Tuor son of Huor wrote:
Philomythos wrote:
Has anyone compiled a list of errata for this volume? I have noted quite a few errors/typos. In particular, the Latin text seems not to have been proofread (Cresar for Caesar, redificia for aedificia). I can make a complete list available if anyone is interested and it hasn’t been posted elsewhere.
Please do, it would be nice if they can get these errors fixed before the deluxe edition comes out this year.
I think it is too late for changes to that edition.
26 January
(edited)
2026-1-26 1:18:07 PM UTC
Edited by Philomythos on 2026-1-26 1:33:40 PM UTC
Edited by Philomythos on 2026-1-26 1:42:58 PM UTC
Edited by Philomythos on 2026-1-26 1:56:40 PM UTC
Edited by Philomythos on 2026-1-26 4:00:53 PM UTC
Edited by Philomythos on 2026-1-26 7:20:48 PM UTC
Edited by Philomythos on 2026-1-27 4:06:32 AM UTC
Edited by Philomythos on 2026-1-27 4:08:34 AM UTC
Edited by Philomythos on 2026-1-27 2:20:54 PM UTC
Edited by Philomythos on 2026-1-29 4:01:25 PM UTC
Edited by Philomythos on 2026-1-29 4:05:51 PM UTC
Edited by Philomythos on 2026-1-29 4:08:38 PM UTC
Edited by Philomythos on 2026-1-29 4:10:54 PM UTC
Edited by Philomythos on 2026-1-29 11:31:42 PM UTC
Edited by Philomythos on 2026-1-26 1:42:58 PM UTC
Edited by Philomythos on 2026-1-26 1:56:40 PM UTC
Edited by Philomythos on 2026-1-26 4:00:53 PM UTC
Edited by Philomythos on 2026-1-26 7:20:48 PM UTC
Edited by Philomythos on 2026-1-27 4:06:32 AM UTC
Edited by Philomythos on 2026-1-27 4:08:34 AM UTC
Edited by Philomythos on 2026-1-27 2:20:54 PM UTC
Edited by Philomythos on 2026-1-29 4:01:25 PM UTC
Edited by Philomythos on 2026-1-29 4:05:51 PM UTC
Edited by Philomythos on 2026-1-29 4:08:38 PM UTC
Edited by Philomythos on 2026-1-29 4:10:54 PM UTC
Edited by Philomythos on 2026-1-29 11:31:42 PM UTC
2026-1-26 1:18:07 PM UTC
The Bovadium Fragments errata
p.viii: “Yet the solution proved to be less palatable than the cure.” – I cannot make sense of this sentence. The sentiment seems to be a variant of the idiom The cure was worse than the disease, but the author has used two words that both mean ‘remedy’.
p.xv: “entitled Motor Bus” – The title is unhyphenated and without a definite article here and on p.xvi but hyphenated and with a definite article on p.75 (where it is put in quotes rather than italics).
p.xvi, line 8: “caeder” – With “nē” ‘lest’, this ought to be the present subjunctive passive first person singular of caedō, caedere ‘hew, strike, slay’, but for that the form is “caedar”, not “caeder” (as though it’s a first conjugation verb). Indeed, the latter form simply doesn’t exist in Latin. This seems to be an error of the present volume, seeing as the text as I find it printed elsewhere has the correct form “caedar” in this line. Nonetheless, the error is repeated on p.xix without acknowledgment, and again on pp.14 and 18.
p.xix: “I will cry out on the Motor Bus” – I would rather translate the dative as ‘for the Motor Bus’ or ‘to the Motor Bus’, as dative case doesn’t typically indicate location. Indeed, this is the usual translation given elsewhere, and Christopher Tolkien’s rendering seems simply incorrect.
p.xix: “caeder” – An error for “caedar”. Cf. my remarks to p.xvi above.
p.xx: “as mentioned on page xv” – The reference should be to page xiii, not xv.
[Edit]
For “Clive Kilby” read “Clyde Kilby”.
p.18: “caeder” – Error for “caedar”. See my remarks to p.xvi above. Also occurs on p.14.
p.21: “emporia” is surely meant to be italicized.
