It's been quite a while, but I remember that I had read The Lord of the Rings in 7th grade. Shortly thereafter I borrowed Bill Bragenzer's copy of The Silmarillion (sometime in 8th grade) and my head almost exploded! Wow, this was some real meat! I've been hooked on all-things-Tolkien ever since... aren't we all?
Now I was already a fan of pens and fountain pens and quills and medieval calligraphy, when I noticed the script running above and below the title pages of my Tolkien tomes. I had no idea what it said, but gosh it sure looked cool!
I don't remember which of us came up with it, Billy or myself (this was 1982... li'l while back) but we took characters from those pages and assigned English equivalents to them... so we could pass notes back and forth "in code." We made two copies of it on little pieces of paper. If you look at it now, it's pure gibberish of course. Those familiar with Tolkien's modes for English (used to write those title pages) will see that most of those characters are constructs of consonants and vowels.
If you look closely at the image above, you can see showing through on the scan a backward image of the third character in the table; that would be a "C" for "Chris." Yes, this is the actual folded up little piece of paper that I kept in my desk back in 8th grade. I found it in a box of old stuff my dad sent me when he was cleaning out the basement back in Wisconsin.
We did get caught once I remember. Our teacher, Mr. Holmstead, really really tried to get us to "give up the code," but we wouldn't do it. I believe we came up with some nonsense like "Oh, we have it memorized; it's not written down anywhere." He suppressed a grin and didn't punish us for it; just gave us the obligatory speech on disrupting class and disrespect and all that, and let it go.
(Some people who know me have probably heard me talk about this super-cool teacher. He's the one who took us over to his house one day for music class and played us RUSH's 2112 album for "music appreciation." That was another mind-blowing experience, and it started me on the road to being the progressive rock fan I am today. I thank him for it.)
I think we also came up with a code based on the Saxon-type or "dwarfish" runes as well, but that doesn't survive anywhere.
Over the years I scribbled this tengwar stuff everywhere, not really knowing how it was supposed to be used; I was just making "pretty scribbles." I don't remember what it was some years ago that made me really look into it. (Here we go with the memory thing again.... I guess it really is the first thing to go. At 40 though? Sheesh.) It may have been the arrival of that box of memories from home, or it could have been the Peter Jackson films. I searched with my then meager internet skills and found http://www.theonering.net/ . Wow. There I found links and links and links and links! I found The Encyclopedia of Arda. I found Dan Smith and his Tengwar Font-packs... what a world!
Most importantly, I found my way to the Tengwar Textbook. What's that you say? You know not of this wondrous thing? Ah, my friend, fear not! I link thee!
( ^ hopefully this one will stay current. A lot of my old links are broken.)
There! Now YOU are an addict too...
Hi, my name is Turin, and I'm a Tengwar Addict. Welcome to my blog.
TT
