One of the most common words, but not as Gollum says it! It’s a sound-play word which communicates both Gollum’s otherness and the echoey, huge, mysterious underground cavern. This is one of the hisses that is the same in 1937 and 1951 – and in fact they occur in exactly the same phrase in the same numbered paragraph:
The 1937 version is 1937.05.059.
Updated 2016.02.11
Gollum is both a character and a sound that Bilbo hears down in the dark. I’ve wrestled this name back and forth a few times – do I count the name as well as the throat sound in the onomatopoeia analysis? There are clear reasons why or why not. In the end, I did because simply repeating the character’s call-name contributes to the creepy, decaying, scary sound of Chapter 5.
These are instances of the sound in the throat, not the name.
And here’s the name:
It’s not an uncommon word – but we include it because of how Gollum pronounces the plural! It’s a sound-play word!
I look forward to the day when I can add all the eggs in the work, not just the uncommonly spelled ones.
2016.03.25 – and that happy day has come! Eggs seems to be evenly distributed, as closely as such non-robust things can be.
Tolkien added a -y to “creep” in parallel construction to “tricksy”. The “-y” suffix indicates “characterized or full of” and in Old English was spelled “ig”. “Creepsy” is Tolkien’s own original word constructed from his deep understanding of the roots of our language. I’m giving it the onomatopoeia tag for adding an ‘s’ to Gollum’s words where there was none.
“-y, suffix1.” OED Online. Oxford University Press, June 2015. Web. 14 July 2015.
“Bitsy” is an adjective all by itself in the OED. The “-y” suffix indicates “characterized or full of” and in Old English was spelled “ig”. Tolkien uses it uniquely adverbially, replacing “for a bit”, constructed from his deep understanding of the roots of our language. I’m giving it the onomatopoeia tag for adding an ‘s’ to Gollum’s words where there was none.
“-y, suffix1.” OED Online. Oxford University Press, June 2015. Web. 14 July 2015.
“bitsy, adj.” OED Online. Oxford University Press, June 2015. Web. 14 July 2015.
I had a thought that the words we tagged “onomatopoeia” would be steady throughout – they they are among the most-used tools in Tolkien’s kit. Here they are, fairly steady, with two delicious peaks:
There’s Gollum! His delicious sounds which follow that star in Chapter 5 and the goblins’ “Clap! Snap!” and battle sounds before it are the peak of the sound-imagery of the work. Both here and at the local peak in Chapter 9 (which includes snoring, bumping, and grumbling), the uncommon sound words are so plentiful as to account for a good deal of those particular peaks in the uncommon word (red) line.
Just a sneak peek as I prepare the whole graph. Remember these are words labeled “onomatopoeic” or “echoic” or “imitative” by the OED plus the names “Gollum” and “Roäc” and “Carc”.
Before I erase it for the comparison graph, notice the y-axis! Many more sound words than the others – the peak reaches right up to 0.02, half of all the uncommon words in the Chapter 1 low point and Chapter 19 denouement.
Poor Bilbo was betrayed by a headcold noise while trying to hide among the barrel-guiding river people.
“snivel, v.” OED Online. Oxford University Press, March 2015. Web. 1 June 2015.
The early meaning “to look at obliquely” has become a direct stare. Even more interesting, OED suggests that goggle is an onomatopoeic word, expressive of oscillating movement. Ahem. Now we know what sound Gollum’s eyeballs make?
“goggle, v.1.” OED Online. Oxford University Press, March 2015. Web. 1 June 2015.
I learned many years ago from Professor Catriona Parsons that Gàidhlig waulking songs, the work songs which keep the rhythm for hand-fulling woolen cloth, are full of “vocables”. In the first song in the linked video, the group’s words between the solo lines are vocables.
“These are not like fa-la-la,” she said. “They are very ancient sounds and they have meaning, but we have lost the meaning.”
She then taught us very carefully to pronounce these syllables, which usually alternate in the songs with phrases in current lexical use, just as she had heard them growing up on the Isle of Lewis. I fancied that it did not matter if we knew the meaning, as long as those to whom we sang could understand.
Similarly, what’s up with tra-la-la-lally? Corey Olsen, The Tolkien Professor, makes this point: ” tra-la-la-lally
here down in the valley!” [03.014] sounds very much like “tra-la-la-lally” is the name of the thing which is happening down in the valley. These vocables are definitely sound play, only spoken by elves. Do these sounds make those singers a bit alien? Do they remind us that they speak other languages natively? I believe they do. In honor of the play of sound-on-sound in these vocables, I am giving them the ‘Onomatopoeia” tag.
I am separating out the Non-Lexical-Vocables after a bloody morning of trying to find a more suitable word. Haven’t found one yet, might have to ask my fellow scholar Jamie Stinnett.
words that you were saying 