The History of the Hobbit

by John D. Rateliff

  21 The standard answer is a man at a table with a leg of mutton stolen by a dog; Tolkien adapts this to the circumstances by substituting ‘no-legs’ for one-leg (i.e., fish for mutton) and a cat (notoriously fond of fish) for the dog.

  Baring-Gould also gives yet another variant (involving a milkmaid, cow, and stool) rather closer to Tolkien’s in compression and general style:

  Two-legs sat on Three-legs by Four-legs.

  One leg knocked Two-legs off Three-legs.

  Two-legs hit Four-legs with Three-legs.

  —Baring-Gould p. 277.

  22 This poem appeared in A Northern Venture: Verses by Members of the Leeds University English School Association [1923], p. 20. A rough translation of Tolkien’s poem would run something like this: ‘My walls are wonderfully adorned with milk-white marblestone; a soft garment is hung within, most like to silk; in the midst is a well of water clear as glass; there the most beautiful of apples glitters on the current. My fortress has no entrance; yet bold thieves break into my palace and plunder that treasure. Say what I am called!’ My thanks to Dr. Tim Machan of Marquette University and Tolkien linguist David Salo for their help with this translation.

  Tolkien also wrote a second Anglo-Saxon riddle which appears with ‘Meolchwitum sind marmanstane’ under the general title of ‘Enigmata Saxonica Nuper Inventa Duo’ – an ingenuous title, since in Latin ‘inventa’ can mean either ‘invented’ or ‘discovered’. Thus, the title translates as ‘Two Recently Discovered Saxon Riddles’ or ‘Two Recently Invented Saxon Riddles’, nicely ambiguous. I give here the companion piece, ‘Hild Hunecan’:

  Hæfth Hild Hunecan hwite tunecan,

  ond swa read rose hæfth rudige nose;

  the leng heo bideth, the læss heo wrideth;

  hire tearas hate on tan blate

  biernende dreosath ond bearhtme freosath;

  hwæt heo sie saga, searothancla maga.

  A literal translation would run something along these lines: ‘Hild Hunecan hath a white tunican [tunic],/and a ruddy nose like a red rose;/the longer she bideth [waits], the less she thriveth [grows];/her hot tears on pale branch/fall burning and freeze ‘in a twinkling’;/say what she is, clever man.’

  The answer, of course, is a candle. This is Tolkien’s free adaptation of another once well-known nursery rhyme riddle, unusual in that it both alliterates in proper Old English fashion and yet also uses internal rhyme – a difficult metrical feat. The original riddle reads as follows:

  Little Nancy Etticoat

  With a white petticoat,

  And a red nose;

  She has no feet or hands,

  The longer she stands

  The shorter she grows.

  —Baring-Gould p. 275; Opies p. 153.

  ‘Hild’ is the Old English word for ‘battle’, but it was also a common proper name (still in use today under the slightly altered form of ‘Hilda’). I cannot explain ‘hunecan’, other than to suggest that it is a nonsense coinage and that ‘Hild Hunecan’ is, like ‘Nancy Etticoat’ (a candle) and ‘Humpty Dumpty’ (an egg), the name given in order to deceive the listener into thinking the riddle describes a person rather than an object. ‘Hunecan’ might therefore be a pun on ‘honey-kin’ (i.e., beeswax), which in a true Old English poem would have been spelled hunig-cynn. My thanks once again to Dr. Tim Machan and especially David Salo for providing much aid in this translation.

  23 This first riddle is usually broken into three distinct riddles by editors (e.g., The Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records, Volume III: The Exeter Book, ed. Geo. P. Krapp [1936]; Old English Riddles, tr. Michael Alexander [1980]), each representing a different kind of storm. Craig Williamson, by contrast, in his detailed analysis of the Exeter Book riddles (The Old English Riddles of the Exeter Book [1977]), argues that the manuscript is correct and that all 104 lines represent a single riddle, whose solution is Wind.

  24 Tolkien’s riddle, of course, refers to the English daisy and not the larger American flower of the same name. English daisies are very small (usually about a half-inch in diameter), with white petals and a yellow center, the blossom lying flat on the grass. The name comes from the blossom’s habit of opening in sunlight and closing in shade or darkness. The American daisy, a relative of the chrysanthemum, is more like a black-eyed susan in appearance and size, while the English daisy is similar to a chamomile (and to Tolkien’s own elvish flower, the elanor or ‘star-sun’). I am grateful to Anne al-Shahi for introducing me to the English daisy.

