Modern Conveyances in the Works of Tolkien

Consider the following three quotations from various literary works by J.R.R. Tolkien:

Out flew a red-golden dragon – not life-size, but terribly life-like: fire came from his jaws, his eyes glared down; there was a roar, and he whizzed three times over the heads of the crowd. They all ducked, and many fell flat on their faces. The dragon passed like an express train, turned a somersault, and burst over Bywater with a deafening explosion.

—The Lord of the Rings Book I, Chapter 1: “A Long-Expected Party” (LR 1.01.049)

Legolas and Gimli were to ride again together in the company of Aragorn and Gandalf, who went in the van with the Dúnedain and the sons of Elrond. But Merry to his shame was not to go with them.

—The Lord of the Rings Book V, Chapter 10: “The Black Gate Opens” (LR 5.10.002)

But Ulmo fares at the rear in his fishy car and trumpets loudly for the discomfiture of Ossë and the rescue of the Shoreland Elves.

—The History of Middle-earth, Volume I: The Book of Lost Tales, Chapter V: “The Coming of the Elves and the Making of Kôr”

Tolkien’s legendarium, as vast an area as it covers in time and space, is generally held to take place in a set of societies that are at a level of technological development roughly equivalent to that of Medieval Europe. How, then, are we to explain the apparent references to modern (post-Industrial Revolution) conveyances in the above and similar passages from Tolkien’s works? (Especially given the conceit that they are actual translations from somewhat contemporary sources.) Here it will be necessary to consider each case separately.

In the case of the “express train”, I don’t believe there is a good way to explain it away, other than to recognize that it occurs in the first chapter of The Lord of the Rings, which was written as a sequel to The Hobbit. Tolkien developed The Hobbit as a story to tell his children. At first its setting was vague, but clearly somewhat modern. Bilbo, the protagonist of The Hobbit, drinks tea, smokes a pipe, and has a clock on his mantel. Later, as the story goes along, its setting becomes more clearly medieval, and Tolkien adds in references to his legendarium. Nevertheless, when he began writing what became The Lord of the Rings, at first he was still writing it very much in the mode of The Hobbit. Although perhaps one could try to explain the term “express train” as referring to something other than a locomotive, the most rational explanation of its existence is that it’s an example of the modern author peeking through the narration.

The case of the “van” is more relevant to my purposes, however. It’s a word Tolkien uses several times in The Lord of the Rings, and a couple of times in The Silmarillion as well. To most contemporary speakers of English, the term suggests a type of motor vehicle with a boxy shape and a large, enclosed rear area. Often it is used for transporting cargo, and has no side windows behind the cabin, but there are also passenger vans with windows all around. The word is a shortening of “caravan”, which can also mean a group of people traveling together for safety. The word is from Persian kârvân, Middle Persian kārawān, and may derive from a Proto-Indo-European root meaning “army” (see Proto-Celtic *koryos and Proto-Germanic *harjaz). However, this is almost certainly not the sense of the word which Tolkien intended.

There is another meaning of “van”, which is also shortened—not from “caravan”, but rather from “vanguard”. The vanguard is the front of a military formation, as opposed to the rearguard. The word comes from Old French avant-garde, with avant deriving from Latin ab ante (“from in front of”). The term “van” is often seen in the same context with the term “rear”. Those who are versed in the history of the Royal Navy will be aware that conventionally the rank of Vice Admiral was given to the Admiral of the Van, and that the lesser rank of Rear Admiral was, of course, given to the Admiral of the Rear of a naval squadron. The Admiral (not Vice or Rear) commanded the center of the squadron.

The meaning of the passage, then is clear: Gandalf, Aragorn, Legolas, Gimli, the sons of Elrond, and the Dúnedain all went to the head (or forefront) of the company that marched to Mordor to engage the forces of Sauron, but Merry (being wounded) was not permitted to go with them.

Ulmo’s “car” is a similar case. Contemporary English-speakers associate the word with an automobile. Many may be unaware of how old the word actually is. It is from the Latin word carrus, which referred to a wagon. Latin borrowed it from Gaulish *karros, which would have had the same form in Proto-Celtic. In fact, Latin already had a cognate word, currus, which could refer to either a wagon or a chariot. In the 19th century the word “car” tended to be used poetically to refer to a chariot. However, with the invention of the automobile, the word came to be the colloquial term used to refer to the new invention. There are other kinds of “cars”: railroad cars, trolley cars, tram cars, or airship cars (gondolas). However, the term as used today almost always refers to an automobile.

How Tolkien used the term in The Book of Lost Tales, however, is undoubtedly different. Presumably Ulmo’s car is some type of sea-chariot, drawn by sea creatures.

Sauron and Shelob

For all I know, the above clarifications may be as yet unnecessary. Contemporary English-speakers may intuitively sense that Tolkien did not use the terms “van” and “car” in the same way as they ordinarily understand them. The following example, however, is one that I know has caused misunderstanding:

And Orcs, they were useful slaves, but he had them in plenty. If now and again Shelob caught them to stay her appetite, she was welcome: he could spare them. And sometimes as a man may cast a dainty to his cat (his cat he calls her, but she owns him not) Sauron would send her prisoners that he had no better uses for: he would have them driven to her hole, and report brought back to him of the play she made.

