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Originally Posted by William Cloud Hicklin
It also says that both were gathered by hand, and no metal tools were used in the process. You can't do this with maize, trust me; those stalks are brutally thick. And the "haulm" or leftover stalks is nowhere close to white, but a muddy yellowish brown, and useless for straw much less hay. Farmers plow it under.
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Excellent; at least that (unfortunately early) source is conclusive! (I wonder if there's "divine wheat" in some Norse myth or something? Scandinavia
apparently has several traditional flatbreads, which were sometimes the only meal of the day, so it's a possible inspiration.)
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Originally Posted by William Cloud Hicklin
As to "kind": Maddeningly vague. But it doesn't have to mean species; a Chihuahua is a different "kind" of dog from a Great Dane.
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Absolutely. But the Biblical use of "kind" stems (partly?) from the Noah story, in which it's hard to imagine God insisting that Noah take 7/2 of every breed of dog! So yeah, it's tempting, but not conclusive.
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Originally Posted by William Cloud Hicklin
Personally I would be very surprised that an Englishman of Tolkien's generation, who never traveled, would have even had a notion that Indian corn was a foodstuff, at least for civilized peoples: as far as he would have been concerned it was merely fodder, only eaten by animals, Red Indians, Americans and other foreign barbarians.
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"Never travelled"? o.O I mean... even setting aside France and Belgium, he definitely went to Switzerland, because it inspired the slip-slide down the slope in
The Hobbit. I'll take your word on maize not being eaten in England at the time, but I think this remains at least a possibility, though of course not conclusive.
Quote:
Originally Posted by William Cloud Hicklin
(Much more interesting would be to read T's account of how taters got to Middle-earth)
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"Taters of Middle-earth", coming from the files of Carl F. Hostetter 2023.
(Potatoes, tobacco, and tomatoes are all nightshades, right? Probably the Numenoreans imported all three - potatoes in particular are an amazing food-crop, and while tomatoes only have a tentative existence in M-e they're no more out of place. It seems like all three were mostly found only around the Shire, so it would only take a local outbreak of some virulant tobacco mosaic strain to wipe them from the continent. Bonus points if we can make athelas a nightshade too!)
hS