Fimi - Tolkien's 'Celtic' Type of Legends

This is a preprint of an article published in Tolkien Studies 4 (2007): 51-71, available online at:
http://muse.jhu.edu/login?auth=0&type=summary&url=/journals/tolkien_studies/v004/4.1fimi.pdf.

Tolkiens Celtic type of legends: Merging Traditions

Dimitra Fimi

1. Tolkiens Celtic Library

After J.R.R. Tolkiens death, a number of books from his personal collection ended up in two
Oxford libraries. A small number are in the Bodleian Library, within the Tolkien manuscript
collection, in the section Tolkien E16. A considerably larger number are to be found in the
Library of the English Faculty. According to the librarys own classification system, the books
are shelved in section V, which is described as Tolkiens Celtic Library.
An initial reaction to this description might be surprise. Tolkiens dislike for things Celtic,
strongly expressed in his much-quoted 1937 letter to Stanley Unwin (Letters 26), is well
known and could be taken as a definitive discouragement to research in Tolkiens Celtic
sources. It is only recently that scholarship has attempted a serious evaluation of the Celtic
elements of Tolkiens inspiration (see Burns; Fimi; Flieger Interrupted Music). Nevertheless,
Tolkiens Celtic Library holds exciting revelations, if only for its sheer size. Over three
hundred books originally owned by Tolkien are held in the Bodleian and the English Faculty
Library, of which approximately a third belong to the discipline of Celtic Studies. It is, of
course, not easy to determine what percentage of the whole body of Tolkiens books they
comprise. It is known that the bulk of Tolkiens books passed initially to his son Christopher,
and that only a small part of these were donated to the two Oxford libraries mentioned
above, while others were sold through an Oxford bookseller (Anderson Personal). Still, this
data is both valuable and significant for Tolkien scholarship, especially in terms of his
involvement with Celtic Studies. Tolkiens Celtic Library at the English Faculty Library
consists of books on Celtic languages (including Welsh, Old and Middle Irish, Gaelic, and
Breton), and also an important number on Irish and Welsh medieval literature, together with
translations, editions and even facsimiles of manuscripts of original texts. An example of how
specialized this collection can be is the so-called Mabinogion from both the Red Book of
Hergest and the White Book of Rhydderch in four editions: those by Rhs and Evans (1887),
by Evans (1907), by Edwards (1921) and by Mhlhausen (1925), as well as its famous
translation by Lady Guest (1913). Tolkien also owned a copy of Pedeir Keinc y Mabinogi,
being a reduced reproduction of a part of the Rhs and Evans 1887 edition, bequeathed to
him by his school friend G.B. Smith, who died in the Great War. This is the only Celtic book
found within the Tolkien MS collection in the Bodleian library (Tolkien E16/20).
1

Many of the books in Tolkiens Celtic library are dated by him, and it is notable that one
third of them were bought between 1920 and 1926, most of them in 1922. Of course, that
could be a reflection of the book-buying zeal of a young academic who finds himself in his
first fulltime jobin 1920 Tolkien was appointed Reader and four years later Professor in
English Language at Leeds University, and many of his non-Celtic books are also dated

1
The collection also includes a separate edition of one of the Mabinogion tales, Peredur Ab Efrawc
(Meyer).

within this period. But, revealingly, it was in 1922 that he started working with his colleague
E. V. Gordon on the edition of the Middle English poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight,
which was finally published in 1925. During this period he also contributed to the Philology:
General Works section of the Years Work in English Studies, for three consecutive years,
presenting and reviewing academic works pertaining to philology. In his 1923 and 1924
articles he commented on publications of English place-names, including their Celtic
elements, and he voiced his views on the ongoing debate on the adventus Saxonum and the
role of the Celtic population of Britain (Tolkien Philology 1923 30-32; Philology 1924 58-
59). His interest in Celtic Studies was, therefore, very much at the core of his academic work
of this time.
The contents of Tolkiens Celtic Library not only add to our knowledge of what he was
familiar with in Celtic Studies; they can also occasionally offer insights into his sources for
specific works. An example is The Lay of Aotrou and Itroun. This long poem was written
during the nineteen-thirties but not published until 1945 in the Welsh Review. The tragic
story of the childless lord and his disastrous dealings with a Corrigan has long been
recognised as inspired by the legends of Brittany (Carpenter 167-68). Jessica Yates has
discussed in detail the origins of Tolkiens poem, and has contested Tom Shippeys claim
that Tolkiens main source was Le Seigneur Nann et la Fe from Wimberlys collection of
English and Scottish ballads (1928). Yates argues that Tolkien could have equally started
from Aotrou Nann hag ar Corrigan from Childs collection English and Scottish Popular
Ballads (1882) which Shippey also cites as one of the books that Tolkien certainly knew,
although he does not associate it with The Lay of Aotrou and Itroun (65-66). Yates also
refers to two translations of the folk poem mentioned by Wimberley (Keightley and Taylor)
that Tolkien might have also known and Shippey, in his revised The Road to Middle-earth
adds a note where he agrees that Keightleys book could have also been a possible source
of Tolkiens poem (446). Yates, however, makes it clear that the ultimate source of the folk
poem in both Childs and Wimberleys collection is named as Villemarqus Barzas-Breis:
Chants Populaires de la Bretagne. Villemarqu was the nineteenth-century folklorist who
originally collected and recorded the poem. In an older article, Alexi Kondratiev had argued
for Villemarqu as the source for Tolkiens Aotrou and Itroun, although he admitted that
there was no proof of Tolkien having read the Barzas-Breis and thus concluded that Tolkien
must have known the story from another source. Yates refers briefly to Kondratievs article
and claims that the lack of proof does not mean that Tolkien did not read Villemarqu (66).
Tolkiens Celtic Library proves her right: Tolkien owned his own copy of Villemarqus
Barzas-Breis. He also owned the Lais of Marie de France, edited by Karl Warnke, which
according to ShippeyTolkien imitated in Aotrou and Itroun (277). Both books, together
with a few other volumes on Breton folklore and some books on the Breton language, are in
Tolkiens Celtic Library and most of them were bought between 1920-1922.
The Book of Lost Tales, the earliest version of Tolkiens early nationalistic project for a
mythology for England, included Celtic elements which I have discussed in detail before
(Fimi). What I wish to demonstrate in this article is how Tolkiens continuous involvement in
Celtic Studies can account for an unbroken sequence of Celtic elements sneaking into
Middle-earth, whether intentionally or not. In The Book of Lost Tales the story of the Tuatha
D Danann already played an important role as an inspiration for the tragic story of the
Gnomess departure from Valinor, and the whole framework of the Irish Book of Invasions

