426 – Tiny Dancer

The Prancing Pony Podcast

The hosts continue their deep dive into Christopher Tolkien's introduction to *Beren and LÃºthien*, examining the botanical origins of the tale and the historical

Key takeaways

Christopher Tolkien deciphered a heavily erased pencil manuscript written over itself (a palimpsest) to reconstruct the earliest surviving version of the Tale of TinÃºviel.
Tolkien wrote the original tale in 1917 while stationed at the Humber Garrison, drawing inspiration from a glade filled with hemlock or cow parsley near Rugeley.
The hosts analyze how Tolkien coped with WWI separation and trauma by stepping into Faerie, using his mythology to process fear and loneliness rather than documenting trench warfare directly.
Beren's identity underwent major revisions across drafts, shifting from human to elf (Noldo/gnome) and back to human, which fundamentally altered the story's central mortal-immortal tension.
Tolkien initially used
for the Noldor based on the Greek *gnÅmÄ* (intelligence/knowledge) but abandoned it due to modern associations with garden figurines.

Main topics

Evolution of Beren and LÃºthien legend
Botanical inspiration (hemlock/cow parsley)
WWI trauma and Faerie as psychological escape

Notable quotes

"the germ of my attempt to write legends of my own to fit my private languages was the tragic tale of the hapless Kulervo in the Finnish Kalevala."

