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#1 | ||
Spectre of Decay
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I was recently reminded via an odd source of a long-obsolete Guardian article that did the usual Guardian things (moral relativism, historical revisionism, intellectual onanism and so forth), but this time in reference to The Lord of the Rings (chiefly the films, because Manchester Guardian columnists don't have time to read). The author suggested that the Red Book of Westmarch is a hatchet job, history is written by the winners, unreliable narrative, cultural relativism, racism, ect, ect, chiz, mone, drone. Clickbait. Like Seamus Heaney's girl from Derrygarve, that article is now out of the saga, because it made me think about something rather more interesting.
While considering the contention that evil is not really evil, just misrepresented by its enemies, I was reminded of the Witch-king's threat to Éowyn: Quote:
So what is a dwimmerlaik? The first discovery is that Tolkien did not use the word as found, but a variant form. Hence the OED has no entry for dwimmerlaik, but it does record dweomerlayk, which refers the reader to demerlayk. This is indeed from Old English gedwimer ('illusion', 'phantasm') and gedwimere ('juggler', 'sorceror') with the Middle English suffix -laik from Old Norse laikr. Tolkien has used - perfectly acceptably for Middle English, in which spelling had not been standardised - his own spelling that emphasises the Scandinavian influence on the word. A Dwimmerlaik is, then, a phantasm, an illusion, a juggler's trick. A product of sorcery or, as Tolkien puts it in his index to LR, necromancy. But where did Tolkien find such a word and why did he resurrect it after so many years, casting it before an audience who could never be expected to have encountered it? Its first recorded use since the thirteenth century was in The Return of the King and the OED, gathering its dignity about it, calmly passes that one over. I think that the clue lies in the fact that two of the citations for dweomer derived words are in Layamon's Brut, which is a Tolkien text for several reasons. Firstly, and most obviously, it was on the Oxford English syllabus so Tolkien was obliged to teach it. Its only complete manuscript is bound in the same volume as The Owl and The Nightingale, which was also required reading. It is written in an early Middle English dialect from around the year 1200 that still preserves much Old English grammar and vocabulary, and its early lines reveal its author to have been based at Ernley (Areley Kings on the Severn in Worcestershire). Moreover, it is the first work in English to make use of the Matter of Britain and the story of King Arthur. It makes reference to Bede (the first English historian) and Wace as sources, and therefore falls into an area that encompassed Tolkien's personal and professional interests. Furthermore, the author was a West Midlander, working in a consciously archaic style as part of a movement that sought to revive old verse forms. Tolkien was almost guaranteed to be a fan. Which brings us to the reason why I think Tolkien was drawn to dwimmerlaik. The first occurrence in Brut cited by the OED is at line 137, near the beginning, but crucially in its genitive rather than its nominative form. Here the story concerns the generations between Aeneas and Brutus, the mythical first king of Britain. In Brut, the sons of Aeneas are the half-brothers Asscanius and Silvius. Asscanius has a son, also named Silvius. In secret, the younger Silvius has fathered a child (Brutus) on a young woman, a relative of Asscanius' stepmother, and Asscanius wants to know more about the child before it is born. To this end he consults occult practitioners. The full passage is as follows. Quote:
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Man kenuva métim' andúne? Last edited by The Squatter of Amon Rûdh; 04-03-2020 at 10:27 AM. |
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#2 |
Spirit of Mist
Join Date: Jul 2000
Location: Tol Eressea
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Very impressive. Add some footnotes to sources and you can submit it for publication.
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Beleriand, Beleriand, the borders of the Elven-land. |
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#3 |
Spectre of Decay
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As always when writing things like that, the question haunts me: "Has Tom Shippey been here already?"
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Man kenuva métim' andúne? |
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#4 | |
Curmudgeonly Wordwraith
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Evidently the Rohirrim are a superstitious lot, and anything beyond their ken would be looked at suspiciously as "sorcery" (whether good, bad or indifferent), hence dwimmerlaik (dweomerlayk) as a nethworldly/shadowy presence capable of spell-casting accords with that distrust.
