¹Is the presence if 'conundrums' in Alice a parallel to echoes of Northern myth in The Hobbit?

2 Not that 'examining' is very profitable. Quite small sales would surpass it. £100 requires nearly as much labour as a full-sized novel.

³Not quite. I should like, if possible, to learn more about the fairy-tale collection, c. 1904.

⁴Still there are more hobbits, far more of them and about them, in the new story. Gollum reappears, and Gandalf is to the fore: 'dwarves' come in; and though there is no dragon (so far) there is going to be a Giant; and the new and (very alarming) Ringwraiths are a feature. There ought to be things that people who liked the old mixture will find to have a similar taste.

⁵It may mitigate your just wrath, if I say that since I wrote in December my wife's health became much worse. I spent most of last term in an attic in a hotel, with my house derelict and damaged.¹ I have been ill myself, and hardly able to cope with university work, which for me has trebled.

⁶Literature has been (until the modern novel) mainly a masculine business, and in it there is a great deal about the 'fair and false'. That is on the whole a slander. Women are humans and therefore capable of perfidy. But within the human family, as contrasted with men they are not generally or naturally the more perfidious. Very much the reverse. Except only that women are apt to break down if asked to 'wait' for a man, too long, and while youth (so precious and necessary to a would-be mother) is swiftly passing. They should, in fact, not be asked to wait.

⁷Christian marriage is not a prohibition of sexual intercourse, but the correct way of sexual temperance – in fact probably the best way of getting the most satisfying sexual pleasure, as alcoholic temperance is the best way of enjoying beer and wine.

⁸Since clifian = 'cleave, stick', it is plain that foxes clife and clifwyrt originally = burdock. clófa is prob. an MS error for glófa through mixing the names.

⁹Especially as I find allusions and references to it creeping into Mr Lewis' work, such as his latest novel.⁴

¹⁰'I think 'criticism' – however valid or intellectually engaging – tends to get in the way of a writer who has anything personal to say. A tightrope walker may require practice, but if he starts a theory of equilibrium he will lose grace (and probably fall off). Indeed (if I dare yet venture on any criticism again) I should say that I think it gets in your way, as a writer. You read too much, and too much of that analytically. But then you are also a born critic. I am not. You are also a born reader.

¹¹Intending the word to be understood in its ancient meanings, which continued as late as Spenser — a murrain on Will Shakespeare and his damned cobwebs.

¹²Though I have thought about them a good deal.

¹³It is, I suppose, fundamentally concerned with the problem of the relation of An (and Sub-creation) and Primary Reality.

¹⁴Not in the Beginner of Evil: his was a sub-creative Fall, and hence the Elves (the representatives of sub-creation par excellence) were peculiarly his enemies, and the special object of his desire and hate – and open to his deceits. Their Fall is into possessiveness and (to a less degree) into perversion of their art to power.

¹⁵As far as all this has symbolical or allegorical significance. Light is such a primeval symbol in the nature of the Universe, that it can hardly be analysed. The Light of Valinor (derived from light before any fall) is the light of an undivorced from reason, that sees things both scientifically (or philosophically) and imaginatively (or subcreatively) and says that they are good' – as beautiful. The Light of Sun (or Moon) is derived from the Trees only after they were sullied by Evil.

¹⁶Of course in reality this only means that my 'elves' are only a representation or an apprehension of a part of human nature, but that is not the legendary mode of talking.

¹⁷It exists indeed as a poem of considerable length, of which the prose version in The Silmarillion is only a reduced version.¹

¹⁸His name is in actual origin Anglo-Saxon: earendel "ray of light' applied sometimes to the morning-star, a name of ramified mythological connexions (now largely obscure). But that is a mere 'learned note'. In fact his name is Elvish signifying the Great Mariner or Sea-lover.

¹⁹A name that Lewis derives from me and cannot be restrained from using, and mis-spelling as Numinor. Númenóre means in 'Elvish' simply Westernesse or Land in the West, and is not related to numen numinous, or νούμενον!²

²⁰Elrond symbolises throughout the ancient wisdom, and his House represents Lore – the preservation in reverent memory of all tradition concerning the good, wise, and beautiful. It is not a scene of action but of reflection. Thus it is a place visited on the way to all deeds, or 'adventures'. It may prove to be on the direct road (as in The Hobbit); but it may be necessary to go from there in a totally unexpected course. So necessarily in The Lord of the Rings, having escaped to Elrond from the imminent pursuit of present evil, the hero departs in a wholly new direction: to go and face it at its source.

