Tolkien's Tales from the Perilous Realm

00:05 - Julia Golding (Host) Hello and welcome to Mythmakers. Mythmakers is the podcast for fantasy fans and fantasy creatives brought to you by the Oxford Centre for Fantasy. My name is Julia Golding and today I am joined by my good friend, Jacob Rennaker, who is sitting over in the US, and we're going to be discussing today a collection of stories by Tolkien which has been given the name Tales from the Perilous Realm. Now, perhaps we should first of all start by saying what these tales are and why they are called that. So, Jacob, do you want to kick off by giving us a list of the main contents of this particular collection? 00:48 - Jacob Rennaker (Co-host) right, yeah, thanks, uh. So, like Julia mentioned, there's, uh, there's. Actually we have two different versions of this book one that was 1997, um, and that's the version. So all the the titles there that we have there, uh, are Farmer Giles of Ham, so a short story. Adventures of Tom Bombadil, which is a collection of poetry, and we're going to talk about each of these later. Smith of Wotton Major, another short story, and then Leaf by Niggle, which is they're all essentially short pieces put together. The later version, 2008, the expanded version, adds Roverandum, which is another kind of short story novella, kind of a children's story. 01:32 - Julia Golding (Host) And there's also, I think, in the appendix they have. It must have an appendix if it's Tolkien. I think they also put the essay on fairy stories. Yes, there's an introduction by the Tolkien scholar tom shippy, just to add yet more delight. Now I will just first of all say hands up, I have not got a copy like this because I had all of these books in the old collections, because I did most of my Tolkien buying before 1997, which shows you how old I am. So I was. When I sort of came back to being interested in Tolkien, after having years of other careers, really other kinds of thoughts, I suddenly thought well, have I missed something? What is this perilous realm, you know? Was there a whole wonderful open door into Tolkien world that I did not go through? So have I missed something? Or is it just? 02:32 - Jacob Rennaker (Co-host) It's repackaging and just giving you more opportunities to purchase books that carry Tolkien name on the cover. 02:42 - Julia Golding (Host) Okay, there is a bit more to it than that, I would say. Probably, thinking about it, there may be a Tolkien quote about perilous realms, but what it immediately reminds me of is the wonderful line by Keats in, I think it's Ode to the Nightingale, about the casement opening onto fairy lands forlorn. There's a word perilous comes in there and it seems quite a keatsian idea. 03:10 - Jacob Rennaker (Co-host) A perilous realm, yeah it's, I know, in the in the 2008 version, which is the version that I have um it starts, it's kind of a inscription. In the front is a segment from on fairy stories which is in the appendix of that yeah, so it is. So it is Tolkien in the sense. Yeah, that's taken again like a loosely governing theme for these shorter works that have appeared in disparate places prior to 97 and with River Random prior to 2008. 03:46 - Julia Golding (Host) Yeah, keats isn't a bad shout though, because there are Keatsian touches in these books with the sort of medievalism of them, and his poem is one of the most famous of the sort of world portal fantasy images that made it into classic poetry. Anyway, just defending myself there, okay right, let's go for it. First of all, I mean, I think when these were written is also interesting. So if I just go through that we'll take, to start off, we'll take the sort of version of this, which is the 1997 version, sort of version of this, which is the 1997 version. So what we have here are some works which come from the 1920s, 30s. They are coming out of the Tolkien nursery, the telling of tales to the children. He's also working on the Hobbit, so there is more Hobbitish touches in them, hobbitish touches in them. Then you've got so that would be, um, particularly farmer giles rover, random too, but that's a late, but farmer giles is definitely in that ilk. Then you've got the wartime thoughts, as Tolkien is struggling to put together lord of the rings, and coming out of that you've got leaf by niggle. But he's also at this time, um, the that's the period of the Rings, and coming out of that you've got Leaf by Niggle, but he's also at this time that's the period of the on fairy stories thinking, and so the touches about the place of fairy, the place of fantasy, are coming, having an academic expression as well as a story expression as well as a story expression, and you can see that flowing into the Smith of Wotton Major, which is also a bit later, and the Adventures of Tom Bombadil poetry collection is a ragbag of things. 05:37 We talked about the poetry in our last get-together. So what he's done is he's bundled up various pieces of work and put them together. So I don't think that has an easy date, because those were composed at different points and put together for a later publication when he became famous. You know why not. So let us think. For the first, the question I have, which i'd'd like to sort of have as the overarching question for us to think about, is do they work as a whole or is the concept forced? We sort of started off by saying is it packaging, is it real? And also the added question is does it work? Because everything Tolkien imagines in the end is dragged into the sort of wake of his bigger project. 