In looking for sources for and influences on the imagination of J. R. R. Tolkien, one must eventually come to the mythologies of the two great races from whom the British people are largely descended: the Celts and the Anglo-Saxons. As a professor of Anglo-Saxon, Tolkien had a great love for the heroic storytelling traditions of this bold warrior race with their wonderful epics, chronicles and adventure tales.
In The Lord of the Rings we have Sauron the Evil Eye, the lord and master of the Orcs, Trolls, Balrogs and most other monstrous beings. In Celtic myth, we have Balor the Evil Eye, the king of the monstrous race of deformed giants called the Formors, who were the chief rivals of the Tuatha Dé Danann (who are looked at more closely later in this chapter).
The hideous Balor had two eyes: one was normal, but the other was huge and swollen. He kept the huge eye shut because it had been filled with such horrific, sorcerous powers that it virtually incinerated whoever and whatever it looked upon. In war, Balor took his place in the Formor front line, facing his enemies while a henchman used a hook to lift his eyelid and his comrades looked away. In Balor’s case, looks could kill, and any who were within the blaze of his fiery eye were instantly destroyed.
Many fell to King Balor’s Eye until the coming of the champion of the Tuatha Dé Danann, the golden-haired warrior Lugh of the Long Arm – Balor’s very own grandson. Seeing the blaze of light just as Balor’s eyelid was being lifted by the hook, the god shot a stone with his rod-sling straight into the fiery Eye. He hurled the stone with such force that the Evil Eye was driven right through the back of Balor’s skull and into the ranks. There, the blazing Eye incinerated half of Balor’s monstrous army and the Formors were driven from the field.
When we learn that the most important source of Welsh Celtic lore was preserved in the 14th-century Red Book of Hergest, we realize that Tolkien is making a small scholarly joke in naming his “source” of Elf-lore the Red Book of Westmarch.
The Red Book of Hergest is a manuscript which includes that most important compendium of Welsh legends, The Mabinogion. The collection contains many stories of magic rings. The damsel Luned, the Lady of the Fountain, gives a ring of invisibility to the hero Owain. Dame Lyonesse gives her hero, Gareth, a magical ring that will not allow him to be wounded. And Peredur Long Spear goes on a quest for a gold ring, during which he slays the Black Serpent of the Barrows, and wins a stone of invisibility and a gold-making stone.
Tolkien’s Elves are largely based on the traditions and conventions of the Celtic myths and legends of Ireland and Wales. However, it is important to understand that, before Tolkien, the “elf” was a vaguely defined concept associated most often with pixies, flower-fairies, gnomes, dwarfs and goblins of a diminutive and inconsequential nature.
The Laiquendi, also known as the Green-elves
Tolkien’s Elves are not a race of pixies. They are a powerful, full-blooded people who closely resemble the pre-human Irish race of immortals called the Tuatha Dé Danann. Like the Tuatha Dé Danann, Tolkien’s Elves are taller and stronger than mortals, are incapable of suffering sickness, are possessed of more than human beauty, and are filled with greater wisdom in all things. They possess talismans, jewels and weapons that humans might consider magical. They ride supernatural horses and understand the languages of animals. They love song, poetry and music – all of which they compose and perform perfectly.
The Tuatha Dé Danann gradually withdrew from Ireland as mortal men migrated there from the east. With his ever-present theme of the dwindling of Elvish power on Middle-earth, Tolkien was following the tradition of Celtic myth. The Elves’ westward sailings to timeless immortal realms across the sea, while the human race remained behind and usurped a mortal, diminished world trapped in time, recall the diminishing of the Tuatha Dé Danann.
The remnant of this once mighty race was the Aes Sídhe or the Sídhe (pronounced “Shee”). The name means the “people of the hills”, for it was believed that these people withdrew from the mortal realm and hid themselves inside the “hollow hills” or within ancient mounds once sacred to them. In Tolkien, as in Celtic legends, we have remnant populations of these immortals in all manner of hiding places: enchanted woods (like Lothlórien), hidden valleys (like Rivendell), in caves (like Menegroth), in river gorges (like Nargothrond) and on distant islands (like Tol Eressëa). Tolkien’s Elves, like the Sídhe, seldom intrude on the world of men. They are far more concerned with their own affairs and histories.
Elven time is very different from mortal time: when Tolkien’s mortal adventurers pass through an Elven realm they experience a jolt in time, not unlike that of mortals held within their realms by the Sídhe – in extreme cases, sometimes mistaking hours for years, or years for hours. This may be due to the rules of immortality by which both the Elves and the Sídhe are governed.
Both the Elves and the Sídhe are immortal in the same sense that their lifespan is unlimited, but they can be killed. Tolkien follows the Celtic tradition which suggests that immortals cannot survive in a mortal world; that they can remain only at the cost of their powers diminishing. Ultimately, there is a choice between remaining in the mortal world and leaving it forever for another immortal and timeless world beyond the reach of human understanding.
Although Tolkien used elements of Celtic myth in his creation of his Elvish race, his original contribution to these creatures of his imagination is immense and remarkable. Tolkien took the sketchy myths and legends of the Sídhe and the Tuatha Dé Danann and created a vast civilization, history and genealogy for his Elves. He gave them languages and a vast cultural inheritance that was rooted in real history, but flourished in his imagination.
The degree to which Tolkien’s Elves were inspired by Celtic models is most obviously demonstrated by looking at his invented Elvish language, Sindarin. Tolkien himself noted that his invented language and Elvish names of persons and places were “mainly deliberately modelled on those of Welsh (closely similar but not identical).” Structurally and phonetically, there are strong links between the two languages.
A few words are identical: mal means “gold” in both the Welsh and Sindar tongues. Others are close: du means “black” in Welsh and “shadow” in Sindarin; calan means “first day” in Welsh and “daylight” in Sindarin; ost means “host” in Welsh and “town” in Sindarin; sarn in Welsh means a “stone causeway” and in Sindarin means a “stone” in a ford. There are many others close in spelling and/or meaning: “fortress” is cacr in Welsh and caras in Sindarin; drud in Welsh means “fierce” while dru in Sindarin means “wild”; dagr in Welsh means “dagger” while dagor in Sindarin means “battle”. Others are the same words with different meanings: adan is “birds” in Welsh and “man” in Sindarin; nen is “heaven” in Welsh and “water” in Sindarin; nar is “lord” in Welsh and “sun” in Sindarin. Some others are strangely connected: iar in Sindarin means “old”, while the Welsh iar means “hen”; however, the Welsh word hen actually means “old”. Coincidentally, a few of Tolkien’s characters take their names directly from Welsh words: Morwen means “maid”, Bard means “poet” and Barahir means “longbeard”.
Although the Celts were the older civilization in Britain, it was the Anglo-Saxons who were the dominant race from whom the British inherited most of their language, and consequently most of their culture. Tolkien being a professor of Anglo-Saxon, we can see how his expertise in this area influenced his imagination in relation to aspects of his human cultures, as much as that of the Celts influenced his Elves.