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The empowerment of Welsh: Tolkien's The lord of rings and his concept of 'native language'
ウェールズ語に力(パワー)を! : トールキンの'native language'概念と『指輪物語』
辺見, 葉子(Henmi, Yoko)
慶應義塾大学藝文学会
2008
藝文研究 (The geibun-kenkyu : journal of arts andletters). Vol.95, (2008. 12) ,p.456(141)- 487(110)

岩松研吉郎教授高宮利行教授退任記念論文集
Journal Article
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The Empowerment of Welsh: 1
Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings
and his Concept of 'native language'

YokoHEMMI

1. The mystery of the Elvish-speaking Hobbits
In The Two Towers, 2 in the all-engulfing darkness of Shelob' s lair,
Sam the Hobbit was faced with a giant spider, Shelob, who was about tocrush and sting him to death. He was alone; he thought his master Frodo
was dead, lying cocoon-like beside him bound entirely in Shelob's
thread. Sam was however inspired to seek the Phial of Galadriel andwhen he muttered the name of the Elf-Queen, he recalled the Elvish songpraising the goddess Elbereth which he had heard twice in the past.
Once he invoked the name of Elbereth, 'his tongue loosed and his voice
cried in a language which he did not know (emphasis added):

A Elbereth Gilthoniel
o menel palan-diriel,
le nallon sf di'nguruthos!
A trio nin, Fanuilos! (The Two Towers, pp. 338-39; emphasis

added)The language was Sindarin Elvish. 3
How could it be possible for a Hobbit, Sam, to speak a whole stanza
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of a hymn in a language which he was totally ignorant of? Tolkien
seemingly tries to offer a 'rational' explanation by mentioning Sam' s
previous two experiences of hearing the song, but in fact it hardly suffices as an explanation because Tolkien stated clearly that Sam had nopractical knowledge of the Elven-tongue when he heard the song in thewoods (The Fellowship of the Ring, p. 88), 4 and that he was fast asleep
when the song was again heard in the hall of Elrond (The Fellowship of
the Ring, p. 250). What makes Tolkien's explanation even less con-vincing is the fact that Sam made considerable changes to the wordingof the hymn in his own version.
The Elves' original version runs as follows:

A Elbereth Gilthoniel,
silivren penna m{riel,o menel aglar elenath!
Na-chaered palan-d{rielo galadhremmin ennorath,
Fanuilos, le linnathon
nef aear, s{ nef aearon!
(The Fellowship of the Ring, p. 250; emphasis added)

Tolkien left both Sam's and Elves' versions untranslated in The
Lord of the Rings, but he provided English translations for both four-teen years later in 'Notes and Translations' included in The Road Goes
Ever On. 6 Here, Sam's version is translated as: '0! Queen who kindledstar on star, white-robed from heaven gazing far, here overwhelmed indread of Death I cry: 0 guard me, Elbereth!'. The Elves' version on theother hand is translated as: '0! Elbereth who lit the stars, from glittering crystal slanting falls with light like jewels from heaven on high the
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glory of the starry host. To lands remote I have looked afar, and now tothee, Fanuilos, bright spirit clothed in ever-white, I here will sing
beyond the Sea, beyond the wide and sundering Sea' (emphasis added).
It is clear that Sam' s version reflects his predicament as indicated in

the underlined phrase, whereas the Elves' version mirrors the longing
peculiar to them for the Undying Lands beyond the Sea. Why did
Tolkien endow Sam, who had no knowledge of Sindarin, with an ability
to arrange the words to meet his impending needs?
We must take Frodo's invocation in Elvish into consideration as
well. It was again the star-glass given by Galadriel that induced theElvish speech, this time in Quenya, a kind of 'Elven-latin', with which
Frodo was even less familiar than with Sindarin. Tolkien describes thispeculiar moment as follows:'Aiya Eiirendel Elenion Ancalima! he cried and knew not what hehad spoken; for it seemed that another voice spoke through his,clear, untroubled by the foul air of the pit. (The Two Towers, p.
329; emphasis added)

Tolkien left it untranslated, but he later rendered the Quenya phrase as'hail Earendil brightest of Stars' .7 It is noted that Tolkien states in bothinstances that neither Sam nor Frodo knew the meaning of their words.
However, both invocations bear such religious overtones that the reader
is left with a vague impression that invocations in the totally unknown
languages might have been made possible by some mysterious religious inspiration 'in moments of extreme peril' .8 This may be what
Tolkien seems to suggest, if only partly, by describing that, to Frodo,'it seemed that another voice spoke through his'. Though Tolkien
chose to present this as some oracular moment in The Lord of the
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Rings, it is hard to believe that he, who took trouble to prepare detailed

etymological comments on the word 'hobbit' which he once scribbled
on a blank page of some school exam paper, did not have certain 'linguistic' grounds to justify this. 9 Tolkien himself acknowledged that'there is a great deal of linguistic matter (other than actually "elvish"
names and words) included or mythologically expressed in the book'and that The Lord of the Rings was to him 'largely an essay in "linguistic aesthetic"' (Letters, p. 220).
The present paper attempts first to demonstrate that the mystery ofElvish-speaking Hob bits can be explained as part of 'a great deal of linguistic matter mythologically expressed' in The Lord of the Rings. I
would like to suggest that the linguistic matter here in question is his
concept of the 'native language', expounded in the lecture 'English andWelsh' .10 The concept of the 'native language' itself concerns the languages of the Primary World, English and Welsh. However, it will beapparent that Tolkien did pursue, in constructing the linguistic Secondary World, what he called an 'unexplored desire' to go home to thenative language ('English and Welsh', p. 194). By studying the historyof the languages of Middle-earth together with Tolkien's 'native language' concept, we can further discern that in his Secondary World, thelanguage-power relationship between English, which has establishedhegemony in the Primary World, and Welsh, which has been driven to
the political and geographical periphery of Britain, is in fact totally
inverted.

