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

In other respects, Tolkien the poet was like many other men faced with the challenge of war, who found a voice to express feelings of nostalgia for England left behind, so different from life in the trenches, or about the war itself. Verses of this sort by G.B. Smith appeared after his death in A Spring Harvest (1918), edited by Tolkien; of Tolkien’s own poems, *The Lonely Isle and *The Town of Dreams and the City of Present Sorrow have been published, but not A Dream of Coming Home, A Memory of July in England, and Companions of the Rose (dedicated to the memory of Gilson and Smith), among others.

In the years following his return from service in France Tolkien continued to write new poetry and to revise earlier work, but until he went to *Leeds in 1920 the greater part of his literary writing was *The Book of Lost Tales, in prose. While at Leeds he retold the story of Túrin Turambar (*‘Of Túrin Turambar’) from The Book of Lost Tales at length in alliterative verse as *The Lay of the Children of Húrin, though he left this unfinished. Several of his shorter poems were published in magazines and collections. He also wrote poems and songs in English and other Northern languages to be sung at meetings of the Leeds Viking Club (*Songs for the Philologists). During this time, while he taught Old and Middle English poetry, Tolkien also made verse translations into Modern English of part of *Beowulf and probably the whole of *Pearl. The complex metre of the latter work inspired him to write an original poem, *The Nameless Land (1924). In 1962 he wrote of this to Jane Neave:

I never agreed with the view of scholars that the metrical form [of Pearl] 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 today might be thought bad). [Letters, p. 317]

In summer 1925 Tolkien began the *Lay of Leithian, a lengthy treatment of the tale of Beren and Lúthien (*‘Of Beren and Lúthien’) written in octosyllabic couplets, but this too he left unfinished. He revised and rewrote parts of it around 1950. *Christopher Tolkien quotes the remarks of an unnamed critic who wrote to his father (c. 1948 or a little later) that in ‘the staple octosyllabic couplet of romance’ he had chosen one of the most difficult of forms ‘if one wishes to avoid monotony and sing-song in a very long poem. I am often astonished by your success, but it is by no means consistently maintained’ (quoted in *The Lays of Beleriand, p. 1).

Tolkien liked to try his hand at poetry with complex metrical demands, including alliteration, the repetition of words, and rhyming schemes, often inspired by styles of the past. He wrote to *W.H. Auden on 29 March 1967 that many years earlier, ‘when trying to learn the art of writing alliterative poetry’, he composed a poem in which he attempted ‘to unify the lays about the Völsungs from the Elder Edda, written in the old eight-line fornyrðislag stanza’ (Letters, p. 379; see *The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún). Most of the riddles in Chapter 5 of *The Hobbit, all of them Tolkien’s own work, in style and method were modelled on old literary riddles. At least two of his poems were in written to provide an explanation of apparent nonsense in nursery rhymes (see *The Man in the Moon Came Down Too Soon and *The Man in the Moon Stayed Up Too Late). Poems such as Iumbo and its descendent *Oliphaunt, and *Fastitocalon were inspired by the medieval bestiary. *The Lay of Aotrou and Itroun is in the style of a Breton ballad, and the poem *Imram was inspired by Irish tales and legends of voyages. Tolkien wrote the first version of *The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth Beorhthelm’s Son in rhyming verse, but later rewrote it in alliterative verse, a form he used with pleasure, also for his unfinished poem *The Fall of Arthur (written in the same style as the Middle English alliterative Morte Arthure) and in *The Lord of the Rings to mark the Anglo-Saxon affinities of the Rohirrim.

The poems and songs found in The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien wrote to Margaret Carroux, when she was translating the work into German,

are an integral part of the narrative (and of the delineation of the characters) and not a separable ‘decoration’ like pictures by another artist ….

