J.R.R. Tolkien and the Irish Question

With the exception of distant echoes found in the place names of Bree and its environs,¹ there are few words from the pre-Westron languages of Men used in Tolkien’s works, and only two times do we hear such words used in conversation by a native speaker. The second is gorgûn, which means Orc in the language of the Wild Men of the Drúadan Forest (RK, V, v, 106). The first is during the Battle of Helm’s Deep, when Gamling, Éomer, and Aragorn discuss the cries of the Dunlendings, who had been dispossessed by the Rohirrim:

“Yet there are many that cry in the Dunland tongue,” said Gamling. “I know that tongue. It is an ancient speech of men, and once was spoken in many Western valleys of the Mark. Hark! They hate us, and they are glad; for our doom seems certain to them. ‘The king, the king!’ they cry. ‘We will take their king. Death to the Forgoil! Death to the Strawheads! Death to the Robbers of the North!’ Such names they have for us. Not in half a thousand years have they forgot their grievance that the Lords of Gondor gave the Mark to Eorl the Young and made alliance with him. That old hatred Saruman has inflamed. They are fierce folk when roused. They will not give way now for dusk or dawn, until Théoden is taken, or they themselves are slain.”

(TT, III, vii, 142)

Most who have looked at this passage have associated Forgoil with Strawheads. Indeed, Tolkien encourages this approach in Appendix F, where he writes,

Of their language nothing appears in this book, save the name Forgoil which they gave to the Rohirrim (meaning Strawheads, it is said). Dunland and Dunlending are the names that the Rohirrim gave to them, because they were swarthy and dark-haired; there is thus no connexion between the word dunn in these names and the Grey-elven word Dûn “west.”

(RK, Appendix F, 408)

This note encapsulates the depth of the division between these two cultures. Each names the other in its own language instead of using their preexisting names for their language and themselves, attempting to impose an identity rather than try to bring an identity across the linguistic divide. Yet the construction of “Such names they have for us” and the parenthetical “it is said” hint that Tolkien is playing with his translation—that “Forgoil,” “Strawheads,” and “Robbers of the North” is a list of three names rather than two.

As such, we should be prepared to entertain the possibility that forgoil is a variation on the Irish forghabháil, which Niall Ó Dónaill’s Irish-English dictionary defines as a “hold, grip, grasp” or “forcible seizure, usurpation”—an indication that, as the Rohirrim are based on the Anglo-Saxons, the Dunlendings are based on the Irish. If this is the case, forgoil is a more appropriate word to borrow from Irish for use in Middle-earth to label Tolkien’s Anglo-Saxonesque Rohirrim than Sasanach (which, being derived from “Saxons,” would be inappropriate to Tolkien’s subcreated world). Variations of Sasanach are still used by contemporary Irish and Scots to refer to the English—despite the fact that the initial large-scale British invasions of Ireland were Anglo-Norman affairs rather than Anglo-Saxon ones. And yet this tension, between a conqueror from overseas and a native (or naturalized) group, can apply to both partnerships, whether it is the perceived Anglo-Saxon/Norman invasion of Ireland or the Rohan/Gondor usurpation of Dunland.

The use of Irish as an equivalent here also makes linguistic sense in Tolkien’s subcreation. That the language of the Dunlendings is as distant from Rohirric as Middle Irish is from Anglo-Saxon can be seen in Appendix F:

Wholly alien² was the speech of the Wild Men of Drúadan Forest. Alien, too, or only remotely akin, was the language of the Dunlendings. These were a remnant of the peoples that had dwelt in the vales of the White Mountains in ages past. The Dead...