certainly a restlessness would appear about then, owing to the (it seems) inevitable boredom of Men with the good: there would be secret societies practising dark cults, and ‘orc-cults’ among adolescents.) [Letters, p. 419]
It seems unlikely that Tolkien began to write The New Shadow before the publication of The Lord of the Rings (1954–5), but there is evidence that its first versions were in existence by late 1958. The first draft opening of the story extends for two sides of a sheet and is accompanied by other manuscript material. Tolkien then wrote a clear manuscript, followed by a typescript in which he made minor emendations and improvements; both manuscript and typescript end at the same point, at the farthest point the story ever reached. The typescript and an amanuensis typescript based upon it were both produced on the machine that Tolkien used up to the end of 1958, except for the first page of the amanuensis typescript, which was made on the typewriter he used from the beginning of 1959. Several years later, probably at the beginning of 1968, Tolkien made another typescript with many emendations, none of significance to the story: this did not reach as far as the earlier versions.
Newby, Percy Howard (1918–1997). P.H. Newby was a prolific writer of novels, including A Journey to the Interior (1945) and The Picnic at Sakkara (1955). His Something to Answer For (1968) was the first winner of the Booker Prize. He also wrote non-fiction books, such as The Warrior Pharaohs (1980). In 1946–8 he lectured in English literature at Fouad I University in Cairo. In 1949 he joined BBC radio as a producer in the Talks Department; in that capacity, in June–July 1953, he expressed an interest in broadcasting Tolkien’s Modern English translation of *Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Tolkien and Newby met for tea at Merton College, Oxford on 31 July 1953 to discuss how the work should be read and introduced. Although Tolkien wanted to do this himself, Newby felt that he was not good enough to read the whole poem; in the event, it was read by several voices.
Newby and Tolkien later discussed other possible topics for radio talks, such as the eighteenth-century Grammarians, fairy-stories, and Tolkien’s old teacher *Joseph Wright; but none came about, at least not with Tolkien in the broadcast. Newby was also instrumental in fostering interest at the BBC in Tolkien’s verse dialogue of the Battle of Maldon, *The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth Beorhthelm’s Son (1953). He was not impressed, however, with *Smith of Wootton Major, which Tolkien stipulated should not be cut, or with Tolkien’s offer to read it himself.
Late in 1958 Newby became Controller of the BBC Third Programme, and at the end of 1971 rose to the position of Director of Programmes, Radio. He retired in 1978.
A photograph of P.H. Newby is reproduced in The Envy of the World by Humphrey Carpenter (1996), following p. 274. A website devoted to Newby, phnewby.net, includes photographs, links to articles, and other features.
Newcastle upon Tyne. A major city in the north-east of England, historically part of Northumberland, now in the metropolitan county of Tyne and Wear, but during Tolkien’s youth (and since 1400) a county in its own right. At the turn of the twentieth century, and long afterward, it was known for coal mining, glassmaking and ceramics, and shipbuilding. An important centre of the Industrial Revolution, it was not without culture, the Laing Art Gallery having been established there in 1901.
Newcastle attracted engineers like William Charles Mountain (see *Mountain family), of the company Ernest Scott and Mountain, maker of electric lighting for mills and factories, as well as pumps, dynamos, and high-speed engines for railways and collieries. Mountain, his wife (Grace Bindley Tolkien, see *Tolkien family), and their two children lived in the Newcastle area and were often visited by Ronald and *Hilary Tolkien during school holidays after their mother’s death.
Nichol Smith, David (1875–1962). Educated at the University of Edinburgh and the Sorbonne, D. Nichol Smith held posts at the University of Glasgow (as assistant to Professor *Walter Raleigh) and at Armstrong College, Newcastle upon Tyne, before his election as Goldsmiths’ Reader in English at *Oxford in 1908. Raleigh had preceded Nichol Smith to Oxford, as Professor of English Literature, and now together again, they made significant contributions to the development of the fledgling English School. ‘If Raleigh’s brilliance as a lecturer and his undogmatic and stimulating mind gave the new school much of its distinction, his “indifference to system” might have retarded its growth, if the calm and orderly mind of Nichol Smith had not been available with suggestion and criticism’ (James Sutherland, ‘David Nichol Smith, 1875–1962’, in Proceedings of the British Academy 48 (1962), p. 453). In particular, Nichol Smith helped to improve the B.Litt. course, making it more rigorous and methodical. In 1929 he became Merton Professor of English Literature, a chair he held until 1946.
His special interest was the eighteenth century, and on critical attitudes of the eighteenth century towards earlier literature. His publications include Eighteenth-Century Essays on Shakespeare (1903) and Some Observations on Eighteenth-Century Poetry (1937), and editions of Dryden, Johnson, Swift, among other authors of the period. As an undergraduate Tolkien certainly attended lectures by Nichol Smith on Samuel Johnson and his friends, and possibly also his lectures on Dryden, and on English literature from Caxton to Milton. Upon Tolkien’s election to the Rawlinson and Bosworth Professorship of Anglo-Saxon in 1925 he and Nichol Smith became colleagues, and served together on the English Faculty Board and numerous committees.
Nichol Smith was also an adviser on English literature to the Oxford University Press, its chief adviser in that field after the death of Raleigh in 1922 and a confidant to *Kenneth Sisam. He was also consulted by *George S. Gordon when Gordon and Tolkien agreed to produce for the Press the ‘Clarendon Chaucer’ (see *Geoffrey Chaucer), and later by Tolkien in a vain attempt to reduce his mass of notes for that book. From c. 1938 Nichol Smith was one of the first three editors of the Oxford English Monographs series, together with Tolkien and *C.S. Lewis.
See further, *F.P. Wilson, ‘A List of Writings of David Nichol Smith, 1896–1945’, in Essays on the Eighteenth Century: Presented to David Nichol Smith (1945).
Nieninque. Poem, first published in *The Monsters and the Critics and Other Essays (1983), pp. 215–16.
Composed in Qenya (later Quenya, see *Languages, Invented), Nieninque concerns the maiden Niéle ‘like a snowdrop (Nieninqe), to whom the air gives kisses’. Tolkien included it in his lecture *A Secret Vice (written ?autumn 1931, delivered 29 November 1931) as an example of his ‘vice’ of language invention and its outlet in poetry. The word nieninqe is Qenya, defined in the *Qenyaqetsa lexicon as ‘snowdrop’, literally ‘white tear’, while nieninque is a later form of the word, in Quenya.
A discussion of five texts of the poem, the first four in the earlier Qenya, was published as ‘Nieninqe’ in Parma Eldalamberon 16 (2006), pp. 88–97, ed. Christopher Gilson, Bill Welden, and Carl F. Hostetter. This includes transcriptions of the first, second, and fifth versions, with Tolkien’s English versions of the first and second; a note on the language of the second version, appended to the poem; variant readings of the third version; and a fifth version, with Tolkien’s glossarial comments. The fourth text in this sequence, following on the sequence of the earlier three versions, was the one incorporated by Tolkien in A Secret Vice. The first text was written in ?1921, the fourth in ?1931, and the fifth on a page from a desk calendar for 26 June–2 July 1955.
Noel. Poem, a celebration of the birth of Jesus Christ, published in The ‘Annual’ of Our Lady’s School, Abingdon, no. 12 (1936), pp. 4–5. A child is born into a world grim, grey, dark, and cold, where ‘all ways and paths were wild’. A star comes ‘shining white and clear’, the voice of Mary rises in song ‘o’er mist and over mountains snow’, and ‘the hall is filled with laughter and light’ as the bells of Paradise ring.
Our Lady’s School, now Our Lady’s Abingdon, was founded in 1860 as a convent school by the Sisters of Mercy, a Roman Catholic order of nuns members of whom Tolkien met while in hospital during the First World War. Noel was composed probably close to the time of its publication.
‘Of the Noldor in Beleriand’. The fifteenth chapter of the *‘Quenta Silmarillion’, published in *The Silmarillion (1977), pp. 125–30.
SYNOPSIS
Inspired by the Vala Ulmo, Turgon of Nevrast discovers the hidden Vale of Tumladen, a suitable place for a refuge. After the Dagor Aglareb he sends some of his people to build a city there, while he himself remains in Nevrast. Fifty-two years later, the city of Gondolin is completed. Ulmo tells Turgon it that will endure longest of the realms of the Noldor, and when a time of peril draws near, one will come to warn him, wearing armour which Turgon is directed to leave behind in Nevrast. Turgon and all of his people, both Noldor and Sindar, make their way secretly to Gondolin. In that fair city the inhabitants remain concealed for over 350 years, not leaving until they take part in the Nirnaeth Arnoediad.
Meanwhile, Finrod Felagund prepares the refuge of Nargothrond, and his sister Galadriel dwells with her kinsman Thingol and with Melian in Doriath. Pressed for information by Melian, who sees that some shadow lies on her and her kin, Galadriel tells her of the theft of the Silmarils and the death of Finwë, but not of the Oath or the Kinslaying. Melian foresees the significance of the Silmarils, and warns Thingol against the sons of Fëanor, but he still sees them and the Noldor as allies against Morgoth.
Rumours of the deeds of the Noldor in Valinor, perhaps spread and enhanced by Morgoth, come to the ears of Círdan, who reports them to Thingol at a time when Finrod and his brothers are visiting Doriath. When Thingol accuses the brothers of concealing the matter from him, they plead their innocence in the Kinslaying and tell of Fëanor’s treachery against them. Thingol is prepared to forgive them, as well as Fingolfin and his people, but forbids the language (Quenya, *Languages, Invented) of those who had slain his kin at Alqualondë to be spoken in his realm. The Sindar obey his decree, and the Noldor begin to use Sindarin for their daily speech. Otherwise Quenya is spoken only by Noldorin lords among themselves, or used as a language of lore.
Finrod celebrates the completion of Nargothrond with a feast. When Galadriel, who is staying with him, asks Finrod why he has no wife, foresight comes upon him that he will be bound by an oath, and his realm will not endure for a son to inherit. But Amarië of the Vanyar, whom he loved, had stayed behind in Valinor.
HISTORY
Only isolated threads of this chapter can be found in *The Book of Lost Tales (c. 1916–20), which says little directly of the early years of the Noldor in Beleriand. An outline for the unwritten part of Gilfanon’s Tale: The Travail of the Noldoli and the Coming of Mankind refers to Turgon founding Gondolin after the Battle of Unnumbered Tears (the Nirnaeth Arnoediad), but there is nothing between this and the first written of the Lost Tales, The Fall of Gondolin, which takes place when the city is nearing its end. Turgon’s former dwelling at Nevrast, and the armour left there, do not appear in the tale. Although Gondolin is a hidden secret city, it is not so cut off; some Noldoli manage to find their way to it. The caves inhabited by the Rodothlim, refugee Noldoli led by Orodreth, in The Tale of Turambar are a precursor of Nargothrond, but in The Book of Lost Tales Finrod Felagund has not yet been introduced. Artanor (Doriath) is ruled by Tinwelint and Gwendeling, less noble versions of the later Thingol and Melian. Galadriel does not enter the history of the First Age until after the writing of *The Lord of the Rings.
In *The Lay of the Children of Húrin (c. 1919–25) the rulers of Doriath are Thingol and Melian, and the Noldorin stronghold of Nargothrond has replaced the more humble caves of the Rodothlim. Although two of Fëanor’s sons, Celegorm and Curufin, establish Nargothrond, at the time of the events of the Lay it is ruled by Orodreth, who seems to be unrelated to Finwë. *Christopher Tolkien has suggested, as an explanation of the change of ruler, that when writing the early part of the lay his father thought of Nargothrond as being founded after the Battle of Unnumbered Tears by Celegorm and Curufin, but as the writing progressed he decided that it was founded before that battle, but afterwards the brothers settled elsewhere, and Orodreth became the ruler of Nargothrond.
The first consecutive, if brief, account of the matter of this chapter appeared in the *Sketch of the Mythology (c. 1926). At this stage Thingol willingly accepts the Noldor in his realm. Turgon still builds Gondolin after the Battle of Unnumbered Tears, inspired by Ylmir (Ulmo), who foretells that it will last the longest of elven refuges. As written, Celegorm and Curufin establish Nargothrond, but are replaced in an emendation by Felagund and his brothers (Felagund, Orodreth, Angrod, and Egnor having already appeared by emendation earlier in the story as the sons of Finrod (later Finarfin) and grandsons of Finwë). This same development took place during the writing of the *Lay of Leithian in the second half of the 1920s. In the *Quenta Noldorinwa (c. 1930) Felagund founds Nargothrond after the Battle of Sudden Flame, in which his brothers Angrod and Egnor were slain. Christopher Tolkien comments that, though in the Quenta Noldorinwa Gondolin is still established after the Battle of Unnumbered Tears, the description of its building suggests a much longer period than the chronology allows.
The ‘earliest’ *Annals of Beleriand (early 1930s) provide a chronological framework for the events. In the entry for Year 50 Tolkien introduced the idea that Turgon and Felagund were inspired by dreams and foreboding to build their strongholds, which both do immediately: thus Gondolin is founded before the Battle of Unnumbered Tears, which takes place in Year 172, when for the first time since its founding Turgon and his people leave Gondolin. In an incomplete second version of these annals, Turgon finds the site of Gondolin in Year 50, but does not lead his people there until the following year, after the Dagor Aglareb. The building of both Nargothrond and Gondolin is complete at about Year 102. Although Tolkien did not finish this version, it is clear that the Battle of Unnumbered Tears would have taken place in Year 272. In the ‘later’ Annals of Beleriand of the mid-1930s Turgon delays his departure until Year 52 (emended to Year 64). The *Quenta Silmarillion (begun mid-1930s) seems to tell the same story.
In the Grey Annals (c. 1951, see *Annals of Beleriand), moving from annal to narrative form, Tolkien added much new material, including the various conversations between Galadriel, Melian, Thingol, and Inglor (= Felagund, Finrod); Thingol’s ban on the language of the Noldor; and Turgon remaining at Nevrast while Gondolin is being built. He moves to Gondolin in 116, and as instructed, leaves armour at Nevrast to be found by Ulmo’s messenger. At about the same time or a little later, while revising the Quenta Silmarillion, Tolkien added a short chapter (three pages of manuscript), ‘Of Turgon and the Building of Gondolin’, partly new and partly copied almost word for word from the Grey Annals, replacing the original text there with a ‘short notice’ (*The War of the Jewels, p. 199).
The first part of ‘Of the Noldor in Beleriand’ in The Silmarillion, concerning Gondolin, was taken from this new chapter, incorporating a few emendations made by Tolkien. The second part, concerning Galadriel, her brothers, Melian, and Thingol, was taken from the Grey Annals.
NoldorinseeLanguages, Invented
‘Noldorin Dictionary’. Brief dictionary of the early Elvish language Noldorin (see *Languages, Invented), published as part of ‘Early Noldorin Fragments’ in Parma Eldalamberon 13 (2001), pp. 157–65, edited with commentary by Christopher Gilson, Bill Welden, Carl F. Hostetter, and Patrick Wynne.
Tolkien based this unfinished work on his *‘Noldorin Word-Lists’ and organized it on principles similar to those underlying the *Gnomish Lexicon, with etymologically related words grouped together, ‘with derivatives listed under the more basic Noldorin word from which they derive, with the Old Noldorin form of words indicated (where different from the “modern” form) as well as prehistoric reconstructions, and with listings of cognates in Qenya, Telerin, and Ilkorin’ (p. 157). This complex scheme seems to have been devised as Tolkien proceeded, working on slips of paper in manuscript and typescript, probably c. summer 1923. Most of the paper (from the University of *Leeds) bears a printed date, 16 April 1923.
‘Noldorin Word-Lists’. Lists of words, names, and components of words in the early Elvish language Noldorin (see *Languages, Invented), published as part of ‘Early Noldorin Fragments’ in Parma Eldalamberon 13 (2001), pp. 133–56, edited with commentary by Christopher Gilson, Bill Welden, Carl F. Hostetter, and Patrick Wynne.
Tolkien compiled these typewritten lists, with additions and revisions in manuscript, c. 1921–3, reflecting his work on *The Book of Lost Tales and *The Lay of the Children of Húrin and closely associated with the *‘Early Noldorin Grammar’ and slips added to the *Gnomish Lexicon.
Nomenclature of The Lord of the Rings. A guide to names in *The Lord of the Rings, prepared by Tolkien for the use of translators. It grew out of his objections to the alteration of names in the first translations of The Lord of the Rings, in Dutch (In de ban van de ring) and Swedish (Sagan om ringen), published in 1956–7 and 1959–61 respectively. On 3 July 1956 he wrote to his publisher *Rayner Unwin concerning the version in Dutch:
In principle I object as strongly as is possible to the ‘translation’ of the nomenclature at all (even by a competent person). I wonder why a translator should think himself called on or entitled to do any such thing. That this is an ‘imaginary’ world does not give him any right to remodel it according to his fancy, even if he could in a few months create a new coherent structure which it took me years to work out.
The correct way to translate The Lord of the Rings, he felt, ‘is to leave the maps and nomenclature alone as far as possible, but to substitute for some of the least-wanted Appendices a glossary of names (with meanings but no ref[erence]s.). I could supply one for translation. May I say at once that I will not tolerate any similar tinkering with the personal nomenclature. Nor with the name/word Hobbit’ (Letters, pp. 249–51).
But he was only partly successful in having his way with the Dutch edition, despite lengthy correspondence (see further, *Translations). Later he had a similar experience with the Swedish Lord of the Rings, all the more distressing because the translator of the first Swedish *Hobbit (Hompen, 1947) had also taken liberties with the text. On 7 December 1957 Tolkien wrote to Rayner Unwin: ‘I do hope that it can be arranged, if and when any further translations are negotiated [after the Dutch and Swedish], that I should be consulted at an early stage …. After all, I charge nothing, and can save a translator a good deal of time and puzzling; and if consulted at an early stage my remarks will appear far less in the light of peevish criticisms’ (Letters, p. 263).
At last Tolkien himself took the initiative. He continued to prefer that The Lord of the Rings in translation preserve the essential Englishness of many of its personal and place-names; but he came to accept that other translators were likely to take a line similar to those of the Dutch and Swedish editions, who had sometimes misunderstood their source, and instead of insisting on no translation of nomenclature, he attempted to influence the translator through an explanatory document. On 7 December 1957 he had also written to Rayner Unwin:
I see now that the lack of an ‘index of names’ [in The Lord of the Rings] is a serious handicap in dealing with [questions of translation]. If I had an index of names (even one with only reference to Vol. and chapter, not page) it would be a comparatively easy matter to indicate at once all names suitable for translation (as being themselves according to the fiction ‘translated’ into English), and to add a few notes on points where (I know now) translators are likely to trip. So far, though both eager to translate the toponymy into other terms, and deliberately to efface the references to England (which I regard as integral and essential) neither appear to be at all conversant with English toponymy, or even to be aware that there is anything to know. Nor do they consult large dictionaries when faced by anything that is not current. [Tolkien–George Allen & Unwin archive, HarperCollins, partly printed in Letters, pp. 263–4]
Such an index was compiled for him, through the offices of George Allen & Unwin (*Publishers), by May 1958. On 11 September 1959, after considering difficulties facing the translator of the Polish Lord of the Rings, Tolkien asked his publisher for a spare copy of the index of names, so that he could mark on it all of those that are not English and therefore, in his view, should not be translated. He seems to have done nothing more with this, however, until around the beginning of December 1966: on 12 December he wrote to Alina Dadlez, of the Allen & Unwin foreign rights department:
When I was reading the specimens of the proposed German translation, I began to prepare an annotated name list based on the index: indicating those names that were to be left unchanged and giving information of the meaning and origin of those that it was desirable to render into the language of translation, together with some tentative advice on how to proceed. I hope soon to complete this and be able to send you a copy or copies for the use of translators …. [Tolkien–George Allen & Unwin archive, HarperCollins]
On 2 January 1967 he wrote to Otto B. Lindhardt, of the Danish publisher Gyldendals Bibliotek, who were planning to publish The Lord of the Rings in Danish, that ‘experience in attempting to help translators or in reading their versions has made me realize that the nomenclature of persons and places offers particular difficulty’, but is important ‘since it was constructed with considerable care, to fit with the supposed history of the period described. I have therefore recently been engaged in making, and have nearly completed, a commentary on the names in this story, with explanations and suggestions for the use of a translator, having especially in mind Danish and German’ (Tolkien–George Allen & Unwin archive, HarperCollins). On 16 January he wrote to *Joy Hill at Allen & Unwin:
I have completed and Miss Jenkinson [his secretary] has typed out a commentary on the names in The Lord of the Rings, especially devised to be (I hope) useful to anyone translating the book into German or Danish …. I think it would save me a considerable amount of time when the German and Dutch projects go forward, and also enable the translators to avoid a lot of the mistakes, and in some cases nonsense, that I now discover in the extant translations. [Tolkien–George Allen & Unwin archive, HarperCollins]
Tolkien’s ‘commentary’ for many years was photocopied by Allen & Unwin and sent to translators of The Lord of the Rings as an aid to their work. After Tolkien’s death it was edited by his son *Christopher and published in A Tolkien Compass, ed. Jared Lobdell (1975), pp. 153–201, as Guide to the Names in The Lord of the Rings. In 2005 Wayne G. Hammond and Christina Scull made a fresh transcription of the Nomenclature from the professional typescript as corrected by Tolkien, with reference also to an earlier version in manuscript and typescript; this was published in The Lord of the Rings: A Reader’s Companion (2005), pp. 750–82. (In the first edition of the Reader’s Companion entries for Mathom and Smials were inadvertently omitted from the Nomenclature. These were absent in the editors’ copy-text, but present in A Tolkien Compass.)
A Northern Venture. Collection of ‘verses by members of the *Leeds University English School Association’, published by the Swan Press, Leeds, in June 1923. See further, Descriptive Bibliography B4. The volume includes three poems by Tolkien, *Enigmata Saxonica Nuper Inventa Duo, *The Happy Mariners, and *The Man in the Moon Came Down Too Soon. Among other contributors are *Wilfred R. Childe, *E.V. Gordon, and *A.H. Smith.
Northernness. Tolkien considered himself a man of north-western Europe, and in his professional life was concerned with the languages, literature, and culture of that region. As he wrote to his son *Michael on 9 June 1941:
I have spent most of my life, since I was your age, studying Germanic matters (in the general sense that includes England and Scandinavia). There is a great deal more force (and truth) than ignorant people imagine in the ‘Germanic’ ideal. I was much attracted by it as an undergraduate … in reaction against the ‘Classics’ …. I have in this [Second World] War a burning private grudge … against that ruddy little ignoramus Adolf Hitler …. Ruining, perverting, misapplying, and making for ever accursed, that noble northern spirit, a supreme contribution to Europe, which I have ever loved, and tried to present in its true light. Nowhere, incidentally, was it nobler than in England, nor more early sanctified and Christianized. [Letters, pp. 55–6]
During the nineteenth century scholars in Northern Europe began to discover and take pride in a common ‘Northern’ heritage, recognizing a culture and literature which they could place beside, and contrast with, the long-established classical traditions of Greece and Rome. Comparative Philology showed the roots and interrelationship of Germanic and Scandinavian languages. The literature of Iceland, previously little known, was seen as a major contribution to the ‘Northern’ heritage, and there was also an interest in that country’s early form of democracy. An article in the Oxford Magazine applauding the establishment of the Vigfússon Readership in Ancient Icelandic Literature and Antiquities at *Oxford in 1941 hailed ‘this new link … forged between Iceland and England: the lands of thousand-year-old Althing and venerable Parliament; the lands of two ancient European vernacular literatures, through the splendid fragments of whose combined traditions we can look beyond the Middle Age[s] and glimpse the far past of the North’ (‘The Vigfússon Readership’, Oxford Magazine, 13 November 1941, p. 65).
But this interest in the North was not confined to scholars. Marjorie J. Burns notes in ‘J.R.R. Tolkien and the Journey North’, Mythlore 15, no. 4, whole no. 58 (Summer 1989), that
by 1892, when Tolkien was born, English popular thought had for some time been turning from the classical world. Southern tastes and southern considerations, particularly from mid-century onward, had been increasingly replaced by Northern ideals. Britain’s Nordic ancestry was taken up like a banner and pointed to as indicative of all that the nation should hold in highest esteem ….
The English, who had previously played down their Northern ties, now chose to deny their Southern past, to see the South as un-English, as decadent, feeble, and lacking in vigor or will …. Neither position is just, of course. Culturally, linguistically, racially, England’s heritage is mixed; but Northern Romanticism, and that human knack of ignoring what doesn’t appeal, now allowed the English to see themselves basically as Norsemen only slightly diluted in race, as Vikings only slightly tempered by time. [p. 5]
For a study in depth of this fascination with the North, see Andrew Wawm, The Vikings and the Victorians: Inventing the Old North in 19th-Century Britain (2000).
Tolkien says in *On Fairy-Stories that of all his childhood reading he most enjoyed ‘the nameless North of Sigurd of the Völsungs, and the prince of all dragons. Such lands were pre-eminently desirable’ (*Tree and Leaf, p. 40). The ‘Story of Sigurd’ he read, in *Andrew Lang’s Red Fairy Book (1890), was written for children, based on the translation by *William Morris of the Old Norse (or Icelandic) Völsunga Saga. The legend of Sigurd provides a good example of the common heritage of Northern Europe: it appears in medieval works written in different languages and places, including the Elder (or Poetic) Edda, the Völsunga Saga (founded on the Elder Edda), and Snorri Sturluson’s Prose Edda (Old Norse); Þidreks Saga (a Norwegian translation of northern German heroic tales); and the Nibelungenlied (a southern German or Austrian heroic epic). A version was also known to the Anglo-Saxons, shown by a reference in *Beowulf to Sigemund slaying a dragon guarding a hoard (in most other versions Sigemund is the father of Sigfrid, and not a dragon-slayer).
While still at school, as part of a general interest in German *languages, including Old English and Gothic, Tolkien also began to learn Old Norse so that he could read the story of Sigurd in the original. He shared his appreciation of Icelandic literature with his fellow pupils at *King Edward’s School, Birmingham in a paper on Norse sagas he read to the school Literary Society (*Societies and clubs) on 17 February 1911. According to a report in the King Edward’s School Chronicle, Tolkien described a saga as a
story of things which happened indeed but so long ago that marvels and miracles of the strange old Northern brand have crept into the tale. The best sagas are those of Iceland, and for pictures of human life and character they can hardly be bettered in any literature …. They tell how brave men – of our own blood, perhaps – lived and loved, and fought, and voyaged, and died.
One of the best … is the Völsunga Saga – a strange and glorious tale. It tells of the oldest of treasure hunts: the quest of the red gold of Andvari, the dwarf. It tells of the brave Sigurd Fafnirsbane, who was cursed by the possession of this gold, who, in spite of his greatness, had no happiness from his love for Brynhild. The Saga tells of this and many another strange and thrilling thing. It shows us the highest epic genius struggling out of savagery into complete and conscious humanity. [‘Literary Society’, n.s. 26, no. 186 (March 1911), pp. 19–20]
Tolkien also praised the story of Burnt Njal, and thought Howard the Halt the best among shorter works. He concluded with a sketch of the Norse religion and quotations from various sagas. The Chronicle reporter thought that the passages Tolkien read aloud constituted one of the charms of the paper.
In later years Tolkien continued to find the Völsunga Saga of interest, but did not hold its author in high regard, for it was solely from the Eddaic lays that the saga ‘derives its power and the attraction that it has for all those who come to it’ (quoted in *The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún, p. 39). He spoke of a similar attraction in his *‘Introduction to the “Elder Edda”’, saying that few who first read an Eddaic poem after a ‘preliminary struggle with Old Norse’ ‘can have missed the sudden recognition that they had unawares met something of tremendous force, something that in parts … is still endowed with an almost demonic energy, in spite of the ruin of its form …. If not felt early in the process it is unlikely to be captured by years of scholarly thraldom; once felt it can never be buried by mountains or molehills of research, and sustains long and wary labour’ (The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún, p. 17).
NORTHERN STUDIES AT OXFORD AND LEEDS
When Tolkien transferred from Classics to the English School at Oxford in Trinity Term 1913 he chose for his Special Subject ‘Scandinavian Philology’, which included a study of the literature. In that same term he read a paper on the Norse sagas to the Exeter College Essay Club (*Societies and clubs), perhaps the same as or similar to the paper he gave in Birmingham two years earlier; the brief report in the Stapeldon Magazine (June 1913) gives no details apart from noting that the audience again enjoyed the quotations with which Tolkien ended his talk. Reports in the Stapeldon Magazine and the Essay Club minutes note a similar response to a paper on the Elder Edda which Tolkien, now Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon, read to the Club on 17 November 1926: ‘The reader, after sketching the character and historical background of the Edda, described certain of the poems. He also gave a number of translations and readings from the Icelandic which demonstrated the peculiar poetic and musical qualities of the language’ (‘Essay Club’, Stapeldon Magazine 7, no. 39 (December 1926), p. 96).
At the University of *Leeds he was concerned with the teaching of Old Icelandic, which was studied in much the same detail as Old English; and as an adjunct, he helped to form a ‘Viking Club’ (*Societies and clubs) which comprised past and present students of Old Icelandic. On his return to Oxford Tolkien established the Kolbítar (*Societies and clubs), dons who met to read in the original and translate all of the major Icelandic Sagas and both Eddas.
During most of his time as Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon at Oxford (1925–45) Icelandic studies were part of Tolkien’s responsibilities. He lectured on all aspects of Old Icelandic language and literature, and often acted as a supervisor or examiner for any B.Litt. or D.Phil. thesis on the subject. This was recognized in Iceland, when in 1933 Tolkien was made a honorary member of Hið íslenska bókmenntafélag (the Icelandic Literary Society; *Societies and clubs). In 1931 he served on an English Faculty Board committee which proposed, among the main needs of the faculty, ‘the endowment of a Readership or Lecturership in (medieval) Scandinavian languages’. Their justification was that ‘Norse literature and philology are of central importance in the medieval curriculum of the English School. Adequate provision for the teaching of these subjects, and for the direction of advanced studies is urgently required. No provision for Scandinavian studies has been made by the Faculty of Medieval and Modern Languages since 1916’ (Oxford University Archives FA 4/5/2/3). The request was rejected by the General Board, but made again in 1939. A bequest ultimately enabled the founding of the Vigfússon Readership in Ancient Icelandic Literature and Antiquities, first held by Tolkien’s former B.Litt. student *E.O.G. Turville-Petre.
With the Vigfússon Readership established Tolkien was no longer responsible for Icelandic studies, and although Turville-Petre was called to war work almost as soon as he became Reader on 1 October 1941, Tolkien was not scheduled to give any lectures or classes on Icelandic studies after Michaelmas Term 1941 for the rest of his time in the Rawlinson and Bosworth chair. See also J.S. Ryan, ‘The Work and Preferences of the Professor of Old Norse at the University of Oxford from 1925 to 1945’, Angerthas 27 (May 1990).
NORTHERN INFLUENCES ON TOLKIEN’S FICTION
Among many influences from Northern literature on Tolkien’s works, Beowulf not only provides the cup stolen from Smaug in *The Hobbit, but also contributes to the Anglo-Saxon culture of the Rohirrim in *The Lord of the Rings, in particular the reception of Gandalf, Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli at Edoras (Book III, Chapter 6), which is based on that of Beowulf at Heorot. It also seems likely that Unferþ in Beowulf provided a prototype which Tolkien reworked as Gríma Wormtongue (see Clive Tolley, ‘And the Word Was Made Flesh’, Mallorn 32 (September 1995)). Most of the Dwarf-names in The Hobbit, and the name Gandalf (originally that of the dwarf later called Thorin), are taken from the Völuspá in the Elder Edda. Even Middle-earth and Mirkwood are derived from early Germanic languages where they appear in various forms (see Letters, pp. 220, 369–70). The figure of Gandalf, as Tolkien himself recognized (Letters, p. 119), embodies some aspects of the god Odin in Norse mythology (see further, Marjorie Burns, Perilous Realms: Celtic and Norse in Tolkien’s Middle-earth (2005), pp. 95–106). Verlyn Flieger comments that although ‘ljösalfar (light elves) and döckalfar (dark elves) are part of the world of the Icelandic Prose Edda and its source, the Elder or Poetic Edda, Tolkien carries the concept [of Light Elves and Dark Elves] beyond mere naming to create a context in which the differences that underlie the distinction can be explained and justified’ (Splintered Light: Logos and Language in Tolkien’s World (2nd edn. 2002), p. 83).
A dragon guarding a hoard, as in The Hobbit and Tolkien’s poem *The Hoard, appears in both Beowulf and the story of Sigurd. Tolkien also drew upon the latter for the story of Túrin Turambar in The Silmarillion (*‘Of Túrin Turambar’), who kills the dragon Glaurung as Sigurd kills Fáfnir, by striking the beast’s soft belly from below. Also in The Silmarillion, the deaths of the companions of Finrod and Beren at intervals by a werewolf echo the account in the Völsunga Saga of the slaying of nine of the ten fettered sons of King Volsung, one by one, on consecutive nights by a she-wolf, and Beren suffers the loss of a hand to the wolf Carcharoth as the Norse God Týr did to enable the binding of Fenris Wolf. Beorn in The Hobbit, who shape-changes into a great bear in the Battle of Five Armies, appears to owe much to the berserk warriors of Northern tradition who fought with frenzied fury and whose name, according to the most accepted interpretation, described them as wearing bearskins. And in The Lord of the Rings, Aragorn’s broken sword recalls that of Sigurd in the Volsungasaga; the seat of Amon Hen is akin to Hliðskjf, the all-seeing seat of Odin; and the meeting of the forces of Sauron and the Army of the West on Dagorlad, the Battle Plain, at the feet of the Ered Lithui or Ash Mountains, recalls the battle between the Goths and the Huns on the Danube-heath below the Hills of Ash.
After discussing the fragmentary remains of early Germanic writings, especially in Old English and Gothic, Paul Bibire observes in ‘Sægde se þe cuþe: Tolkien as Anglo-Saxonist’, Scholarship and Fantasy (1993), that
Tolkien manifestly felt the imaginative pull of these lost literatures, of what must have been. His scholarly caution … warned him against confusing what is with what might have been …. He is also remarkably careful to dissociate his recreative from his scholarly activities, and the legends of the Rohirrim and their ancestors and cousins of Mirkwood are not those of the early English, or of their continental Gothic or Norse cousins: rather, he creates an analogue of such a body of legends, as it might have developed in the different cultural and geographical circumstances of Rohan and Gondor. [pp. 124–5]
Tolkien himself commented on this separation of his re-creative and scholarly activities in an unpublished essay concerning his thoughts on translating poetry:
I must protest that I have never attempted to ‘re-create’ anything. My aim has been the basically more modest, and certainly the more laborious one of trying to make something new. No one would learn anything valid about the ‘Anglo-Saxons’ from any of my lore, not even that concerning the Rohirrim; I never intended that they should. Even the lines beginning ‘Where now the horse and the rider’ [The Lord of the Rings, bk. III, ch. 6], though they echo a line in [the Old English poem] *‘The Wanderer’ … are certainly not a translation, re-creative or other wise. They are integrated (I hope) in something wholly different … they are particular in reference, to a great hero and his renowned horse, and they are supposed to be part of the song of a minstrel of a proud and undefeated people in a hall still populous with men. Even the sentiment is different: it laments the ineluctable ending and passing back into oblivion of the fortunate, the full-lived, the unblemished and beautiful. To me that is more poignant than any particular disaster, from the cruelty of men or the hostility of the world. But if I were to venture to translate ‘The Wanderer’ – the lament of the lonely man withering away in regret, and the poet’s reflexions upon it – I would not dare to intrude any sentiment of my own, nor to disarrange the order of word and thought in the old poem, in an impertinent attempt to make it more pleasing to myself, and perhaps to others. That is not ‘re-creation’ but destruction. At best a foolish misuse of a talent for personal poetic expression; at worst the unwarranted impudence of a parasite. [Tolkien Papers, Bodleian Library, Oxford]
Tolkien did, however, give a version of part of the Old English poem *The Seafarer a significant place in *The Lost Road and *The Notion Club Papers, though in an entirely different context: a sea-longing to seek the land of the Elves. He also wrote, probably in the early 1930s, Völsungakviða en nýja (‘The New Lay of the Völsungs’), a poem of 339 eight-line stanzas. On 29 March 1967 he wrote to *W.H. Auden, who had sent him part of the Elder Edda that he and Paul B. Taylor had translated into Modern English: ‘In return again I hope to send you … a thing I did many years ago when trying to learn the art of writing alliterative poetry: an attempt to unify the lays about the Völsungs from the Elder Edda, written in the old eight-line fornyrðislag stanza’ (Letters, p. 379). A companion poem, Guðrúnarkviða en nýja (‘The New Lay of Gudrún’), of 166 eight-line stanzas, dates to the same time. (For the ‘New Lays’ see The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún.)
