From Dragons and Swords to Motor Cars and Gaffers

this week in between re-reading The Volsunga Saga and Tolkien's The Legend of Sigurd und Gudrun for the current Tolkien and Epic Class offered through Mythgard Institute (spring enrollment now open!) -I read something new by Tolkien. Well new for me as I have never read this work before. This work is Tolkien's children's story picture book Mr. Bliss first published in the U.K. in 1983.

This charming story told by Tolkien through word and pictures tell the tale of Mr. Bliss who wears large hats and has as his neighbor a girabbit - a creature like a rabbit with a giraffe's long neck. One day Mr. Bliss decides to trade his bicycle in for a yellow car and he and his companions - including three bears - go on all kinds of misadventures.

According to Humphrey Carpenter, Tolkien's motivation for the story may have come from his own purchase of a motor car in 1932 and his own mishaps with driving (we know how Tolkien felt about mechanical things). In 1936, Tolkien submitted Mr. Bliss as one of the potential s

tories that would follow the success of The Hobbit. While Tolkien's publishers Allen and Unwin thought it was in class with Alice and Wonderland it was decided the rich illustrations would be too expensive to reproduce and the work was rejected (and of course it was through this and several other works being rejected that Tolkien eventually started work on his "new Hobbit" which became The Lord of the Rings).

But what interested me most about this whacky story (and it is that!) was the cameo appearance of a rather familiar character. In Mr. Bliss Tolkien describes Bliss and all his companions driving to the village and standing about in the centre of town he describes:

"Mrs Golightly is standing with a parcel in her arms, and has stopped talking to Mrs Simkins; old Gaffer Gamgee is trying hard to hear....."

Well what do you know the Old Gaffer has shown in up in Mr. Bliss! He of course will appear later as Sam's father in The Lord of the Rings.

Where did he come from? According to a letter Tolkien wrote to his colleague Christopher Bretherton in 1964 ((Letters, p. 347-8) in the 1930's Tolkien used to take the family to Cornwall (Lamorna Cove) and in 1932 the met "a curious old fellow who used to go around swapping gossip and weather wisdom and such like. To amuse my boys I named him Gaffer Gamgee and the name became part of family lore to fix on old chaps of this kind."

Why would Tolkien have used the word Gaffer to describe this old fellow. The word "gaffer" is sometimes used colloquially to refer to an old man, an elderly or rustic. The Online Etymology dictionary suggests is may be a shortening of 'godfather' with "ga" from association with 'grandfather'
The etymological cite is

gaffer

1580s, "elderly rustic," apparently a contraction of godfather (cf. gammer); originally "old man," it was applied from 1841 to foremen and supervisors, which sense carried over 20c. to "electrician in charge of lighting on a film set."

Of course thinking of the Old Gaffer (or Hamfast Gamgee) in The Lord of the Rings he was both an old man (he is seventy-five at the start of The Lord of the Rings and is the chief gardener (or foreman) of the gardens at Bag End.

The Old Gaffer makes his first appearance in the Third Version of Tolkien's draft for The Long Expected Party of his new Hobbit (1937) - his first appearence is

"After all" as Old Gaffer Gamgee of Bagshot Row remarked "these goings on are old affairs and over; this here party is going to happen this very month as is" (Return of the Shadow, p. 30)

So the term "Gaffer" was in existence as a term used by the Tolkien family to describe old men before Tolkien developed this character and when he needed a term for an old foreman what better name to use then the one from Cornwall and the one who made an appearence in the earlier Mr. Bliss (who appears to be hard of hearing!)

Unlike some of Tolkien's other pre Lord of the Ring stories (including Roverandom and of course The Hobbit) there is very little evidence of other elements of his secondary world work peeping through the pages of Mr. Bliss - there is an adventure in Three Bears Wood that reminds one slightly of The Old Forest and there is a character called Fat Dorkins (or just Fattie) who has curly hair and wore no coat because he split the coats when he tried to get into them. Makes me think of Fredegar Bolger one of the Hobbits who set up the house in Crickhollow and stayed behind and in the earlier versions of LOTR played a much larger part in the story (and of course became a hero in his own right when he made the Nazgul flee by ringing the Horn of Buckland. Tolkien's Mr. Bliss is a wonderful zany adventure and just shows how Tolkien could evoke his story telling craft, as well as his talent at drawing and painting, to construct a fun exciting story for his children and for us all. A nice diversion from incest, dragons, magic helms and sleeping Valkyries - which I am now turning back to..... although I can hear the Old Gaffer saying no thankee to dragons!!!

