'To Rule the Fate of Many: Truth, Lies, Pity, and the Ring of Power' -- Perhaps a part of an Introduction

Introduction:

‘the burden of a large story’

 

‘They wanted a sequel. But I wanted heroic legends and high romance. The result was The Lord of the Rings. ....

‘The magic ring was the one obvious thing in The Hobbit that could be connected with my mythology. To be the burden of a large story it had to be of supreme importance.’

Letters no. 257, p. 346

‘Tolkien was his own best critic’, writes Anna Vaninskaya (2020: 156). Not only did revising his works release a torrent of new ideas, as C. S. Lewis pointed out, but reading and thinking about them revealed depths he had not fathomed before.[1] We can see this in his letters as well as in every phase of the creation of his legendarium, so masterfully laid out by Christopher Tolkien in The History of Middle-earth. An essential part of being his own best critic was being his own best reader. To call the Ring ‘the burden of a large story’ is to perceive that it is as much the burden the story has to bear as it is the burden Frodo has to bear. It is at once supremely important in and to the story. Similarly, in The Lord of the Rings he saw the blending of the Elvish perspective found in the ‘high Legends of the beginning’ and the ‘human point of view’ which first arose in The Hobbit (Letters no. 131, p. 145). At the same time he knew, more abstractly, that the tales of his mythology ‘must, as all art, reflect and contain in solution elements of moral and religious truth (or error)’ (Letters no. 131, p. 144). What is reflected is seen indirectly, if not darkly; what is in solution is seen barely, if at all.  

The Lord of the Rings embodies the synthesis of each of these three theses – the burden of the story and the burden of Frodo, the perspectives of Elves and Men, the reflection and solution in a secondary world of truths fundamental to the primary world – not just individually but into a greater whole, which, presented mythically and realized artistically, creates and shares the significance of these truths, perspectives, and burdens metaphorically. ‘Tolkien is thinking in story,’ Simon Cook tells us in The Apprenticeship of J. R. R. Tolkien (2018) in which he argues forcefully that the ‘allegory of the tower’ which Tolkien told as a means to understanding Beowulf is also of vital importance for understanding Tolkien’s own writing. In employing this allegory Tolkien ‘is exploring a metaphor and making meaning, yet we remain on the surface and have not the key to his intentions.’

A work ‘so multifarious and so true’ (Lewis, Letters, 4 December 1953) as The Lord of the Rings will contain many essential elements besides those introduced above. Some of these Tolkien employed consciously, but there were others the extent of whose presence he recognized only subsequently. He knew well that there is far more to be found in a work, even by its author, than any author intends, as the candor and open-mindedness of these responses to his readers in 1956 and 1958 make clear.  

Of course my story is not an allegory of Atomic power, but of Power (exerted for domination)…. I do not think that even Power or Domination is the real centre of my story. It provides the theme of a War, about something dark and threatening enough to seem at that time of supreme importance, but that is mainly ‘a setting’ for characters to show themselves. The real theme for me is about something much more permanent and difficult: Death and Immortality: the mystery of the love of the world in the hearts of a race 'doomed' to leave and seemingly lose it; the anguish in the hearts of a race 'doomed' not to leave it, until its whole evil-aroused story is complete.

(Letters no. 186, p. 246, italics original)

As for 'message': I have none really, if by that is meant the conscious purpose in writing The Lord of the Rings, of preaching, or of delivering myself of a vision of truth specially revealed to me! I was primarily writing an exciting story in an atmosphere and background such as I find personally attractive. But in such a process inevitably one's own taste, ideas, and beliefs get taken up. Though it is only in reading the work myself (with criticisms in mind) that I become aware of the dominance of the theme of Death.

(Letters no. 208, p. 267)

In his essay Beowulf: the Monsters and the Critics Tolkien talks about the Beowulf poet writing his poem without full awareness or understanding of the theme he had set himself, and this, Tolkien avers, was a good thing: ‘Had the matter been so explicit to him, his poem would certainly have been worse’ (BMC 18). This remark follows from his earlier comment that myth ‘is at its best when it is presented by a poet who feels rather than makes explicit what his theme portends; who presents it incarnate in the world of history and  geography, as our poet has done’ (BMC 16). Whether the Beowulf poet ever looked back and saw more clearly what he had ‘felt’ when composing the poem, no one can say. But Tolkien did. By far the greater part of his fascinating, insightful, and expansive commentary upon The Lord of the Rings comes from the letters he wrote in the years after he had finished it. To be sure, his published letters are only a selection, but the principle of that selection was to make available the material that would be of the greatest interest to readers of The Lord of the Rings and his other published works (Letters, 1).[2] It is reasonable then to see the letters we get before and after Tolkien declared the work finished as representative of his chief concerns in each period.

Letter 131, the ever cited ‘Waldman letter’ of late 1951 (Letters, 167), marks a terminus before which Tolkien’s comments to his correspondents almost invariably addressed the practical challenges of finishing the work, and after which theological, philosophical, and thematic reflections, often in response to questions or criticisms of readers and critics alike, became increasingly common. Wishing to see The Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion published together, a desire which Allen and Unwin seemed reluctant to gratify, Tolkien set out to persuade Milton Waldman of Collins to take on both works. To accomplish this end Tolkien had to step back and think through his legendarium as a whole just as he had done with Beowulf in his 1936 lecture and as he had done with Faërie in On Fairy-stories in 1939.[3] So many of the larger questions he weighs in his later correspondence find their first expression here.

Clearly The Lord of the Rings reflects its author’s mind and meditations from beginning to end. Such themes as Death and Immortality, Power realized in Art versus Power realized in domination, the role small hands play while the eyes of the great are elsewhere, and the essential relationship between high and low, great and small, which gives meaning to the lives and efforts of both, are present throughout, but in telling his story the elements of the metaphor remained largely in solution. With the Waldman letter he begins to precipitate those long meditated elements out of solution.

Indeed important texts he composed in the 1950s, such as Laws and Customs among the Eldar and the Athrabeth Finrod ah Andreth may well owe their existence to the shift away from narrative to philosophical and theological concerns that we first see in Letter 131. The much lamented failure to complete the tale Of Tuor and his Coming to Gondolin at all or The Silmarillion to his satisfaction probably finds some of its explanation here, alongside the profound disappointment inflicted by Collins’s unwillingness to publish The Silmarillion, which was so severe that for some time he stopped working on it entirely (S&H C 405-06). Much as Lewis might have predicted, Tolkien explored so many thoughts in the process of reviewing his entire legendarium that it led him to produce new works and to reexamine and reformulate the metaphysical foundations of his world more directly.

