The things that remain are
most significant – the melancholy and nostalgia, the sense of diminishment or
„fading“, particularly of the elves, and their association with trees and
hills. The imagery of water: particularly the flow of the river and the
importance of the sea – signalled by its capitalisation in the later versions,
these are all themes Tolkien returns to again and again in his later work. The
sea is often a presence sensed or feared in The
Lord of the Rings, and in both this book and in The Silmarillion it is connected with loss, separation and exile.
The story of the elves in all his works is the story of their passing and
re-passing over the great western or sundering Sea.
Kortirion as a concept went
through many changes, originally the city on the Isle of Tol Eressea, it was a
refuge for Elves returning into the West from which they originated but were
not permitted to enter. By the time Tolkien wrote The Silmarillion, the city had become Tirion and it too was built
on a green hill and was the home of elves in the far west from which the most
destructive of the elves emerged. The creation of Kortirion in the poem was
thus an early step towards the ethical cosmology and epic mythology which
underpins Tolkien´s vision of Middle-earth as it is alluded to in The Lord of the Rings and described in The Silmarillion.
To anyone not familiar with Tolkien´s elves it may seem as though his association of Warwick with them is peculiar. In the twenty-first century it may seem odd to say that any town was described as „the city of elves“. However, although Tolkien´s works echo with images of fading and diminishing, and with the Otherworld of elves and fairies, these are emphatically not childish fantasies. Tolkien´s elves are not the gossamer sprites of the Conan Doyle photographs, nor the charming children with wings illustrated in the flower-fairy books. Tolkien´s elves developed from the myths and legends he studied and delighted in. His concept of elves is closer to the Irish and Welsh myths of beautiful and dangerous beings. Indeed, in his essay called „On Fairy Stories“ he describes the world of the fairies as „the Perilous Realm“, because its beauty acts as an enchantment on mortals.
This concept is expressed
vividly in the fourteenth-century verse romance known as Sir Orfeo, which Tolkien edited. In this story, set in Winchester,
the fairy king is violent and dangerous, threatening to have the mortal wife of
King Orfeo torn to pieces if she refuses to go with him. Elves also have a
place in more famous English literature. Chaucer wrote satirically in the Wife of Bath´s Tale of the coming of
Christianity when, he said,
now
kan no man se none elves mo
For
now the grete charitee and prayeres
Of
lymytours and othere hooly freyes
…
maketh that ther ben no fayeres.
For
ther as wont to walken was an elf
Ther
walketh now the lymytour hymself.
Now no one can see elves any more. Now because of the great kindness and prayers of wandering and other kinds of friars there are no fairies. For where elves used to walk the wandering friar himself now walks.
However, the most famous
warrior elf in the English literary „canon“ is probably the Red Cross knight in
Spenser´s Elizabethan epic poem The
Faerie Queene. In this post-Reformation allegory, the warrior elf fights
against contemporary images of evil. So the connection of Warwick/Kortirion
with fading and with elves participates in a literary tradition that associated
them with change as well as with aggression and in all these instances they are
depicted as Other but no less in size and presence than the mortals with whom
they interact.
The connection between elves and the hill on which Kortirion is built recalls the importance of green hills in ancient Celtic mythology where they were regarded as the entrance to the Sidhe, the Otherworld where the immortals dwell. It was said that mortals who entered the Sidhe would find, if they ever came out, that time had passed differently outside. Tolkien uses this concept of different times in his description of the hobbits´ experience of staying in the Golden Wood of Lothlorien. He hints at it first in the narrative which states „They remained some days in Lothlorien, so far as they could tell or remember“ (The Fellowship of the Ring, Bk. 2 ch. 7), but picks it up later in Sam´s observations about the moon „we´d been a week on the way last night, when up pops a New Moon as thin as a nail paring, as if we had never stayed no time in the Elvish country … Any one would think that time did not count there.“ (The Fellowship of the Ring, Bk. 2 ch. 8). In a more modern context, this sense of discontinuous time reflects upon the „sense of history“ often reported by visitors to places of historic interest, and touches on the wonder to be felt when encountering ancient monuments such as long barrows and medieval cathedrals; a sense Tolkien probably encountered as he walked up the hill to Warwick castle.
