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Issue 48 • Autumn 2009 MallornThe Journal of the Tolkien Society Varda Becky Hitchin Mallorn The Journal of the Tolkien Society Issue 48 • Autumn 2009 Editor: Henry Gee editorial Production & 4 John Garth reveals the importance of names design: Colin Sullivan letters Cover art: Gates of Moria by 8 Murray Smith remembers the last veterans of the First World War Jef Murray Inside pages: Becky Hitchin reviews (pp. 2, 27, 35, 38), Jef Murray 9 Henry Gee on Tolkien Studies Volume 6 (pp. 8, 18, 22, 31), Phyllis 10 John Garth on Black and White Ogre Country: The Lost Tales of Hilary Tolkien Berka (p. 11), John Gilbey 12 Joel Franz on The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún by J. R. R. Tolkien (pp. 42, 51, 52), Glendon 13 David Doughan on Paths of Exile by Carla Nayland Mellow (p. 46) 14 Chad Chisholm on The Hunt for Gollum 16 Pat Reynolds on The Tolkien Name in History Mallorn © The Tolkien commentary Society. Printed and 19 Maggie Burns The desire of a tale-teller distributed by The Printed 25 Lynn Whitaker Frodo as the scapegoat child of Middle-earth Word, 7–9 Newhouse 29 Kristine Larsen The Stone of Erech and the Black Stone of the Ka’aba: Business Centre, Old meteorite or ‘meteor-wrong’? Crawley Road, Horsham 33 Paul H. Vigor Questing for ‘Tygers’: a historical archaeological landscape RH12 4RU, UK. investigation of J. R. R. Tolkien’s real Middle-earth poetry 38 Carol Brownlow Dawn Over the Wolds of Rohan and Cuivienen 38 Jodi Storer Sarehole Dreams (Tom Bombadil Alive and Well) obituary 39 Becky Hitchin celebrates the life and work of David Eddings fiction 41 Shelly Li Royal blood 47 Ben Gribbin Wisdom well, I’m back 50 John Gilbey goes in search of Rivendell Mallorn is the Journal of the Tolkien Society, and appears twice a year, in the Spring (copy deadline 25 December) and Autumn (21 June). It considers reviews, comment, scholarly articles, original poetry, artwork and fiction (excluding fan fiction). Unsolicited material is welcome, but contributors should decide prior to submission to which category their manuscript belongs, and electronic submission is strongly encouraged. Full details on the preparation and submission to Mallorn are available on request from the Editor by email ([email protected]) or by mail to 89 Connaught Road, Cromer, Norfolk NR27 0DB, UK, on receipt of a stamped addressed envelope (if in UK) or two International Reply Coupons (if outside the UK). Mallorn © 2009 The Tolkien Society. Copyright for individual articles and artwork resides with the authors and is used here under on a nonexclusive licence. The Tolkien Society Founded in London in 1969 the Tolkien Society is an international organization registered in the UK as a charity (No. 273809) dedicated to furthering interest in the life and works of Professor J. R. R. Tolkien, CBE (1892–1973) who remains its President in perpetuo. His daughter, Miss Priscilla Tolkien, became its honorary Vice-President in 1986. As well as Mallorn, the society publishes a bimonthly bulletin, Amon Hen. In addition to local gatherings (‘Smials’) there are annual national meetings: the AGM and Dinner in the spring, Summermoot and the Seminar in the summer, and Oxonmoot, a celebratory weekend held in Oxford in late September. For further information about the society please contact Sally Kennett, 210 Prestbury Road, Cheltenham, Glos GL52 3ER or visit http://www.tolkiensociety.org. Mallorn Issue 48 Autumn 2009 3 editorial Tolkien of the many names he Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún Sigurd’ he would characterize the brothers offers fascinating new insights into and their father Hreidmar as ‘demons’, it Tolkien’s creative processes — in seems possible that Tolkien in 1909 took Tparticular how Norse myth haunted his nom de plume directly from this Otter him. By that I don’t just mean it inspired of the Eddas and sagas, who memorably him to write something in a similar vein; I spent his time frolicking beside a waterfall also mean it disturbed and horrified him in the form of (no prizes here) an otter, so much that his own legendarium turned before being killed by the even tricksier out to be more like a reaction against it. Out Loki as a tasty meal. The murder prompts John Garth went the amoral Aesir; in came the angelic the payment of a weregild (gold was known Valar. Even in Sigurd and Gudrún, where in Old Norse as the ‘otter’s ransom’), which Tolkien is ostensibly trying to retell an Old sets in motion the curse of the Nibelung Norse story faithfully, his Odin is a far cry ring, so this minor character plays a pivotal from the many-faceted original, whose role in the story. contradictions are so extreme