My paper- Orality in Tolkien

“…and they sang before him and he was glad…
they saw a new world…
Behold your music, this is your minstrelsy…”
(Silmarillian 17, Iluvatar)

J.R.R. Tolkien wrote the stories of Middle-Earth to construct a literary forum for his numerous fields of study. Middle-Earth was about his studies, his ideals, and his beliefs, a reflection of a world where humans evolved from their cultural origins. Of these origins, Tolkien found the orality of humanity very important to the world. Tolkien looked back into our societal roots at the people and stories that existed in what we call primitive times, when an oral culture flourished with knowledge and creativity and a memory that is astonishing. Tolkien himself took an acute interest in the people of ancient northern Europe, who were a primary-oral culture. He fashioned his own fantasy world into this same type of environment, where knowledge and memory lives in song, poetry, riddles, and any type of verse to be carried on through time. In Tolkien’s books nestles a fantastical civilization, modeled after real historical cultures, full of the oral tradition in form, style, history, and creativity.
A primary-oral culture is one in which writing does not exist. All information, knowledge and history is put into complex verse and then learned by those whose job it is to carry on the tradition.
Thinking of oral tradition or a heritage of oral performance, genres and styles as ‘oral literature’, is rather like thinking of horses as automobiles without wheels. You can, of course, undertake to do this. Imagine writing a treatise on horses (for people who have never seen a horse) which starts with the concept not of a horse but of ‘automobile’, built on the readers’ direct experience of automobiles. It proceeds to discourse on horses by always referring to them as ‘wheelless automobiles’, explaining to highly automoblized readers who have never seen a horse all the points of difference in an effort to excise all idea of ‘automobile’ out of the concept of ‘wheelless automobile’ so as to invest the term with a purely equine meaning. (Ong, 12)
Of course, Middle-earth is not a world of primary-orality, but the enormous amount of orality used suggests that it was in the beginning. It is only in the modern ages of Middle-Earth that writing has any significance at all. The oral tradition was still prevalent in the books though, and the main source for historical, worldly knowledge, and the society’s emotional center of the people of Middle-Earth.
There are certain elements that go into epic verse and smaller poems that is used to help remember information and make it more accessible to the listener. Almost all of Tokien’s verse have this basic primary-oral form. These methods of memorization or “memory keys,” are used to remember stories such as Beowulf or Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. The most obvious oral memory keys are repetition, rhythm, epithets, the story within the story, and back-looping.
Repetition is used to ingrain a word or theme into a person’s mind by using it over and over again. Add rhythm and word patterns to this, and the audience gets an easily remembered musical sense of the verse. Epithets, proverbs, and clichés are all used so that a listener can grasp at a recognizable concept. Stories within stories (like Russian dolls-within-dolls or Chinese puzzle boxes) are interconnected, one story leading to another, which leads again to another. The stories flow into each other and necessitate others being told in conjunction. Back-looping is when the storyteller constantly moves back and forth from beginning to end, from repeating idea after idea, so that the audience does not forget the origin of the tale. These are all tricks used in oral cultures, all which Tolkien uses in the poetry of Middle-Earth.
These forms can be observed in such verse as “The Road Goes Ever On,” a poem sung by Bilbo and Frodo in the books. Bilbo is the first who recites it in The Hobbit. A poem written by Tolkien long before the his books, it is a classic song of traveling and returning. Several times it is spoken by Bilbo, and later by Frodo who absorbs and adapts it in The Lord of the Rings. Each time it is performed there are minor changes in the verse to fit accordingly with situation, the place and time, and the audience to whom it is sung.
This is another colorful and important aspect of orality. With the changing of the storyteller, the story changes according to the person’s viewpoint, creative style, and emotional relation to the moment. The performer also modernizes it in a fashion. He adapts the vocabulary so it is digestible, making sure it relates to the audience.
For an oral culture learning or knowing means achieving close, empathetic, communal identification with the known… Writing separates the knower from the known and thus sets up conditions for ‘objectivity’ in the sense of personal disengagement or distancing. (Ong 45)
Finally, the audience needs to be able to understand the verse itself, so it must be made compelling and simple. Again, this can be seen throughout “The Road Goes Ever On” and many other verses of Middle-Earth.
There is writing in Tolkien such as dwarf runes, the library at Isengard, and the historical scrolls. In fact, almost all races have a written language. Even so, Tolkien obviously finds it very important to manifest the oral culture within Middle-Earth. He knows the significance of orality in the linguistic history of Old English culture which he is using. Being a professor of linguistics, Tolkien took a special interest in northern European cultures. The Anglo-Saxons, the Goths, the Normans, to name a few, were people that he intensely studied.