was used as a model for the pseudo-historic Seven Invasions of Luthany (Fimi 161-64). In
the next stage of the evolution of the Lost Tales, c. 1920, the narrative of lfwine of
England emerged. The story of lfwine, like its predecessor, the story of Eriol, was
conceived as an integral part of the framework for presenting the Lost Tales and
associated the Lost Tales with England, and especially Anglo-Saxon England.
2
However,
Tolkien introduced an unexpected change to lfwines pedigree. Instead of being a pure
Anglo-Saxon, lfwine is portrayed as being the son of Dor, a man of English blood and
adgifu, a maiden from the West, from Lionesse as some have named it since (Lost Tales
II 313). Now, Lionesse (or Lyonesse, as it is usually spelt) brings to mind the Arthurian
legend; Cornish and Breton folklore about sunken lands, and also evokes a certain air of the
medieval romances. Given his well-publicized rejection of things Celtic, could all of this
sound more Un-Tolkienian? Nevertheless, the character of adgifu from Lionesse can serve
as the first missing piece of the legendarium jigsaw-puzzle as a merging of Anglo-Saxon and
Celtic traditions, rather than a favoring of the former and a rejection of the latter as Tolkien
would have us believe. In the following parts of the article I will explore Tolkiens work after
the Book of Lost Tales, notably his writings between the 1920s and 1940s, and I will attempt
to provide further evidence that supports the importance of his Celtic Library to his work.
This library was not merely a marginal academic interest, but demonstrates his continuous
fascination with the mythic and legendary past of Britain.

2. Time-travel Stories and the Blending of Celtic and Anglo-Saxon Traditions

lfwines Anglo-Saxon and Celtic ancestry is indeed an important change to the original
conception of the Book of Lost Tales. Lyonesse is one of those enchanted places of
Arthurian romance, usually associated with Tristan or Galahad. It has been claimed to have
been originally Leonais in Brittany or Lothian in Scotland, but it is most often linked to a part
of Cornwall which in legend was sunk under the sea.
3
It is probable that Tolkien had
Cornwall in mind as Lionesse, since in The Lost Road, the next of his writings in which
elfwine appears, his wife (rather than his mother) is said to be from Cornwall (Lost Road
84-85).
The Lost Road began as part of an agreement between Tolkien and C. S. Lewis to write,
respectively, a time-travel and a space-travel story (Letters 347, 378). In Lewiss case the
result was Out of the Silent Planet (1938). Tolkiens very ambitious plan of time-travel, which
remained unfinished, involved a series of fathers and a sons (always bearing names that
could be translated as Bliss-friend and Elf-friend) re-livingby means of dreamsold
myths and legends, concluding with the fall of Nmenor. Tolkien only wrote two parts of the
book: the opening chapters, concerning father and son of modern times, Alboin and
Audoin, and the Nmenrean chapters, concerning Elendil and Herendil of Nmenor.
Nevertheless, we have his notes and drafts of the unwritten chapters that would come
between the old and the modern father-and-son stories. It is within these notes and drafts
that one finds such Germanic myths and legends as the Lombard legend of Alboin, the semi-
mythical semi-historical Norse story of the voyage to Vinland, and the legend of King

2
The role of Eriol and lfwine as mediators in the Lost Tales and their role in linking Tolkiens
mythology with England have been discussed by Verlyn Flieger (Footsteps) and Michael Drout.
3
For an overview see The New Arthurian Encyclopedia (Lacy 287-88).

