Ioreth is, if anyone can be said to have the honor, J.R.R. Tolkien's patron saint of folklore. A wise old woman who tended the wounded in the wake of Pelennor Fields, it was she who spoke first the old saying that foresaw the return of the King, and she who witnessed in wonder in the Houses of Healing, and later spread word of, the healing hands of the one who had come from the northern wilderness. Neither a loremaster nor a scientist, Ioreth represents the common, countryside people in every land (for she was not of the City but of the flowery vale of Imloth Melui in Lossarnach) who do plain work, contented with the quieter life lived below the doings of kings and captains and stewards, and remembering and passing on things forgotten by others.

Ioreth did not, of course, know of the potency of kingsfoil in the hands of a king, for that lore had passed out of the knowledge of the southern folk, and was held only by the loremasters of the Rangers of the north. Yet she kept the knowledge in its surviving form, of its use in dispelling headaches and “some passing heaviness”. And it is often in such simplistic forms that such knowledge takes in traditional cultures. Moreover, Ioreth is a talker, and it was through her that news of the King's arrival spread through the City: from mouth to ear, in the way of old wives immemorial.

 

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Folklore in Tolkien

One of the ways in which Tolkien is unique among almost all other writers of fantasy is his knowledge of and concern for folkloric and mythic elements. No mere showcase of elves, dwarves and little men, Tolkien's epics are infused at nearly every point with the lore, legends and traditions of England's past. This sets he and other earlier fantasists (e.g., C.S. Lewis, George MacDonald, William Morris, etc.) apart from most modern attempts at genre, which are for the most part but reshufflings of the most superficial elements of such earlier men's work. Even within his writing, Tolkien recognizes the value and importance of lore, legend, tradition, and myth.

“	The green earth, say you? That is a mighty matter of legend, though you tread it under the light of day!	”
	- Aragorn to Eómer, The Two Towers, III, “The Riders of Rohan”

“	How fair are the bright eyes in the grass! Evermind they are called, simbelmynë in this land of Men, for they blossom in all the seasons of the year, and grow where dead men rest.	”
	- Gandalf The Two Towers, III, “The King of the Golden Hall”

“	Is it so long since you listened to tales by the fireside? There are children in your land who, out of the twisted threads of story, could pick the answer to your question.	”
	- Gandalf to Théoden, The Two Towers, III, “The Road to Isengard”

Such are only a few examples. Tolkien, of course, is not the only writer to venerate the lore and traditions of the past (and, though pushed to the enclaves, of the present). Folklorist Dwight F. Reynolds writes, “Books and the media teach us much about the wider world, but the folklore of everyday life is often how we learn to be ourselves.”¹ Southern agrarian John Gould Fletcher wrote of how “we may go through school after school and college after college and emerge more of a fool than the meanest farm laborer, who knows, with precision, from the lore handed down from his fathers, when it is likely to rain, when to sow and reap, and what to give his cattle when they are ailing.”²

Ioreth.org is the website of Michael Henry Lucero, a writer, a husband, a Christian, and a folklorist.

 

 

¹ Dwight F. Reynolds, Arab Folklore: A Handbook, p. 218. ISBN: 9780313333118.

² The Twelve Southerners, I'll Take My Stand: The South and the Agrarian Tradition, "Education, Past and Present", p. 92. ISBN: 9780807103579.