: He almost always asserts internal origins for words, for
: example, uruk is a Sumerian city but Tolkien would hold up a
: derivation from Orch or some Quenya stem. This is almost
: certainly retrospective in some measure - no doubt he
: originally produced the word either consciously or
: sub-consciously from a liking for the original name of the
: city.

I am reminded of the reader who wrote to ask Tolkien about such "borrowings" (Letter 297): "I may mention two cases where I was NOT, at the time of making use of them, aware of 'borrowing', but where it is probable, but by no means certain, that the names were nonetheless 'echoes'." He goes on to speak about "Erech" and "nazg" (and now I recall someone saying "nazg" isn't a word for "ring" in Gaelic Irish, but I'm not sure of where I saw that).

: : The "defeated cavalry officer-group" were apparently
: : descendants of the kings of Rhovanion. At least, in Appendix
: : A, in "The House of Eorl", Tolkien writes: "...The
: : forefathers of Eorl claimed descent from kings of Rhovanion,
: : whose realm lay beyond Mirkwood before the invasions of the
: : Wainriders, and thus they accounted themselves kinsmen of the
: : Kings of Gondor descended from Eldacar...."

: It is interesting that Tolkien used the word "Claimed" when he
: could have merely asserted a definite descent. This suggests
: that there was some reason to doubt the veracity of the
: Eorlings' assertions. The Eorlings would not be the first
: dynasty to make false claims of an illustrious descent
: especially if they arose to power in times of
: cultural-political dislocation. In fact a good parallel could
: be drawn to the Anglo-Saxon royal houses who uniformally
: claimed direct descent from the god Woden :)

Well, you're right in one respect, I think. I believe Tolkien was implying that Eotheodic traditions were not considered to be as thorough and reliable as Gondor's archives. But I don't believe Tolkien was implying that the reader should actually deny the claim. Certainly there is no indication he was implying an unreasonable claim such as descent from Woden.

Look at the way Tolkien seems to cast doubt on the Elvish ancestry of the Lords of Dol Amroth, but does anyone really doubt they were descended from Mithrellas?

: : If the worlds met, they did not meet in England, and they did
: : not take the results of that meeting back to England. But by
: : the 11th century the Goths of the Crimea were no longer the
: : Goths who had settled in the Roman Empire -- they certainly
: : didn't inspire the kind of folklore which arose around Alaric
: : and his Goths or the lost Visigothic kingdoms (in Gaul and
: : Iberia), even if their language did survive until the 16th
: : century.

: Though Anglo-Saxon kings generated lots of folklore themselves.
: Alfred and his cakes, Offa and his dyke, King Edmund the saint
: and his re-attaching head and incorruptible body etc.

Yes, but such folklore is not paralleled in Tolkien's world. I do admit I picture a parallel between Helm Hammerhand and (I thinl) Henry IV of the Holy Roman Empire. Both men trekked through the snow in mid-winter horribly underdressed, but Helm's reason was not quite the same as Henry's. Henry had been humbled by a Pope, and Helm though beaten in battle had not been humbled.

I doubt Tolkien had the HRE in mind when he devised the story of Helm, but I can't help seeing parallels.

: : And yet archaeology has unearthed hundreds of long houses
: : throughout Europe. We know the architecture of Meduseld and
: : Heorot are just idealized extensions of basic ancient
: : architecture.

: Tolkien was a linguist not an archaeologist his likely
: influences are literary - Anglo-Norse literature abounds in
: reference to such halls - not so other literatures.

His likely influences are acknowledged by him: Finnic, Scandinavian, Greco-Roman, Anglo-Saxon, Gothic, even Celtic (though he only grudgingly acknowledges the Arthurian connection).

: : He did, however, insist they were not to be identified with
: : the Anglo-Saxons (Appendix F) and he said the Rohirrim were
: : not medieval "in our sense" (Letter 211). These two
: : statements remove the Rohirrim from any distinct relationship
: : with the Anglo-Saxons other than the use of the latter's
: : language to represent the former's.

: The early Anglo-Saxons were sub-Roman or Dark Age people,
: Mediaeval is a term whose limits are badly defined.

Nonetheless, it was the early Anglo-Saxons who took Britain away from the Brythonic Romans, not their more sophisticated descendants.

I believe when Tolkien said the Rohirrim were not medieval "in our sense", he was saying they shouldn't be viewed as a people living according to medieval culture and custom. He may have been implying they were medieval in the sense that they came between civilizations: the high civilization of the Elves, long past, and the high civilization of men, yet to be realized.

