Love, Grief, and Alliterative Verse in Tolkien's Legendarium by Paul D. Deane  

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Okay, at certain points in this, we're really going to be flying, so expect that, and don't be surprised by it. Let me just briefly introduce myself. I'm Paul Deane. I usually say in bios that I … my vocation is computational linguist, my avocation is poet, but my other avocation is Tolkien fandom, which I go way back in, though not so active in it recently. I was 11, and when I first read The Lord of the Rings, and it blew me away. In the 90s, I was very heavily involved in ElendorMUSH, which I don't know if any of you know about, but which was the big role … text-based role-playing game. I played Rhunedhel, an elf in Imladris, and one of my friends there who we … who I started to write. We actually wrote a fantasy novel with. We were never able to publish it before she died, was very active in FrodoHealers. You may know the name Febobe. And that's pretty much it about me, um, except that alliterative verse came in because I was an Elvish bard, I needed poetry, alliterative verse seemed appropriate, and I wrote epics. You can find them on AO3, and we'll go from there.

Okay. So, this is a very famous quote. “The world is indeed full of peril. In it, there are many dark places, but still there is much that is fair, though in all lands love is now mingled with grief, it grows perhaps the greater.” So love and grief. This is a really important theme in Tolkien, and what I'm going to do is I'm going to take you on a tour of most of the love and grief in the Silmarillion in … by stealing a whole bunch of fanart and displaying it, and … So, let's look at the tale of Tuor and Idril.

So, Aredhel sacrificed herself to save Maeglin when her estranged husband Eol tries to kill him. So, love and grief.

Maeglin loves Idril. Idril doesn't love him back. His heart darkens, love and grief.

Idril falls in love with the mortal Tuor, a man instead. Well, there's love and grief into a single sentence.

Then, during the sack of Gondolin, Tuor kills the traitor Maeglin to rescue Idril, his wife and his son Earendil from Maeglin’s clutches. Well, there's some more love and grief.

But Tuor grows old, he and Idril sail together with Valinor. Well, that's kind of a sad thing. You're old, you're kind of … okay, let's go to the West, okay?

Then, Tale of Turin Turambar. Okay. Beleg needed to go and protect Turin and is given Eol’s sword Anglachel. And Turin actually kills Beleg with Anglachel when they come to rescue him from orcs. Okay, love and grief.

Whoops. The elf maid Finduilas, falls in love with Turin instead of his companion, Gwindor. Well, there's love and grief right there.

Gwindor is mortally wounded at a battle Turin foolishly sought, and Turin comes too late to save him. More love and grief? Then the dragon Glaurung holds Turin spellbound while the orcs drag Finduilas past him among their captives. And when he seeks her, the orcs left her body pinned to a tree. There's love and grief. Well, I'll skip the rest of the story of Turin Turambar, all the love and grief, honestly …

Tale of Beren and Luthien. So, Beren wanders into Doriath and meets Luthien in a forest, escaping out of ruin, there's your grief, there's your love with Luthien.

But Thingol won't let her marry unless he brings a Silmaril from the Iron Crown of Morgoth, and I don't know where Morgoth went there. After many dangers, Luthien’s power of song sent Morgoth and his court to sleep, and they escape with the Silmaril, only to be confronted by Morgoth’s dread, hell-hound Carcharoth, which bites off his hand with a Silmaril. Well, there's some grief right there. In the middle of the love.

Thingol relents, allows them to marry but Carcharoth. You know, comes rev … we seem to be losing the last line of my thing, I don't know what happened, but comes ravening into Doriath. And Luthien loves him so much, he goes to the Halls of Mandos to plead for him, more love and grief.

So Mandos just lets them come back to life. And then they have a son, Dior, who marries Nimloth, who have Elwing, Elured, and Elurin. But that's not the end of the grief. Plenty of love, but it's certainly not the end of the grief, because then the sons of Feanor attack. And Elwing escapes. They marries Earendil, they have Elrond and Elros. And then… He sails westward, she's left grieving for him on the shore.

