CHAPTER 9

WORDS MADE FLESH

In a letter written in 1958, Tolkien discussed the significance of his “taste in languages,” which was “obviously a large ingredient in The Lord of the Rings.”1 In the same letter, he quoted with evident approval a correspondent who had seen a connection between lembas, the Elvish waybread, and viaticum, which is the term used in the Catholic Church for the Eucharistic host administered to the dying. This connection is accentuated by the linguistic link between the two words. Viaticum essentially means waybread, from the Latin via, meaning “way,” and from the fact that the thing being given “for the way” is bread. It is sacramental bread to nourish the soul on its journey from this life to everlasting life.

Lembas is synonymous linguistically with viaticum because in Sindarin, one of Tolkien’s invented Elvish languages, it literally means “way-bread” or “journey-bread.” In Quenya, another of Tolkien’s Elvish languages, lembas means “life-bread” or “bread of life.” Linguistically, therefore, lembas is identified as being both viaticum (way-bread) and the Eucharistic host (bread of life), which is why Tolkien agreed with a correspondent who had seen it as “a derivation from the Eucharist.”2

The implicitly religious aspect of lembas was accentuated in another letter in which Tolkien objected to the waybread being described as a “food concentrate,” which he condemned as exemplifying a tendency toward “scientification” that was “alien” to his story. “No analysis in any laboratory would discover chemical properties of lembas that made it superior to other cakes of wheat-meal,” he wrote. Its power was, therefore, not physical, in a manner that could be measured by science, but spiritual. Its “significance,” Tolkien insisted, was “of what one might hesitatingly call a ‘religious’ kind.”3 Illustrating the point, he stated that the religious element becomes particularly apparent in the chapter of The Lord of the Rings entitled “Mount Doom,” referring presumably to this passage: “The lembas had a virtue without which they would long ago have lain down to die. It did not satisfy desire, and at times Sam’s mind was filled with the memories of food, and the longing for simple bread and meats. And yet this waybread of the Elves had a potency that increased as travelers relied on it alone and did not mingle it with other foods. It fed the will, and it gave strength to endure, and to master sinew and limb beyond the measure of mortal kind.”4

A Catholic reading about this “magical” or miraculous power of the Elvish waybread might well be reminded of those saints who had apparently lived on nothing but the Eucharist for long periods. Indeed, Blessed Alexandrina da Costa seemingly lived on the Eucharist alone for many years prior to her death on October 13, 1955, a week before the final part of The Lord of the Rings was published. This medically impossible phenomenon, which was unfolding throughout the whole period of Tolkien’s writing of The Lord of the Rings, was monitored by skeptical scientists who attested to its inexplicable nature. Dr. Gomez de Araujo of the Royal Academy of Medicine in Madrid, a specialist in nervous diseases and arthritis, confirmed in the official medical report of the phenomenon that it was “scientifically inexplicable. . . . It is absolutely certain that during forty days of being bedridden in hospital, the sick woman did not eat or drink and we believe such phenomenon could have happened during the past months, perhaps the past thirteen months leaving us perplexed.” In addition to the formal medical report, there was a certificate signed by two other distinguished scientists that independently confirmed the report’s conclusion:

We the undersigned, Dr. C. A. di Lima, Professor of the Faculty of Medicine of Oporto and Dr. E. A. D. de Azevedo, doctor graduate of the same Faculty, testify that, having examined Alexandrina Maria da Costa, aged 39, . . . have confirmed her paralysis. . . . And we also testify that the bedridden woman, from 10 June to 20 July 1943 remained in the sector for infantile paralysis at the Hospital of Foce del Duro, under the direction of Dr. Araujo and under the day and night surveillance by impartial persons desirous of discovering the truth of her fast. Her abstinence from solids and liquids was absolute during all that time. We testify also that she retained her weight, and her temperature, breathing, blood pressure, pulse and blood were normal while her mental faculties were constant and lucid. . . .

The examination of the blood, made three weeks after her arrival in the hospital, is attached to this certificate and from it one sees how, considering the aforesaid abstinence from solids and liquids, science naturally has no explanation. The laws of physiology and biochemistry cannot account for the survival of this sick woman for forty days of absolute fast in the hospital, more so in that she replied daily to many interrogations and sustained very many conversations, showing an excellent disposition and a perfect lucidity of spirit. As for the phenomena observed every Friday at about 3 p.m. [i.e. her ecstasies], we believe they belong to the mystical order. . . . For the sake of the truth, we have prepared this certificate which we sign. Oporto, 26 July 1943.5

News of this apparent miracle spread far and wide, especially in the Catholic world, and one wonders whether Tolkien was aware of it as he was writing of the miraculous powers of lembas. Yet even if he had not heard of the miraculous news from Portugal, he would have been aware of well-known Catholic saints, such as St. Catherine of Siena and St. Catherine of Genoa, who were reputed to have lived for long periods on nothing but the Eucharist. In any event, and practical examples notwithstanding, the powers attributed to lembas in the previously quoted passage accord exactly with those ascribed to the Blessed Sacrament in Eucharistic theology. We are told that lembas possesses “a virtue” that is life sustaining in a supernatural sense, without which Frodo and Sam “would long ago have lain down to die.” It has “a potency that increased as travelers relied on it alone and did not mingle it with other foods.” It feeds the will and gives strength to endure, providing mastery over the body “beyond the measure of mortal kind”—that is, above what is humanly possible. The very notion of a food feeding the will, as distinct from simply the body, places it beyond mere physical nourishment and elevates it to the metaphysical level. Virtue requires grace to nourish the will, enabling the will to overcome its weakness. Lembas, like the Eucharist, provides this grace. It is little wonder that Tolkien, albeit “hesitatingly,” insisted that the significance of lembas was “religious.”

In the light of Tolkien’s admission or confession that lembas is connected to the Eucharist, it is intriguing to conjecture whether he succumbed to a punning reference to the Eucharistic connection when the Fellowship are first introduced to the Elvish waybread in Lothlórien. After Gimli mistakes lembas for cram, the waybread made by the men of Dale, he is told by the elves that lembas “is more strengthening than any food made by Men, and it is more pleasant than cram, by all accounts.”

“Indeed it is,” Gimli replies, comparing it favorably to the honey cakes of the Beornings, which, he adds, is “great praise, for the Beornings are the best bakers that I know of.” Highly pleased, the dwarf is fulsome in his expression of gratitude, exclaiming that the elves “are kindly hosts.”6 Is it possible that the use of “hosts” in the context of the goodness of lembas is a deliberate pun on Tolkien’s part, or, perhaps, is it the case of his unconscious or subconscious mind inserting itself surreptitiously? After all, as Tolkien himself proclaimed, “far greater things may color the mind in dealing with the lesser things of a fairy-story.”7 Reminding ourselves of Tolkien’s other confession that The Lord of the Rings is “a fundamentally religious and Catholic work; unconsciously so at first, but consciously in the revision,” might we see this as being either a conscious revision made by the author to ensure its fundamentally religious and Catholic character or, alternatively, an unconscious pun, stealing itself into the text unnoticed as the muse moved mystically through the author’s mind?

If the former, it constitutes a rather amusing joke on the author’s part, a deliberate and whimsical clue embedded within the story; if the latter, the clue was left by apparent accident enabling us to say, paraphrasing Gandalf, that there was something else at work, beyond any design of the storyteller. It can be put no plainer than by saying that the reader is meant to find the pun, and not by its maker. And that is indeed an encouraging thought.