Monthly Archives: August 2025

Return to Horrors?

27 Wednesday Aug 2025

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Welcome, dear readers, as always.

Does this picture make your hands sweat?  Can you barely look at it?

How about this one—

Or this one—

Or—

Or—

Or—horror of horrors!—

It’s possible that all of these might have an effect upon you and, in which case, I imagine that you’re reading this hiding under your bed.

Why all of this phobic display?  Because, back in June, I read an article from the BBC about the 40th anniversary of Disney’s Return to Oz entitled:

“ ‘It has the appeal of an actual horror’: How Return to Oz became one of the darkest children’s films ever made”

(You can read the article here:  https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20250616-the-darkest-childrens-film-ever-made )

This is a film I own and have seen perhaps half-a-dozen times and I’ve never viewed it as the horror film which the article would suggest.  Granted, sensationalism sells the news, but, having read the article again, I’ve thought about how horror can be an element in a work—and a powerful one—without making the work as a whole into something like Bram Stoker’s Dracula.

(And, if you haven’t read it, I would certainly recommend it.  Here it is in the first US edition of 1897:   https://gutenberg.org/files/345/345-h/345-h.htm )

Think, for a moment, about The Hobbit.

Here, we go from the safety of Hobbiton

(JRRT)

to a world where there are trolls,

(JRRT)

goblin-infested mountains,

(Alan Lee)

wolves in large packs,

(Tove Jansson)

giant spiders,

(John Tyler Christopher—you can see more of his work here:  https://johntylerchristopher.com/ )

and, finally, an intelligent and vengeful dragon.

(JRRT)

But does the appearance of all these dangers make the book a horror novel, like one of Stephen King’s more forbidding works?

The article points to some potentially disturbing moments—and at least the first is certainly disturbing and, interestingly, is not in the two books upon which the film is based—The Marvelous Land of Oz, 1904,

and Ozma of Oz, 1907.  (For more on the combination and the scriptwriters’ changes, see:  “Chickening In”, 12 February,  2025)

The Kansas of the 1939 film was as bleak as a 1930s sound stage could make it, in sepia, suggesting photos of the Dust Bowl of the Great Depression era—

The 1985 movie showed us the real rolling hills of Kansas and the ruin of Uncle Henry and Aunt Em’s farm.

(This is at the end of the film, when the house has been rebuilt—early in the film, the house—which, of course, was ripped from Kansas and dropped on the Wicked Witch of the East—remains unfinished and Uncle Henry crippled from the twister.)

Dorothy, to Aunt Em, also seems somehow ruined, having reappeared after the tornado with stories about having been in a foreign land, Oz, but with no proof of it, and Em, having seen a newspaper ad for medical treatment by electricity, decides to take Dorothy to the clinic and its all-too-calm and rational Dr. Worley.

The treatment consists of running a powerful electrical current through Dorothy’s brain, (now called ECT—electroconvulsive therapy), which is supposed to erase Dorothy’s (supposedly false) memory of Oz. 

As the audience, with its own memories of Oz, from the 1939 film, the many books, or both, knows perfectly well that Oz is real, as is Dorothy’s memory of it, and, as the article points out:

“…the power of these scenes lies in the fact that they are trying to silence Dorothy, to obliterate her memories of Oz”

Dorothy escapes the clinic (one might really says “asylum”, as it has that grim look of Victorian asylums for the insane)

(A real Victorian asylum—and not the grimmest, there being some real competition here)

and turns up in Oz, once more, where the article mentions other potentially disturbing elements:

the destruction of Oz and its citizens petrified,

its ruins haunted by the Wheelers,

the minions of Princess Mombi, who collects heads and wears them for different occasions,

and then there is the Nome King, who is the current ruler of Oz,

and is the destroyer of the Emerald City, the overlord of Mombi, and has enchanted Dorothy’s former friends, the Scarecrow, the Tinman, and the Cowardly Lion, turning them into inanimate objects.

