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Humbert
Lindon
Nov 8 2007, 2:11pm
Post #1 of 14
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Ch 3. "Three is Company" - Pt 5: Journeyman Blues
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On the road itself, traveling is both fun and frightening, energising but wearying. Songs help to lighten the load, and words spoken by adventurers of the past.
Frodo says that Bilbo used to tell him that there was only one road, and that it began at your front door. “You step into the Road, and if you don’t keep your feet, there is no knowing where you might be swept off to.”
I find these words stirring, perhaps appealing to the (very buried!) Took in me.
How about you? Do they make you want to be swept away?
Did you enjoy hearing these words included in Peter Jackson’s film version?
The walking song Frodo sings is a repeat of Bilbo’s (though he claims he thinks that he’s inventing it on the spot) with one alteration: “Pursuing it with weary [rather than ‘eager’] feet.”
Do you notice this change right away? How much does this subtle difference make to the feel of the song?
Another song that is sung on the road is a jaunty walking song. The third (and final) verse goes:
Home is behind, the world ahead
And there are many paths to tread
Through shadows to the edge of night,
Until the stars are all alight.
Then world behind and home ahead,
We’ll wander back to home and bed.Mist and twilight, cloud and shade,
Away shall fade! Away shall fade!
Fire and lamp, and meat and bread,
And then to bed! And then to bed!
Movie fans will realise that segments of this were used, and altered, for Pippin to sing in the court of the Steward in Peter Jackson’s Return of the King. There, however, it is a haunting lament, used over footage of Faramir’s senseless, hopeless charge into Orc-occupied Osgiliath.
How well do Tolkien’s lyrics work in that more sober context? Did you recognise it from this source? Did the filmmakers do a good job of converting an upbeat travel-tune to a sober ballad?
More generally, how do you find Tolkien’s writing in songs such as these (this one in particular)? Does his talent extend to these flippant hobbit-tunes? (Let’s leave aside the attempts at higher “poetry” for the moment.)
After the first night spent on the road (observed by one rather intelligent fox), “Frodo woke up first, and found that a tree-root had made a hole in his back, and that his neck was stiff.”
These kinds of details are naturally left out later in the story (you can’t mention the quality of the previous night’s sleep for every day of such a long journey!) but here it makes sense to recount the hobbits’ difficulty in adjusting to “roughing it,” as they say.
Do these details make the experience more “real” or more tangible for you? Have you traveled or gone camping and experienced similar discomfort - and if so, does this passage bring back such memories?
Is it useful for the author to try and bring these little details of reality to the situation, or do we want to get on with the story, and get swept up in the fairy-tale adventure aspect of it all?
A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step - and this is one small step for a hobbit, but one giant leap for Middle-earth. And other clichéd sayings of the same sort.
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Curious
Gondolin
Nov 8 2007, 4:55pm
Post #2 of 14
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How about you? Do they make you want to be swept away?
Only in books.
Did you enjoy hearing these words included in Peter Jackson’s film version?
Yes.
The walking song Frodo sings is a repeat of Bilbo’s (though he claims he thinks that he’s inventing it on the spot) with one alteration: “Pursuing it with weary [rather than ‘eager’] feet.”
Do you notice this change right away? How much does this subtle difference make to the feel of the song?
No, I did not notice it for many years. It does make a subtle difference, and that subtle difference becomes much less subtle later in the tale. On the other hand, Bilbo wasn't so eager when he set out on his adventure in The Hobbit.
How well do Tolkien’s lyrics work in that more sober context? Did you recognise it from this source? Did the filmmakers do a good job of converting an upbeat travel-tune to a sober ballad?
They worked remarkably well. I like it.
More generally, how do you find Tolkien’s writing in songs such as these (this one in particular)? Does his talent extend to these flippant hobbit-tunes? (Let’s leave aside the attempts at higher “poetry” for the moment.)
I like some of Tolkien's most flippant poems the best, but I do have a problem with his liking for the four-beat meter. I suppose it works best in a walking song, though, since the regular beat keeps pace with the walking. In longer doses it can get tiring.
Do these details make the experience more “real” or more tangible for you? Have you traveled or gone camping and experienced similar discomfort - and if so, does this passage bring back such memories?
Yes and yes.
Is it useful for the author to try and bring these little details of reality to the situation, or do we want to get on with the story, and get swept up in the fairy-tale adventure aspect of it all?
I like the realistic details.
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Nerdanel
Ossiriand
Nov 9 2007, 12:25am
Post #3 of 14
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I find these words stirring, perhaps appealing to the (very buried!) Took in me.
