Wotan's Musings

Tolkien Work Current and Future and Some Linguistic Archaeology

2011-12-04T12:20:00.011Z

This week Wotan is taking a break from Nysianer Chronicles (which is taking up many notebooks with root words and proposed declensions and the dreaded chapter two exposition story around the languages more to come in the holiday break)

I wanted to report on some interesting areas of Tolkien Studies Wotan is currently involved with and end with two bonus Tolkienian linguistic explorations that have come out of this work

MYTHGARD INSTITUTE - TOLKIEN AND THE EPIC

I can hardly believe that we are in the final weeks of the Mythgard Institute's very first excellent course Tolkien and the Epic - and what a way to conclude this exploration that has taken us through some of the great works that influenced Tolkien (Beowulf, The Kalevala, The Lay of the Volsungs) and great works by Tolkien himself (Sigurd und Gudrun, The Children of Hurin and The Lay of Leithian).

In addition to excellent lectures by the President of the Mythgard Institute, the Tolkien Professor himself, Corey Olsen (his lectures on The Lay of Leithian were awe inspiring) we have also the incredible good fortune to have guest lectures by some of the pantheon of Tolkienian scholarship including Dr Verlyn Flieger, Tom Shippey (the Gandalf of Tolkien studies) and this week Dr Michael Drout - I consider myself a groupie of all four! It is quite amazing to sit at your computer (our modern day Palantir) and have these important scholars comes as if out of the west to talk about Tolkien and, more importantly, interact with students online with q

uestions and discussions,

And what a way to end this first course than with a three week exploration of Tolkien's masterwork The Lord of the Rings. Dr Drout's talk on The Fellowship of the Ring focused on how Tolkien gets us to care about Middle Earth and how knowledge is distributed in the narrative. This was some of the most original thought I have heard on The Lord of the Rings in a while. I am a massive fan of Dr Drout having heard all his Modern Scholar series and his excellent Anglo-Saxon Aloud podcasts. I have been through his landmark work J. R. R. Tolkien, Beowulf and the Critics twice and am looking forward to his upcoming Tolkien book The Tower and the Ruin and his new book on philology. C.S.Lewis said of Tolkien that he lived inside languages- and I think it can be said of Dr Drout that he lives inside Tolkien - the power of The Mythgard I

nstitute is being able to take a virtual class with an important Tolkien academic like Professor Drout as he sits in his house (having just read a chapter of The Two Towers to his son for bedtime)

The spring the great work of The Mythgard Institute continues with two brilliant courses - Tolkien and Lewis and the Making of Myth and Taking Harry Seriously -Exploring Harry Potter (taught by the excellent Amy Sturgis)

Here is a short film showing some exciting highlights of The Tolkien and Epic Course....

THE GREAT WORK BEGINS

Wotan is also very excited to announce that he has recently been excepted into a Phd Programme through The University of Wales to work with one of the top Tolkien scholars Dr Dimitra Fimi on Tolkien Studies. Dr Fimi is the author of one of the key works on Tolkien - the 2011 Mythopoeic Scholarship Award winning Tolkien, Race and Cultural History: From Fairies to Hobbits.as well as teacher of two of the best online courses I have taken J.R.R Tolkien Myth and Middle Earth in Context and Fantasy Literature Before and After Tolkien

Wotan feels like Frodo at the Council of Elrond starting on this quest! My Phd project which I have started work on is called "I'll have to find out what that means" Employing Literary and Linguistic Archaeology to Unearth the Earliest Strata of Tolkien’s Secondary World - And there will be more to come on this project in the coming weeks, months, and years!

FINDEGIL - An Unsung Gondorian Scribe with Nice Hair

In preparing for our Mythgard Institute The Fellowship of the Ring exploration I re-read the notes on The Shire Records and one character jumped out at me who is very important as without him we would not have the Account of the War of the Ring translated by Professor Tolkien - and that is the Gondorian scribe - FINDEGIL

In the Note on The Shire Records it states that the original Red Book of Westmarch was not preserved. Several copies, with various notes and later additions, were made. The first copy was made by request of King Elessar of Gondor and Arnor, brought to Gondor by Frodo's companion Thain Peregrin I. This copy was known as the Thain's Book and "contained much that was later omitted or lost". In Gondor it underwent much annotation and correction, particularly regarding Elvish languages. Also added was an abbreviated version of The Tale of Aragorn and Arwen by Faramir's grandson Barahir. A copy of a revised and expanded Thain's Book was made probably by request of Peregrin's great-grandson and delivered to the Shire. It was written by the scribe Findegil and stored at the Took residence in Great Smials. This copy was important because it alone contained the whole of Bilbo's Translations from the Elvish (i.e. the great tales of the Silmarillion). It was this version that passed through many hands and came down to Professor Tolkien who translated it.

So without the scribe Findegil we would not have the account of The War of the Ring and perhaps the great tales of the First (and Second?) ages.

So who was Findegil and, more importantly, what does his name mean (key to Tolkien). ]

According to the Encylcopedia of Arda -

" Findegil's main claim to historical notice was due to a note he added to the Thain's Book, marking its completion in the year IV 172. This gives Findegil the distinction of being the last character in any of Tolkien's tales whom we can date with confidence."

So we know he was a scribe who lived in Gondor in the time of the Reunited Kingdom

His name certainly sounds Elvish and specfically Sindarin -

The Roots FIN, FINN, FINDEL all have to do with hair, a single strand or mass PHIN+DELAD hair (as in Glorfindal) GLORFINDEL = GLAUR + PHIN+DELA. DEL thick dense, Q PHINDELE mass of long hair OLD SINDARIN findel later finnel (Parma Eldalamberon 17, p. 17)

But there is also the Quenya gloss FINTA to make, show off or decorate a thing with delicate work (a good root word for a scribe)

GIL of course means star (Gil-Galad) and can also mean glint or spark

Ah but then in The Etymologies we find the root TEK (p. 391) which means to make a mark, write or draw together and the Quenya word TEKIL meaning pen which in Noldorian becomes TEGOL so not to far from DEGIL - so perhaps his name means - He with the fine hair who writes with a pen."

So lets hear if for our fair haired Gondorian scribe Findegil for without his effort we would never have heard of any of these glorious tales!

MUSINGS ON FARAMIR'S NAME

Faramir is one of my favorite characters in The Lord of the Rings and I am enjoying revisiting with him this weekend in preparing the readings for The Two Towers lectures next week by Professor Olsen. I have always thought it interesting that Tolkien gave his own recurring nightmare of the great wave comimg over the land to Faramir.

As to the roots and meaning of his name - there is an easy part and a not so easy part.

The easy part is MIR which according to The Etymologies is the root for jewel, precious thing, treasure from which we get the Quenya MIRE which in Parma Eldalamberon 17 Tolkien quotes for atamir, heirloom as a gloss for the Old English word maðm (a precious treasure, valuable gift) there is also the Quenya word MIRYA for a beautiful work of art. MIRIAMA very precious So it is pretty clear that the MIR ending means jewel of precious thing.

The Fara (or Phara) is s bit trickier. In The Etymologies there is a root PHAR from which we get the Quenya word FARYA meaning suffice, sufficient

So Faramir could be a Quenya/Sindarin mixed name for "a sufficient jewel??"

Boromir's name according to the Etymologies might mean enduring, faithful, loyal -so perhaps his name means faithful or loyal jewel.

It is interesting to posit if Denethor their father gave these names then we are already seeing a bit of the source of favoritism between the two sons - both are jewels but one is loyal and faithful and the other one is only sufficient. Also the irony of Boromir's name based on what happens to him is palpable.

But there is another possible root that comes from Parma Eldalamberon 17 (Words, Phases, and Passages in LOTR) is PHERE which means quick, ready, prompt - so could his name made The Jewel that is ready (to fight) ... Possibly.

That's it for now from Wotan - in the next blog post Wotan will discuss two new books on constructed languages he is currently reading The Dictionary of Made Up Languages and From Elvish to Klingon - Exploring Constructed Languages

Lebe Wohl for now!

Nysianer Chronicles

2011-11-27T12:20:00.007Z

I have decided to start blogging about my development of some con langs based on the threads of a very old secret vice. This has to do with my work on the old Nysianer Chronicles - these postings will start out being disjointed but will become more organized as I develop them. A treatise on Old Crytoni is also in the works.

Nysianer Chronicles

And Nysianer rejoiced in their finding....after a long journey from an unknown land through many generations of forgotten time they come to a new land - the 50th generation of a race who does not remember its past, culture, and languages, now only distant echoes in a wandering people who have journeyed many generations to a new land,

What is remembered is only snatches of song and legend - strange names and events that due to constant wandering and odyssey have now lost their context. Who were the Crytoni and why was his sword Amaderfig so important. The daily labor of existence, surviving the elements, hunting, finding food, protecting the family took the place of worshiping gods and keeping alive the legends of their cultures. Were they one culture or many that came together? All that mattered was motion forwards and the constant quest for the place to stop and build a new life and culture. If any words survived it was Nus-int! people forward.

Nus - people, culture. Nysian The People (first vowel becomes y in def article + ian) Nom pl Nysianer

Nus - people culture. Nysian - the people (pronounce nee-sea-an)

Nuser - peoples Nysianer - the peoples (nee-sea-an-er)

Nusib - of people Nysibianer - of the people (nee-sib-an-er)

Nusic - to for by Nysicianer - to for by the (catch all case that has been amalgamated on wandering)

Nusiber - of peoples. Nysibianeer - of the peoples

Nusicar - to for by peoples. Nysicianeer - to for by peoples

Kerr - mountain Kyrrian

Kerrer Kyrrianer

Kerrib Kyrribianer

Kerric Kyrricianer

Kerriber Kyrribianeer

Kerricar Kyrricianeer

Y should be pronounced like e in leak

So for cons endings

Nom S indef - root

Nom S def - 1st vowel changes to y + ian

Nom P indef - root + er

Nom P def - 1st vowel to y

Int - imperative of to go

Old Crytoni - echo of a past language should have an archaic feel - perhaps a proto IndoEuropean feel???

Limdyrs ?? People they encounter

What was the language the Nysians spoke on their journey - track back to the language of Old Crytoni and then what happened to it in the 50th generation of journey to the new world,

In 50 generations a language would break down - structure wold become simplified, endings cut off, words simplified, vocab around environment, words spring up around wandering - the older language would remain in writings.

The Book of Nak-Hysian - an ancient book of lore written in Old Crytoni which remains on the journey but is burned and damaged and can only by read by the sect of the Godifet who study the ancient text and try to keep knowledge of the older language in the culture - but is seen as outof date and ignored,

The gap in the Valley - for the last 15 years the Nysian have been journeying through a vast valley with sheers mountain walls on either side with no end

prelim Nysian vocab

Mountain - kerr

Valley - vakerr (va below / kerr)

Leader - dyc

People - nus

food - befus

Fire - usid

Day - usidej

Night - tyusidej (ty - not)

Death tynus

Old - usidint

Young tyusidint

Walk go on - intydoc

To go ejintydoc (edge-int-ee-doc)

To lead - ejdyc

To die ejtynus

To eat ejbefus

To grow old ejusidint

To walk intydoc

Present Tense

Rintydoc - I walk

Reintydoc - you walk

Rointydoc - he she it walks

Raintydoc - we walk

Resintydoc - you pl walk

Ronintydoc - they walk

But in a sentence the rstem indicating present tense comes at the end of the sentence so

The Nus are walking in the valley

Intydoc valkyrricianer Nysian-ron.

Intydoc valkyrricianeer Nysian-ron.

The Leader leads the people

Ejdyc nysian dycian-ro

ROOTS

VA below

TY not, negation

INT towards

From Dragons and Swords to Motor Cars and Gaffers

2011-10-23T11:43:00.021+01:00

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

2011-10-09T10:41:00.031+01:00

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

2011-10-02T10:27:00.032+01:00

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 Thr eshold 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

On A Sunny Saturday and Monday Morning.....

2011-09-25T10:44:00.003+01:00

Suliad!! from Wotan. Yesterday I attended The Tolkien Society UK Oxonmoot 2011 at Lady Margret Hall in Oxford. It was a day of meeting fellow Tolkienists and hearing some really exciting papers including

Bob Blackham - Tolkien and the War Years

Murray Smith - Two Masters? A Possible Journey from Birmingham to Laketown

Colin Duriez - What made Tolkien Tick and Why Was He Called Reuel?

Dr Lynn Whitaker - Corrupting Beauty: Rape Narrative in The Silmarillion

Andrew Morton - Tolkien, WH Auden and the Age of Anxiety

Dr Dimitra Fimi - Kipling, Tolkien and their mythology for England - From Puck of Pooks Hill to The Book of Lost Tales

All were brilliant and much to think about - anytime Dr Fimi speaks I am there, upfront and taking notes (and her Tolkien and Fantasy online courses are must takes)

Oxonmoot also had a sales room and I went eagerly with much money in the wallet to go Tolkien shopping!!! And lo and behold I found an edition of a book I have been looking for for some time And that is Inkling Charles William's Arthurian Torso containing the posthumous fragment The Figure of Arthur and commentary on the poems by fellow inkling C.S. Lewis
When Charles Williams died in 1945 he left two works unfinished on his thoughts on the Arthur cycle (interesting that Tolkien also worked on an unfinished Arthurian poem called The Fall of Arthur which except for a brief quote in Humphrey Carpenter's biography of Tolkien, has yet to see the light of day (Tolkien Estate are you listening?!))

After Williams death C.S. Lewis published the unfinished works with his notes and commentary. As I travelled back from Oxford to London last night I read the preface in which Lewis indicates "The first two chapters had been read aloud by the author to Professor Tolkien and myself." Lewis then ends the preface with one of the most illustrative descriptions I have read of a gathering of the Inklings setting the scene for Williams reading this poem to them - Lewis writes

"Picture to yourself, then, an upstairs sitting- room with windows looking north into the 'grove' of Magdalen College on a sunshiny Monday Morning in vacation, at about ten o'clock. The Professor and I, both on the chesterfield, lit our pipes and stretched out our legs. Williams in the arm-chair opposite to us threw his cigarette into the grate, took up a pile of the extremely small, loose sheets on which he habitually wrote - they come, I think, from a two penny pad for memoranda and began as follows....." (Williams, p.2)

Oh to have been a fly on the wall in that room on that bright sunny Monday Morning.......

Williams, Charles (1969) Arthurian Torso, Containing the Posthumous Fragment of The Figure of Arthur with notes and Commentary by C.S.Lewis (Oxford, OUP)

Link to The Charles Williams Society

Posted from Andrew Higgins IPAD asthiggins@me.com

Wotan Has Returned!!!! Autumn Postings Shall Commence

2011-09-18T10:50:00.003+01:00

After many nights at the opera and trips to the east and west, Wotan has returned to Valhalla (well if you can call Clapham Valhalla) with a back log of blog postings. First up is a book review Wotan did recently for the Mythprint the Journal of the Mythopoeic Society of a fantastic new book about Tolkien by a man who actually worked with him...so here it is.....

Arne Zettersten. J.R.R. Tolkien's Double Worlds and Creative Process - Language and Life. Palgrave MacMillan 2011. 243pp. £47.00 ISBN 978-0-230-62314-9.

Like many, if not all, of you I am always on the lookout for new books about J.R.R Tolkien. I probably hit the Amazon search button two or three times a week to see what is both out there and on the horizon (you'd think they have a twelve step programme for this!). So it gave me great delight several months ago to see that Professor Arne Zettersten's new book on Tolkien was available for pre-order. At the same time as this rush of excitement I also had that usual tedious inner dialogue with myself regarding rationalising the price for this book (close to £50 in the UK) against other projected expenditure (like rent, food, the dog etc.). As I remember the internal dialogue for this book went on a bit (not as long as the continuing one for purchasing an original copy of The Songs for the Philologists) - but finally my mind rang with "YOU SHALL BUY" and I ordered it.

Arne Zettersten is currently a Swedish professor emeritus. Before retirement, Zettersten was a Professor in English at the University of Copenhagen.
What probably tipped my purchasing decision over the edge was my reading in the notes for the book that Zettersten is one of those fast fading people who actually knew and actively worked with Professor J,R.R. Tolkien. Zettersten gave the keynote lecture at the 2004 Marquette Blackwelder conference on his work with Tolkien in the 1960-70's while Zettersten was working on his doctrinal thesis on the AB language - a term coined by Tolkien himself when he noted that the dialect of a series of works in Early Middle English (the works of the Katherine Group and the Ancrene Wisse (also known as the Ancrene Riwle or the Guide for Anchoresses)
each had a standard language based on one in use in the West Midlands an area of England Tolkien was very interested in linguistically and historically.

What Zettersten includes in this roughly 200 page book is an incredibly focused blending of a personal reminiscence with a biographical sketch that includes the greatest emphasis and discussion I have seen to date on Tolkien's philological development. He also gives an in-depth analysis of Tolkien's professional and academic work and his parallel work on his legendarium, It is from this analysis and personal experience draws one of the key conclusions of the book that I felt is worth the price of purchase - but more on that later.

The very cover of the book sets the tone for this exploration. A hand sketched map Thror's Map from The Hobbit with an inset picture of Tolkien's from the 1960's in his garden.

The book starts with Zettersten's reminiscence of his first meeting with Tolkien in June 1961 with a scene that I am sure every Tolkien lover has fantasised about - the walk up to the front of 76 Sandfield Road, the first glimpse of Tolkien standing by the garage (that garage with all its documents, maps and some yet still to be revealed secrets!) and Tolkien offering him a cup of tea and saying "Mr. Zettersten, do come in." This was the first of Zettersten's meetings with Tolkien which would continue up to Tolkien's death in 1973. As Zettersten points out their shared love of languages, the primary and Tolkien's secondary world and their depth of friendship resulted in Tolkien in the last year of his life asking Zettersten to call him "Ronald" (which Tolkien in a letter to Amy Ronald indicated "was for my next kin only (Letters 309)." In addition in March 1973 Tolkien wrote a letter to Zettersten addressing it as "Dear Arne."

While the biographical sketch (which covers close to ten chapters) does have strong echoes of the key Tolkien biographies we already have (Carpenter, White and John Garth's excellent work on Tolkien and the Great War), Zettersten gives us a much more focused analysis of Tolkien's academic and philological development and especially the key role his mother Mabel Tolkien nee Suffield played in this. According to Zettersten, Mabel Tolkien was a lover of language, calligraphy and drawing - all loves and talents passed on to her son Ronald. Zettersten gives an example of this with a Christmas card Mabel wrote in 1893 on behalf of the then two-year old Ronald to his father in South Africa (a precursor to her sons later Father Christmas letters perhaps?). The card includes a rendering of "baby speech" including "Toekins" for "Tolkien (babies have a hard time saying the letter l).". As Zettersten says "She taught him to read, write, draw and paint. She instructed him in both classical and modern languages. She placed the right books in his hands at a very early age and practised the precise and ornamental handwriting that was characteristic of him.". While is certainly not new knowledge, what I found interesting is the emphasis on Mabel's love and experience with languages herself before passing it on to Ronald. Zettersten brings Mabel Tolkien the person out of the shadows a bit more and emphasises that very early bond between Mabel and her son had - cut had tragically short by Mabel's death in that postman's cottage at Rednal in 1904.

Another new area of insight that comes out of Zettersten's work is through his focus on Tolkien's ability to live in different worlds at the same time (the "double worlds" of the book's title). Zettersten observes that in his meetings with him, Tolkien could suddenly move from the primary and his secondary world without the slightest difficulty or doubt and he did this with same rapidity that one would switch from one language to another Zettersten uses the linguistic term "code switching" to describe this ability. He traces the development of this ability back to Tolkien's early development (for example his use of the Gothic language to construct new Gothic inspired words for his very early languages) up to his research work in the 1920's on the Oxford English Dictionary (for example parts of the re-write of The Fall of Gondolin were written on slips he used for researching the word wariangle "shrike" for the dictionary).

Zettersten's main point here, and this is what I thought was revelatory in the entire book, is the effect Tolkien's remarkable ability to switch between the "real" world and his secondary world had on the quality and depth of his work in both worlds. This "code switching" allowed him to put as much focus and emphasis on the history, language and culture of Middle Earth as he did on Anglo-Saxon and Germanic literature and culture he taught and researched in the primary world. He had the remarkable ability to hold both these worlds in his grasp and be able to discuss, debate and explore each of them almost simultaneously (an early form of multi-tasking?) The primary world complimented and enriched his secondary world. Tolkien's work as an academic and scholar gave him the process and methodology for the development of his secondary world and his work on his secondary world informed his love and passion for the primary world and his "Northern Spirit.". While others may have frowned on Tolkien's waste of time working on his fantasy world, it seems clear from Zettersten that to Tolkien there was no division, they were in the same and each were as important as the other. An area of Tolkien studies that perhaps can do with more focus and investigation?

