When in the first draft (VI. 392) Bilbo said 'I shall have to get that fellow Peregrin to help me', he now says the same of Aragorn, changed in the act of writing to Tarkil (in FR, the Dunadan). At this stage Aragorn's absence from the feast was still explained by his being much in demand in the kitchens.
I noted that in the original draft 'the entire passage (FR pp. 243 - 4) in which Bilbo tells [Frodo] of his journey to Dale, of his life in Rivendell, and his interest in the Ring - and the distressing incident when he asks to see it - is absent.' In this version Bilbo does give an account of his journey, but it was at first different from what he says in - FR:
When he had left Hobbiton he had wandered off aimlessly along the Road, but somehow he had steered all the time for Rivendell.
'I got here in a month or two without much adventure,' he said, 'and I stayed at The Pony in Bree for a bit;(4) somehow I have never gone any further. I have almost finished my book.
And I make up a few songs which they sing occasionally...'
This was changed, probably soon, to the text of FR, in which Bilbo tells of his journey to Dale. The rest of the passage, in which Bilbo speaks of Gandalf and the Ring, was present in this version from the start, the only differences being that Bilbo names the Necromancer, not the Enemy, and where in FR he says that he could get little out of Gandalf concerning the Ring but that 'the Dunadan has told me more', here he calls him Tarkil, and adds 'He was in the Gollum-hunt' (this being afterwards struck out).
The episode of Bilbo's asking to see the Ring is present as in FR, the only difference here being that where FR has 'When he had dressed, Frodo found that while he slept the Ring had been hung about his neck on a new chain, light but strong', this version has 'When he dressed Frodo had hung the Ring upon a chain about his neck under his tunic.' When Aragorn joins Bilbo and Frodo, the conversation is as in FR, with Tarkil for Dunadan, the Dunadan; but Bilbo's reply to Frodo's 'What do you call him Tarkil for?' is different:
'Lots of us do here,' answered Bilbo, 'just to show off our knowledge of the old tongue, and to show our deep respect. It means Man of the West, out of Numenor, you know, or perhaps you don't. But that is another story. He can tell it you some other time. Just now I want his help. Look here, friend Tarkil, Elrond says this song of mine is to be finished before the end of the evening...'
This was changed to:
'He is often called that here,' answered Bilbo. 'It is a title of honour; The Elder Tongue is remembered in Rivendell; and I thought you knew enough at least to know tarkil: Man of Westernesse, Numenorean. But this isn't the time for lessons. Just now I want your Trotter's help in something urgent. Look here, friend Tarkil...'(5)
The passage leading up to Bilbo's song is much as in FR (pp. 245 - 6), but the sentence beginning 'Almost it seemed that the words took shape...' is absent, and where FR has 'the interwoven words in elven-tongues' ('in the Elven-tongue', First Edition) this text has 'the interwoven words in the high elven-tongue'.
The reception of the song moves close to the text of FR (p. 249), but with some differences. No Elf is individually named (Lindir in FR). From Bilbo's words about Men and Hobbits - 'They're as different as peas and apples' - this version has:
'No! - little peas and large peas!' said some. 'Their languages all taste much the same to us, anyway,' said others.
'I won't argue with you,' said Bilbo. 'I am sleepy after so much music and singing. I'll leave you to guess, if you want to.' 'Well, we guess that you thought of the first two lines, and Tarkil did all the rest for you,' they cried.
'Wrong! Not even warm; stone cold, in fact!' said Bilbo with a laugh. He got up and came towards Frodo.
'Well, that's over!' he said in a low voice. 'It went off better than I expected. I don't often get asked for a second hearing, for any reason. As a matter of fact quite a lot of it was Tarkil's.' 'I'm not going to try and guess,' said Frodo, smiling. 'I was half asleep when you began - it seemed to follow on from
something I was dreaming about, and I didn't realize it was, really you who were speaking until near the end.'
The chapter ends now as it does in FR, except that the old form of the chant to Elbereth remains (VI.394), and the passage following it, concerning Aragorn and Arwen, is of course absent.