For the sake of sensationalism, it seems that the article leans heavily on these—as if, I suggested above, one could do the same for The Hobbit, but this leaves out the fact that, although Dorothy’s first allies in Oz have been neutralized, she finds others, just as Bilbo has dwarves, Gandalf, Elrond, the Eagles, and Beorn, not to mention Sting and the Ring.

These include the caustic hen, Billina, who arrives with her from Kansas,

“the Army of Oz”—Tik-Tok,

Jack Pumpkinhead,

and the Gump.

I teach story-telling on a regular basis and a dictum I use is “No fiction without friction” .  Just as trolls, goblins, wolves, Gollum, spiders, and Smaug provide the friction in The Hobbit, so the clinic and its smooth-talking doctor, the Wheelers, Princess Mombi, and the Nome King, provide it in Return to Oz.  These plot elements supply the problems which must be solved before the ultimate goal of the story can be achieved—coming home safely (and much better-off) for Bilbo, coming home and keeping her memories of Oz for Dorothy (guaranteed for her when she sees Ozma, rescued from the Nome King, in her mirror in Kansas).

Disturbing moments—in both—what’s that riddle contest with Gollum if nothing short of harrowing?—but is Return to Oz just this side of a horror movie?  As always, I suggest that you see it for yourself, but remember “no fiction without friction” before you rank it with The Shining.

Thanks, as ever, for reading.

Stay well,

Pick a bed with a reasonable clearance,

And remember that, as always, there’s

MTCIDC

O

Bogged Down

20 Wednesday Aug 2025

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As always, dear readers, welcome.

What’s going on here?

“He turned, and there in the cold glow he saw lying beside him Sam, Pippin, and Merry.  They were on their backs, and their faces looked deadly pale; and they were clad in white.  About them lay many treasures, of gold maybe, though in that light they looked cold and unlovely.  On their heads were circlets, gold chains were about their waists, and on their fingers were many rings.  Swords lay by their sides, and shields were at their feet.  But across their three necks lay one long naked sword.”  (The Fellowship of the Ring, Book One, Chapter 8, “Fog on the Barrow Downs”)

(Matthew Stewart–you can see more of his impressive work here: https://www.matthew-stewart.com/ I like his dragons especially.)

This might appear to look like an early heroic burial, with grave goods piled up,

like this chieftain’s grave from 530BC, found near Hochdorf an der Enz in Baden-Wuerttemberg, Germany—which even has this beautiful wagon (reconstructed—for more see:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hochdorf_Chieftain%27s_Grave ).

There is a difficulty, however:  none of the hobbits is dead—although that sword across three of their necks suggests that they soon will be.

And I would further suggest that what we’re looking at is the scene of a potential human sacrifice—especially if we add what the narrator calls an “incantation” on the part of the Barrow-wight:

“Cold be hand and heart and bone,

And cold be sleep under stone:

Never more to wake on stony bed,

Never, till the Sun fails and the Moon is dead.

In the black wind the stars shall die,

And still on gold here let them lie,

Till the dark lord lifts his hand

Over dead sea and withered land.”

Human sacrifice had certainly been practiced in Middle-earth.  We know that Sauron, defeated temporarily, corrupts the king of Numenor, Tar-Calion (also known as Ar-Pharazon), preaching the worship of the fallen Vala, Morgoth:

“A new religion, and worship of the Dark, with its temple under Sauron arises.  The faithful are persecuted and sacrificed.  The Numenoreans carry their evil also to Middle-earth and there become cruel and wicked lords of necromancy, slaying and tormenting men… “ (letter to Milton Waldman, late 1951, Letters, 216-217—for more on this see “Melkor/Morgoth/Melqart” 29 June, 2022)

I suspect that Tolkien’s own first experience with such sacrifices may have come from a boyhood reading Julius Caear’s (100-44BC) De Bello Gallico, where he would have found:

“Natio est omnis Gallorum admodum dedita religionibus, atque ob eam causam, qui sunt adfecti gravioribus morbis quique in proeliis periculisque versantur, aut pro victimis homines immolant aut se immolaturos vovent administrisque ad ea sacrificia druidibus utuntur, quod, pro vita hominis nisi hominis vita reddatur, non posse deorum immortalium numen placari arbitrantur, publiceque eiusdem generis habent instituta sacrificia. Alii immani magnitudine simulacra habent, quorum contexta viminibus membra vivis hominibus complent; quibus succensis circumventi flamma exanimantur homines.”

