as early as page two of the preface i find myself much chastised by r.i. page for thrilling about being hermione meets lord of the rings when he criticises the "growth of an uninformed enthusiasm for runes in recent decades" and lays some of the blame at the doors of fantasy literature, including "the whimsical travesties of runes that appear in j.r.r. tokien's lord of the rings and its multitude of successors and imitators." ouch. "more insiduous," page writes, "is the way runes are now touched by the flight from reason so characteristic of our pragmatic, scientific and down-to-earth times; the attempt, often in most vulgar terms, to promote some link between runes and the supernatural...[is] likely to lead the study of runes into contempt among the thoughtful."