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The Palantíri. Various writings concerning the palantíri, made by Tolkien while revising *The Lord of the Rings for its second edition, formed by *Christopher Tolkien into a continuous essay and published with notes in *Unfinished Tales (1980), pp. 403–15.

The Palantíri expands upon the history and nature of the seeing-stones, how they were used and what could be seen in them, why they were forgotten in the latter part of the Third Age, what was known to the White Council and what Saruman concealed from it. It reveals that no thought had been given to the use Sauron might make of the Ithil-stone if he had seized it when Minas Ithil fell, and explains that while riding to Minas Tirith with Pippin and answering his questions about the Orthanc-stone, Gandalf was pondering the possibility that Denethor had used the Anor-stone and might have fallen, which was one reason for Gandalf’s haste. The essay points out also that Gandalf could not know when Denethor began to use the Anor-stone, and presumed that Denethor had not used it until peril grew great; but in fact Denethor had been using it since he succeeded to the Stewardship. Tolkien discusses how Denethor used the stone, and how the use affected him. Denethor is said to have withstood Sauron’s domination partly because of his character, but also because, as a Steward for the heirs of Elendil, he had a lawful right to use the Anor-stone.

Since changes consequent on these were not incorporated into The Lord of the Rings until the second printing (1967) of the Allen & Unwin second edition, they date probably from 1966 or early 1967.

Part of the Legend of Amroth and Nimrodel Recounted in Brief

see The History of Galadriel and Celeborn and of Amroth King of Lórien

Payton, Ralph Stuart (1894–1916). R.S. Payton, known as ‘the Baby’, was a friend of Tolkien at *King Edward’s School, Birmingham, entering in January 1906, and a fellow member of the *T.C.B.S. Like his elder brother *Wilfrid, Ralph was involved in a wide range of school activities – football, the Shooting Club, the School magazine, the Debating Society – and in most of these he held office. As Debating Secretary he ‘performed with great energy’ the ‘less pleasant duties’ of the office, ‘especially the finding of new speakers. In his own speeches he is more successful as a humorist, and does not often contrive to be serious without being dull’ (‘Characters, 1911–12’, King Edward’s School Chronicle n.s. 27, no. 193 (June 1912), p. 41). But he was outwardly modest, and his delivery in debate was often faulted. He also served as Prefect, Sub-Treasurer, and School Captain and General Secretary. In 1913 he followed his brother to Cambridge, on an open scholarship for Classics at Christ’s College.

In November 1915 Payton joined the Royal Warwickshire Regiment (14th (1st Birmingham Pals) Battalion) and was made a lieutenant, in charge of Lewis (light machine) guns. He was killed on the Somme on 22 July 1916 while leading his men into action.

Payton, Wilfrid Hugh (1892–1965). W.H. Payton, known as ‘Whiffy’, was a friend of Tolkien at *King Edward’s School, Birmingham, entering in January 1904, and a fellow member of the *T.C.B.S. Like his younger brother *Ralph, he was involved in msny school activities – football, the Shooting Club, the School library and magazine, the Debating Society, the Literary Society – in most of which he held office and was highly regarded. He also served as Prefect, Sub-Treasurer, and School Captain and General Secretary. In 1911 he went up to Trinity College, Cambridge, on an open exhibition for Classics.

In 1915 Payton won a place with the India Civil Service. In the First World War he joined the Indian Reserve of Officers and rose to the rank of captain. He was attached to the 6th Gurkha Rifles, and later to the Khyber Rifles, on the Afghan frontier. His later Civil Service work in Burma earned him in 1945 the honour of Companion of the Order of Saint Michael and Saint George.

Pearl. Alliterative poem in Middle English. It is attributed to the same anonymous late fourteenth-century poet who wrote *Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, another of four works preserved in the same manuscript (British Library MS Cotton Nero A.x, with the poems Patience and Cleanness).

SYNOPSIS

The subject of Pearl (or The Pearl) is the poet’s daughter, who died as a child. As he wanders in the garden in which his child is buried, the poet slips, ‘and to sudden sleep was brought, / O’er that precious pearl’. He has a vision of a fair land of marvels and splendour, of a deep stream beyond which lies Paradise, and of ‘a gentle maid of courtly grace’ arrayed in pearls: his daughter grown to maturity. ‘Lament alone by night I made,’ he tells her, ‘Much longing I have hid for thee forlorn, / Since to the grass you from me strayed.’ She upbraids him for excessive grief, and explains that she is in a blissful state of grace, the bride of Christ. Headlong her father plunges into the stream, eager to join her, but ‘right as I rushed then to the shore / That fury made my dream to fade’, and he wakes from his trance. If, he says, it is true that his daughter is ‘set at ease, / Then happy I, though chained in care, / That you that Prince indeed do please’ (translation by Tolkien).

HISTORY

The excellence of the poem is observed by *Kenneth Sisam in his Fourteenth Century Verse & Prose (1921):

If [the contemporary poem] Piers Plowman gives a realistic picture of the drabness of mediaeval life, Pearl, more especially in the early stanzas, shows a richness of imagery and a luxuriance in light and colour that seem scarcely English. Yet they have their parallels in the decorative art of the time – the elaborate carving in wood and stone; the rich colouring of tapestries, of illuminated books and painted glass; the designs of the jewellers, goldsmiths, and silversmiths, which even the notaries who made the old inventories cannot pass without a word of admiration. The Pearl reminds us of the tribute due to the artists and craftsmen of the fourteenth century. [p. 57]

Tolkien first encountered the work while still at *King Edward’s School, Birmingham, as part of his private study of early English literature. A few years later, it was part of his required reading as a student in the English School at *Oxford. At Easter 1913 Tolkien inscribed his name in a 1910 printing of Charles Grosvenor Osgood’s edition of Pearl (first published 1906). He attended lectures on Pearl by *A.S. Napier, and very probably a class on the work taught by Sisam. The West Midlands dialect of Middle English in which Pearl was written was a subject of special interest to Tolkien; see *English language and *A Fourteenth-Century Romance.

Pearl was also part of the curriculum at *Leeds when Tolkien was on the staff of the University’s English School, and also at Oxford. In May 1924 Tolkien wrote a poem, *The Nameless Land, inspired by reading Pearl for examination papers (see *Examinations).

MODERN ENGLISH TRANSLATION

After the publication of their Sir Gawain and the Green Knight in 1925, Tolkien and his colleague *E.V. Gordon began work on an edition of Pearl in Middle English. But Tolkien made little or no contribution to it for many years; instead he prepared, in spare moments during ?1925–6, a Modern English translation of the poem. On ?26 April 1926 he sent a copy of this to Kenneth Sisam, for whose Fourteenth Century Verse & Prose he had prepared a glossary (*A Middle English Vocabulary). At some time by summer 1936 Tolkien offered the translation to the publisher J.M. Dent: it was rejected, but was seen by Guy Pocock, who having joined the staff of BBC Radio arranged for part of the translation to be read, with Tolkien’s permission, in August 1936 on London regional radio. In October 1936 *Stanley Unwin, of the firm George Allen & Unwin (*Publishers), expressed an interest in publishing the translation; but with the success of *The Hobbit the following year, his main desire was soon for a sequel to that work.

By August 1942 the translation apparently had been lent to the Oxford bookseller and publisher *Basil Blackwell. He wrote to Tolkien, expressed delight in the work, and asked if Tolkien would write, for publication with the poem, an introduction to Pearl aimed at the lay reader rather than the student. He offered to purchase the copyright to the translation, with the sum placed against Tolkien’s outstanding account at Blackwell’s Bookshop. Tolkien agreed, and proofs of the poem were ready in late March 1943. The introduction, however, was not forthcoming at once; and in September 1944 Blackwell, wondering if Tolkien’s delay was caused by objection to giving up copyright, now suggested that publication proceed instead on the basis of a royalty. Tolkien certainly wished to proceed: in a letter of 23–5 September 1944 he wrote to his son *Christopher: ‘I must try and get on with the Pearl and stop the eager maw of Basil Blackwell’ (Letters, p. 94). Six months later, c. 18 March 1945, he was still ‘in trouble with Blackwell who has set up my translation of Pearl, and needs corrections and an introduction’, as he wrote to Stanley Unwin (Letters, p. 114).

In the event, Tolkien never finished this work for Blackwell. In late 1950 Stanley Unwin again enquired about Pearl, in conjunction with Tolkien’s Modern English translation of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, but it was not until August 1959, after the completion and successful publication of *The Lord of the Rings, that plans for Allen & Unwin to publish both Pearl and Sir Gawain were actively discussed. On 24 August Tolkien met with Basil Blackwell, who magnanimously relinquished any rights in the translation of Pearl and refused any compensation for the cost of the abortive typesetting. On finding the Blackwell galley proofs for Pearl in his son Christopher’s library, Tolkien felt less guilty about Blackwell’s sacrifice, as ‘inspection showed them to have been of an astonishing badness; so that the cost of correction of about a thousand fatuous mistakes (from reasonable copy), which would have arisen if I had proceeded with the publication, was at any rate spared’ (letter to *Rayner Unwin, 25 August 1959, Tolkien–George Allen & Unwin archive, HarperCollins). On 27 August Tolkien wrote to Rayner Unwin of his desire

to get Gawain and Pearl into your hands as soon as possible. The spirit is indeed willing; but the flesh is weak and rebellious. It has contracted lumbago, from amongst its weapons of delay – with the colourable excuse that an old man, robbed of helpers by mischance, should not shift bookcases and books unaided. Every book and paper I possess is now on the floor, at home and in college, and I have only a table to type on. When the turmoil will subside, I do not know for certain; nor in what state of weariness I shall then be. [Tolkien–George Allen & Unwin archive, HarperCollins]

Although he now felt that the translations did not need very much work to finish, again Tolkien was delayed in attending to them, partly because he could not decide on the form of the general introduction and commentary that were needed to accompany the poems. ‘On the one hand’, Christopher Tolkien has said,

he undoubtedly sought an audience without any knowledge of the original poems; he wrote of his translation of Pearl: ‘The Pearl certainly deserves to be heard by lovers of English poetry who have not the opportunity or the desire to master its difficult idiom. To such readers I offer this translation.’ But he also wrote: ‘A translation may be a useful form of commentary; and this version may possibly be acceptable even to those who already know the original, and possess editions with all their apparatus.’ He wished therefore to explain the basis of his version in debatable passages; and indeed a very great deal of unshown editorial labour lies behind his translations, which not only reflect his long study of the language and metre of the originals, but were also in some degree the inspiration of it. As he wrote: ‘These translations were first made long ago for my own instruction, since a translator must first try to discover as precisely as he can what his original means, and may be led by ever closer attention to understand it better for its own sake. Since I first began I have given to the idiom of these texts very close study, and I have certainly learned more about them than I knew when I first presumed to translate them.’

But the commentary was never written, and the introduction did not get beyond the point of tentative beginnings. [*Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Pearl and Sir Orfeo (1975), p. 7]

Tolkien mentioned in a letter to his Aunt *Jane Neave that a translation of Pearl attracted him because of the poem’s ‘apparently insoluble metrical problems’ (18 July 1962, Letters, p. 317). Later, in a letter to his grandson Michael George (see *Michael Tolkien) he wrote that ‘Pearl is, of course, about as difficult a task as any translator could be set. It is impossible to make a version in the same metre close enough to serve as a “crib”. But I think anyone who reads my version, however learned a Middle English scholar, will get a more direct impression of the poem’s impact (on one who knew the language)’ (6 January 1965, Letters, p. 352).

Tolkien’s translation of Pearl was published at last in 1975, posthumously in *Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Pearl and Sir Orfeo, edited by Christopher Tolkien.

A three-part version of the translation was broadcast on BBC Radio 3 from 19 May 1978, adapted by Kevin Crossley-Holland and read by Hugh Dickson. A commercial recording of Tolkien’s Pearl read (with *Sir Orfeo) by Terry Jones was first issued in 1997.

EDITION IN MIDDLE ENGLISH

By summer 1937 E.V. Gordon completed work on the edition of Pearl in Middle English begun in 1925. He had given up hope of any contribution by Tolkien, though he told Kenneth Sisam at Oxford University Press (*Publishers) that he would still welcome Tolkien’s participation, for the good of the book; but he did not want long delays, as he had other commitments and Pearl was due to replace Sir Gawain on the Oxford English syllabus in 1938, offering opportunities for sales of the new edition. Therefore, by the start of September 1937, he sent his manuscript to Tolkien for comment and revision, and suggested a date by which the work should be done. (Gordon’s actions in this paragraph, and much else in our account of the edition of Pearl, are documented in correspondence held in the Oxford University Press archives, Oxford.)

Sisam, Gordon’s editor, thought that the edition needed cutting. Gordon, reasoning that it is much easier to cut someone else’s work than to reduce one’s own, hoped that Tolkien would be willing to do so with Pearl. In December 1937 Tolkien replied that he was willing to attempt to reduce its length, but was opposed to the drastic reduction that had been suggested. It was agreed that Gordon and Tolkien together would work on the revision; but Gordon wrote to Sisam that he feared it would take a long time.

On 29 July 1938 E.V. Gordon died. Tolkien then began to help in the settling of his friend’s affairs and academic obligations, as far as he was able to do so. Among these was the edition of Pearl, which was still in abeyance when Tolkien wrote to Stanley Unwin c. 18 March 1945 that he was ‘in trouble with the widow of Professor E.V. Gordon of Manchester, whose posthumous work on Pearl I undertook, as a duty to a dead friend and pupil, to put in order; and have failed to do my duty’ (Letters, p. 114). By mid-1947 Gordon’s widow, Ida, a scholar of Middle English in her own right (see entry for *E.V. Gordon), herself took over the task of completing the edition of Pearl for publication. As she later wrote in its preface, at the time of her husband’s death ‘the edition was complete – complete, that is, in that no part was missing and all had been put into form, if not final form’ (p. iv). On c. 22 July 1947 Tolkien sent Mrs Gordon a revised introduction to the work, and by early August sent her related linguistic matter as well as general comments and suggestions. In a return letter she asked for Tolkien’s advice about preparing the manuscript for publication, and he agreed to assist her further. He did not do so at once, however, much to the consternation of Mrs Gordon and Oxford University Press. Kenneth Sisam warned her that Tolkien was a perfectionist; but his busy Oxford schedule, and matters such as the completion of The Lord of the Rings, also contributed to delay. On 13 June 1949 Tolkien advised D.M. Davin at Oxford University Press that only half of the glossary for Pearl remained to be done – referring, presumably, to his review of the glossary for revision. Probably in June 1950 Tolkien at last completed his revisions. In her preface Mrs Gordon wrote: ‘Many factors combined to delay publication, and … I started the work of final revision in 1950 …’ (p. iv).

On 19 August Ida Gordon sent the manuscript, now finished except for the introduction, to Oxford University Press; in this she incorporated Tolkien’s suggestions and corrections, as well as notes left by her husband. She herself made emendations to the text, restored one reading on Tolkien’s advice, and in general brought order to the material. Tolkien also suggested two changes of punctuation, and wrote one note that Mrs Gordon could not read. During September 1950 Tolkien replied to further queries about the work. On 13 September Mrs Gordon wrote to Tolkien that she was still worried about the introduction to Pearl, though a section which Tolkien had rewritten simplified the task considerably; and in other sections she felt that there may be some unnecessary detail, which she would try to reduce.

