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Old 07-07-2017, 04:27 PM   #11
Balfrog
Haunting Spirit
 
Join Date: Nov 2014
Posts: 87
Balfrog has just left Hobbiton.
Ivriniel, Inziladun, Nerwen, Morthoron

So here we have a situation where the good Professor decides to alter an existing published piece of work just for kicks? Just so he can put in a random piece of colored clothing for the hell of it?

Doesn’t make any sense to me. Particularly when an admitted objective for the 1962 booklet was to better integrate T.B. into the world of The Lord of the Rings and where numerous bits of pseudo-concealed poetry are provided linking back to England and its early documented history. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to conclude there’s a strong possibility of a medieval English originating ‘green girdle’ being slipped in for much the same reason.

I don’t believe that there is a reputable Tolkien scholar alive who honestly believes that a ‘green girdle’ would have held no particular importance to Tolkien. Nor that Tolkien was lax or casual in his choice of words for material to be published. He was undoubtedly a very careful pedant – and a self-admitted one.

When it comes to the choices behind including a waistband of a particular color – it is the combination of the two that arouses most curiosity. After all if he had written ‘orange were his girdle’ or ‘green were his cummerbund’ the impact would be far less. As I am sure you well know, there are several alternates available for the word ‘girdle’. For example he could have described the article as a ‘belt’ or ‘sash’ or many other ways. As for hue – he could have given the waistband any number of the myriad of colors within his vocabulary. Yet he didn’t.

Statistically if we limit ourselves to just considering the number of poetic choices of waistband to three – namely: girdle, belt & sash; and if we conservatively limit color choice to the seven of the traditionally described rainbow (R,O,Y,G,B,I,V), there is only a one in twenty one chance of the green/girdle combination being arrived at on a purely random basis. Roughly that’s 5%.

So yes there is a chance that Tolkien momentarily suffered acute memory loss (and forgot all about SGGK) and decided that for some inexplicable reason that he would change his prior published poetry to include a randomly chosen article of clothing of random coloring – whose significance was entirely overlooked. But the odds of such a coincidence are extremely small.

At the very best I think that one might argue that it boils down to Tolkien either did it by accident or he didn’t. Still a 50% probability – and one high enough not to be dismissed at a whim. In reality the odds of deliberate contrivance are much higher. There is after all only one 'green girdle' of any known significance in this world.





Morthoron


Your last post is not particularly well thought out and lacks balance. I don't see the “stray words out of a hat” comment as at all appropriate. Just like any medievalist would react, if one were to air out the phrase 'green girdle' there is, certainly to my mind, only one possible way Tolkien would have connected it. Unless you can prove otherwise?

As for its significance – much scholarly work has been published on the matter. Significance has been conjectured to exist on multiple fronts. So when it comes to Tolkien's own translation:

“For whoever goes girdled with this green riband,
while he keeps it well clasped closely about him,
there is none so hardy under heaven that to hew him were able;
for he could not be killed by any cunning of hand.”

it's this 'invincibility' significance that Ms. Seth has focused on as a parallel – which you seem to want to ignore. I don’t recall the Professor ever called Lady Bertilak a liar? Nor to my knowledge did he ever imply the poet lied? Nor did he doubt whether it truly possessed magical qualities. Do you?
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