Conclusion

Listeners gain a richer understanding of how Tolkien's wartime experiences and

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:00) Do you ever wish you could step away from the noise of the world for a little while? Well, the podcast Stories from the Village of Nothing Much does exactly that. Each episode invites you into the village, a soothing place where life moves slowly and gently. From the inn on the lake to the downtown bookshop, from the farmer's market to a cabin in the woods, you'll hear warm, family-friendly stories designed to help you slow down. Breathe easier and feel at home. It's sort of like easy listening, but for fiction. It's a bit like a grown-up version of Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood. Gentle, thoughtful, and full of everyday magic. It's from the creator of the internationally beloved podcast Nothing Much Happens, and the series expands the village into a rich, ongoing world. It isn't about falling asleep. It's about comfort, calm, and the joy of a good story. If you're new, try episode 84. It's called All Animal Edition, and it is a delightful introduction to the village's quiet pace and fun whimsy. You can listen to stories from the village of Nothing Much wherever you get your podcasts. Speaker 1 (1:25) Good evening, Little Masters, and welcome to episode 426, where, while we might have been a little optimistic a couple of weeks ago, like Karkaroth, we might have bitten off more than we could chew. Speaker 2 (1:37) No, no, no, Alan. No, no, no. That was terrible. That was terrible. Oh my goodness. That Speaker 1 (1:43) was terrible. What else would you expect? Speaker 2 (1:46) Nothing. Anyway, grab a drink and pull up a bench in the common room, folks. It's time to talk Tolkien. I'm Sarah, the shield maiden of Rohan, and I'm here with the man of the West whose story only exists in the ghostly form of a manuscript in pencil. Alan Speaker 1 (2:02) Sisto. One that I all but entirely erased because really nobody can read my handwriting anyway. Folks, join us as we discover that shortcuts make for long delays as we continue diving into the story that Christopher Tolkien explains was such a deeply rooted presence in his father's life. That is, of course, the story of Beren and Luthien. Speaker 2 (2:20) Yes, indeed. Now, these days, folks are coming to Middle Earth in so many different ways, from the Peter Jackson films to the Amazon TV show, from YouTube lore videos and from video game adaptations like Lotro. And of course, there's always the books. However you came here, we want to welcome each of you to our common room. Speaker 1 (2:39) We do indeed. Now, the Prancing Pony podcast is in our 11th season of reading and talking our way through Middle Earth with, we hope, plenty of insight and deep lore dives, along with the usual digressions and speculations. And if we keep true to form, plenty of bad jokes and a few high-quality puns from time to time, maybe. But our purpose here is to help you explore. High Speaker 2 (3:00) quality? I hear Speaker 1 (3:02) your skepticism from here, Sarah. I really do. Speaker 2 (3:05) You Speaker 1 (3:05) should. Speaker 2 (3:05) You should. Speaker 1 (3:06) It's Speaker 2 (3:06) right out there. Speaker 1 (3:08) Well, folks, our purpose, though, despite the bad jokes, is to help you explore and enjoy the works themselves, to discuss the story along with our favorite themes, Tolkien's inspirations, and plenty more. Speaker 2 (3:19) Yep. And while we will always take the work seriously, we almost never take ourselves seriously. We're just a couple of friends chatting at the pub, and we're genuinely glad you've joined us. Speaker 1 (3:30) Well, we hope and are confident that you'll be glad you joined as well. But before we get to tonight's chapter discussion, let's go ahead and take a few minutes to get into a fan favorite, Philology Fair. Speaker 1 (3:45) Now, today we're going to read from a letter that Christopher references in the introduction, where we'll learn that the tale of Luthien to Nuviel and Beren that Tolkien wrote in late 1917 was, quote, founded on a small wood with a great undergrowth of hemlock. No doubt many other related plants were also there near Rues in Holderness, where I was for a while on the Humber Garrison. So we're going to take a look at hemlock today, even if that means this is probably like 80 % botany, 20 % philology. That's okay. It's still a word and we're nerding out on it. So I think it counts. It Speaker 2 (4:18) absolutely does. Now, since this is botany adjacent, at the very least, we should start with Walter and Graham Judd's excellent book, Flora of Middle Earth. And they write, quote, it is remarkable that nearly all references in Tolkien's writings to hemlock are linked to a single dramatic event. the first meeting of Luthien Denuviel, the elven daughter of Thingol of Doriath and Melian of the Maiar, and Beren, the son of Barahir of the House of Beor. Of course, that story is told many times throughout the legendarium, from the tale of Denuviel, which we'll start looking at next week, to