Quote:
Originally Posted by davem
Going back to the Bombadil poem I gave earlier, & taking this off at a tangent - does anyone have any idea what a lintip is/was
Clearly they're 'little', have a mousy smell, drink dew &, most importantly, are the only things that won't talk to Tom.
The '-ips' ending recalls the mewlips of course, but I can't find any mention of them in any other writing by Tolkien.
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Humor me in this odd bit of exposition...
Lintip and the associated
linti refer (in translation, anyway) to mean 'waves upon water' (lintip) and a 'pool' (linti) from the ancient Gaelic poem
Táin Bó Cúalnge (The Cattle Raid of Cooley), but that makes no sense in regard to the poem (YET!)...
The Gaelic
linti, by way of prestidigitation (see, nothing up my sleeves!), becomes
lintie, which is a short nick for a
linnet, a bird native to the British Isles and a member of the finch family.
A titmouse is not a finch, but according to what I've heard, they apparently put on airs like they wish to be finches (finches, after all, are far less warbly than the titmouse). Therefore, Tolkien has mistaken a titmouse for a linnet (hence the mouse reference), and as linnets prefer to nest in heathlands and are fond of hemp, I wonder if perhaps some of that substance got into the professor's pipe as he was composing the poem.
Oh dear, I believe I've given myself a headache.