The typescript itself comprises fourteen pages; the length of the poem, without the marginal additions and emendations, is 490 lines, the same number as the manuscript fair copy on which it is based. The final Welsh Review version (reproduced above) has 506 lines. Tolkien’s revisions to the typescript, adding in some places, removing in others, extended the poem by 16 lines.
COMMENTARY
The typescript which was the basis for The Lay of Aotrou and Itroun as published in The Welsh Review version is a window into Tolkien’s creative process, showing the final steps in his journey from early ‘Corrigan’ to final, definitive Aotrou and Itroun; from ballad to lai; and from folktale to tragedy. There are revisions on every page. Some are mere substitutions of one word for another, but many are substantial cancellations and rewritings, in one case of nine lines. A separate slip marked for insertion contains seventeen lines, and even that has cancellations and additions. It has not been thought practical to reproduce the entire typescript, but the preceding sample page will give some idea of the extent and nature of the changes. A few examples of Tolkien’s revision process will show both his editorial and creative mind at work.
Lines 19 through 24 were originally typed as follows:
His hungry heart did lonely eld,
his house’s end, his banner felled,
his tomb unheeded, long forebode,
till brooding black his mind did goad
a mad and monstrous rede to take,
pondering oft at night awake.
These are copied word for word from the fair manuscript. But they are then crossed out, and in the left-hand margin the following lines are jotted for insertion:
And pondering oft at night awake
his darkened mind would visions make
of lonely age, and death, his tomb
unheeded while strangers in his room
with other names and other shields
were masters of his halls and fields.
Thus counsel cold he took at last,
his hope from light to darkness passed.
The changes from typescript to first revision are substantial. The revision is longer by two lines; the last line becomes the first line; the felled banner is omitted; the ‘unheeded’ tomb becomes ‘unkept’ instead, altering inattention to neglect; the lord’s ‘brooding black’ mind becomes ‘his darkened mind’, suggesting a change rather than a state or condition. Of special importance is the addition of the last two lines, changing ‘rede’ to ‘counsel’ and shifting the alliteration from ‘mad and monstrous’ to ‘cold’, where it emphasizes ‘counsel’, and charting the passage of hope from light to darkness.
But Tolkien did not stop there. These lines also are crossed out, and in the corresponding right-hand margin he has carefully written:
And Thus pondering oft at night awake
His darkened mind would visions make
Of lonely age and death; his tomb
Unkept while strangers in his room
With other names and other shields
Were masters of his halls and fields.
Thus counsel cold he took at last:
His hope from light to darkness passed.
These changes are smaller, evidence of fine-tuning. The replacement of ‘And’ by ‘Thus’ substitutes an adverbial comment for a simple connective. There is a ghost ‘s’ at the end of ‘vision’ in this revision, possibly added in pencil but so lightly that you have to use a magnifying glass to read it. The comma after ‘counsel cold he took at last’ is now a colon, making the passage of hope from light to dark the direct outcome of ‘counsel cold’.
Of particular interest is the separate sheet inserted between pages 10–11 and eleven and intended to replace lines 351–360 of page ten. The passage takes place on the lord’s return to his house. Here is the typescript version, circled in ink and crossed out.
To bed they brought him and to sleep,
fitful, uneasy; there did creep
the shreds of dreams, wherein no more
was sun nor garden, but the roar
of angry sea and angry wind;
and there a dark face leered and grinned,
or changed – and where a fountain fell
a corrigan was singing in a dell;
a white hand as the fountain spilled
a phial of glass with water filled.
Here are the lines written on the separate sheet:
To bed they brought him and to sleep:
in sunless thickets tangled deep
he dreamed, and wandering found no more
the garden green, but on the shore
the sea went moaning in the wind;
a face before him leered and grinned:
NowNow it is tis earned, come bring to me
my fee it cried a voice said, bring my fee!
Beside a fountain falling cold
{? And then he saw a fountain cold
the Corrigan now greyed shrunk and old
was sitting singing; in her claw
a comb of bony teeth he saw
with which shebroken cloven handraked her withered tress tresses hoargrey
andbut in her other hand she bore?] there lay
a phial of glass with water filled
While the many revisions address different aspects of the poem, one major change, first evidenced in the fragment, is Tolkien’s addition of a motive for the lord, the careful development of the processes of his mind and their progression from foreboding to resolve and thence to action. The story thus is more Macbeth than Oedipus, not a tale of a man caught unknowingly in the toils of fate, but the tragedy of a man going willfully down the wrong road, whose fall into error makes him the architect of his own destiny.
A second change concerns the development of the corrigan. She has three scenes in the finished poem, as contrasted with two in the fair manuscript copy, one in ‘The Corrigan’ II, and none at all in ‘The Corrigan’ I. Moreover, one of the three scenes plays out as the dream of the sleeping lord, shifting the focus from the supernatural to the psychological. Here the lord sees in his sleep the corrigan not as the ‘beautiful fay’ of the epigraph and her other appearances as the seductive fairy of the fountain, but in her alternate shape of a withered hag.
