The Fall of Arthur by J. R. R. Tolkien
This extract has a designation of the style of the passage, which is scarcely legible, but could be interpreted as ‘Dramatic and rhetorical’.
*
Footnotes
1 The name Brut of these and other poems derives from an old fiction, greatly elaborated by Geoffrey of Monmouth, that a certain Brutus, grandson (or great-grandson) of Aeneas of Troy, was the first man to set foot in the very desirable island of Albion (which until then was only inhabited by ‘a few giants’), naming it ‘Britain’ from his own name, and calling his companions ‘Britons’. So in the opening of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, in my father’s translation:
and far over the French flood Felix Brutus
on many a broad bank and brae Britain established
full fair …
2 My father used a copy of the Early English Text Society edition, as revised by Edmund Brock, 1871, which he acquired in September 1919, and which I have used for the quotations in this book.
3 Awkwarde on the umbrere with a back stroke (?) on the visor; nese nose; noyes hym sare grieves him sore; Beblede made bloody; mayles chain-mail; bowes the blonke turns the horse; burlyche brande stout sword; brene cuirass; O-slante aslant; slote hollow above the breast-bone.
4 ane one; mode mood, mind; mett dreamed; dares for dowte lies still for fear; dye as he scholde as if he were about to die; affraye fear.
5 schalkes men; Sakeles guiltless; cirquytrie arrogance; sere various, many; Schryfe the confess; schape prepare; schewynge vision; take kepe yif the lyke take heed if you will; fersely violently.
6 Very oddly he is the slayer of the Emperor Lucius, although less than 200 lines later Lucius is slain again by King Arthur (verses cited above, see here).
7 The reference is to the Lancelot of the French poet of the later twelfth century Chrétien de Troyes, a work known also as Le Chevalier de la Charette, The Knight of the Cart. The name derives from an incident in the narrative in which Lancelot, the secret and impassioned lover of Queen Guinevere, set out to rescue her from captivity in the land of the prince Meleagant. Having lost his horse he accepted the offer of a dwarvish carter to be carried forward on his vital errand: but the cart was a tumbril, used to carry malefactors as a public spectacle to the place of execution. Lancelot thus showed himself ready to submit to the extremity of disgrace and ignominy in the eyes of the courtly world for the sake of Guinevere. That he hesitated momentarily before stepping into the cart of shame was held against him by his idolized lady, a defect in his absolute subservience to the code of amour courtois.
8 Malory ended his tale with these words: ‘Here is the ende of the hoole [whole] book of kyng Arthur and of his noble knyghtes of the Rounde Table. … And here is the ende of The Deth of Arthur.’ William Caxton took the last sentence to refer to the whole compilation of Malory’s Arthurian tales, and ended the text of his edition of 1485 with the words ‘Thus endeth thys noble and Ioyous book entytled le morte Darthur’.
9 mykelle much; couthe knew; wrake trouble, harm, ruin; hele and layne hide and conceal; wene doubt; eme uncle; bydene together; mene tell; mayne strength; blynne left (unsaid). In the first of these stanzas Gaheriet is the form in the Mort Artu and the stanzaic Morte Arthur of the name of Gawain’s brother Gareth, as he is named by Malory and in The Fall of Arthur (III.82).
10 So in the stanzaic Morte Arthur:
That fals traytour, Sir Mordreid,
The kynges sister sone he was,
And eke his owne sone, as I rede.
11 Qwat gome What man; one growffe on his face.
12 in kythe thare he lengede in the land where he lived; konynge skill; dole for his dede sorrow for his death; tite quickly; furthe forth; weries the stowndys curses the time[s]; werdes fates; wandrethe woe.
13 heste command; hally wholly; graythes to Glasschenberye make their way to Glastonbury; the gate at the gayneste by the shortest road; merkes to a manere goes to a manor-house.
14 thethen thence; Bretons Britons; eldyrs ancestors; Bruytte Brut (see footnote 1).
15 On other pages my father scribbled down alliterative lines and half-lines that follow from this summary, and this last sentence would be scarcely more than guesswork were it not confirmed by these lines on another page:
To Cornwall coming
of coast unkind but kind people
or in Lyonesse find loyal welcome.
Lyonesse is the name of the lost land west of the most westerly point of Cornwall (‘Land’s End’). In my father’s early tale of Ælfwine of England (see here) is found the following (The Book of Lost Tales Part II, p.313):
Though Déor [father of Ælfwine] was of English blood, it is told that he wedded to wife a maiden from the West, from Lionesse as some have named it since, or Evadrien ‘Coast of Iron’ as the Elves still say. Déor found her in the lost land beyond Belerion whence the Elves at times set sail.
16 Scraps of verse on other pages, beginning ‘Gawain answered in grave wonder’, show my father’s first movements towards the versification of this passage in the outline, in which he reminds Arthur of their firm resolve and settled purpose.
17 On another page are found these lines written with more care (see here):
in his wake followed
lieges of Lothian. But Lot’s children
Gaheris and Gareth Gawain’s brethren
that day missed he, and dour-handed
Sir Agravain: under earth lay they
by Lancelot in luckless hour
slain to his long sorrow
18 The question mark following ‘Wingelot’ is not editorial. On this name see here, here.
19 gliftis looks; glopyns is distressed, is confounded; grisely terribly; gretande weeping; umbrere visor; lowkkide closed; lede lead; lire face; falowede grown pale; o kynde by kin; levede left; wirchipe honour; were war; hele well-being, prosperity; happynge good fortune; hale wholly; kepide guarded, protected; thofe though; one alone; ekys is increased; dowttouse derfe dede dread, stern death; duellis tarry; drawes … one dreghe draw … aside, hold back.