²¹The view is taken (as clearly reappears later in the case of the Hobbits that have the Ring for a while) that each 'Kind' has a natural span, integral to its biological and spiritual nature. This cannot really be increased qualitatively or quantitatively; so that prolongation in time is like stretching a wire out ever tauter, or 'spreading butter ever thinner' – it becomes an intolerable torment.

²²It is only in the time between The Hobbit and its sequel that it is discovered that the Necromancer is Sauron Redivivus, growing swiftly to visible shape and power again. He escapes the vigilance and re-enters Mordor and the Dark Tower.

²³The Hobbits are, of course, really meant to be a branch of the specifically human race (not Elves or Dwarves) – hence the two kinds can dwell together (as at Bree), and are called just the Big Folk and Little Folk. They are entirely without non-human powers, but are represented as being more in touch with 'nature' (the soil and other living things, plants and animals), and abnormally, for humans, free from ambition or greed of wealth. They are made small (little more than half human stature, but dwindling as the years pass) partly to exhibit the pettiness of man, plain unimaginative parochial man – though not with either the smallness or the savageness of Swift, and mostly to show up, in creatures of very small physical power, the amazing and unexpected heroism of ordinary men 'at a pinch'.

²⁴Nowhere is the place or nature of 'the Wizards' made fully explicit. Their name, as related to Wise, is an Englishing of their Elvish name, and is used throughout as utterly distinct from Sorcerer or Magician. It appears finally that they were as one might say the near equivalent in the mode of these tales of Angels, guardian Angels. Their powers are directed primarily to the encouragement of the enemies of evil, to cause them to use their own wits and valour, to unite and endure. They appear always as old men and sages, and though (sent by the powers of the True West) in the world they suffer themselves, their age and grey hairs increase only slowly. Gandalf whose function is especially to watch human affairs (Men and Hobbits) goes on through all the tales.

²⁵The hostility of (even good) Dwarves and Elves, a motive that often appears, derives from the legends of the First Age; the Mines of Moria, the wars of Dwarves and Orcs (goblins, soldiery of the Dark Lord) refer to the Second Age and early Third.

²⁶'But as each has disliked this or that, I should (if I took all the criticisms together and obeyed them) find little left, and am forced to the conclusion that so great a work (in size) cannot be perfect, nor even if perfect, be liked entirely by any one reader.

²⁷'That is, I will draw it as much better as my little skill allows, in black. But it should of course properly appear in white line on a black background, since it represents a silver line in the darkness. How does that appeal to the Production Department?

²⁸N = ng as in ding.

²⁹It nearly has, even in hasty sketch!

³⁰Since 'mortality' is thus represented as a special gift of God to the Second Race of the Children (the Eruhíni, the Children of the One God) and not a punishment for a Fall, you may call that 'bad theology'. So it may be, in the primary world, but it is an imagination capable of elucidating truth, and a legitimate basis of legends.

³¹Inside this mythical history (as its metaphysic is, not necessarily as a metaphysic of the real World) Creation, the act of Will of Eru the One that gives Reality to conceptions, is distinguished from Making, which is permissive.

³²Only the first person (of worlds or anything) can be unique. If you say he is there must be more than one, and created (sub) existence is implied. I can say 'he is' of Winston Churchill as well as of Tom Bombadil, surely?

³³There are thus no temples or 'churches' or fanes in this 'world' among 'good' peoples. They had little or no'religion'in the sense of worship. For help they may call on a Vala(as Elbereth), as a Catholic might on a Saint, though no doubt knowing in theory as well as he that the power of the Vala was limited and derivative. But this is a 'primitive age': and these folk may be said to view the Valar as children view their parents or immediate adult superiors, and though they know they are subjects of the King he does not live in their country nor have there any dwelling. I do not think Hobbits practised any form of worship or prayer (unless through exceptional contact with Elves). The Númenóreans (and others of that branch of Humanity, that fought against Morgoth, even if they elected to remain in Middle-earth and did not go to Númenor: such as the Rohirrim) were pure monotheists. But there was no temple in Númenor (until Sauron introduced the cult of Morgoth). The top of the Mountain, the Meneltarma or Pillar of Heaven, was dedicated to Eru, the One, and there at any time privately, and at certain times publicly, God was invoked, praised, and adored: an imitation of the Valar and the Mountain of Aman. But Numenor fell and was destroyed and the Mountain engulfed, and there was no substitute. Among the exiles, remnants of the Faithful who had not adopted the false religion nor taken pan in the rebellion, religion as divine worship (though perhaps not as philosophy and metaphysics) seems to have played a small part; though a glimpse of it is caught in Faramir's remark on 'grace at meat'. Vol. II p. 285.⁴

³⁴The chief way in which Hobbits differ from experience is that they are not cruel, and have no blood-sports, and have by implication a feeling for 'wild creatures' that are not alas! very commonly found among the nearest contemporary parallels.

