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Issue 51 • Spring 2011 MallornThe Journal of the Tolkien Society Mallorn The Journal of the Tolkien Society Issue 51 • Spring 2011 Editor: Henry Gee editorial Production & 4 Henry Gee unearths the roots of Ents design: Colin Sullivan reviews Cover art: Horse and Riders 9 Louis Markos on Restoring Beauty by Becky Hitchin 10 Troels Forchhammer on Tolkien Studies Vol. VII Inside: Phyllis Berka: 11 Chad Chisholm on Toy Story 3 and The Book of Eli Smaug (p. 2), Beorn’s Hall (p. 8); Becky Hitchin: Dwarf commentary Knotwork (p. 12); Glendon 16 José Manuel Ferrández Bru J. R. R. Tolkien and the Spanish civil war Mellow: Slate Fragments 19 Dale Nelson There and Back Again and other travel books of the 1930s (p. 13),Forever Painting study 23 Kusumita Pedersen The ‘divine passive’ in The Lord of the Rings (p. 36); Jef Murray: The Grey 27 Sarah J Sprouse Ending the dualism of nature and industry in The Lord of the Company (p. 15), Chetwood Rings (p. 24), Hobbiton (p. 29), 31 Bud Scott Tolkien’s use of free will versus predestination in The Lord of the Rings Théoden Fallen sketch (p. 34), Helm’s Deep (p. 45), Standard poetry Bearer sketch (50); Colin 34 Tuilinde The Paths of the Dead Sullivan: Hardknott Fort (p. 20); Bernadette Barnes: fiction Wyoming (pp. 33, 51); Henry 37 Elizabeth Counihan How many beans make five? Gee (pp. 35, 38); Alan Hyde 42 Diane Forest-Hill The tale of Aud Sigurdsdottir (p. 43); Teresa Kirkpatrick: 44 Jeff Crook Snicker-Snack and the Queen of Egypt Yavanna Kementári (p. 52); well, I’m back 50 Paul H Vigor blows the horn of Buckland Mallorn © The Tolkien Society. Printed and distributed by The Printed Word, 7–9 Newhouse Business Centre, Old Crawley Road, Horsham RH12 4RU, UK. 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 © 2011 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 51 Spring 2011 3 editorial Ents and sources he Ents are among Tolkien’s most trees themselves, rather than the conceit of original creations. But even the men disguised as such. John Gilbey most original ideas have roots However, we can look at a number of Tin the various experiences and other things that could well have activated materials to which an author is exposed. this particular mental compost heap, and This essay looks at several possible roots in this essay I choose three, in decreasing for Tolkien’s treeherders, but ends with a order of likelihood: a Middle-English poem cautionary note — it is all too easy to go that was well-known to Tolkien; the works fishing for possible sources, but in so doing of his near-contemporary, the science- Henry Gee we create a kind of author in our own image, fiction writer Olaf Stapledon, which we who never perhaps existed. If this concept also know Tolkien knew about; and a seems weird — well, let’s not worry about Biblical verse that Tolkien would (certainly) that right now. First, let’s look at the Ents and have known and (entirely speculatively) where Tolkien might have found inspiration might have triggered stories in his mind: for their creation. speculatively, because no documentary Anyone reading this will already know evidence is known to me that Tolkien what the Ents are, or were. The Ents feature remarked on this verse in particular. in The Lord of the Rings as the distinctive denizens of Fangorn Forest, the giant Gawain and the Green Knight “Shepherds of the Trees”. The term ‘Ent’ is One can go much further than saying Old English for giant, and these creatures that Tolkien was familiar with the Middle are indeed huge. But each Ent seems to English epic poem Sir Gawain and The resemble a tree of a particular species, more Green Knight — he was an authority on it, or less, in their build, bark-like skin and and produced a translation (available in the foliage-like hair and beards (all the Ents posthumous publication Sir Gawain and we meet are male). A distinctive feature the Green Knight, Pearl and Sir Orfeo). On of Ents, though, is that some Ents become the surface the poem is a cautionary tale of more rooted and tree-like with age, just courtly manners, but rougher and stranger as some of the trees they herd are actively themes lie not far beneath, mainly in the mobile, so there seems to be a continuum character of the Green Knight. between Ent and tree. For those unfamiliar with the tale, the Tolkien was frank in his ignorance of the story starts when Court of King Arthur origin of the Ents. They emerged, he said, is gathered at Camelot at Christmas, but from the compost of sources and influences matters cannot proceed unless a tale of that accumulates in the mind of any author. adventure is produced. At that moment “I did not consciously invent them at all,” the Green Knight rides into the hall, he wrote in 1955 to W. H. Auden (Letters distinguished first by his size (“that half a of J. R. R. Tolkien 163), suggesting that troll upon earth I trow that he was; but the they emerged on the page more or less largest man alive at least I declare him”) fully formed, as if Tolkien were reporting and, second, by the colour of his clothes, rather than composing. Later in the same and himself (“All of green were they made, letter Tolkien, in more analytical mood, both garments and man”). He rides a vast suggests that their inception might have horse, and holds in one hand a bough of been connected with Old English, and holly, in the other an axe. To cut a long story Tolkien’s dissatisfaction with Macbeth. How short, the Green Knight challenges anyone wonderful, Tolkien thought, if Birnam to behead him with his own axe. Sir Gawain Wood really did march on Dunsinane: the rises to the task, but having beheaded 4 Mallorn Issue 51 Spring 2011 editorial the visitor, is surprised to see the Green The scale of Stapledon’s work makes Knight pick up his own head and challenge Tolkien’s Middle-earth look almost Gawain to receive a blow in return a year’s kitchen-sink. His book Last and First Men hence. It is not hard to see traces of the old (1930) is nothing less than an entire history ‘Green Man’ or ‘Jack In The Green’ story in of mankind, right up to the umpteenth here, entwined with rituals of sacrifice and human race living on Neptune in some fertility, especially at the winter solstice. remote future. Last Men in London (1932) is But for now, one can only be struck with an accessory bauble, a brief intake of breath the giant size of the Green Knight, together before Star Maker, a complete history of with his colour, and its explicit association with woodland and foliage. Source-hunting warps history, creating However, it is perhaps pertinent precursors where perhaps none existed. (and salutary) to note that in his own introductory remarks, Tolkien explicitly does not discuss the legends and myths the cosmos in which the entire action of that might have contributed to the various Last and First Men occupies a couple of episodes in the story, concerning “ancient paragraphs. Star Maker was published in rituals, nor of pagan divinities of the Sun, 1937, the same year as The Hobbit. It is nor of Fertility” and so on, sources of such known that C. S. Lewis admired Stapledon’s things being almost entirely lost. Tolkien work (without necessarily approving of was more concerned with the literary style it) — but what of Tolkien, and the Ents? of the author and how it related to the Tolkien certainly knew (presumably context of his time — the English Midlands through Lewis) of Stapledon’s work — a of the fourteenth century. casual reference to Last Men In London in The Notion Club Papers is evidence enough Olaf Stapledon for that (The History of Middle-Earth IX: Turning from the fourteenth century to Sauron Defeated).