20 Blyne cease; blondirs distract; botles without cure; bale grief; bees will be.
21 Messie Messiah; ryvaye hunt by a river; racches hounds; roo ne rayenedere roe deer nor reindeer; fellide felled; formaylle female hawk; dede death; dare lie still; Drighten the Lord; derfe hard, stern.
22 This river, of no great length, rises near Camelford (west of Launceston) and flows into the sea near Padstow (north-west of Bodmin).
23 I have cited this text from the manuscript Cotton Caligula A ix in Sir Francis Madden’s edition in three volumes of 1847, which for more than a century was the only edition of Laȝamon’s Brut. My father acquired a very fine copy of this rare and costly work in 1927.
24 The name Argante seems likely to have been a corruption of Morgen in Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Vita Merlini (see here).
25 In this connection it may be recalled that (though with a query) Gawain’s ship was named Wingelot, Foam-flower, the name of Eärendel’s ship (see here).
26 Very primitive drafting for the opening lines is in fact found on one of the pages of the notes for the continuation of The Fall of Arthur.
27 In the original story the Lonely Isle was anchored in the mid-ocean, and no land could be seen ‘for many leagues’ sail from its cliffs’: this was the reason for the name.
28 sokerynge succouring, assistance; sond message; mend my mysse mend my wrongdoing.
29 A remarkable note appears in the margin of A (only) against the words fair as fay-woman, line III.75, where my father wrote fair and faultless (the latter word being perfectly clear).
30 In LT (‘the Latest Text’) this line read to faith returning he was faith denied, corrected in pencil to faith was refused him who had faith broken.
31 These two lines ‘in the world walking … Yet I fouler deem’ replaced ‘with beauty perilous, yet blame I more (the eyes of envy …)’.
32 Gawain; and again three lines below.
33 The earliest read
Works by J.R.R. Tolkien
THE HOBBIT
LEAF BY NIGGLE
ON FAIRY-STORIES
FARMER GILES OF HAM
THE HOMECOMING OF BEORHTNOTH
THE LORD OF THE RINGS
THE ADVENTURES OF TOM BOMBADIL
THE ROAD GOES EVER ON (WITH DONALD SWANN)
SMITH OF WOOTTON MAJOR
Works published posthumously
SIR GAWAIN AND THE GREEN KNIGHT, PEARL AND SIR ORFEO
THE FATHER CHRISTMAS LETTERS
THE SILMARILLION
PICTURES BY J.R.R. TOLKIEN
UNFINISHED TALES
THE LETTERS OF J.R.R. TOLKIEN
FINN AND HENGEST
MR BLISS
THE MONSTERS AND THE CRITICS & OTHER ESSAYS
ROVERANDOM
THE CHILDREN OF HÚRIN
THE LEGEND OF SIGURD AND GUDRÚN
The History of Middle-earth – by Christopher Tolkien
I THE BOOK OF LOST TALES, PART ONE
II THE BOOK OF LOST TALES, PART TWO
III THE LAYS OF BELERIAND
IV THE SHAPING OF MIDDLE-EARTH
V THE LOST ROAD AND OTHER WRITINGS
VI THE RETURN OF THE SHADOW
VII THE TREASON OF ISENGARD
VIII THE WAR OF THE RING
IX SAURON DEFEATED
X MORGOTH’S RING
XI THE WAR OF THE JEWELS
XII THE PEOPLES OF MIDDLE-EARTH
Copyright
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All texts and materials by J.R.R. Tolkien © The Tolkien Trust 2013, except for those derived from The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth Beorhthelm’s Son © The J.R.R. Tolkien Estate Limited 1953, 1966, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Pearl and Sir Orfeo © The J.R.R. Tolkien Copyright Trust 1975, The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien © The J.R.R. Tolkien Copyright Trust 1981, The Book of Lost Tales Part One © The J.R.R. Tolkien Estate Limited and C.R. Tolkien 1983, The Book of Lost Tales Part Two © The J.R.R. Tolkien Estate Limited and C.R. Tolkien 1984, The Lays of Beleriand © The J.R.R. Tolkien Copyright Trust and C.R. Tolkien 1985, The Shaping of Middle-earth © The J.R.R. Tolkien Copyright Trust and C.R. Tolkien 1986, The Lost Road and Other Writings © The J.R.R. Tolkien Copyright Trust and C.R. Tolkien 1987 and The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún © C.R. Tolkien 2009
Introduction, commentaries and all other materials © C.R. Tolkien 2013
Quotation from The Development of Arthurian Romance © Roger Sherman Loomis 1963 reproduced courtesy of Dover Publications, Inc.
Quotation from The Genesis of a Medieval Book by C.S. Lewis published in Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Literature in 1966 © Cambridge University Press 1966, 1998, reproduced with permission
Quotation from The Works of Sir Thomas Malory © Eugène Vinaver 1947, 1971 published by Oxford University Press, reproduced with permission
Illustration © Bill Sanderson 2013
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J. R. R. Tolkien, The Fall of Arthur
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