“The whole nation of the Gauls is completely devoted to religious practices and because of this, those who are afflicted with very serious illnesses and those who are involved in battles and dangers either sacrifice men in place of animal victims or pledge that they will sacrifice them and use the druids as the priests for those sacrifices because they think that, unless the life of a person is paid back for the life of a person, the divine will of the immortal gods can’t be appeased and they [even] have sacrifices set up of the same kind at public expense.  Others have images of immense size of which the chambers, woven of willow withies, are filled with living people.   [So that], when they are set alight, the people, surrounded by flame, are killed.”  (De Bello Gallico, Book VI, Sec.16, my translation—you can read more at the invaluable Sacred Texts site here in a parallel Latin/English text:  https://sacred-texts.com/cla/jcsr/index.htm ) 

(This is from Thomas Pennant’s, 1726-1798, A Tour of Wales, 1778.  Pennant was a naturalist, antiquarian, traveler, etc etc and one of those wonderful 18th people seemingly interested in everything and eager to report what they discovered.  You can read about him here:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Pennant but don’t forget to read about his draftsman, Moses Griffith, an equally impressively-talented man:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moses_Griffith_(artist) There is even a Thomas Pennant Society:  https://www.cymdeithasthomaspennant.com/eng/t-p.html And you can read the Tour itself here:  https://archive.org/details/toursinwales00penngoog/page/n8/mode/2up  For more on the idea of the “wicker man”, see:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wicker_man  )

The Romans, with very rare (and early) exceptions, frowned upon human sacrifice, but northern people, before being overwhelmed by the Romans, or too far north for them to conquer effectively, could, as in the case of the Gauls mentioned above, have a different approach to their gods.

Unfortunately, as they were not, like the Romans, extremely literate, what little description we have comes from people like Caesar, curious (and probably horrified) outsiders—and perhaps also propagandists, who wanted to paint those outside the Mediterranean world as savages and therefore worthy of nothing more than conquest.

We do, however, have other and very vivid evidence in the form of archaeological discoveries.

One of these turned up in my last posting, the “Vimose comb” (see “Runing Things”, 13 August, 2025).

The “-mose” in Vimose means “bog/wetland/moorland” in modern Danish, descended from “mosi” in Old Norse and this immediately tells us about a different method of making a sacrifice—and not necessarily a human one—dropping it into water.

Without local explanation, we can only guess what was thought to happen when the object was deposited.  For myself, I’ve always thought of the pool in the story of Fionn mac Cumhaill. 

(Marga Gomila—you can see drafts of this work at:  https://margagomila.artstation.com/projects/OmEwgv )

This was connected with the otherworld and nuts from hazel trees would fall into the pool from that otherworld, to be consumed by a salmon in our world.  Cooking the salmon (caught in this world), Fionn, then a boy, burned his thumb and, putting it into his mouth, gained supernatural knowledge thereby.  (See for more:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fionn_mac_Cumhaill and:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wells_in_the_Irish_Dindsenchas There is a similar story attached to the Germanic hero, Sigurd, which you can read in the form Tolkien probably first read it:  https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/540/pg540-images.html )

So, were these earlier sacrificers dropping in their treasures in hopes of sending them out of this world, presumably to the place where their gods lived?

