Editing Farmer Giles of Ham (section)

=== Parody dragon-slaying tale ===

[[File:St George enamel icon (Georgia).jpg|thumb|upright|Chrysophylax was brought back to the city, tamed, as in the story of [[Saint George and the Dragon]].<ref name="Lakowski 2015"/> 15th-century Georgian icon. ]]

Romuald Lakowski describes ''Farmer Giles of Ham'' as a "delightful, and even in places brilliant, parody of the traditional dragon-slaying tale."<ref name="Lakowski 2015"/> The parody has many strands. The hero is a farmer, not a knight; the dragon is a coward, and is not killed, but tamed and forced to return his treasure.<ref name="Lakowski 2015"/> Lakowski derives Chrysophylax both from medieval dragons and from comic stories contemporary with Tolkien, like [[E. Nesbit|Edith Nesbit]]'s ''The Dragon Tamers'' and [[Kenneth Grahame]]'s ''[[The Reluctant Dragon (short story)|The Reluctant Dragon]]''.<ref name="Lakowski 2015"/> The story embodies a charter myth, in which Giles's descendants have a dragon on their crest because of his deeds. Further, it serves as a local legend, with mock etymologies of actual place-names.<ref name="Lakowski 2015">{{cite journal |last=Lakowski |first=Romuald I. |year=2015 |title='A Wilderness of Dragons': Tolkien's Treatment of Dragons in Roverandom and Farmer Giles of Ham |journal=[[Mythlore]] |volume=34 |issue=1 |at=Article 8 |url=https://dc.swosu.edu/mythlore/vol34/iss1/8 }}</ref> 

Giles's cowardly talking dog Garm is named for [[Garmr|the terrifying dog of the Norse underworld]].<ref name="Lakowski 2015"/><ref Name="Drout 2007">{{cite book |last=Hargrove |first=Gene |chapter=Farmer Giles |title=[[The J. R. R. Tolkien Encyclopedia]] |editor-last=Drout |editor-first=Michael D. C. |editor-link=Michael D. C. Drout |year=2013 |orig-year=2007 |publisher=[[Routledge]] |isbn=978-0-415-96942-0 |pages=198–199 |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=B0loOBA3ejIC&pg=PA198}}</ref> Giles's magic [[Naming of weapons in Middle-earth|named sword]] may derive partly from Norse myth, too; the god [[Freyr]] had a sword that could fight by itself. As for the fight with the dragon, the wounding of the monster's wing echoes an episode in [[Edmund Spenser|Spenser]]'s ''[[The Faerie Queene]]''. Other allusions may include the legend of [[Saint George and the Dragon]], as that dragon was brought back to the city, tamed, and led with the girdle of a maiden round its neck; and the [[Völsunga saga]], as the dragon's cave sounds much like [[Fáfnir]]'s.<ref name="Lakowski 2015"/>