In the Old English poem *The Battle of Maldon the old retainer Beorhtwold, prepared to die in a last desperate stand, proclaims: ‘Will shall be the sterner, heart the bolder, spirit the greater as our strength lessens’. These words, Tolkien comments, ‘have been held to be the finest expression of the northern heroic spirit, Norse or English; the clearest statement of uttermost endurance in the service of indomitable will’ (*The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth Beorhthelm’s Son, in Essays and Studies (1953), p. 13). They exemplify as well an ideal which Tolkien applied frequently in *‘The Silmarillion’ and The Lord of the Rings. To name only one instance in the former, in the Nirnaeth Arnoediad the Men of the House of Hador stand firm against the forces of Morgoth until only Húrin remains:
Then he cast aside his shield, and wielded an axe two-handed; and it is sung that the axe smoked in the black blood of the troll-guard of Gothmog until it withered, and each time he slew Húrin cried: ‘Aurë entuluva! Day shall come again!’ Seventy times he uttered that cry; but they took him at last alive … for the Orcs grappled him with their hands, which clung to him still though he hewed off their arms; and ever their numbers were renewed, until at last he fell buried beneath them. [*The Silmarillion, p. 195]
Likewise, in The Lord of the Rings, Book V, Chapter 6, Éomer lets ‘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’. On a differfent level, the same spirit is expressed by Frodo, and especially Sam, as they struggle across the desolation of Mordor to Mount Doom, and Frodo realizes that
at best their provision would take them to their goal; and when the task was done, there they would come to an end, alone, houseless, foodless in the midst of a terrible desert. There could be no return.
‘So that was the job I felt I had to do when I started,’ thought Sam: ‘to help Mr. Frodo to the last step and then die with him? Well, if that is the job then I must do it ….’
But even as hope died in Sam, or seemed to die, it was turned to a new strength. Sam’s plain hobbit-face grew stern, almost grim, as the will hardened in him …. [bk. VI, ch. 3]
*Priscilla Tolkien once said of her father and his works of fiction:
When thinking of his imagination I feel that like his scholarship it was overwhelmingly Northern European in every detail of his deepest loves and fears. The ideas aroused by the sufferings of long, hard, cruel winters, the dazzling beauty of the short flowering of Spring and Summer, and the sadness of seeing this once more pass back into the darkness; the symbolism of darkness and light is continual in [*The Silmarillion] for good and evil, despair and hope. Such a climate also nourished the virtues which he held in such high regard: heroism and endurance, loyalty, and fidelity, both in love and in war. [‘Talk Given at Church House, Westminster on 16.9.77 by Priscilla Tolkien’, Amon Hen 29 [?November 1977], p. 4]
See also ‘Norse Mythological Elements in The Hobbit’ by Mitzi M. Brunsdale, Mythlore 9, no. 4, whole no. 34 (Winter 1983); Fredrik J. Heinemann, ‘Tolkien and Old Icelandic Literature’, Scholarship and Fantasy (1993); Gloria St. Clair, ‘An Overview of the Northern Influences on Tolkien’s Works’ and ‘Volsunga Saga and Narn: Some Analogies’, both in Proceedings of the J.R.R. Tolkien Centenary Conference 1992, ed. Patricia Reynolds and Glen H. GoodKnight (1995); Tom Shippey, ‘Tolkien and Iceland: The Philology of Envy’ (2002), revised in Roots and Branches: Selected Papers on Tolkien (2007); Marjorie Burns, Perilous Realms: Celtic and Norse in Tolkien’s Middle-earth (2005) and ‘Old Norse Literature’ in J.R.R. Tolkien Encyclopedia, ed. Michael D.C. Drout (2006); Dimitra Fimi, ‘Tolkien and Old Norse Antiquity’ in Old Norse Made New: Essays on the Post Medieval Reception of Old Norse Literature and Culture, ed. David Clark and Carl Phelpstead (2007); J.S. Ryan, ‘Trolls and Other Themes: William Craigie’s Significant Folkloric Influence on the Style of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit’ in Tolkien’s View: Windows into his World (2009); and Mary R. Bowman, ‘Refining the Gold: Tolkien, The Battle of Maldon, and the Northern Theory of Courage’, Tolkien Studies 7 (2010).
The Northmen and the Wainriders
see Cirion and Eorl and the Friendship of Gondor and Rohan
‘Note on the Landing of the Five Wizards and Their Functions
and Operations’seeThe Five Wizards
Note on Final Consonants see Primitive Quendian Structure
Notes for Qenya Declensions. Description of ‘the Common Eldarin and Old Qenya elements and features that underlie the Qenya declensions’ (p. xvii), published in Parma Eldalamberon 21 (2013), pp. 66–9, edited with commentary and notes by Christopher Gilson, Patrick H. Wynne, and Arden R. Smith.
Written on six pages, with revisions, Notes for Qenya Declensions is dated by the editors to the early 1950s. It is closely based on, and probably composed not very long after, an earlier document, *Nouns.
Notes on Motives in the Silmarillion. Essay, published with notes and commentary as text VII in the section ‘Myths Transformed’ of *Morgoth’s Ring (1993), pp. 394–408.
The work, probably from the late 1950s, exists in two versions. The earlier is a four-page manuscript inscribed ‘Some notes on the “philosophy” of the Silmarillion’, described by *Christopher Tolkien as ‘rapidly expressed’ and without ‘a clear ending’ (Morgoth’s Ring, p. 394). The later version, greatly expanded and more carefully expressed, was left unfinished in mid-sentence after twelve manuscript pages.
The ‘notes’ compare Sauron and Morgoth in *‘The Silmarillion’, their characters and motives, their relative power at various times, and the way they used it. ‘Morgoth had no “plan”: unless destruction and reduction to nil of a world in which he had only a share can be called a “plan”’ (p. 397). But ‘Sauron had never reached this stage of nihilistic madness. He did not object to the existence of the world, so long as he could do what he liked with it’ (p. 396). Then follows a discussion of the reasons why the Valar were reluctant ‘to come into open battle with Morgoth’, concluding that Morgoth’s power and being were disseminated throughout the world – ‘the whole of “middle-earth” was Morgoth’s Ring’ – and to try to destroy him ‘might well end in reducing Middle-earth to chaos, possibly even all Arda’; whereas ‘the final eradication of Sauron … was achievable by the destruction of the Ring’ into which his power had been concentrated (p. 400).
In a section developed fully only in the second text, Tolkien suggests reasons for the apparent inaction of the Valar against Morgoth during the First Age, and that their eventual intervention was precisely timed. Manwë with his knowledge of the Music and ‘power of direct recourse to and communication with Eru … must have grasped with great clarity … that it was the essential mode of the process of “history” in Arda that evil should constantly arise, and that out of it new good should constantly come’ (p. 402). The second version ends soon after turning its attention to the later resistance to Sauron, but the published text continues with the first version, from the point where the two texts diverge, with a brief philosophical consideration of the future of Arda.
Finally Tolkien turns to the question of the origin of Orcs: ‘Part of the Elf-Man idea gone wrong. Though as for Orcs, the Eldar believed Morgoth had actually “bred” them by capturing Men (and Elves) early [i.e. in the early days of their existence] and increasing to the utmost any corrupt tendencies they possessed’ (p. 406). (See also *Orcs.)
Christopher Tolkien comments that ‘despite its incomplete state … this is the most comprehensive account that my father wrote of how, in his later years, he had come to “interpret” the nature of Evil in his mythology …’ (p. 406). See also *Good and Evil.
‘Notes on Óre’. A single typescript sheet, apparently the beginning of a substantial essay on the common Eldarin root ȜOR and its descendants, edited with notes by Carl F. Hostetter, was published in Vinyar Tengwar 41 (July 2000), pp. 11–19.
In *The Lord of the Rings Appendix E Quenya óre is glossed ‘heart (inner mind)’, as used in a phrase such as ‘my heart tells me’, but ‘“heart” is not suitable, except in brevity, since óre does not correspond in sense to any of the English confused uses of “heart” ….’ The essay was to have discussed ‘what the óre was for Elvish thought and speech, and the nature of its counsels’ (p. 11) but does not proceed very far. The sheet was found between the typescript of the finished part of *The Shibboleth of Fëanor and the manuscript draft for an unwritten excursus on the names of the sons of Fëanor. It seems unconnected with that work, though probably contemporary with it, 1968 or later.
Pages of manuscript draft material give some indications of how the essay might have continued. Among these is an interesting note, more concerned with the *Athrabeth than etymology. The writer is not identified, but seems to be a Man of a later period. After summarizing the Athrabeth it continues: ‘For (as far as we can now judge [from]) the legends (mainly of Elvish origin probably, though coming down to us through Men) it would seem clear that Men were not intended to have Elvish longevity, limited only by the life of the Earth’, but were intended to enjoy a much greater life-span before passing from the circles of the world. The Elves believed that the life-span of Men had been shortened as a result of some rebellion against Eru in the form of accepting Melkor as God, after which ‘only the wisest of Men could distinguish between [?his] evil promptings and true óre’ (p. 14).
On Eldarin and Quenya, see *Languages, Invented.
The Notion Club Papers. Story, published with commentary and notes in *Sauron Defeated (1992), pp. 145–327.
SYNOPSIS
The heart of The Notion Club Papers is presented as the surviving part of a record of meetings of an *Oxford society during 1986 and 1987 (some forty years in the future when Tolkien wrote the work). Following some preliminaries, the first of its two parts (as originally conceived) begins with a brief report of a meeting in November 1986, notes the omission of ‘one or two minor entries’, and continues with an account of the meeting of 20 February 1987. Michael Ramer, one of the members of the club, has finished reading a space-travel story he has written. This leads to discussion of the credibility of the machine or other device used by writers of space stories to take characters to their destination. Another member, Rupert Dolbear, says that the problem with Ramer’s work is that it is out of keeping with its frame-machinery, and challenges Ramer to say how he got to the place described in the story.
At the next meeting, Ramer explains that he has considered methods of space-travel both for a story and for himself, and that he has tried to train his mind to travel in his dreams. He describes various dream experiences, some inspired by stories he had written long ago, some fragmentary, such as a Green Wave towering over fields, and visions of the planets of our solar system as well as unknown worlds. When he mentions the names of his worlds, the members discuss language and the weak methods of communication common in space-travel stories. Ramer says he has more dreams about *Atlantis than about space, and mentions the Wave towering over the land, a Great Door, and the Elvish En-keladim (all aspects of Tolkien’s mythology, in which *Númenor is associated with Atlantis and his own dreams of a great wave). Ramer ends his account by describing a vision of a disorderly planet, then of an area in which the inhabitants and their buildings spread like ringworm; but as he came closer, he realized that he had been watching a speeded-up history of the Thames Valley and Oxford.
The second part of the work records a series of meetings following directly on the first part, in which the matter of Númenor becomes of prime importance. It seems likely that Tolkien originally intended Part Two to proceed differently, since an outline for it begins: ‘Do the Atlantis story and abandon Eriol-Saga, with Loudham, Jeremy, Guildford and Ramer taking part’ (Sauron Defeated, p. 281). But there is no indication of how the ‘Eriol-Saga’ was to be introduced. Since Arundel Loudham (changed to Lowdham during the writing of the first version of Part Two) was to play an important role in the ‘Atlantis story’, Tolkien made additions to Part One to suggest Lowdham’s interest in the myth. A link is provided by a fragmentary entry reporting the end of a meeting on 13 March, when Lowdham tells Ramer and Guildford that he has been having strange experiences. As the story proceeds, it becomes clear that he is haunted subconsciously by Númenor, and is reminded of the temple Sauron built there when he sees what appears to be smoke coming from the lantern of the Radcliffe Camera.
At the first meeting of the Club in Trinity Term 1987, on 8 May, the members discuss neologisms (the use of new words or expressions), the misuse of established words, and the way that language changes and evolves. They also talk about legends of origin and cultural myths, and whether, if one could go back in time, one would find that myth dissolves into history, or real history becomes more mythical. At some point Lowdham becomes upset, curses ‘Zigûr’, and cries out: ‘Behold the Eagles of the Lords of the West! They are coming over Nūmenōr!’ Ramer says that Nūmenōr is his name for Atlantis, and fellow member Wilfrid Trewin Jeremy says that he also has some recollection of hearing the name. At the meeting on 22 May Lowdham comments on his strange names Alwin Arundel, chosen when his mother objected to the Ælfwine Éarendel his father, Edwin, had wanted to give him. He tells how his father set out in his ship The Éarendel (in the first text Éarendel Star) one day in 1947 and was never seen again. Lowdham remembers his father keeping a diary in a strange script, and that after his disappearance Lowdham had found a sheet in the same script but could not decipher it. The members discuss the meanings of the names Ælfwine and Éadwine, and historical figures with those and related names. (See also *Eriol and Ælfwine.)
This in turn leads to a discussion of the name Éarendel in the lines from the Old English Crist: Éalá Éarendel engla beorhtost / ofer middangeard monnum sended. Lowdham says that he has heard the similar ëarendil in another language, ‘where it actually means Great Mariner, or literally Friend of the Sea; though it also has, I think, some connexion with the stars’ (p. 237). When he is asked ‘what language?’ he tells the members that since he was about ten he has had ‘words, even occasional phrases’, ringing in his ears; ‘both in dream and waking abstraction. They come into my mind unbidden, or I wake to hear myself repeating them. Sometimes they seem to be quite isolated, just words or names …. It was a long time before I began to piece the fragments together’ (pp. 237–8). He recorded these, and after removing Anglo-Saxon or related elements, most of the remainder seem to belong to two languages which he had never come across. He associates both languages with a place called Nūmenōr in the first language (which he calls Avallonian, in fact Quenya; see *Languages, Invented), and Anadūnē in the second (which he calls Adunaic).
He discusses other words, and notes that even those in Old English came to him before he began to learn that language. Among the longer passages of Old English are a line which means ‘a straight way lay westward, now it is bent’, and some verses, one of which includes lines Lowdham translates as: ‘There is many a thing in the west of the world unknown to men; marvels and strange beings, [a land lovely to look on,] the dwelling place of the Elves and the bliss of the Gods’ (pp. 243, 244).
By the next meeting, in Ramer’s rooms on 12 June 1987, Lowdham has heard a much longer passage in his two unidentified languages. His incomplete translation shows that it is an account of the Fall of Númenor – the coming of Sauron, the attempt to invade the land of the Lords of the West, the drowning of Númenor, and the changing of the shape of the world so that there is no longer a straight path to the West. He mentions the name Sauron, and its Adunaic equivalent Zigūr, at which Wilfrid Trewin Jeremy reacts strangely. Both he and Lowdham seem to relive the destruction of Númenor, as dark clouds roll over the sky from the West and a violent thunderstorm breaks. Lowdham addresses Jeremy as ‘Voronwë’, and Jeremy addresses Lowdham as ‘Elendil’; both rush out into the freak storm. During the evening, Lowdham mentions again the sheet with the strange script he had found among his father’s papers, intending to say something about it later, but does not. The other members leave when the storm subsides, and Ramer picks up a sheet of paper and puts it in a drawer.
On 26 June a brief letter from Lowdham and Jeremy is read to the Club, saying they ‘were cast up far away when the wind fell’ (p. 254) and are now doing research. Ramer produces the sheet dropped by Lowdham at the last meeting. Since Lowdham had mentioned that some of the words he received were in Old English, on the chance that this was the language of the strange script, Ramer took the sheet to old Professor Rashbold of Pembroke, who deciphered it and positively identified the language as ‘Old English of a strongly Mercian (West Midland) colour, ninth century’ (p. 257). Translated into Modern English, it turns out to be another, longer account of the last days of Númenor.
The next meeting, on 25 September 1987, begins with Philip Frankley, another member affected by the resonances of Númenor, reading a poem, The Death of St Brendan (see *Imram), which includes allusions to Tolkien’s mythology (*‘The Silmarillion’). He woke ‘four days ago with the thing largely fixed’ in his mind (p. 265). The members discuss possible influences from real accounts of St Brendan, but note there seems no source for the lines describing ‘the round world’ plunging ‘steeply down’ while ‘the old road’ goes on ‘as an unseen bridge … on arches’ (p. 264).
Lowdham and Jeremy then describe their travels around the western coasts of Britain and Ireland, and the rumours they heard of huge phantom waves. They recount that while staying in Porlock (in Somerset on the coast of the Bristol Channel) they both dreamed themselves back to tenth century England in a hall crowded with warriors who had come to join Edward the Elder’s fight against the invading Danes. In that dream Lowdham, now the minstrel Ælfwine, was called upon to entertain those in the hall, and recited a verse about his sea-longing, while Jeremy, now Tréowine from the Marches, told the story of King Sheave. They finish their account for that evening as these Anglo-Saxon personas leave the hall and promise to tell the members more at the next meeting.
At this point, however, Tolkien abandoned The Notion Club Papers. Only a few notes and fragments indicate how the story might have continued. One note suggests that Tréowine and Ælfwine were to sail west, find the Straight Path, and see the round world below, then be driven back. Another has ‘sojourn in Númenor before and during the fall ends with Elendil and Voronwë fleeing on a hill of water into the dark with the Eagles and lightning pursuing them’, and ‘At the end … Lowdham and Jeremy have a vivid dream of the Fall of Númenor’ (p. 279).
ASSOCIATED ‘PAPERS’
In addition to this inner core of the minutes of the Notion Club, as part of their fictional ‘frame’, Tolkien also produced associated ‘papers’. The layer nearest the core is the framework of the (fictional) book Leaves from the Notion Club Papers, subdivided into Part One and Part Two, supposedly edited by one Howard Green and published in 2014, for which Tolkien produced a facsimile title-page (Sauron Defeated, p. 154). According to the ‘editor’s’ foreword, Green found the Club’s papers ‘after the Summer Examinations of 2012 on the top of one of a number of sacks of waste paper in the basement of the Examination Schools in Oxford …’ (p. 155), but was unable to discover how they had got there. They appear to be the incomplete reports of the meetings of an Oxford club from approximately 1980 to 1990, with references to an event as late as 1987, apparently prepared for publication with notes; but ‘Brown’ could find no trace of the existence of a Notion Club. He describes the surviving papers, including a list of members.
Another layer is a ‘Note to the Second Edition’ of the book, in which Howard Green quotes the opinions of Mr W.W. Wormald and Mr D.N. Borrow that the paper and style of writing suggest that the materials date to during or just after the ‘Six Years’ War’ (i.e. the Second World War, 1939–45). Green, who had earlier suggested that if the future events described in the papers were ‘foreseen’ by their author, concludes: ‘If … any such club existed at that earlier period, the names remain pseudonyms. The forward dating might have been adopted as an additional screen. But I am now convinced that the Papers are a work of fiction; and it may well be that the predictions (notably the Storm), though genuine and not coincidences, were unconscious …’ (p. 158).
HISTORY
Tolkien wrote to *Stanley Unwin on 21 July 1946 that he had ‘in a fortnight of comparative leisure round about last Christmas written three parts of another book, taking up in an entirely different frame and setting what little value in the inchoate *Lost Road … and other things beside. I hoped to finish this in a rush, but my health gave way after Christmas’ (Letters, p. 118). Christopher Tolkien is undoubtedly correct that it would have been impossible for his father to produce The Notion Club Papers and all of its associated material (*The Drowning of Anadûnê, Adunaic language, facsimiles) in a fortnight. He thinks, rather, that his father continued to work on it through the first half of 1946. This seems to be confirmed by the fact that Tolkien read The Drowning of Anadûnê (probably the final version) to the Inklings on 22 August 1946, and in recording this in his diary *W.H. Lewis implied that The Notion Club Papers had previously been read to the Inklings. Christopher suggests that during Christmas 1945 his father probably wrote only the first two manuscripts of Part One and the manuscript of Part Two.
The earliest, roughly written manuscript of Part One was apparently followed by an expanded version with many changes and additions. Christopher Tolkien thinks that after some rough drafting, his father produced the first, manuscript, version of Part Two (in which the two languages which come to Lowdham are unnamed, but clearly Quenya and Noldorin/Sindarin; see *Languages, Invented), but left it unfinished to make some preliminary sketches and outlines for, and the first version of, The Drowning of Anadûnê.
He then made a fair copy of Part One, abandoning it just before the end, and then a typescript, one section of which seems to have been done before the fair copy. He began a typescript of Part Two (in which Adunaic replaced Sindarin), but stopped after completing the entry for 22 May to make typescripts of three successive versions of The Drowning of Anadûnê. Probably when all or most of this was finished, he returned to The Notion Club Papers and began another typescript of Part Two at a point near the beginning of the minutes for 22 May. He replaced the relevant part of the first typescript, and continued as far as the manuscript extended. Christopher Tolkien notes that his father apparently changed his mind about the division into two parts, deleting ‘Part I / The Ramblings of Michael Ramer / Out of the Talkative Planet’ from the first page of the last version of Part One, and providing no heading at the beginning of the typescript of Part Two, whereas on the title-page for the previous manuscript appears ‘II / The Strange Case of Arundel Lowdham’ (p. 153).
The final texts of both parts of The Notion Club Papers were published in Sauron Defeated, with readings from earlier versions where they differ significantly. Notes explain some of the allusions and references in the text. Some of the names that appear in The Notion Club Papers are explained in *The War of the Jewels (1994), p. xi.
Christopher Tolkien admits that he does not know why his father abandoned The Notion Club Papers. ‘It may be that he felt that the work had lost all unity, that “Atlantis” had broken apart the frame in which it had been set …. But I think also that having forced himself to return to The Lord of the Rings, and having brought it to its end, he was then deflected into the very elaborate further work on the legends of the Elder Days that preceded the actual publication of The Lord of the Rings’ (p. 152). Later he wondered, too, if the conception had not become too ‘intricate’ for his father to continue (p. 282).
Another reason may be that Tolkien became distracted by ideas for a new language, Adunaic (later Adûnaic, see *Languages, Invented), as spoken in Númenor, and interested in working out a new study of the fall of Númenor, in a Mannish tradition: The Drowning of Anadûnê. He spent considerable time on Adunaic, producing a seventeen-page typescript, said to be a report written by Lowdham to present to the Notion Club. This begins by describing the probable history of the language, and continues with an elaborate but incomplete account of its phonology. Tolkien also spent hours making ‘facsimiles’ of Lowdham’s Adunaic fragments and two of Lowdham’s father’s Old English texts written in Tengwar (*Writing systems); these are reproduced in Sauron Defeated. The transcriptions and translation of the fragments that Lowdham produces at the meeting of 12 June are reproduced as two colour plates at the beginning of the HarperCollins and Houghton Mifflin hardback editions.
THE INKLINGS
An important element of the ‘minutes’ are references or allusions made by the members of the Notion Club to members of the *Inklings and their works. These include criticism of the methods of transporting Elwin Ransom to Mars and Venus in Out of the Silent Planet (1938) and Perelandra (1943) by *C.S. Lewis. One of the members has lectured on Lewis and *Charles Williams with the title Public House School. The Allegory of Love (1936) by Lewis, and Williams’ House of the Octopus (1945), are mentioned as probably the only works by those authors still remembered at all. A few ‘read C.R. [*Christopher] Tolkien’s little books of memoirs: In the Roaring Forties, and The Inns and Outs of Oxford’ but only three members of the Club ‘bothered with Tolkien père and all that elvish stuff’ (p. 219). In the first manuscript of Part Two Jeremy remembers finding in a secondhand shop a manuscript, Quenta Eldalien, being the History of the Elves by John Arthurson (= John R.R. Tolkien, son of *Arthur Tolkien), in which he found the name Nūmenor (sic). Other members then recall C.S. Lewis’s use of ‘Numinor’. Professor Rashbold of Pembroke, who deciphers and translates the Old English text (written in Tengwar; see *Writing systems) is another sly allusion to Tolkien himself (see *Names).
There are also ‘external’ associations with the Inklings, provided in editorial apparatus. A rejected first page of Part One bears the title Beyond Lewis or Out of the Talkative Planet, and continues: ‘Being a fragment of an apocryphal Inklings’ Saga, made by some imitator at some time in the 1980s’. Its replacement has the title Beyond Probability or Out of the Talkative Planet’, a play on the titles of two of C.S. Lewis’s works, Out of the Silent Planet and Beyond Personality (1944), and suggests that the work was ‘written after 1989, as an apocryphal imitation of the Inklings Saga Book’ (pp. 148–9). The real Inklings regrettably kept no such record of their meetings, but The Notion Club Papers probably conveys some of the atmosphere of their discussions. An early list of members of the Notion Club, identifying some with individual Inklings, shows that Tolkien began with such a scheme, but he seems to have abandoned the idea almost immediately. Although some Notion Club members seem to portray aspects of certain of the Inklings, exact equivalences were soon rejected.
The first pages mentioned above continue with ‘Preface to the Inklings’ (rejected version) and ‘aside to the audience’ (second) version): ‘I beg of the present company not to look for their own faces in this mirror. For the mirror is cracked, and at the best you will only see your countenances distorted, and adorned maybe with noses (and other features) that are not your own, but belong to other members of the company – if to anybody’ (pp. 148–9). Christopher Tolkien thinks it likely that his father’s first idea ‘was far less elaborate than it became; intending perhaps, so far as the form was concerned, no more than a jeu d’esprit for the entertainment of the Inklings – while the titles seem to emphasize that it was to be, in part, the vehicle of criticism and discussion of aspects of Lewis’s “planetary” novels’ (p. 149). He sees no indication that his father envisaged Part Two as written, until after he completed Part One.
CRITICISM
In ‘Tolkien’s Experiment with Time: The Lost Road, “The Notion Club Papers”, and J.W. Dunne’, in Proceedings of the J.R.R. Tolkien Centenary Conference 1992, ed. Patricia Reynolds and Glen H. GoodKnight (1995), Verlyn Flieger finds that The Notion Club Papers show
a considerable advance in technical sophistication over The Lost Road. Tolkien’s handling of his material is surer, and his sense of story better developed. There is an increase in narrative tension through a carefully-orchestrated sequence of psychological aberrations, a judicious sprinkling of plot-teasers in the first part of the story, and a gothic use of weather, culminating in the story’s violent climax in a night of storm. The tone of this second narrative is more energetic and its setting more clearly contemporary, more conspicuously grounded in time and place, than that of the earlier story. The argumentative, rumbustious members of the Notion Club are a distinct improvement over the rather quiet Errols, while Tolkien’s earliest drafts make it clear that the wit, rough badinage, and often heated exchanges were drawn from life – specifically the Inklings. [p. 42]
See also Flieger’s A Question of Time: J.R.R. Tolkien’s Road to Faërie (1997), especially Chapter 5, and her ‘The Curious Incident of the Dream at the Barrow: Memory and Reincarnation in Middle-earth’, Tolkien Studies 4 (2007).
David Bratman wrote in ‘The Literary Value of The History of Middle-earth’, in Tolkien’s Legendarium: Essays on The History of Middle-earth, ed. Verlyn Flieger and Carl F. Hostetter (2000), that in The Lost Road and The Notion Club Papers ‘we have something not otherwise found in Tolkien’s fiction – stories with explicitly modern setting, which display the author’s own aesthetic to language so extensively that his biographer quoted from them for that purpose …. Not even in his essay *A Secret Vice did Tolkien so vividly convey what the imagination of language meant to him’ (p. 81). He also remarks that
The club may best be thought of as the Inklings viewed through Tolkien’s eyes and idealized to his tastes …. He knew his men intimately … and his imaginary conversations have all the freshness, repartee, and meanderings into intellectual byways that one would expect of a transcription of the real Inklings meetings. The opening discussions are wide-ranging considerations of secondary-world literature that in style must be very similar to actual Inklings meetings, though the content is tinged heavily by Tolkien’s own ideas and interests. [p. 82]
See also John D. Rateliff, ‘The Lost Road, The Dark Tower, and The Notion Club Papers: Tolkien and Lewis’s Time Travel Triad’, in Tolkien’s Legendarium: Essays on The History of Middle-earth, ed. Verlyn Flieger and Carl F. Hostetter (2000).
Nouns. Description of nouns in Common Eldarin (see *Languages, Invented), published in Parma Eldalamberon 21 (2013), pp. 63–5, edited with commentary and notes by Christopher Gilson, Patrick H. Wynne, and Arden R. Smith.
Written on four pages, with revisions, Nouns is dated by the editors to the early 1950s. It was closely followed by *Notes for Qenya Declensions.
Númenor. The story of Númenor apparently sprang from a chance conversation between Tolkien and *C.S. Lewis in 1936 or 1937. As Tolkien recalled in a letter to Charlotte and Denis Plimmer: ‘L[ewis] said to me one day: “Tollers, there is too little of what we really like in stories. I am afraid we shall have to try and write some ourselves.” We agreed that he should try “space-travel”, and I should try “time-travel” …. My effort, after a few promising chapters, ran dry: it was too long a way round to what I really wanted to make, a new version of the Atlantis legend’ (8 February 1967, Letters, p. 378). The time-travel theme allowed Tolkien to plan a story, *The Lost Road (see further for the chronology of its origin), in which he could incorporate a version of the *Atlantis legend which had haunted him since childhood. He told Christopher Bretherton: ‘This legend or myth or dim memory of some ancient history has always troubled me. In sleep I had the dreadful dream of the ineluctable wave, either coming out of the quiet sea, or coming in towering over the green inlands. It still occurs occasionally, though now exorcized by writing about it. It always ends by surrender, and I awake gasping out of deep water’ (Letters, p. 347). In a letter to Mrs E.C. Ossendrijver on 5 January 1961 he said that ‘Númenor, shortened form of Númenórë’ was his own invention. Its legends ‘are my own use for my own purposes of the Atlantis legend, but not based on special knowledge, but on a special personal concern with this tradition of the culture-bearing men of the Sea, which so profoundly affected the imagination of peoples of Europe with westward-shores’ (Letters, p. 303).
Early texts of the *‘Silmarillion’ mythology say little about the fate of the Men who fought with the Elves against Morgoth in the First Age. *The Book of Lost Tales never reached that point. The *Sketch of the Mythology (c. 1926) says only that the Valar assigned Middle-earth to Men, and that Elves who did not leave those lands would fade. The first version of the *Quenta Noldorinwa (c. 1930) states that Men of the race of Hador and Bëor were to be allowed to depart with the Elves for the West if they wished, but of these Men only Elrond was left, and he elected to remain in Middle-earth. In the second version, the permission for Men to leave was omitted. *Christopher Tolkien thinks that this passing idea in the Quenta Noldorinwa nevertheless represents ‘the first germ of the story of the departure of the survivors of the Elf-friends to Númenor’ (*The Shaping of Middle-earth, p. 200).
The subsequent evolution of Númenor in Tolkien’s writings was complex. It has roots in his mythology of the First Age and in real world myths; and in the quarter-century following his agreement with Lewis, Tolkien not only brought Númenor into two unfinished works of time-travel, The Lost Road and *The Notion Club Papers, but also wrote three narrative accounts of the island’s story, *The Fall of Númenor, *The Drowning of Anadûnê, and the *Akallabêth, as well as *A Description of the Island of Númenor; he developed and extended its history to provide a vital background to *The Lord of the Rings; and he began (but did not complete) two other narrative works, one (*Aldarion and Erendis) set in Númenor and telling the story of one of the earlier kings, the other (*Tal-Elmar) in which Númenóreans are seen from the point of view of men of Middle-earth.
THE LOST ROAD AND THE FALL OF NÚMENOR
Tolkien described his plans for The Lost Road in his letter to Christopher Bretherton: ‘the end was to be the presence of my hero in the drowning of Atlantis. This was to be called Númenor, the Land in the West.’ A father and son would enter into various historic and legendary times and
come at last to Amandil and Elendil leaders of the loyal party in Númenor, when it fell under the domination of Sauron. Elendil ‘Elf-friend’ was the founder of the Exiled kingdoms in Arnor and Gondor. But I found my real interest was only in the upper end, the Akallabêth or Atalantie (‘Downfall’ in Númenórean and Quenya [see *Languages, Invented]), so I brought all the stuff I had written on the originally unrelated legends of Númenor into relation with the main mythology. [16 July 1964, Letters, p. 347]
Christopher Tolkien, however, can find no evidence that Númenor/Atlantis ever existed independent of the mythology: ‘there was never a time when the legends of Númenor were “unrelated to the main mythology”. My father erred in his recollection (or expressed himself obscurely, meaning something else); the letter cited above was indeed written nearly thirty years later’ (*The Lost Road and Other Writings, p. 10).
It also seems evident that the conception of Númenor and of its destruction arose only as part of Tolkien’s plans for his time-travel story. The importance he attached to this part of The Lost Road is confirmed by the preliminary work he did on the Númenórean background before he began to write the story proper. He wrote a quick outline of the history of Númenor, then a fuller, untitled draft narrative: the first version of The Fall of Númenor. After this he wrote four chapters of The Lost Road, two introductory chapters which end as the first instance of time-travel is about to take place, and two which narrate the beginning of an episode in Númenor. There the manuscript ends, except for brief notes for other episodes and part of a chapter set in tenth-century England. Probably after composing the two chapters set in Númenor, Tolkien wrote a second version of The Fall of Númenor.
Although later writings extended the history of Númenor, and added or changed many details, the basic story was already present in the first outline. After the defeat of Morgoth at the end of the First Age, the Valar reward Men who had helped to bring this about with an island in which to dwell, variously called Atalantë, Númenor, and Andúnië. The Númenóreans grow in wisdom and become great mariners. They sail around the shores of Middle-earth and see the Gates of the Morning in the East at the edge of the world (in Tolkien’s mythology originally conceived as flat). Lesser men living in Middle-earth take the Númenóreans as gods. In early versions of the story, the Valar, the ‘Lords of the West’, permit the people of Númenor to sail west to Tol Eressëa, the Lonely Isle where many Elves live, but not further west to Valinor, home of the Valar themselves.
The Númenóreans are granted longer lives than other Men, but are still mortal. Later generations begin to resent this limitation, and to believe that in Valinor they would gain immortal life (*Mortality and Immortality). They are encouraged in this by Thû (the name of Sauron in some early versions of the mythology), once a follower of Morgoth, who comes to Númenor in the likeness of a bird and gains such influence that the king builds a temple to Morgoth and eventually attempts to invade Valinor with a great fleet. In this crisis the Valar, empowered by Ilúvatar, sunder Valinor from the earth, the edges of which are bent back so that it becomes a globe, while a rift opens in which the Númenórean fleet and Númenor itself are destroyed.
The Númenóreans who escape this disaster by sailing to Middle-earth become lords and kings of men. Many still seek in vain to prolong life, but manage only to preserve the bodies of the dead. Their descendants preserve a confused memory of a land in the West ruled by the Gods, to which the dead might come. From this arises a custom among those who dwell on the west coast of Middle-earth of placing their dead on ships and sending them out to sea. Some Númenóreans are able to see, or partly see, a path or bridge rising above the world and leading to the True West; but when they try to find this path they succeed only in sailing around the world. Only the Elves are still able to reach Valinor along the Straight Road.
Amroth, who had continued to honour the Valar, is one of those who escape the destruction of Númenor. He becomes a king in Middle-earth and allies with Elrond, son of Eärendel, and with Elves who had stayed in Middle-earth in an attack on Thû’s fortress. Although they are victorious, Amroth is slain. Thû is driven out and flees to a dark forest.
Having established this history, Tolkien was able to begin to write The Lost Road. The first two chapters, set in more or less contemporary *Cornwall, introduce the main protagonist, Alboin Errol, who from boyhood has heard in his dreams echoes of strange languages, which he calls Eressëan or Elf-latin and Beleriandic, including a passage in Eressëan describing the downfall of Númenor. He finds himself suddenly declaring that some dark clouds ‘look like the eagles of the Lords of the West coming upon Númenor’. Then Elendil of Númenor appears to him and offers him the chance to go back in time, if he takes his son with him. (These two chapters are described at greater length in our article on *The Lost Road.)
The two Númenórean chapters take place forty-four years after the arrival of Sauron (now so named) in Númenor. Elendil (replacing Amroth) is the leader of a party faithful to the old ways and beliefs, while his son, Herendil, has been half won over to the opinion of those supporting Sauron. The kings of Númenor are now descended from Eärendel, and the last king, Tarkalion, in his pride, summons Sauron to Númenor, demanding homage from him. Elendil, who is trying to persuade Herendil to his own point of view, says that men now covet the lands of others, influenced by Sauron; they build metal-clad ships, strong fortresses, and many weapons. Those who displease the king disappear, and there are spies, prisons, torments, and evil rites. Sauron has built a temple to Morgoth on the mountain holy to Ilúvatar, and is encouraging the Númenóreans to abandon the Elvish Eressëan language and revive the ancestral speech of Men. Elendil foresees that Sauron will encourage the ageing king to invade Valinor in a useless bid for immortality. He asks his son to choose between his father and Sauron, and with Herendil’s choice for his father the narrative ends.
