Dwarfs etc. is of course the only recognized modern form of the plural; but the (inconsistent) correction of elvish has not even that excuse. The older and ‘historical’ form elvish is still recognized, and appears even in such popular dictionaries as the ‘Pocket Oxford’. I suppose I should be grateful that Cox and Wyman2 have not inflicted the change from elven to elfin and further to farther on me which Jarrolds3 attempted, but Jarrolds were at least dealing with a MS. that had a good many casual errors in it. I believe there is only one error remaining in the text from which the Puffin was printed: like for likes (6th imp. p. 85 line 1; Puffin p. 76, line 23). This crept in in the 6th imp. I think. Not that Gollum would miss the chance of a sibilant! Puffin has not emended it. I suppose Gollum was regarded as ‘without the law’ and immune from the dictates of dictionaries or ‘house-rules’. Not so the narrator.
Apart from this the errors appear to be few. I have noted: waiting is omitted before for (puffin p. 32/11). ahead appears as head (p. 87/5 from bottom). There is an inverted g in examining (p. 225/2 from bottom). And oubht, bood appear for ought and good on p. 228.
I am sorry to inflict such nigglings on you (I am a natural niggler, alas!) which will not seem to anyone else as important as they do to me; and nothing can be done about them now, anyway. Though Penguin Books might be informed that they have not passed unobserved. In fact I do not think that I should have signed a copy for Sir Allen Lane,4 if I had observed them before. I feel inclined to tell him so, and offer to emend the copy in my own fair hand, if he will return it!
This is a Fell Winter indeed, and I am expecting White Wolves to cross the river. At present dead calm reigns, as the only car to appear in my road slid backwards downhill and disappeared. There is small chance of this reaching you tomorrow Jan. 1 to wish you a Happy New Year. I hope you have plenty of food in store! It is my birthday on Jan. 3rd, and I look like spending it in the isolation of a house turned igloo; but the companionship of several bottles of what has turned out a most excellent burgundy (since I helped to select it in its infancy) will no doubt mitigate that: Clos de Tart 1949, just at its top. With that hobbit-like note I will close, wishing you and your wife and children all blessings in 1962.
Yours ever,
Ronald Tolkien.
P.S. Will you please thank Miss M.J. Hill (and yourself) for the copy of School Magazine Nov. 1961 (N. S. Wales) containing the Hobbit extract and the article ‘Something Special’. I thought the latter was well written for its purpose. . . . . But alas! faced with actual stories people are always more ready to believe in learning and arcane knowledge than in invention, especially if they are bemused by the title ‘professor’. There are no songs or stories preserved about Elves or Dwarfs in ancient English, and little enough in any other Germanic language. Words, a few names, that is about all. I do not recall any Dwarf or Elf that plays an actual part in any story save Andvari in the Norse versions of the Nibelung matter. There is no story attached to the name Eikinskjaldi, save the one that I invented for Thorin Oakenshield. As far as old English goes ‘dwarf’ (dweorg) is a mere gloss for nanus, or the name of convulsions and recurrent fevers; and ‘elf’ we should suppose to be associated only with rheumatism, toothache and nightmares, if it were not for the occurrence of aelfsciene ‘elven-fair’ applied to Sarah and Judith!, and a few glosses such as dryades, wuduelfen. In all Old English poetry ‘elves’ (ylfe) occurs once only, in Beowulf, associated with trolls, giants, and the Undead, as the accursed offspring of Cain. The gap between that and, say, Elrond or Galadriel is not bridged by learning. Now you will feel this letter has become a pamphlet or a new year garland! But you have a w[aste] p[aper] b[asket] I suppose, at least as capacious as mine. JRRT.
237 From a letter to Rayner Unwin
12 April 1962
I have given every moment that I could spare to the ‘poems’, in spite of the usual obstacles, and some new ones.
I am afraid that I have lost all confidence in these things, and all judgement, and unless Pauline Baynes can be inspired by them, I cannot see them making a ‘book’. I do not see why she should be inspired, though I fervently hope that she will be. Some of the things may be good in their way, and all of them privately amuse me; but elderly hobbits are easily pleased.