I myself am pleased by metrical devices and verbal skill (now out of fashion), and am amused by representing my imaginary historical period as one in which these arts were delightful to poets and singers, and their audiences. But otherwise the verses are all impersonal; they are as I say dramatic, and fitted with care in style and content to the characters and the situations in the story of the actors who speak or sing. [29 September 1968, Tolkien–George Allen & Unwin archive, HarperCollins]

In October 1968 he wrote to his son *Michael that his poetry had ‘received little praise – comment even by some admirers being as often as not contemptuous …. Perhaps largely because in the contemporary atmosphere – in which “poetry” must only reflect one’s personal agonies of mind or soul, and exterior things are only valued by one’s own “reactions” – it seems hardly ever recognized that the verses in The [Lord of the Rings] are all dramatic …’ (Letters, p. 396). Both William Reynolds in ‘Poetry as Metaphor in The Lord of the Rings’, Mythlore 4, no. 4, whole no. 16 (June 1977), and T.A. Shippey in J.R.R. Tolkien: Author of the Century (2000) examine two poems from The Lord of the Rings – The Road Goes Ever On (bk. I, ch. 1, 2; bk. VI, ch. 6) and Upon the Hearth the Fire Is Red (bk. I, ch. 3; bk. VI, ch. 9) – and how by subtle changes Tolkien uses them to reveal character, emotion, and situation.

From the beginning Tolkien often revised and rewrote his poems, sometimes after gaps of years, improving, changing emphasis, or transforming to fit into one of his narrative works. The most extraordinary example of this is *Errantry, which evolved through many stages to become the poem ‘Eärendil was a mariner’ which Bilbo recites at Rivendell in The Lord of the Rings, Book II, Chapter 1. By that time only one line survived from the version of Errantry published in 1933. The poem, Tolkien said, is ‘in a metre I invented (depending on trisyllabic assonances or near-assonances, which is so difficult that except in this one example I have never been able to use it again – it just blew out in a single impulse)’ (letter to Rayner Unwin, 22 June 1952, Letters, pp. 162–3).

When he needed a theme for the mostly light-hearted collection published as *The Adventures of Tom Bombadil and Other Verses from the Red Book (1962), Tolkien was able to pretend that the contents were Hobbit poetry, and even attributed some of them to characters in The Lord of the Rings. He told *Pauline Baynes, who was illustrating the book, that the poems ‘were conceived as a series of very definite, clear and precise, pictures – fantastical, or nonsensical perhaps, but not dreamlike!’ and were, he thought, ‘dexterous in words, but not very profound in intention’. *The Hoard was an exception, ‘written in [a] mode rather resembling the oldest English verse – and was in fact inspired by a single line of ancient verse’ from Beowulf (6 December 1961, Letters, p. 312).

TRANSLATION OF POETRY

Tolkien probably first undertook the translation of poetry at *King Edward’s School, Birmingham, where pupils were required to translate English verse into Latin. In the early 1920s, while employed at the University of Leeds, he translated the traditional song ‘The Mermaid’ (‘It was in the broad Atlantic’) into Old English to be recited or sung by the Viking Club (*Societies and clubs). But his most important translations are those that he made of Old and Middle English poems into Modern English. In these he took pains to preserve as far as possible the original metre, rhyming pattern, alliteration, and style. In reply to a letter from Professor John Leyerle, who had evidently expressed different ideas, Tolkien wrote on 28 April 1967: ‘You of course go clean contrary to my own views on translation of works of a former time in your remarks about “aping features that are anachronistic today”. If the taste and sympathies of the present day are to be the criterion, why bother to present to moderns things that are anachronistic in feeling and thought?’ (Tolkien Papers, Bodleian Library, Oxford).

In an unpublished essay concerning his thoughts on the translation of poetry, written after reading Poems from the Old English translated by Burton Raffel (1960), Tolkien pointed out first the value of making such translations without intention to publish them: ‘The making of translations should be primarily for private amusement, and profit. The profit, at any rate, will be found in the increased and sharpened understanding of the language of the original which the translator will acquire in the process, and can acquire no other way.’ He then considered how some of the impact of the work on its original audience might be achieved not only for those who could not read the original, but also for those whose appreciation of the texts had been spoiled because they were objects of study:

