Classic Book of the Month - Farmer Giles of Ham

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Today is Tuesday, July 5th. Thank you for turning to WORLD Radio to help start your day.

Good morning. I’m Mary Reichard.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher. Most readers have probably heard of J.R.R. Tolkien and his high fantasy stories like The Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings trilogy.

But you may not know about Tolkien’s humorous side. Here’s Emily Whitten now with our Classic Book of the Month for July.

EMILY WHITTEN, REPORTER: In this audiobook version of our Classic Book of the Month, narrator Derek Jacobi starts us off at the beginning, with our hero’s name.

JACOBI: Aegidius de Hammo was a man who lived in the midmost parts of the Island of Britain. In full his name was Ngidius Ahenobarbus Julius Agricola de Hammo; for people were richly endowed with names in those days…

Thankfully, Tolkien gives us our hero’s common name–Farmer Giles of Ham. It’s also the name of the story, first published in 1949. Wesley Shantz of Signum Academy introduces the story this way in his 2020 online class:

SCHANTZ: Farmer Giles is kind of a funny story. Kind of a silly satire almost. You know, a playful take on the knight versus the dragon sort of legends. In his version the knight is Farmer Giles, kind of an average country guy, trying to look after his own home…

Giles initially encounters a giant and accidentally vanquishes him. But when a dragon makes his appearance, Farmer Giles faces a tougher foe….

SCHANTZ: …Farmer Giles has to stand up to the dragon again with the help of a wonderful sword. Not a gun this time, but a magic sword. It’s a cool little story.

Fans of The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings will appreciate the elements of Middle Earth–dragons, swords, and heroic quests. But Tolkien isn’t aiming at high fantasy with this tale. He just wants to make you laugh.

Take our hero, Farmer Giles. He’s your stereotypical buffoon, only acting heroically when he’s shamed into it by others. Here’s another clip from Jacobi’s audiobook, this time featuring Farmer Giles’ showdown with the giant. And to set this up, if you’ve never heard of a blunderbuss, it’s an early firearm like a shotgun.

JACOBI: The moon dazzled the giant, and he did not see the farmer. But farmer Giles saw him and was scared out of his wits. He pulled the trigger without thinking, and the blunderbuss went off with a staggering, “Bang!” By luck, it was pointed more or less and the giant’s large, ugly face…

One important difference in this comedy and some kinds of satire–Tolkien doesn’t mean to undermine the idea of noble sacrifice or heroism. In fact, his good-natured ribbing flows out of his love for heroic tales–King Arthur, Beowulf, and the like. For him, dragon myths aren’t mere fantasy or even satire; they ultimately point to something true about Scripture and our world.

I talked recently with Champ Thornton, co-author of The Serpent Slayer and the Scroll of Riddles. In that kids’ book, Thornton helps families appreciate the dragon imagery of Scripture.

THORNTON: Paul picks it up in his epistle, I believe, to the Romans, and he says that God will soon crush Satan under your feet. So he’s picking up that theme, that subtle theme from way back in Genesis. And so this whole idea of serpents and dragons and the warfare between them and God's people, just runs all through God's word.

Thornton recognizes some of these themes of dragon warfare in Tolkien’s work.

THORNTON: I think of Smaug in The Hobbit, for example. He's sneaky, yes. He is powerful and destructive, yes. But he's also vulnerable, and his seeming invincibility is just that; eventually he's defeated. So I feel like there are similarities in terms of the nature of the dragon, of the serpent that come to the surface, whether we're reading Tolkien, or Bunyan, or you know, really anything Christian about dragons. I feel like they have a lot of the same themes.

Our Classic Book of the Month for July, Farmer Giles of Ham, will especially delight readers familiar with more serious dragon tales–they’ll get the joke, so to speak. Families or homeschool groups might even enjoy recording it together, like this version recorded under Paul Butler’s direction.

CLIP: ‘Give me my sword!’ ‘Give us your crown.’ ‘Lightning of heaven, seize him and bind him! What do you hang back for? Just then, the dragon got up from under the breach. He had lain there concealed on the far bank, deep in the river. Now he let off a terrible steam, for he had drunk many gallons of water…

Whatever you do, don’t read too much into this tale. It’s summer, after all.

I’m Emily Whitten.

WORLD Radio transcripts are created on a rush deadline. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of WORLD Radio programming is the audio record.