Sheave. At the same time, the Anglo-Saxon poem The Seafarer would also become an
integral part of one of the unfinished father-son stories, the Anglo-Saxon episode of the
book, featuring Aelfwine and his son Eadwine. In the draft of that part, lfwine recites a
slightly modified version of lines 36-38 and 44-46 of The Seafarer.
In The Seafarer a mariner recounts his wretched experiences at sea, but he also expresses
his urge to live the seamans life. Tolkiens translation of, and intervention in, these six lines
reads:
The desire of my spirit urges me to journey forth over the flowing sea, that far hence
across the hills of water and the whales country I may seek the land of strangers. No
mind have I for harp, nor gift of ring, nor delight in women, nor joy in the world, nor
concern with aught else save the rolling of the waves. (Lost Road 84)
It seems that the way Tolkien was planning to use the poem would be as an expression of
lfwines desire to sail upon the western sea and find the Straight Road, the Lost Road
that leads to Valinor and the Elves even after the world is bent. What is surprising is that he
seems to associate lfwines voyage to the West with the immram genre of Irish tradition
and specifically with the voyage of St. Brendan, which Tolkien was to use again in his later
writings. Already in the outlines he was drafting for the Lost Road, among Northern stories
with a shared Germanic background that Tolkien regarded as part of Englands past, he had
included a Tuatha-de-Danaan story, or Tir-nan-g, and in another outline the Irish legend
of Tuatha-de-Danaanand oldest man in the world (Lost Road 77, 78).
4

The mention of Tir-nan-g, the otherworldly land of Irish tradition, is very significant here.
The idea of the Western happy otherworld island and the geography and function of Valinor,
are points of similarity between Tolkiens mythos and Celtic legends that can hardly be
missed. In the Lost Road, the title itself seems to refer to the lost road to the West, to Valinor
where the Elves live. In other drafts and extracts of the Anglo-Saxon part of the story there
are also references to the voyage of St. Brendan and of Maelduin and to the Insula
Deliciarum (Lost Tales 80, 84-85). The location of the Celtic otherworld in overseas islands
has been disputed in later scholarship (see Carey; Carney), and the generally accepted view
today is that the concept is of ecclesiastical origin and goes back to the biblical earthly
paradise (Dumville; Mac Mathna 280-85).
However, when Tolkien was writing The Lost Road this hypothesis had still not been
vigorously challenged. From 1924, Tolkien was already thinking of parallels between the
Celtic otherworld and Valinor when he wrote a poem entitled The Nameless Land. In it he
talks about a heavenly overseas island, which he compares to Tr-nan g and to the
Christian Paradise. Although no name is given to the island, nor Elves are mentioned, he
was probably thinking of Valinor, the blissful land of the Elves. The poem includes the
following lines: Such loveliness to look upon / no Bran nor Brendan ever won (Lost Road

4
Norma Roche has explored the significance of the story of St. Brendan and the idea of a Western
Otherworld island in Tolkiens work. Her article was published before the ninth volume of the History
of Middle-earth was released (1992), which contained The Notion Club Papers, and so her discussion
is restricted to the evidence in The Lost Road. More recently, Verlyn Flieger has also discussed
Tolkiens debt to the story of St. Brendan, including how the poem Imram is now recognised as part
of The Notion Club Papers (Interrupted Music 130-34).

99), which refers to the voyage of St. Brendan and to the journey of Bran (Immram Brain),
another account of a sea expedition involving otherworld islands, also belonging to the
immram tradition (see Mac Mathu
na).
Tolkien seems to have thought that there was an intriguing point of similarity between the
Germanic legends of sea-voyages and the Irish immram tradition. The legend of King
Sheave, especially as found in Beowulf, where the story is attached to Scyld, seems to have
occupied a lot of his time and study (see Lost Road 92-98). In Beowulf, Scyld arrives as a
child from the sea and his provenance remains mysterious. He becomes a renowned king of
the Danes, and when he dies his body is placed in a ship, together with all of his treasures,
and is given to the sea, sailing on its own accord to an unknown destination (see lines 26-
52). In a quotation from an undated lecture by Tolkien on this subject, as given by his son
Christopher, one can read that in Beowulf:
the poet is not explicit, and the idea was probably not fully formed in his mindthat
Scyld went back to some mysterious land whence he had come. He came out of the
Unknown beyond the Great Sea, and returned into It... In the last lines Men can give
no certain account of the havens where that ship was unladed we catch an echo of
the mood of pagan times in which ship-burial was practised. A mood in which the
symbolism (what we should call the ritual) of a departure over the sea whose further
shore was unknown; and an actual belief in a magical land or otherworld located
over the sea, can hardly be distinguished. (Lost Road 95-96)
It seems that by incorporating in his legendarium the Celtic tradition, Tolkien was able to
establish a pagan, pre-Christian otherworld that the Anglo-Saxons also knew, and that the
poets of The Seafarer and Beowulf alluded to, a land where the real Elves were, a land that
was central in his conception of a mythology for England. The Lost Road is the first
instance in Tolkiens writings in which the Irish tradition is clearly accepted as part of the
same whole of Northern European myth and legend, and as part of what he was trying to
reconstruct for England. Tolkien had started preparing an edition of The Seafarer with E. V.
Gordon, which was left unfinished after he moved to Oxford.
5
The notes they had kept were
finally used by Gordons wife Ida in her 1960 edition of the poem (Gordon 17-18), and it is
noteworthy that in the introductory remarks to that edition the Old English poem, along with
other lyric-elegies, is compared with Celtic poetry of the same kind and is attributed to a
Celtic inspiration (Gordon 17-18). Using The Seafarer in the same context with the story of
St. Brendan and Tir-nan-g, and giving lfwine a wife from Cornwallstating also that the
Welsh tongue is not strange to him (Lost Road 84)seems to confirm Tolkiens acceptance
of an unavoidable historical amalgamation of Celtic and Anglo-Saxon cultures.
Later on, Tolkien elaborated on some of the ideas that first appeared in The Lost Road and
included them in The Notion Club Papers, another abortive time-travel book very much along
the same lines as the former (Sauron 145-237). This was written between 1945-46, but this
time the dreamers that travel to the past are Oxford dons that belong to a literary group, the
Notion Club, which is very reminiscent of the Inklings, the group that C. S. Lewis and