First of all by absolute allegiance to the thing translated: to its meaning, its style, technique, and form. The language used in translation is, for this purpose, merely an instrument, that must be handled so as to reproduce, to make audible again, as nearly as possible, the antique work. Fortunately modern (modern literary, not present-day colloquial) English is an instrument of very great capacity and resources, it has long experience not yet forgotten, and deep roots in the past not yet all pulled up. It can, if asked, still play in modes no longer favoured and remember airs not now popular; it is not limited to the fashionable cacophonies. I have little sympathy with contemporary theories of translation, and no liking for their results. In these the allegiance is changed. Too often it seems given primarily to ‘contemporary English’, the present-day colloquial idiom as if being ‘contemporary’, that most evanescent of qualities, by itself guaranteed its superiority. In many the primary allegiance of the ‘translator’ is to himself, to his own whims and notions, and the original author is evidently considered fortunate to have aroused the interest of a superior writer. This attitude is often a mask for incompetence, and for ignorance of the original idiom; in any case it does not encourage close study of the text and its language, the laborious but only sure way of acquiring a sensitive understanding and appreciation, even for those of poetic temperament, who might have acquired them, if they had started with a more humble and loyal allegiance. [Tolkien Papers, Bodleian Library, Oxford]

Tolkien remarked to Jane Neave that translations which follow the original closely are more difficult to create than original verse, since the translator does not have the freedom of the original poet. By example, he described the complexities of Pearl, the rhyming pattern of its twelve-line stanzas, its internal alliteration of line, and its requirement that certain words and lines be echoed from stanza to stanza. The translation of Pearl attracted him because of the poem’s ‘apparently insoluble metrical problems’ (18 July 1962, Letters, p. 317). Later, in a letter to his grandson Michael George (see *Michael Tolkien), he wrote that ‘Pearl is, of course, about as difficult a task as any translator could be set. It is impossible to make a version in the same metre close enough to serve as a “crib”. But I think anyone who reads my version, however learned a Middle English scholar, will get a more direct impression of the poem’s impact (on one who knew the language)’ (6 January 1965, Letters, p. 352).

For Tolkien, translation not only made a work of the past available to modern readers who could not read the older language, it was also a means by which the translator could study the poem and get close to the thought of its author, and could by the words he chose for the translation provide a commentary on the original. Tolkien had begun translations of Pearl and of *Sir Gawain and the Green Knight for his own instruction, since ‘a translator must first try to discover as precisely as he can what his original means, and may be led by ever closer attention to understand it better for its own sake. Since I first began I have given to the idiom of these texts very close study, and I have certainly learned more about them than when I first presumed to translate them’ (*Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Pearl and Sir Orfeo, p. 7).

His translations of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Pearl, and *Sir Orfeo were published together in 1975. His unfinished verse translation of Beowulf is still largely unpublished, but his prose translation was published in 2014. That Tolkien had a translation of the Middle English Owl and the Nightingale apparently complete by 8 April 1932 is indicated by C.S. Lewis in a letter to his brother; it was, however, apparently not complete to Tolkien’s satisfaction. In 1967 he wrote to Professor Leyerle: ‘I have at present given up the task …. It comes off well enough in certain passages, but in general octosyllabic couplets are defeating for a translator; there is no room to move’ (Tolkien Papers, Bodleian Library, Oxford).

In addition to his verse in English, Tolkien composed poetry in his created Elven languages (perhaps most notably Galadriel’s lament, Namárië) and in Old English, Middle English and Gothic.

CRITICISM

Carl Phelpstead in ‘“With Chunks of Poetry in Between”: The Lord of the Rings and Saga Poetics’, Tolkien Studies 5 (2008), explores how Tolkien’s incorporation of verse within several of his prose tales, from The Story of Kullervo to The Lord of the Rings, was derived from the Icelandic sagas, in part through *William Morris. In ‘Early Influences on Tolkien’s Poetry’, in Tolkien’s Poetry, ed. Julian Eilmann and Allan Turner (2013), Allan Turner discusses the influence on Tolkien of Francis Thompson, William Morris, the T.C.B.S., Georgian poetry, classical poetry, and exotic forms.

