The Story of Kullervo

Notes and Commentary

67 not originally written for this society. See Introduction to the Essays. Tolkien first delivered this talk to the Sundial Society of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, on 22 November 1914. He gave it again to the Essay Club of Exeter College in February of 1915.

the sudden collapse of the intended reader. I have been unable to find any further information on the identity of the reader or the nature of the collapse.

litterature. Tolkien uses this spelling throughout, chiefly in abbreviations, as ‘litt’.

68 the original which is vastly different to any translation. While at Exeter College, Tolkien checked out C.N.E. Eliot’s A Finnish Grammar from the library in order to try to read Kalevala in its original language. He was already, it would seem, working on the theory expressed in Manuscript A of ‘On Fairy-stories’ that ‘Mythology is language and language is mythology’ (Tolkien On Fairy-stories, p. 181).

Stead’s Books for the Bairns. A series of books for young people published by W.T. Stead, an English journalist, philanthropist and politician. Books for the Bairns repackaged classics, fairy tales, fables, nursery rhymes, Great Events in British History, and the Gospels, giving them all a moral and Christian perspective aimed at reforming the world. Books for the Bairns, First Series 1806–1920, were well-known to young people of Tolkien’s generation.

Indo-European languages. The Indo-European language theory, derived from nineteenth-century comparative philology and mythology, reconstructed by phonological correspondences and principles of sound-change a hypothetical pre-historic language called Proto-Indo-European from which the modern Indo-European language families have descended. Finnish, related to Hungarian and (distantly) to Turkish is not Indo-European but Finno-Ugric.

the above beloved pink covers. While there are no pink covers mentioned ‘above’, Tolkien’s later typewritten essay notes that Stead’s Books for the Bairns had pink covers.

Thorfinn in Vinland the good. Thorfinn Karlsefni was an eleventh-century Icelander who tried to establish a colony in ‘Vinland’, previously so named by Leif Eríksson and thought to be somewhere on the north-east coast of North America. His expedition is mentioned in two fourteenth-century Icelandic manuscripts, the Hauksbók (Book of Haukr), and the Flateyjarbók (Flat-island Book).

69 when I first read the Kalevala. According to both Humphrey Carpenter and John Garth, Tolkien first read Kirby’s translation some time in 1911, his last year at King Edward’s School. He went up to Oxford in the autumn of that year, and checked out Charles Eliot’s Finnish Grammar from the Exeter College Library.

the clumsiness of a translation. Not only did Tolkien dislike Kirby’s translation, his stated principle that ‘Mythology is language and language is mythology’ (see entry for ‘original translation’ above) would invalidate any translation of a work as faithfully representing the original.

H. Mods. Classical Honour Moderations, a first round of examinations at Oxford University, in which the student can get a First (highly desirable), a Second (good but not great), and a Third (a weak pass). Tolkien got a Second.

70 Troilus to need a Pandarus. Tolkien could be thinking of the story as told in Chaucer’s poem Troilus and Criseyde or in Shakespeare’s play Troilus and Cressida. In both works, Cressida’s uncle, Pandarus, acts as go-between for the lovers.

71 queer troglodyte story. The primary meaning of troglodyte is ‘cave-dweller’ (from Greek trogle, ‘hole’, with the extended sense ‘hermit’). Tolkien presumably meant a story which has been isolated from the rest of society. Also see the usage by Andrew Lang in the entry below for Andaman Isles.

72 Andaman Isles. The Andaman Isles, a territory of India, are situated in the Indian Ocean halfway between the Indian subcontinent and Southeast Asia. In Custom and Myth, Andrew Lang twice refers to Andaman Islanders, first querying: ‘If a tertiary troglodyte was like a modern Andaman Islander… would he stand and meditate in awe on the fact that a tree was taller than he…?’ (p. 233); and next suggesting that, ‘If the history of religion and of mythology is to be unravelled, we must examine what the unprogressive classes in Europe have in common with Australians and Bushmen and Andaman Islanders’ (p. 241). Worth noting is Tolkien’s much later suggestion in both the A and B drafts of ‘Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics’ (conjecturally dated by Michael Drout to c. 1933–35) that contemporary critics might substitute ‘Andaman-islanders… for Anglo-Saxons’ (Beowulf and the Critics, pp.33, 81).

Hausa Folktales. The Hausa are a Sahelian people occupying a territory ranging over Northeastern Nigeria and Southeastern Niger. In The British Folklorists: A History, Richard Dorson notes that ‘Within a five-year period, 1908–1913, four folklore and language collections were published on the Hausa’ (p. 368). Dorson cites Major Arthur John Newman Tremearne’s Hausa Folktales, published in 1914. An article entitled ‘Hausa Folktales’ by ‘F.W.H.M.’ was published in the journal African Affairs, Oxford University Press, 1914; XIII 457. Appearing at the time when Tolkien was writing, these sources would have been available to him. The skeptical view of comparative mythology here expressed foreshadows Tolkien’s later and equally dismissive opinion of the comparative approach in his essay ‘On Fairy-stories’.

the Mabinogion. The great literary repository of Welsh mythology. It exists for the most part in two manuscripts, the White Book of Rhydderch (Llyfr Gwyn Rhydderch, AD 1300–1325) and the Red Book of Hergest (Llyfr Coch Hergest, 1375–1425). It was translated into English by Lady Charlotte Guest in 1838–49. Tolkien had copies of all three volumes in his library.

