So begins "The Mewlips," a curious and tantalizing poem from the oft-ignored Adventures of Tom Bombadil. The poem describes a set of horrific, flesh-eating creatures that drag their victims into gloomy "cellars" and devour them. There are many references to geography that, though apparently fictional, could correspond with the regions near the Long Lake.
I had two plaguebearer bodies left over from an aborted earlier project, and for a long time I didn't quite know what to do with them. Something about their awkward limbs and ghastly, bloated bellies stuck in my mind, however, and eventually, it occurred to me that they would serve well as mewlips.
The prevailing supposition is that a mewlip is in fact an orc, or rather an orc as it might exist in a nonsensical hobbit poem: a vague, atavistic memory of the orcs that might have preyed on hobbits before they crossed the Misty Mountains, transformed over centuries of story-telling into something like a bogeyman. This is a likely-enough theory. As I started to fiddle with the plaguebearers, however, I came to think of mewlips rather differently. One of the bodies had a pair of what might pass for breasts, so I began to think of it as the female. From there, it was an easy step to see the mewlips as a kind of sub-created version of something from one of Tolkien's dearest real-world stories, Beowulf.
There's not much to go on in the poem, but it seems that the mewlips live in caves or grottoes situated in a dreadful swamp or marsh. These caves contain treasure, presumably filched from the bodies of victims. The mewlips emerge to seize their victims; they feed; and they keep the victims' bones in a sack. We cannot tell how many mewlips there are - whether they are a proper species or just a small group of monsters, nor do we have much in the way of a physical description.
The mention of the sack caught my attention. It seemed like an odd detail, and I couldn't help but think of a line from Beowulf which mentions Grendel carrying a bag or pouch made of dragon-hide into which he stuffs the corpses of men he has killed. Then there is the swamp itself, a bleak, festering marsh situated far away from the abode of civilized men. The poem mentions gorcrows roosting in the willows and "gargoyles" staring down at any trespassers. Whether these gargoyles are actual gargoyles, the mewlips themselves, or perhaps other hideous beasts is unclear. Here again I was reminded of Beowulf: the otherworldy swamp, overhung with trees and filled with writhing water-monsters. Below, in the lair of the merewif, Beowulf finds a treasure-hoard. And there is, of course, the obvious similarity between the mewlips and the monsters themselves.
Before anyone jumps to conclusions, I should make clear that I am not saying Tolkien intended mewlips to be Grendels. Rather, there are certain similarities - allusions, even - to Grendel and his mother that, to my mind, are unlikely to have been entirely accidental. In the same sense, I did not set out to make my own version of Grendel and his mother but rather to allow my fondness for Beowulf to inform my understanding of a what a mewlip is like.
These figures saw a number of firsts: the first time I've resculpted faces, the first time I've tried to mimic figures standing in water, and the first time I've sculpted genitalia. It took me a while to decide whether the last part was necessary, but I didn't care for the sexless, empty-crotched look of the plaguebearers. In addition, the text of Beowulf establishes Grendel and his mother as descendants of Cain, a kind of twisted off-shoot of humanity. There's also an academic theory that considers the merewif a vestige of the fertility deities that preceded Germanic polytheism. So there is some scholarly justification for what was primarily an aesthetic decision.
And the finished products...
The swamp bases aren't quite what I'd hoped. Oh well.
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