The picture Tolkien draws of Númenor under the influence of Sauron, a once great nation in decay, almost certainly owes something to then-current events in Nazi Germany. Christopher Tolkien comments:
From Elendil’s words at the end of The Lost Road there emerges a sinister picture: the withdrawal of the besotted and aging king from the public view, the unexpected disappearance of people unpopular with the ‘government’, informers, prisons, torture, secrecy, fear of the night; propaganda in the form of the ‘rewriting of history’ …; the multiplication of weapons of war, the purpose of which is concealed but guessed at; and behind all the dreadful figure of Sauron …. Moreover, Númenor is seen by the young as over-populous, boring, ‘over-known’ …; and this cause of discontent is used, it seems, by Sauron to further the policy of ‘imperial’ expansion and ambition that he presses on the king. When at this time my father reached back to the world of the first man to bear the name ‘Elf-friend’ he found there an image of what he most condemned and feared in his own. [The Lost Road and Other Writings, p. 77]
The second version of The Fall of Númenor probably followed, or was contemporary with, the writing of The Lost Road, for it includes details introduced in that work. Elrond, son of Eärendel, is now named as the first ruler of Númenor. The Númenóreans adopt the speech of the Elves of the Blessed Realm and Tol Eressëa. Elendil, who escapes the downfall, becomes a king in Beleriand and allies with Gil-galad, the Elf-king, against Sauron, whose stronghold, Mordor, is now named. Although Sauron is overthrown, both Elendil and Gil-galad are slain. A later addition states that Tol Eressëa as well as Valinor is removed from the world.
On 15 November 1937 Tolkien submitted the unfinished manuscript of the *Quenta Silmarillion to George Allen & Unwin (*Publishers). In the following month, while the work was being considered, he leaped ahead in it and wrote an account of the end of the First Age which includes information relevant to the story of Númenor. Eärendel now has two sons who are allowed by Manwë to choose freely whether to be accounted among the immortal Elves or mortal Mankind. One son, Elrond, chooses to be of Elf-kind but remains in Middle-earth rather than accompany the Elves returning into the West; but the other, Elros, chooses the fate of Men. At some time after this, in an amanuensis typescript of the second version of The Fall of Númenor, Tolkien substituted Elros for Elrond as the first king of that realm.
THE LORD OF THE RINGS
Further developments in the Númenor story occurred intermittently during the writing of The Lord of the Rings as it began to play an increasingly important role in the internal history of that work, and finally as an essential strand. Tolkien began to write The Lord of the Rings in December 1937, but it was some time before he developed the Necromancer of The Hobbit into the maker of the One Ring – Sauron, the servant of Melkor in the First Age, who was responsible for the destruction of Númenor near the end of the Second. It was not until late summer and early autumn 1938 that relevant allusions began to appear in the text: Trotter (the precursor of Aragorn) remarks of land the company is passing through that evil people once lived there, who ‘came under the sway of the Dark Lord. It is said that they were overthrown by Elendil, as King of Western Men, who aided Gilgalad, when they made war on the Dark Lord’ (*The Return of the Shadow, pp. 192–3). The idea emerged that Bilbo’s ring is more powerful than other rings, and that it was ‘taken from the Lord [Sauron] himself when Gilgalad wrestled with him, and taken by a flying Elf’ (The Return of the Shadow, p. 226). The ‘flying Elf’ was soon replaced by Isildur, son of Elendil, who cuts the One Ring from Sauron’s hand but then loses it in the river Anduin when he is attacked. Tolkien also considered making the Rangers ‘the last remnant of the kingly people from beyond the Seas’ (The Return of the Shadow, p. 331).
In autumn 1939 the Númenórean realms in exile began to emerge with the mention of Ond (later Ondor > Gondor) in early versions of the Council of Elrond (bk. II, ch. 2). Trotter becomes a man rather than a hobbit, described in Gandalf’s letter to Frodo as ‘Aragorn son of Celegorn, of the line of Isildur Elendil’s son’ (*The Treason of Isengard, p. 50). Eventually Aragorn becomes the last descendant of Elendil and the rightful heir to the realms Elendil founded. Tolkien tried out several ideas for the establishment and early history of these realms before he was satisfied. The story that eventually emerged was that Elendil the Tall and his sons Isildur and Anárion sailed first to the North, where they were befriended by Gilgalad and Elendil established the kingdom of Arnor. His sons then sailed south and founded the realm of Gondor, close to Mordor. When Sauron attacks and takes Isildur’s city, Minas Ithil, Isildur joins his father in the North, and Elendil and Gilgalad form the Last Alliance against Sauron.
THE NOTION CLUB PAPERS AND THE DROWNING OF ANADÛNÊ
During Christmas vacation 1945 and the first half of 1946, with The Lord of the Rings still unfinished, Tolkien began to transform some of the material from The Lost Road into a new work, The Notion Club Papers, again involving time-travel and the final days of Númenor. As part of this work he also wrote *The Drowning of Anadûnê, a new account of The Fall of Númenor. Apparently it was only after completing the first part of The Notion Club Papers that he decided that the second part should deal with Númenor, writing a note: ‘Do the Atlantis story and abandon Eriol-Saga’ (*Sauron Defeated, p. 281).
In the second part of The Notion Club Papers, two members of the titular society, Alwin Arundel Lowdham and Wilfrid Trewyn Jeremy, evidently having inherited memories from remote ancestors, have experiences like those of Alboin Errol in The Lost Road. Both are stirred by the name Éarendel, both dream of hearing fragments of strange languages (Quenya and Sindarin) or of seeing manuscripts written in strange scripts, and report these at meetings of the Club. Lowdham remembers that his father kept a diary in a strange script, and that after his father’s disappearance in his boat Éarendel Star he found a sheet in the same script but could not decipher it. During one meeting, a thunderstorm rages outside, and both Lowdham and Jeremy seem to have a vision of, or to experience, the destruction of Númenor. They cry out:
The ships have set sail at last …. Behold, the mountain smokes and the earth trembles! … Woe to this time and the fell counsels of Sauron! Tarkalion hath set forth his might against the Lords of the West …. The Lords have spoken to the Maker … and the fate of the world is overturned …. The ships of the Númenóreans are drowned in the abyss. They are lost for ever. See now the eagles of the Lords overshadow Númenor. The mountain goes up to heaven in flame and vapour; the hills totter, slide, and crumble: the land founders. The glory has gone down into the deep waters. [p. 251, emended from notes 63–4, p. 290]
Lowdham addresses Jeremy as ‘Voronwë’, and Jeremy addresses Lowdham as ‘Elendil’. Both rush into the freak storm and do not return for some months. Then they begin to tell of their travels round the western coasts of Britain and Ireland, and of a shared dream in which they were in tenth-century England, Lowdham as the minstrel Ælfwine, Jeremy as Tréowine from the Marches.
Tolkien abandoned The Notion Club Papers with this account only partly told. Only a few notes and fragments indicate how the story might have continued. One note suggests that Tréowine and Ælfwine were to sail west, find the Straight Road, see the round world below, then be driven back. Another has ‘sojourn in Númenor before and during the fall ends with Elendil and Voronwë fleeing on a hill of water into the dark with the Eagles and lightning pursuing them’, and ‘at the end … Lowdham and Jeremy have a vivid dream of the Fall of Númenor’ (p. 279).
In association with The Notion Club Papers Tolkien wrote a new account of the fall of Númenor, The Drowning of Anadûnê. This differs significantly from The Fall of Númenor, which had ended with the words: ‘And here endeth the tale of the ancient world as it is known to the Elves’ (The Lost Road and Other Writings, p. 29). There is no reason to doubt that when Tolkien wrote those words he intended that the Elves’ knowledge of the world and its history, deriving from the Valar and their own experiences, should reflect what actually occurred. Nothing is said about if, and how, this Elvish tradition was passed on to Men. The Drowning of Anadûnê is intended to show how events in the First Age and the history of Númenor might have been remembered in the traditions of Men after being passed down through many generations: filtered, changed, distorted, and with much forgotten. But this was also a time when Tolkien began to doubt whether he should include in his mythology elements contrary to scientific knowledge, such as a flat world made round, and considered whether to make fundamental changes, or alternatively, changes in perception and knowledge, even writing a version of the *Ainulindalë in which the world was round from Creation. In The Fall of Númenor a flat world is made round at the time of the Downfall, but in The Drowning of Anadûnê the world was always round.
Tolkien made three rough preliminary sketches before beginning The Drowning of Anadûnê, then produced four successive typescripts. There are considerable differences in the story told in these texts, and Christopher Tolkien concludes ‘that the marked differences in the preliminary sketches reflect my father’s shifting ideas of what the “Mannish tradition” might be, and how to present it; he was sketching rapidly possible modes in which the memory, and the forgetfulness, of Men in Middle-earth, descendants of the Exiles of Númenor, might have transformed their early history’ (Sauron Defeated, p. 407). If one assumes that the Elvish traditions of events in the First Age recounted in the Quenta Silmarillion, the *Annals of Beleriand, and The Fall of Númenor record what actually happened, then it is clear that these versions of ‘Mannish tradition’ preserve only faint and erroneous memories of events. They are particularly confused about the Valar and the Elves, sometimes making no distinction between them, and uncertain about their dwelling places in the West.
In the preliminary sketches and in The Drowning of Anadûnê Tolkien pays much attention to what the Númenóreans thought or were told about the shape of the world. Although he made no authorial statement on this matter, a careful study of internal evidence suggests that this world was round from the beginning. In the first sketch the Númenóreans ‘believe the world flat, and that “the Lords of the West” (Gods) dwell beyond the great barrier of cloud hills – where there is no death and the Sun is renewed and passes under the world to rise again’ (Sauron Defeated, p. 400), but are told by the Elves that the world is round. By emendations it is Sauron, not the Elves, who tells the Númenóreans that the world is round, but in the third sketch (in a section later struck through) ‘the ancient Númenóreans knew (being taught by the Eledāi [= Elves]) that the Earth was round; but Sauron taught them that it was a disc and flat …’ (p. 404). In the first version of The Drowning of Anadûnê the Avalāi (= confused mixing of the Valar and the Elves), who live in Avallondē, tell the Númenóreans that the world is round ‘and that if they sailed into the utmost West, yet would they but come back again to the East and so to the places of their setting out, and the world would seem to them but a prison’ (p. 345); while Sauron ‘bade them think that the world was not a closed circle; and that therein there were many lands for their winning …; and even yet, when they came to the end thereof, there was the Dark without, out of which came all things’ (p. 347). A note written beside the text says that after the disaster, the Númenóreans continued to believe Sauron’s lies that the world was flat until their fleets, seeking for the remains of Númenor, sailed around the world. In the second and later versions of The Drowning of Anadûnê the Valar send messengers to the last king (now called Ar-Pharazôn) and tell him that ‘the fashion of the Earth is such that a girdle may be set about it. Or as an apple … it is round and fair, and the seas and lands are but the rind of the fruit …’ (p. 364). But Zigûr (= Sauron) refutes this with similar words as in the first version. There is no reference in any of the texts to the Númenóreans seeing the Gates of Morning, as there was in The Fall of Númenor.
The sketches refer only briefly to the cataclysm that destroyed Númenor and its aftermath. In various texts of The Drowning of Anadûnê men do not know exactly what happened, for there were no surviving human witnesses of anything but the destruction of Númenor itself. In the first version, ‘those that are wisest in discernment aver’ that when the Númenórean fleets sail into the West the Avalāi (= Valar) ‘laid down their governance of Earth. And Eru overthrew its shape, and a great chasm was opened in the sea’ into which the fleets fall, and Avallondē and Númenor are destroyed, ‘and the Avalāi thereafter had no local habitation on earth …’ (Sauron Defeated, p. 351). The second version says that men later heard from the Nimri (= Elves) that Eru ‘changed the fashion of the world; and a great chasm opened in the sea between Anadûnê and the Deathless Land [= Aman, the home of the Valar] … and the world was shaken’. The Númenórean fleet fell into the abyss, and Aman and Númenor which stood on either side of it were destroyed (pp. 372–3).
In neither version is there any suggestion that the world was ever anything but round, nor is there any mention of a Straight Road. But in both the Númenóreans think that some blessed with a special sight might be able to see, in some fashion, the lands that once had been, and they comment that all the ways are crooked that once were straight (pp. 352, 374). In the third version, Tolkien made an addition to explain this:
For in the youth of the world it was a hard saying to men that the Earth was not plain [flat] as it seemed to be, and few even of the Faithful of Anadûnê had believed in their hearts this teaching; and when in after days, what by star-craft, what by the voyages of ships that sought out all the ways and waters of the Earth, the Kings of Men knew that the world was indeed round, then the belief arose among them that it had so been made only in the time of the great Downfall, and was not thus before. Therefore they thought that, while the new world fell away, the old road and the path of the memory of the Earth went on towards heaven …. [p. 392]
There were rumours of mariners who found this road and reached the Land of Aman. Christopher Tolkien points out that whereas ‘the author of The Fall of Númenor knows that “of old many of the exiles of Númenor could still see, some clearly, and some more faintly, the paths to the True West”, but for the rationalising author (as he may seem to be) of The Drowning of Anadûnê the Straight Road was a belief born of desire and regret’ (p. 395).
In emendations made at this time to the latest version of The Fall of Númenor (a fine manuscript written in the early 1940s), and in the sketches and especially successive versions of The Drowning of Anadûnê, Tolkien added a great deal of information about Númenor and its history, much of which survived into the Akallabêth and The Lord of the Rings and was evidently not intended to represent distorted later tradition. Among its more significant features is a strengthening of the ban against the Númenóreans sailing west: they are now forbidden to sail out of sight of the west coast of Númenor. In early years they offer first-fruits to Ilúvatar on the mountain in the centre of Númenor, the Pillar of Heaven; and they visit Middle-earth, where they teach the men they find there language, agriculture, and crafts, and to reject the rule of the followers of Morgoth.
But even before they are corrupted by Sauron, the Númenóreans begin to resent their mortality and murmur against the Valar. Ar-Pharazôn, the last king, no longer invites Sauron to Númenor but takes a great army to Middle-earth and demands that Sauron pay him homage. Sauron feigns submission, and is taken back to Númenor as a hostage, where he soon gains ascendancy over the king. Most Númenóreans cease to honour Ilúvatar, and instead human sacrifices, often of those who were faithful to the old ways, are offered to Morgoth in the temple built by Sauron. Those who sail east to Middle-earth now do so as cruel conquerors and enslavers. Among the Faithful are Amardil, his son Elendil, and Elendil’s sons Anárion and Isildur, who are descended from Earendil through a junior line. In despair at the king’s plans to invade Valinor, Amardil decides to follow the example of Earendil and sail into the West to seek aid of the Valar. He is never seen again. The eruption of the Pillar of Heaven, which is volcanic, contributes to the destruction of Númenor, which slides into the sea and is overwhelmed by gigantic waves. The ships of Elendil are driven east by the winds and carried on great waves to Middle-earth.
Tolkien evidently had clear pictures in his mind of events in the latter part of The Drowning of Anadûnê, which he transformed into passages of brilliant and memorable descriptive writing:
And now the fleets of the Adûnâi [Númenóreans] darkened the sea upon the west of the land, and they were like an archipelago of a thousand isles; their masts were as a forest upon the mountains, and their sails were like a brooding cloud; and their banners were black and golden like stars upon the fields of night. And all things now waited upon the word of Ar-Pharazôn; and Zigûr withdrew into the inmost circle of the Temple, and men brought him victims to be burned. Then the Eagles of the Lords of the West came up out of the dayfall, and they were arrayed as for battle, advancing in a line the end of which could not be seen. [etc.; p. 371, as emended from p. 391]
In the first version, the Númenóreans abandon their own language and adopt that of the Avalāi (Elvish). In the second version, most Númenóreans continue to speak their own Mannish tongue, Adûnaic, and only kings and princes learned the Elvish language. In the last two versions of The Drowning of Anadûnê, most of the names are in Adûnaic.
THE AKALLABÊTH AND APPENDICES A AND B TO THE LORD OF THE RINGS
Probably in the autumn of 1948, while working on material to be published in The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien wrote yet another account of the fall of Númenor, entitled The Downfall of Númenor, but always referred to it as the Akallabêth. In writing this work, he drew on both The Fall of Númenor and The Drowning of Anadûnê. He evidently intended it not for The Lord of the Rings, but for inclusion in a published ‘Silmarillion’. Neither The Fall of Númenor nor The Drowning of Anadûnê, however, suited that purpose. The Fall of Númenor is less than half the length of The Drowning of Anadûnê, which includes much fine description and new matter not found in the earlier account. But the parts of The Drowning of Anadûnê in which confused later ‘Mannish tradition’ is predominant made it unsuitable to accompany the other ‘Silmarillion’ texts derived from ‘true’ Elvish traditions.
Apparently influenced by the preference his friend *Katharine Farrer expressed in the autumn of 1948 for the ‘Flat World’ version of the Ainulindalë over the ‘Round World’ version, Tolkien, for a time at least, seems to have decided to retain the cosmology of the world being originally flat as it was in The Fall of Númenor. In addition, some new material needed to be added to the story of Númenor to take account of various matters introduced in The Lord of the Rings. Christopher Tolkien thinks that a note his father wrote many years later explains how he regarded the different accounts: The Fall of Númenor relates ‘Elvish tradition’, The Drowning of Anadûnê ‘Mannish tradition’, and the Akallabêth, which draws on both of the others, ‘Mixed Dúnedanic tradition’ (Sauron Defeated, pp. 406–7).
Before starting work on the Akallabêth Tolkien made an outline history of Númenor with rough dates for the thirteen kings (most not named) who followed after the death of Elros in Second Age 460, and for some significant events (e.g. the fourteenth and last king, Tarkalion or Arpharazôn, challenges Sauron in Second Age 3125, and the Downfall of Númenor takes place in 3319). The first text, a manuscript, is addressed to Ælfwine, presumably by Pengoloð, an Elf of Tol Eressëa, and begins with two new paragraphs summarizing the Elvish tradition of the coming of Men into the world, their falling under the dominion of Morgoth, the repentance of the Edain who fought with the Eldar against Morgoth, and the voyage of Eärendil into the West to speak to the Valar on behalf of Elves and Men. The text then briefly follows the third version of The Fall of Númenor for an account of the defeat of Morgoth, the summoning of the Elves into the West to the Isle of Eressëa whose haven was Avallónë, and the creation of Númenor for Men.
From that point the Akallabêth follows mainly The Drowning of Anadûnê, but takes or revises some passages from The Fall of Númenor. The language spoken by most of the Númenóreans is still Adûnaic, but most names are in the Elvish languages (*Languages, Invented), either that which their kings and lords had learned during their alliance with the Elves (here called Noldorin) or the High Eldarin tongue (Quenya) which their lore-masters learn. The Númenóreans are forbidden by the Valar to sail west out of sight of the shores of Númenor, but they know that Eressëa lies to the west, and beyond that is the Blessed Realm. The Eldar from Eressëa visit and bring gifts, including a seedling of the White Tree of Eressëa, itself a seedling of Telperion, one of the Two Trees of Valinor. The seedling is planted in the courts of the king. The Númenórean mariners again see the Gates of Morning in the East. The Númenóreans’ resentment of their mortality begins earlier, and it is to Tar-Atanamir, the seventh king, that the Valar send messengers, who now say nothing about the shape of the world but tell him that even if he came to Aman it would not profit him. ‘For it is not the land of Manwë that makes its people deathless, but the Deathless that dwell therein have hallowed the land; and there you would but wither and grow weary the sooner’ (The Silmarillion, p. 264).
More detail is given of the growing obsession of the Númenóreans with death, building great tombs, and seeking to prolong life, but discovering only how to preserve bodies of the dead. Most cease to show any devotion to Eru. Even before Sauron comes to power, they make settlements in Middle-earth, mainly in the south, and instead of teaching and helping those living there, they seek wealth and dominion. The Faithful sail mainly to the North-west, establish a haven at Pelargir, and help Gil-galad against Sauron. Some of this, and much else of the added material, derived from The Lord of the Rings. In the Akallabêth it is during the reign of Tar-Atanamir that Sauron completes the building of Barad-dûr and begins his campaign for domination of Middle-earth. He is said to hate the Númenóreans because they aided Gil-galad against him. Three of the nine Men whom Sauron snares with rings are great lords of Númenórean race, and he uses them (the Ringwraiths) to attack Númenórean strongholds by the sea. When he comes to Númenor, Sauron urges the king to cut down the White Tree growing in his courts, but before the king consents, Isildur manages to steal a fruit, and the sapling grown from this fruit and the Seven Stones given to them by the Eldar are included in the treasure the Faithful put aboard their ships (cf. the rhyme in The Lord of the Rings, bk. III, ch. 11). Sauron says nothing about the shape of the world except that many lands lie east and west. As in The Fall of Númenor, when the fashion of the world is changed Aman is not destroyed, and Aman and Eressëa are ‘taken away and removed from the circles of the world beyond the reach of Men for ever’ (*The Peoples of Middle-earth, p. 157). Although it is not stated in the account of the actual Downfall in what way the fashion of the world is changed, other than that new lands and seas are made, it is implied in the later statement ‘in after days, what by the voyages of ships, what by lore and star-craft, the kings of Men knew that the world was indeed made round, and yet the Eldar were permitted still to depart and to come to the Ancient West and to Avallónë, if they would. Therefore the loremasters of Men said that a Straight Road must still be, for those that were permitted to find it’ (The Silmarillion, p. 281).
Probably in 1951 Tolkien took up a typescript he had made from the manuscript of the Akallabêth and emended it, altering some names and the sequence of certain events, rewriting a few passages, and adding a lengthy rider giving much more detail of the history of the last Númenórean kings, and in particular their growing hostility to the Eldar and the Valar and to those who remained faithful. The White Tree is no longer a descendant of Telperion, but of a memorial of that tree given to the Elves of Túna. Messengers from the Valar still come to Tar-Atanamir, but he is now the thirteenth king. The nineteenth king chooses a name in Adûnaic rather than in the Elven-tongue – Adûnakhor, Lord of the West – a title belonging to the Valar, and forbids the use of the Elven-tongues in his hearing. Emphasis is laid the status of the Lords of Andúnië descended from Silmarien, the daughter of the fourth king, who, as his eldest child, would have been queen according to a rule of succession introduced later – thus stressing the royal descent of Amandil and his son Elendil, and ultimately of Aragorn. Although the Lords of Andúnië are loyal to the kings, they hold to the old ways and try to protect the Faithful. The twenty-second king forbids the use of the Elven-tongues and any contact with the Eldar of Eressëa, but his wife is a close relative of the Lords of Andúnië and herself one of the Faithful. Their elder son, influenced by his mother, repents, takes the elven name Tar-Palantir, and again pays reverence to Eru. On his death, his daughter Míriel should become queen, but her cousin forces her to marry him and usurps the sceptre for himself, taking the name Ar-Pharazôn and becoming the twenty-fourth ruler. He persecutes the Faithful and seeks homage from Sauron.
Having written this rider, Tolkien seems to have hesitated as to whether Míriel was indeed the unwilling wife of Ar-Pharazôn, and sketched some ideas for a different story. In these he considered the possibilty that Míriel was loved by, and possibly even betrothed to, Amandil’s brother Elentir, but then fell in love with Pharazôn.
Tolkien’s early work on the Appendices for The Lord of the Rings reflect developments which also appear in the Akallabêth. The earliest versions of Appendix B (The Tale of Years) for the Second Age briefly cover events in Middle-earth and Númenor; an enlarged fair copy version was in existence in 1950. In these Tolkien constantly made changes to dates and to the number of kings who ruled in Númenor, as well as adding or emending entries. It eventually evolved that Númenor was founded in Second Age 50; the great voyages of the Númenóreans began in 1700; the Shadow fell on Númenor, and Men began to murmur against the ban, c. 2000; Sauron submitted to Ar-Pharazôn, the twenty-fifth king of Númenor, in 3125; Amandil sailed west to seek help in 3310; the Downfall took place in 3319; the realms in exile lasted 110 years before the war with Sauron; and the Second Age ended in 3441 after a seven-year siege and the overthrow of Sauron. In 1954–5, while preparing the Appendices for publication, Tolkien made further additions and changes, some reflecting revisions made to the Akallabêth c. 1951. Among the more significant dates as published are S.A. 32 for the arrival of Men in Númenor; 600, the return to Middle-earth of the first Númenórean ships; 1200, the Númenóreans begin to establish havens in Middle-earth; 1700, the king of Númenor sends a navy to aid Gil-galad against Sauron; from c. 1800, the Númenóreans establish dominions on the coasts of Middle-earth; 2251, Tar-Atanamir becomes king, during whose reign ‘rebellion and division of the Númenóreans begins’, and the Ringwraiths first appear. Ar-Pharazôn seizes the sceptre in 3255; Sauron is taken to Númenor as a prisoner in 3262; Ar-Pharazôn breaks the ban of the Valar and Númenor is destroyed in 3319; Sauron is overthrown and the Second Age ends in 3441.
Quite late in his work on the Appendices, probably when the space allotted to them was more than doubled, Tolkien decided to include a brief narrative account of the history of Númenor – section I (i) of Appendix A – and wrote two versions, the second of which (with some changes and omissions) was published. Some of the omitted material was published in The Peoples of Middle-earth.
*The Heirs of Elendil, contemporary with the versions of the Akallabêth, also includes an account of the last years of Númenor, the establishment of the realms in exile and the overthrow of Sauron, but adds nothing to the other texts. Probably in 1960 Tolkien compiled *The Line of Elros: Kings of Númenor, which gives dates of birth, surrender of the sceptre, and death for each ruler, with annotations of important events in each reign. He made many emendations to the manuscript, the latest form of which was published in Unfinished Tales.
The story of the glory of Númenor and its Downfall is of significance as the only part of Tolkien’s legendarium in which Men are the main, indeed almost the only, focus of attention. Among the questions of importance to Tolkien dealt with in this work are the imperfect and fallen nature of Man (see *The Fall), and the necessity for men to accept their mortal nature. While various ‘falls’ of the Elves are recounted in the Quenta Silmarillion, almost nothing is said about the first Fall of Man. There are only hints: the Eldar knew nothing of Morgoth’s dealings with Men, but they perceived ‘that a darkness lay upon the hearts of Men (as the shadow of the Kinslaying and the Doom of Mandos lay upon the Noldor)’ (The Silmarillion, p. 141). The beginning of the Akallabêth is more informative: ‘It is said by the Eldar that Men came into the world in the time of the Shadow of Morgoth, and they fell swiftly under his dominion; for he sent his emissaries among them, and they listened to his evil and cunning words, and they worshipped the Darkness and yet feared it’ (p. 259). But some Men repented and assisted the Elves against Morgoth, and were rewarded by the Valar with the island of Númenor.
Although details of Man’s first Fall were hidden in the past, in the story of Númenor the second Fall is dealt with at centre stage and, as with the story of Eden, involves the breaking of a Ban. In a letter to *Milton Waldman in ?late 1951 Tolkien said that this second Fall was ‘partly the result of an inner weakness in Men – consequent … upon the first Fall …, repented but not finally healed’. Their reward of an extended life ‘is their undoing – or the means of their temptation. Their long life aids their achievements in art and wisdom, but breeds a possessive attitude to these things, and desire awakes for more time for their enjoyment.’ He describes ‘three phases in their fall from grace. First acquiescence, obedience that is free and willing, though without complete understanding. Then for long they obey unwillingly, murmuring more and more openly. Finally they rebel …’ (Letters, pp. 154–5). In a draft letter to Peter Hastings in September 1954 Tolkien wrote that his ‘legendarium, especially the “Downfall of Númenor” … is based on my view: that Men are essentially mortal and must not try to become “immortal” in the flesh’ (Letters, p. 189).
CRITICISM
Randel Helms devotes an entire chapter to the Akallabêth in Tolkien and the Silmarils (1981). He notes that the work involves Tolkien in ‘one of his favorite literary tricks, the creation of the “real” source or origin of a famous tale’ (p. 64). But it is also ‘Tolkien’s first full-scale brief epic of men as opposed to elves, presenting his deepest thinking about death, the Gift of Men’. He had prepared for it in the Quenta Silmarillion, where it is said ‘that the hearts of Men should seek beyond the world and should find no rest therein’, but they would be able to ‘shape their life’. The price they pay ‘for this freedom of will and ability to yearn toward Ilúvatar’ is that ‘though their longings be immortal, their bodies are not’.
Here … Tolkien sets a major theme of Akallabêth, showing as well his grasp of human psychology. Always to yearn for what we do not have, to seek beyond the confines of our world, is our destiny, and one resulting directly from our freedom. Because of this combination of desire and liberty, unique in the mortal creatures of Arda, man is peculiarly susceptible to temptation, and men long for what they can never have, immortality in the flesh.
Tolkien thus uses Plato’s story of Atlantis, but deepens its themes. The Atlanteans desired conquest and empire …. The Númenóreans desired not merely conquest – though that was indeed one of their aims – they wanted an attribute of divinity itself, eternity. They wanted to be as gods – knowing not good and evil only, but endlessness – for Tolkien has blended Plato’s legend of Atlantis with the Bible’s story of the Fall of Man, to produce a tale of great resonance. [pp. 66–7]
David Harvey in The Song of Middle-earth: J.R.R. Tolkien’s Themes, Symbols and Myths (1985) likewise relates the fall of the Númenóreans to ‘a Fall in the theological sense. The actions of Ar-Pharazôn are in direct opposition to a stated Ban imposed by superhuman powers and derived from the authority and decree of the One’ (p. 41).
In ‘Aspects of the Fall in The Silmarillion’, in Proceedings of the J.R.R. Tolkien Centenary Conference 1992, ed. Patricia Reynolds and Glen H. GoodKnight (1995), Eric Schweicher points out that in Tolkien’s legendarium Man’s mortality is ‘neither a punishment nor a direct consequence of their [first] Fall. The condition of Man … was determined long before the world was created, in the Great Music of the Ainur …. Yet there is a fear of death on Middle-earth, which is paradoxical if one considers death as a gift.’ Therefore he suggests that ‘the Fall must have had an influence on the attitude of Man towards death, and there one must see Melkor’s influence, which lures Men into believing that what they had been given as a gift is but a bitter fruit’ (p. 169). Thus the desire of the Númenóreans for immortality, and Ar-Pharazôn’s attempt to gain it by conquest, are directly related to the first Fall.
Anne C. Petty, in Tolkien in the Land of the Heroes: Discovering the Human Spirit (2003), thinks that
the passage in the ‘Akallabêth’ that describes the coming of the first Númenóreans to their new land contains some of Tolkien’s most inspired saga-style language, conjuring images of dragon ships and seascapes straight out of such Old English poems as The Seafarer. He balances this vision of wonder with an equally stark vision of horror that concludes the account. This is something Tolkien does better than anyone: he presents the reader with a vision of incredible beauty, and then allows it to be ruined to equally incredible depths, making the end result all the more poignant and devastating. [p. 82]
Númenórean Linear Measures. Series of notes from various manuscripts, published as an appendix to *The Disaster of the Gladden Fields in *Unfinished Tales (1980), pp. 285–7, under a collective title devised by *Christopher Tolkien. These concern the relationship of Númenórean measurements to British units (leagues, yards, feet), and the stature of Númenóreans (especially Elendil), the Eldar (especially Galadriel), the Rohirrim (with a note on Morwen, wife of Thengel), the Hobbits, and the Dúnedain.
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Christina Scull
Wayne G. Hammond
Volume 2 of the most comprehensive in-depth companion to Tolkien’s life and works ever published. This volume includes a superlative day-by-day chronology of Tolkien’s life, presenting the most detailed biographical record available.The J. R. R. Tolkien Companion and Guide is a comprehensive handbook to one of the most popular authors of the twentieth century.One of two volumes comprising this definitive work, the Reader's Guide is an indispensable introduction to J. R. R. Tolkien's life, writings, and art. It includes histories and discussions of his works; analyses of the components of his vast 'Silmarillion' mythology; brief biographies of persons important in his life; accounts of places he knew; essays on topics such as Tolkien's interests and attitudes towards contemporary issues, ideas found in his works, adaptations, and invented languages; and checklists of his published works, his poetry, his pictorial art, and translations of his writings.