One important element we do not find reflected upon in Letter 131, or anywhere before Letter 153 of 1954 in fact, is pity. A part of Gandalf’s exchange with Frodo on pity is present from the very first draft of The Lord of the Rings. Crucially, however, the effect of Bilbo’s pity is solely to save him from becoming another Gollum, or worse: ‘he would not have had the ring, the ring would have had him at once. He might have become a wraith on the spot’ (Shadow 81). There is not the least hint that ‘the pity of Bilbo may rule the fate of many’ (FR 1.ii.59) as in the published text, or, as in Letter 153, that ‘it is the Pity of Bilbo and later Frodo that ultimately allows the Quest to be achieved’ (Letters, 191). Consider, too, Letter 181 of 1956 in which Tolkien states that ‘the “salvation” of the world and Frodo’s own “salvation” is achieved by his previous pity and forgiveness of injury’ (Letters, 234, italics original). Letters 191 and 192, both of 1956, also emphasize the importance of pity, mercy, and forgiveness in this context (Letters, 251-53); and in letter 246 of 1963 Tolkien again calls out ‘that strange element in the World that we call Pity and Mercy’ (326).[4]

Parallel with the limited scope of pity in the first draft of The Lord of the Rings is the limited conception of the power of the Ring. It is not yet the One Ruling Ring. Until Bilbo’s magic ring becomes the ‘one Ring to rule them all’, Bilbo’s pity cannot play the role Gandalf suggests it may well play in the fate of the world. Indeed it has no need to do so. Once the conception of the Ring changes, the two are woven together, with each other as well as with the themes of Death and Immortality. For the Power of the Ring encourages mortals to think they can cheat death, and immortals that they can preserve the world from the fading which is a part of its nature, and their own. Mortals with Rings of Power like the Nazgûl end up undead; immortals like the Elves ‘embalm’ what they would save.[5] Against the Ring pity offers the only real defense, but in the end the pity of this world cannot withstand the enticements of such power. Frodo will fail.

Pity thus plays an essential and paradoxical role in the lives of the characters and in the fate of all Middle-earth, and is a key to understanding The Lord of the Rings and seeing more deeply into Tolkien’s legendarium as a whole. If pity does not rule the fate of many, the Ring of Power will. For that is what Sauron made it to do. In this book I shall trace the long arc of pity and the Ring from the moment Bilbo stood poised in the darkness behind Gollum until Frodo, hurt beyond healing by the burden of the Ring, gazed upon Saruman’s corpse in the morning of the Shire and watched his fallen spirit scattered on the wind, the both of them unable to return home.

 

‘The Ring left him.’

(FR 1.ii.55, italics original)

If the ‘real theme’ of The Lord of the Rings is Death and Immortality, and if the Power of the Ring seems to offer Men and Elves the means to challenge these ‘dooms’ of their nature in addition to attaining more worldly ends, we must also question the nature of the Ring itself. The answer will affect our understanding both of the ‘temptations’ offered by the power of the Ring, and of the interplay of pity and the Ring. Does the Ring then possesses a consciousness and agency of its own? Scholars and fans alike commonly speak as if it does. Gandalf does so himself when he tells Frodo that the Ring left Gollum, a statement which gives by far the strongest evidence for consciousness and agency, but only if Gandalf means it to be taken literally. That Frodo mocks Gandalf’s assertion, I would argue, leaves room for us to doubt this, especially since Gandalf does not reply with a reaffirmation that the Ring made a conscious decision to leave Gollum and acted upon it, a point not to be neglected or passed over if true, but hammered home. Who would need to understand this more than Frodo?

Yet Gandalf does pass over it, and moves immediately on to another point which he considers more important and which he admits he cannot state ‘more plainly’, that Bilbo was ‘meant to have the Ring and not by its maker’ (FR 1.ii.55, italics original). Gandalf, moreover, has used metaphor earlier in this conversation to describe the Ring devouring its possessor (FR 1.ii.47, 55, 57). He has even employed outright deception, withholding as long as he can the truth that the hobbit Sméagol is in fact the creature Gollum, because he believes it to be of the utmost importance to the world that Frodo, who is also ‘meant to have the Ring’, pity Gollum as Bilbo had done.

This combination of reticence, deception, and metaphor warns against making any easy judgement about the Ring and its effect on its possessor. While Frodo reasonably and (I believe) rightly scoffs at Gandalf’s assertions about the Ring’s consciousness and agency, he is nevertheless rarely sure whether the urge to put on the Ring comes from the Ring, from within himself, or from elsewhere. This makes the distinction between the possibilities integral to the power of the Ring and the desires of those who possess or might possess the Ring inherently difficult to maintain, increasingly so as the Ring comes closer to its source. This is challenging for the reader as well as for the Ringbearer owing to the psychological, moral, and spiritual complexity of the struggle between ‘the Ring is my burden’ and ‘the Ring is mine’.

---

[1] Thus Lewis in Tolkien’s obituary in The Times (3 September 1973): ‘His standard of self-criticism was high, and the mere suggestion of publication usually set him upon a revision, in the course of which so many new ideas occurred to him that where his friends had hoped for the final text of an old work they actually got the first draft of a new one.’ The Tolkien Society reprinted the obituary in full in Mallorn 8 (1974) 40-43. Lewis’s comment appears unsourced in Humphrey Carpenter’s biography of Tolkien (1977: 138).

[2] Larger thematic concerns do not of course go unmentioned beforehand. Gollum’s near repentance touches upon pity: Letters, no. 96, p. 110. Letter no. 66, p. 78 addresses power: ‘For we are attempting to conquer Sauron with the Ring. And we shall (it seems) succeed. But the penalty is, as you will know, to breed new Saurons, and slowly turn Men and Elves into Orcs. Not that in real life things are as clear cut as in a story, and we started out with a great many Orcs on our side.’ For more on Power and the Machine: no. 75, p. 87; no 109, p. 121.

[3] On the Beowulf lecture, see S. Cook (2018), and Tolkien and M. Drout (2011). For On Fairy-stories, see V. Flieger and D. Anderson (2014).

[4] To the distinction between pity and Pity we shall return below.

[5] For Elves’ attempts to preserve the world from ‘fading’ as ‘embalming’, see Letters, no. 131, p. 151, and no. 154, p. 196. 

From The Top Of That Chimney You Can See Mordor (RK 6.viii.1004)

Vesuvius 1944 © The Telegraph

By 3 April 1944 Tolkien had started work on The Taming of Sméagol (Letters, no. 58). By the end of the month of May he had a finished draft of the whole of book IV, and moved C. S. Lewis to tears by his reading to the Inklings of The Choices of Master Samwise (Scull and Hammond [2017] 1.291). He had also perforce begun to give thought to what Mordor was like. No one who has read the books will need reminding that ashes, dust, fumes, and smoke figure prominently. It has also long been clear that Tolkien's experience of the trenches in World War One had a profound influence on his descriptions of the blasted landscape of Mordor and the Dead Marshes (Scull and Hammond [2017] 3.1408-1409).

But it struck me the other night that there might be another element in play here. During a Mythgard discussion of how 'volcanic' a landscape Mordor appears to be, I suddenly remembered that Vesuvius had a significant eruption in 1944. When I checked the date more precisely, I discovered that the eruption took place from 17 through 23 March, which makes for a very interesting coincidence. My first thought was that Tolkien might have seen newsreel footage like that below:

It seems more certain, however, that he would have read about it in the newspapers. Now in a 1966 interview Tolkien revealed that at that time he took three newspapers a day: The Daily Telegraph, The Times, and another which was probably a local Oxford paper (Scull and Hammond [2017] 3.1062). Granted, this evidence comes from two decades later, but it shows that dedication to reading newspapers which was not at all uncommon in those who grew up before the advent of television. The choice of papers also points us in a direction. The online archives of The Telegraph don't go back beyond 2000, but those of The Times reach even unto the deeps of time, all the way back to 1785. (Bless them. Of course they do.)

