A Tolkien Mathomium: A Collection of Articles about J.R.R. Tolkien and His Legendarium (review)

This pleasantly eccentric volume is a collection of twenty-six mostly linguistics-oriented essays and notes by Mark T. Hooker, a retired professor of translation studies at the University of Indiana (Bloomington). Some of the entries are reprints from Beyond Bree, Translation Journal, and other Tolkienian and generalist venues; others are previously unpublished. Hooker's professional activity has mostly involved the Slavic languages, but he has also studied Welsh, and speaks modern Dutch. Because this breadth of expertise is somewhat unusual for Tolkienian linguists, most of whom come from the Old English/Old Norse quadrant, Hooker has a wide variety of things to say that have not been heard before. (If he also knew Finnish, he would be too good to be true; but alas, he is as imperfect as most of us.)

Comments below will apply to those articles which particularly caught my attention; others readers' mileage will certainly vary.

"What is a Mathom?", which opens the volume, explores the range of meaning between Old English mathum (treasure, gift) and Hobbitish mathom (antique object of obscure utility), visiting Beowulfian and Rohirric royal gift-givings along the way. This is an example of well-applied cultural linguistics, because it illustrates, with examples, the links between world-view and lexical meaning—showing that when one changes, so must the other.

"Esgaroth" argues for a double origin of the secondary name for Lake-town. Besides "Reedlake," as attested in the "Etymologies" (published in Lost Road), Hooker suggests a Celtic-derived "water-enclosure." (Since we already have an Old English-Sindarin pun [Orthanc] in the canon, why not a Celtic-Ilkorin one?) In another entry later on, he uses the "Etymologies" creatively to defend a parsing of "Estel" (unfortunately misspelled "Estell" elsewhere in the book) as literally "first star," taking on the meaning of "hope" by connotation.

"The Linguistic Landscape of Bree" and "The Linguistic Landscape of Tolkien's Shire" trace connections (Celtic and Germanic respectively, for the most part) between Tolkienian and current European place-names, mostly in the U.K. Sometimes an incomplete acquaintance with Scandinavian languages handicaps Hooker here, as when on pages 23, 59 and 60 he misconstrues the lexical ranges, and the multiple derivations, of –holm and –ey in English names. (Tolkien, who wrote of the "monks of Ely isle," would certainly have known that Ely was derived from "eel island," not "eel district.")

Hooker devotes an entire chapter to the Shire place-name "Stock," which he connects to English place-names, and eventually (via Ælfric) to sacred trees (and St. Boniface and Owen Glendower), concluding that "Stocc would, therefore, appear to be the OE name applied in pre-Christian times to a religious site" (77-8). I find this too great a weight for such a little syllable to support. Granted that Ælfric's "stocks and stones" were in fact sacred sites, it is also worth remembering that in more recent centuries "over stock and stone" (meaning the equivalent of something like: over hill and dale) is a folkloristic and literary commonplace found in the tales of the Grimms ("über Stock und Stein") and in Asbjørnsen and Moe's collection as well ("over stokk og stein"), and that Tolkien would have known it from both these sources. (Google also reveals the same couplet in nineteenth-century Swedish and Flemish poetry—in Gustav Schönberg's "Barndomsminnen" and Jan van Droogenbroeck's "De Brand," where it appears as "stock och sten" and "stok en steen," respectively.)

"And why is it called the Carrock?" connects Beorn's rock, amusingly if not conclusively, to Welsh carreg and Castell Carreg Cennen with its associated legend of sleeping warriors, which Hooker then links to the dead men of Dunharrow. But it can be pointed out that sleeping underground warrior-bands and their leaders are dotted all over the legendary European landscape...