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Published by HarperCollinsPublishers 2017
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Source ISBN: 9780008214531
Ebook Edition © November 2017 ISBN: 9780008273491
Version: 2017-10-20
Dedication (#ulink_74e40f16-2b80-5fde-82c4-377ba7216dd1)
In Memory of RAYNER UNWIN Mentor and Friend
Contents
COVER (#u4701b3dc-d1cc-593f-bc5c-9f077fc0abed)
TITLE PAGE (#u11f9d32b-99b8-5133-8cbb-b3862d9b1676)
COPYRIGHT (#ulink_a85d3f1f-756c-5184-a600-83dac149090a)
DEDICATION (#ulink_dcbc370b-95a6-5ed0-94fd-1833cefff510)
I
PREFACE
CHRONOLOGY
NOTES
INDEX
II
PREFACE
LIST OF ARTICLES (#ulink_6ab6b2f5-2f8c-51ad-b9fe-ce145b765fc1)
READER’S GUIDE A–M
III
READER’S GUIDE N–Z (#udd7e0d2c-561d-5a72-93f6-cdb7b548df55)
N (#ulink_1d920822-99d6-5f41-b7c9-323d92609369)
O (#ulink_1e89ed20-8db5-5211-ac57-2dfdcbd2653b)
P (#ulink_94166511-9b2a-5316-8adc-be2a55c3c312)
Q (#ulink_3622e0b1-e425-570d-aef7-903d471bc97d)
R (#ulink_f2d68a44-88f6-5aab-accd-8e66fcd97c08)
S (#ulink_f9a9503a-6dde-5f10-924b-33278bd357de)
T (#ulink_fe062ad1-4b6a-50fc-bb29-3dce58a1b3b8)
U (#ulink_893ea9a4-3329-5243-853c-613ce97a33b6)
V (#ulink_ea35fe66-f70b-56f7-9d84-782df5583484)
W (#ulink_48419c33-1d72-5fd2-a68b-3c0bee35f342)
X, Y, Z (#ulink_3bc688c1-1915-59c0-be44-8310d728f2a1)
FAMILY TREES (#ulink_14e994c8-88e7-58f9-b8e3-d7938d9639a3)
BIBLIOGRAPHIES
Published Writings & Art Poetry & Translations (#u203fc7b7-30c0-5b41-94c1-b755737caee2)
WORKS CONSULTED (#ulink_1d9c0b82-67ff-5868-aa04-4c3e372a9b83)
INDEX (#ulink_f306e722-d919-5419-851d-398bc1ef8596)
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
OTHER BOOKS BY
ABOUT THE PUBLISHER
LIST OF ARTICLES (#ulink_a0c287df-6adb-5f03-a688-0fe2dbeb1b8c)
Abercrombie, Lascelles
Ace Books controversy
Acocks Green (Warwickshire)
Acta Senatus
Adaptations
The Adventures of Tom Bombadil (poem)
The Adventures of Tom Bombadil and Other Verses from the Red Book
Ae Adar Nín
Ainulindalë
Akallabêth: The Downfall of Númenor
Alcar mi Tarmenel na Erun
Aldarion and Erendis: The Mariner’s Wife
Aldershot (Hampshire)
Allegory
The ‘Alphabet of Dairon’
Aman
Ambarkanta: The Shape of the World
‘The Ambidexters Sentence’
Ancrene Riwle
Ancrene Wisse and Hali Meiðhad
Annals of Beleriand
Annals of Valinor
Appearance
An Application for the Rawlinson and Bosworth Professorship of Anglo-Saxon … Oxford
Art
The Art of The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien
The Art of The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien
Arthur and the Matter of Britain
Athrabeth Finrod ah Andreth
Atlakviða
Atlantis
Attacks of Taste
Auden, Wystan Hugh
‘Of Aulë and Yavanna’
Authorial Presence
Barfield, Arthur Owen
Barnett, Allen
Barnsley, Thomas Kenneth
Barnt Green (Worcestershire)
Barrie, James Matthew
Barrowclough, Sidney
The Battle of Maldon
The Battle of the Eastern Field
The Battles of the Fords of Isen
Baynes, Pauline Diana
Bedford (Bedfordshire)
‘Of the Beginning of Days’
‘Of Beleriand and Its Realms’
Belgium
Bennett, Henry Stanley
Bennett, Jack Arthur Walter
Beowulf
Beowulf: A Translation and Commentary Together with The Sellic Spell
Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics
‘Of Beren and Lúthien’
Beren and Lúthien (book)
Berkshire
Bibliographies
The Bidding of the Minstrel, from the Lay of Eärendel
Bilbo’s Last Song (at the Grey Havens)
Biographies
Birmingham and environs
Birmingham Oratory
Blackwell, Basil Henry
Bliss, Alan Joseph
‘The Bodleian Declensions’
Bombadil Goes Boating
The Book of Lost Tales
The Book of Lost Tales, Part One
The Book of Lost Tales, Part Two
Bournemouth (Hampshire)
Bowra, Cecil Maurice
Bradley, Henry
Braunholtz, Gustav Ernst Karl
Brett-Smith, Herbert Francis Brett
Brewerton, George
Brogan, Denis Hugh Vercingetorix
Brookes-Smith family
Brown, Walter Rolfe
Bryson, John Norman
Buchan, John
Buckhurst, Helen Thérèse McMillan
Burchfield, Robert William
Calligraphy
Cambridge (Cambridgeshire)
Campbell, Alistair
Campbell, Ignatius Roy Dunnachie
Carr, Charlie
Carroll, Lewis
Carter, Douglas
Cat
Cecil, Edward Christian David Gascoyne
Celtic influences
Chambers, Raymond Wilson
Chandler, Pamela
Chaucer, Geoffrey
Chaucer as a Philologist: The Reeve’s Tale
Cheddar Gorge and Caves (Somerset)
Cheltenham (Gloucestershire)
Chesterton, Gilbert Keith
Childe, Wilfred Rowland Mary
Children
The Children of Húrin (book)
Círdan
Cirion and Eorl and the Friendship of Gondor and Rohan
The City of the Gods
Classical influences
The Clerke’s Compleinte
Clevedon (Somerset)
A Closed Letter to Andrea Charicoryides … Sometimes Known as Charles Williams
Coghill, Nevill Henry Kendal Aylmer
Collecting and sales
Collingwood, Robin George
‘Of the Coming of Men into the West’
‘Of the Coming of the Elves and the Captivity of Melkor’
Common Eldarin Noun: Structure
‘Common Quendian Declension’
Comparative Tables
The Complaint of Mîm the Dwarf
Composition, Manner of
The Converse of Manwë and Eru
Cornwall
Corrected Names of Chief Valar
The Corrigan
Cowling, George Herbert
Craigie, William Alexander
The Creatures of the Earth
Criticism
Cromer (Norfolk)
Cuivienyarna
Cullis, Colin
Dagnall, Margery Kathleen Mary, known as Susan
Dangweth Pengoloð
Darbishire, Helen
D’Arcy, Martin Cyril
D’Ardenne, Simonne Rosalie Thérèse Odile
‘Of the Darkening of Valinor’
Davis, Norman
Dawkins, Richard MacGillivray
Day, Mabel Katherine
De Zulueta, Francis
Declension of Nouns
A Description of the Island of Númenor
The Devil’s Coach-Horses
The Disaster of the Gladden Fields
Walt Disney Studios
Dobson, Eric John
Domestic duties
Doworst
The Dragon’s Visit
Dragons
Drama
The Drowning of Anadûnê
Dundas-Grant, James Harold
Of Dwarves and Men
Dyson, Henry Victor Dyson
Éalá Éarendel Engla Beorhtast
Earendel at the Helm
‘Early Chart of Names’
‘Early Noldorin Grammar’
‘Early Qenya Pronouns’
Earp, Thomas Wade
Eddison, Eric Rucker
‘Of Eldamar and the Princes of the Eldalië’
Eldarin Hands, Fingers & Numerals
The Elvish Alphabets
Elvish Song in Rivendell
Emery, Augustin Robert
The End of the Third Age: The History of The Lord of the Rings, Part IV
England
English and Medieval Studies Presented to J.R.R. Tolkien …
English and Welsh
English language
‘English–Qenya Dictionary’
Enigmata Saxonica Nuper Inventa Duo
Of the Ents and the Eagles
‘The Entu, Ensi, Enta Declension’
Environment
Eriol and Ælfwine
Errantry
Escape
‘Essay on Phonetic Symbolism’
Essays Presented to Charles Williams
Etymologies
Eucatastrophe
An Evening in Tavrobel
Everett, Dorothy
Examinations
Fairbank, Christian Albert Hastings
Fairford (Gloucestershire)
Fairy-stories
The Fall
The Fall of Arthur (poem)
The Fall of Arthur (book)
The Fall of Númenor
Fandom and popularity
Farmer Giles of Ham
Farnell, Lewis Richard
Farrer, Katharine Dorothy
Fastitocalon
‘Fate and Free Will’ (notes)
Fate and free will (topic)
The ‘Father Christmas’ letters
‘Of Fëanor and the Unchaining of Melkor’
The Feanorian Alphabet
Field, Geoffrey Simpson
‘Of the Fifth Battle: Nirnaeth Arnoediad’
Filey (Yorkshire)
Finn and Hengest: The Fragment and the Episode
Firth, Charles Harding
‘Five Late Quenya Volitive Inscriptions’
The Five Wizards
Fletcher, Ronald Frank William
‘Flight of the Gnomes’
The Flight of the Noldoli from Valinor
‘Of the Flight of the Noldor’
Folkestone (Kent)
Food and drink
For W.H.A.
A Fourteenth-Century Romance
Fox, Adam
France
Fraser, John
Freston, Hugh Reginald
From the Many-Willow’d Margin of the Immemorial Thames
Gardner, Helen Louise
Gawain’s Leave-taking
Gedling (Nottinghamshire)
‘Gerald of Wales on the Survival of Welsh’
Gilson, Robert Cary
Gilson, Robert Quilter
Glip
Glorfindel
‘The Gnomes Come to the Great Lands’
Gnomish Grammar
Gnomish Lexicon
‘The Gnomish Lexicon Slips’
Goblin Feet
‘Goldogrin Pronomial Prefixes’
Gollins, Annie
Good and Evil
Gordon, Eric Valentine
Gordon, George Stuart
Gordon, Robert Hope
Grahame, Kenneth
Great Haywood (Staffordshire)
Green, Roger Gilbert Lancelyn
The Grey Bridge of Tavrobel
Griffiths, Mary Elaine
Grove, Mary Jane, known as Jennie
Habbanan beneath the Stars
Haggard, Henry Rider
Hall, William Ernest
Halsbury, John Anthony Hardinge Giffard, Earl of
The Happy Mariners
Hardie, Colin Graham
Harrogate (Yorkshire)
Havard, Robert Emlyn
Health
The Heirs of Elendil
Henry Bradley, 3 Dec., 1845–23 May, 1923
‘Heraldic Devices of Tol Erethrin’
Hill, Margaret Joy
Historical and cultural influences
The History of Galadriel and Celeborn and of Amroth King of Lórien
The History of Middle-earth
The History of The Hobbit
The History of The Lord of the Rings
The Hoard
The Hobbit
Holy Maidenhood
The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth Beorhthelm’s Son
Hope and despair
The Horns of Ylmir
Hove (Sussex)
The Hunt for the Ring
Illustration
Imram
Incledon family
‘Index of Names for The Lay of the Children of Húrin’
The Inklings
‘Introduction to the “Elder Edda”’
Ireland, Republic of (Eire)
The Istari
Italy
‘Iþþlen’ in Sawles Warde
J.R.R. Tolkien: Artist and Illustrator
J.R.R. Tolkien’s Letters to Rhona Beare
Jennings, Elizabeth Joan
The Jerusalem Bible
Jones, Gwyn
Kainendan
Kalevala (including The Story of Kullervo)
Katherine Group
Ker, Neil Ripley
King Edward’s School, Birmingham
‘The Koivienéni Manuscript’
Lancashire Fusiliers
Lang, Andrew
Languages
Languages, Invented
Lascelles, Mary Madge
The Last Ark
The Last Ship
Laws and Customs among the Eldar
The Lay of Aotrou and Itroun (poem)
The Lay of Aotrou and Itroun (book)
The Lay of Beowulf
‘Lay of Eärendel’
Lay of Leithian
The Lay of the Children of Húrin
The Lay of the Fall of Gondolin
The Lays of Beleriand
Lea, Kathleen Marguerite
Leaf by Niggle
Leeds (Yorkshire)
Leeds, University of
Leeds University Verse, 1914–24
The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún (including Völsungakviða en nýja and Guðrúnarkviða en nýja)
Of Lembas
The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien
Lewis, Clive Staples
Lewis, Warren Hamilton
Lhammas
Libraries and archives
Light
Light as Leaf on Lindentree
Lincoln (Lincolnshire)
The Line of Elros: Kings of Númenor
The Little House of Lost Play: Mar Vanwa Tyaliéva
London
The Lonely Isle
The Lord of the Rings
Loss
The Lost Road (story)
The Lost Road and Other Writings
Lyme Regis (Dorset)
McCallum, Ronald Buchanan
MacDonald, George
McFarlane, Kenneth Bruce
McIntosh, Angus
Mackreth, John
Madlener, Josef
‘Of Maeglin’
Of Maeglin: Sister-son of Turgon, King of Gondolin
Magic
Malvern (Worcestershire)
The Man in the Moon Came Down Too Soon
The Man in the Moon Stayed Up Too Late
MS. Bodley 34: A Re-Collation of a Collation
Maps
Mary Michael
Masefield, John Edward
Massiah-Palmer, Werner William Thomas
‘Matar and Tulir’
Mathew, Anthony Gervase
Measures, Alfred Ernest
Melkor Morgoth
‘Of Men’
The Mewlips
Middle English ‘Losenger’
A Middle English Vocabulary
Milford-on-Sea (Hampshire)
Mills, Stella Marie
Mr. Bliss
Mitchison, Naomi Mary Margaret
Mitton family
The Monsters and the Critics and Other Essays
Morgan, Francis Xavier
Morgoth’s Ring: The Later Silmarillion, Part One: The Legends of Aman
Morris, William
Mortality and immortality
Mountain family
Murray, Robert Patrick Ruthven
Music
Mythopoeia
‘Name-list to The Fall of Gondolin’ (#ulink_017ea0e4-4166-510c-812e-592020b15b9d)
The Name ‘Nodens’ (#ulink_6eb329d3-bad8-51fc-bf7e-654c76020ae1)
The Nameless Land (#ulink_ec9e33b1-c876-5174-969a-0dc8193a981f)
Names (#ulink_cbd6ed89-9458-51d8-ab88-09f816a7e0a7)
Names and Required Alterations (#ulink_22212781-fa38-5307-98d3-6e78a29eaaef)
‘Names of the Valar’ (#ulink_d3b3a581-1df4-579d-93c9-0f2ce31e2d31)
Napier, Arthur Sampson (#ulink_b6d13896-dd42-5727-ae79-de117939ea5e)
Narn i Chîn Húrin (#ulink_65e65c92-fd48-59f9-813f-bc62cda86b70)
Narqelion (#ulink_aa5c5916-51a8-5097-a246-2629f6079f31)
Nature (#ulink_5d0f8ada-a00f-5750-be2a-51fea5bf69a3)
Neave, Emily Jane (#ulink_a058b35e-853a-5dee-9d43-ca25dca5ab90)
Nesbit, Edith (#ulink_e551a10b-6f2c-5a30-8f8e-bb3eb049ccda)
Netherlands (#ulink_cab8dea0-a0cc-58f3-969a-60b05b641df4)
A New Glossary of the Dialect of the Huddersfield District (#ulink_15b57cf0-9c7f-5b9f-8eca-1c395020666c)
The New Shadow (#ulink_976643fd-1fd0-5b04-af84-13c66c984019)
Newby, Percy Howard (#ulink_2c5d68ef-f1a4-55ec-a995-7cf2d888b864)
Newcastle upon Tyne (#ulink_b2eaa9d0-9a06-5818-96a8-c6372e172431)
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‘Name-List to The Fall of Gondolin’. Unfinished compilation of names in Qenya and Gnomish (Noldorin, later Sindarin; see *Languages, Invented) occurring in The Fall of Gondolin in *The Book of Lost Tales as ‘set forth by Eriol at the teaching of Bronweg’s son … Littleheart’ (*The Book of Lost Tales, Part Two, p. 148). Tolkien evidently compiled this list in more or less alphabetical order from the *Official Name List (?1917–?1919), but it extends only as far as the letter L. *Christopher Tolkien incorporated information from the list in the Appendices (‘Names in the Lost Tales’) to *The Book of Lost Tales, Part One and The Book of Lost Tales, Part Two. The complete list was published in Parma Eldalamberon 15 (2004), pp. 19–30, edited with commentary and notes by Christopher Gilson and Patrick H. Wynne.
Included with the ‘Name-List’ proper is another projected list of names, abandoned after only three entries, probably the beginning of a list for The Cottage of Lost Play (The Book of Lost Tales).
The Name ‘Nodens’. Note, first published as Appendix I, pp. 132–7, in the Report on the Excavation of the Prehistoric, Roman, and Post-Roman Site in Lydney Park, Gloucestershire by R.E.M. Wheeler and T.V. Wheeler (Oxford: Printed at the University Press by John Johnson for The Society of Antiquaries, 1932). See further, Descriptive Bibliography B13.
The report is concerned with excavations in 1928–9 of a promontory fort or small embanked hill-town of five acres, established at Lydney in or shortly before the first century BC. ‘Soon after A.D. 364–7 a temple, dedicated to the otherwise unknown deity Nodens, was built within the earthwork, and with the temple, which was of unusual plan, were associated a guest-house, baths, and other structures, indicating that the cult was an important centre of pilgrimage’ (Wheeler and Wheeler, p. 1). Tolkien observes in his note that the name Nodens occurs in three inscriptions; otherwise, ‘from the same place and presumably roughly contemporary, there is in early Keltic [Celtic] material no trace of any such name or stem’ (p. 132). He relates Nodens to Núadu (later Núada) Argat-lám, the king of the Túatha dé Danann, ‘the possessors of Ireland before the Milesians’ (p. 133), and to other Nuadas in Irish. ‘It is possible to see a memory of this figure in the medieval Welsh Lludd Llaw Ereint (“of the Silver Hand”) – the ultimate original of King Lear – whose daughter Creiddylad (Cordelia) was carried off, after her betrothal to Gwythyr vab Greiddawl, by Gwynn vab Nudd, a figure having connexions with the underworld’ (p. 133). The normal Welsh form of Nuada or Nodens is Nudd.
Tolkien researched Nodens and wrote a note on the subject probably in 1929 or 1930, at the request of R.E.M. (later Sir Mortimer) Wheeler, Keeper and Secretary of the London Museum. Wheeler had the finished note in hand apparently well before 2 December 1931, when he informed Tolkien that a report on the Lydney Park excavations was to be issued by the Society of Antiquaries, including Tolkien’s note, and enclosed a proof. Tolkien replied to Wheeler by 9 December, evidently having had related thoughts on the possible evolution of the name Lydney out of Lludd. He wrote at once to his colleague Allen Mawer, then Director of the Survey of English Place-names, about the history of Lydney, but the data Mawer could supply were indeterminate.
Tolkien wrote a paragraph on the subject nevertheless, commenting on the obscurity of the origin of the place-name Lydney, and that it did not shed light on the problem of Nodens. Lydney was an English settlement, not the site of the temple to Nodens, though Tolkien thought that it might contain a pre-English name with a different original focus. Because of the uncertainty of this argument, however, or because production was already too far advanced to permit an addition, the note was omitted from the published report by Wheeler and Wheeler.
See further, comments by Carl Phelpstead in Tolkien and Wales: Language, Literature and Identity (2011), ch. 4. A prefatory note in the Report lists those who did the actual work of the excavation and mentions others who visited the site and helped to identify the finds. Among the latter was *R.G. Collingwood who, like Tolkien, was a fellow of Pembroke College, *Oxford, and was almost certainly responsible for Tolkien being asked to help with the mythological–philological problem of Nodens.
Tolkien himself, however, is not named in the list, and there is no evidence that he participated in the dig at Lydney Park, stayed there as a guest of the Wheelers on a number of occasions, or even visited Lydney, the surrounding Forest of Dean, or nearby Puzzlewood, all of which have been suggested as influences on *The Hobbit and *The Lord of the Rings. Mortimer Wheeler’s letters to Tolkien in 1931–2 in fact are formal and courteous, with no sign of the familiarity that would be evident between friends. Nor is there any reason to believe, despite much wishful thinking, that Tolkien was influenced in writing The Hobbit by the folk-connection between Lydney and dwarves, hobgoblins, and little people, or – at an even further stretch – that he took the idea of the ring in The Hobbit (later the One Ring in The Lord of the Rings) from a gold ring lost by the Roman Silvianus at the temple of Nodens at Lydney in the late fourth century, found 100 miles away in 1786, and now at The Vyne near Basingstoke, Hampshire.
The Name ‘Nodens’ was reprinted in Tolkien Studies 4 (2007), pp. 177–83.
The Nameless Land. Poem, first published in *Realities: An Anthology of Verse (1927), pp. 24–5.
The ‘nameless land’ is Eressëa, the home of the Elves in the True West of the world. The poet speaks of its golden ‘lingering lights’, its ‘grass more green than in gardens here’, its ‘dells that immortal dews distill / And fragrance of all flowers that grow’. It is unattainable, ‘a thousand leagues’ distant, a land ‘without a name / No heart may hope to anchor near’, more fair than Tir-nan-Og (the land of youth in Irish legend) and ‘more faint and far’ than Paradise, a ‘shore beyond the Shadowy Sea’. The poet dreams that he sees ‘a wayward star’ – the mariner Eärendel (or Eärendil) sailing the heavens – and refers to ‘beacon towers in Gondobar’ (‘city of stone’), one of the Seven Names of Gondolin.
According to a note on one of its typescripts, Tolkien wrote The Nameless Land at his home in Darnley Road, *Leeds, in May 1924, ‘inspired by reading *Pearl for examination purposes’. Like that medieval poem, The Nameless Land has both rhyme and alliteration, and the last line of each stanza is echoed in the first line of the next (‘And the woods are filled with wandering fire. / The wandering fires the woodland fill’). On 18 July 1962 Tolkien wrote to his Aunt *Jane Neave (Letters, p. 317):
The poem [Pearl] is very well-known to mediaevalists; but 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. NO scholars (or, nowadays, poets) have any experience in composing themselves in exacting metres. 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) …. I send you the original stanzas of my own – related inevitably as everything was at one time with my own mythology.
Tolkien later revised The Nameless Land as The Song of Ælfwine (on Seeing the Uprising of Eärendel), with the intermediate title Ælfwine’s Song Calling upon Eärendel, tying the poem more explicitly to his mythology. Ælfwine, a mortal mariner who finds the sea-path to Eressëa, figures in *The Book of Lost Tales, *The Lost Road, and *The Notion Club Papers; see *Eriol and Ælfwine. Many texts of The Song of Ælfwine survive in manuscript and typescript. Two of these were published, together with The Nameless Land, in *The Lost Road and Other Writings (1987); see in that volume, pp. 98–104.
See further, Stefan Ekman, ‘Echoes of Pearl in Arda’s Landscape’, Tolkien Studies 6 (2009).
Names. On 4 January 1892, the day after his son was born, *Arthur Tolkien wrote to his mother: ‘The boy’s first name will be “John” after his grandfather, probably John Ronald Reuel altogether. Mab [*Mabel Tolkien] wants to call it Ronald and I want to keep up John and Reuel’ (quoted in Biography, p. 12). Arthur chose ‘John’ for his own father (see *Tolkien family), but Mabel’s father was also a John (John Suffield, see *Suffield family). Tolkien explained the choice of names in a letter to Amy Ronald on 2 January 1969:
I was called John because it was the custom for the eldest son of the eldest son to be called John in my family. My father was Arthur, eldest of my grandfather John Benjamin’s second family; but his elder half-brother John had died leaving only 3 daughters. So John I had to be ….
My father favoured John Benjamin Reuel (which I should now have liked); but my mother was confident that I should be a daughter, and being fond of more ‘romantic’ (& less O[ld] T[estament] like) names decided on Rosalind. When I turned up … Ronald was substituted ….
Reuel … was (I believe) the surname of a friend of my grandfather. The family believed it to be French (which is formally possible); but if so it is an odd chance that it appears twice in the O[ld] T[estament] as an unexplained other name for Jethro Moses’ father-in-law. All my children, and my children’s children, and their children, have the name. [Letters, pp. 397–8]
At his confirmation in 1903 Tolkien took the additional name ‘Philip’ but used it only rarely.
In an autobiographical statement written in 1955 Tolkien explained his surname as ‘a German name (from Saxony), an anglicization of Tollkiehn, i.e. tollkühn. But, except as a guide to spelling, this fact is as fallacious as all facts in the raw. For I am neither ‘foolhardy’ [= tollkühn] nor German, whatever some remote ancestors may have been’ (Letters, p. 218). Tolkien’s aunt Grace Mountain (see *Mountain family) alleged that their surname had originally been von Hohenzollern, after that district of the Holy Roman Empire from which the family had come. ‘A certain George von Hohenzollern had, she said, fought on the side of the Archduke Ferdinand of Austria at the Siege of Vienna in 1529. He had shown great daring in leading an unofficial raid against the Turks and capturing the Sultan’s standard. This (said Aunt Grace) was why he was given the nickname Tollkühn, “foolhardy”; and the nickname stuck’ (Humphrey Carpenter, Biography, pp. 18–19). The story was also told of a French variation of the surname, du Téméraire, but may be no more than family lore. Research by Polish Tolkien enthusiasts such as Ryszard Derdzinski, reported on the website Tolknięty (tolkniety.blogspot.com) indicates that certain family members emigrated to England from Gdańsk around 1772, having belonged to a family of Gdańsk (Danzig) furriers whose history reached back into fourteenth-century Prussia and thirteenth-century Saxony.
On a copy of a George Allen & Unwin (*Publishers) press release, not before 1968, Tolkien wrote his surname phonetically and gave instructions for its pronunciation: ‘(tôl kēn) tĺkeen (sc. tolk does not rhyme with yolk; the division is tol–keen in which tol rhymes with doll and kien (NOT KEIN) = keen as ie in field and many other words’ (Tolkien–George Allen & Unwin archive, HarperCollins). It was, and is, frequently misspelled Tolkein. Tolkien complained of this in a letter to Graham Tayar in June 1971, ‘in spite of all my efforts to correct this – even by my college-, bank-, and lawyer’s clerks!’ (Letters, p. 410). On 12 October 1966 he wrote to Joy Hill at Allen & Unwin about a document from the Performing Rights Society: ‘I wish producers of documents would see to it that they give me my correct name. My third name appears as Revel twice in each of the Deeds. My surname is Tolkein on one of them’ (Tolkien–George Allen & Unwin archive, HarperCollins). Even on his tombstone Reuel at first was carved Revel.
The phonetic rendering of Tolkien’s surname should be understood to place the stress on the first syllable. The same pronunciation is described by Clyde S. Kilby in ‘Many Meetings with Tolkien’ (an edited transcript of remarks at the December 1966 meeting of the Tolkien Society of America), published in Niekas 19 (c. 1968). Henry S. Resnik, however, in remarks at a July 1966 meeting of the Tolkien Society of America, said on the basis of a half-hour telephone interview that Tolkien ‘pronounces his name tul-KEEN …. His American publisher pronounces it TUL-kin, and I took him as the leading authority, but apparently Tolkien knows’ (‘An Interview with Tolkien’, p. 43).
Arthur and Mabel Tolkien called their son by his second name, Ronald, as did his other relatives and his wife. In his letter to Amy Ronald, Tolkien said that when he was a boy in England Ronald was a much rarer name than it later became: it was shared by none of his contemporaries at school or university ‘though it seems now alas! to be prevalent among the criminal and other degraded classes. Anyway I have always treated it with respect, and from earliest days refused to allow it to be abbreviated or tagged with. But for myself I remained John. Ronald was for my near kin. My friends at school, Oxford and later have called me John (or occasionally John Ronald or J. Rsquared)’ (Letters, p. 398). Tolkien occasionally signed himself ‘John’ to Edith Bratt (*Edith Tolkien) when they were courting.
To intimates such as Edith or his Aunt *Jane Neave he would sign his letters ‘Ronald’. To friends such as *Katharine Farrer and *Donald Swann he signed ‘Ronald Tolkien’, and to *C.S. Lewis ‘J.R.R.T’. His formal signature was ‘J.R.R. Tolkien’. In 1964, when Allen & Unwin wanted to include a facsimile signature on the title-page of *Tree and Leaf, as was their custom for publications in their ‘U Books’ series, and sent Tolkien a sample with ‘Ronald Tolkien’, he wrote to Ronald Eames at Allen & Unwin: ‘I do not and never have used the signature “Ronald Tolkien” as a public or auctorial signature and I do not think it suitable for the purpose’ (3 February 1964, Tolkien–George Allen & Unwin archive, HarperCollins). In letters from his *T.C.B.S. friends Tolkien was called variously ‘Gabriel’, ‘Gab’, ‘Cludhari’ – nicknames whose origin is obscure and not mentioned in surviving correspondence – but mainly ‘John Ronald’, with isolated instances of ‘Ronald’ or ‘JRRT’. His few surviving letters to the T.C.B.S. are signed ‘John Ronald’. In a letter to *Joy Hill of 26 December 1971 he noted that his contemporaries used to write his initials as ‘JR
T’ and pronounce them ‘to rhyme with dirt’ (collection of René van Rossenberg).
According to Humphrey Carpenter, when Tolkien ‘was an adult his intimates [presumably other than family] referred to him (as was customary at the time) by his surname, or called him “Tollers”, a hearty nickname typical of the period. To those not so close, especially in his later years, he was often known as “J.R.R.T.”’ (Biography, p. 13).
The correspondence between Tolkien and the publishing Unwins, *Stanley and *Rayner, is an interesting lesson in the nuances of methods of address. In 1937 Tolkien wrote to ‘Dear Mr Unwin’ and signed himself ‘J.R.R. Tolkien’; Stanley Unwin replied to ‘Dear Professor Tolkien’. During 1944 they wrote to ‘Dear Unwin’ and ‘Dear Tolkien’. In 1946, after Stanley Unwin received a knighthood, Tolkien began his letters ‘Dear Sir Stanley’, while Unwin continued to write ‘Dear Tolkien’. Despite the fact that he had been addressing letters to ‘Dear Tolkien’ for some time, on 28 July 1947 Stanley Unwin wrote: ‘Dear Tolkien (If I may thus address you in the hope that you will call me “Unwin”)’ (Tolkien–George Allen & Unwin archive, HarperCollins). Tolkien replied: ‘Dear Unwin, I will certainly address you so, cum permissu [with permission], though it hardly seems a fair exchange for the loss of “professor”, a title one has rather to live down than to insist on’ (Letters, p. 120).
When Rayner Unwin began to correspond with Tolkien in 1952 he addressed him as ‘Dear Professor Tolkien’, and Tolkien replied to ‘My dear Rayner’ or ‘Dear Rayner’. At first Tolkien signed his letters ‘J.R.R. Tolkien’, but by about 1960 he began to sign ‘Ronald Tolkien’. On 15 December 1965 Tolkien wrote to Rayner Unwin:
Do you think you could mark the New Year by dropping the Professor? I belong to a generation which did not use Christian names outside the family, but like the dwarves [in his mythology] kept them private, and for even their intimates used surnames (or perversions of them), or nicknames, or (occasionally) Christian names that did not belong to them. Even C.S. Lewis never called me by a Christian name (or I him). So I will be content with a surname. I wish I could get rid of the “professor” altogether, at any rate when not writing technical matter. It gives a false impression of “learning”, especially in “folklore” and all that. It also gives a probably truer impression of pedantry, but it is a pity to have my pedantry advertised and underlined, so that people sniff it even when it is not there. [Letters, pp. 365–6]
From that point Rayner wrote to ‘Dear Tolkien’. Seven years later, on 30 March 1972, Tolkien wrote to Rayner Unwin: ‘Would it be possible for you to use my Christian name? I am now accepted as a member of the community here [Merton College] – one of the habits of which has long been the use of Christian names, irrespective of age or office – and as you are now a v[ery] old friend, and a very dear one, I should much like also to be a “familiaris”’ (Letters, p. 418).
He did not care whether he was addressed as ‘Professor’ or ‘Mr’; on 12 December 1955 he wrote to Mr Smith at Allen & Unwin that ‘there is no need to alter “Mr” to “Professor”. In proper Oxford tradition professor is not a title of address – or was not, though the habit has drifted in from places where “professors” are powerful little domestic potentates’ (Letters, p. 230).
Names and Required Alterations. Parallel list of names in Qenya (later Quenya, see *Languages, Invented) from The Cottage of Lost Play (*The Book of Lost Tales), with equivalents in Gnomish (Goldogrin, later Sindarin), published in Parma Eldalamberon 15 (2004), pp. 5–18, edited with commentary and notes by Patrick H. Wynne.
This work appears to date from ?1917–?1919. An appendix ‘assembles a variety of isolated words, linguistic notes, and phonological charts from the Lost Tales [Book of Lost Tales] notebooks that could not be conveniently presented in previous issues of Parma Eldalamberon’ (p. 6).
‘Names of the Valar’. List of names of the Valar (*‘The Silmarillion’), arranged by gender, published as part of ‘Early Qenya Fragments’ in Parma Eldalamberon 14 (2003), pp. 11–15, edited with commentary and notes by Patrick Wynne and Christopher Gilson.
Originally written only in Qenya (later Quenya, see *Languages, Invented), Gnomish (Goldogrin, later Sindarin) forms were added later by Tolkien. The work is contemporary with *The Book of Lost Tales, but probably later than *Corrected Names of Chief Valar, i.e. from the ?first half of 1919.
Napier, Arthur Sampson (1853–1916). A.S. Napier, educated at Owens College, Manchester and Exeter College, *Oxford, taught at Berlin and Göttingen before becoming the Merton Professor of English Language and Literature at Oxford in 1885. In 1903 he became, as well, Rawlinsonian Professor of Anglo-Saxon. Napier’s appointment to the Merton Professorship, on the establishment of that chair, strengthened the language side of English studies at Oxford – he was one of three professors of *Philology, together with John Earle and F. Max Müller – to the regret of those who pictured the philologists ‘lecturing simultaneously on Beowulf to empty benches, while there was no one to lecture on Shakespeare and Milton’ (D.J. Palmer, The Rise of English Studies (1965), p. 87). In fact, Napier would later play a key role, with *Walter Raleigh, in bifurcating the Oxford English syllabus to make it more attractive to students whose primary interest was literature rather than language (from 1908 only four of ten papers were required in common of all students reading English, with the other six oriented to suit the language or literature specialty).
Never robust, during the last ten years of his life Napier was frequently in ill health, but was ably assisted by *Kenneth Sisam, whose B.Litt. thesis Napier supervised. Tolkien later recalled meeting Napier when, as an undergraduate at Oxford, he changed his course of study from Classics to English Language and Literature: ‘I recall that I was ushered into a very dim room and could hardly see Napier. He was courteous, but said little. He never spoke to me again. I attended his lectures, when he was well enough to give them’ (letter to *N.R. Ker, 22 November 1970, Letters, p. 406). These definitely included, in Michaelmas Term 1913, lectures on English Historical Grammar and on Old English Dialects, and in Michaelmas Term 1914 and Hilary Term 1915, on *Pearl and *Beowulf (see further, Chronology).
Narn i Chîn Húrin. Prose narrative of the story of Túrin (see *‘Of Túrin Turambar’), published with notes and commentary in *Unfinished Tales (1980), pp. 57–162, as Narn i Hîn Húrin: The Tale of the Children of Húrin (see below). Some sections of draft and further commentary were included in the account of the Grey Annals in *The War of the Jewels (1994).
When *Christopher Tolkien edited Unfinished Tales he thought that the whole of the Narn was a work of the late 1950s, but during the writing of *The History of Middle-earth he realized that the latter part of the Narn, from the section headed ‘The Return of Túrin to Dor-lómin’ to ‘The Death of Túrin’ (Unfinished Tales, pp. 104–46), was written c. 1951 and in close association with the Grey Annals (*Annals of Beleriand). ‘The manuscript was headed (later) “The Children of Húrin: last part”, and at the top of the first page my father wrote “Part of the ‘Children of Húrin’ told in full scale”’ (The War of the Jewels, p. 144). Up to the point where the Men of Brethil discuss what action to take against Glaurung, preliminary drafting for the manuscript text ‘consists of little more than scribbled slips. From here on … there are in effect two manuscripts’, one of which Christopher Tolkien calls ‘the draft manuscript’, being a ‘continuation of the original, which became so chaotic with rewriting’ that Tolkien made a fair copy (The War of the Jewels, p. 152). In his comments on the relevant portion of the Grey Annals in The War of the Jewels (pp. 144–65) Christopher Tolkien includes comparisons of various versions of the story of Túrin, lengthy extracts from drafts for the Narn, and synopses for the end of the story which show Tolkien hesitating over the dénouement.
Tolkien possibly chose to begin this prose account part way through the story because he had already written a lengthy account of Túrin’s earlier life in alliterative verse in the 1920s (*The Lay of the Children of Húrin), but nothing at length of his later life since *The Book of Lost Tales. The part of the Narn dealing with Túrin’s earlier life, however, is a work of the late 1950s.
In The War of the Jewels Christopher Tolkien describes ‘a twelve-page typescript composed ab initio by my father and bearing the title “Here begins the tale of the Children of Húrin, Narn i Chîn Húrin, which Dírhaval wrought”’ (p. 314). This provided the text for the first part of the Narn (Unfinished Tales, pp. 57–65), but two passages describing the sojourn of Húrin and Huor in Gondolin and an account of the Nirnaeth Arnoediad were omitted, since similar texts taken from the Grey Annals had appeared in *The Silmarillion. Christopher Tolkien comments at length on differences between these passages in the Narn and the Grey Annals, and his use of elements from both in The Silmarillion (The War of the Jewels, pp. 165–70, 314–15). He notes in Unfinished Tales that the next section
(to the end of Túrin in Doriath) required a good deal of revision and selection, and in some places some slight compression, the original texts being scrappy and disconnected. But the central section (Túrin among the outlaws, Mîm the Petty-dwarf, the land of Dor-Cúarthol, the death of Beleg at Túrin’s hand, and Túrin’s life in Nargothrond) constituted a much more difficult editorial problem. The Narn is here at its least finished, and in places diminished to outlines of possible turns in the story. My father was still evolving this part when he ceased to work on it ….
For the first part of this central section, as far as the beginning of Túrin’s sojourn in Mîm’s dwelling on Amon Rûdh, I have contrived a narrative, in scale commensurate with other parts of the Narn, out of the existing materials (with one gap …). [p. 6]
But from that point he found the task of compiling a continuous narrative impossible, and instead published a series of disconnected fragments and notes as an Appendix.
For the part played by Narn i Chîn Hurin in the evolution of Tolkien’s mythology, see entries for *‘Of Túrin Turambar’ and other chapters of The Silmarillion.
Christopher Tolkien returned to the story of Túrin in *The Children of Húrin (2007), re-editing the Narn i Chîn Húrin and associated material to provide a continuous narrative with a minimum of editorial presence. Although this involved reworking in some parts, changes to the actual story were few and not of great significance. In *The Lost Road and Other Writings Christopher explains that in Unfinished Tales he ‘improperly’ replaced [Elvish] Chîn with Hîn ‘because I did not want Chîn to be pronounced like Modern English chin’ (p. 322; in Exilic Noldorin ch is pronounced as in Scottish loch). In The War of the Jewels (pp. 142, 145, 146, 149, 151) he notes editorial changes he made in the text published in Unfinished Tales, as well as authorial emendations.
Tolkien also wrote two versions of an introductory note to the Narn, probably c. 1958, which explains its origins within the context of the *‘Silmarillion’ mythology. A brief summary appeared in Unfinished Tales (p. 146); both texts, under the title Ælfwine and Dírhaval, were published with commentary and notes in The War of the Jewels, pp. 311–15. The Narn began as a lay in an Elvish mode of verse written in Sindarin (*Languages, Invented) by Dírhaval, a Man who lived at the Havens towards the end of the First Age and gathered all the information he could about the House of Hador. According to the first version, Ælfwine (see *Eriol and Ælfwine) translated the lay into the English of his time as a prose narrative, from which the Modern English version is said to have been made. The second version is purported to be written by Ælfwine himself, explaining that he did not feel able to translate the work into verse.
The first version is a manuscript with the title Túrin Turumarth; the second is an untitled, much shorter typescript which Tolkien attached to the twelve-page typescript he had made of the opening of the Narn.
See also *‘The “Túrin Wrapper”’.