But more drastic cuts were called for by the publisher. On 6 June 1951 Ida Gordon commented to D.M. Davin at Oxford University Press that although she could understand some of the suggestions he sent her in regard to Pearl, she felt that the work would suffer if its associated matter were cut in half, as Davin had asked on the advice of Kenneth Sisam. The section Davin targeted in particular, including a discussion of problems involved with the work (‘Form and Purpose’, pp. xi–xix), was contributed by Tolkien, and was already a reduced revision. Davin discussed Mrs Gordon’s letter with Tolkien, who was happy to give her a free hand to condense or omit any parts of his contribution, in the interests of brevity; it is not known if any change was made in Tolkien’s text, though some parts of the introduction were omitted from the published work. Mrs Gordon stated in her preface that she wished to reduce the length of the book ‘in a way that would sacrifice as little as possible of the original material’, and that this ‘made it necessary to make extensive alterations in the form’ (p. iv).

Later, when the question arose about whether his name should appear on the title-page of Pearl, Tolkien declined, giving full credit to his late friend; nor did Ida Gordon sign her name except to the Preface. The edition was published at last at the Clarendon Press, Oxford, in June 1953; see further, Descriptive Bibliography B22. It is still well respected as a standard text.

‘FORM AND PURPOSE’

A central feature of Tolkien’s part of the introduction to Pearl is a discussion of *allegory and symbolism in relation to the poem. ‘It is proper, or at least useful,’ he writes, ‘to limit allegory to narrative, to an account (however short) of events; and symbolism to the use of visible signs or things to represent other things or ideas …. To be an “allegory” a poem must as a whole, and with fair consistency, describe in other terms some event or process; its entire narrative and all its significant details should cohere and work together to this end.’ Pearl contains ‘minor allegories’; ‘but an allegorical description of an event does not make that event itself allegorical’ (pp. xi–xii). In the poet’s day

visions … allowed marvels to be placed within the real world … while providing them with an explanation in the phantasies of sleep, and a defence against critics in the notorious deception of dreams …. We are dealing with a period when men, aware of the vagaries of dreams, still thought that amid their japes came visions of truth. And their waking imagination was strongly moved by symbols and the figures of allegory …. [pp. xiv–xv]

This text was later printed also as part of the introduction to Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Pearl and Sir Orfeo, pp. 18–23.

The Peoples of Middle-earth. The twelfth and final volume of *The History of Middle-earth, edited with notes and commentary by *Christopher Tolkien, first published in Great Britain by HarperCollins, London, in September 1996, and in the United States by the Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston, in December 1996. See further, Tolkien Collector 14 (October 1996), pp. 7–8, and Tolkien Collector 15 (February 1997), pp. 5–6.

Part One, ‘The Prologue and Appendices to The Lord of the Rings’, is divided into nine parts: ‘The Prologue’; ‘The Appendix on Languages’; ‘The Family Trees’; ‘The Calendars’; ‘The History of the *Akallabêth’; ‘The Tale of Years of the Second Age’; ‘The Heirs of Elendil’; ‘The Tale of Years of the Third Age’; and ‘The Making of Appendix A’ (‘The Realms in Exile’, ‘The Tale of Aragorn and Arwen’, ‘The House of Eorl’, ‘Durin’s Folk’). Christopher Tolkien did not realize when he brought the story of *The Lord of the Rings to an end in *Sauron Defeated (1992) that his father had done much work on the Prologue and the Appendices possibly even while writing the final chapters of The Lord of the Rings in the summer of 1948, and certainly immediately after that time, until by the middle of 1950 he had a series of fair copy texts which might provide the necessary background to the story. He probably did little more with this until 1952, when he began to prepare The Lord of the Rings for publication, and most of the final work on the Appendices was accomplished in 1954–5.

Part Two, ‘Late Writings’, contains works from the final years of Tolkien’s life, c. 1967–1973: *Of Dwarves and Men; *The Shibboleth of Fëanor; *The Problem of Ros; *Glorfindel, together with extracts from two versions of a discussion of the Dwarves’ tradition that the spirits of their Seven Fathers were from time to time reborn (drawn from a larger discussion mainly on the reincarnation of Elves, hence see *Some Notes on ‘Rebirth’); *The Five Wizards (‘Note on the landing of the Five Wizards and their functions and operations’); and *Círdan. This was a time, Christopher Tolkien comments, when his father ‘was moved to write extensively, in a more generalised view, of the languages and peoples of the Third Age and their interrelations, closely interwoven with discussion of the etymology of names’ (The Peoples of Middle-earth, p. 293); cf. *The History of Galadriel and Celeborn and of Amroth King of Lórien in *Unfinished Tales (1980). These ‘historical-philological’ essays

are not developments and refinements of earlier versions, and they were not themselves subsequently developed and refined …. Almost all of this work was etymological in its inspiration, which to a large extent accounts for its extremely discursive nature; for in no study does one thing lead to another more rapidly than in etymology, which also of its nature leads out of itself in the attempt to find explanations beyond the purely linguistic evolution of forms. [p. 294]

Part Three, ‘Teachings of Pengoloð’, contains two works of the 1950s, the *Dangweth Pengoloð and *Of Lembas.

Part Four, ‘Unfinished Tales’, contains *The New Shadow, an aborted sequel to The Lord of the Rings begun c. late 1958, and the story *Tal-Elmar, also from the 1950s.

Perry-the-Winkle. Poem, first published in *The Adventures of Tom Bombadil and Other Verses from the Red Book (1962), pp. 41–4.

A lonely troll, whose ‘heart is soft’, ‘smile is sweet’, and ‘cooking good enough’, leaves his home in the hills and wanders through Michel Delving in the Shire. Despite good manners, he frightens everyone he meets, except for the lad Perry-the-Winkle. The troll carries him home ‘to a fulsome tea’, which becomes a Thursday tradition. In time, Perry-the-Winkle grows ‘so fat … / his weskit bust, and never a hat / would sit upon his head’; and he becomes a great baker, though not so good as the troll.

Perry-the-Winkle is a revision of The Bumpus, one of a series of six poems called *‘Tales and Songs of Bimble Bay’ (see also *The Dragon’s Visit, which includes the place-name ‘Bumpus Head’). Three versions of The Bumpus are known. On the first manuscript Tolkien sketched the ‘Bumpus’ as a plump, smiling, lizard-like figure with an apron around its waist, but in his text left its form unclear though certainly outlandish, with a tail long enough to ‘thump’, flat, flapping feet, and a lap in which William – not yet named Perry-the-Winkle – could sit. The second version of The Bumpus was published in the expanded edition of The Adventures of Tom Bombadil and Other Verses from the Red Book (2014), pp. 202–6. The third version, titled William and the Bumpus, began to approach its later form, though many further additions and changes were yet to be made.

Perry-the-Winkle in contrast is overtly a Hobbit poem, with references to the Shire and Bree, and in Tolkien’s preface to the Adventures of Tom Bombadil collection it is ascribed to Sam Gamgee (from *The Lord of the Rings). A typescript of Perry-the-Winkle in the Bodleian Library (MS Tolkien 19, f. 51) is headed ‘a children’s song in the Shire (attributed to Master Samwise)’.

Tolkien recorded Perry-the-Winkle in 1967 for the album Poems and Songs of Middle Earth (1967, reissued in 2001 as part of The J.R.R. Tolkien Audio Collection); see *Recordings.

‘A Philologist on Esperanto’ see Languages: Artificial

Philology. The first definition of philology given in the original *Oxford English Dictionary (section compiled c. 1906) is: ‘Love of learning and literature; the study of literature in a wide sense, including grammar, literary criticism and interpretation, the relation of literature and written records to history etc.; literary or classical scholarship; polite learning’; but this is noted as ‘now rare in general sense’. The first documented use in this sense is by *Geoffrey Chaucer, c. 1386. The first definition of philologist is: ‘One devoted to learning or literature; a lover of letters or scholarship; a learned or literary man; a scholar, especially a classical scholar. Now less usual.’ These remained the primary senses in the United States, but in Britain during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries the words began to be more commonly used in a narrower sense: philologist as ‘a person versed in the science of language; a student of language; a linguistic scholar’ and philology as ‘the study of the structure and development of language; the science of language; linguistics. (Really one branch of sense 1).’ In the 1972–86 supplement to the OED this definition of philology was further qualified: ‘In Britain now usu[ally] restricted to the study of the development of specific languages or language families, esp[ecially] research into phonological and morphological history based on written documents …. Linguistics is now the more usual term for the study of the structure of language, and, with qualifying adjective or adjective phrase, is replacing philology even in the restricted sense.’ For comment on these and later definitions, see The Ring of Words: Tolkien and the Oxford English Dictionary by Peter Gilliver, Jeremy Marshall, and Edmund Weiner (2006).

During the nineteenth century the discovery of similarities between Sanskrit and Greek and Latin led to the recognition of the Aryan or Indo-European family of languages, and the rise of Comparative Philology. More detailed study of existing languages and their history followed, as philologists sought to discover relationships between languages by comparison of their forms past and present, noting regular shifts and changes in sound and spelling over the years and deducing by analogy not only earlier lost forms, but also a common ancestral language from which the Indo-European family developed. From these relationships and fragmentary memories in later writings, some attempted to throw light on the history of the speakers of the languages, in particular the dark period towards the end of the Roman Empire when Germanic and other tribes pressed against its borders.

In England this led to a greater interest in Old English and its relationship with other Germanic languages. A chair in Anglo-Saxon was established at *Oxford as early as 1795 (see *Oxford English School), but during the nineteenth century the responsibilities of its holder were gradually extended to include Old Low German dialects and the antiquities of northern Europe. German scholars played a major role in defining new philological methods, which were fostered at Oxford by the creation of a Chair of Comparative Philology for Max Müller. See further, Tom Shippey, ‘Scholars of Medieval Literature, Influence of’, in J.R.R. Tolkien Encyclopedia, ed. Michael D.C. Drout (2006), pp. 594–8.

The first holder of the Merton Professorship of English Language and Literature, established in 1885, was *A.S. Napier, who had trained as a philologist in Germany and previously occupied a chair at the University of Göttingen. There was as yet no Honour School of English at Oxford, and those who had hoped that the Merton chair would go to someone more interested in Literature than Philology were disappointed. One of the major attacks on Philology came from John Churton Collins, who wrote that

as an instrument of culture it ranks – it surely ranks – very low indeed. It certainly contributes nothing to the cultivation of the taste. It as certainly contributes nothing to the education of the emotions. The mind it neither enlarges, stimulates, nor refines. On the contrary, it too often induces or confirms that peculiar woodenness and opacity, that singular coarseness of feeling and purblindness of moral and intellectual vision, which has in all ages been the characteristic of mere philologists …. Instead of encouraging communion with the noblest manifestations of human energy, with the great deeds of history, or with the masterpieces of art and letters, it tends, as Bacon remarks, to create habits of unintelligent curiosity about trifles. It too often resembles that rustic who, after listening for several hours to Cicero’s most brilliant conversation, noticed nothing and remembered nothing but the wart on the great orator’s nose. [The Study of English Literature (1891), quoted in D.J. Palmer, The Rise of English Studies (1965), pp. 83–4]

A different, more moderately expressed point of view was put forward by Henry Nettleship. Philology, he wrote, ‘can never, from the nature of the case, be hostile to literature, whatever temporary misunderstandings may arise between them. I believe also that philology is a necessary adjunct to the academical study of literature; that the academical study of literature, without philology, is a phantom which will vanish at the dawn of day’ (The Study of Modern European Languages and Literature (1887), quoted in Palmer, The Rise of English Studies, p. 104). But as D.J. Palmer has pointed out, however reasonable this might seem, it avoided consideration of various practical factors and vested interests:

Exactly what literature was to be studied in an English School? The pabulum of philologists was solidly medieval; linguistic interest did not, except by chance, coincide with literary quality; and on modern literature philologists had little to say that was of interest to literary critics. Moreover, even if the principle were conceded that philology was ‘a necessary adjunct’ to literary study, was it any more so than history, or philosophy, or rhetoric, or comparative literature? These issues would directly affect the actual organization of an English School and the definition of its scope and flexibility. [The Rise of English Studies, p. 105]

In the background of this debate was the opinion held by some that the study of English literature, and especially of more recent works, would be a ‘soft’ option compared to other schools, and that Philology, a precise and demanding discipline, would provide some ‘stiffening’. Thus even before an English School was established at Oxford in 1894 there were competing interests and ideas of what its syllabus should cover, and what part, if any, Philology should play in it.

T.A. Shippey has noted that even philologists were divided in how they approached or used their subject:

At one extreme scholars were drawing conclusions from the very letters of a language: they had little hesitation is ascribing texts to Gothic or Lombardic authors, to West Saxons and Kentishmen or Northumbrians, on the evidence of sound-changes recorded in spelling. At the other extreme they were prepared to pronounce categorically on the existence or otherwise of nations and empires on the basis of poetic tradition or linguistic spread. They found information, and romance, in songs and fragments everywhere. [The Road to Middle-earth (2nd edn. 1992), pp. 16–17]

Philology was able to identify the changed names of leaders and heroes in later poetry with earlier writings, and in some cases these did preserve memories of actual people and events. Shippey comments: ‘The change of viewpoint marks an enormous if temporary shift of poetic and literary interest from Classical to native. It also shows how philology could seem to some, the “noblest of sciences”, the key to “spiritual life”, certainly “something much greater than a misfit combination of language plus literature”’ (The Road to Middle-earth (2nd edn. 1992), p. 17, quoting Leonard Bloomfield and Holger Pedersen). Also,

the thousands of pages of ‘dry as dust’ theorems about language-change, sound-shifts and ablaut-gradations were, in the minds of most philologists, an essential and natural basis for the far more exciting speculations about the wide plains of ‘Gothia’ and the hidden, secret traderoutes across the primitive forests of the North, Myrkviðr inn ókunni, ‘the pathless Mirkwood’ itself. You could not have, you would never have got the one without the other. [p. 19]

Tolkien’s interest in words manifested itself while he was still a child. When his mother (*Mabel Tolkien) introduced him to Latin it ‘delighted him. He was just as interested in the sounds and shapes of the words as in their meanings ….’ He liked French less: ‘the sounds did not please him as much as the sounds of Latin and English [*Languages]. She also tried to interest him in playing the piano, but without success. It seemed rather as if words took the place of music for him, and that he enjoyed listening to them, reading them, and reciting them, almost regardless of what they meant’ (Humphrey Carpenter, Biography, p. 22). On several occasions in later life Tolkien referred to the effect the sound of certain words had on him. On 7 June 1955 he wrote to *W.H. Auden: ‘It has been always with me: the sensibility to linguistic pattern which affects me emotionally like colour or music …’ (Letters, p. 212). On 22 November 1961 he wrote to his Aunt *Jane Neave: ‘As for plenilune and argent [in his poem *Errantry], they are beautiful words before they are understood – I wish I could have the pleasure of meeting them for the first time again! – and how is one to know them till one does meet them?’ (Letters, p. 310).

In his lecture *English and Welsh, given in 1955, he commented that ‘most English-speaking people … will admit that cellar door is “beautiful”, especially if dissociated from its sense (and from its spelling). More beautiful than, say, sky, and far more beautiful than beautiful’ (*The Monsters and the Critics and Other Essays, p. 190). He continued, concerning Welsh, the language which influenced his Elvish language Sindarin (*Languages, Invented): ‘In Welsh for me cellar doors are extraordinarily frequent, and moving to the higher dimension, the words in which there is pleasure in the contemplation of the association of form and sense are abundant’ (The Monsters and the Critics, pp. 190–1). He wrote in his letter to Auden of discovering Finnish, which influenced his Elvish language Quenya, that ‘it was like discovering a complete wine-cellar filled with bottles of an amazing wine of a kind and flavour never tasted before. It quite intoxicated me …’ (Letters, p. 214).