5
The projects of academic collaboration, fruitful or not, between Tolkien and Gordon, including the
edition of The Seafarer, have been discussed by Anderson (Industrious). Wilcox has also referred to
their collaboration on The Seafarer in her discussion of that poems impact on Tolkiens literature.

Tolkien himself belonged to. In this work the dreamers travel back in time in the realm of
myth and legend, although this time they mainly find themselves in places from Tolkiens
own mythology, like Nmenor and Valinor. However, during a gathering of the Notion Club,
one of the members, Frankley, reads a poem he has written, entitled The Death of St.
Brendan (Sauron 261-64). Here, the Saint is portrayed as narrating the most memorable of
his legendary voyages to a younger monk, before he dies. The younger monk is already
interrogating him about islands by deep spells beguiled /where dwell the Elven-kind, asking
if he found the road to Heaven or the Living Land (Sauron 261). St. Brendan talks about an
island where he and his companions saw a tree with white leaves. Suddenly the leaves of
the tree fell and flew to the sky, and coming from them they heard:
a music not of bird,
not voice of man, nor angels voice;
but maybe there is a third
fair kindred in the world yet lingers
beyond the foundered land. (Sauron 263)
This incident is strictly modelled upon one of the episodes in the Navigatio Sancti Brendani
abbatis (The Voyage of Saint Brendan the abbot), an early tenth-century Latin prose version
of St. Brendans legend, written by an Irish author and imitating the immram genre of Irish
medieval literature. In this episode the Saint comes to the Paradise of Birds, where he
encounters a magnificent tree with white birds. He learns from one of them that they are
spirits that fell as a result of Lucifers rebellion, not being part of his followers, but not part of
the faithful either (OMeara and Wooding 34, 36). Indeed, Tolkien has the members of the
Notion Club discussing the sources of Frankleys poem. The poet himself admits that: I
read the Navigatio Sancti Brendani, of course, once upon a time, years ago, as well as that
early Anglo-French thing, Benedeit's Vita (Sauron 265), the latter being the early fourteenth
century Anglo-Norman Voyage de Saint Brendan (see Burgess). Lowdham, another member
of the Club, dismisses both sources as rather dismal. Whatever merits they may have, any
glimmer of a perception of what they are talking about is not one of them and he also
adds for the latter source that you wont learn much about the West from that. However, he
refers to the actual episode of the tree and the birds in the Navigatio, by saying:
And the Tree in St. Brendan was covered with white birds that were fallen angels.
The one really interesting idea in the whole thing, I thought: they were angels that
lived in a kind of limbo, because they were only lesser spirits that followed Satan only
as their feudal overlord, and had no real part, by will or design, in the Great
Rebellion. But you make them a third fair race. (Sauron 265)
Indeed, in Frankleys poem of St. Brendans voyages, the fallen angels have been
transformed to Tolkiens own Elves, and that makes the poem a good source of information
about the true West, in contrast with the Navigatio. What should also be pointed out here is
that in Irish folklore, in many occasions elves and fairies were considered to be actually
fallen angels, a view that originated in an effort to impose biblical exegesis onto folk belief
that was supposed to be a remnant of pagan religions of the past ( hgain 187-88).
Verlyn Flieger has added one more element of Celtic inspiration in the canvas of The Lost
Road and The Notion Club Papers: that of the legends of sunken lands in Celtic sources. As

a parallel to Platos Atlantis, she cites the Welsh Cantref of Gwaelod, the Breton Ker-Ys, the
Irish Hy-Brasil, and the Cornish Lyonesse (Interrupted Music 125-30). Tolkien was certainly
familiar with such legends, and indeed they might have played an important role in
contextualizing his Atlantis complex within British (rather than Classical) tradition. The
inclusion of the new version of the Atlantis legend in his mythology would, thus, be justified
as an integral part of Britains past. The mention of Lyonesse or Lionesse brings to mind the
Arthurian legend, and especially its French versions. The next two sections of this essay will
explore Tolkien and the Arthurian legend as a continuation of the blending of traditions of the
British Isles in Tolkiens work.

