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Middle-Earth Revised, Again - Page 6

© Michael Martinez

And then there are the interviews Tolkien gave concerning his work. While the average commercial newspaper was hardly likely to entice serious comment from Tolkien on Middle-earth's underpinnings, he treated the fan magazines and other small publications with greater dignity. Or, perhaps, they simply had sense enough to ask him the really meaty questions. There are assuredly older Tolkien fans who collected these interviews in the 1960s and 1970s, and it would be interesting to see them brought together in some publishable form. Regrettably, I only have a partial citation from one, but I will share it here. It can still be found in a few places on the Internet. This fragment was provided to me by Chris Seeman, the editor and publisher of Other Hands (no longer in publication, thanks to Tolkien Enterprises). Chris included this citation in an article he wrote titled: "A Journey in the Dark: Reflections on the identity of Queen Beruthiel". Chris' source was Daphne Castell's article, "The Realms of Tolkien", published in New Worlds in November 1966 and reprinted in Carandaith in 1969:

...Most of the allusions to older legends scattered about the tale, or summarized in Appendix A are to things which really have an existence os some kind in the history of which 'The Lord of the Rings' is part. There's one exception that puzzles me: Beruthiel. I really don't know anything of her -- you remember Aragorn's allusion in Book I (page 325) to the cats of Queen Beruthiel, that could find their way home on a blind night? She just popped up, and obviously called for attention, but I don't really know anything certain about her; though, oddly enough, I have a notion that she was the wife of one of the ship-kings of Pelargir. She loathed the smell of the sea, and fish, and the gulls. Rather like Skadi, the giantess, who came to the gods in Valhalla, demanding a recompense for the accidental death of her father. She wanted a husband. The gods all lined up behind a curtain, and she selected the pair of feet that appealed to her most. She thought she'd got Baldur, the beautiful god, but it turned out to be Njord the sea-god, and after she'd married him, she got absolutely fed up with the seaside life, and the gulls kept her awake, and finally she went back to live in Jotunheim. Well, Beruthiel went back to live in the inland city, and went to the bad (or returned to it -- she was a Black Numenorean in origin, I guess). She was one of these people who loathe cats, but cats will jump on them and follow them about -- you know how sometimes they pursue people who hate them? I have a friend like that. I'm afraid she took to torturing them for amusement, but she kept some and used them: trained them to go on evil errands by night, to spy on her enemies or terrify them.

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