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More detail is given of the growing obsession of the Númenóreans with death, building great tombs, and seeking to prolong life, but discovering only how to preserve bodies of the dead. Most cease to show any devotion to Eru. Even before Sauron comes to power, they make settlements in Middle-earth, mainly in the south, and instead of teaching and helping those living there, they seek wealth and dominion. The Faithful sail mainly to the North-west, establish a haven at Pelargir, and help Gil-galad against Sauron. Some of this, and much else of the added material, derived from The Lord of the Rings. In the Akallabêth it is during the reign of Tar-Atanamir that Sauron completes the building of Barad-dûr and begins his campaign for domination of Middle-earth. He is said to hate the Númenóreans because they aided Gil-galad against him. Three of the nine Men whom Sauron snares with rings are great lords of Númenórean race, and he uses them (the Ringwraiths) to attack Númenórean strongholds by the sea. When he comes to Númenor, Sauron urges the king to cut down the White Tree growing in his courts, but before the king consents, Isildur manages to steal a fruit, and the sapling grown from this fruit and the Seven Stones given to them by the Eldar are included in the treasure the Faithful put aboard their ships (cf. the rhyme in The Lord of the Rings, bk. III, ch. 11). Sauron says nothing about the shape of the world except that many lands lie east and west. As in The Fall of Númenor, when the fashion of the world is changed Aman is not destroyed, and Aman and Eressëa are ‘taken away and removed from the circles of the world beyond the reach of Men for ever’ (*The Peoples of Middle-earth, p. 157). Although it is not stated in the account of the actual Downfall in what way the fashion of the world is changed, other than that new lands and seas are made, it is implied in the later statement ‘in after days, what by the voyages of ships, what by lore and star-craft, the kings of Men knew that the world was indeed made round, and yet the Eldar were permitted still to depart and to come to the Ancient West and to Avallónë, if they would. Therefore the loremasters of Men said that a Straight Road must still be, for those that were permitted to find it’ (The Silmarillion, p. 281).
Probably in 1951 Tolkien took up a typescript he had made from the manuscript of the Akallabêth and emended it, altering some names and the sequence of certain events, rewriting a few passages, and adding a lengthy rider giving much more detail of the history of the last Númenórean kings, and in particular their growing hostility to the Eldar and the Valar and to those who remained faithful. The White Tree is no longer a descendant of Telperion, but of a memorial of that tree given to the Elves of Túna. Messengers from the Valar still come to Tar-Atanamir, but he is now the thirteenth king. The nineteenth king chooses a name in Adûnaic rather than in the Elven-tongue – Adûnakhor, Lord of the West – a title belonging to the Valar, and forbids the use of the Elven-tongues in his hearing. Emphasis is laid the status of the Lords of Andúnië descended from Silmarien, the daughter of the fourth king, who, as his eldest child, would have been queen according to a rule of succession introduced later – thus stressing the royal descent of Amandil and his son Elendil, and ultimately of Aragorn. Although the Lords of Andúnië are loyal to the kings, they hold to the old ways and try to protect the Faithful. The twenty-second king forbids the use of the Elven-tongues and any contact with the Eldar of Eressëa, but his wife is a close relative of the Lords of Andúnië and herself one of the Faithful. Their elder son, influenced by his mother, repents, takes the elven name Tar-Palantir, and again pays reverence to Eru. On his death, his daughter Míriel should become queen, but her cousin forces her to marry him and usurps the sceptre for himself, taking the name Ar-Pharazôn and becoming the twenty-fourth ruler. He persecutes the Faithful and seeks homage from Sauron.
Having written this rider, Tolkien seems to have hesitated as to whether Míriel was indeed the unwilling wife of Ar-Pharazôn, and sketched some ideas for a different story. In these he considered the possibilty that Míriel was loved by, and possibly even betrothed to, Amandil’s brother Elentir, but then fell in love with Pharazôn.
