PRINCESS MEE
In 1924, while Reader in English Language at the University of Leeds, Tolkien published a precursor to Princess Mee, entitled The Princess Ní, in the collection Leeds University Verse 1914–24:
O! the Princess Ní,
Slender is she:
In gossamer shot with gold,
And splintered pearls
On threaded curls
Of elfin hair, ’tis told,
She is wanly clad;
But with myriad
Fireflies is she girdled,
Like garnets red
In an amber bed,
While her silver slippers, curdled
With opals pale,
Are of fishes’ mail —
How they slide on the coral floor! —
And over her frock
She wears a smock,
A feathery pinafore,
Of the down of eiders
With red money-spiders
Broidered here and there.
O! the Princess Ní,
Most slender is she,
And lighter than the air.
Although Tolkien came to deplore the idea of diminutive, ‘elfin’ beings – ‘a murrain on Will Shakespeare and his damned cobwebs’ (late 1951?, Letters, p. 143) – they featured in some of his earlier poems: the earliest extant manuscript of The Princess Ní is dated 9 July 1915. Here, however, the emphasis is less on the figure of the princess than on her raiment, which Tolkien describes in exquisite detail. As in Errantry, gossamer can be taken in its strict sense of ‘fine cobwebs’. The princess is ‘wanly clad’ (dressed in a pale garment), though with coloured decoration, and with silver slippers festooned with opals (pale or colourless silica) like milky curds. For a smock she wears a pinafore (both words refer to a loose protective overgarment) of eider down (soft feathers from an eider duck), embroidered with money-spiders (small spiders supposed to bring good luck). Goldberry in The Lord of the Rings herself wears shoes ‘like fishes’ mail’ (bk. I, ch. 7). The name Ní is derived, maybe, from the Irish feminine patronymic, as in the mythic Caitlín Ní Uallacháin (Cathleen Ni Houlihan).
Princess Mee, written no later than 15 November 1961, preserves some of the tone and description of The Princess Ní. In the Bombadil preface, Tolkien classifies it among the ‘nonsense’ of the Red Book’s ‘marginalia’, suggesting that it is no more than a hobbit’s idea of an Elf-maiden, dancing on a pool of clear water while dressed in a ‘woven coat’ as light as the silken webs spun by moths and ‘sewn with diamond dew’. In fact, the poem is quietly sophisticated, with its imagery of Princess Mee ‘dancing toe to toe’ with ‘Princess Shee’, its reversal of the final four lines to reflect the four preceding them, and its sad comment that none could discover how to find the mirror-world of the dancer’s reflection.
More than one critic has described Princess Mee as a version of the myth of Narcissus, the youth doomed to love his own reflection but never to reach that other self mirrored in the water; in that respect, the character’s name, Mee, is appropriately self-absorbed, but for the poem’s purposes, it need be no more than a contrast with Shee.
Much of the imagery in Princess Mee – silver and light, dancing beneath the stars – is common in Tolkien’s writing, and recalls most notably the dancing of Lúthien Tinúviel in ‘The Silmarillion’ (here from Canto 3 of The Lay of Leithian, in The Lays of Beleriand (1985), p. 174–5):
Her arms like ivory were gleaming,
her long hair like a cloud was streaming,
her feet atwinkle wandered roaming
in misty mazes in the gloaming;
and glowworms shimmered round her feet,
and moths in moving garland fleet
above her head went wavering wan —
and this the moon now looked upon,
uprisen slow, and round, and white,
above the branches of the night.
A kerchief could be a covering for the head or for the breast or shoulders, while a kirtle is a woman’s gown or an outer petticoat. All of these are possible in the larger illustration of Princess Mee by Pauline Baynes, who seems to have hedged her bets.
THE MAN IN THE MOON STAYED UP TOO LATE
The Man in the Moon Stayed Up Too Late is the title given to the poem in the Bombadil collection, where it is reprinted (with two slight revisions) from The Lord of the Rings, Book I, Chapter 9. It was first composed probably in the period 1919–20. The text of its original version may be found in The Return of the Shadow, p. 145–7; a revision, with only minor differences, was published as follows in the Leeds journal Yorkshire Poetry for October–November 1923 as The Cat and the Fiddle: A Nursery-Rhyme Undone and Its Scandalous Secret Unlocked:
They say there’s a little crooked inn
Behind an old grey hill,
Where they brew a beer so very brown
The Man-in-the-Moon himself comes down,
And sometimes drinks his fill.
And there the ostler has a cat
Who plays a five-stringed fiddle;
Mine host a little dog so clever
He laughs at any joke whatever,
And sometimes in the middle.
They also keep a horned cow,
’Tis said, with golden hoofs;
But music turns her head like ale,
And makes her wave her tufted tail
And dance upon the roofs.
But O! the row of silver dishes,
And store of silver spoons:
For Sunday there’s a special pair,
And these they polish up with care
On Saturday afternoons.
The Man-in-the-Moon had drunk too deep;
The ostler’s cat was totty;
A dish made love to a Sunday spoon;
The little dog saw all the jokes too soon;
And the cow was dancing-dotty.