I always judge the value of a scholarly work on the amount of highlighting I have done in it and I must say at the first pass of this book (and there will be others) I would give it high marks all around, The appendices offer a good summary of the key points from each chapter and Zettersten's gives some interesting insights into the screen versions of The Lord of the Rings (in the preface Zettersten states that Sir Ian McKellen - Gandalf gave him some insights!).

One final item that I thought was interesting In 1972-73 Zettersten was working on a fragment of the Old English Poem Waldere and Zettersten states that Tolkien was interested in Zettersten's aim to be the first person to use ultraviolet light on the manuscript to decipher the illegible parts of the manuscript. One wonders what he would have made of Professor Michael Drout's excellent current work on genomics, DNA and Anglo-Saxon texts.

This book includes some interesting illustrations and pictures of documents including a photo of a handwritten page of a section of the Return of the King time scheme from Lord of the Rings currently in the Marquette University Tolkien Collection. There are also some very interesting and useful charts including a list of the books in Tolkien's private collection when he was a student at Oxford (donated by the Tolkien family to the Bodliean library in 1982).

There is much more to dig into in this book and as an amateur Tolkien academic and philologist (who certainly lives in the primary world while taking long extensive visits to Tolkien's secondary world) I would highly recommend Arne Zettersten's book to lovers, students and aficionado's of Tolkien's works in both primary and secondary worlds. i do hope other reminiscences from Professor Zettersen are on the horizon!!!

NB: after posting this Johan Olin reminded me that Zettersten's book isn't actually that new, it's a translation of the Swedish original that was published in 2008. so really it is the English translation that is new!!!

MYTHGARD INSTITUTE - The Day Has Come!!!

Wotan's other exciting activity this autumn has been taking part in the first course of the new Mythgard Institute entitled Tolkien and the Epic. The Mythgard Institute Has been formed by the
The Tolkien Professor himself, Corey Olsen, who has created an online university for the study of Tolkien amd related subjects using interactive meeting resources (which we have dubbed Webmoot) Professor Olsen has lined up a stellar group of Tolkien academics for this first course on Tolkien and the Epic including Dr. Tom Shippey, Verlyn Flieger and Michael Drout as well as Professor Olsen himself to talk on such works as Beowulf, The Kalevala, Volsungasga and seversl of the key works of Tolkien. More classes are planned for the spring and beyond.

At one of the recent sessions with Tom Shippey, Wotan asked him about Dr. Zettensten's book and if he thought the idea of Tolkien as code switcher from the primary world to secondary world was a useful way to analyze Tolkienian literature and scholarship and he agreed it was.

Looking forward to more regular blogging on Wotan's work in the Mythgard Institute and other Tolkien matters and my new autumn language project learning Old Irish!!!

Lebe Wohl for now!!!!

Posted from Andrew Higgins IPAD asthiggins@me.com

-Turambar and the Foaloke - Etymological Archaeology

2011-03-27T12:52:00.037+01:00

In honour of Tolkien Reading Day (which for me has become a Tolkien Reading Weekend), this posting is based on my current re-read I am doing with a group called The Tolk-Lings whose objective is to read the entire 12 volume History of Middle Earth - one chapter a week (anyone can join along!). We are now in the heart of the great epic tales that make up the second book of Lost Tales around Beren, Turin and the Fall of Gondolin.

In the course of this re-read I am paying very close attention to what I am calling "etymological archaeology" that is a structured examination of the very earliest strata of Tolkien's linguistic development of the languages that form the great languages (Quenya, Sindarin, etc) of the legendarium. Along with the re-read I am also casting a foresnic eye on the two accompanying works - The Qenyaqetsa and The Gnomish Lexicon both published through the excellent linguistic journals Parma Eldalamberon by the Elvish Lingustic Fellowship.

This week what struck me in the re-read of Lost Tales 2 -Turambar and the Foaloke - the earliest version of the Turin story that would later become the great epic works of Turin Turambar - was in a passage given by Christopher Tolkien in the notes to the chapter. Christopher writes that in the notes for the original story, he was able to decipher a pencil outline for a very early version of the Turin story that was NOT erased (one of the few cases when Tolkien did not erase the pencil layer!) -

"Tiranne and Vainoni fall in with the evil magician Kuruki who gives them a baneful drink. They forget their names and wander distraught in the woods. Vainoni is lost. She meets Turambar who saves her from Orcs and aids in search for her mother." (History of Middle Earth, Lost Tales 2, p.138)

Christopher calls this unerased pencil version "a layer in the Turin saga older even than the erased text underlying the extant version." We know that Tolkien began work on Turambar and the Foaloke in 1917.

In this pencil passage we have three names that do not survive into the finalized version of Turambar or any of the later works and thus are of interest from an archaeological etymology point of view. In the notes, Christopher makes parallels from the penciled names to the final ones in Turambar and the Foaloke:

Tiranne - Mavwin (Mother of Turin later Morwen)

Vainoni - Nienori (sister of Turin)

Kuruki - possibly the dragon Glorund/Glauring

(Lost Tales 2, p.139)

The sources of two of these names - Vainoni and Kuruki - do appear in another very early work of Tolkien based on his study and love of the Finnish National Epic The Kalevala. Thanks to the excellent work of Tolkien Scholar Verlyn Flieger we now have Tolkien's original story of Kullervo from 1914 and his essay on the Kalevala (found in Tolkien Studies 7). Flieger writes in her introduction how it was Tolkien's very focus on turning one of the stories from the Kalevala (Runos 31-36 Kullervo) into "a short story somewhat on the lines of Morris romances which chunks of poetry in between" (Flieger, p.211). Tolkien considered this work the very germ of the Silmarillion and it later became the basis for the story of Turin Turambar.

Through a combination of encountering the Kalevala (in Kirby's English translation of 1911) and finding a copy of C.N. Elliot's Finnish Grammar Tolkien became absorbed by study of the Finnish language and myth - indeed the very notebook that Tolkien started to use to sketch a Germanic/Gothic based language became the same note book that he sketched the more Finnish based "Qenya" language - one of the two key languages in the early parts of the legendarium (Parma 12, ix-x)

But before working on an original story based on Kullervo (which became Turin)- Tolkien rewrote the legend of Kullervo from the Kalevala - developing his own story with new characters (including a pre-Huan dog companion called Musta (A good Finnish name for a dog Blacky) and inventing new names for the characters. Flieger makes a note that some of these names echo or prefigure Tolkien's earliest efforts at his invented language - Qenya (Flieger, p.213).

So back to those three names from the early penciled version of Turin and the Foaloke

KURUKI

It is in Tolkien's retelling/reconstruction of Kullervo that we first find the name KURUKI (the evil magician). There is a list of names that accompanies the work that includes the names - KURUWANYO, KURU - The great black river of death. The notes for this indicate that Tolkien may have formed this name from the Finnish word for death - KUOLEMA (Flieger, p.244) Interestingly, there is a Finnish play called Kuolema written in 1903 by Arvid Jamefelt which has incidental music by the writers brother in law Jean Sibelius which is about death visiting a home. The word comes into the Qenya Lexicon where we find Tolkien has transformed the root of this word KURU to mean magic or wizardry with the name KURUVAR meaning wizard (PE 11, p.28). It also has associations with sin, wickedness and evil (CURDHU). Later in The Etymologies, this root KUR becomes "craft Q. KURWE craft, N CURW, CURU; CURUNIR wizard; cf Curufin, CF N CRUM, wile guile, CORW cunning, wily (Lost Road, p. 366) Interestingly there is an added entry "N CRUM was rejected; see KURUM" Lost Road, p. 366). KURUM is glossed as "N. CRUM the left hand, CRUM left, CRUMI left-handed Could there be an association one can draw between crafty, cunning and left-handiness - the idea of the left having a slightly sinister side (as in the very Latin word for left SINISTER and those nuns who used to whack left handed writers till they changed to their right hand?). So in its possible Finnish origin and its later early Qenya association we see Tolkien combining the idea of death (which indeed is what the "baneful drink" ultimately does for Turambar and Vainoni) and the idea of wizardry and cunning. Later of course the Istari Curunir (Saruman) is bound up very much with both evil and death.

VAINONI

The early pencilled version of Turin Turambar's sister Nienor/Niniel whose name means "mourning" or "tear maiden" Vainoni is close to the name Tolkien's uses in his original tale of Kullervo - WANONA (once mentioned as WANORA) which is a name of Tolkien's own creation - in the original Kalevala the sister in not named. Another suggestion of "water" might be in the Elvish stem of the name VAI - which is the name of the outer ocean - but that might be a bit of a stretch. In the Gnomish Lexicon, there are several words with the root GWAN meaning beautiful, fair and there is GWANN who is glossed as a Valsi of dancing, joy, spring, life and beauty (PE 11, p.44) - quite an ironic potential source for a character who meets such a tragic end.

TIRANNE

An elusive name that does not appear in any of the early Finnish works. Tiranne is the name for the mother who would later become Mavwin in Turambar and the Foaloke and in later versions Morwen (dark hair and tall - with the MOR the root for dark). This is a tricky one to source. In both the Qenya and Gnomish Lexicons the root TIRI is associated with watching, looking for, looking out for (PE 12, p.71) and one can certainly argue that Tiranne/Mavwin/Morwen spends a lot of her time waiting and watching for her husband, Urin/Hurin, who was captured in battle by Melkor as well as waiting for her son Turin. I have yet to find a link with this in Finnish. Tirana is the capital of Albania and I have yet to find any connections here!

So here we have three examples of names Tolkien constructed based on his very early work with the Kalevala and his love of Finnish - not just translating the Kalevala but using the phonology of Finnish and his "elvish craft" to construct new names - names that later found there way into the early versions of his legendarium. Luckily due to Tolkien not putting the eraser to this very early strata of the Turin story we are able to see some of his earliest thoughts and influences on the development of the legendarium - and I will be keeping a "Gwahir" eye on other ones throughout this study of The History of Middle Earth.

This entir e blog post was written while listening to Dunedain Radio on the Middle Earth Network which is brilliant!

Sources Used:

Tolkien, J.R.R. The History of Middle Earth (volume 1) HarperCollins: 2002

Parma Eldalamberon XI - Tolkien J.R.R - The Grammer and Lexicon of the Gnomish Tongue The Tolkien Trust:1995

Parma Eldalamberon XII - Tolkien, J.R.R - Quenyaqetsa - The Qenya Phonology and Lexicon - The Tolkien Trust: 1998

The Story of Kullervo and Essays on the Kalevala by J.R.R. Tolkien (edited by Verlyn Flieger) in Tolkien Studies Volume 7, West Virgina University: 2010

Richard Wagner and J.R.R. Tolkien - The Long Defeat, The Final Battle, and Glimpses of Victory

2011-02-27T09:17:00.040Z

Here is the next part of my continuing thread exploring the works of Richard Wagner and J.R.R Tolkien - two of the greatest and most prolific sub-creators of their generation.

Wagner and Tolkien worked on the development of their legendariums over a course of many years and for each of them it was a great part of their lifework. The development of these works reflected their life experiences and changing attitudes. One series of related themes both Wagner and Tolkien explore throughout the development of each of their works are the concepts of the long defeat, the final battle and glimpses of victory.

For Wagner, these thoughts are illustrated in his changing ideas for the end of his great Ring-cycle which he rewrote six or seven times (an interesting personal comparison with Tolkien's habit of "niggling" over his works). In the original 1848 version, written in a time of revolutionary optimism, Siegfried and Brunnhilde rise out of the fire of the funeral pyre and ascend to the god's home of Valhalla. There Brunnhilde cleanses the gods of their guilt and prevents their fated destruction. This is the only version where the gods are saved from ultimate destruction. As Laurence Dreyfus says in his recent article Siegfried's Masculinity, in the early version of the Ring there is little that has to do with romantic love - instead of falling in love men force themselves on females, Grimhild, Gunther's mother is overpowered and Alberich does not forswear love to master the Rhinegold but simply abducts it. (Dreyfus, p. 5) This idea of love and healing begins to play a much more important part in the make up of the Ring in the next major version of the story Wagner penned in 1852 living as a poor political exile in Switzerland. For this version, Wagner re-wrote the ending which now saw the gods being destroyed and being replaced by a human society ruled by love. This version was very much influenced by the Philosopher Ludwig Feuerbach (1804-1872) whose work Das Wesen des Christentums (The Essence of Christanity) argues that the ultimate essence of God is love (gross oversimplification of a very complex theory). This influenced Wagner to change the end to Brunnhilde proclaiming to the gods -

"The holiest hoard of my wisdom I bequeath to the world. Not wealth, not gold, nor godly splendour; not house, not court, nor overbearing pomp; not troubled treaties’ deceiving union, nor the dissembling custom of harsh law: Rapture in joy and sorrow comes from love alone."

In 1856 Wagner fell under two new influences: the philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer and a growing resurgence in Buddhist teachings. These influences caused him to revise the ending of the Ring again this time to to reflect the illusory nature of human existence (known in German as "wahn" as in Wagner's later home at Bayreuth - Wahnfried) and the negation of the will. In this version, Brunnhilde sees herself redeemed from an endless cycle of birth, suffering, death and rebirth – enlightened by love she achieves a state of non-being - her final lines to her horse Grane now are:

"Were I no more to fare to Valhalla's fortress, do you know whither I fare? I depart from the home of desire, I flee forever the home of delusion; the open gates of eternal becoming I close behind me now: To the holiest chosen land, free from desire and delusion, the goal of the world's migration, redeemed from incarnation, the enlightened woman now goes. The blessed end of all things eternal, do you know how I attained it? Grieving love's profoundest suffering opened my eyes for me: I saw the world end."

The final final version of Brunnhilde's Immolation was not written to the very end of orchestral composition for the Ring in 1874 when Wagner now a famous composer fully funded by his patron King Ludwig of Bavaria (ah those were the days!) revisited the ending again. He still has the gods perish in the flames of Valhalla (the last stage direction he gives is “the gods completely hidden from view by flames, the curtain falls”). Now Wagner uses his “elvish craft” of highly complex musical composition - using the network of leading motives he developed to illustrate characters, items and thoughts throughout the Ring. You will hear this theme in the final moments of this clip from my still favorite production of the Ring at the Metropolitan Opera featuring the incomparible Wagnerian soprano Hildegard Behrens as Brunnhilde

In these last glorious moments we hear blasting out of the orchestra the leading motive of “Redemption through Love” This motive has been heard only once before when Sieglinde learns she will give birth to the hero Siegfried and Brunnhilde helps her escape the anger of Wotan.

It is in this final moment of the opera we glimpse a final victory against the downfall of the gods – a victory heralding the start of a new world of mankind. However, Wagner does not indicate what happens to the Lord of the Ring Alberich himself – the last time he is seen is telling his son to “be true” so in this new world Wagner hints that evil may persist.

In J.R.R. Tolkien's legendarium, within the context of his secondary world of Arda and its history there is also a long defeat - a series of historical episodes that move inexorably from the creation to the end of the world. Each age of Middle Earth has defeats and peoples who are the slaves to fate. The great hapless hero of the first age Turin Turambar's, like Wagner's ultimate hero, Brunnhilde, is ruled by fate. The etymological derivation of Turin's very name carries with it the idea of fate. In The Etymologies Tolkien outlines the linguistic roots of this name from the roots TUR (Mastery)and UMBAR/AMBAR (FATE) (History of Middle Earth, The Lost Road, p. 395) and the story of Turin ultimately turns this name against him - "Turin Turambar Master of Fate by Fate Mastered."

As in Wagner's world there is also a persistence of evil. We see a distant echo of this in Tolkien's The New Shadow Tolkien's late unfortunately unfinished sequel to the Lord of the Rings where there is evidence of orc and Morgoth worship in Fourth Age Gondor (Alberich knocking on the Door perhaps?). There is definitely a pessimism and a sense of elegy and fading (one thinks of the Two Trees, the passing of the Elves back to the West, etc.).

Tolkien like Wagner also gives evidence of glimpses of a final victory in the wreck of the "ragnarok" of the end of the world. Looking into the legendarium we see evidence of both aspects. In one of the earliest prose versions of the Turin story from the Book of Lost Tales - Turambar and the Foaloke we are told that after a ritual cleansing in the bath of flame both Turin and his sister Nienori will -

"dwelt as shining Valar among the blessed ones, and now the love of that brother and sister is very fair, "but Turambar indeed shall stand beside Fionwe in the Great Wrack, and Melkor and his drakes shall curse the sword of Mormakil" (History of Middle Earth, The Book of Lost Tales 2, p.116)

An interesting echo of the early version of the ending of the Ring with Siegfried and Brunnhilde ascending to Valhalla in glory?

Later in The Book of Last Tales this concept of the "Wrack of the Gods" is paired with "the Great End -

"The Elves'prophecy is that one day they will fare forth from Tol-Eressea and on arriving in the world they will gather all the fading kindred still live in the world and march towards Valinor - through the Southern lands. Then they will only do with the help of Men. If men, and them, the fairies will take Men to Valinor - those that wish to go - fight a great battle with Melko in Erumani and open Valinor. Laurelin and Silpion will be rekindled and the mountain wall being destroyed then soft radiance will spread over all the world, and the Sun and the Moon will be recalled." (The History of Middle Earth, The Book of Lost Tales 2, p.285)

But as Tolkien continued to develop his legendarium we can see the blending of another theme - the "Great End" starts to be referred to as "Arda Healded." In The Sketch of the Mythology (1926) the last battle is followed by a passage about Yavanna finding the lost Silmarils and using them to rekindle the light of the Two Trees.

"When the world is much older, and the Gods weary, Morgoth will come back through the Door, and the last battle of all will be fought. Fionwe will fight Morgoth on the plain of Valinor, and the spirit of Turin shall fight beside him, it shall be Turin who with his black sword will slay Morgoth, and thus the Children of Hurin will be avenged. In those days the Silmarils shall be recovered from sea and earth and aid, and Maidros shall break them and Belaurin (ed - Palurien/Yavanna) with their fire rekindle the Two Trees, and the great light shall come forth again, and the Mountains of Valinor shall be levelled so that it goes out over the world, and Gods and Elves and Men (Men was struck out according to the notes) shall grow young again and all their dead awake." (The History of Middle Earth, The Shaping of Middle Earth, p.41).

Tolkien continues to develop this theme throughout his later works with the idea that for all the suffering of the world there is an ultimate recovery or perhaps to go further redemption - and as we learn in some of Tolkien's later works - especially in the very interesting Athrabeth Finrod ah Andreth" — A discussion between two characters, an Elven king (Felagund) and a mortal woman (Andreth), about the metaphysical differences between Elves and Men - there is indeed an "old hope" men possess about their ultimate fate -

"'What then was this hope, if you knew?" Finrod asked. 'They say,' answered Andreth 'they say that the One will himself enter into Arda, and heal Men and all the Marring from the beginning to the end. This they say, also, or they feign, is a rumour that has come down through years uncounted, from the days of our undoing." (Morgoth's Ring, p. 321).

So in Tolkien's legendarium there is a reason to fight another day (one thinks of the rousing Quenya war cry - Auta I lome - passing is the night!), there is a reason to suffer and strive - the hope of a final victory - an Arda restored - the ultimate movement from "elegy to eucatastrophe"  

Thus in the development of their vast and shifting legendarium's both Wagner and Tolkien using their own versions of their "elvish craft" - each a form of "gesamtkunstwerk" - depicts stirring visions of the fall, recovery and glimpses of redemption - the world's ultimate hope.

Works/Sites Cited:

Dreyfus, Laurence - Siegfried's Masculinity in The Wagner Journal (Vol 4: 2011)

Tolkien, J.R.R. - The History of Middle Earth (Vol 1) - HarperCollins: 2002

Tolkien, J.R.R. - Morgoth's Ring - Harper Collins: 2002

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Der_Ring_des_Nibelungen:_Composition_of_the_poem

Posted from Andrew Higgins IPAD asthiggins@me.com

"Gundryggia dort, Kundry Hier"

2011-02-20T12:14:00.027Z

In his recent excellent article Sourcing Tolkien's "Circles of the World:" Speculations on the Heimskringla, the Latin Vulgate Bible, and the Hereford Mappa Mundi, Jason Fisher mentions J.R.R. Tolkien's preference to "wringing the juice out of a single sentence, or exploring the implications of one word" (quoted from Tolkien Monsters and the Critics, p. 224). I have decided in the course of writing this blog to attempt to adapt a strand of posts where I will attempt to do just that - look at one word or phrase and attempt to extract meaning and the sources of historical etymology from it - words and phrases found either in Tolkien's legendarium or in the primary world of myth and legend (or opera).

This first one was inspired by my attendance last night at English National Opera's production of Richard Wagner's Bühnenweihfestspiel final work Parsifal in the incredibly powerful staging by Nikolaus Lehnhoff. I had seen this production before when I worked at San Francisco Opera and this time it had a special relevance as it was sung in English with John Tomlinson as a stirring Gurnemanz.

What struck me (and not for the first time) was a line in Act 2 when the evil necromancer Klingsor summons the doomed Kundry to seduce the pure, or half fool, Parsifal. In the evil invocation to awaken Kundry, Klingsor says:

"Herauf! Herauf! Zu mir!
Dein Meister ruft dich, Namenlose,
Urteufelin! Hollenrose!
Herodias warst du, und was noch?
Gundryggia dort, Kundry hier!"

