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#1 | |
Overshadowed Eagle
Join Date: Nov 2017
Location: The north-west of the Old World, east of the Sea
Posts: 3,857
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Do you know what the rarest Tolkien book is? It's not any sort of first edition, or anything of that kind: it's Songs for the Philologists, a collection of poems (13 by Tolkien) that was apparently made without his permission, never distributed, and almost entirely lost in a fire. (I first learnt about it in the course of a Balfrog/Seth thread a couple of years back.)
Well, it turns out that a few years ago, someone with far too much time on their hands wrangled up a copy and turned it into a convenient PDF, which (in the course of trying to do something similar myself) I've just found. Songs for the Philologists, 2007 edition (Be aware that the PDF is apparently coded so that you can't copy and paste the contents, which is very clever and very annoying. ![]() One of the more... interesting Tolkien works (and one of the few in modern English) is Frenchmen Froth, which is, er... extremely snarky: Quote:
Last edited by Huinesoron; 07-06-2020 at 08:41 AM. Reason: Relinking to Wayback Machine. |
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#2 |
Gruesome Spectre
Join Date: Dec 2000
Location: Heaven's doorstep
Posts: 8,035
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I've heard of that collection before. Tolkien's incomparable use of language is, to me, one of the inexorable pulls of his works.
However, the study of words themselves never has commended itself to me especially. Still, this is worth a look just to see the man revel in his passion.
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Music alone proves the existence of God. |
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#3 |
Loremaster of Annúminas
Join Date: Oct 2006
Posts: 2,307
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Well, the collection was certainly made with Tolkien's (and EV Gordon's) permission, since they made it! But the printed booklet certainly was done without, a decade after Tolkien left Leeds.
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The entire plot of The Lord of the Rings could be said to turn on what Sauron didn’t know, and when he didn’t know it. |
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#4 | |
Overshadowed Eagle
Join Date: Nov 2017
Location: The north-west of the Old World, east of the Sea
Posts: 3,857
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Quote:
Mál-rúnar skaltu kunna Google Translate identifies this as Icelandic, and translates it as Know the Runes, but the actual translation looks a bit more... well, snarky. Still entirely by Google: -Mál-rúnar, by itself, translates as 'speech-runes'. -kunna is a form of 'be able to', 'can' (or maybe 'have'). -skaltu is translated as 'please', but alternate translations are 'do' or 'you should' - it's an imperative. Which means, I think, that the entire thing comes out not as 'know the runes', but as: Please learn the words! hS |
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#5 |
Spectre of Decay
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I've been looking for a copy of this for years. Tom Shippey quotes from it in The Road to Middle-earth, but like many of Tolkien's less well-known work it was published in an obscure place. In this case it was a limited print run of an earlier booklet made as a teaching aid for the B or 'birch' (primarily linguistic) stream of the University of Leeds English school.
It doesn't surprise me that UCL was involved, since it's one of the centres for medieval English studies even today. It turns out that A.H. Smith, a former student at Leeds, was responsible for the printing. To be fair to HarperCollins, the audience for a teaching aid in medieval studies, largely written in dead languages and long ago overtaken by scholarship, is doubtful. Probably the copyright is disputable between Leeds university and the estates of Tolkien, Gordon and the other contributors, and the questionable marketability of the work has made untangling the legal situation uneconomical. Still, here a copy is. Thanks for that one, hS. Éadig béo þu
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Man kenuva métim' andúne? |
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#6 | |
Pilgrim Soul
Join Date: May 2004
Location: watching the wonga-wonga birds circle...
Posts: 9,451
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Quote:
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“But Finrod walks with Finarfin his father beneath the trees in Eldamar.”
Christopher Tolkien, Requiescat in pace |
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#7 |
Spirit of Nen Lalaith
Join Date: Feb 2010
Location: Meneltarma
Posts: 5,376
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*imagines Maeglin being bitten by worms*
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Tuor: Yeah, it was me who broke [Morleg's] arm. With a wrench. Specifically, this wrench. I am suffering from Maeglinomaniacal Maeglinophilia. |
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