Jason Fisher in ‘Parody? Pigwiggery? Sourcing the Early Verse of J.R.R. Tolkien’, Beyond Bree, October and November 2009, discusses Tolkien’s early ‘fairy’ poems such as Goblin Feet and his later comments on diminutive fairies in On Fairy-Stories.

Michael D.C. Drout comments in his introduction (‘Reading Tolkien’s Poetry’) to Tolkien’s Poetry, ed. Eilmann and Turner (2013), that the popularity and vast sales of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings mean that ‘we can safely conclude that Tolkien’s poetry is among the most widely disseminated in the past century’ (p. 1). Though many readers admit to skipping them, the verses ‘are essential to the aesthetic and thematic effects’ of Tolkien’s fiction. ‘There are nearly 100 poems in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings’ in numerous forms, metres, and styles, some of which ‘contain certain information that is unavailable elsewhere in the text. Others reveal the characters of their speakers, demonstrate cultural differences and traditions or present otherwise-lost history …. The verses, therefore, cannot be dismissed as filler, incidental ornamentation or self-indulgent excrescence: on multiple levels they are woven throughout the work’ (pp. 3–4).

Julian Tim Morton Eilmann, in ‘I Am the Song: Music, Poetry, and the Transcendent in J.R.R. Tolkien’s Middle-earth’, in Light beyond All Shadow: Religious Experience in Tolkien’s Work, ed. Paul E. Kerry and Sandra Miesel (2011), also considers the songs and poems in The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit to be ‘an integral element in the narrative’ (p. 101) which serve ‘the purpose of social and cultural communication’. The poetry

imparts historical knowledge and is the genre for prophecies …. Furthermore, one has to consider the simple, playful joy of singing and reciting poetry, its aesthetic pleasure. But this is not the crucial point of art reception in Middle-earth. Repeatedly the text of The Lord of the Rings implies that certain forms of poetry are able to evoke vivid images and ideas in the recipient’s mind, causing an effect that is repeatedly called ‘enchantment’. [p. 103]

He cites several examples, including Frodo in the Hall of Fire, and discusses the power of song in *The Silmarillion (see *Music).

Studies of Tolkien’s alliterative verse include Carl Phelpstead, ‘Auden and the Inklings: An Alliterative Revival’, Journal of English and Germanic Philology, October 2004; Mark F. Hall, ‘The Theory and Practice of Alliterative Verse in the Works of J.R.R. Tolkien’, Mythlore 25, nos. 1/2, whole nos. 95/96 (Fall/Winter 2006); Tom Shippey, ‘Alliterative Verse by Tolkien’, J.R.R. Tolkien Encyclopedia, ed. Michael D.C. Drout (2006); and Shippey, ‘Tolkien’s Development as a Writer of Alliterative Poetry in Modern English’, Lembas Extra 2009: Tolkien in Poetry and Song (2009).

On Tolkien’s poetry not in English, see further, Tom Shippey, ‘Poems by Tolkien in Other Languages’, in J.R.R. Tolkien Encyclopedia, ed. Michael D.C. Drout (2006); and Maria Artamanova, ‘Tolkien’s Writings in Old Germanic Languages’, in The Ring Goes Ever On: Proceedings of the Tolkien 2005 Conference: 50 Years of The Lord of the Rings, ed. Sarah Wells (2008).

Political thought. Tolkien’s political views on the whole were conservative, in that he supported the Conservative Party rather than the Labour Party, but also in that he wanted to conserve what was good, and not to assume that new ideas or inventions were good merely because they were new. He understood that *power could corrupt, and mistrusted those who sought it. He applauded the medieval ideal of nolo episcopari: that only the man who does not want to be a bishop is fit to be a bishop – by extension, that those who seek power are unfit to wield it. Letters he wrote to his son *Christopher during the Second World War are enlightening on all of these issues.

