As always, welcome, dear readers.

“Still round the corner there may wait

A new road or a secret gate…”

as Frodo and the other hobbits sing, “Bilbo Baggins [having] made the words, to a tune that was as old as the hills” (The Fellowship of the Ring, Book One, Chapter 3, “Three is Company”), and now that I’m about to teach The Hobbit again, I’ve noticed not anything so grand as a new road, but perhaps a new little footpath into the book.  (For a modern setting of this song, of which JRRT approved, see:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YtH6ROfV7WA&t=75s  This is from a cycle of Tolkien’s poems set to music by Donald Swann (1923-1994), who, along with Michael Flanders, was mentioned in my last posting.)

In my last, I was talking about fears—of spiders

and snakes

(and you’ll notice that I haven’t gone on to “and bears, oh my!” although the rhythm is hard to resist.)

but, rereading The Hobbit, where those spiders—and the big cousin of snakes, a dragon–

(JRRT)

appear, I’d been wondering what is it about these creatures which is most threatening?  We might imagine the odd look of spiders, both the compound eyes and those rapidly-moving legs, and, for me, the wriggly motion of snakes (I’ve always thought that you can see, from muscular tension, what an attacking mammal might signal with its legs, but what do you do with something which has no legs?),

but here, I would propose, is a different possibility, consistent with all of the major threats in the book, and which lies in the title of this posting.

This title is, on the surface, just a kind of shorthand French for “May you enjoy your meal”, which I associate with a tv cooking show from long ago—

hosted by a very knowledgeable and enthusiastic Julia Child (1912-2004),

who ended every show by wishing her viewers, “Bon appétit!”

This show, as the title suggests, is all about French cuisine and the sometimes incredibly complex creation of it.  (I myself own the first volume of Child and her collaborators’ Mastering the Art of French Cooking

but the only thing I’ve ever been able to make from it was quiche, as virtually everything else in it would appear to take numerous hours,  a fully-equipped professional kitchen, and the kind of passionate staff we see in Ratatouille.

I note here, by the way, that Tolkien himself had strong views on such:  “I smoke a pipe, and like good plain food (unrefrigerated), but detest French cooking…” from a letter to Deborah Webster, 25 October, 1958, Letters, 411) 

This title also leads to what I think is the real fear in most of The Hobbit, first introduced in Chapter 2—

“ ‘Mutton yesterday, mutton today, and blimey, if it don’t look like mutton again tomorrer,’ said one of the trolls…

William choked.  ‘Shut yer mouth!’ he said as soon as he could.  ‘Yer can’t expect folk to stop here for ever just to be et by you and Bert.  You’ve et a village and a half between yer, since we come down from the mountains.  How much more d’yer want?’ “  (Chapter Two, “Roast Mutton”—we might also note a near-quotation from a book with which Tolkien was familiar, Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There, 1871—although the title page of the first edition says 1872–

where, in Chapter Five, “Wool and Water”, the White Queen explains to Alice something about Looking-Glass Land:  “The rule is, jam to-morrow and jam yesterday—but never jam to-day.”  You can read this on page 81 of the 1896 Ward Lock edition here:  https://archive.org/details/ThroughTheLookingGlass/page/n77/mode/2up  For Tolkien’s familiarity with Carroll’s works, see his letter to C.A. Furth, 31 August, 1937, Letters, 24-26.)

And this is only the first mention of such a danger—there’s:

“I am afraid that was the last they ever saw of those excellent little ponies…For goblins eat horses and ponies (and other much more dreadful things), and they are always hungry.” (Chapter 4, “Over Hill and Under Hill”)

and

“[Gollum] liked meat too.  Goblin he thought good, when he could get it…

“ ‘Does it guess easy?  It must have a competition with us, my preciouss!  If precious asks, and it doesn’t answer, we eats it, my preciousss.’ ”  (Chapter 5, “Riddles in the Dark”)

and

“ ‘You’ve left the burglar behind again!’ said Nori to Dori looking down…

‘He’ll be eaten if we don’t do something,’ said Thorin…” (Chapter 6, “Out of the Frying-Pan Into the Fire”)

and

“ ‘It was a sharp struggle, but worth it,’ said one.  ‘What nasty thick skins they have to be sure, but I’ll wager there is good juice inside.’

