Minor Works -- 1 - Farmer Giles of Ham

[littlemanpoet]

Many years ago now, I bought a second hand copy of Tolkien's "Smith of Wootton Major & Farmer Giles of Ham," copyright 1967, Ballantine Books. I reread Farmer Giles of Ham for the umpteenth time because I just love it. In the most recent reading it had not lost any of its charm for me.

I find in the Foreword some delicious comments in terms of geography: the valley of the Thames and excursions to the "walls of Wales." The pseudo history places the tale some time after King Coel (maybe) and after King Arthur ... which, of course, makes it pseudo-history in the plainest sense. If one were to take this seriously, then it would have to be a story about pre-Anglo-Saxon Britain. Will we find the ensuing text free of Anglo-Saxon place names? Wink wink.

Let the fun begin!

[Inziladun]

I like the way Tolkien seemingly reinforces a theme from The Hobbit (taking place in a world with "less noise and more green") with this:

The time was not one of hurry or bustle. But bustle has very little to do with business. Men did their work without it; and they got through a deal, both of work and of talk.

Then we have Giles described as being mostly interested in being safe and comfortable, and the fact that he and Garm didn't pay much notice to anything outside the immediate area of Ham (shades of Bilbo Baggins?).

I think Garm is endearingly annoying at times, but obviously very loyal to his master. I love the vocalizations he's given in the book, such as when he wakes Giles to warn of the giant, and gets a thrown bottle for his trouble:

"Ow!" said the dog, jumping aside with practiced skill. "Help! Help! Help!"

The accompanying illustrations in my paperback compliment the story well.

[Estelyn Telcontar]

Does your book have the Pauline Baynes illustrations, Inzil? Those are such a wonderful complement to the story - and Tolkien really liked them. For those who remember her illustrations for the Narnia books, the style is similar. I find it has something medieval, but also something like comic book drawings. I love having the small pictures right where they belong in the text. And the black and white drawings make me want to colour them, though I wouldn't do it in the book...

[Inziladun]

Originally Posted by Estelyn Telcontar

Does your book have the Pauline Baynes illustrations, Inzil? Those are such a wonderful complement to the story - and Tolkien really liked them.

It doesn't say specifically in my Smith/Giles paperback, but I also have the 1966 Tolkien Reader with PB illustrations, and they are indeed the same.

[Morthoron]

Originally Posted by Estelyn Telcontar

Does your book have the Pauline Baynes illustrations, Inzil? Those are such a wonderful complement to the story - and Tolkien really liked them. For those who remember her illustrations for the Narnia books, the style is similar. I find it has something medieval, but also something like comic book drawings. I love having the small pictures right where they belong in the text. And the black and white drawings make me want to colour them, though I wouldn't do it in the book...

I have a hard cover copy of the U.S. Nelson Doubleday, Inc. edition (1976), and the color frontispiece and end covers by Baynes are excellent. The Baynes illustrations (both color and black and white) are certainly reminiscent of 12th century illuminated manuscripts.

[Rune Son of Bjarne]

I realised that I did not have a copy of Farmer Giles of Ham lying around, nor could I find my copy of the Danish translation Niels Bonde fra Bold. I couldn't find it on my audiobook/library apps and my local library have a bit of delivery time. Today I had resigned to purchasing an e-book version, when I looked at the book shelf and realised I had a barely touched volume of "Tales from the Perilous Realm" standing right there... Anyways, I have only made it a little passed the foreword for now.

Originally Posted by Thinlómien

That being said, I feel like one would also greatly benefit from being more familiar with English mythology and history. I feel like you can't really appreciate Tolkien's writing as much "just as a story", without a greater context. Now that I think of it, it's rather fascinating how he often wrote - in a way - for scholars and children at the same time, which is not really a common combination.

As for the foreword itself, two things stood out to me - two very trademark Tolkien things that we see in his major works too. One is that his love for and knowledge of linguistics is evident; how many other authors would say their story is just an explanation for odd place names? Or how many others would bother to establish what language the story is written, and what they're telling us it was translated from? And the trope of the somewhat unreliable translator-narrator passing on an old story, obscuring the truth of what "really happened," is of course the second thing. It is very much like the whole narrative framing of the Red Book of Westmarch.

