Quote:
Originally Posted by Huinesoron
Disagree. Not on the second, but the first.  Tolkien specifically refers to it (3:IV, Text 2) as "Western Corn", and the text comes well after the apparent decision regarding the 'end of "physical" Aman' in 3:XV. We'd need to demonstrate that the idea in 3:XV was actually rejected to make the maize idea untenable.
We know that this idea of non-native species needing to be introduced was one Tolkien considered - a very similar situation arises with rabbits and chickens in 3:XIII ( Of the Land and Beasts of Numenor), and CH highlights that this is because they were not present in NW Europe at that time. The way 3:IV ([i]Lembas[i]) both introduces and removes "Western Corn" looks like a very strong case to me.
The explicit use of "wheat-corn" comes from a hastily hand-written note, and is immediately after an unclear word. It's entirely possible this actually reads "sweet-corn" in the original!
hS |
While the essay "On Lembas" in HME XII is earlier than these, sometime in the 1950s, (I am inclined to later rather than earlier, with or after the later part of the Narn), nothing in it contradicts these new writings, including the use of "corn" and the fact that it was brought from the West by a Vala and was not native to Middle-earth. Yet the description of the plant is unmistakably wheat, not maize.
Note also that Lembas was already known to the Eldar in the First Age, long before the "mortalization" of Aman (if we were to accept that this very late notion was ever more than a notion), and Text 2 states that the Exiled Noldor brought it with them. In other words, it could hardly be other than "the tall wheat of the Gods" (Sil), a divine variant of wheat which was no more found in M-E than were horses like Nahar.
But most of all:
Text I explicitly calls it wheat, and where 2 calls it "wheat-corn" there is no way that this is a misreading of T's handwriting, since Text 2 was typed!
(It seems that Yavanna or the Elves of Eressea also brought tobacco, at least as far as Numenor!)