"Arise Arise To me!
your master calls you! Nameless one
Primeval witch, rose of hell
You were Herodias, and what else?
Gundryggia there, Kundry here!"

So the phrase I would like to "wring the juice out of" is the very last line of this passage "Gundryggia dort, Kundry hier"

In her personal diary entry for March 14, 1877- Cosima Wagner relates... at lunch R (Wagner) tells me: "She will be called Gundrygia (sic), the weaver of war", but then he decides to keep to Kundry."

So where did Wagner derive this Norse name from - the name of what the nameless one was "dort" (there) and how does the word in Wagner's mind come to mean a "weaver of war"

For me the first part of the name "gunn" looks the most familiar as the Old Norse word - gunnr. According to the entry in the Cleasby-Vigfusson Old Norse dictionary there is an entry for:

"GUNNR, f., older form guðr, [A. S. gûd; O. H. G. gundia], war, battle, only used in poetry, Lex. Poët, passim. COMPDS: gunnar-fúss, -gjarn, -örr, -tamðr, adj. warlike, Lex. Poët. gunnar-haukr, m. a hawk. gunn-blíðr, -bráðr, -djarfr, -fíkinn, -hagr, -hvatr, -mildr, -rakkr, -reifr, -snarr, -sterkr, -tamiðr, -tamr, -þorinn, -öfligr, -örðigr, adj. all laudatory epithets = valiant, Lex. Poët.: of weapons and armour, the shield is called gunn-blik, -borð, -hörgr, -máni, -rann, -tjald, -veggr, n.; the sword and spear, gunn-logi, -seiðr, -sproti, -svell, -viti, n.; of the battle, gunn-el, -hríð, -þing, n.; the carrion crow, gunn-gjóðr, -már, -skári, -valr, n.; of the warrior, gunn-nórungr, -slöngvir, -stœrandi, -veitir, -viðurr, -þeysandi, n. etc., vide Lex. Poët. II. in pr. names; of men, Gunn-arr, Gunn-björn, Gunn-laugr, Gunn-ólfr, Gunn-steinn, etc.; of women, Gunn-hildr, Gunn-laug, Gunn-löð; and in the latter part. Þor-gunnr (-guðr), Hlað-gunnr, Hildi-gunnr" (cite)

On a relavatory website called Guide to Nordic Names we find the following historic analysis of this word:

Ancient Germanic
*guntho = 'battle, fight' [1]
Proto Norse
*gunþi- = 'battle, fight' [2]
*gunþiō = 'battle, fight' [2]
Old Norse
gunnr = 'battle, fight' [2] [3] [4] [1]
Old Saxon
gûth = 'battle, fight' [1]
Anglo-Saxon
gûdh = 'battle, fight' [1]
Old High German
gund- = 'battle, fight' [5] [1]

This word survives in English as the word "gun"

So clearly the War part of the name makes sense from the etymological record.

According to Geir T. Zoega's Concise Dictionary of Old Icelandic there is the Old Norse verb - drygja which means "to commit, perpetrate, carry out, practise with secondary meaning
to comply with ones wishes, to obey one (cite p. 97). In Michael Barnes' Glossary to An Introduction to Old Norse (Part 3) the same verb is cited as "carry out, engage in; suffer?"

So one can posit that someone who "weaves" does carry out and perpetrates something. Of course the very meaning of the name points a very important set of characters in Norse mythology who are "war weavers" and carriers out of Wotan's will - the Valkyrie

Going back to the first part of the name GUNNR we find that although not counted among the Valkyries in Wagner's Ring cycle - there is in the corpus of Norse mythology a Valkyrie called GUNNR. We first find her name on the Rök Stone a 9th century memorial block bearing the longest runic inscription which was found in Östergötland, Sweden where it occurs as part of a kenning for the word "wolf" (a good association with Wotan/Walse of course!)

"Þat sagum tvalfta, hvar hæstR se GunnaR etu vettvangi a, kunungaR tvaiR tigiR svað a liggia."

Translation:

I say this the twelfth, where the horse of Gunnr sees fodder on the battlefield, where twenty kings lie...

In the Prose Edda she is described as riding out with her sisters Rota and Skuld - "Guðr ok Róta ok norn in yngsta, er Skuld heitir, ríða jafnan at kjósa val ok ráða vígum"

We also find mentions of her in the Voluspa among the other Valkyries.

So with this etymology is Wagner saying that at one time this primeval witch was a valkyrie - a weaver or carrier out of war - certainly the Valkyrie were charged with carrying the dead heroes of the battlefield to Valhalla where they are to fight eternally as part of Wotan's army for the final end battle of Ragnarok.

Before calling her Gundryggia , Klingsor says "Herodias warst du, und was noch?" Interestingly there is another Valkyrie link here. In the German Poet Henrich Heine's 1843 poem Atta Troll we are told that it was Herodias, not Salome, who asks for severed head of John the Baptist and for doing so is cursed for all eternity to ride, laughing, with the Wild Hunt -

Yes, she really was a princess,
Was the queen of all Judea,
And the lovely wife of Herod,
Who the baptist's head did covet.

For this blood-guilt must she also
Be accursed; she must, as Night-Spook,
'Til the very Day of Judgement,
Ride along with this Wild Hunt.

In her hands she bears forever
That sad platter, with the head of
John the Baptist, which she kisses;
Yes, she'll kiss the head with fervor.

For, at one time, she loved John -
It's not found within the Bible,
Yet the people keep the saga
Of Herodias' bloody loving (Heine, Atta Troll, XVIII)

We know Wagner was a great reader of Heine's works and based two of his earlier works on poems by him - Der Fliegende Hollander and Tannhauser.

In Germanic folklore thunder was often thought to be caused by an army of wild horsemen flying through the night sky. The riders were said to be the dead heroes following the Valkyries to Valhalla. In Jessie L. Weston's Legends of Wagner's Dramas there is an interesting quote from a passage in Simrock's Deutsche Mythologie in the passage for Herodias "which relates how the enmity of Herod's queen towards John the Baptist was really caused by the saint's rejection of her proffered love. When after death she would have covered the severed head with tears and kisses, it recoiled, and from the dead lips issued a blast of wind so powerful that Herodias was carried away by it and made to joint the wild hunt, and like Dante's sinful lovers sweeps for ever onward before its resistless force. This curious legend appears to owe its origin to a misunderstanding of Hrödes, one of the many names of Wotan, who, in his elementary character of the air, is the original Wild Huntsman. Among the many explanations traditionally given of the object of this mysterious chase we find the god represented as pursuing his flying bride; and vice- versa the deserted goddess seeking her lost husband. This chase being closely associated with St. John's (Midsummer) Day, the remembrance of the saint, coupled with the misunderstanding of the name, probably contributed to the evolution of this quaint legend (author's footnote: cf. Simrock, 'Herodias')."

Note: Need to do more exploring with Hrödes - perhaps related to Hrjóðr meaning "the roarer"

So perhaps it is through this association that Gunndryggia and Herodias become associated - you were the pagan Valkyrie war weaver and that Herodias who was doomed to ride with the Wild Hunt with the severed head of John the Baptist laughing for all eternity (and one thinks of Kundry mocking Christ - "Ich sah ihn...ihn und lachte...")

But wait a minute - there is another Valkyrie in the room that can not be ignored - name THE Valkyrie - Brunnhilde - who is also certainly a "war weaver". It is a matter of knowledge that Wagner considered Parsifal to in many ways be the fifth act of the Ring and as early as 1848/9 in his sub-creative essay for his legendarium -Die Wibelungen has already made connections between the Nibelung hoard and the Holy Grail. For a brilliant analysis of all this connection I refer you to Paul Schofield's excellent book The Redeemer Reborn - Parsifal as the Fifth Act of the Ring.

Certainly Brunnhilde and Kundry share similar dual nature character traits (they are both the loving servant and the traitor - both cursed for their deeds and ultimately play a part in redemption). I also believe, and have yet to prove, that we may find in Kundry's music some echos of Brunnhilde's themes in the Ring (more to come on this). So could "Gunndryggia there" mean - yes, you were the weaver of war - Brunnhilde back there, and Herodias and now here in this life you are Kundry - a seductress and a servant.

Going back to the name Gunnr - we also find parallel meaning in the "hilde" part of Brunnhilde's name a poetic name for battle and in Old Norse to vekja hildi means to "wage war, to fight"

I will end this posting with one more interesting observation made by Schofield - Amalie Materna (pictured) was the first soprano to sing the roles of both Brunnhilde in the 1876 Bayreuth production and Kundry in the 1882 premiere. Wagner gave inscribed copies of his photograph to a number of friends and performers. The inscription given to Frau Materna read "Kundry here, Brunnhilde there, the work's bright jewel everywhere." Clearly Wagner is playing on the line "Gundryggia there, Kundry here," he was know to enjoy making plays on words and ideas that had both humorous and serious levels of meaning. In this light the association of Brunnhilde and Gundryggia, and thus with Brunnhilde having been a former life of Kundry, can be taken seriously as well as playfully."

Perhaps, at least we can see that the etymological history of the phrase points in that direction although I am sure there is more "wringing" to be done!

Please note: the most incredible resource on-line for anything about Parsifal is the website Monsalvat - The Parsifal Pages which I have used many times for this research.

Posted from Andrew Higgins IPAD asthiggins@me.com

J.R.R. Tolkien, The Rivals and Mrs Malaprop

2011-02-13T10:13:00.010Z

This weeks blog posting came about from a visit last night to London's The Haymarket Theatre to see Penelope Keith (Good Neighbors) and Peter Bowles (To the Manor Born, Rumpole of the Bailey) in Peter Halls excellent production of Richard Brinsley Sheridan's first comedy The Rivals (1775)

I had planned for this weeks posting to be more about early Tolkien linguistics but then as I sat in the theatre I realised that as much as I tried to put Tolkienan things aside for one night - I had actually come back around to Tolkien - for Tolkien himself has been involved with a production of Sheridan's The Rivals and in his youth had played not the dashing Captain Jack Absolute or his father Sir Anthony Absolute - but indeed Tolkien played the "she wolf" Mrs Malaprop - she who "calls her words so ingeniously misapplied, without being mispronounced" as Julia Melville the cousin of our heroine Lydia Languish says of her in the play. It seems natural that Tolkien with his love for language would savour the opportunity to play a character who uses language in shall we say interesting ways - so what is the evidence of Tolkien taking to the stage to do this?

According to Christina Scull and Wayne G Hammond's J R R Tolkien Companion and Guide in Volume Two The Readers Guide in the section on Tolkien's involvement in pre World War One school days with "The Tea Club Barrovian Society"* -

"In autumn term 1911 Gilson (Robert Quilter Gilson) was Secretary of the Musical and Dramatic Society and planned a performance of The Rivals by Sheridan to be staged at the end of the term. Tolkien, by then at Oxford, was lured back to play Mrs Malaprop, while Wiseman (Christopher) played Sir Anthony Absolute, Gilson Captain Absolute and T.K Barnsley Bob Acres." (p. 999)

Gilson's motivation for producing The Rivals seems to have come a year earlier when according to Scull and Hammond's Tolkien Chronology for December 1910 RQ Gilson during a dinner of the King Edward's School Music and Dramatic Society recited the abduction speech from Shakespeare's Richard II and two scenes from Sheridan's The Rivals (p. 22).

The production of The Rivals was set for Autumn 2011. In Hammond and Scull there is a note that "after the dress rehearsal, the friends, still in costume, marched up Coronation Street in Birmingham to have tea in Barrow's stores (p.999). One could imagine Tolkien decked out as Mrs Malaprop walking up the high street!!

The T.C.B.S performance of The Rivals was given on 21 December 1911 at King Edwards School Birmingham. According to the King Edwards School Chronicle quoted in Scull and Hammond's Tolkien Chronology

"the performance was a thorough success both artistically and financially (ed note - in my line of work both items very welcome!) J R R Tolkien's Mrs Malaprop was a real creation, excellent in every way and not least so in make-up...." (p. 31)

(Now there is a oh I wish I could get in the TARDIS and go back in time moment to see the soon to be Oxford don in drag playing Mrs. Malaprop!!)

It is quite interesting to think that Tolkien a future philologist and creator of languages would play a character whose very name and action would be responsible for a new word in our language

"The word malapropos is an adjective or adverb meaning "inappropriate" or "inappropriately", derived from the French phrase mal à propos (literally "ill-suited")।[1] The earliest English usage of the word cited in the Oxford English Dictionary is from 1630. Malaprop used in the linguistic sense was first used by Lord Byron in 1814 according to the OED. The terms malapropism and the earlier variant malaprop come from Richard Brinsley Sheridan's 1775 play The Rivals, and in particular the character Mrs. Malaprop. Sheridan presumably named his character Mrs. Malaprop, who frequently misspoke (to great comic effect), in joking reference to the word.A malapropism (also called a Dogberryism or acyrologia) is the substitution of a word for a word with a similar sound, in which the resulting phrase makes no sense but often creates a comic effect. It is not the same as an eggcorn, which is a similar substitution in which the new phrase makes sense on some level. Occasionally a phrase, rather than a single word, replaces the original word, for example Stan Laurel said "What a terrible cat's after me!" (i.e., catastrophe) in Any Old Port" (Wikipedia entry on Malaproprisms)

Some of the best of Mrs Malaprop's utterances are -

"...promise to forget this fellow - to illiterate him, I say, quite from your memory." (i.e. obliterate; Act I Scene II Line 178)
"...she might reprehend the true meaning of what she is saying." (i.e. comprehend; Act I Scene II Line 258)
"...she's as headstrong as an allegory on the banks of Nile." (i.e. alligator; Act III Scene III Line 195)
"Sure, if I reprehend any thing in this world it is the use of my oracular tongue, and a nice derangement of epitaphs!" (i.e. apprehend, vernacular, arrangement, epithets). (Sheridan, The Rivals)

One could just hear Tolkien declaring this in the play!!

In a similar way much later on his life Tolkien would construct a word that has now come into our language and the OED; namely "Hobbit"

But if Mrs Malaprop substituted "a word for a word with a similar sound in which the resulting phrase makes no sense but creates comic effect" what the later Tolkien did in developing his languages (not all together for comic effect) was use similar sounds to create a vast tapestry of language structure and from it developed the key languages of his legendarium.

It would be interesting to go through the legendarium and look for examples of malapropisms they must be there - the only related one I can think of right now is something I heard someone once say about Tolkien's works - "Middle Earth is Hobbit forming" (how true).

Welcome more Tolkienian malapropisms and thoughts!!

*it is sobering to think that many of these TCBS friends of Tolkien would soon perish on the battle fields of World War One as masterfully told in the best book on this subject John Garth's Tolkien and the Great War - soon to be in paperback and audio book.

Works Cited

Scull and Hammond The J.R.R Tolkien Companion and Guide (2 cols) HarperCollins:London 2006

Posted from Andrew Higgins IPAD asthiggins@me.com

Middle Earth Comes to the IPAD

2011-02-05T23:16:00.004Z

When I purchased my IPAD last July (way back in the days of IOS 4.0) I hoped that there would be a whole library of Tolkienapps for it. However save a Quenya tutor and several Elf name generators for the Iphone there has not been much movement in this area....that is until now.

On Monday I discovered whilst going through the App store a bona fide Tolkien related app - The Middle Earth Map.

The app has been designed by Richard Blum who develped it as a personal resource when he was reading The Silmarillion. What is currently available is phase one which covers the first age and is a great guide to use if you are reading The Silmarillion or the early parts of The History of Middle Earth.

Richard will be bringing out versions to cover the second age with the Island of Numenor and the Third Age of Middle Earth at the time of The War of the Ring.

I am very impressed by this app. it is like having Google Earth for Arda. you can start with an "Iluvatar view" of Arda and then visits your favorite places, peoples,tombs, graves, mounds and hedges with a great navigation system and colour guide

From the walls of the night in the West to the East seas you can explore Arda of the First Age and stop off and visit the Valar in Valinor, Melian and Thingol in Doriath and Turgon in थेhidden kingdom of Gondolin (just don't anyone you have been there)

But not only does this excellent app offer a tour of Arda, it also connects in to several of the best online Tolkien resources including the One Ring.net and the Tolkien gateway so when you are in a certain land or place you can access information and links about it immediately

I wrote my first app store review about The Middle Earth map and gave it 5 stars - a must for any Tolkien lover. i've got my Sillmarillion on my Kindle app and my Middle Earth map app ready to explore the vast realm of Tolkien's Arda.

I applaud Richard Blum's work and look forward to the next editions! An app worthy of Feanor!!

Posted from Andrew Higgins IPAD asthiggins@me.com

Langon - The Mouth of Melko - Some Etymological Detective Work

2011-01-29T13:35:00.004Z

In a recent post to the Lord of the Rings Fanatics Plaza, Jason Fisher did an excellent piece on hapax legomenon in The Lord of the Rings, words that only appear once. I've been thinking about a similar exploration for names that only appear once in The History of Middle Earth and have found my first candidate.

In the Book of Lost Tales I, in Meril-i-Turnqui's tale to Eriol of "Melko's Chains" we hear of the great assault on Melko in his fortress by the
Valar lead by Manwe, Orome and Tulkas. When Melko hears Manwe's command to come forth he does not but...

"he would not come, but sent Langon his servant and said by him that...." (Lost Tales 1, p 102)

The name leapt out at me as he is one of the first named servants of Melko we hear about (long before Sauron) I wondered where this name and character came from. A check of the main HOME index indicates this is the only time in the entire legendarium that this servant of Melko is mentioned - so a true hapax legomenon.

The key to his name is the "said by him that...." Langon is essentially the voice of Melko.

But whence the name???

In the i Lam na Ngoldathon (The Gnomish Grammar and Lexicon 1917) developed by Tolkien in concert with The Book of Lost Tales (and published as Parma Eldalamberon XI) there are two revealing entries:

-LANG- to blare, clang, ring
-LANGON- great bell

(P.E. XI, p. 52)

So perhaps the name has something to do with Langon "blaring forth" Melko's message of "behold he was rejoiced and in wonder...." (Lost Tales I, p. 102)

But a more compelling case, and indeed perhaps in this case it was nature of the character which influenced the etymological development of the word, comes later in The Etymologies with this passage -

LANK - Quenya lamba throat, N lhame [The Stem was first written LANG, with derivatives, Q langa (*langwi), N lhang,, see LAK" (Lost Road, p. 367)

LAK - swallow, Q lambo throat (Lost Road, p. 367)

And in the Quenya corpus this word and meaning is found in the Quenya poem Earendel which was published by Christopher Tolkien in the essay A Secret Vice in Monsters and Critics

" San ninqeruvisse lútier
kiryasse Earendil or vea,
ar laiqali linqi falmari
langon veakiryo kírier;

Then upon a white horse sailed Earendel, upon a ship upon the sea, and the green wet waves the throat of the sea-ship clove. (MC, p. 216)

So Langon indeed is the mouth/voice/throat of Melko and while this early servant of Melko is not mentioned again in the legendarium - his actual role in this case may have influenced the development of this word and its place in the Quenya lexicon and corpus

Langon also reminds us of a later Mouth - namely the Mouth of Sauron

"At its head there rode a tall and evil shape, mounted upon a black horse… The rider was robed all in black, and black was his lofty helm; yet this was no Ringwraith, but a living man. The Lieutenant of the Tower of Barad-dûr he was, and his name is remembered in no tale; for he himself had forgotten it, and he said: 'I am the Mouth of Sauron" (Return of the King, The Black Gate Opens)

It is interesting in both the cases of Langon and the later unnamed "Mouth of Sauron" we know very little about them. in The War of the Ring we learn a few details about who the Mouth of Sauron might have been (War, p. 431) but no full biography and no name.

So perhaps when Tolkien was developing this Emissary of pure evil in The Lord of the Rings he thought back to this earlier servant Langon - the long forgotten voice of the first Dark Lord?

To Have and To Have Not

2011-01-23T11:14:00.006Z

This week's posting is based on one of my new 2011 activities of learning Finnish - to be ultimately able to read the epic works like the Kalevala. One of my "text books" for this is the actual grammar J.R.R. Tolkien used when he discovered Finnish - C. N. Eliot's Finnish Grammar. In a letter to W.H. Auden in 1955 Tolkien described his discovery of Finnish “It was like discovering a complete wine-filled cellar filled with bottles of an amazing wine of a kind and flavor never tasted before. It quite intoxicated me. . .”

Well, I am currently enjoying the same intoxication - it is indeed the Everest of language learning!

One of the things I most enjoy about learning and trying to "live inside" languages - is looking at parallels and patterns among seemingly disparate languages. And I have discovered a shared pattern in three of the languages I am studying/have studied over the years - Welsh, Russian and now Finnish and that is there is no seperate verb "to have" in these languages.

