The J. R. R. Tolkien Companion and Guide: Volume 3: Reader’s Guide PART 2

The Year’s Work in English Studies (#litres_trial_promo)

Yorkshire (#litres_trial_promo)

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‘Name-List to The Fall of Gondolin’. Unfinished compilation of names in Qenya and Gnomish (Noldorin, later Sindarin; see *Languages, Invented) occurring in The Fall of Gondolin in *The Book of Lost Tales as ‘set forth by Eriol at the teaching of Bronweg’s son … Littleheart’ (*The Book of Lost Tales, Part Two, p. 148). Tolkien evidently compiled this list in more or less alphabetical order from the *Official Name List (?1917–?1919), but it extends only as far as the letter L. *Christopher Tolkien incorporated information from the list in the Appendices (‘Names in the Lost Tales’) to *The Book of Lost Tales, Part One and The Book of Lost Tales, Part Two. The complete list was published in Parma Eldalamberon 15 (2004), pp. 19–30, edited with commentary and notes by Christopher Gilson and Patrick H. Wynne.

Included with the ‘Name-List’ proper is another projected list of names, abandoned after only three entries, probably the beginning of a list for The Cottage of Lost Play (The Book of Lost Tales).

The Name ‘Nodens’. Note, first published as Appendix I, pp. 132–7, in the Report on the Excavation of the Prehistoric, Roman, and Post-Roman Site in Lydney Park, Gloucestershire by R.E.M. Wheeler and T.V. Wheeler (Oxford: Printed at the University Press by John Johnson for The Society of Antiquaries, 1932). See further, Descriptive Bibliography B13.

The report is concerned with excavations in 1928–9 of a promontory fort or small embanked hill-town of five acres, established at Lydney in or shortly before the first century BC. ‘Soon after A.D. 364–7 a temple, dedicated to the otherwise unknown deity Nodens, was built within the earthwork, and with the temple, which was of unusual plan, were associated a guest-house, baths, and other structures, indicating that the cult was an important centre of pilgrimage’ (Wheeler and Wheeler, p. 1). Tolkien observes in his note that the name Nodens occurs in three inscriptions; otherwise, ‘from the same place and presumably roughly contemporary, there is in early Keltic [Celtic] material no trace of any such name or stem’ (p. 132). He relates Nodens to Núadu (later Núada) Argat-lám, the king of the Túatha dé Danann, ‘the possessors of Ireland before the Milesians’ (p. 133), and to other Nuadas in Irish. ‘It is possible to see a memory of this figure in the medieval Welsh Lludd Llaw Ereint (“of the Silver Hand”) – the ultimate original of King Lear – whose daughter Creiddylad (Cordelia) was carried off, after her betrothal to Gwythyr vab Greiddawl, by Gwynn vab Nudd, a figure having connexions with the underworld’ (p. 133). The normal Welsh form of Nuada or Nodens is Nudd.

Tolkien researched Nodens and wrote a note on the subject probably in 1929 or 1930, at the request of R.E.M. (later Sir Mortimer) Wheeler, Keeper and Secretary of the London Museum. Wheeler had the finished note in hand apparently well before 2 December 1931, when he informed Tolkien that a report on the Lydney Park excavations was to be issued by the Society of Antiquaries, including Tolkien’s note, and enclosed a proof. Tolkien replied to Wheeler by 9 December, evidently having had related thoughts on the possible evolution of the name Lydney out of Lludd. He wrote at once to his colleague Allen Mawer, then Director of the Survey of English Place-names, about the history of Lydney, but the data Mawer could supply were indeterminate.

Tolkien wrote a paragraph on the subject nevertheless, commenting on the obscurity of the origin of the place-name Lydney, and that it did not shed light on the problem of Nodens. Lydney was an English settlement, not the site of the temple to Nodens, though Tolkien thought that it might contain a pre-English name with a different original focus. Because of the uncertainty of this argument, however, or because production was already too far advanced to permit an addition, the note was omitted from the published report by Wheeler and Wheeler.