³⁵'gods' is the nearest equivalent, but not strictly accurate.

³⁶The story of Beren and Lúthien is the one great exception, as it is the way by which 'Elvishness' becomes wound in as a thread in human history.

³⁷'There is only one 'god': God, Eru Ilúvatar. There are the first creations, angelic beings, or which those most concerned in the Cosmogony reside (of love and choice) inside the World, as Valar or gods, or governors; and there are incarnate rational creatures. Elves and Men, of similar but different status and natures.

³⁸This was a delusion of course, a Satanic lie. For as emissaries from the Valar clearly inform him, the Blessed Realm does not confer immortality. The land is blessed because the Blessed dwell there, not vice versa, and the Valar are immortal by right and nature, while Men are mortal by right and nature. But cozened by Sauron he dismisses all this as a diplomatic argument to ward off the power of the King of Kings. It might or might not be 'heretical', if these myths were regarded as statements about the actual nature of Man in the real world : I do not know. But the view of the myth is that Death — the mere shortness of human life-span – is not a punishment for the Fall, but a biologically (and therefore also spiritually, since body and spirit are integrated) inherent part of Man's nature. The attempt to escape it is wicked because 'unnatural', and silly because Death in that sense is the Gift of God (envied by the Elves), release from the weariness of Time. Death, in the penal sense, is viewed as a change in attitude to it: fear, reluctance. A good Númenórean died of free will when he felt it to be time to do so.

³⁹There were evil Númenóreans: Sauronians, but they do not come into this story, except remotely; as the wicked Kings who had become Nazgûl or Ringwraiths.

⁴⁰The Elves often called on Varda-Elbereth, the Queen of the Blessed Realm, their especial friend; and so does Frodo.

⁴¹Take the Ents, for instance. I did not consciously invent them at all. The chapter called 'Treebeard', from Treebeard's first remark on p. 66, was written off more or less as it stands, with an effect on my self (except for labour pains) almost like reading some one else's work. And I like Ents now because they do not seem to have anything to do with me. I daresay something had been going on in the 'unconscious' for some time, and that accounts for my feeling throughout, especially when stuck, that I was not inventing but reporting (imperfectly) and had at times to wait till 'what really happened' came through. But looking back analytically I should say that Ents are composed of philology, literature, and life. They owe their name to the eald enta geweorc² of Anglo-Saxon, and their connexion with stone. Their pan in the story is due, I think, to my bitter disappointment and disgust from schooldays with the shabby use made in Shakespeare of the coming of 'Great Birnam wood to high Dunsinane hill': I longed to devise a setting in which the trees might really march to war. And into this has crept a mere piece of experience, the difference of the 'male' and 'female' attitude to wild things, the difference between unpossessive love and gardening.

⁴²Not any better I think than The Marvellous Land of Snergs, Wyke-Smith, Ernest Benn 1927. Seeing the date, I should say that this was probably an unconscious source-book!for the Hobbits, not of anything else.

⁴³The name, spelt this way, also entered the United States, 2 or 3 generations ago, from Canada. I recently had some correspondence with a family in Texas.

⁴⁴The 'Sindarin', a Grey-elven language, is in fact constructed deliberately to resemble welsh phonologically and to have a relation to High-elven similar to that existing between British (properly so-called, sc. the Celtic languages spoken in this island at the time of the Roman Invasion) and Latin. All the names in the book, and the languages, are of course constructed, and not at random.

⁴⁵I once scribbled 'hobbit' on a blank page of some boring school exam. paper in the early 1930's. It was some time before I discovered what it referred to!

⁴⁶The cats of Queen Berúthiel and the names and adventures of the other 2 wizards² (5 minus Saruman, Gandalf, Radagast) are all that I recollect.

⁴⁷I am not Gandalf, being a transcendent Sub-creator in this little world. As far as any character is 'like me' it is Faramir – except that I lack what all my characters possess (let the psychoanalysts note!) Courage.

⁴⁸'Not quite 'certainly'. The clumsiness in fidelity of Sam was what finally pushed Gollum over the brink, when about to repent.