3. The Continuing Fascination of the Arthurian Legend
Tolkiens views on the Arthurian legend and the reasons whyfor himit did not qualify as
English mythology were expressed in his 1951 letter to Milton Waldman (Letters 144).
Flieger has discussed Tolkiens charges against the Matter of Britain: its Christian elements,
incoherence, lavish fantasy, and repetitiveness, and its Britishness rather than
Englishness (Matter of Britain). Still, Tolkiens fascination with the Arthurian legend
persisted from his childhood to his mature years. Carpenter notes Tolkiens enthusiasm for
the Arthurian legend in his childhood (22). This enthusiasm might have been further
enhanced by his school friend G. B. Smith and the latters keen interest in the Celticand
particularly Welshtradition. Smith was an admirer of the Mabinogion tales, which he was
re-reading while in the trenches of World War I, and of the Arthurian legend, particularly its
Welsh origins rather than its more famous French versions. He was an aspiring poet, one of
his longest poems, entitled Glastonbury, having an Arthurian subject. He also seemed to
know the Welsh triads, he showed an interest for the Welsh language itself, and he
esteemed the poetry of W.B. Yeats (Garth 7, 32, 55, 67, 82, 122, 195).
6

During 1925-27, Tolkien composed a story for his son Michael entitled Roverandom, which
was published posthumously (1998). In that story Tolkien included as a character a white
dragon, who turns out to be a familiar one in Arthurian tradition:
All the white dragons originally come from the moon, as you probably know; but this
one had been to the world and back, so he had learned a thing or two. He fought the
Red Dragon in Caerdragon in Merlins time, as you will find in all the more up-to-date
history books; after which the other dragon was Very Red. Later he did lots more
damage in the Three Islands, and went to live on the top of Snowdon for a time.
People did not bother to climb up while that lastedexcept for one man, and the
dragon caught him drinking out of a bottle. That man finished in such a hurry that he
left the bottle on the top, and his example has been followed by many people since.
A long time since, and not until the dragon had flown off to Gwynfa, some time after
King Arthurs disappearance, at a time when dragons tails were esteemed a great
delicacy by the Saxon Kings. (33)

6
Apart from Pedeir Keinc y Mabinogi, Tolkiens Celtic Library includes five more books bequeathed to
him by G.B. Smith. These are An English-Welsh Pronouncing Dictionary (Spurrell), Hanes A Chan
(Edwards 1908), Essai sur La Composition du Roman Gallois de Peredur (Williams), Gwaith Samuel
Roberts (Roberts), and Gwaith Twm o'r Nant (Edwards 1909).

Although humorous and light-hearted, this passage alludes to the famous story of the White
and Red Dragons, symbolizing the Anglo-Saxons and the Welsh respectively, which is
mostly known from Merlins prophecy in Geoffrey of Monmouths Historia Regum Britanniae
(Book VII, Chapter III). Tolkien also alludes to the earlier version of the legend, recorded in
the Mabinogion story Lludd and Llefelys, in which the two dragons end up at mount
Snowdon in Wales.
7

At some point in the 1930s Tolkien started working on a long poem entitled The Fall of
Arthur. The poem remained unfinished, and it has never been published or made available
to consult in its entirety. As a result, the only noteworthy information about it can be traced in
Tolkiens own letters as well as in his authorized biography by Humphrey Carpenter, who
had access to Tolkiens manuscript. Carpenter describes the poem as an individual
rendering of the Morte dArthur, and provides a very brief outline of the work, concentrating
rather on the characters of Mordred and Guinever (Carpenter 168-69). Carpenter seems to
be pointing to Malorys Morte DArthur as an immediate source for Tolkiens poem. However,
Tolkiens poem was written in alliterative metre, while Malorys is in prose.
There are actually two very short fragments, of no more than forty-five lines in total, from the
unpublished Fall of Arthur available to the researcher within Tolkiens manuscripts at the
Bodleian (Tolkien A 30/1, Folios 90-91). Although they constitute too small a sample for any
valuable judgment of the poem, and some of the lines are very difficult to decipher due to
Tolkiens notoriously difficult handwriting, it is significant that Christopher Tolkiens note on
the Folio refers to the poem as Morte Arthure. This title would not point to Malorys poem
but rather to the Middle-English text known as the Alliterative Morte Arthure.
8
This is a late
fourteenth-century Arthurian romance, which, together with the almost contemporary
Stanzaic Morte Arthur, forms the main English Arthurian tradition before Malory (Benson 2).
Tolkien might have showed a preference for this poem rather than for Malorys work
because of it being part of the alliterative revival, a literary movement which began in the
mid-fourteenth century and included such works as the anonymous Sir Gawain and the
Green Knight, which Tolkien co-edited with his colleague E. V. Gordon and also translated
into Modern English alliterative verse. Carl Phelpstead has discussed in detail the
importance of the alliterative form for the Inklings, and its associations with Englishness and
English identity, and has suggested that they attempted a second alliterative revival in the
twentieth-century (457).
9

In addition, in his 1935 essay The Alliterative Metre, C.S. Lewis talks about a return to our
own ancient system, the alliterative line, against the long reign of foreign, syllabic metres in
English. He goes on to refer to the alliterative poetry of Auden, adding that Professor
Tolkien will soon, I hope, be ready to publish an alliterative poem (Rehabilitations 119). The
Tolkien poem that Lewis refers to can definitely be identified as the unfinished Fall of Arthur

7
Tolkien also refers to the story of Lludd and Llefelys in his ODonnell lecture English and Welsh
(MC 189). For a commentary on the extract quoted see also Sculls and Hammonds notes in their
edition of Roverandom (101-3).
8
For an introduction to the poem see Johnson.
9
Phelpstead also refers to the alliterative verses contained in The Lord of the Rings, and claims that
The enormous popularity of this book means that these verses must be the most widely read
alliterative poetry of the twentieth century, if not of any period (444).