Be Very Qwiet, I am Hunting Tolkienian Woodwoses

This week in The Mythgard Institute's Tolkien and the Epic course, Wotan has been part of an incredible experience of exploring the Finnish national poem The Kalevala, Tolkien's earliest work on his version of the Kullervo story and then Tolkien's transformation of this story into his own secondary world cycle of Turin Turambar. Our guide through this exploration has been the famous Tolkien scholar and one of my favorite writers on Tolkien - Dr Verlyn Flieger - who I am very excited to hear will be taking part in future Mythgard Institute courses - spring enrollment is now open for two excellent courses

Wotan has a long list of ideas to explore from these two weeks of lectures (and for Wotan these resulted in very late night but very well worth it web moots!).

One item that jumped out at me as I was re-reading The Children of Hurin (CoH)was the inclusion of an interesting word seemingly taken from Tolkien's primary word academic work and put into his secondary one. In the The Children of Hurin, when the hapless Turin is staying in Doriath he is taunted by an Elf named Saeros and Turin hurls a drinking vessel at him. Then Saeros says

"How long shall we harbour this woodwose? Who rules here tonight? the King's law is heavy upon those who hurt his liegers in the hall....Outside the hall I can answer you, Woodwose!" (CoH, p.88)

There has been some really good work on the word and meaning of "woodwose" especially in Dr T.A. Shippey's Road to Middle Earth and on a recent excellent blog post by Jason Fisher

What interests Wotan is WHEN this word might have found its way into Tolkien's secondary world and why?

Tolkien's earliest professional encounter with the word probably came with his work in the 1920's on the late 14th century alliterative poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight which he worked with E.V. Gordon on publishing as a Middle English Text for students with notes and glossary while he was teaching at Leeds in 1923-1925 (finally being published by Oxford University Press in 1925).

In the second passus of the poem Sir Gawain travels to find the Green Chapel and encounters several mythical and real beasts including the wildmen of the wood

"Sumwhyle wyth wormez he werrez, and with wolues als,
Sumwhyle wyth wodwos, þat woned in þe knarrez,
Boþe wyth bullez and berez, and borez oþerquyle,
And etaynez, þat hym anelede of þe heȝe felle;

Sometimes he fights with dragons and sometimes with fierce wolves
Sometimes with woodwose that haunted the mountains
Both with bulls and bears and occasionally a boar
And giants chased him through the fells (my translation)

Interestingly the same term is found in another Middle English alliterative romance - The wars of Alexander translated chiefly from the Historia Alexander di Magni de preliis by Leo Archpresbyter in the 10th century.

Wroȝt full of wodwose → · & oþer wild bestis;
And þan him hiȝtild his hede · & had on a Mitre,
Was forgid all of fyne gold · & fret full of perrils,

Although in this case the editor of the text Rev Walter W. Skeat glosses the word as faunus or Silvanus giving it a more classical meaning (which would make sense for a romance about Alexander the Great.

Turning back to the Turin cycle - the actual use of the word "woodwose" is not evident in any of the earlier versions of the Turn story.

Tolkien evolved the germ of the Turin story from his work on the Kalevala's Kullervo story - first developing his own version of the Kullervo tale with original names (and evidence of early Qenya) and then using some of the themes in an original story around the hapless Turin (one of the great legendary cycles of Tolkien's complete legendarium)

The earliest versions of this key scene in Turin's life (it causes him to become an outlaw which sets the whole doom of his life in motion) as found in The Book of Lost Tales (Turambar and The Foaloke) from 1918-1919 and in the alliterative poem The Lay of the Children of Hurin all seem to follow a similar narrative pattern. Tolkien would have worked on the alliterative poem (published in volume three of The History of Middle Earth) while he was teaching at Leeds (1920-1925), at the same time as he was working with Gordon on the Middle English text of Sir Gawain. In these early versions of the Turin story, The offending Elf is not the later Saeros but Orgof - who is described in The Lay as as "of the ancient race that was lost in the lands where the long marches from the quiet waters of Cuivienen were made in mirk of the midworld's gloom" (Lays, p.18) - so is Orgof an Avari? (but I digress). Orgof taunts Turin and Turin retaliates by throwing a large drinking vessel at Orgof who is struck by it and falls to the floor dead.