Tolkien’s early work on the Appendices for The Lord of the Rings reflect developments which also appear in the Akallabêth. The earliest versions of Appendix B (The Tale of Years) for the Second Age briefly cover events in Middle-earth and Númenor; an enlarged fair copy version was in existence in 1950. In these Tolkien constantly made changes to dates and to the number of kings who ruled in Númenor, as well as adding or emending entries. It eventually evolved that Númenor was founded in Second Age 50; the great voyages of the Númenóreans began in 1700; the Shadow fell on Númenor, and Men began to murmur against the ban, c. 2000; Sauron submitted to Ar-Pharazôn, the twenty-fifth king of Númenor, in 3125; Amandil sailed west to seek help in 3310; the Downfall took place in 3319; the realms in exile lasted 110 years before the war with Sauron; and the Second Age ended in 3441 after a seven-year siege and the overthrow of Sauron. In 1954–5, while preparing the Appendices for publication, Tolkien made further additions and changes, some reflecting revisions made to the Akallabêth c. 1951. Among the more significant dates as published are S.A. 32 for the arrival of Men in Númenor; 600, the return to Middle-earth of the first Númenórean ships; 1200, the Númenóreans begin to establish havens in Middle-earth; 1700, the king of Númenor sends a navy to aid Gil-galad against Sauron; from c. 1800, the Númenóreans establish dominions on the coasts of Middle-earth; 2251, Tar-Atanamir becomes king, during whose reign ‘rebellion and division of the Númenóreans begins’, and the Ringwraiths first appear. Ar-Pharazôn seizes the sceptre in 3255; Sauron is taken to Númenor as a prisoner in 3262; Ar-Pharazôn breaks the ban of the Valar and Númenor is destroyed in 3319; Sauron is overthrown and the Second Age ends in 3441.
Quite late in his work on the Appendices, probably when the space allotted to them was more than doubled, Tolkien decided to include a brief narrative account of the history of Númenor – section I (i) of Appendix A – and wrote two versions, the second of which (with some changes and omissions) was published. Some of the omitted material was published in The Peoples of Middle-earth.
*The Heirs of Elendil, contemporary with the versions of the Akallabêth, also includes an account of the last years of Númenor, the establishment of the realms in exile and the overthrow of Sauron, but adds nothing to the other texts. Probably in 1960 Tolkien compiled *The Line of Elros: Kings of Númenor, which gives dates of birth, surrender of the sceptre, and death for each ruler, with annotations of important events in each reign. He made many emendations to the manuscript, the latest form of which was published in Unfinished Tales.
The story of the glory of Númenor and its Downfall is of significance as the only part of Tolkien’s legendarium in which Men are the main, indeed almost the only, focus of attention. Among the questions of importance to Tolkien dealt with in this work are the imperfect and fallen nature of Man (see *The Fall), and the necessity for men to accept their mortal nature. While various ‘falls’ of the Elves are recounted in the Quenta Silmarillion, almost nothing is said about the first Fall of Man. There are only hints: the Eldar knew nothing of Morgoth’s dealings with Men, but they perceived ‘that a darkness lay upon the hearts of Men (as the shadow of the Kinslaying and the Doom of Mandos lay upon the Noldor)’ (The Silmarillion, p. 141). The beginning of the Akallabêth is more informative: ‘It is said by the Eldar that Men came into the world in the time of the Shadow of Morgoth, and they fell swiftly under his dominion; for he sent his emissaries among them, and they listened to his evil and cunning words, and they worshipped the Darkness and yet feared it’ (p. 259). But some Men repented and assisted the Elves against Morgoth, and were rewarded by the Valar with the island of Númenor.
