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.

[Estelyn Telcontar]

Thanks for the apt and thoughtful comments on the Foreword! We'll proceed with the story proper, and if anyone has something to add, it can be posted any time.

The first pages introduce two of the main characters - Giles and Garm - as well as the antagonist of the first adventure. After a few pages, Agatha joins them. Considerably later, the villagers, the King and his knights join them.

Which characters do you enjoy most? How do you like the abundance of Latin names used? What opinion do you have of the talking dog? Do you enjoy the parodic humour?

Let's stay with the first adventure for now - it paves the way for the events that follow.

[littlemanpoet]

Many years ago now, I bought a second hand copy of Tolkien's "Smith of Wootton Major & Farmer Giles of Ham," copyright 1967, Ballantine Books. I reread Farmer Giles of Ham for the umpteenth time because I just love it. In the most recent reading it had not lost any of its charm for me.

I find in the Foreword some delicious comments in terms of geography: the valley of the Thames and excursions to the "walls of Wales." The pseudo history places the tale some time after King Coel (maybe) and after King Arthur ... which, of course, makes it pseudo-history in the plainest sense. If one were to take this seriously, then it would have to be a story about pre-Anglo-Saxon Britain. Will we find the ensuing text free of Anglo-Saxon place names? Wink wink.

Let the fun begin!

[Inziladun]

I like the way Tolkien seemingly reinforces a theme from The Hobbit (taking place in a world with "less noise and more green") with this:

The time was not one of hurry or bustle. But bustle has very little to do with business. Men did their work without it; and they got through a deal, both of work and of talk.

Then we have Giles described as being mostly interested in being safe and comfortable, and the fact that he and Garm didn't pay much notice to anything outside the immediate area of Ham (shades of Bilbo Baggins?).

I think Garm is endearingly annoying at times, but obviously very loyal to his master. I love the vocalizations he's given in the book, such as when he wakes Giles to warn of the giant, and gets a thrown bottle for his trouble:

"Ow!" said the dog, jumping aside with practiced skill. "Help! Help! Help!"

The accompanying illustrations in my paperback compliment the story well.

[Estelyn Telcontar]

Does your book have the Pauline Baynes illustrations, Inzil? Those are such a wonderful complement to the story - and Tolkien really liked them. For those who remember her illustrations for the Narnia books, the style is similar. I find it has something medieval, but also something like comic book drawings. I love having the small pictures right where they belong in the text. And the black and white drawings make me want to colour them, though I wouldn't do it in the book...

[Inziladun]

Originally Posted by Estelyn Telcontar

Does your book have the Pauline Baynes illustrations, Inzil? Those are such a wonderful complement to the story - and Tolkien really liked them.

It doesn't say specifically in my Smith/Giles paperback, but I also have the 1966 Tolkien Reader with PB illustrations, and they are indeed the same.

[Morthoron]

Originally Posted by Estelyn Telcontar

Does your book have the Pauline Baynes illustrations, Inzil? Those are such a wonderful complement to the story - and Tolkien really liked them. For those who remember her illustrations for the Narnia books, the style is similar. I find it has something medieval, but also something like comic book drawings. I love having the small pictures right where they belong in the text. And the black and white drawings make me want to colour them, though I wouldn't do it in the book...

I have a hard cover copy of the U.S. Nelson Doubleday, Inc. edition (1976), and the color frontispiece and end covers by Baynes are excellent. The Baynes illustrations (both color and black and white) are certainly reminiscent of 12th century illuminated manuscripts.

[Rune Son of Bjarne]

I realised that I did not have a copy of Farmer Giles of Ham lying around, nor could I find my copy of the Danish translation Niels Bonde fra Bold. I couldn't find it on my audiobook/library apps and my local library have a bit of delivery time. Today I had resigned to purchasing an e-book version, when I looked at the book shelf and realised I had a barely touched volume of "Tales from the Perilous Realm" standing right there... Anyways, I have only made it a little passed the foreword for now.

Originally Posted by Thinlómien

That being said, I feel like one would also greatly benefit from being more familiar with English mythology and history. I feel like you can't really appreciate Tolkien's writing as much "just as a story", without a greater context. Now that I think of it, it's rather fascinating how he often wrote - in a way - for scholars and children at the same time, which is not really a common combination.

As for the foreword itself, two things stood out to me - two very trademark Tolkien things that we see in his major works too. One is that his love for and knowledge of linguistics is evident; how many other authors would say their story is just an explanation for odd place names? Or how many others would bother to establish what language the story is written, and what they're telling us it was translated from? And the trope of the somewhat unreliable translator-narrator passing on an old story, obscuring the truth of what "really happened," is of course the second thing. It is very much like the whole narrative framing of the Red Book of Westmarch.