One has only to review Éomer's wariness upon meeting Aragorn, Gimli and Legolas on the open plain and hearing of Lothlórien: Quote:
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And your little sister's immaculate virginity wings away on the bony shoulders of a young horse named George who stole surreptitiously into her geography revision. Last edited by Morthoron; 04-03-2020 at 11:36 AM. |
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#5 | ||
Overshadowed Eagle
Join Date: Nov 2017
Location: The north-west of the Old World, east of the Sea
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It also says something positive about Eowyn that she was able to take a word that in her country was sometimes (often? mostly?) applied to elves, and recognise that it more truly applied to the servants of the Enemy. Given that the people who had come to Rohan out of Lorien later vanished into a haunted mountain, she could be forgiven for sticking to the use she was raised with... hS |
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#6 | |
Spectre of Decay
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However, unlike Saruman, who is described as "dwimmer-crafty", Galadriel doesn't receive a dwimmer- adjective. In any case, Tolkien doesn't invent the Rohirric dwimmer- vocabulary: all of it comes directly from Old English, so it would be the Anglo-Saxons who were superstitious and suspicious of the unknown. Since so much of the world was unknown to them, and much of the unknown in their day was lethally destructive, this should come as no great surprise. Old English can be surprisingly technical (such as in the number of words it has for types of hill), so what would be the difference between, for example, searucraeft as in the HME IV OE Annals and dweomer-craeft? Is one more scientific and the other occult or closer to conjuring? I'm drawn to the idea of the dwimmerlaik as something phantasmal, insubstantial, even illusory and yet wielding a power in its voice. A good description for a Ringwraith, but it also raises an interesting parallel with Saruman.
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Man kenuva métim' andúne? Last edited by The Squatter of Amon Rûdh; 04-04-2020 at 02:48 AM. Reason: Cross-posted. Edited for clarity |
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#7 | ||
Spectre of Decay
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The word that causes Galadriel some difficulty is 'magic'. She says this to Sam: Quote:
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Man kenuva métim' andúne? |
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#8 |
Spirit of Mist
Join Date: Jul 2000
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"Magic," to the Elves was not something exceptional. Rather, it was something inherent in their nature; the way they manifest their power and skills. While not clear, it seems that Elven "magic" was neither good or bad, but rather part of their nature. Of course, the manner that the "magic" is used may determine whether it is evil or good in effect.
Dwimmer, as a prefix, seems to carry with it negative connotations. Not unlike the distinction between a sorcerer and a wizard. I am no philologist, but dwimmer, as used by Tolkien, is a modifier, almost like an adjective, that may best translate to "sorcerous."
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Beleriand, Beleriand, the borders of the Elven-land. |
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#9 | |
Curmudgeonly Wordwraith
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And I think we can all agree the prefix "dwimmer" refers to sorcery, hence "dwimmer-crafty" and "dwimmerdene" as a sorcerous vale/forested valley (more on dwimmerdene in a later post); but the suffix "laik" is where I started considering optional definers. And I couldn't help but consider the OE term "lich" (ie., corpse, body) had some sort of interrelationship in Tolkien's mind with "laik" as a variation. I wonder if it is one of Tolkien's hidden philological puns. I mean, if one looks up etymological info on "laik", one gets at least one derivation from Proto-Germanic *laiką (“game, dance, hymn, sport, fight”) -- and the "dance" aspect is what intrigued me. Not so much the dancing aspect as the actual movement/exercise/action of dance. Then there is "Lich": also litch, lych, "body, corpse," a southern England dialectal survival of Old English lic "body, dead body, corpse," from Proto-Germanic *likow (source also of Old Frisian lik, Dutch lijk, Old High German lih, German Leiche "corpse, dead body," Old Norse lik, Danish lig, Swedish lik, Gothic leik), probably originally "form, shape," and identical with like (adj.). Perhaps I am just riffing off other ideas and spouting nonsense (which, in my case, is highly likely), but when Eowyn refers to the WitchKing as a "Dwimmerlaik", is this Tolkien saying the WiKi is a sorcerous animated (ie., dancing) corpse?