⁴⁹'They shared in its 'making' — but only on the same terms as we 'make' a work of art or story. The realization of it, the gift to it of a created reality of the same grade as their own, was the act of the One God.

⁵⁰Notably C. L. Wrenn who succeeded me as professor of Anglo-Saxon and who is, I believe, coming to the U.S.A. this autumn for a year, if you (i.e. U.S.A. officials) let him in.

51 humane: this (being in a fairy-story) includes of course Elves, and indeed all 'speaking creatures'.

52 chiefly interested: that is as themes of 'literature', as an amusement. Actually most of them were primarily interested in the acquisition of land and the use of marriage-alliances in furthering their aims.

53 Not unless 'political' is narrowed (or enlarged), so that we are considering imaginatively only one centre or fortress of order and grace surrounded by enemies: the unfilled woods and mountains, hostile and barbarous men, wild beasts and monsters, and the Unknown. The defence of the realm may then indeed become symbolic of the human situation.

54 Of the same kind as Gandalf and Saruman, but of a far higher order.

55 By a triple treachery: 1. Because of his admiration of Strength he had become a follower of Morgoth and fell with him down into the depths of evil, becoming his chief agent in Middle Earth. 2. when Morgoth was defeated by the Valar finally he forsook his allegiance; but out of fear only; he did not present himself to the Valar or sue for pardon, and remained in Middle Earth. 3. When he found how greatly his knowledge was admired by all other rational creatures and how easy it was to influence them, his pride became boundless. By the end of the Second Age he assumed the position of Morgoth's representative. By the end of the Third Age (though actually much weaker than before) he claimed to be Morgoth returned.

⁵⁶My Sam Gamgee is Samwise not Sam(p)son or Samuel.

⁵⁷Having geological interests, and a very little knowledge, I have not wholly neglected this aspect, but its indication is rather more difficult – and perilous!

⁵⁸By 'assistance' I do not, of course, mean interference, though the opportunity to consider specimens would be desirable. My linguistic knowledge seldom extends, beyond the detection of obvious errors and liberties, to the criticism of the niceties that would be required. But there are many special difficulties in this text. To mention one: there are a number of words not to be found in the dictionaries, or which require a knowledge of older English. On points such as these, and others that would inevitably arise, the author would be the most satisfactory, and the quickest, source of information.

⁵⁹Anyway Canétang=Puddleduck² is several classes above this performer!

⁶⁰Actually referred to as 'the One' in App. A III p. 317 1. 20. The Númenóreans (and Elves) were absolute monotheists.

⁶¹For example: Ford of Bruinen = Björnavad! Archet = Gamleby (a mere guess, I suppose, from 'archaic'?) Mountains of Lune (Ered Luin) = Månbergen; Gladden Fields (in spite of descr. in I. 62) = Ljusa slättema, & so on.⁴

⁶²Or (I surmise) the nomenclature of later volumes.

⁶³Soon after AD 1400.

⁶⁴But even so we do not know the original meaning of tooth. Did it mean 'spike, sharp point' or was it (as some guess) really the participial agent to ED 'eat', sc. a functional and non-pictorial name?

⁶⁵Because a single word in human language (unlike Entish!) is a short-hand sign, & conventional. The fact that it is derived from a single facet, even if proved, does not prove that other facets were not equally present to the mind of the users of this conventional sign. The λόγος is ultimately independent of the verbum.

⁶⁶But we do not know how Tīw (=dívus) became a 'name' equated in the interpretatio romana with Mars. Perhaps another substitution of a general term (divinity) for a 'true name'. The plural tívar in O. Norse verse still means 'gods'.

⁶⁷That is: they refer to undisturbed norms of habitual change (like simple statements of the action of frost), but the norms may be interfered with – the patterns on a given window are practically unpredictable, though one believes that if one knew all the circumstances, it would not be so.

⁶⁸By which he means that they are not connected by lost semantic change; but how can he be sure of that?

⁶⁹(See the lament of Galadriel I 394) oiolossëo = from Mt. Uilos.

⁷⁰In High-elven. There was also a more or less synonymous stem gal (corresponding to gil which only applied to white or silver light). This variation g/k is not to be confused with the grammatical change or k, c > g in Grey-elven, seen in the initials of words in composition or after closely connected particles (like the article). So Gil-galad 'star-light'. Cf. palan-díriel compared with a tíro niu.

⁷¹Note the expression III p. 364 [2nd edition p. 365] 'taken as prisoner'.

