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11-14-2010, 03:05 AM | #1 |
Haunting Spirit
Join Date: Sep 2007
Posts: 95
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The Mewlips
I'm intrigued by Tolkien's poem, the Mewlips, found in the volume Adventures of Tom Bombadil
The Shadows where the Mewlips dwell Are dark and wet as ink, And slow and softly rings their bell, As in the slime you sink. You sink into the slime, who dare To knock upon their door, While down the grinning gargoyles stare And noisome waters pour. Beside the rotting river-strand The drooping willows weep, And gloomily the gorcrows stand Croaking in their sleep. Over the Merlock Mountains a long and weary way, In a mouldy valley where the trees are grey, By a dark pool´s borders without wind or tide, Moonless and sunless, the Mewlips hide. The cellars where the Mewlips sit Are deep and dank and cold With single sickly candle lit; And there they count their gold. Their walls are wet, their ceilings drip; Their feet upon the floor Go softly with a squish-flap-flip, As they sidle to the door. They peep out slyly; through a crack Their feeling fingers creep, And when they´ve finished, in a sack Your bones they take to keep. Beyond the Merlock Mountains, a long and lonely road, Through the spider-shadows and the marsh of Tode, And through the wood of hanging trees and gallows-weed, You go to find the Mewlips - and the Mewlips feed. As you can see, it's a pretty creepy poem, but I find it intriguing because it is ostensibly a part of hobbit lore. Any yet, the place names, even the Mewlips themselves, are not really creatures of which we have any other information. Do you think this is meant to reflect the existance of actual creatures who feed on travelers, or are these true folklorick legends? With Middle-earth, it's often hard to tell... |
11-14-2010, 05:38 AM | #2 | |
Wisest of the Noldor
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Quote:
(My understanding is that this poem wasn't meant to be set in Middle-earth originally, so you can't expect the connection to hold up to too much scrutiny, anyway.)
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"Even Nerwen wasn't evil in the beginning." –Elmo. Last edited by Nerwen; 11-14-2010 at 06:45 AM. Reason: punctuation |
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11-14-2010, 09:12 AM | #3 |
Illustrious Ulair
Join Date: Aug 2002
Location: In the home of lost causes, and forsaken beliefs, and unpopular names,and impossible loyalties
Posts: 4,240
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I also feel that 'Mewlips' are simply invented creatures - as with the 'Wild were-worms' Bilbo mention in Ch1 of TH. I remember spending a frustrating few hours trying to trace 'Lintips' (either within or without Middle-earth) after finding out about the third Bombadil poem, Once Upon a Time (not included in AoTB)
ONCE UPON A TIME Once upon a day on the fields of May there was snow in the summer where the blossom lay; the buttercups tall sent up their light in a stream of gold, and wide and white there opened in the green grass-skies the earth-stars with their steady eyes watching the Sun climb up and down. Goldberry was there with a wild-rose crown, Goldberry was there n a lady-smock blowing away a dandelion clock, stooping over a lily-pool and twiddling the water green and cool to see it sparkle round her hand: once upon a time in elvish land. Once upon a night in the cockshut light the grass was grey but the dew was white; shadows were dark, and the Sun was gone, the earth-stars shut, but the high stars shone, one to another winking their eyes as they waited for the Moon to rise. Up he came, and on leaf and grass his white beams turned to twinkling glass, and silver dripped from stem and stalk down to where the lintips walk through the grass-forests gathering dew. Tom was there without boot or shoe, with moonshine wetting his big, brown toes: once upon a time, the story goes. Once upon a moon on the brink of June a-dewing the lintips went too soon. Tom stopped and listened, and down he knelt: "Ha! Little lads! So it was you I smelt? What a mousy smell! Well, the dew is sweet, so drink it up, but mind my feet!" The lintips laughed and stole away, but old Tom said: "I wish they'd stay! The only things that won't talk to me, say what they do or what they be. I wonder what they have got to hide? Down from the Moon maybe they slide, or come in star-winks, I don't know:" once upon a time and long ago. http://bromwell.dpsk12.org/stories/storyReader$179 Still can't work out why they are the only things that won't talk to Tom
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“Everything was an object. If you killed a dwarf you could use it as a weapon – it was no different to other large heavy objects." Last edited by davem; 11-14-2010 at 09:15 AM. |
11-14-2010, 02:09 PM | #4 |
Sage & Onions
Join Date: Aug 2002
Location: Britain
Posts: 893
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Fascinating stuff davem,
I'd not seen that one before. Mewlips, hmm, well, some people don't even believe in Dragons. If they did exist they must be somewhere marshy, perhaps the remoter parts of Midgewater? Alternatively an ancient memory of the Gladden Fields. Maybe even Gollum was the prototype for the legend ;-)
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Rumil of Coedhirion |
11-15-2010, 11:58 PM | #5 | |
Wisest of the Noldor
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Quote:
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"Even Nerwen wasn't evil in the beginning." –Elmo. |
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11-17-2010, 12:06 PM | #6 | |
Relic of Wandering Days
Join Date: Dec 2002
Location: You'll See Perpetual Change.
Posts: 1,480
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Does anyone else remember the album with Tolkien reading this poem? Truly creepy.
Quote:
Perhaps this legend was handed down from the hobbits' more nomadic days, as Rumil suggests? Fun to think of the poem in relation to background history of ME, but it is all fiction in the end, and whether fact or myth, I doubt Tolkien even knew the answer. But it is interesting stuff. |
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12-19-2010, 03:38 PM | #7 |
Wight of the Old Forest
Join Date: Dec 2008
Location: Unattended on the railway station, in the litter at the dancehall
Posts: 3,329
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I can shed no light on the nature of the mysterious lintips either, except perhaps for the etymology of their name, which may contain the adjective lint(a) 'quick, swift, clever, nimble' - an invention which haunted Tolkien's language-making from the early Nevbosh of his teenage years right up to the mature Quenya of Namarië. So whatever they were, they seem to have been quick-footed creatures, flitting along like mice; and given that Tom wonders whether they slide down from the Moon or come in star-winks (travelling on rays of Moon- or starlight?), could it perhaps be that they moved at the speed of light? That would of course explain why they didn't talk to him - he was just too slow to keep up with them, even in his fabulous yellow boots!
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Und aus dem Erebos kamen viele seelen herauf der abgeschiedenen toten.- Homer, Odyssey, Canto XI |
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