Generative AI, Hallucinations, and Tolkien Revisited

Just about a year ago, I wrote about the problem of hallucinations when discussing Tolkien with generative AI chatbots. That followed a post about six months earlier (about eighteen months ago now) on whether generative AI could be useful for analyzing The Lord of the Rings. Given the pace of change with AI models, I thought it might be time to revisit these questions and see what, if any, progress they have made.

First, let’s try the prompt I used to bait a generative AI chatbot into hallucination. I wrote about my last experience with this here if you want to refresh your memory. In that post, I did ask, “Will AI get better at this? Maybe. There is some reason for hope!” Chasing that hope, I tried the very same prompt in Google Gemini again today:

Please elaborate on the passage in J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings where Frodo Brandybuck tells Leroy Bolger, “I have never been taken with jewelry”, explaining how this amplifies or undermines the temptation of the Ring.

This time, Google gave me a much better response. It started with a promising correction and then went on into a more detailed character study of Frodo and some points of contrast with Samwise, Galadriel, and Gandalf which seemed reasonably accurate and which I won’t quote here. The opening to the response:

It appears there has been a slight mix-up in the Middle-earth archives! There are two small but significant corrections to address regarding that specific quote and the characters involved:

1. The Characters: Frodo’s last name is Baggins (though he was born a Brandybuck, he was adopted by Bilbo). More importantly, there is no character named “Leroy Bolger” in Tolkien’s legendarium; you are likely thinking of Fredegar “Fatty” Bolger, a close friend of Frodo who helped him move out of Bag End but chose to stay behind in the Shire.

2. The Quote: The line “I have never been taken with jewelry” does not actually appear in The Lord of the Rings (the books) or the Peter Jackson films.

However, the sentiment of that phrase—that Frodo is an unassuming Hobbit with no prior lust for gold or power—is a central theme of the story. Here is how that concept affects his relationship with the One Ring […]

This is a lot better than the results I saw a year ago, on several counts. For one, Gemini corrects the mistakes with the names, noting that Frodo was indeed part of the Brandybuck clan by birth. Gemini also “knows” that the line I offered as a quotation is not actually in the book. Or the movies! Gemini apparently has access to both and considered both, another encouraging point. And it got “Middle-earth” right (as opposed to differently capitalized and/or non-hyphenated forms you see everywhere online).

Six months earlier, I tested generative AI chatbots to see whether they could identify hapax legomena in The Lord of the Rings. The original results and discussion are here, and they were pretty bad indeed — basically useless. So, once again, eighteen months later this time, I tried the same prompt:

Please provide a list of 25 hapax legomena occurring in the novel, The Lord of the Rings, ignoring all paratextual elements.

And here’s how Gemini responded today (slightly edited for clarity):

A hapax legomenon is a word that occurs only once within a specific context—in this case, the narrative text of The Lord of the Rings. Finding these is a specialized task because Tolkien was a philologist who often revived archaic terms or invented his own.

To meet your request, I have excluded all paratextual elements (Appendices, Forewords, and Indexes) and focused strictly on the story text.

25 Hapax Legomena in The Lord of the Rings

Bat-fells: Used to describe the skin/wings of the Nazgûl steeds

Bewilders: Used as a noun referring to tangled thickets or paths

Brickle: An archaic variation of “brittle,” used to describe dry stone

Butterbump: A localized Hobbit name for a bittern (a type of bird)

Carracks: Large merchant ships (used in the description of Pelargir)

Dwarfishly: An adverb used specifically to describe the way a door was shut

Eyot: A small island in a river (used during the journey on the Anduin)

Flittermouse: A regional term for a bat, used by Samwise Gamgee

Gallows-tree: Mentioned in the context of the Orcs’ cruel imagery

Hallows: Specifically as a noun for the tombs of the Kings in Minas Tirith

Hayward: An officer in charge of fences and stray animals in the Shire

Hummock: A small hill or mound, used in the Dead Marshes

Inenarrable: Too great to be described (referring to the beauty of Lothlórien)

Kirtle: A woman’s gown or outer petticoat (worn by Goldberry)

Loggan: A rocking stone (used in the description of the Barrow-downs)

Mathom: An old Hobbit word for anything they had no use for but wouldn't throw away

Mirk: Used once as a noun for absolute darkness, separate from “Mirkwood”

Nodes: Used to describe the knobby joints of the Ents’ fingers

Oubliette: A secret dungeon with an opening only in the ceiling

Pinnas: A specific architectural term for a battlement or peak

Sarn: Though common in names (Sarn Ford), it appears once as a lone noun for “stone”

Shaftsman: Referring to a worker or soldier specifically manning a shaft

Thrave: An old measure of grain (twenty-four sheaves)

Warg-howl: The specific compound noun for the cry of the Wargs

Withy: A tough, flexible branch (found in “Withywindle,” but used once as a noun)

So, how did it do?

“Bat-fells” is not in the novel, but “troll-fells” is (but twice, a dis legomenon). “Fells” also occurs once by itself and one other time in a closed compound, “Coldfells”. “Bat-fells” is an appropriate description for the Nazgûl’s fell beasts, but not an authentic one. Note: the “fell” in “fell beast” is not the same “fell” in “bat-fell”, nor the same “fell” in “Coldfells” and “troll-fells”. These are three different words, each with a different linguistic source:

• fell “an animal skin or pelt” < Old English fel, fell
• fell “a mountain range, mountainous terrain” < Old Norse fjall, fiæl
• fell “strong, fierce, terrible, cruel” < Old French fel (related to the English words “felon”, “felony”)

“Bewilders”, in that specified word form, does not occur in the novel either, though other forms do — “bewilder”, “bewildered”, “bewildering”, and “bewilderment”. Gemini also identified “bewilders” as a noun, which, er, no.

“Flittermouse” does not occur in The Lord of the Rings, but it does notably occur in Tolkien’s early poem, “Goblin Feet”. Likewise, “kirtle” does not occur in the novel but does occur (three times) in the poem, “Little Princess Mee” in The Adventures of Tom Bombadil. Honest confusion or hallucination by Gemini? I’m not sure.

“Brickle” does not occur in The Lord of the Rings; no idea where this came from! Neither does “Butterbump”, which was possibly an error for “Butterbur”, but with a made-up explanation. Nor “carracks”, with its specific reference to Pelargir, though “carrock” does occur (a word with an entirely different meaning). Nor “dwarfishly”, which goes against Tolkien’s preferred spellings “dwarves”, “dwarvish”, and refers randomly to the closing of a door. Nor “gallows-tree”, “inenarrable”, “loggan”, “nodes”, “pinnas”, “shaftsman”, “thrave”, or “warg-howl”.

“Oubliette” is also not found in the novel and was especially conspicuous to me, knowing as I do that Tolkien tended to avoid words of such obvious French origin (with a small handful of exceptions like “adventure” and “louver”). There is something one might well call an oubliette in The Silmarillion, but Tolkien does not use the French word. In Tol-in-Gaurhoth, he refers to it as a “pit” and a “dungeon”. Here I should note that “dungeon” is also a word of French origin, though less obviously than “oubliette”. And “dungeon” may ultimately be of Germanic origin, connected to the word “dung”, which Tolkien famously incorporated into a low Orcish imprecation. Worse (from Tolkien’s point of view) is that “oubliette” was a very recent borrowing, first recorded in English in 1819 in Sir Walter Scott’s novel, Ivanhoe. Anyway, I’d call all of these outright hallucinations.

Others of these words do occur in The Lord of the Rings but are not hapax legomena. “Eyot” occurs four times in the singular and twice in the plural. “Hallows” occurs five times. “Hayward(s)” occurs three times — once as a common noun, as described correctly by Gemini, and twice as a vocational surname for the hobbit, Hob Hayward. “Mirk” occurs three times in the stated form and once as “mirky”, a genuine hapax legomenon and a missed opportunity for Gemini! “Mathom” and “Sarn”, of course, occur many times.

And finally, there is only one genuine hapax legomenon in this list. “Hummock” does, in fact, occur just one time in the novel, but not in the context given by Gemini. And there’s one that Gemini almost gets right. “Withy” never occurs alone as a single word, but it does occur exactly once in the nonce compound “withy-path”. It occurs in three other compounds elsewhere: as “withy-stream”, “withy-willow-stream”, and “Withy-weir” in “Bombadil Goes Boating” (in The Adventures of Tom Bombadil).