‘Aye, they’ll make fine eating, when they’ve hung a bit,’ said another. “  (Chapter 8, “Flies and Spiders”)

and, finally

“ ‘Very well, O Barrel-rider!’ he said aloud.  ‘Maybe Barrel was your pony’s name; and maybe not, though it was fat enough…Let me tell you I ate six ponies last night and I shall catch and eat all the others before long.  In return for the excellent meal I will give you one piece of advice for your good:  don’t have more to do with dwarves than you can help.’

‘Dwarves!’ said Bilbo in pretended surprise.

‘Don’t talk to me!’ said Smaug.  ‘I know the smell (and taste) of dwarf—no one better.’ “  (Chapter 12, “Inside Information”)

I think that I first met this danger when I was very small and read a comic book version of The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, 1719.

Crusoe had first been alarmed when, living on what he thought was a safely deserted island, he found a human footprint in the sand.  Then, sometime later, he came upon something even more alarming:

“When I was come down the hill to the shore, as I said above, being the S.W. point of the island, I was perfectly confounded and amazed; nor is it possible for me to express the horror of my mind at seeing the shore spread with skulls, hands, feet, and other bones of human bodies; and particularly, I observed a place where there had been a fire made, and a circle dug in the earth, like a cockpit, where it is supposed the savage wretches had sat down to the inhuman feastings upon the bodies of their fellow-creatures.”  (Robinson Crusoe, Chapter XVIII, page 217—you can read this in N.C. Wyeth’s splendidly-illustrated edition of 1920 here:  https://archive.org/details/robinsoncrusoedefo/page/n249/mode/2up )

In other words, like Crusoe’s cannibals, it’s not the outside of trolls, goblins, wolves, spiders, and a dragon which we meet in The Hobbit and which produces the emotion the characters—and readers, too,–at least this reader—feel, but their plan to fill their insides with those characters:  hence the cheerful but ultimately grim title of this posting.

Robinson Crusoe, in succeeding chapters, works his way through his fear and disgust, even, in a sense, trying to see cannibalism as custom of an alien culture (although killing a few cannibals later in the story), and, in The Hobbit, although the fear of being consumed is the major fear, no one is actually eaten, but it’s all left me wondering what recipes an anthropophagen version of Julia Child’s books might include…  (and which might satisfy that bitter critic in Ratatouille, Anton Ego)

Thanks for reading, as always.

Stay well,

If you should see a footprint in the sand,

Head for the nearest exit in an orderly fashion,

And remember that, as always, there’s

MTCIDC

O

PS

And here are Flanders and Swann

again with “The Reluctant Cannibal”:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qjAHw2DEBgw

Welcome, dear readers, as always.

I don’t know if you have it in your memory, but I have this little song (which could be accompanied by finger motions):

“The Hinky Dinky spider

Went up the water spout.

Down came the rain

And washed the spider out.

Out came the sun

And dried up all the rain

And the Hinky Dinky spider

Went up the spout again.”

I’m perfectly blank as to when I first heard it and it stuck, but it must have been pretty early—so early that I never asked myself “what’s a ‘Hinky Dinky spider’ contrasted with any others?”

A little research turned this into “The Itsy Bitsy Spider” (a little more comprehensible than “Hinky Dinky”, certainly), but also showed that it had lots more variants and had originally appeared at least before 1910 (see this WIKI article for more:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Itsy_Bitsy_Spider  –no explanation of “Hinky Dinky”, however, unless one wants to associate it with the chorus to the Great War song, “Mademoiselle from Armentieres”—that is, “Hinky dinky parlez-vous”–as someone has suggested).