[Edit]
p.28 (five lines from bottom): For “or course” read “of course”. See Findegil’s post about this below.
p.35: “cluribus” is an error for “cruribus”, ablative plural of “crūs” ‘leg’.
p.42: For “φροντίξω” read “φροντίζω”. (“φροντίξω”, with xi, is not a word in Greek.) Additionally, I see no reason for the semicolons after “φροντίς” and “φροντιστής” (and note that there is no semicolon after “φροντίξω”). It is also nonstandard to put Greek text in italics, unlike Latin or other foreign languages written in Roman letters or transliterated into them.
p.44: For “Medecine” read (surely) “Medicine”.
p.50, n.1: I see no clear reason to refer the reader to p.11 in particular, regarding “the spirit of Dr. Gums”. I should think p.8, with its footnote in which Gums argues for one (more cautious) rendering of a word over another (less cautious) rendering, would be a more appropriate cross reference.
p.50–1: “ædium…cælum…factæ…” – The ligature <æ> is used for ae only in this text (contrast, e.g., “victimae” in Fragment I, p.14). Yet even here it is inconsistently applied, as we also find “diversae” on p.50. [I do not think there are any instances of the ligature <œ> (cf. “foetor” in Fragment I, p.13).]
The remainder of my discussion of the Latin text on pp.50–1 is deferred to my remarks on its translation (pp.51–53).
p.51: “Motores Bi” – That is, ‘Motor Buses’, which probably ought to have been translated as such here. (Notice the consistent use of “Motors” rather than “Motores” in the remainder of this translation.)
“the tops of the buildings” – The Latin has here “fastigias ædium”, but “fastigias” is not a possible word of Latin. The word for ‘top’ is neuter (“fastigium”), so the correct form would be “fastigia” and the text on p.50 should probably be corrected to “fastigia ædium”.
“danger of death” – For ‘of death’ here the Latin has “morris”. This is an error for “mortis”. (Unless it is a clever allusion to Morris the Daemonic automobile manufacturer?)
p.52: “tarred” – The Latin text on p.50 has “pica tam” (with space), which is an error for “picatam”, the past participle of “picō” ‘smear with pitch, tar’.
“the King” – The Latin text has “Cresarem” (nominative “Cresar”) three times for ‘King’ on pp.50–1. This is surely a typo for “Cæsar” (accusative “Cæsarem”), but how the error was made three times is beyond me. There does seem to be a frequent erroneous replacement of a with r in this text, as seen also in “redificia” (for “ædificia”) on p.51.
“dig up rather the buildings” – The word for ‘buildings’ in the Latin text on p.51 is printed “redificia”. This is an egregious typo for “ædificia” ‘buildings’ (cf. my remarks on “Cresar” above).
“and more speedily” – The Latin text here (p.51) has “and velocius”, an error for “et velocius”.
“every day” – The Latin has “indies”, which ought to be written with a space: “in dies”.
“no one could” – For ‘could’ the Latin text has “possset”, a typo for “posset”.
p.53: “his Motor-boat” – The Latin has “cymbam sua motricem”, an error for “cymbam suam motricem”.
p.75: “The Motor-Bus” – The title of this poem has previously been given as “Motor Bus” (pp.xv, xvi) without the definite article and unhyphenated (and italicized rather than in quotation marks).
p.81, n.1: The stated page range “4–4” cannot be correct. Also, the title is given here with a period after “Mall” but with a colon in the main body of the text on p.81 and again on p.83 (the form with the colon appears to be the correct one).
p.82 (bottom): For “he wrote:” read probably “he wrote,”.
p.85: This text (i.e., “The Origin of Bovadium”) generally avoids the Oxford (or serial) comma (e.g., “Cumnor, Wytham and Shotover’ on p.58; “wildlife, botany…and in particular its proximity…” on p.64; “political, social and academic disputes” on p.84; “modern, forward-looking and embracing of technology” on p.86; “noise, pollution and other environmental factors” on p.112), yet at the top of p.85 we find “multiple reports, public inquiries, and even discussion in Cabinet”, with the serial comma, and in the middle of the page we find “Botley, Marston, and Linkside”, also with the serial comma, but then in the same sentence “office workers, council and hospital staff”, without the serial comma.
