View Single Post
Old 10-20-2004, 06:21 AM   #15
mark12_30
Stormdancer of Doom
 
mark12_30's Avatar
 
Join Date: Jan 2002
Location: Elvish singing is not a thing to miss, in June under the stars
Posts: 4,349
mark12_30 has been trapped in the Barrow!
Send a message via AIM to mark12_30 Send a message via Yahoo to mark12_30
Yet another connection:

"Roads go ever ever on,
Over rock and under tree
By caves where never sun has shone
by streams that never find the sea."

By the time Bilbo sang this, he had been through Rivendell twice. Going East, he spent "fourteen days at least" in Rivendell, and "I wish I had time to tell you even a few of the tales or one or two of the songs that they heard in that house". During his westward return trip he spent a week there, "and he had many a merry jest and dance, early and late, with the elves of the valley."


I wonder how much that influenced his song. Gollum's cave certainly fits the description "Caves where never sun has shone" (and I suppose one could also argue that in Gollum's cave are also found "streams that never find the sea." Nevertheles, to me, the third line says "Moria" and the fourth, "Nimrodel." The two are bound, because it was from the chaos caused by the awakening of Durin's Bane that Nimrodel fled, til Amroth proposed to her on the borders of Fangorn. I wonder; did he end up connecting his own story to the Greater Story, to the lasting themes beloved of the elves that he heard during his times in Rivendell?
__________________
...down to the water to see the elves dance and sing upon the midsummer's eve.
mark12_30 is offline   Reply With Quote