Unlike snakes, which can easily give me the willies—

(I respect them, however, seeing them, as the Romans did, as good luck signs—)

I’ve never seen spiders as anything more than those quiet people who live and work in the dim corners of the house and, if you’re lucky, polish off nasty mosquitoes.  I certainly don’t have the same feeling as the English comic duo of Michael Flanders (1922-1975) and Donald Swann (1923-1994)

expressed in their song “The Spider”–

“I have fought a Grizzly Bear,
Tracked a Cobra to its lair,
Killed a Crocodile who dared to cross my path,
But the thing I really dread
When I’ve just got out of bed
Is to find that there’s a Spider in the bath.

I’ve no fear of Wasps or Bees,
Mosquitoes only tease,
I rather like a Cricket on the hearth,
But my blood runs cold to meet
In pyjamas and bare feet,
With a great big hairy spider in the bath.

I have faced a charging Bull in Barcelona,
I have dragged a mountain Lioness from her cubs,
I’ve restored a mad Gorilla to its owner,
But I don’t dare face that tub …

What a frightful looking beast –
Half an inch across at least –
It would frighten even Superman or Garth!
There’s contempt it can’t disguise,
In the little beady eyes,
Of the Spider sitting glowering in the bath.

It ignores my every lunge
With the backbrush and the sponge;
I have bombed it with ‘A present from Penarth’.
It just rolls into a ball,
Doesn’t seem to mind at all,
And simply goes on squatting in the bath.

For hours we have been locked in endless struggle,
I have lured it to the deep end by the drain.
At last I think I’ve washed it down the plughole,
Here it comes a-crawling up the chain!

Now it’s time for me to shave,
Though my nerves will not behave,
And there’s bound to be a fearful aftermath.
So before I cut my throat,
I shall leave this final note;
Driven to it – by the Spider in the bath!”

(a couple of glosses—Garth—pronounced “Goth” in southern standard British English—was a British comic strip superhero—read about him here:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garth_(comic_strip) and Penarth—pronounced “Penahth”—again, no r—is a seaside resort in southern Wales—you can visit it here:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penarth  And you can hear Flanders and Swann sing this here:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8z3D5Jutw1Q )

And then there’s Tolkien. 

First, of course, we have the gang of predatory spiders in Mirkwood in The Hobbit:

(Oleksiy Lipatov)

“He had picked his way stealthily for some distance, when he noticed a place of dense black shadow ahead of him, black even for that forest, like a patch of midnight that had never been cleared away.  As he drew nearer, he saw that it was made by spider-webs one behind and over and tangled with another.  Suddenly he saw, too, that there were spiders huge and horrible sitting in the branches above him, and ring or no ring he trembled with fear lest they should discover him.  Standing behind a tree he watched a group of them for some time, and then in the silence and stillness of the wood he realized that these loathsome creatures were speaking one to another.  Their voices were a sort of thin creaking and hissing…” (Chapter 8, “Flies and Spiders”)

and then there’s

“Most like a spider she was, but huger than the great hunting beasts, and more terrible than they because of the evil purpose in her remorseless eyes.  Those same eyes that he had thought daunted and defeated, there they were lit with a fell light again, clustering in her out-thrust head.  Great horns she had, and behind her short stalk-like neck was her huge swollen body, a vast bloated bag, swaying and sagging between her legs; its great bulk was black, blotched with livid marks, but the belly underneath was pale and luminous and gave forth a stench.  Her legs were bent, with great knobbed joints high above her back, and hairs that stuck out like steel spines, and at each leg’s end there was a claw.”  (The Two Towers, Book Four, Chapter 9, “Shelob’s Lair”)

(Ted Nasmith)

In a letter to W.H. Auden, Tolkien had expressed himself this way on the subject of spiders:

