Faery by John T Kruse - 2020; the elves of folklore compared with those of Tolkien

I have been reading some of the work of John T Kruse on the subject of fairies; especially  - especially his Faery: a guide to the lore, magic and world of the Good Folk (2020) - which is, by far, the single most informative and readable work on the subject I have encountered. 

Elf is the usual name for such people among Anglo-Saxons and ancient Scandinavians, and this survived into the Middle Ages and beyond in the Scottish Borders - where they form the subject of numerous ballads. 

The word "Fairy" is a more recent, French-derived import - spreading from the metropolis. 

I also read his annotated collection Fairy Ballads and Rhymes (2020) - which features and discusses the fairy-referencing Ballads (mostly originating from the Marches of Northumberland and Cumberland and the southernmost counties of Scotland). 

Some of my particular favourite examples of these include Thomas the Rhymer, and Tam Lin - to which I would add (although it is not included here) Willy O' Winsbury. 

Another perhaps fairy is the protagonist of Long Lankin (or, in Northumbrian Lang Lonkin) - the site of whose exploits we recently encountered during a walk. In his novel about the return of the elves, Lords and Ladies; Terry Pratchett names the Fairy Queen's (especially cruel) lieutenant Lankin - and this certainly fits some versions of the ballad (although this is not the usual explanation).  

Once you have tuned-into fairy references in literature and song, which are often implied rather than explicit; then you can see they may be present at a pretty high frequency. For example in the Arthurian stories - where Wendy Berg and Gareth Knight have both argued that nearly-all of the women, including Guinevere, are probably fairies. 

What has this to do with the elves of JRR Tolkien? Not very much! 

Tolkien's elves - as depicted in The Silmarillion, The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings - have little relationship to folklore and are mostly his own creation. 

Indeed the high elves of Middle Earth (who are the focus of the stories) were at first called fairies; (in poems then the Lost Tales) then called Gnomes until a pretty advanced stage of publication. Although the Gnome name was chosen for its etymological link to knowledge (as in "gnosis"), rather than from its previous usage in folklore, magic etc. 

(Only after garden gnomes - which are more like mini-caricature-dwarves - became popular between the wars, did Tolkien drop the name.)  

If you want Ballad or folklore elves, you can find them (more or less) in Alan Garner's first two novels, Terry Pratchett, and Susanna Clarke's stories - and many other places, including the more authentic fairy stories, such as those of the Grimm brothers.  

Within Tolkien's oeuvre the closest are the Mirkwood elves, in The Hobbit

The feasting people were Wood-elves, of course. These are not wicked folk. If they have a fault it is distrust of strangers. Though their magic was strong, even in those days they were wary. They differed from the High Elves of the West, and were more dangerous and less wise. For most of them (together with their scattered relations in the hills and mountains) were descended from the ancient tribes that never went to Faerie in the West... In the Wide World the Wood-elves lingered in the twilight of our Sun and Moon, but loved best the stars; and they wandered in the great forests that grew tall in lands that are now lost. They dwelt most often by the edges of the woods, from which they could escape at times to hunt, or to ride and run over the open lands by moonlight or starlight; and after the coming of Men they took ever more and more to the gloaming and the dusk. Still elves they were and remain, and that is Good People. 

Tolkien's emphasis on elves as Good People is un-ironic, and is a symptom of the fact that his understanding of faery folk originally derived from literary sources; rather than folklore - where the appellation "good" is apparently fear-motivated and propitiatory.  

However, in the writings of Morgoth's Ring (volume ten of The History of Middle Earth) Tolkien made provision for the transformation of his genuinely good elves, into the much more ambiguous elves of folklore; when he described the fate and nature of the "lingerers" - those elves who refused to migrate to the undying lands when their time was ended: 

It would seem that in these after-days more and more of the Elves, be they of the Eldalie in origin or be they of other kinds, who linger in Middle-earth now refuse the summons of Mandos, and wander houseless in the world, unwilling to leave it and unable to inhabit it, haunting trees or springs or hidden places that once they knew. 

Not all of these are kindly or unstained by the Shadow. Indeed the refusal of the summons is in itself a sign of taint....

The Unbodied, wandering in the world, are those who at the least have refused the door of life and remain in regret and self-pity. Some are filled with bitterness, grievance, and envy. Some were enslaved by the Dark Lord and do his work still, though he himself is gone. They will not speak truth or wisdom. 

