From Dragons and Swords to Motor Cars and Gaffers

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

gaffer

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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