“But I did know more or less all about Gollum and his part, and Sam, and I knew that the way was guarded by a Spider.  And if that has anything to do with my being stung by a tarantula as a small child, people are welcome to the notion (supposing the improbable, that any one is interested).  I can only say that I remember nothing about it, should not know it if I had not been told; and I do not dislike spiders particularly, and have no urge to kill them.  I usually rescue those whom I find in the bath!”  (letter to W.H. Auden, 7 June, 1955, Letters, 316)

The innocent Mr. T, arachnophile?  And yet there’s this, from a later interview:

“Spiders,” observed Professor JRR Tolkien, cradling the word with the same affection that he cradled the pipe in his hand, “are the particular terror of northern imaginations.”… Discussing one of his own monsters, a man-devouring, spider-like female, he said, “The female monster is certainly no deadlier than the male, but she is different. She is a sucking, strangling, trapping creature.”  (The Telegraph magazine, 22 March, 1968)

Perhaps JRRT had more of a memory of that tarantula than he admitted?

As ever, thanks for reading.

Stay well,

When attempting to be friendly with spiders, remember that “attercop” is an insult,

And also remember that, as always, there’s

MTCIDC

O

Welcome, dear readers, as always.

Recently, I read a very detailed essay from 2012 by Michael Livingston, entitled, “The Myths of the Author:  Tolkien and the Medieval Origins of the Word Hobbit”, which you can read here:  https://dc.swosu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1130&context=mythlore  in which he reviews the various past theories for the discovery/invention of the word.  I, for one, have always been perfectly willing to believe JRRT’s “it came out of the blue”—almost in an act of creative self-defense when he was chained to correcting what must have seemed like an endless series of student essays (as a professor, I can empathize—does this distort my judgment?).  In general, it’s clear that JRRT had a Muse to prompt him, perhaps especially when he felt mired in quotidian tasks.  And yet, reading Livingston’s essay, I began to wonder, especially after referring to two Tolkien letters.

In 1938, Tolkien had been asked about the word “hobbit”, when someone signing him/herself “Habit”, published a review of The Hobbit in The Observer, referring to “little furry men” spotted in Africa and mentioning that a friend had a memory of “an old fairy tale called ‘The Hobbit’ in a collection read about 1904’.  Tolkien’s reply at the time was brief:  “I have no waking recollection of furry pygmies…nor of any Hobbit bogey in print by 1904…” (letter to The Observer, 20 February, 1938)

Tolkien returned to this review, however, in a 1971 letter to Roger Lancelyn Green:

“Habit asserted that a friend claimed to have read, about 20 years earlier (sc. c.1918) an old ‘fairy story’ (in a collection of such tales) called The Hobbit, though the creature was very ‘frightening’…  I think it is probable that the friend’s memory was inaccurate (after 20 years), and the creature probably had a name of the Hobberd, Hobbaty class.”  (letter to Roger Lancelyn Green, 8 January, 1971, Letters, 571)

“Hobbit bogey” seems like rather a strange term—a “bogey” is a kind of demonic spirit (the origin of the English—actually, Scots—verb “to boggle”—for more on “to boggle”, see:  “Spooked”, 2 February, 2022 at this blog).  And, in this same second letter in which he refers to “Hobberd” and “Hobbaty”, he also mentions “Hobberdy Dick”—what’s all this about?

Livingston, in his article, cites the work of several earlier scholars, including Donald O’Brien’s “On the Origin of the Name ‘Hobbit’” (Mythlore 16.2, No.60, 1989, 32-28—which you can read here:  https://dc.swosu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2675&context=mythlore ), and Gilliver, Marshall, and Weiner, The Ring of Words:  Tolkien and the Oxford English Dictionary, OUP, 2006, in both of which the Denham Tracts are named.  Who was Denham?  What was Denham?  And how might he have influenced JRRT?

Let’s go back a step or two.

 Even though he’s more of a dashing grave robber than a scientist, when we—or maybe just I?—think “archaeologist”, the first name which comes to mind is “Indiana Jones”.

The second is Sir Arthur Evans.