Tolkien also described to Auden how he developed his interest in languages while still at school:

I went to King Edward’s School and spent most of my time learning Latin and Greek; but I also learned English …. I learned Anglo-Saxon at school (also Gothic, but that was an accident quite unconnected with the curriculum though decisive – I discovered in it not only modern historical philology, which appealed to the historical and scientific side, but for the first time the study of language out of mere love: I mean for the acute aesthetic pleasure derived from a language for its own sake, not only free from being useful but free even from being the ‘vehicle of a literature’). [Letters, p. 213]

According to Humphrey Carpenter, *Robert Cary Gilson, the Head Master at King Edward’s School,

encouraged his pupils to explore the byways of learning and to be expert in everything that came their way: an example that made a great impression on Ronald Tolkien. But though he was discursive, Gilson also encouraged his pupils to make a detailed study of classical linguistics. This was entirely in keeping with Tolkien’s inclinations; and, partly as a result of Gilson’s teaching, he began to develop an interest in the general principles of language.

It was one thing to know Latin, Greek, French and German; it was another to understand why they were what they were. Tolkien had started to look for the bones, the elements that were common to them all: he had begun, in fact, to study philology, the science of words. [Biography, p. 34]

To assist his studies he began to buy books on Philology, including a copy of Chambers’s Etymological Dictionary in which he noted in February 1973: ‘This book was the beginning of my interest in Germanic Philology (& Philol. in general’ (Life and Legend, p. 16). At Oxford Tolkien took Comparative Philology as a special subject for Honour Moderations, then abandoned Classics for the Language side of the English School.

As Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon (1925–45) he was required to teach not only literary aspects of works such as *Beowulf, but also the philological aspects of Old English. He gave lectures on such subjects as Old English Dialects, The Common Germanic Consonant-Changes, and Old English Historical Grammar (Inflexions). That he had a deep interest in such matters is shown in the languages he himself devised, especially Quenya and Sindarin, which underwent shifts and changes similar to those of real world languages, which could be ‘traced’ back to a common and original ‘Quendian’ tongue and developed in different branches according to events explained in *‘The Silmarillion’.

Although words and language remained of prime importance to him, Tolkien thought the divide between Language and Literature unfortunate and unnatural, and as a teacher at *Leeds and Oxford he tried to bridge it in the English syllabi. In his application for the Rawlinson and Bosworth chair of Anglo-Saxon at Oxford he promised ‘to advance … the growing neighbourliness of linguistic and literary studies, which can never be enemies except by misunderstanding or without loss to both …’ (27 June 1925, Letters, p. 13). In his lecture *Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics he objected to critics who mined Beowulf for miscellaneous information, historical as well as philological, and did not study it for itself, as a work of literature. In a draft letter to a Mr Thompson on 14 January 1956 he described himself as ‘a philologist by nature and trade (yet one always primarily interested in the aesthetic rather than the functional aspects of language)’ (Letters, p. 231).

But he was also interested in Philology for the light it could shed on the darker, forgotten corners of history and the peoples who had spoken earlier forms of languages, and whose stories and legends had been mainly lost. He gave lectures on subjects such as ‘Legends of the Goths’ and ‘The Historical and Legendary Traditions in Beowulf and Other Old English Poems’. In a letter written to his son *Christopher after hearing him lecture on ‘Barbarians and Citizens’, Tolkien said that he had

suddenly realized that I am a pure philologist. I like history, and am moved by it, but its finest moments for me are those in which it throws light on words and names! Several people (and I agree) spoke to me of the art with which you made the beady-eyed Attila on his couch almost vividly present. Yet oddly, I find the thing that really thrills my nerves is the one you mentioned casually: atta, attila [diminutive of Gothic atta ‘father’]. Without those syllables the whole great drama both of history and legend loses savour for me – or would. [21 February 1958, Letters, p. 264]

Tolkien also had an associated interest in place-names. He joined the English Place-Name Society (*Societies and clubs) at its inception on 27 April 1923 and remained a member until his death. *The Name ‘Nodens’, which he wrote as an appendix to the Report of the Excavation of the Prehistoric, Roman, and Post-Roman Site in Lydney Park, Gloucestershire (1932), discusses not only philological aspects of the word but also history, legend, and mythology. The story *Farmer Giles of Ham, purporting to explain the names of some of the places near Oxford that Tolkien and his family used to visit, not only provides an ‘historical’ source for Thame and Worminghall but also explains why those names are not pronounced as written.

Tolkien’s grandson, Michael George, commented in a lecture given to the University of St Andrews Science Fiction and Fantasy Society on 2 May 1989 that for Tolkien ‘words were a commodity to be used with care and reverence …. He was for me a philologist not just in the technical sense but in the almost physical sense of feeling that words have a special kind of animation to be pondered and savoured and to be probed’. Michael George remembers

family occasions, usually meals with cross-currents of conversation … he seemed to have the art of carrying on several dialogues at once, including a kind of sotto voce monologue or soliloquy if something linguistic needed calculating …. Consciously or unconsciously he quickly assumed in my imagination the role of an ultimate authority on such matters as the origins of names and the vagaries of words in their use and abuse. He loved to explode or expose common assumptions: he did this so enthusiastically and rapidly and overwhelmingly that one was compelled to listen and agree.

But he also respected words that were perplexing and he rather delighted in their elusiveness …. I think his disciplined, academic training gave him a great advantage (as well as adding to his frustrated impatience) in making people face up to the loose way they used words and phrases. [‘Lecture on J.R.R. Tolkien Given to the University of St. Andrews Science Fiction and Fantasy Society on 2nd May, 1989’]

In a discussion of Tolkien’s medieval scholarship, Michael D.C. Drout argued that

there is a decreased confidence in philology and an increased confidence in the significance and authority of manuscripts that now, with hindsight, seems to be composed partly of legitimate doubts and partly of cant. I think that there is no doubt that medievalists today know much less philology than did Tolkien and his contemporaries, and they have more access to manuscripts via inexpensive air travel, electronic reproductions, and microfilms; thus it is certainly possible to read the development of the criticism as a way of shifting the debate onto grounds in which the newer generation of scholars is more comfortable. Large, theoretical objections to philology (scribes are more accurate, manuscript-readings are sacrosanct, emendations are suspect) have gone hand in hand with a diminution in the ability to do philology. [‘J.R.R. Tolkien’s Medieval Scholarship and Its Significance’, Tolkien Studies 4 (2007), p. 124]

For a general discussion of Philology and the division in English studies, see T.A. Shippey, The Road to Middle-earth, especially the chapter ‘Lit. and Lang.’ Both that book and Shippey’s J.R.R. Tolkien: Author of the Century (2000) are useful references for studying the influence of Tolkien’s philological interests on his literary works. The Ring of Words: Tolkien and the Oxford English Dictionary by Peter Gilliver, Jeremy Marshall, and Edmund Weiner (2006), and ‘The Word as Leaf: Perspectives on Tolkien as Lexicographer and Philologist’ by Gilliver, Weiner, and Marshall, in Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings: Sources of Inspiration, ed. Stratford Caldecott and Thomas Honegger (2008), are also essential readings on Tolkien and Philology.

Pictures by J.R.R. Tolkien. Collection of paintings, drawings, and designs by Tolkien, with foreword and notes by *Christopher Tolkien, first published in Great Britain by George Allen & Unwin, London, and in the United States by the Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston, both in November 1979. See further, Descriptive Bibliography Ei2.

The images first appeared in a series of Tolkien calendars issued by Allen & Unwin (*Publishers) from 1973 to 1979, excepting 1975. A revised edition was published in 1992. The book was allowed to go out of print after the publication of J.R.R. Tolkien: Artist and Illustrator (1995) by Wayne G. Hammond and Christina Scull, in which most (but not all) of the images in Pictures by J.R.R. Tolkien were also reproduced, with greater definition.

A list of Tolkien’s published art is included in the second volume of the Reader’s Guide. See also *Art.

Pity and mercy. In The Lord of the Rings the pity of Bilbo, Frodo, and Sam, each of whom spares Gollum’s life, is clearly shown as having led to the ultimate success of the *quest. In the account of Bilbo’s encounter with Gollum under the Misty Mountains it is said that, as Bilbo fled from Gollum, who suspected that Bilbo had found his ring, the Ring slipped on Bilbo’s finger, making him invisible, and that Bilbo followed Gollum until they came to an opening that led to the lower gates: ‘There Gollum crouched at bay, smelling and listening; and Bilbo was tempted to slay him with his sword. But pity stayed him, and though he kept the ring, in which his only hope lay, he would not use it to help him kill the wretched creature at a disadvantage. In the end, gathering his courage, he leaped over Gollum in the dark, and fled away …’ (Prologue). In Book I, Chapter 2, when Frodo learns that through Gollum Sauron has probably discovered the whereabouts of the Ring, he cries: ‘What a pity that Bilbo did not stab that vile creature, when he had the chance!’ To which Gandalf replies: ‘Pity? It was Pity that stayed his hand. Pity, and Mercy: not to strike without need. And he has been well rewarded, Frodo. Be sure that he took so little hurt from the evil, and escaped in the end, because he began his ownership of the Ring so. With Pity.’

There are several points to be made about these passages. One is the use of ‘pity’ in the conventional phrase ‘what a pity’, often used to indicate regret or disappointment about comparatively minor events or mishaps; but this is not the focus of the present article. That usage is clearly different from the ‘pity’ shown by Bilbo, which falls within the second definition of the word in the *Oxford English Dictionary (OED): ‘a feeling or emotion of tenderness aroused by the suffering, distress or misfortune of another, and prompting a desire for its relief; compassion; sympathy’. The first definition in the OED, ‘the quality of being pitiful; the disposition to mercy or compassion; clemency, mercy, mildness, tenderness’, is noted as obsolete, or merged into the second. The definitions of pitiful include an obsolete use, ‘characterized by piety, pious’, and among modern usages ‘full of pity, compassionate, merciful’. It is clear that one can feel compassion, without mercy being a necessary concomitant, though in some uses it is implied. The OED defines mercy as ‘forbearance and compassion shown by one person to another who is in his power and has no claim to receive kindness; kind and compassionate treatment in a case where severity is merited or expected’. ‘It was Pity that stayed [Bilbo’s] hand. Pity, and Mercy’.

In fact, until the second edition of *The Hobbit (1951) Bilbo showed neither pity nor mercy to Gollum, nor was any needed. In the original version of The Hobbit, Chapter 5, Gollum offered Bilbo a present if he won the riddle contest, but when Gollum lost and went to get his ring, he could not find it, and therefore agreed to show Bilbo the way out instead. He led him through the tunnels as far as he dared, then ‘Bilbo slipped under the arch, and said good-bye to the nasty miserable creature’. The revised version of Chapter 5 was written probably in August or September 1947, and until summer 1950 Tolkien thought that Allen & Unwin (*Publishers) were unwilling to make the change. Yet during the writing of The Lord of the Rings Bilbo’s, and later Frodo’s, pity for Gollum have the same major significance in the story, even in the earliest account of Bingo’s (Frodo’s) conversation with Gandalf, written in autumn 1938, though with some contortion: ‘What a pity Bilbo did not stab the beastly creature when he said goodbye’ …. ‘What nonsense you do talk sometimes, Bingo …. Pity! It was pity that prevented him. And he could not do so, without doing wrong. It was against the rules. If he had done so he would not have had the ring, the ring would have had him at once’ (*The Return of the Shadow, p. 81). It is clear that Tolkien knew almost from the beginning that without pity and mercy being shown to Gollum, the quest would end in failure.

In the published text Frodo responds to Gandalf’s comment on Bilbo’s pity: ‘I am frightened; and I do not feel any pity for Gollum …. He deserves death.’ Gandalf points out that Frodo has not seen Gollum, and it may be that Gollum does deserve death; but

many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgement. For even the very wise cannot see all ends. I have not much hope that Gollum can be cured before he dies, but there is a chance of it. And he is bound up with the fate of the Ring. My heart tells me that he has some part to play yet, for good or ill, before the end; and when that comes, the pity of Bilbo may rule the fate of many – yours not least. In any case we [his captors] did not kill him: he is very old and very wretched. The Wood-elves have him in prison, but they treat him with such kindness as they can find in their wise hearts.

Already not only Bilbo, but Gandalf and the Wood-elves, have felt pity for Gollum. Because the Wood-elves did not have ‘the heart to keep him ever in dungeons under the earth’ (bk. II, ch. 2) Gollum was able to escape, and to play a part such as Gandalf foresaw.

When, in Book IV, Chapter 1, Frodo and Sam capture Gollum at the foot of the Emyn Muil and he begs for mercy, Frodo seems to hear the words spoken by Gandalf in their conversation at Bag End, and says: ‘I will not touch the creature. For now that I see him, I do pity him.’ Frodo’s pity for a while seems to bring about a change in Gollum. At the pool of Henneth Annûn Frodo is offered an easy way out as he approaches Gollum and hears his murmuring about the Precious, nasty hobbits, nasty Men: ‘We hates them …. Throttle them, precious.’

So it went on …. Frodo shivered, listening with pity and disgust. He wished it would stop, and that he never need hear that voice again. Anborn was not far behind. He could creep back and ask him to get the huntsmen to shoot …. Only one true shot, and Frodo would be rid of the miserable voice for ever. But no, Gollum had a claim on him now. The servant has a claim on the master for service, even service in fear. They would have foundered in the Dead Marshes but for Gollum. Frodo knew, too, somehow, quite clearly that Gandalf would not have wished it. [bk. IV, ch. 6]

Faramir, against the command that he slay any he find in Ithilien without leave, allows Frodo, for whom he feels ‘pity and honour’ (bk. IV, ch. 5), to continue on his journey. He also shows mercy (but perhaps not pity) in not killing Gollum, allowing him to leave with Frodo.

On Mount Doom Gollum attacks first Frodo and then Sam, and despite Gollum’s treachery, even Sam at last comes to feel pity for him:

It would be just to slay this treacherous, murderous creature, just and many times deserved; and also it seemed the only safe thing to do. But deep in his heart there was something that restrained him: he could not strike this thing lying in the dust, forlorn, ruinous, utterly wretched. He himself, though only for a little while, had borne the Ring, and now dimly he guessed the agony of Gollum’s shrivelled mind and body, enslaved to that Ring, unable to find peace or relief ever in life again. [bk. VI, ch. 3]

At the last, Frodo admits that but for Gollum, ‘I could not have destroyed the Ring. The Quest would have been in vain, even at the bitter end. So let us forgive him! For the Quest is achieved …’ (bk. VI, ch. 3).

