by Alan Lee
G (page 382)
The absence of this sense is a mere hypothesis concerning men of the lost past, whatever wild confusions men of today, degraded or deluded, may suffer. It is just as legitimate an hypothesis, and one more in agreement with what little is recorded concerning the thoughts of men of old on this subject, that this sense was once stronger. That fantasies which blended the human form with animal and vegetable forms, or gave human faculties to beasts, are ancient is, of course, no evidence for confusion at all. It is, if anything, evidence to the contrary. Fantasy does not blur the sharp outlines of the real world; for it depends on them. As far as our western, European, world is concerned, this ‘sense of separation’ has in fact been attacked and weakened in modern times not by fantasy but by scientific theory. Not by stories of centaurs or werewolves or enchanted bears, but by the hypotheses (or dogmatic guesses) of scientific writers who classed Man not only as ‘an animal’—that correct classification is ancient—but as ‘only an animal’. There has been a consequent distortion of sentiment. The natural love of men not wholly corrupt for beasts, and the human desire to ‘get inside the skin’ of living things, has run riot. We now get men who love animals more than men; who pity sheep so much that they curse shepherds as wolves; who weep over a slain warhorse and vilify dead soldiers. It is now, not in the days when fairy-stories were begotten, that we get ‘an absence of the sense of separation’.
H (page 384)
The verbal ending—usually held to be as typical of the end of fairy-stories as ‘once upon a time’ is of the beginning—‘and they lived happily ever after’ is an artificial device. It does not deceive anybody. End-phrases of this kind are to be compared to the margins and frames of pictures, and are no more to be thought of as the real end of any particular fragment of the seamless Web of Story than the frame is of the visionary scene, or the casement of the Outer World. These phrases may be plain or elaborate, simple or extravagant, as artificial and as necessary as frames plain, or carved, or gilded. ‘And if they have not gone away they are there still.’ ‘My story is done—see there is a little mouse; anyone who catches it may make himself a fine fur cap of it.’ ‘And they lived happily ever after.’ ‘And when the wedding was over, they sent me home with little paper shoes on a causeway of pieces of glass.’
Endings of this sort suit fairy-stories, because such tales have a greater sense and grasp of the endlessness of the World of Story than most modern ‘realistic’ stories, already hemmed within the narrow confines of their own small time. A sharp cut in the endless tapestry is not unfittingly marked by a formula, even a grotesque or comic one. It was an irresistible development of modern illustration (so largely photographic) that borders should be abandoned and the ‘picture’ end only with the paper. This method may be suitable for photographs; but it is altogether inappropriate for the pictures that illustrate or are inspired by fairy-stories. An enchanted forest requires a margin, even an elaborate border. To print it conterminous with the page, like a ‘shot’ of the Rockies in Picture Post, as if it were indeed a ‘snap’ of fairyland or a ‘sketch by our artist on the spot’, is a folly and an abuse.
As for the beginnings of fairy-stories: one can scarcely improve on the formula Once upon a time. It has an immediate effect. This effect can be appreciated by reading, for instance, the fairy-story The Terrible Head in the Blue Fairy Book. It is Andrew Lang’s own adaptation of the story of Perseus and the Gorgon. It begins ‘once upon a time’, and it does not name any year or land or person. Now this treatment does something which could be called ‘turning mythology into fairy-story’. I should prefer to say that it turns high fairy-story (for such is the Greek tale) into a particular form that is at present familiar in our land: a nursery or ‘old wives’ form. Namelessness is not a virtue but an accident, and should not have been imitated; for vagueness in this regard is a debasement, a corruption due to forgetfulness and lack of skill. But not so, I think, the timelessness. That beginning is not poverty-stricken but significant. It produces at a stroke the sense of a great uncharted world of time.
About the Author
FAERIE is a perilous land, and in it are pitfalls for the unwary and dungeons for the overbold…The realm of fairy-story is wide and deep and high and filled with many things: all manner of beasts and birds are found there; shoreless seas and stars uncounted; beauty that is an enchantment, and an ever-present peril; both joy and sorrow as sharp as swords. In that realm a man may, perhaps, count himself fortunate to have wandered, but its very richness and strangeness tie the tongue of a traveller who would report them. And while he is there it is dangerous for him to ask too many questions, lest the gates should be shut and the keys be lost.
J.R.R. Tolkien1
* * *
1From On Fairy-Stories, a lecture given on 8 March 1939. The full text is reproduced at the end of this book.
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 & OTHER ESSAYS
ROVERANDOM
THE CHILDREN OF HÚRIN
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
Copyright © The J.R.R. Tolkien Copyright Trust 1949
The Adventures of Tom Bombadil first published 1961
Copyright © The J.R.R. Tolkien Copyright Trust 1962
Leaf By Niggle first published in Tree and Leaf 1964
Copyright © The Tolkien Trust 1964
Smith of Wootton Major first published 1967
Copyright © The Tolkien Trust 1967
Roverandom first published 1998
Copyright © The Tolkien Trust 1998
Introduction © Tom Shippey 2008
® and Tolkien® are registered trade marks
of The J.R.R. Tolkien Estate Limited
E-ISBN: 978-0-547-95209-3
All rights reserved
For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 215 Park Avenue South, New York, New York 10003.
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