What breaks the enchantment?

[davem]

'Lor' bless you...

Well, we have two alternatives - we can look within the secondary world for an explanation or outside it. Looking outside it, we have alternatives again. One, there is the possibility that it slipped past Tolkien - as Shippey points out it is the kind of exclamation a working class person of Tolkien's period make come out with, so Tolkien used it without thinking. Second, it is a kind of 'half hidden' Christian reference, which again could be conscious or unconscious on Tolkien's part. Third, we can consider the origin of the word 'Lord'. It is anglo-saxon & derives from the word 'hlaford' or 'loaf keeper', referring to the head of the household. So, not necessarily a Christian reference, but its possible.

Approached from within the secondary world it is both more difficult to account for but it is also more evocative - it leads us to ask 'who is this 'Lord' who Sam is invoking? Is this one of only two direct references in the whole of LotR to Hobbit religion (the other one being Merry's exclamation of 'Lawks!' in Three is Company).

What I'm saying here is that 'Lor'/Lawks' only become a problem if we read with primary world baggage in our minds. If we do, then these exclamations may break the spell for us, if we can leave that baggage at the door then far frombreaking the spell they actually add depth by providing a mystery to be solved. They actually make Middle earth a bit odder & more mysterious than it at first seemed. Did the Hobbits have any 'religious' beliefs at all?

Of course, whether Tolkien slipped up or not, what his actual reason was in using these phrases is another question. Its only their primary world connotations that risk doing any damage to our experience. In the other current thread, on 'What ain't there...' we're discussing exactly this kind of thing - the question is, didn't hobbits ought to have some form of belief? If so, what form would it take? Go with the 'conceit' for a moment. Tolkien has a text to translate, he comes across two references to some kind of 'Higher power' in this text, but without any context. What does he do - excise them, or substiute some modern colloquial equivalent? Probably the latter.

Hope this makes sense.....