As the elves of Kortirion live
on, rather than in, their hill, so in The
Lord of the Rings elves do not dwell inside hills, although they do in the
earlier tale of The Hobbit where the
elves of Mirkwood have the protection of what might be described as an
underground „palace complex“ inside a hill. Tolkien differentiates between the
elves in Mirkwood, which is an especially dangerous place, and the elves
dwelling farther south where the danger is less. Elrond, living in Rivendell,
has the protection of the mountains and the river, while Lothlorien, much
further south is not protected by physical geography but by the power of the
Lady Galadriel. However, the creation of Lothlorien shows again Tolkien´s
special association of elves with trees and hills, although these trees are the
Mallorns of his own creation rather than the elms of Warwick/Kortirion.
Nevertheless, the ancient cities of the elves in Lothlorien are both built on
green hills. Looking from one to the other Frodo sees „a hill of many mighty
trees, or a city of green towers“ (The Fellowship
of the Ring, Bk 2 ch. 7).
For Tolkien, the Celtic world
of immortals was one that had known its greatest days. The melancholy of
diminishment is perhaps best known in his descriptions of the High elves of
Lothlorien for whom „spring and summer have gone by“. But Tolkien would also
have been well aware that the concept of fairies had itself diminished. From
tall and beautiful Celtic warriors and hunters, by way of Oberon, Titania, and
Puck, they became the ephemeral little creatures of the Conan Doyle photos and
other nineteenth and early twentieth-century representations, such William Allingham´s the humorously gothic poem beginning
Up
the airy mountain,
Down
the rushy glen,
We
dare no go a-hunting,
For
fear of little men.
Wee folk, good folk,
Trooping all together;
Green jacket, red cap,
And white owl´s feather.
Tennyson managed a grander
vision with his „horns of Elfland faintly blowing“, and the „fairy Lady of
Shallott“. These gothic representations of a faerie Otherworld delighted the
Victorians, but Tolkien´s vision was on a more epic scale, and „Kortirion among
the Trees“ was a step on the road of that epic creative journey, although the
poem, like Warwick itself, is barely mentioned by early commentators on
Tolkien´s life and work.
The physical environment of
Warwick, its history, castle, and medieval buildings all echo through the Lord of the Rings. However, while the
town and its ancient history have a special place in Tolkien´s Middle-earth,
Tom Shippey, in his recent book J.R.R.
Tolkien: Author of the Century, remarks that „Tolkien repeatedly said he
was „a West-midlander by blood“ and his connection with Warwickshire has meant
that the countryside beyond Warwick has been searched for hints of its
influence on Tolkien´s creativity“. Of all the Warwickshire locations, Hob Lane has probably
caused greatest interest because it contains the significant first syllable of
the word „hobbit“. This lane has led to many linguistic „blind alleys“, even
though in The Lord of the Rings
„hobbit“ is only the Shire dialect version of the name. In Middle-earth the men
of Rohan refer to members of this small race as „holbytla“, which is what
Theoden King of Rohan calls the hobbit Merry Brandybuck. The Rohan connection
points to Anglo-Saxon, no surprise since Tolkien used Anglo-Saxon vocabulary,
culture, and social structure to create Rohan.
An Anglo-Saxon dictionary distinguishes 2 parts to Tolkien´s word: „hol“
and „bytla“, and these translate as „hol“ meaning „hole“ and „bytla“ meaning
either „builder“ or „dweller“, while the verb „bytlan“ means „to build“. So we
have the perfect description of a hobbit, from „holbytla“, someone who „builds“
holes in which to live. The alteration in spelling from „holbytla“ to „hobbit“
reflects similar changes in the transmission of many words that have come down
to modern English from Anglo-Saxon times, and Treebeard the ent gives the
modern English translation when he makes a new line in the old lists of the
inhabitants of Middle-earth to accommodate the hobbits he has just met. He
calls them „half-grown hobbits, the hole-dwellers“. This easy encounter with a
dictionary removes the difficulty of reconciling the medieval word „hob“
meaning „devil“ with the charming and stout-hearted hobbits; a difficulty which
only arises from hasty etymological assumptions.