06:40 So let's first of all start off with Farmer Giles and its relationship to Perilous Realms realms, I think this one feels the most oddly, the most unlike, because it is comic, it's a spoof. It is a spoof of, I should say, elements of bear wolf and sir gowan and the green knight. So the bear wolf element is the fighting of successive monsters, but they're comic monsters and the way they are fought is comic. It's not the daring do of Beowulf and the Sir Gawain spoofs, I think, are the court and the farmer jars, like being the knight, and then the king, who turns out to be not very impressive at all. So you can see how his academic work is feeding into this story. But it's also notable in being very specific as to where it is. 07:36 You may not get this as somebody not living in Oxford, but the places he's mentioning Tame, otmore are my local towns. Well, otmore's a bird sanctuary, actually not a town, and Tame is just over there, not very far away, like a little market town, really little dots on the map. And so if you're thinking of Oxford, you'll look at a map and look to the eastern side, heading south following the line of the tens down towards london. So oxford doesn't really get a mention, does it? I don't think he's, he's, he's. He's talking about an area which if he went from his house in northmore road, driving his car very badly apparently with his kids all sort of clinging on for dear life that would be an easy place to go. 08:32 And the story for Farmer Giles, in typical Tolkien fashion, starts with names. We know that he said he wrote Lord of the Rings to well, the whole of the legendarium, to create a world in which they could say the elvish greeting that I won't massacre by trying to say it, um. So it's not unexpected that a short story has the same root and the particular place that he was fascinated by is a little village called worming hall, and he took the name worm, which is an old word for, you know, a dragon, and it started as a story to explain why that was named that. And there's jokes about tame and all sorts of other very in local jokes. So where is the shire and floats above? Possibly Warwickshire, possibly not. It's not located. Clearly, farmer Giles definitely has its muddy boots in the agricultural land of Oxfordshire. 09:40 - Jacob Rennaker (Co-host) Yeah, farmer Giles is really interesting. It's like you said, it is tonally different in that it's a comic piece, it's Genesis as a story for his children. Tom Shippey mentions that he allegedly started telling this story to his children while they were hiding under a bridge during a rainstorm. Were, like hiding under a bridge, uh, during a rainstorm, uh, and then. So that's part of why you have the dragon hiding under a bridge and and popping up, um, there. But it's just, you know, clearly meant to entertain children. But then he kind of, you know he, he was having fun, he was clearly having fun with this piece, especially with, you know, his introduction, where it's it's claimed that this is being translated from the latin, and so he's kind of providing this kind of a spoof on academic commentaries on ancient works. So he's doing things on a few different levels. I'm sure his kids wouldn't have. He didn't have that portion when he's telling the story to his children. So there's like, I think, the genesis of the story itself and then he's taking this idea and then layering in these kind of academic in-jokes with philology and even just like the critical method of approaching ancient tales. And so, yeah, it's interesting in that you have both this child's tale and a kind of like academic critical apparatus that's meant to be examining this children's tale, which is really complex and really fun. So it isn't quite shy. 11:12 With Farmer Giles you do have someone who is an ordinary person, who's very comfortable in their life, and they have an adventure kind of thrust upon them in this giant, you know, stumbling into his yard and him accidentally conquering this giant unintentionally conquering this giant and then kind of getting caught and rolled up into this larger world of monsters. So you do have kind of hints of, you know, a Bilbo Baggins kind of story there as well as an element of this, this sword, uh, that is of ancient lineage, that can sense dragons right when dragons are coming, and so you do have kind of go hints of sting, uh, um, a weapon of great renown, uh, and incredible abilities in the hand of kind of a bumbling, uh, untrained, unsususpecting, reluctant hero-type character. So there's I mean, you've seen some of the similar notes of the Hobbit kind of in there, but it is, yeah, but you're absolutely right that it is more. The purpose seems to be satire or comedy, and maybe a little bit of the satire coming in on the scholarly commentary that he's kind of adding to it afterwards. 12:28 So, yeah, really, really interesting piece, unsurprising that it wasn't, uh, you know, seen by the publishers as something to hold up alongside the hobbit, as you know, kind of like a worthy successor, but it's a very entertaining piece nonetheless, where you see Tolkien kind of stretching his philological muscles and he's engaging in this project that he dances in and out of with the building of the Legendarium, which is coming up with reasons, you know, stories behind why something is called the way it is. 13:06 So he's, what are all these fairy tales that we hear? He's presuming that they might be garbled versions of some ancient, more pristine, more robust story, and so, in this sense, he's providing this kind of robust backstory for a city like Worming Hall, providing this kind of robust backstory for a city like warming hall, uh, and and he's doing that with other, uh, other elements in the early, you know, legendarium what kind of becomes the silmarillion with some of those stories, with this? So he, this is clearly an exercise that he's constantly kind of mulling over in his mind. What do we have now in front of us and what is what possibly could have resulted in this strange name, this strange tradition, this fantastic tale? What's the root, what's the genesis for this, and trying to kind of like get as far back into that as he could I think in a way it resembles more closely other children's. 14:01 - Julia Golding (Host) Well, it's not really a children's tale, but other tales that were told for children at the time, something like kenneth graham's the reluctant dragon now kenneth graham, more famous for, obviously, wind in the willows, but he writes quite a charming tale called the reluctant dragon, which has actually more of a child focus. The thing about farmermer Giles is it's another of Tolkien middle-aged heroes. So that's where it is in the line of the Hobbit. But it does feel more like the folktale retellings of that kind of thing that was going on in early 20th century children's literature and I think it's quite interesting to think well, why does the Hobbit not feel like this? And I think in a way he jettisons the more mannered, more perhaps not quite as funny as he would like it to be stuff. There are some names, for example, which would go down like a lead balloon in in a world where people you know it, as cs lewis told Tolkien not to do so much hobbit talk, and I think there's an element of that. There's a bit more, bit too much, of being happy with your own cleverness in this tale. So it always seems to have one eye on the adult audience as opposed to entertaining the child audience, though one suspects the children in the Tolkien nursery would have got the jokes because they were all very clever. So it may have worked for the Homer audience, but for a general audience I think it might be a little bit, yeah, a little bit too Donnish, if I'm allowed that term, but still great fun and also surprisingly anarchic. 