2. British: the indigenous, ancient, and once dominant language of Britain
Tolkien delivered a lecture titled 'English and Welsh' as the first of
the O'Donnell Lecture Series in Oxford. It was on 21 October 1955,
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incidentally the day after The Return of the King, the final part of The
Lord of the Rings, was published. At the beginning of the lecture,
Tolkien referred to The Lord of the Rings as 'a large "work" [... ] whichcontains, in the way of presentation that I find most natural, much ofwhat I personally have received from the study of things Celtic' ('English and Welsh', p. 162; emphasis added). We can assume that 'things
Celtic' in the particular context of this lecture signifies 'Welsh', and'British', the ancestor language of Welsh.u Although he did not clarify
the relationship between 'things Celtic' and The Lord of the Ring in thelecture, he did so in a footnote provided in a later published version ofit. He informed us that 'the names of persons and places in this story
were mainly composed on patterns deliberately modelled on those of
Welsh (closely similar but not identical)' ('English and Welsh', p.
197). In other words, the names of persons and places in The Lord of theRings are in Sindarin Elvish, one of the two Elvish languages devisedby him, which was 'in fact constructed deliberately to resemble Welsh
phonologically' (Letters, p. 219).
As we will see below, Sindarin (Ilkorin /Beleriandic), which is
closely associated with Welsh, is a later development and virtuallyindigenous to Middle-earth. In contrast, the Quenya (Valarin) is anancient tongue developed in the Blessed Realm, beyond the Sea. Quenya
is based on Latin and is transcribed into a spelling closely resemblingthat of Latin. It is composed with two other main elements, that is,
Finnish and Greek. 12 Tolkien asserts that Sindarin is constructed to havea relation to Quenya 'similar to that existing between British [... ] andLatin' (Letters, p. 219). That is to say, the two Elvish languages,
Quenya and Sindarin, share their roots just as Latin and British have
Proto-Indo-European as their common origin.
First of all, we may need to clarify Tolkien' s usage of the term
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'British', which is strictly linguistic and therefore at variance with general usage. Tolkien's usage basically accords with the first definitions,la and 1b of the OED:

l.a. Of or pertaining to the ancient Britons. Now chiefly in ethnological and archrelogical use.
b . Of or pertaining to the Celtic (Brythonic) languages of theancient Britons; later, =Welsh, occas. Cornish. Also as n.

Tolkien's own usage seems even more linguistically precise; we may
assume it agrees with the definition given by his contemporary, Celtic
linguist Kenneth H. J ackson, whose work Tolkien mentioned in hisnotes added in 1963Y Tolkien most probably based his definition of
the term 'British' on that of Jackson's, proposed in his Language andHistory of Early Britain, published in 1953, two years prior to
Tolkien's lecture. Jackson uses 'British' as 'a general term for the Brittonic language from the time of the oldest Greek information about it(derived from Pytheas of Marseilles, c. 325 B.C.) down to the subRoman period in the fifth century and on into the sixth'. 14 He further
distinguishes between 'Early British, during the Roman occupation andas far as the coming of the Saxons in the middle of the fifth century' and'Late British, from that time until and including the earlier half of thesixth century' (p. 4). According to Jackson's linguistic classification,
therefore, British is the ancient language, while Welsh, Cornish andBreton, its offshoots, are the 'Neo-Brittonic' tongues and therefore'mediaeval' (p. 5).
This differs considerably from the general usage of the term
'British' today: 'Of or belonging to Great Britain, or its inhabitants'( OED 2a). The OED explains that in earlier times it was only a geo-482-(115)

graphical term adopted from the Latin Brittannia, 'the island of Britain'
but 'from the time of Henry VIII frequently used to include English andScotch', and it was 'in general use in this sense from the accession ofJames I [1603]'. At present, it is used mainly in 'political or imperial
connexion, as the British army, British colonies, British India, etc.'.
Tolkien denounces this as 'the misuse of British', brought about by 'themaleficent interference of the Government with the usual object of governments: uniformity' ('English and Welsh', p. 182).
To Tolkien it bears great significance that 'British' is the 'ancientlanguage' of Britain. 15 He draws our attention to the fact that 'there is noevidence at all for the survival in the areas which we now call Englandand Wales of any pre-Celtic speech' (p. 171). British therefore comprises the oldest language stratum in the isle of Britain. It was also adominant language: by the first century A.D., the whole of Britain
south of the Forth-Clyde line shared a British civilization, 'which so far
as language goes formed a single linguistic province from Dumbarton
and Edinburgh to Cornwall and Kent' (p. 174). <See Figure 1.>
Tolkien emphasizes the fact that British is an 'old' tongue in
Britain, and that it has become 'acclimatized to and naturalized in
Britain' (p. 177). British, he says, thus 'had become already virtually"indigenous" when English first came to disturb its possession' (p.
177). This view of British is applied to Welsh, its descendant, as well.
He also places great importance on the fact that he receives strong aesthetic pleasure when in contact with Welsh, heard or read. He assertsthat he feels pleasure in 'the phonetic elements of a language' and in'the style of their patterns', and then in a higher dimension, in 'theassociation of these word-forms with meanings' (p. 190). Tolkien
declares that for himself two things are important: 'Welsh is of thissoil, this island, the senior language of men of Britain; and Welsh is
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beautiful ' (p. 189). Though .he admits that it is impossible to analyse
the pleasure that makes one feel a language is beautiful, for Tolkien, it
apparently cannot be separated from its being indigenous and old .

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Figure 1: 'Britain AD 300-550', from John Haywood, The Historical Atlas of the
Celtic World (London: Thames & Hudson, 2001), p. 89 emphasis added- 480 -

(1 17)

3. British-Welsh as the 'native language'
Based on this view of British-Welsh, Tolkien proposes an extremely unique concept of 'British-Welsh' as a 'native language' of the people of Britain, including himself, an Englishman. According to Tolkien,
one's native language is not 'the first-learned language, the language ofcustom' but it is an individual's 'inherent linguistic predilections' (p.
19 0) .16 He tries to explain the strong aesthetic pleasure he perceives
when in contact with Welsh: 'this pleasure is quite distinct from the practical knowledge of a language, and not the same as an analytic understanding of its structure. It is simpler, deeper-rooted, and yet more
immediate than the enjoyment of literature' (p. 190). Since his childhood he had found pleasure in various second-learned languages: Latin,
Greek, Spanish, Gothic and Finnish. However, it was Welsh that pierced
his linguistic heart (pp. 191-92). Moreover, he claims that his pleasurein the Welsh linguistic style is not peculiar to himself among the English, rather it may be present in many who live in England speaking
English, though it lies dormant, buried, unnoticed. 17 Therefore, it may be
stirred, for example, by 'contacts with the names in Arthurian romancethat echo faintly the Celtic patterns of their origin', and he believes that'it may with more opportunity become vividly aware' (p. 194).
Tolkien cites The Lord of the Rings in evidence: as the names of
persons and places in the story were mainly composed on patterns
deliberately modelled on those of Welsh, this element in The Lord of
the Rings, he believes, 'has given more pleasure to more readers thananything else in it' (p. 197, n. 33). 18 He asserts that 'for many of us it[Welsh] rings a bell, or rather it stirs deep harp-strings in our linguistic
nature. In other words: for satisfaction and therefore for delight -andnot for imperial policy -we are still "British" at heart. It is the native
language to which in unexplored desire we would still go home' (p.
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194). Tolkien here says 'in unexplored desire' but we might assume thatwhat he attempted in The Lord of the Rings was to explore that very
desire to go home to the native language.