I think this scholarly approach is one of the reasons I still find Tolkien so fascinating. It is escapism, but it also speaks to the part of me that loves academia. Like Tolkien I prefer history, even if this history is imagined.

I agree with your comparison with the Red Book of Westmarch, which incidentally is one of my favorite things in the appendix to Lord of the Rings.

Originally Posted by littlemanpoet

I find in the Foreword some delicious comments in terms of geography: the valley of the Thames and excursions to the "walls of Wales." The pseudo history places the tale some time after King Coel (maybe) and after King Arthur ... which, of course, makes it pseudo-history in the plainest sense. If one were to take this seriously, then it would have to be a story about pre-Anglo-Saxon Britain. Will we find the ensuing text free of Anglo-Saxon place names? Wink wink.

Let the fun begin!

Tolkien quite caught my attention when he started talking about the valley of the Thames, because I have never really thought much about southern English geography before. Too me it is just a massive urban area, but all of the sudden my mind started wondering. Why did that area/London become so important. I remembered that it had already been important in Roman times, obviously the main reasons had to be geographical...
and so on.

Anyways, I quite expected the setting to be pre-Anglo-Saxon Britain-like... So I was immediately flustered by the blunderbuss, more so than the giant and the talking dog.

[Pitchwife]

Just popping in very briefly during the final minutes of an insane Day in the current Werewolf game to say that I loved the portrayals of the animals, Garm and the grey mare, they seem so true to life! Did the Tolkien family actually ever own a dog?


Also Pauline Baynes's illustrations, they remind me very much of the Manesse Liederhandschrift, our famous collection of German minnesang poetry from the 12th century.

[Bêthberry]

Originally Posted by Estelyn Telcontar

Does your book have the Pauline Baynes illustrations, Inzil? Those are such a wonderful complement to the story - and Tolkien really liked them. For those who remember her illustrations for the Narnia books, the style is similar. I find it has something medieval, but also something like comic book drawings. I love having the small pictures right where they belong in the text. And the black and white drawings make me want to colour them, though I wouldn't do it in the book...

In case anyone is looking for an edition of Farmer Giles of Ham, there is one that has more than just the Pauline Baynes illustrations: the 50th Anniversary edition, edited by Scull & Hammond. It includes the first manuscript version as well as notes for a planned sequel.

As an example of how much "tinkering" Tolkien did to the story, here is the beginning of that first manuscript version:

THEN DADDY BEGAN A STORY, and this is what he said:
Once there was a giant, a fairly big giant: his walking-stick was like a tree, and his feet were very large. If he walked down the road he would have left holes in it; if he had trodden on our garden he would have squashed it altogether; if he had bumped into our house there would have been no house left. And he might easily have bumped into it, for his head was far above the roof of it and he seldom looked where his feet were going.

And to provide a real spoiler, here's the ending:

'But who was the real hero of the this story, do you suppose?' said Daddy.
'I don't know.'
'The Grey Mare, of course, he said, and that ended it.

[Kuruharan]

Originally Posted by Legate of Amon Lanc

I think Morthoron has already addressed that; personally I recall (but do not have a source at hand) Basileus used somewhere in some circumstances in the medieval Latin-speaking world too, maybe as the sort of mix-and-match, and exactly redundantly in the sense like this. Otherwise at least as far as I can speak for 1-3rd century Greek, basileus was simply a "ruler" there. For that matter, the world "tyrannus" also was not originally Latin (although that was being used), and it just sounds like adding more redundant titles that just make it sound like "how many times can we say that I am a ruler in different ways to hammer the point". But if you read the King's name and simply swap "basileus" with "ruler", it sounds perfectly normal.

There is quite the rabbit hole you can disappear down on this topic...so here I go!

Basileus is not the original Greek word for king. The original word was "Anax," which while losing the status of a title, is still present in the Greek language and appears in such places as personal names.

"Basileus" in origin was a lower title subservient to an anax. The reasons why anax faded into dusty obscurity and basileus came to the fore are, at this far removed, lost to us. I've read speculation that "anax" had more of a sacerdotal association and "basileus", as it ultimately developed, was more secular in nature. There are also implications of what we could consider a feudal hierarchy at play where the anax was the high king and the basileus were autonomous rulers loosely subject to the anax. This is the political system at play in The Iliad. When the Bronze Age collapse occurred, there was no longer an anax but a host of petty basileus’ and that title came to dominate because it was so common.