15:52 Remember, Tolkien said he likes anarchy, basically the big king. So don't think Aragorn, think much more like the Anglo-Saxon kingdom, so people who have a defined area which they rule, like Mercia or Wessex. It's a smaller, almost like a couple of shires together stretch, and from this Far-Majal sets himself up as a king and refuses to sort of separates himself off, which in a way the shire in the Lord of the Rings ends up as an independent kingdom. But not through this. Farmer Giles does it by basically telling the king he doesn't recognize him anymore. He's got a dragon, so it scares him off. So the politics is different and the politics is very anarchic. He hates big government, shall we say. He and his wife Agatha. So enjoyable, but I'm not sure it has much of the, the grandeur and the feeling and the beauty and the. It's got the comedy, but it's like a story told by hobbits rather than about hobbits yeah, that's a good way, that's a good way of putting it. 17:14 - Jacob Rennaker (Co-host) Yeah, so the in terms of this being placed in the perilous realm. You do have the existence of monsters, but it's only kind of in in name or, uh, formally only perilous realm. This is taking place in a perilous realm, but there isn't, like that weight of this, you know, real true danger. Like it doesn't, it doesn't feel mythic in the way that you do have bubbling up so that's yeah. 17:37 - Julia Golding (Host) Folkloric. Yeah, it also feels quite Chaucerian, and we know we've just recently discovered through scholarship that Chaucer was working on an edition of Canterbury Tales all through his life and didn't finish. So you know he had a lot of other things to do. So you can see an element of Chaucer in it as well, the sort of the funny tales in Chaucer, without the crudeness. Ok, so that's Farmer Giles. There's a lot more to say. Say, but let's move on to shall we do leaf by niggle. Next, and this one is the charming short story which feels like a pilgrim's progress, uh, feels very allegorical, um, it reminds me most of something like cs lewis's great divorce, and it also has a structure a bit similar to um the last battle, with the idea of going further, up and further in um, though of course it was written beforehand. That whole idea, I think, is actually based on a biblical passage, so they've both got it out of a biblical understanding of the reality, um, in revelation, but anyway. So they've got common sources, um, and probably dante as well. 18:58 - Jacob Rennaker (Co-host) Let's throw down, yeah, the purgatorio specifically, yeah, both lewis and Tolkien would have been very familiar with, and yeah. 19:05 - Julia Golding (Host) So the reason the similarities are they're reading the same stuff and talking about the same ideas. It's clearly self-reflective, because Tolkien would be the first person to admit that he niggles at things, and that word niggle means to be very finicky, to keep wanting to change. So if you're the kind of you would say now, you're a perfectionist, you won't let something go, you'll keep tinkering at it, a tinkerer at things, and the story is an extended reflection on the use of creativity. What value does it have in society, particularly in the case of Niggle, something which is fantastical? So if we're thinking about Tolkien, working on well on fairy stories has a very strong defence of the role of fairy stories in culture and in creativity. So this is like the of the role of fairy stories in culture and in creativity. So this is like his way of exploring that in a fictional form, and so to be read alongside his essay makes perfect sense. So I can see why they've added that in the later edition. How do you respond to the Leaf by Niggle? What's your feelings about it? 20:30 - Jacob Rennaker (Co-host) Yeah, it's one of my favorites of Tolkien and, like you said, this kind of reflection on a creative life and the frustrations, but then potential joys of creativity, joys of, uh, of of creativity, or the reason why some people feel compelled, called to or compelled to write, to create and in different ways. Um, so the fact that this, this story, is kind of coming from what he says is a dream that he had sometime, you know, between 1939, 1942, this is again. He's, he's finished Hobbit, he's working on, uh, on lord of the rings at this time and it's, it seems, like a, like an anxiety dream, right, he's. He says that in this story he's, he's completed, uh, a just a normal, normal person who just likes, likes, niggling, likes, but likes leaves, he likes tree, he likes leaves. He's done a leaf that he thinks he's done it pretty well, and now he's trying a tree, and this tree has just kind of exploded into this massive project that's taking way too much time and he's finding, you're discovering all these different things, uh, about this tree and the land behind it, uh, and he's afraid that he's not going to finish it right. There's no way that he could get to all of this. So you kind of see that those anxieties in Tolkien is taking so long for him, revision after revision for Lord of the Rings. He's afraid that all of this work that he's done, including the legendarium work, which is kind of this land in the background, behind this tree, that he's creating, this wider world that he's afraid that he's not going to capture. There's no way he can capture any of that and but he's still. 