Farmer Giles of Ham - obviously Catholic?

[Lalwendë]

There are several St George 'histories', and only one of them involves dragon slaying (the others are the usual business about martyrs and whatnot). 'Ours' comes from Turkey and the Middle-east in general, brought back by romantic minded crusaders and was probably an allegory about ending alleged pagan human sacrifices.

It must have been a cracking story as England already had a patron saint, Saint Edmund. Either that or the crusading Norman aristos were keen on finding a belting story that could trample the old Saxon saint's story into the ground - and it does for my taste as Edmund was venerated for losing a battle against Ivar the Boneless, and being of a Viking frame of mind, what's so great about that? Plus the Angles were no Angels. Bah.

Interestingly at the end of the 1800s Pope Leo XIII 'decided' that the English were not to have St George as their patron saint any longer and would have Peter instead. Pht. Pope John Paul II 'allowed' us to have St George back though.

St George is a cool saint to have - he may well slay the dragon, but at least there's one in his story. If Tolkien was playing around with that maybe he felt the same way a lot of us do and wanted the cool dragon to live instead.

[Rumil]

Hi All,

I've generally sort of assumed that Farmer Giles of Ham was set sometime in the dark ages in between the Romans and the 'heptarchy' of the Anglo Saxons. The story mentions the large number of petty kings, which would fit in nicely around this time. This also fits in well with the dates for St. Hilary, can we be any more specific with the dates of the other saints?

Perhaps the story fits into the 'Arthurian' age when Britain was ruled by the Britons not the English. If so the religion could perhaps be the Pelagian version of the Catholic sect or even the Celtic church (different haircuts on monks and date of easter).

[Estelyn Telcontar]

In their Introduction to the edited edition of Farmer Giles, Hammond and Scull specify the "historical" time as given by Tolkien in his Forward:

...between the end of the third century (the time of King Coel) and the early sixth century (the rise of the Seven Kingdoms of the English)...

So it is definitely pre-Arthurian. However, that is not important; they go on to say:

Its 'medieval' setting is merely an appropriate background for a tale of dragons and knights, against which Tolkien places anachronisms for humorous effect...