In the alliterative poem Turin says:

"Thou fool, he said, fill thy mouth therewith and to me no further thus witless prate by wine bemused and he fell backward and heavy his head there hit upon the stone...." (Lays, p.19)

This story pattern continued through Tolkien's prose Sketch of the Mythology (1927) and the 1930's The Quenta (Qenta Noldorinwa). In the Earliest Annals of Beleriand the date of 184 is given for "Turin slays Orgof, kinsman of the Royal House, and flees from Thingol's court. In the Later Annals of Beleriand the same basic story event is given.

We then have the period when Tolkien turned his attention to the great matter of the second and third ages culminating in the great works of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings (in which Elrond refers to Turin as a great elf friend of old).

According to Hammond and Scull's J.R.R. Tolkien Companion and Guide regarding Tolkien and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

"Sir Gawain became a set text on the Oxford and English School in 1947, and every two years from 1946 Tolkien gave a series of lectures about it, usually spread across two or three terms. The number of lectures in the course increased over the years in 1956-7. During this time Tolkien also supervised or examined several B.Litt theses on various Arthurian texts or topics, including two on Sir Gawain.' (Hammond and Scull v.2, p. 924)

In addition to this in 1952-3 Tolkien was chosen to give the WP Ker lecture in Glasgow and on 15 April 1953 he gave this lecture on, you guessed it, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight to 300 attenders (and later published in J.R.R. Tolkien The Monster and the Critics)

Turning back to Turin, the first post LOTR Turin mention we have is in The Gray Annals and here the story of Orgof being killed by Turin with a drinking cup persists (War of the Jewels, p. 81)

But this treatment starts to change in the next major work Tolkien did on the early part of the Turin cycle and the scene with Turin and Orgof/Saeros - this appears in a 12 page typescript which in HOME's War of the Jewels Christopher Tolkien describes as "a 12 page typed manuscript composed ab initio by my father and bearing the title "Here begins the the Tale of the Children of Hurin, Narn i Chin Hurin, which Dirhaval wrote" and what follows is the story that first appeared in Unfinished Tales and then in the later The Children of Hurin. Hammond and Scull indicate this work is from the late 1950's.

There are two interesting developments here. First the introductory note to the Narn now indicates that this work was the tale of a man named Dirhaval (a name possibly meaning Star Watcher -more work to be done here) of the Havens which he wrote during the time of Earendel. Dirhaval is said to come from the House of Hador and dwelt at the havens of Sirion where he gathered together tales from eyewitnesses. Tolkien also states "The lay was all that Dirhaval ever made, but it was prized by the Eldar for Dirhaval used the Grey-Elven tounge in which he had great skill. He used the that mode of Elvish verse which is (long space left in typescript - later to be filled by Minlamad thent) which was of old proper to the Narn, but though this verse mode is not unlike the verse of the English, I have rendered it in prose, judging my skill to be at once scop and walhstod." (War of Jewels, p.312). A note indicates that "walhstod' is Old English for interpreter.

A bit further along, Tolkien also says "I have not added to Dirhavals tale, nor omitted from it anything he told, neither have I changed the order of the history.

The second major change is the narrative of the story of the early Turin story which is now represented as being part of Dirhaval's Narn. Orgof has now become Saeros (possibly in Sindarin this means "bitter rain" - good name for a baddie) and the story arc has now been significantly expanded

• Saeros taunts Turin at the table
• Turin takes up a heavy drinking vessel and throws it at Saeros
• Saeros falls backward with great hurt (but does not die)
  
• Turin draws his sword but Mablung the Hunter restrains him
  
• Saeros spits blood and utters the woodwose lines
  
• Turin leaves the hall - Saeros and Mablung have words
  
• Next morning Saeros waylays Turin and attempts to kill him
• Turin and Saeros fight
  