4. In search of the 'native language'- the 'dominant' languagesof Middle-earth
Now let us examine how Tolkien explored that hitherto 'unexploreddesire' in The Lord of the Rings. First of all, we need to discern the'native language' of the Westron-speaking peoples of Middle-earth. If
we were to apply Tolkien's 'native language' concept to his Secondary
World, 1) the 'native language' in Middle-earth must be as ancient andindigenous a tongue as British was in Britain, 2) it must be a language
once dominant in Middle-earth as British once was in Britain, and 3) itmust bring the strong aesthetic pleasure, quite distinct from the practical knowledge of a language, as British-Welsh did to Tolkien. Obviously it would be the tongues of the Elves that can fulfill all threerequirements but that is to be proved by probing the history of theselanguages. In that process, we would also be able to perceive how
Tolkien delineated the power relationship among the Elvish, Westronand other tongues of Men in the Secondary W orld.2°(i) The history of the Elvish languages
Tolkien left three versions of the work called the Lhammas in which
he described the evolution of the Elvish languages and their offshoots:
Lhammas A, Lhammas B and Lammasethen. 21 There are also three versions of 'The Tree of Tongues' accompanying the Lhammas texts. As isevident from the varying features among the three versions, Tolkien's
creation of the Elvish languages is characterized, as pointed out by
Christopher Tolkien and by Hostetter, by its unceasingly changing
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nature, and thus it would be erroneous to assume any final or complete
forms. 23 However, all versions here accord as regards the origin ofElvish: it derives from the speech of the V alar, the gods. As the table of'The Peoples of the Elves' (Figure 2) and its later form (Figure 3)
show, 24 there occurred divisions among the Elves, with possible allu-

Figure 2: 'The People of the Elves' from The Lost Road, p. 197
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MORIQYENDI'El~s oF thr Ocu·-k;,ness •('t.hc.y n~v.u- SP.w lite LJhl: of the~Figure 3: 'The Sundering of the Elves and some of the names given to their divisions' from The Silmarillion, p. 309
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sions to the 'orders', so to speak, according to their graded levels of
proximity to the Light of the Two Trees of Valinor (the Blessed Realm).
Those who answered the summons of the V alar to come to Valinor anddeparted to join the Great Journey are the Eldar, whereas those who
refused to join the Great Journey are called Lembi (Avari, in later form).
The Bliss of Valinor is symbolized in the Light of the Trees and the differentiation between the Eldar and the Lembi/A vari came from the factthat the former were willing to seek the Light whereas the latter were
unwilling to do so: the religious implication is inevitable. Among the
Eldar, there is further division: those who came to Valinor and actually
saw the Light of the Two Trees are 'Light-elves' or 'High Elves', while
those who departed but did not reach Valinor and therefore never saw theLight of the Trees are 'Dark-elves' .25 The Sindar/Ilkorindi are counted
among the Eldar but as they remained in Middle-earth, they are Darkelves, grouped together with the Lembi/Avari. The Grey-elves (the Sindar) were, however, associated with the Light indirectly through Thingol,
their king, who was one of the Light-elves (The Silmarillion, p. 56) andalso through his Queen, Melian, whose face mirrored the Light of V alinor(The Silmarillion, p. 58). Some of the High Elves who saw the Light

returned to Middle-earth afterwards in exile and they, in turn, came to represent the Light of the Trees of Valinor. They were thus regarded as thenoblest, the most powerful and the wisest of all the peoples of Middleearth.
The language the High Elves developed in Aman is Quenya. 26 1t was
brought to Middle-earth by the Exiled High Elves. Galadriel, who ruled
the Elven realm of Lothl6rien and sang a 'lament' in Quenya (The Fellowship of the Ring, p. 394), was one of them and was regarded as thenoblest of all. Quenya was used 'for ceremony, and for high matters oflore and song, by the High Elves' ('Appendix F', p. 406). Sindarin (or
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Ilkorin in the Lhammas A and B, Beleriandic in the Lammasethen) on
the other hand was developed wholly in Middle-earth. Sindarin and
Quenya were originally related but Sindarin was the language that was'indigenous' and 'old' in Middle-earth. As the Exiled High Elvesadopted Sindarin for daily use, 27 it became a dominant tongue, used by
all the Elves who appear in The Lord of the Rings and also by mortals
who were Elf-friends.
Among the numerous Elvish tongues in the 'Tree of Tongues'; Danian,
the language of the Green-elves, is important because Taliska, theancestor language of W estron, came from Danian. Danian is peculiar inthat it is presented in all three versions of 'Tree of Tongues' as branching from the Quendian line of descent between Lemberin and Eldarin. 28(ii) The history of the Westron, Common Speech

Taliska29 was the language of the Edain, Men of the Three Houses ofElf-friends. When an Exiled High Elf, Finrod Felagund, encounteredsome of the Edain, Beor and his folk, Felagund discovered that he could
interpret their language easily because 'the languages of the Quendi[Elves] were of one origin, the language of Beor and his folk resembled
the Elven-tongue in many words and devices' (The Silmarillion, p. 141).
From Taliska came the 'tongues of Western Men'. 3° Chief among them
was the common tongue of Numenor, called AdunaicY Numenoreans, theKings of Men, whom the Elves called the Dunedain, also used Sindarin
widely, while they revered Quenya and used it for names of both places
and men. Adunaic was spoken on the western coast of Middle-earth
where the Numenoreans maintained forts and havens, and there it
evolved into a Common Speech, mingled with the kindred languages ofWestern Men. After the Downfall of Numenor, the survivors went backto Middle-earth and as Tolkien explains in 'Appendix F', while they
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adopted the Common Speech, Westron, 32 for daily usage, 'they enlarged
the language and enriched it with many words drawn from the Elventongues' (p. 407). Subsequently this ennobled Westron became so dominant a language in Middle-earth that it was used even by their enemies.
Although Sindarin and Quenya came to be known and used by fewer andfewer people over time, Gondor could still be regarded as rich in Elvish
tradition because 'the names of nearly all places and persons in therealm of Gondor were of Elvish form and meaning' (p. 407).
As Westron is of Elvish origin and its history thus interwoven withSindarin and Quenya, we may safely infer that Tolkien regarded Elvish,
especially Sindarin, which was indigenous and once dominant in Middleearth, as the 'native language' of the speakers of Westron. It must be
ascertained finally by examining the Westron speakers' reaction to the'native language', whether Elvish brings a strong aesthetic pleasure,quite distinct from the practical knowledge of the language.

