The J. R. R. Tolkien Companion and Guide: Volume 3: Reader’s Guide PART 2. Christina Scull
According to Tom Shippey, C.T. Onions pronounced his surname not like the vegetable but ‘On-aye-ons’, and ‘unlike Tolkien he retained a Birmingham accent through his life’ (‘History in Words: Tolkien’s Ruling Passion’, in The Lord of the Rings, 1954–2004: Scholarship in Honor of Richard E. Blackwelder, ed. Wayne G. Hammond and Christina Scull (2006), p. 26).
See further, J.A.W. Bennett, ‘Charles Talbut Onions, 1873–1965’, in Proceedings of the British Academy 65 (1979).
Orcs. Two essays, a note, and an extract, published with notes and commentary as texts VIII, IX, and X in the section ‘Myths Transformed’ of *Morgoth’s Ring (1993), pp. 408–24.
Text VIII is a short essay, entitled Orcs, which *Christopher Tolkien describes as ‘very much a record of “thinking with the pen”’ (Morgoth’s Ring, p. 409). The Orcs posed a major problem for Tolkien as he recognized at the beginning of the essay: ‘Their nature and origin require more thought. They are not easy to work into the theory and system …. As the case of Aulë and the Dwarves shows [see *‘Of Aulë and Yavanna’], only Eru could make creatures with independent wills, and with reasoning powers. But Orcs seem to have both …’ (p. 409). In September 1954 Tolkien had written to Peter Hastings that because Eru had given
special ‘sub-creative’ powers to certain of His highest created beings: that is a guarantee that what they devised and made should be given the reality of Creation. Of course within limits, and of course subject to certain commands or prohibitions. But if they ‘fell’, as the Diabolus Morgoth did, and started making things ‘for himself, to be their Lord’, these would then ‘be’ real physical realities in the physical world, however evil they might prove …. They would be … creatures begotten of Sin, and naturally bad. (I nearly wrote ‘irredeemably bad’; but that would be going too far. Because by accepting or tolerating their making – necessary to their actual existence – even Orcs would become part of the World, which is God’s and ultimately good.) But whether they could have ‘souls’ or ‘spirits’ seems a different question; and since in my myth at any rate I do not conceive of the making of souls or spirits, things of an equal order if not an equal power to the Valar, as a possible ‘delegation’, I have represented at least the Orcs as pre-existing real beings on whom the Dark Lord has exerted the fullness of his power in remodelling and corrupting them, not making them. [Letters, p. 195]
In other words, the Orcs were not ‘made’ by Morgoth but only corrupted and, as Tolkien describes them elsewhere in the letter, ‘fundamentally a race of “rational incarnate” creatures’ (p. 190). The only question was whom or what had Morgoth corrupted to produce them.
Up until at least 1954 Tolkien’s solution was that Morgoth transformed captured Elves into Orcs. Towards the end of the 1950s his opinion seems to have shifted, however, to the idea that Orcs had been bred from both Elves and Men, but primarily Men (see *Notes on Motives in the Silmarillion, another of the texts in ‘Myths Transformed’). Probably at this time he also added a note in the Annals of Aman (*Annals of Valinor), originally written c. 1951, beside a statement that Orcs were believed to be corrupted Elves: ‘Alter this. Orcs are not Elvish’ (Morgoth’s Ring, p. 80). In the present essay, which dates probably from 1959, he now considered other possibilities for the origin of Orcs, and ultimately decided that ‘“talking” is not necessarily the sign of the possession of a “rational soul”’, and therefore Orcs were ‘beasts of humanized shape (to mock Men and Elves) deliberately perverted/converted into a more close resemblance to Men’ (p. 410) – though possibly there was an Elvish or Mannish strain also.
In the untitled text IX, undated but probably from also from the late 1950s, Tolkien reiterated: ‘One point only is certain: Melkor could not “create” living “creatures” of independent wills’ (p. 413). He decided that Orcs had a mixed origin, not only from corruptions of Elves and Men, but also from corrupted minor spirits.