22:10 But he still does it, he still like feels compelled to to do this because he loves it, um, and he sees it's worth doing so, like so as, as somebody, as a creative, it's something that resonates with you know, like the, the demands of the everyday. You know he's, he's constantly interrupted by his neighbor, um, parish, or it's seen as an interruption by him at at the time, um, and for me, as we're looking, this is kind of like a creative allegory. Uh, in the story he's, he starts out, he's painting, he wants just to focus on this and his neighbor keeps interrupting him, needs his help for his house, for his wife, and then ultimately, nigel catches cold and dies, is sent to a workhouse, sent on a journey, goes to a workhouse and then ends up in this after the workhouse, which is kind of this analogy for kind of a purgatory, um, presumably, then ends up in this kind of like wide, open, beautiful outdoor space where he ultimately finds this tree that he was working on, that he was painting, and finds it made real in this other world and then, uh, his, uh, his former nuisance of a neighbor, um parish name, ends up here and helping him and together they work on cultivating this tree together, and so what it does for me, I think right now, in my most recent rereading of it, is kind of reflecting on the solitude of a writer's life, right, a creator who is kind of working in isolation, the necessity of not just being stuck in your own hole but in engaging with the wider world, that the people in our lives, circumstances that arrive, are valuable and essential to creating any you know meaningful uh, work of art. Uh, there's, it's, it's, yeah, it's, it's a corrective for that self-referential life. 24:13 Sometimes that's easy to, can be easy to get caught up in, as, as a writer, creating worlds in your own head. 24:19 Um, the the need of balancing art with the necessities of living in a community in which we're all, we're all, we all exist, whether we like to or not. So for me, the kind of most recently in this most recent rereading. That was kind of something that's kind of a call, a call to me as a creative to not see, you know, children, wives, neighbors as interruptions and frustrating you know what the important work that I feel like I'm doing, but that that is kind of an invitation to collaborate in life in general and that in my interaction with these presumed interruptions for my my quote, great work, whatever it is at the time that I'm doing, that the invitation to bring into my life, you know, people other than myself and that they are actually aiding me and making my work, uh, even better by participating in their lives. So this is something that I think is a very beautiful message about the artistic endeavor and the need for maintaining a sense of community and connection to other people in the artistic life. 25:27 So that just kind of an anecdotal kind of sense that I got just this last time reading it so I was interested in the way that you said in on this read. 25:37 - Julia Golding (Host) It meant this to me because I think one of the much discussed areas and we have discussed it in Tolkien and Lewis is the idea of allegory and applicability. So the allegorical hallmarks in Leaf by Niggle are things like the name. So to niggle, that's obviously what I already described. But parish I don't know how much listeners know about the English system of organizing itself, but the fundamental unit was around the parish church and it actually administered things like um, poor, you know, arms for the poor and things like that, arms houses, uh, by the sort of. Obviously we've got a bigger government departments doing that kind of thing now, but still, even today villages and rural areas are organized in parishes. I'm a parish councillor for my sins in the village I live, so we do things like run the children's playgrounds and cut the grass. You know it's that kind of stuff on the children's playgrounds and cut the grass, you know it's that kind of stuff. So when Mr Parrish comes in he's like the everyday stuff that comes through the door saying, oh, mr Niggle, can you come and, you know, spend some time mending the church roof or tidying up the school playground or it's that stuff, that daily little grind. And of course, course, during the war for Tolkien, he was doing war work, so what was knocking on the door was come and be on the fire watch to check the buildings of oxford didn't burn down in an air raid, and things like that, much more more important things. So those, as you were saying, those, that is the stuff of daily life and that matters. So it matters that the children's playground works and that oxford doesn't burn down. It's no good just doing your little leaf, but I would say that the application that I take from it on this time of reading is is about the joy of discovering what your work meant to other people, because that's where it goes. It opens out, he discovers even though he thought he created nothing of any value whatsoever. It's a very healthy place for people to find respite and rest in and isn't that true about Tolkien? And rest in. And isn't that true about Tolkien? He didn't know, because he's writing this prior to the publication of Lord of the Rings, so he might have in mind just the Hobbit at this stage. But certainly Niggle's prophecy, some prophetic projection of what the value of his work is, is wonderful. It's very meta, that thing where actually the description of the joy that many people find in Lord of the Rings is captured in Leaf by Niggle, a lovely story hovering on the allegorical applicable. You, you know, dances on that boundary very happily, in a similar way that some of cs lewis's works do. Okay, so moving on, um, perhaps we should do the smith of wotton major and leave tom bombardill to the end. Sorry, tom. Um. 29:05 Smithwood wooden major, I think is more of a fairy tale, um, and it is musing on the place of fairy and folk traditions and the idea of passing that on. 29:22 So it's about a mysterious star that is baked in a cake by a mysterious chef and some people say it's up to no good. There's a man called Noakes in the village who says it's not worth anything. But this star that goes to a child gives him the right or the ability to pass and explore the world of fairy, uh, and then there's a whole sort of passage of adventures in that world and when he comes back he bakes it again and passes it on to another child who happens to be the grandson of nox, the, the person who doesn't like the whole kind of world of fantasy. So again, it's a sort of medieval world, but it isn't rooted in the same way with the same sort of jokiness of um farmer jars of ham. So I find it a more atmospheric tale, I think. Uh, it's. I prefer it, but just just a matter of taste. So what do you um think about it? 30:33 - Jacob Rennaker (Co-host) yeah, this is again like smith of wooden major is what is one of my favorites. Hey, everything's one of my favorites, but really, in the pantheon of uh, of work, especially like the short works, uh, really, smith of wooden major and leaf by nickel, or two that I keep finding myself coming back to repeatedly um, that every time and every time I revisit them, I'm getting something new and something different and something edifying in some way, and so it really I