Sons of Feanor attack, she has to flee, more love and grief, she never sees them again. Something the book never talks about. She never sees her sons again, at least … oh, maybe she sees Elrond eventually, okay?

And so they went to Valinor. You know, Elwing can only see him when his ship comes back from sailing around the heavens, or at least she can fly up to him occasionally. More love and grief. And after all this, well … Here's love and grief.

So I think there's no doubt at all that love and grief are central to Tolkien's imagination. And now, the interesting thing is there's something else that's central to Tolkien's imagination, and that's alliterative verse. I'm going to abbreviate AV just for short.

So, let's look at this. Tolkien had many multiple early attempts to write alliterative verse about the story of the Silmarillion. The longest of those … most of them you can find in the Lays of Beleriand. The longest was his Children of Hurin. And there's other fragments, there's the Flight of the Noldoli from Valinor, the Lay of Lethian, the Lay of Earendil.

But, here's where things get interesting. Tolkien's interest in alliterative verse goes very deep. Some … there's actually an interesting thing here, which is that Wagner. In Surprised by Joy, Tolkien describes his reaction to Wagner, which is being totally transported. There's a lot of evidence he is not the only person in his generation who felt that way. They, you know, certainly that's the case with Tolkien, but I ran across a very interesting thing about a minor poet of the same generation, where there was an article from one of the modernist poets to another, saying, this young poet is great, or will be great, but right now, all these … the only decent things he's written are his alliterative verse, which you can't find in print anywhere.

So, one of the things that happened in Tolkien's generation is they learned for the first time how alliterative verse worked. They didn't really understand it in the 19th century when they first rediscovered it. But Tolkien was one of the first generations of scholars who studied under German scholars like Sievers’ work, which basically established how alliterative verse works. And most of Tolkien's career was focused on things related to alliterative verse. Most famously, his famous article about Beowulf, and why it was a great work of literature, not just something to study for dusty scholarly historical reasons.

So, let's do a little bit of internal evidence. And so, let's just read this piece of the beginning of one of Tolkien's alliterative poetry fragments:

In the Lay of Leithian: Release from Bondage
In linked words has long been wrought
Of Beren Ermabwed, brave, undaunted.
How Luthien the lissome he loved of yore
In the enchanted forest chained in wonder.
Tinuviel he named her, then nightingale
More sweet her voice, as veiled in soft
And wavering wisps of woven dusk
Shot with starlight with shining eyes
She danced like dreams of drifting sheen,
Pale, twinkling pears and pearls of darkness.

There's an else … it's pearls in pools of darkness. So, there's one line in this, which is really important. Whoops. For some reason, the … Hang on, sorry. The second line. Should be in yellow, but I guess when it was transferred over, the yellow… whoops, what happened? Yeah, it keeps blinking at one and off. So, look at this line: "In linked words has long been wrought." Now, that line is very similar to two lines from, from classical alliterative works in Middle English. This is Tolkien's translation of a line in the first few lines of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight: "Thus, linked and truly lettered as it was in this land of old." And then … What's happening? I don't know. Is it the cables? I could try to see if there's any … Yeah, it was not moving. And then the alliterative destruction of Troy. The … one of the early lines says, "by locking of letters that left were of old."

So these … so in those Middle English poems, those were references to alliterative verse being long-established tradition that this poet is referring to in the introduction to his poem. And so, by Tolkien, by putting this line in the second line of this, of this poem is basically saying that alliterative verse is part of the world, that alliterative verse is the way this stuff is written. Now, Tolkien also wrote lots of very Edwardian rhyming verse. And, you know, that's most of his first production. But he clearly wanted to write alliterative verse.

So, let's look at how that reflects in Tolkien's expressions of love and grief. So here's the source of all the grief, the Oath of Feanor, which Tolkien wrote in alliterative verse:

Be he friend, or foe, or foul offspring
of Morgoth Bauglir. Be he mortal dark
that in after days on Middle-earth shall dwell,
shall no love, nor law, nor league of Gods,
no might, nor mercy, nor moveless fate,
defend him for ever from the fierce vengeance
of the sons of Feanor, whoso seize or steal
or finding keep the fair enchanted
globes of crystal whose glory dies not,
the Silmarils! We have sworn forever.