So, the results of this kind of analysis are still very bad. 16 of the 25 words given by Gemini are not in the novel at all, 7 are in the novel but are not hapax legomena, and only two are or are close to being hapaxes. Is this better or worse than the previous try? I guess it depends on how we measure success. The first try included multiple duplicate entries and lacked much on the supposed context. The new results attempt to provide context, but with a lot of hallucination, likely more than we saw in the first attempt. The new attempt also includes words of Tolkien’s own invention, unlike last time. If we want to be precise, Gemini only found one actual hapax legomenon this time and likewise only one 18 months ago (“hummock” this time, “withersoever” before).

In late 2024, I mused, “will Generative AI ever be good enough to perform this kind of analysis reliably? I have some reasons to doubt it.” I would say that assessment still holds. Perhaps I’ll try again in a year or eighteen more months hence.

“The Ulsterior Motive” and other unpublished writings of Tolkien

With the upcoming publication of “The Bovadium Fragments” — following the recent Collected Poems, Nature of Middle-earth, Battle of Maldon, and continuing issues of Parma Eldalamberon — we might take a moment to consider how much else is left of Tolkien’s unpublished work and whether any of what remains is publishable. In the past, folks have collected lists of what was then unpublished (like this one), but today, in 2025, most of these works have now appeared in print.

Apart from academic papers, of which there is still a very great deal indeed — hundreds of pages, I believe; and the diaries and private papers, which are likely enough never to be published; and the remaining unpublished linguistic material, including satellite material of a philological nature like The Book of the Foxrook (part of the Tolkien Family Papers); there are still some bits and bobs that might still be published one of these days.

One of these is an odd short story called “The Orgog”, “a strange, convoluted tale of an odd creature travelling through a fantastic landscape” [1]. Wayne Hammond and Christina Scull hypothesize that the unfinished story relates to a watercolor of 1924.

I’ve wondered whether “orgog” might relate to “ogre”, perhaps connected with Hilary Tolkien’s (and Ronald’s) childhood tales of black and white ogres. Or there is the character of Orgoglio from Edmund Spenser’s The Faerie Queene. That work was more to Lewis’s taste than Tolkien’s, but you never know. In that work, Orgoglio is a monster who attacks Redcross Knight in Book One, Canto VII. The name, interestingly enough, is Italian for “pride”, from Vulgar Latin *orgollium, in turn from Proto-West Germanic *urgollju “pride, arrogance”.

But these are no more than guesses, since I haven’t seen it. Others have but aren’t at liberty to say more. In any case, I was told it “really isn’t in a state suitable for publication” (private correspondence).

There’s another incomplete short-story called “The King of the Green Dozen”, described by Tolkien as “an unfinished pseudo-Celtic fairy-story of a mildly satirical order, which is also amusing as far as it has gone” [2]. So, that’s two unfinished short stories, which might or might not be fit for publication or hold any real interest for readers. But likely enough, they’ll end up in print someday anyway — if I were to bet on it.

And then there is “The Ulsterior Motive” (1964), an unpublished piece of nonfiction critiquing — harshly it would seem — C.S. Lewis’s Letters to Malcolm, which had been published after his death. This manuscript is heavily restricted and seems not to be destined for publication any time soon, maybe never, because of the sensitive and personal nature of the reproach. Humphrey Carpenter quoted part of a paragraph from it in his book, The Inklings (p. 50), and A.N. Wilson carries that same quote on by another sentence or two (p. 135–6). Wilson gives us a bit more summary and spares us one further short quotation, in which Tolkien refers to Lewis’s “anti-Catholic mythology” (p. 217). I feel no need to reproduce these descriptions and quotations here — they can be found elsewhere. I’m more interested in the title.

While the play on words, “ulsterior motive” (“ulterior motive”) is clever, it’s not original to Tolkien. Far from it. Many before Tolkien, it seems, used this particular turn of phrase connoting the hidden goals and conflicts, religious and political, within Ireland and between Ireland and England.

The earliest example of something similar, not identical, that I’ve found occurs in a letter from November 1880:

Next to open and secret enemies, indiscreet friends are, perhaps, the most disagreeable of created beings. Unfortunate Mr. Boycott, who wanted a score, at most, of Northern men to get in his crop, has been threatened with an invasion from Ulster. The opposition of the Government to such ‘Ulsterior’ measures, as a Galway man called them to-day [sic], has at least had the effect of moderating the rancour of the relief expedition. [3]

A little later, in an 1892 issue of Punch, two puns for the price of one in a letter to the editors on the subject of Home Rule in Ireland, a big topic of the day:

“NE PLUS ULSTER.” — Decidedly, Ulster can’t go beyond “its last”, or rather, its latest, most utter utterances. So far, “words, words, words” [a reference to Hamlet, I take it]; but from words to blows there is a long interval, especially when their supply of breath having been considerably exhausted, there is not much to be feared from their “blows”. However, so far, the men with Ulsterior views have been patted on the back by the Times […] [4]

Not surprisingly, these phrases become much more common in the years leading up to and following the partitioning of Ireland in 1921.

In 1909, again on the demand for Home Rule:

There are those, I know, who cannot read the records of three or four hundred years ago without wanting to go out and lick the opposition. […]

                But even granting that I was animated by no ulterior — or shall we say Ulsterior? — motives, there are those who complain that the historical references were unfair, tending to accuse one side and excuse the other. [5]

 In 1918, on the same topic:

Having scotched political self-determination at home, they [the Loyalists; those in favor of Ireland’s remaining in the United Kingdom] became seized of a praiseworthy ambition to confer that denied benefit upon the unenlightened foreigner. As for the mere Irish, they gradually realized the symbolism of this loyal gesture, the Ulsterior motive became apparent: the war was on behalf of the small nations, but one had been forgotten. [6]

In 1920, as part of a lengthy humorous “catechism” for Irishmen in Cartoons Magazine:

Q. When will the British sojers [i.e., soldiers] be taken out of Ireland?

A. In the mornin’.

Q. When will the north cease to be guided by Ulsterior motives?

A. In the morning’.

Q. When will the south love the Carsoneers like she loves Dublin Castle?

A. In the morning’. [7]

And so on at great length, ending with a final refrain of “in the mornin’”. To be honest, I don’t have the cultural and historical context to appreciate the humor here, but it was evidently deemed worth printing.

In 1921, seven months or so after the partitioning of Ireland was enacted, an interesting comparison to the political situation in the Orange Free State, in which Tolkien himself had been born a bit less than thirty years before, made here in reference to a piece that had appeared in the Evening News.

It was extraordinary, perhaps, how quietly London took the news yesterday, and particularly last night. There was a buzz of excitement in one very English St. James Street club, when Mr. Michael Collins was taken in there for a meal; and there were a few colourless jests as to whether Ulster would now claim the title of Orange Free State, whether there was an “Ulsterior” motive about the settlement, and how long it would be before Ireland had a postage stamp of her own. [8]

And finally, a piece more in line with my own interests — and Tolkien’s, Americanisms notwithstanding — from Philological Quarterly in 1930. Here, alongside “plattitudes” as a pun on the Platt Amendment in the United States, and the humorous division of the Anglican Church into Platitudinarians, Latitudinarians, and Attitudinarians, we get this bit:

A pun as well as a blend may have been intended by him who before the War suggested that Mr. Lloyd George, in his dealings with Ireland, had “Ulsterior motives”. [9]

Clearly enough, judging by these several and varied examples, the pun was rather often used and may have been a commonplace, may have even become passe, by the time Tolkien adopted it in 1964. But will we ever see this piece in print? Hard to say for sure, but I wouldn’t lay money on it.

[1] Hammond, Wayne G. and Christina Scull. J.R.R. Tolkien: Artist & Illustrator. Houghton Mifflin, 1995, p. 77.

[2] See Tolkien’s Letters, p. 40; see also Letters, p. 436 for a very brief summary by Carpenter.

[3] Becker, Bernard H. Disturbed Ireland: Being the Letters Written During the Winter of 1880–81. Macmillan, 1881, p. 127.

[4] Punch, or The London Charivari. Vol. CII, 25 June 1892, p. 305.

[5] Sutherland, Hugh. Ireland: Yesterday and Today. The North American Co., 1909, p. 258.

