[The Squatter of Amon Rûdh]

That's a nice quotation, Underhill. As you say, a perfect counterpoint. And welcome to the thread, dininziliel; I trust your books arrived safely. It's an interesting comparison that you draw, and it demonstrates (if demonstration were necessary) how deeply Tolkien's literary works were rooted, and how closely related they were to his professional interests.

One of those studies was the Welsh language, of which Tolkien was rather fond. Here he explains his predilection, giving some intriguing examples:

Perhaps I may say just this - for it is not an analysis of Welsh or of myself that I am attempting, but an assertion of a feeling of pleasure, and of satisfaction (as of a want fulfilled) - it is the ordinary words for ordinary things that in Welsh I find so pleasing. Nef may be no better than heaven, but wybren is more pleasing than sky. Beyond that what can one do? For a passage of good Welsh, even if read by a Welshman, is for this purpose useless. Those who understand him must already have experienced this pleasure, or have missed it forever. Those who do not cannot yet receive it. A translation is of no avail. For this pleasure is felt most immediately and acutely in the moment of association: that is in the reception (or imagination) of a word form which is felt to have a certain style, and the attribution to it of a meaning which is not received through it. I could only speak, or better write and speak and translate, a long list: adar, alarch, eryr; tân, dwfr, awel, gwynt, niwl, glaw; haul, lloer, sêr; arglwydh, gwas, morwyn, dyn; cadarn, gwan, caled, meddal, garw, llyfn, llym, swrth; glas, melyn, brith, and so on - and yet fail to communicate the pleasure. But even the more long-winded and bookish words are commonly in the same style, if a little diluted. In Welsh there is not as a rule the discrepancy that there is so often in English between words of this sort and the words of full aesthetic life, the flesh and bone of the language. Welsh annealladwy, dideimladrwydd, amhechadurus, atgyfodiad and the like are far more Welsh, not only being analysable, but in style, than incomprehensible, insensibility, impeccable, or resurrection are English.

And for translators of Beowulf he had these words of caution:

A warning against colloquialism and false modernity has already been given by implication above. Personally you may not like an archaic vocabulary, and word order artificially maintained as an elevated and literary language. You may prefer the brand new, the lively and the snappy. But whatever may be the case with other poets of past ages (with Homer, for instance) the author of Beowulf did not share this preference. If you wish to translate, not re-write, Beowulf, your language must be literary and traditional: not because it is now a long while since the poem was made, or because it speaks of things that have since become ancient; but because the diction of Beowulf was poetical, archaic, artificial (if you will), in the day that the poem was made. Many words used by the ancient English poets had, even in the eighth century, already passed out of colloquial use for anything from a lifetime to hundreds of years. They were familiar to those who were taught to use and hear the language of verse, as familiar as thou or thy are to-day; but they were literary, elevated, recognized as old (and esteemed on that account). Some words had never, in the senses given to them by the poets, been used in ordinary language at all. This does not apply solely to poetic devices such as swanrad; it is true also of some simple and much used words, such as beorn 211 etc. and freca 1563. Both meant 'warrior', or in heroic poetry 'man'. Or rather they were used for 'warrior' by poets while beorn was still a form of the word 'bear', and freca a name for the wolf, and they were still used in verse when the original senses were forgotten. To use beorn and freca became a sign that your language was 'poetical', and these words survived, when much else of the ancient diction had perished...

Has anyone else a quotation? I am rather hogging this thread.