Bruce N H
Active Member
Hi all,
I've discussed this before, both during the live Exploring sessions and here in the forum in this post and this post, but I have a head canon about Findegil. As stated in one of those posts, we know that Findegil made edits to the main text long after the direct participants had died, or gone away West, so what was his source material? IMO he added passages from epic poems or official court documents from the realms of Gondor and Rohan. Obvious examples include "From dark Dunharrow in the dim morning..." and "We heard of the horns in the hills ringing...", both of which have direct textual evidence of being written at a later date. But even other places, where the text becomes "high" or "poetic" I suspect that Findegil may have been taking lines from epic court songs and making a prose adaptation.
Of course, this is no proof. The text's main authors - Bilbo for the first bit, Frodo for the bulk, with the final chapter and edits by Sam - were all poets in their own right, so poetic flourishes are to be expected. * I suspect Findegil, though, when the subject matter was of direct interest to the courts of Gondor and Rohan (best example "So it was that Frodo saw her whom few mortals had yet seen; Arwen, daughter of Elrond ...")
Okay, so on to the current example. I was just listening to Exploring episode 261 from a couple of weeks ago. The passage was where the Company is coming back down the mountain, having been turned back by Caradhras. There was much discussion of the alliteration - the "sheer and sudden wall [of snow] ... sharp as if shaped with knives" and of the near-poetic rhythms in the prose. Once again I would suggest possible Findegillian insertion. Why here, and not other passages? I'd suggest that this is a passage where the heir of the kings of Gondor and Arnor and the heir of the stewards worked together to defeat the mountain. Surely this could have been the subject of a song in Gondor. Even though they traveled together for many leagues, there are really only a few real Aragorn and Boromir moments in the text. We get their debate in the Council of Elrond, which didn't cry Findegil to me, because Frodo was there to observe directly. We get this moment on Caradhras. Sure, there are moments in the retreat from Moria where they are fighting side by side, but that's really as part of the larger group. And then we get the death of Boromir. I'll be interested to look for evidence of Findegil in that passage (in a few years, of course).
Bruce / Bricktales
* I know, I know, the real source is that Tolkien, who was "not quite so prosy" as he says of Bilbo, but I love the game he laid for us of searching for the real authors of each passage.
I've discussed this before, both during the live Exploring sessions and here in the forum in this post and this post, but I have a head canon about Findegil. As stated in one of those posts, we know that Findegil made edits to the main text long after the direct participants had died, or gone away West, so what was his source material? IMO he added passages from epic poems or official court documents from the realms of Gondor and Rohan. Obvious examples include "From dark Dunharrow in the dim morning..." and "We heard of the horns in the hills ringing...", both of which have direct textual evidence of being written at a later date. But even other places, where the text becomes "high" or "poetic" I suspect that Findegil may have been taking lines from epic court songs and making a prose adaptation.
Of course, this is no proof. The text's main authors - Bilbo for the first bit, Frodo for the bulk, with the final chapter and edits by Sam - were all poets in their own right, so poetic flourishes are to be expected. * I suspect Findegil, though, when the subject matter was of direct interest to the courts of Gondor and Rohan (best example "So it was that Frodo saw her whom few mortals had yet seen; Arwen, daughter of Elrond ...")
Okay, so on to the current example. I was just listening to Exploring episode 261 from a couple of weeks ago. The passage was where the Company is coming back down the mountain, having been turned back by Caradhras. There was much discussion of the alliteration - the "sheer and sudden wall [of snow] ... sharp as if shaped with knives" and of the near-poetic rhythms in the prose. Once again I would suggest possible Findegillian insertion. Why here, and not other passages? I'd suggest that this is a passage where the heir of the kings of Gondor and Arnor and the heir of the stewards worked together to defeat the mountain. Surely this could have been the subject of a song in Gondor. Even though they traveled together for many leagues, there are really only a few real Aragorn and Boromir moments in the text. We get their debate in the Council of Elrond, which didn't cry Findegil to me, because Frodo was there to observe directly. We get this moment on Caradhras. Sure, there are moments in the retreat from Moria where they are fighting side by side, but that's really as part of the larger group. And then we get the death of Boromir. I'll be interested to look for evidence of Findegil in that passage (in a few years, of course).
Bruce / Bricktales
* I know, I know, the real source is that Tolkien, who was "not quite so prosy" as he says of Bilbo, but I love the game he laid for us of searching for the real authors of each passage.