Starting on 20 March a series of articles record the devastation in precisely the terms one would expect to find: fountains and flows of lava, ash, smoke, mud.

Symptoms of the eruption continue to subside, though the crater is still emitting immense volumes of smoke, often, as throughout yesterday, dirty black smoke, making the mountain look like an immense brick kiln. The pilot of an aircraft flying yesterday to Naples from Palermo encountered this cloud 50 miles out at sea. After flying for 40 minutes in pitch darkness he preferred to turn back and circumvent the volcano by flying inland over Salerno and by the valley eastward from the crater. 

(The Times, 27 March 1944, p. 3) 

Obviously the pall of darkness encountered by the pilot will remind us of the similar cloud that flows out of Mordor starting in The Journey to the Cross-roads (TT 4.vii.699-700).* Yet, even if this is an influence, it is the comparison of the mountain to an 'immense brick kiln' that will lead us somewhere interesting. My first response was that Tolkien would have found this comparison fitting given his opinion of industrialization. My second was to recall the following passage from The Scouring of the Shire:

And looking with dismay up the road towards Bag End [the hobbits] saw a tall chimney of brick in the distance. It was pouring out black smoke into the evening air.

(RK 6.viii.1004)

And it was this that turned me back to the descriptions of the fields and towns being destroyed, and of the people driven from their homes, not only in the articles in The Times, but also in the vision Sam sees in The Mirror of Galadriel, where the smoking chimney also appears:

Like a dream the vision shifted and went back, and he saw the trees again. But this time they were not so close, and he could see what was going on: they were not waving in the wind, they were falling, crashing to the ground.  

'Hi!' cried Sam in an outraged voice. 'There's that Ted Sandyman a-cutting down trees as he shouldn't. They didn't ought to be felled: it's that avenue beyond the Mill that shades the road to Bywater. I wish I could get at Ted, and I'd fell him!' 

But now Sam noticed that the Old Mill had vanished, and a large red-brick building was being put up where it had stood. Lots of folk were busily at work. There was a tall red chimney nearby. Black smoke seemed to cloud the surface of the Mirror. 

'There's some devilry at work in the Shire,' he said. 'Elrond knew what he was about when he wanted to send Mr. Merry back.' Then suddenly Sam gave a cry and sprang away. 'I can't stay here,' he said wildly. 'I must go home. They've dug up Bagshot Row, and there's the poor old gaffer going down the Hill with his bits of things on a barrow. I must go home!' 

(FR 2.vii.362-63)

Of course when Frodo and Sam finally do arrive home, they discover that Sam's vision of the ruin of their 'own country' has come true; it is in fact 'worse than Mordor' (RK 6.viii.1004, 1018). To survive the war only to confront this 'was one of the saddest hours in their lives' (RK 6.viii.1016). That great chimney fouling the air with its black smoke looms over them just as Vesuvius did over the surrounding countryside. On 16 March 1944 the people living near the volcano must have thought that, with the war and fascism behind them, they could 'have just a nice quiet time in the country' (RK 6.viii.1018), that life could return to normal.

Did the newsreels and reports out of Italy influence Tolkien's portrayal of Mordor and the post-war Shire? The image of the chimney belching black smoke suggests it might have done so, but smoking factory chimneys were not an unusual sight in his day, and a man from Birmingham with his likes and dislikes would not have had far to go to come up with such an image. That Britain had already suffered extensive destruction from Nazi bombs, far more than it had during the first war when the necessary 'machines' were in their infancy, would have encouraged such a comparison. This is especially true since Italy itself had suffered from Allied strategic bombing, of which he disapproved: 'So we come inevitably from Daedalus and Icarus to the Giant Bomber. It is not an advance in wisdom!' (Letters, no. 75); 'But it is the aeroplane of war that is the real villain' (Letters, no. 100). Despite his admiration for the courage of the RAF's pilots and crews, and despite his son Christopher's serving in it, Tolkien found himself at odds with the idea of the RAF (Letters, no. 100).

To make a connection between England and the destruction of Vesuvius was no hard matter, as we may see in the recently published letter of an eyewitness, Ray Small, who was a wireless operator for British Intelligence at the time. He wrote home to his parents of what he'd seen:

In San Sebastiano they said there was a deathlike quiet except for a faint gurgle as the black crust of the lava broke and a mass of white-hot rock oozed out to advance a few more yards. About a third of the town had already gone; where it had stood was nothing but a big slag heap of lava, and a memory. Of the houses and shops that were there, neither stick nor stone remained in sight and would perhaps never see the light of day again. Bombs make a terrific row and leave ruins. Lava makes no sound and leaves – nothing. 

Can you imagine a 10 to 30 foot mass of molten rock slowly engulfing Wembley High Street, and, when it is all over, not a stone was left in sight? Sounds crazy, but that’s the way it is. The lava slowly approaches a building, the heat setting it on fire, and starts seeping through doors and windows like a lot of thick treacle. The lava continues to flow in as into a mould, until the pressure of thousands of tons of molten rock becomes too much, and the building collapses, sinking through the thin crust and disappearing for ever. 

(The Telegraph, 28 March 2014)

Finally, even if all we have here is a parallel, examining the two underlines how very close to the 'real' world Tolkien's fantasy can come. The fire and smoke of Vesuvius may be reflected in those of Mt. Doom and the smoking chimney, just as the fires of Coventry, which Tolkien glimpsed over the horizon on the night of 14 November 1940**, may be seen again in the words of Aragorn when saw 'the red glow under the cloud': 'Minas Tirith is burning' (RK 5.ix.877). For Tolkien, to have the hobbits find Mordor and its works in the Shire is as essential as having Sam find humanity in the dead enemy warrior:

It was Sam's first view of a battle of Men against Men, and he did not like it much. He was glad that he could not see the dead face. He wondered what the man's name was and where he came from; and if he was really evil of heart, or what lies or threats had led him on the long march from his home; and if he would not really rather have stayed there in peace .... 

(TT 4.iv.661)

Refugees from Vesuvius 1944 by George Rodger

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Works Consulted

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* So much for flying the Ring into Mordor.

** See Scull and Hammond (2017) 1.261 : '14 November 1940 Working late, Tolkien sees an ever-increasing fiery glow on the horizon. On 15 November he will learn that Coventry, only forty miles away, had been devastated by German incendiary raids and 1,000 people killed. The bombing of London and other major cities in Britain will continue into 1942.'

The Silmarillion, published 15 September 1977

That is my Silmarillion pictured above, the one I bought forty years ago today. I took an hour and a half bus trip that day after school to go get it. The anticipation on that endless, meandering local bus trip, in which the bus stopped every two blocks whether it needed to or not, would likely have been a lot worse had not my best friend of those days, Tricia, been along for the ride (the bookstore was right down the way from her house). I talked to her all the way there about books and school and school friends, as one does at seventeen. As the bus pulled up on the corner where the bookstore was, it was like seeing a far green country under a swift sunrise. The trip back -- if there was one -- I didn't notice, because I had a new book by Tolkien, the last anyone (except perhaps Christopher Tolkien and Rayner Unwin) thought there would ever be. 