Certainly the person who dropped the comb into the Vimose must have had some such hope and that person was hardly alone as, to date, about 2500 objects have been recovered from the site.  (For more on Vimose, check out this very interesting site:  https://ageofarthur.substack.com/p/the-homeland-of-the-angles-and-the See, as well, the Danish National Museum site, with all sorts of short articles on Vimose and other places:  https://en.natmus.dk/historical-knowledge/denmark/prehistoric-period-until-1050-ad/the-early-iron-age/the-weapon-deposit-from-vimose/the-offerings-in-vimose/ )

And it’s not the only site.  From Ireland eastwards through much of Germany, there are sites, some more specific, like La Tene, in Switzerland, where there was a huge cache of swords,

(no citation, but it looks like a Peter Connolly)

and Hjortspring, in Denmark, where there was a boat,

and Dejbjerg, also in Denmark, where there was a wagon.

There are animal sacrifices,

(Miroslaw Kuzma–as a sometime horseman, I hesitated to include this illustration.)

but the most sinister deposits are human ones,

some of whose well-preserved remains would probably have worried those who believed that, once the victim had been dealt with, and sunk in the water, the sacrifice would have been accepted and then the next step would be a god’s.  (For more on so-called “bog bodies”, see:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bog_body )

Although Frodo was responsible for halting what may have been about to be a sacrifice—

“But the courage that had been awakened in him was now too strong:  he could not leave his friends so easily.  He wavered, groping in his pocket, and then fought with himself again; and as he did so the arm crept nearer.  Suddenly resolve hardened in him, and he seized a short sword that lay beside him, and kneeling, he stooped low over the bodies of his companions.  With what strength he had he hewed at the crawling arm near the wrist, and the hand broke off; but at the same moment the sword splintered up to the hilt.  There was a shriek and the light vanished.  In the dark there was a snarling noise.”

It was the appearance of Tom Bombadil, summoned by Frodo, who rescued them all—

“There was a loud rumbling sound, as of stones rolling and falling, and suddenly light streamed in, real light, the plain light of day.  A low door-like opening appeared at the end of the chamber beyond Frodo’s feet; and there was Tom’s head (hat, feather, and all) framed against the light of the sun rising red behind him.”

And there was Tom’s incantation—

“Get out, you old Wight!  Vanish in the sunlight!

Shrivel like the cold mist, like the winds go wailing,

Out into the barren lands far beyond the mountains!

Come never here again!  Leave your barrow empty!

Lost and forgotten be, darker than the darkness,

Where gates stand for ever shut, till the world is mended.”  (The Fellowship of the Ring, Book One, Chapter 8, “Fog on the Barrow-downs”)

I wonder whether, about to be consecrated to a god we no longer know of, a victim might have called upon his/her gods, hoping for a similar rescue?

Thanks for reading, as ever.

Stay well,

Avoid barrows—unless they’re wheeled,

(Is this by a medieval Dr. Seuss?)

Definitely stay out of bogs,

And remember that, as always, there’s

MTCIDC

O

PS

If you’re interested in a scientific explanation for the surprising preservation of some bodies, see:

https://en.natmus.dk/historical-knowledge/denmark/prehistoric-period-until-1050-ad/the-early-iron-age/the-woman-from-huldremose/the-chemistry-of-the-bog-bodies/

Runing Things

13 Wednesday Aug 2025

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Welcome, as ever, dear readers.

It is a grim moment, in The Lord of the Rings when the company, making its way through the complexity of Moria in near-darkness, save for Gandalf’s staff, reaches this—

“Their feet disturbed a deep dust upon the floor, and stumbled among things lying in the doorway whose shapes they could not at first make out.  The chamber was lit by a wide shaft high in the further eastern wall; it slanted upwards and, far above, a small square patch of blue sky could be seen.  The light of the shaft fell directly on a table in the middle of the room:  a single oblong block, about two feet high, upon which was laid a great slab of white stone.