Although details of Man’s first Fall were hidden in the past, in the story of Númenor the second Fall is dealt with at centre stage and, as with the story of Eden, involves the breaking of a Ban. In a letter to *Milton Waldman in ?late 1951 Tolkien said that this second Fall was ‘partly the result of an inner weakness in Men – consequent … upon the first Fall …, repented but not finally healed’. Their reward of an extended life ‘is their undoing – or the means of their temptation. Their long life aids their achievements in art and wisdom, but breeds a possessive attitude to these things, and desire awakes for more time for their enjoyment.’ He describes ‘three phases in their fall from grace. First acquiescence, obedience that is free and willing, though without complete understanding. Then for long they obey unwillingly, murmuring more and more openly. Finally they rebel …’ (Letters, pp. 154–5). In a draft letter to Peter Hastings in September 1954 Tolkien wrote that his ‘legendarium, especially the “Downfall of Númenor” … is based on my view: that Men are essentially mortal and must not try to become “immortal” in the flesh’ (Letters, p. 189).
CRITICISM
Randel Helms devotes an entire chapter to the Akallabêth in Tolkien and the Silmarils (1981). He notes that the work involves Tolkien in ‘one of his favorite literary tricks, the creation of the “real” source or origin of a famous tale’ (p. 64). But it is also ‘Tolkien’s first full-scale brief epic of men as opposed to elves, presenting his deepest thinking about death, the Gift of Men’. He had prepared for it in the Quenta Silmarillion, where it is said ‘that the hearts of Men should seek beyond the world and should find no rest therein’, but they would be able to ‘shape their life’. The price they pay ‘for this freedom of will and ability to yearn toward Ilúvatar’ is that ‘though their longings be immortal, their bodies are not’.
Here … Tolkien sets a major theme of Akallabêth, showing as well his grasp of human psychology. Always to yearn for what we do not have, to seek beyond the confines of our world, is our destiny, and one resulting directly from our freedom. Because of this combination of desire and liberty, unique in the mortal creatures of Arda, man is peculiarly susceptible to temptation, and men long for what they can never have, immortality in the flesh.
Tolkien thus uses Plato’s story of Atlantis, but deepens its themes. The Atlanteans desired conquest and empire …. The Númenóreans desired not merely conquest – though that was indeed one of their aims – they wanted an attribute of divinity itself, eternity. They wanted to be as gods – knowing not good and evil only, but endlessness – for Tolkien has blended Plato’s legend of Atlantis with the Bible’s story of the Fall of Man, to produce a tale of great resonance. [pp. 66–7]
David Harvey in The Song of Middle-earth: J.R.R. Tolkien’s Themes, Symbols and Myths (1985) likewise relates the fall of the Númenóreans to ‘a Fall in the theological sense. The actions of Ar-Pharazôn are in direct opposition to a stated Ban imposed by superhuman powers and derived from the authority and decree of the One’ (p. 41).
In ‘Aspects of the Fall in The Silmarillion’, in Proceedings of the J.R.R. Tolkien Centenary Conference 1992, ed. Patricia Reynolds and Glen H. GoodKnight (1995), Eric Schweicher points out that in Tolkien’s legendarium Man’s mortality is ‘neither a punishment nor a direct consequence of their [first] Fall. The condition of Man … was determined long before the world was created, in the Great Music of the Ainur …. Yet there is a fear of death on Middle-earth, which is paradoxical if one considers death as a gift.’ Therefore he suggests that ‘the Fall must have had an influence on the attitude of Man towards death, and there one must see Melkor’s influence, which lures Men into believing that what they had been given as a gift is but a bitter fruit’ (p. 169). Thus the desire of the Númenóreans for immortality, and Ar-Pharazôn’s attempt to gain it by conquest, are directly related to the first Fall.
