A Response to Caitlin Eha

Abstract

“But when we have done all that research--collection and comparison of the tales of many lands--can do; when we have explained many of the elements commonly found embedded in fairy-stories… as relics of ancient customs once practiced in daily life, or of beliefs once held as beliefs and not ‘fancies’--there remains still a point too often forgotten: that is the effect produced now by these old things in the stories as they are…. Such stories have now a mythical or total (unanalysable) effect, an effect quite independent of the findings of Comparative Folk-lore, and one which it cannot spoil or explain; they open a door on Other Time, and if we pass through, though only for a moment, we stand outside our own time, outside Time itself, maybe.

“If we pause, not merely to note that such old elements have been preserved, but to think how they have been preserved, we must conclude, I think, that it has happened, often if not always, precisely because of this literary effect.” (Tolkien, "On Fairy-Stories" 128-129)