Volume 1 Number 1 Article 3

1-15-1969

Here an Orc, There an Ork

Ruth Berman

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Recommended Citation Berman, Ruth (1969) "Here an Orc, There an Ork," Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature: Vol. 1 : No. 1 , Article 3. Available at: https://dc.swosu.edu/mythlore/vol1/iss1/3

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Abstract Discusses several homophones of “orc” in fantastic literature as possible sources for Tolkien.

Additional Keywords Baum, L. Frank; Beowulf; Blake, William; Milton, John; Tolkien, J.R.R.—Characters—Orcs; Tolkien, J.R.R.—Characters—Orcs—Etymology

This article is available in Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature: https://dc.swosu.edu/mythlore/vol1/iss1/3 8 These three writers are each "mythopoeic” in a different sense. Tolkien creates a self-sufficient myth; Lewis im itates a primary mythos in the creation of a secondary myth; and Williams weaves primary myths into a new combination which is not inde- pendant of the priamry world. I predict that even in The Mytho- poeic Society he w ill always be the least popular of the three; while Lewis can be enjoyed by all but the most virulently anti- Christian reader, and Tolkien by any reader responsive to fantasy.

Here an Orc, There an Ork b y Ruth Berman

When I first read J.R .R . Tolkie' s The Lord of The Rings, I was startled to find "orcs." I already knew " orks" from L. Prank Baum's The Scarecrow of Oz. But the orc and the ork were very different creatures, and I put it down to coincidence, sup- posing both men had independently hit on the same nonsense syllable. But then I ran across the same word in John M ilton's epic, Paradise Lost. In Book XI, lines 831-835, he has the angel Michael describing to Adam, after the Fall, how the Mount of Paradise w ill be dislocated at the time of Noah’s Flood:

pushed by the horned floud, With all his verdue spoil'd, and Trees adrift Down the great River to the op’ning Gulf , And there take root an I l and salt and bare, The haunt of Seales and O rcs, and Sea-mews clang. ML1 8 There were also, I learned orcs in Tasso's Giurusalemme Liberata (Jerusalem Liberated), one of the Italian epics which influenced Milton . There too, orcs were an undescribed sort of sea-monster.

M ilton’s orc, I thought, might lie behind Baum’s Ork. The Orks of Orkland are friendly, cheerful creatures -- a species of bird with four legs and atrophied, balloon-like wings (the actual motive power for an Ork's flight comes from its ta il, which is a propellor --I doubt that the arrangement is aerodynamically sound, but the Orks seem to manage) . Baum’s h e r o in e ,Trot, and her uncle, Cap’n B ill, discovered the Ork while exploring a grotto opening off the sea. By rights, an orc ought to be more like a seal than a seamew (seagull), but Baum needed his own sort of orc .

Having realized that "orc" was actually an En glish word , I went to the Oxford English D ictionary, a giant reference book that gives the definitions of words in order of historical de- velopment. The OED informed me that orc, or ork, was from the L a t in o r c a , a kind of whale. Also from Old Norse orkn, a kind o f s e a l .

D efinition one: a cetacean of the genus Qrca, family D el- phinidae, especially the killer whale (Orca gladiator, G r e y . Delphinuss Qrca, Linnaeus. By earlier authors applied, after the medieval Latin writers, to more than one vaguely identified ferocious sea-monster.

D efiniton two: sometimes more vaguely (perhaps derived from or influenced by Latin Orcus, Romanic orco, Italian orco, demon, monster, from Latin Orcus, Hades, the god of the infernal regions --see ogre).

I dutifully saw orge and discovered that derivation of orge is unknown, but it may come from Latin Orcus (via French -- the earliest use of the word given in the OED is Charles Perraukt's Contes de ma mere oye -- Mother Goose Stories -- in 1697, although someone has written in the margin of the UCLA li- brary copy I consulted for this article, "ogre occurs in Old French Chretien de Troyes, Perceval, about 1190"). Tolkien as a philologist, is probably aware of the possible connection be- tween orc and orge — and his orcs do seem rather orgeish, al- though they apparently do not eat small children (the distin- guishing characteristic of the average orge).

Back at the defintion, I was instructed to see also Old English orc yrs o e heldeofal -- "orc-giant or hell-devil,” also orcneas in Beowulf 112.

So I saw Beowulf (a poem Tolkien knows thoroughly -- see his Beowul f and the C ritics) and discovered that line 112 mention- ed as being among the descendants of Cain "eotenas and ylfe and oreneas” -- eotens and elves and orcs ("orcneas" is the plural, and the word does not occur eleswhere, but its singualr would be orcen). Eotens — also known as etens or ettins — are M L 1 10

giants (the giants in C.S . L e w is' The Silver Chair lived on Ettinsmoor). Tolkien, I suppose , justified his calling his humanoid, and quite unseal -an d unwhale-like monsters “orcs," because the Old English orcens would seem to be humanoid monsters (being grouped w ith giant and elves, as they are.

Baum and Tolkien a r e about as unlike as two authors can be who work in the same genre: the one so obviously American, the one so obvously English; the one writing about a utopia and seeming to believe in the possibility of our reaching a Utopia someday, the other writing of a world as tormented as our own; the one heartily in favor o f science and using white magic as a kind of super-science, the other suspicious of science and using white magic as a kind of telepathic, emotional communion with others (as with the visions Galadriel showed Frodo, or the elf- rope that held or loosed at Sam's need -- although Gandalf 's tracks with fire are like the purely physical wonders of Oz-magic). But both wrote fairy-tales and wrote them with respect for the form and interest in its past, and so cannot avoid many small points of sim ilarity despite their basic differneces.

Footnote: and then, of course, there is science fiction fan Johnny Chamber's cartoon character, the L ittle Green Dino- saur. The LGD, when frightened or startled, exclaims "Orc!" Bu t at that point I exclaim “Coincidence!" and have done with it.

O.K . --- After Steve Reeves and his vikings rescue y o u from the forest o u t l a w s , you set out to rescue the princess from S a u r o n , who's holding her f o r ran so m .. .

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