that even a The only other source of inspiration god can barely contain them. Indeed, as that suggests itself for the 17-year-old Christopher Tolkien nearly says, the Odin in Tolkien’s Otter alias is Ohthere, a seafarer these poems his father wrote around 1930 is who brought King Alfred strange tales more or less Manwë in costume: an august from the Arctic Ocean in the Old English figure with one eye (!) always on the final Orosius (the relevant passage is a standard battle of good against evil. student text in Sweet’s Anglo-Saxon Reader). But for me, the publication of Sigurd Ohthere is an Anglo-Saxon name, but the and Gudrún also brought to mind another sailor was actually Scandinavian and in masquerade arguably inspired by Norse Norse would have been called Ottárr or myth — in this case one in which Tolkien Ottar. It is not hard to believe that Tolkien, himself was the actor. It took place some even five years before he created Éarendel/ 20 years earlier, in 1909, when he wanted Eärendil, might have identified with the a nickname — or codename, rather — to ninth-century shipman: the sea voyage is a use in his ‘Book of the Foxrook’, a teenage standard item of furniture in many people’s exercise in code and Esperanto. The name imaginations, but I suspect for young he picked was Lutro, Esperanto for ‘otter’. Ronald it was imprinted with especial force I wonder whether it was chosen simply from the time he left South Africa in a for the animal’s quick, crafty, secretive steamer at the age of three, never to return. connotations: fitting enough for someone There are, however, two obstacles engaged in making up codes. It has also — neither absolute — to the idea that been suggested plausibly (by Patrick Wynne Otter harks back to Ottar/Ohthere. First, and Arden Smith) that Otter was Tolkien’s although Ottar sounds a bit like Otter it nickname in Animalic, the language he does not mean the same thing at all (rather had developed with his Incledon cousins. it is thought to descend like Ohthere from But Otter also happens to be the name of a older form signifying ‘feared warrior’). the third member of that tricksy brethren Second, Tolkien’s copy of Sweet’s (preserved composed of the dragon Fafnir and his in the Bodleian Library) is dated 1911, the dwarf brother Regin in the story of Sigurd, year he went up to Oxford, and two years which Tolkien had first encountered as a after he wrote ‘The Book of the Foxrook’. child in Andrew Lang’s Red Fairy Book. All we can say for sure, then, is that when he Despite the fact that in his ‘New Lay of picked out his Foxrook codename he was 4 Mallorn Issue 48 Autumn 2009 editorial well aware of the Otter of the Sigurd story. he was a fan of H. Rider Haggard’s She, Quite why Tolkien might have identified which mentions Sekhet without specifying with this short-lived figure is difficult to her sex). guess; it seems rather a self-pitying choice In its largely Roman nomenclature The (but then again he was a teenager at the Battle of the Eastern Field is closely related time). At any rate, his imagination was a to another set of articles in the Chronicle: rich thing indeed, and his use of nicknames the reports of the school’s annual Latin and bynames — not only for himself, but debate. Each participant went by a Latin also for his friends and for the characters in name and, for those interested in such his stories — was virtually a compulsion. It things, hours of fun may be had working seems quite characteristic that in a school out who is who. The headmaster, Robert production of Richard Sheridan’s The Cary Gilson, is P. Roscius Carus Helveticus, Rivals he should revel in the part of Mrs his surname being a reference to his Malaprop, a role that makes an artform of exploits as a keen Alpinist. His son, Robert bestowing alternative names on things — Quilter Gilson, no mountain climber, the difference between Sheridan’s character is belittlingly distinguished from his and Tolkien being that his alternatives are almost always strikingly appropriate. Tolkien’s use of nicknames and bynames was Tolkien could not, would not stop himself virtually a compulsion. from making up names. As a result he had so many names to dispose of that everyone father only by the addition of diminutive he met, as well as everyone and everything infixes: Roscius Carellus Helveticulus. in his writings, ended up with a surfeit of T. K. Barnsley, another sometime member them. of the T.C.B.S. (the clique formed by Name-giving runs right through his first Tolkien, Gilson fils and Wiseman), was published work, The Battle of the Eastern usually known as Tea-Cake in euphony Field, which is actually about a rugby with his initials, so his Latin name was match.