The Lay of Laithian, an epic poem found in the lays of Beleriand and written between 1925 and 1931. Not to mention the version of the tale that Aragorn retells on Weathertop. Speaker 1 (5:03) And Speaker 2 (5:04) there's also the published version in the Silmarillion. And in every one of these, the hemlock is featured. Speaker 1 (5:11) That's right. And it's really strongly tied to this particular story. In letter number 165, which Tolkien wrote to Houghton Mifflin, that was his U.S. publisher, he wrote the letter in 1955. Tolkien's explaining a lot of things about himself. This is frankly a way of getting some general but accurate information about himself to journalists and others. And in that letter, he explains that the kernel of the mythology, the matter of Luthien, Tenuviel, and Beren, arose from a small woodland glade filled with hemlocks. or other white umbelophers near Ruse on the Holderness Peninsula, to which I occasionally went when free from regimental duties while in the Humber Garrison in 1918. Now, that letter is different from the 1964 letter that Christopher references that we'll read from later in this episode. Speaker 2 (5:54) And in neither of those letters does he reveal the deeply personal reason why this glade filled with hemlocks was so important to him and why it was connected to Baron of Luthien. But that's something we talked about last week in the 1972 letter to Christopher, where Tolkien concluded that, quote, the story has gone crooked and I am left and I cannot plead before the inexorable Mandos. But let's get to the plant itself. First, we're not 100 % sure he actually meant hemlock. Now, yes, Judd and Judd say that they've taken Tolkien literally here, but that, quote, this species has an unpleasant odour. And it has been suggested that the actual species at Ruse in Yorkshire was either hogweed, Heracleum spondylium, or more likely cow parsley, Anthriscus sylvestris. Speaker 1 (6:44) Nice Latin, by the way. I'm impressed. Thank you. I'll be here all week. So in his book, Tolkien and the Great War, John Garth argues that the plant in Ruse was cow parsley. So I'm going to read from page 238. When duty permitted, they, and he's talking about Tolkien and Edith, would stroll in a nearby wood, which Rue's tradition identifies as dense garth at the south end of the village, beside the parish church of all saints. Here at the feet of the ash, oak, sycamore, and beech trees, tall flowers with white umbels burst into bloom from mid-April until the end of May. The flowers, anthriscus sylvestris, are what books might call cow parsley, wild chervil, or Queen Anne's lace, among many other names. But Tolkien referred to all such white-flowered umbellifers, and not just the highly poisonous Conium maculatum, by the usual rural name of Hemlock. Speaker 2 (7:34) Agarth quotes Christopher Tolkien as saying that his father, quote, regarded the restriction of a vernacular name to this or that species within a large group of plants not easily distinguishable to the eye as the pedantry of popularizing botanists who ought to content themselves with the linean names. So now that you've heard of some of the other names, along with Garth's description, you can picture them. Tall stems growing quickly in the summer, especially in the shade, along woodland edges and hedgerows with big bunches of small white flowers. Speaker 1 (8:06) Hopefully not the actual poisonous hemlock, as that could have been disastrous. Oh, indeed. I know. Ends very early in 1917. Still, the name hemlock, which Tolkien has no problem applying to all the plants that look like it, does have some etymology that we should at least try to cover in a philology fair. It's derived from Old English, I'm going to probably mispronounce this, himbiliki, himlik, and hemlik. Now, the origin of these is unknown, but that first syllable, him or hem, likely means poison or poisonous. Speaker 2 (8:39) But Tolkien said, quote, the hemlock umbels tall and fair. So what are umbels? Well, you won't be surprised to find that it comes from the same root as we get the word umbrella or umbra, meaning shadow or shade. It is a reference or description of the plant's architecture. The way flowers are stalks that arise from a common point. It comes from a family of plants called umbellifers, and that family includes carrots, celery and parsley, and there are over 3000 species. Speaker 1 (9:11) Not all of which are named Hemlock, which is good, because that would be really confusing. That is good. Otherwise, that could Speaker 2 (9:15) get confusing and slightly dangerous. I Speaker 1 (9:17) was going to say, if one of them is deadly poison, absolutely. All right. Well, let's go ahead and get into, or continue, I should say, the chapter discussion, which in this case is still on the prefatory material. Last week, we covered... Christopher's preface itself, as well as his notes on the elder days. Today, we're actually going to talk about the introduction to Barron and Luthien itself. And I'm going to go ahead and start with the beginning of that. In a letter of my father's written