The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien (89 page)

^fn94
It is not made explicit how she could arrange this. She could not of course just transfer her ticket on the boat like that! For any except those of Elvish race ‘sailing West' was not permitted, and any exception required ‘authority', and she was not in direct communication with the Valar, especially not since her choice to become ‘mortal'. What is meant is that it was Arwen who first thought of sending Frodo into the West, and put in a plea for him to Gandalf (direct or through Galadriel, or both), and she used her own renunciation of the right to go West as an argument. Her renunciation and suffering were related to and enmeshed with Frodo's: both were parts of a plan for the regeneration of the state of Men. Her prayer might therefore be specially effective, and her plan have a certain equity of exchange. No doubt it was Gandalf who was the authority that accepted her plea. The Appendices show clearly that he was an emissary of the Valar, and virtually their plenipotentiary in accomplishing the plan against Sauron. He was also in special accord with Cirdan the Ship-master, who had surrendered to him his ring and so placed himself under Gandalf's command. Since Gandalf himself went on the Ship there would be so to speak no trouble either at embarking or at the landing.

^fn95
In the sense that ‘pity' to be a true virtue must be directed to the good of its object. It is empty if it is exercised
only
to keep oneself ‘clean', free from hate or the actual doing of injustice, though this is also a good motive.

^fn96
The Witch-king had been reduced to impotence.

^fn97
Tasarinan, Ossiriand, Neldoreth, Dorthonion were all regions of Beleriand, famous in tales of the War.

^fn98
Or even the legitimate
need
of money.

^fn99
At least they were certainly
once
necessary. And if we are pained or at times scandalized by those we see close to, I think we should remember the enormous debt we owe to the Benedictines, and also remember that (like the Church) they have always been in a state of succumbing to mammon and the world, and never finally overwhelmed. The inner fire has never been extinguished.

^fn100
The unseemly cobwebs & dust, and the stained label, are not always signs of impaired contents, for those who can draw old corks.

^fn101
Not that one should forget the wise words of Charles Williams, that it is our duty to tend the accredited and established altar, though the Holy Spirit may send the fire down somewhere else. God cannot be limited (even by his own Foundations) – of which St Paul is the first & prime example – and may use any channel for His grace. Even to love Our Lord, and certainly to call him Lord, and God, is a grace, and may bring more grace. Nonetheless, speaking institutionally and not of individual souls the channel must eventually run back into the ordained course, or run into the sands and perish. Besides the Sun there may be moonlight (even bright enough to read by); but if the Sun were removed there would be no Moon to see. What would Christianity now be if the Roman Church has in fact been destroyed?

^fn102
It is a curious chance that the stem
√talat
used in Q[uenya] for ‘slipping, sliding, falling down', of which
atalantie
is a normal (in Q) noun-formation, should so much resemble Atlantis.

^fn103
In
Time and Tide
of this July 15, in a symposium of publishers telling readers what to take on holiday, he only mentioned
The Lord of the Rings
from all his list, and foretold a long life for it.

^fn104
an error probably for
þizōs bōkōs
, ‘of this book', sg.

^fn105
an error probably for
bōka meina,
‘my book', sg.

^fn106
Yes, even up to £15,000! Or more!

^fn107
That is, one in which inventing a language for pleasure was the main motive. I am not concerned with slangs, cants, thieves' argot, Notwelsch, and things of that sort.

^fn108
My
hobbit
is a case. Showing how peculiar to an individual this attribution may be (often obscure to the perpetrator of the ‘noise' and not discoverable by others). If I attributed meaning to
boo-boo
I should not in this case be influenced by the words containing
bū
in many other European languages, but by a story by Lord Dunsany (read many years ago) about two idols enshrined in the same temple: Chu-Bu and Sheemish. If I used
boo-hoo
at all it would be as the name of some ridiculous, fat, self-important character, mythological or human.

^fn109
except in geometry which I was taught by her sister. That was the aunt whose last years I cheered and amused by composing and selecting
The Adventures of Tom Bombadil,
and consulting her about the book, which she had asked for. She died in her 92nd year soon after it was published.
⁴

^fn110
There are exceptions. I have read all that E. R. Eddison wrote, in spite of his peculiarly bad nomenclature and personal philosophy. I was greatly taken by the book that was (I believe) the runner-up when
The L. R.
was given the Fantasy Award:
⁵
Death of Grass
.
⁶
I enjoy the S.F. of Isaac Azimov. Above these, I was recently deeply engaged in the books of Mary Renault; especially the two about Theseus,
The King Must Die,
and
The Bull from the Sea
. A few days ago I actually received a card of appreciation from her; perhaps the piece of ‘Fan-mail' that gives me most pleasure.

^fn111
E.g. in a nonsensical article by J. S. Ryan.

^fn112
With the possible exception of the name (of a king)
Gram.
This is, of course, a genuine A-S word, but not in recorded A-S used (as it is in Old Norse) as a noun = ‘warrior or king'. But some influence of the Northern language upon that of the
Eorlingas
after their removal northward is not unlikely. It is in fact paralleled by clear traces of the influence upon one another of the (poetic) language of Old Norse and A-S.

^fn113
The only (but a major) exception is
Eärendil
. See below.

^fn114
The word
Warg
used in
The Hobbit
and the
L.R.
for an evil breed of (demonic) wolves is not supposed to be A-S specifically, and is given prim. Germanic form as representing the noun common to the Northmen of these creatures. It seems to have ‘caught on' – it appears in
Orbit
2 p. 119, not as a word in [a] strange country, but in an official communication from Earth to a space-explorer. The story is by a reader of the
L.R.

