enemies of Rohan. As the host of the West nears the desolation before the Morannon, the horror of the place unmans some of the men. Aragorn looks at them, and with ‘pity in his eyes rather than wrath’ he suggests another task that they might attempt ‘and so be not wholly shamed’ (bk. V, ch. 10). After his coronation Aragorn pardons and frees the Easterlings who have surrendered, and makes peace with Harad, and pronounces a judgement on Beregond which combines ‘mercy and justice’ (bk. VI, ch. 5). Gandalf offers to let Saruman go free on certain conditions, Treebeard releases him, hating to keep any live thing caged, and Frodo spares him despite all the harm he has done to the Shire and Saruman’s attempt to kill him. Other examples of pity are concerned with compassion rather than mercy: when, for instance, Faramir first sees Éowyn, ‘being a man whom pity deeply stirred, it seemed to him that her loveliness amid her grief would pierce his heart’; but later she tells him ‘I desire no man’s pity’, and he replies: ‘Do not scorn the pity that is the gift of a gentle heart …. But I do not offer you my pity …. I love you. Once I pitied your sorrow. But now, were you sorrowless, without fear or any lack, were you the blissful Queen of Gondor, still I would love you’ (bk. VI, ch. 5).
Katharyn W. Crabbe in J.R.R. Tolkien (rev. and expanded edn. 1988) comments that in The Lord of the Rings ‘to be able to pity others who suffer distinguishes the heroic from the villainous. In fact, Tolkien was no doubt making use of the philological fact that pity, in the general sense of “a feeling of compassion”’ did not exist as separate from its specific religious sense of piety until well after 1600: until then the ability to feel pity was a mark of piety’ (p. 81). In the ‘instances of heroic mercy’ shown by Gandalf, Treebeard, and Frodo to Saruman, by Frodo to Gollum, and by Aragorn to the faint-hearted,
there is an existential side … for in The Lord of the Rings mercy seems to mean the refusal to accept any being’s less than perfect state as his essential nature. Justice would pay each according to what he has done; mercy pays him according to what he might do – according to the ideal …. In a sense, the act of mercy works to preserve the free will of the receiver, giving him the chance to become the better being that is within his capability. Thus mercy is an essentially creative act – it leaves the possibilities for a recreation of the self open as does any healing process. As the hero shares with a divine being the quality of mercy, he shares with him his creative power. [p. 82]
Instances of pity and mercy are less frequent and less prominent in *The Silmarillion. There the Vala Nienna, who ‘is acquainted with grief, and mourns for every wound that Arda has suffered … does not weep for herself; and those who hearken to her learn pity, and endurance in hope’ (p. 28). When Mandos, the Doomsman of the Valar, hears the song of Lúthien, he is ‘moved to pity, who never before was so moved, nor has been since’ (p. 187). Eärendil, as representative of Elves and Men, stands before the Valar and asks pardon ‘for the Noldor and pity for their great sorrows, and mercy upon Men and Elves and succour in their need. And his prayer was granted’ (p. 249).
Brian Rosebury, in ‘Revenge and Moral Judgement in Tolkien’, Tolkien Studies 5 (2008), looks at pity and mercy from a different angle, considering actions by Tolkien’s characters when revenge or necessity may seem to override mercy.
Paul H. Kocher in Master of Middle-earth: The Fiction of J.R.R. Tolkien (1972) comments on the more overtly religious concept of mercy in *Leaf by Niggle, specifically in the dialogue between two voices discussing what is to be done with Niggle,
one voice insisting on justice, the other pleading for mercy. Here the resemblance is to the debate between the four daughters of God – Righteousness and Truth against Mercy and Peace – at the judging of souls, a favorite theme in medieval drama and poetry …. That Tolkien should employ techniques and ideas drawn from the literature of a period he knew so well is not surprising. But his success in acclimatizing them to our times is remarkable. Again we are justified in stressing that they were, and still are, Catholic. [p. 164–5]
‘The Plotz Declension’. Declension of the Quenya (*Languages, Invented) nouns cirya (‘ship’) and lasse (‘leaf’), published with commentary in ‘A Brief Note on the Background of the Letter from J.R.R. Tolkien to Dick Plotz Concerning the Declension of the High-elvish Noun’ by Jorge Quiñonez, Vinyar Tengwar 6 (July 1989), pp. 13–14.