I don't know if this potential sacred vs. secular dichotomy was what the editors were referring to in saying that "basileus" had the connotation of "administrator". It would be a pretty obscure reference if it was.

Originally Posted by Rune Son of Bjarne

Now this seems off to me. Yes basileus was used in the greek speaking parts of the roman empire, but to my knowledge not used by the latin speakers. Surely the west used "Imperator"?

It is a bit murky and there is a lot of what to us in the modern era is a frustrating non-standardization of usage. That being said, the "titles" if you will (which in itself is a bit murky and not a totally accurate description) were "Augustus" and "Caesar." At some point down the road after the end of the Roman Empire in the West "Augustus" completely lost its connotation of being a title, which it very much had in the time of what I will call the classic Roman Empire. In fact, it was the title "Augustus" that unambiguously identified the person of the emperor, not the title "Imperator." After the end of the Western Empire the word Augustus ultimately became what it is today; a personal name specifically associated with the person we now call "Augustus."

"Caesar" has experienced a similar phenomenon, although to a lesser degree. There is still some sense in the collective consciousness that Caesar was used as a title, but it is mostly associated as the name of Julius Caesar. More on “Caesar” below.

However, to ratchet up the levels of confusion "Imperator" was used, especially in an informal sense and "Imperator" as a title (for whatever reason) is the one that ultimately won out linguistically in the West. It was used in its connotation of "command - commander - command sphere or realm." In a way, from a pure definition standpoint, it is similar to the Arabic title “emir.”

My theory for why “Imperator” leading to “Emperor” became the utilized title in the West is that the preferred word order changed from Latin and "Imperator" won because it was the word that came first and was thus more prominent and "Augustus", reflecting its status as being a pretended nickname came later in the name and people lost the original importance of the word.

Of course, this is very much not the case in German as the word for emperor is “Kaiser” coming straight from “Caesar.” Same thing in Russian with “tsar.” I’d be interested to know if there is a similar practice in other Eastern European languages.

This is actually a topic of keen interest to me, so please forgive my digression on this.

That is a peculiar connotation, I wish there was a footnote to the footnote explaining the source.

Indeed.

[Galadriel55]

Originally Posted by Kuruharan

Of course, this is very much not the case in German as the word for emperor is “Kaiser” coming straight from “Caesar.” Same thing in Russian with “tsar.” I’d be interested to know if there is a similar practice in other Eastern European languages.

I can speak a bit for Russian on this tangent perhaps, though I have no linguistic or historical background. The derivatives of "Caesar" can be seen in three forms: Tsar, Tsezar, and Kesar (and perhaps others that I have not thought of). Tsar came to mean "king", and is both a title and a common noun, same as "king" in English. Tsezar is the name of Julius Caesar, as well as the title of other Roman Emperors (and the salad). Kesar is more complicated and could mean either "tsar" or "Tsezar" depending on the context (minus the salad), but in some contexts it may be more appropriate to use one versus the other; I am not sure if there are actually any rules here, this is purely my observation. It is also more archaic and a little bit Biblical, but not exclusively. Then the German Kaiser is called kayzer - which is a title that is also distinct from all the rest, and this one has no overlap to my knowledge.

"Augustus" survives in the Russian adjective avgusteyshiy, meaning pertaining to the royal family (e.g. avgusteyshaya osoba = royal persona).

Imperator is, surprise, imperator and is equivalent to emperor.

The other royal persona (avgusteyshaya osoba ) that left quite a mark on European language development is Charlemagne, who I believe is credited with seeding his name all over Europe's languages (mostly in the form of Karl). In Russian it appears as korol, and means "king", same as "tsar", but is applied to non-Russian (perhaps even non-Slavic? not sure) kings. I know the word also appears in Western Slavic languages, but I will leave it to Legate maybe to talk on their behalf, he would do it much better than I.

What all this mess means in terms of Tolkien is that there is a lot more flexibility in titles - not to mention that my beloved translation also dug up konung from some proto-germanic depths specifically for the rulers of Rohan. But Aragorn, for instance, not being tied to any real-world dynasty, can be called tsar and korol interchangeably, and also knyaz (which is "prince" except that it's much more than "prince", it calls back to the time in history when Knyaz was the title of the biggest boss in your group of people).

