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Surely hanging, drawing and quartering doesn't frighten you, Kuruharan? For myself, I would go to the scaffold proudly, knowing that I died for comedy.
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"I don't know about you, but I'm not a gentleman o' comedy to get hung for it. I intend to collect my yuk-yuks, and then make a mad dash for my life before the irate mob catches up to me!"
(With apologies to R.L. Stevenson for so crudely adapting some of his material to suit my purpose.
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Tolkien thought very highly of the use of earlier themes by the author of Beowulf, as we can see from his essay Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics (1936)
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Speaking of rivers and streams, that's a stream that Tolkien dipped his bucket rather deeply into.
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Although I think it wise not to argue exclusively for one or the other.
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True, true.
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Tolkien could only guess at what had been by reference to known mythology from all over Europe, and from what little of real English myth was written down
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There were some Irish myths that might have been closer to the original English (Welsh, Celtic, whatever).
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I've always rooted for the Saxons, as the underdogs. Needless to say, they always lose.
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If Harold had enough sense to wait in London until his army was reinforced and a little rested, things might have turned out differently. But then again maybe not. William the Conqueror was a soldier born. "Never fought a battle he did not win, and never sieged a castle he did not take," as the saying goes. Odd that he died by falling on his saddle pommel.
[ August 13, 2002: Message edited by: Kuruharan ]