Tolkien Fairy Tales |
The Fairy Tales of J.R.R. Tolkien | Roverandom, Smith of Wootton Major, Farmer Giles of Ham |
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| Xenite.Org News | The Fairy Tales of J.R.R. Tolkien: Roverandom, Smith of Wootton Major, Farmer Giles |
Tolkien Fairy Tales |
The Fairy Tales of J.R.R. Tolkien | Roverandom, Smith of Wootton Major, Farmer Giles of Ham |
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| Xenite.Org News | The Fairy Tales of J.R.R. Tolkien: Roverandom, Smith of Wootton Major, Farmer Giles |
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J.R.R. Tolkien, best known as the author of The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and The Silmarillion, also wrote fairy tales. A fairy tale is a story about a make-believe land, usually with magic, fairies, giants, or other fantastic creatures. There is often a moral to a fairy story, but the story is told and retold because it excites the imagination. Tolkien called them fairy-stories rather than fairy tales. "Story" perhaps sounds more complete than "tale". Or it may just be an idiomatic thing.
"The realm of fairy-story is wide and deep and high and filled with many things: all manner of beasts and birds are found there; shoreless seas and stars uncounted; beauty that is an enchantment, and ever-present peril; both joy and sorrow as sharp as swords."1Tolkien found it difficult to say exactly what a "fairy-story" is, though he gave many examples of what one is not. He provides a crude working definition in "On Fairy-Stories": "A 'fairy-story' is one which touches on or uses Faërie, whatever its own main purpose may be: satire, adventure, morality, fantasy. Faërie itself may perhaps most nearly be translated by Magic -- but it is magic of a peculiar mood and power, at the furthest pole from the vulgar devices of the laborious, scientific, magician. There is one proviso: if there is any satire present in the tale, one thing must not be made fun of, the magic itself. That must in the story be taken seriously, neither laughed at nor explained away."2It could be argued that The Hobbit is by this definition a fairy-story, since the magic is taken seriously and it certainly touches on Faërie. But The Hobbit was drawn into a larger story, one in which the magic is questioned and ultimately found to be a subcreative ability -- a natural skill or innate talent, similar to the ability of bats and dolphins to circumnavigate by sound, or to the ability of fireflies to illuminate themselves. We can emulate these abilities with technology but we cannot acquire them ourselves. Of Tolkien's remaining stories, Roverandom, Farmer Giles of Ham, and Smith of Wootton Major are clearly Fairy-stories. The Father Chrismas Letters are fairy-stories, too, but they fall into a unique category. I propose to discuss only the first three stories here.
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