Tolkien Gleanings #455
* Hammond & Scull have issued their latest Addenda and Corrigenda. Including a lengthy page of corrections for The Collected Poems of J.R.R. Tolkien.
* Fine Books, on a forthcoming auction 1963 Tolkien letter which has a mention of the word ‘cram’ as found in “Perry-the-Winkle” (The Adventures of Tom Bombadil)… “Cramsome” is merely hobbitese for “filling” (Tolkien). The auctioneers at the Swann Galleries elaborate further. Their statement that cram was not in 1963 “in common use by English speakers” is true, yet at that time it would still have been understood at private schools and some universities — in which lax students would have to “cram” for their exams. I would imagine one could also find it still in use in the school-story based weekly comics of the time, in that context, and of course in the Molesworth books which were widely read by children. Swann do usefully dig up the following, which suggests that Gimli’s “cram” was possibly a nod to an English Bible produced only five years after the writing of Sir Gawain and The Green Knight…
“In a 1382 edition of the Bible (according to the Oxford English Dictionary), “cramcake” is used to mean a kind of pancake.”
Specifically in the famous Wycliffe Bible, in “Exodus”. There is also a possible food reference in the Ancrene Riwle which Tolkien would have had to investigate, “Gif heo mei sparien eni poure shreaden [shiue]” (“If she might spare me a poor shred”), perhaps implying some form of tear-able and share-able plain cake.
* Artist Matej Cadil considers “Service, Sacrifice, and the Artist’s Calling in Leaf by Niggle”.
* Elfenomeno on “The Hobbit illustrated by Maurice Sendak: the edition that never existed”.
* The Catholic magazine The Tablet has the article “Memorial to J.R.R. Tolkien to be unveiled in Westminster Abbey”. Appears to be free online.
“Stephen Broadbent of Broadbent studio in Chester designed the memorial depicting a tree in a forest […] It will be fashioned by a team including designers, artisans and engineers from Silverlining Furniture in Wrexham.”
* And finally, on eBay, a vintage postcard with a fine embossed rendering of the arms of Tolkien’s Exeter College…
The post rate for a postcard was ½d until 1918, so this is presumably pre-1918.