But coming back to Farmer Giles with a question: wouldn't the root of baselius still echoed in Latin in some form, since it's via Latin that it gives words like basilisk to modern languages? Or am I getting the order of things wrong?

[Legate of Amon Lanc]

Originally Posted by Kuruharan

Basileus is not the original Greek word for king. The original word was "Anax," which while losing the status of a title, is still present in the Greek language and appears in such places as personal names.

The reasons why anax faded into dusty obscurity and basileus came to the fore are, at this far removed, lost to us. I've read speculation that "anax" had more of a sacerdotal association and "basileus", as it ultimately developed, was more secular in nature. There are also implications of what we could consider a feudal hierarchy at play where the anax was the high king and the basileus were autonomous rulers loosely subject to the anax. This is the political system at play in The Iliad. When the Bronze Age collapse occurred, there was no longer an anax but a host of petty basileus’ and that title came to dominate because it was so common.

But that is exactly what concerns us - if what you are saying is true, anax was out of the game a thousand years before the word had the chance to spread around Europe with the Roman Empire. I know that by the time of 1-3rd century, "basileus" was the common term in Greek, and - perhaps most importantly for its spread in subsequent centuries and potential use in the Middle Ages - it was used in the New Testament. That still does not say anything about whether or how it would get to the Western part of the Empire, but like I said - I think that if it was used in the Middle Ages, it could have been used as a "fancy extra title", using a "foreign word" in your list, perhaps in some "international" diplomatic meetings or somesuch.

Originally Posted by Kuruharan

Of course, this is very much not the case in German as the word for emperor is “Kaiser” coming straight from “Caesar.” Same thing in Russian with “tsar.” I’d be interested to know if there is a similar practice in other Eastern European languages.

Czech has "císař" as the word for "emperor", which is obviously derived from "Caesar" (and I think it is both influenced by Kaiser, as the Germans are immediate neighbours, but likely also some direct knowledge about Caesar). I would personally actually be interested in what do the Southern, Balkan Slavs have, because they would have been directly in contact with the Byzantium (or actually part of it), so I wonder whether their word for Emperor may be similar to Basileus rather than to Caesar/Kaiser/what-have-you.

Originally Posted by Galadriel55

The other royal persona (avgusteyshaya osoba ) that left quite a mark on European language development is Charlemagne, who I believe is credited with seeding his name all over Europe's languages (mostly in the form of Karl). In Russian it appears as korol, and means "king", same as "tsar", but is applied to non-Russian (perhaps even non-Slavic? not sure) kings. I know the word also appears in Western Slavic languages, but I will leave it to Legate maybe to talk on their behalf, he would do it much better than I.

In Czech (and Polish, Slovak etc.) there is the word král (król, etc.) which means "king" and it comes exactly from Karl (i.e. Charlemagne). So yes (and I assume that's how it travelled to Russian too).

Originally Posted by Galadriel55

But coming back to Farmer Giles with a question: wouldn't the root of baselius still echoed in Latin in some form, since it's via Latin that it gives words like basilisk to modern languages? Or am I getting the order of things wrong?

Basilisk specifically is a literal borrowing of a word, but yes, of course there are all these Greek-words-turned-Latin-and-later-(French-and-later-English-or-whichever-other-languages), but I think what others were trying to say was that Basileus, of all things, did not get actually transferred as is into wide use; however, it is true that there is for example the word basilica which definitely WAS used in Latin and DOES come from the same root (it was originally an adjective, meaning "royal", and later became stand-alone noun). So, I guess there is something.

Anyways, I hope to post soon something more about the progress of the story itself

[Kuruharan]

Originally Posted by Inziladun

(shades of Bilbo Baggins?)

Giles doesn't remind me of Bilbo so much as Gaffer Gamgee.

It has been many a long year since I read the book, but it surprised me on this re-read how often I would read a passage and think to myself, "Oh that's where that line comes from!"

One of my personal favorites is the Parson, "The characters are archaic and the language barbaric."

[Estelyn Telcontar]

There are numerous quotable lines in this story! One that I enjoy is, "He [Farmer Giles] was finding that a local reputation may require keeping up, and that may prove awkward."

And I love the turn-around irony of this one: "So knights are mythical!" said the younger and less experienced dragons. "We always thought so."

