What We Didn't Expect in Tolkien's Histories

“Excuse my asking, but were you expecting me, by any chance?”

“No, indeed! ”said the farmer. “Who’d a’thought of seeing you here? I was just going for a ride.” (The Tolkien Reader, 154)

No, indeed. In the quest for historical perspectives in Farmer Giles of Ham, one might encounter many unexpected angles. While Tolkien's use of talking dogs, dragons, and giants wandering the English countryside may seem out of place in comparison to what we consider "historical" accounts, he makes it clear that the story is not a precise historical account of "our world" - for example, the name “Oxenford” was used instead of Oxford to make such a distinction while signifying a close connection to our England. What bothers me about the “historicity” of this story, in another world resembling ours, is Tolkien’s use of perspectives.

History is written by men — well, at least by species that could write. Our notion of “human history” is closely associated with the beginning of writing. In ancient history, the appearance of writing is the point at which we demarcate the “pre-historical period” from “history.” The idea that only men (fine, literate species in Tolkien’s world) write history suggests that the stories must take on the men’s perspective. In the story of Farmer Giles of Ham, men’s perspectives were prevalent. However, the story was also sprinkled with perspectives other than men’s: Garm has a fancy for moonshine; the mare makes up her mind to chase after Chrysophylax, etc. (The Tolkien Reader, 128, 170) Nevertheless, the most noticeable instance of perspective shifting within the story was this:

“So knights are mythical!” said the younger and less experienced dragons. “We always thought so.”

“At least they may be getting rare,” thought the older and wiser worms; “far and few and no longer to be feared.” (The Tolkien Reader, 140)

Rather than treating the appearance of Chrysophylax as a random accident or providing a simple explanation, the story adopts the perspective of dragons similar to that of humans. This reveals an interesting dynamic: while humans thought that dragons were becoming scarcer, the dragons shared the same idea! Dragon-slaying knights were so rare that they entered the realm of myth. Who were the mythical creatures, the humans or the dragons?

The answer to that question, of course, depends on your perspective. However, there could only be a single perspective if the account is historical, for the one that writes dominates history. What does that make of this story?

Perhaps a legend (as the foreword explicitly suggests), “for it is evidently a late compilation, full of marvels, derived not from sober annals, but from the popular lays to which its author frequently refers.” (The Tolkien Reader, 123) What distinguishes legend from history in this sentence are the story's sources and whether the story is believed to reflect the truth accurately, except that we, as “Oxford” instead of “Oxenford” readers, have no idea whether the story reflects the truth. In this sense, history and legends are almost indiscernible — they are all but “stories and tales.” (The Notion Club Papers, Night 65) However, the problem of perspectives remains unsolved. Because of the existence of a few unexpected perspectives that do not belong to history, Farmer Giles of Ham seemingly becomes ahistorical.

But it was actually good history! Modern historians explore different perspectives as a living, not to mention a nice rendition of dialectics and an interesting tension created between two sets of epistemologies — great qualities that I wish to incorporate in my term paper for this course! Being legendary does not diminish the historical value of a story; quite the opposite, legends can be a fascinating form of history. Using Tolkien’s own writings, “Of course, the pictures presented by the legends may be partly symbolical, they may be arranged in designs that compress, expand, foreshorten, combine, and are not at all realistic or photographic, yet they may tell you something true about the Past.” (The Notion Club Papers, Night 65)

On the other hand, In Middle-Earth, the intertwined relationship between legend and history becomes more intriguing and certainly contradicts that somewhat famous quote from the movie: “History became legend. Legend became myth.” (Galadriel in The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring)

In a previous discussion session, I questioned whether Tolkien could write a faithful legend, for he masters the true history of Middle-Earth, for faithful legends, in my opinion, comes from uncertainties. In my view, these uncertainties make romanticizing a crucial part of a legend faithful: one can only attempt to explain the uncertainties through deliberate or inadvertent romanticizing. As a result, as the author of his book and (no matter how much he denies it) the creator of Middle-Earth, Tolkien could not genuinely create a legend in Middle-earth. Yet we, as spectators (and spiritual participants) of this world, may have a better chance — only in terms of faithfulness.

The above paragraph may seem redundant, but I wanted to prove that Middle-earth has undisputed truth in its history, created by Tolkien himself. There is an epistemological difference between the “historical truth” in Middle-earth perceived by the Hobbits and the truth in our world perceived by us. The reason for history to exist comes from uncertainties. The discipline exists because we are unsure of what happened in the past because of the lack of “truth.” We are mortal, and memories are fragile, so we put things into writing and do our best to replicate the perceived “truth.” We may be debating whether there is a “truth” in history, but we can all agree that although close replications are largely available, the whole truth is lost.

Tom Bombardil, the mysterious figure in Middle-earth, disrupts such a dynamic in Middle-earth: he knows the truth, along with other immortal beings such as Gandalf and the elves. History does not become vaguer as time goes by, and historical truths were never lost. They were guarded by the immortal beings — and Tolkien himself.

—ST