This week’s choice is “Errantry” by J.R.R. Tolkien which I have chosen because of its glorious use of language.
He sat and sang a melody
J.R.R. Tolkien (1892—1973)
His errantry a-tarrying
He begged a pretty butterfly
That fluttered by to marry him
She scorned him and she scoffed at him
She laughed at him unpitying
So long he studied wizardry
And sigaldry and smithying.
Poem 360. Errantry
There was a merry passenger,
A messenger, a mariner:
He built a gilded gondola
To wander in, and had in her
A load of yellow oranges
And porridge for his provender;
He perfumed her with marjoram
And cardamon and lavender.
He called the winds of argosies
With cargoes in to carry him
Across the rivers seventeen
That lay between to tarry him.
He landed all in loneliness
Where stonily the pebblеs on
The running river Derrilyn
Goеs merrily for ever on.
He journeyed then through meadow-lands
To Shadow-land that dreary lay
And under hill and over hill
Went roving still a weary way.
He sat and sang a melody,
His errantry a-tarrying;
He begged a pretty butterfly
That fluttered by to marry him.
She scorned him and she scoffed at him,
She laughed at him unpitying;
So long he studied wizardry
And sigaldry and smithying.
He wove a tissue airy-thin
To snare her in; to follow her
He made him beetle-leather wing
And feather wing of swallow-hair.
He caught her in bewilderment
With filament of spider-thread;
He made her soft pavilions
Of lilies, and a bridal bed
Of flowers and of thistle-down
To nestle down and rest her in;
And silken webs of filmy white
And silver light he dressed her in.
He threaded gems in necklaces,
But recklessly she squandered them
And fell to bitter quarrelling;
Then sorrowing he wandered on,
And there he left her withering,
As shivering he fled away;
With windy weather following
On swallow-wing he sped 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,
And 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 elven-knights of Aerie
And Faerie, with paladins
That golden-haired and shining-eyed
Came riding by and challenged him.
Of crystal was his habergeon,
His scabbard of chalcedony;
With silver tipped at plenilune
His spear was hewn of ebony.
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 Dumbledors,
The Hummerhorns, and Honeybees,
And won the Golden Honeycomb;
And running home on sunny seas
In ship of leaves and gossamer
With blossom for a canopy,
He sat and sang, and furbished up
And burnished up his panoply.
He tarried for a little while
In little isles that lonely lay,
And found there naught but blowing grass;
And so at last the only way
He took, and turned, and coming home
With honeycomb, 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.
Errantry is the act of wandering, especially in search of chivalrous adventure, and Tolkien’s poem certainly gives us a delightful exposition of it. Its metre is quite complex and was invented by Tolkien himself—he admitted that he was never able to write another like it, though his later poem Eärendil the Mariner, which can be found in The Fellowship of the Ring, is written in a style derived from this one.
According to Wikipedia, it consists of three trisyllabic assonances in each four lines, with the second and fourth lines of each quatrain rhyming (e.g. mariner/had in her) as well as the end of the first line and the beginning of the second (e.g. passenger/messenger)—it seems to me that in actual fact this is more general: the end of each odd line more or less rhymes with the beginning of the next. It is not easy to read aloud, being rather tongue-twisting.
In Tolkien’s world, this poem is one of Bilbo’s and shows his characteristic facility with words, some of which are fictional (even in Middle Earth) and some quite archaic. Aerie, Belmarie, Derrilyn, Faerie, Thellamie and the Shadow-Land are all Bilbo’s invention as are Hummerhorns. We are perhaps more familiar with Dumbledors in a different spelling through another great work of fiction featuring wizards and elves, and probably more people know it as a synonym for bumblebees now than in 1935 when Errantry was first published.
There is a dizzying list of words: chalcedony, malachite, habergeon, plenilune, provender, sigaldry, morion, argosies, paladins, panoply, tourneying, foraying, derring-do, glamoury, burnished and furbished. If you are familiar with knights and armour, some of these terms will be familiar to you. Chalcedony and malachite are types of rock that are prized for their appearance, a habergeon is a sleeveless coat of mail while a morion is a type of helmet. Tourneying means jousting, for which one would prefer a complete set of armour, or panoply, and your opponents might be paladins (a synonym for one of Charlemagne’s Twelve Peers, legendary knights of his 8th century court).
Provender is a synonym for food or supplies for people or animals. Sigaldry may be a familiar word to devotees of Patrick Rothfus’s books: it means sorcery in Middle English; glamoury similarly means enchantment or magic. Foraying is a sudden raid on an enemy’s territory and an argosy is a flotilla of merchant ships operating under the same ownership, which lent its name to the popular British catalogue store Argos.
Burnishing and furbishing had pretty much the same meaning originally: to polish a metal item so that it shines. Burnish has kept the connection to metal, while furbish is more generally applied (more commonly as refurbish). Derring-do is a heroic or courageous action, perhaps to the point of rashness.
The one word I definitely had to look up is plenilune, meaning at the time of the full moon; so the poem shows us his spear “hewn of ebony” and “silver tipped at plenilune”, meaning the point had been dipped in silver at the full moon, cleverly invoking the silvery nature of the moon as part of the overall impression.
I like it because it is like Gerard Manley Hopkins’s poetry: it flows like The Leaden Echo and the Golden Echo and uses a panoply of words to show us the merry passenger roving at large, having forgotten his original mission, courting and wooing his butterfly paramour (a butterfly chosen, I assume, to symbolise inconstant or insincere love) and then, disappointed by her indifference and scorn, journeying on to jousts and contests of arms with elven knights and fantastic creatures before returning home with his honeycomb, only to recall his errand so that he must depart again.
The poem is filled with wonderful images: the gilded gondola outfitted with oranges and porridge, the airy-thin tissue snare with filaments of spider-thread, pavilions of lilies, countless silver fountains, the shield and helmet of coral and ivory, the golden-haired elven paladins, his “ship of leaves and gossamer/With blossom for a canopy,” and the final image of the weather-driven mariner, “a-roving as a feather does.”
Donald Swann, the pianist of the comedy duo Flanders and Swann, was so enchanted by Tolkien’s world that he wrote music for several poems including this one, and a recording of William Elvin singing this and other songs is available on YouTube. I highly recommend it, as Swann’s musical setting is lovely. I encountered this version many years ago on an LP borrowed from the library.