Thijs Porck

Scholar of Old English, Tolkien and Early Medieval England

Tag: Middle-Earth

The Medieval in Middle-earth: Old English Songs in LOTR: The War of the Rohirrim (2024)
The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim (2024) is an anime film that tells the story of Helm Hammerhand, King of Rohan, and his daughter Héra. The movie is based on the Appendices of J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings and contains many references to Old English, especially in the film’s sound track. This blog post discusses the film’s Neo-Old English lyrics!

Gone with the wind: Where is “The Rider”?

“Where is the horse? Where is the rider?”, the opening lyrics of “Hama’s Song” in The War of the Rohirrim (2024) will remind many a Tolkien fan of “The Lament of the Rohirrim” which Aragorn recites in the chapter “The King of the Golden Hall” in The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers. In Aragorn’s poem, the opening lines run as follows: “Where now the horse and the rider? Where is the horn that was blowing?”. Tolkien, a Professor of Anglo-Saxon (Old English) at the Universities of Leeds and Oxford, based Aragorn’s poem on the Old English elegy The Wanderer, which uses the so-called ubi sunt motif (‘where are they now?’) to express the fleeting nature of worldly pleasures (the answer to the rhetorical questions being “they are no more”). As it turns out, “Hama’s Song” of the new movie is closer to the Old English original poem, which has the line: “hwær cwom mearg, hwær cwom mago” [Where is the horse? Where is the man?].

Ubi sunt (or ‘hwær cwom’) lines in The Wanderer. Exeter Book, fol. 77v

The context of “Hama’s Song” makes clear that “the rider” referred to is the movie’s heroine Héra, who is also the subject of the movie’s credits song by Paris Paloma called “The Rider”. If you listen carefully to this song, you will notice that there is a very clear Old English lyric at 0:41 (and again at 2:01 and 3:01): “Heo is se wind, heo is se wind” [she is the wind, she is the wind]:

More Old English lyrics! A speculative transcription of “The Lament for Helm”

A single line in an (otherwise pretty epic) song is nice and all, but it would have been even better if the full song were in Old English, of course! In that regard, the best song of the film may be “The Lament for Helm”, sung by Lorraine Ashbourne (who also voices the character Olwyn). This entire song is in Neo-Old English verse and it is pretty amazing:

At the moment of writing this blog post (16 December, 2024), the lyrics to this song have not been made available. So, the following transcription is mostly speculative (and I am indebted to Leiden University colleagues Rachel Fletcher, Suzanne Klare and Amos van Baalen for their invaluable input):

…      Beadu-cwealm* hafað
fægne frean      forð onsended
giedd sculon singan      gleomenn* sorgiende
on ealdum eodorum*       þæt he eorla wære
his leode leofost       ond land-frymena hiehst*.
Beadu-cwealm*…

[… Battle-death has
sent forth the fated lord
sorrowing minstrels must sing a song
in old enclosures, that he was of warriors
the dearest to his people and the highest of land-lords.
Battle-death…]

The words marked with an asterisk * have been slightly emended from what we can hear in the song for linguistic accuracy:
- *Beadu-cwealm ‘Battle-death’ – we can clearly hear ‘Beado-cwealm’, but the dictionary form of this word is beadu-cwealm – the word occurs only once in the existing Old English corpus, in the Old English poem Andreas. The pronunciation with the “o” is probably influenced by The Lament for Théodred (for which, see below).
- *gleomenn ‘minstrel’ – we can clearly hear “gleomann” [minstrel], but the plural verb “sculon” suggests that we need the plural “gleomenn” [minstrels].
- *eodorum ‘(in) enclosures’. This sounds like “edoran” in the song, but “edoran” cannot be the right form: we need an “-um” to match the dative plural “ealdum”+ Old English eodor ‘wall, enclosure’ is a strong noun and “-an” is a weak nominal ending. “Edorum” rather than “eodorum” is possible (the Old English poem Genesis A, for instance, has “edoras” for expected eodoras, which matches the spelling of Edoras, the capital of Rohan, based on the same Old English word!).
- *hiehst ‘highest’. We can hear “heahst”, but superlatives are usually affected by i-mutation, so heah > hiehst. That said, heahst is occassionally attested, e.g. in the Old English gloss of the Liber Scintillarum.
What is impressive about this Neo-Old English song is that its author has managed to abide by the rules of alliterative Old English verse, which connects half lines through alliteration on stressed syllables: fæg… frean forþ … | giedd … gleo (and in the same line “sing … sorg“) | eald … eo … eor… | leo…leo…land.