⁷²Sc. belong to our 'mythological' Middle-Ages which blends unhistorically styles and details ranging over 500 years, and most of which did not of course exist in the Dark Ages of c. 500 A.D.

⁷³Almost the only vestige of 'religion' is seen on II pp. 284-5 in the 'Grace before Meat'. This is indeed mainly as it were a commemoration of the Departed, and theology is reduced to 'that which is beyond Elvenhome and ever will be', sc. is beyond the mortal lands, beyond the memory of unfallen Bliss, beyond the physical world.

⁷⁴I imagine the gap to be about 6000 years : that is we are now at the end of the Fifth Age, if the Ages were of about the same length as S.A. and T.A. But they have, I think, quickened; and I imagine we are actually at the end of the Sixth Age, or in the Seventh.

⁷⁵Hence the Elves called the World, the Universe, Eä – It Is.

⁷⁶It is the view of the Myth that in (say) Elves and Men 'sex' is only an expression in physical or biological terms of a difference of nature in the 'spirit', not the ultimate cause of the difference between femininity and masculinity.

⁷⁷In narrative, as soon as the matter becomes 'storial' and not mythical, being in fact human literature, the centre of interest must shift to Men (and their relations with Elves or other creatures), we cannot write stories about Elves, whom we do not know inwardly; and if we try we simply turn Elves into men.

⁷⁸[A note apparently added later:] It was also the Elvish (and uncorrupted Númenórean) view that a 'good' Man would or should die voluntarily by surrender with trust before being compelled (as did Aragorn). This may have been the nature of unfallen Man ; though compulsion would not threaten him: he would desire and ask to be allowed to 'go on' to a higher state. The Assumption of Mary, the only unfallen person, may be regarded as in some ways a simple regaining of unfallen grace and liberty: she asked to be received, and was, having no further function on Earth. Though, of course, even if unfallen she was not 'pre-Fall'. Her destiny (in which she had cooperated) was far higher than that of any 'Man' would have been, had the Fall not occurred. It was also unthinkable that her body, the immediate source of Our Lord's (without other physical intermediary) should have been disintegrated, or 'corrupted', nor could it surely be long separated from Him after the Ascension. There is of course no suggestion that Mary did not 'age' at the normal rate of her race; but certainly this process cannot have proceeded or been allowed to proceed to decrepitude or loss of vitality and comeliness. The Assumption was in any case as distinct from the Ascension as the raising of Lazarus from the (self) Resurrection.

⁷⁹One, the eldest, alone, and six more with six mates.¹

⁸⁰Between 2463 and the beginning of Gandalf's special enquiries concerning the Ring (nearly 500 years later) they appear indeed to have died out altogether (except, of course, for Sméagol); or to have fled from the shadow of Dol Guldur.

⁸¹Anciently this apparently took place, shortly after birth, by the announcement of the name of the child to the family assembled, or in larger more elaborate communities to the titular 'head' of the clan or family. See note at end.

⁸²Hence the Hobbit expression 'a twelve-mile cousin' for a person who stickled for the law, and recognized no obligations beyond its precise interpretation: one who would give you no present if the distance from his doorstep to yours was not under 12 miles (according to his own measurement).

⁸³No presents were given at or during the celebration of Hobbit weddings, except flowers (weddings were mostly in Spring or early Summer). Assistance in furnishing a home (if the couple were to have a separate one, or private apartments in a Smial) was given long before by the parents on either side.

⁸⁴In more primitive communities, as those still living in clan-smials, the byrding also made a gift to the 'head of the family'. There is no mention of Sméagol's presents. I imagine that he was an orphan; and do not suppose that he gave any present on his birthday, save (grudgingly) the tribute to his 'grandmother'. Fish probably. One of the reasons, maybe, for the expedition. It would have been just like Sméagol to give fish, actually caught by Déagol!

⁸⁵We are here dealing only with titular 'headship' not with ownership of property, and its management. These were distinct matters; though in the case of the surviving 'great households', such as Great Smials or Brandy Hall, they might overlap. In other cases, headship, being a mere title, and a matter of courtesy, was naturally seldom relinquished by the living.

⁸⁶This title and office descended immediately, and was not held by a widow. But Ferumbras, though he became Thain Ferumbras III in 1380, still occupied no more than a small bachelor-son's apartment in the Great Smials, until 1402.

⁸⁷descendants of a common great-grandfather of the same name.

⁸⁸In the original poem he was said to wear a peacock's feather, which (I think you will agree) was entirely unsuitable to his situation in the L.R. In it his feather is merely reported as 'blue'. Its origin is now revealed.