His feelings were undoubtedly sharpened by the situation around him (*War) – the use of machines (*Environment) leading to destruction and loss of life, incompetency and corruption, controls and restrictions – and he found some relief in writing about them. On 29 November 1943 he wrote to Christopher, with deliberate overemphasis to make his point:

My political opinions lean more and more to Anarchy (philosophically understood, meaning abolition of control not whiskered men with bombs) – or to ‘unconstitutional’ Monarchy. I would arrest anybody who uses the word State (in any sense other than the inanimate realm of England and its inhabitants, a thing that has neither power, rights nor mind); and after a chance of recantation, execute them if they remained obstinate! If we could get back to personal names, it would do a lot of good. Government is an abstract noun meaning the art and process of governing and it should be an offence to write it with a capital G or so as to refer to people. If people were in the habit of referring to ‘King George’s council, Winston [Churchill] and his gang’, it would go a long way to clearing thought, and reducing the frightful landslide into Theyocracy. Anyway the proper study of Man is anything but Man; and the most improper job of any man, even saints (who at any rate were at least unwilling to take it on), is bossing other men. Not one in a million is fit for it, and least of all those who seek the opportunity. [Letters, pp. 63–4]

In a draft letter to Michael Straight at the end of 1955 he explained: ‘I am not a “socialist” in any sense – being averse to “planning” … most of all because the “planners”, when they acquire power, become so bad …’ (Letters, p. 235). In another draft letter, to Joanna de Bortadano in April 1956, Tolkien explained his doubts about ‘democracy’ as necessarily an ideal method of government: ‘I am not a “democrat” only because “humility” and equality are spiritual principles corrupted by the attempt to mechanize and formalize them, with the result that we get not universal smallness and humility, but universal greatness and pride, till some Orc gets hold of a ring of power – and then we get and are getting slavery’ (Letters, p. 246). In other words, he could see that the ideals of democracy are all too rarely achieved. Those elected may abuse the power they gain in the interests of themselves or their friends, or for various reasons may not represent the population as a whole but only a part of it – great landowners, or those with inherited wealth or political connections.

Tolkien loved *England and applauded true patriotism, but was against any form of imperialism or colonialism, whether political or cultural. In a letter to *Christopher Wiseman on 16 November 1914, not long after the beginning of the First World War, he discussed matters that he felt to be of supreme importance, including ‘the duty of patriotism and a fierce belief in nationalism’. He concluded: ‘I am not of course a militarist. I no longer defend the Boer War! I am a more & more convinced Home Ruler …. I don’t defend “Deutschland über alles” but certainly do the Norwegian “alt for Norge” which translates itself (if I have it right?)’ (Tolkien Papers, Bodleian Library, Oxford). On 9 December 1943 he wrote to his son Christopher: ‘I love England (not Great Britain and certainly not the British Commonwealth (grr!)), and if I was of military age, I should, I fancy, be grousing away in a fighting service, and willing to go on to the bitter end …’ (Letters, p. 65). On 29 May 1945, after the end of the war in Europe but while it continued in the Far East, he wrote to Christopher: ‘As I know nothing about British or American imperialism in the Far East that does not fill me with regret and disgust, I am afraid I am not even supported by a glimmer of patriotism in this remaining war. I would not subscribe a penny to it, let alone a son, were I a free man. It can only benefit America or Russia: prob[ably] the latter’ (Letters, p. 115).

He was patriotic but not blindly so – patriotic to his country but not necessarily to its government’s policies or propaganda. He expressed this in historical terms in another letter to Christopher, on 31 July 1944:

I should have hated the Roman Empire in its day (as I do), and remained a patriotic Roman citizen, while preferring a free Gaul and seeing good in Carthaginians. Delenda est Carthago [Plutarch, ‘Carthage must be destroyed’]. We hear rather a lot of that nowadays. I was actually taught at school that that was a fine saying; and I ‘reacted’ … at once. There lies still some hope that, at least in our beloved land of England, propaganda defeats itself, and even produces the opposite effect. [Letters, p. 89]

