Concerning Tolkien (and Philology) - Part Two (I decided to break this post into two so that it wouldn't look so intimidating)

Anyway - so I'm reading this book that I find fascinating that no one else would find interesting called "Ring of Words: Tolkien and the Oxford English Dictionary," by Peter Gilliver, Jeremy Marshall, and Edmund Weiner. And it so makes me want to be a philologist. I wanted to be one anyway, as soon as I found out there was such a subject to study, but this just makes me want to all the more. It is so fun to see where English came from. Example:
Middle English: Efter noes flode...eontas wolden areran ane buruh and anne stepel swah hehne Þet his rof astiзe up to heofena.
Our English: After Noah's flood...the giants intended to erect a city and a tower so high that its roof would ascend to the heavens.
So, if you know that 'Þ' is 'th,' and you know that eontas means 'giants,' you can see the relation. 'Efter noes flode' is pretty obvious, then 'eontas wolden' (taking the original meaning of the word 'would': 'to desire, to intend'), 'areran' would be hard to figure out, but then 'ane buruh' (a burrow: a town or city), 'and anne stepel' ('and a steeple (a tower)'), 'swah hehne Þet his rof' (getting 'hehne' from context), 'astiзe' would also be hard to figure, and then 'up to heofena.' It makes total sense! Isn't is wonderful!?! ('Wonderful' meaning 'a great thing that leaves one full of wonder and awe') :)
What a fortunate man to get to study such things! And to do what he did with them, using them to create words, languages, and cultures - oh how grand! ('Eontas' - 'giants' - is whence came the word 'Ents.') I could go on and give more examples of what he did with philology, but seeing as this is really long and I'm the only one who cares anyway, I'll stop here. But oh, if only I could study the likes of that!