House of the Wolfings: The William Morris Book that Inspired J. R. R. Tolkiena *s The Lord of the Rings Read Free

exist and have been published in The Silmarillion and Unfinished Tales . In addition, many of the attempted
plots and variations in plot that lie behind The Lord of
Rings have been included in Christopher Tolkien’s “History of
Middle-earth” series. But almost all lack the wide appeal of
Tolkien’s masterpiece. What he left behind is as fragmentary and
incomplete (and thus as uninteresting for most readers) as the
Northern tales he loved so much. For completed tales like
Tolkien’s, we must turn to one of his richest literary sources. We
must turn to William Morris.
    C. S. Lewis would have agreed. Morris’
stories, he wrote, provide readers with “a pleasure so
inexhaustible that after twenty or fifty years of reading they find
it worked so deeply into all their emotions as to defy analysis.”
Morris’ stories were almost certainly among those Lewis meant when
he told Tolkien, “if they won’t write the kind of books we want to
read, we shall have to write them ourselves.”
    Readers should keep one thing in mind. In
Morris, you won’t find an epic as broad or as extraordinarily
complex as Tolkien’s tale of the Ring. Instead you find stories
having the same flavor, with heroes and heroines from long ago
fighting to stay free in a hostile and dangerous world. You will
find descriptions of forests and nature every bit as marvelous as
anything in Tolkien and tales that stresses the importance of
remaining loyal to those close to us, whatever the cost. Finally,
you’ll find something Tolkien is often accused of neglecting, warm
romances between men and women.
    In short, if you like what Tolkien wrote
about Aragorn and his Rangers, if you admire the bravery of the
Riders of Rohan, if you long for more tales of travel in an
unspoiled wilderness, and if you wish that Tolkien had more to say
about the courage of women or about romance between men and women,
then you’ll be delighted by tales from the pen of William
Morris.
    We should always remember that William
Morris, the writer who delighted and inspired Tolkien, can also
delight and inspire those who love the marvelous stories that
Tolkien wrote.

Introduction to The Roots of the
Mountains
    by Michael W. Perry

    In J. R. R. Tolkien’s great epic, The
Lord of the Rings , the climax of the Council of Elrond comes
when the decision is made that “the Ruling Ring must be destroyed.”
When the noon-bell rings, a silence falls on the group as they
ponder who will take up this seemingly impossible task. At that
moment Frodo, the central character in the tale, is filled with
dread, “A overwhelming longing to rest and remain at peace by
Bilbo’s side in Rivendell filled all his heart.” With a great
effort, he makes his choice, “I will take the Ring,” he said,
“though I do not know the way.”
    In this earlier tale by Morris, the central
actor, Thiodolf, faces a similar choice, one linked to a magical
hauberk (a coat of chain mail) rather than a Ring. Like Frodo, he
must choose either to live, remaining close to someone he loves
(Wood-Sun) or face the near certainty that he will die defending
his people.
    Morris said as much in a 1888 letter when he
wrote that The House of the Wolfings “is a story of the life
of the Gothic tribes on their way through Middle Europe, and their
first meeting with the Romans in war. It is meant to illustrate the
melting of the individual into the society of the tribes: I mean
apart from the artistic side of things that is its moral—if it has
one.”
    Although it is no more than a coincidence,
both Frodo and Thiodolf see in its starkness the choice they must
make in the fourteenth chapter of their respective tales. For Frodo
the choice was clear beyond doubt. He must carry the Ring to
Mordor. But for Thiodolf, the choice was at that time no more than
a dark suspicion, “that a curse goeth with the hauberk, then either
for the sake of the folk I will not wear the gift and the curse,
and I shall die in great glory, and because