See further, comments by Carl Phelpstead in Tolkien and Wales: Language, Literature and Identity (2011), ch. 4. A prefatory note in the Report lists those who did the actual work of the excavation and mentions others who visited the site and helped to identify the finds. Among the latter was *R.G. Collingwood who, like Tolkien, was a fellow of Pembroke College, *Oxford, and was almost certainly responsible for Tolkien being asked to help with the mythological–philological problem of Nodens.

Tolkien himself, however, is not named in the list, and there is no evidence that he participated in the dig at Lydney Park, stayed there as a guest of the Wheelers on a number of occasions, or even visited Lydney, the surrounding Forest of Dean, or nearby Puzzlewood, all of which have been suggested as influences on *The Hobbit and *The Lord of the Rings. Mortimer Wheeler’s letters to Tolkien in 1931–2 in fact are formal and courteous, with no sign of the familiarity that would be evident between friends. Nor is there any reason to believe, despite much wishful thinking, that Tolkien was influenced in writing The Hobbit by the folk-connection between Lydney and dwarves, hobgoblins, and little people, or – at an even further stretch – that he took the idea of the ring in The Hobbit (later the One Ring in The Lord of the Rings) from a gold ring lost by the Roman Silvianus at the temple of Nodens at Lydney in the late fourth century, found 100 miles away in 1786, and now at The Vyne near Basingstoke, Hampshire.

The Name ‘Nodens’ was reprinted in Tolkien Studies 4 (2007), pp. 177–83.

The Nameless Land. Poem, first published in *Realities: An Anthology of Verse (1927), pp. 24–5.

The ‘nameless land’ is Eressëa, the home of the Elves in the True West of the world. The poet speaks of its golden ‘lingering lights’, its ‘grass more green than in gardens here’, its ‘dells that immortal dews distill / And fragrance of all flowers that grow’. It is unattainable, ‘a thousand leagues’ distant, a land ‘without a name / No heart may hope to anchor near’, more fair than Tir-nan-Og (the land of youth in Irish legend) and ‘more faint and far’ than Paradise, a ‘shore beyond the Shadowy Sea’. The poet dreams that he sees ‘a wayward star’ – the mariner Eärendel (or Eärendil) sailing the heavens – and refers to ‘beacon towers in Gondobar’ (‘city of stone’), one of the Seven Names of Gondolin.

According to a note on one of its typescripts, Tolkien wrote The Nameless Land at his home in Darnley Road, *Leeds, in May 1924, ‘inspired by reading *Pearl for examination purposes’. Like that medieval poem, The Nameless Land has both rhyme and alliteration, and the last line of each stanza is echoed in the first line of the next (‘And the woods are filled with wandering fire. / The wandering fires the woodland fill’). On 18 July 1962 Tolkien wrote to his Aunt *Jane Neave (Letters, p. 317):

The poem [Pearl] is very well-known to mediaevalists; 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) …. I send you the original stanzas of my own – related inevitably as everything was at one time with my own mythology.

Tolkien later revised The Nameless Land as The Song of Ælfwine (on Seeing the Uprising of Eärendel), with the intermediate title Ælfwine’s Song Calling upon Eärendel, tying the poem more explicitly to his mythology. Ælfwine, a mortal mariner who finds the sea-path to Eressëa, figures in *The Book of Lost Tales, *The Lost Road, and *The Notion Club Papers; see *Eriol and Ælfwine. Many texts of The Song of Ælfwine survive in manuscript and typescript. Two of these were published, together with The Nameless Land, in *The Lost Road and Other Writings (1987); see in that volume, pp. 98–104.

See further, Stefan Ekman, ‘Echoes of Pearl in Arda’s Landscape’, Tolkien Studies 6 (2009).

Names. On 4 January 1892, the day after his son was born, *Arthur Tolkien wrote to his mother: ‘The boy’s first name will be “John” after his grandfather, probably John Ronald Reuel altogether. Mab [*Mabel Tolkien] wants to call it Ronald and I want to keep up John and Reuel’ (quoted in Biography, p. 12). Arthur chose ‘John’ for his own father (see *Tolkien family), but Mabel’s father was also a John (John Suffield, see *Suffield family). Tolkien explained the choice of names in a letter to Amy Ronald on 2 January 1969:

I was called John because it was the custom for the eldest son of the eldest son to be called John in my family. My father was Arthur, eldest of my grandfather John Benjamin’s second family; but his elder half-brother John had died leaving only 3 daughters. So John I had to be ….