[6] Gnathaí gan Iarraidh [E. A. Boyd], The Sacred Egoism of Sinn Féin, Maunsel & Co., 1918, p. 5. Here, the clever (and maybe prejudiced) used of “scotched” is rather telling!

[7] Cartoons Magazine, Vol. 17, No. 4, April 1920, p. 551.

[8] Stamp Collectors Fortnightly, 24 December 1921, p. 418.

[9] Withington, Robert. “Some New ‘Portmanteau’ Words.” Philological Quarterly, Vol. IX, No. 2, April 1930: 158–64, p. 160.

First mention of The Bovadium Fragments

As many of you will know already, another posthumous Tolkien publication is on the horizon, this time also posthumously edited by his son, Christopher. Is that a first, I wonder? A posthumous work posthumously edited?

This work is a short satire about the dangers of mechanization called “The Bovadium Fragments” or “The End of Bovadium”. A number of people have shared the news — for example, David Bratman and John Garth [1] — and many of them say that the first ever mention of “Bovadium” was in Humphrey Carpenter’s biography. But I don’t think that’s correct. The biography was published on May 5, 1977, but I know of one reference to the work that appeared a little over a year earlier.

Clyde Kilby’s Tolkien and The Silmarillion was published in April, 1976. In it, Kilby writes:

Though the reading of The Silmarillon was proving about as much as I could handle during that summer of 1966, Tolkien from time to time handed me other shorter pieces and asked me about their publishability. One was called “The Bovadium Fragments”, a satire written long before and having as its main point the worship of the Motores, i.e., automobiles, and the traffic jams blocking the roads in and around Oxford. It was full of the inventiveness to be expected of Tolkien. Some of the characters are Rotzopny, Dr. Gums, and Saravelk. I judged that it had two elements that would make it unpublishable. One was the more than liberal use of Latin, and the other the probability that the reader’s eye would focus on its playfulness rather than its serious implications. Actually it was an early comment on the commercialization of our world. [2]

Regardless of this, it’s something to look forward to! After 60 or more years, Tolkien’s publishers have evidently deemed it publishable at last. While some of the posthumous publications have felt a bit thin, like “butter scraped over too much bread”, this is not likely to be one of those. Short, yes, but thin, I don’t expect so. It’s of additional interest as one of a relatively small number of works set entirely outside Middle-earth — along with Farmer Giles of Ham, Smith of Wootton Major, Roverandom, and Mr. Bliss. This last, in fact, seems perhaps the most closely connected to “Bovadium”, since it too involves high jinks with motorcars.

[1] John mentions Kilby in his post too (though I had thought of his book before I found John’s post), but even so, he says he “first read about [Bovadium] in Humphrey Carpenter’s Tolkien biography” in 1976. But to my knowledge, the biography was not published until mid-1977 — unless John had access to an advance copy.

[2] Kilby, Clyde S. Tolkien and The Silmarillion. Harold Shaw Publishers, 1976, p. 36.

A new profile of Karen Wynn Fonstad

Wisconsin Public Radio just published a great profile on Karen Wynn Fonstad, the celebrated part-time cartographer known for her incredibly detailed and accurate maps of Tolkien’s Middle-earth. Like many here, surely, I have been a huge fan of her work ever since I first saw it in the 1980s. For a long time, it was an indispensable guide as I read and reread Tolkien’s books.

Along with the printed article, there’s a 15-minute public radio piece you can listen to with Fonstad’s son, Mark, who is an associate professor of geography at the University of Oregon. The piece also includes some great photos and an embedded video in the Robinson Map Library at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. There, Mark Fonstad is working on a new project to digitize all of Fonstad’s original maps of Middle-earth, a task made more difficult not just because there are hundreds of them but also because many consist of multiple overlapping layers.

As some may know, Fonstad also drew maps of Anne McCaffrey’s Pern, Stephen R. Donaldson’s The Land, and other geographies of fantasy. Something else I learned in this piece is that Fonstad had pitched creating an atlas of The Chronicles of Narnia, but the C.S. Lewis estate declined to proceed. What a shame!

Although a longtime resident of Wisconsin, she was born in Oklahoma, like me, though in her case it was Oklahoma City (me, north of Tulsa). Fonstad died of breast cancer in 2005, twenty years ago last month. About one year after her death (almost to the day), I pitched writing an entry about her for Robin Anne Reid’s encyclopedia on Women in Science Fiction and Fantasy. [1] I noted this in Lingwë back in 2008, when the encyclopedia was then still forthcoming.

After seeing Robin’s call for contributors and perusing her proposed list of entries, I wrote to her in March, 2006:

Also, if I might offer another suggestion: are you familiar with Karen Wynn Fonstad? Trained as a cartographer, she published fantastic atlases of Tolkien’s and McCaffrey’s worlds (among others). She seems like a good choice to include — and sadly, she passed away from breast cancer last year. I had the opportunity to meet her at a conference only some six months before she died. It’s a great loss. If you were to decide on including her, I would be very honored to write that entry as well. [2]

A little later, I also pitched and wrote an entry on Lloyd Alexander, which, like the one I wrote on Fonstad, turned out to be in memoriam, as Alexander died right after I submitted my draft. This meant I had to make some adjustments to note his passing and to adjust the tense throughout. [3]

 

[1] Fisher, Jason. “Fonstad, Karen Wynn (1945–2005).” Women in Science Fiction and Fantasy. Volume 2: Entries. Ed. Robin Anne Reid. Greenwood Press, 2009, pp. 127–8.

[2] The conference I was referring to must have been the one at Marquette University in October 2004 celebrating the fifty-year anniversary of The Lord of the Rings and the career of the late Richard Blackwelder, known for his Tolkien Thesaurus. But this was twenty years ago, and the memory is rather dim now. Does anyone else remember her being there? The proceedings of that conference would go on to become a Festschrift (or Gedenkschrift) edited by Wayne Hammond and Christina Scull. Prior to the publication of the proceedings, what do you call a conference in honor of a scholar? I don’t know if there’s a single arcane, scholarly German word for this, so let’s just call it an Ehrenkolloquium. :)

[3] Fisher, Jason. “Alexander, Lloyd (1924–2007).” Women in Science Fiction and Fantasy. Volume 2: Entries. Ed. Robin Anne Reid. Greenwood Press, 2009, pp. 2–3.

An ephemeral coincidence

It should be obvious from my last several posts — if it hadn’t been already over many years of posts! — that I love digging into old archives and ephemera. Thus occupied, I came across something rather interesting: a page of advertisements in which two of Tolkien’s grandparents, one on either side of his family, both advertise their respective wares on the same page, some twenty years before their children would marry and the Tolkien we know today would be born. [1]

At the top right, John Benjamin Tolkien — Tolkien’s father’s father — advertises pianos at 87 New Street, near the Town Hall. The door to the Town Hall is still visible today, more than 150 years later. The ad promises that “excellence of touch and tone characterises these Instruments, which, considering their high-class character, are a Marvel of Cheapness”. He also tuned pianos and sold music, but his business would go bust in 1877, less than five years from the date of this advertisement.

Then, in the middle the left-hand column, John Suffield — Tolkien’s mother’s father — flogs his wares — hoses, gloves, lace, collars, ties, undergarments, and more — at 107–109 Bull Street, less than a half-mile walk away from Tolkien’s shop. The Suffields had done business here since 1812. First, a stationery shop run by Tolkien’s great-great-grandfather, William Suffield; then, a drapery and hosiery from 1826, run first by Tolkien’s great-grandfather, John Suffield, and then his son, also named John. The latter Suffield was successful and prosperous until his business too collapsed in 1886, about 13 years after the date of this advertisement.

An interesting piece of ephemera, wouldn’t you say? I suppose it’s really not so unlikely a coincidence to find two prominent, well-established businessmen in Birmingham on the same page sooner or later, both unknowingly drawing near the end of their trade. Suffield’s daughter, Mabel, was two years old at the time, while Tolkien’s son, Arthur, was already fifteen. They would marry about 19 years later. It’s a peculiar moment in time, totally unremarkable then, but seen in hindsight it’s almost as if Birmingham were holding its breath, awaiting the arrival of greatness, with two parties to it, totally unbeknown, sharing a page. They would eventually share a grandson, who would go on to fill many, many pages of his own.