Another, very reminiscent of the Shire quote about the rest of the world being there, even if they weren't aware of it (can't remember the exact words or location): "But the Wide World was there." Sounds just a bit ominous, doesn't it?!

One of the characters that grew on me as I read and reread this story is Giles' wife Agatha. She's not mentioned very often, and according to Scull and Hammond, she was not part of the original story Tolkien told to his children, nor of the first manuscript. I will keep an eye out for the passages in which she appears to see if their is any significance to her addition to the story.

Incidentally, I haven't seen anyone cosplaying Queen Agatha - so I remedied that situation at the "Tolkien 2019" event in Birmingham two years ago...

[Rune Son of Bjarne]

Originally Posted by Estelyn Telcontar

Which characters do you enjoy most? How do you like the abundance of Latin names used? What opinion do you have of the talking dog? Do you enjoy the parodic humour?

Let's stay with the first adventure for now - it paves the way for the events that follow.

I know nothing of latin, but I have taken an interest in the Eastern Roman Empire (don't be surprised if I start a thread drawing comparisons with Gondor) and so I recognise the Greek title of Basileus in the title of the king.

Augustus Bonifacius Ambrosius Aurelianus Antoninus Pius et Magnificus, dux rex, tyrannusm et Basileus Mediterranearum Partium

My guess is that it is used in accordance with Byzantine customs to mean emperor. It could also just mean king, but rex is already part of the title so it seems unlikely.

Anyways, I am mystified why a greek word appears in our story. I mean as far as I know it was never used in Latin...

Later we learn that the sword Tailbiter used to belong to the famed dragon-slayer Bellomarius, and now I am ready to go into conspiracy theory mode.

Bellomarius is such a strange name, and just too similar to Belisarius, the greatest Byzantine general of all time (instrumental in Justinian's attempt to reconquer the western half of the empire).

I look forward to see how the rise of Islam, Iconoclasm and the first crusade have been incorporated in the later stages of this book, as they no doubt have.

[Morthoron]

Originally Posted by Rune Son of Bjarne

I know nothing of latin, but I have taken an interest in the Eastern Roman Empire (don't be surprised if I start a thread drawing comparisons with Gondor) and so I recognise the Greek title of Basileus in the title of the king....

My guess is that it is used in accordance with Byzantine customs to mean emperor. It could also just mean king, but rex is already part of the title so it seems unlikely.

Anyways, I am mystified why a greek word appears in our story. I mean as far as I know it was never used in Latin...

The original meaning of "dux" was military leader (before it became attached to the aristocracy (duke in English, duc in French). So, King Arthur is referred to in some early texts as dux bellorum (war leader/general of battles). Given the pompous title Tolkien gives the king, I would consider dux rex to be "lord of all generals."

As far as the Greek basileus appearing in Tolkien's story (and the dragon's name Chrysophylax is Greek as well), basileus was used in the Eastern regions of the Roman Empire in reference to the Emperor in Rome (Imperator). The use of the term basileus survived in the West up until Charlemagne, who was recognized as "basileus Rhomaíōn" by the Byzantines as the titular ruler of Rome and emperor of the West.

It's basically the scruffy king of Mercia putting on airs, as evinced by the further title Mediterranearum Partium, usually in reference to the Mediterranean Sea, is here more a conveyance for imparting that the King reigns over the English Midlands, because Mediterranean literally means "in the middle of land, inland": medius ("middle"), terra ("land, earth").

Even the king's ponderous name Augustus Bonifacius Ambrosius Aurelianus Antoninus Pius (minus the titles) refers to the pre-Saxon Romano-British society of the Britons, and each aspect of the name concerns a certain personage in Briton history (Ambrosius Aurelianus, for instance, was a famous hero of Romano-British resistance to the invading Saxons).

[Kuruharan]

Originally Posted by Rune Son of Bjarne

I know nothing of latin, but I have taken an interest in the Eastern Roman Empire (don't be surprised if I start a thread drawing comparisons with Gondor) and so I recognise the Greek title of Basileus in the title of the king.



My guess is that it is used in accordance with Byzantine customs to mean emperor. It could also just mean king, but rex is already part of the title so it seems unlikely.

I too had noticed this oddity.

