“Thee” and “thou” in “The Lord of the Rings”

[Galadriel55]

Originally Posted by Guinevere

When reading "The Children of Húrin" I noticed that Christopher Tolkien had changed all the "thou"s to "you"! (in the conversations with Glaurung and Gurthang) Why do you think he did that?

What?! No!!! I never noticed that before. And now it all sounds wrong in COH.

I can't think of any reason CJRT would want to change it. But another question is why he changed it in COH but not in The Sil. He edited both of them, so why not change both, or leave both?

[Aiwendil]

I'm pretty sure the change was neither arbitrary nor an attempt at modernisation. I don't have the books at hand at the moment, but I'm almost certain that JRRT himself changed his mind once or twice about "thou" vs. "you" in various places in the Narn.

(I believe (though I could be mis-remembering) that he originally wrote "thou" in some places but later began, but didn't finish, systematically changing every "thou" to "you". Presumably, in UT Christopher Tolkien left this as it was whereas in CoH he completed the systematic revision. I could be wrong about the details, though; I'll try to find the source when I get home.)

[Aiwendil]

Hmm, maybe this is what I was thinking of, referring to the dialogue between Hurin and Morgoth:

As the speeches were typed they were set entirely in the second person singular, 'thou wert', 'knowest thou', etc.; but my father went through it changing every 'thou' and 'thee' to 'you', and the equivalent verb-forms – and changing 'Knowest thou' to 'Do you know' rather than 'Know you' (also 'puissant' to 'mighty'). In this form, of course, the text was printed in Unfinished Tales.

The dialogues with Glaurung and Gurthang originate from a different text (NE, as Christopher calls it), so perhaps they were changed in the interest of stylistic consistency.

I could have sworn I read something else about "thou" and "you" in the Narn, but if so I can't find it.

[Faramir Jones]

People might be interested to know that Tolkien intended to use the old intimate 'thee' in an exchange between Samwise and Rose Gamgee.

In a planned but unpublished last chapter to LotR, set 17 years after Sam and his companions returned to the Shire, and when he receives a letter from King Elessar about the latter's forthcoming visit, we see Sam and Rose when their children have gone to bed:

Master Samwise stood at the door and looked away eastward. He drew Mistress Rose to him, and set his arm about her.

'March the twenty-fifth!' he said. 'This day seventeen years ago, Rose wife, I didn't think I should ever see thee again. But I kept on hoping.'

'I never hoped at all, Sam,' she said, 'not until that very day; and then suddenly I did. About noon it was, and I felt so glad that I began singing. And mother said: "Quiet lass! There's ruffians about." And I said: "Let them come! Their time will soon be over. Sam's coming back." And you came.'

'I did,' said Sam. 'To the most belovedest place in all the world. To my Rose and my garden.' (The History of Middle-earth: IX. Sauron Defeated, (London: HarperCollins Publishers, 1993), pp. 127-8)

The use of 'thee' in this context adds, in my opinion, a little extra to this tender scene.

[Lalwendë]

This is an interesting thread. I've been looking at the English Dialect Dictionaries of Joseph Wright on and off the past few months and of course he was an immense influence on Tolkien. These collections of dialect usage are a wonderful resource if you can find a decent copy of them online (there are six volumes), or have the money to buy a rare paper copy.

Of course, one of the topics he deals with is the thorny issue of theeing and thouing. It's still a bit of a hot topic to this day in the North where we haven't all yet descended to more common language usage! Even the nickname of Sheffielders refers to this as they are called "deedars" which possibly refers to their over use of the words "thee" and "thar" ("thou" in the Sheffield accent) which is viewed, even in towns as close as Barnsley and Sheffield as deeply uncouth. It could also be a more aggressive insult which stems back to the past - "deedar" being "thee, thar" and hence a verbal insult intended to mark the inhabitants out as socially inferior. Or maybe just mocking the inability to sound "th". Who knows? The important thing here is the nickname, which is widespread (incidentally, it cuts both ways, Barnsley folk are nicknamed "Dingles" ).

One saying I heard when I was a child would be "Don't thee thee me!" which meant you needed to moderate your tone and treat your elders with more respect! And it's still something you hear today in various ways and combinations. Also the source of a joke you hear all the time up north which runs: "Where's the bin?" "Ahs bin nowhere. Why? Where's thar bin?"

Far from being cutely 'familiar', it's seen as a bit insulting to "thee" someone and has been for some time. It might be used between a couple, between good friends or by a parent to a child (my grandparents would "thee" me all the time), but for say Denethor to use to Gandalf would be seen as highly rude. And for Eowyn to use it to Aragorn it would make him very uncomfortable.

Here's an entry from Vol 6:

THEE, v, Wor. To treat or address haughtily; to speak in a patronising manner.

A superior speaking to his inferior, a master to his servant, &c, would be said to 'thee' him, if he spoke sharply, angrily, or haughtily.

And note that this instance was gathered in Worcestershire. Not the North! Tolkien will have known full well that it was a dodgy way to address someone, fraught with potential danger

The reason why people now associate thee and thou with high falutin' language use is that it's preserved in the Bible, particularly the King James edition, and religious writings usually addressed God or divinity in familiar terms rather than formal.

It's possible that the loss of thee and thou came about due to the influence of French. When they invaded and imposed their system and language on the English, they also brought this formal/informal langauge system, whereas before, there was no 'you' and 'thou' wasn't considered insulting. So there's also a class element at play here, with a word usage gradually becoming considered insulting over time (as also happened with what are now our swear words, once everyday language) because the ruling class didn't use it, except presumably to insult the servants.

I'll stop now before I get onto how modern English dialect usage has devised replacements for loss of the plural second person and what happens when various accents swallow chunks of their "thous"...

[Faramir Jones]

I liked very much your references to Wright's English Dialect Dictionaries, Lalwendë!

I saw, when at Oxonmoot 2011, the phonograph Wright used to gather material for that work, in Oxford's Museum of the History of Science:

http://www.mhs.ox.ac.uk/a-very-speci...ry-phonograph/