great sea-dragon, rearing up apocalyptically over the land-habitations of humankind, could both blast with fire and drown with water; but what is most interesting about this is not its specific solution itself as the way it draws together (pentecostal) fire and (baptismal) water in a catastrophic overturning of the mortal world. Who
conceals
such a dragon? God, of course. More to the point, concealment, and unconcealment, are what riddles do, as do divine mysteries.
According to the
Oxford English Dictionary
(a project with which Tolkien was involved for a time, although I am not suggesting he worked on this particular entry) the English word ‘dragon’ derives from Greek δράκων, (
drákōn
), ‘dragon, serpent of huge size, water-snake’, which in turn probably comes from the verb δρακεν (
drakeîn
) ‘to see clearly’. The ironic force of this etymology is rather striking, for it names an imaginary, and therefore (strictly) invisible,beast as precisely
the clearly seen one
. But it is right, of course. Dragons
are
clearly seen, in our cultural imaginary at any rate. And Tolkien’s own love for dragons is clearly connected with what can be seen and what cannot be seen, dramatised in
The Hobbit
with Bilbo’s first encounter with Smaug wearing a ring of invisibility. As with the larger fascination Tolkien’s work manifests with questions of visibility and invisibility, or seeing and blindness, this turns out to be a way of finding dramatic and emblematic mode of rendering the fundamentally evangelical truth—seeing past the epiphenomena of this world to the prime reality of God. ‘Because thou hast seen me’, Christ tells Thomas, ‘thou hast believed; blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed’ (John 20:29).
The second and third riddles of the
Exeter Book
do similar work in elaborating a mysterious connection between destroying oceanic water and saving divine grace. Indeed, the riddles are so closely linked, thematically, that some scholars think we should read all three as one long riddle. Here, again in Crossley-Holland’s translation, is the opening of Riddle 2:
Sometimes I plunge through the press of the waves,
surprising men, delving into the earth,
the ocean bed. The waters ferment,
sea-horses foaming …
The whale-mere roars, fiercely rages,
waves beat upon the shore; stones
and sand, seaweed and saltspray, are flung
against the dunes when, wrestling
far beneath the waves, I disturb the earth,
the vast depths of the sea. Nor can I escape
my ocean bed before he permits me who is my pilot
on every journey.
The riddle concludes by asking ‘tell me, wise man: / who separates me from the sea’s embrace / when the waters become quiet once again?’ The answer provided by scholars is ‘an earthquake under the sea’, or perhaps ‘a storm at sea’. Either answer could be correct. I would suggest, though, that we can also read this riddle in the light of Tolkien’s own ‘Fastitocalon’, a poem he published in
The Adventures of Tom Bombadil
. He took the peculiar name ‘Fastitocalon’ from anAnglo-Saxon bestiary. He explained in a letter to Eileen Elgar (5 March 1964) that the name may have come from ‘
Aspido-chelone
’, which means a round-shield-shaped turtle. Of this proper name ‘
astitocalon
’ is a simple corruption, although the initial ‘f’, according to Tolkien, was an unwarranted addition to make the word alliterate with the rest of the line in which it appears ‘as was compulsory for poets in his day’. 10 The actual line is:
þam is noma cenned / fyrnstreama geflotan Fastitocalon
, which means ‘he is given a name / the first-stream floating one, Fastitocalon’. Tolkien goes on to consider the widely-used trope of the treacherous location at which sailors moor thinking it an island, but which is actually a semi-submerged ocean monster. He thinks this myth derives ‘from the East’, and that it may embody some exaggerated memories of
conceals
such a dragon? God, of course. More to the point, concealment, and unconcealment, are what riddles do, as do divine mysteries.
According to the
Oxford English Dictionary
(a project with which Tolkien was involved for a time, although I am not suggesting he worked on this particular entry) the English word ‘dragon’ derives from Greek δράκων, (
drákōn
), ‘dragon, serpent of huge size, water-snake’, which in turn probably comes from the verb δρακεν (
drakeîn
) ‘to see clearly’. The ironic force of this etymology is rather striking, for it names an imaginary, and therefore (strictly) invisible,beast as precisely
the clearly seen one
. But it is right, of course. Dragons
are
clearly seen, in our cultural imaginary at any rate. And Tolkien’s own love for dragons is clearly connected with what can be seen and what cannot be seen, dramatised in
The Hobbit
with Bilbo’s first encounter with Smaug wearing a ring of invisibility. As with the larger fascination Tolkien’s work manifests with questions of visibility and invisibility, or seeing and blindness, this turns out to be a way of finding dramatic and emblematic mode of rendering the fundamentally evangelical truth—seeing past the epiphenomena of this world to the prime reality of God. ‘Because thou hast seen me’, Christ tells Thomas, ‘thou hast believed; blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed’ (John 20:29).
The second and third riddles of the
Exeter Book
do similar work in elaborating a mysterious connection between destroying oceanic water and saving divine grace. Indeed, the riddles are so closely linked, thematically, that some scholars think we should read all three as one long riddle. Here, again in Crossley-Holland’s translation, is the opening of Riddle 2:
Sometimes I plunge through the press of the waves,
surprising men, delving into the earth,
the ocean bed. The waters ferment,
sea-horses foaming …
The whale-mere roars, fiercely rages,
waves beat upon the shore; stones
and sand, seaweed and saltspray, are flung
against the dunes when, wrestling
far beneath the waves, I disturb the earth,
the vast depths of the sea. Nor can I escape
my ocean bed before he permits me who is my pilot
on every journey.
The riddle concludes by asking ‘tell me, wise man: / who separates me from the sea’s embrace / when the waters become quiet once again?’ The answer provided by scholars is ‘an earthquake under the sea’, or perhaps ‘a storm at sea’. Either answer could be correct. I would suggest, though, that we can also read this riddle in the light of Tolkien’s own ‘Fastitocalon’, a poem he published in
The Adventures of Tom Bombadil
. He took the peculiar name ‘Fastitocalon’ from anAnglo-Saxon bestiary. He explained in a letter to Eileen Elgar (5 March 1964) that the name may have come from ‘
Aspido-chelone
’, which means a round-shield-shaped turtle. Of this proper name ‘
astitocalon
’ is a simple corruption, although the initial ‘f’, according to Tolkien, was an unwarranted addition to make the word alliterate with the rest of the line in which it appears ‘as was compulsory for poets in his day’. 10 The actual line is:
þam is noma cenned / fyrnstreama geflotan Fastitocalon
, which means ‘he is given a name / the first-stream floating one, Fastitocalon’. Tolkien goes on to consider the widely-used trope of the treacherous location at which sailors moor thinking it an island, but which is actually a semi-submerged ocean monster. He thinks this myth derives ‘from the East’, and that it may embody some exaggerated memories of
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