• Turin throws Saeros to the ground and strips him
  
• He lets Saeros go and chases him through the wood
  
• Mablung and others see this and call it Orc Work
  
• Saeros attempts to leap a great cleft but falls back with a cry and crashes on the rocks below
  
• "Long will Mandos hold him"
  

Therefore in this expanded version of the story Tolkien creates more opportunity for Saeros to have a voice and it was in this development of the narrative that the opportunity arose to have Saeros come up with a pejorative word for Turin and Tolkien's use of the word 'woodwose' not only accomplishes this but also foreshadows the orc like behavoir Turin will adapt by chasing Saeros naked through the wood with his sword (truly the act of a wildman) as well as a later episode of someone leaping over a cliff (his doomed sister Nienor). As Dr Flieger also said in her talk it is due to this action of killing Orgof/Saeros that Turin does become a wildman of the wood by becoming an Outlaw and living with Gaurwaith (The Wolfmen of the Wood).

So perhaps Tolkien's increased primary world focus on Sir Gawain and the Green Knight during the time of developing and expanding the Turin cycle gave him the very word he was looking for to both brandish a nasty term at Turin and foreshadow both his later history and fate.

One last point - in the context of the secondary world - I wonder what the original word in Sindarin Dirhaval used which became rendered as the Anglo-Saxon wodwose. "Wildman of the Woods" in Sindarin would have been something like 'Adan alag en thewair' - so perhaps this is close to what Tolkien as walhstod saw - alas this is lost in the vestiges of real or feigned time.

Tolkien Works Cited

The Book of Lost Tales, Part Two, edited by Christopher Tolkien (New York: Random House, 1983)

The Lays of Beleriand, edited by Christopher Tolkien (New York; Random House, 1984)

The War of the Jewels, edited by Christopher Tolkien (New York: Random House, 2002)

The Monsters and the Critics and Other Essays, edited by Christopher Tolkien (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1983)

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, edited by Christopher Tolkien (London: HarperCollins 1999)

The Children of Hurin edited by Christopher Tolkien (London, HarperCollins, 2007)

' "The Túrin Prose Fragment: An Analysis of a Rúmilian Document". In Vinyar Tengwar 37 (December 1995), (edited by Arden Smith) pp. 15-23

The Story of Kullervo and Essays on “The Kalevala” edited by Verlyn Flieger in Tolkien Studies Volume 7 (2010), p. 211-278

OTHER WORKS CITED

Hammond Wayne G & Scull, Christina The J.R.R. Tolkien Companion and Guide

(2 vols) .London: HarperCollins;

Posted from Andrew Higgins IPAD asthiggins@me.com

Across the Bridge of Tavrobel

Yesterday, taking advantage of both a free Saturday and a very warm day in England, David and I took a train up north to Staffordshire to Shugborough Hall which has been said to have been the inspiration for J.R.R. Tolkien's Book of Lost Tales Elf city of Tavrobel and Gilfannon's House of the One Hundred Chimneys.

This recent "Tolkien Trail" document is a good example of this reputation.

I started this journey rather bleary eyed as I had been up late the night before attending the excellent web moot of The Mythgard Institute's Tolkien and Epic course with Dr Verlyn Flieger doing the closing session on Kalevala and Kullervo (by the way enrollment is now open for Spring Courses). But I set out to see for myself this area and see if this truly was the inspiration for Tolkien's setting for his Book of Lost Tales.

Thanks to the great scholarship of John Garth in Tolkien and the Great
War: The Threshold of Middle Earth (available in print, e-book and a very highly recommended audio book read by the author himself) we know that J.R.R Tolkien enlisted in the army and in 1916, was stationed at Cannock Chase in south Staffordshire. His wife, Edith, whom he married in March of that year took a cottage at the village of Great Haywood, near Stafford, just to be close to him (more on that Cottage later). After returning from the animal horror of The Battle of the Somme with trench fever in November 1916, Tolkien, spent that winter convalescing with Edith in the cottage at Great Haywood.