(iii) The 'native language' comes to expression
Tolkien was aware that 'our native language comes seldom toexpression' ('English and Welsh', p. 190), but in the following two
scenes in The Lord of the Rings he seems to have depicted those veryrare moments, giving proof of the fact that Elvish, in these two cases
Sindarin, was indeed the 'native language' of the Westron-speaking
Hobbits:

The singing drew nearer. One clear voice rose now above the others. It was singing in the fair elven-tongue, of which Frodo knew
only a little, and the others knew nothing. Yet the sound blending with the melody seemed to shape itself in their thought intowords which they only partly understood. (The Fellowship of the
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Ring, p. 88)

Frodo heard the song again in the hall of Elrond while Sam was fastasleep beside him:

At first the beauty of the melodies and of the interwoven words inelven-tongues, even though he understood them little, held him
in a spell, as soon as he began to attend to them. Almost it
seemed that the words took shape, and visions of far lands andbright things that he had never yet imagined opened out before
him; and the firelit hall became like a golden mist above seas offoam that sighed upon the margins of the world. (The Fellowshipof the Ring, p. 245)

It seems as if the meaning of the Sindarin words could be transmitted via

channels other than by an actual knowledge of the words, and thisagrees with Tolkien's claim that the pleasure he perceives when in contact with Welsh, the 'native language', is 'distinct from the practicalknowledge of a language' and that it is 'simpler, deeper-rooted, and yet
more immediate' ('English and Welsh', p. 190).
We can now see why Tolkien made Sam speak a stanza of a hymn in
Sindarin: for Tolkien, it was a mythological expression of an important
linguistic concept of the 'native language'. As for Frodo's invocationin Quenya, Tolkien's reasoning must have been that although Quenya isneither 'indigenous' nor 'dominant' in Middle-earth, its influence on
the evolution of Westron, and its shared origin with Sindarin, provide
plausible linguistic grounds for Frodo, who is learned enough to know alittle Sindarin, to utter a phrase of Quenya, an Elven-latin.

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5. Reflections of the language relationship of the Primary World(i) The 'minor' languages of Men
There exist other tongues of Men derived from Taliska, but developed separately and distinctly from AdG.naic. As their languages wereoriginally related to AdG.naic, however, they preserved a likeness toWestron ('Appendix F', p. 407). The Men of the Long Lake and of Dale,
whom we encounter in The Hobbit, and the Rohirrim, Men of Rohan,
are among them. While Westron was 'translated' into Modern English,
Tolkien selected Old Icelandic for the words of the Men of the Long
Lake and of Dale, and Old English for the tongue of the Rohirrim. 33 The
linguistic relationship between the Germanic languages of the PrimaryWorld is thus reflected in the languages of Men in the Secondary W orld?4(ii) The languages of 'Swarthy men' 35 or 'Wild Men'

There are, moreover, Wild Men who learned language from theLembi/Avari who themselves were unwilling to seek the Light of the
Two Trees in Valinor. The Lembi are counted as Dark Elves and also
called Silvan Elves because they lived in forests or mountains. It isfrom their language, Lembian, that the 'manifold tongues of Men',
except those of the Men of the West, are derived (The Lhammas, p.
17 6). In the 'Tree of Tongues' illustrating the Lammasethen, their languages are called 'tongues of Swarthy men' (The Lammasethen, p. 196).
The term 'tongues of Swarthy men' here seems to be used generically toindicate the various languages of Wild Men. This usage, besides its perhaps racist connotation, is problematic because it does not accord with
Tolkien' s usages of the term in some other texts, which in turn arethemselves inconsistent and thus cause further confusion.
Tolkien used the terms 'Swarthy Men' and 'Swertings' to denote different peoples, although the etymologies seemingly point to the corn-472-(125)

mon origin of the peoples: 'swart' and 'swert' are both derived from Old
English 'sweart', the latter being a spelling variation of the former. 36 In
the accounts of the First Age, Tolkien used the term 'Swarthy Men'
specifically to denote the Easterlings whom the Edain encountered,
whereas in The Lord of the Rings, the term 'Swertings' is the Hobbits'
appellative of the Haradrim (The Two Towers, p. 255). The 'Swarthy
Men' of the First Age are described as 'short and broad, long and strong
in the arm', with their skins 'swart or sallow', their hair and eyes 'dark'(The Silmarillion, p. 157). These First-Age Easterlings or 'Swarthy
Men' are probably akin to the Easterlings who periodically attacked
Gondor in the Third Age, and are described as 'not tall, but broad andgrim, bearded like dwarves, wielding great axes' (The Return of theKing, p. 95). It is argued that they are partly based on historical andlegendary images of the Huns. 37
The 'Swertings' of the Third Age, on the other hand, have 'dark
faces', 'black eyes, and long black hair, and gold rings in their ears' andsome have 'red paint on their cheeks, and red cloaks' and they fightmounted on oliphaunts (The Two Towers, pp. 254-55). These elements,
together with the Sindarin term 'Haradrim' ('south-people'), imply that
Tolkien' s images of these 'Southrons' reflect those of the peoples of
the Near East, India, and above all, Africa. 38 McFadden pointed out that
Tolkien depicted his 'Swertings' based on the images he acquired fromhis reading of Latin and Old English descriptions of the Sigelwara, or
the Ethiopians. 39 Tolkien's depictions of ethnic 'others' apparently
reveals a racism shared by his contemporaries, 40 but they are at the sametime accurate reflections of the medieval European views of Africa andits people, with which Tolkien was well acquainted. 41
We can discern from Tolkien's application of the term 'Swarthy
men' to Wild Men collectively that swarthiness for him was the defin(126)-471-

ing and symbolic characteristic of Wild Men. They are regarded as 'dark'
not only in their physical appearance but also in a 'religious' sense,
being distant from the 'Light'. Faramir explained to Frodo that there arethree kinds of Men: the High (Men of the West, Numenoreans), Middle(Men of the Twilight), and Wild (Men of Darkness) (The Two Towers, p.
287). Wild Men or Men of Darkness are associated with evil, being
unvaryingly in the service of the Dark Power; Morgoth in the First Ageand Sauron in the Second and the Third Ages. 42 It should be noted that asinister Bree-lander is described as 'swarthy', and he, together with a'squint-eyed southerner', seems to work as a spy for Mordor (The Fellowship of the Ring, p. 172).

