leading Tolkien scholar Tom Shippey, in his book The Road to Middle-earth, connects the Birch (the "Beorc" rune-name in Old English) to the "B" scheme of English studies at the University of Leeds where Tolkien had taught, namely his subject, philology. This meant an interest in language and comparative linguistics, especially of the old Germanic languages like Old English and Old Norse. These things that Tolkien loved stood in sharp opposition to the "A" scheme, symbolised by the Oak tree (the "Ac" rune-name in Old English) for "literature and literary critics", meaning from the Early Modern period onwards. Shippey states that "oaks were furthermore the enemy: the enemy of philology, the enemy of imagination, the enemy of dragons". He links this meaning to Smith of Wootton Major, noting that the name of that story's Master Cook, Nokes, in Middle English "" ("at the Oaks"), is connected to the Oak tree. He deduces that the Old Cook, Alf (Old English , "Elf") "is a philologist-figure" while Nokes is "a critic-figure" and Smith himself must be "a Tolkien-figure". In Shippey's view, s praise of the Birch, with its defiance of wind and lightning, confirms the tree's symbolism of the "B" scheme of study. The scholar of medieval literature Verlyn Flieger, while admiring the poem, and remarking that it is the only one "by any hand" written in Gothic, is not convinced by Shippey's arguments, stating rather that Shippey's description of the Birch as a representation of "learning, severe learning, even discipline" and the world's "traditional opponent, scholarly study", "a kind of Golden Bough between Earth and Paradise" says little about the powerful emotional effect of the Birch episode in Smith. She connects that with the poem's "lightning flashes" (verse 3), saying there is no need to diminish that effect by looking for further symbolism. References Sources 1936 poems Poetry by J. R. R. Tolkien Gothic language Songs about trees