think there's things that touch on on on myth, um, uh, especially with with wooden major, so with this one, yeah, so so with smith of wood major, like, like you mentioned, the story about this kind of fairy star being baked into a cake is a. It initially started as he was commissioned to write a preface to George MacDonald's book fairy tale story for children, the Golden Key, and so it was in his writing this preface that he started the preface, and if you buy it, there's a small book version of Just Smith of Wood Major that includes the actual preface as he started it. So, as you can see everything he's writing, he's writing this introduction to the Golden Key, but then he says within this introduction he kind of says like I want to go give you a parable about, kind of like, what telling fairy stories is like. And so once he he starts this creating this little story and that's with Tolkien, like anytime he starts creating anything story like it then all of a sudden just like reaches out, tendrils, uh, and he kind of automatically starts spinning off into, okay, who are these characters, where did they come from? Who are their parents? What was the history of the city for the past 100 or 200 years? So he actually has chronologies of, uh, you know, there's a family relationships in this town of wooden major, wooden minor. 32:27 So he, just this man, his creative impulse in world building, like knows no bounds, asked to write a simple introduction to somebody else's work, ends up spinning off into this powerful novella about the effects that fairy have on individuals who go there and the difficulty of expressing that to other people. And so for me it's this wonderful tale and this is an excellent companion piece to On Fairy Stories, to on fairy stories, because what he describes there in, uh, in his this, this lecture on fairy stories, um is, you know, he outlines okay, here's where first stories kind of are coming from, here so they're functioning, here's their effect. And so, rather than just have this kind of like academic analysis, which is what the on fairy stories does, I think. Rather well is here's him doing that. Okay, now here's what a story like that looks like, and so he's invoking these different principles that he had been processing earlier. 33:33 This is the last published work that Tolkien writes. This is last fully finished work that he has, um, uh, and so this is kind of being written later in his life as he's had time to kind of sit with this idea of myth, uh, in the realm of fairy and his own experience and kind of feeling that he's had time to kind of sit with this idea of myth and the realm of fairy and his own experience and kind of feeling that he's touched that as he has been writing and developing these different stories and the world of Middle Earth. And so, yeah, it is a more mature story and very I think, yeah, there's a weight to it that you don't have in some of these other stories, but it's, it's beautiful as kind of a standalone piece, uh, on what it's like to experience fairy, um, uh, and and how other people might react to that who don't quite share the same perspective or have the same sensibilities, um, so, yeah, it's again it. It touches on a few different things that we've already touched upon in other works, that we've discussed even here today, in that where does something come from? So the Noakes, the fellow that you mentioned, julia, who is this cook for the town, and there's this fairy star that he has, that he can, that he's supposed to be given to use in this special cake that's, that's that's baked every so often for the children of the of of the town. 34:57 And this chef, this cook, doesn't have a training in really background in in in cooking and baking. He just kind of is given the job and reluctantly and he thinks, like what he thinks children like are sugary, bright, gaudy cakes with lots of icing and maybe like we're not talking disney, are we? 35:19 right, right, which is which is possibly. 35:24 - Julia Golding (Host) Yes, I'm really good he wasn't up on disney, was he? 35:27 - Jacob Rennaker (Co-host) he didn't no, no, no, not at all of that era. 35:30 - Julia Golding (Host) I think you know right of that. 35:31 - Jacob Rennaker (Co-host) Yes, yes, good, yeah, it's a good. So like yeah, so for his, you know, snow white and the seven dwarves to him is uh, just unspeakable crime yes, yeah, yeah, exactly exactly. 35:44 So this is kind of looking at what other people who didn't appreciate fairy stories, or relegating, like he says, in on fairy stories, the essay, um, that that society in large, at large, kind of as he's experiencing it, um have kind of relegated fairy tales to the nursery and that these are stories for children and should only, you know, be simplified to just kind of more kind of superficial topics, themes, treatments of life of people and whereas and in this story he makes the point, you know, that it's better, maybe better, that the elves actually do make, make make the point that well's, maybe better that the elves actually do make the point that, well, yeah, maybe even just like this super simplified, reductive elf figure, this elf queen with a little wand and all this sugary frosting, that's even better than nothing. So at least having that as maybe a doorway, a step into the larger, real, weighty, uh, perilous realm of of fairy, uh and uh. But there is something that these, even these, these, these cakes, these gaudy frosted, um, sugary cakes for children, there's something that lies like behind them, uh, and, and that is this realm. So fairy stories aren't just these simple stories are told by children. 37:08 Again, like I mentioned earlier. This is part of this larger project of like trying to recover. Okay, there's this nursery rhyme, there's this tale, what is the like epic mythic background for this, what's its genealogy? And and Tolkien believing that even behind these stories seemingly silly fairy stories, there's something that's truly deep and meaningful in them, that they're coming from. That is kind of tapping into and that's what he's hoping to recover in his writings with Lord of the Rings, with the Silmarillion and with Smith of Wooden Major. 