Whatever’s to hand, and all three of the above. Plus - with the hardback edition I picked up for nothing from a library clearout - the dustcover as well. I also mark interesting passages - a line in the margin and notes on the inside front cover. Must get round to putting them in a Word document soon.
That’s so hot!
It’s pathetic, but thanks for humouring me.
Well, now I had to look it up.
Mana tárë antuva nin Ilúvatar enyárë i metta pella, írë Anarinya queluva?
What will the Father give me in that day beyond the end when my Sun faileth?
42, eh? Interesting…
Tolkien had an easy marriage? The impression I got from the Humphrey Carter bio was that it was a bit rocky, mostly due to his wife’s (relative) lack of education.
Interesting thoughts on Tolkien/Lewis.
Why are the terms “men/man” often used (by the elves, in prophecy, etc) as broad representations of the human race…except in the case of who/what is capable of killing the Witch King?
Thanks for reminding me I must get the Carter book. I was winging it a bit with the marriage line, I must admit. (Thereagain, what does anyone know of another person’s marriage?) The lack of education bit I’ve heard about, I suppose I was giving it a different spin. That wifey at home having babies and cooking and cleaning for him allowed him time to do other things (like being a damned good tutor as well as inventing all these languages). BUT, it also meant he was a little more out of touch with some aspects of “reality”, in a way that Lewis, for example, wasn’t. His depictions of women (females, I suppose, is more accurate) in LOTR is a thing of wonder: beautiful virgin warrior-nurses, or beautiful ethereal immortal breathers of eternal wisdom-destroyer of prejudices and bestower of gifts, or cooks and washer-women cleaning up the tobacco stains down in the Shire. I think I know which category his wife fell into.
Well okay, Tom Bombadil was just a character based on one of his kids’ toys, QtM. You know that, I know that, and a whole buncha sad geeks know that. However, within the limits of internal consistency, what could old Iarwain actually be? He walks, talks, is clearly sentient… that means he’s a Man (hardly likely, he’s far too old), an Elf (also hardly likely), a Dwarf (ridiculous) or an Ainu. Or else a special one-off nonesuch that either the Valar or Eru himself thought up, and even the former is unlikely give the origins of the Dwarves.
I’ve read the essay that purports to identify Bombadil with Aule and filed it under “a likely story”, as ISTR that you have too. Elsewise, so far as we’re ever told the Valar stay at home these days (with the frequent but irrelevant exception of Ulmo), he’s been around too long to be an Istar, and almost the only box left to tick seems to be Maia, which neatly encompasses his longevity, his ability to tell Old Man Willow and Barrow-Wight alike to go stick their heads in a pig, and the Ring’s impotence against him.
/geek
But wasn’t Gandalf himself a Maia? He was terrified of the ring.
See, I didn’t know Bobadil was based on a toy–that explains everything. He’s not of middle earth, he is from a toybox in the material earth on this side of the mist. Being neither from middle earth, nor from the spiritual world, the only two realms where magic and noncorporaeal beings exist, he is unaffected by them. He is, however, from the material earth (here) and is thus able to affect physical things in middle earth.
It’s all so clear now.
Well, he did have ‘Luthien’ and ‘Beren’ carved on their gravestones, so he obviously felt there was something immortal-beautiful-elf-maiden about her. I still don’t get the impression that he had any female friends whom he regarded as equal to his male friends. Not that that’s uncommon for the time period, but I know Lewis had several intelligent female pen friends.
Am I dithering? Does anyone know anything about Tolkien’s opinion of women?
Oh yeah. roger, in the Battle at the Black Gates (in the movie) what the hell do they do with their horses? They’re on horses when they challenge the Gate, and then when they attack, the horses are gone. Where did they go?
But JRRT never translated what the Father would give Firiel when her Sun had faded. How can any mere mortal answer this.
I don’t think 42 is the answer as this is more a question of afterlife is it not?
On Tobacco, why think you pipeweed = tobacco. The Longleaf is an older and lost herb similar to tobacco brought back from Numenor. Tater’s of course probably also came over from Numenor.
The characters are not Gay; just very early 1900’s English. This just seems queer to many modern day readers. 
The Relation between Frodo and Sam was similar to the relation between a British officer and his porter in WWI. I read this I think in the Tolkien Letters.
The characters in LotR are barely sexual at all.
Tom Bombadil: very simple, JRRT actually said there must be some mystery that no one knows. But he is not to be numbered among the free peoples and is older than the Eldar.
I’ve got a question: The ultimate Middle Earth question: debated even more than Tom Bombadil.
Did …Balrogs…have…wings…?
Anything 'bout sheep thereabouts?
Gandalf feared the ring because he had the desire to bring his own will to bear upon the world. He had a decent heart, and was willing to forgo that desire, but knew that the ring would inflame his desire to do good, and turn him to evil. So, he feared the power of the ring.
Bombadil has no such desires. He rules the realm he has defined without need for more power, and has no interest in the rule of other lands or people. The ring has no power over him, because the ring only amplifies the inherent will to dominate others. To Bombadil, this makes it yet another trivial toy. The power of Sauron might destroy the entire world around Bombadil, and to Sauron that might appear a victory. But against Bombadil it would still be powerless, leaving him “last, as he was first.”
Tris
Isn’t there a little more about how in the end as Sauron would have the power to destroy hills and rivers that Bombadil would also fall to him.
Last to fall but he would fall. This of course was only elven conjecture however.
Heh. 42 is the ultimate answer. To the Question. Of life. The universe. And everything.
Which certainly summarizes the most fundamental question of both the Eldar (where do we go when the music is over?) and the Edain (where do we go after we die?)
And as Malacandra so aptly points out, JRRT himself was very ambivalent about fitting TB into his mythos or just leaving him in as an enigma.
QtM, currently plowing thru “Morgoth’s Ring” for the 3rd time, looking for more insight.
The locals needed them for the trotting races, I heard. Best decision Jackson made was to write Bombadil and that awful Goldberry out of the film. Actually, he got rid of almost all the unbearably twee “songs”. Sam’s allowed a bit of a grunt at one point, as I recall.
I like what he did with Bilbo’s walking song. You know, transposed it into the song Pippin sings to Denethor. Actually, I think Pippin sings it in the book, too, it’s just more cheerful sounding and during the hike from Hobbiton to Buckland.
No. Mim the Petty-Dwarf harvests some during the Tale of Turambar, which would have been before even the establishment of Numenor. That is, assuming that Mim’s earth-bread was the same plant as Sam’s taters, but I think that’s a safe assumption. My guess would be that earth-bread was not actually the same plant as what we now call potatoes, but a close relative, native to Europe and no longer recognized by mortals as edible. This plant is only called “potato” in the Lord of the Rings as part of Tolkien’s translation, in much the same way that Kalimac’s name is rendered as Meriadoc. Tolkien wanted to make the story familiar to us modern readers, and the closest familiar comparison to earth-bread is the potato.