After the publication of The Lord of the Rings some readers wrote to Tolkien commenting on the honour given to Frodo despite his ‘failure’. In a letter to Michael Straight, written probably at the end of 1955, Tolkien said that

the ‘salvation’ of the world and Frodo’s own ‘salvation’ is achieved by his previous pity and forgiveness of injury. At any point any prudent person would have told Frodo that Gollum would certainly betray him, and could rob him in the end. To ‘pity’ him, to forbear to kill him, was a piece of folly, or a mystical belief in the ultimate value-in-itself of pity and generosity even if disastrous in the world of time. He did rob him and injure him in the end – but by a ‘grace’, that last betrayal was at a precise juncture when the final evil deed was the most beneficial thing any one c[oul]d have done for Frodo! By a situation created by his ‘forgiveness’, he was saved himself, and relieved of his burden. [Letters, p. 234]

On 27 July 1956 he wrote to Amy Ronald:

It is possible for the good, even the saintly, to be subjected to a power of evil which is too great for them to overcome – in themselves. In this case the cause (not the ‘hero’) was triumphant because by the exercise of pity, mercy, and forgiveness of injury, a situation was produced in which all was redressed and disaster averted. Gandalf certainly foresaw this [in Book I, Chapter 2]. Of course, he did not mean to say that one must be merciful, for it may prove useful later – it would not then be mercy or pity, which are only truly present when contrary to prudence. Not ours to plan! But we are assured that we must be ourselves extravagantly generous, if we are to hope for the extravagant generosity which the slightest easing of, or escape from, the consequences of our own follies and errors represents. And that mercy does sometimes occur in this life. [Letters, pp. 252–3]

In a draft letter to Mrs Eileen Elgar in September 1963, Tolkien explained his thoughts on

that strange element in the World that we call Pity or Mercy, which is also an absolute requirement in moral judgement (since it is present in the Divine nature). In its highest exercise it belongs to God. For finite judges of imperfect knowledge it must lead us to the use of two different scales of ‘morality’. To ourselves we must present the absolute ideal without compromise, for we do not know our own limits of natural strength (+ grace), and if we do not aim at the highest we shall certainly fall short of the utmost that we could achieve. To others, in any case of which we know enough to make a judgement, we must apply a scale tempered by ‘mercy’: that is, since we can with good will without the bias inevitable in judgements of ourselves, we must estimate the limits of another’s strength and weigh this against the force of particular circumstances. [Letters, p. 326]

There are other examples of mercy and pity in The Lord of the Rings; indeed, the opponents of Sauron generally seem eager to offer mercy to all except Orcs. Wormtongue, who has betrayed his king, is allowed to depart unhindered by both Théoden and Gandalf. After the Battle of Helm’s Deep, the hillmen beg for mercy; the Rohirrim disarm them, set them to bury the dead, and then set them free to return to their own land, asking only that they swear an oath not to pass the Fords of Isen in arms again or aid the enemies of Rohan. As the host of the West nears the desolation before the Morannon, the horror of the place unmans some of the men. Aragorn looks at them, and with ‘pity in his eyes rather than wrath’ he suggests another task that they might attempt ‘and so be not wholly shamed’ (bk. V, ch. 10). After his coronation Aragorn pardons and frees the Easterlings who have surrendered, and makes peace with Harad, and pronounces a judgement on Beregond which combines ‘mercy and justice’ (bk. VI, ch. 5). Gandalf offers to let Saruman go free on certain conditions, Treebeard releases him, hating to keep any live thing caged, and Frodo spares him despite all the harm he has done to the Shire and Saruman’s attempt to kill him. Other examples of pity are concerned with compassion rather than mercy: when, for instance, Faramir first sees Éowyn, ‘being a man whom pity deeply stirred, it seemed to him that her loveliness amid her grief would pierce his heart’; but later she tells him ‘I desire no man’s pity’, and he replies: ‘Do not scorn the pity that is the gift of a gentle heart …. But I do not offer you my pity …. I love you. Once I pitied your sorrow. But now, were you sorrowless, without fear or any lack, were you the blissful Queen of Gondor, still I would love you’ (bk. VI, ch. 5).

Katharyn W. Crabbe in J.R.R. Tolkien (rev. and expanded edn. 1988) comments that in The Lord of the Rings ‘to be able to pity others who suffer distinguishes the heroic from the villainous. In fact, Tolkien was no doubt making use of the philological fact that pity, in the general sense of “a feeling of compassion”’ did not exist as separate from its specific religious sense of piety until well after 1600: until then the ability to feel pity was a mark of piety’ (p. 81). In the ‘instances of heroic mercy’ shown by Gandalf, Treebeard, and Frodo to Saruman, by Frodo to Gollum, and by Aragorn to the faint-hearted,

there is an existential side … for in The Lord of the Rings mercy seems to mean the refusal to accept any being’s less than perfect state as his essential nature. Justice would pay each according to what he has done; mercy pays him according to what he might do – according to the ideal …. In a sense, the act of mercy works to preserve the free will of the receiver, giving him the chance to become the better being that is within his capability. Thus mercy is an essentially creative act – it leaves the possibilities for a recreation of the self open as does any healing process. As the hero shares with a divine being the quality of mercy, he shares with him his creative power. [p. 82]

Instances of pity and mercy are less frequent and less prominent in *The Silmarillion. There the Vala Nienna, who ‘is acquainted with grief, and mourns for every wound that Arda has suffered … does not weep for herself; and those who hearken to her learn pity, and endurance in hope’ (p. 28). When Mandos, the Doomsman of the Valar, hears the song of Lúthien, he is ‘moved to pity, who never before was so moved, nor has been since’ (p. 187). Eärendil, as representative of Elves and Men, stands before the Valar and asks pardon ‘for the Noldor and pity for their great sorrows, and mercy upon Men and Elves and succour in their need. And his prayer was granted’ (p. 249).

Brian Rosebury, in ‘Revenge and Moral Judgement in Tolkien’, Tolkien Studies 5 (2008), looks at pity and mercy from a different angle, considering actions by Tolkien’s characters when revenge or necessity may seem to override mercy.

Paul H. Kocher in Master of Middle-earth: The Fiction of J.R.R. Tolkien (1972) comments on the more overtly religious concept of mercy in *Leaf by Niggle, specifically in the dialogue between two voices discussing what is to be done with Niggle,

one voice insisting on justice, the other pleading for mercy. Here the resemblance is to the debate between the four daughters of God – Righteousness and Truth against Mercy and Peace – at the judging of souls, a favorite theme in medieval drama and poetry …. That Tolkien should employ techniques and ideas drawn from the literature of a period he knew so well is not surprising. But his success in acclimatizing them to our times is remarkable. Again we are justified in stressing that they were, and still are, Catholic. [p. 164–5]

‘The Plotz Declension’. Declension of the Quenya (*Languages, Invented) nouns cirya (‘ship’) and lasse (‘leaf’), published with commentary in ‘A Brief Note on the Background of the Letter from J.R.R. Tolkien to Dick Plotz Concerning the Declension of the High-elvish Noun’ by Jorge Quiñonez, Vinyar Tengwar 6 (July 1989), pp. 13–14.

The manuscript was included in a letter sent by Tolkien to an American correspondent, Richard Plotz, between late 1966 and early 1967. The declension chart proper, on one page, is accompanied by explanatory notes by Tolkien on a second page. The chart, but not Tolkien’s notes, was published earlier in Tolkien Language Notes 2 (1974), p. 4, with a commentary by Jim Allan, and in Beyond Bree for March 1989, p. 7 (‘The Dick Plotz Letter: Declension of the Quenya Noun’), with a commentary by Nancy Martsch.

Poems and Stories. Collection of shorter works by Tolkien, illustrated by *Pauline Baynes, first published (in de luxe form) by George Allen & Unwin, London, in May 1980. See further, Descriptive Bibliography A16. Trade editions were published by HarperCollins, London, in 1992 and by the Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston, in 1994.

The volume contains the poems of *The Adventures of Tom Bombadil and Other Verses from the Red Book; *The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth Beorhthelm’s Son; *On Fairy-Stories; *Leaf by Niggle; *Farmer Giles of Ham; and *Smith of Wootton Major. Compare *Tales from the Perilous Realm.

The Poetic and Mythologic Words of Eldarissa. List of words in Eldarissa, i.e. Qenya, the language of the Eldar (later Quenya, *Languages, Invented), apparently derived from the dictionary portion of the *Qenyaqetsa (the ‘Qenya Lexicon’) in ?1917–?1918 and entitled variously Vocab[ulary] and The Poetic and Mythologic Words of Eldarissa. Elements from this word-list are indicated in the Qenyaqetsa as published in Parma Eldalamberon 12 (1998), edited by Christopher Gilson, Carl F. Hostetter, Patrick Wynne, and Arden R. Smith.

The manuscript of the list is contained in a notebook with the title Names and Lang[uage] to Book of Lost Tales, later altered to Notebook B, being Names to the Book of Lost Tales. On four pages in the middle of the work Tolkien interposed ‘a chart outlining the different kindreds of Elves and other races of beings in his mythological world, giving the terms for them in both Qenya and Gnomish’ (Parma Eldalamberon, p. xx), and the names of few prominent characters (*‘Early Chart of Names’), as well as a list of names from the ‘Story of Tuor’ in Qenya and Gnomish (*Official Name List).

According to the Parma Eldalamberon editors, the title The Poetic and Mythologic Words of Eldarissa ‘suggests that Tolkien’s intention was to prepare a basic vocabulary list to accompany his poems and mythological tales, and explain the significance of the names and other Elvish words included in them’ (p. xx).

Poetry. Tolkien recalled in *On Fairy-Stories that as a child he was ‘insensitive to poetry, and skipped it if it came in tales. Poetry I discovered much later in Latin and Greek and especially through being made to try and translate English verse into classical verse’ (*Tree and Leaf, p. 41). Robert Browning’s Pied Piper, at least, ‘failed with me even as a child, when I could not yet distinguish the shallow vulgarity of Browning from the general grown-uppishness of things I was expected to like’ (letter to *Jane Neave, 22 November 1961, Letters, p. 311). Nevertheless the young Tolkien may have tried to write a poem himself, about a dragon, when he was six or seven years old. In later years he could not recall if it was a poem or a story, only that his mother told him that he must write ‘great green dragon’, not ‘green great dragon’ (Letters, pp. 214, 221).

Tolkien’s earliest surviving poem appears to be Morning, which he included in a letter to Edith Bratt (*Edith Tolkien) written on 26 March 1910. Many of his early verses celebrate his feelings for *nature and landscape, or copy (or parody) poetic styles including those of medieval works that he studied and taught. *The Battle of the Eastern Field (1911), for instance, is a description of a rugby football match written in the style of one of Lord Macaulay’s Lays of Ancient Rome. Tolkien also looked for inspiration to the Finnish *Kalevala and to medieval verse which formed part of his professional interests such as the works of *Geoffrey Chaucer (see *The Clerke’s Compleinte and *Errantry) and William Langland (Piers Plowman; see *Doworst). For several years verse was his preferred form of literary composition, except for papers to be read to societies, and some of those were on poetry or poets – the Kalevala, *Francis Thompson, *H.R. Freston.

Tolkien believed that his poetic voice was stimulated by the meeting of the *T.C.B.S. in London on 12–13 December 1914. He wrote to his friend *G.B. Smith on 12 August 1916 of ‘the hope and ambitions … that first became conscious at the Council of London. That Council was as you know followed in my own case with my finding a voice for all kinds of pent up things and a tremendous opening up of everything for me: – I have always laid that to the credit of the inspiration that even a few hours with the four [core members of the T.C.B.S.] always brought to all of us’ (Letters, p. 10). Smith was himself an amateur poet of some talent; also, poetry had long been a pursuit by which young men of a literary bent sought to make their names.

In the months following the ‘Council of London’ Tolkien began to write poems more prolifically, and shared them with his T.C.B.S. friends (G.B. Smith, *R.Q. Gilson, and *Christopher Wiseman) and with a former schoolmaster, *R.W. Reynolds, for comment and criticism. He made fair copies of his poems and had them typed, arranging them for possible publication. The prospect of death for a young officer during the war gave such activity a special urgency. With no time for Tolkien to establish himself by publishing individual poems in magazines, he submitted a collection of his verse, with the title The Trumpets of Faerie, to Sidgwick & Jackson of London early in 1916; but it was rejected.

By now his poem *Goblin Feet had appeared in Oxford Poetry 1915, and he had also written verses such as You & Me and the Cottage of Lost Play (April 1915, see *The Little House of Lost Play: Mar Vanwa Tyaliéva) and *The Princess Ní (July 1915). Although Tolkien later came to dislike his early depictions of diminutive beings with ‘fairy lanterns’ and ‘little pretty flittermice’, they were not uncommon in poetry of his day. ‘Fairy poetry’ had been popular since the nineteenth century, promoted by the likes of Christina Rossetti and William Allingham. Fairies also featured often in pictorial art. John Garth in Tolkien and the Great War (2003) cites The Piper of Dreams (1914), a painting by Estella Canziani, as a possible influence on Tolkien’s poem *Tinfang Warble. Some of his fairy poetry – which R.W. Reynolds felt to be his strong suit – foreshadows the fairies and elves of his *‘Silmarillion’ mythology, while other verses of the period, such as Kortirion among the Trees (November 1915, see *The Trees of Kortirion), are more clearly within its framework. Tolkien later wrote on one version of *The Shores of Faery (July 1915, illustration May 1915, see Artist and Illustrator, fig. 44) ‘first poem of my mythology’.

In other respects, Tolkien the poet was like many other men faced with the challenge of war, who found a voice to express feelings of nostalgia for England left behind, so different from life in the trenches, or about the war itself. Verses of this sort by G.B. Smith appeared after his death in A Spring Harvest (1918), edited by Tolkien; of Tolkien’s own poems, *The Lonely Isle and *The Town of Dreams and the City of Present Sorrow have been published, but not A Dream of Coming Home, A Memory of July in England, and Companions of the Rose (dedicated to the memory of Gilson and Smith), among others.

In the years following his return from service in France Tolkien continued to write new poetry and to revise earlier work, but until he went to *Leeds in 1920 the greater part of his literary writing was *The Book of Lost Tales, in prose. While at Leeds he retold the story of Túrin Turambar (*‘Of Túrin Turambar’) from The Book of Lost Tales at length in alliterative verse as *The Lay of the Children of Húrin, though he left this unfinished. Several of his shorter poems were published in magazines and collections. He also wrote poems and songs in English and other Northern languages to be sung at meetings of the Leeds Viking Club (*Songs for the Philologists). During this time, while he taught Old and Middle English poetry, Tolkien also made verse translations into Modern English of part of *Beowulf and probably the whole of *Pearl. The complex metre of the latter work inspired him to write an original poem, *The Nameless Land (1924). In 1962 he wrote of this to Jane Neave:

I never agreed with the view of scholars that the metrical form [of Pearl] 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 today might be thought bad). [Letters, p. 317]

In summer 1925 Tolkien began the *Lay of Leithian, a lengthy treatment of the tale of Beren and Lúthien (*‘Of Beren and Lúthien’) written in octosyllabic couplets, but this too he left unfinished. He revised and rewrote parts of it around 1950. *Christopher Tolkien quotes the remarks of an unnamed critic who wrote to his father (c. 1948 or a little later) that in ‘the staple octosyllabic couplet of romance’ he had chosen one of the most difficult of forms ‘if one wishes to avoid monotony and sing-song in a very long poem. I am often astonished by your success, but it is by no means consistently maintained’ (quoted in *The Lays of Beleriand, p. 1).

Tolkien liked to try his hand at poetry with complex metrical demands, including alliteration, the repetition of words, and rhyming schemes, often inspired by styles of the past. He wrote to *W.H. Auden on 29 March 1967 that many years earlier, ‘when trying to learn the art of writing alliterative poetry’, he composed a poem in which he attempted ‘to unify the lays about the Völsungs from the Elder Edda, written in the old eight-line fornyrðislag stanza’ (Letters, p. 379; see *The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún). Most of the riddles in Chapter 5 of *The Hobbit, all of them Tolkien’s own work, in style and method were modelled on old literary riddles. At least two of his poems were in written to provide an explanation of apparent nonsense in nursery rhymes (see *The Man in the Moon Came Down Too Soon and *The Man in the Moon Stayed Up Too Late). Poems such as Iumbo and its descendent *Oliphaunt, and *Fastitocalon were inspired by the medieval bestiary. *The Lay of Aotrou and Itroun is in the style of a Breton ballad, and the poem *Imram was inspired by Irish tales and legends of voyages. Tolkien wrote the first version of *The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth Beorhthelm’s Son in rhyming verse, but later rewrote it in alliterative verse, a form he used with pleasure, also for his unfinished poem *The Fall of Arthur (written in the same style as the Middle English alliterative Morte Arthure) and in *The Lord of the Rings to mark the Anglo-Saxon affinities of the Rohirrim.