To call on them is folly. To attempt to master them and to make them servants of one own's will is wickedness. Such practices are of Morgoth; and the necromancers are of the host of Sauron his servant.

This is all much closer to the folklore and ballad descriptions detailed by John T Kruse in his Faery compilations. 

The passage indicates that Tolkien saw value in explaining how the nature and reputation of elves had undergone such a transformation from the era of his Legendarium down into recorded history. 

We can also note how thoroughly Tolkien had left-behind his early "Victorian" attitude to fairies* as tiny, pretty creatures who were harmless when not benign - but never scary or wicked. 

  

*Most notoriously evident in his very early, and quite popular anthology, poem Goblin Feet; which Tolkien later detested - but which, at the time of its composition in 1915, was typical of his fairy writings.  

Aunt Grace Day - A new Tolkien tradition established: March 3rd

Last week, my wife and I decided to establish a new tradition of celebrating the anniversary day of the death of JRR Tolkien's Aunt Grace, by laying some flowers on her grave - this being the most tangible link between JRRT and Newcastle upon Tyne.  

The most chilling lines in The Lord of the Rings...

From The Two Towers "Shelob's Lair" (slightly edited):

‘We’ll see, we’ll see,’ Gollum said often to himself, when the evil mood was on him, as he walked the dangerous road from Emyn Muil to Morgul Vale, ‘we’ll see. 

'It may well be, O yes, it may well be that when Shelob throws away the bones and the empty garments, we shall find it, we shall get it, the Precious, a reward for poor Smeagol who brings nice food. 

'And we’ll save the Precious, as we promised. O yes. 

'And when we’ve got it safe, then She’ll know it, O yes, then we’ll pay Her back, my precious. 

'Then we’ll pay everyone back!’

Then we'll pay her back... Then we'll pay everyone back!

These sentences from Gollum/ Smeagol chill me, deeply, whenever I read or hear them. 

Here we have encapsulated the power of that most evil of motivations: spiteful resentment. 

The self-righteous, insatiable, lust for revenge.

The will to hurt, to destroy every-one, every-thing... all of divine creation. 

Was this JRR Tolkien's holiday home in Newcastle upon Tyne?

9 St George's Terrace, Jesmond, Newcastle upon Tyne - photographed in 2024; 

this is where JRR Tolkien's Aunt Grace and Uncle William lived.  

John Benjamin and Mary Jane Tolkien had eight children. The oldest was Arthur Reuel, who was JRR Tolkien's father. The third born was a daughter Grace Bindley Tolkien (1861–1947). 

Grace married William Charles Mountain, and they lived in the Newcastle upon Tyne area at 9 St George’s Terrace, Jesmond; South Street, Hexham; Sheriff Hill, Gateshead; and in Sydenham Terrace, Newcastle.

According to Alan Myers; Tolkien visited Newcastle upon Tyne in each of the years from 1910–1912. 

If so, then he would have stayed either at the above house in St George's terrace, or else in Sydenham Terrace, a parade of spacious properties, now demolished, which stood south of Exhibition Park. 

Part of Sydenham Terrace, Newcastle upon Tyne photographed in 1909.

These houses were evidently considerably larger (and more expensive) than that which the Mountain family had earlier inhabited in St George's Terrace - as would be expected from the increasing status and prosperity of Uncle William Mountain. 

Which of these places is most likely for the young Tolkien to have visited? It seems that the relevant part of St George's Terrace was previously called Moor View and had been built 1882-5; and Syndenham Terrace(above) was photographed in 1909 - so both houses had been built before the time of Tolkien's presumed visits in 1910-12. 

Aunt Grace apparently died in 1947 while living in Sydenham Terrace. So the question is whether she had been living there for some forty years or if in 1910 she was resident in St George's Terrace. 

Perhaps she was in Jesmond in 1910. There was still still plenty of time to move to living the other two listed houses - in Hexham and Gateshead - before finally returning to Sydenham Terrace in Newcastle. 

"Anxiety of Influence" can be powerful and harmful - Alan Garner and JRR Tolkien

It is some decades since I read Harold Bloom's 1973 book "The Anxiety of Influence". The idea I retain from it is that a "strong" (and would-be "major") writer will sometimes (I recall that Bloom says always, which isn't true - but let's say "sometimes") have his work shaped by the "anxiety" of his major precursor. 

So that the Roman poet Virgil's work was shaped by his own sense of debt to the Greek poet Homer. 

