Sam and Frodo

[The Squatter of Amon Rûdh]

What ho, Kalessin.

Your comment about "rarely hearing mature opinions outside your own circle" just struck me as slightly amusing.

I can be more pompous than that if it entertains.

I agree Mallory's saga was particularly French. I was really using it as an exemplar of the concept of chivalric love between warriors (knights), by way of exploring some of the male to male relationships within LoTR.

It's great for that, but I think that its Frenchness may have influenced Tolkien against its author as a writer of English epics. He once spoke out against the Norman conquest in his school debating society.

So, like you, I don't like or appreciate everything that happens in language. And I will rail against the verbal shorthand of our age. But I take some (sheepish) responsibility for it too

Never. I will never take responsibility! Do you hear? Never! *Runs off into the distance, hair shedding straws liberally...*

*...returns, straws replaced and wearing a neat rolled-gold trilby and cast-iron spats*

Actually I like to flit around between different idioms of English, depending on my mood. Rhyming slang; Wodehousean old-beanery; 1940s RAF-speak; Whitehallese and, of course, the lager-fuelled obscenities of the twenty-something rocker: each has its place. I just don't like to see them mixed up and used in inappropriate places. If this and the desire for elegance are elitist then so be it; I'd rather see a few people doing something well than a lot of people doing the same thing badly.