TLC Forum

Funny how some fanon becomes almost canon so easily!

What is Kristi's coin sort game?

This: http://www.thelionscall.com/games/coin-sorting/
(TLC is affiliated with TLC. ) (I am not responsible for addiction.)

Oh! OH.
You are not responsible for addiction. Our uncle, who years ago installed a similar game, long since lost in OS updates, on our computer, is responsible.

Ah.

As the two trees that grew up from coins in Uncle Andrew's pocket are gold and silver, I get a hunch that CSL was thinking of the two trees in Valinor (Tolkien's work).

I suppose that's possible, but, um, would Tolkein have liked that? Remember, he didn't like Narnia.

I am not sure he had an equal dislike for all books.

And I am sure CSL had a way of very disrespectfully poking JRRT's side about Middle-Earth. Like - less disrespectfully - referring to Numinor (!) or to Tor and Tinidril (Tuor and Idril) in Perelandra or That Hideous Strength.

One version of Lay of Beren and Luthien (in verse form, not complete) was submitted to CSL for criticism.

Instead of saying outright he didn't like such and such a passage as it was he usually gave the word to text critics (invented ones) like Pumpernickel (if you know what it refers to, you know the critic is invented) saying things like "totally unworthy of the poet, certainly inserted by a later scribe" or "could be emended as" (follows slight change of the line or, with changed rhyme, even pair of lines) and sometimes he refers to the public library of Narrowthrode (deliberately as how Nargothrond would sound like now). Though JRRT did that kind of humour in hobbit format and in Farmer Giles of Ham, he didn't like when it was done to parody his serious stuff.

And CSL probably got pretty many peeks both at LotR while it was being written and at the Silmarillion material which was going to remain unpublished up to after JRRT's death. Also, JRRT had accessed parts of Chronicles, when they were read to Inklings, before he completed LotR.

Since one had considered the coin trees came from silver tree and gold tree from Uncle Andrew's pocket, it occurred to me simply in passing this could be what CSL considered "a counterpoint in minor" for the Two Trees of Valinor.

I thought of the gold and silver Narnian trees when I first read the Silmarillion. C.S. Lewis and Tolkien have a number of very similar elements in their books (Ettinsmoor and Ettenmoors, for example) which I find interesting (and somewhat amuses me as well ).

I actually once counted a score of forty such similarities, Ettenmoors and Ettinsmoor in that list, but the trees from the pocket of Uncle Andrew outside it.

The difference of register made me overlook it to now.

Of course, the name of the coins came before the trees (unless Lewis was playing with that particular idea simultaneously or previous to writing VDT). And the connection of the trees to the coins is what made me think whether Narnians thought the connection was there and whether it was Lewis' way of bringing that particular motif back.