The Treason of Isengard (17 page)

goes merrily for ever on.

He wandered over meadow-land

to shadow-land and dreariness,

and under hill and over hill,

a rover still to weariness.

He sat and sang a melody

his errantry a-tarrying;

he begged a pretty butterfly

that fluttered by to marry him.

She laughed at him, deluded him,

eluded him unpitying;

so long he studied wizardry

and sigaldry and smithying.

He wove a tissue airy-thin

to snare her in; to follow in

he made a beetle-leather wing

and feather wing and swallow-wing.

He caught her in bewilderment

in filament of spider-thread;

he built a little bower-house,

a flower house, to hide her head;

he made her shoes of diamond

on fire and a-shimmering;

a boat he built her marvellous,

a carvel all a-glimmering;

he threaded gems in necklaces -

and recklessly she squandered them,

as fluttering, and wavering,

and quavering, they wandered on.

They fell to bitter quarrelling;

and sorrowing he sped away,

on windy weather wearily

and drearily he fled away.

He passed the archipelagoes

where yellow grows the marigold,

where countless silver fountains are,

and mountains are of fairy-gold.

He took to war and foraying

a-harrying beyond the sea,

a-roaming over Belmarie

and Thellamie and Fantasie.

He made a shield and morion

of coral and of ivory,

a sword he made of emerald,

and terrible his rivalry

with all the knights of Aerie

and Faerie and Thellamie.

Of crystal was his habergeon,

his scabbard of chalcedony,

his javelins were of malachite

and stalactite - he brandished them,

and went and fought the dragon-flies

of Paradise, and vanquished them.

He battled with the Dumbledores,

the Bumbles, and the Honeybees,

and won the Golden Honeycomb;

and running home on sunny seas

in ship of leaves and gossamer

with blossom for a canopy,

he polished up, and furbished up,

and burnished up his panoply.

He tarried for a little while

in little isles, and plundered them;

and webs of all the Attercops

he shattered them and sundered them -

Then, coming home with honeycomb

and money none, to memory

his message came and errand too!

In derring-do and glamoury

he had forgot them, journeying,

and tourneying, a wanderer.

So now he must depart again

and start again his gondola,

for ever still a messenger,

a passenger, a tarrier,

a-roving as a feather does,

a weather-driven mariner.(11)

In the second version the poem began thus:

There was a merry messenger,

a passenger, an errander;

he gathered yellow oranges

in porringer for provender;

he built a gilded gondola

a-wandering to carry him

across the rivers seventeen

that lay between to tarry him.

He landed there in loneliness

in stoniness on shingle steep,

and ventured into meadow-land

and shadow-land, and dingle deep.

He sat and sang a melody, &c.

The poem otherwise, as I have said, scarcely differs from the Oxford Magazine version; but the last four lines were:

for ever still a-tarrying,

a mariner, a messenger,

a-roving as a feather does,

a weather-driven passenger.(12)

The third version reached the opening of the published form, except that it began 'There was a merry messenger, a passenger, a mariner', and retained the lines

He landed all in loneliness

in stoniness on shingle steep,

and wandered off to meadowland,

to shadowland, to dingle deep.

The fourth version reached the published form except in this third verse, which now read:

He landed all in loneliness

where stonily on shingle go

the running rivers Lerion

and Derion in dingle low.

He wandered over meadow-land

to shadow-land and dreariness, Rc.

Rayner Unwin mentioned in a letter to my father of 20 June 1952

that he had received an enquiry from someone unnamed about a poem called Errantry, 'which made such a deep impression on him that he is most anxious to trace it again.' To this my father replied (22 June 1952, Letters no. 133):

As for 'Errantry': it is a most odd coincidence that you should ask about that. For only a few weeks ago I had a letter from a lady unknown to me making a similar enquiry. She said that a friend had recently written out for her from memory some verses that had so taken her fancy that she was determined to discover their origin. He had picked them up from his son-in-law who had learned them in Washington D.C. (!); but nothing was known about their source save a vague idea that they were connected with English universities.

Being a determined person she apparently applied to various Vice-Chancellors, and Bowra (13) directed her to my door. I must say that I was interested in becoming 'folk-lore'. Also it was intriguing to get an oral version - which bore out my views on oral tradition (at any rate in early stages): sc. that the 'hard words' are well preserved,(14) and the more common words altered, but the metre is often disturbed.

In this letter he referred to two versions of Errantry, an 'A.V.'

('Authorised Version'), this being the Oxford Magazine text, and an

'R.V.' ('Revised Version'). The 'R.V.', in which substantial alterations were made to the 'A.V.', is the text published in The Adventures of Tom Bombadil ten years later. - He also said in this letter that the poem was

in a metre I invented (depending on trisyllabic assonances or near-assonances, which is so difficult that except in this one example I have never been able to use it again - it just blew out in a single impulse).

On this Humphrey Carpenter remarked (Letters p. 443):

It may appear at a first glance that Tolkien did write another poem in this metre, 'Earendil was a mariner', which appears in Book II Chapter 1 of The Lord of the Rings. But this poem is arguably a development of 'Errantry' rather than a separate composition.

That this is true will be seen from the earlier forms of Bilbo's song at Rivendell.

