Lore & Learning in Middle-earth

[davem]

In the CbC thread on Field of Cormallen I posted a response to Hilde on Gandalf's words to Gwaihir

Its a common proverb, apparently:

Whether it was a specifically Hobbit proverb which Gandalf had picked up, or whether it was a commonplace saying in Middle-earth is another question. If the former we'd expect Gwaihir to respond to Gandalf with a 'Sorry, I don't follow.' Seems we have to go with the latter, which implies a collection of common sayings known by members of many different races. Where did these sayings originate? And why, exactly, does the third time pay for all?

EDIT

Maybe these sayings were part of a collection of lore passed down even among Hobbits:

EDIT again:

Shippey in a talk at Birmingham claims he counted over 70 proverbs in LotR. Gandalf's words to Frodo are interesting:

These common riddles are obviously very ancient & come from before the settling of the Shire. What's interesting is the way they have survived down to Bilbo's time. Shippey pointed out that Gollum's riddles have their roots in Anglo-Saxon riddles (as found in the Exeter Book for example) while Bilbo's seem to be recent creations (ie invented by Tolkien) so the process of inventing riddles seems to have gone on. Bilbo therefore has an advantage over Gollum - he knows the old ones but has access to new ones whereas Gollum only has the ones he learnt 500 years previously. So we seem to have ancient lore (& riddles) handed down & new ones invented - as with Bilbo's 'Out of the frying pan, into the fire' & 'Never laugh at live dragons.' So we get a collection of lore building up over the years, some of it the common property of all races, some of it unique to each race (as with Butterbur's: 'But there's no accounting for East and West as we say in Bree' & Pippin's ironic response "'Handsome is as handsome does' as we say in the Shire)

Now, by the time I'd posted the second EDIT there had been two or three other responses, so I don't know if anyone actually read it. Anyway, I found it quite interesting, listening over to my recording of Shippey's talk, the way lore is transmitted in Middle-earth & the way new proverbs come into being as a result of individual's experiences - cf Bilbo's creation of at least two (above).

Another thing worth thinking about is whether some characters invent 'proverbs' - when Bilbo tells Merry & Pippin 'Don't let your heads get too big for your hats.', or when the Gaffer alters a traditional proverb ('All's well as end's well') & comes out with 'All's well as ends better'.

Finally, we have Frodo's song of the Man in the Moon at Bree - this is a variant of a poem originally written by Tolkien much earler, an 'expanded' version of the nursery rhyme 'The Cow jumped over the Moon' - & Aragorn's 'Here's a pretty Hobbit skin to wrap an Elven Princeling in'. I found this on the Tolkien Society Website:

Don't forget that Tolkien rewrote and expanded nursery rhymes like 'The Man in the Moon', 'The Cat and the Fiddle', as well as borrowing part of 'Bye Baby Bunting'. If you don't remember this it come in when Aragorn removes Frodo's jacket in the Dimrill Dale and sees the mithril shirt. He calls the others and says 'Here's a pretty hobbit-skin to wrap an elven princeling in!' If you remember your nursery rhymes you will remember this distinctive rhythm from

Bye baby Bunting,

Daddy's gone a-hunting.

Gone to fetch a rabbit skin

To wrap a baby Bunting in.

Tolkien's use of the familiar rhyme in LotR offers a moment of light relief amid the grief of Gandalf's fall, and evokes a brief memory, for us, of the comforts of childhood. These are simultaneously transferred into the LotR context, making the moment even more poignant as the remaining Fellowship are far from comfort and security.

Even the Orcs have their own proverbs: 'Where there's a whip there's a will', etc

Anymore thoughts?

[Hookbill the Goomba]

I think it’s a sort of association with the wise in Middle Earth (although not all the time). The Gaffer is generally regarded (by Sam at least) to be a wise Hobbit, and he has many, many, proverbs. But I think it's all relative, really, even though some proverbs may be applicable to other situations to what they were made for. When Pippin says, of Hobbit proverbs, that they wouldn't interest those in Minas Tirith, it is probably because they are based mainly around peaceful hobbit life, gardening, smoking, drinking, and so on. Where as Minas Tirith would have proverbs based around war and battle, perhaps.
Gandalf, if he picked up the 'three times pays for all' proverb, was wise enough to apply it to his circumstances, as was Bilbo (Either that, or Tolkien simply liked the proverb for his own reasons). Its obvious that Hobbits were among the most advanced in Middle Earth, being touched little by war and suffering, having more time to think of sayings. Hobbits obviously had a close relationship with their parents and children (especially Sam and the Gaffer) and it is via that close relationship that wisdom or lore is passed on.
That’s what I think, anyway.

[davem]

Good points.

I can't help wondering though about the nature & relevance of proverbs/riddles/ poems in Middle-earth, & how they do everything from preserve & transmit ancient lore of vital importance (Gandalf's rhyme of the Seven Stars for instance) to just provide folk with something to say (Butterbur's stream of cliches: 'It never rains but it pours, we say in Bree', 'One thing drives out another' 'Best chat I've had in a month of Mondays' etc, or the Gaffer's fund of 'wisdom', which we usually hear from the lips of Sam 'Where there's life there's hope' (traditional), '& need of vittles' (addition invented by the Gaffer himself??)

Then we have Ioreth's 'The hands of the king are the hands of a healer'...