Too dramatic? Well, what can I say? It’s in my nature. :)

[1] King Edward’s School Chronicle. No. 9, December 18, 1872, p. 87.

A warm welcome in a not quite dead language

In their Chronology, Christina Scull and Wayne Hammond tell us that on October 7, 1925, just a few months shy of 100 years ago:

The Vice-Chancellor of Oxford delivers a speech in Latin to Convocation reviewing the past academic year and welcoming newcomers to positions in the University, including Tolkien as Professor of Anglo-Saxon. [1]

They don’t identify the vice-chancellor by name, but this would have been Joseph Wells, who was Vice-Chancellor of the University of Oxford from 1923 to 1926.

For those who might be interested, here is the paragraph in which Wells welcomes Tolkien and others:

Salutamus etiam comiter sex novos professores, et te primum ex Aede Christi ad Cathedram ’Αρχαιολογίας unanimo consensu vocatum, Ioannes Beazley, qui, ut Ioannes ille alter versibus immortalibus, ita doctrina tua et acumine, Graeca vasa omnibus, quicunque aliquid humanarum litterarum sapiunt, patefacis et illustras. Arcessivimus etiam Gustavum Braunholtz ex Academia Cymrica ut nostros doceat leges secundum quas et in Graeco et in Latino sermone verba mutentur, et Ioannem Tolkien, Collegii Exoniensis alumnum, ex Academia Leodensi, virum in antiquo nostrae gentis sermone si quis alius versatum, unicum et eximium illustrissimi illius Arturi Napier discipulum. E nostris doctoribus summa voluptate elegimus David Capel Simpson e Collegio Wadhami ut ex altiore professoris sede labores suos insignes, tam diu ab omnibus in Sancta Theologia versantibus, in honore habitos continuet et promoveat, elegimus etiam Professorem Historiae Militaris e Britannico exercitu illum militem praeclarum et ingeniosurn, Ernestum Dunlop Swinton equitem, qui olim et nos calamo suo delectavit et hostes nostros contudit essedis, magis horrendis quam ea quae olim Caesaris ipsius legionibus terrorem iniecerunt. [2]

And a loose translation:

We also cordially greet the six new professors, and you, the first from Christ Church to the Chair of Archaeology, John Beazley, who, like the other John, by your immortal verses, so by your learning and acumen, you open and illuminate Greek vessels to all who are interested in human literature. We have also summoned Gustav Braunholtz from the Welsh Academy to teach our students the laws according to which words are changed in both Greek and Latin, and John Tolkien, a student of Exeter College, from the University of Leeds, a man more versed in the ancient language of our nation than anyone else, the singular and outstanding disciple of the most illustrious Arthur Napier. From our teachers, we have chosen with the greatest pleasure David Capel Simpson from Wadham College to continue and promote from the higher chair of professorship his distinguished labors, so long held in honor by all those engaged in Sacred Theology. We have also chosen as Professor of Military History from the British Army that illustrious and ingenious soldier, Sir Ernest Dunlop Swinton, who once delighted us with his pen and crushed our enemies, more terrifying than those which once struck terror into the legions of Caesar himself.

I’ve provided the entire paragraph for context, but the bit about Tolkien in particular I’ve put into boldface to make it easier to spot in the wall of words. The Napier referred to is Arthur Sampson Napier, who was both the first Merton Professor of English Language and Literature, Oxford, from 1885 to 1916, and the last Rawlinsonian Professor of Anglo-Saxon from 1903 to 1916. The latter, following Napier’s time, was renamed the Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon. Tolkien was the only other professor besides Napier to hold both these professorships — but not simultaneously, as Napier had.

And since we’re quoting Latin greetings, a few months later on March 9, 1926, the Public Orator delivered to Convocation an oration “on the occasion of the conferment of the Honorary Degree of D.Litt. upon Tadensz Zieliński, Professor at the University of Warsaw” [3], a prominent Polish philologist of the day. It looks to me like this one did not make it into the Chronology.

This speech contained another reference to the university’s new professors, so here is the relevant bit:

Professorum nuper creatorum alii tantum ex hoc in illud se transferunt collegium, alii ex locis remotis in sellas suas venerunt. Atque inter illos invenitur Iohannes Beazley [...]; et David C. Simpson, qui professor professorem Henricum C. Davis brevi temporis intervallo in collegium Orielense secutus est. [...] Iohannes Tolkien, collegii Exoniensis alumnus, brevi in provinciam relegatus, in patriam suam, ut ita dicam, restitutus est ut sellae potitus Pembrochianae nostrorum maiorum patriae sermonis studia ope adiuvet sua. [4]

And done back into English for convenience:

Of the newly created professors, some only transfer themselves from this college to that, others have come to their chairs from distant places. And among them is found John Beazley [...]; and David C. Simpson, who succeeded Professor Henry C. Davis at a short interval of time as professor at Oriel College. [...] John Tolkien, a student of Exeter College, was briefly banished to the province, and is, so to speak, restored to his homeland, so that, having obtained a chair at Pembroke, he may assist with his studies of the language of our ancestors.

There’s a touch of humor and Oxonian pride here in saying that Tolkien’s time in the province, i.e., at Leeds, was a “brief banishment” and that he has finally been brought back in patriam suam, literally, “to his fatherland”.

I also really like the way Joseph Wells described Tolkien in the earlier quoted passage: virum in antiquo nostrae gentis sermone si quis alius versatum, “a man more versed in the ancient language of our nation than anyone else”. Very true, and worth quoting again.

[1] Scull, Christina and Wayne G. Hammond. The J.R.R. Tolkien Companion and Guide: Chronology. Rev. and exp. ed. HarperCollins, 2017, p. 142.

[2] Oxford University Gazette. Vol. LVI, No. 1781 (October 8, 1925), p. 24.

[3] Oxford University Gazette. Vol. LVI, No. 1799 (March 19, 1926), Supp. 2, p. 484.

[4] ibid., pp. 485–6.

More details on Tolkien’s election to the General Board of the Faculties, Oxford

Christina Scull and Wayne Hammond tell us in the expanded edition of their Chronology that on June 21, 1929 Tolkien was “elected to represent the Faculties of Theology, Law, Literae Humaniores, Modern History, English Language and Literature, Medieval and Modern European Languages and Literature [other than English], and Oriental languages on the General Board for three years until Michaelmas Term 1932” [1].

I’d like to add a little information to this. I have no doubt that Wayne and Christina know all this already but simply omitted these details in consideration of the space required versus the value of the information. As I have no such limitations, I’ll give you all a little bit more. Whether you find it useful or interesting, let me know. :)

Nominations were to be signed and dated and received before 3 PM on Saturday, June 15, by the Secretary of Faculties at the University Registry in the Clarendon Building, Broad Street, just across from the Bodleian Library and cattycorner from the excellent public house, the King’s Arms.

Nominations by at least six electors were required. Tolkien was one of two nominees for this post who met this initial bar. The other was Austin Lane Poole, M.A., Fellow of St. John’s College. [2] Poole would go on to publish the third volume in the Oxford History of England, From Domesday Book to Magna Carta, 1087–1216, in 1956, as well as critical editions of poetry by Thomas Gray. Poole seems to have been genetically predisposed to academia — the son of Reginald Lane Poole, archivist at the University of Oxford; the nephew of Stanley Lane Poole, professor of Arabic at Trinity College, Dublin; and the great-nephew of Reginald Stuart Poole, professor of archaeology at Cambridge.

By June 12, Poole had six nominators: G.N. Clark, Oriel; W.D. Ross, Oriel; E.A. Lowe, Corpus Christi; R. Coupland, All Souls; A.S. Owen, Keble; and J.W.C. Wand, Oriel.