The major difference between the two isn’t, of course, that the one is fictional, but that a real archeologist, like Evans, directs patient excavation and documentation at a site, something which can take years and maybe not be completed in the lifetime of that first director (Evans worked at his site, Knossos, from 1900-1913, then again from 1922-1931 and it’s still being worked on today.)

During Evans’ lifetime—and that of Indiana Jones’ (1899-1993?) early years–the modern science of archaeology was only gradually being created, being descended most recently from something called “antiquarianism”.

Long before there were professional archaeologists, antiquaries looked into the past.  In England, although the occasional medieval or renaissance scholar might be curious about the past, the real beginnings are with the rise of the age of science, beginning in the later 17^th century.  Many of these men were clergy, a good example being William Stukeley (1687-1765),

who was interested, among other things, in stone circles, like Stonehenge

and Avebury.

These are engravings from Stukeley’s own illustrations—here are modern views for an interesting contrast—

Unfortunately for science, Stukeley’s ideas about these places were less than scientific and he began to see them as:

1. druidic monuments—and, worse, that druids were monotheistic semi-Christians

2. and places like Stonehenge and Avebury were actually proto-Christian sites (for more on this, see:  Stukeley, Stonehenge A Temple Restor’d to the British Druids, 1740, https://archive.org/details/b30448554/page/n7/mode/2up  and Abury A Temple of the British Druids, 1743, https://www.gutenberg.org/files/64626/64626-h/64626-h.htm  For all of this sort of thing, Stukeley also had a more scientific side, visiting many sites—not easy to do in early-18^th-century England, when travel by road was difficult, at best—carefully measuring things and thinking stratigraphically.  Because of his work, we also know much more about ancient monuments which have not survived or have suffered damage over time.  In fact, he’s quite admirable in his way and Stuart Piggott, his modern biographer, has given us a detailed portrait of him in William Stukeley An Eighteenth-Century Antiquary

which, if like me, you’re interested in the history of archaeology, I would recommend.)

Antiquaries were not just proto-archaeologists, however, but also proto-folklorists/anthropologists and, as many were clergymen, it was natural to collect from their parishioners everything from folksongs, folktales, and folklore to local vocabulary.  If such collecting had many devotees among the clergy in the UK, ordinary people might also be involved.  One such was John Francis Campbell (1821-1885),

with his Popular Tales of the West Highlands, 1860-2, which you can read here:  https://archive.org/details/populartalesofwe01campuoft/page/n5/mode/2up (Vol.1); https://archive.org/details/cu31924080788676/page/n9/mode/2up (Vol.2); https://archive.org/details/populartalesofwe00campuoft/page/n5/mode/2up (Vol.3); https://archive.org/details/populartalesofwe04camp_0/page/n7/mode/2up (Vol.4) 

Another was Michael Aislabie Denham (1801-1859), who, from 1846 to 1858, produced a series of works with titles like A Collection of Proverbs and Popular Sayings relating to the Seasons, the Weather, and Agricultural Pursuits, gathered chiefly from oral tradition.  These are monographs, some brief, some longer, which were originally printed in small numbers (50 copies, generally), but which were eventually collected and reprinted in two volumes in 1892/95 which you can read for yourself here:  https://archive.org/details/cu31924092530504/page/n7/mode/2up (Vol.1); https://archive.org/details/denhamtractscoll00denh/page/n7/mode/2up (Vol.2)

Something in Volume 2 might link Tolkien to Denham.

 “Hobberd, Hobbaty”, and “Hobberdy Dick” all have that “Hob” and, by employing the index to those tracts, we find, in a long list of supernatural creatures:  “hob-goblins, hobhoulards…hob-thrusts…hob-thrushes…hob-and-lanthorns…hob-headlesses…hobbits…hobgoblins…” (Denham Tracts, Vol.2, 77-79)

“Hobbits?” 

