Attercop, Mirkwood, and Dwarf |
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 Topic: Attercop, Mirkwood, and DwarfIn his blog Lingwė -Musings of a Fish
Jason Fisher explores the etymology, and the inter-relationship between attercop (spider), Mirkwood, and dwarf, and demonstrates some fascinating linkages.
And while Jason properly observes:
I talked about the temptation to find such echoes in unlikely places out of mere wishful thinking.
He also comments:
But I also acknowledged that Tolkiens linguistic borrowings were diverse and layered. He liked to imbue words with multiple shades of meaning, or even double-meanings, within and across languages. {my bold emphasis}
In the way he demonstrates the links between, attercop, Mirkwood, and dwarf, he certainly demonstrates the veracity of that latter observation. Well worth a read!
 Edited by halfir - 23/Oct/2009 at 9:36pm |
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He that would foil me must use such weapons as I do, for I have not fed my readers with straw, neither will I be confuted with stubble.
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Member of the Tolkien Society, the Finnish Tolkien Society, and founder of Lindon, the Swedish-speaking smial of the FTS. My Tolkien-related twitter: http://twitter.com/Ardamir
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It's somewhat unreasonable to make a bland statement of implicit criticism without stating why . On that basis any one of us here could make the same observation on each other's posts- and end up with fairly meaningless discussions. If you wish to critcize someone's work you should at least do them the courtesy of identifying the areas of disagreement and why. Moreover, the fact that there might be some questionable aspects of what Jason Fisher has written does not invlaidate the whole piece. Edited by halfir - 24/Oct/2009 at 11:40am |
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He that would foil me must use such weapons as I do, for I have not fed my readers with straw, neither will I be confuted with stubble.
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I did comment on Jason's post in the obvious place to do it - to the post itself, which is even better than commenting here on the Plaza forums behind Jason's "back".
Irmo note: There is no edit, my computer glitched and threw up the wrong post for edit. Edited by halfir - 25/Oct/2009 at 3:34am |
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Member of the Tolkien Society, the Finnish Tolkien Society, and founder of Lindon, the Swedish-speaking smial of the FTS. My Tolkien-related twitter: http://twitter.com/Ardamir
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Well as you made no mention of that here and we are not pyschic you received a comment that was more than fair in the context of your Plaza post.
This is what Ardamir posted in Jason Fisher's blog- his is one of 14 comments:
Well, I have to say that I suspect that both instances (myrkky and dwerg) are coincidences. They seem to be quite farfetched in my view. It may be that if you look close enough, you would find other instances in Tolkien's writings that are cast in the same mould (here I don't mean the more obvious and explicit ones like "Bag End"). I might have noticed something along these lines myself, but I can't recall it now. Edited by halfir - 24/Oct/2009 at 11:00pm |
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He that would foil me must use such weapons as I do, for I have not fed my readers with straw, neither will I be confuted with stubble.
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And if you had you would have provided us with some interesting information and observation- which we now have anyway! |
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He that would foil me must use such weapons as I do, for I have not fed my readers with straw, neither will I be confuted with stubble.
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(btw, the title of this thread just so made me think of the Middle-earth equivalent of Wilson, Kepple & Betty.... ) |
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I used to be Captain Bingo but lost me capitals....
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he's not here to either confirm our suspicions, or tell us not to be so ridiculous....
Fair point. Perhaps we should all put caveat emptor clauses each time we make such assertions! And it's good to see you again captainbingo- I hope life is treating you well.Edited by halfir - 25/Oct/2009 at 3:35am |
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He that would foil me must use such weapons as I do, for I have not fed my readers with straw, neither will I be confuted with stubble.
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Nope - I have swine flu....... (seriously, I have (expletive deleted) Swine flu!!!!) Actually, its not as bad as I expected & its meant I can grab some time for myself to at least visit the Plaza - even though I'm not up to much more than making 'jokes' about Music Hall acts 'cos 'my brain hurts!' This thread has encouraged me to finally get hold of a decent (but preferably cheap-ish) etymology dictionary - any suggestions? Actually, this looks interesting - the author states she was one of the handful to follow the course in early literatures and the history of language which was devised by Tolkien and Lewis to counteract the dreadful obsession with studying recent writers such as Dickens. While studying, I was able to discover a new sort of archaeology a linguistic archaeology of the mind. The great joy of looking at word origins and development is the way that it opens doors to both the thoughts and culture of the past. Just as the early literature enables you to try to get an understanding of the minds of both the writers and the audiences of the past, so focusing in on the individual words or phrases can give a different sort of understanding. Anyone got a copy? |
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I used to be Captain Bingo but lost me capitals....
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If you could give the name of the author and dictionary title that might be helpful!