My father favoured John Benjamin Reuel (which I should now have liked); but my mother was confident that I should be a daughter, and being fond of more ‘romantic’ (& less O[ld] T[estament] like) names decided on Rosalind. When I turned up … Ronald was substituted ….

Reuel … was (I believe) the surname of a friend of my grandfather. The family believed it to be French (which is formally possible); but if so it is an odd chance that it appears twice in the O[ld] T[estament] as an unexplained other name for Jethro Moses’ father-in-law. All my children, and my children’s children, and their children, have the name. [Letters, pp. 397–8]

At his confirmation in 1903 Tolkien took the additional name ‘Philip’ but used it only rarely.

In an autobiographical statement written in 1955 Tolkien explained his surname as ‘a German name (from Saxony), an anglicization of Tollkiehn, i.e. tollkühn. But, except as a guide to spelling, this fact is as fallacious as all facts in the raw. For I am neither ‘foolhardy’ [= tollkühn] nor German, whatever some remote ancestors may have been’ (Letters, p. 218). Tolkien’s aunt Grace Mountain (see *Mountain family) alleged that their surname had originally been von Hohenzollern, after that district of the Holy Roman Empire from which the family had come. ‘A certain George von Hohenzollern had, she said, fought on the side of the Archduke Ferdinand of Austria at the Siege of Vienna in 1529. He had shown great daring in leading an unofficial raid against the Turks and capturing the Sultan’s standard. This (said Aunt Grace) was why he was given the nickname Tollkühn, “foolhardy”; and the nickname stuck’ (Humphrey Carpenter, Biography, pp. 18–19). The story was also told of a French variation of the surname, du Téméraire, but may be no more than family lore. Research by Polish Tolkien enthusiasts such as Ryszard Derdzinski, reported on the website Tolknięty (tolkniety.blogspot.com) indicates that certain family members emigrated to England from Gdańsk around 1772, having belonged to a family of Gdańsk (Danzig) furriers whose history reached back into fourteenth-century Prussia and thirteenth-century Saxony.

On a copy of a George Allen & Unwin (*Publishers) press release, not before 1968, Tolkien wrote his surname phonetically and gave instructions for its pronunciation: ‘(tôl kēn) tĺkeen (sc. tolk does not rhyme with yolk; the division is tol–keen in which tol rhymes with doll and kien (NOT KEIN) = keen as ie in field and many other words’ (Tolkien–George Allen & Unwin archive, HarperCollins). It was, and is, frequently misspelled Tolkein. Tolkien complained of this in a letter to Graham Tayar in June 1971, ‘in spite of all my efforts to correct this – even by my college-, bank-, and lawyer’s clerks!’ (Letters, p. 410). On 12 October 1966 he wrote to Joy Hill at Allen & Unwin about a document from the Performing Rights Society: ‘I wish producers of documents would see to it that they give me my correct name. My third name appears as Revel twice in each of the Deeds. My surname is Tolkein on one of them’ (Tolkien–George Allen & Unwin archive, HarperCollins). Even on his tombstone Reuel at first was carved Revel.

The phonetic rendering of Tolkien’s surname should be understood to place the stress on the first syllable. The same pronunciation is described by Clyde S. Kilby in ‘Many Meetings with Tolkien’ (an edited transcript of remarks at the December 1966 meeting of the Tolkien Society of America), published in Niekas 19 (c. 1968). Henry S. Resnik, however, in remarks at a July 1966 meeting of the Tolkien Society of America, said on the basis of a half-hour telephone interview that Tolkien ‘pronounces his name tul-KEEN …. His American publisher pronounces it TUL-kin, and I took him as the leading authority, but apparently Tolkien knows’ (‘An Interview with Tolkien’, p. 43).