(Selected Literary Essays 15). It is known that the poem was read and praised by E. V.
Gordon and R. W. Chambers, the latter describing it as: great stuffreally heroic, quite
apart from its value as showing how the Beowulf metre can be used in modern English
(Carpenter 168). In this context, Tolkiens desire to finish the poem as late as 1955 (Letters
219) can be justified.
Apart from a tribute to the alliterative form, though, the poem could also be a tribute to the
Arthur of the English, to the English Arthurian tradition. Unfortunately, Tolkiens Fall of
Arthur is not available to consult and compare with either Malorys Morte dArthur, or the
Alliterative Morte Arthure, but both works would qualify as depicting an English Arthur, as
opposed to a Welsh, or even worse for Tolkien, a French one. In an article written around
the same time when Tolkiens Arthurian poem was being composed, E. V. Gordon published
an article (together with E. Vinaver) on the Alliterative Morte Arthure, discussing the new
light thrown on it by the discovery of the Winchester manuscript of Malorys Morte Arthure.
This discovery had caused excitement in the academic world and might have contributed to
Tolkiens Arthurian venture.
After the 1930s and The Fall of Arthur Tolkiens next engagement with the Arthurian legend
was in his unfinished work The Notion Club Papers, in which discussions held by the
members of the Notion Club reveal once more Tolkiens continuous fascination with the story
of Arthur. In the record of Night 65, after a missing leaf in the account, Jeremy and Frankley
start a conversation about myth and reality, about mythical and historical truth. Jeremy
argues that there is truth in myths, although this would not necessarily be the conventional
scientific truth we think of today. He also argues that real details, facts. like real
historical personalities, are caught up in myth: the example he uses is that There was a
man called Arthur at the centre of the cycle (Sauron 227). Frankley is quick to respond and
reject the Arthurian romances as real but Jeremy insists that they might be real in a
different way than true past events are. This argument about a historical Arthur being
caught up in myth had been explored previously by Tolkien in his 1939 Andre Lang lecture
On Fairy-stories. Talking about the Pot of Soup, the Cauldron of Story, and on how folk
stories are born and developed, he writes:
It seems fairly plain that Arthur, once historical (but perhaps as such not of great
importance), was also put into the Pot. There he was boiled for a long time, together
with many other older figures and devices, of mythology and Faerie, and even some
other stray bones of history (such as Alfreds defence against the Danes), until he
emerged as a King of Faerie. (MC 126)
This seems like a conclusive view, following the model of folklore theory. Still, the historicity
of Arthur, and the lack of enough documents for the study of the origins of the Arthurian
legend seemed to concern Tolkien later on, when he was writing the Notion Club Papers.
The record of the Notion Club for Night 61 includes a dream scene that Ramer narrates to
the rest of the members. This is the image of an old librarian looking through a volume
made up of various manuscript-fragments bound together, probably in the sixteenth century.
Ramer continues:
In the remembered bit of the dream I knew I had been able to read the page before
he turned over, and that it was not English; but I could remember no more than

thatexcept that I was delighted, or he was. Actually it was a leaf, a unique fragment
of a MS. in very early Welsh, before Geoffrey, about the death of Arthur. (Sauron
192)
Even the hint of the existence of such a manuscript would not only be of superlative
importance in the study of the Arthurian legend as Christopher Tolkien notes (Sauron 216),
but would re-open heated debates about the historicity of Arthur and thorny issues about
national identity and culture. Geoffrey of Monmouths Historia Regum Britannie has always
been considered as the work that popularized Arthur and made him an internationally
recognized hero, but also as a work that gave Arthur a mythical aura, thus obscuring the
origins of the legend, which might point to the historical Arthur. Indeed, most academic work
on the historicity of Arthur concentrates by default on the pre-Galfridian material.
Tolkiens rejection of the Arthurian legend as an authentic part of Englands heritage must be
taken with a pinch of salt, and the same is valid for his whole reaction to things Celtic, as I
have argued elsewhere (Fimi 156-70). Tolkiens Anglo-Saxonism was a major strand of his
mythology, indeed instrumental in the creation of the Middle-earth saga, but after the Lost
Tales he seems to have started thinking in more British terms. After the Anglo-Saxon
material that Tolkien looked up to and used in his legendarium, the Middle English literature
followed. Middle English literature was under the shadow of French cultural influence, which
was becoming dominant in the rest of Europe at the time. The French form of the romance
was introduced in England, and the Arthurian legend was re-introduced in its French guise,
notably through Chrtien de Troyess romances. Some of the most important texts of that
period were either translated or adapted from French sources. Tolkien held in great esteem
such Middle English texts as Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and Sir Orfeo, two works that
he had studied extensively. His own edition of Sir Gawain (with E. V. Gordon) recognizes the
French influence on the poem (Tolkien and Gordon xii-v), while in his editorial notes to his
Middle English Version of Sir Orfeo he seems to subscribe to the theory that the poem is a
translation or adaptation of a lost Old French original (Hostetter 104). The Arthur of the
English was a fusion of its Celtic origins, its French re-working, and its Middle-English
context. Tolkiens attempt for an Arthurian poem modelledat least in terms of metreupon
the Alliterative Morte Arhure was an acknowledgment of the Arthurian legend as an integral
part of Englands cultural and mythical heritage, whatever its historical origin.