I stayed up all night reading it because here at last were those tales alluded to in The Lord of the Rings, most importantly Beren and Lúthien, but which till now I could only hunger for, and try to puzzle out from the text I had. I think I started reading it again the moment I finished it, scrawling notes in the margins and inside the covers, thrilled to see the names Olórin and Galadriel, trying to figure out the metaphysics and theology of The Ainulindalë, and weeping more times than I ever would have admitted then at the beauties and sorrows of Arda Marred. Nothing I had gleaned from Carpenter's biography or Clyde Kilby's Tolkien and the Silmarillion had prepared me for the full impact. And I was lucky. I only had to wait six years from the time I first read The Lord of the Rings. Others had to wait over twenty. And it exceeded all my hopes. I was fortunate not to be put off as some were by its very different style and almost total want of hobbits.

So that is my Silmarillion. We have gotten older and shabbier together, and equally unappealing to collectors. Do I wish I'd been more careful with the wrapper? No doubt. Not because that would increase its value today -- nothing could increase its value to me -- but because it deserved a better fate than tatters. And yet:

From a locked drawer, smelling of moth-balls, he took out an old cloak and hood. They had been locked up as if they were very precious, but they were so patched and weatherstained that their original colour could hardly be guessed: it might have been dark green. 

(FR 1.i.31)

Boromir, Fear, and the Pity of Frodo (FR 2.x.396-402)

In studying the long lead-up to the introduction of Gollum as an active character in The Taming of Sméagol, I have come more and more to consider the following question: given that the portrayal of Gollum in the first three books of The Lord of the Rings is negative, dark, and monstrous, why does Frodo pity him? The narrator (Frodo) has taught the reader to regard Gollum with fear and loathing, and thus Frodo's pity, when it comes, may seem right in a high moral sense, but terribly wrong in visceral, practical terms.  Let us first examine the moment itself:

Things would have gone ill with Sam, if he had been alone. But Frodo sprang up, and drew Sting from its sheath. With his left hand he drew back Gollum's head by his thin lank hair, stretching his long neck, and forcing his pale venomous eyes to stare up at the sky. 

'Let go! Gollum,' he said. 'This is Sting. You have seen it before once upon a time. Let go, or you'll feel it this time! I'll cut your throat.'  

Gollum collapsed and went as loose as wet string. Sam got up, fingering his shoulder. His eyes smouldered with anger, but he could not avenge himself: his miserable enemy lay grovelling on the stones whimpering.  

'Don't hurt us! Don't let them hurt us, precious! They won't hurt us will they, nice little hobbitses? We didn't mean no harm, but they jumps on us like cats on poor mices, they did, precious. And we're so lonely, gollum. We'll be nice to them, very nice, if they'll be nice to us, won't we, yes, yess.'  

'Well, what's to be done with it?' said Sam. 'Tie it up, so as it can't come sneaking after us no more, I say.'  

'But that would kill us, kill us,' whimpered Gollum. 'Cruel little hobbitses. Tie us up in the cold hard lands and leave us, gollum, gollum.' Sobs welled up in his gobbling throat. 

'No,' said Frodo. 'If we kill him, we must kill him outright. But we can't do that, not as things are. Poor wretch! He has done us no harm.'  

'Oh hasn't he!' said Sam rubbing his shoulder. 'Anyway he meant to, and he means to, I'll warrant. Throttle us in our sleep, that's his plan.'  

'I daresay,' said Frodo. 'But what he means to do is another matter.' He paused for a while in thought. Gollum lay still, but stopped whimpering. Sam stood glowering over him.  

It seemed to Frodo then that he heard, quite plainly but far off, voices out of the past: 

What a pity Bilbo did not stab the vile creature, when he had a chance!  

Pity? It was Pity that stayed his hand. Pity, and Mercy: not to strike without need.  

I do not feel any pity for Gollum. He deserves death.  

Deserves death! I daresay he does. Many that live deserve death. And some die that deserve life. Can you give that to them? Then be not too eager to deal out death in the name of justice, fearing for your own safety. Even the wise cannot see all ends.  

'Very well,' he answered aloud, lowering his sword. 'But still I am afraid. And yet, as you see, I will not touch the creature. For now that I see him, I do pity him.'  

Sam stared at his master, who seemed to be speaking to some one who was not there. Gollum lifted his head.  

'Yess, wretched we are, precious,' he whined. 'Misery misery! Hobbits won't kill us, nice hobbits.' 

'No, we won't,' said Frodo. 'But we won't let you go, either. You're full of wickedness and mischief, Gollum. You will have to come with us, that's all, while we keep an eye on you. But you must help us, if you can. One good turn deserves another.' 

'Yess, yes indeed,' said Gollum sitting up. 'Nice hobbits! We will come with them. Find them safe paths in the dark, yes we will. And where are they going in these cold hard lands, we wonders, yes we wonders?' He looked up at them, and a faint light of cunning and eagerness flickered for a second in his pale blinking eyes.  

Sam scowled at him, and sucked his teeth; but he seemed to sense that there was something odd about his master's mood and that the matter was beyond argument. All the same he was amazed at Frodo's reply. 

(TT 4.i.614-15, emphases original)

It is essential to point out here, and to bear in mind as we go on, that Frodo in the book is not taken in by Gollum, as the version of Frodo in Peter Jackson's film is.  He may pity him. He may wish him well (4.ii.622-23). He may even trust him, conditionally and because he has no other choice (4.i.618; iii.640; cf. ii.624). Yet he is never fooled. Between their meeting at the foot of the Emyn Muil and their parting in Shelob's Lair, for as long as they journey together, Frodo repeatedly indicates that he knows well the danger Gollum poses, and that even the restraint placed upon him by his oath to the Precious will last only so long (4.ii.623-24; iii.640-41; viii.713-14), an oath Frodo will twice use to terrify Gollum into submission (4.iii.640-41; vi.687). 

Note how Frodo's first action compares to what he said to Gandalf.  He shows not the least hesitation. He springs up, draws Sting, seizes Gollum, and threatens to cut his throat. So far here, Frodo seems as swift and decisive as when he refused to pity Gollum and declared him worthy of death in The Shadow of the Past.  And yet if that were entirely correct, we might expect him simply to kill Gollum outright. Now in part it may well be that Frodo is finding that it is one thing to say 'he deserves death' in the safety of one's own home, and another to become the executioner of that sentence.  But there are other clues here we should not ignore.

At this crucial moment, with Sam's life at immediate risk, Frodo doesn't just kill Gollum or even simply threaten to kill him. Rather, he reminds him that he has seen Sting before and that Bilbo had shown him mercy. He then points out, to Sam's annoyance, that they cannot just kill Gollum, 'not as things are,' that 'he has done us no harm,' and that 'what he means to do' is not strictly relevant. These words, too, are striking reminders of Bilbo's encounter long before:

Bilbo almost stopped breathing, and went stiff himself. He was desperate. He must get away, out of this horrible darkness, while he had any strength left. He must fight. He must stab the foul thing, put its eyes out, kill it. It meant to kill him. No, not a fair fight. He was invisible now. Gollum had no sword. Gollum had not actually threatened to kill him, or tried to yet. And he was miserable, alone, lost. A sudden understanding, a pity mixed with horror, welled up in Bilbo’s heart: a glimpse of endless unmarked days without light or hope of betterment, hard stone, cold fish, sneaking and whispering. All these thoughts passed in a flash of a second. He trembled. And then quite suddenly in another flash, as if lifted by a new strength and resolve, he leaped. 