(iii) The language of the 'wild men of the hills': the Dunlendish
The languages of 'Swarthy men' are associated with various layersof 'darkness' in the Lhammas: these Men learned 'wholly or in part of
the Ores and of the Dwarves' (The Lhammas, p. 179). Among these languages, only two are referred to in 'Appendix F' to The Lord of theRings: the speech of the Wild Men of Druadan Forest and that of theDunlendings. About the former, however, nothing is said beyond its
being 'wholly alien' (p. 407), which implies that they learned whollyof the Ores and of the Dwarves. The Dunlendish, a language of the Dunlendings, which is given greater importance as we will see below, is
described as 'wholly alien or only remotely akin' to the Westron' (p.
407).
The speech of the 'wild hillmen and herd-folk of Dunland' (The Two
Towers, p. 132) sounds, to the ears of Earner, a prince of Rohan, like'the scream of birds and the bellowing of beasts' (p. 142). However,
Gamling, who knows that tongue, explains that 'it is an ancient speechof men, and once spoken in many western valleys of the Mark' (p.
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142). The Dunlendings were a remnant of the peoples that had dwelt inthe vales of the White Mountain, and they are a 'secret folk, unfriendly
to the Dunedain, hating the Rohirrim' ('Appendix F', p. 408). These'wild hillmen' are described, not surprisingly, as 'swarthy' ('Appendix
F', p. 408).
Outside of Dunland, their language survives only as remnants in thelanguages of the Men of Bree, and of the Hobbits of the Southern
Stoors. The Bree-landers had roots in Dunland and are described as'brown-haired, broad, and rather short, cheerful and independent' (The
Fellowship of the Ring, p. 161). They were descended from those who

had moved to the empty lands as far north as the Barrow-downs, theancient landscape marked with standing stones and burial mounds, andhaunted by barrow-wights. In other words, they represent a primitive
branch among the tongues of Men that survive as 'relics' on the wildest
and darkest periphery.
The Hobbits of the Southern Stoors adopted Dunlendish while they
lived in Dunland before their emigration to the Shire. 43 Remnants ofDunlendish are therefore found in the names of Buckland and the Marish,44 where the Southern Stoors settled down.

(iv) The 'survival' of Celtic elements in England: Dunlendish andBritishTolkien argues that 'since the survival of the older language of theStoors and the Bree-men resembled the survival of Celtic [i.e. BritishWelsh] elements in England', he has sometimes imitated the latter in
his translation ('Appendix F', pp. 413-14). For instance, Gorhendad,the first name of Gorhendad Oldbuck, is a Welsh word meaning 'greatgrandfather' .45 He modelled Bree-land names such as Bree, Combe(Coomb), Archet and Chetwood on relics of British nomenclature, that
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is, on Modern Welsh bre 'hill', cwm 'narrow valley' and coed 'wood'('Appendix F', pp. 413-14). According to Jackson's Language and History in Early Britain, all these can be traced back to British and went

through the following changes:
British *brigii > Late British *bre3a > Welsh/Cornish/Breton bre(p. 445)

British *cumbo- >Primitive Welsh *cumb >Welsh cum 46 (p. 510)
British *caito-, later *c?to- > Primitive Welsh *c?d > Welsh
coed (p. 327)

These 'Celtic' elements survive in Modern place-names in England, in
the Primary World: the British element *bre3 is found in 'Bredon' in
Worcestershire; this is *bre 3 hill' + explanatory Old English diin'hill' .47 Brewood in Staffordshire has British *bre 3 + Old English wudu
'wood' .48 Chetwode in Buckinghamshire has Primitive Welsh *c?d +Old English wudu. 49 There was an Anglo-Saxon place-name Archet in
Dorset, which can be traced back to Primitive Welsh *Arg?d but now
the British element has been erased and becomes East Orchard (Jackson,
p. 327).
It is intriguing that Tolkien used actual words of British origin torepresent Dunlendish, one of the 'tongues of Wild Men', the traces ofwhich barely survive in the time of The Lord of the Rings, while he used
Modern English to represent Westron, 50 one of the 'tongues of Western
Men', which, by contrast, has become the Common Speech of Middleearth. Here, the linguistic power relationship in the Primary World
between British-Welsh and English is reflected directly in the Secondary World. It is surmised that Tolkien used invented language,
Elvish, modelled on Welsh phonologically, to express his desired version of the linguistic power relationship between British and English.

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(v) British-Welsh in the Primary World

It is manifest that in the Primary World of Britain in the past,
British was, as Figure 1 shows, a dominant language. Tolkien values
British greatly as the 'native language' of the peoples of Britain, butthere survives no substantial literature written in British. Y Gododdin,
attributed to the poet Aneirin, is one of the earliest poems but the language is either Old or Early medieval Welsh, not British. However, Y
Gododdin is considered to mirror the heroic ethos of ancient British
society. Ironically, though, it is a poem about their loss of sovereignty
over Britain; it is an elegy for the warriors of the British kingdom of
Gododdin, 51 killed in battle against the Saxons in c. 600. The poem ispreserved in only one manuscript, Llyfr Aneirin (the Book of Aneirin),
dated c. 1250 or in the second half of the thirteenth century. 52
With the possible exceptions of poets like Aneirin and Taliesin,
who allegedly described the continued British tradition first hand, there
exists no primary text concerning the Britons. Because tales about
them were related by outsiders, often by conquerors, they were loadedwith prejudiced images of 'otherness' or 'darkness'. The description of
British women, with wild-hair and brandishing torches, whom the
Romans encountered on their invasion of the Druid sanctuary of Mona
is a typical example. 53 Here we may detect the germ of a stereotype, termed the 'Visionary Celt' by Sims-Williams, 54 which was to be expanded
by Ern est Renan and Matthew Arnold in the nineteenth century.
Tolkien's depiction of the 'Wild Men' and their language, however,reminds us rather of the 'hard' primitivism of John Aubrey's seventeenth-century view on the Ancient Britons that depicted a savage orbarbarian people in an unfavourable and unromanticised light. 55 It caneasily shift to 'soft' primitivism, which portrayed the Ancient Britons
as the Nob le Savage, and as Sims-Williams observes, racial antitheses
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survive even the reversal of their polarity. 56 Tolkien himself was wellaware of the fallacy of such racial myths and he rebuked the problems of
Celticism 57 in 'English and Welsh' (pp. 170-73). By comparing theremnants of the tongues of 'Wild Men' with the survival of British elements in England, and by endowing the Dunlendings and their descendants with images reminiscent of the Ancient Britons, Tolkien may betranslating the problems of Celticism in the Primary World into his
Secondary W odd.

6. The Empowerment of Welsh
In Tolkien' s Secondary World, the stories preceding the time of The
Lord of the Rings, that is, The Silmarillion and other legends, are written from the Elvish point of view. They are therefore free from the misguided conceptions about the Elves/fairies, which, Tolkien laments,
abound in the Primary World. 58 Tolkien directs attention to the fact that
The Silmarillion is peculiar and differs from all similar things that heknows in not being anthropocentric (Letters, p. 147). In fact, hedeclares that 'the "stories" were made rather to provide a world for the
languages than the reverse' and that he 'should have preferred to write in"Elvish"' (Letters, p. 219).
In the 'present' in Tolkien's Secondary World, that is, the time of
The Lord of the Rings, it seems that, at first glance and at least as far as
the prevalence of languages is concerned, W estron, the tongue of Men,has already become dominant. With the destruction of the Ring, the Ageof the Elves is ended and the new Dominion of Men begins. However,the new era is blessed with the marriage of Aragorn the mortal andArwen the Elf, 'inheriting all that can be transmitted of Elfdom'(Letters, p. 160). 59 The Lord of the Rings, in contrast to The Silmarillion, is written mostly from Hobbits' point of view, but the Elves' per- 466-