The various items – all that I now venture to offer, some with misgiving – do not really ‘collect’. The only possible link is the fiction that they come from the Shire from about the period of The Lord of the Rings. But that fits some uneasily. I have done a good deal of work, trying to make them fit better: if not much to their good, I hope not to their serious detriment. You may note that I have written a new Bombadil poem, which I hope is adequate to go with the older one, though for its understanding it requires some knowledge of the L.R. At any rate it performs the service of further ‘integrating’ Tom with the world of the L.R. into which he was inserted.fn89 I am afraid it largely tickles my pedantic fancy, because of its echo of the Norse Niblung matter (the otter’s whisker);1 and because one of the lines comes straight, incredible though that may seem, from The Ancrene Wisse.2. . . .
Some kind of foreword might possibly be required. The enclosed is not intended for that purpose! Though one or two of its points might be made more simply. But I found it easier, and more amusing (for myself) to represent to you in the form of a ridiculous editorial fiction what I have done to the verses, and what their references now are. Actually, although a fiction, the relative age, order of writing, and references of the items are pretty nearly represented as they really were.
I hope you are not greatly disappointed by my efforts.
238 From a letter to Jane Neave
18 July 1962
[Tolkien’s aunt appears to have suggested that she return a cheque he had sent her, so that the money could be spent on buying a wheelchair for Tolkien’s wife Edith, who was suffering from arthritis.]
As for your noble and self-sacrificing suggestion. Cash the cheque, please! And spend it. One cannot attach conditions to a gift; but I should be best pleased, if it was spent soon, and on yourself. It is a very small sum. Taken only from my present abundance, over and above the needs of Edith and myself, and of my children. Edith happily does not need a chair; and I could give her one if she did. (It is an astonishing situation, and I hope I am sufficiently grateful to God. Only a little while ago I was wondering if we should be able to go on living here, on my inadequate pension. I have never been able to give before, and I have received unrepayable gifts in the past. . . . . I receive as a septuagenarian a retirement pension, of which I feel it proper to give away at least what the Tax collectors leave in my hands (a National one, I mean: I refused the University pension, and took the lump sum and invested it in a trust managed by my bank). All this, simply to assure you that the little gift was a personal pleasure, hardly worthy of much thanks; also to assure you that I can help more if needed. Saving universal catastrophe, I am not likely to be hard up again in my time. This is the advice of a very shrewd old publisher. Also I gather that he told Edmund Fuller1 that my books were the most important, and also the most profitable thing that he had published in a long life, and that they would certainly remain so after his time and his sons’ time. (This is just for you: it is unwise to advertise still more to boast of good fortune, as all Fairy-stories teach. So say nout. I do not want to wake up one morning and find it all a dream!). . . .
I am glad to say that we are both rather better this year. . . . . I had some treatment last September, and have been more or less free and easy on the legs since, though my usual lumbago afflicted me in June. Edith is markedly better this year; and we managed a train journey to Bournemouth in July (2nd to 9th). Diet has done much good. We should have to reorganize life altogether if she was reduced to a chair! She does all the cooking, most of the housework, and some of the gardening. I am afraid that this often means rather heroic effort; but of course, within limits, that is beneficial. Still it is hard being attacked in two different ways at once – or three.
Great increase in weight due to operations. Arthritis, which is made more painful and acute by the weight; and an internal complaint, small internal lesions (I gather), which cause pain, often incalculably, either by strain, or vibration, or by digestive irritations. Still we accepted this verdict more or less gratefully, after she had spent some time in a nursing home ‘for observation’ (ominous words).
We lost our ‘help’, because of ill health, that we had had for about eight years, last autumn. If ever you pray for temporal blessings for us, my dear, ask for the near-miracle of finding some help. Oxford is probably one of the hardest places even in this England, to find such a thing.
