Wherefore Orcs?

[bwgwl]

i found an orc (well, "ork") in, of all places, Oz.

re-reading "The Scarecrow of Oz" i found this:

They had divided one of the biscuits and were munching it for breakfast when they were startled by a sudden splash in the pool. Looking toward it, they saw emerging from the water the most curious creature either of them had ever beheld. It wasn't a fish, Trot decided, nor was it a beast. It had wings, though, and queer wings they were: shaped like an inverted chopping bowl and covered with tough skin instead of feathers. It had four legs--much like the legs of a stork, only double the number--and its head was shaped a good deal like that of a poll parrot, with a beak that curved downward in front and upward at the edges, and was half bill and half mouth. But to call it a bird was out of the question, because it had no feathers whatever except a crest of wavy plumes of a scarlet color on the very top of its head. The strange creature must have weighed as much as Cap'n Bill, and as it floundered and struggled to get out of the water to the sandy beach, it was so big and unusual that both Trot and her
companion stared at it in wonder--in wonder that was not unmixed with fear.

The eyes that regarded them as the creature stood dripping before them were bright and mild in expression, and the queer addition to their party made no attempt to attack them and seemed quite as surprised by the meeting as they were.

"I wonder," whispered Trot, "what it is."

"Who, me?" exclaimed the creature in a shrill, high-pitched voice. "Why, I'm an Ork."

"Oh!" said the girl. "But what is an Ork?"

"I am," he repeated, a little proudly, as he shook the water from his funny wings, "and if ever an Ork was glad to be out of the water and on dry land again, you can be sure that I'm that especial, individual Ork!"

now, this doesn't sound much like a D&D orc or a Tolkien orc, but it is a type of "sea-monster" orc, which is another of the early definitions of the word. (cf. orca, or killer whale.)

btw, "The Scarecrow of Oz" was published in 1915.

 

[S'mon]

I'm not saying you can't call Tolkien a liar, just that he specifically says he made up the name tooling around with Old English roots and seeing how they'd be today.

He may very well be lying (although I certainly don't believe he was.) Stranger coincidences than that have certainly been known to happen.

I expect he chose the word first (possibly forgetting where he'd seen it) then later made up a retrospective in-world etymology for it. People do that kind of thing all the time.

 

[S'mon]

Re non-Tolkien orcs in modern literature: the Fomorians (evil humanoid sea-monsters) of the 'Slaine' comic strip & RPG are sometimes referred to as Orcs. They resemble a cross between Cthuluesque Deep Ones and D&D orcs, but appear to be derived primarily from the original Celtic mythology, AFAIK.

 

[hellbender]

i found an orc (well, "ork") in, of all places, Oz.

re-reading "The Scarecrow of Oz" i found this:


now, this doesn't sound much like a D&D orc or a Tolkien orc, but it is a type of "sea-monster" orc, which is another of the early definitions of the word. (cf. orca, or killer whale.)

btw, "The Scarecrow of Oz" was published in 1915.

Not to be a smart apple, but your quote did say the ork had funny wings and was glad to be out of the water and on dry land again. maybe he wasn't a sea monster after all. Bit of a flying ork, I would wager.


hellbender

 

[andrew]

Well, I have been able to dig up a little more on the Denham Tracts. What follows is a bit of description of the tracts and some commentary. If you're just interested in the list with the word 'hobbit' in it, skip to the next post (which reads like a D&D encounter table!).

There are a couple versions of the Denham Tracts out there: the original tracts published by MA Denham, a collection of the tracts from the Folklore Society edited by James Hardy, and a fairly recent reprint of a few of the more common tracts. The following is from the introduction to a 1974 reprint of several of the tracts, Denham Tracts or, a few Pictures of the Olden times in connection with The North of England:

Between 1846 and 1849 M. A. Denham of Piersebridge near Darlinton published a series of tracts (54 in all) about the folklore of the northern counties. They were a scholarly and comprehensive collection which is unequalled in any other area of Great Britain. Unfortunately they were issued in very small editions, clearly intended only for his friends. Most of the tracts were published with 50 copies but some only in editions of 13 or 25 copies. They are therefore excessively rare and I do not know of any library or individual who has a complete collection. The catalogue which we reprint at the beginning of this volume lists all the tracts and the numbers of copies published.
A second edition of the Tracts, edited by Dr J. Hardy was published in two volumes in 1892 and 1895 by the Folklore Society.
The present volume is a facsimile of some of the original tracts and we hope to republish the rest of them in subsequent volumes.

Unfortunately, those subsequent volumes don't seem to have materialized. Because the original tracts are so rare, I have only been able to get my hands on an original copy of 'Folk-Lore: or a collection of local rhymes, proverbs, sayings, prophecies, slogans, &c, relating to Northumberland, Newcastle-on-Tyne, and Berwick-on-Tweed'. While a very interesting volume (includes bits on the mosstroopers of the border counties, family histories, etc.) it deals more with local sayings than anything supernatural.