37:40 - Julia Golding (Host) Yeah, I think it's also quite helpful. I'm sure many listeners who love Tolkien will see, as I do, those headlines from time to time where people suddenly say how much they think Lord of the Rings is a waste of time. So, james Corden, you know, the talk show host, british actor, he doesn't. He said that. I mean he may be defining himself Again. Stephen Colbert, you know, it was kind of you like that stuff. And then there's another comedian who got headlines the other week saying, oh, josh Riddickham, saying what's all this about hobbits? You know, and they are to me this story is. The answer to them is that they're not even trying to understand and appreciate. Not everybody wants to eat cake. So you can say that cake isn't for me, fine, I'm gonna have something else. But to actually say the cake you're eating is bad, is, is, is a different thing, and so this is. I find this story quite helpful as a way of framing what's wrong about the critics who dismiss something that many of us love as being fanciful or not real. 38:56 - Jacob Rennaker (Co-host) Or escapist. 38:57 - Julia Golding (Host) Escapist. I mean, Tolkien got all the answers in his essay. So, yeah, I find it quite helpful thinking that, and I would say that in our collection of stories here that this does actually qualify as a perilous realm, and I've actually managed to put my finger on the Keats quote. It's perilous seas and fairy lands forlorn, which is the quote from Oto and Nightingale. So I knew there was a perilous in there somewhere. So it does seem part of that perilous realm because when the smith actually does go into Faerie he meets the queen and she isn't comfortable. She's quite like Galadriel, she's quite sort of she could. You know she's a queen. 39:51 - Jacob Rennaker (Co-host) Dangerous galadriel. She's quite sort of she could. Yeah, she's a queen, dangerous, um, which is, and the, the, yeah, and there's the ship of elven, these like elven soldiers that wash up on the shore and they're like marching past him and he's just scared out of his wits and kind of like drops down on the ground and cowers. There's this storm that like comes in and blows off and strips this one tree of all its leaves. That was kind of helping Smith to hang on, and then it's weeping and then he's told to go away. 40:13 - Julia Golding (Host) And it's not a comfortable place, it's a dangerous place, it's perilous. So, yes, this does fit the description on the title does fit this story. 40:23 - Jacob Rennaker (Co-host) I have a quick question for you, julia. So if we're looking at this title of uh, tales from peril perilous realm, where would you put the peril in leaf by niggle? Where is that, that perilous realm? Where does that exist in that story or could be teased out? 40:39 - Julia Golding (Host) I find it hard to actually fit that one in, other than we are all at peril of our mortal soul in that sense. But I don't think that's what this means, because I don't. I think that Leaf by Niggle is our world and the next life, and fairy has always been placed as the third way and that's how it was described. So you had fairy. You know, the door in the hill, in the green hill, that goes to fairy is like the third way. So I don't think it does personally, and I think it's a big stretch in the branding. But anyway, um, if people disagree, please let us know what about you yeah, I was just. 41:26 - Jacob Rennaker (Co-host) I was just thinking that, as we're talking about swift and smith of whitton major, the most peril that you have is really the, the fact that he's going to die or he's going called on this journey, right? So so this world becomes in some ways the perilous realm that he doesn't realize that he's in. But then the workhouse there is. That doesn't seem to be peril, that's more of kind of a rehabilitation and working, and there's no real peril in the after uh, afterlife, or the, the world, the, the stage that he then moves on to. So the only peril that there seems to be in the story is in our world, uh, which, again, this is just based in a dream, uh, and isn't perhaps meant to evoke fairy itself, but that's the closest that like peril that there really is is him catching a cold, uh, and then it developing and him dying as a as a result of that. But you're right, that doesn't quite fit the theme, but I do think it's interesting. 42:22 The closest thing that that uh kind of borders on perilous realm is like the world in which we live, and so if the, if it is helping you to see the world we live in as something that is like Tolkien argues in on fairy stories, that what language can do, what fairy tales can do, is help, you see, by understanding a dragon richly, the world in which you live, than they have done their. They've done their job, um, and that's to enrich the world in which we live, um, through these kind of secondary worlds helps. Yeah, but that's what? The fresh view, so maybe that, but that's just like that's me being super generous and stretching perhaps far too far, uh, to make that work, but uh. But yeah, you're right, it doesn't fit neatly in with some of the other tales that we've been discussing. 43:20 - Julia Golding (Host) Yeah, I don't think that is a fairy tale. 43:25 - Jacob Rennaker (Co-host) Right right, it's not a fairy tale. 43:27 - Julia Golding (Host) Okay, so we haven't talked about Rover Random, which I think doesn't fit very well either, even though it does have so much. I don't know. 43:39 - Jacob Rennaker (Co-host) So this is my first time reading Rover Random, which I'm grateful that I did, because as I'm reading it now, after having been so steeped in Tolkien larger world and legendary, I'm just seeing all the different kind of ideas that he's playing with here in this children's story. You have quarrels between wizards that are kind of dueling. You have these creatures like Poseidon, these gods that are described as kind of diminishing in size. Poseidon has become the size of a minnow. So it's kind of like Tolkien talking alluding to the fact that, like fairies or elves have kind of over the years, have kind of diminished in size and perception. There's the man in the moon, which we'll talk about in a bit with the with the tom uh adventure, tom bombadil. So man in the moon is a character and where these kind of rhymes are coming from dragons, uh, massive spiders, uh, some abandoned ideas that Tolkien had with this land of lost play, cottage of lost play, where children this early idea that he has about children and their dreams kind of actually going to Valinor and existing there, like you see children in some ways doing this. Here you have Rove Random actually glimpsing the Elvenholm, essentially the mountains of Elvenholm, and so you see all these little kind of things, kind of cameos. It seems like now in retrospect that these are popping up, although this was written earlier where he's you know it's all part of the stew, his soup of story, that he is kind of playing with these different ideas and it's a fun, entertaining little tale. 45:18 Nothing that's like really weighty or I don't think many people probably go back to very often, but again, this is Tolkien impulse to his son lost a toy, so he wrote an entire story to explain this. Lost, you know, metal dog. They lost on the beach. His son was inconsolable and so he spun this whole tale, uh, for him to make him feel better about that, which is a, I think, an incredible, you know storytelling impulse. 