Hall, whose D.Phil. thesis is A History of the Scandinavian Influence on the English Language. He proposes that the General Board of the Faculties be asked to initiate legislation for a Diploma in Comparative Philology (as suggested during summer 1927 by the Boards of Faculties of Literae Humaniores, of English Language and Literature, of Medieval and Modern Languages, and Oriental Languages). The English Faculty Board is to be represented on the Committee for Comparative Philology by two members, including the Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon. The Board endorses Tolkien’s proposal. Also during this meeting Tolkien presents the report of the examiners in the 1927 English Honour School, written by himself on behalf of the committee (Tolkien, Ernest de Selincourt, A.O. Belfour, and F.P. Wilson).
5 November 1927 Tolkien certifies that Julia Maud Keays-Young has completed course work towards her B.Litt.
9 November 1927 Tolkien attends a Pembroke College meeting.
16 November 1927 Tolkien and Eugène Vinaver examine Daniel Ferguson Aitken of Balliol College viva voce on his B.Litt. thesis, A Study of the English Romance of Sir Tristrem in Relation to Its Sources, at 11.00 a.m. in the Examination Schools.
21 November 1927 Tolkien and Vinaver sign their report on the examination of D.F. Aitken.
23 November 1927 Tolkien attends a Pembroke College meeting.
27 November 1927 The Arthurian Society is formed (*Societies and clubs), with Eugène Vinaver as its first Honorary President. Tolkien will become a member.
2 December 1927 Tolkien certifies that A.C. Corlett of St Edmund Hall is qualified to be a full B.Litt. student, with the thesis The Phonology of the Vowels in the Poems of B. Mus. MS Nero Ax (Sir Gawain, Pearl, Patience, Purity) with Special Reference to the Treatment of Middle English.
9 December 1927 Tolkien attends an English Faculty Board meeting. The Applications Committee has appointed Tolkien and E.V. Gordon examiners of the B.Litt. thesis of Julia Maud Keays-Young, England and the English in the Icelandic Sagas. It has also appointed Tolkien supervisor of B.Litt. student A.C. Corlett, and of advanced student H.M. Buckhurst of St Hugh’s College. Miss Buckhurst’s thesis to be The Historical Grammar of Old Icelandic. – Tolkien also attends a Pembroke College meeting.
10 December 1927 Michaelmas Full Term ends.
21 December 1927 Tolkien, as ‘Father Christmas’, writes a letter dated 21 December to the entire Tolkien family as well as Aslaug (one of the Icelandic au pair girls) and Jennie Grove, who usually spends Christmas with the Tolkiens. Father Christmas has heard from Michael and Christopher but not John, whom he assumes will soon be too big to hang up a stocking. He tells how the Man in the Moon came to visit him on 7 December, fell asleep, and was pushed under the sofa by the North Polar Bear. With the Man absent from the moon, dragons came out and obscured its light (surely a reference to the lunar eclipse that occurred on 8 December). With this is an illustration of the North Pole with no moon or Northern Lights, lit only by a comet and stars.
Christmas 1927 Tolkien probably writes out the first manuscript of Roverandom during the holidays.
c. 1928 In or around 1928 Tolkien begins to write a series of poems which he calls collectively *‘Tales and Songs of Bimble Bay’. These include The Bumpus (see *Perry-the-Winkle), *The Dragon’s Visit, *Glip, Poor Old Grabbler (later Old Grabbler), *Progress in Bimble Town, and A Song of Bimble Bay. – Tolkien also makes many paintings and drawings (see also entries for July through September), including The Wood at the World’s End (in two versions; Artist and Illustrator, fig. 60; ; Art of The Hobbit, fig. 99); a decorative frieze with a peacock; a flowering tree with a bird (Pictures, no. 42); a page with drawings of realistic flowers, possibly to precede a ‘Tree of Amalion’ drawing (see entry for July–August 1928); and Maddo, a gloved hand crawling down a curtain, and Owlamoo, a sinister owl-like creature, both drawn to exorcise bogeys imagined by young Michael Tolkien (Artist and Illustrator, figs. 78–79). The preceding are all dated ‘1928’. An undated drawing of three friezes in The Book of Ishness, incorporating favourite motifs of waves, clouds, mountains, moons, and stars (Artist and Illustrator, fig. 59), is probably also made around this time, as are two unusual drawings in a geometric style, one entitled Moonlight on a Wood, accompanying but not part of The Book of Ishness (Artist and Illustrator, fig. 61; Life and Legend, p. 4).
1928 The new Committee for Comparative Philology begins to meet this year. As Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon, Tolkien is a member of the Committee, and will continue to be a member until Michaelmas Term 1960. – Evidently at some time this year Tolkien hands over notes he has written for the Clarendon Chaucer to George S. Gordon, so that Gordon can assist in their reduction. – Poetic Diction: A Study in Meaning by *Owen Barfield is published. It will come to have a profound influence on Tolkien. Barfield and Tolkien had became acquainted earlier in the 1920s through their mutual friend C.S. Lewis. – Otto Jespersen invents an artificial language, ‘Novial’. Tolkien will refer to it as ‘ingenious, and easier than Esperanto, but hideous’ (The British Esperantist, May 1932, p. 182).
12 January 1928 A New Glossary of the Dialect of the Huddersfield District by Walter E. Haigh, which includes a foreword by Tolkien, is published.
22 January 1928 Hilary Full Term begins. Tolkien’s scheduled lectures and classes for this term are: Beowulf and The Fight at Finnesburg on Tuesdays and Thursdays at 11.00 a.m. in the Examination Schools, beginning 24 January; The Prose of Sweet’s Anglo-Saxon Reader on Thursdays at 10.00 a.m. in the Examination Schools, beginning 26 January; and Germanic Philology (Class) on Fridays at 12.00 noon in the Examination Schools, beginning 27 January.
Hilary Term 1928 Tolkien reads a paper, The Chill Barbarians of the North, at a meeting of the Newman Society in Oxford. The Tablet for 7 April 1928 will report that Tolkien, ‘the newly appointed Professor of Anglo-Saxon, criticized the views associated with Mr. [Hilaire] Belloc and maintained that the Northern culture was quite as real as the Latin, and that so far as observation of foreign lands was concerned the Romans were stupid and devoid of imagination’ (‘University Notes’, p. 467; the writer for The Tablet maintains that ‘our literary inspiration has been Greek, apart from our own Northern sentiment and delight in wild nature which is the antithesis of either the Greek or Latin spirit’).
2 February 1928 Tolkien attends an English Faculty Library Committee meeting at 2.15 p.m. in the Library. The members discuss the purchase of new books and decide for the moment to concentrate on Philology, and to acquire the books recommended by Professor Tolkien.
10 February 1928 At a meeting of the English Faculty Board, in Tolkien’s absence, he is appointed to a committee ‘to consider the position of language teaching for men undergraduates’, i.e. whether it is ‘desirable that male candidates in the English School should receive special tuition in the linguistic branch of their studies’ (Oxford University Archives FA 4/5/1/1). – Tolkien and E.V. Gordon examine Julia Maud Keays-Young of the Society of Oxford Home-Students viva voce on her B.Litt. thesis, England and the English in the Icelandic Sagas, at 10.00 a.m. in the Examination Schools. Tolkien writes out their report.
29 February 1928 Tolkien attends a Pembroke College meeting.
14 March 1928 Tolkien attends a Pembroke College meeting.
16 March 1928 Tolkien attends an English Faculty Board meeting. He is appointed to a committee to draft a scheme of lectures for 1928–9.
17 March 1928 Hilary Full Term ends.
Late March–early April 1928 During the Easter vacation