  While Tolkien maintained that the daisy-riddle was not in verse, due no doubt to its metrical irregularity, it could easily be converted into a poem by very slight revision of the final line, e.g. ‘. . . in a low place/Not in a high’ (which would give it the quite satisfactory rhyme scheme of aabbab).

  25 For more on the cup-episode and the palimpsest page of the Beowulf manuscript, see p. 533. For the editorial addition of Prince Éomer to the story (in place of geomor, the manuscript reading), see Kiernan’s Beowulf and the Beowulf Manuscript [1981], page 184.

  26 For more on the Hauksbok manuscript and its relationship to the other versions of the saga, see Christopher Tolkien’s introduction to his translation and edition, The Saga of King Heidrek the Wise [1960], especially pages xxix–xxxi and 80.

  27 Indeed, David Day has devoted an entire book, Tolkien’s Ring [1994], to listing all the various ring-legends Tolkien might have drawn on for his One Ring, surveying and retelling Celtic, Greek, Tibetan, and Biblical myths, as well as stories from the Arthurian and Carolingian cycles, but focusing most on Norse and German myth, especially the story told variously in The Volsunga Saga, The Nibelungenlied, and Wagner’s Ring cycle (Das Rheingold, The Valkyrie, Siegfried, and Twilight of the Gods). While Day’s book is well written, wonderfully illustrated (by Alan Lee), and full of interesting stories, readers unfamiliar with the original legends should be warned that the book is factually worthless; Day has no compunction about making up details in order to magnify similarities between Tolkien and his ‘sources’.

  28 While rare, rings of invisibility are primarily to be found in medieval (Chrétien, Hartmann, the Welsh adaptor) and renaissance (Boiardo, Ariosto) romance, as the examples discussed in this section of commentary show. Curiously enough, they are extremely rare in one place where we might expect to find them plentiful: in fairy tales. Certainly magical items abound in such tales – from the Grimms’ ‘The Tinderbox’ (which summons up three great dogs that do the owner’s bidding) to ‘The Worn-Out Dancing Shoes’ (better known as ‘The Twelve Dancing Princesses’), which features a cloak of invisibility – but so far only two have been discovered that feature rings of invisibility.

  Since the success of The Lord of the Rings, magical rings of invisibility have become a generic part of post-Tolkienian fantasy, even to the extent of earning their own entry (along with rings of djinn summoning and rings of three wishes) in the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Dungeon Master’s Guide [1979; 2nd ed. 1989; 3rd ed. 2000]. Even so, they are generally avoided by fantasy authors as too blatantly borrowed from Tolkien – with the ironic result that they are more noted by their absence than their actual presence.

  I would like to thank my friends ‘The Burrahobbits’, from whom I received much valuable help in uncovering ring-lore throughout this section.

  29 Plato’s text is quite clear that this adventure happened to an ancestor of Gyges; however, some commentators have argued that it was Gyges himself who rose from shepherd to king via the power of his magic ring (in the best fairy-tale tradition). Interestingly enough, Herodotus (Histories, Book I, parts 8–13) also tells a story about how this Gyges rose to become king through the contrivance of the queen, but his story lacks any magical apparatus. Gyges was actually a real person, who in historical fact founded a dynasty of kings and reigned over Lydia (a neo-Hittite kingdom in western Anatolia) circa 687–652 BC. Aside from inspiring this legend, his chief claim to fame is that it was either in or immediately after his reign that the Lydians minted the w
orld’s first coins.

  30 Atlantis features in two of Plato’s late dialogues, Timaeus [circa 360 BC?] and more significantly in the late, unfinished Critias [circa 347 BC?], which contains a brief history and detailed description of Atlantis. Significantly, Plato does not claim to have invented the legend himself but has his character Critias state that his account was brought to Greece by Solon (who had died more than two centuries before), who in turn learned it from much earlier Egyptian accounts. Traditionally Plato scholarship has dismissed this claim as a fiction, but in recent years it has been revived as a serious possibility by iconoclasts such as Martin Bernal.

  31 The passage in Plato might have been pointed out by C. S. Lewis, who considered himself a philosopher and one of whose three degrees was in ‘Greats’, or classical studies – cf. the figure of the Professor in the Narnia series, who keeps insisting ‘It’s all in Plato’ – or by another of the early Inklings, Adam Fox, who later wrote a book Plato for Pleasure [1945].