45:46 That's marrying this. You know the, the creative impulse with your like we were talking about before the inter quote interruptions uh, the people that you interact with every day. He's using his storytelling, uh you know powers to help console a child, which I absolutely get. Yet just yesterday my child lost his favorite, uh, favorite car dropped. It was running and it flew out of his pocket and landed in the ocean and we couldn't get it and so he was just inconsolable. So now, after having read this now? Do I need to set aside time to write this epic tale about this car that gets transformed into a niad and has adventures under the sea and whatever? 46:27 - Julia Golding (Host) I think an undersea vehicle, right, it doesn't fit cleanly. What's that? That Pixar thing? Vehicle? Um doesn't fit cleanly. What's that that? Oh, pixar thing? Um, I think that if you're sort of putting it in a category, you can see why it didn't make the cut for the tales from the perilous realm first time around. 46:44 This time you can also see why it does. It feels a bit more like the randomness rover random, obviously in the title, um, but it feels more like the way the father christmas letters suck in that whole sort of series of ragbag of ideas. Okay, right, we're not going to spend too long on tom bombardill ventures of tom bombardill, because we talked a lot about poetry last time. But I do want to start. You know, draw put focus on the introduction, because here we we've been talking about the publishers packaging the this as the perilous realm stories rather than middle earth stories, and what we have in the tom bombadil is something that actually is in middle earth. So we've got it's, it's. It's sort of don't know, it's sort of not quite following the Perilous Realm theme, but there are stories in it which apply, that feel more like something that would be found in a world of Smith, of Wooten Major or Farmer Jars of Ham, but the introduction to it, and I think Tolkien is basically very clearly trying to appeal to people to buy it. Who've bought the Hobbit. 48:03 He dishes out the different poems, all written by him, and says they belong to it's this pseudo-scholarly thing, they belong to other hobbits. So we've got um. The present selection is taken from the older pieces mainly concerned with legends and jests of the shire at the end of the third age that appear to have been made by Hobbits, especially by Bilbo and his friends or their immediate descendants. And he goes down to say number five was made by Bilbo, number seven by Sam Gamgee, and so on and so on. So he is trying to fold it very tightly within the shire narrative and, as we saw when we looked at the scholarly edition of his poetry, what happened to these poems is they lost some of their outside references, things that put them in a world of everyday England, and they became more shire-like to the final evolution as as they were published. So what do you make of the adventures of tom bombardil? As being part of tales of peril, of the perilous realm? 49:27 - Jacob Rennaker (Co-host) yeah, this it's just, yeah, not perilous, because there is, because several of the poems are jokes, are more in jest, kind of more like former Giles of Ham right. These weren't intentionally created as touching on Middle Earth. These were just earlier poems that he wrote and that he had a chance to. Granted, he could revise and revisit them and polish them up for this publication. But it's, yeah, it's, it's, it's not there. There isn't the sense of peril, especially with the titular character at Tom Bombadil when he's encountering Barrow-Wights. It's, it's largely, you know, comical. You don't have any of the sense of dread that you have in in Lord of the rings. Uh, say so. There isn't that sense of. This is a, a realm of, of a real peril, um and also wonder. You do get some of the, you get the wonder, um, but with, but but largely without the peril, I think, um, in this particular selection the last poems have a change in tone. 50:32 - Julia Golding (Host) So whereas the early ones are more like the songs that Frodo sings in Bree and the Oliphant and things like that, the Shadow Bride feels very. I'm sorry I need to talk about Keats again. It's very La Belle Danse en Merci or Kolarich Christabel it's very much in that romantic era. They were strong pulse all the way through Victorian poetry. Coleridge, christabel it's very much in that romantic era. They were a strong pulse all the way through Victorian poetry into people like Walter de la Mer and all those other contemporary poets for Tolkien. And there's also the very fine poem the Horde, which is about treasure and how it appears over time and the different people who own it and come to no good. So elves, dwarves, dragon kings and then an abandoned um horde that nobody looks after anymore. I rather like that poem. 51:29 - Jacob Rennaker (Co-host) It's my favorite yeah, and that was, and that's probably. Yeah, that poem is probably the closest thing to like a perilous realm, I think is like the peril of dragon sickness. 