on the 16th of July, 1964, and just as a side note, folks, that is in the letters volume as number 257. He said, the germ of my attempt to write legends of my own to fit my private languages was the tragic tale of the hapless Kulervo in the Finnish Kalevala. It remains a major matter in the legends of the first age, which I hope to publish as the Silmarillion. Though as the children of Hurin, it is entirely changed except in the tragic ending. The second point was the writing out of my head of The Fall of Gondolin, the story of Idril and Eirendil during sick leave from the army in 1917, and by the original version of The Tale of Luthien, Tenuvial, and Beren later in the same year. That was founded on a small wood with a great undergrowth of hemlock, no doubt many other related plants were also there, near Rues in Holderness where I was for a while. on the Humber Garrison. Of course, that's the letter we read about in the philology fair. So now we're coming back to Christopher's words. My father and mother were married in March 1916 when he was 24 and she was 27. They lived at first in the village of Great Haywood in Staffordshire, but he embarked for France in the Battle of the Somme early in June of that year. Taken ill, he was sent back to England at the beginning of November 1916, and in the spring of 1917, he was posted to Yorkshire. This primary version of the Tale of Tenuvial, as he called it, written in 1917, does not exist. Or more precisely, exists only in the ghostly form of a manuscript in pencil that he all but entirely erased for most of its length. Over this, he wrote the text that is for us the earliest version. The Tale of Tenuvial was one of the constituent stories of my father's major early work of his mythology, the Book of Lost Tales. an exceedingly complex work which I edited in the first two volumes of The History of Middle Earth, 1983 and 1984. But since the present book is expressly devoted to the evolution of the legend of Banner and Luthien, I will here very largely pass by the strange setting and audience of The Lost Tales, for the tale of Tenuviel is in itself almost entirely independent of that setting. Central to the Book of Lost Tales was the story of an English mariner of the Anglo-Saxon period named Eriol, or Elfwina, who, sailing far westwards over the ocean, came at last to Tol Eressëa, the Lonely Isle, where dwelt elves who had departed from the Great Lands, afterwards Middle-Earth, a term not used in the Lost Tales. During his sojourn in Tol Eressëa, he learned from them the true and ancient history of the creation, of the gods, of the elves, and of England. This history is The Lost Tales of Elphines. The work is extant in a number of battered little exercise books in ink and pencil, often formidably difficult to write, though after many hours of peering at the manuscript with a lens, I was able many years ago to elucidate all the texts with only occasional unsolved words. I'm just going to stop the reading right there and be like, man, thank you, because I could not have done that. Speaker 2 (12:55) I don't know how he did it. I really don't. Especially when you think about the fact that he was writing over the top of a piece of paper that already had writing on it in pencil. Exactly. Speaker 1 (13:07) He erases the pencil text and then he writes ink over it. And he's still able to decipher the underlying. And we all know his writing is hard to decipher in the first place. So now deciphering it from just empty erased text on it. Wow. That's just. Speaker 2 (13:23) I know. Thank goodness he did it, as you said. But even so, I mean, all the kudos to Christopher, because I've tried reading Tolkien's scribbly, notey handwriting. Speaker 1 (13:33) It's awful. It's really, really awful. Yeah. Speaker 2 (13:37) Yeah. Only occasional unsolved words. Wow. That's such an achievement. Speaker 1 (13:42) I'm frankly happy if I can decipher about 20 % of the words if it's one of his full scribbles. It's really, really hard. So coming back to Christopher here, he writes, The tale of Tenuvial is one of the stories that was told to Eriol by the elves in the Lonely Isle, in this case by a maiden named Veanne. There were many children present at these storytellings. Sharply observant of detail, a striking feature, it is told in an extremely individual style, with some archaisms of word and construction, altogether unlike my father's later styles. Intense, poetic. at times deeply elvish mysterious. There is also an undercurrent of sardonic humor in the expression here and there. In the terrible confrontation with the demonic wolf Carcharus as she fled with Benrin from Melchor's hall, Tenuvial inquires, wherefore this surliness, Carcharus? Speaker 2 (14:35) I love Tenuvial's sass at this point. That is Speaker 1 (14:38) seriously sassy. I like that. Why are you so grumpy? Yes, Speaker 2 (14:41) it Speaker 1 (14:41) is. You know, I mean, it's so good. All right, lots to talk about here. Let's get into this. Let's start, I suppose, with the beginning that, you know, Tolkien's talking about all three of his great