Tolkien’s Sellic Spell: A Beowulfian Fairy Tale

Christopher Tolkien appends to his edition of J.R.R. Tolkien’s Beowulf: A Translation and Commentary a short prose piece by his father titled Sellic Spell. As both father and son note (358), the title of that piece derives from Beowulf, line 2109b: our hero has defeated Grendel and Grendel’s mother in Denmark and is now back in Sweden, retelling his adventures to King Hygelac. The Danish King Hrothgar (or an “aged Scylding” in any case)¹ had celebrated Beowulf’s victory over Grendel by playing the harp, and in Tolkien’s translation, “now a lay recited true and bitter; or again, greathearted king, some wondrous tale rehearsed in order due” (Beowulf T&C 74, lines 1770–72).² “Wondrous tale” renders syllic spell in the original (syllic is a variant spelling of sellic).³ Commenting on this passage, Tolkien remarks that syllic must refer to legendary or marvelous traditions, “all that lost matter (which we call fairy-tale) of which only traces remain from the North—such as Grendel, and occasional hints in the Elder Edda” (348). In fact, “fairy tale” would be an apt translation of “sellic spell” as Tolkien employs it, although “wondrous tale” is in some ways an even more apt term, since according to Tolkien the role of magic, elvish craft or in particular enchantment is a characterizing feature of the genre.⁴

Christopher Tolkien claims in his preface that Sellic Spell is “an imagined story of Beowulf in an early form” (Beowulf T&C xiii), a somewhat misleading characterization also reflected in the front flap’s assertion that it is “a story written by Tolkien suggesting what might have been the form and style of an Old English folktale of Beowulf.” Tolkien writes instead in his brief headnote, “It is only to a limited extent an attempt to reconstruct the Anglo-Saxon tale behind the folk-tale element in Beowulf ” (355). While Tolkien wrote as a jeu d’esprit an (unfinished) Old English version of Sellic Spell (404–14), he knew full well that fairy tales per se (as a subgenre of folk-tales)⁵ have not come down to us in Old English.⁶ As a distinct genre (rather than as putative traces in medieval genres) they only survive “as received” (355) in the versions recorded from oral narratives by primarily 19th-century collectors like the Brothers Grimm and known variously as magic tales (see above), fairy stories, and fairy tales; the latter two English terms are unfortunate since, as Tolkien expresses it, “fairy-stories are not in normal English usage stories about fairies” (OFS 32). As one can tell from the modernized character names (Beewolf, Handshoe) and other features discussed below, Sellic Spell is a pastiche of a fairy tale “as received” in the modern period, using the plot of the first half only of the Old English poem as a foundation. In this essay I demonstrate that Tolkien in Sellic Spell altered the Beowulfian plot in two ways: (a) in the direction of fairy tale (as he conceived of the genre and as inspired by Andrew Lang) and (b) in an attempt to “improve” the plot according to his and especially R. W. Chambers’s critical interpretations.

Sellic Spell as Fairy Story

Tolkien touches on the fairy-tale element in Beowulf (the basis for his retelling in Sellic Spell) in his second-most-famous essay, “On Fairy-stories.”⁷ Tolkien originally presented the essay in 1939 as the eleventh Andrew Lang lecture, named after one of Tolkien’s favorite collectors of fairy tales, to whom I will return.⁸ Another favorite was George Dasent, who had translated Asbjørnsen and Moe’s collection of Norwegian folk tales. Drawing on Dasent’s notion of the “soup” of legend, reworked as the “Cauldron of Story” (OFS 39, 44), Tolkien remarks that historical and legendary-historical elements are tossed into this pot. The Danish material of King Hrothgar and his court in the hall named Heorot thereby becomes “associated with many figures and events of fairy-story,” which includes “the turning of the bear...