A Seminal Book

Peter Kreeft writes in the 'Foreword' :

"The Proverbs of Middle-earth is worth reading, for fun as well as for (mental) profit.  Those two are the twin purposes of books: literary critics used to say that a book should ‘please and instruct,’ while an old Arabic proverb says the same thing: ‘Before you shoot the arrow of truth, dip it in honey.’  This book is both a quiver-full of well-pointed arrows, and a large jar of honey.  It is a romp, as well as a thorough and deeply penetrating exploration of its subject."

David, in his Introduction writes :

"And for those, like me, who know that the longer you get to spend in Middle-earth, the better, I hope that this book and its insights scratch a hitherto-unseen itch, and that your future experience of Middle-earth is enriched as a result."

Published by Oloris Publishing today.  DO hope you enjoy it. 

Tomorrow is Publication Day.

Here is a link to the 'Proverbs of Middle-earth' page on the Oloris Website, including a long excerpt, "What Makes a Proverb a Proverb".

All you have to do is click here >>>  Read more about the book 

2 days...

"Arda, the world of which Middle-earth is but a part and The Lord Of The Rings only a chapter, is Tolkien’s Tree, discovered almost by accident as he was busy painting leaves.  The whole marvellous artwork remains as unfinished as Niggle’s picture, but its details—the leaves—are exquisite, reflecting the near-obsessive priorities of their creator.  In investigating one small aspect of the whole, this book is an exercise in leaf-love, in delighting in the details over which Tolkien niggled."

From the 'Introduction'

David Rowe

Orloris Publishing

Just 3 days...

Eala Earendel engla beorhtast

     [Hail Earendel, brightest of angels]

Ofer middangeard monnum sended

     [Above Middle-earth sent unto men]

In his early twenties, Tolkien read the above lines for the rst time. They are part of an eighth century devotional piece called Crist (‘Christ’), writ- ten in Anglo-Saxon by the poet Cynewulf, in which the planet Venus is described in personal and angelic terms, using the name Earendel. ‘I felt a curious thrill,’ Tolkien later remembered, ‘as if something had stirred in me, half wakened from sleep. There was something very remote and strange and beautiful behind those words, if I could grasp it.’

Forty years later, now in Quenya, Cynewulf’s line reappears in The Two Towers: Frodo, holding the Starglass in the great darkness of Shelob’s Lair, cries out Aiya Eärendil Elenion Ancalima!—‘Hail Eärendil, brightest of stars!’—a prayer to the mariner who sails the skies with a Silmaril on his brow. The journey from a fragment of Old English to the pass of Cirith Ungol mirrors the journey of Tolkien’s legendarium as a whole. 

Chapter 5 'The Half-Elven'

David Rowe

$15 from Oloris Publishing.

4 days to go...

"The history of Arda repeatedly shows that it is the libido dominandi—the lust for power—that corrupts.  The virtue of creative liberty, inherent in the Great Music, is twisted by the tyrannical desire to direct and dictate.  In Tolkien’s world, power—when it dominates or seeks to dominate other wills and minds—is evil, but that doesn’t make it any less tempting, even to good people."

From the 'Afterword'

David Rowe

Oloris Publishing  

5 days to go...

[Image: 'The Mountain Path' - J.R.R. Tolkien]

"In the summer of 1911, Tolkien went on a walking holiday in the high Alps, during which he bought a postcard reproduction of a painting called Der Berggeist, ‘The Mountain Spirit’. The painting shows an old man with a white beard and long cloak sitting on a rock under a pine tree, and from whose hand a young deer is eating.

According to Humphrey Carpenter, Tolkien ‘preserved this postcard carefully, and long afterwards he wrote on the paper cover in which he  kept it: ‘Origin of Gandalf’.’ "

David Rowe
Oloris Publishing

6 days to go...

Aragorn’s knowledge of oral tradition is not limited to proverbs: according to Butterbur ‘he can tell a rare tale when he has the mind’; under Weathertop he sings a selection from the Lay Of Leithian (which he clearly knows in multiple languages); faced with the Paths of the Dead he recalls the prophetic-poetic words of Malbeth the Seer; and in the Houses of Healing he recites a Rhyme of Lore:

‘When the black breath blows 

and death’s shadow grows 
and all lights pass,
come athelas! come athelas! 
Life to the dying
In the king’s hand lying! 