Arthur and Mabel Tolkien called their son by his second name, Ronald, as did his other relatives and his wife. In his letter to Amy Ronald, Tolkien said that when he was a boy in England Ronald was a much rarer name than it later became: it was shared by none of his contemporaries at school or university ‘though it seems now alas! to be prevalent among the criminal and other degraded classes. Anyway I have always treated it with respect, and from earliest days refused to allow it to be abbreviated or tagged with. But for myself I remained John. Ronald was for my near kin. My friends at school, Oxford and later have called me John (or occasionally John Ronald or J. Rsquared)’ (Letters, p. 398). Tolkien occasionally signed himself ‘John’ to Edith Bratt (*Edith Tolkien) when they were courting.

To intimates such as Edith or his Aunt *Jane Neave he would sign his letters ‘Ronald’. To friends such as *Katharine Farrer and *Donald Swann he signed ‘Ronald Tolkien’, and to *C.S. Lewis ‘J.R.R.T’. His formal signature was ‘J.R.R. Tolkien’. In 1964, when Allen & Unwin wanted to include a facsimile signature on the title-page of *Tree and Leaf, as was their custom for publications in their ‘U Books’ series, and sent Tolkien a sample with ‘Ronald Tolkien’, he wrote to Ronald Eames at Allen & Unwin: ‘I do not and never have used the signature “Ronald Tolkien” as a public or auctorial signature and I do not think it suitable for the purpose’ (3 February 1964, Tolkien–George Allen & Unwin archive, HarperCollins). In letters from his *T.C.B.S. friends Tolkien was called variously ‘Gabriel’, ‘Gab’, ‘Cludhari’ – nicknames whose origin is obscure and not mentioned in surviving correspondence – but mainly ‘John Ronald’, with isolated instances of ‘Ronald’ or ‘JRRT’. His few surviving letters to the T.C.B.S. are signed ‘John Ronald’. In a letter to *Joy Hill of 26 December 1971 he noted that his contemporaries used to write his initials as ‘JR

T’ and pronounce them ‘to rhyme with dirt’ (collection of René van Rossenberg).

According to Humphrey Carpenter, when Tolkien ‘was an adult his intimates [presumably other than family] referred to him (as was customary at the time) by his surname, or called him “Tollers”, a hearty nickname typical of the period. To those not so close, especially in his later years, he was often known as “J.R.R.T.”’ (Biography, p. 13).

The correspondence between Tolkien and the publishing Unwins, *Stanley and *Rayner, is an interesting lesson in the nuances of methods of address. In 1937 Tolkien wrote to ‘Dear Mr Unwin’ and signed himself ‘J.R.R. Tolkien’; Stanley Unwin replied to ‘Dear Professor Tolkien’. During 1944 they wrote to ‘Dear Unwin’ and ‘Dear Tolkien’. In 1946, after Stanley Unwin received a knighthood, Tolkien began his letters ‘Dear Sir Stanley’, while Unwin continued to write ‘Dear Tolkien’. Despite the fact that he had been addressing letters to ‘Dear Tolkien’ for some time, on 28 July 1947 Stanley Unwin wrote: ‘Dear Tolkien (If I may thus address you in the hope that you will call me “Unwin”)’ (Tolkien–George Allen & Unwin archive, HarperCollins). Tolkien replied: ‘Dear Unwin, I will certainly address you so, cum permissu [with permission], though it hardly seems a fair exchange for the loss of “professor”, a title one has rather to live down than to insist on’ (Letters, p. 120).

When Rayner Unwin began to correspond with Tolkien in 1952 he addressed him as ‘Dear Professor Tolkien’, and Tolkien replied to ‘My dear Rayner’ or ‘Dear Rayner’. At first Tolkien signed his letters ‘J.R.R. Tolkien’, but by about 1960 he began to sign ‘Ronald Tolkien’. On 15 December 1965 Tolkien wrote to Rayner Unwin:

Do you think you could mark the New Year by dropping the Professor? I belong to a generation which did not use Christian names outside the family, but like the dwarves [in his mythology] kept them private, and for even their intimates used surnames (or perversions of them), or nicknames, or (occasionally) Christian names that did not belong to them. Even C.S. Lewis never called me by a Christian name (or I him). So I will be content with a surname. I wish I could get rid of the “professor” altogether, at any rate when not writing technical matter. It gives a false impression of “learning”, especially in “folklore” and all that. It also gives a probably truer impression of pedantry, but it is a pity to have my pedantry advertised and underlined, so that people sniff it even when it is not there. [Letters, pp. 365–6]

From that point Rayner wrote to ‘Dear Tolkien’. Seven years later, on 30 March 1972, Tolkien wrote to Rayner Unwin: ‘Would it be possible for you to use my Christian name? I am now accepted as a member of the community here [Merton College] – one of the habits of which has long been the use of Christian names, irrespective of age or office – and as you are now a v[ery] old friend, and a very dear one, I should much like also to be a “familiaris”’ (Letters, p. 418).