Anne C. Petty, in Tolkien in the Land of the Heroes: Discovering the Human Spirit (2003), thinks that
the passage in the ‘Akallabêth’ that describes the coming of the first Númenóreans to their new land contains some of Tolkien’s most inspired saga-style language, conjuring images of dragon ships and seascapes straight out of such Old English poems as The Seafarer. He balances this vision of wonder with an equally stark vision of horror that concludes the account. This is something Tolkien does better than anyone: he presents the reader with a vision of incredible beauty, and then allows it to be ruined to equally incredible depths, making the end result all the more poignant and devastating. [p. 82]
Númenórean Linear Measures. Series of notes from various manuscripts, published as an appendix to *The Disaster of the Gladden Fields in *Unfinished Tales (1980), pp. 285–7, under a collective title devised by *Christopher Tolkien. These concern the relationship of Númenórean measurements to British units (leagues, yards, feet), and the stature of Númenóreans (especially Elendil), the Eldar (especially Galadriel), the Rohirrim (with a note on Morwen, wife of Thengel), the Hobbits, and the Dúnedain.
O
Of … such titles are entered by the first significant word following ‘Of’
Ofer Widne Garsecg see Songs for the Philologists
Official Name List. List of names in early Elvish languages (*Languages, Invented) which appear in The Fall of Gondolin in *The Book of Lost Tales, published as part of ‘Early Noldorin Fragments’ in Parma Eldalamberon 13 (2001), pp. 100–5, edited with commentary by Christopher Gilson, Bill Welden, Carl F. Hostetter, and Patrick Wynne.
The work is arranged with Eldarissa (Qenya) names on the left and Noldorissa (Gnomish, later Sindarin) names on the right. A few names are translated into English. The names come from the original manuscript of The Fall of Gondolin as revised by Tolkien, but before *Edith Tolkien made a fair copy. This list was written in the same note-book as the *Poetic and Mythologic Words of Eldarissa; the *‘Name-list to The Fall of Gondolin’ was derived from the Official Name List. A short table of abbreviations indicates that Tolkien probably intended to list names from all of the ‘Lost Tales’.
Oilima Markirya see The Last Ark
The Old English Apollonius of Tyre. Edition of the Old English version of Apollonius (Corpus Christi College, Cambridge MS 201) prepared by Peter Goolden, published by Oxford University Press in November 1958 with a brief prefatory note by Tolkien. See further, Descriptive Bibliography B24.
Goolden was admitted as a B.Litt. student in English at *Oxford in May 1950 and received his degree in 1953; his thesis, The Old English Version of the Story of Apollonius of Tyre, was supervised by *C.L. Wrenn. In 1954 Goolden submitted the work to Oxford University Press and was informed that although the Press would not publish it independently (it was not judged to be a mature work of learning), it might be suitable for publication in the series *Oxford English Monographs, of which Tolkien was then chief among three general editors (with *F.P. Wilson and *Helen Gardner). Tolkien received a copy of Goolden’s thesis in February 1954 but could not consider it until later in the year. It was approved for inclusion in the series, pending revision.
At the beginning of March 1956 Goolden lost the manuscript of his work in a fire and had to start revision again with a second copy of his thesis. He seems to have completed this in short order. Already on 14 May 1956 the Delegates of Oxford University Press approved the publication of his book, supported by Tolkien and Wrenn; but Tolkien took more than a year to look over and approve the manuscript, and the finished work was not sent to the printers until the end of August 1957.
Wrenn complained to Oxford University Press about Tolkien’s delay, which was the more unfortunate because a German work with the same text of Apollonius (ed. Josef Raith) had been published in 1956. In his prefatory note Tolkien wrote that ‘the [series] editors feel justified … in publishing Mr. Goolden’s work, since it is independent, and differs from Dr. Raith’s edition in treatment and in some points of opinion,’ and because it was specifically designed for English students and ‘provides a conflated text of the Latin source, notes, and glossary’ (p. iii).
In his preface Goolden thanks C.L. Wrenn as ‘the prime mover of the work’, and ‘Professor J.R.R. Tolkien who kindly suggested revisions in presentation and style’ (p. vi).
The Old English Exodus. Edition of the Old English poem Exodus, with a Modern English translation and commentary, assembled from Tolkien’s lecture notes and other papers by his former B.Litt. student *Joan Turville-Petre, published by the Clarendon Press, Oxford in 1982 (despite imprint and copyright dates of 1981).