How about you? Do they make you want to be swept away?
Did you enjoy hearing these words included in Peter Jackson’s film version?
In the early days of my obsession with LotR I lived just off US Route 62 in Ohio, and I loved thinking of that as a stream that could sweep me off to Mexico or Canada! I'm glad the words were included in the movie in Bilbo's voice.
How well do Tolkien’s lyrics work in that more sober context? Did you recognise it from this source? Did the filmmakers do a good job of converting an upbeat travel-tune to a sober ballad?
I recognized the words right away. It was pretty well done--Pippin would not know any sad songs, so he'd come up with a walking song (rather than a bawdy bar song) but he'd sing it very sadly. I'm not sure the tune they used in the movie could ever be rendered as a brisk walking song, though.
After the first night spent on the road (observed by one rather intelligent fox), “Frodo woke up first, and found that a tree-root had made a hole in his back, and that his neck was stiff.”
These kinds of details are naturally left out later in the story (you can’t mention the quality of the previous night’s sleep for every day of such a long journey!) but here it makes sense to recount the hobbits’ difficulty in adjusting to “roughing it,” as they say.
Do these details make the experience more “real” or more tangible for you? Have you traveled or gone camping and experienced similar discomfort - and if so, does this passage bring back such memories?
Is it useful for the author to try and bring these little details of reality to the situation, or do we want to get on with the story, and get swept up in the fairy-tale adventure aspect of it all?
Actually, one of the few memories I have of the first time I read LotR was of all the descriptions of sleeping and the dangers of doing so particularly as Frodo and Sam trudge into Mordor. The effect is to feel like we are experiencing the whole quest in real time.
[
(This post was edited by Nerdanel on Nov 9 2007, 12:33am)
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Menelwyn
Nargothrond
Nov 9 2007, 12:33am
Post #4 of 14
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The walking song Frodo sings is a repeat of Bilbo’s (though he claims he thinks that he’s inventing it on the spot) with one alteration: “Pursuing it with weary [rather than ‘eager’] feet.”
Do you notice this change right away? How much does this subtle difference make to the feel of the song?
Well, I didn't the first time (or twenty) that I read it, but I certainly do now, since I pay a lot more attention to the poems/songs these days. (As I have said here many times, I learned to appreciate the poems when I heard them as songs, actually set to music.) The change does have a huge effect on the feel of the song for me. My current theory is that Bilbo's version is sung when he has just given up the Ring, so traveling is fun, an adventure, something to look forward to. So also with the life that the Road symbolizes. Bilbo is free, able to enjoy what life will bring him from now on. Frodo's version, on the other hand, is when the burden of the Ring is just setting in. The journey is an arduous task, a duty to be performed, and not a pleasant one. Frodo is restrained, and already weighted down by the Ring. So, for him, the journey is one of weariness. Big difference!
Movie fans will realise that segments of this were used, and altered, for Pippin to sing in the court of the Steward in Peter Jackson’s Return of the King. There, however, it is a haunting lament, used over footage of Faramir’s senseless, hopeless charge into Orc-occupied Osgiliath.
How well do Tolkien’s lyrics work in that more sober context? Did you recognise it from this source? Did the filmmakers do a good job of converting an upbeat travel-tune to a sober ballad?
They work wonderfully, at least with the omission of the appropriate lines, and I did recognize it immediately. The fact that I did indeed recognize its original source is part of what made the song really stick out as shocking in that scene, and part of what had me bawling through that scene every time I watched it for a long time. But at the same time, it makes perfect sense. Tolkien did the same thing himself to another verse of this song, which Frodo repeats on his way to the Grey Havens. That too is a somber occasion. And incidentally, I really like how the Tolkein Ensemble handles that switch in their recordings. The tunes for the two versions are nearly identical, but they slow the pace and alter the tone of the second version to convey the difference in mood. In any case, I feel that what the movie-makers is entirely justified.
More generally, how do you find Tolkien’s writing in songs such as these (this one in particular)? Does his talent extend to these flippant hobbit-tunes?
I actually feel that the hobbit songs work better in some ways than many of the "higher poems". The rhythm and rhyme schemes that he seems to use everywhere except for in the alliterative poems work for walking songs and so forth, for simple songs of a rural people. And walking songs should have a certain rhythm, like the ones Tolkien chooses. When he uses the same patterns in, say, songs by the Elves, it doesn't seem to fit as well, especially as poetry. Again, I've heard musical settings of some of the other songs, even ones that have this same kind of scheme, that work wonderfully as music although I don't like them so much as poems (I think notably of Gimli's song in Moria, as performed by the Tolkien Ensemble).