He did not care whether he was addressed as ‘Professor’ or ‘Mr’; on 12 December 1955 he wrote to Mr Smith at Allen & Unwin that ‘there is no need to alter “Mr” to “Professor”. In proper Oxford tradition professor is not a title of address – or was not, though the habit has drifted in from places where “professors” are powerful little domestic potentates’ (Letters, p. 230).

Names and Required Alterations. Parallel list of names in Qenya (later Quenya, see *Languages, Invented) from The Cottage of Lost Play (*The Book of Lost Tales), with equivalents in Gnomish (Goldogrin, later Sindarin), published in Parma Eldalamberon 15 (2004), pp. 5–18, edited with commentary and notes by Patrick H. Wynne.

This work appears to date from ?1917–?1919. An appendix ‘assembles a variety of isolated words, linguistic notes, and phonological charts from the Lost Tales [Book of Lost Tales] notebooks that could not be conveniently presented in previous issues of Parma Eldalamberon’ (p. 6).

‘Names of the Valar’. List of names of the Valar (*‘The Silmarillion’), arranged by gender, published as part of ‘Early Qenya Fragments’ in Parma Eldalamberon 14 (2003), pp. 11–15, edited with commentary and notes by Patrick Wynne and Christopher Gilson.

Originally written only in Qenya (later Quenya, see *Languages, Invented), Gnomish (Goldogrin, later Sindarin) forms were added later by Tolkien. The work is contemporary with *The Book of Lost Tales, but probably later than *Corrected Names of Chief Valar, i.e. from the ?first half of 1919.

Napier, Arthur Sampson (1853–1916). A.S. Napier, educated at Owens College, Manchester and Exeter College, *Oxford, taught at Berlin and Göttingen before becoming the Merton Professor of English Language and Literature at Oxford in 1885. In 1903 he became, as well, Rawlinsonian Professor of Anglo-Saxon. Napier’s appointment to the Merton Professorship, on the establishment of that chair, strengthened the language side of English studies at Oxford – he was one of three professors of *Philology, together with John Earle and F. Max Müller – to the regret of those who pictured the philologists ‘lecturing simultaneously on Beowulf to empty benches, while there was no one to lecture on Shakespeare and Milton’ (D.J. Palmer, The Rise of English Studies (1965), p. 87). In fact, Napier would later play a key role, with *Walter Raleigh, in bifurcating the Oxford English syllabus to make it more attractive to students whose primary interest was literature rather than language (from 1908 only four of ten papers were required in common of all students reading English, with the other six oriented to suit the language or literature specialty).

Never robust, during the last ten years of his life Napier was frequently in ill health, but was ably assisted by *Kenneth Sisam, whose B.Litt. thesis Napier supervised. Tolkien later recalled meeting Napier when, as an undergraduate at Oxford, he changed his course of study from Classics to English Language and Literature: ‘I recall that I was ushered into a very dim room and could hardly see Napier. He was courteous, but said little. He never spoke to me again. I attended his lectures, when he was well enough to give them’ (letter to *N.R. Ker, 22 November 1970, Letters, p. 406). These definitely included, in Michaelmas Term 1913, lectures on English Historical Grammar and on Old English Dialects, and in Michaelmas Term 1914 and Hilary Term 1915, on *Pearl and *Beowulf (see further, Chronology).

Narn i Chîn Húrin. Prose narrative of the story of Túrin (see *‘Of Túrin Turambar’), published with notes and commentary in *Unfinished Tales (1980), pp. 57–162, as Narn i Hîn Húrin: The Tale of the Children of Húrin (see below). Some sections of draft and further commentary were included in the account of the Grey Annals in *The War of the Jewels (1994).