The Old English Exodus is a free paraphrase of that portion of the Old Testament book (ch. 13–14) which deals with the passage of the Israelites through the Red Sea and the destruction of Pharaoh’s host. A single instance of the work survives, in an eleventh-century manuscript, Junius 11 in the Bodleian Library, Oxford (*Libraries and archives). It is considered one of the most difficult Old English texts to interpret, in part because it is incomplete, and it contains many words that are otherwise unrecorded.
Tolkien lectured on the Old English Exodus at *Oxford for many years, beginning in Michaelmas Term 1926. Joan Turville-Petre comments that his papers concerning the poem were ‘never intended as an edition, although the lecturer scrupulously drew up an edited text as the basis of his commentary. It is an interpretation of the poem, designed to reconstruct the original (as far as that is possible), and to place it in the context of Old English poetry’ (p. v). And yet, on 25 October 1932 Tolkien noted in a letter to R.W. Chapman at Oxford University Press that
both Elene [a poem by Cynewulf] and Exodus will remain set books in the English School. They both need editing. I have commentaries to both. I should like very much after Beowulf [i.e. after he completes his Modern English translation of *Beowulf] to tackle a proper edition of O.E. Exodus. The Routledge edn. of Ms. Junius 11 by Krapp [The Junius Manuscript, 1931] is thoroughly bad, and virtually negligible for our students, though admittedly better than nothing. Sedgefield is of course merely laughable (he does a large chunk of Exodus in his miserable Anglo-Saxon verse-book [An Anglo-Saxon Verse Book (1922)]). [Oxford University Press archives]
Tolkien’s surviving lecture notes on Exodus represent ‘the discourse of a teacher among a small group of pupils, expressing his understanding of the text in the circumstances of that time.’ Joan Turville-Petre therefore reduced ‘diffuse comments and some basic instruction … such as observations on phonology and morphology’ (p. v).
A manuscript page by Tolkien showing the opening of the Old English Exodus, with his notes, is reproduced in Life and Legend, p. 81.
In Notes and Queries for June 1983 Peter J. Lucas harshly criticized The Old English Exodus for its manner of presentation, lack of an introduction and glossary, numerous errors and omissions, and unnecessary emendations. ‘As an editor Tolkien emerges as an inveterate meddler who occasionally had bright ideas’ (p. 243). Nevertheless, Lucas was himself indebted to Tolkien in his own edition of Exodus (1977; rev. edn. 1994): ‘In the preparation of this edition I have had access to notes taken from lectures given by J.R.R. Tolkien at Oxford. Two of the emendations adopted in the text … were, as far as I know, first suggested by him in these lectures …. His comments or suggestions are also incorporated in the Commentary from time to time …’ (p. x).
In another review, D.C. Baker commented in English Language Notes for March 1984 that ‘lesser mortals, in their preparation for lecturing undergraduate students, do not prepare themselves in this way; they do not edit the texts on which they are to expound; they do not provide a commentary exhaustive in its learning together with original criticisms and suggestions. These are the work of a master, a master of all he surveyed’ (p. 59).
See further, T.A. Shippey, ‘A Look at Exodus and Finn and Hengest’, Arda 3 (1986, for 1982–83), and his ‘Tolkien as Editor’ in A Companion to J.R.R. Tolkien, ed. Stuart D. Lee (2014).
‘Old English Verse’. Extracts from a lecture, published as an appendix to the volume *The Fall of Arthur (2013), edited by *Christopher Tolkien, pp. 223–33. The text provides ‘some indication’ of the ‘essential nature’ of the Old English alliterative verse form used in the poem *The Fall of Arthur (p. 223). The lecture originated in the radio talk Anglo-Saxon Verse, the sixth in the series Poetry Will Out: Studies in National Inspiration and Characteristic Forms, broadcast on the BBC National Programme on 14 January 1938. Tolkien expanded it for another talk in 1943, and with revisions for further delivery in 1945 and 1948.
