1. This eastern European folk-tale is not to be confused with the quite different story on which Stravinsky based his ballet The Firebird (1910). Probably the best-known version, Prince Ivan, The Firebird and The Grey Wolf, is that told in Russia and first published by Alexander Afnasev (1826–1871), the Russian counterpart of the brothers Grimm. But I shall here be referring to the rather more complex Czech version, found in most collections of Czech folk tales, in which the ‘helpful animal’ is not a wolf but a fox.

2. It was probably no accident that Tolkien should unconsciously have arranged the geography of his imaginary world of Middle Earth in this way, conceived as it was in Britain around the time of the Second World War. If ‘the Shire’ to the western edge of the map was identified with England, it was threatened from the east and south-east by the vast, world-threatening shadow of the dark power of Sauron, centred in Mordor. This reflected the way in which, at the time, Hitler’s dark empire on the continent of Europe was casting a deadly shadow over Britain from the same general direction. Tolkien denied any conscious parallel between his story and contemporary political events (in his Foreword to the second edition of the book); but others, including his brother, have suggested otherwise.

3. There are clear echoes here, as elsewhere in The Lord of the Rings, of the thrillers of John Buchan. With his stories of heroes battling across wild landscapes threatened by shadowy enemies, Buchan was one of the few modern fiction writers Tolkien admired.

4. Wagner drew the inspiration for his ring from a genuine myth, the Norse Volsunga Saga. This tells how the ring cursed by the dwarf Andvari, after being stolen by Loki, leads first to his own son Fafnir turning into a monster; then to Fafnir’s death at the hand of the great hero Sigurd the Volsung (Wagner’s Siegfried), who goes on to free and marry Brynhild; and finally to Sigurd’s own death (we look at Wagner’s Ring-cycle in Chapter 24 and the Norse myths in Chapter 34). Much of Tolkien’s own story was, of course, inspired by his scholarly study of Norse sagas and Anglo-Saxon epics from the ‘Dark Ages’.

5. A later parallel to the symbolism of these rings can be seen in Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, the first of the books by J. K. Rowling which enjoyed such popularity at the end of the 1990s and at the beginning of the twenty-first century. In a story combining elements of Voyage and Return, Rags to Riches, Overcoming the Monster and Quest, the young orphan hero, persecuted by the suburban family who have adopted him after the death of his parents, suddenly finds himself transported into a mysterious ‘other world’ governed by magic and peopled by wizards, dragons, trolls and other fabulous creatures. Here it seems he is already famous because, when he was a baby, his parents, as two distinguished wizards, had been killed by this world’s chief figure of darkness, Voldemort, who had been magically destroyed in trying to kill Harry himself. We thus realise how, in classic Rags to Riches fashion, the boy hero has been singled out for some special destiny. Harry is initiated into the magical world and sent to Hogwarts, a school for young would-be wizards. Here he finds himself caught up in a cosmic battle between light and dark which eventually centres on a race to secure the ‘Philosopher’s Stone’, an object of immense magical power. The spirit of Voldemort needs this to become reincarnated, to carry on his evil work. But when, at the story’s climax, Harry finally wins the Stone, it disappears. He is then told by Professor Dumbledore, the ‘wise old man’ who is the school’s headmaster, that this is just as well because the powers of the Stone, like those of Tolkien’s and Wagner’s rings, can only really be used to serve dark and selfish ends. Like the rings, in short, it is a symbol not of the Self but of the ego. Harry had only been able to win it because he did not want it for himself but only in the name of a selfless, world-saving cause. Like Frodo’s ring on Mount Doom, it can then disappear back into the ‘One’ from which it had been separated.

6. The role played by Papageno in The Magic Flute helps to illumine the significance of that played by Caliban in The Tempest. Like Papageno, although he is much darker and less good-natured, Caliban stands for ‘natural man’: someone living more or less unconsciously and instinctively, understanding nothing. Papageno’s darker side is split off and represented by Monostatos. Caliban’s mother Sycorax ‘was a witch and one so strong that could control the moon, make flows and ebbs’. Like the Queen of the Night, she is ‘Mother Nature’. It is in this respect that Caliban is the opposite to Prospero, who lives on such a lofty plane of consciousness, understanding almost everything; although as master and servant the two are intimately connected, just as Monostatos is the shadow of his master, the Wise Old Man Sarastro. So long as Prospero himself is not yet completely whole, Caliban stands for the unregenerate remnant in Prospero’s kingdom – i.e., in Prospero himself (‘this thing of darkness I do acknowledge mine’). But at the moment when Prospero finally achieves wholeness, Caliban is brought to the light. The last vestige of natural, unconscious man has been purged by the arrival of complete understanding.