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spective does exist and there are a considerable amount of references tothe Elder Days, especially to the Light of the Trees, embedded throughout the stories as items symbolizing 'Hope': the Phial of Galadriel,
Earendil's Star, the White Tree, and so on.
The power relationship in Tolkien's Secondary World is determined,
as we have observed above, according to proximity to the Light of the
Two Trees of the Blessed Realm. The High Elves are therefore the mostpowerful and the noblest among the Elves, and the Phial of Galadriel,which contains the Light, 60 proves to be the most powerful weapon
against Shelob. Elvish languages are deemed 'powerful' because of theirassociation with the Light; directly in the case of Quenya, indirectly inthe case of Sindarin, even more indirectly in the case of Danian, which is
the immediate origin of W estron, and only remotely in the case ofLembian, from which the tongues of Middle-earth such as Dunlendish
and other minor Wild Men's tongues were derived. In this language
landscape of Middle-earth, Elvish dominates as the most 'powerful'. Wemight call this the 'empowerment' of Elvish.
Finally, if we turn to the 'present' in the Primary World, British
civilization, which once covered the whole of Britain south of theForth-Clyde line, has receded to the western-most periphery of Britain. 61<See Figure 4.> As regard the area where actual speakers of Welsh survive, the domain further dwindles. <See Figure 5.> English hegemony
was long since established in the Primary World and the British-Welsh
elements have survived only as fragmented relics in English. In the Primary World, where the power relationship is decided according to value
judgement based on elements such as numbers, political influence andphysical dominance, Welsh as a minor language is considered as disempowered. Tolkien, by regarding Welsh as the 'native language' of thepeoples of Britain, declaring 'we are still British at heart', restored the
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dominance British once enjoyed. However, the 'native language' it may
well be, yet it lies dormant and unnoticed, unless 'stirred' by chance. By
stark contrast, Elvish, the 'native language' of the peoples of Middleearth, is presented as 'powerful'. In Tolkien' s Secondary World, a different value system is at work; the power relationship is determined by theproximity to the Light of the Blessed Realm. Tolkien has empowered

Figure 4: 'The C~ltic countries' , from Haywood, Historical Atla, 139 emphasis added

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Welsh as a language by modelling Sindarin Elvish, a 'powerful' language, on Welsh. The Westron, represented by Modern English, is anoffshoot of an Elven-tongue which is much less 'powerful' than Sindarin. Tolkien thus inverted the power relationship between English
and Welsh in his Secondary World version of the history of English.

Figure 5: 'The Celtic-speaking areas', from Haywood, Historical Atlas, 137 emphasis added

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NOTES

The present paper is based on one read at the 18th Biennial Congress of
IRSCL, in August 2007. I owe special thanks to Professor Nicholas Henck of
Keio University for proofreading.
2

J. R. R. Tolkien, The Two Towers (London: George Alien & Unwin, 1954,
1978).

3

There is a vast amount of scholarship on the languages invented by Tolkien,
which is impossible to refer to in the limited space of this article. For a very
thorough and detailed survey on the history of Tolkienian Linguistics, seeCarl F. Hostter, 'Tolkienian Linguistics: The First Fifty Years', in Tolkien

Studies, 4 (2007), 1-46. As for resources for Tolkienian Linguistics see<http://www.elvish.org/resources.html>. See also 'Carl F. Hostetter: A
Checklist', compiled by Douglas A. Anderson, in Tolkien Studies, 4 (2007),
47-50. As for Tolkien's writings in and concerning his invented languages,
see 'Elvish compositions and grammars', in J. R. R. Tolkien Encyclopedia:

Scholarship and Critical Assessment, ed. by Michael D. C. Drout (New York:
Routledge, 2007), pp. 155-59. See also 'Languages invented by Tolkien' inibid., pp. 332-44.
4

J. R. R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring (London: George Alien &Unwin, 1954, 1980).

5

Shippey calls this Tolkien's 'major linguistic heresy' and annotates as follows: 'he [Tolkien] thought that people could feel history in words, could recognize language "styles", could extract sense (of sorts) from sound alone,
could moreover make aesthetic judgements based on phonology. [... ] Heclearly believes that untranslated elvish would do a job that English could
not.' Tom Shippey, The Road to Middle-earth (London: George Alien &Unwin, 1982; rev.edn, London: Harper Collins, 2005), p. 130.

6

J. R. R. Tolkien, The Road Goes On: A Song Cycle (London: George Alien &7

J. R. R. Tolkien, The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien, ed. by Humphrey Carpenter

Unwin, 1968, 1978), pp. 63-75 (p. 72).
(London: George Alien & Unwin, 1981), p. 385. Frodo may not have known,
but it was actually a very appropriate invocation inspired by the star-glass,which was filled with the light of Earendil's star, that is, a Silmaril. It is as if
Frodo shared the experience of the people of the Middle-earth at the end of
the First Age, thousands of years before, when the Earendil' s star was firstseen: 'Now when first Vingilot was set to sail in the seas of heaven, it rose
unlooked for, glittering and bright; and the people of Middle-earth beheld it
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from afar and wondered, and they took it for a sign, and called it Gil-Estel,the Star of High Hope'. J. R. R. Tolkien, The Silmarillion, ed. by Christopher
Tolkien (London: George Alien & Unwin, 1977), p. 250.
8

Tolkien refers to Varda/Elbereth as a 'divine' or 'angelic' person: she was'often thought of, or depicted, as standing on a great height looking towards
Middle-earth, with eyes that penetrated the shadows, and listening to the cries
for aid of Elves (and Men) in peril or grief. Frodo (Vol. I, p. 208) and Sam
both invoke her in moments of extreme peril. The Elves sing hymns to her.
(These and other references to religion in The Lord of the Rings are frequently
overlooked.)' The Road Goes Ever On, p. 73.

9Shippey discusses this famous episode concerning the word 'hobbit' in The
Road to Middle-earth, p. 76. See also Tom Shippey, J. R. R. Tolkien: Authorof the Century (London: Harper Collins, 2000), pp. 2-5.

10J. R. R. Tolkien, 'English and Welsh', in The Monsters and the Critics andOther Essays, ed. by Christopher Tolkien (London: George Alien & Unwin,1983), pp. 162-97. John Garth offers an excellent summary in Tolkien Encyclopedia, pp. 162-63.

11

On other occasions, he uses the phrase 'Celtic things' in a more general way
to refer to the literature composed in medieval Celtic languages, that is, inmedieval Welsh and Irish, for which he says he feels a certain distaste
because of their 'fundamental unreason' (Letters, pp. 26, 144). On Tolkien's
use of 'Celtic things' in his works, see Verlyn Flieger, 'The Other World'(Chapter 6) of Interrupted Music: The Making of Tolkien's Mythology (Kent& London: Kent University Press, 2005); Marjorie Burns, Perilous Realms:

Celtic and Norse in Tolkien's Middle-earth (Toronto: University of Toronto

Press, 2005); Dimitra Fimi, '"Mad" Elves and "elusive beauty": Some Celtic
Strands of Tolkien' s Mythology', Folklore, 117.2 (2006), 156-70; Dimitra
Fimi, 'Tolkien's "'Celtic' type of legends": Merging Traditions', Tolkien
Studies, 4 (2007), 51-71.
12

Letters, p. 176.

