Tolkien, JRR

From 1945 to 1959 JRR Tolkien is Professor of English Language and Literature at Merton College, Oxford

This essay explores J.R.R. Tolkien’s engagement with John Rhys’s reading of Welsh fairy stories. Rhys was the authority on all things Celtic in the Oxford of Tolkien’s undergraduate days. In his opinion, Welsh tales of fairies were echoes of dim memories of ancient encounters with a non-Indo-European aboriginal population of the British Isles. It is argued that Tolkien discovered hobbit stories (i.e. stories told about and initially by hobbits) behind Rhys’s image of Britain’s pre-Celtic inhabitants. 

The essay begins with a discussion of Rhys’s place in the history of scholarship and then outlines his reading of Welsh fairy stories. The main part of the essay consists of an enquiry into the different ways in which Tolkien can be read as responding to Rhys’s reading. It is first shown how Tolkien imagined fairies and fairy tales as belonging to England rather than to Wales. It is then argued that Tolkien believed that, even if he had been wrong in his particular conclusions, Rhys had nevertheless been right to ask what lay behind the Welsh tales. Finally, it is suggested that Tolkien discovered that Rhys had actually produced (an admittedly somewhat confused) account, not of fairies, nor of pre-Aryan aborigines, but of hobbits. - See more at: http://www.tolkienlibrary.com/press/1100-concerning-hobbits-welsh-fairies-in-oxford.php#sthash.g961nl5s.dpuf

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