122 To Naomi Mitchison

[Mrs Mitchison had written in praise of Farmer Giles of Ham, which was published in the autumn of 1949.]

18 December 1949

3 Manor Road, Oxford

Dear Mrs Mitchison,

It was extremely kind of you to write to me. .... As for 'Farmer Giles' it was I fear written very light-heartedly, originally of a 'no time' in which blunderbusses or anything might occur. Its slightly donnish touching up, as read to the Lovelace Soc., and as published, makes the Blunderbuss rather glaring — though not really worse than all mediaeval treatments of Arthurian matter. But it was too embedded to be changed, and some people find the anachronisms amusing. I myself could not forgo the quotation (so very Murrayesque) from the Oxford Dictionary. Greek Fire must have been more like a flammenwerfer: as used on their ships it seems to have been quite deadly. But in the Isle of Britain in archaeological fact there can have been nothing in the least like a fire-arm. But neither was there fourteenth century armour.

I find 'dragons' a fascinating product of imagination. But I don't think the Beowulf one is frightfully good. But the whole problem of the intrusion of the 'dragon' into northern imagination and its transformation there is one I do not know enough about. Fafnir in the late Norse versions of the Sigurd-story is better; and Smaug and his conversation obviously is in debt there.

I know Icelandic pretty well (as I should), and a little Welsh, but in spite of efforts I have always been rather heavily defeated by Old Irish, or indeed its modern descendants. The mix-up was politically and culturally great and complex — but it left very little linguistic trace on Icelandic, save in the borrowing of certain names notably Brian and Niai which became used in Iceland. On Irish the influence was more considerable. But in any case names that were at all similar in sound tended to be equated or confused. ....

I hope to give you soon two books, about which at least one criticism will be possible: that they are excessively long! One is a sequel to 'The Hobbit' which I have just finished after 12 years (intermittent) labour. I fear it is 3 times as long, not for children (though that does not mean wholly unsuitable), and rather grim in places. I think it is very much better (in a different way). The other is pure myth and legend of times already remote in Bilbo's days.

Thank you again for writing. I hope the reply is in places legible. With best wishes.

Yours sincerely,
J. R. R. Tolkien.