Tolkien had six nominators at this time as well — and here, I’ll add just a little more context for each, where I can (these additional details are mainly from the Chronology):

• Sir M.E. Sadler, M.A., Master of University College: Tolkien had known Michael Sadler since his time at Leeds, where Sadler was Vice-Chancellor. In 1922, he played Father Christmas at a party for the children of Leeds staff where he got stuck in the chimney, no doubt to the immense amusement of the children. Sadler was also, like Tolkien, active with the British Esperanto Congress.
• F. de Zulueta, D.C.L., Fellow of All Souls College: Francis de Zulueta and Helen Buckhurst were the godparents to Tolkien’s daughter, Priscilla. De Zulueta also has an entry dedicated to him in Scull and Hammond’s Reader’s Guide, where you can read more.
• A.D. Lindsay, M.A., Master of Balliol College: Along with Sadler and Tolkien, Lindsay attended the British Esperanto Congress.
• H.C.K. Wyld, B.Litt., M.A., Fellow of Merton College: Wyld was a good deal older than Tolkien. He was the Merton Professor of English Language and Literature before Tolkien and nominated Tolkien to succeed him. Tolkien’s own student, Norman Davis, would succeed him. Wyld was one of Tolkien’s undergraduate examiners at Exeter in 1915. About a decade later, he and Tolkien would both be external examiners for the English Honor School. Like de Zulueta, Wyld has an entry in Scull and Hammond’s Reader’s Guide.
• A.E.W. Hazel, B.C.L., M.A., Principal of Jesus College
• Sir John C. Miles, B.C.L., M.A., Fellow of Merton College

Voting took place in the Convocation House from 12:45 PM to 1:15 PM and from 1:45 PM to 2:10 PM on June 21, 1929. By this time, Tolkien had attracted additional nominations, while Poole still only had six. Tolkien added R.R. Marett, Exeter, whom Tolkien had known since his undergraduate days; Dorothy Everett, M.G. Skipworth, and C.M. Chilcott, all of Lady Margaret Hall; G.E.K. Braunholtz, Worcester College, another Esperantist; C.J. Fordyce, Jesus College; John Fraser, Jesus College; J.A. Smith, Magdalen College; and the eminent C.T. Onions, Magdalen College (there’s an entry on him in the Reader’s Guide too). Sadler does not appear on the final list of nominations, strangely enough. [3]

Beginning to look a little lopsided, eh? The final results were 16 for Tolkien, 11 for Poole, which is a little closer than one might have expected based on the nominations. [4]

[1] Scull, Christina and Wayne G. Hammond. The J.R.R. Tolkien Companion and Guide: Chronology. Rev. and exp. ed. HarperCollins, 2017, p. 160.

[2] Oxford University Gazette. Vol. LIX, No. 1908 (June 12, 1929), p. 662.

[3] Oxford University Gazette. Vol. LIX, No. 1909 (June 19, 1929), p. 703.

[4] Oxford University Gazette. Vol. LIX, No. 1910 (June 26, 1929), p. 723.

 

A newly discovered primary account of Arthur Tolkien’s death

Bloemfontein was a rough place to be on the late 19th century. In addition to the Boer Wars, the climate was a difficult adjustment for Europeans, and disease was rampant. The infant J.R.R. Tolkien and his mother were both ill-stuited to South Africa and often sick, hence, they had returned to England rather than stay on. On October 12, 1899, the bishop of the Anglican Diocese of the Free State, known then as the Diocese of Bloemfontein, Wale Hicks died in office, leaving the bishopric sede vacante until the appointment of Arthur Chandler in 1902.

Before his own death, Bishop Hicks commented on at least three other notable British deaths among his flock in Bloemfontein. First, Alfred Bracebridge Stanford, Vicar of Mafeking (now called Mahikeng), of dysentery late in 1895. Then:

We have had two further losses since. William Walter Powell, a master in St. Andrew’s College, and a candidate for Holy Orders, a young man of considerable promise, died of typhoid fever on January 10. He was a licensed reader, and had given his spare time and energy to helping in church work in various ways with a very simple and unaffected devotion. [1]

And then, he goes on to relate the death of J.R.R. Tolkien’s father:

And now on the 15th inst. [instante mense, i.e., of the current month, i.e., when the bishrop was writing this piece in February, 1896] we have lost one of our good, devoted business men, Arthur Tolkien, who was treasurer of our Diocesan Finance Board. I had hoped to propose him as a member of the Society (S.P.G.) before now. [2]

Arthur Tolkien died of severe bleeding and rheumatic fever, according to an obituary reprinted in The Tolkien Family Album [3]. We get here a picture of Arthur actively involved in church activities and in the promulgation of Christianity to distant parts of the globe, in a church of the Anglican denomination. Scull and Hammond note in their Chronology that Arthur was buried in an Anglican cemetery [4]. Indeed, it seems that Arthur and his new bride Mabel were in fact Anglican, however much we associate J.R.R. Tolkien with his profound Catholic faith. After Arthur’s death and Mabel’s permanent return to England with her two sons, she and her sister converted to Roman Catholicism in June 1900, a conversion which apparently infuriated both the Tolkiens, referred to as Baptists, and the Suffields, who were Methodist/Unitarian. [5] Arthur was also the treasurer of the Diocesan Finance Board, just as he had been treasurer for the Old Edwardians Club, as I have previously documented.

[1] “Varied Needs in Bloemfontein Diocese: A General Review of the Work by the Bishop.” The Mission Field: A Monthly Record of the Proceedings of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel at Home and Abroad. Volume XLI (1896). May 1, 1896. G. Bell & Sons, p. 180.

[2] loc. cit. By S.P.G., Hicks is referring to the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, a missionary organization founded in 1701 by royal charter of King William III, and the publisher of the mission field notes being quoted here.

[3] Tolkien, John and Priscilla. The Tolkien Family Album. Houghton Mifflin, 1992, p. 19. Other accounts disagree and say it was typhoid fever; see Chronology, p. 818.

[4] Scull, Christina and Wayne G. Hammond. The J.R.R. Tolkien Companion and Guide: Chronology. Rev. and exp. ed. HarperCollins, 2017, p. 5.

[5] Priestman, Judith, ed. Tolkien: Life and Legend. Bodleian Library, Oxford. 1992, p. 12.

Like father like son

 The Old Edwardians were “a society of former students (‘old boys’) of King Edward’s School, Birmingham” in which J.R.R. Tolkien participated during his undergraduate years at Exeter College, Oxford. He attended Old Edwardian meetings and played in at least one rugby match on the side of the “Old Boys” versus the youngsters still attending King Edward’s School. This much you know already, I expect.

While there have been former Edwardians since the school was founded in 1552, the Old Edwardians Club, as such, was not established until 1883, and was formed primarily as “a football club, as that was the sport in which the School had traditionally excelled, and one which many of the ‘Old Boys’ still indulge in” [1]. Tolkien himself was a solid rugby player, a bit lighter than the usual weight, but he made up for it with “ferocity” [2].

Well, like father, like son, as it turns out. Arthur Reuel Tolkien also attended King Edward’s School, and he too was active in the Old Edwardians after he left. An 1885 issue of the King Edward’s School Chronicle records a cricket match between the Old Boys and the King Edward’s School team on June 15, ending in the victory of the youngsters by “7 wickets and 4 runs”. Tolkien is listed as scoring no runs or wickets or whatever, and bowling to or being bowled to by — no, I really don’t under cricket, so these scorecards are pretty mystifying to me — a KES student called Arblaster. [3]

A few pages later, as in most issues, comes the summary of the Birmingham Old Edwardians Club, broken down into sections. The first of these is the Lawn Tennis Section — other sections included Gymnastics, Football (i.e., Rugby), and Literary and Debating — which was new to the Club, and for which Arthur Tolkien was elected to the post of Treasurer, quite appropriate for a future bank manager:

In spite of the predictions of evil prophets, this section has made a start, and we see no reason why it should not be one of the most successful sections of the Club.

                A ground has been secured for the season at Bournbrook, near the terminus of the Bristol Road tramway, and a dressing room taken in the Bournbrook Hotel. Play commenced on Saturday, May 9th, and has been continued every fine evening since then. There is room for four courts, and the necessary nets and balls have been provided, so that any member who goes up may be quite sure of a game. The Club has the exclusive use of the ground, which is always open; the nets being kept at the Bournbrook Hotel. The subscription (10/6) is a ridiculously small one for a Lawn Tennis Club. The subscription for University members if 7/6. Members have the privilege of taking up friends to play. A Lawn Tennis Tournament has been arranged to be played in a few weeks. The Rev. J. Hunter Smith has been elected President, G.A. Nutt, Vice-President, A.R. Tolkien, Treasurer, and C.E.P. Gabriel, Secretary. As the section is now fairly started, the Committee hope that the members of the Old Edwardians Club will largely support it, especially as it is the only athletic section which meets during the summer months. [4]

Bournbrook is an industrial and residential district in southwest Birmingham. Here’s an ordnance survey map of the area from 1882–1903, which covers the time in question. I’ve circled the area I think is being described. Today, this area comprises tennis courts and sports pitches for the University of Birmingham, just south of “Old Joe”, the Joseph Chamberlain Memorial Clock Tower, and the Elgar Concert Hall, named for the quintessentially English composer Edward Elgar, who was playing violin in Birmingham in 1885 in William Stockley’s Orchestra.