In the notes in the 50th Anniversary Edition it says thusly:

Basileus is also 'king', but with the suggestion of 'administrator'.

I must admit I had never seen basileus as carrying that connotation before that footnote, and I don't think I have ever seen it again. I'm not sure where the editors got that reference from.

[Legate of Amon Lanc]

I have finally the time to join in. Let me start just on the Foreword first...

Originally Posted by Inziladun

We have the scene set in England, but in a time that cannot be precisely set, much like Middle-earth (but much less removed).

It too struck me as obvious forerunner (well, or not exactly forerunner, rather, co-runner) of all the Aelfwine stuff and the attempt to frame also Middle-Earth into an "oh, this is real-world translated from ancient XY". Tolkien clearly was a lot into this, or at least he had a stage where he had been very much using that form.

It actually made me think not that it was just a satire, as some have mentioned here, but that perhaps he was simply following certain trends that had been there in 19th century and its echoes were probably still present, or it may have had enough influence on Tolkien in his youth and studies.

I am referring to the whole "hobby" many writers picked up around the time when all the national revivals were popping up around Europe and the renewed interest in trying to find old national myths. And that whole era marked with discoveries (and perhaps even more often, "discoveries") and renewed interest in national epics and stories (and not just among scholars, but exactly among the wide public) - ranging from real ones like the Niebelungenlied, through collected and admittedly modified ones like the Kalevala, to utter fakes presented as real things, like the Scottish Ossian or the Russian Slovo o pulku Igoreve (yes, I know it is still being debated, but I am with those that think that enough proofs have been made to show that it was fake).

I mean, did not Tolkien himself say that with his legendarium, he started with the ambition to write an "authentic" English myth? It is exactly the same kind of approach that the authors of the "fake myths" had, only admitted one. He had the advantage of having the distance of a hundred years from all that, but I can imagine how doing that would appeal to a writer with an interest in history and linguistics. Heck, it would appeal to one even now!

So Farmer Giles seems to me to be a by-product of the same "hobby". The "hobby" that many writers had had, well, since antiquity in fact (Journal of Dictys), but spiked again in recent past and could have been an inspiration to Tolkien, something he wanted to try. Obviously, Giles *is* framed as a joke, but that does not matter - it was an exercise utilising the same form, only not with a serious intent. But in technical terms it is no different from the fake manuscripts - an educated writer that knows something about a certain past era writes a completely imaginary story and plays with the ideas on how to connect it to existing places and other known myths.

Originally Posted by Morthoron

In regards to the Forward, when Tolkien references the "Little Kingdom" I believe the conjecture is that he was referring to Surrey or Frithwuld's Surrey, a 7th century sub-kingdom of Mercia. Let the anachronisms begin with Giles' blunderbuss.

With my very generic knowledge of the history of Britain with many gaps, I always wondered whether "Little Kingdom" referred to something "real" (as in, that there was actually something called that, by whomever). So I take it that there wasn't, but if you wanted to take it as "real", you could identify it with something?

Originally Posted by Bêthberry

Tolkien's Foreward satirises scholarly concerns at the time over the origins of fairy tales and nursery rhymes. King Coel is non other than a reference to the children's nursery rhyme about Old King Coel, who was a merry old soul, who called for his pipe and his bowl and his fiddlers three. There had been much scholarly ado trying to discover which historical character is referred to in the nursery rhyme but scholars came up empty handed (or dry penned?) Sir Walter Scott even joined the speculation There were attempts to link Coel with Arthur's legends. So all in all this little satirical reference shows Tolkien's own interest in the legends and possibly the mythology of his little island, an interest which produced what we now know as The Book of Lost Tales, while providing, significantly, a satirical slight on the study of nursery rhymes not as art or story or entertainment but as historical content
.

This is basically in line of what I was thinking. And nice, even with my only second-hand experience with English nursery rhymes, I immediately thought that this was referrence to Old King Coel - I am glad this confirms it.

Originally Posted by Thinlómien

Also, I'm a little saddened I only have the book in Finnish; while the translation is good, the story is so English that it seems already after the introduction that one is losing quite a bit by not reading it in the original. I'll cope, I guess!

Yes, there is no copy of English Farmer Giles in our house - I, on the other hand, am reading it in Czech translation. Nonetheless, I believe it is a quality one, and perhaps we are going to stumble upon something that will stand out differently in that way.

