Authorial Detachment or "The Vanishing Harper"

[littlemanpoet]

I tend to see things the way Bêthberry does. The "lost bard" seems "the right" way to handle the role in myth and legend. Maybe there's more to it than that for Tolkien. Maybe some of us are finding applications he never intended, and some he wouldn't mind.

[Anguirel]

Originally Posted by Of the Ruin of Doriath

It is told that a seer and harp-player of Brethil named Glirhuin made a song, saying that the Stone of the Hapless should not be defiled by Morgoth, nor ever thrown down, not though the sea should drown the land; as after indeed befell...

I came across this most minor of minor characters when researching the Haladin for Silmarillion Survivor. I believe his single over-looked appearance is critical to our question. Glirhuin is a "seer and harp-player", as if these are two elements of the same role; and of course, in parts of folklore and in Tolkien, they are. There has always been an intimate connection between recording the past and recording the future; the harp is the instrument of both. Maglor also perhaps prophecises, in his famous "less evil shall we do in the breaking" speech.

For my folklore sources, I recall firstly the Celtic "priesthood", and the people of Brethil seem to me to be deeply Celtic, if in a Welsh rather than Gaelic sense. Celts wishing to become druids first trained as bards; then, after many years of bardic performance, as itinerant judges called brehons, one of whom, incidentally, I portrayed in Werewolf IV; then finally trained as full druids.

Folklore perhaps rooted in this includes heroes of the Mabinogion like Gwydion and Math, mysterious magicians who exercise their powers through music; the legendary Merlin of the Prophecies, Precepts and Vitae Merlinae; the semi-factual Taliesin, bard to Owain ap Urien, prince of Rheged, and to Maelgwyn of Gwent (I think) whose mystical powers are well documented; and Thomas the Rimer, who predicted accurately the death of Alexander III, King of Scots, who fell from a clifftop.

Furthermore, in Tolkien's world the whole structure of destiny is based, of course, in the Music of the Ainur. It makes sense, therefore, that bards are attuned to it, can to an extent tap its knowledge. (Though this does raise the question: when the Ainur sung, who was playing the harp?) Perhaps the invariably mist-shrouded departures of minstrels and harpers portray them finally going to join the music they have chased, mostly unknowingly, for the whole of their lives.