[Aiwendil]

The Horns of Ulmo

Looking at this again, it seems to me that Jallanite's first line does not work (nor our slight modification to it).

Jallanite's version:

{Inland musics subtly magic that those reeds alone could weave −}
[To sea musics ringing magic that the wind and wave can weave −]
It was in the Land of {Willows} [Nevrast] that once {Ylmir} [Ulmo] came at eve.

Our latest proposal:

{Inland musics subtly magic that those reeds alone could weave −}
[Ocean musics ringing magic that the waves alone can weave −]
It was in the Land of {Willows} [Nevrast] that once {Ylmir} [Ulmo] came at eve.

In both cases, the first line is out of place (and ungrammatical) without the lines that go before and have been deleted:

{It was in the Land of Willows where the grass is long and green −
I was fingering my harp-strings, for a wind had crept unseen
And was speaking in tree-tops, while the voices of the reeds
Were whispering reedy whispers as the sunset touched the meads,}

This is because the first line, "Inland musics subtly magic . . ." is an appositive describing the "voices of the reeds".

I'm inclined, then, to say that the conservative emendation would be to delete those two lines and begin with:

In the twilight {by the river on} [on the sea-strand through] a hollow thing of shell

However, I've been thinking about Squatter's criticism that we lose the symmetry of the poem by deleting those lines; and I think that it's a very good point. I have been contemplating the possibility of doing the same for the opening lines as Jallanite did for the closing lines: converting them to present tense, so that the poem begins with Tuor describing his present situation, which is followed by a flashback to his vision in Nevrast before returning to the present.

There are two difficult points with regard to that idea. The first is that a straight substitution of present tense verbs for past tense comes across as rather awkward. The second is that we then require some kind of transition to signal the beginning of the flashback.

Here's the first thing I came up with; it's (by necessity) rather risky, I think:

{'Twas} [Here] in the Land of Willows where the grass is long and green −
I {was} [sit] fingering my harp-strings, for a wind {had} [has] crept unseen
And {was} [is] speaking in the tree-tops, while the voices of the reeds
{Were} [are] whispering reedy whispers as the sunset {touched} [hits] the meads,
{Inland musics subtly magic} [But my heart recalleth sea musics] that {those} [the] {reeds} [waves] alone {could} [can] weave −}
It was in the Land of {Willows} [Nevrast] that once {Ylmir} [Ulmo] came at eve.

Comments, by line number:
1 - I changed "'Twas" to "Here" rather than to "'Tis" simply because "'Tis in the Land of Willows where the grass is long and green" sounds awkward and less likely a line.
2 - The same goes for "was" to "sit" rather than to "is".
4 - The problem in this line is that "touches" is more syllables than "touched" and thus ruins the meter. "Hits" was all I could think of at the moment that conveys something like the right meaning while maintaining the meter - but of course it's not exactly the right meaning. Perhaps there's something better.
5 - This was the real hard part. The only way I could think of to make the transition to the flashback was to have him compare the "voices of the reeds" in the present to the "sea musics" in Nevrast. I could think of no way to accomplish this save to delete the "subtly magic" and use the rhythmic space to insert the totally fabricated "But my heart recalleth". The new line technically fits the meter but doesn't fit nearly as nicely as the original line. Still, it the meter of this particular poem does tend to be a bit free and I think that the proposed line is passable.

There may be other ways of accomplishing the same thing. One idea would be to have the "music" of line 5 remain "inland music", describing the voices of the reeds as in the original, and then somehow begin the flashback in line 6. I'm not sure exactly how that would be done, though.

So, we would appear to have three options:

1. Delete the poem
2. Use the conservative emendations, which lose the original symmetry
3. Use more liberal emendations to preserve the symmetry

I think that the only way of accomplishing number 2 is what I proposed above - deleting the whole beginning and starting with "In the twilight on the sea-strand . . ."

For number 3, we have my proposal as an example, though others are certainly possible.