tales, right, that he's explaining in this letter. But specifically, this tale and the connection to Hemlock that we talked about earlier. And that dates back then to the marriage as well, which, you know, they were only married for, it looks like, what, maybe three months before he was shipped off to war? And then he came back a few months after that. Right. Speaker 2 (15:16) Yes. It's worth having a look at Tolkien's poem, Tol Eressëa or The Lonely Isle, which was written as he was sailing over to France and feeling desperately unhappy about being parted from Edith. It's a lovely companion piece Speaker 1 (15:31) to Speaker 2 (15:32) this moment here. It's just a thing perhaps if you've got time to go and dig that poem out, it's absolutely lovely. Speaker 1 (15:39) Yeah, so that poem, of course, is actually featured in Skull and Hammond's poetry collection. It's in volume one. And looking at the fourth version, which is the final of the typescripts, we read, and I'll just do a few lines from this because, of course, we don't read the entirety of any work. Oh, glimmering island set sea-girdled and alone, a gleam of white rock through a sunny haze. Oh, all ye hoary caverns ringing with the moan of long green waters in the southern bays. Ye murmurous, never ceasing voices of the tide. Ye plumid foams were in the shoreland spirits ride. And it just, it goes on and it's fantastic. I want to read the last bit. So I want to skip the middle portion. When in the silence fairies with a wistful heart dance to soft airs, their harps and vials weave over great wastes and to my gloom apart. There echoes through the golden elms at eve from a high inland tower appealing bell ringing forever in thy citadel. Oh, lonely sparkling isle. Farewell. Man, that is. Speaker 2 (16:42) Isn't that beautiful? Oh my goodness. And to realize Speaker 1 (16:45) that's written as he is on his way to France for the war. Speaker 2 (16:50) Yes. And the longing to be home is it just. permeates every single line here. But Speaker 1 (16:59) of course, you Speaker 2 (17:01) think of it immediately when you get this wonderful bit in this introduction where it's made clear what the context is for the telling of the tale of Tenuviel. It's all about this landing on Tol Eressëa, the Lonely Isle, where dwelt elves who had departed from the Great Lands, blah, blah, blah, that you read so beautifully earlier. connecting these together because they're all written at a similar time, I think is really good because you get this sense of Tolkien blending already his primary worlds and his secondary worlds. And I've talked about this in other places, but I am absolutely convinced that one of the ways in which Tolkien was coping with both The separation from Edith, but also being in the midst of war, was by stepping sideways into Faerie. Speaker 1 (17:54) No, absolutely. I mean, it's a fascinating thing to watch as you kind of review all the works around that time. Knowing when it was written really does help you kind of comprehend what's going on in Tolkien's mind as he's writing this. He's not just... He didn't set out as a child and say, I'm going to write an incredible collection of lore and then just sit down and figure out the lore in a vacuum. He was living in a real world. He was living in a world that involved, like you said, separation from his wife, leaving from home, and not just leaving from home, but going to a war where he knew quite well he could die. And in fact, so many of his friends did. I mean, that's, in fairness, I don't even know that he had an inkling as to how bad it would be in terms of... The casualty rates, World War I was so much more deadly than previous wars. And I'm sure he knew there was still a risk, but my goodness, once he got there, it was very obvious. Speaker 2 (18:49) Right. Speaker 1 (18:49) The Battle of the Somme was going to be just a meat grinder. Yes. Yes, Speaker 2 (18:54) it was appalling for a highly sensitive young man who just wanted to be in the quiet writing poetry. Of course, he wasn't the only one like that. There were other poets on the front, as we know, but so many of them dealt with their experiences by writing about being there. Speaker 1 (19:13) Yeah. Speaker 2 (19:14) About being in the trenches, in the midst of war. I'm thinking Sassoon, I'm thinking Owen, all of those. The war poets, yeah. Right. These war poets coped by talking about what it was like being right there. Speaker 1 (19:28) Tolkien Speaker 2 (19:29) also was a war poet. He absolutely was a war poet. But he was doing it differently. He was coping with his war experiences by slipping into the land of Faerie and dealing with his emotions, his fears, his loneliness through Faerie. Speaker 1 (19:47) Yeah. And I think that comes back to when we read on Faerie stories and we talk about that key central element of escape as one of the three hallmarks of Faerie. You know, the traditional war poets, reading them as grim, reading them as hard, reading them as... emotionally draining. It is powerful. It is poignant, but it's, you never get a sense of hope. You instead