The poems and songs found in The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien wrote to Margaret Carroux, when she was translating the work into German,

are an integral part of the narrative (and of the delineation of the characters) and not a separable ‘decoration’ like pictures by another artist ….

I myself am pleased by metrical devices and verbal skill (now out of fashion), and am amused by representing my imaginary historical period as one in which these arts were delightful to poets and singers, and their audiences. But otherwise the verses are all impersonal; they are as I say dramatic, and fitted with care in style and content to the characters and the situations in the story of the actors who speak or sing. [29 September 1968, Tolkien–George Allen & Unwin archive, HarperCollins]

In October 1968 he wrote to his son *Michael that his poetry had ‘received little praise – comment even by some admirers being as often as not contemptuous …. Perhaps largely because in the contemporary atmosphere – in which “poetry” must only reflect one’s personal agonies of mind or soul, and exterior things are only valued by one’s own “reactions” – it seems hardly ever recognized that the verses in The [Lord of the Rings] are all dramatic …’ (Letters, p. 396). Both William Reynolds in ‘Poetry as Metaphor in The Lord of the Rings’, Mythlore 4, no. 4, whole no. 16 (June 1977), and T.A. Shippey in J.R.R. Tolkien: Author of the Century (2000) examine two poems from The Lord of the Rings – The Road Goes Ever On (bk. I, ch. 1, 2; bk. VI, ch. 6) and Upon the Hearth the Fire Is Red (bk. I, ch. 3; bk. VI, ch. 9) – and how by subtle changes Tolkien uses them to reveal character, emotion, and situation.

From the beginning Tolkien often revised and rewrote his poems, sometimes after gaps of years, improving, changing emphasis, or transforming to fit into one of his narrative works. The most extraordinary example of this is *Errantry, which evolved through many stages to become the poem ‘Eärendil was a mariner’ which Bilbo recites at Rivendell in The Lord of the Rings, Book II, Chapter 1. By that time only one line survived from the version of Errantry published in 1933. The poem, Tolkien said, is ‘in a metre I invented (depending on trisyllabic assonances or near-assonances, which is so difficult that except in this one example I have never been able to use it again – it just blew out in a single impulse)’ (letter to Rayner Unwin, 22 June 1952, Letters, pp. 162–3).

When he needed a theme for the mostly light-hearted collection published as *The Adventures of Tom Bombadil and Other Verses from the Red Book (1962), Tolkien was able to pretend that the contents were Hobbit poetry, and even attributed some of them to characters in The Lord of the Rings. He told *Pauline Baynes, who was illustrating the book, that the poems ‘were conceived as a series of very definite, clear and precise, pictures – fantastical, or nonsensical perhaps, but not dreamlike!’ and were, he thought, ‘dexterous in words, but not very profound in intention’. *The Hoard was an exception, ‘written in [a] mode rather resembling the oldest English verse – and was in fact inspired by a single line of ancient verse’ from Beowulf (6 December 1961, Letters, p. 312).

TRANSLATION OF POETRY

Tolkien probably first undertook the translation of poetry at *King Edward’s School, Birmingham, where pupils were required to translate English verse into Latin. In the early 1920s, while employed at the University of Leeds, he translated the traditional song ‘The Mermaid’ (‘It was in the broad Atlantic’) into Old English to be recited or sung by the Viking Club (*Societies and clubs). But his most important translations are those that he made of Old and Middle English poems into Modern English. In these he took pains to preserve as far as possible the original metre, rhyming pattern, alliteration, and style. In reply to a letter from Professor John Leyerle, who had evidently expressed different ideas, Tolkien wrote on 28 April 1967: ‘You of course go clean contrary to my own views on translation of works of a former time in your remarks about “aping features that are anachronistic today”. If the taste and sympathies of the present day are to be the criterion, why bother to present to moderns things that are anachronistic in feeling and thought?’ (Tolkien Papers, Bodleian Library, Oxford).

In an unpublished essay concerning his thoughts on the translation of poetry, written after reading Poems from the Old English translated by Burton Raffel (1960), Tolkien pointed out first the value of making such translations without intention to publish them: ‘The making of translations should be primarily for private amusement, and profit. The profit, at any rate, will be found in the increased and sharpened understanding of the language of the original which the translator will acquire in the process, and can acquire no other way.’ He then considered how some of the impact of the work on its original audience might be achieved not only for those who could not read the original, but also for those whose appreciation of the texts had been spoiled because they were objects of study:

First of all by absolute allegiance to the thing translated: to its meaning, its style, technique, and form. The language used in translation is, for this purpose, merely an instrument, that must be handled so as to reproduce, to make audible again, as nearly as possible, the antique work. Fortunately modern (modern literary, not present-day colloquial) English is an instrument of very great capacity and resources, it has long experience not yet forgotten, and deep roots in the past not yet all pulled up. It can, if asked, still play in modes no longer favoured and remember airs not now popular; it is not limited to the fashionable cacophonies. I have little sympathy with contemporary theories of translation, and no liking for their results. In these the allegiance is changed. Too often it seems given primarily to ‘contemporary English’, the present-day colloquial idiom as if being ‘contemporary’, that most evanescent of qualities, by itself guaranteed its superiority. In many the primary allegiance of the ‘translator’ is to himself, to his own whims and notions, and the original author is evidently considered fortunate to have aroused the interest of a superior writer. This attitude is often a mask for incompetence, and for ignorance of the original idiom; in any case it does not encourage close study of the text and its language, the laborious but only sure way of acquiring a sensitive understanding and appreciation, even for those of poetic temperament, who might have acquired them, if they had started with a more humble and loyal allegiance. [Tolkien Papers, Bodleian Library, Oxford]

Tolkien remarked to Jane Neave that translations which follow the original closely are more difficult to create than original verse, since the translator does not have the freedom of the original poet. By example, he described the complexities of Pearl, the rhyming pattern of its twelve-line stanzas, its internal alliteration of line, and its requirement that certain words and lines be echoed from stanza to stanza. The translation of Pearl attracted him because of the poem’s ‘apparently insoluble metrical problems’ (18 July 1962, Letters, p. 317). Later, in a letter to his grandson Michael George (see *Michael Tolkien), he wrote that ‘Pearl is, of course, about as difficult a task as any translator could be set. It is impossible to make a version in the same metre close enough to serve as a “crib”. But I think anyone who reads my version, however learned a Middle English scholar, will get a more direct impression of the poem’s impact (on one who knew the language)’ (6 January 1965, Letters, p. 352).

For Tolkien, translation not only made a work of the past available to modern readers who could not read the older language, it was also a means by which the translator could study the poem and get close to the thought of its author, and could by the words he chose for the translation provide a commentary on the original. Tolkien had begun translations of Pearl and of *Sir Gawain and the Green Knight for his own instruction, since ‘a translator must first try to discover as precisely as he can what his original means, and may be led by ever closer attention to understand it better for its own sake. Since I first began I have given to the idiom of these texts very close study, and I have certainly learned more about them than when I first presumed to translate them’ (*Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Pearl and Sir Orfeo, p. 7).

His translations of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Pearl, and *Sir Orfeo were published together in 1975. His unfinished verse translation of Beowulf is still largely unpublished, but his prose translation was published in 2014. That Tolkien had a translation of the Middle English Owl and the Nightingale apparently complete by 8 April 1932 is indicated by C.S. Lewis in a letter to his brother; it was, however, apparently not complete to Tolkien’s satisfaction. In 1967 he wrote to Professor Leyerle: ‘I have at present given up the task …. It comes off well enough in certain passages, but in general octosyllabic couplets are defeating for a translator; there is no room to move’ (Tolkien Papers, Bodleian Library, Oxford).

In addition to his verse in English, Tolkien composed poetry in his created Elven languages (perhaps most notably Galadriel’s lament, Namárië) and in Old English, Middle English and Gothic.

CRITICISM

Carl Phelpstead in ‘“With Chunks of Poetry in Between”: The Lord of the Rings and Saga Poetics’, Tolkien Studies 5 (2008), explores how Tolkien’s incorporation of verse within several of his prose tales, from The Story of Kullervo to The Lord of the Rings, was derived from the Icelandic sagas, in part through *William Morris. In ‘Early Influences on Tolkien’s Poetry’, in Tolkien’s Poetry, ed. Julian Eilmann and Allan Turner (2013), Allan Turner discusses the influence on Tolkien of Francis Thompson, William Morris, the T.C.B.S., Georgian poetry, classical poetry, and exotic forms.

Jason Fisher in ‘Parody? Pigwiggery? Sourcing the Early Verse of J.R.R. Tolkien’, Beyond Bree, October and November 2009, discusses Tolkien’s early ‘fairy’ poems such as Goblin Feet and his later comments on diminutive fairies in On Fairy-Stories.

Michael D.C. Drout comments in his introduction (‘Reading Tolkien’s Poetry’) to Tolkien’s Poetry, ed. Eilmann and Turner (2013), that the popularity and vast sales of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings mean that ‘we can safely conclude that Tolkien’s poetry is among the most widely disseminated in the past century’ (p. 1). Though many readers admit to skipping them, the verses ‘are essential to the aesthetic and thematic effects’ of Tolkien’s fiction. ‘There are nearly 100 poems in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings’ in numerous forms, metres, and styles, some of which ‘contain certain information that is unavailable elsewhere in the text. Others reveal the characters of their speakers, demonstrate cultural differences and traditions or present otherwise-lost history …. The verses, therefore, cannot be dismissed as filler, incidental ornamentation or self-indulgent excrescence: on multiple levels they are woven throughout the work’ (pp. 3–4).

Julian Tim Morton Eilmann, in ‘I Am the Song: Music, Poetry, and the Transcendent in J.R.R. Tolkien’s Middle-earth’, in Light beyond All Shadow: Religious Experience in Tolkien’s Work, ed. Paul E. Kerry and Sandra Miesel (2011), also considers the songs and poems in The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit to be ‘an integral element in the narrative’ (p. 101) which serve ‘the purpose of social and cultural communication’. The poetry

imparts historical knowledge and is the genre for prophecies …. Furthermore, one has to consider the simple, playful joy of singing and reciting poetry, its aesthetic pleasure. But this is not the crucial point of art reception in Middle-earth. Repeatedly the text of The Lord of the Rings implies that certain forms of poetry are able to evoke vivid images and ideas in the recipient’s mind, causing an effect that is repeatedly called ‘enchantment’. [p. 103]

He cites several examples, including Frodo in the Hall of Fire, and discusses the power of song in *The Silmarillion (see *Music).

Studies of Tolkien’s alliterative verse include Carl Phelpstead, ‘Auden and the Inklings: An Alliterative Revival’, Journal of English and Germanic Philology, October 2004; Mark F. Hall, ‘The Theory and Practice of Alliterative Verse in the Works of J.R.R. Tolkien’, Mythlore 25, nos. 1/2, whole nos. 95/96 (Fall/Winter 2006); Tom Shippey, ‘Alliterative Verse by Tolkien’, J.R.R. Tolkien Encyclopedia, ed. Michael D.C. Drout (2006); and Shippey, ‘Tolkien’s Development as a Writer of Alliterative Poetry in Modern English’, Lembas Extra 2009: Tolkien in Poetry and Song (2009).

On Tolkien’s poetry not in English, see further, Tom Shippey, ‘Poems by Tolkien in Other Languages’, in J.R.R. Tolkien Encyclopedia, ed. Michael D.C. Drout (2006); and Maria Artamanova, ‘Tolkien’s Writings in Old Germanic Languages’, in The Ring Goes Ever On: Proceedings of the Tolkien 2005 Conference: 50 Years of The Lord of the Rings, ed. Sarah Wells (2008).

Political thought. Tolkien’s political views on the whole were conservative, in that he supported the Conservative Party rather than the Labour Party, but also in that he wanted to conserve what was good, and not to assume that new ideas or inventions were good merely because they were new. He understood that *power could corrupt, and mistrusted those who sought it. He applauded the medieval ideal of nolo episcopari: that only the man who does not want to be a bishop is fit to be a bishop – by extension, that those who seek power are unfit to wield it. Letters he wrote to his son *Christopher during the Second World War are enlightening on all of these issues.

His feelings were undoubtedly sharpened by the situation around him (*War) – the use of machines (*Environment) leading to destruction and loss of life, incompetency and corruption, controls and restrictions – and he found some relief in writing about them. On 29 November 1943 he wrote to Christopher, with deliberate overemphasis to make his point:

My political opinions lean more and more to Anarchy (philosophically understood, meaning abolition of control not whiskered men with bombs) – or to ‘unconstitutional’ Monarchy. I would arrest anybody who uses the word State (in any sense other than the inanimate realm of England and its inhabitants, a thing that has neither power, rights nor mind); and after a chance of recantation, execute them if they remained obstinate! If we could get back to personal names, it would do a lot of good. Government is an abstract noun meaning the art and process of governing and it should be an offence to write it with a capital G or so as to refer to people. If people were in the habit of referring to ‘King George’s council, Winston [Churchill] and his gang’, it would go a long way to clearing thought, and reducing the frightful landslide into Theyocracy. Anyway the proper study of Man is anything but Man; and the most improper job of any man, even saints (who at any rate were at least unwilling to take it on), is bossing other men. Not one in a million is fit for it, and least of all those who seek the opportunity. [Letters, pp. 63–4]

In a draft letter to Michael Straight at the end of 1955 he explained: ‘I am not a “socialist” in any sense – being averse to “planning” … most of all because the “planners”, when they acquire power, become so bad …’ (Letters, p. 235). In another draft letter, to Joanna de Bortadano in April 1956, Tolkien explained his doubts about ‘democracy’ as necessarily an ideal method of government: ‘I am not a “democrat” only because “humility” and equality are spiritual principles corrupted by the attempt to mechanize and formalize them, with the result that we get not universal smallness and humility, but universal greatness and pride, till some Orc gets hold of a ring of power – and then we get and are getting slavery’ (Letters, p. 246). In other words, he could see that the ideals of democracy are all too rarely achieved. Those elected may abuse the power they gain in the interests of themselves or their friends, or for various reasons may not represent the population as a whole but only a part of it – great landowners, or those with inherited wealth or political connections.

Tolkien loved *England and applauded true patriotism, but was against any form of imperialism or colonialism, whether political or cultural. In a letter to *Christopher Wiseman on 16 November 1914, not long after the beginning of the First World War, he discussed matters that he felt to be of supreme importance, including ‘the duty of patriotism and a fierce belief in nationalism’. He concluded: ‘I am not of course a militarist. I no longer defend the Boer War! I am a more & more convinced Home Ruler …. I don’t defend “Deutschland über alles” but certainly do the Norwegian “alt for Norge” which translates itself (if I have it right?)’ (Tolkien Papers, Bodleian Library, Oxford). On 9 December 1943 he wrote to his son Christopher: ‘I love England (not Great Britain and certainly not the British Commonwealth (grr!)), and if I was of military age, I should, I fancy, be grousing away in a fighting service, and willing to go on to the bitter end …’ (Letters, p. 65). On 29 May 1945, after the end of the war in Europe but while it continued in the Far East, he wrote to Christopher: ‘As I know nothing about British or American imperialism in the Far East that does not fill me with regret and disgust, I am afraid I am not even supported by a glimmer of patriotism in this remaining war. I would not subscribe a penny to it, let alone a son, were I a free man. It can only benefit America or Russia: prob[ably] the latter’ (Letters, p. 115).