—The Lord of the Rings Book IV, Chapter 9: “Shelob’s Lair” (LR 4.09.057)

Why would Tolkien need to explicitly tell us that Shelob didn’t own Sauron, when the phrase his cat seems to imply that the ownership was the other way around? To many speakers of Modern English, what this passage seems to be telling us may be that Sauron owns Shelob, but Shelob doesn’t own Sauron. One suggestion has been made that people don’t own cats; cats own people. Therefore, if Shelob doesn’t own Sauron, it means she has no relationship with him. This explanation approaches the truth, but in order to fully understand what Tolkien meant, one needs to understand a meaning of the verb “to own” that has largely fallen out of use. Among its rather many meanings, it may mean “to recognize” or “to acknowledge” someone’s authority. In this sense, vassals may “own” a lord, subjects may “own” a king, and worshippers may “own” the deity they worship. Using this sense, the passage above becomes easily understandable: Sauron sees Shelob as his pet, but she doesn’t acknowledge him as her master.

The Etymology of Philology

The meaning of the word “philology” started out very broad, and has gotten successively narrower. Its original meaning is fairly transparent. The Greek adjective (and later noun) philologos is composed of philo- (“loving”) and logos (“words”). A philologist, then, is fond of words—not necessarily individual words, as an etymologist, lexicographer, or onomatologist/onomastician deals with, but speech, discourse, language. Originally philologos could just refer to someone who was talkative, or who loved discussion and debate. However, it soon came to mean someone who was fond of learning and literature. The related noun philologia could be a synonym for “scholarship” at its broadest. As it passed from Greek to Latin, it became increasingly identified with love for and study of literature, in particular, and it has had much this sense ever since.

A Guide to a Vanished Realm

“I have read erudite tablets in obscure Sumerian and in an Akkadian that is hard to make sense of, I have studied stone inscriptions from before the Flood that are cryptic, impenetrable, and confused.”

—Assurbanipal, Emperor of Assyria (translation by Sophus Helle)

I said “much this sense”, but there is, in the traditional meaning of the Latin words philologus and philologia, as they have existed for the past two millennia or so, an important shade of distinction from the common lover or critic of literature. In his Introduction to a 1988 conference on the question “What is Philology?”, medievalist Jan Ziolkowski makes reference to an “old proverb” that says, “To read and not to understand is to disregard.” A philologist is one who is not content to disregard a work of literature merely because it is old, and hence likely also difficult to understand. Indeed, to a philologist, the fact that a work is old is often an attraction, and that it is difficult to understand is a challenge to be accepted. Curiosity, particularly about the past, is the driving force of the philologist.

The past, as they say, is a foreign country. Traditionally, works of literature have been our main ports of entry allowing us to visit those vanished realms. However, in all but the most recent cases there are no native guides left to help us interpret what we are seeing. That is the job that falls to the philologist. Philologists serve as our guides to the vanished realms of the past, reconstituting them from the texts that have come down to us. Each text is a product of the time and place in which it was composed or set down. The more time passes since then, the more changes accrue to the language, culture, customs, technology, political institutions, religion, and even perhaps the basic philosophical outlook on life. The philologist’s aim is to understand the texts as they were meant to be understood at the time and in the place in which they were written.

Philological Traditions

Of course, writing has been a worldwide phenomenon for several thousand years, and consequently so has philology. So far I have mainly been concerned with what is called “Classical philology”—the interpretation of ancient Latin and Greek texts. At first I was going to use the term “classical philology” for the type of philology I am discussing in this article. However, because the term (at least when capitalized) is associated specifically with ancient Greek and Latin literature, I decided to use “traditional philology” instead. And there are different traditions of philology. There is also Arabic philology, Hebrew philology, and Chinese philology. Chinese philology, at least, arose outside the entire tradition of Western philology.

The word “philologie” was first attested in the English language in the late 14th century, at which time no one would have used the term “Medieval philology”. However, in recent centuries philology has specialized into various fields, including Medieval philology, Romance philology, Germanic philology, Slavic philology, and so on, in addition to Classical philology. Likewise, modern philologists have their own specialties of time and place.

Tolkien’s Academic Contributions

Most of Tolkien’s academic work may be classified as traditional philology, or at least as in support of traditional philology. Comparative philology may also be considered as being in support of traditional philology; however I will consider it separately in the following article. Among these activities are the creation of or contribution to dictionaries (lexicography), the etymology of specific words and phrases, the editing (and sometimes translation) of texts for modern readers in “student editions” or “critical editions”, together with explanatory notes and commentary, and the writing of standalone essays explaining antiquated texts to a modern audience. Below I will attempt to provide a more-or-less exhaustive list of Tolkien’s academic contributions in these areas, to the extent that I am aware of them. However, as this article is already long enough, I will not elaborate on more than one or two examples of each type.