Beren and Lúthien - Changes needed

[Elvellon]

Originally Posted by Findegil

First of all: Elvellon, I am glad to have your input here as everywhere.

Thanks, and I appreciate the thoughtful and informative replies. Coming here has sure humbled me in regards to my familiarity with Tolkien, but I'm loving the process of diving deep into this project!!

To your points about the "songs of Númenor" and "Mannish texts," thank you for taking the time to summarize it so clearly. I can see the reasons for adopting this stance, and I'm happy to leave it there as settled.

How about this, then:

So would they not that angry day
King Felagund their lord obey,
but {sullen }murmured that Finrod[ was not grand]
{nor yet his son were as a god}[as any Vala to command].

BL-RG-00.7:
Is there a thread here where the use of the term “magic” was discussed? I'm curious if it is primarily Patrick Curry’s opinion that drove this idea I've seen that Tolkien saw magic as an evil. Is there a clear statement from JRRT on the matter? My understanding has been that Tolkien saw the word “magic” not as inherently negative but as inaccurate, because “all human stories have suffered the same confusion” between “the devices and operations of the Enemy, and those of the Elves” (from Letter 131). Galadriel echoes this sentiment in Fellowship, where she does not say that the word “magic” is only used for “the deceits of the Enemy,” but rather that it is one word being used for two different things. It must not have had too negative an association in her mind, because she then referred to the mirror as “the magic of Galadriel” and “Elf-magic” – and ironic adoption of a word familiar to the Hobbits.

I don’t disagree that the word should be minimized because of its inaccuracy. And this is easy enough to do in prose, but it seems to me that in the Lays, one should do so primarily when it doesn’t disturb Tolkien’s verse too much. Personally, the more I think about it, the more I feel “in magic fast for ever bound” is too lovely a turn of phrase to mess with. But in fairness, here's another suggestion:

A vault of topless trees it seemed, {995}
whose trunks of carven stone there stood
like towers of an enchanted wood [1240]
BL-RG-00.7 {in magic}[so crafted] fast for ever bound,
bearing a roof whose branches wound

BL-RG-08.5:

but is it the doom of the Noldor that they approach going to central square in Tirion?

I was using it in the sense of the Noldor gathering to begin the long, metaphorical march from their “fading homes” to their inevitable doom across the sea.

BL-EX-10:
“Seek” and “indeed” are too imperfect of a rhyme. I think the word “reek” here is altogether appropriate: Tolkien refers to “the reeking towers of Thangorodrim,” as well as “the reeking tops of the Iron Mountains”; and he used the word in the sense I’ve used it more than once in composing the Lay of Leithian: “above the reek and trampled dead”, “A second morning in cloud and reek”, “amid the reek, and far and wide”. It’s only because he used it so frequently that I felt comfortable using it. In general, I’ve tried to restrict my changes to rhymes that Tolkien used elsewhere; that seemed the safest, least destructive, course.

Farther on I would like to now why you moved the ‘shall’ in the third last line?

I’m not sure, but you’re right, it shouldn't have been moved!

BL-RG-22: I like your suggestion. But why do you change {neither}[not]?

Again, I’m not sure, it must have been late! It should be “neither.”

BL-EX-10.5:

I like your suggestion, but aren’t your first three lines each one syllable short?

You’re right about the first line: "but alone; for none would go" is 7 syllables. "No one" misplaces the stresses, so to preserve natural stresses, I'd suggest a rhetorical repetition of the word "went" (I've bolded the stresses):

and went with hound and bow and spear,
but went a-lone; for none would go,

However, the other two lines do have the proper four feet of eight syllables (stresses in bold):

per-ceiv-ing e-vil would foll-ow
the curse that heav-y lay there-in

The stresses on "follow" and "therein" are slightly unnatural, but Tolkien broke the rules plenty (Shakespeare too), so I'm not too bothered by it, personally.

Maybe my counting is wrong, but isn’t Curufin 3 syllables (Cu-ru-fin)? If so that line is too long. But however the line can stand since we count iambic feet and not syllables propper.

Tolkien himself didn’t always stick to only eight syllables, as long as the extra syllables were unstressed. For example: “the quest of the shining Silmaril” is nine syllables, as is “of the breaking of the towers of stone” (ten syllables if you pronounce towers as “tow-ers”).