(The Hobbit, 97, emphasis mine)

So Frodo is clearly thinking of Bilbo here, and seeing the parallels in their situations, even before he recalls his own conversation with Gandalf. In fact that memory seems evoked by his own echo of Gandalf's words and attitude in response to him then. For Frodo's 'I daresay,' followed by a dismissal of what Sam has said about Gollum's intentions parallels Gandalf's 'I daresay' and dismissal of the question of Gollum's deserts.  It is at this moment that their conversation comes back to him, a conversation to which Bilbo had been as crucial as Gollum and the Ring.  But Frodo does not recall Gandalf's words with perfect accuracy:

‘What a pity that Bilbo did not stab that vile creature, when he had a chance!’ 

‘Pity? It was Pity that stayed his hand. Pity, and Mercy: not to strike without need. And he has been well rewarded, Frodo. Be sure that he took so little hurt from the evil, and escaped in the end, because he began his ownership of the Ring so.With Pity.’  

‘I am sorry,’ said Frodo. ‘But I am frightened; and I do not feel any pity for Gollum.’ 

‘You have not seen him,’ Gandalf broke in. 

‘No, and I don’t want to,’ said Frodo. ‘I can’t understand you. Do you mean to say that you, and the Elves, have let him live on after all those horrible deeds? Now at any rate he is as bad as an Orc, and just an enemy. He deserves death.’  

‘Deserves it! I daresay he does. Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgement. For even the very wise cannot see all ends.   

(FR 1.ii.59)

Now, noticing that these two passages do not correspond word for word is nothing new. The remembered conversation condenses and omits much. One could easily argue that this is a realistic touch, since memory is selective both in what it recalls and what it forgets. One could also suggest, as Christopher Tolkien does, that the original conversation and the memory of it 'remain different in detail of wording, perhaps not intentionally at all points' (HoME VIII 97).  Thus the discrepancy might owe itself to chance rather than choice.  

I would argue otherwise. The words 'fearing for your own safety' represent a significant addition to Gandalf's actual statement, which stresses Pity and Justice and Life and Death merited and unmerited. To be sure, Frodo had mentioned that he was frightened, but Gandalf in his response had ignored the fear Frodo adduced as a motive. Gandalf, as we saw at that time, argues from higher ground. And yet here Frodo puts these words in his mouth.

In his recent near encounters with Gollum, Frodo had given no indications of pity, only revulsion and fear. In fact when they had come face to face in the darkness on the banks of the Anduin Frodo had also drawn his sword and then informed Aragorn -- who of course already knew -- that Gollum was stalking them (FR 2.ix.384). As Frodo knew well, Aragorn had once captured Gollum and treated him rather harshly (FR 2.ii.253). He cannot have expected less if Strider caught him again.

So what has changed? Is it merely the sight of Gollum, as Frodo openly says? Is it that Frodo has suffered more from evil and had more experience of the Ring since that morning in Bag End? We cannot ignore these factors of course. On no account may Gollum be called prepossessing, and Frodo has certainly learned much of the Ring. Yet between Frodo's encounter with Gollum on the banks of the Anduin and the moment when he holds Sting to his throat, but does not use it, something happens which can help explain Frodo's change of heart as well as the intrusion into his memory of the false detail 'fearing for your own safety.' We will be able to see it even more clearly if we step back to consider the setup. 

The heart of Legolas was running under the stars of a summer night in some northern glade amid the beech-woods; Gimli was fingering gold in his mind, and wondering if it were fit to be wrought into the housing of the Lady's gift. Merry and Pippin in the middle boat were ill at ease, for Boromir sat muttering to himself, sometimes biting his nails, as if some restlessness or doubt consumed him, sometimes seizing a paddle and driving the boat close behind Aragorn's. Then Pippin, who sat in the bow looking back, caught a queer gleam in his eye, as he peered forward gazing at Frodo. Sam had long ago made up his mind that, though boats were maybe not as dangerous as he had been brought up to believe, they were far more uncomfortable than even he had imagined. He was cramped and miserable, having nothing to do but stare at the winter-lands crawling by and the grey water on either side of him. Even when the paddles were in use they did not trust Sam with one. 

(FR 2.ix.382)

What a beautiful paragraph this is in detail and movement, from character to character and from boat to boat. Beginning with the loveliness of Legolas' vivid, dreamlike memory, and Gimli's chivalrous, romantic imaginings, we never expect the uneasy turn it takes, with Merry, Pippin, and the disturbing, almost threatening behavior of Boromir. We then follow Boromir's gaze through Pippin's eyes straight to Frodo in the boat ahead with Strider and Sam. But suddenly and unexpectedly, since our attention has just been directed to Frodo, we find ourselves with Sam instead. But the introduction of Sam here, uncomfortable, unhappy, and untrusted Sam, is a misdirection. It lightens the menace of the sentences on Boromir, but only in order to refocus it a moment later on another threat that is present on the Great River, another one who has his eyes fixed on Frodo and Frodo's burden. The next paragraph reads:

As dusk drew down on the fourth day, he was looking back over the bowed heads of Frodo and Aragorn and the following boats; he was drowsy and longed for camp and the feel of earth under his toes. Suddenly something caught his sight: at first he stared at it listlessly, then he sat up and rubbed his eyes; but when he looked again he could not see it any more. 

(FR 2.ix.382)

It is of course Gollum whom Sam has seen, but the way in which the narrator shifts our attention from Boromir to Gollum is masterful. Notice how Sam is looking back towards the boats behind his own. Given the previous paragraph, we might expect him to have caught the same 'queer gleam' in Boromir's eyes as Pippin did. But it is not so. For just as we followed Boromir's gaze forward to Frodo, but found Sam instead, so, too, we now follow Sam's back, not to Boromir, but to Gollum. Sam's remarking over and over again on Gollum's eyes further pairs these two threats. Nor is this the first time that Frodo has been the object of Boromir's intense gaze (FR 2.viii.369; ix.388). As the moment nears when Frodo must decide between Minas Tirith and Mordor, danger is converging on him from more than one direction. From Gollum of course, but also from Boromir, who, desperate to save his land, feels quite keenly the anguish of the choice which lies before Frodo. And if Gollum, as Boromir himself said, is 'small, but great in mischief' (FR 2.ii.255), what is Boromir?