The other texts in this book seem to use serial commas (cf., e.g., p.xi: “Playful, erudite, and ultimately tragically moving”; p.xx: “the three ‘Fragments’, and the postscript”), though I have not checked if this is absolutely consistent. At any rate, the use or disuse of the serial comma probably ought to be standardized throughout the book as a whole, or at least in the portions that are not written by J.R.R. Tolkien or quoted from another source.
p.85: “Dons” is here capitalized, while elsewhere it is consistently lowercase (e.g., pp. 75, 76, 79, 101). The capital should probably be removed to match the rest.
p.104: For “the high” read probably “the High” (consistently capitalized elsewhere, including earlier in this quotation on p.103).
p.105: “public inquiry” – This phrase is otherwise capitalized (viz. on p.104, below on p.105, p.106, pp.111–12), except on p.115, where it is again lowercase. The two lowercase occurrences should probably be capitalized for consistency.
p.113, n.1: Missing period at end.
p.114: “junior counsel for the City” shows different capitalization from the same title in the very next sentence, “Junior Counsel for the City”. I see no reason they shouldn’t both have the same capitalization.
p.viii: “Yet the solution proved to be less palatable than the cure.” – I cannot make sense of this sentence. The sentiment seems to be a variant of the idiom The cure was worse than the disease, but the author has used two words that both mean ‘remedy’.
p.xv: “entitled Motor Bus” – The title is unhyphenated and without a definite article here and on p.xvi but hyphenated and with a definite article on p.75 (where it is put in quotes rather than italics).
p.xvi, line 8: “caeder” – With “nē” ‘lest’, this ought to be the present subjunctive passive first person singular of caedō, caedere ‘hew, strike, slay’, but for that the form is “caedar”, not “caeder” (as though it’s a first conjugation verb). Indeed, the latter form simply doesn’t exist in Latin. This seems to be an error of the present volume, seeing as the text as I find it printed elsewhere has the correct form “caedar” in this line. Nonetheless, the error is repeated on p.xix without acknowledgment, and again on pp.14 and 18.
p.xix: “I will cry out on the Motor Bus” – I would rather translate the dative as ‘for the Motor Bus’ or ‘to the Motor Bus’, as dative case doesn’t typically indicate location. Indeed, this is the usual translation given elsewhere, and Christopher Tolkien’s rendering seems simply incorrect.
p.xix: “caeder” – An error for “caedar”. Cf. my remarks to p.xvi above.
p.xx: “as mentioned on page xv” – The reference should be to page xiii, not xv.
[Edit]
For “Clive Kilby” read “Clyde Kilby”.
p.18: “caeder” – Error for “caedar”. See my remarks to p.xvi above. Also occurs on p.14.
p.21: “emporia” is surely meant to be italicized.
[Edit]
p.28 (five lines from bottom): For “or course” read “of course”. See Findegil’s post about this below.
p.35: “cluribus” is an error for “cruribus”, ablative plural of “crūs” ‘leg’.
p.42: For “φροντίξω” read “φροντίζω”. (“φροντίξω”, with xi, is not a word in Greek.) Additionally, I see no reason for the semicolons after “φροντίς” and “φροντιστής” (and note that there is no semicolon after “φροντίξω”). It is also nonstandard to put Greek text in italics, unlike Latin or other foreign languages written in Roman letters or transliterated into them.
p.44: For “Medecine” read (surely) “Medicine”.
p.50, n.1: I see no clear reason to refer the reader to p.11 in particular, regarding “the spirit of Dr. Gums”. I should think p.8, with its footnote in which Gums argues for one (more cautious) rendering of a word over another (less cautious) rendering, would be a more appropriate cross reference.
p.50–1: “ædium…cælum…factæ…” – The ligature <æ> is used for ae only in this text (contrast, e.g., “victimae” in Fragment I, p.14). Yet even here it is inconsistently applied, as we also find “diversae” on p.50. [I do not think there are any instances of the ligature <œ> (cf. “foetor” in Fragment I, p.13).]
The remainder of my discussion of the Latin text on pp.50–1 is deferred to my remarks on its translation (pp.51–53).
p.51: “Motores Bi” – That is, ‘Motor Buses’, which probably ought to have been translated as such here. (Notice the consistent use of “Motors” rather than “Motores” in the remainder of this translation.)