Tolkien himself has played a major role by working with the literature that came out of the orality of the time. He translated the Anglo-Saxon Exodus as well as Gawain and the Green Knight and The Homecoming of Beortnoth, Beorhthelm’s Son, among others. He also taught this genre, giving famous lectures and writing ingenious essays on stories such as Beowulf and The Pearl. The cultures that created these stories revolved around their use of songs and chant. There is always the vivid image of the Anglo-Saxon men in mead halls, bursting with songs of valor, heroism, honor, death, and triumph. We can definitely see these characteristics in the race of the Rohirim, the dwarves and in the men of Gondor.
In the world of Middle-earth, language has actual physical power. Tolkien, always a scholar and a Catholic, was well-versed in religion and the Bible. He might have taken religious ideas into account when he gave language this power. The story of the people of Babel, who were unified with one common language, built a tower to heaven, and when God discovered this He smote it down and in his wrath. He then divided the language of the people so that they could never again attain such power. In this way, when God took away language, He took away power.
Also, in the event of one people conquering another, there is always the factor of how to integrate them into the new society so that they cannot unify and revolt. So, the Egyptians took away the language of the Jews. The English made it illegal for the Irish, the Scots, and the Welsh to speak or write in their own language thus, the language was forgotten. With the loss of language comes the loss of stories and therefore history. Thus, the culture is stripped of its very essence and instead mixed with the new. How can a people unite if they no longer have individuality and freedom. Without language, how can they remember who they are? It is in Tolkien’s books that this power is played out.
When Gandalf speaks at the Council of Elrond, his words are power. As Gandalf speaks the language of Mordor, it actually has a real effect. He has conjured an evil through the language.
“The change in the wizard’s voice was astounding. Suddenly it became menacing, powerful, harsh as stone. A shadow seemed to pass over the high sun, and the porch for a moment grew dark. All trembled, and the Elves stopped their ears.” (Tolkien, 248)
A damned language such as this dark Elvish, might manifest the very evil itself, and the elves, knowing this were angry with Gandalf for having endangered them all.
Names also hold power in Tolkien’s works. Another biblical explanation for this might be that in the Bible; God does not even say his own name, but instead says “I am.” Nor are his worshippers alowed to say his name; even in modern times the Christian will not “take the Lords name in vain.” To do this may invoke the wrath of God. When Christ wants to hold political sway, he calls upon the names of his forefathers: David, Abraham, Adam, so that he may have their power, though he too incurs their sins. Gandalf always refers to characters by their names and then the names of their father, such as; “Gimli son of Gloin.” Names are always of importance in Tolkien. To give a name is to give the recipient power over you. To be given a name is to take on the characteristics of that name. Gollum “Sneak” becomes a sneak; “Strider” becomes “Wind-walker,” as he must travel quickly.
When Gollum is caught by the agents of the dark-lord, with torture he is forced to utter through his grimy lips, “Baggins!” and “Shire!” With these words the evil-doers can then locate the ring and start on their journey. Another example is when Thingol, Luthien’s father, curses Beren in The Silmarillion. Beren refuses to take the names onto himself when Thingol does this. “Death you can give me earned or unearned; but names I will not take from you of baseborn, nor spy, nor thrall.” (The Silmarillion, 167) In this way, Thingol’s names cannot define being of Beren.
Of course, the real importance of orality that jumps to mind when the history of Middle-earth comes to mind is its creation. Eru/Iluvatar makes the Ainur/Valar who sing Arda/Middle-earth into existence. Through each of their individual melodies, the three harmonies create the world. The power of song is the power of creation. This makes it quite apparent then, how song and orality is based in the very existence of the earth.
Orality is used throughout history whether it is to invoke evil and good, to mourn or to remember people and events past. Interestingly enough, many of the songs, lays, poems or riddles are related to actual real English lore. Old nursery rhymes and fairy tales are woven into the orality of Middle-earth, as if that is where they originated in the first place, or maybe to demonstrate where all fairy tales come from. In The Silmarillion, when Luthien is trapped in her house, she uses her long hair to escape, like the story of Rapunzel. The Middle-earth song, “The Man on the Moon Came Down too Soon,” is a longer and more descriptive version of “Hey Diddle Diddle, the Cat and the Fiddle.”
Tolkien seems to revere the origins of oral culture to a high degree, whether that is because of his love of language or his study of primary oral culture. It shows up in every single one of his written works and in his oral dialogue. In inventing this fictional oral culture, he has again conjured admiration for the oral tradition. In every song and story in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, the reader is sent down a road of history, into the heart of the world.