Celtic influences on Tolkien

English and Welsh (centre left) borders the Welsh Powys and Gwynedd (left). Tolkien's relationship with the Celtic languages is somewhat complex, as he professed to like Welsh but to dislike Old Irish and Scottish Gaelic. He gave several conflicting explanations of why he liked Welsh, and his other favourite languages so much. That pleasure was complex, involving phonetics, style, and association with meaning all at once. but which influenced his choice of names in Middle-earth. Tolkien believed that the sound of a language somehow conveyed meaning, and in some cases pleasure, even to people who did not know the language: to anyone who heard the sound of, for example, Welsh words. The philologist and Tolkien scholar Tom Shippey described that belief as Tolkien's "linguistic heresy", adding that while linguists of his time were largely opposed to it (holding that the association of sound and meaning is wholly arbitrary), evidence has emerged which supports it. Tolkien gave yet another explanation, namely that Welsh was uniquely attractive to people native to Britain. He wrote that "It is the native language to which in unexplored desire we would still go home". He meant that since Welsh was the language of Britain before the English language arrived, there was a powerful but dormant liking for Welsh among speakers of English: land and language went together. At the same time, Tolkien stated explicitly that he was English, from Worcestershire, a county in what was once the Kingdom of Mercia, and professed a love for its (Germanic) language. Fimi comments that Tolkien was arguing that "history and ancestry or a sense of 'home' and belonging are the main reasons behind personal linguistic tastes." She writes that in that case, Tolkien's Worcestershire roots had put him in touch with Middle and Old English as well as Welsh, and presumably (since the Romans too had occupied the area) also Latin. Tolkien worked not only to construct individual languages, but to develop the systematic patterns of changes from a language to its descendants, forming families of Elvish languages. In Tolkien's words, "The changes worked on Sindarin [from Common Eldarin] very closely (and deliberately) resemble those which produced the modern and medieval Welsh from ancient Celtic, so that in the result Sindarin has a marked Welsh style, and the relations between it and [the supposedly ancestral language] Quenya closely resemble those between Welsh and Latin." Nelson Goering analysed this claim, finding it broadly reasonable, if the relationships are allowed to be of different kinds. Tolkien further stated that he had given Sindarin "a linguistic character very like (though not identical with) British-Welsh ... because it seems to fit the rather 'Celtic' type of legends and stories told of its speakers", i.e. that he envisaged a "fit" between the language, the character of his Sindarin Elves, and the people in Celtic legends. == Irish ==

Tír na nÓg has been compared to the Celtic Otherworld, shown here in a 1910 illustration by Stephen Reid Matthew T. Dickerson, in the J. R. R. Tolkien Encyclopedia, writes that Rivendell consistently represents a sanctuary, a place that felt like home, throughout the legendarium. The journalist Jane Ciabattari writes that a major reason for the popularity of Lord of the Rings was the desire for escape among the Vietnam War generation. She compares the military-industrial complex with Mordor, and suggests that they yearned for a place of peace, just as Frodo Baggins felt an "overwhelming longing to rest and remain at peace… in Rivendell". The medievalist Marjorie Burns writes that Rivendell and the other Elvish realm of Lothlórien parallel the Celtic Otherworld (in Irish, Tír na nÓg) in being hard to find, but if one is admitted and welcomed, one crosses a river, symbolising the spiritual transition from the ordinary realm, and "the weary adventurer is transported into a haven of Elven hospitality and delight". There are multiple markers of the transition: Burns notes that both "Riven" and "dell" suggest a low place into which one must descend; and that a descent is characteristic of Celtic tales of entry into the underground realm of the Tuatha Dé Danann, whose chiefs each rule a burial mound. Tuatha Dé Danann The exile of the Noldor Elves in The Silmarillion has parallels with the story of the Tuatha Dé Danann. These semi-divine beings invaded Ireland from across the sea, burning their ships when they arrived and fighting a fierce battle with the current inhabitants. The Noldor arrived in Middle-earth from Valinor and burned their ships, then turned to fight the Dark Lord Melkor. Nuada received a hand made of silver to replace the lost one, and his later appellation has the same meaning as the Elvish name Celebrimbor: "silver hand" in Sindarin. Tolkien's professional work at the Temple of Nodens, Nuada's precursor, with its associations with a hero, Elves, a ring, and Dwarves, may have been a major stimulus in his creation of his Middle-earth mythology. == Welsh ==