Tolkien recognized that *good and evil are not all on one side, even if he felt that perhaps there was more evil, or more evil men, in the Second World War among the Germans and Japanese. When he read an article in a local paper ‘seriously advocating systematic exterminating of the entire German nation as the only proper course after military victory: because, if you please, they are rattlesnakes, and don’t the difference between good and evil!’ he wondered if the writer himself knew the difference, and commented to Christopher: ‘The Germans have just as much right to declare the Poles and Jews exterminable vermin, subhuman, as we have to select Germans: in other words, no right, whatever they have done. Of course there is still a difference here. The article was answered, and the answer printed’ (23–5 September 1944, Letters, p. 93). In the same letter he objected to propaganda on the BBC and in newspapers, which he supposed was produced by the Ministry of Information,

that the German troops are a motley collection of sutlers and broken men, while yet recording the bitterest defence against the finest and best equipped armies … that have ever taken the field. The English pride themselves, or used to, on ‘sportsmanship’ (which included ‘giving the devil his due’) …. But it is distressing to see the press grovelling in the gutter as low as [Nazi propagandist Joseph] Goebbels in his prime, shrieking that any German commander who holds out in a desperate situation … is a drunkard, and a besotted fanatic. [Letters, p. 93]

It has been alleged that Tolkien was not interested in current affairs, and hardly ever read a newspaper. He told Henry Resnik in an interview in 1966, however, that he and his wife took three newspapers, and ‘I read them when I’m interested. I take a strong interest in what is going on, both in the university and in the country and in the world’ (‘An Interview with Tolkien’, Niekas 18 (Spring 1967), p. 39). The sinister picture of *Númenor under the influence of Sauron in *The Lost Road (written ?1936–?1937), for instance, almost certainly reflects knowledge of the contemporary rise of Nazi Germany. This includes, as Christopher Tolkien comments,

the withdrawal of the besotted and aging king from the public view, the unexplained disappearance of people unpopular with the ‘government’, informers, prisons, torture, secrecy, fear of the night; propaganda in the form of the ‘rewriting of history’…; the multiplication of weapons of war, the purpose of which is concealed but guessed at …. The teaching of Sauron has led to the invention of ships of metal that traverse the seas without sails …; to the building of grim fortresses and unlovely towers; and to missiles that pass with a noise like thunder to strike their targets many miles away. Moreover, Númenor is seen by the young as over-populous, boring, ‘over-known’ … and this cause of discontent is used, it seems, by Sauron to further the policy of ‘imperial’ expansion and ambition that he presses on the king. When at this time my father reached back to the world of the first man to bear the name ‘Elf-friend’ he found there an image of what he most condemned and feared in his own. [*The Lost Road and Other Writings, p. 77]

That Tolkien was well aware of anti-Semitism in Nazi Germany (*Prejudice and racism) is shown by his reaction to a request by the proposed publisher of a German translation of The Hobbit, for a declaration of Tolkien’s ‘arisch’ origin. He pointed out the correct meaning of Aryan and regretted that he had no Jewish blood. In addition, Christopher Tolkien remembers *Father Vincent Reade visiting his father in Oxford not long before the Second World War and describing the maltreatment of Jews in Germany, which he had recently visited (correspondence with the authors).

In the mid-1950s Tolkien made references in letters comparing the disintegration of Frodo’s will under the influence of the Ring in *The Lord of the Rings to brainwashing, and though he did not specify, presumably to the treatment of prisoners of war in North Korea. In a draft letter to Michael Straight at the end of 1955, he said that Frodo did indeed fail at the end of his *quest, and one correspondent had said that Frodo should have been executed as a traitor. ‘Believe me, it was not until I read this that I had myself any idea how “topical” such a situation might appear …. I did not foresee that before the tale was published we should enter a dark age in which the technique of torture and disruption of personality would rival that of Mordor and the Ring and present us with the practical problem of honest men of good will broken down into apostates and traitors’ (Letters, p. 234). In a draft to Miss J. Burn on 26 July 1956 he wrote: ‘In the case of those who now issue from prison “brainwashed”, broken, or insane, praising their torturers, no such immediate deliverance is as a rule to be seen. But we can at least judge them by the will and intentions with which they entered the Sammath Naur; and not demand impossible feats of will, which could only happen in stories unconcerned with real moral and mental probability’ (Letters, p. 252).

