Langon - The Mouth of Melko - Some Etymological Detective Work

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

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

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"

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

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

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