Minor Works -- 1 - Farmer Giles of Ham

[Legate of Amon Lanc]

Originally Posted by Estelyn Telcontar

Let's move on to the main adventure - enter Chrysophylax Dives! The thing that I noticed right away upon rereading this is the difference between expectation and reality of adventures. The idea of real (meaty) Dragon's Tail vs. (sweet) Mock Dragon's Tail - which one do they actually want?!

I have always thought that the Mock Dragon's Tail sounded like something I'd like to try. The real one, not so much.

Originally Posted by Esty

Shades of the Hobbit again - "...adventures. Nasty disturbing uncomfortable things! Make you late for dinner!"

Yes! And I can't help but again noticing a million similarities with Hobbit/LotR in general.

There is also the part, when Garm informs Giles about the dragon, and Giles asks where did he see him, and Garm describes the area, Giles's reaction is the classic Hobbit reaction, in the vein of either Gaffer Gamgee about Bucklanders or Farmer Maggot about Bagenders (see, we again have the two people Giles was compared to before on this thread), "oh there? Well that explains, there have always been strange folk over there, nevermind". Despite it being only a couple of miles in reality, the "queer folk" argument, this is beyond our familiar village, is enough to convince Giles that it is normal to have a dragon prowling there. Or in other words: it hasn't breached our comfort zone yet; once it starts running across the places we all know, then it will become a problem.

You can clearly see from this that Giles sees (much like the Hobbits) the world divided into the "safe world" around his home and the "Outside". And no matter the actual geographical distances and/or other parameters, the "Outside" is the Outside and you could dump anything into it from Giants to Dragons to people who eat different type of things for breakfast.

***

Other similarities? I don't think I ever realised it before, but the parson actually bears some similarities to Gandalf. He is the one who recognises the magical item (sword) with an inscription and suspects that it is something long before everyone else, just like Gandalf can recognise not only the Troll-swords, but also The One Ring. He overall knows much more and seems to be somewhat manipulative, not unlike Gandalf in TH, in nudging Giles into the quest (but also in calculatingly letting the dragon run free so that the rest of the story can unfold).

The similarity between the dragons' respective dialogues and cunning eloquence in TH and Giles does not need to be even mentioned.

More recurring themes: what is it with Tolkien and swords with runes on them anyway? Is just the influence of the generic cultural background (Excalibur etc being such an important part of English mythology)?

And more interestingly, what is it with Tolkien and millers? He clearly has some beef with them. Sandymans in LotR, and the local miller here, clearly people of questionable motives and morality. If someone in the future stumbles upon an unpublished detective story by Tolkien, I guarantee you that the culprit is the miller. Can anyone more familiar with Tolkien's personal life confirm some real-life parallels? Did the Tolkiens have at some point an annoying miller for a neighbour?

Originally Posted by Huinesoron

• Ægidius - Late Latin name and origin of the English 'Giles'.
• Ahenobarbus - Latin cognomen meaning 'red-beard' or 'copper-beard'.
• Agricola - Latin for 'farmer'.
• de Hammo - 'of Ham', I assume in Latin.

So Tolkien is here being 100% literal: 'farmer', 'Giles', 'of Ham', and 'he had a red beard' are all parts of the good farmer's name!

(I don't know what happened to the Julius. Perhaps a dragon ate it.)

Okay! But of course! It never occured to me to seek the answer in his name. Well done, now it makes perfect sense!

Originally Posted by Rune Son of Bjarne

It is funny the way vast differences in time can totally disappear in popular culture. I often wonder why people think it makes human-dinosaur interaction more realistic if the humans are from the stone-age. In the grand scheme of things they are not much closer in time to dinosaurs than us.

Indeed, it's exactly the same thing! Or the other famous examples like Cleopatra living closer to current time than to the building of the pyramids, or - since you mentioned dinosaurs - my favourite, tyrannosaurus being actually closer in time to humans than to... stegosaurus. (Yes, the popular illustrations have been lying to us.)