⁸⁹Only in this respect – hatred of trees. She was a great and gallant lady.

⁹⁰See III p. 245.¹

⁹¹Actually, since the events at the Cracks of Doom would obviously be vital to the Tale, I made several sketches or trial versions at various stages in the narrative — but none of them were used, and none of them much resembled what is actually reported in the finished story.

⁹²We frequently see this double scale used by the saints in their judgements upon themselves when suffering great hardships or temptations, and upon others in like trials.

⁹³No account is here taken of 'grace' or the enhancement of our powers as instruments of Providence. Frodo was given 'grace': first to answer the call (at the end of the Council) after long resisting a complete surrender; and later in his resistance to the temptation of the Ring (at times when to claim and so reveal it would have been fatal), and in his endurance of fear and suffering. But grace is not infinite, and for the most pan seems in the Divine economy limited to what is sufficient for the accomplishment of the task appointed to one instrument in a pattern of circumstances and other instruments.

⁹⁴It is not made explicit how she could arrange this. She could not of course just transfer her ticket on the boat like that! For any except those of Elvish race 'sailing West' was not permitted, and any exception required 'authority', and she was not in direct communication with the Valar, especially not since her choice to become 'mortal'. What is meant is that it was Arwen who first thought of sending Frodo into the West, and put in a plea for him to Gandalf (direct or through Galadriel, or both), and she used her own renunciation of the right to go West as an argument. Her renunciation and suffering were related to and enmeshed with Frodo's : both were parts of a plan for the regeneration of the state of Men. Her prayer might therefore be specially effective, and her plan have a certain equity of exchange. No doubt it was Gandalf who was the authority that accepted her plea. The Appendices show clearly that he was an emissary of the Valar, and virtually their plenipotentiary in accomplishing the plan against Sauron. He was also in special accord with Cirdan the Ship-master, who had surrendered to him his ring and so placed himself under Gandalf's command. Since Gandalf himself went on the Ship there would be so to speak no trouble either at embarking or at the landing.

⁹⁵In the sense that 'pity' to be a true virtue must be directed to the good of its object. It is empty if it is exercised only to keep oneself 'clean', free from hate or the actual doing of injustice, though this is also a good motive.

⁹⁶The Witch-king had been reduced to impotence.

97 Tasarinan, Ossiriand, Neldoreth, Dorthonion were all regions of Beleriand, famous in tales of the War.

98 Or even the legitimate need of money.

99 At least they were certainly once necessary. And if we are pained or at times scandalized by those we see close to, I think we should remember the enormous debt we owe to the Benedictines, and also remember that (like the Church) they have always been in a state of succumbing to mammon and the world, and never finally overwhelmed. The inner fire has never been extinguished.

100 The unseemly cobwebs & dust, and the stained label, are not always signs of impaired contents, for those who can draw old corks.

¹⁰¹Not that one should forget the wise words of Charles Williams, that it is our duty to tend the accredited and established altar, though the Holy Spirit may send the fire down somewhere else. God cannot be limited (even by his own Foundations) – of which St Paul is the first & prime example – and may use any channel for His grace. Even to love Our Lord, and certainly to call him Lord, and God, is a grace, and may bring more grace. Nonetheless, speaking institutionally and not of individual souls the channel must eventually run back into the ordained course, or run into the sands and perish. Besides the Sun there may be moonlight (even bright enough to read by); but if the Sun were removed there would be no Moon to see. What would Christianity now be if the Roman Church has in fact been destroyed?

¹⁰²It is a curious chance that the stem √talat used in Q[uenya] for 'slipping, sliding, falling down', of which atalantie is a normal (in Q) noun-formation, should so much resemble Atlantis.

¹⁰³In Time and Tide of this July 15, in a symposium of publishers telling readers what to take on holiday, he only mentioned The Lord of the Rings from all his list, and foretold a long life for it.

¹⁰⁴an error probably for þizōs bōkōs, 'of this book', sg.

¹⁰⁵an error probably for bōka meina, 'my book', sg.

¹⁰⁶Yes, even up to £15,000! Or more!

¹⁰⁷That is, one in which inventing a language for pleasure was the main motive. I am not concerned with slangs, cants, thieves' argot, Notwelsch, and things of that sort.

¹⁰⁸My hobbit is a case. Showing how peculiar to an individual this attribution may be (often obscure to the perpetrator of the 'noise' and not discoverable by others). If I attributed meaning to boo-hoo I should not in this case be influenced by the words containing bū in many other European languages, but by a story by Lord Dunsany (read many years ago) about two idols enshrined in the same temple: Chu-Bu and Sheemish. If I used boo-hoo at all it would be as the name of some ridiculous, fat, self-important character, mythological or human.