Place-names Scholars have stated that Tolkien chose the placenames of Bree-land carefully, incorporating Celtic elements into the names to indicate that Bree was older than the Shire, whose placenames are English with Old English elements. The name "Bree" means "hill", and the hill beside the village is named "Bree-hill". The name of the village of Brill, in Buckinghamshire, which Tolkien visited when he was at the University of Oxford and which inspired him to create Bree, is constructed exactly the same way: Brill is a modern contraction of Breʒ-hyll. Both syllables are words for the same thing, "hill" – the first is Brythonic (Celtic) and the second Old English. Shippey writes that the name's construction, "hill-hill", is "therefore in a way nonsense, exactly parallel with Chetwode (or 'wood-wood') in Berkshire close by." The first element "Chet" in "Chetwode" derives from the Brythonic ced, meaning "wood". Shippey notes further that Tolkien stated that he had selected Bree-land placenames – Archet, Bree, Chetwood, and Combe – because they "contained non-English elements", which would make them "sound 'queer', to imitate 'a style that we should perhaps vaguely feel to be “Celtic”'." Shippey comments that this was part of Tolkien's "linguistic heresy", his theory that the sound of words conveyed both meaning and beauty. The philologist Christopher Robinson writes that Tolkien chose a name to "fit not only its designee, but also the phonological and morphological style of the nomenclature to which it belongs, as well as the linguistic scheme of his invented world." In Robinson's view, Tolkien intentionally selected "Celtic elements that have survived in the place names of England" – like bree and chet – to mark them as older than the Shire placenames which embody "a hint of the past" with their English and Old English elements. All of this indicates the "remarkable care and sophistication" with which Tolkien constructed the "feigned history and translation from Westron personal and placenames". The Mabinogion was part of the Red Book of Hergest, a source of Welsh Celtic lore, which the Red Book of Westmarch, a supposed source of Hobbit-lore, probably imitates. Arthurian legend asks the Lady of the Lake for the sword Excalibur". 1911 illustration by Walter Crane The Arthurian legends are part of the Welsh cultural heritage. Tolkien denied their influence, but scholars have found multiple parallels. The Wizard Gandalf has been compared with Merlin, Frodo and Aragorn with Arthur, and Galadriel with the Lady of the Lake. She points out visible correspondences such as Avalon with Avallónë, and Brocéliande with Broceliand, the original name of Beleriand. Tolkien himself said that Frodo's and Bilbo's departure to Tol Eressëa (also called "Avallon" in the Legendarium) was an "Arthurian ending". Such correlations are discussed in the posthumously published The Fall of Arthur; a section, "The Connection to the Quenta", explores Tolkien's use of Arthurian material in The Silmarillion. Another parallel is between the tale of Sir Balin and that of Túrin Turambar. Though Balin knows he wields an accursed sword, he continues his quest to regain King Arthur's favour. Fate catches up with him when he unwittingly kills his own brother, who mortally wounds him. Turin accidentally kills his friend Beleg with his sword. Tolkien's use of swords with their own names, magical powers, ancient pedigrees, their own histories, and rituals of passage from one hero to the next, is in line with medieval and Arthurian legend. There are multiple parallels between Aragorn with his magical sword and Arthurian legend. The Sword in the Stone is broken, as Narsil is. Just as Excalibur delimits King Arthur's reign, so Narsil delimits the Third Age, beginning when Isildur cuts the Ring from Sauron's hand, and ending when the sword remade as Andúril helps to end Sauron's power and restore Aragorn as King. Both Kings lead their peoples to victory. The sword's magical scabbard, too, which the Elf-queen Galadriel gives to Aragorn as he leaves Lothlórien with the words "The blade that is drawn from this sheath shall not be stained or broken even in defeat", parallels Excalibur's sheath, which guarantees that its wearer "shall never lose no blood, be ye never so sore wounded". The elven scabbard describes the sword it was made for: "It was overlaid with a tracery of flowers and leaves wrought of silver and gold, and on it were set in elven-runes formed of many gems the name Andúril and the lineage of the sword." == Modern Celtic ==

Ethereal Elves 's film treatment of the Elves in the style of John Duncan's 1911 painting Riders of the Sidhe (pictured), and the modern Celtic music accompanying some of the Elvish film scenes, indicate an "otherworldly" tone very unlike Tolkien's. In his 2001–2003 The Lord of the Rings film trilogy, Peter Jackson chose to treat the first group of Elves seen by the Hobbit protagonists in the style of John Duncan's 1911 painting Riders of the Sidhe. The film was accompanied by music which similarly gave a "ethereal" modern Celtic feeling for the Elves. Together, these portrayed the Elves with an "otherworldly" tone, very unlike Tolkien's. The composer responsible for the score, Howard Shore, creates what the folklorist and Tolkien scholar Dimitra Fimi calls the "same 'Celtic' feel'" in the music for the Elves in Rivendell. Shore had approached the Irish "folk-cum-New Age" singer Enya, whose music represents "Celticity as melancholy over a lost tradition." For example, Enya's song "Lothlórien" on her album Shepherd Moons is an instrumental composition named for the Elvish realm of Lothlórien. In Fimi's view, the "'Celtic' air and ambience" that Jackson uses for the Elves is reinforced by what the film's conceptual designer Alan Lee called "the use of natural forms ... [and] of flowing graceful lines" and "elements of Art Nouveau and Celtic design". Fimi notes that both Tolkien and the historian Malcolm Chapman wrote "mocking[ly]" about the romantic stereotyping of Celts in this way. Tolkien spoke of "the wild incalculable poetic Celt, full of vague and misty imaginations"; Chapman wrote of "high-flown metaphysical and moral conclusions drawn from 'Celtic' art by its admiring critics". Irish peasant Hobbits s in The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power speak in Irish accents and have been said to resemble John Leech's Irish peasants, as in his 1845 cartoon "Justice to Ireland". criticized Shore's use of modern Celtic music for the Shire and its Hobbits. Bratman stated that the use of instruments like the bodhrán and Celtic harp was inappropriate, given that the Hobbits' homeland was inspired by the English Midlands where Tolkien lived. The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, a series about events in the Second Age of Middle-earth, has been criticized for its handling of race. Commentators have observed that the Hobbit-like harfoots speak in Irish accents, behave as friendly peasants, and are accompanied by Celtic music; and that they resemble the 19th century caricaturist John Leech's "wildly unflattering" depictions of the Irish in Punch magazine. == See also ==