The Root of the Boot - A Philological Parody?

[Huinesoron]

Originally Posted by Nerwen

I wonder, though, if it *is* referencing *something*, given that according to your source some of the other poems in the book "poke fun at the academic community". If so, however, it could just as well be, say, a controversy at Leeds itself as anything to do with Shakespeare.

I agree with Ms. Seth that it has to be doing something. The poem doesn't really seem to have any inherent philological merit, unless you count 'making up words and rhyming them'. The next poem in the book (shown on the scan) seems to be in a Scandinavian language, while the other Tolkien poem shown is a story about Lit' and Lang'; there must be something that made The Root of the Boot worth including.

A little more research has turned up this chapter listing for the book, which shows that all of Tolkien's songs (at least) were set to the tune of various folk tunes, including...

Originally Posted by Nerwen

Speaking of plagiarism- the other rather interesting thing, which I don't think Ms Seth touched on, is that the original version seems to be modelled directly on the traditional folk song, "The Fox Went Out on a Chilly Night", which also has "successful theft" as its subject. ("The Stone Troll is similar, but as noted has a somewhat different rhyming scheme).

... well, that.

It is worth noting that Wikipedia's version of 'The Fox...' includes specific mention of a character named John. It also ends with the fox and his family chewing on the bones-o, bones-o, bones-o. We can also be sure that Tolkien remembered the source even much later than the original drafting - the line 'A couple of you will grease my chin' is directly evoked by The Stone Troll's 'A bit of fresh meat will go down sweet'.

Okay. Most of the songs seem to have been in non-English languages, but a look at some of the others might hint at what Tolkien was thinking about when he wrote them. I've managed to shake up a scan of From One to Five, which helpfully includes notes on how it was edited to fit the book. The first verse, as originally written, ran:

One old man of Yorkshire
Wrote [a play?] in dialect
Had the verse been sounder
T'royalties had been rounder - poor he!

Far more than The Root of the Boot, that reads like a direct commentary on someone (as does the rest of the poem)... but is it? There's no pre-Tolkien Yorkshire dialect playwrights or poets who spring out from a quick Google, and the other verses (particularly the one about 'two poor loons [who] tried to talk in Norse') seem to be just making jokes about philology in general (or sometimes not even that!).

The same source also provides Natura Apis, another Tolkien song, this time about bees. Once again, it could be an allegory - but there's nothing to suggest it is.

~

So I guess I'm going to walk back on my earlier claim. Tolkien's contributions Songs for the Philologists may look like they have a deeper meaning, but an examination of the available texts shows that the most likely truth is that the English-language ones were simply silly little nonsense rhymes, pulled from Tolkien's files or written to fill the space. All of them were modelled on folk songs, to allow them to be sung by the philologists in question; none of them seem to be any deeper than that.

hS