In Finnish one forms the the concept of "to have" with the verb to be (olla) together with the endings -lla/-lla which is the ending for the adessive case added to the word which indicates what the person has. So to say "I have" it would be Minulla on (lit There is to me....)

Meilla on nelja viikoa lomaa - We have four week's holiday

In Welsh, the construction is very similar...

Mae car gyda fi - I have a car (Lit - There is a car to me)
Mae digon o datws gyda fi - I have got pleny of potatoes

In Welsh, the possession is expressed by the word -gyda (in North Wales it is gan) which mean "with"

In Russian, the verb to be is again used in the construction to expressed the idea of "to have" - with the translation essentially being "by you there is...")

У брата есть машина - (My) brother has a car (lit By brother is a car)
У вас есть чаи? Do you have tea? (By you is there tea)

So three languages no specific verb to have and each using a construction with the verb to be and either an ending or preposition construction.

Three languages each sharing a similar pattern and I am sure there are more (I believe Persian has a similar construction!). This is an ongoing investigation and like Bogie above I will be sleuthing out more connections in this exciting web of language!!! Suggestions please!!!!

Posted from Andrew Higgins IPAD asthiggins@me.com

Looking for the King -An Inklings Novel By David Downing - A Review

2011-01-15T17:20:00.014Z

Looking for the King - By David Downing

SPOILER ALERT - If you have not read this book this review may give away some key plot points!

During the recent but now seemingly long past Christmas holidays as I scanned more books to download onto my IPAD and read with my trusty Kindle app, this title caught my attention and I became even more interested when I read that the book was about King Arthur, the holy spear of Longinus and included as characters Charles Williams, C.S. Lewis and Professor J.R.R Tolkien himself!!! What a combination, I thought, a must read and onto the IPAD it went.

Overall I enjoyed this book which towards the end does become a bit of a page, or screen, turner. I did get the feeling in the early parts that I was reading two books. One, a rollicking good Dan Brownesqe (although much better written) thriller set in Britain in the 1940's with two Americans visting some of the key Arthurian sites in the U.K. in search of a lost relic of primeval power that others evil elements are looking for (shades of Indiana Jones). The other, a "lets meet the Inklings" novel where we through the hero and heroine of the adventure meet Lewis, Williams, and Tolkien and the other Inklings usually in their favourite haunts -- a pub or restaurant.

But the genius of this book is how Downing combines these two strands together by having the Inklings comment and indeed shape the search which is based in messages in dreams around King Arthur and "the spear of destiny" Indeed in the first couple of chapters Lewis informs our hero that there is a recent theory " by Professor R.G. Colingwood backed up by a colleague of his named Tolkien" on the real Kng Arthur (referring to Collingwood's book Roman Britain and its English Settlements).

Also after reading Downing I feel I know Charles
Williams a bit better (an Inkling whose works have alluded me and need further exploration). One moment of a slight chuckle comes towards the end of the book when some of the Inklings are musing on how they will be remembered in the future and C.S. Lewis says to Charles Wlliams we shall end up as footnotes in your biography - interesting that of the three major Inklings Charles Williams is the least well known (Tolkien says nothing in that scene) Also when the hero tells of the adventure, one of the Inklings exclaim "it sounds like the plot of one of your books Charles" perhaps referring to his holy grail mystery The War in Heaven

Downing's description of Tolkien is an interesting one. He clearly has done his research and very helpfully includes in the appendix a line by line reference to quoted remarks. I felt while he does capture some of the donish, elegiac and "I am in fact a Hobbit" character of Tolkien, what we get is very much a rehash of what we know of Tolkien through letters, interviews, etc. So we hear him describe how we know (or how he wanted us to know)how he started writing the Hobbit, we hear the recurring great Wave engulfing all nightmare, etc. There is a wonderful scene when the two main characters go to visit Tolkien and are greeted at the door of 20 Northmoor Road by his young daughter Priscilla who escorts them into Tolkien's book lined study. its 1940 and Tolkien is working on the "new Hobbit" and spends some time talking with them about the new darker adventure which has reached a crossroads tavern and met a "walker in the woods (is he Strider or Trotter?") Also I thought it was interesting that Tolkien set an alarm clock so his visitors would not overstay their welcome (he had to get that writing done sometime!) But it was hard not to read that scene and think - yes you are talking about the new Hobbit, but in a file or drawer you have the notebooks of The Book of Lost Tales and the Quenta Sillmarillion and all that work on Elvish linguistics that you have stopped writing to work on this much desired sequel.

For Tolkien and Lewis lovers this scene and an earlier one when our hero is invited to spend a morning at the Eagle and the Child (Bird and the Baby) pub with the Inklings are ones that as you read makes you think what would it have been like? i think Downing captures the boisterous quick rapid banter of the Inklings (these were no bookish dons) and the welcoming nature they would have had for a colleague interested in their pursuits.

The actual thriller?? Fine, although the denouement is a bit obvious and the ending does have echoes of that final moment in Raiders of the Lost Ark when the source of all potential divine power is literally warehoused. it is interesting when the hero decides not to take advantage of what he has uncovered for power or gain he says it is not for him to take such a thing on himself and leaves it for others to decide what to do with it (shades of the ring?). Then Downing has Tolkien say "We indeed endure things But the martyrs endured to the end." and the Tolkien comments to the puzzled Inklings "It is an elvish saying."

I think what Downing does succeed at is bringing the Inklings to life not as active heroes out saving the world but as scholarly advisers in the background of the action. Indeed, it is thanks to Tolkien's pursuits of the Northern Spirit and his focus on pre-Norman Saxon culture that a great part of the mystery is solved.

Downing masterfully has Lewis recount his conversion by Tolkien and Dyson on that long evenings walk and he later weaves it into the story and character development of the hero. Downing also creates a real sense of the worry and stress in Britain in 1940 on the eve of Dunkirk and the movement of the war from the phoney phase towards the defeat of France (Lewis comments that they are taking all the signs down in the Southern part of England in case the Germans invade)and the looming Battle of Britain. Downing has Tolkien talk about the "animal horror" of the last war and the fears and concerns he has for his two sons both currently in midst of battle (as well as C S Lewis for his brother Warnie).

Of course there is room left for a sequel and the mind boggles on who would play the Inklings if this book were made into a movie (Sir Ian perhaps as J.R.R?).

With another book with Tolkien as a character on the horizon it looks like this may be the start of a trend. I applaud these efforts if they are done with care and attention and understanding of the real lfe characters and their work. I wonder what the Professor himself would have thought of being a character in some one elses sub-creation??

While a bit thin on plot I think Downing has succeeded in bringing the Inklings to life and I look forward to more of the adventures they become mixed up with.

Who knows my idea for a series of mystery books with the composer Richard Wagner has a solver of murders may not be so far fetched!!!

Posted from Andrew Higgins IPAD asthiggins@me.com

"Where Even Now the Peacocks Pace a Stately Drill"

2011-01-08T12:49:00.001Z

Another small snippet from the exploration of the first chapter of Tolkien's The Book of Lost Tales One, The Cottage of Lost Play. In this Chapter Christopher Tolkien includes various versions of his father's poem Kortirion among the Trees. All three versions include the line

"Where even now the peacocks pace a stately drill"

As we learn in this chapter in the original version of Lost Tales The seafarer Eriol comes from the ancestral home of the English to the lonely island which is England. Where he hears the story of the fairies and elves is Kortirion which will later become Warwick (Lost Tales I, p.25).

Well I was in Warwick last year and took this picture - I guess the peacocks persist although not sure if it is pacing a stately drill!!!

Posted from Andrew Higgins IPAD asthiggins@me.com

The History of Middle Earth - A Chapter by Chapter Exploration

2011-01-08T12:11:00.001Z

Some former students (including yours truly) of Dr Dimitra Fimi's excellent
Tolkien Myth and Middle Earth in Context through the University of Wales (UWIC) have banded together as a group called the Tolk-lings to start a chapter by chapter exploration of the twelve volume bedrock of Tolkien scholarship The History of Middle Earth. Thanks to Dr. Fimi and UWIC we have been given permission to use the UWIC Fantasy literature discussion board to explore and discuss each chapter and very excited with the group of UWIC students and others who are joining in
(and anyone can join as well)

Another thread of this blog, in addition to Wagner and Tolkien, will be some key observations On The History of Middle Earth as I journey chapter by chapter through it with a specific focus on the development in the legendarium of the language system of the Elves and Men (we have now received our first glimpse of the language of the first men, Taliska is Parma Eldalamberon 19)

So here is my first posting on the first chapter of Book of Lost Tales One - The Cottage of Lost Play

Tolkien's Early Concept of the Olore Malle - The Path of Dreams

So much in the opening chapter so where does one start? Well, one concept that has always interested me mainly because it is introduced in this chapter and then slowly fades away (or does it) is the Olore Malle - the pathway of Dreams on which mortal children travel to Valinor in their dreams as Tolkien illustrates in the poem "You and Me and The Cottage of Lost Play (Lost Tales I, pp 28-31). As Christopher Tolkien says the entire conception of the Children who went to Valinor was to be abandoned almost without trace (Lost Tales I, p. 27) with only two other major references to it throughout the rest of the Book of Lost Tales. So this was a very early concept of travel into faerie through dreams which Tolkien brought into the development of the Book of Lost Tales and then "abandoned.". One of the most fascinating aspects of the Book of Lost Tales, for me, is even at this earliest point in the formal development of his legendarium, Tolkien had already developed a body of poetic works about his early world. John Garth's excellent Tolkien and the Great War and Dr Dimitra Fimi's award winning Tolkien, Race and Cultural History are key sources for charting the development of these pre Book of Lost Tales works and their influences. As Dr Fimi indicates an important early influence of Tolkien and the specific development of the Olore Malle was J.M Barrie's Peter Pan which Tolkien saw as a child. Dr Fimi indicates that the idea of children coming and staying in fairy land parallels the story in Barrie's Peter and Wendy in which reference is made to Peter Pan living with the fairies and who when children died accompanied them part of the way so they would not be frightened (Fimi, p.37). So this early concept comes out of the Edwardian and Victorian fairy tradition that soon faded, as did this concept, in the harsh light of the aftermath of World War One. But did it? Actually the concept of "travel" in dreams to faerie actually persists in Tolkien's writings as we will see later on in his time travel stories The Lost Road and The Notion Club Papers.

I was also struck on this re-read by how much of the atmosphere of the hall found it's way into the Hall of Fire in Rivendell where great tales are also told.

Works Cited

The Book of Lost Tales 1 in The History of Middle Earth (Part 1), edited by Christopher Tolkien. (London: HarperCollns: 2002)

Fimi, D (2010) Tolkien, Race and Cultural History: London: Palgrave

Also stop presses!!! Professor Corey Olsen otherwise known as The Tolkien Professor has announced a new course which he will make available for iPod listening called Faerie and Fantasy .

His course last year on Tolkien's major works was brilliant and I think a key event in Tolkien scholarship and looking at the reading list which includes Middle English literature, Chaucer, Dunsany, Lewis, Tolkien and more looks really exciting.

Professor Olsen should receive one of the rods of the Istari for opening up and allowing exploration of the works of Tolkien and others to international audiences!! I will be reading and listening along to this one.

Posted from Andrew Higgins IPAD asthiggins@me.com

Wagner and Tolkien Thread: Strange Ring Fellows

2011-01-03T19:33:00.001Z

Happy New Year!! In honor of Professor Tolkien's birthday today I am publishing the next posting in my thread of looking for evidence of shared common ground between the two great sub-creators of the 19th and 20th century - Richard Wagner and J.R.R. Tolkien.

In the course of my ongoing investigations I have identified several narrative parallels in Wagner and Tolkien's works especially in each of their great Ring cycles. This posting focuses on the last two people who possess Alberich's and Sauron's Ring - the unlikely duo of the demi-god turned mortal Brunnhilde and the fallen Hobbit Gollum

In his 1849 prose sketch for his Ring cycle, The Nibelungen Myth, Wagner describes Wotan's dilemma with the cursed ring after he was forced to give it to the giants as part of the ransom for the goddess Freia.

“Wotan can not erase the the injustices without committing a new one; only a free will, independent of the gods, which is willing to take all the guilt on itself and to suffer for it, can break the spell.” (Haymes, P.47).

In the libretto for Die Walkure, Wagner dramatiizes this idea in the following admonition from Wotan to his jealous wife Fricka:

"Eines höre!
Not tut ein Held,
der, ledig göttlichen Schutzes,
sich löse vom Göttergesetz.
So nur taugt er
zu wirken die Tat,
die, wie not sie den Göttern,
dem Gott doch zu wirken verwehrt."

"Listen this once! The crisis calls for a hero  who, free from divine protection, will be released from divine law.  So alone he will be fit to do the deed  which, much as the gods need it, a god is nevertheless prevented from doing. (Wagner, 1876)

Throughout the cycle Wotan tries to force the creation of this hero (first with Siegmund and then his son Siegfried) but ultimately fails. The true hero is Brunnhilde who after the death of Siegfried (who fails to end the curse of Ring) puts it on and selflessly immolates herself in the bridal fire with Siegfried - thus ending the curse. Brunnhilde starts the cycle as a valykrie – a demi-goddess with god like powers. Then she disobeys Wotan her father by protecting Siegmund in battle and is banished from the order of the valkyries and turned into a human. So Brunnhilde has very much a dual nature of goddess and human. She is also fated by her father Wotan to play a great part in the final action of the legendarium as he tells Brunnhilde's mother Erda in the final act of Siegfried:

Die du mir gebarst,
Brünnhild',
weckt sich hold der Held:
wachend wirkt
dein wissendes Kind
erlösende Weltentat. -

"Brünnhilde, whom you bore me, will awaken to the hero: on waking, the child of your wisdom  will do the deed that will redeem the world. " (Wagner, 1876)

In Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, it is the character of Gollum who ultimately is responsible for the destruction of the Ring in the fires of Mount Doom. He too has a dual nature, albeit different in aspect than Brunnhilde. He is also fated by Gandalf (arguably a Wotan-like character) to perform a great act

“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 the least (Fellowship, p. 58)

Ultimately it is Gollum, after the hero Frodo fails in his quest to destroy the Ring, who leaps Into the fire with the ring

“But Gollum dancing like a mad thing, held aloft the ring, a finger still thrust within its circle. It shone now as if verily it was wrought of living fire. Precious! Precious! Precious! Gollum cried “My Precious! Oh My Precious And with that, even as his eyes were lifted up to gloat on his prize, he stepped too far, toppled, wavered for a moment on the brink, and then with a shriek he fell.” (Return, p. 925)

Here of course we see a major contrast in the characters of the final Ringbearers. Brunnhilde makes a conscious decision to destroy the Ring “For I shall now return this ring to you, wise sisters of the depths. The fire that burns me will also purify the evil jewel.” (Haymes, P 59) whereas Gollum slips and falls. Brunnhilde's selfless act is replaced by Tolkien's use of eucatastrophy - the sudden joyous turn - that destroys the ring.

As Brunnhilde had to go through a series of actions and events to become the final character to perform this act of redemption so too did a series of acts and events have to occur to have Gollum arrive on that precipice to perhaps be the agent of this final act – despite many characters throughout the course of the story (Frodo, Sam, Faramir) wanting to kill him as Frodo finally says

“But do you remember Gandalf's words “Even Gollum may have something yet to do? But for him, Sam I could not have destroyed the Ring – The Quest would have been in vain, even at the bitter end” (Return, p. 926)

So perhaps what we are seeing in the roles of both Brunnhilde and Gollum - the final ring bearers - is that each of them had to go on a long journey to reach the point of where they each needed to be to perform that final act that destroys the ring and heralds the start of a new (redeemed?) world.

For Brunnhilde this was very much an active journey of metaphoric death and rebirth, betrayal and finally complete self awareness in her final moments declaring

'Alles, alles,
alles weiss ich, -
alles ward mir nun frei"

"Everything, everything,
everything I know,
all is now clear to me!" (Wagner, 1876)

For Gollum there is a similar journey but it is more focused on how people react to him (an awareness of Gollum's ultimate role by not killing him) that gets him to that precipice to be an agent of whatever powers were at work in Tolkien's ultimate eucatatastrophic turn.

Strange ring fellows to be sure following two different pathways but with rather similar results!

Tolkien Sources

(Fellowship) The Fellowship of the Ring in The Lord of the Rings (London:HarperCollins,1993)

(Return) The Return of the King in the Lord of the Rings (London: HarperCollins, 1993)

Other Sources

Haymes, E (2010) Wagner's Ring in 1848: New Translations of The Nibelung Myth and Siegfried's Death. New York: Camden House

Wagner, R (1876) Der Ring des Nibelungen. Librettos available at http://www.rwagner.net

Posted from Andrew Higgins IPAD asthiggins@me.com

Richard Wagner and J.R.R Tolkien The Forgers of their Rings

2010-12-21T15:01:00.001Z

i have just finished an excellent online Tolkien course through the University of Wales in Cardiff: (Tolkien Myth and Middle Earth in Context) by Dr Dimitra Fimi -author of a key work of Tolkien Scholarship Tolkien, Race and Cultural History . I highly recommend this course to anyone interested in an in-depth exploration of Tolkien and his legendarium.

For this course I wrote a paper focusing on Richard Wagner (another one of my passions) as a sub-creator like Tolkien and tried to find some "common ground" between these two incredible artists of the 19th and 20th century. This is an attempt to move the dialogue beyond the oft-quoted remark by Tolkien (made in a fit of anger!) "both rings are round and that's where the comparison ends" (Letters, 237).

The original paper was over 6,000 words long (double the requirement!) and several sections had to be omitted from the final paper. I would like to get the final paper in shape for potential publication. I will be posting to this blog some excerpts from the paper focusing on several thematic areas of shared common ground. I welcome any thoughts and comments. I will also be adding to the paper as I discover new material. For example, the recent excellent book Middle Earth Minstrel had some new intriguing material on Wagner and Tolkien

We will start at looking at the very specific item at the centre of both legendarium's - THE RING itself

"solang er lebt,
sterb' er lechzend dahin,
des Ringes Herr
als des Ringes Knecht!"

"Ash nazg durbatuluk,
Ash nazg gimbatul,
Ash nazg thrakatuluk agh burzum-ishi kimpatul"

"A specific shared item of evidence for common ground is found in the actual item of Wagner and Tolkien’s ring. In his prose sketch The Nibelungen Myth, Wagner outlines the earliest origin for his ring:

“Alberich stole the clear and noble Rhine Gold, carried it away from the depths of the waters and forged from it with great cunning and art a ring that gave him the highest power over the whole race, the Nibelungs: so he became their lord, forced them from that moment to work for him and collected the immeasurable hoard of the Nibelungs. “ (Edward Haymes, 2010, p. 44)

The ring as sketched here is an item that gives the owner power and dominion. Based on the primary Norse sources Wagner would have known, there are several stories about magic rings. There are two major magic rings mentioned in the Eddas: Odin's ring Draupnir and the dwarf Andvari's ring Andvarnaut. Regarding the later, in Volsunga Saga, Andvari is forced to ransom his ring to the god Loki and he sets a curse on it.” (Finch, 1965, p. 67) From these and perhaps other sources, Wagner forged his own ruling ring – a ring that grants world domination, unlimited power, wealth and is also cursed.

As T.A. Shippey states “none of the ancient sources give the Ring the central place that Wagner does....It was Wagner who, in very Tolkienian fashion, noted the gaps of the ancient tradition and wrote his version of the story determinedly into them.” (Shippey, 2006, p. 106)

Turning to Tolkien, how did he forge his Ruling Ring? It is important to remember that the role of the ring in Tolkien went through many changes from the time it was first found in the dark by Bilbo in The Hobbit to its later manifestation as the Ruling Ring- “For Bilbo's Ring is not the same as Frodo's in its nature nor its powers...Bilbo and Gollum's Ring is a simple ring of invisibility with rather limited power.” (Rateliff, 2007, pp. 174-5). Indeed, Tolkien’s early concept of the ring is much more like Wagner’s tarnhelm - the magical instrument (either a helmet or chain mail) which has the power, among several, to make you invisible. The other main characteristics of Wagner’s ring – greed, dominion and a curse are not evident in Bilbo’s ring. However, as Tolkien started to work on the much demanded sequel for The Hobbit, he did explore the idea of incorporating the slightly nefarious concepts of greed into the potential plot line for his new Hobbit. In the first sketches of the opening chapter, The Long Expected Party, Bilbo is to leave the Shire to look for more dragon-gold having spent his share of the treasure he received from his activities in The Hobbit. (Shadow, pp. 19-34) In a fourth version sketch Bilbo says, “Now I have spent all my money which once seemed to me too much and my own has gone after it. And I don't like being without…in fact I am bring lured.” (Shadow, p. 41) Later in the same sketch, he asks Elrond what he can do to heal his “money wish and unsettlement. “ (Shadow, p. 41) As Tolkien developed this idea he wrote “The Ring: whence its origin. Necromancer? Not very dangerous when used for good purpose. But it exacts a penalty. You must lose either it our yourself .” (Shadow, p. 42) Tolkien eventually connects these earlier ideas of greed and lust and the curse with the nefarious attributes of the Ruling Ring.