So much of what Boromir says in the scene where he tries to take the Ring from Frodo plays off earlier scenes involving the Ring. When Boromir says it was only 'unhappy chance' that Frodo had the Ring, and that it should have been his, it recalls the justifications of Bilbo and Gollum (FR 1.i.33, ii.xx. 53, 56-57; 2.x.399) His statement that the Ring is 'a gift to the foes of Mordor', to use as a weapon against Sauron, turns on its head Gandalf's assertion that Bilbo and Frodo had been meant to find the Ring, with the result that they might destroy it (FR 1.ii.55-56; 2.x.398). When he imagines what he might accomplish with the Ring, and avers that ruthlessness -- that is, the want of pity -- is essential to victory, he follows in the footsteps of Gandalf and Galadriel, who also imagined what they might do if they had the Ring, but Boromir falls into the trap that they avoided (FR 1.ii.61; 2.vii.365-66, x.398). When he claims that the Ring belonged by right to the men of Númenor, he reasons as Frodo did when he said that the Ring should be Aragorn's, the heir of Isildur, but Aragorn rejected this reasoning (FR 2.ii.246-47, x.399).  When Boromir threatens to take the Ring from Frodo with his greater strength, it echoes Bilbo's paranoid fear that Gandalf wished to do the same, only now Frodo is not deceived by the Ring as Bilbo was (FR 1.i.34; 2.x.399).  And when Boromir's face changes 'hideously' and 'a raging fire' appears in his eyes, it echoes Frodo's vision of Bilbo as Gollum at Rivendell, but here the change is real, not imaginary (FR 2.i.232, x.399). It is also a reminder of the Eye of Sauron, 'rimmed with fire' that Frodo saw in Galadriel's mirror (FR 2.vii.364).  Again, however, this is not a vision, but a present, physical threat.

Finally, Boromir's attempt to take the Ring plays off the three scenes in which Frodo has freely attempted to give it away -- to Gandalf, Aragorn, and Galadriel (FR 1.ii.61; 2.ii.246-47, vii.365-66), all of whom refused to take it. But after Frodo's confrontation with Boromir, he never again makes this offer. He has seen for himself, unquestionably, how terrifying the evil that the Ring works can be. He has seen it happen to a comrade, whom he had so far known to be brave, self-sacrificing, and honorable. And after this present and personal experience of the evil of the Ring with Boromir, his vision of the Mordor and his near discovery by the Eye itself, his own eyes see some things more clearly.

Frodo rose to his feet. A great weariness was on him, but his will was firm and his heart lighter. He spoke aloud to himself. 'I will do now what I must,' he said. 'This at least is plain: the evil of the Ring is already at work even in the Company, and the Ring must leave them before it does more harm. I will go alone. Some I cannot trust, and those I can trust are too dear to me: poor old Sam, and Merry and Pippin. Strider, too: his heart yearns for Minas Tirith, and he will be needed there, now Boromir has fallen into evil. I will go alone. At once.'  

(FR 2.x.401, emphases mine)

Where previously Frodo had been afraid to go to Mordor, as Sam correctly told the others (FR 2.x.403), he now fears to remain with his companions.  The gentle phrases 'the Ring must leave them' and 'now Boromir has fallen into evil' reveal the pity that Frodo feels for the man of Gondor, quite unlike the purely harsh words he had had for Gollum, when he rejected out of hand Gandalf's suggestion that pity was in order (FR 1.ii.59).  Then, too, he had scorned the idea that seeing Gollum would move him to pity, but here seeing does precisely that, not only for Boromir, but potentially for others, too. And so, fearing what the Ring could do to others, Frodo flees the company, only to run almost at once straight into the Tale's foremost example of the evil one could fall into because of the Ring. Although the structure of the book can lead the reader to forget this, only three days pass between The Breaking of the Fellowship and The Taming of Sméagol (RK App B 1092).

Notice, however, that Frodo does not seem to see the 'evil of the Ring' working on himself. He sees his friends and comrades as susceptible to something that makes at least some of  them  -- who, precisely? -- untrustworthy. He nowhere wonders what it is doing to him. Indeed his self-deception here is visible in his thinking that, with the Ring at work, he can trust any of them, regardless of how 'dear' they might be. After all, were not 'Give us that, Déagol, my love' very nearly the last words that luckless hobbit ever heard (FR 1.ii.53)?

What is the whole question of trust bound up with except the fear that someone else will try to take the Ring for himself just as Boromir did? From Gollum's cry of 'thief, thief, thief'' to Bilbo backed against the wall with his hand on his sword, from Frodo wanting to strike Bilbo for reaching for the Ring to Boromir's 'For I am too strong for you, halfling,' the fear of this threat persists, and underlying it is one simple sentence: 'The Ring is mine.'

Thus Frodo will not only pity Gollum when at last he meets him, but will use the Ring to dominate and terrify him, while allowing himself to be called the Master of the Precious. Frodo's journey from Bag End, where he can't throw the Ring into the fire, to the Sammath Naur, where he can't throw the Ring into the fire, is no simple quest by a hero without flaws.

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Gollum Before the Taming of Sméagol (I)

Gollum Before the Taming of Sméagol (II)

Gollum Before the Taming of Sméagol (III)

Gollum Before the Taming of Sméagol (IV)

The Time Is Out Of Joint -- Erroneous Dates in The Notion Club Papers

One of my many peculiarities is being fascinated by things that go on in the background.  When watching a film, I look at what is going on behind the main characters.  I look at the shops and street signs, or if the scene is indoors I try to make out the titles of any books I might see. When reading, I check into historical events and characters mentioned by the author, I look up books and poems that are cited or quoted.  And I check dates given against the days of the week on which the author claims they fall. 

So, recently I was looking at The Notion Club Papers in Sauron Defeated, the ninth volume of The History of Middle-earth series, and found the following days and dates listed for meetings of The Notion Club. I give them below as written in the text, only adding citations.

• night 54 Thursday, November 16, 1986 (HoME IX.161).

• night 60 Thursday, February 20, 1987 (HoME IX.161).

• night 61 Thursday, February 27, 1987 (HoME IX.173). 

• night 62 Thursday, March 6th, 1987 (HoME IX.222).

• night 63 Thursday, March 13, 1987 (HoME IX.222).

• night 64 Thursday, March 20, 1987 (HoME IX.223).

• night 66 Thursday, May 22nd, 1987 (HoME IX.233). 

• night 67 Thursday, June 12th, 1987 (HoME IX.245).

• night 68 June 26th, 1987 (HoME IX.253) -- no day of the week given, but it is fourteen days after night 67 and thus would be the same day.

• night 69 Thursday, 25 September, 1987 (HoME IX.260).

• night 70 Thursday, 2 October, 1987 (HoME IX.277).

It's Thursday nights, I imagine, because that's when the Inklings met in Lewis's rooms in Magdalen. But I noticed a curious fact when I pulled up calendars for 1986 and 1987. The dates don't correspond with the days.  The dates given for nights 60 through 70 are actually all Fridays, and, what is even stranger, the date for night 54 is a Sunday. 

I checked Christopher Tolkien's notes, but he seems not to have noticed the discrepancy. Fortunately, we can explain almost all of the error by changing 1987 to 1986, when the days and dates for nights 60-70 match perfectly. 

Unfortunately, I cannot reconcile night 54 in this way.  16 November in 1985 fell on a Saturday. The two nearest years in which 16 November was a Thursday were 1978 and 1989.  I have played around with the calendar a little and I am unsure if there can be year in which 16 November falls on a Thursday, followed by a year in which all the other given dates are also Thursdays.

So did Tolkien simply miscalculate?  Perhaps.  Probably even. Yet this would be surprising since he was so meticulous about chronology, dates, and moons, in The Lord of the Rings, and he wrote The Notion Club Papers in 1945, precisely when he was most involved with trying to synchronize the multiple narrative streams of the divided fellowship.  There is also the irony of getting the dates wrong in a story about time-travel, which makes me wonder if the whole error is actually an exceptionally obscure and entirely donnish joke. I like to think so, but I doubt we could ever be sure.