4. Middle-English, French and Celtic: The Lay of Leithian
As briefly referred to above, in the early 1920s Tolkien gave his key character lfwine a
mother from Lionesse, the romance country of Lyonesse of the Arthurian legend. In the
period 1925-1927, before the Lost Road venture, Tolkien began a long poem on the story of
Beren and Lthien, a story already told in the Book of Lost Tales. The poem was called The
Lay of Leithian, its extended title being The Gest of Beren son of Barahir and Lthien the
Fay called Tinviel the Nightingale, or the Lay of Leithian Release from Bondage. The poem
seems to have a Middle-English atmosphere. The word gest used in its title would allude to
the French chansons de geste, mainly associated with the matter of France. However, the
term has also been used for accounts of the Arthurian legend in France and Britain. As
Christopher Tolkien notes, lines 2298-9 and 2348-9 of the Lay come more or less directly
from lines 285-6 of Sir Orfeo and seem also to echo Tolkiens translation of these lines (Lays

237, 238, 248). In addition to that, Tolkien also uses in the Lay two archaic words he also
used in his translation of the Middle-English poem Pearl: ruel-bone for some kind of ivory,
and stared for shone, the latter coming straight from the original (Lays 236, 266, 371;
Tolkien Sir Gawain 92, 94). But probably the most striking French-cum-Arthurian reference
in the Lay is the location of Thingols kingdom, which is initially called Broceliand, and in a
later draft Broseliand (Lays 158, 159, 160).
The forest of Brocliande is one of the most famous Arthurian locations associated with
Brittany. It features in Chrtien de Troyess Yvain, it is mentioned in the writings of Giraldus
Cambrensis, and its marvels are described by Wace, an Anglo-Norman poet who wrote the
Geste des Bretuns, today better known as the Roman de Brut.
10
The Roman de Brut was
based on Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia and of course covered the story of Arthur, which
was becoming more and more popular at that time. Tolkiens term Broceliand/Broseliand
underwent much consideration and change and ended up in the much more familiar
Tolkienian name Beleriand, but if the poem is read with the reader substituting Beleriand for
Broceliand/Broseliand, as it was initially, then its Arthurian/Celtic ambience becomes
immediately discernible.
The most telling sign is the motif of the relationship of a fairy woman with a mortal man,
which had always been a favorite Celtic theme.
11
Indeed, such fay women are also
frequently encountered in French Arthurian romances. In the Lay, both Lthien and her
mother Melian are referred to as fays (Lays 153, 172, 229), and their stories follow that
motif: Lthien is an elf or fairy who gives her love to a mortal man, while in the case of
Thingol and Melian we have an analogue of the same idea: Thingol is an elf himself, but
Melian is a Maia, a higher being than Thingol and closer to the Valar. Marjorie Burns has
also noted Melians Arthurian heritage, remarking that the various names that Tolkien
considered for her in The Book of Lost Tales, including Wendelin, Gwendeling, Gwenniel,
Gwenethlin, Gwendhiling, Gwendelin, and Gwedhelin, have a clear Arthurian ring (196).
Especially the initial g or w of the name brings to mind the names Waynor and Gaynor,
used interchangeably for Guinevere in the alliterative Morte Arthure (see for example l. 84
and l. 233).
In a 1954 letter to Naomi Mitchison Tolkien seems to openly contradict his 1937 letter to
Allen and Unwin, in which he refutes the characterisation of his works as Celtic. He writes:
The living language of the Western Elves (Sindarin or Greyelven) is the one usually
met, especially in names. This is derived from an origin common to it and Quenya;
but the changes have been deliberately devised to give it a linguistic character very
like (though not identical with) British-Welsh: because that character is one that I find,
in some linguistic moods, very attractive; and because it seems to fit the rather
Celtic type of legends and stories told of its speakers. (Letters 176)

10
For the forest of Brocliande see The New Arthurian Encyclopedia (Lacy 55).
11
It seems that Tolkien was undecided for a while whether Beren would be a man or an elf.
Christopher Tolkien refers to the lost original of the Tale of Tinviel where Beren was a man, in
contrast to Beren being an elf in the extant version of the Tale (Lost Tales II 52, 139). However, from
The Lay of Leithien and on Berens identity is securely fixed as that of a man.

