The Lord of the Rings,
'Longshanks' and the Anglo - Scottish Border
   

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Tolkien's 'Border' 

 

Middle Earth resonates to old mythologies, languages and literature as well as  its history having an interface with the real history of the Anglo-Saxons (Rohan), Rome in decline (Gondor), the experiences of 1st and 2nd World Wars, and the medieval Scottish Border.

 

Tolkien described Middle-earth as a place that was “perilous”, rooted
in “flame and shadow”. The Scottish border was therefore an ideal
physical situation for his imagination for some of the horror elements
of the Lord of the Rings. He described the Eye of Sauron as “rimmed
with fire” with the “black slit of its pupil opened on a pit, a window into nothing” (Tolkien quoted in Larsen p173).  Similarly, for many years, the land of the Scottish Border and its Reiver culture could have been described as a destroyed nothingness, rimmed with murderous intent.

 

An unstable border can be a symbol for a ‘border’ between the world of the real and the world of fantasy, with some people wanting these two worlds to be separate, whilst some like the worlds to be fluid and part of something larger.

 

Lewis and Currie refer to Tolkien's epic as being on the 'edge of reality', where the story 'is just off the map'. Such a concept of a distant border was essential to enable Tolkien to achieve the art of creating a convincing 'suspension of disbelief'.

 

Another ‘border’ in fantasy is whether we focus purely on the work of art itself, or as Valéry described one of the pleasures of listening to music, “an inward gaze of the subject contemplating the space of selfhood”.  Reading about his elves, hobbits, dwarves and wizards we see both life and ourselves tangentially and fluid.

 

Tolkien once described his writings as ‘a mythology for England’ and it seems that England's border injustices are also subtly referred to. And just as a real violent historical border tends to create real monsters, heroes and traitors, his Scottish Border has created the darker ingredients of his epic fantasy.  ‘Veni, Veni Creator Spiritus’.

 

 

Drout, M D C . (Ed) ‘JRR Tolkien Encyclopedia Scholarship and Critical Assessment.’
            Routledge 2007

Larsen, K.  ‘Shadow and Flame: Myth, Monsters and Mother Nature in Middle-Earth’.
            In ‘The  Mirror Crack’d: Fear and Horror in JRR Tolkien’s Major Works’
            Ed Lynn Forest-Hill.  Cambridge 2008.

Lewis, P and Currie, E. 'The Unchartered Realms of Tolkien'. Medea 2002

Mahler, Gustav. Symphony No. 8. 1907  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symphony_No._8_(Mahler)

Manni, F. ‘Real and imaginary history in The Lord of the Rings’ Mallorn (Journal of the Tolkien
             Society) Issue 47 Spring 2009

Scull, C and Hammond, W G.  ‘JRR Tolkien Companion and Guide’. HarperCollins 2006

Shippey, T. ‘The Road to Middle-earth’. HarperCollins 2005

Stimpson, B.  ‘An Aesthetics of the Subject: Music and the Visual Arts’ . In ‘Reading Paul Valery:
              Universe in mind’. Gifford and Stimpson (Ed) 1999 Cambridge Studies in French

Tolkien, J R R. ‘On Fairy-Stories’. In ‘The Monsters and the Critics and Other Essays’ .
               Harper Collins 1997

Tolkien, J R R. 'The Lord of the Rings'. HarperCollins 2004.