[davem]

Originally Posted by Bb

I don't doubt there's much to be found in the Welsh mythology, but there are a few querilous comments about things Celtic in Tolkien's Letters, which I don't have at hand now.

I think you have to distinguish (as Tolkien did) between Irish myth & Welsh. Certainly he seems to have disliked the Irish language but loved Welsh. It seems to me that his disparaging comments regarding things 'Celtic' refer much more to Irish myths & legends rather than Welsh. The Irish legends are much darker, more full of blood & vengeance, as well as being more 'outlandish' (now I suppose someone will throw 'Culhwch & Olwen' at me!). All that said, I don't think that anyone would deny that the Mabinogion was a major influence on Tolkien.

I think delving too deeply into the biographical aspect is fraught with danger - we don't know enough about the man - Helen stated that Tolkien married Edith at age 21 after returning from WW1. He didn't. He was born in 1892, so he would have been 21 in 1913, a year before WW1 began & they were already married before he went. They married (according to Carpenter) on 22 March 1916 & Tolkien embarked for France on 4 June of that year. I don't mean to pick on Helen here, but I think there is a danger of reading the text & making assumptions about Tolkien's life which may not apply.

Point taken, although, as you will note by the bolding that I added to the previous quotation from your post, the term 'Britain' seems to carry a literary function as well as political one.

Matthews was writing about Celtic (ie 'British' or non-Anglo-Saxon) myth, so her usage is correct. I think, in the post colonial period the inhabitants of these Islands have been forced into a rethink of our identity. 'Britain'/Britishness' seems to have been a concept which came into being with the Empire & has died along with it. The English were the last ones to hold onto the term & saw it as synonymous with English. Since the Welsh & Scots have reasserted their own unique identity in increasingly vociferous ways & have now gained their own Parliament (Scotland) & Assembly (Wales) & the same thing is happening in Northern Ireland, we English have come more & more to seek out our own identity, seperate from the Celts. Tolkien seems to have seen that coming & realised that just as the Celts of these Islands drew on their history & legends for their sense of identity, the English would seek to do the same.

John Milton might be forgiven, after the Commonwealth and then Restoration, for calling his history, The History of Britain, that part especially now called England. He was an early enthusiast who wished to make use of the Arthurian tales, if I am not mistaken.

Well, the Arthurian tales were pretty much the only body of legend associated with these Islands - Tolkien had to invent a mythology. Arthur was king of Britain & fought his battles against the incoming Anglo-Saxons, so it would be impossible for the English to claim Arthur once they had stopped thinking of themselves as 'British'. Even worse, the Arthurian tales as we have them are mainly of French origin & were taken up by the Normans (via Geoffrey's Historia in the first instance, then via Layamon, Wace etc, down to Malory). It was these very Arthurian stories that drove out & replaced the myths & legends of the conquered English.

Of course, Tolkien didn't reject the Arthurian legends out of hand - he even began to write an epic poem on Arthur - he just felt that England needed a national myth. That 'throwaway' comment in my last post, about the Legendarium having become rather a 'mythology for America' says a lot in this context. Why have so many modern Americans not adopted the tales of the First Nation peoples & gone rather for Tolkien's Northern European inspired tales?