The inclusion of a Neo-Old English song in The War of the Rohirrim does not come out of the blue: Tolkien himself was known to compose his own Old English poetry and, in doing so, also inspired an eerily similar Neo-Old English song that was included in the extended edition of Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002) : Éowyn’s Lament for Théodred (written by Philippa Boyens and translated into Old English by David Salo).

The Lament for Helm vs. Éowyn’s Lament for Théodred: A comparison

While Éowyn’s song (LfT) appears to have a lot in common with The Lament for Helm (LfH), attentive listeners can spot a number of differences, which are listed below, line per line:

LfH: Beadu-cwealm hafað | LfT: Bealo-cwealm hafað

Éowyn uses the word Bealo-cwealm ‘evil death’ rather than Beadu-cwealm ‘Battle-death’. The word comes from the Old English poem Beowulf, ll. 2265b-2266:

London, British Library, Cotton Vitellius A.xv, fol. 183r

Bealo-cwealm hafað | fela feorhcynna forð onsended [Evil death has sent forth many of the living].

LfH: fægne frean forð onsended | LfT: freone frecan forð onsended

Clearly, the half line “forð onsended” (sent forth), found in both lamentations, is also based on Beowulf, but both songs provide a different first half line. For Théodred, Éowyn uses “freone frecan” [the noble warrior] – this phrase was not an option for The Lament for Helm, given the fact that the movie also features an unlikable character called Freca (named after the Old English word for ‘warrior’, of course!). The phrase “fægne frean” means something along the lines of “lord doomed/fated to die”, which is very apt for the character of Helm.

LfH + LfT: giedd sculon singan gleomenn sorgiende

Both laments have the same line here, with double alliteration on g and s.

LfH: on ealdum eodorum þæt he eorla wære | LfT: on Meduselde þæt he manna wære

In Éowyn’s song, the minstrels are singing in Meduseld (the hall of the kings of Rohan; medu-seld is an Old English word meaning ‘mead-hall’) and so she alliterates on the m with “manna” [of men]. When The Lament for Helm is sung, they are (crucially) not in Meduseld, but in the Hornburg (later: Helm’s Deep), a somewhat dilapidated place, so “ealdum eodorum” [old enclosures] seems suitable and triggers an alliteration with “eorla” [of warriors].

LfH: his leode leofost ond land-frymena hiehst | LfT: his dryhtne dierest and maga deorost

Here we see a clear distinction between Helm Hammerhand, a king, and Théodred, a prince. The former is “dearest to his people and highest of the land-lords”, while Théodred is “dearest to his lord [i.e. his father Théoden] and bravest of kinsmen”. The alliteration in The Lament for Helm sticks closer to the ‘rules’ than Éowyn’s Lament for Théodred here, since the last stressed syllable of a line rarely participates in the structural alliteration in Old English verse (but in LfT “deorost” alliterates with “dryhtne” and “dierest”).

All in all, then, while the laments are certainly similar (and the one must be based on the other!), there are also clear differences, prompted by the differing contexts in which they are sung. A medievalist would call this mouvance, a concept Tolkien also played around with in his fiction, but that is a story for another blog post. For now, I hope you have enjoyed this little foray into the world of Neo-Old English – if you want to learn more about the topic, there is a whole book about it: Old English Medievalism: Reception and Recreation in the 20th and 21st Centuries!

If you liked this post, you may also be interested in:
You can find my academic publications in the field of Tolkien Studies (available for free, in Open Access) here!
16 Dec 2024
The Medieval in Middle-Earth: Thror’s Map

As a professor of Anglo-Saxon at the University of Oxford, J. R. R. Tolkien could not help but be inspired by the language and literature he studied and taught. As a result, his fictional world is infused with cultural material of the Middle Ages, particularly Old English language and literature. In this blog, I will regularly shed some light on the medieval in Middle-Earth, starting with the map of Thror.