*
No poem of my father's had so long and complex a history as that which he named Errantry. It issued ultimately in two entirely distinct poems, one of which was the song that Bilbo chanted at Rivendell; and this is a convenient place to set out fairly fully the nature of this divergence, this extraordinary shape-changing.
My father described the origin and nature of Erranty in a letter written to Donald Swann on 14 October 1966. (Errantry had been published in The Adventures of Tom Bombadil in 1962, and it was set to music by Donald Swann in The Road Goes Ever On, 1967: see his remarks on the poem in his foreword to that book.) In this letter my father said:
With regard to Errantry: I am most interested in your suggestion. I wonder if it is not too long for such an arrangement? I looked to see if it could be abbreviated; but its metrical scheme, with its trisyllabic near-rhymes, makes this very difficult. It is of course a piece of verbal acrobatics and metrical high-jinks; and was intended for recitation with great variations of speed. It needs a reciter or chanter capable of producing the words with great clarity, but in places with great rapidity. The 'stanzas' as printed indicate the speed-groups. In general these were meant to begin at speed and slow down. Except the last group, which was to begin slowly, and pick up at errand too! and end at high speed to match the beginning.(6) Also of course the reciter was supposed at once to begin repeating (at even higher speed) the beginning, unless somebody cried 'Once is enough'.(7)
The piece has had a curious history. It was begun very many years ago, in an attempt to go on with the model that came unbidden into my mind: the first six lines, in which, I guess, D'ye ken the rhyme to porringer had a part.(8) Later I read it to an undergraduate club that used to hear its members read unpublished poems or short tales, and voted some of them into the minute book. They invented the name Inklings, and not I or Lewis, though we were among the few 'senior' members. (The club lasted the usual year or two of undergraduate societies; and the name became transferred to the circle of C. S. Lewis when only he and I were left of it.)(9) It was at this point that Errantry began its travels, starting with a typed copy, and continuing by oral memory and transmission, as I later discovered.
The earliest version that my father retained is a rough pencilled manuscript without title: there were certainly preliminary workings behind it, now lost, since this text was set down without hesitations or corrections, but it seems very probable that it was in fact the first complete text of the poem, possibly that from which he read it to the original 'Inklings' in the early 1930s. The page has many alterations and suggestions leading to the second version, but I give it here as it was first set down.
There was a merry passenger,
a messenger, an errander;
he took a tiny porringer
and oranges for provender;
he took a little grasshopper
and harnessed her to carry him;
he chased a little butterfly
that fluttered by, to marry him.
He made him wings of taffeta
to laugh at her and catch her with;
he made her shoes of beetle-skin
with needles in to latch them with.
They fell to bitter quarrelling,
and sorrowing he fled away;
and long he studied sorcery
in Ossory a many day.
He made a shield and morion
of coral and of ivory;
he made a spear of emerald
and glimmered all in bravery;
a sword he made of malachite
and stalactite, and brandished it,
he went and fought the dragon-fly
called wag-on-high and vanquished it.
He battled with the Dumbledores,
and bumbles all, and honeybees,
and won the golden honey-comb,
and running home on sunny seas,
in ship of leaves and gossamer
with blossom for a canopy,
he polished up and burnished up
and furbished up his panoply.
He tarried for a little while
in little isles, and plundered them;
and webs of all the attercops
he shattered, cut, and sundered them.
And coming home with honey-comb
and money none - remembered it,
his message and his errand too!
His derring-do had hindered it.(10)
Among my father's papers are five further texts, all titled Errantry, before the poem's publication in The Oxford Magazine, Vol. LII no. 5, 9 November 1933, which I give here. In fact, the form published in 1933 was virtually achieved already in the second version, apart only from the beginning, which went through several stages of develop- ment: these are given at the end of the Oxford Magazine version.
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 cardamom 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 pebbles on
the running river Derrilyn
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, &c.
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 To
m 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;
The History of Middle Earth: Volume 7 - The Treason of Isengard Page 12