In the same way that Gandalf would have recited and repeated such lines and verses in his wanderings as an aid to memory, Aragorn has taken the three strands of oral tradition—songs, stories, and sayings— and made them his companions on his long road. 

Chapter 11 - 'Aragorn'

David Rowe

Oloris Publishing

7 days to the publication of "The Proverbs of Middle-earth"

"When Ingold bars Gandalf’s path at the Rammas, citing the proverb Wish for no strangers in the land as his justification, he is not being rude, only professional. And when Gandalf does him the courtesy of arguing his case—that Pippin, though a ‘stranger,’ should be admitted— with a proverb that would appeal to the military mind (Valour... cannot be computed by stature), Ingold acquiesces and then honours Pippin’s humility, saying Many a doer of great deeds might say no more."

Chapter 10 : 'The Peoples of Gondor'

David Rowe

Oloris Publishing 

8 days to the publication of "The Proverbs of Middle-earth"

"Butterbur and Bree have a paradox at their heart: they are  open yet closed; hospitable yet suspicious; well-informed yet small- minded and ignorant. This incongruity is not without its causes.  Bree is a welcoming place because it has to be – valuable income is  generated from the business of Outsiders – but at the same time, Outside is also where all things dark and dangerous originate, things to be avoided at all costs. Pulled in both directions at once (and with no military strength nor any other means by which to defendthemselves), the underlying fears of the Bree-folk cause them to 

hold anything untoward or alien at arms length ... "

Chapter 3 : 'The Breelanders'

David Rowe

Oloris Publishing

9 days to go to the publication of "The Proverbs of Middle Earth"

"On the long march from Emyn Muil to Mount Doom, Frodo knows that he cannot rely on Sam for more than companionable stolidity, and he is wary of trusting Gollum at all. Proverbs therefore become his primary counsellor at need. Better mistrust undeserved than rash words, he reminds himself when longing and fearing to open up to Faramir; Do not be too eager to deal out death in the name of justice rings through his memory when presented with the chance to kill Gollum; and The servant has a claim on the master for service, even service in fear comes to mind when wishing to be free of his wretched guide."

From Chapter 1 : "'The Hobbits'

David Rowe

Oloris Publishing are now taking pre-publication orders.   

10 days before the publication of "The Proverbs of Middle-earth

"Saruman’s sayings act as a rhetorical technique to shut down debate and to silence others. In this way, he tells the future king of Rohan 'Meddle not in policies which you do not understand', and has the gall to address 'Does an unarmed man come down to speak to robbers out of doors?' to the wizard whom he imprisoned and the king whose kingdom he invaded."

Chapter 4 : 'The Istari'

David Rowe
Oloris Publishing (who are now taking pre-publication orders)

11 days to the publication of "The Proverbs of Middle-earth"

"Whilst not being particularly remarkable in other ways, the Bree-hobbits were famous for, and proud of, being the originators of an addictive art: the smoking of sweet galenas or pipe-weed͛.  This habit, championed in Bree, spread around the known world from that acknowledged epicentre."

Chapter 3: 'The Breelanders'

David Rowe
Oloris Publishing

12 days to the publication of "The Proverbs of Middle-earth"

"Put Hobbits in counsels of war, discerning the devices of evil, and they will fall silent. But get them discussing ale (Proper fourteen-twenty!) or bath-times (A loon is he that will not sing), rivers (Boats are quite tricky enough for those that sit still) or baby-names (Make it short, then you won't have to cut it short), and a wealth of tried-and-tested sayings leap forth."

From Chapter 1 : 'The Hobbits'
David Rowe
Oloris Publishing

13 days to the publication of "The Proverbs of Middle-earth"

... and we have a cover image too.

"Bilbo’s ‘as my father used to say’, Sam’s ‘as my Gaffer used to say’ and Pippin’s ‘as we say in the Shire’ point to an underlying assumption that inherited tradition carries special weight and authority.