I think this scholarly approach is one of the reasons I still find Tolkien so fascinating. It is escapism, but it also speaks to the part of me that loves academia. Like Tolkien I prefer history, even if this history is imagined.

I agree with your comparison with the Red Book of Westmarch, which incidentally is one of my favorite things in the appendix to Lord of the Rings.

Originally Posted by littlemanpoet

I find in the Foreword some delicious comments in terms of geography: the valley of the Thames and excursions to the "walls of Wales." The pseudo history places the tale some time after King Coel (maybe) and after King Arthur ... which, of course, makes it pseudo-history in the plainest sense. If one were to take this seriously, then it would have to be a story about pre-Anglo-Saxon Britain. Will we find the ensuing text free of Anglo-Saxon place names? Wink wink.

Let the fun begin!

Tolkien quite caught my attention when he started talking about the valley of the Thames, because I have never really thought much about southern English geography before. Too me it is just a massive urban area, but all of the sudden my mind started wondering. Why did that area/London become so important. I remembered that it had already been important in Roman times, obviously the main reasons had to be geographical...
and so on.

Anyways, I quite expected the setting to be pre-Anglo-Saxon Britain-like... So I was immediately flustered by the blunderbuss, more so than the giant and the talking dog.

[Bêthberry]

Originally Posted by Estelyn Telcontar

Does your book have the Pauline Baynes illustrations, Inzil? Those are such a wonderful complement to the story - and Tolkien really liked them. For those who remember her illustrations for the Narnia books, the style is similar. I find it has something medieval, but also something like comic book drawings. I love having the small pictures right where they belong in the text. And the black and white drawings make me want to colour them, though I wouldn't do it in the book...

In case anyone is looking for an edition of Farmer Giles of Ham, there is one that has more than just the Pauline Baynes illustrations: the 50th Anniversary edition, edited by Scull & Hammond. It includes the first manuscript version as well as notes for a planned sequel.

As an example of how much "tinkering" Tolkien did to the story, here is the beginning of that first manuscript version:

THEN DADDY BEGAN A STORY, and this is what he said:
Once there was a giant, a fairly big giant: his walking-stick was like a tree, and his feet were very large. If he walked down the road he would have left holes in it; if he had trodden on our garden he would have squashed it altogether; if he had bumped into our house there would have been no house left. And he might easily have bumped into it, for his head was far above the roof of it and he seldom looked where his feet were going.

And to provide a real spoiler, here's the ending:

'But who was the real hero of the this story, do you suppose?' said Daddy.
'I don't know.'
'The Grey Mare, of course, he said, and that ended it.

[Kuruharan]

Originally Posted by Legate of Amon Lanc

I think Morthoron has already addressed that; personally I recall (but do not have a source at hand) Basileus used somewhere in some circumstances in the medieval Latin-speaking world too, maybe as the sort of mix-and-match, and exactly redundantly in the sense like this. Otherwise at least as far as I can speak for 1-3rd century Greek, basileus was simply a "ruler" there. For that matter, the world "tyrannus" also was not originally Latin (although that was being used), and it just sounds like adding more redundant titles that just make it sound like "how many times can we say that I am a ruler in different ways to hammer the point". But if you read the King's name and simply swap "basileus" with "ruler", it sounds perfectly normal.

There is quite the rabbit hole you can disappear down on this topic...so here I go!

Basileus is not the original Greek word for king. The original word was "Anax," which while losing the status of a title, is still present in the Greek language and appears in such places as personal names.

"Basileus" in origin was a lower title subservient to an anax. The reasons why anax faded into dusty obscurity and basileus came to the fore are, at this far removed, lost to us. I've read speculation that "anax" had more of a sacerdotal association and "basileus", as it ultimately developed, was more secular in nature. There are also implications of what we could consider a feudal hierarchy at play where the anax was the high king and the basileus were autonomous rulers loosely subject to the anax. This is the political system at play in The Iliad. When the Bronze Age collapse occurred, there was no longer an anax but a host of petty basileus’ and that title came to dominate because it was so common.

I don't know if this potential sacred vs. secular dichotomy was what the editors were referring to in saying that "basileus" had the connotation of "administrator". It would be a pretty obscure reference if it was.