He begins by quoting lines from the tenth-century Old English poem The Battle of Brunanburh, followed by his own Modern English alliterative version. He explains the background to the poem and something about the Anglo-Saxon period, then deals with the alliterative metre which he finds ‘worthy of study by poets today as a technique. But it is also interesting as being a native art independent of classical models …. It was already old in Alfred’s day. Indeed it descends from days before the English came to Britain, and is almost identical with the metre used for Old Norse (Norwegian and Icelandic) poems’ (p. 227). After explaining the metre, he describes the use of archaisms and ‘kennings’, and suggests that attempting to translate Old English Verse ‘is not a bad exercise for training in the full appreciation of word …’ (p. 230).
Appended by Tolkien to the lecture were four examples of his own alliterative verse: Winter Comes to Nargothrond (*The Lays of Beleriand, p. 129), lines 1554–70 of *The Lay of the Children of Húrin (with minor variations from the text printed in The Lays of Beleriand, pp. 129–30), and two extracts from The Fall of Arthur, both with minor differences from the text as published in 2013. Against the extract from Canto I, lines 183–211, Tolkien ‘wrote the relevant letters referring to the patterns of strong and weak elements (“lifts” and “dips”) in each half-line’ as described in the lecture (p. 231).
Oliphaunt. Poem, first published in *The Lord of the Rings, Book IV, Chapter 3. It was later printed with the title Oliphaunt (i.e. an elephant) in *The Adventures of Tom Bombadil and Other Verses from the Red Book (1962), p. 47.
In the former work, Sam Gamgee describes the poem as ‘a rhyme we have in the Shire. Nonsense maybe, and maybe not.’ Tolkien included it, with three minor textual differences, as ‘a hobbit nursery-rhyme’ in a letter to his son Christopher, 30 April 1944 (Letters, p. 77). Although in another letter, to Mrs Eileen Elgar, 5 March 1964, he wrote that Oliphaunt was ‘my own invention entirely’, unlike *Fastitocalon which was ‘a reduced and rewritten form, to suit hobbit fancy, of an item in old “bestiaries”’ (Letters, p. 343), in fact Oliphaunt had a similar origin.
An earlier and much longer version, Iumbo, or ye Kinde of ye Oliphaunt, composed probably in the 1920s, was first published as one of the Adventures in Unnatural History and Medieval Metres, Being the Freaks of Fisiologus, as by ‘Fisiologus’ in the Stapeldon Magazine (Exeter College, *Oxford) 7, no. 40 (June 1927), pp. 125–7, and also in the expanded edition of The Adventures of Tom Bombadil and Other Verses from the Red Book (2014), pp. 216–20. Like an earlier version of Fastitocalon and two other (unpublished) animal poems, Reginhardus, the Fox and Monoceros, the Unicorn, it was inspired by the medieval bestiary, which describes the characteristics of animals and draws from them Christian morals. This, in turn, was based on earlier sources, including the ?second-century compilation entitled Physiologus (‘Naturalist’).
Tolkien followed this model but added elements of contemporary culture. Iumbo (i.e. Jumbo) describes the elephant as ‘a moving mountain, a majestic mammal’, whose nose ‘Performs the functions of a rubber hose / Or vacuum cleaner as his needs impose.’ His vice is drugs, ‘the dark mandragora’s unwholesome root’, a notion from the bestiary. This fills him ‘with sudden madness’, and he ‘blindly blunders thumping o’er the ground’, crushing villages in his path. When he tires he leans against a tree, but hunters who know of this habit cut the trunk so that it will collapse, with the elephant – which, according to the bestiary, cannot rise again on its own. In the Physiologus the elephant falling to the ground because of a tree is related to Adam’s fall.