The manuscript was included in a letter sent by Tolkien to an American correspondent, Richard Plotz, between late 1966 and early 1967. The declension chart proper, on one page, is accompanied by explanatory notes by Tolkien on a second page. The chart, but not Tolkien’s notes, was published earlier in Tolkien Language Notes 2 (1974), p. 4, with a commentary by Jim Allan, and in Beyond Bree for March 1989, p. 7 (‘The Dick Plotz Letter: Declension of the Quenya Noun’), with a commentary by Nancy Martsch.
Poems and Stories. Collection of shorter works by Tolkien, illustrated by *Pauline Baynes, first published (in de luxe form) by George Allen & Unwin, London, in May 1980. See further, Descriptive Bibliography A16. Trade editions were published by HarperCollins, London, in 1992 and by the Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston, in 1994.
The volume contains the poems of *The Adventures of Tom Bombadil and Other Verses from the Red Book; *The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth Beorhthelm’s Son; *On Fairy-Stories; *Leaf by Niggle; *Farmer Giles of Ham; and *Smith of Wootton Major. Compare *Tales from the Perilous Realm.
The Poetic and Mythologic Words of Eldarissa. List of words in Eldarissa, i.e. Qenya, the language of the Eldar (later Quenya, *Languages, Invented), apparently derived from the dictionary portion of the *Qenyaqetsa (the ‘Qenya Lexicon’) in ?1917–?1918 and entitled variously Vocab[ulary] and The Poetic and Mythologic Words of Eldarissa. Elements from this word-list are indicated in the Qenyaqetsa as published in Parma Eldalamberon 12 (1998), edited by Christopher Gilson, Carl F. Hostetter, Patrick Wynne, and Arden R. Smith.
The manuscript of the list is contained in a notebook with the title Names and Lang[uage] to Book of Lost Tales, later altered to Notebook B, being Names to the Book of Lost Tales. On four pages in the middle of the work Tolkien interposed ‘a chart outlining the different kindreds of Elves and other races of beings in his mythological world, giving the terms for them in both Qenya and Gnomish’ (Parma Eldalamberon, p. xx), and the names of few prominent characters (*‘Early Chart of Names’), as well as a list of names from the ‘Story of Tuor’ in Qenya and Gnomish (*Official Name List).
According to the Parma Eldalamberon editors, the title The Poetic and Mythologic Words of Eldarissa ‘suggests that Tolkien’s intention was to prepare a basic vocabulary list to accompany his poems and mythological tales, and explain the significance of the names and other Elvish words included in them’ (p. xx).
Poetry. Tolkien recalled in *On Fairy-Stories that as a child he was ‘insensitive to poetry, and skipped it if it came in tales. Poetry I discovered much later in Latin and Greek and especially through being made to try and translate English verse into classical verse’ (*Tree and Leaf, p. 41). Robert Browning’s Pied Piper, at least, ‘failed with me even as a child, when I could not yet distinguish the shallow vulgarity of Browning from the general grown-uppishness of things I was expected to like’ (letter to *Jane Neave, 22 November 1961, Letters, p. 311). Nevertheless the young Tolkien may have tried to write a poem himself, about a dragon, when he was six or seven years old. In later years he could not recall if it was a poem or a story, only that his mother told him that he must write ‘great green dragon’, not ‘green great dragon’ (Letters, pp. 214, 221).
Tolkien’s earliest surviving poem appears to be Morning, which he included in a letter to Edith Bratt (*Edith Tolkien) written on 26 March 1910. Many of his early verses celebrate his feelings for *nature and landscape, or copy (or parody) poetic styles including those