Yep, but also love. So here's about Finduilas:

Finduilas, maybe, faring lightly
on the sward he saw, or swinging pale
a sheen of silver down some shadowy hall.
Yet to Turin was turned her troublous heart
against will and wisdom and waking thought:
in dreams she sought him, his dark sorrow
with love lightening so that laughter shone
in eyes new-kindled in her Elfin name
he eager spake as in endless spring,
they fared free-hearted through flowers enchanted
with hand in hand o'er the happy pastures
of land that is lit by no light of earth
by no moon nor sun down mazy ways
to the black abysmal brink of waking.

So, Turin Turambar! He got love. In dreams. You know, probably the best love he ever got.

Okay, so what does this mean? Well, I would say Tolkien fans have good reason to write alliterative verse about Tolkien's world. There's plenty of precedence for it. He did it himself. It looks like he wished he could have written the whole Silmarillion in it, but he didn't. Like a lot of things, he just sort of gave up after a certain point.

So, I confess to doing so. So, if you go to this link on AO3, I'm afraid that I'll have to probably put it on an SWG sometime, too, but sorry about that, folks. But I've got a whole series, basically a cycle of songs written by Rhunedhel about the Avari of the East, and about the city that they founded hidden under a mountain with a crystalline dome that let in the light of the sun and plenty of fun stuff, including an adventure in which … involving an elvish smith making armor unbreakable to man, for somebody who might have been the Witch King.

You know, now the interesting thing is that I did, with alliterative verse in this sequence what, um, you know, what fanfiction people do in general with stories, which is I made up my own form. So, the form I use is not classical alliterative verse in this. It's something I call a Daeron stanza. It's sort of like the, it has some rhyming codas, kind of like the bob and wheel in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, and it uses splitter alliteration. And so, at one point … and so the one I consider my masterwork is the redemption of Daeron, which is a fanfic which looks at Daeron out in the east, endlessly grieving for Luthien, when he meets somebody else. And at one point in that, there's sort of … let me just give you a little quote. He is explaining how horrible everything has become, and sort of explaining himself when challenged, why are you still grieving? You know, this is … leave, you know, leave death in its tomb, basically. And, you know, he says, the loom of life's a frame we fill, with deeds and dreams we tangle till. Our hearts are stunned as patterns pass, like flashing beams too bright as to last, and nothing's as it seems.

So, I had fun. And there's plenty more. I put together a theme page, and Zdenka is on it, of alliterative verse for Arda. And I've got a … here is also linked for my website. And you can also find a lot of other alliterative verse on my website. I think I can proudly claim to have found pretty much all the alliterative verse on the internet, either published it or linked to it. Or … and if I've missed it, tell me where it is. So, a great opportunity for new fanworks.

And I'm going to stop and tell you about a few opportunities. Opportunity number one. I proposed a Tolkien alliterative fanverse, alliterative verse fan poetry workshop for Oxonmoot 2025. I don't know whether it'll happen. They haven't given back the answers yet, but if anybody's going to be at Oxonmoot, please email me, and if it happens, I'll let you know. And the other opportunity is I have a quarterly literary journal of alliterative verse that I publish. Just put out the summer issue, and that one, the theme was protests, prophecies, and poetic battles. And there's some very fun poems in there, but here is the schedule for the next year. In this case, we lost the… You got the yellow, and you lost the text, probably. Yeah, so the summer issue is Alliterative Verse in Arda. And so I'm looking for Tolkien, alliterative fanverse for my Summer 2026 issue. Before then, I've got a fall issue focusing on Norse and Icelandic forms of alliterative verse, Psalms and Meditations, Winter 2026, Moments Sensed and Seen, more lyric poetry, Spring 2026, and then Summer 2020-26, I want alliterative verse in Arda. So, that's the story. Thank you so much!