He was patriotic but not blindly so – patriotic to his country but not necessarily to its government’s policies or propaganda. He expressed this in historical terms in another letter to Christopher, on 31 July 1944:

I should have hated the Roman Empire in its day (as I do), and remained a patriotic Roman citizen, while preferring a free Gaul and seeing good in Carthaginians. Delenda est Carthago [Plutarch, ‘Carthage must be destroyed’]. We hear rather a lot of that nowadays. I was actually taught at school that that was a fine saying; and I ‘reacted’ … at once. There lies still some hope that, at least in our beloved land of England, propaganda defeats itself, and even produces the opposite effect. [Letters, p. 89]

Tolkien recognized that *good and evil are not all on one side, even if he felt that perhaps there was more evil, or more evil men, in the Second World War among the Germans and Japanese. When he read an article in a local paper ‘seriously advocating systematic exterminating of the entire German nation as the only proper course after military victory: because, if you please, they are rattlesnakes, and don’t the difference between good and evil!’ he wondered if the writer himself knew the difference, and commented to Christopher: ‘The Germans have just as much right to declare the Poles and Jews exterminable vermin, subhuman, as we have to select Germans: in other words, no right, whatever they have done. Of course there is still a difference here. The article was answered, and the answer printed’ (23–5 September 1944, Letters, p. 93). In the same letter he objected to propaganda on the BBC and in newspapers, which he supposed was produced by the Ministry of Information,

that the German troops are a motley collection of sutlers and broken men, while yet recording the bitterest defence against the finest and best equipped armies … that have ever taken the field. The English pride themselves, or used to, on ‘sportsmanship’ (which included ‘giving the devil his due’) …. But it is distressing to see the press grovelling in the gutter as low as [Nazi propagandist Joseph] Goebbels in his prime, shrieking that any German commander who holds out in a desperate situation … is a drunkard, and a besotted fanatic. [Letters, p. 93]

It has been alleged that Tolkien was not interested in current affairs, and hardly ever read a newspaper. He told Henry Resnik in an interview in 1966, however, that he and his wife took three newspapers, and ‘I read them when I’m interested. I take a strong interest in what is going on, both in the university and in the country and in the world’ (‘An Interview with Tolkien’, Niekas 18 (Spring 1967), p. 39). The sinister picture of *Númenor under the influence of Sauron in *The Lost Road (written ?1936–?1937), for instance, almost certainly reflects knowledge of the contemporary rise of Nazi Germany. This includes, as Christopher Tolkien comments,

the withdrawal of the besotted and aging king from the public view, the unexplained 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 …. The teaching of Sauron has led to the invention of ships of metal that traverse the seas without sails …; to the building of grim fortresses and unlovely towers; and to missiles that pass with a noise like thunder to strike their targets many miles away. 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]

That Tolkien was well aware of anti-Semitism in Nazi Germany (*Prejudice and racism) is shown by his reaction to a request by the proposed publisher of a German translation of The Hobbit, for a declaration of Tolkien’s ‘arisch’ origin. He pointed out the correct meaning of Aryan and regretted that he had no Jewish blood. In addition, Christopher Tolkien remembers *Father Vincent Reade visiting his father in Oxford not long before the Second World War and describing the maltreatment of Jews in Germany, which he had recently visited (correspondence with the authors).

In the mid-1950s Tolkien made references in letters comparing the disintegration of Frodo’s will under the influence of the Ring in *The Lord of the Rings to brainwashing, and though he did not specify, presumably to the treatment of prisoners of war in North Korea. In a draft letter to Michael Straight at the end of 1955, he said that Frodo did indeed fail at the end of his *quest, and one correspondent had said that Frodo should have been executed as a traitor. ‘Believe me, it was not until I read this that I had myself any idea how “topical” such a situation might appear …. I did not foresee that before the tale was published we should enter a dark age in which the technique of torture and disruption of personality would rival that of Mordor and the Ring and present us with the practical problem of honest men of good will broken down into apostates and traitors’ (Letters, p. 234). In a draft to Miss J. Burn on 26 July 1956 he wrote: ‘In the case of those who now issue from prison “brainwashed”, broken, or insane, praising their torturers, no such immediate deliverance is as a rule to be seen. But we can at least judge them by the will and intentions with which they entered the Sammath Naur; and not demand impossible feats of will, which could only happen in stories unconcerned with real moral and mental probability’ (Letters, p. 252).

He also objected to cultural ‘colonialism’ and the standardization that often follows, regretting the loss of diversity, including diversity of language with the spread of English:

The bigger things get the smaller and duller or flatter the globe gets. It is getting to be all one blasted little provincial suburb. When they have introduced American sanitation, morale-pep, feminism, and mass production throughout the Near East, Middle East, Far East, U.S.S.R., the Pampas, el Gran Chaco, the Danubian Basin, Equatorial Africa, Hither Further and Inner Mumbo-land, Gondhwanaland, Lhasa, and the villages of darkest Berkshire, how happy we shall be. At any rate it ought to cut down travel. There will be nowhere to go. So people will (I opine) go all the faster. Col. [Collie] Knox says ⅛ of the world’s population speaks ‘English’, and that is the biggest language group. If true, damn shame – say I. May the curse of Babel strike all their tongues till they can only say ‘baa baa’. It would mean much the same. I think I shall have to refuse to speak anything but old Mercian.

But seriously: I do find this Americo-cosmopolitanism very terrifying …. I am not really sure that its victory is going to be so much better for the world as a whole and in the long run than the victory of —— [sic]. [letter to Christopher Tolkien, 9 December 1943, Letters, p. 65]

In yet another letter to Christopher, on 31 July 1944, Tolkien wondered what the end of the war would bring, ‘but I suppose the one certain result of it all is a further growth in the great standardised amalgamations with their massproduced notions and emotions’ (Letters, p. 89).

For comment on politics and government in Tolkien’s ‘Middle-earth’ fiction (an aspect of his creation he never intended to develop fully), see, for example, William H. Stoddard, ‘Law and Institutions in the Shire’, Mythlore 18, no. 4, whole no. 70 (Autumn 1992), pp. 4–8; Alexander van de Bergh, ‘Democracy in Middle-earth: J.R.R Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings from a Socio-Political Perspective’, in Tolkien and Modernity 1, ed. Frank Weinreich and Thomas Honegger (2006); and Dominic J. Nardol, ‘Political Institutions in J.R.R. Tolkien’s Middle-earth: Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying about the Lack of Democracy’, Mythlore 33, no. 1, whole no. 125 (Fall/Winter 2014).

Poole (Dorset). Tolkien and his wife *Edith in their later years frequently visited *Bournemouth on the south coast of England. Eventually they decided to move to the area permanently. Tolkien seems to have made up his mind as soon as he saw the property at 19 Lakeside Road in nearby Poole that it was what he and Edith wanted. On 14 May 1968 he wrote to *Rayner Unwin: ‘I have discovered a very admirable and commodious bungalow in the borough of Poole (with of course a correspondingly ample price)’ (George Allen & Unwin archive, University of Reading). Their possessions were removed from *Oxford to Poole in mid-July 1968, but in Tolkien’s absence due to a leg injury in June.

In Poole the Tolkiens ‘lived in greater luxury than they had ever known, for despite the wealth from his writings, they both retained a great simplicity in the way they lived. Now, for the first time they enjoyed the comforts of central heating and a bathroom each; while Edith was as excited as a young bride at the sophistication of their new kitchen’ (*John and *Priscilla Tolkien, The Tolkien Family Album, p. 83, with photograph). There was also a sittingroom, a dining-room, a bedroom each, a room for Tolkien to use as a study, a veranda where he and Edith could sit, and a large garden; and since it was a bungalow, there were no stairs for its aged owners to negotiate. The building was plain and modern, but a private gate led to the wooded Branksome Chine, where Lord Snowdon photographed Tolkien leaning against the roots of a great tree, and down to the sea. As at Sandfield Road in Oxford, a double garage was converted into a library and office. *Joy Hill of George Allen & Unwin (*Publishers) often came to help Tolkien with his fan mail and other correspondence. His new address and telephone number were kept secret to avoid unwelcome intrusions by fans such as he had suffered in Oxford.

Tolkien lived in Poole until Edith’s death on 29 November 1971. In March 1972 he returned to Oxford. The bungalow was demolished in 2008.

Possessiveness. In Tolkien’s writings possessiveness is a major sin, and usually leads to the loss of the desired object and evil consequences.

This is a recurring motif particularly in *‘The Silmarillion’. Fëanor is possessive about the Silmarils, ignoring the fact that, although he has made them, much of their glory is due to the light of the Two Trees created by Yavanna and Nienna, which has been captured in the jewels. He wears the Silmarils at great feasts, but ‘at other times they were guarded close, locked in the deep chambers of his hoard in Tirion. For Fëanor began to love the Silmarils with a greedy love, and grudged the sight of them to all save to his father and his seven sons; he seldom remembered now that the light within them was not his own’ (*The Silmarillion, p. 69). When he is summoned by the Valar to a reconciliation with his brother, ‘he denied the sight of the Silmarils to the Valar and the Eldar, and left them locked in Formenos in their chamber of iron’ (p. 75). But Melkor is able to seize them when he attacks Formenos after destroying the Two Trees. Fëanor refuses Yavanna’s request for the Silmarils to try to revive the Two Trees with their light, neither knowing that the jewels have already been seized by Melkor. The writer of The Silmarillion comments that ‘all one it may seem whether Fëanor had said yea or nay to Yavanna; yet had he said yea at the first … it may be that his after deeds would have been other than they were’ (p. 79). Fëanor and his sons then swear ‘a terrible oath …to pursue with vengeance and hatred to the ends of the World’ any being ‘whoso should hold or take or keep a Silmaril from their possession’ (p. 83). From this follows war and treachery, so that at the end of the First Age Eönwe, the herald of Manwë, refuses to give two Silmarils to the two surviving sons, telling them ‘that the right to the work of their father … had now perished, because of their many and merciless deeds, being blinded by their oath …’ (p. 253).

In the story of the mortal Beren and the Elf Lúthien Tinúviel (*‘Of Beren and Lúthien) Thingol, King of Doriath, is so possessive of his daughter Lúthien that to send her lover, Beren, to his death and yet keep the promise he has made to Lúthien not to harm Beren, he demands as the price of his daughter’s hand that Beren bring him a Silmaril from Morgoth’s crown. Beren comments: ‘For little price do Elven-kings sell their daughters: for gems, and things made by craft’ (The Silmarillion, p. 168), implying that Thingol is treating his daughter like a possession. Later, when he has the Silmaril, ‘Thingol’s thought turned unceasingly to the jewel of Fëanor, and became bound to it, and he liked not to let it rest even behind the doors of his inmost treasury; and he was minded now to bear it with him always, waking and sleeping’ (p. 232). His resulting commission to the Dwarves to place it in a necklace, the Nauglamír, leads to the ruin of his realm.

In the story *‘Of Tuor and the Fall of Gondolin’ the message that Tuor brings from the Vala Ulmo to Turgon, King of Gondolin, is ‘that the Curse of Mandos now hastened to its fulfilment, when all the works of the Noldor should perish; and he bade him depart, and abandon the fair and mighty city that he had built ….’ Turgon remembers words spoken to him long before by Ulmo: ‘Love not too well the work of thy hands and the devices of thy heart; and remember that the true hope of the Noldor lieth in the West, and cometh from the Sea’ (The Silmarillion, p. 240). But out of love for the city he has built, and trust in its strength, Turgon does not heed the message, and Gondolin is destroyed.

In *The Hobbit Tolkien describes the dragon Smaug’s reactions when he discovers that one cup from his hoard had been stolen. ‘His rage passes description – the sort of rage that is only seen when rich folk that have more than they can enjoy suddenly lose something that they have long had but have never before used or wanted’ (ch. 12). Later the dwarf Thorin is unwilling to share any of the treasure of the dragon’s hoard, even though he knows that not all of it originally had been the property of his people. The Dwarves were particularly prone to the sin of possessiveness, and ‘used their rings only for the getting of wealth; but wrath and an overmastering greed of gold were kindled in their hearts, of which evil enough after came …’ (The Silmarillion, pp. 288–9).

Tolkien’s cautionary poem *The Hoard relates how doom fell upon the Elves; the treasure they had made is hoarded in a dark cave by an old dwarf; he is killed by a dragon who lies on the hoard, only to be killed in turn by a young warrior. And although the warrior becomes a king, as he grows old he can think only ‘of his huge chest … / where pale gems and gold lay hid’. An enemy invades, his kingdom is lost, and the hoard lies hidden under a mound ‘while earth waits and the Elves sleep’ (*The Adventures of Tom Bombadil and Other Verses from the Red Book, p. 54).

In *Smith of Wootton Major Smith receives a star which gives him entry to Faery. After many years he meets the Queen of Faery face to face: she says farewell and lays her hand on his head, ‘and a great stillness came on upon him; and he seemed to be both in the World and in Faery, and also outside them and surveying them, so that he was at once in bereavement, and in ownership, and in peace’ (p. 38). He leaves sadly, and meets Alf the Prentice, actually the King of Faery, who tells him that it is time to give up the star. At first Smith is unwilling: ‘Isn’t it mine? It came to me, and may a man not keep things that come to him so, at least as a remembrance?’ Alf replies: ‘Some things. Those that are free gifts and given for remembrance. But others are not so given. They cannot belong to a man for ever, nor be treasured as heirlooms. They are lent. You have not thought, perhaps, that someone else may need this thing. But it is so’ (pp. 41, 44). Because Smith then gives up the star freely, he is allowed to choose who shall be the next bearer of the star.

In his letter to *Milton Waldman of ?late 1951 Tolkien found fault with the Elves who chose to stay in Middle-earth at the end of the First Age:

In [*Of the Rings of Power and the Third Age] we see a sort of second fall or at least ‘error’ of the Elves. There was nothing wrong essentially in their lingering against counsel …. But they wanted to have their cake without eating it. They wanted the peace and bliss and perfect memory of ‘The West’, and yet to remain on the ordinary earth where their prestige as the highest people … was greater than at the bottom of the hierarchy in Valinor. They thus became obsessed with ‘fading’, the mode in which the changes of time (the law of the world under the sun) was perceived by them ….With the aid of Sauron’s lore they made Rings of Power ….

The chief power (of all the rings alike) was the prevention or slowing of decay (i.e. ‘change’ viewed as a regrettable thing), the preservation of what is desired or loved, or its semblance – this is more or less an Elvish motive. But also they enhanced the natural powers of a possessor – thus approaching ‘magic’, a motive easily corruptible into evil, a lust for domination. [Letters, pp. 151–2]

In *The Lord of the Rings, at the end of the Third Age Elrond and Galadriel accept that the power of their rings must pass, and therefore aid the Ringbearer in his quest to destroy the One Ring (which, however, is also their only hope of preventing Sauron from regaining the ruling ring). Elrond never seems to consider the possibility of using the One Ring, and Galadriel refuses it when it is offered to her.

The possessive attitude of the various owners of the One Ring – Isildur, Gollum, Bilbo, Frodo – as expressed in The Lord of the Rings is a different matter, since their behaviour towards it arises not wholly from innate character, but from the insidious influence of the Ring towards possessiveness. Ominously, Isildur, Gollum, and Bilbo each uses the word ‘precious’ in relation to the Ring.

Paul H. Kocher notes that in the section on *Recovery in *On Fairy-Stories Tolkien says that it is necessary to provide a clear view of things which seem trite: because we know them so well, we no longer look at them, but keep them locked in our memory as in a hoard. This, says Kocher, explains much of Tolkien’s feelings about correct attitudes and sources of evil. ‘We are not to be like dragons hoarding in our dens whatever we can snatch from the living world around us. People and things are not meant to be our property, they belong to themselves …. We are possessed, captured, by what we think we possess, says Tolkien. And if we believe we can wholly possess anything we delude ourselves’ (Master of Middle-earth: The Fiction of J.R.R. Tolkien (1972), pp. 66–7).

