Before I encountered the works of Tolkien in childhood, I was already an enthusiast for maps, scripts, ancient languages, and mythology. Naturally Tolkien’s world took my imagination by storm. And so, after reading The Lord of the Rings at the age of twelve, I wrote a few chapters of an embarrassingly bad imitation story, accompanied by maps full of invented place names. These names were not, however, underpinned by that vital basis, a fully functioning language from which the names could be drawn, or to which they could at least be linked: this was beyond me at that age. I did, however, invent four brief utterances formed of made-up words; and these, strangely, survived almost unchanged through all the successive stages that led, after sixty years, to the present undertaking.
During my teenage years I repeatedly tried to create stories that would fuse the atmosphere of C. S. Lewis’s Narnia with my pseudo-Tolkien world. This never really worked. Then, as a student, with all the emotional intensity of that period of life, I shifted to trying to capture something of a Tolkien-like world in mythological or legendary poems. A poetry-writing friend thought they were pretty bad, so I put them aside in shame.
But I did manage to write standalone prose pieces that have some good qualities. Most notably, at the age of seventeen, while accompanying my parents at a conference in Leeds, I wrote the story ‘Ingos in Aphelos’, and felt that I was on to something. When, at the age of seventy-one, I came to key it into a computer file, I persuaded myself that there was a viable ‘legendarium’ latent in the materials that had come down from my teenage and student years.
Intermittently, during the intervening fifty or so years, I had attempted to invent languages. But I never lost sight of the need for a ‘legendarium’ in which these languages could live and move. All this time I continued to read and study Tolkien’s work, and in about 2004 I also began writing about his relationship with language. By about ten years ago, as a result of occasional tinkering in moments of spare time, I had the beginnings of a workable invented language, waiting for a narrative in which it could be embedded.
But then, a few years later, for some reason that I can’t recall, I was suddenly impelled to write the scene ‘The forging of Gantzor the Coldsword’. The character of Dreygan, the forger of a great Sword, had existed from the very earliest teenage sketches, but many of the other elements seemed to come to life from nowhere, most notably the person of Slungandi, Drumster of the Deep, who had no antecedents in my imagination — though no doubt readers will see in him a blend of Gollum, Loki, and perhaps even Puck. Also, importantly, it gave rise to a glossary, with little bits of etymology, drawing upon the language already mentioned.
At this time I was busy keying numerous old family documents into computer files. The fantasy writings of my younger years, together with drawings, scripts, and maps, had been preserved in a dilapidated box file alongside these family letters and diaries. So I thought I might as well type out all these ‘legendarium’ and language materials (apart from the cringeworthy early adventure narratives) just to see where it led me. It led not only to the rediscovery and reappraisal of ‘Ingos in Aphelos’, but also to the realization that these various scrappy attempts at devising a legendarium contained elements that might be made to work together in a mythical world that was different from Tolkien’s Middle-earth, and, while inevitably inferior to it, possibly interesting to read about.
These tales are in many ways derivative. I acknowledge the influence of J. R. R. Tolkien in every exercise of imagination behind them. They stem from a childhood desire to emulate, however feebly, his towering achievement. And I am sure that I am in no way unique in that. But I hope there are also original elements.
For one thing, I have not attempted to introduce the various humanoid races (elves, dwarves, ents, orcs) of Tolkien, though my own invented ones bear strong resemblances to them.
Additionally, my inventions are not developed from Old English, Old Norse, and other real-world elements in the way Tolkien’s were, though I have borrowed both narrative motifs and sound patterns.
I’ve tried to avoid writing in the novelistic genre of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. I haven’t focused the reader’s identification on particular homely characters, like the hobbits. I’ve tried to invent a series of folk tales or fairy stories about legendary characters. Those that occur earlier in the legendary history are vaguely inspired by compilations like the Kalevala.
Of course, I’ve introduced a struggle between good and evil, but I’ve tried to make this more a conflict of magical powers than one of physical weapons, though weapons also feature in the stories.
And finally, I haven’t tried to capture the lofty moral and spiritual themes that run through the works of Tolkien: the pain of irrecoverable loss, the extraordinary flavour of elvishness, the sense of vast depths of time, the grandeur and solidity of Middle-earth, and the other unique flowerings of his genius. I’ve simply tried to capture the atmosphere of legend and fairy tale.
As regards languages, I spent many years experimenting with pairs of languages that related to each other phonologically, rather as Quenya and Sindarin do. But in the end I gave that up. Instead, I developed a single language that has many of the phonological and grammatical features of both Elvish tongues, simply because I like them all. So Ligmanutsi — I’ve no idea where this name came from — is in some ways plagiaristic; but in many other ways it is quite different both in sound system and in grammar. And there are fragments of other languages, left over from earlier dabblings, as well as some hints of dialect variation. Which, from the point of view of verisimilitude, is all to the good.
One thing has surprised me. As a teenager the exciting part was drawing The Map, with its mountains, forests, rivers, and swamps. This time round I have had a map in my head but have not yet, at the time of writing this, felt driven to draw it.
The reader should note that details of these stories, and of the accompanying language, are likely to be retrospectively changed as the stories develop further.
The names of the first six books of the Ingos Saga
- The Talyoran
- Gantzor the Coldsword
- The First Victory of Tídris
- The Great Severing
- The Fall of Tídris
- Ingos in Aphelos
