A manuscript page by Tolkien showing the opening of the Old English Exodus, with his notes, is reproduced in Life and Legend, p. 81.
In Notes and Queries for June 1983 Peter J. Lucas harshly criticized The Old English Exodus for its manner of presentation, lack of an introduction and glossary, numerous errors and omissions, and unnecessary emendations. ‘As an editor Tolkien emerges as an inveterate meddler who occasionally had bright ideas’ (p. 243). Nevertheless, Lucas was himself indebted to Tolkien in his own edition of Exodus (1977; rev. edn. 1994): ‘In the preparation of this edition I have had access to notes taken from lectures given by J.R.R. Tolkien at Oxford. Two of the emendations adopted in the text … were, as far as I know, first suggested by him in these lectures …. His comments or suggestions are also incorporated in the Commentary from time to time …’ (p. x).
In another review, D.C. Baker commented in English Language Notes for March 1984 that ‘lesser mortals, in their preparation for lecturing undergraduate students, do not prepare themselves in this way; they do not edit the texts on which they are to expound; they do not provide a commentary exhaustive in its learning together with original criticisms and suggestions. These are the work of a master, a master of all he surveyed’ (p. 59).
See further, T.A. Shippey, ‘A Look at Exodus and Finn and Hengest’, Arda 3 (1986, for 1982–83), and his ‘Tolkien as Editor’ in A Companion to J.R.R. Tolkien, ed. Stuart D. Lee (2014).
‘Old English Verse’. Extracts from a lecture, published as an appendix to the volume *The Fall of Arthur (2013), edited by *Christopher Tolkien, pp. 223–33. The text provides ‘some indication’ of the ‘essential nature’ of the Old English alliterative verse form used in the poem *The Fall of Arthur (p. 223). The lecture originated in the radio talk Anglo-Saxon Verse, the sixth in the series Poetry Will Out: Studies in National Inspiration and Characteristic Forms, broadcast on the BBC National Programme on 14 January 1938. Tolkien expanded it for another talk in 1943, and with revisions for further delivery in 1945 and 1948.
He begins by quoting lines from the tenth-century Old English poem The Battle of Brunanburh, followed by his own Modern English alliterative version. He explains the background to the poem and something about the Anglo-Saxon period, then deals with the alliterative metre which he finds ‘worthy of study by poets today as a technique. But it is also interesting as being a native art independent of classical models …. It was already old in Alfred’s day. Indeed it descends from days before the English came to Britain, and is almost identical with the metre used for Old Norse (Norwegian and Icelandic) poems’ (p. 227). After explaining the metre, he describes the use of archaisms and ‘kennings’, and suggests that attempting to translate Old English Verse ‘is not a bad exercise for training in the full appreciation of word …’ (p. 230).
Appended by Tolkien to the lecture were four examples of his own alliterative verse: Winter Comes to Nargothrond (*The Lays of Beleriand, p. 129), lines 1554–70 of *The Lay of the Children of Húrin (with minor variations from the text printed in The Lays of Beleriand, pp. 129–30), and two extracts from The Fall of Arthur, both with minor differences from the text as published in 2013. Against the extract from Canto I, lines 183–211, Tolkien ‘wrote the relevant letters referring to the patterns of strong and weak elements (“lifts” and “dips”) in each half-line’ as described in the lecture (p. 231).
Oliphaunt. Poem, first published in *The Lord of the Rings, Book IV, Chapter 3. It was later printed with the title Oliphaunt (i.e. an elephant) in *The Adventures of Tom Bombadil and Other Verses from the Red Book (1962), p. 47.
In the former work, Sam Gamgee describes the poem as ‘a rhyme we have in the Shire. Nonsense maybe, and maybe not.’ Tolkien included it, with three minor textual differences, as ‘a hobbit nursery-rhyme’ in a letter to his son Christopher, 30 April 1944 (Letters, p. 77). Although in another letter, to Mrs Eileen Elgar, 5 March 1964, he wrote that Oliphaunt was ‘my own invention entirely’, unlike *Fastitocalon which was ‘a reduced and rewritten form, to suit hobbit fancy, of an item in old “bestiaries”’ (Letters, p. 343), in fact Oliphaunt had a similar origin.