CRITICISM
In his review of Unfinished Tales (‘Dug Out of the Dust of Middle-earth’, Maclean’s, 26 January 1981) Guy Gavriel Kay wrote that
Túrin Turambar is Tolkien’s most tragic character – perhaps his only tragic figure. His story is told in The Silmarillion: victim of the curse of a fallen god, condemned to bring evil on those who aid him, tangled in a web that leads to a bitter ending of unwitting incest with a long-lost sister and ultimate suicide. Here the same tale is retold, at three times the length and in detail that would have overwhelmed the spare narrative style and the overriding shape of The Silmarillion. The story was inspired by a part of the Finnish myth-cycle, *The Kalevala, but in the fated inevitability of its conclusion, Túrin’s saga moves and feels like something out of Greek tragedy. The reader’s affinity for the longer or the shorter version will depend on whether he prefers his tragedy austere or baroque. [p. 46]
Thomas M. Egan in his review ‘Fragments of a World: Tolkien’s Road to Middle-earth’, Terrier 48, no. 2 (Fall 1983), wrote:
Adventure tales like ‘Narn I Hîn Húrin’ … grip us with the moral drama of Good and Evil involved. The language … is almost always quasi-Biblical, elegant in tone and forcing us to slow down in our reading habits. It is the context the author uses to explore a human soul, when it ultimately finds despair and loss, rather than the optimistic triumph of the Ring heroes [in *The Lord of the Rings] …. The mood is sometimes bitter but never cynical. Incest, rape, murder are all here as Tolkien explores his version of the modern anti-hero. Túrin Turambar seems cursed by fate …. But Tolkien adds the depths of his convictions to the tale. The respect for the power of human free will, that which links the soul to God (Eru) Himself … appears here as always operating. Even when it is denied or misused, the author always puts in the concrete details of other characters or situations to remind us that things could have gone so differently – if the dominating figure was willing to curb his pride, chastise his lust for revenge (even when severely provoked) and especially, learn the elusive art of possessions (rather than letting things control the individual). [p. 10]
Narqelion. Poem in Qenya (later Quenya, see *Languages, Invented), a lament to autumn, with passing references to Eldamar and the Gnomes (a kindred of the Elves) from the *‘Silmarillion’ mythology, inspired by the poem Kortirion among the Trees (*The Trees of Kortirion). (Compare Quenya Narquelië ‘sun-fading’, the name of the tenth month given in The Lord of the Rings, Appendix D.) A single text survives, apparently begun in November 1915 and completed in March 1916. Four lines were published in Biography (1977). The complete poem was first published, with a commentary, in ‘Narqelion: A Single, Falling Leaf at Sun-fading’ by Paul Nolan Hyde, Mythlore 15, no. 2, whole no. 56 (Winter 1988), pp. 47–52. The poem, with extracts from Hyde’s article, was also printed in Vinyar Tengwar 6 (July 1989), pp. 12–13.
A fuller linguistic analysis of the poem, ‘Bird and Leaf: Image and Structure in Narqelion’ by Patrick Wynne and Christopher Gilson, was published in Parma Eldalamberon 3, no. 1, whole no. 9 (1990); it includes an English translation from Qenya. A facsimile of the manuscript of Narqelion was published (p. 5) in Vinyar Tengwar 40 (April 1999), which number also includes ‘Narqelion and the Early Lexicons: Some Notes on the First Elvish Poem’ by Christopher Gilson, a new linguistic analysis made in light of Elvish lexicons published in 1995 and 1998 (see *Gnomish Lexicon and *Qenyaqetsa). Gilson provides both a literal translation of the poem into English prose and a fresh translation in verse.
Natura Apissee Songs for the Philologists
Nature. Tolkien’s love of and delight in all aspects of the natural world – plants, trees, birds, weather, sky, the changing seasons – as they appear in a rural or even a town landscape, is made abundantly clear in his correspondence. To quote only a few examples from letters to his son *Christopher: ‘A lovely morning dawned …. A mist like early Sept[ember] with a pearl-button sun … that soon changed into serene blue, with the silver light of spring on flower and leaf. Leaves are out: the white-grey of the quince, the grey-green of the young apple, the full green of hawthorn, the tassels of flower even on the sluggard poplars. The narcissuses are a marvellous show …’ (18 April 1944, Letters, p. 73); ‘The most marvellous sunset I have seen for years: a remote pale green-blue sea just above the horizon, and above it a towering shore of bank upon bank of flaming cherubim of gold and fire, crossed here and there by misty blurs like purple rain’ (22 August 1944, Letters, p. 92);
It froze hard with a heavy fog, and so we have had displays of Hoarfrost such as I only remember once in *Oxford before … and only twice before in my life. One of the most lovely events of Northern Nature. We woke … to find all our windows opaque, painted over with frost-patterns, and outside a dim silent misty world, all white, but with a light jewelry of rime; every cobweb a little lace net, even the old fowls’ tent a diamond-patterned pavilion …. The rime was yesterday even thicker and more fantastic. When a gleam of sun … got through it was breathtakingly beautiful: trees like motionless fountains of white branching spray against a golden light and, high overhead, a pale translucent blue. It did not melt. About 11 p.m. the fog cleared and a high round moon lit the whole scene with a deadly white light: a vision of some other world or time. [28 December 1944, Letters, p. 107]
Towards the end of his life, in a letter to *Rayner Unwin, Tolkien described a more formal display in the Fellows’ Garden at Merton College: ‘The great bank … looks like the foreground of a pre-Raphaelite picture: blazing green starred like the Milky Way with blue anemones, purple/white/yellow crocuses, and final surprise, clouded-yellow, peacock, and tortoiseshell butterflies flitting about’ (16 March 1972, Letters, p. 417). And his delight in watching birds is shown in another letter to Christopher:
There is a family of bullfinches, which must have nested in or near our garden, and they are very tame, and have been giving us entertainment lately by their antics feeding their young, often just outside the dining-room window. Insects on the trees and sowthistle seeds seem their chief delight. I had no idea they behaved so much like goldfinches. Old fat father, pink waistcoat and all, hangs absolutely upside down on a thistle-spray, tinking all the while. [7 July 1944, Letters, p. 87]
In turn Tolkien applied his keen interest in the world around him, observed in minute detail and vividly described, to the invented landscapes of his fiction, giving them the substance of reality. *The Lord of the Rings is particularly rich in this regard, from Goldberry’s gown ‘green as young reeds, shot with silver like beads of dew’ and her belt ‘of gold, shaped like a chain of flag-lilies set with the pale-blue eyes of forget-me-nots’ (bk. I, ch. 7), to elanor, athelas, niphredil, and mallorn, to landscapes like that in Book I, Chapter 6, where the four hobbits approach the River Withywindle:
Coming to the opening they found that they had made their way down through a cleft in a high steep bank, almost a cliff. At its feet was a wide space of grass and reeds; and in the distance could be glimpsed another bank almost as steep. A golden afternoon of late sunshine lay warm and drowsy upon the hidden land between. In the midst of it there wound lazily a dark river of brown water, bordered with ancient willows, arched over with willows, blocked with fallen willows, and flecked with thousands of faded willow-leaves. The air was thick with them, fluttering yellow from the branches; for there was a warm and gentle breeze blowing softly in the valley, and the reeds were rustling, and the willow-boughs were creaking.
The scene is not unlike that Tolkien would have found on the banks of the River Cherwell near Oxford, which he and his family would occasionally explore. Cerin Amroth, on the other hand, has no analogue in our world, but Tolkien permits his reader to stand in its midst through vivid description of its natural features:
They were standing in an open space. To the left stood a great mound, covered with a sward of grass as green as Springtime in the Elder Days. Upon it, as a double crown, grew two circles of trees: the outer had bark of snowy white, and were leafless but beautiful in their shapely nakedness; the inner were mallorn-trees of great height, still arrayed in pale gold …. At the feet of the trees, and all about the green hillsides the grass was studded with small golden flowers shaped like stars. Among them, nodding on slender stalks, were other flowers, white and palest green: they glimmered as a mist amid the rich hue of the grass. Over all the sky was blue, and the sun of afternoon glowed upon the hill and cast long green shadows beneath the trees. [bk. II, ch. 6]
Tolkien devotes almost a page to describing Ithilien in close detail, its abundance of plant life seeming Edenic after the Dead Marshes and the approaches to Mordor:
All about them were small woods of resinous trees, fir and cedar and cypress … with wide glades among them; and everywhere there was a wealth of sweet-smelling herbs and shrubs …. Here Spring was already busy about them: fronds pierced moss and mould, larches were green-fingered, small flowers were opening in the turf ….
Many great trees grew there, planted long ago, falling into untended age amid a riot of careless descendants; and groves and thickets there were of tamarisk and pungent terebinth, of olive and of bay; and there were junipers and myrtles; and thymes that grew in bushes, or with their woody creeping stems mantled in deep tapestries the hidden stones; sages of many kinds putting forth blue flowers, or red, or pale green; and marjoram and new-sprouting parsleys …. The grots and rocky walls were already starred with saxifrages and stonecrops. Primeroles and anemones were awake in the filbert-brakes; and asphodel and many lily-flowers nodded their half-open heads in the grass …. [bk. IV, ch. 4]
Above all, Tolkien felt a deep affection for trees. Photographs often show him in their company: of these the most notable are Lord Snowdon’s portrait of Tolkien reclining against the roots of a great tree behind his home in *Poole, and the last photograph of him taken by his grandson Michael George (see *Michael Tolkien) on 9 August 1973, in the Botanic Garden, Oxford, standing with his hand on the trunk of a Pinus nigra, one of his favourite trees (now unfortunately no longer standing). *Joy Hill recalled that the last time she visited him in August 1973 he did not want to work, but took her on a long walk. They visited the Botanic Garden, walked by the river to look at willows, then went through the Botanic Garden again. He asked her to bring a camera on her next visit, so that he could have photographs of the trees.
Tolkien was saddened to see so many trees ill-treated or felled in both countryside and town. He wrote in an autobiographical note for the Houghton Mifflin Company in the summer of 1955: ‘I am (obviously) much in love with plants and above all trees, and always have been; and I find human maltreatment of them as hard to bear as some find ill-treatment of animals’ (Letters, p. 220). His friend *George Sayer noted that Tolkien, during walks in the country while on a visit to *Malvern in 1947, ‘liked to stop to look at the trees, flowers, birds and insects that we passed’, but
his greatest love seemed to be for trees …. He would often place his hand on the trunks of ones that we passed. He felt their wanton or unnecessary felling almost as murder. The first time I heard him say ‘ORCS’ was when we heard not far off the savage sound of a petrol-driven chain saw. ‘That machine,’ he said, ‘is one of the greatest horrors of our age.’ He said that he had sometimes imagined an uprising of the trees against their human tormentors. [‘Recollections of J.R.R. Tolkien’, in Proceedings of the J.R.R. Tolkien Centenary Conference 1992, ed. Patricia Reynolds and Glen H. GoodKnight (1995), p. 22]
By 1947 Tolkien had already written the chapters in The Lord of the Rings dealing with the march of the Ents on Isengard. Many readers have found the Ents, the shepherds of the trees, among Tolkien’s most original and most vivid creations. The chapter ‘Treebeard’ (bk. III, ch. 4), he said, seemed to write itself; and there the Ent Quickbeam’s lament for the rowan trees cut down by Saruman’s orcs certainly echoes Tolkien’s feelings. In a letter to the Daily Telegraph he wrote:
In all my works I take the part of trees as against all their enemies. Lothlórien is beautiful because there the trees were loved; elsewhere forests are represented as awakening to consciousness of themselves. The Old Forest was hostile to two legged creatures because of the memory of many injuries. Fangorn Forest was old and beautiful, but at the time of the story tense with hostility because it was threatened by a machineloving enemy. Mirkwood had fallen under the domination of a Power that hated all living things but was restored to beauty and became Greenwood the Great before the end of the story. [30 June 1972, Letters, pp. 419–20]
In the same letter he commented on ‘the destruction, torture and murder of trees perpetuated by private individuals and minor official bodies’ (p. 420), perhaps thinking of the poplar tree which was an inspiration for his story *Leaf by Niggle. He told his Aunt *Jane Neave that ‘there was a great tree – a huge poplar with vast limbs – visible through my window even as I lay in bed. I loved it, and was anxious about it. It had been savagely mutilated some years before, but had gallantly grown new limbs – though of course not with the unblemished grace of its former natural self; and now a foolish neighbour was agitating to have it felled. Every tree has its enemy, few have an advocate’ (8–9 September 1962, Letters, p. 321). At the end of Leaf by Niggle the great tree that Niggle had attempted to paint, but could reproduce his vision only imperfectly, is made real, whole and glorious.
Trees figured prominently in Tolkien’s imagination no less than in Niggle’s. In *‘The Silmarillion’ the Two Trees that lit Valinor with their unsullied light are of primary mythical importance; the light provided by the Sun and Moon, created from the fruit and flower of the Trees after they had been defiled, is of lesser kind. In *On Fairy-Stories Tolkien refers to a symbolic ‘Tree of Tales’, which he himself drew several times (the ‘Tree of Amalion’, see Artist and Illustrator, pp. 64–5). He described it to Rayner Unwin on 23 December 1963 as ‘a ‘mythical “tree”, which … bears besides various shapes of leaves many flowers small and large signifying poems and major legends’ (Letters, p. 342).
In *Smith of Wootton Major a birch tree protects Smith from the Wind and is stripped of all its leaves. In The Lord of the Rings there are also the Party Tree at Bag End, the Old Forest and Old Man Willow, the holly trees at the entrance to Moria and the crescent moon-bearing trees on the doors of the west gate, Fangorn Forest, the woods of Ithilien, the White Tree embroidered on Aragorn’s banner and found by him as a sapling, and finally the trees felled by Saruman in the Shire and replaced by Sam.
Dylan Pugh discusses trees in myth and history in relation to Tolkien’s writings in ‘The Tree of Tales’, Mallorn 21 (June 1984). In ‘Tolkien’s Trees’, Mallorn 35 (September 1997), Claudia Riiff Finseth comments that Tolkien gives us in his fiction
all kinds of forests and groves in which to find adventure – and he does more. He ascribes to his individual trees and forests a fantastic variety of meanings and possibilities by drawing from and adding to the rich symbolism of trees that has developed throughout the history of literature. Tolkien describes the trees with which we are familiar – oak, birch, willow – so that we see them with a fresh eye. He creates new trees for us such as we have never seen growing on our earth. He gives us a chance to look at things from a treeish point of view, which is to say a fresh point of view, and from there he can give an added dimension to his human characters, who define themselves in part through their attitude towards trees.
Indeed, she comments that ‘as a lover of trees and a man who abhorred the needless destruction of them, Tolkien the writer often defined his characters as good or evil by their feelings about trees’ (p. 37).
Verlyn Flieger, however, in ‘Taking the Part of Trees: Eco-Conflict in Middle-earth’, in J.R.R. Tolkien and His Literary Resonances (2000), points out some inconsistencies in Tolkien’s attitude to trees. She notes that the ‘well-ordered, well-farmed countryside’ of the Shire (The Lord of the Rings, Prologue) and even ‘Frodo’s peaceful sunlit garden … must at some earlier time have been wrested from what Tom Bombadil calls the “vast forgotten woods” [bk. I, ch. 7] of which the Old Forest is the sole survivor’ (p. 150). And she discusses whether there is any difference between hobbits cutting down and burning trees to prevent the Old Forest advancing into the Shire, and Saruman’s orcs felling trees in Fangorn, and between the Ents’ anger at the Orcs and the hostility towards Hobbits from Old Man Willow and trees in the Old Forest.
In Tolkien in the Land of Heroes: Discovering the Human Spirit (2003) Anne C. Petty comments that
Tolkien’s love of the outdoors and the wildness of the natural world took hold early and continued throughout his life. His role as a crusader for nature in the face of mechanized progress seems to have been triggered when his mother moved the family from rural Sarehole to industrial Birmingham, and escalated after his return from the war – an attitude you can see developing if you read his collected letters sequentially. Nature itself becomes a sentient character in Tolkien’s writings, and its destruction in his tales serves as a grand symbol for what he felt was wrong with society (whether modern-day industrialists or corrupted wizards).
The forces of evil are frequently associated with scenarios that demonstrate the horrible things done to the natural world, especially to trees. But rather than just creating ongoing lament for the death of trees Tolkien takes advantage of the printed page to provide an outlet for revenge. He creates champions and personifications of nature who can take up the crusade for him, righting the wrongs inflicted on hill and tree by those who mar the landscape with evil intent. Although his stance on defending nature and trees in particular, was notoriously embraced by the ‘green’ activists of the sixties and several more aggressive ecology movements since then, you won’t find any evidence that he supported these groups …. But the dismantling of Isengard by Ents and Huorns is one of the most satisfying acts of retribution committed to paper. In this sense Tolkien’s pen was definitely mightier than any sword he might have waved trying to stop the felling of trees or building of parking lots. [pp. 219–20]
See further, the rest of her chapter ‘In Defense of Nature’, pp. 219–43.
Patrick Curry has written (in ‘Nature’, J.R.R. Tolkien Encyclopedia, ed. Michael D.C. Drout (2007), p. 453) that one of the most distinctive marks of Tolkien’s fiction
is the extent to which its natural places are so individual, varied, and fully realised. Furthermore … they are never mere settings for the human drama; rather they participate in and help determine the narrative. The various places of Middle-earth could themselves be said to figure as characters in the stories of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.
In Tolkien’s stories, no aspect of the natural world – geology, flora, fauna, weather, and the stars and Moon – is wholly neglected, and most receive respectful, even loving attention at some point. Nature is never abstract but rather as we actually expreince it, sensuous and particular. Thus, the power of place is paramount, just as it was in aboriginally mythic and enchanted nature – and still is, in so far as such a sensibility still survives.
In On Fairy-Stories Tolkien wrote of ‘the desire of men to hold communion with other living things …. Other creatures are like other realms with which Man has broken off relations, and sees now only from the outside at a distance, being at war with them, or on the terms of an uneasy armistice’ (*Tree and Leaf, pp. 19, 60–1). In his fiction men and animals often exist in close relationship. Huan the hound and Carcharoth the wolf are important to the ‘Silmarillion’ tale of Beren and Lúthien (*‘Of Beren and Lúthien’). Among Tolkien’s writings for children, Mr Bliss (*Mr. Bliss) interacts with bears, Farmer Giles (*Farmer Giles of Ham) with his dog Garm, Father Christmas (*The ‘Father Christmas’ letters) with the North Polar Bear, Beorn of The Hobbit with his animal servants. Birds, some of which can speak with humans, take active roles in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. And in the latter book, horses are featured as characters in their own right, particularly Shadowfax and Bill the Pony. Animals are also the subjects of several of Tolkien’s poems, such as *Fastitocalon and *Oliphaunt, drawn partly from the medieval bestiary tradition. Unusually, *Roverandom is told from the viewpoint of an animal, a dog who converses with other dogs, the gull Mew, and the whale Uin.
Some of Tolkien’s pictures made from nature – his talents as an artist were in landscape rather than portraiture – are also memorable, though one feels that, like Niggle, Tolkien often caught only a shadow of what his inner eye could see. Still, it would be difficult to think of any artist who could capture visually the Mallorn trees of Lothlórien (Artist and Illustrator, fig. 157; Art of The Lord of the Rings, fig. 64) which Tolkien described so hauntingly in words. Nor could his watercolour of Taur-na-Fuin (Artist and Illustrator, fig. 54; Art of The Hobbit, fig. 48) fully convey the claustrophobic picture of those woods Tolkien describes in The Tale of Turambar: ‘a dark and perilous region so thick with pines of giant growth that none but the goblins might find a track, having eyes that pierced the deepest gloom’ (*The Book of Lost Tales, Part Two, p. 78).
Some of his more successful illustrations celebrating aspects of nature and landscape are The Gardens of the Merking’s Palace (Artist and Illustrator, fig. 76), with its depiction of an underwater world full of colour; ‘Mr Bliss on the Hillside’ (Artist and Illustrator, fig. 83), with a view into the distance similar to many in the Cotswolds Tolkien knew so well; four watercolours for *The Hobbit with contrasting landscapes – the well tended sunny fields of The Hill: Hobbiton-across-the-Water, the deep valley of Rivendell, the wildness of the Misty Mountains in Bilbo Woke Up with the Early Sun in His Eyes inspired by Tolkien’s 1911 visit to Switzerland, and the light glimpsed through an avenue of trees in Bilbo Comes to the Huts of the Raft-Elves (Artist and Illustrator, figs. 98, 108, 113, 124; Art of The Hobbit, figs. 11, 23, 39, 64); and the stylized late The Hills of the Morning (Artist and Illustrator, fig. 1). Tolkien also made topographical drawings and watercolours which suggest weather, season, or time of day: the detailed view of the garden at 20 Northmoor Road in Spring 1940, the rainstorm in the background of Lambourn, Berks, the light filtered through the trees in Foxglove Year, and the sky, clouds, and shadows in Summer in Kerry are particularly noteworthy (Artist and Illustrator, figs. 3, 11, 17, 29).
See further, Lara Sookoo, ‘Animals in Tolkien’s World’, J.R.R. Tolkien Encyclopedia, ed. Michael D.C. Drout (2007); and Gregory Hartley, ‘Civilized Goblins and Talking Animals: How The Hobbit Created Problems of Sentience for Tolkien’ in The Hobbit and Tolkien’s Mythology: Essays on Revisions and Influences, ed. Bradford Lee Eden (2014). See also *Environment.
Neave, Emily Jane (née Suffield, 1872–1963). From 1885 to April 1892 Emily Jane Suffield, commonly known as Jane, attended King Edward VI High School for Girls in *Birmingham. The convenience of the School to New Street Station allowed Jane to pass private messages from her elder sister Mabel (*Mabel Tolkien) to *Arthur Tolkien on the railway platform, before their father (see *Suffield family) would permit Mabel to be formally betrothed. In October 1892 Jane was appointed a mistress at Bath Row School, one of King Edward’s Schools for Girls. In 1893–6, concurrent with her teaching duties, she studied geology, botany, and physiology at Mason College, the predecessor of the University of Birmingham, earning a Bachelor of Science degree in 1895 under the examinations of the University of London. From ?1897 she worked in Liverpool, organizing a science school (or the science department of a school; the exact circumstances are not known), but returned to Bath Row School in June 1899. From 1900 to 1903 she was a member of the Church Party on the Birmingham School Board.
In spring 1895 Mabel Tolkien brought her two sons to England from *South Africa. She taught her boys many things, but it was Jane who instructed her young nephew Ronald Tolkien in geometry. At this time, and for the next few years, Jane still lived in the Suffield family home in the Birmingham suburb of Kings Heath. There she met a lodger, Edwin Neave (1872–1909), the son of a Salford pawnbroker, now or later an inspector for the Guardian Fire Insurance Company (later the Guardian Assurance Company): he would sit ‘on the stairs singing “Polly-Wolly-Doodle” to the accompaniment of a banjo and making eyes at Jane. The family thought him common, and they were horrified when she became engaged to him’ (Humphrey Carpenter, Biography, p. 18). (In *Finn and Hengest Tolkien speculates (p. 52) that the surname Neave ‘probably’ is related to the name Hnæf via Middle English neve ‘nephew’ and modern dialectal neve, neive.) In 1902 Edwin was promoted to agent in his firm and in 1904 moved to *Hove. Ronald Tolkien stayed in Hove with Edwin temporarily while his mother was in hospital.
In summer 1905 Edwin was appointed Resident Secretary (manager) of the Nottingham branch of the Guardian Assurance Company. This further promotion evidently enabled him at last to support a wife. Jane Suffield resigned from her teaching position on 31 May 1905, and she and Edwin were married in Manchester in August of that year. They settled in the village of *Gedling, from which Edwin could commute to Nottingham by train. Their marriage was cut short, however, by Edwin’s death from bronchial pneumonia on 11 May 1909.
Jane subsequently obtained the post of Lady Warden at University Hall, University of St Andrews, the first residence hall for women students in *Scotland (opened 1896). She was later praised for her ‘wise and gentle wardenship’ and for her learning: ‘Her vivid mental life knew no boundaries, her knowledge of English Literature was so vast that one felt she should have been a professor, perhaps of poetry, a scholar and the author of many books. But she loved her own subject best and followed with intense interest its philosophy and new developments all through her life’ (obituary in the St Andrews Alumnus Chronicle, quoted in Andrew H. Morton and John Hayes, Tolkien’s Gedling, 1914: The Birth of a Legend (2008), p. 17). Tolkien visited his aunt in St Andrews on at least two occasions. On one of these, probably in 1910, he made a drawing, St Andrews from Kinkell Brak, and on another, in 1912, he wrote a short poem, The Grimness of the Sea (*The Horns of Ylmir).
While in St Andrews Jane became close friends with James and Ellen Brookes-Smith (*Brookes-Smith family), whose daughters attended a school in the city. Ellen was a kindred spirit, and in July 1911 the two became joint owners of two farms and adjacent land in Gedling, Church Farm (renamed Phoenix Farm) and Manor Farm, following their auction that March when Jane had independently bid for Church Farm. The 1911 Census, conducted on 2 April, records Jane as a boarder at Church Farm, presumably to look at the property with its tenant farmer, Arthur Lamb.
In late summer 1911 Jane and her nephews, Ronald and *Hilary Tolkien, joined a walking tour in *Switzerland organized by the Brookes-Smiths. In 1912 she resigned her position at St Andrews and moved to Gedling; she is listed in a local directory for 1912 as a ‘farmer’. With Ellen Brookes-Smith she managed and worked Phoenix Farm and Manor Farm. Hilary Tolkien joined them there, having chosen a life in agriculture. Ronald visited his aunt and brother and the Brookes-Smiths at Gedling on several occasions, and made at least three drawings of Phoenix Farm.
The Neave–Brookes-Smith partnership was dissolved in 1922, a result, perhaps, of the deep depression into which English agriculture fell immediately after the end of the First World War. Jane then appears to have lived briefly in Devon before buying another farm, at Dormston, Inkberrow, Worcestershire. Known as Dormston Manor Farm as well as a variety of other names, most notably ‘Bag End’, it comprised just over 200 acres and included among several buildings an early manor house which had been substantially rebuilt in 1582. This was a substantial dwelling, brick at the front and half-timbered at the back, and with three wings. From 1923 until 1927 Jane worked the farm in partnership with Marjorie Atlee, a former pupil who had worked at Gedling as a ‘land girl’ and in 1927 married Jane’s nephew Frank Suffield (son of Mark Oliver Suffield). Jane’s father, John Suffield, spent much time at Bag End in his final years.
In 1931 Jane sold the Bag End farm except for two cottages. She let one of these and lived for a short while in the other (Church Cottage) before moving to Chelmsford in Essex. According to Andrew Morton (see references below), Jane now pursued an interest in medieval mysticism and moved to Chelmsford to be near the Diocesan retreat run by the mystic Evelyn Underhill. In 1937, however, she returned to Church Cottage, where she stayed for ten years. Later she lived in a caravan on Hilary Tolkien’s farm in Blackminster, and finally in Gilfachreda in West Wales with Frank and Marjorie Suffield.
Tolkien wrote of his Aunt Jane to Joyce Reeves on 4 November 1961: ‘The professional aunt is a fairly recent development, perhaps; but I was fortunate in having an early example: one of the first women to take a science degree. She is now ninety, but only a few years ago went botanizing in Switzerland’ (Letters, p. 308). Asked by Jane earlier that year ‘if you wouldn’t get out a small book with Tom Bombadil at the heart of it, the sort of book that we old ’uns can afford to buy for Christmas presents’, Tolkien assembled *The Adventures of Tom Bombadil and Other Verses from the Red Book (1962). It was published just in time to delight his aunt a few months before her death.
See further, including photographs of Jane Neave, Morton and Hayes, Tolkien’s Gedling, 1914; Andrew H. Morton, Tolkien’s Bag End (2009); and Maggie Burns, ‘Jane Suffield’, Connecting Histories website.
Nesbit, Edith (1858–1924). Despite the death of her father when she was three, the English writer E. Nesbit enjoyed a generally happy childhood with her mother and siblings: she was the youngest of five surviving children. Her marriage in 1880 to Hubert Bland was unconventional: both had lovers, and Bland’s two illegitimate children were brought up together with the three surviving children of the marriage. Hubert and Edith were also founding members of the Fabian Society, formed to propagate evolutionary socialism. After Hubert’s death Nesbit married an old friend, Tommy Tucker, with whom she lived the rest of her life. Among Nesbit’s likely lovers, certainly a close admirer, was *R.W. Reynolds, one of Tolkien’s masters at *King Edward’s School, Birmingham. Nesbit dedicated her adult novel The Incomplete Amorist (1906) partly to Reynolds and used his Christian name for one of the Bastables in her children’s fiction.
To supplement family income Nesbit sold poems and juvenile and adult fiction to magazines, much of it hack-work. It was not until she was almost forty that she wrote the first of the children’s stories that brought her fame. Her stories of the Bastable family began to appear in 1897, and were published in book form as The Story of the Treasure Seekers in 1899. Tales of children trying to find ways to make money to amend the fortunes of their impoverished family, they were appreciated by readers of all ages. Further books about the Bastables followed, including The Wouldbegoods (1901) and The New Treasure Seekers (1904). *Roger Lancelyn Green notes in Tellers of Tales: Children’s Books and Their Authors from 1800 to 1964 (rewritten and rev. edn. 1965) that it was from her own ‘holiday life that Edith derived the joyous recollections of childhood’ evident in her work (p. 208). ‘She had, as perhaps no other author has quite possessed it, the power of becoming a child again, of thinking and inventing with her child characters, speaking and writing from their point of view – but with the skill and discrimination of a practised author’ (p. 206). The Railway Children, probably her best known story about ordinary children and their leisure activities, was first published (in book form) in 1906.
In 1900 eight short stories by Nesbit which had appeared in Strand Magazine the previous year were collected in The Book of Dragons. In writing of many of these dragons, comic figures that are no match for their child opponents, Nesbit may have been influenced by ‘The Reluctant Dragon’ by *Kenneth Grahame (1898), and Grahame’s story and Nesbit’s collection may have contributed in turn to the character of Chrysophylax in *Farmer Giles of Ham (1949).
Nesbit also wrote two stories about children travelling into their family’s past, The House of Arden (1908) and Harding’s Luck (1909). Virginia Luling has suggested (‘Going Back: Time Travel in Tolkien and E. Nesbit’, Mallorn 53 (Spring 2012)) that the first of these, in which the protagonists, Edred and Elfrida, find themselves living in the bodies of their ancestors, may have influenced Tolkien in writing *The Lost Road and *The Notion Club Papers.
But better known among Nesbit’s works are those in which contemporary children experience magical adventures, especially Five Children – and It (1902), The Phoenix and the Carpet (1904), and The Story of the Amulet (1906). Roger Lancelyn Green’s comment on the opening of the first of Nesbit’s dragon stories is also applicable to these: ‘And so straight into the realm of magic, with the prosaicness of everyday life that makes it absolutely real and acceptable; the mixture of fancy and observation which is the real child-world, the game come to life and the day-dream that stands up to the clear light of noon’ (Teller of Tales, p. 211).
On 31 August 1938 Tolkien wrote to C.A. Furth at George Allen & Unwin (*Publishers) that Nesbit was ‘an author I delight in’ (courtesy of Christopher Tolkien), and in drafts for *On Fairy-Stories he wrote of the ‘triumphant formula that E. Nesbit found in the Amulet and the Phoenix and the Carpet’ (*On Fairy-Stories (extended edn. 2008), p. 251). From The Story of the Amulet and the earlier Five Children – and It Tolkien borrowed the Psammead for his own *Roverandom (1998). In Five Children – and It, while digging a hole in a gravel-pit children find in sand at the bottom a strange creature: ‘Its eyes were on long horns like a snail’s eyes, and it could move them in and out like telescopes; it had ears like a bat’s ears, and its tubby body was shaped like a spider’s and covered with thick soft fur; its legs and arms were furry too, and it had hands and feet like a monkey’s’ (1912 printing, p. 14). It is a Psammead, or sand-fairy. It likes to sleep in warm sand, dislikes getting wet, and if disturbed can be rather gruff. Like Gandalf at the beginning of *The Hobbit it plays with the meaning of words and conventional phrases: when one of the children says that ‘now one comes to look at you’ she can see that it is a sand-fairy, the Psammead replies, with literal correctness, ‘You came to look at me several sentences ago’ (p. 16). The Psammead magically grants the children a series of wishes, almost all of which have unfortunate consequences, but luckily the magic lasts only until sunset. Similarly in Roverandom the dog Rover, who has been turned into a toy, meets a ‘sand-sorcerer’ called Psamathos Psamathides, ‘an excellent magician’ who ‘liked to lie buried in warm sand when the sun was shining, so that not more than the tip of one of his long ears stuck out’ (p. 11; ‘long ears’ was an emendation from ‘long horns’), ‘certainly was ugly’ (p. 13), and had ‘a fat tummy’ (p. 16) and ‘legs like a rabbit’ (p. 57). Psamathos saves Rover from the incoming tide, and sends him on excursions to the Moon and to the mer-king’s palace under the sea. In the earliest text of Roverandom the sand-sorcerer is actually called a psammead.
Another work by Nesbit with elements analogous to some in Tolkien’s fiction is The Enchanted Castle, first published in 1907. Among the treasures of an estate (the ‘castle’ of the title) in England’s West Country is a magic ring whose power changes according to whatever its possessor declares – sometimes unwittingly, and as always in a Nesbit story, with unfortunate consequences. Most notably, the ring can confer invisibility, but has no effect on the wearer’s shadow: ‘In the blazing sunlight that flooded the High Street four shadows to three children seemed dangerously noticeable. A butcher’s boy looked far too earnestly at the extra shadow, and his big liver-coloured lurcher snuffed at the legs of that shadow’s mistress and whined uncomfortably’ (ch. 3). The presence of a shadow cast by an otherwise unseen person recalls The Hobbit, Chapter 5, in which goblins see the invisible Bilbo’s shadow as he escapes through the back-gate, while the ability of a dog to detect someone who cannot be seen brings to mind early texts of The Lord of the Rings in which Bingo puts on the Ring, becoming invisible, in the house of Farmer Maggot, but the farmer’s dog ‘remained behind jumping and frisking round Bingo to his annoyance’ (The Return of the Shadow, p. 94) or ‘halted near Bingo sniffing and growling with the hair rising on its neck, and a puzzled look in its eyes’ (The Return of the Shadow, p. 290). In another scene, when the invisible Mabel is having tea, ‘it was rather horrid to see the bread and butter waving about in the air, and bite after bite disappearing from it apparently by no human agency; and the spoon rising with apple in it and returning to the plate empty’, or ‘a mug of milk was suspended in the air without visible means of support’ (ch. 3). Compare again, perhaps, invisible Bingo’s (later Frodo’s) visit to Farmer Maggot during which a ‘mug left the table, rose, tilted in the air, and then returned empty to its place’ (The Return of the Shadow, pp. 96, 292).
Neither Christopher nor Priscilla Tolkien recall having read The Enchanted Castle, though other books by Nesbit were on their shelves.
See further, Noel Streatfeild, Magic and the Magician: E. Nesbit and Her Children’s Books (1958), and Julia Briggs, A Woman of Passion: The Life of E. Nesbit, 1858–1924 (1987).
Netherlands. Tolkien visited the Netherlands from 28 to 31 March 1958, at the invitation of the Rotterdam booksellers Voorhoeve en Dietrich (the Dutch translation of *The Lord of the Rings had been published in 1956–7). He arrived by sea at the Hook of Holland early on 28 March, then went by train to Rotterdam. Together with a representative of his Dutch publisher, Het Spectrum, he ‘saw a good deal of the depressing world of ruined and half-rebuilt [postwar] Rotterdam … with its gigantic and largely dehumanized reconstruction’ (letter to Rayner Unwin, 8 April 1958, Letters, p. 265). In the evening he attended, as guest of honour, a ‘Hobbit Maaltijd’ or hobbit-themed dinner at the Flevrestaurant in Rotterdam. On 29 March he went with his friend, Professor Piet Harting of Amsterdam University, to the Mauritshuis at The Hague, and then to Amsterdam for a private dinner. On 30 and 31 March Tolkien visited Amsterdam and the University; there he was joined by students of the English department and ‘made an extremely hobbit-like expedition to [the distillery] Wynand Fockink’ (letter to Rayner Unwin, 8 April 1958, Tolkien–George Allen & Unwin archive, HarperCollins).
See further, René van Rossenberg, Hobbits in Holland: Leven en Werk van J.R.R. Tolkien (1892–1973); Johan Vanhecke, J.R.R. Tolkien, 1892–1992 (1992); René van Rossenberg, ‘Tolkien’s Exceptional Visit to Holland: A Reconstruction’, in Proceedings of the Tolkien Centenary Conference 1992, ed. Patricia Reynolds and Glen H. GoodKnight (1995); Johan Vanhecke, In de Ban Van de Hobbit: Leven en Werk van Tolkien (2005).