Other Warwickshire locations cause other difficulties. Near the village of Long Compton, long barrows, ancient burial mounds, can still be seen, and together with the Rollright stones have been taken by Tom Shippey and others as inspiration for Tolkien´s description of standing stones and barrows in The Fellowship of the Ring. But in these instances, no matter how persuasive any location may be, we have to allow that Warwickshire is not the only place in England where long barrows and standing stones can be found. They are part of the British landscape from Shetland to Cornwall. Furthermore, leaving the sources unspecific allows Tolkien´s mythology for England to be just that, inclusive rather than exclusive. Moreover, we know from Tolkien´s letters that he specifically visited the long barrow south of Oxford known as Wayland´s Smithy.
Leaving geographical influences unspecific allows readers in every
region of the world the freedom to participate in Tolkien´s vision of
Middle-earth. But in the case of Warwick, we should not losing sight of the
importance he attached to this particular place because we can trace the town´s influence on Tolkien´s creative vision. The
geography inspired his very early creation of the elvish city of the trees –
Kortirion, the city of the elves on Tol Eressea, the Lonely Isle. This city
went on to become Tirion in The
Silmarillion. Tolkien himself said that the history of Tol Eressea was the
history of England, and Warwick was a „disfigured Kortirion“, using „disfigured“
in the sense particular to his mythology, to suggest that because it was no
longer the dwelling place of elves its ancient mythical beauty had waned, a
sense captured in all the versions of the Kortirion poem. Nevertheless,
Warwick´s remaining beauty was such that he dedicated his poem to the town and returned to its
images again and again in his writing throughout his life.
Extracts from Christopher Tolkien, ed., The Book of Lost Tales 1
Tolkien gave one early copy an Anglo-Saxon or Old
English title: Cor Tirion þaera
beama on middes and it is „dedicated to Warwick“.
O fading town upon a little hill,
Old memory is waning in thine ancient gates,
The robe gone gray, thine old heart almost still;
The castle only, frowning, ever waits
And ponders how among the towering elms
The Gliding Water leaves these inland realms
And slips between long meadows to the western sea –
Still bearing downward over murmurous falls
One year and then another to the sea;
And slowly thither have a many gone
Since first the fairies built Kortirion.
O spiry town upon a windy hill
With sudden-winding alleys shady-walled
(Where even now the peacocks pace a stately drill,
Majestic, sapphirine, and emerald),
Behold thy girdle of a wide champain
Sunlit, and watered with a silver rain,
And richly wooded with a thousand whispering trees
That cast long shadows in many a bygone noon,
And murmures many centuries in the breeze,
Thou art the city of the Land of Elms,
Alalminórë in the Faery Realms
O fading town upon an inland hill,
Old shadows linger in thine ancient gate,
Thv robe is grey, thine old heart now is still;
Thy towers silent in the mist await
Their crumbling end, while through the storeyed elms
The Gliding Water leaves these inland realms,
And slips between long meadows to the Sea,
Still bearing downward over murmurous falls
One day and then another to the
Sea;
And slowly thither many years have gone,
Since first the Elves here built Kortirion.
O climbing town upon thy windy hill
With winding streets, and alleys shady-walled
Where now untamed the peacocks pace in drill
Majestic, sapphirine, and emerald;
Amid the girdle of this sleeping land,
Where silver falls the rain and gleaming stand
The whispering host of old deep-rooted trees
That cast long shadows in many a bygone noon,
And murmured many centuries in the breeze;
Thou art the city of the Land of
Elms,
Alalminórë in the
Faery Realms.
of which Christopher writes that it was „composed (as I believe) nearly half a century after the first.“
O ancient city on a leagured hill!
Old shadows linger in your broken gate,
Your stones are grey, your old halls now are still,
Your towers silent in the mist await
Their crumbling end, while through the storeyed elms
The River Gliding leaves these inland realms
And slips between long meadows to the Sea,
Still bearing down their weir and murmuring fall
One day and then another to the Sea;
And slowly thither many days have gone
Since first the Edain† built Kortirion. †Edain = mortal men.
….
Alalminórë!
Green heart of this Isle
Where linger yet the
Faithful Companies!
Still undespairing here they
slowly file
Down lonely paths with
solemn harmonies:
The Fair, the first born in
an elder day,
Immortal Elves.