Sigelwara Land
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Sigelwara Land is the title of an essay in two parts by J. R. R. Tolkien, appeared in Medium Aevum Vol. 1, No. 3. December 1932 and Medium Aevum Vol. 3, No. 2. June 1934. It treats the etymology of the Old English word for Ethiopians, Sigelhearwan. Tolkien concluded that, while the meaning of the first element was evidently sigel "Sun", the meaning of the second element hearwan was not recoverable:
- "a symbol ... of that large part of ancient English language and lore which has now vanished beyond recall, swa hit no wære."
The phrase Sigelwara land appears in a free translation of the book Exodus (Codex Junius 11):
- .. be suðan Sigelwara land, forbærned burhhleoðu, brune leode, hatum heofoncolum.
- "... southward lay the Ethiop's land, parched hill-slopes and a race burned brown by the heat of the sun ..."
The mysterious hearwan, adapted to modern English phonology, may be an inspiration of some placenames in Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, viz. Dunharrow, and, less prominently, Underharrow, a placename in Rohan. However, harrow is less mysterious and meant "place for sacrifice", see its cognate Horgr.
The main thrust of Tolkien's argument in this two-part paper seems to have been that "Sigelwara" was a corruption of "Sigelhearwa", and had come to mean something different in its later form than it had in its original. He begins by pointing out that Ethiopians in the earliest writings are presented in a very positive light, but by the time they written of as "Sigelwarans", the perception has become the opposite. He does not speculate why, but instead demonstrates a clear relationship between "sigelwara" and "sigelhearwa" and shows how discovering the original meaning of the word "Sigelhearwa" is almost impossible; that trying to do so must be "for the joy of the hunt rather than the hope of a final kill".
He finishes on a distinctly more tentative note, postulating that the original never referred to human beings but to a legendary demon, and that its later form is used, incorrectly and in a pejorative sense, to represent Ethiopians.
| J. R. R. Tolkien |
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| Bibliography |
| Fiction: Songs for the Philologists (1936) • The Hobbit or There and Back Again (1937) • Leaf by Niggle (1945) • The Lay of Aotrou and Itroun (1945) • Farmer Giles of Ham (1949) • The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth Beorhthelm's Son (1953) • The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (1954), The Two Towers (1954), The Return of the King (1955) • The Adventures of Tom Bombadil and Other Verses from the Red Book (1962) • The Road Goes Ever On (1967) • Tree and Leaf (1964) • The Tolkien Reader (1966) • Smith of Wootton Major (1967) |
| Posthumous publications : The Silmarillion (1977) • Unfinished Tales (1980) • Bilbo's Last Song (1990) • The History of Middle-earth (12 Volumes) (1983–1996) • Roverandom (1998) • The Children of Húrin (2007) |
| Academic Works : A Middle English Vocabulary (1922) • Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (1925) • Some Contributions to Middle-English Lexicography (1925) • The Devil's Coach Horses (1925) • Ancrene Wisse and Hali Meiðhad (1929) • The Name 'Nodens' (1932) • Sigelwara Land parts I and II, in Medium Aevum (1932-34) • Chaucer as a Philologist: The Reeve's Tale (1934) • Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics (1937) • The Reeve's Tale: version prepared for recitation at the 'summer diversions' (1939) • On Fairy-Stories (1939) • Sir Orfeo (1944) • Ofermod and Beorhtnoth's Death (1953) • Middle English "Losenger": Sketch of an etymological and semantic enquiry (1953) • Ancrene Wisse: The English Text of the Ancrene Riwle (1962) • English and Welsh (1963) • Introduction to Tree and Leaf (1964) • Contributions to the Jerusalem Bible (as translator and lexicographer) (1966) • Tolkien on Tolkien (autobiographical) (1966) |
