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Old 04-20-2008, 02:11 AM   #45
davem
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Join Date: Aug 2002
Location: In the home of lost causes, and forsaken beliefs, and unpopular names,and impossible loyalties
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davem is battling Black Riders on Weathertop.davem is battling Black Riders on Weathertop.
I only recently discovered the poem myself - after reading a recent entry on John Rateliff's blog http://sacnoths.blogspot.com/2008/04...-leprawns.html & it was the mention of "brownies, fays, pixies, leprawns" in BoLT that got me wondering whether Tolkien was drawing on British folklore for lintips (& by extension mewlips). Rateliff kindly provides us with a copy of the Denham Tracts http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denham_Tracts in his History of the Hobbit but neither creature makes an appearance there (of course Denham's list of British spirts/fairies is not exhaustive), but we do find Hobbits on the list.
Quote:
"What a happiness this must have been seventy or eighty years ago and upwards, to those chosen few who had the good luck to be born on the eve of this festival of all festivals; when the whole earth was so overrun with ghosts, boggles, Bloody Bones, spirits, demons, ignis fatui, brownies, bugbears, black dogs, spectres, shellycoats, scarecrows, witches, wizards, barguests, Robin-Goodfellows, hags, night-bats, scrags, breaknecks, fantasms, hobgoblins, hobhoulards, boggy-boes, dobbies, hob-thrusts, fetches, kelpies, warlocks, mock-beggars, mum-pokers, Jemmy-burties, urchins, satyrs, pans, fauns, sirens, tritons, centaurs, calcars[2], nymphs, imps, incubuses, spoorns[3], men-in-the-oak [4], hell-wains, fire-drakes, kit-a-can-sticks, Tom-tumblers, melch-dicks, larrs, kitty-witches, hobby-lanthorns, Dick-a-Tuesdays, Elf-fires, Gyl-burnt-tales, knockers, elves, rawheads, Meg-with-the-wads, old-shocks, ouphs[5], pad-foots, pixies, pictrees, giants, dwarfs, Tom-pokers, tutgots, snapdragons, sprets, spunks, conjurers, thurses, spurns[6], tantarrabobs, swaithes, tints, tod-lowries[7], Jack-in-the-Wads,mormos, changelings, redcaps, yeth-hounds, colt-pixies [8], Tom-thumbs, black-bugs, boggarts, scar-bugs, shag-foals, hodge-pochers, hob-thrushes, bugs, bull-beggars, bygorns, bolls, caddies, bomen, brags, wraiths, waffs, flay-boggarts, fiends, gallytrots[9], imps, gytrashes, patches, hob-and-lanthorns, gringes, boguests, bonelesses, Peg-powlers, pucks, fays, kidnappers, gallybeggars[10], hudskins[11], nickers, madcaps, trolls, robinets[12], friars' lanthorns, silkies, cauld-lads, death-hearses, goblins, hob-headlesses, bugaboos, kows, or cowes, nickies, nacks [necks, waiths, miffies[13], buckies[14], ghouls, sylphs, guests, swarths, freiths, freits, gy-carlins [Gyre-carling][15], pigmies, chittifaces[16], nixies, Jinny-burnt-tails, dudmen, hell-hounds, dopple-gangers, boggleboes, bogies, redmen, portunes[17], grants, hobbits, hobgoblins, brown-men, cowies, dunnies, wirrikows, alholdes[18], mannikins, follets [19], korreds[20], lubberkins, cluricauns, kobolds, leprechauns, kors[21], mares, korreds, puckles korigans, sylvans, succubuses, blackmen, shadows, banshees, lian-hanshees,clabbernappers, Gabriel-hounds, mawkins, doubles, corpse lights or candles, scrats, mahounds, trows, gnomes, sprites, fates, fiends, sibyls, nicknevins [22], whitewomen, fairies, thrummy-caps[23], cutties, and nisses, and apparitions of every shape, make, form, fashion, kind and description, that there was not a village in England that had not its own peculiar ghost. Nay, every lone tenement, castle, or mansion-house, which could boast of any antiquity had its bogle, its spectre, or its knocker. The churches, churchyards, and crossroads were all haunted. Every green lane had its boulder-stone on which an apparition kept watch at night. Every common had its circle of fairies belonging to it. And there was scarcely a shepherd to be met with who had not seen a spirit!"
I did wonder, though, whether lintips might be a common name for an animal or insect.
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