Editing Farmer Giles of Ham (section)

=== Blunderbuss philology ===

[[File:Dragon pistol.jpg|thumb|left|A [[blunderbuss]] ]]

Another joke puts a question concerning the definition of blunderbuss to "the four wise clerks of Oxenford": "A short gun with a large bore firing many balls or slugs, and capable of doing execution [killing people] within a limited range without exact aim. (Now superseded, in civilised countries, by other firearms.)"{{sfn|Tolkien|1949|p=15}} Tolkien had worked on the ''[[Oxford English Dictionary]]'', and the "four wise clerks" are "undoubtedly" the four lexicographers [[Henry Bradley]], [[William Craigie]], [[James Murray (lexicographer)|James Murray]], and [[Charles Talbut Onions]].<ref>{{cite journal |last=Hyde |first=Paul Nolan |year=1987 |title=J.R.R. Tolkien: Creative Uses of the Oxford English Dictionary |journal=[[Mythlore]] |volume=14 |issue=1 |at=Article 4 |url=https://dc.swosu.edu/mythlore/vol14/iss1/4 }}</ref><!--<ref>{{Cite book |last1=Gilliver |first1=Peter |title=The Ring of Words: Tolkien and the Oxford English Dictionary |title-link=The Ring of Words: Tolkien and the Oxford English Dictionary |last2=Marshall |first2=Jeremy |last3=Weiner |first3=Edmund |publisher=[[Oxford University Press]] |year=2006 |page= }}</ref>-->{{efn|The "Clerk of Oxford" is the narrator in [[Geoffrey Chaucer]]'s ''[[The Clerk's Tale]]''.<!--<ref>{{cite book |last=Bowers |first=John M. |title=Tolkien's Lost Chaucer |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Q5OwDwAAQBAJ |year=2019 |publisher=Oxford University Press |isbn=978-0-19-258029-0 }}</ref>-->}} Tolkien then satirises the dictionary definition by applying it to Farmer Giles's weapon:<ref name="Shippey 1997"/>

<blockquote>
However, Farmer Giles's blunderbuss had a wide mouth that opened like a horn, and it did not fire balls or slugs, but anything that he could spare to stuff in. And it did not do execution, because he seldom loaded it, and never let it off. The sight of it was usually enough for his purpose. And this country was not yet civilised, for the blunderbuss was not superseded: it was indeed the only kind of gun that there was, and rare at that.{{sfn|Tolkien|1949|p=15}}
</blockquote>

The Tolkien scholar [[Tom Shippey]] comments: "Giles's blunderbuss ... defies the definition and works just the same."<ref name="Shippey 1997">{{cite book |last=Shippey |first=Tom |author-link=Tom Shippey |title=[[Tales from the perilous realm|Tales from the Perilous Realm]] |date=1997 |publisher=[[HarperCollins]] |chapter=Introduction}}</ref>