(the Hildebrandts)

‘It looks like a tomb,’ muttered Frodo, and bent forwards with a curious sense of foreboding, to look more closely at it.  Gandalf came quickly to his side.  On the slab runes were deeply graven:

‘These are Daeron’s Runes, such as were used of old in Moria,’ said Gandalf.  ‘Here it is written in the tongues of Men and Dwarves:

BALIN SON OF FUNDIN

LORD OF MORIA ‘.”  (The Lord of the Rings, Book Two, Chapter 4, “A Journey in the Dark”)

Even if you’re not an expert in early western writing systems, you’ve probably encountered runes before.  They appear to be a Germanic invention, with their first known outside mention thought to be in P. Cornelius Tacitus’ (c.56-c.120 AD) essay on some northern tribes, Germania, where this passage is cited.

“[10] Auspicia sortesque ut qui maxime observant: sortium consuetudo simplex. Virgam frugiferae arbori decisam in surculos amputant eosque notis quibusdam discretos super candidam vestem temere ac fortuito spargunt. Mox, si publice consultetur, sacerdos civitatis, sin privatim, ipse pater familiae, precatus deos caelumque suspiciens ter singulos tollit, sublatos secundum impressam ante notam interpretatur.”

“[the Germans] pay very close attention to auspices and lot-drawing:  the practice of lot-drawing is simple.  They split a branch cut from a fruit tree into splinters and scatter those, marked out with certain signs, on a white robe casually and randomly.  Then a priest of the settlement, if it may be the public consulting of an oracle, but if private, the father of a family himself, having prayed to the gods and raising his eyes to the sky, draws three [splinters] one at a time [and] interprets those drawn according to the mark stamped upon [them] previously.”

(Tactius, Germania, Section 10—my translation.  If you’d like to read the whole text, here’s a useful Victorian translation:  https://archive.org/details/tacitusagricolag00taciiala/page/62/mode/2up )

We don’t know where Tacitus got his information from, but he lived at about the same time as one of the earliest currently-known runic inscriptions, the “Vimose comb”, dated to about 160AD,

(There seem to be two guesses at to what the inscription says—transliterated, it appears to read “harja”, meaning either the obvious “comb” or the less obvious “warrior”.  For more on this and other early rune-marked artifacts, see:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vimose_inscriptions and https://en.natmus.dk/historical-knowledge/denmark/prehistoric-period-until-1050-ad/the-early-iron-age/the-weapon-deposit-from-vimose/the-offerings-in-vimose/   Until they sold out, you could even get a bone replica of the comb here:  https://norseimports.com/products/vimose-comb )

so the notae, “marks”, he mentioned could, indeed, be early runes.

We’ve seen runes three times before in the book, each time related to Gandalf and the first letter of his name in runes–

The first is a jolly appearance:

(Darrell K. Sweet, who died, unfortunately, in 2011, but you can see his archived website here:  https://web.archive.org/web/20110131141507/http://www.sweetartwork.com/DKSmainPage.html and read a little more about this very talented illustrator here:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darrell_K._Sweet And I couldn’t resist adding this knowledgeable appreciation of his work:  https://blackgate.com/2022/04/17/an-adventure-to-be-had-a-journey-through-the-art-of-darrell-k-sweet/ )

“At the end of the second week in September a cart came in through Bywater from the direction of Brandywine Bridge in broad daylight.  An old man was driving it all alone…It had a cargo of fireworks…At Bilbo’s front door the old man began to unload:  there were great bundles of fireworks of all sorts and shapes, each labeled with a large red G [runic letter] and the elf-rune [see the image above].” (The Fellowship of the Ring, Book One, Chapter 1, “A Long-Expected Party”)

The second is not, being Gandalf’s much-delayed letter to Frodo, still at the Prancing Pony in Bree, instead of being delivered 3 months before to the Shire, meant to alert Frodo to the possibility that he won’t meet them, with some consolation that Strider might appear. (The Fellowship of the Ring, Book One, Chapter 10, “Strider”)

(the Hildebrandts)

And the third is only guessed at as seeming to be a sign from Gandalf on Weathertop:

“ ‘The stroke on the left might be a G-rune with thin branches,’ said Strider.  ‘It might be a sign left by Gandalf, though one cannot be sure…I should say…that they stood for G3, and were a sign that Gandalf was here on October the third:  that is three days ago now.  It would also show that he was in a hurry and danger was at hand, so he had no time or did not dare to write anything longer or plainer.  If that is so, we must be wary.’ “ (The Fellowship of the Ring, Book One, Chapter 11, “A Knife in the Dark”)

(John Howe)

In our Middle-earth, there are several iterations of runes, with the melodious (modern) names of “Futhark”(Elder and Younger) and “Futhorc”, which get those names, as the word “alphabet” does, from putting together a collection of the first letters of the series in a standard order.  Here’s the Elder Futhark—

It’s easy to see why the letters might be shaped as they were, appearing to be relatively easy to inscribe on things with a knife.  (Or a chisel for the stone inscriptions?)

(a 12th-century AD inscription on wood from Bryggen in Norway—one of 670 inscriptions on wood or bone found at the site since 1955—for more see:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bryggen_inscriptions  and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bryggen One of the many amazing things about this second piece is that it underlines just how sophisticated trade could be in northern Europe in the Middle Ages.)

(This is the Kylver Stone from Gotland, Sweden, c.400AD, which lists the Elder Futhark letters.  For more, see:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kylver_Stone and you can see from the translation of the runes where “Futhark” came from. )

Tolkien’s own runes, as he tells us, are derived from what are sometimes called the “Anglo-Saxon” or “Anglo-Frisian” Futhorc:

“There is the matter of the Runes.  Those used by Thorin and Co., for special purposes, were comprised of an alphabet of thirty-two letters (full list on application), similar to, but not identical, with the runes of Anglo-Saxon inscriptions.”  (letter to the editor of The Observer, published there 20 February, 1938, Letters, 42)

We can then imagine that this is what must appear as the “moon letters” on Thror’s map—

 

And this brings me to my final point.

In my last, in connection with the conlang (constructed language) toki pona, I mentioned the internet site Robwords, one of my favorite places for information and discussion about languages, primarily English, German, and French, but with some surprises (see last week’s “Simple Words” for more).

(This is Rob Watts, of Robwords)

One of those surprises was toki pona, but, in another, Rob made the suggestion that the Roman alphabet, in which I’m writing this posting, was rotten for the English language, being adapted from the Greek alphabet (in turn adapted from the Phoenician alphabet) via the Etruscan alphabet,

and lacking letters for certain common English sounds like “th” and “sh” and “ng”.

In his playful way, he suggested that we’d be better off with the runic system, and specifically that Anglo-Saxon version, aka Futhorc.

 To prove his point, he cites something familiar to Tolkien readers—

and then proceeds to translate it, showing that it’s not in the language of the dwarves, as one might expect from a dwarvish map, but English (or, if you prefer, “the Common Speech”).

Watch the video, then, and see if you agree with Rob: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4npuVmGxXuk

And, if you’d like to try your hand at using the runes, here’s something to help—it’s a link to Harys Dalvi’s Old English runic keyboard:  https://www.harysdalvi.com/futhorc/  Harys Dalvi’s website is full of really interesting language and computer stuff and just plain fun:  https://www.harysdalvi.com/

Thanks, as always, for reading,

(ᚦᚫᛝᚳᛋ᛫ᚫᛋ᛫ᚫᛚᚹᛠᛋ᛫ᚠᚪᚱ᛫ᚱᛁᛁᛞᛁᛝ)

Stay well,

(ᛥᛠ᛫ᚹᛖᛚ)

Try runisizing today,

(ᛏᚱᚫᛁ᛫ᚱᚢᚾᛁᛋᛁᛋᛁᛝ᛫ᛏᚣᛞᛠ)

And remember that, as always, there’s

ᛗᚪᚱ᛫ᛏᚣ᛫ᚳᚢᛗ᛫ᛁᚾ᛫ᛞᚣ᛫ᚳᚣᚱᛋ

O

PS

At “wikiHow” there’s a pronunciation guide and a rather New Age interpretation of the Elder Futhark’s runes.  It’s fun, but, as it sits to the left of such “How” guides as “telekinesis”, and “reading palms”, I myself would stick to the pronunciations!  https://www.wikihow.com/Elder-Futhark-Runes 

PPS

And how could I resist listing this:  https://runicstudies.org/ the website for the American Association for Runic Studies?  If you get hooked on runes—and I think that that would be quite easy to do, especially after playing on Harys’ website—this site has links in all directions.