The book of poems is going along. Pauline Baynes has accepted the contract and is now beginning on the illustration. The publishers certainly intend it for Christmas. I have done my part.
At the moment I am engaged on putting into order, with notes and brief preface, my translation of Sir Gawain and of Pearl, before returning to my major work the Silmarillion. The Pearl is another poem in the same MS as Sir Gawain. Neither has any author’s name attached; but I believe (as do most others) that they are by the same person. The Pearl is much the more difficult to translate, largely for metrical reasons; but being attracted by apparently insoluble metrical problems, I started to render it years ago. Some stanzas were actually broadcast, in the late 1920s.2 I finished it, more or less, before the war; and it disappeared under the weight of the War, and of The Lord of the Rings. The poem is very well-known to mediævalists; but I never agreed to the view of scholars that the metrical form was almost impossibly difficult to write in, and quite impossible to render in modern English. NO scholars (or, nowadays, poets) have any experience in composing themselves in exacting metres. I made up a few stanzas in the metre to show that composition in it was not at any rate ‘impossible’ (though the result might today be thought bad).3 The original Pearl was more difficult: a translator is not free, and this text is very hard in itself, often obscure, partly from the thought and style, and partly from the corruptions of the only surviving MS.
As these things interest you, I send you the original stanzas of my own – related inevitably as everything was at one time with my own mythology. I will send you a copy of the Pearl, as soon as I can get a carbon copy made. It has 101 twelve-line stanzas. It is (I think) evidently inspired by the loss in infancy of a little daughter. It is thus in a sense an elegy; but the author uses the then fashionable (it was contemporary with Chaucer) dream-framework, and uses the occasion to discuss his own theological views about salvation. Though not all acceptable to modern taste, it has moments of poignancy; and though it may in our view be absurdly complex in technical form, the poet surmounts his own obstacles on the whole with success. The stanzas have twelve lines, with only three rhymes: an octet of four couplets rhyming a b, and a quartet rhyming b c. In addition each line has internal alliteration (it occasionally but rarely fails in the original; the version is inevitably less rich). And if that is not enough, the poem is divided into fives. Within a five-stanza group the chief word of the last line must be echoed in the first line of the following stanza; the last line of the five-group is echoed at the beginning of the next; and the first line of all is to wind up echoed in the last line of all. But oddly enough there are not 100 stanzas, but 101. In group XV there are six stanzas. It has long been supposed that one of these was an uncancelled revision. But there are also 101 stanzas in Sir Gawain. The number was evidently aimed at, though what its significance was for the author has not been discovered. The grouping by fives also connects the poem with Gawain, where the poet elaborates the significance: the Five Wounds, the Five Joys, the Five virtues, and the Five wits.
Enough of that. I hope you are not bored. I enclose on a separate sheet the opening stanza in the original, and in my version, as a specimen.
239 From a letter to Allen & Unwin
20 July 1962
[With reference to the Spanish translation of The Hobbit.]
If gnomos is used as a translation of dwarves, then it must not appear on p. 63 in the elves that are now called Gnomes. I need not trouble the translator, or you, with the long explanation needed to account for this aberration; but the word was used as a translation of the real name, according to my mythology, of the High-elven people of the West. Pedantically, associating it with Greek gnome ‘thought, intelligence’. But I have abandoned it, since it is quite impossible to dissociate the name from the popular associations of the Paracelsan gnomus = pygmaeus.1 Since this word is used – for its aptness in preference to Sp[anish] enano I am not able to judge – for ‘dwarves’, regrettable confusion would be caused, if it is also applied to the High Elves. I earnestly suggest that on p. 63, lines 6–7, the translator should translate old swords of the High Elves of the West; and on p. 173, line 14, should delete (or Gnomes) altogether. I think these are the only places where Gnomes appears in The Hobbit.
240 To Mrs Pauline Gasch (Pauline Baynes)
[Pauline Baynes, who was illustrating The Adventures of Tom Bombadil, pointed out that the typescript of the title poem described Tom as wearing a peacock’s feather in his hat, but the version in the galley-proofs had the reading ‘a swan-wing feather’.]