  32 Despite their names, ‘High German’ (Hochdeutsch) and ‘Low German’ (Plattdeutsch) refer not to social status but region: High German originated as the form of the language spoken in the highlands of what is now Austria and Bavaria, near the Alps in southern Germany, while Low German was spoken in the lowlands near the coast in northern Germany and modern-day Holland. Old English is closely related to Low German, particularly Old Saxon (sometimes also called Old Low German), the language of those Saxons who did not immigrate to the British Isles alongside the Angles and Jutes. Modern written German descends from High German, since Martin Luther chose it for his translation of the Bible, although many Germans in the north still use Low German in less formal contexts. Just as a work written in thirteenth-century English is in ‘Middle English’, a work written in the southern form of German in the thirteenth century is in ‘Middle High German’. My thanks to Wolfgang, Brigitte, and Dr. Werner Baur for their help in sorting through the matter of modern vs. medieval German dialects.

  33 The Red Book of Westmarch, Tolkien’s fictional source for The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, takes its name from actual surviving medieval manuscripts such as The Red Book of Hergest and the White Book of Rhydderch, the two main texts of The Mabinogion [both fourteenth century]. Tolkien owned copies of both in the original Welsh, in the editions by J. Gwenogvryn Evans [The White Book, 1907; The Red Book, 1905† ], along with Lady Charlotte Guest’s famous translation [1837] (Verlyn Flieger, personal communication). Moreover, he taught Medieval Welsh at Leeds (Letters p. 12), and The Mabinogion is the greatest surviving work of literature in that language. Flieger also notes that Tolkien ‘made a transcription and partial translation of the First Branch, Pwyll’,†† along with extensive notes on the name ‘Annwn’ (Flieger, Interrupted Music [2005], page 60). Tolkien also draws upon one of The Mabinogion’s component stories, ‘Culhwch and Olwen’ – the oldest known Arthurian tale – in his essay ‘The Name “Nodens”’ [1932]. And of course the translator of the text given here, Gwyn Jones, was a friend of Tolkien’s; see p. 281.

  † Note that this was a limited edition of six hundred copies, testifying to the seriousness of Tolkien’s interest in its text.

  †† This text is now in the Bodleian Library’s Dept. of Western Manuscripts (Mss. Tolkien A18/1. fols 134–56).

  34 Lewis’s remark, which in fact made the comparison to Ariosto’s disadvantage, comes from the blurb he wrote for the first edition of The Lord of the Rings and which was included on the inside front flap of the dust jacket: ‘If Ariosto rivalled it in invention (in fact he does not) he would still lack its heroic seriousness.’ Tolkien was at first pleased by the comparisons in the blurbs to Spenser, Malory, and Ariosto, declaring them ‘too much for my vanity!’ (JRRT to Rayner Unwin, 13th May 1954; Letters p. 181). For Tolkien’s later [circa 1967] disclaimer of any familiarity with the Italian mock-epic (‘I don’t know Ariosto, and I’d loathe him if I did’), see Carpenter, Tolkien: A Biography, page 218.

  35 Again, either Kreutzwald or Lang’s translator was careless or the original tradition this tale was based on confused, since we are told several times that one of the ring’s powers is to enable the wearer to fly, yet the betrayed witch-maiden later avenges herself on the hero when he is ‘in the form of a bird’ (page 19) by changing herself into an eagle and capturing him; this is the only indication anywhere in the tale that the ring actually transforms its wearer, rather than (as on the three previous occasions) simply granting the power of flight.

  36 Faux-Rings: In addition to these genuine rings of invisibility, the scholarly record is littered with references to magical rings, several of which are described as a ‘ring of invisibility’ but, upon examination of the original literature, turn out to be nothing of the sort. I include two such samples here, both appearing in Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, since they demonstrate how errors perpetuate themselves.

  The first false ring appears in Ortnit, a Middle High German romance [circa 1217–25] set in Lombardy, part of the Dietrich cycle or Heldenbuch inspired by legends of Theodoric the Great, king of the Ostrogoths. This ring is labelled ‘Ornit’s Ring of Invisibility’ in Brewer’s (e.g., 14th edition, [1989], page 938), but in fact it has no such power. Instead, Ortnit’s ring would more accurately be called a ring to detect invisibility: it enables the wearer to see the ‘wilderness dwarf’ Alberich, a magical being who becomes Ortnit’s helper. Those without the ring can hear the dwarf (or more properly midget, since he appears as a perfectly proportioned four-year-old child although as strong as a hardy knight), who sometimes pretends to be an unseen angel; only Ortnit or those to whom he loans the ring can see the dwarf-king:

  He saw [Alberich] . . . only by the power of the stone in the ring on his finger.

