> I was from early days grieved by the poverty of my own beloved country: it had no stories of its own (bound up with its tongue and soil), not of the quality that I sought, and found (as an ingredient) in legends of other lands.

My immediate thought was “What about King Arthur?!” But then I begin to wonder how much Arthurian legend has been enriched purely in the 20th century. “The once and future king” -where a lot of the modern take on Arthur came from - was punished in 1958, 4 years after the Lord of the Rings.

According to Wikipedia, Arthurian legend was popular in the Middle Ages, but kind of fell out of favor.