Power. Several of Tolkien’s correspondents thought that the main theme of *The Lord of the Rings was power and its misuse. In his replies Tolkien admitted its importance, but generally rejected the idea that it was the most significant or predominant theme in the work. In a letter to G.E. Selby soon after the publication of The Lord of the Rings was complete (?late 1955 or ?1956) he wrote: ‘The story is for me about Mercy and Hope/Death, to which “Power” (which most people fasten on) is subsidiary’ (quoted in Sotheby’s, Fine Books and Manuscripts: Including English and American Literature, New York, 16–17 May 1984, lot 703; see also *Hope and despair; *Pity and mercy). On 17 November 1957 he told H. Schiro that ‘the tale is not really about Power and Dominion: that only sets the wheels going; it is about Death and the desire for deathlessness. Which is hardly more than to say it is a tale written by a Man!’ (Letters, p. 262). And to Rhona Beare on 14 October 1958 he wrote that ‘if the tale is “about” anything (other than itself) it is not as seems widely supposed about “power”. Power-seeking is only the motive-power that sets events going, and is relatively unimportant, I think. It is mainly concerned with Death, and Immortality [*Mortality and Immortality]; and the ‘escapes’: serial longevity, and hoarding memory’ (Letters, p. 284).

In a draft letter to Joanna de Bortadano in April 1956 Tolkien wrote more fully:

Of course my story is not an allegory of Atomic power, but of Power (exerted for Domination) …. [But] I do not think that even Power or Domination is the real centre of my story. It provides the theme of a war, about something dark and threatening enough to seem at that time of supreme importance, but that is mainly a ‘setting’ for characters to show themselves. The real theme for me is about something much more permanent and difficult: Death and Immortality …. I am not a ‘democrat’ only because ‘humility’ and equality are spiritual principles corrupted by the attempt to mechanize and formalize them, with the result that we get not universal smallness and humility, but universal greatness and pride, till some Orc gets hold of a ring of power …. [Letters, p. 246]

Tolkien was aware of the corrupting effect that power could have on those who wield it, and indeed that those who seek power are often the least fit to have it. He wrote to his son *Christopher on 29 November 1943 that ‘the most improper job of any man, even saints (who at any rate were at least unwilling to take it on), is bossing other men. Not one in a million is fit for it, and least of all those who seek the opportunity …. The mediævals were only too right in taking nolo episcopari [“I do not wish to be made a bishop”] as the best reason a man could give to others for making him a bishop’ (Letters, p. 64). He undoubtedly agreed with John Emerich Edward Dalberg, the first Baron Acton (1834–1902), who wrote that ‘power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely’, and with William Pitt, Earl of Chatham (1708–1778), who said in the House of Lords in 1770 that ‘unlimited power is apt to corrupt the minds of those who possess it’.

Tolkien objected especially to the use of power to dominate the wills of others, even ‘knowing what was best for them’ and to the use of *magic or machines (see *Environment) to enforce or impose one’s own will. In a letter to *Milton Waldman in ?late 1951 he noted that even a sub-creator (see *Sub-creation) ‘may become possessive, clinging to the things made as “its own”’ (as did Fëanor in *‘The Silmarillion’), and wish

to be the Lord and God of his private creation. He will rebel against the laws of the Creator – especially against mortality. Both of these (alone or together) will lead to the desire for Power, for making the will more quickly effective, – and so to the Machine (or Magic). By the last I intend all use of external plans or devices (apparatus) instead of the development of the inherent inner powers or talents – or even the use of these talents with the corrupted motive of dominating: bulldozing the real world, or coercing other wills ….

The Enemy [Melkor/Morgoth in ‘The Silmarillion’] in successive forms is always ‘naturally’ concerned with sheer Domination, and so the Lord of magic and machines; but the problem: that this frightful evil can and does arise from an apparently good root, the desire to benefit the world and others – speedily and according to the benefactor’s own plans – is a recurrent motive. [Letters, pp. 145–6]

It is noteworthy in The Lord of the Rings that most of those who oppose Sauron reject using the One Ring as a weapon against him, and will not even accept it as a gift. Gandalf tells Frodo:

With that power I should have power too great and terrible. And over me the Ring would gain a power still greater and more deadly …. Do not tempt me! For I do not wish to become like the Dark Lord himself. Yet the way of the Ring to my heart is by pity, pity for weakness and the desire of strength to do good. Do not tempt me! I dare not take it, even to keep it safe, unused. The wish to yield it would be too great for my strength. I shall have such need of it. Great perils lie before me. [bk. I, ch. 2]

Tolkien commented in a draft letter to Mrs Eileen Elgar in September 1963, that ‘Gandalf as Ring-Lord would have been far worse than Sauron. He would have remained “righteous”, but self-righteous. He would have continued to rule and order things for “good”, and the benefit of his subjects according to his wisdom …’ (Letters, pp. 332–3).

In ‘The Silmarillion’ the Valar reject the use of force to bring all of the Elves to Aman, and though they warn, they take no steps to prevent the Noldor returning to Middle-earth. In the Third Age the Valar send the Istari to Middle-earth as messengers ‘to contest the power of Sauron, and to unite all those who had the will to resist him; but they were forbidden to match power with power, or to seek to dominate Elves or Men by force or fear’ (The Lord of the Rings, Appendix B). Saruman falls, and his words as he tempts Gandalf to join him seem to embody the deceits, lies, and corruption of those who will do anything to obtain power or to gain the attention of those who have power:

A new Power is rising …. We may join with that Power. It would be wise, Gandalf. There is hope that way. Its victory is at hand; and there will be rich reward for those who aided it. As the Power grows, its proved friends will also grow; and the Wise, such as you and I, may with patience come at last to direct its courses, to control it. We can bide our time, we can keep our thoughts in our hearts, deploring maybe evils done by the way, but approving the high and ultimate purpose: Knowledge, Rule, Order; all the things that we have so far striven in vain to accomplish, hindered rather than helped by our weak or idle friends. There need not be, there would not be, any real change in our designs, only in our means. [bk. II, ch. 2]

In a late work, *Notes on Motives in the Silmarillion, Tolkien commented that Morgoth had ‘a vast demiurgic lust for power and the achievement of his own will and designs, on a great scale’. When ‘confronted by the existence of other inhabitants of Arda, with other wills and intelligences, he was enraged by the mere fact of their existence, and his only notion of dealing with them was by physical force, or the fear of it. His sole ultimate object was their destruction.’ He endeavoured ‘to break wills and subordinate them to or absorb them into his own will and being, before destroying their bodies. This was sheer nihilism, and negation its one ultimate object’ (*Morgoth’s Ring, pp. 395–6). In contrast, ‘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). He desired to dominate the ‘minds and wills’ of the ‘creatures of earth’ (p. 395). Sauron’s corruption of the Númenóreans, which led to the destruction of *Númenor, was ‘a particular matter of revenge upon Ar-Pharazôn’, for his humiliation of Sauron. But ‘Sauron (unlike Morgoth) would have been content for the Númenóreans to exist, as his own subjects, and indeed he used a great many of them that he corrupted to his allegiance’ (p. 398).

In Tolkien: A Cultural Phenomenon (2003) Brian Rosebury comments, regarding the despotism of both Saruman and Sauron, that the ‘keynote’ of evil is ‘aggrandisement of self and negation of not-self’, achieved

through the enslavement and torture of other persons and the destruction of growing things. There is only one form of political order, a military despotism which terrorises its own soldiery as well as its enemies; sexuality is loveless, either diverted into sadism or confined to the organised breeding of warriors; economic life is based on slavery, and is devoted not to the cultivation, but to the exploitation, and ultimately the destruction of resources. Industrial processes are developed solely for the purposes of warfare and deliberate pollution. [p. 45]

Katharyn W. Crabbe comments in J.R.R. Tolkien (rev. and expanded edn. 1988) on the power shown by Sauron that it

goes beyond the simple acquisitiveness of The Hobbit to include the ultimate control – control over being. Sauron’s power, or the power he seeks, is a power that parodies the power of the creator. Rather than create, Sauron will destroy; rather than set free, he will enslave; rather than heal, he will harm. The desire of Sauron to make everything in Middle-earth less than it is capable of being is clear in his repeated threats to ‘break’ captives, in the ruined and desolate lands that were once fertile and productive …. [p. 86]

Meredith Veldman points out in Fantasy, the Bomb, and the Greening of Britain: Romantic Protest 1945–1980 (1994) that

Saruman’s faith in ‘a lot of slaves and machines and things’ reflects his failure to see other beings in their wholeness and individuality. The Mordor spirit reduces individuals to an undifferentiated mass in need of regimentation. Saruman’s fall begins with his desire for power in order to do good, but he demands to be able to dictate to others the timing, scope, and scale of this goodness …. Such a desire to dictate, even for the good, stems from the urge to dominate, the ‘will to mere power’ embodied in the Ring and triumphant in Mordor ….

Because it regards other creatures as slaves rather than allies, the ‘will to mere power’ incarnate in Sauron annihilates individual freedom and choice. Sauron reduces those in his power to mere pawns to satisfy his own insatiable hunger for total domination. In contrast, the good achieve victory by recognizing the importance of individual choice and action. The corrupted Saruman would have ‘the Wise’ determine the course of events, but the unfolding of The Lord of the Rings reveals the significance of the actions of small and weak individuals. [pp. 83–4]

Anne C. Petty discusses use of innate and external power at length in the chapter ‘The Use and Abuse of Power’ in her Tolkien in the Land of Heroes: Discovering the Human Spirit (2003). She notes that ‘as a talisman of power, the Ring is both actual and symbolic. It represents what happens when concentrated power (especially in a technological sense) takes our imaginations in frightening directions. The inference to weapons and industries of war in our technological age is applicable, although not allegorical. For Tolkien, the Ring served as a symbol of desire for pure power, wielded through deception … and technology …’ (p. 155).

‘Pre-Fëanorian Alphabets’ see Writing systems

Prefatory Remarks on Prose Translation of ‘Beowulf’. Essay, first published by George Allen & Unwin, London, in July 1940 in Beowulf and the Finnesburg Fragment, a new edition of Modern English translations by John R. Clark Hall of the Old English poems *Beowulf and the ‘Finnesburg [or Finnsburg] Fragment’. These translations had been published originally in 1901, revised 1911; for 1940 they were revised again, with notes and introduction, by *C.L. Wrenn and newly prefaced by Tolkien’s essay. In 1983 the Prefatory Remarks were printed also as On Translating ‘Beowulf’ in *The Monsters and the Critics and Other Essays, pp. 49–71. See further, Descriptive Bibliography B17, A19.

SYNOPSIS

In the first of the essay’s two parts, ‘On Translation and Words’, Tolkien comments that although Clark Hall’s text is a ‘competent translation’ of Beowulf it is no substitute for reading the poem itself – a great poem whose ‘specially poetic qualities’ cannot be caught in prose, and which in Modern English may lose the shades of meaning present in the original Old English. ‘For many Old English poetical words there are (naturally) no precise modern equivalents of the same scope and tone: they come down to us bearing echoes of ancient days beyond the shadowy borders of Northern history.’ Thus, for instance, Old English eacen, rendered by Clark Hall variously as ‘stalwart’, ‘broad’, ‘huge’, and ‘mighty’, originally meant ‘not “large” but “enlarged”, an addition of power, beyond the natural, whether it is applied to the superhuman thirtyfold strength possessed by Beowulf … or to the mysterious magical powers of the giant’s sword and the dragon’s hoard imposed by runes and curses’ (pp. 49, 50). Another difficulty for the translator is Old English descriptive compounds such as sundwudu ‘flood-timber’ (i.e. ‘ship’) and swan-rad ‘swan’s-road’ (‘sea’), which are ‘generally foreign to our present literary and linguistic habits’ (p. 51).

Tolkien warns the translator against ‘colloquialism and false modernity’. ‘If you wish to translate, not re-write, Beowulf, your language must be literary and traditional: not because it is now a long while since the poem was made, or because it speaks of things that have since become ancient; but because the diction of Beowulf was poetical, archaic, artificial (if you will), in the day that the poem was made.’ But ‘words should not be used merely because they are “old” or obsolete’ (p. 54). (For a related discussion by Tolkien of deliberate ‘archaism’ in *The Lord of the Rings, see his letter to *Hugh Brogan, September 1955, Letters, pp. 225–6.)

In the second part of the essay, ‘On Metre’, Tolkien discusses metre and alliteration in Old English poetry.

HISTORY

Probably in 1935 Tolkien’s B.Litt. student *M.E. Griffiths suggested to George Allen & Unwin (*Publishers) that they issue a new edition of Clark Hall’s translation of Beowulf, last revised in 1911, and also suggested Tolkien as its editor. Allen & Unwin contacted Tolkien about this early in 1936, or possibly late in 1935: the earliest surviving letter on the subject, from C.A. Furth on 30 March 1936, states that Allen & Unwin were writing to Tolkien about the matter ‘again’. Feeling that he did not have the time to spare to undertake the work himself, Tolkien suggested in turn that it be given to Miss Griffiths. He, however, would read what she produced, and write a preface or introduction to the book. In the event, Griffiths could not complete the revision, and at the end of June 1938 asked to be released from her contract.

By then Tolkien had not yet written his contribution. ‘I would quickly write my brief introductory note, if I saw the book complete,’ he told *Stanley Unwin on 4 June 1938. ‘It would be brief for I do not wish to anticipate the things I should say in a preface to a new [Modern English] translation [by himself]’ (Tolkien–George Allen & Unwin archive, HarperCollins). He had completed a prose translation already by the end of April 1926, and had begun an alliterative verse translation, but never finished either to his satisfaction. A few lines from the verse translation, however, are in the Prefatory Remarks.

On Griffiths’ withdrawal Tolkien still did not wish to deal with the whole of the book, but on 24 July 1938, presumably feeling an obligation to Allen & Unwin, he offered to ‘put the thing into such order as is now possible, for such remuneration as seems good to you, with a title to be devised …. My concern would be primarily to put the text into reasonable working order, as far as can be contrived without too great or too costly cutting up of the version now in type’ (letter to C.A. Furth, Tolkien–George Allen & Unwin archive, HarperCollins). His offer was accepted; but he soon found that other commitments, and problems of health, prevented him from doing the required work. He recommended that he relinquish the revision, therefore, to his Oxford colleague C.L. Wrenn, himself a formidable scholar of Old English, who was ready to complete the project in short order.

Indeed, Wrenn finished the revision months before Tolkien wrote his promised note. In a letter of 19 December 1939 to Stanley Unwin, having received several inquiries from his publisher, Tolkien apologized: ‘I will try and collect my weary wits and pen a sufficient foreword to the “Beowulf” translation, at once’ (Tolkien’s emphasis, Letters, p. 44). But ill health, the war, domestic troubles, and academic duties made writing difficult. In early 1940 he was again pressed for a note: ‘a word or two’ would be enough. He replied to Stanley Unwin on 30 March 1940:

I knew that a ‘word or two’ would suffice (though could not feel that any words under my name would have any particular value unless they said something worth saying – which takes space). But I believed that more was hoped for …. For a fairly considerable ‘preface’ is really required. The so-called ‘Introduction’ does not exist, being merely an argument [or summary, with ten lines concerning the Beowulf manuscript, much less than Clark Hall had included in the previous edition]: there is no reference whatever to either a translator’s or a critic’s problems. I advised originally against any attempt to bring the apparatus of the old book up to date – it can be got by students elsewhere. But I did not expect a reduction to 10 lines, while the ‘argument’ (the least useful part) was rewritten at length.

