Editing Smaug (section)

=== Old English spell ===

{{further|Philology and Middle-earth}}

{| class="wikitable" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; border: none;"
|+ "A low [[Philology|philological]] jest"<ref name=Letter25 group=T/> 
|-
! [[Old English]] !! [[Old Norse]] !! Plain meaning !! Alternatively 
|-
| ''smugan, sméogan''<ref name="Bosworth"/><br/>past tense ''smeah'' || ''smjúga''<ref name="Shippey 2002"/><br/>past tense '''''smaug'''''  || "to creep, to squeeze through a hole" || "to think out, to scrutinise"
|-
| ''wyrm'' || &nbsp; || "worm" || "lizard, reptile, dragon"
|-
| [[File:Lacnunga f.137r spell wið smeogan wyrme (detail).jpg|200px|center]] {{center|''[[Lacnunga]]'', [[Spell (magic)|spell]] (on line 3)<br/> ''wid smeogan wyrme''<ref name="Storms 1948"/>}} || &nbsp; || [[File:Ascaris lumbricoides (Round worm).JPG|100px|center]] {{center|''[Book of] Remedies''<br/> "against a [[Ascariasis|penetrating worm]]"<ref name="Storms 1948"/>}} || "against a crafty dragon"
|}

Tolkien noted, in a joking letter that he was surprised to see published in ''[[The Observer]]'' in 1938, that "the dragon bears as name—a [[pseudonym]]—the past tense of the [[Common Germanic|primitive Germanic]] verb ''smúgan'',<ref name="Bosworth">{{cite encyclopedia |last1=Bosworth |first1=Joseph |author-link=Joseph Bosworth |last2=Toller |first2=T. Northcote |author2-link=Thomas Northcote Toller |chapter-url=http://www.bosworthtoller.com/028182 |chapter=smúgan |title=[[An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary]] | publisher=[[Charles University]] |location=Prague |date=2018}}</ref> to squeeze through a hole: a low [[Philology|philological]] jest."<ref name=Letter25 group=T/> Critics have explored what that jest might have been; an 11th-century medical text ''[[Lacnunga]]'' ("Remedies") contains the Old English phrase ''wid smeogan wyrme'', "against a [[Parasitic worm|penetrating worm]]" in a [[Incantation|spell]],<ref name="Storms 1948">{{cite book |last=Storms |first=Godfrid |title=No. 73. [Wið Wyrme] Anglo-Saxon Magic |date=1948 |publisher=[[Martinus Nijhoff]]; [[D.Litt]] thesis for [[University of Nijmegen]] |location='s-Gravenhage |page=303 |url=https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/16191646.pdf |quote=If a man or a beast has drunk a worm ... Sing this charm nine times into the ear, and once an Our Father. The same charm may be sung ''against a penetrating worm''. Sing it frequently on the wound and smear on your spittle, and take green centaury, pound it, apply it to the wound and bathe with hot cow's urine. ''[[Harley manuscript|MS. Harley]] 585, ff. 136b, 137a (11th century) ([[Lacnunga]]).'' |access-date=24 February 2020 |archive-date=31 July 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200731211147/https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/16191646.pdf |url-status=live }}</ref> which could also be translated "against a crafty dragon". The Old English verb meant "to examine, to think out, to scrutinise",<ref>{{cite book |last=Clark Hall |first=J. R. |author-link=John Richard Clark Hall |title=A Concise Anglo-Saxon Dictionary |date=2002 |orig-year=1894 |publisher=[[University of Toronto Press]] |edition=4th |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ufdQAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA311 |page=311}}</ref> implying "subtle, crafty". Shippey comments that it is "appropriate" that Smaug has "the most sophisticated intelligence" in the book.<ref name="Shippey 2005">{{cite book |last=Shippey |first=Tom |author-link=Tom Shippey |title=The Road to Middle-Earth |date=2005 |edition=Third |orig-year=1982 |publisher=Grafton ([[HarperCollins]]) |isbn=978-0-26110-275-0 |pages=102–104}}</ref> All the same, Shippey notes, Tolkien has chosen the [[Old Norse]] verb ''smjúga'', past tense ''smaug'', rather than the Old English ''sméogan'', past tense ''smeah''—possibly, he suggests, because his enemies were Norse [[Dwarf (Middle-earth)|dwarves]].<ref name="Shippey 2002">{{cite web |last=Shippey |first=Tom |author-link=Tom Shippey |title=Tolkien and Iceland: The Philology of Envy |date=13 September 2002 |url=http://www.nordals.hi.is/Apps/WebObjects/HI.woa/wa/dp?detail=1004508&name=nordals_en_greinar_og_erindi |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071014000303/http://nordals.hi.is/Apps/WebObjects/HI.woa/wa/dp?detail=1004508&name=nordals_en_greinar_og_erindi |archive-date=14 October 2007}}</ref>