The Man-in-the-Moon had another mug
And fell beneath his chair,
And there he called for still more ale,
Though the stars were getting thin and pale,
And the Dawn was on the stair.
The ostler said to his tipsy cat:
‘The white horses of the Moon,
They neigh and champ their silver bits,
But their master’s been and drowned his wits,
And the Sun will catch him soon.
Come play on your fiddle a hey-diddle-diddle,
’Twill make him look alive.’
So the cat played a terrible drunken tune,
While the landlord shook the Man-in-the-Moon,
And cried ‘’tis nearly five!’
They rolled him slowly up the hill
And bundled him in the Moon;
And his horses galloped up in rear,
And the cow came capering like a deer,
And the dish embraced the spoon.
The cat then suddenly changed the tune;
The dog began to roar;
The horses stood upon their heads;
The guests all bounded upon their beds
And danced upon the floor.
The cat broke all his fiddle-strings;
The cow jumped over the Moon;
The little dog laughed to see such fun;
In the middle the Sunday dish did run
Away with the Sunday spoon.
The round Moon rolled off over the hill —
But only just in time,
For the Sun looked up with a fiery head,
And ordered everyone back to bed,
And the ending of the rhyme.
The rhyme that has come ‘undone’ or ‘unlocked’ is one of the best known of English nursery rhymes:
Hey diddle diddle,
The cat and the fiddle,
The cow jumped over the moon;
The little dog laughed
To see such sport
And the dish ran away with the spoon.
But as first suggested by George Burke Johnston, Tolkien may have be
en inspired also by ‘The True History of the Cat and the Fiddle’ by George MacDonald in At the Back of the North Wind (1870), in which ‘Hey Diddle Diddle’ is combined with the traditional rhyme ‘The Man in the Moon Came Down Too Soon’ (see also our notes for Tolkien’s poem of that title, below):
Hey, diddle, diddle!
The cat and the fiddle!
He played such a merry tune,
That the cow went mad
With the pleasure she had,
And jumped right over the moon.
But then, don’t you see?
Before that could be,
The moon had come down and listened.
The little dog hearkened,
So loud that he barkened,
‘There’s nothing like it, there isn’t.’
Hey, diddle, diddle!
Went the cat and the fiddle,
Hey diddle, diddle, dee, dee!
The dog laughed at the sport
Till his cough cut him short,
It was hey diddle, diddle, oh me!
And back came the cow
With a merry, merry low,
For she’d humbled the man in the moon,
The dish got excited,
The spoon was delighted,
And the dish waltzed away with the spoon.
Revised for The Lord of the Rings, The Cat and the Fiddle is sung by Frodo at the inn at Bree, and in that work, as in the Bombadil preface, it is said to have been composed by Bilbo Baggins. The Lord of the Rings poem differs from the version in the Bombadil volume at only two points: in the eighth stanza, ‘The ostler said to his tipsy cat’ reads (our emphasis) ‘Then the ostler said to his tipsy cat’; and in the tenth stanza, ‘and a dish ran up with a spoon’ reads ‘and a dish ran up with the spoon’.
Ostler refers historically to a hostler, or hosteler (with silent h), one who runs a hostelry (or inn), later (and probably here) more specifically to a stableman or groom for guests’ horses. The ostler’s mention of white horses may be an echo of those sometimes shown in art to draw the chariot of the moon-goddess Selene (Luna). In The Cat and the Fiddle, totty means ‘unsteady, dizzy’; here it rhymes with dotty, also ‘unsteady’ but figuratively ‘silly’. In The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien glosses the female pronouns in Frodo’s song which refer to the Sun, explaining that ‘Elves (and Hobbits) always refer to the Sun as She’.
THE MAN IN THE MOON CAME DOWN TOO SOON
The second ‘Man in the Moon’ poem in this book is a revision of Why the Man in the Moon Came Down Too Soon, one of three works (with Enigmata Saxonica Nuper Inventa Duo and Tha Eadigan Saelidan: The Happy Mariners) which Tolkien contributed in June 1923 to A Northern Venture: Verses by Members of the Leeds University English School Association:
The Man in the Moon had silver shoon
And his beard was of silver thread;
He was girt with pale gold and inaureoled
With gold about his head.
Clad in silken robe in his great white globe
He opened an ivory door
With a crystal key, and in secrecy
He stole down the lucent floor;
Down a filigree stair of spidery hair
He slipped in gleaming haste,
And laughed with glee to be merry and free,
And faster he earthward raced —
He was tired of his pearls and diamond twirls,
Of his pallid minaret
Dizzy and white at its lunar height
In a world of silver set;
And adventured this peril for ruby and beryl
And emerald and sapphire,
And all lustrous gems for new diadems,
Or to blazon his pale attire.
He was lonely too with nothing to do
But to stare at the golden world,
Or strain for the hum that would distinctly come
As it gaily past him whirled.