That being so I laboured long and hard to compress (and yet enliven) such remarks on translation as might both be useful to students and of interest to those using the book without reference to the original text. But the result ran to 17 of my [manuscript] pages (of some 300 words each) – not counting the metrical appendix, the most original part, which is as long again! [Letters, p. 45]

Tolkien now sent all that he had done to Stanley Unwin, suggesting that Unwin might care to consider it for inclusion later in a further edition, or that ‘it might make a suitable small booklet for students’ (p. 46); or certain passages might be removed for the sake of length. In the event, Unwin printed Tolkien’s manuscript in full, though it increased the length of the book. Tolkien corrected proofs of his Prefatory Notes in April 1940.

At his suggestion and with Wrenn’s approval, the spelling of ‘Finnsburg’, used in earlier editions of the book, was changed to ‘Finnesburg’. (On this poem, see *Finn and Hengest.)

Another edition of Beowulf and the Finnesburg Fragment was published by Allen & Unwin, and distributed in the United States by Barnes & Noble, New York, in 1950. In this the scholarship of the work proper was revised again, a new introduction was provided, the notes were greatly enlarged, and misprints were corrected in the translations and in Tolkien’s Prefatory Remarks, which were otherwise unchanged.

Prejudice and racism. The letters Tolkien wrote in 1938 to his publisher *Stanley Unwin and to Rütten & Loening, the proposed publisher of a German translation of *The Hobbit, in response to a request from the latter that he confirm his ‘arisch’ (Aryan) origin, clear him of any suggestion of anti-Semitism. He objected to the request, and wrote to Stanley Unwin on 25 July:

Personally I should be inclined to refuse to give any Bestätigung [confirmation] … and let a German translation go hang. In any case I should object strongly to any such declaration appearing in print. I do not regard the (probable) absence of all Jewish blood as necessarily honourable; and I have many Jewish friends, and should regret giving any colour to the notion that I subscribed to the wholly pernicious and unscientific race-doctrine. [Letters, p. 37]

With this he sent two possible replies, leaving it to Stanley Unwin to decide which to send to Germany. Only one remains in the Allen & Unwin archive, presumably the one not sent, possibly the more strongly worded of the two. In this Tolkien displays his knowledge of the correct use of the word Aryan as opposed to the Nazi misuse: ‘I regret I am not clear as to what you intend by arisch. I am not of Aryan extraction: that is Indo-iranian; as far as I am aware none of my ancestors spoke Hindustani, Persian, Gypsy, or any related dialects. But if I am to understand that you are enquiring whether I am of Jewish origin, I can only reply that I regret that I appear to have no ancestors of that gifted people’ (Letters, p. 37).

In 1944, in response to a comment made in a letter by his son *Christopher about apartheid in *South Africa, where he was training to be a pilot, Tolkien wrote on 18 April: ‘As for what you say or hint of “local” conditions: I knew of them. I don’t think they have much changed (even for the worse). I used to hear them discussed by my mother; and have ever since taken a special interest in that part of the world. The treatment of colour nearly always horrifies anyone going out from Britain & not only in South Africa. Unfort[unately] not many retain that generous sentiment for long’ (Letters, p. 73).

During the Second World War Tolkien wrote to Christopher on 23–25 September 1944, objecting to racist propaganda about the enemy:

I cannot understand the line taken by BBC (and papers, and so, I suppose, emanating from M[inistry] O[f] I[nformation]) that the German troops are a motley collection of sutlers and broken men …. The English pride themselves, or used to, on ‘sportsmanship’ (which included ‘giving the devil his due’) …. But it is distressing to see the press grovelling in the gutter as low as Goebbels in his prime, shrieking that any German commander who holds out in a desperate situation … is a drunkard, and a besotted fanatic.

It is clear that he considered revilement of the enemy, just because he was the enemy, as much an exhibition of racism as segregation or anti-Semitism – that patriotism did not justify racism. He continued in his letter that a recent article had called for the extermination of the German people because ‘they are rattlesnakes, and don’t know the difference between good and evil’. If one were to accept that idea, said Tolkien, then ‘the Germans have just as much right to declare the Poles and the Jews exterminable vermin, subhuman, as we have to select the Germans: in other words, no right, whatever they have done’ (Letters, p. 93).

Those who see evidence of racism in Tolkien’s works, whether conscious or unconscious, draw attention to descriptions which suggest that the various races of men that fought for Morgoth, Sauron, or Saruman (in *‘The Silmarillion’ or *The Lord of the Rings) are of Asian or African origin, while those on the ‘good’ side have European features. They also point to the existence of the race of Orcs, apparently irredeemably evil (*Good and Evil). Charles Moseley in J.R.R. Tolkien (1997) sums up some of the points:

Tolkien’s texts do reveal values that are Eurocentric, white, middle-class, patriarchal – those of the majority of his generation in England, in fact. They are values embedded in the very vocabulary of his work. The Black Speech of the Dark Tower … echoes the consonantal patterns of Turkish; the Orcs’ curved swords and their cruelty recall ancient legends, and illustrations, of the heathen East. The Southerners who come up the Greenway or fight in Mordor’s host are ugly, slant-eyed and swart, emblematic of a culturally embedded racial stereotype of evil, the enemy; while the forces ranged against them, so far as we can see, are clean-limbed, white, dark-haired, grey-eyed examples of Northern European excellence [p. 63]

Mosley does not mention Tolkien’s sympathetic treatment of Ghân-buri-Ghân and the Woses, but he does also point out that ‘no fiction can satisfy every orthodoxy, least of all those that are differently historically conditioned from those of its own time’ (p. 63).

Such critics tend to make no allowance for the fact that, although Tolkien meant Middle-earth to represent our world in fictional earlier ages, it is in fact a Secondary World which cannot be judged by events in our own particular history; that Tolkien as its author had the right to change the parameters; and that what he states as the truth is true within that world. Morgoth, Sauron, and Saruman, who seek to obtain dominion by force and fear, are indeed rebels against the Creator, Eru, and his vicegerents the Valar, and the Elves and Men who oppose them have learned the truth directly or indirectly from the Valar. Nor, indeed, do some critics note how many episodes in The Lord of the Rings plead for the abandonment of old prejudices, for tolerance and understanding, and show this being achieved through knowledge and greater appreciation of ‘the other’.

Virginia Luling in ‘An Anthropologist in Middle-earth’, in Proceedings of the J.R.R. Tolkien Centenary Conference 1992, ed. Patricia Reynolds and Glen H. GoodKnight (1995), notes that although Faramir’s explanation to Frodo that the lore of Gondor divides Men into ‘the High, or Men of the West, which were Númenóreans; and the Middle Peoples, Men of the Twilight, such as are the Rohirrim …; and the Wild, the Men of Darkness’ (The Lord of the Rings, bk. IV, ch. 5) may sound ‘like the classic Victorian evolutionary sequence of Savagery – Barbarism – Civilisation, which was around in Tolkien’s youth ….’ But on closer look,

the resemblance is only superficial; the whole structure of assumption underlying the two schemes is quite different. For the anthropology of Middle-earth is not evolutionary at all. The ‘high’ civilisations of Gondor and its predecessor Númenor have not developed by their own interior dynamic out of societies like that of the Rohirrim; they owe their arts and wisdom to their contact with the Elves …. The Rohirrim, too, owe their ‘twilight’ status to being descended from the Elf-friends of old. The ‘Men of Darkness’ are those who have not enjoyed the influence of the Elves ….

If we have something here that looks outwardly like what in our world we know as ‘racism’, we can dismiss that appearance, not only because Tolkien in his non-fictional writing several times repudiated racist ideas, but because … in his sub-creation the whole intellectual underpinning of racism is absent. The Haradrim and the Variags of Khand are corrupt not because they are biologically inferior but because they are human and therefore corruptible. In any case, though they are politically subject to Sauron it is uncertain … how far they are corrupt as individuals (unlike Orcs, who are a separate problem, and one that Tolkien himself never really solved). The men of Gondor and their allies are ‘nobler’, not by their intrinsic nature but because they have had the luck to inherit from their ancestors the mediated tradition – the faith – of Aman, and more or less held on to it – though they are constantly in danger of letting go. (As far as actual descent goes, they are ultimately the same as the Rohirrim.) [pp. 54–6]

Tolkien was writing out of the ‘leaf-mould’ of his own experience, and as he pointed out, ‘a man of the North-west of the Old World will set his heart and the action of his tale in an imaginary world of that air, and that situation: with the Shoreless Sea of his innumerable ancestors to the West, and the endless lands (out of which enemies mostly come) to the East’ (letter to *W.H. Auden, 7 June 1955, Letters, p. 212). The invaders who gained the most lasting reputation for savagery were the Huns, a warlike Asiatic nomadic people, who under Attila menaced both Constantinople and Rome. They suffered a major defeat in ad 451 at a battle on the Catalaunian plains, a recorded incident which may have influenced the depiction of Théoden’s death on the Pelennor Fields (see Reader’s Companion, p. 563). Europe also saw invasions by (among others) Arabs, whose drive into France was halted only at the Battle of Tours in ad 732, and who were not entirely expelled from Spain until 1492; Ottoman Turks, who took Constantinople in 1453, tried to take Malta in 1565, and besieged Vienna as late as 1683; and pirates from the north African coast and Turkey, who threatened ships in the Mediterranean and inspired the Corsairs of Umbar in The Lord of the Rings. This is not to say that the Europeans did not engage in internal conflict and in conquests of their own, but for them the invader from Asia or Africa was viewed with particular horror because he was an ‘infidel’.

Any discussion of racism and prejudice in Middle-earth is complicated by the fact that within those lands are not only several races of Men, but also other species – Elves, Dwarves, Hobbits, Ents, Drúedain (Woses), even Ainur – and the relations between these must also be considered. In ‘The Silmarillion’ a series of interspecies marriages are of great significance, obviously fated, and necessary to achieve the overthrow of Morgoth: those between Melian the Maia and Thingol the Elf, between their daughter Lúthien and the Man Beren, between the Man Tuor and the Elf Idril, and between their son Eärendil and Elwing, the granddaughter of Beren and Lúthien. Although many of the different species in Middle-earth do get on reasonably well, and sometimes are closely allied, very rarely do two species live together; but this seems to be by choice, not because of imposed segregation, with each species preferring to retain its own traditions and way of life. Even when two species do live in close contact, such as Men and Hobbits in Bree, this is still the case: ‘the Big and Little Folk (as they called one another) were on friendly terms, minding their own affairs in their own ways, but both rightly regarding themselves as necessary parts of the Bree-folk. Nowhere else in the world was this peculiar (but excellent) arrangement to be found’ (bk. I, ch. 9).

Slavery is always depicted by Tolkien as evil. Elves captured by Morgoth are forced to work, and some are perhaps corrupted and refashioned as Orcs; followers of Morgoth oppress and enslave the remnants of the People of Hador; in their decline, and under the influence of Sauron, the Númenóreans ‘came no longer as the bringers of gifts, but as men of war. And they hunted the men of Middle-earth and enslaved them and took their goods’ (*Sauron Defeated, p. 348); Sauron has many slaves to supply the needs of his armies in ‘the great slave-fields away south’ (The Lord of the Rings, bk. VI, ch. 2); and the Haradrim use captured men of Gondor to row their ships. Most of these examples of slavery are closer to that known in European history (the enslavement of the defeated by Greeks and Romans, or Irish or Viking raids on Britain for captives) than to ‘plantation’ slavery in the American South.

Rohan and Gondor do not enslave their defeated enemies. When the Rohirrim overwhelm Saruman’s army at Helm’s Deep, they disarm the hillmen of Dunland and tell them that if, after helping to bury the dead and repairing the damage Saruman’s army had done to Helm’s Deep, they are willing to take an oath never to attack Rohan again, they will be allowed to return, free, to their own land. ‘The Men of Dunland were amazed, for Saruman had told them that the men of Rohan were cruel and burned their captives alive’ (bk. III, ch. 8). At the end of the War of the Ring, Aragorn pronounces his judgement on those who have fought in Sauron’s armies and attacked the forces of the West: ‘And embassies came from many lands and peoples, from the East and the South, and from the borders of Mirkwood, and from Dunland in the West. And the King pardoned the Easterlings that had given themselves up, and sent them away free, and he made peace with the peoples of Harad; and the slaves of Mordor he released and gave to them all the lands about Lake Núrnen to be their own’ (bk. VI, ch. 5).

Since strife and open warfare are major elements in both ‘The Silmarillion’ and The Lord of the Rings, there is a certain amount of the nationalistic fervour expressed as hatred and even vilification of the opponent which Tolkien criticized in the letter he wrote to Christopher in September 1944. In Ithilien, both Mablung and Damrod curse the Southrons who are coming to reinforce Sauron’s armies. But this is balanced by Sam’s thoughts about the Southron killed in the ambush, seeing him as a person rather than an enemy: ‘He was glad he could not see the dead face. He wondered what the man’s name was and where he came from; and if he was really evil of heart, or what lies or threats had led him on the long march from his home; and if he would not really rather have stayed there in peace’ (bk. IV, ch. 4).

Tolkien rarely described the physical features of the enemy in any detail. The Swarthy Men or Easterlings who entered Beleriand after the Dagor Bragollach are said to be ‘short and broad, long and strong in the arm; their skins were swart or sallow, and their hair was dark as were their eyes’ (The Silmarillion, p. 157). A Mediterranean type was probably intended; some of these men betrayed their alliance with Maedhros, but others proved as faithful as the men of the Three Houses of the Edain. There are only a few brief descriptions of the men allied to Sauron in The Lord of the Rings: Gollum describes those about to enter the Morannon: ‘They have black eyes and long black hair, and gold rings in their ears …. And some have red paint on their cheeks’ (bk. IV, ch. 3). The fallen Southron seen by Sam had ‘black plaits braided with gold’, and his ‘brown hand still clutched the hilt of a broken sword’ (bk. IV, ch. 4). In the Battle of the Pelennor Fields the Southron chieftain wields a scimitar, which suggests a Saracen or Turk; and ‘out of Far Harad’ came ‘black men like half-trolls with white eyes and red tongues’ (bk. V, ch. 6). Since they come from the far South, these may be intended to suggest Africans, but as Virginia Luling points out, since Sauron’s armies were recruited mainly from the South and East it was natural that Tolkien should draw ‘on inherited images of “paynims” and other enemies’ (‘An Anthropologist in Middle-earth’, pp. 56–7), and it is only because they fight for Sauron that they are seen as enemies.

There are some examples of prejudice among Elves in The Silmarillion, but it always seems to suggest a character defect. The sons of Fëanor in their pride look down on the Elves who had remained in Middle-earth; Caranthir says to Angrod, in response to a message from Thingol, ‘Let not the sons of Finarfin run hither and thither with their tales to this Dark Elf in his caves!’ (The Silmarillion, p. 112); and later Curufin calls Eöl ‘Dark Elf’, and tells him that ‘those who steal the daughters of the Noldor and wed them without gift or leave do not gain kinship with their kin’ (pp. 135–6). When Thingol learns of the slaying of his kin at Alqualondë by some of the Noldor, he bans the use of the Noldorin tongue in his realm (*Languages, Invented).

Even within the small area of the Shire, there are prejudices among the Hobbits. Christina Scull wrote in ‘Open Minds, Closed Minds in The Lord of the Rings’, in Proceedings of the J.R.R. Tolkien Centenary Conference 1992, ed. Patricia Reynolds and Glen H. GoodKnight (1995): ‘The Hobbits were … doubtful about other Hobbits, not those of a different breed, but also those who lived in a different part of the Shire. In this Tolkien probably intended to reflect the attitudes of the inhabitants of the English countryside in the days before travel was common, when areas beyond the next village or market town were considered “foreign” and the people “different”’ (p. 151). While the Hobbits in the Ivy Bush