An interesting comment by NUI Galway President Iggy Ó Muircheartaigh at last week’s graduation (in reference to Enya’s music for the Lord of the Rings): he said that JRR Tolkien was an external examiner for the University in the 1950s.
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and in the 1960s IIRC . He was the extern in Old and Middle English when that was a separate department . Prof Henry told me years ago about this .
Its no secret except that UCG only had about 1000 students back then of whom a fraction did English and a smaller fraction did honours and may therefore have met the extern. .
Prof Henry (who is still around and a fascinating character in his own right ) would remember him .
They had many chats on diverse subjects at a formative time in the composition of the Ring trilogy, ya never know that one horrible monster was not based on a tall tale from the celtic wesht rather than nordic and saxon marchen 🙂
Profs memories on the subject / visits should be committed to the record for posterity . What is an English Department for one wonders ???
I don’t like, you know, when some person becomes famous and popular and people start to look for his past, the fact and events, and talk about him, for example, who he was before writing and so on. But if he stays a common person, noone will remeber about him. Did you hit my point?