One of the things I want to bring out in the open is Tolkien’s confession of an attraction towards stories of strange lands below the earth:
“I am extremely fond of the genre, even having read Land under England with some pleasure …”.
–
The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, Letter #26 – 4 March 1938, Edited by H. Carpenter, 1981
And we should take notice because the statement was made in that crucial creationary period at the beginning of the new ‘hobbit story’ which was to become
The Lord of the Rings.
Inevitably and inexorably – one can understand why fabrication of a Middle-earth Faërie was mulled upon, and then decided to be included into the storyline. But it is possibly a direct account of a folkloric otherworld below the very soil of England spurred Tolkien down such a path. The extraordinary account of the famed Woolpit children emerging from underground in Suffolk in the twelfth century is an intriguing tale evoking debate even to this day. The tale of
The Green Children was published in Edwin Hartland’s
English Fairy and Other Folk Tales, 1890. We know per ‘
Bibliographies’ in
Tolkien On Fairy-stories, 2014 by Verlyn Flieger & Douglas Anderson, Tolkien consulted this book for his
On Fairy-stories paper. Given his liking of tales ‘below the earth’ one can understand how Tolkien might well have been drawn to this piece of folklore, though unfortunately I have no absolute proof.
Anyhow, it was Ralph of Coggeshall and William of Newburgh who both recorded how two strange green-skinned children were found by locals, lost and unable to communicate in English. Practically starving, all the boy and girl would eat were ‘green beans’ which they devoured readily. Later after learning the language – the girl claimed they had emerged from another land and had gotten lost after stumbling out of a cavern. They had then become disoriented by the bright Sun; a Sun which didn’t exist in their world. Astoundingly she recounted all the folk in their land were green tinged too.
Woolpit Village sign honoring The Green Children
Tolkien might well have been fascinated. Hmm … ‘beans’ – a legendary item in English fairy tales*! Were green beans solely responsible for their pallor? Were beans regular fairy-food, and is that why the Green Knight (in
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight) portrayed a similarly hue? Then were the children from faërie? Perhaps the account was inaccurately documented. Perhaps there really was a green sun** in an otherworld below England, and it was the cause of such skin shading. Perhaps it remained slightly below the horizon – leaving the general aura of light described by the children as true, It is these sorts of ideas and thoughts that may well have whirred about in the Professor’s mind.
Getting back to the tale of
Einion and Olwen, the one where he have a standing stone lifted up by a blue-eyed little old fat man, what this Welsh Celtic tale resembled in part was
The Adventures of Covan the Brown-haired*** – a Scottish Celtic fairy tale. Here was a story which equally may have resonated with the Professor. Because therein was another old man, the ‘Spirit of old Age’, who was linked to a youthful golden-haired damsel depicted as combing her hair. The story itself centered on three sons who sought their sister after a mysterious disappearance. It was the youngest who in the end succeeded and saved not only his sister, but restored his brothers who had been turned to stone.
‘Covan the Brown-haired’, The Orange Fairy Book, Andrew Lang, 1906
Tolkien probably felt much had got mixed up in the ‘pot of soup’. Yet his sympathies appear to have belonged to the English and their fairy tales (as opposed to Celtic ones), believing they reflected a truer account of fairies:
“… the English) have the true tradition of the fairies, of whom the Íras and the Wéalas (the Irish and Welsh) tell garbled things.”
–
The Book of Lost Tales, Volume II, The History of Eriol or Ælfwine – pg. 290, 1984
His former tutor Sir John Rhys (Professor of Celtic Studies at Oxford) had deduced that much cross-fertilization had taken place between English and Celtic tales. Tolkien might have found it hard to disagree with one particular case. Because
The Adventures of Covan the Brown-haired and
Einion and Olwen**** certainly resonate with that great English fairy tale:
Childe Rowland.
And it is the English fairytale
Childe Rowland that I believe is key to understanding how in ‘meddling’ with the standing stone, the hobbits on the Barrow-downs accidentally opened up a gateway to Middle-earth Faërie.
… to be continued
*
Jack and the Beanstalk immediately comes to mind.
** It is possible Tolkien envisaged that an atmospheric condition in Middle-earth Faërie led to its sun appearing green. Tolkien did give the impression, in his
On Fairy-stories paper, that the sun of our Primary World and that of the Secondary World of Faërie – were one and the same.
*** The tale was published in Andrew Lang’s:
The Orange Fairy Book, 1906.
**** The tale was repeated by Professor John Rhys in
Celtic Folklore: Welsh and Manx – Volume I, The Fairies’ Revenge and appears in
The Welsh Fairy Book, 1908 by William Jenkyn Thomas under
Einion and the Fair Family.