Simple Words

06 Wednesday Aug 2025

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Welcome, as always, dear readers.

I’ve read and reread Tolkien since the surprising appearance of this—

and the two volumes which followed–

which got me hooked and, as the (rather tired) saying goes, the rest is history—although I much prefer the genie’s words at the end of Disney’s Aladdin

“…ciao!  I’m history!  No, I’m mythology!”

as JRRT himself said of creating a language:

“As one suggestion, I might fling out the view that [in] the perfect construction of an art-language it is found necessary to construct at least in outline a mythology concomitant…because the making of language and mythology are related functions.”  (“A Secret Vice” in J.R.R. Tolkien, The Monsters and the Critics, 210)

In all of those readings, however, I’ve never quite believed something which Tolkien wrote—and more than once—that:

“The invention of languages is the foundation.  The ‘stories’ were made rather to provide a world for the languages than the reverse.” (taken from letter to the Houghton Mifflin Co., June, 1955, Letters, 319)

Gollum?  Saruman?  Grishnakh and Ugluk?  Treebeard?  Sam?  All created only so that they could speak JRRT’s languages?  Such vivid major and minor characters—surely there was also a pure pleasure not only in having them talk, but in what they said and what effect their talk—and actions—had on the ‘stories’?

I can certainly believe, however, that the languages were a major feature of JRRT’s making of Middle-earth—just the essay I quoted above—“A Secret Vice”– would show you just how devoted Tolkien was to languages and their creation, or look up “Languages” in the Index to Letters

and you’ll find two columns and a little more (pages 667-669) of references to languages, name-formation, Quenya vs Sindarin, Dwarvish, the Black Speech, and much more.  And, digging below the surface, you can find such details as Tolkien writing to a fan with the declension of two nouns in Quenya:  cirya, “ship” and lasse, “leaf” (declensions are patterns of noun/adjective formation in which the functions of the words are shown by their endings—think of “whose” and “whom” in English as the last remnants of something which would earlier have look like this:

Nominative (shows subject):   who

Genitive (shows possession):  whose

Dative (indirect object):   whom

Accusative (direct object/takes prepositions):  whom

Ablative (would take some other prepositions—fell together with the accusative):   whom

and there can be other endings—all called “case endings”—like the instrumental, the ending of which would tell you that the noun was being used as a means to do something, the locative, which indicates at what place something is, and the vocative, employed when you’re addressing someone/thing)

(see “From a letter to Dick Plotz, c.1967, Letters, 522-523)

Such profusion is in strong contrast to something which I discovered a week or two on YouTube.

One of the real pleasures I find there are the number of languages and essays about them available in great profusion.  One of my current favorites is a feature called “RobWords”, which is written and presented by Rob Watts, its subjects tending to center around English, but touching upon German and French, among other topics, as well.

It’s a very informative and light-hearted site with occasional surprises, as I found with one entitled “The World’s Smallest Language”, which introduced a conlang (constructed language—in fact, just like Tolkien’s languages), but with an extremely simple grammar and an initial vocabulary of 120 words:  “Toki Pona” (you can see the episode here:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PY3Qe_b9ufI )

The inventor, Sonja Lang, is, not surprisingly, a linguist, combining her knowledge of world languages with her own creations—something you might guess from the name of the language itself:  “toki” coming from the language “Tok Pisin”—that is, “Talk Pidgin”—“pidgin” meaning a kind of trade language—and “pona” coming from Latin “bonus –a –um”—“good”.  (More about pidgins here:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pidgin and Tok Pisin here:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tok_Pisin )

Here’s how Lang explains it:

“Toki Pona was my philosophical attempt to understand the meaning of life in 120 words. 

