LotR -- Book 5 - Chapter 08 - The Houses of Healing

[Lalwendë]

Originally Posted by davem

‘Old wives’ tales’ seem to be respected as a source of wisdom even by the Elves. To them seems to be attributed the retention of old wisdom, lost to the ‘wise’.

This links back to the discussion earlier in the week about myth and folklore and England on the Adoption thread. As I said there, Tolkien did not make great use of English folktales, certainly not as much use as other writers have, instead creating a world of his own imaginings (boiled in stew of many ingredients ). Even so he stated he wanted to create a 'mythology' for England - folktales and mythologies are different; the former informal and the latter structured. This can mean that the folktale, almost always orally transmitted, is easily lost, while the mythology lends itself more readily to printing and publication.

Anyway, getting back to the point, it is clear that Tolkien created something new rather than attempt to 'preserve' old English folktales when he created his works and he does make reference to his antipathy of simply collecting old folktales in 'On Fairy Stories'. Here he has his characters display great respect for old folktales and find truth in them as repositories of old wisdom, which is interesting as it seems to conflict somewhat with his own view.

But here I think he is showing how the old tales should not merely be treated as simple stories, but that there may be truths in them, hidden histories maybe?