The direction of these revisions, and indeed of the general changes from poem to poem, take the story into ever deeper and darker territory. Rather than beginning with the birth of twin children, as does the original Breton poem and Tolkien’s shorter ‘Lay’, his later version makes the lord’s childlessness the engine of his doom, his ‘mad and monstrous’ resolve to seek the fay a symptom of his darkening mind, and juxtaposes the physical allure of the fay against her ‘withered’ and ‘bony’ image in the lord’s dream. No work of Tolkien’s says more about his concept of the dark side of faërie, his belief in the very real peril of the perilous realm, and his awareness of its pitfalls for the unwary and its dungeons for the overbold.
PART FOUR
COMPARATIVE VERSES
COMPARATIVE VERSES
On several occasions in his essays and letters Tolkien asserted his deep conviction that language and myth are inseparable one from the other; each being the outgrowth of the other; each dependent on the other for its essential meaning. The paired notions that a world created by the language that describes it generates the language of the world it describes led him directly from his study of real-world myths in their proper languages (including Anglo-Saxon, Old Norse, Finnish and Breton) to his invented world and the languages he developed for its peoples’ expression.
Comparison of the verses offered below from the Breton original, Villemarqué’s French paraphrase, two contemporary English translations by Thomas Keightley and Tom Taylor, and Tolkien’s version of The Lay of Aotrou and Itroun will illustrate the principle. Even without a familiarity with any of the languages shown, it is possible to recognize on the page and feel in the mouth differences in shape a
nd sound and delivery among the original Breton as given by Villemarqué, and the French and two competing English translations, and to compare those with Tolkien’s renderings of the same poems.
To reproduce all the poems in all the languages is beyond the scope of this volume, and, even if practical, would be a demanding chore for even the most diligent readers. But it is to be hoped that the representative sampling here given, aided by some knowledge of the plots and characters of the story involved, will offer a taste, at least, of Tolkien’s dictum that ‘mythology is language and language is mythology’ (TOFS 181).
The verses are presented without commentary in the expectation that they will speak for themselves.
Opening Verses: Breton, French, English
Villemarqué’s Breton
‘Aotrou Nann Hag ar Gorrigan’, 1846
Ann aotrou Nann hag he briet
Iaouankik-flamm oent dimezet,
Iaouankik-flamm dispartiet.
Villemarqué’s French
‘Le Seigneur Nann et la Fée’, 1846
Le siegneur Nann et son épose
ont été fiancés bien jeunes,
bien jeunes désunis.
Tom Taylor’s English
‘The Lord Nann and the Fairy’, 1865
The good Lord Nann and his fair bride,
Were young when wedlock’s knot was tied –
Were young when death did them divide.
Thomas Keightley’s English
‘Lord Nann and the Korrigan’, 1882
The Lord Nann and his bride so fair
In early youth united were,
In early youth divided were.
Opening Verses: J.R.R. Tolkien Poems
‘The Corrigan’ II, 1930
See how high in their joy they ride
The young earl and his young bride!
May nought ever their joy divide,
Though the world be full of wonder.
The Lay of Aotrou and Itroun
(The Welsh Review, 1945)
In Britain’s land beyond the seas
the wind blows ever through the trees;
in Britain’s land beyond the waves
are stony shores and stony caves.
There stands a ruined toft now green
where lords and ladies once were seen,
where towers were piled above the trees
and watchmen scanned the sailing seas.
Of old a lord in archéd hall
with standing stones yet grey and tall
there dwelt, till dark his doom befell,
as still the Briton harpers tell.
No child he had his house to cheer,
to fill his with laughter clear;
though wife he wooed and wed with ring,
who love to board and bed did bring,
his pride was empty, vain his hoard,
without an heir to land and sword.
Closing Verses: Breton, French, English
Villemarqué’s Breton
‘Aotrou Nann Hag ar Gorrigan’
Gwelet diou wezen derv sevel
Diouc’h ho bez nevez d’ann uc’hel;
Ha war ho brank diou c’houlmik wenn,
Hag hi ken dreo hakel laouen,
Eno ‘kana da c’houlou de,
Hag o nijal d’ann env goude.
Villemarqué’s French
‘Le Seigneur Nann et la Feé’
De voir deux chênes s’elever de leur tombe nouvelle dans les airs;
Et sur leurs branchés, deux colombes blanches, sautillantes et gaies,
Qui chantèrant au lever de l’aurore, et prirent ensuite leur volée vers les cieux.
Tom Taylor’s English
‘The Lord Nann and the Fairy’
Next morn from the grave to oak-trees fair,
shot lusty boughs high up in air;
And in their boughs – oh wondrous sight! –
Two happy doves, all snowy white –
That sang as ever the morn did rise;
And then flew up – into the skies!