And I hope that you recover from your swine flu quickly. Here, in Asia, as worldwide, the severity of the flu has been grossly exaggerated, particularly in terms of fatalities, and has been another bonanza for drug companies playing on popular fears and bloated bureaucracies such as the WHO justifying their amazingly expensive existence and salaries.(rant over!)
 And those of us living in 2009 might raise a wry smile at the depiction of Dickens as a 'recent writer'. On wonders how current undergraduates would respond to such a statement- understandable tho' it was at the time of Tolkien and Lewis.And I would be interested in further information on any etymological cooperation between Tolkien and Lewis.They contemplated co-authoring a book on the nature, function, and origin of languages, cf. Letter # 92 which never happened, and led to Lewis's famous comment:
My book with Tolkien -any book in collaboration with that great, but dilatory and unmethodical man - is dated I fear to appear on the Greek Calends. {Letter # 92. Note 2.}
And Tolkien's comments on Lewis's Studies in Words -which was published in 1960, is hardly complimentary:
I have just received a copy of C.S.L's latest:Studies in Words.Alas! His ponderous silliness is becoming a fixed manner. I am deply relieved to find I am not mentioned........He remains at best and worst an Oxford 'classical' don-when dealing with words. I think the best bit is the last chapter and the only really wise remark is on the last page:'I think we must get it firmly fixed in our minds that the very occasions on which we should most like to write a slashing review are precisely those on which we had much better hold our tongues.' Ergo silebo.{Letter # 224}
Ergo silebo - therefore I will keep silent
Edited by halfir - 25/Oct/2009 at 1:02pm |
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He that would foil me must use such weapons as I do, for I have not fed my readers with straw, neither will I be confuted with stubble.
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I used to be Captain Bingo but lost me capitals....
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He that would foil me must use such weapons as I do, for I have not fed my readers with straw, neither will I be confuted with stubble.
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Since Fisher is going a bit outside the Anglo-Saxon/Old Norse material that Tolkien is certain to have known intimately in his puns, I think it's very important for him to provide reasonable sources where Tolkien could have encountered these words or meanings- and he does so quite well. The first 'pun', that Mirkwood plays not only off of the obvious Germanic word 'murk', but also Finnish myrkky, which means poison (it's the home of poisonous spiders) gets a very solid backing- its use in Eliot's Finnish grammar that Tolkien used (S&H confirm on p. 463 that Tolkien checked this grammar out- twice). I was initially sceptical of the idea that Tolkien might have punned off of a dialectical Swedish meaning of 'dverg' that meant spider, but I think I'm pretty well brought around. Firstly, in one of the comments he does give a source- Grimm's Teutonic Mythology. I can hardly imagine that Tolkien wasn't familiar with this work, and at the least Grimm's work would have spread that particular factoid somewhat in the philological world. Interestingly, Fisher isn't the first person to suggest this, or something very similar (though of course he deserves any credit--or eye-rollings, if you prefer them--for proposing it on his own). In The Annotated Hobbit, Douglas A. Anderson has this fascinating note, which is simplest to quote in full: Kelley. M. Wickham-Crowley has pointed out to me a possible pun here on the word dvergs-nät. In Anglo-Saxon Magic and Medicine (1952), J. H. G. Grattan and Charles Singer mention the Anglo-Saxon peoples' fear of both elves and dwarfs, and in their text of the Old English semi-pagan "Lacnunga" they include a charm to be spoken for protection against a dwarf. Grattan and Singer also note that "Swedish dverg means not only dwarf but also spider, and dvergs-nät means cobweb," and "in Breton, Welsh, and Cornish, the word cor also means both dwarf and spider" (p. 61). The pun is in the situation: the dwarves were caught in dwarf-nets, which are also spider webs. -The Annotated Hobbit, Ch. 8 Flies and, Note 17, p. 215 of the hardback revised edition The Lacnunga dwarf charm actually gives another possible link between dwarves and spiders which might have stuck in Tolkien's midn. The Old English text of this charm is here: http://books.google.com/books?id=bFRkHU4I4uEC&lpg=PA97&ots=LALPX8mVTR&dq=lacnunga%20dwarf%20charm&pg=PA99#v=onepage&q=lacnunga%20dwarf%20charm&f=false It's mainly interesting for the first line of the song part of the charm, which goes: Her com ingangan inspidenwiht The underlined word is glossed as 'spider' in Clark Hall, though it has the mark (i?) next to it, which I'm not entirely sure how to interpret. It's certainly not the normal word for spider, and I think it's reading is a bit uncertain, but the puzzle of a spider-like word in a dwarf charm may have been another of those strange philological associations that Tolkien played off of in his writings. At the least, there seem to be enough arrows pointing in this direction to make this a highly plausible suggestion. So well done Mr. Fisher! Edited by Lord of the Rings - 28/Oct/2009 at 9:47am |
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Jason Fisher is of course (sorry to unmask you my dear friend) Lingwe of the Plaza.