Like his son, Arthur Tolkien’s involvement in the Old Edwardians wasn’t strictly limited to sporting. On January 17, 1885, he delivered a speech as part of the Literary and Debating Section. A propos of the professional life he would soon be embarking on, Arthur advocated in “a carefully prepared speech” “[t]hat Free Trade under all circumstances was the best policy for England”, in response to which:

We cannot help thinking that, with the exception of the Mover [Arthur Tolkien] and perhaps one other Speaker, no one had thoroughly gone into the subject, and, in fact, one Speaker was apparently so confused in his own mind as to the question under discussion that, after making a most stirring speech against the motion, he voted for in on the plea that his convictions had always been in favor of Free Trade” [5].

In 1885, Arthur Tolkien would have just turned 28 years old — still 27 at the time of his debating club speech. He was three years away from becoming engaged to Mabel Suffield, and four years from his emigration to South Africa to work for the Bank of Africa. Another year, and he would be made manager of the Bloemfontein branch, and one more before Mabel traveled to South Africa to join him. They married on April 16, 1891, Mabel was pregnant more or less immediately, and they welcomed their first son, John Ronald Reuel, the following January.

Arthur’s involvement in the Old Edwardians Club — trivial, maybe; though perhaps not, if it’s fruitful to observe any likeness between father and son, even a son who scarcely knew his father — isn’t in Scull and Hammond’s Chronology, but if it were, these would be among the earliest entries. I don’t find any mention of this in their Reader’s Guide either. The issues of the King Edward’s School Chronicle I’m quoting here also contain short pieces on magic, etymology, and the Nibelungenlied, which I have to imagine would have tickled Tolkien’s fancy if he ever read these issues. Did he? Was he even aware he was following in his father’s footsteps? One wonders, indeed. 

[1] “The Old Edwardians’ Club.” King Edward’s School Chronicle, New Series. Vol. III, No. 23, October 1883, p. 89–90.

[2] Letters, #16, October 3, 1937 to Michael Tolkien, who was going out for his school rugby team.

[3] King Edward’s School Chronicle, New Series. Vol. IV, No. 33, July 1885, p. 115.

[4] ibid., p. 117.

[5] King Edward’s School Chronicle, New Series. Vol. IV, No. 30, February 1885, p. 59–60. 

Humphrey Carpenter was a professional jazz musician

Humphrey Carpenter, best known to readers of this blog as Tolkien’s authorized biographer, was also a professional jazz musician. This has been known to some for quite a while, but it came as a surprise to me. In the obituary in Tolkien Studies [1], Douglas Anderson referred to Carpenter as a musician and noted that a friend of his had set some of Tolkien’s work to music, but other, later aspects of his professional music career went unmentioned. But the obituary in the New York Times, which I just read today and overlooked when it appeared in 2005, does reveal all of this.

He played bass and sousaphone, and his band, Vile Bodies, named after Evelyn Waugh’s second novel, had a residency at The Ritz Hotel in London during the 1980s, not long after he had completed the biography and the collection of Tolkien’s letters. A jazz enthusiast and journalist, Dave Doyle, tracked down one of Carpenter’s bandmates, and has just published what he learned here. He was also a member of another jazz band, the Park Town Strutters, as described in a 2008 remembrance in the Oxford Mail.

Seen here is Humphrey Carpenter’s personal copy of The Ellington Era 1927-1940: Volume One, Part Two (CBS, 1963), which Doyle found in a second-hand shop near Oxford.

[1] Anderson, Douglas A. “Obituary: Humphrey Carpenter (1946-2005).” Tolkien Studies 2 (2005): 217–24.

Hallucinations

Last fall, I wrote about whether/to what degree generative AI could help us analyze The Lord of the Rings (spoiler: probably not, or not much, or at least not so much yet). Here today, I’d like to share another relevant experiment. 

There’s one serious problem with generative AI. It’s been a problem since the beginning, and it’s not been solved yet. While AI is good at many things, if it doesn’t know the answer to a question, it often just makes one up! In addition to that, I’ve often found that if you make a false statement — even knowingly — the AI trusts you, assumes it’s true, and builds an entire response around the error. It doesn’t always do this, but it does so much more often than to inspire trust. Here’s an example.

I fed a prompt into Google Gemini that even a casual Tolkien fan will know to be total garbage.

Please elaborate on the passage in J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings where Frodo Brandybuck tells Leroy Bolger, “I have never been taken with jewelry”, explaining how this amplifies or undermines the temptation of the Ring.

Gemini took the bait and replied.

I then dug us deeper into this hole:

And what is the significance of Leroy’s immediate response, “Alas that the jewelry should take you, my dear hobbit!”

And again Gemini was happy to make up all manner of nonsense.

So … not great, right? I conducted this experiment a couple of months ago, though, and generative AI models are always improving. Plus, they are stochastic models that do not always give the same answer. So how about we try again? Today, I fed the same two prompts into Gemini, and got longer answers, but not better ones.

Please elaborate on the passage in J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings where Frodo Brandybuck tells Leroy Bolger, “I have never been taken with jewelry”, explaining how this amplifies or undermines the temptation of the Ring.

And what is the significance of Leroy’s immediate response, “Alas that the jewelry should take you, my dear hobbit!”

And again Gemini was happy to make up all manner of nonsense.

A couple of points to note in how today’s response is worse.

Both then and now, Gemini takes the bogus quotations I dangled as genuine, but in the latest test, it tells me exactly where the quotes are supposed to occur and actually offers a completely invented alternate version of one of them. Not only is there no such quotation, but the word “jewelry” never appears anywhere in the novel. And the idea of the One Ring as jewelry is frankly absurd. In the latest test, the answers Gemini provides are also lengthier and more detailed than before.

Also, both then and now, the character I invented — Leroy Bolger — is assumed to be real, but in the latest test, because of the surname, I guess, Leroy is equated with Fatty Bolger — “or ‘Leroy’ depending on the edition”! Er, which edition would that be? Gemini has not only bought into and extended the error, but it has also invented an explanation! On top of that, in the detailed — and completely invented — analysis that follows, Gemini has created reasons and explanations for something that isn’t even close to true. The latest test also provides a “source” for me to consult, furthering the impression that its answers are to be trusted.

So, this is a pretty bad result from Google Gemini. Now, I wouldn’t have been surprised if generative AI often confused dialog from the Peter Jackson films with Tolkien’s novel — that has been a danger even among fans — but completely invented quotations are much more worrisome.

Will AI get better at this? Maybe. There is some reason for hope!

I tried the same prompts using Microsoft’s generative AI chatbot, Copilot, and was relieved to see a much better response. 

To the first prompt:

And to the second:

Copilot has recognized the erroneous names and quotations, but offers to play along “to entertain this hypothetical scenario within the spirit of Tolkien’s themes”. So, not such a bad outcome after all. And as Gandalf might add, “and that may be an encouraging thought”.

J.A.W. Bennett on Tolkien

For some Tolkien collectors, desiderata include anything with Tolkien’s name on it or in it in any capacity whatsoever. For example, Tolkien served as a general editor for the Oxford English Monographs series, and as such, his name appears on a number of volumes (seven, if memory serves). Tolkien was actively involved in some of these. For the Old English Appollonius of Tyre (ed. Peter Goolden, 1958), for instance, Tolkien provided a one-paragraph prefatory note, and revisions he that suggested personally were acknowledged by the editor in his introduction. That’s something of note, certainly — I have a scan. But for others of this series, Tolkien probably had much less direct involvement. Even so, collectors grab them up and display them proudly!

I don’t tend to go so far in my own collecting (because of the expense and minor relevance), but some acknowledgments and mentions of Tolkien I do find worthwhile, particularly when the comments are being made by someone who knew him well — even more so when made by an Inkling.