Which are these Celtic type of legends that the Grey Elves, the Sindar, seem to have? I
would argue that it is exactly the story of the Lay of Leithian, the story of Beren and
Lthien, and the previous parallel story of Melian and Thingol. Indeed, this seems to be the
main legend of the Sindar, who speak a language much like Welsh in its phonetic structure.
Melian is referred to as a fay throughout the Book of Lost Tales (Lost Tales I 120; Lost
Tales II 9, 10, 43, 76, 96, 233) and there are further Celtic elements in the original Tale of
Tinviel, elements that were later further developed in The Lay of Leithian. The original
idea of the Girdle of Melian seems to be very much like the enchanted forests of the
Arthurian romances, so that the name Broceliand/Broseliand used in the Lay seems to fit
very well:
Hidden was his dwelling from the vision and knowledge of Melko by the magics of
Gwendeling the fay, and she wove spells about the paths thereto that none but the
Eldar might tread them easily, and so was the king secured from all dangers save it
be treachery alone. (Lost Tales II 9; my emphasis)
Also, both the Tale and the Lay make use of a triad, which seems to work as a mnemonic
device, exactly in the same way as the Welsh triads were used. By arranging names, place-
names or storylines in groups of three, the bards could recall more easily a major part of the
body of orally preserved Welsh repertoire of myths and legends (Bromwich lxv). Both in the
Tale and the Lay, the triad concern Lthiens brother, Dairon, who was one of the three
most magic players of the Elves, listing Tinfang Warble and Ivr who plays beside the
sea as the other two (Lost Tales II 10). The triad in the Lay runs thus:
Such players have there only been
thrice in all Elfinesse, I ween:
Tinfang Gelion who still the moon
enchants on summer nights of June
and kindles the pale firstling star;
and he who harps upon the far
forgotten beaches and dark shores
where western foam for ever roars,
Maglor whose voice is like the sea;
and Dairon, mightiest of the three. (Lays 174)
The use of triads in Tolkiens legendarium is quite rare, and it cannot be accidental that two
of them appear in the most famous legend of the Sindar.
Finally, some later evidence that Tolkien was still thinking of the story of Beren and Lthien
as Celtic/Arthurian, can be found in The Etymologies, written in the late 1930s, and in the
map that accompanied the Later Quenta Silmarillion, written in the 1950s. In the
Etymologies, under the stems GAT(H)-, GARAT- and THUR-, the word Garthurian
appears, explained as Fenced Realm, and is used to refer to Doriath (Lost Road 358, 360,
393). In the map associated with the Later Quenta Silmarillion, we find the place-name
Garthurian at the edges of Doriath (Morgoth 183). In his commentary on the map
Christopher Tolkien adds his father note that the Noldor often used the name Arthurien for
Doriath, though this is but an alteration of the Sindarin Garthurian hidden realm (Morgoth
189).

Tolkiens linguistic invention was a serious philological venture, which simulated the process
through which real languages develop. For example, when composing his Elvish languages,
Tolkien would establish first the common Proto-Elvish root and then modify it to fit its
development into words in Quenya and Sindarin, following the phonetic rules he had
established for these languages.
12
However, inventing the root first was not always the
case. As Christopher Tolkien notes, already from the period of the Lost Tales, in some cases
the word was already there and its etymology was worked out backwards (Lost Tales I
246). In the early documents of the Qenya and the Gnomish Lexicons, it seems that
some sort of historical punning was present as Christopher Tolkien notes on his
introduction.
13
I would suggest that Arthurien and Garthurien for Doriath is such a
historical punning, linking this Middle-earth location with its original conception as
Broseliand/Broceliand, and alluding to the Celtic type of legends of its people.

5. Merging Traditions
In his 1955 ODonnell lecture English and Welsh, Tolkien referred to the appeal of Welsh
as a native language, noting that for satisfaction and therefore for delight... we are still
British at heart (MC 194). This acceptance of the term British is remarkable. As late as
1943 Tolkien still insisted on the distinction of English and British when talking about
patriotism: For I love England (not Great Britain and certainly not the British Commonwealth
(grr!) (Letters 65).
14
However, the transition from English (which would have primarily meant
Anglo-Saxon), to British (which would include the merging of different traditions, including
Celtic and French, and would start with the Middle English period) was gradual in Tolkiens
mind and was also reflected as a gradual process in his creative writings. As discussed
above, the Book of Lost Tales already included Celtic elements, and the Lost Road made an
explicit declaration of the blending of Irish and Anglo-Saxon traditions. At the same time the
Sindar were always associated with a language very similar to Welsh, and their most famous
legend, the story of Beren and Lthien, was, from early on, conceived as a Celtic type of
legend, very close to medieval Arthurian romances.
Finally, Arthur as a historical and mythical figure was always present in Tolkiens
imagination, leading to the writing of one more unfinished work. It seems that by the end of
his life Tolkien explicitly acknowledged what is true for many nation-states and their history:
that purity of tradition is not a realistic part of the process of nation-building, and that
significant merging of peoples, languages, and cultural elements occurs. Especially in the

12
This process can be attested in the fact that when he attempted to record his languages in a
dictionary form he often listed the Proto-Elvish roots alphabetically, with derived words under every
entry. This is how, for example, the Qenya Lexicon and the Etymologies work. This account of
Tolkiens creation of languages is, of course, an over-simplified one that does not reflect the
successive layers of revisions and alterations.
13
For example, the root SAHA, meaning be hot produces (apart from saiwa, hot or sara fiery) the
word Sahora, the South. This historical punning seems also to be true of the word Atalantie
meaning Downfall in Quenya. Tolkien himself seems to be making a semi-humorous note on this
coincidence, by writing: It is a curious chance that the stem talat used in Q[uenya] for slipping,
sliding, falling down, of which atalantie is a normal (in Q) noun-formation, should so much resemble
Atlantis (Letters 347).
14
For Tolkiens conception of the English vs. British identity and the historical background of how
these terms were used at the time see my discussion (Fimi 159-61).

case of the British Isles, a long troubled history of invasions, conquests, and linguistic
amalgamations created the modern state of the United Kingdom, and the mythology of
Middle-earth, either consciously or not, reflects this process right from its original conception.
Tolkiens 1954 letter to Naomi Mitchison quoted above, together with his conclusion of his
1955 ODonnell lecture, seem to be the reflections of a more mature Tolkien upon his own
work, perhaps realising that his mythology for England eventually became a mythology for
Britain.

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