Originally Posted by Rune Son of Bjarne

Now this seems off to me. Yes basileus was used in the greek speaking parts of the roman empire, but to my knowledge not used by the latin speakers. Surely the west used "Imperator"?

It is a bit murky and there is a lot of what to us in the modern era is a frustrating non-standardization of usage. That being said, the "titles" if you will (which in itself is a bit murky and not a totally accurate description) were "Augustus" and "Caesar." At some point down the road after the end of the Roman Empire in the West "Augustus" completely lost its connotation of being a title, which it very much had in the time of what I will call the classic Roman Empire. In fact, it was the title "Augustus" that unambiguously identified the person of the emperor, not the title "Imperator." After the end of the Western Empire the word Augustus ultimately became what it is today; a personal name specifically associated with the person we now call "Augustus."

"Caesar" has experienced a similar phenomenon, although to a lesser degree. There is still some sense in the collective consciousness that Caesar was used as a title, but it is mostly associated as the name of Julius Caesar. More on “Caesar” below.

However, to ratchet up the levels of confusion "Imperator" was used, especially in an informal sense and "Imperator" as a title (for whatever reason) is the one that ultimately won out linguistically in the West. It was used in its connotation of "command - commander - command sphere or realm." In a way, from a pure definition standpoint, it is similar to the Arabic title “emir.”

My theory for why “Imperator” leading to “Emperor” became the utilized title in the West is that the preferred word order changed from Latin and "Imperator" won because it was the word that came first and was thus more prominent and "Augustus", reflecting its status as being a pretended nickname came later in the name and people lost the original importance of the word.

Of course, this is very much not the case in German as the word for emperor is “Kaiser” coming straight from “Caesar.” Same thing in Russian with “tsar.” I’d be interested to know if there is a similar practice in other Eastern European languages.

This is actually a topic of keen interest to me, so please forgive my digression on this.

That is a peculiar connotation, I wish there was a footnote to the footnote explaining the source.

Indeed.

[Kuruharan]

Originally Posted by Inziladun

(shades of Bilbo Baggins?)

Giles doesn't remind me of Bilbo so much as Gaffer Gamgee.

It has been many a long year since I read the book, but it surprised me on this re-read how often I would read a passage and think to myself, "Oh that's where that line comes from!"

One of my personal favorites is the Parson, "The characters are archaic and the language barbaric."

[Estelyn Telcontar]

There are numerous quotable lines in this story! One that I enjoy is, "He [Farmer Giles] was finding that a local reputation may require keeping up, and that may prove awkward."

And I love the turn-around irony of this one: "So knights are mythical!" said the younger and less experienced dragons. "We always thought so."

Another, very reminiscent of the Shire quote about the rest of the world being there, even if they weren't aware of it (can't remember the exact words or location): "But the Wide World was there." Sounds just a bit ominous, doesn't it?!

One of the characters that grew on me as I read and reread this story is Giles' wife Agatha. She's not mentioned very often, and according to Scull and Hammond, she was not part of the original story Tolkien told to his children, nor of the first manuscript. I will keep an eye out for the passages in which she appears to see if their is any significance to her addition to the story.

Incidentally, I haven't seen anyone cosplaying Queen Agatha - so I remedied that situation at the "Tolkien 2019" event in Birmingham two years ago...

[Rune Son of Bjarne]

Originally Posted by Estelyn Telcontar

Which characters do you enjoy most? How do you like the abundance of Latin names used? What opinion do you have of the talking dog? Do you enjoy the parodic humour?

Let's stay with the first adventure for now - it paves the way for the events that follow.

I know nothing of latin, but I have taken an interest in the Eastern Roman Empire (don't be surprised if I start a thread drawing comparisons with Gondor) and so I recognise the Greek title of Basileus in the title of the king.

Augustus Bonifacius Ambrosius Aurelianus Antoninus Pius et Magnificus, dux rex, tyrannusm et Basileus Mediterranearum Partium

My guess is that it is used in accordance with Byzantine customs to mean emperor. It could also just mean king, but rex is already part of the title so it seems unlikely.

Anyways, I am mystified why a greek word appears in our story. I mean as far as I know it was never used in Latin...

Later we learn that the sword Tailbiter used to belong to the famed dragon-slayer Bellomarius, and now I am ready to go into conspiracy theory mode.

Bellomarius is such a strange name, and just too similar to Belisarius, the greatest Byzantine general of all time (instrumental in Justinian's attempt to reconquer the western half of the empire).

I look forward to see how the rise of Islam, Iconoclasm and the first crusade have been incorporated in the later stages of this book, as they no doubt have.