Through a process of soul-searching, comparative linguistics and playfulness, I designed a simple communication system to simplify my thoughts.”  (Toki Pona The Language of Good, Preface)

And simple it is:  things which appear in Indo-European languages like grammatical gender (whether a noun is masculine, feminine, or neuter—not important in English, but necessary, for instance, in language descended from Latin—Italian, French, Spanish, Catalan, Portuguese, and Romanian), plurals, case endings (see above), definite and indefinite articles (the/a/an in English) verb tenses, even more than one form for a verb—are all gone.  Sentence formation basically follows English, which is Subject, Verb, Object (SVO in linguistic terms—“Cats [subject] drink [verb] milk [object]”)—but use the link above to learn more and be entertained by a bit of a catchy pop song in Toki Pona.  If you want more about its grammar, see:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_PgytSj-YVE and, if you go to YouTube, there are many more places to visit.  If you watch these two videos, you’ll see that that simplicity might easily lead to vagueness (something which “RobWords” points out), but, for a fluent speaker, with an imagination, perhaps it’s less vague than may seem at first.  For example, watch this speaker demonstrate how you can create the term “video game” using only the readily-available vocabulary:  https://www.youtube.com/shorts/z2ltEHfgR2g

Tolkien had been a learner and admirer of an earlier conlang:  Esperanto (if you don’t know about it, see:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esperanto and https://esperanto.net/en/ ) and I wonder what he would have made of Toki Pona?  As a number of its words are derived from a language he loved, Finnish, I think that we might not be surprised if he found Toki Pona fun (see:  https://www.youtube.com/shorts/UoVTWjMrlp4  for a list of parallels between the two languages)—although he probably wouldn’t be able to resist adding to that 120-word basic vocabulary.

But all of this raises the question:  just how many words do you need to communicate?

In my science fiction reading, I’ve found one ingenious answer in a short story by Stanley G. Weinbaum, “A Martian Odyssey”, published in the July, 1934 issue of Wonder Stories.  For another wonder, it was his first published story in what was, unfortunately a brief career, Weinbaum dying in 1935.  (You can read more about him here:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanley_G._Weinbaum )

In this story, the main character, Jarvis, is one of a 4-man expedition, the first to reach Mars (and this is a Mars with Martian gravity, but also with a thin, breathable surface layer of oxygen).  While exploring, his ship crashes and he’s stranded many miles from where the rocket which brought the crew to Mars, the Ares, has landed.  While hoping that the others will search for him, he sets off to walk back towards the Ares and, in the process, rescues a local, whom he calls “Tweel”, as he can’t really pronounce the local’s actual name, that being a loose approximation.  He attempts to communicate, using a few words, based upon the setting, and then a little math, and it’s clear that the local understands some of what he tries to do, but, interestingly, while “Tweel” can speak a little of what Jarvis tries to convey, Jarvis has no luck—and doesn’t even really try—to speak the other’s language.  So, with about half-a-dozen words between them, they set off together on Jarvis’ original journey, meeting strange creatures—and a deadly one—on the way.

I won’t do a summary beyond this as, if you read this far and you’re interested in languages or science fiction, or both, you’ll want to read the story for yourself:  https://www.gutenberg.org/files/23731/23731-h/23731-h.htm

Thanks, as ever for reading,

Stay well,

mi tawa (“Goodbye” in Toki Pona—simply meaning “I’m going”, although I’d prefer to say the “hello” greeting, powa tawa sina—“peace be with you”),

And remember that, as always, there’s

MTCIDC

O

PS Weinbaum wrote a sequel to “A Martian Odyssey” which, if you enjoyed that story, you can read here:  https://gutenberg.org/cache/epub/22301/pg22301-images.html