If you are skeptical, Livingston himself admits that there’s no hard evidence, at the moment, that Tolkien had ever opened that 2-volume collection—although Gilliver et al. note that there were copies available in Oxford libraries—but the fact that JRRT mentions other “hobs” in his letter to Green and they, in the list in the Tract, are associated with “hobbit” might suggest that, although he may have long before picked up the word in his reading (we know that he enjoyed folklore) without even remembering that he had done so.  Or, as I had always before believed, had “hobbit” had simply come to him, as he told us, and not only the hobbit, but his home and, in the sentences following, his people and their culture, from pure inspiration (with a touch of desperation)?  For myself, I’ll stick with the Muse.

As always, thanks for reading.

Stay well,

Always cite your sources (unless your inspiration comes from the Muse, in which case, offer a sacrifice),

And, as well, remember that there’s always

MTCIDC

O

ps

Stukeley’s enthusiasms could have gotten him into scholarly trouble when he was deceived into believing that Charles Bertram’s medieval forgery, The Description of Britain by “Richard of Cirencester”, was authentic.  Fortunately for him, although there were some early doubts, the truth about this fake didn’t come out until a century after Stukeley’s death.  You can read more about this at:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Bertram  You can read the 1809 translation of this forgery at:  https://archive.org/details/descriptionofbri00bert/page/n7/mode/2up  and read the series of articles from 1866-7, by the splendidly-named Bernard Bolingbroke Woodward, which revealed the work as a forgery here: 

https://archive.org/details/sim_gentlemans-magazine_january-june-1866_220/page/300/mode/2up (Parts 1 &2)

https://archive.org/details/gentlemansmagazi221hatt/page/458/mode/2up (Part 3)

https://archive.org/details/sim_gentlemans-magazine_1867-10_223/page/442/mode/2up (Part 4)

pps

Not only could antiquarianism be the target of fraud:  it could also be the target of mockery.  See Charles Dickens’ The Pickwick Papers, 1837, Chapter XI, “Involving Another Journey, And An Antiquarian Discovery…”  which you can read here:  https://www.gutenberg.org/files/580/580-h/580-h.htm#link2HCH0011

ppps

I admit to a small literary borrowing, by the way:  “hobbit-forming” was something which turns up in a Tolkien letter, but, looking through them, I can’t seem to find where.  Tolkien is actually quoting someone else, so I guess I need to admit to a double-borrowing!

As always, welcome, dear readers.

Currently, I’m rereading the invaluable Douglas Anderson’s Tales Before Tolkien.

I had first known Anderson’s work through the reason I’ve called him “invaluable”—this—

which I recommend to anyone interested in deepening her/his knowledge of The Hobbit.  In Tales, Anderson provides us with a selection of short stories (one, at least, H. Rider Haggard’s “Black Heart and White Heart:  A Zulu Idyll” being so long as maybe even to be considered a novella) which JRRT might have read or had read to him, based upon his own or other’s testimony, as well as stories with themes which appear in his work and which, although we have no evidence for them, he might have known.

One story which fits the first category is from Andrew Lang’s The Red Fairy Book (1890),

Lang’s retelling of “The Story of Sigurd”.

Initially, we might have a pretty good idea that Tolkien was acquainted with this book from the title of a previous story in it, “Soria Moria Castle”, which he mentions in a letter to “Mr. Rang” (“drafts for a letter to ‘Mr. Rang’, August, 1967, Letters, 541, although there he credits George Webb Dasent’s Popular Tales from the Norse, 1859, from which Lang reprinted and edited it, of which you can read the second edition here:  https://www.gutenberg.org/files/8933/8933-h/8933-h.htm ) but the Sigurd story seems to me the real giveaway:

1. it has a talking dragon, Fafnir, who “wallows” on a mound of gold, as well as a horse with a noble pedigree

2. but perhaps even more convincing, it has a sword which, once broken, its sherds are carefully preserved and reforged and which then prove that dragon’s doom (The sword is called Gram, which, in the Old Norse form, “gramr”, means “wrath”, according to Cleasby and Vigfusson’s 1874 An Icelandic-English Dictionary—in modern German, “Gram” means “grief/sorrow”—clearly what happens when wrath takes action—as in the case of this dragon)

Was it this story which produced this anecdote?

