[Bêthberry]

Originally Posted by littlemanpoet

Does the Translator Conceit function in this text and/or context? How? What does it achieve if it does function here? What does it not achieve?

Since I first raised the issue that this passage was one of the places that broke the enchantment for me, I'll take a stab at this. But first I want to consider more why this passage broke the enchantment.

The events are harrowing and thrilling. Aragorn has marched off to the Paths of the Dead. We have just seen Éowyn (and Merry) dispatch the WitchKing. Yet the King of the Mark has fallen; Théodan has gone to his forebearers. Yet ere he dies, he names his heir, Éomer. Now we have the new king speaking to his people, an invocation to the dead as well as a reminder that now is not the time to mourn. I have already suggested that I wish more time had been spent developing Éomer's character at this point, to prepare us for his elevation into the heroic mold of eld and enable us emotionally to see this change. Perhaps all it would have needed would have been, "Remember, Remember" and then clearly some statement that, out of this momentous occasion when he puts on the kingship, Éomer reminds his people of stirring words from old song. (Compare the difference between these lines of verse and Éomer's dialogue immediately following--there is the response 'in character'.) But something else is at work here.

"Mourn not overmuch" is pure Old English verse form, in both rhythm and allieration. These lines from Éomer do not belong to Tolkien's subcreation; they are not like the elvish languages he created for Middle earth and they are not like the other verses. They take me out of the secondary world and put me right back in the primary world, for this is Old English verse, not an approximation.

Thus, it isn't a sub-created form at all, but a specific language form of the primary world. I suppose readers who don't know this take the primary world Old English as Rohirric. But here are the word forms of The Battle of Maldon and of Beowulf, and here, the primary and secondary worlds are the same.

Perhaps this is a small place where the fantasy collides with the purported history? Earlier, in "The Muster of Rohan", Tolkien used an approximation of OE verse form in "From the dark Dunharrow in the dim morning" but there we are given the verse as a legend retold:

On down the grey road they went beside the Snowbourn rushing on its stones; through the hamlets of Underharrow and Upbourn, where many sad faces of women looked out from dark doors; and so without horn or harp or music of men's voices the great ride into the East began with which the songs of Rohan were busy for many long lives of men thereafter.

What follows is the Dunharrow verse. And immediately following the verse, we are given the narrator's 'historical revision' of those lines:

It was indeed in the deeping gloom that the king came to Edoras, although it was then by noon by the hour.

A narrator's comment about the accuracy of song and legend!

So, was Tolkien here (in the invocation on the death of Théoden) deliberately attempting to conflate the subcreated world with the primary world so we could see that this is the early history of his people? I wonder why he might do that here. It seems a tall order given the events we have just 'witnessed'. And, anyway, we have previously been told that such verse was song created after the fact.

So, I am left with two reasons why the passage broke the enchantment for me: it was an awkward movement for the character, a rough patch where the previously used elements of fictional characterisation come face to face with heroic voice from Old English. (Heroic lines in OE verse are usually created after wards, not in the heat of battle, although they are given in the heat of battle.) Here, in these lines, the Rohirrim = Anglo Saxon. The applicability is destroyed.

I can't for the life of me figure out which editor/translator/narrator would want to do that.

EDIT: whoops! cross posted with davem