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The Borogoves, Toves and the Raths
Sir John Tenniel
Wood-engraving by Dalziel
Illustration for the sixth chapter of Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking Glass (1871)
"'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe."
For translation and commentary, see below. [Click on the image to enlarge it, and mouse over the text for links.]
Translation:
"It was four o'clock in the afternoon, and the slimy and lithe toves[Guess which is the tove, the borogove, the rath.]
In 2000 student assistants from the University Scholars Program, National University of Singapore, scanned this image and added text under the supervision of George P. Landow. [You may use the image without prior permission for any scholarly or educational purpose as long as you (1) credit the site and (2) link your document to this URL in a web document or cite the Victorian Web in a print one.]
The highly original nature here of Lewis Carroll's text and of John Tenniel's artwork should not be passed over lightly. Previous children's literature had employed many animals which were easily recognisable - the goose which lays the golden egg, Dick Wittington's cat, frogs and so on - and Carroll's own earlier Alice's Adventures in Wonderland had relied upon a large number of often talking animals: the White Rabbit, the Mouse with the long "tale," Sid the Lizard, the March Hare, the sleepy Dormouse, dancing Lobsters and so forth, together with later forays with talking flowers, the Fawn, a philosophising Walrus and more. Here, however, and perhaps in an entirely unprecedented masterstroke, the talented pair of Carroll-Tenniel achieves never-before-seen creatures. Not unreasonably, these are then given much needed philological attention, from the irascible Humpty Dumpty to the not entirely convinced Alice.
Root sources for Carroll's literary originations are here somewhat sketchy. SOED offers boro-, as employed from E19 in borosilicate glass; and for the fragrant rue family shrub boronia, known from Australia L18, and named after Italian botanist Francesco Borone, 1769-94. Carroll had long been drawn to plants and Botanical Gardens, both in London and Oxford (Diaries, 1: 102; 4: 200, passim), and in his later children's fairytale Bruno and Sylvie (Ch. XIX passim) he would include a character who was a botanist, with repeated discussions of floral subjects as he had done in an earlier chapter of the present work (see The Garden of Flowers). For additional chemical interest and possible helpful suggestion, his close friend and near contemporary, Vernon Harcourt (1834-1919), was a Reader in Chemistry at Oxford.
For "Raths" SOED offers "rath, Late Middle English, from Gaelic place names." In early Irish archaeology, this was an earthen wall or enclosure serving as the fort and residence of a tribal chief. Lewis Carroll's wider interest in all things Anglo-Saxon and early British has been indicated in some detail elsewhere, especially in a discussion of the same author's widely-known Jabberwocky poem.
Carroll, Lewis. Lewis Carroll's Diaries. The Private Journals of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson. Vols. 1 and 4. Ed. Edward Wakeling. England: Lewis Carroll Society, 1993, 1997.
_____. Sylvie and Bruno. London: Macmillan, 1889.
Last modified 2 June 2021 (commentary added)