Newsgroups: rec.arts.books.tolkien Subject: Rhymes and Records (was Re: One Ring to Rule them All?) References: X-Newsreader: trn 4.0-test70 (17 January 1999) From: sbjensen@midway.uchicago.edu (Steuard Jensen) Lines: 55 Message-ID: NNTP-Posting-Host: 128.135.12.7 X-Trace: news.uchicago.edu 1010675053 128.135.12.7 (Thu, 10 Jan 2002 09:04:13 CST) NNTP-Posting-Date: Thu, 10 Jan 2002 09:04:13 CST Organization: The University of Chicago X-SessionID: N3i%7-12120-y4-2579@news.uchicago.edu X-Hash-Info: post-filter,v:1.4 X-Hash: 665e8327 e776b048 64da1ced 294c7800 194a46ae Date: Thu, 10 Jan 2002 15:04:13 GMT Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news.mailgate.org!news-spur1.maxwell.syr.edu!news.maxwell.syr.edu!newsswitch.lcs.mit.edu!news.uchicago.edu!not-for-mail Xref: chonsp.franklin.ch rec.arts.books.tolkien:71407 Quoth "Jonathan White" in article : > What is the origin (story internal, I mean) of the verse > "Three Rings for the Elven Lords under the sky ... > In the Land of Mordor, where the shadows lie." This leads to a broader question that I've wondered about for some time (it may have been discussed here before, but I'm not sure): why did the Elves and Men of Middle-earth apparently rely so much on "rhymes of lore" to preserve important knowledge? We have many examples of such rhymes: the Ring verse that you've mentioned, the "Seven stars, seven stones, and one white tree" verse that Gandalf recites to Pippin, the Athelas poem ("death to the dying, in the King's hand lying"), and probably a fair number of others. As I understand it (which admittedly isn't that well), such rhymes have tended to arise historically as a means of record keeping in cultures with a strong oral tradition: putting information into poetic form can serve as a memory aid, which is particularly important in the absence of written records. The thing is, both Elves and Men in Middle-earth had a fully developed writing system: they didn't _need_ tricks like rhymes for the Wise to have access to all the important lore of their people. I could easily be wrong, but my impression is that in real history, oral tradition and written tradition have almost never coexisted for long periods of time in a single culture. So why did the Elves and the Dunedain apparently maintain both? I'm very interested in peoples' ideas on this. I actually have one theory of my own: I wonder if the Elves found, over the centuries, that they had _too much_ information available (in written form) for them to be able to find important details when they were needed, or even to remember what was there. They may have gone back to "rhymes of lore" almost as an indexing system. For example, when Elrond was considering the dangers and difficulties facing Aragorn as the war in the south intensified, he may have been reminded of "the words of the seer" because it was poetic and thus easy to remember. If he'd had to rely on searching through written records without that mnemonic device, he might never have thought to look at that period in history. Also, when he sent his reminder to Aragorn, Aragorn knew what he was referring to, without needing to have his own historical records to look it up. I wonder if Tolkien had a desire for our society to return (in this partial way) to an oral tradition. We are, after all, beginning to face the very problem that I've suggested may have driven the Elves to do so: there is so much information out there, it's impossible for people to even be aware of it all, much less know it. Maybe if we developed a few of our own rhymes of lore, we could all have a slightly better idea of where to start looking for knowledge that we need. Or maybe not. :) Steuard Jensen ###### From: ebroadwe@dept.english.upenn.edu (Liz Broadwell) Newsgroups: rec.arts.books.tolkien Subject: Re: Rhymes and Records (was Re: One Ring to Rule them All?) Date: 10 Jan 2002 16:02:23 GMT Organization: University of Pennsylvania Lines: 60 Message-ID: References: NNTP-Posting-Host: dept.english.upenn.edu X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.2 PL2-upenn1.3] Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news.mailgate.org!news-spur1.maxwell.syr.edu!news.maxwell.syr.edu!elk.ncren.net!nntp.upenn.edu!dept.english.upenn.edu!ebroadwe Xref: chonsp.franklin.ch rec.arts.books.tolkien:71421 Steuard Jensen (sbjensen@midway.uchicago.edu) wrote: : The thing is, both Elves and Men in Middle-earth had a fully developed : writing system: they didn't _need_ tricks like rhymes