Thus, in the development of the ring it changes from a useful ring of invisibility (more akin to Wagner's Tarnhelm) to the One Ring (more akin to Wagner’s Ring of the Nibelung). Now certainly Tolkien could have arrived at this through synthesis of the same type of sources that Wagner found in Old Norse works. Shippey states that if Tolkien did take anything from Wagner it was perhaps no more than the idea that something could be done with the idea of the Ring of Power, something more laden with significance, than anything in an ancient source but at the same time and very definitely not what Wagner had done with it.” (Shippey, 2006, p. 113). However, Michael Scott Rohan in his paper Was Tolkien the Real Ring Thief states that there is nowhere else Tolkien can have come by it; no dark passages in which his hand rested on an enigmatic Ring. (Rohan, 2005, p. 151 ). In his piece The Ring and the Rings, Alex Ross goes even further stating that it is clear that Tolkien used Wagner to develop his ring and accuses Tolkien of being a closet Wagnerian and brandishing his walking stick as Nothung Siegfried's reforged sword! (Ross, 2003).

One item which Ross focuses on in his analysis are the similarities in the actual curses put on the ring by Alberich and Sauron (both included above) In the final libretto for Das Rhinegold, Alberich curses the ring “Forfeit to death, faint with fear shall he be fettered; the length of his life he shall long to die, the lord of the Ring as the slave to the Ring.” (Wagner, 1876). Which is interesting to compare to Sauron's curse “One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them, One Ring to Bring them all, and in the darkness bind them.” (FR, p. 49) Clearly, each ring carries a curse that is bound up with themes of slavery and dominion over all who dare to bear it. “Wagner's fundamental message is, in short, a warning against the curse of covetousness and hunger for power.” (Bjornsson, 2003, p.276)

The same could certainly be said of Tolkien's One Ring as well."

So that's the first instalment - Next time we will look at some evidence of shared ground in character and fates of Wagner and Tolkien's final Ring bearers.

Happy YuleFest to all!!!

REFERENCES

Works Cited by J.R.R. Tolkien

The History of the Hobbit: Part One Mr. Baggins, edited by John D. Rateliff. (London: HarperCollins, 2007)
The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, edited by Humphrey Carpenter with the assistance of Christopher Tolkien. (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1981)
The Return of the Shadow: The History of The Lord of the Rings, Part One, edited by Christopher Tolkien. (London: Harper Collins, 2002)

Other Works Cited

Bjornsson A (2003) Wagner and the Volsungs: Icelandic Sources of Der Ring des Nibelungen. London: Viking Society for Northern Research
Finch, R.G (1965) The Saga of the Volsungs. London: Thomas Nelson
Hammond, Wayne G. & Scull, Christina (2008), J. R. R. Tolkien Companion and Guide vol. 2 Companion London: HarperCollins
Haymes, E (2010) Wagner's Ring in 1848: New Translations of The Nibelung Myth and Siegfried's Death. New York: Camden House
Rohan, M (2005) 'What Story I Wonder?” said Gandalf....” Was Tolkien the real Ring-Thief', in Sarah Wells (ed.) The Ring Goes Ever On Proceedings of theTolkien 2005 Conference vol. 2, Tolkien Society, Coventry England, pp. 147-155
Ross, A. (2003) The Ring and the Rings. Available at http://www.therestisnoise.com/2004/04/wagner_tolkien_1.html (Accessed on
4th December 2010)
Shippey, T (2003) The Road to Middle Earth. London: HarperCollins
Shippey, T (2006) Roots and Branches: Selected Papers on Tolkien. Walking Tree Press
Wagner, R (1898) 'A Communication to My Friends (Eine Mittheilung an meine Freunde)', in The Art-Work of the Future: Richard Wagner's Prose Works Vol 1, Translated by William Ashton Ellis. London: The Wagner Library, pp, 230-344.
Wagner, R (1876) Der Ring des Nibelungen. Librettos available at http://www.rwagner.net/libretti/rheingold/e-t-rhein.html (Accessed on 5th December 2010)

Posted from Andrew Higgins IPAD asthiggins@me.com

I've discovered the works of Edward Plunkett The 18th Baron of Dunsany

2010-12-20T18:41:00.006Z

He's been on my reading list for some time and now thanks to the holiday break I have been exploring some of the great works of fantasy of Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, 18th Baron of Dunsany (24 July 1878 – 25 October 1957) known as Lord Dunsany

Over the weekend I read his early works The Gods of Pegāna and
Time and the Gods which is an epic tale of a pantheon of great and lesser gods in the world of Pegana. There are certainly some evidence of Tolkien's Valar peering out. There is an interesting God of Mirth and Melodious Minstrel called Limpang-Tang which reminds me of Tolkien's Tinfang Warble from the Book of Lost Tales. Behind the Pantheon of Gods there is the mysterious figure of Mana-Yood-Sushai who sleeps while the lesser gods play and again has some interestng parallels to Tolkien's Iluvatar.

Lord Dunsany also wrote some really witty tales which combine primary and secondary worlds. In his short story Miss Cubbidge and the Dragon of Romance a rather prim Victorian lady is whisked away to another world on the back of a
Dragon. In The Coronation of Mr. Thomas Shap a rather ordinary man sub creates a world and then actually starts to live in it an become the king of the world. In "The Wonderful Window" a piece of glass becomes a magical window into another world.

Dunsany was a bit older than Tolkien and came from very aristocratic background. Both Tolkien and Dunsany fought in World War One.

I have heard that his best book is The King of Elfland's Daughter and look forward to reading this one and then will do some more postings on this very interesting sub-creator of secondary worlds,

There is also a book about Lord Dunsany on Google books

Posted from Andrew Higgins IPAD asthiggins@me.com

Hans Sachs in the center of Nurnberg

2010-12-11T19:26:00.001Z

Posted from Andrew Higgins IPAD asthiggins@me.c

Tolkien Studies for 2011

2010-12-11T17:12:00.004Z

Habt Acht! Wotan is returning soon. In 2011 he will be exploring several areas of Tolkien Scholarship and will try to be faithful to his readers!!!

just received the new copy of Parma Eldamberon 19 which I am going through. first evidence of Tolkien's first age Taliska language which this blog will seek to analyse. More to come!!

PARMA ELDALAMBERON 19

Quenya Phonology:
Comparative Tables
Outline of Phonetic Development
Outline of Phonology

By J. R. R. TOLKIEN

http://www.eldalamberon.com/parma19.html

Quenya phonology is a topic frequently discussed or alluded to by this group; and indeed a great deal is known about it, based on incidental statements made by Tolkien in various contexts and on inferences drawn from the evidence of attested examples of Quenya. So I hope it will be welcome news that Tolkien's own writings about this topic dating from the time of his composition of _The Lord of the Rings_ have now been published in _Parma Eldalamberon_ No. 19.

The "Outline of Phonology" is a comprehensive survey of all of the sounds and sound-combinations that occur in Quenya, including the divergences among the Vanyarin, Noldorin and Telerin dialects of the language, and variations over its recorded history such as those between _Parmaquesta_ or 'book-language' and _Tarquesta_ 'high-speech'. The sounds are all traced to their origins in Common Eldarin; and this forms the basis for the organization of the "Outline," which has sections on Consonants in Isolation, Initial Consonant Groups, Medial Combinations of Sounds, and Consonants Standing Finally, along with a section on Vowels that was left uncompleted. The text was composed around the time Tolkien began his revision of _The Silmarillion_ in 1951, and includes additions and emendations from certainly as late as 1959 and probably later; so it reflects the conception of Quenya that has come to be termed "LotR-Era" insofar as the writing is presumably intended to be consistent with Tolkien's published fiction.

The "Outline of Phonetic Development" is an earlier version of essentially the same survey, probably composed around the time of _The Etymologies_. In this text the part dealing with Vowels was completed, and it includes sub-sections on Changes Due to Accent and Stress, and Changes Produced in Hiatus.

The "Comparative Tables" are a series of charts laying out the regular correspondences among the sounds of the various languages Tolkien had invented by the late 1930s or conceived of as part of his history of the Elves, including Valarin, Quenya, Lindarin, Telerin, Noldorin, Ilkorin, Danian and Lemberin, as well as the Mannish language Taliskan. These are accompanied by Tolkien's notes on the general phonetic characteristics of the historical development of the languages, and on their phonological types in terms of the "real" languages on which
.

__,_._,___

The Tolkien Professor

2009-07-11T10:15:00.006+01:00

Over the course of the last week I have been listening to a wonderful new IPOD lecture series called The Tolkien Professor. Its the work of Corey Olsen Professor of Medieval Lit and an English PhD. Professor Olsen has started his series with several lectures on The Hobbit and then he is gong to go into Lord of the Rings and hopefully the other parts of the histories. He is also offering a Q&A discussion group on Tolkien items. In his first edition of this special discussion there is some really good insights into the three age old question of whether Balrogs have wings and who exactly is Tom Bombadil? These are really worth a listen.

Looks like Tolkien Studies Vol 6 is on the Horizon.

Great New Book about Con-Languages

2009-06-28T08:43:00.007+01:00

One of the reading joys of this summer (thanks to the Amazon "we think you would enjoy option") is a new book about the world of artifical languages (or con-langs) called In the Land of Artifical Languages by Arika Okrent.

As an avid although I fear hoplessly inept Tolkien Linguist I was not aware of the incredible number of artifical languages and the number of people who had the same "secret vice" as Tolkien. The book is excellenty writen with some great tongue and cheek observations of a newbie at at a Loglan conference or cramming to pass her first test in Klingon (which I am now secretly -will not so secretly if I am posting it here! - thinking of learning once I get my head around Russian.

I recommend it highly! My Good Reads review follows:

In the Land of Invented Languages: Esperanto Rock Stars, Klingon Poets, Loglan Lovers, and The Mad Dreamers Who Tried to Build A Perfect Language by Arika Okrent

My review

rating: 5 of 5 stars
Excellent book - a must read for any secret vice arm chair linguist - has made me interested in learning Klingon!!! Excellent - a bit more on Tolkien would have been good - perhaps a second volume.

View all my reviews.

Tolkien Pause - Let's Watch The Bloody Apprentice

2009-06-07T09:32:00.007+01:00

In the middle of much reading on the new mass of Tolkien books that have passed my mailbox from Amazon!

So on the eve of the final of the UK Apprentice let's take a break from this world and watch a really fun film by Cassette Boy called "The Bloody Apprentice" based on one of my fav shows staring that Elrond from the East End - Sir (or should I say Lord) Alan Sugar - enjoy and back soon with more Tolkien blogging!!!

Arda Reconstructed: The Creation of the Published Silmarillion

2009-05-02T10:16:00.005+01:00

Just in time for the arrival of the new Tolkien book - The Legend of Sigurd und Gudrun - I finished (well first time as this is a book that is definately to return to and highlight!) - Douglas Kane's Arda Reconstructed - The Creation of the Published Silmarillion. Seeking to double duty here is the review I posted on Good Reads.

GOOD READS REVIEW -

rating: 5 of 5 stars
Excellent book - a definite for the Tolkien lover library. A very in-depth concise analysis of how Christopher Tolkien constructed the published Silmarillion from the various versions of Tolkien's first age work (most for the post Lord of the Rings era) - what he choose to use and, even more interestingly, what he left out. The charts for each chapter are very interesting and has got me interested in re-reading the later History of Middle Earth books (again).

A very very important work for Tolkien scholarship. A further analysis to come.

View all my reviews.

On to The Legend of Sigurd und Gudrun!

Tolkien's Sigurd and Gudrun - Coming in May!!

2009-04-12T10:32:00.012+01:00

Well last year the guardians of the Tolkien corpus favored us with the publishing of The Children of Hurin - and now coming up this May we have what I hope will be a a continuing series of Tolkiens unpublished works - this one The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrun - is based on work Tolkien did in the 1920's and 1930's on the Saga of the Nibelungs and Fanfinrsbane Sigurd. The book will also include a lecture on Norse mythology that Tolkien gave.

Currently online is a great promotion video about the work including a very short excerpt from the book read by Brian Cox who will do the audio book:

Included in this video or some actual pixs of the manuscript in Tolkien's handwriting I have tried to capture these for view:

Intriguing to see mention of "gold tormented" "serpents seize him" and "the eye of Atli"- we shall have to wait to May for the rest!

So Christmas comes every May for Tolkienists we hope - what could be next? Well there is a prose back story to the Beowulf legend that Tolkien wrote called Sellic Spell and then of course back in Middle Earth we can see similar Children of Hurin treatment given to the Legends of Beren and Luthien and the magnificent Fall of Gondolin we find in the Lost Tales (written shortly after World War I - one of the bet descriptions of war I've read) - and then of course there is that grammar of Taliska (the first age language of men based on Gothic) which the Tolkien linguists have been working on for some time - one can only wait and hope.....

Please note the screen shot above is from the video about J.R.R. Tolkien's upcoming book Sigurd and Gudrun by the Publisher. The material is copyrighted by The Tolkien Estate and if there are any concerns about it being displayed here please contact me at asthiggins@yahoo.co.uk

Romani in podcasto sunt! Maxime!

2009-03-29T12:21:00.010+01:00

I've been meaning to blog about this for a while - one of the joys of my morning commute down to Lewes has been some excellent podcasts - and one of the best has been a home grown podcast from the States called The History of Rome .

The author is Mike Duncan from Seattle and I have been listening to him give vivid accounts of the rise of Rome from a backwater village to the conqueror of most of the know world. Mike manages to convey in an hour the next key piece of history in both an authoritative and fun way - and some of his droll and very apt comments on how Roman Republican politics mirror our current world. The episode on Spartacus is really good.

Mike is currently in the midst of the Second Triumvirate and we are about to embark on the rise of the Empire (I believe Mike is currently in the process of enjoying Hymen's delights and will be back in two weeks). Really worth a listen and I do hope he continues through to 476 (or perhaps 1453).

New Tolkien Book Coming Soon

2009-03-17T22:07:00.003Z

Just noticed on Amazon.co.uk that there is now cover artwork for the new Tolkien book - The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrun based on work did around the Niflung poem in the 1920's-1930's. An eagerly awaited publishing event for all Tolkien lovers! I'm sure I will be reading my deluxe edition just in time for the broadcast of Wagner's Ring Cycle from the Metropolitan Opera!

Been Twittering for 2 Weeks

2009-03-08T11:07:00.005Z

Ok, so I am hooked. I've joined that growing group of Twitters including Stephen Fry, President Obama, Katherine Jenkins, Elijah Wood, Number 10, Jonathan Ross and as of this Monday - Her Majesty the Queen (our Corgi Charlie is especitally excited about this!).

Twitter is an interesting experiment in trying to boil down what you are doing into 140 characters and then read what others are doing with their 140 characters - our UK Twitter Lord is Stephen Fry and also Jonathan Ross. There was recently a great piece on the excellent John Stewart show in the States about Twittering

n

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c

Twitter Frenzy

Daily Show Full Episodes
Important Things With Demetri Martin

Political Humor
Joke of the Day

So if you are into this type of thing be sure to follow the link on my site and visit Wotan on Twitter - think I will hold off on Grunter and Stalker!!

Winter Storm in London

2009-02-02T09:50:00.008Z

No Wotan is not singing Act 1 of Die Walkure - It does not happen very often - and it certainly pales a bit to the blizzards Wotan experienced in his youth in New York - but the hrimthursir have invaded England and we are currently in the midst of a good old snow storm - here are some pictures of Valhalla this morning (no Logi in site
a least Wotan's hund die zauber corgi Charlie is having fun - Wotan has not had a "snow day" for quite some time - may hold off on the magic fire for a while!!

Dark Shadows Reborn!!!

2009-02-01T11:31:00.018Z

As a visitor to Wotan's Musings you may have noticed that Wotan has rather eclectic favs - in the TV front there is one that surpasses all others and that is Wotan's love of the late 60's - early 70's TV Gothic series - Dark Shadows.

For those of you unfamiliar with Dark Shadows here is a bit of a sample -

It was the brain child of TV Director Dan Curtis who had a dream of a woman being invited to be a governess in a strange New England mansion - this was developed into a story called "Shadows on the Wall" and then a daily TV "soap opera" that was broadcast in America on ABC at 4pm (Wotan vaguely remembers coming home from school and watching the original last couple of seasons). From its start (and you can enjoy all 1200+ episodes on DVD) there was a Gothic Jane Eyre feel to it -- an orphaned woman named Victoria Winters comes is invited to be governess to a rich New England Family called - The Collinses - who live in a large mansion high a top a hill called Collinwood. The matriarch of the house - Elizabeth Collins Stoddard has not left the mansion for 18 years and there may be a connection between her and the new governess Victoria (although interestingly this plot line in never really resolved). In its first year there was intrigue, a gothic feel and even the hint of a ghost - but when daytime ratings began to dip Dan Curtis has a masterstroke - lets go for it on the supernatural front - and after introducing a creature called the Phoenix who is reborn from the flames every 100 years - he went all out and introduced probably one of the most famous vampires of all time (after that other big one and Angel and long before the current Twilight) - Barnabas Collins who is released from his 200 year imprisonment by the tomb robber - Willie Loomis.

This started a cycle of stories that cover every much horror genre including the reluctant vampire, the werewolf, HP Lovecraft, Frankenstein and even Shirley Jackson's The Lottery. To tell the complete tale of the Collins family - Curtis employed time travel (with the same actors playing different parts) and even parallel time (the same time but based on you making different choices) - the budget was small and the camera never was stopped - the special effects for their time were quite creative and up to 1973 Dark Shadows was a unique show that launched the careers of such actors as Kate Jackson, David Selby and Laura Parker (as well as having such notable talent as Grayson Hall, Joan Bennett and Jonathan Frid as the tortured Barnabas. Two films followed, a 1990 revival series which re-told the Barnabas story with Ben Cross as the Vampire and now we hear that Johnny Depp, a great fan of the show, is working with Tim Burton on a movie version!!

Like Barnabas and Quentin this show does not die and over the years it has spawned books by Marilyn Ross (with such inventive titles as Barnabas, Quentin and the Scorpio Curse) as well as another series by Laura Parker - who played the wicked witch of Dark Shadows - Angelique, merchandise (including several copies of Barnabas's silver heads wolfs cane - one of which Wotan has in his living room). Web resource abound and there is even a wiki about Dark Shadows -

And now probably one of the most exciting occurrences as series of audio dramas featuring the original cast members with new stories and dramatic readings. These are being produced by Big Finish and Wotan has just finished listening to the first year of the series and several of the dramatic recordings - and there is a promise of more to come. There is a great blog by Darren Gross who is developing these shows and also working on the restoration of the second Dark Shadows movie - Night of Dark Shadows - which was edited extensively when it was released in the cinema in the 70;s.

There has never been, and I fear never will be again, such an original story like Dark Shadows and luckily for us there is all group of people who grew up with the show that now want it to stay alive and grow - and Wotan enjoys his many hours sitting in drawing room of Collinwood and hearing the wind come across Widows Hill and this haunting theme........

A Visit to Kortirion

2009-01-04T11:07:00.009Z

Happy New Year to all. With what is happening in the Middle East (again) not a great way to start the New Year and the ravens (Huginn and Muninn) are fluttering around Wotan and saying this will not be an easy year all around!!

So the best remedy to troubling times?? Reading and study!! And I have set up a list of projects which I will track on this blog to keep me up on all the current languages I know - solidify my proficency in Portugese and start a new one for me, Russian (and a new script!).

During the holidays my partner and I took a short day trip to Warwick - a town steeped in Tolkien inspiration. There is a great article about this on the Tolkien Society website by Lynn Forest-Hill which I will quote sections of here. Warwick Castle is now privately owned by an entertainment group and it does smack of going to a historical DisneyLand - but the tours are done very well and you do get a sense of what Tolkien was thinking when he looked upon the hill (which is reported to have had a hall on the top of it prior to the Norman invasions that looked like Meduseld....as Lynn Forest-Hill writes....

"(Tolkien's)foremost biographer, Humphrey Carpenter, has written that Tolkien 'found Warwick, its trees, its hill, and its castle, to be a place of remarkable beauty' and yet little notice has so far been taken of the way all those elements of Warwick that were so attractive to Tolkien can be seen echoing in his works throughout his life."