get a sense of fatalism, of, you know, despair, of inevitability. And Tolkien fights that with his work with Faerie. He Speaker 2 (20:21) does, yes. So I think it's nice to do those little sidesteps into the context just to see where it is this is coming from and why, in fact, he writes in the way he writes in this time. Because we're about to start talking about, you know, next time we'll be talking about the tale of Tenuviel. Speaker 1 (20:40) And Speaker 2 (20:40) one of the things I'm sure we're going to get into is why the tale of Tenuviel is written so differently to the later tale of Beren and Luthien. Speaker 1 (20:50) We'll actually get to that some later in this episode because Christopher points out, wow, this is quite a change. And we're going to actually get to that, I think, in our very next section of the book. Oh, wonderful. Yeah, so it should be good. Just as a reminder, when you look at that poem that we read in the poetry volume, you'll discover that that version was published in Leeds University Verse in 1924 from the text of that final manuscript. I thought this was interesting too. G.B. Smith, one of Tolkien's very good friends, was likely referring to this exact poem when he wrote to Tolkien in July of 1916 saying, I have again been reading through your thing about England. Believe me, it is one of the best. I copied it out and sent the copy home. You Speaker 2 (21:33) can't mention G.B. Swift without my heart audibly breaking. Speaker 1 (21:38) Seriously, yeah. Especially when you realize that was weeks before he passed away. Speaker 2 (21:44) Yes, yes, indeed. Indeed. Just heartbreaking. Right. Well, if you don't want Sarah to be an absolute blubbering mess, we should probably move Speaker 1 (21:51) on. We Speaker 2 (21:51) should probably move on. Yes. So Speaker 1 (21:54) let's talk a little bit about the practicality. We actually stopped the reading in the middle of this to point out how difficult it would have been for Christopher to actually look at the text here. But talking about this ghostly form of a manuscript in pencil. Speaker 1 (22:12) It's an incredible thing that this story doesn't exist, that our earliest version is not in fact the earliest version. What do we make of that? Speaker 2 (22:22) Right. I think the word ghost here is so appropriate Speaker 1 (22:27) because Speaker 2 (22:28) the ghost of the original, it's still there. We know that it existed. Speaker 1 (22:34) Once Speaker 2 (22:34) upon a time, it was there. But even Christopher can't resurrect it because it is erased. It is written over. And what we actually have is not the earliest earliest. but it's the earliest possible for us to read. It's still incredible that we do have so many different versions of this tale and wonderful that Christopher was able to actually read them to the extent that he was. I'm still completely flabbergasted by that. Speaker 1 (23:03) But Speaker 2 (23:04) there's so many examples of this early work where Tolkien was writing in pencil. And that was almost certainly because pencil was more practical at the time than pens because they hadn't invented the biro. So all you had, if you were trying to write in pen, was fountain pens and ink. No Speaker 1 (23:26) ballpoint pens, nothing easy. No. Speaker 2 (23:28) Nope, nope. So you didn't have an easy kind of pen to use if you were at the front, for example. So a pencil would be much more practical. When he was shipped back for hospital treatment, Speaker 1 (23:42) it Speaker 2 (23:42) was much more likely that he'd have a pencil to hand than that somebody would hand him a pot of ink and a pen. It just wouldn't be practical. Speaker 1 (23:50) While he's sitting in a bed and convalescing. Yeah. Exactly. Nobody wants to clean that up. Speaker 2 (23:56) Right. But what is one of the massive problems with pencil? The constant movement of human fingers over paper where pencil is written will erase that pencil mark. Time will erase that pencil mark. So even the ones that he didn't use as a palimpsest, a piece of paper on which you write over and over and over and over. the chances are that the pencil is very difficult to read because it fades so badly. Speaker 1 (24:22) It really does. And especially, you know, and you may experience this yourselves, listeners, when you write in pencil, it starts out fine. But as the point dulls, if you don't stop and sharpen it, it gets a little blurry. It gets a little soft. It gets a little hard to read. And the further you go, the worse that gets. So imagine that over and over again. It's not like he's... got a pencil sharpener right there. So, you know, Nope, it would have been a knife. Yeah. Yeah. So it's, it is a miracle indeed that we have any of the pencil stuff. I always keep coming back to that question. What if Tolkien had written in a time where we had Google docs and we could just see every one of his edit histories and revisions and there'd be no problem with legibility. Speaker 2 (25:06) Except for the fact that he would have deleted so much of his early stuff. Yeah. And Speaker 1 (25:10) he never would have