^fn115
Already well advanced 20 years before
The Hobbit
was written. The legends of the past before the time of
The Hobbit
and
The L.R.
were also largely composed before 1935.

^fn116
Its earliest recorded A-S form is
earendil (oer-),
later
earendel, eorendel
. Mostly in glosses on
jubar=leoma;
also on
aurora.
But also in
Blick[ling] Hom[ilies]
163,
se níwa eorendel
appl. to St John the Baptist; and most notably
Crist
104,
éala! éarendel engla beorhtast ofer middangeard monnum sended.
Often supposed to refer to Christ (or Mary), but comparison with Bl. Homs. suggests that it refers to the Baptist. The lines refer to a
herald,
and divine messenger, clearly not the
soðfæsta sunnan leoma
=Christ.

^fn117
Q.
ëar
S.
aear
(see I 250).

^fn118
This provides the key to a large number of other Elvish Q. names, such as
Elendil
‘Elf-friend'
(eled+ndil), Valandil, Mardil
the Good Steward (devoted to the House, sc. of the Kings)
Meneldil
‘astronomer' etc. Of similar significance in names is
-(n)dur
, though properly this means ‘to serve', as one serves a legitimate master: cf. Q.
arandil
king's friend, royalist, beside
arandur
‘king's servant, minister'. But these often coincide: e.g. Sam's relation to Frodo can be viewed either as in status
-ndur,
in spirit
-ndil.
Compare among the variant names:
Eärendur
‘(professional) mariner'.

^fn119
At the time of her lament in Lórien she believed this to be perennial, as long as Earth endured. Hence she concludes her lament with a wish or prayer that Frodo may as a special grace be granted a purgatorial (but not penal) sojourn in
Eressea,
the Solitary Isle in sight of
Aman,
though for her the way is closed. (The Land of Aman after the downfall of Númenor, was no longer in physical existence ‘within the circles of the world'.) Her prayer was granted – but also her personal ban was lifted, in reward for her services against Sauron, and above all for her rejection of the temptation to take the Ring when offered to her. So at the end we see her taking ship.

^fn120
Though the episode of the ‘wargs' (I believe) is in part derived from a scene in S. R. Crockett's
The Black Douglas,
probably his best romance and anyway one that deeply impressed me in school-days, though I have never looked at it again. It includes Gil de Rez as a Satanist.

^fn121
Which I remember, since (
omen
again) the OTCs
²
of that day were specially privileged and I was one of 12 sent down from K[ing] E[dward's] S[chool] to help ‘line the route'. We were camped for a wettish night in Lambeth Palace and marched to our stations early on a dull morning that soon cleared up. I was actually standing outside Buck. Palace great gates to the right, facing the palace. We had a good view of the cavalcades, and I have always remembered one little scene (unnoticed by my companions): as the coach containing the royal children swept in on return the P[rince] of W[ales] (a pretty boy) poked his head out and knocked his coronet askew. He was jerked back and smartly rebuked by his sister.

^fn122
A nice singular which I feel hobbits must have used, with a distinctive pl[ural] ‘
youbodies
'.

^fn123
This willingness usually connotes some degree of humility. In Yorkshire its first impulse was the desire to ‘get on'. But that does not remain the sole objective. Cupboard-love is a frequent preliminary to actual love.

^fn124
Not to mention ‘drugs'.

^fn125
Not ‘vintage'. But I like port (v. much) as a mid-morn, drink: warming, digestible, and v. good for my throat, when taken (as I think it should be) by itself or with a dry biscuit, and NOT after a full meal, nor (above all) with desert!

^fn126
I have now! Probably more than most other folk; and find myself in a v. tangled wood – the clue to which is, however, the belief in
incubi
and ‘changelings'. Alas! one conclusion is that the statement that
hobgoblins
were ‘a larger kind' is the reverse of the original truth. (The statement occurs in the preliminary note on Runes devised for the paperback edition, but now included by A & U in all edns.)

^fn127
This meaning was understood by other peoples ignorant of Sindarin: cf.
Stoningland
(1 vol. edn. 882), and in particular the conversation of
Théoden
and
Ghân
864f. In fact it is probable within the historical fiction that the Númenóreans of the Southern kingdom adopted this name from the primitive inhabitants of
Gondor
and gave it a suitable version in Sindarin.

^fn128
The remark in the foreword to the 1 vol. paper-back p. 7 that the whole thing was ‘primarily linguistic in inspiration' is strictly true.

^fn129
Possibly the reason why my surname is now usually misspelt TOLKEIN in spite of all my efforts to correct this – even by my college-, bank-, and lawyer's clerks! My name is Tolkien, anglicized from
To(l)kiehn
=
tollkühn,
and came from Saxony in the 18th century. It is not Jewish in origin, though I should consider it an honour if it were.

^fn130
He was actually of almost exactly the same age as my real father would have been: both were born in 1857, Francis at the end of January, and my father in the middle of February.

^fn131
She knew the earliest form of the legend (written in hospital), and also the poem eventually printed as Aragom's song in L.R.

^fn132
Owing to Christopher – when I was looking in vain for somewhere to live he wrote ‘off his own bat' to the Warden of Merton College and said that his father was wandering looking in vain for a home, & could the College help? So I was amazed to receive a letter from the Warden saying that he had called a special meeting of the Governing Body, and it had unanimously voted that I should be invited to be a residential Fellow!

^fn133
Sc. a closely formed body of enemy soldiers.

^fn134
The Silvan Elves of Thranduil's realm did not speak S. but a related language or dialect.

^fn135
The difference between this and S.
Ithil
is due to a change of
(th) >s in Q. of the Exiles. But there was a stem
√SIL
as in
Silmarilli.
Cf. also
síla lúmenna omentielvo
.