At plenilune in his argent moon
He had wearily longed for fire:
Not the limpid lights of wan selenites,
But a red terrestrial pyre
With impurpurate glows of crimson and rose
And leaping orange tongue;
For great seas of blues and the passionate hues
When a dancing dawn is young;
For the meadowy ways like chrysoprase
At topaz eve — and then
How he longed for the mirth of the populous Earth
And the sanguine blood of men;
And coveted song and laughter long,
And viands hot, and wine,
Eating pearly cakes of light snowflakes
And drinking thin moonshine.
He twinkled his feet as he thought of the meat,
Of the punch and the peppery stew,
Till he tripped unaware on his slanting stair,
And fell like meteors do;
As the whickering sparks in splashing arcs
Of stars blown down like rain
From his laddery path took a foamy bath
In the Ocean of Almain;
And began to think, lest he melt and sink,
What in the moon to do,
When a Yarmouth boat found him far afloat,
To the mazement of the crew
Caught in their net all shimmering wet
In a phosphorescent sheen
Of bluey whites and opal lights
And delicate liquid green.
With the morning fish — ’twas his regal wish —
They packed him to Norwich town
To get warm on gin in a Norfolk inn,
And dry his watery gown.
Though canorous spells from the musical bells
Of the city’s fifty towers
Shouted the news of his lunatic cruise
In the early morning hours,
No hearths were laid, not a breakfast made,
And no one would sell him gems.
He found ashes for fire, and his gay desire
For chorus and brave anthems
Met snores instead with all Norfolk abed;
And his round heart nearly broke,
More empty and cold than above of old,
Till he bartered his faerie cloak
For a kitchen nook by a smoky cook,
And his belt of gold for a smile,
And a priceless jewel for a bowl of gruel —
A sample cold and vile
Of the proud plum-porridge of Anglian Norwich —
He arrived so much too soon
For unusual guests on adventurous quests
From the mountains of the Moon.
Shoon is the archaic plural of shoe – in these, the Man in the Moon twinkled his feet (moved them lightly and rapidly). His head is inaureoled, as if with a halo or heavenly crown. The floor is lucent (shining, luminous), the minaret (a slender tower, here divorced from its meaning as the turret of a mosque) is pallid or pale, like the limpid (clear) lights of wan (pale) selenites (precious stones, white and transparent; selen- is Greek ‘moon’). Tolkien’s moon is white, ivory, or crystal, ‘a world of silver set’, a place of light without colour. Against this, the ‘golden’ earth is a temptation, with its rich mineral colours – ruby and beryl, emerald and sapphire, chrysoprase (chalcedony) and topaz, ‘lustrous gems for new diadems’ (crowns or headbands) or to blazon (display prominently on) the Man in the Moon’s ‘pale attire’ – its fire with impurpurate (purple) glows and ‘leaping orange tongue’, its blue seas, and its colourful dawn. Plenilune (the time of full moon) and argent (silver) are words which Tolkien thought beautiful before they are even understood (see his comments to Jane Neave, Letters, p. 310).
Why the Man in the Moon Came Down Too Soon ‘explains’ the well-known (with variations) English nursery rhyme:
The man in the moon
Came down too soon,
And asked his way to Norwich;
He went by the south,
And burnt his mouth
With supping
cold plum porridge.
In Tolkien’s poem, the Man in the Moon falls, like sparks whickering (making a sound like something rushing through the air) and down a filigree stair (like delicate jewel work), into ‘the Ocean of Almain’, the North Sea (Almain is an older English name for Germany, and the North Sea has been called the ‘German Ocean’). Into these waters juts the English county of Norfolk in the region of East Anglia, with its capital at Norwich; East Anglia is so called because it was settled by Angles, thus ‘Anglian Norwich’ in the final stanza. From medieval times, Norwich has been a major city in England, with many churches and (latterly) two cathedrals, a place of many towers whose bells could well cast canorous (melodious, resonant) spells. The ‘Yarmouth boat’ whose crew find the Man is out of Great Yarmouth, a town south of Norwich and once a major fishing port. The gruel he buys at a dear price, a ‘cold and vile’ sample of plum-porridge (see below), and his equally cold reception by those folk of Norwich awake at an early hour are not the sanguine (warm, cheerful) men and hot viands (foods) the Man desires.
The earliest workings of Why the Man in the Moon Came Down Too Soon are dated 10–11 March 1915 and subtitled An East Anglian Phantasy. Tolkien later omitted the subtitle and added a foretitle, A Faërie, as well as a title in Old English, Se Móncyning (‘The Moon-king’). Another version of the poem, following that in A Northern Venture but still retaining (indeed, adding) references to Norwich, was published in The Book of Lost Tales, Part One, p. 204–6. Possibly in mid-May 1915, Tolkien wrote four lines from the original poem (from ‘He was tired of his pearls …’) in the notebook he called The Book of Ishness, accompanied by a watercolour, ‘Illustr[ation]: To “Man in the Moon”’, which depicts the Man sliding down to the earth on a spidery thread; see our J.R.R. Tolkien: Artist and Illustrator (1995), fig. 45.
The Adventures of Tom Bombadil Page 9