Thomas Keightley’s English
‘Lord Nann and the Korrigan’
To see two oak-trees themselves rear
From the new-made grave into the air;
And on their branches two doves white,
Who there were hopping gay and light;
Which sang when rose the morning ray
And then toward heaven sped away.
Closing Verses: J.R.R. Tolkien Poems
‘The Corrigan’ II, 1930
They laid her beside him in the night.
I heard bells ring. There was taperlight.
Priests were chanting a litany.
Darkness lay upon the land,
But afar in pale Broceliand
There sang a fay in Brittany.
The Lay of Aotrou and Itroun
(The Welsh Review, 1945)
the sun lay on the land;
while deep in dim Broceliande
a silver fountain flowed and fell
within a darkly woven dell,
and in the homeless hills a dale
was filled with laughter cold and pale.
Beside her lord at last she lay
in their long home beneath the clay;
and if their children lived yet long,
or played in garden hale and strong,
they saw it not, nor found it sweet
their heart’s desire at last to meet.
In Brittany beyond the waves
are sounding shores and hollow caves;
in Brittany beyond the seas
the wind blows ever through the trees.
Of lord and lady all is said:
God rest their souls, who now are dead!
Sad is the note and sad the lay,
but mirth we meet not every day.
God keep us all in hope and prayer
from evil rede and from despair,
by waters blest of Christendom
to dwell, until at last we come
to joy of Heaven where is queen
the maiden Mary pure and clean.
FOOTNOTES
Note on the Text
1 [For a more detailed analysis of the prosody see John Rateliff’s discussion in ‘Inside Literature: Tolkien’s Exploration of Medieval Genres’ in Tolkien in the New Century: Essays in Honor of Tom Shippey, ed. Houghton, Croft, Martsch, Rateliff and Reid.]
Introduction
2 Tolkien was in the habit of keeping a log of his progress on the fair copy of The Lay of Leithian, noting in the right margin the date by which he had copied so many lines. Thus, ‘lines 3076–84 (Canto X), September 1930; line 3220 (Canto X), 25 September; line 3267 (Canto XI), 26 September’ (Scull and Hammond Chronology, p. 154). No similar log has come to light for Aotrou and Itroun.
The Lay of Aotrou and Itroun
3 homestead
4 rob, steal
5 vial
6 potion
7 frozen
8 grey
9 track
10 love-making
11 old age
12 cultivated land
13 Guide
14 thanks for surviving childbirth
15 counsel
Introduction
16 It is a coincidence worth noting that the word korigans appears in the 1891 compendium of folklore known as The Denham Tracts (Vol. II, p. 79), where it is in the same word-list as the first known recorded use of the word hobbits, another term which Tolkien put to good use in his own work.
‘The Corrigan’ I
17 The Breton term bugel, is cognate with Welsh bwg or bwgwl, ‘terrifying’, as in bygel (or bugail) nos, ‘goblin of the night’, and appears also in the Breton compound bugelnoz, glossed by Mackillop as ‘night imp, goblin’.
18 grimaced
19 fallen nuts
20 glen, dell
‘The Corrigan’ II
21 Tolkien also wrote a mermaid poem in Old English, ‘Ofer Wí
dne Gársecg’ (Across the Broad Ocean), included in Songs For The Philologists, pp. 14–15.
The Fragment
22 decision
23 bent; back
24 fallen
25 ‘or’ in the sense of ‘either’
Aotrou & Itroun
26 See Commentary here.
27 decision, resolve, plan
WORKS CITED
Briggs, Katherine. The Vanishing People. New York: Pantheon Books, 1978.
Denham, Michael Aislabie. The Denham Tracts, Reprinted from the original, ed. Dr. James Hardy. 2 vols. London: David Nutt for the Folklore Society, 1892–95.
Evans-Wentz, Walter. The Fairy-Faith in Celtic Countries. University Books, Inc., 1966.
Houghton, John William and Janet Brennan Croft, Nancy Martsch, John D. Rateliff and Robin Anne Reid. Tolkien in the New Century: Essays in Honor of Tom Shippey. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, Inc., 2014.
Keightley, Thomas. The Fairy Mythology. London: George Bell & Sons, 1882.
Kirk, Robert. The Secret Commonwealth of Elves, Fauns and Fairies. Stirling: [The Observer Press] Eneas MacKay, 1933.
MacKillop, James. Dictionary of Celtic Mythology. Oxford University Press, 1998.
Marie de France. The Lais of Marie de France, trans. Robert Hanning & Joan Ferrante. New York: E.P. Dutton, 1978.
Scull, Christina and Wayne Hammond. The J.R.R. Tolkien Companion and Guide, Vol. 1, Chronology. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2006.
Shippey, Tom. The Road to Middle-earth, Revised and Expanded Edition. London: HarperCollinsPublishers, 2005.