“Deep Roots Are Not Reached by the Frost”: Tolkien and the Welsh Language

Stephen Brady “Deep Roots are Not Reached by the Frost”: Tolkien and the Welsh Language J. R. R. Tolkien was intensely conscious ein cariad, Un Fodrwy I’n clymu—“One thology for England” thus extend its roots that he was English, indeed West Mercian. Ring to show our love, One Ring to bind beyond the soil of England? The good Pro- His legendarium, of which The Lord of the us”. This is still inscribed on many Welsh fessor himself suggests the answer in his Rings is the most widely-read part, was wedding rings to this day. 1955 O’Donnell Lecture: “Welsh is of this also intended to be intensely English, as Another property of the Ring, that of soil, this island, the senior language of the was his self-declared purpose in writing it: making its wearer invisible, was shared by Men of Britain, and Welsh is beautiful.” “to make a body of more or less connected the ring given by Luned to Owain in the old Tolkien loved the sound of Welsh from legend . which I could dedicate simply: Welsh tale Iarlles y Ffynnon, “The Lady of childhood. “I heard it coming out of the to England; to my country.”1 the Fountain”, which was included in the West. It struck at me in the names on coal- Yet, surprisingly, when native Welsh collection of ancient stories and myths to trucks; and drawing nearer it flickered past speakers heard Tolkien’s invented Elvish which its nineteenth century translator, on station signs, a flash of strange spelling language, Sindarin, spoken in the Peter and a hint of a language old yet alive; even Jackson film adaptations, they initially in an adeiladwyd 1887, ill-cut on a stone thought they were hearing Welsh, and cer- slab, it pierced my linguistic heart.” tainly not any form of English, ancient or Tolkien, critically, soon saw through the modern. “strange spelling” to the elegant simplicity This was by no means accidental. As of the orthography of the Welsh language, Tolkien himself said in his O’Donnell Lec- rooted in the adaptation of the Latin alpha- ture on “English and Welsh”, delivered at bet to a Celtic language by monks 1400 Oxford University in October 1955, “the years ago. Read according to its own rules names of persons and places in this story the Old Speech of Britain has, as Tolkien were mainly composed on patterns deliber- saw even as a child, a mellifluous beauty, a ately modelled on those of Welsh (closely language worthy of beirdd a chantorion, of similar but not identical)”. He went on to bards and singers. observe that “this element in the tale has English-speakers are in no position to given perhaps more pleasure to more read- complain about Welsh orthography. That ers than anything else in it”.2 of their own language, as George Bernard As J. S. Ryan has observed, “the ‘Welsh’/ Shaw is reputed to have observed, enables Celtic strand to [Tolkien’s] writing . Bridget Ruffing, Tolkien Smoking. “fish” to be spelled “ghoti” (“gh” as in must be given the serious attention hitherto Lady Charlotte Guest, gave the name The “tough”, “o” as in “women”, and “ti” as accorded only to his Old English and Old Mabinogion, a book with which Tolkien is in “nation”). The old monks saw to it that Norse analogues”.3 As we shall see, this known to have been very well acquainted. Welsh spelling was far more rational and strand extends to the inspirational influ- The stories in The Mabinogion were taken consistent! ence of tales and legends from the Welsh from the “The Red Book of Hergest”. It is As an undergraduate, Tolkien would cultural heritage, a heritage with which intriguing, therefore, that Tolkien present- spend the Skeat Prize he won for English at Tolkien was very familiar. For example, ed The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings as Exeter College Oxford in 1914 on a book the inscription on the Ring (One Ring to “translations from the Red Book of West- on Welsh grammar by J. Morris-Jones. The bring them all and in the darkness bind march”, especially as Hergest Court, from collection of Tolkien’s books deposited them) which Gandalf reveals written in let- which “The Red Book of Hergest” gets its after his death in the Library of Oxford’s ters of fire to a quavering Frodo, hearkens name is in Herefordshire, a part of England Faculty of English shows that over the back to the inscription on the ring given bordering Wales known as the Marches. years he amassed a significant collection of as a token of love by the famed mediaeval From the viewpoint of Tolkien’s native books in and about Welsh, many annotated Welsh ruler Llewellyn the Great to his be- Warwickshire it is the West March. in his own