Swanships and Swanroads in Tolkien and Beowulf

From the earliest days of the legendarium the swanships were present.  In 1917 (or so) Tolkien wrote in The Book of Lost Tales, Part One¹:

Now do the Solosimpi take great joy of [?their] birds, and of the swans, and behold upon the lakes of Tol Eressëa already they fare on rafts of fallen timber, and some harness thereto swans and speed across the waters; but the more hardy dare out upon the sea and the gulls draw them, and when Ulmo saw that he was very glad.  For lo! the Teleri and the Noldoli complain much to Manwë of the separation of the Solosimpi, and the Gods desire them to be drawn to Valinor; but Ulmo cannot yet think of any device save by help of Ossë and the Oarni, and will not be humbled to this.  But now does he fare home in haste to Aulë, and those twain get them speedily to Tol Eressëa, and Oromë was with them, and there is the first hewing of trees that was done in the world outside Valinor. Now does Aulë of the sawn wood of pine and oak make great vessels like to the bodies of swans, and these he covers with the bark of silver birches, or .... with gathered feathers with the oily plumage of Ossë's birds, and they are nailed and [?sturdily] riveted and fastened with silver, and he carves the prows for them like the necks of upheld swans, but they are hollow and have no feet; and by cords of great strength and slimness are gulls and petrels harnessed to them, for they were tame to the hands of the Solosimpi, because their hearts were so turned by Ossë.

(BoLT 1.124)

And though Tolkien never wrote more than a few scraps and notes of Eärendil's tale, he nevertheless had at least one detail of his ship clear in his mind. It was 'shaped as a swan of pearls' (The Book of Lost Tales, Part Two, 263).  Tuor, Eärendil's father, had a boat just like those of the Elves of Tol Eressëa, 'with a prow fashioned like to the neck of a swan' (BoLT 2.151), and he was subsequently guided by swans on a path that led him in time to Gondolin, where he adopted the swan's wing as the sign of his house (2.152-160).²  In his later years, after Gondolin had fallen, Tuor built a ship called 'Swanwing' in which he sought to sail to Valinor (2.253-55, 260, 263, 265), on whose shores was Alqualuntë (later Alqualondë), 'Swan-Haven,' where the ships of the Solosimpi were berthed (BoLT 1.163-64). 

In Tolkien's painting of Taniquetil from the 1920s, we can glimpse just such a ship

in the sea at the foot of the mountain:

Nor does Tolkien abandon the swanships as Middle Earth develops.  The one in which Galadriel comes to bid farewell to the Fellowship is only the most famous example from The Lord of the Rings (FR 2.viii.372-73):

They turned a sharp bend in the river, and there, sailing proudly down the stream toward them, they saw a swan of great size. The water rippled on either side of the white breast beneath its curving neck. Its beak shone like burnished gold, and its eyes glinted like jet set in yellow stones; its huge white wings were half lifted. A music came down the river as it drew nearer; and suddenly they perceived that it was a ship, wrought and carved with elven skill in the likeness of a bird.... 

Aragorn stayed his boat as the Swan-ship drew alongside.... 

The Swan passed on slowly to the hythe, and they turned their boats and followed it.

In the song Bilbo sings at Rivendell he can still say of Eärendil's ship: '[h]er prow he fashioned like a swan' (FR 2.i.234); and the banner of the Prince of Dol Amroth bears 'a white ship like a silver swan upon blue water' (RK 5.viii.871; cf. 6.iv.953). We can also find swans and swanships in The Silmarillion (61, 238), and the link between these birds and Tuor is maintained in the lengthy fragment Of Tuor and His Coming to Gondolin in Unfinished Tales (25-28). 

So clearly the images of the swans and the swan-ships had an abiding appeal for Tolkien, but where the swanships come from is a question that to my knowledge has not been answered.  There are a number of possibilities, and though I incline more to one than the others, it is not implausible or unlikely that several influences combined to produce the swanships.

The first is simple, and might seem ridiculous.  Indeed it might be ridiculous, but that in itself does not rule it out.  When I first read of the swanship of Galadriel in The Lord of the Rings, I found it odd, but I could visualize it immediately.  At that time I was a little boy spending my summers in a small beach town adjacent to Asbury Park, NJ, and in the lake between the two towns there was a swan-boat:

As I was considering this, and actually inclining to dismiss it, the latest issue of The Tolkien Society's newsletter, Amon Hen (253), arrived in my mailbox.  Inside, by chance, was a request from one member, Mr Anthony Roland Clent, to contact him if anyone remembered 'the "Swan" boats at Hinksey boating pool' at Oxford in the 1940s and 1950s, which he saw as a possible source of inspiration for Tolkien. And while I don't consider chance-if-chance-you-call-it an adequate basis for scholarship, it made me think twice.  Now the swan-boats at Hinksey Park cannot be the inspiration for the swanships themselves, since the park did not exist until the mid 1930s,³ and both The Book of Lost Tales and the painting of Taniquetil predate this. It's quite possible, however, that the boats at Hinksey influenced Tolkien's description of them in The Lord of the Rings.⁴ As the gentleman from The Tolkien Society put it in his reply to my email:

I cannot but think that Tolkien used the idea of these two boats at Hinksey for his Swan boat of Galadriel. The description is uncannily similar to how I remember them, with their "white wings half lifted", and I guess Tolkien must have seen them if he ever walked down that way. They were not, alas, propelled by two elves clad in white, using black paddles....

For a medievalist and a man of his time like Tolkien inspiration might also be found in the tale, first found in the late 12th century, of the Knight of the Swan and more recently in Wagner's Lohengrin. In sum, a mysterious knight arrives in a boat drawn by a swan to rescue a woman in peril. Here there clearly seems to be a link to the passage of The Book of Lost Tales I quoted above, which describes the swans pulling the rafts on the lakes of Tol Eressëa.

Lohengrin Postcard ca. 1900

17th Century Woodcut

But while this might explain the swans drawing the boats in the lakes, it does not explain the swanships themselves.  For this we must look elsewhere.  Fortunately an answer seems to be ready at hand, in a source that will surprise no one.

                             Hét him ýþlidan
gódne gegyrwan;   cwæþ, hé gúþcyning
ofer swanrade        sécean wolde
mærne þéoden,      þá him wæs manna ðearf.

(Beowulf  198-201)

                             He ordered his ship built,
A great wave-walker, and said he would seek
Over the long sea, the swan's road,
that well-known king needing brave new men.

