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A Long Time Ago, in a Middle-Earth Far, Far Away...

© Michael Martinez

In the early 1970s the Charlie Daniels Band hit the pop rock scene with a song called "The Devil Went Down to Georgia". It was common for songs of that period to tell a story, and this one focused on a violin duel between the devil and a good old boy named Johnny. The stakes were a golden fiddle (violin) and Johnny's soul. The devil got his comeuppance, as so often happens in folklore. Scratch, or the devil, is a popular figure in American folklore. He crops up in various places looking for people's souls, tricking people into signing eternity away for usually small stakes. One story ("The Devil and Daniel Webster" by Stephen Vincent Benet) has a famous lawyer defending a poor soul before a jury of demons. The lawyer makes such an impassioned plea he reduces the jury to tears, and they find in favor of the defense, leaving Scratch scratching his head once again. That may be the only story where lawyers are depicted favorably in American folklore. Middle-earth folklore is a bit tame compared to the tall tales we dreamed up for ourselves. There is no one like Pecos Bill and Catfish Sue in the tales passed around Tolkien's imaginary corner of the past, except perhaps for Bandobras Took's invention of the game of golf. Bandobras, called "Bullroarer", led the defense of the Shire in the year 2747 when a band of Orcs from Mount Gram, led by Golfimbul, invaded the Shire from the north. Bandobras met the Orcs in battle near the town of Greenfields, and he reportedly knocked the Orc-leader's head off his shoulders with a club. That's not quite on the scale of Paul Bunyan and Babe the Ox raising the Rocky Mountains, but it's a story which provides a glimpse into Hobbit folklore. We get to see a bit of Gondorian folklore in the making, too, in "The Steward and the King". As Aragorn's coronation cermony begins, Ioreth, the woman who had worked in the Houses of Healing, lectures her cousin from the countryside on who is who in the procession.

'Nay, cousin! they are not boys,' said Ioreth to her kinswoman from Imloth Melui, who stood beside her. 'Those are Periain, out of the far country of the Halflings, where they are princes of great fame, it is said. I should know, for I had one to tend in the Houses. They are small, but they are valiant. Why, cousin, one of them went with only his esquire into the Black Country and fought with the Dark Lord all by himself, and set fire to his Tower, if you can believe it. At least that is the tale in the City. That will be the one that walks with our Elfstone. They are dear friends, I hear....'

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