Farmer Giles of Ham
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"Farmer Giles of Ham" is a short story written by J. R. R. Tolkien in 1937 and published in 1949. The story describes a series of encounters between Farmer Giles and a wily dragon named Chrysophylax. It is set in a fantasy Great Britain of long ago, which has mythical creatures, medieval knights, and primitive firearms; it is not connected to the author's Middle-earth legendarium, apart from the fact that Middle-earth is distantly connected to Great Britain (see The Book of Lost Tales), as both this and Middle-earth are intended to be "English mythology". It is happily anachronistic, and is more like a folk-tale than the sweeping epics which Tolkien is better known for.
The book was originally illustrated by Pauline Baynes.
Farmer Giles (or Ægidius Ahenobarbus Julius Agricola de Hammo) was not a hero. He was fat and red-bearded and enjoyed a slow, comfortable life. One day a rather deaf and short-sighted giant blundered on to his land. Farmer Giles managed to scare him away with a blunderbuss shot in its general direction. The people of the village cheered: Farmer Giles was a hero. His reputation spread far and wide across the kingdom. Giles was rewarded by the King of the Middle Kingdom, with a sword named Caudimordax or "Tailbiter", a powerful weapon against dragons.
The giant reports to its monstrous friends that there are no more knights, just stinging flies (actually scrap metal from Giles' blunderbuss), in the Middle Kingdom. This prompts a dragon, Chrysophylax Dives, to investigate the area — and everyone turns to the accidental hero Farmer Giles to deal with it.
The story makes light of the great dragon-slaying traditions. The knights who are supposed to do the job are useless fops more intent on "precedence and etiquette" than on noticing huge dragon footprints littering the landscape; the only 'dragon' they ever see is in the form of an annual cake. Giles is also an interesting commentary on how people react to danger. Heroes aren't simply called for, they are demanded and hapless farmers can be forced to become heroes.
The Latin names and references imply that Giles is a Briton, a late generation remnant of the old empire after the decline of the western authority of the Romans. All the Giles place-names are supposed to occur relatively close to Oxford, along the Thames or on the route from London to Oxford.
Among the jokes is a question put to "the four wise clerks of Oxenford"; Tolkien then quotes from the Oxford English Dictionary. Tolkien had worked for Henry Bradley, one of the four main editors of the OED. The phrase "wise clerk of Oxenford" is also a reference to Chaucer's Clerk.
Farmer Giles of Ham is sometimes published in an omnibus edition with Smith of Wootton Major, another Tolkien novella with illustrations by Pauline Baynes.
| 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) • The History of The Hobbit (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) |