EDIT

I wonder also about how proverbs are used by different individuals. It seems some are useful, some are statements of the obvious & some are meaningless. Some characters like Butterbur seem to use these proverbial sayings as a way of showing their 'wisdom', a kind of pretence at cleverness & insightfulness. (Shippey did bring up probably the most famous spouter of cliches in literary history - Sancho Panza)

[Lalwendë]

I enjoyed Shippey's lecture on this as he brought up the idea that many of these sayings are patently absurd, and it was clear that Tolkien himself thought so. I think that there are a few different types of sayings displayed in Tolkien's work.

Proverbs/maxims - these are things which could be said to be truthful; this is where the real lore is preserved. The ideal example would indeed be Ioreth's "The hands of the king are the hands of a healer". This saying has preserved some old lore.

Aphorisms - these at one time may have held some lore but have now become slightly absurb if we think about them logically. Tolkien makes great use of these, reflecting patterns of colloquial speech (and thus providing welcome relief from the high-flown and high-falutin' ), and I think he finds a certain amount of humour in them.

Thinking about "It never rains but it pours", it is quite a meaningless statement; it is similar to the modern day "you wait for a bus, none turn up for thirty minutes and then three come along at once". Yes, this does indeed happen, but hidden behind the statement is that someone has a sinister, underhand intention to irritate us. The statement is illogical.

Again the saying "those who live in glass houses should not throw stones" is quite absurd, as patently those who do live in glass houses can throw stones with gleeful abandon, just so long as they don't throw them at their own property.

What such aphorisms hide within their absurdity is an idea, but one that is more colourfully expressed with a pithy statement.

Anti-proverbs - This is when an aphorism is altered to humorous effect. I think that in this respect The Gaffer is a genuine humorist, worthy of his own column in The Shire's version of Private Eye.

There are a few ways of twisting sayings and playing with the words to emphasise the absurdity within, but he always does this to great effect as seen with "where's there's life there's hope, and need of vittles" - you can almost hear the pregnant pause between the two clauses . Others such as Butterbur seem to get a saying a little muddled unintentionally which is itself great humour.

I enjoy Tolkien's humour with his twisting of such sayings (I wonder if he also enjoyed cryptic crosswords?), and Shippey's lecture brought to mind how funny it can be to mess around with sayings. I remember there being something of a craze for doing this in my 6th form - my favourite was the alteration of "you can't teach your grandmother to suck eggs" to "you can't teach your eggs to suck grandmother".

[The Squatter of Amon Rûdh]

The lack of a home internet connection is definitely limiting my comments on such subjects, but hopefully I can give you all some food for thought nonetheless.

What I find interesting is just how many of Tolkien's gnomics are recycled from English literature. For example, "third time pays for all" is Tolkien's translation of a proverb from passus III of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.

For I haf fraysted þe twys, and faythful I fynde þe.
Now "þrid tyme þrowe best" þenk on þe morne,
Make we mery quyl we may and mynne vpon joye,
For þe lur may mon lach when-so mon lykez.'

Sir Bertilak to Sir Gawain, p. 47 in the text linked to above.

The connection between Bilbo's riddle game and the Exeter Book riddles (the only extant Old English riddle collection) is well known, but in general Tolkien's use of sententious and gnomic statements, riddles and mnemonic rhymes echoes a common idea that our earliest literature is fossilised oral tradition. That the truth is far more complicated does not change the fact that Old English and Old Norse literature are replete with proverbial wisdom, of which my signature is an example. The poetic 'kenning', or condensed metaphor so often used by poets in the medieval Germanic languages, such as 'Whale-road' and 'swan-way' for the sea, is itself a meta-riddle, describing allusively a common concept. Medieval skalds took this to such extremes of complexity that some of their poetry still defies attempts to interpret it, seeming to revel in layer upon layer of mythological allusion and obfuscated meaning. It would be interesting to look at Bilbo and Gollum's game and see how the Anglo-Saxon riddles are apportioned between them, and whether Tolkien put in any subtle allusions to Gollum's age.

Now, the point to all this is that the medieval proverbs, like those Tolkien uses, can be mere truisms ('winter is coldest', for example), aphorisms, or truly pithy wisdom. Nor does this form of transmission reside only in dusty manuscripts, but is in common use. I think that Tolkien simply used an idea that seemed obvious to him: people use proverbs and rhymes to record the things they feel they ought to know. His reconstruction of a largely oral society accords quite well with the thinking of his time, which tended to see much oral-formulaic transmission in the earliest medieval texts. He was also quite right to give the rustic Hobbits their own set of bucolic gnomics, closely derived from common English sayings. The wisdom of some of these seems to reinforce another of Tolkien's pet points: old wives' tales may not be so valueless as many think.

[Hilde Bracegirdle]

Not only does it seem fitting that various cultures of Middle-earth have these elements present, but it serves build a poignant link to our own. (And apparently a very real one, judging from the earlier posts.) Whether that is intentional, I won’t pretend to know. But hearing familiar sayings, though at times garbled, does make it seem to be more of a historical account, than fiction.

I am thinking of how today I hear the changes in sayings I remember from childhood. Having moved residence in the interval might account for some changes, but I can’t help but ascribe it to the growth of the living language over time, as well as over distance. It is only a little stretch to adopt these sayings as a predecessor of own.

On a light note though, Gandalf’s musing over the “Tall ships and tall kings, three times three” does recall trying to remember history in school. “In 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue.”