Minor Works -- 1 - Farmer Giles of Ham

[Formendacil]

The Foreword is appropriately brief--two pages in my edition of Tales from the Perilous Realm, which is the text I have readiest to hand, though I first encountered it in a very dusty, unassuming copy of The Tolkien Reader on my Dad's bookshelves--a not-quite-standard collection of some of Tolkien's minor works. There are several of these, not all quite lining up in terms of content.

Farmer Giles has never felt quite Middle-earthen to me, which makes him stand stand out from both Roverandom and The Hobbit, which are its nearest comparisons in his catalogue. Where he draws nearest to Middle-earth might actually be here: this Foreword reminds me strongly of the Prologue to The Lord of the Rings: it's the same pseudo-scholarly voice.

It occurred to me, reading the Foreword this time, that it's a shame that Hobbitus Ille was the first official Tolkien-to-Latin translation, because this would have been a more appropriate attempt--possibly also more challenging, since it would be best to render it as "very insular Latin." My own Latin would not actually be up to the challenge of reading it, but I would still have been deeply amused by the gesture.