But that's just a guess as to what he was implying (if anything).

: : There is no parallel. Tolkien did not compose the poems in
: : true Rohirric and then translate them into Anglo-Saxon.

: If the Rohirric verse form was different from that indicated
: why did Tolkien not use it?

How could he have used it? He was presenting the verses in English, not Anglo-Saxon, as though they had been translated from the original language. In reality, to "do it right", he would have had to compose the verses in true Rohirric, then translate them into Westron (for the Red Book), and then into English. Would that have been worth the effort?

: : Elvish shows the same addiction. "Tinuviel! Tinuviel!"

: I would say that Elvish has much less of this sort of
: linguistic habit than Rohirric. Personal nicknames are not
: really the same thing - the Romans were fond of earthy
: nicknames (squinter - Strabo, brass-beard - Ahenobarbus etc.)
: but Latin does not use by-words like A-S does. A Roman called a
: sword a sword not a fast-striking steel-serpent.

We really know very little about Rohirric, but each language constructs its nicknames according to its needs and practices. And I suspect Cicero would have found a few useful turns of phrase to describe things if he wished.

Nonetheless, I don't think your point is holding up. The Numenoreans were the Elendili, the Elf-friends.

: : : : You've surely read Tacitus, Martin. That custom was
: : : : documented among the ancient Germans centuries before
: : : : there were Anglo-Saxons.

: : : But this does not diminish the fact that both cultures (A-S
: : : and Rohan) exhibit the same trait.

: : It's not an "Anglo-Saxon trait". Hence, Tolkien did not get
: : this aspect of the Rohirric culture from the Anglo-Saxons.

: Of course it is an Anglo-Saxon trait, it is strongly indicated
: in their history and literature. Once again it is not a
: uniquely A-Saxon trait, though it is not as well marked in
: other cultures...

The fact it occurs in other cultures (and is in fact well attested in them) shows it is not an Anglo-Saxon trait. It is not peculiar to the Anglo-Saxons and did not spread from them to other Germanic peoples. It is properly a GERMANIC trait.

: ...Indeed, in many of the cultures where it is known, or
: suspected, to have occurred little or no literature was
: created or has survived. Furthermore, we know that in its
: Anglo-Saxon form it was investigated at great length by
: Tolkien, who posed as a continuator of the poet of the Battle
: of Maldon to produce his own work commenting on the practice of
: "Service beyond death."

And Tolkien was well aware of Tacitus, the Icelandic Sagas, etc., having read them all in the original languages.

: : Martin, I've fed and stabled horses. I assure you, we do it
: : pretty much the same way men have been doing it for thousands
: : of years. You clean up the stall, put down fresh straw or
: : hay, pour oats or other feed in a bag, hang the bag on the
: : horse's head, and walk away. Watering horses is done rather
: : simply as well. You pour water in a tub or take the horse up
: : to a stream.

: Did you sow and reap the feed you fed to these horses? The
: economic forces on pre-modern highlanders were severe.

[snip]

They also had a totally different situation from that of the Rohirrim, who controlled their territory uniformly.

: : And we do still breed large horses. And, yes, draft horses
: : are raised in the mountains. War horses? The Rohirrim
: : didn't have the huge mountains of horse that became popular
: : in the late medieval period, but the Goths certainly kept up
: : their cavalry tradition despite living in the Balkans for a
: : while.

: Even late Mediaeval war horses were (and we have the armour to
: prove it) more like large and strong hunters than any of the
: draught-breeds. The areas of the Balkans settled by the Goths
: (Moesia, Thrace and latterly Pannonia)contained good horse
: breeding plains - Pannonia makes up the western half of modern
: Hungary - home of the hussar.

Very much like Rohan, I note.

: : : But the Rohirrim didn't confine their activities to the
: : : mountains. Clearly they pastured their herds in the open
: : : grasslands at times.

: : At times. And clearly they kept the horses close to home,
: : too. The Rohirrim lived in the mountains. That's the point.

: Given their penchant for horses, the mountains could not have
: been economically the most important area of their country.

The mountains were where the Rohirrim lived. They built their cities and towns in the mountains, as well as their fortresses (unless they took all such places of refuge from the Numenorean fortifications).

: : Why would anyone WANT to live in the highlands if the
: : lowlands were available?

: Precisely my argument in regard to the Rohirrim.

But not MY argument. And you're not addressing the facts about why the Rohirrim chose to live in the mountains.