for the Wise to : have access to all the important lore of their people. I could easily : be wrong, but my impression is that in real history, oral tradition : and written tradition have almost never coexisted for long periods of : time in a single culture. So why did the Elves and the Dunedain : apparently maintain both? I'm very interested in peoples' ideas on : this. I just want to add a couple of ideas. Oral traditions do tend to hang on where part of the population is illiterate or semi-literate, even when a literate elite exists. Medievalists work on this -- some people that come to mind are M.T. Clanchy (_From Memory to Written Record_) and Richard Firth Green (_A Crisis of Truth_). It wouldn't surprise me if the Dunedain -- slipping from the high culture of Numenor toward something more like the Rohirrim (who are an oral culture, according to Aragorn in TTT: "writing no books but singing many songs") and faced with an ever increasing need to pour resources into sheer survival rather than extras like educating loremasters (everybody thinks Faramir is a little odd for being a warrior and semi-educated) -- have an elite/nonelite split along literacy lines and some kind of semi-functional oral tradition picking up the slack -- not for the Wise, necessarily, but for the world at large, and the Wise (as Steuard points out), might use them for indexing, or just pick them up as handy mnemonics. Written records, before printing, are also time-consuming to produce, reproduce and (even now) to preserve. I think it's in UT we hear that very few written records survived the Downfall, and by LOTR linguistic shifts have left a lot of the Dunedain's written history over the course of their tenure in Middle-earth inaccessible to the ordinary man. Stories and rhymes can't replace that (and don't appear to do so -- Gandalf finds information in the library at Minas Tirith that is completely lost from the stories-handed-down that Boromir and Faramir are aware of), but you can keep an oral tradition linguistically current, while written records decay and become incomprehensible. So you have old wives keeping in memory some matters it was once necessary for the wise to know . Elves are probably a different kettle of fish -- maybe if you live forever, with a clear memory of everything that happened to you, you're more inclined to maintain an oral tradition of some sort alongside your books of lore. You can go straight to eyewitnesses of events the literate cultures of mortals rely on documentation to record, and the illiterate ones on stories and rituals to recall. Peace, Liz -- Elizabeth Broadwell | "The true servants of the Merciful are (ebroadwe@dept.english.upenn.edu) | those who walk humbly on the earth and Department of English | say, 'Peace!' to the ignorant who at the University of Pennsylvania | accost them." -- Qu'ran (tr. Dawood) ###### From: "Troels Forchhammer" Newsgroups: rec.arts.books.tolkien References: Subject: Re: Rhymes and Records (was Re: One Ring to Rule them All?) Lines: 74 X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Newsreader: Microsoft Outlook Express 6.00.2600.0000 X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V6.00.2600.0000 NNTP-Posting-Host: 212.130.21.178 X-Original-NNTP-Posting-Host: 212.130.21.178 Message-ID: <3c3db916$1@news.wineasy.se> Date: 10 Jan 2002 16:53:58 CET X-Trace: wineasy!news.wineasy.se 1010678038 212.130.21.178 (10 Jan 2002 16:53:58 CET) X-Complaints-To: abuse@wineasy.se Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news.mailgate.org!newsfeed.wirehub.nl!news.tele.dk!small.news.tele.dk!213.131.157.171!newsfeed1.wineasy.se!wineasy!news.wineasy.se Xref: chonsp.franklin.ch rec.arts.books.tolkien:71357 "Steuard Jensen" wrote in message news:N3i%7.51$y4.2525@news.uchicago.edu... > The thing is, both Elves and Men in Middle-earth had a fully developed > writing system: they didn't _need_ tricks like rhymes for the Wise to > have access to all the important lore of their people. I could easily > be wrong, but my impression is that in real history, oral tradition > and written tradition have almost never coexisted for long periods of > time in a single culture. So why did the Elves and the Dunedain > apparently maintain both? I'm very interested in peoples' ideas on > this. Oral tradition and written lore _has_ actually coexisted for long periods in real history. The drive towards general literacy in Denmark didn't start until the first half of the 19th century, and it