22 See Note B at end (see here).
23 In the case of stories and other nursery lore, there is also another factor. Wealthier families employed women to look after their children, and the stories were provided by these nurses, who were sometimes in touch with rustic and traditional lore forgotten by their ‘betters’. It is long since this source dried up, at any rate in England; but it once had some importance. But again there is no proof of the special fitness of children as the recipients of this vanishing ‘folk-lore’. The nurses might just as well (or better) have been left to choose the pictures and furniture.
24 See Note C at end (see here).
25 By Lang and his helpers. It is not true of the majority of the contents in their original (or oldest surviving) forms.
26 Far more often they have asked me: ‘Was he good? Was he wicked?’ That is, they were more concerned to get the Right side and the Wrong side clear. For that is a question equally important in History and in Faërie.
27 Preface to the Violet Fairy Book.
28 See Note D at end (see here).
29 This is, naturally, often enough what children mean when they ask: ‘Is it true?’ They mean: ‘I like this, but is it contemporary? Am I safe in my bed?’ The answer: ‘There is certainly no dragon in England today’, is all that they want to hear.
30 Preface to the Lilac Fairy Book.
31 That is: which commands or induces Secondary Belief.
32 This is not true of all dreams. In some Fantasy seems to take a part. But this is exceptional. Fantasy is a rational not an irrational activity.
33 See Note E at end (see here).
34 See Note F at end (see here).
35 Christopher Dawson, Progress and Religion, 58, 59. Later he adds: ‘The full Victorian panoply of top-hat and frock-coat undoubtedly expressed something essential in the nineteenth-century culture, and hence it has with that culture spread all over the world, as no fashion of clothing has ever done before. It is possible that our descendants will recognise in it a kind of grim Assyrian beauty, fit emblem of the ruthless and great age that created it; but however that may be, it misses the direct and inevitable beauty that all clothing should have, because like its parent culture it was out of touch with the life of nature and of human nature as well.’
36 See Note G at end (see here).
37 Or group of similar stories.
38 The Queen who sought drink from a certain Well and the Lorgann (Campbell, xxiii); Der Froschkönig; The Maid and the Frog.
39 See Note H at end (see here).
40 This is characteristic of Lang’s wavering balance. On the surface the story is a follower of the ‘courtly’ French conte with a satiric twist, and of Thackeray’s Rose and the Ring in particular – a kind which being superficial, even frivolous, by nature, does not produce or aim at producing anything so profound; but underneath lies the deeper spirit of the romantic Lang.
41 Of the kind which Lang called ‘traditional’, and really preferred.
42 The Black Bull of Norroway.
43 For all details may not be ‘true’: it is seldom that the ‘inspiration’ is so strong and lasting that it leavens all the lump, and does not leave much that is mere uninspired ‘invention’.
44 The Art is here in the story itself rather than in the telling; for the Author of the story was not the evangelists.
45 According to one estimate 6 foot 9 inches tall. This estimate was based on the length and size of his bones when examined, in his tomb at Ely, in AD 1769.
46 That Olaf Tryggvason was actually present at Maldon is now thought to be doubtful. But his name was known to Englishmen. He had been in Britain before, and was certainly here again in 994.
47 According to the views of E. D. Laborde, now generally accepted. The causeway or ‘hard’ between Northey and the mainland is still there.
48 It was indeed plainly intended as a recitation for two persons, two shapes in ‘dim shadow’, with the help of a few gleams of light and appropriate noises and a chant at the end. It has, of course, never been performed.
49 Cf. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, 2127–31.
50 To fela means in Old English idiom that no ground at all should have been conceded. And ofermod does not mean ‘overboldness’, not even if we give full value to the ofer, remembering how strongly the taste and wisdom of the English (whatever their actions) rejected ‘excess’. Wita scàl gepyldig ... ne næfre gielpes to georn, ær he geare cunne.) But mod, though it may contain or imply courage, does not mean ‘boldness’ any more than Middle English corage. It means ‘spirit’, or when unqualified ‘high spirit’, of which the most usual manifestation is pride. But in ofer-mod it is qualified, with disapproval: ofermod is in fact always a word of condemnation. In verse the noun occurs only twice, once applied to Beorhtnoth, and once to Lucifer.
51 It is probably the first work to apply the word ‘letters’ to this metre, which has in fact never regarded them.
WORKS BY J.R.R. TOLKIEN
The Hobbit
Leaf by Niggle
On Fairy-Stories
Farmer Giles of Ham
The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth
The Lord of the Rings
The Adventures of Tom Bombadil
The Road Goes Ever On (with Donald Swann)
Smith of Wootton Major
WORKS PUBLISHED POSTHUMOUSLY
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Pearl, and Sir Orfeo
The Father Christmas Letters
The Silmarillion
Pictures by J.R.R. Tolkien
Unfinished Tales
The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien
Finn and Hengest
Mr. Bliss
The Monsters and the Critics and Other Essays
Roverandom
The Children of Húrin
The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún
THE HISTORY OF MIDDLE-EARTH
BY CHRISTOPHER TOLKIEN
I The Book of Lost Tales, Part One
II The Book of Lost Tales, Part Two
III The Lays of Beleriand
IV The Shaping of Middle-earth
V The Lost Road and Other Writings
VI The Return of the Shadow
VII The Treason of Isengard
VIII The War of the Ring
IX Sauron Defeated
X Morgoth’s Ring
XI The War of the Jewels
XII The Peoples of Middle-earth
Copyright
HarperCollinsPublishers
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First published in Great Britain by George Allen & Unwin 1964, 1975, 1988
Tree and Leaf, including Mythopoeia,
copyright © The Tolkien Trust 1964, 1988
The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth Beorhthelm’s Son
copyright © The J.R.R. Tolkien Copyright Trust 1953, 2001
® and ‘Tolkien’ ® is a registered trademarks of The J.R.R. Tolkien Estate Limited
Source ISBN: 9780007105045
EPub Edition © September 2012 ISBN: 9780007388097
Version 1
FIRST EDITION
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