Bloom's idea is that the earlier major poet casts a shadow and exerts such an influence that the later poet must either engage-with and transcend the earlier poet - or else be resigned to being a derivative and second-rate version of the earlier poet. 

If this goes well; the later writer will be the equal of, but qualitatively different from, the earlier poet. 

But if this fails - if the later author fails positively to transcend the earlier writer, yet is compelled by "anxiety" to make his own work as different as possible; then the result will merely be that the later author negatively reacts-against the earlier. 

I see this latter negative, reacting-against, version of the anxiety of influence; in the relationship between Alan Garner and JRR Tolkien.

Garner's earliest works were The Weirdstone of Brisingamen and The Moon of Gomrath. I like these both very much, especially Gomrath; and have re-read them multiple times. 

But they were clearly deeply indebted to Tolkien, and in his shadow. 

These books were indeed significantly different in form; being set in modern times, with a parallel occult magical world breaking-into the protagonist's lives. The magical world is also of a much more folkloric nature than Tolkien's autonomous world-building.

Nonetheless, the Tolkien influence is undeniable. 

 

Garner continued on this line with his next two books, Elidor and The Owl Service. 

Elidor does not work for me; but The Owl Service (1967) is both powerful and original in its use of a Mabinogion atmosphere and theme - probably Garner's "best book", qua book. 

These two later books introduce themes very different from Tolkien - an increasingly psychologically-tormented male protagonist, and socialist-type elements of class-conflict and -resentment. These are both autobiographical themes for Alan Garner*; as evident in his book of essays The Voice that Thunders.

Elidor and Owl Service also eschew the "eucatastrophic" (Tolkien's word) happy endings of classic fairytale; although OS has a satisfying sense of closure.

But Elidor, in particular, ends very abruptly with an atmosphere of pessimism and disgust, almost despair. 

 

Garner has often spoken either slightingly, or in a definitely hostile way, about JRR Tolkien and his work; and about both of the first two - and most obviously Tolkien-esque - books. 

Tolkien and garner indeed shared several strikingly similar characteristics, personal experiences, and professional interests.  

Tolkien's background was lower middle class. His childhood and young adult sufferings were (I think) much greater than Garner's, since Tolkien's childhood was distinctly impoverished. He was orphaned age twelve, and served in the First World War on the frontlines. Many close friends were killed. 

By contrast, Garner had a loving family background among the upper working classes of rural Cheshire. He did a short period of compulsory Army National Service during peacetime. His main unusual sufferings were three prolonged and severe, life-threatening, childhood illnesses. 

Both Tolkien and Garner were scholarship boys at famous and academically-rigorous old Grammar Schools in their nearby cities. Both joined the Army after school; and both went on to Oxford University to study Classics (Literae Humaniores) - with ambitions to become an academic; and both had an academically-undistinguished first couple of years. 

However, here their biographies diverge. 

Tolkien changed to an English degree, discovered his true academic interest, became a philologist, a full-time academic, and eventually a Professor. His major writings were done part-time, in his meagre spare time; for his own personal motivations, and without regard to making-a-living. 

Garner dropped-out of Oxford without taking a degree in 1956, shortly after Tolkien had published The Lord of the Rings. From then onwards, Garner was a full-time professional author; and either needed to accept state or personal subsidies, or make a living from his writing to support his family.

Garner was an excellent writer; but from age 22 his whole life became focused on writing, publishing, selling books etc. 

And in terms of making a living from writing, it became evident that the more Tolkienian were Garner's books, the more popular they were and the money they made. 

Weirdstone is still, by some distance, Garner's best-selling book on Amazon. 

It is my inference, but it seems evident that Garner's anxiety of influence therefore got worse with time. The less Tolkien-esque he was, the less successful were his books...

He desired to be a major writer, and had great talent in that direction - but, as with many other full-time professional writers - I get a sense of running-out of things to say; and a change to focusing on form rather than content.

A sense of focusing on how the book is written, more than what the book is "about".  

This is, I believe, one of the reasons for literary "modernism" and the stylistically and structurally "experimental writings" of the 1920s and 30s; such as Joyce's Ulysses, Eliot's The Waste Land, and the like. 

So, rather belatedly, Garner made a decisive break with the earlier Tolkien-esque stories; and wrote Red Shift (1973) - which is extremely difficult to follow, and very experimental and stylized in its structure and prose. 

Yet which is underneath (as with Ulysses) somewhat banal and stereotyped, melodramatic, in its action and emotions. 