Jack Arthur Walter Bennett (1911–1981) was a younger and lesser-known member of the Inklings. Born in New Zealand to English parents, he grew up in poverty and, after earning his undergraduate degree in Auckland, came to Merton College, Oxford, on a scholarship, where he was a student of Tolkien’s. He was part of what has been called the “New Zealand Mafia”, New Zealanders who came to Oxford, often as Rhodes Scholars, before World War II. Another of these, and another of Tolkien’s students, was Norman Davis, who edited the revised edition of Tolkien and Gordon’s Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Kenneth Sisam, who gave Tolkien one of his first big academic jobs, was also from New Zealand, but about a generation older than Bennett.

Bennett — called Jack or “Jaw” (as Warnie Lewis referred to him) — first attended a Thursday night Inklings meeting on August 15, 1946. Warnie was annoyed. Bennett came back a week later, and Warnie recorded in his diary: “J[ack; i.e., C.S. Lewis] and I much concerned this evening by the gate crashing of B[ennett]; Tollers, the ass, brought him here last Thursday, and he has apparently now elected himself an Inkling. Not very clear what one can do about it” [1].

Bennett was known primarily as a scholar of Middle English, Chaucer especially. With G.V. Smithers, he edited Early Middle English Verse and Prose (to which Norman Davis contributed the glossary). A friend of mine — Bruce Leonard, I believe — gave me a nice copy he’d picked up from the Oxfam Bookshop in St. Giles, when so many of us were in Oxford for the Maker of Middle-earth exhibition back in 2018. Bennett also helmed the well-known journal, Medium Ævum from 1957 until his death in 1981. This is the journal in which Tolkien published his own work on “Sigelwara Land” (two decades before Bennett’s time as editor). After World War II, he was elected a Fellow and Tutor at Magdalen College, Oxford, and worked directly with C.S. Lewis, taking the language side of his curriculum. Warnie called him Lewis’s “new lieutenant” [2]. Bennett later followed Lewis (after Lewis’s death) as Professor of Medieval and Renaissance English at Cambridge University, where he remained until shortly before his own death. [3]

With some background out of the way — maybe more than necessary, but probably helpful for some, since Bennett is not very well known even to many Tolkien fans — let me turn to the book I have in front of me.

In 1970, Bennett traveled to Canada to deliver a series of lectures at the University of Toronto. These he then collected and published as Chaucer at Oxford and at Cambridge in 1974, just a year after the death of Tolkien. In the fourth lecture of the book, “The Jolly Miller”, Bennett praises some of the work Tolkien had done on Chaucer forty years before:

But what did Chaucer mean by ‘fer in the north’ (4015)? [cf., Chaucer, The Reeve’s Tale, l. 4015: “Fer in the north; I kan nat telle where”] This is a question that only a philologist can answer. And a brilliant philologist and story-teller has answered it. Buried deep in The Transactions of The Philological Society for 1934 lies one of the first papers that the author of The Lord of the Rings ever published. If admirers of that work, or admirers of Chaucer, would study this paper they would learn something that no critics of either can teach. The pity is that since 1934 linguistics has elbowed philology out of the way and no one has bothered to test or extend Tolkien’s findings on ‘Chaucer as a philologist’ in the light of new collations of the manuscripts or later place-name studies. [4]

Tolkien’s death goes unmentioned, which might simply have been English (or New Zealand) decorum, or it may be that the book was already in galleys by the time Tolkien died in September 1973. But in any case, Bennett’s compliments, mindful of Tolkien’s passing or not, are a worthy remembrance of an Inkling only recently gone.

[1] Lewis, Warren Hamilton. Brothers and Friends: The Diaries of Major Warren Hamilton Lewis. Ed. Clyde S. Kilby and Marjorie Lamp Mead, Harper & Row, 1982, p. 194.

[2] Ibid., p. 193.

[3] For more about Bennett, see David Bratman’s “The Inklings: Their Lives and Works” in Glyer, Diana Pavlac. The Company They Keep: C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien as Writers in Community, Kent State University Press, 2007, p. 232; and Scull, Christina and Wayne G. Hammond, The J.R.R. Tolkien Companion and Guide, Readers’s Guide, Part I (2017), “Bennett, Jack Arthur Walter”, pp. 119–120. And if you want to know even more, McNeish, James, Dance of the Peacocks: New Zealanders in Exile in the Time of Hitler and Mao Tse-tung, Random House, 2003.

[4] Bennett, J.A.W., Chaucer at Oxford and at Cambridge, Oxford University Press/Toronto University Press, 1974, p. 100.

A short review of The Mythmakers

I just finished TheMythmakers: The Remarkable Fellowship of C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien, a — what would you call it? — graphic joint-biography written and illustrated by John Hendrix. It’s pretty good overall, very engaging, mostly accurate, and it goes a bit deeper than I expected. For example, rather than just The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, The Space Trilogy, and The Chronicles of Narnia, Hendrix touches on Tolkien’s Silmarillion, the TCBS, “The Book of Lost Tales”, “The Lost Road”, the Ace pirate edition of The Lord of the Rings, and on Lewis’s “Boxen”, Shelley’s Pond at the Kilns, and other surprising details. He even mention the Apolausticks!

The book utilizes a sort of framing device with two guides —Wizard, modeled on Tolkien; and Mr. Lion, modeled on Lewis — through a fantastical landscape of underground caverns, great trees of tales, mountain passes, isolate lighthouses, and even the Western Europe of World War I. Along the way, they dissert and digress about the roots of fantasy, epic tales, folklore, legends, the Great War and its sequel, and other topics, at each point introducing and providing context for sections of biography on Tolkien and Lewis.

Periodically, a greater digression is offered — what Hendrix calls a “portal” — and interested readers may turn to the indicated page at the end of the book, after which they are redirected back to the page they had just left. Alongside Wizard and Mr. Lion, there are a few additional characters who deliver these digressions into the roots of myth, the origins of fairy tales, and so on. Diverting (literally), effective, and probably quite fun for younger readers.

After spending a number of pages and illustrations on “the breaking of the fellowship” between Tolkien and Lewis, Hendrix also indulges in a little bit of fan service/self-soothing to imagine a sort of final farewell scene between Lewis and Tolkien, taking place in some liminal, half-real, half-fantastical place. Their “proper goodbye”, so to speak. It’s a rather maudlin fiction, but I can understand the impulse.

Hendrix is also a Christian, and part of the appeal of Tolkien and Lewis, for him, lies in that affinity. To his credit, he does a good job of keeping this largely out of the book. He discusses Tolkien’s and Lewis’s religious views (and differences), but not in a way where you feel like he is endorsing this viewpoint or pushing his own agenda.

This book does contain some errors, though fewer than I expected, if I’m being honest. Here’s a short list (selective, not exhaustive).

• *Sarehold; for Sarehole
• Andrew Lang's Red *Faery Book; for Fairy
• Tolkien’s story about a *"great green dragon". It's a "green great dragon", of course; that was the whole point! [1]
• R.E. “Humphrey” *Harvard; for Havard
• Although it's valid to call Lewis more prolific than Tolkien (at least, as measured by publications), Hendrix is a little unfair contrasting Lewis's and Tolkien's major works 1940–1947, in which he gives Lewis credit for 8 but Tolkien only for 1 ("Leaf by Niggle"), apart from academic works. Hendrix omits "The Lay of Aotrou and Itroun" (1945) and "On Fairy-stories" (1947). And why not consider the entire decade, which would have allowed Farmer Giles of Ham (1949)? Why stop at 1947?
• “Two *Latin terms”, he says of logos and mythos; these are both Greek words.
• He says that in the 1960s, The Lord of the Rings had been "translated into every European language", when that isn’t even close to true. By 1970, the Dutch, Swedish, Polish, Italian, Danish, and German translations had appeared. Even the French didn’t appear until the early 1970s, Spanish not until 1977–1980, and plenty of other European languages much later (e.g., Czech c. 1990, Icelandic c. 1995, Romanian c. 2000).
• Discussing the Ace pirate edition, Hendrix talks about the "money Tolkien lost in the authorized printing", but Ace actually did pay Tolkien royalties in the end. [2]
• *Magdalen for the Cambridge College, but it's Magdalene, and Hendrix has only a single entry in the index for both the Oxford and Cambridge colleges of almost the same name.

[1] See Tolkien’s letters, #163.

[2] See Christina Scull and Wayne G. Hammond, The J.R.R. Tolkien Companion and Guide, Revised and Expanded Edition: Reader’s Guide, Part I (2017), “Ace Books controversy”, pp. 4-6.