: : For defence. The Rohirrim were investing themselves in a
: : largely abandoned land, but they were also fighting off
: : enemies from the east. Theirs was a particularly different
: : situation from what the Anglo-Saxons found in Britain.

[snip]

: : You are excluding the clear and obvious parallels between the
: : Rohirrim and virtually all northern European peoples to the
: : point of saying these parallels apply only to the
: : Anglo-Saxons.

: : I can only think of one passage where Tolkien compared the
: : Rohirric speech to that of the Anglo-Saxons, but I did not
: : get the impression from Tolkien that only the Anglo-Saxons
: : spoke "with a slower tempo and more sonorous articulation,
: : than modern urbans". And he made no comment on poetic forms
: : and usages.

: : Also, you keep bringing up "Beowulf". That was not an
: : "Anglo-Saxon" poem. It's generally regarded to be
: : Scandinavian as written down by an Anglo-Saxon. The story,
: : after all, is not about Anglo-Saxons, and it reflects an
: : older time when the Anglo-Saxon world was simply a part of
: : the broader northern world in which many Germanic peoples
: : mingled and exchanged news, stories, and poetry freely.

: That's like saying Hamlet isn't a piece of English literature
: because it is based on Danish folk- lore...

No, Shakespeare was definitely not part of a broader oral tradition as the "Beowulf" poet clearly was. His work was heard throughout the northern world, and it is thought to have been composed at a time when Danes and Swedes could have understood the original language with relative ease.

: ...Beowulf is a heroic poem based on an oral tradition written
: by a probably Mercian English poet in the 8th century. Its
: subject matter concerns the semi-legendary past of Southern
: Scandinavia but reflects conditions of the place and time of
: the poet himself (there are Christian elements in the poem for
: example). Considering that the Angles and the Jutes, who are
: amongst the cultural progenitors of the Anglo-Saxons, both
: lived in Jutland and were the immediate neighbours of the Danes
: (who were in turn the immediate neighbours of the Geats) it
: should come as no surprise that these peoples might share an
: overlapping store of heroic tales.

No arguments here. Nonetheless, the story is essentially Scandinavian, or northern if you prefer, but in the 700s the Anglo-Saxons were very much part of a wider northern world than was contained in England. Their poets were carrying on a tradition Tacitus had recorded 600 years previously. "Widsith" is testimony to the fact the Angles didn't forget their kinship with continental Germans, even if it is older than "Beowulf" by some generations.

The Angles retained strong tribal traditions because more of them moved to Britain than of the Saxons, and when the kings left Jutland for Angle Land they undoubtedly took their scops and the scops' oral traditions with them. And though the Mercians were the "borderers", theirs was the only ancient English dynasty to claim descent from continental kings. They appeared relatively late, around the end of the 500s, and this coincides with the fact that from about 500 to 550 or thereabouts there was a migration out of England by the Germanic tribes while the British held the upper hand.

But after the middle of the 6th century the Saxons began winning significant battles and the great Anglian kingdom was established. Hence, Mercia provides a closer link to the continent than, say, Kent, Sussex, or Wessex, and certainly a closer link to Jutland and the rest of Scandinavia.

: : Nonetheless, England has three more ship-mounds than Rohan,
: : and the Anglo-Saxons (and Danes and Frisians and Norwegians
: : and Celts etc.) all arrived by boat. The Rohirrim got to
: : their land by riding their horses (and/or other means of
: : land-based travel).

: The meagre maritime prowess of the Anglo-Saxons (particularly
: before the advent of the Vikings) just does not merit an
: outright contrast being drawn to the Rohirrim.

"meagre maritime prowess"? Martin, these meagre sailors brought their wives, children, and animals across the stormy North Sea from about 448 to around 600. That's a tradition of around 150 years of "meagre maritime prowess". It's been argued the Anglo-Saxons didn't even mint their own coinage until late in the 7th century (largely because of the finds at Sutton Hoo), and yet currency never wholly disappeared from Britain as the Anglo-Saxons moved in. Southampton's Anglo-Saxons traded with the Franks. London was one of the chief ports of England in Bede's day.

The Anglo-Saxons were never backwards sailors who drifted aimlessly across the Channel in blind hope of reaching land. You do them a great discredit by downplaying their significant maritime tradition, which was never lost. Numerous trade routes between England and the continent have been documented in the 7th and 8th centuries.

An outright contrast between these mercantile Anglo-Saxons who continued to depend on the sea and the Rohirrim who never approached the sea is certainly highly warranted.
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