1 August 1962
76 Sandfield Road, Headington, Oxford
Dear Mrs Gasch,
I am sorry that you have been bothered by this detail. There have been a number of minor changes made at various times in the process of assimilating Tom B. to the Lord of the Rings world.
The peacock’s feather belongs to an old draft. Being unsuitable to the L.R. this becomes in the L.R. (I p. 130)1 ‘a long blue feather’. In the poems as now to be published Tom appears (in line 4 of the first poem) with a ‘swan-wing feather’: to increase the riverishness, and to allow for the incident in the second poem, the gift of a blue feather by the king’s fisher. That incident also explains the blue feather of the L.R. Poem one is evidently, as said in the introduction, a hobbit-version of things long before the days of the L.R. But the second poem refers to the days of growing shadow, before Frodo set out (as the consultation with Maggot shows: cf. L.R. I p. 143).2 When therefore Tom appears in the L.R. he is wearing a blue feather.
As far as you are concerned peacocks are out. A swan-feather in the first poem; and a blue one after the kingfisher incident.
Thank you for taking so much trouble. I may say that a number of changes were made in the drafts that were originally submitted to you. Only the galleys are reliable.
For instance, in the altercation with the kingfisher, I found that no variety likely to be in our parts of the world has a scarlet crest. (Scarlet breasts are more likely though ones I know are pinkish!) Also, more interesting, I found that the bird’s name did not mean, as I had supposed, ‘a King that fishes’. It was originally the king’s fisher. That links the swan (traditionally the property of the King) with the fisher-bird; explains both their rivalry, and their special friendship with Tom: they were creatures who looked for the return of their rightful Lord, the true King.
Do not be put off by this sort of thing unless it affects the picture! The inwardly seen picture is to me the most important. I look forward to your interpretation. The donnish detail is just a private pleasure which I do not expect anyone to notice. (E.g. the hanging up of a kingfisher to see the way of the wind, which comes from Sir T. Browne;3 the otter’s whisker sticking out of the gold, from the Norse Nibelung legends;4 and the three places for gossip, smithy, mill, and cheaping (market), from a mediæval instructive work that I have been editing!)5 With very best wishes
Yours sincerely
Ronald Tolkien.
241 From a letter to Jane Neave
8–9 September 1962
[Tolkien’s aunt, who was living in Wales, had been reading a proof copy of his lecture ‘English and Welsh’, delivered in 1955 and published in 1963 in the volume Angles and Britons: O’Donnell Lectures.]
I was so pleased to hear from you again. I was a bit afraid that I had ov
erstepped the mark with that lecture: much of it rather dull except to dons. It is not really ‘learned’: my task was to thread together items of common (professional) knowledge in an attempt to interest English people. The only ‘original’ things in it, are the autobiographical bits, and the reference to ‘beauty’ in language; and the theory that one’s ‘native language’ is not the same as one’s ‘cradle-tongue’.
I should not be surprised to hear that your postman did not know bobi: caws bobi. It seems not to be mentioned in modern dictionaries, and is probably obsolete. It means or meant ‘toasted cheese’, i.e. Welsh rabbit. pobi is the Welsh word for ‘cook, roast, toast’, and (if Andrew Boorde1 got it right) it has changed p- to b- because pobi is used as an adjective, after a noun. London was for a while very Welsh-conscious at the time (as seen in Shakespeare), and bits of Welsh crop up in plays and tales. But the notion that Welsh was the ‘language of heaven’ was much older. Andrew B. was simply making fun of an often heard Welsh claim. I expect the postman will have heard of it. Postmen are on the whole a good tribe – especially the country ones who still walk. But Welsh postmen seem specially kind, and also learned. Sir John Morris Jones, a famous Welsh scholar (and author of the grammar that I bought with prize-money as related)2 said, commenting on the work of a learned French scholar (Loth) on Welsh metres: ‘I get more learning and sense on the topic out of my postman.’
The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien Page 44