¹⁰⁹except in geometry which I was taught by her sister. That was the aunt whose last years I cheered and amused by composing and selecting The Adventures of Tom Bombadil, and consulting her about the book, which she had asked for. She died in her 92nd year soon after it was published.⁴

¹¹⁰There are exceptions. I have read all that E. R. Eddison wrote, in spite of his peculiarly bad nomenclature and personal philosophy. I was greatly taken by the book that was (I believe) the runner-up when The L. R. was given the Fantasy Award:⁵Death of Grass.⁶I enjoy the S.F. of Isaac Azimov. Above these, I was recently deeply engaged in the books of Mary Renault; especially the two about Theseus, The King Must Die, and The Bull from the Sea. A few days ago I actually received a card of appreciation from her; perhaps the piece of 'Fan-mail' that gives me most pleasure.

¹¹¹E.g. in a nonsensical article by J. S. Ryan.

¹¹²With the possible exception of the name (of a king) Gram. This is, of course, a genuine A-S word, but not in recorded A-S used (as it is in Old Norse) as a noun = "warrior or king'. But some influence of the Northern language upon that of the Eorlingas after their removal northward is not unlikely. It is in fact paralleled by clear traces of the influence upon one another of the (poetic) language of Old Norse and A-S.

¹¹³The only (but a major) exception is Eärendil. See below.

¹¹⁴The word Warg used in The Hobbit and the L.R. for an evil breed of (demonic) wolves is not supposed to be A-S specifically, and is given prim. Germanic form as representing the noun common to the Northmen of these creatures. It seems to have 'caught on' – it appears in Orbit 2 p. 119, not as a word in [a] strange country, but in an official communication from Earth to a space-explorer. The story is by a reader of the L.R.

¹¹⁵Already well advanced 20 years before The Hobbit was written. The legends of the past before the time of The Hobbit and The L.R. were also largely composed before 1935.

¹¹⁶Its earliest recorded A-S form is earendil (oer-), later earendel, eorendel. Mostly in glosses on jubar=leoma; also on aurora. But also in Blick[ling] Hom[ilies] 163, se níwa éorendel appl. to St John the Baptist; and most notably Crist 104, éala! éarendel engla beorhtast ofer middangeard monnum sended. Often supposed to refer to Christ (or Mary), but comparison with Bl. Homs, suggests that it refers to the Baptist. The lines refer to a herald, and divine messenger, clearly not the soðfæsta sunnan leoma=Christ.

¹¹⁷Q. ëar S. aear (see I 250).

¹¹⁸This provides the key to a large number of other Elvish Q. names, such as Elendil 'Elf-friend' (eled+ndil), Valandil, Mardil the Good Steward (devoted to the House, sc. of the Kings) Meneldil 'astronomer' etc. Of similar significance in names is -(n)dur, though properly this means 'to serve', as one serves a legitimate master: cf. Q. arandil king's friend, royalist, beside arandur 'king's servant, minister'. But these often coincide: e.g. Sam's relation to Frodo can be viewed either as in status -ndur, in spirit -ndil. Compare among the variant names: Eärendur '(professional) mariner'.

¹¹⁹At the time of her lament in Lórien she believed this to be perennial, as long as Earth endured. Hence she concludes her lament with a wish or prayer that Frodo may as a special grace be granted a purgatorial (but not penal) sojourn in Eressea, the Solitary Isle in sight of Aman, though for her the way is closed. (The Land of Aman after the downfall of Númenor, was no longer in physical existence 'within the circles of the world'.) Her prayer was granted – but also her personal ban was lifted, in reward for her services against Sauron, and above all for her rejection of the temptation to take the Ring when offered to her. So at the end we see her taking ship.

¹²⁰Though the episode of the 'wargs' (I believe) is in part derived from a scene in S. R. Crockett's The Black Douglas, probably his best romance and anyway one that deeply impressed me in school-days, though I have never looked at it again. It includes Gil de Rez as a Satanist.

¹²¹Which I remember, since (omen again) the OTCs² of that day were specially privileged and I was one of 12 sent down from K[ing] E[dward's] S[chool] to help 'line the route'. We were camped for a wettish night in Lambeth Palace and marched to our stations early on a dull morning that soon cleared up. I was actually standing outside Buck. Palace great gates to the right, facing the palace. We had a good view of the cavalcades, and I have always remembered one little scene (unnoticed by my companions): as the coach containing the royal children swept in on return the P[rince] of W[ales] (a pretty boy) poked his head out and knocked his coronet askew. He was jerked back and smartly rebuked by his sister.