*

There are no less than fifteen manuscript and typescript texts of the

'Rivendell version', and these may be divided into two groups: an earlier, in which the poem begins with the line There was a merry messenger (or in one case a variant of it), and a later, in which the poem begins Earendel was a mariner (the name being spelt thus in all texts). The textual history of the first group is very complex in detail, and difficult to unravel with certainty owing to the fact that my father hesitated back and forth between competing readings in successive texts.

In the earliest text of all the poem was still in the process of emergence. The opening lines are here particularly interesting, for they remain so close to the first verse of Errantry as to be scarcely more than a variant:

There was a merry messenger

a passenger a mariner:

he built a boat and gilded her,

and silver oars he fashioned her;

he perfumed her with marjoram

and cardamon (15) and lavender,

and laded her with oranges

and porridge for his provender.

Earendel is hardly present here! Yet this initial text at once moves away from Errantry, and the new poem in its first 'phase' was already quite largely achieved in this manuscript. It was followed, no doubt immediately, by the version that I print below. It is indeed extremely difficult and even unreal to delimit 'versions' in such cases, where my father was refining and enlarging the poem in a continuous process; but this second text was originally set down as if in a finished and final form, and in this form I give it here.(16)

There was a gallant passenger

a messenger, a mariner:

he built a boat and gilded her

and silver oars he fashioned her;

her sails he wove of gossamer

and blossom of the cherry-tree,

and lightly as a feather

in the weather went she merrily. 8

He floated from a haven fair

of maiden-hair and everfern;

the waterfalls he proudly rode

where loudly flowed the Merryburn;

and dancing on the foam he went

on roving bent for ever on,

from Evermorning journeying,

while murmuring the River on 16

to valleys in the gloaming ran;

and slowly then on pillow cool

he laid his head, and fast asleep

he passed the Weepingwillow Pool.

The windy reeds were whispering,

and mists were in the meadow-land,

and down the River hurried him

and carried him to Shadowland. 24

The Sea beside a stony shore

there lonely roared, and under Moon

a wind arose and wafted him

a castaway beyond the Moon.

He woke again forlorn afar

by shores that are without a name,

and by the Shrouded Island o'er

the Silent Water floating came. 32

He passed the archipelagoes

where yellow grows the marigold,

and landed on the Elven-strands

of silver sand and fallow gold,

beneath the Hill of Ilmarin

where glimmer in a valley sheer

the lights of Elven Tirion,

the city on the Shadowmere. 40

He tarried there his errantry,

and melodies they taught to him,

and lays of old, and marvels told,

and harps of gold they brought to him.

Of glamoury he tidings heard,

and binding words of sigaldry;

of wars they spoke with Enemies

that venom used and wizardry. 48

In panoply of Elvenkings,

in silver rings they armoured him;

his shield they writ with elven-runes,

that never wound did harm to him.

His bow was made of dragon-horn,

his arrows shorn of ebony,

of woven steel his habergeon,

his scabbard of chalcedony. 56

His sword was hewn of adamant,

and valiant the might of it;

his helm a shining emerald,

and terrible the light of it.

His boat anew for him they built

of timber felled in Elvenhome;

upon the mast a star was set,

its spars were wet with silver foam; 64

and wings of swans they made for it,

and laid on it a mighty doom

to sail the seas of wind and come

where glimmering runs the gliding moon.(17)

From Evereven's lofty hills,

where softly spill the fountains tall,

he passed away, a wandering light

beyond the mighty Mountain-wall; 72

and unto Evernight he came,

and like a flaming star he fell:

his javelins of diamond

as fire into the darkness fell.

Ungoliant abiding there

in Spider-lair her thread entwined;

for endless years a gloom she spun

the Sun and Moon in web to wind.(18) 80

His sword was like a flashing light

as flashing bright he smote with it;

he shore away her poisoned neb,

her noisome webs he broke with it.

Then shining as a risen star

from prison bars he sped away,

and borne upon a blowing wind

on flowing wings he fled away. 88

To Evernoon at last he came,

and passed the flame-encircled hill,

where wells of gold for Melineth

her never-resting workers build.

His eyes with fire ablaze were set,

his face was lit with levin-light;

and turning to his home afar,

a roaming star at even-light 96

on high above the mists he came,

a distant flame, a marineer

on winds unearthly swiftly borne,

uplifted o'er the Shadowmere.

He passed o'er Carakilian,

where Tirion the Hallowed stands;

the sea far under loudly roared

on cloudy shores in Shadowland. 104

And. over Evermorn he passed,

and saw at last the haven fair,

far under by the Merry-burn

in everfern and maidenhair.

But on him mighty doom was laid,

till moon should fade and all the stars,

to pass, and tarry never more

on hither shore where mortals are, 112

for ever still a passenger,

a messenger, to never rest,

to bear his burning lamp afar,

the Flammifer of Westernesse.

The chief changes introduced on this manuscript were in lines 14-17, altered to read:

on roving bent from hitherland,

from Evermorning journeying,

while murmuring the River ran

to valleys in the Gloaming fields

and in lines 93 - 6, which were rewritten and extended thus: The seven-branched Levin-tree

on Heavenfield he shining saw

upflowering from its writhen root;

a living fruit of fire it bore.

The lightning in his face was lit,

ablaze were set his tresses wan,

his eyes with levin-beams were bright,

and gleaming white his vessel shone.

From World's End then he turned away