“Somewhere about six years old I tried to write some verses on a dragon about which I now remember nothing except that it contained the expression a green great dragon…”  (taken from notes attached to a letter of 30 June, 1955, written to Houghton Mifflin, Letters, 321—Tolkien adds a little to this in a letter to W.H. Auden, 7 June, 1955, Letters, 313)

Wherever the influence came from, it was a strong one upon Tolkien—but there was a kind of realism attached, as well:

“I desired dragons with a profound desire.  Of course, I in my timid body did not wish to have them in the neighbourhood, intruding into my relatively safe world, in which it was, for instance, possible to read stories in peace of mind, free from fear.  But the world that contained even the imagination of Fafnir was richer and more beautiful, at whatever cost of peril.”  (“On Fairy Stories”—in this edition—The Monsters and the Critics, Harper/Collins, 2006–135)

“Never laugh at live dragons, Bilbo you fool!” (The Hobbit, Chapter 12, “Inside Information”) might have been written by the young JRRT, but the second dragon story in Anderson’s collection is in sharp contrast to the tragedy of the life and death of Sigurd:  E. Nesbit’s “The Dragon Tamers”.    E(dith) Nesbit (1858-1924)

was a popular English children’s author of the late-Victorian/Edwardian era, both an imaginative and witty one (she also wrote for adults) and this story reflects that combination.  As you can read it for yourself here in The Book of Dragons (1901):  https://www.gutenberg.org/files/23661/23661-h/23661-h.htm , I’ll only say that it’s a story in which a dragon is outwitted by a blacksmith and which has writing like this:

“But the dragon was too quick for him—it put out a great claw and caught him by the leg, and as it moved it rattled like a great bunch of keys, or like the sheet-iron they make thunder out of in pantomimes.

‘No, you don’t,’ said the dragon, in a spluttering voice, like a damp squid. [firecracker]

‘Deary, deary me,’ said poor John, trembling more than ever in the clasp of the dragon; ‘here’s a nice end for a respectable blacksmith!’

The dragon seemed very much struck by this remark.

‘Do you mind saying that again?’ said he, quite politely.

So John said again, very distinctly:  ‘Here-Is-A-Nice-End-For-A-Respectable-Blacksmith.’

‘I didn’t know,’ said the dragon.  ‘Fancy now!  You’re the very man I’ve wanted.’

“So I understood you to say before,’ said John, his teeth chattering.

‘Oh, I don’t mean what you mean,’ said the dragon, ‘but I should like you to do a job for me.  One of my wings has got some of the rivets out of it just above the joint.  Could you put that to rights?’ “

At first, I wasn’t sure how “The Dragon Tamers” fit into Anderson’s schema for his selections:  dragon, yes, but a live dragon one might laugh at or at least about?  But then I thought about Tolkien’s  Farmer Giles of Ham (1949).

Besides a pesky giant, the title character has to deal with the splendidly-named “Chrysophylax Dives”—“Goldguard the Wealthy”

and not only do we have a talking dragon (and a blacksmith—although he’s rather a negative minor character), but we have comedy again.  Giles has captured Chrysophylax and made him agree to pay a ransom—which the dragon reneges upon.  Giles is then nominated by the king to track him—and the ransom—down.  Giles does so and the haggling (at least on the dragon’s part) begins–

“ ‘You’re nigh on a month late,’ said Giles, ‘and payment is overdue.  I’ve come to collect it.  You should beg my pardon for all the bother I’ve been put to.’

‘I do indeed!’ said he.  ‘I wish that you had not troubled to come.’

‘It’ll be every bit of your treasure this time, and no market-tricks,’ said Giles, ‘or dead you’ll be, and I shall hang your skin from our church steeple as a warning.’

‘It’s cruel hard!’ said the dragon.