An earlier and much longer version, Iumbo, or ye Kinde of ye Oliphaunt, composed probably in the 1920s, was first published as one of the Adventures in Unnatural History and Medieval Metres, Being the Freaks of Fisiologus, as by ‘Fisiologus’ in the Stapeldon Magazine (Exeter College, *Oxford) 7, no. 40 (June 1927), pp. 125–7, and also in the expanded edition of The Adventures of Tom Bombadil and Other Verses from the Red Book (2014), pp. 216–20. Like an earlier version of Fastitocalon and two other (unpublished) animal poems, Reginhardus, the Fox and Monoceros, the Unicorn, it was inspired by the medieval bestiary, which describes the characteristics of animals and draws from them Christian morals. This, in turn, was based on earlier sources, including the ?second-century compilation entitled Physiologus (‘Naturalist’).
Tolkien followed this model but added elements of contemporary culture. Iumbo (i.e. Jumbo) describes the elephant as ‘a moving mountain, a majestic mammal’, whose nose ‘Performs the functions of a rubber hose / Or vacuum cleaner as his needs impose.’ His vice is drugs, ‘the dark mandragora’s unwholesome root’, a notion from the bestiary. This fills him ‘with sudden madness’, and he ‘blindly blunders thumping o’er the ground’, crushing villages in his path. When he tires he leans against a tree, but hunters who know of this habit cut the trunk so that it will collapse, with the elephant – which, according to the bestiary, cannot rise again on its own. In the Physiologus the elephant falling to the ground because of a tree is related to Adam’s fall.
Oliphaunt in turn is a reduction of Iumbo, made simpler and cleansed of anachronisms. In The Lord of the Rings it is meant to be traditional verse, and indeed is in the form of nursery rhymes with which readers in English are familiar: it retains the essential characteristics of the elephant in a concise form and in a rhyme that is easy to remember (‘Grey as a mouse, / Big as a house’, etc.). These qualities have made the poem a popular choice to include in anthologies for children.
A private tape recording of Oliphaunt, made by Tolkien in 1952, was issued on the album J.R.R. Tolkien Reads and Sings His The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers/The Return of the King (1975; first reissued in 2001 as part of The J.R.R. Tolkien Audio Collection; see *Recordings).
On Ælfwine’s Spelling. Description of the orthographic practice of Ælfwine (*Eriol and Ælfwine), published as part of ‘Qenya Spelling’ in Parma Eldalamberon 22 (2015), pp. 67–78, edited with commentary and notes by Christopher Gilson and Arden R. Smith.
Ælfwine in the context of *‘The Silmarillion’ translated Eldarin legends and chronicles into Old English. Tolkien wrote six versions of this brief account of Ælfwine’s work, one entitled Ælfwine, four with the title as given for this entry, each on two sides of a single sheet. All of the versions appear to date largely ‘from the period when Tolkien was working on *The Etymologies around 1937 or 1938, or shortly after this …’ (Gilson and Smith, p. 57), except for the sixth version which is from the early 1950s. The editors point out that ‘mentions of Ælfwine’s transcription of names are given in the Outline of Phonetic Development and the Outline of Phonology’ (p. 60; see *Quenya: Outline of Phonology).
On Fairy-Stories. Lecture, first published in Great Britain in *Essays Presented to Charles Williams by Oxford University Press, December 1947, pp. 38–89. A slightly revised text was first published in *Tree and Leaf, in Great Britain by George Allen & Unwin, London, in May 1964, and in the United States by the Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston, in March 1965. See further, Descriptive Bibliography B19, A7. References here are to the appearance in the 1988 edition of Tree and Leaf.
SYNOPSIS