I have not been able to find an original copy of 'Ghosts, Hobgoblins, and Phantasms' There are two editions, the first with 6 pages and the second with 8 published in 1852 and 53 respectively. From what I can tell by comparing the list of tracts in the 1974 Folklore with the material reprinted in the Hardy edition, this is the tract with the original list. (There's also a chance that the list in question appears at the end of 'Manners, Customs, Weather Proverbs, Popular Charms, Juvenile Rhymes, &c., &c., in the North of England' (32 pages, 50 copies, 1858) , but I think this is just an editorial mistake on Hardy's part. (It could even be a mistake of Hardy's editor, G Laurence Gomme, who took over the project after Hardy became too ill to finish it.) As far as I know, the only place this list current appears is in Hardy's edition of the Denham tracts appended to the section on Folklore of the North of England.

Volume II of Hardy's edition of the Denham Tracts was published in 1895 by the Folklore Society. The original title for this collection is 'The Denham Tracts. A collection of Folklore by Michael Aislabie Denham, and reprinted from the original tracts and pamphlets printed by Mr Denham between 1846 and 1859. The important section is Tract VIII: Folklore, or Manners and customs of the North of England. This appears to be a collection of the original 4 tracts on the manners and customs of the North of England with Denham's spirit list appended. The tracts are exactly what the title claims: random bits of folklore from the northern counties. Everything from superstitions about cats to local songs and rhymes is included in the collection.

The section in question covers pages 76-80 of the edition. The word 'hobbit' is certainly in the reprinted edition. However, it appears in a rather odd list. The particular entry is ostensibly about the inability of ghosts and spirits to appear on Christmas Eve. Denham quotes a bit from Hamlet and follows it with a supporting observation that not only are ghosts prevented from appearing on Christmas Eve, but it is an 'incontrovertible fact' that anyone born on Christmas Day cannot see spirits. Denham goes on to explain how this must have been such a relief to people born a few generations earlier because the world was so overrun with spirits and and ghosts in those days that there was not a single town, castle or building of any age that didn't have at least one of its own apparitions.

In the middle of this, he rather surprisingly just starts listing all the kinds of spirits that might have appeared in one of these towns or buildings in days gone by. It is in this list that the word 'hobbit' finally appears. Clearly, as stated in the Times article, this is a solid pre-Tolkien reference in print of the word 'hobbit'. However, that's about as far as it goes. For our purposes, I feel comfortable saying that Tolkien 'created' the hobbit.

First, judging from the list, I doubt Denham's 'hobbit' had any relation to Tolkien's hobbit. It appears in this list crammed with all manner of supernatural beast from barguests to wizards. It seems little, if any, care has been taking in ordering these spirits. Many are even repeated in the list. It also becomes obvious from the number of spirits in general and the number of 'hob'- spirits specifically that there was little in the way of a classified difference from one spirit to the next. I'm also not sure if I don't detect a slightly tongue-in-cheek nature to this list and other bits of lore from Denham's tract. Note how it is an 'incontrovertible fact' that folks born on Christmas can't see spirits and that all these spirits inhabited the English landscape in some unsubstantial 'before', but certainly not in Denham's present.

I would be very surprised if Tolkien had ever seen the word 'hobbit' in print, from Denham or any other source. The Denham tracts are rare enough that it would have been very unlikely for Tolkien to have seen an original . The reprints, though more accessible are fairly obscure and not especially appropriate for an Anglo-Saxonist.

(Rare or not, I feel fairly safe stating that I'm the first person to actually read Volume II at my library. The pages had not been properly cut by the printer so many of the folios were still part of the same piece of paper. I had to get a pair of scissors from the library staff so I could personally cut the pages apart so I could read them!)

Considering the regular occurrence of 'hob'- spirits in English folklore, I wouldn't be surprised if Tolkien had pulled the term or at least it's inspiration from some half-remembered tale. There are plenty of 'hob'- references in Denham's list alone: Hob-and-lanthorns, Hobby-lanthonrs, hobcross, hobgoblins (twice!), hobhoulards, and hob-thrusts. It's not out of the question that Tolkien was sparked by some kind of 'hob'- as a spirit and ran with it. (I don't have the Letters handy, but I seem to remember Tolkien alluding to something similar.) If he picked it up anywhere, he probably absorbed it in the tales of the 'country folk' of whom both he and Denham were so enarmoured. At worst, Tolkien took a confused and nearly forgotten word and breathed fresh life into it, recovering not just a word, but the whole spirit of the fairy story that may have otherwise been lost.