RS also ends extremely negatively; in disgust, extreme pessimism, and despair; with the tormented male protagonist descending into psychosis - and a coded intention of suicide. 

Since Red Shift; Garner has continued to write in a broadly similar deliberately obscure and experimental style - and typically aimed at adults, rather than children or adolescents. 

His books are critically acclaimed in the high-brow media, and have "garnered" and sustained a dedicated - almost fanatical - cult following. 

Yet they are not popular because they are not enjoyable, and don't sell well. 

This outcome seems, from what he says, to have hardened and intensified Garner's negative reaction-against Tolkien and his earlier Tolkien-indebted fictions. 

He has doubled-down on his modernistic experimentations; obscurity, the puzzle-like decoding required of the reader.  

But, in terms of quality, there has been a price to pay - and this includes a pervasive atmosphere of horror, misery, resentment, bitterness - and hopelessness.  

The recurrence of suicide as a theme, or resolution, is especially telling - and dismaying. 

Such have been, by my judgment, the extremities of the phenomenon of anxiety of influence for a very talented writer. 

I am sympathetic about Garner's dilemma, and the problem is genuine. 

But I believe he made wrong choices, fell into endorsing wrong attitudes; and has chronically refused to repent his errors. 

*This relatively late arrival of autobiographical themes, strikes me as retrogressive. Autobiographical concerns ought, I feel, to be worked-through at an early stage (a classic "first novel" concern!) - and something a writer transcends as his work proceeds. But in the case of professional authors, with their writing-focused lives; it seems they feel compelled to dredge their own lives - often of their pre-writing lives - over and again; for lack of any other personally-motivating theme. Either that or they start writing-about-writing!

 

Gimli the Dwarf is the only non-Hobbit point-of-view character in The Lord of the Rings

I was only in the past few years that I noticed that the Dwarf Gimli is (I think) the only point-of view character in The Lord of the Rings who is not a Hobbit. 

For all the rest of the book, when there is direct report of the consciousness of a character, it is always Frodo, Sam, Merry or Pippin. 

But for just a couple of pages it is Gimli. No other character is given such a distinction.  

The Gimili perspective passage is near the end of the chapter "The Passing of the Grey Company", and describes the Dwarf's inner reactions, especially his almost paralysing fear, as he walks the Paths of the Dead inside the Dwimorberg - the Haunted Mountain.   

I think the Gimli POV passage is easily missed, because it is short and seamlessly bracketed by the normal third person narrative. It begins just after :

And there stood Gimli the Dwarf left all alone. His knees shook, and he was wroth with himself.  

The report of Gimli's inner narrative starts with: "it seemed to him that he dragged his feet like lead over the threshold; and at once a blindness came upon him...". 

And we continue revisiting Gimli's inner reactions until: "the Dwarf saw before his face the glitter in the Elf's bright eyes."

After which we hear no more of Gimli's stream of consciousness. 

I find this a fascinating exception to Tolkien's self-imposed rule throughout LotR to "see" the events of Middle Earth and the story through the mediating consciousness of a Hobbit. 

Indeed, it seems that Gimli is here taking the role of a "surrogate Hobbit" - presumably because there are no Hobbits present, and perhaps Gimli's mind is in some ways the most suitable for the job. 

But why is Gimli most suitable? 

Well the alternatives among characters of the Fellowship present at this time; are Legolas and Aragorn. 

Legolas is perhaps regarded as too strange, too much a part of the "high" and enchanted phenomena of Middle Earth to be a suitable mediator. As an Elf, Legolas is not scared by the atmosphere of the Paths of the Dead, nor by the presence of the ghosts of Men. 

And much the same applies to Aragorn, at this point and in this context. Aragorn a Numenorean, partly elish; and has chosen to take the Paths and is leader of the Company; and he does so by ancient right and prophecy. 

Therefore the reader cannot readily identify with Aragorn's point of view - at least not at this particular point of the narrative.

Gimli is chosen, I believe; because, although of a different race than Men, we can in this situation easily identify with him. 

He is terrified by the experience, as we also would be if we found ourselves in the same situation. 

And probably also because Gimli is established by this point as a likeable and realistically-flawed character - a "rough diamond" whose emotions run close to the surface, and are less tightly disciplined than those of Aragorn and Legolas.  

Anyway; it seems that the Gimli-focused passage works well enough to do the job of putting the reader emotionally into the situation in the absence of any Hobbit; and without drawing attention to itself as breaking Tolkien's own rules about a Hobbit-centric story.