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.

My Year in Books: 2025

As anyone visiting this blog must know, I read quite a bit. I’ve been recording most of my reading (with one or two lapses) since 2004, over twenty years now, but just for myself really. Recently, I came across a post from a work acquaintance who shared his reading list for 2025, with a seven-word capsule summary of each book. Why seven words? As he explained:

Originally, I was writing longer synopses, but then I read a biography of William Howard Taft, and when I wrote the synopsis, the first sentence that came to mind was, “Taft succeeds Roosevelt, but not very well,” which I thought captured the whole book better than anything longer could have. So I started limiting myself to 7 words, which is both challenging and, frankly, fun, because it takes more effort and imagination.

I read twice as many books as he did in 2025, so this would be a little more work for me than for him, but I thought it might be fun to try. I’m going to list books in the order read, split into lists for fiction and nonfiction, and I’ve marked those I’ve read before with an asterisk (only two books in 2025). I’m also highlighting a few in boldface to indicate favorites / most memorable for the year. In choosing what to highlight as favorites, I’m trying to limit myself to about 10% of the list. For 51 books read in 2025, I’ve highlighted 6, although I enjoyed almost all of them.

As you can see, my reading is pretty eclectic, roughly balanced between fiction and nonfiction, and hitting a lot of different genres and subject matter — fantasy, science fiction, espionage, classics, tech, politics, history, linguistics, just to name a few represented in last year’s reading. Some interesting patterns emerge from time to time. For example, you’ll notice I read several books about human-animal relationships, something near and dear to my heart — Nunez, Dalton, Harbison, Haupt. And Blake Crouch followed Patricia Highsmith very nicely indeed. Eugenides and Chbosky, ditto. Even Hutchison and Conway, oddly enough, though their books are a century apart, nominally on totally different topics. I love the way one book will often lead you organically into another. And in spite of these terse 7-word descriptions, I could — and might still — write entire posts on a few of these books — Harvey, Butler, Zevin, Garner, and especially Harpman, whose book has really stuck in my craw.

So, here goes. Feel free to let me know what you think of the 7-word synopses. And if you want to talk more about any of these books, let me know; I’m game. And should I continue to do this on an annual basis? What do you think?

Fiction (28)

The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, Suzanne Collins — Before Katniss, Snow always landed on top

Parable of the Sower, Octavia E. Butler — Dystopian America crumbles; new faith takes root

The Staircase in the Woods, Chuck Wendig — Supernatural staircase reopens old wounds among friends

Havoc, Christopher Bollen — Elderly widow meddles disastrously in others’ lives

Real Tigers, Mick Herron — High-tension thriller with inept spies and laughs

Orbital, Samantha Harvey —  Astronauts orbit Earth, contemplating humanity and fragility

Sunrise on the Reaping, Suzanne Collins — Young Haymitch endures Hunger Games, loses everything

Ascension, Nicholas Binge — Mysterious mountain appears; ascent warps reality, memory

Spook Street, Mick Herron — Aging spy unravels, sparking dangerous internal reckoning

Dissolution, Nicholas Binge — Shadowy organization erases past, unraveling couple’s reality

Treacle Walker, Alan Garner —  Boy meets mystic wanderer, entering myth‑soaked reality

The Plague, Albert Camus — Quarantined city confronts suffering, solidarity, existential reckoning

I Who Have Never Known Men, Jacqueline Harpman — Isolation shapes girl’s identity in post‑human wasteland

London Rules, Mick Herron — Political schemes, terror threats, Slow Horses collide

My Side of the Mountain, Jean Craighead George* — Solitude teaches youngster self‑reliance, resilience, and belonging

Danny The Champion of the World, Roald Dahl* — Father and son plot ingenious pheasant‑poaching adventure

The Buffalo Hunter Hunter, Stephen Graham Jones — Pastor’s hidden diary unlocks indigenous vampire’s story

Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, Gabrielle Zevin — Decades‑long collaboration tests friendship, love, and forgiveness

Homegoing, Yaa Gyasi — One line enslaved, one complicit; histories intertwine

The Virgin Suicides, Jeffrey Eugenides — Five sisters die; boys chase meaning endlessly

The Perks of Being a Wallflower, Stephen Chbosky — Sensitive Charlie navigates adolescence, friendship, and trauma

The Friend, Sigrid Nunez — Quiet elegy on suicide and human-animal companionship

Annihilation, Jeff VanderMeer — Husband’s vanished expedition haunts biologist’s dangerous mission

Authority, Jeff VanderMeer — Human systems fail while Area X intensifies

Acceptance, Jeff VanderMeer — Some questions are answered, others remain open

The Talented Mr. Ripley, Patricia Highsmith — Imposter covets friend’s life — and takes it

Famous, Blake Crouch — Celebrity lookalike’s obsession leads to catastrophic decisions

Absolution, Jeff VanderMeer — Baffling coda to an equally baffling trilogy

Nonfiction (23) 

The Mythmakers: The Remarkable Fellowship of C.S. Lewis & J.R.R. Tolkien, John Hendrix — Adequate joint biography in comic book format

Ten Arguments for Deleting your Social Media Accounts Right Now, Jaron Lanier — Convincing, but overcoming the inertia is hard

Forgotten English, Jeffrey Kacirk — Obsolete words revived with wit and charm

Cabin: Off the Grid Adventures with a Clueless Craftsman, Patrick Hutchison — Man rebuilds collapsing cabin, accidentally rebuilds himself

The Making of Latin: An Introduction to Latin, Greek, and English Etymology, R.S. Conway — Takes Latin apart, rebuilds it from scratch

Who Owns the Future, Jaron Lanier —  Good ideas, but a very long slog

How the World Really Works, Vaclav Smil — How energy, food, materials shape modern civilization

Poverty, By America, Matthew Desmond — America’s institutions manufacture poverty, benefiting the rich

An African History of Africa: From the Dawn of Humanity to Independence, Zeinab Badawi — Africa’s decolonized history recounted through African voices

Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism, Sarah Wynn-Williams — Whistleblower exposes Meta’s power and moral failures

Raising Hare, Chloe Dalton — Woman nurtures leveret, discovering nature’s quiet revelations

Languishing: How to Feel Alive Again in A World That Wears You Down, Corey Keyes — Suggests pathways to vitality amid aimlessness epidemic

The Sirens’ Call: How Attention Became the World's Most Endangered Resource, Chris Hayes — Attention capitalism thrives; human agency steadily weakens

The Writers: Portraits by Laura Wilson, Laura Wilson —  Thirty‑eight authors captured in striking, thoughtful images

The AI Con: How to Fight Big Tech’s Hype […], Emily M. Bender and Alex Hanna — Authors dismantle AI myths, revealing structural harms

Pronoun Trouble: The Story of Us in Seven Little Words, John McWhorter — Dismantles pronoun myths with humor and history

Is A River Alive?, Robert Macfarlane — Rivers witnessed as alive, vulnerable, and relational

Proof: The Art and Science of Certainty, Adam Kucharski — Why certainty seduces, misleads, and sometimes fails

Murderland: Crime and Bloodlust in the Time of Serial Killers, Caroline Fraser — Environmental poisoning shaped decades of American bloodlust

Tina: The Dog Who Changed the World, Niall Harbison — Golden retriever’s survival sparks global rescue movement

Enough Is Enuf: Our Failed Attempts to Make English Easier to Spell, Gabe Henry — Five centuries of spelling reformers fail spectacularly

Mozart’s Starling, Lyanda Lynn Haupt — Composer’s beloved bird inspires creativity and companionship

How to Stand up to A Dictator: The Fight for Our Future, Maria Ressa — Courage, empathy, honesty guide struggle against tyranny

“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.