13

Kenneth H. Jackson, 'The Pictish Language', in The Problem of the Picts, ed.
by F. T. Wainwright (Edinburgh: Nelson, 1955).

14

Kenneth Jackson, Language and History in Early Britain: A Chronological
Survey of the Brittonic Languages 1st to 12th c. A. D. (Edinburgh: Edinburgh

University Press, 1953), p. 4.
15

Deidre Dawson compares Tolkien's and Macpherson's linguistic and historical preoccupations and finds their concern for 'authenticity' and 'sincerity' of

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languages similar. Deidre Dawson, 'English, Welsh, and Elvish: Language,
Loss, and Cultural Recovery in J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings', inTolkien's Modern Middle Ages, ed. by Jane Chance and Alfred K. Siewers(New York: Palgrave, 2005), pp. 105-20 (p. 108).
16

As Garth points out, 'Tolkien had previously fictionalized it as a psychic key
to access prehistory in "The Lost Road" and "The Notion Club Papers"'(Tolkien Encyclopedia, p. 162).
17

It seems Malcolm Chapman who criticized Tolkien's account as providing'no satisfactory answer to the question of where the "native language" waslodged in the meantime [that is, before he came to Welsh in adulthood], failed
to notice this sentence. Malcolm Chapman, The Celts: The Construction of aMyth (Houndmills: Macmillan, 1992), p. 246.
18

Although Tolkien was convinced that his 'heresy' (Shippey's term) worked,
Shippey finds it most doubtful that it did (The Road to Middle-earth, p. 88).
Allan Turner explains Tolkien's 'linguistic heresy' in more detail (J. R. R.

Tolkien Encyclopedia, pp. 330-31).
19

Here he uses the term 'British' in its original sense; it is not that he has
accepted what he denounces as 'the misuse of British'. He is well aware thatin Britain, as Fimi says, the different traditions merge (Fimi, 'Tolkien's"'Celtic' type of legends"', p. 66), but in this particular context where he istalking about the 'native language', he is arguing that many of the inhabitantsof Britain, including himself 'who today live in Lloegr and speak Saesneg'('English and Welsh', p. 194) are still British or ancient Britons deep down.
In other words, he asserts that the people with 'merging traditions' can be
regarded as still British because they share the 'native language', BritishWelsh, in common. Therefore his use of the term 'British' here is not necessarily to be regarded as reflecting the 'transition' of his views as Fimi claims(p. 66).

20

There are tongues other than Elvish and Mannish, such as those of Ents, theOres and the Dwarves (see 'Appendix F', 'Of Other Races', in J. R. R.
Tolkien, The Return of the King (London: George Alien & Unwin, 1955,
1978), pp. 405-16 (pp. 408-11).

21

J. R. R. Tolkien, The Lhammas, in The Lost Road and Other Writings: Lan-guage and Legend before 'The Lord of the Rings', ed. by Christopher Tolkien(London: Unwin Hyman, 1987), pp. 167-98.
22'The Tree of Tongues (earlier form)' in The Lost Road, p. 169; 'later form', p.
170; 'illustrating the Lammasethen', p. 196.
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23

J. R. R. Tolkien, 'Etymologies', in The Lost Road, pp. 341-400 (pp. 341-46);
Carl F. Hostetter, 'Elvish as She Is Spoke', in The Lord of the Rings 19592004: Scholarship in Honor of Richard E. Blackwelder, ed. by Wayne G.
Hammond and Christina Scull (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press,
2006), pp. 231-55 (pp. 235-36).

24

As The Lhammas were earlier texts, written some time prior to the end of1937 and the beginning of 1938, the names are considerably different fromthe ones we see in The Silmarillion and The Lord of the Rings.

25

As regards the development of ideas concerning the Dark-elves and the Lightelves, see Tom Shippey, 'Light-elves, Dark-elves and Others: Tolkien's
Elvish Problem', in Roots and Branches: Selected Papers on Tolkien by Tom
Shippey, Cormare Series 11 (Zurich and Berne: Walking Tree Publisher,2007), pp. 215-33 (first publ. in Tolkien Studies, 1 (2004), 1-15).

26

In the Lammasethen the account of the development of Quenya is slightly different from the other two versions in that it makes Quenya a language apartfrom the other forms of Elvish (The Lost Road, p. 195). However, Quenya
and other branches of Elvish still share a common origin.

27

This situation, which appeared in The Silmarillion, was a conception developed later than The Lhammas (The Etymologies, in The Lost Road, pp. 343400 (p. 346)).

28

The Lhammas texts are not consistent on the question of whether the Danas
were considered to be Eldar or not. It seems they are counted as neither Eldar
nor Lembi. Christopher Tolkien explains this problem by postulating that theDanas abandoned the Great Journey early enough to be counted among theLembi but as they still felt a desire to seek the Light, their position is anomalous and might well be classified either as Eldarian or as not Eldarian (The
Lhammas, p. 188). In the Lammasethen Tolkien explains that they 'have a
middle place' (The Lhammas, p. 195).

29

Tolkien Encyclopedia, pp.341-42. On the historical background of Taliskan,
see Christopher Gilson, 'Elvish and Mannish', Vinyar Tengwar, 4.33 (1994),
10-26 (pp. 11-12).

30

As Christopher Tolkien points out, it is not clear why in the Lammasethen
Tolkien states Taliskan to be 'of Quendian origin' while in 'The Tree ofTongues' accompanying the Lammasethen, 'influence' not direct descent issuggested (the Lhammas, p. 196).

31

Tolkien describes the Adunaic in his 'Lowdham's Report on the Adunaic
Language' in Sauron Defeated: The End of the Third Age (The History of The

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Lord of the Rings Part Four), ed. by Christopher Tolkien (London: Harper
Collins, 1992), pp. 413-40. See also Tolkien Encyclopedia, p. 342; Gilson,'Elvish and Mannish', pp. 10-11.
32

On the Common Speech, Westron, see Tolkien Encyclopedia, pp. 342-43;
Carl F. Hostetter and Patrick Wynne, 'There are Fairies at the Bottom of our
Garden!', Vinyar Tengwar, 4.32 (1993), 11-14.