Is it useful for the author to try and bring these little details of reality to the situation, or do we want to get on with the story, and get swept up in the fairy-tale adventure aspect of it all?
It's not bad to get some of this here at the beginning, because to a certain extent it goes into illustrating the character of the hobbits. Even the movie (or at least the EEs), which is more constrained to get on with the story than the book is, has a bit of this: in the FOTR EE, Sam is the one sleeping on a root, and he complains that he can't sleep and never will be able to. Then in ROTK, we see him quite comfortably asleep on the edge of a precipice in Cirith Ungol--he has come a long way. The conditions have in fact gotten worse, but Sam has learned to adapt to it. So I imagine too with Frodo in the book.
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Beren IV
Mithlond
Nov 9 2007, 6:18am
Post #5 of 14
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Tolkien's poetry is awful doggeral
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but then, the same is true of the Ode to Joy, until Beetoven set music to it. And remember that most of Tolkien's poems are presented as songs...
Once a paleontologist, now a botanist, will be a paleobotanist
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N.E. Brigand
Gondolin
Nov 9 2007, 6:26am
Post #6 of 14
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What makes these hobbit poems "awful doggerel"? //
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(This post was edited by N.E. Brigand on Nov 9 2007, 6:27am)
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elostirion74
Nargothrond
Nov 9 2007, 10:52am
Post #7 of 14
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the details make it believable
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Thanks for including that image from the movie - I loved the scenes of the hobbits travelling through the Shire:)
Did you enjoy hearing these words included in Peter Jackson’s film version?
Actually, and you might be surprised to hear this, I've never been able to imagine the "The Road goes.."
as a song, although it's said to be one. I liked to hear the words in the film, but the melody never felt right. I think of the lines more like a sort of poem to speak to oneself, especially with Frodo.
Do you notice this change right away? How much does this subtle difference make to the feel of the song?
I've done so for a long time, but I probably didn't the first times. As a poem about the course of life, or fate, the difference highlights how Bilbo is eagerly going on an adventure, while Frodo is going reluctantly, burdened by the Ring.
How well do Tolkien’s lyrics work in that more sober context? Did you recognise it from this source? Did the filmmakers do a good job of converting an upbeat travel-tune to a sober ballad?
I recognized the source at once and I loved the song. But that is as much due to the power of the scene in itself, the music and Billy Boyd's voice. Seen from the outside, the lyrics don't fit in with the scene for me. But I tend to forget about that as soon as Billy Boyd starts singing.
More generally, how do you find Tolkien’s writing in songs such as these (this one in particular)? Does his talent extend to these flippant hobbit-tunes?
I find that Tolkien is quite good at these more straightforward poems, with their contrast between the comforts of home, the known scenery and adventure ahead. The simple metrics fit the walking song mode.
Do these details make the experience more “real” or more tangible for you? Have you traveled or gone camping and experienced similar discomfort - and if so, does this passage bring back such memories?
Is it useful for the author to try and bring these little details of reality to the situation, or do we want to get on with the story, and get swept up in the fairy-tale adventure aspect of it all?
It seems to me that Tolkien was drawing on his own experiences of hiking, probably also from quite familiar areas. I'm a bit envious of him for not only noticing the small details of the landscape, but also understanding quite exactly the lay of the land and the geography at the same time (my sense of orientation is hopeless). The details of the landscape and the small experiences make the story believable and seem familiar, it's as if you're on the quest yourself. I note the contrast between this part of the journey and the description of the journey from Bree to Rivendell, where the landscape is wild, bleak and often dispiriting.
As for having similar memories, I recall the feeling of stiffness, drinking from streams and a lot of other things, although Tolkien's landscape is a bit different from what I'm used to. What seems to be lacking, though, is feet cold from water and ridiculous arguments when people are getting tired.
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a.s.
Doriath
Nov 9 2007, 11:48am
Post #8 of 14
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they may not be "good" but they're not doggerel
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well, IMHO. 
I really think they are meant to be songs, and we are meant to have the impression that they ARE songs and that they've been known for a long time or are new verses written to go along with old melodies, etc. They are, in other words, folk songs.
Barbara Allen (as an old folk song) might not be a great poem, but it's a pretty good folk song.
This quality of folkiness is what makes me like the hobbit song poems much more than most of the verses in LOTR.
a.s.
"an seileachan"
Forgiveness means giving up all hope of a better past.
