Fastitocalon (poem)

"Fastitocalon" is a medieval-style poem by J. R. R. Tolkien about a gigantic sea turtle. The setting is explicitly Middle-earth. The poem is included in ''The Adventures of Tom Bombadil''.

The work takes its name from a medieval poem of the same name, itself based on the second-century Latin ''Physiologus''.

Origins

The second-century Latin ''Physiologus'' tells of a sea-monster, the '' Aspidochelone''. This is retold in the Old English poem "The Whale", where the monster appears under the name ''Fastitocalon'', in the Exeter Book, folio 96b-97b.

By etymology, the name "Fastitocalon" is a corruption of the Greek ''Aspido-chelōne'', "round-shielded turtle", with the addition of the letter F, according to Tolkien, "simply to make the name alliterate, as was compulsory for poets in his day, with the other words in his line. Shocking, or charming freedom, according to taste".J. R. R. Tolkien, ''The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien'', #255 to Mrs Eileen Elgar, 5 March 1964; Humphrey Carpenter (1981) George Allen & Unwin; Tolkien commented that the tale of the monster that treacherously simulates an island is from "the East", and that the turtle is mixed up with a whale when the story arrives in Europe, so that the Old English version has him feeding like a whale "trawling with an open mouth".

Publication history

Tolkien's first ''Fastitocalon'' poem was published in the '' Stapledon Magazine'' in 1927. A second, heavily revised version appeared in ''The Adventures of Tom Bombadil'' in 1962.J. R. R. Tolkien, ed. Humphrey Carpenter (1981), ''The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien'', George Allen & Unwin, letter 255 (5 March 1964), p.343;

Poem

Fastitocalon, the central character in the poem, is the last of the mighty turtle-fish. This poem is well known to the Hobbits. It tells of how Fastitocalon's huge size, a "whale-island", enticed sailors to land on its back. After the sailors lit a fire upon Fastitocalon, it dived underwater, causing the sailors to drown.

Fastitocalon was at the surface for long enough for vegetation to grow on its back, adding to the illusion that it was an actual island. Fastitocalon was far larger than the largest non-fictional turtle (''Archelon'').

It is never explained whether the turtle-fish were an actual race in Middle-earth or fictional characters created solely for the poem. It is distinctly possible that the story is in fact an allegory of the fall of Númenor. Like the Fastitocalon, Númenor too sank below the waves, and drowned most of its inhabitants.

Reception

Norma Roche writes in ''Mythlore'' that Tolkien makes use of the medieval story of the voyages of Saint Brendan and the Irish ''Immram'' tradition, where a hero sails to the Otherworld, for his vision of the Blessed Realm and seas to the west of Middle-earth, as seen in poems such as "The Sea-Bell" and "Imram", while (as several scholars note) his "Fastitocalon" resembles the tale of Jasconius the whale.

John D. Rateliff notes that Tolkien stated that when he read a medieval work, he wanted to write a modern one in the same tradition. He constantly created these, whether pastiches and parodies like "Fastitocalon"; adaptations in medieval metres, like "The Lay of Aotrou and Itroun" or "asterisk texts" like his "The Man in the Moon Stayed Up Too Late" (from "Hey Diddle Diddle"); and finally "new wine in old bottles" such as "The Nameless Land" and Aelfwine's ''Annals''. The works are extremely varied, but all are "suffused with medieval borrowings", making them, writes Rateliff, "most readers' portal into medieval literature". Not all found use in Middle-earth, but they all helped Tolkien develop a medieval-style craft that enabled him to create the attractively authentic Middle-earth legendarium.

Paul H. Kocher comments that from a land-loving Hobbit point of view, the story warns never to go out on the dangerous sea, let alone try to land on an uncharted island. He groups the poem with "Oliphaunt", which the Hobbit Sam Gamgee recites in Ithilien, and "Cat", where the innocent-looking pet dreams of slaughter and violence, as reworked Bestiary poems.

References

{{J. R. R. Tolkien

Middle-earth poetry

fr:Les Aventures de Tom Bombadil#Fastitocalon