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Hello everyone! I must say I am gratified to find a post from my blog being discussed here. The comments above are just what I've come to expect from a LOTR Plaza discussion and its insightful, articulate, and erudite members. Prompted in part by a comment here, as well as one on my blog, I have taken a closer look at the wiš dweorh charm in the Lacnunga text, and for those who might be interested, I have written a follow-up, here. Thanks to everyone for your comments and compliments.
Jason Fisher
(Lingwė)
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Sorry if I caused any confusion, but I actually posted the comment on your Blog too- I thought I should say something at the original place. I actually originally said something about that being here too, but I lost my comment while fiddling with getting it to post under the right google account, and I guess that bit didn't make it into my rather quick rewrite.
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Jason-great to hear from you. I know you're a very busy guy but don't be a stranger to us.
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He that would foil me must use such weapons as I do, for I have not fed my readers with straw, neither will I be confuted with stubble.
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I wondered whether the comment here and the one on my blog had been made by the same person. I didn't want to assume, so I appreciate the confirmation that they were. They seemed closely related, but I didn't want to assume that the moniker "Lord of the Rings" here corresponded to the "Anonymous" user (one of two) on my blog. Good to know! And thank you again for the valuable comments.
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Once more we have Tolkien comparing spiders and Dwarves, this time directly and right from the horse's mouth as it were! |
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In RK, Tolkien likens Denethor to 'an old patient spider'. (ch.4 'The Siege of Gondor'.
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It's all in the books...
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Taurėllo a trib for givnig us another dwarf /spider link- I must admit I had totally forgotten that (if I ever remarked it! )Edited by halfir - 29/Oct/2009 at 11:45pm |
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He that would foil me must use such weapons as I do, for I have not fed my readers with straw, neither will I be confuted with stubble.
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Taurėllo, well done! I had forgotten about that one as well, but it's a very nice piece of textual evidence (even if circumstantial) to support the idea that Tolkien was aware of this traditional connection between spiders and dwarves.
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 I want to stress though, that the word dwerg or dvärg (many different, archaic spellings probably exist - dvärg is the modern spelling) for 'spider' is not in general usage all over the Swedish-speaking area, at least not today. Although Swedish is my mother/first/native language, I don't think I've encountered it being used in this sense before. Spindel is the normal Swedish word for 'spider', and 'cobweb' is normally spindelnät.As for myrkky, I am still not convinced. It is possible, but may be a coincidence. The y's are pronounced almost exactly like German ü, quite differently than the 'i' in mirk. |
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Member of the Tolkien Society, the Finnish Tolkien Society, and founder of Lindon, the Swedish-speaking smial of the FTS. My Tolkien-related twitter: http://twitter.com/Ardamir
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The y's are pronounced almost exactly like German ü, quite differently than the 'i' in mirk.
Not so different- /y/ > /i/ is pretty regular in English, and /y/ is just a round /i/, making them quite closely related. And in Sigurd and Gudrun the Old English rendering of Mirkwood is Myrcwudu (and of course the Old Norse is Myrkvišr), meaning that the relation of /y/ and /i/ in the case of Mirkwood isn't even hypothetical.
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Member of the Tolkien Society, the Finnish Tolkien Society, and founder of Lindon, the Swedish-speaking smial of the FTS. My Tolkien-related twitter: http://twitter.com/Ardamir
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Ardamir, you're actually quite right that they don't sound that similar to most people. I guess I should have emphasised that Tolkien would have been highly aware of the close linguistic relationship between the two sounds, not that he would have equated the modern Finnish pronunciation with the modern English one.
Incidentally, Greek is another language that shows the move from /y/ > /i/ historically (although given how many other sounds also > /i/ in Greek maybe this isn't so telling!). Also, when I was in Germany, I heard people making fun of Bavarian dialects by pronouncing /y/ (ü) as /i/, and /ö/ as /e/ (which is the same type of change: loss of rounding on a front vowel). I never actually spent any time in Bavaria to find out if anyone really talked that way, but the change is at least stereotypically understood for some German dialects. There are other examples that I've run across as well (and in areas rather more distant from each other than these), but they're not coming to mind just now. But it's one of those interesting sound changes that, for whatever reason, seems to be quite common.
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Member of the Tolkien Society, the Finnish Tolkien Society, and founder of Lindon, the Swedish-speaking smial of the FTS. My Tolkien-related twitter: http://twitter.com/Ardamir
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