Mithril and Mirkwood: The Influence of William Morris on Tolkien's Fiction

This week we turned our attention to the following quote from one of Tolkien’s letters:

‘Personally I do not think that either war (and of course not the atomic bomb) had any influence upon either the plot or the manner of its unfolding. Perhaps in landscape. The Dead Marshes and the approaches to the Morannon owe something to Northern France after the battle of the Somme. They owe more to William Morris and his Huns and romans, as in The House of the Wolfings or The Roots of the Mountains.’ (Tolkien, Letter 226)

Having spent last week discussing how World War One might have influenced Tolkien’s fiction, it seemed only appropriate, given the assertions in the above quote, to discuss one of Tolkien’s other major influences: William Morris. The discussion involved some close reading of passages from The House of the Wolfings and The Wood Beyond the World. Our first port-of-call was the introductory poem from H of W:

Whiles in the early Winter eve

We pass amid the gathering night

Some homestead that we had to leave

Years past; and see its candles bright

Shine in the room beside the door

Where we were merry years agone

But now must never enter more,

As still the dark road drives us on.

E'en so the world of men may turn

At even of some hurried day

And see the ancient glimmer burn

Across the waste that hath no way;

Then with that faint light in its eyes

A while I bid it linger near

And nurse in wavering memories

The bitter-sweet of days that were.

The theme of the poem, we agreed, resonated with the themes of Tolkien’s fiction. The group picked out the ‘dark road’, the ‘waste that hath no way’, the ‘ancient glimmer’, the ‘wavering memories’ and the welcoming homestead with its lights burning as themes that occur in Tolkien's fiction. We compared Morris's poem with the songs ‘The Road Goes Ever On’ and ‘I Sit Beside the Fire and Think’. The following two verses from the latter seemed particularly apposite:

I sit beside the fire and think

Of people long ago

And people that will see a world

That I shall never know

But all the while I sit and think

Of times there were before

I listen for returning feet

And voices at the door.

Next, we turned our attention to Chapter 1 of H of W. The group picked out some key names, such as the ‘Mark-men’ and ‘Mirkwood’. Our main concern, however, was with Morris’s opening descriptions of dwellings and of a race of people. We thought about how Morris’s stories are primarily about races as opposed to individuals and how the opening of H of W testifies to this. We thought about Morris’s interest in the ‘many branches’ of the ancestry of the Mark-men and of Tolkien’s similar interest in the roots and branches of races and people. We considered to what extent The Lord of the Rings was a story about races as opposed to individuals. To do this, we compared the prologue to LotR with the opening of H of W and could see fundamental similarities in the way Tolkien begins his tale with the setting out the nature, geography and history of the Hobbits. Tolkien's story begins not with an individual but with a race of people, and it is some way into the story before the reader can ascertain who the chief protagonist will be. Even then, the story does not focus on Frodo all the way through, but divides up into various sub-narratives that depict the various races of Middle-Earth and their roles in the War of the Ring.

Having discussed both Tolkien’s and Morris’s interests in races, ancestry and geography, we moved on to think about a very different aspect of H of W. We looked at the chapter in which the Wood-Sun (an immortal daughter of the Gods) gives Thiodolf (the lord of the Wolfings) a mailcoat to protect him in battle. The following passage struck a particular chord with Tolkien’s work:

Then [the wood-sun] leaned down from the stone whereon they sat, and her hand was in the dewy grass for a little, and then it lifted up a dark grey rippling coat of rings; and she straightened herself in the seat again, and laid that hauberk on the knees of Thiodolf, and he put his hand to it, and turned it about, while he pondered long: then at last he said:   "What evil thing abideth with this warder of the strife,   This burg and treasure chamber for the hoarding of my life?   For this is the work of the dwarfs, and no kindly kin of the earth;   And all we fear the dwarf-kin and their anger and sorrow and mirth."

We compared the mailcoat with the mithril vest that is given to Frodo by Bilbo. We compared the colour and appearance of the coat and how it was made by the race of dwarves. We thought about the Sindarin word mithril and how its etymology mean grey-glitter (mith = grey, ril = glitter). We also thought about how Tolkien sometimes creates histories for ambiguous or provocative names or objects in Old English and Norse ('Earendil' being one example) and we considered how Tolkien may have wanted to provide a rich history for the mailcoat. Tolkien creates a whole backstory to the mailcoat, with Bilbo being given it by the dwarves in The Hobbit and then Bilbo bequeathing it to Frodo.

As well as the mailcoat, we also considered the relationship between Thiodolf and the Wood-Sun. We compared the mortality of Thiodolf and the immortality of the Wood-Sun to Aragorn and Arwen. We thought about the women in LotR and how they are left behind whilst the men go to war, comparing Eowyn’s plight with the plight of the Wolfing women:

‘Nor yet shall the Wolfing women hear words on the wind go by

As they weave and spin the night down when the House is gone to the war,

And weep for the swains they wedded and the children that they bore.’

(spoken by the Wood-Sun)

Lastly, we turned our attention to The Wood Beyond the World and the moment the protagonist, Golden Walter, encounters a strong dwarf after being shipwrecked and finding himself on a strange island. We discussed the dwarf as a source for Tolkien’s Gollum and saw clear similarities between Gollum’s speech and behaviour and the dwarf’s:

Said the dwarf, writhing his face grievously, and laughing forsooth: "I know it all: I asked thee to see what wise thou wouldst lie. I was sent forth to look for thee; and I have brought thee loathsome bread with me, such as ye aliens must needs eat: take it!"     Therewith he drew a loaf from a satchel which he bore, and thrust it towards Walter, who took it somewhat doubtfully for all his hunger.     The dwarf yelled at him: "Art thou dainty, alien? Wouldst thou have flesh? Well, give me thy bow and an arrow or two, since thou art lazy-sick, and I will get thee a coney or a hare, or a quail maybe. Ah, I forgot; thou art dainty, and wilt not eat flesh as I do, blood and all together, but must needs half burn it in the fire, or mar it with hot water; as they say my Lady does: or as the Wretch, the Thing does; I know that, for I have seen It eating."

We were very much reminded of Gollum’s relationship with Frodo and Sam and the moment in Ithilien when Gollum brings them two conies to eat. We also thought about how Gollum refers to Shelob enigmatically as ‘She’ and ‘Her’ and compared this to the enigmatic ‘Lady’ and ‘Thing’. The following passage also resonated with Gollum’s behaviour and speech:

     The creature let out another wordless roar as of furious anger; and then the words came: "It hath a face white and red, like to thine; and hands white as thine, yea, but whiter; and the like it is underneath its raiment, only whiter still: for I have seen It--yes, I have seen It; ah yes and yes and yes."     And therewith his words ran into gibber and yelling, and he rolled about and smote at the grass: but in a while he grew quiet again and sat still, and then fell to laughing horribly again…

The meeting between the dwarf and Walter, we agreed, shared an uncanny resemblance to the meeting between Frodo, Sam and Gollum. What’s more, like the dwarf, Gollum gibbers and smites the ground, displaying curious behaviour and speaking brokenly and with repetition.

Overall, the group were much more convinced by the similarities between the work of Morris and Tolkien than they were by the influences of WW1 on Tolkien’s fiction. But the uniqueness of Tolkien’s fiction, of course, is the combination of elements of the medieval with contemporary issues, such as industrialisation and modern warfare.