Originally Posted by Thinlómien

Now that I think of it, it's rather fascinating how he often wrote - in a way - for scholars and children at the same time, which is not really a common combination.

Really? I actually disagree. Or, okay, maybe it is not *as* common, but I think there is a lot of books - and that is actually the best kind of literature in my opinion - that are written "for children", but have some hidden jokes in there if not necessarily for scholars, then for the parents. And often these can be pretty elaborate, up to the point of being rather "for scholars" than for any "average parents". I'm thinking you might find probably something like that in the Moomins. But at least the "inside jokes for parents" is certainly a thing that is present in a lot of things written for very little children (it is probably there for the relief of parents who would otherwise have to plough through some stupidity just because their child does).

Originally Posted by Thinlómien

Or how many others would bother to establish what language the story is written, and what they're telling us it was translated from? And the trope of the somewhat unreliable translator-narrator passing on an old story, obscuring the truth of what "really happened," is of course the second thing. It is very much like the whole narrative framing of the Red Book of Westmarch.

That is exactly what made me think about the "fabricated old epics" framework.

Originally Posted by Formendacil

Farmer Giles has never felt quite Middle-earthen to me, which makes him stand stand out from both Roverandom and The Hobbit, which are its nearest comparisons in his catalogue.

Interestingly, Giles to me somehow seemed fairly Middle-Earthy on first reading: maybe it was because of the dragon. But let's see if I get the same impression this time.

Originally Posted by Rune Son of Bjarne

I know nothing of latin, but I have taken an interest in the Eastern Roman Empire (don't be surprised if I start a thread drawing comparisons with Gondor) and so I recognise the Greek title of Basileus in the title of the king.

My guess is that it is used in accordance with Byzantine customs to mean emperor. It could also just mean king, but rex is already part of the title so it seems unlikely.

Anyways, I am mystified why a greek word appears in our story. I mean as far as I know it was never used in Latin...

I think Morthoron has already addressed that; personally I recall (but do not have a source at hand) Basileus used somewhere in some circumstances in the medieval Latin-speaking world too, maybe as the sort of mix-and-match, and exactly redundantly in the sense like this. Otherwise at least as far as I can speak for 1-3rd century Greek, basileus was simply a "ruler" there. For that matter, the world "tyrannus" also was not originally Latin (although that was being used), and it just sounds like adding more redundant titles that just make it sound like "how many times can we say that I am a ruler in different ways to hammer the point". But if you read the King's name and simply swap "basileus" with "ruler", it sounds perfectly normal.

[Rune Son of Bjarne]

Originally Posted by Morthoron

The original meaning of "dux" was military leader (before it became attached to the aristocracy (duke in English, duc in French). So, King Arthur is referred to in some early texts as dux bellorum (war leader/general of battles). Given the pompous title Tolkien gives the king, I would consider dux rex to be "lord of all generals."

Sounds more likely than my interpretation, and I do like pompous and longwinded titles.

Originally Posted by Morthoron

As far as the Greek basileus appearing in Tolkien's story (and the dragon's name Chrysophylax is Greek as well), basileus was used in the Eastern regions of the Roman Empire in reference to the Emperor in Rome (Imperator). The use of the term basileus survived in the West up until Charlemagne, who was recognized as "basileus Rhomaíōn" by the Byzantines as the titular ruler of Rome and emperor of the West.

Now this seems off to me. Yes basileus was used in the greek speaking parts of the roman empire, but to my knowledge not used by the latin speakers. Surely the west used "Imperator"?

Also, it seems very un-byzantine to recognize anybody else as Roman Emperor. They were pragmatic, so they might not always object to other powers encroaching on their turf, if it suited the political situation. Anyways I am straying off topic and will only add that to my knowledge they only acknowledge Charlemagne as Emperor of the Franks.

Originally Posted by Kuruharan

I too had noticed this oddity.

In the notes in the 50th Anniversary Edition it says thusly:

I must admit I had never seen basileus as carrying that connotation before that footnote, and I don't think I have ever seen it again. I'm not sure where the editors got that reference from.

That is a peculiar connotation, I wish there was a footnote to the footnote explaining the source.


All the pompous titles and names, especially those of the petty king, has an air of Erasmus Montanus about it (a central play in Scandinavian theater).