¹²²A nice singular which I feel hobbits must have used, with a distinctive pl[ural] 'youbodies'.

¹²³This willingness usually connotes some degree of humility. In Yorkshire its first impulse was the desire to 'get on'. But that does not remain the sole objective. Cupboard-love is a frequent preliminary to actual love.

¹²⁴Not to mention 'drugs'.

¹²⁵Not 'vintage'. But I like port (v. much) as a mid-mom, drink: warming, digestible, and v. good for my throat, when taken (as I think it should be) by itself or with a dry biscuit, and NOT after a full meal, nor (above all) with desert!

¹²⁶I have now! Probably more than most other folk; and find myself in a v. tangled wood – the clue to which is, however, the belief in incubi and 'changelings'. Alas! one conclusion is that the statement that hobgoblins were 'a larger kind' is the reverse of the original truth. (The statement occurs in the preliminary note on Runes devised for the paperback edition, but now included by A & U in all edns.)

¹²⁷This meaning was understood by other peoples ignorant of Sindarin: cf. Stoningland (1 vol. edn. 882), and in particular the conversation of Theoden and Ghân 864f. In fact it is probable within the historical fiction that the Númenóreans of the Southern kingdom adopted this name from the primitive inhabitants of Gondor and gave it a suitable version in Sindarin.

¹²⁸The remark in the foreword to the 1 vol. paper-back p. 7 that the whole thing was 'primarily linguistic in inspiration' is strictly true.

¹²⁹Possibly the reason why my surname is now usually misspelt TOLKEIN in spite of all my efforts to correct this – even by my college-, bank-, and lawyer's clerks! My name is Tolkien, anglicized from To(l)kiehn = tollkühn, and came from Saxony in the 18th century. It is not Jewish in origin, though I should consider it an honour if it were.

¹³⁰He was actually of almost exactly the same age as my real father would have been: both were born in 1857, Francis at the end of January, and my father in the middle of February.

¹³¹She knew the earliest form of the legend (written in hospital), and also the poem eventually printed as Aragorn's song in LR.

¹³²Owing to Christopher — when I was looking in vain for somewhere to live he wrote 'off his own bat' to the Warden of Merton College and said that his father was wandering looking in vain for a home, & could the College help? So I was amazed to receive a letter from the Warden saying that he had called a special meeting of the Governing Body, and it had unanimously voted that I should be invited to be a residential Fellow!

¹³³Sc. a closely formed body of enemy soldiers.

¹³⁴The Silvan Elves of Thranduil's realm did not speak S. but a related language or dialect.

¹³⁵The difference between this and S. Ithil is due to a change of þ (th) >s in Q. of the Exiles. But there was a stem √SIL as in Silmarilli. Cf. also síla lúmenna omentielvo.

¹³⁶Note: 2 ancient words in Elvish for 'tree': (1) *galadā <√GAL 'grow' intr[ansitive]; and (2) *ornē from the v[ery] f[requently] used √OR/RO rise up, go high (cf. ortani 'raised'). (1) > Q. alda, S. galadh. (2) > Q. orne, S. orn.

(1) is not connected in origin with the name Galadriel, but it does [occur] in Calas Galadhon, Galadhrim. Before I discovered that many readers like you wd. be interested in language-details, I thought people would feel dh uncouth, and so wrote d (for ð & dh) in names. But galadhon, -dhrim is now in text.

¹³⁷If indeed all were so; some may have been merely coinages in the general style; or alterations of old names arising domestically. As in our Robert > Robin, Dobbin, Hob, Bob etc.

¹³⁸Your use of lenited indicates that you know these, so I need not say any more; except to observe that though of phonetic origin, they are used grammatically, and so may occur or be absent in cases where this is not phonetically justified by descent.

¹³⁹e.g. Periannath the Hobbit-folk, as distinguished from periain hobbits, an indefinite number of 'halflings'.

¹⁴⁰Original[ly] the Q. duals were (a) purely numerative (element ata) and pairs (element ū as seen in Aldūya); but they were normally in later Q. only usual with reference to natural pairs, and the choice of t or u [was] decided by euphony (e.g. ū was preferred after d/t in stem.

¹⁴¹from arn(a)gon -ath.

¹⁴²This we certainly never meant to be.