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And your little sister's immaculate virginity wings away on the bony shoulders of a young horse named George who stole surreptitiously into her geography revision. |
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#10 |
Spectre of Decay
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I don't know if Tolkien is, but Éowyn might be. The context marks this as a term of scorn.
I should probably have put in a translation of the laik component as well. In Middle English it can take the form -layk or -laik (the latter being the closer to its origins), and it does indeed mean 'play'. In a sense, though, the Witch-king is a plaything of the Necromancer; you could call him a puppet of the Black Hand. Going back to Galadriel's words about magic, I think it could be significant that all the way back to Old English there seems to be little or no distinction between actual sorcery and conjuring tricks, even juggling. Is this just Galadriel to Sam or also Tolkien to all English speakers?
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#11 | |
Spirit of Mist
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Within his subcreation, Eru created Elves and Men (and indirectly Ents, Dwarves, etc.) as they were intended to be. Thus Elves, as part of their nature, have powers that mere, superstitious Men would call "magic." Elves do not think that "magic" is evil, it just is. Men, at least those not educated in the ways of Elves, naturally fear that which is different or strange and might shun the supernatural. This fits and works in Middle Earth. But did Tolkien intend some broader applicability (word choice intentional)? Somehow, I doubt it. But then again I have not read On Fairy Stories in some time...
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Beleriand, Beleriand, the borders of the Elven-land. |
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#12 | |
Spectre of Decay
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As luck would have it, I was skimming through Letters earlier (looking for something else that wasn't there), and found this.
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#13 |
Loremaster of Annúminas
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To call the W-K a dwimmerlaik was also an insult, since it implies that he was nothing more than a phantasm, an illusion, a false creation of Sauron's (like the mock-Eilenel that ensnared Gorlim) rather than a Man, and once a great one, despite being reduced to invisibility. I'm also struck by the possible connotation of "puppet:" also, if intended, an insult.
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The entire plot of The Lord of the Rings could be said to turn on what Sauron didn’t know, and when he didn’t know it. |
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#14 | ||||
Curmudgeonly Wordwraith
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I had mentioned I would get back to this. And so I have.
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Although it is only implied in the words of Eomer and Wormtongue, there could well have been a "girdle" encircling Lothlorien, as was employed by Galadriel's mentor Melian in Doriath. It is possible, given that the Elvish Rings of Galadriel and Elrond have a power that preserves, and may well protect their enclosures (Elrond could even control the flood of the Bruinen). Something in the collective consciousness of the Rohirrim, reflected in their ancient legends, harkens back to something particularly nasty happening to travelers caught in the clutches of the "Golden Wood". That at least seems to be the implication Tolkien wishes to infer on behalf of the Rohirrim, and he used just such magical nets and net-weaving in Mirkwood in The Hobbit (the disappearing Elven feast), and more pointedly in the story of Eöl: Quote:
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It is not quite a leap to consider that mortals traveling at unawares into the Golden Wood become ensnared and do not come back alive (although it is more likely a case of Elvish archers hidden in their telain than snares of deception); however there are any number of legends, from Rip Van Winkle (borrowed from Greek story of Epimenides), wherein a man is enchanted and wakes again as an old man, or any number of English and Irish legends of men and maidens running afoul of faery circles and never returning, or returning as old men (the Irish legend of Niahm and Oisin, or St. Patrick and Oisin, for instance). I suppose one would have to consider what penalty would be levied by Galadriel if a mortal came unbidden into Lothlorien. Certainly not a by your leave situation.
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And your little sister's immaculate virginity wings away on the bony shoulders of a young horse named George who stole surreptitiously into her geography revision. |
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#15 |
Loremaster of Annúminas
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Add to this that both in old sources (e.g. the Heidrikssaga) and in Morris' House of the Wolfings "Mirkwood" represented the doubtful and treacherous border region between the Goths and the orc-like Huns.
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The entire plot of The Lord of the Rings could be said to turn on what Sauron didn’t know, and when he didn’t know it. |
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