hand. By 1920, when he holi- trothed Joan in 1206: Un Fodrwy i ddangos But why should Tolkien’s intended “my- dayed in Trwyn Llanbedrog with his fami- StAR May/June 2021 page 15 ly, it seems he could speak at least some of of the scholars and archaeologists of his the Welsh people in their struggle to pre- the modern Welsh language, in addition to day in rejecting the view that the An- serve their ancient language and heritage, being able to read it fluently in its mediae- glo-Saxons had exterminated or driven out not least because it was, he believed, his val incarnation. He also lectured and wrote the native Britons when they conquered heritage as an Englishman also. on themes related to Welsh language and and colonised England. They imposed their Tolkien clearly valued linguistic, cul- literature throughout his academic career. rule and their language on the people they tural, and ethnic diversity, as is shown by Welsh seems indeed to have appealed to conquered but the indigenous people re- its presence in his subcreated world. Carl him aesthetically even more than his be- mained and intermarried with them. Phelpstead in his magisterial study of the loved Anglo-Saxon and Old Norse, as he In his lecture on “English and Welsh” he issues covered in this essay, Tolkien and confides in a letter to W. H. Auden.4 In that argues that “neither Celtic nor Germanic Wales, quotes my good friend Elwyn Fair- letter he places Finnish equal in its appeal forms of speech belong in origin to these burn on this point. Writing in Tolkien: A to him with the latter two languages, and islands. They are both invaders and by sim- Celebration, edited by this magazine’s this no doubt led him to base the other of ilar routes. The bearers of these languages editor Joseph Pearce, Fairburn remarks of his main invented languages, Quenya, the have clearly never extirpated the peoples the Free Peoples of Middle Earth, Elves, ancient “High Elven” speech, on Finnish, of other language that they found before Dwarves, Hobbits, Ents and Men: “They as Sindarin, the usual speech of Elves in them”. He concludes that “the inhabitants each preserve, without mutual hostility, Middle Earth, is based on Welsh. of Britain, during recoded history, must their own speech and way of life and eth- But the Welsh roots of Tolkien’s legend- have been in large part neither Celtic nor nicity.” Professor Phelpstead goes on to arium go deeper than mere aesthetics or Germanic, that is not derived physically observe that “[s]uch diversity would not phonetics, deeper than the aural beauty of from the original speakers of those variet- have survived under Sauron but is fostered the language. It is clear that they are found- ies of language, nor even from the already by Aragorn when he becomes King of the ed more profoundly in his comment that more racially mixed invaders who planted West”.5 Tolkien was “at home only in the Welsh is “the senior language of the Men them in Britain. In that case they are and counties upon the Welsh Marches” and, of Britain”. He was aware that the language were not either ‘Celts’ or ‘Teutons’ accord- Professor Phelpstead concludes, “his love which now survives as Welsh was spoken, ing to the modern myth that still holds such of Wales and Welsh were inseparable from in its ancestral form, in what is now En- an attraction for many minds”. his love of, and sense of belonging to, En- gland, long before the arrival of those who Tolkien cites much evidence from lan- gland”.6 spoke what we now know as Old English. guage and place names such as Walton. The truth is that Tolkien’s “mythology Walworth, and Walcot to support his ar- A Hobbit at heart, Stephen Brady has re- for England” has roots that reach deep- gument that the Anglo-Saxons did not re- tired as near to the Shire as he can get, al- er than those of the English language and place the people they called “wealas” (the though he does not—yet—live in a hole in the people who called themselves English, origin of the modern words “Wales” and the ground. roots sinking deep into the common British “Welsh”). Modern scholarship has largely linguistic and ethnic heritage. come around to Tolkien’s view, supported Tolkien actually dissented from many most recently by DNA studies. Based on References other scholars in his academic field, the such studies, geneticist Stephen Oppen- 1. Humphrey, The Letters of J. R. R. philology of the English language, in argu- heimer argued in The Origins of the British Tolkien (London: Allen & Unwin, 1981), ing that, contrary to the prevailing view, the (2006) that the Anglo-Saxons contributed p.

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