History, Legend, Myth, Truth by Lferion  

History, Legend, Myth, Truth

Brush aside the withy-stems

The yellow willow flowers

Look between the slender twigs

And see the dancing Powers

Vana and Yavanna step

A counter-point of hours

Gold and silver shining forth

On meadow-lark and bowers

O clamber midst the singing stones

Where roots and pebbles scour

The little pathways lizards run

The rocks where slithers cower

Tulkas and Orome ride

Through light and shadow dour

Watchful in both wood and field

Where distant mountains lour

Leaf and blossom scent the glade

Where the darkness never glowers

Figures glimmer, reach and turn

That such vigor might be ours!

Nessa, dancing love and war

Swiftly moves, unveils, empowers

Este, healing all who ask

Athelas despair devours

Look beyond the peaks and plains

The waters sweet and sour

Where kindreds gather, make and dream

Of ships and shipwrights, mills and flour

Aule, Maker, Ulmo, sea,

Snowmelt, stream, mist and shower

Forge and fire, knowledge, strength

Stone and mortar make a tower

Starlight shimmers in the wind

All of heaven Varda's dower

Manwe's Eagles wheel and soar

Ears alert to every vower

What is Myth, what history

Where legend sings of power

Art all true, now, near and far

In present moment, distant hour

Fingon looked at what his pen had wrought. His long-ago tutors would call it over-wrought, excessively flowery and downright frivolous. But not untrue. How could they, when the Valar were palpably present in the land they lived in. Aule taught Elves, Nessa danced in many groves, he knew beyond any doubt that the air in Middle Earth was Manwe's breath. But most in Middle Earth did not have that surety.

What was he, after all? Only a tale, a myth, a legend, a hero of songs. What did song-Fingon have to do with history-Fingon? Very little, even when they were both him, and he knew the truth of both in his bones, his blood, his fea. And he could -- he often did -- walk down the streets of Tirion, of Cir Ondolinde, of Valmar, Alqualonde and Avallone unrecognized. Only a Noldo, no-one important.

Flowery or severe, old-fashioned or up-to-the-minute, songs, tales, poems spoke truths that remained. That were still true, as myth, as legend, as windows on history. The words were about more than the Valar. Slowly, deliberately, Fingon dipped his pen in the ink and scribed in a strong hand across the top of the sheet:

History, Legend, Myth, Truth