(transl. Williamson)

Swanrad, the swan-road, as the context makes clear, is a kenning for the sea, much like the better known hronrad, the whale-road (Beowulf 10). But there's something odd about it.  Swans may be water fowl, but they are not seabirds.  That Tolkien perceived this is evident: in the lakes of Tol Eressëa swans pull the rafts of the Elves; but in the salt sea petrels and gulls are harnessed to the swan-ships.  Robert Woodward resolved this oddity by pointing out that swanrad is in fact a double kenning, in which swan is itself first a kenning for ship, and then is joined to rad to become a kenning for the sea.⁵ And it's only a few lines later, as Woodward notes, that the poet likens the 'neck' of the ship to a bird's:

Gewát þá ofer wægholm    winde gefýsed
flota fámiheals    fugle gelícost,

(Beowulf  217-18)

Over the scending sea, driven by the wind,
Went the ship, foamy-necked much like a bird,

(transl. mine)⁶ 

Heals, the second element in the adjective fámiheals, means both prow and neck, and the poet plays ably on both these senses in fámiheals fugle gelícost.  Birds don't move fast enough through the water to make the sea foam around them, but ships do; and ships don't have necks, but birds do. 'Its foamy prow so like a bird's neck' catches, I think, the double sense of it, but loses the poem's eloquent compression. Nevertheless, the poet evokes the image of a bird here to describe Beowulf's ship, and it can hardly be an accident that seventeen lines earlier he had chosen to use swanrad when he could just as easily have used hronrad,⁷ but instead of the whale he conjured the swan, whose neck curves so like the prow of a ship of this era.

The famous Oseberg ship, built ca. 820

And Tolkien's close attention to this passage could not be more clear.  He chose these very lines (210-228) to illustrate his explanation of the workings of alliterative verse in his essay On Translating Beowulf (61-71), in which he also already discussed swanrad, though the meaning of rad was his subject there (51-52). We have three separate renderings of fámiheals fugle gelícost by him: in verse as 'foam-throated, like a flying bird;' in prose as 'with foam at the throat most like unto a bird;' and a literal prose version in the Old English word order, 'foamy-neck (to) bird likest.'⁸ 

If, moreover, we turn back for a moment to consider Galadriel's swan-ship, 'wrought and carved with elven skill in the likeness of a bird,' we can see an interesting progression in Tolkien's description of it.  When the members of the fellowship first see it, they take it to be a proper 'swan.' Then they realize that it is in fact a 'swan-ship.'  And finally it becomes a 'Swan.'  From 'swan' to 'swan-ship' to 'Swan,' it's like watching the birth of a kenning.  If Tolkien did not recognize the swan in swanrad as itself a kenning for ship, he turned it into one here.

Now Old English possesses a second word for swan, ilfette/ilfettu, which establishes another link to the swanships and the Elves in The Book of Lost Tales.  In a marginal gloss on the words 'Kópas Alqualuntë, the Haven of the Swanships,' Tolkien wrote Ielfethyþ. This word, Christopher Tolkien explains,

is Old English, representing the interpretation of the Elvish name made by Eriol in his own language: the first element meaning 'swan' (ielfetu), and the second (later 'hithe') meaning 'haven, landing place.'

(BoLT 1.164)

As Christopher Tolkien's note indicates, ielfethyþ is his father's coinage through the character of Eriol, the seafarer who finds his way to Tol Eressëa and learns the stories told in The Book of Lost Tales (1.13-27). Why use ielfethyþ when swanhyþ would have worked just as well? Not to conceal one connection by choosing the less obvious synonym, but, I would argue, to suggest another by echoing ilfe, the Old English for elves, the entry for which directly precedes ilfette in Bosworth Toller.⁹

Hyþ, the second element in ielfethyþ, also has echoes in this connection since 'hithe' is used by Tolkien only to describe the landing place where the swan-ship of Galadriel lands; he spells it 'hythe' in an archaic manner evocative of Old English; and the three times the word 'hythe' appears here are the only three times the word appears in The Lord of the Rings (FR 2.viii.371, 373, 377).  Except for Christopher Tolkien's note above, it also does not appear, in either spelling, in The Hobbit, The Silmarillion, The Book of Lost Tales, or Unfinished Tales.  In an author so careful of his words, so knowledgeable about them, and so inclined to archaic words in the right context, the fact that he uses 'hythe' three times here and nowhere else indicates great deliberateness in choosing it.  It was not merely an old word that meant 'landing.'

On balance then there seems to be ample evidence for tracing Tolkien's inspiration for the swanships to the combination of swanrad and fámiheals fugle gelícost. Other influences are not to be ignored for other aspects of the swanships, like the Knight of the Swan and the likelihood that Tolkien saw swanboats at Hinksey Park. Michael Martinez has summarized still other likely reasons for the imagery of swans in Tolkien.  But the ships themselves first sailed the swanroad.

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¹ For those not familiar with The Book of Lost Tales, a couple of quick observations may be useful. First, it contains early versions of many stories that we later see in The Silmarillion, but these stories often differ greatly in emphasis, tone, style, names, and characterization (to name a few). Some find these differences as surprising as The Silmarillion itself is to those who have known only The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. The Book of Lost Tales, however, is as interesting a work in its own right as it is as a precursor to the later tales. Second, Christopher Tolkien performed heroic work on chaotic manuscripts to come up with a publishable version, reading nearly unreadable handwriting set down in faded 70 year old pencil on paper that had sometimes held older versions which had been erased and overwritten. No doubt an electron microscope and a palantír would have come in handy.

For the date see The Book of Lost Tales, Part One (Boston 1984) 1.203; The Book of Lost Tales, Part Two (Boston 1984) 2.146-47; Unfinished Tales (1981) 4-5.

² At BoLT 2.160 Tuor names himself as being 'of the house of the Swan.' He seems to have taken this description to himself rather than inheriting it: 'This [dwelling] by slow labor [Tuor] adorned with fair carvings of the beasts and trees and flowers and birds that he knew about the waters of Mithrim, and ever among them was the Swan the chief, for Tuor loved this emblem and it became the sign of himself, his kindred and folk thereafter' (2.152).

³ Hinksey Park was built on the grounds of the former Oxford Waterworks, which were purchased for this purpose in 1934.  See here.

⁴ I contacted the gentleman who had placed the notice in Amon Hen by email, to which he was kind enough to reply as quoted.  Unfortunately he did not have a photograph of his swan-boats, and I have so far been unable to find one.

⁵ Robert H. Woodward, 'Swanrad in Beowulf,' Modern Language Notes 69 (1954) 544-46.  He also identifies parallels in Old Norse using svan.

⁶ I supply my own translation here because I think a more literal rendering is necessary to the point being made. I also think Williamson's otherwise excellent translation of Beowulf stumbles on fámiheals fugle gelícost, for which he gives us 'the foam-necked floater.' To be sure flota is a rather colorless word for ship, but the super-literal 'floater' conceals more than it reveals. And revelation is what we seek here.

⁷ On hronrad see Tolkien, Beowulf: A Translation and Commentary (2014) 141-43, where he argues that "'whale road'-- which suggests a sort of semi-submarine steam engine running along submerged metal rails over the Atlantic" is not quite the right translation for this word.

⁸ The poetic and the literal prose translations come from On Translating Beowulf, 63 and 69 respectively, reprinted in in The Monsters and the Critics and Other Essays (London, 2006), and the prose from Beowulf: A Translation and Commentary (New York 2014).

⁹ What the difference may be between swan and ilfette is unknown to me. Hexam. 8 suggests that to some there was one: sume fugelas beóþ langsweorede swá swá swanas ond ilfette. 'Some birds are long-necked like swanas and ilfette. According to Bosworth Toller, in Icelandic svanr, the cognate of swan is only poetical, while alpt/alft, the cognate of ilfette, was the normal word for swan, but it does not appear from the citations in Bosworth Toller that Old English maintained so neat a distinction.