33

Thomas Honegger points out the contradiction 'between Tolkien's theoreticalconception of the "relative linguistic distance" between the Mannish languages and his concrete implementation of these languages as Old English(for Rohirric) and modern English (for the Westron) in his narrative works',
in 'The Westron Turned into Modern English: The Translator and Tolkien's
Web of Languages', in Translating Tolkien: Text and Film, ed. by Thomas
Honegger (Zurich and Berne: Walking Tree Publishers, 2004), pp. 1-20 (p.
17).

34

See 'Simplified Depiction of the Development of Some Mannish Languages'
and 'Simplified Depiction of the Development of the Germanic Languages' in
Honegger, 'The Westron Turned into Modern English', pp. 12-13. See also
Tsukus Ito, Yubiwa-monogatari: elf-go wo yomu [Elvish in Middle-earth](Tokyo: Seishun Shuppan, 2004), pp. 77-79.

35

Tolkien uses 'men' with a lower case 'm' when referring to the language spoken, but an uppercase 'M' when referring to the people. I have retained thispractice below.

36

According to the OED, 'swert' is a spelling variation used in the 15th and the37

Tolkien Encyclopedia, pp. 140-41.

38

Tolkien Encyclopedia, p. 622. See also Paul Kocher, Master of Middle-earth:

17th centuries.

The Achievement of J. R. R. Tolkien (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1974),
p. 20.

39

Brian McFadden, 'Fear of Difference, Fear of Death: the Sigelwara,
Tolkien' s Swertings and Racial Difference', in Tolkien 's Modern Middle
Ages, pp. 155-69. See also Jane Chance, 'Tolkien and the Other: Race andGender in Middle-earth', in Tolkien's Modern Middle Ages, pp. 171-86; J. R.
R. Tolkien, 'Sigelwara Land', Medium /Evum, 1 (1932), 183-96 and 3 (1934),

95-111.
40

Regrettably, limitations of space preclude here a detailed analysis of
Tolkien' s use of the word 'swarthy', an adjective also employed by G. K.
Chesterton and Arthur Conan Doyle in pejorative contexts.

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41

Tolkien Encyclopedia, p. 622. See also Anderson Rearick, 'Why is the Only
Good Ore a Dead Ore? The Dark Face of Racism Examined in Tolkien's
World', Modern Fiction Studies, 50 (2004), 861-74.

42

In the moral geography of the Middle-earth, both the East and the South areconnected with evil and the enemy. See Tolkien Encyclopedia, pp. 138-40,
622.

43

According to 'Appendix F' (p. 408), there is no record of any language peculiar to Hobbits; they seem always to have used 'the language of Men nearwhom, or among whom, they lived'. The Hobbits of the Shire and of Bree
had adopted Westron for probably a thousand years by the time of the The
Lord of the Rings. Hobbits' own tongue before they adopted Westron was a
Mannish language related to that of the Rohirrim. In other words, it was
related to Taliska, the ancestor language of the W estron.

44

To the Shire-folk, the Hobbits of Buckland, who live near or in the Old Forest
which is 'a dark bad place' are perceived as 'queer' (The Fellowship of theRing, p. 30). The folk of the Marish are also 'in many ways peculiar'('Appendix F', p. 413). See Jane Chance, 'Tolkien and the Other', p. 176.

45

J. R. R. Tolkien, 'Guide to the Names in The Lord ofthe Rings', in A Tolkien

Compass, ed. by Jared Lobdell (New York: Ballantime, 1975), pp. 168-216(p. 183).

46'Occurs in numerous place-names in coombe, and has become a commonnoun in English' (Jackson, Language and History in Early Britain, p. 510).

47

A. D. Mills, A Dictionary of British Place-Names (Oxford: Oxford University

Press, 1991, 2003), p. 74.
48

Mills, p. 75.

48

Mills, p. 111.

50

Allan Turner discusses the 'pseudotranslation' device in Allan Turner, Translating Tolkien: Philological Elements in 'The Lord of the Rings' (Frankfurt:Peter Lang, 2005), pp. 34-40.

51

Malcolm Chapman finds an allusion to the northern British kingdom of
Gododdin in Anor, from where a descendant of the kings [=Aragorn] comesto restore the greatness of former years. He says 'the Elves are, in a sense, pCelts of a British (perhaps Welsh or Cumbrian) type, while the Men (or atleast all the good men) are mostly Anglo-Saxons or Scandinavians' (Chapman, p. 247).

52

Aneirin, Y Gododdin: Britain's Oldest Heroic Poem, ed. and trans. by A. 0.
H. Jarman (Llandysul: Gomer Press, 1988, 2005) pp. xiii-xiv.

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53

The Celtic Heroic Age: Literary Sources for Ancient Celtic Europe & Early
Ireland & Wales, ed. by John T. Koch (Oakville: Celtic Studies Publications,
1994, 2001), p. 34.

54

Patrick Sims-Williams, 'The Visionary Celt: The Construction of an Ethnic
Preconception', Cambridge Medieval Celtic Studies, 11 (Summer 1986), 7196 (p. 78).

55

Stuart Piggott, Celts, Saxons, and the Early Antiquaries (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1967), pp. 1-23 (p. 17).

56

Sims-Williams, p. 76.

57

See Joep Leerseen, 'Celticism' in Celticism, ed. by Terence Brown (Amsterdam-Atlanta: Rodopi, 1996), pp. 1-20. Needless to say, Tolkien did not use theterm 'Celticism' as it was brought into currency by W. J. McCormack in 1985.

58

Cf. 'Appendix F', p. 415; J. R. R. Tolkien, Tolkien On Fairy Stories:

Expanded Edition, with Commentary and Notes, ed. by Verlyn Flieger andDouglas A. Anderson (London: Harper Collins, 2008), pp. 28-32. Tolkien
claims that an English fairy-lore is 'more true than anything to be found in· Celtic lands', where the Irish and Welsh 'tell garbled things'. The Book of

Lost Tales, Part Il, p. 290. Fimi points out the 'Anglo-Saxon pride syndrome'in Tolkien (Fimi, "'Mad" Elves and "elusive beauty"', pp. 160-61).
59

See Eliabeth Massa Hoiem, 'World Creation as Colonization: British Imperialism in "Aldarion and Erendis"', Tolkien Studies, 2 (2005), 75-92 (p. 83).

60

The Phial of Galadriel, the star-glass, contains the Light of Earendil's star,
which was a Silmaril, which in turn gathered the Light of the Two Trees
before they were destroyed by Ungoliant, from whom Shelob is descended.

61

Tolkien warns us, however, that it is too simplistic to view the process
whereby the English language was established in Britain as "'Teutons" driving out and dispossessing "Celts'" ('English and Welsh', p. 169). In fact it is
now believed that there were large numbers of Brittonic speakers within the
Anglo-Saxon kingdoms for several centuries but the fact remains that Brittonic failed to remain the lingua franca of Britain. This phenomenon has notbeen adequately explained either by historians or linguists (Christopher A.
Snyder, The Britons (Maiden: Blackwell, 2003), p. 255).

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