He also objected to cultural ‘colonialism’ and the standardization that often follows, regretting the loss of diversity, including diversity of language with the spread of English:

The bigger things get the smaller and duller or flatter the globe gets. It is getting to be all one blasted little provincial suburb. When they have introduced American sanitation, morale-pep, feminism, and mass production throughout the Near East, Middle East, Far East, U.S.S.R., the Pampas, el Gran Chaco, the Danubian Basin, Equatorial Africa, Hither Further and Inner Mumbo-land, Gondhwanaland, Lhasa, and the villages of darkest Berkshire, how happy we shall be. At any rate it ought to cut down travel. There will be nowhere to go. So people will (I opine) go all the faster. Col. [Collie] Knox says ⅛ of the world’s population speaks ‘English’, and that is the biggest language group. If true, damn shame – say I. May the curse of Babel strike all their tongues till they can only say ‘baa baa’. It would mean much the same. I think I shall have to refuse to speak anything but old Mercian.

But seriously: I do find this Americo-cosmopolitanism very terrifying …. I am not really sure that its victory is going to be so much better for the world as a whole and in the long run than the victory of —— [sic]. [letter to Christopher Tolkien, 9 December 1943, Letters, p. 65]

In yet another letter to Christopher, on 31 July 1944, Tolkien wondered what the end of the war would bring, ‘but I suppose the one certain result of it all is a further growth in the great standardised amalgamations with their massproduced notions and emotions’ (Letters, p. 89).

For comment on politics and government in Tolkien’s ‘Middle-earth’ fiction (an aspect of his creation he never intended to develop fully), see, for example, William H. Stoddard, ‘Law and Institutions in the Shire’, Mythlore 18, no. 4, whole no. 70 (Autumn 1992), pp. 4–8; Alexander van de Bergh, ‘Democracy in Middle-earth: J.R.R Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings from a Socio-Political Perspective’, in Tolkien and Modernity 1, ed. Frank Weinreich and Thomas Honegger (2006); and Dominic J. Nardol, ‘Political Institutions in J.R.R. Tolkien’s Middle-earth: Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying about the Lack of Democracy’, Mythlore 33, no. 1, whole no. 125 (Fall/Winter 2014).

Poole (Dorset). Tolkien and his wife *Edith in their later years frequently visited *Bournemouth on the south coast of England. Eventually they decided to move to the area permanently. Tolkien seems to have made up his mind as soon as he saw the property at 19 Lakeside Road in nearby Poole that it was what he and Edith wanted. On 14 May 1968 he wrote to *Rayner Unwin: ‘I have discovered a very admirable and commodious bungalow in the borough of Poole (with of course a correspondingly ample price)’ (George Allen & Unwin archive, University of Reading). Their possessions were removed from *Oxford to Poole in mid-July 1968, but in Tolkien’s absence due to a leg injury in June.

In Poole the Tolkiens ‘lived in greater luxury than they had ever known, for despite the wealth from his writings, they both retained a great simplicity in the way they lived. Now, for the first time they enjoyed the comforts of central heating and a bathroom each; while Edith was as excited as a young bride at the sophistication of their new kitchen’ (*John and *Priscilla Tolkien, The Tolkien Family Album, p. 83, with photograph). There was also a sittingroom, a dining-room, a bedroom each, a room for Tolkien to use as a study, a veranda where he and Edith could sit, and a large garden; and since it was a bungalow, there were no stairs for its aged owners to negotiate. The building was plain and modern, but a private gate led to the wooded Branksome Chine, where Lord Snowdon photographed Tolkien leaning against the roots of a great tree, and down to the sea. As at Sandfield Road in Oxford, a double garage was converted into a library and office. *Joy Hill of George Allen & Unwin (*Publishers) often came to help Tolkien with his fan mail and other correspondence. His new address and telephone number were kept secret to avoid unwelcome intrusions by fans such as he had suffered in Oxford.

Tolkien lived in Poole until Edith’s death on 29 November 1971. In March 1972 he returned to Oxford. The bungalow was demolished in 2008.

Possessiveness. In Tolkien’s writings possessiveness is a major sin, and usually leads to the loss of the desired object and evil consequences.