Text X contains the first two paragraphs of Appendix C of *Quendi and Eldar, ‘Elvish Names for Orcs’, and another essay entitled Orcs. Both probably date from 1959–60. Deliberately bypassing the question of the ultimate origin of Orcs, the extract describes them as bred by Morgoth in ‘mockery of the Children of Ilúvatar, wholly subservient to his will, and nursed in an unappeasable hatred of Elves and Men’. Nevertheless they are ‘living creatures, capable of speech and of some crafts and organization, or at least capable of learning such things from higher creatures or from their Master’ (p. 416). But it was unlikely that the Eldar had met any orcs before they began their march into the West.
This seems to have led Tolkien to compose on his typewriter a four-page essay on Orcs, which he attached to Quendi and Eldar. Prior to Tolkien’s proposed revision of the cosmology of Arda in the late 1950s, Men awoke only with the rising of the Sun, formed from the last fruit of the tree Laurelin after the destruction of the Two Trees, and therefore could not have been corrupted to form Orcs, who were abundant in Middle-earth before this event. But once the Sun was conceived as having been in existence since the beginning, the awakening of Men could be placed far back in the history of Middle-earth, though not, Tolkien decided, before most of the Elves followed Oromë on the Great March to the West. This, however, also posed a chronological problem, since Melkor had been taken prisoner to Aman before the March began. Orcs, like Men, were short-lived; and ‘it became clear in time that undoubted Men could under the domination of Morgoth or his agents in a few generations be reduced almost to the Orc-level of mind and habits’ (p. 418).
In the essay Tolkien seems also to be trying to explain why Orcs were treated differently from other servants of Morgoth or Sauron:
Though of necessity, being fingers of the hand of Morgoth, they must be fought with the utmost severity, they must not be dealt with in their own terms of cruelty and treachery. Captives must not be tormented, not even to discover information for the defence of the homes of Elves and Men. If any Orcs surrendered and asked for mercy, they must be granted it, even at a cost. ([footnote:] Few Orcs ever did so in the Elder Days, and at no time would any Orc treat with any Elf ….] [p. 419]
The essay continues with a discussion of Orcs in the Second and Third Ages under Sauron, who ‘achieved even greater control over his Orcs than Morgoth had done’ (p. 419). This suggests a solution to the chronological problem: the idea of breeding Orcs came from Morgoth, but the accomplishment was left to Sauron, who was able to continue with the programme in the long years of Morgoth’s captivity in Aman.
Accompanying one copy of the typescript of text X are two notes written almost a decade later on versos of papers dated 10 November 1969. One discusses the spelling orc versus ork, the other the ability of Morgoth to reduce Orcs to ‘puppets’ but at a great expense of his power, and therefore this was the case for only a small part of their numbers.
Ósanwe-kenta see Quendi and Eldar
Otley (Yorkshire). From mid-April to mid-May 1916 Tolkien took an army course at the Northern Command and Ripon Training Centre Signalling School, based in Farnley Park, Otley, a market town north-west of *Leeds. Within the park is Farnley Hall, built in 1581 with an eighteenth-century addition.
Otsan. List, detailing the week as defined by the Elves, published as part of ‘Otsan and Kainendan’, pp. 16–22 in ‘Early Qenya Fragments’ in Parma Eldalamberon 14 (2003), edited with commentary and notes by Patrick Wynne and Christopher Gilson.
The full title of the list is The Otsan or Otsola (oglad) of the Elves. In this the Qenya (later Quenya, see *Languages, Invented) names for a seven-day week, derived from terms in the *Qenyaqetsa, are equated to English names, and each is also associated with names and domains of responsibility of the Valar (or Children of the Valar). Wednesday, the first day of the week, is linked to Manwë and Varda, perhaps ‘to create an association between Manwe, Lord of the Valar, and Woden (Odin), chief of the Germanic gods after whom Wednesday is named … while still according Manwe the honour of having his day come first in the week’ (pp. 19–20).