When *Christopher Tolkien edited Unfinished Tales he thought that the whole of the Narn was a work of the late 1950s, but during the writing of *The History of Middle-earth he realized that the latter part of the Narn, from the section headed ‘The Return of Túrin to Dor-lómin’ to ‘The Death of Túrin’ (Unfinished Tales, pp. 104–46), was written c. 1951 and in close association with the Grey Annals (*Annals of Beleriand). ‘The manuscript was headed (later) “The Children of Húrin: last part”, and at the top of the first page my father wrote “Part of the ‘Children of Húrin’ told in full scale”’ (The War of the Jewels, p. 144). Up to the point where the Men of Brethil discuss what action to take against Glaurung, preliminary drafting for the manuscript text ‘consists of little more than scribbled slips. From here on … there are in effect two manuscripts’, one of which Christopher Tolkien calls ‘the draft manuscript’, being a ‘continuation of the original, which became so chaotic with rewriting’ that Tolkien made a fair copy (The War of the Jewels, p. 152). In his comments on the relevant portion of the Grey Annals in The War of the Jewels (pp. 144–65) Christopher Tolkien includes comparisons of various versions of the story of Túrin, lengthy extracts from drafts for the Narn, and synopses for the end of the story which show Tolkien hesitating over the dénouement.

Tolkien possibly chose to begin this prose account part way through the story because he had already written a lengthy account of Túrin’s earlier life in alliterative verse in the 1920s (*The Lay of the Children of Húrin), but nothing at length of his later life since *The Book of Lost Tales. The part of the Narn dealing with Túrin’s earlier life, however, is a work of the late 1950s.

In The War of the Jewels Christopher Tolkien describes ‘a twelve-page typescript composed ab initio by my father and bearing the title “Here begins the tale of the Children of Húrin, Narn i Chîn Húrin, which Dírhaval wrought”’ (p. 314). This provided the text for the first part of the Narn (Unfinished Tales, pp. 57–65), but two passages describing the sojourn of Húrin and Huor in Gondolin and an account of the Nirnaeth Arnoediad were omitted, since similar texts taken from the Grey Annals had appeared in *The Silmarillion. Christopher Tolkien comments at length on differences between these passages in the Narn and the Grey Annals, and his use of elements from both in The Silmarillion (The War of the Jewels, pp. 165–70, 314–15). He notes in Unfinished Tales that the next section

(to the end of Túrin in Doriath) required a good deal of revision and selection, and in some places some slight compression, the original texts being scrappy and disconnected. But the central section (Túrin among the outlaws, Mîm the Petty-dwarf, the land of Dor-Cúarthol, the death of Beleg at Túrin’s hand, and Túrin’s life in Nargothrond) constituted a much more difficult editorial problem. The Narn is here at its least finished, and in places diminished to outlines of possible turns in the story. My father was still evolving this part when he ceased to work on it ….

For the first part of this central section, as far as the beginning of Túrin’s sojourn in Mîm’s dwelling on Amon Rûdh, I have contrived a narrative, in scale commensurate with other parts of the Narn, out of the existing materials (with one gap …). [p. 6]

But from that point he found the task of compiling a continuous narrative impossible, and instead published a series of disconnected fragments and notes as an Appendix.

For the part played by Narn i Chîn Hurin in the evolution of Tolkien’s mythology, see entries for *‘Of Túrin Turambar’ and other chapters of The Silmarillion.

Christopher Tolkien returned to the story of Túrin in *The Children of Húrin (2007), re-editing the Narn i Chîn Húrin and associated material to provide a continuous narrative with a minimum of editorial presence. Although this involved reworking in some parts, changes to the actual story were few and not of great significance. In *The Lost Road and Other Writings Christopher explains that in Unfinished Tales he ‘improperly’ replaced [Elvish] Chîn with Hîn ‘because I did not want Chîn to be pronounced like Modern English chin’ (p. 322; in Exilic Noldorin ch is pronounced as in Scottish loch). In The War of the Jewels (pp. 142, 145, 146, 149, 151) he notes editorial changes he made in the text published in Unfinished Tales, as well as authorial emendations.