"During the late sixties his residency in the town was celebrated.
Anglo-Saxon Warwick, on its rocky outcrop, commanded a crossing on the river Avon. It was fortified in 914 during the Anglo-Saxon offensive against Mercian Viking settlement, becoming one of the Anglo-Saxon burhs or fortified towns of the kingdom of Mercia. (By the time Doomsday Book was written it was a royal borough). Tolkien himself acknowledged that his kingdom of Rohan was Anglo-Saxon England, specifically Mercia. He gave the horsemen of Rohan not just Old English as their language, but the dialect of Anglo-Saxon known as Old Mercian, which would have been used in pre-Conquest Warwick and the surrounding shire. Tolkien did not want his Rohirrim to speak standard West Saxon although, or perhaps because, that was the dominant language of language and literature before the Conquest. Tolkien's best known contribution to Anglo-Saxon studies was his analysis of Beowulf, and this poem is widely thought to have been composed for Offa King of Mercia, although the language of the manuscript is primarily West Saxon. Tolkien's attitude to the elitism implicit in the status accorded to West Saxon can be deduced from one of his early letters in which he wrote: 'I think I shall have to refuse to speak anything but Old Mercian.'
The physical aspect of Anglo-Saxon Warwick suggests the pattern of Edoras, the chief settlement in Tolkien's Rohan. Early Warwick would have been fortified with a stout wooden palisade. Its halls, including that of its lord Earl Thurkill, as well as all the smaller dwellings and buildings would have been primarily constructed of wood. Like the hall of the kings of Rohan, Earl Thurkill's great wooden hall could have looked out from its elevated position on the hill on which modern Warwick now stands, over the rolling green countryside of Warwickshire; but that Warwick was swept away in the years following the Norman invasion of 1066 and a new town developed with a feudal lord, a steward of the newly defined 'county'. The Anglo-Saxon stronghold became a Norman castle, looming over the countryside, as much a threat and declaration of power as a protection to the local people. Norman castles were intended to quell an unruly conquered populace. In the aftermath of 1066, stone replaced wood as the means of differentiating the rulers from the ruled. Tolkien once corrected an impression that he deplored war by saying that it was not only modern warfare that he had in mind, but the cultural catastrophe of the Norman Conquest. We know, however, that Tolkien admired the stone-built castle on its rock rising above the river which became a model for Middle-earth locations such as Minas Tirith, Amon Hen and Amon Sul, as well as Edoras - all fortified places set on imposing rocks, hills or mountains. Nor would he have ignored the beauty of the Beauchamp chapel or its association with Richard Beauchamp earl of Warwick, one of the great knights-errant of the Middle Ages. Sir Richard epitomised in life the values of knighthood set down in the manuscripts of medieval romances upon which Tolkien drew for inspiration. The other medieval buildings that survived the 1694 fire that devastated Warwick would have added to the sense of stepping back in time. Also from the medieval period Warwick's medieval hospital or Maison Dieu has its reflection in the Houses of Healing in Minas Tirith to which Merry Brandybuck, Eowyn, the Lady of Rohan, and Faramir, second son of the steward of Gondor are taken after their separate encounters with the deadly Lord of the Nazgûl. Tolkien uses the two historical aspects of Warwick, the Anglo-Saxon and the post-Norman medieval as sources for two of the most clearly defined kingdoms of Middle-earth - Rohan and Gondor. They are neighbours and allies in the book, but their social, cultural, and political situations are clearly differentiated, and that differentiation can be illuminated through the history of Warwick. In The Lord of the Rings Tolkien maps geographically what was in reality a temporal change. He contrasts the society and culture of Rohan with the culture and society of Gondor, and as Rohan is Anglo-Saxon, Gondor is influenced by Norman and French culture and history. Here Tolkien changes the scale. Where Meduseld, the hall of the kings of Rohan sits on a hill, Minas Tirith's rocky location is a shoulder of Mindolluin, in the White Mountains, where the Steward of Gondor sits isolated in his massive citadel above the city. However, while Theoden of Rohan regains his nobility in old age, Denethor the Steward echoes the Carolingian usurpation of the Frankish Merovingians in his arrogant refusal to bow to the 'last of a ragged house long bereft of lordship and dignity'. Although the scale changes in a reflection of the historical shift, the configuration of Minas Tirith like that of Edoras reiterates the geography of Warwick.

Warwick's associations in Tolkien's life are of two principle kinds, and these are interwoven in the medieval English romances which were the focus of much of his academic work. His marriage to Edith Bratt in the church of St Mary Immaculate on Wednesday, March 22nd was the culmination of a period in Tolkien's life that bore striking similarities to some of those same romances. These romances were popular stories of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, composed as poems in different dialects of Middle English, probably for oral performance by travelling storytellers and minstrels, and they formed an important part of the inspiration for his later epic The Lord of the Rings.

One of the funniest moments of our trip was when David and I went to St. Mary Immaculate and as we were entering I said to the lady at the desk - is this the church where Tolkien married Edith Bratt - she looked at me and went "who?" - ashame - this knowledge could increase their offerings and profits at their book store!!!

Lynn Forest Hill continues

"Three versions of this poem (Kortiron among the Trees) were published by Christopher Tolkien in the first Book of Lost Tales (1983), for Tolkien worked on it intermittently for around fifty years - a testimony to the importance he placed on the ideas expressed in the poem and inspired by Warwick, to which he dedicated it. There are marked differences between the versions in the vocabulary which expresses the poem's most significant features, but some concepts remain unchanged, or only slightly modified. Two extracts must serve as examples.

The first version begins:

O fading town upon a little hill,Old memory is waning in thine ancient gates,The robe gone grey, thine old heart almost still;The castle only, frowning, ever waitsAnd ponders how among the towering elmsThe Gliding Water leaves these inland realmsAnd slips between long meadows to the western sea
....
And slowly thither have a many gone

Since first the fairies built Kortirion.

And from the third version:

O ancient city on a leaguered hill!

Old shadows linger in your broken gate,Your stones are grey, your old halls now are still,Your towers silent in the mist awaitTheir crumbling end.
....
The River Gliding leaves these inland realmsAnd slips between long meadows to the Sea,
....
The Fair, the first-born in an elder day,Immortal Elves, who singing in their way
....
Pass like a wind among the rustling trees.

The earliest version of the poem is full of the freshness and vigour of its youthful creator, even if its ideas are expressed with a certain rawness. The rhythm and metre are suitably measured to convey the stateliness of the subject. The second version is even more measured, while the third shows the mature creativity that is found in Tolkien's major prose works as well as in the poem. In this late version the archaisms that belonged to a pre-war deference to the authority of the past are rejected as 'thy' and 'thine' become simply 'your'. The anthropomorphism is gone - the grey robe, old heart, and frowning castle are exchanged for grey stones, old halls and silent towers, and the greater simplicity has greater power. Unchanged are the melancholy and nostalgia, the sense of diminishment or 'fading', particularly of the elves, and their association with trees and hills. The imagery of water - the flow of the river and the importance of the sea - signalled by its capitalisation in the later versions, these are all themes Tolkien refers to again and again in his later work. In The Lord of the Rings, the elves are leaving Middle-earth, and so it is losing the beauty and wisdom associated with them. The sea is often a presence sensed or feared, and in both this book and in The Silmarillion it is connected with loss, separation and exile. The story of the elves in all Tolkien's works is the story of their passing and re-passing over the great western or Sundering Sea.

Kortirion as a concept went through many changes. Originally the city on the Isle of Tol Eressea, it was a refuge for Elves returning into the West from which they originated but were not permitted to enter. By the time Tolkien wrote The Silmarillion, the city had become Tirion and it too was built on a green hill and was the home of elves in the far west from which the most destructive of them emerged. The creation of Kortirion in the poem was thus an early step towards the ethical cosmology and epic mythology which underpins Tolkien's vision of Middle-earth as it is alluded to in The Lord of the Rings and described in The Silmarillion."

The full article is worth a read

It was a great day out with lots of pictures which are being shown on the slide show widget I have put on this blog.

Here's to an exciting 2009!!

Selections quoted from: Kortirion among the Trees: the Influence of Warwick on JRR Tolkien's vision of Middle-earth by Lynn Forest-Hill

Move Over G-I Joe

2008-12-25T23:11:00.006Z

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to all out there in Blog Land!!! What do you get for someone who loves Richard Wagner!! Recordings, books, letters from Wagner asking for another 25,000 Thalers to finish the Ring (and you should be glad I am asking you!!).....No....

My partner got me.....

A Wagner doll the plays Ride of the Valykrie when you wind him up and....

wait for it...

a Wagner Action figure that moves!!! He will be a welcome addition to my desk at Glyndebourne!!

I am going to collect all the figures - Mozart, Verdi, Puccini, Strauss and the action opera house set and watch them fight crime as Der Komponeist League of Baveria!!!

Now that's fun!!!

It's Beginning To Look at Lot Like Christmas!!!

2008-12-07T15:43:00.014Z

Credit crunch be damned!! - Wotan (in the Father Christmas Hat) and his partner David (and Corgi and cat out of picture) are intent on enjoying this Christmas. This weekend turned a lovely tree from Scotland into a massive Christmas Tree which sits in Haus Pooksnig (no sword growing through it though).

What would Treebeard have said about the pagan practice of Christmas Trees??? Perhaps this is where the Entwives went to and now we dress the up with tinsle and ornaments!!!
Also, half way through JK's latest offering - Tales of Beedle the Bard - which are excellently crafted fairy tales for wizards and witches with commentary by Albus himself - wonder if this is the first of several and if JK has a Silmarillion like back story waiting in the wings - I'm sure Bloomsbury would be happy if she did!!!!

Mereth Veren e-Doled Eruion! Garo Idhrinn Eden Veren!!

Tolkien 2005 The Rings Goes Ever On

2008-11-18T20:36:00.004Z

Yeah!!! I received the proceedings of the Tolkien 2005 The Rings Goes Ever On conference from Birmingham courtesy of the great work of The Tolkien Society.

Two volumes - about 400 pages each - alot to absorb and I am off at the end of the week to Aquae Sulis (otherwise known as the eoten geworc land of Bath) where I will absorb. Well worth for an addition to any Tolkien library.

Bravo Tolkien Society for putting this together.

Glyndebourne On the Big Screen(s) and Some New Tolkien Linguistic Goodies!!!

2008-11-16T10:28:00.020Z

Its been a while...but I have been busy in the opera front. I write today about two exciting and very different initiatives of note:

Glyndebourne on Screen - this is an exciting new intuitive we have at Glyndebourne that is bringing some of our Glyndebourne opera productions to cinemas throughout the UK, United States, Europe and Japan. Now you can experience our current productions of Handel's Giulio Cesare (in a landmark production by the visionary opera director David McVicar), this summer's hit Hansel and Gretel and Rossini's Cenerentola in stunning high definition 5.1 stereo surround sound. The experience of seeing opera on a large screen o is a unique one - where else can you see a really tight close up on a singer as they are performing such a moving aria as Cleopatra's - Lascia ch'io pianga and Da Tempeste sung exquisitely by Glyndebourne's Cleopatra - the excellent Danielle De Niese.

And if you can't get to one of the close to 100 cinemas we are appearing at - you can also view excerpts from the operas on Telegraph TV iincluding the ability to embed these clips and email them to friends - a great way to get an opera party together to go to one of the Glyndebourne Screenings!!!! Here is an example of what you can experience:

On another completely different front - after the excitement of the publishing by the Elvish Linguistic Fellowship of Parma Eldalamberon 17 containing Tolkien's guide to all the "foreign" words in Lord of the Rings there has been a bit of a pause in Tolkien linguistic analysis for the summer. Now the autumn (when it grows dark and there is more time for reading ans study) heralds forth two excellent works for study - the first is the published version of Thorsten Renk's Pedin Edhellen Sindarin Course which has been available as a PDF for some time but can now be purchased as a book to save one from killing many trees by printing out the work. I am half way through and I find his development of an actual course on Sindarin very well constructed with careful consideration (shaded in grey) for areas that are asterix conjecture - it also incorporates findings made from PE 17 including a much more fleshed out version of Tolkien's concept of the verb "to be" and personal pronouns.

Over at E.L.F - they have posted on a new article on their online journal Tengwestie by Helios De Rosario Martinez called Early Ilkorin Phonology. This article analyzes the develop of one of Tolkien's "minor" languages which he developed in the early phase of the development of his mythology - starting with the Book of Lost Tales and into the period when he was at the University of Leeds. Ilkorin is the language of those elves who "never saw the light of Kor" and therefore represents Tolkien's thoughts on that language who lingered in Middle Earth and did not have their tongue mingled with the Valar and/or Elves on the West. In the article Martinez states that Ilkorin was most likley a series of languages that included the language of Doriath (the language of Thingol and Melian).

It is quite interesting to see how Tolkien potentially modeled the phonological and morphology of this language and the development of proto-Germanic including parallel vowel shifts in key stages of its development. Martinez also states in his conclusion that "Ilkorin was supposed to be the germ of the languages of Men and that it changed less than the other tongues of the Elves." This got me thinking about one of Tolkien's languages that I am most interested in - the first language of Man - Taliska - which according to what we know about the language was based on Tolkien's love of Gothic. I did query this to Lambengolmor - the Tolkien linguistic mail group -and was told by ELF editor Carl F. Hostetter that we should revisit this question when the information on Taliska is finally published - Carl indicated that he was working on editing this but that it was going slow (I volunteered to help) - so perhaps in the near future we can compare the language of Taliska with Ilkorin to see how much the Elves who stayed in Middle Earth in the first age had an impact on the development of the languages of Men - the languages we speak to this very day!!

The Tolkien books keep coming - and I am eagerly awaiting my order of The Proceedings from the 2005 Tolkien Society Conference in Birmingham which seems to be coming via Entish post!!!!

Cavalleria Rusticana and Pagliacci at English National Opera

2008-09-28T11:47:00.025+01:00

Went to English National Opera on Friday night to take in the first new production of the season - Cavalleria rusticana and Pagliacci. I have been in love with the score from both of these one actors for quite some time and have seen several productions - including Franco Zeferelli's massive cast of what looked like a thousand production at the Metropolitan Opera. Also when I was at English Touring Opera we did a really intimate production of Pagliacci with a band of five that really conveyed the lyrical quality of the score accompanied with some beautiful Neapolitan songs. This new production is directed by Richard Jones who I am a big fan of - especially his production of The Trojans at ENO which recast the fall of Troy into the American idiom of the fall of Kennedy's Camelot and his chilling production of Hansel and Gretel. I am very excited that he will be coming to Glyndebourne again (with the imaginative designer Ultz) next summer with a new production of Falstaff.

Cavelleria is a good old fashioned revenge story set in Sicily (you might remember it was used by Coppola in Godfather Part 3 as the backdrop for all the revenge that went on at the end of the story as scores was finally settled - who could forget the poisoned pastries!). The story takes place on Easter morning and Jones sets it in a Sicilian social club - a box set with a small kitchen for teas and coffees. This box gives the production a claustrophobic feel and you do not get to the see the usual large church on the hill that the Easter morning village go towards in the glorious chorus praising the resurrection. Cav (as it is know with its partner Pag) is a true verismo opera - a movement that became popular with composers like Cav's Mascagni and in Puccini operas like Tosca - which attempts to give a slice of life with very little background to the story (no long Verdian or Wagnerian narratives of what has happened before as we hear in the later parts of the Ring and in Trovatore). The lead roles were song beautifully by Jane Dutton (Santuzza), Peter Auty (Turiddu) and Roland Wood was an excellent Onegin and Don Giovanni in past English Touring Opera productions blew me away as Alfio. ETO has two great new productions coming up this autumn - La Tragedie de Carmen and Rusalka and its worth a visit to the site to see some really good previews of both productions that will tour the UK starting in October.

Note: interesting parallels between Santuzza and another opera heroine set during Easter time Wagner's Kundry (sacrifice, redemption - note to self to research).

The second half of the evening was the reverse side of the coin -- Jones' Pagliacci recast this story which is said to have been based on a true story of an actor killing his cheating wife and lover on the stage during a performance - to the 1950's with a travelling troop of actors putting on a cheesy bedroom romp called "Ding Dong" - this is a production to be seen and I will not give too many of the staging away - it packs quite a punch with beautiful singing by Mary Plazas as Nelly and Geriant Dodd as the Kenny the head of the troop who sings the famous aria Vesti La Giubba (you know, Riddi Pagliacci!) in a dank regional theatre dressing room as he struggles to go on the stage after finding out his wife is having an affair. The star of both these productions in the ENO orchestra and chorus under the baton of Edward Gardener - who gets an incredibly powerful and poignant sound from them. A must see!!!! And I am looking forward to the new production of Handel's Partenope next week.
On the Tolkien front - I was very please to see in a London bookstore yesterday the new edition of Tales from the Perilous Realm with illustrations by Alan Lee - five stories (Roverandom, Farmer Giles, Tom Bombadil, Smith of Wooten Major and Leaf by Niggle) that I look forward to revisiting. Also, I have Tolkien Studies Vol 5 on the way.......so many books so little time.

Its been one month for me at Glyndebourne Opera - a truly amazing and innovative mecca in the rolling hills of the Sussex downs where we are in the process of launching the 2008 Glyndebourne On Screen programme - which will bring three Glyndebourne operas to cinemas in the UK, US and Japan in 5.1 high definition and surround sound - Hansel and Gretel, Giulio Cesare (with the excellent Danielle De Niese as Cleopatra) and Cenerentola coming to a cinema near you!!!
And for Richard Strauss lovers - I just sat through one earth shaking listening session of the glorious Renee Fleming's new recording of Strauss' Four Last Songs and other works - this is one for the IPOD and good to have more Strauss from Renee - she was born to sing his works!!!

Basta for now!!

Back from the Summer

2008-09-03T21:09:00.011+01:00

Hello, out there. I am back after a long busy summer which let me get through a good pile of books (not all!) and change jobs. The literary focus of my summer has been getting to know the works of William Morris - a very important influence on Tolkien whose works include several great historio-romantic stories set in the times of the fall of Rome - The Roots under the Mountain and The House of the Wulfings (set in the forest of Mirkwood) and I very enjoyable series of journals Morris kept when he travelled to Iceland in 1871 and 1873. Morris had a great gift for description and as I read his description of the volcanic landscape of places like Thingvellir I could here echoes of Tolkien's description of Mordor - well worth a read.

In addition to literary pursuits I also exchanged variety theatre to have the extreme luck to be working at one of the most beautiful opera companies in the world - Glyndebourne Opera - set in the rolling Sussex countryside - my office looks out green hills and the ba'ing of sheep. Glyndebourne is one of the most innovative opera companies in the world and as we just finished mounting an excellent world premiere opera based on Gabriel Garcia Marquez's Of Lovers and other Demons - For me and many others, Glyndebourne is truly Valhalla (with some more Wagner to come).

So in the coming weeks I shall be quiet busy getting Glyndebourne under my skin and will try to keep faithful to this blog with items on Tolkien, languages, etc - so more too come!!!

Layers upon Layers

2008-06-22T11:41:00.010+01:00

Recently back for Portugal were we had a great time visiting some of the most historical sites of its history including the founding city in the north Guimares (a name derived from a Germanic based word meaning the "the rich ones" because that is where all the wealthy land owners lived - which is what made it very attractive to the Spanish. We stayed in a beautiful 12th century monastery that was converted by the government (called a Passada). It was there in the 12th century that the warlord Don Alfsono Henriques defeated his own mother in the Batalha de S.Mamede and started the foundation of Portugal. In Coimbra (the Oxford of Portugal) we say the great Library of Joao V as well as the fascist like statues the dictator Salazar has erected at the University of Coimbra. We also toured one of the largest Roman sites - Conimbriga (a Roman summer resort with one of the largest bath houses in the area). Going further back we went to the Celtic site of Britarieos which was excavated in the 19th century and has some of the most extensive pre-Roman Celtic remains including many foundations of Celtic round houses. The site also contains Roman and Medieval remains (perched a high on a hill it became a place for hermits in the 10th century (I go down to the moors, collect me berries, chastises myself - sorry lapsed in Monty Python...). Also returned to Lisbon (where we had been before) and took a trip back to Belem - to have their speciality Pastleis de Belem and a dinner in the Barrio Alto of Bacchaleu (Salt Fish). In Lisbon, we stayed in a hotel right above the famous coffee house - The Braseliera - where the famous 20th century poet Pessoa used to sit and write (and where after a drinking bout he apparently died). There is nothing like a bica in the morning.

So I have fallen in love with the country and the language which I am learning - there is so much great Portuguese literature and very little in translation and the other interesting thing I find is the amount of literature on the Knights Templar who found refuge in Portugal towards their end - and when we return I want to go to Tomar - one of their major strongholds. So in the coming months I hope to dig into this wealth of literature and of course, eventually, read Lord of the Rings in Portuguese.

On another front I am getting increasingly interested in this concept of "The Great Chain of Reading" which Nagly put forth in the recent book on Tolkien and the Middle Ages. I am interested in studying authors who did what Tolkien did in terms of developing an "original" piece of connected literature out of a series of layered stories, annuals, chronologies,etc - I am currently re-reading Roger Loomis's volume on Arthurian Literature in the Middle Ages and seeing the many layers of stories that make up what eventually became the stories of King Arthur and the Round Table has "fixed" in Malory and Tennyson - another interesting one that I picked up while reading the excellent book Lord of the Rings and the Western Narrative Tradition is the Hellenistic poem The Argonautika by Appollinious of Rhodes who was himself a librarian and had access to many sources of books on the gods and heroes that make up the story of Jason and Medea (and what of Homer and the layers we can find in that - could the Cretan lies of Odysseus in the later books of the Odyssey be an earlier layer of the story? All very much worth investigating.

