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Hungry Ghoul
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Goethe's 'Erl-King' and 'Flight To The Ford'
Yesterday I sudddendly realized what the chapter ‘Flight To The Ford’ had always unconsciously reminded me of --- it does bear an obscure, but if observed, clearer resemblance to the classical German ballad ‘The Erl-King’ by J.W. von Goethe.
You can find both the original and a very good English translation
http://graham.main.nc.us/~bhammel/erlkng.html#scott here</a>.
Most parallels are quite obvious: in the Erl-King we have the sick son; in LOTR’s ‘Flight to the ford (FTTF)’ we have the sick Frodo. Both need to be carried as fast as possible by horse to their shelter.
The child in the Erl-King imagines / perceives the ethereal Erl-King, a mischievous apparition who seduces the child to come to his spirit-world (to play with him, see the beauties of his realm, and his daughters). In FTF we have the mischievous Nazgûl who, with promises of power and glory, seduce Frodo to enter their spirtitual plane and come to their evil realm.
The woodland in which the environment becomes animated in the eyes of the child echoes the woodland passage Frodo and company ride through.
The down-to-earth and wise appeasements of the father who explains to his son the apparitions he sees is the same voice of reason and wisdom, and experienced leader, as Aragorn is to the hobbits.
The willows which come to life before the son’s eyes as the daughters of the Erl-King seem like a dark memory of the entrance of Old Man Willow Frodo experienced.
The shelter of Frodo is the house of Elrond the elven lord. The Erl-King is no less an elven lord, too, for the word ‘Erl’ is but a faulty translation from Danish, meaning ‘Elf’.
In the end, the powers of the Elves decide the outcome of the flight. The father reaches his home, but the child is dead, struck by the Elf-King. Elrond uses his powers to rescue Frodo and maim the Nazgûl in the Bruinen. In both cases, the rider finally reaches the realm of the Elf – the netherworld one side, Imladris on the other.
Here the fundamentally different nature of elves in European folklore and Tolkien’s myth is of course evident. The evil-intented seductions of the Erl-King indeed are like those of the evil Nazgûl, not the work of the good elves of Rivendell and Middle-Earth. This is only at first glance a contradiction to the parallel motif.
Tolkien no doubt knew the poem; one can specualte that he wanted to use its motif for his own fiction; or that he wanted to set a counterpart to that piece of Andersen-style fairy tale (whom JRRT disliked, as he said) where the Elf-King is good, and victorious over the evil seducers.
On the other hand, one should probably not go as far as that with specualtion – it may be even more likely that Tolkien used the motif
unconsciuosly, as something impressive, lingering in a corner of his mind waiting to be brought to paper; he himself admitted that such things were sometimes the case in his fiction.
Conclusively, both texts stand perfectly on their own as impressive pieces of literature (Flight to the ford naturally within the larger context of the book). What we can gain from comparing both is an image of the event had Frodo not had the power to resist the Nazgûl long enough – the departure to the spiritual plane, death.
Each man kills the thing he loves...</p>