would last until the midpoint of the twentieth before general literacy had reached a point where everyone had more than 7 years in school. Literacy was initially the province of the very learned, slowly growing to the powerful and later the rich. All this while the lore of the common population was kept as an oral tradition - tales, verses, songs etc. This oral tradition included much botany, history, some weather lore etc. A lot of this oral tradtion was also written down - see e.g. the Grimm brothers. > I actually have one theory of my own: I wonder if the Elves found, > over the centuries, that they had _too much_ information available (in > written form) for them to be able to find important details when they > were needed, or even to remember what was there. They may have gone > back to "rhymes of lore" almost as an indexing system. I think you are right that the oral tradition is easier accessible than the written tradition, and in ME the wise may very well have had a vast store of oral tradition to draw upon. Also we may assume that most of the records of the North Kingdom were lost when that kingdom fell - reverting the history to an oral tradition. We further know that the records kept in Minas Tirith weren't for everyone to see - and we don't know how much was lost in Minas Morgul and Osgiliath. There may have been a conscious effort among the dunedain of the north to build an oral tradition - possibly with help from Rivendell - as they couldn't really keep records when living as nomadic rangers. Concerning the elves, it seems to me, that they had always been putting their lore into an oral form - songs etc. This, I guess, is due more to the nature / culture of the elves than a conscious choice. > I wonder if Tolkien had a desire for our society to return (in this > partial way) to an oral tradition. I am sure he would. I know that in Denmark the oral tradition survived with astonishing vigour in the rural districts (which were also the last to gain general literacy), and Tolkien's love for the rural life of his youth is well known. > We are, after all, beginning to > face the very problem that I've suggested may have driven the Elves to > do so: there is so much information out there, it's impossible for > people to even be aware of it all, much less know it. Maybe if we > developed a few of our own rhymes of lore, we could all have a > slightly better idea of where to start looking for knowledge that we > need. Or maybe not. :) Putting the information available on the internet into an oral form is a challenge I wouldn't accept ;-) Maybe a few light verses on how to enter a sensible search on a search engine could be called for - ideas anyone ;-)) -- Troels Forchhammer Please reply to (t.forch@mail.dk) This isn't right. This isn't even wrong. Wolfgang Pauli, on a paper submitted by a physicist colleague (Thus speaks the quantum physicist) ###### Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!not-for-mail From: Neil Franklin Newsgroups: rec.arts.books.tolkien Subject: Re: Rhymes and Records (was Re: One Ring to Rule them All?) Date: 10 Jan 2002 21:51:10 +0100 Organization: My own Private Self Lines: 24 Message-ID: <6uofk2gcap.fsf@chonsp.franklin.ch> References: NNTP-Posting-Host: chonsp.franklin.ch X-Trace: chonsp.franklin.ch 1010695870 408 10.0.3.2 (10 Jan 2002 20:51:10 GMT) X-Complaints-To: news@chonsp.franklin.ch NNTP-Posting-Date: 10 Jan 2002 20:51:10 GMT X-Newsreader: Gnus v5.7/Emacs 20.4 Xref: chonsp.franklin.ch rec.arts.books.tolkien:71527 ebroadwe@dept.english.upenn.edu (Liz Broadwell) writes: > Steuard Jensen (sbjensen@midway.uchicago.edu) wrote: > > : time in a single culture. So why did the Elves and the Dunedain > : apparently maintain both?> > > Elves are probably a different kettle of fish -- maybe if you live > books of lore. You can go straight to eyewitnesses of events the > literate cultures of mortals rely on documentation to record, and the > illiterate ones on stories and rituals to recall. Not to forget, that the Eldar (the only elves we know much about anyway) suffered quite a loss of written text when Beleriand was destroyed. What survived was the stuff memorised. And for the Noldor we have the earlier losses when coming to ME. So after all that they may be loath to rely again soley on written records. -- Neil Franklin, neil@franklin.ch.remove http://neil.franklin.ch/ Hacker, Unix Guru, El Eng HTL/BSc, Sysadmin, Archer, Roleplayer - Intellectual Property is Intellectual Robbery