The Standing Stone

[Priya]

The most definite and obvious otherworld of Tolkien’s sub-created mythology is voiced in Bilbo’s poetic recital at Rivendell:

“… from Otherworld beyond the Sea …”.

– The Fellowship of the Ring, Many Meetings, Poem: Eärendil was a mariner

The fabled province of the ‘gods’, in which lay ‘Elvenhome’, and once part of the Primary World had, due to the transgressions of men, been sundered away into a separate otherworld. Initially termed as ‘Faëry’ in some of the earliest works of the mythology (see The Book of Lost Tales Vols. I & II – by the time of The Hobbit it had become titled:

“… Faërie in the West.”

– The Hobbit, Flies and Spiders



Naturally, as the publication of The Hobbit was swiftly followed by the inception of The Lord of the Rings which in turn, early on, was hindered by preparation for the Andrew Lang Lecture, one might wonder whether multiple worlds in the forefront of Tolkien’s mind actively led to another jump in a developing mythology. After all - as intimated in the Lecture, though witches, trolls, giants, dragons and other such fantastical beings ‘intrude’ into our Primary World – they really belong to Faërie;

‘In Fairyland’, Andrew Lang, Originally illustrated 1870 (above 1979 reprint)

but for Tolkien, certainly not the ‘Faërie in the West’. Because the idyllic ‘Blessed Realm’ where:

“… naught faded nor withered, neither was there any stain upon flower or leaf in that land, nor any corruption or sickness in anything that lived; …”,

– The Silmarillion, Of the Beginning of Days

was wholly incompatible. I simply cannot emphasize that enough!

And so where exactly was the faërie of all those monsters and fay creatures? Was it just a place that resided in his mind, or the minds of other fairy tale inventors? Maybe – but maybe not. Tolkien might well have thought there was more to the matter. A shred of doubt would have been enough to build upon. As such, I believe that for The Lord of the Rings Tolkien subcreated a faërie adjoining Middle-earth. One consistent with existing real-world mythology associated to the soil of England and nearby lands. Intimately connected to ‘Middle-earth Faërie’ and central to the plan, was the standing stone set atop the dished and rounded hill.

Yet before returning to ponder the standing stone, readers of this thread might first ask:

‘Why bother? Was it absolutely necessary to create another faërie? And where is the proof?’


… to be continued