Tolkien’s Lost Lyrics

August 26, 2024

Soon, we’ll get to read poems by Tolkien that were lost for a long time. Bookstores in the West will sell a big three-book set by the writer of the famous “The Lord of the Rings” 50 years after he died.

Tolkien is one of the most well-known story writers ever. People have bought more than 150 million copies of his fantasy books. But he always hoped people would like his poems too.

The Guardian says Tolkien had a hard time getting his poem books published during his life. He did put about 100 poems in “The Hobbit” and “The Lord of the Rings”, though. Now, 50 years after he died, we’ll get to see 70 poems that were never published before. Next month, a company called HarperCollins will print a book with more than 195 of Tolkien’s poems.

Tolkien’s son Christopher wanted more people to know about his dad’s poem writing skills. Before he died in 2020, he worked on this project with two Tolkien experts, a married couple named Christina Scull and Wayne Hammond.
Hammond told a newspaper that the book has some “really good” new poems. He said, “This will show even more how much Tolkien loved language and words.”

Christina Scull added, “These poems will make us see Tolkien as an even better writer.”
The experts looked at lots of handwritten and typed papers. Some were with Christopher, and some were in libraries. Hammond said some papers had beautiful writing, while others were hard to read.

During World War I, Tolkien was a soldier in France. He fought in a big battle called the Somme. In late 1916, he got sick and had to go home. This probably saved his life because most of the other soldiers in his group died.

The new poems include some about war, but they’re more about life, loss, faith, and friendship than about fighting. Christina Scull really liked an unfinished poem called “The Empty Chapel” about a lonely soldier who hears marching and drums. She said it was very moving.
Tolkien wrote things like:

“I knelt in a silent empty chapel

And a great wood lay around

And a forest filled with a tramping noise

And a mighty drumming sound…

“O ye warriors of England that are marching dark

“Can ye see no light before you but the courage in your heart.”

Tolkien could be funny too. He wrote a poem called “Monday Morning” where everything goes wrong. It starts like this:

“On Monday morning all agree
that most annoying things can be.
Now I will tell you in this song
of one when everything went wrong.
The sun was early shining bright,
but not, of course, for my delight:
it woke the birds who woke mama,
who woke the boys, who woke papa;
it came and hit me in the eye,
though still I wished in bed to lie …”

Scull and Hammond had trouble understanding a poem Tolkien wrote in Old English. It was called Bealuwearge, which means “evil criminal” in Old English. This made them think of the scary Balrog from “The Lord of the Rings” and the wolf-like Wargs from “The Hobbit.”

They looked for the words in old dictionaries but couldn’t find them. Then they realized Tolkien was changing Lewis Carroll’s silly poem “Jabberwocky” into Old English. He made up words to match Carroll’s made-up words.

The experts say, “Many people who like his Middle-earth stories forget about his poems or don’t read them. They either rush to read the story parts or they think they don’t like poetry. But they’re missing out. The poems are important parts of the stories. They help make the plots better and create the right feeling and mood.”