From Chapter 1 : 'The Hobbits"

David Rowe 
Oloris Publishing

14 days to the publication of "The Proverbs of Middle-earth"

'[Hobbits] have a fund of wisdom and wise sayings that men have mostly never heard or have forgotten long ago.'    (JRRT – The Hobbit, p.83) 

David Rowe
Oloris Publishing 

15 days to the publication of "The Proverbs of Middle-earth"

“The leaf-mould of Tolkien’s mind was extraordinarily rich.  Like Niggle’s Tree, which started simply only to outgrow even its creator’s capacity to complete it, Arda’s vast tapestry had a long germination process and took on a life of its own…”

From the 'Introduction"

David Rowe
Oloris Publishing

16 days (revised) to the publication of "The Proverbs of Middle-earth"

‘Do not despise the lore that has come down from distant years; for oft it may chance that old wives keep in memory word of things that once were needful for the wise to know.’   (JRRT – The Lord of the Rings, p. 365)

David Rowe

Oloris Publishing

Day 17 (revised) to the publication of "The Proverbs of Middle-earth"

“What we quickly discover is that Tolkien did not merely create hundreds of erudite, apposite, and funny sayings – however great an artistic achievement that is – he also invented entire wisdom traditions in which these sayings belong.”

From the 'Introduction'

David Rowe
Oloris Publishing

Day 18 (revised) to the publication of "The Proverbs of Middle-earth"

“… what is undeniable is that Middle-earth has hundreds of proverbs. Scattered throughout the Tolkien corpus we hear proverbial-sounding sayings in the mouths of every culture and people.”

From the 'Introduction'

David Rowe
Oloris Publishing

Day 19 (revised) - 19 days to the publication of "The Proverbs of Middle-earth"

“Reference to oral tradition is therefore akin to quoting a favourite poet or orator, except that it is not an individual whose wisdom is being cited, but an entire culture. ‘As my old Gaffer used to say…’ is not Sam Gamgee crediting his father as the inventor of an insight, but recognising the person from whom one aspect of Hobbit-sense was most often, or most memorably, received.”

From the 'Introduction'

David Rowe

Oloris Publishing

Day 20 (revised) - 20 days to the publication of "The Proverbs of Middle-earth"

“Proverbs are vessels of transmission, the ships in which wisdom sails. They come into being because of the tremendous value of hard-won wisdom, and the consequent need to pass it on. In the words of Sophocles, wisdom ‘outweighs any wealth’, and in order to share that wealth – to avoid the need for every individual in every generation to relearn the same lessons from scratch – a method or means to preserve and communicate is required.”

From the 'Introduction'

David Rowe

Oloris Publishing

Day 21 (revised) - 21 days to the publication of "The Proverbs of Middle-earth"

"While the proverbs identified in this volume are limited to those from books published in Tolkien’s lifetime – The Hobbit and The Lord Of The Rings – this does not reflect the full range of Arda’s proverbial depth. The Silmarillion, Unfinished Tales, and The Children Of Húrin each contain a further treasure trove of proverbial material, demonstrating that Tolkien’s commitment to convincing inner reality was not a late addition..."

From the 'Introduction'

David Rowe

To be released by Oloris Publishing on the 30th November.  

Advance orders now being taken.

Day 22 (revised) - 22 days to the publication of "The Proverbs of Middle-earth"

Tolkien’s original hope, to provide a mythology for his beloved but generally legend-free England, was far more than a quest for exciting stories. He believed that the creative process of myth-making is nothing short of a sacred task; that humans have a special responsibility to reflect their Creator by becoming sub-creators.

From the 'Introduction'

David Rowe

To be released by Oloris Publishing on the 30th November.  

Advance orders now being taken.

"The Proverbs of Middle-earth" is delayed by a fortnight.

Unfortunately Oloris have delayed publication of "The Proverbs of Middle-earth' by a fortnight... here are the details:

< Click Here >

12 days to the publication of "The Proverbs of Middle-earth"

"Its subject is not only the proverbs of the numerous species and civilizations in Tolkien’s Middle-earth (as its title advertises), but also of the cultures these proverbs express. The short and simple proverbs are the humble little gates into the big, wide, and complex cities of these various cultures."

From the Foreword by Dr. Peter Kreeft (Professor of philosophy at Boston College and The King's College)

To be published by Oloris Publishing on the 18th November