December 1994 the Journal of the Tolkien Society
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December 1994 The Journal of the Tolkien Society ISSN 0308-6674 The Tolkien Society Founded in London in 1969, the Tolkien Society is an international organization registered in the U.K. as a charity (No. 273809), dedicated to furthering interest in the life and works of the late Professor J.R.R. Tolkien, C.B.E. (1892-1973), who remains its President ‘in perpetuo’. His daughter, Miss Priscilla Tolkien, became its Honorary Vice-President in 1986. In addition to Mallorn, the Society publishes a bi-monthly bulletin, Amon Hen. In addition to local gatherings (“smials”), there are three annual national meetings: the A.G.M. and Dinner in the Spring, the Seminar in the Summer, and “Oxonmoot”, a celebratory weekend held in Oxford in late September. For further information about the Society, please contact the Secretary: Annie Haward, Flat 6, 8 Staveton Road,OXFORD, 0X2 6XJ Notes for Contributors PROSE ITEMS (including fiction) should be typed, double-spaced with margins a minimum of 3cm wide, and on one side of the paper only, with your name, the title and page number at the top of each sheet. Even more acceptable are computer discs: 3'A” or 5” (IBM compatable); ASCII, word, Wordstar, wordperfect, or any version of Locoscript - your disc must be accompanied by a legible print out. If your text includes any character which may not convert properly (including any with accents, as in, for example, “Manwe”) , please substitute these with standard characters not used elsewhere in your text (e.g. %, $, &), and enclose a table showing what they represent (the printout should have the real characters, not the substitutions). 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Citation should be made in the Harvard format, and references (including the work's author, [and/or editor, translator, etc. if appropriate], title, place and date of publication, publishers name, [part and volume number, pages, where appropriate], VERSE ITEMS, which should not usually be more than 50 lines, may be presented eidier in the format indicated above, or in calligraphed form, in which case the specifications for artwork given below should be followed. ARTWORK should be in black and white, no larger than A4 size, and either the original of the work or an exceptionally high quality photocopy. The artist’s name should be written clearly on the back IN PENCIL. GENERAL NOTES: Contributors who want their material returned should provide a self-addressed appropriately stamped envelope, or TWO IRCs. The editors reserve the right to reject any item, or to ask for changes to be made. Contributions should be sent to: Pat Reynolds at 16 Gibsons Green, Heelands, MILTON KEYNES, England, MK13 7NH (email [email protected]). Copy date for MALLORN 32 is 30th July 1995 Opinions expressed in individual articles are those of the authors, and do not necessarily reflect those of the editors or of the Tolkien Society. Published by the Tolkien Society and printed by Centurion Press, 52 George Street, London, W1H 5RF © The Tolkien Society and individual authors, 1994 Mallorn XXXI Contents page Editorial 5 Reappraising Gawain John Matthews 7 Bells and Bell-ringing in Middle-earth Martin Hardgrave 15 “Before Defended Walls”: Hill-forts and Fortified Sites in northern Eriador in the Second and Third Ages John Ellison 19 Turin Turambar and the Tale of the Fosterling Marie Barnfield 29 The Economy and Economic History of Gondor Ruth Lacon 37 J.I.M. Stewart, J.B. Timbermill and J.R.R. Tolkien Jessica Yates 44 Reviews 45 Contributors 59 Artwork J Ellison 19,21,22 A Fiddy 58 3 Editorial Editorial respect for the evidence to which those facts Although most issues of Mallorn feature articles build is all-important, and that interpretation which adopt the convention of treating Middle- must not disregard any part of the evidence, or earth as a “real” world, this one perhaps contains indulge in imaginative flights of fantasy away more than most. Readers will find one essay that from it. In other words, applying these principles attempts to construct a kind of archaeology in to “Middle-earth Studies”, you may try to Middle-earth alongside another that examines illustrate or elaborate Tolkien’s world, but you the economic infrastructure of Gondor. It may cannot invent it, or any part of it; you must seem as if the student’s proper concern, namely always derive your material and your ‘Tolkien Studies”, has given rise to a derivative conclusions from indications, however slight, which threatens to outgrow and replace it, actually present in Tolkien’s text, or texts. “Middle-earth Studies”. As Tolkien developed his conception of his The convention was one that Tolkien imagined world over many years, those texts evolved and consistently employed, hut he was a may disagree with or contradict each other. The little disconcerted by some of its side effects. At historian of Middle-earth, just like his colleague quiet an early stage he wrote to Rayner Unwin in our own “real” world, may be faced with indicating this; “I am not now at all sure that the conflicts of evidence requiring trained tendency to treat the whole thing as a kind of historians’ skills to determine where “historical” vast game is really good - certainly not for me, truth may lie. Tolkien’s very inconsistencies who find that kind of thing only too fatally only serve to intensify the “reality” of Middle- attractive”1. What ought the relationship of the earth. two to be? Are we in danger, perhaps, of The pitfall that the student of the history of forgetting that the primary objective of all Middle-earth may need to avoid is the same as studies of Tolkien’s work is to enable us to that to which historians of the “real” world are understand and explain his significance as a sometimes prone; an over-concern with minutiae creative artist and the qualities that make him at the expense of the larger view. Studies of, say significant? the rate of growth of the hair on hobbits feet Well, a vital quality is the mastery he shows perhaps reflects Kingsley Amis’ satirised title for in constructing a complete imagined world an imaginary thesis; “The economic influence of displaying “the inner consistency of reality”. the development of shipbuilding techniques This is demonstrated by its ability to absorb 1468-1475” (or whatever the period was!) treatments as as diverse as, say, the But do corresponding principles apply, one “archaeological-historical” one adopted by the may ask, to the would-be creative writer who author of one of the articles in this issue, and the wishes to follow in Tolkien’s foot-steps - a “Marxist-analytical” one of Edward Crawford, wholly understandable and laudable wish in featured in the first of our published “Peter Roe itself? Is there a place for imaginative fiction set memorial” booklets. So we hope that the “game” in Tolkien’s World? is worth playing; in the end it contributes to our There have been successful instances. Many understanding of Tolkien’s world as a created (or will recall a moving tale, by Kay Woollard, sub-created) whole, that is, as a work of art. which appeared in Mallorn some years ago2, and A game, however, must have rules, and as of the sad fate of two hobbits who had been Tolkien’s world, through the convention he present with the bowmen sent to the aid of the evolved to embody it, operates as history, the last king of the North-kingdom. The story here, rules must be, in essence, those by which the though, was provided with a context in Middle- historian lives and writes. That is to say that earth, but that was not its raison d’être. Its facts, once established, are inescapable, that characters were products of the writer’s 1 Letters no 160, pp. 209-10. 2 Kay Woolard, ‘The Survivor” Mallorn 25 (September 1988), pp. 23-9 5 Mallom XXXI imagination; there was no attempt to write object of the exercise has to be the expression of Tolkien’s fiction for him. The story, in other the writers own personality as an end in itself, words, would have been just as good had it been not as an echo of the masters, to employ Tolkien set in a different fantasy world, or in our own as a springboard, not as a crutch. This will real one. involve inventing an independent “fantasy” The essential principle is surely the same world, that will belong to the writer alone, even for the imaginative writer as it is for the historian if it involves labouring over its construction as of Middle-earth, namely that while you can aim long and arduously as Tolkien did. In an issue of to illustrate Tolkien’s World, you cannot invent Mallorn published not long after the late Peter more of it, or add bits on to what Tolkien left Roe’s death, there appeared some extracts from a obscure or unfinished. There is parody, of story which he had begun to write, which show course, but this is not to be taken seriously as art, him doing exactly that.