74 Väinämöinen. The primeval singer and oldest culture-hero, first of the ‘big three’ heroes of Kalevala, the other two being Ilmarinen the smith and Lemminkainen the rascally playboy. Väinämöinen is the first-born and most folkloric of the three, having aspects of shamanism in his character.

Petrograd is in Finland. Tolkien is speaking geographically, not politically, though in the case of Finland the two often overlap, since Finland became a Grand Duchy of Russia in 1809. Petrograd (changed from St. Petersburg in 1914) is at the head of the Gulf of Finland, at the base of the Karelian isthmus. Karelia, which has a large Finnish population, is divided now between Finland and Russia. Many of the runos collected by Lönnrot, especially those concerning Kullervo, came from Karelia.

75 Elias Lönnrot in 1835 made a selection. In 1835 Elias Lönnrot, a Finnish physician and folklore collector, published a selection from his extensive collection of runos or songs, now called the Old Kalevala.

Lönnrot was not the only collector. Earlier collectors included Zachris Topelius, Matthias Castrén, Julius Krohn, and Krohn’s son Kaarle Krohn. For a complete discussion see Domenico Comparetti, Traditional Poetry of the Finns, London: Longmans Green, 1898, and Juha Pentikäinen, Kalevala Mythology, trans. Ritva Poom, Indiana University Press, 1989.

published again in 1849. The augmented, standard edition of Kalevala from which all current translations are made.

78 ‘Hiawatha’ is not a genuine storehouse of Indian folklore, but a mild and gentle bowdlerising of the Kalevala. For more on this, and for its relation to Tolkien’s invented languages, see John Garth’s essay on Tolkien and Longfellow, ‘The road from adaptation to invention’ in Tolkien Studies Vol. XI, pp. 1–44.

L[ongfellow]’s names are often too good to be inventions. See Garth’s essay (cited above) for an extended discussion of the relationship among the names in Kalevala, ‘Hiawatha’, and Tolkien’s Qenya/Quenya.

the Kal[evala]’s first rush into translations in Scandinavian and German. There was indeed a ‘rush into translations’ starting with a translation into Swedish of the Old (1835) Kalevala by Matthias Castrén (a Finn) in 1841. In 1845 Jakob Grimm included thirty-eight lines from Runo 19 in a presentation to the German Academy of Sciences, and a complete translation into German of the New (1849) Kalevala was produced by Anton Schiefner in 1852.

‘Chanting the Hundredth Psalm that Grand old Puritan Anthem’. Tolkien’s syntax makes it hard to figure out exactly who said what to whom about what, but apparently it is an ‘American appreciation’ quoted in the London Daily News as praising Longfellow’s ‘The Courtship of Miles Standish’ for containing ‘one of the most marvellous lines in all English.’ The line in question (misquoted in Tolkien’s text) describes Priscilla Mullens, the object of the Courtship, ‘singing the hundredth Psalm, the grand old Puritan anthem’. Equally unclear is the object of Tolkien’s obvious sarcasm, whether it is the American appreciator of the quote, the London Daily News for its taste in poetry, or Longfellow for calling a Hebrew Psalm a ‘Puritan anthem’. Or all of these.

79 Ilmarinen. One of the ‘big three’ heroes of Kalevala. His name is formed from ilma, ‘sky’, with the occupational suffix ri. He has the epithets seppo, ‘craftsman’, and takoja, ‘hammerer, forger’. He was originally the maker of the sky, Finnish kirjokansi the ‘decorated/many-coloured lid’, and is the forger of the Sampo, the mysterious creation which is the object of contention in Kalevala.

Kaukomieli. A by-name or epithet for Lemminkainen, the reckless playboy, third of the ‘Big Three’. Magoun translates Kaukomieli as ‘man with a far-roving mind’; Friburg as ‘far-minded’, Kuusi, Bosley and Branch as ‘far-sighted’ or ‘proud’.

80 ‘speeches in part’. A convention of folk tale and folk poetry in which inanimate but personified objects have voices and speak for themselves, usually to or about human characters. The harp in ‘Jack and the Beanstalk’ telling the giant that Jack is stealing it is an example. Tolkien used the convention in The Hobbit when he had the Trolls’ purse speak to Bilbo, who was trying to steal it.

82 Ahti and his wife Vellamo dwell in the waters. Ahti appears most often as a by-name for Lemminkainen, while Kirby gives Ahto as the name of the God of the Sea and of the Waters, husband of Vellamo, according to Kirby ‘the goddess of the Sea and of the Waters, the spouse of Ahto.’ Ahti as a variant of Ahto does, however, occasionally appear as the name of a water-god.