~~~Landrum Bolling
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Beren IV
Mithlond
Nov 9 2007, 9:44pm
Post #9 of 14
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Tolkien's poetry tends to have a very heavy meter, and characteristically consists of either rhyming couplets or of rhyming pairs of couplets, with only one rhyme per couplet. This gets very repetative after a while, which is why I use the word "doggeral". This means that short verses aren't as grating as the long verses: the Ring rhyme is a great opening to a great book, but the Lay of Leithien that goes for over seven thousand lines is more than a little off-putting!
Once a paleontologist, now a botanist, will be a paleobotanist
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Kdgard
Nevrast
Nov 10 2007, 6:52am
Post #11 of 14
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Hi Elostirion74. You said, "Actually, and you might be surprised to hear this, I've never been able to imagine the 'The Road goes...' as a song, although it's said to be one."
If you get a chance, check out the following CDs by The Tolkien Ensemble:
"An Evening in Rivendell"
"A Night in Rivendell"
"At Dawn in Rivendell"
"Leaving Rivendell"
Christopher Lee also contributed to the last two albums, and they are actually my favorites of the four. Anyway, these albums allow you to hear Tolkien's songs actually sung along with music. They also read many of the poems with mood music in the background. If you listen to these and close your eyes, it's easy to imagine that you're in The Hall of Fire in Rivendell!
Kdgard
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Morwen
Nargothrond
Nov 10 2007, 7:23pm
Post #12 of 14
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I like Tolkien's "simple" poetry
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The words are easy to learn and I'm sure the songs were easy to sing. This is especially appropriate for a culture in which many people didn't read or write. The hobbit walking song worked beautifully as a sad ballad in the movie, but could also be sung by children at play or simply around the fireside. The walking song may not be great poetry but the verses are something everyday folk could understand and remember.
I've heard your anguish, I've heard your hearts cry out
We are tired, we are weary, but we aren't worn out
Set down your chains, until only faith remains
Set down your chains--Jewel
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N.E. Brigand
Gondolin
Nov 11 2007, 11:22pm
Post #13 of 14
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"But round the Silmaril dark Fate
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was woven: they were meshed in hate,
and not yet come was their doomed hour
when wrested from the fallen power
of Morgoth in a ruined world,
regained and lost, they should be hurled
in fiery gulf and groundless sea,
beyond recall while Time shall be."
The Lay of Leithian Recommenced (c. 1950) canto XIII, lines 19-26
Some parts are better than others, as you would expect in a work running to more than four thousand lines (not seven thousand). I like the use of enjambment at the first line here. C.S. Lewis commented on the poem at length, finding great fault with some passages, and praising others.
Note the "gulf" here, which squire has identified as a post-LotR word for Tolkien.
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N.E. Brigand
Gondolin
Nov 12 2007, 12:25am
Post #14 of 14
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"Then world behind and home ahead"
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“You step into the Road…”
I find these words stirring, perhaps appealing to the (very buried!) Took in me. How about you?
What is the Road -- life, destiny, duty? What is the “larger way”?
Did you enjoy hearing these words included in Peter Jackson’s film version?
I may have at the time, but I can’t remember.
“Pursuing it with weary [rather than ‘eager’] feet.”
Do you notice this change right away? How much does this subtle difference make to the feel of the song?
I never noticed the change before reading Tom Shippey’s The Road to Middle-earth in the late 1990s. Not consciously, anyway. The song is more drastically changed when Bilbo reprises it in “Many Partings”. And all three are preceded by “Roads go ever ever on” in the last chapter of The Hobbit.
Another song that is sung on the road is a jaunty walking song…
“Home is behind, the world ahead…”
Movie fans will realise that segments of this were used…
How well do Tolkien’s lyrics work in that more sober context?
Did the filmmakers do a good job of converting an upbeat travel-tune to a sober ballad?
The song has sober undertones as written. I’m not sure it was best to bring them to the surface (though it was pretty and plaintive in the film) but that may be my reaction to one of the movie's most ham-fisted sequences. I think the filmmakers view the song's message differently: “Mist and twilight, cloud and shade / Away shall fade! Away shall fade!” (or “All shall fade”, as Boyd presented it) is more hopeful for Tolkien than for Jackson and co.
More generally, how do you find Tolkien’s writing in songs such as these (this one in particular)? Does his talent extend to these flippant hobbit-tunes?
These two hobbit songs work much better than the elvish song that shortly follows.
“Frodo woke up first, and found that a tree-root…
These kinds of details are naturally left out later in the story…
Do these details make the experience more “real” or more tangible for you?
Tolkien doesn’t always give these details later, but he doesn’t abandon them, either. I've spent lots of time outdoors, and Tolkien’s attention to the reality of long walks is one of the aspects of LotR that most appeals to me.
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