The Mewlips

[tumhalad2]

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...

[Nerwen]

Originally Posted by tumhalad2

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?

That's not necessarily an either-or thing. I think the in-story explanation would be that, while there were no actual beings called "Mewlips" in Middle-earth, or "Merlock Mountains" or a "marsh of Tode", there were many sinister creatures and places of which the hobbits might have heard from travellers' tales. Or the stories could have been passed down from their wandering ancestors. After generations of retellings the source, whatever it was, might become unrecognisable.

(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.)

[davem]

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

[Rumil]

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 ;-)

[Nerwen]

Originally Posted by A Mewlip, engaging in typical pre-throttling sweet-talk

The poem said: "Mewlips," I am curious. In this lovely guy! It reminds me of what, from the Allen Poe.I think a lot of success comes from the rhyme - in particular, repeated sibilants. Like Gollum with his "Yessss, I precioussss." In the recurrence of the "S" sound in this poem to a sense of things, it is hidden in darkness and hissing like a snake.

Nah, scratch what I said earlier. They not only exist, they're on the internet.

[Hilde Bracegirdle]

Does anyone else remember the album with Tolkien reading this poem? Truly creepy.

Originally Posted by Rumil

If they did exist they must be somewhere marshy, perhaps the remoter parts of Midgewater? Alternatively an ancient memory of the Gladden Fields.

I was thinking Midgewater Marshes as well, but it seems that it might be on the wrong side of the mountains in relation to long held Hobbit settlements that spring to mind. Gladden Fields would seem to make more sense in that regard.
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.

[Pitchwife]

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!