Edit: fixed a quote

 

[andrew]

Here, reprinted for your pleasure from The Denham Tracts, Vol II, pp 76-80, is Denham's complete list of spirits. I've omitted the extensive notes: they primarily refer to places named after the spirits in the list. In some cases, I suspect the spirits have been invented to fit the placenames rather than the other way around.

GHOSTS NEVER APPEAR ON CHRISTMAS EVE!
* * * *
"Some say that ever 'gainst that season comes
Wherein our Saviour's birth is celebrated,
The bird of dawning singeth all night long ;
And then they say no spirit dares stir abroad ;
The nights are wholesome ; then no planet strikes,
No fairy takes, nor witch hath power to charm,
So hallowed and so gracious is the time."
-Marcellus

"So have I heard and do in part believe it."
-Horatio
* * * *

So says the immortal Shakespeare; and the truth thereof few now-a-days, I hope, will call in question. Grose observes, too, that those born on Christmas Day cannot see spirits; which is another incontrovertible fact. What a happiness this must have been seventy or eighty years ago and upwards, to those chosen few who had the good luck to be born on the even of this festival of all festivals; when the whole earth was so overrun with ghosts, boggles, bloody-bones, spirits, demons, ignis fatui, brownies, bugbears, black dogs, spectres, shellycoats, scarecrows, witches, wizards, barguests, Robin-Goodfellows, hags, night-bats, scrags, breaknecks, fantasms, hob-goblins, hobhoulards, boggy-boes, dobbies, hob-thrusts, fetches, kelpies, warlocks, mock-beggars, mum-pokers, Jemmy-burties, urchins, satyrs, pans, fauns, sirens, tritons, centaurs, calcars, nymphs, imps, incubusses, spoorns, men-in-the-oak, hell-wains, fire-drakes, kit-a-can-sticks, Tom-tumblers, melch-dicks, larrs, kitty-witches, hobby-lanthorns, Dick-a-Tuesdays, Elf-fires, Gyl-burnt-tails, knockers, elves, rawheads, Meg-with-the-wads, old shocks, ouphs, pad-fooits, pixies, pictrees, giants, dwafs, Tom-pokers, tutgots, snapdragons, sprets, spunks, conjurers, thurses, spurns, tantarrabobs, swaithes, tints, tod-lowries, Jack-in-the-Wads, mormos, changelings, redcaps, yeth-hounds, colt-pixies, Tom-thumbs, black-bugs, boggarts, scar-bugs, shag-foals, hodge-pochers, hob-thrushes, bugs, bull-beggars, bygorns, bolls, caddies, bomen, brags, wraithes, waffs, flay-boggarts, fiends, gallytrots, imps, gytrashes, patches, hob-and-lanthorns, gringes, boguests, bonelesses, Peg-powlers, pucks, fays, kidnappers, gally-beggars, hudskins, nickers, madcaps, trolls, robinets, friars' lanthorns, silkies, cauld-lads, death-hearses, goblins, hob-headlesses, buggaboes, kows, or cowes, nickies, nacks, [necks] waiths, miffies, buckies, gholes, sylphs, guests, swarths, freiths, freits, gy-carlins [Gyre-carling] pigmies, chittifaces, nixies, Jinny-burnt-tails, dudmen, hell-hounds, dopple-gangers, boggleboes, bogies, redmen, portunes, grants, hobbits, hobgoblins, brown-men, cowies, dunnies, wirrikows, alholdes, mannikins, follets, korreds, lubberkins, cluricauns, kobolds, leprechauns, kors, mares, korreds, puckles, korigans, sylcans, succubuses, black-men, shadows, banshees, lian-hanshees, clabbernappers, Gabriel-hounds, mawkins, doubles, corpse lights or candles, scrats, mahounds, trows, gnomes, sprites, fates, fiends, sybils, nick-nevins, whitewomen, fairies, thrummy-caps, cutties, and nisses, and apparitions of every shape, make, form, fashion, kind and description, that there was not a village in England that had not its own peculiar ghost. Nay, every lone tenement, castle, or mansion-house, which could boast of any antiquity, had its bogle, its spectre, or its knocker. The churches, churchyards, and cross-roads were all haunted. Every green lane had its boulder-stone on which an apparition kept watch at night. Every common had its circle of fairies belonging to it. And there was scarcely a shepherd to be met with who had not seen a spirit!

 

[kenjib]

Hey, thanks! *copy* *paste* *save* What a great list of critter names!!!

 

[Scarbonac]

Hey, thanks! *copy* *paste* *save* What a great list of critter names!!!

That goes double for me! Good job, andrew!

 

[Knightfall]

That goes double for me! Good job, andrew!

And triple for me!

 

[TalonComics]

Awesome list! It almost reads like a 1E Monster Manual listing.

What do you think the chances of a "Dick-a-Tuesday" is going to show up in 3.5?

~D