Thread by @JohnGarthWriter

The claim that Tolkien's Ruling Ring was inspired by a ring at the Vyne in Hampshire and a curse-inscription at Lydney in Gloucestershire is doing the rounds yet again. It's tenuous, as I argue in THE WORLDS OF JRR TOLKIEN. Here's why…
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#Tolkien #FactCheck

Tolkien wrote a paper for the 1932 report on REM Wheeler’s excavations of Romano-British remains at Lydney, Gloucestershire. But Tolkien only dealt with one aspect of the curse tablet there, the divine name Nodens (on which he mostly summarises existing knowledge)…

His paper shows no sign that he considered the content of the tablets, and makes no reference to the curse or to the ring mentioned in it…

The ring in The Hobbit as written (1929–1934?) and published (1937) was a simple ring of invisibility. When Tolkien reluctantly began a sequel in December 1937, he saw Bilbo’s ring as a potentially promising loose thread, but didn’t know what to do with it…

Tolkien did not immediately think of the idea that the ring had a curse and its maker wanted it back. Drafts and notes in The Return of the Shadow (vol. 1 of The History of LotR, ed. Christopher Tolkien) show how it came together piece by piece like a jigsaw over some 10 months…

The jigsaw pieces:
1. Bilbo’s son wants to return the ring to Bilbo, who left it to him.
2. The ring was made by the Necromancer but is ‘not very dangerous’.
3. Tolkien unexpectedly invented the Black Riders but didn’t know who they were…

4. The Necromancer made many rings to turn their wearers into wraiths, and this is the only one left that has not been destroyed or gathered back to him. For this, the Germanic motif of the lord dealing out rings to his retainers is a clear source, intimately known to Tolkien…

5. Gandalf says it might be destroyed by dropping it into the Fiery Mountain (but does not say this is where it was made, nor that it is in the Necromancer’s land).
6. The idea of a quest to the Fiery Mountain near Mordor's Dark Tower appears in notes August–September 1938…

7. The ring is the Ruling Ring: the idea first appears in notes of September–October 1938
8. The curse on the ring – the famous Ring-verse ‘One ring to rule them all’ – also first appears in a draft of ‘The Shadow of the Past’ September–October 1938…

There is slight similarity with Sauron’s Ring. Silvianus, whose ring had been stolen, had a curse inscribed wishing ill-health on the thief Senicianus until the ring is returned. Yet Silvianus’s curse is not inscribed on the ring, but on a stone tablet…

The curse inscribed on Sauron’s Ring is about control over other rings, given by him or made with his guidance. Ill-health is only involved with the nine rings for mortal men, who become Ringwraiths…

There's no sign that Tolkien visited Lydney or would have needed to; no sign that after c. 1931 he had further connection with Lydney; no sign that he ever had any link with the Vyne.
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