Oliphaunt in turn is a reduction of Iumbo, made simpler and cleansed of anachronisms. In The Lord of the Rings it is meant to be traditional verse, and indeed is in the form of nursery rhymes with which readers in English are familiar: it retains the essential characteristics of the elephant in a concise form and in a rhyme that is easy to remember (‘Grey as a mouse, / Big as a house’, etc.). These qualities have made the poem a popular choice to include in anthologies for children.
A private tape recording of Oliphaunt, made by Tolkien in 1952, was issued on the album J.R.R. Tolkien Reads and Sings His The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers/The Return of the King (1975; first reissued in 2001 as part of The J.R.R. Tolkien Audio Collection; see *Recordings).
On Ælfwine’s Spelling. Description of the orthographic practice of Ælfwine (*Eriol and Ælfwine), published as part of ‘Qenya Spelling’ in Parma Eldalamberon 22 (2015), pp. 67–78, edited with commentary and notes by Christopher Gilson and Arden R. Smith.
Ælfwine in the context of *‘The Silmarillion’ translated Eldarin legends and chronicles into Old English. Tolkien wrote six versions of this brief account of Ælfwine’s work, one entitled Ælfwine, four with the title as given for this entry, each on two sides of a single sheet. All of the versions appear to date largely ‘from the period when Tolkien was working on *The Etymologies around 1937 or 1938, or shortly after this …’ (Gilson and Smith, p. 57), except for the sixth version which is from the early 1950s. The editors point out that ‘mentions of Ælfwine’s transcription of names are given in the Outline of Phonetic Development and the Outline of Phonology’ (p. 60; see *Quenya: Outline of Phonology).
On Fairy-Stories. Lecture, first published in Great Britain in *Essays Presented to Charles Williams by Oxford University Press, December 1947, pp. 38–89. A slightly revised text was first published in *Tree and Leaf, in Great Britain by George Allen & Unwin, London, in May 1964, and in the United States by the Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston, in March 1965. See further, Descriptive Bibliography B19, A7. References here are to the appearance in the 1988 edition of Tree and Leaf.
SYNOPSIS
Tolkien first gives a general definition of what may be found in a fairy-story:
The realm of fairy-story is wide and deep and high and filled with many things: all manner of beasts and birds are found there; shoreless seas and stars uncounted; beauty that is an enchantment, and an ever-present peril; both joy and sorrow as sharp as swords. In that realm a man may, perhaps, count himself fortunate to have wandered, but its very richness and strangeness tie the tongue of a traveller who would report them. And while he is there it is dangerous for him to ask too many questions, lest the gates should be shut and the keys be lost. [p. 9]
He then attempts to answer the question the question ‘What is a fairy story?’, turning to the *Oxford English Dictionary but finding its definitions too narrow. He rejects the notion of fairies as ‘supernatural beings of diminutive size’, propagated by works such as Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream (c. 1595–6) and Michael Drayton’s Nymphidia (1627), and notes that although ‘fairy as a noun more or less equivalent to elf’ (p. 12) was hardly found until the late fifteenth century, faërie, meaning the realm of fairies or ‘Elfland’, appeared in John Gower’s Confessio Amantis (c. 1390). Tolkien also rejects the definition of fairy-story (or fairy-tale) as simply ‘a tale about fairies, or generally a fairy legend’.
Fairy-stories are not in normal English usage stories about fairies or elves, but stories about Fairy, that is Faërie, the realm or state in which fairies have their being. Faërie contains many things besides elves and fays, and besides dwarfs, witches, trolls, giants, or dragons: it holds the seas, the sun, the moon, the sky; and the earth, and all things that are in it: tree and bird, water and stone, wine and bread, and ourselves, mortal men, when we are enchanted.
Stories that are actually concerned primarily with ‘fairies’, that is with creatures that might also in modern English be called ‘elves’ are relatively rare, and as a rule not very interesting. Most good ‘fairy-stories’ are about the aventures of men in the Perilous Realm or upon its shadowy marches. [p. 14]