Of course, life is busy and my partner and I have of late been doing marathon Lord of the Rings Online games (I'm a level 17 elf - he a level 20 hobbit) - eats up time but its fun - anyone interested in joining a fellowship quest into the great barrow of Ongenthow (thought that was Beowulf's father??).

Will be at the UK Tolkien conference next week - and will report on next week.

The War of the Ring from the Orcs Point of View

2008-06-02T21:58:00.002+01:00

Hey all on holiday in Portugal and came across this book in a shop never seen before it is by a Russian author and tells the story of the War of the Ring and the aftermath from the Orcs point of view - anyone heard of it - in Portuguese O Ultimo Anel by Yeskov Russian author . more exploration needed when I return to UK

Posted: Wed Mar 05, 2008 11:45 am Post subject: O Último Anel

Descubra o outro lado da lenda do Anel A Guerra do Anel terminou. Com mentiras e traições, os bárbaros supersticiosos da Aliança do Ocidente, ajudados por feiticeiros com intenções sinistras, conseguiram derrotar o povo orc, amante da paz, do progresso e das ciências. E agora começa a carnificina: aos vencidos aguarda-os o amargo regresso a casa, perseguidos por patrulhas de elfos que os querem eliminar. Falsamente acusados de canibalismo e crueldade, todas as desculpas são válidas para exterminar um orc, seja ele macho, fêmea ou até uma criança. Mas das cinzas da catástrofe pode extrair-se um resquício de esperança. Se a missão incumbida aos nossos protagonistas tiver êxito, talvez o sacrifício dos orcs não tenha sido em vão. Kiril Yeskov mostra-nos o lado dos perdedores do mais famoso universo de fantasia, numa história brilhante, surpreendente e divertida, que já é um êxito internacional.

Beau Jest Has Opened at The Hackney Empire

2008-05-13T21:22:00.014+01:00

Sorry for no posts recently - I have been helping to give birth to a new romantic comedy with a jewish twist at the Hackney Empire - Beau Jest by the American playwrite James Sherman (who flew over to London for the opening week and was a real joy to meet and talk with). We are breaking fairly new ground with a three week run of a romantic comedy at the Hackney Empire - a theatre known for a wide variety of popular entertainement. Its funny, sharp and has a real message to deliver about how families interact with each other - be they Jewish (as in the play), Black,
Muslim or from any other culture. We've got a great cast - with Laura Pulver as Sarah a kindergarten teacher who will come up with any scheme to please her parents, the excellent comic actor Adam Rayner as Sarah's real beau - jest (who is also appearing in the upcomng episode of Dr. Who on BBC), Alexander Giles as her analyist brother Joel, Alex Hardy as Sarah's real beau Chris and Sue Kelvin and Jack Chissick as Sarah's parents (who steal the show!). Susie McKenna (one of the best UK directors we have) has worked with this cast to deliver that kind of quick rapid comic dialogue that made shows like Seinfield, Friends and Will and Grace must see shows - if you are in London its worth seeing (and if you want tickets feel free to email me).

So while I've been doing this I have had very little time for my Tolkien and language persuits. I did receive the new Inkling book which I am looking forward to reading (and I will be bringing a pile with me when I go on holiday to Portugal in a couple of weeks) - for now my reading (along wiht my stress level) is rather on the lite side - polishing off two volumes of the Ellis Peters Cadfael mysteries. Stay tuned for more Tolkien studies - two weeks of Beau Jest to go!!!

We've Started the Eowyn Challenge and the Middle Earth Heritage Society

2008-04-27T10:09:00.014+01:00

Apologies for no posts in a bit - its a busy time for Wotan at his workplace!! Yesterday the UK was blessed with one of the warmest days of the year so far and it afforded myself, partner and our Corgi, Charlie, to start the Eowyn Challenge (our cat Meowman was not interested and preferred to do the couch challenge). We have decided this summer to walk to Rivendell from Hobbiton (roughly 450 miles). We travelled to one of the ancient seats of the Bishops of Winchester - Farnham (the ruins of the castle are pictured)- and walked roughly 5 miles which essentially according to the Eowyn Challenge (the "Horse Joy" challenge as it were) got us into Tookland (27 miles to the first encounter with the Black Rider - why am I looking forward to that?).

Farnham Castle is currently managed by The English Heritage Society and as we were passing by the gates I got thinking about what The Middle Earth Heritage Society would look like in the future time of Middle Earth (say the 20th Age) what ruins would exist (Minas Tirith, Isengard, Edoras) - with the passing of the Elves one would think that Elvish buildings would fade as well (although as in the Lord of the Rings Online game - one would still see some remains of Elvish architecture like Edelethion). Would men have set up a society to manage and fund the upkeep of the most famous sites of Middle Earth and as a member of the Middle Earth Heritage Society you could get in free to all these sites. Would there be museum displays of the great battles - and I'm sure to secure government funding from the Elessarion goverment you would have to do some interactive educational elements (try on the armor of a Numenorian soldier, make your own remedy out of Athelas leaves, etc) - would there be a gift shop (purchase your own Lembas bread recipe, palantir snow globes, etc.). What would people be thinking as the walked across the stone ruins of what was Osgiliath or Minas Ithil - would there be a coffee/gift shop and travellers restaurant on top of Weathertop?

Coming back down to earth (middle) - I'm in the middle of reading Elizabeth Whittingham's The Evolution of Tolkien's Mythology which gives an excellent analysis of how Tolkien developed key elements of his mythology and the various phases this development went through in the forty years Tolkien spent weaving his world - the chapter on the Valar alone is worth the book as it charts how Tolkien's concept of the Valar in Book of Lost Tales as being closer to the gods and goddesses of Greek and Norse myths (war like, descriptions of the buildings they built to live in, descriptions of who was married to who) changed over the years to more removed and ethereal powers more in line with the Judeo-Christian concept of the angels. Also an interesting tidbit that alluded me on first (and second) reading is the fact that in the early 1950's texts of the Ainulindale "the reader learns that Varda rejected Melkor prior to the Great Music and that as a result 'he hated her, and feared her more than all others," which helps explain the animosity Melkor feels for the Valar." I'll be blogging on this in the near future.

Great news that Guillermo del Toro is set to direct The Hobbit and the "other movie" (which according to his post on The One Ring.net Del Torro does not want to call "the bridge movie") - there is a lot in Appendix Two and several writings for the writers to draw upon to portray the 50 years between the Hobbit and Lord of the Rings - it will be interesting to see what they come up with and now that Sir Ian Mckellen is on board as Gandalf whether there will be a Grey Book Part 2 on his website.

Staying Fit the Middle Earth Way!!!

2008-04-06T10:22:00.008+01:00

Well if you surf the net long enough you do tend to see everything - and now some very enterprising folks have combined their love of Tolkien and Lord of the Rings with the activity de jour of getting fit - and come up with The Eowyn Challenge. That's right you can now combine the exercise we are all being urged to do (get of the couch, close that book and getting walking, running, etc) - and combine the time you are spending exercising with the activity of walking the various routes of Middle Earth in Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit (Bag End to Rivendell, Lothlorien to The Falls of Rauros, etc). Once you log in you are given a dedicated page where you enter the amount of exercise you do each day and when this is entered it correlates to the amount of miles Frodo and co. walked that day in the given journey. The web site has lots of great reference material including heavy use of Karen Wynn Fonstad Atlas of Middle Earth (a well thumbed copy of which I own). The site also links you to other walkers on the specific journey so you can share thoughts, observations, stories, etc. So I guess if I get off my couch (once it stops snowing in London as it is today!) and walk to say Oxford I should be close to Bree and the Prancing Pony (are the hoodies the Nazgul need to watch out for them). What a great way to combine getting fit with journeying through Middle Earth. "Roads go ever on and on" and for me that would be the M1!!!

Day 12 - OK I Slipped a Bit!!!

2008-04-02T21:38:00.009+01:00

Hey Blogers - its Day 12 of my book buying ban - and I've done ok - alright I slipped once - one of the best blogs on the web is Jason Fisher's blog Lingwe - Musings of a fish (Lingwe being the Elvish/Quenya word for fish) - and saw a new book on the Inklings including a chapter by him. I just finished (yes from my pile!!) The Cosmic Triology by C.S. Lewis and am about to start on Charles William's The War in Heaven - so I have been trying to read up on The Inklings. This book Truths Breathed Through Silver: The Inklings' Moral and Mythopoeic Legacy. So I slipped (but a great way to slip) but am back on the wagon now.

Most of my time has been spent working on promoting an exciting new production coming in May at The Hackney Empire - James Sherman's romantic comedy Beau Jest - a hit on off broadway in New York which is coming to the UK for the first time. Its got a great cast and being directed by The Hackney Empire director of our hit holiday panto's Susie McKenna. Its set in Chicago of the 80's and its been quite fun revisiting some of those great movies of the 80's llike You've Got Mail, Dirty Dancing, Sleepless in Seattle, etc. Its got a great fun story (like a good Friends episode) and the marketing photo shoot was interesting - we used two of our principles and then needed to improvise a third person in the form of hand with a ring (guess who's hand?). Will keep me busy getting tickets sold over the next couple of weeks.

Some blogs coming on Eldila, Sorns and Hnau in the coming weeks!

My Name is Andy and I am a Book-a-holic!

2008-03-25T21:42:00.007Z

I can just see the scene - a cold night - rainy - a dark church - you go down the stairs - theres a room nicely lit, a table with some cookies and coffee (and tea) - several posters on the wall and a group of people in that circle. I walk in, sit down and say - "I'm Andy and I'm a book-aholic."

And then I wake up! Ok some maybe I am - I have of late been building up quite a pile of books and found myself just wandering into bookshops (in London where there are many!) and just purchasing 2-3 books at a time (not to mention Amazon where everything is just a click away) - I mean just look at the the pile I have set myself for the coming month!

War and Peace -- new translation (in 500 pages already)
The Hideous Strength - last part of C.S. Lewis Cosmic triliogy
The String of Pearls
All of the Father Brown's Mysteries by G.K. Chesterton
War in Heaven - Charles Williams
Notes from Nowhere - Morris
Lord of the Rings and the Western Tradition
There be Dragons
Chretian De Troyes Arthurian Romances (Oh and I am learning Old French to read these)
Company of Liars
The Looming Tower
The Fifth Elephant
V The New Invasion (not the Pynchon the TV series)

And then there is how many books to read at one time. Recently I was doing two - one for home (heavy) one for transport - then I thought - perhaps one for the weekends!! So I have made a pact that I will not purchase any new books toI get through this list (and blog about them) and I am taking this one day at a time - I just hope there aren't any new Tolkien books around the corner!!!

Oh well, there are worse vices to have - I guess!

Off to do some reading!

The Hardest Working Opera Company in the UK

2008-03-16T12:59:00.019Z

Its been a busy week for me and one that has been enriching and full of culture - for it was time for The Hackney Empire to host one of the most hardest working and best opera companies in the UK - English Touring Opera. ETO's spring 2008 tour is an exciting triple bill of three red hot opera's Donizetti's Anna Bolena - the first in a trilogy of operas he wrote about the Three Tudor Queens. Then a beautiful lyric American opera by Carlisle Floyd called Susannah based on the story of Susannah and the Elders from the Apocrypha set in the valleys of Appalachia in Tennesse and finally Mozart's drama giocoso of the man who sleeps with close to (or maybe more than) 10,000 woman and goes to hell - Don Giovanni.

I am a lover of bel-canto opera and one its greatest creations is the cabaletta (the fast paced ending to alot of the scenas you hear from the a term that means "as the horse runs" - it was Maria Callas (who was responsible for the revival of Donizetti bel-canto masterpieces like Anna Bolena) who said that an aria without a cabaletta is like sex without an orgasm! The story of Anna Bolena takes place in the waning years of Ann Boleyn's reign and after having just one child (a girl, the future Elizabeth I) and a sting of miscarriages Henry has grown tired with her and already has his sights on the next on - Jane Seymour (Giovanna in the opera). This opera beautifully directed by one of opera's most visionary directors, James Conway (General Director of English Touring Opera) conveys a sympathy for both Ann and Giovanna which culminates in a heart rending duet in the second act where Giovanna confesses to Ann that the King has seduced her. Brought up on trumped up charges - Ann is doomed to go to the block and as she awaits the final blow (from a French sword not an ax) we hear the canons of the wedding of Henry and Giovanna - Ann goes mad and (in the first of many mad scenes Donizetti wrote) she imagines its the day of her wedding to Henry and the block in front of her the altar. Simply stunning and James Conway has included as a stroke of genus the character of the young Mary Tudor (daughter of Kathrine of Aragon) who seems to always be in the room when Ann is in a suspicious situation and before Henry appears (shades of revenge by Kathrine on Ann?). There is also a wonderful tenor named Luciano Botelho as Percy who is definitely going to give Juan Diego Florez a run for his money!!!

Carlisle Floyd's Susannah is a morality tale that grew out of the McCarthy communism witch hunt error of the 1950's in America. I fell in love with this piece when I saw it at the Metropolitan Opera in New York with Renee Fleming and Samuel Ramey (indeed it was due to Renee Fleming that the MET decided to do this opera). It is replete with lyrical music (with lots of echos of Copland) and also heavy orchestration. In the English Touring Opera production - again directed masterfully by James Conway - soprano Donna Bateman plays Susannah Polk a young innocent girl in a very close knit Tennessee Community in Appalchia who is free spirited and longs, perhaps like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz, longs to escape - in he first show piece aria - A'int it a Pretty Night - she dreams of going where the "folk speak nice" - but Susannah gets into trouble when she bathes in the river where next day the baptisms are going to occur - for to the town as come the preacher Olin Blitch (played with power by one of the best bass baritone's we have in the UK - Andrew Slater) who is going to save the sinful of the community. And not only does Susannah bath naked in the pond but several of the town elders she her and of course lust after her. She is banned from the community and becomes a victim to Olin Blitch who volunteers to save her soul and in the end falls prey to his own temptation (it reminded me of that American evangelist Jim Baker with his long suffering wife Tammy Faye and is very public affair with Jessica Hahn).

The third production was Mozart's Don Giovanni in a really interesting production by first timer to opera Jonathan Munby (who has directed for the RSC). The singing is fantastic and all three of the Don's women (Anna, Elvira, and Zerlina) are in top form and the production is set in 1930's Fascist Spain with the Don has a fascist soldier (I'm never quite sure who these characters are, what their backgrounds are, etc). Special mention for the tenor Eyolfur Eyolfsson as Don Ottavio the poor simp who follows Donna Anna around waiting for her to come around and gets to sing some of the most beautiful tenor aria's Mozart wrote.

English Touring Opera is one of the most hardest working opera companies in the UK - of very little resource they put these shows together and travel throughout the UK - this tour goes to Sheffield, Cheltenham, Exeter, Truro, Poole, Bexhill, Crawley, Wolverhampton, Buxton, Cambridge, Snape, Warwick, Durham, Durham and Perth - with shows are better than you'd see at some of the top opera house in the world. Bravo English Touring Opera long may you tour.

So now its back to Old Norse and my pile of Tolkien books blogging soon on Glyer's Company they Keep about the Inklings which I really enjoyed!!!

Short Note - The Masters of Fantasy on BBC4

2008-03-06T21:09:00.007Z

It's been a busy week for yours truly but last night I did manage to watch a really excellent BBC4 series called The Masters of Fantasy. This episode was especially interesting since it was about Tolkien and Mervyn Peake the author of the Gormenghast books - Tolkien and Peake both created secondary worlds for their imagination to inhabit but came at it in very different ways. The show is on BBC IPlayer for the next six days and worth a view. Got me thinking of reading Peake's work again (read them when I was in my teens) - I'll add it to the growing reading list.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/page/item/b00936hj.shtml?src=ip_potpw

On another note - the passing of Dungeon and Dragons creator Gary Gygax reminded me of the first time me and my friends in Florida purchased the three original books (probably worth a lot on ebay if I had kept them!) and spent a weekend trying to figure out the game - this became almost two years of weekend marathon D&D games - I usually played the Dungeon Master and would start some one off by saying - "You were find in a pile of horse manure with a tag around your neck." Loved playing the subcreator - oh well, great days - and who can forget the deck of many things!

Operatic Interlude - Verdi's Otello from the MET

2008-03-02T10:37:00.009Z

I listened to the Otello from the Metropolitan Opera in New York last night here in London. When I lived in New York I was lucky enough to see this production several times with Placido Domingo and Renee Fleming which was pure magic (and an excellent James Morris as Iago). So when I heard this was being broadcast and someone other than Domingo was doing the moor I was a bit dubious - of course I will listen to anything Renee Fleming does and was again very lucky to work with her in San Francisco where she did Louise, The Marschellin in Rosenkavalier and literally travelled around (not in stalking way mind) to hear here in Manon, Figaro, Handel's Alcina and in recital several times.

The broadcast blew me away - and I was quite impressed with Johan Botha as Otello - I heard him in the past in Cavelleria Rusticana and Meistersinger and thought he was great and from his first note of "Exsultate" I was hooked - I was especially impressed with the way he sang alot of the role pianissimo which is how Verdi indicated it in the score (and gives Otello a more sinister feel).

Renee of course delivered in spades - she just gets better and better and I was brought back to the first time I heard her in the Willow Song 13 years ago - and her last act last night was a tour de force - Renee is a singing actress and I loved the fact that during the interval (where she usually interviews the singers - was she going to interview herself) she talked about the character of Desdemona who she thought was a bit of blank until she read Shakespeare's Othello and the first act where you learn the back story about Desdemona.
Brava Renee! Long may you sing.

Here she is with the greatest Otello of my time - Placido Domingo - doing the duet that ends the first act of Otello in concert from Verona.

Now back to finishing Tolkien Studies vol 4 and Old Norse reading!

Karmic Washing Machine?

2008-02-17T10:48:00.011Z

I have been intrigued by the subject of a recently read very interesting and well written book - Parsifal as the Fifth Act of the Ring by Paul Schofield (a Wagnerian Scholar and a former Zen Buddhist) ever since my teens when I read in an introduction to an English translation of The Ring that Wagner considered Parsifal to be the fifth concluding act of The Ring cycle. Schofield takes this as a starting point and quotes several key references from Wagner's letters and prose writings and also masterfully combines into the hyopthesis Wagner's interest and desire to incorporate his study of Buddhism and Eastern thinking into his works even drafting in 1856 Die Sieger (The Victors) an opera about the Buddha. There is some also really good background on the sources of the Ring, Parsifal and he Holy Grail (which Wagner said in his 1849 essay The Wibelungs - The World History as Told Through Myth - ultimately came from the hoard of the Nieblung). Schofield focuses on three characters from the Ring - Wotan, Brunnhilde and Siegfried and demonstrates how the "wheel of karma" starts by Wotan profaning nature by breaking a branch from the world ash tree (the true beginning of the Ring) and starting a cycle of deceit, envy and greed that can only be "redeemed" by a cycle of karmic washing (Erlosung) that involves rebirth from The Ring to Parsifal where ultimate redemption is acheived through learning compassion "mitlied." A very interesting theory - at times I felt the author creates this structure and then attempts to fit into his scheme the different characters (and there are some contradictions - first Schofield says that Wotan perceieves his first act of contrition by renouncing any further attempt after Die Walkure to get The Ring back - but then we see Wotan as the Wanderer skulking around in Siegfried dropping hints to get Siegfried to get the Ring. The Brunnhilde/Kundry theory works philologically with one of Kundry's names being Gundryggia (Gunn meaning "strife" or "battle" is one of Wotan's key Valkyrie and Schofield has an interesting link with one of the other name's Klingsor called Kundry - Herodias - linking it to a poem by the Henrich Heine called "Atta Troll" (1847) where Herodias who demanded the head of John the Baptist is doomed to ride in the wild hunt of Odin continuing to kiss the dead head of John the Baptist till doomsday (and lets not forget that naff movie from the 80's where Demi Moore was forced to wander the world and be constantly reincarnated because she laughed at Christ on the cross - when I saw that movie, in my youth, I yelled out in the movie house - she's Kundry!!!) but i digress....

I was not conviced by Schofield's comment that Brunnhilde left the Ring world with bad karma because she plotted the death of Siegfried and needed to go through "the karmic washing machine (my term)" to eventually wind up as Kundry who still serves evil (Klingsor the karmic embodiement of Alberich) and Amfortas (the karmic embodiement of Wotan) and needs ultimate redemption through Parsifal (the karmic embodiement of Siegfried).

Interesting, and got me thinking - Schofield is a former Zen buddhist and the lae chapters have a somewhat preachy attitude to how we should apply this "karmic cleansing" in our lives (and a couple of references to less than academic works like Baigent and Lincoln's Holy Blood/Holy Grail and Gardener's The Line of the Grail Kings) - but worth the read for Wagner lovers!!!

Launch a Website - Read Tolkien Books

2008-02-03T11:43:00.000Z

This week in the midst of launching a new website for the theatre I work at the Hackney Empire I got through two excellent books from the latest batch of books on Tolkien - The Frodo Franchise by Kristen Thompson and The Silmarillion Thirty Years On edited by Allan Turner. I enjoyed both very much and found some really good insights in each.