Of this time, John Garth says "in his absence Edith had traced his movements on the map on her wall. Until now, any knock at the door could have brought a dreaded War Office telegram. His return to Great Haywood was thus an emotionally charged moment, which Tolkien marked with a six stanza ballad, The Grey Bridge of Tavrobel - Garth gives us this elegiac poem of return -

O! Tell me, little damoiselle
why smile you in the gloaming
On the Old Gray Bridge of Tavrobel
As the Gray folk come a-homing

I smile because you come to me
O'er the gray bridge in the gloaming
I have waited, waited wearily
To see you come a-homing

In Tavrobel things go but ill,
And my little garden withers
In Tavrobel beneath the hill
While you're beyond the rivers

Ay long and long I have been away
O'er see and land and river
Dreaming always of the day
Of my returning hither" (Garth, p.207-208)

Where does Tavrobel and this Grey Bridge come from and how is it connected to this area Tolkien was staying in with Edith?

One of the most revealing documents that gives evidence for TAVROBEL is a Heraldic Device that Tolkien sketched as part of his collection of Heraldic Devices of Tol Erethrin which appear in The Lost Tales Notebooks and was published with notes in Early Noldorin Fragments in Parma Eldalamberon 13. According the editors notes -

"The first inscription is labelled Taurobel which Christopher Tolkien identifies as Great Haywood in Staffordshire where Tolkien and Edith lived in 1916-1917." In the lexicon of the Goldogrin language developed during the time of The Book of Lost Tales - the name comes from TAVROS "forest, wooded land" (as in the name of the upcoming (Eru help us) new Elf in the Peter Jackson film The Hobbit Tauriel) and the second element is a mutated form of PEL which means village, home or or hamlet (from the verb PELU from which we later get the battle field of PELANNOR) -so TAUROBEL (or Tavorobel) could mean "wood home"

The description of this heraldic device is as follows: "The device depicts three trees, tall and narrow like Lombardy poplars, above a bridge with three arches through which flow three streams of water with clusters of reeds growing on the banks. Above the trees is the arching motto TRAM and NYBOL apparently the name of the bridge." (Parma 13, p.94)

In the Gnomish lexicon found in Parma Eldalamberon 11 TRAM is confirmed as BRIDGE (TRATH is glossed as a passage or a ford) The second word NYBOL may be related to the Goldogrin word NIB which means SNOWFLAKE (Gnomish Lexicon, p. 61) and NYBOL might mean SNOWY BRIDGE. After trying to find some linguistic reason why a bridge would be refered to with the word snow, my partner David pointed out the obvious to me - and that is if Tolkien were in this area in the winter of 1916 there would have been snow on the bridge. Also could winter not be depicted as "gray" as in the poem above.

In The Book of Lost Tales which Tolkien started around the time of his convalesence and thus would have been working on during his time in Great Haywood, there are several descriptions of a bridge associated with Tavrobel. In the interlude to The Tale of the Sun and the Moon, Eriol the wanderer is told to go "to the ancient house - the house of One Hundred Chimneys that stands nigh the bridge of Tavrobel (Lost Tales 1. p.175). In the last tale, the final battle of Men on the Withered Heath takes place a "league from Tavrobel."In the epilogue to The Golden Book which Eriol (or Eriol's descendants) wrote depicting the Great Tales he has heard from the Elves, there is a recollection of "the people of Tavrobel beneath the Moon, and they would ride or dance across the valley of the two rivers where the grey bridge leaps the joining waters." (Lost Tales 2, p.287-88 -my emphasis added)

Well yesterday in the hot October sun there certainly was no evidence of snow but in Staffordshire there is indeed a bridge that resembles this bridge of Tavrobel - namely The Essex Bridge which was built during the reign of Elizabeth I which crosses the Trent at Great Haywood and connects the village with the Shughborough Estate and has a second tributary of the River Trent - the River Sow flowing under it - and as you can see it is very wooded (need to check on the poplars).