Thror’s Map

Thror’s map (source)

Found in the front matter of The Hobbit, Thror’s map is for many readers the first glimpse at Tolkien’s fictional universe. A closer look soon reveals that this is no ordinary map. For one, its orientation seems off: the East is on top, North is on the left, West is on the bottom. Moreover, the map contains little drawings, such as a mountain, a dragon and a spider in a web, accompanied by such little texts as “there are spiders”. More obviously, perhaps, is the strange alphabet (discovered and identified by Elrond as ‘moon letters’) and the little hand on the left, pointing at more moon-ish letters. A strange map, indeed. Though not so strange, perhaps, for someone who is familiar with the Middle Ages.

A medieval map: The Cotton World Map

Cotton World Map. © The British Library, Cotton Tiberius B v (source)

This Anglo-Saxon map of the world, made in Canterbury around 1025-1050, shows a number of similarities to Tolkien’s map of Thror. First and foremost, the two maps share the same orientation: East is on the top, North is on the left and the West is on the bottom (you can clearly see this by looking at Britain in the bottom left corner!) – a standard feature of medieval maps (before the introduction of the compass, the East (where the sun rises) was the easiest direction to locate). Moreover, the Cotton World Map, like Tolkien’s, features several drawings, such as two little men fighting in the south of Britain, little drawings of cities like Rome and Jerusalem, and mountains (including Mount Ararat in Armenia with a little Ark of Noah!). Finally, the Anglo-Saxon map accompanies some of these drawings with descriptions; e.g., the drawing of a lion in China, where it says “hic abundant leones” [here are many lions] – not unlike Tolkien’s drawing of a spider, near the text ‘There are spiders’.

It is not inconceivable that Tolkien, in fact, drew inspiration from the Cotton World Map – its manuscript, Cotton Tibius B v, contains a version of the Marvels of the East (a catalogue of monsters), of which another version is found in the Beowulf manuscript that was so vigorously studied by Tolkien.

Details of the Cotton World Map: Britain; Mount Ararat with “arca noe”; Lion. © The British Library, Cotton Tiberius B v

Strange script: Moon letters are Anglo-Saxon runes

The fact that only Elrond is able to decipher the moon letters might make them seem strange and ancient; they turn out to be a lot closer to home. Tolkien based his moon letters on the Anglo-Saxon ‘futhorc’, the runic alphabet used for short inscriptions on stone, wood and metal. Using the Anglo-Saxon runic alphabet, one can clear decipher the message on Thror’s map as “Stand by the grey stone when the thrush knocks and the setting sun with the last light of Durin’s Day will shine upon the keyhole”. The English reading of the runes is retained even in some foreign-language versions of The Hobbit, including the Dutch one.

Anglo-Saxon futhorc (left) and moon letters on Thror’s map (right)

Manicula: Little hands in the margins of medieval manuscripts

The little hand pointing at another set of letters (which, again, can be deciphered using the Anglo-Saxon futhorc) is reminiscent of similar little hands found in medieval manuscripts. These so-called maniculae were often added in the margins by readers to point out important pieces of text (see a highly informative blog here)- the little hand on Thror’s map serves a similar purpose.

Little hand on Thror’s map and examples of early 14th-century maniculae. © The British Library, Royal MS 12 E.xxv (source)

To conclude, the map that serves as every reader’s introduction to Middle-Earth immediately gives away the medieval character of the fictional world it depicts. Welcome to Middle-Earth? More like welcome to middangeard!

The information in this post is slightly adapted from an article I published in the Tolkien journal Lembas (available here). In 2016, I will be teaching a course on Tolkien and the Anglo-Saxon World (more info here) and I am also involved in the organisation of an international conference on the theme ‘Tolkien among Scholars’, in association with the Dutch Tolkien Society Unquendor (more info here).

Tolkien’s map and its Anglo-Saxon exemplar?

© Thijs Porck and Dutch Anglo-Saxonist Blog, 2015. Unauthorised use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Thijs Porck and Dutch Anglo-Saxonist Blog with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

19 Nov 2015