New English Dictionary see Oxford English Dictionary
A New Glossary of the Dialect of the Huddersfield District. Written by Walter E. Haigh and published by Oxford University Press (*Publishers) in January 1928, with a foreword by Tolkien, pp. xiii–xviii. See further, Descriptive Bibliography B11.
Haigh’s Glossary concerns the dialect spoken in South Yorkshire ‘in the geographical basin, measuring some ten to fifteen miles across, which lies in the south-west corner of the West Riding, close under the main ridges of the Pennines’ (p. vii). Tolkien first became acquainted with the work in 1923, ‘when Mr. Haigh had already lavished endless time and care upon it; almost my only contribution since has been to urge him to go on, and to assure him of the value of his work, not only to local patriotism, but to English philology generally’ (p. xiii). He compliments Haigh for having compiled a complete, not selective, glossary, which is essential for the full understanding of a dialect. Because it includes all types of words, including those of more recent times, it more nearly approaches ‘a true and lively picture of its dialect, and is of much greater value to philologists, than if it had dealt only with those rare or venerable words which are imagined to interest such people specially’ (p. xiv).
Tolkien commends the work also for ‘the excellence, humour, and idiomatic raciness of its illustrative quotations, which bear the mark of the native speaker.’ Dialect words are dead when isolated from ‘colloquial instances’ (p. xiv). A ‘foreigner’ to the district, Tolkien is interested in its speech because
even if not a student of dialect generally, … his attention is at once aroused by this dialect because of the very region to which it belongs – the North-West … the field of dialectal competition and mingling at a particularly important boundary, the borders of the Northern and the (Western) Midland, and the scene of the swaying fortunes of different types of English since very early times …. [p. xv]
He also remarks that
the North-West became later, in the fourteenth century, the centre of a revival of writings in vernacular speech, of which the most interesting examples preserved are poems in an alliterative metre descended from the old verse of Anglo-Saxon times, though clothed in a language now difficult to read because of its strong Scandinavian element and its many other peculiar and obscure dialectal words …. [p. xvi]
Books such as Haigh’s Glossary ‘throw valuable light on the meanings or forms of words’ in old poems, including *Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, *Pearl, and the Wars of Alexander (p. xvi).
See further, Janet Brennan Croft, ‘Walter E. Haigh, Author of A New Glossary of the Huddersfield District’, Tolkien Studies 4 (2007). Croft suggests that ‘Tolkien most likely met Haigh [1856–1931] through the Yorkshire Dialect Society’ (p. 185).
‘The New Lay of Gudrún’see The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún
‘The New Lay of the Völsungs’seeThe Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún
The New Shadow. Abandoned sequel to *The Lord of the Rings, published with commentary and notes in *The Peoples of Middle-earth (1996), pp. 409–21.
The brief text is set during the reign of Eldarion, son of King Elessar. Borlas, son of Beregond, now an old man, is visited by Saelon (in earlier versions Egalmoth or Arthael), whom he had rebuked as a boy not only for stealing good fruit, but also for destroying unripe fruit, calling his action ‘Orcs’ work’. The two discuss that occasion, the roots of evil in Men (‘the roots of Evil lie deep, and from far off comes the poison that works in us’, p. 414), and ‘rumours’ they have heard. Saelon invites Borlas, if he would know more, to come with him that evening. It is not clear if Saelon is working with or against a barely suggested conspiracy.
In a letter to Colin Bailey, 13 May 1964, Tolkien comments that he began ‘a story placed about 100 years after the Downfall [of Sauron], but it proved both sinister and depressing’, showing ‘the most regrettable feature’ of human nature,
quick satiety with good. So that the people of Gondor in times of peace, justice and prosperity, would become discontented and restless – while the dynasts descended from Aragorn would become just kings and governors …. I found that even so early there was an outcrop of revolutionary plots, about a centre of secret Satanic religion; while Gondorian boys were playing at being Orcs and going round doing damage. I could have written a ‘thriller’ about the plot and its discovery and overthrow – but it would be just that. Not worth doing. [Letters, p. 344]
Compare his letter to Father Douglas Carter, ?6 June 1972:
I have written nothing beyond the first few years of the Fourth Age. (Except the beginning of a tale supposed to refer to the end of the reign of Eldaron about 100 years after the death of Aragorn. Then I of course discovered that the King’s Peace would contain no tales worth recounting; and his wars would have little interest after the overthrow of Sauron; but that almost certainly a restlessness would appear about then, owing to the (it seems) inevitable boredom of Men with the good: there would be secret societies practising dark cults, and ‘orc-cults’ among adolescents.) [Letters, p. 419]
It seems unlikely that Tolkien began to write The New Shadow before the publication of The Lord of the Rings (1954–5), but there is evidence that its first versions were in existence by late 1958. The first draft opening of the story extends for two sides of a sheet and is accompanied by other manuscript material. Tolkien then wrote a clear manuscript, followed by a typescript in which he made minor emendations and improvements; both manuscript and typescript end at the same point, at the farthest point the story ever reached. The typescript and an amanuensis typescript based upon it were both produced on the machine that Tolkien used up to the end of 1958, except for the first page of the amanuensis typescript, which was made on the typewriter he used from the beginning of 1959. Several years later, probably at the beginning of 1968, Tolkien made another typescript with many emendations, none of significance to the story: this did not reach as far as the earlier versions.
Newby, Percy Howard (1918–1997). P.H. Newby was a prolific writer of novels, including A Journey to the Interior (1945) and The Picnic at Sakkara (1955). His Something to Answer For (1968) was the first winner of the Booker Prize. He also wrote non-fiction books, such as The Warrior Pharaohs (1980). In 1946–8 he lectured in English literature at Fouad I University in Cairo. In 1949 he joined BBC radio as a producer in the Talks Department; in that capacity, in June–July 1953, he expressed an interest in broadcasting Tolkien’s Modern English translation of *Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Tolkien and Newby met for tea at Merton College, Oxford on 31 July 1953 to discuss how the work should be read and introduced. Although Tolkien wanted to do this himself, Newby felt that he was not good enough to read the whole poem; in the event, it was read by several voices.
Newby and Tolkien later discussed other possible topics for radio talks, such as the eighteenth-century Grammarians, fairy-stories, and Tolkien’s old teacher *Joseph Wright; but none came about, at least not with Tolkien in the broadcast. Newby was also instrumental in fostering interest at the BBC in Tolkien’s verse dialogue of the Battle of Maldon, *The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth Beorhthelm’s Son (1953). He was not impressed, however, with *Smith of Wootton Major, which Tolkien stipulated should not be cut, or with Tolkien’s offer to read it himself.
Late in 1958 Newby became Controller of the BBC Third Programme, and at the end of 1971 rose to the position of Director of Programmes, Radio. He retired in 1978.
A photograph of P.H. Newby is reproduced in The Envy of the World by Humphrey Carpenter (1996), following p. 274. A website devoted to Newby, phnewby.net, includes photographs, links to articles, and other features.
Newcastle upon Tyne. A major city in the north-east of England, historically part of Northumberland, now in the metropolitan county of Tyne and Wear, but during Tolkien’s youth (and since 1400) a county in its own right. At the turn of the twentieth century, and long afterward, it was known for coal mining, glassmaking and ceramics, and shipbuilding. An important centre of the Industrial Revolution, it was not without culture, the Laing Art Gallery having been established there in 1901.
Newcastle attracted engineers like William Charles Mountain (see *Mountain family), of the company Ernest Scott and Mountain, maker of electric lighting for mills and factories, as well as pumps, dynamos, and high-speed engines for railways and collieries. Mountain, his wife (Grace Bindley Tolkien, see *Tolkien family), and their two children lived in the Newcastle area and were often visited by Ronald and *Hilary Tolkien during school holidays after their mother’s death.
Nichol Smith, David (1875–1962). Educated at the University of Edinburgh and the Sorbonne, D. Nichol Smith held posts at the University of Glasgow (as assistant to Professor *Walter Raleigh) and at Armstrong College, Newcastle upon Tyne, before his election as Goldsmiths’ Reader in English at *Oxford in 1908. Raleigh had preceded Nichol Smith to Oxford, as Professor of English Literature, and now together again, they made significant contributions to the development of the fledgling English School. ‘If Raleigh’s brilliance as a lecturer and his undogmatic and stimulating mind gave the new school much of its distinction, his “indifference to system” might have retarded its growth, if the calm and orderly mind of Nichol Smith had not been available with suggestion and criticism’ (James Sutherland, ‘David Nichol Smith, 1875–1962’, in Proceedings of the British Academy 48 (1962), p. 453). In particular, Nichol Smith helped to improve the B.Litt. course, making it more rigorous and methodical. In 1929 he became Merton Professor of English Literature, a chair he held until 1946.
His special interest was the eighteenth century, and on critical attitudes of the eighteenth century towards earlier literature. His publications include Eighteenth-Century Essays on Shakespeare (1903) and Some Observations on Eighteenth-Century Poetry (1937), and editions of Dryden, Johnson, Swift, among other authors of the period. As an undergraduate Tolkien certainly attended lectures by Nichol Smith on Samuel Johnson and his friends, and possibly also his lectures on Dryden, and on English literature from Caxton to Milton. Upon Tolkien’s election to the Rawlinson and Bosworth Professorship of Anglo-Saxon in 1925 he and Nichol Smith became colleagues, and served together on the English Faculty Board and numerous committees.
Nichol Smith was also an adviser on English literature to the Oxford University Press, its chief adviser in that field after the death of Raleigh in 1922 and a confidant to *Kenneth Sisam. He was also consulted by *George S. Gordon when Gordon and Tolkien agreed to produce for the Press the ‘Clarendon Chaucer’ (see *Geoffrey Chaucer), and later by Tolkien in a vain attempt to reduce his mass of notes for that book. From c. 1938 Nichol Smith was one of the first three editors of the Oxford English Monographs series, together with Tolkien and *C.S. Lewis.
See further, *F.P. Wilson, ‘A List of Writings of David Nichol Smith, 1896–1945’, in Essays on the Eighteenth Century: Presented to David Nichol Smith (1945).
Nieninque. Poem, first published in *The Monsters and the Critics and Other Essays (1983), pp. 215–16.
Composed in Qenya (later Quenya, see *Languages, Invented), Nieninque concerns the maiden Niéle ‘like a snowdrop (Nieninqe), to whom the air gives kisses’. Tolkien included it in his lecture *A Secret Vice (written ?autumn 1931, delivered 29 November 1931) as an example of his ‘vice’ of language invention and its outlet in poetry. The word nieninqe is Qenya, defined in the *Qenyaqetsa lexicon as ‘snowdrop’, literally ‘white tear’, while nieninque is a later form of the word, in Quenya.
A discussion of five texts of the poem, the first four in the earlier Qenya, was published as ‘Nieninqe’ in Parma Eldalamberon 16 (2006), pp. 88–97, ed. Christopher Gilson, Bill Welden, and Carl F. Hostetter. This includes transcriptions of the first, second, and fifth versions, with Tolkien’s English versions of the first and second; a note on the language of the second version, appended to the poem; variant readings of the third version; and a fifth version, with Tolkien’s glossarial comments. The fourth text in this sequence, following on the sequence of the earlier three versions, was the one incorporated by Tolkien in A Secret Vice. The first text was written in ?1921, the fourth in ?1931, and the fifth on a page from a desk calendar for 26 June–2 July 1955.
Noel. Poem, a celebration of the birth of Jesus Christ, published in The ‘Annual’ of Our Lady’s School, Abingdon, no. 12 (1936), pp. 4–5. A child is born into a world grim, grey, dark, and cold, where ‘all ways and paths were wild’. A star comes ‘shining white and clear’, the voice of Mary rises in song ‘o’er mist and over mountains snow’, and ‘the hall is filled with laughter and light’ as the bells of Paradise ring.
Our Lady’s School, now Our Lady’s Abingdon, was founded in 1860 as a convent school by the Sisters of Mercy, a Roman Catholic order of nuns members of whom Tolkien met while in hospital during the First World War. Noel was composed probably close to the time of its publication.
‘Of the Noldor in Beleriand’. The fifteenth chapter of the *‘Quenta Silmarillion’, published in *The Silmarillion (1977), pp. 125–30.
SYNOPSIS
Inspired by the Vala Ulmo, Turgon of Nevrast discovers the hidden Vale of Tumladen, a suitable place for a refuge. After the Dagor Aglareb he sends some of his people to build a city there, while he himself remains in Nevrast. Fifty-two years later, the city of Gondolin is completed. Ulmo tells Turgon it that will endure longest of the realms of the Noldor, and when a time of peril draws near, one will come to warn him, wearing armour which Turgon is directed to leave behind in Nevrast. Turgon and all of his people, both Noldor and Sindar, make their way secretly to Gondolin. In that fair city the inhabitants remain concealed for over 350 years, not leaving until they take part in the Nirnaeth Arnoediad.
Meanwhile, Finrod Felagund prepares the refuge of Nargothrond, and his sister Galadriel dwells with her kinsman Thingol and with Melian in Doriath. Pressed for information by Melian, who sees that some shadow lies on her and her kin, Galadriel tells her of the theft of the Silmarils and the death of Finwë, but not of the Oath or the Kinslaying. Melian foresees the significance of the Silmarils, and warns Thingol against the sons of Fëanor, but he still sees them and the Noldor as allies against Morgoth.
Rumours of the deeds of the Noldor in Valinor, perhaps spread and enhanced by Morgoth, come to the ears of Círdan, who reports them to Thingol at a time when Finrod and his brothers are visiting Doriath. When Thingol accuses the brothers of concealing the matter from him, they plead their innocence in the Kinslaying and tell of Fëanor’s treachery against them. Thingol is prepared to forgive them, as well as Fingolfin and his people, but forbids the language (Quenya, *Languages, Invented) of those who had slain his kin at Alqualondë to be spoken in his realm. The Sindar obey his decree, and the Noldor begin to use Sindarin for their daily speech. Otherwise Quenya is spoken only by Noldorin lords among themselves, or used as a language of lore.
Finrod celebrates the completion of Nargothrond with a feast. When Galadriel, who is staying with him, asks Finrod why he has no wife, foresight comes upon him that he will be bound by an oath, and his realm will not endure for a son to inherit. But Amarië of the Vanyar, whom he loved, had stayed behind in Valinor.
HISTORY
Only isolated threads of this chapter can be found in *The Book of Lost Tales (c. 1916–20), which says little directly of the early years of the Noldor in Beleriand. An outline for the unwritten part of Gilfanon’s Tale: The Travail of the Noldoli and the Coming of Mankind refers to Turgon founding Gondolin after the Battle of Unnumbered Tears (the Nirnaeth Arnoediad), but there is nothing between this and the first written of the Lost Tales, The Fall of Gondolin, which takes place when the city is nearing its end. Turgon’s former dwelling at Nevrast, and the armour left there, do not appear in the tale. Although Gondolin is a hidden secret city, it is not so cut off; some Noldoli manage to find their way to it. The caves inhabited by the Rodothlim, refugee Noldoli led by Orodreth, in The Tale of Turambar are a precursor of Nargothrond, but in The Book of Lost Tales Finrod Felagund has not yet been introduced. Artanor (Doriath) is ruled by Tinwelint and Gwendeling, less noble versions of the later Thingol and Melian. Galadriel does not enter the history of the First Age until after the writing of *The Lord of the Rings.
In *The Lay of the Children of Húrin (c. 1919–25) the rulers of Doriath are Thingol and Melian, and the Noldorin stronghold of Nargothrond has replaced the more humble caves of the Rodothlim. Although two of Fëanor’s sons, Celegorm and Curufin, establish Nargothrond, at the time of the events of the Lay it is ruled by Orodreth, who seems to be unrelated to Finwë. *Christopher Tolkien has suggested, as an explanation of the change of ruler, that when writing the early part of the lay his father thought of Nargothrond as being founded after the Battle of Unnumbered Tears by Celegorm and Curufin, but as the writing progressed he decided that it was founded before that battle, but afterwards the brothers settled elsewhere, and Orodreth became the ruler of Nargothrond.
The first consecutive, if brief, account of the matter of this chapter appeared in the *Sketch of the Mythology (c. 1926). At this stage Thingol willingly accepts the Noldor in his realm. Turgon still builds Gondolin after the Battle of Unnumbered Tears, inspired by Ylmir (Ulmo), who foretells that it will last the longest of elven refuges. As written, Celegorm and Curufin establish Nargothrond, but are replaced in an emendation by Felagund and his brothers (Felagund, Orodreth, Angrod, and Egnor having already appeared by emendation earlier in the story as the sons of Finrod (later Finarfin) and grandsons of Finwë). This same development took place during the writing of the *Lay of Leithian in the second half of the 1920s. In the *Quenta Noldorinwa (c. 1930) Felagund founds Nargothrond after the Battle of Sudden Flame, in which his brothers Angrod and Egnor were slain. Christopher Tolkien comments that, though in the Quenta Noldorinwa Gondolin is still established after the Battle of Unnumbered Tears, the description of its building suggests a much longer period than the chronology allows.
The ‘earliest’ *Annals of Beleriand (early 1930s) provide a chronological framework for the events. In the entry for Year 50 Tolkien introduced the idea that Turgon and Felagund were inspired by dreams and foreboding to build their strongholds, which both do immediately: thus Gondolin is founded before the Battle of Unnumbered Tears, which takes place in Year 172, when for the first time since its founding Turgon and his people leave Gondolin. In an incomplete second version of these annals, Turgon finds the site of Gondolin in Year 50, but does not lead his people there until the following year, after the Dagor Aglareb. The building of both Nargothrond and Gondolin is complete at about Year 102. Although Tolkien did not finish this version, it is clear that the Battle of Unnumbered Tears would have taken place in Year 272. In the ‘later’ Annals of Beleriand of the mid-1930s Turgon delays his departure until Year 52 (emended to Year 64). The *Quenta Silmarillion (begun mid-1930s) seems to tell the same story.
In the Grey Annals (c. 1951, see *Annals of Beleriand), moving from annal to narrative form, Tolkien added much new material, including the various conversations between Galadriel, Melian, Thingol, and Inglor (= Felagund, Finrod); Thingol’s ban on the language of the Noldor; and Turgon remaining at Nevrast while Gondolin is being built. He moves to Gondolin in 116, and as instructed, leaves armour at Nevrast to be found by Ulmo’s messenger. At about the same time or a little later, while revising the Quenta Silmarillion, Tolkien added a short chapter (three pages of manuscript), ‘Of Turgon and the Building of Gondolin’, partly new and partly copied almost word for word from the Grey Annals, replacing the original text there with a ‘short notice’ (*The War of the Jewels, p. 199).
The first part of ‘Of the Noldor in Beleriand’ in The Silmarillion, concerning Gondolin, was taken from this new chapter, incorporating a few emendations made by Tolkien. The second part, concerning Galadriel, her brothers, Melian, and Thingol, was taken from the Grey Annals.
NoldorinseeLanguages, Invented
‘Noldorin Dictionary’. Brief dictionary of the early Elvish language Noldorin (see *Languages, Invented), published as part of ‘Early Noldorin Fragments’ in Parma Eldalamberon 13 (2001), pp. 157–65, edited with commentary by Christopher Gilson, Bill Welden, Carl F. Hostetter, and Patrick Wynne.
Tolkien based this unfinished work on his *‘Noldorin Word-Lists’ and organized it on principles similar to those underlying the *Gnomish Lexicon, with etymologically related words grouped together, ‘with derivatives listed under the more basic Noldorin word from which they derive, with the Old Noldorin form of words indicated (where different from the “modern” form) as well as prehistoric reconstructions, and with listings of cognates in Qenya, Telerin, and Ilkorin’ (p. 157). This complex scheme seems to have been devised as Tolkien proceeded, working on slips of paper in manuscript and typescript, probably c. summer 1923. Most of the paper (from the University of *Leeds) bears a printed date, 16 April 1923.
‘Noldorin Word-Lists’. Lists of words, names, and components of words in the early Elvish language Noldorin (see *Languages, Invented), published as part of ‘Early Noldorin Fragments’ in Parma Eldalamberon 13 (2001), pp. 133–56, edited with commentary by Christopher Gilson, Bill Welden, Carl F. Hostetter, and Patrick Wynne.
Tolkien compiled these typewritten lists, with additions and revisions in manuscript, c. 1921–3, reflecting his work on *The Book of Lost Tales and *The Lay of the Children of Húrin and closely associated with the *‘Early Noldorin Grammar’ and slips added to the *Gnomish Lexicon.
Nomenclature of The Lord of the Rings. A guide to names in *The Lord of the Rings, prepared by Tolkien for the use of translators. It grew out of his objections to the alteration of names in the first translations of The Lord of the Rings, in Dutch (In de ban van de ring) and Swedish (Sagan om ringen), published in 1956–7 and 1959–61 respectively. On 3 July 1956 he wrote to his publisher *Rayner Unwin concerning the version in Dutch:
In principle I object as strongly as is possible to the ‘translation’ of the nomenclature at all (even by a competent person). I wonder why a translator should think himself called on or entitled to do any such thing. That this is an ‘imaginary’ world does not give him any right to remodel it according to his fancy, even if he could in a few months create a new coherent structure which it took me years to work out.
The correct way to translate The Lord of the Rings, he felt, ‘is to leave the maps and nomenclature alone as far as possible, but to substitute for some of the least-wanted Appendices a glossary of names (with meanings but no ref[erence]s.). I could supply one for translation. May I say at once that I will not tolerate any similar tinkering with the personal nomenclature. Nor with the name/word Hobbit’ (Letters, pp. 249–51).
But he was only partly successful in having his way with the Dutch edition, despite lengthy correspondence (see further, *Translations). Later he had a similar experience with the Swedish Lord of the Rings, all the more distressing because the translator of the first Swedish *Hobbit (Hompen, 1947) had also taken liberties with the text. On 7 December 1957 Tolkien wrote to Rayner Unwin: ‘I do hope that it can be arranged, if and when any further translations are negotiated [after the Dutch and Swedish], that I should be consulted at an early stage …. After all, I charge nothing, and can save a translator a good deal of time and puzzling; and if consulted at an early stage my remarks will appear far less in the light of peevish criticisms’ (Letters, p. 263).
At last Tolkien himself took the initiative. He continued to prefer that The Lord of the Rings in translation preserve the essential Englishness of many of its personal and place-names; but he came to accept that other translators were likely to take a line similar to those of the Dutch and Swedish editions, who had sometimes misunderstood their source, and instead of insisting on no translation of nomenclature, he attempted to influence the translator through an explanatory document. On 7 December 1957 he had also written to Rayner Unwin:
I see now that the lack of an ‘index of names’ [in The Lord of the Rings] is a serious handicap in dealing with [questions of translation]. If I had an index of names (even one with only reference to Vol. and chapter, not page) it would be a comparatively easy matter to indicate at once all names suitable for translation (as being themselves according to the fiction ‘translated’ into English), and to add a few notes on points where (I know now) translators are likely to trip. So far, though both eager to translate the toponymy into other terms, and deliberately to efface the references to England (which I regard as integral and essential) neither appear to be at all conversant with English toponymy, or even to be aware that there is anything to know. Nor do they consult large dictionaries when faced by anything that is not current. [Tolkien–George Allen & Unwin archive, HarperCollins, partly printed in Letters, pp. 263–4]
Such an index was compiled for him, through the offices of George Allen & Unwin (*Publishers), by May 1958. On 11 September 1959, after considering difficulties facing the translator of the Polish Lord of the Rings, Tolkien asked his publisher for a spare copy of the index of names, so that he could mark on it all of those that are not English and therefore, in his view, should not be translated. He seems to have done nothing more with this, however, until around the beginning of December 1966: on 12 December he wrote to Alina Dadlez, of the Allen & Unwin foreign rights department:
When I was reading the specimens of the proposed German translation, I began to prepare an annotated name list based on the index: indicating those names that were to be left unchanged and giving information of the meaning and origin of those that it was desirable to render into the language of translation, together with some tentative advice on how to proceed. I hope soon to complete this and be able to send you a copy or copies for the use of translators …. [Tolkien–George Allen & Unwin archive, HarperCollins]
On 2 January 1967 he wrote to Otto B. Lindhardt, of the Danish publisher Gyldendals Bibliotek, who were planning to publish The Lord of the Rings in Danish, that ‘experience in attempting to help translators or in reading their versions has made me realize that the nomenclature of persons and places offers particular difficulty’, but is important ‘since it was constructed with considerable care, to fit with the supposed history of the period described. I have therefore recently been engaged in making, and have nearly completed, a commentary on the names in this story, with explanations and suggestions for the use of a translator, having especially in mind Danish and German’ (Tolkien–George Allen & Unwin archive, HarperCollins). On 16 January he wrote to *Joy Hill at Allen & Unwin:
I have completed and Miss Jenkinson [his secretary] has typed out a commentary on the names in The Lord of the Rings, especially devised to be (I hope) useful to anyone translating the book into German or Danish …. I think it would save me a considerable amount of time when the German and Dutch projects go forward, and also enable the translators to avoid a lot of the mistakes, and in some cases nonsense, that I now discover in the extant translations. [Tolkien–George Allen & Unwin archive, HarperCollins]
Tolkien’s ‘commentary’ for many years was photocopied by Allen & Unwin and sent to translators of The Lord of the Rings as an aid to their work. After Tolkien’s death it was edited by his son *Christopher and published in A Tolkien Compass, ed. Jared Lobdell (1975), pp. 153–201, as Guide to the Names in The Lord of the Rings. In 2005 Wayne G. Hammond and Christina Scull made a fresh transcription of the Nomenclature from the professional typescript as corrected by Tolkien, with reference also to an earlier version in manuscript and typescript; this was published in The Lord of the Rings: A Reader’s Companion (2005), pp. 750–82. (In the first edition of the Reader’s Companion entries for Mathom and Smials were inadvertently omitted from the Nomenclature. These were absent in the editors’ copy-text, but present in A Tolkien Compass.)
A Northern Venture. Collection of ‘verses by members of the *Leeds University English School Association’, published by the Swan Press, Leeds, in June 1923. See further, Descriptive Bibliography B4. The volume includes three poems by Tolkien, *Enigmata Saxonica Nuper Inventa Duo, *The Happy Mariners, and *The Man in the Moon Came Down Too Soon. Among other contributors are *Wilfred R. Childe, *E.V. Gordon, and *A.H. Smith.
Northernness. Tolkien considered himself a man of north-western Europe, and in his professional life was concerned with the languages, literature, and culture of that region. As he wrote to his son *Michael on 9 June 1941:
I have spent most of my life, since I was your age, studying Germanic matters (in the general sense that includes England and Scandinavia). There is a great deal more force (and truth) than ignorant people imagine in the ‘Germanic’ ideal. I was much attracted by it as an undergraduate … in reaction against the ‘Classics’ …. I have in this [Second World] War a burning private grudge … against that ruddy little ignoramus Adolf Hitler …. Ruining, perverting, misapplying, and making for ever accursed, that noble northern spirit, a supreme contribution to Europe, which I have ever loved, and tried to present in its true light. Nowhere, incidentally, was it nobler than in England, nor more early sanctified and Christianized. [Letters, pp. 55–6]
During the nineteenth century scholars in Northern Europe began to discover and take pride in a common ‘Northern’ heritage, recognizing a culture and literature which they could place beside, and contrast with, the long-established classical traditions of Greece and Rome. Comparative Philology showed the roots and interrelationship of Germanic and Scandinavian languages. The literature of Iceland, previously little known, was seen as a major contribution to the ‘Northern’ heritage, and there was also an interest in that country’s early form of democracy. An article in the Oxford Magazine applauding the establishment of the Vigfússon Readership in Ancient Icelandic Literature and Antiquities at *Oxford in 1941 hailed ‘this new link … forged between Iceland and England: the lands of thousand-year-old Althing and venerable Parliament; the lands of two ancient European vernacular literatures, through the splendid fragments of whose combined traditions we can look beyond the Middle Age[s] and glimpse the far past of the North’ (‘The Vigfússon Readership’, Oxford Magazine, 13 November 1941, p. 65).
But this interest in the North was not confined to scholars. Marjorie J. Burns notes in ‘J.R.R. Tolkien and the Journey North’, Mythlore 15, no. 4, whole no. 58 (Summer 1989), that
by 1892, when Tolkien was born, English popular thought had for some time been turning from the classical world. Southern tastes and southern considerations, particularly from mid-century onward, had been increasingly replaced by Northern ideals. Britain’s Nordic ancestry was taken up like a banner and pointed to as indicative of all that the nation should hold in highest esteem ….
The English, who had previously played down their Northern ties, now chose to deny their Southern past, to see the South as un-English, as decadent, feeble, and lacking in vigor or will …. Neither position is just, of course. Culturally, linguistically, racially, England’s heritage is mixed; but Northern Romanticism, and that human knack of ignoring what doesn’t appeal, now allowed the English to see themselves basically as Norsemen only slightly diluted in race, as Vikings only slightly tempered by time. [p. 5]
For a study in depth of this fascination with the North, see Andrew Wawm, The Vikings and the Victorians: Inventing the Old North in 19th-Century Britain (2000).
Tolkien says in *On Fairy-Stories that of all his childhood reading he most enjoyed ‘the nameless North of Sigurd of the Völsungs, and the prince of all dragons. Such lands were pre-eminently desirable’ (*Tree and Leaf, p. 40). The ‘Story of Sigurd’ he read, in *Andrew Lang’s Red Fairy Book (1890), was written for children, based on the translation by *William Morris of the Old Norse (or Icelandic) Völsunga Saga. The legend of Sigurd provides a good example of the common heritage of Northern Europe: it appears in medieval works written in different languages and places, including the Elder (or Poetic) Edda, the Völsunga Saga (founded on the Elder Edda), and Snorri Sturluson’s Prose Edda (Old Norse); Þidreks Saga (a Norwegian translation of northern German heroic tales); and the Nibelungenlied (a southern German or Austrian heroic epic). A version was also known to the Anglo-Saxons, shown by a reference in *Beowulf to Sigemund slaying a dragon guarding a hoard (in most other versions Sigemund is the father of Sigfrid, and not a dragon-slayer).
While still at school, as part of a general interest in German *languages, including Old English and Gothic, Tolkien also began to learn Old Norse so that he could read the story of Sigurd in the original. He shared his appreciation of Icelandic literature with his fellow pupils at *King Edward’s School, Birmingham in a paper on Norse sagas he read to the school Literary Society (*Societies and clubs) on 17 February 1911. According to a report in the King Edward’s School Chronicle, Tolkien described a saga as a
story of things which happened indeed but so long ago that marvels and miracles of the strange old Northern brand have crept into the tale. The best sagas are those of Iceland, and for pictures of human life and character they can hardly be bettered in any literature …. They tell how brave men – of our own blood, perhaps – lived and loved, and fought, and voyaged, and died.
One of the best … is the Völsunga Saga – a strange and glorious tale. It tells of the oldest of treasure hunts: the quest of the red gold of Andvari, the dwarf. It tells of the brave Sigurd Fafnirsbane, who was cursed by the possession of this gold, who, in spite of his greatness, had no happiness from his love for Brynhild. The Saga tells of this and many another strange and thrilling thing. It shows us the highest epic genius struggling out of savagery into complete and conscious humanity. [‘Literary Society’, n.s. 26, no. 186 (March 1911), pp. 19–20]
Tolkien also praised the story of Burnt Njal, and thought Howard the Halt the best among shorter works. He concluded with a sketch of the Norse religion and quotations from various sagas. The Chronicle reporter thought that the passages Tolkien read aloud constituted one of the charms of the paper.
In later years Tolkien continued to find the Völsunga Saga of interest, but did not hold its author in high regard, for it was solely from the Eddaic lays that the saga ‘derives its power and the attraction that it has for all those who come to it’ (quoted in *The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún, p. 39). He spoke of a similar attraction in his *‘Introduction to the “Elder Edda”’, saying that few who first read an Eddaic poem after a ‘preliminary struggle with Old Norse’ ‘can have missed the sudden recognition that they had unawares met something of tremendous force, something that in parts … is still endowed with an almost demonic energy, in spite of the ruin of its form …. If not felt early in the process it is unlikely to be captured by years of scholarly thraldom; once felt it can never be buried by mountains or molehills of research, and sustains long and wary labour’ (The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún, p. 17).
NORTHERN STUDIES AT OXFORD AND LEEDS
When Tolkien transferred from Classics to the English School at Oxford in Trinity Term 1913 he chose for his Special Subject ‘Scandinavian Philology’, which included a study of the literature. In that same term he read a paper on the Norse sagas to the Exeter College Essay Club (*Societies and clubs), perhaps the same as or similar to the paper he gave in Birmingham two years earlier; the brief report in the Stapeldon Magazine (June 1913) gives no details apart from noting that the audience again enjoyed the quotations with which Tolkien ended his talk. Reports in the Stapeldon Magazine and the Essay Club minutes note a similar response to a paper on the Elder Edda which Tolkien, now Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon, read to the Club on 17 November 1926: ‘The reader, after sketching the character and historical background of the Edda, described certain of the poems. He also gave a number of translations and readings from the Icelandic which demonstrated the peculiar poetic and musical qualities of the language’ (‘Essay Club’, Stapeldon Magazine 7, no. 39 (December 1926), p. 96).
At the University of *Leeds he was concerned with the teaching of Old Icelandic, which was studied in much the same detail as Old English; and as an adjunct, he helped to form a ‘Viking Club’ (*Societies and clubs) which comprised past and present students of Old Icelandic. On his return to Oxford Tolkien established the Kolbítar (*Societies and clubs), dons who met to read in the original and translate all of the major Icelandic Sagas and both Eddas.
During most of his time as Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon at Oxford (1925–45) Icelandic studies were part of Tolkien’s responsibilities. He lectured on all aspects of Old Icelandic language and literature, and often acted as a supervisor or examiner for any B.Litt. or D.Phil. thesis on the subject. This was recognized in Iceland, when in 1933 Tolkien was made a honorary member of Hið íslenska bókmenntafélag (the Icelandic Literary Society; *Societies and clubs). In 1931 he served on an English Faculty Board committee which proposed, among the main needs of the faculty, ‘the endowment of a Readership or Lecturership in (medieval) Scandinavian languages’. Their justification was that ‘Norse literature and philology are of central importance in the medieval curriculum of the English School. Adequate provision for the teaching of these subjects, and for the direction of advanced studies is urgently required. No provision for Scandinavian studies has been made by the Faculty of Medieval and Modern Languages since 1916’ (Oxford University Archives FA 4/5/2/3). The request was rejected by the General Board, but made again in 1939. A bequest ultimately enabled the founding of the Vigfússon Readership in Ancient Icelandic Literature and Antiquities, first held by Tolkien’s former B.Litt. student *E.O.G. Turville-Petre.
With the Vigfússon Readership established Tolkien was no longer responsible for Icelandic studies, and although Turville-Petre was called to war work almost as soon as he became Reader on 1 October 1941, Tolkien was not scheduled to give any lectures or classes on Icelandic studies after Michaelmas Term 1941 for the rest of his time in the Rawlinson and Bosworth chair. See also J.S. Ryan, ‘The Work and Preferences of the Professor of Old Norse at the University of Oxford from 1925 to 1945’, Angerthas 27 (May 1990).
NORTHERN INFLUENCES ON TOLKIEN’S FICTION
Among many influences from Northern literature on Tolkien’s works, Beowulf not only provides the cup stolen from Smaug in *The Hobbit, but also contributes to the Anglo-Saxon culture of the Rohirrim in *The Lord of the Rings, in particular the reception of Gandalf, Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli at Edoras (Book III, Chapter 6), which is based on that of Beowulf at Heorot. It also seems likely that Unferþ in Beowulf provided a prototype which Tolkien reworked as Gríma Wormtongue (see Clive Tolley, ‘And the Word Was Made Flesh’, Mallorn 32 (September 1995)). Most of the Dwarf-names in The Hobbit, and the name Gandalf (originally that of the dwarf later called Thorin), are taken from the Völuspá in the Elder Edda. Even Middle-earth and Mirkwood are derived from early Germanic languages where they appear in various forms (see Letters, pp. 220, 369–70). The figure of Gandalf, as Tolkien himself recognized (Letters, p. 119), embodies some aspects of the god Odin in Norse mythology (see further, Marjorie Burns, Perilous Realms: Celtic and Norse in Tolkien’s Middle-earth (2005), pp. 95–106). Verlyn Flieger comments that although ‘ljösalfar (light elves) and döckalfar (dark elves) are part of the world of the Icelandic Prose Edda and its source, the Elder or Poetic Edda, Tolkien carries the concept [of Light Elves and Dark Elves] beyond mere naming to create a context in which the differences that underlie the distinction can be explained and justified’ (Splintered Light: Logos and Language in Tolkien’s World (2nd edn. 2002), p. 83).