The Frodo Franchise is an in-depth analysis of the development he current Rings franchise from the movie and DVD's to website, games, and fan clubs that have sprung up. I especially love how that moment when Peter Jackson pitched the movie idea to New Line's Bob Shaye (after beiing forced by Mirimax to attempt to compress the movie into two parts - including cutting out completely Lorien and Galadriel) and after watching the preview reel Shaye said why two movies when Tolkien wrote three books - there is something almost mythic about this moment. Also the line of one of the Weinstein's (loveling depicted as trolls in one of the credits) saying - "do you have to have four hobbits?" just showed what PJ was up against. From a marketing point of view the online promotion and alliance with the fans now seems just commonplace (just look at the current marketing campaign for Cloverfield) and it will be interesting to sse how The Hobbit movie(s) will be promoted. Also, this book brought me to two web sites that has passed me by in the course of the movies - Lord of the Peeps and Figwit the Elf in Rivendell who thanks to the fans has become an online elf star (and made into a peep as well). Well worth a read a Thompson's blog is one I look at on a regular basis - especially as news on The Hobbit movies are starting to take off (as well as Ian Mckellen's excellent website where one can find any news and rumors of his Gandalf doings - the king of actors as his recent Lear in the UK showed)

On a different front - Walking Tree Presses The Silmarillon Thirty Years On is an excellent series of essays celebrating the thirty anniversary of the publication of The Silmarillion in 1977. The two essays that really had an impact on me (they are all very good) is Professor Michael Drout's very personal essay on what it was like to first read The Silmarillion when his parents were in the midst of a divorce and the idea of sadness and nostalgia (coming from the greek words nostos - "return home"/algos "pain."

My other fav article was Jason Fisher's Tolkien, Lonnrot, and Jerome - a really fascinating article about the role of Christopher Tolkien in forging together the vast source work of material Tolkien left at his death in 1973 into the published Silmarillion and comparing to the same process Lonnrot used in fashioning The Kalevala and Jerome used in The Vulgate Bible. This is a topic I first became interested in when I read Nagy's article in Jane Chance's Tolkien the Medievalist "The Great Chain of Reading" which relates that the various versions of some of the key cycles Tolkien developed (Beren, Turin, etc) were paralleling the various source works of the key myths and legends in different versions (lays, prose works, chronicles). What Christopher did is take these and develop a single narrative that became the "accepted story" of that specific cycle of legend - that is until he published in the 1990's The History of Middle Earth and we learned that actually there are many versions of the stories. Fisher who has an excellent blog called Lingwe - Musings of a Fish, also shows places in the story where Christopher actually had to write some of his own material (as in the chapter in the Silmarillion "The Ruin of Doriath") to give the story a unified narrative struture) Fisher as also done some great work on paralleling this to the creation of the Finnish epic The Kalevala - and he has made me take that CN Eliot Finnish Grammer I purchased for Ebay a year ago (the very 1915 edition Tolkien used to study Finnish) and start to "plod through some of the original" as JRR said.

It also got me thinking of another poet we all read and accept what is fixed in the literal poem as the "authorized story" - and that is Homer and The Iliad and The Odyssey. In college I did some work on the various lies that the willy Odysseus uses when he returns to Ithaca (to the goatherder Eumeaus, his son Telemachos and finally wife Penelope) - in each he says he from Crete and analysis of the language and structure indicated that this might be an older part of the oral tradition of the Odyssey (also similar with the Proteus episode) - it would be interesting to look at how those forgers of the Homeric tradition in Athens put together these epics into what we now accept as the Iliad and the Odyssey - and can we do similiar with Gilgamesh and Beowulf?

Both two great reads and worth a read - now its on to three more Tolkien books and I am slogging my way through the new translation of War and Peace which is excellent.

NB: Picture from Patrick Wayne's excellent website of images from The Silmarillion

Tolkien Interviewed on BBC Radio in 1972

2008-01-22T22:07:00.000Z

A busy week ranging from Circus of Horrors at my theatre the Hackney Empire and trying to make a dent in my winter project of the new translation of War and Peace.

In the meantime I came across this interview with Tolkien from the BBC Radio from 1972 on UTube. A rather extended interview with a very feisty Professor Tolkien - why did you give a hobbit the Ring to shoulder - I don't give him the ring it just happened....worth a listen.

Well at least we still have the Grail!!!

2008-01-19T14:35:00.000Z

The other morning I was listening to one of my favorite IPOD casts - the BBC 4 show In Our Time hosted by Melvyn Bragg. Each week Melvyn gets together a group of academics to explore one specific topic for an hour - the topics can range from The Charge of the Light Brigade to Tectonic Plates to The Nicene Creed to what this week's topic was - The Fisher King.

It was an hour long romp through the history and development of the Fisher King from his first mention in Chretin de Troyes final unfinished story to his "fleshing out" inn the works of Robert de Boron, Wolfram von Eschenbach, Malory, Wagner (Anfortas) and finally in such modern renderings as Elliot's The Waste Land the Terry Gilliam's movie The Fisher King. As well as some of the potential Celtic sources for the story that may go back to the second branch of the Mabynogion (Bendigrifyfn the giant in the story of Branwen as well as Irish tales).

I've done a lot of studying of the Grail legends over the years and the role of the Fisher King. I often wondered what was it that caused in the 1180-1200 this somewhat burst of stories about the Grail (and of course the transition of the Graal from a plate, to a stone to finally a chalice that was used in the Last Supper as it culminated in Malory.

I also recently read an excellent book by G. Ronald Murphy called Gemstone of Paradise which talks about Wolfram von Eschanbach's use of the stone at the Grail and what the possible origins of this may have been (well worth a read).

What both this book and the radio show did is put the development of the Grail stories in an historical context - namely that at the time of the development of these stories to be told and then read to/by the lords and ladies of Europe - Saladin has just recaptured Jerusalem and the holy land and the west which created the need for a Third Crusade. The West were at a low and they needed something to rally around - and here might have been the perfect thing - a pure holy talisman that belonged to the west and despite losing the holy land to the "infidel" this symbol of purity was still on the side of the West - I guess in a way it was like having Superman on the side of the Allies during World War II - fighting for truth, justice and the American Way.

'll be pondering more tonight at I listen to Parsifal from the Royal Opera House on BBC Radio 3 - any comments much appreciated!

Re ortu nominis Caesaris

2008-01-07T21:30:00.000Z

I am in the midst of reading an excellent new book by linguist Nicholas Ostler called Ad Infinitum - A Biography Latin (very recommended). According to the book jacket besides being an author Ostler is also the chairman of the Foundation for Endangered Languages

I came across an interesting note in his chapter on Etruscan and Latin regarding the origin of the name Caesar - according to Ostler (page 42) - "The name Caesar, for example, suggests that some remote ancestor (possibly Lucius Julius, who fought in the first Punic War around 250 BC) had had a significant link with the Etruscan city of Caere (called in Etruscan Cair-)" Ostler gives as his source for this Facchetti's L'Enigma svelato della lingua etrusca Rome, 2000

In my classical studies I had encountered several potential meanings, the two most popular being that the first Caesar had a thick head of hair (Lat caesaris) or that it was an actually an anti-Caesar jibe since the Caesars were known for baldness and this could have been away of saying "oh yeah the ones with the hair). This is glossed in the Historia Augusta.

The other is that Caesar is not Latin at all - the suffix -ar was highly unusual for Latin and the etymology could come from the Punic word "caesai" meaning Elephant - and that one of Caesar's ancestors killed an Elephant during the First Punic War and got the title - Elephant Man (Caesar) - indeed Julius Caesar is said to have agreed with this interpretation and during his campaigns in Gaul and Britain had an image of an elephant stamped on the coins (see image).

As I said the caere one is a new one on me. Caere is the Latin name of the modern city of Cerverteri in Southern Eturia. It does have two variant names in the sources - Caisra and Cisra so certainly close. There were battles there during the Etruscan and First Punic Wars so it is possible that an ancestor of Caesar could have fought there and gained glory and his name (like Scipio Africannus, etc) - just needs some more research and any comments very welcome.

On another Roman front I am currently enjoying a series of lectures you can download from I Tunes U from Stamford University of Virgil's Aeneid - fun reliving this epic poem and I need to find the William Morris translation which the Professor - excellent Dr. Susan Bratman - says makes Virgil sound like Tolkien!

Oh and my Beginning Hittite Book came in the post today - another project for 2008!

Happy Birthday Professor Tolkien!

2008-01-02T22:11:00.000Z

Tommorow is 3rd January - the birthday of Professor J.R.R. Tolkien who was born on 3rd Jan 1892! You can raise a glass to the professor through the UK Tolkien Society website who will be publishing all the birthday toasts to Tolkien on their website today.I'll be toasting with some glog I brought back from Copenhagen.

Here's to the Professor - Nostor veren!!

'll be reading Tolkien all day (but what???)

Monster of a Woman or Female Warrior - Who was Grendel's Mom?

2007-12-30T21:09:00.000Z

Last night I went to see the current Beowulf film in the stunning glory of Imax 3-D. Its the type of film that takes a good deal of processing to absorb. For the first half an hour or so I was transfixed by special effects and having spears fly at me and rats crawl right over my head as well as the whole CGI/Stop Motion technique - so it took my brain a bit of time to actually focus on the movie and the story. I also could not stop myself from thinking "Boy I wish they did Lord of the Rings like this" as I pictured the 3-D Imax effects of Gandalf fighting with Saruman and the Nazgul's encounter with the Hobbits in the Shire.

I guess the most interesting element of the film for me was the portrayal of Grendel's mother played by Angelina Jolie. The Grendel character was for me pretty much as I pictured the "mearcastapa" in the poem - having him speak Anglo-Saxon was a master stroke I thought. There were a couple of times that he reminded me of one of those giants from a Maurice Sendak story - but overall ok. What kept niggling at me throughout the film was were is the textual justification for having Grendel's mother look like Angelina Jolie (with a tail of course)

She''s always been an interesting character to me - doesn't even have a name and certainly her son gets a lot more of the action and lines in the poem. She takes her revenge on the murder of her son, smash and grab (Aeschere's head) and then heads back where (and now we get into that weird space the movie created of are we being told what really happened?) Beowulf dispatches her with a mighty sword.

So I want back to the text (excuse the "th's") and the lines that describe Grendel's mother:

(Lines 1259-1263)

Grendles modor
ides, aglaec-wif, yrmthe gemunde
se the waeter-egesan wunian scolde
cealde streamas, siththan Cain wearth
to ecg-banan angan brother

Which I translate as:

The Mother of Grendel
a monster of a woman (or a woman warrior)
called to mind her misery
he (not she) who was doomed to dwell in the fearsome water - the cold streams
since that time when Cain do slay his own brother..."

The words that are of most interest to me is "ides, aglaec-wif" which seems to have two different meetings

Klaeber translates it as "awesome assailant in woman's form"
CL Wren's edition (1953) "a monster of a woman"
n the Beowulf Student Edition edited by George Jack (Oxford, 1994) "ides" is translated as woman and "aglaecwif" as "female warrior

According to Bosworth and Teller - aglaec can mean - a wretch, monster or miser -and an aglaec-wif is a wretch of a woman, vile crone, monstrum, miscreant.

But there may also be a textual variant according to Chickering who notes that the line could be read as "idese onlicnaes" which simply means "in the likeness of a woman" (what in the likeness of woman.),

And then I found another twist in the tail when looking at where else in poem that word "aglaec" is used - and this seems to point to the second potential meaning of the word as "female warrior." In line 893 of the poem the hero Siegmund is described as "aglaeca elne" fierce warrior. Then in later in line 2592 both Beowulf and the Dragon are described as "tha aglaecean" which can mean "those terrible ones, fierce ones."

So is the "aglaec-wif" we have in the poem a monster of a woman or a fierce woman warrior. Its also interesting to think that the word is used to describe both Grendel's mom and Beowulf both who come from the sea - and thinking about the plot of the film (without spoiling it for those who have not seen) the connection of Beowulf, Grendel's mom and the dragon).

Is what the poem (and the film to a certain extent) telling us that in this meeting of Beowulf and the Mother - they are equally matched and kindred spirits?

I will investigate the word further - and see what Tolkien may have thought of this word - any comments most welcome! I also belive Jane Chance wrote an article on this very subject which I will search for.

Looking forward to the New Year

2007-12-28T21:56:00.001Z

It was certainly a busy autumn professionally and especially with the start of a new job in a new arena for me I did really start to feel the way Tolkien felt when he tried to fit in all his work on languages and Middle Earth into a busy schedule and keeping a roof over his families head and food on the table. So I am looking forward to 2008 because besides keeping up studies in Old English, Old Norse, Welsh, Greek and Latin (currently in play with Harrius Potter 1) I also want to embark on learning the oldest Indo European languages - Hittite and also get more of Tolkien's languages under my belt.
The recent publishing by the invaluable Elvish Linguistic Fellowship of Parma Eldalamberon 17
A Guide to Names and Places in Lord of the Rings has opened up a lot of new information on the key languages and I have just given this one read - so I will be tucking into this more and developing some key models for the languages.

I am currently reading a first edition translation of The Ancrene Riwle (Ancrene Wisse) which my partner gave me for Christmas. This is the edition by M. Salu who was a student of Tolkien. The Ancrene Riwle is a guide for female nuns and was written in the 12th century in the midlands (Tolkien has a keen linguistic interest in this due to the Early Middle English (Semi Saxon as he called it) midlands dialect it was written in. It was most likely written by a student priest and exists in several versions which go all the way up to the 15th century. One of the key messages that I have seen at the outset is the idea of being physically and morally "pure" to have a truly contemplative relationship with God. Of course a lot of the Riwle is about how to ward off those terrible evil impure thoughts (all those nuns together - reminds me of that scene in Monty Python's Holy Grail with all the maidens in Castle Anthrax!) - should be an interesting read.

There's also a new spate of Tolkien books to read and I am (as Professor Simon Schama so beautifully put it on a recent Radio 4 podcast) about to set off on the grand voyage with the new translation of War and Peace which is sitting on my bedside table waiting to be opened.

So it looks like its going to be a fun interesting year and with my new WIFI mini laptop I should get more postings in!!

Happy Holidays!

2007-12-26T12:38:00.000Z

Mereth Veren e-Doled Eruion! Garo Idhrinn Eden Veren!

I have been givwn a nifty new mini laptop for the holidays with wifi and will be endeavouring to become more regular at posting to this blog with my work on Tolkien's languages. Happy Holidays to all. I was chuffed to see I was mentioned on another blog.

Namarie Andy

A New Resident of Ambridge

2007-10-28T12:17:00.000Z

The recent offering by the BBC of the longest running radio serial The Archers on ITunes has delivered it to my IPOD and got me hooked!!! Its like driving into a community that you find off on some side road with people you don't really know but do. So I am getting to know Ed and Falllon, Kenton, Jazzer and the lovely residents of Ambridge and Borchester. It is very interesting how the show is structured - what seems like a very normal run of the mill day suddenly is hit with car crashes, drug addiction, rape, etc - just goes to show what lurks behind those quiet English Country villages.

Just finished Sophia McDougall's Romanitas - which is an excellent thriller set in to the present day but based on the premise that thanks to the work of one rather minor Roman emperor - Pertinax - the Roman Empire survives in to the present day - looking forward to reading the sequel Roman Burning.

Return to San Francisco

2007-10-19T20:20:00.000+01:00

Well not exactly, this morning I was interviewed in London (at 4am) by KGO AM radio in San Francisco about the London tourists don't often get to see presented by Visit London - of course I talked about The Hackney Empire - London's leading arts complex!!

During the course of the interview it also got out about this blog and my work on Tolkien languages!!

Here's the link - its towards the end. Enjoy.

http://bayradio.com/kgo_archives/player.php?player=real&hour=21

Bad Blogger!!! But I am Back!

2007-09-29T22:10:00.000+01:00

I've been a bad blogger of late! I started a new job as Head of Marketing, Communication and Development at The Hackney Empire (an excellent London theatre) and its has been quite a lot to get my head around! I have also been digesting one of the best works on Tolkien linguistics so far which is Vol 17 of Parma Eldalamberon which has all of Tolkien's notes on "foreign" words, phrases, etc in Lord of the Rings - a treasure trove of lingustic notes that is a must to have - you also learn the Elvish word for "outhouse" and Sauron's original name.

Oh and new rest for the wicked I have started reading Harry Potter in Latin!!

Here's a bit of shameless promotion

More to come - probably on the weekends for a bit.

Namarie

Beowulf and se laolic podcast

2007-08-20T12:18:00.001+01:00

Hwaet!!! I have read all the posts about the upcoming Beowulf movie and even downloaded the HD version of the trailer to watch. When I saw Angelina Jolie as Grendel's mommy I thought - ok, have an open mind it could be interesting. Then this morning on the way to work I listened to the first chapter of the Beowulf podcast with these two guys from some other movie review podcast (with an intonation and vocab that sounds like they are from "Dude Wheres My Car"). My resolve started to break even more as I listened to them. I don't think we should position Beowulf as "that really weird poem that most of you probably read through Cliff Notes in school" and then play a clip from Annie Hall where Woody Allen says to Diane Keaton - "don't take any class where you have to read Beowulf."

There is already a sense of having to dumb down what is probably one of the most noble epics we have in Western literature. I know the 3D and motion capture elements are all designed to get people off their couches and back into the theatres (and yours truly will be seeing in in the 3D Imax version I'm sure) but wouldn't a podcast be better served with exploration into the poem to give people a background perhaps interspersed with interviews with the actors (would love to hear Anthony Hopkins - Hrothgar in the film - actually read some Beowulf.Here is a wonderful opportunity to revive interest in Beowulf for a new generation (as the LOTR films did).

There can be so many interesting ways of doing this (hopefully some new books, perhaps finally Tolkien's translation of Beowulf will be published), etc. I don't think we are inspiring this be immediately dumbing this work down to that really hard poem you had to read in the high-school! Thoughts???

Happy Birthday Die Hielige Johanna!

2007-08-08T12:01:00.001+01:00

Soon it will be the birthday of that great melime fairieva* wunschmadchen of the lands of Briarwalt in the county of Tarir - Joan of the panad a te! She is loved and miss by all across the waters - and this is a special blog post wishing her.....

Penblwydd Hapus
Alasse merendenna
Aur onnad meren
quchjaj goSilj

Have a good one Joan - have some flops on us - here's a birthday greetings from beyond for you!

Stay tuned for some Quenya and Aduniac ramblings this weekend!

* attempts to "place" the word mugwump in the Quenya language - a "mugwump" is (according to Ambrose Bierce) a lover of freedom - therefore melme (for CE Root MEL) lover - fairieva (according to HKF's dictionary of Quenya at http://www.ambar-eldaron.com/quen-eng.pdf fairie is an early Qenya word LT: 250 denoting freedom +va gen marker ) - needs work I'm sure.

Lord of the Rings Online - Move over Second Life - Here comes Middle Earth

2007-07-31T13:44:00.000+01:00

Over the years I would say I have toyed with several computer games like Kings Quest, Flight Simulator, Leisure Suit Larry and some of the movie based LOTR games. After considerable thought and an assessment of how much time I am likely to spend on it - we purchased the new Lord of the Rings Online: Shadows of Angmar and installed it last night on the computer (warning: when you first load it in there are lots of files to be updated - took about 4 hours). It is quite amazing (and that's only after an hour or so on it). I created an Elvish Lore Master named Golubedir (Sindarin - Golu - wisdom/ Ped - root of speak/ir - masculine ending) and he is currently fumbling his way through a training area of Middle Earth around the Ered Luin

This game is called an MMOG (Massive Multiplayer Online Game) that allows us to interact with computer generated and online players (not sure yet how to distinguish one from the other). Think Middle Earth meets Second Life!! There are over 3,000 places and 1,500 people to meet as well as opportunities to go on quests, fight and become monsters, etc. More to come on how I fare. Be great to hear comments from anyone else currently taking a vacation in Middle Earth.

Just look out for Golubedir - a somewhat clumsy Elvish Lore Speaker who may be looking kind of lost!

HP and the Deathly Hollows!

2007-07-23T11:10:00.000+01:00

My partner and I purchased Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows at midnight on friday night and finished yesterday afternoon. I am not giving anything away! I thought it was the best of the seven and J.K. has done an incredible job with the story and the characters. There are more twist and turns than I have read in a novel in a while and the emotional range was staggering. Bravo! Well worth it. I only hope somewhere in J.K.'s notes there is a some materials for an Harry Potter Silmarilion!! Be interesting to debate the points - love to get into the horacrux and Tolkien's ring - once we are all prepared to discuss.

On the Tolkien language front - I think I am going to take a bit of a u-turn and start doing some prose translation - perhaps of Tolkien's Of the Rings of Power and the Third Age....of course with the way things are going in the UK it might be better to get do the The Downfall of Numenor (I feel the flood waves a comin!).