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Old 10-06-2017, 08:54 PM   #11
Balfrog
Haunting Spirit
 
Join Date: Nov 2014
Posts: 87
Balfrog has just left Hobbiton.
Morthoron

Hallelujah! Is there actually a point you're willing to agree on with Ms. Seth – namely Tolkien's seeming disdain for Shakespeare? In an ever so roundabout way are you actually entertaining the possibility Tolkien might have poked fun at the Bard by casting him as a Troll? Well I never – may miracles never cease to occur!

Really by now – I would have thought the: 'I know more than you' thing, and the 'lack of comprehension' thing, would have been dropped. It's a little puerile – and I'm sure off-putting to readers of this thread wishing to enhance their knowledge of Tolkien's works. In all probability I know a lot more than you think and you know a lot less than I think. And by the way – I asked for evidence where your Tom, Bert & Bill knew of each other and were friends and rivals. I didn't make a big deal about your 'lack of comprehension' in providing a comedy where the three characters obviously historically didn't.

Nonetheless your parody was highly amusing. There's definitely some talent there. If only you could harness and hone it to be more objective about Ms. Seth's works.

Anyway – the bottom line is that it's probably possible to find three 'famous' cohorts possessing the names of the Trolls – but it's near impossible to find allusions (of any decent amount) to the same buried within Roast Mutton. Especially to the depth exhibited by Ms. Seth's three Elizabethan playwrights. Which makes me believe Ms. Seth's theory is quite a strong one!

As to:

By the way, they are not necessarily speaking cockney, but more like Mancunian, given that Tolkien would be more acquainted with guttural Manchester accents, having lived outside of Birmingham as a child and serving in the Lancashire Fusiliers in WWI. His brushes with London cockney would be limited.


Tolkien's knowledge of the English Language and dialects was vast. It would be wrong to belittle him. John Rateliff, probably, the most knowledgeable scholar on The Hobbit – calls the Trolls' accents 'cockney' (see The History of The Hobbit).

By the way your words sound remarkably like Eledhwen (a Special Educational Needs Teacher) from The Tolkien Forum some 12 years ago (thread: about trolls' accents). When I type in on Google search: 'trolls cockney' – the first thing that comes up is:

That particular aspect of the trolls' accent seems more Mancunian (Manchester) to me than Cockney. Tolkien will have been more familiar with the accents of the West Midlands and the North West than Cockney, as he lived just outside Birmingham as a child, and served in the Lancashire Fusiliers in WW1, where he would have encountered such speech among the enlisted men.


Tolkien wrote The Hobbit while in Oxford. Oxford to London is a mere 50 miles. It's far too presumptive to assume the Manchester connection. However I could be persuaded if, with your obviously deep acquaintance of English dialects, you could point out in a Manchester dialectal dictionary, the words:

Lumme, Blighter, Copped etc.
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