A brief additional off topic observation on Tolkien and Ireland:
It's curious how he seemed, whle liking Ireland as a country and its people,
not to be especially taken with its language or mythology. Two excerpts from "Letters":
Quote:
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I do know Celtic things (many in their original languages Irish and Welsh), and feel for them a certain distaste: largely for their fundamental unreason. They have bright colour, but are like a broken stained glass window reassembled without design.
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#19
Quote:
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(I) find both Gaelic and the air of Ireland wholly alien- though the latter (not the language) is attractive.
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# 165.