The Devil's Coach Horses

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The Devil's Coach Horses is a 1925 essay by J. R. R. Tolkien ("Devil's coach-horse" is a British expression for a particular kind of rove beetle).

Tolkien draws attention to the devil's steeds called eaueres in Hali Meidhad, translated "boar" in the Early English Text Society edition of 1922, but in reference to the jumenta "yoked team, draught horse" of Joel (Joel 1:17), in the Vulgata Clementina computruerunt jumenta in stercore suo[1] (the Nova Vulgata has semina for Hebrew פרדח "grain").

Rather than from the Old English word for "boar", eofor (German Eber) Tolkien derives the word from eafor "packhorse", from a verb aferian "transport", related to Middle English aver "draught-horse", a word surviving in northern dialects. The Proto-Germanic root *ab- "energy, vigour, labour" of the word is cognate to Latin opus.

[edit] References

J. R. R. Tolkien, The devil's coach-horses in: The review of English studies : a quarterly journal of English literature and the English language vol. 1 no. 3 (July 1925), p. 331-6 (London, Sidgwick&Jackson)[2], reprinted 1950 [3].

[edit] External links

v • d • e J. R. R. Tolkien

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 Fiction	The Father Christmas Letters (1976) • 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	A Middle English Vocabulary (1922) • Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (Middle English text, 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 (1936) • 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)

Posthumous Academic	Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Pearl, and Sir Orfeo (Modern English translations, 1975) • Finn and Hengest (1982) • The Monsters and the Critics (1983) • Beowulf and the Critics (2002)