A dragon guarding a hoard, as in The Hobbit and Tolkien’s poem *The Hoard, appears in both Beowulf and the story of Sigurd. Tolkien also drew upon the latter for the story of Túrin Turambar in The Silmarillion (*‘Of Túrin Turambar’), who kills the dragon Glaurung as Sigurd kills Fáfnir, by striking the beast’s soft belly from below. Also in The Silmarillion, the deaths of the companions of Finrod and Beren at intervals by a werewolf echo the account in the Völsunga Saga of the slaying of nine of the ten fettered sons of King Volsung, one by one, on consecutive nights by a she-wolf, and Beren suffers the loss of a hand to the wolf Carcharoth as the Norse God Týr did to enable the binding of Fenris Wolf. Beorn in The Hobbit, who shape-changes into a great bear in the Battle of Five Armies, appears to owe much to the berserk warriors of Northern tradition who fought with frenzied fury and whose name, according to the most accepted interpretation, described them as wearing bearskins. And in The Lord of the Rings, Aragorn’s broken sword recalls that of Sigurd in the Volsungasaga; the seat of Amon Hen is akin to Hliðskjf, the all-seeing seat of Odin; and the meeting of the forces of Sauron and the Army of the West on Dagorlad, the Battle Plain, at the feet of the Ered Lithui or Ash Mountains, recalls the battle between the Goths and the Huns on the Danube-heath below the Hills of Ash.
After discussing the fragmentary remains of early Germanic writings, especially in Old English and Gothic, Paul Bibire observes in ‘Sægde se þe cuþe: Tolkien as Anglo-Saxonist’, Scholarship and Fantasy (1993), that
Tolkien manifestly felt the imaginative pull of these lost literatures, of what must have been. His scholarly caution … warned him against confusing what is with what might have been …. He is also remarkably careful to dissociate his recreative from his scholarly activities, and the legends of the Rohirrim and their ancestors and cousins of Mirkwood are not those of the early English, or of their continental Gothic or Norse cousins: rather, he creates an analogue of such a body of legends, as it might have developed in the different cultural and geographical circumstances of Rohan and Gondor. [pp. 124–5]
Tolkien himself commented on this separation of his re-creative and scholarly activities in an unpublished essay concerning his thoughts on translating poetry:
I must protest that I have never attempted to ‘re-create’ anything. My aim has been the basically more modest, and certainly the more laborious one of trying to make something new. No one would learn anything valid about the ‘Anglo-Saxons’ from any of my lore, not even that concerning the Rohirrim; I never intended that they should. Even the lines beginning ‘Where now the horse and the rider’ [The Lord of the Rings, bk. III, ch. 6], though they echo a line in [the Old English poem] *‘The Wanderer’ … are certainly not a translation, re-creative or other wise. They are integrated (I hope) in something wholly different … they are particular in reference, to a great hero and his renowned horse, and they are supposed to be part of the song of a minstrel of a proud and undefeated people in a hall still populous with men. Even the sentiment is different: it laments the ineluctable ending and passing back into oblivion of the fortunate, the full-lived, the unblemished and beautiful. To me that is more poignant than any particular disaster, from the cruelty of men or the hostility of the world. But if I were to venture to translate ‘The Wanderer’ – the lament of the lonely man withering away in regret, and the poet’s reflexions upon it – I would not dare to intrude any sentiment of my own, nor to disarrange the order of word and thought in the old poem, in an impertinent attempt to make it more pleasing to myself, and perhaps to others. That is not ‘re-creation’ but destruction. At best a foolish misuse of a talent for personal poetic expression; at worst the unwarranted impudence of a parasite. [Tolkien Papers, Bodleian Library, Oxford]
Tolkien did, however, give a version of part of the Old English poem *The Seafarer a significant place in *The Lost Road and *The Notion Club Papers, though in an entirely different context: a sea-longing to seek the land of the Elves. He also wrote, probably in the early 1930s, Völsungakviða en nýja (‘The New Lay of the Völsungs’), a poem of 339 eight-line stanzas. On 29 March 1967 he wrote to *W.H. Auden, who had sent him part of the Elder Edda that he and Paul B. Taylor had translated into Modern English: ‘In return again I hope to send you … a thing I did many years ago when trying to learn the art of writing alliterative poetry: an attempt to unify the lays about the Völsungs from the Elder Edda, written in the old eight-line fornyrðislag stanza’ (Letters, p. 379). A companion poem, Guðrúnarkviða en nýja (‘The New Lay of Gudrún’), of 166 eight-line stanzas, dates to the same time. (For the ‘New Lays’ see The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún.)
In the Old English poem *The Battle of Maldon the old retainer Beorhtwold, prepared to die in a last desperate stand, proclaims: ‘Will shall be the sterner, heart the bolder, spirit the greater as our strength lessens’. These words, Tolkien comments, ‘have been held to be the finest expression of the northern heroic spirit, Norse or English; the clearest statement of uttermost endurance in the service of indomitable will’ (*The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth Beorhthelm’s Son, in Essays and Studies (1953), p. 13). They exemplify as well an ideal which Tolkien applied frequently in *‘The Silmarillion’ and The Lord of the Rings. To name only one instance in the former, in the Nirnaeth Arnoediad the Men of the House of Hador stand firm against the forces of Morgoth until only Húrin remains:
Then he cast aside his shield, and wielded an axe two-handed; and it is sung that the axe smoked in the black blood of the troll-guard of Gothmog until it withered, and each time he slew Húrin cried: ‘Aurë entuluva! Day shall come again!’ Seventy times he uttered that cry; but they took him at last alive … for the Orcs grappled him with their hands, which clung to him still though he hewed off their arms; and ever their numbers were renewed, until at last he fell buried beneath them. [*The Silmarillion, p. 195]
Likewise, in The Lord of the Rings, Book V, Chapter 6, Éomer lets ‘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’. On a differfent level, the same spirit is expressed by Frodo, and especially Sam, as they struggle across the desolation of Mordor to Mount Doom, and Frodo realizes that
at best their provision would take them to their goal; and when the task was done, there they would come to an end, alone, houseless, foodless in the midst of a terrible desert. There could be no return.
‘So that was the job I felt I had to do when I started,’ thought Sam: ‘to help Mr. Frodo to the last step and then die with him? Well, if that is the job then I must do it ….’
But even as hope died in Sam, or seemed to die, it was turned to a new strength. Sam’s plain hobbit-face grew stern, almost grim, as the will hardened in him …. [bk. VI, ch. 3]
*Priscilla Tolkien once said of her father and his works of fiction:
When thinking of his imagination I feel that like his scholarship it was overwhelmingly Northern European in every detail of his deepest loves and fears. The ideas aroused by the sufferings of long, hard, cruel winters, the dazzling beauty of the short flowering of Spring and Summer, and the sadness of seeing this once more pass back into the darkness; the symbolism of darkness and light is continual in [*The Silmarillion] for good and evil, despair and hope. Such a climate also nourished the virtues which he held in such high regard: heroism and endurance, loyalty, and fidelity, both in love and in war. [‘Talk Given at Church House, Westminster on 16.9.77 by Priscilla Tolkien’, Amon Hen 29 [?November 1977], p. 4]
See also ‘Norse Mythological Elements in The Hobbit’ by Mitzi M. Brunsdale, Mythlore 9, no. 4, whole no. 34 (Winter 1983); Fredrik J. Heinemann, ‘Tolkien and Old Icelandic Literature’, Scholarship and Fantasy (1993); Gloria St. Clair, ‘An Overview of the Northern Influences on Tolkien’s Works’ and ‘Volsunga Saga and Narn: Some Analogies’, both in Proceedings of the J.R.R. Tolkien Centenary Conference 1992, ed. Patricia Reynolds and Glen H. GoodKnight (1995); Tom Shippey, ‘Tolkien and Iceland: The Philology of Envy’ (2002), revised in Roots and Branches: Selected Papers on Tolkien (2007); Marjorie Burns, Perilous Realms: Celtic and Norse in Tolkien’s Middle-earth (2005) and ‘Old Norse Literature’ in J.R.R. Tolkien Encyclopedia, ed. Michael D.C. Drout (2006); Dimitra Fimi, ‘Tolkien and Old Norse Antiquity’ in Old Norse Made New: Essays on the Post Medieval Reception of Old Norse Literature and Culture, ed. David Clark and Carl Phelpstead (2007); J.S. Ryan, ‘Trolls and Other Themes: William Craigie’s Significant Folkloric Influence on the Style of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit’ in Tolkien’s View: Windows into his World (2009); and Mary R. Bowman, ‘Refining the Gold: Tolkien, The Battle of Maldon, and the Northern Theory of Courage’, Tolkien Studies 7 (2010).
The Northmen and the Wainriders
see Cirion and Eorl and the Friendship of Gondor and Rohan
‘Note on the Landing of the Five Wizards and Their Functions
and Operations’seeThe Five Wizards
Note on Final Consonants see Primitive Quendian Structure
Notes for Qenya Declensions. Description of ‘the Common Eldarin and Old Qenya elements and features that underlie the Qenya declensions’ (p. xvii), published in Parma Eldalamberon 21 (2013), pp. 66–9, edited with commentary and notes by Christopher Gilson, Patrick H. Wynne, and Arden R. Smith.
Written on six pages, with revisions, Notes for Qenya Declensions is dated by the editors to the early 1950s. It is closely based on, and probably composed not very long after, an earlier document, *Nouns.
Notes on Motives in the Silmarillion. Essay, published with notes and commentary as text VII in the section ‘Myths Transformed’ of *Morgoth’s Ring (1993), pp. 394–408.
The work, probably from the late 1950s, exists in two versions. The earlier is a four-page manuscript inscribed ‘Some notes on the “philosophy” of the Silmarillion’, described by *Christopher Tolkien as ‘rapidly expressed’ and without ‘a clear ending’ (Morgoth’s Ring, p. 394). The later version, greatly expanded and more carefully expressed, was left unfinished in mid-sentence after twelve manuscript pages.
The ‘notes’ compare Sauron and Morgoth in *‘The Silmarillion’, their characters and motives, their relative power at various times, and the way they used it. ‘Morgoth had no “plan”: unless destruction and reduction to nil of a world in which he had only a share can be called a “plan”’ (p. 397). But ‘Sauron had never reached this stage of nihilistic madness. He did not object to the existence of the world, so long as he could do what he liked with it’ (p. 396). Then follows a discussion of the reasons why the Valar were reluctant ‘to come into open battle with Morgoth’, concluding that Morgoth’s power and being were disseminated throughout the world – ‘the whole of “middle-earth” was Morgoth’s Ring’ – and to try to destroy him ‘might well end in reducing Middle-earth to chaos, possibly even all Arda’; whereas ‘the final eradication of Sauron … was achievable by the destruction of the Ring’ into which his power had been concentrated (p. 400).
In a section developed fully only in the second text, Tolkien suggests reasons for the apparent inaction of the Valar against Morgoth during the First Age, and that their eventual intervention was precisely timed. Manwë with his knowledge of the Music and ‘power of direct recourse to and communication with Eru … must have grasped with great clarity … that it was the essential mode of the process of “history” in Arda that evil should constantly arise, and that out of it new good should constantly come’ (p. 402). The second version ends soon after turning its attention to the later resistance to Sauron, but the published text continues with the first version, from the point where the two texts diverge, with a brief philosophical consideration of the future of Arda.
Finally Tolkien turns to the question of the origin of Orcs: ‘Part of the Elf-Man idea gone wrong. Though as for Orcs, the Eldar believed Morgoth had actually “bred” them by capturing Men (and Elves) early [i.e. in the early days of their existence] and increasing to the utmost any corrupt tendencies they possessed’ (p. 406). (See also *Orcs.)
Christopher Tolkien comments that ‘despite its incomplete state … this is the most comprehensive account that my father wrote of how, in his later years, he had come to “interpret” the nature of Evil in his mythology …’ (p. 406). See also *Good and Evil.
‘Notes on Óre’. A single typescript sheet, apparently the beginning of a substantial essay on the common Eldarin root ȜOR and its descendants, edited with notes by Carl F. Hostetter, was published in Vinyar Tengwar 41 (July 2000), pp. 11–19.
In *The Lord of the Rings Appendix E Quenya óre is glossed ‘heart (inner mind)’, as used in a phrase such as ‘my heart tells me’, but ‘“heart” is not suitable, except in brevity, since óre does not correspond in sense to any of the English confused uses of “heart” ….’ The essay was to have discussed ‘what the óre was for Elvish thought and speech, and the nature of its counsels’ (p. 11) but does not proceed very far. The sheet was found between the typescript of the finished part of *The Shibboleth of Fëanor and the manuscript draft for an unwritten excursus on the names of the sons of Fëanor. It seems unconnected with that work, though probably contemporary with it, 1968 or later.
Pages of manuscript draft material give some indications of how the essay might have continued. Among these is an interesting note, more concerned with the *Athrabeth than etymology. The writer is not identified, but seems to be a Man of a later period. After summarizing the Athrabeth it continues: ‘For (as far as we can now judge [from]) the legends (mainly of Elvish origin probably, though coming down to us through Men) it would seem clear that Men were not intended to have Elvish longevity, limited only by the life of the Earth’, but were intended to enjoy a much greater life-span before passing from the circles of the world. The Elves believed that the life-span of Men had been shortened as a result of some rebellion against Eru in the form of accepting Melkor as God, after which ‘only the wisest of Men could distinguish between [?his] evil promptings and true óre’ (p. 14).
On Eldarin and Quenya, see *Languages, Invented.
The Notion Club Papers. Story, published with commentary and notes in *Sauron Defeated (1992), pp. 145–327.
SYNOPSIS
The heart of The Notion Club Papers is presented as the surviving part of a record of meetings of an *Oxford society during 1986 and 1987 (some forty years in the future when Tolkien wrote the work). Following some preliminaries, the first of its two parts (as originally conceived) begins with a brief report of a meeting in November 1986, notes the omission of ‘one or two minor entries’, and continues with an account of the meeting of 20 February 1987. Michael Ramer, one of the members of the club, has finished reading a space-travel story he has written. This leads to discussion of the credibility of the machine or other device used by writers of space stories to take characters to their destination. Another member, Rupert Dolbear, says that the problem with Ramer’s work is that it is out of keeping with its frame-machinery, and challenges Ramer to say how he got to the place described in the story.
At the next meeting, Ramer explains that he has considered methods of space-travel both for a story and for himself, and that he has tried to train his mind to travel in his dreams. He describes various dream experiences, some inspired by stories he had written long ago, some fragmentary, such as a Green Wave towering over fields, and visions of the planets of our solar system as well as unknown worlds. When he mentions the names of his worlds, the members discuss language and the weak methods of communication common in space-travel stories. Ramer says he has more dreams about *Atlantis than about space, and mentions the Wave towering over the land, a Great Door, and the Elvish En-keladim (all aspects of Tolkien’s mythology, in which *Númenor is associated with Atlantis and his own dreams of a great wave). Ramer ends his account by describing a vision of a disorderly planet, then of an area in which the inhabitants and their buildings spread like ringworm; but as he came closer, he realized that he had been watching a speeded-up history of the Thames Valley and Oxford.
The second part of the work records a series of meetings following directly on the first part, in which the matter of Númenor becomes of prime importance. It seems likely that Tolkien originally intended Part Two to proceed differently, since an outline for it begins: ‘Do the Atlantis story and abandon Eriol-Saga, with Loudham, Jeremy, Guildford and Ramer taking part’ (Sauron Defeated, p. 281). But there is no indication of how the ‘Eriol-Saga’ was to be introduced. Since Arundel Loudham (changed to Lowdham during the writing of the first version of Part Two) was to play an important role in the ‘Atlantis story’, Tolkien made additions to Part One to suggest Lowdham’s interest in the myth. A link is provided by a fragmentary entry reporting the end of a meeting on 13 March, when Lowdham tells Ramer and Guildford that he has been having strange experiences. As the story proceeds, it becomes clear that he is haunted subconsciously by Númenor, and is reminded of the temple Sauron built there when he sees what appears to be smoke coming from the lantern of the Radcliffe Camera.
At the first meeting of the Club in Trinity Term 1987, on 8 May, the members discuss neologisms (the use of new words or expressions), the misuse of established words, and the way that language changes and evolves. They also talk about legends of origin and cultural myths, and whether, if one could go back in time, one would find that myth dissolves into history, or real history becomes more mythical. At some point Lowdham becomes upset, curses ‘Zigûr’, and cries out: ‘Behold the Eagles of the Lords of the West! They are coming over Nūmenōr!’ Ramer says that Nūmenōr is his name for Atlantis, and fellow member Wilfrid Trewin Jeremy says that he also has some recollection of hearing the name. At the meeting on 22 May Lowdham comments on his strange names Alwin Arundel, chosen when his mother objected to the Ælfwine Éarendel his father, Edwin, had wanted to give him. He tells how his father set out in his ship The Éarendel (in the first text Éarendel Star) one day in 1947 and was never seen again. Lowdham remembers his father keeping a diary in a strange script, and that after his disappearance Lowdham had found a sheet in the same script but could not decipher it. The members discuss the meanings of the names Ælfwine and Éadwine, and historical figures with those and related names. (See also *Eriol and Ælfwine.)
This in turn leads to a discussion of the name Éarendel in the lines from the Old English Crist: Éalá Éarendel engla beorhtost / ofer middangeard monnum sended. Lowdham says that he has heard the similar ëarendil in another language, ‘where it actually means Great Mariner, or literally Friend of the Sea; though it also has, I think, some connexion with the stars’ (p. 237). When he is asked ‘what language?’ he tells the members that since he was about ten he has had ‘words, even occasional phrases’, ringing in his ears; ‘both in dream and waking abstraction. They come into my mind unbidden, or I wake to hear myself repeating them. Sometimes they seem to be quite isolated, just words or names …. It was a long time before I began to piece the fragments together’ (pp. 237–8). He recorded these, and after removing Anglo-Saxon or related elements, most of the remainder seem to belong to two languages which he had never come across. He associates both languages with a place called Nūmenōr in the first language (which he calls Avallonian, in fact Quenya; see *Languages, Invented), and Anadūnē in the second (which he calls Adunaic).
He discusses other words, and notes that even those in Old English came to him before he began to learn that language. Among the longer passages of Old English are a line which means ‘a straight way lay westward, now it is bent’, and some verses, one of which includes lines Lowdham translates as: ‘There is many a thing in the west of the world unknown to men; marvels and strange beings, [a land lovely to look on,] the dwelling place of the Elves and the bliss of the Gods’ (pp. 243, 244).
By the next meeting, in Ramer’s rooms on 12 June 1987, Lowdham has heard a much longer passage in his two unidentified languages. His incomplete translation shows that it is an account of the Fall of Númenor – the coming of Sauron, the attempt to invade the land of the Lords of the West, the drowning of Númenor, and the changing of the shape of the world so that there is no longer a straight path to the West. He mentions the name Sauron, and its Adunaic equivalent Zigūr, at which Wilfrid Trewin Jeremy reacts strangely. Both he and Lowdham seem to relive the destruction of Númenor, as dark clouds roll over the sky from the West and a violent thunderstorm breaks. Lowdham addresses Jeremy as ‘Voronwë’, and Jeremy addresses Lowdham as ‘Elendil’; both rush out into the freak storm. During the evening, Lowdham mentions again the sheet with the strange script he had found among his father’s papers, intending to say something about it later, but does not. The other members leave when the storm subsides, and Ramer picks up a sheet of paper and puts it in a drawer.
On 26 June a brief letter from Lowdham and Jeremy is read to the Club, saying they ‘were cast up far away when the wind fell’ (p. 254) and are now doing research. Ramer produces the sheet dropped by Lowdham at the last meeting. Since Lowdham had mentioned that some of the words he received were in Old English, on the chance that this was the language of the strange script, Ramer took the sheet to old Professor Rashbold of Pembroke, who deciphered it and positively identified the language as ‘Old English of a strongly Mercian (West Midland) colour, ninth century’ (p. 257). Translated into Modern English, it turns out to be another, longer account of the last days of Númenor.
The next meeting, on 25 September 1987, begins with Philip Frankley, another member affected by the resonances of Númenor, reading a poem, The Death of St Brendan (see *Imram), which includes allusions to Tolkien’s mythology (*‘The Silmarillion’). He woke ‘four days ago with the thing largely fixed’ in his mind (p. 265). The members discuss possible influences from real accounts of St Brendan, but note there seems no source for the lines describing ‘the round world’ plunging ‘steeply down’ while ‘the old road’ goes on ‘as an unseen bridge … on arches’ (p. 264).
Lowdham and Jeremy then describe their travels around the western coasts of Britain and Ireland, and the rumours they heard of huge phantom waves. They recount that while staying in Porlock (in Somerset on the coast of the Bristol Channel) they both dreamed themselves back to tenth century England in a hall crowded with warriors who had come to join Edward the Elder’s fight against the invading Danes. In that dream Lowdham, now the minstrel Ælfwine, was called upon to entertain those in the hall, and recited a verse about his sea-longing, while Jeremy, now Tréowine from the Marches, told the story of King Sheave. They finish their account for that evening as these Anglo-Saxon personas leave the hall and promise to tell the members more at the next meeting.
At this point, however, Tolkien abandoned The Notion Club Papers. Only a few notes and fragments indicate how the story might have continued. One note suggests that Tréowine and Ælfwine were to sail west, find the Straight Path, and see the round world below, then be driven back. Another has ‘sojourn in Númenor before and during the fall ends with Elendil and Voronwë fleeing on a hill of water into the dark with the Eagles and lightning pursuing them’, and ‘At the end … Lowdham and Jeremy have a vivid dream of the Fall of Númenor’ (p. 279).
ASSOCIATED ‘PAPERS’
In addition to this inner core of the minutes of the Notion Club, as part of their fictional ‘frame’, Tolkien also produced associated ‘papers’. The layer nearest the core is the framework of the (fictional) book Leaves from the Notion Club Papers, subdivided into Part One and Part Two, supposedly edited by one Howard Green and published in 2014, for which Tolkien produced a facsimile title-page (Sauron Defeated, p. 154). According to the ‘editor’s’ foreword, Green found the Club’s papers ‘after the Summer Examinations of 2012 on the top of one of a number of sacks of waste paper in the basement of the Examination Schools in Oxford …’ (p. 155), but was unable to discover how they had got there. They appear to be the incomplete reports of the meetings of an Oxford club from approximately 1980 to 1990, with references to an event as late as 1987, apparently prepared for publication with notes; but ‘Brown’ could find no trace of the existence of a Notion Club. He describes the surviving papers, including a list of members.
Another layer is a ‘Note to the Second Edition’ of the book, in which Howard Green quotes the opinions of Mr W.W. Wormald and Mr D.N. Borrow that the paper and style of writing suggest that the materials date to during or just after the ‘Six Years’ War’ (i.e. the Second World War, 1939–45). Green, who had earlier suggested that if the future events described in the papers were ‘foreseen’ by their author, concludes: ‘If … any such club existed at that earlier period, the names remain pseudonyms. The forward dating might have been adopted as an additional screen. But I am now convinced that the Papers are a work of fiction; and it may well be that the predictions (notably the Storm), though genuine and not coincidences, were unconscious …’ (p. 158).
HISTORY
Tolkien wrote to *Stanley Unwin on 21 July 1946 that he had ‘in a fortnight of comparative leisure round about last Christmas written three parts of another book, taking up in an entirely different frame and setting what little value in the inchoate *Lost Road … and other things beside. I hoped to finish this in a rush, but my health gave way after Christmas’ (Letters, p. 118). Christopher Tolkien is undoubtedly correct that it would have been impossible for his father to produce The Notion Club Papers and all of its associated material (*The Drowning of Anadûnê, Adunaic language, facsimiles) in a fortnight. He thinks, rather, that his father continued to work on it through the first half of 1946. This seems to be confirmed by the fact that Tolkien read The Drowning of Anadûnê (probably the final version) to the Inklings on 22 August 1946, and in recording this in his diary *W.H. Lewis implied that The Notion Club Papers had previously been read to the Inklings. Christopher suggests that during Christmas 1945 his father probably wrote only the first two manuscripts of Part One and the manuscript of Part Two.
The earliest, roughly written manuscript of Part One was apparently followed by an expanded version with many changes and additions. Christopher Tolkien thinks that after some rough drafting, his father produced the first, manuscript, version of Part Two (in which the two languages which come to Lowdham are unnamed, but clearly Quenya and Noldorin/Sindarin; see *Languages, Invented), but left it unfinished to make some preliminary sketches and outlines for, and the first version of, The Drowning of Anadûnê.
He then made a fair copy of Part One, abandoning it just before the end, and then a typescript, one section of which seems to have been done before the fair copy. He began a typescript of Part Two (in which Adunaic replaced Sindarin), but stopped after completing the entry for 22 May to make typescripts of three successive versions of The Drowning of Anadûnê. Probably when all or most of this was finished, he returned to The Notion Club Papers and began another typescript of Part Two at a point near the beginning of the minutes for 22 May. He replaced the relevant part of the first typescript, and continued as far as the manuscript extended. Christopher Tolkien notes that his father apparently changed his mind about the division into two parts, deleting ‘Part I / The Ramblings of Michael Ramer / Out of the Talkative Planet’ from the first page of the last version of Part One, and providing no heading at the beginning of the typescript of Part Two, whereas on the title-page for the previous manuscript appears ‘II / The Strange Case of Arundel Lowdham’ (p. 153).
The final texts of both parts of The Notion Club Papers were published in Sauron Defeated, with readings from earlier versions where they differ significantly. Notes explain some of the allusions and references in the text. Some of the names that appear in The Notion Club Papers are explained in *The War of the Jewels (1994), p. xi.
Christopher Tolkien admits that he does not know why his father abandoned The Notion Club Papers. ‘It may be that he felt that the work had lost all unity, that “Atlantis” had broken apart the frame in which it had been set …. But I think also that having forced himself to return to The Lord of the Rings, and having brought it to its end, he was then deflected into the very elaborate further work on the legends of the Elder Days that preceded the actual publication of The Lord of the Rings’ (p. 152). Later he wondered, too, if the conception had not become too ‘intricate’ for his father to continue (p. 282).
Another reason may be that Tolkien became distracted by ideas for a new language, Adunaic (later Adûnaic, see *Languages, Invented), as spoken in Númenor, and interested in working out a new study of the fall of Númenor, in a Mannish tradition: The Drowning of Anadûnê. He spent considerable time on Adunaic, producing a seventeen-page typescript, said to be a report written by Lowdham to present to the Notion Club. This begins by describing the probable history of the language, and continues with an elaborate but incomplete account of its phonology. Tolkien also spent hours making ‘facsimiles’ of Lowdham’s Adunaic fragments and two of Lowdham’s father’s Old English texts written in Tengwar (*Writing systems); these are reproduced in Sauron Defeated. The transcriptions and translation of the fragments that Lowdham produces at the meeting of 12 June are reproduced as two colour plates at the beginning of the HarperCollins and Houghton Mifflin hardback editions.
THE INKLINGS
An important element of the ‘minutes’ are references or allusions made by the members of the Notion Club to members of the *Inklings and their works. These include criticism of the methods of transporting Elwin Ransom to Mars and Venus in Out of the Silent Planet (1938) and Perelandra (1943) by *C.S. Lewis. One of the members has lectured on Lewis and *Charles Williams with the title Public House School. The Allegory of Love (1936) by Lewis, and Williams’ House of the Octopus (1945), are mentioned as probably the only works by those authors still remembered at all. A few ‘read C.R. [*Christopher] Tolkien’s little books of memoirs: In the Roaring Forties, and The Inns and Outs of Oxford’ but only three members of the Club ‘bothered with Tolkien père and all that elvish stuff’ (p. 219). In the first manuscript of Part Two Jeremy remembers finding in a secondhand shop a manuscript, Quenta Eldalien, being the History of the Elves by John Arthurson (= John R.R. Tolkien, son of *Arthur Tolkien), in which he found the name Nūmenor (sic). Other members then recall C.S. Lewis’s use of ‘Numinor’. Professor Rashbold of Pembroke, who deciphers and translates the Old English text (written in Tengwar; see *Writing systems) is another sly allusion to Tolkien himself (see *Names).
There are also ‘external’ associations with the Inklings, provided in editorial apparatus. A rejected first page of Part One bears the title Beyond Lewis or Out of the Talkative Planet, and continues: ‘Being a fragment of an apocryphal Inklings’ Saga, made by some imitator at some time in the 1980s’. Its replacement has the title Beyond Probability or Out of the Talkative Planet’, a play on the titles of two of C.S. Lewis’s works, Out of the Silent Planet and Beyond Personality (1944), and suggests that the work was ‘written after 1989, as an apocryphal imitation of the Inklings Saga Book’ (pp. 148–9). The real Inklings regrettably kept no such record of their meetings, but The Notion Club Papers probably conveys some of the atmosphere of their discussions. An early list of members of the Notion Club, identifying some with individual Inklings, shows that Tolkien began with such a scheme, but he seems to have abandoned the idea almost immediately. Although some Notion Club members seem to portray aspects of certain of the Inklings, exact equivalences were soon rejected.
The first pages mentioned above continue with ‘Preface to the Inklings’ (rejected version) and ‘aside to the audience’ (second) version): ‘I beg of the present company not to look for their own faces in this mirror. For the mirror is cracked, and at the best you will only see your countenances distorted, and adorned maybe with noses (and other features) that are not your own, but belong to other members of the company – if to anybody’ (pp. 148–9). Christopher Tolkien thinks it likely that his father’s first idea ‘was far less elaborate than it became; intending perhaps, so far as the form was concerned, no more than a jeu d’esprit for the entertainment of the Inklings – while the titles seem to emphasize that it was to be, in part, the vehicle of criticism and discussion of aspects of Lewis’s “planetary” novels’ (p. 149). He sees no indication that his father envisaged Part Two as written, until after he completed Part One.
CRITICISM
In ‘Tolkien’s Experiment with Time: The Lost Road, “The Notion Club Papers”, and J.W. Dunne’, in Proceedings of the J.R.R. Tolkien Centenary Conference 1992, ed. Patricia Reynolds and Glen H. GoodKnight (1995), Verlyn Flieger finds that The Notion Club Papers show
a considerable advance in technical sophistication over The Lost Road. Tolkien’s handling of his material is surer, and his sense of story better developed. There is an increase in narrative tension through a carefully-orchestrated sequence of psychological aberrations, a judicious sprinkling of plot-teasers in the first part of the story, and a gothic use of weather, culminating in the story’s violent climax in a night of storm. The tone of this second narrative is more energetic and its setting more clearly contemporary, more conspicuously grounded in time and place, than that of the earlier story. The argumentative, rumbustious members of the Notion Club are a distinct improvement over the rather quiet Errols, while Tolkien’s earliest drafts make it clear that the wit, rough badinage, and often heated exchanges were drawn from life – specifically the Inklings. [p. 42]
See also Flieger’s A Question of Time: J.R.R. Tolkien’s Road to Faërie (1997), especially Chapter 5, and her ‘The Curious Incident of the Dream at the Barrow: Memory and Reincarnation in Middle-earth’, Tolkien Studies 4 (2007).
David Bratman wrote in ‘The Literary Value of The History of Middle-earth’, in Tolkien’s Legendarium: Essays on The History of Middle-earth, ed. Verlyn Flieger and Carl F. Hostetter (2000), that in The Lost Road and The Notion Club Papers ‘we have something not otherwise found in Tolkien’s fiction – stories with explicitly modern setting, which display the author’s own aesthetic to language so extensively that his biographer quoted from them for that purpose …. Not even in his essay *A Secret Vice did Tolkien so vividly convey what the imagination of language meant to him’ (p. 81). He also remarks that
The club may best be thought of as the Inklings viewed through Tolkien’s eyes and idealized to his tastes …. He knew his men intimately … and his imaginary conversations have all the freshness, repartee, and meanderings into intellectual byways that one would expect of a transcription of the real Inklings meetings. The opening discussions are wide-ranging considerations of secondary-world literature that in style must be very similar to actual Inklings meetings, though the content is tinged heavily by Tolkien’s own ideas and interests. [p. 82]
See also John D. Rateliff, ‘The Lost Road, The Dark Tower, and The Notion Club Papers: Tolkien and Lewis’s Time Travel Triad’, in Tolkien’s Legendarium: Essays on The History of Middle-earth, ed. Verlyn Flieger and Carl F. Hostetter (2000).
Nouns. Description of nouns in Common Eldarin (see *Languages, Invented), published in Parma Eldalamberon 21 (2013), pp. 63–5, edited with commentary and notes by Christopher Gilson, Patrick H. Wynne, and Arden R. Smith.
Written on four pages, with revisions, Nouns is dated by the editors to the early 1950s. It was closely followed by *Notes for Qenya Declensions.
Númenor. The story of Númenor apparently sprang from a chance conversation between Tolkien and *C.S. Lewis in 1936 or 1937. As Tolkien recalled in a letter to Charlotte and Denis Plimmer: ‘L[ewis] said to me one day: “Tollers, there is too little of what we really like in stories. I am afraid we shall have to try and write some ourselves.” We agreed that he should try “space-travel”, and I should try “time-travel” …. My effort, after a few promising chapters, ran dry: it was too long a way round to what I really wanted to make, a new version of the Atlantis legend’ (8 February 1967, Letters, p. 378). The time-travel theme allowed Tolkien to plan a story, *The Lost Road (see further for the chronology of its origin), in which he could incorporate a version of the *Atlantis legend which had haunted him since childhood. He told Christopher Bretherton: ‘This legend or myth or dim memory of some ancient history has always troubled me. In sleep I had the dreadful dream of the ineluctable wave, either coming out of the quiet sea, or coming in towering over the green inlands. It still occurs occasionally, though now exorcized by writing about it. It always ends by surrender, and I awake gasping out of deep water’ (Letters, p. 347). In a letter to Mrs E.C. Ossendrijver on 5 January 1961 he said that ‘Númenor, shortened form of Númenórë’ was his own invention. Its legends ‘are my own use for my own purposes of the Atlantis legend, but not based on special knowledge, but on a special personal concern with this tradition of the culture-bearing men of the Sea, which so profoundly affected the imagination of peoples of Europe with westward-shores’ (Letters, p. 303).
Early texts of the *‘Silmarillion’ mythology say little about the fate of the Men who fought with the Elves against Morgoth in the First Age. *The Book of Lost Tales never reached that point. The *Sketch of the Mythology (c. 1926) says only that the Valar assigned Middle-earth to Men, and that Elves who did not leave those lands would fade. The first version of the *Quenta Noldorinwa (c. 1930) states that Men of the race of Hador and Bëor were to be allowed to depart with the Elves for the West if they wished, but of these Men only Elrond was left, and he elected to remain in Middle-earth. In the second version, the permission for Men to leave was omitted. *Christopher Tolkien thinks that this passing idea in the Quenta Noldorinwa nevertheless represents ‘the first germ of the story of the departure of the survivors of the Elf-friends to Númenor’ (*The Shaping of Middle-earth, p. 200).
The subsequent evolution of Númenor in Tolkien’s writings was complex. It has roots in his mythology of the First Age and in real world myths; and in the quarter-century following his agreement with Lewis, Tolkien not only brought Númenor into two unfinished works of time-travel, The Lost Road and *The Notion Club Papers, but also wrote three narrative accounts of the island’s story, *The Fall of Númenor, *The Drowning of Anadûnê, and the *Akallabêth, as well as *A Description of the Island of Númenor; he developed and extended its history to provide a vital background to *The Lord of the Rings; and he began (but did not complete) two other narrative works, one (*Aldarion and Erendis) set in Númenor and telling the story of one of the earlier kings, the other (*Tal-Elmar) in which Númenóreans are seen from the point of view of men of Middle-earth.
THE LOST ROAD AND THE FALL OF NÚMENOR
Tolkien described his plans for The Lost Road in his letter to Christopher Bretherton: ‘the end was to be the presence of my hero in the drowning of Atlantis. This was to be called Númenor, the Land in the West.’ A father and son would enter into various historic and legendary times and
come at last to Amandil and Elendil leaders of the loyal party in Númenor, when it fell under the domination of Sauron. Elendil ‘Elf-friend’ was the founder of the Exiled kingdoms in Arnor and Gondor. But I found my real interest was only in the upper end, the Akallabêth or Atalantie (‘Downfall’ in Númenórean and Quenya [see *Languages, Invented]), so I brought all the stuff I had written on the originally unrelated legends of Númenor into relation with the main mythology. [16 July 1964, Letters, p. 347]
Christopher Tolkien, however, can find no evidence that Númenor/Atlantis ever existed independent of the mythology: ‘there was never a time when the legends of Númenor were “unrelated to the main mythology”. My father erred in his recollection (or expressed himself obscurely, meaning something else); the letter cited above was indeed written nearly thirty years later’ (*The Lost Road and Other Writings, p. 10).
