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| **THE WORD HOUND by Jan Haber |
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THE WORD HOUND -3/04 Huh? Shakespeare in Middle Earth? by Jan Haber "But stay, I smell a man of middle earth." Isn't Middle Earth an invention of J.R.R. Tolkien, of the famous Lord of the Rings trilogy? What was Shakespeare doing there almost 300 years before Prof. Tolkien published his first book? Now bolt upright, with all thoughts of sleep gone, I headed for the Internet to dig for answers. The answer I found was no; Prof. Tolkien (1892--1973) invented many things but Middle Earth was not among them. Though fairly obscure, Middle Earth appears in European literature before 1200. In poetic use it is the mortal realm, as distinct from the land of faerie. It probably originated in an Icelandic creation myth which says that, in order to keep hostile giants away, the gods built a ring of mountains, calling the inner part Middle-erd (middle enclosure). The erd was Old English for yard, not earth so some mistranslation is in the mix. The middle enclosure in question was our world, suspended midway between Heaven and Hell. The gods populated it with humans, which they made from trees. In the very center was Asgard, their stronghold. J.R.R. Tolkien (John Ronald Reuel, or Ronald to family and friends), taught Old English at Oxford University and was a specialist in Welsh, Finnish and antique Germanic languages, especially Gothic. He was steeped in ancient mythology, which he drew upon to give his creations the ring of authenticity. As an example, Hobbit--one of his inventions--has a pseudo-Old English etymology created from holbytla (hole-builder), put together from real Anglo-Saxon words, hol (hole) and bytla (builder, hammerer). Its authentic ring sent word buffs everywhere scurrying to their dictionaries. * Do you have a word or a question about a word for The Word Hound? Send it to us. E-mail is preferred: info@nyackvillager.com
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