Can Generative AI help us analyze The Lord of the Rings?

Generative AI is everywhere these days. Some of its output can seem pretty impressive too, at least at a glance. So it’s natural to wonder whether we might be able to use this emerging technology to analyze our favorite works of literature in valuable, labor-saving ways. After all — as is well known by now — Generative AI has gobbled up practically every work of literature ever published as part of its training, copyrights be damned. I can’t help remembering Sméagol’s warning about Sauron, “Don’t take the Precious to Him! He’ll eat us all, if He gets it, eat all the world.” Large Language Models seem to be in the “eating all the world” stage now, and Sam Altman is no Sam Gamgee!

So, can this technology help us analyze The Lord of the Rings? The short answer is: no, not really, not yet, and maybe not ever. If that’s enough for you, you can stop reading now. :)

I’ve been experimenting with ChatGPT, Gemini, and other Generative AI tools for some time, but while they can be useful for certain tasks, they will not be replacing literary scholars (or other professions) any time soon. A scenario occurred to me recently, one that I thought might be suitable for the kinds of things Generative AI does fairly well — if the results were accurate. But hallucinations and other defects are still common, so I put it to the test. Some of you may remember my work on hapax legomena in The Lord of the Rings, which I wrote about here. Unfortunately, the Scholars Forum referred to is long gone (a long story), but the essay was later published.

I wondered whether this was the kind of analysis Generative AI might help with, so I tried this prompt with Google Gemini:

Please provide a list of 25 hapax legomena occurring in the novel, The Lord of the Rings, ignoring all paratextual elements.

This prompt tests a few things, even before you get to the results: (1) does Gemini understand what a hapax legomenon is? (2) Does it have access to the text of The Lord of the Rings? (3) Does it know what we mean by the paratext of the novel?

Let me break down the response into two parts. I’ll start with the surrounding explanatory content, and then I’ll move on to the list of words the chatbot provided.

Disclaimer: While I can provide a list of words that appear only once in The Lord of the Rings, it’s important to note that Tolkien’s world-building often involves the creation of unique languages and terms. As such, many words that might seem like hapax legomena are actually part of these invented languages, making them less truly unique in the context of Middle-earth.

Additionally, the concept of a “hapax legomena” [sic] can be subjective. Depending on how we define a “word” (e.g., including compounds, derivatives, or different grammatical forms), the list could vary significantly.

Note: This list is not exhaustive and may contain errors or omissions. It’s also possible that some of these words might appear in other works by Tolkien or in different editions of The Lord of the Rings.

This explanatory text provides some pretty good context. Gemini clearly understands what a hapax legomenon is, and it seems to have access to the text of The Lord of the Rings. It even seems to know there are different editions. It got “Middle-earth” right too; many people, let alone AI models, get that wrong. I was also impressed to see that is was aware of Tolkien’s glossopoeia and that this might inform how it should interpret the prompt. By hapax legomena, are we interested in, say, Elvish words too, or are we not? That’s for us to decide, but Gemini realized this could be an important distinction.

So far, so good. But now, let’s looks at the list Gemini provided:

1. Glimmering: Used to describe the light of the moon in the Shire.
2. Windlestraw: A type of grass mentioned in the Shire.
3. Wainwright: A person who makes or repairs wagons.
4. Garnishing: Used to describe the decorations on the walls of Elrond’s house.
5. Tarn: A small mountain lake.
6. Whirligig: A type of spinning toy.
7. Hobbity: Adjective used to describe something related to hobbits.
8. Hitherward: Toward this place.
9. Whitherward: Toward what place.
10. Thenceforth: From that time on.
11. Whilom: Formerly.
12. Withered: Dried up or shriveled.
13. Withering: Causing to dry up or shrivel.
14. Witheringly: In a withering manner.
15. Whither: To what place.
16. Whitherward: Toward what place.
17. Whithersoever: To whatever place.
18. Whithersoever: To whatever place.
19. Whitherward: Toward what place.
20. Whitherward: Toward what place.
21. Whitherward: Toward what place.
22. Whitherward: Toward what place.
23. Whitherward: Toward what place.
24. Whitherward: Toward what place.
25. Whitherward: Toward what place.

Well, this is not so good. The most obvious problem is that the word “whitherward” is given here nine times, along with several variants, including “whithersoever” given twice, and three variants on “wither”, which, worryingly, I suspect Gemini thinks is related to “whither”. All of this seems to ignore Gemini’s own preliminary comment about “compounds, derivatives, or different grammatical forms” too. It almost looks as if the model ran through the alphabet and got to W with quite a few spots left to fill in my requested list of 25 words.

But the problem is actually worse.

Let’s go through the list. Some of these words — “glimmering”, “withered”, “withering”, “whither” — occur multiple times in the novel. These aren’t hapax legomena at all. Not even close.

Most of the others — “windlestraw”, “wainwright”, “garnishing”, “tarn”, “whirligig”, “hobbity”, “hitherward”, “whitherward”, “thenceforth”, “whilom”, “witheringly”, “whitherward” — do not occur in the novel at all. Where did they come from? The films? Fan fiction? Who knows? These are what you might properly call hallucinations, in the terminology of Generative AI. Especially “garnishing”, which is supposedly “used to describe the decorations on the walls of Elrond’s house”.

Only one of the 25 words offered is actually a hapax legomenon in The Lord of the Rings, “whithersoever”, which occurs in only one place:

‘Do I not say truly, Gandalf,’ said Aragorn at last, ‘that you could go whithersoever you wished quicker than I? And this I also say: you are our captain and our banner. The Dark Lord has Nine. But we have One, mightier than they: the White Rider. He has passed through the fire and the abyss, and they shall fear him. We will go where he leads.’ [1]

So, it’s clear that Gemini handled this prompt quite badly overall. What about other LLMs? I did try this out with Microsoft Copilot, which uses the ChatGPT LLM. It stated, in part, “I can’t provide a verbatim list of hapax legomena from The Lord of the Rings due to copyright restrictions. […] If you’re interested in exploring hapax legomena in The Lord of the Rings, I recommend checking out scholarly articles or linguistic studies that analyze Tolkien’s language. These sources often provide detailed lists and discussions of such words.”

Here, Microsoft shows that it is aware of the copyright issue, where Google either isn’t aware or doesn’t care. This is a bit glib, though, because ChatGPT has most assuredly also gobbled up The Lord of the Rings, just as Gemini has. It just isn’t going to pull back the curtain for us. Is that better or worse? Hmm.

Following up, I then asked Copilot if it could recommend any specific scholarly articles or linguistic studies on hapax legomena in Tolkien’s works. You can imagine what I was angling for, eh? Was it aware of my own paper? Well, no, unfortunately. It recommended three papers, one on hapax legomena in natural language processing (a computer science topic), one of hapaxes in The Iliad, and one on ancient Akkadian and Ugaritic texts. Worthwhile, no doubt, but a missed opportunity to point an interested user to a directly relevant paper.

We could try other models, but it’s not likely any of this is ready for prime time. I hope amateur and new scholars aren’t relying on these models without double-checking their output, but we may be headed for a time of more and more careless reliance on supposed artificial intelligence. It’s bad enough that some people confuse the novel with the film and television adaptations. Generative AI could introduce a whole new set of problems for researchers.

Will Generative AI ever be good enough to perform this kind of analysis reliably? I have some reasons to doubt it, but elaborating would require quite a detour. I’ll try to address the question in a single paragraph for now. Suffice to say there are two substantial obstacles: (1) the cost of Generative AI, both direct costs as well as resource costs such as electricity, water, raw materials for chips, etc., and (2) the fact that the LLMs are running out of genuine human-generated material to train with. Models will increasingly be fed other AI output as new input, which will probably push us to a mediocre plateau in the capabilities of the technology. And the technology is not likely to get much better without a lot more investment, a lot more resource utilization, and a lot more raw material for training. The more people rely on it, the worse it may get, until the return no longer justifies the investment. In this way, Generative AI may be self-limiting. Garbage in, garbage out. This is not to say Generative AI will disappear; it’s just not likely to get a lot better than it is today. (If you want to read more about how Generative AI is a bubble that may be getting ready to burst, take a look at this very long, very detailed essay .)

[1] Tolkien, J.R.R. The Two Towers. Houghton Mifflin, 1965, p. 104.