  . . . just as soon as the little one seized the ring, he disappeared and was nowhere to be seen.

  ‘Speak! Where did you go?’ cried the Lombard.

  ‘Never mind where I am’ replied the little one . . . ‘You have given up a ring whose loss you will regret as long as you live. It was through the power of the stone that you were so lucky as to see and capture me, and I would always have had to serve you if you had kept it . . .’

  . . . [Ortnit] was crafty and strong and, as soon as Alberich held out the ring, he threw him onto the ground. Bending down over him, the king exclaimed: ‘Well, evil spirit, before I let you go this time, you must tell me what you know.’ When he put on the ring, he could see Alberich and he held him tightly.

  — Ortnit and Wolfdietrich: Two Medieval Romances, tr. J. W. Thomas [1986], pages 7, 10, & 11.

  The second false ring appears in Reynard the Fox – a late twelfth- & early thirteenth-century Old French story-cycle of beast-fables so popular that the antihero’s name, renard, replaced goupil as the standard French word for fox. At one point in one of the best-known Reynard stories, published by Caxton as The History of Reynard the Fox [1485], Reynard falsely claims to have owned a marvellous ring that, according to recent editions of Brewer’s, among its many other powers ‘rendered the wearer of the ring invisible’. In fact, the ring has no such power, although there was little else it could not do:

  . . . a ring of fine gold and within the ring next the finger were written letters enameled with sable and azure and there were three Hebrews’ names therein . . . those three names that Seth brought out of Paradise when he brought to his father Adam the oil of mercy. And whosoever bears on him these three names, he shall never be hurt by thunder nor lightning, nor no witchcraft shall have power over him, nor be tempted to do sin. And also he shall never take harm by cold though he lay three winter’s long nights in the field, though it snowed, stormed, or froze never so sore, so great might have these words . . . Without-forth on the ring stood a stone of three manner colours. The one part was like red crystal and shone like as fire had been therein in such wise that if anyone would go by night him behooved no other light, for the shining of the stone made and gave as great a light as it had been midday. That oth
er part of the stone was white and clear as it had been burnished. Whoso had in his eyes any smart or soreness withoutforth, if he struck the stone on the place where the grief is, he shall anon be whole. Or if any man be sick in his body of venom or ill meat in his stomach, of colic, strangullion, stone, fistula, or canker or any other sickness, save only the very death, let him lay this stone in a little water and let him drink it and he shall forthwith be whole and all quit of his sickness.

  . . . the third colour was green like glass. But there were some sprinkles therein like purple . . . who that bore this stone upon him should never be hurt of his enemy and . . . no man, were he ever so strong and hardy . . . might misdo him. And wherever he fought, he should have victory, were it by night or by day, all so far as he beheld it fasting. And also thereto wheresomever he went and in what fellowship, he should be beloved though they had hated him tofore. If he had the ring upon him, they should forget their anger as soon as they saw him. And though he were all naked in a field against a hundred armed men, he should be well hearted and escape from them with worship.

  —The History of Reynard the Fox, tr. Wm Caxton [1485],

  ed. Donald B. Sands [1960], pages 141–2.

  The misinformation about Reynard’s ring entered in with the Centenary Edition of 1970, which replaced the correct earlier reading ‘the green [portion of the stone] rendered the wearer of the ring invincible’ (Brewer’s, 8th ed. [1963], page 765) with the erroneous ‘. . . wearer of the ring invisible’ (Brewer’s, Centenary [12th] ed. [1970], page 920; emphasis mine). Sad to say, however, the error regarding ‘Ornit’s Ring’ goes back to Rev. Ebenezer Cobham Brewer himself, and was present in every edition I checked, going back at least to 1890. Both these errors are still present in the most recent edition available to me (the 17th ed. [2005], 1st printing; cf. pp. 1165 & 1172).

  My thanks to Gwendolyn Kestrel and Wolfgang Baur for aid in tracking down these errors in various editions of Brewer’s book.