It also seems evident that the conception of Númenor and of its destruction arose only as part of Tolkien’s plans for his time-travel story. The importance he attached to this part of The Lost Road is confirmed by the preliminary work he did on the Númenórean background before he began to write the story proper. He wrote a quick outline of the history of Númenor, then a fuller, untitled draft narrative: the first version of The Fall of Númenor. After this he wrote four chapters of The Lost Road, two introductory chapters which end as the first instance of time-travel is about to take place, and two which narrate the beginning of an episode in Númenor. There the manuscript ends, except for brief notes for other episodes and part of a chapter set in tenth-century England. Probably after composing the two chapters set in Númenor, Tolkien wrote a second version of The Fall of Númenor.
Although later writings extended the history of Númenor, and added or changed many details, the basic story was already present in the first outline. After the defeat of Morgoth at the end of the First Age, the Valar reward Men who had helped to bring this about with an island in which to dwell, variously called Atalantë, Númenor, and Andúnië. The Númenóreans grow in wisdom and become great mariners. They sail around the shores of Middle-earth and see the Gates of the Morning in the East at the edge of the world (in Tolkien’s mythology originally conceived as flat). Lesser men living in Middle-earth take the Númenóreans as gods. In early versions of the story, the Valar, the ‘Lords of the West’, permit the people of Númenor to sail west to Tol Eressëa, the Lonely Isle where many Elves live, but not further west to Valinor, home of the Valar themselves.
The Númenóreans are granted longer lives than other Men, but are still mortal. Later generations begin to resent this limitation, and to believe that in Valinor they would gain immortal life (*Mortality and Immortality). They are encouraged in this by Thû (the name of Sauron in some early versions of the mythology), once a follower of Morgoth, who comes to Númenor in the likeness of a bird and gains such influence that the king builds a temple to Morgoth and eventually attempts to invade Valinor with a great fleet. In this crisis the Valar, empowered by Ilúvatar, sunder Valinor from the earth, the edges of which are bent back so that it becomes a globe, while a rift opens in which the Númenórean fleet and Númenor itself are destroyed.
The Númenóreans who escape this disaster by sailing to Middle-earth become lords and kings of men. Many still seek in vain to prolong life, but manage only to preserve the bodies of the dead. Their descendants preserve a confused memory of a land in the West ruled by the Gods, to which the dead might come. From this arises a custom among those who dwell on the west coast of Middle-earth of placing their dead on ships and sending them out to sea. Some Númenóreans are able to see, or partly see, a path or bridge rising above the world and leading to the True West; but when they try to find this path they succeed only in sailing around the world. Only the Elves are still able to reach Valinor along the Straight Road.
Amroth, who had continued to honour the Valar, is one of those who escape the destruction of Númenor. He becomes a king in Middle-earth and allies with Elrond, son of Eärendel, and with Elves who had stayed in Middle-earth in an attack on Thû’s fortress. Although they are victorious, Amroth is slain. Thû is driven out and flees to a dark forest.
Having established this history, Tolkien was able to begin to write The Lost Road. The first two chapters, set in more or less contemporary *Cornwall, introduce the main protagonist, Alboin Errol, who from boyhood has heard in his dreams echoes of strange languages, which he calls Eressëan or Elf-latin and Beleriandic, including a passage in Eressëan describing the downfall of Númenor. He finds himself suddenly declaring that some dark clouds ‘look like the eagles of the Lords of the West coming upon Númenor’. Then Elendil of Númenor appears to him and offers him the chance to go back in time, if he takes his son with him. (These two chapters are described at greater length in our article on *The Lost Road.)
The two Númenórean chapters take place forty-four years after the arrival of Sauron (now so named) in Númenor. Elendil (replacing Amroth) is the leader of a party faithful to the old ways and beliefs, while his son, Herendil, has been half won over to the opinion of those supporting Sauron. The kings of Númenor are now descended from Eärendel, and the last king, Tarkalion, in his pride, summons Sauron to Númenor, demanding homage from him. Elendil, who is trying to persuade Herendil to his own point of view, says that men now covet the lands of others, influenced by Sauron; they build metal-clad ships, strong fortresses, and many weapons. Those who displease the king disappear, and there are spies, prisons, torments, and evil rites. Sauron has built a temple to Morgoth on the mountain holy to Ilúvatar, and is encouraging the Númenóreans to abandon the Elvish Eressëan language and revive the ancestral speech of Men. Elendil foresees that Sauron will encourage the ageing king to invade Valinor in a useless bid for immortality. He asks his son to choose between his father and Sauron, and with Herendil’s choice for his father the narrative ends.
The picture Tolkien draws of Númenor under the influence of Sauron, a once great nation in decay, almost certainly owes something to then-current events in Nazi Germany. Christopher Tolkien comments:
From Elendil’s words at the end of The Lost Road there emerges a sinister picture: the withdrawal of the besotted and aging king from the public view, the unexpected disappearance of people unpopular with the ‘government’, informers, prisons, torture, secrecy, fear of the night; propaganda in the form of the ‘rewriting of history’ …; the multiplication of weapons of war, the purpose of which is concealed but guessed at; and behind all the dreadful figure of Sauron …. Moreover, Númenor is seen by the young as over-populous, boring, ‘over-known’ …; and this cause of discontent is used, it seems, by Sauron to further the policy of ‘imperial’ expansion and ambition that he presses on the king. When at this time my father reached back to the world of the first man to bear the name ‘Elf-friend’ he found there an image of what he most condemned and feared in his own. [The Lost Road and Other Writings, p. 77]
The second version of The Fall of Númenor probably followed, or was contemporary with, the writing of The Lost Road, for it includes details introduced in that work. Elrond, son of Eärendel, is now named as the first ruler of Númenor. The Númenóreans adopt the speech of the Elves of the Blessed Realm and Tol Eressëa. Elendil, who escapes the downfall, becomes a king in Beleriand and allies with Gil-galad, the Elf-king, against Sauron, whose stronghold, Mordor, is now named. Although Sauron is overthrown, both Elendil and Gil-galad are slain. A later addition states that Tol Eressëa as well as Valinor is removed from the world.
On 15 November 1937 Tolkien submitted the unfinished manuscript of the *Quenta Silmarillion to George Allen & Unwin (*Publishers). In the following month, while the work was being considered, he leaped ahead in it and wrote an account of the end of the First Age which includes information relevant to the story of Númenor. Eärendel now has two sons who are allowed by Manwë to choose freely whether to be accounted among the immortal Elves or mortal Mankind. One son, Elrond, chooses to be of Elf-kind but remains in Middle-earth rather than accompany the Elves returning into the West; but the other, Elros, chooses the fate of Men. At some time after this, in an amanuensis typescript of the second version of The Fall of Númenor, Tolkien substituted Elros for Elrond as the first king of that realm.
THE LORD OF THE RINGS
Further developments in the Númenor story occurred intermittently during the writing of The Lord of the Rings as it began to play an increasingly important role in the internal history of that work, and finally as an essential strand. Tolkien began to write The Lord of the Rings in December 1937, but it was some time before he developed the Necromancer of The Hobbit into the maker of the One Ring – Sauron, the servant of Melkor in the First Age, who was responsible for the destruction of Númenor near the end of the Second. It was not until late summer and early autumn 1938 that relevant allusions began to appear in the text: Trotter (the precursor of Aragorn) remarks of land the company is passing through that evil people once lived there, who ‘came under the sway of the Dark Lord. It is said that they were overthrown by Elendil, as King of Western Men, who aided Gilgalad, when they made war on the Dark Lord’ (*The Return of the Shadow, pp. 192–3). The idea emerged that Bilbo’s ring is more powerful than other rings, and that it was ‘taken from the Lord [Sauron] himself when Gilgalad wrestled with him, and taken by a flying Elf’ (The Return of the Shadow, p. 226). The ‘flying Elf’ was soon replaced by Isildur, son of Elendil, who cuts the One Ring from Sauron’s hand but then loses it in the river Anduin when he is attacked. Tolkien also considered making the Rangers ‘the last remnant of the kingly people from beyond the Seas’ (The Return of the Shadow, p. 331).
In autumn 1939 the Númenórean realms in exile began to emerge with the mention of Ond (later Ondor > Gondor) in early versions of the Council of Elrond (bk. II, ch. 2). Trotter becomes a man rather than a hobbit, described in Gandalf’s letter to Frodo as ‘Aragorn son of Celegorn, of the line of Isildur Elendil’s son’ (*The Treason of Isengard, p. 50). Eventually Aragorn becomes the last descendant of Elendil and the rightful heir to the realms Elendil founded. Tolkien tried out several ideas for the establishment and early history of these realms before he was satisfied. The story that eventually emerged was that Elendil the Tall and his sons Isildur and Anárion sailed first to the North, where they were befriended by Gilgalad and Elendil established the kingdom of Arnor. His sons then sailed south and founded the realm of Gondor, close to Mordor. When Sauron attacks and takes Isildur’s city, Minas Ithil, Isildur joins his father in the North, and Elendil and Gilgalad form the Last Alliance against Sauron.
THE NOTION CLUB PAPERS AND THE DROWNING OF ANADÛNÊ
During Christmas vacation 1945 and the first half of 1946, with The Lord of the Rings still unfinished, Tolkien began to transform some of the material from The Lost Road into a new work, The Notion Club Papers, again involving time-travel and the final days of Númenor. As part of this work he also wrote *The Drowning of Anadûnê, a new account of The Fall of Númenor. Apparently it was only after completing the first part of The Notion Club Papers that he decided that the second part should deal with Númenor, writing a note: ‘Do the Atlantis story and abandon Eriol-Saga’ (*Sauron Defeated, p. 281).
In the second part of The Notion Club Papers, two members of the titular society, Alwin Arundel Lowdham and Wilfrid Trewyn Jeremy, evidently having inherited memories from remote ancestors, have experiences like those of Alboin Errol in The Lost Road. Both are stirred by the name Éarendel, both dream of hearing fragments of strange languages (Quenya and Sindarin) or of seeing manuscripts written in strange scripts, and report these at meetings of the Club. Lowdham remembers that his father kept a diary in a strange script, and that after his father’s disappearance in his boat Éarendel Star he found a sheet in the same script but could not decipher it. During one meeting, a thunderstorm rages outside, and both Lowdham and Jeremy seem to have a vision of, or to experience, the destruction of Númenor. They cry out:
The ships have set sail at last …. Behold, the mountain smokes and the earth trembles! … Woe to this time and the fell counsels of Sauron! Tarkalion hath set forth his might against the Lords of the West …. The Lords have spoken to the Maker … and the fate of the world is overturned …. The ships of the Númenóreans are drowned in the abyss. They are lost for ever. See now the eagles of the Lords overshadow Númenor. The mountain goes up to heaven in flame and vapour; the hills totter, slide, and crumble: the land founders. The glory has gone down into the deep waters. [p. 251, emended from notes 63–4, p. 290]
Lowdham addresses Jeremy as ‘Voronwë’, and Jeremy addresses Lowdham as ‘Elendil’. Both rush into the freak storm and do not return for some months. Then they begin to tell of their travels round the western coasts of Britain and Ireland, and of a shared dream in which they were in tenth-century England, Lowdham as the minstrel Ælfwine, Jeremy as Tréowine from the Marches.
Tolkien abandoned The Notion Club Papers with this account only partly told. Only a few notes and fragments indicate how the story might have continued. One note suggests that Tréowine and Ælfwine were to sail west, find the Straight Road, see the round world below, then be driven back. Another has ‘sojourn in Númenor before and during the fall ends with Elendil and Voronwë fleeing on a hill of water into the dark with the Eagles and lightning pursuing them’, and ‘at the end … Lowdham and Jeremy have a vivid dream of the Fall of Númenor’ (p. 279).
In association with The Notion Club Papers Tolkien wrote a new account of the fall of Númenor, The Drowning of Anadûnê. This differs significantly from The Fall of Númenor, which had ended with the words: ‘And here endeth the tale of the ancient world as it is known to the Elves’ (The Lost Road and Other Writings, p. 29). There is no reason to doubt that when Tolkien wrote those words he intended that the Elves’ knowledge of the world and its history, deriving from the Valar and their own experiences, should reflect what actually occurred. Nothing is said about if, and how, this Elvish tradition was passed on to Men. The Drowning of Anadûnê is intended to show how events in the First Age and the history of Númenor might have been remembered in the traditions of Men after being passed down through many generations: filtered, changed, distorted, and with much forgotten. But this was also a time when Tolkien began to doubt whether he should include in his mythology elements contrary to scientific knowledge, such as a flat world made round, and considered whether to make fundamental changes, or alternatively, changes in perception and knowledge, even writing a version of the *Ainulindalë in which the world was round from Creation. In The Fall of Númenor a flat world is made round at the time of the Downfall, but in The Drowning of Anadûnê the world was always round.
Tolkien made three rough preliminary sketches before beginning The Drowning of Anadûnê, then produced four successive typescripts. There are considerable differences in the story told in these texts, and Christopher Tolkien concludes ‘that the marked differences in the preliminary sketches reflect my father’s shifting ideas of what the “Mannish tradition” might be, and how to present it; he was sketching rapidly possible modes in which the memory, and the forgetfulness, of Men in Middle-earth, descendants of the Exiles of Númenor, might have transformed their early history’ (Sauron Defeated, p. 407). If one assumes that the Elvish traditions of events in the First Age recounted in the Quenta Silmarillion, the *Annals of Beleriand, and The Fall of Númenor record what actually happened, then it is clear that these versions of ‘Mannish tradition’ preserve only faint and erroneous memories of events. They are particularly confused about the Valar and the Elves, sometimes making no distinction between them, and uncertain about their dwelling places in the West.
In the preliminary sketches and in The Drowning of Anadûnê Tolkien pays much attention to what the Númenóreans thought or were told about the shape of the world. Although he made no authorial statement on this matter, a careful study of internal evidence suggests that this world was round from the beginning. In the first sketch the Númenóreans ‘believe the world flat, and that “the Lords of the West” (Gods) dwell beyond the great barrier of cloud hills – where there is no death and the Sun is renewed and passes under the world to rise again’ (Sauron Defeated, p. 400), but are told by the Elves that the world is round. By emendations it is Sauron, not the Elves, who tells the Númenóreans that the world is round, but in the third sketch (in a section later struck through) ‘the ancient Númenóreans knew (being taught by the Eledāi [= Elves]) that the Earth was round; but Sauron taught them that it was a disc and flat …’ (p. 404). In the first version of The Drowning of Anadûnê the Avalāi (= confused mixing of the Valar and the Elves), who live in Avallondē, tell the Númenóreans that the world is round ‘and that if they sailed into the utmost West, yet would they but come back again to the East and so to the places of their setting out, and the world would seem to them but a prison’ (p. 345); while Sauron ‘bade them think that the world was not a closed circle; and that therein there were many lands for their winning …; and even yet, when they came to the end thereof, there was the Dark without, out of which came all things’ (p. 347). A note written beside the text says that after the disaster, the Númenóreans continued to believe Sauron’s lies that the world was flat until their fleets, seeking for the remains of Númenor, sailed around the world. In the second and later versions of The Drowning of Anadûnê the Valar send messengers to the last king (now called Ar-Pharazôn) and tell him that ‘the fashion of the Earth is such that a girdle may be set about it. Or as an apple … it is round and fair, and the seas and lands are but the rind of the fruit …’ (p. 364). But Zigûr (= Sauron) refutes this with similar words as in the first version. There is no reference in any of the texts to the Númenóreans seeing the Gates of Morning, as there was in The Fall of Númenor.
The sketches refer only briefly to the cataclysm that destroyed Númenor and its aftermath. In various texts of The Drowning of Anadûnê men do not know exactly what happened, for there were no surviving human witnesses of anything but the destruction of Númenor itself. In the first version, ‘those that are wisest in discernment aver’ that when the Númenórean fleets sail into the West the Avalāi (= Valar) ‘laid down their governance of Earth. And Eru overthrew its shape, and a great chasm was opened in the sea’ into which the fleets fall, and Avallondē and Númenor are destroyed, ‘and the Avalāi thereafter had no local habitation on earth …’ (Sauron Defeated, p. 351). The second version says that men later heard from the Nimri (= Elves) that Eru ‘changed the fashion of the world; and a great chasm opened in the sea between Anadûnê and the Deathless Land [= Aman, the home of the Valar] … and the world was shaken’. The Númenórean fleet fell into the abyss, and Aman and Númenor which stood on either side of it were destroyed (pp. 372–3).
In neither version is there any suggestion that the world was ever anything but round, nor is there any mention of a Straight Road. But in both the Númenóreans think that some blessed with a special sight might be able to see, in some fashion, the lands that once had been, and they comment that all the ways are crooked that once were straight (pp. 352, 374). In the third version, Tolkien made an addition to explain this:
For in the youth of the world it was a hard saying to men that the Earth was not plain [flat] as it seemed to be, and few even of the Faithful of Anadûnê had believed in their hearts this teaching; and when in after days, what by star-craft, what by the voyages of ships that sought out all the ways and waters of the Earth, the Kings of Men knew that the world was indeed round, then the belief arose among them that it had so been made only in the time of the great Downfall, and was not thus before. Therefore they thought that, while the new world fell away, the old road and the path of the memory of the Earth went on towards heaven …. [p. 392]
There were rumours of mariners who found this road and reached the Land of Aman. Christopher Tolkien points out that whereas ‘the author of The Fall of Númenor knows that “of old many of the exiles of Númenor could still see, some clearly, and some more faintly, the paths to the True West”, but for the rationalising author (as he may seem to be) of The Drowning of Anadûnê the Straight Road was a belief born of desire and regret’ (p. 395).
In emendations made at this time to the latest version of The Fall of Númenor (a fine manuscript written in the early 1940s), and in the sketches and especially successive versions of The Drowning of Anadûnê, Tolkien added a great deal of information about Númenor and its history, much of which survived into the Akallabêth and The Lord of the Rings and was evidently not intended to represent distorted later tradition. Among its more significant features is a strengthening of the ban against the Númenóreans sailing west: they are now forbidden to sail out of sight of the west coast of Númenor. In early years they offer first-fruits to Ilúvatar on the mountain in the centre of Númenor, the Pillar of Heaven; and they visit Middle-earth, where they teach the men they find there language, agriculture, and crafts, and to reject the rule of the followers of Morgoth.
But even before they are corrupted by Sauron, the Númenóreans begin to resent their mortality and murmur against the Valar. Ar-Pharazôn, the last king, no longer invites Sauron to Númenor but takes a great army to Middle-earth and demands that Sauron pay him homage. Sauron feigns submission, and is taken back to Númenor as a hostage, where he soon gains ascendancy over the king. Most Númenóreans cease to honour Ilúvatar, and instead human sacrifices, often of those who were faithful to the old ways, are offered to Morgoth in the temple built by Sauron. Those who sail east to Middle-earth now do so as cruel conquerors and enslavers. Among the Faithful are Amardil, his son Elendil, and Elendil’s sons Anárion and Isildur, who are descended from Earendil through a junior line. In despair at the king’s plans to invade Valinor, Amardil decides to follow the example of Earendil and sail into the West to seek aid of the Valar. He is never seen again. The eruption of the Pillar of Heaven, which is volcanic, contributes to the destruction of Númenor, which slides into the sea and is overwhelmed by gigantic waves. The ships of Elendil are driven east by the winds and carried on great waves to Middle-earth.
Tolkien evidently had clear pictures in his mind of events in the latter part of The Drowning of Anadûnê, which he transformed into passages of brilliant and memorable descriptive writing:
And now the fleets of the Adûnâi [Númenóreans] darkened the sea upon the west of the land, and they were like an archipelago of a thousand isles; their masts were as a forest upon the mountains, and their sails were like a brooding cloud; and their banners were black and golden like stars upon the fields of night. And all things now waited upon the word of Ar-Pharazôn; and Zigûr withdrew into the inmost circle of the Temple, and men brought him victims to be burned. Then the Eagles of the Lords of the West came up out of the dayfall, and they were arrayed as for battle, advancing in a line the end of which could not be seen. [etc.; p. 371, as emended from p. 391]
In the first version, the Númenóreans abandon their own language and adopt that of the Avalāi (Elvish). In the second version, most Númenóreans continue to speak their own Mannish tongue, Adûnaic, and only kings and princes learned the Elvish language. In the last two versions of The Drowning of Anadûnê, most of the names are in Adûnaic.
THE AKALLABÊTH AND APPENDICES A AND B TO THE LORD OF THE RINGS
Probably in the autumn of 1948, while working on material to be published in The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien wrote yet another account of the fall of Númenor, entitled The Downfall of Númenor, but always referred to it as the Akallabêth. In writing this work, he drew on both The Fall of Númenor and The Drowning of Anadûnê. He evidently intended it not for The Lord of the Rings, but for inclusion in a published ‘Silmarillion’. Neither The Fall of Númenor nor The Drowning of Anadûnê, however, suited that purpose. The Fall of Númenor is less than half the length of The Drowning of Anadûnê, which includes much fine description and new matter not found in the earlier account. But the parts of The Drowning of Anadûnê in which confused later ‘Mannish tradition’ is predominant made it unsuitable to accompany the other ‘Silmarillion’ texts derived from ‘true’ Elvish traditions.
Apparently influenced by the preference his friend *Katharine Farrer expressed in the autumn of 1948 for the ‘Flat World’ version of the Ainulindalë over the ‘Round World’ version, Tolkien, for a time at least, seems to have decided to retain the cosmology of the world being originally flat as it was in The Fall of Númenor. In addition, some new material needed to be added to the story of Númenor to take account of various matters introduced in The Lord of the Rings. Christopher Tolkien thinks that a note his father wrote many years later explains how he regarded the different accounts: The Fall of Númenor relates ‘Elvish tradition’, The Drowning of Anadûnê ‘Mannish tradition’, and the Akallabêth, which draws on both of the others, ‘Mixed Dúnedanic tradition’ (Sauron Defeated, pp. 406–7).
Before starting work on the Akallabêth Tolkien made an outline history of Númenor with rough dates for the thirteen kings (most not named) who followed after the death of Elros in Second Age 460, and for some significant events (e.g. the fourteenth and last king, Tarkalion or Arpharazôn, challenges Sauron in Second Age 3125, and the Downfall of Númenor takes place in 3319). The first text, a manuscript, is addressed to Ælfwine, presumably by Pengoloð, an Elf of Tol Eressëa, and begins with two new paragraphs summarizing the Elvish tradition of the coming of Men into the world, their falling under the dominion of Morgoth, the repentance of the Edain who fought with the Eldar against Morgoth, and the voyage of Eärendil into the West to speak to the Valar on behalf of Elves and Men. The text then briefly follows the third version of The Fall of Númenor for an account of the defeat of Morgoth, the summoning of the Elves into the West to the Isle of Eressëa whose haven was Avallónë, and the creation of Númenor for Men.
From that point the Akallabêth follows mainly The Drowning of Anadûnê, but takes or revises some passages from The Fall of Númenor. The language spoken by most of the Númenóreans is still Adûnaic, but most names are in the Elvish languages (*Languages, Invented), either that which their kings and lords had learned during their alliance with the Elves (here called Noldorin) or the High Eldarin tongue (Quenya) which their lore-masters learn. The Númenóreans are forbidden by the Valar to sail west out of sight of the shores of Númenor, but they know that Eressëa lies to the west, and beyond that is the Blessed Realm. The Eldar from Eressëa visit and bring gifts, including a seedling of the White Tree of Eressëa, itself a seedling of Telperion, one of the Two Trees of Valinor. The seedling is planted in the courts of the king. The Númenórean mariners again see the Gates of Morning in the East. The Númenóreans’ resentment of their mortality begins earlier, and it is to Tar-Atanamir, the seventh king, that the Valar send messengers, who now say nothing about the shape of the world but tell him that even if he came to Aman it would not profit him. ‘For it is not the land of Manwë that makes its people deathless, but the Deathless that dwell therein have hallowed the land; and there you would but wither and grow weary the sooner’ (The Silmarillion, p. 264).
More detail is given of the growing obsession of the Númenóreans with death, building great tombs, and seeking to prolong life, but discovering only how to preserve bodies of the dead. Most cease to show any devotion to Eru. Even before Sauron comes to power, they make settlements in Middle-earth, mainly in the south, and instead of teaching and helping those living there, they seek wealth and dominion. The Faithful sail mainly to the North-west, establish a haven at Pelargir, and help Gil-galad against Sauron. Some of this, and much else of the added material, derived from The Lord of the Rings. In the Akallabêth it is during the reign of Tar-Atanamir that Sauron completes the building of Barad-dûr and begins his campaign for domination of Middle-earth. He is said to hate the Númenóreans because they aided Gil-galad against him. Three of the nine Men whom Sauron snares with rings are great lords of Númenórean race, and he uses them (the Ringwraiths) to attack Númenórean strongholds by the sea. When he comes to Númenor, Sauron urges the king to cut down the White Tree growing in his courts, but before the king consents, Isildur manages to steal a fruit, and the sapling grown from this fruit and the Seven Stones given to them by the Eldar are included in the treasure the Faithful put aboard their ships (cf. the rhyme in The Lord of the Rings, bk. III, ch. 11). Sauron says nothing about the shape of the world except that many lands lie east and west. As in The Fall of Númenor, when the fashion of the world is changed Aman is not destroyed, and Aman and Eressëa are ‘taken away and removed from the circles of the world beyond the reach of Men for ever’ (*The Peoples of Middle-earth, p. 157). Although it is not stated in the account of the actual Downfall in what way the fashion of the world is changed, other than that new lands and seas are made, it is implied in the later statement ‘in after days, what by the voyages of ships, what by lore and star-craft, the kings of Men knew that the world was indeed made round, and yet the Eldar were permitted still to depart and to come to the Ancient West and to Avallónë, if they would. Therefore the loremasters of Men said that a Straight Road must still be, for those that were permitted to find it’ (The Silmarillion, p. 281).
Probably in 1951 Tolkien took up a typescript he had made from the manuscript of the Akallabêth and emended it, altering some names and the sequence of certain events, rewriting a few passages, and adding a lengthy rider giving much more detail of the history of the last Númenórean kings, and in particular their growing hostility to the Eldar and the Valar and to those who remained faithful. The White Tree is no longer a descendant of Telperion, but of a memorial of that tree given to the Elves of Túna. Messengers from the Valar still come to Tar-Atanamir, but he is now the thirteenth king. The nineteenth king chooses a name in Adûnaic rather than in the Elven-tongue – Adûnakhor, Lord of the West – a title belonging to the Valar, and forbids the use of the Elven-tongues in his hearing. Emphasis is laid the status of the Lords of Andúnië descended from Silmarien, the daughter of the fourth king, who, as his eldest child, would have been queen according to a rule of succession introduced later – thus stressing the royal descent of Amandil and his son Elendil, and ultimately of Aragorn. Although the Lords of Andúnië are loyal to the kings, they hold to the old ways and try to protect the Faithful. The twenty-second king forbids the use of the Elven-tongues and any contact with the Eldar of Eressëa, but his wife is a close relative of the Lords of Andúnië and herself one of the Faithful. Their elder son, influenced by his mother, repents, takes the elven name Tar-Palantir, and again pays reverence to Eru. On his death, his daughter Míriel should become queen, but her cousin forces her to marry him and usurps the sceptre for himself, taking the name Ar-Pharazôn and becoming the twenty-fourth ruler. He persecutes the Faithful and seeks homage from Sauron.
Having written this rider, Tolkien seems to have hesitated as to whether Míriel was indeed the unwilling wife of Ar-Pharazôn, and sketched some ideas for a different story. In these he considered the possibilty that Míriel was loved by, and possibly even betrothed to, Amandil’s brother Elentir, but then fell in love with Pharazôn.
Tolkien’s early work on the Appendices for The Lord of the Rings reflect developments which also appear in the Akallabêth. The earliest versions of Appendix B (The Tale of Years) for the Second Age briefly cover events in Middle-earth and Númenor; an enlarged fair copy version was in existence in 1950. In these Tolkien constantly made changes to dates and to the number of kings who ruled in Númenor, as well as adding or emending entries. It eventually evolved that Númenor was founded in Second Age 50; the great voyages of the Númenóreans began in 1700; the Shadow fell on Númenor, and Men began to murmur against the ban, c. 2000; Sauron submitted to Ar-Pharazôn, the twenty-fifth king of Númenor, in 3125; Amandil sailed west to seek help in 3310; the Downfall took place in 3319; the realms in exile lasted 110 years before the war with Sauron; and the Second Age ended in 3441 after a seven-year siege and the overthrow of Sauron. In 1954–5, while preparing the Appendices for publication, Tolkien made further additions and changes, some reflecting revisions made to the Akallabêth c. 1951. Among the more significant dates as published are S.A. 32 for the arrival of Men in Númenor; 600, the return to Middle-earth of the first Númenórean ships; 1200, the Númenóreans begin to establish havens in Middle-earth; 1700, the king of Númenor sends a navy to aid Gil-galad against Sauron; from c. 1800, the Númenóreans establish dominions on the coasts of Middle-earth; 2251, Tar-Atanamir becomes king, during whose reign ‘rebellion and division of the Númenóreans begins’, and the Ringwraiths first appear. Ar-Pharazôn seizes the sceptre in 3255; Sauron is taken to Númenor as a prisoner in 3262; Ar-Pharazôn breaks the ban of the Valar and Númenor is destroyed in 3319; Sauron is overthrown and the Second Age ends in 3441.
Quite late in his work on the Appendices, probably when the space allotted to them was more than doubled, Tolkien decided to include a brief narrative account of the history of Númenor – section I (i) of Appendix A – and wrote two versions, the second of which (with some changes and omissions) was published. Some of the omitted material was published in The Peoples of Middle-earth.
*The Heirs of Elendil, contemporary with the versions of the Akallabêth, also includes an account of the last years of Númenor, the establishment of the realms in exile and the overthrow of Sauron, but adds nothing to the other texts. Probably in 1960 Tolkien compiled *The Line of Elros: Kings of Númenor, which gives dates of birth, surrender of the sceptre, and death for each ruler, with annotations of important events in each reign. He made many emendations to the manuscript, the latest form of which was published in Unfinished Tales.
The story of the glory of Númenor and its Downfall is of significance as the only part of Tolkien’s legendarium in which Men are the main, indeed almost the only, focus of attention. Among the questions of importance to Tolkien dealt with in this work are the imperfect and fallen nature of Man (see *The Fall), and the necessity for men to accept their mortal nature. While various ‘falls’ of the Elves are recounted in the Quenta Silmarillion, almost nothing is said about the first Fall of Man. There are only hints: the Eldar knew nothing of Morgoth’s dealings with Men, but they perceived ‘that a darkness lay upon the hearts of Men (as the shadow of the Kinslaying and the Doom of Mandos lay upon the Noldor)’ (The Silmarillion, p. 141). The beginning of the Akallabêth is more informative: ‘It is said by the Eldar that Men came into the world in the time of the Shadow of Morgoth, and they fell swiftly under his dominion; for he sent his emissaries among them, and they listened to his evil and cunning words, and they worshipped the Darkness and yet feared it’ (p. 259). But some Men repented and assisted the Elves against Morgoth, and were rewarded by the Valar with the island of Númenor.
Although details of Man’s first Fall were hidden in the past, in the story of Númenor the second Fall is dealt with at centre stage and, as with the story of Eden, involves the breaking of a Ban. In a letter to *Milton Waldman in ?late 1951 Tolkien said that this second Fall was ‘partly the result of an inner weakness in Men – consequent … upon the first Fall …, repented but not finally healed’. Their reward of an extended life ‘is their undoing – or the means of their temptation. Their long life aids their achievements in art and wisdom, but breeds a possessive attitude to these things, and desire awakes for more time for their enjoyment.’ He describes ‘three phases in their fall from grace. First acquiescence, obedience that is free and willing, though without complete understanding. Then for long they obey unwillingly, murmuring more and more openly. Finally they rebel …’ (Letters, pp. 154–5). In a draft letter to Peter Hastings in September 1954 Tolkien wrote that his ‘legendarium, especially the “Downfall of Númenor” … is based on my view: that Men are essentially mortal and must not try to become “immortal” in the flesh’ (Letters, p. 189).
CRITICISM
Randel Helms devotes an entire chapter to the Akallabêth in Tolkien and the Silmarils (1981). He notes that the work involves Tolkien in ‘one of his favorite literary tricks, the creation of the “real” source or origin of a famous tale’ (p. 64). But it is also ‘Tolkien’s first full-scale brief epic of men as opposed to elves, presenting his deepest thinking about death, the Gift of Men’. He had prepared for it in the Quenta Silmarillion, where it is said ‘that the hearts of Men should seek beyond the world and should find no rest therein’, but they would be able to ‘shape their life’. The price they pay ‘for this freedom of will and ability to yearn toward Ilúvatar’ is that ‘though their longings be immortal, their bodies are not’.
Here … Tolkien sets a major theme of Akallabêth, showing as well his grasp of human psychology. Always to yearn for what we do not have, to seek beyond the confines of our world, is our destiny, and one resulting directly from our freedom. Because of this combination of desire and liberty, unique in the mortal creatures of Arda, man is peculiarly susceptible to temptation, and men long for what they can never have, immortality in the flesh.
Tolkien thus uses Plato’s story of Atlantis, but deepens its themes. The Atlanteans desired conquest and empire …. The Númenóreans desired not merely conquest – though that was indeed one of their aims – they wanted an attribute of divinity itself, eternity. They wanted to be as gods – knowing not good and evil only, but endlessness – for Tolkien has blended Plato’s legend of Atlantis with the Bible’s story of the Fall of Man, to produce a tale of great resonance. [pp. 66–7]
David Harvey in The Song of Middle-earth: J.R.R. Tolkien’s Themes, Symbols and Myths (1985) likewise relates the fall of the Númenóreans to ‘a Fall in the theological sense. The actions of Ar-Pharazôn are in direct opposition to a stated Ban imposed by superhuman powers and derived from the authority and decree of the One’ (p. 41).
In ‘Aspects of the Fall in The Silmarillion’, in Proceedings of the J.R.R. Tolkien Centenary Conference 1992, ed. Patricia Reynolds and Glen H. GoodKnight (1995), Eric Schweicher points out that in Tolkien’s legendarium Man’s mortality is ‘neither a punishment nor a direct consequence of their [first] Fall. The condition of Man … was determined long before the world was created, in the Great Music of the Ainur …. Yet there is a fear of death on Middle-earth, which is paradoxical if one considers death as a gift.’ Therefore he suggests that ‘the Fall must have had an influence on the attitude of Man towards death, and there one must see Melkor’s influence, which lures Men into believing that what they had been given as a gift is but a bitter fruit’ (p. 169). Thus the desire of the Númenóreans for immortality, and Ar-Pharazôn’s attempt to gain it by conquest, are directly related to the first Fall.
Anne C. Petty, in Tolkien in the Land of the Heroes: Discovering the Human Spirit (2003), thinks that
the passage in the ‘Akallabêth’ that describes the coming of the first Númenóreans to their new land contains some of Tolkien’s most inspired saga-style language, conjuring images of dragon ships and seascapes straight out of such Old English poems as The Seafarer. He balances this vision of wonder with an equally stark vision of horror that concludes the account. This is something Tolkien does better than anyone: he presents the reader with a vision of incredible beauty, and then allows it to be ruined to equally incredible depths, making the end result all the more poignant and devastating. [p. 82]
Númenórean Linear Measures. Series of notes from various manuscripts, published as an appendix to *The Disaster of the Gladden Fields in *Unfinished Tales (1980), pp. 285–7, under a collective title devised by *Christopher Tolkien. These concern the relationship of Númenórean measurements to British units (leagues, yards, feet), and the stature of Númenóreans (especially Elendil), the Eldar (especially Galadriel), the Rohirrim (with a note on Morwen, wife of Thengel), the Hobbits, and the Dúnedain.
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Christina Scull и Wayne Hammond
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Издательство: HarperCollins
Дата публикации: 16.04.2024
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О книге: Volume 2 of the most comprehensive in-depth companion to Tolkien’s life and works ever published. This volume includes a superlative day-by-day chronology of Tolkien’s life, presenting the most detailed biographical record available.The J. R. R. Tolkien Companion and Guide is a comprehensive handbook to one of the most popular authors of the twentieth century.One of two volumes comprising this definitive work, the Reader′s Guide is an indispensable introduction to J. R. R. Tolkien′s life, writings, and art. It includes histories and discussions of his works; analyses of the components of his vast ′Silmarillion′ mythology; brief biographies of persons important in his life; accounts of places he knew; essays on topics such as Tolkien′s interests and attitudes towards contemporary issues, ideas found in his works, adaptations, and invented languages; and checklists of his published works, his poetry, his pictorial art, and translations of his writings.