“the tops of the buildings” – The Latin has here “fastigias ædium”, but “fastigias” is not a possible word of Latin. The word for ‘top’ is neuter (“fastigium”), so the correct form would be “fastigia” and the text on p.50 should probably be corrected to “fastigia ædium”.
“danger of death” – For ‘of death’ here the Latin has “morris”. This is an error for “mortis”. (Unless it is a clever allusion to Morris the Daemonic automobile manufacturer?)
p.52: “tarred” – The Latin text on p.50 has “pica tam” (with space), which is an error for “picatam”, the past participle of “picō” ‘smear with pitch, tar’.
“the King” – The Latin text has “Cresarem” (nominative “Cresar”) three times for ‘King’ on pp.50–1. This is surely a typo for “Cæsar” (accusative “Cæsarem”), but how the error was made three times is beyond me. There does seem to be a frequent erroneous replacement of a with r in this text, as seen also in “redificia” (for “ædificia”) on p.51.
“dig up rather the buildings” – The word for ‘buildings’ in the Latin text on p.51 is printed “redificia”. This is an egregious typo for “ædificia” ‘buildings’ (cf. my remarks on “Cresar” above).
“and more speedily” – The Latin text here (p.51) has “and velocius”, an error for “et velocius”.
“every day” – The Latin has “indies”, which ought to be written with a space: “in dies”.
“no one could” – For ‘could’ the Latin text has “possset”, a typo for “posset”.
p.53: “his Motor-boat” – The Latin has “cymbam sua motricem”, an error for “cymbam suam motricem”.
p.75: “The Motor-Bus” – The title of this poem has previously been given as “Motor Bus” (pp.xv, xvi) without the definite article and unhyphenated (and italicized rather than in quotation marks).
p.81, n.1: The stated page range “4–4” cannot be correct. Also, the title is given here with a period after “Mall” but with a colon in the main body of the text on p.81 and again on p.83 (the form with the colon appears to be the correct one).
p.82 (bottom): For “he wrote:” read probably “he wrote,”.
p.85: This text (i.e., “The Origin of Bovadium”) generally avoids the Oxford (or serial) comma (e.g., “Cumnor, Wytham and Shotover’ on p.58; “wildlife, botany…and in particular its proximity…” on p.64; “political, social and academic disputes” on p.84; “modern, forward-looking and embracing of technology” on p.86; “noise, pollution and other environmental factors” on p.112), yet at the top of p.85 we find “multiple reports, public inquiries, and even discussion in Cabinet”, with the serial comma, and in the middle of the page we find “Botley, Marston, and Linkside”, also with the serial comma, but then in the same sentence “office workers, council and hospital staff”, without the serial comma.
The other texts in this book seem to use serial commas (cf., e.g., p.xi: “Playful, erudite, and ultimately tragically moving”; p.xx: “the three ‘Fragments’, and the postscript”), though I have not checked if this is absolutely consistent. At any rate, the use or disuse of the serial comma probably ought to be standardized throughout the book as a whole, or at least in the portions that are not written by J.R.R. Tolkien or quoted from another source.
p.85: “Dons” is here capitalized, while elsewhere it is consistently lowercase (e.g., pp. 75, 76, 79, 101). The capital should probably be removed to match the rest.
p.104: For “the high” read probably “the High” (consistently capitalized elsewhere, including earlier in this quotation on p.103).
p.105: “public inquiry” – This phrase is otherwise capitalized (viz. on p.104, below on p.105, p.106, pp.111–12), except on p.115, where it is again lowercase. The two lowercase occurrences should probably be capitalized for consistency.
p.113, n.1: Missing period at end.
p.114: “junior counsel for the City” shows different capitalization from the same title in the very next sentence, “Junior Counsel for the City”. I see no reason they shouldn’t both have the same capitalization.