‘A bargain’s a bargain,’ said Giles

‘Can’t I just keep a ring or two, and a mite of gold, in consideration of cash payment?’ said he.” 

Imagine Smaug trying to make a deal! 

And here—as I entitled this “Three Dragons… “ after all—I want to add to Anderson’s list one more comic dragon, an unnamed by very talkative one in a short story by Kenneth Grahame (1859-1932).

You may know him from his The Wind in the Willows (1908).

(And I can’t resist adding that you can acquire your own copy of E.H. Shepard’s illustrated edition—my favorite—here:  https://archive.org/details/the-wind-in-the-willows-grahame-kenneth-1859-1932-sh/mode/2up )

This story, “The Reluctant Dragon”, was published in Grahame’s 1898 collection Dream Days

and I think that the title alone gives you an idea that this is not going to be a Fafnir/Sigurd tragedy any more than “The Dragon Tamers” or “Farmer Giles”.  This is, in fact, a poetry-loving creature who, when accosted by Saint George, absolutely declines to fight—until he collaborates on fixing the match, which the dragon enjoys immensely:

“The dragon was employing the interval in giving a ramping-performance for the benefit of the crowd.  Ramping, it should be explained, consists in running round and round in a wide circle, and sending waves and ripples of movement along the whole length of your spine, from your pointed ears right down to the spike at the end of your long tail.  When you are covered with blue scales, the effect is particularly pleasing; and the Boy recollected the dragon’s recently expressed wish to become a social success.”

Once the match is over and the dragon has “died”, he is revived and Saint George makes a speech to the villagers (some of whom had actually bet on the dragon) about how the dragon is now a repentant beast and promises to be good ever afterwards and there’s a banquet.  Again, a far cry from Fafnir/Sigurd, but certainly in line with “The Dragon Tamers” and Farmer Giles.  (And you can read it here:  https://archive.org/details/dreamdays00grahuoft/page/176/mode/2up )

Now what about that griffon?  It’s in “The Griffon and the Minor Canon” and

Anderson includes it from Frank Stockton’s (1834-1902)

1887 collection, The Beeman of Orn and Other Fanciful Tales, which you’ll find here:  https://www.gutenberg.org/files/12067/12067-h/12067-h.htm

If you recognize the name “Frank Stockton”, you’ve probably read another of his stories “The Lady, Or the Tiger?” from the 1884 The Lady, Or the Tiger? And Other Stories—available here:  https://archive.org/details/ladyortigerando01stocgoog/page/n4/mode/2up

As in the case of “Tamers”, Giles, and “Reluctant”, the monster of the title comes to a small village, but, instead of planning a feast, he is there to view a carving of a griffon over the local church door, which makes him sound more like the unnamed reluctant dragon than the others. 

The villagers are terrified when he makes inquiries and it’s only the minor canon (a kind of junior clergyman) who, even nervous, is willing to talk with the griffon.  The griffon stays in the village and bonds with the canon and even rescues him at one point from a kind of martyrdom in the wilderness, but it’s rather a sad little tale, well told, but this is the one story which I have difficulty in understanding its possible connection with JRRT.  As it’s in the collection for which I’ve posted an address above, read it for yourself and see what you think.

And, as you read, think about what Tolkien had written, and which I cited earlier:

“I desired dragons with a profound desire.  Of course, I in my timid body did not wish to have them in the neighbourhood, intruding into my relatively safe world, in which it was, for instance, possible to read stories in peace of mind, free from fear.  But the world that contained even the imagination of Fafnir was richer and more beautiful, at whatever cost of peril.”  (“On Fairy Stories”—in this edition—The Monsters and the Critics, Harper/Collins, 2006–135)

As ever, thanks for reading.

Stay well,

Remember that, with some dragons, it can be a laughing matter,

And remember, as well, that there’s

MTCIDC

O

PS

With this—posting #521—we begin our eleventh year together, dear readers.  Thank you, as always, for your support.  Together, may we have just as many years of reading and writing about adventure and fantasy—at least—in the future.