51:36 - Julia Golding (Host) Right is essentially what that is kind of outlining and the sea bell also feels and and and the last ship. They're quite elven, yeah, yeah, um. So there are some where the tone feels more in that place, but the first part, as you say the first parts is more yeah, it's just kind of hodgepodge things, kind of repurposed but we would stress that Tolkien didn't give it that title, so it's fine for him to do it and say these three tensions are tom bobby doll. 52:05 It's. What we're looking at here is how they've been packaged as the perilous realm and what sense that makes. Yeah, so the last sort of place just to rest in this. When the 1997 I think it was edition came out, um, the bbc followed up with an adaptation by brian sibley which, um, I was having a listen to today. It's full of some greats. It's got michael horden who was gandalf in their wonderful lord of the rings, and it's got brian blessed, who is the famous actor of the booming voice playing farmer giles, which seems like a perfect casting. So that's a lot of fun. And there's also a version of it read by the great actor derek jac. So if you like to imbibe these as an audio version, they are two interesting places to go. 52:59 The adaptation, obviously, is not a literal reading. It's an imaginative play upon the top but very close to the books, so okay. So how are we going to finish talking about this? I would say that I would just do a little warning If you're going to dip into these books and you haven't already. I think the Perilous Realms is quite a sort of sexy, attractive title, and the contents don't quite live up to what you might be expecting. So do do a little bit of thinking as to why it's been packaged like this, and don't blame Tolkien if it doesn't quite fit what you're coming to expect yeah, yeah, I think I'm trying to think. 53:43 - Jacob Rennaker (Co-host) I'm trying to think of for whom this book would be best as a like a standalone, like if this is, if you're, if you're interested in reading with, with, with the exception of tom bombadil, so if you're interested in seeing, like, what other things uh, Tolkien has written, um, and just kind of get a sense for kind of the range of things that he wrote outside of, uh, the hobbit, lord of the rings and silmarillion, I think this would be a good kind of like a sampler for that, uh, with the kind of caveat that adventures of tom bombadil actually takes place in, um, middle earth. But it still has kind of a variety of different things that weren't in, weren't originally intended in many cases to fit within that. So I think it still gives you a sense for Tolkien him working outside of the legendarium. What does that even look like? This is a good, I think, a good kind of collection of those for people who want to see what Tolkien is doing and how he does storytelling outside of Middle-earth. 54:36 - Julia Golding (Host) And if someone were just going to say, okay, I'll give it one, I'll go and read one of these. Which one would you point them to? 54:44 - Jacob Rennaker (Co-host) Oh well, yeah, I didn't tell you. 54:47 - Julia Golding (Host) I was going to put you on this, but I think I would. Yeah, I know, I know. 54:49 - Jacob Rennaker (Co-host) Yeah, smith, I think Smith of Witton Major if you like. Yeah, so if you like Lord of the Rings and the way Tolkien, like the mythic nature of Tolkien, this is where you're going to get that. Outside of Lord of the Rings, probably best. 55:03 - Julia Golding (Host) Yeah, if you want Tolkien, then he's devotional. 55:07 - Jacob Rennaker (Co-host) Yeah, and if you like Lord of the Rings because it does something for you like devotionally or like personal applicability, then maybe Leaf by niggle might be a good one for for you for that, for approaching it in that sense. But if you just want to see how Tolkien does other like children's stories or you know fantasy type stories from in a very particular way, then you know the other farmer, giles and rover, random kind of might scratch that itch, but um, but probably most, it probably mostly. 55:34 - Julia Golding (Host) Yeah, I would say smith, smith of winton, major for the people that are probably coming to this, um, and then leaf by niggle is kind of a second maybe yeah, it's a softer landing, I think, yeah, yeah, okay, so thank you for um discussing those uh with me, and I did give you a little bit of warning that I was going to end up with one of my questions about where in all the fantasy realms that you can choose, is the best place to find a perilous realm? It doesn't have to be any inkling universe, it can be anything. So did you ever try to come up with one? 56:12 - Jacob Rennaker (Co-host) Yes, yes, yeah, yeah. The first thing, just instantly and still, my final answer is going to be um, susanna clark's uh, jonathan strange and mr norrell, so like that world, like that, her, uh, you know fairy, you know elven home, like the elf land. The realm of fairy, like that, is truly perilous, in the same way that there's whimsy and wonder but also terrible peril and things that happen when you touch on that and bring that back into the world with you. For me, I think that hits the right note of a perilous realm, with Faerie in particular, that it just captures it so well. 56:51 - Julia Golding (Host) for me, oh, that's a good answer. My first thought went way back, was thinking of the odyssey I happen to see, um, it's a return with ray fines, um, which I happen to see on a plane, so not, but it's a really interesting, good film, um, but it made me think of that journey home is full of perils. So the mediterranean, um post troy. But I also thought that, as I've mentioned keats a couple of times, and because his, his lingo, his language is about perilous seas and fairy lands, forlorn, but actually his wonderful collections of of short verse, fairy tales, lamia. I've already mentioned about damson mercy, that I think they are perilous realms, um, not the greek ones, not the endymion ones, but the ones which are in the medieval inspired world. 57:51 - Jacob Rennaker (Co-host) I'd go for them so I need to, yeah, and that's, and that's a an area where I'm lacking in, uh, in my familiarity, so I I definitely want to check those out. 58:00 - Julia Golding (Host) So thank you the thing about um, poetry is they're quite short, so you could knock that off. You know, at lunch today, um, but in terms of the language and and the, the, the, the I talked about, the casement is in his wonderful, wonderful ode, ode to a Nightingale, which if you haven't read it, guys just read it out loud and appreciate the mastery of Keats. He had a very brief and brilliant career as a writer and obviously that is his at the fullest of his powers. He was writing these pieces Right. Well, thank you very much. Thank you very much for spending some time in peril with me. 58:47 - Jacob Rennaker (Co-host) Happy to. I couldn't think of a better person to be in peril with. 58:56 - Speaker 3 (None) Thanks for listening to Mythmakers Podcast brought to you by the Oxford Centre for Fantasy. Visit OxfordCentreForFantasy.org to join in the fun. Find out about our online courses, in-person stays in Oxford, plus visit our shop for great gifts. Tell a friend and subscribe wherever you find your favourite podcasts worldwide.