According to Christopher Tolkien, in the epilogue to the final days of The Book of Lost Tales, Tolkien names these two rivers as GRUIR and AFROS (Lost Tales 2, p. 287). So can we see any source to where Tolkien might have constructed these names from? According to Wikipedia, the name "Trent" comes from a Celtic word possibly meaning "strongly flooding". The tributary Sow is said to have been originally Stow which means "place" and could have been from where Stafford got it's name - "Stafford means 'ford' by a 'staithe' (landing place). The original settlement was on dry sand and gravel peninsula that provided a strategic crossing point in the marshy valley of the River Sow, a tributary of the River Trent." In a very short time of searching, one possible etymological lead I have come up with is that GRUI in the Gnomish Lexicon is defined as FEROCITY OR HORROR, MAD WITH WRATH. If a river is "strongly flooding" perhaps it could be seen as being ferocious or mad with wrath (Ulmo or Osse on the war path perhaps)? AFROS even tricker - though in Sindarin ROSS can mean foam (PE: 17:117) and AF or AB can mean "without" so a river without foam - perhaps. More linguistic work to be done here - and any helps or suggestions much appreciated!

From the Bridge of Tavrobel we journeyed to the The Shugborough Estate which is reputed to be the House of Hundred Chimneys where the wanderer Eriol is told to seek "guest kindliness of Gilfannon in whose ancient house - The House of the Hundred Chimneys, which stands nigh the Bridge of Tavrobel."(Lost Tales 1, p.175). According to the materials The Shugborough Estate (which previously belonged to the Lords of Litchfield and has many mysteries - including the mysterious Holy Grail related Shugborough Inscription attached to it) has eighty chimney's on it and therefore was the inspiration for Tolkien's House of Hundred Chimney's (in this picture you can see two of them)

While an absolutely incredible house I was less convinced by this - from what I could see (and perhaps there were many changes made to the house since Tolkien's time there) I could not see that many Chimney's!


I feel more convinced by Wayne G Hammond and Christine Scull's picture in J.R.R. Tolkien Art and Illustrator of the cottage Tolkien stayed in with Edith at Teddesley Hay in Staffordshire called Cottage 1 Gipsy Green being the real source for inspiration for Gilfannon's house (certainly in the sketch by Tolkien the chimney's are more prominent!)

So it was a brilliant day in Staffordshire - and yes, I think I did stand upon the very bridge that inspired Tolkien's Bridge of Tavrobel and viewed a lanscape that was very much in Tolkien's thoughts as he constructed those very first stories of The Book of Lost Tales. As I wandered through this country side I was reminded of an elegiac passage towards the end of The Book of Lost Tales -

"Hark! Oh my brothers, they shall say, the little trumpets blow; we hear a sound of instruments unimagined small. Like strands of wind, like mystic half-transparencies, Gilfannon Lord of Tavrobel rides out tonight amid his folk and hunts the elfin deer, beneath the paling sky. A music of forgotten feet, a gleam of leaves, a sudden bending of the grass, and wistful voices murmuring on the bridge and they are gone. But behold, Tavrobel shall not know its name, and all the land be changed, and even these written words of mine belike will all be lost; and so I lay down the pen and of of the faeries cease to tell." (Lost Tales 2, p. 289)

In several moments of great stillness while standing on that bridge, I think you can hear the murmurings of those forgotten feet!

Tolkien Works Cited

The Book of Lost Tales, Part One, edited by Christopher Tolkien (New York: Random House, 1983)

The Book of Lost Tales, Part Two, edited by Christopher Tolkien (New York; Random House, 1983)

I•Lam na•Ngoldathon: The Grammar and Lexicon of The Gnomish Tongue in Parma Eldalamberon 11 (1995) (edited by Christopher Gilson, Patrick Wynne, Arden R. Smith and Carl F. Hostetter)

Qenyaqetsa: The Qenya Phonology and Lexicon: together with The Poetic and Mythologic Words of Eldarissa in Parma Eldalamberon 12 (1998) (edited by Christopher Gilson, Carl F. Hostetter, Patrick Wynne and Arden R. Smith)

The Alphabet of Rumil and Early Noldorin Fragments in Parma Eldalamberon 13 (2001) (edit by Patrick Wayne, Christopher Gilson, Carl Hostetter, Bill Welden)

Other Works Cited

Garth, J (2003) Tolkien and the Great War: The Threshold of Middle Earth. London: Harper Collins

Hammond, Wayne G. & Scull, Christina. J.R.R. Tolkien: Artist & Illustrator. London: H Collins

Posted from Andrew Higgins IPAD asthiggins@me.com