Lore & Learning in Middle-earth

[Lalwendë]

I enjoyed Shippey's lecture on this as he brought up the idea that many of these sayings are patently absurd, and it was clear that Tolkien himself thought so. I think that there are a few different types of sayings displayed in Tolkien's work.

Proverbs/maxims - these are things which could be said to be truthful; this is where the real lore is preserved. The ideal example would indeed be Ioreth's "The hands of the king are the hands of a healer". This saying has preserved some old lore.

Aphorisms - these at one time may have held some lore but have now become slightly absurb if we think about them logically. Tolkien makes great use of these, reflecting patterns of colloquial speech (and thus providing welcome relief from the high-flown and high-falutin' ), and I think he finds a certain amount of humour in them.

Thinking about "It never rains but it pours", it is quite a meaningless statement; it is similar to the modern day "you wait for a bus, none turn up for thirty minutes and then three come along at once". Yes, this does indeed happen, but hidden behind the statement is that someone has a sinister, underhand intention to irritate us. The statement is illogical.

Again the saying "those who live in glass houses should not throw stones" is quite absurd, as patently those who do live in glass houses can throw stones with gleeful abandon, just so long as they don't throw them at their own property.

What such aphorisms hide within their absurdity is an idea, but one that is more colourfully expressed with a pithy statement.

Anti-proverbs - This is when an aphorism is altered to humorous effect. I think that in this respect The Gaffer is a genuine humorist, worthy of his own column in The Shire's version of Private Eye.

There are a few ways of twisting sayings and playing with the words to emphasise the absurdity within, but he always does this to great effect as seen with "where's there's life there's hope, and need of vittles" - you can almost hear the pregnant pause between the two clauses . Others such as Butterbur seem to get a saying a little muddled unintentionally which is itself great humour.

I enjoy Tolkien's humour with his twisting of such sayings (I wonder if he also enjoyed cryptic crosswords?), and Shippey's lecture brought to mind how funny it can be to mess around with sayings. I remember there being something of a craze for doing this in my 6th form - my favourite was the alteration of "you can't teach your grandmother to suck eggs" to "you can't teach your eggs to suck grandmother".

[The Squatter of Amon Rûdh]

The lack of a home internet connection is definitely limiting my comments on such subjects, but hopefully I can give you all some food for thought nonetheless.

What I find interesting is just how many of Tolkien's gnomics are recycled from English literature. For example, "third time pays for all" is Tolkien's translation of a proverb from passus III of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.

For I haf fraysted þe twys, and faythful I fynde þe.
Now "þrid tyme þrowe best" þenk on þe morne,
Make we mery quyl we may and mynne vpon joye,
For þe lur may mon lach when-so mon lykez.'

Sir Bertilak to Sir Gawain, p. 47 in the text linked to above.

The connection between Bilbo's riddle game and the Exeter Book riddles (the only extant Old English riddle collection) is well known, but in general Tolkien's use of sententious and gnomic statements, riddles and mnemonic rhymes echoes a common idea that our earliest literature is fossilised oral tradition. That the truth is far more complicated does not change the fact that Old English and Old Norse literature are replete with proverbial wisdom, of which my signature is an example. The poetic 'kenning', or condensed metaphor so often used by poets in the medieval Germanic languages, such as 'Whale-road' and 'swan-way' for the sea, is itself a meta-riddle, describing allusively a common concept. Medieval skalds took this to such extremes of complexity that some of their poetry still defies attempts to interpret it, seeming to revel in layer upon layer of mythological allusion and obfuscated meaning. It would be interesting to look at Bilbo and Gollum's game and see how the Anglo-Saxon riddles are apportioned between them, and whether Tolkien put in any subtle allusions to Gollum's age.

Now, the point to all this is that the medieval proverbs, like those Tolkien uses, can be mere truisms ('winter is coldest', for example), aphorisms, or truly pithy wisdom. Nor does this form of transmission reside only in dusty manuscripts, but is in common use. I think that Tolkien simply used an idea that seemed obvious to him: people use proverbs and rhymes to record the things they feel they ought to know. His reconstruction of a largely oral society accords quite well with the thinking of his time, which tended to see much oral-formulaic transmission in the earliest medieval texts. He was also quite right to give the rustic Hobbits their own set of bucolic gnomics, closely derived from common English sayings. The wisdom of some of these seems to reinforce another of Tolkien's pet points: old wives' tales may not be so valueless as many think.

[Hilde Bracegirdle]

Not only does it seem fitting that various cultures of Middle-earth have these elements present, but it serves build a poignant link to our own. (And apparently a very real one, judging from the earlier posts.) Whether that is intentional, I won’t pretend to know. But hearing familiar sayings, though at times garbled, does make it seem to be more of a historical account, than fiction.

I am thinking of how today I hear the changes in sayings I remember from childhood. Having moved residence in the interval might account for some changes, but I can’t help but ascribe it to the growth of the living language over time, as well as over distance. It is only a little stretch to adopt these sayings as a predecessor of own.

On a light note though, Gandalf’s musing over the “Tall ships and tall kings, three times three” does recall trying to remember history in school. “In 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue.”