26 January
(edited)
2026-1-26 4:29:53 PM UTC
Edited by Philomythos on 2026-1-26 4:34:09 PM UTC
2026-1-26 4:29:53 PM UTC
The errata in my previous post are only a portion of the notes I made while reading this volume. In case anyone is interested, the complete notes can be found here. These include not only errata but also explanatory notes and (limited) personal musings, in which the views expressed are my own and do not represent those of HarperCollins, The Tolkien Estate, TCG, or anyone involved in the production of this volume. The explanatory notes may be found especially helpful for those who do not read Latin (or even those who do), as I compare the Latin texts with their translations and note any important differences. Feedback and corrections are welcome but probably not appropriate to this forum, so please just send a personal message to me directly if you have something to say; I'll make any needed corrections to the document itself.
The Bovadium Fragments by Findegil
https://wayneandchristina.wordpress.co ... 6/the-bovadium-fragments/
https://wayneandchristina.wordpress.co ... 6/the-bovadium-fragments/
I will in no way quibble with the notes about the incorrect Latin... but I will point out that Tolkien did regularly work on manuscripts in extinct languages with scribal errors. The well-known error "egsode eorl" in line 6 of Beowulf comes to mind, with very convincing analysis by Drout in recent years.
Given what I know of the frame story I can imagine a world in which he put in (humorous?) language mistakes on purpose to give a similar impression, or as a challenge to the reader. Perhaps his colleagues would have found his deliberate Latin mistakes amusing, had it been published in the 1960s. Note however, I'm still waiting for my copy to arrive, the book only being released in Australia around about now, so I don't have the full context. And I fully grant that any or all of these might still be production errors.
Given what I know of the frame story I can imagine a world in which he put in (humorous?) language mistakes on purpose to give a similar impression, or as a challenge to the reader. Perhaps his colleagues would have found his deliberate Latin mistakes amusing, had it been published in the 1960s. Note however, I'm still waiting for my copy to arrive, the book only being released in Australia around about now, so I don't have the full context. And I fully grant that any or all of these might still be production errors.
The first step is for the publisher to compare the text as printed with the text that Christopher established, to see what is merely a typo introduced in the publishing process. Whatever suspected errors then remain could (presumably) be compared with Tolkien’s manuscripts, to see if something may have been misread. Only then should one attribute a possible error to Tolkien, and only then try to decide whether it may have been intentional.
27 January
(edited)
2026-1-27 2:43:56 PM UTC
Edited by Philomythos on 2026-1-27 2:48:39 PM UTC
2026-1-27 2:43:56 PM UTC
DMRoberts wrote:
I will in no way quibble with the notes about the incorrect Latin... but I will point out that Tolkien did regularly work on manuscripts in extinct languages with scribal errors. The well-known error "egsode eorl" in line 6 of Beowulf comes to mind, with very convincing analysis by Drout in recent years.
Given what I know of the frame story I can imagine a world in which he put in (humorous?) language mistakes on purpose to give a similar impression, or as a challenge to the reader. Perhaps his colleagues would have found his deliberate Latin mistakes amusing, had it been published in the 1960s. Note however, I'm still waiting for my copy to arrive, the book only being released in Australia around about now, so I don't have the full context. And I fully grant that any or all of these might still be production errors.
Nobody who knows Latin even a little bit, much less Christopher Tolkien, who knew it well and read this text carefully enough to edit it and translate portions of it, could fail to notice “cluribus”, “redificia”, “morris”… So if these forms were in the manuscript (actually typescript), whether they were deemed intentional or not, I would expect Christopher Tolkien to have remarked on them (or at least some subset of them) in his edition. An editor passing by MS “Cresar” three times in silence and simply sending it off to the printer would be genuinely shocking.
In any case, I did actually note one instance that I thought could possibly be taken as a sly joke (see my note on “morris” above), but I don’t seriously believe that (it was more meant as a clever joke on my part).
On the whole, the idea of these errors being deliberately made for the sake of “amusement” is not credible: For example, “possset” with three s’es instead of two… What amusement is there in that? And where is the editor’s note explaining the joke to the laity? The same editor, by the way, who felt it necessary to explain all the Latin puns in the poem “Motor Bus” to a readership for which he assumed no knowledge of the language.
Philomythos
Fair comment, I stand corrected. Given the errors in the revised Letters as first printed, I guess I should have been less charitable to the copy-editing process. ^_^
Fair comment, I stand corrected. Given the errors in the revised Letters as first printed, I guess I should have been less charitable to the copy-editing process. ^_^
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